Sophistus nodded again, and I felt my arm start to move, ever so slowly.
“Kellen,” the queen said softly to me.
I wanted to yell or scream, You stupid girl! Hurt as she already was, I wanted to shout at her, This was your plan? This? A child’s fantasy that…that what? That I can break free from something I can’t even understand? Everything was going to go to seven hells, and all because this foolish little girl had thought I had a kind face and somehow that could make everything okay.
“Kellen,” she said, so softly I thought for a moment it was just inside my head. But I could see her across from me and see her mouth moving. “What makes a person evil?”
“Get on with it, Sophistus,” I heard the count saying. He sounded very far away for some reason.
“In a moment,” the binder answered back. I felt myself starting to laugh and realised it was him. “This is amusing.”
The queen ignored him. “Kellen, how could you be born evil? How can a thing be evil without the freedom to make that choice?”
Move, I told myself. Just move. I tried. I tried as hard as I could just to move, to twitch a finger or open my mouth or anything that would feel like I was me, that I was in control; that I was a person, not an instrument for someone else to play. I tried to think of a spell. But my magic was weak. It had always been so weak. Just like everything else about me. And even if I were a better mage, what spell can you cast without your own will?
“Kellen, you know it’s true, deep down. Under all that hatred and loathing you feel, under all that fear, you know you’re not evil.”
Right. Because of my kind face, I thought.
My right arm was now perpendicular to the line on the writ where my signature would appear below the queen’s.
“Kellen, I know you don’t believe that you’re a good man. That’s okay. Maybe you don’t have to be good on the inside. Maybe I can be good for you.”
Stupid, I thought. The words of a child overwhelming whatever wisdom was supposed to come along with being the two-thousand-year-old spirit of her royal line. How could one person be good for another? The shadowblack was inside me—a pure, toxic evil. So what if I didn’t feel evil? Does anyone? Doesn’t the murderer believe at some level that he’s righteous? Doesn’t the defiler think he deserves what he takes?
“For goodness sake, Sophie, I need to get the supper on,” Darlina said.
“A moment…” the binder said.
I could see him in my field of vision too. Something was different. The muscles in his face were clenched, and he was struggling. Then my hand started moving and I made the first letter of my name. It sat there like an indictment as the pen continued to move.
“Kellen, maybe there is something inside you that you can’t change. Perhaps the shadowblack truly is evil. But maybe it takes more than that. Maybe evil is only evil when it’s what we can’t change combined with what we choose not to.”
Maybe it’s what we can’t change combined with what we choose not to. I thought about the things I’d done in my life. I thought about Reichis and how many times he’d kept me from running. I was a coward, but his courage had sometimes been enough to make me stand and fight. I was weak and foolish, but Ferius’s wisdom had sometimes been enough to make me clever. I was a liar by instinct, but Nephenia’s fearless honesty had taught me to be truthful, sometimes even to myself. Maybe that’s how it was with the queen. I was broken inside, but what if I didn’t need to be good? What if I could just…do good? Could I still be a coward and do the brave thing? Could I still be evil and do the right thing? Wouldn’t that be one hell of a spell?
My hand slowed down. It was barely moving.
“Sophistus, don’t make me come over there and reprimand you,” Martius said.
The binder was sweating now, and, I realised, so was I. What was happening here? Could it really be this simple? Was the cure for evil nothing more than…what? Believing you could be good? No. It wasn’t that. It was something else. Ever since I’d run from my people, I’d been fighting to be free, to make my own decisions, to not let anyone control me. I’d always believed that if I ever committed myself to anyone or anything, if I ever served someone else, I’d be a slave. So I’d become an outlaw. A slave to nothing, to solitude, to myself.
I felt the binder’s invisible hands clench around my soul. Funny thing that: until I met him, I’d never really believed I had a soul. Now he was putting everything into binding it and that made it real to me.
In that instant I gave whatever soul I had left to the queen—not forever, because having a soul isn’t the same as living in a prison, but for now. For right now. I can be good for you, I swore silently.
I heard a voice start to say something. It sounded like my name.
“Sophie,” Martius said, “why’s he talking?”
“I—”
Then I heard the voice again, stronger this time, and realised it was coming from me.
“My name is Kellen Argos, you withered old bastard. I’m the Path of Endless Stars. The queen’s spellslinger. And my shadowblack soul may be rotten to the core, but I’m still more than good enough to kick your arse.” I saw Sophistus’s expression change as he felt the last part of me slip from his grasp. Yet there still must have been some small connection, because I could tell he knew my next words even before they passed my lips. “Carath Erras.”
The explosion took away my hearing for a few seconds. I felt myself choking, but not on smoke. I wasn’t breathing. At first I couldn’t remember how—couldn’t command the muscles between my ribs to fill my lungs with air. Then, all in a rush, I was breathing again, so much and so fast that I became lightheaded. When I calmed down enough to make sense of the world again, I saw that I was on my feet with my hands out in front of me. The white binder was doubled over and folding to the floor, a small, round blast mark on the wall behind him. My fingertips stung from the sloppily fired spell, but I revelled in the pain. I was myself again.
