by Sam Hawke
“But death comes to us all. My uncle, for example, and the Chancellor, both died horribly. Without dignity, without comfort. You did that to them.” I stood, letting my lips split wide into a semblance of a smile. “I have the last of Marco’s poison now. I hope that’ll help you enjoy your food and water in prison over the years. Anticipation … it’s better than spice.”
Then I turned and walked away.
* * *
My apartment was empty, all of my “guests” gone, just the debris of their passage to give sign of all that had changed in this house. I tidied up the rooms, one at a time, but took no comfort in the routine.
Our country would survive this. In the long run, it would be better for it. We had Aven and the surviving mercenary chiefs in custody, and we would work out who else was involved in her plan. We would untangle it all, and we would come out of this a better people. Tain had grown in this siege, nourished by the trauma, into someone new, someone stronger. I had confidence he would be the leader we needed.
I just didn’t know where I fit anymore. This war had torn apart everything that had been important to me: my family, my job, my honor … maybe even my relationship with my best friend. I wasn’t sure I could look at Tain without seeing, in all too graphic detail, what had happened to my sister. I had lied to Aven, of course. Dead was dead, but even thinking about the pain Kalina must have suffered at her hands was like tearing apart the edges of a wound. So I pressed the thoughts back into the cold stone and continued my tasks, wishing I could clean up the pieces of my life as simply as I could clean my home. The silence, broken only by my footfalls, echoed around me. Once a place of peace and warmth, now the apartments seemed big and cold. The war had taken my home from me as well.
But the war had given me something, too, if I was willing to reach out and take it.
She found me there, in Etan’s kitchen—it would always be Etan’s—and joined me in my cleaning without words. Sweeping the floor while I scrubbed the bench, we worked together in the silence for a while.
Then she stepped up behind me and slipped her arms around my waist. I froze. Part of me wanted to turn into her, to take the comfort she offered. But I just stood there, awkward, unable to respond, until she let go and stepped away.
Good, the cruelest voice in my head said. You don’t deserve comfort or peace.
A pause. Then she slipped past and sprang up on the bench, facing me, legs dangling.
“When I was young,” she said, “I was not the easiest child. I made up stories and talked to the spirits. I used fresken when I should not have. My eye even used to turn sideways sometimes, and people did not like to look at me. The other estate children, the girls especially, they tormented me. Little things, when we were small—tripping me behind corners, pushing me at the well—then more, as we got older. They knew I wanted to be a Speaker and they mocked me for it. They would cut my arms when I slept, or try to startle me when I carried hot water. And I grew up, but I carried it all still with me. For the longest time, I was…” She paused, looking distant. “Angry, yes, but mostly frightened. I swore no one would hurt me, and I took seriously the fighting games we used to play, so that I could protect myself. But I was so cold inside, Jovan. I was too frightened to let anybody close so they could not see how afraid I was of everything.
“And so I hid. I was cocky and brash, and quick to argue and fight, because I could use those things as a shield. I used the bruise inside me like that, giving it more relevance than it should have had. For a while, I let it be Hadrea. But it was not me.”
She took my hand. Hers felt warmer than mine, firm and callused, as beautiful as the finest musician’s or artist’s. “You are hiding behind so many things. Your honor and your duty, which stopped you wanting things for yourself. And your grief for your uncle and now for your sister. You are using them as shields to protect you. But that is making those things define who you are, when they are not. They are parts of you, but they are not you.”
I didn’t let go of her hand. It felt like a lifeline. But the first emotion that cracked through the stone was fear. “And what if I don’t know what else is there, when you take those things away?”
“Then we will find out.” Hadrea smiled, and something warm buzzed between us. “Together.”
Epilogue
Jovan
I woke in the middle of the night, disoriented, from my first dreamless sleep in months. I blinked, confused, and it took me at least ten breaths to realize the pounding sound hammering through my head was an actual sound, not merely a headache.
Beside me, curled against my back, Hadrea stirred. “What is that?”
I sat up. “The door, I think.”
Scrambling to find a robe, I made my way to the front door, Hadrea trailing behind me, muttering blearily. A thick fog of drowsiness surrounded me. Irritation at breaking the first real sleep I’d had in a long time made me snatch the door open with a scowl.
“Credo Jovan?”
