The Curse Giver

by Dora Machado

  “We grew up together in Laonia.”

  “So you really are the Lord of Laonia?”

  “I try to be.” When he wasn’t on the hunt.

  “Was it something you did to Orell?” she said. “Or was it something he did to you?”

  “Do you always ask this many questions?”

  “Only when my life depends on the answers.”

  He had to give it to her. She was a persistent little witch. But Bren was not about to tell her about how nearly nine years ago, after Ethan’s sudden death, Orell’s father had led the rebellion against the rule of the house of Uras. Or how the people of Laonia had risen in defense of the ruling house against the traitors and put down the revolt, or how the mob had hacked Orell’s father into bloody chunks and Orell had fled from Laonia and sworn fealty to Riva.

  “I don’t think Orell cares much for my rule,” he said instead, hoping to put an end to her inquiries.

  “So you think he doesn’t like you because of your politics?”

  “Why else?”

  “You must be blind like a calf born without eyes.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Can’t you see? The way he looks at you, the loathing in his eyes? Hatred like that is personal.”

  She had a mind as sharp as a needle and she didn’t miss a stitch. “I’ll worry about Orell,” he said. “He’s my problem.”

  “He’s my problem too,” she said. “What will happen if we can’t escape him?”

  “It’ll be a long stay in Riva’s dungeon for me.” Not to mention, he thought, a fast descent into chaos for Laonia. “But we’ll get out of here. You’ll see.”

  “I know you’re supposed to hunt me,” she said. “Because of my birthmark.”

  He felt the lack of air in his lungs for the first time. “Who told you that?”

  “Back at the seed house.”

  “Eleanor told you to run?”

  “It was Tatyene, the lady’s bodyguard, who brought it up.”

  That explained Lusielle’s escape. Eleanor had never been praised for her discretion and Tatyene wouldn’t do anything without her lady’s sanction. He owed Eleanor some gratitude for her patience over the years, but he didn’t appreciate her meddling with his affairs.

  “I don’t believe you want me dead,” Lusielle said with a conviction that left him reeling.

  “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “Hunting for a mark like mine might be your family’s sport, but if you wanted me truly dead, why did you come after me when I was about to die anyway?”

  Is that what Eleanor had told her? That he was hunting her for sport? Bren didn’t know if he was grateful for Eleanor’s fabrications or furious for her plotting. Had she woven the trap all by herself? Or was she playing someone else’s game?

  Women. The one crammed in the coffin with him was no dimwit.

  “Well?” she insisted.

  “Coming after you doesn’t make me any less dangerous to you.”

  “So you don’t deny the hunt?”

  How could he deny the truth? He shrugged.

  “Yet you don’t feel dangerous to me.”

  Her instincts were sorely lacking if she couldn’t feel the danger in him, and yet her honesty was refreshing. He had a dangerous impulse. For a moment, he considered telling her everything: the why, the how, the previous murders, the future’s gloom. But reason prevailed.

  He couldn’t betray Laonia.

  The wagon rattled violently. He pressed his body against hers to cushion the banging. They jostled against each other like tiles thrown together in a pewter cup. It was a fitting analogy. He was hoping that the death demon wouldn’t turn up at the end of this throw.

  Chapter Eleven

  THE MAN CRAMMED IN THE COFFIN with Lusielle wasn’t much for words. Talking to a toad would have bettered her chances to learn something pertinent, let alone helpful. A toad would have been more forthcoming and less irritating as well.

  She didn’t give a hoot about highborn and their bloody quarrels. After all, the highborn had been plotting against each other for centuries. But if she was going to escape with her life, if she was going to survive her plight, she needed to understand what the Lord of Laonia wanted and why. Her life depended on her wits.

  “Word in the kingdom is that Laonians are warmongers,” she said.

  A snort. “That’s what Riva would like for you to believe.”

  “He’s sent away a lot of able men and women to repel Laonian raids.”

  “Have you considered it could be the other way around?”

  “Why would we want to attack you?”

  “I’m not having this discussion with you.”

