Good lads.
Regrets? Hells, yeah. Just a few. What have I got to hope for, now, he thinks at night, except a crap death? In a different life, maybe… Tobias, son, husband, father, maker of beautiful things. But the village dyer died, and the village died with him, and the gods know and Marith Altrersyr knew the world’s a cruel place.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
I do not remember his face now, or the sound of his voice when he spoke to me. I do not need him. He was not a good man. He deserved what came to him. I cannot remember, now, why it was that I cared for him.
But I did think that he would come with me.
On the other side of the world, in Ae-Beyond-the-Waters, which may or may not be a real place, there is a house that looks out over the shining sea into the east. A woman lives there alone. She walks on the beach, stands staring out at the horizon, rides in the hills, goes out on the rocks of the headland to watch the waves, visits the village to buy meat and fish and bread. Talks to the village women of little things. Her hair is turning grey now; she can feel old age drawing its fingers across her back. A memory might come to her sometimes of terror and glory. What it felt like to be the most terrible and most glorious power in all the world. Memories to break her heart with grieving. Memories to make her smile. Memories to make her cold with shame. Her life is pointless, in the way most human lives are pointless. Dull quiet peace, hope, memory, her life going on and on. She wakes each morning with the sun on her face.
She has in her house a bag of gold thalers, a bag of diamonds, a bag of rubies, a bag of dragon’s teeth. She is the Chosen of Great Tanis the Lord of Living and Dying, she is the Queen of the World, she is Eltheia Returned to Us.
Perhaps it is easy for her to live in peace.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
The young woman stands on the headland, listens with closed eyes to the sea. She’s come out here to make him have to walk to find her. Put it off.
His footsteps scrunch on the turf behind her. It’s wild here, right out on the edge, where the cliff tumbles down into the sea. In a few years’ time he will be buried here, out on the cliffs at the edge, she will weep bitter tears of guilt over his grave, promise him she’ll avenge him, curse herself, curse their father, curse him. A bee buzzes too close to her, she shakes her head and her yellow hair blows in the sea wind.
“He’s agreed to it. All of it,” her brother says.
She turns. It’s done.
“He promised me,” her brother says. “Swore it. On his sword and on his name.” He looks uncomfortable, shifts his eyes away from her. There’s a dirty stain on his jacket, his clothes are crumpled and smell of sweat. He’s getting heavy in the face. Hasn’t slept.
“Held a bottle to his lips, told him you’d pour it into him if he agreed, did you?” she says. She was the one who made him do this. She shouldn’t be angry with him. It’s all getting out of control. “Made him beg?”
“Not quite,” her brother says. His face crumples up with pain as he speaks.
A disturbance in the water, just where the waves break on the rocks. A seal, a very large one, raising its dog head, seems almost to be staring at them. It’s too far away to see us, she thinks. It dives. Comes back up and it’s got something in its mouth. An eel. It wrestles, fighting the eel, biting at it. The waves break over it, washing it white. Carin rubs at his eyes. He’s started doing that recently. It irritates her. She’s beginning to guess what it is. “You’ll have a wonderful wedding night, I’m sure,” he says.
“That’s years away.” The Altrersyr lie, she thinks. Desperate.
“It can’t be years away, Landra,” her brother says. “Are you stupid? It has to be soon. Before his father finds some way to get him out of it.” Her brother says savagely, hatefully, to her, to himself, “Before he drinks himself to death. Joy to the bride, Landra,” her brother says. “Start planning your wedding dress.”
“We’ll rule the White Isles!” she shouts back. The seal is still wrestling with its prey, can’t get its jaws around it to hold it. Her shout makes a gull start up, sweeping out over the cliff over the sea with a shriek. She shivers.
“How wonderful.”
It will be, she thinks. Yes. She thinks of her mother, fussing over how the household is run, bending her head to their father in servitude, doing as she is bid.
“I’ll take him out to celebrate the betrothal, then,” her brother says. “Thank him. Tell him how delighted you are. Start prodding him on how and when.”
