by Nalini Singh
Though only if Mala asked. And if she was foolish enough to drink without asking, then she would get what she deserved.
Eyes like stone, Kavik shook his head. “The goddess has abandoned this land.”
“I am here, warrior.”
“That only means it is almost the end,” he said, and his voice was that of a man who did not dare to hope anymore. He only braced himself for worse. “Try to avoid the notice of the warlord.”
Lord Barin? Mala would not be able to do that, either. “Why?”
“You’re strong.” His dark gaze lingered on her features. “He’ll want you—or he’ll want to break you.”
The man standing before her was strong, too. But she wouldn’t ask now how Barin had tried to break him. They’d meet again, and perhaps Kavik would tell her. “He can want all he likes. Only I choose who will have me. But I thank you for the warning.”
He nodded and, after a final look at her face, turned away.
Curse it all. She called after him, “Are there markings to guide me through the maze?”
It didn’t matter if there were. Shim could follow the path. But she wanted the warrior to look at her like that again, with that strange combination of hunger and bleak torment—because she might understand why he looked at her that way if she could hold onto his image a little longer.
“You don’t need markings.” He bent to his saddle and slung the bloodied tack over his broad shoulder. “Just follow the bones.”
CHAPTER 3
Mala could follow the bones all the way to Lord Barin’s citadel.
Beyond the maze, the bones no longer littered the ground, but they stood in the people on the road to Perca who watched her with wary eyes. They stood in the fallow fields and the sagging walls of the crofters’ huts. They stood in the thousands of bowls and vases set out to catch the rain, and in the desperate faces of the children who quickly backed into the shadows and alleys as Shim carried her into the city.
This was a land stripped bare, with hope carved away. Mala’s mother had once told her that Krimathe was the same in those months after the Destroyer had passed through their lands. But Mala’s home had recovered. Blackmoor had not, though it had obviously once been strong. Mala could see those bones once she reached Perca, too—in the high walls surrounding the city, the wide roads, and the heavy stone of the city’s fortress. They had all been built to last, by careful planning and knowledgeable hands. Now the flesh was gone, and the skin stretched over those durable bones was thin.
Guards were lighting torches at the citadel’s gate when Mala rode through. None attempted to stop her or to question her presence there, as if Barin did not fear anyone who might enter his fortress.
She dismounted in the courtyard. Beside her, Shim raised his head, sniffing out the horses tied in front of the garrison on the eastern wall. Saddled, they stood with their backs to the rain and heads down. Two of the mounts responded to his whinny, but all moved uneasily against their tethers, as if they’d caught wind of the revenant blood still staining his legs and Mala’s cloak.
The musty scent of peat smoke hung in the air. Two servants crossed the yard, heading for the garrison and carrying a heavy soup cauldron between them. She had apparently come during the guards’ supper. Mala pulled up her hood, marking the remaining guards’ positions. The courtyard was large—too large for the scarce number standing watch. Most of those who weren’t eating waited near the keep’s entrance, and a few others walked the battlements.
No vessels stood atop the walls to catch the rain. The people within the citadel must have no trouble procuring water. That couldn’t be true for everyone within the city. How desperate must that make them?
Her gaze fell upon the pillories standing in the courtyard’s northwestern corner. A dozen of the devices stood silhouetted in the torchlight. She’d never known any city to need so many. Half were in use, the prisoners bent over with their heads and wrists trapped between slabs of darkwood, their pale faces and hands visible through the gloom. Two more guards watched over them, and—
Mala’s step faltered. It could not be. Yet she could hear the pained cries from one of the prisoners now.
Her blood seemed to thicken. Pulse pounding in her ears, she turned toward the pillories. Shim kept pace beside her, yet she barely heard the clop of his hooves. One guard watched as the other rutted behind an imprisoned man. He spared her a glance as she approached, but must have thought that she was there to pelt the prisoners with offal or to stand as another spectator. His gaze returned to the rutting pig. It was the last thing he saw.
