The Ruin of Kings

by Jenn Lyons

  “Don’t you—ever—” Darzin hit Kihrin again, this time in the arm as Kihrin raised a hand to defend himself. “Mouth off to me in front of family. I will kill you. You understand me, boy? I will fucking kill you.”

  He drew back to hit the young man again, but this time Darzin hit the tall brass vase Kihrin brought between them. Darzin howled while his son backed away.

  Kihrin’s lip was bleeding and his jaw swollen, but he sneered as he looked as his father. “What have you told me about watching your language, Father?”

  Darzin stopped and stared at the boy, his expression one of fury and incredulity. “Are you actually baiting me, boy? Are you that fucking stupid?”

  Kihrin laughed with mocking delight. His eyes were glazed, the gleam of someone pushed so far they passed beyond all caring of consequence. “I must be; I hear it runs in the family.”

  For a moment, Darzin simply glared at the young man with flat, dead eyes. “Then let’s do something stupid together. It’ll be a bonding moment. I wonder how well you’ll play the harp for that stinking fat general without any thumbs?” Darzin unsheathed a dagger from his belt.

  Any humor, sarcastic or otherwise, left Kihrin as he considered his father’s insane eyes and realized that Darzin truly intended to do it. He backed away, slowly, while his father advanced.

  Kihrin swallowed bile, and tried to reason with the man. “The High Lord expects me to play . . .”

  “My father,” Darzin said, “should be used to not getting what he wants by now. I very much doubt he’ll even attend.”

  “You do this,” Kihrin said, “and you better kill me. Because if you leave me alive you won’t live long to regret it.”

  “Promises, promises,” Darzin replied. He reached out and grabbed for the young man, but Kihrin ducked under the hand. Darzin pushed out his leg for Kihrin to trip over, and as the boy stumbled he grabbed the back of Kihrin’s shirt, and when that ripped, the back of Kihrin’s hair.

  Kihrin screamed, and flailed back an elbow, but didn’t hit anything important. He was all too aware that his father held an unsheathed dagger in his free hand and was contemplating where best to use it.

  “Let’s cut that face a little,” Darzin said. “It’ll give the healers something to practice on.”

  Kihrin threw himself forward. He felt the hair on his scalp start to rip, but it gave him the leverage to kick back with one leg and catch his father in the groin. Darzin’s hold on him let go, for just a second. Kihrin ran through a side door, every bit as afraid for his life as if he were still a Key running from the Watchmen.

  Darzin was through the same door a few seconds later, but he stopped and frowned. The parlor was empty and dark, with only the moonlight from the Sisters shining in from the window to give any real illumination. He paced around the room several times before looking out an open window. Darzin D’Mon noted the long drop to the ground as well as the climbing trellis that would have made descent safe and easy for someone trained in a life of crime. He cursed.

  “You can’t treat him like Galen,” a stern voice called from the doorway.

  “He’s mine to do with as I wish,” Darzin said as High Lord Therin stepped into the room.

  “Just as you are mine, my son, and what you are doing is unacceptable. If you want someone to abuse, buy a slave for the task. Since you have decided to bring that boy into this house as your heir, you will treat him appropriately.”

  Darzin stopped and looked at his father. “Did I imagine the ‘or else’ at the end of that sentence?”

  “You have excellent hearing.”

  “Or else what?” Darzin’s expression was spiteful. “Perhaps you have forgotten—it is this family’s good name and rank that I am protecting here.”

  “Oh, you’re protecting something,” Therin said, “but I have my doubts that it is the honor of House D’Mon.”

  Darzin’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t threaten me. I know secrets you would rather leave buried.”

  Therin smiled. “Go ahead. Tell the world. I’ll be the talk of a few social clubs—a bit of salacious gossip to fire the cold blood stirring in harpy veins. My secrets are merely embarrassing—they are not treasonous.”

  “Pedron was your father,” Darzin snapped. “Where was your loyalty?”

