by Jeff Seymour
Steelhill made a note on one of the parchments in front of him. His manner changed. Less cold, more resigned, more vulnerable.
“How many undead can a force like that wield, Leramis?”
Leramis blinked. He hadn’t thought Charles Steelhill had ever learned his real name, let alone that he might remember it so many years after Lars Dors.
The coals in the braziers hissed and crackled.
Leramis licked his lips and offered the truth.
“Anywhere from twenty thousand to six hundred thousand, depending on the strength of the individual necromancers involved.” Steelhill narrowed his eyes. Leramis tried to shake his head but was stopped by the knife at his throat. “I have no idea how strong those two thousand are, Charles.”
Another mark.
“How many corpses buried underneath Death’s Head?”
Leramis swallowed, and the knife scraped over the bulge in his throat. He didn’t think anyone truly knew the answer to that question. “A few hundred thousand, I expect. The city’s as old as we are, and we’ve been keeping bones since its foundation.”
Steelhill’s quill fell to the table. He stared blankly at his maps. His right eye twitched.
And Leramis saw that Eldan hadn’t properly prepared for besieging Death’s Head.
It would be difficult to starve the Order out. There were months of provisions laid in, gardens kept within the city walls, boats for fishing in the harbor and the rocky reaches beyond where Eldan’s warships couldn’t patrol. Eldan’s army would perish for want of food long before Death’s Head would.
Steelhill’s arm trembled, then stilled. He placed his hands on his maps and stood, looked around uneasily, ran a hand through his hair.
He’s showing me his nerves on purpose, Leramis realized. Why?
“Think,” Steelhill finally said. “Think about whose side you want to be on in this, Leramis. I don’t know how to take Death’s Head except by brute force. Neither does anyone else.” When his eyes came up, there was real sadness in them. “The Twelve and the Seven won’t accept defeat. They’ve staked too much on this. How many of your countrymen will you send to their deaths? How many of your classmates and cousins?”
Leramis’s stomach squirmed.
“We used to laugh at you because you wanted to do something great for the realm, Leramis. Because you wanted to redeem your father’s worthless name. But I’ll tell you a secret.” Steelhill leaned forward. “We respected you for it. You cared more than any of us.”
Steelhill drew back and nodded to the man with the knife. The cloth was wrapped over Leramis’s eyes again.
“Think about who you want to be remembered as, Leramis,” Steelhill said. “Whether you want the entry below your name in the Book at Lars Dors to read: ‘Died an unrepentant traitor,’ or ‘Saved the lives of thousands during the siege of Death’s Head before perishing for his sins.’”
The world had slipped back into darkness once again, but it wasn’t a darkness that Leramis could mine for strength or peace. He smelled the cloying smoke of the braziers. He saw a few hazy pinpricks of light through his blindfold.
“And think about how you want your last days to feel,” Steelhill finished.
The coals clattered as the poker was withdrawn from them.
“Charles, wait.”
A source of heat drew near Leramis’s ear. His legs began to tremble and his armpits to sweat. The heat moved down, toward the meat of his neck. The soulwoven bonds around his limbs grew tighter, and the man with the knife pressed it against his throat.
“Let me think, Charles. Give me a day to think.”
Something hard and biting touched Leramis’s neck.
He screamed loud and high before he realized the sensation was one of icy cold. The hot poker receded. His heart hammered against his chest. His throat swam with bile. His stomach twisted over itself like a coiled snake.
They taught you that, he told himself. Remember? Get the man to expect heat and he’ll feel it when given cold instead.
He heard the rustle of the poker being inserted into the coals once more.
“That was a warning, Leramis,” Steelhill said. “One day. Think hard.”
TWENTY-SIX
Thirty-seven days before the destruction of Nutharion City
A -
Sure you’ll have heard. They held a funeral. Sunfish to be named Hor. Poe is dead.