The scrape of her blade across the bottom of his helm went unnoticed by the grunting pig, but the pilloried woman closest to Mala shrieked when the guard’s helmeted head dropped in front of her.
The other guard looked up. He stumbled back one step, brocs falling to his ankles before Mala reached him. She struck twice, and the pig only had a blink to realize that his cock had been separated from his balls before his head joined it on the muddied ground.
Shouts echoed across the courtyard. With rage boiling in her veins, Mala shattered the pillory lock with the butt of her axe. Whatever this man’s crime, he’d been punished as no one ever should be and had served sentence enough.
All of these prisoners had. Sick fury rose from her gut as her gaze raced over their soiled clothes, the bruises and stains. She stalked to the first pillory and kicked the guard’s head away from the imprisoned woman’s feet. Teeth clenched with every bone-jarring swing, she moved down the row, destroying each lock.
“Halt!”
A handful of guards marched toward her. Mala gave them no note beyond a glance. Like any other horse, Shim stood with his head down and his back against the rain, yet his hooves would bash in the guards’ helms if they came too close. She continued to the last pillory, where a slam of her boot sent the blackwood slab flying open on the hinge. As if the prisoner’s legs were too weak to hold her, the woman dropped into the mud.
Chest heaving, her heart like ice, Mala tossed back her hood and stood waiting in the torchlight, sword and axe in hand. A brute of a woman with greasy lips and a ragged scar over her pale left eye led the guards.
Mala punted the rutting pig’s head to her. “Are you captain of these men?”
The gore-stained helm landed at the woman’s boots. Shock and anger painted her cheeks red. She reached for her weapon.
“Stay your hand!” Mala snapped. “Are you captain of these men? Heed the cloak I wear and answer well, or I’ll spill your lump-weeded brain into the mud with them.”
Lips pinched, the woman gripped her sword. Mala grinned. So this guard wouldn’t heed the warning. Good. Near the pillories, a bowl of grease and a rod strapped to a belt had told Mala that not only the male guards had been raping the prisoners. By Vela’s moon-glazed blade, she would enjoy gutting every one of these bum-birthed scuts.
A guard behind the woman caught her forearm. “She is Vela’s,” he hissed.
Unease slipped over the woman’s anger and she hesitated. Curse it all. Mala would have preferred that these pigs were among those who didn’t fear the goddess and attempted to challenge her power, instead.
But if they defied her laws and forced themselves on these prisoners, they obviously didn’t fear her enough. Before Mala left this land, they would.
The guard’s hand fell away from her weapon. “The captain is at his supper.”
“His name?”
“Heddiq.”
“Then this will be Captain Heddiq’s last easy meal. You will announce me to Lord Barin, then you will visit the garrison and tell your captain to begin running as far from Blackmoor as he can, because if ever I see him, I will not stay my weapon. Perhaps your next captain will know better than to risk Vela’s wrath by allowing his guards to violate the prisoners under his charge.” She pointed her axe at the other guards. “You three will help these men and women to the citadel gates and release them. One more bruise on any of them and I come for you
r heads.”
Shim would keep watch outside and let her know if she needed to.
The guards exchanged uncertain glances. “But our Lord Barin—”
Mala interrupted them. “Will allow it.”
And if possible, would suffer the same fate as the guards. The captain wasn’t the only one who should have prevented the guards from raping these prisoners, but Mala wouldn’t make threats that she couldn’t be sure of carrying out. Earlier that day, when she had returned to the caravan to give Telani the salve, she’d learned from the other woman that Barin had ruled over Blackmoor since the days of the Destroyer—and that the warlord couldn’t be killed, though many had tried.
That couldn’t be true; even gods could die. But Mala wouldn’t test her blade against his neck today.
The guards hastily backed out of her way when she started toward the keep. Solidly built, the towers rose like spears against the night sky. The greasy-lipped guard rushed ahead—most likely to warn Lord Barin and to report what Mala had done at the pillories.
