The Exalted

by Kaitlyn Sage Patterson

  Then bright red blood bloomed over Amler’s bright robes, and a blade sprouted from her heart. As she crumpled to the ground, Castor looked down at her, stunned, and I immediately lunged toward him, thrusting my sword through his neck.

  Without his sister’s eyes watching for him, Castor never saw my killing blow. He fell beside her, and their blood pooled between them, staining their white robes crimson.

  I was still looking down at the fallen Suzerain when Vi’s voice came clear through my head. Knife! I spun around to see Claes release a throwing dagger. There was less than a blink of an eye to act, and the knife was hurtling straight for Vi’s throat.

  Without thinking, I reached out to catch the knife, and it buried itself to the hilt in my palm. Adrenaline coursed through my body as I yanked the blade out of my hand and lunged for Claes. Fury overtaking me, I tackled him to the ground and wrapped my hands around his neck, determined to squeeze the life from his deceitful body. My blood pooled beneath him, and he glowered up at me as he bucked and writhed, trying to throw me off.

  And then his knife slid between my ribs—a searing, white-hot pain that took my breath away. I blinked in disbelief as my strength began to leave me, and the world went dark.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Vi

  Thirteen Alskader citizens died because of the temple’s actions on the day of Bo’s coronation. Thirteen names that would forever haunt my memories. Ten families lost mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, brothers, sisters, grandparents and cousins. Four little girls would grow up without mothers. Eight children orphaned completely. Six more left fatherless. All because of the temple. There was no reparation we could pay, no wound we could heal. The temple had gouged something from our city, from our people, that they could never get back.

  But the people I loved had paid an even higher price. Curlin and Quill, the two people who knew me best—who loved me, flaws and all—were dead. Curlin at the hands of the Suzerain, and Quill in protecting my brother’s life.

  Though my grief at their loss was nothing to the pain that Mal now felt as one of the diminished, we steadied each other in our pain. We were seldom apart, leaning on each other for support.

  My sadness was an empty thing, a hole inside me so large I thought it would never be filled. Curlin, who’d promised to always protect my weaker side, had been murdered doing exactly that.

  And Quill. I couldn’t face the thought of the world without him. So I busied myself with the work of helping Mal through his grief as best I could.

  Together Mal and I had readied their bodies for their pyres together. We’d stood, hand in hand, on the beach as we released their spirits to the halls of the gods. Then we’d walked, hollow-eyed and empty, back through the streets of Penby to the palace where my brother lay, feverish and unsteady after a surgery we hoped would save his life.

  It wasn’t hard, after that, to loosen the grip of the Suzerain and their corrupt anchorites on the throat of Alskad’s citizens. The people did the great bulk of the work themselves, coming in droves to the palace to demand the High Council examine and prosecute the anchorites of the temple for the evil they’d done to the people of Alskad.

  In the early days after Bo’s coronation, while he was still unconscious, recovering from surgery, the members of his High Council came to his bedside almost hourly to confer in low whispers. They wanted, inexplicably, to hear my thoughts as we all waded through the murky waters of a country shaken to its very foundation. They asked questions of Swinton, too, and General Okara, and Gerlene. But mostly they asked my opinion, and they listened, full of eager respect, when I told them what it was like to come up in the End, a ward of the temple and a dimmy to boot.

  Even Queen Noriava came to sit by Bo’s bedside. Swinton, through no great fault of his own, refused to speak to the woman, and spent her visits glaring daggers at her. But still, she came every day, and he let her. Though I’d never say it to Swinton, I was grateful to the awful woman. It turned out to be a boon that Noriava had pursued him across the Tethys. Her royal surgeons had accompanied her, and she’d reacted quickly to the disaster on the balcony. The swift and decisive action of her doctors had been the only thing that’d stood between Bo and death, and even still, it’d been a very near thing.

