by Grace Draven
The most loathsome part of her evening had yet to start—time spent socializing with the newly elevated nobility who rejoiced at their change in rank, even if it was accomplished through dire circumstance.
“Still not used to the waking hours of the Kai, Your Majesty?” Vesetshen Senemset threw down the first gauntlet the moment Ildiko stepped across the northern solar’s threshold. “I saw His Majesty this morning and inquired after you. He said you were resting and would be available later.”
The chamber was crowded with women at various tasks. At Vesetshen’s question, and its implied criticism, their conversations halted. Weary and not particularly tolerant of the not-so subtle jibes the matriarch had tossed out on numerous occasions since her arrival, Ildiko claimed her seat nearest the fire with its bright light and warmth and shuffled through the papers Mesumenes had left her to review.
She dipped her quill in the inkpot and paused, letting the room’s expectant hush grow and Vesetshen’s impatience with it. “I’m used to the different hours, madam.” She met the other woman’s gaze, poisonous as an adder. “I’m not always used to His Majesty’s ardor, which often results in little sleep for either of us.”
Choked laughter and a few coughs broke the tension. Vesetshen’s face darkened to the shade of wet slate, and her lips thinned to reveal the ivory pickets of her teeth. Ildiko shrugged and went back to reviewing her lists. Vesetshen’s ambitions spelled trouble, but Ildiko had faced down the Shadow Queen of Bast-Haradis in her own court. This upstart was nothing more than an annoying gnat by comparison.
She was in the kitchens reviewing the dwindling larder when Mesumenes appeared at her side. “Another harvest wagon has arrived, my lady. Half a barn’s worth maybe, but it’s better than nothing.”
He escorted Ildiko out to the bailey, now dangerously overcrowded with people and livestock. A wagon stood parked near one of the bailey walls, piled high with wheat. Ildiko surveyed the yield, mentally calculating how much bread or gruel it might convert to once it was threshed, winnowed and milled. “How many do you think our stores will feed now if we ration and encourage people to eat soup instead of a haunch of meat?”
The dismal number Mesumenes gave her had them both frowning at each other. “I wish it were different, my lady,” he said.
Ildiko worried her lower lip with her teeth, ignoring Mesumenes’s aghast expression. “We could feed the current population for a few months if we counted every spoonful. With the Haradis survivors coming, we’ll be lucky to make it a month, even with strict rationing.”
“One meal a day,” he replied. “And if necessary, one meal every other day. It might work if we did that.”
“It will be hard on the younger children.”
His brief smile lifted her spirits. “Kai children’ aren’t like human children, my lady. They’ll weather the deprivation much better than you think.”
That was a small relief at least. “Find out what the mollusk bed in the lake is like right now. How extensive.”
The steward gaped at her. “Your Majesty—”
She understood his shock. Eating an amaranthine mollusk was like eating gold. That, and they weren’t called bitter mollusks for nothing. “A last resort, Mesumenes, but I want to be prepared just in case.”
The two spent the remainder of the night traveling through the camps, talking with the displaced Kai, hearing their complaints and fears, their hopes and plans. All were frightened and homesick. Sometimes the fear took the form of aggression, with both Kai men and women offering up their services as soldiers for the garrison. Others begged for tasks to keep their hands busy and their minds distracted. Ildiko sent the first group to Mertok. With their population swelling at such a rapid pace, Saggara needed to strengthen its military ranks with more bodies. Mertok would assign some menial but necessary task. An aid to the Saggaran troops but lacking the power to influence or turn a troop’s loyalty.
She dealt directly with the second group, enlisting the steward’s help to delegate tasks that ranged from digging cess pits to working the grain mills, forge, washhouse and the makeshift kitchens set up to dispense hot meals to those in the tent city. There was more than enough work for everyone; there wasn’t nearly enough food.
“They will riot when there’s nothing left,” Mesumenes said softly.
“Pray the galla will be defeated before that happens,” she replied.