Shut up, she thinks. Stop. She tries to look for the seal. It’s gone. Just the gulls.
“He won’t do it,” she says. She frowns. “You’re lying. No one would agree to do that, not to their own father. Not even him.”
“Not even him?” Her brother says, “Gods, Landra, why do you hate him suddenly?”
“I don’t hate him.” It’s his fault, she thinks. Somehow. He should have seen through them. Said no. Pushed them away. How can he go along with this, his own ruin, if he’s not vile and poison and only worth her hate? “I want to marry him, don’t I?” she says.
“He loves me,” her brother says then. “He told me that. He loves me.” The gulls scream. Twist in the air. Dark shapes. The seal resurfaces, dog head staring, pebble wet black eyes. Too far away to see her brother’s face. Her brother says, “He says he doesn’t want anything else in the world, not the throne, not a crown, not eternal glory, not anything, apart from to love me.”
“The Altrersyr lie,” she spits out. She wants to shake him. But Carin says fiercely, “He’s not lying,” and she knows that’s true for now at least.
Acknowledgments
There are more people to thank with every book:
Once again once again, this book was only possible because of my agent, Ian Drury, and my editors Vicky Leech, Jack Renninson and Natasha Bardon at HarperVoyager and Brit Hvide at Orbit. Between them, they have changed my life. I cannot express my gratitude to them.
Michael R Fletcher is the best writing friend and collaborator I could wish for, also his books rock.
Adrian Collins at Grimdark Magazine is too good for this world. Grimdark Magazine itself is brilliant. The Grimdark Magazine team are very cool.
Mark Lawrence, Christian Cameron, Lucy Hounsom, Deborah A Wolf, James A Moore, Anna Stephens, Sam Hawk, Jen Williams, Micah Yongo, Steve Poore, Joanna Hall, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Peter McLean, Andy Remic, Luke Scull, John Gwynne… the list of authors whom I admire and am privileged to know is wonderfully long.
Leona Henry. Jo Fletcher. Michael Evans, Laura M Hughes and Kareem Mahfouz at The Fantasy Hive. Petros and everyone at BookNest.eu. Bethan Hindmarch. Thomas James Clews, who really did like the porridge. James Allen Razor—thinking about you and Stacey. Team Grimbold Books, not very grim in person but bold indeed. The Fantasy Inn crew. Alex Khlopenko at Three Crows Magazine. Red Star Reviews. Coffee Archives. The Speculative Kitchen. Book Wol, who makes drinks worthy of Marith. The facebookers of the Second Apocalypse. The Fantasy Writers’ Bar. Everyone at GDWR, my spiritual home.
Julian, Gareth, Jo and everyone else at PP, for being understanding. It’s
Sophie E Tallis, for the map.
Stas Borodin, Dejan Delic, and Quint Von Canon, for the pictures.
Allen Stroud and Karen Fishwick. Kate Buyers. Kate Dalton.
Judith Katz.
My family.
Everyone who reads my books.
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meet the author
Photo Credit: Peter Philpott
ANNA SMITH SPARK lives in London, UK. She loves grimdark and epic fantasy and historical military fiction. Anna has a BA in classics, an MA in history and a PhD in English literature. She has previously been published in the Fortean Times and the
poetry website greatworks.org.
if you enjoyed
THE HOUSE OF SACRIFICE
look out for
QUEEN OF THE CONQUERED
by
Kacen Callender
Sigourney Rose is the only surviving daughter of a noble lineage on the islands of Hans Lollik. When she was a child, her family was murdered by the islands’ colonizers, who have massacred and enslaved generations of her people—and now, Sigourney is ready to exact her revenge.
When the childless king of the islands declares he will choose his successor from among eligible noble families, Sigourney uses her ability to read and control minds to manipulate her way onto the royal island and into the ranks of the ruling colonizers. But when she arrives, prepared to fight for control of all the islands, Sigourney finds herself the target of a dangerous unknown magic.
