Queenslayer

by Sebastien de Castell

Reichis bridged the gap between himself and the war mage. With a feral growl he leaped up into the air. Arc’aeon nearly fell back, despite the fact that there was no way the squirrel cat was going to be able to breach the shield. But the shield wasn’t the target. The instant Reichis hit the ground he started digging ferociously, tearing through snow and ice to where the fragile circle of copper wire holding the spell must be buried.

  Arc’aeon was just starting to figure it out when I fired another shot at his familiar.

  “Carath Toth,” I murmured.

  “No!” Arc’aeon screamed. He fired a different kind of spell this time, some kind of blessing or protection that enveloped the eagle and dissipated my blast into airy black smoke. Nice trick, I thought.

  “Now!” Reichis growled at me.

  I saw the crease in the snow where he’d been digging. That was my opening. But I wasn’t in the right place to send a bolt through the hole in the shield.

  “Damn it,” I said, as I got to my feet and ran towards Arc’aeon.

  I saw him look down at the ground, his hands forming a new and ugly shape. His eyes went from the hole to Reichis before settling on me and aimed the spell at my chest. Too soon, damn it, too soon. I wasn’t in line with the gap yet.

  “Carath moron!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, aiming my fingers at Arc’aeon as if I’d really been casting the spell. The “moron” part wasn’t necessary, but when you’re an outlaw with a price on your head, you take your fun wherever you can. Reflexively he changed the configuration of his fingers and formed a transient shield. A mistake, since I hadn’t actually fired and his warding would only last a second without copper to anchor it. Arc’aeon’s mouth went slack as he realised I’d tricked him. I was now in line with the gap in his shield.

  With the opening in the shield now visible as a stuttering shimmer in the air, I whispered, “Carath Toth,” one last time. The powders slammed against each other before me. Aiming down the line of my fingers, I sent the explosion through the gap before Arc’aeon could get another warding spell up. The bolt took him in the dead centre of his belly and right through the decorative plating of his armour.

  There was quiet then, as we waited for the last echoes of the explosion reverberating off the mountains to fade. For a few seconds the war mage remained standing, ignorant of the fact that his body now lacked the vital organs necessary for life. The blast had left a hole big enough for me to see right through him to where Merrell was cowering behind his champion. I walked towards him as the mage’s body finally figured out what had happened and collapsed to the ground.

  If that all sounds too easy, it wasn’t.

  Besides, we’re still not at the part where I screwed everything up.

  3

  Blood and Silk

  “Now, Kellen, don’t you go doing somethin’ we’re both gonna wish you hadn’t done…” Merrell pleaded. He turned to the two marshals, Harrex and Parsus. “Don’t let him get me!” he cried out. “I’ll pay you! I’ve got good money here, now that the mage is dead.”

  The marshals gave Merrell stony looks. Trying to bribe the queen’s marshals service? Not too bright. I suspect the only reason they didn’t arrest him on the spot was because they knew I was about to make it a moot point.

  “Don’t you come no closer, Kellen!” Merrell had his hands clasped together in prayer, which was a waste of time. My people are too civilised to believe in gods. We worship our ancestors instead.

  “Me?” I asked. “I’m not planning on doing anything reckless, Merrell.”

  I gave him just enough time to look relieved before I added, “Now the squirrel cat, he’s a mean little cuss, and I figure he’s going to rip your face off while I eat me some breakfast.”

  Ancestors. Now Reichis has me talking like a borderlands hillbilly.

  “No! Wait! We can still make a deal. Everybody knows you’re lookin’ for a cure for the shadowblack, right? Well, I got a guy.”

  When it comes to snake oils and miracle cures, everybody’s got a guy.

  The snow crunched pleasantly under my boot heel as I took another step towards Merrell. I could still see the look on that girl’s face when he…No. Anger just makes you sloppy. Focus on the here and now.

  “I swear, Kellen! I got a guy! He can fix your shadowblack!”

  Reichis was crouched down, ready to jump. He turned his puffed-up squirrel cat face towards me and I could already see what he thought of that idea. “Don’t fall for this crap again, idjit.”

