by Sarah Remy
Mal’s warding served them well enough on the edge of camp. The two mercenaries sleeping in the first tent screamed as Tajit took them through an eye and the throat, respectively, but the lone soldier dozing the next tent over neither heard nor noticed, not until Mal ran his knife up through his third and fourth rib, neatly piercing the man’s heart. The gush of blood made the mercenary’s tunic useless, but his cape and leather helm were disguise enough.
Tajit stripped off his basarati and quickly dressed in stolen gear. Liam hesitated only briefly before tugging jerkin and wool cloak off a stiffening corpse. The lad’s hands shook as he dressed, but when he looked Mal’s way, his mouth was set in a determined line.
“All right?” Mal asked. Tajit nodded. “It’s a busy camp. The trick is in convincing yourself you belong. Stay close, look sharp, be bold.”
Liam muffled a nervous giggle. Mal waited until the lad had got himself under control, then banished the warding. The silver light dissipated, and the noise of the mud city grew louder.
“This way,” Mal decided. He strode from the tent, hands clasped casually at his back, and took the closest thing he could see to a path; a churn of well-traveled eastward trail. Liam hurried after, leather halberd creaking. Tajit followed more slowly.
Mal let his eyelids drift almost shut. Even with the moonlight to guide them, it was easier to follow the constellation of life in his head. The mercenaries and their attendants were stars in Mal’s skull, brighter and sweeter by far than the lesser corpse-spirits drifting alongside. Living energy, flagging in the elderly or ill, muted in the sorrowing or lonely. Here and there an angry flare of red madness, or a darker cast of bitterness.
The brightest stars shone at the center of the tent city, a veritable bonfire of healthy energy. The strong and the hale, Mal thought, gathered protectively around the most important man in the camp, Khorit Dard.
They paused, standing off to the side as a small group of men trooped past. The mercenaries spoke in low voices amongst themselves, vowels liquid and unfamiliar. They paid Mal and his companions no attention. Mal smelled the faint, sweet perfume of flowers burnt in temple offering.
“Opion,” Tajit said when the mercenaries were out of earshot. “The poppy. It’s said Khorit Dard snares his newest recruits with promises and a pinch of the black pulp, just a taste of false paradise.”
Mal squelched revulsion and moved on.
As they drew closer to the center of camp, he began to worry. Even in the middle of the night the mud city was alive and awake. Servants trotted past on business, brushing elbows and arms in the tight space. Yellow-eyed men with great shaggy beards squatted in groups around fire or in the dark, silent and watchful. There were women, malnourished camp followers lurking on the edges of busy spaces, hollow-cheeked and skirted, breasts bared to the air in the custom of desert whores.
Once or twice Mal caught the burnt-flower stink of opion, quickly gone.
When the constellation in his head became too bright to distinguish one star from the next, he stopped. Tajit eyed the bustle ahead from Mal’s side.
“We’ll not escape notice in that,” he said. “No matter how bold. No matter all the yellow eyes,” he nudged Mal pointedly, “look at their tunics.” Each man, no matter his age or apparent station, wore a stylized red silk flower pinned to his right shoulder.
“We won’t get away with thievery again, my lord.”
Tajit met Mal’s eye. “You’ll be needing a distraction, I think.” Mal startled, but Tajit only smiled, ugly face creasing. “Why do you think Isa insisted I come along, necromancer? Not for the pleasure of a walk in the mud.”
Mal opened his mouth on protest, but Liam tugged his sleeve in warning. “My lord,” he whispered. “That one over there, he’s coming our way. Best do something quick, he’s wearing a nasty scowl.”
Tajit grunted, and turned in the direction Liam indicated. “It begins,” he said, awarding Mal another broken smile, and a quick bow. “I’ll find you after, Malachi Doyle. Look for me. Now go. Don’t tarry.” He drew his sword and stepped forward, bellowing challenge.
Liam gaped after, frozen. Mal grabbed the lad around the waist and hauled him sideways and behind the nearest tent. Liam struggled, making a broken sound low in his throat, the tip of his sword dragging in the mud. Mal clapped his hand over the lad’s mouth, silencing him, and crouched low beneath a quickly conjured warding as a group of red-badged mercenaries ran past.
