Author: David Estes; G. D. Penman
Date: 2023-02-07 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy
Description: The battle has been won, but the war has just begun. Artemio Volpe may have bested the Arazi Dragonlords on the field of battle, but in his absence the capitol has been taken by Agrantine zealots. Behind enemy lines, surrounded by blades of meteoric iron that can blunt his magic, he must find the missing Twin Kings of Espher and escort them to safety, or all will be lost. Meanwhile, his own twin sister travels north with the exiled Arazi, Kagan, to retrieve that which was lost in the most powerful of the Shadebound, now fallen into enemy hands. Standing between them and their goal is nothing l
Publisher: Wraithmarked, LLC

Bloodbound

The Last King

Book 2

David Estes and G. D. Penman

BLOODBOUND

Book Two of The Last King

Copyright © 2022 by G. D. Penman & David Estes. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product
of the author’s imagination or used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locals,
or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this
publication can be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
without expressed permission from the author.

Editor: Taya Latham

Cover Illustration: Anastasia Bulgakova

Cover Design and Interior Layout: STK•Kreations

Art Direction: Bryce O'Connor

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-955252-36-2

Worldwide Rights

1st Edition

Published by Wraithmarked Creative, LLC
www.wraithmarked.com

1 - The Chained Dreamer

2 - Shadows of Agrant

3 - The Death Trade

4 - The Fallen City

5 - To the Victor

6 - The Spoils

7 - By Water and Night

8 - By Shadow and Steel

9 - Dead of Night

10 - The Waking Dream

11 - When Kings Lay Down Their Crowns

12 - Fortune’s Scales

13 - The Other Side

14 - A Shade Named Covotana

15 - Overdue Departure

16 - The Road to Ruin

17 - Romancing the Throne

18 - Between Wrath and Peace

19 - The Crown Deserved

20 - Duel in the Dark

21 - Journey’s End

22 - Chasing Ghosts

23 - By Blade and Scepter

24 - In the Heart of the Mountain

25 - The Fallen Star

26 - The Slaves of History

27 - The Burning God

28 - Breaker of Mountains

1 - The Chained Dreamer
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

Fire scorched her skin. Wind whipped by so fast it tore her hair from its roots. The chill of the grave clawed its way up into the bones of her legs, edging higher and higher with each passing moment. She was drowning at the bottom of a deep, dark pool, and she was infected with every disease she had ever read about.

Poison coursed through her veins in place of blood. Blood wept from a thousand cuts on her skin. Each opening, another rough edge for the wind to tug at, for the flames to crispen and sear.

She would have screamed if she was not choking on the pondweed dragged down her throat by the influx of stagnant water. She would have wept if her eyes were not shriveled to nothing by the flames.

Still, she could not die.

She could want to. She could long for it with every part of her being, but she could not die.

The flames that seared her filled her up with burning life. The chill of the grave served only to temper them. The water and the wind switched places again and again, flickering back and forth so she was in perpetual torment but could not actually drown. There was no end. For every poison an agonizing poultice was applied to draw it out.

It was not as though she’d had no warning. From the very beginning she had known that tragedy was the fate of any who dabbled with the dead. From her birth mother’s haunted stares into the dark of night. From Mother Vinegar’s softness when she spoke of the shades, with no edge to her razor tongue at all. Every day in the House of Seven Shadows it had been drummed into them. To invite a shade inside you was to court disaster. All their teachings were meant to mitigate that danger. To clip your pet shade’s wings so they could not soar too high or grow too strong. To layer laws and rules and restrictions on even the smallest trade of life for power.

They had all been so afraid the shades would drink their fill and leave them dead. They had all warned her it could happen to her, that it was the very worst thing that could happen to her, that she might spend every moment of her life in one fell swoop if she ever let go of control for even an instant.

Nobody had warned her about this. They had all warned her that she could die; not one had warned her that she would live.

Strength and life flooded her as swiftly as her shades tore it away. But every time she reached for that bond to restore herself, it was snatched away from her groping fingers by the storm of chaos. The shades fought and scrabbled for pieces of her spirit like rabid dogs, and she was both prize and battlefield. Even as they tore into her, more life flooded in. Even as they grew more and more powerful, more and more capable of rending her apart, she fed them.

Her body, they could not touch. They were not creatures of flesh and blood. Her mind, though, it was in ruins. No mind was built to withstand that kind of pain, that kind of damage. Death was meant to stop it before it got this bad. Why wouldn’t death come?

The first time she had fallen into a fugue like this, it had been only her and one shade battling for dominance. She had lost months, years of her life as Ginny Greenteeth had fought her for control of her body. Every scratch, she had bled minutes. Now she lost decades with every brutal bite.

All the memories she had bought so dearly in the House of Seven Shadows, all the rules and laws and tricks that shades might pull. All the ways she could use them and not be used in return, they burned. Offered up on the sacrificial pyre as she tried desperately to cling to the parts that were still her. Her name. What was her name? She could remember a girl, pressing a soft kiss to her chapped lips. She could remember a man, more serpent than human. The comfort in his arms. The only one she had not forgotten any part of was Mother Vinegar, and that was because the old witch was here with her now, inside her, fighting like all the rest. Fighting back against all the rest to save her, even as the shade drank deep of her to fuel its fighting and poisoned her with every attempt.

Distantly she was aware of her body. It should have been still. Immobile and useless as all the forces that might have animated it clashed here inside her. Yet she could feel it moving. Rocking rhythmically as it was carried off somewhere. Was she going home? Were they taking her somewhere she could be safe? Somewhere she could heal? If she could just end this conflict, assert control once more, then she would know, but she could not. Even if her mind was not so beaten and bruised that mere simple speech eluded her, she would not have had the will.

Until this battle ended, she was trapped here. Until the dragon and the swamp monster and the rebel and the old witch stopped fighting for mastery, they were all lost. If she could just speak to them, she could make them understand, but each time she tried, her words were drowned out. Drowned literally by the weight of water rushing down into her. Scorched from her throat as fire tried to burn its way up through a body that was never meant to breathe flames. Strangled back by the razor-edged winds of the rebel’s blades pressed against her. Frozen by the grave chill of the dead that inhabited her living flesh.

If she could remember her name, she would be able to find her way back to herself. Back to her body, to her life. She’d be able to escape from this maelstrom of pain and terror. She could be herself again, instead of prize or battlefield or victim. All she had to do was remember.

Why couldn’t she remember?

Why wouldn’t they just let her die?

Layer after layer of who she was peeled away. The battle with the dragon-lords was long gone, her time in the House of Seven Shadows grew vaguer by the moment, and with each part of herself that she lost, more and more of the past peeked through. Not the parts that she clung to. Not the memories that were the pillars of her being. Things she had forgotten. Things she had chosen to forget, because remembering them was like reaching out to touch a pot boiling over the fire again and again.

The fire searing her now took her back to the fire that had seared her then. The wild dragon’s flames licking over her back as she fled through the Selvaggia, catching on her clothes, clinging to her flesh, sticky fire eating in, burrowing deeper. Pain digging down to touch her bones. Agony she’d never known before.

This wasn’t what she hid from. The scars on her body would never truly fade, the memory of the pain would forever haunt her, but this was not the memory that made her wake weeping in the night.

That came after, when the dragon caught up to her, when its mouth opened wide and those huge teeth closed behind her, and all that she knew was darkness. The forest, gone. Her life, gone. Nothing to lose, she had called out to the shade in the pool. It had leapt to her call. Suckling at her life.

Even this, she still remembered. She had no shame of it. Not truly. For all that Kagan had spoken of the ultimate evil of killing a dragon, she could never bring herself to regret saving her own life the only way she could.

It was the moment after that still haunted her. When the dragon began to die around her, when she felt it dying through senses no mortal was meant to possess. She felt the venom stop pumping, the blood slow, and the hearts still. She felt the soul leaving, and she reached out and snatched it.

There had been no accident that brought a second shade into her heart, just some twisted instinct to preserve a life being lost. A life she’d felt a momentary spark of guilt for taking through the tumult of her possession. She did not know if it was pity or some avarice she had not known she harbored, but when the soul of the dying dragon came into reach, she took it. Swallowed it down and made it hers, just as the shades now did to her.

Rational thought was lost to her again in the chaos. That brief glimpse of her darkest memories now washed away in the same flood that kept her from even a moment’s rest. Time had lost all meaning early into the living conflagration. She could not have said if minutes, hours, or days had passed since she lost her hold over the shades.

Was this what madness felt like? Reason untethered from perception. Any sense of self lost in sensations that should not exist.

She was stripped back further, past her worst moment, past the man in the woods and the witch in her hut and the shade in her body, twisting her, remaking her in its image. Through bad memories and childhood and back. All the way back.

This was familiar. All of it. She had been through all of this before. The madness. The chaos. The soul-tearing swarm of shades trying to strip her life away. She knew this pain. She knew it, because this had all happened to her before.

Her very first breath had drawn them in. A whole world of the dead, desperately clinging to any trace of life. She was a beacon fire to them, and they had rushed into the hollow in her soul, one after another after another, filling her up, making her them. She remembered things she could have never known. She was every one of the dead for a few blissful moments of harmony, her empty head full of all their fading dreams, then it had all been dragged out of her. The leaden weight of a bag on her chest, the distant thrum of Mother Vinegar’s voice.

She had suffered this before, and she had survived. She had grown, and she had learned, and she had gone on surviving. She had made it through this. So, she would make it through again. This was not the end for her. These were not her death-throes.

Though the shades still clawed at her, she no longer gave ground, she no longer sought the oblivion they drove her towards. The pain did not lessen, because it could not, no spirit was meant to suffer as hers did, but her tolerance for it grew.

Strength still flowed. It may have been snatched at by greedy shades, but it still touched her first, and now that she had a foundation to build upon, it gathered.

The parts of her that had survived were no longer being whittled away. The parts of her that she’d thought lost were just there on the other side of the storm. It burned her to reach for them. Bladed wind sliced at her. The crushing weight of water tried to hold her down. But she was both the prize and the battlefield, and they could not keep her cornered inside her own mind forever.

She had survived this before. She would survive this now. She would live. She would remember.

Kagan was the name of the dragon-lord she was bound to. His strength was what sustained her. His life was what kept her heart beating through all this pain.

Harmony was the girl who had pressed soft promises of a future to her lips. A future that was not pain and misery but hope for better.

Mother Vinegar was the old haggard woman who she rose to stand beside. Who she directed the flow of life into, so that newborn shade could match the strength of the ancient and wicked things that she had welcomed inside her and protect her spirit from their predation.

Her name was the last piece. The last stone to be set in the foundation, to make her whole, to make her real. She reached for the most fiercely guarded prize of the invasive shades, and they bore down on her with all their strength.

She pushed on through as they bit into her, teeth and claws, fire and ice, all the powers that they could bring to bear, they flung in her face, and she passed through. Not unscathed, never unscathed, but determined all the same. They had already done their worst to her. What more did she have to fear?

When she reached that hidden word, she did not even know it for what it was. The only sign that she had touched upon her goal was the sudden echoing silence of the shades as they braced for her counterstrike. Orsina. Her name was Orsina.

They came upon her in a flood, trying to claw the name back. She fell away from them, behind the protective poisons of Mother Vinegar, clinging to it with all she was. Dragging it with her from where it had been lost to this hidden safe place in her mind where her darkest secrets lay buried. She laid it down only once she could be certain it would lock into place.

Like the others, it became the foundation block on which she stood. It was from this solid ground that she could now fight back. It was from here that she would reclaim her mind, then her body, then her life.

Exhausted, battered, and torn to shreds, she turned to face the enemies within.

2 - Shadows of Agrant
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

On the white walls of Covotana, black banners fluttered in the breeze. As though the whole city mourned.

As well the city should mourn. It was the heart of the Kingdom of Espher and infested with the soldiers of a foreign power. The banners bore the symbol of an eye surrounded by a starburst, all stitched in thread of gold. Yet for all that expense, they were poorly finished. As though the maker had no care for their hard work.

The great walls rimming the caldera the city was sunk into bore an abnormal load too. In the place of city guard stationed every ten feet, there was but a single man for each stretch of thirty. In other armies, Artemio would have taken this as a sign of weakness, that the Agrantine had overextended themselves, but he knew that it was not so. The one thing that Agrant was not lacking was bodies. They had drowned vassal states in corpses to take them. Laid down twenty of their own men to fell a single enemy soldier and considered it a low price to pay. He knew their history, and he knew who the men atop the walls were and the message they sent. They were not the common foot soldiers Agrant used so freely. They bore no shields, no spears, nothing but a single sword on their hip. The message of their placement was not a lack of bodies, but contempt for anyone who might attack. One sword-saint was worth more than three guardsmen.

Evening was already falling as the Espheran army came in sight of this desecration, and night was close when they stood beneath the flapping eyes, staring out from either side of the closed gates.

There had been no forced march back from the northern frontier. The men and the horses were not exhausted as they might have been, but they had been bearing their wounded with them, and more peasants had deserted to return to their own fields and furrows than might reasonably have been expected. There was no punishment for them, of course. Desertion after duty was done was hardly desertion at all. Still, their numbers had been depleted sorely by their clash with the Arazi and the gradual attrition of peace. They were, in essence, as weak as they were ever going to be, while the Agrantine showed no signs of a fight whatsoever.

The gates should have been flung open. The Agrantine should have come pouring out before the snaking line of troops on the roads could make up formations. They could easily break Espher’s army in this moment, and that one defeat would be all that was required to take not only the city but the whole nation. The loyalty of the nobility was to the king, and if he lay dead upon his throne, then the ensuing civil war among what cousins the Cerva had produced would almost certainly leave the kingdom wide open to any further incursions the southerners brought to bear. This army, here and now, was the only unity that Agrant would face. All they had to do was prove their dominance and the exhausted soldiery would flee.

Yet they did not.

Artemio was not inclined to look a gift-horse in the mouth. The moment the change in décor had become apparent to his lieutenants, they had begun roaring their men into formation, but with battlefield swiftness, Artemio belayed their orders and redistributed the troops. No longer were they forming up on the road in one great block. Instead, they dispersed off the packed dirt and spread out into the plain around the city in their respective squads. They did not truly have the manpower to achieve the full encircling that Artemio demanded of them, not while so many were held back to establish a command base out of reach of arrowshot, but they deployed with all haste regardless.

So long as they were still on the field of battle, no lord or Shadebound would dare to back down or ignore an order for fear of being labeled a coward or traitor. Legacies had been broken over the barrel of history for far less. Artemio still had them for now, and so long as he had them, there was a way to reclaim the city.

There was dissent in the ranks. Arguments among nobles. Princes among men who felt their duty had been done but could not say as much without shame. They would not order their men at arms to do the work that was required. Digging latrines and fortifying positions was peasant work. They should send out riders to fetch back their vassals. They should not have been allowed to wander off to begin with. They should have been whipped from here to their home villages. It was a great deal of noise that Artemio had no patience for. They would not have long to entrench their position before Agrant made a move, and if they were caught unawares, it would be catastrophic. A siege was a slow operation, gradual, arduous, but the establishment of one was not. It had to be performed rapidly, and each moment he had to spend talking one of his own lords into doing the task assigned to them was a moment the enemy had to take them unawares.

“I am aware that your men are tired and wounded. We are all tired and wounded, and it will matter nothing to Agrant how we have wept for soft beds. If they are not encircled, then they shall receive supplies rendering all our efforts at siege craft moot. It will also allow them the opportunity to summon reinforcements. If your men are so hard-pressed as you insist, then such a summons would end in their deaths. Given the choice between hard labor for a few hours and perpetual annihilation, I should imagine that each and every man in your company shall abruptly sprout shovels and a working knowledge of fortification.” There was no time to stand still. Even as he was pestered, he had to walk the line, pointing and calling out where things had been missed. Gracing the competent with firm nods. It was the kind of work his father would have delighted in. Artemio would rather have been sitting alone in a quiet room with a book. Possibly a glass of wine.

The particular hanger-on hanging from his sleeve was an older noble, bald of pate and thick of gut, like so many of them were. Artemio thought he could hear a creak each time a thought tumbled down from beneath that bald pate to topple out the man’s mouth.

“Duke Volpe…”

Artemio cut him off with a raised hand. Brought the whole procession to a halt with it in fact. All the secretaries and batmen and miscellaneous lordlings with complaints slammed to a halt as his hand rose. “If the next words from your mouth are not obeisance then we shall have a quarrel on our hands, Lord Tartaruga. I would rather not quarrel with so charming a man.”

Flattery was so simple with men like this. Men who believed that by burden of birth they had been gifted with every virtue loved to hear them described. “You shall have my full compliance, of course.” Tartaruga wheedled on. “I was merely going to say that as my men bore the burden of the Arazi assault, might it not be kinder to offer them a position in defense of the command post where they are less likely to suffer immediate injury?”

“My lord, you have some of the finest men at arms in all of Espher, and I should be delighted to have their company once the cordon is established, but as of this moment, all hands must be upon the figurative deck.” He clapped the man on the shoulder and set off again.

From behind his back the old lord cracked a grin. “This is hardly the time for cards, Duke Volpe.”

Artemio was so tired he couldn’t quite muster a false laugh. “Very droll.”

Then away one man spun with another springing into place, trying to match the jovial smile still plastered on Artemio’s face even though he felt only a few moments away from attempting to incinerate every man, woman, and ignorant wannabe strategist in reach.

“With regret, Duke Volpe, my men must depart the field. Our home is between here and your own domain to the south. We must drive off whoever the Agrantine left to holds our lands.”

Artemio’s head buzzed through all the various lordlings between here and the Cut. Dark tan, dark hair cut short, blue eyes, unusual combination. Lady Toporagno, a bastard child recognized by the father when no heir was forthcoming. Tenuous hold on her estate. No wonder she felt the need to flee.

“With regret, Lady Toporagno, your forces must complete the task I have assigned to them.”

She puffed herself up as much as she could muster. “You would leave our homes in the hands of the Agrantine?”

If she meant to shame him in front of the other noble scions of Espher, she would have to try harder than that. Artemio had been enduring their sneering contempt for his entire life. If she thought he’d fold over a false moral quandary, she was soon to be disappointed. He spoke up so everyone could hear his answer. “If the Agrantine are wise, of which we have no guarantee, then they will be holding a passage south for reinforcements or retreat. In likelihood, such a passage must lead through both of our lands, yet for some reason you do not see me rushing homewards. Why do you suppose that might be?”

Because the Cut was not home to him. Because the Osservatore had ever felt like a prison. Because he’d sooner cede the whole thing to Agrant than have to look in the eyes of his father’s loyal servants, knowing he had killed the man they swore their life to.

Toporagno missed every mark. “Because you have a duty to lead this army to victory. I have no such obligation.”

“You have a duty to be led,” he snapped, sounding every bit as harsh a taskmaster as the old duke had been. Perhaps this was his true inheritance. An outlet for all of his anger. “Listen carefully to me, my lady, for it is not often that I trouble myself to explain my thinking to those who should be obedient without question. The only reason the column south must be held is because of the Agrantine in the heart of Espher. Without them, there is no reason for any foreign soldier to be upon our soil. We could turn from this city, head south, close off that passage, and strangle them of reinforcement, but in so doing we would leave the invaders time to sink roots. If we remain, we might pluck the whole putrid weed from the ground in one fell swoop. Leaving the root to the south to wither without purpose.”

She made one last-ditch appeal to the nobility of his spirit, clearly not understanding that he had none to speak of. “My men have wives and children…”

He cut her off. “Who will remain as alive or dead as they already are now, regardless of when you return home. If it is of any consolation, I do not believe the Agrantine are prone to harming the peasantry of those nations they invade. It would be akin to stealing a house and then tearing up all the floorboards.”

So dismissed, she fell back and a secretary elbowed his way into her place, much to the chagrin of the high lords and ladies.

“Duke Volpe, I need to speak with you.”

Artemio cast a glance around him. “In this, you are not unique.”

“It is about your sister, my lord.”

“Of course it is. Because planning a siege cordon at the drop of a hat was not enough.” He stopped where he stood and pinched at the bridge of his nose. “What has she done now?”

“She is at the command post, making… suggestions.”

He had braced himself for the worst, expecting her to have attempted to mount the walls on her own, but this news was somehow even more troubling. It was bad enough that every lordling from here to the steppes had their own opinion on how the invasion should be handled. To have division showing within his own family was tantamount to admitting that he had no idea what he was doing. She spoke with some measure of his authority. Her suggestions would be thought to have flowed from him, and if they contradicted his actual orders, then chaos would most assuredly reign.

He called out for a horse then turned to the gathered high and mighty of Espher. “I will return as soon as possible, until then you must continue to establish the cordon line. I am certain that you are up to this task, and I shall not forget your loyal service.”

There was little room for argument. Particularly because the window in which to mount one was so brief. Truth be told, none of them could have had any pressing matter that Artemio needed to attend to, otherwise one of his innumerable secretaries or lieutenants would have brought the news to him. This was just the usual nonsense of court—large heads that needed propping up.

He rode alongside his soldiers at as close to a gallop as he dared over the mud-churned field. The horse beneath him already had the beginning of a limp from so long on the road. Wouldn’t it be a fitting end for him to die here between battles because of a fall. If death were anything like sleep, he might have wished for it at about that moment. Rest seemed like a distant relative that he had not heard much from in the past few years.

It was not difficult to find Harmony. It never had been difficult. Her voice carried well for someone who was meant to be neither seen nor heard, and right now she was so incensed that she erupted, larger than life. Even if she had been silent, the crowd gathered around her would have been sufficient to draw the eye. The young and the hungry of Espher’s courts, some who had been waging secret political wars for decades, now standing shoulder-to-shoulder with one another, bobbing their heads to her words like they were ducks in a pond.

Artemio caught the tail end of it as he drew the horse up.

“…every moment that those scum are inside our fair city, they are staining her white stone with their darkness. Even now they might be preaching their false-god to our children. Even now they might be tearing the work of the masters to shreds…”

“Even now they might be listening to bellowed conversations.” The crowd snapped around to look at him, and he saw it in their faces. The hunger. Glory and valor were just words to the old ones, but these children dressed in the flesh of men, they still believed that war was how a man proved his worth. That they could win on the battlefield and carry that victory with them for all time like a badge of honor. History might remember them that way, but their peers would not. They would remember the friends they’d lost and the blood they’d spilled, but on the field of battle there was nothing glorious. Just people killing people.

He was faced with a choice, to remain atop his horse and use the height to establish his superiority, his command. These were not men well versed in rhetoric, they would not recognize it as the crutch that it was. He would know, though. He would know that he did not trust in his own words to win them over so he had to borrow the authority that a beast of burden could bestow upon him. He slipped from the stirrups and met their eyes as his boots hit the mud.

For them, a siege was the worst of all possible outcomes. All the strain of maintaining an army with none of the opportunity for glory. There would be forays of course, but Covotana was a fortress as much as it was a city, and Artemio fully believed that starving out the enemy was a more likely victory condition than anything cunning.

“Duke Volpe… your sister was just…”

“Inciting you to launch an immediate attack upon the city while our army is exhausted from the march, has no equipment for the breaching of the walls, and is possessed of no plan for such an assault. Yes, I can see that.”

“Art, we need to drive them out.” He almost flinched at being called by his childhood nickname in front of all these people. Harmony’s manners were slipping. There was an edge of desperation to her voice that he hoped the gathered circus would note—if she were actually leading any astray rather than simply providing them with a rallying point in their pursuit of the goal that they had already set themselves upon. “We need to get back inside.”

“And we shall, but rushing at them now, with half our troops scattered to the wind and all of theirs well rested and fortified is not the way.”

One of the preening lordlings had the arrogance to speak up. “So you mean to press the attack when we have the numbers?”

Pale brown hair, olive tone, strong nose. “Lord Gazza, what I mean is that in this moment, our best course is the one I have prescribed. When that is no longer our best course, you can rely upon my judgement to steer us to the better one. Had I double the men and they were well rested, then I would most likely attempt to breach the city this moment. But though I know some of our company dwell in their dreams, that is not the scenario that reality has given us.”

That drew a titter from some of young Lord Gazza’s political rivals. He was ever the idealist, and now he was being put into his place by someone more schooled in rhetoric than even a performer of the Teatro.

Gazza flushed but had the good sense to remain silent as Artemio turned once more to his sister. “Harmony, would you come walk with me for a moment. I mean to inspect the enemy’s disposition on the walls and could use your eye.”

It seemed that Harmony’s little outburst was not yet done. “You’re Shadebound! Blow the walls down.”

He presented her with a placid smile, even though inside, his heart hammered with anger. The eyes of the lords were upon him. “Of course, dear sister, why didn’t I think of such a simple solution. Let me do just that. I’m certain that the greatest Shadebound throughout history were not called to reinforce the city walls in such a manner that they cannot be breached.”

Another round of giggles from the peanut gallery. Harmony did not look chastened in the least. “Then why can’t you fly over it?”

“We could, certainly. I and those other Shadebound willing to take the chance. And we would be cut down wheresoever we landed by the Agrantine sword-saints before we took a step.” That set off another round of murmurs. It seemed that those with their eyes locked on the horizon and the bright new dawn they had imagined for themselves had not managed to spot the gear those on the walls boasted. “Do you know why there are so few sword-saints? The true reason, not the bravado about the difficulty of their training and the requirement for natural talent.”

Harmony was growing more sullen with every passing moment, but she still wasn’t leaving her followers behind to be dressed down like a good little soldier. She was digging in her heels. “No.”

“Because for all of its wealth and vastness, the Agrantine Empire cannot produce more swords for them. Because the materials hammered into their steel are in fact so rare that just one of the swords up there is worth a fortune in the world beyond Espher’s borders. Do you care to wager why?”

Dark hair, pale skin, greens in his coat of arms; Lord Alce piped up as if it were a quiz in the House of Seven Shadows. “Meteoric iron.”

Lord Gazza called out, “One of the few materials in this world that are resistant to the effects of a shade.”

Artemio wondered if they thought they could get extra credit for their answers. “Precisely so. Blades that cut shades as surely as mortal flesh. How well would we fare against them, dear sister? The tiny fraction of us who can call ourselves Shadebound at all.”

Her mouth opened and shut. A mirror to his own hidden rage shining bright in her eyes. Something only he could see, only he could know. Artemio held out his hand to her. “Walk with me.”

Though the crowd had already parted, it seemed to take her forever to leave it as though the press of bodies had some gravitational pull. But she did come forward of her own volition to take a hold on his hand and crush his fingers together in his glove. She was going to be a real delight today, Artemio could already tell. “I shall have you back to these upstanding gentlemen in due course. Until then, perhaps they might assist in establishing the line.”

There was an explosion of industry from the young and stupid faction of the camp, with every one of them setting off to find whatever soldiers they had to their name and put them to work. Anything that reduced the number of useless nobles milling about was advantageous, so Artemio made no complaint that most of their men had likely already taken to the work with the due diligence of their class.

It was not long before they had strolled out of earshot, heading for the northern gate they had paraded out of with cheers from the peasantry what felt like a lifetime ago.

“I’m right, and you know I am. We need to strike now before they have time to dig in.”

“Dear sister, there is no digging required.” Artemio retrieved his crushed fingers from her grasp with a tug, leaving the glove behind. “They took the city, and now all of its defenses are theirs. It was built for siege, long before it became a hub of civilization. They have simply returned it to that purpose.”

She rounded on him then, eyes blazing with all the fury she’d been trying to hide from her little following. “You’ve lived here for years. You’re telling me you never worked out how to get in?” She snorted in disbelief. “It’s you.”

Artemio couldn’t keep the smile from his face. Not entirely. It was nice to know that even when they were at odds, his sister still had some faith in him. “While I have many potential solutions to the current state of affairs, I cannot proceed with any one of them until I’ve had time to assess the situation. The numbers of the enemy within our walls. The purpose of this invasion. It is impossible to make the correct decision without more information.”

“I know you, Art.” Whatever warmth and goodwill he’d been feeling towards her faded in the face of her glacial stare. “I know that your all your reasoning and calculations and historical quotes are just a mask to hide your own fear. You’re scared to try and take Covotana back, because you’re scared to see what’s inside. You’re scared the king is dead, and you’ll have to deal with it. You’re hiding out here, playing soldiers instead of facing reality.”

He swallowed the insults as if they were his due. He had never cared for the taste of them, but he could tolerate them if it got the poison drained from Harmony quicker. “If the kings were dead, then the Agrantine would have their heads on pikes outside the gates. It would immediately break the morale of our soldiers, and we would immediately descend into civil war.”

“Or it would incense the common people and nobles alike, and they’d rally behind the one man with a better claim to the throne than anyone else.”

Once more, his hand seemed to rise of its own volition to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Please don’t repeat Father’s old lies back to me as though they were truth.”

“You haven’t seen the way they look at you when your head is turned, Art. They just watched you beat an army of dragons. These men would follow you through the gates of the abyss if you would only ask. No speeches. No cunning plans that would convince them of your genius. Just loyalty. The kind that can’t be bought.” She had the good sense to speak softly at least. They were near the limit of accurate crossbow range of the gates now, and Artemio felt his attention splitting, one ear listening for the telltale thump of a bolt flying his way.

He tried to bite back on his sarcasm.“Yes, such loyalty that has every noble arguing back against every command I issue.”

“That’s just… that’s just how they are. That’s their nature. All of them scrambling over one another all the time to be on top of the pile.” She looked at him curiously, as if surprised that he hadn’t grasped some truth yet. “They aren’t doing it to try and get one over on you. Half of them are just trying to get in your line of sight and hoping you’ll remember their names.”

“That makes no sense.”

She shrugged her shoulders, and for a moment, she was his Harmony again. Not the bitter half-mad thing he’d had to drag south from the battlefield. “When have they ever made sense?”

He shook all thoughts of this nonsense off. “I cannot entertain these fancies. I have a war to wage and a throne to save.”

She caught him by the sleeve, turning his eyes from where they darted along the ramparts to meet her own. “But who’s going to sit on it?”

“While I appreciate a well-constructed deflection, I think we both know the reason you are so desperate to enter Covotana has nothing to do with who will be sitting the throne once it is reclaimed.” He’d tried to be polite, but she seemed intent on having this out. “The only reason you want me to throw all of these lives away in a fruitless attempt at a breach is because you want to see Kagan.”

“They don’t know who he is. And if they did, they might kill him just to rob us of Orsina. We have to…” She was rambling, all the anxieties that had been building up in her since she’d caught sight of the Agrantine flags on the walls pouring forth.

There was no option but to snap her out of it with the verbal equivalent of a slap. “He may already be dead. He may have been dead since Orsina fell on the battlefield. We cannot risk so many lives on so small a chance.”

Her mouth fell open, all of her rambling falling away to a reedy whine. Eventually she pulled herself together enough to snarl, “You unbelievable bastard.”

“Harm…” He held up his empty hands.

“No. Don’t ‘Harm’ me. You… You don’t get to placate me with your twisting words.” There was a sob in her voice. “You don’t care, do you? You don’t even care if she’s alive or dead.”

It hurt to admit it, but the truth was a necessary burden for all of them to bear. “With all of the life she fed to her shades in battle, I struggle to imagine how she or her impresario might have survived.”

There were tears in her eyes now, hanging there, not yet falling. He hated to hurt her, but he couldn’t let her hurt anyone else either. “So, all of this time you’ve been stringing me along with false hope?”

“Harmony… I… A slim hope is better than none, but it isn’t enough.” He stepped forward and tried to embrace her. “I will do all that I can to discover the state of Kagan, and I will do all that I can to ensure that you learn of Orsina’s fate as swiftly as possible, but I cannot… I cannot let it be the sole point informing all of my choices.”

She stepped back out of his encircling arms. Her own were at her sides. Knuckles whitening. “I’m an afterthought, as always. Why did I think that would change with Father gone?”

“Harmony, that isn’t fair.” Once more he had to swallow his own anger. It burned on the way down. “You’re asking me to condemn men to a fruitless death just so you might get your answer a little sooner.”

The tears finally broke free of Harmony’s eyes and streaked down her cheeks. He had become so accustomed to the dust of the road that he hadn’t even noticed that it covered her face until it washed away. They were all marred by the past few weeks. When she spoke, her voice was so soft he had to strain to hear it. “Do you even care for her at all?”

“Of course I care. Her birth and station mattered nothing to me. She was a friend to you when you’d had none before. She saved your life.” His actual feelings were a complex mangle of momentary encounters. Helping the girl to stitch up her wounded arm. Meeting her in the dead of night and convincing her not to flee. The evenings of polite company with Harmony there to serve as chaperone. Or perhaps he was there to serve as chaperone for her. Everything was so mixed up. “She… she was my friend too. I hope.”

“Was?” Harmony’s eyes narrowed. “She was a friend?”

He wet his own dusty lips. “I misspoke.”

“You can’t lie to me, Art,” she snarled. “I’m not one of the simpering tag-alongs who think you’ll lift them up when you mount the throne. I know you.”

“Then you know that I still hope she lives and that I will do my utmost to confirm it as swiftly as possible, by whatever means I have available to me.” He wasn’t used to this. He’d spent his whole life preparing justifications for his decisions to his father, mother, tutors, and peers but never Harmony. She was the only one on his side. The only one he didn’t need to lie to or manage.

She spat on the packed earth between them. “How is laying siege to the city going to get us answers ‘swiftly’ exactly?”

“Leverage. Once we have the city besieged, we have power in negotiations. Once negotiations commence, I shall be able to seek minor concessions, such as the release of certain prisoners.”

She scoffed. “You really think they’d give him up so easily?”

“Once negotiations begin, I can also contact our agents within the city and palace and gather information. In all likelihood, Kagan will have been forgotten in the chaos. He is not in any official quarters. He is secluded from sight. They may not even know he is in the city.” He brushed past that. He had no idea if the Agrantine knew what the value of the Arazi was. Or how many of the peasantry would have given up every secret for the promise of softer treatment by their new masters. The whole game could already have been given away. Kagan could already be dead a dozen times over, even if he hadn’t died with Orsina in the battle.

“Look at me, Art. Look me in the eyes and tell me this is the quickest way to find out if Kagan is still alive.”

He met her eyes, and he knew he couldn’t lie to her. “It isn’t. Not by a long shot. But it is the best way. The way that puts nothing at risk that need not be at risk. That doesn’t fling us into the jaws of the southern beast with no hope of clawing our way back up its throat.”

“What is the quickest way?” She held out her hands, and tentatively he took them.

“Have a shade fling us over the walls, fight our way through to Kagan.” He was being honest, so he may as well be entirely honest. “Die in the attempt or in the escape.”

She took a steadying breath, and he wondered how often she had been doing this, managing him. “What’s the quickest way that doesn’t kill us?”

He nodded along the wall to the eastern side of town. “Wait until nightfall tomorrow, infiltrate through the waterway, where the river flows out of the city. They’ll have it guarded, but not well enough. From there, try to contact allies within the walls. Gather intelligence.”

She frowned at that. “Do we have any allies within the walls?”

“I do.” His mind flickered through the masked faces of the Last King cult. To the ones he had seen unmasked and could approach. The ones who were liable to have smoothly assumed the same roles in service to the Agrantine. “And if I can contact them, then so shall you.”

Harmony’s brows drew down. “Why wait until tomorrow night?”

“Because tonight, the Agrantine will be on high alert. Tomorrow they will believe we are settling in for a long siege.”

She tightened her grip on him. Like she could wrench the truth from him. Like he was ever going to lie to her. “Was this your plan all along?”

“Dear sister, you wound me.” He managed a smile at last. “You think that I only have one scheme operating at any given moment?”

She snorted. “Idiot.”

Drawing in a deep breath, he asked the necessary question. “Can I trust you not to lead an attack on the walls the moment my back is turned?”

“And go against the will of the one true king?” She forced a smirk. “Who would dare?”

He rolled his eyes once more. “That’s quite enough of that too. All it takes is for the wrong ear to catch words such as those and we’ll both be dead.”

“Or crowned.”

He squeezed back. Snapping her full attention to his words. “A crown matters little if the head that bears it is no longer on your shoulders.”

She released one of his hands so they were left in position to shake on their deal. “I shall refrain from inciting rebellion so long as you prove to me that you are doing your utmost to find out what has happened to Orsina.”

“As you wish, dear sister.” They shook hands. Like merchants making a trade. It was not a true formality. Their class made promises with paper and seals, not words and skin. But it was the ghost of one that should never have been placed between family. He didn’t know how to bridge the chasm of grief that separated them.

He was about to say something more, something to bring them back together, to make them feel like they were on the same side, when the trumpets sounded.

3 - The Death Trade
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

Harmony’s hand went to the sword on her belt, her father’s sword, passed along by Art before the battle on the steppes and never reclaimed. The sudden eruption of sound from the still and silent city had brought all the preparations out here in the killing field surrounding it to an abrupt halt.

The great gates of the city spread open with an awful shrieking sound, rust set into the hinges so deep there was likely little iron left. The doors hadn’t been closed in generations; it was small wonder they were mad about getting moved again so soon. She glanced to her brother. “Is it the counterattack?”

After another quiet moment’s assessment, he shook his head. “Look.”

From the center of the gatehouse, a white banner was being unfurled by a pair of sword-saints. Unfurling to show the same golden eye, barely visible on the creamy expanse of fabric. It must have been a nightmare to keep that clean. “Surrender? They’re giving up already?”

“Parley.” His placid smile was grim to her eyes. “They want to talk.”

“That’s what you wanted too. Right?”

“Once the cordon was established and we had a platform from which to negotiate.” He turned to face the gates head-on, even as a swarm of lesser nobles came barreling across the field to line up behind him in a ridiculous show of force that would do nothing to impress the Agrantine.

A single figure emerged from the gates of Covotana, garbed in simple black and head shaved bald, like all of the Agrantine. How Art was able to recognize the woman from a momentary glance escaped Harmony entirely, but he hissed over to her, “It is Ambassador Modesta. Please do not… just don’t speak to her unless she speaks directly to you, and even then, keep it brief. Give her nothing.”

“This isn’t my first time in hostile territory, Art.” Honestly, he still treated her like they were children half the time. Like he was her big brother instead of her twin. “We’ve had the same life.”

There was a long reluctant moment as Art tried to find the words, before finally, begrudgingly muttering, “She’s better at this than we are.”

It was enough to drag Harmony’s stare away from the tall, lithe woman stalking towards them. “Better than you?”

Once more, Art seemed to be having a hard time trying to get his words out before eventually grunting out, “Yes.”

She crossed her arms across her stomach and smirked. “Well, now I cannot wait to see the show.”

“Whose side are you on, again?”

The ambassador had stopped her approach well within crossbow reach of the walls. She was showing faith by walking out and letting them close the door behind her, but she wasn’t stupid enough to let her life go unavenged if the oh-so-civilized nobles of Espher decided to take a swing at her.

Art turned to the gathered crowd. “Let’s see what she has to say for herself.”

There was some ribald chuckling among the mounted nobility. As though Art was Father coming home to find that the rugs hadn’t been beaten rather than a general returning to find his capital lost. She supposed that it was another one of the calculated, clever little things that he’d say to make them give him their trust, but it did not sit well with her. Pretending as though a woman could not conquer, only keep house, when the evidence to the contrary was right in their faces.

When Art set out, Harmony went with him, a step behind him. If he died, she died. It made no difference if the two of them walked into easy range of the Agrantine crossbowmen or only he did.

When they arrived, dust-streaked and battered from war and chaos, Ambassador Modesta smiled at them as though they were joining her for tea. She was clean, her scalp freshly shaved. The simple black dress that she always wore for her supposed religious modesty was crisply pressed. “A joy to see you again Duke Volpe. Was the journey home from your war with the Arazi pleasant?”

“I suspect that it would have been more pleasant if I had a home to return to.” Artemio seemed to see no issue with cutting straight to the point, even if it did make Harmony wince.

“Come now,” Modesta tittered. “What is a little invasion between friends?”

If the Agrantine woman had a fan like one of the courtiers lingering around the Teatro, Harmony thought she would have flicked or fluttered it about then. Was this woman flirting with Artemio after stealing his city out from under him?

“Rather rude, if I’m to be honest.” He crossed his arms across his chest with exaggerated care, so as not to excite any archers watching from a distance. “It was my understanding that we parted on good terms.”

“The very best of terms.” Modesta fluttered her lashes at him. There was no way Art was oblivious to all this. What had passed between these two? What was going on? Harmony was bursting with questions, but she bit them back. “With you owing a great debt of gratitude to Agrant for preserving your life. You led me to believe that you did not share your father’s prejudice against us. Was this false?”

“Madam, there is a vast difference between judging a person for their place of birth and judging them for the actions they take.” Whatever they’d said to each other before, it was apparent that Artemio was simmering over with irritation at her. He’d thought she was on his side, somehow. Even though she was Agrantine.

A little line appeared between Modesta’s eyebrows. “My loyalty has never been to you, but to my husband, the Eternal Emperor. Am I to understand that you feel betrayed?”

Artemio was still for a long moment, the thoughts tumbling over in his head too fast for them to spill out, the way that he got sometimes. Then it passed, and he sighed and uncrossed his arms. “If I am being honest, no. Expecting you to behave in any other manner is like expecting a viper not to bite.”

“Then I believe that we still have an understanding of each other.” She reached out a hand to him, and he shook it. There was no lingering touch, no warmth in the act, it was perfunctory. “You are loyal to Espher, I to Agrant. But does that mean that we must be at cross-purposes?”

He huffed out a breath in surprise. “When Agrant means to conquer Espher, I believe it does.”

“I do not feel that this is so.” With a little shrug of one shoulder, Modesta stepped back, clearing her archers’ line of sight to them but not moving out of striking range for either of their swords. Art would be analyzing every word she said and every move she made, but to Harmony’s eyes, it could only mean one thing. She wasn’t scared of them. She didn’t consider them to be a threat. It was an insult disguised as politeness. “Perhaps with time, and a good night’s rest, you might come to the same conclusion?”

“I suspect that a good night’s rest shall be denied to me out here on the siege plain, at least until the rest of our forces arrive, but who knows what the future holds? Perhaps they’ll bring soft beds along with siege weapons.”

That was a clumsy bluff for Art, and Harmony could tell from the ambassador’s widening smile that she’d seen clean through it too. Espher had committed everything it had to facing the Arazi, nothing held back. Anyone living in the capital would have known that.

Instead of calling him out, she turned that smile into an invitation. “Would you care to discuss the possibilities of the future further?”

There should have been some hesitation, some searching for a trap in the words, but Art, he just dove right in. “It would doubtless be to the benefit of both Agrant and Espher if this matter can be settled without further bloodshed.”

“Shall we retire to somewhere more comfortable?” Modesta gestured back to the city.

It was too much. Too dangerous. Too stupid. Harmony blurted out, “You most certainly will not.”

“Harmony,” Art snapped. “Please.”

“You are Harmony Volpe?” Modesta’s gaze flitted to Harmony the moment she opened her mouth. Like before, a wall of silence separated them and protected Harmony from her attentions, but now that it had been breached, the full weight of that gaze bore down on her. “What a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance. I have heard so much about you.”

It was a thrust. So, Harmony parried. “Whatever he told you was probably a lie.”

“Harmony.” Art actually took his eyes off their opponent to pinch at his nose again. Like she was giving him a headache. Like she was the problem here, not this southern fanatic trying to drag him out of sight and butcher him.

“Alas, your brother and I have spoken little of family matters, beyond the reason that his courtship of me could not proceed.” Another calculated thrust at what she saw as a weak spot in their united front. She’d seen her fake flirting confusing Harmony earlier, so she was laying it on thicker. “All that I have heard of you has been through your peers. Perhaps they have painted a more truthful picture of you?”

Harmony was caught off guard again. Nobody knew her. Nobody spent time with her except Art and Orsina. That was all that was in her mind when she blurted out, “I don’t have any peers.”

“Quite so.” Modesta’s laugh was like sparkling wine. She was taking the blunt statement as bravado. “Much has been made of your talents with the sword. It would bring me great joy if we might someday cross our blades upon the sparring grounds. Would you enjoy that?”

There was no secret message encoded in that one. If this old maid wanted to fight, Harmony would be more than happy to give it to her. “Anywhere, anytime.”

Art cleared his throat loudly. “What my sister means is that once the current situation has resolved, we will have ample opportunity for such diversions.”

“I believe that your sister speaks for herself, and she has made her opinions quite clear.” Modesta continued to give Harmony her undivided attention until the very last moment, then glanced back to Art. “Shall we return to the matter at hand?”

Artemio let out a soft breath of relief. “To where did you intend for us to retire?”

“I believe that the palace has many empty rooms at the moment. Would it not seem the correct place to discuss Espher’s future?”

“You would have me walk inside the city with you, leaving my army here?”

“I do not believe we have enough empty rooms for quite so many guests.” She always seemed to be laughing or smiling. Harmony couldn’t tell if it was with them or at them. “And it is not their opinions on matters that I seek. Do you think any would volunteer to join you?”

Once again, Harmony felt obliged to speak up. “Artemio, you can’t.”

He cast a sly glance her way. “I do believe that you were the one who wanted me to get inside the city, dear sister.”

“You can’t!” This was madness. This was as bad as flinging himself over the walls like he’d said before. Worse, because she wouldn’t even be there to protect him. And she knew that this wasn’t the cautious, smart choice. She knew that he was choosing to do this stupid thing because of her nagging at him to find out about Kagan. He was going to throw his life away and kill them both in the bargain for her answer. An edge of pleading came into her voice. “You’d be a hostage. Think. Please.”

He gave her a wry smile. “I doubt that my death would overly trouble the high lords and ladies of Espher so badly that they could not maintain the siege in the event of my demise.”

“You’d be wrong.” Harmony still couldn’t believe that he was so observant about some things and so blind to others. For a moment, she couldn’t even understand it, but she didn’t have to tread far down familiar paths of thought before she came to the usual conclusion. Father. He had convinced Art that no matter what his eyes might tell him, he would never be loved or respected. He’d convinced him with every snide comment and every strike of his belt. Art could understand anything except his own value.

Help came from an unexpected quarter. “I find myself to be in agreement with your sister. Would it not put you at something of a disadvantage in any negotiations that we undertake if you feel your life would be forfeit should you go against my wishes?”

Harmony barked with bitter laughter. “Wasn’t that the whole point of your invitation?”

“Ladies, the invitation is an exchange. Not a kidnapping.” He held up his empty hands once more. “I will be placing myself into the power and protection of the Ambassador Modesta, and in return, the leader of the Agrantine forces here will be placed into mine.”

Modesta’s head cocked to one side, her pristine smile never faltering. “I am not certain that I follow.”

“Just as having the ambassador remain as a guest within our camp while I undertake discussions with one of her underlings would result in our mutually assured destruction should any harm come to either one of us, so too does inviting me into her company. While my weapons may be taken from me, I remain Shadebound. Swift she may be with a blade, but my power cannot be blunted by steel.”

“You truly believe that you could slay me faster than I might disable you?” At last, the good humor seemed to drain from Modesta’s voice, and she was taking matters seriously. As though the rulership of Espher was some trifle to be discussed over dinner, but the possibility of one of the foremost Shadebound in generations being able to best her in single combat was a subject for the most stern debate.

“My belief matters little. Only the facts of the situation.” He shrugged his shoulders. “The principal of those being that I am Shadebound. So long as I am within Covotana, Ambassador Modesta will do all that she can to keep me from harm, and in return, I shall do no harm to her. Lest both of us face our ends.”

Modesta was still hung up on that part. “You honestly believe you could do me harm?”

“Fire can burn faster than a blade swings, Ambassador.”

All three of them fell silent at that, and even Harmony felt a little sheepish at how she had been trying to protect him. Truth be told, he had power enough to protect both of them, and then some.

“Then we have an accord?” Modesta held out her hand to him for the same butcher’s or baker’s handshake he had given his own sister scant minutes before.

“No, we don’t!” Harmony caught his wrist as he reached for Modesta. The movement was too fast. A crossbow bolt loosed. Striking off a cobblestone before skittering to a halt by their feet. A grim reminder of the situation they were in. Modesta glared back at the gates while the Volpe twins discussed matters further.

“Dear sister, while I am inside with the ambassador, I would ask that you convey the situation to the rest of my command and allow them to rely upon your instincts when matters of judgement arise.”

She couldn’t voice how terrible an idea this was. All she could do was plead with her eyes.

“My orders remain as they have been from the beginning. You are to lay siege to the city, preventing any aid from reaching the Agrantine until such time as I return. If you find that you are incapable of pursuing this course, seek out your favored of the other dukes. I’m sure one of them will be more than happy to assume command in my absence.”

“I assure you that your brother shall be well cared for, my dear girl,” Modesta piped up, as if anything she could say would make this feel better. “We Agrantine have made a truly terrible impression upon you, as our hosts, thus far, and it is my hope that we might remedy that by offering him some succor and comfort while we bring an end to this unfortunate situation. Surely that is not objectionable to you?”

“Artemio.” Harmony took a deep but unsteady breath. “This is not the safest course.”

“But you cannot deny that it is the fastest.” He flashed her a smile then. His true smile, the one she didn’t believe anyone else in the world had ever seen. “Do try to remember what I told you regarding my myriad schemes and how to proceed with them.”

It wasn’t a subtle code, as far as codes went. In fact it was so obnoxiously obvious he was hinting at something secret that Harmony was amazed Modesta hadn’t jumped down their throats looking for more details. She continued to watch them impassively. Smile fixed in place as though it had been painted on.

Harmony made a joke of it. The only thing she could think to do to stop herself from sobbing. He was telling her that he would arrange things so the entrance by the waterway would be safe for her. He was doing all of this so she could get inside and see Kagan. Despite whatever it might cost him. Despite all of his fears for the future of his beloved Espher. “How is any one woman meant to keep track of so many things?”

“I’m certain you will be able to focus upon the ones that matter,” he reaffirmed, just in case he had not been blatantly obvious enough up until this point. “Just as I will.”

Then he took Modesta’s hand, and they shook on the deal.

Harmony repressed a shiver, then the two of them were off, still hand in hand, heading back towards the gates. Artemio did not look back, and that was probably for the best because if she had seen any hint of fear in his eyes, she would have begged him to stay. Fought off the Agrantine hag. Done whatever it took to protect him from the terror he was choosing to stroll right into.

He would have known that, and that was why he did not look back.

Instead, she had to force herself to turn away, to trudge back along the path to the waiting army, every man of which was watching with undisguised horror as their general walked off with the leader of the enemy. Abruptly, they were all shouting. At Art, at her, at one another. It was such a cacophony that she did not hear the gates being opened and shut behind her. It was only when she turned around amidst the tumult that she realized it was too late. He was gone. He was inside.

It sparked fury in her. That was good, she could use it. She turned around, raised a hand for silence, and when she didn’t get it, her shout came out as a roar. “Shut up!”

Not a one of the high lords and ladies on their high horses had ever been spoken to in such a manner, and it had the desired effect. If only for the moment it took for them to pull themselves together from the surprise. “Duke Volpe issued you orders. You are to obey those orders to the letter while he is occupied. If there is confusion over any of those orders, you may come to me for clarity.”

It was one of the few women in the group who managed to find her voice first. Harmony didn’t have her brother’s encyclopedic knowledge of the noble houses of Espher, so she couldn’t have said who she was. “Might your brother have left an explanation for his actions along with those orders?”

“Duke Volpe does not need to explain himself to you. However, for the sake of clarity. The Agrantine hold the city, and he goes to negotiate their departure. If we can be rid of our invaders without spilling any more Espheran blood, then he’ll do it. If not, he’ll return with the vital intelligence that is required to conduct our siege with more brevity.” She couldn’t help but let a note of pride slip into her voice at that last part. Art was doing this for all of them. Taking all of the risks so that they didn’t have to. It was so like him that it made her angry she hadn’t seen it coming. He’d never been very good at sharing.

Another lord spoke up, though it seemed unintentional. “Why would anyone go willingly into that nest of vipers?”

“It’s quite simple, my lord.” She really needed to learn some names. “He’s planning on negotiating until negotiations fail, then setting the whole damned nest on fire.”

There was a fresh murmur spreading among the nobles at that sentiment. It was a little bit of a stretch of the truth, but at this point, having seen what Art would do for them, and for Espher, not a one of them could openly doubt her words.

One by one, they began to pull away from the edges of the line, returning to their troops, returning to their stations, digging in for a siege as commanded. Planning to starve out the most well-stocked stronghold in all the world. Until finally only that first woman remained, staring down at Harmony where she stood in the mud. “Would you care for a ride back to your command, my lady?”

Harmony wasn’t sure she should be showing any favor to a woman who’d just demonstrated open defiance to her family, but she was far too tired to walk the distance after everything else had taken its toll. “If you would be so kind…”

“Duchess Granchio.”

She forced a smile onto her face. “Of course, Duchess, I did not recognize you in your armor.”

“Do not worry, girl, I couldn’t remember the name of any of the boring old people in court when I was your age either.”

Harmony had to strangle the laugh before anyone else could hear. She took the offered hand and felt the strength in the arms that hoisted her up. “My thanks to you.”

“Any aid that I can offer you, I will give you freely, my lady.”

Even as the horse wheeled and she was forced to tighten her grip on the woman’s waist, Harmony felt the overwhelming desire to pull away. Nobody gave anything away for nothing. “Strange that whenever someone tells me they’re giving something freely I always have to pay for it later.”

“Hah.” Duchess Granchio’s laugh was a coarse as her straightforward manner of speaking. “Perhaps there’s hope for you yet.”

Yet when Harmony cast her glance back to the looming city walls, it felt as though it were in scant supply.

4 - The Fallen City
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

The ambassador released Artemio’s hand once they were through the gates. As though she had been ensuring that he would not bolt and run before the bar could be lowered once more. Gone were the warm faces of Espher from the guardhouse, the distant rattle of dice, and the indiscreetly concealed bottles of wine tucked away when a commander strolled by on his rounds. In its place, the Agrantine. Every one of them was dour-faced and placid, like cows left to stand in a field. He did not know what it was about life in that southern empire that so stripped people of their joy, but he could not bear the sight of it for too long.

He turned to face Modesta again, the only spark of life among this desolation. He could not say why she was different from them. How her indoctrination into the cult of the Eternal Emperor had diverged from the purging of all emotion into a fully expressive and charming woman. Perhaps it was that she had given herself over to it willingly. Perhaps it was simply a matter of class. After all, he had often found the peasants of Espher to be sullen and hollow-eyed too. She graced him with another smile when she caught his gaze. “Welcome home, Artemio. As you can see, your people have been treated with all fairness in your absence. Does it take a weight off your mind?”

Looking out across the city, he could not explain how it had changed. The buildings were the same. The crowds still thronged the streets, hustling about their business, but the air felt wrong, foreign. Even when they had been rebuilding in the aftermath of the dragon attack, it had not been so subdued. Black flags hung where the royal greens had been the last time Artemio had walked these streets, but they were so small a change as to be barely noticeable. Life went on in Covotana, whether one king or another ruled, but today it felt as though that life was a mockery of what it should have been. As though the dead walked among them.

“This is not my home, Ambassador. Merely the place where my duty has brought me.”

There was a carriage waiting for them, bearing the ambassador’s livery, and it was almost a relief to climb inside it and look no longer on all that was wrong outside, even if it meant being in close proximity to the one who had made it so. “Do you think, then, the southern reach, what you call the Cut, is truly your home? I can assure you that the people there have suffered no indignity or discomfort either. Those scant mercenaries in your father’s employ had long scattered by the time my saints passed through, and those loyal to your kin holed up in their fortress rather than face us with their dwindling numbers. Does that convince you of our good intent?”

“It convinces me that you intend to conquer rather than ravage and that you believe your position to be tenable enough that you needed no display of violence to curb any uprising against you. Though I am certain you shall resort to all manner of brutality the moment that changes.” He was far too cultured to roll his eyes at her, but neither was he so polite that he could let so blatant a lie about their intentions pass. If it had been in the best interests of Agrant, she would have had every man woman and child of Covotana flayed alive and strung out for him to see. He had read the histories of their expansion, of the atrocities they had committed joyously with righteous fervor in their hearts.

Modesta did her best to divert him from that line of thinking. “We are not the savages that your father painted us as. We have no wish to harm our neighbors, only to protect them. If your kingdom had allies like us to call upon, do you believe the Arazi would have been so bold in their incursion against you?”

“To be frank, yes. Their attempts at diplomacy looked much like this. The promise of every bully that willing submission will protect the victim from further depravities.” Her diversion was a classic one, the kind of logical fallacy that he’d seen so many of his peers fall into. That of the lesser of two evils. Just because one enemy was a threat, the other could be discounted. He had fallen into that very same fallacy when marching off to war, never even considering Agrant when the Arazi were at their door. “In fact, I believe they promised the very same as you. A change in sovereignty with no real difference to our daily life. Their protection against hostilities from the likes of Agrant.”

She scoffed. “And you believe they would have upheld such promises?”

“As much as I would believe that Agrant would.” His shoulders were shrugged for him as they moved from the packed dirt of the gates to the cobblestones. He could feel their familiar rattle up his back. “That is the funny thing about sovereignty; the moment that it is given up, ultimate power no longer lies in the hands of whoever sits the throne and instead belongs to whoever allows the throne to be sat.”

“It will be difficult for us to reach an accord if these opinions of yours remain unchanged.” She feigned a pout. It looked moderately ridiculous on the face of so stern a woman. “Would you cut the heart from our negotiations before they even begin?”

“My dear Ambassador,” he forced a polite smile onto his face, “it is my intention to enter into these negotiations with as open a mind as your own.”

There was a momentary lull in the conversation as they both pondered precisely what he meant by that, then Artemio chose to break the silence. “Perhaps you can tell me how all of this came to pass. I assume that your troops departed Agrant when…”

“When news of your father’s passing came to us. Yes.” She clasped her hands over her knee. She wore no sword on her hip, probably feeling no need for one in a stronghold, yet still she exuded competence and threat. As though she might reach out with those manicured nails and slit his throat. “He had always been the most stalwart defender of the south, and with his loss, and your preoccupation in the capital rather than in your own lands, it was clear that the way lay open to us. A full congregation of saints set off north, with the intention to make entry to Covotana when it became undefended. Is this what you wish to hear?”

She had cocked her head to the side, as if politely awaiting a reply. The Agrantine habit of ending everything they said with a question was uniquely frustrating. “So, it was simply a matter of waiting out our army’s departure?”

“Would that it were so simple. No, my messages south are not so swift that I could have hoped for that. It was a dreadful waiting game, hoping that my saints would arrive after you had departed but before your conflict was resolved. Can you imagine my worry that your standard would show over the horizon before theirs?”

“You’ll excuse me if I do not overflow with sympathy for you.” It took all his efforts to refrain from spitting his contempt and another effort to push the conversation forward. “What if we had lost?”

“It was that danger that drove me to call upon the Fatherland’s aid.” She settled back into her seat now, gazing out the window at the passing buildings. Casual, as though her enemy was not seated across from her. As if they were merely friends, traveling together. “Had the armies of Espher been defeated, then there is no doubt the Arazi would have hewed south next. By fortifying Covotana, we meant to delay them long enough for a countering army to be raised.”

With another deliberately casual motion, she met his stare. “You understand we did not come here and take this city out of spite or to cut your victory from under you. It was duty to my home that forced my hand. Can you tell me that you would not have done the same in my place?”

He sidestepped the question. If she was going to ask them reflexively, it did not mean he had to answer them in the same way. “How was the city taken? I see no signs of fighting, no broken gates or scaled walls.”

“Upon sighting our standard, your king fled the city, leaving only Queen Cadence in his stead.” She might have been lying. She might have been telling the truth. Artemio was startled to realize that he could not tell at all. Without the familiar foundations of history beneath his feet, he found statecraft and the art of deception to be unsettling. “Realizing that it was within her power to prevent bloodshed, she ordered the gates flung open to us. Always she thinks of the people before herself. She is quite the inspiration to any would-be ruler, wouldn’t you say?”

“That or she is your creature through and through, merely awaiting the opportunity to betray us to Agrant the moment the chance presented itself.” He forced a smile. Let her think he believed that when it was only a suspicion. Let her believe a thousand little lies to distort her understanding of him, so that she could not find the kinks in his armor and thrust her envenomed words home.

“I can assure you that is not so. Would that it were.” When she laughed it was rich and full-bodied, completely unlike the affected tittering favored by Espheran women. He felt it rolling over him. The hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention. “My duties in this sinful place would have been all the much easier. Would you believe she would not even answer letters from the Eternal Emperor himself when they were sent?”

“Quite the scandal for some princess from a lesser vassal state, sold off as breeding stock.” He wanted to shock her. To stop the laughter. He wanted for her to take every word he said painfully seriously. She might not have believed it, but he could destroy her.

It did not work. She threw back her head and laughed all the louder. “Artemio! I am surprised to hear you speak so coarsely of such matters. Although please do not take that to mean that I do not like it. You’ve spent time enough among the court, do you know what a fresh breath of honesty feels like to one who has been immersed in pandering and lies for years?”

“Madame Ambassador, to hear you speak of it, deceit is as foreign to you as flight to a fish,” he sniped.

That had the desired effect. Her laughter stopped. All of the jovial conversation she was trying to draw out of him withered on the vine. “Have I not always been honest with you, Artemio?”

“When it serves Agrantine interests, certainly.”

“Then let us find some common ground, so that both of our interests might be served and as such we can both remain honest.” She offered him her hand, not like a mercantile deal, but like a suitor. “Does that seem fair?”

He pressed his lips to her knuckles. “Indeed, Ambassador.”

Seemingly satisfied, she settled back into place and continued with her stories. “With the gates open to us and the guards commanded from on high to stand down, it was a simple matter to secure the city and begin our preparations for attack by the Arazi. The springs that feed the city would of course be imperative in containing any fire that spread, but they would not be sufficient, so we immediately began stockpiling more. Likewise, we have laid on food vastly in excess of the usual demands of the city, in case the dragon-lords left their ground troops to lay siege against us while their nobility journeyed farther afield. The people of Covotana saw in us the security that they were so sorely lacking with all of the armies of Espher drawn away north. Surely you, too, can see that we are your natural allies against such monstrous invaders?”

This sort of blatant deception was almost laughable after the graceful waltzes of words the ambassador usually carried along. Loudly announcing her siege readiness to the opposing commander so that he would lose heart. It was almost as ridiculous as his own ploy suggesting that Espher’s standing army had any sort of siege weaponry available to it. It was a fair trade he supposed. A thrust and riposte.

Still, he could not let the rest of the lie pass by so easily as he accepted her claims that she had somehow conjured up supplies enough to feed both her saints and the city. “If you meant to reinforce us, then you would have marched north, not here. If you meant to be a friend to Espher, you would have fought by our side, not stabbed us in the back. Once more, dear Ambassador, I must ask you to err on the side of truth when spinning your tales. I am not some peasant to be easily impressed with a sack of hardtack and armored men when trouble rears its head. Your saints are ill equipped to face dragons, and you could not have held this city if the Arazi came, which is why you left the real fighting to us. It is why you have always left Espher in peace. Because you know that our Shadebound are the shield that protects you from the creatures of the wild, and that your stifling religion would not suffer us to live if we were one of your dominions.”

He forced another smile. “Stuck between theology and reality, leaving us in peace, was ever the simplest solution. Might I ask why that has changed?”

“While I resent the implication that we are not here to offer succor to your poor and suffering common folk, I must admit that there is some logic to your statement. And it is for that reason that I have long remained here, advising a light hand and caution to my beloved husband.” Her husband, the Emperor of Agrant, greatest of all polygamists given that every woman of age and rank within his kingdom became his bride. “You understand that neither one of us wanted this outcome?”

“Neither one of you and I, or neither one of you and your emperor?”

There was a moment when he thought she might falter, but it seemed that the oiled gears of her diplomacy were too well made to be so easily knocked out of alignment. “We are one and the same. I speak with his voice. And here in this carriage where prying ears cannot hear, I will readily admit that all you have said is true. So long as we had some control over you, Agrant was content to allow Espher to live free. But were you to become vassals of the Arazi? That would change matters greatly. What would you have had me do?”

Anger flared within Artemio at last. He should have been furious to see his city stolen out from under him, but he was so exhausted from the war that he had taken it in stride, just another problem to solve. Now he was being told that this whole thing could have been avoided? That Agrant had the good sense to leave Espher in its rightful place?

“If all of that were so, you could have trusted in us to do what we have always done. You could have had faith in my abilities.”

“My faith is reserved for my god.” She glanced out of the window once more, solemnity creeping into her expression. “The choice had to be made swiftly, and I do not regret it. Would you have trusted in some unknown general to best the Arazi?”

“I was not unknown to you, Ambassador.” There was an edge of a growl in his voice.

“Wit in conversation and a skill for battlefield tactics do not inform each other.” Her head snapped around, and she returned at least some measure of his irritation. “All I knew was that the Cerva were placing their trust in your abilities despite all the many reasons they should not. In truth, I believed you had blackmailed your way into a position far beyond your ability.”

She took a steadying breath and then spoke as calmly as if she had not but a moment ago been enraged. “I am pleased to see that it was not the case, and that you will continue to serve as an able defender of these lands. I also appreciate your own faith in my ability to know all, but I am not divine. We mortals must work from the little we have seen and heard, must we not?”

His eyes narrowed at that. “And what was it that you had seen and heard that made you think so little of me?”

“A cunning mind but ambition burning brighter than I think even you yourself know. It is like a pyre, on which all you judge to be your moral inferiors will burn.” She let out an unsteady breath. Almost like excitement. If the subject had been something else, and the situation vastly different, he might have thought it was flirtation. But she was a married woman, of course. Married to a man she likely had never met but committed to his cause with a frightening devotion. Whatever it was, it was over in just a moment, and she carried on. “Quite daunting, I should imagine. Doubtless it served you well as a leader, but if you were confounded by a lack of acknowledgement of your talents, you can see why I might think that it would lead you astray?”

His own reply was quite subdued by comparison. Devoid of all feeling. As he had always been taught to make it. “I have no ambition but to serve.”

“To serve to the fullest of your abilities? To serve as you judge best?” She let a small smile play over her lips as she spoke, treating him to warmth in her gaze that he felt that he was in no way deserving or desirous of. “This urge of yours, to test yourself against the great and powerful. I do not know if it comes from how you grew on the sidelines of high society, if it is a result of your heredity, or if it is simply the only safe expression you had for your natural desire to rule. You cannot even recognize it as ambition, can you?”

Her head cocked to the side as she was rocked steadily, a hint of sunset penetrating the clouds above to glint off it through the window.

“If Espher was best served by another, I would gladly step aside.” He held up his empty hands, as if he were releasing the reins of some invisible horse.

“Once they had proven themselves your better, of course.” She smirked. “Which you would strive against with everything in you so that you might judge them worthy only if they could best you in every domain you consider yourself to excel in. Silly me. How could I not have seen that as an absence of ambition?”

Artemio shifted uncomfortably. He did not like to think of himself in such terms. He did not like for others to think of him in such terms. There was a danger in ambition. Not for others, but for the scions of an overthrown king. Usurpers would always have to fear the true line’s return, and if the Volpe line was to survive, it had to bury any and all ambition. Sublimate it into other pursuits. Proving their worth to Espher, always. Perhaps that was the ambition she spoke of. The desire to prove that he was worthy of the ongoing survival that the world had inexplicably granted him. His father had his bitter war with Agrant, who he blamed for the rise of the Cerva. Artemio, his puzzles, mysteries, and histories. He had meant to make his mind an invaluable tool. A head too full of useful things to ever be parted from his shoulders. “Do you have a point you are ambling towards, Ambassador?”

“It is simple, my dear.” She smiled through his rudeness. “You wish to place yourself as a moral authority. To judge all through objective eyes. Yet you are not objective, you are a player in this tale, not merely its observer. You say to me that you would cede your position if it was for Espher’s betterment, yet mere moments ago you told me that you would never cede her sovereignty regardless of circumstance. Can you not see the contradiction?”

“Without sovereignty, Espher ceases to be Espher. It becomes a shadow of Agrant dressed in the corpse of what it once was.” He was straining to be diplomatic, but there were certain truths even he could not grease. “I cannot… no matter how I may wish to meet you in a compromise that pleases you in our negotiations. I cannot allow Espher to die, whether that death be swift or slow and lingering, with the corpse listing on. I cannot. I will not.”

There was nothing but the trundle of wheels over cobbles for a time. The gentle rocking of the carriage in motion, the distant, subdued sounds of life going on. A testament to just how little sovereignty actually mattered to the average citizen. The baker rose before dawn to make his bread, and so long as the flour delivery arrived, he had no care for the land on which the grain was grown or which flag fluttered above it. The truth of it bore down on Artemio as though he were the cobbles beneath the carriage. They didn’t care. None of them cared. The wars and manipulation and ceaseless effort that the nobility put into ruling meant as little to them as the rain a continent away. They saw no further than their next meal.

Modesta’s voice cut through his reverie. “Each conversation that we share provides me with a more profound insight into your thoughts. Through understanding we shall reach the compromise that we both seek. Is this not the purpose of all conversation?”

“Then I shall endeavor to go on making myself crystal clear.” He spoke softly now, not humbled by the truth of the common man, but so incensed by it that he could barely contain his rage. “No compromise in which Espher becomes a vassal state to Agrant will ever be acceptable.”

She let out a full-bodied laugh, rich as chocolate. “Do you feel that you have been less than clear in that?”

“I feel that you do not understand it as you should.”

“I understand, Artemio. So long as Espher retains sovereignty and identity, you will accept any other compromise for the return of your city.” She was smiling coyly when he met her gaze. “Correct?”

It was enough. He managed a laugh of his own. “Not quite. But with those rules established, we might move forward with the negotiations in good faith.”

The carriage stilled as she threw up her hands as though despairing. “If there are no further constraints that you wish to place upon me, I believe we have arrived. Was there anything further you wished to demand of me, as your hostage?”

He offered her his hand as they rose. “I shall be sure to let you know if I think of anything, Ambassador.”

5 - To the Victor
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

For all that the city was unchanged, the palace could not have been more different. It was a silent as a tomb the moment they stepped inside. It was too early in the conquest for any of the established families to start sending out forays. They would be secured behind their walls in villas across the city, in their little fiefdoms, guarded by their private armies. Even if they did muster some attempt to sidle into Agrantine favor, it would only be second sons or wives making the attempt. The true decision makers of Espher lay beyond the city walls. The powerful had ridden out beside Artemio with the vast majority of the fighting power Espher’s upper class could muster.

For all of the exhortations that his sister had been doling out, no statues had been torn down or paintings shredded. The palace and its furnishings were as pristine as the day Artemio had left. Presumably because the servants had remained behind and no longer had to contend with the dust and filth the courtiers trod in with them. He supposed that the kitchens would be still and silent too, but for a pot or two simmering away. The Agrantine had no delicacies, such decadence was frowned upon. Likewise, the wine cellars had likely gone untouched too. Leaving sommeliers and butlers with little to do but take stock and hope for brighter days. Or, more likely, to indulge in some long-overdue holidaying.

Even the royal colors still hung everywhere Artemio looked. Presumably, the Agrantine felt no real need to make a display of their ownership here inside the palace, where nobody was looking. Out in the city, it was a necessary reminder, to establish their dominance. Likewise, the city walls needed to be seen flying the black, but here, it was presumably a waste of time and dye. Here there could be no question of who ruled, because there was nobody to speak. They passed by one or two of the sword-saints who had taken the city, and each time, Artemio did his best to take the measure of them. They were dressed more like monks than soldiers, members of some holy order whose only iconography was the dull scabbard at their hip.

Their swords were a matter of some interest for Artemio, star-forged steel. Perhaps his interest in them should have been more practical, driven by a fear of being upon the receiving end of one of them, but in truth, it was primarily academic. He had heard folktales of the charms passed down to ward off shades by the common folk in the outer reaches of Espher—not the tales themselves, of course, but the recounting of them by those throughout history who had sought them out—and of those described by wizened old women who kept such lore, meteoric iron was always spoken of as the most potent. There had been considerably too little academic interest in the subject in Artemio’s opinion. Almost as though knowledge of such a thing had been deliberately suppressed and those who had pursued it had been pushed to the side where they struggled even to have their meticulous work published. As such the philosophical cause of why such things repelled shades were barely touched upon. Were circumstances different, he would likely have been begging his captors to draw steel and give him some time to study the devices that allowed them to wound the dead as though they still lived, but at present it seemed impolitic.

They would fight like Modesta, he knew. There was a single school of fencing in Agrant, a single discipline taught by rote to every fighting man and woman. Although fencing seemed the wrong term for it. There was no flair or fancy to their motions. Simply repetition and reinforcement of the same cuts. Over and over, until the memory of making them was so ingrained in the memories of the muscles of Agrant’s soldiery that they could perform each of them in sequence without need of thought. Some pursued this “art” further, refining each stroke of their sword and every parry until it took on the look of a beautiful display. Among those, the best became sword-saints, bequeathed one of the blades of their order by one who was retiring or who had expired. Modesta did not carry one of those blades. She was no saint; she was a wife of the emperor, and while it no doubt would have been quite a statement of faith in her abilities were she to be granted one, it probably would not have been well received in a nation so reliant upon shades were a weapon forged to destroy them carried in by a foreign ambassador.

The very first time they had met, Ambassador Modesta had demonstrated her form. Not in some gauche display of martial prowess but as an act of meditation, or possibly even worship, that he had intruded upon. There were few things in life that Artemio would admit had frightened him, but what he had seen in that little courtyard garden played out over and over in his mind, even now. The precise movements, all flowing from one to the next without pause, without mercy. Even if her sword was not infused with any unearthly metal that would let it slice through the power of his shades, it was still a heavy length of steel that would have bent an Espheran rapier in half with a love-tap. Yet she swung it around as though it were weightless. As though it were merely an extension of her own arm. For all of Harmony’s much-vaunted skill with the blade, he could not see a way in which she could best Modesta. Not alone.

Yet she carried no blade now, no longer was she alone with only a few trusted servants in an enemy stronghold. Now she was the reigning ruler, at least in the interim. What need had she for a sword when she had so many skilled warriors in reach of her shout?

When Modesta noticed him paying entirely too much attention to the armed guards, he quickly jumped back to his original train of thought. “I would have thought there would be some of those delightful portraits of the emperor posted up about the place by now.”

“My dear husband’s picture sits by my bedside, of course, but it has not been our practice to enforce the display of the imperial majesty in conquered kingdoms for many years. They tend to be bottlenecks for dissent. So easy to mar a picture in the dead of night when the courage to strike at the face itself is absent. We remove the temptation and thus protect the foolish from their own excesses. You have some experience of that, I believe?”

“I shall have to update our histories to reflect this change in policy.” He did not want to like Modesta. He truly didn’t. She had, of course, impressed him in their first meeting, because she was an impressive woman, but the fact of the matter was that for all that they were playing games with words for the obvious dull political reasons, he was beginning to find it fun instead of a chore.

“True power does not require the display of flags or the hanging of pictures,” Modesta intoned with mock seriousness. “It is unseen, unspoken, but known by all. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“I would, but at the same time, you would have heard no objection from me if all the green hangings had been torn down.” He leaned over slightly as though confiding a secret. “I’ve always felt it made the place look a little rustic.”

“Very droll,” she replied with a little roll of her eyes. “With the Cerva dethroned, you now feel comfortable enough to make such jokes about striking their colors?”

Back and forth. Back and forth. They quipped and ducked and dodged. Artemio held up his hands. “It is no slight upon the man if his ancestors selected a tone that I personally find displeasing to the eye. But you are quite right of course. I should not be so flippant in these matters. I assume you are leaving their standards hanging because you expect their imminent return?”

That brought their repartee to an abrupt halt. Modesta let out a sigh. “Perhaps this is the sort of conversation best conducted in a place other than the halls?”

Suitably chagrined, Artemio felt a little of his enjoyment in the situation fade. “My apologies once more, Ambassador. You are quite right.”

Yet it seemed that Modesta was not finished bandying with him. Perhaps she had spent too long in Espher, where wordplay was a hobby as much as a necessity. Or perhaps the sullen-faced saints provided little in the way of meaningful conversation. She grinned at him widely, showing him in no uncertain terms that his conversation was welcome. “No matter how often I hear you say those words, I cannot help but savor them. Would you say them again for me, just once more?”

He let out a little snort of laughter before he caught himself. Relief as much as amusement. “Only when you have earned them, Ambassador.”

They were still chuckling when they rounded the next corner and came face-to-face with the queen.

Cadence Cerva had never looked less than composed on any of the occasions that Artemio had met her. Even now, though her red-rimmed eyes widened in shock at his sudden appearance, her expression remained flawless and tempered. Her mouth did not fall open into gawking, and there was no quaver in her voice when she asked, “Am I to understand that Espher is back in friendly hands?”

Guilt washed over Artemio. Here he was cracking jokes with the enemy while his queen was held hostage, completely alone. “Alas, no, your Majesty. I am merely a visitor, here to negotiate the Agrantine withdrawal.”

She continued to have eyes only for him. It was as though Ambassador Modesta were invisible. “I have never known of the Agrantine Empire willingly ceding an inch of territory once they had claimed it.”

“Nor I, your Majesty.” He sighed as he remembered himself at last and dropped into a bow. “Yet here I am, nonetheless, hoping that we might bring this matter to an end without recourse to violence.”

“Violence is the only language they speak, Duke Volpe. They might pretend at conversation, but unless blood is spilled, the Agrantine do not believe a word that has been said.”

After that particular slur against her people, Modesta piped up, just to remind them she was there. “What luck to have met you here, your Majesty. We were just on our way to find you. Would you care to join us for some refreshments and a discussion of Espher’s future?”

Cadence’s voice wavered as she snapped back, “Like a lamb with the butcher’s blade to its throat would bleat for its future?”

She had spent a long and fruitful career as a politician never saying such things. It startled Artemio more than a little, but Modesta just chuckled. “It seems that we have two plain speakers among us at least. No, your Majesty. Rather we shall talk as two butchers with blades pressed to the other’s neck instead. Has nobody informed you that the Espheran army has returned?”

She was thin-lipped as she answered. “I am no longer kept abridge of the latest gossip.”

Artemio made his attempt at a reassuring smile but felt quite certain he had overshot into a pained expression. “The city is under siege and shall remain so until the Agrantine have departed.”

“So, I’ve starvation to face in addition to imprisonment, what a delight,” the queen replied in a monotone.

“I do not believe it will come to that.” Artemio tried to cheer her. “The ambassador…”

Once more, her impatience cut through the carefully cultivated veneer of civility that had been her only armor in a foreign court for all these years. “The ambassador is the pretty face that the monster shows to fool you into complacency. You have been taken in, Duke Volpe. You have succumbed to her wit and wiles. This is not a storybook tale. There is no happy ending for either one of us. Death, privation, and misery are all that await under Agrant’s yoke, and now it is locked upon us.”

He could not let any sign of it show on his face, but Artemio believed her then. She had been young when she came to Espher. Some said too young. But those years before her marriage, she had lived in a kingdom under Agrantine rule. The emperor did not like to overplay his hand. When he could take nations as vassal states rather than conquer them outright, it was his preference. Thus when Agrant and the world at large was mapped, its own borders were markedly smaller than the thousands of miles that owed it fealty. It was a matter of politeness among foreign nobility not to comment upon another’s loss of sovereignty, just as it was ill will to stare at a bald man’s pate. Some matters were beyond the control of men, and for so many, one of those forces bore the golden eye sigil.

Modesta tried to keep up the jovial tone that had buoyed him along through their journey here, but he found himself flinching away from it. Recognizing it for what it was. The nectar that drew the bee in to drown.

“I dare say that the situation isn’t quite so grim. Wouldn’t you, Artemio?”

He presented a placid smile. Remembering himself all at once. “My queen has spoken, and I would not countenance contradicting her. Particularly in a matter where she has a wealth of experience.”

Ambassador Modesta threw back her head and laughed, and for just one moment, Artemio saw through her artifice. He had read in books of people throwing back their heads to laugh, just as he was certain Modesta had. And it was this that she attempted to mimic, not any real-life situation she had observed. There was nothing natural in her motions. In any of them. “So, I am to face two dour Espherans while I play the role of a humorless Agrantine. What dull hours shall we while away?”

He needed time to think. Time to gather information and piece together their next move. Modesta had promised him anything he might desire, so why not simply ask for it? “Might I have a few moments to consult with her Majesty and bring her abreast of the current situation?”

“Much as I would like to grant you this very minor request, I regret that I must serve as chaperone for the pair of you.” She opened her hands as she shrugged. Careful, controlled movements. How could Artemio have not seen before just how false it all was. “I could of course have one of my guards fulfill the same function, but they will then come to me and repeat the entire conversation, so in essence, you would merely be prolonging the matter. Should we not take the path of least resistance?”

Artemio scoffed. “I scarcely think that we require chaperoning. Her Majesty is a married woman.”

