“Senator,” the queen’s mother said. “Ambassador. Your soldiers have barred our entry to the dungeons.”
“What need have you to visit the dungeons?” Emil demanded, showing little courtesy to the woman who had just lost her child, and was a queen by right.
Before she even responded, Mahalath tensed, knowing what she was about to say. The pthisicis-corporis. Everything had happened so quickly since Emil’s arrival that he’d had no opportunity to broach the subject yet, but it had been nagging at the back of his mind, like a midge that kept buzzing in his ear. Mahalath couldn’t imagine why the queen’s parents would want to see the prisoner, though, even if he was a pthisicis-corporis, which Mahalath highly doubted.
“There’s a prisoner down there,” the queen’s mother said. “My daughter, the queen.”
Senator Emil laughed, but Mahalath was stunned. Why would she think the prisoner is Makarria? he asked himself, but in the back of his mind, he feared he knew the answer.
“Please do explain,” Emil said. “If I’m not mistaken, you were there in the throne room, along with me and hundreds of others, when your daughter was murdered by her own bodyguard.”
“That wasn’t my daughter up there. That was the body thief.”
Mahalath’s skin prickled to hear her say it.
“A body thief?” Emil asked incredulously. “No such thing exists. You are simply distraught. Denial is a natural part of grief.”
“No, I have a letter explaining everything. Fina left it for me. The body thief was wearing Makarria’s skin.” The queen’s mother held up a folded slip of parchment for them to see.
“Fina, you say?” Emil asked. “The same woman who killed your daughter on the public stage of the throne? You must excuse me for not believing anything a mad woman would write.”
“I’m skeptical myself,” the queen’s father spoke up. “But there’s no harm in letting us see the prisoner and making sure. Tell your guards to let us pass.”
Mahalath shot a glance at Emil, and wet his lips. “Perhaps we should all—”
“Absolutely not,” Emil interrupted. “I’ll read this letter you speak of and investigate matters, but we can’t risk the queen’s royal parents getting injured visiting the dungeon, not after what’s happened already.”
“You have no right to bar Queen Prisca from anything,” Captain Haviero said suddenly. “With Makarria gone now, Prisca is Queen of Valaróz.”
“The queen is dead,” Emil replied. “The treaty she signed was a royal proclamation, declaring the Republic as steward of the realm, and we take that responsibility very seriously. Before you barged in we were discussing the formation of a council of governors to rule the kingdom, a council which Lady Prisca would sit at the head of.” Emil smiled ingratiatingly and stood up to walk toward the queen’s parents. “Here now, let me have the letter to look over, and all of you retire back to your rooms. This is a mournful time for you, I know. Let me look into matters with this prisoner.”
Senator Emil slipped the letter from Prisca’s hand and called for the legionnaires outside. “Soldiers, please escort the queen’s parents back to their rooms.” And then he spoke quickly to the legionnaires in the Old Tongue. Mahalath did not speak the Old Tongue fluently, but he knew it well enough to make sense of what Emil said. His jaw clenched and he took half a step forward to protest, but Emil made a terse hand motion in his direction.
Say something, you coward! Mahalath told himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak, and then it was too late. The queen’s parents were escorted out, along with Captain Haviero.
Emil returned to his seat, and finally Mahalath found his tongue. “That was unnecessary, Senator.”
“Don’t be naive,” Emil said. “You know as well as I do that the woman won’t relent, and as long as she has soldiers loyal to her at her side, she has the ability to cause trouble. Especially that captain. The Royal Guard will be loyal to him and he looks fool enough to try a coup. If anything I’ve just saved lives by ordering the captain killed.”
Mahalath knew he would get nowhere with this argument. It was done. Captain Haviero was as good as dead.
“As you say,” Mahalath said, sitting himself back down. “But as to this matter of what they call a body thief, there is more you don’t know. While you were gone—”
“The queen captured what she thought was a pthisicis-corporis,” Emil interrupted. “Yes, I know. I have my own eyes and ears in the city. Trust me when I tell you that the pthisicis-corporis are long extinct. This prisoner might be a sorcerer, and a traitor by all accounts, but he is no pthisicis-corporis.”