  Lugine, Bethea and Sula came to the palace, as well. For the first time in my memory, they wore plain clothes, not a pearl or an ounce of gold on any of them. Pem and Still brought them through back alleys and secret doors all the way to Bo’s rooms. It wasn’t safe for anchorites to be on the streets these days, even those so entirely dedicated to the people of Alskad and the service of their vows. They told me in low, hushed tones that in the confusion and panic after the attack, they’d found and destroyed every ounce of the poison the temple had secreted away. They vowed to do anything in their power to aid the High Council in their quest to find justice for the people of Alskad, so I called for Patrise and Lisette and introduced them.

  A letter from Aphra arrived two days after the attack. Thanks to the careful, patient persistence that was Aphra’s greatest flaw and greatest strength, there wasn’t a drop of the evil serum left in Ilor or the rest of the Alskad Empire. Soon, too, the philomena plant would be culled from the hills of Ilor, and access to the flowers would be limited to only a few trusted souls carefully chosen by the High Council.

  While Bo recovered, neither Swinton nor Mal nor I left his bedside for very long. When he finally came fully awake, on the third day after his surgery, he fixed the three of us with a deeply troubled look.

  “I don’t mean to be an ass, but when was the last time any of you three bathed?” Bo croaked.

  I glanced at Swinton, confused. Swinton stood and laid a gentle hand on Bo’s forehead. My brother sniffed and wrinkled his nose.

  “I’m not feverish,” Bo snapped. “You stink. I don’t know if anything could ruin my appetite at this point, but if anything could, it would be that stench.”

  I snorted and clapped a hand over my mouth to hide my grin.

  “You’re not immune, Vi. I can smell you from here. And there’s something crusted in your hair.”

  I raised my hand to my braid but didn’t feel anything.

  “Not there. On the top...”

  Bo raised his arm to point, and I felt the blood drain from my face and the laughter die on my lips as he saw Mal alone, with Quill conspicuously absent.

  Swinton took his hand in a gentle grasp. “We lost some of our best people that day, bully.”

  Bo took a sharp breath in through his nose.

  “Mal,” he said, his voice a mirror of the pain and sympathy that I felt echoing through me. “I am so sorry. He was a truly wonderful man. I know nothing I can say will be enough. This is such a senseless loss. All of these deaths, all of this violence—it could have been stopped, had the Suzerain... Had I...”

  I clenched my jaw and did my best to steel myself against Bo’s anger as it radiated through our bond. I wouldn’t let him blame himself for this.

  “How about the two of you go find something for us to eat?” I asked gently. “Bo and I could use a moment to talk.”

  “I’m not a child,” Bo said. “I can be left alone. And I’d rather like a moment to myself, if you don’t mind.”

  “I mind,” I said, glaring at him. I wasn’t about to let him throw himself into a sinkhole of despair. Not with so much work to be done, and not because he’d only just seen the cost of his crown. I would grieve Quill and Curlin every day for the rest of my life, and I knew he would, too. But Bo didn’t have time to wallow in his sadness. He had an empire to run, and I wasn’t about to keep doing it for him.

  Tearing my eyes away from Bo, I smiled sweetly up at Swinton and Mal and ever so slightly jerked my chin toward the door. Swinton could come in and clean up my mess when I finished, but someone had to knock some sense into my twin, and today that task fell to me.

&
nbsp; “I’m sure Bo would love some soup,” I said. “And maybe you can hunt through the cellars for something decent to drink, Mal? I’ve had about as much tea as I can stand.”

  Swinton nodded, and when Bo looked away, mouthed, “Thank you,” to me before slipping out of the room with Mal.

  “You’re angry,” I said.

  “How could you tell?” Bo crossed his bandaged hand over his chest and glowered at me.

  “No one ever thought we would get out of this fight without losses.” My voice cracked on the word, and Bo reached out to me, sympathy replacing the anger in his eyes.

  Bo sighed, biting his lip. “I know. I mean, I can see the fact of it. It’s just...”

  “We never expected it would be the people closest to us.”

  “It doesn’t seem fair,” Bo agreed. “It’s not fair.”

