Red Tigress

by Amélie Wen Zhao

  Linn hesitated. It was long past dusk, and Ana would be waiting for her. Two more bells, and she’d be at her negotiation.

  The doors yawned wide open, beckoning to her. It wouldn’t take two bells for Linn to quickly look inside.

  She stood from where she crouched, assessing. Walls and guards might keep out everyone else, but they weren’t a problem for her.

  She backed to the end of her veranda and took off at a run, summoning her Affinity as she did so. With a kick, she launched herself off the edge, the breeze at her feet rising into a sudden gale, propelling her forward.

  She landed on the crenellated wall as silently as a cat, and the breeze fell. Voices of the Royal Guards drifted up from beneath her, probably commenting about the weather. To them, she would have been nothing but a shadow in the night.

  Linn dropped into the empty courtyard. In five steps, she was at the ironore doors. She wrapped her fingers around the bronze knockers, sent a quick prayer to her gods, and tugged.

  They opened with a resounding creak that set her heart stuttering. Linn quickly lifted a gust of wind that rattled the alder trees, but even as she did, she heard the guards speaking, the grating of the ironore doors outside.

  Linn pushed more wind against the door, so that it clanged open against the opposite wall. She had to hope that the guards would think Sorsha hadn’t closed the door properly, and that it had blown open in the strong wind. Blades in hands, she darted inside and pressed herself against the wall, holding still.

  Outside, she heard a guard calling to his companions, the grind of metal as he heaved the heavy door shut, trapping her inside.

  It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust. She was in a corridor of the Naval Headquarters that appeared to be quite deserted. The walls were made of actual stone, and the entire place felt older than the polished halls of the Livren Skolaren or Godhallem that gleamed with ironore or searock enhancements.

  There were doors on either side of the hallway, which stretched so far, it seemed to swallow itself into an expanse of darkness. There was no one here, but Linn sensed a shift in the air as the currents settled back into the space a body had just moved through, almost like the wake of a ship. Sorsha had come through here.

  Linn followed the trail to a door that looked the same as the others she had passed. Cautiously, she opened it.

  Stone steps descended into a yawning stretch of darkness below. The air here was cold, but as Linn pressed her Affinity to it, she found a swirling trail leading forward.

  Sorsha had gone down here.

  All of her senses rang in warning against the dark, the stillness, the silence, the enclosed space behind the door. Her mind leapt to memories she’d tried to keep buried—the chafe of chains against her wrists, the taste of sedatives on her tongue, the bouts of consciousness and the blurred in-betweens.

  Linn shook her head. You are overreacting, she thought sternly. Bregon was not Cyrilia, and she was here of her own free will, supporting a cause that would fight against inequality and oppression, that would ensure that no other young girl from a foreign kingdom went through what Linn had gone through.

  This was her way of fighting. She would need to be stronger than her fear.

  Linn palmed a dagger. She drew a breath, as though to steel herself, and then entered, drawing the door shut behind her.

  It was pitch-black inside, and she kept a hand on the wall next to her as she began to descend. Here, there was only the sound of her own breathing, the slight swirl of air currents before her as the trail Sorsha had left began to close. Several times, she could swear she saw shapes moving—but, she reasoned with herself, it was merely the effect of fear and darkness on her imagination. She kept one hand on the wall as she counted her steps, her Affinity sorting through the heavy tangle of air before her, searching for any disturbances.

  Gradually, she thought she began to see enough to be able to distinguish shadows around her, blurred shapes. And then she began to make out the outlines of walls and steps before her, and at last, flickers of torchlight.

  She was close.

  The stairs ended abruptly, before another set of doors. Light emanated from the cracks beneath them, but when Linn grasped the handles, she let go immediately, as though she’d been burned.

  Blackstone. These doors were made of blackstone. It was unmistakable—the unnatural coldness, the way her Affinity seemed to fade beneath a pounding pressure in her head when she touched it.

  She swallowed. She hadn’t expected to find blackstone in a highly guarded section of the Naval Headquarters.

