by Sam Hawke
Hadrea wiped her hands off and glanced over at Tain. “You had best go. You should not keep the elders waiting.”
“Are—are you not coming?” Tain asked, his voice thin. Under my hand, his shoulder shook still.
“My mother will be there. I am better at pointing out problems than deciding on messy solutions. I will leave that to you.” Hadrea smiled. “And hold you to account about it afterward.”
“Jov?”
I squeezed his arm, but let him go. “You go. I need a bit of time to breathe. Start the meeting without me and I’ll join you soon.”
“I must care for my brother,” Hadrea told me. “But I will find you after your meeting?” I nodded, unable to fake a smile, and the three of them left.
* * *
The truth was, I wasn’t sure how to face them all now. It was a time for empathy and diplomacy, and I lacked the capacity for either at the moment. Scrubbed out like an old pot, nothing left inside me but scratches.
Tain would have to explain Aven and Marco’s role in all of this to the others, which was difficult since we still didn’t understand it fully ourselves. Though some of the mercenaries or “travelers” who had helped supply and ignite the rebellion had claimed to be disgruntled soldiers, Aven herself had never openly supported the rebels; she had never had any intention of helping them sack the city. She had simply used them for her own ends, not caring how many lives would be lost in the process.
Her cold eyes flashed before me again. I hadn’t asked how my sister had died. What would she have told me? I began to pace. My chest burned with the effort of suppressing my imagination. If only I had done things differently. I counted my steps. Mustn’t think of Lini, must focus on the logic, the reasons.
Though I understood why Tain had wanted Aven out of his sight, what I needed was more information from her. Certainly there was bound to be some crooked accounting in the Guild books, and possibly in the Reed family accounts as well, but she wasn’t rich enough to have funded a rebellion on her own. And she had mentioned her “friends”; there were still enemies out there, wealthy ones. I wondered, though, what they had wanted. Aven had hungered for the Chancellery, but thanks perhaps to the beetle-eye she had as much as admitted she had used someone else’s support of the rebellion to achieve her own goals.
I counted steps, following my thoughts around and around, skirting the edges of the painful ones. I needed to wash, and remove the small arsenal of things strapped around my body in preparation for this meeting with Aven: the remains of my poison supplies, the sedatives I’d spent half the night making, even the last of Baina’s explosives. Aven was a warrior, and a cunning, intelligent woman; I had taken no chances. Yet in the end I hadn’t needed much of anything. It felt almost anticlimactic.
My brain wasn’t satisfied it was over. Something was wrong, something was missing. Yes, there were still enemies out there. We would need to have a longer-term strategy for guarding Aven, and some means of determining her loyalists in the army; we would be foolish to assume they had been limited to Marco. Aven had commanded deep loyalty and affection from her troops. Would her loyalists attempt to free her, try something new to destroy us, or simply fade back into the army, hoping never to be exposed?
Somewhere in the distance a faint rumble sounded; I jumped at first, thinking back to the lake, but realized it was more likely thunder. We were due some of our late-summer storms. It still felt odd, unreal, to think of something supernatural having a role in the weather. But no one in this city would be able to ignore the connection anymore, not after yesterday. I pushed back some of the heavy drapery at the edges of the room, letting some sun in, and peered out at the blue sky. No sign of clouds, but there was the thunder again.
I stared blankly at the sky, then started pacing again, trying to capture my disquieting thoughts. If Aven was in the employ of a third party, or at least had been funded by one, what would they do now that she had failed? Perhaps I needed to speak to the mercenaries. Their loyalty was, by definition, for sale, so perhaps we could buy information from them.
The distant boom was constant, now. Not thunder. I looked again out the window and this time saw smoke rising; something was happening in the city. Honor-down, could we not have one day of peace? I started down the hallway and heard a sudden burst of voices within the building—muted, probably from the business wing of the Manor. The meeting must have finished early. But farther along the spiral corridor the voices became clearer and my sense of wrongness intensified. Shouting, people were shouting. Had the meeting gone so badly?
Then I smelled the smoke.
