The Black King (Book 7)

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “You absorbed the Words,” Coulter said to Matt. “Can you make some globes?”

  Matt nodded. His head felt very heavy.

  “What would it take?” Coulter asked.

  “Sand.” Matt’s voice was a rasp. “From the beaches beneath the Slides of Death. Someone to make glass with it. And inside a lining of water from the fountain in the Roca’s Cave. Just before you close the globe you put it in, and let it sit for a month before—”

  “We don’t have a month,” Gift said.

  “I’m sorry,” Matt whispered. It all felt like his fault again.

  “No need to be sorry.” Gift sounded oddly elated. “I think we need to make a detour. We have to go to the Place of Power. There are still some globes in there, right, Coulter?”

  “No,” he said. “They’ve all been used.”

  “There are some more in the Vault,” Matt whispered.

  “Rugad may want me to leave Blue Isle, but I’m going to do the opposite.” Gift grinned. “I’m going to the heart of Blue Isle’s power.”

  “Won’t he try to stop you?” Con asked.

  “He might,” Gift said. “We’ll have to be prepared.”

  “And the Assassin?” Arianna said.

  Matt raised his head. No one had told him about an Assassin.

  Coulter eased him back down. “By now, the Assassin’s probably learned that I was headed for Jahn. We didn’t exactly make it a secret. We’ll just go back and keep an eye open.”

  “Assassins are impossible to see,” Chandra said.

  “I don’t believe that anything’s impossible,” Coulter said.

  “Neither does Rugad,” Matt whispered and fainted.

  THE ASSASSIN

  (Two Days Later)

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  DAWN. The sun had risen over the Cardidas, turning the water its familiar rust-red. The sky was red too, and orange and pink. Sunrises were tremendous on Blue Isle. Xihu hadn’t seen the like anywhere, and she had always thought them beautiful in the Eccrasian Mountains.

  But she wasn’t enjoying this one. Her eyes stung from the acrid smell of smoke that still lingered in the air. She hadn’t slept in two days, and she had used most of her reserves.

  She stood just outside the gate. The Islanders and Fey were waking up, beginning to fill the streets, going about their business. Most didn’t realize how serious the damage to the palace and its Fey occupants had been.

  Arianna had wanted it that way.

  The Healing Wing of the Domicile was full, and they had to expand into the Infantry barracks and the closed wings of the palace—anywhere they could make a clean bed. Xihu had never seen so many wounded.

  Most were badly burned. She didn’t have Healing talents, even though hers was a Domestic magick, but she did have small abilities. She had used all of them, and then more. She had helped mix potions to ease pain, she had applied salves. For two days, she had comforted the dying. She couldn’t believe that this kind of carnage had been caused by one man. One young man, some had said. Little more than a boy.

  She hadn’t seen him. When she asked Arianna what happened, Arianna had given her a measuring look. For a moment, it almost felt as if Arianna believed that Xihu were involved. But Xihu couldn’t have been involved in something like that. It would have stolen her magick.

  Apparently Arianna realized that, for she said, “It was a disgruntled Islander. The son of the former Rocaan—you know, the one who murdered my mother. He was an Enchanter, and so is his son. The boy wanted to burn the palace the way the Fey once burned the Tabernacle. And he wanted to kill me as he said his father should have done thirty years ago.”

  It sounded right, and the handful of Fey who had met the old Rocaan said the boy looked just like him. But the story had a stilted quality that lacked the fury Xihu would have expected.

  And then there was the dead Fey in the North Tower, the Charmer that Arianna had killed in self-defense. Xihu had helped remove the body—there weren’t enough Red Caps nearby to do the work. Arianna had to send for them from other parts of the Isle—and Xihu had seen things she hadn’t understood.

  No one knew why the dead Charmer traveled with the Rocaan’s Islander son. No one knew why a boy who claimed to hate the Fey had a Fey assistant.

  Nothing made any sense. And last night, Xihu had heard the rumor that Gift, along with two Islanders, had carried the boy to his ship.

