Oathbreaker

by Cara Witter

  “I take orders. I don’t do favors.”

  Jaeme nodded. He’d rather this man help him of his free will, but if this was what he wanted, Jaeme supposed that was close enough. “Find the others I’ve been traveling with. Find Daniella and keep her safe. And Nikaenor, he’s—”

  “The Foroclaean lad with the big stomach.”

  Jaeme smiled. “That’s the one. And Kenton. When you find him, tell him—” It pained Jaeme to say it, but it was the quickest way to get the information across— “Tell Kenton he was right about my uncle.”

  Buras nodded sharply. “Consider it done.”

  “You’re a good man,” Jaeme said. “Better than most knights.” Then he hurried off down the hallway to the servants’ door, intent on getting out of the castle as quickly as possible.

  Jaeme circled around the castle wall and moved through the alleys behind the smithy to avoid drawing attention. The smithy was empty now—likely the smiths had finished their work earlier in the day, when it was a bit cooler out—and Jaeme ducked in just long enough to find a spare sheath. He belted it on and stowed his sword. There might be some knights or guards who didn’t know of Greghor’s order to find Jaeme, and he didn’t want to look like a madman running around with a sword drawn.

  This area of the courtyard was mostly empty, aside from some gardeners pruning some distant bushes, and a couple kitchen workers leaving the chicken coops with newly-dead hens in their hands. None of them looked his way.

  Jaeme was just moving past the gardens toward the place where the wall gave way to cliffside, and beyond that to the grove of trees, when movement at the main castle doors caught his eye. Jaeme stopped short behind the wall of the carriage house—

  And saw Daniella descending the stairs leading out from the castle, glancing around as if she was looking for someone. Her eyes were pink-rimmed and her face puffy as if she’d been crying.

  Gods, if his uncle had done anything to her, Jaeme was going to kill him. Right after he killed him in vengeance for what he’d done to Nikaenor’s father and the people of Ithale.

  “Dani!” he called as softly as he could. There must be guards around here, possibly looking for him, and Jaeme couldn’t afford to attract their attention. Not until he got to the jewel.

  Daniella looked around and finally spotted him. When she did, she started toward him, sniffling like she was trying to pull herself together. He drew her behind the carriage house and into his arms.

  “Hey,” he said. “Are you okay? Did my uncle hurt you? Where are the others?”

  Daniella looked up at him in confusion. “Your uncle? Why would your uncle—”

  Gods. She didn’t know. “Kenton was right,” he said. “My uncle set me up. I’ll tell you the details later, but right now we have to get to Kotali.”

  Daniella’s eyes widened. “Get to—do you know where he is?”

  Jaeme nodded. “But if you didn’t know about my uncle, why are you—”

  Daniella wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. “It’s nothing. Nothing important, anyway. We can talk about it later.”

  While Jaeme was quite certain it was not nothing, there were very few things as important as getting to Kotali as fast as he possibly could. He reached down and squeezed Daniella’s hand. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Jaeme led Daniella along the wall to where it stopped at the edge of the cliff, and together they ducked through the trees in the small grove that grew behind Castle Grisham, ringed around the back by that same cliff. Jaeme ran, and Daniella pulled up her skirts with one hand to keep up as they dodged between trees. Despite the knights who must be pursuing them, Jaeme hadn’t felt so free since he was a boy, running through these same trees, toward this same group of rocks that had served for so many childhood games.

  There they were, ahead, just as Jaeme remembered them, though a little more moss-covered than they’d been in the memory. Welcome back, the voice said, echoing in harmony, as if with each reverberation, the sound changed in congruous tones.

  Jaeme stopped in front of the rocks, which he remembered being taller, but were only as high as mid-chest to him now. He’d strolled through these woods many times as an adult. It had been his escape, his refuge, even then. He knew he had sat on these rocks many times, but couldn’t recall a specific incident, as if sometime since his youth, he’d simply stopped paying attention.

  Daniella blinked, first at the stones, and then at him. “It’s here?”

