“I’m a Wraith Walker.”
“Mm.”
“And the son of King Craigh Opsillian. Dragons are returning, and you sent me here to acquire the phylactery.”
Baern leaned over the wall and, with both hands, lifted a small oval container reinforced with bands of steel. He placed it in Lavery’s waiting hands. “There you are, Mister Lavery Opsillian. Ah, one more thing.” He bent down, scooped up a hammer and chisel from an assortment of tools lying on the floor. He chiseled into a mortar groove, breaking it apart and in the process freeing a small key. “You’ll need this.”
Lavery glanced from Baern to the apparent phylactery and back again.
“Do you think I’m lying? That I’m giving you a worthless vessel?”
“No, I—” He stroked the phylactery, half-expecting a twilight-colored aura to wisp out. Nothing of the sort happened. “How does this thing bring down a wall?”
Baern stuck his head forward, as if he had misheard. “Pardon?”
“I don’t understand. You said this will destroy the wall that the Twin Sisters of Silderine erected.”
“Ah,” Baern said, with a sagely lift of his head. “Did I tell you what to do with it?”
“You told me to bring it to you.”
“Then you should do that. And you should also get going, unless you wish to stay here for the rest of your days. You would likely be unhappy with that, and future me doubly so.”
The echo of his voice told Lavery that he did need to leave soon. But he had so many questions still.
Baern put a hand atop Lavery’s head. “Go.”
With regret, Lavery disengaged himself from the past and once more found himself in the present, holding a phylactery that looked like a fortified coffer made in a blacksmith’s forge.
“Do you have it?” Laythe asked. “I can’t tell my hand from my knee in here.”
Wobbly and unsteady—as returning from a Walk is wont to leave a Wraith Walker—Lavery braced himself against a wall. “Yes,” he said simply, wiping drool on his arm.
“Good. We need to leave before we die of—”
Lavery coughed. “That smells like smoke.”
“Before we die of smoke inhalation,” Laythe finished. “They’re rioting.” With that, he reached up through the mausoleum breach, fished around for some leverage to pull himself up. He found it and emerged above ground like a cicada rising from its decade-long sleep.
A riot? Lavery thought. A pang of pride struck him then. His people, those he would have ruled over—no, ruled with—those he called his friends, his neighbors, they were fighting back against Aven Klouth’s hostile claim.
He expected to see a semiorganized militia wielding swords they’d pillaged from the barracks, maybe a cohort of guards who fought with the people rather than against them. He expected to see the rusty orange colors of House Klouth falling in battle as the downtrodden and unfortunate tore his banners from the walls and stormed his keep.
But instead Lavery Opsillian witnessed a scene born from horror.
Diseased roots busted through cobbles, coiling around ankles and ramming themselves through bone and tendon. Blood burst like fat globules of rain falling from the sky, spraying walls and faces.
People screamed. Children cried.
“Come,” Laythe said, taking him by the hand.
Lavery felt numb. They gave a wide berth to a horde from the dregs, gaunt and black-eyed. The sickly people collapsed to their knees and onto their faces they fell. Their skin from the elbow down sloughed off—melted right from the bone like warm cheese.
“Help me!” begged a man. His hands swam for Lavery in desperation, but Laythe pulled him away. “He…lp.” Pustules sealed his eyes shut then, and his jaw teetered back and forth before fracturing.
Lavery wanted to vomit. And he might have had Laythe not jammed a bucket over his head. It smelled of hay.
He felt himself being lifted up and placed on a saddle. He could have easily removed the bucket, but what sick, morbid soul would do that? He pulled it down, ensuring the running of the horse’s hooves over bumps and dimples wouldn’t jar it loose.
The horse whinnied as a sudden impact nearly unseated Lavery. “What was that?”
“A swerve,” Laythe said, looking back and watching a helpless Daughter clutch at her pulverized face. “We’re going to Tactin’s Fist, meet with Baern. We won’t be stopping for a while.”
