Oathbreaker

by Cara Witter

  Nothing like a concocted lie to get things back on track. “I’ve gotten into a bit of a predicament. I need to erase some memories from someone who believes I’ve wronged them. Incorrectly, of course.” Kenton gave Dez a hesitant smile. “But this person is stubborn, and, well, giving her a perspective shift would be in all of our best interests. Including yours.” He gave the coin purse hanging from his belt a pat hard enough to make the coins inside jingle against one another.

  Dez’s eyebrows raised. “Well, you are ambitious, aren’t you?” She dug a hand into her pocket, and Preeta coughed in suspiciously laugh-like manner, the first demonstration of emotion he’d heard from her.

  “And too dumb for us to make any use of those brains after we harvest the rest of your organs,” Preeta muttered from over the sink.

  Kenton glared at the tall woman’s back and made the mistake of flinching when Dez rested her small hand on his arm. His heart hammered, but her fingers were bare. She wasn’t at him with a blood letter, though he did think he saw a crust of old blood under her nails.

  “I’m afraid we can’t help you with that, though.” Dez patted his arm, frowning. “Memory manipulation isn’t something blood magic can do. If we were to take full control of your friend, her mind would make memories to fill in the gaps—biology is so convenient like that—but we can’t erase things she already remembers.” Then she brightened. “But we could make this person do anything you’d like. Want her to kill herself? Do something so terrible it makes any mistakes you made look small in comparison? Oooh! We could—”

  “Wait,” Kenton cut in. “It’s not possible at all? What about planting some new memories instead? That could be enough to make her doubt the other.” Daniella said she couldn’t be controlled, and the evidence seemed to be on her side. But if she wasn’t being controlled as a child, then the memories of the things she’d done must have been erased by other means.

  “Planting memories is also impossible with blood magic. It simply can’t be done.”

  “Maybe I just need to find better blood mages,” Kenton said.

  Dez let out a little breath that sounded like irritation, but something darker flickered in her blue eyes, and Kenton thought that perhaps he’d made a mistake worse than showing fear.

  Dez’s lips pursed together tightly, and Kenton met her gaze, hopefully showing far more confidence than he felt. Then she giggled and her expression was nothing but sweetness and smiles once more, the type of girl he might have danced with at a festival as a young soldier.

  Kenton thought he might have preferred seeing that moment of darkness in her. It felt far truer.

  “I like you,” she said cheerfully, giving his arm a squeeze before stepping away. “But truly, you could find the best blood mages in the world, and they’ll tell you the same thing.” She rapped her knuckles on the table. “If they talk to you at all. You might not be aware of this, but we aren’t typically known for our willingness to be helpful.”

  “So I’ve heard. You’re something of an exception.”

  Her hand went to her pocket again, and Kenton hoped she hadn’t decided to come at him with a bloodletter, after all. “Preeta and I are nothing if not helpful, though, aren’t we, darling?”

  Preeta made a noncommittal noise and the rat in her hand made a loud squeaking sound that grated on Kenton’s nerves. What in all hells was that woman doing over there?

  It didn’t matter. That crazy woman could toy with animals, and this crazy woman could pretend to be a society debutante for all he cared, but he needed answers. What they were saying didn’t make any sense. Diamis had somehow messed with Daniella’s memories, and the man was clearly a blood mage. How else could he have done that? Something Vorgalian? Surely if Vorgale could do such a thing, there would be public outcry.

  “Forgive me my questions, but blood magic controls not only a person’s body but their mind as well, correct? They can become your puppet utterly. Doing what you want them to do. Thinking what you want them to think. I don’t see how that’s so different from changing one’s memory.”

  Dez looked at him with a kind of fond condescension, like one might a puppy chasing its tail. “True. But while we have control, they think what we think. Then we relinquish control, and poof! They have their mind back, including their old memories. Changing those in any permanent way is impossible.”