I slowed my pace and softened my footfalls. Smoke in the city, smoke in the Manor. Aven had warned me it wasn’t over. Padding closer, I listened.
“… think because of a few words, that erases the past? I say this city is rotten to the core! Even the Chancellor himself admitted it was built on a lie.” Cheers in response. I didn’t recognize the voice—young, male—but chances were good we were dealing with some of the rebels who’d been shouted down at the lake yesterday. And an enthusiastic crowd of supporters, from the sound of it. “They took everything from us! Now we take everything from them!” This time amidst the cheers came thuds and crashes and the tinkle of breaking glass.
My insides grew cold.
Closer than the shouting I heard panting and footsteps. I ducked into an alcove, holding my breath. One of Tain’s servants ran past, face wet with tears, looking over her shoulder as she ran. “Wait!” I stepped out and she jolted and drew in her breath to scream, but caught it in time with a shaking hand over her mouth.
“Credo,” she whispered. “Credo, they’ve stormed the Manor. They—they’ve barricaded the Council chamber.” She jolted again at another crash and skittered backward. “They’re burning them alive!”
Tain. Salvea. Eliska and Marjeta and the innocent Darfri elders. “They’ve set the Council chamber on fire, and barricaded the door?” Too calm, I was too calm, and it was frightening her even more. She nodded, but took several more rapid steps from me.
“How many of them?”
“How many what?” She continued to retreat, eyes darting over my shoulder.
“How many people have they got? They obviously overwhelmed the Guards at the door.”
She shook her head. “No, Credo. They were the Guards at the door.”
Mago. Mago had seen us hauling Aven away. Had this been part of the plan all along, or was this revenge for us taking her down?
“Then more soldiers came up from the city and joined them. And some of the rebels, too, countryfolk, not many, but the ones who were still really angry. They’re saying it’s a revolution and the ones negotiating are betraying their cause … and they need to burn out the heart of the beast, and…”
“It’s going to be all right,” I lied. “Keep going down this hall. Do you think you can get out a window? There are small ones in the sitting room, through there. If you break the glass and climb out, do you think you can get out of the grounds unseen?”
“I don’t know,” she said, voice rising.
“It’s going to be all right,” I repeated. “It’s not a big drop. If you can get to the Darfri quarter, raise the alarm there.”
I didn’t give her time to argue. Zealous rebels or Aven’s loyalists or both, it didn’t really matter. I couldn’t get through ten people in time to save the people trapped in the chamber, let alone hundreds.
But maybe I didn’t have to.
It took precious time to find the storeroom; several wrong turns and a few dead ends. Eventually I got to the one Kalina had mentioned, recognizable by the dusty cupboard with the carved doors in the corner. Up I scrambled into Kalina’s little tunnel. It was ill-suited for my stockier form, and already thin lines of smoke wafted through its twilight length, but I wiggled along as swiftly as possible, trying not to think of my sister up here, trying not to think how I would get the more rotund of us through this tiny space on the way out. My shoulders jammed in
the bends and my face grew hot as I drew close. I regretted the full pouches and supplies strapped to my body under my paluma, because they caught on every irregularity in the passage and I had no room to shed them. An eternity of shuffling, breathing, fighting down panic.
It was hot and dark in the viewing alcove, and smoke crept in from the room below along with the sounds of desperate coughing and wails of terror. On my hands and knees I fumbled with the viewing slit, trying to no avail to force it larger. The space was concealed behind the internal paneling, though, which surely wouldn’t withstand a decent amount of force. I curled into a ball and rolled onto my back, spun around so that my shoulders were wedged against the back of the space, then kicked my feet as hard as I could at the viewing panel.
It popped out with a satisfying crack.
I scrambled onto my hands and knees and stuck my head in through the splintered wood. Below was a nightmare. They must have either rigged the room in advance or thrown some kind of flammable substance in before barricading it. The perimeter of the chamber crackled with angry orange flames, and two dozen–odd people huddled in the middle of the stone table, coughing and crying. Torn clothing masked their faces to shield them from the smoke, and those on the outer edges clutched water jugs and teacups as if the last dregs of liquid could fight the flames. “Tain!” I called, and through the smoke I saw his face turn up among the cluster. He had one arm around an older man who seemed barely able to stand.