  Jaeme bit his lip and nodded. It was. It had to be. But still he was plagued with doubt. Had he heard wrong? Had he simply conjured the memory in his need for an answer, when in truth, none had been given?

  “No,” Jaeme said. “Kenton was right about my uncle, and he’s right about me.”

  Daniella squeezed his hand. “Your uncle is working with my father?”

  Jaeme nodded. He wished he could tell her everything but didn’t dare admit he’d known before today. “He directed me to the place in the basement where he’d stashed the body. Then he directed Hugh there at the same time, asking him to check what I’d been doing down there, saying he was concerned about me.”

  Daniella blanched. “Gods, Jaeme. I’m so sorry.”

  Jaeme pushed back anger. He’d deal with his uncle later. Right now, all that mattered was the stone. “So,” Jaeme said. “How do you think I get to it?”

  And before Daniella could respond, he reached for the top stone and began to mold it in his hand.

  The rock melted easier than normal stone, though Jaeme couldn’t be sure if it was different, or if it was the proximity of the god that made it give more quickly. Jaeme pulled a few handfuls of granite aside as if it were the softest clay, and discarded it on the ground, where it turned immediately back to stone, immortalizing his hand-prints. He pulled up another few fistfuls, reaching deep into the rock.

  But he came up with nothing.

  “It’s here,” he said again. “It has to be. But even if the stone melts easier, my uncle will have found us by the time I wade through all of this.” He gestured to the pile, which had seemed small moments ago, but now felt like an enormous heap of cow dung he was expected to sort through with nothing but his bare hands.

  Daniella was quiet for a moment, her brow furrowed. “When you pray to Kotali,” she said, “you kneel in a patch of dirt.”

  Jaeme shook his head. “I haven’t prayed formally since I took my vows.”

  “Not the point,” Daniella said. “If you were to kneel in front of it, where would you reach?”

  Jaeme considered the rock. He supposed it would be proper to approach Kotali while kneeling—at least as appropriate as it was for Nikaenor to approach his god while swimming. Jaeme circled the formation and found a concave indentation in the base of the stone. If the thing had been an island, this curve would have been a bay, and it happened to be exactly the right shape for Jaeme’s knees.

  Jaeme sunk down beside the stone, his knees cushioned by a patch of moss growing over the detritus of leaves that formed the forest floor. Daniella stood behind him, silent, holding her breath.

  Jaeme reached down and took a handful of the mulch, the leaves and twigs half turned to dirt. It was true what he’d said—he hadn’t prayed to Kotali in years. But he remembered a line from his knighthood training, a phrase his lips had muttered more than a decade ago. “May my heart be steady as the stone,” he said. “And my sword sharp with truth.”

  He reached in front of him and dug his fingers into the stone. It gave even easier here, like grabbing butter in his hand. Jaeme pulled out fistfuls of melted rock and wiped it from his hands onto the stone at his sides. He reached deeper and deeper in, but still felt nothing solid in his hands.

  Then, nearly a foot into the rock, Jaeme’s hands pushed through the putty of softened rock and met smooth, hard stone.

  Jaeme grabbed onto it and p
ulled. The stone emerged from the muck, which immediately hardened into an unnatural, furrowed hole in the granite. The remains of the surrounding stone fell from around the god as if repelled by him, and plinked as they hit the dirt, already hardened before they hit the ground. Jaeme stood, staring at it in wonder.

  The stone was surprisingly smooth in Jaeme’s hand, fitting comfortably in his palm. It was duller than the others, more rock-like than jewel, but as he watched he was able to pick out subtle shifts in the surface, almost imperceptible swirls of browns and greens. Power radiated off of it and deep within himself, and Jaeme felt complete.

  Nikaenor had told him that Mirilina sung a joyful song of celebration in his hand. Jaeme didn’t feel that way. His stone seemed to warm him from the inside out, a deep, comforting warmth. And he knew, instinctively, what he had to do. He saw, as if he were there, the enslavement of the people under Maldorath, felt the brutality of the blood magic, the sacrifice of the Four. Kotali spoke to his heart and Jaeme opened his very soul to his god. His knees began to shake.