Modesta raised a brow. “I believe young widows also require the protection of their virtue by your custom?”

Their procession onwards through the palace had scarcely begun again before that brought them to a dead halt. If the halls had not already been eerily silent, this revelation would have been enough to tear all sound from them as it had torn the breath from Artemio’s body. He took but a moment to steady himself before forcing the words out. “The king is dead?”

The question hung among the three of them for a moment. None of them willing to admit to the well-known fact of the king’s twin who swapped in and out of the throne interchangeably. For Artemio, it would have been too much like giving a secret away to an enemy. To the queen, it was a constant impunity upon her honor, so she did what she could to avoid the subject entirely. Why Modesta went along with the mummer’s farce, Artemio could not fathom. But nonetheless she did.

When she gave answer, it did little to ease his horror. “I could not say. He certainly is not here. And while I am certain that you will announce the purity of your intentions towards her Majesty, you have form for seeking out her company in private and secluded places in the past. What fun it would be for your king to return after being so rudely dethroned only to find a bastard in his wife’s belly. Can you imagine the scene?”

Artemio couldn’t even look at the queen, and a red flush leapt up his neck and face, so bright it almost matched with his hair. “I would never…”

Modesta cut him off with a chuckle. As though they were not currently discussing regicide. “Ah, and here come the protestations of purity. Did I not predict them?”

“Fine.” Artemio swallowed down his discomfort and embarrassment and turned to look upon the queen once more. For all her certainty that their situation was severe, it seemed that even she could not help but smirk a little at his blush. “Your Majesty, though it pains me, I must ask after the health of the king.”

Her smirk faded faster than Artemio’s flushed cheeks. “It is… as Modesta says. We were separate when news of the attack came, and I do not know what became of him. He could be alive and well or dead and gone, and I would be none the wiser.”

He plodded on to the next confirmation. “And it is true that you opened the gates to the invaders?”

“We… There were no soldiers left to fend off an attack. It was on the advisement of those few who remained in court that I surrendered the city in the hope of dulling the savagery of the Agrantine.”

Already she tried to shift blame to her advisors, sensing that he would have taken a different path and trying to defer to his knowledge. She was the queen, yet she gave his opinion more weight than her own. It was ridiculous and a testament to how ill treated the woman had been since here arrival in Espher. She had been kept a prisoner in the palace, passed around like a common whore by her husband, and treated with none of the respect due to a woman in her position. And so, they were left with this ruler that could not rule.

In truth, given the numbers involved, he most likely would have thrown the gates open himself, gambling upon the return of sufficient numbers from the battle in the north to secure the city. Just as she had. The only difference was that he knew he wasn’t an agent working for the Agrantine. “And did it work?”

“There was little violence, in truth.” She had pinpoints of red upon her cheeks, not nearly so fearsome a blush as he had exhibited but some sign of shame at least. Was it the shame everyone would expect or the shame that she had deliberately betrayed the nation that had given her a home beyond Agrantine reach? “Some scuffles and a few examples made of the peasantry.”

“Is it not exactly as I said, Artemio?” Rich as silk and deep as the ocean, Modesta practically purred as she said it.

“Of course, Ambassador.” He didn’t even bother to glance her way. This was supposed to be a private conversation after all. “I did not doubt your word for a moment, I only seek to understand my queen’s views on the matter.”

“A clever sidestep.” Her laugh was similarly rich. Like the heavy cream the palace cooks liked to ladle over every dessert. “But forgive me, it was not my intention to intrude upon your private conversation. I am, after all, merely here for the sake of maintaining your decorum. Would you continue?”

The queen snapped at her again before another word could be spoken. “Your presence is the most likely cause of me losing my decorum, madam.”

It seemed that they would truly have no peace, and time alone with the queen was exactly what he craved the most in that moment. Not for the sordid reasons that Modesta suggested, but because Cadence was the one most likely to know what had actually happened to the king. Were he captive, the whole siege would be over. He was too valuable a hostage to be traded for only a city. Yet Modesta made no show of him. If he had fled the city as was being claimed, then logic would have dictated that he sought to join the army. Yet there had been no sign of him. At present, Artemio could only fear the worst. That the queen was a widow in truth. Though again, the absence of evidence of the king’s death added complications. It would only have made sense to make a show of his death and destroy the cohesion of the army outside. Yet here they sat with nothing. It was a mystery, and while tinkering with those was usually Artemio’s favorite pastime, today he had the burden of a kingdom upon his shoulders.

He wet his lips. “We can return to this conversation later, your Majesty. For now, it would seem prudent to hear what the ambassador proposes.”

She still glowered at Modesta as though she meant to burn a hole through her. The enmity there seemed real enough. But if they were both operatives of Agrant and one had trodden all over the long, slowly unveiling plan of the other, would that not have created a similar degree of annoyance? “So long as you are not foolish enough to believe a word of it as fact, I’m sure it will be most enlightening.”

They stopped dead in their procession once more, Modesta spinning on her heel, face blank of all emotion but for the little tremor of anger that she allowed to slip through. “Your Majesty, I am shocked and appalled at your implication. Is this how an ambassador to Espher is to be treated?”

Now that Artemio could see all this for artifice, he couldn’t help but find himself amused by the ambassador’s little displays. She knew exactly what was thought of her, and the fact that it was said so infrequently was considerably more unlikely than the few occasions that it did slip out. There was a chuckle edging into his voice that he had not meant to be there. “It was less of an implication and more of an outright statement, Ambassador. But I’m sure that in the interest of progress you can move past it.”

Finally, they emerged into the solarium after what had felt like hours of navigating the corridors of the palace. Where Artemio had first met, and taken breakfast with, the twin Cerva kings.

6 - The Spoils
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

There were still signs of them everywhere he looked. Even their seats seemed to have been left in the same place, as though they had been occupied but a single moment before. A knife still lay on the table, the one they had used to cut up apples. The last of the daylight peeked over the rim of the horizon, shining in through the windows and bathing them all in its blood-red light. Artemio strode to his accustomed seat opposite that of the kings and sat. The ambassador and queen, less comfortable and familiar with this place, seemed to dither before positioning themselves on one of the king’s chairs and a footstool by Artemio’s side respectively. It was not right for her to sit there so, as though she were subservient to him and not the other way around, but there was no way to change it now without provoking a scene. Taking a steadying breath, he put it out of his mind.

They were alone now. There was no more need for cowing words. “It seems that the time for tiptoeing around the subject is over. Ambassador, might you inform us as to the location and disposition of the king?”

“As her Majesty already told you, that is unknown at present.” Modesta smiled at him. “Do you doubt her word too?”

He didn’t say that he did, nor make any implication of it, but he could feel her stiffen at his side. A well-placed wedge between them in only a few words. Modesta truly had a talent. “It was my hope that you or your men might have access to more information on the matter.”

“Alas, by the time that my forces arrived at the palace, the Cerva king had vacated the premises. I can assure you that if there was more I could tell you, I would.” She gave a little shrug of her shoulders. “But enough about the past. It is time that the three of us discuss the future of Espher and what you mean to make of her. Unless you wish for Agrant to remain in place and maintain the peace?”

Cadence seemed to have softened at Artemio’s explanation that his doubt was directed towards her limited resources rather than her person, but her tongue certainly had not lost its edge. “The sooner you depart, the happier we shall all be.”

Servants shuffled in with a bottle of wine and glasses, hastily setting them down on the table and retreating in the awkward silence. After they were gone, Modesta resumed from where they had left off. “Let us discuss precisely how that might be achieved, shall we?”

Artemio leaned forward in his chair. “First, I shall go outside and direct my commanders to stand down, then they shall part to allow your army out of the gates. Afterwards, we shall march with you to the southern border to ensure that you encounter no unfortunate incidents. Then, alas, we shall part ways forever.”

“A polite and fitting end to this brief foray onto your sovereignty.” She was all smiles and soft edges. As though the more Cadence pressed her, the more fluid she would become. “Although I do hope that you spoke in error with regards to ejecting me along with the soldiery. It would be quite impolitic to throw the emperor’s wife out of your kingdom. Wouldn’t you say?”

“Alas, I fear that you will no longer be able to serve your function as ambassador with the trust between you and Espher so broken.” He cast a glance sideways at Cadence. She was still and silent for now. Resisting whatever urge she might have had to verbally assault the ambassador. It was only a matter of time before that dam broke. “But rest assured, I shall be happy to give a good account of you to our king and petition for your return. Once tempers have settled.”

“Most kind of you.” Modesta’s smile became more genuine. Except of course, that it didn’t. She knew how to fake a fake smile and her real one. Artemio wondered if that snake had any actual emotions at all or if she was hollow all the way through. “I know that you are not a man to take such promises lightly. So, the question now becomes, what can be done to facilitate our rapid arrival at your extremely practical plan for our withdrawal?”

He clapped his hands together. “You should pack your bags, gather any belongings, and pull down the black banners, then I believe that we are set.”

“I feel you are being facetious with me.” Her smile never wavered. “Would that be a correct assessment?”

Artemio leaned back in his seat with a sigh. “Just tell us what you want.”

It was rude. He knew that it was rude, but he was exhausted, and he was growing even more weary of dancing around her words. If she stated her price, then they could negotiate it down. Provided it was not too unreasonable.

At least Modesta seemed to take his bluntness in her stride. “In truth, what we seek the most for Espher is stability. As you so ably addressed earlier, it is not in our best interest to extend dominion over you, but neither can we tolerate a hostile power on our border when our attentions are needed elsewhere. When the Arazi circumvent you and march on us, do you think we can afford to be worrying about Espher?”

“I suspect an invasion is not the ideal means of acquiring an alliance.” He knew he was meant to be mediating here, as the central point between the fury of Cadence and the supposedly cold practicality of Modesta. Yet there was no escaping the fundamental fact of the situation. She had ordered Espher’s invasion.

Modesta paused to formulate her next answer. Something that was not a lie but gave no admission of wrongdoing on her part. “As I have explained already, our current circumstance were precipitated by the threat of the Arazi. It made our long-standing approach untenable…”

“There was no good reason for you to invade.” Cadence cut her off with a snarl. “There was no reason at all that I can see beyond a desperate grab at our sovereignty while our strength was directed elsewhere. The very thing that you claim Agrant fears with regards to us.”

“It was a matter of practicality.” She simply could not let go of this thread. “Duke Volpe, I am certain that you would have ordered the same thing in my position?”

“Quite possibly,” he conceded. “Yet I did not, and you did. And now you claim that you want our friendship? More than friendship. Military alliance. Quite a hole you have dug yourselves into, wouldn’t you say?”

Perhaps she was truly angry. Her lips seemed a little thinner. There was a touch of warmth in her voice. “One that I am currently trying to extricate all of us from while you seek to assign blame. Would you judge that to be entirely fair?”

“Fairness matters little in matters of statecraft,” he said as neutrally as he could muster. “As I’m sure we are all entirely too aware.”

There was another lull in the conversation. So Artemio took it on himself to press forward. “It was my understanding that you had a good relationship with the House of Cerva. May I ask what changed so abruptly? Other than the issue of draconic invaders?”

“Me,” Cadence piped up. “I was meant to be their hold on the kings, yet I will not bow to their false god.”

“While that was unfortunate, it was, in fact, a matter of inheritance.”

Cadence’s mouth snapped shut at the word. But Modesta had eyes only for Artemio. It was the somewhat inevitable result of the queen placing herself in a subordinate role in the proceedings. It made him the center of the ambassador’s attentions. “My husband is eternal. He shall outlive every one of us. And with such a span he thinks not in such short terms as a single reigning monarch, but in terms of dynasty. The Cerva line seem to be incapable of fostering such a dynasty. Thus, we must look to alternative solutions. Unless you happen to be currently with child, your Majesty?”

She glanced to the queen only after that was said, staring intently at Cadence with an open and calm expression that with just a little tweak would have been a challenge.

The queen most assuredly took it as such. Wilting in the face of it. “You know well that I am not.”

“Yet by the account of all who examined you before your gifting to Espher, there is no physical impairment at the root of this issue.” Modesta swiveled that burrowing stare back to Artemio. “Ergo, the fault must be in the Cerva line. You can understand why the chaos of a civil war in a neighbor would engender worry?”

Artemio felt oddly obliged to defend the absent twins. Though he had to admit that the lack of an heir had been something of a concern for everyone. “The king is not so old that the possibility of heirs is entirely gone.”

“We would have seen some sign by now if the union was to bear fruit. Even if it were fruit withered on the vine.” Again Modesta snapped back to Cadence. “Has there been any such sign, your Majesty?”

On first spying her, Artemio had been taken by her beauty, for if nothing else, the queen had that in her favor. Yet now she looked all the more beautiful, glowing from within with unabating rage. It called out to something in Artemio. Some desire, no doubt born of his own dead father’s foul temper, to soothe such anger when he saw it. She sneered at Modesta, and he even found that enchanting. “Your spies have served you well. There has not.”

“Spies?” Modesta chuckled. As if such a thought would never have occurred to her. As if she didn’t have a network of agents diligently feeding her intelligence. “Hardly a necessity when it comes to so vital a matter for the whole kingdom. I would hope your courtiers had the good grace to avoid sharing such gossip in your earshot, but you cannot have hoped that such a thing is not a subject of common discussion?”

The rage soured. Her face went back to the carefully cultivated blankness, and Cadence once more showed the two pinpricks of blush upon her cheeks. “What a joy to know that the comings and goings of my bedroom are fair game for tavern chatter.”

“The price of rule, I am afraid. For the private to become public.” Modesta swirled the wine in her glass. The only one of them to be partaking of the refreshments so far. “Regardless of how your dignity is offended, it has made certain factions within the Holy Court of Agrant nervous. Nervous enough that they have begun to apply pressure. To suggest to the Eternal Emperor that perhaps the price in uncertainty is not worth paying for the shield that Espher offers to our northern flank. Those who would simply make this another part of Agrant and damn that which was lost in the struggle. Many feel that stability matters more than the uniqueness of your assistance.”

There was a long, drawn-out pause in which Artemio almost felt compelled to speak. But there had been no question posed, so by the odd linguistic quirks of the Agrantine, the ambassador was not done. “I do not wish to trouble you with these matters of course. It has always been my wish to keep you from fearing your friend to the south, but it is my hope that you can understand that I am the one representing the moderate solution to the problem of Espher?”

It rang uncomfortably true in Artemio’s mind. While his usual area of study was history, the longevity of the Agrantine Empire made many patterns throughout that history crystal clear. There would have been many in that court who considered the special relationship between their nations to be heretical, who considered the Shadebound to be monsters, or at the very least the worldly consorts of monsters. The idea that many to the south wanted Espher gone was hardly a revelation to him. Only that the ambassador was now willing to speak of it so openly was a surprise. “I can understand why you withheld that particular piece of information, because yes, the idea that the maniac that led an invasion force to capture our capital being considered in any way moderate is invariably concerning.”

“The tragedy of it is that she is probably telling the truth.” Cadence sighed. “I’m amazed that we are even speaking at all. Agrant tends to prefer negotiations using fire and sharp implements.”

For the first time in all of their conversations, Ambassador Modesta looked truly uncomfortable. Staring down at the floor. As though she were giving away things that she did not want to. Artemio had no doubt that it was being exaggerated for effect and that she was parting with these secrets in a precisely calculated order to bring about her desired outcome, but at the same time, it seemed likely that she was telling them things that she would normally have been ordered to conceal. “Throughout the years, to maintain the peace between our nations, I have greatly oversold the cost in lives and gold to conquer Espher. I have lavishly praised her military capabilities, lamenting only that leadership was lacking. Now that is no longer the case. The situation has changed, and so my position changes with it. Now more than ever I can see the value in your independence. Would you prefer I adhere to dogma?”

Cadence leaned across to Artemio but did not bother to whisper. The room was too small and too silent for any such subterfuge. “This is a negotiating tactic. She positions herself as the polite compromise and threatens us with bringing the full might of Agrant to bear upon us if we do not snatch it from her hands, effusive with praise.”

Artemio’s eyes did not leave Modesta’s face for a moment. If she was offended at being called a liar once more, then she didn’t bother to show it. Why would she? When she had a ready defender in the form of him. “Is it? There can be no question that Agrant could bring forces to bear against us that we simply could not match. This idea of the cost of conquest being too high seems entirely in keeping with how they have made policy decisions in the past. Even if there is a good chance that she is deceiving us, is that a risk we can afford to run?”

“Agrant would have to drown us in blood.” Cadence sneered. “They would have to abandon dozens of other more tempting prospects, prizes that the emperor has been plotting for across centuries. They would cripple their own fighting power and make themselves a target for every scavenger and predator on the continent.”

She laid her hand on Artemio’s arm, and at last he turned to face her. To see her sincerity. “There is a reason they have compromised. There is a reason I was sent here to marry into the royal family and foster a bond between our nations. My children were meant to bridge the gap, to be pliable to Agrantine demands when the time came.”

It was no more than he had always suspected, but they were drifting into territory that it had always been wisest for members of his family in particular to avoid. “Without speaking ill of them, was the king not already sufficiently pliable, given the assistance received in ascending to the throne?”

Cadence was not under any such compunctions. She could admit what had long been rumored about the Cerva insurrection without any harm coming to her. “Perhaps my husband was not showing sufficient gratitude?”

“Or perhaps this is the consequence of a lack of heir, as I have already stated.” Modesta brought their attention back to her in short order. “Must you constantly assume the worst of me?”

“We are all judged by our actions, Ambassador.” Artemio could not be riled so easily. “And while you have given a good account of yourself with words, the fact remains that there are Agrantine soldiers in Covotana.”

She threw up her hands. “Which I will be more than happy to withdraw with all haste once our negotiations are complete. Have I not promised as much?”

Cadence spat her next words with such force Artemio almost expected Modesta to rock back under the weight of the blow. “What worth are your promises?”

“What I believe my queen means is that regardless of our negotiations, your soldiers will be removed from Espher.” Artemio turned the full weight of his own glare against the Agrantine. She had most assuredly been working on him the entire time they were talking. Twisting things to better manipulate him. It seemed that she considered him to be a settled arrangement. It was time to disabuse her of that illusion. They were enemies. Regardless of how politely they discussed the politics of the situation. “Whether it is by statecraft or warcraft, they shall not last.”

“Of course, we are all in agreement on that fact.” Modesta did not flinch. Perhaps she thought he was only mimicking the queen’s direction and had no anger of his own. In fact, she seemed almost pleased at the first hint of antagonism from him. “You and I are seeking the most peaceable outcome, are we not?”

“The most peaceable outcome would be your immediate departure without making further demands,” he replied, casually. “But I can fully understand that your diplomatic position here has been permanently compromised, and you now seek to create a new ‘solution’ to the Espher problem. One in which Agrant might expect to exercise a hold over us once more despite your misstep.”

Sensing that she had an ally in the room rather than another player, Cadence seemed to have acquired some nerve. She had the beginnings of a smile on her face. “Rather difficult to arrange when you’ve lost the king. No way of knowing what mood he’ll come back in, is there?”

Still Modesta remained unruffled. “Not so difficult as you might assume. There are options that the three of us might explore. If you still mean to seek peace?”

That particular phrasing—options that the three of them might explore—stuck in Artemio’s mind for a moment longer than her usual platitudes and slyness. It had significance. Whatever solution Modesta meant to propose involved all three of them, not just him and her, not just her and the queen. “I am not certain which options you are suggesting. Nor why those I can conceive of would require the three of us.”

Modesta leaned forward and set her wineglass down. For all she had made a show of drinking from it, it was barely touched. You could take the woman out of the ascetic theocracy, but you couldn’t take the ascetic theocracy out of the woman.

“You wish for me to lay my cards upon the table, so to speak?”

Cadence gave her answer. “We can neither assent to nor deny any bright idea you may have until we know what it is.” Leaning forward too, eyes brightening from the dull sheen they had been holding from the moment they’d encountered each other in the hall. She was coming alive again. Finally, they were getting to the heart of matters instead of all this endless circling.

“The king is gone. The throne of Espher empty,” Modesta said plainly. “It must be occupied. Someone must sit it. On this we are all agreed?”

“The king is neither gone nor not at this moment,” was Artemio’s measured reply. “The fact that he is beyond your reach does not remove him from the discussion.”

Modesta sighed. “Then let us consider the possibilities. He is dead or he is alive and fled like a coward to leave his wife alone to deal with the situation the moment that danger arose. In either one of these scenarios, can you conceive of any way in which he could then return to the throne?”

“In the latter, most certainly. He is the king.” Artemio set his jaw. He did not like where this conversation was going. Nor the quiver of realization that he saw passing through Cadence. “He is king because he is king, not because the people love him.”

Modesta pressed on. “And how might a king so unloved by his people rule? When he has lost their trust, and that of his court? How could he be trusted to lead again in a time of crisis?”

Artemio half expected Cadence to give answer to that. To defend her husband’s choice as something other than cowardice. The rational move of a rational man, removing an important hostage from the reach of an enemy. She did not speak up for him. Or rather, them. She loathed the two of them in truth. So, it was small wonder that she thought the worst of them now.

So Artemio had to say, “He is the king.”

“By what right is he king?” Modesta cocked her head to the side.

Artemio could feel the shape of this ploy now. He could feel the teeth of the trap closing in around him. “By right of blood.”

“So, whosoever has the best claim to the throne by blood should rule?”

Artemio did not answer. There was no answer that he could give that wouldn’t lead precisely where she wanted to lead him. Either blood won out, or there were contingencies in which it didn’t. If the contingencies existed, then this would have become one of them. If blood won out, then…

“That is the law.” Cadence interrupted his train of thought. “Both of man and nature.”

It was all Modesta needed. Her head snapped back to Artemio, and she pasted on an expression of faux horror. “Then forgive me, your Majesty, for failing to address you with your proper title. I hope that my misunderstanding of your customs has not given offense. Where I am from, the emperor rules not by virtue of his blood but by divine right. You can understand how the difference confused me?”

It had all been leading to this, and Artemio could not express how disappointed he was. He had thought that for once he was being treated as a human being with his own virtues, but it came back to blood once more. He was here because he was a useful tool.

“I am not the king.” It came out in a growl. “And I do not appreciate being addressed as such.”

Modesta feigned surprise. “You are not the descendant of the last true king of Espher?”

“I am no usurper.” His bellowed words shook the glass panes lining the roof. He did not know when he had gone from seated to standing or when his fists had clenched. Yet here he was looming over the two women like some ogre. Floorboards creaking beneath him.

In the moment that it took him to compose himself, the two women seemed to share a whole conversation in their meaningful glances. It took real effort to force his legs to bend and to settle back into his chair. He scooped up his own glass of wine from the table and took a solid gulp, hoping to wash down his anger. Artemio silently chastised himself, both for blurting out anything too true in front of the ambassador and because he was well aware that drinking heavily was hardly the best thing to improve your emotional control.

“What does this… idea have to do with me?” Cadence finally broke the silence.

“I have endeavored to keep myself abreast of the political situation in Espher as part and parcel of my duties here. There will be factions within your court that would not approve of the House of Volpe returning to power. Enough of them to provoke the civil war that we are seeking to avoid. Yet a significant proportion of those factions support your Majesty without reservation.” Modesta spoke with a swiftness that seemed at odds with her usual languid tone. As though she hoped to rush through this part without objections. It made the hair on the back of Artemio’s neck prickle, and it made him hang on every word for the subtext. “By combining both of your positions, we would be able to achieve the lasting stability that Agrant hopes to see. You can both see how such stability would be good for Espher beyond merely pleasing your neighbors, I hope?”

Even devoting his considerable attention to the conversation, he still couldn’t grasp what she was getting at. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure how the pair of us presenting a united front resolves the issue of the longevity and continuance in Espher.”

From his side, the queen groaned softly. “The ambassador is not suggesting that we form a political alliance, Duke Volpe. She is suggesting that we wed.”

For a breathless moment, Artemio tried to think about it objectively. Tried to distance himself from the situation. Tried not to listen to the panic rising in his gullet.

“You’re already married,” Artemio said. Definitely said, and not yelped. His head snapped around to Modesta to try again with a little more dignity. “She’s married!”

“To a man who is dead.” The ambassador shrugged. “Is it not the custom of Espher that widows are free to remarry as they please?”

“He isn’t dead!” Artemio snapped. Cadence was mysteriously quiet on the subject and even now was averting her eyes from him. Did she know something he did not? If he could just get her away from Modesta there might have been the opportunity to pry the truth from her, but under the watchful eye of the ambassador there wasn’t a hope of him dragging the truth out.

“Politically, he is.” Modesta seemed entirely unbothered by Artemio’s emotional reaction to the suggestion that the Cerva line had ended. As if she thought that it was just artifice, the same as the emotions she chose to show. “And of all people, I feel certain that you know the necessary precedent for a widow remarrying without the body of her spouse having been laid to rest?”

It was not an area which Artemio had given a great deal of study to, but it took very little reflection to pull up a multitude of cases that had come before the court. Enough of them that the precedent had been quite firmly set, and if the conditions were met, an assumption of death was laid down as fact. There had been few contesting voices over the years. If any storm-swept husbands had ever returned to find their bed warmed by another man, it had not made it into any official accounts. Still. “When they’re lost at sea! Not when…”

Modesta cut him off. “Lost at sea. So, when they are blatantly absent in a dangerous place with nobody the wiser as to their location. Is that not the very definition of our current situation?”

Artemio grit his teeth together, trying to contain his temper. Yet it was the queen who spoke next, with a quaver in her voice that made Artemio fear she was on the verge of tears at them so callously discussing her husband’s death. “Ambassador, you ask far too much.”

“Is she not beautiful? Is he not handsome? And what of wits. The pair of you seem matched well.” Modesta reached over the table and tried to take their hands, to draw them together. Neither one of the Espherans was having any of it. They jerked back from her grasp as though she carried an electric charge. Still, she pressed on with her insinuations. “A more mature woman would be an ideal match for a young man of little experience. Particularly in matters of continuance. Though I suspect you shall barely even notice the scant years between you. Indeed, I would think either one of you would consider yourself lucky to be so paired.”

The knee-jerk reaction would have been to reject the whole thing out of hand, declare he had no interest in the queen and inevitably insult her and drive a wedge between them in the meantime. It was a simple conversational trap, but he took a moment to avoid it. “While her Majesty is a perpetual wonder each time that I lay eyes upon her, she is wed, and I am not king. These indelible facts have not been altered simply because you wish for them to be so.”

The queen paused just long enough before launching into her own tirade to give Artemio a soft smile. “And while Duke Volpe is as charming a courtier as I’ve ever had the fortune to encounter, I am not some harlot to be passed from hand to hand as and when it best suits Agrant.”

It was strange that for all that Modesta had sought to find an easy compromise, she had instead struck against the two most solid possible points of opposition. Just as Artemio had spent all of his life avoiding any hint of impropriety towards the Cerva, to the point of murdering his own father in their service, so too had poor Cadence spent more than a small portion of her adult life as the subject of lewd and crude jokes on the part of the common man. It was a normal thing for peasants to long to tear down the beautiful and powerful, to make them nothing more than equals in their eyes, but there had been only one way to assail the unassailable majesty of the queen and that was through reference to the unfortunate matter of the twin kings sharing her.

At best in tavern tales, this was treated like some mummer’s farce with each man tagging out of the bedroom for rest while his duplicate took over the duty of sating the insatiable. At worst, there were graven images circulated among some of the young men of the House of Seven Shadows. Lewd images meant to entertain those of prurient interest. Among them was one depicting the queen in congress with the pair of the Cerva twins at once. It had sickened him then, and it sickened him now. Yet it was burned into his mind like everything else that he studied, and he could not rid himself of the afterimages, even here in her true radiance.

“My dear woman, I am not some rumormonger among your handmaidens. I would never suggest such a thing of you. You are, to all intents and purposes, a widow. You, a foreign queen in a land that holds no love for your people, in a time when hatred of the outsider is reaching its fever pitch amidst the threat of war on every side. Does the idea of a protector in these troubled times hold no appeal?””

Artemio managed to focus on the present for long enough to interject, “I love that we are simply brushing past the fact that you are the threat of war. Very diplomatic.”

“I do not need a protector.” Cadence carried on as though he had not said a word. “As you have told us, I am well loved among the Espheran court. I shall be well cared for regardless of how this situation resolves.”

With an audible sigh, Modesta settled back once again. Her wine remained untouched on the table between them. Artemio considered that he should really put his down before some fresh revelation had him flinging it about the room, but there was a comforting weight to the warm pewter in his hands. Surely a bad sign that proximity to wine, even when he did not drink it, felt like a comfort.

The ambassador pressed on. “Once more I must ask you to look to tomorrow’s tomorrow. For now, positioned as you are in such proximity to power, you are beloved. Yet when that fades, do you believe that you shall still be so cherished?”

“I do not need adoration, only the freedom to live beyond Agrantine reach.” Cadence had looked beautiful in her wrath, but in her disgust all the fine contours of her face contorted. This was a rage beyond anything Artemio had seen in her. “It will take the promise of more than some handsome young lordling to have me willingly place my head upon the block.”

For a long moment silence hung in the solarium once more. Servants scuttled about lighting lamps, but it was apparent that negotiations were not going to continue into the night. Not today.

Artemio forced himself to set down the cup, then steepled his fingers so that his unoccupied hands did not nervously reach for it once more. “It seems that we are at something of an impasse, Ambassador. The queen has no desire to marry me. I have no desire to usurp a throne. And it seems that you will have to present a more acceptable list of demands.”

“I notice that you did not say you did not wish to wed her Majesty.” Modesta could accurately portray a great many emotions, but this pseudo-flirtation looked almost comical on her. As though she were some excitable child. “Could it be that we have found the secret love of the famously chaste Duke Volpe?”

“It could not.” Artemio cut her off dead. If she meant to embarrass him, she would need to discover a new avenue of attack. This one was now shut. “No matter my admiration for her Majesty, whatever it may be, my duty to Espher comes first.”

Cadence settled back and crossed her arms across her chest, leading Artemio to look away swiftly. “Please make a different suggestion, Ambassador. Perhaps one that allows for the return of my husband to his throne?”

“You must understand that I have considered all of the other possibilities before presenting this one to you. Of course, I can see why it might be objectionable to you both, the reasons are obvious, but without a substantial change in Espher to adjust the course that it is set upon, I cannot justify my withdrawal.” She allowed some exhaustion to emerge from where it had been hidden. “If either of you has a better solution, then I beg you to share it with me. Will you please?”

No bright ideas immediately sprang to the minds of either member of the Espheran delegation. Artemio met the gaze of Cadence properly for the first time since the idea of their marriage was proposed, and he saw in her a resigned sadness. It was the expression that he had most associated with her until this moment. The face she wore when she thought that others could not see. Her life in Espher had not been an endless parade of comfort and joy, he knew that. The secrets of the royal bedchambers were widely discussed, but he had scarcely had any real time to consider what it must do to a person, to know that their love was ever founded in a deception. To be torn from family and home to be wed off to some foreign king you had never known and then to be treated so coarsely by them that none dare to speak of it.

If Artemio had been plucked from his family at her age and given a new lease on life, it would have delighted him. He would have been overjoyed to be loosed from his own shackles and placed in such a gilded cage. But she was not him, and few people hated their parents with the passion he had mustered over the decades.

In turn, she knew nothing of him but what she had been told. Reclusive, intelligent enough to be useful, born of an unfortunate line, most likely brought up to believe he was the rightful heir to the throne of Covotana. She could not know who he truly was because it would have been madness to show the truth, to show the gaping crack in his family’s armor, to let House Volpe’s many enemies know they were already divided.

Once more the ambassador spoke, offering empathy in place of her own weariness at proceedings. “Perhaps we should retire for the evening. I realize that all of this must have come as something of a shock to you. A night to sleep upon it may be in order, before any decisions are made. Shall we retire for the night?”

Both Artemio and the queen opened their mouths to speak, both already bristling at the suggestion that personal weakness was all that stood in the path of progress. As the lesser in station, it was of course Artemio who demurred. “After you.”

“My thanks, Duke Volpe.” She offered him a smile, still sad but honest. “I believe that I can speak for both of us when I tell you that no amount of rest is going to move our position on this matter, Ambassador.”

“Then perhaps you will be able to concoct some other solution that I have not seen. I do not claim omniscience. That part, my dear husband chooses not to share.” She waved forward one of her guardsmen, concealed previously amidst the hangings by the alcove where Artemio faintly suspected the servants usually lurked, waiting to bring forth fresh drinks on cue. “I believe you both have rooms in the palace already?”

“Mine was soaked in blood last I saw it.”

If Artemio had meant to shock her, he was sure to be sorely disappointed. Nothing short of a direct meteorite strike was likely to dent her composure if she did not choose to have it dented. “I’m sure the servants have seen to that by now.”

It was not until he had passed from the room that he realized Modesta had separated them so there was no chance to speak without her presence. She took her duty as chaperone most seriously, or the queen held some secret that she did not want shared.

7 - By Water and Night
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

Dawn had brought with it fresh madness, and it took little time for Harmony to begin sharing her ill temper. She had been placed in the position of defending her brother’s choices even when they were in complete opposition to what she herself would have done, and it took little time before that took its toll too.

The running of a siege was no small matter, even at the best of times, and these were far from them. There were supplies to secure, scouts to post, plans to be made. Every moment from sunrise she had been bombarded with questions that she had no answer to. She knew nothing of warfare, beyond the personal component that involved pushing sharp objects into people. Delegation seemed the key to success, but she did not know which of the many lords and ladies who presented themselves as experts knew the first thing about this business, and she suspected that in truth not one of them had either the knowledge or experience required to make a success of their tasks.

Relying upon Duchess Granchio’s judgement became a necessity early on, but Harmony could not shake the idea that the woman’s forthright nature didn’t actually prevent her from rearranging things to best suit herself, but instead made it so blatant that it no longer looked like guile at work. She suspected that if or when the woman stabbed her in the back, she’d proudly inform Harmony of the fact and ask her to turn around to save them any dancing about.

The worst part of it all, to Harmony’s mind, was that she did not know her own mind. Ever since she saw Orsina fall, her thoughts had been in chaos. She had been pulled in every direction and not once did she feel like the choices she was making were her own.

Here, she was doing her brother’s will. Back on the battlefield, she had been dragged by her love to chase after Orsina, even if it meant crossing the veil of death.

The clarity of thought she had always cherished by unloading all of the heavy lifting of decision making onto Artemio was gone. Art was gone. He had walked blithely into the jaws of death, just as Orsina had flung herself into doom. The only small comfort that Harmony felt was the knowledge that if he was killed, at least she would know about it. Admittedly, that was because she would be instantly killed too, but at least there would be none of this accursed doubt lingering around.

It was not until a meal was forced upon her by some secretaries that she realized how much of the day had already gone. The sun had passed its zenith somewhere up above the gathering storm-clouds while she was debating the merits of dividing their forces even more thinly so that parties could be sent out to seek reinforcement from those distant country nobles who had not provided manpower to the army, or at least to raid their winter stocks so that the exhausted and wounded soldiers they’d dragged back home might not starve or freeze out here on the open plains.

With her at its head, the gathered army still seemed to be rudderless. Every minor disagreement a divide just waiting to crack open and tear the whole endeavor apart. With her gone, she could not imagine it would hold. Without someone forcing all the bickering fools of court to behave themselves, she’d have bet that it wouldn’t last a day before the various factions with their myriad petty grievances realized that they currently had a small but functional army ready to march against anyone they disliked farther along the curved battle line. An attempt by Agrant to break the siege might have galvanized them, but none seemed to be forthcoming.

If anything, the absolute silence from the city did more to foster dread and dissent than anything else. There had not been sign or word from within. No sign that the capital they now stood watch over was not a necropolis. Even the many Shadebound among their number could not penetrate the age-old defenses of the city to confirm or deny the rumors that rippled through the lines.

Which brought Harmony to something of a problem. Artemio had left her in charge of this motley band of infighting imbeciles, but he had also left her with explicit instructions on how to enter the city under the cover of night, alone.

She cursed the contradiction. Cursed him for making her the one who had to decide what course to follow. All of her life, she had been following orders, first her father’s, then Art’s when it became clear that the old man was a few prickles short of a hedgehog. She had focused on keeping him safe, on making herself into the best protector and partner he could require, but in turn she had given up on so many of the things that made her into her own person. It was only with the arrival of Orsina and the blossoming of whatever it was they had that she had begun to push back against her brother’s unshakeable commandments. It was only as she was just beginning to see the light of day that everything had come collapsing in on her again.

She could feel the pressure mounting as the sun slipped lower in the sky. The time for her decision was swiftly approaching, and to make matters worse, there was nobody she could talk to. Art had always been there to help her through every decision. If not him, then Orsina. She was not used to holding whole arguments in her head instead of allowing them to spill out. She did not know who she was, or what she would do, without another person to reflect it back to her.

Duchess Granchio was almost brought into her confidence several times through the late afternoon, as she struggled internally with making the decision. But as much as she may have been struggling, and as well as Granchio was serving her purpose, Harmony was not a fool.

Granchio was already well positioned to take over command of the army after the day they had just spent working in harmony to pummel it into some semblance of order. By might of arms, whosoever controlled the army implicitly ruled all of Espher in this moment. The temptation must have been there from the start to remove Harmony from the equation and to place herself upon the makeshift throne. Harmony certainly wasn’t going to offer up more temptation by giving Granchio a clean shot at her.

There were two ways that it could go if she trusted Granchio. She would be decried by everyone for abandoning her post and all of her extremely temporary control over the situation would be snatched away before she could make her move, or the duchess could allow her to proceed with her plan to enter Covotana and make just enough noise outside the walls at an inopportune moment to result in Harmony’s untimely death by guardsmen. The latter had the added bonus of eliminating Artemio from the equation too, so that no vengeance might be sought if he did come sauntering back out of the city.

There was nobody in the Espheran camp she could trust with the truth of what she was going to do, so when dawn came and the courtiers gathered to demand more wisdom she had never claimed to possess, they would find her bedroll lying empty and their army entirely without command. There would be squabbling and bickering and likely outright bloodshed over the right to lead. Once that dust had settled, there would be the question of direction in the aftermath. Would whoever took the reins stay the course? Would they abandon Covotana to protect their own holdings from what seemed an inevitable full invasion from the south? Would whoever mastered the army care enough about the Volpes to resist the natural call to valor and attack the city head-on? There were too many questions, but in the flux of them, Harmony realized that she had one answer at least.

She was no longer considering the possibility of staying put. If she could find out whether Orsina was alive, then she had to. Just as she’d been feeling sorry for herself for having never made a decision in her life, even this one seemed to have been snatched out of her hands. Here in the camp barking orders, she was worse than useless, but in the city, she could find the answers she was seeking.

When it came down to it, it hardly seemed a choice at all.

Night fell. She recused herself from her duties and slunk away to her tent showing every part of her exhaustion in every line of her body. She had never been a talented liar, but in this case no deception was required. Inside the dubious privacy of her tent, she went about the motions, taking her mean sustenance—no larger a ration than any of the soldiers received—and then stripped out of the dress that politeness dictated she wore even here in the midst of the mud. Once it was off, she left it lying on the sunken boards and gave serious consideration to kicking it.

It wasn’t that she took any satisfaction in dressing like a man, she had always been very clear with Artemio about that when she borrowed his shirts and trousers, it was just that there was a limited range of motion, and limited practicality, in the dresses she was expected to wear. She needed to run, she needed to duck and dodge and spin and thrust. She did not need to look like an overly ornamental cake trapped on a plate.

So, she dug through the chest of clothing Artemio had left behind, mediocre as it was, and looked for an outfit in which to break into a city. All-black probably would have been the preference, to let her pass under cover of darkness unseen, but that would have presented a problem once she was inside the city. Someone dressed entirely in black would stand out, someone dressed in normal clothes could blend into a crowd. Once more, the decision was made for her, in this case by Artemio’s limited wardrobe. She chose some navy blue and the same crisp white shirts that Art always seemed to be wearing, layered on what she could to hold off the night’s cold, and then buckled her sword belt around it all. To that she added a knife, not of military construction, but from the board her dinner had been served on, tucked through the belt in case she found herself fighting in close quarters.

Finally, there was no more delay to be had, the sun was long down, the campfires about the siege burned bright, and it was time to go.

There was a tremor in her hands as she pried up the canvas and slipped outside, not from the effort or the cold, but from nerves. She did not fear the Agrantine; she did not even worry that in their much-vaunted saints she would meet her match. When it came to a straight fight between her and any number of men, she would always have bet heavily upon herself. But talent with the blade could not turn a crossbow bolt in the dark. If she was seen, the best she could hope for was death.

You did not grow to adulthood in a strict home without some degree of stealth training, but there was a vast difference between avoiding the creaking floorboard on the landing and approaching a besieged city under cover of darkness. For one thing, the air was crisp with frost and every breath that she drew seemed loud and felt sharp. For another, moving silently in boots fit for battlefield mud was a whole new conundrum, involving arching her foot inside them to stop the inevitable sucking sound as she lifted off from the ground. Every day was a learning experience.

She managed a grim smile to bolster her courage, then quickly closed her mouth again when she felt the cold in her teeth. She was not looking forward to dealing with the water.

To begin with, she was moving through Espheran camps, skirting the warm glow of the fires and the sounds of soldiers’ banter. It was hard not to creep closer and bask in the humanity of it. But not so hard that she was truly tempted. Around and around she went, along the curving line of fires that encircled Covotana. Drifting from the outer edge to the inner one as she moved between different nobles’ battalions. United they might stand, but by night they lay segregated by whoever paid their bill.

It was not so much the cold or the dread that was making Harmony consider giving up and heading back to her tent. It was the tension. There was no moment where she did not have to be entirely focused on everything she was doing and everything that was going on around her. On the battlefield that was an elation; now, so prolonged, it was a torment. Every movement had to be measured. She had to lurk in the long shadows, waiting for a man to fling up his hand in the midst of a tale so that the motion would cover her own.

If she were caught now, by her own men, she would not die. Her night’s quest would be over, of course, but she herself would go on. It would become a joke, a subject for snide comments. It would rob her of any ability to command, and gradually and quietly she would be shuffled away with comments about her brother’s superiority. But she would live.

The letter that she had left for Baroness Granchio as a seal of approval would never be read; the curmudgeonly old woman would never assume command, never rise to the role that she had been born for. Everything would become chaotic, and Espher’s army would falter. At this point, she didn’t give all that much of a damn, personally, but there was no question that Art would. She bent even lower as she passed by the next fire, moving out into the empty land between the siege and the city. She would stand out more clearly in the space beyond the shadows’ end, but her journey around the walls wasn’t yet done, and with a slow drift inwards she hoped to avoid any alarm if she was spotted. Just another soldier, wandering off from camp to make water. Making it in a dangerous place perhaps, but it wouldn’t be entirely unexpected. She pottered along, until she passed beyond one encampment, and then she was out far enough that neither the flames of camp nor the torches of the city touched her. The dark silent band between them where she was safe, where she could breathe without fear of it being heard.

Yet still she found she could not breathe. That each drag of air was a struggle. That her muscles tensed as though they sought to pull against her. She was certain she could not be seen by the starlight or the waning moon, but still she felt as if she must fling herself down. She was in reach of that unseen, whistling crossbow bolt in the dark now. That sudden, unknowable, ignominious death.

She couldn’t even muster terror. Not really. It wasn’t the death that she feared, but the failing. To fear death was the burden of commoners. Noble children were raised to know dishonor was a far more terrible thing. You could only die for a moment, but if you showed cowardice, that would be a tarnish on your family name for generations to come. Your shade, were it called at all, would be bound to some thankless industry unworthy of your station, passed off to some lesser line for a favor.

Failure, though, she had been drilled in failure since she was old enough to speak. Until Artemio showed his gift, they were both treated with the same rough hand, snapped back into place if they ever seemed to be growing askew. Even once their father’s focus tightened to only Art, some of the disdain still washed out over her. At least until she learned that excellence in all things was the ideal way to deflect it, and she proved herself time and again. With each success, the standards rose. A never-ending spiral staircase that she had to race up at a full gallop if she had any hope of holding off the contempt.

It had made her who she was, as strong as she was, as quick as she was, and as broken.

She could do this. She could do anything. Here in the darkness, she would not be seen, and the sounds that she made in her hurry would be concealed as she drew close to the sound of rushing water. She moved more swiftly now, focus returning as her blood heated with motion. The dreamlike quality of the whole strange night fled as her heart beat harder.

The waterway outlet was a thick iron grate in the white walls of the city set up six feet to keep animals from wandering in. If Harmony was not running, she wouldn’t have had the momentum to leap up and catch onto it. If she wasn’t running, she might have thought just how loud rusted metal could be when it shifted in its stone sockets. It practically screamed as she hung there, paralyzed with shock for a moment before she hauled herself up.

It was done now, no going back. If whichever unfortunate guard had drawn the short straw to stand watch over the drain had heard, then Harmony would just have to deal with the consequences.

She swung her legs down and kicked off the wall. Flinging herself out, drawing another rusty screech, her toes caught on the lip, and she was able to haul herself up. The crisscrossing bars were black by the moonlight, but it was a darkness that came away on her hands. She would be stained with the rust, all Art’s fine clothes smudged with orange and brown by the time she pushed her way through the gap. For a grown man, there wouldn’t have been enough room between the bars to gain entry, but for all her efforts building her strength, Harmony was still slim enough at the shoulders that there was only one uncomfortable moment before she was through, dropping hands down into the flow of sullied water.

She scrabbled for something to grasp so she could haul her hips through. The sword caught on the grate, and the knife fell from where it had been tucked, tumbling into the flow of water. The cacophony of the metal had only grown worse as she wriggled through, finally going silent when she twisted entirely around and managed to get unhooked.

Without the grate holding her up, she was dropped onto her back in the water. It rushed over her, deafening her and blinding her to whoever was out there. In that moment of failure, she could have died and felt that she deserved it, but when she shot up out of the water like a cork from spring wine, she was untouched and unseen.

A swift tug on her belt put everything back into place, and she was just considering how worthwhile searching for the knife would be when she heard death coming.

Death, in this case, sounded like the slapping of wet boots on stone. Someone else was in the waterway. She could have flung herself against a wall and hoped they didn’t have a torch, but that felt like flinging herself from a tall building and hoping gravity just wouldn’t notice. Instead, she did the only thing she could: She drew her sword and charged.

The waterway branched once it was out from under the wall, a dozen tunnels spreading beneath the city, gathering all that drained from the decorative fountains and the overflows of the canals. There was none of the pristine white stone down here. It was dug into the caldera itself; they were down in the crust of volcanic stone that the white polish was meant to hide. Black as night and rough as pumice. Here and there, a bubble showed, bitten into the rock so long ago that Harmony could not conceive of it. If she could find one big enough, she could duck inside, ambush the guard. She’d have a chance instead of running headlong towards the ever-louder thump of boots.

Fate did not furnish her with such an easy way out.

She burst out of the first tunnel she’d taken, and the last filtering moonlight faded. She was alone in total darkness and heading down a slippery slope into a narrower passage filled with water almost to the depth of her knees before she had even registered what was happening. Leaves and the smell of rot swirled around her.

Still the boots came closer.

Her own sounds echoed everywhere in this confined space. Booming along to alert the guard that there was someone here. Sloshing through the water slowed her, but it also disguised her passage better. The racket of all the water flushed through these tunnels provided a mask to her own splashing. She could only hope it would be enough.

Torchlight brightened the far end of the floodway, and with one last desperate gulp of air, Harmony ducked back down into the putrid water. Eyes scrunched up tight to keep every drop of the foul liquid out. Nose held to keep bubbles from escaping.

As it turned out, feeling like she was holding her breath differed greatly from actually holding it. The same tension was there, but now there came a burning too, starting by her hammering heart and slowly spreading out until she felt like it encompassed her whole being. Until all she could feel was the burning and the oily slick shifting of what she was generously calling water.

When she couldn’t stand it anymore, she had to surface, the burning air dragging her body up. She blew and spat as she emerged, trying not to taste the sweet corruption clinging to her lips. The light was gone; the guard had passed. She had to move.

The exhaustion of the day had been compounded by her little swim. Every part of her ached as she dragged her way along the tunnel in the direction that the light had come from, on the basis that it was the most likely path towards the surface. Or at least the direction that the guard was no longer in. She never quite managed more than a squelching jog through the pitch black of the tunnel, tracing one hand along the side to guide herself deeper.

She should have thought ahead. She should have brought a lantern. It would have been washed out by her little dip, but if she could see a damned thing, she might have been able to find another way around that. Each time she felt an opening beneath her hand, she ignored it and carried on straight ahead. Eventually she would reach a dead end or a way out. Then she could worry about choosing a turn.

Her foot came down into open air instead of soaked stone, and she tumbled forward. For a moment her mind could make no sense of what was happening, and then it had already happened. Her hand had snapped out and hooked in a pocket of water in the volcanic stone, her sword had battered off the stone as it rushed invisibly by her face. She might have fallen inches or miles, and there’d be no way to know until someone shone a light. Sound echoed around her in the chimney of stone, her own haggard breathing and the scrape of her boots as they tried to make more solid purchase. She ended up spread-eagled like a trodden frog on the wall. Hand and feet digging into the puddled indents where air bubbles had been expanded out by time and the flow of sewerage.

Muscles already strained and screaming, she tried to tuck her sword back in its scabbard to get another point of contact free and succeeded only in overbalancing herself. Harmony skidded down the slime-streaked wall. She was still blind, still scrabbling with bloodied fingers for anything to hold on to; she didn’t manage to stop herself again.

The wall gave way to open air, just as the floor had a moment before, and for one long awful moment she was just spinning in emptiness. Then she hit the water.

By all rights, she should have considered herself very lucky to have landed in water rather than on any of the much more solid materials of which this place was constructed, but with the air smacked out of her from the impact on the surface and the foul water rushing into her mouth when she gasped trying to replace it, Harmony was not feeling lucky. She choked and spluttered and scrambled for the side of the pool, the weight of her sodden clothes pulling her down and only her dwindling strength dragging her up.

For the first time, she realized that she might actually die down here in the dark. It wouldn’t be glorious or recorded in Artemio’s histories. It wouldn’t even be fair. She would just go from alive to not because she drowned or slipped. Nobody would ever find her body. It would decompose and come apart and wash away from the city, and there would be no trace of her left.

Her fingers sparked with pain as they made contact with the side. But compared with the dull chill spreading through her, the pain was almost welcome. She managed to grip onto the stone and pulled herself up, only to hit a wall. It was a rim on the edge of the pool, not another walkway.

Resting on her elbows for a moment, treading water, and nursing the rising bruise on her head, Harmony stopped to think. She had no idea where she was or how far she had fallen. She had no map of these waterways or any idea of how they were connected to the city. Even if she could see where she was going, there were even odds of going in circles until the guards finally found her. Or until her strength gave out.

This was meant to be simple. She was meant to stroll into the city unimpeded, find Kagan, and escape with him in tow. She was not meant to have gotten lost before she even got into Covotana. She was not meant to have fallen into invisible pits in the hungering dark or half drowned herself in the overflow from the streets somewhere up above.

She didn’t want to die. If she could have fallen in battle against some great enemy or fallen asleep some night in her love’s arms, it might have been different, but this death had no glory, only the dull thrum of horror.

Take inventory. Plan the attack. She was bruised and battered, missing some fingernails, nothing broken yet. Her sword was inexplicably in its sheath, the comforting weight doing its best to drag her down and drown her. Reason would have dictated that she drop it, shed the weight, but that was as likely as spontaneously learning to breathe the water.

She had never given much consideration to water, prior to this moment. It had been a drink when there was no wine to be had, mostly meant for horses. She’d learned to swim under her mother’s tutelage with the ever-present guardsmen standing with their backs turned to preserve her dignity, but that water had been different somehow. Harmless and even friendly. Buoying her up. She was no stranger to rain either, but that was just an irritation. This was something else entirely. Water should not have a pull to it. It should not have a strength and weight as mighty as the stone around it. Such a simple thing, known to everyone everywhere, and she’d misunderstood it completely.

“Water.” She spat the word, and more of the stuff she was cursing sprayed from her lips. The water she drank had never tasted so putrid. All the runoff of the city streets, all the filth they washed away found its way down here. This was the true taste of the city, and she retched. If she’d let herself throw up into this water, it probably would have made it cleaner.

Step one of any plan would have to be getting out of the accursed stuff. Hand by hand, she inched herself around the outside of the pool, careful to stay clear of the little waterfall coming from above, feeling the chill spritz coming up from where it hit the center of the cistern.

Every few feet she’d pause and stretch up, straining her exhausted arms in the hope of finding some opening, but each time her palm struck on solid stone again. By the third time she couldn’t hold back a little sob. This place had been built, once upon a time; there had to have been a way for whoever built it to get in and out. That was simple logic. A treacherous voice might have been whispering that they might have bricked off the passage afterwards, but she had to ignore it.

Harmony was going to get out of here. She was not dying without knowing what had happened to Orsina. Kagan would be waiting for her. Art was relying on her. She could drag him down into the drowning depths too. Not like this. Not for nothing.

Her shoulders had taken on the burning that her lungs had felt when she was submerged, but while that had expanded out and reached its limit swiftly enough, this burning just seemed to grow worse and worse, sending out sharp shocks along her back, her neck, her arms.

“Oh, just go in through the waterways. It won’t be well guarded.” She didn’t know when she’d started rambling to herself, but the sound of a human voice proved a great comfort. “Of course they aren’t well guarded, they’re a bloody labyrinth, Art.”

She hit on another flat patch of bubbled stone.

“You don’t need to guard a bloody labyrinth, because it guards itself. This one even drowns people for you.”

Another slap, another sting in her bloodied fingers. Another impassable barricade.

“What a wonderful dinner party conversation this will be. Art will be delighted to talk about how all the old dead people were terribly clever, building a maze into the one weak point in the defenses of the city. Orsina will…” Another sob caught in her throat. “Orsina…”

She had been trying not to think about Orsina. Trying not to think about the final moments when she’d fallen. When she’d won a war all by herself. Harmony had known she was powerful, it was clear from the special treatment the girl had gotten, from the way she’d come in with no education and laid her betters to waste. But to see that power unleashed. To see what her quiet, clever little mouse could do when pressed to her limits… it still seemed unreal.

“And Orsina will spend the whole time fussing over me and worrying, even though I obviously survived this mess just fine. Of course I did! It isn’t like we’re going to have a dinner party in the sewers.”

Her hand struck nothing. Flopping down to hit on flagstones or tile or whatever the ancient builders had thought was appropriate décor for their pitch-black death trap. Another little sob escaped Harmony as she realized that she still had to pull herself up.

If the water had seemed wicked before, now it became the true villain of her life story, sucking at her as she tried and failed to haul herself up. Dragging down at her dangling feet as she gave up on any hint of grace and wriggled and rolled her way out of the water like some great sodden slug being birthed.

Perhaps, in her retelling, she’d skip over this part. That and the part where she lay there in the entrance to the passage, dropped on her side like a horse run to death, heaving for breath and enduring the wretched smell of it all.

The longer she was down here, the greater her chances of being caught. She knew she had to move, but her body just refused to comply with her mind’s demands. It was quite comfortable here on the stone floor, thank you very much. Perhaps it could have a nap and then it might reconsider her demands?

She grit her teeth and rolled against the wall, setting her back against it and using her legs, which now had a similar consistency to overcooked pasta, to push herself upright. By water or steel, she was not dying down here.

The weight of her own sodden clothes seemed an insurmountable burden, but step by unsteady step she moved into the tunnel, each inch from the hiss of falling water a triumph, and a relief. As long as she kept moving, the cold couldn’t seep in any deeper. As long as she kept moving, she was getting closer to a way out.

8 - By Shadow and Steel
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

Harmony had been living in the House of Seven Shadows for more than a year. She had lived her life outside the supposed safety of her rooms blindfolded. She had the training that she needed for this place, for the dark tunnels and unmarked exploration. The fall and the chase had disoriented her, but it wasn’t as though she hadn’t gotten lost in the Shadebound school either. She just had to keep moving, mentally map, find the familiar, and reorient.

The distant hiss of the loathsome cistern was a beacon. She started plotting out from there, lurching from wall to wall to find openings. Registering the texture of the stone beneath her numbed fingers. She was not the genius her brother was acclaimed as. She couldn’t map the whole world in her head with a glance, but she could do this. Just as she’d done it when they first arrived in Covotana. Just as they’d navigated the halls of the Osservatore by night as children.

An opening to the left, then an opening to the right, equally spaced if she was any judge. Each step, she let her foot rest solidly before lifting the other. She wasn’t falling down any more holes. Down was the opposite direction to where she should be going, and it was only luck that she’d survived the last fall.

The passage curved, the smooth carved stone of masonry giving way to the rough-textured volcanic rock once more. The roof dropped to brush along the top of her hair. Tugging the few stray strands that had already managed to dry. With one hand held up in front of her face, she pressed on, plodding forward until she would have had to bend double to continue.

It was difficult to stop, to turn around and go back into territory she had already explored, but she had no choice. Not if she didn’t want to risk getting stuck. Just the thought of that was enough to set her mind screaming in terror. Back she went to try a side tunnel. The one on her left came first, previously her right. No point in this blind wandering if she didn’t keep track, didn’t map it out, didn’t think.

It occupied all her mind, the map that she was building, the demarcation between carved stone and natural tunnel. The parts that felt dry and those misted by fallen water. She needed it to occupy her mind, because the alternative was to think about the situation she was in, and that contemplation felt like a darker maze than the one she was currently walking.

A slope up ahead, slick with slime. Another overflow, leading down to the cistern. Not flowing now, but if rain came, she’d have had no hope of making it up. Even now it was a struggle. She went down on all fours, hooking with her aching fingers for the ridges in the stone for a hold as gravity tried to drag her back down. She needed to go up. The city. Kagan. Answers. Up was hope of survival.

She clawed, slipped back, scrambled, braced against the walls, and finally she made it to the top. By now the aches of the night’s exertions were fading to a worryingly distant thrum. The sort she’d only found after a long day of pushing too hard in her training, when at any moment any part of her might give out without warning. There was solid carved stone beneath her hands as she pushed up to standing, the same on the walls. She couldn’t help but feel that meant this was the right way. Farther into the parts man had made rather than those inherited from nature. The city was a built place, so surely built places would lead to the city.

Two exits on the left, one on the right, then the corridor hit a dead stop. She could hear her footsteps echo up above her, and reaching, she found no roof above her. A shaft. For a mad moment she considered climbing it, like she’d jostled her way up a chimney and emerged coated in soot during an overenthusiastic game of hide-and-seek as a child. Even as she reached up and felt out the size of the opening above, her arms began to tremor with the effort. She couldn’t climb vertically. Not now.

Back along to take a turn, left this time. The one tunnel on that side. Another slope, but gentle this time, and nowhere near so slick. Enough to make her feel almost confident before she came upon a damper patch and her foot skittered out from under her.

This was hell.

It was the only conclusion at which Harmony could rationally arrive after what had to be hours of wandering in the dark, backtracking and branching out and turning right around again when she found another dead end. She must have died in the reeking cistern, unable to find her way out, and now she had been condemned to some netherworld for crimes against some deity or other.

Religion had never featured heavily in Espher’s makeup. Having spirits with godlike powers at your beck and call slightly curbed any interest in those you couldn’t directly interact with, and the general consensus was that Espher’s nobility were too busy worshiping themselves to spare a thought for any higher power. Or indeed, to acknowledge that there was any higher power. Perhaps it was this lack of faith that had led to Harmony being condemned to this netherworld. She couldn’t think of any other particular affront to any given god that she might have committed. She was sure that there were some out there that would take offense at an atheist.

Every time she had to turn back, she had to go down again, slithering back into the deeper dark. She could see nothing, hear nothing, nothing but the distant, endless dripping. It may have not been hell, but this was assuredly what madness felt like. There was no question in Harmony’s mind that she would be spending the rest of her nights sleeping with a candle lit by her bedside. She never wanted to be back here. Never wanted to be reminded of this awful loss of her senses.

Would she be able to endure a blindfold again, if she was to ever return to the House of Seven Shadows? She kept her thoughts busy with such worries, they served as an ideal distraction from the much larger concern. That there was no way out. That this was hopeless.

She could not doubt. It would kill her as surely as another pitfall.

Despite the dread in each leaden step, she did not find another pitfall in her travels, leading her to suspect that she was at the lowest of all possible levels. This was not a thought that filled her with joy, even if it did mean less fear of an abrupt fall. She scrambled up steep inclines and turned and backtracked, and time would have lost all meaning if she wasn’t still desperately clinging to the map in her head. The smell was getting worse, and she tried to comfort herself with the thought that the reeking stench was a sure sign she was getting closer to humanity, but there was a world of difference between the runoff from the streets and fountains when compared with the foulness up ahead. The poor parts of the city made do with the same bucket or outhouse that had served mankind since time immemorial. Only the wealthy needed indoor plumbing and the sewers beneath. There was some sort of poetry to it, or possibly a bawdy limerick at least.

There was a grating in the wall up ahead of her, rusted iron crumbling to jagged shards beneath her grasp. From beyond it the reek of the sewer proper. It was the closest she’d come to an exit. There wasn’t that much to the sewers compared with this nightmare of dark tunnels. She could find her way out, find her way through to the cavern where the peasants had gathered in rebellion and then out to the canal. All she had to do was get through these bars.

She tried to squeeze into the gap in the crisscross of metal, but she could barely fit her head through, let alone her shoulders. Rusted metal caught at her hair, ripped at her scalp. The sharp smell of the wet iron overtook the putrid reek from up ahead for a moment, and she realized she was bleeding. Tears were running down her face too, blending with the muck and damp and blood. Not despair, never despair, but brutal frustration. She was so close.

Rearing back, she flung herself at the grate, as if sheer rage might overcome metal.

And it did.

The ancient rat-chewed mortar crumbled. The bars, rusted through, snapped. Harmony tumbled through, ripping clothes and flesh on the jagged remnants that were left behind. Momentum carried her on, past the rim of tilework and into the causeway beyond. Falling face-first into what lay down there.

Her wounds burned at its touch. If she didn’t die down here, disease was almost sure to take root. Her eyes and her mouth had slammed shut on impact with the bars, but it oozed up her nose, into her ears. Rearing up out of the filth, she tried to wipe it away with hands that were just as filthy.

This time she was sick, the dinner she’d eaten a lifetime ago burning back up her throat. It went on and on, racking her until she had nothing left inside but bile. With one last spit to clear her mouth, she stumbled on, clattering her shins on the raised side of the tunnel before struggling her way out.

The miasma rising up off the flow was enough to overwhelm all her other senses, but before she’d gotten out, she’d felt the slow drift of the unmentionable things around her. She knew which way this sewer was running, so she went against that flow, trudging along with the same dogged determination that had carried her through so many hours in the dark. One hand trailing the filth crusted on the walls, one foot stamping down before each step to be sure that it was solid ahead.

Even as the vileness pressed in all around her, she could not help feeling hope burning as surely as her infection.

She was going to live. She was going to make it. This was all going to be worth it.

Ahead of her, she saw shapes. Dim and grey and faded, but still, it meant light and sight were returning. She was so overjoyed that she staggered forward. So exultant in her coming freedom that as the flames burned brighter, dancing on the walls, it did not even occur to her that there was anything to fear.

She could not hear the footsteps approaching for her own squelching run. She could not bring any rational fear to bear when life was just around the corner.

Rounding the bend at a skidding pace, she breathed in the distant hint of fresh air. Then her long-useless eyes finally did their work, and she saw that between her and the distant open sky, a sword-saint stood waiting. Torch held aloft in one hand; sword drawn with the other.

“Who goes there?” he asked, though it seemed to be habitual rather than out of any real desire for an answer. She blinked hard, forcing her mind to process what her eyes were seeing. Dark brows drawn low, shaved head, dark robes, sword. Stance wasn’t familiar, but the level and angle of the sword held out before him was. Classic low guard.

Harmony could only imagine what she looked like after the journey through hell she had just endured. Some swamp shade crawling from the pits. And swamp was probably being generous given the various aromas swirling around her.

The taste of foulness was still on her lips when they parted. “Would you believe I’m just an innocent peasant who fell down a privy?”

She saw his lips moving as he translated her words into his own language.

Finally, he translated an answer back. “Would anyone?”

With a dull sense of obligation, Harmony drew her sword. The blade was streaked with water and worse, but it still shone in the torchlight. “I should imagine a cut from this will leave your wound poisoned.”

Another pause as he put together his words. “Is it not lucky that it isn’t going to touch me?”

As he advanced, long-drilled memories moved Harmony into a fighting stance, but even those automatic motions were sluggish. She was so far beyond tired that she had almost reached the distant shore on the other side where she could no longer feel her body anymore. There was no way in which she might win a fight in this state. A toddler could knock her down with a stick. Yet what other choice did she have but to fight? There would be no surrender. She did not look like a noblewoman now, and there would be no ransom on a peasant girl with a sword. All the protections she had taken for granted had fallen away.

“I can make this quick. Will you agree not to cause me trouble?”

“Oh, you stupid creature.” She forced a smile, even though it tasted like death. “I love trouble the way other women love baubles and babies.”

He feigned at her left, a classic opening of Espheran fencing, even if he used a cut instead of a thrust. She could see in the set of his feet that there would be no power behind it. Enough to kill her certainly, but not to break a guard. She sprang forward past the swipe, thrusting for his heart.

Or she would have, if her feet didn’t feel like lead and her arm could bear the weight of her weapon.

She was bludgeoned in the chest by the hilt of his sword for her uneven hop forward, stumbling sideways towards the stream of sewage and almost tripping right over the edge. While she may not have been so heavily endowed in the area of her chest as some of her so-called peers, there was certainly enough there that it cushioned the blow and hurt so badly she almost folded up around it.

She wheezed out, “Rude.”

Wasting time on words was not wise. With a twist of the wrist the saint’s blade went from parallel to Harmony to sweeping down at her from above. He must have swept it around, but the motion had been too quick for her dulled senses to follow. Only jumping back into the stream of sewage kept her innards from becoming her outtards.

“I don’t suppose that you could be convinced that I’d changed my mind and wish to come quietly?”

She’d surrendered the high ground and solid footing. In a sparring match, the opponent would usually allow her to concede when she was at such a disadvantage. Apparently the saint had not heard of that courtesy. Just before his blade touched the ground, he thrust forward, slipping under any defense she might have raised.

Only luck saved her. Her heel had come down on what may have been a dead rat or simply a particularly robust example of why a diet of only meats and cheeses were bad for the nobility. As she fumbled to get her blade around and parry, she slipped.

The razor edge of the saint’s sword grazed past her cheek as she fell, parting those unfortunate hairs by her ear that had not been plastered down by filth.

She slid or was dragged along by the current. As her face hit the water, she was blinded for a moment. It was more luck, keeping her from the immediate skewering that the saint was inevitably trying to deliver.

She flung herself into a roll, trying to regain her footing and bringing her blade about. Her eyes burned; she moved on instinct. Practice guided her blade up to parry the next thrust, but the jarring force of it left her arm aching. She was not facing a fencer with a rapier. This was a length of solid metal being swung about with the same deft grace as the delicate needle of steel she wielded.

There was a moment’s respite as her sight returned. The saint sniffed at the air, then hopped down into the channel to face her on equal footing. “Do you have no more words to bandy around with me?”

He strode forward, cutting at her from one side then the next, the torch flaring green behind him as foul gases erupted from the flow around their knees. She parried one cut, but it drove her guard down so hard that she had to fling herself clear of the next cut, again. Giving ground. Losing.

In her best form, she’d have been pressed to keep up with this man. Today she’d be lucky to survive long enough to curse his name.

As she fell, she kicked out, twisting his knee out from the impact so he couldn’t follow up. It was a desperate move, but she was desperate, so it was apt. Her arm had scarcely brushed the soft bottom of the channel before she was springing back up, flicking her now cupped hand at the saint’s face. The scoop of sewage fell between them, striking the hem of his already soiled robes.

“Are all of Espher’s fighters so pathetic?”

He was trying to rile her, trying to get her on the offensive instead of having to chase her down. If she could have felt any emotion beyond exhausted numbness, perhaps it would have been effective, and he would have been able to cut her down and get on with the more important business of washing off his boots. But she didn’t feel a thing.

She did stumble forward to face him, but that was mostly from the momentum of regaining her feet, and what he might have hoped were thrusts made clumsy by anger were purely clumsy because she was half asleep on her feet. He parried each with barely a flicker from his ready stance, slapping them wide with the flat of his blade and awaiting the opportunity that was sure to come. When she thrust for his face, he leaned a little to the side and brought his blade around to block her from slicing at him on the way back. It was a casual motion, arrogant, born of repetition. She saw bits and pieces of an Espheran fencer’s motions in his art, and she wanted to test how much of it would play out here. When she pressed in at his neck, they locked blades, just as they’d both been trained, her lesser weight against his bulk. His strength against hers.

There was no way she could win a test of might. The close game was for brutes and butchers when it came to fencing, and just the weight of his weapon would have been enough to turn the fight against her. He pressed, and she bowed back. His face a dark mask, silhouetted by the torch behind him. “No more wit?”

She pursed her lips and spat. All the fouled water that had rushed into her mouth when she’d fallen, she’d kept there, and now it went into his face. Into his eyes. Burning them, just as hers had been burning all night. He let out a shrill cry. Whether disgust or pain, Harmony didn’t know.

He reared back, and she hooked a foot out to catch him behind the ankle and pushed. She rode him down, blades still locked. He had just opened his mouth to bellow in rage as he disappeared under the scummy surface of the sewage.

His torch went under with him, and the world plunged back into total darkness. Harmony could feel him shifting beneath her, their blades scraping together. He wasn’t getting out that easily. He might have had weight on her, but she had leverage on her side now. She had the high ground, such as it was, and she could bring all her weight down to keep his blade pinned to his chest. His body held beneath the surface. His mouth had already been open. The sewage must have rushed in. As he tried to retch and spit it out, more would intrude. All the indignities she had suffered through in the hours of the labyrinth, were inflicted on him in a moment.

As he bucked beneath her, she did not move. All pressure on the sword abandoned, she did not move. Only when his scrabbling hands clawed up the length of her and caught hold of her arms did she finally haul herself up. He burst out of the sewage, gasping for air and only managing to gulp down more of the filth.

It would be his last breath.

Harmony slammed the tip of her rapier down into his chest. Glancing off submerged bone, then hitting home in the soft red beneath. His piss-rimmed eyes bulged wide, and then he sank back into the flow.

Shaking and stumbling, she put her foot onto his chest to stop him drifting away, and she waited. Beneath her, the body jerked once, twice. Bubbles came up to the surface. The red of his blood already washed away in the kaleidoscope of effluence flowing by.

She waited for the very last tremors to pass though him. She waited until she was sure he was dead. So many hours had been wasted down in the tunnels. What were a few extra minutes now to keep a knife from her back?

When at last she was satisfied that the work was done, she fumbled her sword back into its clogged sheath and staggered towards the distant breeze.

So close now. She couldn’t taste it, because her mouth was full of bile and things more vile, but she could feel it even through the layers of grime on her skin. Even through the thick crust forming all over her, the cool of fresh air cut in.

She was going to live. She was going to make it. After everything she had endured, she was going to survive. And she was going to take a bath. More than one. A hundred baths.

Light glowed at the end of the tunnel. Not bright torchlight or the blinding sun but the soft touch of moonlight drifting in, as though through a veil. Now the end was in sight, she almost faltered. The strength that should have long ago departed had been replaced at some point by sheer willpower, but even that was not a limitless resource, and somewhere between the dark and the fight and the sewage, it had given out. She rested, with one hand against the wall, the way it had been all along the tunnel. The flow of sewage and the side channels it had flowed from had been left behind, but out of habit, she was still tracing her way along by touch.

Just a few more steps and it was over. Just a little farther.

She marshaled what was left of her determination and stumbled on, coming up the slope, pressing through the wide bars blocking entry to the sewer, and then stopping face-to-face with another saint.

This one carried no torch, relying on the lanterns in the street above the culvert. It left her other hand free to push her robes back as she drew her sword in the face of the monster that had just crawled out of the drain.

Harmony reached for her own sword with exaggerated slowness. Less from a desire to be unnoticed and more because it hurt too much to move. “I don’t suppose I could convince you that…” She met the blank stare of the saint. “Never mind.”

Even when she dragged her sword out, it hung limp in her hand. The strength to actually wield it was long gone. Down in the sewers, all the misfortune she’d suffered through the night had twisted back around into good luck when the time came to fight. She couldn’t imagine the same would be true now. Even the clash of steel would be enough to draw attention and bring enemy reinforcements down on her head.

As she tried to lift it into a guard, the sword tumbled from her numb fingers to clatter on the cobblestones. There was no fight left in her.

If she announced her name and station, threw herself upon Agrantine mercy, there was a chance she might survive. It was not a good chance, but it was better than her odds of winning a fight against a sword-saint with her bare hands when she couldn’t even muster up a clenched fist.

“I’m not a peasant. Or a shade. Or whatever you think I am coming crawling out the drains. I’m Harmony Volpe. Sister of the duke? The duke your ambassador is trying to negotiate peace with. Probably wouldn’t want to make him angry.”

The same placid, blank stare. Harmony had the awful sinking feeling in the tangle of her guts that perhaps the last saint she’d encountered had been an outlier rather than the norm when it came to learning the language of the countries they conquered. Harmony spoke only a few words of Agrantine herself, and none of them were repeatable in polite company. They certainly wouldn’t be the kinds of phrases that might get her out of a fight. Quite the opposite.

Like most Espherans, Harmony’s approach to those who could not speak her language was to speak slower, louder, and more condescendingly. “I give up. Take me prisoner.”

The saint stalked closer, eyes flitting from her empty hands down to the sword at her feet. Harmony nudged it forward with her toes. “See. No weapon. I surrender.”

It did not seem that her submission was being accepted. The saint’s motions were still slow, suspicious. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Her eyes now shot from Harmony to the dark opening behind her, to the sides of the culvert where any allies might be lurking.

“I’m all alone. I came alone, like an idiot.”

Seeming to make up her mind, the saint took another step forward, gesturing towards the ground with her off-hand.

“You want me to kneel? You want me to pick up my sword? What do you want?”

A harsh word in Agrantine rolled over her, and she stumbled back a step in surprise. The sudden motion set the saint off. She hefted her blade and was stepping in to swing at Harmony when she abruptly stopped mid-step. Another harsh word, this time whispered. More of a groan than a word.

She jerked, again and again, trying to twist and strike behind her, but she, too, seemed to have been suddenly overcome by the same weakness that had taken Harmony. It was as though her legs had frozen in place as her upper body contorted and twisted, but it was only as she fell to her knees that the saint finally had the good sense to open her mouth and scream for help.

It gurgled up her throat but was cut off. Quite literally cut off as a grasping, hairy hand caught her by the bare scalp, yanked her head back, and a knife sliced across her throat.

Dead, or close enough. She flopped forward onto the stone, leaving Harmony face-to-face with her rescuer.

9 - Dead of Night
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

As it turned out, her hero in the night was a small woman in a peasant’s fraying cloak worn over modest black that wouldn’t have looked out of place on one of the Agrantine. Her face was the wrong shape, twisted out as though lips and nose were merging into one. That elongation had forced her front teeth out to hang over her bottom lip. A mongrel then. But not an unfamiliar one.

Harmony’s exhausted brain could barely process what was in front of her. “You.”

“Me,” the rat-maid replied shakily. “Now come with me, I beg you. We must get off the streets. There will be trouble when they find a dead saint.”

The pair of them looked down at the much-punctured body between them, then Harmony reached down and managed to scoop up her sword on the second attempt. She felt drunk. Words slurring as she said, “We could hide the body?”

The mongrel cocked her head to one side. “Can you lift her?”

Harmony looked down at the dead woman, calculated the weight, subtracted her own exhaustion and quivering muscles. “Not at the moment, no.”

“Me neither.” The rat-maid shrugged. “Let’s go.”

They scurried up the culvert, the maid because that was how she was built, Harmony because she was sagging ever more under the cruel draw of gravity and exhaustion. From there it was a quick dart across the well-lit street into an alleyway between what smelled like a tannery and what sounded like a bordello.

They paused there for a moment, rat-girl cocking her head from side to side, listening to the traffic beyond the alley mouth with her oversized ears. Harmony couldn’t help but distract her. “Weren’t you trying to kill me the last time we met?”

Her beady eyes narrowed. “Things change.”

“You’re no longer associated with the peasant rebellion?”

The maid’s shoulder slumped as it became apparent that the woman almost treading on her tail was not going to shut up and let her listen. “I still go where the Last King commands.”

“And this king of yours, the man in the mask.” Harmony’s addled brain couldn’t keep up with this turn of events. “He wants you to help me?”

Beady black eyes narrowed further, until the maid looked every bit the rat she was bonded to. “He… you did not know?”

Harmony leaned back against the warm brickwork and wondered if she could fall asleep standing up. “I’m frequently confronted with the fact I don’t know anything about anything.”

The mongrel snorted. “Perhaps you should try to learn.”

Now it was Harmony’s turn to be annoyed at the interruption. She could feel sleep just out of reach. All she needed was a moment when she wasn’t thinking, and it would envelop her and carry her off to somewhere considerably more comfortable. She was mumbling as she answered with more candor than she’d intended. “Every time that I do, I just discover more things I don’t know anything about.”

They lapsed back into silence after that. Sleep did come and take Harmony. Carrying her off into the distant dull warmth of dreamless darkness. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, she breathed in and out smoothly and without any fear or hitch. As her legs began to uncramp, and she started to slide down the wall, she startled herself awake.

The rat-maid was already in motion. “This way.”

With a choice between falling asleep in an alley still in spitting distance of a dead saint while covered in what she was continuing to politely think of as mud or following after her rescuer, the former seemed infinitely more appealing. Sure, she might die when the guards came around, but wouldn’t that just be like an even longer sleep? Yet still she moved. There was too much on her shoulders to set her burden down. Orsina. Her brother. She couldn’t lie down and die if it would cost them their lives too.

Another road was darted across, or stumbled across in Harmony’s case, then they were into the warren of backstreets and alleys that characterized the lower-class areas of Covotana. Every city had them, of course, but Covotana at least had enough shame to hide them behind the façade of civility out on the streets where those of higher birth might have been passing by.

As they wove their way through the thicket of buildings and piled refuse, Harmony piped up again. “I suppose that I should thank you, for saving my life.”

Rat-girl sneered at her. Sneering with teeth like that must have come easily. The lip was already on its way up whether intentionally or not. “That’d be polite. Wouldn’t it. My lady.”

“Is it traditional to thank an assassin when they elect to murder someone other than you?” Just the thought of thanking a servant for doing their job would have rankled her, but thanking this particular creature made anger bubble in her stomach. Or perhaps that was simply the foul water she’d swallowed working its way back out.

“I’ve never…” The rat-girl rounded on her, fury blazing before it was subsumed into her usual meek pretense. “That was the first time I’d ever…”

Harmony laughed. It was not a nice laugh. The kind made when someone was amused. It was the kind that spoke of contempt and whipping. She was being rude now, but once you’d seen a rat’s face sneering, anything seemed acceptable. “You seemed ready and willing enough when it was Art under your knife.”

“That was different, that was…” Her nose quivered. “I thought he deserved it, for what he done to me.”

Harmony rolled her eyes and strode past her, forcing the rat-maid to scurry ahead once more. “The blackmail or the pet-theft?”

She caught Harmony by the back of her matted hair and hauled her to a halt. The knife that had vanished back into the maid’s aprons had found its way back into her hairy-knuckled hands. “You people, you’ve no idea do you? If I was to rip out half your soul and hide it somewhere, you’d want it back too. Wouldn’t you?”

The knife might have been made not for battle so much as for chopping vegetables, but Harmony wasn’t certain that her kidneys would be able to tell the difference. Besides, honesty worked just fine, so she didn’t have to think too much. “I suppose that I would.”

“You’d do near enough anything to get it back.” The maid spun her around, pressed the tip of the blade against her stomach. All it would take was a little shove. It was already trying to bite through. “No matter what you had to do, right?”

Harmony glanced down at the knife between them. “Your point is made.”

Rat-girl sneered again. This close, Harmony could see that her front teeth were jagged at the bottom, as though they’d once been even longer, and the girl had snapped them off somehow. Her breath felt hot in the chill night air. “Was that an apology?”

“My brother did it. Not me.” She kicked out at the same time as she grabbed for the knife. If it were anyone else, she’d have taken a kneecap off. With a maid whose joints were reversed there, the effect was less brutal. The girl simply staggered back, losing her grip on the knife’s handle just as it passed into Harmony’s hand. “I would have just beaten the fur off you until you told me what I wanted to know.”

