Ruin of Stars

by Linsey Miller

  His jaw tensed. Through clenched teeth he muttered, “Moira Namrata.”

  It reached the whole square despite his attempts to swallow the words, and Moira nodded.

  “I am Moira Namrata, daughter of Namrata Vera, the First Star of Nacea and Protector of the Northern Reach, and now, I am the Last Living Star of Nacea.” She raised her arms to the crowd, palms out and runes bared. “You know Naceans resettled in Erlend. Gaspar del Weylin told you it was from the kindness of his heart. He granted us land and saved us from the slaughter of our home country when Alonian shadows invaded us from the south. He told you half truths—they were not Alonian shadows. They were Erlend shadows made by Celso de Lex. I know this because Weylin taught me to make shadows with Celso’s notes. I know too that Weylin ordered the release of those shadows in northern Alona to fight their army, but he didn’t know they couldn’t control them. So when they started heading north, they let them through Nacea instead.”

  She turned to him. Her arms fell. The knife slapped against her thigh.

  “Weylin did not think of this on his own. Lena de Arian, Nevierno del Farone, Caden de Bain, Horatio del Seve, and Mattin del Aer decided that it would be better to let the shadows destroy Nacea, slowing them down and giving the Erlend army time to retreat.” She turned to the crowd, silhouette a jagged blur of runes poking through her skin. “Do you deny that you had a hand in this?”

  “They would have destroyed Erlend!” He jerked. The bonds held. “I will not apologize for saving the lives of the people I swore to protect when I took up my title.”

  “So you admit to damning Nacea to the shadows,” Moira said, “but claim it was to save Erlends?”

  “Of course.”

  Moira pulled the copies of Riparian’s ledger from the box. “This is a list of all the people Weylin tested magic on when trying to bring it back and all the people who died when he forced us to make shadows.”

  She began to read a list of names. A dozen names and then a dozen more, and plenty of them were Erlend names. Erlend, Nacean, Alonian, and a few from Mizuho as though the terror hadn’t spread far enough. I found Elise in the crowd, her spectacles two stars among the sea of unfamiliar faces, and stared at her. She shuddered at each name.

  She wasn’t the only one. A quarter of the crowd was screaming, sobbing, tearing down the steps to be closer to the stage and proof of their loved ones’ fates.

  One shadow, slight, lanky, barely a smear of dark before the torchlight, slipped through the crowd without so much as touching another person and stopped before a woman at the front. The shadow wore a ragged cloak that only just hid the remnants of their body—a bony leg, a flayed hand, and a blank, bleeding face. And the woman called the shadow “daughter.” Embraced it. Her.

  People.

  So many people.

  Moira spoke till her voice grew hoarse and tight, crackling with each detail and death—a flayed person and failed shadow strung up at the border, a group of rangers trained in flaying so that Our Queen could know Erlend’s wrath, and a long, long list of the children Winter helped send from the south to Erlend for study. The last name a man’s, convicted of desertion. His brothers denied it until Moira described his face and scars.

  “Leon Margo and Perrin Cal.” I choked on my parents’ names. “Shea Leon and Hia Leon, my siblings. They weren’t even five yet. I don’t remember my sister’s laugh, but I know the color of her skull at dawn. And you made more shadows? Killed more children? Started a new war? Because Our Queen of Igna—you can’t even call her country by the right name—didn’t start it. You did.”

  “We were killing a war criminal that your queen let live.” Winter tried to look at me, but his ropes kept him still. “Rodolfo da Abreu murdered our mages after the treaty was made. He tortured them to death.”

  “He cut the runes from their skin so that no one would ever know how to make shadows again, but you couldn’t let the world forget.” I shrugged. “And you can’t speak of war crimes. You nearly killed Royal Physician Isidora da Abreu. The only reason she’s not dead is because I stopped you then. You threatened to kill the family of a servant if he didn’t assassinate Our Queen.”

  It was easy to pick out the Erlends who’d seen the shadows. They were crying or shaking or staring in horror at the lithe-limbed shades above us.

  “The Erlend nobles have made shadows twice now,” I said. “The first time, you destroyed an entire nation. What if it hadn’t worked? What if they’d escaped into Lynd?”

