Ruthless Gods (ARC)

by Emily A Duncan

  “There is a collective of slavhki who wish to see me off the throne,” Serefin said. “And I don’t know what to do.”

  Klarysa stood. She clipped her spell book to her waist and moved briskly across the room, placing her hands on Serefin’s shoulders.

  “You know exactly what to do. You make them regret that their tepid whispers reached your ears.” She tilted his chin up. “You are the king. Do you think your father didn’t have enemies whispering for his removal from the throne every night?”

  “I was one of those enemies,” he said wearily.

  She kissed the top of his head. “You did what you had to.”

  “Is that how you justify what happened to Malachiasz?”

  She sighed. “If I could have kept him close, I would have. You two were the only thing that made this palace bearable.”

  “Then why did you send him away? Why did you never tell me?”

  “The Vultures came for him, there was nothing we could do.” She smoothed Serefin’s hair as she pulled him to her. “I did not tell you because you would’ve tried to pull him from the order. You are so stubborn, Serefin, and we are not to concern ourselves with the affairs of Vultures.”

  He shivered, her nails lightly scratching his scalp.

  “Treason is another matter,” she continued thoughtfully. “As poetic as my sons wielding the two thrones of Tranavia might be, we can’t have treason. But let’s see to those slavhki first, yes?”

  Serefin’s panic had cooled to frustration when he found Ostyia in the hallway. He grabbed her arm, ignoring her yelp of surprise as he dragged her into his rooms and slammed the door closed.

  “You knew about Malachiasz,” he said, tone more accusatory than intended.

  “What?”

  “You knew. You knew he was the Black Vulture the whole time.”

  She rolled her eye. “Why does this matter to you now? I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think it mattered.”

  “I thought he was dead. For years. You let me think it.”

  “He may as well been!” she said incredulously. “What is this about, Serefin?”

  For a brief instant, he considered telling her the truth. Or did she know that, too? What else had she kept from him for his own supposed good?

  Ostyia groaned. “It was a few years ago. I saw him without his mask. I know you were close but he was . . .” She trailed off, shaking her head. “Poisonous. I didn’t want to break your heart when you had finally moved on.”

  “It wasn’t for you to keep from me,” he said.

  She shrugged, clearly nonplussed. “Why are you bringing this up?”

  Serefin shook his head, waving her off. This was a growing point of contention between them and he was willing to let it fester.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he muttered, hating that everyone had hid the truth from him. “Nothing matters. I need to go to dinner.”

  “Not like that, you’re not.” She grabbed his wrist and yanked him back. “Clean up first. Don’t give them more ammunition against you.”

  He gritted his teeth, brushing a hand over his jaw. He needed to shave.

  If word got out about Malachiasz . . . Serefin was already treading on dangerous ground. He couldn’t very well pin his father’s death on Malachiasz, though ultimately he liked to think it was his fault—the common folk and the slavhki idolized the Vultures to a point risking civil war if he threatened their rule.

  Malachiasz must have known he would have immunity granted to no one else by sheer lack of precedence. But treason was treason.

  Ostyia flagged down a servant, then waited while Serefin did his very best to be halfway presentable.

  “We need to find Żaneta,” he said, moving to take a razor and getting his hand slapped away by Cyryl, his manservant. He sighed and let Cyryl shove him onto a stool.

  Ostyia perched on his desk. She looked thoughtful.

  “She’s likely in Kyętri . . .”

  Serefin shuddered, earning him a scowl from Cyryl. He had to play the game in a way the slavhki understood, with power. Żaneta was a piece he held that those who wanted him out of power desired. The problem was his mother wanted him to deal with this issue first, and to leave Malachiasz be until the time came to deal with him as well.

  To Serefin, it was killing two birds with one stone.

  “May I cut your hair, Your Majesty?” Cyryl asked. “While we’re here . . .”

  Serefin waved a noncommittal hand.

  “Finally,” Ostyia muttered.

  She was one to talk, she’d hacked off her bangs herself and they were crooked.

  “It would be a risk to leave Grazyk,” Ostyia said. “You have to figure out how to do this without leaving the city.”

  Serefin frowned.

  “What if I can’t?” he mused quietly.

  “They take everything.”

  * * *

  Serefin couldn’t walk a step without tripping over a new low slavhka who had arrived from somewhere in Tranavia, hoping to find favor with the young king.

  It was exceedingly tiring.

  The dinner was supposed to be a quieter affair than most, yet even this was still too many people for Serefin’s liking. If only he was the sort who thrived on social interactions. Instead they made him desperate to escape.

  The room was dimly lit with too many dripping candles spread across the table. Torches burned against the wall, casting the lower hall in a flickering, erratic light. The paintings on the ceiling struck Serefin as being vaguely familiar in a different way than usual, as if he had seen them once in a dream, this vast battle between bears and eagles.

  The slavhka he found sitting to his left was none other than Patryk Ruminski. Serefin stifled a sigh as he was announced. This was going to be a long evening.

  Nadya caught his attention from where she sat further down, tense and taut before tracking to the nobles seated near him. She shot him a sympathetic look before turning to the person at her right. Masks had not fallen out of fashion, to Serefin’s dismay, and Nadya wore the bare minimum with a strip of white lace tied over her eyes.