“Liam,” he said. “I need you to be still. I’ll not leave you behind, but if need be I’ll clock you over the head and carry you over my shoulder.”
Liam bit Mal’s hand, hard, puncturing glove. Mal swore. More men ran past, weapons drawn. Liam stilled. Mal counted to ten, then spoke into the boy’s ear.
“Better?”
Liam nodded. Mal withdrew his hand. Liam jerked away and to his feet, sheathed his sword angrily. “He’ll die.”
“He will,” Mal agreed. He stood, brushing mud from his knees. “And so will we, if we linger to help. He’s given us a chance at success. I, for one, don’t intend to waste it.”
“Avani would stay and find a way to save him,” Liam said with a vehemence that made Mal’s chest ache. “She wouldn’t leave him behind.”
“I’m not Avani.” Mal turned his back. “Are you coming?”
Liam didn’t answer, but when Mal slipped between tents, the boy followed only a few steps behind. Mal let the warding stretch to accommodate his reluctance. They’d walked a good way toward the center of the camp, skirting knots of frantic activity, before Liam scoffed.
“Knock me over the head, mayhap. You couldn’t drag me but a few strides, my lord. You’re that short.”
Mal grunted reluctant agreement, and resisted the urge to reach back and ruffle the lad’s hair.
JACOB FOUND THEM on their bellies atop a mound of mud-slicked firewood, looking down onto Khorit Dard’s tent.
Mal was growing increasingly desperate. They’d crept around tent and cook fire, crawled under empty wagons and over mounds of kitchen refuse, looking for a hole in the lord’s final defenses. The camp was awake and in uproar, an ant’s nest riled beneath the sinking moon. But even as men ran to and fro, shouting unintelligible orders, narrowly missing the edges of Mal and Liam, the wall of mercenaries around that final, pennant-topped tent stood firm. Liam was grown morose and silent, and Mal was beginning to fear he’d have to drop the last twelve men where they stood, consign desert bones to the ruined fields, because he saw no way to slip past without catching their attention.
They were solid desert soldiers, armor like a second skin, weapons easy in their hands, and they would cut Liam to ribbons without a second thought. Mal was trying one last time to convince the lad to stay behind, hidden within the stack of lumber, when Jacob dropped from the night sky and settled on Mal’s shoulder, scoring new marks through his tunic.
“By the Aug,” Mal sighed, at the end of his patience. He shook the bird off, ignoring Jacob’s petulant mutter. “Not now.”
Jacob balanced on a split log, beak half open, wings spread. He tilted his head, black eye unblinking, and made a sound like steam off a boiling kettle.
“Jacob.” Liam rolled off his belly and sat up, relieved. “Mal, he’s come to help.”
Mal returned his attention to the men below. “Last that bird helped we nearly went to the bottom of the sea.”
Liam snorted. Jacob laughed.
And the midnight sky groaned and tore asunder, and the ground rolled, tossing Mal up and into the air.
He landed hard, face in the mud. Lumber fell in pieces across his legs and spine, knocking the breath from his lungs. He heard screaming, and smelled scorched flesh. The ground rocked sideways even as he lay prone; for a moment he thought he was back aboard The Cutlass Wind. He scrambled to his hands and knees, dislodging wood, then managed his feet, legs spread ag
ainst the tremor in the ground.
“Liam!”
A crater cut the ground where they’d perched. Splinters of wood and bits of fabric stuck up from the mud. Split logs lay whole and in new pieces across collapsed tents. He heard moans and felt life fading all around.
“Liam!” Mal stumbled in the direction of ebbing energy and found not Liam, but a gutted mercenary, beard stained black with blood. Mal backed away. The dying man looked after, mouth working, and then his spirit stood in the mud, blue eyes baleful.
“The prince,” said the haunt, in the desert tongue. “Save the prince.”
Mal struggled away, conjuring a mage-light, sending it darting here and there, searching. He saw more ruin, and the dead man’s bottom half strung across broken tent poles, but no sign of the lad. He shouted, and reached for Siobahn, and came up instead against the empty space in his head where she no longer lived.
