The Ouroboros Cycle, Book Three: A Long-Awaited Treachery

by G. D. Falksen

  “But mark me: if any of you continues to aid this conspiracy, if any of you raises a hand against your brethren, or betrays this trust to our enemies....” Zawditu paused and her gaze traveled across the crowd, giving the impression that she was looking at each and every one of them individually. “Then I will execute you personally.”

  The crowd was silent at Zawditu’s words, perhaps struck dumb with fear. Certainly, it was a promise that she could easily carry out if she chose. But presently Luka noticed a sense of relief creeping throughout the assembled Shashavani. In one stroke, Zawditu had both relieved them of their urge for paranoia and assured them that they would be protected against further betrayal. And she had granted a means of escape to any conspirators who might now doubt their allegiance but would otherwise feel they had no choice but to continue or face death.

  Suddenly, Luka caught sight of a dark shape moving against the snow-covered riverbank. Turning, he strained his eyes until he realized that it was a crowd of people pulling themselves out of the frozen river.

  Was it an attack? But surely not. No sensible enemy would seek to invade a fortified town in daylight after swimming through icy water.

  More survivors! he realized.

  “Seteney!” he exclaimed, his tone urgent but still quiet enough not to interrupt the Strategos. “With me.” He pointed to a group of soldiers. “You, you, you, follow.”

  Without another word, he ran for the riverside gate and down the stone steps that led to the embankment. Some of the town guards noticed him run past and joined him. As he drew near, he saw dozens of sodden, freezing scholars helping one another out of the river. There were some Living among them, but most still walked in the Shadow of Death, and they would soon be in its darkness if they were not brought someplace warm.

  Their leader was a woman who stood on the riverside pulling the stragglers out of the water. She was bleeding from a wound in her side, and she seemed on the verge of collapse. As she turned, Luka realized it was Ekaterine.

  “Cousin!” he shouted, running toward her.

  “Luka!” Ekaterine exclaimed, her voice as excited as it was weak. She waved to him in greeting. “Oh, I think I’m going to—”

  Luka reached Ekaterine just in time to catch her as she collapsed.

  “Seteney, get everyone indoors!” he shouted.

  “Sir,” Seteney answered, before barking orders to the guardsmen and to whichever scholars seemed well enough to help the others.

  Luka lifted Ekaterine into his arms. Ekaterine blinked a few times and smiled at him.

  “You’re carrying me,” she said, “like you did when I was a little girl.”

  “Not so little anymore,” Luka noted, carrying her back toward the town. “You have been eating too many English scones.”

  “Hush,” Ekaterine replied, weakly poking him with her finger. “There’s no such thing.”

  Luka frowned. “You’ve been shot.”

  “Not badly.”

  “Who are all these people with you?” Luka asked.

  “Archivists,” Ekaterine said. “And some others I met on the way.”

  “You got all these people out?”

  “Mother always said I was clever,” Ekaterine told him, smirking as best she could.

  “You need a doctor,” Luka said.

  “Nonsense,” Ekaterine protested. “What I need is a warm glass of….” Suddenly she opened her eyes wide. “Doctor! Varanus is still in there! We must help her!”

  “Cousin—” Luka began, trying to calm her.

  “I must help her!” Ekaterine cried, her voice weak from blood loss and exhaustion. Slowly her eyes began to flutter. “But I’m so sleepy.”

  “Stay awake, Cousin,” Luka urged her as he ran through the snow. “Stay awake. We’ll attend to the Doctor as soon as you’re well. But you must stay awake!”

  Ekaterine slowly nodded and forced her eyes open. She seemed strengthened by the notion that she had to remain awake to save Varanus. At least that was something, though it pained Luka to lie to his cousin.

  After all, he thought, if Varanus still lived, she was trapped in her cell unable to escape. If she was not already dead, she soon would be.