  The rat let out another high-pitched screech, and Dez smiled broadly. “Now, is there anything we can actually help you with? Because as much as we’ve adored the pleasure of your company—and we truly have, haven’t we, Preeta?—we are rather busy, and talking doesn’t keep our business running. Even mages need to eat, you know.”

  Kenton could tell he wasn’t getting any more information regarding Daniella’s situation, not out of these two. Probably, he should cut his losses and leave. But as long as he’d gone to all the trouble already . . .

  “One more thing,” he said, forcing another smile that he hoped approached charming from at least spitting distance. He pulled out a silver shield from his coin purse and held it out in front of him. “And surely this will help cover the cost of your time in answering. Is there a way to use blood magic to track someone or spy on them without possessing their blood or the blood of anyone they’re with?”

  It wasn’t the best description of the group’s circumstances, since Diamis definitely had Daniella’s blood and Perchaya’s, but he wasn’t about to go into the details of that.

  Dez took the coin—not an overlarge amount, but more than was generally offered for information alone—and opened her mouth, but it was Preeta that spoke first. “Not yet, we can’t,” she said. The woman turned from the basin, still cradling the rat in her hands, but the rat was unmoving, blood matting in its fur around its ears and open glassy eyes. She plucked the dead rat up by its thick tail and tossed it into the cage with the cat, where it landed with small thump. The cat hissed and pressed itself against the wooden slats of the cage, as far from the dead rat as possible.

  Dez twisted her lips, considering. “Only if someone else whose blood you did have followed the target close behind, tracking by traditional methods.”

  Kenton frowned. It was as he’d suspected, and he certainly knew they weren’t being tracked in any traditional way. He glanced back at the cages, where the cat had started pawing at the dead rat. “What about using animals?”

  Dez gave him a look, like he was playing some kind of trick on her. “That’s a silly question.”

  Kenton raised an eyebrow. “Surely I’ve paid enough to ask a dumb question or two.”

  Dez laughed and fluttered her long eyelashes coyly. “Paying for questions like that, I’m starting to think you just want an excuse to spend time with me. Trust me, I don’t mind.”

  Preeta shot Dez a glare, but Dez ignored it. “Of course you can’t use animals. Otherwise we’d have spies in every nobleman’s bedroom in the Five Lands.” She gave Kenton a wink.

  “We will,” Preeta said. “Eventually.” She opened a cage door and poked a long finger at a dead bird lying at the bottom of the cage, eyeing it as if she expected it to rise up at her touch. It didn’t.

  Dez’s lips tightened, her easy smile become forced. “My darling Preeta is a dreamer. She thinks she’ll change the whole face of blood magic with her little experiments. Based on one tale that the elder races of old could be controlled by blood magic, she thinks she can use the arts to see through the eyes of a bird or force a dog to attack. She even tries to combine animals to make her own creations of blood magic—I especially thought the snake mixed with the bat was a fascinating thought—but all we end up with is dead animals and lots of cleanup.” She sighed, like a fond but harried mother. “But we all have our hobbies.”

  Preeta said nothing, but Kenton saw how she went from stroking the dead bird lightly with her finger to jamming her thumb right through its neck until its head popped off. She
licked her thumb slowly then, staring right at Kenton with eyes that looked as empty as the rat’s had been.

  “Right,” Kenton said. He’d been here long enough, and nothing confirmed it faster than that. He gave Dez another small smile. “I appreciate your time.”

  “Of course!” Dez said brightly. “And keep an eye out for that snake on the way out, will you? She wasn’t joking about that. Be sure to come visit again!”

  If he could possibly help it, Kenton didn’t intend to.

  Thirty

  The garden was quiet this morning as Perchaya sat and looked at the roses. Fresh dew painted the world a shimmering silver in the sunlight. Perchaya took a deep breath and inhaled the scent of the flowering honeysuckle vines that climbed the posts of the gazebo in which she was enjoying the morning. The air felt thick here, but not unpleasantly so, especially in the morning before the summer heat descended.

