The Exalted

by Kaitlyn Sage Patterson

  As if he understood without my having to say a word, Quill took me gently by the elbow—perhaps the only part of my body that wasn’t bruised, battered or scraped—and led me into the next room. Around a wide table, scarred with years of use and still damp from a recent scrubbing, sat my youngest siblings: Pem, Still, Fern and Trix. A steaming pot of tea sat in front of them, and the table was scattered with plates and crumbs, peels and cores, and crocks of butter and jam scraped down to the dregs.

  “What the bloody hell are you lot doing here?” I croaked. My knees trembled, and Quill guided me into a chair.

  Curlin slumped down beside me and eyed Fern and Trix suspiciously. “More Abernathy brats, I take it?”

  “Gerlene swore on her life we could trust this one.” Pem jerked her head at Lugine, who ducked her head, but not before I saw the smile dart across her face. “Bo couldn’t let you rot away in a temple cell. Not with him as likely to lose his head as wear the crown.”

  Still punched her sister in the arm. “We weren’t supposed to tell her that part, chatterbox.”

  My fingers started to drum on the table of their own accord, but the shooting pain from where Claes had shoved slivers of wood underneath them stopped me. Quill sat down next to me and took my hand gently. I glanced at Curlin, who was sipping from a chipped teacup. She shrugged.

  “We’ve got a plan,” Pem said. “And it didn’t hurt that we could get these two out of the clink in the meantime.”

  “We’ve got a plan?” Quill asked with a sardonic smile.

  “Well, Bo hatched it,” Still conceded, “and Quill and Gerlene filled in the missing bits. But without me and Pem, ain’t none of this’d be happening, and you can bet your ass on that.”

  “Language, child,” Sula said gently.

  Bethea settled into the chair next to Quill, and the other two anchorites perched on stools at the other end of the table.

  “The girls have already filled us in. We’ll get Fern and Trix to the ship where they’ll be safe—”

  Fern interrupted Bethea. “You won’t. If these two little brats can dart about the city unsupervised and stuffed up with their own import, then we’re gonna help, too, and ain’t nothing you can do about it.”

  “Fern...” I cautioned. “They’ve been trained.”

  “Ain’t nothing they know from Bo that we ain’t learned picking pockets.”

  “Weren’t you snatched by the Shriven for picking pockets?” Quill asked mildly.

  “That’s neither here nor there,” Trix snapped. “Don’t need to pick pockets to make this work. Just need to get bodies to rally to us. Need to make some noise. We can make noise.”

  “Listen,” Curlin said. “Why don’t you tell us the plan, then we can decide who goes with and who goes to the ship. Fair?”

  Before any of my sisters had half a chance to argue, Quill launched into an explanation. Their idea was smart, albeit risky, and we would have to move fast. But Fern and Trix were right—we’d need all the bodies we could get.

  With the help of the three anchorites, we made our way out of the temple unseen. Waiting in an alley behind the temple was a wagon, with General Okara in the driver’s seat and a team of four strong horses stamping in their traces. Quill helped Curlin and me into seats on either side of the general and pulled my sisters into the wagon bed.

  “You’re not coming with us?” I asked the anchorites. “You’ll be dead if anyone finds out you’ve helped us.”

  Bethea smiled up at me. “There’s work to be done from within the temple, too, my dear. We’ve let our brothers and sisters lean on their wicked poison for too long. It’s beyond time that they see their power curtailed.”

  Lugine interrupted, the barest hint of a laugh coloring her words. “And if we made every decision based on how likely our brethren were to string us up, neither one of you’d be here to argue the point. We’ll see you again.”

  “We pray that the goddesses will keep you both safe,” Sula said.

  Curlin rolled her eyes at me, but didn’t manage to control the edge of a smile that played across her lips. “We’ve been doing just fine without ’em lately, Anchorite, but I won’t say no to the extra help.”

  Then General Okara snapped the reins, and the horses sprang to a trot.

