“It’s okay. Really. The way the world is, I can’t blame anyone for getting drunk.”
“It’s not just the world. It’s…I…this…” He breathed in deeply, eyes shut, and then let it out. “I’m sorry, Tilla. I should go. Before I say anything else.”
“Ellarion, it’s fine. You can talk to me,” I tried, but he was already up on his feet, lurching toward the tents. “Guard my food!” I yelled to Marlo and then rushed over to catch Ellarion, pulling one arm under his to keep him from falling over, and together we made our way across the camp toward his tent. I could see a lot of the other rebels eyeing us with annoyance. If anyone else had acted like this, they’d be disciplined within minutes. But Ellarion was a Volaris, and that carried special weight, even here.
I got him into his tent and flopped him down on his mat, where he sprawled, eyes shut, legs splayed. “I’m sorry, Tilla,” he slurred, already half-asleep. “This is embarrassing.”
“I once held your cousin’s hair while she puked into a potted plant. Taking care of drunken Volaris is pretty much my thing.”
Ellarion made a sound that was half chuckle and half snore. And as badly as I wanted to leave, there was one last thing I had to deal with. “Ellarion,” I said quietly. “Your hands.”
He let out another sound, this one an angry sigh, and then clasped his hands together, so the clockworks fingers of one came together at the wrists of the other, where polished metal met blistered, burn-scarred skin. He pressed down lightly on a smooth button at the base of the hands, and with a slight rush of condensed energy, a faint tinkling whistle, they tumbled down, falling flat onto the tent’s floor. Even the best Artificed prosthetics had their limitations. They couldn’t feel. They couldn’t do magic. And they had to be taken off every six hours, to prevent overexposure.
The hands lay on the ground, fingers twitching as the magic left them. Ellarion kicked them away lazily and rolled onto one side. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen him this drunk, or the dozenth. I knew how this would play out. Tomorrow, he’d walk out of his tent sobered up, act like nothing had happened, swagger his way to the command tent and shoot me a knowing glance, like Heh, wasn’t that funny? Then we’d go a few weeks doing fine, and then it would happen again. I didn’t judge him for it. It’s just how life was.
I turned to leave, but as I did he spoke again. “Tilla. Can I tell you something? Something I haven’t told anyone?”
“Okay…”
When Ellarion spoke, his voice was distant, a thousand miles away. “When I was a kid, I was scared of the dark. Like, really scared. Terrified. I’d lie awake in my dark room, holding the blankets, afraid of closing my eyes. And then my father showed me how to make these little lights, Candleflies, blue and yellow and pink, that could flutter in the dark and keep me safe.” He closed his eyes, lost in the memory. “And they did. I made the Candleflies come every night, and I stopped being afraid.” His voice choked up. “I can’t make the Candleflies come anymore, Tilla. They’re gone. Forever. And now all I have is the dark.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, what I could possibly say to that. So I just stood there in the tent’s entryway, frozen, until I heard his breathing go shallow, and turn into a light snore. Then I left and stepped back into the camp, the sun hidden behind a gray cloud overhead, the whole forest a dusky gray.
It wasn’t just the world that was broken. It was us.
I ate my stew and drank my beer, taking way less joy in them than I would have liked, and made my way back to my tent. Zell was waiting there, wearing just a drying cloth around his waist, his taut muscular torso still glistening from his own trip to the lake. His slick brown skin was decorated with scars, some old, some new: a jagged line across his chest from a Westerner’s sword, a small white triangle from an arrow he’d taken in the shoulder. I crossed over to him wordlessly and kissed him, running my hands through his neatly-cut black hair, gazing into his eyes, tasting his lips, breathing in that smell of first winter frost.
“Tilla?” he asked, even as his broad hands worked their way down my side, easing open the clasps of my shirt.
“Just kiss me,” I said, and we sank together onto the bed.
Later, we lay together, my head nestled in the crook of his shoulder, his fingertips running gently running along my bare back. This year had changed me too, given me a body I couldn’t always recognize: firm and hardened, my stomach taut, my thighs strong, my biceps actual biceps. A warrior’s body, as hard as that was to believe, decorated with a litany of scars of my own.