Dil sucked in a sharp breath. She was seated in Allenbee’s office, where the Violet Lady had cleared off a desk for her to use when she was sorting through correspondence. The slanted light of late afternoon made a long tetrahedron on the floor, and the appetite she’d been looking forward to sating at dinner evaporated.
“Something interesting?” Allenbee asked behind her.
In Dil’s memories Quay was waving in the rain, hugging her, telling her and Cole to take care of one another. Standing in the sunset, telling her she could go with them. Trusting her to lead them through the Estmarsh. Telling her he didn’t care that she was a Wilderleng.
Nobody’s going to die, Ryse had said. I’m sure of it.
It didn’t feel real. Couldn’t be real. She didn’t want to bring herself to say the words.
“Dilanthia?”
“Quay’s dead,” Dil said.
Her throat closed up. Her chest constricted.
It can’t be real.
“Read the rest,” Allenbee said. Her voice grew much more attentive. “Blackarrow has a flair for the dramatic. There may be more.”
Dil took a shaky breath and read on, out loud. “‘No one certain where body came from, but most common rumor has it turning up by docks in Densel. No one’s seen it but the Seven. Willow’s in a fury. Says she saw Poe last year after he left city, and he was up to something big. Says rumors of his disappearance don’t line up with things he told her. She and Thinshadow plan to investigate.’”
Willow. Blackarrow’s unnamed source in whichever of the Great Houses he worked for. Thinshadow. Ense Pendilon, the heir to his house. Same age as Quay, and one of the men who’d been talked about as a potential new heir.
That was it for Blackarrow’s first letter. She set it down.
Allenbee kept quiet, but Dil heard her drum her fingers on her desk. Dil was left with nothing to do but worry at the mysteries or let a deep, dark well of grief overwhelm her.
So she kept at the mysteries.
Found by the docks in Densel.
A second letter, sealed by white wax with a rose on it, lay beneath Blackarrow’s. She tore it open, hoping for better news. Something to contradict Blackarrow.
Something to keep her afloat.
A -
I received your last message. I don’t know what happened to that soulweaver, and I’m still asking, but I’m not likely to turn up much. I hear no rumors about the dragon inside the Complex. They all seem to be coming from outside. I suspect it’s just rabble finding something to worry about.
Dil suppressed the urge to tear Whiterose’s message in half. Below, there was a second letter from Blackarrow. She broke the seal with shaking hands.
Received your last message. Looking into why Seven not paying attention to rumors about dragon. Suspect they’re after something big enough to distract them. Probably Koe’s position. Hoping Thinshadow will let something slip to Willow to confirm. No news on Poe. Been gone so long I think everyone was expecting this. Inclined to believe it.
There were little wet spots on the letter, which was beginning to shake so hard it couldn’t be read anymore.
A hand reached over her shoulder and removed it from her grasp, gently.
“Easy,” Allenbee said. “Easy.”
Dil grabbed the edge of her desk so hard she worried her fingers might break. “Did you know?”
“No.”
The tears were still coming, and she was angry. Angry like she’d never been before.
“How could they?” she whispered.
“How could they what?”
&nb
sp; “Someone killed Quay. Someone made Ryse disappear. How could they?”
“It might have been an accident.”
Dil shook her head. “You don’t know them. You don’t know what we survived together.”
Allenbee stepped forward and leaned against Dil’s desk. Her fingers tapped her arm thoughtfully, like the key to the mystery lay in Dil’s reaction to it.
“What?” Dil snapped.
“Blackarrow thinks there’s a conspiracy between the Seven and the Temple to kill Quay’s father in Menatar and put someone else on the throne.”
Quay was dead. Ryse was gone. It was getting increasingly hard to care about the Seven and the Temple.
“Getting rid of Quay would be an important part of that,” Allenbee continued. “So that someone—Arayi Elpioni, by the sound of it—could be named heir and put in a position to take the throne after Molte Eldani’s death.”
Dil pried her fingers from the desk’s edge and looked up at Allenbee. “What sense does it make to murder someone so you can sit on a throne while the dragon eats the world out from under it?”
