Queenslayer

by Sebastien de Castell

  “Kellen, I need you to let me in.”

  Why she didn’t just have one of her marshals use their master key to open the door, or hells, just for effect, knock it down and see exactly how strong Sha’maat’s spell was, I couldn’t understand. Then I realised it was because the queen must’ve come alone. I looked at Reichis. The look he gave me back held little sympathy for me. “No,” I said finally.

  “Please, Kellen. You don’t understand. I need you.”

  Her voice was so plaintive I felt my hand start to turn the knob. But the memory of Colfax’s last warning stopped me. Imagine what they could make you do to her.

  “Go away, Your Majesty. I’ve resigned.”

  “Kellen—please! You don’t understand. Several of my guards have left their posts, there’s something wrong—”

  A terse whisper cut through the door to my room: “Your Majesty, I need to get you out of here. There are men coming!” It was Arex’s voice.

  “Please,” the queen cried.

  “We’ve got to go now,” Arex said.

  “Kellen!” It sounded as if she was being pulled away, and I hoped that’s exactly what was happening. Arex was in a far better position than me to keep her safe. Besides, he’d already proven he could beat me in a fair fight.

  For a moment, silence. Then came the sound of heavy boot heels thundering through the hallway. “Damn it,” Reichis said, his ears perking up.

  “What’s going on?”

  “The nobles—Arex said most of them didn’t show up at court today. And fires around the city, with the marshals being pulled from their posts. Kellen, this is a coup.”

  I reached for the door and then stopped myself. Chances were, if I got involved, I’d end up dead. Worse, I might get the queen killed in the process. Maybe it was better if I stayed out of it. She’s with Arex, I told myself. He’ll keep her safe. Unless of course he was part of the coup.

  Reichis was growling at the door. Not chittering, not insulting me, not threatening me. Just growling. It’s as if there’s only so much of my crap he can handle before the bond between us starts to break. A braver man would’ve taken that as a sign and opened the door, but I was born a coward the way that some men are born with a club foot or cleft palate. In this life, you play the cards you’re dealt.

  Then I heard the scream.

  The sound couldn’t have been that loud, it just couldn’t. Stone walls and an oak door? Not to mention the fact that she must’ve been at least thirty yards away. And yet it was as if the queen was standing right next to me. The fear, the raw, unchecked terror in her voice, was paired with a note of desperation, of need. For someone. For anyone. For me.

  It was just a scream, that’s all. It only lasted a second.

  But it was enough.

  Just enough.

  For one brief instant there was no coward living inside me. There was no shadowblack around my eye. There was no white binder out there ready to creep inside my arms and my legs and every other part of me to use as he wanted. I couldn’t even hear Ferius Parfax with her Argosi nonsense, cajoling me into seeing things a different way.

  There was just that scream.

  I heard another growl. I assumed it was Reichis, but it couldn’t have been him because an instant later I heard him say, “It’s about damn time.”

  I turned to look at him. His eyes were dark. His fur had lost all its colour, becoming pure black. No stripes this time, no shades. There was nothing cute or funny or forgiving about him. He was a killer, waiting for the door to open so he could answer that scream with tooth and claw.

  My hand reached for the door, but something inside me, or maybe it was Reichis, said, No. Not that way. Our way.

  “Carath Erras,” I said, powder flying in the air, flames reaching out. The blast blew the heavy door clean off its hinges. Outside, the hallway was empty and silent.

  Except for that scream, echoing over and over inside my head.

  For the reformed outlaw, it always comes down to this: you’ve got to bury the person you once were. No matter how hard you try to hang on to your dreams, your truths, your very soul…if there’s one universal law to this business it’s that, one way or another, the outlaw always dies in the end.

  50

  The Palace Coup

  A few feet from where I stood, a trail of blood winding across the hallway floor like a snake led to Arex. Two men in Zhubanese leather armour were on him. One held him from behind as the other withdrew a sword from the social secretary’s belly, the white fabric billowing out, following the blade, turning crimson with its passage.