Night had fallen outside, so our tent was dark, the only illumination a few rays of moonlight ghosting in through the slit. It was quiet out there, the only sounds the occasional murmurs of a conversation, the crackling of a dying fire, the hooting of a distant owl. There was something soothing about the forest at night, almost magical, that made you feel like you were alone in the world. It was here, in the still forest night, safe in Zell’s arms, the heat of his skin against mine, that I felt like I could be really honest, that I could give words to the fears and truths that raged within me.
“Zell,” I whispered. “What if this all isn’t worth it?”
“What isn’t?” he asked, his voice husky and low.
“What we’re doing out here. This rebellion. This whole life. What if it isn’t worth it?”
I felt him shift, turning his head so he could look at me. “The man today. Vladimyr. His words affected you.”
He could read me like a book. “Yeah. A little, I guess. I just keep thinking about it. What if he’s right? What if they have won? What if we’re wasting what little time, what little freedom, we have with this pointless fight?”
Zell exhaled, his chest rising and falling beneath me. “And what would we do instead?”
“Run away,” I said, my voice so quiet it could barely count as a whisper. “Somewhere far, where they’d never find us. Take up new names. Build a little house. Raise animals and grow plants, go into town once a month to sell them. Maybe…I don’t know…make a family.” This was heavy shit, even for us, but once I’d broken the dam the words just kept spilling out. “What if this is our one life, Zell? What if this is our only chance at happiness? Are we making a huge mistake in giving that up?”
We lay in silence for a long time, and I listened to the steady beating of his heart. “And what of the people who can’t run away?” he asked at last. “What of the people who are locked away in your father’s prisons, the people trapped in his cities, the people he’s already killed? We just abandon them?”
“I don’t know,” I said, even though I did know.
“This is my fault, Tilla,” Zell said. “If I hadn’t helped the Ragged Disciples, if I hadn’t let them take over Lightspire, none of this would have happened. This world, this nightmare, is my fault. And I can’t rest or settle or even dream of a peaceful life until I’ve atoned for my mistakes. When I die and stand before the Crone, I need to show her that I did everything I could.” He pulled me in tight with his arm. “I dream of that life too, Tilla. Of that little house. Of…a family. But I can’t be that man. Not yet.”
“I know,” I said. And of course he was right. More than right. Because this wasn’t just his fault. It was also mine. Sure, he’d helped the Disciples, and that led, in some small way, to Lightspire falling. But it was my actions all the way back in Castle Waverly that led to Miles discovering the secret of magic, my actions that brought my father to Lightspire, my actions that broke the world. And if Zell was guilty, then I was guilty too, guilty of so much more.
I didn’t believe in his Gods, didn’t believe in the Titans, didn’t really believe in any judgment after death. But I knew just as well as he did that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I ran, no matter how doomed or pointless this fight was. I was in this till it killed me.
“You’re right,” I said, then turned onto my side. “It was just a dream.”
He wrapped his arms around me and pressed his chest to my
back, entangled his bare legs with mine, kissed my neck. “A beautiful dream,” he whispered, and sleep took us both.
TWO WEEKS WENT BY WITHOUT any more raids. I settled into the dull routine of camp life: days practicing in the training grounds, nights lounging by the fire with Lyriana or learning military history from Ellarion or wandering the forests with Zell. I swam in the lake. I broke my knuckles on practice dummies. Garrus tried, and failed, to teach me how to bake. It was nice, boring even, but that was okay. I welcomed boring.
Then the messenger came, one humid summer morning. Galen communicated with the rest of the Unbroken through some elaborate coded network of Whispers and human messengers. It was always a big deal when they came in, the few outsiders who knew our location, our most trusted contacts, bearing news from the rest of the Kingdom. Some days it was massive, like when we’d received the missive that the Southlands had declared secession; that night, the whole camp had celebrated, even as Galen had urgently penned letters trying to form an alliance with their upstart Dyn. Other times, the news was smaller, more disheartening, like when the messenger came to tell us that Miles had created another hundred new bloodmages, that they marched openly in the streets of Lightspire, that three dozen citizens had been executed for treason without so much as a trial. I’d seen all kinds of news pass into camp, but I’d never seen anything like this.
