by Ellyn, Court
The soldier’s name was Diveryn. He was shy now, away from the battleground. He gazed at the legs of furniture, shuffled around near the doorway, hands restlessly checking and rechecking his gear, as Lyrienn’s bloodied mouth was examined and treated.
“I’m nobody,” he explained. “Trying for sergeant, but I’ve only been in the Regs a couple years.” A single red stripe curled across each cheekbone.
Lyrienn pressed a salve-soaked sponge to her jaw. “What kind of situation are we in? How many of your brethren have chosen Lothiar?”
“Believe me, Lady, you have the majority.”
Her trust wavered. She wished she could believe him. “Andrilor sounded certain that the Regulars would follow his orders, whatever they might be.”
“Commander’s a fool if he thinks we’ll mourn Tíryus one day, and the next fight for the assassin who murdered him.” Diveryn’s sticky hands slashed angrily. “We are soldiers, not slaves! How could Andrilor serve as Tíryus’s aide for decades and not feel the same loyalty? The protection of Avidanyth is the cause we fight for, not Lothiar’s mad schemes. When I learned what Commander meant to do, I rallied everyone left in the barracks, and … well, it was the first time I ever disobeyed an order. Don’t like how it feels.” Not even a sergeant, yet he had led the charge? “These are sorry times when we can’t trust our own.”
Lyrienn offered a sad smile. “Seems you’re one more I can count on.”
After taking a double dose of silverthorn for the throbbing in her mouth, the Lady descended to the scrying pool. She spoke the commander’s name over the silent waters, and the waters shifted with opalescent ripples. Her aim had been off; an inch higher and her little knife would’ve severed Andrilor’s jugular. Still, he bled profusely. The bandage he had scrounged up was soaked. Blood dried on his breastplate, dribbled afresh. He bellowed orders. Orders the waters didn’t relay. But his location was clear.
“Seems he has barricaded himself in the stables.” Tackle hung on walls. A soldier opened stalls, releasing the horses. “Diveryn, rally your warriors.”
“My warriors?”
“You’ve won your promotion. I’ll grant you a second stripe later. Right now, get to the stables and contain him. Keep me informed. If you have trouble receiving obedience from your superiors, tell them ‘The Lady assigned me personally,’ then send them here. I have lost all tolerance for those acting against the needs of the city.”
The fear that had been smoldering like fever under Linndun’s skin unleashed. From a balcony Lyrienn watched the fighting spread like a rash. In clusters it broke from the Lady’s Isle, across the bridges, and into the streets, leaving lesions of red on gray cobbles. Neighbor fought neighbor. Mobs gathered at the far ends of the bridges. Shouting for whom? The mobs fell upon one another. The wounded crawled into shadows, left behind as one mob scattered the other. Glass shattered. Smoke billowed. Screams chased screams up the tower.
“I’ve never seen such chaos,” Cheriam said. “Surely there’s something—”
Lyrienn raised a hand. “No. I fear it must run its course. Or the question would remain.”
“What question?”
“Whether I chose the path my people want.” If Lothiar’s supporters numbered enough to take over the city, it was Lyrienn who would be fleeing into exile and her brother who would set the throne upright again.
Near midnight, Diveryn himself returned to the scrying room. Fresh out of his chrysalis, his wings were still wet. Yet he’d been forced to fly. Was he victorious? Or was Lyrienn to pack her belongings?
“We broke into the stable,” he said, voice gruff. “Andrilor is slain.”
She longed to trust him, but she had to make sure. Again she spoke the commander’s name over the pool. The waters lay still.
Lyrienn sighed. Relief was premature, however. The commander’s death didn’t mean the coup was quashed.
“Sergeant, the Regulars are to patrol the streets. Put a stop to bloodshed. Do not contribute to it. Understood?”
“Yes, Lady. The citizens loyal to Lothiar? Are we to arrest them?”
Fill the dungeons with people who preferred one leader over another? What would that make her? “They are to be escorted out of the city. If they would follow my brother, they must follow him into exile. Let them build a city elsewhere.”
“The Regulars, too? The ones we arrested?”
