The Exalted

by Kaitlyn Sage Patterson

  Her words came like a punch to my gut, and it took every fiber of my strength to keep myself upright. How was it that this woman, just a few years older than me, could lounge there in her nightclothes, sipping a glass of wine and plotting the violent extinction of an entire population? I searched my mind for anything that would help me, anything that would give me a foothold in this argument.

  “Your people would never agree to this,” I said desperately. “It’s the Denorian way to value and protect life above everything else. Your scientists won’t replicate a poison. The values of your people won’t allow it. And you shouldn’t allow it, much less advocate for it. Please, Noriava.”

  Noriava laughed, a quiet little giggle that gained strength and power and grew into a wicked cackle. Another sound joined her laughter, a disjointed, terrifying sound like metal on rock. I knew without looking that it came from Swinton.

  He started to sing, a familiar tune we’d heard time and again in Ilor. “I have a way with monarchs. I have a way with kings. They shower me with diamonds and golden rings, but show me a farmer, and my heart will sing.”

  I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look anywhere. Empty desperation filled me, like a ship taking on water, pulling me down, down into the depths of despair.

  “I’ll do anything you want,” I said miserably. “Just don’t do this to anyone else. Find a cure. I heard you with Swinton. You can turn this into a profitable venture. More profitable than a poison you can sell only to the most immoral people on the planet. Even better, make something preventative, something that everyone can take, dosed or not. Just find a cure for him.”

  “Why should I?” she sneered. “You don’t seem to understand, Ambrose. You have no more power in this conversation. You’ve got nothing to offer me. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

  I glanced back at Pem and Still, watching silently from the doorway, their mouths compressed into thin lines. I met Still’s eye, and she started shaking her head violently, as if she’d already heard the words that were about to come out of my mouth.

  I looked away and took a deep breath. Vi would call me weak, a coward. She’d find a way to call Noriava’s bluff. But I wasn’t Vi. I wasn’t as brave or as smart or as strong as she was, and the only thing in the world I wanted in that moment was to take away Swinton’s pain.

  “There’s one thing I have that you want,” I said, resignation filling me. “My hand in marriage. I’ll agree to marry you if you agree to set your scientists to finding a cure. The day that Swinton is cured, I will stand before my people and yours and agree to a union between our two nations.”

  Noriava popped out of her chair and crossed the room quickly, and I could tell that she’d been expecting and ready for my response. She ran her fingers along my shoulder and tilted her head to look at me with gleaming eyes. “You’ll marry me?”

  I nodded.

  “And have children with me? Heirs?”

  The idea of being in bed with the heartless, horrible woman who stood in front of me made me cringe, but again, I nodded.

  “Bo, don’t,” Pem said, her voice quavering. “You don’t have to. We can find another way.”

  But as I turned my gaze to Swinton, I knew that this was exactly what I had to do. The veins on his forehead and arms bulged as he fought against the leather straps holding him to the chair. His muttered curses damned everything and everyone from me to his mother and the sea to the stars. It was as though rage and aggression had washed away the wit and charm and mischievous joy that made him the person I loved.

  I couldn’t let him stay this way. I couldn’t let this happen to anyone else. I would do whatever it took to find a cure for the temple’s awful poison, even if it meant tethering myself to Noriava for the rest of my life. Noriava was a liar, and seemed to be entirely lacking a moral compass, but at least I could see what a life with her would look like. At least I knew what I was in for.

  Noriava’s smile grew wide and wicked. Her lips were stained blackish by the deep red wine, and her teeth were tinged with crimson, as though she’d been drinking blood.

  “I will perform all of the duties of a royal consort and husband,” I said. “But, before we are married, your scientists will produce an antidote to the temple’s poison, and Swinton will be cured. Should anything happen to him in the meantime, our engagement will be nullified.”

  Noriava’s smile dimmed ever so slightly.

