by Sarah Remy
Mal might have laughed but for the spear points still pressing his flesh. Avani squeezed his knee, an admonishment. He closed his eyes to blot out her anguished expression and lessen the vertigo. It was cold and dark inside his skull, a constellation abolished. He mourned the loss of light and wondered how he had ever wished it gone.
“I begin to distrust this flatland god, Majesty,” Baldebert said. “His moods seem to wax and wane with the turning of the season or, if I may be so pointed, the changing of the temple guard. When my sister comes at last to meet her husband—what then? I daresay I fear Brother Orat’s further vacillation.”
“Nay,” replied Orat. “You have my word, Majesty. The Rani will be feted as she deserves, hero and queen. So long as the necromancer meets his fate as required by the old laws.”
“Wine,” Mal begged after the two priests were ushered away. “Please.”
“The spells in my bracelets wreak havoc upon his system,” Baldebert murmured. “Wine will settle his stomach and his head.”
“Nay,” said Renault evenly. “Water, to wet his throat, but nothing more. He’s had too much of wine, lately.”
Spear points fell away. The warmth that was Avani left Mal’s side. After a moment, she returned and pressed a goblet to his mouth. He sipped, then gulped. She took it away before he could drink his fill.
“Lay your head in my lap,” she said, settling again on the floor. “Rest if you can.”
“Liam?” Forgetting dignity, he accepted her comfort, cuddling close to the heat of her.
“Alive and well as any of us.” Her fingers soothed his curls.
“How much time do I have left?”
“Enough,” she said, but he thought she lied. “Close your eyes.”
He must have dozed, the rain a comforting rhythm outside the oriel. Someone started a fire in the hearth; it crackled and he dreamed restlessly of flames. He woke, gasping, rolled onto his side and wretched up bile. He knew without opening his eyes that Avani had left the dais. The ivory manacles dulled their link to nonexistence but he did not need that thread to find her in the chamber.
“Let him go with Everin, back over the mountains.” Her voice cracked. Mal thought she had been weeping. Carefully he sat up, blinking the chamber into rough focus.
They gathered around the hearth, the arbiters of his fate. The king, the witch, the admiral, and to Mal’s greater surprised, Everin and Cleena. The sidhe he might have expected—Renault always paid his debts. But he had not supposed Everin would come willingly before the throne that by all rights belonged first to him.
Everin dissented, his voice a rough whisper. “I came to beg your mercy for the desert, Majesty, not Malachi. I fear he is beyond saving. The desert tribes are decimated but not exterminated. I beg of you, stay your hand.”
“The desert attacked me.” Renault was taller than Everin. Stronger. He loomed. Everin endured the king’s posturing with aplomb. “And this is not the first time they’ve overstepped. Baldebert has no love for the sand snakes. My forefathers built watchtowers to keep them at bay. Why should I not water my fields with their blood?”
“They were misled,” argued Everin, “by Khorit Dard, by Crom Dubh, by your Brother Paul. They are starving. Will you walk the footsteps of your forefathers? The sidhe, the magi, and now the desert, who are your cousins in truth. And if you had listened to your priests, why not Roue?” He did not falter beneath Renault’s indignation. “I regret to see a penchant for extermination plagues the bloodline.”
“Do not pretend you would have done better.” Renault bristled. “Oh, aye, I know who you are, grandsire. I guessed when first you showed your face in Wilhaiim, looking for a job as courier. You very much resemble your mother, Elodie, whose paintings are relegated to back halls for her betrayal. Oh, I see. You supposed you were never mourned amongst your family in the quiet hours when regrets come home to roost? We spoke of you often, your name whispered in the nursery as a cautionary tale.”
“The Virgin King,” Everin replied coldly. “You made mockery.”
“Legend made mockery,” snapped Renault. “Virgin, aye. Unsullied, undefiled, untouched by the weight of the crown. Amongst your family it was not mockery. It was reverence. We owed you our continuance, our gratitude.”
“I don’t want your gratitude. I want the desert.”
“So, what?” Renault paced a circle. In doing so he glanced Mal’s direction, seeking counsel, before he recalled circumstances and pivoted away. “In another decade you will lead them across the divide against me again?”