  Holding her dagger before her like a torch, she reached out, turned the handle, and slid the door open a crack.

  At first, she thought she was looking at a healing wing of some sort. Pillars were spaced evenly along the walls. Austere metal tables stretched in the center of the long chamber, neatly stacked with papers and pens and several bottles. The slick black walls curved and wove into shadowed alcoves, the walls between each one lined with shelves that bore medical supplies. Rows of scalpels that glittered like teeth, large and small bottles of liquids, gauze and needles in glass jars.

  In one of the alcoves, something moved.

  Linn bit down a cry.

  There was a girl bound to the walls, long golden hair unkempt. She looked no more than skin and bones, her fingers curling like claws against her manacles. A black collar encircled her neck, dull beneath the shine of light.

  More blackstone. There was so much of it here, she was beginning to realize: woven into the material of the walls, the pillars interspersed through the chamber, even the ceiling. Her Affinity had been reduced to the faint flicker of a candle.

  Voices drifted to her, echoing in the empty chamber. The first was a male voice. The Bregonian words were rough and unfamiliar to Linn, but his tone was quiet, smooth, if not tense.

  A second voice spoke, and Linn instantly recognized its unsteady tones that slipped easily into threatening snarls. Linn pushed the door open a bit wider, her heart hammering.

  Sorsha came to a stop before the alcove with the girl. She gestured, and a man in white robes swept forward. He produced a key and unlocked the prisoner’s chains, including the blackstone band around her neck.

  The girl crumpled to the ground.

  Without so much as a flicker in his expression, the scholar grabbed one of her wrists and hauled her forward, disappearing from Linn’s field of sight.

  She was debating whether she should follow them farther inside when the screaming started.

  Fear bloomed. Her every nerve, every sense, whispered at her to run.

  Monsters, came King Darias’s whisper. I just want to tell you about the monsters beneath my floors.

  His monsters were right around the corner; she could feel it like the press of destiny at her back. The need to act pushed her forward, the knowledge that she was on the brink of discovering something greater than herself, than her fear. She had to see what lay down there.

  Yet that didn’t stop her heart from beating like a trapped bird in her chest, her knuckles turning white around her grip of the dagger.

  I am afraid, Ama-ka. She’d spoken those words aloud once, at six years old, before her first flight. Linn thought them now, her hands cold around her blades.

  Ama-ka’s response came to her, the faintest glimmering threads in the shadows all around.

  That, my daughter, is when you can choose…

  The darkness was suffocating. No one would come searching for her down here if she was caught. No one was here to witness her choice. She was but a pawn in this war, where glory was reserved only for the few.

  Sometimes, Linn thought, bravery was not loud, or grand, or brilliant as the blaze of a thousand fires.

  Sometimes it was quiet. Unremarkable. Unknown. The resilient wend of water through rocks, year after year af
ter year.

  …to be brave.

  Linn drew a breath, lifted her dagger, and slipped through the gap in the door.

  Bogdan’s once-handsome face had hollowed out to the point of becoming skeletal, his cheekbones jutting sharply. His hair, which had before looked to be spun of gold, hung in grime-slicked strands to his chin. But what haunted Ramson most was the look in his eyes—that of a wild animal, of frenzied desperation.

  Scholar Ardonn held out a hand. “Perform,” he ordered.

  Bogdan moaned, and Ramson felt chills down to his bones. It was the sound he had heard earlier—the long, drawn-out keening noise, half-human, half-animal. He raised his arm—now stick-thin—and Ramson caught sight of a band around it. The material undulated in waves, reminding him of the ocean.

  Searock, he thought. That looked like searock.

  And then it started to glow. Fissures of light spread from the band onto Bogdan’s skin, crawling like veins up his arm, his neck, his cheeks, and to his eyes.

  The gold rose into the air from Ardonn’s palm, gleaming in the light. It spun. The veins on Bogdan’s face began to bulge. And Ramson thought of Ana’s hands, the way her veins engorged with blood and turned dark when she used her Affinity.

  No, this wasn’t possible.