  I started to pull powder but realised that if by some chance Arex was still alive, I’d end up killing him along with the two assassins. I needed to get a hold of myself. Think. Use your anger; don’t let it use you.

  I slid my right hand into the leather pouch holding my steel throwing cards and sent a pair spinning at the face of the guy holding the sword. Reichis followed, unleashing a growl as he leaped on the assassin, climbing the man’s body as if it were a tree until his claws were deep into the man’s cheeks and eyes.

  The Zhuban warrior stumbled back and his sword slipped from his fingers to clatter on the floor. I reached down and picked it up just as Arex, his face pale from advancing shock, managed to spin around, exposing his other attacker’s back to me. Zhuban swords are curved but sharp at the point, so as I thrust the blade into the assassin’s back, I held out my arm to make sure he didn’t fall back and have his weight push the blade all the way through to Arex. I pulled out the blade and turned to see the other assassin writhing on the floor, his arms flailing as Reichis hopped over them, back and forth, every time stealing more of the flesh from the man’s face.

  “Eat later,” I said.

  Reichis growled and then grunted.

  “Kellen, you’ve got to stop the others,” Arex said, leaning against the wall, his hand barely holding his guts from slipping out of his belly. “They’ve got the queen. If they escape with her, it’s going to be chaos.”

  I supported him as he slowly slid down to the ground. “Who took her?”

  He nodded towards the men we’d killed. “More of these guys. Zhuban warriors. Some of them are Elites, I think. They’re wearing red masks.”

  Red masks. The Zhuban wear such things not to hide their faces but to show that they are acting as agents of the universe itself. I wonder if it makes them feel any less guilty when they’re slaughtering innocents. “Where the hell are the guards? Where are the damned marshals?”

  Arex coughed up blood. “Everywhere but here. Something’s going on in the city, and then someone tried to blow a hole in the south wall. The ones still here thought it was an attack—they went to stop it, but it must’ve been a distraction.”

  “Where are the queen’s personal attendants? Lirius, Ricard and the others.”

  “Dead,” he said.

  “Where’s Colfax then?” I asked, even though I knew that wherever he was, the white binder would be too.

  “In the city. The queen gave him a direct order to keep the peace… try to prevent loss of life. Kellen, go. You’ve got to save the queen. If they take her, there won’t be a ransom. That’s not what the Zhuban do. Ritual assassination is an… art form to them.”

  I nodded.

  “Take this,” I said, passing him my coat. “I’ll send someone for you. In the meantime, just keep pressure against the wound. The bleeding’s not that bad.”

  He looked at my face and gave a hoarse laugh. “I should’ve played cards with you when I had the chance, kid. You’re a lousy liar. Just go.”

  We left him there to die, alone and in pain, and never knowing whether he had saved his queen. He’d deserved better.

  Down two sets of hallways we found more dead Daroman guardsmen and the occasional Zhuban warrior. The score was not looking good for the queen’s guards. The cries of the dying reached us from around a corner and Reichis and I raced down the east wing until we saw more blood. The palace
was like a ghost town. Other than the occasional terrified servant, crouching in a corner, it was empty but for blood and bodies and the distant sounds of men and women meeting their ends.

  How could this have happened so quickly? The timing was perfect—that I understood. The queen had just taken half the court north to the border. Then she’d ended up coming back early and many of them—probably her most loyal noble houses—had remained behind to monitor the border situation. But to line up the others…To bribe the guards and distract the marshals…It would take years to plan something this effective on such a scale. Had the Zhuban government done this on their own? Or were they working with Daroman nobles to bring down the queen? Or was it my own family, tipping the scales for one side or the other as I hid in my room?

