Spellslinger 6: Crownbreaker

by Sebastien de Castell

  His answer, while plain enough, frustrated the hells out of me. ‘That doesn’t explain anything. How can you even know it’s you who’s—’

  He abruptly moved another piece, a wooden vizier this time, cutting off both my own pieces and my question. ‘You claim to dislike being controlled, but can you tell me what it means to be free?’

  I removed my eagle from the chariot and took his vizier. ‘To make one’s own choices, free from the influence of others.’

  His archer mounted the chariot. I’d made an amateur mistake. No piece can attack from a chariot except an archer, but they can only mount a chariot abandoned by another player, which I’d just done. ‘You are not free,’ Shujan said. ‘The shadowblack around your eye, the limitations of your own mortality, the need to stay alive – these inform every choice you make.’

  ‘Not so much that last one,’ Reichis grumbled. He appeared to be rooting around in a drawer of underclothes.

  Why does he have to embarrass me in front of a god?

  ‘Since you haven’t asked a question,’ I said, bringing my second eagle forward into play, ‘why don’t you explain to me why a god needs someone to tell him his abilities? Shouldn’t you know who you are?’

  Instead of answering, the boy rose and walked over to the partitioned study area. When he returned, he placed six heavy books in the middle of the board between us, scattering the carved wooden pieces and putting an abrupt end to our game. ‘These are the codices of my people, the entirety of our holy texts. Find for me, if you please, where it says God must be all-knowing.’

  I sat there staring at the leather-bound tomes, one for each of the Berabesq god’s supposed ‘faces’. Warrior. Gardener. Clockmaker. Hermit. Healer. Penitent. Ferius had implied the Argosi had something to do with these different variations, thus ensuring six distinct sects of religious traditions that would keep the Berabesq from uniting behind one theological banner. But that story didn’t sound quite right – the Argosi weren’t the sort to manipulate cultures in that way. More likely, most of the individual interpretations were oral traditions, and they’d simply made sure all six appeared in written form to prevent one single one from erasing all the others.

  Click.

  Not a sound, not really, but the tell-tale pinching of the skin around my left eye as my shadowblack markings began to turn.

  To unlock.

  ‘You haven’t been honest with me, Shujan,’ I said to the boy.

  ‘No?’

  His hesitation increased my certainty. I felt the second ring of my shadowblack markings turn.

  ‘You said you weren’t sure if you were God.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘I think you do believe you’re God … You just aren’t sure which one.’

  I felt the third twisting ring of my shadowblack markings turn. The enigmatism that my grandmother had banded me with as a child, the curse that made me a hunted outcast everywhere and never answered my questions until I found just the right one, unlocked.

  The board between us grew, spreading out beyond the walls of the spire, past the temple grounds and the city itself. Shujan and I ceased to exist, becoming watchers without substance. There, upon the hexagonal fields below us, armies marched away from the board rather than towards its centre, each one led by Shujan himself. Only … he wasn’t the same boy.

  On one side he strode with a flaming sword in hand, his warriors cheering him on as he led them to conquer. They left the slaughtered corpses of other nations in their wake.

  On another he carried a bag of seeds, his followers planting them across the land as they raised new crops, their success causing other nations to join them in exchange for the resources they needed to survive.

  A different Shujan, this one the penitent, led his people in quiet prayer. They lived simple lives, sought out no great conquests, simply hoped to justify their existence through piety.

  I watched one god after another lead the people of Berabesq, each in a different direction towards different lives – lives that affected those of everyone else on the continent.

  ‘Show me,’ the boy who was still inside that room in the spire begged. ‘Show me which path must my people take so I may know which god I should be to them.’

  But there was no answer – no good one. The warrior conquered territory at the cost of the lives of his own people. The clockmaker devised great plans for prosperity and dominance of the continent, yet his people grew indolent, relying on the labour of others. The gardener, the penitent … They each provided an answer, yet none was complete.

