All My Crimes

by Tal Valante

  Fine.

  I tell him the barest details of my journey. The death threat. The rune on the door. Reluctantly, the ghost. The words leave a bitter taste on my tongue, and I sip the rest of my wine. Put down the glass.

  “Can I see the king now?”

  Darius puts down his own wine glass, nearly untouched. “It’s an interesting story,” he says slowly.

  “Not a story. The truth.” I look at the horologe in the corner. Twenty minutes to midnight.

  Darius calls my attention back to him. “You’ll forgive me if I take every precaution.”

  “Not if it will cost the king his life.” I think fast. “Call a necromancer. He’ll confirm the part about the ghost.”

  Darius sends one of his soldiers, who looks relieved to leave the room. The remaining guards all look half-sick, half-petrified. I can’t blame them. They’re not trained to fight ghosts.

  Ah, but I’m wrong. I see them flinch under my stare. It’s me they’re afraid of.

  The guard returns with an old man in brown robes, ruffled from sleep. I recognize him from my childhood.

  I give him the barest of smiles. “Lord Lothian.”

  He seems surprised. “Lord Eve. What a pleasure.”

  “I doubt it.”

  He acknowledges with a thin smile of his own, but he’s already turning to Darius. “Captain?”

  Darius’s lips purse as if he’s struggling with words. I have no such qualms.

  “I’m haunted,” I say to Lothian. “By an elven ghost.”

  “Impossible.”

  I glower at him. “Just cast whatever spells you need.”

  He hesitates, my old rival, as if past enmities weigh a whit at such times.

  “Do it,” Darius snaps from behind his desk.

  Lothian closes his eyes. Whatever adjustment he’s making between this world and the next, I can’t understand it. It’s like a bridge that undulates through time and space, anchored at each end but bucking wildly in between. Yet it holds, and Lothian walks it.

  He opens his eyes.

  Darius beats me to the question. “Well?”

  Lothian doesn’t meet my stare. “He’s not been touched by ghosts, Captain. Not in the last several years.”

  I fall back into my chair. Shake my head. “I saw it. I saw it plain as light.”

  They don’t speak, but I can read their thoughts in their eyes.

  “I’m not seeing things!” I clench my hands. “My magic ripped right through it. It must have been a ghost.”

  Darius pours out another glass of wine and slides it across the table toward me, as if I’m a child to be comforted from a nightmare.

  I swipe the glass off the table. It explodes against the door with a splatter of blood-red liquid.

  The door opens.

  King Gidden Loristan enters the room, looking just like I remembered him: tousled auburn hair, roguish face, clear blue eyes. He’s wearing a long silk robe, loosely cinched. Slippers.

  There are words on his tongue, but they catch there when our stares collide. His eyes widen. His face pales.

  “Terry,” he whispers. And then he shakes his head, just once. “Teregryn,” he says more firmly. “Lord Eve. Welcome back.”

  I stand up, but it’s not etiquette that moves me. There’s so much I want to ask him. Did you have to forget about me? What really happened in that last battle? How have you been? Did you have to forget about me?

  But I’m not here for that.

  “I came to warn you,” I say. “There’s an elven assassin set to kill you. Me, as well.”

  His face furrows. Not boyish anymore. “There are no elves left. They died in the Cleansing, remember?”

  That argument is getting old. “You missed one.”

  “Not likely. It’s been two years. We’ve been scouring their forests.”

  “Then how do you explain the ghost?” Gidden looks puzzled; behind me, Lothian stirs. I speak over the necromancer’s muttered protest. “I’m haunted by an elven ghost. It tracked me all the way here—”

  I fall silent with the sudden, terrible realization. “Oh, gods. It’s the ghost.” I screw my eyes shut. “Oh, gods. I’m sorry, Gidden. I led it straight to you.”

  The guards break into murmurs. Do they finally understand the gravity of the threat? I glance around. No, they’re angry I’ve used the king’s given name. Wake up, fools. The time for protocol is long past.

  I move toward Gidden, but Darius places himself between us. His back is to me. His mouth is to Gidden’s ear.