  Serefin recognized the languid way the girl beside the cleric held herself, the pile of black hair and dark blue eyes that kept the room sharply in her attention from behind the iron mask that hid all but a quarter of her face.

  A Vulture. The second in command that hadn’t been seen anywhere in months. Serefin scanned the room. No other Vultures in sight.

  Nadya lifted her hand slightly, beckoning Serefin over.

  Slight Ksęszi Ruminski by speaking with a girl who should be far beneath his attention and a Vulture first? Or suffer not knowing what the Vulture was doing here the whole dinner?

  Serefin decided to compromise. It was only diplomatic.

  He murmured his greetings to Ruminski and the boy seated on his other side, whom he did not recognize at all, before moving to where Nadya was seated, highly aware it should be the other way around. Nadya should be coming to him. He was the king. This was breaking all sorts of protocol.

  “I’m going to have to suffer the most awkward conversation after this,” Serefin said, resting a hand on the back of Nadya’s chair and leaning down.

  “I thought speaking with those who wanted to depose you was a mundanity,” Nadya murmured.

  “It is, but—” he cut himself off. It was no use talking about these kinds of things with her.

  Nadya gestured to the Vulture, but Serefin spoke before she could.

  “We’ve met,” he said shortly. “Give my regards to Jen Eczkanję,” he said, dryly.

  The Vulture snorted. “Something tells me he won’t want those. My name is Żywia, and you’re right, we have met.”

  Serefin went cold. The Vultures didn’t just hand out their names. Nadya was eyeing Żywia with cautious curiosity.

  “What’s this about?” he asked. He glanced longingly at Nadya’s wine glass. He needed a drink. “Did he send you?”

  “It took some time, you see, to put eve
rything in order. And I don’t know what mess has happened here in our absence.”

  Serefin’s stomach clenched at our. But there was no way he was here. Nadya, who had been toying with her dinner knife earlier, now held it in the practiced grip of someone who could make the dull blade kill without difficulty. She appeared calmly dismissive, like it was every day she dealt with the upper echelons of Tranavia’s bloodiest cult.

  Well, Serefin considered, I suppose she has.

  “Who has decided they lead the Vultures?” Żywia asked. “Not that it matters, let them playact at leadership.”

  Serefin had met with a handful of Vultures since being crowned. Each one had claimed to be ruling in the Black Vulture’s absence, and each one had disappeared, never to be seen again.

  “Is that the only reason you’re here?”

  She shook her head. “We’ll speak later, Your Majesty. I am but a messenger.”

  Serefin nodded, straightening and preparing to return to his seat. He caught a glimpse of Nadya’s expression as he moved away.

  Her grip on the knife had tightened.

  Four

  Nadezhda Lapteva

  Svoyatova Lizavieta Zhilova—When the Tranavian blood mage Pyotr Syslo burned her village to the ground when she was a child, Lizavieta—granted vengeance by the goddess Marzenya—hunted him down and fed his eyes to the wolf that haunted her steps.

  —Vasiliev’s Book of Saints

  “Your story is threadbare,” the Vulture said casually as she reached for her glass of wine.

  Nadya tensed. She picked up her fork to stab a mushroom scattered with dill and waited until she had finished chewing to answer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Żywia cast her a wry, sidelong glance before tugging the mask off her face. Nadya heard a few scandalized gasps from down the table.

  The Vulture was unexpectedly lovely. Her skin was smooth and her features fine; a series of careful circles were tattooed in a line down her chin, stretching down her throat. “Malachiasz doesn’t keep secrets from me, dear.”

  “That makes one of us,” Nadya muttered.

  “I was impressed you made it so far initially without the slavhki poking holes in your first tale. It was a good story, if a touch macabre.”

  “Malachiasz came up with it,” Nadya said. If the Vulture knew she was Kalyazi, there was no point in lying further. Except that they were at a court dinner and there were dozens of ears listening in.

  “That boy never fails to surprise me. But your new story, well . . . and paired with such convenient timing . . .”

  Nadya’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not here to give me warnings.”

  Żywia shrugged. “No. Give Tranavia warnings? Yes. But you? No.” She reached up, curling a lock of black hair around her index finger. “You should worry, though. I’ve only been back a day and the slavhki talk. They talk a great deal about the slavhka with a suspicious story who is close to the king, yet no one knows who, exactly, her family is.”

  Nadya swallowed hard.

  “I know what happened,” she continued.

  Because Malachiasz doesn’t keep secrets from her, Nadya thought bitterly. But he lied about everything to me.

  “And?”

  “And the rumors the slavhki are spreading venture dangerously close to a certain shade of truth.”

  The blood drained from Nadya’s face. The only reason she had lasted this long was because the truth was so uncanny that it had been swallowed up in a swirl of even more mundane rumors.

  Panic started to press down at her ribcage. She cast a glance down the table at Serefin. He looked miserable, sitting next to the man trying to take his throne away.

  Her story had not been made to last this long. There were obvious holes, clear gaps where things did not make sense because she was here on some forged paperwork and a story constructed out of desperation when they were all too devastated to think clearly.

