“Oh,” Lavery said, covering his mouth. He closed his eyes, wishing he hadn’t seen the scattered limbs and toes. If he’d glanced a few paces ahead, he’d have seen teeth lying like hail on the shattered cobbles and nearby heads without bodies, throats eviscerated.
Lavery, his eyes still closed, pointed in another direction. “Are there dead things there?”
“They’re everywhere, I’m afraid. Look straight, not down. You’ll… barely notice.”
Lavery nodded. “I still notice. Why are there claws everywhere?”
Haren bent down and examined one of those claws. It looked like a herd of great beasts had stormed Valios, murdered everyone, shed their talons, and left.
“You know,” Lavery said, studying his uncle’s face.
Haren’s mouth moved to one side, regret on his face. “If I tell you, you must go straight to the keep, no more questions. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“It’s the claw of a demon,” Haren said, twirling the blackened talon that curved to a severe point. It was larger than his finger, the point sharper than a finely crafted dagger.
Lavery reached for it. “I’ve never heard of demons. Well, I have, but only in books that Maren O’Keefe told me I should not read. My father was not fond of those books, either.”
“Possibly the same demons,” Haren said. “Though I doubt it. These demons live in this world, just like you. They’re from a land faraway.”
“Why did they come?”
Haren put a hand on his nephew’s back. “I told you no more questions.”
Lavery looked crestfallen.
A sigh. “Start walking toward the keep, and I’ll tell you on the way.”
That sounded good to Lavery. It’d also get his mind off the death and destruction that swamped his vision. He led Haren through the dregs of Valios, where the poor used to gather on the streets and beg for food. Some were too weak to beg, and also—Lavery hated admitting this, but it was true—too drunk.
“Most sorcery,” Haren said, “has consequences. Bring fire into this world, and nature will counter it with frost. Cast an illusionary loci here—thereby adding to the world—and nature will counter it with the removal of land over there. But understand here and there are far apart.”
Lavery kept checking in with his uncle, peering back as he stepped over maggot-infested corpses and smoking, splintered wood.
“Nature chooses a point far away in which to issue its equalization. Sadly for demons and colossi—”
“Colossi?” Lavery interrupted.
Haren gestured for him to shush. “Sadly for them, their lands are as far from Avestas and Baelous as they can possibly be. They suffered the wrath for our sorcery.”
Lavery stopped up before a charred post. “So the demons—and colossi?—had their homes destroyed?”
Haren gently pushed Lavery along through the street of broken cobbles. “Slowly, yes.”
“They came to Avestas for sanctuary,” Lavery said, mostly to himself. He looked back at his uncle. “How did they know this land existed?”
Haren forced an uneasy smile, kept Lavery trudging along. “Go on.”
Lavery stopped, his brows twitching with emotion. “You won’t tell me?”
“You won’t think it kind of me to do so.”
“I’ll think you a liar if you don’t,” he countered. “You told me you’d answer my questions.”
“I didn’t say those exact words, and the rules were you had to keep walking.” He threw a finger up to idle Lavery’s inevitable complaints. “But if you must know, it was your mother’s doing. Now, go.”
Lavery felt his head list, tilt against his shoulder. “My… mother? Why—”
“Lavery,” Haren said, a punishing tone to his voice. “Get to the keep, now.”
Swallowing hard, Lavery pushed himself onward.
“Understand,” Haren said, “your mother was a brilliant woman.”
“But. There’s always a but, isn’t there?”
“She unleashed sorcery on this world. She did not create it, for I believe it was always here, waiting to be tapped like a vein of gold deep beneath the earth. Your mother, however… she didn’t know—she couldn’t have known—the consequences her discovery would bring.”
“What was her name?”
“Estelle.”
“That’s a pretty name,” Lavery said, wishing he could have seen her face, just once.
“She saw the madness her mutations had caused,” Haren said. “She attempted to destroy them, to bury sorcery in the forgotten annals of time. But the Children, as they called themselves, they didn’t take kindly to that. They hunted your mother, desired to learn all she had discovered and bury her with none of it.