  “He’s mad,” I hear him say. He doesn’t quite bother to whisper.

  “Not mad.” I shake my head until I’m dizzy. “I’m not mad.”

  Gidden looks at me over Darius’s shoulder. “You know ghosts can’t harm us.”

  My anger rises, but I dig blunt nails into my forearm until I regain control. “This one did. This one leeched my life force and almost killed me. Slag it, I hardly made it here.”

  I can sense without seeing that Lothian is shaking his head in the negative.

  Ten minutes to midnight.

  “Gidden, please,” I say. “You’re in danger. Won’t you trust me again this one time? Or do you want me to beg?”

  Darius tenses between us. “Please, Highness. You should retire to your room.”

  Gidden looks down, and I suddenly remember the broken glass and spilled wine. “Perhaps that would be best,” he says quietly.

  He meets my gaze again, and I must remind myself his eyes are always blue—it has nothing to do with sorrow—but I cannot help the impression. His eyes seem to well with infinite sadness.

  “I’m sorry,” he adds. “I’ll do what I can for you.”

  I watch him turn his back on everything I’ve done, everything I’ve endured, everything I’ve sacrificed to come here and warn him. No.

  No.

  A rush of power floods my veins and clears my mind. I sidestep Darius, grab Gidden’s arm, and swing us around. Wrap my arms around him from behind, as intimate an embrace as we’ve always shared. He doesn’t struggle. The guards have drawn their weapons and spread out in a semicircle in front of us, but they can’t reach me without harming the king. Their helplessness is comical. Only Darius stares at me with cool eyes.

  I whisper into Gidden’s ear, “Tell them I’m not mad.”

  “Terry . . .”

  “You know me. You were my friend—”

  “I am your friend.”

  “Then tell them. Tell them I’m not mad.”

  He brings up his hand and squeezes both of mine, where they clasp over his chest.

  “You were mad,” he says softly. “After you escaped from the elves. You were mad for two years until the monks at St. Ceperess managed to heal you. The physical injuries were easily tended. But the rest . . . Terry, they tried everything. Prayers. Herbs. Confinement. Shocks.”

  My missing memories. Oh, gods.

  The guards seem as ghastly entranced as I feel.

  My voice trembles. “I remember my time with the elves.” I remember Kalen. “I survived. I escaped. Why would I go mad?”

  And why, in all my memory surges, can I not remember my escape?

  He doesn’t answer. Instead he leans back into my grip and rests his head against my shoulder. My body, recognizing his touch, almost relaxes.

  “You said the monks cured me,” I say. “Then I’m not mad. Not any longer.”

  “I hope so,” he whispers.

  “I know so.” And then a familiar weakness washes over me, only this time, I welcome it with triumph. “I know so! Look!”

  They all turn to where I’m pointing, to where the ghost of the elven warrior floats forward through the wall, but then they look at each other in confusion. I’ve forgotten—the blasted thing haunts only me. Darius takes advantage of the moment and tries to break my hold on the king, but he’s too late. I’ve already pushed Gidden behind me to shield him with my body.

  “Look, damn you!” I scream at them, will
ing it to happen. “Look!”

  The guards look again in reflex. This time, a shocked cry ricochets off the walls, and a sword clatters to the floor. They turn as one to face the ghost. Darius joins them. Lothian stands behind their protective line with his eyes closed, muttering in concentration.

  The ghost stares at me, or maybe through me at Gidden. I try to make myself larger, to hide him completely, and I clutch his arms to my sides because I know that otherwise he’d move forward and do the same for me.

  He is King Loristan, and it is not his place to lay down his life for us.

  Lothian mutters furiously. The soldiers stand ready but uncertain. Even Darius looks lost. Gidden struggles against my back, breathing raggedly. Only the ghost, slender and elegant in its red armor, stands with utter calm. The lamplight shines now on it, now through it.

  It is waiting.

  Not for long, though. My mind grows numb, and the edges of my world turn gray. My breath rasps in my throat. I drop to one knee, and Gidden is instantly at my side.

  “It’s me you want!” he shouts at the ghost. “Leave him be!”

