“Oh, I’m locking you up for this, my lord.” Quintus bears down on me with the inevitability of an avalanche. “They’ll hang you from the nearest bloody tree.” There’s an unfamiliar tremor to Quintus’s voice. Then again, one does not look upon five-score mangled bodies without being moved by the sight.
I contrive to look appalled. “For what, exactly?”
Nothing’s changed between us. Quintus has no proof. He doesn’t even know why I was really here. Much as it twists him up inside, for all he knows I’m just another victim. Not that it’ll stop him wanting someone to blame.
He rounds on me, storm clouds gathering behind his grey eyes. “I heard every word. Fitzwalter, the Hayadra Grove, all of it.”
So the Red Lady brought Quintus into the grey world with me? In hindsight, it’s obvious. Quintus and I are both agents of the Council. The terms of the truce left her unable to harm us, so she instead sets us at each other’s throats. Clever. Ambitious. But she’s underestimated us, just as I underestimated her.
I advance to within a pace of Quintus and press my wrists together, inviting shackles. “Then arrest me. Parade me through the streets. Throw me in the Pit. Hang me from the tallest tree in the city. Arlia won’t give you trouble for some time yet. She’ll have her hands full once word of this massacre spreads. Every racketeer and coshman of standing will be out to stake his claim now Arlia’s removed their masters and mistresses. But in five years, she’ll be ready. I hope you’re ready too.”
A vein throbs in Quintus’s cheek. I know what he’s thinking. Even if he can make the charges against me stick, which is unlikely, not one of my fellow councillors will believe the rest of it. They’ve spent decades systematically purging magic from the Republic. They have no defence against someone like Arlia, which means they won’t want to believe. Which means they won’t act. Not until it’s too late. Democracy is merely another word for inaction.
Though Quintus is loathe to admit it, he needs me. Just as I need him. Because the truth is, we have something in common. That something is our ambition, and what it serves. We act not out of desire for personal gain or status, but so our city, our republic, can survive, and maybe even prosper. I may deride Quintus’s methods. He may abhor mine. But today, and for the next five years, that which unites us is greater than that which divides us.
I only hope Quintus admits as much before he strikes my head from my shoulders. Otherwise “awkward” won’t cover it.
Quintus turns away. The sword slips from his grasp and clatters to the stage. When he speaks, it’s like he’s dragging the words from the very bottoms of his boots. “Get out of my sight, my lord.”
Motioning for Balgan to follow, I comply. Another game lies ahead. A game five years in the making. It’s time for the first move.
Blood Penny
- The Dragon’s Legacy -
Deborah A. Wolf
1: Dark Wishes of the Heart
Kanati was telling moon-tales to the children.
He sat as he often did, cross-legged beneath the branches of the cherry tree in front of his family’s teahouse. He wore a boy’s robe of common silk, sashed with gold to mark him as the favored son of his House, yellow brocade upon his sleeves and hem marking him as one of the Emperor’s own. As if his twilight skin and moonsilver hair and eyes left any room to wonder about his parentage. His hands were busy, always busy, even as he ensorcelled the children with his stories; just now he was plucking blossoms out of a shallow wooden bowl and stringing them together.
Awitsu stepped deeper into the shadows, gathering them about her even as she gathered the scratchy, filthy edges of her hempen robes. She was daeborn as well, but there would be no fine brocade or golden silk for her. Awitsu was beloved of nobody.
The children sat on the low stone walls, they floated flower-petal boats in the mossy fountain, they lay scattered about the small garden like so many blossoms shaken loose by the wind. Pretty and pink and sweet-smelling, she thought, easily crushed, easily bruised. Sweet to look at, but never to touch. They stared wide-eyed at the storyteller, and more than one of the girls had tucked pink flowers into her hair.
“Akari faced the Huntress then, and terrible his flame
But, lo! She drew her sunblade forth, and he beheld in shame
Upon her blade in darkness Zula Din had forged his name…”
Kanati wove his spell with all the skill of a trueborn storyteller; his voice was low and soothing, smooth as water over dark stones. That voice had eased her hurts and worries for as long as she could remember, and Awitsu scowled to think his magic might be stolen by the village girls with their cinnamon skin and pretty round ears. She gathered the darkness into her heart, used it to deepen the shadows that concealed her, even as Sajani Earth Dragon had hidden from the wicked Huntress.
“The moons hung low and pale with woe, the stars fled from the sky
The Song began to shatter when it heard Sajani cry
And then the King began to sing the Dragon’s lullaby.
And this is why the Huntress, though she stole Akari’s will
Though she and her Hound searched the world around, she never made that kill.
The Four Winds wept as the Dragon slept. O, Listen! They mourn her still.”
Kanati smiled at the children as he strung the last flower and tied off the silken cord. “And this is how Zula Din enslaved Akari Sun Dragon by using his true name, but failed to kill Sajani. For Sajani Earth Dragon sleeps still, and the Dragon King built his great fortress Atukos upon her back, and so it shall be until the end of time.” And he sat back against the tree, still smiling, and cut his eyes towards Awitsu-in-Shadows.
She could hide from anyone in the world, but never from Kanati.