He thought the ground rolled again, or it was his heart in his chest, but he found himself prone in the mud, this time on his back, the moon once more properly overhead. He thought he was shouting, but his ears were ringing as if from sorcery badly discharged, and he tasted salt in his mouth, blood or tears.
The dead mercenary loomed over Mal, stubborn to the last. The ghost pointed, insistent. “Save the prince.”
Mal crawled, away from the spirit, into the center of camp. He passed two more dead soldiers. Their haunts stood silent, paying Mal no attention. He stole a scimitar from one of the corpses, used it to prop himself back upright, found the ground steady again. He settled the pommel against his palm, and walked forward.
Khorit Dard’s remaining guards rushed at him all at once. He smiled and let them come, let the battle lust come over him as it hadn’t since he’d last fought for his life on Stonehill Downs. He welcomed the rage, and the red haze of the hunt, and he took the first man with his sword and his teeth alike, breaking bone as he sundered muscle.
There were seven, and he killed them all. It was inelegant and messy, and he thought he howled when he took them apart. Once Siobahn might have brought him back from the killing edge, but now he was alone in his skull, and he laughed as he slit his enemy’s throat, laughed as blood spattered mud. His fists struck flesh again and again.
Thunder cracked and Mal staggered, almost falling. He caught himself against a tent pole, panting, and looked into Tajit’s face.
“Are you indeed mad?” the man screamed, eyes flashing blue as the moon. “Why are you dancing upon corpses when Khorit Dard stands waiting?”
Tajit’s spirit pointed. Mal followed the line of the other man’s finger, realized he stood beneath Khorit Dard’s billowing flag, was propped against the prince’s crooked tent.
“Go!” Tajit ordered, breath cold against Mal’s face. “Now.”
Mal let go the tent pole and dropped his sword. He took instead the long knife he’d chosen from his belt, carried it with him into the tent. His mage-light bobbed after, shedding warmth in the dark spaces. Even partially collapsed, the space was tall enough for a man to stand upright, long and narrow. Rugs failed to keep the mud at bay. An overturned table lay across rumpled bedding. The candles in their sturdy branch were snuffed, but when Mal pulled glove from hand with his teeth and touched the tip of his thumb to the wick, it was still warm, warm as the ember of life lurking behind a fold of fallen roof.
“Khorit Dard,” Mal called, gentle. “It’s no use hiding, opion prince. I’ve your taste, now. I’ll find you if you run.”
The Lord of the Poppies was not a large man, nor small. He was of average height, but more bone than muscle, except for a roundness about his belly, and a sag beneath his chin. He wore no beard, nor a circlet. His face was delicate, and Mal could see the Rani’s features beneath the more masculine angles. His eyes were all pupil, and he stank of charred flowers. When he stepped from behind his curtain, he limped.
“Joints,” he said in the desert tongue, then switched easily to the royal lingua. “The mud and the damp are hard on an old man. My daughter’s finally seen reason, has she, and sent me a proper end?”
Mal turned his head and spat blood onto the rug. Khorit Dard regarded the bobbing mage-light with curiosity.
“Magus,” he said, then, with more emphasis. “Necromancer.”
“Kill him,” Tajit urged from the door of the tent. “There’s naught in your way.”
Khorit Dard winced and groaned and sat himself atop a large gold-bound trunk. He stretched his legs across the rug, shifted to ease his swollen gut.
“Brought you across the very sea, did she?” he asked. “Dangerous, and clever. Isa was always the clever one, always knew which words to use to get her way. It was Isa convinced her mother to burn the flower fields, did she tell you that?”
Mal quirked his brows. The knife felt light and warm between his fingers, Tajit’s ghost chill as winter at his back.
“I haven’t any left,” Khorit Dard said. “Opion, I mean. If that’s what you’ve come for. I sent most of it home, in golden caskets like this one. The rest I rationed over the years, I’m a careful man. I took the last when I heard the elephant guns roar. It’s working on me now; don’t waste your knife. It stops the brain, too much, and then the heart. Like drowning, only sweeter.” He looked vaguely around the ruins of the tent, then back at Mal. “Was it you who convinced her to use the guns? I’ll admit I’m surprised. I honestly didn’t think she had it in her, clever, cruel Isa.”
