“They’ve taken Katharine behind the lines,” she says.
“Probably all the way into the Volroy, to get away from that.” Pietyr nods to the southwest, where the mist creeps through soldiers, swallowing them whole and spitting them out in pieces.
“What does it want?” Pietyr asks with disgust.
Arsinoe watches as retreating queensguard fighters run straight into it in a panic. Not all come out the other side. After the battle ends, she wonders whether they will be able to tell which of the soldiers fell from a blade and which to the mist.
“You can’t have thought it would sit this one out,” Arsinoe says.
“You cannot have thought that I would,” says Pietyr.
Arsinoe looks ahead grimly. The mist lies directly in her path, a white shroud biting at the edges of the battle like a dog pulling at the edge of a tablecloth.
“Jules and Emilia hoped it was Katharine that the mist was after. But if that’s true, it doesn’t seem opposed to snacking along the way.” She glances at him. “You don’t seem afraid.”
“Nor do you.”
“I think Mirabella is there. I think she’ll protect me. You know what I mean to do, Renard.”
“I do.”
“And you won’t try and stop me?”
“I mean to come with you. Whatever happens, I need to be there.”
She smiles without showing her teeth. “Ready to jump onto the winning side, of course.”
“Believe what you wish.”
Arsinoe hesitates, her hand on her sword.
“Please,” he says softly. “I have earned this. There will be no peace for me if I am not there.”
She motions to the back of her horse. “Climb on if you’re coming.”
After a beat of disbelief, he holds his hand out, and she helps him up. The mist has crept over the ground between them and the Volroy like a blanket. There is no way to go but through.
“We might be torn inside out the moment we step inside it,” Arsinoe says. “Or at least you might. Did Mirabella like you?”
“Your sister is not in the mist,” Pietyr says in her ear. He clutches her around the waist. “But no. Though we never really spoke.”
“I don’t know that would have made much of a difference.” Arsinoe kicks her horse forward, and wishes she had the naturalist gift to make him brave.
Mirabella, if you’re there, look after me one last time.
Emilia can hardly breathe. The blood leaking down her forearm and the ache in her chest mean nothing.
Jules cut the legion curse free.
She crawls across the ground, getting to her feet as fast as she can after Jules shoved her down. Jules and Camden are already halfway down the hill.
“Jules. Jules, look at me!” But she does not really want her to. Jules’s spine and shoulders jerk with the curse, and when her head turns, Emilia sees her lips stretched so far over her teeth that it seems that they must tear.
If Jules and Camden were to turn back, they would rip her to shreds, drive steel and claws deep into her chest. But she is not the most enticing target on the field. It is only thanks to Rho Murtra that Emilia is still alive.
“Jules!” she shouts weakly. “Jules, don’t!”
Down the hill, Camden leaps upon the first person she reaches. The poor queensguard soldier does not even have time to scream. Jules draws her sword but does not seem keen to use it. Instead, she appears to be driving her horse directly into Rho’s, and between his terror and her naturalist gift, the gelding will obey.
There is something both terrible and beautiful about watching Jules race toward all that blood and pain, so fearless and full of anger. And lacking in a plan, just like her friend Arsinoe. Emilia does not know how the two of them survived together for so long.
As Jules and Rho meet, Jules urges her horse to make one final leap, and Emilia opens her mouth to scream.
She wakes up on the ground. And she is not alone—the blast leveled every nearby soldier in a broad circle. Warm blood drips from her nose and runs down to her lip. After a moment, she can hear again, sounds muffled behind the ringing, and she gets to her feet on legs that feel like she has drunk a barrel of ale. The brief pause in the battle is over and stunned sword arms begin to swing. She has to get to Jules. She must find her queen.
She swivels and sees her, already on her feet if indeed she was ever off them. The poor gelding and Rho’s massive battle charger lie motionless, their bodies forming a boundary like an arena as the two warriors circle each other in the center. Waves of darkness seep from Rho like fog. The flesh of her forearms are rotting and green. Though Emilia has never been particularly pious, the white priestess hood on something like that seems pure blasphemy. No warrior in Bastian City could stand against such a monster. Not Emilia. Not even her mother. Only Jules.