  I heard voices and followed them around a corner, tripping over a body on the ground. I recognised it as Cerreck, the retainer who announced visitors in the throne room. He wasn’t dead, but he was nearly there, closer even than Arex had been. How many men had it taken to bring down the Daroman throne? How many had stood for the queen? One less than she’d needed, I realised coldly. One less because I’d cowered behind an oak door shielded by Jan’Tep spells as she called out my name.

  “The queen,” Cerreck said weakly.

  “I know. I’ll find her.”

  “Zhuban,” he said, trying to get to his feet. “No gloves…”

  “I know it’s the damned Zhuban, Cerreck. How many?”

  “The river. They’re headed for the river entrance. In the palace cellars. It’s supposed to be guarded at all times. They’re not wearing gloves,” he wheezed finally, before slipping back to the floor.

  I had no idea what he was talking about, and he couldn’t answer my questions. Reichis and I ran along the hall towards the long staircase that led down to the cellars.

  When we reached the bottom, I saw the butchered bodies of the guards who had been stationed there. The gate was held open by two long iron rods fitted with hooks at the end, jammed in to keep the heavy iron gate from coming down. The last few guards were fighting off six men in the leather-strapped armour of Zhuban Front Cavalry—the same types of warriors who had attacked us on the way north. Only these men weren’t wearing steel caps. Instead, each of their faces was covered by a red mask.

  “Carath Erras,” I said, tossing the red and black powders in front of me and sending them screaming into the back of one of the assassins. Fire ripped through him, but also caught the guard who was trying to fend him off. Hells. They’re all too damned close to each other.

  One of the five remaining Zhuban came for me, but Reichis had already scrabbled up a pillar and onto a shelf near the ceiling. He glided down onto the assassin and went straight for the back of his neck. The man brought his arms up to grab at Reichis, so I took one of the dead guard’s spears and drove it into the assassin’s belly. Then I saw that the last pair of Daroman guards were now dead, and the four remaining Zhuban had hold of the queen on the other side of the iron gate. The two on either side each pulled at the base of one of the iron hooks, and I watched as the gate came hurtling down, slamming into the hard stone floor with a deafening clang. Reichis ran for it, but the spaces between the bars were too small for even him to get through, and the Zhuban jammed their swords into the gaps, very nearly skewering him.

  One of the men holding the queen looked at me, his head tilted slightly to the side. Beneath the thin red silk of his mask I could see that he was smiling. I pulled powder and was just about to flick it into the air when he grabbed the queen by her hair and held her out in front of him like some kind of prize fish. She screamed, her hands clutching at the man’s arm to keep her hair from being ripped out of her head.

  “Let her go,” I said. “Or I’ll send you to whatever hell welcomes child killers.”

  The queen kept writhing in his grasp, but the assassin put his other hand around her neck to keep her steady. The powder in my fingers was burning.

  “Take the shot, Kellen,” Reichis chittered. “If they get away with her, she’s dead anyway.”

  “You don’t know that. Maybe we can track them to wherever th—”

  “We’re never going to find them, Kellen. Take the shot.”

  The other assassins were pulling on a rope. A small boat was coming into view through the gate. “Reichis, I’ll kill her if I try.”

  The man holding the queen shook her, as if he was daring me.

  “Kellen, now!” Reichis shrieked.

  The queen screamed again. Then she seemed to find a strange calm and she called to me, “Kellen, don’t let them take me, please. Shoot!”

  The Zhuban didn’t make a sound, but just smiled and mouthed a word: naghram. Then he began falling backwards, still clutching the queen in front of him.

  Frustration tore through me. “Carath Erras,” I screamed, flicking the powders in the air, the red and the black grains colliding, biting at each other, exploding in their rage as the spell drove their fire outwards, towards my enemy, towards my queen.

  The blast passed right over them as they fell backwards into the arms of the Zhuban waiting in the boat. One of them threw something at me—a knife, I think. Reichis must have seen it first because he barrelled into the back of my knees, forcing me to drop down. The tip of the blade parted my hair as it flew by.