  “Further, should I learn that your Denorian scientists have been working to replicate the poison, our agreement will be void. Denor will produce an antidote and a preventative. And the entirety of your army, apart from a detachment large enough to protect the people of Salemouth, will sail with me to Alskad. They will be sworn to my service as the royal consort of Denor.”

  “Royal consort?”

  “That’s my final condition. You will have no power over Alskad or Ilor. In exchange, I will cede my right to the governance of Denor and its people.”

  “And if something, goddesses forbid, should happen to you?”

  “Then I suppose the Alskad throne will return to the hands of the current regent, Rylain.”

  Noriava studied me, her venomous eyes moving up and down my body and darting around the room, appraising, deconstructing, testing. I stood still as death, waiting, forcing myself to meet her eyes each time they settled on me. The muscles in my jaw ached from the tension I held there.

  “No.”

  “No?” I asked, my blood gone suddenly cold.

  “No. I’ll not go to all this trouble to be some sort of impotent consort. Alskad calls itself an empire. With this marriage, it can finally begin to live up to that name. Our nations will be truly joined, or I walk away.” Noriava’s gaze fell on Swinton. “If you feel half as much for the citizens of Alskad and Ilor as you do for him, you’ll agree to my terms. We’ll be married when I deliver the antidote. At our wedding, you will name me the heir to the Alskad throne until such a time as we produce an heir.”

  I paused, thinking of Runa. Thinking of all the work she’d done to preserve the Alskad throne and our place in the world. Could I really sacrifice all of that just to take back my throne? I wondered what Vi would have to say about this. Would she tell me to go ahead with it, or would she toss her hands in the air and find another way?

  “An heir!” Swinton’s voice cracked through the air like a whip. “An heir! An heir! I can see it now—bully and the bitch and their black-hearted babe.”

  I swallowed. There might be another way to take back my throne, but I knew in my heart that Noriava was the only person who could make Swinton himself again.

  “Agreed,” I said, and my fate was sealed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Vi

  “I wish you were here. I wish I could tell you my worries and fears and hopes face-to-face, instead of in letters you may never see. They say you’re dead, and while I know in my heart that you aren’t, the repetition of it makes it feel almost real. I don’t think I could stand for my heart to break over losing you again.”

  —from Vi to Bo

  The next day, I perched in a window seat of the governor’s mansion, fiddling with the cuff I’d locked around my wrist as I listened to the governor of Ilor address the Ilorian people from a stage erected just outside. Dozens of dispatch riders sat on their horses at the edge of the stage, ready to race from town to town, delivering copies of her speech the moment she finished.

  With her wife and children on one side of the podium and Aphra and Curlin on the other, Ysanne spoke about freedom and justice. Reading from a speech we—Ysanne, Quill, Mal, Aphra, Curlin, Hepsy, Myrna and I—had spent hours arguing over, she addressed the rumors about the philomena farms, the distilleries and the temples. She spoke to the rising discontent among the laborers, and as the sun broke through the gray drizzle, setting off the lush bushes and flowers planted throughout the squar
e like boxes of sparkling gems, Ysanne declared that all contracts with the temple had been nullified, a dozen new labor laws had been put into effect and anyone who wished to walk away from their contract had that right.

  I wanted to be happy that the governor was a reasonable person and not entirely opposed to the changes we’d forced upon her government. But I couldn’t shake the memory of the battle I’d fought and the fear of everything we’d yet to accomplish. It still wasn’t safe for me to walk the streets. A cluster of the Shriven stood at the back of the crowd, their white robes stark against the green of the plants that grew in every unoccupied inch of Ilor.

  Ysanne’s voice, amplified by a copper horn, echoed over the crowd. “Further, every person in Ilor, including those who have been previously held by an unfair contract, will now earn a minimum of two hundred and fifty ovstri a year.”

