Mistress of Winter

by Giles Carwyn

  Their defeat in the Nightmare Battle left Physendria as dry as the southern badlands. The Summermen rushed into that vast emptiness, filling it like the Summer Seas and washing away the nation that had once been Physendria. They were now the Summer Deserts, and to speak the word “Physendria” to the wrong person meant your life.

  Still, if the Nine Squares competition were to begin tomorrow, Phanqui retained the right to begin at the Scorpion stone. It made him smile, the idea of his cowardly heart and broken body running the desert again, like he had run with Brophy so long ago. Phanqui could still smell the swirling dust during that glorious moment when he and his kinsmen ran side by side with the Ohndarien prince. That day had been the finest of his life, and it truly seemed that everything would finally change for the better. How wrong he had been.

  The Nine Squares games ended the night Brophy flew, burning like Phoenix. Now the great volcano was home to countless refugees, packed into the galleries like roaches. Some children had spent their entire lives in that horrid place, some had—

  “Look out!” one of his guards shouted. Phanqui turned just as the rock struck him. With a gasp, he fell to the garbage-strewn road, clutching the gash in his head. Another rock arced down, but he managed to get his arm up in time to deflect it.

  The heads of three youths poked briefly over the lip of the trench. “Traitor!” one of them called. “Ass-spreader!”

  They threw more rocks, then disappeared.

  Phanqui’s guards left him on the ground, running for the nearest ramp leading up to the surface. Both pulled little silver whistles from their tunics and blew in unison, filling the air with a piercing shriek. Half a hundred Summermen would swarm over this area in moments. There was a handsome reward on the head of any rebel, no matter how young.

  Phanqui sent a brief prayer to Falcon for the fleeing boys. “Lend wings to their feet,” he whispered. “Fly away little ones. Keep running, keep throwing your rocks until we’re free of them forever.”

  He remained on his knees, holding one hand to his bloody head as the shrill whistles of other Summermen crisscrossed the surface above them. Part of him wished the rock had been a spear that would have ended his part in this endless nightmare.

  He shook his head. Is that what Brophy would have done? When an entire country stood against him, did he lie down and wait for the spear? No. He broke the game, threw off the shackles, escaped the inescapable prison. He soared like Phoenix.

  Phanqui rose to his feet and continued toward the Catacombs. He still lived in the subterranean palace, surrounded by the officers and soldiers of the new regime. In exchange for a full belly and feather sheets, Phanqui had become the hatchet man of the invaders. Or their shovel man, rather. The Summermen buried their enemies alive.

  As a subcaptain of Physen’s Black Watch, Phanqui ate as the officers did, attended some of their planning sessions, and was afforded some small luxuries, the best food, a physician’s care when his wife fell ill, things that his starving countrymen no longer knew. In exchange for these things, Phanqui had the simple job of arranging the arrest and execution of anyone who raised a finger against the foreign invaders.

  Here in Physen, the rebellion was little more than children throwing rocks. The Summermen held all the major towns, but it was a different story in the deep desert. His countrymen had seized the mountain passes and many of the smaller towns in the south. The Summermen could only move men and supplies by ship, sailing through the Ohndarien locks. The Waveborn were losing their grip. They would have to leave soon, or…If Lord Vinghelt had his way, come back with the combined might of the Summer Cities and wash them from the face of the earth.

  Phanqui entered the Catacombs, nodding at the two Summermen who stood sentry at the archway. He wound his way through the dimly lit passages until he reached his door.

  Drawing a deep breath, he tried to banish his brooding thoughts, tried to banish the faces of the Physendrians he had condemned today, two men and a woman. He tried not to think about how they might even now be struggling to breathe under six feet of desert, their hearts beating out of their chests as they scratched at their sandstone coffins, screaming words that none would ever hear.

  Phanqui’s fingers became a claw on the door, and he cursed his perfect memory. He had known the woman, had seen her once while riding on Governor Vinghelt’s chariot through the city above. Her arm had been wrapped protectively around a skinny young boy. The woman he’d condemned to death tonight had had a son.