With a flourish, she turned the knife over in her hand and offered it back to the maid. Even dead on her feet, she could still handle an untrained half rodent. “We should hurry.” They set off again, Harmony very deliberately trailing behind the maid now. “Where are we hurrying to?”

“First, we need to get you clean.”

When confronted with a foul smell over a long period of time, most people would eventually filter it out, mentally. Otherwise, such places as the tannery they had passed could not exist. Harmony herself had long ago learned not to mind the damp in the House of Seven Shadows and had barely noticed her mother’s musk-heavy perfume towards the end of her life. Yet her current predicament differed. Each time she thought she had become accustomed to the reeking effluence that was drying into her clothes and hair, she would move, and the crust would crack, and some fresh foulness would be unleashed. If there was just a single rancid smell to contend with, perhaps she might have managed, even if the slime still clung to her face, but instead it was a veritable smorgasbord of aromas that would make even the most hardened gutter-rat feel queasy.

“I strongly agree.”

They trudged on through the back alleys, the mongrel all too confident at fitting in, Harmony horrified that she was so good a match for the people who would usually dwell here. Eventually they came upon a water barrel tucked against a wall, gathering the rain from the broken gutter above. It wasn’t a bath, but it was a start. Harmony set to work with gusto while the maid kept watch.

The minutes ticked by, with Harmony getting no closer to clean and the risk of discovery ever mounting. The rat-maid glanced back at Harmony using her nails to pry off some particularly resilient smudges where they’d hardened, “When you’re done, we need to get you off the streets.”

Harmony didn’t bother to look up. “That’s where our opinions begin to differ.”

The maid froze for a moment, her ears swiveling beneath her hood. Searching for any hint of trouble. “You can’t be wandering around in full view of everyone.”

“Why not?” Harmony shrugged, cracking off more caked filth from her back that she then turned her attention to. “Who knows me?”

All of the splashing was almost certain to have drawn attention by now, even if nobody had elected to wander into a dark alleyway to investigate just yet. Self-preservation instincts in the peasantry of Covotana were well ingrained. “My instructions were to see you to safety, and that is what I intend to do.”

“How? Are you going to pick me up and carry me?” Harmony snorted, then snorted again, and again, trying to dislodge whatever awful thing was still stuck in her nose. She cupped water up to her face, but before trying to get it up there, she added, “And who, precisely was giving you these instructions?”

As the peasant gave not a word of answer, clearly vibrating on the very edge of fleeing from the whole mess, Harmony eased back down. “I’ll tell you what, if you lead me to the Anatra estate, I’ll be happy to get out of sight there.”

The rat-maid groaned. “That’s halfway across town. All open squares and bridges. We’ll be seen. There are patrols.”

“What of it?”

“They’ll catch us and kill us is what.”

“Why would they? Are they rampaging about murdering every man woman and child in the streets? I hardly think that the Agrantine are so foolish as to try and enforce a curfew on this city.” She wrung out her hair, and the stream of water was brown.

“They’ll question us, they’ll want to know why we are out so late.”

Harmony glanced up at the fading stars. “I believe it’s actually early, by now.”

When she glanced back to the maid, she realized she’d made some misstep. The girl’s fists were clenched. She was staring out from under her hood with unbridled aggression. Harmony had never seen her so furious, even when they were bullying her into revealing her master’s location.

“This. This is why we’ll get caught. Because you think this is a game. You think you can score points talking to someone, and if you score enough you win. All you parasites are the same. You don’t live in the real world.” She closed the distance between them and grabbed Harmony by the front of her shirt, dragging her nose to snout. “In the real world, you talk back to a soldier like that, and they kill you, and that’s if you’re lucky. Pretty girls like you won’t get lucky.”

“You think that I can’t bluff my way past a few…”

The rat-girl snapped. “They’ll kill you before you get the first word out. You couldn’t get out of a hole in the ground without help. You’re a stuck-up princess with no more sense than any of the other brats I’ve had to pick up after for my whole life. This isn’t a game. You will die. And I’m not letting you kill me too.”

“Then go your own way!” Harmony swept her hands up, knocking herself free of the maid’s grasp, then back over her scalp, freeing her vision of the dark tangles that had plagued it. “I’ll see myself across town.”

“You will die!” It came out in a sob. “I’ve killed to save you. And you’re just going to throw it away?”

“If I die, then I die.” She was still too exhausted to muster any real anger. “I’d rather die than cower like a rat in an alley.”

In the face of such apathy, the rat-girl couldn’t even muster up any real wrath. She switched to an almost coddling tone. “Come with me. We will hide, then when the streets are full and busy, I will take you.”

“Will you?” Harmony’s eyes narrowed. “Or is this just a ploy to have me do as you say?”

With a sigh, the maid took her arm. “I will.”

Which was when the sword-saint flipped open the panel of his storm-lantern and shone it in their faces. Both women froze in place. The rat-girl was between Harmony and the guard, the only reason her sword was hidden from view. So long as they did not move, there would be no reason for the guard to draw arms. They were blind for a long dreadful moment, then the familiar black robes and bald pate came into view.

He said something in Agrantine, but in response to their flinching stares, he switched tactic. “Why here?”

All the lies she planned to tell died upon Harmony’s tongue. Her mind was more numb than her body. It had robbed her of her dexterity before, and now it seemed even the speed of her mind had slowed to a crawl. The maid had to come to her rescue once more.

“Walking home. Late night. Cleaning.”

What little of Harmony that was exposed to the man was soaking wet, and those parts that hadn’t been slick with rainwater still looked filthy. It was a good lie. Vaguely plausible.

“Silence, mongrel,” he snapped. Eyes locked on Harmony alone.

If the Agrantine considered Espher’s dalliances with the spirits of the dead to be blasphemous, she could only imagine their treatment of the beast-folk. They were beneath contempt.

She could use that ignorance.

“Out now.” He beckoned them forward.

They moved slowly, together, in a lopsided formation. Keeping her sword masked from view. There was no hope in a straight fight, but there were two of them to the one saint, and exhausted as Harmony was, she had strength enough for a single stab into a turned back. If the opportunity arose.

Out in the street proper, Harmony felt properly exposed. The gentle breeze caught on her damp skin and set her shivering. For all that the weather was always fair in Espher, this was still the winter, and she was in no way dressed for it. Her cloak was long gone, somewhere beneath the street. She couldn’t even guess at when she’d lost it down in the blinding darkness.

“Apart.” He gestured to either side of the alleyway. “Show hands.”

Harmony raised her hands quickly enough, but neither woman moved apart. Even the pounding of adrenaline wasn’t enough now to get her body moving properly. She was watching the whole thing as though it were a play. Like she was floating just behind herself. Operating her body like a puppeteer. She hissed to the maid, “Same as the last one.”

The rat-girl’s eyes flicked to her, but it was so brief that even the scouring stare of the saint’s gaze was not sufficient. Her nose bobbed a quarter inch. It was probably a nod.

“Apart!”

They sprang to either side of the saint, Harmony’s sword hissing out from its sheath, the lantern-light playing over the shining length of it, catching the saint’s eye, spinning him to track it as he reached for his own sword.

Harmony lunged. On the draw, the saint parried, swerving her off course before snapping his blade back down towards her on the diagonal. She managed to deflect the counter-slash, but it rang off the hilt and chipped away some of the gilt.

Her arm was jarred up to the elbow, aching even through the numbness. As the saint brought his sword back around for another strike, she had no hope of catching it. This was the ultimate end of all her reserves and training. Pushed past her limit, she was going to be cut down in the street.

The saint only had eyes for her. Which was why he did not notice the rat-girl circling behind him or making her leap up onto his back. She wasn’t all that much smaller than the average woman, for all her rodent qualities. He might have been well muscled, even for a soldier, but it was enough to rock him. To spoil his swipe.

He reached back and grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, even as she stabbed him and bit at his nape. If she’d struck on the first leap, perhaps she could have taken him down, but now she was just blunting her little knife on his shoulder blades. With one hard tug, he dislodged her and flung her down to bounce off the cobbles.

Harmony’s sword was buried to the hilt in his chest by the time he was done, and her shoulder was wedged under his arm to keep him from swinging his sword around with any force.

The expression on his face was one of puzzlement more than pain. He looked down at where metal met robes and then back up again. Like it was an illusionist’s trick and he was trying to see how it had been done. As blood bubbled up onto his lips, Harmony reached up and pressed her hand over them. She could feel the wetness and the heat of it on her palm, but she did not release him.

This was not a game, as the rat-girl had said. Uncovered, he might cry out or scream and bring the whole city down on them. If she had struck true and punctured heart and lung, he would not be able to speak, but she had no way of knowing if she’d struck true. Not in the awkward reality of a street brawl. She still had hope, but she was not so foolish as to rely on it when she had other means at her disposal.

It was fine, really. She had endured so much worse than a little spittle and blood this night. Nothing in her lifetime would match that grotesquery. This felt positively pleasant by comparison.

She lowered the saint gently to the street, drawing her sword out as they went, checked one last time for breath, then sliced his throat for good measure.

Only with all of that done did she finally turn to the tangle of rags that had been her guide. It dawned on her now, as she crept closer, that she had not even bothered to learn the girl’s name. “Are you all right?”

No answer was forthcoming.

Harmony crouched down over the mongrel and touched gently on what she hoped was a back. “Are you hurt?”

It was a stupid question. Nobody was flung bodily into the civilized version of a big pile of rocks without a little pain. Her real question, which she didn’t really want to say out loud, was, “Are you dead?”

Retrieving the saint’s lantern, she shone light down upon the maid, making sense of the tangled limbs and lumps. Here was a leg, here the other, turned the opposite way, the tail curled here, and that meant that beneath this piece of dyed sackcloth would be the head. She uncovered the maid’s face.

The beady black eyes had changed in quality. Before they shone by the torchlight. Now they looked dull, almost dry. Her malformed mouth hung open. The tip of her tongue dangled on a thread of tissue where her huge incisors had snipped it. When Harmony placed a hand in front of her snout, there was no breath to be felt.

All the questions left unanswered burned in Harmony’s mind, but there was no time to weep over what was lost when there was still so much to lose. This woman had tried to kill her, had killed to save her, had died in a fight for her life. And she didn’t know how to feel about her passing, except for the selfish wave of hopelessness that she would now have to navigate the city without a guide.

The plan was unchanged. Find shelter until morning. Blend into the crowd. Sneak into the Anatra estate. Find Kagan. Prove Orsina was alive.

Finding shelter in this part of the city was something of a problem. Even if her vague aroma of the chamber pot matched with what she’d come to expect of the common man, her clothes were entirely too well made for her to blend in here. With some trepidation, and no small amount of disgust with herself, Harmony untangled the maid’s cloak from about her and swung it around her own shoulders. It was still warm, too warm in the places where blood had soaked into it. At least the extra stains would add to her credibility.

Dressed like a peasant and smelling like a peasant, she set off again, her sword handily concealed by the ragged cape and her face shrouded by the hood. Yet beneath that shroud, her mind was gone. If she could just sleep for a little while, she’d be able to think, she’d be able to get out of this situation with a dazzling turn of wit. It took her a solid minute of walking before she realized that she was strolling down a main street, just begging for another patrol to find her. Wandering away from where one of their number lay dead. Idiot.

She stumble-ran her way to the side of the street, looking for another handy alleyway, but it seemed that real estate was at too much of a premium here among the shopfronts for even an inch to be given up. Buildings pressed into one another as though they were lovers in an embrace. Drunken lovers staggering home, given the odd angles at which they intersected.

In the twilight hours before the sun rose over the caldera’s rim, while night’s chill still clung, it became harder to see with the same sharp distinction as she had before. The distant light of a lantern would have been a stark warning to her before, yet now, it took time for her to parse. Long enough for the patrolling figure to sight her, if they had turned her way. But in this light, at this distance, would they think anything of it? Or believe her to be their companion? She decided swiftly that she had no intention of finding out. There may have been no alleyway in which to hide from sight, but this was Covotana, city of a thousand fountains. It took but a moment of courage to stride back out into the middle of the street and on to the nearest square before she came upon one of the many humpback bridges reaching over the canals. Setting her lantern down with care and sliding its metal plates into place, returning the night’s darkness, she bundled up the rat-maid’s cloak to serve as a cushion. Thus returned to only the light of the distant stars, she stepped to the side of the bridge and swung herself down with a hand hooked in the overflow drain. If it were summer, there would have been stone for her to set her feet upon, but with the rains of winter, the canals were swollen. She plunged directly into the fresh flowing water and remembered with horror all that she had endured at the hands of mere water in the past few hours.

Yet this shimmering flow seemed to hold none of the malice of that underground. It tugged at her, drifting her along beneath the bridge before she could catch hold on crenellated stonework once more. It was cold, but that cold brought back sensation as much as it numbed it. Startling Harmony awake, setting her mind turning, at least a little. She would be invisible beneath this bridge to the patrols. If it wasn’t almost certain to drown her the moment she lost her grip on the waking world, she’d have been tempted to hide out down here until it was safe.

The city was eerie in the grim light of dawn. There were some distant sounds of activity, but the streets that Harmony had never seen devoid of swarming crowds were still. The occupation of Covotana had stilled her. She languished in silence.

She counted, for want of something better to do, as the steady flow of water stripped the filth of the sewers away. Returning it from whence it came.

Strength had almost departed entirely by the time she hauled her way back up out of the canal, but at last, she escaped it and found an alleyway, enclosed by the reaching of upper floors towards one another. Pitch black if not for her borrowed lantern. All the refuse and detritus of a busy city had been pushed away so that it was hidden from sight. A shattered wagon, wheels long departed, formed an angled wedge, blocking further progress. Beneath it were scraps and rags, the kind of filth that Harmony would have been disgusted to see on a normal day. Now they seemed to be the most comfortable bed that she had ever come across.

Crawling beneath it, she untangled the sword and sheath from her belt and curled up around them. Was this place fit for royalty? Most certainly not. Could any part of Harmony be brought to care? That was also a firm no.

10 - The Waking Dream
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

On her bed of hay, Orsina stirred. In the moment of waking, everyone suffers a moment of uncertainty, when they do not know where they are, what time it is, what they should be doing next. It is a fundamental part of the human condition. Less common was what Orsina suffered, when she opened her eyes, she could not remember who she was. She couldn’t remember what she was.

In front of her face lay straw and dirt, a not uncommon bed for her in her childhood. As Mother Vinegar, she never slept. That was part and parcel of her legend. As a dragon, her rest came when she rode upon thermals, gliding through the open sky. As each of the other shades, sleep was so distant a memory that she could not even picture it. She was none of them and all of them.

But it was Orsina’s body that ached, her lips that were chapped and dry after her long coma. She was weak in a way she had not been even after her long convalescence before she departed for Covotana. There had been no motherly hands lifting her head and spooning broth into her mouth. There had been no care taken for her at all. There were bruises all over her, the half-healed hurts of her fall, of course, but others too. An ache at her ankles and wrists where she had been trussed up and hauled around. Bruises on her shoulders, hips, thighs, arms, where she had been manhandled about. If she were to peel back the sooty cloth of her blouse, there would likely be clear handprints on her skin.

She tried to move, and that was the latest in a long line of bad decisions that had led to this point. It took only a moment of aching before she slumped back into her limp state. A piece of straw was jutting up to scratch at the side of her nose, and it could just stay there for now. Ticklish was better than sore.

The big complex questions of who she was and who now occupied this body were too much to tackle at that moment in time. She had just woken up, and she needed a few minutes before her brain could go from a walk to a canter. Instead, she focused outwards for the first time in who knew how long. The straw she knew, the patchy grass flattened out beneath her was also familiar, the dirt was like the stuff back home, more or less. A little paler, a little drier, but otherwise good old-fashioned dirt. Familiar. Safe.

Extending her gaze farther, there was a bucket. Perhaps containing water. It didn’t much matter where in the world you were, buckets looked much the same. This one was bound with some woven material instead of a band of iron, but such a thing was familiar outside of the big cities. Familiarity. Safety. If she kept her vision focused only on the inches about her, she had nothing to fear.

Beyond that, concern began to mount. Wooden canes were set upon the earth, bound together with a ring of horizontal bars of the same material, bent to follow the curve a few feet up. That same rope held them together, fresh-cut instead of the old and settled stuff of the bucket. She didn’t move her head, because that was a sure recipe for finding some new ache, but with her eyes, she followed it around until it became clear it was some sort of pen for animals. A cage that had been simply dropped here on the open land instead of being embedded into the soil. That was silly. She could get up, pick the thing up, and duck underneath, strolling off to wherever she pleased.

It made no sense, and too many things were making no sense at the moment, so she pressed her eyes shut and waited for the tempest to calm a little before making a second attempt at understanding what was going on around her.

There was chatter. She was not alone in the middle of nowhere; there were people, talking, working, living their lives all around her where she lay in a cage as though it were entirely normal to have caged women lying around in the middle of your village. That was definite cause for concern. At least it explained why they weren’t worrying about an escape attempt. If she tried to walk away, presumably someone would stop her.

She tried to focus on the voices amidst the hubbub, but she couldn’t pick out a single word. Even trying to parse the language of her own thoughts was a strain for now. She stayed as still as she could, breathed as slowly as she could, held on to this moment. To this place. The feel of the straw on her face, the warmth of the sun beating down from above, even the pain helped to ground her and keep her here. The battle inside her had come to a standstill, not because of a lack of will, but because of a lack of progress. Each shade may have hungered for dominance and raged against all of the others, but none of them could make any real progress alone. Alliance was impossible when the end goal was complete subjugation of all the others, and the only one with a mind complex enough to encompass subterfuge was the one trying to hold the rest off from Orsina.

She shuddered as she thought on them. Tremors of that distant battle felt even here back in the real world. Strange for her to call it that, when it felt the opposite. When all that she had experienced within herself seemed so much more vivid than anything out here.

Once more, she forced her eyes open. Forced herself to see what was outside of herself. Clung to it like an anchor. Her eyes took in more now, beyond the bars of the cage were Arazi, some looking mostly human, some as bulky and marked as heavily with dragon-scale as Kagan had been. Strolling alongside them were creatures. Things she had never even dreamed of before the battle.

Her mind slid away from the battle before that memory could sink its hooks into her.

There were more varieties of wyverns strolling through the middle of the camp than she had encountered in all her life out in the wild places of the world. Some bearing burdens like they were donkeys. Others garbed in bright-colored barding to mark their allegiance. At first she had thought such things were meant to convey ownership, to explain which of the Arazi commanded them, but just a moment’s observation made it clear that the wyverns were equal to the humans around them, not subservient. A man would step aside for an oversized lizard as though it were a gentleman of note. The barding seemed to denote status in some way, the more ornate of the wyverns being given precedence over the plain and humans alike.

To have such wild beasts in the heart of their camp would have been unthinkable to the people of Espher. Even back in Sheepshank, the pigs were kept penned, and the sheep were fenced off from the crops and village alike. Horses were tied up away from their riders so that the stable hands could brush them down and see to their feeding. The line between man and animal was firmly drawn. But here, there was no line. Not even a blurring, just no distinction between them whatsoever.

She couldn’t stay still all day. Even if she were not so thirsty that she had serious concerns that her throat may have closed up, there were other biological demands making themselves known, along with the horrifying implications of the bucket. Movement would hurt, but after that brush with her internal world, anything that helped to ground her in reality could only be a good thing. She rolled, nice and slow, first onto her back to stare up into the bright blue expanse beyond her woven birdcage and then over onto her other side.

Beyond the wicker cage on that side lay a dragon. Both eyes almost crossed trying to stare at her. She would have screamed if her throat would have let her, but all she really managed was a wheeze.

It was not one of the lesser wyverns or one of the young dragons that she had faced off with in the skies above Espher. The sleekness had gone with age, its scales grown thick as armor plates and its body bulking out to match its new burden. Even the wild dragon she had fought in the Selvaggia was not so massive as this creature. Where the scales of most ran a gamut of camouflaging colors in creams and browns, this one was blackened from the jaws back. Two long streams of soot stains so ingrained along the length of its neck that there would be no removing them, no matter how they were polished. All about its muzzle shone obsidian black in the sunlight.

Only the bright yellow of its eyes, locked on Orsina, stood out amidst the mass of scales. Shining not only with the faint amber glow that all the great dragon-kin’s eyes seemed to share, but also with intelligence. It was watching her to see what she did, not like a predator waiting for the opportune moment to strike, but like a vast human being observing a prisoner.

With painstaking slowness, she eased herself up to sitting, eyes never leaving the dragon. It did not move, except to follow her with its gaze as she moved slowly from sitting to standing and then over to the dreaded bucket. There was water inside. Fresh, clean. She dropped back down to her knees and cupped it in her hands, pulling it up to her lips before thoughts of things like poison could even cross her mind. Harmony would have thought of them; she planned ahead and thought things through, while Orsina caved to her base impulses instantly. The chill of it hurt her teeth, then when it hit her dried-out throat, she choked on it. Spluttering and coughing until it sprayed back out of her mouth. Still desperate, she had no sooner spilled it all down herself than she brought another handful to her lips. This time, she slowed, let a trickle down. Felt her tongue swell back into shape, her gums, her throat. By the time she was reaching for the next mouthful, she could actually swallow, by the time she had finished swallowing, her attention was dragged back to the dragon where it lay, watching and waiting.

With some distance, she could see more of the creature, the tail coiled back to run along one side, the wings carefully furled so that it would take up as little room as possible, and so that the business of the camp could go on all about it without having to adjust for a monstrous beast bigger than a cart parked in the middle of everything.

Orsina wet her lips and flinched as the cracks in them stung. “Hello?”

Perhaps it was foolish to expect the dragon to speak back. Perhaps it was foolish to expect anything but death here among her enemies. Still, she gathered her breath and tried again. “Hello?!”

The dragon moved. It was barely perceptible, just a little shuffle that set the scales along its body rattling together, but it was enough to catch attention, to let the Arazi know she was awake. There was more shouting in that language she didn’t know.

Maybe the memories implanted in her by the Owl shade had contained some primer on the basics of their language, but even her own memories were a tattered mess barely hanging together at this point. If she tried wandering off into others, she was liable to never find her way back again. Then again, it was just as likely that the library of Septombra contained no such book. Espher tended to view its distant northern neighbors as barbarians. One did not lower oneself to speak to a hound by barking.

Orsina wasn’t like that, of course. If given the opportunity, she would have listened to every growl and yelp, but it didn’t help if she couldn’t understand any of it.

From the parting crowd emerged one of the dragon-lords. The hulking men and women who had bonded with one of the true dragons instead of their lesser kin. They stood taller than other Arazi, fought with all the might of their mounts, and bore the same thick scales upon their skin. It was hard to believe, looking up at this one, that Orsina had managed to kill one of them. Let alone so many of them. “Hello?”

It did not seem that the looming giant, armored in bone and glowering at her with barely contained loathing, was in the mood for pleasant conversation. That was probably just as well. Hello was about all that Orsina could muster at that moment. His voice was a deep rumble she felt in her stomach as much as she heard it. Hair on the back of her neck rose up when he growled, “You will be silent. You will be still. You will listen. You will obey.”

She held up her empty hands, as if this monstrous thing could be in any way scared of her. Empty-handed or not. “Okay.”

The Arazi rumbled on as if she had not interrupted. “You will not call on your magic. You will not influence our minds. You will not summon the dead to aid you.”

She slowly let her hands fall back to her sides. It hurt too much to keep them up. “Wouldn’t know how to do most of that.”

The bark became a roar, and Orsina stumbled back under the impact of it. “You will be silent.”

She kept her mouth firmly closed this time. She had sense enough for that.

“A torch will burn through the night. If you bear more than one shadow, you will die. If you try to cast a spell, you will die. If we see any sign of your magic being used, you will die.” He continued this dire litany in his more tolerable growl, pausing only once to establish that she was still listening. “You will raise your fist to show that you understand and agree.”

She held up her hand and clenched a fist. No need to anger him any more than she had already.

“You will travel with us north. You will be bound and gagged when we travel. If you try to escape, you will die. If you try to conjure, you will die. Always, you will be observed.”

She didn’t mean to speak, honestly she didn’t, but it seemed that her mind and mouth had finally been reconnected without any of the usual good sense or delay between them. “Why am I going north?”

“You will be silent,” he hissed. Then, seeing no good reason not to answer: “You will stand before the Prophet and be judged. Then our war on Espher will end.”

So much had happened to her since she fell in battle. So much that she had no say or control over. She supposed that it should have made her frightened to be so powerless, but instead it left her furious. She snapped back, “I’m going to be judged? For what? Fighting back when you invaded us?”

He stepped up closer to the bars, and she saw that even his teeth had been changed by his bond with the dragon by his side. They were conical and pointed, fit only for tearing meat. Blackened with soot to an obsidian shine, just like the dragon’s. “You will be judged, to decide what you are. To decide what will be done to you.”

She wasn’t even sure what that meant if she was being honest. Perhaps something was being lost in translation. “Uh.”

“Be silent,” he intoned one last time. Soft and rumbling her bones. Not angry anymore. Almost too calm. “Make peace with your gods. But do it in silence.”

When it became clear that she didn’t intend on blurting out any answer to that, he turned his back on her and walked away. The golden eyes of the dragon were still upon her, even if his were not. She’d know no peace.

If she tried anything, all the dragon needed to do was open its mouth and breathe out. The wooden cage wouldn’t protect her, it would just be kindling for the fire. Whatever else she had forgotten in her long sleep, the touch of dragon fire would never truly leave her. The mess of scars across her back were a testament to its awful power. They’d barely brushed her before. To bear the full weight of the dragon’s searing venom would be a pain beyond anything she’d ever known. Even the torments that had raked her spirit since her capture would pale compared with that pure, flaming hurt.

So left with nothing else to do, she returned to her bucket and drank her fill before unbuckling her belt. If they wanted to watch her every moment of the day, that was their shame, not hers. The prickling blush on her cheeks mattered little in the grand scale of things.

Perhaps this was a normal sight to see among these barbarous people. Perhaps they were being polite in looking away. All she could say for certain was that it was less of an embarrassment than she had been expecting. Perhaps she hadn’t absorbed all the lessons of shame that Harmony had been trying to impart on her. Holding forks wrong wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow here any more than it had back home in Sheepshank.

Regardless, with her business done, she was now left at a loose end. She moved away from the bucket to the far end, even though it put her right beside the dragon. So long as she didn’t try to call her shades, the dragon wouldn’t burn her alive. Probably. And if it meant to, then the extra few feet of distance wouldn’t make any difference anyway. Weirdly, there was something comforting about the steady huff of its breath over her. There was a faint tang of venom on its breath that she wasn’t sure she’d ever get accustomed to, but beyond that it was like… it was like sleeping in a ditch, wrapped in Kagan’s protective arms. Her whole trip to Covotana, they’d fallen asleep huddled for warmth. She couldn’t believe that she was looking back on that misery fondly now. Just went to show, things could always get worse.

“Am I allowed to talk to you? Giant dragon, you probably aren’t going to fall for my magical wiles or whatever the big guy was scared of.”

The dragon remained partially cross-eyed. She wasn’t right at its nose, but close enough to make it look funny.

“So, am I meant to be scared of you or what? Do they not know I kill dragons? Were they not paying attention?”

There was no reply, because dragons didn’t speak. She turned her back on the dragon and sank gratefully back down to the dirt. Her straw heap had spread far enough this way that it was slightly better than nothing. Slightly. Leaning back on the cage made it shift slightly, but she was light enough that it didn’t slide away from her. “Of course, to kill you I’d have to call my shades, and then you’d set me on fire, and it would be a race to see who could kill who first, and I don’t think either of us really want to find out, do we?”

She let her head loll back to rest on a crossbar. Every movement still hurt, but it was definitely getting better. “Then again, calling my shades might just make me turn into a comatose blob again. I can’t find out what they’re up to in here without going and looking, and if I go and look, I might end up blobbed. Bit of a conundrum.”

The general chatter of the camp had resumed now that the dragon-lord had departed, but she still found herself in a bubble of silence.

“Blobbed.” She liked the feel of it in her mouth.

The silence stretched out again as she took a keen interest in what everyone else was up to. It seemed that they were in the process of breaking camp, but with one this big, that was no fast process. Different hide tents were rolled up together in a particular order. The bent canes that made her cage were being used to support them, and they too had to be broken down, separated out into their respective piles and bundled. And that wasn’t even taking into account all of the objects that had been in tents, or spread out on blankets in front of them, or hung over campfires. Everyone seemed to know what they were doing, and they were doing it with all due diligence, but everyone was also waiting for everyone else to finish one part of the job before they could get on with the next. It was hardly an operation being run with military precision. Artemio probably would have been having conniptions over how long it was taking them. Big stickler for organization.

She tilted her head a little further back to catch a glimpse of the hulking dragon. Upside down, it wasn’t any less intimidating, although it had at least stopped trying to stare directly at her and was now just looking off into the middle distance. “So how is being a dragon treating you? Do you enjoy having someone riding on your back all the time? I can’t imagine it is fun.”

“You get used to it.”

Her head snapped around at the sound of a voice, and all the aches and pains she thought were abating flared back up. What could have been a greeting or a sound of surprise instead emerged as a strangled yelp.

The Arazi by the side of her cage laughed. “I did not mean to startle you.”

His voice was heavily accented, the full-bodied version of Kagan’s occasionally clipped words, but there was none of that dreadful rumble that the big Arazi had. He was scaled, but sleek.

“How would you know what a dragon thinks about being ridden?”

He shrugged, and now that the initial shock had passed, she could get a good look at him. The leathers he wore were faded from too much time in the sun, and the bright feathers woven through his hair could only have come from one of the terror-birds. He didn’t look much older than her, not that she could really tell how old she looked anymore after all the ups and down of feeding life to her shades.

“Can’t speak for the big ones, but my wyvern likes it well enough. Once she got used to the weight. Feels naked without me.”

He was treating her like a human being, and despite herself, she liked him for it. “She told you that, did she?”

“Clear as day.” He grinned with pointed teeth. Not so pronounced as the lord’s jagged maw, but still a predator’s jaws.

A smile was fighting its way onto her face, even as it made her cracked lips sting. “Your commander was under the impression that I could control minds with my words.”

That seemed to catch his interest. He glanced from side to side before theatrically whispering, “Can you?”

She had to strangle a laugh. “No. But if I could, I’d probably say I couldn’t.”

He dropped down to sit beside her, putting his back to the other side of the cage. “If you do control my mind, try to do a better job keeping it in line than I do.”

She twisted to look at him, wondering where he was going with this. “Aren’t you worried you’ll get in trouble?”

He shrugged. “Some things are worth the trouble.”

They sat in silence for a moment, basking in the sunshine, pointedly ignoring the dragon glowering down at the pair of them. Eventually whatever manic energy had driven him to wander over to her overspilled, and he had to talk again. “He isn’t my boss. Different clan. We march together, but that doesn’t mean he can tell me what to do.”

Thinking was coming hard to Orsina. So many parts of her mind had been ravaged in the past few days. So many of the connections she had struggled so hard to make so she could pass as a noblewoman had been untethered and now flapped loose. There was probably some polite and cunning way to ask him things that would actually help her without giving away her intentions, but she didn’t have the capacity to come up with them. Not without delving into those dangerous parts of her mind where the shades still lurked, waiting to strike. She blurted out, “What is it exactly you think you’re going to get out of this?”

Perhaps something was lost in translation; he didn’t seem to understand what she was asking. “What do you mean?”

She tried to put it into as simple terms as she could, so that there was no opportunity for their crossed languages to cause trouble. “Where is the reward to balance the risk of you getting into trouble?”

He laughed. “It isn’t often you get a chance to see the devil up close.”

“The devil?” It wasn’t a familiar word to her. She’d heard of religion during her stay in Covotana but had felt no real need to explore it further when she had so many more pressing areas of study.

“The… I don’t know your word.” He sat pondering for a moment. “The worst thing?”

That hurt more than she would have guessed. “You… think I’m a monster?”

“I think I’m saying it wrong.” He had winced at her tone. Maybe the words were harder to parse than the inflection. Maybe he had thought that a monster would be proud of its title. “In stories, there are the bad people, and then there is the one, the worst. The others can get better, can learn. But never the worst. There is only one end for the worst.”

Carefully keeping her tone even, she replied, “And I’m the… irredeemable?”

“That’s what they say.” He looked away, guiltily.

It took Orsina some time to get her head around this fresh indictment. She couldn’t understand it. She couldn’t understand where this loathing for her came from. She didn’t mean to speak aloud, but her mind and mouth were still short on their usual separations. “What did I do? I fought back? Was I meant to just let you come in and kill everyone? Was I meant to let my friends go out and die and do nothing?”

“I do not think…” He seemed to be struggling with his words even more than before. “Ah. This is difficult. It is not what you did. It is what you are.”

She let her head loll back again, staring up into the sky. If there were unshed tears in her eyes, he could not have seen them. Pain, exhaustion, she had no shortage of excuses. When she spoke it was so softly that he had to lean closer to hear her.

“What am I?”

He blew out a huff of air. Then let his head fall back on the bars too. Technically his forehead was inside. Risky behavior that the overlooking dragon was certain to have noted. “What do you know of us?”

“The Arazi?” Orsina stalled for time. In truth she knew almost nothing of them. There had always been legends about them of course, but they were abstract, less real than even the folklore that was passed around Sheepshank in place of history. They lived in far-off lands. They had enslaved even the mighty dragons. They were mighty warriors who ruled with an iron fist and the flames of their mounts. Kagan would not speak of his people; everything about them was an open wound in that man. Just the memory of home burned him, so Orsina had never pried. Even when she finally came to Covotana and was set against them in a war, all she had learned was how to fight them. Not who they were. To learn who they were would have made it harder to kill them, not easier. She had avoided all knowledge of them.

He interrupted her train of thought. “The Arazi. Do you even know what that name means?”

“Oh, I’m sure it means mighty conquerors or dragon tamers or some nonsense like that.” She tried to play off her ignorance, and thanks to the wonders of the language gap, it actually worked.

He smiled up at the sky, as if this story was a happy memory. The kind of thing he’d heard as a little boy, gathered around the campfire. “It means The Chosen.”

Just like the nobles back in Espher, so sure that they were better than everyone else. “And who chose you exactly?”

His head clunked against the cage when he laughed, cutting it off short. “I like you; you ask the right questions. Not why are they special, but who decided they are.”

She turned her gaze back to the sky. So long as they were talking, she did not need to think about what was coming. She did not have to think about what it meant to be a prisoner of the enemy. “And your answer?”

He settled himself more comfortably, rubbing at the back of his head absentmindedly. “Long ago, we were just warring tribes. We fought one another for land. For food. For nothing. We bonded with the wyverns, but aslinda-dragons, they frightened us.”

Orsina twisted to meet the golden gaze of the monster standing guard. “They are terrifying.”

“You have only seen them in battle. I have mucked out their aeries.” He widened his eyes as though he had seen true horrors. “You do not know fear.”

She rolled her eyes. “So, you were scared of dragons and fighting like savages…”

“Then came the change, from the high tundra, a dragon came down, bearing a rider.” He spread his arms as though they were wings, like he was making some grand proclamation. “The first of the Arazi. The first chosen to protect our world.”

Until now it had been just another self-aggrandizing story for just another empire. But that was enough to give her pause again. “Protect it from what?”

“Through Konus, her rider, the dragon spoke.” His eyes closed when he spoke the rider’s name. Like this wasn’t some figure from history, but a god. “They warned of the world’s end. A creature born of death that would consume all life and light if it was not stopped.”

It didn’t take Orsina long to understand where this was going. “I’m not a shade.”

“I did not think you were.” He reached over and prodded her in the side, making her yelp in surprise. “Too fleshy.”

She shuffled a little farther around her cage, trying not to laugh. She had to remember where she was. Who she was with. “So why do they think that I’m…”

He went on with his story. “Konus united us, his dragon led us to others, and our young were bonded to them in partnership, not dominance. All were united in fear of this doom. All dragons stand on the side of the living. Of the flame.”

Orsina interrupted again. “What does this have to do with…”

“To be Arazi is to hunt this foe.” He didn’t let her cut in. He pressed on with his story. “To mark it as your enemy. To strive towards its defeat with all that you are. It is…

She spoke right over him this time. “What does that have to do with me?!”

“You need to understand, it is not some small… matter.” He had struggled for only a moment with the word. Just long enough to remind her how sorely her own education in foreign tongues was lacking. “It is all that makes us what we are. It is all that united us, brought us together, to range across the world in one great hunt.”

Maybe something really was getting lost in translation, so she spoke loudly and simply as she could. “I understand, you’ve made it perfectly clear, but what has this hunt got to do with…”

“It is you.” He turned to meet her stare. Gazing into her eyes as though he hoped to find the truth hidden in them. Like she might blink and reveal her true monstrosity. “Or they think it is you. The Adversary. The Prey.”

She’d known it was coming, but it still left her gobsmacked to hear it said out loud. “But I’m just… I’m just another Shadebound. There are hundreds of us. Nothing I did was special or different.”

The camp was growing quieter now, the tents all felled, the bundles stowed away on the backs of terror-birds and wyverns. The true dragons, those the Azari called aslinda, they were the only ones that bore no burden. The stillness meant that they could not rely upon the clatter and chatter to cover their conversation now. They had to speak softly.

He said, “They know of your necromancers, and still, they think that it is you.”

Orsina pressed her eyes shut and tried to think. If they thought she was this world-ending nightmare, then she’d be killed. There was no question about it. If she believed a word of it, then she’d have been the first to volunteer herself to face the headsman’s block. But they were wrong about her. Now she just had to convince them of that. Prove her innocence. “What is this monster I’m meant to be?”

“Ah.” He looked out across the now cleared field and waved his arm. One of the wyverns that had been milling about, unburdened by much more than a saddle, came stalking through the crowd towards them. It was a pretty thing, as far as wyverns went. A ridge down the top of its head was flanked with bright feathers. He still seemed to be struggling to find the words. “It is… the elders speak of it like… hmm.”

Orsina sighed. “You don’t even know what it is?”

“Your language, it is difficult.” He spun his hands over one another. “I have to put together many words to make simple thoughts.”

“Well, you’re better at Espheran than I am at… What do you people even speak?”

As he rose to his feet, he made a throaty sound. There was something like a click in the middle. It took Orsina a moment to understand that he had not injured himself but had spoken the name of the language. “I’m not even going to try to pronounce that. I’ll make a fool of myself.”

He snapped his fingers just as the wyvern arrived and nudged at him with its snout. “Rats. Do you have rats in Espher?”

She eyed the straw pile that had been her bed with no small amount of trepidation. “Doesn’t everywhere have rats?”

“Well, rats, when they live together, they all sleep in one place, all together, on top of one another.” He pointed to her bed. “Like, like straw heaped up.”

She blinked at him, waiting for this to approach any semblance of relevance.

“Well, sometimes it goes wrong. Their tails, they get tied together, they’re… knotted. Many made one. There is an Arazi word, but yours it is… ah…”

She remembered. Not from her studies in Septombra, not from her time living in a farming village perpetually beset by rats, but from one of Mother Vinegar’s stories. “A rat king.”

“Yes. They tangle tails, but they still live, they move together, eat together, hunt together. All different but all one.”

It was more than that, Orsina knew. Mother Vinegar had spoken of the rat king in great length, as if it were some sort of moral lesson that Orsina needed to absorb. The rats’ tails often broke in the tangle, but when their bodies were studied afterwards, they had healed into a new formation, keeping them locked together, but also proving that the rats lived long enough for even bones to knit while they were combined in such a manner. They survived, despite being unable to function alone, to eat or scavenge. Some thought that other rats gathered food to sustain them, proving some sort of rodent camaraderie. Some thought that through their tangled tails, the rat king truly became one creature, thinking with one mind, moving all together.

“I’m really not following what any of this has to do with me.”

“They say you are… the tangle,” he said carefully. “The knot.”

“A shade king?”

He looked triumphant to have finally been understood. “Yes!”

“I’m really not.” Orsina sighed. Whatever she was, it wasn’t anything great and powerful. She wasn’t royalty of any sort, not even the kind that lived in rot and sewers. The shades within her did not function as one creature, though she supposed that in a sense they were all tangled. And she was the tangle.

With little more than a huff of breath, her companion launched himself up into the saddle. “It is what they say.”

“Well, they should know better.” Orsina was nearing the end of her reserves of energy. As pleasant and distracting as conversation was, her time in a coma had not been sleep; it had been an endless trial, and now she found herself left to pay the piper even though it was other minds waging war with her as the battlefield. “Whoever they are.”

The wyvern was the wingless sort, sleek and shining in the sunlight, it wheeled on its hind legs before settling her new friend in place beside her once more. He looked like he was ready to depart, just like everyone else in the camp. Up there on his lizard’s back, he looked as though he had merely paused as he went about his duties. For all that he spoke of having no fear of repercussions, he clearly did not wish to suffer them. “They don’t. None of us do. None of us have seen the thing we hunt. But he will know.”

Orsina forced herself up to her feet to speak with him. “Who?”

“Konus.”

She blinked. “Konus is still alive? The way you were telling your story, I thought this was ancient history.”

He shrugged, and the wyvern shimmied its vestigial wings in sympathy. “It was long before any of us were born that he came down from the ice.”

“Then how could he…” Orsina was trying to calculate the age of this mythical figure, but she had no dates to work from, and the Arazi did not strike her as the sort of folk to keep a calendar.

“Aslinda-dragons, they do not age.” He smiled at the thick-plated brute of a creature still glowering at her as though they were old friends. “When humans bond with them, they share that with us.”

“Wait, so… you’re still following the same person who…”

He shrugged his shoulders, and there was another shuffle of scales and feathers, this time running down the length of the wyvern. “Time is different for the aslinda. They are… life. Creatures of life. It does not fade in them. That is why it is an abomination to take their life.”

She let out a sigh. “No wonder you hate me so much.”

“Yes, even if you aren’t the king, you are abominable.” He smirked. “That is why we are treating you so poorly.”

She cast her gaze around her cage for any real sign of mistreatment. They had locked her up, of course, and there was a guard posted to kill her, which wasn’t particularly friendly. But if one of the Arazi had been taken captive by Espher, she couldn’t imagine they’d have legs left to stand on. Finally her gaze settled on… “The bucket.”

“The bucket,” he replied solemnly.

Even the slowest moving of the thunder lizards seemed to be in motion now, heading off in the direction that must have been north. Slowly but surely, the town of skins and staves had broken down and wandered off without her.

Tearing her mind away from memories of the awful bucket, she asked. “When are we leaving?”

“They will come and get you last, I think. Once all else is done.”

She stared at the beast beneath him with mounting discomfort. Trying to imagine what it would be like to climb on the back of one, to feel it shifting between her legs as they moved. She’d barely been on a horse before, let alone something with teeth out of primordial nightmare. At least the worst a horse could do was kick you or throw you. “Will I have to ride on one of your wyverns?”

For the first time her new companion had the good grace to look vaguely embarrassed. “I think you will be taken on… him.”

Their eyes turned to the great dragon where it still lay with its face by her cage. Acrid smoke drifted up from its nostrils, as though somewhere deep inside a fire was being stoked.

“Oh no.”

The Arazi gave her a grimace of sympathy, then went looking at the dark clouds for silver linings that weren’t there. “You have not always dreamed of flying?”

“Flying is fine.” Orsina latched onto that. It was true. She’d rarely had much time to think about it while she was doing it, her focus almost always being on the myriad things trying to kill her while she was in flight, but the actual experience was exhilarating. “I like flying. But…”

“You do not like dragons?”

There was another tangle of a question that she didn’t know how to answer. So, she sidestepped it neatly.

“The idea of being tied up and flung on the back of one, miles in the sky… it doesn’t sound like a good time. And the rider… he’s not… polite like you.”

The aforementioned dragon-lord was making his way through the thinning crowd to where Orsina stood, and her new friend was getting ready to make himself scarce.

“Hah. Polite? I am my mother’s disgrace.”

She smiled at him. “Well, you can tell your mother that your manners were good enough for an abomination.”

“She will be delighted!”

11 - When Kings Lay Down Their Crowns
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

Artemio woke with a start. The last time he had dwelled in this particular room within the palace of Covotana, he had been woken by an assassination attempt. Such a history had a tendency to make for shallow sleep, and every creak and groan of the ancient wood had him reaching for his sword before his eyes had even opened.

Despite ample opportunity, he had not been attacked at any point through the night. The castle was full of enemies, but not one had set foot in the room. And if he were to have been attacked, he had protections in place that would have seen him through. Bisnonno Fiore, the last Volpe king, was still with him, his shade a constant presence whether Artemio invoked him or not. He scarcely needed to be fed life here. A second drained away from Artemio every so often, but here in this place where Fiore had lived and died, his presence was so potent that it was scarcely required. So through the night, the old king watched over the boy who would be king, if the ambassador had her way.

Now that the initial rush of terror had worked its way through his system, he lay there in his bed, looking up at the discolored portrait looming over the bed, and let his mind do what it did best: frantically scour through all that he had learned in search of connections.

There were two obvious reasons for Modesta to wish for him to sit the throne.

To win the loyalty of Espher’s ruler, and to break Espher’s defenses. If the kings lived and returned to rally their forces, having Artemio set against them might have swayed enough of the army outside of the wall to weaken them beyond the point of being able to break the siege. If the kings did not live, then in all honesty Artemio could think of no good reason that he should not take his place as ruler of Espher. Given the alternatives, he could not help but think of himself as the superior choice. Most of the others in the running would take to ruling like a hog to muck, but that did not mean that they were in any way the right choice for the kingdom. It was only latterly in the Cerva’s reign that he had become convinced that they had what it took. And then they had gone and undone whatever trust he might have had in their abilities by fleeing the city instead of defending it.

So, he found that his choice was predicated upon a point on which he had absolutely no information. Though he had succeeded in making contact with his network of spies in the guise of the Last King when meals were brought to these chambers and set them to work undermining the invasion in every way that he could conceive of, the fate of the Cerva twins remained a mystery to him. Whatever had happened in the palace in the hours leading up to their supposed departure, it had happened out of sight of the servants.

That was a mystery in itself.

Nothing went unobserved in a palace. There were servants whose duty it was to attend to every minuscule detail of the king’s life, and while there had been some degree of obscuring thanks to the Cerva’s switching back and forth, a crown-prince wouldn’t have been the recipient of any less observation and care. There would not have been a moment of any day that Canticle or Madrigal went unseen. Yet somehow neither one of them had been observed by any of their usual servants. Which in turn left Art with two more equally unappealing possibilities: They had been hidden away somewhere none of the servants had access to, which was practically impossible, or the servants had sold them out to Agrant.

The latter seemed infinitely more likely. Money could turn any peasant’s head. When it looked like a regime was changing, it rarely paid to remain loyal to the dead. Even the queen’s own household servants, such as they were, had been selected for her from those with an affiliation to their southern neighbors.

But if they had given themselves over to the ambassador and were now singing her tune and hers alone, what possible advantage was there in keeping him in the dark? If the kings were dead, did she fear that he would have tried to avenge them? She knew him well enough to know that he was not superstitious about the spilling of royal blood. The truth would out eventually, it always did. But if he claimed the throne and the kings remained alive, then Agrant had managed to break the bond of trust required for him to command Espher’s armies without spilling a drop of blood.

The only way that it made sense was if the kings lived and she was trying to play him. Trying to force his hand and create that rift. The entire setup made sense only if the kings lived, or if she was telling the truth and genuinely didn’t know. It would have been more believable if she’d lied, one way or the other, because that at least would have given him some clear direction in which to jump.

By introducing both possibilities, she made his reaction to the situation unpredictable. Knowing either way would have locked him into a certain response, but removing that certainty left him paralyzed. It prevented him from making decisive action. All that this enforced confusion bought her was time. Why was Modesta playing for time?

Reinforcements must be on the way. If she could keep the city until they arrived, she would win herself a stranglehold on Espher. If she could keep him frozen, then she would be able to prevent the siege from breaking until it was too late. Trapped between an army and the walls, his own troops would be crushed.

But the truth would out. There would be no guarantee that he could not discover the truth and make his decision immediately based upon that. There was no guarantee that he would not simply cast the whole problem aside, return to his army, and bring down the walls. It was all a gamble, and he did not believe that Modesta was the sort to gamble with her life on the line.

Which meant that no matter the truth, or the outcome, she had to be predicting a win for Agrant.

If he took the throne and the kings were dead, she won by being the one to put him there. Even if he was disobedient, there would always be the suspicion that Agrant was his kingmaker in the minds of his own subjects. The authority of the crown would be diminished, sovereignty would be wounded, bleeding strength to the emperor in the south.

If he took the throne and the kings lived, she won by fomenting rebellion and crippling Espher’s ability to stand against external foes.

If he denied the throne and the kings were dead, she won. Espher would descend into scrabbling lordlings all trying to portion up their part.

If he denied the throne and the kings lived, they would return as toothless as Modesta had said. The kings who’d abandoned their throne. Whatever threat they might have posed would be removed.

Yet not all of these prizes would be of equal value. She may have engineered the situation to a degree, but she did not control everything, and it seemed that she did not control one of the most important factors in this whole situation. Whether or not the twin kings lived.

To Artemio’s mind there could be no question that reinforcements were already on the way to the occupation forces. Either by Modesta’s design or because she had been cut off from contact by his siege. If she truly was Espher’s champion in the court of Agrant, then her enemies would have been capitalizing upon her silence to demand more forces be deployed. If she was lying, then she would have requested reinforcement herself, now that she had won such a prize as Covotana.

This meant that time was short. Whatever decision he meant to make, he needed to make it soon. So, he faced a whole new paralysis. The one that had held him throughout all of yesterday’s boredom and silence. To act or to not act, in the hope that more information would make its way to him. Did he believe the Cerva twins lived or were dead?

His little minions in the cult beneath the streets had done their part, but he had access to an entirely different quality of sources.

For all that they were the most powerful people in Espher, neither one of the kings had a particularly large habitat. They did not even have the full run of the palace for the most part. The majority of it was hidden from view, just as the secret apparatus of any functioning noble household was unseen by those who benefited from it. That was how the Last King’s rebels had passed so invisibly into the homes of their victims. The commoner was unseen even when they were in plain sight. Yet still they occupied space, and space had to be set aside for their duties. Beyond all those corridors and rooms frequented by them, there was so much more to the palace, entire wings that were sealed up more often than not, built for some ancient king’s mistress or some beloved ambassador in the style of the time, now covered in sheets and dust. When you got down to it, encompassing the various rooms where they entertained guests, ate meals, and performed such duties as required the actual presence of a king, you could count the locations on two hands.

A king loomed large in the hearts and minds of his people, even a king with such mixed feelings from the general populace as the Cerva. If one of them had been struck down, Artemio had little doubt they would become a shade, lingering on, just as his own grandfather did. All he would have to do was come close, and he would know for certain if a king had died.

With a wave of his hand, he dismissed Fiore and rose from the bed to face a day far busier than the last, if he had anything to say about it. There was no light in this cell, so it may have been before dawn or midmorning by the time that he flung the door open and startled the saint stationed outside. Confusion briefly broke through the solemn expression that they all wore before Artemio was past him, nodding and murmuring, “Good day,” as he went.

The moment of uncertainty was all that was required to have him falling into step behind Artemio instead of trying to block his path. It wasn’t a trick that was liable to work twice. “I assume the ambassador is holding court in the throne room?”

The poor saint mumbled out, “The ambassador said…”

He cut the man off as they went, politely ignoring his weak grasp of the language. “The throne room or the Teatro? Which is it?”

They made it another corridor before the Agrantine swordsman bumbled out, “Tay Ah Tro?”

“Very good, your Espheran is coming along well.” Artemio stopped to clap a hand on the man’s shoulder, making him flinch. “I’m most impressed. Was that your answer or were you simply sounding it out?”

He made a second attempt at gaining control of the situation. “The ambassador said that you were to…”

“She can say whatever she likes directly to me if you’d be so kind as to tell me…” They rounded another corridor, and for the first time, Art caught a glimpse of someone who wasn’t wearing Agrantine colors in the hall. She still wore black, but it was a maid’s simple blacks rather than the aggressively pious sackcloth robes. “Oh, never mind.”

He jogged the last few steps and called out to the servant. “Excuse me, miss, is the ambassador holding court in the throne room?”

Her eyes darted from him to the saint and back. Obvious trepidation marked her expression. “Yes, m’lord.”

“Splendid.” He clapped his hands. “And could you have someone attend to my room? The usual maid didn’t turn up.”

She bobbed into a curtsy. “At once, m’lord.”

There was no point in sneaking about. If Modesta meant for this to be his palace, then he was going to treat it as such. He had been so lost in his own thoughts, plans, and plots that the reality of what she was offering had passed him over. Forget the long-lasting implications, she could not demand that he be king and then treat him like anything less. It would destroy all credibility her offer held.

The doors were flung open before him by the heralds, who he couldn’t help but notice had not lost their jobs when their previous employer vanished. He supposed that like him, their loyalty was to Espher, or at least to the palace, rather than any particular ruling family. Back when the Volpe family were bloodily deposed, he supposed that the staff had simply switched sides then too. He tried very hard not to hold such things against people, but that was presumably why if you were to scratch the surface of his gilt mask you’d find rage burning bright beneath.

The room fell silent as he entered. Lesser nobles were lined up to swear fealty to Agrant, interspersed with merchants and their ilk, who would have traded away all of Espher for more gold in their pockets. The type who when confronted with the existential threat of the Arazi had immediately begun working out appropriate pricing for dragon-feed.

If he were to take the throne, the population of courtiers would find itself in rapid decline. Those coming to seek the king’s wisdom would find that they were offered practical solutions, and those who came to make demands would learn all too swiftly why a king’s time was not to be trifled with. The thought gave him brief pause before he walked past the full line of supplicants to face Modesta where she sat upon the ivory throne. If a tyrant was what was required to make Espher work, then he'd bear the mantle gladly.

Trying to maintain that same demeanor, he barely dipped his head in greeting while his knees strained from not bending. “Good day to you, Ambassador Modesta.”

By contrast, she leapt to her feet and immediately dropped into a curtsy. “Your Majesty, would you care for a seat?”

The pair of them looked at the throne for a long moment. What a sight that would have been for the people of Espher to see, her standing up from the throne and offering it to him. Exactly what they’d discussed in private now brought out for all to see. There was no response that ended well for him, so he ignored the whole thing. “I wondered if I might borrow you for a conversation at some point?”

She pressed her hands together in delight. “You have come to your decision then?”

The delight faded just as swiftly. “It is a work in progress.”

“It appears that the duty of maintaining the kingdom remains upon my shoulders then.” She sighed and sank back down into the throne, looking out across the crowded chamber. “Would you care to join me for lunch?

“I’d be delighted.” He smiled, and it barely even felt forced. A private conversation was what he wanted, after all. “In the Royal Dining Hall perhaps?”

Modesta threw back her head and laughed. It was deep and throaty, and it carried all the way to the back of the room. There were words hidden in it: “Let all of them see how you amuse me. How we have high regard for each other and enjoy the other’s company.” The sultry edge to it would have implied a romantic dalliance as well. To those with an ear for it. She meant for the two of them to be bound together as clearly in the kingdom’s mind as him and the queen. If she wasn’t intent on supplanting the queen entirely. Finally, it wound down. “Do you hope to find your king hiding under the tablecloth?”

He gave her as placid a smile as he could muster. “At this point in my life, I sincerely doubt that it would even surprise me.”

As it turned out, there was little time to waste after he had extricated himself from all the onlookers and well-wishers in the throne room. None of them seemed to be entirely clear on what they were congratulating him for. A few may have mentioned his victory in the north, but the vast majority seemed to believe that he had achieved something more important here in the city. If pressed, he was sure they would answer what precisely that was, but that would have left him in the awkward position of having to openly deny his intentions to sit the throne when just a little more information might render that untrue. It would not do for there to be any confusion in this matter after his coronation, if that was the choice he made, so instead he let himself be carried along on their redundant praise without prying deeper.

Artemio only knew about the royal dining chambers from the whispers in his mind from Bisnonno Fiore. He had never even come close to the kings’ living quarters in his previous visits to the palace, and that was precisely how the guards liked it. However much faith the Cerva may have had in him, it could not counterbalance the danger of his blood in the eyes of those stoic defenders. He had never been invited into their wing of the palace, nor had he ever expected to be.

Fiore guided his steps, up the long spiral stairs, along the tapestried galleries, through a door that stuck after heavy rain and normally took the servant putting a shoulder to it to open up the next set of corridors. He could feel the weight of the crown on his brow when he channeled the old king. Felt the weight of the kingdom on his shoulders. His trust in the old boy had faltered of late. Where before he had considered his grandfather to be as reliable a companion as his own dear sister, now there was a deliberate distance placed between them.

Fiore had betrayed him. When he’d called on his shades to fight his father, the old king had intervened. It was the instinct of a father to protect his child, and in any other circumstance, Artemio was sure he would have forgiven him in an instant. But because Fiore was a shade, it introduced a philosophical conundrum. In Septombra, they had been taught that shades were not people, that they were merely echoes of the person who had died to create them. Trace memories woven through with their psycho-geographical presence. Capable enough as tools but lacking the agency of the living. What Fiore had done smacked of independent thought. Which meant that at any moment, when Artemio was relying upon any one of his shades to act according to their purpose, he might find that they now didn’t feel like it. Given that he was reliant upon them in life-or-death situations, this was a concern. Add in the moral quandary of enslaving sentient beings and the whole practice of shade binding became… ambiguous.

It was almost a relief to turn his attention outwards as he strolled into the royal suites. If they had been disturbed since their owners departed, Artemio could see no sign of it. Even the maids had declined to dust. He’d wondered if perhaps Modesta might have moved herself in, but it seemed that she still maintained her sleeping quarters elsewhere. It made little sense for that elsewhere to be the embassy, but he supposed she probably already had an allocated room somewhere in the palace as a valued member of court, just as he did. Though hers probably had windows.

It was almost a surprise to realize that the saint from his room was still following at his heels. He would have assumed that at some point he would have taken a hint and gone on his merry way, but it seemed the ambassador was insistent on keeping an eye on him at all times. Given that he had turned himself over willingly and given no indication of an intention to escape, this meant only one thing to Artemio. There was something in the palace that she did not want him to find out about. To his mind, that could only mean the truth about the Cerva was here somewhere, just waiting to be found.

He closed his eyes, stilled his breath, and let his other senses roll out through the room.

There were wards worked into the stone of the palace, doubled or even tripled here where the royals took their rest. Shades that had been bound in stone, with no purpose but to prevent any other from passing through. Layers upon layers of them. Artemio could feel them all around, like a leaden weight pressing down on him, and more important, upon those who were within him.

At his back, where the saint stood, was a hollow place. More than just the saint himself seeming to have no soul within him, he blocked all sense that Artemio could have gotten from the walls behind him. He was more than just absent; he was a void.

With a press of concentration, the vague outline of a man grew more fuzzy, some glimmer of life stirred in the darkness, but as Artemio’s senses crept lower, closer to the sword on his belt, it was again like staring out into a starless night.

He set that aside for now. He was here to look for dead kings, not to examine the star-metal swords of the Agrantine or puzzle over the damage they seemed to be wreaking upon his enemy’s spirits. He pushed out into the room, feeding out a trickle of life, like an angler casting out bait. He let it spread with his senses, the tantalizing tickle of power. Enough to bring the faded ones back from the edge of oblivion, to tease out any shade still lingering here. He swished it back and forth as he walked deeper and deeper into the suite, past the dining room where he’d been directed, ignoring the saint-guards that still trailed at his heels doing nothing to stop him but implying by their presence that he was doing something that he was not meant to be doing. Next there would come a cavalcade of coughs and grumbles, until eventually one of them managed to muster up the courage to break the barrier of polite silence and demand that he return to where he was meant to be going. His own personal saint, who was still trailing along behind him like a shadow in his black robes, was clearly closer to the end of his patience than the ones Aretmio’s presence had gathered from the hallway. It seemed he had already developed a tickle in his throat.

Through their connection, Artemio pulsed out a demand to his least trustworthy of shades. His grandfather stirred after so long hearing not a word from his heir apparent, stiffly, as though he’d been roosting for too long, even though his actual presence had been invoked mere hours before. “Seek out your usurper’s heirs.”

Any of his shades could have been set to the task, but with his dawning understanding of Bisnonno Fiore, he felt that the old king was the best suited to the task. There had always been hints of independent thought in shades, something that the House of Seven Shadows instructors had jokingly referred to as flavors. A fire spirit would more readily undertake tasks of destruction. An old soldier would more gladly swing a sword than a ploughshare. Somewhere between the characteristics of the creature that unleashed the shade and the meaning that people attached to it, you found the thing’s nature. And to be fiercely protective of the Volpe line to the point of preventing it from wielding power against itself would inherently mean a hatred of the Cerva.

If the Cerva were dead, then Fiore would see to it that they never returned in any form. They were royal enough to fit within the vague remit of his being, which meant that they could be consumed to strengthen him. It was the normal way that shades in the wild grew in power, condensing and consuming all similar shades until only the greatest of them remained, an amalgam of all who had come before. Artemio supposed that when his father died, Fiore would have swallowed the old bastard’s spirit down involuntarily. A family member devoted to bringing the House of Volpe back to the throne was as good a fit for him as any crown-wearing stranger. United by their commonalities, Artemio doubted that Fiore had even realized what it was eating, only that it was a viable source of lingering life that didn’t require draining the only living heir to the line. Funny how Fiore became an it when Artemio thought of it as a shade, but a him when he thought too much of him as the man he'd been.

There had been closed doors in the royal suite. Probably untouched since the kings had departed for the last time. When Fiore was unleashed, every one of them burst open. The candles in the overhead chandeliers fluttered and died, leaving only the lace-filtered sunlight to bathe the rooms in a cool light. The saints at his back moved right past polite coughing and pointed comments to drawn blades.

He did not hear them, but he heard the silky sound of swords being pulled and turned to face them with his hands held up and empty. “Gentlemen, there is no need for that.”

The three saints stood with steel out in the open, eyes flitting from him to each other. Well, two of them did. The third only had eyes for Artemio. Glowering eyes. It was this one that hissed something out in Agrantine, one of the few words Art had picked up. “Witch.”

There were tenets in the Agrantine faith regarding the use of magic, and in particular the form of magic so widely practiced in Espher. Necromancy, they called it, though to Artemio’s mind it should have been necrotheurgy, as very little divination was done with the spirits of the dead that were summoned.

If anyone had the misfortune of being born Shadebound a little south of Espher’s border, they could have expected an extremely gruesome and painful future, although not one that was particularly long. Fire and needles would have featured heavily in the weeks after a Shadebound was discovered, as would a variety of special metal devices that it was said their God Emperor had designed himself for the specific purpose of purging the evil from their spirits. The efficacy of these devices was unknown, given that nobody survived them long enough to report back on how pure their spirit had become.

“I think you at least knew I was Shadebound before you were assigned to watch me. There would be no good reason for it to be a saint otherwise, would it?”

Art’s personal stalker’s lips had thinned to a line. It was funny how they’d all looked alike with their shaved heads and robes right up until now, when the distinctions among the three men could not have been clearer. Artemio’s room guard was taller than the other two by an inch or so; the murderous one still sported bushy eyebrows despite shaving everything else to the bone, as was the Agrantine saints’ wont; the last had broken his nose at some point. Presumably before he became a master of the martial arts. Breaking it afterwards probably would have been quite a bit trickier.

The saint Artemio had come to think of as his own turned his eyes from Art to his companion at the very same moment that bushy brows leapt forward. One saint sprang forward to intercept the other. Slapping his thrust off course so Artemio wasn’t run through. Wouldn’t do for the king of Espher to be killed by an Agrantine saint without explicit orders. Of course, he supposed that if he died, then Modesta would simply find the next most likely candidate to slap on the throne and call it a day. It would be more difficult for her, what with the absence of any rightful heirs lurking in the wings, and the lack of loyalty from the majority of the nobility to one another more or less guaranteed that whoever she left on the throne wouldn’t be there the next time she looked. Still, it was something to bear in mind as he negotiated his way through life behind enemy lines. He was not entirely indispensable, so he would have to take care not to do stupid things like blast open the doors and blot out the lights with a single foolish move. At least not in front of any twitchy guardsmen.

Art leapt to the side as the saints tumbled by, his attacker still trying to lash out despite having been picked up off his feet. Whatever else could be said of the star-metal blades of the saints, there could be no denying that they kept an edge well. His waistcoat and shirt parted, and were it not for the small amount of whalebone structure that had been built into the waistcoat to make it extra stiff and uncomfortable, it was likely his skin would have been split too.

The two tumbled out into the parlor proper, blades twisting to meet each other before either man had fully regained his feet. They fought on their backs, then coming up on their knees, then finally in hunched positions. Blade ringing on blade. Spinning so fast from strike to parry and strike that Artemio could scarcely follow the motion of it. He took a staggering step towards the remaining saint, and it only took him a moment to realize what a mistake he had made.

Thinking that the wicked necromancer was coming after him next, after turning the minds of the other saints against each other, he took a swipe at Art too. The whalebone did not take the blow for him this time. Bisnonno Fiore rushed between them to catch the blade.

Any normal swordsman would have found their sword stopping dead in the air, they would have felt the chill in that dead air permeating the metal and frosting up the blade until their hand burned and they had to drop it. This was not a normal swordsman nor a normal sword. Contact with the meteoric steel could kill Fiore as surely as it would Art himself, and he was not yet willing to make that sacrifice. He would not give up one of the cornerstones on which he had built his power for so small a thing as a cut. In one spiritual motion, he hauled Fiore back inside himself and unleashed the forge spirit, not on the saint, on whom the power would have broken like waves upon a rock, but on the floor beneath his feet.

In other parts of the palace where the comfort of the residents had mattered less, there were solid stone flagstones. In those places where it mattered the most to impress, there were great slabs of white marble. Here in the airy chambers where the kings did most of their actual living, there were floorboards, finely sanded and oiled down so there was no risk of rot or splinters in his Majesty’s feet. A suspended floor was an unusual enough feature in keeps of this size that Artemio had noted it when he walked in. He just wished that he had also noted what was on the floor beneath these chambers. Whatever it was, it had to be better than being split from gizzard to spleen.

In a plume of abrupt smoke, he disappeared through the hole in the floor, sizzled through the plaster roof of the room below, and then plummeted. The next room beneath the royal quarters wasn’t there. Down below, Artemio could see the rapidly approaching plaster roof of another room, but here in what should have been prime palatial real estate, the Cerva had constructed a void space.

Any attempts to circumvent the guards by entering their chambers from below would have been doomed to failure unless their would-be assassins had a premonition to carry along a twelve-foot ladder.

Artemio hit the plaster roof below and burst straight through with barely any slowing. He supposed that the done thing would have been to scream all the way down, but he’d long lost the habit of raising his voice, even in the face of mortal peril. The last petals of flame that he’d been projecting beneath him licked out to touch the furnishings of the next chamber down. Another bedroom, exceedingly well appointed in a manner that spoke less of the gaudy gold-leaf fashion of the newly wealthy and more of the old, long-lasting wood that had defined previous generations’ ideas of luxury. Furniture built for your great-grandchildren to still enjoy. Hopefully they would not enjoy it any the less for the char marks that he had left on them as he fell.

Fiore tried to catch him before he hit the ground, absorbing some portion of his momentum, but not nearly enough, though passing through the dead old king had a helpful numbing effect so Artemio didn’t feel the impact quite so much—at least for the first few moments before he finally managed to struggle in a breath, and the pain blossomed all across his side. He’d landed half on the floor and half on a chest. And he couldn’t say whether the flagstones or the curvature on the top of the box had hurt more.

Ribs were definitely cracked, if not broken. His side seemed to have taken the brunt of the hit. If he’d had half a moment to prepare, then he doubtless could have called on some other shade to protect him from the impact, but as it turned out when he was plummeting through an unexpected void space, his mind had gone equally unexpectedly blank. Groaning, he half slithered, half crawled his way across to the door and made sure it was secure.

He'd made it out without killing any of the Agrantine. That would come in helpful when convincing them that he had not actually intended an escape, merely to open the doors and air the place out. Assuming he could get anyone to listen long enough without trying to murder him.

Which version of the tale was told to Modesta would doubtless depend upon which of the brawling saints above survived. With luck, the most aggressive of the three had been dealt with promptly and the other two had managed to reach some sort of impasse. If the two hostile ones had paired up to slay the other, then he wouldn’t be waiting for Modesta to come knocking. He turned his gaze to the hole in the roof. It wasn’t particularly satisfying. If he fell through a plaster ceiling, there should have been an Artemio-shaped hole left behind rather than the rather ragged circle up there.

If they came down, then his defender was dead. If they walked around to knock on the door, some other balance had been struck.

There was nothing so unpleasant as waiting. Pain, violence, and fear were all terrible in their way, but they lasted only so long as they lasted, and then they were gone. Dread could last a lifetime. It could haunt your dreams and stalk your thoughts and poison any happiness that you might have felt. Even when any given doom was fulfilled, the dread still lingered in the knotted muscles of his shoulders, in the tremor of his hands, in the way his eyes darted. If they were coming, he wished they would just come.

The moments ticked by, each one as long as an hour spent in study. He dared not start on any fresh plan for escape without knowing which way Modesta would jump. It was apparent to him that she needed him, both to resolve her issue of lineage and to dissolve the army at her gates, but inadvertently he had created something of a test for her resolve. How badly did she need him?

The windows were an option of course. There would be an awful distance to scale down the side of the building, considerably more than his stamina would allow for, and he’d be wide open to crossbow fire from below, but perhaps some sort of crabwise shuffle before they realized where he had gone would allow him to re-enter through another window and then make his way down through the palace proper, guided by the old king. If he’d been certain of what was coming, he could have blasted his way out into the halls and run like hell before an alarm was raised, but that ran too contrary to his nature.

Not the part about acting swiftly and decisively. He had a handle on both of those by this point in his life. The part where he turned tail and ran was the cause for his delay. He wasn’t sure he could stomach it, whether it was the wisest course or not. Even back on the battlefield, he had felt a sense of relief when the Arazi were encircling him because it eliminated retreat as an option. Certainly, it had spurred the Espheran army on when they might have broken and run in the face of the ruin that true dragons could rain down upon them, but on a personal level, it meant that Artemio no longer had to consider it as a tactical option, and that was a massive relief to him, even if it should have been a source of dreadful anxiety.

So, he waited for the better part of an hour until a gentle knock came on the door. “Duke Volpe, I would like to apologize for my men. Would it relieve you to know they have been disciplined?”

He let out a soft sigh of relief, muffled by his hand so that it could not be heard beyond this room. Lowering it, he decided to be the bigger person and make things easier for her. “Not fatally, I hope. It was a momentary lapse in judgement. On my part as much as theirs. It did not even occur to me that I would cause such distress by simply opening some doors.”

“The saints in question will no longer be serving within the palace, as it seems a poor fit for their temperaments.” Modesta’s voice was almost soft compared with its usual richness and potency. She was clearly suppressing a great deal of emotion. And Artemio would wager that emotion was fury at her underlings’ incompetence. “Is that acceptable?”

He forced a smile onto his face in case she could hear that he was not wearing one. His father had been able to do that. Even with his back turned. “Absolutely ideal. My thanks to you.”

For a moment the two of them stood on either side of the door, waiting.

Modesta broke the silence. “I believe that so long as we are careful of the damaged area, the royal suite is still available to us. Might I interest you in resuming our lunch arrangement?”

His head had been spinning off down a dozen new paths, many of which had involved it no longer being attached to his body, so it was almost a relief to drag himself back to the more familiar mystery of the kings’ fate. “Yes, that is probably for the best.”

There was another long pause, then the ambassador asked, “I don’t suppose that door is locked from the inside?”

Art didn’t groan, but it was a near thing. “I’m afraid not.”

“That may present an issue.” He was almost certain he had heard her groan, though it might have been one of her courtiers reflecting the look on her face. “Are you quite comfortable to wait while we locate the key holder?”

He glanced towards the hole in the ceiling. “Perhaps I should just make my way back and meet you up there? Assuming the gentlemen from earlier have now departed.”

“I can assure you they are gone.” There was that pronounced softness again. She was genuinely furious. He mattered to her enough to pierce the cloak of professional distance that she kept from everyone. He must have been central to her schemes. “It is quite a distance, and I am in no hurry. Are you certain you can manage?”

“I have help.” His smile felt a little more genuine this time around. “But thank you for your concern.”

Then, as if to prove to himself that he could move swiftly and decisively after so long lingering there, he walked straight beneath the hole in the roof and launched. The shade of Saveria Gatto provided the force required, as though Artemio stood atop the very tip of a vast rapier being thrust straight up. The acceleration stopped just short of the blackened circle up above, and with a grace that he himself did not possess, Artemio drifted forward at the zenith of his launch to land upon the slightly charred and dipping floorboards. Arriving safely before gravity could cotton on.

Taking in the scene of the fight was habitual at this point. The two wrestling saints had gone end over end as they fought, making it to their feet and then flinging furniture about as they tried to gain some sort of terrain advantage over the other. It looked as though the fight had carried over a chaise lounge, which, from the scratches, Artemio could tell had been tipped up onto one end. Before ultimately the third man in the room intervened, breaking them up, but not before disturbing the dust by their feet and scratching a line up the wallpaper where he raised his own sword to part theirs. To Artemio’s other senses, the places where their blades had scratched were dulled, as though the mere touch of the meteoric steel was sufficient to rob the world of its vigor. The ward behind the panel that had been scratched was dead, an opening through which shades might enter now. He made a mental note to have it replaced. For the Cerva when they returned, not for himself. Probably.

Regardless of who would occupy these rooms in the future, the guards were gone now, as promised. Which meant that Artemio had the full run of the royal suite without interference, at least until Modesta made her way up two flights of stairs. Without delay, he unleashed Fiore again, setting Saveria Gatto loose to serve the same purpose while he hunted through each room in turn, straining out his senses for any hint of the twin kings even as he used his eyes and mind to piece together what he could from the scene they had left behind. Nothing was out of place, everything had been put into its allotted place, even the vast wardrobes off the bedrooms were organized tidily, and in all of his life, Artemio could not think of any other time where a foppish noble of any sort had his overwhelming plethora of different clothes so orderly. It made him think better of the Cerva again, albeit only briefly.

Peering down at the ground served no purpose either, there would be no trace of the kings’ footprints here, all dust would have settled after their departure, not before. Yet he caught himself doing it once or twice, some thought nagging at the back of his head until finally he found himself giving it voice. “How long have they been gone?”

The dust lying on the floor was too thick to only have been a few days. Even assuming the kings had gone into hiding the very moment the army had marched off to war, it wouldn’t have been possible for the place to become so run-down so quickly. Did they even stay here at all? If you were as assassin-averse as the Cerva, advertising one place as your sleeping quarters and sleeping someplace else entirely made an awful kind of sense. He set it aside for now and continued his sweep of the suite of rooms, invariably turning up nothing.

If they had died, he was confident it hadn’t happened here. And if they lived, he was confident they had not departed from these rooms. He found himself intensely frustrated by the whole process of elimination. The palace had more rooms than he could readily count. If he were to go through them one by one, giving them the due diligence and care required to turn up any hint to the kings’ whereabouts, then it would take him the better part of a year, and that was assuming everything could have been perfectly preserved in this moment until he turned his attention to it. As it stood, all he could do was focus upon those places where it seemed the most likely to him that the kings may have been and expand the search out from there to the marginally less likely places, and then to the rest. The kings had the full run of the keep, even if politeness typically kept them contained. If they had known there was an Agrantine army on the march, then they might have holed up anywhere before making a break for it. Or they may not have fled at all, instead secreting themselves away somewhere in the palace with the intent of waiting things out or positioning themselves and their followers to take the city back.

Anything was possible, and since the people he had given his fealty to so readily had elected not to leave him a single hint as to their current whereabouts, anything would remain possible. At least for now.

By the time Modesta had arrived, he had settled himself at the table and only rose to greet her politely for a moment before sinking back down. Moving hurt, and he’d expended more effort than he’d intended scurrying around the suite while he had peace.

There was no way to avoid her noticing his wince. He did not like to show weakness before an enemy, but in this case, any injury that had been done to him was practically a point scored in whatever game they meant to play next. Her voice had returned to its usual richness when she said, “My dear Duke, I’m so very sorry for this unfortunate turn of events. I hope that all is well?”

“Just a few bruises, I assure you.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. No need for acting, the whole right side of his body seemed to be tightening up now that he had stopped moving. He would be black and blue from armpit to knee. “For all of their much-vaunted lethality, I would have expected more from your saints.”

She mustered up a sympathetic smile for him. “Ah, but there were saints leaping to your defense also, were there not?”

He laughed a little too hard, and it was cut off abruptly by the surge of pain. “Are you suggesting that the one balanced the other, for a net result of no death?”

“Perhaps?” She glanced out into the foyer room, at the blackened mark on the rugs, still visible from so far off. “Though I’m sure they are not accustomed to men who can simply disappear through the floor when threatened either. You are full of surprises. Aren’t you?”

“Did you like that?” He grinned. Let her think him a fool, so pleased to turn her head. “I thought it was rather a good trick. It would only work that once of course. Afterwards, everyone and their mother would know to station a second guard on the floor below me, but it served its purpose. I’m still here, chatting away with you and wondering what sumptuous delights will be served.”

Servants had drifted into the room as they spoke, and despite himself, Artemio had fallen back into the old habit of ignoring them until it was no longer necessary to do so. It was how the Last King cult had slaughtered so many of Espher’s nobility unseen. He needed to keep closer watch, particularly now that he was injured. To his mind, many of those peasants were like wild dogs, just waiting to scavenge upon the corpse of any noble wolf that looked susceptible to their attentions. He did not want to look weak in front of them either. It would not provide him with a life expectancy beyond weeks.

The ambassador glanced around as plates were set down and silverware alongside. Sniffing at the aromas wafting up from the covered platters. She glanced about before whispering conspiratorially. “It is not politic to say so, but I must admit a preference for Espheran cuisine now that I have dwelled here for so long. When I first arrived, everything was too rich for me, of course. I spent my first week here in a constant state of nausea. But now that I have adjusted, there is much to appreciate. Wouldn’t you say?”

He looked down at his plate with a smile. Pheasant, shimmering in the sunlight and scented heavily with cinnamon. Beans in a rich broth. Fried zucchini flowers. All extremely Espheran dishes. “Unfortunately, I lack much basis for comparison. I can’t say that I’m terribly familiar with food from the south…”

“A culture founded on the principles of asceticism can create a great many things, from mighty warriors to pious devotees, but one thing that they lack for is a variety of sauces and soups. Agrantine cuisine tends to focus less on flavor than on its sustaining properties. The most food for the smallest cost. Grand crops of grains and rice, our farmlands stretch on for acres. As far as the eye can see. Yet the quantity of produce is tempered by a lack of distinct flavors. Shall I call down to the kitchen and ask them to send up some examples?” She did not laugh aloud as she made the offer, but there was a wicked sparkle in her eye. He knew that if he said yes, she would absolutely make him endure whatever drab barley stew they subsisted on back home, yet refusing might be taken as an insult.

As tactfully as he could manage, he gave his answer. “I can’t say that you’ve really impressed on me the reason why anyone might want to eat it, thus far.”

“Efficiency, for the most part. When you have an empire spanning from one ocean to the other, it behooves you to ensure stomachs are full first and palates pleased second.” She took a delicate bite, crunching into a zucchini flower, and then sighed with pleasure. “I suppose that at some time in our history we reached a turning point where such a trade no longer needed to be made, but by then all that we knew to cook was what had sustained us through darker times. Is this much like what happened here, in Espher?”

Artemio was a little perplexed. “We had constant prosperity, and it caused our tables to overflow with delights? Possibly? I can’t say I’ve given it too much study.”

“My meaning was your shades rather than your supper. Even the name of your necromancers gives answer to why your ancestors were willing to attach their souls to such monsters. To bind them. To keep them from their rampaging.” She bent forward to ensure none of the sauce from her beans might spatter her dress, though Artemio doubted it showed any stains. Least of all red ones. It created a false sense of intimacy between them. As though she were speaking of something shameful. “So now it is all your people know. Is it why they hold with such archaic wickedness?”

“With respect, Madam Ambassador, I believe you have misunderstood the etymology. It is not the shades that are bound, it is I.” He found that persistent spark of anger burning deep inside him. A personal insult he would have shrugged off as his due more often than not. But to have the entirety of Espher tarred with the brush of archaic wickedness was too much for him to stomach. “Just as we might say a crown-prince is throne-bound, so it is with my people. To command the dead is our birthright. They are our destiny. Our gift. We do not cling to the past because it is all that we have ever known, we hold with traditions that have made Espher a world power since before your god had learned how to piss for himself.”