No, I thought, my chest releasing its tightness, knowing I was now bound to this strange little girl for as long as she needed me. I’m better.
58
The Reckoning
The sound of the blast brought Martius’s other men into the room, but freed from the white binder I blasted them out before they could get through the door. Three bodies now littered the floor, the life draining out of them. Count Adrius Martius, the would-be ruler of the Daroman empire, gazed down upon the death of his servants and his dreams with an equanimity that only a truly practical sort of madman could muster. “Well,” he said, leaning his elbows on the kitchen table, “that’s that, I suppose.”
I let my hands drift back to the holsters at my sides.
“You won’t need those,” he said. “There’s no one else here but us and the boys. Had to be that way. Couldn’t take a chance on anyone getting greedy and talking.”
“So that’s it? I take out one old monk and a few thugs, and your whole conspiracy falls apart?”
Martius gave a weary little smile. “You ever plan a palace coup, son?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“Well, first lesson is, no matter how well you plan it, no matter how careful you are, you go into it knowing if it fails you’re done for. That’s just how it is.”
“You don’t seem scared,” I said.
He shrugged. “Wouldn’t make a difference. Fear is just a lot of trouble that won’t change the outcome one bit.”
“A careful, practical man like you? You expect me to believe you didn’t make any contingency plans?”
He gave a laugh. “Contingency plans? Kellen, what do you think this was? Leonidas was supposed to take the throne, not me. But you’re right, I suppose. I’ve done other things. There are other plans still in motion. But nothing I can change and nothing I’ll live to see. Come here, darling,” he said to his wife. She walked past the queen and knelt down to kiss Martius on the cheek and give him a rough hug.
I pulled my hands out, pinch
ing just enough powder to take them both out, flexing my fingers to make sure I had the dexterity to aim precisely and not let anything hit the queen. She rose up and put her small hand on my arm. “No,” she said.
I looked down at her. “You can’t mean it.”
She shook her head. “You killed those others because you had to. There was no other way. But I don’t want you to put any stains on your soul for me. I need you to be good for me.”
I thought about ignoring her and just doing what needed to be done, but I was afraid of what it would do to her, to her faith in me.
“There’re plenty of knives in the drawer, little miss, if you want to do the deed yourself,” Count Martius said.
The queen looked over at the man who had engineered so much misery in such a short time. I couldn’t imagine the anger inside her right then, but her hand felt hot against my skin.
“No, thank you for your courtesy, Count Martius. But the first thing a queen learns is the cost of every royal act upon her soul. Feeding my desire for revenge would not be—” she gave a weary little smile—“practical.”
Martius didn’t respond, didn’t nod, didn’t show any sign that he understood.
“You won’t be troubled by us any more,” Darlina said, rising to her feet. “I’ll cook something up that’ll send us to the long sleep. No sense waiting around for the marshals service or our own allies to do us in, once they figure out we failed.”
I thought about that, and about what Martius had said about other plans being in motion. I looked down at Colfax’s body. “Give me one of those knives,” I said to Darlina.
We left them there and walked out of the kitchen, past the parlour and into the entrance hall. I took a cloak from a hook on the wall and used it to cover the queen against the cold. I wasn’t sure where we were, or how to make our way back to the palace, but there were horses outside and all I needed right now was to get away from that place as fast as possible.
“Kellen,” the queen said softly as I bent down and wrapped the cloak around her shoulders.
“Yes, Your Majesty?”
“I’ve been very brave,” she said.
I nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty, you have.”
She took a very small breath and let it out again. “Is it all right if I’m scared for a while? I think… Is it all right if I’m not brave, just for now?”
I picked her up in my arms and pushed the front door open with my foot.
“It’s okay,” I said softly. “I’ll be brave for both of us, just for a little while.”
“I knew you would save me,” she said in my ear.
Looking down at her small body, the bruises and cuts bearing mute testimony to a hundred violations, seeing the tears of relief and something a little like love in her eyes, and worst of all feeling the tight, sudden clench of her arms around my neck as she held on for warmth and reassurance, I hated myself for the myriad ways I’d failed her. I had betrayed her once at the palace when they came for her, a second time when I’d used her kidnapping as a way to escape punishment for my failure. And even now I was betraying her, by letting her think I’d saved her when, in fact, she had saved me.
As we stepped out into the cold night air, I reminded myself that I was born a coward, the way that other men are born with a club foot or cleft palate. In this life, you play the hand you’re dealt.
But if I had to, for her, I would be brave for just a little while longer.
59
The Broken City
It took us several hours to find our way back to the palace even on the sure-footed horse we rode. I still wasn’t familiar with the capital city, and the queen, her body resting back against my chest, fell in and out of a kind of fugue state as we travelled.
Two-thousand-year-old soul or not, her mind and body had suffered more than anyone should. She’d held up a long time under whatever tortures Martius and Darlina had devised for her in their cold, practical hearts. But eventually we all pay the barman for what we drink, even when all he serves us is pain and sorrow.
