by Devin Madson
His grip strangled all hope of a pithy retort and scattered my thoughts. His arm tightened. Death called. But Takehiko would sense my fear. He would come. He would save me.
But Takehiko did not come.
Clashing metal seeped through the gathering darkness, but I could not turn my head nor even focus upon its source. Blood sprayed upon the matting, its pain cutting the night. Then that pain poured into me, overflowing into agony and I screamed silence. Lan’s grip faltered. His breath came in sharp gasps. He let me go, but the pain only grew like fire searing every inch of my flesh.
Lan lurched back, gripping his head. My knife sat upon the matting and I dragged myself through the waves of pain toward it, though each wave threatened to drown me. The room spun, but my fingers found steel. Then with one foot beneath me I lunged. The blade entered his chest first, shuddering off bone. Then again. More ribs. One cracked beneath my barrage, the snap as satisfying as the bloom of blood upon his crimson robe and his guttural cry. He gripped my throat, but his strength was waning. Blood had made my grip slick, but I did not stop, could not get enough of the joy that came with every furious thrust into his chest. His arms. And then his throat. Lan’s gaze wavered then, his anger seeping out with his blood, his hands shaking about my neck as he tried to breathe and failed.
I pulled away, dropping the knife. Lan fell with it, first to his knees then rolling on to his side still gasping for air. Joy abandoned me as memory threw up its cruel images. This the man I had married. Whose children I had borne. His laughing eyes, his confident smile, the whisper of sweetness in my ear and the promise of plenty. And there was no goodbye, never could be, because even in that moment I could not forgive.
A roar snatched my attention as Nyraek swung at his opponent, only for Gadjo to disappear and reappear with a breathless laugh. “Just give up,” he said. “I won’t let you hit me.”
Nyraek swung again, pain still sloughing off him to spark along my skin. Anger mingled with it, pushing him on as it pushed me. “Stop!” I shouted, staggering toward them. “It is done! He’s dead.”
Another swing, Nyraek throwing himself at where he knew Gadjo would no longer be. Blood stained his shoulder and his leg, and it dripped down the side of his face, but though Gadjo could have killed him at any time he had not.
Appearing behind Nyraek again, the servant, sagging and gasping for breath, said: “You give me permission to take him?”
“Yes,” I said. “Take him. Go. Leave and never return. Don’t harm any of my other children.”
“Touch him and I will run you through,” Nyraek snarled.
“He will kill you if you try,” I said, putting bloodstained hands together to plead. “This is the only way. If we don’t let him take Takehiko he will kill Yarri and Tanaka and Rikk and still come back for him. And for what? There is no point fighting.”
His face set in grim lines. “There is always a point. I will fight until I die because I could not live with myself if I did not. If he wants to take my son then he will have to kill me first.”
“Damn your honour! I don’t want to kill you,” Gadjo said. “I haven’t met another freak since my mother was burned for prophesying the death of Empress Li.” He turned to me as he spoke, then barked out a harsh laugh. “Fool she is to try and evade what has already been written.”
“You’re the son of the seer?”
He bowed, sweat flicking from his hair. “At your service, though she was the far more useful one. She is the reason I chose to work for Lord Epontus, because she knew more than she ever told others. She could have told you how you would die. She could have told the emperor that he would die. That his empire would fall. That his palace would burn. That the greatest threat to the throne was much closer than he had ever imagined.”
A burst of energy sent me staggering, my mind a swirl of fear and anger and pain. Nyraek thrust his blade for Gadjo’s gut and caught his side. The man howled. Blood burst from his tunic, his flesh ripped by the exiting blade. But the killing jab that followed found nothing but air.
When Gadjo reappeared both men staggered, bleeding and broken and unwilling to stop.
“Last chance,” Gadjo gasped, clasping his side. “I don’t want to do this but I will.”
“Then do it.”
Somewhere in the scuffle the axe had been thrown down, but Gadjo’s short knife was all the better for killing at short range. Of killing the only ally I had left. It unfolded before me. Nyraek would strike. Gadjo would not be where his sword struck and would appear behind him to slice open Lord Laroth’s throat. The seer might have said it could not be changed, but I could not lose anymore.