I blinked, bleary. The fog didn’t lift. I didn’t know the man standing at my door, disheveled and alone. He was young, early twenties at most, with a broad, plain face and big hands, twisting around and around each other in front of his belly. One of his arms was heavily bandaged and he had a healing wound by his left ear. “Yes?”
“Are you…” He spotted Hadrea over my shoulder and stopped, chewing his lip. His eyes darted about, and he looked over his shoulder.
I scowled, impatience increasing my annoyance. “Yes?” I said again.
Hadrea sensed it before I did. “He is afraid, Jovan,” she said, a breath in my ear.
I looked at him, looked properly. She was right. Terror radiated from him. “What is it?” I asked, kindly this time.
“My name’s Garan,” he said, half in a whisper. “I’m … I was … a scout. In the army. I … I need you to come with me.” He looked at me, eyes wide. “Please?”
“Where?” When he didn’t answer, I folded my arms. “I’m not going anywhere unless you tell me more. What are you afraid of?”
He wrung his hands. “The Warrior-Guilder, Credo.” He laughed, an anxious trill. “Honor-down, I know how that sounds … a lowly soldier like me … but I’m not making it up. I think she’s going to try to kill me.”
Behind me, Hadrea had already found cloaks for us both and was throwing mine over my shoulders before I could even respond. “All right,” I said, following Garan out the door. “We’ll come. And you should know, the Warrior-Guilder’s in jail. And so are quite a few of her lieutenants. They attacked the Council, didn’t you hear?”
His head snapped back over his shoulder, eyes glimmering like a scared animal’s in the dark. “She’s what? I’ve been in the hospital, I didn’t hear.… Are you sure?”
“She betrayed the city,” I said. “And she killed—” I couldn’t even say it aloud. “She killed a lot of people. She’s never leaving that jail, not ever.”
Garan let out his breath and his whole body sagged, as though he’d been propped up by the air in his lungs alone. Hadrea caught his arm and steadied him. “Why did you think the Warrior-Guilder would try to kill you?” she asked.
He shook his head, dazed. “I was guarding your sister,” he said, and if he said anything else I didn’t hear it for the sudden rushing sound in my ears.
My heart started hammering as the emotion I’d suppressed burst through the cracks Hadrea had opened. Aven’s cold eyes, the evil pleasure in her smile as she had taunted me, and her words, the terrible images she had used to try to unhinge me … This time I had no armor. I stopped walking, rubbed my hands over my face, trying to compose myself. “I can’t talk about my sister. Please.”
“She told me,” Garan said, and though I couldn’t see him, I heard tears in his voice. “She told me what she guessed about the Warrior-Guilder, and I didn’t listen. I didn’t believe her. I … What happened, it’s my fault.” He made a choking sound. “She escaped, but when the Warrior-Guilder came, I … I told her what your
sister said. I didn’t think … I only told her because I was worried Kalina might do something risky, run into the battle, and I thought we could help her.”
Fury wormed its way through the pain, even though some part of me knew, looking at the poor scared lad, that I couldn’t blame anyone but the monster responsible. Hadrea slipped an arm around my waist, and that calm contact drained my anger.
“It’s not your fault,” I said, and though my tone came out wooden, I meant it. “Who would believe a Councilor would do something like this. She was your Guild leader. You trusted her.”
He dragged his fingers through his unruly hair, making it stick out even further. “There was something, though, something I didn’t trust. I followed her. I’m good at following people,” he added in a mumble. “Not much good at anything else.”
I knew where this was going, and I didn’t want to hear from another person how horribly my sister had died. It might make this boy feel better to share it with someone, but how would that help me? “I know what happened,” I said. “I don’t think I can hear it again, all right?”
But Hadrea’s grip on my waist had tightened. Again, she read him better than I. “Garan,” she said, and this time it was her voice that came out strange and tight. “Garan, where are we going?”
“To the hospital,” he said. “I did my best, Credo, but I had to wait until the Warrior-Guilder was out of sight. Kalina fought so hard, but they struggled and she fell into the river.… Aven assumed she was dead, Credo, but she must have held her breath and dragged herself all the way to the bank.”
As if all the air had been sucked from around me, my whole body tensed up. Moments passed in limbo, then I found my hands gripping the front of Garan’s rough tunic, my face a handspan from his. “Is she…” I couldn’t go on, just stood there holding him up like a schoolyard bully, unable to even ask, choked by hope.
Hadrea finished for me. “Are you saying Kalina is alive?”