Someone is killing off the ruling families to clear a path to the throne. As the bodies pile up and all eyes regard her with suspicion, Sigourney must find allies among her prey and the murderer among her peers… lest she become the next victim.
Chapter One
The invitation is a plain piece of yellowing parchment, folded shut—thin enough that I can see the red of my fingers shining through, as though the paper is a layer of skin in my hands. The paper itself hasn’t been perfumed with the scent of crushed flower petals, as most posts from the kongelig tend to be. Only the seal of white wax, with the sunburst insignia of Hans Lollik Helle, marks the letter in any way.
It’s an invitation I’ve been waiting to receive for nearly ten years: a symbol of all I’ve worked for, and everything still to come. I hold it in my hands, staring at the seal, my heartbeat drumming through my veins. Now that the moment has finally arrived, I can’t bring myself to read the words.
Marieke sweeps into my room with a woven basket of fresh sheets. She sees the letter in my hands, noting the tremble in my fingers before I have a chance to steady them.
“What’s that?” she asks briskly, even though she knows exactly what it is. She strips the sheets from my bed, and when I don’t answer, she says without sparing me another glance, “Aren’t you going to open it?”
I place the invitation atop the stand beside my bed.
Marieke watches me as she straightens my new sheets. Marieke has always valued patience, so it’s almost amusing when she sucks her teeth as she fluffs my pillows. She thinks I’m falling apart. She can’t blame me, she knows—the pressure I’ve put on myself with this goal of mine would be enough to break anyone. I’ve whispered to her at night that this plan is the only reason I’m still alive. Marieke believed me when I told her, and she thought it was sad, too, that a child should ever say that they want to die, but Marieke has known many children who’ve felt life wasn’t worth living.
There’s been another slave uprising, this time on a sugarcane plantation in the fields to the east, so I ride with my twelve personal guardsmen across Lund Helle, through the groves of tangled brush and branches and thorns, weaving beneath the blessed shade of coconut and palm trees, crossing the fields of guinea grass shimmering in the breeze. Lund is the flattest of its sister islands, so the grass stretches on for miles, without any relief from the sun, which seems to reflect against everything here—the white of my dress, the blue of the sea forever shining in the corner of my eye, even the air itself. The heat is a living thing. It burns the corners of my eyes and lips, already cracking from the salt that’s carried from the ocean on the wind.
The ocean has always terrified me. It isn’t meant for the living. The water, burning my eyes and nose and throat, can so easily fill my lungs; the power of the tide can pull me beneath its waves. Most frightening of all are the spirits. My sister, Ellinor, would whisper to me that they walk the ocean floor, waiting for their chance at vengeance against the living; that their hands will pull you into the depths, so that your body, like theirs, can turn to salt and sand, and you can join them in waiting for a chance at revenge.
She’d told me this when I was a girl child, so young I could barely walk anywhere on my own without clutching at my eldest sister’s skirts. I’d wanted to know if what Ellinor said was true, so I walked into the water—walked until I could no longer feel the sand beneath my feet. I took a deep breath and let myself sink beneath the surface and opened my eyes, stinging in the salt. There were no spirits standing in the sand, waiting for their revenge. All I could see was the coral, the schools of fish flashing silver in the light, the seaweed swaying beneath the waves. I decided Ellinor was a liar and turned to swim back to shore, but the tide was strong that day. I was pulled away from the shore. I would have kicked my legs, just as I’d been taught, but it was like I’d become stationary, unable to move. I swam, swallowing saltwater, unable to cry for help, but I was only pulled farther and farther, until I began to wonder if my sister had been right after all and if the spirits had grasped me by my legs, even if I couldn’t see them or feel their hands.
My limbs became weak and numb, and I sank, my lungs burning and my vision fading away. I should’ve drowned, but when I opened my eyes again, I was back on the sand, salt drying on my skin. No slaves were nearby to claim that they’d jumped into the water and rescued me; my family was still in the gardens, enjoying their tea. It was just me, alone on the shore. The spirits weren’t ready to take me yet.