THE VOLROY
Arsinoe holds her breath as she and Pietyr plunge into the mist. She closes her eyes, and Pietyr’s arms squeeze tighter around her middle. But after a few steps, it seems they will not be torn in two.
“How will you know which direction to go?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” she replies. It is a stupid question, anyway. Everyone on Fennbirn knows that the mist brings you where it wants. Or where you are meant to be.
“Is it always so cold?”
“Yes,” she says, though this mist does not feel at all familiar. Not like it was when she was a child in the boat with Jules and Joseph. Not like passing through it on the way to the mainland. This mist feels like a fist waiting to close, so thick she can hardly see the brown coat of her horse beneath her.
“Where is everyone? We must not be alone,” Pietyr says just as the horse stumbles. He goes down on his front knees, pitching Arsinoe and Pietyr off over his head.
Arsinoe scrambles to hold on to the reins as Pietyr grasps on to her waist.
“Don’t! I can’t lose the horse! I can’t lose him!” She drags herself up and touches his nose. The poor frightened gelding is breathing hard. She pats his neck, and it is wet with sweat. But he does not bolt. “Good boy, smart boy,” she whispers.
“Dear Goddess,” Pietyr says from behind her. He stares at the ground, at the thing the gelding stumbled over. It is a body. Or at least it was. Twisted and torn and bent, it is hard to tell whether it used to be woman or beast.
Arsinoe steps back and trips. When she tries to get up, her hands shove inside something wet and warm.
“Another body.”
Pietyr helps her to her feet. “Or the rest of the same one.”
She pulls the horse close. Her fingers are slick, painted with red and gore to the wrists.
Everywhere they look, on all the ground they can see, are bodies or pieces of bodies. Beside them, several queensguard lie on top of each other coated with blood, like they were piled onto a platter. And to her right, a skinned arm, the muscle and sinew exposed all the way to the disconnected shoulder.
“We have to get out of here,” Pietyr says.
“Don’t panic,” she snaps. She knows better than anyone how long the mist can wrap you in its grasp. They could wander forever. Until they starve or lose their minds. By the end, they could be begging the mist to twist them apart. But there is no point in saying so to Pietyr. “Take my hand.”
He takes it without hesitation despite the gore, and they begin to move forward. She counts a hundred paces in the same direction before she begins to suspect they should have reached the Volroy’s outer gates. Then she counts a hundred more, passing scattered corpses of horses and soldiers. Pietyr’s breath is fast in her ear.
“I do not remember the Volroy gates being so far.”
“They aren’t. Something’s wrong.”
“Why must you say that?” he hisses.
“Would you rather we ignore it?” she growls back.
She breathes in and the mist coats her throat and sinks into her lungs. It swirls around them in curious bands.
“Oi! Is anybody there?” someone c
alls out.
She and Pietyr turn. The voice could have come from anywhere.
“Yes! We’re here!” Arsinoe cries. “Over here!”
The young queensguard soldier stumbles into view. Her eyes are bewildered, and she still carries her sword, the tip dragging along the ground.
“Are you real?” she asks. “I couldn’t find—I cannot find—anyone. . . .”
“You found us,” Pietyr says. “It is all right now.”
The girl does not look convinced. But she drops her sword. And when she does, the mist swirls in and tears her apart.
Arsinoe screams. The horse pulls the reins from her hand and gallops off, his hoofbeats gone in an instant.
One half of the girl is missing, including her head. Her other half, with one arm and one leg still attached, lies twitching in the dirt.
“Do you still think Mirabella is in this mist?” Pietyr asks. He grabs her by the shoulder and shoves her toward the girl’s body. “This is what is spread upon the battlefield. This is what will cover the entire island! Right now, somewhere behind us or in front of us or around us, everyone you know—it could be happening to them!”