  Moira laughed. “Weylin had a plan for that. It was only for him and his court—not the citizens, not the soldiers, not the servants. They were to be his new Nacea and slow the shadows down.”

  A rock flew from the crowd and slammed into the stage at Winter’s feet.

  “I had planned this to be Gaspar del Weylin’s confession and execution, but Nevierno del Farone is just as guilty, just as monstrous.” She reached out and pressed the point of her blade to his cheek. “Don’t worry. I won’t flay you like Weylin made me flay my mother. I am not the monster Erlend’s nobles tried to make me. I will end your monstrous reign.

  “This is what it’s like when people really know you,” Moira said to him. She raised her face to the crowd. “Is there anyone here who would speak in defense of Nevierno del Farone?”

  Namrata, rotten limbs dragging across the ground, dripped blood down the steps as she walked down the center stair of the amphitheater and onto the stage. The crowd rippled as she passed, leaning away from her. The last human parts of her sloughed away.

  “I would.” Her voice shook. “But he would not speak for me, my daughter.”

  Moira nodded, hands shaking, and opened her mouth to speak, but Elise beat her to it.

  “I, Elise de Farone, would.” She stood, cheeks damp and spectacles pushed to her forehead to keep them clean of tears. “But I was there when he tried to kill Isidora dal Abreu and when he sent the children we were sworn to protect north to be used and hurt and killed, and I cannot speak for him anymore. He doesn’t deserve it.”

  “I’ll kill you!” He tried to launch himself from the chair and tumbled back, nearly falling over altogether. His teeth clacked together. “All those kids, all your Naceans, they’ll be dead by dawn. Gaspar made sure of it.”

  “I hear your words,” Moira said, “and I am not compelled toward mercy by them.”

  She stabbed the knife into the wooden stage at her feet. Winter collapsed back, shoulders slumping. His eyes rolled from side to side.

  “You can’t kill me. You’re Nacean.” His voice cracked. Blood dripped from the ropes at his wrists. “You can’t spill blood. You can’t. It’s not allowed. She’ll disown you.”

  “It’s not?” She laughed, head thrown back, and cut his cheek. “Are you sure?”

  He shuddered.

  Moira let out a shuddering breath, mouth half-open, eyes wide, and lips pulled back in a taut sneer. “Do not tell me how to live my culture, a culture you have tried to destroy time and time again. You know nothing. You’re so shortsighted. All these years with us, and you think it’s about spilling blood? Death isn’t an equivalent exchange. I can’t simply erase the blood killing you will leave on my soul. But I can repent for it. I can bear my guilt.” She reached into the box at her feet and pulled out a pitcher the size of her torso. “You don’t even know what guilt is.”

  Moira closed her eyes, took a breath, tilted her head to night, and when she opened her eyes again, I could’ve sworn the Lady’s stars shone in them.

  “You and your confidants tried to kill us.” The runes beneath her skin writhed and tore and ripped free from her, pooling at her feet till nothing but blood and bone and skin remained within her. “I wish I weren’t like this, but this is our choice, and you will not take another one from us. Making us be like you, making us give up our traditions to take up yours. You tried to kill us twice.”

  The words rattled in my chest.

  It was a different kind of killing.

  Mo
ira hugged the pitcher to her chest. “So every dawn of every day since you first had us carve souls from skin, I bled and cried. I regretted something that wasn’t even my doing. No more. The pain you caused ends tonight.”

  Winter quivered.

  “I offer my blood, blessed and saved, as payment for past, present, and future indiscretions against others.” Moira tipped the pitcher and blood trickled down and down until the clot-speckled puddle of red at her feet encompassed us all standing on the stage. She pulled free the knife. “Do you have last words?”

  He shook his head. “You can’t.”

  She raised the knife to his throat, pressed the blade to his chin, and didn’t draw a single drop of blood.

  “I can’t.” Moira laughed, sobbed, and stepped across the river between her and Winter. “But your crimes are great and demand a fair trial. So, citizens of Erlend, what punishment fits Nevierno del Farone’s crimes?”