“Is the dragon real, Kanati?”
“Of course she is real.”
“Can I see her?”
“No, Nanli, Sajani sleeps beneath Atualon, and that is as far from Peichan as the Sun Dragon flies. But sometimes you can hear her in your dreams.”
“In my dreams?” The little girl squeaked in excitement.
“Yes, you can hear her in your dreams, and she can hear yours. The stories say that some day, the Dragon will wake, and she will make all our dreams come true.”
One of the older girls, Daiwei with flowers in her curly dark hair, covered her mouth with her hand and giggled.
“All our dreams, Kanati?”
He blushed.
Awitsu let the shadows fall from her and stepped into the sunlight. Let them see her, all of her, from the velvet-soft tips of her antlers to the pale filth of her little bare feet. Daiwei drew back, pretty little mouth pulled back in a grimace, but Awitsu did not wait for the poison to fall from those painted lips. She lowered her head, shook her antlers at them, and whispered,
“Even my dreams, Kanati? Even mine?”
“Even yours, Awitsu,” he sighed.
She crossed her arms over her chest, still bony and flat as a boy’s, and stared at the other children with hard eyes until they all got up and left. Daiwei and her friends rose last, and as they went they tossed glances like daggers back at her, and their hands fluttered like butterflies before their mouths as they giggled. Awitsu did not much care.
Let them laugh, let them mock. Awitsu did not need to wake a dragon—she had found a way to make her own dreams come true. And when they did…
“Why are you looking like that?” Kanati put his bowl aside and stood, stretching like a cat. His shadow fell across her face and Awitsu shivered with delight. He was almost a man grown, and so beautiful that now everyone could see it, not just her. She tried not to think about what that meant, that next Feast of Daeyyen would be his sixteenth year, and after that she would truly be alone.
Unless this worked.
It had to work.
“Looking like what?” She did not move as he came to her, and looped the flowers about her neck, and kissed her cheek. She had known they were for he
r, but her heart leapt anyway.
“Like you have a secret. A wicked secret.”
“Probably because I have a secret.” She let a smile, a real smile, steal across her face. Her cheek was still warm where he had kissed her. “A wicked, wicked secret. Come see.” She took his hand and turned towards the path that would lead them out of the village and up the mountain beside Cold Spirit Stream, and beyond that…
“Are we going to get in trouble again?”
“No.” She spared a glance over her shoulder. “Not unless you let us get caught.”
He sighed again, but let himself be led. So it had always been between them, and so it would always be.
If this worked.
It had to work.
* * *
Akari Sun Dragon had begun his plunge towards the ocean by the time they got there, and Awitsu’s feet were cold and slimy with muck. Her ankle throbbed from a slip in the river, and she had skinned the palms of both hands, but it was worth it, it was worth every bit of it to see the look on his face as she pulled aside the heavy curtain of vines.
“Awitsu,” he breathed. “Awitsu. How did you find this?”
She grinned and held back the vines, slipping through in his wake and letting them fall as they would. “You told me where to look.”
“What? I never...”
“You did,” she insisted. “Do you remember the story you were telling last two-moon, about the witch and the stars and the blood of the innocent? I fell asleep by the river thinking about that, and when I woke up the stars were out, and I thought, oh! The witch is Hag Nagui, see, and her wand points towards the Bleeding Sisters, and the drops of blood lead straight to the Hangman’s Bucket! See, see? It was all right there, in your stories!” She bounced on the balls of her feet and clapped her hands, willing him to share in her delight.
“Clever girl.” He smiled and tugged at a tine on one of her antlers. He was the only soul in all the world she would allow to do such a thing. “I wonder what this place is…look at the roots, how they have grown over the buildings.” He took a few slow steps down the crumbling stone stairs towards the floor of the narrow valley. “It looks like nobody has been here for a hundred years or more.”
“Longer than that,” she told him. “You will see. Come on! Before it gets dark.” And she hurried down the path before him.
The path was narrow and steep and the footing treacherous, but Awitsu was nimble as a deer, and Kanati more graceful still. They were swift and silent and quick as ghosts upon the wind, scarcely disturbing the dead litter of last year’s leaves and the thin yellow blossoms of baobing. Kanati exclaimed as they came upon the round stone buildings with their narrow windows and caved-in roofs, and exclaimed again as they clambered over tree roots as big around as they were tall and intent on reclaiming this place for Sajani Earth Dragon. These things were interesting, but rocks and roots were not the reason she had brought him here so late, late enough that she would be back home too late for dinner but just in time for a beating. Rocks and roots would have waited for another day. But this...
“Awitsu!” He stopped short, and his breath made her name into a prayer. Aaaah-wiiiiiit-suuuuu. “Awitsu, what is that?”
They had come upon a circular clearing where nothing grew. The low stone houses stopped abruptly and seemed to take a step back. The space was wide, and quiet, and utterly devoid of life. The wind, like the stone houses, seemed to shun this place, and the birds fell silent as they drew close. Awitsu tugged at her friend’s sleeve, urging him closer.
“Come,” she said.
Come, come, echoed the voice of the Well. It crouched in the middle of the clearing like a spider in her web. And it called to her.