  She traced her finger over the petals of the ivory rose. Despite her intense disappointment that Kenton hadn’t been behind the gesture, she was deeply intrigued. Her experience with men in a romantic sense was limited to one awkward kiss behind the Hiller’s barn when she was twelve. An awkward kiss that was unfortunately witnessed not only by his father, but her own.

  After a curt reminder that her mother would be looking for her at home, her father had dismissed her. She never discovered what her father said to him, but the boy never so much as glanced in her direction again, and neither did any of the other boys in town. Her time in Drepaine was brief and consumed by Reisa’s problems with Jaiden and trying to build a life in a new place. There hadn’t been time for any romance besides some mild flirtation with a couple of Jaiden’s co-workers over drinks at the tavern. Flirtation that she didn’t know how to respond to and wasn’t sure she wanted.

  But a hand-carved gift from a duke of Mortiche . . . the thought of it was exhilarating and nerve-wracking. The duke of Bronleigh was handsome, rich, powerful, and he seemed kind. Even Perchaya with her limited social exposure could recognize that he would be highly sought after by women with much more to offer him than herself. Women much more beautiful, with breeding and fortune. Women who weren’t being hunted by a crazy blood mage and his army for an accident of birth. Women who knew how to respond to his advances. Women who weren’t in love with another man who had no interest in her.

  Yes, Perchaya was certainly a prize. Which led to the question of why he would bother. What did he want from her? Even she wasn’t naïve enough to think he would look to a foreign nobody for marriage. Not in conservative Mortiche where alliances and breeding were so important. But he also hadn’t made any advances when they’d dined together. He was kind and respectful, keeping a proper distance from her while still showing interest. When she spoke, he listened and followed up with engaging responses and questions. She liked him.

  But he wasn’t Kenton.

  The sound of a throat clearing pulled her out of her thoughts, and she looked up to see Kenton’s frame outlined in the light at the entrance to the gazebo. Perchaya smiled.

  “I thought I might find you here,” Kenton said as he sat beside her.

  She was glad to see that the bruising on his face was nearly gone—Sayvil’s ointments were doing their work, especially now that she had the full stock of Grisham’s herbal stores to work with. “Side effect of constant travel and running for your life, I suppose. As soon as the sun comes up, I feel the need to be moving.” She slipped the rose into a pocket of her skirt as unobtrusively as possible. The last thing she wanted to hear from him was how they didn’t have time for complications and that she should discourage it.

  The direction of his gaze and the slight furrow between his brows showed that she wasn’t discrete enough. “Has Duke Whatever sent you anything else?”

  She smiled ruefully at his pretending to forget Hugh’s name. “Don’t worry. I’m not planning to let this affect the quest. I know bringing down Diamis is most important.”

  He visibly startled, a frown marring his lips. “I wasn’t going to say that.”

  “Maybe not, but you were thinking it,” she said, squeezing his arm lightly to take away the sting of her words. “But that’s why you’re our leader. You keep us focused and on track, and you know we love you for it.”

  His expression softened, and he sighed in pretend perturbation. “It’s impossible to even pretend to be irritated with you. Do you know how annoying that is?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Chuckling in response, he reached into a satchel that he’d been carrying and pulled out a large heavily bound book with gold embossed writing on the cover. Handing it to her, he said, “I actually came to find you to give you this.”

  Perchaya took the book and ran her hands over the cover, staring. The book was an expensive copy of the Banishment Chronicle covered in thick green leather. Flipping the cover open, the page edges had been dipped in gold ink and large swathes of pristine paper surrounded panels where the story of the Banishment had been copied in an elegant script in Sevairnese. The first letter of every page was left unwritten, the borders bare, just waiting for illumination.

  Just looking at it, her fingers itched for her paints.

  “For me?” she asked. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Well,” he said, “we need a copy with us, anyway. I thought while we’re not on the road, you could start working on pictures of the bearers. A good way to document our mission for future generations, anyway. Assuming we succeed for there to be any.”

  Perchaya threw her arms around Kenton. “Thank you.”

