Sovereign

by Ted Dekker

  “She stays,” Jordin said, staring at the girl.

  Roland’s brow arched. The others paused, the room bathed in sudden tension at the unspoken standoff.

  “I need her,” Jordin said.

  Roland hesitated and then gave a curt nod. Kaya eased back down, hands in her lap. The others resumed their departure in silence, some to doorways along the wall, others up the stairs, like dark phantoms vanishing into the walls, leaving only Roland, Michael, and Kaya at the table. The prince waited until the last door was closed before speaking.

  “Quite the entrance. You would do well to remember where you are.”

  She was looking at Kaya, who returned her stare with indifference. “How could I possibly forget?”

  “Indeed,” Roland said. “And yet you’ve forgotten so much lately.”

  “It’s apparently easy to lose your mind in this place.”

  “And yet you seem to have found yours in my bed,” he said.

  She gave him a sharp look. But his tone had not been mocking, and she saw that his face had softened.

  “Yes,” she said. “I slept well. I trust you did also.”

  He gave a slight smile. “Very.” He motioned to a chair with an open hand. “Please….”

  He was dressed in black, his sleeveless shirt half buttoned up the front. Black armbands hugged each arm where his biceps met his elbows. Taut muscle pressed his veins to the surface of his forearms; his fingers, curled and at ease, looked strong enough to crush a man’s neck as an afterthought. She was surprised by her reaction to him even now, even as a Sovereign and fully rested.

  And yet this was the man she must kill. The thought terrified her.

  “We don’t have time to sit here,” she said. “I may know the way into the Citadel, but getting to Feyn and Rom could take some time.”

  “Yes, of course. We kill Feyn today. I’d nearly forgotten.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “You haven’t told me what it is you remember. Tell me now so I know what to believe.”

  She stared at him, trying to judge his sincerity, aware of Michael studying them. He was playing with her, knowing she had no option but to play along. She needed him as much as he needed her.

  “I will. As soon as Kaya becomes Sovereign.”

  His placid expression remained in place. “That is her choice, not mine.”

  Kaya glanced between them, silent.

  “Go on, my little darling. Tell us if you would take the dead blood and lose your Immortality.”

  “Why would I do that?” Kaya asked.

  “Because you were a lover of Jonathan before you crawled into this man’s bed!” Jordin snapped. “Get ahold of yourself, Kaya!”

  “Isn’t this what Jonathan wanted?” she said, far too innocently.

  “He died for this?” Jordin demanded. “Are you mad?”

  Kaya blinked, with shock or simple realization, Jordin couldn’t tell. Roland seemed content to leave them to their exchange. Relished it, perhaps.

  Jordin walked behind the prince’s chair and squatted on one foot next to Kaya. She took the girl’s hand and looked into her black eyes.

  “Please, Kaya…. think about the Sovereignty that Jonathan died to bring us. How many have given their lives to protect his blood? You, maybe more than any of us, know what it means to come to life. He saved you from the Authority of Passing! You have to take his blood again and find that life again.”

  “I’ve never felt so alive,” she said. A hint of fear crossed the girl’s face. “I can’t take dead blood! Not now. I’ve just found life.”

  Jordin felt her ire rise to the breaking point, pushed higher by the acute knowledge that she had felt the same…. and the fear that she might be wrong. Was the right thing supposed to be so difficult? Was the wrong supposed to feel so very natural, and so right?

  “Don’t be a fool!” she said, standing abruptly, not knowing if she was speaking to Kaya or herself. “You took his blood and found a new life, just as I did!”

  “A life of misery,” Roland said, echoing her own words of the night before.

  Jordin shoved a finger at him, her eyes boring into Kaya’s. “He sweeps you off your feet and lifts your skirt, and you forget who you are? Don’t mistake pleasure for truth.”

  Kaya’s face darkened. “What makes you think I’ve lifted my skirt for anyone? You think I’m a tramp? That I’ve lost my mind just because I still have the life you gave up?”