Come.
Awitsu followed the prints her own feet had left in the ash and grit earlier that day. The air had an acrid smell and felt heavy in her lungs, but her heart was light as a feather as she heard Kanati behind her. She had been searching for so long, and she was so close
So close, whispered the Well, so close
To having all her dreams come true.
Her hands rested like pale birds on the edge of the Well; the stone was cool to the touch, rough and gritty. A breath sighed up to her from the bowels of the earth, an old smell and deep, the smell of things best left hidden.
His hand covered hers like a shadow across the face of the moon. “You know what this is.”
“I know.”
“The Witching Well.”
“Toss in a blood penny,” she whispered, “and the darkest wish of your heart will come true.”
His stories had told of this well, this place. Dark stories, blood stories, not moon-tales for pretty little girls with eyes full of mist and flowers in their hair.
“What happened to them?” She pointed with her antlers towards the little houses. In the dying light they looked like a ring of staring skulls. She asked, but she did not really care. They were just people, after all.
“The stories do not say,” he answered. “No story I have heard. They speak of the Well, and the penny, and the wish. But never of what became of the village.” His eyes caught the new-moonslight as Didi peeked over the mountaintops, and his hair curled about his shoulders like fog as he gazed upon the dead village. “Something bad, I think.”
“I think so, too.” She did not smile, because that would upset him.
“We need to start back. My parents will worry.”
Her father would not worry. He would beat her, but he would have done that anyhow. But all she said was, “The darkest wish of your heart.”
“You would have to have a blood penny to make it work. Where are you going to get a blood penny? My father’s father fished the cold waters his whole life, they split open the skull of every sea-thing child they ever caught, and in all his years he only saw one.” Kanati’s eyes were moonsilver, catching the starslight and burning with pity. “The man who found it bought his freedom and was never seen again.”
“Coin enough to set you free.”
“Even so.” He patted her hand. “Come on. I’ll lead—my night vision is better than yours.”
And still, she thought, you can be so blind. “I have one,” she whispered. She had never dared say the words, never dared think them, until this moment. Her heart beat so loud it seemed she could hear an echo deep, deep in the Well.
He stopped and turned, his mouth such a perfect ‘o’ of surprise that she almost laughed. Almost. She did not want to hear the Well laughing back at her.
“What did you say?”
“I have a blood penny.”
Blood penny.
Blood penny.
“Awitsu...”
“Do you remember three years ago,” she told him, stumbling over the words in her haste to pass them by, “when the shongwei pup washed up on the shore near Houlen?”
“I remember,” he said. “Its head was smashed, and the fishermen who found it thought there might be a blood penny. But there was none.”
“There was.” She refused to look away from his face. “I found it first. It is mine.”
Mine.
Mine.
“And you kept it all this time?”
“It is in a safe place.” Buried beneath the Blood of the Child on her mother’s grave; nobody would look there.
“Awistu, you silly girl, that is your freedom, right there!”
She shook her head. Blind. “Coin enough to set one free,” she whispered, “but never you. Never me. We are daeborn, Kanati. The Emperor will never let us go. And besides,” she shrugged, “my father would have just taken it from me and claimed it for his own.”
Kanati stepped close and took both her hands in his. “What will you do, then?”
Delpha had risen behind her little sister, and both moons peeked over his shoulder to hear her answer.
“I will wake the blood penny with the blood of the innocent, just as the stories say,” she replied, “and the
n I will make my wish.” Make them pay.
Make them pay, agreed the Witching Well.
“Will you stop me?”
Kanati stared at her for a long moment. He was so beautiful. He reached out and traced the livid bruise beneath her eye, the one she had gotten last night. Witch child, her father had called her. Daespawn. Not my father, she reminded herself again. Only my mother’s husband. My father rides with the Wild Hunt.
But it still hurt.
“No, little flower” he said, and leaned to kiss the tip of her nose. “I will help you.”
2: Blood of the Cock
“I do not see how this will help.” Awitsu kept her voice soft, though nobody but the daeborn children would ever dare take this path at night.
“We must bathe the blood penny in the blood of the innocent, by the light of the full moons,” Kanati explained. “That is the only way to wake it.”
“Yes, but it is a stolen chicken. How is that innocent?”
“The chicken is innocent. Your father is the one who stole it. Are you sure he will not beat you for this?”
Awitsu hugged the burlap sack close to her chest, muffling the struggles of the scrawny black cock. “He was drunk when he stole it, and that old woman never comes into the village. Nobody will ever know.” It was only a little lie, but he glanced back at her and scowled.
“One day, somebody will beat him.”
Or make a wish, she thought.
They climbed the steep path by moonslight as they had so many times before. The ginger was blossoming, and the pale night jasmine. Somewhere in the distance a wyvern was singing, sleepy low notes that rumbled through the air like thunder as it bedded down for the night.
“Tree wyvern,” guessed Kanati. “Have you ever seen one?”
“No.”
“Neither have I. I would like to.”
“So would I.” The cock had gone limp; Awitsu lessened her grip, lest she kill it before time. “But only if it had a full belly.”
Evil is a Matter of Perspective: An Anthology of Antagonists Page 36