  How wrong he was. “We’ve heard rumors of a few little skirmishes at the river borders over the years,” Lusielle said.

  The man’s body tensed in the darkness. “Skirmishes?”

  “King Riva always wins.”

  “Ha!”

  “Ha?”

  “Do you always believe everything that Riva says?”

  “Nobody challenges King Riva and lives.”

  “Riva rules over a bunch of fools.”

  “The kingdom’s cemeteries are seeded with his opponents’ tombstones.”

  “He’s a man, not a god,” the lord said.

  “And yet he can’t be defeated.”

  “Of course he can be defeated. My father defeated him in battle twice, thirty years ago and then again twenty years ago. And less than two years ago, I repelled a full scale invasion at the Narrows.”

  “You did?”

  “The tyrant can be defeated. Laonia has seen to that.”

  Lusielle was hard pressed to believe what the lord was saying, and yet she had to admit that some of what he said made sense. There had been rumors. Thousands of troops had never returned from the river borders. Sons and daughters forsook their mothers for good. Husbands and wives went missing en masse. Food had grown scarce. Even horses had been difficult to find.

  Had the king managed to conceal a major defeat from his subjects? Was the Lord of Laonia telling the truth?

  She had never heard anyone else speak ill of King Riva, let alone challenge him openly. Everyone she knew was afraid of Riva. Not even the kingdom’s highborn dared to call the king a tyrant aloud.

  The Lord of Laonia might be short of words and quick to anger, but these days, a man had to be very brave to speak as he did.

  “Is that why the king is after you?” she asked. “Because you speak against him and claim you’ve defeated him in battle?”

  “I did defeat him.”

  “So the king wants to bring you back to the kingdom and silence you in the same way in which he has silenced every dissenter who speaks against him?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Will he order you quartered like young Torkel?”

  “Torkel?”

  “One of my neighbors, an aspiring painter who lived down the street. He got quartered for painting a portrait of the king without permission.”

  “Sounds like Riva.”

  “I heard the portrait was a good likeness. Maybe Riva will spare you the quartering. Maybe your sentence will be more like Marlina’s, the town demented drifter, who likened Riva to a swine during a fit of madness. She, he ordered drowned in a barrel of horse piss.”

  “Leave it to Riva to make quartering appealing by comparison.”

  But there had to be more to Riva’s quarrel with the Lord of Laonia, Lusielle thought, trying to ignore her body’s urgent need to stretch, to be free of confinement. The king had gone to great lengths to trap the lord, sending his goons across the river, taking pains to bring him back in secret.

  “What do you have that Riva wants?” she asked.

  He was silent for a few moments then said, “You don’t give up easily, do you?”

  “Is Laonia a rich territory?”

  “Some would think so. In good times, precious metals and gems can be mined from the Crooked Mountains. The sturdie
st of steeds are raised on the High Steppes. The finest wines are produced from the Hill Country crops. The best white woods can be harvested from Laonia’s Quercus Forests and the sweetest grains grow in the Lake Basin.”

  King Riva would like all of that, but Lusielle wasn’t daft. The lord had failed to mention Laonia’s greatest treasure, the Lake of Tears, the source of the Nerpes, the site of the sacred spawning and the beginning and the end of the all-important tides. Without the yearlings’ migration, there would be no quickening of the Nerpes. Without the quickening, there could be only hardship and famine.

  Since the Goddess’s time, Laonia was the lake’s first and final custodian. Even Teos deferred to Laonia when it came to the lake. Oh, yes. King Riva would love to take on Laonia’s duties, because if he ruled the lake, he could hold the land hostage to his whims and prevail over Teos.

  In addition, the king liked to grow his kingdom by annexing his neighbors. There were no Free Territories left on the west shore of the Nerpes. Had it not been for the river, Riva might have overtaken the Free Territories on the east shore a long time ago. Everyone knew the Narrows offered the only viable crossing for an army. Laonia was the plug preventing Riva’s poison from spilling into the rest of the world.