“Estelle seduced a dragon and fled the Ancient Lands. She came upon the home of demons and later the home of colossi, and she learned the havoc sorcery had wrought. Disenfranchised by her own people, and angry and shameful of what she had wrought, she told the demons and colossi of Avestas and Baelous.”
Lavery’s bottom lip trembled. “She wanted revenge.” He arrived at the fountain at the forefront of the city, below the rising pitch of land on which the Valiosian keep stood.
“She would go on to regret that decision,” Haren said. “But the pieces were in place, the parts already moving. She bore you twelve years ago, in hopes of rectifying her mistakes.”
Lavery pointed to himself in disbelief. “Me? I can’t stop demons! I don’t even know what colossi are, but I’m certain I can’t stop them, either.”
Haren smiled. He stroked his nephew’s cheek. “She didn’t expect you to save this world from the terror it is about to experience. She wished for you to begin it anew. That’s where your gift comes in. You have a very kind soul, Lavery. You’re everything your mother hoped you would be.
“You’re brave, and you’re smart. You’re kind to all those who approach you, and your loyalty I’ll never question—not after your insistence that you stay with those cutthroats. Mercenaries,” he corrected himself.
Lavery’s mouth fell open, and he shoved himself toward his uncle in excitement. “You said you would observe them if you could—Elaya and Adom and Tig and Paya and Kaun. Did you? Were you able to?”
Haren looked away. He regarded Lavery with a troubled face. “I saw them asleep not long ago. At the foot of the City of Ice, I’m afraid.”
“Were they looking for me? How would they know to go there?”
“Did you tell anyone?”
Lavery backed away, sitting on the fountain wall. “Only two women I encountered in the woods. They were quite friendly and told me I could pass through what used to be the seal. I didn’t tell them I had already intended to do that, because doing so seemed rude. It was as if they were granting me permission.”
Haren turned his head, pretending to cough. He instead swore quietly into his shoulder. When he turned back, he feigned a smile. “Well—”
“Do you think,” Lavery said, cutting his uncle off, “Elaya encountered the two women as well? I imagine it a good possibility. They likely told the Eyes about me, because certainly Elaya would have asked. I can’t believe this,” he said, shaking his head. “Have I led them to their death? They’ll have run short on supplies and—we could save them. Couldn’t we?”
“No,” Haren said plainly.
“Well, why not?”
Haren crouched before him. “That woman in Coraen is very… let us call her evil.”
“Lusilia?”
“Yes. I don’t know what she has planned, but you cannot encounter her again. She must believe you are forever sealed in the Obviator.”
Lavery bit his bottom lip. “I won’t go. Not until we save my friends. They are my friends, no matter what you may think of them.”
“Lavery—”
“I won’t go!” Lavery said, with a firm stomp of his foot.
Hands at his hips, Haren regarded Lavery in silence. Then, “You are as foolish as you are kind, my nephew. Although… I s
uppose there are worse qualities one can possess. Take my hand.”
“To Coraen?”
Haren nodded.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Oriana sat at the head of the council table, a stack of parchment in front of her. Fingers of light from a noon sun waded through the windows, scrawling across the table and revealing patches of glinted dust.
It’d been four days since she had taken the throne. Horace had told her the tempers and worries in the kingdom had been placated, but she wasn’t so sure. Unlike her sister, who’d holed herself up in the keep during her reign, Oriana walked the streets every morning and saw an uneasiness reflected in the eyes of her people.
Maybe they were happy to have her holding the crown rather than Olyssi, but she thought them at best wary of the future and at worst suspicious that the empire they’d known for so long had finally crumbled. Coups, necessary though they may be, are a last resort. Once it’s put on the table, it becomes that much easier to pull out of the bag again.
She wondered how Sarpella was holding up. Horace had visited her big girl daily, but Oriana hadn’t seen her since leaving for Haeglin. Oriana had promised Sarpella she’d bring her to the kingdom, but Horace had suggested waiting—allowing the chaos of the past week to settle and simmer.