I know that the path we take is dangerous. It leaves us too vulnerable, too much in the open. We’re practically inviting an ambush. This would’ve been a silly thought, once, on an island like Lund Helle. The island only has a few sugarcane plantations, with houses scattered in between, but there’ve been three slave uprisings in as many months. Before this, the last uprising was nearly twenty years ago, when Bernhand Lund was still alive and Herre of this island. All the masters of the plantation had been killed. Herre Lund ended the uprising swiftly. Every slave on the plantation, whether they claimed innocence or not—whether they were children or not—was executed, their bodies staked and hung from trees so that the other slaves of this island could see. No other islander attempted an uprising since, not until now.
Friedrich rides beside me. “You didn’t have to come,” he says again for the second time this morning. “It’s a simple group of slaves that have now decided to call themselves rebels.”
“I’m capable of deciding where I need to be, Friedrich.”
He looks away, scathed. I feel that there’s regret in his gut, regret he hopes I won’t see, though he knows any emotion he has, any thought of his, belongs to me. If I will it, I can hear his thoughts the way I might think to myself; his emotions become my own. It requires effort, yes—energy, to make my mind become one with another’s—but after holding this kraft for so many years, it’s a skill that comes with the ease of racing across the fields of Lund Helle, or holding my breath beneath the sea. I know that Friedrich doesn’t want to kill his own people. Before these uprisings, Friedrich had never killed before, not once in his entire life. He’d been trained to—had learned how to stab and maim and disembowel straw-filled opponents, as have all fifty of the guards of Lund Helle—but he never expected to see his sword shining red. He was surprised how easy it was to take the life of another man. His sword had pressed against the skin of the slave rebel who had run at Friedrich with a machete, and then his sword sliced through that skin and into pink guts, and it stopped as though hitting a rock—the man’s bones, Friedrich later realized—and the man was still alive as Friedrich pulled back his sword, yanking at it with effort. The man looked as surprised as Friedrich felt before he fell to the dirt.
Friedrich killed three more men that day and, when the fighting was done, walked into the brush so that no one could see him or hear him vomit the cold oats and the juices of the sugarcane he’d swiped from the kitchens that morning. He prayed to the gods of the masters, asking for forgiveness, even though the masters don’t believe that taking the life of an islander is a sin, and so there would be nothing to forgive.
Friedrich had hope
d he would never have to kill another man again. How disappointed he was to hear of another uprising. “The fight won’t last long,” he tells me. “They never do.”
My horse jerks back and forth beneath me. There’s a clopping of hooves against the rocks scattered across the dirt, kicking dust into the air, already heavy with heat. My cloak sticks to my skin, and my neck and shoulders ache beneath the blistering sun. It’s always hot on this island of mine, but the dry season has lasted a little too long. The crops are failing now, the plantations earning this island less coin every year. Bernhand Lund was put into his grave four years before, and since the title of Elskerinde was passed on to me, there have been nothing but droughts and uprisings. Proof, according to the Fjern of this island, that I shouldn’t have the power that I do.
Lund Helle has no cities, no towns, only isolated collections of houses, which form small plantations holding its slaves and are owned by the few Fjern who live here. An abandoned house we pass leans to its side, as though the wind blew a little too hard one night. A rotted body hangs from a lone mahogany tree, bones visible through the rags it still wears, flies like a layer of living skin. It’s always difficult to tell in death what color a body had once been in life.
I see the smoke of the plantation’s houses before we arrive. It gushes black into the bright blue sky and burns my eyes, even from such a distance. There are brown bodies of islanders in the green field, already swelling in the heat—but there’s no way to tell if these men, women, and children fought alongside the slave rebels, or if they were innocents killed in the clash. I see fallen Fjernmen as well, with their pink skin turning purple and blue. The masters of the plantation. I shouldn’t be so pleased, seeing their bodies on the ground.
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