We walked past the armed guards and soldiers, who glared at us or just stared in awe as we passed. We stepped over the battering ram — a gilded statue of Seraph Alaudrin — and into the hallway. In the back of my mind, I counted — counted down our time and counted down the king’s mercy. It took until we were about halfway down the hall for our shaky truce to end.
Then, with sorrow in his voice, the king said, “Kill them.”
As King Safford’s men charged, Zarra dived at us from the nearest office. She wrapped her arms around us all and Stepped us away—
Right into the moat surrounding the palace.
We landed with a great splash. I spluttered as my head broke the surface. Rath floundered next to me. I grabbed the end of his crutch and dragged him next to the grate under the bridge.
“Hold onto this,” I said, glancing around for the others. Mel was right beside me, but Zarra was nowhere to be seen. Her armor must have been too heavy. I made a wild guess about where she may have landed and dived underwater.
Pa had taught me how to swim in the lake near our cottage. I was a strong swimmer. I opened my eyes under the water and located Zarra easily enough. She was thrashing about like a mad person. I swam to her and instantly saw the problem. Her leg was buried to the knee in the rocks and mud at the bottom of the moat, anchoring her down. I kept my feet kicking to keep myself from floating back to the top as I desperately dug the rocks and mud from around her leg. My lungs began to scream for air. I grabbed Zarra’s waist and tugged her upward, wrenching her boot free. She was limp now, so I had to swim both of us back to the surface.
I gasped delicious air into my lungs as my head broke the surface. Careful not to touch Zarra’s boot — I already had a lovely rash on my arm from this most recent Stepping — I dragged her unconscious body over to the grate.
“Hold her up!” I directed Rath and Mel. They each grabbed one of her arms and pinned her to the grate.
Now what?
I panicked for a moment and then remembered Rath helping Jagger when I was young. He had forced him to spit up the water he’d swallowed.
I elbowed Zarra in the stomach. She spat water all over me and coughed back to life.
“Not how I would have done it,” Rath said, “but effective.”
“The moat, Zarra?” Mel asked when Zarra had regained enough strength to cling to the grate herself.
“I never carried three people before,” she said. “You’re heavy. I couldn’t aim. And warping His Highness anywhere is like trying to drag a bull by its ankle.”
“So how do we get out of this?” I asked, looking up at the bridge several paces above us. This moat had been dug deep, with water filling it only halfway and steep sides that offered no handholds for anyone attempting to climb out. This moat wasn’t made to keep people out. It was designed to keep deadmen away.
Rath began to flounder. I seized him by the crutch on his back and pulled him back to the grate.
“Not a swimmer, Rath?” I teased.
Rath scowled at me. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to tread water when you only have one leg?”
I squirmed with shame. “Sorry.”
“Zarra,” Mel asked, “can you use the boot?”
Zarra shook her head. “My feet have to be touching the ground to use it. I am not going back down there.”
Mel looked around. “Well, I doubt they filled this moat with buckets. This water must come from somewhere.” She released the grate, treading water beside me. “I’m going to swim around and see if I can find a way out of here.” She dove beneath the water and swam away.
“This would be a pathetic way to die,” Zarra said. Rath and I mumbled our agreement. I would rather be killed by Safford than drown in his moat.
“Rath,” I said, “Safford believes my parents were responsible for the Rise of the Deadmen. That isn’t true, right? I mean, it’s ridiculous.”
Rath didn’t respond immediately.
“Rath?” I pressed.
“Well, the timing was certainly unfortunate,” Rath said.
That wasn’t the answer I had been expecting.
“Do you think my parents caused the Rise?” I asked.
Rath licked his lips. “I think there may be some truth to Safford’s suspicions. Your father — no. He didn’t have that sort of power. But your mother may have. She commanded her sys like no one I’ve ever known. If she could commune with the dead, why not command them?”
I shuddered.
“But we may never really know,” Rath continued. “We don’t actually know what killed your parents, whether it was the revolutionaries or something else.”