Mala gave the woman time and followed at a slower pace. As she passed through the inner gate, a chill raced down her spine. The rain? By Temra’s fist, she hoped it was. But the cold weight in her belly and the sudden urge to draw her sword warned her that this trepidation was nothing so simple.
She’d sensed magic before. Never had such an icy dread accompanied it, but she’d heard this reaction described by her mother, upon first seeing Anumith the Destroyer.
He wasn’t here. But either his sorcery was still at work, or someone here abused the same foul magics.
Perhaps it was someone who couldn’t be killed.
The lilting notes of a hornflute and the distinctive mossy fragrance of roasted constrictor greeted Mala at the entrance to the great stone hall. So the warlord was at his supper, too.
She paused between the stone columns at the head of the chamber. The hornflute player danced in the center, the silver threads in his embroidered tunic catching the firelight from the torches. On either side of the room, two darkwood tables ran the length of the walls, each heavily laden with platters of sugar-dusted fruit, steaming soups, and a portion of the roasted snake. The benches were filled—by courtiers, she judged. Intricately woven garments in bright colors adorned many of the men and women, and even those who were dressed more simply wore finer cloth than any Mala had seen outside the citadel.
At the far end of the chamber, thirteen men ate at a shorter table atop a stone dais. Lord Barin sat in the center upon a tall, carved chair—but even if he hadn’t chosen to raise himself above the others or wrap himself in yellow robes edged in gold, his position would have been impossible to mistake. The fanged head of the giant constrictor gaped open near his left hand, and the first portion of its roasted body stretched to the end of the table. The longest portions fed the courtiers at the other two tables, but the tail ended at the warlord’s right hand, as if the snake’s body had circled the room. The message was clear: even the very food these people consumed began and ended with Lord Barin.
Though he had ruled this land for almost thirty years, the warlord didn’t appear much older than Mala. No gray threaded his brown braids or his short beard, and his tanned skin appeared smooth and unlined, marked only by the sun tattooed around his right eye.
The cold dread in her stomach sharpened. That tattoo marked the sun god’s disciples. The Destroyer had been one, too—before claiming that he was Enam, freed from his fiery prison in the heavens and reborn. Not all who wore that mark believed it. But many did.
At the east wall, the greasy-lipped guard was speaking to a tall, wiry man dressed in simple robes. The marshal, perhaps, who would relay the guard’s news to Barin. Smug anticipation lit the guard’s face as she spoke, and her gaze upon Mala was that of a child’s tattling to an elder and hoping to watch the inevitable punishment.
Mala didn’t fear it. She strode past the columns. The sound of a sharp breath to her left made her glance in that direction. A dozen people sat naked and leashed, each one wearing a thick leather collar.
Hot fury exploded through the icy dread, but she forced herself to continue on. She didn’t know what purpose or punishment those people served. But she would find out.
Silence fell over the hall. His pale gaze upon her, Barin had raised his hand for quiet. For a long moment, there was only the light sound of her footsteps, the rustle of cloth as the courtiers shifted to better see her, and the faint crackle of the torches. The marshal bent his head to Barin’s ear.
She reached the dais. After a nod from Barin, the marshal straightened. His deep voice sounded through the hall. “Our glorious liege welcomes the High Daughter of Krimathe to Blackmoor!”
Mala hadn’t told them who she was, yet she wasn’t surprised that he knew. Rumors traveled the roads even faster than Shim did. “You were expecting me, my lord?”
He leaned forward slightly, his glacial eyes arrested on her face. His angular features were handsome, almost beautiful, yet she preferred the fanged grin of the roasted snake near his elbow to the small smile upon his lips. “It is said that a red-cloaked daughter of Krimathe has journeyed across the mountains on a quest, and that as she travels, she has been renewing alliances that have long lain fallow. When I heard of you, I hoped that your quest would lead you through Blackmoor. Do you intend to form an alliance with me, as well?”