  The warning wasn’t needed or wanted. I’d travelled two entire continents and spent every penny I could earn or steal searching for a remedy for the twisting black marks around my left eye. Only thing I ever got was constipation and a bad case of rose pimples that one time.

  “What’s this miracle worker’s name?” I asked.

  Merrell was either too smart to think I’d fall for his game or too stupid to come up with a fake name. It didn’t matter though. He’d made me hesitate and that was enough. He reached behind his back and I caught a glimpse of steel just before he sent the knife whirling at me with an underhand throw. The blade took me square in the right shoulder and I went down like a sack of dirt. Reichis scrabbled up Merrell’s body and went for his face, clawing a strip of flesh around his left eye socket that sent a trail of blood into the air. Then the squirrel cat went for his neck.

  Merrell was screaming a good one as I got back to my feet, but then I saw him reach behind his back again.

  “Reichis! He’s got another knife!”

  The squirrel cat ignored me. Bloodthirsty little monster.

  I sprinted the few steps towards them, rubbing my fingertips together in hopes the feeling would come back so I could risk using the spell again. It was hopeless though—I’d used too much powder in my last shot and now my fingers were numb. If I tried again, I’d just blow my own hands off. I had a deck of razor-sharp steel throwing cards strapped to my right thigh, but those wouldn’t do me any good with numb fingers and a knife stuck in my shoulder.

  Merrell brought the blade around and tried to slash at Reichis, but the squirrel cat was savvy enough to drop off his chest and go after his leg. Merrell kicked him hard and the squirrel cat landed a few feet away. In a fit of rage, Merrell chased after him and brought his foot down like a hammer. Had Reichis not rolled away he’d’ve been crushed. Merrell was about to give it another try when I caught up with him. Whistling through my teeth as I presaged the pain, I ripped the knife out of my shoulder and used it to stab Merrell of Betrian through the neck. In the end, I think I screamed more than he did.

  The two marshals waited patiently for Merrell to bleed out, then led their horses towards us. As part of the overseeing service, they always patch up the victor’s wounds. The Daroman are civilised like that.

  “You’re bleeding pretty good there, fella,” Parsus said.

  I looked at my shoulder and realised he was right. There was more blood than there should have been. The knife must’ve hit something important. Absently I grabbed the first cloth I saw from the side of the marshal’s horse and pressed it against the wound to staunch the flow.

  “Oh crap,” I heard Reichis mutter.

  My gaze went from the squirrel cat to the two marshals. Parsus looked like he was about to go into shock. Harrex was pulling out his crossbow. That’s when I realised what I’d just done.

  I’d come a hundred and fifty miles to kill a man with no legal justification other than that he’d cheated me at cards. I’d killed a Jan’Tep mage in a duel, murdered his employer in cold blood and up until that exact moment… when I’d grabbed the red-and-white flag of Darome off that marshal’s horse… I hadn’t even committed a crime.

  Funny thing about the empire: by their way of thinking, unless you’re a foreign diplomat, the instant you cross into Daroman lands you become a citavis teradi—a territorial citizen. That dubious honour that comes with one or two minor legal protections and the sacred duty to defend the monarch. Unfortunately, I’d just
soaked the queen’s flag in blood, which was how you declared war against the Royal Family of Darome, the very definition of an act of treason. And I’d done it in front of two of the queen’s own marshals.

  I didn’t have the strength for another spell, but I probably would’ve tried anyway if Parsus hadn’t prudently hit me on the back of the head with his marshal’s mace. As I went down the last thing I heard was Reichis’s terrified, chittering voice.

  “Idjit.”

  4

  Horses and Handcuffs

  My first thought on waking up was that Reichis was dead. Well, that’s a bit of a lie—my first thought was that someone must have vomited, because an acrid smell filled my nostrils. My second thought was that, since I could also taste it, the vomit had likely come from me. My third thought was that someone had strung me up over the side of a boat. But since the ocean below me appeared to be frozen, it was more likely I’d been tied to the side of my horse. The marshals had strapped me face down across the saddle and that’s not a good position to be in when the thing under your stomach is trotting through the countryside. My fourth thought, I promise you, was that my partner was dead.

