Sacrifice: The First Book of the Fey (The Fey Series)

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  “Some,” Adrian said. “But we have no formal system. We are not military people.”

  “So I gathered,” she muttered. “Tell me about your military, or what exists of it.”

  He shook his head. “We have no military. We have the guards who protect the King. The rest of us fight to save our homes, our children, and our lives.” He jutted out his chin as he spoke, as if she were going to rebuke him for his defiance. Instead, she had to suppress a smile. She liked their aggression, their passionate belief in their own rightness. Perhaps that, more than anything, gave them strength.

  “You make yourselves sound so noble,” she said.

  “We are,” he said.

  “We value our own principles as much as you value yours,” she said. “Just because you do not believe in them does not make them wrong.”

  She regretted the words as soon as she spoke them. He had got to her. And she hadn’t wanted him to.

  “Your principles are wrong,” he said, “if they cost me my life.”

  She stared at him for a moment, suddenly finding his defiance unappealing. She didn’t want to think in his terms, even though he had a point. “You’re safe enough,” she said blandly.

  “Like Ort?” he asked.

  “Ort will live.”

  “How well?”

  She let the words hang in the silence. Then she stood and looked down at him. “What other plans does your King have for fighting the Fey?”

  He didn’t tilt his head to look up at her. Instead he leaned back in the chair as best as his ropes would allow and gazed up without moving much, so that they still seemed to be on the same level. “Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you that. I am not a fool.”

  “No,” she said, “I suppose you aren’t.” She had already got enough from this conversation. She started to walk away when an idea hit her.

  She paused, then gazed at Adrian over her shoulder. He had turned to his son, whose lower lip was trembling like a babe’s. When they noticed she hadn’t left, their faces returned to neutral masks. But in that moment she had seen despair, and great love.

  “What kind of help would you give me if I let your son go free?” she asked.

  Adrian opened his mouth, but she waved a hand to silence him.

  “Don’t answer me now. Think about it.” She smiled, knowing she had him hooked. “The exchange would have to be an equal one. You would have to give me something worth a life that hasn’t even reached its halfway point.”

  With that she let herself out of the room. As soon as the door closed, her knees buckled beneath her. She braced a hand against the rough wood wall, ignoring the splinters that dug beneath her palm, and took a deep breath. She hadn’t realized how much energy she had put into that meeting. Another sign of the low level of panic she carried with her always. Part of her believed they would never leave this place. Such a belief had never bothered her before. She had no real home. Her family had been moving since the day she’d been born. But she had a community that included her grandfather and her brothers, as well as most of the Fey. This world here, in the Shadowlands, was a small, pale replica of the world she had left behind.

  When the moment of weakness passed, she went down the hall. Her father was standing beside the fireplace, staring at the piles of ash, his hands clasped behind his back.

  “Well?” he asked without looking at her.

  “They claim they know nothing about how to make the poison, but it figures into their religion. The older one—Adrian—says that it is part of the ‘mystery’ of religion.” She walked up beside him and stared down as well. A charred log was half-buried in the ash. Grayness everywhere. How she longed for real color.

  “The mystery?” He straightened and finally sought her face as he was speaking to her. “Do they know?”

  “About our Mysteries? I don’t think so. But I don’t know. They could all be lying. They may know more about us than we could ever learn about them.”

  “Then why haven’t the Doppelgängers reported it?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “The coincidence feels odd to me. First the poison, now the fact that it is connected to a mystery.”

  “You are looking for signs where there are none, child,” he said.

  “You shouldn’t rule things out this early in an interrogation,” she snapped. She had just spent her time discovering information only to have him dismiss it and call her “child” as if she were little more than a tiny girl with hopes and dreams instead of knowledge and experience.

  He sighed and returned his attention to the empty hearth. She wondered if he looked there because the cottage had no windows. It had no need for them. Everything looked the same outside, and the temperature remained the same as well.

  “What else did you learn?” he asked.

  “That our remaining two are father and son. And that the father might be willing to bargain for his son’s life.”

  Rugar smiled. “You are very effective, Jewel.”

  “Yes,” she said more sharply than she intended. “I am.”

  She left his side and pulled out a chair, sinking into it, letting the exhaustion creep over her. When he said nothing else, she felt as if she had to fill the silence. “I think they should be put somewhere together and given some freedom from those bonds. When the Warders are done with their companion, he should be placed with them as an example for the father of what might happen to the son. I think we will learn more from them that way.”

  “I’d like you to continue to interrogate them,” Rugar said.

  “In due time.” She would pick the time, although she did not tell him that. The exhaustion she was carrying created little black spots around the edges of her vision.

  “Have you ever thought,” she asked, “of negotiating a peace?”

  “What?” He barked the word out, as if shocked that a child of his would suggest such heresy.

  “A peace. Until we figure out a way around all of this.”

  He looked at her as if she had lost her mind. “The Fey never negotiate from a position of weakness.”

  She shrugged. “We don’t have to keep the peace. Once we learn what we need, we might be able to conquer them after all. No one said we had to do it fairly.”