  Then I felt the vision shatter, the shadowblack markings around my eye unwinding until they settled once again, revealing the same room I’d been in moments before, except now Nephenia, Reichis and Ishak were all on the floor, tiny darts dangling from their necks.

  ‘I can tell you exactly what kind of god the world needs,’ Torian Libri said, holding a blowpipe in one hand and the scourge she’d taken from me without my even noticing in the other. ‘A dead one.’

  51

  The Dupe

  Torian was saying something – something about me stepping aside so she could finish the job she’d known all along I couldn’t be trusted with. I didn’t hear much of it though. My eyes were on Nephenia and Ishak, who were unconscious on the floor, and Reichis, who lay so still I watched desperately for signs of him breathing, even as another part of me considered what I would do if he were dead. Poison’s a tricky thing to work with. The dose to knock out a full-grown woman or even a hyena was more than enough to kill a squirrel cat.

  ‘Are you growling at me, card player?’ Torian asked. She held up the blowpipe for me to see. ‘Never thought much of these as killing weapons, but I’m starting to appreciate them for getting rid of unwanted witnesses. I’ve got a dart just for you, if you’d rather not watch.’

  ‘A moment, if you please,’ I replied, still watching Reichis.

  There, I thought, suddenly able to breathe again as I saw his side rise just a little, then fall again. He’s alive!

  ‘I was careful with the dosage,’ Torian said. Evidently she knew me well enough to guess at what had me so worried. That only made the betrayal hurt more.

  ‘You were the one who killed the vizier,’ I said. ‘You led the guards to the travellers’ saloon so they’d arrest the first foreigner they saw leaving, which you knew would be me.’

  ‘Now don’t get all sore, card player. I knew you’d shake them soon enough.’ She held up the scourge. ‘I needed you to bring this to me, remember?’

  Shujan, sitting across from me, held my gaze.

  Perhaps this is the answer we both sought, he told me silently. Perhaps we have both been free all along because neither of our choices really mattered.

  I rose to my feet and turned to face Torian. She shook her head and showed me the blowpipe again. ‘I wouldn’t suggest coming any closer. I think I might’ve dipped this last dart in the venom too long, and I know how much you hate it when I poison you.’

  I waited there for a few seconds, trying to learn what I could from the way she stared back at me, from her posture, from the set of her jaw. Torian was hard to read though. She so proudly wore the mantle of heartless, cavalier enforcer – the ruthless agent of the empire – but there was always something else hiding beneath. Now it played under the surface of her features. Was it fear? Uncertainty?

  ‘Don’t,’ she said, a sudden flush of anger coming to her cheeks.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Don’t look at me that way, with that Argosi gaze of yours, as if I’m some puzzle for you to solve with your arta precis or arta tuco or whatever it is.’

  There were a range of responses to that one, some witty and disarming, some outraged. I let them all drift by me. First lesson Ferius ever taught me about arta loquit – eloquence – was that a conversation is music, and sometimes it’s best to let your partner be the notes, and you the silences.

  ‘The queen’s with the army, amassing at the s
outhern border, did you know that?’ she asked, a bitter timbre in her voice. ‘A twelve-year-old girl in pretty armour that won’t do her a lick of good when she’s overrun by the Berabesq. She insisted she had to be there though. Told me some nonsense about monarchs having no right to send armies to die if they wouldn’t ride alongside them into the abyss.’

  I felt a stab of guilt and something harder, colder, in my gut. None of it surprised me; Ginevra showed herself to be that kind of ruler at every turn – the type who wants to earn the love of their people. The type who most often die trying.

  ‘But here you are, sipping tea with the enemy, no doubt delving into all sorts of deep, philosophical discussions about the intricacies of religion. Debating, contemplating, searching for some great path to appear before you that will free you from having to do what needs to be done.’

  I gave no reply, just waited for her to make her own way round to whatever it was she really wanted to say. Finally the words came out, not in a flurry of tears, but with the sorrow and confusion of a girl half her age all the same. ‘You killed my father, Kellen.’