As Nyraek stepped in to strike, I charged at the empty space behind him— and slammed into a wall of flesh. Air burst from my lungs as I fell with Gadjo in a tangle of limbs and sweat and silk. I landed on his legs, stunned and breathless, and before I could roll the bloodstained flat of a blade appeared before me, its point plunged into Gadjo’s gut. Pinned to the matting the man thrashed, kicking me off with limbs that moved at the speed of desperation. Only with death did he slow to a natural pace, but though he lifted a shaking hand toward me he had nothing left and in silence he faded, dropping the half-arrow birthmark onto the matting.
Nyraek yanked the sword free.
I did not get to my feet, could not, not yet. My arms trembled and I sat in the spreading blood all too aware of the presence of Nyraek standing beside me.
Only after a few beats of silence passed did he speak. “We have to get out of here before General Kin returns,” he said, wide eyes taking in the scene. “By the gods what have we done?”
“What needed to be done,” I said, though I hugged my knees to my chest.
He turned those wide eyes upon me, the horror in them stinging. “You wanted this? Why? Because he chose to set you aside for another?”
“No!” I forced myself to my feet then. “I am not so petty. It had to be done to protect Kisia from another war.”
Nyraek laughed, a mirthless, bitter laugh. “Protect Kisia from another war? You have made another war a surety. Was this your secret? Is this why Koto died?”
“Lan was planning an alliance with the Curashi. And with the pirates. He was going to attack Chiltae without warning, breaking the treaty and throwing Kisia into a war it could ill-afford. And when our new allies turned on us? What then?”
“And when General Kin returns to find a Chiltaen assassin dead in the emperor’s rooms, what then? Do you think Grace Tianto will make peace then?”
He might well have slapped me so harsh were the words, each seeming to end in a laugh he could not shake. I stared down at the still form of Gadjo. “Then we move him. We hide him.”
Lord Laroth spread his arms. “Where? Under the sleeping mat? Bodies start to stink after awhile, or didn’t you know that? Or are you expecting me to lug a dead body out of here without being seen? Some of the Imperial Guards are still loyal to me, but not that loyal. Their first duty is to the emperor and no one else and it always has been. As it is I will have a hard time getting out.” He spat the words, fury lashing from his lips. “Too many people know I was here for me to ever show my face in Mei’lian again. To ever show my face in Kisia! You have made exiles of us all, my dear, and for what? So Prince Yarri can wage the war his father planned.”
“We could burn the body.”
“Burn it?” He was really laughing now. “Bodies are soggy things, Li, you can’t just tip a brazier on it and wait for it to become ash.”
“No, but we could tip coals on his face. That way no one would know he was Chiltaen.”
The laugh died upon his lips. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am very serious.” I pushed past him and strode to the brazier.
“If you tip that onto the matting it will catch fire and burn the whole place down.”
“And why not?”
“Because even if you burn the palace down you still won’t be the empress.”
I glared at him in silence, hat
ing the grain of truth that made his words sting.
“I should not have said that,” he said when the silence grew fat and awkward. Nyraek bowed. “My apologies, but this has not been a good night. Whatever you might have thought of him and whatever his plans, I gave my oath to protect His Majesty and in that I have failed.” He shot a glance at Takehiko. The boy had not once moved. “We need to get him out of here. I cannot take him without rousing suspicion. I have to go out the way I came in or even my old friends will not let me go. You need to leave all your things and order a palanquin brought around now before Kin returns. I’ll meet you in the city. You know where. Then we can talk properly.”
Though covered in drying blood, I nodded. “I will meet you there.”
Nyraek let out a deep breath and gripped my arms. “We will get out of Kisia and our son will be safe.”
“Yes.”
A wry laugh this time, no longer bitter. “Just like we always planned, eh? To run away together to somewhere warm. Somewhere far away.”
“I hear there’s a place across the Eye Sea where they have no emperors, no kings, no wars. Just herds of horsemen who wander wide grass plains.”