The sky was fading from black to indigo when Brishen returned from patrol to Escariel. He found Ildiko counting elixir bottles and spice boxes in the large cabinet to which only she and Mesumenes possessed a key.
Ildiko’s welcoming smile faded at her husband’s severe expression. “What happened? Another half of a horse?”
He shoved his hair back from his face. “No, but the galla have arrived in Escariel. I don’t know how many, and I’m certain it’s not the horde’s main body. We could hear them in the trees. Some venture out to torment the Kai on the safe shore.”
“What do they look like?” She’d grown up hearing stories of the galla. Vile and ancient, they were the monstrosities that haunted the nightmares of every child threatened by a nurse or parent for misbehavior.
“Like shadow and sickness combined. As if plague took form and stalked the land, red of eye and drunk on cruelty.” His brow furrowed. “It’s not how they look so much as what they are. Unnatural. Abomination. Malice distilled into its purest state.” He shook, as if to slough off their taint.
She caressed his forearm, hand gliding over his gauntlet. “Have you eaten? The kitchen fires are still lit…”
He captured her fingers. “Not yet,” he said and pulled her along behind him toward the stairs and upper floors. Once inside their room, he kicked the door shut and set to untying the laces on her gown. “I hunger for you, wife,” he said in a voice thickened with lust.
Ildiko flattened his hands against her, halting his movements. The moment she dreaded had arrived, far sooner than she liked. “No, Brishen.”
His claws skittered across the clasps that closed the front of her tunic. “We won’t be long, and I don’t mind cold food.” The first clasp snapped open under a persistent claw.
This time she swatted his hand, hard. “Stop it.” He recoiled as if she’d bitten him, and gawked at her, face slack with surprise. She gentled her tone. “Do you not see what you’re doing?”
If anything, he looked even more flabbergasted by her question. “Trying to make love to my wife.”
Ildiko snapped the clasp closed and took a bracing breath. Her knees were like water, and the words thick as wet wool on her tongue. “No, Brishen,” she said as gently as she could. “You’re trying to sire a child.” She almost retracted her words at his expression—stunned, confused, hurt. Much as it had been when she defended the Elsod’s proclamation that he set her aside.
“I love you,” she continued. A tear tracked down her cheek when he retreated a step from her. “I love that you desire me. I hope you always will. I feel the same for you. But this isn’t lovemaking. It’s breeding, and we’re doing it, not out of love, but out of fear and misguided desperation.” She reached out to him, begging for his understanding. “I feel it too, but this is wrong.”
“What are you saying?” His question was hardly more than a croak, and he’d gone ashen.
Ildiko lowered her arms and crushed her skirts in her fists. “You’ve had me under you, on top of you, in front of you. I think I’ve forgotten what it feels like not to have you inside me. I can’t walk from one room to another without you lifting my skirts. But no matter how often you spill your seed within me, it won’t catch.” Thinking the words made the fact real. Saying them hammered them home in a painful strike. “I will never conceive. You know this.”
His eye color lightened, a sure sign of a Kai’s agitation. He crossed his arms, his biceps flexing in involuntary twitches as if he physically restrained himself from breaking the furniture. “That’s what you think?” he said in the same dead, icy voice he’d u
sed on the Elsod earlier. “That I’m using you like a brood mare? I never guessed your poor opinion of me.”
She forgot to breathe. “No! You’re twisting my words, their meaning.”
“Am I? His eye blazed whiter with each passing second, and his lips stretched tight across his teeth. “You refuse me because you say this is breeding. What part of that can be misunderstood, Ildiko? What made me so diminished in your regard that you’d think such a thing?”
Tears poured down her cheeks, and she let them drip to the floor. She’d done this all wrong, wrecked something precious between them in a staunch but misguided bid not to mislead him. “It isn’t you who is diminished, Brishen. It’s me. To your people, I’m lesser because I can’t fulfill the one task that is vital to my role as your queen. Making love to me a dozen times a day won’t change that, no matter how much either of us want it to. You have a human wife, and all the limitations that come with such a mate.”