  For hours afterward, he had dwelled on the hateful gaze she had given him. She never once looked at their Waveborn oppressors as they passed. Her hatred was for Phanqui alone. Everyone despised a traitor, an ass-spreader bending over for their foreign lords.

  Phanqui pushed the door open and crept into his chambers.

  His wife, Shafyssa, lay sleeping on the circular bed that hung from chains in the middle of the room. Their one-year-old daughter lay cuddled tight in the curve of her body, as if the mother could protect the child from the world outside their door.

  Swallowing, he crossed the room and knelt silently at the bedside. He touched the child’s tiny palm, and she reflexively grabbed his finger, squeezing twice.

  Shafyssa’s eyelids flickered.

  “Hello, beautiful,” he said softly.

  “Hello, gimpy,” she mumbled, still half-asleep.

  Their marriage had been arranged by their parents, and neither of them had wanted it. But sometimes the Nine were generous, and the two of them had fallen in love. It was about the time that she had started using that nickname that he had lost his heart to her.

  Slowly waking up, she opened her eyes and saw his forehead.

  “What happened?” she cried, jolting upright and waking the baby. She gathered Brepha into her arms, holding her against a breast. The little girl began sucking immediately.

  “Rebels,” he said. “Children. Got me good with a rock.” He smiled wryly.

  Shafyssa lowered her voice to a whisper. “Are they all right? Did they get away?”

  “I don’t know,” he whispered back. Phanqui doubted he was important enough to spy on, but secrets slipped through the Catacombs like water slipped through sand. “I hope so. I sent a prayer after them. With any luck, they were fast enough to stay ahead of it.”

  Brepha had fallen back asleep as quickly as she woke, and Shafyssa laid her gently on the bed. She rose and went to fetch a basin of water. Kneeling next to Phanqui, she began washing his cut.

  “I buried three more today,” he said. He rarely talked about his work, but he couldn’t help himself. The woman had had a son.

  She winced and nodded. “You did what they made you do.”

  “But I said the words. I was the one they looked at with such hatred—”

  She grabbed his chin, forced his gaze to meet hers. “Don’t say that.” Her gaze flicked to their baby, asleep on the bed. “You know who you are; you know why we’re doing this.”

  “Yes, but sometimes I just wish…” he said, then stopped. He wished they had never had Brepha. She made them so vulnerable, so afraid every moment of their lives. How could he ever explain this to his daughter? How could he look at her and tell her what he’d done, tell her why he had done it?

  Phanqui banished the thoughts from his mind and silently begged forgiveness from the Nine. It was profane to wish away a child.

  “Stay strong, my husband,” Shafyssa whispered. “You are the only one who could do this. The information you feed the rebels is invaluable. Your timely whispers have saved hundreds of lives.”

  “But my accusations have also buried hundreds.”

  “That blood is on their hands, not yours. If you fled your post, ten lesser men would line up to fill it. You do the Nine’s work.”

  “Explain that to the son of the woman I just condemned to death.”

  Shafyssa fell quiet for a moment, then said, “That boy is the reason you are doing this.” Her voice was hard, angry. “Hold his face in that
flawless memory of yours. Hold that boy close to your heart with all of the others. Because one day we will make Vinghelt and all of his minions pay for every death, for every orphan who cries because her mother dared to believe in Physendria.”

  Phanqui turned away. He wanted her words to rekindle the fire in his soul, as they had done so many times in the past; but after tonight, he would need more than her words.

  Leaning close to her, he whispered in her ear, so quiet that she could barely hear him. “That day may be very close at hand. One of my contacts has asked me to join a plan to assassinate Lord Vinghelt.”

  She drew back, her eyes wide. She swallowed, and he could see the fear and excitement mixing in her heart. “Is this the new one? The—”

  “Yes. The spy sent by the Kherish crown.”

  “The fat one with the red eyes?”