  “Pedron was nothing but a villain who cuckolded the man who raised me,” Therin corrected. “I showed that dastard as much loyalty as he deserved.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “You may have been just a child during the Affair of the Voices, and so your role was not suspected, but don’t think for a moment that I didn’t realize where you were spending your nights. My own son. I willingly and gladly handed over Pedron, but not my own child, something which you have given me cause to regret on numerous occasions since.”

  “You would be just as culpable,” Darzin said, after a long and shocked pause, “for hiding me.”

  “Perhaps so,” Therin admitted. “The difference is that I can quite easily be pushed to the point where I no longer care. You, on the other hand, will always be the most important thing in your world. If we must play a game of bluff, I will win, for the simple reason that I am never bluffing.”

  Darzin clenched his teeth together. “I should have killed that slut myself when I realized she was pregnant.”

  Therin slapped his son across the face. “Be gone from my sight,” Therin whispered, harsh and furious. His anger was trademark D’Mon: lethal, deadly menace.

  Even Darzin was taken aback. He stared at his father for a moment, before turning on his heel and walking out the door.

  The High Lord watched him go, then walked over to a side table. He poured himself a glass of sasabim and stared at the glass for a dozen or so seconds. Then he sat down by the fireplace. He didn’t drink at first, staring at the unlit woodpile.

  After a moment he said, “You can come out now. I know you’re here.”

  Kihrin stood up from where he had sat motionless, his shadow blending with the curtains behind him. He pressed a handkerchief against the side of his face, which was swollen and bleeding.

  “How did you know?” the young man asked.

  The High Lord shrugged. “When I was younger I befriended a man who had a similar magical talent. I’ve learned to recognize the way the mind slides away from a corner of the room. Also, the dogs.”

  “The dogs?”

  “Yes,” Therin said as he gestured toward the open window with his drink. “Dogs. They patrol the open court, and you are too new for them to be used to your scent. Had you left by the window, I would have heard them barking.”

  “What was the Affair of the Voices?” Kihrin asked.

  Therin sighed. “Something that happened before you were born.”

  “I think I need to know.”

  Therin stared at the boy for a moment, before nodding. “The various Royal Families are known as the Court of Gems. Or rather we like to call ourselves royalty, but we are not true rulers and have not been since the founding of the Empire. We did something. No one is sure what anymore. It’s a secret lost to the ages.* All anyone knows is that it was terrible, so terrible that the Eight Immortals spat down a curse on us, and a fate. They decreed that no member of a Royal Family would ever rule in the Quuros Empire, save those few who could win the right to be Emperor. If so much as a single member of a family breaks this taboo, the gods have promised to come down and wipe out that family down to the last babe. So the Court of Gems rules by proxy, through the Ogenra we push into power with granted lands and titles, and through the representatives we elect to be Voices. We are merchant princes, our strengths economic and our politics republican. It is enough for most of us, but some pine for old days so long ago when we made the laws—and we decided who lived and who died ourselves. Twenty-some years ago, a secret cabal formed to change this status quo. They believed they were the culmination of a prophecy, fated to destroy the Empire.” Therin’s mouth twisted. “Presumably to make it over, gloriously renew
ed. People are always so willing to plow under fertile crops and murder nations if they can convince themselves they’ll be planting the seeds of something better.”

  “Wizard, thief, knight, and king, the children will not know the names of their fathers who quiet the Voices’ sting. That prophecy?”

  Therin frowned, and leaned forward toward Kihrin. “Where did you hear that?”

  “It was a rich man’s idea of graffiti. Which one was Pedron? The wizard?”

  Therin narrowed his eyes. “No. Thief. Pedron didn’t grow up in the Upper Circle. His mother smuggled him out of the palace before her death, and he grew up in the Lower Circle. When he was reclaimed by House D’Mon he’d already formed the Shadowdancers.” He waved a few fingers dismissively. “Gadrith D’Lorus had believed that the prophecy referenced Ogenra children of various noble houses who were later claimed and made legitimate. Children who would overthrow the Voices and ‘quiet their sting.’”

  Kihrin whistled. “Gadrith D’Lorus? Gadrith the Twisted was part of this?”

