by Gwynn White
“Axel is not a fool. Do you think he will buy your excuses about Meka?” From Dmitri’s tone, the seer seemed to intimate that he knew Axel’s reaction to the meeting.
It wouldn’t surprise Felix to know that the seer had eavesdropped on them and read all their minds. He pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose. “What was I to say? You know I cannot have Lukan arrested. Not while he holds the only trigger to a second Burning.”
“Then I suggest you work on getting yourself out of the hole you have dug.” Dmitri lifted a finger. The strategy board and tile box floated off Felix’s bookshelf and landed on the table in between them. The lid opened, and the four tiles Dmitri had given Felix hopped out the box and landed under Dmitri’s cupped hand.
Felix didn’t have as much power—and probably never would. He suppressed a glower.
Dmitri lifted his fingers, revealing the four tiles. He poked the diamond tile with a glowing digit. “Take it. Claim a spot on the board.”
Claiming a spot on the board was not how the game was played, but who was Felix to argue with a dead man who shifted things around the room with his mind and a finger wave?
He picked up the tile and considered the two prime blocks every player strove to win: first, the Lord of the Conquest, which led inexorably to the Emperor, the winning piece of real estate on the board.
Felix knew enough of the curse to know that Lukan would be the last emperor to rule Chenaya. Logic, therefore, said that Nicholas the Light-Bearer would take the Lord of the Conquest’s block, represented by an illustration of a bloodied axe. Who came next to rule in the empire’s unfolding history, Felix didn’t know. But surely leadership wouldn’t be left to a wet-behind-the-ears boy like Nicholas?
Was Dmitri going to enlighten him?
All excitement wiped from his face, Felix edged the diamond tile into the Lord of the Conquest’s spot. He waited, eyes hooded, for the seer to either confirm or deny the Light-Bearer’s claim.
Dmitri slid the red tile—Grigor—out from under his hand and used it to push the diamond across to Kerill Corner.
That dark block was the most benighted spot on the map, represented by a rook tearing at a human skull. Named for an early emperor who marched a hundred thousand guardsmen to their death in the only other failed campaign in the empire’s history, a player caught here might as well admit defeat. Clawing back a victory was nigh on impossible.
Felix had often wondered what block posterity—if any survived Lukan’s insanity—would give the dolt for his efforts in Treven and Lapis. After almost seventeen years of conflict and countless Chenayan lives lost, not to mention the expense, Lukan was no closer to securing the mines than he had been when the campaign first mired in Chad’s gas. Not even the most long-suffering councilman could accuse Lukan of being a strategist. In fact, to a man, fifteen of the sixteen High Councilmen despaired over the Treven war.
Annoyed with himself for the diversion, he pushed the thought away to consider the implication of Dmitri’s radical move for Nicholas.
But Dmitri wasn’t finished.
The seer pushed Grigor’s tile into the emperor’s spot. Showing a lot of teeth, he smiled at Felix. “The Crown Prince holds the center.”
Clearly, Dmitri wasn’t playing any game of tiles Felix knew. For Grigor’s tile to grab that spot, Dmitri would have to outwit Felix’s moves to block the advance with his own tiles. He pursed his lips, wondering what the phrase the Crown Prince holds the center even meant. And more to the point, whether he could trust Dmitri’s cryptic moves.
After a lifetime of fighting the man and his curse, Felix wasn’t willing to leap in to trust Dmitri just because he could move a parchment map and a box of tiles around with a wave of his hand. And all that talk about the redemption of his soul meant nothing if Felix lived to see his life’s work destroyed.
“Grigor seethes with rage at Lukan for imprisoning him with just his brother for company.” The seer tapped the red tile. “Do not allow him to rebel against his posting. He is needed in this spot if we are to succeed. Do whatever you have to, use every resource at your disposal, but keep Grigor in the center.”
If who was to succeed? Dmitri or Felix? Felix suspected the answer was simple and not to his liking: Dmitri. He grunted and pointed at Meka’s green tile. “And his brother?”