  Bogdan was not an Affinite.

  Yet something was happening to Bogdan. The bar of gold had begun to spin in the air. The glowing fissures that had spread on his skin were growing more rapidly, spreading to his entire body.

  Kerlan took a step back in alarm. “What’s wrong?” he demanded. “What’s happening?”

  Scholar Ardonn examined Bogdan’s wrist, leaning as close as possible without risk of being hit by the bar of gold. “The siphon seems faulty. It’s fracturing.”

  “Please,” Bogdan whimpered. The bar of gold was spinning faster and faster, starting to veer out of control. “Please, Master—”

  Kerlan ignored him. “We’ll need the other one in the Blue Fort, after all,” he snarled at the scholar. “Is the problem with the siphon, or is it with the bearer?”

  “Likely both, though I’ve advised that giving a siphon that has collected multiple mageks to a nonmagen could break the test subject.” Scholar Ardonn began to back away, but he shot Kerlan a pointed look. “The siphon you gave him had gold magek, herb magek, and salt magek. He must be overwhelmed.”

  Indeed, Bogdan was now trembling violently. The threads across his body lit up like currents of lightning, splintering his face as though his skin were peeling from his bones. “Please, get it out of me, please—” His voice rose, cresting into a scream.

  “Take cover!” Nita shouted, hauling Alaric Kerlan out of the way.

  The searock-like band around his wrist exploded in a burst of light.

  The force blew Ramson backward. He grunted as the sharp edge of a crate smashed into his ribs. Pain coursed through his body.

  From belowdecks, there was the sound of a sword being drawn, of metal meeting flesh, and then silence. Footsteps.

  He’d just pushed himself to his hands and knees when the shout came. “Intruder!” A blow struck his face, sending him reeling.

  He heard Kerlan’s reply, slightly out of breath. “Tie him up. And someone clean up this gods-damned mess.”

  Dimly, Ramson sensed cuffs being clipped over his hands and feet. A piece of cloth went over his mouth; he groaned as it tightened. He was lifted by his armpits and dragged through the hatch, then shoved onto the deck.

  Throughout the silence came a distinct noise: a rhythmic click-click-click of heels striking wood. Something about the noise awoke a primal fear in Ramson; echoes of screams, memories of searing heat and black water.

  Two spots of yellow appeared in his vision, flashing. They grew brighter and more solid until they merged into a pair of gold-heeled shoes. They stopped right before Ramson.

  “Well, well,” came a voice. “Look what the tide washed in. Stand him up.”

  The world shifted as he was hauled to his feet. A face swam into view.

  “Hello again, Ramson,” said Alaric Kerlan. “I certainly didn’t think I would be running into you here, old friend.”

  Behind him, figures were emerging on the deck, more than he’d counted, dressed in Cyrilian furs and attire. The worst thing, Ramson realized, was that he recognized some of them. He’d seen their faces back at the Order of the Lily; he’d even worked with some of them in passing.

  Olyusha had been right. Kerlan had brought what was left of his Order to Bregon.

  Nita nudged Ramson with a boot. “What shall we do with him?”

  “I’m quite enjoying the look of horror on your face, my son.” Kerlan bent and cupped a hand under Ramson’s chin. His nails dug into Ramson’s cheek. “I must say, though, I thought I’d left you for dead the last time we met.” His grip tightened. “I won’t make the same mistake this time.”

  The gold buttons of his sleeve brushed against Ramson as he stood and gestured at one of his men. “Bind weights to him.”

  It dawned, with a slow horror, that Kerlan meant to drown him tonight.

  Ramson tensed against his manacles, his fingers feeling along the chains for any weaknesses.

  As a crony began to strap weights to him with a second set of chains, Ramson realized, for the first time, that he had no way out. He’d been stripped of pins and blades and any sharp objects that he could use to pick a lock, and his hands and feet were shackled so tightly that he could feel his circulation cutting off.

  With a grunt, he kicked his legs up and slammed the man in the chest. He fell back with a snarl, and Ramson managed to sit upright—

  And then, in a flash, the strength left his body.

