She did not bother visiting the gorge, even though that was the most direct route back to Knightswrath. Even Humans were not foolish enough to leave so obvious an entrance into their city unprotected on the eve of a siege. She suspected that by now, a pile of rubble blocked off the old entrance into the sewers, and scores of Dhargots with crossbows had been given the sorry duty of patrolling the sewers.
She thought back to how she, Royce, and Saanji had ridden ahead with the vanguard and discovered a small host of Iron Sisters massed outside the city. Zeia had recognized the Isle Knight in their midst before any of them—though the absence of an adamune with a telltale hilt of dragonbone had filled her with dread. Almost immediately, she’d pressed one flaming hand to the Isle Knight’s forehead, sending her thoughts into his. She’d ascertained where the sword was, and she might have rushed straight into the sewers right then and there to retrieve it, but a company of Dhargots happened by.
Only a hundred strong, they posed no real threat, and they ran as soon as they spotted Royce’s banners and the flashing armor of his men. But Saanji, fool that he was, had ignored Royce’s advice and given chase. She suspected that the foolish Human was trying to impress her. And even more foolishly, she’d delayed her entrance into the sewers to see that the Earless prince—who now truly only had one ear—made it back in one piece.
By then, it was too late. Dhargots had massed along the city walls, and catapults added their fury to an endless arc of arrows, driving them back. Now her only chance to retrieve the sword of Fâyu Jinn lay in entering Hesod the same way that a host of Shel’ai and Unseen assassins had once entered Lyos: through its wells. Zeia winced at the thought of how much what she was about to do would hurt.
She trudged through the snow, alone in the no-man’s-land between the encampment and the city. The walls of Hesod loomed above her. In places, ice glazed the stone. Dhargots massed around the battlements. A few shouted insults and fired arrows at her, but she was too distant for the latter to reach her and unperturbed by the former.
Zeia searched north of the city until she found what she was looking for. Just ahead, illuminated by moonlight, the snowy fields gave way to a frozen ribbon of water. Fishing huts lined the icy lake, along with a line of modest watchtowers, but all looked to have been abandoned. Nevertheless, Zeia approached them cautiously.
While Lyos drew its water from an aqueduct that ran all the way to the coast and fed a massive manmade reservoir within Pallantine Hill, Hesod’s water came from wells fed by a river that ran near the city. In winter, ice formed over that river. Even if one broke through the ice, swimming the river all the way to the wells would have been impossible, as no one could hold their breath for that long.
Not without magic.
Zeia hesitated. Fadarah had never attacked Hesod; thus, the Shel’ai had not performed any reconnaissance there. For all Zeia knew, the watery tendrils that ran underground and fed Hesod’s wells were far too narrow for a person to swim, anyway. She could lose her way. She might even become trapped, held in the darkness until her magic ran out, followed promptly by her air.
Besides those risks, and despite her earlier boasts to Saanji, she had never been among the strongest of Fadarah’s Shel’ai. The spell she was about to attempt had always been too difficult for her in the past.
But I have to try. I have no choice.
She thought of the Isle Knight—what a disappointment he’d turned out to be thus far. Instead of rallying nations and inspiring armies, as Fâyu Jinn had done, he’d floundered in the wild, alternately drawn to and fearful of the incredible magic at his disposal. Silwren had sacrificed herself for nothing. The Human stood no chance against Chorlga. Better that they’d all just forgotten about Fel-Nâya completely and explored some other means of slaying the Dragonkin. But it was too late for that.
Zeia reached the frozen waters, took a deep breath, and let it go. Looking down, she thought she saw fish passing by, a dark blur far beneath the ice. She knelt in the snow. Summoning her flaming hands, she pressed her palms to the ice. She shivered even as she urged heat to flow through her ghostly touch. Slowly, the ice began to melt.
She withdrew her hands long before the ice had completely gone, knowing she had to conserve her strength. Dismissing one flaming hand but retaining the other, she drew her sword. She fumbled as she gripped it, still not quite accustomed to the strangeness of holding something with a wispy hand formed entirely of magic—a hand she did not feel so much as sense. Gathering her strength, she drove the blade downward. The ice cracked.