  “Whatever made you think of this?” His voice had a gruffness she hadn’t heard before.

  “The situation,” she said. “If Grandfather doesn’t come, and we keep losing people, we will die here. But if we stall and discover what gives them their power, we might have a chance to survive.”

  “It sounds like a coward’s solution,” he said.

  “It’s sensible,” she said. “We’ve already lost more on this campaign than any other in my memory.”

  “Things will change.”

  “Right.” She stood, and for the second time that day her knees buckled. She pitched forward, feeling the blackness overwhelm her, but helpless to stop it. Her father caught her, his arms warm and strong around her. His scent mingled with the leather of his clothing, and his chest was firm. Pain slashed her forehead.

  Her father was shouting, “Someone help her! Please help her!” but his voice sounded too far away. She opened her eyes. A sword hung over her head. They were in the Tabernacle, with all the lords and all the Fey leaders gathered around. The ceremony. She had ruined the ceremony. A man leaned over her, his eyebrows straight, his hair long and blond. His features were square. Nicholas. Tears floated in his eyes. He cradled her in his arms with a tenderness she had never felt before and said, Orma lii. Islander that sounded as familiar as Nye. Are you all right? Then he said her name over and over.

  Someone poured water over her face, and she cringed. Nicholas raised a hand to stop it.

  “Let them!” her father said, pulling Nicholas’s arms away. The burning in her forehead eased.

  Then the scene shifted. Nicholas still held her. She was wrapped in her father’s healing cloak, but she was in a room made of stone, lying on a mattress that made her sink as if she were
in water. A Healer—Neri—was bent over her, chanting. She slapped a poultice on Jewel’s forehead. It smelled of redwort and garlic. “She’ll live,” Neri said, “but I can promise no more.”

  “What did she say?” Nicholas’s Fey was heavily accented, barely understandable.

  “That she’ll live,” her father said in Nye, “and maybe little more.”

  Nicholas made a keening sound in his throat and pressed her closer. “Jewel.” He kissed her softly, then brushed her hair away from her cheeks. “Ne sneto. Ne sneto.” I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  She touched him back. This night was not how she had dreamed it would be.

  His arms tightened, and then he grabbed her shoulders, shaking her. “Jewel! Jewel!”

  Not Nicholas. Her father. She felt a vague disappointment, as if the pain was worth Nicholas’s touch. The darkness receded. She opened her eyes and found herself staring at the ceiling of their cabin. Her mouth was open, and drool ran down her chin. She brought her head up slowly, half expecting the burning in her forehead to stop the movement, but there was none.

  “Are you all right?” her father asked.

  She nodded, feeling a dislocation, as if she had been in two places at once. “I haven’t had enough sleep,” she said.

  He eased her toward the chair. “You had a Vision.”

  She had to squint to see him. He looked older than she remembered. Maybe she hadn’t looked at him, really looked at him, in a long time.

  “Didn’t you?”

  The tone was off as well. He had never spoken to her with that mixture of awe and anger. Only to his father. What had gone wrong?

  She put a hand to her head, unable to think, wondering why she felt like lying to him, why she had been lying to him about her Visions all along. “I suppose I did,” she said.

  “Tell me what you Saw.” Not a request, a demand. And he didn’t seem to care how she felt, even though she had nearly passed out. Was this how it was supposed to be between them? Was this how his father had acted toward him when the Visions had started?

  “I think it was personal,” she said, wishing her brain would clear, knowing that it wouldn’t, that she needed to sleep before she could think clearly.

  “In our family Visions are never personal,” Rugar said.

  She took a deep breath and then pulled her hand away from her head. The echo of the burning pain remained there, and for a moment she thought she felt scarred skin under her palm. Then she touched her forehead again. Smooth, as it should be.

  “Does it matter what I Saw?” she asked.

  “Of course it matters!” he said. “We have to do this together now.”

  “Then why don’t you tell me what you See?” she asked.

  He blanched. His face went from its normal dark to a grayness as deep as the Shadowlands within a matter of seconds. His eyes glittered. “You don’t need to hear about my Visions.”

  “I think I do,” she said, “if I am going to tell you mine.”

  “When did we find ourselves on opposite sides?” he asked.

  “When you got so intense.”

  He laughed then and sank into a chair beside her. He took her hand. His palm was clammy. “I was worried, Jewel. That’s all. I had never seen you do that before. It’s startling when it happens to me. I never realized what it looked like.”

  “You never saw your father have a Vision?”

  He shook his head. “You’re the first.”

  The oddness again, but she decided to trust him. Perhaps he was right; perhaps her faint had startled him. It had certainly startled her.

  She closed her eyes and recited the Vision as closely as she could. She didn’t tell him she had seen the same thing twice before, nor did she tell him that this Vision had altered slightly. She understood it better, knew the language, knew the people involved. The Vision’s evolution startled her more than the Vision itself.

  When she finished, he was staring at her. “What do you think it means?” he asked.

  Finally she had had enough. “You’re the expert,” she said. “You tell me.”

  For a moment his gaze seemed empty. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I honestly don’t know.”