  He nodded. “He is posing as a weapons merchant and needs me to arrange a meeting with Lord Vinghelt on his ship. With my help, it would only take a few men to bring him down.”

  “Do you trust the fat man?”

  Phanqui paused, then said, “The Kherish have no love for the Waveborn, that is certain.”

  “But you want to trust him. You want to swing a sword for the Nine once again.”

  Phanqui glanced at little Brepha. His hand moved, then stopped. He longed to touch her, to run a finger down her smooth cheek, but he held back.

  “You must remember our pact, Phanqui,” she whispered, catching his glance. “Remember that night in the desert.”

  “I cannot forget it.”

  “We made that choice together. We bought the worm’s milk that would have thrust her from my womb, but we both held that cup and poured that tea into the sand. We promised we would not let a child hold us back. We promised we would still take this step when the time came.”

  Phanqui nodded, reliving the moment. He could still feel the stinging sand blowing against his legs. He could still smell the acrid stench of the tea. He had never been so scared. Or so in love.

  He looked at his wife. He looked at his daughter.

  “We’re running out of time,” she told him, and she was right. Vinghelt would return to the Summer Cities soon to gather his army.

  Phanqui watched Brepha’s tiny chest move up and down as she slept. Shafyssa gently forced him to look back at her. “You fear they will bury us. But we are already buried, my love. They squeeze the life out of us.”

  Shafyssa turned toward little Brepha. Silence fell for a time, then she whispered, “Every time I nurse her, I’m afraid the hatred and bitterness will seep into her, crushing her heart before she even has a chance to really live. We cannot allow her to grow up as a slave, as a worthless child of a defeated people.”

  Phanqui shook his head, walking away from her. She followed, grabbing his hands, squeezing them tight.

  “I still remember the moment I fell in love with you,” she said.

  His heart wrenched as the memory came back to him as clear as if it had happened an hour ago. In the weeks before the Summermen descended upon them, the fifteen families were desperate to unite their feuding factions against the foreign invaders. They made several royal matches in one week. Phanqui’s had been one of those.

  “We’d just made love for the first time,” she said, smiling ruefully. “And it was bad. So bad.” She chuckled softly, squeezing his hand. “I had never felt so awkward, so lonely. I hated you at that moment, and I despaired for my life.”

  He kept his gaze on the floor.

  “But then you started to talk. You told me about that horrible wound in your leg. You told me about the last Nine Squares contest. You told me about your friend, Brophy, about the day you stabbed him in the back. You did it for your family, you said. For your mother, your father, your sisters and cousins. You saved your family.”

  “I lost my soul.”

  She shook her head. “I did not believe that then, and I do not believe that now. At that moment, I saw the man you really are, even if you couldn’t. I saw the gods in you that night. I saw the Nine shining through your eyes.”

  She placed her head against his chest, holding him tight.

  “This is another moment, just like that first,” she murmured against him. “The Nine are in the room with us. You’ve been touched by the gods, and the lives of the men they choose are rarely happy, rarely long. But this is your burden, and only you have the strength to bear it.”

  She paused.

  “If Brophy was here right now,” she whispered, “he’d be on that Kher’s ship. He’d take his stab at Vinghelt’s heart, with nothing but a sharp stick if need be. And you would be with him.”

  Phanqui didn’t say anything.

  “Wouldn’t you?” she pressed.

  Slowly, he nodded. “If Brophy was here, I would be with him.”

  “Then go,” Shafyssa whispered. “Fight for us. Fight for her.” She looked at their sleeping daughter. “If the Nine claim the highest price, I will pay it before I see you—before I see any of us—truly lose our souls.”

  He nodded, then whispered. “And before our country disappears forever.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Must we drag ourselves through the filthy streets of these dusteaters,” Mikal said to Lawdon, flashing his winning smile. “When it looks to be such a beautiful day?”

  “If the simple act of walking pains you so much,” Lawdon replied, “why didn’t you stay on the ship?”

  “I would sooner die a coward’s death than be cleft from your side,” Mikal said as he trudged along Canal Street next to her. “You wound me with the mere suggestion.”