Zeia withdrew her blade. Rather than stab with it, she swung and swung, as though she held an axe. Sweat formed on her brow, but she went on chopping until chunks of ice fell away, revealing the pale-blue water beneath. Then she sheathed her sword, dismissed her flaming hand, and sat to catch her breath.
She stared at the ugly, puckered scars capping her wrists. A wave of resentment filled her. El’rash’lin wielded the powers of a Dragonkin. He could have restored her hands and made her whole, but he had refused. At the time, she’d agreed with his decision. But perhaps she had been hasty.
No, El’rash’lin was right. He was right about everything, from the beginning. If Fadarah… if all of us… had just listened to him, none of this would have happened.
She lowered her arms, letting her sleeves slide down and conceal her scars. She rose to her feet. For a long time, she stared at the pale, cold waters. To her surprise, she thought of Saanji and felt another pang of guilt over the pain she’d caused him during her demonstration of the mind-stab technique.
Pushing the prince from her mind, she summoned her flaming hands once more, ungirded her sword, and let it fall. Then she took another deep breath, stepped off the bank, and let the icy water close over her head.
Igrid woke to find a sweaty, rat-faced man with yellow teeth leaning over her. She feared for one wild moment that she had died and Fohl, the Undergod, had come to torment her by endlessly hauling out her insides. Then she recognized the robes of a healer. His nimble fingers fussed with her bandages, though his eyes and chilling smirk betrayed his greater interest in her breasts, which were as bare as the rest of her.
Then the healer noticed that her eyes were open. He leapt back. Igrid reached for his throat, but something stopped her short. She realized she’d been tied down. She turned her head, looking left then right. She was lying on a bed. The room smelled of wine and putrid incense. Lanterns blazed on tables all around her.
Gods, where am I?
She struggled, but the bonds tied to her wrists had been wrapped underneath the bed. Identical ones held her ankles and thighs. She studied the healer then looked past him and saw still more figures in dark robes lurking by the lanterns. Panic surged within her, but she forced herself to smirk.
She tried to threaten the men by telling them how pretty their ears would look on her necklace, inviting them to come closer so she could bite them off, but she found that she could not speak. For a moment, she thought it was just the consequence of her dry, parched throat. Then she remembered the alley—and the knife.
Gods, I tried to cut my own throat…
She gnashed her teeth and hissed.
The lead healer paled. He held up his hands. “Don’t move, child. We’re just changing your dressings. The good news is that your bones have almost healed. But lie still, or your wounds will reopen.”
The note of pleading in his voice puzzled her. The men weren’t city clerics. They looked like Dhargots. But Dhargothi healers were known for observing the same stern philosophy as the warriors: only the strong deserved attention. The weak were better left to perish. Why would they care if she lived or died?
Igrid looked down at her body. Bandages wrapped half her torso, but where the healer had not yet finished, tight stitches were wreathed in purple skin. A thin trickle of blood ran from one of them. Igri
d winced as a wave of nausea swept over her.
“Don’t retch,” the healer warned. “If we have to keep stitching up your guts, you’ll have more holes than flesh.”
One of the other healers laughed and said something crude. Igrid gritted her teeth and stubbornly willed herself not to vomit. Slowly, the nausea subsided, relaxed by numbing pain. Despite her best efforts, her eyes watered.
“I’ll give you wine for the pain, but you have to promise to lie still.”
Igrid nodded weakly.
One of the other healers handed the leader a goblet. A third, younger healer came forward and helped lift Igrid’s head. He held it while the leader brought the goblet to her lips. Igrid drank. The wine was strong but bitter, obviously mixed with herbs to dull her pain. The leader lowered the goblet so that she could swallow.
The other healer made another crude comment. Igrid shifted her eyes, batted her lashes, and smiled at him. The next time they offered her the goblet, she filled her mouth, waited until they lowered the goblet, and spat at him.