“Nay. There will be no divide. These people need your help, Majesty. They will not survive without Wilhaiim to blunt their hunger, and in return they have much to offer. They are hardly the savages history has led you to believe. Under the right circumstances, the desert might cease to be the enemy knocking always at your door.”
“Do you suppose so? That is a very large boon you ask, all for ridding my skies of Crom Dubh.” Renault turned his growl on Cleena. “And you, also, have come seeking a boon for your service?”
“Aye,” the beekeeper answered, smiling. “I’ve come for Crom Dubh’s head as proof to my people that he is gone. Surely that is not too much.” Her smirk turned venomous. “I sacrificed my swarm for the sake of your city.”
“Bees.” Renault shook his head. “Recompense for bees.”
“Wisest to comply, Majesty,” Everin said. “Amongst the sidhe a single honeybee is far more precious than an entire kingdom of mortals. Cleena did you honor indeed.”
“Why?” Renault wondered, regarding the sidheog, “Did you? Are you intending, like Everin and his sand snakes, to broker peace between barrowman and flatlander?”
Cleena spat into the fire. The flames jumped. “Nay,” she said. “We are not interested in peace, nor ever will we be. This is our land—you took it from us. Someday we will have it again and make chair and table of your bones. Nay,” she continued, “I did it for the lad. The brave, bonny lad with the scars on his hands and face. So the necromancer would not swallow his splendor with the rest.”
“Liam?” Avani said, disbelieving. “You loathe Liam.”
“I loathe that he is not anymore the babe I brought to term, cradled in my arms, and called mine own. I loathe that he was murdered in the mounds for the sake of a trivial dispute, and I loathe that when the aes si brought him back he was different, no longer the son I loved. Aye, witch, I loathe him and I love him together.” She shrugged. “Nevertheless, in the doing I earned Crom Dubh’s head. That is the boon I ask.”
“Wythe guards the monster’s corpse still,” Renault said after a terrible silence. “Tomorrow you may go to her and ask, in my name. If she doesn’t kill you for the temerity of claiming her prize, I will not stand in your way.”
“And?” Everin pressed. “What of the desert? Their time is running out. Roue’s troops will advance with the dawn, slaughter any survivors by your order.”
Renault glanced once more Mal’s way. Mal raised his brows. It hurt badly, the pull of his flesh over his too-sensitive skull and also Renault’s bleak resignation.
“Come into my war room,” the king ordered Everin. “It seems we have much to discuss.”
“Why are you still here?” Mal asked Avani when the rain had stopped and sunrise turned the panes of the king’s oriel silver. They were alone in the throne room but for some fifteen watchful Kingsmen and Jacob, who sat perched on the back of the throne muttering to himself about the dawn.
They sat back to back because it was easier for Mal to stay upright that way. Avani, like Jacob, looked out the window panes. Mal, when he could keep his eyes open, watched the fire in the hearth. Baldebert, against Renault’s wishes, had smuggled in a blanket and a large flask of red wine.
“I’m sorry,” the pirate prince had said, meaning the ivory manacles. “Would that I could have taken you cleanly through the heart with my sword instead.”
“Not a chance,” Mal said. And then in gruff surprise when, in s
huffling beneath the blanket, he discovered the Curcas hidden in its folds. “Thank you.”
“Where else would I be?” Avani asked now. They passed the goblet of wine between them, though Mal’s shackles made the sharing difficult. She took a sip, then rolled her shoulders against his spine. “Besides which, Renault promised if I left this chamber, he’d lock me in the catacombs until he decided whether I’m to stay or go.” She huffed amusement. “Yesterday he begged me to serve him as magus, today he’s terrified I will.”
“It’s not Renault’s decision, nor mine, but if you’ll take advice from a friend—”
“Aye.”
“—run far and fast away from this place. Sooner or later they will look at you and think of me.”
“So Deval also counseled. I’m inclined to agree.”
Mal felt something poignantly close to relief. “When the time comes, then, mayhap I’ll think of you on the Downs again, with your sheep and your loom.”
“If you like,” Avani agreed.