He stared at her for long moments, his gaze piercing, distant, as if he measured her and wondered how he might have been deceived into loving her. “Did you never think that maybe I sought solace in the one person who could make me forget this madness for a few short hours? Even minutes?” She cringed at the hollow flatness of his tone. “Give me hope when it feels hopeless?”
She wanted to throw herself at him, plead for his understanding and his forgiveness, swear she never meant to be callous. “I’m sorry I hurt you. You are the last person I’d ever want to hurt, but I don’t want to give you false hope.”
“Sometimes false hope is far better than no hope.” He pivoted and left her without another word, closing the door behind him with a soft click of the latch.
Ildiko stared at the expanse of wood, blurry in her vision. She sank slowly to the floor, rested her head against her bent knees and sobbed into her skirts.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Serovek returned to Saggara almost as soon he left, this time with a companion. Brishen met him in the stables as he unsaddled his mount. “Change your mind, yet?” he asked. He didn’t think the margrave would, but Brishen certainly understood if he did.
Serovek surrendered tack and horse to a waiting groom with an arch stare. “I have many weaknesses; indecision isn’t one of them. We spotted the Haradis survivors on our journey here and the galla that followed them. Wolves tracking a herd, ready to cull the weak and unwary. More than half the kingdom of Bast-Haradis is about to descend on Saggara.”
“So my scouts have reported. We can hardly feed the ones already here.” His gaze settled on the silent newcomer standing behind Serovek. “Who is this?”
“A bit of good news in the midst of the bad.” Serovek motioned, and the other man stepped forward. “The monk I told you about. This is Megiddo Cermak.”
Slender as a stripling lad next to the bigger, powerfully built Serovek, Megiddo possessed a gravitas woven into every fiber of his bearing. From his stance to the elegant construction of his facial features, he wore dignity like a second skin. That he was a cenobite in service to a god didn’t surprise Brishen.
The monk executed a graceful bow. “It is an honor, Your Majesty,” he said in measured tones.
“Welcome to Saggara…” He paused, wondering how the follower of an unknown religious order was addressed.
Megiddo’s lips tilted as if he heard Brishen’s thoughts. “I’m called by my birth name or my designation, macari.”
“What does ‘macari’ mean?”
Megiddo shrugged. “Monk.”
Serovek grinned. “Not ones for poetic imprecision, these monks.”
Brishen laughed for the first time in days. “An admirable trait.” He motioned for them to accompany him back to the manor house. “Come. You can break your fast and satisfy my curiosity as to how something as simple as a rune circle trapped galla, even for a short time.”
They settled into the ground floor study, which had become the central hub of planning and discussion for anything involving Saggara’s defenses and ability to offer sanctuary. A tray of bread and thinly sliced cold meat was brought in, along with pitchers of warm ale. Brishen leaned back in his chair, claw circling his goblet rim as he observed his guests. Serovek tucked into the food without hesitating while Megiddo declined.
“What gods do you serve, Megiddo?”
The monk sipped at his ale before setting it aside. “A single god only. Faltik the One.”
Serovek dunked a piece of bread into his ale before pointing it at Megiddo. “Megiddo’s a heretic,” he declared blithely, ignoring the other’s disapproving side glance. He popped the bread into his mouth and washed it back with a swallow of ale. “A foreign faith that’s gained hold in Belawat.” He stabbed a slice of meat with his eating knife. “Its practitioners don’t hawk their beliefs too loudly. It isn’t sanctioned by the king.”
Brishen, intrigued, wondered what moved a worshipper to put all their faith into a single, solitary god with no pantheon behind him. He refilled Serovek’s goblet. “You do like to cultivate risky associations, my friend. Do you follow this Faltik?”
Serovek snorted. “Hardly. I prefer to hedge my bets. If one god won’t listen to my prayers, I can always appeal to a dozen more.”
Even Megiddo’s solemn features relaxed into a half smile at Serovek’s irreverent philosophy. “So sayeth the blasphemer,” he uttered in that calm voice. Its timbre made Brishen think of a still lake, barely rippled by an insect’s glide or the whisper of wind over its surface.