There was a sullen silence for a long moment. During which Modesta took another crunching bite of zucchini. Finally realizing that he was going to make no apology, she offered one up instead. “I apologize for the misunderstanding. Am I to take it from your rather visceral reaction that I have touched upon a taboo subject?”

“Not at all. I simply do not want there to be any misunderstanding between us.” His eyes narrowed as he pressed on, anger burning within him, no matter how he tried to deny it. How could anyone have lived in Espher for so long and still not understood one of the most fundamental things about it and its people? “I do not endure my shades as a necessary evil; I revel in the gifts that the past bestows upon me, upon Espher. It is through our mastery of these embodiments of our history and culture that we have come to rule our little corner of the world. It is our mastery of them that keeps all of your grand upstart empires from trampling over us and swallowing us up. Come rain, snow, or dragon, Espher will survive, because we are Shadebound.”

Modesta fell silent once more, but it was less a matter of shock and more one of having her mouth full this time around. Artemio joined her in working their way through the first course. It was not that the food had been delivered to his room cold in the past day, only that the volume and variety of that which had been delivered was rather lacking.

“Espher cannot endure if it no longer remains Espher,” Modesta said as she polished off the contents of her spoon. “That was more or less what you told me on your return to the city, was it not? So long as I promised you that Espher would remain a kingdom of its own, then you would accept any deal required to protect her?”

Now they were once again coming to the crux of the matter. He set his own knife and spoon down. “There is no question of it.”

“Yet I have offered you all that most men dream of, and still you decline.” She counted off his blessings upon her fingers. “A kingdom to rule, a famed beauty for a wife, the support of powerful allies for your new regime. All while guaranteeing her sovereignty. What more could you ask for?”

He could lie, of course he could lie, but he didn’t feel that he had enough talent in deception to get past the ambassador, nor could he conceive of a way to extract useful information from her without first acknowledging what information he was seeking. So, he did that which was unthinkable in the circles that the two of them now moved in. He leaned close, and he was honest about what he wanted. “I need to know what has become of the Cerva before I make any rash decisions.”

Modesta sat back with a loud sigh. “I do not know what has become of them. Nobody does. I can assure you, that knowledge was of the foremost priority to me when my hand was forced. I have made every inquiry it was possible to make, and I have come up with no answers for you. What more would you have me do?”

“Set me loose.” His answer leapt unbidden from his mouth. “Let me look for them, let me track them down. It would help your cause to have their whereabouts known, just as it would help my own decision making.”

Modesta’s face had turned stern. “And if you do not like what you find?”

“Then wouldn’t you rather I learned it now before I sat the throne and directed all its power against you once the truth has outed?” He bit down into the meat of his pheasant with considerably more force than was strictly required. Not champing at the bit to begin his search but agitated nonetheless. “This is a city where the dead speak. Do you truly think that I will not find out eventually, with or without your assistance or leeway?”

“As you have already said, it would be in my best interests to allow you to search. Either you turn up nothing and thus are free to follow through on my plan without delay or remorse, or you find them alive and well somewhere, hiding from their duty and being a general embarrassment to the entire human race. Regardless, the truth must be sought, and as such I give you my fullest blessings and whatever authority you require to discover the truth of this matter swiftly. Is that sufficient?”

“Your blessings are appreciated.” He smiled at how easy all of this was. “But I believe that I have authority enough myself, if I am to be the king-in-waiting. Wouldn’t you say?”

“Quite. If you do intend to take up the crown?” It wasn’t quite a question, but it wasn’t not either, and apparently it had been close enough for her bizarre Agrantine speech pattern to accept it as such.

He didn’t have an answer to it yet, but the truth was obvious. He wouldn’t still be here entertaining this conversation if he wasn’t at least considering it.

They finished up that first course and a light refreshment was brought in to tide them over to the next: shaved ice flavored with pear syrup. The kind of exorbitant luxury that in other nations would have been impossible to acquire, even for most royals. Here in Espher where shades could be commanded to conjure ice from the water in the air, it was affordable enough that even a peasant was likely to taste it once or twice, during festival times.

It was very refreshing, and it set his mind back onto the task at hand. The real reason that he had asked for this meeting. “Ambassador Modesta, would you mind telling me what you do know of the king’s movements before his disappearance?”

She let out a laugh that made him uncomfortably aware that he was alone, eating a private meal in a private room with an attractive woman. A woman who seemed to cultivate her attraction in the way a warrior honed his sword. “Am I a suspect to be interrogated?”

“Not at all. I’m simply convinced that you of all people in Covotana have access to the best intelligence at this point. None of my usual contacts are currently available, what with them being outside the city walls.” There was no need to mention his conversations with the servants. Modesta wouldn’t count them as people.

“My dear, flattery is entirely unnecessary. As I have already told you, I was somewhat involved in logistical arrangements on that particular day, but it is my understanding that his Majesty withdrew from holding court in the throne room as soon as my army was sighted. From there, the castellan reports that he remained in the palace, heading to the solarium to discuss matters with his brother in private, even sending away their servants. We assume it was from there that they made their egress.”

She had taken the first meeting with them in the solarium. Already giving him a look, to see if he could pick up the trail like a good hunting dog, before they’d even begun their discussions of peace terms. It seemed that she meant to use him for anything and everything that he was good for. Thinking back, there had been no sign of any shade lurking around, nor had Bisnonno Fiore abruptly swollen with power from consuming a royal shade, so it could be assumed that no violence had been done to them there.

Of course, the very fact that Modesta was holding court there on his arrival meant it had been thoroughly cleaned and organized before he could see it, eliminating any evidence of a struggle if they had been seized there and killed elsewhere.

He gave no hint of any of this on his face. “It is certainly a good starting point to begin my search, thank you.”

If she thought he was a fool who could be used unwittingly for her purposes, then all the better.

12 - Fortune’s Scales
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

There were hidden cities within the city of Covotana. Towns made in miniature and hidden behind compound walls. Within a noble family’s domain in the city, you might find their own baker set up in his own bakery. Their own soldiers set up in their own barracks. Stables, wells, streets, and entertainers. All of the things that made a city into a city scaled down to serve only a handful of people who were considered deserving of it. There was fierce competition among the noble houses to acquire the finest talent from among the skilled workers of Covotana, to get contracts signed and then consign them to servitude for the rest of their lives. It was a comfortable life, for those who were being consigned, and it made the already comfortable lives of those doing the acquisitions that little bit more pleasant to know that at no point would they have to step beyond the walls of their tiny city and interact with any of the world beyond.

After a morning of being jostled by crowds, ignored by people she was speaking to, and generally treated with the kind of contempt with which she had treated the common man of Covotana, Harmony was beginning to see the appeal of a private town with none of the human race intruding.

The press of bodies was precisely what she needed to make it safely past the patrolling saints or any other spies from the palace that might have seen her before, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed the elbows of that press nor the pungent aroma that she often had to remind herself was actually probably originating with her, given her sewer-diving exploits.

Before she had lain down for the night, everything had hurt, but while she had dozed in fitful slumber, it seemed that her injuries had not and that they had claimed quite a bit more territory while there was nobody keeping watch. She didn’t just look like a peasant or smell like a peasant, she moved like one now, limping and shying away from every contact with others. Flinching as though she were afraid to take up any room. She could not have asked for a more complete disguise, and just as it was with the press of bodies around her, she hated every moment of it despite its utility.

Technically speaking, she knew where she was going. She knew Covotana, and she was more than passingly familiar with the Anatra estate, which she had been longing to visit since she was a child to enjoy one of their famous balls. Having now successfully attended one, she would have thought the location ever more firmly burned into her mind. Yet the version of the city that she knew, viewed through the window of a hired carriage, was not the one down here amidst the terra-cotta paving and horse-apples. She did not think the extra two feet of vantage would have changed her view so thoroughly, but she could not see the usual landmarks through all of the damned heads bobbing into her line of sight, and it seemed that actually asking any of those head owners the way to somewhere was a surefire way to get barked at.

What should have taken her an hour had taken the better part of her day so far, and she hadn’t even come up with any sort of plan for actually surmounting the estate’s fairly substantial walls yet. Now that she had located the place, she was encircling it slowly, trying to be as unobtrusive as it was possible for a hideous stinking beggar to be in this part of town. Which was to say, if the usual city guard had still been on duty, she would already have been bound in chains at best or on her way to the bottom of a canal at worst.

Dense ivy artfully draped across the outer walls, but it didn’t take Harmony more than a moment to realize that for all that it was widely spread, it was also cultivated from fresh growth in such a way that it didn’t actually hold on to the wall anywhere. It gave the appearance of ivy while offering all the assistance in climbing that you’d normally associate with clouds. If anything heavier than a sparrow put weight on it, it would tear free.

Her impression of the Anatra was not that they were particularly clever people outside of the sphere of social climbing, where they excelled, but it seemed that they did employ clever people. Which meant that any attempt at egress was liable to encounter trouble. The few places the wall seemed to dip lower, there was a shimmer of broken glass showing atop it. Anywhere that another building stood close enough that a daring leap from an upper story might have been attempted, she could hear the soft shuffling of feet in dry leaves on the other side of the wall.

The Agrantine had found no fight when they came into the city, and places like this were why. When confronted with danger, the nobility of Espher would have given any turtle a run for its money on who could retreat to safety swifter. There was probably a substantial standing army outside the city with the Anatra sigil on their shields, but some smaller, more elite, number of them would still be here, surrendering any potential glory on the battlefield for the certainty of three square meals a day and a substantial monthly stipend for entertainment.

She did not want to encounter them.

The bottom line was that these soldiers were fundamentally mercenaries, fighting not for honor or country or anything else noble of heart, but for cash. If they found her and recognized her, then she would have been as well turning herself over to the Agrantine without a fight. It wouldn’t take all of them turning on her, just one who was ready to cut a new deal for prosperity. Eventually she reached a corner somewhere off behind the main villa, which had been set near the back of the estate at an angle so that none of the building and the outer wall were facing. Wouldn’t want any irritating echoes. She looked around, realized that she was currently unobserved, and then grit her teeth, staring up at the tiled top of the wall. It was tall, but not so tall as to make the possibility of climbing over it ridiculous. If Art were here, he’d gust her over with one of his shades so quickly she wouldn’t even have time to yelp, but he wasn’t, and she was alone with only her own body and mind at her disposal. She went for the corner, running. Where the roofed stretches of wall met, there was a seam between the tiles, and if she could catch a hold on that and swing, there was a chance she’d be over and in before anyone was any the wiser.

She took a deep breath, staggered back, with every muscle in her body loudly protesting, and then she ran for it. Building momentum all the way across the street. One foot hit the wall, then the next, up above it, she ran as high as she possibly could in those two kicks before finally slamming down her heels, coiling, and then springing up.

Or at least that was her intention. What happened instead was that her hand grasped the edge of the tiling for only a moment before it gave way, and she tumbled back down into the street.

She was still lying there, bleeding from her scalp and with the detachable tile in her hand, when the guards who had been patrolling around inside came out to check on what had caused the commotion. At once, their sergeant cursed under his breath, then by his command the two lesser officers seized Harmony under the arms and hauled her up.

For a moment she thought that she could stand and fight, but the strength in her legs gave out promptly. Head wounds were a tricky thing, especially after a night of being flung around and battered off the sides of tiled pools beneath the surface of the city. Her vision kept slipping into darkness and back, everything swayed from side to side, and it was only when the pain cut through her confusion she realized it was because her eyes kept trying to close without her say-so.

“Miss? Miss, can you hear us?”

She meant to cuss them out, to demand they release her, to threaten the lot of them with gruesome violence if they laid a hand on her person, but what came out was, “Ow.”

The guard on her left arm didn’t seem to even notice. “I told them. Didn’t I tell them. You can’t go loosening up tiles, they’re going to fall. And look what happens.”

“They don’t want anybody climbing over the walls,” right arm piped up.

“Then build them higher. Don’t go putting a death trap for anybody walking by.”

Right arm jostled her a little, and nausea rolled through her. She’d fought dragons and dragon-lords, and if she died from falling over, she was going to be furious. “If you build them higher, people think you’re scared of something,” right arm said.

Left arm yanked her a little closer, which was probably for the best because her legs might have been going through the motions of walking as they dragged her along, but they had the lost what little strength sleep had given back to them. “Know what I’m scared of? I’m scared that some poor girl will come walking by, and the tiles we loosened will come down and crack her head open.”

That shut up right arm for a moment. But eventually he mumbled out, “Look, this was just bad luck.”

“Bad luck, was it? How many times have we had to come out and replace fallen tiles? How many times a week?” Left dragged her along when one of her feet got turned under her ankle. “It wasn’t luck. It was a tragedy waiting to happen.”

She felt like she should probably contribute to the conversation in some way. But the words seemed to be coming to her from a great distance away, and her ears were ringing, and it was darker than it should be for midday. “I’m… I’m all right.”

Left arm scoffed. “No, miss, you most certainly are not. You’re bleeding, and you look like the Last King came knocking at your door.”

She was bleeding. There was wet running down her face, down her neck. Why hadn’t she felt that before? Probably a bad sign. “Scalp. Always looks bad.”

“You’re right enough, miss, but that still don’t explain why you can’t stand up on your lonesome, now, does it?”

She didn’t have an answer for that. Art probably would have had words. Lots of fancy words. Like concussion. And brain swelling.

They passed through the gates and into the Anatra estate without a single alarm being raised, unless you counted right arm’s grumbles over the top of her lulling head. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Well, I’m surely not leaving her out in the street when it’s all our fault she’s hurt.”

Right arm’s tone was gradually shifting from complaining to wheedling. “Lady Anatra will have our guts for garters, she hears we’ve brought some girl in.” He tried to lower his voice but failed rather fantastically as he added, “Have you smelled her?”

“Don’t be rude, we don’t know the hardship she’s endured, do we? And how’s the lady going to find out exactly?” left asked very pointedly. A challenge. “Besides, it isn’t like there’s going to be any funny business.”

She hadn’t even considered the fact that she was surrounded by men and essentially powerless to defend her virtue at this point. But Harmony did what she could to defend herself. “Might throw up.”

“See, hardly puts you in the mood?” Left seemed pleased to get a little support, even if it was from the quarter of an almost unconscious peasant girl.

Still right arm persisted. “Well, she can’t be in the barracks. Everyone will see her.”

Left snorted. “Whole bloody house is empty with the war. Let’s bung her in one of the outhouses and call it a job well done.”

“Better get a bucket though, in case she does go,” right arm added, with the growing confidence of a man who recognized some small battle he could win, even as the war went against him. “Don’t fancy explaining that to her ladyship neither.”

Left bobbed his head. “Right you are.”

They fell quiet for a time, or possibly, Harmony slipped out of consciousness long enough to lose her bearings and track of the conversation. Blinking hard, she caught tiny glimpses of the world outside her aching head. The greenery of the gardens. The mosaic tiles beneath her feet as she passed over places where she’d danced not so long ago. She could hear fountains for a while, then they faded to quiet. Finally, the creaking of a door being opened stirred her.

She was slumped down into a heap of sacks. Lumps shifted beneath her that she hoped were apples rather than rats. Left arm remained with her; right wandered off somewhere. Bucket. Getting a bucket in case her rising gorge finally made a break for it. She tried to speak around it, but that just seemed to encourage it to climb higher.

Left pushed her hair back from her face. The blood was already turning tacky. “Right, miss, you just settle there for a little rest. I’ll come back and check on you in a bit. Bring you a drink and whatnot.”

She managed a few words, though she didn’t seem to have any control of what they were. “Got… to go.”

“You aren’t going nowhere, miss, not until you’re seeing straight again.” His hand paused from its gentle ministrations and gave her a pat on the cheek. If she’d been anyone else, she might have recognized the tone as fatherly, but her mind substituted brotherly, slotting Art into that role. The only one to show her kindness when she was hurt or beaten down. “I’m sure whoever you’re hurrying off to meet will forgive you once they see all that blood, and no mistake.”

Darkness encroached on the edges of her vision, and she fought it back. She knew falling asleep would be bad. She knew it, just like she knew so many things, because Artemio had been rambling about them, and some bits of his rambling got stuck in her head too. “Got things to… go. People to…”

“Well, I’m sure they’ll still be there once you’re feeling better.” He put a hand on both of her shoulders, as though he was trying to stop her getting up. Stupid. She could barely stay where she was without slumping. “Just don’t go wandering, all right? If somebody spots you there’ll be trouble for us all, sure enough.”

The other one had come back to plunk a bucket by her legs. Wedging it in between them with a nudge of his foot. “I still think this is stupid.”

The brotherly guard turned on him with a snarl. “And I think I wouldn’t leave a hurt dog out on them streets with the bloody black-robes out there. Would you?”

He held up his hands in defeat. “All right. All right.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Then finally the door swung shut, the blinding light of day was blocked, and blissful silence descended. Finally, all the noise was over, and she could get some rest. Harmony let her aching head loll back against the rough fabric of the sacks and closed her eyes.

No. That was wrong. Her eyes snapped open again, though just keeping them open hurt. Sleep was the enemy. Sleep would kill her. She had to remember. Even though trying to remember anything, focus on anything, was utterly hopeless. Orsina. She needed to remember why she was here. What she was doing. She had to know. If Orsina was dead, then maybe she could just lie down and let this all be over, but so long as there was hope, she was not going to go quietly into the dark.

So, she sat up, and threw up, and hurt. All three of those steps took markedly longer than she would have thought possible, as though time itself had ground to a halt to politely remind her that perhaps lying down and dying might be the preferable option at this point. She didn’t listen. Time, her body, all of it could shut the hell up. Pushing herself to standing, she swayed dangerously, feet shuffling about to find stability. Up was clearly a bad idea. Everything felt so much worse when she was upright. It was as though she’d shoved her head into a cloud of nausea that had been lingering over her. Her stomach convulsed, but there was truly nothing left to bring up.

Step by step she crossed the reeds laid out on the floor to reach the door. Inch by inch, she hauled it open, slow as she could, so as to keep the hinges from creaking. Peering out, she could distantly see the central villa through the shrubberies. She was in some storage hut set away from the main house and the major paths. She was inside the compound, past the guards, guards who now had a vested interest in not drawing attention to her. It was the absolute best-case scenario, and she loathed how easy it had been because she’d earned none of it. Unless you were a believer in some sort of luck balance, in which case she was likely owed a great deal more good fortune to make up for the past day or so.

She kept her hand on the wall as she left the storage hut, it was more vital to her balance than keeping her eyes open, as her eyes continually seemed to wander sideways and try to lead her astray. Kagan was here, somewhere, locked up in one of the lesser chalets secreted around the estate. She wished she’d paid more attention when he was being relocated from the palace. As it was, she was going to have to scout them all out.

Kagan had been too much of a liability to the war with the Arazi to be allowed to roam free, but as the impresario to one of their most impressive Shadebound, he could no longer be confined to a cell. This holiday on an ally’s estate had been the best compromise that could be reached.

Stealth was beyond her at this point, even continuing to move under her own power was something of a stretch. So long as she maintained her focus, everything was fine, but the moment she gave in to the fuzzy fog that was intent on swallowing her up, she would topple like a puppet with cut strings. She lost count of how many times she had fallen as she meandered about the place. Every impact sent another jolt shooting straight up into her aching skull.

By any rational logic, it should have been making her feel sicker each and every time, but through some awful crossing of connection in her brain, it seemed to be bringing the world back into sharper focus each time she rose. Perhaps it was just the gradual recovery that time brought with it, but she couldn’t help but feel as though she were gradually jolting her brain back into the correct position.

The first two chalets that she came across were a bust. No sign of habitation, no sign of much of anything really. They’d been cleaned out and the doors left wide to air them out after. Despite the chill crispness of the winter air, it was still dry enough for such a thing, and there was no fog, no matter what her senses kept on trying to tell her. It was only when she set off along a winding path to the rear of the property that she finally hit on some luck. The next chalet wasn’t just closed, it was closed up. All the shutters locked in place. The doors were not barred, for the idea probably hadn’t crossed anyone’s mind and would have made the place look too obviously a prison. But it seemed enough like a prison to get her heart beating faster again.

She lumbered over to the wall, trailed her way along it to the door, and then, confronted with no brighter ideas, she knocked.

The silence stretched out. Agonizing beyond anything she could have imagined. To have come all this way. To have endured everything, only to meet silence now. And then there was a shuffling sound on the other side of the door.

“Isn’t dinnertime yet, is it?” A baritone so deep it set the wood humming beneath her hands.

Harmony almost collapsed then and there. It was him. He was alive. Which meant that Orsina was alive. She was alive.

Her own words came clumsy, as if she were chewing on something as she tried to speak. After a couple of failed attempts, she blurted out. “Kagan?”

The silence returned, then a softer rumble. “Who’s there?”

“Harmony. Harmony Volpe. Orsina’s… friend.”

There was a pause as he tried to remember her. “The little woman with the sword?”

She was so caught up in the joy of knowing that Orsina was alive that she couldn’t even be annoyed. A laugh escaped her. “Isn’t everyone little when you’re nine feet tall?”

“Not many women with swords though.”

She sank down and put her back to the door with a sigh. When her head lolled back to touch the wood, it sent a fresh sharp jab of pain through her. “I suppose not.”

Perhaps she drifted off again, perhaps he was just impatient. Either way he rumbled, “What do you want, Harmony Volpe?”

“I want to get you out of there,” she groaned back. “I want you to come with me, to find Orsina.”

“Where’s she gone that she needs finding?”

Harmony closed her eyes against the brightness of the sky and tried to put everything into order in her mind. “What have you already been told?”

“Somewhere between bugger and all.” There was an edge to his voice now. Frustration. She could just picture how he’d spent his last weeks. Cooped up in there with nobody telling him anything. She’d probably have been clawing at the walls. He had remarkable discipline for a giant lizard monster man.

She wet her lips, then regretted it when she tasted her own blood on them. “We fought the Arazi. We won. Orsina won. She… she carried the day.”

“Not a surprise there.” He huffed out a rough breath she took to be laughter. “Only one of you with any blood in her. That one’s stubborn as a mule. Would take more than an army of dragon-lords to stop her. Worst came to it, she’d just open that fool mouth of hers and talk them to death.”

If not for the tale Harmony had to tell, she might’ve laughed at the truth in his words. As it was, the next part took more than a little discipline on her part to repeat. Even though the moment had been playing in her head over and over since the moment she saw it. “After the fighting was done, she… she fell. The Arazi took her. They took Orsina.”

The door behind her was hauled away abruptly, and Harmony fell back into the chalet, head injury bouncing off the flagstones. Then there was a glowering dragon-lord scowling down at her roaring, “They what?”

She held up her hands, and for some reason she had a half dozen pairs, all spinning around between her and the half dozen Kagans. “They took her, I didn’t know if she was alive or dead, but they scooped her up, carried her off.”

“And you let them?!” He dropped down over her, snarling. Those huge, pointed teeth in his mouth all on display. “She’s a dragon-slayer! Do you have any idea what they do to slayers?!”

She blinked the extra images away. “Kill them?”

His jaw snapped shut, then he grumbled, “Lucky guess,” as he pushed himself back upright to tower over her some more.

“But they haven’t killed her.” She pushed herself up onto her elbows and then tried for her feet, even though she could already feel her balance slipping. “If they had, you wouldn’t be here. You’d have gone with her.”

He caught her by the shoulders before she could topple. Scowling now at the state of her. “Then whatever they’ve got planned for her has to be worse.”

It was enough to render the pair of them silent for a moment. Each one of them imagining Orsina in pain. Each one of them desperate to prevent it, for their love of her. As different as that love might have been.

Harmony managed to recover her wits first and pull back from the mental spiral that he had set them both down. “So that door has just been open this whole time?”

It was hard for a towering monster of a man covered in scales to look sheepish, yet here he stood. Exuding wooliness. “Well, your brother said to stay put.”

Freed from his grasp, she settled back down to sitting. It was easier to be lower to the ground. Crawling might have featured in her future.

Harmony rolled her eyes. “Since when does anybody listen to him?!”

Kagan’s brow furrowed, and since he was missing all the hair that would normally make up eyebrows, it mostly involved bristling scales. “Isn’t he second to the king or something?”

“I mean… yes,” Harmony conceded. “But that doesn’t mean you need to listen to him.”

Kagan snorted. “Only if I don’t want my head cut off.”

“Oh, Art wouldn’t cut your head off.” She waved away the possibility.

“No, he’d order someone else to do it.”

“No, he really wouldn’t.” She paused to think, trying to force her sluggish brain back up to speed even though thinking too loudly was giving her a headache. “Even if you weren’t bound to Orsina, he wouldn’t have…”

She trailed off for a moment, then got her mental carriage back onto the right road. “I need to catch you up to current events swiftly… We beat the Arazi, lost Orsina, and came back to find the Agrantine had taken the city.”

“Churchy folk?” Kagan settled on his haunches to be level with her. “Black robes?”

“They’ve got an empire behind them, and that empire wants Espher.”

He huffed out laughter. “Doesn’t seem like you’d be worth the trouble.”

It occurred to her then, that for all the effort she’d put into finding him, the two of them had basically never had a conversation. For all she knew, he loathed her, and Espher, with all his heart. All she really knew about him was he was so much of a criminal that his own people exiled him, and that Orsina trusted him with her life. “You don’t like it here?”

“Not what I’m saying. Too hard to take, with all the necromancers and mountains. Too expensive.”

“Well, that didn’t stop the Arazi,” she shot back.

He broke away from her gaze to look out at the carefully cultivated garden. Out here, it had been preened to look like they were in a forest, all the sound of the city softened by the canopy. Though no tree had been allowed to grow awry, everything rose parallel. “That’s different.”

She felt like she finally had some sort of advantage in the conversation. “How so?”

“The Arazi, they’re on a crusade. They’re not…” He grumbled. “It’s just different.”

She set her back to the doorframe and pushed herself upright. It hurt, of course, but there was no avoiding the pain at this point. All she had was pain to bring her world back into focus, so she may as well lean into it. “We need to get both of us out the city, unseen. Then we need to go and rescue Orsina before they can do whatever awful thing you think they’re going to do to her.”

“You’ve got to be mad.” He could barely cross his arms over his chest, the way they bulged with such huge muscles. “You want me to chase after the whole Arazi horde across the steppes to try and save one girl?”

“The way that I see it, you don’t have much choice in the matter.” Harmony shrugged. “If she dies, you die.”

“Then I’m dead.” When he leaned back against the doorframe, the whole wall creaked. “There’s no way we can get her back without a fight, and unless you’ve got an army hidden under that cloak, I’d say we’re done for.”

“I have got an army, actually,” she mentioned offhand. “The Espheran army is laying siege to the city.”

Kagan cocked his head to the side and narrowed his eyes. “And you reckon they’ll come chasing off after our lost girl?”

“No, probably not,” she conceded without a pause. “But we can ask.”

“Better not to.” He headed back into the little guesthouse, digging around for his few belongings and strapping the vast majority of them straight onto his body. He had no weapons because technically he was a prisoner, but she couldn’t help but notice that anything else he might feasibly have needed for a cross-country journey seemed to have been gathered to him. Dried meat and biscuits set aside from meals. A heavy traveling cloak. Almost as if he’d been planning for this trip. “If they’ve any brains, they’ll stop us throwing our lives away. Time spent arguing will give the Arazi even more time to get away.”

She lingered in the doorway. “So, we’re going then?”

“Like you said.” He gave her a smile. “Not much choice.”

Things passed too quickly for her to follow after that. Both because they were moving at a heady pace, and because her dazed state blurred it all together. She distinctly remembered the moment of weightlessness when he flung her up on top of the wall and the awful moment as all the tiles beneath her feet began to slide sideways to dump her out into the street. At least she knew it was coming this time, and she landed in a roll.

By the time she had some sort of awareness of what was going on again, the hulking figure of Kagan was at her side, covered over with cloak and hood and hunched down so that he merely looked like one of the massive mongrel men that you sometimes glimpsed about town. He wasn’t dragging her along exactly, but he was close enough to catch her when she swayed and give her a little shove in the right direction.

Now that they were actually in motion, it was becoming harder to ignore the fact that she had absolutely no plan beyond this point. Normally this would be when she turned to Art and he’d already have composed a seventeen-step solution to whatever problem they were facing, but Art wasn’t here. He was still off somewhere, in the palace or back out with his army, surrounded by other people who were using that brain of his for their purposes when she needed him. It was rude.

So given no brighter ideas, she swayed a little closer to Kagan as they pushed their way through the crowded throngs on the streets and asked, “How are we going to catch up to them?”

“We’re going to walk.”

She nodded at that as if it made a single bit of sense. “We’re going to walk?”

“We’re going to walk, fast. Maybe even run a bit, when you’re feeling up to it. Try to keep up.”

They broke free of the market crowd and headed off along one of the less trodden thoroughfares, towards the city walls, but not towards the gates where they’d have found them shut against the besieging army.

Still, she couldn’t let go of the idea that walking fast might not be sufficient. “They’re on dragons.”

“Not all of them. And a flight moves at the speed of whoever’s slowest.” Kagan put an arm around her shoulders and dragged her to the side of the road so a wagon didn’t roll right over her. The rules for pedestrians in a city as busy as this mostly revolved around survival rather than right-of-way. “Otherwise, they’d have been down over the border and on your doorstep in a day. Kanatzi-dragons move slower than an ox. We can catch up before they clear the steppes.”

She blinked up at him slowly. “Can of what?”

There was a momentary pause as he reached for the word in her tongue, then he remembered. “Thunder lizards. Big. Plodding. They use them as siege engines when they have to. Wouldn’t have gone to war against you without them.”

“Right. Okay. So, she’ll be on one of them?”

“No. If they’re keeping a necromancer alive, they’ll have an aslinda-dragon watching over her. A true dragon. Ready to roast her if she pulls anything out her hat.”

“She doesn’t have a hat.” She mumbled it, realizing how stupid her words were even as they came tumbling out her mouth.

He paused by the roadside to take the measure of her again. “Hit your head back there?”

“A few times, yes.” She didn’t feel any need to share the embarrassing details of her fall or her crawl through the sewers.

He sighed. “I’d carry you on my back if it wouldn’t raise questions.”

“I wouldn’t let you.” She staggered a step away, as if he were about to swoop down and scoop her up.

A grin cracked his face. “Can’t string a sentence, but her pride still burns.”

They came to the foot of the wall surrounding the little caldera they called home and immediately swerved to the side to walk parallel with it. Kagan kept his head down to stay out of sight of the guards atop the wall, not that the few saints so much as glanced their way.

“Did you perhaps forget that we were in a city under siege?”

He grunted. Then turned it back around on her. “How did you get in?”

“Sewers. You wouldn’t fit.”

He sniffed, then something seemed to dawn on him. He covered up whatever aromatic revelation he didn’t want to discuss with a gruff, “Pity.”

They ducked their heads together as though in deep conversation as they strolled by the guardhouse at the base of the walls. There was no sign of saints anywhere around it, but there was no point in tempting fate. Harmony outright asked him, “So, we’ve been wandering for a while now. What is your plan precisely?”

“You’re the one rescuing me, right?” He snorted.

She was finally willing to admit some degree of weakness, now that she was literally hanging off his arm to stay upright. “Does the rescuer often require the rescued to carry them because of traumatic head injuries?”

He didn’t even glance at her. “Most folk need head injuries to think snatching prisoners out of a city under siege is a good idea.”

She punched him in the arm, and he rocked away from her as if he’d suffered an actual blow instead of a tap. Then the pair of them froze. Each recognizing their own place in the tableau, but not the other player. She was treating him like he was Art. He was treating her like she was Orsina. Both of them had slipped into the well-worn grooves in the other’s relationship. She flushed with embarrassment, and were a cold-blooded creature capable of doing the same she was certain that he would have. Neither one of them could quite bring themselves to look at the other. Not with the memory of another person superimposed over the top.

Harmony cleared her throat. “You’re quite right, of course, I should have left you to rot.”

He bobbed his head in the periphery of her vision. “Wouldn’t be the first to say that.”

“Instead of your strained attempts at wit, do you think that you might focus on finding us a way out?” She didn’t shove him, didn’t hit him, didn’t do anything that might make them fall back into the same pattern of behavior. She didn’t think that she could bear the burden of walking in Orsina’s shoes. Particularly when it came to this man.

For his part, he remained cool and withdrawn. Something with which Harmony was all too familiar. Though this time it seemed to be for her benefit, rather than to punish her. This close, she could feel the vibrations of his voice in her teeth. “I’ve already got us a way out. Just need to wait until night.”

She glanced back towards the closed-up guard post and leaned in closer. “Oh, do you have some cunning skulduggery planned?”

He reached down to his belt and produced a coiled length of silken cord. It looked like it had originally been intended to tie back curtains, but somehow he’d laid hands on it. “I leave complicated to humans. I like simple. Got some rope. We run up there and climb down the other side before anybody sees us.”

She tried to gesture broadly at the wall and the many men standing atop it, but she overbalanced herself and stumbled back to her perch on his arm. “And how exactly do you suppose we’re going to achieve that?”

“We’ll run fast and climb down like squirrels.”

“And if they spot us and cut the rope?” Harmony asked, feeling slightly ill again.

“Then we’ll get down even faster.”

13 - The Other Side
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

Orsina ached, but it was a physical pain this time, instead of the spiritual burning that had been plaguing her since she was first roused. The day had been uncomfortable, to say the least. From her cage, she had been hauled up onto the dragon’s back, arms bound behind her, and the sneering dragon-lord who’d laid down his commandments settled into the saddle behind.

In theory, he would catch her if she slipped. In practice, she could very easily imagine that he’d quite happily let her fall to her death and make up some story about her having tried to escape. He’d probably look people right in the eye and tell that lie, and not one of them would care enough about her to challenge him.

With each beat of the dragon’s wings, through takeoff and beyond, she was rocked back into him. She didn’t have the riding rhythm to predict the beast’s movements, so each time it bucked up under her, she was lifted from the well-worn leather and deposited into the dragon-lord’s lap.

The first time that happened, he almost threw her off entirely. Shoving her forward so she had to cling desperately with her thighs until the next undulation of the dragon flung her back upright. It was her legs where the worst of the pain was centered now. She didn’t know if she’d be able to straighten them for a week after the cramping strain of clenching them, to keep herself in place.

And that wasn’t even mentioning the friction burns. Dragon fire certainly won out in terms of sheer destructive power, but Orsina doubted that it won in terms of consistent pain. At least when a dragon sprayed fire on you it was a brief experience. The slow abrasion of riding on one’s back lasted hours.

Worse than his attempts to fling her away from him were the times when she lost her hold and he made no complaint, letting her sit there on his lap while he leered down at her. Clearly enjoying himself.

Orsina could not have rightly told anyone how old she was at this point, but though her body was that of a young woman, she often felt that her mind had yet to catch up. She had no time to grow, no steps between child and adult in which to learn about herself and about others. Some took it as innocence; some took that innocence as an invitation.

Even though she ached and it would have been so much easier to just rest with her back to the broad expanse of dragon-lord behind her, she hauled herself forward time and time again. Ignoring his jeers, ripped away by the wind. She would sooner burn herself alive than tolerate that man’s touch, and given that she had a dragon’s shade dwelling within her, that was an option she could actively pursue if it came to it.

She might have expected pawing hands, if she were less innocent. Some attempt to hold her in place. Yet neither came, and it became increasingly clear that he did not actually want her, he just wanted her to feel ashamed about being so close to him. It was not about want; it was about power. About making her feel small.

They made landfall long before sundown. Long before she had expected, if truth be told. She had seen the speed at which dragons could fly, seen them zipping across the sky like birds despite their bulk. With focus, they likely could have been clear of these endless grassy steppes, but after she had slowly become numb to the deathly drop, Orsina realized that they were moving with anything but focus. Instead of traveling straight to their destination, they drifted from side to side constantly. Some part of it, she could tell from the draconic presence within, was to do with chasing rising pillars of warm air, allowing them to glide without effort. But chasing thermals did not explain their ponderous pace, particularly given that there would have been no shortage of thermals up ahead. It seemed almost as though they were searching for something, though she could see no sign of the man behind her looking down at all. Perhaps the dragon was hunting. Perhaps there was some arcane reason she couldn’t decipher. Either way, they dithered their way across the sky until the sun began to dip, then swooped down to settle on some exposed stone.

It was onto that stone she had been unceremoniously dumped after being dragged from the saddle, and it was on that stone she now lay, trying not to groan and let the enemy know her weakness. At first she was all alone with the dragon-lord, and she had expected some fresh horror, but he seemed to have no interest in her at all. Down on his haunches, he studied the stone beneath their feet with more interest than he’d truly shown her all of the time they were in flight, but not long after, a second of the true dragons and its rider arrived, carrying with it enough of the wooden cage that she was soon confined once more. Albeit in a far smaller container than the last time.

The men spoke in their guttural rumbling tongue, then the one who had borne her, and his dragon, left her in the care of the fresh dragon, flying off once more.

She had hoped that they might unbind her arms, which now ached almost as badly as her legs, but it seemed that luck was not on her side. So, she lay there for a while, hurting and angry, then she rolled over, so that different parts of her could hurt for a while. Just for variety.

The new dragon was smaller than the last, not quite so hoary and spiked by comparison. It was still a fearsome creature, of course. It was still a dragon. Yet when this one settled itself to stare at her intently, she nonetheless felt that there was less malice. It would burn her to a crisp the moment she gave any sign of calling her shades, but it wasn’t looking forward to it, the way the other had. How anyone could read anything from the face of a great reptile was beyond her, but that was still the sense that she got.

After what must have been an hour of nothing but aches and stifled groans, she rolled over to face it, even though her hips started screaming with the effort. “Hey big guy, how are you doing?”

The dragon blinked. Sooty nictating membranes slipping back to the corners of its eyes from the corner when its lids parted. Weird the things she noticed when there was literally nothing else to pay attention to.

“You have a nice fly today? Enjoy all the big open spaces?”

This time it raised its head a little, cocked it to the side, barely a degree of inclination, but better conversation than she’d had the rest of the day. “Yeah, it must be nice to be able to completely stretch out.”

“If you want bindings cut, only have to ask.” The Arazi scared the hell out of her. She hadn’t even realized he was there, dozing beneath the shade of his bondmate’s wing.

Still, for all her surprise, Orsina managed to recover well. “Oh, but it is so comfortable having no blood in my hands.”

“Come.” He drew a bronze knife from his boot before he rose. It seemed he was a man of action, rather than words. Or he had so few words to use in her language that doing things came easier.

With some effort she made her way upright and staggered over to put her back to the man with a bared knife. Always a good idea. With one sharp tug, he sliced cleanly through the rough hemp that had bound her. It took a few good flexes before her hands went from numb to burning, but she accepted it gratefully.

“Thank you.”

He grunted in reply, then stalked back over to the dragon, who was already lifting a wing to accommodate him.

“Can I ask why we’re going so slow?”

There was clearly some internal debate before he rumbled back, “Scouting.”

“For what, exactly?” She almost wept at the prospect of somebody, anybody to speak to. It wasn’t the loneliness that was killing her, she’d spent most of her life alone in truth, it was the hostility. She wasn’t used to everyone openly hating her, only doing it behind her back, and it was beginning to wear on her patience.

Which was why it hurt just a little bit more when he replied, “Shut mouth.”

“I mean, I have eyes too.” A desperate edge was creeping into her voice. A reedy, wheedling sound that she detested. “I’m up in the air. I could help with the scouting.”

He shook his head, and there was a mirroring quaver in the dragon’s head. “No more speaking.”

She put her buzzing hands against her hips. “I’m offering to help, there’s no need to be rude.”

“Stop.” When the Arazi barked, the dragon mirrored his motions, its head jerking forward, its mouth falling open to the same degree. The only difference between them was that she could see fire roil behind its blackened teeth.

“I’m… fine.” She turned her back on the pair of them and slumped down to sit on the cool stone again. “Fine!”

As time rolled on, more dragons swept down from the sky. Both the true dragons the Arazi prized so dearly and other winged beasts that she probably would have called wyverns not so long ago. From a distance, they all shared similarities with the dragons, but whether through feathers, differences in the number of limbs, or simply an entirely different body shape, these lesser cousins of the dragon distinguished themselves.

Orsina watched them all intently, for want of anything better to do, and realized that there was a distinct pecking order, even among those lesser beasts. The closer they were to true dragons, the more respect they were offered by the others. It was only in truly unfortunate moments in which there were creatures of similar stature and rank that things turned nasty, and they’d snap at one another to establish dominance. In turn, this seemed to set their riders to roaring arguments, sometimes summoning them from halfway across the gradually accumulating camp at a run so they could fling themselves bodily between their bondmates and indulge in the same sort of petty butting of heads in the lizards’ places.

It was not so long later that the first of the wyverns on foot began to arrive. The terror-birds and the long-striders, carrying with them all the supplies required to put up the camp before night actually fell and the rest of the great caravan caught up. Orsina’s friend was among them, though she caught scarcely a glimpse of him before he threw himself into the work of building up tents.

She could hardly expect him to come bounding up and start chatting about his day in full sight of all and sundry. She was a prisoner of war after all, one they attributed strange and mysterious powers to. It was probably in his best interests to set himself up in a tent at the far end of camp and never so much as look at her again. She’d be bored, and bereft of any friendly source of information, but it wasn’t as though there was anything that she could give him in return beyond the pleasure of her dubious wit.

In what seemed the blink of an eye, the full town that had been disassembled in the morning seemed to have sprung up around her once more. All the same conversations were picking up, all the crowded throngs passing through. It even smelled like the same meals were being cooked from the wafting spices that reminded her how long it had been since she had a meal.

A bucket was provided, full of fresh water. A second bucket was provided shortly afterwards. Neither of the delivery-people seemed much inclined to talk. In fact, the moment she looked their way, they took off at full pelt, as if just talking to her would do them harm.

She drank, and she used the other bucket, then moved it across to the far end of the enclosure before coming back to find that her original jailer was now back in place, scowling at her. It was a testament to how busy the whole place had become that a full-grown dragon could come and go without her even noticing. At least its rider wasn’t there. She wasn’t sure she could have endured any more of his leering, and it would be a dreadful end, to be burned alive for throwing a bucket of piss on somebody.

Food did eventually present itself, accompanied by her erstwhile companion, who proffered it through the bars on little wooden skewers.

“Take it. Take it. Before anyone else sees me wasting food on a ghoul that eats the souls of the dead.”

She snorted. Then she took a tentative bite of the spiced meat. It was delicious. She didn’t care if it was muskrat, goat, or any of the other myriad critters that could be found on the steppes. If it was human flesh, she probably would have only hesitated a moment before tearing into the next bite. Now that she could smell food, she was ravenous.

“Your people have some colorful stories about the Shadebound.”

“This is the first that you have eaten in a week.” He shrugged and passed her a torn off chunk of flatbread. “You might understand how that looks.”

She froze, mid-chew. “Wait, seven days?”

“This is the seventh.” He looked puzzled at her surprise.

She looked down at herself. She had certainly looked better. Garbed in borrowed men’s clothes, bloodied and coated in both mud and soot in equal measures. Yet all of the new curves that her rapid aging before she was bonded had bestowed on her had not shriveled away. Not a single fresh wrinkle could be found, since she was bonded. For all the years, decades, and more she must have spent in the battle, beneath the grime her hands were still those of a young woman. A young woman who looked perfectly well fed. She felt fine. “I’ve gone without eating for seven days?!”

“You are eating now.” He was now munching away contentedly again. Talking around his food with the sort of manners that would have gotten Orsina a slap on the wrist from Harmony during her lessons. “So, six.”

“I would have starved!”

He paused mid-chew. “This is not your necromancy? You do not feed upon souls of the dead?”

“No.” She strangled the shout, muffling it into more of a low growl. It wouldn’t be smart to draw attention, or to scare off her only point of contact.

He gave her a measured stare for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders before settling down with his back to the cage. “Strange.”

She slumped down beside him to finish her meal. Even if she wasn’t really feeling the desperate need for it. “That’s all you have to say?”

“You do not understand it. I do not understand it. What more should we say?”

They sat in companionable silence for a while. Companionable on his side, a little more introverted on Orsina’s as she tried to decipher the meaning of this latest strangeness. Nobody had told her anything about not needing to eat anymore when she bound shades. What was more, she had most certainly eaten in her time at the House of Seven Shadows, indeed, almost all her social life, limited as it was, had revolved around sharing meals with the Volpe twins. This was new, it was definitely new. She had eaten and drunk and hungered for food up until her memory faltered.

Eventually, they were out of food and excuses for silence, so the Arazi spoke. “Did you enjoy your flight?”

She let out an involuntary laugh before she caught herself. “If I never rode a dragon again for the rest of my life, I would consider myself lucky.”

“You didn’t like the view?” He gestured vaguely around the desolation they had spent all day crossing. The empty land that belonged to nobody and was wanted by nobody.

“The view was delightful, the dragon itself was pleasant enough to ride once I found my rhythm.” She couldn’t deny that, even if she was aching now. “Though not easy to ride with bound hands. It was really just the company that truly spoiled things.”

“You do not enjoy time with Emir the Scourge?”

She had to turn around to check if he was being sarcastic, but it seemed a genuine question. She was almost questioning if the Arazi even had sarcasm before she remembered just how much of it dripped constantly from Kagan’s mouth. Though she supposed it was possible he’d picked that up later.

“How do you even ask something like that with a straight face? ‘Oh, don’t you like Marco the Murderer?’ Honestly…” She turned her back to the Arazi once more.

“You should be comfortable with such men. Killers are your peers now.” He spoke softly. So softly that she wasn’t even certain it was him speaking, and not just her conscience griping at her. “How many dragons did you slay? How many men?”

She snapped back. “I haven’t named myself for it.”

The Arazi scoffed at her. “At least we are honest. We tell you what we are.”

“Then he might need to be renamed to Emir the Molester.”

For a moment, her only friend in the camp fell silent, then he asked, in a voice like his own but touched with the same resonant bass as the dragon-lords themselves, “He touched you?”

She shuddered at the memory of him at her back. “He made a great show of my powerlessness.”

“I will ask if another might carry you. A woman perhaps. This was not right.”

She’d seen the pecking order of the Arazi. She had seen the aslinda-dragon riders walking through camp like they were its kings and all the others peasants. The word of some wyvern scout was hardly going to be enough to dethrone one. “And they’ll all jump at your command, will they?”

“We are not animals. Whatever you think of us.” For the first time, she felt like her Arazi visitor was actually angry. There was little change to his tone or cadence, but there was a rumbling against the periphery of her senses. Like the little distant tugs she sometimes felt when Kagan had hunted with her and wanted to warn her of something unseen. “If I tell what he did, they will listen.”

It was said with such utter sincerity that Orsina had no choice but to accept it. “Well… thank you.”

He settled back down to sitting and let out a long sigh. Head lolling back so that he could look up into the ever-darkening sky. Night fell earlier up here on the steppes than down in Espher, and the farther north they went, the darker it would become. At least here, far from the city, Orsina could see the stars again. She had missed them.

Eventually he tried talking again. “The dragons like you.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” She snorted in an entirely unladylike manner. “Do they know I killed their kin?”

“Of course. But dragons respect strength. And you were strong in battle. None can deny that.”

“Does that mean that they won’t burn me for moving wrong?”

She felt the cage shift with his shrug without needing to look at him. “They will do their duty. As we all do.”

“Then I’m not sure how the dragons liking me makes a blind bit of difference.”

“They do not like…” He seemed to struggle for the right word. “People. Other dragons, yes. The Arazi they are bound to. But not strangers.”

She tried to remain pleasant in the face of adversity, but a bitter laugh came out all the same. “I suppose I’m just likeable.”

“Or you smell like dragon.”

She turned a little to see him. To realize that he was staring at her. “What is that meant to mean?”

“Arazi feel. We know what is inside. Dragons share that, once we are bonded.”

He looked like he was going to try to explain further, and probably despite the language barrier, he would have done a better job than anything Kagan had told her, or anything she’d read in the libraries of Covotana, but she wanted to get to the point and find out what he meant. “I’m aware of your empathy.”

He turned to meet her gaze. She noticed that though so much of him still looked human, his eyes bore a vertical slit in place of a pupil. “Why do you feel like a dragon inside?”

She knew the answer to that. But she hadn’t known that any part of her shades were perceptible to other people. Even Shadebound themselves couldn’t know what others had bound. They were concealed within the spirit of the one who bound them. In an instant, she was on edge, wondering how many more of her little secrets he was trying to pry his way into. An expert on the Arazi she may not have been, but certain things were obvious enough that an education was not required. They held Shadebound in contempt and dragons in reverence, if they discovered that she had inadvertently captured the escaping spirit of a dead dragon, a dragon that she herself had killed by her artifice, then there was no question that it would be held against her.

She stood abruptly, stomping away from him to fetch a drink from the water bucket. “What is this, an interrogation?”

Another cage-shifting shrug. “If you felt a shade in me, you would tell me. I feel a dragon, so I tell you.”

She scoffed at that. He wasn’t nearly as slick as he thought he was. “Oh, so this is more of the good manners that make your mother so proud?”

“Yes.”

She swished the tepid water around her mouth and then spat. “Well, you’re better mannered than a man who calls himself the Scourge, at least.”

He smiled then, despite her having seen through his ruse. “High praise.”

A rapid change of subject was in order. She did not want him circling back to matters of dragons inside her. She didn’t even like to think about it herself, let alone indulge in conversation about it. To talk about it was to acknowledge it was real, and pretending that it wasn’t seemed the only way to keep the vicious draconic shade from attempting a takeover at any given moment. Perhaps now it would struggle, locked in conflict with all the others within her, but she was not willing to take the risk that it would not see this as an opportunity.

As Orsina, she could survive being caged. A dragon would not stand to be confined. It would level the whole camp, rather than face a moment under the woven bars. She could almost feel its anger as her own. She could almost feel the desire to lay waste, to burn and burn until nothing remained but her, undisputed ruler of all that she surveyed. It is what a dragon would have done, risen up and fought all comers instead of backing down and cowering to await their judgement. All she had to do was give in to the dragon within, to reach out for its strength, and all of this could be over. She could be free and powerful. She could rule.

Instead, she blurted out her last coherent thought. “Why are we traveling so slow? On the dragons we could be across the rest of the steppes in a day or two.”

He gestured around him to the rest of the Arazi in camp. “We travel together. Always. It is not safe to be alone out in the open.”

Still not quite ready to sit back down beside him, she stood, awkwardly, shifting her weight from leg to leg, trying to get the ache to fade. “I’m not certain that anyone would bother an army on the move, not with all your wyverns and the rest.”

There was more than enough trouble here to scare off any of the fearsome beasts attributed to the steppes, and any roving bandits would have been looking for a markedly softer target.

He nodded to the great hoary beast where it lay glowering at her, as it always seemed to. “The aslinda protect us from what we cannot fight.”

She scoffed at that. “If I had an army of terror-birds and thunder lizards at my command, I cannot imagine many things that I couldn’t fight.”

When she glanced back, his head was cocked to one side, and then dawning realization crossed over his features. His mouth fell open. “You really do not know?”

Her brow furrowed as she tried to decipher what he could possibly have been talking about now. “Know what?”

He shook his head in disbelief. “Espher is another world.”

“What is that meant to mean?” Orsina was getting increasingly frustrated. “Stop speaking in riddles.”

He held up his hands. As though he were balancing things upon them. “There is the world where the rest of us live, and there is yours. And you don’t know there is a difference.”

She opened her mouth to refute that but was cut off by screaming. Her Arazi companion was on his feet and reaching for a weapon before she could even spot the source. With spear in hand, he pounced onto the saddle of his wyvern and stood in the stirrups.

It was dim by then, evening was falling, yet a spectral light played across the camp, flickering and bursting. Familiar, yet alien. Like moonlight through tree branches, though the night sky was shrouded in clouds and the nearest trees were in Espher.

The screaming fell silent. It had Orsina rocking on her feet to find it so abruptly gone. Then she felt the pressure on her skin, on her mind. The grave chill that radiated from the spirits of the dead. Shades.

Was this a rescue? She had no idea. She ran to the edge of her cage and scrambled up the bars as high as she could manage before banging her head against the curvature of the bent canes. “What is happening? I can’t see. What is it?!”

Screaming started up all over again. Spotty to begin with, but unified in one overwhelming wave of horror not a moment later. The crowd that had been milling about so freely like any city street had found fresh purpose now; they parted and flowed around her cage like a river about a rock. They flocked and fled, but not far. She would have thought they’d have gone on running, but the moment they were past her, they seemed to grind to a halt, with a solid half of them looking like they wanted to run back the way they’d come and fight. Even if they’d have no hope.

The stuttering light strobed higher, illuminating more. Showing more of the grotesque shape rising up from beneath the old stones they’d laid their camp on. Spindly arachnid legs of blinding white reaching up and out, each tipped with chaotic, jagged spurs. Raking through the crowds. Reaping life everywhere they touched.

A woman slammed against the bars of the cage, sending Orsina tumbling back down. “You! You have called them down upon us.”

They all flinched as a concussion rocked the whole camp. Tents and wyverns alike were launched from where they had stood so solidly, raining down into the fleeing crowds. The spindles lashed out at them in flight, piercing through a terror-bird and ripping the life from its body as it fell, body undamaged, soul rent.

“It isn’t me!” Orsina had to shout to be heard over the renewed screaming of the crowd. “I’m not doing anything!”

She heard the shade then, its cries somewhere between whale-song and the shattering of glass. It felt like glass jammed into her ears. The cold smoothness of it. She dropped to her knees with the impact of that sound, even though the explosions in the air had washed over her without harm.

Another of the Arazi leveled a spear at her through a gap in the bars. “Call them off! Call them off now!”

From behind the flailing legs or arms of the first shade, a second shape began to rise, smaller than first, but nonetheless fearsome. While the first had looked solid enough for a thing made of moonlight, the second was tattered and insubstantial, as though even its spectral form had begun to decay. There was the suggestion of a horse’s skull beneath the shroud it wore, huge, humped shapes that might once have been wings at the back and sides. While the great spider moved with wild abandon, this shade seemed less hurried, more focused. It had waited this long for a meal, what was a little longer?

Eyes watering at the sight of them, Orsina held up her hands to the baying crowd as though them being empty rendered her harmless. “I’m not doing this. Please. You have to believe me.”

Another voice bellowed out. Deep and guttural. “Liar!”

Emir was stripped of his armor, his scaled hide shining wet in the ghost-light. He’d been bathing when the shade struck. Clothes he didn’t bother with, but his great spear was in hand. Hefted and ready to fling at her.

A third shade and a fourth rose up from beneath the feet of the fleeing mass. Smaller than even the humans they must once have been. Each of them the reflection of the other, twins painted in reverse. One-horned heads sat atop bodies bristling with spines. The same shroud that hid the ghastly form of the horse-headed ghoul flowed out in a train to cover them over too, only their barbs protruding through it as they darted about, snapping elongated jaws.

There was a frantic edge to Orsina’s voice as she looked around her for proof, anything that she could use to show she wasn’t behind the shades laying waste to the camp. “Look, count my shadows. Count them. One shadow. One! I’m not channeling. I’m not doing anything.”

Emir dropped his spear, seized the bars of her cage and heaved. It was only held down by its own weight, and the strength of man and dragon combined in one was more than enough to overpower it. In an instant she was free, standing face-to-face with the dragon-lord. He barked, “Stop them!”

One great arching leg of the spider came sweeping over all their heads, knocking a rider from a thunder lizard and sending both into a pitiful, if gigantic, heap. She could not see the other shades. She wished she could not see that one. What was anyone meant to do in the face of a thing like that?

“I can’t.”

Her only friend in the camp had soot marks streaking his face when he and his wyvern came bounding back. Campfires had spread to the dried hides that were flung down on them in the chaos. All the camp was alight. He did not command her. He begged.

“Use your curse; bind the shades.”

Her stomach turned at the thought of inviting those things inside her. Suckling them on her life, trying to bend them to her will. There was no mind within these ancient specters. No point of connection she could use to bargain with them. What could she offer that shades so powerful could not tear from others freely?

“I can’t! That isn’t how it works.”

Another Arazi and her true dragon had waded in through the crowd while Orsina had eyes only for the shades. It was this one that barked, “Make it work!”

Surrounded by the Arazi, with two great dragons now looming over her, Orsina reached for the power inside herself on which she had slammed the door.

With her own shades unleashed, she could corral these wild ones back, beat them down, overpower them not only with her will, but with the boundless life that flowed through her from Kagan. It would not matter that her shades were young and weak compared with the monsters she faced, because they had her to drink from, and the unbound ghosts of these rocks had only what remnants they still held on to.

She reached for the door between her waking mind and the hollow in her soul, and she could not make it budge. All of this time she had been terrified of letting the shades out, of risking the same ravaging that she had suffered after the battle when she lost all control over them, but now they would not come when she called.

Her eyes snapped open to fresh horrors. There were still so many of the Arazi between her and the shades, and they were changing course now, drifting sideways through the camp, reaving souls as they went. “I can’t. I can’t stop them. I can’t…”

“Do it now, or they die. All of them die.” Her only friend in camp had leapt down again from his steed. He took her face in his hands, meeting her watering eyes with his serpentine stare. “We are not your enemy. We only have one enemy. Prove you are not it. Save them.”

She crushed her eyes shut again against the pleading in his eyes. She opened herself up to the shades, let life spill out of her in every way it wanted. Yet still they did not come. Neither her shades nor the monstrous mindless things out there. Tears ran down her face as she strained, her hands shook as the life that kept her body in motion was forced out into the air, again and again, to no avail. She could not call her shades. She could not call these new ones. She could do nothing but watch.

“I can’t!”

Emir gave a sharp nod, believing her at last, then he turned to face the shades at his dragon’s side, both of them bounding against the flow of the crowd. Trying to get in as close as they could to the shades. He must have been mad. It didn’t matter how big a lizard he rode or how strong he was, a shade would not be stopped by either. Strength of arms could not touch the dead. Scale and claw could not touch the dead.

The horse-headed specter sprang forward from amidst the scattering dregs of the Arazi camp, blazing light trailing from those unfortunates it passed through to restore it to all of its luminous glory. It shone so bright after this feast that Orsina could scarcely look away. It shone so bright that even the dragon fire seemed dim by comparison.

When Emir’s dragon flamed, the shade burned.

It was not the searing chemical death of venom ignited that Orsina had felt the touch of. The venom itself passed harmlessly through the shade’s body to spatter across the ground and catch alight when the spark chased along the spray after it. Instead it was the blinding ignition of a candle in utter darkness. The moon-blue glow of the shade burned brighter, brighter, so bright it rivaled the sun in the sky, then it was done. The golden glow of its outline hung for but a moment before only the afterimage of the light was left in its place, then nothing at all.

The dragon’s fire had consumed it from the inside out. Orsina blinked the burning from her eyes. She was wrong. It had consumed the dragon’s fire and found it too much. When vision returned, she saw the carnage left in the dragon’s wake. Everywhere the shade had been extended had blackened with soot. Every tent was ablaze, every person consumed. The Arazi had always been able to destroy the shades, but they had wanted for a way to do it that cost no lives. She could not give that to them.

Whatever had happened to her in the sky above the battlefield had made sure of that. There would be no savior from Espher coming to fend off the shades. No Shadebound to be shackled and carried along with the dragon-wagon-trail. To be used as a shield for the poor, innocent war-parties setting out to enslave and kill the people of Espher. Whatever they wanted from her, she did not give it, no matter how desperately she might have wanted to.

Another of the aslinda-dragons swooped low from the sky above, strafing by the upper reaches of the spider-legs as they strained for it and unleashing a fresh tempest of flame down upon it.

It took the three dragons working in tandem, pouring fire and life into the great spider beast, to lay it low. Even from where she stood behind them, the heat of the flame was enough to crispen Orsina’s hair and make her flinch back farther, backpedaling into Emir, who threw her down to the ground in disgust.

Between shades and dragons there had been a dozen or more stragglers, and now they were gone. Blackened husks curled up on the ground. Sooty smears across the stone. Any that were too close to the shades were dead. Where the hulking spirits had hung in the air was a faint mist that evaporated faster than the rich smoke around it. The shades’ destruction had left a void that nothing seemed in a rush to fill.

As she scrambled back to her feet, Orsina cast her panicked gaze around. The cost in Arazi lives must have been catastrophic, yet none of the ones nearby seemed all that shocked. With the worst of the shades driven off, grief began to creep through the camp in drips and drops, but Orsina was stunned at just how little such widespread death seemed to faze these people. It was as if huge rampaging shades rearing through the camp was a perfectly regular occurrence.

Perhaps it was.

For all the terror, there had been nobody tripping over one another, nobody rushing back to grab at their belongings, scant as they may be. It was that moment, when the quiet fell and all was silent but for the sobbing and soft crackle where the venom still burned that convinced Orsina that they had become accustomed to this horror.

An enemy only the true dragons could fight.

It had not even crossed her mind that there would be shades beyond Espher’s borders. It had not occurred to her that what was an inconvenience or folktale to one nation’s people could be the nightmare of another. Before, she had not grasped the stories of the Arazi, had not understood what the coming of the dragons had meant to them. She had known that they were always nomads, but now she understood what they were running from.

How could you build a city if there was no way to pluck up the shades that would grow in it like weeds? How could you live at all, knowing that in death you might come back to plague all those you knew and loved? If this was a normal day for them, small wonder that the greatest evil they could imagine was a shade that could not be stopped.

When she looked around at the disgust on all the Arazi’s faces, the hatred of her, she understood it now. When they retrieved her cage, she made no objection to being put back inside it.

14 - A Shade Named Covotana
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

“I truly do not understand the purpose of this excursion. What is it you seek in the city that we do not have in the palace?”

The city rolled by the carriage windows, and Artemio found that he could not drag his gaze away from it to study the ambassador’s expression. The black flag of Agrant hung from the city walls. The usually bustling streets were subdued. Strolling saints tamping down any hint of rebellion or joy. Artemio counted one every seven streets; it was simple enough to calculate their numbers from there. Adding in those he’d seen in the palace, and on the walls, he now knew the full numbers of the Agrantine forces in the city.

They didn’t have enough to hold the line. Even accepting that their swordsmen were the finest in the world, a sword did not stop an arrow, nor did their impressive black robes. The robes let them move freely through the forms of the sword and made them look very striking but did nothing to help when they were struck. Rushing the walls would be costly, of course, but Artemio was inside the walls already, and if between him and the cult at his disposal they could not see a way to get those gates open, then he would be thoroughly ashamed of himself.

He did spare her a glance, to let her know she was receiving a reply. “Perspective, primarily. While I have no doubt that you are telling me all that you need me to know, I believe that consulting with someone else versed in the politics of court might give me a better grasp of precisely what I am signing up for.”

She was staring out of the window too, but she wasn’t really seeing anything. She was bored. Parted from the comforts of the palace for what she considered to be no good reason. There was a hedonist streak to her that had seemed entirely normal in the company of the average Espheran but now that she was being compared with her own countrymen was marked. She was bored.

“And there is some reason that we could not simply have summoned this consultant to the palace?”

“Several good reasons, in fact. The Prima of the House of Seven Shadows is not strictly a subject, or rather, she holds a position of such high esteem within Covotana that it would be considered a rebuke to demand her attendance in such a manner, rather than making the visit to her.” This was not a lie; none of it was a lie, exactly. So long as he continued telling at least a greater part of the truth to the ambassador, he would be protected from missteps born of forgetting. If he was caught out, then her politeness would rapidly decline. “If I mean to rule, I shall need her support, so beginning our relationship in such a manner would be a gross misstep.”

“That is a single reason. Did you have others?” He could hear the raised brow without even having to look her way.

“The second reason was so that I could look over the city and see how well my people are coping with the occupation. It is my understanding that seeing their leaders traveling among them is a source of comfort to the common man, allowing them a sense that somebody is in charge and events are not unfolding entirely at random. It is why public appearances are considered a vital part of the royal duties. No matter what others might say of pomp and ceremony.” If any of the common people out on the street needed their hearts lifted, then it would not be done by his appearance, nor that of the black-clad coach rolling along the main streets of Covotana as if they were already a part of the Agrantine Empire. Nobody would see him, but he would see everything from his vantage point behind these lace curtains. None would dare to so much as look askance at anything bearing Agrantine colors, not with saints everywhere.

He nearly jumped off the bench when he felt a hand close on his leg. His own hand involuntarily grabbing for it before he realized that the squeeze of his thigh was meant to convey affection, rather than a prelude to some sort of grapple. He could almost manage a bashful smile and to cover the ambassador’s hand with his own for a moment before she withdrew it with all grace.

“I must say, Duke Volpe, that it is sounding increasingly like your mind has been made up with regards to the future rulership of Espher, and now you are simply running on the spot. Would that be an unfair assessment?”

The ambassador had been described in many ways—as a beauty, as an unmatched swordswoman, as a skilled politician—but in that moment the most apt description Artemio could settle upon was that she was most like a butcher’s dog with a stolen bone. Gnawing away at it without rest or respite until she cracked through to the marrow.

“It would certainly be a premature one.” He smiled at her politely and wondered what the correct protocol was for women squeezing at your legs. It was not an area that he had any personal experience with prior to this moment. She was a married woman, so he felt quite certain that he was not dealing with an overture, yet he could think of no other scenario in which such an act would have been even vaguely appropriate. “I am not one for snap decisions, Ambassador. As I’m sure you are aware. Until I have all of the information that is available, I will not be making a decision.”

Her eyes narrowed as she was thwarted, but she came back with a counterthrust of her own. “And you suppose that your Prima will be able to provide you with some knowledge of the departed king?”

“Most likely not.” He would have expected the Prima to be dead in the streets if she did have any knowledge that the ambassador wanted concealed. She may have been the greatest Shadebound in all of the land, but just as swords would not help against arrows, neither would an array of shades do much in the face of star-steel blades. “But the lay of the land will also be a vital consideration. As to my final reason, I have been cooped up in the palace for days without end and now feel desperately in need of some fresh air.”

“The rooftop gardens are not to your liking?” The ambassador’s brow was up again. He could feel it. Arching.

Artemio let out a huff of laughter. “I prefer fresh air of a baser kind, the sort that does not have clouds drifting through it level with you.”

“To think that so lofty a personage would have a fear of heights.” He did glance her way that time, to show his contempt for her wordplay. She smiled all the wider for being treated to such a glance. “Is this an admission of fear from one who denies it so stalwartly?”

Artemio smiled tersely. “The heights do not trouble me so much as the birds crashing into me as I try to enjoy my wine.”

“Shall I have my men erect nets for your protection from aggressive avians?” The ambassador was smirking, and Art couldn’t even be annoyed about it, not when he was the one cracking jokes. Amusing her. Making a friend of what should have been his worst enemy.

They were far from the palace now, making good time as they headed towards the outer walls of the city, traveling uphill all the way at a slight incline, through the densely packed inner city and out into the walled estates. It was easy to make good time when the streets cleared themselves for you.

The streets were always quieter out here, where lingering for too long too close to a noble household was liable to result in a thorough beating by the guards, but now they were desolate, and even the itinerant merchants and journeymen hoping to make a name for themselves with commissioned work were not doing their rounds.

“I think not. Her Majesty would likely object to my obstructing her view.”

“She does truly seem to love it up there.” Modesta sighed. “I do not believe she ever took a meeting with me anywhere else in all my tenure as ambassador. Perhaps she appreciates the sense of connection to her kingdom?”

Artemio had never felt farther from Espher than when he was perched up there, vision extending as far as the distant horizon in every direction. A kingdom was its people, not its land, and up there staring down on them all, they looked like a particularly industrious antheap that had been overturned. If he were king, he would avoid places like that like the plague. Anything that made him forget that his place was down on the ground with the real people he ruled. To do otherwise was folly.

“I suspect she prefers the solitude. And the lack of places for spies to be hiding and listening in on her conversations.”

When he dragged his gaze from the window at last, Modesta was staring at him with an odd expression on her face. Shrewd. “Have you considered making some other improvements to the rooftop gardens?”

He sighed. “To add some helpful little culverts in which listeners might be stowed?”

“As a gift to your lady wife, Duke Volpe.” That shut him up. “It is my understanding that the former king did not make a single improvement upon the place. And as you know, a happy house is a productive house.”

There was an uncomfortable warmth in her voice as she trailed off. As though the prospect of his… productivity was personally pleasing to her. “You do wish to please your wife?”

It left Art feeling off balance. “I… yes, of course. I will not be some ogre, treating her poorly. If I should choose to accept your offer, and she my proposal.”

“Speaking as a happily married woman, I must inform you that there are many degrees between ogrish behavior and matrimonial bliss. It seems reasonable to expect that you will put the same dedication into your marriage as every other aspect of your life, so I should not worry that you will trend towards the former. Indeed, from what I have heard of her last husband’s treatment of her, you would be hard-pressed not to be a marked improvement.” Seeing the struggle of emotions vying for control of Artemio’s face, she added, “Do you deny it?”

He set his jaw. “I will not speak ill of my king.”

“Then allow one who is not bound by convention to do so for you. The king was not worthy of the throne of Espher, and his father was little better. The rulership should never have passed from Volpe hands. On that we can agree at least?”

She was treading into dangerous territory indeed. The kind of subject never openly addressed. With good reason.

“Perhaps if that was Agrant’s view on the matter then they should not have provided material support to the usurpers.”

“Perhaps if I had a say in policy at the time, they would not have. By now I am sure that you realize the Agrantine court is not a monolith, any more than your own.” She reached out to him again, but this time stopped short when the glower on his face made it apparent that the contact was not wanted, nor would it be reciprocated. “What others have done, I cannot undo, history is not mine to rewrite. But is it not our place to put right the mistakes of the past?”

He let out a long breath, trying to steady himself from saying something he might regret. “It is a relief to hear you finally admit Agrantine involvement in the coup.”

“There are no more Cerva to protect.” She shrugged only a single shoulder. “What care have I if their ruined reputation is tarnished further?”

He dragged in another breath, with all the words he wanted to scream trapped inside it. “Honesty is the true breath of fresh air, I must say.”

“Then it is my hope that you will breathe easier in the future. For I never mean to deceive you again.”

Silence rang in the carriage between them as he waited for the question, but none was forthcoming. Either she had gone native, was becoming ruder with his company, or she did not want to know the answer to the obvious question posed by her statement. Did he believe her?

He did not. He had taken her measure the first time they met. She would say whatever it took to get what she wanted, and while she found it easier, more comfortable, to weave truths, the sad fact was that she would go on saying whatever was necessary to further the ends of Agrant. For all her fine words, she was a zealot like all the rest of her people.

Artemio knew how she thought because he thought in the same way. He knew how to lie with truths, and he would do so, so long as it protected Espher. Exactly the same as she did.

“Then I swear to you, Ambassador, that I shall treat you in kind.”

The gardens that surrounded the House of Seven Shadows were still in a state of disrepair after the dragons’ attack. Soot scars across the gravel. Plants withered to black nothing. He could not recall if he had seen this place since that day, amidst all the chaos of planning a war. He supposed that he must have, but his mind had been turned inwards. It almost felt right for it to look this way. To show some hint at the mighty terrors that dwelled within. He hoped that it filled the ambassador with the same dread.

There were no Shadebound or students in the grounds, as there usually were. Nor were there any signs of the servants who attended to the place. Noble scions would have been recalled to the safety of their homes, and the servants were most likely secreted away inside where they could not be interfered with. There were no saints here, which struck him as odd. If he had known of such a well of power that might be brought to bear against his invading army, he would have occupied it with all force. It showed how little the ambassador understood of what the Shadebound were capable of, even now.

The Prima herself stood waiting by the doors. A high honor that likely would not have been extended to Artemio or the ambassador not so long ago. They went through some of the usual pleasantries, thanking her for her time, asking after mutual acquaintances, all while still standing outside in the sunlight. With no servants at hand, the ambassador had to tie a blindfold around her own head, a length of silk that she produced from where it had been threaded around her belt.

Artemio had never seen anyone walk into Septombra with the confidence of the ambassador. She moved like the servants did, with a familiarity that bordered upon contempt. Out of ingrained habit, he had offered his arm to her, and she did take it, but it was apparent after only a short stroll through the labyrinthine corridors that he was an accessory rather than a necessity. They reached the safety of the Prima’s study in record time.

As the ambassador unwound the scarf, the Prima dipped into an arthritic curtsy before them. “It is an honor to receive such esteemed guests. How may I be of assistance to you?”

It was almost bizarrely formal for a woman who scant months before had been flinging Art off his seat for showing up late to a lecture. A woman who had raised him to the fullness of adulthood, as much as any woman had.

With the same rigid formality, trying not to give away too much of their personal relationship to the ambassador, he began, “I am sure that you are aware of the situation in the palace, the absence of the king.”

“Some small part of that tale has come to me, yes.” There was a sarcastic edge to her reply that he hoped passed Modesta by.

It seemed that it had, given the ambassador’s willingness to fling herself into the conversation despite its acidity. “I have of course done all that I can to keep the Prima abreast of the situation. Have I not?”

“Of course, Modesta.” The Prima reached over to pat the woman on the back of her hand. “You have been as good a friend to me as always.”

Artemio repressed a shudder at that particular piece of familiarity. Of course they were friends. Both were women, outsiders in court, with massive power behind them that the rest of the Teatro had no real grasp of. “Then am I to assume that the ambassador has also informed you of her solution to the issue of the empty throne?”

“I must say, it came as something of a surprise, but I cannot fault her reasoning. Who would have thought all those months ago when I set you on your course to give aid to the House of Cerva that your star would rise so swiftly. My dear boy…” She trailed off, realizing even as she said it that it was hardly the correct form of address for a duke, let alone a king. ”I suppose that I must get out of the habit of speaking to you thus. When you take the throne, all of the past is forgotten, and you must start anew. Did you know that in the early days of Espher, before the true lineage was brought out, each new king of Espher would take a new name upon their coronation, to mark the differentiation?”

She was usually terse, her answers usually providing only the bare minimum of information required to set others on their own courses of study. The fact that she was waxing lyrical about so pointless a thing suggested that she understood that his visit to the House of Seven Shadows was not for his stated purpose of an interview with her and was in fact for something else entirely. Something that would be ably aided and abetted by someone who was willing to fill the silence that any lapse in his side of the conversation might have caused. May the ancestors bless her, she understood why he was there, and she was letting him know that she was willing to help.

“That is a detail that must have passed me by in my studies. Though I must say that written histories from that period always made a great deal of addressing them exclusively by their coronated names.”

She smiled then, softly, her offer of inane conversation accepted. “Contemporary sources would most likely have sought to curry favor with their ruler by only offering the utmost respect. Perhaps it is that same impulse that I find myself following even now.”

He settled back on his seat. “Well, I am no king. Not yet at least. So, you may continue to be as familiar with me as you desire, Prima. And we might cross whatever bridges come as we reach them.”

She settled in herself, already aware of the way that he had loosened his bonds upon his shades, the way that he was leaking tiny fragments of life out into the air. To any Shadebound, his actions would have been entirely obvious, but of course, Modesta was not Shadebound. She could not know that he was extending his consciousness out to envelop the room, and then pushing it farther still. Pushing against the spiritual pressure of the Great Shades that lay dormant about the House of Seven Shadows. Weaving through them to find the one he sought.

“Then, my dear, dear boy, you must tell me how this old woman can be of help to you.”

His smile remained polite and fixed as he continued to split his attention. “I have received the ambassador’s invitation to restore the Volpe line to the throne, and while I have no doubt that all she has broached the subject with have been entirely in favor of the idea, it struck me that it is often in the best interests of an occupied people to declare the ideas of their conqueror’s ruler to be the best that they have ever heard. I believe that you may have a more balanced perspective on the matter.”

She brought a hand up to her chin, and one finger began to tap on her lower lip. She had been a handsome woman in her time, and even now, so late in life, after having spent so much of that life on the shadework for which she was famed, he could see the shape of that young beauty behind the mask of age.

Weaving down past all of the usual lesser shades, giving each of the great ones a wide berth so he could maintain his focus without being distracted or blinded by the way they shone, he delved down into the volcanic stone beneath them.

When the Prima spoke, it felt like it was coming to him from a great distance, as though his ears were currently in a different room from his body and the sounds were being funneled down to him with a slight delay.

“You’ll be seen as an egotistical ambition-riddled opportunist obsessed with power, you’ll be considered a tool of the Agrantine, and you’ll face massive opposition across the spectrum. The Teatro will tear you apart if you even attempt to make a moral argument at any point during your rule, and many of the houses that backed the Cerva will openly rebel.”

When he didn’t immediately leap to his own defense in the face of such implications, the ambassador took it upon herself to carry things on alone. “We believe that there may be a way to shift the support of those who backed the Cerva by marrying our young king to the current queen. Do you suppose that would be sufficient to keep rebellion less… open?”

Once more he could distantly sense what his eyes were telling him, the way the Prima shifted uncomfortably in her seat as his spirit and life flowed over her, the way she made it seem as though she were merely considering the options before replying, “That could certainly work. It would also ease the concerns of those in the pro-Agrantine camp considerably.”

Despite his distraction, Artemio couldn’t help but comment upon that. “I rarely present moral arguments. I have never found that they gain much traction with the nobles of Espher. As though I were speaking in a foreign tongue.”

The Prima nodded primly. “Which addresses another issue.”

Artemio’s split mind began to ache. Longing to be focused in one place or another. Yet he could not surrender either part of his consciousness nor entirely decouple them. The former because it would mean abandoning either the ruse or his true purpose in visiting. The latter because it was impossible without permanent damage. Even attempting his current explorations was stretching him thin to breaking point.

“As for my appearance, I do not care for opinions. It matters little to me how I am seen, so long as I am obeyed.”

The Prima had always been a stern woman in his company. But now amusement set her face aglow. “In all honesty, being an egotistical ambition-riddled opportunist obsessed with power may very well endear you to many of the lords and ladies of the greater houses, given that it is a fair description of them.”

It felt as though his words were coming slow and sluggish, but that was because his split awareness was slowing his perception, not because his mask of concerned interest had slipped. “So, you believe that there is a possibility that I might take the throne without destroying Espher entirely?”

She met his eye, recognized precisely what he was doing, and took responsibility for his preservation without a moment’s thought, launching herself into a rambling speech that might, if he were lucky, last long enough for him to complete his task. “There are a great many factors to consider, my dear boy. Those opposed to Agrantine influence will likely see your marriage as a testament to your subservience. One problem solved and another created. Likewise…”

This time, he had no need to hold back, no need to divide himself over so great of a stretch. He let his awareness slip out from his body, trusting in the Prima to keep it safe until his return and in the ambassador to be so confident in her measure of him that she wouldn’t trouble to cast him a second glance when there was so much that a potential enemy or ally was saying. So many words to be picked over for double meanings. How could she know that they were little more than chaff being tossed up to obscure her view of the real task at hand.

Without the bifurcation, everything became infinitely easier. He could sense all of the Great Shades of Septombra in their allotted places: Gufo lingering in the tower above the library, waiting to trade in knowledge and secrets; the Hollow Armor, just waiting for some enterprising Shadebound to bend it to their will. He sank down past them both, past every worked stone of the House and all of the natural tunnels beneath them to boot. What he was reaching for was older than all of this, more powerful and ancient than the city herself.

Deep down in the dark he felt it, not a mind, not even the specter of a mind, but a rumbling giant asleep. Emotions in turmoil, rage. Blinding rage. Pressing in on his own mind. Trying to make it his anger. Through his forge spirit he could make the connection, but it was his own fury that truly let his consciousness meet it. Fire spoke to fire, wrath spoke to wrath, and while its fury was old and simmering, his had been building more and more with every passing moment since the city had come into sight. After all he had done, after all he had sacrificed, to see the flags of the very people that had driven his family into near exile hanging on the capital had almost driven him mad.

He let The Fire Below feel that wrath. Let it recognize it, and instead of letting its anger become his, he made his anger into its.

With the seed planted, he withdrew with all haste. He could not allow his mind to be drawn down into that endless burning. Yet in his fear of being devoured whole he leapt back too far, returning to his body.

“…to be entirely honest with you, if it had not been for your victory against the Arazi, it is likely that we could not even consider this course of action to be advisable. Even with it, there will likely only be a short window of opportunity in which you will be considered acceptable, primarily on the basis of the support of the common man. I believe that there are songs being sung about you in taverns, if you could believe it. That sort of goodwill could certainly be parlayed into…”

The Prima was still going, still perfectly absorbing the full attention of the ambassador. He turned to glance at Modesta, and from her periphery she must have seen him and nodded back. For a moment he was pinned in place by her gaze, unable to slink back out of his body to resume his task, but painfully aware that with every tick of the Prima’s grandfather clock, he came closer to losing his tenuous grasp on the Great Shade.

At last, she turned her eyes away from him, and he could flee. Back down, through his own mind and farther down, sending his hollow spirit all the way back to the roiling mass of magma that still persisted beneath the caldera of Covotana even after all of these millennia of dormancy.