“Jov!” He barked out a relieved laugh-cough and shoved his mask down for a moment. “Everyone, forgive me, but shut up and listen!”
Others spotted me, too; Salvea wept with joy at the sight. “Come on,” I said. “Hurry.” I had untied the knots on my cording before entering the tunnel and I pulled it loose from my body now, double thickness. But below me the flames licked up hungrily and I worried it would catch, too, if I lowered it straight down.
Tain followed my gaze. “Salvea, quick. I’ll boost you.” Together he and a burly Darfri man stood at the outer edge of the central table and made a stool of their arms. Salvea tottered up on it, her eyes wide with terror above her face mask. I threw her one end of the cording and she wrapped both hands tightly in the silky rope. Tain counted, “One, two…” and on three they hoisted Salvea like a pillar tossed at the karodee games up toward me. She hit the portrait below me with a squeal and I pulled her the rest of the way, bracing awkwardly in the small space, and soon had her forearms on mine.
She cried out as her arms caught on the splintery edges of the wood but made it up, fitting easier than I had in the space. “Keep going,” I told her, squashed up as far as I could to let her past.
We got the smallest and the elderly in the room out that way: Nara, Marjeta, Budua, and Eliska, most of the rebel representatives, and Varina. But since I had burst the panel open another problem was presenting itself: the smoke, which was wearing down the remaining men on the table, was flooding the tunnel so badly now I could barely see through it. “They won’t make it,” I yelled to Tain between my own coughs. “They’ll suffocate.”
Tain looked at the barred door, now behind an impenetrable wall of flames. The portraits and other hanging wall coverings had caught, and a fair amount of the carpet. Even the treated wood paneling below me was starting to burn. Bradomir, Lazar, and Javesto all slumped on their knees in the central huddle, barely coughing anymore and almost invisible from my perch. Several of the Darfri leaders still stood, but the smoke was now so thick none of us would last much longer. Tain looked back at me, and his dark eyes were bleak. I fancied I could hear the sounds of fighting outside the door, but what good would it do? Even if loyal forces prevailed, they’d never get in here in time.
My friend gestured at the tunnel. “Go,” he cried, and dropped to his knees. “Please, go.”
But instead I looked up at the glass dome ceiling and had one final, dumb idea.
“Get me a fresh mask!” I called down urgently, and Tain didn’t ask questions, just cut off another section of the base of his paluma, soaked it in the remaining teapot, and balled it up to toss to me. I wrapped it gratefully around my nose and mouth; the last one had already dried off in the heat.
I dug into my supplies one last time.
As I swung my torso out of the hole, I had a sudden and vivid memory of my uncle, standing in his workshop, beaming at me over a jar of silvery-white crystals we’d derived from bat dung. I could smell the caramelizing sugar and acrid chemical stench as the crystals turned purple in the flames, as richly if he stood before me right now. His kind, wise eyes regarded me with approval and a dose of mischief. I miss you, Etan, I told him silently.
I took what grip I could on the ornate cornices, pressing my body tight against the hot wall, and wedged the last of Baina’s devices into the space above the cornice. Then I lowered myself down carefully back into my hole, broke off a piece of the now-burning wood paneling, and held it at one end with a piece of my paluma, like a torch.
“Get low and cover your heads,” I called down to those remaining on the table.
I lit the device, dropped the stick fuse, and squished back as far into the tunnel as I could get.
There was just time to note the flare of indigo before the dull boom and a splintering crash and then everything was heat and pressure and light, and I was falling, tumbling, landing hard on my back with a crunch.
* * *
I blinked. Light and sound came in waves; everything felt thick, like I was underwater. My body hurt, but I wasn’t burning. I sat up and almost vomited. My brain lagged a hand’s width behind my head and then ricocheted back into my skull moments later. I rubbed a hand over my head and found it covered with dust and shards of glass. I got my bearings: I hadn’t fallen far, but part of the wall below the dome had been blasted open, exposing now-damaged stone behind the decorative paneling.