  I drew back the curtain. The wealthy landowners, seated in the front of the crowd, made no attempt to control their disbelief and anger. Some exchanged furious whispers. Others stood and stalked to their waiting carriages in a huff. I smiled to myself as a stout, red-faced woman—Constance, who’d made every effort to buy my contract what felt like a lifetime ago—fanned herself furiously. When she saw that no one was watching her, she fluttered her hands and feigned a dead faint.

  “As the minimum wage mandate may be a great burden on those who have not budgeted for it this year, the offices of the governor will be open every day to those who wish to apply for a government stipend to fund their employees—based, of course, on need. Those who wish to leave their contracts or are currently unemployed will be eligible for jobs funded by the government that will aid in expanding our system of roads and conserving the natural resources of Ilor. We, the Ilorian people, will be free. Each and every one of us.”

  The landowners who’d been making a great show of their distress calmed, and a great cheer rose up over the back of the crowd. I sighed my relief and sat back on the cushions.

  Curlin, sitting beside me, patted my leg. “We’ve accomplished a lot, Vi. You should be proud.”

  I shushed her and went back to watching through the open window. There was still so much left to be done.

  * * *

  A couple of days later, Quill led us to an abandoned estate, a place Bo had told him about before he left for Alskad. The main house was burned, but many of the outbuildings remained more or less intact. We gathered everyone there—Quill’s resistance fighters, the folks who’d flocked to Aphra after Plumleen burned and the people who’d come out of the woodwork after the governor’s announcement—so they’d be outside Williford and safe. At least for the moment. We piled ourselves into the servants’ quarters and barn, with four, sometimes six, to a room meant for one.

  There, we plotted our next move. Our last chance. We didn’t have long before the Shriven would find us.

  The idea had come from the land itself, and the more we talked it over, the more it curdled my blood. Quill stood in a corner of the room we shared with Curlin, Aphra and two other women, arms crossed over his chest. Curlin leaned across me to pull the curtain aside, and all of us stared through the glass, our minds chewing over the same horrible thoughts. Through a gray drizzle of rain, I looked out over rolling fields where jewel-green bushes dotted with white flowers grew together in endless, tangled rows.

  Philomenas.

  The plants the temple used to make their mind-altering serum. On the far side of the field, all but invisible through the sheets of rain, an enormous windmill hulked, blackened and charred, but standing.

  “It’s less predictable, but the smoke has almost exactly the same effect as the serum,” Quill said. “There are a couple of folks here who fled Alskad after being tasked by the temple to study the effects of the philomenas. They think they’ve got a way that we can light the fires and get out without being affected by the smoke. We should be okay.”

  We had every able-bodied person working around the clock to get the equipment we needed built, and a former farm manager planning how to light the fields for a strategic, controlled burn.

  “If the wind is with us and we manage to set the fires correctly, we’ll incapacitate the entire Shriven force in Ilor,” Quill explained. “Even if we manage to take out just half of them, we’ll have significantly evened the odds.”

  I chewed on my bottom lip, unwilling to meet anyone’s eyes. Despite my desperate, aching need for revenge, and my desire to see them suffer in equal measure to the suffering they’d caused, I couldn’t get over the slithering wrongness of it. “It’s not right,” I said finally. “We can’t do to them what the temple has done to us.”

  “We can’t what, Vi?” Curlin snapped. “Go to war? Do what we have to do to take away the temple’s power? This is the only way we overcome the odds. This is the only way we win.”

  “At what cost?” I snapped. “You were one of them. They forced you to be one of them. Had things turned out differently, you would be on that side of the battlefield. You would be the one poisoned.”

  “How is this any different from any other fight?” Aphra asked. “You’d kill them in battle, but you won’t do to them what they’ve done to hundreds of people like you and me?”

  “At least in hand-to-hand combat, someone chooses to hit you, chooses to shoot at you, chooses to accept the consequences of their actions. This is...” I searched for the right words. “Not one of the Shriven will walk into this fight thinking that they’re going to lose themselves. Lose everything that makes them who they are. That’s not fair.”

