by Devin Madson
‘Tell me, Darius. Is Endymion a Laroth, too?’
‘Ask your master when you see him,’ I said, pulling my robes on as one.
‘You mean your brother?’
I turned on her with a snarl. ‘I cannot help what I was born. Trust me, I’ve tried. Yes, Malice is my brother. You of all people should know that that doesn’t mean I don’t hate him as much as I love him.’
‘But not as much as you hate yourself.’
Again her sharp intuition shot a barb through my defences and I looked away, deft fingers putting the finishing touches to a knot all too complex for a day spent shut in a dusty storeroom. Her eyes burned into the back of my head. I wanted air, I wanted space, but she was the only way out.
The divan creaked as she rose, fabric rustling. She would be tying her own sash, covering the body that only moments before had been mine. ‘I wish you had told me,’ she said. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t care?’
‘One must live in hope.’
Silence reigned, the weight of the Keep pressing down on us. I stared at the lantern flame dancing in its cage.
‘We should rest,’ I said.
‘Darius, I didn’t mean–’
‘Didn’t you? You can’t lie to me. I’m an Empath, remember? At least Malice has never wished me to be anything but what I am.’
Beneath my own anger I could not feel her at all, could only see her scowl. Then, exuding her great sadness, she disappeared through the wall.
Chapter 5
The night stared back. It was full of souls, but of Darius and Kimiko there was no sign.
A great willow tree stood at the crossroad, its branches drooping to sweep the ground at its feet. It shifted, its thin, blade-like leaves shaking – otherworldly in the moonlight. Malice crouched beneath it, little more than a collection of shadows in the gloom.
The horses were growing restless.
‘We need to keep moving,’ Ire growled, gripping the reins as his black stallion backed, snorting. ‘I don’t like waiting in the dark.’
‘Scared?’ Conceit jeered.
Ire spat on the ground. ‘Petrified,’ he said.
Parsimony sat at the side of the road with his horse’s rein looped around his wrist. ‘Who says she’s even coming back?’
‘She’s marked, Pars, she has to obey.’
‘Doesn’t mean she has to live. I wouldn’t trust such a mission to a minnow.
‘Can you walk through walls then?’
‘Of course I can’t, but there are other ways.’
Ire snorted, his handsome face contorted in the moonlight. ‘Not when your enemy knows what you’re capable of.’
Gathered at the side of the track, the Vices were as restless as their animals. I sat back against the old signpost and watched them, each man throwing swift glances at their silent leader.
‘What’s so special about Lord Laroth anyway?’
Ire stared at Parsimony, but the man just stared back. With a jerk of his head he indicated Avarice sitting on a rock further along the track, his large hands stroking the velvet cheek of Conceit’s horse. ‘Go ask if you don’t know.’
Silence fell again, but only in the solid world. Leaching into every head, my Empathy heard the whispers, jumbled together like the rustling leaves.
I’d like to see him ask. Avarice bites anyone who talks about the Monster.
I wonder if they’re really brothers.
That Endymion is one of them, too. Never thought I’d see someone that freaked me out more than the master.
It’s those eyes.
Those eyes.
And his hands are always cold.
Hope was watching me, returning to his habit now we were once more on the road. But I could not leave now, could not escape without permission. The mark might not affect me the same way it did them, but it had not left me untouched. The further I walked from Malice the sharper the pain became, like a hand crushing my heart.
I got to my feet and brushed myself down. A few wary eyes turned my way, but ignoring the Vices, I crossed the moonlit track to the enormous willow tree. My robe stuck to my back with sweat, the gentle breeze doing nothing to alleviate the heat.
I parted the curtain of hanging leaves. ‘What do you want, Endymion?’ Malice asked with an overdramatic groan. He had constructed a makeshift Errant board out of sticks and stones, and he sat before it, two fingers pressed to his temple.
‘Your Vices are worried,’ I said. ‘They don’t think she’s going to make it out alive.’
Malice moved a piece.
‘And you want to know whether I think she will, yes? How sweet of you to worry for the brother you know nothing about.’
‘I’m not the only one who’s worried.’
He looked up then, slashes of moonlight cutting across his face. ‘You can feel me, can you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Am I tasty?’
‘You’re afraid.’
Malice forced his strange rictus of a smile. ‘I do not like being forced to do nothing but wait. Yes, she may die, but there is nothing else I can do. I know what my Vices are capable of, and what they cannot do is storm the Keep and bring him out alive. Even you and I are not immortal. We are not proof against sheer force of numbers, in fact, we aren’t even proof against accident or old age. Did you know that our father died insane?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What do you think I mean? He went mad not long after Emperor Lan died. Some say his heart was broken, yes? It was common knowledge he was in love with your mother, and she died along with the rest of your family, hacked down as she ran from her assailant, blood everywhere–’
There had been blood on the bowl. Skin dangled from the boy’s slit throat.
‘–And then the great Nyraek Laroth turned on his own men. Day by day he grew increasingly more strange, until he died, friendless and raving in a puddle of piss.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ I said, the picture he drew so unlike the man I remembered fondly.