  The marshals don’t like wildcards and they don’t take chances. Having seen Reichis go after the bird and then the mage, not to mention shredding Merrell’s face, they’d have put him down rather than have him attack them when he realised I was being taken away. Poor little guy. I hoped he hadn’t seen it coming.

  Then I heard a noise that sounded like a grunt and the sound of laughing. Ancestors, I thought. They’re torturing him for kicks.

  “Bastards,” I said. At least he was still alive. Now I just had to find a way to free myself and rescue him. I twisted my neck uncomfortably to see what they were doing to the squirrel cat. I don’t know quite what I was expecting to see, but it certainly wasn’t the sight of the older man, Harrex, on his horse behind me, with Reichis lying with all four of his paws up as the marshal plopped bits of food into his mouth. The squirrel cat gave another little grunt, followed by a burp.

  “Let me take him for a while,” Marshal Parsus called to his partner.

  “You had him practically all the way from the border,” Harrex said. “Besides, he’s comfy as he is.” Then Harrex held another morsel of food a few inches from Reichis’s muzzle. “You’re just a comfy fuzzy little bear, aren’t ya?”

  Reichis reached up with his little paws and plucked the food from Harrex’s hand. This sent the marshal snorting with pleasure.

  “Oh, you’re a clever one, aren’t ya, little fella?”

  “Son of a bitch,” I muttered.

  “What?” Reichis chittered. “It’s not like you’ll feel any better if I’m on an empty stomach.”

  This is probably a good time to mention that I’m fairly sure squirrel cats are a type of flying rat.

  I tried to pull my hands free, intent on murder but not entirely sure who to start with. That’s when I felt the Daroman handcuffs and realised—with the distant curiosity they say you experience just as the hangman drops the trap door below you—that I was screwed.

  I don’t know what it is about handcuffs that fascinates me. It’s not the state of being bound, that’s for sure. As a frequent, if involuntary, wearer, I promise you my experience is nothing like the erotic pictures you sometimes see decorating the walls of the second-floor stairs of full-service saloons.

  The thing about handcuffs, though, is that they tell you a whole lot about the country you’re in. Take the Zhuban, who live just north of where I’d been arrested. Now their handcuffs are really something: thick iron rings lined with sharp protrusions that provide steady, painful pressure against the nerves in your wrists. Anyone wearing the cuffs for more than a couple of hours experiences intense agony and frequently bleeds out from the cuts on their skin before they even meet their Zhuban advocate to prepare for trial. On the other hand, if you’re smart, and you can handle a lot of pain, the blood from your wrists can be an effective lubricant in the process of escaping the cuffs.

  That’s the Zhuban people for you: they’re cruel, fearless and not altogether bright. The instruments of torture that pass for Zhubanese handcuffs are what you get when you have a culture completely devoted to the idea that all of existence is governed by destiny. They figure that if you’re in cuffs, whether guilty or not, you must’ve done something to annoy the universe and you deserve all the pain you get. On the other hand, anyone who breaks out of one of their jails is presumed to be innocent because, after all, it was their destiny to escape.

  Now the Jan’Tep dislike using iron for anything. Magic is their game, or, I should technically say, our game, since I come from a Jan’Tep clan. Mages don’t have much use for pure iron since it interferes with magic. Besides, they don’t need anything as blunt as thick iron rings to keep a person bound. A pair of Jan’Tep binding loops are just thin copper wire inscribed with intricate little symbols. Binding loops have the insidious property of tightening the more you put pressure against them. So the more scared and frantic you get, the sooner you’ll see your hands flop down to the floor, cut through by the sharp copper wire.