Dmitri plunked the green tile down on top of the diamond in Kerill Corner.
Felix couldn’t stop his eyes bulging with shock. The seer wanted Meka to join Nicholas in that prison cell in the slaughterhouse?
That was outrageous.
Not to mention unlikely.
And anyway, he had been thinking of moving Nicholas to a more secure jail away from Cian.
“Leave him where he is,” Dmitri commanded.
“And have people stumble upon him? That slaughterhouse is only fifteen miles from Cian. Thanks to my Dreaded and the electric current, it’s been years since anyone ventured into the village, but I cannot risk operatives stumbling across it.”
Dmitri scoffed. “You think I will tell our allies where he is?”
“Won’t you?”
“Why would I, when I want Prince Meka to join him there?”
That made sense. Still, Felix closed his eyes to consider his options of masking the building from passersby, however unlikely. Perhaps he could expand upon his Dreaded to give the entire building a new façade? It would be difficult, but not impossible to make a slaughterhouse seem like tumbled-down tenement housing. He would set his private team of programmers working on it at once.
When he opened his eyes, Dmitri and the four tiles had gone.
Felix shoved his hand into his pocket and fondled his informa. Doing so always helped him think.
Although not represented by a tile on the map, he was being played by Dmitri as surely as the seer manipulated everyone else. While he couldn’t fathom Dmitri’s short-term moves in this unfamiliar game of tiles, the seer’s long-term plan was blatantly clear: to use the Light-Bearer to overthrow the Avanov Dragon.
Defending the Dragon had been Felix’s entire focus since he had first learned of the curse as a boy. How was he now to reconcile that imperative with his need to protect his loved ones and reunite Axel with his family?
There had to be a way.
He prodded Dmitri’s favored illustrations on the map with his maimed hand.
For a man with his acumen, wrangling Grigor into the center of the board was relatively easy. So wrapped up in his desire to gas them all, Lukan would barely register Felix’s subtle hand until Grigor was recognized as the true Crown Prince of All Chenaya and the Conquered Territories. Dmitri implied that keeping him there would be the biggest challenge.
Felix snorted at the notion that he, a man with a lifetime of experience in manipulating people, would have any trouble controlling a sixteen-year-old boy.
Condemning Meka to a life in the slaughterhouse would also be a cinch. Just his Norin looks were enough to denounce Meka as a traitor. A push here and a shove there, and Lukan would quickly develop an abiding aversion for his blond nephew. The trouble was, Felix didn’t trust Dmitri’s motives in sending Meka there. And what of his promise to deliver Meka to Axel? How did that fit in with Dmitri’s plan? Or was Axel’s request unrelated to Dmitri’s goals?
At least Axel was family, and Felix had a better grasp on Axel’s motives than those of the seer. He decided to pin his efforts on freeing both princes from that cage. Meka, he would send to Treven. Grigor would be catapulted into the crown prince’s throne. Lured by a steady supply of power over his peers, girls, chenna, money enough for gambling and to satisfy his every appetite, tools successive emperors had used to control their eldest sons, Grigor would soon be brought to heel.
And as for the Light-Bearer?
Bitter resolve infused into Felix. After all his efforts to protect the throne from that traitor, how could he now hand the boy to Axel? Especially when he trusted neither Axel nor Lynx to keep their side of the bargain?
Axel still has to prove his loyalty to me before I can take such a radical step.
Conscious that Dmitri may have been listening to his thoughts, he made a cautious decision.
If the seer wanted to play with him, Felix would give him a game to remember. Like all good games of tiles, this one could not be rushed. At least not if Felix was to win.
If the Burning could not kill Nicholas, then the game needed to be delayed long enough for insanity to claim the boy. Given enough time and the right goading, even the mighty Light-Bearer would crack.
Even now, the boy thought the voice he heard in his head was Lukan’s, little realizing it was Felix prodding him through the miraculous Final Word. It was a masterful stroke of manipulation. Apart from a brief meeting at the cottage, Nicholas barely knew Felix existed. And now that he’d given Axel access to the boy, Dmitri’s allies would also hear “Lukan” speaking to Nicholas. When the Light-Bearer snapped, no one, not even Lynx and Axel, could blame Felix for his demise.