“What do you mean ‘something else’?”
“When your parents died, everyone in the room died with them,” Rath said. “There were no survivors.”
“None?” I squeaked.
“None,” Rath affirmed. “Even their attackers were dead. And then suddenly, there were haunts and deadmen everywhere. The castle was abandoned, and then the whole city. No one has been back since.”
“So there’s no one left who can tell us what actually happened?” I considered this new information with a furrowed brow.
It had never occurred to me that something may have caused the deadmen. I had assumed that they had always been around. But if my mother had the power to raise the dead, maybe she also knew how to stop them.
“We have to know what happened that night,” I said.
“What part of ‘no survivors’ do you not understand?” Zarra asked.
“Maybe it’s not the survivors we’re looking for,” I said. “Maybe we need to ask the ones who didn’t live.”
“No,” Rath said.
“No,” Zarra added.
“No,” they said together.
“We are not going to the Old Capital so you can try to commune with the dead,” Rath said.
“Do you want to die?” Zarra asked.
Mel saved me from Zarra and Rath. She popped up beside me, clutched the grate, and took a moment to catch her breath.
“I was right,” she said. “There’s a tunnel about halfway down over there, where the water is coming in. I think it leads directly to the Tasaun River right outside the city walls. I dove down there, and I could see light at the end, but it was pretty far off. I think maybe one-thirty, one-fifty triple paces.”
“We can’t swim that far,” I said.
“I’m all for pushing limits,” Zarra agreed, “but that’s too far without air. We’d drown down there.”
“Maybe not.” Mel tapped on the armor around Rath’s waist. “Do you think you could use this to push yourself forward underwater?”
“I’ve never tried,” Rath said thoughtfully.
“Well, try it,” Mel said. “We either swim out of here, drown, or get fished out by Safford and die at the guillotine.”
Rath pushed away from the grate and let himself sink a bit before positioning himself lengthwise. He was still for a moment. I thought I might have to rescue him again, but then he shot off like a lightning fish. I had to go save him from the other end of the moat because he couldn’t steer. But he could certainly move fast.
“It works,” Mel cheered in a half whisper. “If Rath can sustain that long enough to drag all of us with him, we might be able to make it.”
We lined ourselves up behind Rath. Zarra grabbed his ankle, then I grabbed hers — the one not wearing the boot — and Mel grabbed mine. Together, the four of us took deep breaths, dove together, and then Rath used his armor to drag us through the tunnel.
Even with the magic of the armor, we barely made it to the other side. The tunnel dumped us into a river right outside the city walls. We all made it to shore, coughing and gasping and shaking water out of our hair and clothes. When we were certain we could all breathe again, we took a look around. Mel began to laugh. It was a weak, but infectious sound. We were all soon laughing right along with her. We were hysterical with relief that we were alive.
“M
el,” I gasped.
“Yeah?” She was squeezing water out of her hair, still giggling.
“I love you,” I said.
Mel tackled me. We wrestled on the bank of the river briefly until she somehow managed to pin me. Sitting on my chest, she glared down at me. “Don’t you ever go running off into the evil king’s chambers to have a showdown with your imposter ever again, okay?”
I laughed, which kind of hurt since she was sitting on me. “I can promise you that was a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” I said.
“Especially since Izay- the Imposter - is dead,” Zarra said gravely.
“Did you really stab him?” she asked me.
Before I could answer, she punched me playfully on the shoulder.
“Respect,” she said. “And all this time I thought you were kind of a pansy.”
“Hey!” I cried. The others laughed at my expense. Including Mel. The traitor. I shoved her off of me. She retaliated with a handful of mud lobbed at my chest and scurried away, laughing, when I tried to catch her.
We all sort of looked like drowned cats. We were soaking wet, we had no supplies aside from what we had in our pockets (which in my case consisted mostly of a few soggy biscuits), and night was fast approaching.
Zarra killed the mood when she asked, “So, um … now what?”