  Jordin suddenly felt foolish—and ashamed for doubting the girl, at least when it came to Roland. She felt her face flush.

  Kaya stood up, face now firmly set. “I have no intention of taking your blood! I’m Immortal now, and I’ve never been happier. With your permission, my prince….” She faced Roland. “I would like to leave.”

  “Of course,” he said gently. “And stay clear of eager hands, yes?” He glanced at Jordin as he said it.

  Kaya bowed her head. “I will.” She turned and hurried toward the stairs without a glance at Jordin.

  “The virus will kill every Immortal, Kaya!”

  The girl didn’t acknowledge her warning.

  “You’ll only find misery!” Jordin cried after her.

  Kaya spun at the first step. “You’re the only miserable one, Jordin.” Then she flew up the stairs and was gone.

  Roland said with dry amusement, “I guess she told us, didn’t she?”

  Her words burrowed into Jordin’s mind like a tick. She could no longer pretend that she wasn’t miserable.

  “You’re dragging her to the grave with you,” she said, sitting heavily in the chair Kaya had vacated.

  “And yet you may be in the grave well before her. Immortals are, after all, immortal.”

  Jordin faced the short life of a Sovereign. Perhaps very short. Roland might kill her yet. She could die on this mission. She likely would. The fact that she’d survived seroconversion twice meant nothing.

  “Now…. as you said, we’re running out of time. Tell me where I can find this alchemist who wishes us all dead.”

  “The only way to stop him is to kill Feyn.”

  “I’ll put my faith in my own intuition, if you don’t mind.”

  His smile vanished, replaced by a look of absolute command.

  “I assume you know the way back home. Take me yourself or tell me where it is. Either way, we will be at death’s doorstep by nightfall to make our own fate.”

  His brow arched. “Or would you rather allow this virus to run its course?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  FEYN FOLDED her hands inside the observation room. Beyond the glass, Rom sat slumped in the ironwood chair. There was no need for restraints, though by the look of him he might have benefited from them, if only to keep him sitting erect.

  An hour, Corban had said.

  Too many had passed.

  She stepped to the door and entered the inner room. Rom made no move, his head hung over his chest. She wondered if he was sleeping. She glanced over at Corban, who offered a single nod, then walked around the chair and stood before Rom.

  “Good morning. I hear you had a rough night.”

  Still quiet.

  “I’m sorry you had to endure such a slow turning—only full surrender can give you peace. Do you, Rom? Feel peace?”

  He looked up, the circles of fatigue beneath one eye as dark as the blackened bruise beneath the other. His skin had paled to a ghastly pallor since she’d seen him in the Senate Hall. The dark tree of veins along his neck, creeping up toward his jaw and over the back of his hands seemed less like the inky elegance of her own veins and more like dark fissures in something about to crack.

  He lifted his head, struggled to keep it from bobbing back down. His eyes never made it higher than her knees.

  “Somewhat,” he said.

  She flashed Corban a glance, and he gave another reassuring nod. Standing near his table, the alchemist looked worn, though he was certainly in far better condition than Rom. He ha
d changed his tunic, she noticed.

  She returned her attention to Rom. One of his hands occasionally trembled, as one who has palsy. Was that a product of the conversion or the lack of sleep?

  “Good. Full peace will come as you fully submit. Tell me, are you pleased about this new change in you?”

  “I….” He swallowed deeply, looked around, a strange bewilderment in his gaze. She gave him time.

  “I’m having trouble remembering the change.” His eyes rested on her.

  “What about your change are you unclear about?”

  “I…. I don’t know. What it was like before.”

  She gave him a slight smile. “Do you realize, Rom Sebastian, that this is the first time that we are of like kind?”

  “I don’t know what you mean….”

  “This is the first time you and I are both of the same blood. I your maker, you my slave. You said yesterday that you loved me, an appropriate sentiment for a slave. That you wanted me to be as you are. Now I have granted that wish.”