  I didn’t ask who’d told her. Emelda. One of the other Murmurers. Maybe someone else. It hardly mattered now. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, not because it would do any good, but because it was how I felt. Jed Colfax had terrorised me when he’d set that white binder on me, brought my already miserable existence to the brink of utter and irreversible despair, yet every action he’d ever taken had been to protect the queen. I should’ve realised his daughter would be cut from the same cloth.

  ‘You shot Ferius to keep her from coming with me,’ I said.

  ‘I could’ve killed her. That would’ve been a fair trade, don’t you think? Goodness knows the world could use one less Argosi, but I kept my temper, just wounded her to keep her from interfering with the mission. I wanted to believe that if it was just you, if I gave you the chance, you’d do the right thing.’

  The right thing.

  Ancestors, I was almost as sick of people telling me the right thing to do as I was of trying to figure it out myself. Mostly, though, I was tired of listening to people lie to themselves.

  ‘The reason you didn’t kill Ferius is that if you had you’d’ve been forced to admit to yourself that all your talk of duty and loyalty is just more of the same garbage people like your mother feed the world to justify their actions.’

  The outrage in her expression became so hardened that it was as if Arcanists had inscribed it onto her features. ‘You pompous bastard. What gives you the right to judge me? You’re an outlaw! A card sharp! Your whole life is tricking people!’

  ‘You missed one,’ I said. ‘Did you forget I’m also a murderer?’

  For a second I thought I’d pushed her too far and she’d just hit me with the dart and that would be the end of it. Problem was, I needed to make her so angry that knocking me out wouldn’t be enough for her.

  ‘You think you’re so very clever, don’t you?’ she asked. ‘The spellslinging shadowblack Argosi who sees through everyone else’s deceptions? You’re the blindest one of all, Kellen! So convinced about who you trust, who you doubt, that you couldn’t spot a trick so simple the lie was right there in plain black ink.’

  I spun to Shujan, but he looked as confused as I was. My arta loquit picked up on two phrases from Torian’s little tirade, repeating them over and over in my mind: ‘who you trust … the lie was right there in plain black ink.’

  The word ‘trust’ had been filled with bitterness. Why?

  She resents who you trust, I thought.

  The lie in plain black ink. That could’ve referred to Shujan’s markings, but I doubted it. There was no reason for her to believe that was some kind of ruse. My shadowblack? No, she knew that was real too. Besides, who would ever want to fake the …

  No, please, not her!

  Torian smiled as if she’d just beaten me in a duel.

  ‘The queen,’ I whispered, hoping my suspicion wasn’t true, suddenly completely sure that it was.

  A year ago, after the attempted coup that nearly brought down her reign, Ginevra had brought me into the palace throne room. I’d been preparing to depart Darome for good, wanting to get away from court intrigues and an endless parade of powerful nobles who wanted me dead. She’d forced me to watch as she pulled aside part of her dress, revealing the winding black markings that would be the end of her when she turned thirteen and by tradition had to present herself naked before the people she ruled. That’s when I’d sworn to stay and protect her.

  Ancestors, I am such a sucker sometimes.

  ‘She was an eleven-year-old girl who’d just been tortured for days and had barely hung on to her crown,’ Torian said. ‘She needed a protector and she’d chosen you, the only person she could trust. But you were going to walk away and leave her to those wolves in fine silks who prowl about the palace waiting for their chance to destroy her. So she drew those markings on herself, knowing the shadowblack would be the one thing that would make you stay.’

  ‘I thought … I knew there was a secret her tutors had over her. The shadowblack explained everything.’

  ‘That’s the problem with wanting the world to make sense, Kellen. It makes you gullible. Worse, it makes you demand other people live up to your expectations. Ginevra’s a good girl. She’s going to be a great queen. But she needs people around her who understand that you can’t run away every time there’s a difficult choice to be made. Doesn’t matter how clever you are, card player – nobody gets to pull a fast one on destiny.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that. The part of my brain that’s usually dedicated to clever retorts was trying desperately to come up with a reason why I shouldn’t just walk away and let Torian do whatever she wanted, or stall her until some temple guard or Arcanist came along to kill her. Would a Berabesq empire be any worse than a Daroman one? This whole lousy continent seemed determined to destroy itself one way or another.