  Only when Daniella grabbed onto his arm did Jaeme realize it wasn’t his knees, but the ground. In great jolts and jerks, the rocks beneath them shook, and Jaeme fell on his knees again, Daniella falling beside him, still clinging to his arm. He held the stone away from her, careful not to touch her with it, and wrapped his other arm around her as a great roaring noise sounded all around them, like an avalanche.

  Over the cliff edge, beyond the treeline, the land beyond the ridge began to rise. Daniella put both her hands on the ground as the shaking continued and then abruptly stopped. The trees above them swayed a moment longer, then stood still.

  In the ominous silence that followed, Jaeme helped Daniella to her feet and moved to the edge of the cliff, looking down.

  A great chasm had opened, isolating Castle Grisham from the forested area beyond. Jaeme grabbed onto a tree trunk and leaned over the cliff, past the edge of the grove—and from there could see the sloping ground of the city cleaved in two just outside the castle wall, dividing it from the town by several yards of width and a long, long drop down.

  As far as Jaeme could tell, the chasm continued around in a near-perfect circle, stranding them on a plateau without a bridge.

  Jaeme closed his eyes. From what he could see, there was no escape. They were stuck on the island of Grisham with his traitorous uncle and the remainder of the dukes of Mortiche who had lingered after the end of the tournament, including the one Jaeme had locked up in the castle basement.

  He looked down at the stone. Was this supposed to help us?

  The stone didn’t respond.

  “Gods,” Daniella said. “Does it go all the way around?”

  “Looks that way,” Jaeme said. He gripped Kotali in his hand. “Come on. I need to introduce my uncle to our god.”

  Fifty-one

  Nikaenor’s lungs burned as he finally reached the gatehouse to Castle Grisham, sweat from the long sprint and the heat of the day dripping down his face. He hated running. Gods, how he hated running.

  Why am I always the one running?

  But Erich was here, in the city, maybe even in the castle already . . .

  No, he thought. He couldn’t have made it here before them, not unless he was sprinting through the crowds, too. Which he would have no reason to do.

  Right?

  Peace, Mirilina said. And while he wanted to believe her, he could have used less reassurance and more help with Erich right about now.

  He slowed to a stop before the open gate, which was flanked by two guards, pausing to take a deep breath and allow Sayvil a chance to catch up. Which she did, her usually pale face now bright red from the run, and just as slick with sweat as his own. Unlike him, she’d had to run in skirts, which he’d heard her cursing several times along the way.

  She drew even with him, muttering under her breath, and Nikaenor raised a hand of greeting to the gate guards. After a week at the castle as Lord Jaeme’s guests, the guards recognized them and generally let them pass without even having to state their purpose.

  This time, though, one of the guards gave the other a nod, and they both stepped forward, clearly blocking the way.

  “We’re going to have to stop you, young man,” the larger guard said, the one with the mole under his eye.

  “And you as well, miss,” the other added, a tall, slim fellow named Edvin. He’d let Nikaenor join in one of guards’ card games at the barracks, at least until Kenton had dragged Nikaenor away, probably worried he’d somehow reveal all their secrets over a game of Blind Duchess.

  He has no faith in me, Nikaenor had thought then, but it hadn’t bothered him much. Kenton had no faith in pretty much anyone.

  “We don’t have time, Edvin,” Nikaenor started, appealing to the one he knew at least a little. “We need to get to Lord Jaeme right—”

  “You’re to be taken to the duke,” Mole-face said, stepping forward. “Lord Jaemeson will have to wait.”

  “The duke?” Nikaenor took a step back from the large man instinctively. “But why—”

  “Nonsense,” Sayvil said, folding her arms across her chest and drawing herself up so that she appeared inches taller than she actually was. The imperious look was somewhat spoiled by her red face and a slash of dark hair stuck with sweat to her cheek. “We are guests of Lord Jaemeson and will see him . . .”

  She trailed off as two more men stepped out from inside the gatehouse—another guard dressed similar to the others in leather jerkins over a tunic of Grisham maroon and gold, and a mustached man with a steel breastplate, his tunic maroon and green. They both had swords drawn already, and Nikaenor didn’t doubt for a moment they knew how to use them.