What slowed us down the most though was steering around the flames and chaos that filled the streets. Buildings were on fire in several districts we rode through. In others, looters were taking apart the very bricks and using them to enact further destruction.
Martius had been right about one thing: the Daroman people weren’t nearly as strong as they needed to be to keep an old and decaying culture alive. How many confederates had aided in his plans? It would take years to track them all down. I shuddered to think what vengeance the marshals service would mete out once they regained control. Part of me wanted to help them do it.
“We’re almost there,” the queen said softly, opening her eyes and looking straight up at the night sky as if she could navigate our position from the stars.
“Almost home,” I said.
She gave a sad little laugh. “Home.” Then she looked at me and said, “I thought I heard… Did you kill a man back there?”
I nodded. One of the looters had come for us. Most were smart enough to stay out of the way of a warhorse, and the queen in my arms just looked like any little girl. Sometimes one would throw a brick at me as we rode past, hoping to knock me from the horse, but few men had the aim or strength of arm to make that work. This one though had found himself a good long spear and seemed to know how to use it. I had blasted him from existence without even slowing the horse. I’d had to stop after that as my black powder had run low. I didn’t know how many more times I could do the spell. My body was bone-tired, and my fingers had no feeling left. But if I did need the spell, I couldn’t rely on old Erras any more. So I’d stopped off in an alleyway and done some dark business with the bloody souvenir I’d brought with us from Martius’s hideout. I hoped the queen understood why I was doing such a foul thing. In any case, she made no comment about it.
“I appreciate your protection, Kellen,” she said as we rode, “but once this is over I would ask you not to kill my subjects if you can at all avoid it.”
I smiled. “I’ll try to limit the number of murders I commit.”
She nodded and her eyes flittered shut once again. “That’s good.” Her hand squeezed my arm. “You’re not an outlaw any more, you know.”
An hour later we reached the palace gates and I saw what awaited us, and realised I was going to have to break my promise sooner than I’d expected.
60
The Price of Promises
Forty men stood between us and the palace entrance. Forty Daroman soldiers who had no good reason to be outside the gates with three dead guards at their feet.
If I’d been smart I would’ve put the queen in the hands of a marshal as quickly as I could find one after we’d left Martius’s hideout. But I hadn’t. I was tired, and angry, and I’d been beaten half to death by the damned marshals service. I had wanted to bring the queen in myself, sneak her inside the palace and then jam my thumb in the face of the first marshal I found and told him to fetch me some coffee and my damned squirrel cat. It would’ve been a good moment. But in this world, things don’t work that way. In this world, you come through hell only to find forty soldiers with their shiny steel helmets standing between you and freedom. Forty soldiers I’d met before, when they served under Leonidas.
“Get off the horse,” one of them commanded. He was the one I’d met back in Sarrix. Sergeant Tarius.
I knew we wouldn’t get ten feet before they caught us, so I dismounted.
“She comes down too,” he said, pointing to the queen.
“Who?” I asked.
“You know who. Get her down or I will.”
“Say her name,” I said.
The sergeant took a step closer. I flipped open the flaps of my holsters and dug my hands inside. His men readied their weapons. Tarius looked at me, weighed what he saw in my eyes. “You can’t take us all,” he said evenly.
“I surely can,” I said. “I’ve got enough powder in my holsters to send every one of you on a short ride t
o the seven hells.” I pulled my hands out, each one filled with powder, their endless hatred for each other even now making them burn in my palms. “I just have to be willing to make the journey with you.”
“Kellen, don’t…” the queen said.
“She’ll die too, spellslinger,” the soldier said. “Did you think of that?”
“Say her name,” I repeated.
“Ginevra,” a voice said, softly. Beautifully. Painfully. “Ruler of Darome, daughter of a line of great kings and queens. My beloved cousin.”
The soldiers parted as Mariadne walked between them.
“Cousin, will you not greet me?” she asked.
The queen dismounted from the horse. “Countess Mariadne,” she said, curtsying. “Beloved cousin.”
Mariadne stepped towards me, with plenty of sorrow in her eyes, but no fear. “It’s over, Kellen. The queen comes with me now.”
I shook my head slowly, never taking my gaze from the countess.
She smiled. “So fierce. Just like you were when you fought for me. Was it only a few days ago? Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps it was just a dream, your ladyship. I’ve never been known for my heroics.”
She came closer and placed her hands on mine. “Unfortunately that’s not true, Kellen.” Ever so gently, she turned my wrists. I let the powders fall to the ground, far enough apart to keep them inert. “Good,” she whispered. “That’s good. We can make this work, you and I.”
“Really?” I said. “How exactly?”
Mariadne put her hands on the sides of my face, a gesture uncomfortably reminiscent of my sister’s. “I didn’t betray the queen, Kellen. I had no knowledge of Martius’s plans. I never knew he planned on using me to take the throne.”
“I know,” I said. As gently as I could, I forced her hands away. “But then Leonidas died.”
She nodded. “He died. You killed him. To save me.” She leaned in and kissed my neck before whispering in my ear, “And I love you for it.”
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