  “It isn’t. But we aren’t the only people who’ve lost loved ones in this fight. We need you up and well. We need you to be a king.”

  “Everything hurts. My body. My heart. I don’t know when I’ll feel like myself again,” Bo said. “I don’t know how I’ll fix this.”

  “Well, I’ve been running your kingdom for the last three days,” I said, smiling. “And I can tell you right now that it won’t be easy. Cry me a rutting river, but get out of bed and do your damn job. I’ve no interest in being queen, and there are a thousand and one things that need to be decided.”

  “Can’t I have five minutes to grieve?”

  “You can grieve once you put your house in order. And I’ll do the same.” I knew I was being harsh, but the doctor’s cautions—that the best thing for him would be to push himself through the grief and pain of his recovery—echoed through my head. What he really needed, they’d said, was to be thrown off the end of the dock and made to swim. Metaphorically, of course.

  “Curlin,” Bo started. “I am so sorry, Vi.”

  I pressed my lips together, once again unsteady as the waves of grief washed over me. “And Quill.”

  Tears welled in Bo’s eyes. “He was trying to save me. Oh, Vi.”

  As his grief swelled to join mine, I flung my arms around him and wept. We’d lost so much to find our way here, to a place that felt just as hard, just as impossible as the one we’d come from. But below the pain and the anger and the grief, there was a kernel of hope. A promise of a brighter future for the people who would come after us.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Bo

  Though Gunnar and Karyta and their pack of servants did everything in their power to keep me in bed for a full week after my surgery, they couldn’t quite manage to keep me from my work. And honestly, I couldn’t have kept the kingdom at bay if I’d tried. There was too much to be done. The High Council had appointed Gerlene to the newly minted position of Royal Counsel, and she and a handpicked team of the brightest legal minds in the land were hard at work tracking down and prosecuting every crime that had been overlooked because of the temple’s influence.

  Patrise convinced Noriava—using means I begged him not to detail—to allow some of her scientists and researchers to join the new university we were planning to build outside Penby. The High Council had banded together in my absence and stripped Rylain of her enormous wealth, voting unanimously to use the confiscated funds to build a school that would not only generate the future leaders of Alskad, but also educate any student willing to dedicate themselves to learning. The temple’s hoard, accumulated through years of theft, tithing and greed, would be dedicated to the education of the Alskad people, as well.

  Patrise and Noriava were a shockingly good influence on each other—he encouraged her to enjoy life a bit more, while she brought out the more responsible and caring side of his nature. Noriava voluntarily came to Swinton and me to apologize for her horrifying behavior, and offered to send as much of the Denorian treatment for the diminished as they could produce. I didn’t think Swinton would likely forget what she’d done anytime soon, but at least he’d forgiven her.

  As I ought to have expected, I was never, ever alone. People streamed in and out of my bedroom day and night, asking for opinions, answers and thoughts on everything from the color of the drapes in the throne room to the rate of incentivized pay for shipbuilders, now that I’d agreed to sell Alskader ships to Denor. Swinton was constantly by my side, a book in his lap and his feet propped on the bed. The advice he offered was practical and always welcome.

  My Abernathy siblings tumbled in and out of the room, bringing me bits of gossip and suggestions for improving the lives of the people in the End. At their request, I’d found Ina and offered her and Dammal a fresh start—a small property near Ina’s family, in the town where she’d been raised. But to a one, my siblings had chosen not to join their parents, in favor of staying in Penby.

  The only person conspicuously absent was Vi. It wasn’t until the late evening on the day Patrise and Noriava departed for Denor that she finally appeared in my doorway.

  “Have a minute for your sister?” she asked.

  “Always,” I told her with a smile.

  Vi slid into the room with Mal in her wake and perched on the settee at the end of my bed.

  “Mal,” I said, my voice grave. “I’d just like to say again that I’m so sorry for your loss. Quill was an exceptional man.”