Oriana pinched the white feathers of a quill that sat in an inkwell. She had plenty of legislation to sign—mostly related to her position as the new queen of Haeglin—but her mind was a moor of worries. Also, she hadn’t slept but three hours a night since taking the crown. Also, the trial for her sister and Bastion was tomorrow.
A knock at the doors jarred her. “Yes?”
“Milady,” came a muffled reply. Obviously a Jackal, whose face was concealed by a steel helmet. “Cornik Usular, Highlord of Grisson and Chief Emissary of Plorgus, has arrived. He wishes to hold a meeting with your highness.”
Maybe we can avoid war, Oriana thought. She wasn’t expecting an emissary from Plorgus, but she welcomed his arrival. “Bring him in.”
The doors opened. Sandwiched between two looming Jackals whose pikes stood perfectly vertical against their shoulders walked a short, squat man. He wore loose-fitting robes with V-shaped patterns woven into the silk fabric. The cuffs swallowed his hands, though Oriana could tell he had them clasped like a dignified gentleman reared on manners and the importance of appearance.
Oriana remained seated. She nodded to the Jackals. They responded likewise and departed.
“Sit,” Oriana said to Cornik, gesturing to the chair at the far end of the table, opposite of hers. She scrutinized the emissary, drawing from his doughy face and pruned brows a story of privileged life. She despised talking to these sorts of people, though to be fair she herself was one. But she didn’t act like it, and that made all the difference.
“Maya Plommen’s body has been preserved,” she said. “I’m prepared to release her into your custody.”
Cornik unclasped his hands and shook them free of his sleeves. “A gesture of goodwill,” he said, smiling. “That bodes well. But as you can imagine, the damage Haeglin has caused with the assassination of our good queen… it cannot be solved by gestures.” He sniffed the air and stretched his plump neck. “I have heard the assassin is a high-ranking guardsman. Is that correct?”
Gimble Rivace—that was who he referred to. Captain Jameson Jauren had brought her up to speed in regard to the assassination. He’d told her that Bastion Rook had ordered Gimble’s arrest, but Jameson thought the evidence manufactured. It was too perfect, too quickly procured.
Oriana wasn’t convinced. She’d pegged Gimble as the man who had framed Maren O’Keefe for the murder of her father. She remembered the two running into one another shortly before Raegon had drunk the poison. That had served as the perfect time to subtly drop a vial of Cal’eous poison into Maren’s pocket.
Still, Gimble Rivace’s assumed role as Maya’s assassin posed a problem. It told Plorgus, and indeed all of Avestas, that the Jackals had consolidated power in Haeglin. It showed the crown was only a mouthpiece.
“The investigation continues,” Oriana said. “But if you want my opinion—”
“I do,” Cornik said.
“Gimble Rivace might have nocked the arrow that killed your queen. But my sister ordered the hit.”
Cornik pursed his fat lips. He clicked his tongue. “I came here to negotiate peace. You’re making it difficult.”
“Olyssi was an illegitimate queen,” Oriana said.
“Maybe so. All that tells me is that the Empire of Haeglin has been compromised. It cannot be trusted.”
A prepared answer, Oriana thought. No matter what excuse she gave for Maya’s death, Cornik likely had a scripted reply. Such prepared statements were among the repertoire of any skilled diplomat.
Oriana looked to the frosted windows and the murky sky that resembled an oil painting behind them. “What do you want?”
Cornik steepled two fingers. “I’ve already told you. Plorgus wishes for peace.”
Oriana nodded along, eyes still transfixed on the windows. “Tell me what it will take to achieve that.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw a wrinkling of Cornik’s face. Her bluntness had taken him aback.
He parted his hands and clapped them together. “First, I think we can both agree that the Emerald Grove in its entirety must be given to Plorgus.” He waited, as if to hear a yes or no from Oriana. She said nothing. “Additionally,” he continued, “reparations for the murder of our queen. Two million gold coins.”
Oriana returned her attention to Cornik. Then she glanced down at the thick stack of parchment before her. She swiped a page off the stack and onto the table, then took her quill and put a signature on it. “Continue,” she said, exchanging that page for another.