  * * *

  General Okara drove us into the narrow, winding streets of the End. Familiar faces gathered around us, following the wagon as we went. They were the former Shriven and the Ilorian soldiers, and as we traveled, a chant began, part of a verse that Quill had quoted all those many months ago.

  They two are chaos.

  They two shall build this earth anew.

  They portend great loss,

  For those whose greed’s rent the world in two.

  First it was just Quill, his voice a surprisingly lovely tenor, and then the former Shriven around him joined in. Then the Ilorians, and as their voices called down the sky, doors were flung open, shutters lifted and people from the End began to pour into the streets.

  We stopped in a park, and the crowd of our people parted, allowing the folks from the End to press in close. I looked to Quill, to General Okara, waiting for one of them to speak, but their eyes were on me. Curlin nudged me painfully in the ribs with an elbow, and I glanced helplessly up at Quill. This wasn’t part of the plan. I had nothing to say to these people. What could I tell them? They’d spent their lives fearing and hating people like us. Dimmys. The Shriven. The other. There was nothing in my appearance that might suggest that these people could trust a word out of my mouth.

  Quill offered me a hand. “Tell them the truth. It’ll be the first time anyone’s done that much for them in a long time. Perhaps ever.”

  I took his hand and stepped onto a crate in the back of the wagon.

  My voice was small and quavering as I spoke. “My name is Vi.”

  Someone in the back of the crowd shouted, “Speak up, lovey.”

  “What’re you doing, then?” another person cried, and something like relief washed over me when I realized that I knew these people. These were the faces I’d grown up with, people I’d seen every day for most of my life. These were the people whose brothers and sisters, whose mothers and fathers and lovers had been ripped away from them since Rylain stole the throne from Bo. These people were grieving and raw and scared and ripe for a revolution.

  I started again. “My name is Vi Abernathy, but most of you know that already. Up until about a year ago, I lived in your neighborhood. I sold you oysters and bought things from your shops. You know me. What you don’t know—what I didn’t know up until a couple of months ago—is that King Ambrose is my twin brother. And I’m here to ask for your help in putting him in his rightful place on the throne.”

  A hush went over the crowd. Then someone called out, “Piss off. The prince is dead.”

  I raised my hand for silence. “King Ambrose is alive, and right now he’s fighting to take back the throne so as to help fix all the horrible things Rylain’s done in the name of the temple. Queen Runa knew he was a twin, and she wanted him on the throne. She chose him to lead you. Everything the temple’s been feeding you all your lives is a lie.”

  The people gathered around the wagon shifted and murmured to each other. I looked out over the sea of familiar faces. They were the fisherwomen who’d bought the temple’s oysters from me for years. They were the bakers who’d looked the other way when I paid them in stolen coin. They were the shopkeepers who’d watched me warily for years, who’d waited for my inevitable violence for so long that they’d almost forgotten about it and made a pet of me. These people had watched my sisters and brothers grow, had talked behind their hands about my mother’s drinking and bar brawls, about Dammal’s gambling. If anyone had reason to trust my word, it was them.

  “Why should we believe you?”

  “I’ve no reason to lie to you. You k
now me, Irina Hatclove. You gave me a pair of old oyster knives when you found me crying my eyes out behind your shop because I’d snapped the temple’s blade. Remember?” I looked out over the crowd, spotting another face I knew. “Thomasin Gretinsk, I see you there in the back. I used to save my pennies just to buy one of your raisin cream tarts. Makes my mouth water just thinking about them to this day. And you, Jemma Twillerson. How many times did you slip me a salve when my knees were skinned, or a mug of tea when I was sniffling? No matter what you think, you all cared about me, and I you.

  “I had another life waiting for me in Ilor, but I came back because I believed in my brother,” I said huskily. “And because I believe in protecting you. You think I’d be back here, risking my life, just to lie to you? I’ve nothing to gain from that lie. Only the temple does. They’ve got a poison, a poison that makes dimmys turn, and they’ve been using that fear to control you. To keep you down.” I paused for a moment, weighing the suspicious looks on the faces of the crowd. “Think about what the temple has done these last few months. Think about all the harmless dimmys they’ve rounded up. Think about all the people who’ve disappeared. You can see it. Think about all the violence and horror you’ve seen in these few short months of Rylain’s rule. Bo wants to change all that. He wants you to be free.”