  Chapter Seventeen

  •

  Varanus had no knowledge of what Luka thought about her chances for survival, which was just as well: had she known, she would have been very angry with him. Instead, she ran through the corridors of the castle alongside Judith, pausing at intersections and ducking into side rooms to avoid detection. She could not know for certain who else might be in league with Thoros and Teimuraz; lacking that knowledge, she resolved not to be seen by anyone she did not trust implicitly, and that was a very short list.

  Above all, she had to find Ekaterine.

  And of course, there was the looming threat of Thoros following some uncertain distance behind them. Varanus’s ears twitched at every creak of a floorboard or a door, fearing that it might be the madman who had finally run them to ground.

  As they continued along, Varanus found further signs of violence: bloodstains on the carpet, arrows and sword-marks in the woodwork, and corpses upon the floor. But for all the bodies, Varanus knew that they were too few for the violence inflicted. The dead may have been heavily outmatched yet still managed to do severe damage to their assailants, or it could have been that many of the victims survived and were taken elsewhere. But that latter possibility did not give Varanus any relief.

  “Perhaps this was a kidnapping, liebchen,” Korbinian suggested, as he ran along beside her. “The dead may have resisted. Perhaps that is why they were killed.”

  That made a degree of sense, Varanus thought, but it did not answer everything. Why take so many people prisoner? The halls were all but deserted. Something had happened to the Shashavani.

  “Thoros tried to murder us,” she said aloud, forgetting herself. “As did Teimuraz. This is not only about taking prisoners.”

  “Teimuraz tried to kill you?” Judith asked. “I thought it was only Thoros!”

  Varanus silently scolded herself for addressing Korbinian aloud.

  “Yes,” she said. “In my cell.”

  “Horrible,” Judith replied, scowling. “I wonder how deeply this goes.” She paused as another thought came to her. “You were in a cell? You never seemed the meditative sort to me, Doctor Varanus, if you will pardon my saying so.”

  Varanus was silent, surprised by the question. How could Judith not have known of her confinement?

  “Liebchen,” Korbinian said to her, sounding only slightly disappointed, “surely few among the Shashavani have any care for the dealings of the Council, save for when they themselves are affected by it. I doubt that even half the Order knew of your crime, and most will have forgotten it by now. And certainly, those that do recall it will have far more with which to concern themselves at the moment.”

  No doubt he was right.

  “Yes,” Varanus told Judith, “Lord Iosef thought it would be constructive for me to spend some time isolated from the world.”

  Judith merely nodded and said nothing.

  They continued on toward the upper floors. Varanus remained set on her plan to arm herself from Luka’s private arsenal and then find Ekaterine. Judith seemed intent merely on keeping ahead of Thoros, and she made little comment on what direction they went.

  After a time they passed along one of the upper galleries overlooking the Great Hall. Looking down, Varanus saw a tremendous crowd of people all clustered in the center of the room, surrounded by soldiers who kept them trapped in place with a wall of spears. There were both Living Shashavani and those of the Shadow in the crowd and among the soldiers. And, Varanus realized, the division was not purely soldier-scholar. There were robed academics among the guards and disarmed warriors among the prisoners.

  At the sight, Judith gasped and as
ked softly, “What is this?”

  “We’ve found where everyone is,” Varanus said, also keeping her tone low. “They’ve been taken captive.”

  “But by whom?”

  “That is the question,” Varanus agreed. She peered out from behind the wall that concealed her. They were mostly hidden from the view from below, but if someone came through the gallery behind them, they would be seen for certain. “We’re too exposed here. We should get inside somewhere.”

  Judith nodded in agreement and said, “There is a room further along.” She pointed down the gallery to a room that stood overlooking the hall. “If it is empty, we can hide in there and still see what is happening.”

  “If it is empty,” Varanus said.

  But it was a reasonable point. In the gallery they would be seen eventually. If there were guards in the room, they could always run again, but otherwise it might give them a chance to rest.