Cornik rubbed his lips, hesitant. “The investigation into Maya Plommen’s death must be turned over to Plorgus. Interrogations will be—”
Oriana held up a hand. She wagged the dry tip of her quill at Cornik. “When will I hear about what you desire?”
“Pardon?”
“You’re highlord of Grisson. Surely you have wants that are of higher importance than those of Plorgus.”
Cornik leaned back and chuckled. “I told Commander Sessons that he shouldn’t underestimate you. I’d heard Raegon’s older daughter was far more… let us say, effective, than her younger sibling.”
Oriana dipped her quill into the inkwell and smiled. She’d long believed that politics disinterested her, that she’d cringe with boredom and despair if her father ever passed the crown to her. And maybe she’d eventually find that was true. But this exchange with Cornik Usular was riveting and delicious, not bland and trite.
It was, all things considered, a game. A series of clever stratagems to outmaneuver the emissary. I could get used to this, she thought.
“I must say,” Cornik began, “I’m surprised you’ve ever heard of Grisson.” A curt knock at the doors interrupted him.
Oriana glanced that way, suspiciously. This meeting with Cornik was of utmost importance, and the Jackals knew that. They wouldn’t have interrupted unless the need was dire.
“Yes?” she answered.
“Milady, Lord Ayres of the Ryze wishes to speak with you.”
“It’s not a damned wish, it’s a need,” said a man with a grizzled voice. “Open these doors.”
Oriana and Cornik exchanged glances. While she knew the imprecise location of the Ryze—somewhere in the West and flimsily under the banner of Valios—she had no knowledge of Lord Ayres. He sounded like an old general whose crowish screams at his men had reduced his voice to that of scraping steel.
“Valios,” Lord Ayres said, “has fallen. Is that enough to open these damned doors?”
“Let him in,” Oriana said.
There was a click and the doors opened with a heavy thud. Lord Ayres shouldered himself free of his Jackal escort and marched up to the council table. He had thin silver hair and a thick, knotted beard. He wo
re a royal-blue tunic with mail that bulged beneath and ran down his arms. His sigil—a triple-tipped icicle against a background of white—centered his tunic.
He glanced briefly to Cornik, then to Oriana. He threw his hands on the table and huffed. “I’ll get straight to the point. Four weeks ago I sent a courier to Havenwill, intending to negotiate a purchase of warm bodies for my army. Heard nothin’ back. Mind that Havenwill is only a three-day ride from the Ryze.
“I sent an envoy of twenty soldiers a week later. Two came back, tales of monsters on their tongues. Hoofed beings, fleshless creations. I saw the bastards myself days later.”
“With your own eyes?” Oriana asked.
Lord Ayres pushed away from the table. He bellowed a growling sigh. “They swarmed Gorche’s Valley, forty thousand strong. I figured two days before they’d climb my mountain and break my walls. It took them half a day.” His jaw shifted to one side, and he shook his head. “Half a day. They moved with ungodly speed.”
Oriana placed her quill in its inkwell. “But you’re alive.”
“Call me a coward if you want, but I saddled my steed and fled down the canyon at the ass end of the Ryze. If it was merely a war, I’d have stayed and taken my hits, died a warrior like my father. But if you’d seen what I saw…”
Cornik hooked an arm around the back of his chair. “You said Valios fell.”
Lord Ayres put his hands on his hips, idling his scabbard, which swung back and forth as he moved. “Can’t say I saw that with my own eyes, but I know it did. I saw the plumes of smoke; hell, you can see ’em from here. You can smell it too, the stench of a sacked kingdom.”
Oriana tried to put on a calm face. But under her cool, unflappable demeanor, she felt the pricks and agony of unchecked terror. The stone giants beneath the Glass Sea had dominated her nightmares, and now these… these monsters had obliterated one of the five capital kingdoms.
This isn’t a coincidence, she thought. This was a planned and orchestrated attack on Avestas.
“I can’t tell you where they came from,” Lord Ayres said, “and I don’t know what they want. But I’d wager all the gold in your mountainside vault that they won’t stop at Valios. Heard rumors that Bastion Rook made a home here after the Roost fell. You’d best send him onward to the North, have him stitch together as many alliances as he can.”
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