  “Oh yes. He was the ‘wizard.’ There were a few others, all dead now. I never thought Gadrith did a particularly good job of shoehorning people into the prophecy roles he wanted, but there’s no reasoning with someone who thinks they’re the Chosen One.” He sighed. “It makes me sick to think that Darzin was helping that disgusting little cabal.” As he stared into the fireplace, Therin’s eyes were haunted with an emotion that Kihrin had never seen in a D’Mon’s stare: shame.

  But shame was not the feeling that rose within him. He turned on his grandfather and said, “So how long do you intend to keep covering up for Darzin?”

  Therin’s eyes flicked back over to Kihrin. “I have been liberal with you. Do not push your luck.”

  “Someone has to,” Kihrin retorted. He wiped more blood off his face with the handkerchief. “I’m curious: what’s it going to take before you do something about him? Hard proof that he’s broken the gods’ own laws? How many people will he have to kill or torture? I’m starting to get the idea that when people talk about a fate worse than death, what they mean is someone unlucky enough to end up as one of your son’s slaves. Do you have any idea what he does to them?”

  “He owns them. He can legally do what he likes.”

  “Sure, and he ‘owns’ his children too, and obviously the fact that he beats his own children whenever the whim takes him doesn’t seem to bother you. There’s plenty of Lower Circle thugs with no more education than the gods gave fish who would be embarrassed to treat their own blood that way. So what’s the line that Darzin has to cross? I really want to know. Torture? Murder? Rape?”

  “Enough!” Therin shouted, throwing his glass to the ground where it shattered in punctuation to his rage. “Don’t you dare speak to me in this way.”

  Kihrin sneered. “What are you gonna do, old man? Hit me too?”

  Therin’s jaw worked noiselessly, as he stared at Kihrin.

  The young man shook his head. “I guess I take after you more than Darzin, because just like you, I can be pushed to the point where I don’t care anymore. That bastard took everything I loved from me. Everything. But don’t go patting yourself on the back because you protected me, because you let him do it—”

  “I never—”

  “You did!” Kihrin screamed. “He summons demons and he murders people and he commits treason and you cover it up . . . What is that possibly going to teach a man like Darzin—except that he can do whatever he feels like and you’ll always be there to clean up his shit? And you can sit here and feel sorry for yourself, at your great nobility and restraint in dealing with your rabid dog of a son. Well, you know what? You made that rabid dog the way he is, so there’s nothing noble about your refusal to put him down.”

  Therin did not reply, but he looked mortally wounded. Slowly, he slumped down in the chair, his gaze on the floor. Kihrin found himself growing angrier, and his desire to lash out grew more intense.

  “I hope you’re proud of your boy,” Kihrin spat. “As far as I’m concerned, you deserve each other.”

  After Kihrin left, Therin sat there and stared at the unlit fireplace for several hours, only leaving to fetch a new glass and bottle of liquor. He was still there when Lady Miya finally came looking for him, and put him to bed.

  49: CRITICAL LESSONS

  (Kihrin’s story)

  When I woke, I lay facedown—drooling onto the black rock floor of the training room. I ached all over. My arms, my neck, my shoulders, my thighs, and my calves. Every part of me felt like I was back in the rowing galley of The Misery.

  I groaned and raised my head. Doc sat a small distance away. He’d thrown out the tea and replaced it with a bottle of wine, and he had poured a cup for himself. He was staring at my borrowed harp, although given the unfocused gaze on his face, he wasn’t seeing the harp at all.

  When I made a sound, Doc looked over, saw me, and stood up. He didn’t look happy.

  “That was pathetic,” Doc said as he walked over. He didn’t offer me a hand up. “How many times did you die? Three dozen? Four? What was Darzin teaching you? The most efficient way to impale yourself on your enemy’s sword?”

  I almost defended Darzin, but I stopped myself in time. My so-called father had only trained me in fighting so he’d have an excuse to punish my lack of progress. “You drugged me. Let’s talk about the fact that you drugged me!”

  “I told you I wouldn’t go easy on you.”

  I took a deep breath and bit back on the impulse to start shouting. The drugging wasn’t the important part, anyway. “I’m familiar with riscoria weed. It doesn’t cause visions like that. How did you do that?”