  Nasty things. Unbreakable too, unless you happen to be a more powerful mage than the one who charmed the binding loops. Well, that’s not entirely true—there is one trick that can get you out every time, but I’d rather keep that little secret to myself. Regardless, the Jan’Tep never bother asking the question: “What if the person being bound is, in fact, a more powerful mage than the one who made the loops?” because, for the Jan’Tep, whoever is the better mage is almost certainly the better man, and thus if the prisoner escapes, he must not have deserved to be in cuffs in the first place. Which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about my people, my family and my life.

  But the handcuffs that the marshals had put on me were Daroman in design. Daroman handcuffs are unlike those of the Zhuban or the Jan’Tep. Oh, don’t get me wrong; they’re strong like you wouldn’t believe: a half-inch-thick band of Gitabrian steel connected by a chain you could waste a dozen serrated blacksmith’s saws trying to cut through. But unlike the painful protrusions of the Zhubanese cuffs, or the wrist-cutting magic of the Jan’Tep, the inside of Daroman cuffs are thickly padded with silk. They’re extremely comfortable. Soft as a courtier’s winter glove, I swear.

  This tells you a lot about the Daroman culture. For them, being an imperial people who over the past hundred years have come to dominate many of the smaller nations on the continent—including the Jan’Tep—the most important thing is to be seen as trustworthy. The Daroman have a queer notion of justice compared to most people: they think you shouldn’t be punished for a crime until you’ve been found guilty of committing it. It’s a crazy way to think, but seems to have worked for them over the years.

  By Daroman reckoning, if they do have to hold you in order to take you to trial, you should be, if not comfortable, then at least not in pain. Darome is nothing if not a civilised country. No wonder they’ve taken over half the continent and killed a good portion of the other half.

  But the Daroman people are also incredibly practical: the silk padding inside the cuffs actually fits so tightly around your wrists that it makes escape impossible because it forms a perfect seal. Daroman cuffs, in addition to being the most comfortable shackles you’ll ever encounter, are also the only ones that guarantee you’ll never get out by yourself. That’s why, when I say, I knew I was screwed the moment I felt the Daroman handcuffs around my wrists, I know what I’m talking about.

  5

  Unlucky Eights

  “Y’need anything?” Marshal Parsus asked me, nudging his horse alongside mine.

  “The key to these handcuffs would be nice.”

  The slightly confused expression on his plain, freckled face was a testament both to his genial disposition and utter lack of any sense of humour. “I was thinking more of some water or food,” he said.

  Daroman marshals—they truly pride themselves on making sure their pri
soners reach the gallows in perfect health. The thought of food, however, only brought on another wave of nausea. “Just some water, thanks.”

  He pulled out a leather flask and brought it to my lips. I had to turn my head sideways to catch the stream, giving the marshal a clear view of the shadowblack markings around my left eye.

  “Those things hurt any?” he asked, tilting the flask a little closer to my mouth.

  I swirled the water around a little before swallowing. “They get cold when the sun shines on them. But other than that, not really.”

  “Funny-looking thing.” He traced his finger in the air a few inches from my face. “Kinda like three rings being eaten by vines.”

  “I’ve heard worse descriptions.” Mostly having to do with parts of people’s anatomy.

  Parsus glanced back at Reichis, who was at that moment cooing—actually cooing like a damned pigeon—as he wheedled more treats out of Marshal Harrex. “Your pet there’s got the marks around his eye too. Are they…?”

  He let the question hang there. Six months ago, Reichis had gotten infected with the shadowblack thanks to a girl who thought she was doing me a favour. I guess she was, in a sense, because doing so had restored the bond between me and the squirrel cat. On the other hand, I was pretty sure that one day the little monster was going to become a full-on demon and kill half the population of the continent in a rampaging search for butter biscuits. “It’s just an unsightly birth mark,” I lied, then louder—so Reichis could hear me—added, “It’s because he was the runt of the litter.”

  The squirrel cat seemed unconcerned with the slight. “Says the guy who’s the weakest mage in his whole clan.”

  Parsus brought his finger a little closer to my face. “Mind if I…?”

  “Kind of, yeah,” I said.

  He stopped. “You ever think about spendin’ a little money and gettin’ that seen to by a, well, a doctor or a whisper witch or some such person?”