  “A foothold,” she said. “If Riva can get into Laonia, he’ll have a foothold for conquest.”

  “Impressive,” he said. “All that heat coming from your head ….”

  She would have hit him if those leather-and-copper plates covering his chest hadn’t posed such a challenge to her knuckles.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “Laonians are fierce fighters. We won’t let Riva cross the river.”

  That was the real reason why King Riva was after Laonia’s lord, because if the king couldn’t defeat the lord in battle, the only other choice he had was to try to end the lordship line and take over Laonia’s charter as the king had done many times before with the territories he had annexed.

  But if that was the case, why was Orell keeping the Lord of Laonia alive? Why wasn’t he dead yet?

  The highborn code. It was shifty territory, but Lusielle knew that it had been set up to prevent savagery among the bloodthirsty highborn. The code prohibited a highborn suspected of murdering another highborn from appropriating a territory, unleashing Teos’s infamous inquests and imposing stiff penalties on the aggressor, including death and the loss of charter.

  King Riva would want to avoid all of that. It was probably the only reason why Laonia’s lord was still alive.

  But people disappeared in the kingdom all the time without a trace. Murder, by definition, couldn’t be proven if a body never turned up. And if the Lord of Laonia made it to the kingdom, there was a good chance he would never be seen again.

  One other thing. “Don’t you have to be present to renew Laonia’s charter when Teos summons you?” she asked.

  “Aye.”

  “Don’t you have to offer tribute then?”

  “Everyone has to pay the tribute to Teos, and that includes your mighty King Riva.”

  “What happens if Laonia can’t pay the tribute?”

  If he would have been a bear, he would have growled. “You don’t think I can meet my obligations?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “We’ve managed every year of my rule so far.”

  But with him trapped and unable to raise the bounty, it couldn’t be a surety this year. His rule would end. Laonia would lose its charter. Riva would prey upon a world where no one believed the tyrant king could be challenged.

  What a frightening prospect for her, who had lived under the king’s rule her entire life and was now a fugitive of the king’s capricious justice; what a grim and hopeless prospect for the Lord of Laonia, for Laonia and for the Free Territories.

  “Perhaps it’s fate,” he said. “Perhaps the gods are set on ending the rule of the house of Uras.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “I’ll get to Teos on time. It’s my duty.”

  And it was obvious to her that he took his duty very seriously.

  The cart stopped suddenly. The fake funeral procession came to a halt. Lusielle and the lord fished for the discarded gags in the coffin, stuffed the foul things back into their mouths and tucked their hands behind their backs. Surprise was the only advantage they had. The Lord of Laonia clutched a blade in each fist.

  “Here we go,” he whispered through the gag. “Are you ready?”

  Lusielle braced herself. The lid lifted. Orell hauled her out of the coffin and dropped her against the cart’s railing. Two of Orell’s men were readying to lift the Lord of Laonia when he exploded from the box. Death came quickly for the careless men. The lord’s knives sliced through sinew and flesh with chilling efficiency. Orell unsheathed his sword and launched his bulk against Lord Brennus, calling for his scattered men to join him.

  Lusielle spat out the gag and spotted the lord’s weapons piled on one side of the wagon. She lunged for the sword and, unsheathing it from the scabbard, called out, tossing the heavy blade in the air, praying it wouldn’t slice off a finger or a hand.

  He caught the sword in midair and deflected Orell’s blow with a block and a thrust. Lusielle bolted over the wagon’s bench, unhooked the brake and grabbed the reins, urging the draft horse into an uneasy trot. The wagon made for an unwieldy load, with the two men fighting in the back, an escort of saddled horses tied to the cart, and three or four warriors in pursuit. Lusielle didn’t allow any of that to stop her.

  One of Orell’s mounted guards caught up with the wagon. His sword crashed next to her with a deafening whack. When she dodged his sword again, he leapt from his horse and climbed onto the side of the driving bench. She struck him with the whip, once, twice, three times, then braced a foot on his belly and kicked him off the wagon. She looked back just in time to see Orell, diving headfirst into the mud with a bloody gash on his shoulder.