The healer let go of her head, which fell back down on the pillow, sending waves of pain radiating out from her throat. The younger healer cursed, wiped his face, and lifted his other hand to strike her. The leader stopped him with a sharp command. He spoke a name, and the younger healer paled and backed away.
Karhaati. He said Karhaati’s name…
A chill raced through her body. Had the Bloody Prince himself ordered that she be saved? If so, what sick torments would a man like that have in mind for her once she’d healed? She considered forcing her wounds to reopen so that she could die then and there.
The lead healer looked down at her again. After ogling her, he looked into her eyes when he spoke. “Please don’t struggle. I promise, child, we’re trying to help you.”
Igrid forced herself to nod. If she meant to reopen her own wounds and bleed out, she would have to wait until the healers left, anyway. With supreme effort, she managed to lie still as the lead healer finished bandaging her while two more healers assisted him. Igrid noted that although they freely leered at her naked body, which made her skin crawl, none touched her beyond what was called for.
When they were finished, the lead healer sent the others away. Igrid accepted another drink of wine then endured the humiliation of the rat-faced old man spoon-feeding her a bowl of vile-tasting broth. By then, she felt tired. She wondered if the wine had also been drugged.
“That’s enough,” a voice said.
The old man turned and bowed. “Of course, my prince.” He flashed Igrid a look—was it pity or pleading?—and hurried to go. A big man in red robes stepped into the lantern light. He grabbed the old man’s arm, turned him back around, and pointed at Igrid.
“Why is she uncovered?”
The old man paled. “Prince, as you commanded, we were changing her dressings, checking stitches—”
“Are you still changing her dressings and checking her stitches?”
The old man hesitated. “No, my prince. Forgive me—”
“You’re finished, yet you left her there, naked. Did I not tell you that she was to be treated with dignity?”
“We have treated her well,” the healer insisted. “I swear on the Dead God, no man has touched her except to—”
The big man punched the healer in the stomach, held his fist there as the healer jerked, then pulled back. Igrid saw a wide, bloody knife in the big man’s hands. He knelt, wiped the blade on the dying healer’s robes, then straightened. He snapped his fingers. A big man with a patch over one eye stepped out of the shadows. He gave Igrid a leering glance then grabbed the old man’s arms and dragged him out of the room. His whimpering confirmed that he was still alive. A moment later, Igrid heard a wet, rasping choke from the hallway.
The Bloody Prince closed the door, flipped the knife, and sheathed it. “I’m running out of healers, Iron Sister. Strange that even bruised and stitched, you manage to be beautiful.”
Igrid forced herself to meet his gaze. Though her heart pounded painfully in her throat, she refused to look away. After a moment, the Bloody Prince nodded in what looked like grudging approval, stepped forward, and grabbed a blanket off the floor. He covered her.
“Believe it or not, as much as the thought pleases me, I have no intention of raping you. Nor will any other man so long as I’m alive. I have other plans for you. That’s why I put you in my own bed, so that I could be close enough to protect you.”
Queen Sharra’s bed, Igrid realized.
“Do you have any idea how strange it is that you’re still alive? Fever, infection, the depth of your wounds, one of which was actually poisoned… yet here you are.” He sat down at the edge of the bed.
Igrid went rigid.
“Clearly, the Dead God wishes it so, as do I.” The Bloody Prince withdrew something from his belt and dangled it in front of her.
When Igrid realized what it was, she tried to claw Karhaati’s eyes out despite her bonds. He smirked. He dangled the dark lock of Ailynn’s hair over Igrid’s face a moment longer, then sniffed it, grinned, and tucked it back into his belt. He stood. “Do I have you nice and rankled, Iron Sister? That’s good. You see, I mean for you to regain your strength, all of it, before I kill you. I want you at your very best, understood? Either you give me a good death, or I give you yours. That’s what warriors like us deserve.”
He moved slowly around the room, extinguishing one lantern after another. Igrid panicked again as darkness began to swallow the room. He gave her a chilling look, his face half lit by firelight. Then he extinguished the last lantern. Igrid braced herself, prepared to fight as hard as she could, if only to open her wounds and speed up her death.