  Curlin’s eyebrows knit together, and she scowled at the fields and the drizzling rain. “I think you’re right. But I’m also not willing to lose the advantage this gives us.”

  “So what do we do?” Aphra asked.

  I pulled a white blanket up over my bad shoulder and stared down at the fabric in my hands. “I have an idea.”

  * * *

  We rode out under a white flag in the lavender light of predawn the next morning. Beetle snorted unhappily each time I turned in the saddle to look behind me, expecting the Shriven to surround us at any moment, but her gait was smooth and steady as she kept pace with Aphra’s, Curlin’s and Quill’s larger mounts. The morning sun had yet to burn off the fog and chill of the night’s long rain. Mist hovered above the damp grass that lined the narrow road, and the trees were eerily silent.

  We rode for nearly two hours before Curlin spotted the first Shriven lookout. She pointed, all brazenness and courage, and called, “I see you there in the trees. We approach under the white flag. Scurry off and tell your matron.”

  Before we’d left, Curlin had mimicked the Shriven’s customary black paint around her eyes and coated her forehead in a smear of white that made the tattoos across her chin and nose stand out even more starkly. She wore white as well, scrounged from the dressers and wardrobes of the servants who’d fled the philomena farm. Curlin’s thick auburn hair had grown into disobedient waves that curled around her ears, and it shone like a newly minted coin in the sun. Her arms were bare, her tattoos telling the coded story of her triumphs and defeats, the secrets she carried, the ranks she’d achieved. I’d covered my newly tattooed arm and the bracelet on my wrist, not wanting to provoke the Shriven any more than we had to, but Curlin wore her history openly, carrying it like a weapon.

  Every choice she’d made sent a message to the Shriven: she had been one of them, but now she was free.

  Before long, we were forced to rein our mounts to a stop in front of a hastily erected barrier in the road. Four Shriven stood behind it, their weapons drawn and expressions grim.

  “We ride under the white flag with a message for your matron and brethren. You will let us pass.” Curlin’s voice was ice and stone.

  The four Shriven shifted and exchanged a series of glances. With a nod from the woman standing in the middle, one of the Shriven turned on his heel and sprinted down the roa
d into the jungle. The others shifted to fill the empty space left by their companion, resuming their stiff, guarded stances and staring into the middle distance. It was like we disappeared the moment they settled back into their places.

  Curlin sat back in her saddle, all lazy confidence and quiet power. Aside from Aphra’s fingers, which twitched nervously at her reins, she was the picture of reserved, noble elegance. Her back was straight, her fine clothes immaculate, and her hair, parted in the middle, were twin waves of copper and gold.

  “What now?” Quill asked.

  “It looks like we wait,” I snapped.

  The muscles in Quill’s jaw twitched. I should have been nicer to the man. After all, he and Mal were the ones who’d found shelter and food for our whole group when we’d had to flee Williford. He was the one who’d come up with our plan. He was the one who had quietly built an actual army.

  And he was the only man I’d ever kissed. The only one I’d ever thought I might be able to love. I took a deep breath. My nerves were frayed, but that was no excuse to be an ass.

  Aphra and Curlin exchanged a glance, and Curlin glared at me. “You insisted we do this. The least you can do is follow the plan.”

  I glared down at Beetle’s overgrown mane. I needed to pull myself together. I needed to be stone.

  A few moments later, a twig snapped, and I looked up to see the path packed with Shriven. They wore battle black, their faces bisected with black paint that covered their shorn scalps. They were disconcertingly silent, standing there with their hands on the long knives at their belts and their wicked staffs. The crowd parted, and a matron, in the flowing orange robes of the anchorites, strode to stand before us. The matrons were both Shriven and anchorites, and they bore the marks of both orders. This woman was tattooed from head to foot, and the pink lines of battle scars cut through the tattoos on her tan arms and face. Her head was shorn but for the crown, which was elaborately braided and pinned.