  Ramson collapsed onto the deck.

  “Marvelous, Nita,” Kerlan said. “Now, take the others and load them onto the two wagons for the Blue Fort. Leave some to guard the ship. We must make haste. I shall join you, once I deal with my old friend, over here.”

  No. A voice in Ramson’s head was screaming, but he couldn’t move.

  Click-click-click. Kerlan’s shadow fell over Ramson, and for a moment, he looked down with mild pity.

  Then he bent and wrapped his fingers around Ramson’s neck hard enough to cut off his air supply. His face morphed into cruel fury.

  “Did you really think I’d let you ruin it all?” Kerlan hissed, spittle flying from his mouth. “Nearly fifteen years, I’ve been waiting for this—did you really think I’d let one pathetic son of a whore interfere?” He thrust Ramson’s head back against the wooden deck so hard that Ramson saw stars.

  He coughed, sucking in air through his cloth gag, his stomach heaving. Yet his mind latched on to Kerlan’s words. Fifteen years. Kerlan had been planning this for fifteen years.

  He thought of Daya’s words, of how she’d told him that her first job for Kerlan had been eight years ago, that Kerlan still had men waiting for him in Sapphire Port. Ramson had grown up listening to his father’s stories of Alaric Kerlan and his criminal empire. But, he realized suddenly, with a growing dread, he’d never known the reason why Roran Farrald had exiled Alaric Kerlan in the first place.

  A small smile was playing about Kerlan’s lips. “I’ve made many Trades in my lifetime, paid pretty sums for pretty things. But the look in your eyes right now, my son, is simply priceless. The confusion. The anger at my triumph. The helplessness.” His smile stretched. “Tell me, did you bid good-bye to your beautiful blood princess?”

  Something in Ramson snapped and he twisted, choking against his gag, his chains rattling.

  Kerlan laughed. “Imagine my surprise, my utter delight, in hearing that the so-called Red Tigress had landed in Bregon, right into the lap of my network of spies. Intending, I heard, to warn Bregon about Empress Morganya’s intentions to steal their weapon.” He chortled, wiping a tear from the edge
of his eye. “Who do you think developed the siphons fifteen years ago? Who do you think told Morganya about its existence in the first place?”

  Ramson couldn’t breathe. His head spun, struggling to process what Kerlan had just revealed. The greater picture that he had been seeking all along, spanning oceans and kingdoms and decades.

  “Yes,” Kerlan crooned, watching him carefully. “Oh, how lovely it is, watching you connect all the pieces of my lifetime of work. But how could you have known? All along, you’ve only seen the tail end of my grand plan. All those enhancements to the Blue Fort, the searock that those pitiful little fools in the Naval Headquarters now tread on—who do you think mined those materials in the first place, discovered the properties that made them so powerful?”

  It couldn’t be. Back at the Naval Academy, they’d learned about the A. E. Kerlan Trading Company, which had excavated precious stone and supplied it to the Kingdom of Bregon. They’d been told that it had been a criminal empire operating under a façade, and that it was Admiral Roran Farrald who had banished its notorious leader forever.

  “And then came Roran Farrald, my supposed friend”—Kerlan spat the word—“who rose so quickly in the ranks of the Navy, and declared me a criminal once he saw what I had developed with searock. He sent me into exile, and took over everything I had built, all the knowledge I’d discovered.” He straightened, his face sliding back into mild serenity. “He’ll get his retribution tonight. My forces have already infiltrated the Blue Fort. Within hours, my army arrives, and we strike.

  “And,” he said, slowly, with relish, “once I take down Bregon and deliver your Red Tigress back to Empress Morganya, I shall be crowned King of Bregon in the new era of our world.” His gray eyes bore into Ramson’s. “But first, I’m going to savor this moment: seeing you die, knowing just how hard you’ve failed. Knowing that everything you’ve ever loved and cared for is about to end.” He stood. “I’m afraid I’ve got to get going, Ramson. The biggest party in all of the Blue Fort awaits me tonight. Good-bye, my son.”