It moved.

For all of written history, since the founding of the city, the molten stone below had been still, lulled into slumber by the efforts of the Shadebound, generation after generation of them passing through Septombra had done their duty, learning their limits against the implacable weight of an ancient shade with all the care for humanity as the shifting of tectonic plates. The Fire Below had always been an object lesson to them, to recognize that there were limits to what even the most powerful of Shadebound could wield, but also that they could still exercise influence over those Great Shades beyond their power to master.

Now he meant to undo it all. Instead of soothing the Fire, he fanned the flames. He let more and more of its rage build, unabated. He made no effort to calm it, to protect the city that he knew and loved so dearly. If the Agrantine held Covotana, then it was no longer the heart of Espher, it was a cancer in her chest, and if the only way to be cured was to burn out the infection, then that was precisely what he meant to do. He stoked the fire, built it up, waited until the surface was sizzling against the lower reaches of the stone plug above. The stone plug on which the whole city had been built, and then he left it there, simmering, ready to erupt with just the slightest nudge.

He was connected to The Fire Below now. By his shade, by his anger. There would be no effort or searching when the time came. Only a moment. One moment, when he decided that this was the better option, and he let his mind and the primordial fury touch.

“…needless to say, swift action will be required to secure your position if you should proceed. Eliminating the most vociferous of your opponents, purging remnants of the Cerva line. I am not certain that you will have the stomach for the actions that must be undertaken to hold a throne, not only for yourself, but for future generations. And as far as your descendants go, they shall have to prove themselves time and again or face the risk of deposition. After all, it is a difficult thing to kill a king for the first time, but once the seal on the bottle is broken, there is no preventing another pour being made.”

The tail end of the Prima’s speech covered over the sound of his indrawn, shuddering breath. His hands shook where they grasped the arms of the chair, white-knuckled. His mind spun as he tried to get back up to speed with this struggle, instead of the one he had been engaged in beneath them all.

He wet his lips. “This plan of the ambassador’s should be a complete success so long as I am a brutal tyrant and all my hypothetical children and grandchildren prove to be exceptional rulers without flaw. This does not seem to be the cut-and-dried situation that was initially presented to me.”

Modesta had the good grace to look a little embarrassed. “I had assumed that you would continue to excel to a degree that would render such objections obsolete. Did you intend otherwise?”

Artemio was not some child to be pulled along by his ego. “The study of the history of royal lineage may not have been one of my foremost interests, but there can be no denying that each subsequent generation is something of a roll of the dice. Just as my children may not have red hair, so too might they be lacking in the requisite intellect to run rings around their enemies. Stability reliant upon exceptions is no stability at all.”

She threw up her hands in an imitation of irritation. “My dear Duke Volpe, you must understand that over the periods of time we are discussing, massive change can occur…”

Whatever she meant to say next, Artemio entirely missed. He had threaded his life and will down into The Fire Below, intent on lighting it like a fuse when the time came. It had not occurred to him that the shade might yank on it exploratively when it was discovered. Flame leapt up the length of the cord. The massive weight of the spirit hauled him down. Tearing him from his awareness of what was happening in the room where his body still sat, propped up with the same vacant expression.

In an instant, he went from calm to panicked, struggling against the awful gravity of the thing below. It was fire, it consumed. He had left a thread of himself there for it to latch onto, for it to suckle upon and draw him down. The old fire burned brighter from the fuel he’d fed it. The rumbling deep beneath the city built from so low that nobody could hear it, to startling the birds that roosted on the terra-cotta tiles of the city through the winter into flight.

He hauled back with all of his strength, drawing the fire back up along the same cord of will, drawing it into himself. Filling his mind with its ancient rage. There was no will behind it, no malice, only that blind desire to destroy and destroy until nothing remained. He swallowed it down and made it part of himself and then crushed the cord so tight that not another drop of magma could force its way up, no matter the pressure. The burning thread between shade and man remained.

Then he was back to himself, back to the room, quaking with unbridled terror at what had almost occurred and pain at the fire he had swallowed. Sweat beaded his brow, and he swept it away absentmindedly as he tried to compose himself. The Prima and ambassador both sat staring at him. Waiting for some answer to a question he had not heard. To his shame, his voice broke as he said, “I’m terribly sorry, could you…”

The Prima was up and fussing over him before he could even finish his sentence, pulling him to face her, studying him for any sign of influence. She must have felt the pull of the shade, it had been a tectonic movement for those with the senses for it. It wouldn’t have taken much to make the connection. “The boy is overwhelmed. We are asking so much of him. It matters not how great the mind, even the strongest of oxen can only bear so many burdens before they halt. We have given him much to think about and perhaps not enough time to think about it.”

The ambassador, not to be outdone in feigning care for him, was at his other side, her callused fingers resting ever so gently upon his sleeve. Warmth without weight. “Do you feel overburdened, Duke Volpe?”

He drew in a steadying breath. Then he told them the truth. “Days ago, I fought an army of dragons to preserve Espher’s sovereignty. This more personal matter scarcely registers, I assure you.”

Gradually the two of them drew back and returned to their seats, though he noticed that the Prima never took her eyes off him for even a moment, as though he might burst into flames at the slightest provocation. He tried, for his part, to keep the conversation moving forward. “The consensus opinion, ladies? Will this work, if I should choose to pursue it?”

“You place me in the awkward position of having to contradict the ambassador, my dear boy, but I find that it is unnecessary.” She gave him a smile, despite the worry still haunting her eyes. To let him know that despite the circumstances, her words were genuine. “Your ascension to the throne in the current circumstances seems to be the most palatable option for all concerned, and I believe that others will see matters in the same light.”

The ambassador looked to be extremely satisfied with that particular answer. For all the fake smiles she had plastered on her face since Artemio first met her, he felt that he could now discern the difference from those few moments when she was genuinely pleased. It could just be a second layer to her deception of course, but he did not think so. To maintain a constant mask on one’s true feelings was exhausting, and the woman had shown a preference for using the truth as a patchwork with her lies to give more verisimilitude.

He almost felt bad to wipe the smile from her face when he asked, “And if the king lives?”

“The Cerva king?” The Prima stared off past his shoulder, to the door beyond, as though she were weighing her options, gauging whether or not she might be heard. “I suppose that would be the first test of your resolve to rule, your willingness to eliminate direct competition for the seat.”

Art’s mouth fell open in genuine surprise. He had never expected anyone to speak so plainly of the death of the twin kings. “If the king lives, you expect me to kill him?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “It is something of a tradition when it comes to deposing monarchs.”

“It is treason to even speak such thoughts aloud,” he hissed through his teeth.

“Is it not also treason to take the place of the king? Or does it not become treason until you choose to act on your contemplations?” the ambassador prodded him verbally. Perhaps seeking some small measure of revenge for him interrupting her own happiness. “Is that why you continue to vacillate when the solution is clear?”

“I will not kill a king.” He had thought his temper was under his control. He had thought that a lifetime of beatings for showing the faintest hint of emotion had deprived him of the ability to leap so swiftly to an emotional outburst. But whether it was his own turmoil, or the wrath of The Fire Below that now seared through him, his voice came out in a growl. “I will not become what my father planned for me. I will not become a monstrous usurper. I will not be all that I hate, not even for Espher.”

“You surprise me, Duke Volpe.” The ambassador looked genuinely affronted. As though he was betraying her trust in him. Those words, clumsily chosen by anger, had run contrary to her perception of him. “You have just informed us that you care nothing for the opinions of your peers, but now the thought of being seen as a usurper suddenly troubles you?

The heat of his wrath still hadn’t left his voice when he answered. “The opinions of others matter as much as bird-shit on the palace walls. But if I see myself as a usurper, it will… trouble me. It will rob me of the moral foundations that I deem required to rule.”

The ambassador scoffed. “But if you can take it all without blood, your objections fade?”

“I… if the king is gone. Then I have no choice but to take the throne. There is no successor and no contender who could unite all factions.” Now that he had recognized the wild anger as an alien thing, he could purge it from his mind, he could push it aside and let the calculating and rational part of him speak while the rest simmered silently, out of sight. “If the king is not gone, then he must rule.”

The Prima inserted herself neatly back into the conversation, deflecting attention from Artemio again. Still protecting him. When he had the opportunity, he would have to thank her for all that she’d done this day. Assuming they both survived. “So, it seems that you have a simple task before you, Modesta, simply ensure that the Cerva are dead, and you have a ready-made puppet king.”

Artemio snarled, “I shall be nobody’s puppet.”

“Spoken like one who cannot see the strings.” The Prima sighed. “My dear boy, all of us are bound. Some by ties of blood, of friendship, of honor. It is only by recognizing the myriad directions in which we are being pulled that we gain any semblance of equilibrium and any opportunity at agency.”

Modesta was quick to try to deflect the path his thoughts now took. “You will not be obligated to obey me or any demand of Agrant. In truth, you are doing me a great favor by placing someone of competence and power at the head of Espher. If anything, would you not say that I am obligated to you?”

The Prima leaned in closer, as though she were whispering something for his ears only. As if the ambassador weren’t privy to every word they shared. “Wasn’t that remarkably well played? Won’t you remember that lack of obligation when the time comes to make decisions about Agrant? Notable in its absence. A reminder of your dear friend Modesta’s kindness. A fine thread, to be sure, but one that is sure to be plucked.”

“Prima! The very thought that I am attempting to manipulate the duke!” Modesta gasped in dismay. “Artemio, you cannot believe that…”

He cut her off before she could get to the question. He didn’t think he could stomach hearing it at that moment. “The point stands, Ambassador. Regardless of your intentions, I will remember your behavior here and it will shape the choices that I make in the future.”

“Then all that I can hope is to leave a good impression of myself and the one I represent.”

He cut her off before the question a second time. That was probably rude in Agrant, but this was not Agrant, and he could not abide the ambassador begging for his assurance. Not after all she had done. “Something you have been doing quite ably, Ambassador.”

She seemed to settle at that. As though what could easily have been a lie had given her comfort. These games of words that they played held so many layers that often even Artemio could not tell for certain which of the many levels he was meant to be engaging upon. Whether he was meant to read deeper into every expression, or to accept at face value what wasn’t being told to him. No wonder the Teatro was a full-time job for the nobility of Espher, and no wonder they seemed so utterly devoid of thought beyond its walls. After committing all of their energies to deciphering such situations, it would be remarkable indeed if they had any brain power left to accomplish such simple tasks as walking and talking, let alone all the rest. Artemio was exhausted just from this brief bout.

“Tell me, Duke Volpe, having fully indulged your curiosity with the Prima, do you now feel prepared to make your decision?”

He gave the ambassador an indulgent smile in the hope that it might settle her nerves. “I have but a single question left to ask her. Where is the king?”

Always the Prima held herself with a pride to reflect the majesty of her position. Always she composed herself with dignity. So when he asked her that question and her shoulders slumped, Artemio knew how much it pained her to give him the answer. “Oh, my dear boy, I wish that I could tell you. I wish that I could say he had died in the fighting or he had fled into exile to hold court in some foreign land, but I cannot give you the certainty that you seek, and I have no way of finding it for you.”

He opened himself up again, not to the Great Shade below, which he was doing his damnedest to keep from his mind, but to the shades of the Prima. Just a touch from one of them would let him know that she was dissembling, that she was hiding the truth not from him, but from the Agrantine ambassador. It would have given him somewhere to circle back to. A starting point. She did not give him the faintest touch. Even as he pried.

“Neither shades nor man have brought any information to you that might shed light on his disappearance?”

“Not a whisper. Not a one. And I can assure you that it has not been from a lack of trying on my part.” She reached across her desk once more, placing a hand on his. “The better of my students have all departed to wage your war, the others retreated into their shells, but through every contact and contract I have at my disposal, I have sought this knowledge and found nothing at all.”

He turned his hand until their palms touched. Then they parted. “I have nothing but faith in you, Prima. If you cannot find something, then it cannot be found.”

She met his gaze, despite the prying stare of the ambassador burrowing into the sides of their heads. “It is my hope that you have found what you sought, in coming here.”

“I did, Prima,” he said without a hint at bitterness. “Thank you.”

15 - Overdue Departure
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

Escaping from a besieged city proved to be considerably easier than Harmony had anticipated. It seemed that all of the efforts of Covotana’s invaders were focused upon keeping people out rather than keeping people in. Truth be told, it would most likely be to their advantage to have fewer people inside the walls. When the siege stretched out and food supplies began to dwindle, fewer mouths would prove an immense advantage, particularly mouths attached to bodies that had no intention of assisting in holding the walls.

So it was that when she and the dragon-man had climbed up the steps to the walls after nightfall, the worst of her dizziness and confusion departed at last, the saints standing watch were mostly bemused.

The closer of the two was a woman, to Harmony’s eye, scarred all the way up her face and scalp. She came on with considerably more aggression than her partner on the other side, closing the distance and swinging for Kagan without casting Harmony a glance. It was clear which of the two potential escapees was the physical threat.

Which was of course why it was so easy for Harmony’s own rapier to slide along the underside of the saint’s arm, through the bundled sackcloth of her robe, through skin and breast and muscles before finding its home in her heart.

How easily the saints of Agrant died. Falling back before the pain could even reach her mind. Body robbed of strength as her rich, bright lifeblood spattered out on the stone. Harmony spun to face the next with her glittering rapier in hand, shining red and slick by torchlight.

The other saint did not slow. Bellowing, “Stop!” at the top of his lungs, as though they would dare to stop now. Kagan had his rope secured around the battlements and looked askance to Harmony.

She snapped, “Go.”

“Can’t leave you here.”

“Nor do I expect to be left, but there isn’t time for both of us to descend before this oaf arrives to cut the rope, and you stand a better chance of catching me than the opposite, wouldn’t you say?”

“Fine.” At least he had the good sense not to argue. Maybe Orsina wasn’t so foolish for making him her impresario after all, if he could be trained.

The next of the saints rushed her with his blade already in full swing. Harmony moved like a serpent, coiling back from the blow and darting forward so swiftly it would have brought a tear to many of her fencing instructors’ eyes to see the perfection they’d wrought.

Sadly, they had been Espheran instructors, not Agrantine. Swiftness could not overcome superior form. Not when there was no element of surprise on her side. With a twist of the wrist, his swing became a parry, and the lightness of her blade, the fineness that brought her so much finesse, suddenly worked against her as it was slapped aside with almost casual ease, leaving her wide open to the counter.

It came swift and brutal, a short chop that hit her in the upper arm as she tried to fling herself aside. It bore down to bone and would have carried on through her if she hadn’t already been traveling the direction it was headed. Despite herself, she let out a howl of pain.

He was over her, with his sword leveled on her toppled body before she had a chance. “Submit.”

That obviously wasn’t an option. She kicked out for his knee, missing but driving him back a step, giving herself a little room to work with. Kagan had to be halfway down the wall by now. She just needed to hold this sword-slinging ape’s attention for a little longer.

“Is it true that in Agrant, they make you lie with your own mothers?”

Whatever martial discipline had been instilled in the saint was no match for the mental image her words provoked. The stern gaze of a seasoned warrior twisted in disgust. She flung herself up. The moment all she needed to meet his rapid riposte with a parry of her own. It knocked her right back down again, but the added momentum gave her distance, put her by the base of the battlements, with solid stone at her back to serve as a support next time she had to try her strength against his.

“Why would say such thing?” His swordplay was markedly better than his Espheran.

Her arm throbbed where the blade had bitten deep. It would need to be stitched. She hated stitches.

“Isn’t it meant to remind you that the emperor gets all the young, nubile Agrantine girls as his brides, and all you have to look forward to is your sagging, old…”

He interrupted the thought before she could complete it, which was a relief because she was becoming queasy trying to conceive of something vile enough to rile him.

The star-steel blade swung down at her with just a touch more force than was strictly required, and she punished his overextension with another kick out at his leg, low in the shin, setting him off balance entirely. She rolled aside, so he struck that fancy sword of his off the stonework, throwing up sparks.

“You die.”

Her bleeding shoulder hit the corner of the battlements, and her whole world washed out in red for one awful moment. But when she came back to herself, she was halfway to her feet, with her ass pressed firmly to the wall for balance.

“We all die, but not all of us return to whence we came. Only you Agrantine boys get to brag of that.”

In his rage, all of his precious training had held up, guiding him through the perfect motions of the Agrantine sword forms. Yet now, as he screamed, “Die!” at the very top of his lungs, she saw him waver. She saw it in the line of his shoulder, in the bend of his arm. He was no longer perfect, and that meant he could be beaten.

She didn’t even try for a killing blow—that would have been folly and overextension of herself. But what she did manage was all the more effective for being so harmless. Instead of striking for his exposed chest, she thrust the tip of her blade into his arm, at the inner join of his elbow.

It was little more than a prick, barely enough to draw blood. In the kind of fencing matches that Harmony had grown up watching and then eventually participating in, it would not have even been considered a touch, yet it was enough to stop his arm from bending, his sword from swinging. Enough of a delay that she could fling herself shoulder-first into his guts and send him toppling back off the wall.

For an instant, there was silence, then the wet crack of head meeting flagstone. She didn’t go to see what damage she’d done. Instead, she sheathed her sword, hopped over the battlements, and began her descent.

Adrenaline ran dry about halfway down the wall, and her firm grasp on the rope became shaky. If it hadn’t been for the solid anchor of Kagan at the wall’s foot, then she might very well have lost her grip. Instead, she descended through shakes and shudders that she could blame on the cold wind and was more or less herself again by the bottom of the wall.

“Didn’t have to catch you.” For someone so huge, it should have been quite impossible for Kagan to lurk so effectively in the shadows of the wall, yet one moment he was there and the next he was not. Harmony wondered if dragons and their human vassals were like those lizards Art had spent a solid hour obsessed over. The ones that could change color to match their background.

She managed a smile through the pain and shudders. “I can assure you that I’m as relieved as you are. Knowing my luck, you would have dropped me.”

For a moment it looked like he would close the rest of the distance, put an arm around her shoulders, and give her the comfort that she so obviously needed, but he didn’t. Instead, he stopped short and crossed his massive arms across his massive chest. “Wouldn’t have.”

He’d caught himself before he fell into the trap of treating her like Orsina. So she had to give him the same courtesy and stop treating him like Art. “I’m sure you wouldn’t have intended to, but a crossbow bolt would have come lancing out of the darkness, and you’d have to dive aside to avoid it, and I’d have become so much human jam.”

Almost against his will, he cast a glance back at the wall. As if there was some crossbowman lurking up there, just waiting for his opportunity. “Big imagination.”

She put her back to both him and the wall and set off across no-man’s-land. They had nobody raining death on them for the moment, but there was no reason to think that the Agrantine would continue to be so polite, especially with two of their saints dead because of her efforts. “It helps to worry ahead of time when fate seems intent on bending you over at every opportunity.”

All it took was a couple of long strides and then he was by her side, matching her pace. “Seem pretty lucky to me.”

“Because I made it back out of the city that I should be able to call home with barely my life?” She scoffed. “Because my family is such a nightmarish disaster that sending a rat-girl to meet me in the sewers is considered an act of filial kindness? Because I managed to escape with you in tow? You, so wondrous a prize?”

“Because of Orsina.” Kagan’s voice rumbled on her skin, but without that, she might not have heard his answer at all.

“All right, yes. That was very lucky.” She blushed. Then upped her pace to be sure he could not see her face. There were tents and fires up ahead, the soldiers she had been so desperate to avoid before, and that now she didn’t even have a second thought for. They would stop by her tent, if they weren’t stopped before then, to load up on supplies.

They went unchallenged for a fair distance, farther than Harmony had really expected. It wasn’t until they made it to her tent that a guard finally stopped her. “Duchess Volpe! You’ve returned!”

“It shall only be a brief visit, I’m afraid. I have another mission I must undertake with immediacy.”

“Your brother spoke to us from the walls, told us to maintain the siege but not to attempt to break it. Can you tell us any more of his plans?”

She put on as stern a face as she could maintain while watching the rapidly approaching crowd of nobles and secretaries swerve off from their charge towards her at the sight of the dragon-lord at her back. “What he has shared with you is his command, and you’d do well not to question it.”

The Duchess Granchio emerged from the crowd, unbent by the burden of command and undeterred by the sight of one of the Arazi in their camp. “And your mission, your Grace?”

“Were it something that I could share with you, Duchess, I assure you that I would. Simply rest assured that what I am doing is in the best interests of Espher. I leave this army in your capable hands. Maintain the siege until such time that the command comes from Artemio to break it.”

Granchio was not so easily swayed as the other nobles. “And you have decided that this mission is more important than leading the armies of Espher in her darkest hour?”

“My quest will turn this war on its head in an instant.” She said it with such sincerity that even the dubious duchess fell silent.

“I shall need horses, supplies for my journey, and a change of clothing. If you might see to the former for me, I shall see to the latter. See if you can’t get my servant some spears and armor while you’re at it.”

Kagan stepped into her tent with her, still lurking in her shadow. His voice rumbled out into the dim. “Servant?”

“You have a better mask to wear?” she called back over her shoulder, digging into the chest of Art’s clothes in search of anything else a little more practical than her current rags.

It was only when she began stripping off in earnest that Kagan seemed to realize what he was glowering at and turned away. “Not your servant.”

“You know that, and I know that, but there are few roles that the nobility of Espher might see you in and not object to.” She managed to force a shirt down over the massive bruise that her torso seemed to have become. “Servant is one.”

“Tracker.” He grumbled to the tent wall. “Was the king’s huntsman.”

“Ah, but that would lead to questions about what I’m tracking or hunting.” She called back over her shoulder.

“Better than being called a servant.”

She spun him around now that she was fully dressed again. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry to have offended you by suggesting that you aren’t the highest born of all dragon-riders, but I judged the situation to require some degree of finesse.”

He huffed out air. “Next time, you’re my servant.”

She laughed. “Next time?”

“When we’re sneaking into the Arazi camp.” He hoisted the bundled supplies she’d found for herself onto his shoulders. “You can carry my stuff.”

“I’d be delighted to.” She gathered herself before heading back out into camp. “Just so long as you get us there while Orsina still draws breath.”

The gathered crowd had swelled in her absence. All the nobles who hadn’t had the opportunity to stare her down on arrival were now taking their opportunity, and while Duchess Granchio had fetched horses for them as requested, she was now standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the other leaders of Espher in a living barricade.

“Duchess Volpe, we would have words with you.”

Harmony forced a smile onto her face. “So long as they are short words, I will be happy to entertain all of you.”

A whiskered lord that she didn’t recognize grumbled, “I’ve got some short words for you, girl…”

For a moment she felt her world lurch sideways. This would only work if she had their loyalty or had borrowed enough of their loyalty to Artemio. If she was challenged, she had nothing to fall back on. If she was challenged, she knew she’d fade back to who she was before, the pariah. They had lived all their lives with power as their birthright, and she had lived with nothing but their contempt. She knew just how ephemeral it all was.

Kagan lurched forward from the tent flap to loom over the man. “I beg pardon, my lord, I did not hear your wisdom. Could you speak up?”

Whatever other comment the man had meant to make gave out in the face of the Arazi. Power again. Far from ephemeral. Far from easily dismissed. The power of muscle and bulk. The power of the threat of violence.

She let her hand drift down to rest on the hilt of her sword. No matter the way the world changed around them, there would always be this. If it came to it, she could fight her way through. She could win. That was why she had spent so long in study of the blade. To have that power. That power that could never be taken from her. Compared with the command of armies and the economic pull that the great houses could manage, such power was a tiny thing. But standing face-to-face with her as the fools were now, her power could not be denied.

“You mean to leave us again so soon?” Granchio tried to seize control of the situation again.

“I have my orders from Artemio, as you have yours. House Volpe has no soldiers to command, nor bannermen to call.” With the weight of the sword pressing up against her fingers, Harmony found the calm she needed. “All we have is ourselves, and so it is our lives that are being spent. Artemio within the city, and I farther afield.”

The whiskery lord managed to muster the courage to speak again, even if he couldn’t meet Kagan’s eye. “And you truly believe that your actions will have so vast an effect on the conflict as to make this abandonment of your post to be worthwhile?”

“My post is where Artemio sets me,” Harmony snapped back before her temper was fully under her control. “And as to the effect of my mission. You saw what happened to the Arazi when one of Artemio’s plans came to fruition.”

Another noblewoman, younger and probably still knowledgeable about the noble bachelors of Espher, tittered a little as she spoke. “I will admit that I did wonder why that hedge-witch girl had come under his wing. Some thought it was a love match.”

“Ha.” She couldn’t keep from laughing at the thought. “Hardly.”

Granchio did not seem to share her amusement. “And you believe that your brother means to pull another miracle from under his hat?”

Shockingly, Kagan was the one to answer that. “There is a reason we all follow him, isn’t there?”

They might have argued among themselves, they might have argued with her, but they could not argue with the specter of her brother. Not after she had tacitly implied that he had been the one to bring Orsina to the peak of power she’d displayed. Not after she’d implied that he’d spent her so easily. These people respected that kind of callous plan. Art’s ability to turn his feelings off and let his mind lead was what made them follow him too.

From there, the fight was out of them. Harmony and Kagan mounted up, checked over their supplies, and set off to the north. It was almost too easy. None of it felt real until the last of Espher’s flags vanished over the horizon at their back, and all that was left in front of them was Espher herself.

Harmony didn’t strictly know how to speak to Kagan. She especially didn’t know how to thank him for piping up to help her back at camp. She opened and closed her mouth enough times that she was starting to consider a new career as a carp. Eventually, she managed to say. “Back there, you…”

He cut her off before she could get any more awkward. “If I don’t save Orsina, I’ll be dead too, right?”

She forced down all her attempts at thanks and managed to splutter out, “Indeed.”

They rode on. There was nothing to do for now. Nothing to say. Nothing to see. Just farmland, well churned by the passage of an army heading north and south again. They could drive the horses a little harder now while they were on the packed earth. It wouldn’t be long before it gave away to little more than hunting trails and the pace would need to slow. At least until they reached the open expanse of the steppes.

Kagan surprised her by keeping the conversation going. Though he seemed more like he was talking to himself. “Not like I’d leave her anyway.”

She nodded her head in time to the rhythm of the horse’s motion. “I’m sure.”

Once more they sank back into silence. Sullen on his part, curious on hers. Eventually she was forced to ask the thing that had been gnawing at her mind since she’d first heard of this Arazi exile. “You aren’t harboring some strange ideas about Orsina, are you?”

He grunted. “Stranger than the reality?”

“Fair play, I should have been more specific.” She wet her lips and blurted the rest of it out as quickly as she could. “I just mean, you’re not for instance an old lover trying to win her back or something along those lines?”

She had to look around when she heard how vehemently he barked back, “No.”

Disgust permeated that one word. As if just the thought of it was sufficient to turn his stomach.

She straightened up. Eyes forward. She could admit to herself that it was a relief, even if his revulsion seemed to be a little much. “Well, all right then.”

“She’s a child,” he rumbled, by way of explanation.

Harmony snorted. “Well, hardly.”

“Known her since she was one.” His chuckle sounded like the grinding of rocks. “Still acts like one.”

The idea of defending Orsina from others had always been on Harmony’s mind. But this certainly was not the manner in which she had expected to do it. This was not the snappish assault of some nobleman questioning Orsina’s manners; it was one of her old friends. Apparently from childhood.

“Now, that seems a little unfair.”

“Not an insult.” He shrugged his shoulders. Every motion slow and exaggerated with his bulk. “Maturity comes with time. She’s never had any.”

They rode on a little farther before he unexpectedly piped up again. “Why do you care?”

“She’s my friend. I care about her?” She cleared her throat. “I wouldn’t want to see someone in your privileged position trying to take advantage.”

His face split into a jagged grin. “Jealous?”

“I’m afraid tall, dark, and scaly isn’t really my type. She’s more than welcome to you if her tastes run that way.”

“You’re friends,” he said with an odd lilt to his voice.

Her eyes narrowed as she called back, “That’s right.”

“Won’t bother you we slept together then?”

She nearly leapt from the saddle in horror. “What?!”

He pointed off to the side of the road. “In that ditch.”

She couldn’t help but shout. Even though she realized he was leading her along by her nose. “You did what?!”

“Had to huddle for warmth. Pissing rain.” He chuckled. “No inns wanted me.”

Harmony swallowed down her irritation. “I’m not entirely sure what you intend to accomplish by riling me…”

He cut her off. All serious, all at once. “She’s mine. My… kid. Has been since I met her. Bond just made it official. Stop worrying about her past, worry about her future.”

“What future?” she snapped, bitterly. “Incineration?”

“You came for me because you know she’s alive. Same as I know.” Even his sighs sounded like the shifting of tectonic plates.

“I just don’t understand why.”

“Why she’s still alive?” Kagan looked askance at her.

“The Arazi don’t take prisoners.” Harmony’s gaze dropped to the road once more. “Everyone knows that.”

“Everyone who knows that is lying to you.” Kagan laughed. “We take prisoners, give them food, shelter, better lives, then they’re Arazi.”

The thought of Orsina as one those savages riding on a dragon’s back flashed through her mind. All that power, turned against Espher. She couldn’t even fault the girl for the betrayal. It wasn’t as though Espher had ever been kind to her. “So, you suspect that they’re trying to convert Orsina to their cause?”

Kagan looked remarkably untroubled by the thought. She supposed he was the last person who had not seen just what his “kid” was capable of. “Nope.”

“Do you care to elaborate?” Harmony’s sighing was becoming increasingly elaborate as the day went on, no longer just the simple huff of irritation, but now a staccato beat of exhalations.

It took time for him to compose his thoughts, but she had the good sense to wait it out instead of pushing. Eventually he spoke. “Some crimes are too wicked to go unpunished. Worst crime for us is killing a dragon.”

Harmony felt a chill settling over her. “She’s killed dozens.”

“Then they can’t let her live.”

He said it so simply, like it was a matter of fact. If a stone was thrown in the air, it would fall. If the sun rose, it would set. If someone killed a dragon, they died.

She felt his certainty like a cold weight in the pit of her stomach, but the evidence of her eyes denied it. “Yet the fact that we are having this conversation suggests that not only did they let her live, but they are also continuing to let her live.”

It was his time to huff out his breath. “Think that’s my fault.”

“Well, then I suppose that I owe you my thanks.” She managed a smile despite the dire subject of their conversation. “In what way do you suppose that it is your fault?”

“We’re bonded.” Kagan’s hand drifted up to touch the center of his chest. As though he could feel the bond like some physical thing. “Me and the girl. Same as me and my dragon. If I die, my dragon dies. If she dies, I die. Can’t kill a dragon, so what do you do?”

Harmony’s mouth hung open. “You have had a dragon all of this time, and you were sitting locked up in a villa?”

“She’s… not here.” He trailed off. “The bond’s still… doesn’t matter. She’s far away.”

“A dragon-lord without a dragon.” Harmony pondered. “Isn’t that rather like a dancer without feet?”

He snapped back, “More questions like that and you’ll see how well you wave that needle with no hands.”

“Charming.” She snorted. “This must be the famed Arazi politeness.”

His shoulders had hunched up, and she couldn’t see his face for the bulk of them. “Isn’t rude to say no to being interrogated.”

She guffawed. “Fairly rude to threaten grievous bodily harm though.”

When he cast a glance back at her, there was hate there in his eyes. She had really struck a nerve. Hardly surprising. “You want a sorry?”

“No, you’re well within your rights to threaten me with gruesome maiming. It was… rude of me.”

He grunted. “Famed Espher politeness.”

She couldn’t hold back a laugh. “I can see why she likes you.”

“Can’t see why she likes you,” he said with a growl in his voice. “But I guess we’ll find out what you’re made of. Long road ahead.”

“It feels longer by the moment.” She’d tried to break the ice. She’d tried to be friendly. If he chose to throw it back in her face, that was his mistake. “Have you had any thoughts as to how we will track the Arazi down?”

“Head north. Start at the battle. Follow the trail. Easy tracking. Even you’ll be able to do it.”

She spurred the horse on, slipping by him at a canter. “Then let’s get moving, shall we.”

16 - The Road to Ruin
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

They made better time than Harmony would have thought possible. Every time she began to tire, the sight of the implacable glacier of Kagan still rolling on at her side made her push through it. Throughout the night and day they traveled, pausing once or twice to water the horses and let them graze and only finally settling down to rest in a thicket off the main road as the night drew in around them.

“Don’t get comfortable,” Kagan rumbled. “Five hours, then we go.”

Harmony glanced around her environs and scoffed. “I really don’t think that you need to be concerned about me finding this heap of sticks comfortable.”

“Grab some. Build a fire.”

“Is that the wisest course of action?” She cast her gaze around, as though she might spot Agrantine spies hidden amidst the twigs. “We are still rather close to Covotana, wouldn’t you say?”

He was ignoring her entirely to dig in the saddlebags. “Wiser than freezing or eating raw meat.”

She raised an imperious brow at him when he glanced back. “I don’t see any meat.”

“That’s what I’m getting while you pick up sticks.” He withdrew some short spears from where they’d been stowed, rolling them in his hands, finding their balance.

“Do you mean to conjure it from thin air?”

“You learned what fork to use when,” he sneered. “I learned to hunt.”

She threw up her hands and went to look for kindling. “Go on then, amaze me with your prowess.”

He was almost to the edge of the thicket when he called back over his shoulder. “Shouldn’t take much.”

“You think I’m easily impressed?”

“Think you’re wasting light talking when there’s sticks to gather.”

The cold came in sooner than the dark. So far south it had been easy to forget that winter was upon them, but the closer they headed to the barren wilds that Orsina had called home, the more that chill seemed to dog their every step.

Gathering firewood was quick enough work, as was getting the fire going once she’d dug through enough pockets in the saddlebags to uncover a tinderbox. It helped her to feel useful, even though out here in the middle of nowhere she was anything but. So long as she filled her time with little tasks, she could avoid thinking about the grand one that lay ahead. She had no trouble doing what had to be done to save Orsina, no hesitation in throwing herself into the fray to draw the other girl out. But when she looked at the task as a whole—crossing the steppes, chasing down dragons, snatching a prisoner out from under the Arazi—it all seemed to be utterly impossible. Insurmountable. So, she kept her gaze off the horizon and fixed on the task at hand. The jobs in front of her. Small as they were.

The horses were lathered from the hard ride, likely to drop soon. She didn’t know if Kagan knew that or just didn’t care. She couldn’t imagine dragons tired so swiftly or needed so much care and attention. So perhaps he thought that they could carry on like this forever. More likely, they’d get in sight of the steppes and the poor things would drop dead.

She startled from her work at the sound of rustling in the bushes, and her hand went to her sword. If there was a bear out there, it wouldn’t make much difference, but anything smaller would be scared off with a poke or two, if not by the fire.

When Kagan stepped through into the firelight, Harmony’s stomach dropped. Nothing had changed about him since he’d stomped off earlier, there had been no sudden transformation from man to monster, but now she was seeing clearly and had no familiarity to soothe her, she realized just how much of a terror she rode beside. Thick ridges of bone pressed up on the underside of his skin where it was showing. Scales spread out from where the sharp edges had broken through. His face—she couldn’t stop staring at it, lit by the fire. More dragon than human. More monster than both. She thought that she’d accustomed herself to such things, living in Covotana with its vast population of mongrel folk, but where they looked like badly assembled mash-ups of two different dolls, the Arazi were something else entirely. On the battlefield when she had faced them, that had made things easier. They were monstrous, and so she need find no sympathy for them. But here, now, she had to wrap her head around the idea that this was a man like any other, not liable to slaughter her in her sleep, not liable to open up those scale-ridged lips and breathe fire onto her the moment her back was turned.

He had brought down a hare, though Harmony had not a clue how given the speed they moved, the thickness of the brush, and the limited tools he had to use. She’d heard of them being snared, but the thought of one being brought down by a thrown spear was tantamount to ridiculous. Yet there it dangled.

“Meat. As promised.”

It was a welcome distraction from her own thoughts. “How did you accomplish that?”

He settled down by the fire, pushing back some leaves that had piled up too close, and drew out a knife to start skinning and gutting his prize. “I’m Arazi.”

As if that explained anything. “And I’m Espheran, but I can’t paint a landscape or sing an opera. Where we’re from doesn’t make…”

He cut her off with a wave of his bloody knife. “We feel what the beasts feel. Easy to find them. Easy to know where they’ll jump.”

“Even so, unless you were standing right on top of them, how in the…”

His tectonic shrug brought her to a halt again. “Easier on foot than wyvern-back.”

“You’re joking.” She didn’t believe a word of it. “You could hit hares while riding?”

“Not enough meat on them for a dragon.” He flicked the innards of the hare off to the side. “From the sky, everything’s small.”

They lapsed into silence for as he got the meat on a skewer and held it out over the fire. It would be soot-licked, but she supposed that such things wouldn’t matter to those who shared meat with dragons. Another minute or so passed before he grunted, “Fire’s good.”

“I’m so glad that it is up to your exacting standards.” Harmony could hear herself snapping at him for no good reason, but she still couldn’t quite manage to stop the words coming out.

He pressed on as if he hadn’t heard her. “Easy to build too big or too small. Don’t figure you’ve set a lot for yourself.”

It occurred to her then that he was being deliberately exasperating rather than it being an accident. There was something very like a smirk on his face. “I’m quite capable of caring for myself, thank you very much.”

“Explains why you came back and our girl didn’t.”

All the warmth was out of his voice now. All that jovial teasing gone. Beneath it, there was something colder, harder. The kind of man who could master a dragon and bend it to his will.

“She fell from the sky among the enemy.” The specter of danger that she had felt pass over her when Kagan had wandered back into the firelight was back, looming large. Yet still she could not be cowed. “I’m not at all certain what you would have done differently.”

He drove the gutting knife into the soil, all the way to the hilt, with a flick of his wrist. “Wouldn’t have put her in the sky. Wouldn’t have put her in the fight. Care more about her living than some glory. Thought you understood that.”

Harmony sank down beside the fire to warm her hands. “She has a mind of her own; she made her own choices.”

Looking up at him through the flames, she could see the fire reflecting back from beneath his ridged brow. “Did she now?”

She spat into the fire and made it hiss. “And what is that supposed to mean exactly?”

“Girl I knew wouldn’t hurt a fly ’less she had to. Cried the first time I took her hunting. Still crying when she ate the meat. But she ate it.” He shifted his head, like he was shaking the memory away. “Way I figure it, you made her think that going off to fight was all she could do to help.”

Harmony scoffed. “I can assure you that I offered her no encouragement in that regard. She took it upon herself to…”

“Why’d anyone even know she existed?” he cut in. She wondered if she actually needed to be present for this conversation or if it was merely an extension of his own internal monologue. “She was meant to get her problem under control. Stay out of sight. Take care of herself. What was she doing in court? How’d anyone know she could fight? She was meant to be going somewhere safe. Somewhere she could learn to be safe, so she could live. And you… you people fed her to the Arazi to keep them off your doorstep. You used her like you use everything and everyone around you.”

“She saved my life.” Harmony surprised herself by barking back. “That is why her existence was known. That was why her power was known. She had no reason to. No reason beyond the scant friendship that I’d offered up to her out of obligation, but still, she did it.”

“And how’d she end up in a position to…”

Harmony closed her eyes against the fire, and she told Orsina’s story, as best she could. The assassin, the king, the dragons, the war. “I don’t like it any more than you do. But it is what she chose. Step by step, it is what she chose.”

“Like she could’ve just walked away.” Kagan still sounded furious, but it was as though a spring thaw was creeping in. Cracks were appearing in his wrath. In his certainty. “Like you’d have let her.”

“Given what we’ve seen of her power since, I doubt there was a force in Espher that could have stopped her if she had elected to leave.”

He had fallen into silence at last. Answering with little more than a rumble. They ate the burned hare between them as the temperature dipped into night proper, and then there was nothing to do but wait. Harmony dragged her cloak around herself and shuffled in closer to the fire, hoping that the heat might ease her into sleep, but it seemed that even that comfort would be denied her. Her head ached with exhaustion, but knowing that Kagan would have her up and moving again in an hour or two left her at something of an impasse. Even if she did manage to get to sleep, it would be interrupted, so she was dithering back and forth over which of the two options would be the more miserable.

It seemed that her plight had not gone unnoticed. Kagan growled from his own resting place. “Sleep.”

After a moment of sullen silence, she grumbled back. “For an hour?”

“For a few.” He tried to shrug while lying down, and mostly just wiggled. “Horses need the rest.”

That reminded her of her earlier thoughts. “We cannot keep on running them the way that we have. They’ll die.”

“That’s the plan.”

Despite the ache in her bones, she twisted around to look at him. “What?”

“Use them up for the distance they’ll gain us, then leave them behind before the steppes.” He said it as if it made the slightest bit of sense. As if the steppes weren’t perfect riding ground.

Despite the dull clouds of exhaustion that hung over her thoughts, Harmony took her time carefully choosing her next words. “With just a little care, they could carry us all of the way to Orsina.”

“Not alive.”

Now it was her patience running thin. “What is that supposed to mean?”

There was a lull in conversation, when all that could be heard was the nattering of the horses and the crackle of the fire. When Kagan did eventually speak, it seemed as though he were talking to himself as much as her. “Couldn’t work out how the scouts sensed us before. People are fuzzy. Lots of feelings, lots of chaff. Easy to miss your mind, if you keep quiet. Horses though, they’re loud. Sharp. Halfway mad.”

This was new information that made his decision moderately more sensible, even though she was certain that the Arazi were so far ahead of them by this point that it would be nigh on impossible to catch up before they’d crossed the entirety of the north. Particularly on foot.

“Then can’t we just cut them loose when we get to the steppes?”

He looked like he was weighing the thought. “It would cost us time.”

“So much for the so-called empathy of the Arazi. You’re willing to spend the lives of these beasts so readily.” The words tasted bitter in her mouth. He was as bad as any nobleman, spurring his horse bloody to win a race. She didn’t know why she’d expected more from him. Why she’d thought that just because the Arazi could reach into the hearts of animals, they’d care about their survival.

His voice came out in a low growl now, so low it set the hair on the back of her neck standing up. “You’ll see horses die. I’ll be in their heads when they go. I’ll be one of them. I’ll feel their death like it’s my own. That’s empathy. Knowing you’ll feel all their pain and condemning them to it anyway.”

“But why?” she cried out. “Why would you choose that?”

He was almost mumbling now, instead of growling. Like he was embarrassed about it. “Least I can do for them. They’re dying for me.”

“I meant, why would you choose to condemn them to death, knowing you’ll be suffering too?”

He took a deep breath and let it out in a huff of steam. Eyes fixed on the fire. As though he were afraid to meet her gaze. “Because it is the right choice, even if it hurts.”

They remained silent for a time. Long enough that Harmony started to wonder if he’d fallen asleep, an illusion only shattered when he poked at the fire.

There was one last thing that made no sense. “You’re willing to spend their lives for a few extra hours of distance, but you’ll let me sleep the same?”

He shrugged. “No use to me falling out of the saddle.”

“I’m not clear what use to you I’ll be regardless.” She let a little too much of her bitterness slip out.

He grinned in the dark. Light glinting off his sharp teeth. “Well, I’ll need a servant to carry my things.”

They did sleep, some time after that. And it was almost dawn by the time Kagan prodded her awake and hoisted her up onto her horse. Now that she knew it was going to die, she didn’t know how she felt about it. Should she apologize? Thank it for its service? In the frantic rush of yesterday, she’d never even bothered to ask the thing’s name. In the end, she settled for just kicking it in the ribs and doing her best to ignore the ache of her backside.

Kagan had them up to a trot within the hour and was pushing the horses for more. Last journey north he claimed it had taken nigh on a week to reach the Selvaggia, and though the forest was long gone, he meant to better the time this trip. For her part, Harmony was mostly holding on for dear life. As confident a rider as she was, it had been many years since she’d last taken any sort of journey on the back of one, rather than in a carriage being drawn by them. It hurt, and she was tired, despite the long rest that had been graciously given to her. One night’s rest in a bush could hardly compensate for the week she’d been having. A week in a comfortable bed might have been a start, but even then she probably would have still spent mealtimes yawning.

Whatever she might have convinced herself of, she was not built for this. She was not made from the stern stuff that allowed hunters to stalk day and night, soldiers on the march to carry on in lockstep, or noblemen to argue until blue in the face only to rise and do it all again the next day. It did not matter that she had been trained in the arts of war by the finest instructors that money could buy, only that she was at this point about as dangerous as a kitten.

Sometimes, Kagan would slow to ride alongside her, to pass over a waterskin or some hardtack from his saddlebags, but most of the time he rode ahead. Driving them faster. Setting a pace that she felt sure the horses would object to before another hour was past. Yet they didn’t. Every time the horse beneath her stumbled, it seemed to find a second wind. Every time it slowed, all it took was a tap of her heels, and they were off yet again.

The mystery of it kept her occupied through the morning. Only when the midday sun was shining down on them and even she was starting to waver just from the riding did they slow, then stop. That was when she saw Kagan’s shoulders slump, and the horses almost toppled.

It was him.

He had been carrying them on, carrying the weight of the horses’ exhaustion. This was how he meant to get them across the rest of Espher so swiftly. By stealing into the minds of the horses and robbing them of their self-preservation. It came out more like an accusation than she had intended. “You’re doing this?”

“Bearing it for them.” He had always seemed to move slowly, but now it was less because of his bulk and more because he looked completely shattered. Every motion seemed to cause him pain. Every breath seemed to be a labor.

She hadn’t thought about the toll, only the results. They had benefited from the horses running fine all through the morning, gaining so much ground she could not even hazard a guess, and it had cost her nothing but the thump on her rump. Meanwhile, Kagan had taken all the suffering the horses must have been building without complaint. She felt like a fool.

“We’ll give them time to… water.” He was slurring his words even worse than his lipless mouth usually did. “Can’t fake that.”

There was no attempt made by him to lead the horses to water, but now that she realized what was happening, Harmony was swift to see to them herself. At least she understood why he wanted her along now. If he was going to be exerting himself like this all the way, then he’d need somebody to wait on him. Keep him alive.

He had barely eaten the night before. He was twice her size but took only half the hare. It hadn’t been near enough, even with them chewing tack all day. That night she would have to put together something more substantial, force him to eat it. Get him to remember that he lived in his own body and needed to feed it. Just another way he was painfully familiar.

With the horses washed off and left by the water, she forced herself to cross the distance back to Kagan and crouch down so that she was closer to level with him. “Are you well?”

“Tired. Not hurt.”

The words all tried to come out in a tumble. “I didn’t even know… Thank you. For what you’re doing. To get us to her.”

He leaned back and looked up at the sky. “Needs doing.”

“Well, I certainly couldn’t do it, nor would I have thought to ask it of you. I…” She trailed off without really knowing what she meant to say. That she was sorry for misjudging him? That she was impressed at what feats of cruelty were being committed in Orsina’s name? That the horses were almost certain to die if they drove them past their limits like this? The truth of the matter was that their morning’s canter had been enough to eat up a fair portion of Espher. The road ahead was churned into invisibility amidst the hoofprints of the army heading back and forth. The battlefield would be in sight by sundown if they maintained the pace. It was impossible. The fastest couriers swapping horses at every hitching post could not achieve such a pace. Yet here they were. She started over. “Will they last the afternoon?”

His eyes were pressed closed now, and he seemed all the more human by the light of day. “I’ll make them.”

She could see the horses by the water still, shivering and shaking. They’d be lucky to survive, even if they stopped now. Given the general fragility of horses. “And all of their suffering we cause them, the damage we’ll deal?”

“I’ll take it.” He cracked an eye open to peer at her, trying to make sense of her.

She reached out and laid a hand on his brow. He didn’t jerk away as she’d expected. But neither did he seem to take any comfort from it. She could feel the same tremors running through the man as through the beasts. Though he was holding them back. “Can you take any more?”

“I’ve had worse.” He leaned away from her. “Your brother’s done worse to me than this. It’s nothing.”

That was enough to bring her up short. “Artemio hurt you?”

“Thought I was a comfortable guest in the dungeons of Espher?” He snorted, then lumbered back to his feet.

“But…” She started after him as he stalked to the horses. “Artemio?”

He shrugged. “Wasn’t all his fault. He wanted me to tell him things. I wanted free.”

“But if he…” She lost track of her words.

He cut her off short. “We should go.”

“So soon?” She had thought of trying to force some lunch in him. Or at least let them all get a little more rest.

“Longer I leave them, worse they’ll get.

The moment that he mounted the horse, all its pain seemed to fade. Her horse stopped in its tremoring too before she’d even laid her hands on the bridle. It was unnaturally still. As though it had spotted a predator. She supposed that Kagan would have qualified. Stalking into its mind. She clapped the side of the horse’s neck, wondering if it could even feel that small comfort through the haze of whatever Kagan had done to it. He had called Orsina a necromancer, but this seemed more like the stories of the dead walking than anything the Shadebound had ever done.

Now that she was aware of what was happening, she could see it clearly. Each time a horse stumbled, it was Kagan who flinched. Each time they slowed, it was him that bore the burden of exhaustion, lifting them back up again as it pressed him harder. Where before he had always ridden ahead with his eyes fixed on the distant horizon, now they rode side by side because she feared he might topple from the saddle.

The day stretched on, and every moment of it was riddled with tension. The terrain growing more and more boggy did nothing to help, nor did the reek of burning on the air. Harmony remembered the heat of battle. She remembered dragons swooping down and Shadebound casting up. She would never forget it, for the rest of her days. But still she found it hard to believe that in so little time, they had come close enough to the battlefield itself at the base of the steppes for such a smell to reach her.

As it turned out, it was the smell that was skewing things rather than the geography. They had to ride on and on into the dimming twilight, through a veritable wall of fog being thrown up by the still-smoldering remains of the Selvaggia forest until finally they came close. Everywhere there were ashes and embers. Everywhere the battle had scarred the land in ways Harmony had not even begun to see.

Lines were carved across the plains where once great oaks grew. Blackened smears across the earth where dragon venom had touched and where nothing would ever grow again. The tangled roots of a forest older than most civilizations was now simmering beneath the earth, turning day by day to a crow’s nest of charcoal. In terms of life lost, if quantity was discussed over quality, then there could be no question that the demise of the Selvaggia was the greatest tragedy of all. Yet Harmony could not bring herself to weep for fallen trees or refugee squirrels. Not when there were people suffering.

She could feel the heat of it rising, before she saw any hints of the burning beneath the earth. The roots of the old forest must have stretched a mile in every direction around it, and now all of it was smoldering away. It seemed that dragon fire could not be smothered by a little dirt.

Parts of this place were vaguely familiar to her from Orsina’s scarce stories of home, parts from the battle itself, when the turbulent earth had bristled with men. But to Kagan who had not been here for the clash with his people, the change must have been stark. The horses died as the battlefield came into view and his concentration faltered. The pair of them went sprawling in the mud before he managed to recover his composure, but by then they were long beyond retrieval. The mud was something of a blessing, cushioning their fall from saddle-back. There could have been broken bones in the offing instead of a mere coating in filth.

If Harmony hadn’t known better, she would have said they’d been dead for hours, and only Arazi witchcraft had kept them in motion. She did know better of course. She had felt the warmth of the horse against her legs only a moment before it dropped like a marionette with cut strings. Even if it was cold and still now.

Yet even with their horses dead, his attention never turned from the field laid before him. His voice came hoarse when he asked, “What did this?”

For a voice that usually sounded like the grinding of stones to be hoarse spoke to either a thickness in the smoke that Harmony was not experiencing, or some depth of emotion that they had not yet reached. Still, she couldn’t seem to help herself from rolling her eyes as she hauled her leg out of her boot in the mud, then had to wrestle to retrieve it.

“There was a battle, I don’t know if you heard?”

“I’ve seen battle. This is…” He lapsed into silence.

They set to work divesting the dead horses of their saddlebags, sifting through the contents, and leaving behind whatever they didn’t plan to use. It was the sort of busywork that she’d been doing the night before, to keep her mind off the bigger picture. Kagan seemed to be extremely invested in it.

“So, this isn’t what a battlefield usually looks like?”

He grunted.

Tasked with carrying the conversation all by herself, Harmony pressed on. “More bodies usually, I’d imagine.”

He glanced around at the mysterious absence of corpses. “Not after dragons. Fighting is hungry work.”

“The Arazi retreated from the field. I’m dubious about just how many snack breaks their mounts would have been allowed.”

He ran his fingertips through the ashen earth. “Fire, then.”

“Must have been.”

On foot, they headed out into the crater that had been Selvaggia. Through the fallen bones of dragons, the torn earth, and the scars of flame and poison across the land. Chasms broken down to bedrock. Armor turned molten and rained across the black, baked soil like stars littering the sky. All of it leading in to one central point, between where the armies had stood. From down here, it seemed like chaos, but for Kagan it must have meant something different. At least judging from the way that his breath came quicker. Despite all the years that he had been down on the ground with the rest of the mortals, his mind was still locked to the draconic perspective. He could picture all of this as if from above. He could see the grand spirals of destruction reaching out from that central point.

When he looked askance at her, she was forced to answer him truly. “This was Orsina.”

17 - Romancing the Throne
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

Speaking from the walls to his makeshift generals always left Artemio with an abiding sense of unease. Within the city, plodding along about his business, it was easy enough to forget that the full armies of Espher were gathered out on the plains, but when he stood atop the walls looking out at them, he was reminded how much was at stake. He was reminded that it was not just Modesta waiting on his answer. He was also reminded that they were, for the most part, the very snakes that had always loathed him and his sister for their mere existence and now only listened to a word he said because he had proven himself beyond any shadow of a doubt to be both loyal to the Cerva, and skilled enough to be worth the effort.

Arrangements had been made for him to dine with the queen, at his request, and the ambassador had, somewhat inevitably, volunteered herself as chaperone to ensure the pair could keep their lusts to themselves. Artemio did not believe that either he nor Cadence had much lust to fling about, but he was willing to accept the ridiculous statement if it allowed him to get on with things.

Rather than the formal stuffiness of a dining room, and the impossibility of private conversation that came along with it, he had requested that they make use of the solarium once more. Yet when he was marched there by yet another fresh saint, he was surprised to find that he was alone in the warm room. It was unusual. Foremost, because the ambassador typically saw to it that she was with him as much as possible so he could not get up to mischief, but also because it suggested an imbalance of power. The person of lesser standing was meant to arrive last at such meetings, because it came with the implication that they were making a visit to the one of the greater. Even if he had arrived an hour before the queen, he should have been kept waiting outside so that she could be seated first. It spoke to some flaw in the Agrantine that they continually assumed he was the one with power simply because he was a man. Until such time as he accepted the throne, he was a mere duke. It was an insult to the queen to make her come to him.

It was a matter of etiquette that it would have been ridiculous to expect the Agrantine to know, providing the ambassador, who he was certain did know, some plausible deniability with regards to her own guilt in arranging things this way. It was likely a part of her continuing effort to completely ignore his words and make him king by his actions. It wouldn’t work of course; one could not be forced into a throne in such a way.

Without the kings’ daily presence, the room had been left untended for the most part. The plates had been cleared away, but the furniture remained ever so slightly out of place. The rugs, rucked up at corners as though they had not been smoothed down for appearances. The heat that basted the room each afternoon had also given rise to an unsavory smell, sweet like decay, and Artemio wondered if it was simply the crumbs and leavings of a meal improperly swept away or a natural feature of the room usually concealed beneath incenses and perfumes. There were no shortage of places in his own home keep that had an odd pungency to them, though there it was due more to damp rising.

At least in the absence of the women he would soon be seeing he had the opportunity to make a circuit of the room, seeking out any clue that might have thus far eluded him. The entrances were few, three in all, counting the servants’ way. The other two would have been guarded while the kings were present. There was no way they could have exited via either without observation, which left only the servants’ door, which he was quick to note had been designed to blend into the wood paneling and as such lacked a handle on this side. It would have to be held open from the other side for a servant to depart the room. Ensuring that there were always two servants waiting upon the kings, one to watch the other for any signs of malfeasance. They had been so obsessed with the idea of assassination that the castle itself had been rebuilt around that obsession. Were he to take the throne, he would need to settle in with the latest blueprints and acquaint himself with all of the changes that Bisnonno Fiore would have no recollection of or run the risk of becoming lost in his own palace.

When he heard voices from without the solarium, he was swift to seat himself and give no sign of his prior explorations, almost tripping over the raised edge of a rug in his haste. He had to be sitting when the queen arrived so that he could immediately spring up and make a show of politeness.

The whole thing was ridiculous, but he would not give Modesta the satisfaction of seeing him settle into the role she strived to make him accept. As soon as he was up, he was dropping into a low bow again. Feeling somewhat like a yo-yo. “Your Majesty, thank you so much for dining with me.”

When she smiled, he could feel the tension that he’d been holding on to since the wall fade. “The pleasure is entirely mine, Duke Volpe. I find myself lacking in both leisure and conversation of late, so this is an opportunity for the both of us.”

His brow furrowed at her words. “I trust that the Agrantine have been treating you well?”

“As well as could be expected.” She shrugged her shoulders as she settled into the seat beside Artemio.

The ambassador moved to take a seat opposite them and gestured for the saints to depart. “Surely I cannot be held to blame if so many of your ladies-in-waiting chose to withdraw from the court?”

“For this, as with so many things, my dear chaperone, you will be held accountable in the fullness of time.” Cadence spoke with a smile on her face, but there was a growl to her voice.

Modesta’s mask of neutrality slipped. “I do hope that you don’t mean…”

“Not to interrupt this delightful bickering, but I had intended on actually speaking with my possibly betrothed at some point today.” Politeness was a cornerstone of dialogue, and if neither woman could achieve it for long enough to actually carry out a conversation, then he was not certain how he could get to the point.

The queen drew in a deep breath to calm herself, and then tittered. Artemio could not have been more surprised. “Possibly betrothed. What a dry wit you have, Duke.”

He was not certain how to take that. “So dry that most people would say it was not there at all.”

“No need for such self-deprecation.” She smirked. “My possibly betrothed.”

The food was served, and it looked perfectly fine, but Artemio couldn’t find any desire for it at the moment. Not when he had the opportunity to ask the questions that had been gnawing at him.

“I want to talk to you, not as a king and queen, or duke or… any of those things. I want to speak to you as a man and a woman would. If they were given the chance.” He found his cheeks warming as he tried to talk about so personal a subject.

She obviously saw the tension settling back into his shoulders and did not like the look of it. So she tried for another joke to break it. “What luck we brought along a chaperone, then.”

He managed a smile before forcing himself to dive back into the conversation. “I know the logical argument to be made for our marriage, and realize, of course, that this is the manner in which matches are made. We are not peasants to chase the stirring of loins and hearts in our hunt for a partner. We do not have the luxury of such randomness in our lives, not with the world looking on and demanding our perfection. What I would ask you is this. Setting aside all logic, what would you choose for yourself? Do you care to be wed again, and so swiftly, to a man you scarcely know? Would it give you comfort to know that I would treat you with care, if not reverence?”

Modesta piped up. “Heirs will be required, so perhaps not too much reverence?”

He glared at her before catching himself. “A little respect, if you please.”

“I… have not given it much consideration, dear Duke. It has always been my fate to be wed to whosoever it best serves. My wants did not feature in the conversation.” Cadence’s forced happiness wavered. “You seem to me a fine enough man, but wives swiftly learn that their husband’s seeming can fall away as soon as the doors to privacy are closed. From what I know of you, you would be a fine enough match for me, but I would be a liar if I was to say that there is no trepidation on my part. The fact that the ambassador is pushing so hard for this, makes me suspect that it is the wrong path to follow. Yet in the continuing absence of Madrigal, I have no clue as to where else I should turn.”

It was time to lay all of his cards upon the table and hope they were sufficient. If he meant to go ahead with this, then he would need Cadence to be not only his wife, but his ally. He would need her to be all of the things that she could have been for the Cerva if they had not been so accursedly ignorant to her value. It was time to tell the truth and see where things fell in the aftermath. It was time to speak against the Cerva, in a small way, to see if he was ready for the next step.

“It has not escaped my notice that you were unhappy in your first marriage. Nor that you were treated most poorly. Both by your masters, your husbands, and by all the court of Espher. I would not force you to endure such a thing again.”

The ambassador had done a good job of keeping silent thus far, but now she erupted in dismay. “You’d be willing to cast all of Espher into war over the feelings of some woman? A woman you’d be damning to an ignominious end without royal protection. This is your supposed wisdom?”

Artemio closed his eyes in the face of her tirade and once more spoke calmly. “Ambassador, I will ask you once, politely, to cease your interruptions in what is meant to be a private conversation.”

When he opened his eyes again, they were only for Cadence. She was older than him, of course, but there could be no denying her beauty. Some hint of the southern lands made itself known on her skin, a hint of paleness in the olive tones of the people born farther north. If he were less well traveled, he might have been inclined to call her exotic. But of course, such minor variances in appearance were commonplace across Espher. Just less so in the court where everyone pursued the same appearance with a fervor, applying makeup and even selectively breeding future generations in pursuit of more averagely beautiful babies.

“With all due respect to you, Duke, I do not believe that we can entirely separate my feelings from the reality of our situation. I understand that for a man, marriage is but a part of life, but for a woman of noble birth I’m afraid it is a more important matter. Either I live as the widow to a dead usurper, or I live as the wife of a living king. Which do you suppose would be the more pleasant?”

He could not help but get hung up on the words dead usurper. They spoke to a drastic change in Cadence’s toeing of the family line with regards to such matters. “So, you truly believe that the king is dead?”

“I do not know. And it is grotesque that I do not know.” Her voice cracked as she tried to maintain her composure. Silence echoed through the room as she gathered herself. “If anyone should know for certain whether that man is dead, fate should have seen to it that as the most wronged party in his court I should have been the one. Yet with the truth revealed or not, there seems no better course for me but to wed you.”

It was not what he wanted to hear. But Artemio could see that she was in a state of distress and had no intention of exacerbating it. “I… understand.”

There was a momentary lull once more before Cadence let out a bark of laughter. Even with tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, she could still find humor in their situation. “Did you wish for me to soothe your ego, Duke Volpe? Proclaim that your beauty has me overrun with lust? Assure you that your good character has shone through, and I know that you shall make for the finest husband? I do not know you, Duke. I do not know what kind of man you are behind the mask, in the dark. The only way that I shall find out is too late. That is the nature of the gamble.”

It seemed to settle things for him. If she was willing to take the gamble, then he would do all that he could to ensure that she won the finest possible prize. He had truly never given consideration to marriage before, except in the most abstract sense. For a time, he had pondered dying unwed, so that the Volpe line ended with him, one final act of vengeance against his father who adored that name above all worldly treasures.

Yet even when he had won his place back in court and climbed the social ladder, proposals and offers had not come in. Perhaps they would have, given time, but there was a war to fight, and all of his attentions, and those of the court, had been turned to that purpose. Typically, matchmaking was considered woman’s work. Without his mother to fend for him, the task would have passed to an aunt, if any still lived. Now he was not even certain where such proposals might be sent. For all that he knew, Harmony had a stack of letters sitting around with all of his possible matches somewhere. He had never asked, because it had never been a priority. And now, now it was at the forefront of his mind.

He spoke softly. “A pity there is naught I can say to convince you.”

“As I have already said, I cannot decide based upon what I hope for myself. But I find myself in a position to play kingmaker, and given the available options, it is my belief that you are the best choice.” Her hard demeanor slipped as she laid her hand on the back of his. “We can concern ourselves with playing house once that is done.”

He turned his hand over slowly, as though afraid of frightening her away, so that her fingers rested on his palm when the rotation was complete. “So long as the concern does arrive eventually. I wish… I would do right by you, if I can.”

“Only words.” She smiled. “But I feel as though you mean them.”

The moment was ruined by Ambassador Modesta’s smirking. “Then I believe that is another one of your myriad objections removed from play. Wouldn’t you say, Duke Volpe?”

“Indeed, Ambassador.” He carefully withdrew his hand from beneath the queen’s. “Leaving only the one.”

“You are like a bard with only a single song, Artemio.” She gestured to the spread laid out before them. “Can we at least partake in some luncheon before you delve back into your obsessive questioning?”

While Modesta was quick to eat once the other two had taken up plates, both of the Espherans seemed reluctant to consume much. Perhaps it was that stuffy scent on the air putting them off. Perhaps they were simply overwrought. For Artemio’s part, he simply did not have any interest in food, not when compared with the far more fulfilling conversation.

“Your Majesty, though I’m loath to spoil the mood, I am obliged to ask you…”

Cadence sighed. “The king?”

“Indeed.” Artemio did his best not to mirror her sigh. In truth, his own fruitless search of the palace was increasingly feeling like a wild goose chase. “Anything that might help to locate either the man or his body would be incredibly helpful at this juncture. Anything at all, no matter how irrelevant it may seem.”

“In truth, I did not see them on the day the Agrantine attacked.” He watched her carefully as she spoke. Searching her perfectly schooled expression for any hint as to what it was the ambassador was so intent upon keeping from him. Someone somewhere had to know the truth. “They… rarely sought my company in the daylight hours. All that I know of their movements is what was conveyed to me before I was placed in command of the city.”

“At which point you ordered the guard to stand down.”

“By which point, the enemy were already at the gates, and I was faced with the impossible task of repelling them.”

“Did you consider it?”

She drew back from him. Trying to force a laugh and not entirely succeeding. “Duke Volpe, is this an interrogation?”

“Not at all, your Majesty.” He smiled with as much honesty as he could muster. “I am merely seeking to understand the sequence of events.”

“I considered it, yes. But as you know, our military might was all but spent upon the Arazi. We had not a single notable Shadebound, not that they would have made much difference against saints. No standing army. No bannermen to call. We had only the choice of closing or opening the gates. Closing them and facing a wrathful invasion, opening them and preserving the life of the populace. I considered the latter to be the wiser move, particularly considering that we had no knowledge of your army’s disposition at the time.”

Whatever he had hoped she would give to him, whatever surety of his course he might have hoped to find in her words, there was nothing to be found. It was the same story. Repeated verbatim. Again and again. There was no thread to pull upon to untangle this mystery. No hint as to the direction that he should be traveling. His mounting frustration spilled out of him. “I feel as though we all talk in circles. As though there is no answer at the heart of this riddle. It saddens me and exhausts me in equal measure. I know that I must decide to sit the throne or abdicate my chance to the wild winds of fate. Yet the one factor that I cannot control, and that I must know, remains obscured.”

Cadence offered him a soft smile. “It is a gamble, for us both it seems.”

“Hah, indeed.” It was a nice reminder for him, that others were willing to take a risk with their future. That they were willing to commit without the full breadth of knowledge required. A hint that sometimes moving on from a crossroads was more important than choosing the right direction. “Crowns or tails?”

Cadence had brightened at his laughter, as though it could expunge her of her own guilt in this choice. “The crown is self-explanatory, the tails on the coin… I suppose you could turn tail and run should all go awry?”

He met the ambassador’s eyes as he spoke. Saw the excitement mounting on her face as he affirmed that she too had made a safe bet. “Death would be preferable to exile.”

Modesta chuckled. “You know, I’ve heard a great many men express similar sentiments through the years in fits of bombastic patriotism, but I do think that you are the first one I believe. Would another place truly be so terrible?”

All of the confusion and strife that had plagued him since his return to the city pressed up his throat, trying to strangle him. The idea of just leaving. Of being free of all this. It was like a dream. But just like a dream, he knew that it could never come to pass. “I am certain that the world beyond our borders is full of wonders that I shall never see. My place is here. It always has been, and it always will be.”

“Perhaps Espher will benefit from having a king who believes that.” Modesta smiled at him; she could see the shape of things to come. She knew that she had beaten him down at last. “Or at least fare better than with the fair-weather friendship of the Cerva who vanished at the first sight of trouble. Wouldn’t you say?”

“I will speak the truth of the Cerva when I must, but I have no intention of besmirching their names unjustly. Their father murdered my grandfather to steal his throne, but the sons inherited nothing of his guilt along with this palace. They ruled as best they could, and Espher accepted them as king.” He found his voice cracking under the pressure. “Whatever happened to drive them from this place, to hide them from our sight, I do not know. And I will not pass judgement without that knowledge.”

Cadence took up his hand again then, her own concerns set aside so that she might support him. Already his queen. Already offering him all that a queen could offer to a king. “Then you are more gracious than any could have predicted.”

Modesta raised an eyebrow. “Or still hedging your bets against their return?”

Artemio chuckled at that. “Let us pretend that it is the former and I am not forced to face the latter. Taking their seat while they are out of the room might be excused by ignorance to their survival, but taking their wife will not be so easily forgiven.”

“So, you do mean to take her?” Modesta’s grin had turned predatory now. All of her plots and plans coming to fruition.

“Ambassador!” Cadence was appalled. It was quite possible that the double meaning of Modesta’s words had escaped the ambassador. Espheran was not her native tongue, after all. But Artemio doubted it.

He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. “Tell your saints to stand down and make ready to depart. Tell the servants to make ready for a coronation. I do not require grandeur, but there are traditions that must be upheld for my ascension to be recognized as legitimate.”

Modesta’s eyes were alight with excitement when Artemio opened up his own to face the new world he had made. When the words came, they came in whispered reverence. As though the outcome of all of this had ever been in doubt. “You shall be king?”

“I have been bound by blood to this fate since long before any of this. I am king in everything but name. Let us do away with any further delay. Let them anoint me. Let them place the crown upon my head.” His voice did not crack this time. All of the tension that had plagued him was melting away now that his course became clear. “Let us be done with this whole charade.”

Settling back like a cat that had finally captured the bird singing outside her window, Modesta gave a smug grin. “Your Majesty, I cannot express how delighted I am to hear you say that.”

“My queen will require time to make preparations of her own. Please provide her with free rein to make the necessary arrangements for our wedding upon the next day.” He squeezed Cadence’s hand gently. “If that suits you?”

Whatever trepidation she might have felt about the changing of husbands and the gamble that she was taking, Cadence let nothing show upon her face. “As you wish, your Majesty.”

18 - Between Wrath and Peace
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

It took far longer than either of them would have liked to merely traverse the battlefield under the cover of darkness, but at the same time, neither of them suggested that they stop and wait for daylight. The press of lost time was undoubtedly a factor, but so too was the oppressive nature of the place. It was not so simple as lingering shades or the miasma of death that hung over the place; it was a sense of wrongness. Forces had been unleashed here that the world had never seen before, and neither of them had any desire to linger in such a place, where history had been written so recently.

When she had been fighting, it had all seemed smooth enough going to Harmony; she had her eyes on her goal, enemies in her way, little else. Now she had to deal with the churned earth, the land that looked solid but crumbled away to ash at a touch, the snapped spears jutting out, the abandoned and the broken and the ruin that they had wrought. Somewhere beneath it all there was surely still the same forest that Kagan had once had the run of, the cottage where Orsina had grown, the pool in which her first shade had dwelled. All her history was here, reduced to nothingness.

Neither of them spoke of it. Not of the village that had once been nearby or the forest that had once flourished or the battle that had taken place. There were no words for the devastation.

By dawn, it was behind them, the steppes were spread out ahead, and once more they were unanimous in their decision not to look back. Orsina was forward. The scars she had left upon the world were behind. So, they looked to the future.

The immediate future looked to be full of arguments.

Following a massive army of lizards and their riders was simple enough, as Kagan had said. Harmony could have tracked it herself. A blind man could have. The damage left in their passing was nothing compared with the chaos of the battlefield, but compared with the unoccupied and untouched expanse of the steppes, it could not be missed. It was not their direction they argued about—it was the directions that Kagan was giving to her as they trudged on.

“Stop thinking about it.”

She resisted her natural urge to throw something at the back of his head. “Do you know how difficult it is to choose not to think about something? It is like some sort of philosophical exercise that only the most vacuous of layabouts could have conceived of.”

His huge shoulders hunched up towards his missing ears and then back down again. “You’re trying too hard.”

“How am I supposed to succeed without effort? Hm?” She didn’t mean to sound sharp, but the entire exercise was aggravating, and the more time she spent with Kagan, the more his long silences rubbed her wrong.

He glanced back at her with an unreadable expression on his face. “Isn’t about succeeding. It’s about… balance.”

She picked up the pace to be alongside him so he could see her scowl. “What precisely am I supposed to counterbalance my desire not to think about anything with? A desire to think about everything all at once?”

Harmony did not consider herself to be a truly violent person, not really. She had trained for combat, because protecting her brother was the duty to which she had been born. She had honed her reflexes so she could respond to violence with immediacy. She had even, if she was being honest, fallen into the habit of striking her brother, gently, when he said something that particularly displeased her. Yet none of that could account for her immediate desire to rend this man limb from limb when he said, “Think less.”

She took a deep breath and pushed the anger down. “It explains so much about you that you practice this.”

“Speak less too.” He picked up his pace, forcing her to do the same if she wanted to stay by his side, stride for stride. “Head empty.”

She did pick up the pace again, even though it was clearly easier for his long gait to swallow up the steppes than her own. Many times, she had been chastised by her mother for taking long steps, and the habit had never been broken, no matter how unladylike it may have made her seem. Yet it could not compare with the long legs of the towering man she chased. “I’m sorry but I really don’t think that this is going to be working any time soon.”

He seemed almost surprised to see that she was still beside him. She took that as a petty victory. He rumbled, “You’re walking. What is there to think about?”

At last given the opportunity to voice all the thoughts roiling around in her head, she found no difficulty in bellowing them all out. “The fact that I am walking beyond the borders of Espher for the first time in my life? The fact that I am strolling casually towards a colossal army of dragons that would quite cheerfully render me down to tallow with my bones as a wick? The fact that I am in receipt of extremely poor instruction in the precise manner in which such rendering might be avoided?”

He looked away from her again once he was certain she was done. “Don’t need to be thinking about any of that right now.”

It would be so easy to hit him with his back turned; she’d just need to bound forward that one extra step. Plough her fist into his back. “Someone needs to think about it!”

“Why?” Another movement of the shoulders. Another increase in pace. “What does it change?”

“What do you mean what does it change? Are we meant to just go charging blindly into these situations? We need to plan, calculate our best chance of success. We need to…”

He cut her off with a raised hand. “You aren’t doing that.”

The way he spoke to her, with none of the respect she was due, set her teeth on edge. “Excuse me?”

“You aren’t planning. Can’t be. Don’t know what we’re up against. Just thinking too much.”

She let out a barked laugh that was more exasperation than humor. “And I suppose that you’re approaching this entire situation without the slightest hint of trepidation?”

“We get caught, I die. My dragon dies. Orsina dies. Not my problem anymore.” Another shrug. She wished she could take a chisel and plane those shoulders down to normal size. “We make it, we save her. We go home. We live. Not my problem anymore.”

“What a refreshingly bleak outlook.”

There was something like a smile on his face when he glanced her way, but it was closer to a grimace of remembered pain. “Live a few centuries, you calm down a lot.”

She rolled her eyes, even though he wasn’t even bothering to look at her. Again. “I’m not liable to have the opportunity.”

He finally rounded to face her, bringing their brisk jog across the steppes to a halt. “Not going to make it a week if you don’t think less.”

Up on her tiptoes, she squared her shoulders and snarled at him. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re entirely insufferable.”

“Been called plenty.” His eyes seemed to move past her as if she weren’t there. “Not that.”

It was hard to have a good argument with someone who wouldn’t rise to the bait. She called after him as they set off once more. “Well, you had best expect to be called it markedly more in the future.”

He didn’t answer. Plodding on without any sign of tiring. Her legs felt like they were aflame, and spite seemed to be the only thing keeping them moving. She could feel the individual muscles in her legs tugging with each step. If she could walk at all the next day, it would be a small miracle.

More time passed; another mile or so was eaten up beneath them. Eventually the great lump of meat deigned to speak to her again, obviously trying to extend a hand of peace. “When I was learning this… it was hard.”

As was her typical form, Harmony immediately tried to bite that hand. Figuratively. “Well, I don’t have several hundred years set aside to improve upon my ability to not think about things!”

He let out a huff of air, and those vast shoulders seemed to sink an inch. “Took me weeks to learn. It’s hard.”

“Weeks?” An edge of hysteria was creeping into Harmony’s voice, despite her best efforts. “Do we have weeks?”

“You’ll be faster. I was a kid. You’re not.”

She opened and closed her mouth several times before managing to fumble out, “You… were some sort of prodigy?”

“I was slow.”

She flung her arms up in the air. “Right. Of course. I’m less capable than a slow child.”

He cut her off mid-rant. So rude. “I was slow, you won’t be.”

“Oh, let’s not delude ourselves into thinking I’ll develop some sort of mental discipline in the few days that we have. Your old Arazi friends are going to smell me feeling something, and we’re going to be incinerated by a flight of dragons, and that will be the end of it.”

He chuckled. “First time learning something new?”

“You genuinely do believe that I am an infant,” she snapped.

“Isn’t easy to start.” He tried to offer her some comfort, and it was possibly his worst idea to date. “To be bad before you can be good.”

“Yes, thank you for your boundless guidance. I can only thank my lucky stars that ‘learning is hard’ was an improvement over ‘don’t think.’ Truly, you are a font of wisdom.” If she rolled her eyes any harder, they were going to unscrew, fall to the ground, and she was going to trip over them.

He sighed. “Talk less.”

“You talk less,” she retorted. “You’re distracting me.”

“From walking.”

“From not thinking!”

He huffed with amusement. She recognized that noise now. That contemptuous huff. Like he was dealing with a spoiled child throwing a tantrum. “Can’t be distracted from not thinking. Nothing to distract from.”

At some point throughout the argument, her hand had drifted down to the hilt of the sword on her belt. Sometimes she ran her fingers over the details of the pommel to reassure herself. Now she was toying with the ridges in the leather wrapped around the handle, her grip tightening and loosening with each step. “If Orsina wouldn’t be hurt by ramming my sword directly up your scaly backside, I can assure you that I’d have made an instant improvement to your posture by now.”

He shook his hips with the next step. “Spend a lot of time thinking about my backside, do you?”

“You…” He really did seem to be immune to good manners or good-mannered aggression. She did her best to reel it back in before she said something she regretted. “I am thinking about nothing.”

Another huff of laughter. “Doesn’t feel like it.”

“How exactly do you think I’m meant to achieve the emotional equilibrium that you’re demanding of me if you keep antagonizing me every step of the way?”

He slowed again, to speak to her directly instead of expecting her to snatch his words off the wind. “Reckon a dragon flying overhead will antagonize you more.”

“Oh, so this is all just training?” She laughed in his face. “You aren’t being irksome out of malice?”

One of his scaled brows rose. “Irksome?”

“And I thought I was the one supposedly lacking in education.”

“Know what it means.” He shrugged and turned back to the trail. “Just never irked before.”

She trailed behind him shouting after his back. “Well, I’m frankly amazed because you have been consistently irksome from the first moment that I laid eyes upon you.”

“Because Orsina likes me.” He said it with a finality that she could not abide. As if he had the secret key to her heart, had peered inside, and found it wanting.

Harmony flung desperately in a different direction. “Because you’ve delighted in tormenting me from the moment we departed.”

It didn’t work. He knew her weak spot, and he had no intention of leaving it alone now. Not when he could rile her so easily with so small a prod. “I didn’t make her like me. She did that herself.”

Harmony was surprised to find herself yelling at him. “Not everything is about Orsina!”

This time the silence between them vibrated with what was unsaid. Kagan had enough sense not to butt heads with it directly, instead slipping around her side once more. “Out on a walk for our good health.”

“I am perfectly capable of disliking you without it being about her.”

He laughed without humor. “But it is.”

“It is not.” Harmony tried not to grit her teeth between words and found it to be a struggle. “If I did not trust in her judgement, then I never would have rescued you from the capital. If I did not trust in her judgement, then I would have intervened when she tried to name you impresario. I did not object, and I did save you, and thus I clearly have no problems with your… relationship.”

“Then why are you so angry every time I say her name?”

She drew her sword. “Stop raking around in my head, Arazi.”

“Stop thinking about her so loud.” He didn’t even bother reaching for his own weapon; he must have known that she wasn’t going to use it. Or that if he went for his own weapons she’d be on him too quick.

They were at an impasse, she could not stab a man in the back just for accurately describing her feelings any more than he could stop enraging her with his knowledge of her inner workings. She had her sword in hand but nothing to do with it. And no way to put it away again without feeling an utter fool. “I… I do not…”

“Don’t care. Not my business who loves who. Just need you to tone it down.” He talked on through the beginnings of her fumbled protests. “And everything else too. Think about the sky. The grass. Something you don’t care about. Empty out the rest. It will all keep for later.”

It was remarkable, given the pace they were walking at, how level the tip of her blade remained, perfectly aligned with the middle of his back. “You really expect me to just forget that you were poking around in my head?”