Even Dmitri could not object when he had done nothing to stop Nicholas’s incarceration.
Lips pursed in firm satisfaction, Felix stumbled to his feet and headed for bed.
Chapter 22
Drip.
Scuttle.
Scrape.
Talon smiled. Roach was back. Although he couldn’t see him in the dark, he liked Roach. He—or she, Talon wasn’t sure of its sex—was company.
After a lifetime in the forest, he didn’t mind being alone, but it was nice to pretend Roach sought his company the way he sought Roach’s. But the reality was that Roach came to pick over the leftover scraps of boiled cabbage and potato mush Morass tipped onto the floor once a day through the slit in the door. Although Talon was always hungry, he made sure to leave a mouthful for Roach. If he lay still, he could hear Roach chew.
Even so, he didn’t think Roach enjoyed the food any more than he did.
He only ate the vile offerings because he refused to give Lukan the pleasure of starving him to death. He didn’t need to feel his ribs to know his bones stuck out. Lying on the floor, he could feel every joint and node in his skeleton. But he was sure staying alive annoyed Lukan far more than his death ever could, so he ate as if every meal was his Mom’s fish soup, followed by a jar of honey.
He held out his finger and sniggered as Roach’s feelers tickled his raw, bloody fingers. They were ragged from scraping away at the cement around one of the stone blocks on the far wall.
Roach didn’t seem to mind.
Neither did Talon, because today would be the day he removed one of the stone blocks. With one gone, he would knock down a few others to make a hole big enough to escape through the back wall. He had no idea where his opening would lead, but didn’t doubt that freedom beckoned.
Drip.
He hitched Roach onto his shoulder. Laughing against the rasp and patter of Roach’s tiny legs against his bare skin—his shirt had been stiff with blood, so he had removed it—he walked purposefully across the room to his demolition site. After a few steps, he stopped briefly to breathe away the ache in his head. It still troubled him, but not as much as it used to. That was positive.
He reached the wall and felt along it for the loose block. His fingers brushed jagged cement. Just a few stubborn lumps of the stuff stood between him and freedom. Gritting his teeth against the pain in his shredded fingers, he fumbled on the floor for a piece of discarded mortar to use as a pick. He was about to start chipping away when Roach scuttled down his back and then his leg.
Talon froze. No! The last thing he wanted was to crush Roach.
Only when Roach scampered to safety away from his bare feet did he move.
“You are reduced to cuddling cockroaches, Nicholas.” Lukan’s voice speaking in his head again. Like he did every day, every night.
Talon flinched despite his best efforts to hide his emotion. Lukan watched him again. He would know when Talon escaped. He would send Morass to—
No! Talon almost yelled in his head to drown out Lukan’s voice. I won’t let that stop me. Not when there was the slightest chance he could evade Lukan and Morass and escape.
Drip.
He started to hum, anything to drown out Lukan’s goading, his own fears, and that hated drip.
With all his force, he slammed his “pick” into the cement. Blood from his fingers splattered against his face and arm. It didn’t matter because a good-sized chunk of cement broke free. Encouraged, Talon gripped the pick tighter, hummed louder, and hit harder. Soon he had a bloody pile of mortar at his feet and a wobbling block in the wall.
Although he could see nothing, he glanced nervously over his shoulder. Did Lukan know how close he was to victory? Was Morass even now striding to the outside wall to catch Talon when he wriggled out into what the gray light promised was bright sunshine?
There was only one way to find out.
Face set in a determined frown, Talon slipped his fingers down the sides of the block and pulled. His blood-slick fingers slipped right off it. He grimaced and tried again, getting a better grip. He tugged, but the block was heavier than he anticipated. Or was he weaker than he’d once been? He grunted; that was probably it.
It just meant he had to try harder.