  Xihu couldn’t ask Gift. The night of the fires, Gift left Jahn. His ship had sailed inland, and Xihu had heard that Arianna was furious about this. She believed that Gift was going to the Islander Place of Power.

  Xihu let out a sigh. She was thinking horrible thoughts and some of them were because of her exhaustion. She had stepped outside the gate because she wanted a reminder that life went on without the horrible stench of burning flesh, the cries of people too injured for help.

  Some of the Infantry—the ones that were uninjured—had been enlisted to end lives that couldn’t be saved, people who were in too much pain to continue. She couldn’t do that, nor could any of the other Domestics, no matter how much they wanted to. Sometimes she wondered if too many of the injured were being kept alive. Their wounds looked too serious to recover from. But she wasn’t a Healer, and the Healers kept reassuring her that most of the Fey who lived through the first few hours would survive.

  Standing outside the palace didn’t give her the satisfaction she wanted. Watching the locals begin their day made her very uncomfortable. Arianna hadn’t been honest with them. She had told them that during the freak storm the palace had been struck by lightning. Those who had seen the injured Islander Enchanter had been told that he was hurt during the resulting crisis.

  The Fey seemed to know all, though, and there were rumblings about retaliation. Xihu clutched her hands together. Part of her felt sympathy with that—the boy had done so much damage. But Gift’s presence made her wary. She should have known if Gift had planned to send an Islander in. The fact that Gift arrived at the last moment made her wonder if something changed since she left the ship.

  There was no way to know. With the ship gone, Xihu was committed to her course. She liked Arianna even less after this attack—Arianna’s calm response and all the lies angered Xihu, although not as much as Arianna’s reaction to the injured. She wanted to know how many would be back at their posts and how quickly. She was more concerned with the damage to the Fey forces than she was with the individuals involved.

  Xihu sighed. Kerde had once said that the biggest curse of the Black Family was their inability to understand that they ruled an empire of people, not of things. Xihu had never seen that in Gift. Even when he had been making hard decisions, like asking Rudolfo to impersonate him on the ship, he had known that he was risking a life. Perhaps that sympathy disappeared with time. Perhaps some members of the Black Family had never been born with it. Perhaps that was why Gift used to say Arianna was more suited to rule than he was.

  Xihu turned and walked back through the gate. She hadn’t really examined the damage much, being more concerned with saving lives, but it struck her now.

  The stable had burned to the ground. The horses were dead—most burned or put to death afterwards. All of the hay and supplies that had been sitting outside were now charred ruins. There were scorch marks on the cobblestones.

  The fire had consumed most of the North Tower. One side of it—the side with the staircase—had crumbled inward and the Domestics who specialized in building structures had declared it unsafe. The rest of the palace was unharmed. Apparently there had been a lot of damage from the hidden passageways—smoke threading throughout the entire building—but none of it was serious.

  Arianna had put a clean-up crew on the main part of the palace to scrub the scorches off the stone and to get rid of the smoke smell. And she had chosen a team to rebuild the North Tower. She had seemed more irritated that one of her favorite places was gone than she was about the wounded scattered around the grounds.

  X
ihu ran a hand through her coarse white hair. She headed back toward the Domicile, when someone called her name. DiPalmet hurried toward her. His thin face was pinched. Ever since the confrontation with the Islander, DiPalmet had a look of someone who had been forced to understand something about himself that he didn’t like.

  “Arianna wants to see you,” DiPalmet said.

  “I have duties in the Domicile,” Xihu said.

  “I know.” DiPalmet glanced in that direction. He had actually been in the Domicile a few times and had used his Charm to convince the desperately injured that they had enough strength to survive. Sometimes, the Healers said, that was all it took.

  But sometimes it wasn’t.

  “I’ll go for you,” DiPalmet said. “Arianna says this is important.”

  And they certainly wouldn’t want to anger the Black Queen, would they? Xihu didn’t say that, but she felt it. “Did she say what she wanted?”