He checked his rear again, fleeing through the open city gate. No Daughters. No hunters. He massaged the phylactery like the hand of a lover.
And he smiled.
Chapter Thirty
Sarpella glided above the Glass Sea effortlessly, carrying with her one more piece of cargo than she’d originally left with.
“Since when does Baelous fix its problems with muscle?” Oriana asked.
Catali, hands wrapped around Oriana’s waist, leaned forward and put her lips to her ear. “The northern half has been arming itself for a while now. Southern Baelous still relies on espionage and diplomatic coups. They’d better start preparing for a fight, though. Fahlmar is pivoting south. Dragons kinked his power, but he’s got too many friends, too much clout. If the Conclave doesn’t make a hard push for him, he’ll wrest native and sovereign control from the South, from the tip of Mount Pomfell to the Wetlands.”
Oriana sighed. “This world’s a mess.”
“At least the ocean’s still beautiful.”
She turned and smiled. “You never lose your positivity, do you, Cat?”
Catali fit a nail inside the milky outline of a scar that hooked through her eyebrow. “You get this and”—she circled a finger atop her shiny bald head—“this for your eighth birthday, and you can choose to look forever at the bad side of life or the good. The darkness never intrigued me.”
“Hopefully it won’t consume you. I don’t really have much of a plan to thwart the clutches.”
Catali said something, but Oriana couldn’t hear; Sarpella had tucked her wings and made a sharp descent to avoid a wall of thick clouds. Sar hated clouds, Oriana had learned, and did everything in her power to avoid them.
“I said,” Catali began again, “they probably won’t attack immediately. I’m sure they’ve a staging ground somewhere. Crossing the sea is exhausting, and they’ll want an organized assault.”
“The clutch of Evanescence makes traveling redundant,” Oriana reminded her.
“Doubtful the clutch expends its breath so soon. They’ll want to save it for a crushing blow or, in the most unlikely of scenarios, a quick escape. How much sorcery do we have? I told myself it was in the hundreds, but that seems high.”
“Fifty-five,” Oriana said. She knew the numbers of her people like one knows the number of one’s toes. “Not to mention thirty-five children. Only a couple can tap into their respective planes, though. They won’t be much help.”
Catali shifted in the saddle. “And dragons?”
“Over two hundred. Most of them are still whelps, and only six—including my girl here—are fit for conflict. We need an army, Cat. A big army and an amazing strategy.”
“The strategy, I think we can come up with. An army?”
“Not so easy, right?”
Catali agreed, with silence.
Oriana peered below, into the greenness of the ocean. She loved the view from above. Up here you could see so much more: gray schools of fish moving about happily, long-beaked birds and skinny-necked ones bobbing on gentle waves. In some places, where banks of sand rose high, she could see straight to the bottom.
She wondered what it was like down there, in the solidarity of water. Everything seemed to coexist in harmony. Of course this wasn’t true; she hadn’t seen the predators of the ocean, the ones who make peace impossible. Animals didn’t know a thing about peace, though. They were driven by a primal instinct to survive; a shark’s devouring of fish wasn’t personal or born from a place of hatred and spite.
That’s where humanity had failed, she thoug
ht. For all their inventions and strides toward greater knowledge, they always circled back to senseless violence. She was guilty of this too, raising dragons so she could change the world. But if she had her way—her way—that would be the last war ever to be waged. She would herald peace. She would herald change.
“Hischk told me the Conclave came and took most of Feirdeen’s inhabitants. Any idea why?”
“No,” Catali said. “And I’d just met with Vicar Yorn a month ago. He said nothing that would give me even the most basic knowledge of their intentions.”
“Maybe they’re recruiting soldiers,” Oriana wagered.
“I hope it’s that benign. It never seems to be with the Conclave.”
The sun eventually set and night came and went, and the day started all over again. After two such cycles, the haziness of a shoreline greeted Oriana. It sharpened and resolved with each beat of Sarpella’s wings.
“Much nicer than your estate,” Catali said. “No offense. I’ve lived in squalor, and that was far from it, but you can’t beat a seaside view.”