Garan nodded, still looking terrified. I dropped him, shaking.
“Yes, but she’s not in good shape, Credo. I grew up in Green Bend, by the river. I know what to do when someone’s taken a lot of water—I got it out from her lungs, but her stomach … I’m no physic. The knife didn’t land where it was meant to, but it was still a bad wound. I bandaged her up as best I could to hold it all together. I didn’t dare ask anyone for help. I dragged her to the army in a body sling, and slipped in with the rest of the wounded. But I hid her tattoos and didn’t tell the physics who she was, because I thought Aven might find out.”
Kalina, I thought. And I ran.
The dark was no obstacle, not to me. Years of pacing had taught me the streets of the upper city; it mattered not that most of the lights had been out for weeks to conserve oil. The other two followed me as I raced through the city in a blur, fighting down the bursts of hope that both propelled and terrified me. I wanted to believe; honor-down, I had never wanted anything so badly.
It might have been midday, for all the activity in the hospital. Garan took the lead once we burst into the crowded hive of the main hall, and led us through the bustle. “Where is she?” I demanded, not caring how manic I sounded.
“Through here,” he said, but I’d already seen her.
A tiny, pitiful figure on a bed; I’d have known her anywhere, even though part of me registered how alien she looked, how wrong, lying there so straight instead of curled up like a kitsa, the way she usually slept. Her hair was splayed over the pillow, a dark halo around a carving of a face. I knelt beside her.
“Lini,” I whispered. I had to hold my hand in front of her nose to confirm she still breathed. That tiny puff of warm air was the best thing I’d ever felt.
“The physics already operated,” Garan said, hovering behind. “But they don’t know … there was so much damage.”
“Who was the physic?”
Garan pointed him out; I recognized him as the physic who I’d helped with an injured soldier on the walls, weeks ago. He recognized me, too, and raised an eyebrow when he learned the identity of his patient. “It’s a bad injury,” he told me, pinching his nose. “We’ve repaired what we can, but it’s going to be a waiting exercise now, I’m afraid, Credo.”
Hadrea rested her chin on my shoulder, arms slipping around me. “We’ll be here when she wakes up,” she said, and I heard calm, not fear, in her voice.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, we will.”
The physic shook his head, putting a hand on my shoulder. “I don’t want you to hope unnecessarily, Credo,” he said. “It will take real strength, a fighting spirit, and a determined body, to recover from this. You should know she probably won’t wake up.”
I sat beside Hadrea, feeling the warmth of her body against mine. I found myself smiling. “The hell she won’t,” I said. “She’s the strongest person I know.”
And we settled in together by the bed, to wait for my sister to come back to us.
About the Author
A black belt in jujitsu, SAM HAWKE lives with her husband and children in Australia. This is her first novel.
Visit her online at Samhawkewrites.com, or sign up for email updates here.
Twitter: @samhawkewrites
www.facebook.com/samhawkewrites
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Laceleaf
1. Jovan
Zarnika
2. Kalina
Maidenbane
3. Jovan
Bluehood
4. Kalina
Hazelnode
5. Jovan
Clouddust
6. Kalina
Lendulos
7. Jovan
Bitterseed
8. Kalina
Praconis/slumberweed
9. Jovan
Rabutin
10. Kalina
Art’s plainsrose
11. Jovan
Esto’s revenge
12. Kalina
Manita fungus
13. Jovan
Eel brain
14. Kalina
Feverhead
15. Jovan
Stingbark
16. Kalina
Lockwort
17. Jovan
Salgar (red death)
18. Kalina
Okubane
19. Jovan
Bloodroot
20. Kalina
Geraslin ink
21. Jovan
Atrapis
22. Kalina
Dumbcane
23. Jovan
Moonblossom
24. Kalina
Poison rookgrass
25. Jovan
Darpar
26. Kalina
False goaberry
27. Jovan
Petra venom
28. Kalina
Graybore
29. Jovan
Blisterbush
30. Kalina
Beetle-eye
31. Jovan
Scatterburr
32. Jovan
Traitor’s curse
33. Jovan
Epilogue: Jovan
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
CITY OF LIES
Copyright © 2018 by Sam Hawke
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Greg Ruth
Cover design by Jamie Stafford-Hill
&n
bsp; A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-30668-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7653-9689-1 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-0-7653-9691-4 (ebook)
eISBN 9780765396914
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First Edition: July 2018