“Tricks,” muttered Jacob from Renault’s throne. “Tricks!”
“I didn’t know you taught him to speak.” Mal squinted at ebony feathers.
“Ai, well. I didn’t. I expect it’s the Goddess’s idea of a joke.”
“You don’t find it amusing, I think.”
“Nay,” Avani agreed, pointedly not looking Jacob’s way. “I don’t.”
It was Avani’s turn to sleep. She did not stir when Renault returned to the throne room, nor even when he climbed the steps into the oriel.
“Brother,” the king said. “I was promised the ivories would prevent your conjuring. Whence came the blanket and the drink, then, for surely no one in this castle would disdain my express command?”
“Brother,” replied Mal, well in his cups but not yet so drunk as to use the Curcas seed, “lack of sleep has you imagining things. There is no blanket or drink here.”
Renault squatted to better see Mal’s face. “When you are gone, will the Automata . . . stop? They ruin my city just by standing in one place; very few have the courage to endure their glance without collapsing.”
“Say not when I am gone but when I die. We’ve never been delicate with each other, Majesty.”
“When you are executed,” Renault said evenly, “will the Automata cease their twitching and staring?”
“In truth, I am surprised to hear they have not yet stopped,” Mal confessed. “Baldebert’s bloody bracelets are worse than death.” Despite a grief like oil sloshing in his belly, or because of the wine, he giggled.
Renault snatched the goblet from the flagstones and drank. Wine beaded on his lower lip. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.
“My grandsire desires all of the east, to make a kingdom of his own. Though he will not admit ambition, of course, and claims only to have the best of intentions.”
Mal laughed harder. Avani sighed in her sleep, but did not wake.
“Your Majesty, I wish you luck. I fear where that one is concerned, you’ll need it. I expect it’s his hard-headedness bred true through generations that makes you Wilhaiim’s finest king.”
He’d only seen Renault weep openly once before, when they’d found Kate Shean murdered in the royal herb garden. Mal wished he did not have to see it again.
“I do not want you dead. Damn you, Mal, I will not forgive you for this though I live another fifty years.”
“I do not want to die,” replied Mal. And then, “I forgive you.”
They came for him before evening fell again, armored head to toe as if he could smite them on the way to his pyre, as if iron was an antidote to bone magic. By the time they seized his blanket, he had the Curcas tucked in his loin cloth. Russel met his eye from beneath her helm; his heart broke a little that she showed no remorse. Avani was stiff and silent at his side, one hand a vise around his chains.
“My lady,” Russel said gently. “He’s to come with us, now.”
“Where is Renault?” Avani demanded. “Surely the king will not let him go to his death alone!”
“He’s not alone, my lady. He has us. The king is in the bailey, waiting.”
Avani nodded stiffly, let go the chains to touch Mal’s cheek, then turned her back on his disgrace. The Kingsmen ushered him down the steps and through the chamber. He stumbled, vertigo making his legs useless. Two of the soldiers hauled him roughly upright. Jacob left the throne and flapped overhead, lurching from rafter to rafter, shrieking. Mal, light-headed and dazed, could not tell whether the raven’s noise was celebration or indignation.
The court had turned out in the main hall, clothed in all their finery as if Mabon had come early. They applauded his nakedness and his dishonor. The bravest amongst them spat in his face and on his bare chest. He remembered how bright they had appeared when they were stars instead of people. He’d loved them then, for their potential and their shine. Now they appeared dark and dingy, muted and self-absorbed. He couldn’t remember why he’d thought it reasonable to sacrifice his life for theirs.
To his distant surprise, they took the servant’s stairs instead of parading him through the palace’s front doors. Through an arrow slit Mal could see the bailey was cleared but for Renault and Tillion, and a tree trunk driven into the ground where Tillion had once made his pedestal, and kindling piled all around the base. Despite the rain the air stank still of fire and battle. Mal was glad. At least they would not be able to tell the smell of his own cooked flesh from the rest.
“Careful,” Russel said when he swayed, near to fainting. He thought her rough edges had softened. “Almost there.”
Brother Orat met them on the steps, dressed in clean, white robes, a mug in his hand.