She kept talking about the beauty of the Blue Coast and how even the harshest storms blow over quickly and this and that about the soft sand. Oriana hadn’t intentionally ignored her—something had stolen away her attention. On the ground, inside her illusion.
Things weren’t at all the way she’d left them.
“Oh, gods,” she stammered. “Cat, tell me—please tell me that isn’t blood.”
Silence.
“Sar, go. Go! Quickly.”
The dragon of ice tapped into her reserves and exhausted the last of her energy to barrel toward the shoreline.
“There,” Oriana pointed. “Land right there, Sar.” She covered her gaping mouth in horror as the tide lapped up blood and washed over several slain sorcerers and… yes, those were children.
Soon as Sarpella dug her claws into the sand, Oriana jumped off. She fell flat on her face, pushed herself up. Puffed hair out of her eyes, jumped to her feet. And she ran, wet sand sucking at her boots.
“No, no, no,” she said, and again. Each breath came with force, as if momentarily captured in her chest before vaulting into her throat. She fell to her knees beside the body of a boy with closed eyes. He had no visible wounds. Wasn’t bleeding. Neither was he breathing.
“Ori!” came a husky voice.
Oriana spun around, eyes welled and hot. “Rol, what happened?” She got back to her feet and grasped Rol by the straps of his hauberk. “What happened?” she screamed, shaking him.
Splotches of dried blood covered his arms. And hands. “We had a turncoat on our hands. He tried bringing down the goddamned sky. Got a couple of us before Lucous brought him down.”
Oriana’s fingers fell away from Rol’s chest. She faced the carnage. “A couple?” She counted no fewer than thirty bodies. “Who was it?”
With a point of his sword, Rol said, “Rheem.”
Oriana approached Rheem’s corpse. She remembered him coming over on a boat two years ago. Had he been a spy that long, or had he turned recently? It didn’t matter much now, did it? She looked at his long face, his fat lips, that huge nose everyone gave him grief for.
“I want him bolted into the mountain, right over there. I want him hung there so anyone who passes this place will see his corpse. I want him hung there so his cowardly corpse is in full view of the gods.”
“Ori,” Catali said, a hand on her back.
She wheeled. “He murdered children, Cat. He betrayed us. What would you have me do?” Over Catali’s shoulder she saw a gathering crowd. A sense of despair hung over her people as farmhands and sorcerers alike came together, heads hung, eyes red.
“You wanna change the world,” Rol said. “So change it by showing mercy. Anyone can nail a traitor to a wooden beam; seen it all my life. Takes courage to let the water wash ’em away, though.”
She considered this. Anger filled her. Anger dominated her, and it controlled her. She knew acting at a time like this was unwise, but… it would feel so, so right.
“What do you say?” She pointed her chin at the crowd. “All of you, tell me what should happen to this betrayer? Should he sink into the ocean, never to be seen again? Or should he be put on display for his sins?”
Many hours later, when the pinks and purples of twilight streaked the sky, Oriana came to stand before the Crags. She crossed her arms and viewed Rheem’s corpse. Iron bolts bored through his palms and ankles and knees, keeping him firm to the rock. Bugs were already picking at his flesh; soon he’d fester and rot away to nothing but white bone.
She walked up to him, thought about kicking him in the crotch. But that seemed the action of a callow, puerile woman.
One of her dragons flew low overhead, talons outstretched. It was preparing to land. Several minutes later, from the faraway crackles of campfire hollered a man. “Where the bells of hells is Oriana?”
She didn’t bother announcing herself, instead opting to remain before Rheem, silent and still.
“Oriana,” he called. “Ori, Ori, Ori. Where the—” She heard a muttering, then a stomping of feet in the sand.
It was Brynn, probably wanting to know what they should do with the last of the iron ingots: armor or weapons?
“You know,” Brynn said, “it’d be lovely if you answered me.”
She glanced at him, then back to Rheem. “I figured it wasn’t important.”