  She paused. “You do recall that you love me, don’t you?”

  “I don’t…. I don’t remember the conversation.”

  What else might he not remember? Clearly, he’d surrendered his state of resistance following the conversion, but if he couldn’t remember the details of his former life, all would be lost.

  She looked at Corban, brow raised in question.

  “Is it a ruse?”

  “I don’t believe so. His conversion is complete—body and will. If not his mind or emotion. Those will follow, I’m quite sure.”

  “I do love you,” Rom said. His gaze lifted to her face. “Yes…. yes, I do love you.”

  “As you should. Then you would do all that I ask of you.”

  He was quiet.

  “Am I wrong?” she asked more sharply.

  “No,” he said, his tone strange, as though he didn’t understand the word—or that it had come out of him.

  But in that moment Feyn knew she had Rom Sebastian, leader of the so-called Sovereigns. Truly had him, despite his failure to find full peace. What was peace anyway? She felt little of it herself, and her Dark Bloods knew even less. She needed only their unquestioned loyalty and service, not their joy or peace. Their love, not their pleasure.

  “Then show me your devotion and address me properly.”

  He glanced at Corban, then turned his eyes back to Feyn.

  “Lower your eyes,” she said gently.

  He did as she directed.

  “Who am I?”

  “My liege,” he said quietly.

  “And?”

  “My maker.”

  “And?”

  “The one that I love.”

  “Good. Now tell me where the rest of the Sovereigns are hiding.”

  His brows drew together.

  “Now.”

  “I can’t….”

  “Now!”

  His struggle to recall appeared genuine. She could not fault him for that.

  “In ruins,” he said.

  “Ruins? Where?”

  “In the city….”

  “The city is full of ruins. You will tell me which. Now.”

  “Ruins—south. The south part of the city. I can’t—” His eyes lifted, face drawn.

  “Lower your eyes!”

  He did at once. “Forgive me, my liege.”

  “Which ruins? Think!”

  Sweat had beaded on his forehead. “I can’t remember….”

  “Focus!”

  He went silent, his eyes searching the floor between his feet. The memory was beyond him.

  Feyn turned toward Corban. “Send a thousand men. Sweep the southern sector of the city. Comb every ruin you find.”

  “My liege, that could take days. And the virus, if what he has said is true, will release in three.”

  “Then send ten thousand! Now!”

  She turned with a rustle of black silk. “And keep working on our new friend. The information is hidden somewhere in that thick skull of his.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  BYZANTIUM LAY beneath a charcoal night sky, a sprawling city unaware that the fate of the world hung in unforgiving balance, final judgment to be rendered in a mere matter of hours.

  Jordin sat atop her stallion between Roland and Michael, staring down at the capital from the rise. Forty of Roland’s most skilled Rippers were mounted abreast, silent and unmoving, hooded and clad in black. Anyone peering out from the city might have thought them a cadre of reapers come to drag the unwitting to Hades.

  And they might be right.

  Behind the closed doors of a hundred thousand houses and as many apartments, Corpses prepared an evening meal consisting mostly of simple starches, canned meats, and aged vegetables. They would not venture out, far too aware of the bloodshed that visited their streets after dark. And so they remained imprisoned by fear as much as by the city’s evening curfew, praying over their supper for the Maker to grant Feyn favor against the plague of white-faced Immortals whom they feared more even than her Dark Bloods.

  Eighty thousand of Feyn’s guards patrolled the city in an ever-broadening perimeter around the Citadel, roaming the vacant streets in packs, eager for a kill. Bringing the head of an Immortal to Feyn would catapult even the lowest-ranking Dark Blood to a high position within the ranks.

  At least, that was the assumption. The feat had yet to be accomplished.

  Roland’s Rippers had never come into the city in such numbers as they would tonight. Theirs was a guerilla campaign, dependent on the stealth and sharpened perceptions that made them prized targets for the stronger and faster Bloods.