Malice spread his hands. ‘Why do I tell you these things indeed,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I just want to frighten you, yes? Or perhaps I am going soft and I want you to understand that we are strongest together. Allies. Brothers. Of course I am worried.’
‘Let me go after them.’
Moving a stone across the board, he laughed. ‘You want me to trust you?’
‘What happened to allies? Brothers?’
‘I am not the fool you seem to think me, yes?’
‘I don’t think you’re a fool at all. You played me well.’
Again that predatory smile. ‘Tell me, Endymion,’ he said, abandoning his game and leaning forward, his ponytail slipping over his shoulder. ‘What would you do if I let you go?’
‘Get him out of there.’
‘Your love for your brother is touching.’ Malice ran his fingers through his hair, each strand hanging true. Though he sat upon the grass with burrs clinging to his clothing, knots were something that happened to other people. ‘You would be caught, Endymion. The answer is no.’
‘And if Ki– If Adversity dies?’
He let out a long sigh and leaned back against the tree trunk, plucking at a loose thread on his sleeve. ‘She will not die, yes?’ I heard the words but not their conviction. ‘Whatever Katashi might have done, he will not kill his own sister. He chose to exile me instead of behead me – that means he is afraid of what I can do, and by the gods he should be, because if he so much as touches Darius he will be sorry.’
‘You love him,’ I said.
Malice brought his gaze back to my face. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I love him. So do you. He is just one of those men. He prefers to instil fear and keep people away because if he does not, th
ey fall at his feet in droves.’
Shadows caressed his face, but his mind was no longer present. He gazed over my shoulder, the sharp lines of his features relaxing into something like a real smile.
‘I know what you did to him,’ I said, the words a fearful whisper.
Malice brought his gaze back. ‘Oh yes? And how about what he did to me?’
The night was empty but for this man. ‘What he did to you?’
‘Oh, you think poor Darius is a victim? You saw his memory, yes? Of the night he tried to leave me. Tell me, do you think I knew? Do you think I knew which side of his chest held his heart?’
‘Did you?’
‘I am asking you that question, yes?’
Our eyes locked. I knew him for the mastermind behind every moment of suffering in Darius’s heart. He had orchestrated my downfall, had played me false, and now he had planted a seed of doubt. Darius’s soul owned places even I could not go.
‘You didn’t want him to leave you,’ I said. ‘You wanted to hurt him.’
‘Yes. And he deserved it.’
‘He didn’t deserve it.’
Malice sighed. ‘It’s that beautiful face of his,’ he said. ‘It’s so perfect, yes? No one wants to believe ill of him. Our father said he was like a shrine doll; every feature perfectly in proportion, divine, and somehow ethereal, as though he was never entirely present. The old man didn’t understand him. I do. He is not what you think. He is never what people think; never what they expect.’
The corners of his lips trembled. As the true spider of the Laroth crest, Malice had always lived up to his name, but now he was somewhere else, someone else, his expression more rueful than angry.
For many minutes I let him stare through me, until I could no longer hold back my troubled question.
‘Do you think Adversity will succeed?’ I asked. ‘Will she be able to do it?’
Malice sighed, dragged back to the present. ‘She will obey. Her heart is too soft to let a man die, even the Monstrous Laroth. Whatever happens, there is no force in this world that could keep him from me forever.’
Approaching hoofbeats emerged from the night, breaking the peace in our little hollow. Fondness fell from Malice’s face and he rose, stones scattering into the grass as he kicked his improvised board. A lantern flickered through the willow fronds.
Back out on the track the Vices had gathered, every eye upon the road. Two riders approached, their black horses almost indistinguishable from the night. They slowed as they crossed the ditch, one black cloak parting to display the imperial uniform the Vices always wore when travelling.
‘Spite,’ one of the others said. ‘What news?’
Hooves kicked up dirt as they reigned in, the flanks of their horses heaving. ‘Nothing,’ Spite said, addressing Malice. ‘I’m sorry, Master, but there is no sign of them and no news from the castle.’
‘You think Otako would shout about it if Lord Laroth escaped?’ one of the others jeered.
Malice’s fingers shook infinitesimally against the dark silk of his robe. ‘Still inside the castle?’
‘It seems that way, Master.’
‘I see. Conceit? Folly?’
‘Yes, Master?’ they replied in unison.
‘Find a way inside. Don’t let them take his head.’
‘Yes, Master.’
Low conversation broke out as the two Vices readied their mounts, but Malice had already turned away. ‘Wait,’ I said, striding after him. ‘What if we went? You and I. We could do what Darius and I did. We could–’
‘No,’ he snapped, turning back.
‘Why not?’
There was a twinge of fear and his smile slipped before he hitched it back to his lips. ‘Because it would not work, yes? A few dozen men you touched that night, and at great expense. We go to Rina.’
‘Rina?’
‘Stop asking questions and get on the wagon, yes?’
Leaving me, he picked his way across the uneven ground to where his wagon waited. It stood beside a rocky ditch that might have been a stream once, before the hot, interminable summer drank it dry.