  Hurrying along, Varanus paused at the entrance, exchanged a look with Judith, and opened the door. The room was dark, lit by oil lamps that had been turned down to keep it in shadows. It seemed deserted, and Varanus, eager to be out of the gallery, hurried in without pausing. It only took her a moment more to realize that she had been mistaken as her eyes focused on the point of a long-bladed spear that appeared from the darkness inches from her nose.

  Varanus froze, her eyes slowly taking in the weapon and then the figure holding it. She could not make out details, but she gauged it to be a woman with long black hair and a simple chokha-dress. Behind her, Judith hurried into the room and stopped short, also seeing that they had been ambushed. Varanus glanced at the nearest corner and saw the bodies of a man and a woman clad in mail. They had been killed and left piled up in the shadows.

  “Oh no...” Judith murmured.

  The woman holding the spear advanced into the light to get a better look at Varanus. It was Joan the Breton, once a noblewoman of Brittany who had turned pirate after the death of her husband during the Hundred Years’ War.

  “Doctor Varanus?” Joan asked, surprised. She glanced at Judith. “Rabbi ben Loew?

  Another figure appeared from the darkness, sword in hand. It was Magnus the Dane, his clothes bloodstained and tattered from extensive violence, just like Joan’s garments. He reached behind Judith and quickly closed the door.

  “What are they doing here?” he demanded, keeping his voice low.

  “Better to ask them,” Joan said.

  “Are they armed?”

  “No,” Varanus interjected, unable to conceal her displeasure at the fact. She was still in desperate need of a weapon.

  “Are they with us?” Magnus asked Joan.

  “An important question.” Joan turned her eyes back to Varanus and Judith and raised her spear. “Whom do you serve?” she demanded. “Answer me!”

  “What?” Varanus asked. It was an absurd question. “I serve no one, and nor does she.”

  The idea! Claiming that she would ever serve another!

  Joan relaxed slightly and lowered the spear.

  “I believe them,” she said to Magnus, who nodded and sheathed his sword.

  “As do I,” murmured a voice from the shadows across the room.

  Varanus recognized the voice, and the relief she took from hearing it made her rush past Joan to be sure. She saw Vaclav the Moravian crouching in the darkness near the balcony that overlooked the Great Hall. He smiled in greeting at Varanus and Judith and motioned for them to join him.

  “Doctor,” he said, “I am pleased to see you released from your confinement.”

  “I am rather happy about it myself,” Varanus agreed. She glanced at the crowd below them. “What is happening? Has everyone gone mad?”

  “A coup d’état, it seems,” Joan said, kneeling beside them while Magnus guarded the door. “We are still trying to make sense of it, but in Lady Sophio’s absence, some portion of the army has taken up arms against us.”

  “That was why you asked who we served?” inquired Judith.

  “In part,” replied Vaclav. “The enemy has a sort of pass phrase. They say that they serve the ‘Winter King’ so that they might know one another. I have seen it happen twice already. It is not merely coincidence; it is a code.”

  “Ah,” Varanus said. “And that is how you know who to kill: the ones that respond correctly.”

  Joan nodded. “Precisely.”

  “And who is this ‘Winter King’?” Varanus asked.

  “That I do not know,” Vaclav told her. He leaned out a little and studied the crowd, which had begun to move, being turned toward the throne and the dais by their guards. “But I think we may soon find out.”

  Varanus looked into the hall and saw three figures step onto the dais, two women and one man. She recognized them as members of Sophio’s Council—Margaret, Iese, and Caroline. They were all dressed richly, in robes and coats threaded with gold and adorned with gemstones. And they were armed, a point that Varanus did not fail to note. However much they might trust their soldiers, they trusted their own sword-arms above all.

  The one called Margaret stepped forward from the other two and raised her hands in greeting to the crowd of prisoners. She spoke to them like a Roman Emperor addressing the plebs:

  “Brothers and Sisters, welcome. Thank you all for accepting my...invitation.”

