A game? This was no game. The outcome was already assured. There was only one winner.
With the king gone, I turned to Banques. “You can’t do this. This violates everything that the Alliance—”
“This violates absolutely nothing,” he snarled. “I will remind you that this is the Kingdom of Eislandia, and Montegue is its rightful and true ruler. It is not only under his jurisdiction to rule and protect as he sees fit, it is his moral duty to ensure the peace for his citizens. He is doing his job and doing it well. He does not take the advice of a thief or barbarian soldier, especially not one who is sympathetic to the Ballengers, who brought about this carnage in the first place. We are still trying to stamp out a war and restore order and must use every means at our disposal for the good of all.”
Every means? He glanced down at the children, then glared at me, his hand curling into a fist in like he wanted to smash it into my face. He warned me to be silent while he explained everything. The rules, it turned out, were easy to remember. They were nearly all the same.
1. If you ever leave as much as a small bruise on the king …
2. If you ever leave a bruise on any of his cabinet or soldiers …
3. If you are ever found outside your room without an approved escort …
4. If you ever steal so much as a hairpin …
5. If you ever lie to the king … one of the children will die, and you will be forced to choose which one.
“Understand?” he asked.
I nodded. But I would slit my own throat before I would choose between Lydia and Nash.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
JASE
The tide, there was a rhythm to it.
In.
Out.
It was winning. I felt it pulling me under.
* * *
Blackness. It was all I knew. And silence. Had I stopped breathing? But the pain was still there. The pain was everywhere.
I had to be alive.
* * *
Burning. Wet. My skin, my lips, everything on fire.
Hell. I had to be in hell. And I couldn’t find my way out.
* * *
He’s coming to.
Bloody saints. Not now. Keep him quiet.
I tried to reach up, to feel my eyes, to see if they were open, because I still only saw blackness, but the slight movement ignited a red-hot poker stabbing into my shoulder. I groaned and a hand pressed hard over my mouth.
“Shhh,” a voice hissed. “Unless you want to die!”
I was still because I couldn’t move. I couldn’t reach up to push the hand away. I heard something creak over my head. A wooden floor? Muffled voices.
No love lost between us and the Ballengers …
… burned us out …
If any were here, we’d be the first to hand them over …
Good riddance, I say.
If you do see him, you’re to report it immediately.
I heard the sound of horses riding away, and the hand lifted from my mouth.
I felt myself slipping again, falling back into some dark cave. “Who are you?” I whispered.
“Kerry.”
“Kerry of Fogswallow?”
“How many Kerrys do you know?”
Only one. A small child was able to hold me down.
* * *
The heavy scent of burning tallow stirred me awake. When I opened my eyes, a candle flickered in a glass lamp and shadows shifted on walls. Barrels lined the room, and there were rushes scattered across the floor. I was lying on a pallet. Caemus sat next to me on a milking stool. Shadows filled the hollows of his face. None of it made sense. What was I doing here? What had happened to me? And then, bit by bit, the black fog rolled back. We had been attacked. Kazi and I—
I tried to rise, but instead I sucked in a sharp breath, coughed, and pain shot through my chest.
“Hold on, there,” Caemus said, gently holding me down. “You’ve barely got one foot out of that underworld. Don’t go stepping back into it.”
“Where am I?” I whispered.
“The root cellar. Lucky thing you dug it. Don’t know where else we’d hide you.” He poured water from a pitcher into a cup. “Here,” he said, bringing the water to my lips. I struggled to drink. Even my tongue ached. It was dry, coated, and salty. My lips were cracked, and I shook with the effort of lifting my head, even with Caemus’s help.
He set the cup aside. “That’s enough for now. We didn’t think you were going to make it at all. You’ve been in and out for days now.”
I couldn’t remember any of it. “Where’s Kazi? Why isn’t she here?”
And then the fog rolled back a little farther. Baricha. I had told her to run, to get away, but instead she jumped from her horse and fought them, beating them away from me, ordering the horses to run. She killed one, and then another, and then a fist—a fist punched into her stomach—but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t get to her. I couldn’t do anything. I had never felt more helpless. Baricha. Tigone ran into the forest. Metal flashed, voices shouted, the world faded in and out. Pieces were all I could remember—slamming to the ground, footsteps, someone lifting me.
“He only brought you.”
“He? Someone brought me here? Who was it?”
“I don’t know. It was dark, the middle of the night. He didn’t say his name, and it was hard to get a good look at him. I think he wanted it that way. He told me to take care of you—to do my best, but not to call a healer. He said they were watching all the healers, following them. He tried to give me coin for your safekeeping, but I wouldn’t take it. Before he left, he wiggled your ring off your finger. Said he needed it, and I didn’t argue, seeing as he was trying to save your life.”
They.
They were watching healers.
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t gone back since the fires. We’re making do with what supplies we have here. It’s too dangerous in town.”
He had to tell me twice. Maybe three times. I was still drifting in and out, trying to grasp his details. Taking sips of water. Coughing. Still feeling like I had a foot in an underworld that didn’t want to let me go.