  I find the strength to speak. “Gidden, don’t . . .”

  Lothian’s panicked voice comes to me blurred. “I can’t exorcise it!”

  I look up at the necromancer, half pleading and half accusing, and his eyes shoot ever so wide. His stare snaps to the ghost, then back to me. His skin loses all color.

  “It’s no ghost!” he says.

  Gidden is bracing me, and his voice rumbles through my bones. “Whatever it is, get rid of it! It’s killing him!”

  “He’s the one doing it!” Lothian drops to his knees in front of me. Grabs my shoulders and shakes. “Stop it! You’re casting an illusion. The Third Sight is burning up your brain. Stop it before you kill yourself!”

  I try to process his words through the haze that fills my mind, but they mean so little. My gaze shifts to the ghost of the elven warrior. It’s still standing there. It reaches up and unclasps the red helmet, and I shake my head wildly. I don’t want to see the darkness underneath that visor. I don’t want to see—

  The ghost removes its helmet. The lamplight reflects off a cascade of black curls, shines in solemn gray eyes, and adds a golden tinge to the graceful features of the elven man in the armor.

  A single word falls from my lips like a final breath: “Kalen . . .”

  And just like that, he fades away.

  My breath returns with a gasp, and the gray fog recedes. Some measure of strength flows back into my limbs. When Gidden helps me up, I allow him. My knees hold, however tenuously.

  “What’s happening, Gidden? If the ghost and the runes and the death threat were all my doing, what does it mean?”

  Even as I ask, my mind makes the final inevitable connections, though they lead nowhere that makes sense. I grip Gidden’s hand just as he starts to withdraw.

  “Why would I want to kill you?”

  In the corner of my eye, I see Darius tense. Gidden gestures him to back off.

  The image of Kalen has shaken free something in my mind, and behind it, dark things roil.

  I lean into Gidden’s face. “Did you abandon me? When the elves took me prisoner, did you simply forfeit my life? Is that it?”

  He tries to yank his hand away. I grip it harder. “Did you?”

  “No,” he says quietly. I’m not sure I believe him. But then he lowers his head. “I did worse.”

  I let go of his hand. Darius at once drags me away from him, and a second guard claims my other arm, pulling it roughly behind me. My breath comes in heavy bursts. I have eyes only for Gidden.

  He meets my stare, and there is wetness in his eyes and a tremor in his lips. This is costing him. This is costing me. We’ve always been similar, he and I.

  “I sent you,” he says. “Gods forgive me, I sent you into their hands.”

  My stomach swoops as if I’ve missed a stair going down. “You betrayed me?”

  “No! No. Never.”

  “Then what?”

  Darius’s hold tightens on my arm. “Your Highness . . .”

  Gidden shakes his head. “No. He has the right.”

  Damn right I do. “What do you mean, you sent me?”

  Gidden pinches the bridge of his nose, but the gesture cannot stave the pain we both know is coming.

  “You suggested it, but I should never have let you go. Don’t you remember, Terry? Don’t you remember how it began? And how it ended?”

  And suddenly all those roiling things surge to the forefront of my memory. I hear Gidden’s words, but they come from a long way off. The guards’ grips on my arms merge with the memory of leather bonds. I’m in the Circle, tied to the great oak. An elven guard is sitting in front of me. His eyelids droop and start, droop and start. Droop. He falls asleep.

  His restrictive magic fizzles around me, and for the first time in my captivity, my own magic comes rushing back. I take the Fourth Sight and look inside the very grains of the world, where every iota of material is made of rhythmic motion, wave-like, up and down and round and round. I reach into the leather cords that bind me and interrupt the wave. At once, the bonds disintegrate from around my wrists.

  I’m free.

  My legs, when I stand up, feel like wooden clubs. I join my hands and land a hard blow on my guard’s nape. Ease his unconscious body to the ground. Straighten up and look around me.

  The elven city lies silent and sleeping under a half-moon, but for a handful of sentries. I weave myself out of their existence with the Second Sight. There was a human raid on the edge of the forest earlier today, and everyone is exhausted. I look at the road that leads out of the city, through the woods, and back into human lands. To safety.