  His confusion turned to outright fear.

  “. . . immediately,” Sayvil finished, though with much less confidence than before.

  “Come with us peaceably,” the mustached man said, his voice likely meant to be soothing, but clearly without practice at it. He had small coils of rope in one hand, and he handed them to Mole-face. “I’m sure all this will be resolved after you see the duke.”

  Jaeme’s uncle? Why would he want us? And why would he send guards and a knight after us? Nikaenor had seen enough knights parading around the castle over the course of the week to recognize that this fellow was more than a mere guard.

  And why does it look like they want to arrest us?

  Nikaenor traded a wide-eyed glance with Sayvil—she was clearly asking herself the same questions and coming to the same answers, most like. Something had changed while they were out. And whatever it was wasn’t good.

  “Set your packs on the ground. And your belt pouches,” Edvin said, his eyes landing on the pouch at Nikaenor’s hip. The pouch containing Mirilina.

  Nikaenor’s stomach sank into his boots. They knew. Somehow, someone had found out he had the godstone. And someone—Jaeme’s uncle? Or was that just a pretense?—wanted it.

  Sayvil unbuckled the belt hanging around her loose shirt and bent to set it on the ground, giving Nikaenor a sharp look that was clearly supposed to convey something. Probably “Don’t be an idiot.” But he could have used some more specific instructions on that count. Because Edvin and Mole-face were edging around them to the side to block them off, and the other guard and knight were coming closer from the front, and soon they’d be totally surrounded.

  “Your herbs,” he hissed. “Use them.”

  “My three leaves of dew-dress? What do you want me to do, make them a poultice?”

  Nikaenor’s mouth snapped shut, as he fumbled to remove his pack over his shoulders. He had a waterskin in there, and his Foroclaean wool vest he’d removed in the heat, and a knife he was rather useless with, other than for skinning or trap-making.

  But the pouch at his side—that, he would not let them have.

  Good, Mirilina said. Nikaenor cast about de
sperately for anything to use to their advantage, but they were already exhausted from the long run and would never make it far before being overtaken. Shouting for help would probably only bring more guards against them.

  “Get the boy,” the knight ordered, and suddenly the guards moved in a quick, practiced action, coming at them from all sides.

  Nikaenor yelped as Edvin grabbed his arms and yanked them back. Sayvil had grabbed a blade from her boot and slashed out with it, which Mole-Face dodged, though only barely.

  “No!” Nikaenor cried, as the third guard grabbed for the pouch at Nikaenor side and reached in, pulling out a blue stone that swirled gold like sunlight on the ocean—

  And then the guard screamed.

  It didn’t take long before they all saw why. His hand, which had been clutching the godstone, went from a ruddy tan to so colorless you could see through it and then vanished. The stone fell to the ground in a spray of water.

  Water that had once been a human hand.

  Edvin hadn’t finished binding Nikaenor’s hands, and he, like the others stared in horror at their fellow soldier, who was staring white-faced at the stump of his arm, which was sealed over with flesh as if it had been long ago lost and cauterized.

  Nikaenor stared in horror, too, but he was able to recover faster. He threw his head back as Kenton had taught him to do, cracking Edvin in the face—causing a far greater pain in the back of his head than Kenton had led him to expect—and knocking the guard back.

  His sudden movement seemed to spur the rest of them on. Mole-Face lunged again at Sayvil, and the knight brought his sword out toward Nikaenor, though his eyes kept darting nervously to Mirilina. Nikaenor lunged for the stone, dodging under the knight’s thrust, and held it up in front of his face like it was a talisman.

  Or, he supposed, like it was a god that could liquefy people.

  “Stay back!” he yelled. “Both of you! Get away from her, you overgrown pile of pig turds, or I’ll turn you both into a puddle!”

  The knight gritted his teeth, but his gaze stayed on the stone, and he took a step back. Mole-Face glared but dropped the rope. He took a step back when Sayvil jabbed in his direction with her blade. From behind Nikaenor, Edvin groaned, pushing himself back to his feet, but not moving forward.