  Lady, she could have me till my veins ran dry and my bones were dust, till everything within me had rotted and returned and the only words that left my lips were the winds through my cracked teeth.

  She was better than he could have ever been.

  “Give him to us,” the Erlend woman in front, arms still clasped around her daughter’s shadow, said. “To his shadows.”

  The crowd surged, some stepping forward and some moving back, and three of the nine shadows drifted to Moira. They whispered to her, dripping blood across the stage. A dozen people waited before it.

  Winter had pushed me from a window. He had killed Ruby. He had been part of the plot that killed my family.

  But Winter was not my kill.

  He’d hurt so many more than me. His fate belonged to everyone and not just me. Moira was right.

  Moira undid his shackles and ropes. Elise buried her face in her hands, and he started running, stumbling, away from the stage. The shadows flickered, thorns through flesh. A line of red welled across his neck. He fell.

  I closed my eyes and turned away.

  And the Erlend Winter died screaming.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  There was no body. There was no blood. There might have been no death at all if not for the weary-eyed stares of the grieving. The other Naceans dragged Riparian to the chair, and she, still quiet as she had been all night, only sneered. Elise did not look up.

  “I read your ledgers, Lena de Arian.” Moira pulled the knife from the wooden stage. “I know how much you think a Nacean life is worth. How much an Erlend life is worth. How much do you think you’re worth?”

  Riparian didn’t answer.

  “No answer?” Moira asked. “Did you never take stock of your life as you did ours?”

  The thick, green leggings covering Riparian’s legs were torn and filthy, splinters of her carriage caught in the creases, and a jagged wound cut across her left cheek. Fresh blood on new snow.

  “I know who I am and what I’ve done, and I regret nothing. I know what the people of our future will think of me. The only reason Lynd still stands is because we directed the shadows through Nacea. If we hadn’t, Erlend, the whole of it, would be dead. So no, no begging, no regrets.” Riparian’s gaze slid across the crowd. “And it brings me great comfort knowing that in two days’ time, all the Nacean homesteads will be razed.”

  Moira, the runes along her throat crumbling and her voice fading, stilled before her. “What?”

  “Gaspar sent the rangers to kill as many Naceans as they could two days ago. They’ll reach the closest one in two days. You won’t.” Riparian laughed deep in the back of her throat, tears dripping down her chin. “We knew you’d pick tonight. The only things we didn’t know were the details.”

  Moira stilled. A shuddering hum rose in me, shaking through my teeth, my ribs, and an unnatural quiet settled over the crowd till all I could hear was Moira’s unsteady gasps. The nine leaves in her arms bubbled over with blood. She cupped her hands together.

  “The closest homestead is four days away,” Moira said. The blood pooling in her palms dripped through the cracks in her fingers and overflowed. It turned to ash before it even touched the ground. “My shadows against your rangers. Who do you think is faster?”

  The pile of ash at Moira’s feet scattered in the cold night air. Nine figures, bandaged and bloodied, rotting bodies held together by nothing but will and runes, stepped into the lights of the stage. Namrata, more shade than flesh, stepped between Moira and the crowd. I stared through the dark nothing where Namrata’s lungs should have been and met the eyes of an Erlend girl, hollow-stare deadened even more as Winter’s blood dripped down her shirt.

  “Gaspar del Weylin commanded me to make shadows. If I didn’t, he would kill me, my family, the town I grew up in, and anyone else he deemed fit to die.” Moira’s voice shook, and she held out her hands full of blood and ink and ash to Riparian. “He watched as I stripped my mother from flesh to muscle to bone to soul, and when I cried, he reminded me of how many would die if I stopped. And every success, every failure, you logged in your ledgers next to the monetary worth of the person used.”

  Namrata and the other shadows grew darker in the bright lights, their wispy silhouettes taking shape, and began to march from the amphitheater.

  “And?” Riparian arched one perfect eyebrow. “The people of Erlend were always the most important part of my life. They were always the people I protected. All those people I saved, all those people I’ve spent my life caring for, will not let you walk away from killing me.”