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” She jerks away and hits him hard, the back of her fist against his chest. “I know that!”
“Then do something about it! Get us out of here! But do not let go of me.” He tightens his grip on her hand. “I think you are the only reason I am not”—he nods to the body at their feet—“in pieces.”
“What would you have me do?” Arsinoe asks. “Mirabella was the one who could face the mist. She was the elemental; I’m just a poisoner like you. So why don’t you do something?”
His icy eyes snap to hers.
“You are not just a poisoner, Arsinoe. Nor are you merely a naturalist. You are a queen.”
She takes a deep breath. Queen she may be, yet the mist presses in on her like a weight. At any moment, Pietyr will be snatched away from her into the white, and she will be alone.
“I know the mist,” she says quietly. “And I know who made it. And I am a queen, though not like any queen the island has seen before. We none of us were.” She reaches for her small sharp knife. She remembers Mirabella’s last letter.
Me to face down the mist. Katharine to be the vessel. And you to banish them with low magic.
“There was only ever one thing that I was good at.” She links her arm through Pietyr’s and draws the blade across her hand. “And I won’t be ashamed of it anymore.” She holds her hand before her face and lets her blood drip down her wrist as her voice grows louder. “The dead queens started this fight. But it is the living ones who will finish it.” She bares her teeth and slams her palm into the soil.
A great wind rushes down, and Pietyr ducks close, trying to cover her. The mist churns, and voices and cries echo from inside it. Perhaps it is Illiann. Maybe it is Daphne. But though she strains, she does not hear Mirabella.
She closes her eyes and presses her hand harder into the ground, and suddenly the air is light. She opens her eyes. They are in the courtyard beyond the front gates of the Volroy.
“How?” Pietyr asks, rising slowly.
“Don’t ask questions. It’s where we were meant to be.” Arsinoe rises and runs ahead, into the fortress.
Katharine is in her room beside the fire when she hears Arsinoe call her name. It has been so long since she has heard her voice, and she is surprised to find that the sound is a relief.
The castle is nearly empty; there will be no members of the Black Council and no soldiers to impede her. All that remains is to choose the place.
Katharine touches the knives at her waist, her dear, poisoned blades. Though against Arsinoe, the poison does not matter.
The dead queens who remain with her slither furtively into her blood. They prod gently, meek without the strength of their numbers.
“Hush,” Katharine whispers to them. “It is almost time for you to face my sister.”
THE BATTLEFIELD
Emilia lies frozen in place as she watches Jules and Rho Murtra circle each other. Arsinoe was right. Jules is beyond her. There is nothing she can do, to help, to protect, to stop what is coming.
“Emilia!”
She looks to her right and sees Mathilde. The oracle has taken an arrow to her shoulder but fights on bravely, shoving soldiers back and waving her sword arm to signal rebellion flags. At her order, the reserves come, spilling from the northwest hill like ants. Watching them, Emilia feels a tightness in her throat. They are so brave. Despite the mist and despite the monster the Undead Queen sent for them, they do not flee.
“Mathilde!” Emilia struggles to her feet. Mathilde is unhorsed, and her yellow cape is stained dark with mud. Many of the oracles have fallen, their colors easy to see in the dirt. But a few still fight on.
“We have to hold the line,” Mathilde shouts. “Draw the western flank of queensguard thin!”
Emilia nods. She remounts her horse and catches a passing mare for Mathilde.
“Wait,” Mathilde says when she is in the saddle. “Look.”
Downfield, Billy stumbles through the battle, one hand pressed to his side and the other barely fending off attacks. His armor and clothes are soaked with red.
“Foolish mainlander,” Mathilde says. “He should have stayed nearby. If you lead the charge with the reserves now, you may be able to buckle the flank.”
Emilia looks between the queensguard, drawn enticingly thin, and Billy, on one knee and bleeding heavily. Downfield to her left, Jules and Rho begin to trade blows. There are so many places she would wish to be and no point in letting this moment of glory pass when the boy is practically dead already.
