Sacrifice: The First Book of the Fey

by Rusch, Kristine Kathryn

  “All right, then,” he said. “Get this counterattack started, and make sure someone else comes up here with more holy water for the guards outside.”

  “Yes, Sire.” Monte nodded once, to acknowledge the King, then let himself out the door.

  Stephen pushed the Danite. “You go with him.”

  “But—”

  “King’s orders,” Stephen said.

  The Danite frowned in confusion, but left as well. Stephen closed the door behind him. “Odd,” he said, leaning against it. He brought the bottle to his face. The water inside glistened.

  “I would have liked to question that Danite more,” Alexander said.

  “Not yet, Sire,” Stephen said. “Let’s see how this counterattack goes first.”

  “You are supposed to follow my wishes,” Alexander said, noting that Stephen did not use a term of respect in his address.

  “I am supposed to protect you.” Stephen put the bottle of holy water on the conference table. “How were we to know that Danite was one of us?”

  “He was with Monte,” Alexander said. Stephen watched him. Alexander frowned and peered at the bottle. “You think this is a ruse to get at me?”

  “It could be, Sire.”

  “Then why would Monte—?” Alexander stopped, remembering the conversation earlier after the advisers had left the room. “You think Monte might be under the Fey’s magick?”

  “We can take no chances,” Stephen said. “At the moment the only two people we can be certain of are me and you.”

  “By the Sword.” Alexander sat heavily on the bench. “And we can trust each other only if we remain together.” This level of caution was beyond him. Not to trust people he had known all his life? How could his world have turned itself upside down so quickly? “We can’t live like this.”

  “If this holy water works,” Stephen said, “we will devise a test for those who are near you. It might all be moot, anyway.”

  “If the holy water works,” Alexander repeated, putting his face in his hands, not willing to let himself feel. “If it works, we have hope.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  This body’s slenderness belied its lack of strength. Silence cursed as he scurried across the courtyard. He hated the part of his magick that forced him to duplicate his hosts exactly. The first Islander host had been too fat, and this one was no better, remaining slim by relative youth and excellent heredity, not through exercise or a good diet. He was getting winded already.

  The battle continued around him. Fey and Islanders fought outside the back entrance leading to the palace kitchen. Shouts and screams echoed in the air. Swords flashed. Near him an elderly servant used an iron barrel rim to slash at passing Fey. Silence kept swivelling his head, afraid that the Danites were nearly upon him. They wouldn’t try to kill him, thinking he was their precious Lord Powell, but if some of that holy water splashed on him . . . He shuddered. No one deserved to die like that.

  He was still disoriented from the change. Islander personalities did not mesh well with his own. In Nye he would change and be that person immediately. Here even his knowledge of the culture came slowly.

  This second change made everything slow. The changes depleted him more than he cared to admit.

  Behind him, Shima called a retreat. Her voice trembled as she yelled.

  The clothes he had stolen were too tight. He hoped no one would notice that he dressed differently than Powell had been a moment before. At least he had remembered to grab his stiletto in all the confusion.

  He slipped behind a column, cowering as he had seen Powell do. He hoped no one had seen him speaking Fey with Shima. That would make him suspect from the start. But he couldn’t worry about that now. He had to find Jewel, and quickly.

  Shima’s commanding voice broke off in midcry. He turned, saw the Danites clearing their way through the crowd. The stench was rising—and the tone of Fey voices was changing from victory to terror. He took a deep breath, then pushed into the melee that blocked the door to the kitchen.

  Islanders slashed at Fey with clubs of burning wood, with knives, and with swords stolen from the dead or dying. The Fey—the Infantry—were fighting back with their own swords, youthful faces covered with sweat. The stench of the dying hadn’t made it to this area yet. It smelled of smoke and fear.

  Both of his personalities recognized faces. Most of the fighting Islanders were kitchen staff, although a few of the guards had made it this far down. The butler was staving off two Fey with the handle from the butter churn, screaming as he did so.

  All of the Fey in this area were from Shima’s troop: Infantry members too young to have discovered their magicks, or the unfortunates who had no magicks to speak off. He weaved his way around the fighters, glad for Powell’s relative height, each step another step between him and the Danites.

  He kept to the walls. The screams and cries and shouts were a blur to him. He couldn’t tell which were in his native tongue and which were in Powell’s. He squinted through the smoke and near darkness, hoping to see Jewel.

  It wasn’t until he got near the stairs that he realized something had changed.

  Islander and Fey stood side by side, forming a semicircle. Their expressions seemed identical: a mixture of confusion and hope. All held their weapons at their sides, as if they were afraid to use them.

  Burden stood near Silence, his sword bloodied. He was breathing heavily. Silence followed Burden’s gaze.

  There, in the center of the circle, Nicholas held Jewel while his men tied her hands. She wasn’t struggling.