“That,” he said. “Sounds perfect. Except that we aren’t the same people anymore. This can never be forgotten. I ought perhaps to thank you, to hold you, but I cannot be sure what I would pass if I did.”
Pain still frayed the air around him.
“I understand. And Nyraek,” I added as he went toward the doors. “I am sorry.”
The wry smile twisted his lips and he shrugged one shoulder. “Too late.” And on those words he went out, pausing in the doorway to look both ways along the passage before disappearing into the darkness.
Takehiko made no sound as I shook him. “We are leaving,” I said. “You must run and grab our cloaks and meet me outside the nursery. Can you do that?”
Nothing.
“Juno is already waiting for us.” My lie brought him to life in a way that broke my heart, but I forced a smile. “Good boy. I will be there in a minute, there is something I need to do here first.”
Another nod. No words.
“Good. Now run.”
He did so, not stopping to look around as Nyraek had done, just dashing out the open doors. I started forward to close them, but there was no time. Any moment more guards could come. Any moment General Kin might return.
A pair of metal tongs hung beneath one of the braziers and I gripped them with the end of my sash. Muttering a prayer to no god in particular, I lifted out the biggest coal and lowered it onto Gadjo’s staring eye, hoping the curvature of the socket would keep it from rolling on to the floor. It hissed as I returned to the brazier for another. Though my heart hammered and my hands shook, I got a second pinched in the tongs and returned to the body. The skin around the first was scorching toward black, the stink of burning skin and hair returning me to that cold morning two years ago when his mother, the seer, had started screaming.
My hand shook so much the second coal almost toppled to the floor, but I caught it on the side of the tongs and scooped it into place upon his other eye. Something bubbled and hissed.
I dropped the tongs and turned toward the door only to halt. A man stood in the doorway, not Nyraek, not General Kin, not a guard or a servant or a secretary or even a lord of the court. He was dressed in grey, plain like a commoner except that he wore sturdy leather boots instead of reed sandals. He seemed to take in the room at a blink and a small notch appeared between his brows.
“Who are you?”
“No one,” he said, the words more growl than voice. He pointed, and water dripped from the end of his sleeve though it had not been raining. “Is that the emperor?”
“Yes. He... he died.”
The knife might always have been in his hand, but he lifted it now and came toward me. “One less.”
“Wait! No! I am not the—”
Hot pain cut my flesh. I needed to speak, to plead, but blood came to my mouth instead of words. I scrabbled at the man’s arm, his chest, his face, trying to grip anything to stop myself sinking. The room spun until there was no room. Until there was no breath. No sound but the crackle of flames and distant screams.
The smell of charring flesh followed me into the darkness.
You will die before your thirtieth year. Your children will die. The empire will burn.
You don’t have to believe in fate. Fate believes in you.
Epilogue
Blood covered the man’s hands and rain dripped from his hood, but he heeded neither. Safe beneath his travelling cloak two children slept, one leaning against him upon the horse, the other a baby tucked into a peasant woman’s sling. Despite their warmth and the rhythm of their breath, he paid no heed to them either. On through the rain the man rode, eyes upon the night, thoughts somewhere far away. There wasn’t much time. He was needed back in Mei’lian, but he was needed here more.
A pinprick of light grew as his horse approached with weary steps, until a priest’s wagon appeared from the gloom exactly where he had been told it would be. Something was going right at last – a bitter thought for a bitter cold night.
“Time to wake up,” the man said, nudging the child on the horse in front of him.
The boy took his own weight, but did not answer.
Level with the wagon the man got down, taking care not to spill the baby from the sling beneath his cloak. He ought to have looked back to see if anyone followed, ought to have examined the shadows for waiting blades, but he had left such interest in life behind.
The steps of the wagon were slick and the painted door was chipped and worn. He knocked. The whole wagon rocked as someone moved beyond, then the door opened. A man in white stood in the light, a frown marring an otherwise kindly face.
“Brother Jian?”
“Yes?”
The man gestured to the boy on the horse. “I need your help.”
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- Devin Madson
Also by Devin Madson
The Vengeance Trilogy
The Blood of Whisperers
The Grave at Storm's End
Standalone
In Shadows We Fall