“No poking. You… radiate.” Kagan still hadn’t looked at her since she drew. Maybe this was his way of letting her sheathe her blade without feeling so embarrassed. He must have known she had it out, but by not looking, perhaps he was trying to give some plausible deniability that he knew. “You’re loud.”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry if my full range of human emotion is an irritant to you. Perhaps we should all be stoic and silent.” She rammed the blade back into its sheath, covering the sound with her bitching and moaning.

“Yes.”

She snapped. “Yes what?!”

“Be quiet.”

She took a deep breath. Then fell back into pace with him. “I hope you know I’m going to murder you in your sleep.”

“Nope.”

His monosyllabic answers had grated on her at first, but now that she’d realized just how much he could drive her mad by speaking full sentences, she was almost grateful. “You don’t know? Or I won’t?”

“I know you want to, but you won’t.” He glanced at her, finally. “Can’t.”

She didn’t rise to the bait. There were very good reasons not to kill him. “Because it would kill Orsina.”

He nodded. “We fight. You lose.”

Still, for all that they both knew they were being reasonable, she had spent a lifetime of being looked down upon for her gender, and she wasn’t capable of letting a slight like that pass. “You are not the first dragon-lord I have faced in battle. Nor the first man who thought he’d have the better of me simply because he is larger.”

Kagan looked away with a shake of his head, eyes turning back to the horizon. “Isn’t about that.”

“No, I’m sure it is all about your superior training and a lifetime of combat experience. Just like all the others I’ve bested over and over through the years.” She smirked.

“You won’t kill me. I’d kill you without blinking.”

“Because of Orsina. Because I would never hurt her.”

“No.” He picked up the pace again, forcing her to scramble to keep up even though her legs burned. She wondered if this was like what he’d done with the horses. Messing with their emotions to keep them running past the point of exhaustion. If he was manipulating her, he was doing a damned fine job of it. “Because you haven’t got it in you.”

“I’ve killed before.” She spoke softly, but even without ears, he heard her just fine.

“Strangers are easy.” A shrug of the shoulders. As though it was a statement of fact. As though everyone in the world was a killer and ranking the emotional weight of different murders was a perfectly normal thing for folks to do.

“Oh, I see, you think that you are protected by my overwhelming love for you.” She laughed. “Perhaps you should take another look at my feelings with your weird Arazi witchery. See how much I care for you.”

They trudged on, and on. Until just when she thought she’d finally managed to shut him up, he piped up. “Murder is different. Don’t have what it takes.”

That stumped her for a moment. It was difficult to argue with something that she’d always suspected was true of herself. Something that, if she was entirely honest, she hoped was true. Nobody wanted to think that they were capable of murder. Nobody wanted to think that if the circumstances warranted it, they could look at another human being and decide that their ease was more important than the other person’s life.

“And you do?”

“Yes.”

The one word sent a shiver up Harmony’s spine. She knew that Art made calculations like that, that he was cold enough inside to make decisions so difficult that she could not have even attempted them. It was part of the reason she followed him, part of the reason others followed him too. Knowing that, when it came to it, he’d bear the burden of responsibility for whatever terrible thing he’d calculated was the best course of action to achieve his goals. She didn’t like that he had that in him, but she’d had a lifetime with him to become accustomed to the idea, while Kagan, for all that she knew of him, should not have had that. The way Orsina had spoken of him, the little she’d spoken of him at all, he’d been like some kindly uncle. But the truth was that despite knowing precisely how he was hurting the horses, and how much, he had still willingly drained them to their last drop of usefulness. She wondered if you could do a thing like that, feel something like that, and not be able to extend that callousness to your fellow man.

She tried to make a joke of the grim confession, but it didn’t sound funny, even to her own ears. “You think that admitting you’ve murdered in cold blood, pun intended, makes it less likely for me to want you dead?”

“Being honest.” He let out a heavy sigh. “Good way to get your feelings out. Stops them holding on to you.”

This time, Harmony meant to laugh, and she meant for it to sound as bitter as it did. “I should treat you like some Agrantine confessor? Proclaim all my sins to you and find absolution and peace after?”

Kagan’s voice rose from its baseline rumble when he snapped back, “Tell a rock. Tell the grass. Tell the sky. Get them out. It quiets you.”

She supposed that for the Arazi, in their own little world where voicing every thought wasn’t liable to see you stabbed in the back by your supposed friends, being open and honest with everyone that you met was an option. No wonder they had no struggle containing their emotions if they let everything spill out the moment it sparked to life. There would be no time to harbor grudges, no dark thoughts dwelling beneath the surface. There would never be a blaze, because the sparks were allowed to shower out instead of being contained. Loath as she was to admit it, the lizard man might have been onto something with this idea. Still, she couldn’t let him know that.

“Hello sky, did you know that Kagan is an infuriating nuisance?”

He glanced up, then held a hand up to where his ears should have been, as if he were listening for a reply. “It knows already.”

She rolled her eyes but could not stop a smile from creeping onto her face, despite her attempts to drown it with sarcasm. “Hilarious.”

The day stretched on and on, silently now, for which the two of them counted their blessings. Kagan thought whatever thoughts slowly turned in that bald head of his, and Harmony did her damnedest not to think at all. It was hard, just as she’d said from the very start, but it was not impossible. And though she would never, ever admit it, his advice to just speak her thoughts was actually helping.

Admittedly, she was speaking the majority of them under her breath in between huffs of air while trailing so far behind the Arazi that there was no chance of being overheard, but it still worked. When she worried about how Orsina was being treated, she told it to a passing patch of scrub. When she worried about how her brother was faring back in the occupied city, she mentioned her concerns to a bird circling overhead.

It didn’t fix anything. It didn’t make anything less of a worry, but it tricked her, for a moment, into thinking that she had done something about it. Then when the next worry came along, it was just as easy to whisper it away too. Over and over, until her exhausted brain seemed to give up on its bombardment entirely. She saw what her eyes saw. She heard the faint strum of the wind on the grass. She felt the same breeze on her skin. Everything else became background noise in her head. Unnecessary. Then, of course, she got excited about her success, and ruined it all by thinking about it.

Kagan rumbled from up ahead. “Better. Quieter.”

“Thanks.” She was surprised at the sincerity that both of them had managed to muster.

“Not perfect.” He grinned back at her. “Better. Good for the first try.”

There was no real malice left in her by that point. “I’ve been trying all day.”

“Trying my patience.” He snorted.

They plodded on a little farther in companionable silence before he had to go and spoil it by trying to compliment her. “Knew you could do it.”

“Well, I didn’t.” She brushed him off.

“When you’re fighting, you go blank.” He paused mid-stride, caught in the thought. “Figured it was about getting you riled. Wasn’t.”

“I’m emotionless when I am fighting?” She almost burst out laughing. All the instructors. All the years. Hammering into her, one blunted blade tip at a time, that she was too emotional. Too easy to agitate and feint. “I can assure you that isn’t the case.”

“You’re feeling, but low. Soft.” He stopped their advance to dig for a waterskin in the saddlebags they’d slung over him. “Thinking parts go quiet. Eyes and hands connect.”

Her mouth fell open, and she had to snap it shut before he could turn around and see. He was right. She would never admit it, but it had felt like those perfect moments in a sparring match when all the world faded away and there was nothing but her muscle memory, her reactions, and her perception between victory and defeat. Thought and movement, one. The next time she fought, she’d be able to reach that perfect place easier, thanks to the stupid exercise he was making her do. This thing he’d learned when he was a slow child.

She changed the subject rapidly, hoping to distract him before he could go prying into her thoughts again. “Are we taking a break?”

He slumped down to the ground as if his strings had been cut. Then set about moving things from one saddlebag to another. Presumably to rebalance for the water he’d just drunk. “Sure.”

There was no shade, nothing soft to sit on and nothing to entertain her, so Harmony took after her guide and flopped down to the ground herself. Baking there in the sun beneath the pitiless blue of the sky, she could most likely have drifted off to sleep for a time, but instead she found herself closing her eyes and trying to find that silence in her mind again. Not even bothering to whisper the thoughts that came, just letting them wash right over her without touching.

Time lost its meaning as she drifted in that silence inside her head. Wind, heat, prickling grass. Vibration.

It was not enough to stir her from her meditation, but she could feel it, a steady tremor running through the earth beneath them. She pulled herself back up to sitting, eyes still closed, and focused on that tremor, trying to let her senses tell her what it was without needing to engage her thinking mind.

Her eyes snapped open just in time to see Kagan bounding to his feet.

“Something’s coming.”

Still halfway into a trance, Harmony was slower to gain her feet, slower to reach for a weapon. Then it came into sight. There were dozens of wyverns in the Arazi armies, more breeds and combinations than Harmony could have even guessed at. If she were to leave Artemio alone in a library for a day, he most likely could have come back and told her what the thing bounding across the steppe towards her was, but she had neither a day, nor a library, nor her brother. Only the evidence of her own eyes.

It was built bulky, more like a thunder lizard than one of the riding wyverns the enemy scouts had used. Too broad by far to be mounted in any sort of traditional way. Presumably why the Arazi atop it was standing, holding on to ropes bound to the outermost horns on the beast’s head ridge.

Both monster and rider shared that thickness of musculature and bone, the beak-like protrusion, the pale blue scales that so perfectly matched the sky above. It was so good a match that Harmony almost mistook it for some sort of mirage. Almost. “Why didn’t you feel them coming?”

The open plain should have offered them protection. It was essentially impossible to sneak up on somebody on the steppes; predators would have had no opportunity to ambush them. Yet now, faced with the charging wyvern, an enemy that absolutely did not need any stealth to tackle them, it provided nothing but a preview of their oncoming doom.

Her hand shook. The blade of her sword wavered. What could it do against a thing like that?

“They’ve trained the same as I have.” Kagan looked calm. So calm that it unsettled Harmony even more. “If they’re out hunting, they’ll have their senses closed.”

“That’s a hunter?” She waved vaguely in the direction of the charging beast. Almost scared to look right at it. To face the reality bearing down on her. Smoke billowed from out its mouth, trailing back behind the wyvern. Spreading out across the steppes like a heavy fog.

“We’re all hunters.” Kagan was taking the time to prepare himself for battle. Unloading the saddlebags onto the ground, thrusting the spears into the soft loam beneath them so he could fling and draw a fresh one in rapid succession. It made Harmony feel even more grossly unprepared. She’d dropped off her backpack, but that was the extent to which she could change her situation. With an army and Shadebound at her back, she had felt quite capable of facing off with wyvern, even dragons, but alone, she was only one person, with only one person’s strength. How was she meant to compete with some primordial monster?

Kagan spared her a glance. “Eyes or rider.”

“What?”

“Little sword won’t make it through scale.” He hefted his first spear, at the ready. “Those two spots, you can hurt it.”

She looked at the mass of scaled flesh bounding towards them, and she let herself see it in those terms. Eyes and rider. Like two marked targets on the dummy. She could do this.

She felt her fear, her panic, heard all the very reasonable concerns that her own mind was expressing about her continued survival, and she let them pass over her. She could do this.

Before it closed the distance, it belched out yet more of that sulfurous smoke. Harmony had not realized how thick it was at a distance, but now it was as though a storm bank was bearing down on them. Coupled with the rumble of the beast’s stomping, she could understand how they came to be called thunder lizards. This breed may not have had fire to spit, but the smoke was a hazard in itself that also provided it with its own cover that it could delve in and out of throughout a battle. She did not care to know if the lizard’s venom was carried in the cloud, so she would do what she could to avoid that.

Finally feeling calm enough to speak in the face of their situation, Harmony asked, “Why has it been stationed here?”

At what she would have considered an impossible distance, Kagan threw his first spear. It was not one of the carefully weighted javelins of his own people, just the closest facsimile that the forges of Espher could produce. When it sailed wide of the target, plunging off into the clouds, he could probably have assigned the blame to the weapon’s lack of balance. If they lived long enough to make excuses.

“The steppes are ours. We hunt them. This is just… someone.” Another spear was drawn and readied, but still the wyvern charged on unwavering, trusting to its armor to carry it through any barrage.

Full of energy, with nowhere to direct it, she found there was a sharp edge to her laughter. “Some random dragon-lord just happens to be here?”

“We’re not… we’re not you.” Kagan’s empty hand lined up with the wyvern, a single finger pointed out to pick his target as his other arm drew back. “We’re our own people. We march together for the cause. Everyone is free to choose.”

He launched. The spear soared true this time, traversing the vast distance, only for the wyvern to duck, throwing up the crest of thick scale and bone around its head to provide a shield for its rider. Whether the spear even drew blood, Harmony could not see at this distance. All that mattered was that the beast did not slow.

“Free to wander off when the fighting is done.” Harmony shook her head in amazement. The idea that an army, any army, could be comprised of volunteers instead of conscripts mystified her. How warlike were the Arazi that any given one of them would choose this course over a peaceful life?

“No slaves.” Another spear was in his hand, but he had not drawn back, not yet. He did not have so many of them that they could be squandered. “No masters.”

The earth beneath their feet seemed to buck at the wyvern’s approach. They were close enough now that Harmony could make out the streaks of dried paint across the creature’s head. The rider wore armor of bones, long tassels of leather dangling back from the joints and tipped with bright feathers of the same blue as the beast he rode. He barely looked human at all. Not because of his impossible bulk or the helm grown of his own skull, but because of the almost ethereal quality that the clouds of smoke and feathers seemed to grant him. Like he was some amorphous thing flowing in the wind.

Tension had been strumming through all of Harmony’s muscles as it came on, but now she realized that there would be no flung javelins for her to dodge, the rider bore no weapons. The wyvern was the weapon. A vast bludgeon being flung at her with all the power of that charge, enough to shatter walls and level towers. Enough to run through her as though she were not there. She let the fear pass over her once more. She could do this. She just had to trust in her body, in her training, in her instinct.

She broke into a run. She could hear Kagan gasp from behind her and all rational parts of her mind telling her that this was the wrong direction. That when a monster was charging straight towards you then, yes, you should run, but in any direction other than directly towards it. She did not question her instinct, did not slow her gait. All of the exhaustion of the hike had been washed clean by adrenaline. Every part of her thrummed, like a bowstring held taut, ready to release.

Kagan’s spears flew past her as she went, whipping overhead to be deflected time and again by the shield of the wyvern’s crest or dodged by the rider as he seemed to ripple to the side and then back into his place.

The great beaked mouth of the wyvern opened as it came close, a great plume of smoke pouring out to envelop her. Her mind screamed at her to see reason, to break free of the cloud, to run for her life. She did not listen. Another spear flew into the shrouded darkness of the smoke with her. The wyvern’s mouth, still spilling foul smoke, dipped down towards the dirt as it brought up the crest to defend its rider.

Then at last her rational mind saw what her instinct had been telling her. The great head of the beast, bigger than her whole body, was an incline when it tipped its head forward. The great ridges of scale were solid footholds.

She leapt, finding purchase with the balls of her feet, first on the edge of the beak, then the eyebrow, then the vast shield of the head-fringe. For a moment, she too was no longer human, she was flying. And the wild, golden eyes of the rider looked up at her from beneath his skull helm and she saw fear.

His arms were outstretched as though he was welcoming her home, and her blade was happy to take that welcome. She plunged it down with all of her momentum and strength, punching through the feathered patches between the ribs that encased him, biting through scales and flesh to nestle in his chest.

If he cried out, she did not hear it over the rush of wind and blood in her own ears. But she would like to think that he did not. That this surprise was so complete that he had not even comprehended his end before it was upon him.

The legs went out from under the wyvern, and both she and the rider were sent tumbling back along the length of it, end over end, battering off ridged scale, through the stacked prizes that the Arazi had gathered. They crashed down on the tail, then the bony club at the tail’s end before finally landing on the blessed, soft earth once more.

Air had been knocked out of her. Everything hurt, but she was alive, and the Arazi was dead.

She could do this. And she had.

It could have been an hour or two minutes later when she heard Kagan approach as she lay there trying to catch her breath, the edges of the blue sky dimming black in her vision, it was difficult to keep track. It was easy to follow his approach, though, the hacking laughter that sounded like rocks being banged together.

“Girl, are you mad?”

“Have I ever suggested otherwise?”

“All right.” He reached down with one arm to haul her upright. Her sword, still wedged in both her grip and her foe, was dragged out with a wet sucking noise as she was drawn up and placed carefully on her feet. “I get it now.”

Her brain still wasn’t quite running at full speed. “Get what?”

“Why she likes you.”

When he grinned down at her, there was none of the barely restrained contempt that she hadn’t even realized was there before. Now that she saw its absence, it stung her just a little more that he’d thought so little of her all this time.

“Does that mean you’re going to stop being an insufferable ass for the rest of the journey?”

He threw back his head, and the laugh that came out was bestial. Almost a howl. Like he was finally trusting her with who he really was. “I ain’t promising anything.”

Despite herself, she smiled. “Of course not.”

19 - The Crown Deserved
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

Organization began for the coronation with all due haste, and Artemio found himself seated on the throne in the grand hall, dealing with minutiae that he could not even believe were being brought to him. All the nobility of Espher who had become invisible during the occupation now seemed to be coming out of the woodwork to demand the best seating, and the merchants who claimed not to have a single thing set aside to add to the ration piles suddenly had all the materials required for grand feasts and gifts. His acceptance of the crown seemed to have filled the people of Covotana with all the courage they had been lacking thus far. Presumably because they trusted in his delicate relationship with the Agrantine to prevent any brutality being unleashed upon them for their lies of omission up until this point. The ambassador, perpetually by his side, chose to express amusement as all the ways that she had been defied were made clear. Artemio suspected that beneath the surface, rage was simmering.

He had made a fuss of wanting the high lords encamped outside of the walls of the city in attendance, while the ambassador had assured him most vociferously that while she would be content to open the gates for them to attend his wedding, until he was crowned, there could be no trust between them. With the crown upon his brow, he was co-conspirator, until then he was merely an active party in her scheme and could argue his way out of consequences. She needed his commitment before she’d risk the gates.

Meetings with the important people of Espher were carefully monitored, but when servants were shuffled into his quarters in the evening for him to approve details that nobody in their right mind would care about, he found that they could speak freely. The same mistake that he had made in his investigation into the cult of the Last King was being repeated, and he made the most of the opportunity to make his own arrangements for the day of the coronation.

Beyond those few servants he spoke to, beyond the small areas of the palace that he could see, there was a buzz of activity at all times now. A change taking over the place, as though it had been lying dormant throughout the occupation and was only now stirring. If he were inclined to fits of ego, then Artemio might well have tapped into the memories of his grandfather’s time on the throne and compared the buzz now and back then with the more austere years of Cerva rule. What luck that he was not so inclined.

By tradition, his entire house should have been in attendance. Surrounding the throne, showing the strength of the family. So that no other might be inclined to challenge. If circumstances were different, he still would not have had that, but positions about the throne could have been doled out to trusted allies, or those he wished to make believe were trusted allies. There were lifetimes of skulduggery that could have been managed in a single event’s seating arrangements. The ambassador was controlling all of that, and he was letting her because it assured that none of those attending could claim any special favor from him, and because it would allow him to see who Agrant believed to be his strongest allies, or who they would prefer fill that role.

Even beyond the politics, there were procedures that were unique to the crowning of a Shadebound king that could not be properly observed. Oaths to be made, by both his impresario and him, not to allow the dead to rule through him, not to take any risk with their lives lest all Espher fell into ruin.

His impresario was gone beyond Agrantine reach, beyond any hope of contact, and it was not as though they would delay the ceremony for her to return from whatever adventure he had sent her off on. Of equal importance was the fact that Harmony’s absence rendered impossible any scheme to take her as hostage to ensure his compliance once he sat the throne.

There was some small bitter part of Artemio that wished she was here to offer him comfort and support and some other part of him that hoped he might find some way to sever their connection before the day was out, so that he alone would bear the burden of the choices he was making.

He did not sleep well on his final night as a mere duke. As a rule, Artemio was not prone to bouts of nervousness. Once he had chosen a course and committed himself to it, that was typically the end of matters. As though it had already happened simply because he had played it out in his mind. Yet on that night, an agitation took hold of him. Too much was outside of his direct control, and even the parts he would be complete master of felt as though they might slip from his grasp too easily.

Chaos had always been a loathsome thing to Artemio. Order was always to be sought, even in the pages of his beloved histories. The common thread of logic that could link events, the clear progression from one event to the next, all moving towards a more perfect world where reason won out over the animalistic and bestial. It had driven him on, through the hard times, knowing that his suffering served some higher purpose. That everyone was a part of the grand system known as Espher and that he could exchange all of his potential for a place within that system. It was why his father’s plans for insurrection had troubled him so. Why he had rejected them out of hand, as an expression of base desire for power. Yet now, he worked towards the purpose of disorder. All that his ancestors had built would fall by his hands. All the futures that had been promised were going to burn away, and it was all because of the choices he had made. Because of his decision to take something beautiful and cast it on the ground to shatter, rather than let it be held by one who would not appreciate it.

When the knocking came on his chamber door, he could not have said whether it was dawn or midnight, but nonetheless, he rose. What followed was no doubt meticulously organized down to the smallest detail, but Artemio would be damned if he could remember a single part of it when all was said and done. He was passed from one skilled artisan to the next to be scrubbed and oiled, dressed, undressed, redressed, compressed—he had resented the girdle at the time, but given the additional layers still to be added, he eventually understood the necessity of it—and then handed along to the next of the many servants and savants whose sole purpose it was to make him look presentable to stand in the same room where he had been standing just the day before. It seemed that royal standards differed somewhat.

After that, the holy men came, laying hands upon him, anointing him with their own oils, waving censers and murmuring their blessings in tongues at which Artemio could not even begin to guess. There were Agrantine among them, those few of the saints who had once been clergy proper, now engaged in commending his soul to their God Emperor. Once more, all of it blended until Art probably could not have picked out an individual word from the jabbering. Yet with all of it complete, it seemed he was considered to be worthy of sitting in the same chair as yesterday, with a different hat perched on his head.

The silence in the grand hall thrummed after the fanfare of his arrival had died down. Most of these people were strangers. Saints from Agrant, lesser nobles, particularly wealthy freemen. Even the ones that came from old families were lesser offshoots, second daughters and bastards. If he had ever been in a room with any of them, Artemio did not recall it, and these were the cream of the crop. The best of the upper class. It was laughable. All of this turmoil to finally stand before a room of nobodies.

The only person in the entire room that he truly knew was the Prima. She was nestled back in the crowd, making steady eye contact with him throughout his arrival and procession. If there were other Shadebound in the room, feeling the sudden spiritual pressure radiating from their soon-to-be-king, they neither commented on nor understood what was occurring.

Every one of his footsteps echoed. Every eye was on him. Perhaps long ago there had been some version of him that would have withered under all of this attention, but that person had long ago been buried in a shallow grave. To survive among the wolves of court required poise and confidence. Showing any hint of fear would have doomed him, doomed them all.

If there had been a mirror, he might have looked upon himself all coifed and powdered and considered that he looked like a different person entirely. That this king he was becoming was another new man being born, leaving the Artemio of old to be laid to rest, just as that timid and naive boy had been.

There was no mirror, so in his heart he remained the same. The temptation to embrace metamorphosis never became more than an idle dream.

Words were being spoken, the allotted hour grew close at hand. All the pomp, ceremony, and tradition that he usually would have reveled in being present for were the background noise to his own thoughts, to the countdown that was running in his brain and to the efforts he was exerting to gradually increase the flow of life from his own body into the shade lurking beneath their feet without letting the gravitational pull of it strip him of consciousness entirely.

He had his own words to say soon, a proclamation of his intent to rule, his oath to uphold the ancient tenets by which Espher had persevered through the centuries. They had drilled those words into him, over and over, though he had them memorized by the second repetition. It was an odd quirk of his mind that it should be so. That he should so meticulously absorb words that he never had any intention of speaking.

All eyes were upon him once more, all speeches done. Blood rushed in his ears as he rose from his throne. He raised his arms for silence, as though a pin could have dropped in the room at that moment and not been heard. “My name is Artemio Volpe. My grandfather sat upon this throne before the Cerva ascended to royalty. He swore oaths like those you expect of me. To uphold the laws of Espher. To protect and preserve her at any cost to myself. Yet now that my time comes, I find that I cannot make such a promise.”

That unstopped the bottle. A hubbub began to spread. Modesta began to walk towards him from where she had been lurking out of sight, behind the throne. Her saints, taking cues from her, began to move in too, pushing through the guests.

Artemio’s voice rose, drowning out the confusion of the crowd. Echoing strangely, as though he were shouting from down in some deep cave. “I cannot make that promise, not because I do not love this great nation with all of my heart, but because to swear now at the point of a blade would surrender no small part of our sovereignty to our enemies. I cannot swear so now, because to promise I will do no harm to Espher is a lie. For I mean to do her a great injury this day.”

Modesta drew closer, close enough that he could see she had forgone a sword at her hip. She had a hand out to the closest of her saints, snapping her fingers. He drew his weapon, then held it out to her by the blade, the hilt thrust towards her.

“As a doctor must cut into a patient to remove a cancer, so too must I drive the Agrantine from our city, from our nation. It will not be bloodless. It may even cost us Covotana itself. Yet it shall be done, because if I do not cut Espher, the invader will not be removed from within her heart.”

With that final word, the room shook. Plaster rained down from the vaulted ceiling, as though all the angelic faces painted upon the shades of legend up there were now weeping white. Dismayed cries went out. Some elderly guests were bowled over.

If the Agrantine had expected their meteoric iron to preserve them from his power, then it showed their ignorance once more. He was not some peddler of petty sorceries, some flinger of ghosts; he was Shadebound. Kings and gods echoed in his soul, and he mastered them all.

At last he turned from the gathered crowd to look at Modesta as she came charging on, sword at the ready. “This city is built upon a volcano. It lies beneath our feet not dead but dreaming. I am Shadebound. I hold that dream in the palm of my hand, and with but a twist of my wrist, I can wake The Fire Below.”

The room quaked once more, not only the room, but the whole palace, the whole city. It was right that if this place was wiped from the map, it should be by the hand of a Volpe. The fathers of this civilization, and the ones who had been worst betrayed by it. Artemio’s hand shook as he brought it up to point at the ambassador, not from fear but from the effort of holding back the destruction that would consume them all.

“Modesta, wife of a false god. Saints of Agrant. If you do not depart from this place now, never to return, then I will burn Covotana to the ground to purge you. I shall call up boiling stone from the deep and drown you. It will cost me my life, as it will cost the lives of every citizen of this city, and I will consider it a small price to pay for the freedom of Espher.”

The Agrantine had stopped in their advance, all of them except for the ambassador. They had come to this land expecting it to be haunted, expecting stray shades that they could cut down with their blessed swords and careful training, nobody could have prepared them for what the Shadebound were truly capable of. Nobody outside of Espher even knew.

Modesta’s advance had slowed. The sword in her hand now pointed down, as though it was not meant to be an open threat. Contempt dripped from her mouth when it opened. “You would not…”

Artemio cut her off. “Ambassador, choose your next words carefully, for they may be your last. Look into my eyes and tell me I would not. Think on all you know of me and tell me I would not.”

She met his gaze then, and she truly was halted. He could almost see the wheels spinning in her mind, sifting back through all their conversations. All that she’d learned of him through her networks of socialites and spies. Had he ever made false threats? Threats that he was neither willing nor able to carry out? He knew that he had not. If he had underestimated her capabilities, then this would not work. The whole plan fell apart in the face of incompetence.

The ambassador’s eyes narrowed. “What need was there for all of these dramatics? If you meant to make a threat, why would you not simply speak to me in private? What need was there for this deception? What need was there to bring us all here?”

What he had not accounted for was an overabundance of competence instead. He had not expected her to see through his choices so swiftly. He needed to buy more time. He needed to keep her head spinning. Unable to see through the many layered veils of deception at work. “Because the palace is at the center of the city. At the lowest point of the caldera. The place where the plug will burst. Where the fire will rise. I wanted you and your saints here, so that I might burn them first.”

She spun the sword in her hand into a ready position. Artemio made no move to defend himself as the razor tip was pointed at his chest. He did not even flinch at the movement. He knew he had her respect already. She believed in his judgement if nothing else, and she would not see this as an act of bravado as she might have with another man. “You are no king. Nobody of consequence. What is to stop me from simply cutting you down?”

His hands shook as he raised them up, empty, to show her. They quivered even as his face showed no fear. Before her eyes, fresh strands of his hair would have been turning to grey. All of that life, all of that fuel for a shade’s cold fire, it had to be going somewhere. Let her think where that might be. “If the life were to flee my body now, where do you think it would go? What do you think it would empower and awaken?”

“If you meant to do it, then you already would have.” She stepped in closer, the tip of her sword passing over his shoulder, over all the fur-trimmed collars and robes of silken finery, until the blade’s edge rested upon his throat. “Or have I judged you entirely wrong?”

Artemio’s talent at lying had been cultivated early, by a mother and father both bent to the impossible standards of the latter. Without the lies he told them, he would never have been able to live at all. Without the lies he told himself, he would not have been able to sleep at night. Yet one thing had always held true for him. When he was at his absolute best, lying better than anyone else in the world, he had always done so by telling at least some small part of the truth. It was the simplest way to construct a deception. To thrust something true into the light, so nobody noticed the hand holding it was shrouded.

When he answered her, it was not in the raised voice he had been using so that all of court and her minions could hear. It was soft as conversation between two old friends coming to terms with their differences. “Despite our opposition to each other, I have respect for you, Ambassador. If I could offer you the opportunity to depart without doing you harm, I felt bound by honor to do so.”

“You aren’t sentimental, nor do you crave attention.” The wheels in her mind were still spinning. She believed what he had told her. Believed in his promise to allow her to leave with some semblance of her dignity intact. She must have believed it, because his throat was not slit. Yet still she knew that there was some missing part to all of this. Some piece of the puzzle that he was keeping under his hand. “I know that I have not so thoroughly misjudged you. So, what purpose did all of this serve?”

He met her gaze steadily, the countdown in his head finally coming to its natural end, and then he smiled. The doors to the chamber hammered open, and some loyal saints of Agrant came barging in, yelling in their own heathen tongue but too distant for Modesta to hear them clearly.

“What have you done, Volpe?”

With hands held high, he finally let the smile he’d been holding back show. “The gates to my city lie open. You have had your chance to surrender.”

“The guards…”

He cut her off. “Are fed and watered by my people. When they wake from their stupor, it will already be over.”

Panic washed away her carefully cultured expression of indifference. “The city is filled with my saints. The walls never truly mattered, not in the face of our prowess.”

“Your saints are all here, or coming here, to protect the wife of their god.” The palace trembled, and the temperature rose as he let a little more of his control slip. It would be so easy to let go. To feed himself into the fire. What greater mark could he make on history than this? “After all, it is not every day that the earth tremors and smoke pours from beneath the palace.”

“So, your grandiose threats were all a deception?” She brought her sword slowly up, testing it for balance. “To lure them from their stations?”

“Not at all. Should my army fail to retake the city, I shall level it. And let us be honest, there could be little more effective a draw for your pious minions than a volcanic eruption.” His smile of relief became a smirk. His hands drifted back down to his sides. “An act of god?”

With the balance pleasing her, she now drew back for a killing blow. “And how precisely do you suppose that you will stop me from issuing countermanding orders, Duke Volpe?”

“I do not need to. Time is finally on my side, dear Ambassador. Every moment that they are delayed is another street my army has taken. Every word that we bandy back and forth brings your defeat so much closer. But regardless of how swiftly you respond, it is over.”

As she lunged forward, Artemio stamped his foot. The palace rocked. Pillars that had held up the vast chamber’s roof, and all the floors above it, cracked, the weight bearing down on them making their sudden fractures explode stone shrapnel across the room. Cutting into the guests and saints alike. The screaming started. The heat rose.

Splitting his attention right now was foolish, but he needed to be able to move. His forge spirit was almost frantic thanks to the proximity of so powerful and hungry a shade of a similar type. It did not want to be consumed. It did not want to be replaced. Like a loyal dog, it leapt to his mildest command. Scorching away all the finery he had been garbed in, leaving behind only the lowest layers of underclothes, which were, admittedly, still markedly more than a normal person wore on the average day. He let those same flames wash out from him, scorching the closest of the guests, but abating to nothing before they could touch the saints, who still advanced upon him with murder in their eyes.

Over the roar of fire and screams of rancor, the ambassador called out to him. “There is one factor that I do not believe that you have accounted for, Duke Volpe. You cannot think of anything that you missed?”

There were fleeing guests flooding between them, nobles and merchants of no note or interest to Artemio. If she had expected him to flinch as she cut her way through them, she was mistaken. Espher was more than her people. It was more than these people in particular.

He backed away from her slowly, keeping out of reach. The longer this was delayed, the more time his army had to advance and rescue him. Assuming that his messages to that effect had been communicated to them.

“And what might that be?”

With one last sweep of her sword, knocking coronation guests and her own gathering saints aside, she had a clear path to him. Her true fury finally showed upon her face. “You cannot think that I will let you survive this betrayal?”

She must have thought she was herding him into a dead end, steering him away from the chamber’s few exits. He had the full layout of the palace available on tap, through his grandfather. He knew better. Still, he needed to make her believe it. “I made no lie when I said that my death would unleash flaming death upon you all.”

“Your soldiers would slay me. To fail my husband is to die. There is no end to this in which I still draw breath. So, I ask you again, do you think I would not gladly spend the life of every person in this city to avenge myself upon you?”

He threw a glance back, as though he were finally realizing his predicament. Saints crowded in at his sides. The solid marble floor beneath his feet felt scorching hot, even through his ridiculous silk slippers. “Well, obviously I’d prefer not to die, but if there is no alternative, then I suppose that…”

At the moment she leapt for him, the floor beneath them shattered. To control the earthquakes so finely was essentially impossible, but to hit the whole area with an impact from The Fire Below, and to know where the structure was at its weakest, that was more than possible. It was easy.

Cracks spread across the marble in every direction, the solid stone beneath it gave way, and just as he had slipped free of the saints back in his king’s chambers by cutting through the floorboards, he slipped away through the chasm that he had just opened beneath him. Plunging through the ruins of an ancient reliquary, long boarded up and forgotten, and down through the shattered floor of that chamber to land with a crash inside a cell in the dungeons.

One of the stable boys stood by the door with a pair of boots, a sword belt, and an expression of absolute mystification at the sudden appearance of Artemio Volpe atop the mound of straw he’d been instructed to lay out in the cell.

“Good work, boy.” Artemio grinned as he snatched his belongings from the servant. “Now run like hell.”

The sword went on before the boots, because he had his priorities right, but when neither saints nor ambassadors came raining down from the ceiling to wreak bloody vengeance upon him, he swapped out his footwear too. A new timer was running in his mind. If they didn’t want to risk the dive into the unknown, then they’d have to take the stairs down to the dungeons. From the grand hall where the coronation was to be held down to here was at least seven minutes, assuming they knew the optimal path. Which they probably didn’t.

That gave him at least five minutes to either get lost in the warren of cells down here or to prepare some sort of defense for when they came for him. He chose neither. Staggering from the mental weight of The Fire Below constantly gnawing at his defenses, Artemio made his way deeper into the dungeons. To all the old cells where people could be left and forgotten. To the real reason that he could not allow the ambassador to call his bluff. The kings were in this palace somewhere, and now he was free of Modesta, he had a chance to find them.

Killing everyone in Covotana, himself included, was something that Artemio would have done, given the right prompting by events. Leveling one of the most ancient cities in all of the world would have been a necessary evil. Even the destruction of the Covotana libraries and archives, holders of so much of Espher and mankind’s history, would have been a price he was willing to pay to free them from the grasp of the Agrantine.

Yet there were lines he would not cross and crimes he would not commit. He could not steal the throne from the rightful king. He could not kill the rightful king any more than he could sit back and let the rightful king come to harm.

There was no logical way that the Cerva could have made it out of the city, therefore, they were here. Therefore, destroying the city would kill them. He needed to find them before everything came to its head. He had to protect them or get them out if it seemed that the armies of Espher were going to prove insufficient to deal with the Agrantine and he actually had to use his little backup plan.

There had been changes made, down here in the lowest levels of the palace, far below the servants and kitchens and stockpiles and stores. The old map that he had overlaying it all in his head was wrong in so many tiny details. Some of them, age could account for, but other parts could only be explained away by the willful ignorance of Bisnonno Fiore as to the precise workings of this place.

It seemed that his grandfather was the kind of man who did not want to know how the sausage was made. He wanted peace, he wanted his enemies rooted out and punished, but he never wanted to descend into the dark, pick up a red-hot poker, and do what was necessary to protect his rule. On the one hand, it was a relief that he wasn’t a sadist like so many kings of old had been. On the other, it struck Artemio as a weakness of will. A weakness of stomach, perhaps. To abdicate such responsibility entirely meant that the last Volpe king had to be reliant upon his advisors feeding him the truth. Given how his reign ended, it seemed apparent that this was not a good way of running things.

There were oubliettes down here that the old king had never heard of, but the majority of them lay empty now. Either the Cerva had far fewer enemies than they believed, or the Agrantine had set those prisoners free when they anticipated a change in regime. It would be yet another loose end to tidy up once the true king was restored to his throne.

At least it made the searching easier, it was not as though these cells were marked with their contents like the storage levels above. If he wanted to know the contents of these barrels, he’d have to crack open the top, and that would be even more of a delay when he was short on time.

The dungeons were the only logical place left for the kings to be. There were whole sections of them that had essentially been abandoned to the rats and cobwebs, interlocking layers of corridors that would be unfamiliar to anyone else in the palace. There was nowhere else they had not already searched.

Others would have assumed that given the opportunity, the Cerva would have fled the palace. Fled from these dark and dismal parts of it where they were denied all the comforts they were accustomed to, but Artemio knew them just a little better. He’d seen the steel beneath their foppish exteriors. He’d seen one of them sit perfectly still while he drove a blade into his face to mimic the scar on his brother. Men like that would not run at the first sign of danger, they would position themselves somewhere to observe and manipulate the situation to their advantage. Above all, he was certain that men so fearful of assassination would never leave so well fortified a nest as they had made for themselves here in Covotana. Even occupied by enemy forces, this palace was safer for a king than the world outside.

Room by room, he cleared the map in his mind. Eliminated the options. Narrowed the search. They were down here somewhere, like rats in a burrow, and he would find them.

20 - Duel in the Dark
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

Minutes ticked by. Minutes that he did not have. Dead end after dead end. Empty cell after empty cell. As though he were all alone in the world. He could not even hear the castle or the city above; there was just him and the heat and the distant rumble of the volcano beneath his feet waking from its long slumber.

Then finally, when it seemed that there would be no end to his search, he heard footsteps approaching. Just a single set.

Now he moved with fresh purpose, not darting from cell to cell, but rolling his feet as he walked to keep his own steps as silent as he could muster. Listening as much as moving. Plans shifting with every new step he heard. Only a single saint sent to get him, the rest diverted to face off with the encroaching armies of Espher.

All that he need do was position that one saint somewhere deeper into the dungeons than he was and cause a collapse. The Agrantine had been so certain in their immunity to shades that it had not crossed their minds that the world about them could be turned into a weapon through the Espheran art. So confident in their much-vaunted skill with the blade that they had truly believed their own legends, forgetting that in reality, perfection of form and strength of arms mattered only in some small ways, to adjust the odds of your survival, not to ensure it. If it were him alone with his skill with the blade against a single saint, then he would likely lose, but that was not a situation that would ever occur. There would always be an army at his back, a distraction at hand, a shade he could call.

The Agrantine saw the world in black and white, simplifying everything down to a single variable. People were either good or they were evil. People were either the best swordsmen or less than. They could not conceive of a world in which these things were not the defining factor. It made them predictable.

The ambassador stepped out into the end of the passage that he had been sneaking towards so industriously. Her borrowed star-metal blade shimmering in the dim torchlight of the dungeons. Something like a smile playing over her lips. “They are not down here, either. Did you think that I would have missed them?”

Artemio drew his own sword and gave it a few twists and turns in the air to loosen his wrist. “I think that you had a vested interest in them not being found, alive or dead.”

“Hostages would have been better by far. Corpses a welcome secondary option, with their deaths a clear demarcation between the old order and the new. I did not desire this… instability.” She strode towards him, and it took all of his courage not to scuttle back and seek a safer distance from the lethal reach of her blade. A lunge would reach him now, at the speed she delivered them. “What loyalty do you owe these men who stole your rightful place that it overpowers all reason?”

“I would not expect any Agrantine to understand.”

Her attack came then. Exactly as he could have predicted, lashing out so fast and fluid that he could have mistaken it for another step had he not been ready and waiting. His parry was clumsy by comparison, but so too would have been the flight of a soaring eagle or the swimming of a fish. That he’d turned the thrust from his body was victory enough. He did not need to compare form.

“My body and my soul belong to my emperor. So have they since I was old enough to speak an oath. All that I do is in his service. I breathe only that I might do his will with the life it brings me. But here in Espher, you squabble and scrap, you climb over the backs of one another to reach for the crown. Do you truly believe that your kind know loyalty better than mine?” After that first lash, she had sprung back, talking again, pacing again, circling slowly to one side so he had a wall to his back and couldn’t dodge. Opening up just enough space in the corridor for him to try to dash by her, exposing a flank. He was not fool enough for that.

“Blind subservience driven into the mind like the breaking of the horse is not loyalty. For there to be loyalty there must be a choice of disloyalty.” He inched towards the opening that she’d left, not with the intention to use it, but hoping that he might goad her into lashing out too soon. It was a dim hope, but he could not simply stand back and allow her to have the run of the place without any counter. “When I swore myself to the Cerva, it was not when I was a babe, nor when I came of age. It was when I met them as a man grown, and I chose loyalty to the crown over any ties of blood or kinship. You dare to question my loyalty? If only you had a clue what sacrifices I have made to serve them when I could very well have been king had I not. There has never been a more difficult choice, and I chose Espher.”

She went for him again, just as he was midway through a step, at the least balanced he could be. There were few duelists in Espher who could time a strike so well. Fewer still that could do it in this dim light. She was truly talented. If he had not been waiting for it, he would most certainly have been skewered through. As it was, a slap against the juncture of basket hilt and blade diverted her swift thrust aside, the tip halting just before the wall before jerking back. She was not using the weight of her weapon against him yet. As though she were trying to make this fair, as though she were pretending at being some Espheran duelist instead of the brutal machine of slaughter that Agrant had made her. She drew back once more, positions reset with him no closer to the escape he needed.

“And what has it brought you but pain?”

“This moment will pass, and the next. I will live, I will die. All of it will fade until only history remains.” He granted her his own smile then. Knowing that despite whatever happened here, he had secured his legacy as the man who saved Espher not once but twice in the span of a month. He did not want to die, did not want to condemn his sister to the same, but if he did, it would not have been for nothing. “Pain is fleeting.”

There was no more testing, no more tricks. She leapt for him, blade sweeping his own tawdry defenses aside. “Yours shall not be. Yours shall be a thing of legend.”

Her elbow followed through after the swipe of blade, catching him in the jaw, knocking him stumbling back into the wall. Exactly where he did not want to be.

“Or better yet, of history. You shall be a cautionary tale to the generations that follow, to every petty lordling of Espher that tries to bite at the hand of Agrant when they are fed.” She followed not with a killing blow, but with a kick while he was still stunned. Striking her shin against the outside of his leg and collapsing it beneath him. He was not so seasoned as his sister, but he had been planning for this day ever since the first time he saw Modesta in practice. The fluidity of her motions. One movement passing seamlessly into the next. He knew that there would be no slowing her now, no stopping a blow short. He let his leg collapse and flung himself over it as it went, dropping and rolling out of reach, even as she switched course to bring the killing edge of star-steel down on his back.

“You are quite right in saying that you had a choice. What a pity that you chose to be the lapdog of dead men.”

She missed him by a hair, parting what little remained of the clothing on his back and tracing a freezing line down the length of his spine. He could not spare a moment to whimper or to answer. Though he might bleed, he was free and clear of her now, and he had to move.

“Espher will become Agrant now. Just another border kingdom swallowed up in the conquest. You could have stopped that. You could have guided her through these troubled times. But instead you decided to fling yourself between the turning gears of history in the hope that your corpse might gum up the workings.” Before he’d even found his feet, she was upon him again, blade singing in the dark. “It will not.”

He managed to parry away that first blow, absorbing far too much of the impact in his forearm and bending his rapier to a dangerous curve. But the second slipped past his guard and stilled. The razor tip of the blade beneath his chin, not killing him yet, but pinning him in place.

Modesta hissed, “You have wasted the only opportunity that you had. Haven’t you?”

On the floor, with a blade pressed to his throat, Artemio smiled. “Not if I find them.”

The earth shook beneath them, and he saw that fraction of a moment when Modesta’s eyes darted to the shadows that he cast, counting them. He flung himself forward, not impaling himself upon the blade, but springing at her legs, it was not anything taught in a tactical manual, not anything that anyone with sense would have committed to, but if one thing was becoming increasingly clear from their conflict, it was that nobody with any sense would have chosen to go toe-to-toe with the ambassador at all. She was a weapon, razor-sharp after so long drawn along the whetstone of the finest swordsmen in Agrant. Not one of them would have attempted such idiocy. And that was why it succeeded.

It wasn’t much of a tackle, she never lost her footing fully, but it knocked her off her balance, out of her perfect stance, and her confusion at what had occurred was worth more than anything else. This was the grey area in which Agrant could not operate. Beyond the perfection of their martial arts, there were millennia of history in which mankind had simply flung itself bodily at an enemy with no care for how they struck. It was how the peasants brawled in their bars. It was how the beasts battled in the forest. She had no defense against animal savagery, and she could never have expected it from him.

With arms flung out to find balance, all she could do was kick him back, but his close proximity diminished the bone-breaking power her early shin-slam had unleashed. It was more of a push than anything else, something to get him back out into comfortable range when the blade came down. He used the momentum of it to find his feet and dance back along the corridor that she had entered by. She was the one with her back to a dead end now.

At last some measure of her ill temper shone through the perfect political mask. “There is nothing to find. They are gone. If they could be found, would I not have found them?”

He had expected an immediate charge, not more bandying of words. He found himself off balance at the sudden change of pace. For her part, Modesta shook out the tension that had been building from her arms and reasserted her stance. Obsessed with her own perfection, even now.

“It matters not. My army storms the city. My people fight to free themselves from your tyranny. By dawn there shall be nothing of Agrant left in this city but bloodstains.”

She darted in with a lancing blow that he had to leap back to avoid. He did not mind giving ground now, not when there was so much more of it behind of him.

“The siege is over. Your peasants and your soldiers and your witches have driven us out. Then what?”

It was almost insulting, the way she merely leaned aside to avoid his thrust rather than bothering to parry it. He supposed that compared with her, his movements were so slow that it didn’t seem worth the effort. “Then I find the king, or I rule.”

“And how many months do you suppose that you shall rule with the blood of the Eternal Emperor’s favorite wife on your hands?” She swiped at him with just a little more strength than a feint, knocking his guard open and then flicking her blade in further to scratch a line across his cheek. A dueling scar. Proof of her superiority. How quaint. “How long before his armies come? Before they take your little nothing of a kingdom out from beneath you and use it as kindling for the pyre on which you are burned alive?”

She was too controlled. Too perfect. He had to throw her off rhythm. He smirked at her then, blood tickling at his lips. “They can try.”

That seemed to do the trick. She came on with furious cuts then. One flowing into the next. His parries barely enough to keep them from his guts, his thighs, his face. “You simpering buffoon. You think that fighting an empire is akin to your little border scrap with some savages? The emperor knows no mercy, for your kind or mine. He will drown you in blood if he must.”

Artemio staggered as he fed more life to The Fire Below, as he beckoned it and goaded it, as he never had to do his own shades. When the earth beneath them shook again, the ambassador did not falter in her steps, she could accommodate uneven ground. But she could not have prepared herself for the bucking of the earth that followed, nor the crumbling of the stone all around them. Once more, his willingness to fling himself into harm’s way blindsided her. Nobody would ever expect a man to bring a castle down on his own head.

The passage collapsed around them as though crushed by some vast invisible hand as the pocketed stone gave out. All of Covotana had been built on this unsteady ground, this earth that hungered to swallow those up on the surface. It was a strange thing to realize that a place everyone considered the heart of stability within the kingdom was only ever one good hit from crumbling.

To her credit, Modesta leapt for Artemio with none of the practiced grace he had seen from her before but with all of the natural grace of a cat pouncing on its prey. The sword in her hand forgotten, everything forgotten but the desperate leap to safety on top of him. Assuming that he had been sane enough not to bring the tunnel down on himself as well. It was a poor assumption.

In the end, her flying leap to knock him onto the ground did little to protect her from the falling masonry and rubble and everything to protect Artemio from the same. She was a human shield of taut and trained muscle, fending off the bricks and stone shards that fell upon them. Arms braced to either side of his shoulders so that every impact did not grind their bodies together.

Her face was inches from his, her eyes narrowed to the point that they looked closed. The light around them dimmed as more and more rubble fell, blocking and dislodging the torches. Then finally it was over. She pushed up, and the rocks heaped on her back began to tumble away.

Artemio took his chance. Abandoning his sword to where it lay buried, he grabbed for the front of her robes, tearing them open inadvertently as he used them as a leverage point to lift his head from the ground and hammer his forehead into her face.

Her nose gave out with a wet pop. The perfect aquiline slope of it forever ruined. Blood spattered down onto Artemio’s face, intermingling with his own. Rebounding from that blow, Modesta reared up, tearing free of the grip he had on her robes and buying him only a moment to grab for his sword before she found hers and plunged it down into him. There was no time to look around and see just how badly he had trapped himself. No time even to think. His hand scrabbled for the sword, found only a block of stone toppled on top of where he remembered the hilt to be, and brought that up instead.

Modesta’s blow was clumsy; she was half blinded by tears and half lost to rage. It was powerful, but not precise. It deflected from that hunk of rock to cut into his armpit. Scraping off ribs but snipping through tendons too.

It was Artemio’s turn to hurt. To scream. Metal scraped on bone, vibrating through his chest, but worse than even that was the awful emptiness he felt where the star-metal touched him. Like his soul was dead on contact with the strange properties of the weapon. Modesta cursed at him in her own tongue, and he could not hold back the laughter, though every heave of it brought pain.

“You were never going to leave Espher alive.”

“Imbecile. You have lost. What are bruises to a lost arm?”

There was a drunken slur to his voice when he spoke, all the exhaustion of the Great Shade work and the loss of blood starting to catch up to him. He giggled out, “Lost? It’s right here.”

The stone was still in his other hand when he brought it around to smack her in the temple. Reaction speeds he couldn’t even conceive of had her snapping her head back even as she turned towards it, and once more her nose took the brunt of the blow. If it hadn’t been thoroughly broken before, it certainly was now. The force of the blow rolled her off him, all the rubble still atop her sloughing off as she fell. Her sword tore free of his wound as she went, and then the blood truly started to flow. Dropping his bloody rock and fumbling to stanch the outpouring of his vital fluids, Artemio scrambled away. He had not survived for this long by trusting to luck, and he had seen no indication that having her nose half torn from her face would be enough to stop Modesta.

She rolled to her feet, finding balance with the collapsed passage at her back.

Artemio had hoped that it would not come to this. That he would not have to make the decision that he was now making. It took some of his options away. Some of his better options, if truth be told. It brought him down to who he was before all his plots had come to fruition. But it was necessary.

He severed his connection to The Fire Below.

In an instant, his heartbeat lurched from the sluggish pace it had been pounding at to its usual staccato rhythm, then, seeing Modesta coming on at him, it hammered all the harder and all the faster. The sword. His sword was still on the ground. If he bent to grab at it, she would be upon him. If he didn’t she would cut him down. He didn’t even have a spare hand to be traded for the killing blow that was sure to come.

She rushed him, predictably enough, her mangled face barely recognizable through the blows he’d dealt it, the beauty she’d used so ably to circumvent the defenses of so many now gone, but her bright eyes still locked on him with murderous fury burning within them. Artemio did not know what to do.

But Saverio Gatto knew. He held out Artemio’s hand to catch the sword that Bisnonno Fiore had hauled from the rubble and, with a flicker of movement, knocked away the slash that would have taken Artemio’s throat.

It was a unique horror to those new to the use of combat shades to be trapped within their own body with no control over it, simply an observer to events, but in this moment Artemio relished it. He was able to relax and watch confusion and then horror play over the ambassador’s face as she realized that she was outclassed.

Her next three attacks came in swift succession, each perfectly performed and each parried aside with Art’s single working hand as though they were playful taps. When the riposte came, it sliced along her cheek, giving her a matching mark to Artemio’s own new scar. It seemed that Gatto was offended by her ill manners in so marking his host.

“How?” was all that she managed before his sword snapped out again. This she managed to parry and parry well, buying herself the vital moment to regain her footing and reset her guard, but with every motion she made, Gatto became more aware of the way she fought. When she made a testing thrust at his guard, it was slapped away contemptuously before it had even begun, the very tips of their swords brushing over each other before Gatto plunged, scraping down the length of the star-metal to slip past the weapon’s cross guard and stab into her elbow joint.

Hissing came from her was either surprise or pain, but most likely both, a sound more feline than human. Yet in that vital frozen moment when she was immobilized, Gatto did not strike. It took Artemio one awful moment to realize that he was back in control of arm, body, and blade all. And that moment was all she needed to recover.

The flat of her blade had been resting against the outside of his arm. The meteoric steel doing its wicked work to drive the shade of Gatto away.

It was Artemio’s turn to curse as he hauled back with none of his rider’s grace. Heel coming down on fallen masonry in his haste to get away from the accursed sword and his whole body slipping off balance before Gatto could regain mastery of him.

With a swift slash, he cut off the Agrantine advance, but the fear that had taken Modesta for those precious moments was gone now. Her brows drawn down and her mind calculating.

The next exchange of blows came and went so swiftly that Artemio could not keep track of every motion. So fast that they did not look planned to his eyes, more like chaotic flailing that nonetheless ended with their swords deflecting from each other again and again. Had he control of himself, he likely would have gasped at such a display, but Gatto was the one who drew breath for him now, and it came steady.

“You need dead men to fight for you, Volpe?”

Gatto smirked in response. Whatever Artemio might have said still caught in his own mind, unable to escape unless he asserted control once more. Which was doubtless what she was fishing for, given that the next flurry of strikes came almost as the last word left her lips.

She pressed in at him, using her superior size and weight to drive him back, not to the crumbling walls but along the passage. Gatto might have been too skilled to have been backed into a corner, but not to give ground when it seemed there was a nigh infinite supply. Amidst her attacks, Artemio was amazed to see Gatto still launching counters, so swift and abrupt that he was not even certain of what he was witnessing.

This was a fight for the ages—a clash between the greatest swordsman Espher had ever birthed and the pinnacle of the Agrantine art—and it was being played out not on some glorious battlefield but down amidst the instruments of misery and torture deep within the tormented earth. It was almost tragic that it would not be seen. Unremembered and unaccounted in the histories.

Unless Artemio survived it and committed it to paper.

Finding no luck with the blade alone, Modesta kicked out for his shins, seeking not so much to topple him as to distract. Gatto accepted the blow without flinching. If she’d hoped to break his discipline with a tap, she was disappointed.

Now that footwork had been called into question, however, Artemio realized that the usual smooth sweeping steps of the average fencer were markedly absent from the way Gatto fought. It was as though there were new bends in his legs that he had never before been privy to. With every step, his weight was shifted to the best advantage, every lunge committing the full weight of him to the blow, all his balance on the balls of his feet. Even with his feet placed, there was more motion in his stance than some fencers achieved in a whole bout. Yet that was not the extent of it; every time the battle called for it, he lifted and kicked out his foot into position, as though he were feeling his way across the battlefield for hidden dangers. It had caught Modesta by surprise too, the first time she’d tried to draw back a step and found that there was the firm but insistent presence of a boot pressing down on her dorsum.

She’d nearly died then, in that moment of realization. Overbalancing as what should have been a simple step out of reach turned into a struggle that drew her light-footed attacker along with her, regaining the inch she’d gained.

Even as their blades clashed about their heads, their legs moved, knees twisting to press in at the side of the other’s joints, feet lashing and jerking around, trying to win control. It was for nothing. The two of them were too well matched. Modesta and Gatto. Not Modesta and Artemio.

It was all too apparent that she had realized it too when she used their interlocking legs as an excuse to press the flat of her blade against his and try to push it back into him. If it were just the two of them, Artemio had no doubt she might have overbalanced him like that, but Gatto was of course too seasoned for such a simple trick. Right up until the moment that she twisted to lay the flat of the metal against his shoulder, abandoning any hope of winning the clash.

Gatto fled his body, and strength went with the shade.

What had been a gentle push to the better fighter now drove Artemio staggering back, the feet that had been held at bay with tensions he could not hope to emulate now hooked at his heels, sending him sprawling. Modesta had no intention of letting Gatto come back. Even as Art fell, she rode him down with a knee jammed between his legs and the flat of their swords still pressed between them. On landing, momentum was transferred, and Art’s singing voice went from tenor to coloratura soprano. He did not vomit directly into her face, but that was only because in all of the excitement of the coronation he had missed his breakfast. Not that her face was insufficiently nauseating all on its own now. The dangling remains of the nose and the cavity revealed behind it, bubbling with blood and snot dominated what had once been a beautiful face. Now he could barely tear his eyes away from it to look into her eyes, burning with rage.

“Weak.”

She ground her knee up into him again, drawing out a weak wheeze of agony. She leaned in close and hissed into his ear. “Pathetic.”

He opened his mouth to give answer, found that air would not come, and then lunged up. Pinned as he was, he could not reach her throat, but his teeth closed on an ear. Gristle ground between his teeth, and he gnawed and tore. She screamed as she realized what he was doing, girlish in a way that seemed entirely unnatural for her. Abandoning her position, she tried to yank her head away, but in so doing parted the ear in his mouth from the ear on her head.

The wailing reached a new crescendo as Artemio used that moment of pain and confusion to roll them over. Until his was the weight bearing down on her. His body pinning their weapons between them.

With a roar that he didn’t know he had in him, he reared back once more and brought his head down into her ruined face.

All at once, the struggling and the screaming was over. His ears rang from the impact, but she did not move. He drew an unsteady breath, then pushed himself up off her. That movement, in conjunction with what had happened between his legs, nearly set him retching all over again.

That would have been the ideal opportunity for her to murder him if she were still conscious. So, he was forced to acknowledge that despite everything, he had actually won. Stumbling back to her, he hooked a foot under her sword and tossed it a good distance away, still heaving for breath. It felt terribly cold, even through the leather wrapped around the hilt and the leather of his boot, but getting it out of her hands mattered more than his comfort.

The very moment that it parted contact with his hand, Gatto rushed back in. The rapier in his hand was suddenly in a loose grip, instead of the death grip he had been using to ensure he did not drop it. The tip trailed up the length of the ambassador until it rested on the bare skin where he’d torn the front of her robes apart. A gentle touch with the tip did not stir her, so Gatto moved it down to hover over her heart.

“No.”

Gatto rebelled; he strained against the contract. Against Artemio’s control. If the shade had been screaming in his mind, it would have been less shocking than the soft speech he heard whispered from behind his ear. She was an enemy. She was relentless and skilled. It was madness to leave her alive at their heels.

“She is done.”

She would never be done. If she survived this place, she would haunt his every step for the rest of his life; he was a fool to think otherwise. No warrior had her prowess without an ego to match, and no ego so towering could tolerate being laid low like this. Why was he willing to run the risk?

The tip of the blade traced down the unconscious woman’s sternum even as Artemio struggled to assert control. Was it because she was a woman? It wasn’t misplaced chivalry, or he would not have been willing to do all that he had to survive. Perhaps it was lust. It wasn’t love, but for the most part the shades that dwelled within him had no knowledge of the workings of the blood and other humors, only the mind.

“That is not…” He yanked his hand back, rapier tip leaving a scratch across the underside of her breast as it withdrew. A mark above her heart. “I will not kill to sate your bloodlust. You belong to me. You obey me. Not the other way around.”

At that, Gatto seemed to recede back into the recesses of Artemio’s mind without further prompting, leaving him to confront the woman on the floor alone.

Even now, there was a certain majesty to her. Face ruined, splendor tattered, all her airs and graces pummeled away. For all that he could not allow Gatto to kill her, it was invariably the correct course. This would be a knife in his back if he did not deal with it now.

Though he ached and he creaked, he lowered himself down onto his haunches to press his fingers into the side of her neck, where blood beat in time to heart.

Around them, the tunnel shook. The structure of these dungeons had always been decrepit and honeycombed, but now it was destabilized. A shower of fragments rattled down onto Artemio’s back as he jerked away from the crack overhead.

The Fire Below stirred, still sleeping but troubled by Art’s tender ministrations. It bucked and twisted beneath the world, and the world bucked and twisted in answer.

What had been a crack became a crevasse with an awful lurch. The ground on which Artemio stood, tilted. His cry of dismay at the chaos he’d wrought was drowned out in the deafening crack of stone. If Modesta lived, then the earth meant to swallow her down. If she was dead, then this seemed as fitting a burial as she might have earned. Either way, Art had no intention of dying with her.

With a leap, he made it onto the stairs, and with a groan of exhaustion, he made his way back up towards the light. Hoping that enough of the palace still stood to make it worth taking.

21 - Journey’s End
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

The steppes gave way. It had been a long time coming, with more and more dark stone shining through the scrub grass as they came closer and closer to the point when the myriad tribes of the caravan would disperse. Many had already departed, the lion’s share, if Orsina’s count was right, but there was never a shortage of glowering eyes upon her. Both in the faces of what used to be humans and set in the feathered and scaled faces of the dragon-kin.

Her erstwhile companion had left her alone for many days after the attack of the shades. Ostensibly angry with her for failing to magically stop them from slaughtering their way through the campsite, but probably just as much afraid to be caught in her company after his public display of trust in her. She had not seen any of these savages slaughtering one another over petty disputes, but she was coming to suspect that offering aid to her went beyond the range of petty disputes and into outright treason in the eyes of some of these dragon-lords.

The vast majority of them looked upon her as if she were evil incarnate, and even those who didn’t refused to grant her even a word. She felt as though she was slowly losing her mind in her isolation, and the loathsome bucket to which she had to subject herself each day soon became a conversational partner. Not one with a lot to say, but it was full of markedly less excrement than most of the people she’d spoken to in Covotana.

When he finally returned to the side of her cage, it was in the dead of night. He was solemn. “I had friends in this camp. People that I think you would have been friends with too, if circumstances were different. Some are dead, the rest are mourning.”

“I am sorry, I truly am.” She had not troubled to turn and face him. What good would it do to look upon his sorrow as well as see it. “But there was nothing I could do, short of calling on my own shades and going off to fight them.”

“You could have done this?”

She risked a glance back. He was little more than a shadow in the embers of the campfires. “I would have tried to, if there weren’t spears being pointed at me.”

“It does not matter now. It is done.” He slumped down beside the cage, not with the casual poise he usually had, but with what looked to be exhaustion. “We thought… I thought that in Espher, the people could control shades. Tame them.”

“Some of them, weaker ones, not…” She struggled to find an explanation for something she barely grasped herself. It was a lie to say only the weak shades could be bound, because within her were already mighty shades, and she had scarcely started down this path at all. “It is like your dragons. We find some that we can bond with, but we cannot bond with all of them, and it is only through the bond that we exert our control.”

“We do not control our dragons. We are… I do not know the Espher word.” There was a lull in which Orsina could distantly hear the steady breathing of the dragon left to stand guard over her. “Kindred? Our minds are one. We want the same things.”

“So you want to roast and eat people alive?” She needed to find some levity in all of this misery, but her stumbling attempt at a joke fell flat.

“Personally? Not so much.” She could hear the smile when he spoke. “But when it comes to the big things, our minds are united. To be otherwise would be… it would go against the nature of our bond. It would be… painful.”

“What luck that you never disagree then,” she scoffed. “My shades disagree incessantly, and I am perpetually struggling to keep them under control so that they don’t drink the life out of me from the inside out.”

There was another pause, another stretched-out moment as the camp lay restful about them, then finally he said, “You joke.”

“I wish it were a joke. That’s what it means to be Shadebound, you struggle for your life, and then someday, you fail and they take you and you’re gone.” The words came out far more bitter than she’d meant them to. With everything that had happened in her life, there had never been time to pause, to think, since she’d arrived at Septombra. Every day had been a wild rush to the next crisis. Only now, locked up like an animal, had she had even a moment for self-reflection. She did not like what she saw in that reflection.

“I saw you, you know. In the battle. I saw you in the sky, fighting dragons. I have never seen anything like that. In all my years.” Her companion let out a long sigh. “It convinced me that you were what they feared you were. Seeing you with such control over everything. But now you say you have no control. That you struggle with and fight your own bondmates. And still you did all of that? Despite them? If you tell this truthful, then you are even more frightening than I thought you were.”

Orsina snorted. “Ah yes, what could be more terrifying than someone with no control over themselves.”

“To do all that and to fight inside too, it is… so much.”

“If it is any help in humanizing me, I have been feeling like a trampled corpse since then.”

“Hah.” He shifted a little closer, so that they could speak more softly without being overheard. “And your new keeper?”

“She has been as gentle as I could have hoped for. Barring the times that she is tying me up and throwing me around.”

“You are still a prisoner.” There was little apology in his voice.

“I don’t need reminding.”

It seemed for a time that was the end of their conversation, but he still did not depart. Eventually she turned and caught a glimpse of eyeshine from amidst the shadow of his face. He was watching her. All this time, he was watching her. “Among us, some said you were responsible for the shades.”

“I’ve already told you…”

He cut off her denials swiftly. “I am not one of them. I know why they came. The old stones. We should never have made camp there. Anywhere people have lived there are ghosts. It is why…”

She had already come to this conclusion. “You’re nomadic.”

His breath came in a huff that might have been a laugh. “It is why it was a bad choice from Emir. It helped get you away from him.”

She wasn’t sure where the conversation was going. The fact that he felt it necessary to remind her of the kindness he’d done felt suspicious. “I feel I’ve already thanked you for that.”

He shifted topic again. “What you did, in the battle. I have never seen a necromancer do those things.”

“Well, most of us have a little too much self-preservation.”

Another huff of laughter. “Not many would rush to fight dragons.”

“I don’t mean that, I mean… calling shades, it costs us. It ages us. I dread to think how I look after all of that.” In truth, she’d seen only glimpses of herself reflected in the bucket of water each day brought her. She had looked haggard, but she wasn’t certain it was not her age but her treatment.

“Still very pretty,” he piped up. “For a human.”

“Hah. Not your type?”

There was something like pity in his voice when he told her, “A little too young, I think.”

They spoke a little longer that night, but that little conversation was spread out across the hours. Long bouts of silence as they listened to the night around them, interspersed with a few words here and there, like punctuation of the passing time. It was the same each time he found his way back to her.

And so the days and nights had passed, bound and carried on dragon-back, then cast into the same cage, hastily assembled each night. She ate little, drank little, had little opportunity to do much more than either of those things. The dust of the road had hardened now into something like a crust upon her clothes, and she longed for a shower to slough it off, even though she knew she’d suffer in the cold afterwards.

Yet in the dead of night, he came to her with his little questions, little prompts, sharing stories of his shamed mother and how the wyvern he rode had acted out that day, chasing hares across the field when they were meant to be scouting quietly for larger prey. It was amazing just how little it took to win her trust and affection.

So it was that when they walked off the grass and onto the obsidian-dark soil, it was to him that she looked for comfort and guidance.

“Welcome to Sorumluluk Araz. Here we call home, here you meet your fate.”

This past day, she had not been set upon a dragon’s back. It seemed that they did not want her to see what was up ahead anymore, and the scouting that those great beasts were usually consistent about had ceased to be necessary in their own territories. As such, she had been walking for the first time since her capture, an aslinda-dragon tailing behind her like a pet puppy. Although puppies were probably less inclined to arson at the slightest provocation.

“Not the most hospitable-looking place, is it?”

“It is hot and dry, as the dragons like it.”

There could be no denying it. As they had marched northwards, the chill of the caldo season had been ever abating, and now it felt like nothing so much as a spring day in Sheepshank. If her legs had not been aflame from the sudden exercise after so long idle, she might have even been enjoying the breeze. Offhand, she mentioned, “You would think that creatures full of fire would prefer somewhere cooler.”

“They make fire, they are not…” He paused mid-stride to glance across at her and the little smile playing out over her features despite the sweat running down her. “You know this. You joke.”

“I do joke, yes.” She glanced around at the other Arazi, plodding along beside them with the same fixed glowers. “Although not very well judging by all the stern expressions.”

“Forgive them.” He smirked. “It is not often my people are here. We have vast territories, stretching from one ocean to the other, all needing protection and a dragon’s watchful eye.”

There was a smell like rotten eggs on the air. The kind of thing that she’d only before smelled in the depths of the House of Seven Shadows when volcanic water was drawn. Looking down at the soil at her feet, she came to wonder how much of it was actually soil and how much ash. “So, what, you only come back for feast days?”

He looked around at his compatriots with a sad smile. “Many of this caravan have never seen Sorumluluk at all. It is a story to them. Fabled birthplace of our kind.”

Orsina’s brows furrowed as she tried to put the pieces of the story together. “I thought your fabled birthplace had glaciers.”

“That is where Konus came from. Not the rest of the bonded. Much farther north, where it turns from hot to cold again.” He looked off as though he might see it up ahead, rather than simply staring at the backside of the thunder lizard plodding along in front of them. “Where the land becomes ice, and the earth hard as stone.”

“So, what I’m hearing is that you have a whole lot of land.”

He did not seem to take any pride in it, nor did he find her comment amusing. “Too much, I say. We stretch too far.”

She shrugged her shoulders, relishing the freedom of movement. It had been so long since a day passed that was not spent at least partially in bondage. If it hadn’t been for the company, she probably would have been waving her arms around. Possibly dancing. “There’s plenty of people always fighting one another for more land. Maybe you could make a gift of them.”

“Nobody could survive without us.” His scowl deepened. “Do we gift riders and dragons into slavery too?”

She snorted at all the drama he insisted on interjecting. “I am fairly certain that people manage just fine without dragons elsewhere in the world.”

He glanced at her sideways. No humor in his voice at all when he said, “They do not.”

They plodded on until the last few tiny patches of grass were gone and only the crunching black dirt beneath them could be seen. In the sky above, curling clouds drifted slowly past them. Beyond that, she could see nothing else.

Just trying to keep the conversation going, she said, “We don’t have dragons in Espher.”

“You have necromancers.”

“We don’t need them though.” She tried not to sound too condescending, but it was like having to tell little children that fairy tales weren’t true. “It isn’t like there are shades rampaging everywhere the Shadebound aren’t.”

“Because you necromancers cull the strongest of them. Keep the herd weak.” He was still striding along beside her, and there was no real irritation creeping into his voice, but she couldn’t shake the worry that pushing too hard was going to leave her stranded without a guide of any sort.

Still, she couldn’t let it pass. Not when it was so blatantly false. “I’m fairly certain I’d notice that happening too.”

“Shades do not fade away, they linger forever. One taken a hundred years before you were born is gone. One today is gone. Their numbers cannot swell.”

She had been just about to accuse him of grossly overstating the dangers of shades when she recalled just how much of the caravan lay burned and dead in their wake. It seemed like a very good time to change the subject. “So tell me more about this… aromatic place. What are the sights that we simply have to see while visiting?”

A smile spread over his face, and she could tell that she’d chosen her distraction well. “You will see the Atesin Yuzugu. The deep fire where the burned god sleeps.”

“I wasn’t aware Arazi were religious.”

“We were, then we burned our god.” He chuckled. “Now, not so much.”

She tried to catch onto that same buoyant mood. “I’d imagine that might take a little bit of the shine off worship.”

“Some of the old ones still give offerings, but it is not how it was.” He trailed off a little towards the end.

Taking a risk she had not dared through all of her captivity, she lay a hand on his arm. Beneath the soft surface layer, she could feel scales shift. “You don’t seem terribly happy about that.”

“It is a sad thing,” He looked down at her hand on his arm but made no motion to remove it. “To kill your god.”

She carefully withdrew it on her own. Then clapped her hands together to rid herself of the urge to wipe the scaly sensation away. “So other than this, this yuzuzu, what else is there to see?”

“The aeries where the dragons nest. The Renk Pazari, where we trade.” He counted them off on his fingers, a grin beginning to form. “The boiling sea. Really more of a lake. Good water for your skin.”

She laughed. “Why do I suspect that I won’t be getting much time for swimming?”

His smile became softer. “Because we take you to the Atesin Yuzugu to be judged by the elders and Konus.”

“The big man himself.” She forced more levity, even though just thinking of her near future filled her with dread. “I suppose that if he says I’m all right I get to go home?”

“No.” It was not her usual companion who answered, but the Arazi woman who had been carrying her over the past few days. This was the most she had said in all of their time together. The giantess towered over both Orsina and the man that walked with her. Bulkier than any man in Espher by a long shot, and she included those few mongrel men she’d met in that comparison. Horns seemed to grow up out of the woman’s collarbones, trailing back up over her scaled shoulders.

“No.” Orsina’s shoulders slumped. “Of course not. So, my potential futures are death or…”

Her usual conversational partner stepped back in, after he was certain the aslinda-dragon rider had nothing more to say. “Imprisonment.”

There was no point in dwelling upon such things and making herself miserable. “Well, that hardly sounds pleasant, but I suppose it beats dying.”

“It does not.” His voice would never be so low as Kagan’s, but sometimes it dipped into that same bass range, where she could feel it in her bones as much as hear it with her ears. “You will be buried under the mountain, never to see the sky again. It is… it is the worst thing.”

“I thought I was the worst thing.”

It was a poor attempt at levity, but he did try to give her a sympathetic smile that looked markedly more like a grimace. “There is no punishment more cruel.”

“Then I’m glad to be held captive by your people, because I’m fairly certain that back home they’ve got some considerably more cruel ones involving sharp things and hot pokers.”

He blinked in surprise. “You joke, again.”

“Well, yes. Not about the pokers, but about preferring to be your captive.”

All of the usual confidence that spilled out of him when they met under cover of darkness seemed to be missing today. Confusion played over his features. She wondered if this had been happening all along, but it had been too dark for her to see. “Yet you did not run. You did not fight. All of this way, you could have used your power, freed yourself. Why didn’t you?”

She wasn’t ready to share the truth, that channeling her shades might very well have opened her up to being utterly destroyed by them. Just thinking about it came dangerously close to the barrier she’d built in her mind. That pain… that torment, like being a battleground littered with corpses… she never wished to experience that again. Never. Even if the alternative was death or imprisonment beneath the earth itself. “Perhaps I’m trusting in the wisdom of your elders. Once they meet me, they’ll see I’m not what they’re frightened of.”

“You are a dragon-slayer.” Both of them had been tiptoeing around that point of contention this whole time, but it had been apparent from the beginning that this was the main reason she was so loathed by the other Arazi. Not fear of what she might be, but the truth of what she was. “There is no happy end to this for you.”

“Then I suppose…” She was briefly at a loss for words. To contemplate the real reason that she would not call on her shades was to acknowledge the divide in her own mind, the raging war that had been carrying on among all parties trapped within her soul the last time she had been there. To contemplate it too closely would be to peer beyond that barrier, to welcome the things that were trapped there to come on through. The Arazi might have feared imprisonment more than death, but even that had to be better than being held captive and useless within your own body, within your own mind. To be completely overrun by the things that were meant to serve you. It took all of her will to set the thought aside, to search for some other answer that was still true, even if it wasn’t the full immensity of the horror she faced. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone else.”

His jaw dropped. “What? You were the terror of the battlefield. How can it be that…”

“I didn’t want to be.” That truth slipped out all too easily. Back in Covotana when she had fought the dragons, it was because she felt that there was no other option, but by the time they reached the battlefield, her resolve had already begun to waver. Even remembering this was difficult, dangerous territory bordering on that blank expanse of her mind that she could not touch upon. “I didn’t want to fight, I was only there because your people… I’d rather everything was peaceful. I’d rather we could all live quiet lives, and if I call my shades… I don’t know what will happen.”

The Arazi leaned in closer. “The dragon will breathe fire on you.”

“I don’t mean…” She glanced over to spot the grin on his face. It took a concerted effort not to slap it off.

“I make jokes now.”

Her lips thinned as she flatly replied. “Hilarious.”

“Lighting the mood.” He was still grinning, and despite herself, Orsina felt the beginning of a smile tug at her cheeks too.

“Lightening.”

“Yes.” His grin spread wider. “That too.”

“Will you come visit me after I’m imprisoned forever?”

“No,” he said with the same fixed smile.

“Charming.” She snorted out a laugh.

The remainder of the day, they plodded on, deeper and deeper into the heartland of the Arazi. The curling wisps of cloud in the blue sky above become dark plumes before long, and it did not take a scholar to realize that they were following that smoke back to its source. To whatever volcano had blighted this land and made it the barren wasteland they now traveled.

Listening to the Arazi for all of this time had given Orsina very little of their language, and even those parts she could parse seemed to shift from day to day, as her assumptions about the meaning of one sound or another were shattered by a whole new word or phrase that ran contrary to what she thought she’d pieced together. Atesin Yuzugu had several sounds that she had heard more than a few times, but she could not discern what they meant in conjunction with one another. Something to do with fire was about all that she could work out. But so much of the Arazi language seemed to revolve around their various words for fire with different inflections that for all she knew, it could have meant anything at all.

It was only when at last the smooth horizon began to show signs of sloping, and the sun was dipping down towards the east, that some hint as to the meaning of the words became apparent. Not one volcano, but several.

Darkness fell, and no stars came out to greet them. The thick sulfurous clouds blotted out any light from above but reflected the dull orange glow of the volcanoes. Like a guiding light bringing the Arazi home.

Though all were tired, there was no talk of making camp, and if anything, their pace quickened as the glow up ahead grew brighter. The deep fire, they called it. She had not heard the Arazi word for it, only her companion’s translation, but she could grasp the distinction. The sun was one fire, the dragons another, and this was a third. The kind that dwelled in the heart of the world. She could safely recall The Fire Below and the other Great Shades of Septombra without delving into dangerous territory. She wondered if the Arazi’s burned god would answer if she opened herself up to it.

The door in her soul was on the far side of the war zone, so there was no possibility that she might go looking. Given how overwhelming the presence of The Fire Below had been, she probably wouldn’t have wanted to take her chances anyway. She had enough nightmares living inside her that the possibility of inviting another was supremely unappealing.

In the dark of the night, at so great a distance, the hulking shape rising up from the horizon made no sense to Orsina. Not the volcano she had expected, nor the chain of them, running like a ridge of mountains. They were gathered like a copse of bushes, with the open plain stretching out in every direction around them. A blister on the skin of this desert of ash.

As they came in closer and closer, more of the caravan peeled away, until only the aslinda-dragons and their riders remained by her side. Them and her constant companion, who she feared would be receiving no shortage of reprimands as a result of his ongoing company. She tried to whisper to him that he could leave, but he shrugged his shoulders and announced, “We are Arazi, we go as we please. It pleases me to walk beside you this last time you are under the sky.”

She looked up then and saw the swirling maelstrom overhead. Smoke and flame, with vast shapes drifting between the ground and the chaos above. Dragons circled. More dragons than she had ever seen, more even than had taken the field in the battle she dared not think of. But soaring so high that she could scarcely make them out as more than flitting shadows, like carrion crows lingering over the burning corpse of this land. Yet for all of this alien majesty, of the sky she could see no sign at all. “I missed it. My last look.”

“Then hope they let you die. At least then you will be laid out for sky burial.”

Before she could open her mouth to ask what that even meant, the dragon at her heels huffed out a cloud of venom, the acrid smell of it coating her, stinging her eyes even though it had not touched them. She cast a furious glance back, but could not understand the expression on the vast serpent’s face any better now than she had the first time she looked upon one. It was only by jerking her head around and seeing the tear running down the rider’s face that she grasped that she was not the only one feeling things in this moment. The towering giant of a woman who had spent nigh on a week manhandling her laid a hand on Orsina’s shoulder now and tears shimmered in her golden eyes.

“You will die, slayer. Do not fear.”

It was hard not to take such a comment personally, until Orsina realized that it was meant to be a comfort. She reached up to awkwardly pat at the woman’s clawed grasp on her with her own bound hands. Then with that moment of weakness over, they parted ways, her guard mounting the dragon behind them with a bounding leap.

There was a quiet moment before Orsina leaned close to her constant companion and asked softly, “Aren’t they scared I’m going to run anymore?”

He snorted and jerked his chin up. “How many dragons do you think are above you?”

She turned her gaze back to the dark maelstrom above. Trying to comprehend all that she was glimpsing there in the dull red glow, but after only a moment she had to admit, “I lost count.”