  I could see the wheels turning in their heads. They didn’t want to believe me. Didn’t want to upend their lives on the word of a dimmy. It took a lot for a body to change the way they saw the world. I knew that. I’d need to give them something more. I turned to look at Curlin, the question in my eyes, but she was already pulling herself to her feet.

  “You lot know me just as well as you know Vi,” she said. “You saw us come up together. You watched us with fear in your eyes for our whole lives, waiting for us to lose our grip and put one of your brats in danger. That whole time, though, you cared for us. Each of you, in your own little ways, did things to make our lives easier. You weren’t open about it, none of you, but there’s not a face in this crowd who didn’t, at some point, do something kind for Vi or me.”

  Curlin shrugged out of the loose jacket that Bethea had draped over her shoulders and let the cold Alskad air send gooseflesh whistling up her tattooed arms.

  “You know I joined the Shriven. You know I was one of them. All of you think you know what the Shriven are capable of, but the brutality you’ve seen from them doesn’t come close to the full scope of the temple’s evil. The serum Vi’s telling you about is real. I’ve seen perfectly sane twins lose their grip and rip each other apart. I’ve helped the temple dose people without their knowing. I’ve done some truly horrible things on their orders, but I’ve never changed. I’ve never become diminished, because the temple’s always had another use for me.”

  I wrapped an arm around Curlin’s waist and took up the thread of her narrative.

  “Right now, my brother is fighting to take back the throne so that he can protect us from the temple. We need you to spread the word of what the temple has done, rally in the palace square, tell the High Council that the people of Alskad are done with being ruled by fear, done with being ruled by religion. We want a king who fights for his people. We want a king of the people. We want King Ambrose!”

  The applause started in the back of the crowd, hesitant and quiet at first, but it spread like wildfire, and before a full minute had passed, the crowd was roaring all around us. My knees shook as Quill helped me back to my seat. Curlin and Quill each held one of my hands as the wagon rolled forward once more, and my bones vibrated with the reverberations of the cry that echoed through the streets behind us.

  “King Ambrose,” they cried. “We want King Ambrose.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Bo

  The anchorites that Rylain had installed on the High Council tried, for the most part, to keep their expressions cool and nonplussed as they entered the council chamber and saw me, crown atop my head, seated at the head of the table. Not a one of them made any gesture of respect or so much as acknowledged my presence in the room, but some didn’t make even the slightest effort to control their disdain. I had steeled myself against the possibility that Claes would sit on the council, but, mercifully, he was nowhere to be seen.

  One of the anchorites tightened her mouth into a hard line, and she refused to meet my eyes. Another, a man I recognized from the ceremony on my birthday, sneered at me, his face contorted into an expression so hateful that he seemed more like a villain out of a novel than a person who’d devoted his life to the temple and the gods.

  But then, I reminded myself, it was the anchorites who’d created a serum that induced violence and delusion. It was the Suzerain who’d used that serum to control my people, and it was the Suzerain who’d murdered my people on the shores of the Tethys. It made sense for them to appear villainous. They were villains.

  The singleborn entered the council chamber one by one and made a point of giving me the greatest courtesies possible. Each of them bowed over my hand in turn and asked after my health before taking their places around the table. Patrise, grinning, took the seat opposite me at the other end of the long table, surrounded by anchorites. One of them gave him a hard look and started to remind him that his chair was the seat usually reserved for the heir to the throne.

  Lisette, in her airiest, most flippant voice, said, “Calm down, you old bat,” and dismissed the woman’s concerns with a wave of her hand.

  Rylain was the last to arrive. She flew into the room, coattails flapping behind her like dark wings. She wore a simple gold circlet over her brow, and the sleeves of her jacket were cropped at the elbow to emphasize the highly polished gold cuffs she wore on each of her wrists.