“Jov!” Tain’s voice sounded distant, but his hands peck-pecked at me, plucking at my attention, and I turned my head—slowly this time—to see that he had climbed up the broken wall to me. Though his mouth and nose were covered with cloth still, his grin crinkled around his eyes. He gestured up, and I followed the line of the rising smoke out the massive hole in the dome. A rope fashioned from clothing hung from a distorted protrusion of metal at the edge of the blast hole, and the men were using it to help scramble up the rough ladder of rubble formed by the damaged wall.
Tain hooked my arm over his shoulder and put his around my waist. “Come on, my friend,” he shouted. “We’re getting out of here.”
* * *
I went to see her one final time. She’d have heard the commotion, and presumably guessed from the fact that no one had come down here to release her that it hadn’t gone as planned.
“It really is over this time,” I told her wearily. My ears were still ringing and it was an effort not to cough. I would show her none of it. “I just wanted you to know. Your people are dead or arrested. There’ll be no big rescue, no heroic escape. There’s no revolution and certainly no military leader taking over the country.” And no more fears that her loyalists are hiding in the army. “But we can make things more comfortable for you if you tell us who funded you.”
Aven sat in the cell, her hand still treated only roughly with Hadrea’s bandage and obviously causing her pain. She listened without speaking, then shut her eyes, took a breath, and relaxed in one fluid wave. I had to admire her sheer willpower as she took control of herself, almost as if she had switched off the pain entirely. Her eyes snapped open, seeking me out through the bars.
“Did you want to know how your sister died?” she asked, and aside from the extra throatiness to her voice, she might have been asking about the weather.
I said nothing.
“I was feeling a bit bad about it earlier,” she said, her black eyes boring into me. It would have been the kind thing to do to just kill her cleanly. “I’d just found out our precious Heir was alive, and I’m afraid I might have taken out my frustration on your wee sister
, Jovan. But now … well. Now I know she somehow managed to ruin everything so comprehensively, I rather think she deserved everything she got.”
“I don’t really care what you think about much of anything,” I said, and hoped she would hear the flat honesty in my tone. I wasn’t sure if I could care about anything anymore.
“Don’t you want to know what I did?” Aven asked, a tiny, icy smile turning up the corners of her mouth. “I think you do. You gave me something in my tea earlier—I guess you must like hearing me talk. But you can’t control what I talk about.” She lifted her chin, somehow looking comfortable despite the indignity of her pose. “Such a pity dear Kalina was a little weakling, but she caused me so much trouble, I thought I might cut her in half.” She grinned. I thought, numbly, that it was the worst thing I’d ever seen. “I was going to hack her little head off, but honestly that earther afterlife nonsense isn’t worth worrying about. And anyway, I wanted her to feel pure terror before she died.”
My hand gripped the bars. I realized my whole body was shaking. But inside I couldn’t even properly feel the fury, the devastation her words wrought. I knew it was there, but it was like it belonged to someone else.
“Her body’s at the bottom of the river now,” Aven added. “There are all kinds of beautiful fish in there that would have loved eating out her intestines. Maybe she even felt their little teeth before she drowned.”
One part of me wanted to respond, wanted to lunge, my animal to take on hers. The two guards to either side of me eyed me warily, perhaps contemplating stepping in. But in the end, the cold won. My eyes like sand and my throat a fraction of its normal size, I forced myself to meet her gaze without expression. “You know what, Aven? Dead is dead. She was too smart to fall for your lies, so you killed her. It doesn’t much matter to me how you did it. She’s gone either way.
“But it matters to you, doesn’t it? You’re still trying so valiantly to pick a fight. The big plan failed, and now you don’t want to waste your life away in jail. But didn’t you hear what I said earlier?” I dropped my voice and she leaned forward as if compelled to hear my words. “No warrior’s death for you. No fight. No clean stroke of a sword. By the time you die, no one will be watching you, no one will care about you. Maybe no one will even remember you.” I drew back. “You’re going to lie in a jail cell, getting weak and frail and irrelevant. You might even live for years, like that.