“But Queen Makarria was not herself after confronting and capturing this man,” Mahalath said, surprising even himself with the admission. She never would have signed my treaty so readily. I knew better. Mahalath wetted his lips. Beneath his turban, his shorn scalp was soaked in sweat. “The queen came to us ambassadors and claimed there was a pthisicis-corporis in her court and that she meant to capture him, and then…”
“And then what, you damn fool? She came to you, complaining of her inadequacies as queen, and tried to lay the blame for her troubles on the Republic. She all but accused us of plotting to destroy her. And like the spineless lickspittle you are, you sat there and took it. Have you no pride?”
He’s lying. Trying to humiliate me to hide the fact he knew all along.
“I want to see the letter,” Mahalath said.
Emil stared at him for a long moment, then ripped the letter in half, and then in half again. “Absolutely not. Get out of my sight, and I’ll not hear another word of this.”
22
Into the Eye of the Storm
Her tears had dried, crusting the mustache whiskers on her face with salt. It’s Lorentz’s face that I wear, she reminded herself, but she was not certain of that anymore. She didn’t even know whether her eyes were open or closed half the time, not since she’d been visited by the creature wearing her body. It can’t be true what the body thief told me, she’d tried convincing herself, and yet she had seen it with her own eyes. She had watched as Fina drove the dagger into her body, once, twice. And then the confusion. She watched as Fina’s body fell to the floor. As her own body stood and straddled Fina’s. She watched the blood soaking through the gown and spreading across the white marble dais. The color seeping from flesh. The final breath of two bodies. And then the panic of the people in the throne room. The screaming. Her mother. Father. Rushing to her body. The guards pulling them away. And then everything again from the beginning—the jabs of the dagger, once, twice. The blood. The fading flesh. Over and over again.
It’s just a vision, she tried telling herself. She had experienced a vision once before, when she was locked in Emperor Guderian’s dungeon. She had seen his past in that vision, his very real past. But this vision was not the past. The body thief had just been with her the day before. Or was it two days before? Or a week before? She couldn’t be certain. Just a vision, she repeated to herself. Just a premonition. It doesn’t have to be true. Talitha told me prophecy is only a potential future. Even the pthisicis-corporis said visions are unreliable.
But still, Makarria kept seeing it over and over, whether her eyes were open or closed. The dark, dank walls of her cell had become the repeating nightmare vision of Fina killing her body. The guards had come thrice to feed her, she thought, but she couldn’t know for sure. Maybe the guards and the feeding funnel were just a memory. Or a vision, like the throne room. Maybe it’s all a vision. A dream. A nightmare that won’t stop… Do you even know who you are?
Yes. Makarria. Your name is Makarria. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up…
“Wake up!”
The voice was not hers. Harsh, yellow light assaulted her eyes. Torchlight, she realized. She was in her cell, and a man wearing a turban was standing before her, barking at her to wake up. Ambassador Mahalath?
“That’s right, open your eyes,” he said. “Look at me.”
Makarria blinked
the blurriness from her eyes and willed herself to raise her head, though her neck muscles were a knot of pain from supporting the weight of the mind cage. Mahalath was no more than a foot away, holding up a torch in one hand to see her. Behind him stood two servants, both of them holding torches of their own. The cell door was closed and Makarria saw no sign of the usual guards.
“Who are you?” Mahalath asked. “Tell me your name. Please.”
It was the please that did it. Makarria knew she had no reason to trust Mahalath. He was from the Old World, and it was the Old World that had plotted to steal control of Valaróz from her, that had released the pthisicis-corporis upon her. But Mahalath’s voice was tender rather than demanding, and he said please. Makarria needed some form of kindness more than anything, and please was enough.
“My name is Makarria.” The words passed through her lips in a raspy whisper. “The pthisicis-corporis… I touched it with my power and…”
“It switched bodies with you,” Mahalath finished for her.
“Please, believe me,” Makarria whispered. “I came to you and the other ambassadors, remember? Wearing my real body, not this one. You warned me to be cautious with the body thief. I thought I was being cautious, but I used my power. I didn’t know.”