  She spoke with more sincerity and warmth than ought to have been possible in such circumstances, and ripples of suspicion, confusion, and fear began to spread through the prisoners. It seemed they knew not what to make of this. Being assembled for slaughter was as easy to comprehend as it was terrifying, but to be addressed in tones of kindness by one’s captor was unnerving.

  “I apologize for the rough methods of my compatriots,” Margaret continued, “but I fear with such momentous events, we could not risk otherwise. But you are here now, and that is all that matters.”

  “Arrogant creature, isn’t she?” mused Joan.

  “Quite,” Varanus agreed. “A coup is a coup. She acts like it were the French Revolution.”

  Joan looked at her in astonishment and asked, “Oh? Have the French had a revolution?”

  “Yes, we did,” Varanus replied. “A century ago.”

  Joan shook her head. “I must keep better track of current events.”

  Below them, Margaret continued:

  “No doubt I am known to you. I am Margaret of the Hebrides, formerly of the Council advising our now-departed Eristavi, Lady Sophio. I have held my post for almost as long as Lady Sophio has held hers, and I have guided her as she has guided us.

  “But I fear, Brothers and Sisters, that the time of Sophio’s reign has passed. Like those who came before her, she has abandoned us for the world, never to return.”

  This seemed to surprise many of the prisoners who apparently had no knowledge of Sophio’s departure.

  “We are left, it seems, on the verge of chaos.” Margaret turned her gaze toward each of the prisoners, locking eyes with each of them for the smallest of moments as she spoke. “I know that there are some among us who still remember the dark time when Shashava left us as well, so long ago. We trusted that our founder would watch over us always, and our founder abandoned us. We trusted that the Companions would watch over us always, and the Companions abandoned us as well. And now Sophio, the last of those who came before us, has betrayed us too, casting aside her responsibilities and leaving us to whatever may befall us.”

  This brought cries of protest and angry accusations from many of the prisoners, especially from the old. But among the young Shashavani, there was a hint of uncertainty, and they looked at one another, murmuring softly. It was obvious what troubled them: Was Margaret right? Had they been abandoned by the queen they hardly knew? And if so, what would befall them next?

  Margaret held out a hand as if to stop such whispers of fear.

&nb
sp; “But be at peace, Brothers and Sisters,” she said, her tone both gentle and commanding. “Though Sophio has abandoned you, though Shashava and the Companions have abandoned you, know that I never will.”

  There was a pause. Margaret raised her head and placed one fist over her heart in a show of conviction even in the face of great personal sacrifice.

  “In their absence and with the approval of my fellow councilors—” She motioned toward Caroline and Iese. “I proclaim myself Eristavi, your Prince, your Queen, from this moment onward until such time as one whose authority is greater than mine returns from the wilderness to relieve me of my burden.”

  Varanus almost laughed aloud at this, for surely Margaret meant the return of Shashava or the Companions, neither of which was likely. Then a dark thought fell across Varanus’s mind. Shashava, the Companions, or Sophio. Certainly Margaret would not have usurped the throne if there were any real chance of Sophio returning. How could she be so confident of that? Had she engineered some plot to deal with Sophio as well? Or was it really so certain that Sophio would never return from her sojourn?

  And if not, what did that mean regarding Lord Iosef?

  “Shh, liebchen,” Korbinian murmured in her ear, perhaps sensing her unease at the thought of losing her mentor. “Your Russian will return. I do not doubt it and nor should you.”

  Korbinian was right, of course. Iosef was far too responsible to abandon his duties in such a way. He at least would return. The reassurance calmed Varanus somewhat, but it did not change the greater danger still at hand.

  In the hall, Margaret’s announcement was met with a mixture of outrage, disinterest, and acceptance. Though many of the Shashavani recoiled at Margaret’s usurpation, there were those who seemed to care little for such a question of politics, and many others who showed relief at the idea of a quick and orderly succession.

  Quick and orderly and bloody, Varanus thought.