  FORTY-SIX

  The air smelled odd in the sanctuary. Goose bumps ran up Matthias’s arms as he quietly closed the oak doors behind him. The carvings dug into his palms, and he knew without looking that he had just placed his hands over the scenes of the Roca’s birth. Normally he loved those: the water funnel surrounding and protecting the baby; the frightened faces of his parents; the face of the Holy One etched in the clouds. But on this day he didn’t stop to look. On this day he pulled his hands away from the door and stood in the silence.

  A faint scent, one he had learned to recognize in the last year. Blood. In this, the holiest of places.

  His mouth had gone dry. He wanted to swallow, but couldn’t. He clenched his fists so that he wouldn’t touch the tops of the pews as was his custom to make sure no one had altered the carvings there. Instead he pulled off his sandals and set them by the door so that his feet would make no sound on the polished floor.

  When the Rocaan walked down this aisle, the Auds walked before him, rolling a red carpet. Other Auds followed, rolling up the red carpet where he walked, so that no other feet touched it besides his. Matthias had often thought that the ritual made the Rocaan look as if he were walking on an island of red.

  Blood-red.

  Matthias’s feet were sticking to the polish. Ahead he saw no one. He seemed to be alone, a fact that unnerved him even more than the odor.

  The sanctuary was usually his favorite place. It made him feel refreshed. And sometimes, when the choir sang, he almost felt as if he could touch the Ear of God.

  Nothing appeared to be disturbed. Rows of pews glistened in the light flowing down from the stained-glass panels inserted into the ceiling. The panels also depicted various events in the Roca’s life, and as the sun revolved in the heavens, the sanctuary’s interior light reflected different colors on the floor below. At night the lights were invisible, and the place had a dark, mysterious air not disturbed by the candlelight.

  The pews had red cushions that so far appeared unstained. Ahead, the red rug covering the altar also appeared clean. No one had touched the silver bowl containing the holy water, and the vials in their shelves under the Sacrificial Table appeared undisturbed. If an attack was to happen here, someone would go for the water immediately.

  He was being foolish.

  He was being cautious. The smell was faint but ever present.

  The air was cold. He shivered once, then continued his measured pace. Finally he reached the center of the sanctuary, where the pews were truncated to form a small circle on the floor. Above him, the largest replica of the Rocaan’s sword hung, pointing downward. He had often wondered what would happen if the sword fell in the middle of a service. But it never had. It was held with ropes that the Auds constantly replaced—a different rope done on a different day by a different Aud, always overseen by a different Officiate. The sword was four times larger than a human being, and encrusted with jewels. Its point gleamed menacingly in the multicolored light.

  Matthias had half expected to find something unusual in the circle, but the floor was polished there too. The smell seemed to have grown stronger, though. He ran a hand through his hair, his fingers tangling in the curls, glad he hadn’t worn his biretta. He had planned to come there to plead with Roca to give him faith—the attack on the Fey hiding place had shaken him somehow—but this distraction had taken all resolve from him. A man couldn’t speak to his God when the sanctuary smelled of blood.

  Past the circle, the pews jutted back into the aisle and continued until they reached the stairs leading to the altar. The carved wooden chairs on the altar lacked the shine they normally had. Someone had been sitting in them since the morning cleaning.

  It could have been one of the Elders. Matthias wasn’t the only one who used thi
s sanctuary, instead of the tiny chapel on the third floor, to pray. But that thought didn’t stop his heart from racing even faster than it had a moment before.

  He made himself walk slowly so that he looked at each pew as he passed, making certain they were empty. He wished he had a small vial of holy water in the pocket of his robe, as he used to when this war first started. He had become lax of late: he had seen no Fey in so long, only the dead reminded him that the country was under attack.

  His breath was coining in short gasps as he walked up the steps. The hair on the back of his neck prickled. The square Sacrificial Table, nicked with the cuts of a hundred consecrated swords, was empty, but the rug beneath it had a dark blotch, as if someone had spilled water and forgotten to mop it up.

  He knelt and touched the spot. It was damp. He brought his fingers to his nose and winced. Blood. Just as he suspected.

  He glanced around quickly to see if he was still alone. He was. He saw no one else, but he couldn’t be sure he was alone. Stupid, stupid of him not to have got help the moment he noticed the smell.

  Matthias swallowed and rocked back on his heels. Now he had reason to get someone. He started to stand when his gaze caught something near the leg of one of the chairs. With a shaking hand he reached over and grabbed it—

  —and nearly dropped it. It was smooth and white, but still damp, as if someone had wiped it clean. He kept it in his hand and brought it closer to his face. A bone. A tiny one. Like the bones of a person’s fingers.

  His trembling had increased. He sat down on the carpet, away from the blood spot, and looked closely at the weave. No more blood, no more bones. Whoever had caused the blood had missed this particular piece of evidence just by chance.

  “Matthias?”

  Matthias started and almost stood but forced himself to remain sitting. He recognized the voice. It belonged to Andre, one of the Elders. “Come here,” Matthias said, slipping the bone into his pocket. He would save that surprise for later, once he determined what was going on.