Not in a thousand years, not as long as this man ruled this country. Alliances had only foundered because the Destroyer had corrupted so many royal houses, or killed them and replaced their heads with his own men—and because it had taken a full generation for Krimathe to gain the strength to look outside of its own borders again.
But Mala only said, “It is true that your predecessor, Karn of Blackmoor, was once a strong ally, and I hope that we might once again renew ties with your people. But I have also come for another purpose.”
“Your quest? And what is it?” His brows arched with amusement. “To kill more of my guards?”
“If necessary.”
“You must believe it is.” Indolently he leaned back in his chair. His golden robe fell open, revealing a smoothly muscled chest. More runes had been tattooed down his throat and across his pectorals, but Mala recognized none of the symbols. “As a daughter of Krimathe, you must be especially sensitive to such punishments.”
Because after the Destroyer had killed every man and boy that he hadn’t already enslaved for his armies, he had set his soldiers upon every remaining woman. But although Barin’s careless reference to the most horrific assault her people had ever endured steamed Mala’s blood, she would not be baited.
“I administer Vela’s justice,” she said. “And before we ever speak of an alliance, I must first know if I must administer it again.”
“Upon me?” Barin’s grin seemed to crawl up her spine and was answered by a few uneasy titters from the listening courtiers. “For what offense?”
Probably more than the one she was about to name. “You have men and women leashed in this chamber.”
“And you wonder if they are enslaved? Let me set your avenging mind at ease, Krimathean. To pay their debts, they have chosen to serve me in this manner.” He rapped upon the table. “Come up, Gepali. Your deliverer has arrived to rescue you from your labors.”
Oh, she would not draw her sword. She would not draw her sword. No matter how she wanted to.
Unlike the other tables, Barin’s had been covered by a long blue cloth that concealed everything beneath. Mala had thought the man sitting two seats to the warlord’s left had been drunk—his eyes were glazed and his skin flushed, and he’d only seemed to be half listening while she spoke to Barin. But when a collared woman emerged from beneath the cloth, her mouth red and her lined face a portrait of humiliation and misery, Mala could only imagine taking her blade to every single courtier in this chamber.
Gripping her leash, Barin tugged the woman closer. “Tell us, Gepali—tell all who are here—is it by choice that you ser
ve me and my court?”
The old woman had to draw two long, shuddering breaths before the answer came. “Yes, my lord.”
“And do you enjoy performing with my guests?”
Her tortured gaze flicked up to meet Mala’s. “It is my honor to please them and to repay his lordship’s generosity to my family.”
Generosity. Mala wondered what threat Barin had made toward her family that this woman—that all of these leashed people—had chosen this, instead. If he’d threatened their lives, there would be no difference between choice and force.
But merely asking this woman whether that was true might endanger her family, too. And remembering Kavik’s warning that any kindness might earn Barin’s retaliation, she dared not offer Gepali encouraging words, either. Mala would have vowed to her that she wouldn’t leave this land without seeing Lord Barin dead.
She silently made the vow to Vela, instead, knowing the goddess would hear her and hold her accountable.
“So you see that I have spoken truth, chosen one,” Barin said and pulled on Gepali’s leash again. The old woman sank to her knees, unresisting. “Now tell me why you so urgently seek alliances from our neighbors. Perhaps you have also heard the rumors that the Destroyer is returning from across the western ocean?”
No reason to lie. “We have.”
“It is no rumor. He comes.” Those pale eyes seemed to glitter with amusement, as if Barin could sense the shiver that raced over Mala’s skin. “So it would be best for you and your people to form that alliance with me, because there will be no standing against him. He is the storm, and the wind, and the sun.”
Then Mala and her people would be mountains. They didn’t need to stand forever—only long enough. “Then we will speak of alliances after I have completed my quest. I have been told that a demon tusker haunts the mountains to the north.”
Barin abruptly stilled, his gaze intense on hers. “You seek to destroy the demon?”
Did he not want her to? Watching his reaction just as intently, she said, “Vela has sent me to tame the beast of Blackmoor.”