He said that about two months ago there had been a bad fire. The north livery burned down. All the horses inside died. The next night there was another fire and then a raid on a caravan. More trouble came after that, but he and the rest of the settlers had stayed away, afraid of being hit on the trail, not to mention that since five Vendan soldiers had absconded with the Patrei, Vendans hadn’t exactly been welcome in town. Except for a hurried trip to get some medicine at the apothecary, they hadn’t been back. Caemus mostly kept his head down, not wanting to be noticed, but from the little he gathered from whispers at the apothecary, it seemed the Ballengers had been running everywhere, trying to stop whoever was stirring up the mayhem before an army had marched in and taken everything over.
“An army?” I asked. Each new bit of information he gave me seemed to twist into something more impossible. “What army?”
“I don’t know, but I heard there’s a lot of them. I got a glimpse of a few as I rode in.”
An army from where? A neighboring kingdom? Or had the leagues joined forces? I thought about Fertig’s gang and Kazi’s observation that they were well trained.
“And Tor’s Watch?” I already knew the answer. I had seen the broken spires, the walls. But I still couldn’t understand how. Our defenses were impenetrable. Our walls, our guards, our vantage point, and the steep grade leading to Tor’s Watch—an army with a dozen ballistae couldn’t breach our walls. Our archers would take them out before they were even in range. “How did they bring down the wall?”
Again, he said he didn’t know for sure, but he said they had weapons unlike anything he had ever seen. “Word is, the whole nave of the temple is gone and that one shot brought it down. The apothecary’s wife said they did it just to get everyone’s attention. It worked. No one’s challenging them now.”
This was not an army coming in to rescue a town. It was an invasion. Paxton, Rybart, and Truko. It had to be. They had joined forces.
I was afraid to ask, but more afraid not to. “What did the weapons look like?”
“That was the strange part,” he said. “They weren’t that large. They carried them on their shoulders.” He went on in some detail. They sounded exactly like the launchers Beaufort was designing for us—the ones we never got.
“What about Kazi? Do you know where she is? Do they have her?”
He shook his head. “Don’t know. The man who brought you didn’t say, and like I said, we haven’t been back to town.”
But I did know. They had her. She was their prisoner. That was the only way Kazi wouldn’t be here beside me. Unless—
I remembered them swarming over us, black shadows moving over the dark hillside.
“I have to get to—” I leaned over on an elbow, trying to sit up, then fell back, unable to breathe. Caemus cursed, saying I was going to break open the wounds that Jurga had stitched shut.
“You’re not going anywhere. Even if she is in town you wouldn’t be any help to her, not with the shape you’re in. And not with just one of you, and hundreds of them.”
“But my family. They could—”
“They’re not helping either. They’re all hiding inside that mountain of yours. I know that much.”
The vault. And that meant it was really bad.
“I have to get to them. They’ll know what we were up against. They’ll help me find—” But then I felt the black fog rolling back in, and my eyelids eased shut against my will. I was afraid I might not open them again, afraid that this time the underworld might pull me under and not let go.
The cellar, the musty air, the pain, everything slipped away.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
KAZI
I was returned to my room and left alone in my “fine” accommodations for two full days. I was told I would be summoned when they were ready for me. My door wasn’t locked. It felt like a test. But there was no worry that I would leave. I cracked it open and peeked out, but I didn’t dare step through it. Food was brought to me in abundance. More clothing. More medicine. But no came one to speak to me—or give me more rules. The waiting and wondering and being able to do nothing drove me to near madness. Summon me, for gods’ sakes!
My hours were filled with a thousand questions. Who had been hanged? How many had died? How could there be a warehouse of weapons? Was Gunner truly responsible for all the carnage? Had he blackmailed the town for more money as he let Rybart pillage it?
But the Patrei’s vow was his family’s vow, and as much as I hated Gunner, I couldn’t believe he would do this. Though he was impulsive. He had lied to the town and said the queen was coming.
On the other hand, as much as he hated the idea, he did help rebuild the settlement. Jase’s promise was his promise too. And surely Vairlyn would never allow—
A cloud of locusts batted in my head, details flying around in a mad, scattered mess. I couldn’t sort out the truth. I searched for solutions, one thought crashing into another. Ultimately, only one thought rose above the others again and again—I had to get Lydia and Nash out of their grip. That was the most important thing. But my skills as thief and soldier offered me nothing. Stealing a tiger or even Beaufort was one thing, but stealing two small children who were under heavy guard was another. And where would I take them? The city crawled with enemy soldiers. Tor’s Watch was destroyed and abandoned. There was only one of me and hundreds of them. And there was the possibility they wouldn’t even come with me. I remembered Gunner’s and Priya’s last bitter words. Had they poisoned Lydia and Nash against me? Everything pointed to failure, and failure carried too great a downside. If I could get a message to the queen—
But the arena had been taken over too. Traders. I could slip a message to a trading caravan. But when? I was under heavy guard, and even a trading caravan might be sympathetic toward the king, and then, if my treachery were discovered—
This violates nothing. It’s within his rights.