With a nod forward, her gaze was drawn into the hollow between the circle of volcanoes. It seemed like madness that anyone would build there, that anyone would even dare to stand amidst such inevitable destruction, but by torchlight and campfire and the dull blaze of the mountains themselves, she could make out something like a town nestled in the bosom of annihilation. Long strings of incongruously bright-colored flags fluttering over the grey drab. Music playing.

“How many of our warriors do you think are ahead?”

In all honesty, it looked like an overturned anthill, with the vast mountainous protrusions being the remainder. So many people swarmed not only down amidst the tents and noise, but all the way up the hillsides that Orsina began to suspect that there were as many dwelling there as could be found in Covotana, and that was not even accounting for the vast prides of greater wyverns and lesser dragons that would not fit into the makeshift city itself.

“I couldn’t guess.”

“If you run, they will catch you.” He shrugged his shoulders as if that meant the matter was settled.

Orsina dragged her eyes away from the strange to look upon the familiar. “Would you catch me if I ran?”

For the longest moment, he lingered, until Orsina felt sure that the dragon stomping along behind them would trample him, but finally he strode forward again, his mind made up. “I would not.”

Tears pricked at Orsina’s eyes at this unexpected kindness, and for a while, she didn’t know what to say at all. Finally, she settled upon something entirely inadequate for the promise he had just made her. But the only thing that she had to give was, “Thank you.”

He nodded solemnly. Then spoiled it all by adding, “I would let you run. It is in the dragon’s blood to hunt. If you run, one will hunt you. Kill you. It would be kinder.”

The watery sensation that had taken her before, leading to leaking from the eyes and a softening of the heart, was reversed. That same feeling froze inside her, crystallized into something sharp and tearing. “Less an offer to help me escape and more another dire warning about how awful my punishment is going to be. Wonderful. Thanks so much.”

“I warned you already.” He sighed. “There is no end to this in which you live, dragon-slayer.”

“Orsina.” Her hackles were up now, and she could not back down, even if she wanted to. If an argument destroyed whatever relationship they’d managed to forge from opposite sides of her cage, then she no longer had any reason to cling to it. He had written her off for dead already; it should have come as no surprise to him when the dead of Espher lashed out. “My name is Orsina. You would think that after all of this time, you might have learned it.”

He rounded on her then, anger writ across his features. Rising in response to her own. Like a child, put out that others refuse to play nice and be bullied. “And what is my name, Orsina?”

“Every time it seems like you’re going to tell me, you switch subjects,” she snarled. “I have to assume it is Allesandro the Joke or something equally shameful.”

He held up his hand, and the whole procession of dragons and warriors halted. Orsina almost tripped over her own feet before she realized what had happened. It was as though the land beneath them had been rolling along at a steady pace, with the bodies encircling her as the only landmarks she had for guidance, and now she had taken a step out of order. She could not understand how he done this, or why, until she spun to face him, and saw that the anger had faded away to a strange new mask that she did not recognize. Something like the nobles of Espher strove to wear.

“I am Konus Atesli.” He spoke softly, but in the sudden silence of stilled bodies, it felt almost deafening. “Konus the Inferno.”

She cast a glance around and saw not a single one of the Arazi looking their way. If this was a joke, it had been very well rehearsed. “Very funny.”

“Do you see me laugh, Orsina?” His voice had changed. It sounded imperious now. As though he were pretending to be this leader of men and dragons. Even his posture changed, the hunched shoulders of a wyvern-rider slipping back, his whole spine straightening until he was taller than her for the first time. “Do you hear any joke in my words?”

“You’re Konus? The Konus? Leader of all the Arazi?” It sounded ridiculous. This was the lowly nobody who’d fetched her water and food. The man who’d looked aside bashfully when she had to use the loathsome bucket. The one who’d put a word into the right ear so that her guard was changed. He was her only friend among these strange alien savages. He couldn’t be Konus. He couldn’t. She couldn’t accept it.

“We are not soft like your Espher men. Our kings do not hide at home while wars are won. We march at the head of our armies. You find us in the heart of battle.” When he reached out and took her arm to lead her on, the whole army around them moved in lockstep. Every motion he made rippling out to be mimicked by them. Every step he made their step.

“This isn’t funny.” She almost stumbled, and only the grip he had on her arm kept her from dropping. It was a grip like steel. “You… you ride on a little wyvern. How could you do that if you were not bonded?”

His wyvern, the stunted little thing with the stubs for wings, was somewhere out there in the pack. She wanted to see it now. To prove to herself that it was his. She couldn’t feel the bond between them any more than he could feel the wrath of her bound shades, but she had been so certain of it. “How did you ride on aslinda-back? Because the rider willed it.”

Still, she scrambled for another explanation. “You’re too small. Konus would be much bigger. He’s bound to a true dragon. He’d be as huge as the other dragon-lords.”

“The other dragon-lords were bonded when there was food. Times of plenty.” Something like a smile played over his lips, as though he had not expected her to comment on his stature. As though it had been a very long time since anyone pointed it out. “I am small because I was not fed. What else would drive a hunter out onto the ice?”

She tugged her arm free of him, and he let her go, even though just the briefest brush with his true strength told her that if he had wanted to keep his grip on her, there would have been no breaking it.

Given no other option, she fell back into step beside him. Her mind whirring with a million questions, but none so pressing as proving that he could not be who he said he was. Yet even she had to admit that she was scraping the bottom of the barrel when she asked, “Why would Konus spend his time with me?”

“You did not listen.” His voice rose now, echoing out through the gathered troops, straightening their backs and lighting fire in their eyes. “The Olulerin Kral is the end of all things. It is the purpose of the Arazi to slay it. Nothing matters more.”

There could be no denying it anymore. Even as he inspired all his little minions to push their shoulders back and strut, Orsina felt all the exhaustion of the past few days catching up to her, and she slumped. “You’re him.”

“I am.”

“I thought…” She was genuinely surprised to find her eyes prickling. She’d thought that she was past this kind of thing. After facing off with all the maddeningly pretentious nobility of Espher, she would never have suspected that she’d have fallen so easily for someone’s dubious charms. “I thought you were my friend.”

To her immense surprise, some part of the man that he had been pretending to be was still present. He looked genuinely wounded by her words, and when he gave answer, it was with sorrow thick on his tongue. “Among the Arazi, there is no better friend to have.”

“And your mother?”

Undisputed ruler of the Arazi, he may have been. Master of dragons and dragon-lords and an empire spanning from ocean to ocean, but he still snorted with surprised laughter when she said that. “She was ashamed of my manners, but that was long ago.”

Her own laughter was more bitter. “I’m not sure they’ve improved much.”

Given the opportunity to apologize, he chose to straighten his back once more and stare ahead. “People forgive more when you are strong.”

“They forgive you for pretending to be someone else and lying for weeks?”

“We were never going to be anything but enemies.” Once more, there was unexpected sadness in his voice, as if he really had developed some affection with her, and the whole thing hadn’t just been some prolonged interrogation. Even now, he was trying to manipulate her into trusting him further. “You can’t lie to an enemy.”

The words were what Orsina had expected from him, but the tone was not. She was not going to let him manipulate her again. She wasn’t going to let him twist her into dropping the subject, just so that she could go on using him as a source of information. There was no point. They were here now. The time when his help might have saved her was long past. If he thought she was going to fade quietly like some wilting flower, he would be sorely disappointed. “Why tell me now? To gloat?”

He crossed his arms across his stomach and did not even try to meet her eye. “Because I do not hate you, Orsina. Even if you’re my enemy. I wanted you to know me. Before the end.”

Hope had been in short supply throughout this journey. Orsina already knew the penalty for slaying a dragon, hadn’t even dared to dream at what horrors would be inflicted upon her for the crime of being whatever they imagined her to be. Yet through it all, she had still harbored some faint notion that the wisest among the Arazi would look upon her and realize that she was just a person who had been put into an impossible position. She had hoped that at least one of them might have taken the time to speak with her, to know her, so that they did not condemn a young girl to death over nothing more than accidents of fate. And now, now she realized that the tiny ember of hope that still burned within her was flaring to life.

“There doesn’t need to be an end. You know me, I’ve never been anything less than honest with you, and you’ve seen me every day. You know that I’m not powerful or dangerous. I’m not the monster your people fear.”

He nodded at that, solemn still, and she felt her hope rising to a crescendo. “I do know you.”

“Then you know that…”

He cut her off before she could begin. Not finished speaking, and not used to interruptions. “If you are not already the Olulerin Kral, then you may become it. Already you are a slayer, an abomination.”

The weight of despair was easily the match of the hope that had been lifting her up. It hit her like a physical blow, almost dragging her to her knees. On the far side of the barrier she was still struggling to hold steady, she could feel her shades rearing up, flinging themselves bodily against her restraint. She could not tell which ones had made it so far, which ones were fighting for dominance over her and which were still embroiled in the battle among themselves. If she could have reached in and touched those memories, she might have tapped all that she’d learned from the Owl shade in the library, understand some part of where her mistake was made and how it had turned, ever so briefly, into the font of her strength. But like so much else, it was lost to her.

All that managed to slip through the barrier when the shades felt her distress was an overwhelming wave of anger. “I’m no different from any other Shadebound!”

“Then they must all be wiped out.”

If he had answered with anger in kind, then she could have gone on, enraged, fighting with him, to distract from the awful pit that had opened up in her gut, but instead there was only that solemn proclamation, made with no passion whatsoever. He had just announced that he was going to commit genocide with all the excitement of a merchant haggling over price.

It left her gobsmacked yet again. “What?”

He scoffed. “We did not know of you when we marched on Espher. We sought to purge the land. You presented yourself to us like a gift.”

Orsina’s brow furrowed. “But you sent an ambassador, you said…”

“I lied.” He cut her off sharply. “If the gates had been opened, we would have come through with spears ready.”

Once more, she lost the rhythm of their march. She supposed that he had been lying this whole time, about who he was, what he was, but it was still a shock to hear him say it outright. Turning her head away from him, she looked to the other Arazi around her, to see how they were taking the news that their leader had no respect for the most basic rules of war, but none of them seemed even a little surprised.

Worse still, she had been so intent upon the revelations and arguments that she had not noticed that they were now past the parting waves of wyverns and into the embrace of the mountains. Flags and streamers fluttered on strings overhead, like feast day bunting but ashen-edged from long exposure to this desolate place. Hide tents rose up all about their path, but it was apparent from the heaped ashes creeping up their sides that they too had been left in place for far too long. As though people who knew nothing of settling in one place had made an attempt to build permanence out of their temporary homes. They had no talent for it.

Tents that would have survived the test of ages were tattered and beaten by the weather here, the bone frames used to keep them up bowing with their constant weight. Black spots marred most of the upper halves of the tents, where sparks had come raining down from above. It made what should have been a beautiful and bright place forlorn.

Trying not to gawk like a village girl come to the city for the first time, Orsina turned her attention back to Konus. “You’re mad.”

The great dragon still trailed behind them, and all of the people of this makeshift town had to scurry to part and to haul the movable walls wide enough that it could proceed through. It was apparent that true dragons did not mingle down here with their lesser kin. Even more apparent was the terror this one was spreading. Even the wyverns and terror-birds that strolled among the Arazi fled in flurries of feathers and croaks at its approach When they marched for war, there had been none of this. Every Arazi knew their place. But here in their version of civilization, it seemed to be very different.

Dragging her eyes away from all the chaos, Orsina met Konus’s gaze as he spoke. “The end of all life, or the end of necromancers. It was not even a choice.”

There was no way she could let it pass. Her fury flared up again. Someone’s fury at least, hers or her shades’. “And who says it is your choice to make? Why are you so certain this monster of yours is ever going to even exist?!”

That steady stare drew her in. Even in the face of her anger, there was nothing there but perfect calm. “Because I have seen the end of all things.”

It was too mad to bear. All of this time she hadn’t even realized that she was in the company of a madman, or that all of the Arazi nation was founded on the principle of his insanity. “Because you can see the future.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m only a man.” Orsina let a little breath of relief slip out at that admission. “My dragon can.”

22 - Chasing Ghosts
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

As the steppes ran out, the branching trails became harder and harder to distinguish. The true dragons flew, of course, and left no tracks behind, but there was no shortage of bones from their scavenging. The thunder lizards and other titanic beasts that walked the earth had parted ways from the northward trail, leaving Harmony certain that they had lost Orsina forever, but Kagan was insistent now that he knew where she was being taken.

It seemed that for an itinerant people, the Arazi did have someplace they called home, where they would take a prisoner like Orsina if they had her. Kagan was a little vague on where exactly that might have been, given the centuries since he had last been there, but he did feel sure that it was closer to due north of the steppes than otherwise, and so when they took their rest at night, sleeping in shifts to defend against predation by the native beasts of this wild place, he had marked the position of the stars and scratched that northward direction into the soil by their campfire to keep them right.

Day and night had blurred together for Harmony somewhere during the forced march north. After she’d proven her worth to Kagan, it had only become harder. He had seen how far she was willing to push herself, so he no longer shortened his stride or their days. It became something like a fugue, putting one foot in front of the other, while trying to keep an eye on the horizon in every direction, while trying to keep her mind completely clear of all emotions, while trying to think ahead to what they would find when they caught up to Orsina.

From what little she’d managed to wheedle out of Kagan, the Arazi enslaved anyone that they took prisoner, setting them to work immediately in whatever area the individual specialized. Given the grave cost of Orsina using her gifts, Harmony worried immensely about what state she’d be in by the time they arrived if the Arazi had been forcing her to call shades for them. From what he had said, indentured labor was the cost of entry to outsiders, and she knew all too well the distances that Orsina would push herself to be accepted and integrate. The only consolation was that Kagan did not seem to be aging rapidly or suffering any ill effects, and through their bond, he should have been.

It was only as they reached near to the end of the steppes that Kagan’s purported talents in tracking had to come to the fore.

There were three distinct tracks leading off from the last place the Arazi had made their camp, and while up until now it had been simple enough to pick out the correct route either due to the massive divergence from their northward course, or by the kinds of tracks that the various types of dragon-kin had left behind, now the split was essentially even.

Harmony was somewhat startled to realize that this may have been the first time that they had stopped moving, while conscious, in days. The aching of the start of their hike had faded somewhere in the middle, the exhaustion consuming it, and her legs, already well toned from her practice, were now essentially solid muscle with skin painted over the top. Mother would have complained at how they’d look in her sheer summer dresses, but Mother was dead and could keep her opinions to herself now.

Back and forth Kagan stalked, hunched and searching the ground. Eventually, out of boredom as much as any desire to help, Harmony asked, “Can I help?”

He didn’t straighten up, but he did look at her. “Ever tracked before?”

“Obviously not.” It had been a few days since he’d last treated her like a flagrant incompetent just because she hadn’t lived outdoors her entire life, but it seemed that he was back to his old form.

Surprisingly, he just shrugged instead of making a jibe. “Look for something of hers.”

Wandering over to the next branching path over from him, she went to look, even as she called back over her shoulder, “Oh yes, I’m sure that she has conveniently dropped a monogrammed handkerchief.”

“Hair,” he sniped back. “She sheds like a dog.”

“Ah yes, how foolish of me, she’s definitely the only person with hair in the entire army.” There was no way that he could see her expression with her back turned, but some part of the sarcasm it implied must have transferred to her voice.

Kagan ran a hand over his own bald pate and waited for realization to dawn when she glanced over.

“Oh, she really is.” Harmony crouched down and started hunting in earnest. “Okay. Looking for hair.”

A few moments passed. With the only sound the breeze whistling through the grass and Harmony occasionally muttering, “Hair. Hair. Hair,” to herself before realizing she was doing it and cutting herself off.

To her immense amusement, after about a half hour of searching back and forth, back and forth, across his own trail, she could make out Kagan’s voice. “Hair. Hair. Hair.”

There had been a set of familiar holes poked into the ground in the midst of what had been the Arazi camp, arrayed in a circle that Kagan had felt certain was the cage where captives would have been held. Beside it, in each camp, they had found the distinctive claw rakes of a true dragon’s claws, arrayed in a set of four around flattened grass, showing that one had lain there, head pointed towards Orsina each night. Harmony wondered that anyone could sleep with flaming death only a few feet away but supposed that you could get used to anything after a while. She certainly never would have expected to sleep so soundly on the rocky earth of the steppes after years of soft mattresses, yet now she wondered if there was anywhere that she could not sleep. The exhaustion helped, certainly, but so too had an adjustment to expectations and a newfound acceptance that waking would come with some aching bruised spots where she’d failed to clear something hard or pointy before losing consciousness.

Kagan could probably have slept on a bed of spearheads, given the way that he instantly passed out when his watch was over, snoring with a low rumble that set her teeth on edge. But he did have the advantage of tiny armored plates all over him.

When she spotted the hair, she actually walked right by it to begin with. So used to the search by this point that her brain was too focused despite the task having been completed. It took her a moment before realization sank in, and she jerked her head back to it.

There was no question that it was Orsina’s. Even back in Covotana there had been few who could boast a curly mane like hers. The one lustrous dark hair that was caught on a blade of grass could only be hers. Harmony couldn’t contain her excitement. “I’ve got one! I’ve got it!”

Even in the midst of their clash with the thunder lizard, she was not certain she’d seen Kagan move so swiftly. He ran to her side and dropped into a crouch so suddenly she felt certain that he’d slid into place. Peering at the hair, he nodded, then reached over to pat Harmony on the shoulder with one of his plate-sized hands. It was the closest he’d yet come to acknowledging a job well done, the second closest being his expounding upon her madness when she had charged the thunder lizard and rider.

“So this is the path? This is the way?”

He cocked his head to the side slightly, as though listening for something, then he stopped dead. “Maybe.”

She blinked at him. “Maybe?”

Still crouched down, he shuffled a little closer to the hair, then reached out to nudge the blade of grass it was caught on. It was loose. Not rooted. But by leaning in even closer Harmony could see that it had not been torn up with dirt still attached, but instead was cut cleanly at its base.

Kagan stood up then, so abruptly it made Harmony startle and fall back onto her rump. Turning slowly in a circle with his eyes closed, he seemed to be listening once again.

“What do you mean maybe? It’s here. That means that…”

He reached over without opening his eyes and covered her mouth. It was so like Artemio’s foolishness that she was abruptly overtaken with missing her brother, then, automatically, as she’d always done when Artemio pulled this nonsense, her teeth nipped shut on the palm.

Kagan jerked his hand away in surprise, eyes springing open to meet Harmony’s glare as she hissed, “That was rude.”

“Just… wait. Let me…” He trailed off.

“Let you examine my teeth? Let you manhandle me however you fancy? Let you…”

He covered his own face with his hands this time. Pressing the heels of them into his eyes. “Do you ever shut up?”

“Do you ever apologize?”

He pried his hands away to glower at her. “When I’ve done wrong.”

It was enough to earn him a solid pout, and that pout was long enough for him to do whatever it was he was trying to do. He turned on his heel and stalked off a distance away from the hair, away from the path, head swaying from side to side all the way, like some sort of scenting hound. Finally, he dropped into another crouch and said, “Here.”

Harmony stomped over to look at whatever it was that could be so damned important and discovered, upon dropping to her haunches and peering, that he had found an anthill. Barely large enough to qualify as a hill at all, more of an ant hole if truth be told, barely even a hump in the smooth of the plain.

“You found bugs.” Thanks to that tiny bump of dirt, Harmony’s reply was somehow flatter than the steppe they stood upon. “What an achievement. This will definitely change everything.”

He stalked off back towards the hair. “Changes the way we’re going.”

“And how is that exactly?”

“Hair was carried. One path to the other.” He pointed. “We need to follow the eastern tracks.”

Exasperated, she called after him. “You cannot possibly know that.”

No reply was forthcoming, Kagan was off at his steady stride already, each step swallowing up more of the distance to Orsina. In a fit of pique, Harmony almost trampled on the ants swarming out to defend their home, but she decided at the last moment that she was better than that. When all of this was over and Orsina was safely home, she was going to punch the lizard-man.

There was a new bounce in her step for much of the day, and her attempts at clearing her mind seemed to have been much more successful, given that Kagan didn’t bother to correct her for hours upon hours. Every so often, he might look askance at her and see the smile playing over her lips, but he must have just assumed that she was happy with their progress, as he did not pry into what happy little thought was giving her so much energy.

As the steppes began to give way to dark earth and soot, Harmony was forced to ask the pressing question that had arisen time and again in her mind and that she just could not quiet. “How far behind them do you think we are?”

Kagan pondered the question a moment, still trudging on, his stride seeming to shorten now. “A day at most.”

“So…” She didn’t want to voice too many of her concerns, as that tended to ruffle his figurative feathers and set him back to demanding she clear her mind.

“They’ll have her locked up.” Yet it was obvious his mind was on the same topic. “Arguments to have about what to do with her.”

“Won’t the king simply…”

He cut her off with a shake of his head. “The Arazi have no kings.”

For a time, they plodded on as Harmony attempted to digest this information, until finally she blurted out, “Then who rules? Who makes laws?”

“Can’t set anyone above a dragon.” He shrugged his shoulders. “They won’t stand for it. Everyone decides for themselves.”

“That sounds like chaos.”

Another great shrug. Not denying her words, but not accepting them either. “Works better than you’d think.”

She still couldn’t wrap her head around the concept. For someone who had grown up in Espher, where social hierarchy was as stratified and solid as the world beneath her feet, this was like asking Harmony to learn how to fly. “What about war? Who calls their bannermen? How do you…”

“Arazi unite against anything that might hurt us.” Harmony wouldn’t have called the expression on his face a smile exactly—it lacked the usual mocking smugness he infused them with—but there did definitely seem to be some measure of pride when he spoke of the people who had rejected him and cast him out. “Even clans that hate each other set their troubles aside when war comes. That’s what it means to be Arazi, what it means to be a dragon. Us against all.”

Thinking back to the battle with the Arazi, Harmony tried to piece it all together. Huge swathes of the army had moved in unison, as though commanded, but how much of that was instinct, passed along to them through their bondmates, allowing them to flock and move in perfect synchronization? Every part of the battle line had fluctuated and adjusted according to the needs of the battle, as though they were receiving their orders instantaneously. Could they have been making choices for themselves? Every unit in the army, choosing their own best course, but working in harmony with every other one? It seemed like such a backwards way to run things that it would never have even occurred to her that it could have been so until Kagan had said so.

She forced it from her thoughts and turned back to the matter at hand. “So, every single Arazi will get to decide what happens to Orsina? At least that guarantees a long argument.”

“Elders will talk it out, probably.” His voice, usually rumbling low enough to set things vibrating, now dipped even lower into something that Harmony could only have described as a growl. “Them and… him.”

After leaving more than enough time for him to fill in the details, Harmony sighed and prodded the conversation along once more. “Am I supposed to know who this him is?”

“The one who exiled me.” Kagan’s growl had not become any less guttural, though it certainly was louder now. “Their… cult leader.”

She frowned, still piecing together all the fragments of knowledge that had been so hard won throughout their march. “I thought you said Arazi didn’t have a religion?”

Kagan’s vast shoulders drew down now. She couldn’t see his face, because he was still maintaining his ridiculous pace, but it was as though he were being crushed by some great invisible hand. Folding in on himself. “They’ve got him.”

Once more conversation lapsed, in no small part to Harmony finding herself surprisingly out of breath trying to keep up with the pace Kagan was now setting. She wasn’t sure if he was running from the subject or desperately trying to reach some distraction, but either way, it would not help. She was not known for her mercy. Offering him a smile that was anything but kindly, she huffed out, “I sense a little antipathy in your tone.”

He chewed that over, like the word was a new flavor to be explored, then finally grumbled out, “Man destroys your life, you’d have some too.”

It might have been a mile later, maybe two, before Harmony discovered the limits of her patience once more and decided to pry. “You never did tell us why you were exiled.”

“Never mean to.” Kagan the Exile had obviously been waiting for this. Probably waited for it from everyone that knew his full name. He had the answer ready to go as soon as the words reached his ears.

Harmony overtook him for the first time all day, shrugging her shoulders and making sure that he could see the bounce in her step as if she didn’t care in the slightest. “Oh well. I’m sure I’ll find out once we get to their camp. When everyone comes to murder you or burn you alive or whatever they do to exiles who come home.”

“You’ll be burning with me.” That put something of a damper on conversation as they proceeded down off the steppes into the dark land the Arazi called home.

Harmony had extensively quizzed Kagan as they traveled and felt as well prepared for the place as she could, but just seeing the desolation of it all, and understanding that people chose to live there despite it, was still a harrowing experience. She’d known that the Arazi loved their dragons more than themselves, just as she felt about Orsina, but it was hard to imagine any love would make her choose to leave the lush and beautiful lands beyond the borders of this awful place and willingly live in a desert reeking of rotten eggs.

It wasn’t long before she had to make comment on the smell. If only because its presence was overwhelming. She could taste it in her mouth, and that was the only reason she’d finally reverted to breathing through her nose again. “The only thing that I can say in favor of this place is that at least we will not be staying here long.”

Kagan was back to shrugging. “Probably be here the rest of our lives.”

The joke was so unexpected that it took Harmony a moment to realize that it had been a joke at all. She let out a laugh that was entirely too much like a hoot. “And who said the Arazi were completely devoid of a sense of humor.”

Kagan’s eyes swept over the landscape, such as it was. He had always kept watch as they walked, always known that they were heading into dangerous territory full of wild animals and enemies, but now there was a melancholy edge to his gaze. As though he wasn’t seeing just what was there, but what he’d lived through there.

“Never thought I’d see it again. Never thought I’d miss it.”

For the first time, she genuinely didn’t want to rile him when she asked, “And is it everything you remembered it being?”

He turned to look at her, possibly for the first time since they’d set foot in the place. All the sorrow that was in his voice was written on his face, but he still tried to force levity, to make it a joke when he answered, “Worse.”

She tried for that same tone. For all that she had been tormenting him for her own amusement this entire time, she wasn’t actually a monster intent on making him relive his worst memories. “Really, you aren’t relishing every moment breathing the free—if pungent—air of home?”

There was a huff of air that might have been a laugh, but he was back to avoiding eye contact and powering his way forward again.

If it hadn’t been for the last days of travel finally bringing her past all human exhaustion, to the point of being incapable of noticing fatigue, she probably couldn’t have matched his pace, but she tried her best all the same, and eventually he slowed enough for them to be side by side once more. Where before his eyes had roamed all over the place, searching out memories, now they had fixed upon the horizon and the distant plume of dark smoke that seemed to mark their destination.

They fell into a slower rhythm now, as darkness fell and stole their view, even as the distant glow of the mountains began to rise. It was almost the pace that sane human beings might set. Even so, Harmony was startled when he spoke. “Do you know why the Arazi came here, gathered here instead of roaming free across the land as we always had?”

In the dark, there was no way for him to see her eyes rolling. “Obviously not, I don’t know a thing about you people, as you seem quite intent on ensuring with your rather terse approach to sharing.”

“Aslinda-dragons come here to lay.” His voice had become hushed as he said it, as though it was some great secret that he was not meant to share. “It is the heat of the soil, it makes the chances of hatching better.”

As much as she had wanted to know more about where they were going and what they were about to face, Harmony now found herself uncomfortable at making him break his bonds of silence. She was, ultimately, an enemy of the Arazi, and he was telling her where their most precious resource was hidden. She hadn’t meant for it to happen, and so she felt awkward as she blustered out, “I suppose I can understand why you’d want to protect such a place.”

Yet Kagan did not seem to have noticed any awkwardness nor felt any shame of his own at having shared such secrets; his mind was on other things, his great ridged brows drawn down. “It was forced breeding. Forcing the aslinda to stay close, even though they want to be spread apart in their own territory. Keeping them here, with nothing to do. Nothing to hunt.”

She glanced up at the sky, as though she was about to be treated to an eyeful of breeding dragons overhead. Thankfully the clouds were too thick and night too far advanced for any such thing to be visible. “So, this place is a non-stop dragon orgy. Charming.”

“The aslinda were… an asset to his cause. He wanted more of them. An army of them.” Kagan spat, and where it struck the sooty ground it coiled in on itself, like a living creature brought into existence by that one brief touch of moisture. “Even though it was unnatural to keep them here all the time. Even though it meant that the Arazi had to pay tribute. Carry in supplies. Abandon their hunting grounds in times of plenty. It was a perversion of the dragons’ nature, of our nature. The first of many.”

That threw her for a moment. Not the idea of breeding stock being pushed to produce more valuable mounts, that was common practice everywhere that animals were domesticated. There wasn’t a horse farmer in Espher who wasn’t doing the same year-round. But the idea that Kagan could be opposed to the creation of more dragons when they were so revered by his people, that was something unexpected. “You… didn’t want more dragons?”

“Every aslinda hatching is a blessing,” he grumbled. “Of course it is, but to force their breeding, it is…”

Everything snapped into perspective for her then. The Arazi didn’t look at their dragons as animals to be used, they looked at them as equals in a relationship, like the bond between Shadebound and impresario. For all that the Prima had made subtle manipulations through the years, attempting to bring powerful bloodlines together, physically forcing Shadebound to copulate and produce new generations was as appalling a thought as she’d ever come upon.

“I suppose it is a bit creepy if you think of them as people.”

What happened next set all the hair on the back of Harmony’s neck standing on end. She thought that she’d heard Kagan angry before; indeed, roaring and rumbling almost seemed to be his primary means of communication. But the way that his voice sounded now was something else entirely. It had not changed in pitch or tone from the usual primordial growling, but there was a coldness in it, the same coldness as when he’d spoken about being able to choose murder.

“He went too far, but none of us stopped him. Because we believed in him.”

It took some time for her to compose herself after that, time in which they went on marching and the red glow on the horizon blossomed up over the dark sky like a spreading bloodstain. Rich and deep, but still brighter than the darkness with no stars behind it. “I take it that your blind faith ran out at some point, and that was why you no longer dwell among these people in their foul-smelling desert?”

“Mine?” He chuckled. “No. I’ve never been clever.”

“Something we agree on at last.”

He laughed so heartily that it actually startled her. All of the clever quips of the last few days, and all it really took was calling him an idiot. What a waste. Still, the full weight of his sadness didn’t leave him. “I didn’t see through him, not until too late. Then it was… it was too late.”

“Not the most enlightening ending to the tale, but an insight all the same.”

They marched on a distance, still trailing along in the tracks of the war-band, before Kagan brought them to a halt, and they cut off to the side. “No dragons means they’ll catch us if we walk straight in. Got some bits from the rider you killed, should be able to dress us up. But we’ll still need to come in through a crowd.”

She fumbled through the dumped-out heap of bits. There were visible bloodstains, but she supposed that would only add to the verisimilitude. “I’ve had enough sneaking into cities full of enemies to last me a lifetime.”

“Same here, but we’re still doing it.” He tried to force a skull-shaped helmet onto his own head before giving up and tossing it to her. Likewise, the leathers were far too small for him, despite the dead Arazi’s bulk, so he dumped them in front of her, covering them in ash, once again adding to their authenticity. “See if you can cover yourself with these. Arazi don’t wear cloth and wool.”

Without a tailor handy, she had no idea how she would make any of this fit. She held up the dangling remains of what looked more like horse tackle than clothing and shook it, setting the vertebrae on the tassels clacking.

“Surely they wear…”

He cut off whatever attempt she was about to make at a distraction by pulling a knife and advancing on her. “We hunt, we wear leathers and skins. Bones for armor. Feathers for color.”

As she watched, he severed piece by piece from the harness, trimming it back until there was barely anything to it at all, doubling over pieces of leather and tying them off so that the length was more suitable for her stature. “And what am I meant to wear under this if I can’t use cloth?”

“Skin.”

She had her suspicions that was going to be the answer. “Absolutely not.”

“Doesn’t have to be yours.”

That gave her a little more pause. “You’re willing to donate yours, are you?”

“Why I carried it all this way.”

Knife still in hand, he reached around behind him, and even as Harmony yelled out to him to stop, he drew the tattered remains of the thunder lizard’s underbelly scales out from his backpack.

He looked genuinely startled at her yelp of dismay. “What?”

“I thought that you were… never mind.”

There wasn’t enough of the lizard skin to fully cover her, and it hung above her knees like a tunic, even when it was secured in place with the harness, but when combined with the heavy fur cloak of her victim, she made a passable dragon-lord. Or dragon-lady, she supposed.

As for Kagan, he went in the opposite direction, stripping off the clothes he had been wearing to expose more and more of his scaled skin. He looped the dangling bones that he’d cut free around the horniest protrusions at his shoulders and other joints. Only his face remained a problem. He might have looked just like any other Arazi to Harmony, but among his own people he would be distinctive. The skull-helm did a great job of concealing Harmony’s hair, but they only had the one. In the end, a haphazard hood made of their remaining skins and furs, roughly bound together with the leftover tassels, had to do the job.

Harmony snorted at the sight of him. “You look like a jester. A giant scaly jester.”

“You look like a sutcu.”

Her hand strayed down to the sword on her belt, still there underneath her layered disguise. “A what?”

“Doesn’t translate.”

She couldn’t help but smirk at his sudden change in tone. “I’d bet good money that it translates just fine, but you’ve realized all of your vulnerable bits are dangling out in that new outfit of yours.”

He had the decency to look away as she stripped her trousers out from underneath everything else. At least her boots were leather and she wouldn’t have to go barefoot. Even if the style of them needed a little adjustment with that knife of his.

“Very respected job, sutcu.”

The night air felt chill on her legs, and she startled every time flecks of ash blew up to stick to her, but she supposed that ashen skin was going to be less noticeable than her own human-looking flesh, so she tolerated it as they made the long hike away from their intended target to loop around and approach from elsewhere.

There were no roads out here, of course, but when they came upon the track leading into the Arazi version of civilization, there was a clear demarcation where the loose earth and dust of everywhere else had been compacted by constant footfall. Harmony was devoting no small part of her attentions to keeping her mind clear, but as stray thoughts popped into her head, she found the easiest way to be rid of them was to voice them.

“Should I have been learning how to speak some Arazi?”

“I know it is going to be hard for you, but…” Kagan snorted a laugh. “Don’t speak.”

“That won’t be suspicious?”

He chuckled some more. Clearly enjoying seeing her so out of her element. “Not as suspicious as a squeaky little voice like yours.”

That did, in fact, finally shut her up.

23 - By Blade and Scepter
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

There was nowhere left in the dungeons for the Cerva to be hidden. No secret corner or walled-up enclosure. They were gone. Truly missing from the last place that Artemio could think to look within the palace.

All that he had gambled was for nothing. All that he’d risked. Shaking such thoughts from his head, he banished his shades and reached out to The Fire Below once more. It simmered just on the periphery of his consciousness, just waiting, not like a dog anticipating its master’s call, but like a wolf looking for a way out its cage. Pacing. Stalking. Once it was unleashed, there would be no stopping the shade, all of Covotana would burn, all of Espher would be weakened by her loss. Yet the city was not the country, and Artemio had no small hope that the best and brightest of Espher’s leadership were within the walls of the city by now, ready to be purged with the Agrantine cancer. Leaving fresh blood to seize control, less mired in millennia of tradition and infighting to the point of madness than any of the current crop.

He would not know if such measures were necessary until he had returned to the palace proper or, better yet, to the rooftop gardens where he might use his vantage point and shades to communicate orders to his troops and ensure the liberation was as bloodless as possible. For Espher, that is.

There were more than a dozen flights of stairs between the dungeons and the roof, and that was assuming the way was clear, unblocked by crumbling masonry or by the soldiers of Agrant still swarming about the place. In likelihood double the number once he’d crossed back and forth across the keep, navigating through the changes he’d wrought.

Bleeding as he was, exhausted as he was from the fight, the prospect did not appeal to Artemio very much. But still he moved, lurching his way up through cellars and kitchens. Blinking away long moments of lost time as the wound began to take its toll. Staggering along passageways that only by the guiding hand of his dead grandfather was he able to navigate. The memory of the place was more real to him than what his eyes and hands told him as he fumbled his way along. Here he’d met in secret with a lover, here he’d chased the butler down after he’d absconded with the good wine mid-meal, here he’d done nothing at all because these were not his memories. He was not his grandfather, and his grandfather needed to remember that this body was not his for the taking. Art cut him off from the usual trickling supply of life and let the old man wither as he trudged along mired in confusion. He had seen the old man’s memories; he did not need reference material. He could retain the map on his own, if he could just concentrate.

When he rounded a corner into a crowd of black-garbed Agrantine, he did not even slow, pushing his way through the saints as though they were not there. If he had run, if he had fought them, likely they would have pounced, but he did nothing of the sort. Just plodding through them as they argued among themselves. For all they knew, he was still in Modesta’s pocket. For all they knew, she was still conscious and guiding the defense of the city.

It was only as he rounded the next corner and set off for the all-too-distant servants’ stairs on the far side of the throne room that he began to encounter people who knew otherwise. One of the palace’s vast staff of entirely interchangeable castellans caught him under the wounded shoulder and hoisted him up to standing.

“My lord, we must find a healer for your…”

“The roof. Get me to the gardens.”

The weasel-faced servant’s eyes boggled. “Sire, you are bleeding.”

“All of Espher bleeds, and I must stanch it.” That sounded suitably regal, if it turned out that he was going to be sitting the throne after all of this was over. So long as he survived his ongoing bleed. It was not an artery, he was certain. He would never have made it up the stairs with his heart thumping away if it had been. Admittedly his peripheral vision had gone a little dark, but that did not mean he was going to fall any time soon. It could be accounted for by the pain of the servant’s bony shoulder digging into the site of the injury. The man seemed to be all elbows as he dragged Artemio along the way. Step by staggering step.

It was only once they were nose-to-nose with the saints filtering out from the throne room that he remembered there were other factors at play than simply walking upstairs. Cries of anger and dismay that seemed less than saintly echoed across the grand halls, and Artemio pushed away from his assistant. “Run.”

The hallway tilted sideways as he tried to gain his focus, and Artemio grit his teeth against what he knew he had to do. Switching his sword into his right hand, and taking a moment to double-check that the deadened limb was actually holding it, he brought two fingers of his left up to his armpit, pushing through the bloodied cloth and silk until he touched the wet scorching heat of his wound. He managed half a breath in before calling the forge spirit to inhabit him, to send fire pouring forth from his fingertips and cauterize the wound.

The first of the charging Agrantine caught a face full of bile as they tried to tackle him, staggering back, blinded, as Artemio struggled to regain control of lurching innards. The next foe kept a hand to the level of his eyes to block any more attempts at poisonous spitting and made it inside the reach of Artemio’s rapier.

That very same hand that had hidden the saint’s eyes now lashed out to grab Artemio by the front of his shirt, and it was that hand that Art touched as he was drawing his own from the sealed site of his bloody stab. The smell of cooking meat filled the air, and the supposedly stoic saint screamed.

The star-swords would have wiped away a great burst of fire, but a searing blue spark the size of a fingertip could be moved around their dampening effects. It could be traced across the back of a man’s hand and burn through to blacken bone.

All their training, all their years in the field hunting itinerant shades, everything that had made the sword-saints of Agrant into a fighting force that the world feared, faded in that moment, as they caught the scent of their friend cooking. They hesitated.

They should not have hesitated.

Art’s sword-hand moved, guided in part by Saverio Gatto but in equal part by the rage that had been searing his innards every moment that he had to walk about Covotana and see Agrantine soldiers. The blade took the burned saint through the throat, and then with a flex of his wrist tore out through the side, spraying the hallway with a brief waterfall of bright blood.

The next saint came on at last, and Artemio gave the shade within him free rein.

Once more, he was able to observe the fight unfolding without having to devote any thought to it, and here in the open space of a great hall there was never a need to press into claustrophobic contact and risk the touch of the enemy’s steel. One by one, the saints from his coronation came pouring out, and one by one they fell.

It was not that they were stupid men, or even particularly arrogant about their skills, but it is a very difficult thing to live all your life according to one set of rules, in which you are unbeatable in combat, and then face a situation in which all that you know and believe to be true about the world is proven fatally false. It took them far too long to go from challenging him one-on-one to preparing some sort of battlefront, and by then their numbers had already been depleted. Worse yet, for all that they were immune to the touch of a shade, the world around them most certainly was not.

As needed, Artemio snatched back control of himself for but a moment and unleashed his forge spirit to set the banners of the Agrantine Empire alight. Between parry and thrust, he’d slip back into his body to pull the burning banners down with a quick tug by Bisnonno Fiore.

Now that he was no longer dying, now that he was actually winning, Artemio could feel the glacier that his mind had become beginning to defrost. No longer was he reliant on Gatto to do all of the dirty work of planning their survival. He was the one who sidestepped into the swing of one of the saints to drive an elbow up into the man’s throat. He was the one who slashed at the hamstrings of the next one along before stepping into his gap on the line. Then Gatto was left with the hard, technical work of fighting his way along to gut the saints’ ill-formed formation and routing them.

From his perspective, the fighting took only moments, yet when he returned to mastery of his flesh Artemio found every limb was shaking and weak. Glancing around the room for his next opponent, he was startled to realize that none were forthcoming. All the lesser nobility of Espher that had been crammed into the throne room had spilled out behind the saints and stood, politely clapping, as Artemio slaughtered through more than two dozen men. Smoke filled the air from those fixtures he’d seen fit to burn, but the look upon his citizens’ faces filled him with more trepidation than even the risk of setting the palace alight. They were full of awe.

He told himself that it was ridiculous, that any Shadebound could have done it, that it was worth the fresh growth of grey hair that now streaked through his red. But in the back of his mind, some small calculating part of him filed it away. Even if these people had no love for him before, he’d have their support now. Just as he’d won over the common folk and his soldiers with his skill on the battlefield, now he had won these last holdouts against his rule.

If he could not find the kings.

The stairs presented a more daunting task than fighting through whatever saints remained between him and the rooftop gardens, but now he had more than mere servants attempting to help him along. A half dozen of the lesser nobles caught him as he sagged and gave him no question when he directed them to carry him upwards and onwards.

For want of something to do with his other new supporters, he dispatched them to fetch the queen from whatever isolation Modesta had locked her in. He tried to tell himself it was simply to prevent the Agrantine from doing the poor woman harm, but the same cold, calculating voice in the back of his mind was more honest about its intentions. He wanted her where he could see her, so that she could not slip away in the chaos, and he wanted to make use of the ambassador’s plan if the king could not be found, and that meant securing all the necessary assets now.

Under the power of some powdered wigs on legs, he traversed the full height of the palace without having to do much walking at all. Strength began to trickle back into his body, though no small part of that was pure adrenaline that would doubtless abandon him the moment the crisis was over.

Stepping out into the fresh air high above the city did wonders to clear his mind of any lingering exhaustion. It felt like he could breathe properly for the first time the whole day. He was so surprised, he touched his corseted girdle to check if it had come loose somewhere during the fighting.

Pushing free of the now grasping hands of the courtiers, he directed them to go and join with whatever resistance was at work within the palace. It wasn’t as though any of the Agrantine would think to come and look for him up there—and none of these primped fools could have done a thing to stop them if they did.

With a roll of his shoulders to loosen up, he strode to the edge of the roof and looked out over his city.

The southern gate was still the center of the fighting. His peasant cultists had done fine work in removing the barriers and allowing the forces from outside in, but the soldiery of Espher clearly had not been ready to break a siege this day. There had been no cavalry charge to pierce into the heart of the city, and for all their limited numbers, the saints were putting up a valiant defense. Unable to rely on the fortifications to hold the enemy back, they were instead barricading side streets and funneling the invading army into choke points where their superior numbers could not turn the tide so easily.

The fighters on Espher’s side were not highly trained combatants. The majority of those who’d made the push were men at arms hoping to claim sufficient glory that they might see a knighthood in their future and conscripts ordered forward, farmers with spears thrust into their hands and as much training as could be barked out on the march north. There was only one banner flying over the troops to show any sort of noble leadership, and Artemio was ready to write it off as some unfortunate lesser house until he made out the detail of a crab on the blue backdrop. House Granchio.

She was competent; he could work with that. He sent Bisnonno Fiore out to find a Shadebound in her retinue so that messages could be relayed and turned his attentions elsewhere.

In places around the walls, he could see fighting. Not the simple, bloody combat that was unfolding on the streets, but flashes of light and power that could only be the Shadebound at work, carried up and over the wall by their shades. For a brief moment, he considered it to be a foolish waste of their potential, then he realized how well they were spaced around the city’s perimeter. They had been sent to draw enemy forces to them. To herd the saints together, away from the gates. To divide the enemy’s attention. Duchess Granchio was smarter than he’d given her credit for.

To bring the full weight of the army to bear, they needed the other gates open. He’d only made arrangements for the single one to be opened, assuming that surprise would have been sufficient to get his men inside before there was a strong defense mounted, but he had underestimated the Agrantine’s competence too. For all his threats and distractions, he had achieved nothing.

It snatched the air from him for a moment, to see all his conniving and efforts cut out from under him. Regardless of how the battle turned, there were good men dying in the streets because he had failed to sufficiently tilt the odds in their favor. He desperately searched for any good that he’d actually done with all of his plotting until Bisnonno Fiore returned, waiting for the next message.

“They have no leader. They will not be able to adapt to rapid change on a grand scale.” He said it aloud, to himself as much as Fiore. “We need to cede ground, fall back towards the gate, make their choke points useless.”

The long-dead king moved off to serve as messenger for only a moment before Artemio caught him with a snare of will. “Next, you’ll go to the Shadebound on the walls. Tell them that while their distraction is admirable, I need them to push through to the gates, avoid the saints, avoid conflict altogether if they can.”

Fiore was still waiting a moment later when Artemio snapped at him to get a move on.

With luck, the Shadebound on the walls would send their own shades back to him to serve as messenger and coordinate the rest of their action, but even without them, things were going to begin moving forward now. He may only have eliminated Modesta and her honor guard, but that was enough to gut the Agrantine defense. He was getting entirely too emotionally invested in his own involvement and losing sight of the bigger picture, and nobody could afford for him to do that.

Shades did come flitting back to him mere moments after Fiore had departed, far too soon for the message to have reached them. It seemed that news of his arrival on the field had been spread by Granchio, and she had already ceded command to him. They were pounding in against the outer walls of his consciousness, demanding answers, demanding guidance. Relief overtook him. He was finally back in his element.

Time slipped away from him as his mind engaged with the great puzzle laid out before him. Every station was now reporting to him through their Shadebound, and all those idle hands were suddenly and abruptly turned to industry. The cavalry charge he would have used to clear the southern gate was now being wheeled into place to strike at the east the moment that the door was opened.

Granchio’s forces fell back from the front, operating a fighting retreat back to the wide-open spaces about the gate entrance, and thanks to the lack of command, the foolish Agrantine were following, thinning their lines to chase after what they mistook for beaten opponents. Artemio didn’t even need to give that any attention; Granchio would be more than capable of butchery without his input.

What he did do was seize on those troops who had been slowly trickling into the city at the back of the blockage by the southern gate and redirect them up the flights of stairs to the walls. There were crossbowmen up there, more than ready to rain death on anyone attempting the ascent, but the Agrantine were becoming increasingly aware as their positions were overrun; a crossbow could turn anyone into a deadly ranged combatant—once. After that first shot, the apparatus had to be rewound, and the lethal combatant became a sitting duck. Behind walls, they were ideal. With nothing between the enemy and the crossbowman but distance, they only served to anger the charging foe.

The walls were swept, the Espherans spreading out predominantly to the east with every intention of fighting down into that gatehouse from above. It would be costly in terms of the attackers’ lives—the place was fortified against such invasion—but Artemio had already done the arithmetic and found the losses acceptable.

Down on the ground, the Agrantine did nothing.

They fought with all their ferocity against an enemy that could now bring numbers to bear against them, and they held up despite the crushing weight of bodies arrayed against them. There was no question that they were the better fighters, but wars were not won by better fighters, they were won by strategy, and the saints were a headless body.

The cavalry was already charging before the gates were unbarred, building up the momentum that would win this whole battle. The Shadebound arrayed around the walls took flight in those final moments, closing the pincer on the few standing defenders and overwhelming them.

When the gates slammed open, the horses came through, a huge wedge formation charging straight to the heart of the city, rolling over any and all Agrantine defenders without slowing. A blade thrust into the heart of the city. Lancing the boil.

The rear side of the saints was exposed, all eyes towards the southern gate, and as the cavalry charged over the bridges and leapt over the canals, they did not even hear them coming over the crash of battle.

It was not clean, as it would have been on the open plain of battle. The cavalry had to split through streets and side streets and leap over toppled carts. Which meant that when they struck the saints, the enemy were not swept away in a single motion. The momentum was lost, the fighting turned ugly, and every inch the cavalry took was paid for in blood.

If his work downstairs had not been so efficient, then a counterattack would have taken the cavalry in the flank, just as they had taken the saints, but all that came tumbling out of the palace doors below him were the lesser nobility of Espher, not long departed from Artemio’s side and armed with the finest antiques they could prize from the walls. If any one of them managed a kill, Artemio would have been amazed, but sometimes the most important part of a battle was not the actions of a fighting force, but its positioning.

There would be no retreat back to the palace for any surviving saints, no chance for them to consolidate their invasion on a smaller scale, requiring further prying open. All thanks to the presence of those useless nobles in the way.

For a moment, there was nothing to do but watch. Artemio’s mind returned to his body, to the aching exhaustion and the quaking of his legs. To feel the wind on his face. To hear the steps approaching from behind him. His queen, no doubt, finally brought to his side.

Modesta struck before he’d even turned. Viper-fast.

His sword was at his belt, his hands empty as he brought them around to ward off the killing blow.

Instead of his neck, her sword took his right hand from his wrist before embedding in the palm of the other.

It was a strange thing. There was no pain. The sharp sensation of the blade on his skin, the unnatural chill of contact with the star-metal, but nothing more. He wouldn’t have known the hand was gone unless he’d seen it falling aside.

That numbness was what saved him. It left his mind clear long enough to leap aside, trailing blood, before Modesta’s follow-up skewered him through.

He landed with a thump in the flower beds, what would have been a soft landing if it were not for the thorns of the roses. Freed from the touch of the unearthly metal, his senses screamed, and he joined them, sounding like nothing but as a wounded animal.

When he opened himself, it was not to reach out to his shades so much as it was to grab at them desperately. The forge spirit he called first, and flames erupted from the stump where his sword-hand had always been before.

Modesta parried that lance of flame aside, not even realizing it was not meant for her.

With his wound cauterized, Artemio endured only a fraction of a moment of the awful agony that he had just inflicted upon himself before he turned his body over to Saverio Gatto. The first sword of Espher rolled them back through the thorns and to their feet again on the other side of the raised bed, awkwardly drawing the rapier from Artemio’s left hip, using his left hand, ending up with it in a hopeless reversed grip by the time that the ambassador was upon him.

The executioner’s blow that would have split him from hip to crotch was turned aside in a shower of sparks, redirected away from his body, taking the heads from the roses instead. Modesta gave him no time to congratulate himself, or his shade, kicking out at his knee and knocking him off balance.

He caught a glimpse of her eyes then, the only part of her face that still looked like it belonged to her, the rest given over to gaping holes and gore. Whatever was left of her nose remained down in the dungeons, yet there were no tears pooling in those eyes. They burned with hatred. With rage.

Artemio could work with that.

“What a disappointment you turned out to be.” It was a nice vague verbal swing, a general tut in her direction without much meaning. An easy starting point to scale up from once he’d narrowed in on a weak spot.

She gave no answer with her voice, preferring for her actions to communicate her feelings. The sword hammered in at him, spinning over the back of her hand to strike at him from another direction entirely before he’d even finished his first parry. If Gatto hadn’t read it in the movement of her hips, Artemio would have died then and there.

“All the talk of the amazing sword skills of Agrant, all of those mornings showing off for all and sundry in your little garden, to think that you’d fall so easily.”

Pride was always the Agrantine vice. They denied themselves all earthly pleasures, they denied themselves the freedom to choose their own futures, they denied themselves everything that made a life worth living, but in exchange they were granted that unnaturally potent pride in themselves, that they could do all of that and nobody else was even willing to try. And a prideful foe was the easiest to rile. He’d made a fool of her down in the dungeons, made a joke of all her carefully honed skills, and now he had to do it again, and again. He had to make all that she was a subject of derision and drive her past the bastions of logic and into the wild, unfamiliar country of mindless rage—because as much faith as he may have held in Gatto, so long as Modesta was thinking, she could not be matched.

“It wasn’t even superior form, although even a half-witless imbecile like you could see that. I beat you with the tricks of a tavern brawler. Any Espheran peasant would have been your match. You put on a good show, but out here in the real world, your fancy footwork and spins mean less than nothing.”

Three swift thrusts tested his defenses as the last words fell from his mouth, and another kick out at his other knee sent him stumbling away once more. She did not leap on the opportunity as a less seasoned fighter would; she tested him again, tested to see what she could score against him with his supposed injury. She didn’t trust in the evidence of her own eyes.

She was right not to. He caught her a graze across the length of her forearm when she took her swipe at him. Small, insignificant, but enough to turn her arm aside. Enough time for him to twist his knee back inwards and launch forward.

It was not how Artemio would have fought. He always held himself at a distance, the better to see the lay of the land, the better to use his shades. But Gatto had the measure of Modesta, and just as they had down in the lowest levels of the castle, they grappled.

She grappled, to be more specific. Artemio was lacking the free hand for such things. His elbow caught her in the gut, and his shoulder hit her in the chest, even his forehead did its work, jerking up as they collided to knock her chin up and clatter her teeth together.

It was the last moment of victory he’d experience for quite some time.

Her knee jerked up reflexively, catching him in the gut, blasting the air from his lungs. He stumbled back from that blow, only to realize that his inability to grapple properly had not prevented Modesta’s fingers from clamping down on the stump where his hand should have been. There were many wrist locks that he and Gatto knew, but they were all reliant on there being something else on the other side of the wrist. For a moment, Art hoped that she’d have no clue what to do with her solid grip on him, then that grip tightened.

Even at a distance, his mind separated from his body by an entirely separate consciousness, Artemio felt the pain. It lanced up the arm like lightning strikes from where she squeezed. The fresh burn he had cauterized opened in all of the places where her crushing grasp wrinkled it. The slickness of his own blood should have won him his freedom but there was no stopping her crushing grip.

She brought the pommel of her sword around and hit him.

They may have been in too tight for a proper swing at him, and even the pommel blow to the cheekbone wouldn’t have done any damage too terrible, but the metal of the pommel was star-steel, just like the rest of the sword. The moment that it touched his skin, his shades abandoned him, the safe and comfortable distance between him and the pain vanished.

If he had called on The Fire Below, summoned lava from the depths of the earth, then plunged his arm into that glowing stone it would not have felt much different from what he was experiencing now.

Throughout all of their clashes, he had been stoic and silent, even in those moments where other men would have gasped or wept. She had been accustomed to it. Considered it to be part and parcel with the measure of him that she had taken. So when the pain struck him all at once and he screamed right into her face, it startled her.

Her death-grip on the stump of his arm she did not release. Her position, pressed up against his body so that she could use her superior strength to manipulate him, remained unchanged. All that happened when she flinched was that, for a moment, the pommel of the sword she had been grinding into his face, almost unnoticed thanks to the pain in his arm, lost its contact with his skin.

The shade that leapt back into him was not the one that had departed, rather it was the closest to hand, the most pliable, the one that he could dump all of his pain inside without having to worry about remonstration or remorse. The forge spirit swallowed down all of that agony, and it burned brighter. Flames leapt once more from his ruined wrist, searing the ambassador’s hand and sending her skittering back. They rushed up the length of his rapier too, burning blue-hot and bright, superheating the metal until it was almost soft.

Everywhere that was not guarded by the cushioning of star-metal was burned. The flowers caught alight, the little trees transported up here and pruned back to keep them from overgrowing the sparse dirt prepared for them went up like candles. The whole beautiful garden, cultivated over decades by generations of queens, ignited like kindling. Consumed by the fire he had started.

Artemio could not even bring himself to care. There was not enough of his rational mind to split his attention to anything less consequential than life and death.

Modesta leapt back in, through the waves of flames still rippling off him, her sword swinging straight down towards him, cleaving apart the shade’s influence, all power and grace and perfect form. The forge spirit was subsumed, Gatto thrust back up into its place, Artemio gambling that at least one of them would have some way out of this.

The air screamed as the white-hot metal of his rapier sliced up to meet the descending strike. It was going to break, even before the weapons made contact, he could feel his muscles and stance shifting to accept the loss. To survive the blow, even without the sword.

When contact was made, it broke exactly as predicted. Half its length severed at an angle just sharp enough to deflect the killing blow and no more.

One hand, half a sword, things could have been going better.

Modesta kicked out even as she landed, hitting his ankle and turning out his foot, putting him just enough off balance that when the blade whipped up and around to slam at him from the side, his own parry knocked him a step to the side.

For all his attempts to rile her, the truth was that her form was beyond perfection, beyond what any normal human being could have ever achieved. Even Gatto in his prime would have been no match for the display of her prowess. It was only with the consumption of other shades of swordsmanship through the centuries that he had gained in skill what she possessed in raw talent. She was more than a saint. She was a savant.

Rather than accept the pushed-out step, Gatto overcommitted to it, rolling Artemio’s whole body over his turning ankle, bringing him back up, already thrusting his shortened, blunted rapier into what should have been the Agrantine woman’s gut. Instead, she did something that he would have sworn was impossible if he had not seen it with his own eyes. She twisted her spinning sword so that the flat of the blade faced out, and she caught his thrust in the fuller.

It was a smooth groove up the length of her sword, barely deep enough to catch at all, but with a twist of her wrist, she prevented him from dragging it aside, letting the spin go on, carrying his thrust wide and leaving him open to the counter.

She stepped into her own swing and hammered an elbow forward into his face. There wasn’t a huge difference in their height when they stood side by side, but Artemio was still in the midst of rising from his roll away, so she was able to angle her blow down and knock him entirely off his feet.

This time there was no clever somersault, nor could he move his exhausted legs fast enough to get them back under him before his backside hit the scorched soil and he slid back.

For an instant, the world had flickered dark. For that moment, all of the exhaustion and pain of the day had overtaken him, and he had not been able to think, nor to channel a shade more capable of thinking for him. The ambassador’s blade had finally completed its graceful swing up to high guard. The sunlight glinting along it razor-sharp length.

His sword was broken. His stance was broken. His will teetered on the edge of oblivion too.

She swung for him with all of the wild fury and abandon that she had never been allowed in her life. All that she had been forced to swallow down and pretend did not exist. He had drawn that anger out, whether when he broke that beautiful mask that she wore as a face, or when he’d mocked her with her own weakness. Now the rage was on the surface. Now the rage ruled her.

It made the descending blow sloppy.

Gatto brought the broken hilt of the Volpe rapier up and caught Modesta’s blow on the basket of the handle. The golden wire finery twisted under the impact, tangling around the blade, but it did not give. When he yanked it aside, the clumsiness of the strike was laid bare. All of Modesta’s training, all of her perfect form, had been left behind when she let her anger rule her, and so her feet were not set and ready in the scorched and churned earth of the rose garden. She was unbalanced. When he pulled to the side, she slipped.

The useless remains of his rapier slipped from his grasp as he used his one functioning hand to grapple with Modesta for control of her sword. Gatto gave him the precise motions required to disarm her, but from the moment that his hand closed over the cross guard, all contact with the spiritual world was severed, and Artemio was abruptly, painfully alone.

He could still remember what Gatto had intended, still knew the way to wrest control of the weapon from the ambassador’s grasp, but he no longer had the strength to do it. Each moment that he had channeled his shades had stripped him of a little more life, and while under Saverio Gatto’s control all pain was a distant memory, that now came back to him with interest. Worse still, the very muscles he was trying to use had been ill used by their previous master. It mattered nothing to Gatto how he overworked Artemio’s strength. His purpose was only to fight, to win, not to care about what would come next. Every muscle in Artemio’s body felt like it had been pulled. Conditioning would be essential if Artemio ever meant to use his combat shade again, at least at this level. Otherwise the shade might very well pull his body apart in pursuit of its victory.

All of these thoughts and a dozen more were flitting through Artemio’s mind as he wrestled back and forth with the Agrantine monster beside him. The shades of his armies were flitting in and out, whispering messages into his mind that he had no time to answer or even comprehend. Both his legs were up and rabbit-kicking into her stomach as he pulled with all his might. She still tried to entangle him with her own legs instead of kicking out in turn, crush him to stillness between her thighs, or at least pin him so that his constant assault was stopped.

“You used to be such a beauty.” He aimed his next jibe well, his chilled breath ruffling her hair with every word. “Now you’re a monster among monsters.”

She exploded into a frenzy of motion, her controlled twists and turns of the sword momentarily forgotten as she tried with all her might to free her weapon. Artemio’s favorite part of that rather clumsy second jab was that it was only a feint. The killing blow would come next.

Using her greater strength and leverage to her advantage at last, Modesta flung herself around the fulcrum of the sword to land atop him, giving up entirely on retrieving her weapon and trying instead to drive it down into him. Were it not for the endless cocooning layers of finery still covering Artemio, the blade’s sharp edge would have bitten deep in his chest already. As it was, he was mustering the little might he could bring to bear in his remaining functional arm to push it back, leaving only a little uncut skin exposed beneath.

“What is your husband going to think of your new face?”

He saw the moment that her expression went from blind rage to realization and horror. All of her carefully schooled expressions since they’d first met. All of the subtle manipulation. It was all gone now, and he was glad to see the back of it. To see what was really going through her mind.

The God Emperor of Agrant chose the most beautiful maidens from across all of his myriad lands and holdings to take as his wives. Artemio wondered about what happened to those who no longer fit that description. What happened to a woman in his court when she went from beautiful and graceful to looking like the death-mask monster now looming over him, dribbling blood and snot from the tear in her face where a nose should have been.

She hissed. “I’ll kill you.”

“Then do it, you coward. You’ve had days to finally work up the gumption. You had me at your mercy down there in the dungeon, and you did nothing more than scratch me.” He let his bloodied teeth show and let the savagery that he so carefully doled out throughout his days come to the fore. “Kill me if you can, or go crawling back to your master with your tail between your legs. I don’t care which.”

Releasing her grip on the sword, she caught hold of Artemio’s stump, crushing it in one hand as she tried to pull the other away with the sword still wrapped tightly in her grasp. “This is more than a scratch.”

She twisted her grip on it, tearing at the fresh scar tissue, setting it bleeding anew, and grinding those fragments of bone that were still left in his wrist. The pain was as bad as the first time, but he was prepared for it. It did not take him by surprise, if anything it helped his increasingly fuzzy mind focus in on the problem in front of him.

He let go of the sword.

With no counterweight to her pull, Modesta jerked back from him so abruptly that she lost her grip on his leaking amputation. The sword was not touching him. His shades rushed back in, and this time, with methodical precision, Artemio called the fire to wash out over them both and then loosed Saverio Gatto.

This time he did not bind the warrior shade to his own flesh but to the fallen fragments of sword lying by his side. All it took was for Gatto to reach for them, and they came together into a weapon once more.

Modesta did not see the shade, could not see it, and the blade itself was hidden from her sight, what with all of her vision being tunneled down at Artemio. She hefted her now freed sword above her, threw his arm aside, and brought the tip of the blade down at his chest.

Gatto turned it aside with a thrust. The moment the broken sword touched hers, the shade was banished, but another killing blow had been turned aside, and through the rush of blood in his ears, Artemio could now hear voices. He was not alone up here. He was not going to die alone up here.

At first it seemed that Modesta had not noticed their new company, her eyes still blazing hatred, but then one of the lesser nobles who had come barreling to Artemio’s rescue caught sight of her face and let out a shrill scream.

It was enough to draw her attention.

She rolled off him, and for one lovely moment, he considered just lying there. Letting others deal with her, letting others deal with everything. He had given his hand and his blood for Espher on this day. Surely someone else could finish what he had started.

The scream was cut off with an awful gurgling sound as the noble’s throat was slit, and Artemio knew that peace had never been an option for him. He called Gatto back, whitening yet more of his own hair but getting his ruined body back into motion. At least there was no flip to his feet. Even the great Saverio Gatto must have been feeling the strain of the damage done to Artemio’s body by now.

“Modesta.” His voice sounded ragged and exhausted, even to his own ears. “Leave them alone.”

Three of the lesser nobles who had carried him up the stairs and run his errands were already dead, the fourth had managed to parry the first killing blow, but now he was wide open to the star-metal swooping back around to pierce his chest. Slipping perfectly through his ribs to bite into his heart. He was dead before he hit the ground, the rapier falling from his numb hand with a clatter.

A switch to Fiore brought that fallen blade soaring to Artemio’s hand, and he called after her again. “Faceless wretch, come and face me!”

The insult hit home just well enough to slow her advance on his now cowering rescuers. Artemio couldn’t spare them another moment’s thought, not when Modesta was turning back to him. Another switch and a wall of fire leapt up between her and the dregs of nobility. She could walk through it with that sword of hers, but punch-drunk as they both were, he hoped she wouldn’t realize it.

Either she feared the flame, or she took it as the formal invitation to duel that it was. She rounded on him and sprinted forward, her sword slipping into a reverse grip as though it had a mind of its own.

Gatto took the helm, deflecting her first sweeping strike and bringing the rapier up to catch her blade again when she abruptly reversed her grip once more and swept it down again from the opposite direction.

Before, they had not tried to match the bigger woman for strength, had deflected instead of blocking in light of the imbalance in weapon weight. But this time, though it bowed the narrow steel of the borrowed blade, she was kept at bay. He caught her eye, beyond the crossed blades, and he smiled.

“For all that we are enemies, I am glad to see your true face at last, Ambassador.”

It was enough to push her over the edge into blind rage again. Her measured attacks turned wild, hammering at his defenses from every angle, as if breaking through would win the day, as if the banners of Espher were not already flooding the city beneath them, driving the saints back, step by step. As if killing him would bring her face back.

Before, when her temper had been lost, it had made Artemio’s life easier. It had made her clumsy, overbalanced towards offense, but now there was no chance for him to launch any sort of counter. He couldn’t do anything more than weather the storm of steel that seemed to surround him. As deranged as her all-out assault seemed, there could be no denying the logic underlying it. All that she needed to do was touch the blade to his body and it would all be over. Any glancing blow or brush over his knuckles would have severed his connection to Gatto, left his body a hollow wreck. Easy pickings.

It didn’t work. Gatto’s defense was too perfect, even wrong-handed and using a body pushed beyond its limit and breaking point. Even with a sword that should not have borne the weight of half the blows she hammered down into it. That was the level of the dead man’s mastery.

She had not slowed yet, but there was sweat beading on her brow that had nothing to do with the dying embers all around them. It was good that she had not shaved her brows as she did her head, or it would have been running down into her eyes. Her stamina was remarkable; even after everything she had been through in the last few hours, she did not slow or falter in a single cut. Each was as perfect as it could be.

All of her mind was bent to the purpose of destroying him, but Artemio’s mind was free. Gatto controlled his body, followed the lead of his senses. It left him with ample opportunity to plan.

The city was Espher’s again. The tide had come in too far to be turned back now, and the Agrantine morale was broken. The northern gate was the latest to be flung open, forces spreading through the streets in swift forays. If the saints had been his army to command, Artemio would have mounted a guerrilla defense, laying traps and making the Espherans pay for every inch they took, but that was not the guiding rationale of the Agrantine. They were all about overwhelming an enemy with power, rather than accepting weakness.

It played out in miniature up there in the palace gardens. On and on Modesta came, battering at him with all the strength in her limbs, exhausting herself against the immovable object of Gatto’s defense. As though repeating the same pattern of attacks time and again would eventually result in anything other than the same failure repeated again and again.

Distantly, he realized that he should not have been giving away so much of his life so freely. That she was, in her way, wearing through him. Despite his bond with Harmony, he could not bring himself to draw on her life now. She could be anywhere, facing anything, and he would not rob her of her strength.

Neither Gatto nor Modesta could bring this fight to an end. They were perfectly matched in brilliance. Which meant it would wear on, and he would age and age until there was nothing left but a bag of dusty bones. Already, he could see wrinkles upon the backs of his hands. Middle age was upon him.

They couldn’t end the fight. But he could.

In the moment between Gatto lining up the rapier for a perfect deflection and Modesta’s sword making contact, Artemio took control.

His strained arm gave way beneath the blow, the perfect defense knocked aside by his weakness, the sword knocked from his hand entirely.

The same momentum that brought his guard up carried his now empty hand on as her downwards slash tore the cloth and flesh down the length of his handless arm. Ripping loose muscle and chipping off bone.

His hand was still empty and open when it reached her face, when his shaking fingers dipped into the hole that had been her nose and hooked in, the force of her strike a counterweight, driving him on. Gristle gave way to blood beneath his fingers, and they curled on impact with what had to be bone, locking into place inside her head.

None of his shades could be called to his rescue. Nobody could do this but him. He pulled with all his remaining strength, letting his own deadweight haul the pair of them off balance, off their feet, down to the flagstones below.

The ambassador of Agrant tried to scream but it came out wet and gargling. They rolled as they fell, battering off each other. Bleeding from all their myriad wounds. Their lifeblood intermingling to water the dead roses.

Somehow in the flailing he ended up on top, and with a heave he brought her head up and smashed it down again onto the stone. Up and down, again and again. Her sword bit at him. Flailing clumsy cuts across his back, his shoulders, drawing a fresh red waterfall from his scalp to hide the new white of his hair.

He was screaming too, a monstrous guttural noise that he had not known himself to be capable of making. For all that he spoke of the monsters that dwelled in the hearts of men, he had never truly believed himself one of them until now.

With one last brutal heave, Modesta went limp beneath him. All her expertise and artistry rendered moot by his unmitigated savagery.

Too tired to move, he stayed put, fingers still burrowed inside her, blood pouring down him in a dozen places. Truth be told, he probably would have stayed there forever, bleeding to death, if it were not for the gentle hands that now seized him and drew him up. Vision dimming, Artemio took a moment to register that amidst the miscellaneous nobles who had rushed up here to his rescue, it was the queen who was holding him close now.

She had seen him kill. Seen him kill like that. She had seen all that he had done, and there was fear of him in her eyes, but still she held him. He managed to groan out, “Your… Majesty.”

It drew the ghost of a smile to her lips.

He would survive this, and if the king still could not be found, she would be his wife. For the first time, he recognized the value of that. The potential for joy in this desolate place.

Like the monster returning from the grave in some penny opera, Modesta sprang back to her feet with a practiced acrobatic motion. Her sword crossed over her body as she rose, twisting into a thrust as she came forward.

It would have skewered Artemio through and through. It should have. But instead, he was flung aside and the blade meant for him sank into Cadence.

“No.” His word came out as barely a whisper.

Modesta’s face contorted as she realized what she had done. Then Artemio was in motion once more. Fiore bringing a sword to his hand, Gatto guiding his strike. He would not leave a thing to chance. Not now.

The blow took Modesta through the temple, cutting through bone, brain, and bone again. With a twist of the blade, he let her fall.

But a moment later, he was down on his knees too. Trying to cradle Cadence to his chest, hand pressing into the vast and spreading patch of hot, red wetness on her pristine white dress. What would have taken him through the heart had hit her lung. He fumbled with his one hand, trying to apply pressure to the wound as it sucked and bubbled. He heard cries go out for a healer, but there would be none who could reverse what had been done here.

She was still awake, even as the blood came pouring from between her perfect lips and all the futures they might have had ran away with it. “Cadence…” He had no words left in him. Only the one question still burning through it all. He held her close, and he let the tears for all that could have been come. “Why? Why would you do that?”

That same soft, sad smile he had seen on her face a dozen times or more played out again, stained with gore. She wheezed out her answer with the last of her breath. “There is only… one king.”

24 - In the Heart of the Mountain
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

Whatever Orsina had been expecting, it was not this.

Custody of her was finally transferred from the aslinda at her heels to more humanoid guards before she entered the tunnel into the mountain, not because the passage was not sufficiently wide to herd a dragon in, but because it was considered cruelty to separate a dragon from the sky. Even the guards around her seemed to droop as they passed under the threshold. Every part of them except for the arms holding jagged knives to her neck, of course. Each of the guards had been specially prepared for her coming, with a torch in one hand and a blade in the other, ready to slit her throat the very moment any part of her shadow looked unnatural to them. Given the roughness of the stone making up the walls and floor of the tunnel, it was frankly remarkable that she survived all the way to the vast, arched central chamber where the council of elders awaited her.

They spoke in hushed tones and shouts, debate raged back and forth over her head from the assembled dragon-lords, and when all was said and done, she was none the wiser to her fate than she had been when she first arrived. It seemed that she would not be offered the courtesy of a translator, and Konus had made himself scarce at around the same time as the dragon on her tail.

That had struck her as strange. She’d assumed that he meant to come in and share what he’d learned of her during the grand deception all the way from Espher, but it seemed he would not, instead leaving the actual council to base their decision on hearsay.

She had a few words of Arazi in her belt now, just enough to catch fragments of the debate. Ciltli, that was something to do with the bond between rider and dragon. Aslinda, that meant the true dragons. Something about her soul being a dragon? Or bound to one? Regardless, it seemed that they were not willing to kill somebody bound to a dragon. Which she supposed that she might be, through Kagan? They were worried that killing her would kill a dragon, and that was their cardinal sin. But she’d killed dragons, which was their cardinal sin, that had to be paid for with her death.

They were stuck in a rut of their own dogma, and it was keeping her alive, so she wasn’t about to mention that she didn’t even know if killing her would have any effect on the dragon at all. Not that any of them would have understood Espheran anyway.

From that long and laborious period of standing around doing nothing, Orsina was finally taken, not out into the open to be executed by dragon fire as she’d assumed, but down deeper into the mountain, dipping below the surface of the earth, into the hot chambers where magma had once pooled and bubbled before breaking for the surface. She started to sweat somewhere in those tunnels, and she was thankful for it washing away some of the crusted grime of the road. Down and down they went, and while her guards seemed unaffected by the sweltering heat, it felt to Orsina as though the full weight of the mountain itself was crushing down on her shoulders the deeper they traveled.

It took less time than she had expected to reach the lowest level of the Arazi dungeons. Presumably they had not settled too deep within the mountain given their loathing for being underground, combined with the already soaring temperatures. Digging deeper and risking lava leaks probably wasn’t the best of ideas anyway.

After all the unique preparations that had been made for her captivity thus far, Orsina had been anticipating some sort of special anti-Shadebound setup, but it seemed the Arazi had enough faith in the strength of their walls that such a thing was not necessary. Looking at the door that would seal her inside, she supposed she would have had faith in it too. A great slab of stone, bound up in rusted iron, it was like a movable mountain. Great chains hung from a complex apparatus of pulleys up on the roof, and as she watched, her honor guard switched them from one set of fixtures on the great slab to the other. By what signal they communicated to whoever was above, Orsina did not see, but in a moment the chains drew taut, and the slab began sliding back into place over the entrance to her cell with an awful grating sound that echoed ominously.

The blades were snatched away from her throat so swiftly that she almost swayed to follow them, and then she was manhandled through the closing gap with all haste, cast over the threshold with a heavy boot to the middle of her back.

Sprawling, she hit the ground hard, arms bound behind her back giving her no means to protect herself. Her chest bore the worst of it, though some gravel embedded in her chin too. She rolled onto her back almost as soon as she was down, intent on at least giving the man who’d pushed her a good glare, but she could not see him past the bristle of spearheads that seemed to fill the bottom half of the great doorway. Even now, they were just waiting for her to lash out.

All she struck with was the word, “Rude!” Then the rock rolled into place with a heavy thud and she was sealed off from the mountain at large. If she had any fear of suffocation in a sealed space, it vanished almost immediately when she turned to take in her surroundings. It was less of a cell and more of a cavern, vast enough that she could have taken every student in the House of Seven Shadows down here with her, and not one of them would have been touching another. For longer than it should have taken her, she stood staring around the cavern, taking in the venom-lit lanterns spaced about the walls and the waterfall trickling down one corner, staining the dark stone with lush green growth, before finally she realized that no mistake had been made in the allocation of space, nor the creation of a prison cell so vast. This was not a place meant to hold humans; it was a jail for dragons.

At first it was something of a boon for her ego, to consider herself as dangerous as one of the vast aslinda, but it did not take much time to realize that the only ones the Arazi would ever imprison would be dragons themselves. Everyone else they could simply execute.

Left with that rather sobering thought, Orsina began a tour of the facilities, happily cupping some fresh water into her mouth and pouring it over her face. Where it splashed onto the ground beyond the green algae, it became steam, rising to form little clouds at the top of the chamber. The ceiling was high enough that a dragon could stand erect without doing itself injury, but low enough that the light of the torches would still touch it. No prisoner could fool themselves into thinking there was anything but solid stone above. It was subtle, but it was still torture. Orsina had to give them credit where it was due.

The constant heat probably wasn’t considered torture for the dragons held here, or at least she hoped it wasn’t. Sweat continued to slough the filth of the road off her, and she could watch the water she’d cast on herself evaporating away.

It did not take long before she ran out of cell to examine. It may have been a vast space compared with most prison cells, but it was also featureless. Water and lamps were the highlights and indeed the only things of note. She supposed that if she managed to climb the smooth wall, she’d be able to break one of the lamps, douse herself in venom in the process, and accidentally set herself on fire, but it didn’t seem like the best option to assist in her escape, and none of the lanterns were close enough to the sealed stone door to think she might be able to weaponize the spray.

Which left her with nothing new to occupy her mind. It was a dangerous situation for someone with a partition in their brain who had no intention of going digging beyond the wall she’d built. She quickly switched her focus from the internal situation to the external. Her clothes were essentially rags after such rough use and lack of cleaning, the wool stiff with sweat and the linen stained and wilted. Beneath them, she was somewhat startled to discover that her body showed no sign of decline or privation. She had not shed weight, her musculature, such as it was, was undiminished. Even the small scratches and scars that could have been expected from her rough treatment were already faded, pale marks on the flat, olive tone of the rest of her skin. She was grateful for her ongoing good health, but she should have been on the verge of death by all rights, and the juxtaposition of what should be and what was threw her world off balance.

It also made it abundantly clear to her, yet again, that she could not go on ignoring the parts of herself she had pushed far away, so far that they were severed almost completely from her waking mind. She had to face what she had done to herself.

But before she started calling shades and melting her own thoughts down, there were a few practicalities she could cling to. A few more moments of being normal. She washed herself, washed her clothes, laid them down on the hot stone to dry, tried to find whatever spot had been designated for her to use as a toilet, discovered there was none, and dressed herself again. Drank copiously. Drenched herself in more of the water, undoing all the good work the rocks had done in drying her clothes but fending off the heat. She’d be dry again before she knew it. Dry and gasping for more water, though she could already hear her stomach sloshing. In a moment of inspiration, she climbed right into the little pool of water, realizing that the whole place would be flooded if it did not have some sort of drainage, but as it turned out, the water escaped through the porous volcanic rock at the bottom of the pool. Only pooling at all because of the pondweed and algae gunking up the drainage. Another possibility depleted.

She was not going to die. Whatever else might happen, there was no chance she was going to allow them to execute her. At least, she would not let herself die without exhausting every other option first. If that meant allowing the shades still trapped inside her to feast on her life and take over her body, then that was what she would do. Even though it went beyond a last resort and into the same realm as her earlier plan of self-immolation by venom-lamp.

Waiting until the last moment did not seem to be the most sensible course of action. Not when she had no idea what awaited her beyond the fortifications she’d constructed to split her soul in two. Now was the time to look. Now that she had peace and nobody present prepared to ignite or stab her the very moment she showed any sign of interacting with her shades.

For all she knew, the civil war that her component spirits were engaged in was over. There may have been one victor who now ruled over the other shades and through whom she might forge compacts, or they may have dwindled to mere wisps compared with their former selves, having been cut off from the supply of life on which they had become so swollen. They all needed her, for all that they fought and tried to overwhelm her; they could not continue to exist without the wellspring of vitality that she provided.

In truth, it would be easy to do now. With nothing but empty time to occupy and an uncomfortable but safe place for her body to lie undisturbed while her attentions were elsewhere. The real effort that had been wearing on her was the strain of maintaining the divide. All she needed to do was let go. Relax and let go.

When she heard a thump on the other side of the wall, it was such a relief that she nearly wept before scurrying over to it. She hurt her knuckles rapping back, but she didn’t care. Anything that could serve as a distraction was worthwhile in that moment. Even if there was nobody on the other side of the wall and all that she’d been hearing was the lurch of some hidden part of the machinery that moved the cell doors into place.

Delight lit up her face when the same knock came again in answer, not once but twice. She banged on the wall with one fist after the other. Proving she, too, was real to whoever was trapped on the other side.