  After that, the boat slipped away down the underground river, and she was gone.

  51

  Capture

  I got back to my feet and started running, up the stairs and back along the hallways. I shouted for guards, but the only answers I got were the occasional moans and cries of the wounded and dying.

  “Kellen!” Reichis said, racing to keep up with me.

  “Come on,” I said. We were in one of the outer hallways, small, open-arched windows flicking by us as we ran. Flickering red and orange light caught my eye and I saw that outside those windows, in the city, fires were burning. Two… three… I couldn’t keep track. There must have been at least a dozen, spreading chaos through the city—enough to keep the city guard, Colfax and whatever marshals he’d taken with him busy until this was all over.

  “We’ve got to go,” Reichis said, panting.

  “I know,” I said. “We’ll go round the long way and out the west exit.” From there we’d have to go around half the palace to get down to the river and start following it.

  Reichis snapped at my calf. “Damn it, Kellen, stop! There’s no way we’re going to catch them now.”

  “There’s no one else even looking for her, Reichis. We’ve got to follow them before—”

  He growled. “It’s over, Kellen. It’s over. We’re never going to catch that boat. They’ve probably abandoned it by now and moved onto horses. Whoever else is involved with this is going to kill us if they see us, and whoever isn’t is going to think we’re a part of it. We’re the ones who embarrassed the queen in public. She came back early from the north without her supporters, and people are going to blame us.”

  I stopped, nearly falling over as a sudden weariness fused with my lack of breath. “Reichis, this was my fault!”

  “No, it wasn’t, you idjit. But people will think it was, and they’ll kill us for it. How’re we supposed to rescue the queen if we’re dead?”

  I tried to calm my breathing, but I couldn’t seem to slow it down. “Then we’ve got to get out of here and get help.”

  “Help from who?” Reichis asked. “Most of the marshals are gone, and half the guards are dead. Nobody here trusts us.”

  I thought about the cellar and the gate, the river and the boat, the carnage in the palace and the fires in the streets. “Someone’s been planning this for a long time, Reichis. This wasn’t just a band of Zhuban assassins coming out of nowhere.”

  “Maybe,” Reichis said, “but we don’t know who, or how many, or why, or how to stop them. And in the meantime, people here are going to content themselves with seeing our heads on the block.”

  “So we just let the queen die,�
� I said. It wasn’t a question.

  “No. We let ourselves live. That’s all that’s left, Kellen.”

  He was right, I realised. Whatever happened to the queen, I didn’t have a way to save her. And no matter how half the nobles felt about her rule, people were going to want blood. There’s always a patsy in situations like this. And if I stuck around, well, it was going to be me.

  We got to our room and I grabbed my saddlebags. It was a risk to stay around the palace, but the panniers contained the few items of value we had, as well as some of the ingredients for my powders. We’d need both to get out of Darome. We left the room and went back down the hall. The two assassins we’d killed were still there, but Arex’s body was gone.

  “You think there’s a chance someone got him to a healer?” I asked.

  Reichis snorted. “I doubt it. He probably crawled off into one of the rooms to die in private.”

  Only a squirrel cat would think of that one. I knelt down and pulled the mask off of one of the dead Zhuban—the one I’d killed. The one Reichis had done in wasn’t in any shape to be examined.

  “What are you doing?” Reichis chittered.

  “His face,” I said.

  “What about it?”

  It’s always hard to tell with a dead man. The skin tends to drain of colour pretty quickly. This one had black hair and his skin still held a hint of orange-brown. “Do you think he’s really Zhuban?”

  Reichis stuck his snout in close to the dead man’s face. “He’s got Zhubanese blood—that much I can tell.”

  “So does a third of Darome.”

  Reichis sniffed again. “Hair could be coloured, I suppose. Of course, lots of Daroman have black hair. Skin might be wind-tanned or it could just be that way from living outdoors. Maybe a farmer?”