Send Lothiar trained soldiers? Dathiel wouldn’t thank her for that, nor would Laniel. Might these soldiers change their minds, given time? “How many altogether?”
“Near thirty is all.”
Lyrienn laced her fingers before her bruised mouth, dreading the action she must commit to. Mother guide me. “Separate five of the most outspoken. H-hang three from the north bridge, two from the south. Andrilor’s body is to be the third. Perhaps … perhaps the rest will decide to remain loyal to Linndun.”
Diveryn stared at her with ill-restrained horror. “I’m to choose?”
She laid a hand to his forearm. “Your brothers and sisters, I know. Let them choose for you. The first five to fall asleep tonight, for their consciences are easiest.”
The young sergeant gave a shaky nod, saluted, and made his exit.
Lyrienn poured herself a tumbler of andyr wine. Then she remembered Aerdria’s long descent, hiding inside the cocoon of numbness. Besides, the liquor would set the cuts in her mouth on fire. She carried the tumbler onto the balcony and pressed it into Cheriam’s hand.
The captain balked. “I can’t.”
“I insist.”
Cheriam didn’t refuse twice. She tossed back the liquor, sighed, and watched the fires dwindle in a distant street. “Who is to lead the Regulars now?”
Lyrienn met the captain’s eye, daring her to argue. “I am.”
~~~~
24
Time had little meaning in the Pit. Light from neither sun nor moons found a crack in the stone wide enough to shine through. The ogres replaced the torches erratically, before they fully guttered out or long after they had gone cold. The only mark of time was the passing of the cauldron, which seemed to happen at regular intervals.
Carah and Jaedren met at the end of their chains, and with a chip of stone they scratched game boards into the floor. Doc’s threshold was littered with squares and x’s and circles. The rules evolved according to whim, something like checkers, something like Skull ‘n Rose. The Ixakan refused to engage in their frivolities; eventually he tired of the intrusion and scattered them. Irksome neighbors.
Carah had never been skilled at entertaining herself. At times she feared she’d go stark raving mad without something to occupy her mind. She laid on her back, feet propped on the wall, to watch a bat flit about the ceiling. She stretched stone-bruised muscles. She counted the links in her chains, looking for a weakness to exploit. No luck. She broke four fingernails trying to pick the locks with a sliver of stone she found in her alcove. She braided her hair and tried not to notice how badly it needed a wash. She guarded her alcove against the investigations of curious rats. But her favorite pastime, that which seemed to devour the minutes fastest, was lying on her belly, chin balanced on her forearms, as she stared over the lip of the shelf at the ring of skulls. She had counted one hundred and eighty three skulls, all she could see on her side of the mound of bones. There were likely a several dozen more on Rhian’s side, so she estimated a total of three hundred skulls. Three hundred avedrin Lothiar had managed to sniff out and subdue and starve to death. Not so many when she considered the vast population of the known world.
How many had he missed? Alyster, Ruthan, Daryon, her uncle. There must be more. Knowing they were still out there made Carah smug with defiance.
And these? Who had these men and women been? One skull was smaller than the others. A child, quite young. Where had they come from? What had they looked like? Carah tried to imagine their faces, guess at their names, their voices. Her fingers pressed into her flesh, feeling for the shape of the bones beneath, for co
mparison. Soon, she feared, the flesh would grow thin, the bones sharp. Then there would be no flesh at all. Her skull might be three hundred and one.
Would the ogres scoop out her brain? Feast on her dreams, her memories?
She hummed while she studied, like a girl plucking daisy petals, knees crimped, feet swaying lazily. Today (tonight?) her tune absently turned into Alovi’s Ballad. I shall seek thee, love, near and far, though I search beyond sun and star. Soon as she realized, she stopped herself.
In the silence, punctuated by grumbling torches and the slow shuffle of sentries’ feet, she heard the sibilance of half-formed syllables coming from Doc’s alcove.
“What are you reciting?” she asked.
When he didn’t answer, Carah peered over her shoulder.