I felt the same panic as I had that day when I spit in the queen’s face, useless, lost, a bird with plucked wings. The world I knew how to navigate had disappeared. I had to follow the rules Banques laid out. It was my only option.
As bad as the panic and questions were, at times it seemed they were all that saved me from another kind of madness. Jase. He was gone. It was a crushing thought that would slam into me unexpectedly and rob me of what little sanity I had. Only thinking of how I could save Nash and Lydia allowed me to shove the madness away.
On the third afternoon, guards knocked loudly on my door and told me the king required my presence. I had been summoned. They told me specifically what to wear. My mind raced once again as Black Teeth and Broken Nose escorted me to another wing of the inn.
“Here,” Broken Nose said, stopping at an open door and nudging me inside.
The king’s chambers bustled with activity as if last minute preparations were being made. A bevy of nervous servants hovered around him, adjusting his baldrick, lacing boots, buckling breastplates, filling scabbards with knives and swords. He seemed to drink in the attention, and I guessed this was all new to him. But it was clear there was an urgency too, a rush to slip the king into another new persona.
His head turned as I entered the room. He waved me over and gave more orders for servants to “prepare” me. A long sword and dagger were slid into my weapon belt. There was no worry that I would use them. It had been clearly outlined what would happen if I made the slightest aggressive move. Any weapon was useless to me. However, I did note these were dull. Very dull. They were more suited for beating dust from a rug than for stabbing anyone. But when sheathed, they certainly gave the appearance of strength.
“What are you staring at?” he asked, though it had to be obvious. He was dressed in full military regalia. The black leather pauldron on his shoulder gleamed with polish. “Don’t be so surprised. Of course I’m a soldier. I’ve been under Banques’s tutelage for years now, and it’s not an exaggeration to say he’s the finest swordsman on the continent.” A farmer under the tutelage of a swordsman? For years?
He paused to look at himself in a mirror, tugging on his tunic and adjusting the baldrick across his chest. “And I think it’s fair to say, too, that the student has now surpassed the master.” He turned to look at me, his expression solemn. “I’m the leader and protector of my kingdom. I need to convey that in my attire, to inspire confidence.”
He painted an imposing and impressive picture. No doubt Synové—and maybe any girl in Hell’s Mouth—would swoon over his transformation. His dark hair was trimmed and combed, a single strand falling forward as if he had just swung a sword. His cheeks glowed with a fresh shave, and his leather breastplate was cut to accent his wide shoulders. Every detail conveyed strength, leadership, and a message that this was a king who was fit and able to lead.
I didn’t respond and he paused, waving away a servant who was tending him. He stepped closer to me. “I’m not the monster you think I am. I am a just ruler and have to listen to my advisors. That is what they are paid for.”
“Using children as hostages is vile. Your advisors are vile. And if you listen to them, that makes you vile too.”
“That’s easy enough for a bystander to say. Words and lofty accusations are easy, aren’t they, when you haven’t watched people die? You don’t run a troubled kingdom beset by marauders where hard decisions must be made every day—and I have made one. Sometimes sacrifices must be made for the greater good.”
I couldn’t restrain a deep roll of my eyes. “Is that another gem your well-paid advisors vomited into your hands?”
His dark lashes fluttered, and his eyes ignited with fury.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Does bruising your delicate ego count as a transgression too? Will the children now suffer for it?”
He stepped closer, his face inches from mine,
his chest heaving. “Rybart preyed on the town, pillaging and burning it while the Ballengers and their henchmen blackmailed it for more protection money. Those are the facts! And I am the King of Eislandia.” He lowered his voice so only I could hear him. “You will show me respect,” he hissed between clenched teeth. “Do you understand?”
This was no show. The man who had courteously pulled out a chair for me just days ago now fumed with hot rage. He had stepped into the role of powerful monarch in a ravenous way.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” I answered cautiously. In that moment, looking into his dark eyes, I was afraid that bruising his ego might be what mattered most of all. I was usually good at judging temperaments, knowing just how far I could push, but this king seemed to be many different people, and I didn’t understand even one of them.
He looked away, grabbed a paper from a table, and handed it to me. “Here, Banques prepared this. It’s what you will be reading to the town. Read it word for word. We have to leave soon, before the last bell rings.”
Servants swarmed in again, making final adjustments to his uniform. One young woman fussed over him, picking away imaginary threads. I wasn’t sure if she was afraid of him or completely enamored, but when he turned his back, she quickly fluffed her hair with her fingers and smoothed out her bodice, and my question was answered.
When he was satisfied with his appearance, he shooed her and the other servants away and studied me—from the sword hanging at my side to the long, tailored woolen jacket that servants had dressed me in. His inspection was slow and searing. He finally nodded as if pleased. “Yes, you look like you just rode in, maybe a bit gaunt from the journey. We’ll fill out those cheeks with a tasty celebration afterward. Trust me, this is all for the best. Let’s go share your news.”
He pulled my hood up to cover my head and took hold of my arm firmly but gently, leading me to the door, playing the role of a soldier king leading a respected messenger of a foreign monarch to share the important news of the Patrei’s execution. A new era was beginning.
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