  Silence swallowed, a cold terror running through him. She wasn’t wounded by the Danites, for she would be dying. Could the Islander boy have bested her in a fight? Jewel, granddaughter of the Black King, one of the strongest of all the Fey?

  He pushed his way through the standing crowd, his heart pounding wildly at the risk he was taking. Fey or Islander could strike at him at any moment. He took advantage of the oddness of the situation to protect him.

  “Well done, Highness,” he said in a voice that carried. “Our first prisoner. Is she yours?”

  Nicholas glanced up, and a wariness crossed his features. “Lord Powell. Shouldn’t you be helping my father?”

  Jewel was watching him, a slight frown on her forehead. Some Fey claimed to be able to recognize a Doppelgänger no matter who he was wearing, but she had never been one of them. Still, Silence felt as if she could look through his disguise.

  “Your father sent me here,” Silence said, and with that statement an image jumped through his brain. He knew where the King was, and he knew how to get there. Perhaps if he could stay ahead of those Danites, he might be able to demoralize these Islanders after all.

  But Jewel came first. Rugar could not lose his oldest child.

  “I am supposed to monitor the ground.” He held out his hand as he came forward. “But you seem to have it well under control. Let me take this prisoner to your father.”

  “I don’t know if she is a prisoner yet,” Nicholas said. Then Silence noticed the dagger in the boy’s left hand. The fear that was dogging him grew.

  “Oh?” If Silence was going to rescue her, he had to sound diffident. And Powell thought he knew the boy: all reckless curiosity and flamboyance, with little real strength. Silence hoped his host was right. “Well, then, if she’s not important, kill her.”

  The words came more easily than he expected. Nicholas’s grip on his dagger tightened, but he shook his head. “She’s important,” he said softly.

  Silence took a step closer. Jewel didn’t move, her gaze trained on his face. “Then let me take her for you. You can finish up here. The Danites are coming with a potion that kills these creatures quickly, leaving no time for even a death cry. We have the situation well in hand now.”

  The Islanders had finished tying Jewel, but Nicholas still clutched her against him. “Where would you take her?”

  “To the barracks. We need to be able to question these creatures, and sin
ce you think she’s important—”

  “I’m taking her to my father.”

  “What?” Silence couldn’t hide his surprise.

  “They all listen to her, they all follow her. She’s someone important. My father can question her, maybe even bargain with her.”

  The boy’s stubbornness made Silence’s chill grow. Silence forced himself to smile. “She is probably just a division commander. She probably knows nothing more. We won’t need to bargain, since we have our holy water. We are going to win, Highness.”

  “Are we, milord?” The boy smiled in return. “Then indulge me.” He took Jewel’s arm and pulled her to the stairs. “You know where my father is. Take me there.”

  Silence swallowed. Behind him he heard the cries of dying Fey. He glanced over his shoulder. The Danites were at the door, making their way into the room. The stench preceded them. All the Fey would die. All of them. Even Jewel.

  He tried not to let his fear show and scanned his mind for Powell’s knowledge of the castle. Not all the pieces were there yet, but some of them were. Even if Silence got Jewel, he would have to take her through the Great Hall, the lodgings, and finally into the streets: the streets from which the Danites had come.

  To the Islanders, though, he was one of their rulers, one of their lords. He would be able to free her and take her to the Shadowlands later, when the path was safer.

  The screams were growing behind him. He wished for one moment without Islander presence. He would scream a warning to his people. But that was the price of his profession. He had known it since he’d been a boy at the battle of Issan.

  “All right,” he said, striding closer and taking Jewel’s free arm. “I’ll take you.”

  Color filled Nicholas’s face as Silence touched Jewel. Jewel didn’t move. Silence looked down and saw that her face had gone vacant, her eyes glazed.

  A Vision.

  He bit back an oath. The Black King’s granddaughter, fighting in the Infantry, when her entire body could be paralyzed by a Vision. She had kept it secret from all of them. She had to. Rugar wouldn’t have let her fight with this kind of magick.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Nicholas asked, his voice rising, a boy again and not the man he was pretending to be.

  “I don’t know,” Silence said. “Perhaps it’s some kind of trick. Let me take her from here—”

  “No!” Nicholas said. “She’s coming with me.”

  The tension in her body relaxed, and she crumpled in their grasp. Silence put a hand on her back, but Nicholas used his body to brace her. Powell’s knowledge of the boy did not extend to kindness toward women. If anything, he showed an atypical lack of interest in them.

  Perhaps he was one of the cruel—the kind who took Fey women and tried to destroy the magick in them by force.

  Jewel’s eyes fluttered. Her gaze focused slowly on Silence’s face, and she smiled. “Silence,” she whispered in Fey.