“Enough,” Mahalath said. “Save your strength. I believe you. I didn’t want to believe it, not when you came to me that night to accuse the Old World, nor when I thought it was you signing my treaty. I saw what I wished to see, and I let Senator Emil deceive us both. I am sorry.” Mahalath glanced back to his men and motioned them forward. “Help me unchain her from the wall.”
Makarria didn’t believe what she was hearing. Is this some sort of trick? But the servants did as Mahalath commanded. They had the jailor’s keys, and together they unlocked first her feet and then the manacles at her wrists that had been supporting her weight for days now. The servants were gentle in lowering her down, but even so, when her arms were released from their restraints to flop to her sides, the flesh came alive with pain—a million pinpricks of fire from shoulders to fingertips.
The guards sat her down on the floor and leaned her back against the wall, and then Mahalath knelt in front of her. “I’m sorry, but this is going to hurt very badly. Men, hold her still.”
Makarria didn’t think she could possibly be in more pain than she already was, but she was wrong. When Mahalath grabbed the first of the thumbscrews that attached the mind cage to her skull and then twisted, it hit her like a bolt of lightning, shooting down her spine and blinding her with white and blue flashes. Vaguely, she could hear herself screaming and feel herself struggling against the strong hands holding her down, but her body felt far away and foreign. The pain was all-consuming. By the time Mahalath got to the second thumbscrew, Makarria blacked out.
When she came to, Mahalath was wrapping a long linen bandage around her head. “You’re free of the cage now, but do not try to use your power. The screw holes in your head have become infected. I’m wrapping the bandage loosely so they may bleed and purge the contagion. Let them heal, and your body rest, before trying anything. I cannot conjecture as to what might happen if you try to use your power in your condition. You very well might die.”
“Thank you,” Makarria told him. Her body was weak and ached everywhere, but with the weight of the mind cage gone, without the clicking and whirring of gears in her head, she felt alive again. She held up her new hands, calloused and wide-knuckled, the hands of a career solider. It didn’t seem they could possibly be hers now, but when she willed them to move, they did so.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked Mahalath, lowering her hands, not wanting to see them. “Will you take me to my mother, please?”
“I am sorry, but I cannot. That would be as good as killing you myself. Emil likely suspects who you are now. He’s content to have you locked up down here for the time being, but no doubt he means to kill you eventually, and if I free you into the palace, he’ll have you killed immediately. No, I am sorry, but you cannot stay here. If you were in your own body, it would be one thing, but no one will believe you are the queen in this man’s body. Valaróz is lost to you. Emil controls everything, and there’s nothing either one of us can do to stop him. I’ve risked much already in coming here, but I owe you your life, at least, for the deception and treachery I unwittingly allowed to happen.”
Mahalath stood and motioned for the servants to help Makarria up. Makarria groaned, but managed to support most of her own weight as the guards lifted her and placed a cloak over her head and shoulders. Lorentz’s body was stout and accustomed to physical punishment, it seemed.
“Where are you taking me, then?” Makarria asked.
“I’m putting you on a ship to Kal Pyrthin. Quiet now. Your Valarion guards outside will obey my commands, but they will not understand who you are, so don’t try to speak to them. Be our silent prisoner.”
Makarria allowed herself to be led forward, leaning heavily upon the servants to either side of her as Mahalath opened the cell door. He spoke curtly to the two Valarion jailors standing in the corridor, and then led the way past them toward the rear stairwell, which led up to the service wing of the palace. At the top of the stairs, Mahalath and his attendants guided Makarria into the servants’ courtyard, walking so fast Makarria couldn’t keep up and was left dragging her feet below her. Pained as she was, the cool night air in the courtyard was the most refreshing thing Makarria had ever smelled. Even thick with dust and the odor of horse dung, it was better than the moldering stank of the dungeon.
A horse-drawn coach was already prepared for them, and Mahalath stepped up first to help Makarria in, whereupon she collapsed onto the hard wooden bench at the rear of the cabin. Mahalath closed the door, sat down on the bench across from her, and then rapped his knuckles on the front wall to signal the driver to go. The driver whipped the reins and the coach lurched forward, out of the courtyard and into the streets of Sol Valaróz.