  “Only that she has a few questions you would know the answers to.”

  More hypotheticals. Hypotheticals which Xihu was beginning to realize weren’t hypothetical at all.

  “I have a few questions too.” DiPalmet put his hands behind his back, a movement that reminded her of Arianna. But his expression was nothing like the Black Queen’s. It was worried.

  DiPalmet had always kept to himself. He had never come to Xihu before, at least not on his own accord. And he usually covered his voice with the Charm that so irritated any good Visionary. That Charm was gone now.

  “What are they?” Xihu asked.

  DiPalmet looked from side to side, then glanced behind him. When he seemed satisfied that no one could overhear, he said, “Arianna wants to send a force to Constant. That’s where she said this unrest came from.”

  Retaliation was a typical response for a Black Ruler. Xihu waited.

  “But Gift sailed in that direction. We’ve had Spies watching his ship. They say he took that Islander Enchanter aboard, and now they’re heading toward the Cliffs of Blood.”

  Xihu didn’t move. “What, exactly, does Arianna want to do?”

  “She wants to send in troops and burn the city of Constant which she said houses the Islander religion and is the source of most unrest. She wants to kill all the people in the area.”

  “A sweep-and-burn,” Xihu said. “I haven’t heard of one of those in decades.”

  “Actually,” DiPalmet said, “Rugad did one after an uprising in the center of Blue Isle fifteen years ago. Arianna says she’s modeling this response on that one.”

  “But she has another goal in mind,” Xihu said.

  “She says we get two added benefits: we destroy their religion completely and we get the Place of Power.”

  “She rules Blue Isle. I don’t see why she has to destroy to get what she’s in charge of.”

  “She believes the rebels hold the Place of Power as well as control the religion. Our Spies confirm part of that. They say the man who came to Arianna almost a year ago about rebuilding the Tabernacle was on Gift’s boat before it sailed. And, they say, the other Islander Enchanter who tried to help the Golem Sebastian kill Arianna six months ago was on the ship as well. That Enchanter was placed in charge of the Place of Power by Gift fifteen years ago.”

  Xihu didn’t like any of this. “What’s your question?”

  “I’ve heard rumors that Visionaries have Seen the Blood. Is that true?” DiPalmet’s usually golden voice shook.

  Xihu saw no point in lying to him. “Yes.”

  “If Arianna sends a fleet and a force and tells them to sweep-and-destroy in the region where Gift is, and they kill Gift, will that cause the Blood?”

  Now they were in a tricky area. Xihu rubbed her hands along her arms. “Does Arianna know that Gift is going in that direction?”

  “Yes,” DiPalmet said. “I told her myself.”

  Xihu looked at the palace, at its destroyed North Tower. Somehow, she got the sense that Arianna wasn’t out to kill Islanders for revenge. There was something else going on. Something greater.

  Apparently DiPalmet felt that way too.

  Xihu shook her head. “There are so many factors. If Arianna warns the troops to stay away from Gift, it’ll be fine. But then again, she could say she assumed they already knew not to attack the Black Family.”

  “Do you think she is trying to kill him?”

  Xihu looked at DiPalmet. “Would you be talking to me otherwise?”

  “What the Black Family does is its business.”

  “Then why ask me at all?”

  “Because, I think this was the first volley in a battle that will lead to the Blood, and it frightens me.”

  “It frightens me too,” Xihu said. She had no words of comfort for him, nothing she could say that would make this any better.

  “Will you talk with Arianna?”

  “And convince her not to retaliate?” Xihu smiled. They both knew that was impossible.

  “Perhaps mention the problem with Gift,” DiPalmet said. “For my peace of mind.”

  He didn’t want to be the one to give the order that would cause the Blood. Xihu nodded. She understood that. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  She picked up the skirts on her robe and walked across the filthy cobblestone to the kitchen door. Here the smell of smoke was still strong and slightly sour. She turned back toward DiPalmet. “You’ll go to the Domicile for me?”