For a long time, nothing happened. She could hear the Bloody Prince standing near her bed, breathing heavily in the dark. Then he opened the door, left the room, and closed the door behind him. A moment later, she heard the door lock.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The Challenge
“This is mad. You know that, right?”
Royce blinked at Saanji’s accusation then smiled faintly across the council table. “I thought we’d already settled this. We can’t wait for the Dragonkin to bring up his army and attack us from the rear. Either we withdraw and brace for a siege ourselves… which we might have to do later, anyway… or I kill the Bloody Prince right now, in front of his city, and remove one enemy from the game board.”
“This isn’t a game,” said the female Isle Knight seated to his left.
Saanji nodded, pointing at her. “Gods-damned right, it isn’t!” Realizing he was standing up, he sat back down. He picked up his goblet and took a long drink. “You’re good, Royce. I’ve seen you dance circles around men in the practice yard, and the gods know how much trouble you made for my brother. But this is a needless risk. Spring will be here in fewer weeks than I have fingers. Just wait. My brother’s own men will kill him soon enough.”
But Royce was already shaking his head. “And what if they don’t? Or better yet, what if they do? We’ll just be replacing one enemy with another. Better the Bloody Prince dies in humiliation while the Dhargots are already vulnerable.”
Someone said, “Loyalties aside, perhaps our one-eared friend just doesn’t feel like watching his kin die. He can hardly be blamed for that.” The speaker was the young, bronze-skinned prince of the Queshi, who also happened to be the tallest man Saanji had ever seen. While the others had arrived at the council wearing armor, the Queshi wore only plain riding clothes and a dagger. His sand-colored hair had been pulled back in a tight braid. Nothing about him betrayed his rank besides the fierce-eyed bodyguards standing with crossed arms behind him.
Saanji lifted his cup. “Do not be concerned, Prince Kentua. I promise you, I’ll gladly kiss the hands of any man who guts that bastard.”
“The
goddesses know he’s in dire need of gutting,” Haesha added, lifting a goblet of her own.
The Dwarrish prince, Leander, spoke next. Despite his muscular frame and dented armor, and in spite of all the horrors Saanji guessed the young man must have witnessed, his eyes remained shy and downcast. “My men and I didn’t come here to fight Dhargots. We didn’t come here to save the Hesodi, either… as much as we sympathize with their plight.” He nodded toward Haesha, who answered with a stony scowl. “I’m sure Kentua can say the same. We came here for Chorlga.”
Kentua nodded. “Chorlga and his metal devils didn’t just do harm to our Dwarrish neighbors. We Queshi once had a city of trade near the southern border of Stillhammer, at the base of the mountains. It’s gone now. Women, children… all happened as you would imagine. Chorlga must answer for that. And by my arrows, he will.”
“But the Bloody Prince is the Dragonkin’s strongest ally,” Royce countered. “Chorlga might be powerful, and his Jolym might be gifted killers, but he cannot hope to rule all of Ruun without help. He’ll use the Dhargots to enforce his will throughout every kingdom, including yours.” He nodded to the two princes, who sat beside each other.
“Agreed. Better we break the bastard now.” Haesha rose unsteadily to her feet, one hand on her sword. “And I should be the one to do it, not you. No disrespect, Lancer, but I’m the closest thing to a captain that the Iron Sisters have left. I speak for them. Better I honor our slain by slicing the Bloody Prince throat to cock and feeding him to the crows.”
Maybe if you hadn’t already drunk more wine than I have, Saanji thought, listening to the faint slur in her voice.
Royce gave the Iron Sister a respectful nod. “I admire your passion. If I fall… which I don’t expect I will… then you are free to issue any challenge you like. But I’ve brought thousands of men from Ivairia, and if I might speak bluntly, more than a few of them are anxious to go back. Our own king has ordered it. My men need to be reminded why they’re here in the first place. As much as the Bloody Prince has to die, I have to be the one to kill him.”
Kingsteel (The Dragonkin Trilogy Book 3) Page 45