  “Ha!” she egged on the horse. “Go!”

  The beast strained to pull the wagon on the muddy road. The wheels sank in the deepening mire. Several arrows struck the wagon. One hummed too close to her ear and hit the bench, pinning her skirt. The angry shouts of Orell and his men kept up with the wagon’s pace. By the gods, they would be on them very soon.

  The Lord Brennus pulled up next to her, clutching the belt that held his weapons, riding one of the horses that had been tied to the back of the wagon. “Jump!”

  Lusielle swallowed a rush of fear and, ripping her skirt free from the arrow, jumped into the front of the saddle. A harsh grip secured her atop the horse. The beast’s powerful muscles gathered beneath her precarious seat. The horse took off, leaving the lumbering wagon behind and taking them out of Orell’s arrows’ reach.

  The sun was struggling to rise. A gray fog lodged in the landscape’s hollows as the low-lying road led them through a deepening swamp where the dark waters of the Dismal Bog seeped like black molasses into the mighty Nerpes. The horse had trouble with the sludge. The rain had muddled the trail even more. The thick mire muted the horse’s hooves, imposing an ominous silence in the surreal dawn.

  They had made almost two leagues when the horse began to falter. Lusielle turned in the saddle and spotted an arrow in the horse’s haunches an instant before the beast stumbled. She tumbled head over heels into the mud, crashing into a stand of cattails.

  She shook off the impact and found her bearings. It took her a moment to clamber back onto the road. The poor beast was sprawled on its side, bleeding out from the arrow wound.

  She could hear the lord cursing with the land’s foulest mouth. As she came around the dying horse, he thrashed on the ground, half-buried in the mud. His leg was pinned beneath the animal. Every time he moved, he sank deeper into the mire. Lusielle glanced in the direction they had come. Orell and his men couldn’t be far behind.

  “You better get running.” Lord Brennus strained to free himself, but he wasn’t making much progress. “They’ll be
on us as soon as Orell regains his mount.”

  He was right. Lusielle started to leave. She had a good destination in mind and a plan to journey there. This could be the only opportunity she might have to escape Orell and Laonia’s lord. She had been listening very carefully during the time they had been trapped together in that awful coffin. She had learned a lot about Laonia, but despite having plenty of opportunities to dispel misunderstandings, not once had the fickle lord attempted to dispute the notion of her death at his hands.

  And yet she couldn’t get herself to walk away. She didn’t understand many things about the Laonian lord, but she couldn’t forget that he had freed her once from the fire and a second time from Orell’s clutches. In fact, while it pained her to admit it, she could very well be the reason he was trapped and sinking into a mud pit, in a land where he was considered an outlaw.

  And he wouldn’t be able to meet Laonia’s obligations while imprisoned in one of Riva’s dungeons.

  Lusielle had lived all her life under the king’s harsh rule. She had experienced the king’s injustices on her own flesh. She understood the dangers firsthand. If she failed to act, she could be condemning all of those brave Laonians, indeed all the people of the Free Territories, to the tyranny of Riva’s reign.

  She made up her mind. A debt paid was freedom gained. She would help him now, then she would find a way to part company and continue her journey.

  “What are you doing?” he said, when she took a cautious step toward him. “Don’t come any closer!”

  “Oops.” Lusielle’s leg sank into the mud all the way down to her thigh. She tried to back out, but the mud clung to her leg with astonishing grit. It was thick as mortar and sticky as glue.

  Gathering her skirts around her waist, she pulled and tugged until at last, with a sudden slurp, her leg came free. The mud returned her soiled foot, but almost managed to keep her boot. She fished it out with the tip of her toes and rushed to put it on.

  Her eyes narrowed on a cluster of exuberant growth visible in the bog beyond the gnarled trees edging the road.

  “You need to go,” the lord said. “Orell’s going to be in a foul mood when he catches up with us. He’ll have to keep me alive for Riva, which means he’ll take his anger out on you.”