“You figured wrong. Davok just got back. That was him flying in. He found their staging grounds.”
Oriana found her nostrils flaring beyond her control. “Where?” she demanded.
“Esse’s Hump.”
She’d expected it, and yet she still felt sick. Esse’s Hump—so named for the goddess of the sea—lay only thirty miles east of the illusion. “That means they’re coming here first.” Here didn’t necessarily mean her illusion. It remained a possibility that the clutches hadn’t caught wind of her new location yet. But the Blue Coast held more than her encampment of sorcery and dragons.
“Ready Sarpella for me,” she told Brynn. “Where is Rol?”
“Babbling incessantly in his sleep. Where are you going?”
“To strike an alliance with the Torbinens.”
As she walked away, Brynn called out to her. “What if you can’t? I mean, Farris is—”
Oriana returned to him. She smiled and hung an arm over his shoulder. “Six years now and you still haven’t learned the most important thing about me, you big oaf. I may lose sometimes, and I may fall, and discouragement might hit me hard and true. But, and remember this, Brynn: I never fail. I never fail.”
She left him with that and headed back to the camp. The clutches would regret not killing her when they’d had the chance.
Chapter Thirty-One
In a book banned by all six capital kingdoms, philosopher and bard, Datelli Chroosh wrote that the reason kings and queens turn gray, the reason their youthful skin turns to flab and their faces soon turn the texture of walnuts, the reason their minds abandon them—the reason all of this happens too soon is because those who wear the crown know that, though they may reign over and dominate the people inside their walls, the world is settled mostly by those outside their walls.
And if these people, these impoverished villagers and destitute slaves and servants of the land, if they ever rise up as one, they will come with the impetus and quickness of lightning. And they will show that walls cannot keep them out.
Elaya had never read Datelli’s work, and she was not a philosopher herself—drunken what-ifs notwithstanding—but she had an idea that was based on his assertion.
From Haeglin to Silderine, there were approximately two hundred villages scattered about. Milkers of goats and cows, concubines belonging to sleazy yeomen, and other assorted village folk whose jobs include tilling land, planting crops, general farm work, washing clothes, fitting very old and very irritable horses with shoes—these people generally aren’t eager to go marching off to war.
&nb
sp; That was the if behind Datelli’s premise. Uncle Dawick who cleans stables, lays manure and sleeps in a chicken coop might have a shitty quality of life, but he’s living and that’s infinitely better than the alternative. You can’t convince men like him to take up arms against a cause bigger than themselves with a speech about morals and the good of the world.
Elaya knew what these people needed: a better life. A future so splendid and bright that the risk of paying the ultimate price is worth it. More than that, they had to know such a future was achievable.
Elaya made that knowledge widely available when she and the Eyes breached slave camps and unleashed freedom.
She rode into the mines where picks clanged against ore under watchful and ireful eyes of taskmasters. She spilled evil’s blood that day. She trampled down expansive fields of cotton and flax and hemp, and she shattered chains that day.
She acted on a tip and stormed a disgraceful manor where girls, some heartbreakingly young, served as toys for older, misbegotten perverts who made their coin selling and buying and fucking innocent lives. On that particular day, she buried over thirty of those deviants. She could still hear their screams from six feet under as she walked away under a rain that would fall heavy on their mud caskets.
The more victims she rescued, the larger her army became, the greater her reputation grew. Not everyone joined her. She did not force them to. If they wished to live their days in the wilds or attempt to reach their long-lost families, they could. But most had no families outside the chains; most were born to the chains.
As she marched into more proper but still unenviable dwellings, evidence of her capability followed her. The pleas of elders and yeomen fell on deaf ears as the cogs of their villages stood and followed the woman who promised them life as they were meant to experience it.
Two months after she’d embarked on this journey from Haeglin—and unwittingly three hundred miles away from where seven clutches of dragons gathered in preparation to assault Avestas—she arrived at the edge of Tactin’s Fist, a depressed plot of globe-shaped land featuring an assemblage of buildings and a small fence around its perimeter.
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