The messenger came at us galloping through the forest, so quickly that the scouts blared their horns and the guards at the gate drew their swords in alarm. He tumbled off his horse as he drew near, his ruddy face streaked with sweat, holding out a crumbled scroll in his hand. “An urgent dispatch from the Raven!” he bellowed, even as the guards tackled him to the dirt. “Please! You have to read it now!”
I watched as Galen took the note out of the man’s hand, watched his expression darken as he read it. Then he crumpled up the paper and spun around. “Command tent. Now.”
The command tent was big enough to fit a dozen, with a heavy table in the middle covered by an intricate map of the Kingdom. We gathered in a circle, the leadership of the Unbroken: Galen, Lyriana, Ellarion, Zell, and I, plus Manos Vore and the young scholar Kelvin Del Te Rayne. Galen laid the letter flat on the table in front of all of us, and we all stared at its blocky script.
“The Raven,” Galen said, “has been captured.”
An uneasy murmur passed through the room. The Raven was our absolute best contact, our most valuable spy. He’d first reached out to us six months ago through a series of intermediaries, gifting us the location of one of Miles’s blood-harvesting prisons. The prison was incredibly secret, its location known only to maybe a dozen people; it was also absolutely fucking horrifying, which we discovered when we attacked it and freed the few prisoners who were still alive. There were still people out there who refused to join the fight, who lamented that both sides of the conflict were the same. Bullshit. After what I saw in that prison, I knew there was a right side and a wrong side. And I knew which I’d fight for.
After the dispatch about the prison, the Raven stayed in touch, sending us a tip every few weeks. Some were big, like a list of which Provinces the Inquisitor was searching, and others were smaller, like the travel route of an Eastern merchant collaborator. Speculating on the Raven’s identity was a common pastime in the camp, and we always came up blank. None of us had any idea who he was, just that he was someone very high up in my father’s court, someone with access to all kinds of secret information…and someone who really, really hated the bloodmages.
“What do you mean he’s been captured?” Ellarion asked, his eyes flaring red at the thought. He might not have been able to use magic, but it was still in him, running through his veins.
“According to the letter, Inquisitor Hampstedt was able to identify him as a rebel contact,” Galen said. His voice was flat, emotionless, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t angry. “The Raven has been arrested and thrown into prison. He was able to bribe a guard into relaying this message to us. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to do it again.”
“Titans be damned,” growled Manos. His frizzy gray hair hung down his back in four tightly wound braids, and salt-and-pepper stubble dotted his slab of a jaw. “We need the Raven. Without him, we’re up shit creek.”
“That’s not all,” Galen said, and oh, were we just getting to the bad news? “The letter says that Inquisitor Hampstedt has called a meeting of Lords a week from now at the castle of Lord Delaux in Fallowfields. He’s bringing the Raven with him, to make an example out of. The Raven will be publicly tortured and killed.” Galen glowered. “He’s a dead man.”
The tent was silent for a moment as we all took the weight of that in—a silence Lyriana vehemently broke. “We have to rescue him!” she implored. “After everything he’s done for us, everything he’s risked for us, we can’t just let him die.”
My instinct was to agree with Lyriana. I’d grown attached to the Raven, thought of him as one of us. Leaving him to die just didn’t seem right. “Plus, there’s probably a lot more he knows, right?” I said, not sure if I was convincing the others or justifying it to myself. “If we saved him, he’d probably still be really useful.”
“Maybe,” Galen said, and I could practically see the thoughts whirring through his head, the gears of possibility spinning away. “Or maybe this whole letter is just a trap to lure us in.”
“We have to take that chance,” Lyriana said.