  He couldn’t respond. He couldn’t make a movement that would give himself away, although he wanted to say something, anything. Instead he squeezed her arm, the terror in him deepening. His responsibility was no longer to Rugar and the Black King. It was to the Fey themselves. For the loss of Jewel meant the loss of their future.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  She came out of a sound sleep gradually, hearing the cry of a baby, and wondering why Roca tortured her so. She wished Drew were beside her to cradle her as he used to. It’s only a bird, beloved, he would murmur. Only a bird.

  But as she stirred, the sound continued. A baby’s cry, deep and heartbroken. And a woman’s voice, quiet and soothing. Eleanora frowned. Her body ached. As she opened her eyes, the room spun. The ceiling was thatch, and she was lying on something soft.

  The room was small with rough, unsanded walls. A table stood beside the bed, with a single candle on it. The window, at the bed’s foot, had no tapestry covering it. The room smelled of drying mud and fresh milk.

  She blinked; then the memories came back. They had had to help her to the half circle of cottages that formed the village of Daisy Stream. When they’d got to Helter’s cabin, she had passed out. Her frail body had not been able to take any more. They must have put her on their bed.

  But those creatures hadn’t come.

  “I think we should go to Coulter’s and see what she was talking about.” A male voice filtered through the window.

  “They might have gone in a different direction.” A woman—Vy?—said. “She wouldn’t have taken the baby otherwise.”

  “Really?” Helter asked, his voice soft. “We all know how she covets children.”

  A lump rose in her throat. She pushed herself up, willing the dizziness to go away. Covets children. And she had thought Helter was her friend. He was Drew’s friend and nothing more. Maybe not even that.

  “She doesn’t covet children,” Vy said. “She cares for them, just like many women do. She never took anyone’s child before. In fact, she brought Gitwen’s son home when he ran to the river that time. She could have kept him at the house. It was right after Drew died.”

  Eleanora ran a shaking hand over her face. The baby had stopped crying, but the woman was still crooning in a nearby room. Helter’s cottage was big, even compared to Coulter’s. Helter’s family had lived there for generations, and Helter’s father had always believed that separate people needed separate rooms.

  She used the wall to brace herself and sat up slowly. Splinters dug into her fingers. This room had to be a more recent addition. She pulled the blanket off her legs. The dizziness was strong for a moment; then it faded. Too much effort for an old and starving woman.

  “Why don’t we send a group to Coulter’s? If there’s a problem, we need to know, and if she took the child, Coulter needs to know.” Helter spoke forcefully. It sounded as if he had moved closer to the window.

  She took a deep breath and eased herself to her feet. Then she smoothed the blankets on the bed—a feather mattress suspended on a wood platform—how much more comfortable than her pallet on the floor—and walked to the door.

  The bedroom opened into the kitchen. Like Coulter’s, this room had a hearth stove, very small, that heated everything. The table was old enough to have scratches. Lowe had the baby on her shoulder, her hand patting his tiny back. His little face was red from crying, his eyes squeezed shut, his breathing even. When Lowe saw Eleanora, she smiled.

  “He’ll be all right,” she said. “He misses his parents, but he will be fine.”

  “Did he eat?” Eleanora asked. She kept one hand on the door frame to brace herself.

  “We warmed some goat’s milk for him. He drank it all.” Lowe’s gaze ran the length of Eleanora. “How are you?”

  Eleanora smoothed her hair. “Shaky. But fine. How long was I asleep?”

  “Not very long,” Lowe said. “You need more rest than that.”

  “There’s been nothing on the path? No one following me?”

  Lowe shook her head.

  Eleanora pushed off from the door frame and crossed the room, letting herself outside. The sun was out, but the air had the coolness of twilight. The cabins were dark. All of the villagers sat around the meeting stump just past Helter’s front garden. Helter stood near the edge of the garden, beside the blooming berry plants. He had sounded closer inside.

  The conversation stopped when people saw her. Helter turned.

  Eleanora hadn’t seen this many people in years, maybe not this many at once in her entire life. She cleared her throat. “If you send people to Coulter’s,” she said, “make sure they can defend themselves. And make sure they can hide.”

  Helter had the grace to look away from her. “No one has come up the path.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe they don’t know there are settlements this far out. I was afraid they were going to follow me. Maybe they didn’t even know I was there.”

  “You’ve got to admit,” Helter said, “that your story is fantastic.”

  “Just because it’s strange
doesn’t mean I lied.” She kept her hands loose at her sides, trying to look relaxed. Any bit of nervousness would make her even more suspicious to him. “If I was were going to steal a child, do you actually think I would be foolish enough to bring him here—a place where you knew his parents—and then tell you where he came from? I’m old, Helter, not stupid.”

  “I think we need to take her seriously,” Vy said. She was sitting at the edge of the semicircle, leaning against the stump. “These creatures sound frightening. If they can kill Coulter, they can kill anyone.”