  “When I wound you, you’ll feel it,” Lawdon said, walking down the deserted street with long strides. She had spent most of her childhood on Ohndarien’s streets and waterways scheming up her dinner for the night, but the city had changed more than she’d expected.

  “I would bare my breast to receive your knife, my steel dove,” Mikal said. “Simply give the word.”

  Lawdon considered handing him her dagger, just to see what he would do, but suppressed the urge.

  Lawdon had docked her ship, Summer’s Heart, in Cliff Town late last night. She’d considered heading to Baelandra’s house immediately, but decided that would be rude and forced herself to wait until dawn before heading to the far side of the city. It had been years since she had climbed the four hundred steps alongside Ohndarien’s underground waterway. Those locks usually ran day and night, but they seemed to be shut down for some reason, and Lawdon hadn’t seen another soul since they entered the tunnels.

  Climbing the famous Foreplay Steps used to be a chore most sailors looked forward to, as every step brought them closer to the Ohndarien brothels on Canal Street, but those brothels had closed down years ago leaving this part of the city practically empty on this lovely morning.

  A bell began to toll in the distance. The deep ring came from the west and carried across the city. Lawdon felt a swift chill up her spine. Her first thought was a fire, but that was never a problem in a city made of stone. The sound continued clear and steady, and she paused, looking toward the Hall of Windows.

  “Are we being invaded?” Mikal asked.

  “Let’s hope not.” The attacks of the corrupted on Ohndarien were well-known in the Summer Seas. Lawdon had seen Shara once when she had embraced a tiny whiff of black emmeria. She had no desire to see a full-fledged corrupted.

  Mikal tried to usher her back toward the ship. “Please, my love, my life, my light. Let us away from these desiccated—and ridiculously steep—shores with all haste. An ocean of delight awaits us back in the Summer Seas.”

  Lawdon ignored his efforts and continued down the street, increasing her pace, just to spite him. “Don’t you realize that Ohndarien was once called the Jewel of the Known World? She is renowned for her beauty.”

  “Farad oxen are renowned for the size of their dumpings,” Mikal replied. “It does not change the nature of the oxen. Or their dumpings.” Mikal dramatically d
odged a pile of dung that steamed in the street.

  She glanced back and couldn’t help but smile, wondering if he arranged these moments. He was a poet duelist, after all; even if his reputation implied that he enjoyed the sound of his own voice much more than the heft of his blade.

  Mikal grinned back at her, showing flawless white teeth. “You see?” he said. “No matter how glorious a dusteater city may be, it still squats upon the land. Such vile necessities have nowhere to go. And so they sit in plain view. It is not the fault of these fine Ohndariens. I’m certain they are a very…clean people.” He wrinkled his nose. “But surely you must feel the indignity of being land-bound. You are Lord Reignholtz’s captain, master of the prince’s flagship! Not a sheep. A hoofed ox. A…a dusteater.”

  “No one made you come with me,” Lawdon replied. “In fact, I don’t think you were even invited.”

  “My dear, my heart, my savior, your recent kindness has put me forever in your debt. You know I must attend upon you every moment until the last breath drifts from my mouth.” Mikal scissor-stepped quickly to catch up with her, facing her as he walked backward.

  “You have taken the most tender parts of me and kept them cruelly in hand, and I cannot leave your side until I melt your fist into a tender embrace, until we spin with abandon, shedding our outer defenses and leaving naught but your skin…” He looked at her, eyes brimming with hope. “My skin…Our skin…”

  Lawdon snorted. “I have a task, Heidvell. All that skin might be pleasantly distracting, but I must meet with Baelandra, as charged by my lord. It is a matter of duty. Surely you must remember what duty is?”

  “I believe it was a word my mother used every time I embarrassed her, but the memory comes and goes.”

  Lawdon turned onto a bridge across the canal and headed for the bay. “If your memory comes and goes, perhaps you should drink less and eat more vegetables.”