‘Go on, move it.’ Avarice pushed past, shunting me with his shoulder. ‘You’re with us.’
The others were mounting. Conceit and Folly were already fading from my range, and as Spite extinguished his lantern, the night consumed us, too.
‘You had better be quick,’ Hope said, passing me. ‘I don’t think the master will be forgiving tonight, not when another Laroth is in danger.’
‘You know?’
‘I know Empathy runs in blood. Come, you must obey.’
Malice had already disappeared into the wagon, closing the door on the night. Lantern light seeped beneath it, stretching its fingers toward the step where Hope took up his vigil. With the reins already gathered, Avarice sat on the box. ‘Kaere,’ he said, clicking his tongue the moment I climbed onto the running board. ‘Kaere.’
The horses started forward, drawing the wagon from the ditch. It jolted over rocks and tufts of grass before finding the track, and as it swayed I crossed my arms, resigning myself to an uncomfortable night.
Half of the Vices rode ahead, each a dark shape in the shredded moonlight. We might have been a cavalcade of shadows, black riders on black horses, even Malice’s wagon was painted in subdued colours. Every outward face was covered in intricate patterns of midnight blue and deepest violet, fine lines forming shapes in which one might see whatever they wished.
The lights of a village shone at the base of a rocky slope, a constellation of tiny lanterns in the night.
Eighty-seven souls.
One wheel juddered into a pothole and Avarice swore. The back wheel followed with a jolt, but we kept moving, following the last silken tail of the horse ahead. We were heading into the mountains, the oak trees on either side growing taller and taller until they blocked out the sky. With no light our pace slackened to a walk. Saplings stretched supple hands from the roadside, brushing the wagon and catching in its wheels.
‘Ask the master for the lanterns,’ Avarice growled as the wagon lurched again. ‘Or we’re going to break a wheel.’
Hope rose, holding tight to the doorframe as he lifted the latch. Light spilled out, sluggish as treacle; the smell of opium sweet on the air. I peered up at Avarice, but he was watching the road. Only tiny shreds of moonlight remained to light the way, peeking through the dense foliage. Acorns cracked beneath the wheels. Another jolt almost sent me head first onto the road.
Hope returned, half a dozen lit lanterns hanging from his fingers.
‘What kept you?’ Avarice snapped.
‘The master.’
‘But he gave permission?’
‘In his way.’ Hope stretched up to hang a lantern over the wagon’s spar. ‘He’s not all there.’
The procession was moving slowly enough for Hope to drop onto the track and jog ahead. He hung a lantern on the crossbar, drawing potholes and tussocks from the road. Two lanterns went to the Vices ahead, and two to those behind, before Hope returned, gripping the slow moving running board and hauling himself back onto the wagon.
Avarice relaxed, but the erratic lantern light threw strange shadows. It turned the young oak leaves into golden hands, their grasping branches smothering a woodcutter’s shack set back from the road. There, two souls lay fast asleep.
Four. Six.
My Empathy ranged out over the forest, and another came into view. Seven. Two more. Nine. Twelve. Twenty-four. Fifty. I shook my head, blinking rapidly. There were no glimmers of light shifting between the trees, no voices, no footsteps, yet a hundred and fifty-one souls waited where none had been before. Awake. Alert.
I sucked in a breath. Hope sat huddled in the doorway while Avarice scowled at the road. Words of
warning leapt to my lips, but they remained unspoken. I was travelling the wrong way. Darius was in Koi.
One hundred and fifty-one souls grew closer. The Vices would feel nothing, see nothing until it was too late, and Malice was at his drug. Only Avarice might notice something amiss. All it needed was for a horse to shy at a strange smell and he would be on his guard.
Darius had controlled his Empathy.
‘Well, aren’t we dull tonight,’ I said as I stood, the wagon rocking beneath my feet.
Avarice grunted.
‘You’re never chatty, Avarice. Why are you called “Avarice”?’
Still scowling at the road, he said: ‘Because I stole silver.’
‘From who?’
‘Master Darius.’
‘So it has nothing to do with what you’re capable of?’
‘No.’
‘What can you do?’
Avarice did not answer. By the door, Hope shifted into a new position. ‘That’s a very rude question,’ he said. ‘It’s personal. We all have what we do for a reason.’
‘You heal people.’
Avarice gave one of his snorts and Hope lifted his brows, his face glistening in the light. The heat had covered us all in a sheen of sweat. ‘Do I?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I will say yes, but only because it’s a nice lie.’
Hope looked away and for a few seconds neither spoke, no sound above the grind of the wheels and the desultory crunch of hooves upon the road. The night was growing quiet.
‘And what was Master Darius like?’ I asked, stepping into the silence, ears pricked. ‘You said you knew him as a child.’
Avarice didn’t turn around. ‘Master Darius was Master Darius.’
‘That isn’t a good answer.’
‘It wasn’t a good question.’
‘Did you look after him when his mother died?’
The Vice didn’t speak, just scowled at the road.
‘How did she die?’