“And how would we do that?” Ellarion replied. “We’re not talking about raiding a caravan or hitting some remote prison. We’re talking about riding straight into the lands of Lord Alayne Delaux, one of King Kent’s most loyal allies. And not just that, but doing it while the Inquisitor is there himself. You know how Hampstedt travels. There’ll be a whole company of soldiers with him, and dozens of bloodmages.” He drummed his fingers on the table as he talked, with the heavy thuds of metal on wood. “What you’re talking about is a suicide mission.”
“It’s probably a real letter, then,” Kelvin said quietly. “The ratio of cheese to mousetrap is all wrong.” He was a handsome young Easterner in his mid-twenties, with curly blond locks and sparkling blue eyes. He was one of the Kingdom’s brightest minds, and before the war, he’d been on track to become a professor at the University; when my father had burned it to the ground, he’d come running to us instead. He was useful, sure, but something about his haughty manner always set me on edge.
“So what?” I asked. “We just let the Raven die?”
“Better that than dying ourselves,” Galen replied. “There’s just no way.”
“No way to do a direct attack, sure,” Lyriana said. “But we don’t need that just to rescue one prisoner. We could send a small group in. We sneak in disguised, grab the Raven, and get out before anyone even knows we were there.”
Galen arched a skeptical eyebrow. “I notice you’re saying ‘we.’ I can’t imagine you think for a minute I’d let you be a part of this.”
Lyriana glared at him, then sighed. She raised a slender hand, and the Rings on her fingers pulsed a dazzling color, a swirl of turquoise and emerald. The air around us crackled with the electric hum of magic. I tasted lavender, I think, and felt an odd heat on my skin, like a ray of sunshine on a cold day. Lyriana scrunched up her face in concentration and spun her hand in a delicate circle before pointing her fingers directly at Manos. The room around him seemed to throb and pulse, a contraction of light, and the air around him shimmered like an oil spill. I blinked, or the room blinked, and suddenly Manos wasn’t there at all anymore. He was gone, the only sign that he’d ever been there a faint shimmer over his chair.
We all gaped. Kelvin’s jaw fell open in shock. Even Ellarion sat up, dazzled.
“What?” Manos demanded, and okay, his voice coming out of thin air was pretty damn funny. “What is it? What are you all staring at?” Kelvin lifted up a mirror so Manos could see, and then his chair toppled over as he fell back in surprise. The illusion vanished as soon as he hit the ground
, the shimmer disappearing to reveal Manos’s sprawled form. With a rush of air and the tingle of a cold breeze, the magic left the room, and Lyriana slumped back down in her seat.
“How in the frozen hell did you do that?” Galen demanded.
“It’s a new Art. One I invented. I call it Glimmering,” Lyriana said, beaming. “I can do it for all of us, and keep it up for twenty minutes at a time.”
“That’s incredibly powerful magic,” Kelvin said, staring at the Queen with the world’s most obvious schoolboy crush.
“It’s something, all right,” Ellarion said, and I could hear it in his voice, a pained mix of pride and jealousy.
Lyriana either didn’t see it or decided not to acknowledge it. “Here’s my proposal. A small group of our best rides out to Fallowfields. We keep our distance and take stock of the situation. If there’s an opportunity to rescue the Raven—and I’ll fully admit that’s an enormous if—I’ll use my magic to hide us, and we’ll sneak in and rescue him. What do you say?”
Manos nodded. “I’m in. Without the Raven, we’ve got nothing but piss and dirt.”
“I’m in, too,” Zell said, and I nodded. The Raven deserved this much. And I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me excited at the prospect of being in the same room as Miles, of finally getting revenge on the boy who’d cost me so much.
“Well, I’m not.” Ellarion folded his arms across his chest. “There are so many unknowns, so many things that could go wrong! We’re talking about sending the Queen…the Queen…out into the field on the most dangerous mission we’ve ever done, with barely any intel or planning, using untried magic, and…and…” He threw up his hands. “Come on! This is madness!”
“It is.” Galen nodded. “But everything we do here is madness. If we back down from this, from saving a loyal ally who risked his life to help our cause, then we’re admitting defeat. And if we’re doing that, then we might as well just surrender right now.” He picked up the letter and crumpled it in his fist. “I’m in, too.”
War of the Bastards Page 3