Seeing he couldn’t escape, he humored her. “A saga. Recounting the deeds of my ancestors. It’s ten thousand lines long, so if you don’t mind…”
“You remember all of them? You should be a bard. Recite it to me?”
“No.”
“Grouch.” Before she could resume her study of the skulls, Frogtongue emerged from the tunnel, hefting the cauldron. Tin plates clanked against stone.
The madman’s meat had run out. Yesterday, there had been only the slimmest string, the smallest chunk to be dug out and set aside. Carah detected none today. Greedily she lapped up the mushy turnips the ogre ladled onto her plate.
She had eaten half of it when she noticed Rhian emerging from his alcove. He stood on the shelf, his plate hanging like a deadweight against his thigh. Something in his face stopped Carah mid-slurp. He stared at the floor but saw nothing. Gray-faced, he looked as if someone had extricated his innards and shock had taken over.
“Rhian?” she asked.
He didn’t look at her.
Frogtongue made her slow, waddling circuit of the shelf, slapping mush onto tin. As she neared Rhian, he backed against the wall and slid down to sit on his haunches. The ogre stopped beside him and dipped her ladle. Rhian raised his plate as high as Frogtongue’s knee, then he gave it a toss.
The plate cut an arc, wobbling through the air, and struck the mound of bones. It ricocheted and rolled into a sentry’s foot. Everyone looked up at the clatter.
“No!” Carah scrambled on hands and knees to the edge of the shelf.
The sentry stooped to pick up the plate and dropped it amid femurs, ribs, and rats. Refuse. No longer required. Worse, it lay in plain sight, balanced against a ribcage, where Rhian could stare at it, feeding after feeding.
He laid his head against the wall, eyes squeezed shut. Frogtongue croaked with amphibian laughter. Then she waddled past and made for the tunnel, bearing his portion away with her.
“He didn’t mean it!” Carah cried. But the ogres were heedless. “Rhian, what are you doing? You’d leave me here? Rhian, I need you. Don’t do this.”
His eyes snapped open. “Stop! It’s done, Car. There’s no taking it back.” He glared a plea. Don’t make this harder. But how could she not?
“Why?” Her shriek reverberated. Tears traced hot lines down stone-chilled cheeks.
“You trust me?”
He had asked her that once before. In the star-speckled twilight atop Ilswythe’s wall, high above Grandmother’s sweet-scented garden before the ogres ravaged it. How bright his azeth that first time she’d seen it, twining with her own like lovers’ fingers. She had trusted him then, and he’d shown her the magic that slept inside herself.
“I can’t watch it, Car,” he said. To her ear, his voice already sounded weaker. Perhaps it was his fear she heard. “When Lothiar returns with Dathiel, it won’t only be him forced to watch what he does to you. I won’t do it.”
Could he be so selfish? “I’ve mourned you once already! Don’t you realize that? You’ll put me through it twice?”
“Trust me. You must trust me.”
A sentry snarled. Their pleading with each other grated in the ogre’s ears. Clawed fingers tightened about a spear shaft.
Rhian lowered his voice. “Be still now. Don’t be an eejit.” He closed his eyes. His mouth moved with the words, “Trust me. Mother’s sake, trust me.”
~~~~
25
Valryk sat in the warm grass beside a mountain of onions. The furrowed field stretched out under the summer sun, green onion tops standing like rows of skinny flags. While his back soaked up the heat, he placed the good onions into crates and tossed the damp, discolored ones into the field. His hands reeked of onion. Flakes of thin yellow skin clung to his fingers, wafted into his hair. The tedious task was all he was fit for, but he owed Megga much.
A little girl with white-blond tangles crouched nearby, helping. Edi lifted each onion inquisitively.
“Crate,” Valryk said, and the girl dropped it in.
On the rare occasion she came across a rotting onion, her round face brightened; she stood barefoot in the tilled soil, reared back with all her might and launched it. She tried to lob them as far as Valryk did. She didn’t understand why her onions didn’t fly as far.
Edi followed Valryk wherever he went. Came from watching ogres murder her father and oldest brother, he assumed. It hadn’t taken her long to warm up to him.