Makarria could still hardly believe what was happening. To be alive and free of the mind cage was wondrous, but her thoughts couldn’t escape the memory of her visions, of the scene the pthisicis-corporis had foretold. Ambassador Mahalath had said Emil was in control now, but had said nothing about the pthisicis-corporis. She looked up at Mahalath, who sat looking back at her.
“My guard Fina,” Makarria said. “Did she…”
“Yes. Your body is dead, I am afraid. And your servant Fina, as well.”
Makarria slumped in defeat. Her body had been murdered just as the pthisicis-corporis told her, and now Makarria was trapped in Lorentz’s battered body forever. Her parents would never see her again. Nor Caile. She was utterly alone, and the weight of it all was crushing. She couldn’t cry, couldn’t think beyond the surface facts.
“The body thief knew what Fina was going to do,” she said, as if outside of herself. “It told me it was going to switch with her, and then switch with one of the guards when they came after her. It happened just like it said, and now the pthisicis-corporis is free again, in someone else’s body.”
“No, I think not,” Mahalath said. “I did not understand what was happening when I witnessed it, but now knowing what your friend Fina was facing, I understand. She poisoned herself first. My men and I just examined her room and found the wolfsbane. Both the pthisicis-corporis and your friend were dead within moments. No one else touched them, your friend made sure of it. She was a loyal servant to the end, though she will be known forever as the one who murdered the Dreamwielder.”
This time Makarria couldn’t hold back the tears, but she cried for Fina and the sacrifice she had made, not for herself. The reality of her own plight was still too much to comprehend, and so she cried quietly for Fina as the coach moved through the streets of Sol Valaróz toward the harbor. When they drew close, Mahalath roused her from her misery.
“I am putting you on a Valarion ship. It is captained by a man of the Republic and making way for the Esterian Ocean to aid the Repub
lic armada in defeating Pyrthinia, but the crew are all your countrymen. Go with them, pretend to be a sailor, and the old gods willing, you will survive the storm and battle before you. If so, go and make a new life for yourself. There is nothing for you here any longer. Your mother and father still live and are safe, but you can do nothing for them. Emil needs them, if for nothing more than to maintain the cooperation of your people. I am sorry. I wish there was more I could do…”
Makarria could only bring herself to nod.
The wagon came to a stop a moment later, and she allowed herself to be escorted from the coach and then up the gangplank to a ship. Mahalath spoke briefly to the captain, who summoned sailors to escort her below deck to the sick bay where she collapsed into one of the hammocks. Her last thought before falling into the oblivion of sleep was, I’m dead and I’ve failed everyone…
• • •
She awoke to find her hammock rocking. The cabin was dark, lit only by a sputtering tallow candle on the table at the center of the room. She was alone, and the walls and ceiling around her were pitching from side to side. It took her several seconds to remember where she was, and who she was. Not Makarria any longer, she reminded herself as she ran her fingers over her face, the face that once belonged to Lorentz. I’m on a ship to Kal Pyrthin. I’m a sailor now, like my grandfather. The thought of Parmo and how he had been assassinated moments before being crowned King of Valaróz grieved her. Grampy is gone, and now Lorentz, Natale, Fina, and even me. What am I without my body? Just a stupid girl trapped in the body of a broken soldier.
She sat up in the hammock and nearly fainted as a wave of nausea washed through her. Her head throbbed like someone was beating on it with a sledgehammer. She probed the blood-caked bandage wrapped around her head and gasped. The four spots where the mind cage had been screwed into her skull were inflamed and wet with discharge. Makarria could tell by the rotten smell that the dampness was puss, not blood. I need to clean it with hot water and a poultice of wormroot and bee balm before it’s too late, she thought, pushing herself to her feet. She went to the table in the center of the cabin, intent on grabbing the candle lantern and exploring the room—it was the sick bay, after all, and bound to have some sort of medicinal herbs—but she found the lantern was fastened to the table. Of course, this is a ship. Everything is nailed down to keep from flying around in rough seas.
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