  “Who called this meeting of the council?” she demanded, not looking up from the hefty legal tome in her hands. “I have a great deal of work to do, and almost no time for any of it.”

  I rose, my hands firmly on the table to hide their shaking, and said, “I, King Ambrose Oswin Trousillion Gyllen, called this meeting of the High Council of Alskad. Rylain, if you would, please take a seat.”

  “You’ve no right,” Rylain sputtered.

  “In fact, cousin, it’s you who has stepped beyond the boundaries of the law.”

  I took a deep breath and launched myself into the monologue of legal gymnastics that Gerlene had seemed to conjure out of thin air within hours of Vi handing herself over to the temple. The gist of it was that the law precluded Alskaders from holding a seat on the High Council while simultaneously serving as a guild master or—thanks be to my wily ancestors who’d built the scaffolding of these laws—as a member of the temple clergy. That meant the anchorites Rylain had installed on the Council would either have to step down as councillors or denounce their vows to the temple. Regardless, until their conflict was resolved, they would be forced out of the council chamber.

  One pinch-faced anchorite sputtered and spit and demanded to see the original book of law that set down these rules, thinking it would be impossible for me to set my hands on it, but I was ready for her. As soon as we entered the council chamber, Swinton had gone to the law library to retrieve the book. So the moment Patrise opened the door to summon a chamberlain, the book was in his hands, the appropriate passages already marked.

  “With respect to my cousin and the work she’s done to maintain order in Alskad in my absence, I would like to call for a vote,” I said. “Those in favor of allowing the anchorites to remain on the council, please say ‘yea.’”

  In unison, the temple sycophants and Rylain voted in favor.

  “That’s it, then,” Rylain said. “They stay. Now I would like to call a vote that will put this pretender’s claim to rest once and for all.”

  I was barely able to contain my smile as Lisette raised her objection in a lazy, melodic voice. “Rylain, darling, I do hate to be a bore, but the trouble is, you’re not actually on the High Council. The last I rememb
er, you stepped down to allow King Ambrose to take your seat. In the confusion after his death, of course, we all assumed it was right and good that you take back that place, but unfortunately, without the rightful monarch swearing you back onto the council, you don’t get a vote.”

  Patrise looked around the room, his face all raised eyebrows and dramatically pursed lips. “In that case, shall we finish the vote?”

  “All those opposed?” I asked.

  Every one of the singleborn, even Dame Turshaw, who looked like she’d swallowed a rotten egg, raised their hands.

  “And with my nay, the vote carries. I’m afraid I must ask you all to leave.” I didn’t take my eyes off Rylain’s blazingly furious face. “Rylain, as the next vote I call will concern you, you may remain in the council chamber for the time being.”

  “Should we ask her to stand?” Lisette asked, toying with one of the many rings that decorated her long, slender fingers.

  “Don’t be a brat,” Patrise said, grinning.

  “Order,” Dame Turshaw intoned. “I demand that the order of this chamber be respected, even by the two of you.” She turned to me. “If you’d continue, Ambrose, I’d like this business concluded as soon as possible.”

  The room went quiet, and I looked at each of the singleborn in turn. These people were, one and all, my family. Each of them had seen me grow up, had known my father, had served my grandmother, had mourned with me when I’d sent my mother and Penelope and then Claes to the halls of the gods, all within a month of each other. I thought of all I’d been through to get to this place, everything Vi had sacrificed, all the planning and careful thought that Runa had put into choosing me—choosing Vi and me. I wanted to honor that history, all of it.

  “I come before you today much changed,” I told them. “I’m not the man I was a year ago when I first made my oaths to Runa and to the Alskad people. There was so much I didn’t know then, so much that had been hidden from me. I had no sense of the scope of the work I’d agreed to inherit. But Runa chose me to follow her. She chose me knowing that I had a twin. She wanted to break away from the idea that only the singleborn can lead—an idea that the temple has forced on us.