  Why did you save me that day when my sister accidentally stopped my heart, Ferius? Why bother teaching me to see the world differently from other people if the end result is always the same?

  ‘Just step aside, Kellen,’ Torian said. ‘I’ll do what has to be done and then I’ll help you get your friends away from here. Your Argosi mentor will recover and you can all ride off into the sunset together.’

  It was strange, but the sarcasm in her tone as she mentioned Ferius became a kind of music to my ears, not just in the usual way that arta loquit makes you hear things, but because her disdain was so pure, made my mentor sound so ridiculous, that it created a kind of contradiction in the universe that couldn’t be allowed to stand. Either Ferius Parfax was a joke, or everything she’d taught me was so real that it didn’t matter where it led, only the path upon which it guided me.

  I don’t think I’ve ever had to make an easier choice.

  I put up my hands for a moment to show Torian I wasn’t going to try anything, then removed my hat and set it down on the floor. My coat came next, then, very slowly, the belt that held my powder holsters.

  ‘What are you doing, Kellen?’

  I unstrapped the leather case holding my deck of throwing cards and set that on the floor too. ‘Getting ready,’ I replied, and pulled my shirt with the castradazi coins in the hem over my head.

  A confused rumbling came from the other side of the room. Reichis looked up at me, head trembling, eyes unfocused. ‘Wha’ happen? What are we …?’ His beady eyes stared at me quizzically, then at Torian, then he grumbled, ‘Oh, you’re going to mate,’ before laying his head back down to go to sleep.

  ‘I don’t know how that messed-up brain of yours works, card player,’ Torian said, a dubious smile crossing her mouth, ‘but this really ain’t going to go down the way I think you’re hoping.’

  ‘Put down the weapons,’ I said. ‘Take off that coat and your bandoleer of throwing knives.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘Because otherwise you’ll be too tempted
to use them when I’m beating you senseless.’

  She looked surprised. ‘Now why would you think after everything that’s happened that I’d risk my mission just to give you a few bruises?’

  ‘Because the queen’s wrong about us, Torian. She wanted us to be a couple. Maybe she figured that would somehow make up for the way your father died or the lie she told to keep me by her side. I don’t know. But she misread what it is that you find attractive about me.’

  Torian snorted. ‘Your pretty face?’

  I shook my head. ‘You’re not sure if you can take me in a fight.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve no doubt on that score, card player.’

  I ignored her attempt at arta valar. It wasn’t very good. ‘I used to wonder why you took it so personally when I got into some duel with a mage or bounty hunter and came back alive. Like the queen, I figured maybe deep down, underneath all the insults and threats, the times you dumped me in a jail cell, that you actually cared about me. And who knows? Maybe you do. But underneath that? What really bugs you about me is that you can’t stand seeing a trickster defeat all those dangerous men – the ones you beat with strength, skill and courage.’ I gestured to my gear on the floor. ‘Well, now we see what happens when all the tricks are taken away.’

  She stared at me a long while, the part of her that resented being pegged warring with the part that so desperately needed to wipe the smug look off my face. ‘No weapons?’ she checked.

  ‘I give you my word not to use any of mine. How about you?’

  She set the blowpipe and scourge aside and began removing her coat. ‘If that’s how you want it. I’m kind of surprised you’d want to throw down with fists. Always took you for someone who imagines himself playing the chivalrous hero from the old romantic tales. Don’t recall any of them going around beating up women.’ She took another knife from the back of one boot and set it on the ground. ‘I imagine you’ll feel even less chivalrous when you’re flat on your back looking up at me after I’ve broken both your arms and legs. You sure you want to make this play?’