  Jordin had agreed to lead Roland in; she needed him, end of story. He was unyielding in his conditions, knowing she had no choice but to agree. He’d even made a reasonable case for his ability to stop Mattius from releasing the virus. They still had two full days, did they not? With his Immortal skills, he might stop the older Sovereign before he could trigger the release. Wasn’t it better to cut the alchemist off at the knees before going after Feyn and confronting her formidable Dark Bloods?

  They’d ridden hard and arrived an hour before dusk. But now that the time had come, Jordin couldn’t settle her nerves. She’d run through all possible approaches to the Sanctuary a hundred times. With his far superior eyes and sense of smell, Roland might be the better choice for initial penetration, but she had the advantage of delivering Roland if he agreed to go in as a captive. She would be fulfilling part of her bargain, which might at least cause Mattius to pause and buy her more time.

  She hadn’t suggested the approach to Roland yet.

  Roland flipped his hood from his head. His hair fell down over his shoulders. “Tell us the way now,” he said, not bothering to turn to Jordin. His attention was fixed on the distant barriers along the entrance she’d led them to on the city’s eastern border. She stared, barely seeing them in the dark, feeling practically blind compared to the creature she had been mere hours before, unable to keep from wondering if she might have been better served in this mission as an Immortal herself.

  The call of those intoxicating senses, so rich and full of the sensual life all but renounced by the Sovereigns, was hard to ignore. She could hardly blame Kaya for refusing to give them up in exchange for an uncertain and less vibrant future spent toiling under the wretchedness of Sovereignty.

  Wretched? Less? She shoved the insane thoughts aside and set her mind on the task at hand.

  “What guarantee do I have that you won’t kill me the moment I tell you?”

  He turned toward her, his expression set. “The virus is our common enemy. Return my belief in your warning with trust in me.”

  “Mattius is no fool. If he manages to release the virus, it’ll go airborne. Once that happens, we have no reason to believe it can be stopped. I have a better way.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I take you in as my hostage. Bound and gagged.”

  The prince arched a brow. One
of the horses gave a quiet snort.

  “I can understand how you might prefer me bound and gagged. And if I were anyone else I might agree,” he said dryly. “Tell me, have you ever heard of an Immortal being killed in battle over this past year?”

  “No.”

  “No.” His affirmation was low and utterly sure. “There’s a reason for that. And you will be better served trusting my abilities over any crafty plan. Believe me when I say I will be in and out of your Sanctuary before this Mattius realizes he’s not dreaming.”

  Perhaps she was underestimating him. Jonathan had simply said, Lead him.

  “Have it your way. But I lead.”

  He gave a curt nod.

  Turning to Michael, he said, “Ride hard down the streets. Pound Hades from the cobblestones. I want every Dark Blood within ten miles to hear. To rush to the fight. Don’t engage them, just draw their attention away from us.”

  To Jordin: “I need to know the direction.”

  “Southeast,” she said.

  He studied the dark city then spoke to Michael again. “Send them northeast with Marten leading. No more than an hour in the city. Then exit north, into the western waste. We will rejoin in the Bethelim Valley.”

  Jordin knew of the valley by hearsay only, so named by the old Nomads who had their own names for any landmark on the map. It was the barest valley in the land, once lush but now unmade because in truth there was no Maker, as the saying went by those who had defied Order. There, godlike weapons had turned the earth to dust during the Zealot War five centuries ago. No life had returned. Not a soul traveled there. Ever.

  None but Immortals, evidently.

  Roland looked to his left. “Cain.”

  “My prince,” the Ripper answered. The man who’d approached her with such wanton affection only two nights earlier was now fixed on nothing but dealing death. Of the four War Lords among Roland’s wraiths, only Michael had come, but Cain would surely one day be one himself—if he lived long enough.

  “Your men with me and Michael.”

  He dipped his head. “As you say.”

  “Now, Michael.”