  I turn my back on that path, and make my way among dark homes of wood to the abode of Kalen a-Shan.

  I mask my entrance with magic and find him lying on a carpet of moss, naked, with moonlight as his only blanket. His red armor and weapons are stacked in the corner. I reach into the pile and draw out his dagger.

  This is why I came here. This is why I let myself be caught, why I endured three months of captivity, why Gidden has never attempted to free me. This is what I came to do. Because without a leader, the elves might lose their stony composure and make a mistake, maybe even charge us in the open. Because our people are dying, and this is our only hope of ending the war for good.

  And everything has gone according to plan. Every single thing but one.

  I lean down and brush a kiss on his forehead. His eyes flutter open. I can tell the moment he recognizes both me and the fact that I’m blocking his magic.

  His eyes are deep blue with sorrow.

  I hate myself for plunging down the knife.

  The rest is blurred: I escape back to Gidden with the entire elven nation rearing over me like a tidal wave. Gidden is ready for them. They break upon his wall of swords. The realization of what we’ve done crashes down on me, and I go mad with guilt. St. Ceperess. The monks. Their treatments. Finally they lock away the memories, because nothing else will do.

  And overlaying these images, always there, is the memory of Kalen’s eyes.

  The memory of his eyes merges with the sight of Gidden’s, which are dark with concern. I’m looking up at him—I’ve somehow fallen to the floor of Darius’s office—and I’m shaking with anger.

  “We killed an entire people, Gidden. We sat in your office over a glass of wine and planned the death of a people.”

  He looks stricken. “Terry, don’t. We planned the survival of our people. We were losing the war. We had no choice.”

  “No choice? I killed him. I killed them all!”

  “You begged me to spare them—”

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  “It was too late!” He holds out an empty hand. “They’d gone mad already. They wouldn’t have stopped! What was I supposed to do, sacrifice our soldiers? Sacrifice everyone?”

  My steely control is melting with the heat of my
anger. “And the Cleansing? Our soldiers went into their forests and hunted them down!”

  “Our people hate with a passion. I couldn’t have stopped the raids.”

  “Did you try?”

  Gidden hangs his head. “No, I didn’t. And if I had, then what?” He looks up again. “A few elves would have survived. They would have remembered. They would have reared their young in hate. Three generations from now, the war would have broken out all over again. I wanted to end it forever. If it meant sacrificing my soul, so be it, but I never meant for this to cost you so much—”

  “Me?” The word catches on my strangled sob. “I killed him! He was our only chance of reconciliation. He loved me, and I killed him!”

  Sweat pours off Gidden like anointment oils. Off me, too. It beads on my lips and runs down my spine. My knees make wet splotches on the floor where I’ve fallen. The guards are switching their swords from hand to hand and wiping their palms on their uniforms. Lothian adjusts his collar. Darius in his heavy armor is panting and flushed.

  “I should kill you,” I say to Gidden, and my voice is the only cold thing in the room.

  He takes a shuddering breath and nods. “If you wish.”

  Darius twists my arm behind my back, but Gidden stops him with a gesture.

  “I should kill you,” I say again, “and then I should kill myself.”

  Gidden’s eyes cloud over, almost elf-like. “If that’s the only way you can find peace, my friend.”

  Does Kalen rest in peace? Or is his soul writhing in anguish over the fate of his people, the fate which I brought upon them?

  My anger peaks, and so does the temperature in the room. Every breath scorches my lungs. Tears well in my eyes. Gidden is shouting for the others to leave, and some guards do. Others stay.

  Above me, Darius turns to Lothian. “Do something!” he screams. “Stop him!”

  I smile grimly, because whereas I don’t know necromancy, Lothian doesn’t know pyromancy. But he’s a fool. He closes his eyes in concentration and tries anyway, his lips moving frantically. I turn from his futile efforts.

  Gidden is looking at me. A pillar of shimmering air writhes and churns around him, and his face distorts with pain. He’s a well-trained warrior; I know he can mask much greater agony. He’s not even trying.