  “When his court finally turns on you, do you think you’ll have the protection of the king?” Żywia asked.

  Nadya needed to get out.

  Żywia smiled sweetly. “You’ve outstayed your purpose, dear, that’s all. You did what was required of you and brought our Black Vulture back where he belongs. It’s time to take your leave. Consider this me being altruistic.”

  The air between them had chilled, and malice threaded through the Vulture’s voice. Nadya thumbed the bottom of her dinner knife. Żywia’s gaze dropped to Nadya’s hand and her smile widened.

  “By my guess you have only days before the slavhki move to have you imprisoned at best, hanged at worst. I’d run, towy dżimyka.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Nadya snapped, before she shoved her chair back from the table and stalked out of the room.

  She yanked the lace from her eyes as she walked, wishing she could tear off the finery as well. Tear it all away and be somewhere else, anywhere else, home. But she didn’t know where home was anymore. She didn’t have the monastery to go back to. And there were no gods to guide her actions.

  “It’s not fair,” she muttered. She reached into her pocket and removed her prayer beads, returned to her after months of reaching for them.

  They had been resting on the side table by Malachiasz’s bed. Next to his iron mask and a thin book that Nadya had taken but not thought of since. Of course he had her prayer beads the whole time, it made it all the easier to convince her that he could be trusted—that the heretical way she had used magic was necessary.

  She settled them around her neck, rubbing her hand over the beads, and continued to her newest hiding spot. Nadya had discovered a few of Tranavia’s secrets in her boredom while in Grazyk. Far past the eastern wing, where the floors became less polished and servants stopped appearing with regularity, there was an old door. Its aged, dusty wood was carved all the way down with symbols Nadya could not decipher.

  She shoved the door open, overly aware of how the empty hall hollowed out, and her with it. She shivered. The room was dark and she killed the instinct to reach for her prayer beads for a light spell. She had a candle in her pocket from some midnight wanderings Serefin need never know about so she lit that.

  Nadya stood in an old, forgotten chapel. She spun slowly, taking in the lines of painted icons on the walls, saints and symbols of gods she knew very well.

  And a few she didn’t know at all.

  She moved past pews covered in dust so thick it was like upholstery. The front of the chapel held an ornate altar, carved with more symbols Nadya didn’t recognize.

  Nadya had spent a lot of time in this abandoned chapel and still had nothing to show for it, but that never stopped her. She would keep praying. She would try until she heard her goddess once more.

  She wove her prayer beads around her hand, thumb working up and down the smooth wood, feeling the rough edges of the carved icons. I don’t know what comes next, she prayed, like she had a thousand times before. She kept her thumb over the icon of a skull. Marzenya’s icon.

  Her goddess of ice and winter and magic.

  And death. Always death.

  Nadya had been chosen to be an instrument of those above all others.

  And Nadya had ignored her goddess’ calls for death every time Marzenya ordered her to kill Malachiasz. She had strayed from her path and was bound to a monster. And the silence of her gods had followed.

  It was the emptiness that scared her the most. The feeling that something which had always been warm and there was just gone.

  What I did was wrong. I took the easy path when I should have struggled. I should have . . . Nadya faltered. She should have ended Malachiasz’s life. But even now, she wanted to bring the Tranavian boy back, not kill the monster. Heresy.

  I know what I should have done. The mistakes I have made are unforgivable. Please don’t let this be the end.

  She didn’t expect an answer. Yet the silence pricked at her heart. It wasn’t a door closing like before, this was a prayer sent out into the empty
air where there was no one to hear it.

  Marzenya wasn’t listening.

  She pulled her prayer beads back over her head, wiping at her eyes. What she wanted was something vast enough to swallow her so she could no longer think, no longer feel, no longer spend her time circling around how not only had she failed, that this was it, this was the end. The magic she had known was gone. She was just a peasant girl who had killed a king and would hang for it.

  What she did feel was anger.

  “I have spent months,” she whispered harshly, “reading and praying that there might be something I can do. I’ve found nothing. I need your help! I don’t understand how I can be Kalyazin’s hope in one breath and thrown away like nothing the next.”

  She had oblique references to a single cleric in history who had petitioned the gods for magic, physically, but that was impossible. And in the back of Nadya’s brain, constantly present, were the dreams she had of monsters that were more than just monsters.

  She wanted answers and she might never get any.

  There was nothing for her here.

  There was—

  She stopped. Head lifting. The air in the room had grown thick with his power.

  None of those words were for you. She threw it out like a blade, in Tranavian. Her struggle was not one to be shared. Especially not with him.

  A roiling, churning madness circled her like a predator, making her breath come too fast and her heart beat so rapidly in her chest she thought it might burst.

  The candle flickered where it rested on the pew beside Nadya. The madness shifted. Perched on a pew, watching her intently, but when she turned her head there was nothing there. Only flickers in the corner of her eye.

  She didn’t want this. It was too soon—it had been an eternity—she could not stand to have him so close. She could feel the monster’s mutating incoherence.

  What she wanted was to feel horror, anger, disgust, anything, anything that would push him far away.

  But Nadya was curious, more than anything else.