She raises her sword arm, and the war gift sings in her veins like the Goddess herself. She knows what it will feel like, crashing through the ranks. She can feel the strike of them against her knees, and hear their moans on the edge of her blade.
She squeezes her eyes shut and bellows. “Curse you, Arsinoe!”
“What are you doing?” Mathilde asks.
“Charge the flank without me. Go!” She turns her horse and races to Billy in fast strides, her sword sweeping down to cut through queensguard at the vulnerable place near the elbow. She relishes what fighting she may have all the way to the mainlander.
“Billy!”
“Emilia, thank god,” he says as she pulls him into the saddle. “It was Renard. The bastard stabbed me when I tried to stop him from going after Arsinoe.”
“Thank your god in your own country,” she says, her heart lingering with the fight even as they gallop out of it. “Today you should thank my Goddess.”
They look back together as the horse takes them out of the fray. In the confusion of the mist, fighters scatter. They turn on each other, tripping friends and allies in the hopes of buying time. Everywhere the white touches them they scream; they fall to the ground with backs full of blood.
“The mist,” Billy says in horror. “What do we do about the mist?”
Emilia faces forward and kicks her horse hard.
“That is up to your Arsinoe now.”
Camden prowls the border of Jules and Rho’s contest ground marked off by the fallen bodies of their mounts, killed when they first collided. But even without the cougar, no one would have disturbed them. For who would dare?
They strike and parry, strike and parry, their show of speed unnatural. The clang of their weapons crossing would vibrate any other fighter to her knees.
The only sounds are grunts and fierce bellows, the legion curse leaping high and the dead queens knocking it back, every impact hard enough to crush bones. Over and over, they come together and are thrown apart, yet the only damage they show was taken before the encounter began: ribbons of blood down a legion-cursed arm, a speckling of rot across an undead cheek.
The clearing around them grows as those fighting nearby stop to stare. But even the spectators flee when the mist comes.
The dead queens land a f
earsome blow and send their opponent rolling. At the sight of the mist, they screech and use the priestess’s war gift to wrench the battle-ax out of the ground. With two weapons, they greet their two enemies.
The legion curse attacks, slashing with sword and short dagger, using the war gift as a shield, but the dead queens are not afraid. They lash out, their rage their strength, cutting, bashing, stomping until they hear bones snap.
When the mist curls around their legs, they feel its chill. But they are still not afraid. They sweep their ax through the mist like they will cleave it in two.
They are distracted. They do not see her get up and brace on one leg. They do not see her leap, making the broken bone shatter.
The sword and the dagger sear into their flesh and pierce deep large holes that pour dead, black blood, and the dead queens drop the ax to try and hold themselves inside.
They leak out into the air, sensing Katharine nearby, and fly to her, pouring out of Rho as the body of the priestess collapses to the dirt. They leave her, and the hated Legion Queen, behind. They do not look back when the mist sweeps in to tear the empty sack of Rho Murtra to shreds.
THE VOLROY
Arsinoe shakes her cut hand, sending droplets of blood spattering against the Volroy’s stone floor.
“Here,” Pietyr says, and hands her his handkerchief.
“Those poisoner manners.” She wraps the cut. “I’m glad I never learned them.”
They walk together, deeper into the Volroy, and Pietyr keeps her abreast of the turns. He whispers which rooms are which and tells her where they might try. She lets him do it to feel useful. He does not know that she once lived a life through Daphne’s eyes and knows pathways through the castle that he has no idea of.
They round a corner and come upon a small green space, a walled garden that Arsinoe remembers well.
“What is it?” Pietyr asks when she lingers.
“This was the Blue Queen’s favorite garden. Illiann, she used to sit here for hours.”
“How do you know?”
“I know lots of things that I shouldn’t know.” She looks at him sideways. She should not be going to Katharine with him. It does not matter that he said he would not interfere or that he swore to overthrow the crown. Hearts in love are unpredictable, and once he sees Katharine, all of his promises may be forgotten.
Five Dark Fates Page 29