“See?” Megga had explained to her younger siblings. “There’s a sick man in the barn. You can’t play out here till he’s better. I’ll whip you good if you do.”
The threat didn’t keep Cai or Edi from peeking in the window at him, making faces, and sneaking in to ask a thousand questions. Once, he woke to find a bouquet of tiny white flowers beside his pillow. Likely some weed plucked from the field, but to a four-year-old girl, they were a treasure worth giving.
For a full week Valryk had lain on a bed of hay, shivering with fever, sobbing like a babe at the pain, screaming at nightmares that Paggon had found him and tied his feet over the burning brazier.
The delirium had passed, and as of this morning he’d been four days without fever. Yesterday was the first day he had tried hobbling about. Megga had brought him a better crutch, one her older brother used when he fell off the barn roof. She brought Valryk the dead boy’s clothes too. The trousers were too long, and the hobnailed boots were a size too big.
Valryk’s right foot was nearly as good as new. The small gaping emptiness on the left, where his small toes should be, needed more time to heal. He’d never dance the same way again, but that was a small price to pay.
Megga had done a clean job, more or less. Certainly as good as any battlefield surgeon with a bone saw. As she had requested, Valryk covered his eyes when she brought her basket of implements into the barn. He had no idea if she used a kitchen knife or a hacksaw, but the pain had been so acute that he’d passed out. And thank the Mother for that: he’d been unconscious when she heated the flatiron and cauterized the wound. If he had realized she would use fire on him, he never could have gone through with it.
Edi’s face screwed up, and she raised a bulb half-black with mold.
“Toss it,” Valryk said.
Her smile was all dimples and unspoiled pinkness. The onion flew almost straight up and landed at her feet. She caught on fast. If she threw them up instead of out, she got to throw them many times. Before long, Valryk sorted onions alone.
He was making fine progress, having sorted the majority of the mountain, when Cai dragged a bag from the far corner of the field. The boy upended it, spilling more onions atop the pile.
Valryk scowled. “Many more out there?”
The boy nodded, despairing, then headed back to dig more. Cai didn’t ask to go run and play; he didn’t ask his gentleman guest to teach him about swordplay or horseback riding. His life was onions, onions, that’s all it would ever be.
A water bucket sloshed nearby. “Rhorek? Drink?”
Strange, answering to his father’s name. When he woke after the amputation, he hadn’t understood what Megga was calling him. He’d blurted nonsense, and for several days had feared he’d given away who he was. Then it o
ccurred to him that if he had, Megga would have ousted him from her barn.
He took the ladle she lowered and drank it dry. She eased down beside him, forearm wiping sweat and earth from her forehead. “Get them feet healed up and you can help me with more than sorting onions. Gentleman or not, you’re strong, I bet. Cai and Edi, they’re too little to carry like I need. We’ll have plenty to trade once the markets open up again.”
She was a brave girl, carrying on. The farm was large, the fields dwindling off toward the hills, far more than she could manage alone. But the alternatives were too grim to contemplate. If she didn’t plant onions and find a way to trade them, she would watch her younger siblings starve, or be forced to abandon the farm and whore herself out in some back alley. As long as she had her draft horse, her plow, and her strong young back, she would make it work.
Valryk watched her in awe. She never stopped moving. She cooked and washed and scrubbed and hoed. She took not one moment of leisure. There was not one book in the house, not one cushioned chair. Her tongue was a stranger to complaint.
He watched her, fretful, too. She had yet to see her plans go awry, had yet to face the winter. All this industry, planning, hoarding might yet crumble around her, as his own had done.
“I can’t stay, Megga.” Remorse weighed on him. Astonishing, finding a part of himself that wanted to stay. They could benefit one another, like a bird plucking parasites off a cow’s back.
She peered at him down the length of her nose, brazen and stubborn. “Gimme time, I’ll talk you into it yet.”
In the far corner of the field, Cai shrieked. He tossed his spade aside and dived to his hands and knees. Like a beaten dog, he slunk between furrows.
Megga didn’t need to be told why. She looked to the road. “They’re coming. To the house. Hurry.”