“Yet more wine?” Mal’s tongue had grown thick. He was not sure they would understand him.
“Laced with a sleeping draft,” Orat said. “Quick acting. Even for all your trespasses, Malachi, the king does not wish for you to suffer.” He held the mug to Mal’s lips. “Swallow it down—God willing you’ll dream sweetly into death and spare us your angry haunt.”
Better than painful Curcas poison, far better than the agony of suffocation and flame. Mal let his heavy lids fall shut. He imagined for himself a garden, a beloved pocket of spring, grass growing as thick as a rug, and brilliant flowers climbing invisible walls. He populated it with marble benches, and glistening fountains, and rolling hedges sporting violet berries, and a three-tiered fountain frothing beneath blue skies. Siobahn sat there, in her blue wedding garb, the Siobahn he remembered from youth, before his ambition had ruined her. Rowan lingered near the hedgerow, head tilted, mouth curved in a welcoming smile.
“Swallow,” urged the Masterhealer, tilting the mug so liquid flowed across Mal’s tongue.
Mal drank.
Surrender
A bonfire burned in the Rose Keep’s bailey. Flames made blue and orange by damp driftwood popped merrily. The keep’s housecarl, an extraordinarily tall man called Biaz, fed sea grass and pieces of evergreen to the large brazier, encouraging the blaze. Mabon was not Mabon without a good, hot fire and the Lady Selkirk had guests to impress.
She needn’t have tried so hard. The Lady Selkirk had won Avani over the day she’d sent word to the Downs that she meant to hold funeral rites for her disgraced youngest son, the court’s opinion be damned.
“Look at the colors of the sunset,” Parsnip breathed. The lass craned her neck to see past the bonfire. “I’ve never seen one so pretty.”
“It’s because we’re so near the sea.” Arthur, sitting on his haunches, wrapped his arms around Bear’s neck, cuddling the brindled hound close for warmth. The days had become cold and even so near the coast snow had fallen, covering the keep’s famous rose brambles with a dusting of white.
“Hush, now,” warned Liam. “Here they come.”
Seamen and merchants stood in a loose crowd around the bonfire. Joseph, the keep’s Masterhealer, passed amongst them, dressed in mourning kit, a shawl emblazoned with embroidered roses wrapped
about his sloped shoulders. Selkirk’s guard stood on the battlements, ringing the courtyard. They looked down on the funerary fire, their backs set, resolute, to the sea. The Selkirk’s cook, a stout woman with strands of silver in her hair, was weeping loudly into a kerchief pressed against her nose and mouth. Her honest grief made the lump always in Avani’s throat grow painful. She coughed to keep from choking.
Seamen, merchants, and servants bent the knee when Lady Selkirk descended the stairs from the lighthouse tower. Avani, Liam, and the three pages stayed properly upright. It was apparent Mal had gotten his diminutive height from his mother. A compact, dour woman, she wore the seaman’s uniform of trousers and tunic, and the Rose badge on her arm. A simple silver circlet rested on her curls; wind burn and age spots freckled her face and hands. She carried an orange-needled branch in her arms—a gift from Wilhaiim’s king for Mabon. When she tossed it onto the fire, the flames hissed, snapping. She watched the branch burn, then gestured to her priest.
When Brother Joseph rose, creaking, to his feet, the servants, merchants, and seamen followed. He took three strong men with him into the temple keep.
“Red sky at night,” murmured Liam as they waited. He sounded bemused.
“Sailor’s delight,” Morgan finished quietly. The young earl was dressed in lavish velvet and silk according to his station. He’d come to the coast to pay his respects, and of all of them Lady Selkirk appeared to appreciate his presence the most. Wythe was an old and respected house; Morgan was the first of his family to visit the Rose Keep.
Brother Joseph and his three companions returned, a corpse swathed in a sigil-painted sail cloth balanced on their shoulders. It was not a corpse, of course, but an effigy of bundled sweet grass. That it was not her son’s body in truth did not seem to bother Lady Selkirk.
“It’s not unusual. Sailors often die at sea. That my lady lost Malachi to burning instead of drowning makes little difference.”