“Tell me how your rune circle worked. Magic tends to only whet the galla’s appetite.” An idea had teased the edges of his mind since Serovek first described how Megiddo had saved his brother’s family from the demons.
“I think that’s why it worked.” Megiddo drew an invisible circle on the tabletop. “The circle is a demon trap, one taught to third-year macaries in our order. It served more as a distraction than a cage, was more appetizing than we were. I think they fed on it while we escaped.” He paled. “Do you think it made them stronger?”
Brishen shook his head. “Gods, I hope not. They’re feral and powerful enough as it is.” Still, a rune barrier to encircle a city… He scowled. It would have to be enormous and fueled by an unimaginable amount of magic.
Serovek broke through his musings. “Could the Kai do something similar? Create a greater barrier around Saggara? Your magic is easier to come by than ours since you’re all born with a measure of it.”
Not for long, Brishen thought. But he’d take that secret with him to his grave as would the handful who shared the knowledge with him. “Maybe, if there were fewer galla and less land to cover, but this is a hul galla; a horde. And getting bigger all the time. And I don’t think I’d circle Saggara.” The idea continued to gnaw at him. Not Saggara but maybe destroyed Haradis.
“Have you heard anything from Gaur?”
“No, nothing.” He had hoped Sangur the Lame would at least confirm he’d received the message, even if his answer was a refusal to help. They’d sent a Kai messenger and a carrier bird. Neither had returned yet, and they couldn’t wait any longer.
Serovek rubbed his hands together. “Then the good news I mentioned earlier will improve your day. Megiddo has volunteered to join you in fighting the galla. He’s willing to become one of your Wraith Kings.”
Brishen eyed the monk across from him. How ironic that those who came to help were not of Gaur, Haradis’s ally, but of Belawat, the uneasy neighbor. “Did Lord Pangion tell you what this involves?”
“Yes. I saw those things up close.” Megiddo’s expression remained untroubled, though a sharpness edged his voice now. “My order has fought demons. It was part of my training. But the galla...they’re like nothing I’ve ever encountered. Unclean isn’t a strong enough word to describe them. I’m not sure if you set the whole world on fire it would be enough to cleanse it of their stain. As a member of the Jeden Order, I took a vow to hold sacred all that Faltik created, by sacrifice or sword. All earth is hallowed ground to Falt
ik. It’s my duty to rid it of these creatures.”
Not so much a man with a purpose but one on a crusade. Brishen didn’t usually approve of such men. The fire of belief often crossed the boundaries into the scorched earth tactics of the fanatic. Megiddo didn’t seem that type despite an obvious and powerful sense of duty to his god. “A noble cause,” he said. “But you’re a monk. What do you know of battle?”
“Macaries are trained for combat to protect ourselves, our elders and our temples. The monastery I serve was given an estate in the Lobak Valley to farm. The warlord Chamtivos seized the valley to establish a prefecture. My order fought his troops and won it back.”
Serovek refilled all three goblets with ale. “I’ve heard of Chamtivos. A tough enemy to engage, much less defeat. Too bad the galla didn’t spring up in the middle of his camp. Would have gotten rid of that festering boil in no time.” He clinked goblets with Megiddo and Brishen.
Brishen admired the monk’s courage, but he also needed an experienced fighter who had engaged in warfare. Training for it was one thing. Engaging in it, another. “You fought in this battle?”
“Yes.”
Serovek spoke up once more. “I’ve seen him handle a sword. He’s an adept and a skilled rider too.”
Brishen stared at Megiddo, who stared back, unflinching. “If you do this, there will be no fame or glory. No wealth or status. Not even a guarantee you’ll return home alive or whole. If we’re lucky, we’ll come back, intact, to the loved ones we fought for.” Will you be here if I return, Ildiko? he wondered. She had promised once already and still he doubted. Shame rode hard on the back of that doubt.
Megiddo’s gaze never wavered. “Why else fight?” he said.