  He seemed pleased I’d noticed, and he tapped the green tsali stone around his neck. It was the same stone the Manol vané had been wearing, the one who’d taunted and killed me in the vision.

  The exact same stone.

  “Chainbreaker,” he said.

  I blinked. “I’m sorry. What?”

  Doc chuckled at my confusion. “You wear the Stone of Shackles. I wear its brother, Chainbreaker. You and I are part of a very small and exclusive club with only eight members in the whole world.”

  I traced the stone around my neck. “Eight? There are eight of these?”

  “Yes. Each with its own powers, gifts, and curses.” He pursed his lips. “So let’s talk about your training.”

  “No. I want to talk about the Stone of Shackles and Chainbreaker. I want to talk about that illusion you put in my mind.”

  Doc sighed and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. Suddenly, he wasn’t there anymore.

  The tip of his sword pricked the skin of my neck so quickly I’m not sure I saw him move as more than a faint blur. “You want real? This is real, young man.” A small drop of red welled up on my collarbone, just above the Stone of Shackles, which burned ice-cold in case there was any doubt of my teacher’s earnestness. “What is real is that you have entered a world that hates you and is only too glad to leave your decaying corpse slapped across the garbage heaps of life. What is real is that you have neither the training nor the skill you require to survive until your next birthday. What is real is that hiding in a cave from monsters like Relos Var is no way to have a life at all.”

  “I can’t leave,” I spat back, although I didn’t lean forward the way I might have otherwise, in consideration of that sword. “You can’t have missed the dragon out there. He’ll kill me if I try to leave.”

  Doc laughed in an unfriendly way. “The Old Man isn’t going to kill you. You wear the Stone of Shackles.”

  “I know that! But that’s not going to stop—” I paused.

  “You don’t even know what that means, do you?”

  I stared at him. “It would kill him. I know that much.”

  Truthfully, I’d assumed the damn thing wouldn’t work on a dragon. That he would be immune to whatever magic this rock possessed. I stared down at the stone. I thought I might scream if it turned out I’d had the powe
r to leave the island this whole time, but there was only one way to find out. Ask.

  “What does it do?”

  “If I killed you right now while you wore that chunk of rock, your body would still die, but the Stone of Shackles would switch our souls. My soul, and not yours, would be the one to go stand before Thaena, while you would find yourself enjoying a new body. Specifically, you’d find yourself enjoying my body. Not necessarily a situation to your liking unless you’re impatient to become middle-aged and soft around the center.” He chuckled, seeming to find that idea more amusing than I did.

  I felt like the stone floor had just shifted. A hundred little pieces fell into place. Why Talon had refused to kill me. Why Miya had given Lyrilyn the Stone of Shackles. Why it had seemed like that same stone had failed to protect Lyrilyn from being murdered.

  That wasn’t how the Stone of Shackles worked. Lyrilyn died, but Lyrilyn’s soul lived on—in the body of the mimic who had slain her.

  A few other things fell into place too.

  I raised my hand, wrapped my fingers around the edge of his sword, and slowly pushed the blade away. I pulled a chair away from the table and sat down.

  Not much time had passed while I was unconscious, though it seemed like lifetimes for me. The lamps were still lit, although the oil level had gone down. The tea was cold, but the bread was not yet stale. An hour at most.

  “In the vision,” I said, “I was wearing the Stone of Shackles. I was Terindel—I was King Terindel. I was wearing the Stone of Shackles when I was killed by a Manol vané who just happens to resemble Teraeth more than a little . . .”

  Doc raised an eyebrow and motioned for me to continue.

  “You”—I pointed at him—“said Teraeth’s father was a fool and an idiot.”

  “Doc” Terindel chuckled and drank the cup of wine. “Yes, well. I would know, would I? I’ve had almost five hundred years to contemplate how my hubris lost me the Kirpis crown. I was a fool and an idiot, and it cost me everything.” He flicked thumb and forefinger against Chainbreaker; a bell tone rang. “I’ve gotten so good at using this hunk of gem I forget I’m wearing an illusion sometimes.”