Straining every muscle in his arms and back, he eased the block out and then jumped away as it tumbled to the ground. Body shaking with the effort and excitement, he scrambled over the block to feel what lay beyond the opening he’d created.
He groped into the hole—and hit solid rock.
A drop of icy water hit his skin. And then another.
Heart sinking, he searched the wet rock with roving fingers for nocks and crevices. There were none. As far as he could reach, his hand touched solid, unending stone.
And the drip was now almost deafening.
Lukan’s laughter sounded in his head. “Did you really think I would let you chip away at my wall if it meant you could escape? How foolish do you think I am?”
Talon had failed.
Again.
He fell on his knees on the broken mortar and the useless block and buried his head in his burning hands. Even if he pulled down every stone in the wall facing him, destroying his fingers in the process, would he find anything beyond the rock and the drip?
He doubted it because he now understood what this room was—a cold room for storing meat. He and Uncle Tao had built a small one in the root cellar in the cottage for the summer months. They had constructed theirs with double stone walls, with water from the stream channeled through the gap between the blocks to keep it cold. No doubt, this was the same design. That meant, without tools, he would have to crash through not one, but two lines of rock. Impossible.
“In winter, it will be icy,” Lukan said.
Talon grasped all the menace behind those simple words. Unless his mother rescued him, he would still be here when the snows gripped the world. But did his mother even know where he had been hidden? How could she, when he didn’t know for sure that she was alive?
He sank down and buried his head under arms. The only thing that mattered now was survival.
Chapter 23
Tao lay on the grass next to a stream with his sons. At least eight miles from the palace through thick trees and undergrowth, it was the farthest he had yet taken them from the cage. Finding their way home from here would challenge them, but it would not be impossible.
Just as well, for today they would need those navigational skills. The lesson Tao and Dmitri planned today was designed to remind them that Lukan was not to be trifled with. Yet.
If Grigor and Meka disobeyed Tao’s coming instructions, the illusion of two boys fishing at the ornamental lake would vanish. As much as Tao dreaded the outcome, every camera and every guardsman monitoring the cage would know they had escaped. If that happened, this would be the last time Tao saw his sons for—well, he wasn’t entirely sure. Dmitri hadn’t told him how exactly long he would be parted from them, just that they would all suffer if t
oday’s lesson went wrong.
The lesson would tax Tao in other ways, too. That was one of the reasons he held back on issuing his instructions.
He would see Bird for the first time since his death.
He hoped he was emotionally ready for the encounter. Either way, this day promised to be the hardest he had faced since Morass’s axe had ended his life.
Meka wiped his mouth on his arm, smearing honey onto his very soiled shirt. “Best meal I ever ate.” He burped far more loudly than was either necessary or polite.
It made Tao smile. But then most of the antics they got up to these days did.
Using flies tied with their own hands—after almost three months of practice, they were quite the experts—his boys had caught a net full of trout. They had cleaned and then cooked two of the biggest over the coals, releasing the rest when Tao had declined to eat. Tao had provided freshly baked bread and a pot of honey, filched from the palace kitchen, to go with the meal.
Grigor lay on his back, looking at the sky through the canopy of golden, autumn leaves. “Pretty amazing, I’ll admit.”
He rolled over and, head propped on his hand, prepared to ask Tao a familiar question.
It wasn’t that Tao wanted to read their minds, but regardless, their thoughts came to him in a continuous stream. Just like he felt their individual reactions to physical stimuli as if they were his own.
“Tao, how do you get around?”
“What do you mean, Grigs?”
The dark-haired boy smiled openly, without disdain or suspicion; it showed off his features well. Tao never tired of seeing that smile.
After successfully rescuing them from the guardsmen and high-born on their horses—with Dmitri’s help, Tao was ashamed to admit—Grigor and Meka had waited the next day for him at the gate to the cage. If not contrite, they had at least mumbled apologies for calling him a turd.
With each subsequent meeting, he had observed tiny changes in them. Subtle at first, but with growing assurance. They seemed less quarrelsome, less disdainfully hesitant, more eager to please, more determined to keep him coming back.