Everyone looked at me.
“We’re going to the Old Capital,” I said. “I need answers.”
“This is not going to end well,” Rath sighed.
I swung my pitchfork with a grunt. Zarra blocked my hit with the staff she had carved from the remains of a dead tree.
“Now duck!” she said. “Good. Twist, hit. Excellent! You’re getting the hang of this.” Zarra shoved me away from her and held up her hand to signal a break. She leaned against the wall of the old stone guard tower we were using as shelter for the night and caught her breath. This was the latest in a series of lessons on how to use my pitchfork as a weapon. I liked to think I was improving.
The ability to defend myself would be handy, if only to make Rath’s job a little easier. Zarra and Mel had returned to the Capital using Zarra’s boot. Mel had bartered for a fresh supply of arrows, and Zarra had returned to Rath’s apothecary to fetch my pitchfork. I had laughed when she handed it to me, but secretly, I was thrilled to see it again. I ached for something familiar.
I had been weeded out as the weakest link in our small group. Despite being the biggest and strongest, I was clumsy and inexperienced. Thanks to her safeguard parents, Mel knew everything about fighting deadmen. Zarra had formal combat training from her time posing as a soldier and plenty of experience fighting dirty. And Rath? I wasn’t willing to question his preparedness. I had seen him fight before, and I was glad that I wasn’t his enemy.
Zarra taught me how to twirl the pitchfork like a staff, how to block incoming attacks, and how to watch for an opening to strike. She taught me how to stand on the balls of my feet so that I could move more quickly and how to dig my heels in and then rock forward to throw my opponent off balance.
While Zarra hammered on me with her staff, Rath and Mel prepared food from what little provisions we carried, supplemented with any other material Mel could track down. Rath wouldn’t let me eat until I repeated everything I had learned from Zarra.
Despite my complaints, I actually enjoyed my training sessions with Zarra. Taking part in an activity that required such focus was a welcome relief for my exhausted mind.
Zarra was a tough opponent. She was quick and clever. I was so distracted trying to avoid contact with her boot that she would easily slip under my defenses. She teased me mercilessly about what she called my “dancing.”
When I wasn’t sparring with Zarra, I practiced mutilating bushes with the sharp tines of my pitchfork. I couldn’t really imagine ever using the pitchfork against human flesh. I really hoped it would never come to that.
“That’s good,” Zarra said. “Take a break ’fore your face burns off.” Zarra thought it was hilarious that my cheeks turned pink when I exerted myself. She said I looked like a doll. Between that and her comments about my dancing, I was feeling a little abused. But I would never show her. She already thought I was pathetic and spoiled.
Zarra splashed her face with water from her canteen. All we drank was water. After the incident with Safford’s daughter, we weren’t going to risk drinking anything with a strong flavor. We drank the water from the nearby Setsun River. This river, according to Rath, came from springs up in the mountains and provided one of the major water supplies to the Old Capital. He tested the water with some minerals he carried in a leather packet and deemed it safe to drink. Until traveling with Rath, I had assumed water was always safe to drink. Now I wondered if even the air we breathed might hold secret dangers I had never heard of.
I drank from my own canteen and stretched my sore muscles. The cool evening air felt good against my sweaty face. I sat on a crumbling wall as I caught my breath.
I watched Zarra curiously. She wore her hair pulled up into two tight buns on the back of her head, the classic hairstyle for soldiers with longer hair. But, ever the rebel, she had colorful beads playfully woven into the otherwise utilitarian hairdo. Though she had had several opportunities to change out of her soldier’s uniform, she chose not to. She kept it painstakingly clean.
I realized I really didn’t know much about her. How had she come to work for the Imposter? Had she been a soldier first and been bribed to betray the king? Could her loyalty be purchased?
“Zarra,” I asked, “where did you meet the Imposter?”
Zarra gave me a fleeting half smile. “He recruited me,” she said. “Before I joined Izayi-er the Imposter, I was a rougher.”
“A what?”