He coughed, swallowing a wheeze, then hummed. Thunder cracked and the ground shifted. Mal braced himself against the shivering candle branch. Khorit Dard laughed.
“Būṛhē Adamī is angry,” he said, giggling. “He trembles in disgust. Wasteful bloodshed in sight of his shadow. Maybe not so clever after all, daughter.”
He snorted, and then gurgled in surprise as Mal’s knife took him in the throat. He whined, mouth wide and welling blood, then slumped sideways, toppling from the chest.
Mal padded across the rug, retrieved his knife, wiping it clean on the edge of Khorit Dard’s tunic. When he turned away, Tajit’s ghost was gone, and Liam stood in his place, the raven on his shoulder, bloodied sword in hand.
“I killed two men,” the boy said, scars pale against blanched cheeks. “And Jacob plucked the eyes from three more. Fire’s falling from the sky, and the mountain’s quaking. Are you quite finished, my lord? Can we go home now?”
Physic
THE LAST OF the sidhe gates on Mal’s map wasn’t a gate at all, but a grille in the floor at the back of the king’s stables, buried beneath a generation of straw and barrels of moldy grain. The two surviving stable lads helped Avani clear the space, eager for adventure but doubtful as to what exactly they were searching out. She taught them how to read the map, how to decipher north and south and east and west on parchment, and when they broke in the afternoon for rest and reassessment, the youngest ran to the kitchens and returned with mince pies and sweet cider.
It was near evening before they scraped away the final layer of debris, baring the grille. The spaces between the bronze lattice were clogged with mud and horse manure, and the grille stuck so tight into the floor that in the end they had to hitch one of Renualt’s best cart horses to the handle and drag it from the ground. It came free with a screech and a hiss, startling the cart horse into kicking, and sending the rest of the stable into a lather. The two brothers ran off to tend the animals, taking the cart horse with them, and leaving Avani alone with a square hole in the stable floor.
She rolled up the map, placing it carefully atop a pile of fresh hay, then lay on her belly on the floor and looked down. The dark opening smelled almost as poisonous as the Maiden Spring. When she sent her mage-light into the shadow, it revealed a straight shaft cut neatly from the bedrock, and hand- and footholds carved into one wall. Nor was the shaft as deep as she’d first thought, the drop little more than twice her own height.
&
nbsp; Avani muttered a quick prayer, then swiveled around and climbed feetfirst into the hole. The handholds were slippery and difficult. Twice she almost slipped, and as soon as she was close enough to the ground to drop without threat of injury, she did so.
As soon as her bootheels hit the dirt, she wished she’d had the forethought to use rope, of which there was plenty in His Majesty’s stable, because it occurred to her, and too late, that up might be even more difficult than down.
Rope was the sort of thing Russel always remembered when they went hunting sidhe gates, but Russel and every other soldier in the king’s service were busy scouring all of Wilhaiim with the caustic lye soap that had proved so effective against the Red Worm biters, the same soap that had kept the theist priests, all unknowing, protected in an infested infirmary, and had in the end saved many a citizen, including Peter Shean’s grieving wife.
Wilhaiim, Avani thought with dark amusement, had learned almost overnight to value a hot bath and a good scrub.
“Ai, but not in time.”
Too many young ones lost, and their ghosts walked the city streets in great gangs, refused to move on. Avani hadn’t yet found the heart to speak the words of banishment. Wilhaiim wouldn’t recover quickly or completely, not with almost an entire generation lost to the plague. The streets were still too quiet, too many windows shuttered in grief, the surviving adults dead-eyed and numb as they attempted to put the pieces of their shattered lives back together.
A gust of fetid air whipped around Avani’s ankles and up the shaft, scattering pieces of straw across the stable floor above. Avani’s mage-light flickered. She twisted Andrew’s ring on her thumb, clutched it against her palm until it warmed and soothed, and used the boost of energy to bolster her light. The sphere burst bright and white, revealing an opening in the shaft, another hole at knee height, a tunnel just wide enough for man or sidhe to shimmy through.