  Mal bowed. He’d grown the beginning of a beard, but even that didn’t disguise the hollowness of his cheeks and the bags beneath his eyes. “Thank you, Your Majesty. I plan to honor his memory as best I can.”

  “How are you this evening, Your Majesty?” Vi asked, delicately changing the subject.

  I gestured to the piles of paper laid out across my bed. “Just fine. I doubt I’ll ever make my way to the bottom of these decrees and memorandums, though. I thought I knew a bit about the role of a ruler, but I’ve learned there’s much more to it than I ever imagined. For instance, did you know that Alskad consumes nearly half a million tons of smoked fish per year? Also, you’ll be happy to know that the new goat ranchers subsidized by the crown are producing wool nearly as fine as that of the Denorian sheep.”

  “I...did not know those things,” Vi said, hesitantly.

  Swinton rolled his eyes. “Don’t encourage him.”

  I stuck my tongue out at Swinton and grinned at Vi and Mal, but their returning smiles looked forced.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “We wanted to talk to you about Ilor,” Mal started.

  “What about it?”

  Vi took a deep breath. “We both think that Ilor should be allowed independence, if they want it. We think you should call for a vote.”

  I glanced at Swinton, looking for his opinion. He shrugged. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me, bully, but I think they’re right. To keep a colony so far away, with no real leadership on the ground, is its own kind of folly. The people there know what they want, and they know who ought to lead them. That said, I think leaving Aphra in charge without a check is asking for trouble, and if it’s not done right, the transition could lead to an oligarchy more dangerous than what’s been the case there since it was settled. They still need more than a little help from you.”

  “That makes sense,” I agreed. “But there’s so much happening here, I don’t know when I’d be able to devote the necessary time.”

  “It wouldn’t have to happen now. The governor has a fair tight leash on Aphra for the time being,” Vi said. “Maybe in a year or two. You can send people to start building relationships now and ease them into the idea of a transition.”

  Mal put his hand on Vi’s forearm, and Vi looked up at him, giving an almost imperceptible shake of her head. I could feel her anxiety building.

  “What is it?” I asked. “What aren’t you saying?”

  “Vi should be the one to serve as the ambassador,” Mal said. “I’m going back in any case, but the people there look up t
o Vi. They trust her. She’s the right person to lead this...”

  Mal trailed off, leaving the room in silence. My hand clenched on the sheets, and tears welled in my eyes. I didn’t want to be without her. I’d come all this way, endured all this pain to have my sister by my side. I looked up, to try to read Vi’s expression, but her eyes were trained on the sheaf of papers she held in her lap.

  “Do you want to go?” I asked.

  Vi looked up, her gray eyes the mirror of mine and full of tears. “I want to be of use.”

  “You can be of use here.” But the argument died on my lips. I knew, all at once, that asking Vi to stay would be like trying to keep a wild thing in a cage. It didn’t matter where she was—she would always be my twin, my other half. But this place didn’t hold the same memories for her as it did for me.

  Vi got up, walked around the bed and nudged me over, settling in beside me. Swinton and Mal exchanged a glance, stood simultaneously and left the room.

  “It seems like the world is always pulling us apart,” I said.

  “Does it?” Vi asked, resting her head on my shoulder. “Because to me, it seems like the world is set on bringing us back together over and over again, like waves against the shore.”

  I touched the battered gold cuff on her wrist, a reflection of mine, and let myself grieve, just for a moment.

  “When will you go?”

  “Not for a while yet,” she said. “Some of the other Ilorians want to get the next ship out, but the Shriven who joined us are doing their best to rehabilitate those who remained loyal to the temple. Mal and I feel like I need to see that through. For Quill and Curlin.”

  We sat together, not speaking for a few minutes as the fire crackled merrily in the hearth. Finally, I broke the silence with the question that’d been biting at me since she’d said she wanted to leave.

  “Will you come back? Not forever, necessarily, but from time to time?”

  Vi smiled. “The world is always pulling us back together, Bo. What makes you think it’ll stop now?”