Allenbee smiled thinly. “You don’t know them, or what they think is important. There are blood feuds in play that run back centuries.”
Dil scowled. “Somehow I don’t give a fuck.”
She sounded like Cole, saying that. And that made her think of him, and what the news would mean to him. The anger flared briefly, and then a deep sea of sadness crashed over it.
She felt as if she’d sprinted a mile.
Allenbee was staring at her. Letting her stew. Letting her fume.
After a few moments more, the anger had drowned. For a while.
“Can I tell Cole?” Dil murmured.
Allenbee shook her head. “He’d ask how you knew. I’ll tell him. Tonight, after dinner.”
“I’ll tell him you told me.”
Allenbee pursed her lips. “You’re sure that’s a job you want?”
Dil looked into the Violet Lady’s stony face. She looked calm. Emotionless. Heartless. She had no idea. No idea what Quay meant to Cole. And she wouldn’t care even if she did.
“Yes,” Dil said. “It is.”
***
She waited until after dinner, when she and Cole could be alone. They stood on the balcony outside his room, watching the sun set over the stone canyons. The idea of Quay being dead had sunk in a little more, and there was no one left around to be mad at. She was just sad and worried about what her news was going to do to Cole.
He leaned on the balcony’s stone balustrade, frowning. “You said you had something to tell me?”
“Put your arms around me first, and promise not to let go until I tell you to.”
Cole’s frown grew deeper, but he complied. “Dil,” he said slowly, “what’s wrong?”
“Allenbee told me something this afternoon. Something awful.”
Cole breathed. Waited for her to continue.
“Cole,” she said, “Quay’s dead.”
His body jerked. His arms contracted. Like someone had hit him from behind with a sledgehammer. “What?”
“They held a funeral last week, in Eldan City.”
“What?” Cole said again. “I can’t—what?”
For a second he just stood there, and then he sagged in her arms. “Let me sit down.”
She did. He crossed his legs at her feet, let his chin fall to his chest.
“How does she know?”
“She has informants in the city.”
“Shit,” Cole whispered. He stared at his hands, then pressed them together so tightly they began to shake. “I told him not to go. I told him!”
Dil sat down next to him. His eyes came up glistening, and he had a look of pain on his face she’d only seen once before.
Brother! he’d screamed at her, and she’d understood and jumped into a raging, freezing river to save Litnig’s life.
This time there was nothing she could do, and she felt like her heart was being chewed on by a wolf.
“He knew he was going to die, Dil. I saw it in his eyes, and I didn’t stop him.”
“He had to go,” she said, but the words sounded hollow.
“There must have been another way. He wouldn’t give me timeto find it, but I could have.”
“I know,” she said. She put her arms around him and stroked his back. “I know.”
The sun sank over the horizon. Cole’s fingers dug into her skin. His arms crushed against her ribs. He wept.
The world slid deeper into shadows.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Thirty-six days before the destruction of Eldan City
Ryse’s trial went by so fast that later, she could barely recall it. She retained a few hazy images of the great golden interior of the Dome of Yenor in Eldan City, lit by flickering orange flame and bright yellow soulweaving. A tribunal of the Twelve, staring down from their bench with cold eyes and stone hearts. Darkness seen through the pupil of an enormous fresco of the Eye of Yenor. Watching her. Judging her. She screamed her warnings, but no one listened.
During the first week of her imprisonment in a vermin-infested cell beneath Temple Complex, she thought about escape. But they watched her, and a hooded soulweaver from Division Nine was never far from her, always ready to strike if she attempted to run.
By the end of the second week, she was beginning to understand what hunger and weakness were, and her thoughts of escape had been largely replaced by thoughts of food.
By the end of the first month, they stopped guarding her. There was little left to guard.
***
A drop of water wormed a line down Ryse’s face. The stubble where her hair had once been itched furiously. Cold chains chafed her wrists and ankles.