  He patted her on the back while simultaneously pulling her closer. “I’m glad you like it.”

  The feeling of his arms around her, of his heartbeat pounding a matching rhythm to her own, made her wish that she could stay there forever. She pulled back slightly to look up into his face, to see if there was any chance that he was as lost in the moment as she. His eyes were closed and his face peaceful in a way that Kenton rarely was. If nothing else, it seemed that he felt that she was home to him as much as he was home to her.

  Unfortunately, she knew from sad experience that he didn’t mean it in the same way. She sighed as he released her and picked up the book again to flip through it. She skimmed through the familiar passages regarding the corruption of Maldorath and the Age of Blood.

  “This is a good translation,” she said. “Beautiful use of imagery. I think I can really make something special out of this.”

  Clearing his throat again, he said, “I knew you would.”

  “And the part with the prophecy—it’ll be the first copy with accurate portraits. But hopefully not the last.” She opened to that chapter, near the end of the book, where the Drim writer spoke of the release of the seal, and read aloud: “The chains will break, the lock undone, and the Bearers who have borne their gods will now bear witness to the One. The originator will die, the child key, and the Dark One will retake His throne.” Perchaya cringed. “That sounds ominous. Do you know what it means?”

  “The originator is Diamis,” he said, looking down at the passage. “It talks about Diamis freeing him somehow. It’s ambiguous about how, no matter the translation, but clearly he’s doing it by killing off the Drim. Otherwise he’d have finished the task long ago.”

  Perchaya squinted at the passage. “So you think Diamis will die to release Maldorath?”

  Kenton nodded. “My best guess is that Maldorath will need a body. Right now he’s in the seal, but his real body was destroyed long ago. He’ll probably inhabit Diamis as a vessel, and that will kill him. But the truth is, we don’t know.”

  “I still wonder why he didn’t kill us,” Perchaya said. “Erich said that Diamis wanted to do the honors himself, but it still bothers me. If he only needs us all dead to open the seal, Erich should have murdered us on sight, in Peldenar and in Ithale. They kept me alive in the dungeon as bait for you, b
ut once he found you—”

  “He should have killed us,” Kenton said. “Or at least tried.”

  “Exactly.” Perchaya sighed. “I wish we had more information. Maybe we could look in the library here.”

  “They might have some books I haven’t seen,” Kenton said. “But I was thorough. And the books here will all be in Mortichean, so I doubt there’s much you could do.”

  That was true. No doubt if there was more information to be found, Kenton would have found it. He’d even read the books in Diamis’ own library, for the gods’ sakes.

  “Well,” she said, “we’d better be going. Jaeme will be dreadfully disappointed in us if we miss the tournament events today.”

  Kenton groaned, but he reluctantly stood.

  “You never know,” she said. “Maybe Jaeme will happen upon Kotali in the jousting field.”

  Kenton gave her a look, but he offered her his arm, and together they headed into the city, Perchaya with her book still in hand.

  Thirty-one

  Despite the odor that accompanied a crowd of this magnitude, Kenton was glad for the masses of people who had gathered in the city of Grisham. A crowd provided a kind of anonymity. No one would think twice about the group of strangers come to see the tournament. They were only a few among thousands.

  It would have been the perfect cover for them to look for Kotali, if Jaeme would concern himself with the task. Castle Grisham, while keeping them well-fed and rested in luxury, was beginning to feel like a stone cage, and Kenton the cat prowling anxiously back and forth. He knew it was beneficial for the group to get a chance to rest, and, as everyone was fond of reminding him, it had only been two days, but the fact that he had made a similar mistake back in Ithale was by no means lost on him.

  Diamis might not have troops he could command in Mortiche, but that didn’t mean Grisham was impenetrable. Especially amongst this crowd, there were almost certainly spies—blood puppet or otherwise—watching for a group of their description. Even without them, as before, Diamis likely knew exactly where they were and was waiting for the moment when they set foot over the border into Andronim to find Sayvil’s stone.