  “I’m on my way now,” he said.

  She thanked him and went inside the kitchen, stopping near the ovens. The bakers were making bread, and over the stench of smoke, she could smell the yeast.

  In truth, she was relieved to get away from the Domicile for a while, especially after that conversation with DiPalmet. If DiPalmet was right, those poor souls in the Healing wards were only the first in a long protracted war, a war Xihu had once hoped to avoid.

  Now the best she could do was counsel a ruthless ruler on ways to avoid the Blood.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THE CLIFFS OF BLOOD rose around him, their red stone a reminder of the Eccrasian Mountains, the jagged peaks a skyline unlike any other he had ever seen. Gift stood on the deck of the Tashka and felt his discomfort grow.

  From the Cliffs ahead, he could feel the pull of the Place of Power. When he’d first felt it, fifteen years ago, he hadn’t known what it was. Now he did.

  He looked up at one of the mountainsides and saw a dark spot, an obvious opening in the stone. He knew, from long experience, that what seemed obvious to him wasn’t visible to many others. Lyndred and Coulter would be able to see it, and maybe Bridge. Skya, with her Warders abilities, might be able to see it too.

  Everyone else saw only mountain.

  The breeze was cool here, and felt good. The trip up the Cardidas had been easy and successful. His new captain had worried that the river would become shallow somewhere in the center of the Isle, and it hadn’t. The ship had fared well, and they were here faster than Gift expected. Which was good, because if they could get the Lights of Midday and then return to Jahn quickly, he might still be able to catch Rugad off-guard from Matt’s attack.

  Gift had heard, from some of Bridge’s people who joined the ship at the last moment, that the North Tower of the palace had been destroyed and a lot of Infantry were injured. Rugad would be conjuring a revenge plan, but it had to be elaborate. He probably knew that Arianna and Gift were involved, and so he had to be careful to prevent the Blood.

  Gift was wondering if their own plan would cause the Blood. He wished Xihu were here to consult. The Lights of Midday attacked the magick in the brain, burning it away. But in this case, the magick was Rugad. It would leave Arianna’s body alone, but Rugad would be gone. All of Rugad. But Rugad was a construct, not a person. Gift hoped that would make all the difference.

  Still, he was taking Skya’s advice. He was facing the Visions instead of running from them.

  Skya. He had been arguing with her ever since he confronted her about the pregnancy. Her reason for not tel
ling him was that she was unsure whether she wanted to have the child. She had even spoken to the Healer about getting rid of it. The Healer had stopped her, saying that if Gift were its father, there would be problems. The Healer made her check with Xihu. Xihu believed getting rid of the child was like killing a member of the Black Family.

  Skya wasn’t sure. She was waiting until she had a chance to see some of the Island’s Healers to see if they would help her. But she never got a chance to get off the ship. Then Gift found out. He wanted to marry her and have the child. She said she wanted neither.

  I don’t want to be bound to you in any way, she said over and over.

  Finally he had said to her, You are. Now.

  Since then, they hadn’t spoken.

  But Skya was the smallest of his problems today. He also had to try to talk with Arianna one more time. She said she understood the implications of this path that they were going to take against Rugad, but Gift wasn’t convinced.

  He heard a creak on the deck behind him. Coulter came up beside him.

  “They don’t change, do they?” he said, looking at the mountains.

  “They’ve been here a lot longer than we have.” Gift sighed. “Sometimes it feels like I never left this place.”

  “It’s gone through a lot of changes since you were here.”

  Gift smiled. “So have I.”

  Coulter put a hand on Gift’s back. “Chandra doesn’t want Matt taken off the ship.”

  “I thought you have a good team of Healers at the school.”

  “I do,” Coulter said. “And his mother is one of the best Healers in Constant, although she doesn’t call her abilities by that name.”

  “What’s Chandra’s hesitation?”

  “I think she’s worried about him leaving her care. Sometimes magick is specific to its user, you know.”

  “Do you have any Healers to spare from the school?”