The darkness around her swam with demons.
She saw no light. Knew nothing but blackness and touch and sound. Her mind faded in and out of hallucinations. Some days she fell asleep and couldn’t wake up. Others she thought she was running through the fields outside Eldan City. Sometimes she relived every moment of the things that had happened onboard the Folly of Man, as if they were happening again and the devils in the darkness were as real as the metal on her skin.
And some days she was keenly, painfully aware of exactly where she was: imprisoned beneath Temple Complex, in the care of Division Nine.
They don’t understand, she whispered to the darkness. The words didn’t come out aloud, but she felt them, scurrying across the surface of her mind like mice.
Footsteps echoed in the dungeon, and she scrunched back against the wall. Her legs began to shake.
Footsteps. It starts with footsteps. It’s Quay, only it’s not. Yenor, please…
She remembered where she was.
Only Division Nine walked in the dungeons beneath the Temple. Only Division Nine, in their hooded, faceless robes, came to feed her a ladle of something awful and give her the cup of water that had been her daily ration for—
For how long?
She didn’t know. But the footsteps drew nearer. Voices floated through the darkness, along with something bright that made her wince. She heard other sounds. The rustling of chains, whimpering, moans.
The others.
The prisoners she’d seen when they brought her down. People who were chained like her—heretical or traitorous or other things that didn’t matter. She’d forgotten about them.
Yenor, she prayed. Her chin flopped against her chest, and her eyes closed to shut out the approaching light. Yenor, help me remember them.
Yenor was there in the darkness. It was from darkness that Yenor had been born, and from darkness that Zhe had brought forth the world. It was Hir home.
And in the darkness, Yenor gave Ryse strength.
“You are sure?” said a voice.
Metal squealed in front of her. Her head wobbled up. A man and a boy passed through a door in the bars that blocked in her cell. The man wore a robe of snowy white. The boy was shrouded in a sleeveless, hooded robe of dark gra
y. The light came from the man’s hand.
Something tickled the back of Ryse’s mind. Something he was doing. Something she’d once been able to do as well.
Weaving. He’s weaving the light.
The man was white-haired, his face taut and vital, with only the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes to betray his age. It was his voice she’d heard. He looked familiar.
“Hoist her,” he said.
The boy in gray moved to a wheel that stood near him in the shadows. His arms looked almost childish, until he grabbed the wheel and began to turn it.
New sounds found Ryse’s ears. Metal sliding along metal. Wood creaking under strain. Her arms were lifted above her head and away from each other by the chains on her wrists. At first the stretching felt good, but the chains continued to move until her shoulders were pulled beyond the point of comfort—to the edge of pain. She wobbled to her feet, but the chains didn’t stop moving. Soon she was on her toes, and then the chains on her ankles were being drawn taut as well. Her legs were pulled apart by the tightening chains, and a memory flashed across her mind. She made a sound that was part scream, part bark, part whimper.
“That’s enough,” said the man in white. He squinted and stepped forward, grasped her jaw, turned her head one direction and then the other. His fingers were warm and hard and hurt her bones. Her heart pounded erratically.
ItwillbefineItwillbefineItwillbefineItwillbefine she told herself, until the calmness of Yenor in the black spread through her and she felt warm and comforted. Nothing could touch her. Not the real her. Not anymore. The man’s eyes, wide and blue and implacable, fixed on hers. His grip on her face tightened.
I should speak, she thought. I should tell him about the dragon.
But her jaws were too weak, and his grip was too strong. She smelled food on his breath—onions and carrots and beef and garlic. Her mouth began to water. She would’ve done anything to eat, anything at all to have a bite of what she could smell on his breath. She wanted to tell him that, to tell him anything, but when he stepped back and released her jaw, all she could do was utter dry squeaking noises.
“She could be the child,” the man said. He wiped the hand that had held her jaw on his robe and sniffed. “It doesn’t matter. She’s worthless to us at this stage.”