  “All the good you did,” Moira said, pulling out a copied page from the ledger, “but does it make up for the twenty Erlend children, the twenty Lynd citizens no older than fifteen and too ill to live without a physician’s aid, you told Weylin to use when you couldn’t send others to use instead?”

  She huffed. Shook her head. “Of course. That’s absurd. Just because you know their names and recite them near me doesn’t mean I killed them.”

  Moira glanced at me. The shadows were gone, racing to catch the rangers before they reached the Naceans, and her skin was the ashy pale of blood lost too quickly.

  “If Erlend does not want her death, Our Queen Marianna da Ignasi does.” I tied my opal mask around my head and took the long-bladed knife from Moira. “Whatever good you did here, Lena de Arian, you are still responsible for the attempted assassination of Our Queen, kidnapping, and murder.” I cut her free from the chair. “Weylin abandoned you, left you here with us to die so that he could escape, so where will you run?”

  She stood and fell, stumbling off the stage. I followed.

  “What do you know of the south?” I asked the people nearest me as I descended the stage. Riparian fled up the steps. “Of what Lena de Arian has been doing?”

  “The southern holdings were political prisoners.” The blood-splattered girl looked from Riparian to me. “They escaped. The queen retaliated. The war restarted.”

  “No,” I said, “they were trusted allies, and they tried to assassinate multiple members of Our Queen’s court before seceding from the nation and rejoining Weylin. They’re traitors, and they started the war.”

  “It’s true.” Elise stood, eyes teary and hands shaking. “I wasn’t a prisoner. My father wasn’t a prisoner. Lena wasn’t a prisoner. We were members of the noble court. We were normal people there. It was my father who took me prisoner when he brought me here. When he tried to kill the people I grew up with just so he could blame the start of the war on them.”

  Riparian spun, chest heaving. “Elise—”

  “You tried to poison me tonight,” Elise said. “I did not speak for my father, and I will not speak for you because I know how guilty both of you are and you do not deserve my mercy.”

  “I was saving you!” Riparian broke for the first time, a shaking through her. “Gaspar would’ve slit your throat. I was only going to put you to sleep.”

  Elise’s mouth tensed. She sniffed. “I would rather have died like that than found out the people I loved had murdered so m
any and would have added me to their lists.”

  “Let’s see how much you’re worth then,” Moira said, voice low and scratchy. “Run, Lena de Arian. Perhaps someone here thinks you’re worth helping. They won’t be harmed. No other innocents in Lynd will be harmed if I can help it.”

  Tomorrow, when the sun was high and the people with no missing loved ones awoke, the city would be harder to control. A few thousand people and only a hundred or so with reason to be here, with reason to cling to the promise of knowing what happened to their missing. Would the rest believe them? Would the people who’d no reason to doubt North Star, Winter, and Riparian their entire lives believe Erlend was capable of this?

  But for now, with the victims of Riparian’s life lining the streets, no one helped her. No one hid her. She’d worked her whole life to make Erlend a safe place for herself, and now all the Erlends she’d brushed aside wouldn’t even look at her.

  They only cleared a path for her and said a prayer.

  Moira grabbed my arm. “Executioner, not assassin.”

  “Shadow,” I said, shaking her off. “I will be her shadow.”

  They might all take offense tomorrow, but they’d learn that a handful of good deeds didn’t outweigh a nation. I’d done bad things for good reasons, bad reasons too, and my hands were still red. Riparian didn’t get to wash herself of this.

  “We can make this fair.” I tossed her one of my knives.

  She snatched it.

  “You killed a boy named Rath,” I said as loud as I could. My voice cracked. “Rath went looking for you after you abducted one of the kids he looked after to be used as a mage or shadow, and when he found you, when he tried to save a child’s life, you killed him.”

  She took off, and by the time I reached the top of the stairs, she was sprinting down an alley. Out of sight.

  I took off running.

  She didn’t make it to the corner before I caught up to her, a small collection of the grieving at my back. She stopped in the middle of the empty street. Turned.

  “Will you really pretend you’re doing this out of devotion to your job?” She swallowed, tilting her chin up. Her fingers tightened around my knife. “They’ll kill you.”