“When people owe other people stuff and refuse to pay, the other person hires roughers. We sorta convince people to pay — intimidation and a couple broken fingers and all that.”
I stared at her with wide eyes. “That’s terrible.”
Zarra laughed and said something about “cute little farmboys” and how the outlands must be total anarchy without any roughers. I was thinking the exact same thing about the mainland actually needing roughers.
“Anyway,” Zarra continued, “I was actually hired to rougher-up Izay—” she coughed, “the Imposter.” She grew anxious every time she accidentally slipped up and called the Imposter by my name. I really didn’t mind. I kind of felt bad for the effort it took her to rebrand her old boss just to avoid insulting me.
“Jon-Do-Jon the Blacksmith hired me after Izayik — I mean, the Imposter — failed to pay the full price for a new knife he’d forged. The Imposter tried to kill me at first, but he’s actually not that great of a fighter, so he offered me a job instead. He made sure my folks were protected from the deadmen since they were left out close to the gates and had no place else to go. He forged me some papers and enrolled me in the king’s army. It was a pretty nice-like set up, ya know?”
Zarra leaned her head back against the stone wall, looking up through the hole in the tower’s roof. We could see all the way up to the darkening sky because the wooden floor above us had rotted out, probably long ago.
She spoke again. “I always wanted to think that he — that the Imposter — was actually the prince — that all his plots and plans were going to save everyone.” She chuckled, but her voice had a wistful regret that betrayed her. “In the end, I guess all he really wanted was power.” She turned her face toward me. “I think you’re a better Izayik, Highness.”
“Really?” I assumed she thought I was a useless nuisance. “Why?”
“Because you care about people — because you skewered a man in the heart, and you haven’t braggered about it.” The corner of her mouth twitched up into a smile. “I would have braggered,” she admitted. “And you had the guts to tell Safford right to his face that you would come for him if he hurt your family. Highness, I wish I had stupid-brave like you did.”
“Stupid-brave?” I l
aughed.
“Yessem. You have stupid-brave through and through. You do the right thing even when it’s the dumbest thing to do — like waltzing into the Old Capital.” She took another swig from her canteen. “You act so brave, but you don’t fool me. I think, Highness, that the truth of it all is you’re afraid of death.”
“I’m not afraid!” I insisted too loudly.
“I think—” Zarra tapped her canteen against her chin. “I think you know something about death that the rest of us don’t, and it scares you. You try so hard to keep things from dying. Like the family back in Hazeldown. You know they aren’t even your real true-to-blood family, and yet you still fight so hard to keep them alive.”
“Yes, well—”
“I like that about you, Highness,” Zarra said. “Respect.” She saluted me with her canteen. “I think if there were more people as scared of death as you are, there would be a lot fewer deadmen around.” She nodded toward the fire. “Better get yourself cleaned up, Highness. Rath hates when you stink.”
I half laughed and half choked on my embarrassment. Zarra could be distressingly honest sometimes, but she was right: if I approached Rath in my current state, he would dunk my head in the river and spray me with weird smelly potions. He took my lack of princely grooming as a personal insult.
I lumbered toward the river, away from our practice grounds and out of sight of the camp. The river gurgled peacefully by, completely oblivious of my presence.
I liked that about nature. Nature didn’t care that I was a prince.
I knelt in the tall grass and stared down at my reflection. My hair was growing shaggy, and I had the beginnings of a beard on my chin and throat. I rubbed my hand over the short, bristly hairs. My first beard. I was becoming a man out here. What did that even mean, anyway? I thought I had known, once; I used to think I had everything figured out.
As I stared down at the river, the face gazing back at me changed. It may have just been my imagination, but I thought I saw the face of the Imposter grinning back at me. I gasped and splashed my reflection away.
I had to admit, in this quiet moment and just to myself, that I really was afraid of death. I saw what the dead became. They were empty, lonely whispers of their old selves. They huddled in dark corners, longing for life, ignored by the world that had once been theirs.
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