Excitement hit her like a physical force, staggering her back from the blank stone. Fear wiped it away a moment later. That had not been her excitement. She had felt it as though it were her own. It had elated her. But there were undercurrents to it that ran too deep to be native to her own heart. So long dwelling in captivity, time stretched out until it had lost all meaning, and now finally, finally, someone else in the world. Someone who was not only there but who could be reached, who could be spoken to, who did not loathe the prisoner for what she’d done so much that it sealed their souls to her.

It was the other prisoner’s excitement, and it had come rushing into Orsina through the blockade in her mind that she had so carefully built, as though her hard-won defenses were not there at all. The excitement recoiled, ripping back out of her so fast that it left an emotionless void in its wake. It was vast and powerful, but clumsy. Like an overgrown child that did not realize it was trampling over a playmate until the screaming started.

Orsina did not scream, but it was close.

The intrusion of shades into her mind had become commonplace enough that the thought of it no longer filled her with fear. In fact, no small part of her mental energy each day was spent on ensuring that such incursions did not occur without her explicit consent. What troubled her about the latest assault was that it was effortless. It had felt every bit like a feeling that she was experiencing for herself. All the protections she’d put in place to keep the shades out had done nothing. All the years she’d been protecting herself, meaningless.

“How?”

She could not have expected a voice to answer her. And even if she had, she would have expected some low rumbling like what came out of Kagan. Not the delicate whisper that she heard. “I am not one of the dead. We live, both of us, and in living our hearts sing to the other.”

That scared her more than anything else so far. She’d been able to parse conversations with her own shades, arguments and accusations and all of the usual leveraging that they pulled, but to find someone who could talk so clearly into her mind was bizarre. Someone living.

She didn’t know how to answer. She’d spoken aloud before, but no sound could carry through the thick stone of the wall separating her from the other woman, the other prisoner.

“Can you hear me?”

“I can.” Orsina heard the reply echoing back into her mind before she’d even finished the sentence. “When you speak, you feel the words first. I feel them too.”

There was a slightly manic edge to Orsina’s words now. “Right, and I’m definitely not going mad, sitting here in a cave talking to myself.”

“I have been sitting in a cave talking to myself for so long, I don’t even remember the sun anymore.” The reply came through the wall. “If there was madness to be found, I would have found it.”

With that sobering statement, their conversation came to an abrupt halt. The wave of sadness that had accompanied the words on arrival in her mind had rocked Orsina where she stood, and despite knowing that the feeling was not her own, it seemed that her own emotions could not help but rise to meet that cresting despair.

She could not dwell on her thoughts, because looking too closely at them would only lead her down the winding path to the section of herself that remained in quarantine. She would not succumb to that lingering existential dread. Not when there was so obvious an outlet.

“So, you’ve been down here a while?”

“Too long.” The voice on the other side of the wall did a better job of hiding the depths of her misery this time. It was a woman’s voice. Quite distinctly. She sounded younger than Orsina, in her head. But she supposed that her own voice in her head sounded a damned sight younger than the one that came out when she spoke. So many years, swallowed up by the shades, all of her childhood swallowed up by the forest. She was scarcely older than a child, in the grand scheme of things.

She forced herself to smile, to laugh, even though she knew no part of it would carry over. “Doesn’t sound like I’m going to be here long at all. As soon as they work out how to kill me safely, I’m gone.”

Her own fear fell like a drop of rain into a vast ocean, swallowed up in the self-pity of the other prisoner. “Then you’re lucky.”

“Be sure to tell that to my incinerated corpse.”

The misery ran so deep that just perceiving it made Orsina feel like she might drown. As though all that was joyful in the world had been inverted, turned from a mountain to a pit. “At least it will be over.”

Just touching against all that misery was enough to make Orsina cry. She hadn’t wept for herself, for her dead mother, or for her dead father or the whole village that had raised her. She hadn’t wept for Mother Vinegar, who was dead but not gone, or for the people she’d killed. She hadn’t wept for anything, because to show weakness was to invite reprisal among the children of nobles or the savages of the Arazi. But now the tears came in floods. She had to choke past them to answer with all honesty, “I’d rather it wasn’t.”

There was another lull, the great sorrowful soul beyond the stone eased back from her, and she was able to draw breath between her sobs. It was all too much to bear, and now that the floodgates had been opened, Orsina found that she could not hold back her own misery. It was cold comfort indeed when the voice spoke inside her head once more. “When you get old, you’ll understand that more days are a curse, not a blessing.”

It was so obscene that Orsina genuinely couldn’t hold back laughter this time. It was bitter and cruel, but at least it was better than wallowing in the pit of despair. “Not going to have much opportunity for getting old either.”

She did not feel any amusement from the other prisoner. She did not feel anything at all. It was as though the omnipresent weight of the other girl’s feelings had lifted away for a moment, and she was able to breathe again without it being in harmony with her. She was herself again. Her mind her own, her feelings her own. She was not happy about it, as such, because it left her all the more starkly aware of how much of what she had been feeling was entirely herself.

Finally, when she’d just begun to convince herself that there was nobody there and that she had simply been experiencing some sort of episode as a result of the strains placed upon her mind, the voice came again, the emotion less heavy-handed this time. “You’ll let them kill you?”

“There’s an army of them.” Orsina’s voice sounded shaky in her own ears, but she was certain that what was being projected was perfectly understandable. “I’m not sure ‘let’ really comes into it.”

“You cannot deceive me.” There was a smug edge to the voice she heard in her head, as though the woman behind the wall was proud of herself. Proud to have weaseled her way past what Orsina thought on the surface to the truths below. The truths she would not admit to. “I know that in your heart, the choice is still yours.”

Power. It all came down to power. The power she had, the power she denied, the power that had been denied to her. If she were to unleash her shades, she may not have been able to pull the whole mountain down, but the fact that she could even entertain the thought was concerning.

All she had to do was let go. The shades, whatever form they now took, whoever among them had managed to rule or make peace among the others, would come to her call, they would suckle at her as they always had, and she would make them stronger than their wildest dreams. Feeding them endless years for brief moments of power so dazzling it could outshine the sun. In feeding them, she made them stronger, in drawing on that strength, she found ever more cause to feed them. That downwards spiral would sap every moment from her if she let it, and she had come so close to letting it when the battle was at its peak.

The wall was still there, not beneath her hands, but inside her mind, and she could tear it aside as easily as she could rip through a paper package. The only thing that was stopping her was the fear of what she’d find on the other side. The fear of what she might become.

Searching for a safe topic to distract her from doing it, Orsina asked, “What do you do for fun around here?”

There was a lingering pause again, as though her new neighbor was taken aback by the question, but she felt warmth wash over her as the answer came. “Sometimes I sleep. Sometimes they feed us. Not often, but sometimes.”

Orsina sank down at last, putting her back to the wall as she always had when talking with Konus. She tried to put the comparison out of her mind, knowing there was no way she was being deceived in the same way again. Her heart lay open to the woman on the other side of the stone, and the same was true in reverse. She snickered as she spoke aloud, “Riveting stuff.”

There was a long confused pause again as the other woman came to realize that a joke was being made, through interpretation of Orsina’s feelings more than her words. Orsina didn’t even know if the other prisoner spoke Espheran or if it was simply the direct connection of their souls that let them to communicate so clearly.

Amusement, laughter, joy, these were things that the other woman had forgotten in her confinement, and now they lapped at the back of Orsina’s mind like they meant to tickle her. “I think I would like you, even if you were not the only person in my world.”

She wasn’t quite sure how to answer that. “Thanks?”

There was a moment of silence, uncertainty, Orsina didn’t even know how they were communicating really, just that it felt like a shade whispering in her mind when it was channeled. “Who are you?”

“Yelena.”

It seemed that was all the answer she was getting. Because the woman quickly deflected, “Please, tell me some of what I have missed.”

What followed was the most haphazard and guesswork-filled treatise on the history of the Arazi and their neighbors as anyone had ever had the misfortune to listen to. By the midpoint, it had become apparent to both speaker and listener that those parts of the tale that were not fiction or supposition were at the very least grotesquely misunderstood, but in the place of frustration at the lack of vital intelligence, Orsina’s new companion seemed to be almost overwhelmed by it, given the affection emanating from her. It soon became less of a lecture and more of a conversation with both sides trying to piece together something resembling a timeline. Orsina with her fleeting knowledge gleaned from the Arazi she had met and the few fragments of lore of the dragon-lords she had been able to extract from the library of Septombra, and her new neighbor filling in the blanks with the suppositions that she had been constructing for herself throughout whatever ages she had been imprisoned here. With both women working all out, they perhaps pieced together a year or two correctly between them, but the sheer indulgence of conversation seemed to please both of them considerably more than any true history ever could have.

At first, Orsina had been reluctant to explain her own part in the more recent history, to explain that she was the great enemy of the Arazi, according to their deranged leader, but soon it became apparent that whatever vitriol she held for Konus and his crusade, it was more than matched by the other prisoner’s abject loathing of the man. Orsina supposed that he must have had a hand in the other woman’s imprisonment too, but judging by the brief flickering touches of deeper hatred, she gradually came to realize that the anger was born not of vengeance but of abhorrence. Her new friend was a political prisoner, sealed beneath the mountain for her hatred of Konus and all that he stood for. A dissenting voice in a society that could allow for none to speak out against their beloved demi-god of a leader.

Whatever Harmony might have said about Orsina’s manners, or lack thereof, she had at least enough tact not to simply demand an answer as to what crimes had resulted in her companion’s incarceration, though the question haunted all they spoke of. It seemed to Orsina that given their love of freedom, simply speaking against Konus would not have resulted in a treatment considered so cruel among the Arazi. There must have been some action that had given their dubious prophet the excuse he needed to damn the woman to eternal bondage.

Whatever it was would remain secret. Just as Orsina herself held back the more private details of her own history. Even here, in this distant and foreign land, she could not admit to the humble birth that had brought her into the world nor the tangle of feelings that seemed to constrict about her each time that she thought of Harmony, free in the world but all alone. Anything that she could not explain to herself, she did not try to explain to her new friend, but gradually the two of them pieced together a picture of the other.

Strange as it was, different as they were, something about the prisoner reminded Orsina of Kagan. Not her manner of speech or her stoic acceptance of her unhappy circumstances but something deeper. It was not just that they were both Arazi, it was more that they seemed to have been cut from the same cloth. Orsina wondered if her old friend had siblings still here among the Arazi, because it seemed to her that this was his sister, even though there had been no real suggestion to that effect.

He was the other subject that she kept to herself.

It was obvious from the way that Orsina spoke that she knew one of the Arazi before the war came. She made no attempt at subterfuge when her conversational partner could look right into her heart, but neither did she name him or give any description to him. Nobody in exile would want attention drawn to them. Nobody would want to be thought ill of by the family they had left behind. She would not bring more trouble down on him than she already had.

Except she already had.

It stuck her like an icicle in the gut when she realized they were bonded and bound, that if she were to give up and die, then it would not only be herself condemned to the grave but her kindly protector too. She had forgotten him, in all her balancing of the scales. She might have allowed herself to pass away peacefully rather than unleash that maelstrom inside her again, but whatever happened, she would not allow harm to come to Kagan. Whatever ethical dilemma she had been struggling with before was now moot.

As much as she had been enjoying their conversation so far, it soon became apparent to her new friend that she needed some time to think for herself. Yelena may have felt the stab of shock running through Orsina or her newfound resolve not to go down without a fight. Either way, it drove enough of a wedge between them that when Orsina begged off for some rest, there was no argument. The prisoner went back to her solitude, even though it pained her, and Orsina crossed the cavern, as though it would make the blindest bit of difference, settling beneath one of the lanterns so she could see the long, single shadow that she cast.

Closing her eyes, she reached out to the wall that she had built to keep her soul and sanity safe, she laid her hands upon it, and she ripped it aside.

25 - The Fallen Star
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

It was not long before Harmony’s practice at keeping her mind clear was put to the test. Though it was late at night, it seemed they were not the only ones returning to the camp in this direction. A plodding, wide plate of a thunder lizard was making its way along the path, accompanied by an equally short and stout woman dressed in an outfit of leather scraps not entirely dissimilar to Harmony’s own.

Kagan nodded to her as they passed by, and there was a murmur of Arazi speech in return. At any moment, Harmony knew that her presence might give them away, the chaos of her thoughts spilling over from the placid pool she was trying to visualize and washing over this stranger. This close to the others, there was no hope of silently killing the beast and bondmate. It would bring all of the Arazi down upon them if she lost control.

She could not help but feel that it was more luck than mastery of herself that this did not occur. They moved on along the road, unburdened as they were with any colossal reptile, and soon were clear of the other woman. A long-held breath eased out of Harmony then, and some of the tension left her body with it. She could do this. She was already doing this. It had already been done. Even her newfound confidence had to be washed away and set aside for later.

Full dark was upon them long before they reached the gathered flames of the city between the mountains, but in the gaps between other travelers, of which there were surprisingly few, Kagan would point out the shapes of things daylight would reveal. The circle of volcanoes, the steep but fertile slopes that could have been plantations with just a little of the imported water but had been given over entirely to the aslinda-dragons. Fires burned everywhere, and Harmony could not imagine how many trees they had to haul across the grey to keep this place lit for even a day—at least until they approached the first flame and she realized that while there were torches, the great fires used for cooking, industry, and the majority of the town’s light were little more than shallow pits filled with an acrid oil of some sort. The smell was all too familiar, until she finally made the connection to the thunder lizard charging her way, pluming smoke. It was venom. Dragon fire.

Bodies were gathered around the fires, hulking and human or lithe and reptilian, all were gathered for the warmth, all but the aslinda-dragons themselves. She caught glimpses of shadows moving up on the mountainside, looming over them all. The first time, she’d started, thinking it was a rockslide, but gravity did not pull stone sideways and then up any more than stone could release warbling cries. Roaring and snarling and war was all she’d ever heard of dragons; to hear them now, calling out to one another in the night, made her feel unsettled in ways she had not anticipated.

Heads turned as they passed, but Kagan did not deign to look back, and she followed his lead, keeping her chin tucked low, staring up through the eye sockets of her helm, eyes locked upon the great mountain, the crown jewel of the towering volcanoes encircling them like the arms of a mother. It was there that Kagan stared, there that he strode, even as he made every pretense of being on the lookout for someone, or something. She would have asked him, if the sound of her own voice wasn’t a death sentence. As it was, she simply trailed along, doing her damnedest to stay in his shadow.

What would have frightened her by daylight became nightmarish in the dark of night and the flickering flame. Terror-birds lived up to their name, looming up out of the darkness, though they were few and far between. The far more common horror was the Arazi themselves, human enough to be familiar, changed enough to be utterly alien. Harmony had thought herself inured to that sense of wrongness, between the mongrels of home and her long journey by Kagan’s side, but while he had become normal to her perception, it gave her only another point of reference by which to find these creatures wrong. Profoundly wrong. Some had necks as long as their bodies, others had arms trailing below their knees. Yet others had taken that sleek and perfect scaling that coated Kagan and shifted it to dreadful excess, moving as though they were terribly burdened by the weight of the bony growths encompassing their bodies. Giving them silhouettes neither human nor reptile, more like barely graven statuary, granted unnatural life. Shapes seen in clouds.

But that fear passed through her and out the other side without her allowing it to touch her. She kept her mind clear, her emotions emptied out. Just as she had done on the road, just as she did in the midst of battle, when she slipped into perfect focus. Perhaps later, in her sleep, these monsters would come back to haunt her, but for now, her training had done its work.

Beyond the shadowed figures were tents and lean-tos, trying and failing to do the work of walls and houses. But the tables set up in front of them told her quite clearly that this was some sort of market, one that it seemed went on trading into the night. She’d heard tell of the great cities of Agrant, where the men were worked like dogs through night and day alike and sleep was a stranger to all, but she had never expected to see such a thing here. Yet for all that this seemed the most rustic and backwards of places in stark contrast with that ceaseless industry, there were customers still buying and merchants still selling—and a dense enough crowd that she eventually had to catch onto Kagan’s wrist so they were not separated in the press.

He moved faster then, with certainty that they would not be parted, using his bulk and the status it implied to part the crowd ahead of them and pick up the pace. Yet he did not make a rush towards the great mountain where he claimed Orsina would be held, instead dragging Harmony off to the side, through a gap in the tents and into the tangled warren of sinew-ropes and pegs that held the façade of a town upright. There were others there, to Harmony’s surprise; some huddled in on themselves, trying to find sleep, others engaged in whatever kind of trade was illicit even here. They may have had no kings, but it seemed there were still some laws Arazi abided by, otherwise what need would there have been for secrecy?

All of their new companions behind the canvas froze at the sight of Kagan. A dragon-lord was surely the bearer of bad news for anyone flouting the laws of the Arazi. Yet he paid them no mind, and after what seemed a long moment of readjustment, everyone set about their business with renewed haste. She leaned in as close as she dared, resting a hand upon the bare and scarred expanse of his chest for balance, probably making the whole thing look like some sort of sordid dalliance. “What are we doing here?”

He cast his eyes around like they were back out on the plains. Searching for whatever wild beast he feared was coming. “Being hunted.”

“I slipped.” She cursed under her breath, trying to keep her mind calm and steady. “I knew I’d slip. I should have stayed behind…”

He clapped a hand over her mouth and dragged her over into the crevice where two hide tents were leaning into each other, crouching so his own massive body could fit and whispering in her ear. “Someone recognized me. Or recognized something wrong. I sensed their interest, not you. You’re doing good, kid.”

She pointedly did not bite his hand this time, feeling a swell of pride at his praise. “Why are we…”

He jerked his chin up, setting his leathery wig chiming. “Dragons above. Easy to spot us.”

“In the pitch black?”

His chest heaved behind her in what she thought was a cough, then realized was a snort. “We can see in the dark.”

That did explain the ongoing market at least. Why stop if you could see the same either way? Not to mention that it seemed the Arazi barely needed sleep thanks to their bond, or Kagan didn’t at least. “Now what?”

“Now we see how good their tracking is.”

The journey across the steppes had seemed stressful to Harmony, their time walking through this hive of enemies even more so, but none of it had prepared her for the utter misery of standing there in the dark, waiting for death to come.

Chatter could be heard beyond the tents, the quiet trade of the contraband dealers, the sound of the hustle and bustle back out on the public face of this place. Above, the gentle rumble, almost like thunder, of the circling dragons’ wingbeats. Everything about this place was strange, from the dead earth beneath her feet to the strange spices lingering on the air and mingling with the foulness of the molten earth’s breath.

“Kagan, seni gordugumu biliyorum, hain.” The voice was as deep as his, if not deeper, but there was something in the pitch that still made it clear a woman was shouting out from amidst the tangle of ropes, somewhere just out of line of sight.

His mouth hovered behind Harmony’s ear, and he whispered. “She knows me. She saw me.”

“Bir maskenin seni gizleyecegini mi sandin?” the Arazi roared loud enough that it drowned out all the ruckus of the market. “Sana o yaralari ben verdim!”

“She knows me by my scars.” There was a sadness in Kagan’s voice now. All of this time, she had seen him angry, furious really, at his exile, and dreading what he’d face on his return. Harmony had wanted to pass unnoticed because it was a risk to her life to be discovered, but for Kagan, she supposed that he was holding on to some hope that he would not have to confront what he had left behind. Maybe he even thought that if he could slip in undetected, he might be able to stay, to live among his people again.

Until that moment, she had felt no sympathy for him, not really. He claimed to be a murderer, claimed to being capable of cruelty, but he had never shown any sign of craving it. She had assumed his exile was justified, and he’d given no indication it was anything else.

But she had not thought of what it would be like to have lived his life, to be cast away from everyone and everything that he knew. She wondered how she would have survived if Espher had rejected her and she had ended up here on her own. A foreign land, a foreign tongue, a culture completely alien to her. With the passing of years, would she ever stop feeling homesick? Would she ever stop missing her life, her brother? She had not even asked if Kagan had family here. For all she knew, he had a wife and children. A dozen brothers and sisters. A veritable brood.

“We must face her.” He pressed against her back, the full weight of him driving her forward even as she dug in her heels.

“What? Why? She doesn’t know where we are, or she wouldn’t be trying to draw us out.”

He picked her up then, like she was a child, scooping her under her arms and lifting her clean off the ground as he stepped out. “Can’t let her draw more attention.”

The woman was at least as large and impressive as her voice. Though the only light was the reflected glow of the fire in the mountains, Harmony could make out the shape of her and the way she moved. Stalking through the ropes like a wildcat, weapons already in her hands.

She did not claim any expertise in the Arazi, even after warring with them and spending so much time in the company of one, but to her eyes, this woman seemed to be bonded to a true dragon. There was something different in the way it shaped people than the other bonds, something that gave them bulk while maintaining a certain sleekness of form. Where the other Arazi grew huge and misshapen, there was a streamlined symmetry to the dragon-lords themselves.

There was nothing sleek about the weapons dangling from the woman’s hands. They looked like nothing more than great cleavers of polished bone set in handles carved into the backs of the blades and linked to her wrists by lengths of chain.

One hit from them would snap her sword, the weight of them alone would be enough to carry a fight, and that wasn’t even taking into consideration the strength behind the blow. Strength that had to be immense just to hold such massive things.

Kagan set Harmony down like an afterthought and then strode out to meet the woman with the same languid grace she possessed. Like he was a mirror of her.

The woman spoke first. “Gozlerime inanamadim, nasil bu kadar aptal olabilirsin?”

It was all gibberish to Harmony, but Kagan answered with his own rumbling voice, a voice made for their shared tongue. “Uzgunum.”

Apparently he was terse in any language.

Then the Arazi woman moved, and the time for words was over.

The heavy weapons she carried had seemed incongruous to Harmony, so unlike the choices Kagan made. The spears and javelins that he favored relied on the innate ability of his dragon to plot courses through the air and predict angles, while this woman, so similar to him in so many other ways, had chosen hers for brute force.

Without moving from where her feet were set amidst the tripping tangle of guy-ropes, the dragon-lord swung her arm and then let the cleaver go. It leapt from her grip like it was possessed of a mind of its own, flying through the air towards them with its edge thirsty for blood.

Kagan tripped over the tangled ropes as he tried to leap aside, falling and hooking his ankle in the taut mass of them. If that first throw had been all there was to the Arazi attack, then that would not have mattered, but once the chain was stretched out to its full length, the dragon-lord yanked her weapon back, spinning it off course and towards where Kagan had fallen.

She was too far away to do anything about it, set aside as she was while the grown-ups fought. All of their focus was on each other.

That had to change.

Letting out a whoop that she hoped might pass for an Arazi battle-cry, she charged. Perhaps it was too obvious a distraction, or perhaps the Arazi woman didn’t consider her a threat. Either way, her head did not turn, even as she hefted back her other cleaver to let it fly.

Kagan may have been down, but he was not out of the fight yet. His spears were bent beneath his back, almost to snapping point, and the knife on his belt may as well have been on the other side of the world for the time it would have taken him to reach it, but his hands were not bound, and he was still himself. That had been all he’d ever needed.

As the blade fell at him in an executing blow, he struck out, knocking it from its course. It slammed into the packed earth by his head, severing ropes and starting the gradual collapse of a row of the tents that formed the walls around this arena. The secrecy that was keeping them alive was crumbling before their eyes.

It took another tug for the Arazi to retrieve her weapon, even if she couldn’t angle it to hit Kagan on the return flight. Another moment that Harmony had to close the distance. Instead of tripping her way across the field, she sprang, bouncing from rope to rope like a circus performer. Of all the ridiculous things her trainers had used through the years to improve her balance and footwork, she had never even considered that her days of learning to fight on a line strung over a pond would number among the ones that would one day come in useful.

The second cleaver swung out as the first one returned, headed straight towards Kagan as he struggled back upright. It would split him down the middle if it hit, armored scales or not.

Harmony lurched to the side, all the momentum that had been carrying her forward diverted at an angle so she was no longer charging the Arazi, but crossing paths with the chain.

The cleaver on the end of the line probably weighed more than Harmony, and she had few illusions about how much of a difference she would make even before the chain hit her in the ribs. But it worked. The perfect flight of the cleaver was brought up short by the sudden weight on the chain. Yanked off course at the very last moment to sweep uselessly by Kagan.

Finally, attention was turned to her. The Arazi flicked the chain, drawing her first blade back like a whip, trying to snap the blade down into Harmony as it passed. It missed, but it carved through yet more guy-lines and threw sparks off the other chain when they met.

Harmony sprang to her feet as both cleavers were hauled back towards their master, leaping not to the side to avoid them, but towards the one controlling the flying blades. She was inside of the other woman’s impressive reach, and unless the Arazi meant to carve herself too, there was no way the weapons could be brought to bear against her properly.

It seemed that their enemy was not above improper use of her weapons, however. She spun, twisting her arms out and crossing the chains before giving them an awful tug. It was not the blades but the chains themselves that struck Harmony, binding her with crushing pressure from both sides and lifting her off her feet.

Breath would not come. Her flight lasted only a moment before the tension of the chains eased and the blades came flying by, but it proved the Arazi’s point quite ably: It did not matter that someone was inside her guard when her weapons could be anywhere within that sphere of influence with a few tugs.

Harmony’s arm felt broken, and she had to strain to fill her lungs. The sheer pressure exerted on her in that moment had been inhuman. Yet still her drawn blade was in her hand, and the moment that her feet touched something solid, she was propelling herself forward again.

In the final moment of her charge, when there was no air in her lungs and no time to think again, the great cleaver blades were readied in her opponent’s hands.

Keep it short. That was the only way Harmony could win. Not because she was exhausted and breathless and a contest of stamina would almost certainly end in her ground into the dirt, but because there was no way to fight in silence. All it took was one more set of eyes and the whole camp might collapse in on them.

No attempt was made to parry her leaping strike; the Arazi woman clearly considered it to be beneath contempt. Instead, both blades were swung around on a horizontal arc, one set above the other, so Harmony would have been split mid-thigh and mid-chest.

Time did not slow in that moment, there was no moment of realization when Harmony recognized her own impending destruction and her inability to avoid it. That would have implied that there was anything controlling her beyond muscle memory and honed instinct. She was going to die and never even know it.

Kagan’s javelin hit the Arazi in the gut. Like he hadn’t trusted his strength to get it through the armored plates of her chest. The impact of it knocked her from her feet, spoiled her swing. Harmony lived, the blades that would have destroyed her falling out of reach.

At any moment, Harmony felt certain the fallen warrior would leap back into battle, but once she herself had hit the ground she found herself oddly unable to rise. Perhaps it had something to do with the air having been stolen from her lungs by the crush of chains, perhaps it was simply the exhaustion of the past weeks catching up to her. Even as she fumbled to free herself from the ropes she’d inevitably landed amidst, she could feel the strength leaving her.

The Arazi woman did not rise, did not swing out her lethal cleavers once more. Where the javelin was lodged through her stomach, she had pressed both of her hands, and her eyes were rolled up to the dark sky above. A scream tore through the night, not coming from her, but from above.

One of the innumerable sets of wingbeats drumming above stopped.

With only human eyes, Harmony could not see the dragon swooping down towards them, but she could hear the whistle of wind, and the awful shriek that the beast released as it plummeted. Kagan was beside her before she was back to her feet and able to wheeze in a breath. “What… do we do…”

“We don’t let them touch.” He shouldered past her, still tripping all the way to the other Arazi’s side. “It will strengthen the bond, let her heal the way a dragon heals.”

The warrior woman lay on a hammock of crisscrossing ropes, unmoving, desperately trying to hold her own innards in place. She spat at Kagan when he entered her line of sight. Snarling out more words in their foreign tongue that Harmony had no hope of understanding, even if she were trying to.

“Iyi geceler hercai,” Kagan answered her, before lifting one of those impossibly heavy cleavers almost casually from her unresisting hands and bringing it down into her face.

Harmony had to wrench her gaze away. She had been through war and the kind of grotesque depravity you’d only read of in a peasant’s penny dreadful, but the sight of that almost human head split open was too much for her to stomach.

Dropping the cleaver, Kagan reached for Harmony, and despite her mixed feelings about the brutality she had just borne witness to, there was no hesitation in her before she took his hand. This was who he was, who he had always been, and who he had readily admitted to being. There was no need for her to feign surprise or upset at that. Perhaps a noble of Espher might have made for more pleasant conversation on the road, but now that the fighting was started, she was immensely glad to have Kagan along. As he dragged her across the field, moving faster than either one of them had in days, he growled at her, “Move!”

Just to be contrary, she hooked her foot on a line for a moment, spinning him to face her by the iron grip he had on her wrist. “Shouldn’t we be hiding the body or something?”

Through gritted teeth, he yanked her free and essentially tucked her under his arm so he could run. “That isn’t the body we need to worry about.”

About a moment later, the body that they needed to worry about landed. The dragon had already been in a dive, plummeting directly towards its rider before the killing blow was struck. The fact that it had now lost its life did nothing to rob it of momentum.

The screams started before it even hit the ground. The whole camp shook as the corpse struck like a meteor into their midst. Without guidance, it had come down halfway into the tangled space behind the tents and half on a row of stalls. Harmony did not dare to think how many had just died beneath its crushing weight in that instant. Instead, she kept her head tucked low and hung on to Kagan like he was the last solid point in a world turned to quicksand. His status was not enough to part the crowds now, he had to rely on his shoulder, and she trailed along in his wake as they went against the tide. All eyes were on the fallen dragon, all wailing and screaming and despair was on its behalf. Who knew how long it would take them to even notice the dead woman?

Breaking free of the crowd, she felt safe enough to ask him, “What now?”

He glanced back at the chaos unfolding behind them and picked up the pace. “Got our distraction. We’re going in.”

26 - The Slaves of History
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

Artemio woke to a newfound sense of royalty. It was not something that he was seeking, expecting, or even vaguely hoping for, particularly given the unexpected loss of Cadence and her ability to secure some of the more fractious factions within Espher. When the armies came to the conclusion that the war was won and the kings were gone, he had assumed that internecine fighting would begin immediately. From his vantage point under a pile of doctors, surgeons, barbers, and anyone else who cared to weigh in with their medical opinion, he had observed the palace being cleared of Agrantine stragglers and searched floor by floor. He had seen their colors struck from wherever they hung, and he had borne witness, partially supported by the thick arms of Duchess Granchio, to the execution of any who had survived the fighting.

It was a small mercy that Modesta had died at his hand. Artemio could see her in his mind’s eye, making a speech, becoming a martyr if it failed. Evincing sympathy even from the stony hearts of the nobility she had betrayed. It would have helped that she and Agrant had been lining the pockets of those nobles for decades. Presumably in expectation of a day like this when all the favors might be called in and the headsman’s axe set aside.

Granchio was a comforting presence, and he found it increasingly difficult to pretend that he was not at least in part reliant upon her. Her family, large and powerful, had been favored by the Cerva, and it was quite likely that she was merely attempting to curry favor with him in case his support was needed when the time came for her family to make a run at the throne, but after everything that he had suffered and lost in the last day, he found himself accepting the anchor to humanity that she represented willingly. She helped him to move around, aching body easier to shift with a little extra muscle, missing hand a little easier to overlook when there was someone there to hand him things.

She spoke little, after affirming all that he already knew of the war he’d just waged. That despite the lack of leadership, the siege had held strong on the weight of his command. That when his mongrel messengers slipped out through the sewers and passed along his orders, they were accepted in the spirit in which they were intended. The battle itself he endeavored to distance himself from. To his mind, Granchio had been the commander to lead the army through the breach, and his only contribution had been an elevated perspective. She disagreed with him but had the good sense not to argue with a man who looked so very close to the precipice of death.

There were whispers among the nobles that it was the time for a purge, for all who had aided and abetted the enemy to suffer the same fate. Artemio found that he was not in agreement, but neither was he currently in any position to issue commands to the contrary. If it were his choice, he would offer them amnesty. After such a show of strength, most if not all of them would be cowed, and it would serve to break any hold Agrant still held on them. Something that was going to be vital in the coming years when the drums of war sounded.

The matter of the collaborators remained in the air, like a coin toss, still flipping and turning to be seen by all from all angles. No small part of the Espheran court had been in their pocket at one time or another, so the question of how far back such collaboration should be considered treasonous was swiftly going to become a deciding factor on just how much of the court survived the coming days. Once Espher had a king once more.

Apart from that brief outing onto the balcony to watch the fountains around the palace turn pink with spilled blood, Artemio had spent no small part of his time resting and recuperating in what he would still insist were the king’s chambers. The hole that he had punched through the floorboards had been inexpertly patched by the Agrantine, and a proper craftsman would have to be brought in to make the fresh wood blend with the rest. The whole thing made Artemio uneasy. He was already feeling unstable on his feet, and the idea of the vast empty space just below the boards kept on setting off some sort of alarm in the back of his mind. As though he might fall through at any moment. It was a silly fancy, but one he could not push aside entirely.

The rest of his time was spent in the Teatro. The accursed Teatro. Where every minor niggle and complaint of the nobles had all come flooding back now that there was no more war to unite them. In the king’s absence, and in no small part likely due to pity over the injuries that he’d suffered, Artemio had been set beside the throne to serve as regent until such time as business returned to usual and a chain of succession was reestablished.

Pain served him well in those hours, fighting back his exhaustion, driving out any stray thoughts that might have intruded on the business he needed to attend to. Even in those brief moments when the Teatro was in recess, he found himself surrounded incessantly by petitioners and worse. Praise. The sacrifices that he had made for Espher had not gone unnoticed, though he suspected that they might have been less noticed had his sword-hand remained attached.

When edicts and laws were passed before him after much debate, he had to sign them with his off-hand. It was an unpleasant experience that he supposed he would have no choice but to get used to. The attendants, the valets, even Granchio, all seemed to be waiting for him to burst into motion at any given moment, to cast aside all the duties of the day and hurl himself off into some fresh venture that would fix everything.

It was not until late in the afternoon, when what little liveliness he had left in him was waning and the herb-reeking cot where he had been receiving treatment for his injuries started to sound appealing, that his mind wandered far enough from the task at hand to come upon a useful landmark.

He held up his hand, and the Teatro fell silent. Such a thing was practically an act of magic in itself, but the expressions on the faces of the nobles gawking at him were something else entirely. There was no irritation that their arguments had been halted, no contempt or complacency. They looked at him like a child to its father, waiting for him to solve all their problems with a word.

“Bring me the most recent mapping of the castle. The latest changes. Quickly now.” The elderly castellan and the various administrative staff of the castle stirred from their soporific leaning and sprang into action before they could be flogged by any of the suddenly very excited nobles around them. Turning his head to see the Duchess Granchio up in the stalls, he could intuit that the same energy had infected her.

The pieces were all slotting together in his mind; all that he needed to be certain was a glance at the plans.

Before he could even reach for them, the vellum scrolls being hurried into the room were unrolled. Finding strength in his legs that he thought had all been spent, Artemio was up and moving along the layered plans for the castle until he came upon the last known location of the Cerva kings. His finger marked the position, and he began to hunt on the layer below for the corresponding place. There was nothing shown on the map. It was as though the palace simply stopped dead and the solarium floated above the open air. He dragged his finger down to that empty space and tapped. “What is here?”

The castellan did not know nor did any of the masters of the house. Even when Artemio called in the maids who attended to that wing, an answer could not be drawn from them. He turned back to the gathered nobles and held out his hand. “We shall take a brief recess so that I may continue my investigations. Please remain seated.”

Granchio shuffled up beside him as he headed to the door, hooking her arm around his as though she were his maiden-aunt out on a walk. Meanwhile the strength of her hand locked beneath his armpit was all that kept him from toppling as he moved.

“My thanks to you, Duchess.”

She squeezed him a little tighter as they moved into a stairwell, with a degree of camaraderie that would have brought a dampness to Artemio’s eyes even were she not applying pressure to cracked ribs.

“With respect, you aren’t so much of a burden as you think you are.”

He forced a grin onto his face. “I hope that you’ll continue to feel that way when I tell you that we’re headed to the solarium at the top of the palace.”

“Figured as much.” The duchess snorted. “Hope you remember this when I’m in my dotage and need somebody to haul me about.”

“I shouldn’t worry about that circumstance, dear Duchess.” He leaned on her a little more heavily, the closest he could manage to nudging her with his shoulder. “Such a thing must still be days away.”

For an awful moment, he worried that he’d overstepped the bounds of their relationship. For as long as they had been working together, she had been every bit the consummate soldier, and he now feared that he’d mistaken her temperament as jovial when it had only been professional.

She cleared her throat, then in a perfect monotone she declared, “Oh no, I’ve dropped Duke Volpe, and he landed on his head on every step all the way down to the cellars.”

It hurt to laugh, but he did it all the same. Some things were worth the pain. “It would surely make an improvement upon my reasoning. I swear I must have had a dunce’s cap affixed to me the moment I stepped back into Covotana.”

“I suspect you may have had other things on your mind.”

He flicked his hand out, as though he could dispel her words. “Distractions from the most important question.”

The duchess lost a little of her jovial tone as once again her voice slipped into monotone. “Who’ll be king?”

“Where is the king.” Artemio sighed as they exited the stairwell to cross over to another.

“Where is… You think the Agrantine dogs let him be, do you? Think he slipped through their fingers?”

“I have had my suspicions from the beginning. I was so close to picking apart this riddle from the very first day that I was here, but I did not think like the Cerva. My mind was divided, dealing with everything else that was happening, running around on my wild goose chase. If I had simply stopped, I would have seen the truth staring me in the face.”

“And what truth is that?”

“I’ll let you know once we’re in the solarium and I can prove it one way or the other.”

She snorted. “Forget Agrantine money, Arazi invasions, squabbling nobles, and the rest. The worst plague on Espher is opera.”

“I thought you were rather partial to it?”

“Oh, I am. I love the songs, the drama.” She had something of a crooked grin, likely hiding a bad tooth or the like, but Artemio found that after so much time in the company of pristine and perfect faces with venomous fangs tucked behind them that a little bit of character was a welcome change. “But it infects us all with its stories. Makes everyone in Espher a showman.”

“I can assure you, my dear Duchess, that I have not a single iota of romance or drama in my heart.”

He found himself too breathless to do much conversing on the rest of their journey up. It was not the breathlessness of exhaustion, which he was all too accustomed to, but a new one, where pain constricted his ability to breathe rather than him simply being robbed of air.

Yet when they reached the solarium, new strength seized him, and he could ignore the worst of his injuries. The same stale stench still filled the room as the last time he had passed through. The hint of decay underlying the stuffiness. Now that he knew what he was smelling, it turned Artemio’s stomach. When Granchio recognized that he was hauling all the furniture off the rug beneath them, she joined in, though with markedly less urgency. Carefully placing each antique item of furniture by the walls of the room rather than simply barging them aside as Artemio had been forced to. When it was only halfway to clear, he crouched down and took as strong a grip as he could with his weaker hand before peeling the rug away.

The same floorboards that supported the king’s chambers were here. Distinct only in that here there was a squared section of them cut out and capped off with a trapdoor that would have looked identical to the wood around it when lying flat, barring that line.

The servants who had come through to tidy up would have straightened out the carpet where it lay rucked up. When they moved the furniture back into its usual position from where it had been nudged aside, they had inadvertently covered any trace of the king’s escape.

“All this time, they’ve been here. Right under our noses.”

Artemio tried to fumble a dagger from his belt and pry the trapdoor open, but he had neither the strength nor the leverage. Granchio had to shoulder him aside and put her own strong arms to work, moving around the different sides until she finally found a spot that had give. She wedged her dagger in deep, stamped upon the hilt, and at once the void space beneath the solarium was laid open.

It reeked. The stale scent of decay that had pervaded this space had been but a hint at the full stench awaiting them. Weeks of human effluence layered over the top of another, unfortunately familiar aroma. That of decay. Death.

Dangling from beneath the mouth of the trapdoor had been a rope ladder, but part of the way down into the dark beneath, it was torn off. The rope unraveled around the point where it had snapped on one side and spiraled out uselessly on the other. If it had been sabotaged, it was done in such a way as to look indistinguishable from the aging of something seldom used, but Artemio did not get the sense that anyone other than the Cerva were meant to even know that this existed.

He met the duchess’s eyes over the top of the pit and resisted the urge to call out. “I will not be able to climb down.”

Wordlessly, she took hold of the unraveling rope and gave it a few tugs to be sure it was solid enough to support her weight. It would take all her substantial upper-body strength to descend, but he had faith in her.

Hand over hand she descended, fading from the torchlight until Artemio had enough of a visual prompt reminding him to send a blazing ember down to light her way. She took her time, surmising all too well that it was likely too late for their discovery to matter. How many days had passed? How many meals had been missed? The Cerva were a slim pair, cultivating the svelte physique of men who would never have to do labor. They would not have Granchio’s strength. They would have been trapped down in that hole without any ability to climb back up and restock with the ladder broken.

The dancing ember drifted along by Granchio’s side. Revealing things more or less as she discovered them. The solid stone flagstones of the void space. The rusty stain below the trapdoor. The casks of wine, water, and hardtack gone to rot from waiting too long, now toppled hollow and empty, a sign that they had survived the fall. Excitement crackled through Artemio at the sight of it. Hope that he had been crushing down since the very moment the city had fallen. They were alive. The king lived.

It was all he could do to restrain himself, to keep from jumping down and doing himself some further awful injury. It had all been worth it, everything that he had done to preserve the sanctity of the throne, to protect the Cerva claim. He had fought to his last breath to be sure that the throne would be sitting there waiting for them, and now, finally, he was going to see them restored to their rightful place.

It was at about that moment of triumph that Granchio turned on her heel, dashed into the dark, and retched.

That most likely was not a good sign. He knew that the aromas emerging from the void space beneath the solarium were unpleasant, but they were hardly unprecedented. Ultimately, it was not as though the poor men had a chamber pot, and any food that they had smuggled down with them would invariably have turned by now. Granchio was too stalwart for such a small thing as decay to turn her from her duty. What she had seen was worse.

Artemio could not wait for her to finish her vomiting. He had to know what was happening this very moment. With a sigh, he let his grandfather take his weight and carry him down into the darkness.

It was worse than he could have anticipated, worse than a nightmare made flesh. To Granchio’s eyes, it would have been a simple obscenity, but Artemio was not so blessed. Looking upon a scene of violence, his mind moved unbidden to piece together the evidence before him, to solve the puzzle even before he could consciously restrain it.

Here, then, was where one of the kings fell, the rope ladder snapping after he had pulled the boards back into position above them. Here was where his leg broke on impact with the stone, where he fell to the side, unsupported, and his skull struck on one of their casks of supplies.

Artemio tried to look away, he really tried. He tried not to see that the initial fall did not kill. He tried not to see the patterns in the dust, the smears of blood, the days upon days of slow decline, with neither man able to eat, neither able to drink more than a mouthful or two. The awful embarrassment of having to be helped to the toilet corner because he could not stand. The spread of infection through the wound. The fever. The stillness that followed.

The king who had died had not died a clean and comfortable death. He had lingered in pain and misery for days while his twin did everything in his power to preserve him. Everything short of crying out for help and revealing their position to the enemy that had overrun the city.

Even to the last, they had known that their duty was to survive.

The crimes that followed after the moment that one king woke and the other did not were an inevitable extension of that same instinct for survival. There was water down here, enough to last a week for the two of them. It would now have stretched to almost double that distance. But it was apparent that they had meant to return to the solarium above for food. There had always been food laid out there, even on the days the kings did not mean to make use of the space, even after their vanishing, the servants had gone on performing their tasks dutifully. Prisoners to routine. With access to such resources, the twin kings likely could have outlasted the short duration of the siege, returning to the surface to serve much as Artemio had, as an agent for Espher within the palace walls.

But the ladder had snapped.

Hunger would have been the constant companion of the surviving king, hunger and the knowledge that he had no heir to take up the crown in his absence. If he died down here in the dark, then all of Espher would fall into chaos and civil war. Only by his survival might he preserve their sovereignty. What price would any man pay for that?

It had begun slowly. He had failed in his first attempt, tearing loose skin but not enough flesh to provide any suitable sustenance. That same skin had come right back up again after it had been forced down. He had the good sense to avoid the now gangrenous-smelling leg, but he had strayed too far from any of the muscle masses, gnawing at a wrist. By his second or third attempt, the survivor seemed to have steeled himself. He had selected a more nutritious bite, and it seemed that he had kept it down. Then it had gone on like that, each time the hunger grew too much. Never returning to the same place, as decay settled in the corpse. Guided, in the pitch black of this hell, by touch and scent, he had eaten, and he had survived.

Now, Artemio’s ember flared brighter, and he could make out the huddled form in the corner of the room. Cadaverously thin beneath all the layered finery of a king. Bent over on himself, eyes blind to the world outside of the personal nightmare that he was living and reliving.

All his own pain now fading by comparison, Artemio had no trouble in crossing the room, in dropping down to his knees beside the Cerva king. “Your Majesty, it is over.”

The vacant eyes still did not focus, even when the light of the fire came close enough to warm him.

“Your Majesty?”

Nothing was getting in or out of the old king’s head anymore. With time, perhaps he might have crept back to sanity. With time, he might have been trained and conditioned to behave as a man once more, to obey the orders of his advisors and become the perfect little puppet. Any man could rule through such a puppet. Any man, known to have the king’s ear and trust, could likely inherit all the power of the throne without ever needing to risk the ascent himself.

Artemio pulled the king closer, into an embrace of comfort, hoping despite himself that the mindless stare might be broken by a blink, that the slick and smug persona of the Cerva kings might be returned to its place.

Even if he were sane, news of what had happened down here would come out. There was no way the body could be removed, or laid to rest, without the injuries being seen. For a king’s death to be accepted, the body would have been viewed, studied by a physician, and there was nobody who could see either those injuries or the bloody stains upon the survivor’s face and not know precisely what had unfolded in this man-made cave.

There could be no following the man after that. If trust in the Cerva had been broken by them slipping into hiding when the Agrantine came, then it would be shattered and ground to dust by the revelation of what this man had done to his own twin brother, just so he could survive. Logic would not have any place in the debate. Everyone in Espher would be disgusted at the thought. Whatever authority the Cerva might have wielded once had been devoured.

This close, Artemio could smell the rot on Madrigal Cerva’s breath. He could feel the tremors running through him. He glanced down at the stump that remained of his own right arm, then back to the broken king. Nobody would follow this wretched, crippled mess. None could look upon him with anything but disgust and pity.

The scar on the king’s cheek would have looked identical to the one of the dead body to anyone else, but Artemio was not anyone else. He had made the cut on Canticle Cerva’s face himself. He had given it the tiniest upturn at its start, invisible from a distance, but perfectly recognizable to him. How could anyone have resisted such an opportunity?

Artemio dragged his eyes away from the man to meet Duchess Granchio’s steady stare. She was waiting. Waiting to see what he chose to do. She may not have been able to piece together the scene as swiftly as Artemio, but it was simple enough to understand. Time would have placed all the pieces in her path eventually. She looked to the dead king and the living one in Artemio’s arms. And she nodded.

The knife that he had used to pry open the trapdoor was in his hand. Hidden from the last king by his own body. It would be a painless thing. A kindness, really.

He did not look at the king, did not look to Granchio for support. She had already given whatever consent she was liable to. All he could do was lean in a little closer and say, “I am sorry.”

Then he drove the knife home. Tip-first, it bit deep into the king’s neck, then with a flick away from himself, it tore out, showering the corner where the last Cerva king had been sitting in arterial spray.

Art staggered back from the dying man, finding his feet and avoiding the gore. When he found that he could speak again without the words choking him, he turned his head to Granchio. “We found the pair of them dead. The ladder broke as they descended. Tragic accident. Nothing anyone could do.”

“You’re sure?” Her mouth was twisted still, bile bitter on her tongue. “Word of this might still slip out.”

For a moment, Artemio paused. Was it a threat? Had she baited him only to betray him? The life of the Cerva kings had come to its conclusion, and kings almost invariably left shades of themselves behind, painted on the world like the letters of history. He waited until the duo had intertwined and swollen to monstrous conjoined proportions before he cut Bisnonno Fiore loose to consume them.

Wetting his lips, he turned back to Granchio. “If you value your life, it will not slip out from you or me. The rumors may circulate later, after they have been shrouded and buried, but it will not be from my lips that these blasphemies are repeated. If it spreads far and wide, then it buys the new king some free goodwill, to have replaced such monsters. If it spreads only to some nobles with the palace staff on their payroll, then it will be known that we chose to protect the good name of the Cerva, even when it was advantageous not to. It will cement our position as honorable victors. In as much as any part of this could be considered a victory.”

It seemed that all of this logic added up for her, because she nodded her agreement once more before plodding over to stand beside him, basking in the radiant chill that was evaporating off him in waves. Finally, blunt as could be, she asked him what she really wanted to know. The question that had clearly burned inside her since the moment she returned to the city.

And he answered.

27 - The Burning God
Caldo, Regola Dei Cerva 112

They made it much farther than anticipated before the killing started.

In better days, Harmony would have called it impossible, or at least lucky, but she had no time for such frivolity with her head tucked down and their destination swiftly rearing up ahead. All of the town was in chaos, its citizens flooding across the rugged terrain to lament the fallen dragon, to wonder at what kind of monster lived among them who would be willing to kill an aslinda. Kagan’s face was locked and expressionless beneath the ineffective disguise, but he still moved with the elegance and purpose of a glacier cutting through the crowds and leading her to the mountain.

The entrance to the mountain was under guard, guard that was on high alert given what had just unfolded, but when they saw the purpose that Kagan moved with, they made no attempt to block his way. A dragon-lord surely knew what he was doing and where he was going. Their own hierarchy and abundance of numbers worked against their attempts at security. The supremacy of the dragon-riders was such that none dared to question one, even in the midst of all that was happening, and they had bred so many dragons and proliferated so far that every ally could be a stranger.

Stoic and still through the press of bodies and under the watchful eye of the guards, Kagan only flinched when they stepped under the threshold of the mountain, some old lava tube carved out into something more. Harmony still couldn’t read his expressions, not really, but there was a tension in him that she hadn’t seen since their first encounter. It was the mountain above them, she knew. The absence of sky.

He still moved with the same confidence as he had throughout their entire journey, but she recognized that now as meaning nothing. Even when he had been lost, he’d moved with that same confidence, and when they were out of sight of any Arazi, his head was constantly shifting from side to side, like he was scanning for the next path to follow. The mountain depths were a tangle of tunnels, coiling down into the earth, spiraling around one another. Some opened out into chambers, others onto dead ends, and it was becoming increasingly obvious as they progressed that Kagan had no clue which it would be.

“All new.”

“Well, I suppose you have been gone awhile?”

He closed his eyes then, like he had when listening for the thoughts of ants. “We need to go down.”

“The dungeons are at a lower level? Revolutionary thinking on the part of the Arazi.”

Kagan snorted and ignored her, leading on.

They found the way down just as a pair of hulking dragon-lords came storming up a narrow passageway. Harmony had her emotions under control. She knew that she did because she had barely even considered screaming the whole way through the enemy city, yet as they passed by, one’s head snapped around to look at her. At the bare skin of her legs, uncovered by fur or scale. How she wished it were mere lechery.

He barked, “Duz!?”

Kagan went for him before another word could spill out. Hands clamping down on his elongated snout and pinning his mouth shut, even as the second one, who had been polite enough not to ogle her until this point, hefted an axe into his hand and spun on them.

Just like she had on the battlefield what felt like a lifetime ago, Harmony made no attempt to meet the swing of that heavy weapon. Instead, she ducked beneath the swipe to thrust into the heart of the Arazi. Somewhere in the dragon-lord’s history, his rib cage had fused into one solid slab of thick bone, so she had no luck with a killing blow, but the sudden sharp pain startled him enough to buy her the time required to slip back outside of his reach.

After all of the waiting, all of the tension, this was the greatest sense of release Harmony had ever experienced. Finally, there were no tricks or traps or lies, just her, the sword in her hand, and an enemy.

Instead of relying on his superior reach, the Arazi moved to close the distance, to use his strength against her, to crush her in his huge arms. She had spent her whole life fighting bigger opponents, men who’d found it quite hilarious to use their size against her. Which was to say, she knew exactly how to get out of it with minimum effort on her part and the maximum amount of pain for her opponent. Thick plates of bone may have guarded his internal organs, but those that were external and dangling remained as squishy and burstable on her knee as any other man she’d ever known.

The Arazi twisted to avoid it, but as much as it would have hurt him and as satisfying as it would have been, it was only a feint. The rapier blade was flush along her bodyline, rushing up in time with her knee in the space between them. Even as his lower body twisted, his upper body turned in the opposite direction, exposing the underside of his chin for the blade to plunge home.

It was in and out faster than the blink of an eye, silver then red, and Harmony was already turning to the other Arazi, still locked in mortal combat with Kagan, before her own foe fell. She did not spare him a backwards glance, any more than he would have done for her.

Kagan and the other were locked together, arms entangled, each straining with all their ungodly strength to break the grapple. They slammed each other against the walls as though taking turns, rock shrapnel raining down upon their heads. The stranger making up for the disadvantage of being lower on the slope with his superior strength. It was that hulking Arazi’s turn to hit the wall when Harmony stepped into that gap and lined up her sword with a patch of flesh bearing no decent scales. As he was flung her way, she was knocked back into the wall, but her blade was not knocked from its position. Her aim stayed true. Another Arazi died.

When the strength left his foe, Kagan overbalanced in confusion, the struggle over so abruptly that he kept on fighting the corpse for a good long moment. Somewhere far up above them, two more dragons died, and he showed no signs of sorrow this time, only that same elation that Harmony knew all too well. Victory. Survival.

This time, Kagan offered her no look of surprise or incredulity, only nodded briefly before leading them farther down the slope and into the guts of the mountain.

When she had first taken up the sword, she had been rebuffed.

It was not the done thing. But she had seen the look in her father’s eye, the calculating gaze that he cast on everything, reducing everyone and everything down to numerical values, objects to be bartered. She saw her own estimate climbing when he caught her sneaking from her classes to spar with the squires. She heard actual praise from him once he assigned to her the finest fencing trainer their scant resources could afford. The words of praise had given her a focus and purpose for the first time in her life, but the real value was in her father’s spending of money on her training, on her improvement. She was an investment now; he had sunk real coin into her. For years, that accumulating value had driven her, until one day he praised her after she’d bested Artemio once more, and she found that she had no stomach for it.

The man did not care for her as his daughter, only as a tool to be used. Yet she was so far gone down the path that fencing had taken her, she could hardly reverse course. She could not unlearn what she had learned or become nothing again. She would not. So instead, she found her joy in her victories. In besting the best and proving herself the equal of those who would look down on her for her diminished station, her provenance, or her gender. Victory became her constant companion. Her constant tutor, demanding more and more of her each time, pushing her to beat not the fencer setting themselves up for slaughter on the far side of the piste, but the version of herself who had fought on the day before. It was the drive that made her victorious and the curse that she had to bear, that there was no end to her climb, only ceaseless progress until finally, fatally, she was bested.

There was blood dribbling from the basket hilt of her rapier now, tickling across the back of her palm. It was hot and fresh, and she loved it more than she would ever dare to admit.

In perfect step, they turned the next corner and rolled over the trio of Arazi standing guard there. Here in the heart of their domain, in the closest thing that they had to fortifications, every one of the Arazi had been at ease, trusting in their senses to warn them of any threat.

It was a mistake.

Harmony went low as Kagan went high. He was huge, threatening; she was not. When he swung that borrowed axe all of the Arazi moved to defend themselves, and she slipped right under their guard. It was bizarre how quickly they had fallen into this routine. She gutted one, slashed across the chest of another, and finished in a spray of blood with a thrust to the throat of the third.

The one whose chest was now bloodied took the brunt of Kagan’s blow now that his companions in arms were down, and what should have been an easy parry with three sets of arms supporting it became hopeless. His block broke, and Harmony pounced forward to hammer her blade home, taking the flinching Arazi not in the neck like the other, but directly through the cheek, roof of the mouth, and brain.

Compared with the fencers she was accustomed to, this was almost laughably easy.

Once upon a time, stamina had been her downfall when it came to fighting. She could perform her dozens of strikes, parries, feints, jumps, ripostes, and all the other tricks with blinding confidence and impossible speed, but only in brief bursts. She had trained for years to rid herself of the sluggishness that took her body after the first few rounds of a bout, and now Kagan’s non-stop hike had purged the last of it from her body.

A half dozen more dead ends and upwards-slanted tunnels, two more Arazi. She was sweating now, more from the heat of the place than exertion.

“I can’t imagine that the distraction is going to last forever.”

He glanced to the blood on his clawed hands. “We extended it.” He was right, Harmony knew. She could only imagine the chaos outside the mountain, where dragons were falling in droves from the sky, dead before their corpses shook the earth.

With dead dragons filling the void in the back of their minds, they soldiered on. A room that had clearly been some sort of barracks, currently abandoned. A storage room. A chamber meant for one person to sleep, a heap of furs in the middle, water running down a corner through some contrivance Harmony could not guess at. Tunnels, endless tunnels. Rolls of dried skin. Torches lit with the distinctive aroma of dragon venom. Chains. The Arazi seemed to love chains; it was the only use they had for metal. And they seemed to excel at chains. Vast lengths of them, fed through great pulleys and down through holes in the stone. Another oddity that Harmony could not guess at, but which Kagan seemed to view as some sort of omen.

Layer by layer they chipped their way down, through guards and tunnels, twists and turns. A dozen Arazi lay dead in their wake, and still they had come upon no concerted effort to stop them. Harmony could scarcely believe it.

They rounded another bend in the corridor, and it opened out into a wider chamber. Here, the thin tunnels that magma had chewed through the earth widened into a chamber vast enough to hold dozens of men and dragons. Even the ceiling was so high that the torchlight didn’t touch it.

And there at the center of it all, was a single, skinny little Arazi that made Kagan stop dead.

“Have you killed enough of your kin yet, Slayer Kagan?” This stranger spoke in the Espheran tongue, heavily accented but perfectly easy to understand. “Is your wicked heart sated?”

“You know everything before it happens.” Kagan’s arm had stretched out in front of Harmony in that moment of surprise, and he was trying to push her behind him. “You put them in my path to die.”

For her part, Harmony couldn’t understand what the trouble was. They’d already massacred their way through a dozen or more Arazi who looked a damned sight more impressive than this runt of the litter. The man didn’t even have a weapon. His armor, such as it was, looked more suited to one of the little scouts than a dragon-lord. Why on earth was Kagan behaving like he was someone to be feared?

The weedy Arazi folded his arms and strolled across the open chamber to face them. There were a dozen openings around the place. So many wrong turns to take and wrong ways to go. It made sense for him to lay an ambush here. It looked like a terminal between all the myriad parts of the mountain.

“If I knew all things before their time, you would never have been corrupted. I would have chosen a more fitting bondmate for you. One you could master, instead of being mastered in turn.”

A shudder ran through Kagan then, all the scales in his body shifting like the feathers on a bird. As though he were puffing himself up to frighten off a predator. The cold rage was in his rocky voice as he said, “Thinking the aslinda need masters was your first mistake.”

“Thinking they can do no wrong remains yours.”

“Run.” Kagan’s command hit Harmony with the weight of a breaking dam. Terror flooded her, terror that was not her own. All his fear he dumped out into her, to fuel her flight.

Instinct took over, sending her scurrying away before she could even force another thought into her head. The fear kept flooding in, wave after wave, impossible to get out from underneath when more kept pouring on top.

Her feet skidded in the dust as she sprinted for another exit, any other exit, anything to get her away from here, from him. Out of the line of fire.

That word was what was echoing in her mind. That was the fear that Kagan had tapped, the most primal of instincts, the most basic, reaching out to touch the fire in the fireplace, the sting of touching food before it was cool enough to eat, the all-encompassing terror as a dragon bore down with its jaws spread wide. Fire.

But there was no dragon down here, no fire, and her fear of it had never been this pronounced. She had never felt flames lick at her flesh, threatening to consume her. She was not Kagan, or Art, or poor Orsina who had suffered under flame. She was herself, and of all the hooks he could have put in her heart and hauled on, this was a weak one.

All this time, he had been teaching her to clear her mind and emotions so that the powers of the Arazi could not be used against her. It seemed he had forgotten that included him. She slipped into that same state of calm, and the fear washed over her without gaining traction. Her wild run stopped, and she spun on her heel to charge back into the impending wrestling match between Kagan and whoever this other guy was.

The two men were closing on each other, circling, whatever weapons they had carried now cast aside, though she couldn’t remember seeing any on the little guy. For a moment, she almost stopped right there to watch the show as her own pet giant Arazi beat this little one into the ground over and over, but some part of the trepidation from before had carried over into her, and so she kept up her approach, skirting to the side to stay out of the stranger’s direct line of sight.

As Kagan closed, she felt the heat in the room building, until the soles of her boots were letting off smoke with each step. Her body grew slick with sweat, and she wasn’t even close to the thick of it yet. She could not understand what she was experiencing, unless the volcano around them had suddenly sprung to life. Then, in an instant, it all became clear. The heat. The fear. The fear of fire that he had tried to grant her.

The stranger opened his mouth, and fire leapt out.

It was not the roiling red flame that Harmony knew, the gentle warming creation of man’s craft that filled their lives with warmth and roasted their dinner. This was an older fire, a primal fire, a fire born before man had crawled from the oceans and taken their first breaths. White-hot, so hot that it was almost invisible, it came in less of a burst and more of a stream from the Arazi’s blackened lips.

Where a dragon’s breath came out in a roar, this abomination was expelled with a scream, high-pitched and near deafening. Shrill, like glass being cut. Loud, like nothing Harmony had ever heard.

One moment there was nothing, the next a solid bar of white-hot flame crossed the room. It should have been impossible to avoid, there was no moment between launch and arrival, but somehow Kagan had foreseen this, had moved aside just enough to avoid destruction.

When the light snapped out again, it left a black line burned across Harmony’s vision, blinding her to her target as she staggered on towards the source. The sudden rush of air when he unleashed his fury had damped every torch in the room. The only light left for them to see by was the beacon of the Arazi’s flames. Kagan’s answering roar was not backed up with any fire. Whatever transformation took hold of the dragon-lords that allowed them this impossible power, it had not been given to him before his banishment. Yet it was the answer he was meant to give. Defiance in the face of this power.

Twisting her head to one side, Harmony could get a good look at the other Arazi once more, and all of his features that had once seemed so insignificant took on new meaning. That long, skinny appearance no longer made him look like an overgrown boy wearing his father’s clothes. In motion, his head bobbed at the end of the sinuous serpentine neck of a dragon. It jerked forward once, then again. Strobing the room with blinding light. Sending Kagan tumbling aside lest he be speared with it.

She tried to call out to him. Tried to warn him off, or draw the attention of the murderous Arazi, but even when she drew the scorching air into her lungs and bellowed his name, it couldn’t be heard over the shrieks and echoes.

She did not know how Kagan was still alive, attributing it to whatever unnatural talent had allowed him to guess at the flights of thrown spears or ride the winds. He was in no way moving fast enough to avoid the blinding burst of flame, yet somehow not a one of them touched him as he charged his opponent, rapidly closing the distance.

Jets of fire roared again and again, and each time the darkness was blasted away, Harmony was closer to her foe. Still in the periphery of his vision. Closing far faster than Kagan had any hope to, dodging from side to side to avoid the flames of destruction issuing forth from the man’s maw.

In the next blink, he was there, right in front of her. Eyes locked on hers. Instinct and training took over where surprise would have killed another. Her sword-hand was in motion, her body twisting into the perfect stance, a thrust aimed right for his heart.

With the flat of a hand, he turned the blade away. With a twist, he wrapped the other arm around hers, and with a sudden jerk, her shoulder popped free of its socket.

Her words might have been silenced by the shriek of his breath, but her screams now filled up the halls of the dragon-lords. Echoing her pain out through all the tunnels they had stalked and all the depths they had not reached. The sword fell from her limp hand. The strength fleeing her body as the agony raced up to her neck.

Worse than the pain, worse than the turning of her stomach and the loss of her blade, was the ease of it. The fire-breather had disarmed her without even giving her his full attention. He hadn’t just beaten her, he had shamed her.

The shame would not last for long.

This close, she could hear him drawing in a deep breath through his nose. She could feel the heat washing off him as he leaned in close like they were lovers in a tryst. As his lips began to part, the whole room was filled with that awful, sterile light.

Her fist took him under the chin, snapping his jaws shut with the clacking of his teeth.

All her years of training had done nothing to prepare her for the reality of a fight. That was why, from the moment she was out from her father’s watchful eye, she had sought out an entirely different kind of training.

Everyone she could find lurking in the Osservatore’s shadow. Fights spilling out into the streets. The ill-tempered and the bigots who’d lose to her on the fencing piste and then seek vengeance after. Foreigners, mercenaries, barbarians, and peasants. At first she had come away from those scraps bruised and battered, but by the end, she could hold her own. Going to war had been just another lesson. First, she had learned how to fence. Then she had taught herself how to fight.

The primal instinct to survive that Kagan had tapped with his illusion of flame was still alive in her, brought back to the fore by the pain, and she was willing to do whatever was required to live.

The Arazi’s head was up, still off-aim, when he managed to get his jaws open. For a moment, his face was colored in reverse, white in the deepest recesses, black at the extremities, and then the bar of flame shot out to score a line across the distant ceiling. A signal fire, to draw in anyone still out there in the darkness.

Kagan tackled him to the ground, those huge hands of his enough to encompass the man’s face entirely. Squeezing it shut. Blinking out the only light left in their world.

That moment of total darkness gave Harmony the time she needed to comprehend what was happening. What had already happened to her. Her shoulder’s dislocation was her priority. Artemio had talked her through the mechanics of it after she’d seen it happen to a foe during one of those brawls. He’d told her how it might be fixed, how he would fix it for her, if she came back to him twisted and broken. Impact, pain, correction.

Throwing herself at the pair, she crashed into Kagan’s broad back with her damaged shoulder. It ground back into place. A white-hot explosion of pain radiated through her, and for a moment she was paralyzed by it. But then, with a suddenness that stole her breath, she could move again, pins and needles and pain filling her to brimming. It was nothing, not when she could clench her fist again. She dove, scrambling across the ground for her lost sword.

Kagan’s teeth shone in the brief embers of white lapping out through his fingers. His face contorted in a rictus of rage and hate that chilled Harmony to her core. Here at last was the killer he’d promised. Here at last that monster was needed.

He was not content to hold the other man’s mouth shut and contain the inferno within; he seemed intent on bringing his strength to bear to crush the Arazi’s skull in his hands. Having seen what she had just seen and felt what she had just felt, she felt like cheering Kagan on.

“Say good night, Ata,” Kagan ground out through gritted teeth.

They were not so lucky that the enemy sat still and peaceful as they crushed the life from him. He was in motion almost from the first moment that Kagan set upon him. Hooked claw fingers raking scales from flesh, digging into the soft meat beneath, limbs twisting and contorting to get the same kind of lock on the hulking Arazi arms as had so easily dislodged Harmony’s own grip. Each time he came close to breaking Kagan’s hold, he was thwarted only by the difference in strength and mass.

His scrabbling feet kicked the rapier away, and Harmony went from helplessly stomping on a body protected by scales to chasing after her weapon. She was making no difference anyway. She fell to her knees, the jarring impact running up to her shoulder like a bolt of lightning, then came up holding the sword ready.

Some twist or turn bought the Arazi the moment he needed, a flash filled the room, and Kagan was launched clear, grip broken. He hit the ground on all fours, scrabbling across the room like a great ape, the solid line of white chasing after him, leaving molten stone hissing in its wake.

Once more Harmony thrust for the Arazi and was unsurprised to see him repel the blow without even turning his head. How many years had he trained and fought? Centuries? More? What would her form have looked like after all that time? How would her reactions have honed?

Still, even after all that time, she hoped she would not be so arrogant as to face off against her without granting even a glance in her direction. The same arm as the last time swept out to encircle her own, hooked on the bend of her elbow when she jerked it back, and remained there as she hauled on him, not trying to outmatch the man’s strength but to ruin his balance. The beam of flame chasing after Kagan was jerked abruptly off course. The stability of the Arazi was not spoiled, of course, his form remained too good for that, but she could work with his perfect form. She could beat perfection. The same way that she always had. Step by step.

Her foot took him in the back of the knee as he yanked his arm free from her, and as it gave, she drew the blade of the rapier across his throat. The scales there were fine and light, enough to stop her getting through to the airway or arteries she longed to rupture, but thin enough that blood was still drawn, and the dazzling light that had been flowing so freely through his mouth made an attempt to escape through that other exit.

One of his hands, previously en route to club her to the ground, reversed course and clapped over the wound, the light burning within him dimming even as smoke came trickling from beneath his new collar.

Down a hand, it seemed he no longer liked his odds of besting them. Where before he’d been happy to stand in place and take whatever they threw at him, now he fled. If she had not seen his stalwart defense moments before, Harmony would never have called it a retreat. Where before they had been deflected and driven away from the Arazi, the eye of the storm, now he drifted back to avoid their strikes. Ducking and dodging instead of meeting force with overwhelming force. He was no longer fighting them to exhaustion; he was trying to end things fast. Taking risks.

He had to devote a fair portion of his attention to Kagan’s full-bodied punches. Once more his eyes were not on Harmony, where they should have been. As he stepped back out of reach of one of Kagan’s powerful jabs, it looked for an instant like his foot slipped out from under him—then it hooked behind Harmony’s heel.

She fell, but instead of doing the sensible thing of protecting herself from impact on the ground, rolling out to resume an optimal position, or even just flinging herself clear so she was out of danger, she struck at him. The blade tip threw sparks as it trailed down his scales, but blood was drawn at his hip. Far from a killing blow. He likely wouldn’t have noticed it at all, beyond that momentary flinch of pain. That flinch that Kagan took every advantage of to slam his shin into the man’s side.

In an instant, her desperate sweep pierced into him. The impact of Kagan’s blow driving the blade in from the other side, impaling the Arazi on it like a butterfly on a pin. He couldn’t even scream with the pain of it, not with his hand still clasping his damaged throat.

Harmony hit the ground hard, the air knocked from her as she landed, the sword in her hand receiving one final spiteful twist before she withdrew it. Her vision was beginning to return to normal now that the fire-breathing was done, so she caught a glimpse of the red running the length of the shining blade before she started scrambling back upright.

The other Arazi’s fighting retreat turned into an outright panic, one hand clamped to his throat, the other to his side. Once more, he righted himself and ran, ducking and dodging around Kagan’s attacks with the same practiced ease as before, but the attacks that had lashed out to counter Kagan were gone.

Once she was back on her feet, it was clear that the moment they caught their quarry the fight would be over, but it didn’t look like they were ever going to catch him. Outside of Kagan’s reach, the Arazi turned tail and ran, vanishing into one of the tunnels spreading out from the central chamber.

She caught Kagan as he barreled by her, his momentum almost hauling her off her feet. “Stop.”

“He is getting away.” Kagan went on pulling, dragging her bodily across the room as she tried to get her heels dug into the rock and debris.

He took hold of her arm, the better to drag her, and pain lanced up it. Bringing a yelp into her voice as she said, “We aren’t here for him.”

“If he reaches his dragon, all his wounds will be undone with a touch, and he will inherit her regeneration.” Kagan’s voice hammered against her now, the vibrations that had always been present now setting her bones to quaking. “He is weak. We must end him now!”

“We’re here for Orsina. He’s going up; she’s down.”

That killing rage continued to vibrate through him, his scales flickering out and in with each breath. “Do you know how long I have waited, how many years my people have been enslaved to that monster? Together we can defeat him!”

Still Harmony stood firm. “We’re here for her.”

There was a moment, just a moment, where she feared that his hatred had blinded him completely. That he’d turn those huge hands upon her. But the moment passed, and he gave her a stiff nod.

From this central nexus, it was easier to decipher their way. To Harmony, little made sense, but to a mind attuned to following invisible courses through the air, thermals, and winds, it seemed that there was a logic to it all. They took a track that tilted upwards to Harmony’s reckoning, but somehow steered them in a wide loop ending up somewhere beneath the chamber they’d just departed. When Kagan’s head cocked from side to side now, she stayed silent, letting him use those senses she lacked.

There were no more guards, no more Arazi at all, so deep in the mountain, in the place they all loathed so and condemned their worst prisoners to. Whether they’d assumed nobody would ever make it so deep, they’d trusted in the power of their leader to turn aside any interlopers, or they simply didn’t bother to come near to their prisoners, Harmony could not say, nor could she bring herself to care.

As they walked, she replayed their fight in her mind. The clash of the Arazi, her own role, less as the deciding factor and more as an influence. Still parts did not make sense to her. Kagan’s familiarity with the man’s movements. The way he could guess at every move. The incongruity of Kagan’s little quip.

“Ata?”

Kagan glanced back to her when she said it aloud. Rage returning to his features.

“It means father.”

That did a truly excellent job of shutting Harmony up for the remainder of their search. She had loathed her own father, truly loathed him, but she would never have dared to fight him. Even now, the thought of it left a tremor in her hands. Even now that he was dead and gone.

When they arrived, it was something of an anti-climax. The huge stones blocking entry to the cells were very impressive of course, as were the complex mechanisms of hidden chains and pulleys, but the actual tunnel was just that. The very same as every other one. Kagan had overcome his loathing of their enclosure and moved to the closest stone without delay, setting a shoulder against it and beginning to push.

Harmony knew the man was strong. She had borne witness to it over and over through their journey, but the full depths of his inhuman power had never been so clearly displayed as in that moment, when he laid hands on what might as well have been a mountain, and it moved.

The stone’s grating was a deafening roar, and through it all, Harmony could do nothing. She didn’t delude herself into thinking her fragile form might shift something so massive. This was not a fight where she could work her way around an opponent’s bulk; it was a test of raw strength, and this kind of might was something that her humanity did not permit her.

It was all she could do not to get underfoot, to stand, bouncing on the balls of her feet, trying not to peek through the tiny gap that was opening up, allowing the stale air within to flow out. She deluded herself, thinking that she could already hear Orsina’s voice. Could smell her on the air. Never perfumed, unless she was forced. At best Orsina had always smelled of nothing more than salt sweat and soap. Harmony longed to smell it again. To brush the other woman’s hair out for her. To have any one of the million tiny excuses for intimacy that they’d found through their time together.

With a heave of his massive form, the stone was moved aside far enough to permit entry, and Kagan turned, panting to step inside.

In that moment of their final triumph. Everything went wrong.

Kagan went from standing to flying. He crossed the corridor, hit the wall on the far side—but did not fall. The torrent of destruction being unleashed into him did not allow him that mercy.

For a moment Harmony thought it was the other Arazi, Kagan’s father, that he’d somehow gotten down here ahead of them and had finally caught her companion in that awful breath of his. But once her vision recovered, she could see that the force hammering him into the stone was not fire. Or at least it was not fire alone. It rippled and sprayed like compressed water. Beneath its surface, dark shapes moving with such swiftness that she did not comprehend they curving blades until they splashed out into Kagan’s gut, flaying scale and skin from him. Steam and lightning and all other manner of elemental chaos soon followed, but Harmony had seen enough to understand now. To grasp the foe they faced. She screamed, but over the sound of the blast, it was drowned out.

“Orsina!”

28 - Breaker of Mountains
Gemmazione, Regola Dei Volpe 1

She heard her name, even through the cacophony of the dead in her ears and the roar of the power flowing through her. When Harmony spoke, she listened. Hope was a luxury she hadn’t been able to afford until now, and she almost thought she was lying to herself, convincing herself of something that could not be. Then she opened her eyes, and she saw Kagan.

The shock of it cut the shades off more swiftly than anything she might have attempted with rational thought. They were halted by will alone, Orsina’s control snapping shut on them and leaving fragments of their being still bound within her spirit.

Out in the hallway, her oldest and dearest friend now fell to the ground.

“No.”

If he had been a smaller man, all that would have been left would’ve been scorched limbs, but with his bulk, the damage had only stripped away the front side of his body, leaving organs and blackened bones protruding and spilling out.

“No!”

Harmony was there in an instant, down on her knees by the Arazi’s side. Eyes wide with horror. Color fleeing her face.

“No. No. No.”

By the time she reached him, all the awfulness she’d been squeezing down and out of Orsina’s mind had come pouring out, tears flooding down her face, her breath ragged. She’d killed him. She’d killed Kagan. His eyes were still open, still moving, wide and terrified. He didn’t even understand what she’d done. He’d die never knowing she’d murdered him. She didn’t know if that was worse or better.

“Help him!” Harmony was screaming. “Do something!”

She was trying. Her hands sank into the hot roil of meat that had been his innards as she tried to push them back in. All of her walls had been torn down as she grasped for any shade, anything that might help. But she had no power to heal, only to destroy.

“You’re going to die.” Harmony was weeping now too. Realization setting in for both of them. “You’re both going to die. He’s your impresario.” She grabbed at Orsina, as though she could stop her being taken away, as if she could postpone the inevitable through some mystical power unlocked by nothing but her touch, even though the drain of life was already beginning. Tremors running through her. Hair lengthening, bones stretching. “This isn’t right. This isn’t how this was meant to end. Don’t you leave me again!”

Orsina tried to push her life out, tried to push it into Kagan, but it was like trying to reverse the flow of a river. All the life he had contained was spilling away, fading to nothing. The gathered shades picking at it like vultures as Orsina tried to fend them off.

“Bring him to me.”

The only calm voice cut through the chaos, and Orsina’s head snapped around to the other vast boulder in the hall. She could do nothing to save Kagan. She could not think of anything that one of the Arazi could do either, but if death was about to take her, then she was at least going to free the only person who’d brought her comfort through this whole ordeal.

So wrought with emotion, it was easy to draw her shades back inside. So overwhelmed with loss, she did not notice all of the strength they had guzzled out from Kagan. When she reached towards the rock blocking the cell door, it did not move, it shattered. Gravel and shrapnel rained around them, Harmony flung herself bodily over the top of Kagan to keep the worst of it from touching him.

When Orsina turned to face the man she’d killed and the girl she cared for the most, there was a strange serenity on her face. As though she did not care what the outcome of the following moments might be. She beckoned, and Kagan was hauled off the ground, carried forward by the invisible hands of the dead. The very vultures that feasted upon him now gave flight and carried him at their mistress’s command. Dragging him into the darkness of the cavern beyond.

Harmony leapt back when he began to move, but now the fear was in her again. She had never seen Orsina like this, so lifeless. It frightened her, Orsina knew.

With a sudden expulsion of air, fire filled the empty cavern where Orsina had taken Kagan, as though Orsina had just annihilated them both in flame, but then the truth became apparent. Both of them were alight, that much was true, bathing in a steady stream of blazing flame, but it was not Orsina’s doing.

Within the darkness of the cavern, fire flowed from the open mouth of the dragon lying in wait.

Harmony screamed and screamed as the flames lapped around them, as Orsina and the man she cradled in her arms became nothing but silhouettes in the blaze. Yet when the fire abated, both of them were still whole, or as whole as they had been when they first went in. It did not hurt. It did not burn. She had felt dragon fire before, and this was something else. Warm and welcoming. This flame felt like home.

Orsina stepped through the dying fire to lay her hand on the aslinda-dragon’s snout. Feeling the life flowing from that wellspring. Recognizing the connection that they shared, even though she could not put it into words. She hauled Kagan close enough and took him by the wrist, placing his limp palm against the scaled expanse of the dragon’s maw.

It was funny how they were two different species in the beginning, but now they looked so alike. The ridges above the dragon’s eyes, the crests that ran back, even the coloration of the scales, it was a perfect match for Kagan. The moment they touched, it was as though a rope had been tied between them. All of the life radiating from the dragon suddenly had direction and purpose and flowed into the unconscious Arazi.

To Orsina’s surprise, it was passing through her too, from where she touched the dragon to where she held Kagan’s wrist. From where Kagan touched the dragon, through him and into her. The painful stretching of her bones came to a halt. The wrinkling of her skin reversed. She didn’t even notice; it was a sideshow compared with the main event. Kagan’s uncoiled innards spooled slowly back inside him, shuffling around like a nest of serpents trying to get comfortable. Flesh began to knit, and the parts of him that in her haste to escape she’d seared away started to bubble and regrow. Like burning in reverse.

The moment Kagan had lungs that worked and enough blood pumping to wake him, the screaming started. She had never heard Kagan scream. Never heard anyone in such pain scream. In any other situation, death would have released them, but he was burning not to death, but to life. There were flickers of the dragon’s flame along the edges of the closing wound. The same fire that had embraced them when they came into the cell. Warm but not burning. Crackling across their skin without searing. Nothing that they had seen or done could have prepared her for this sight, but now that Kagan was returning to life, she realized the gift of agony that was being bestowed on him, suffering the same lethal injury again in reverse.

She could feel him in her head, the same way she could feel the dragon. The presence of him, like a living shade on the periphery of her awareness. She tried to break through, to give him some solace, but his walls were raised, and even now in the depths of his torment he would not lower them. He was trying to protect her, trying to protect his dragon, from the experience.

If he was going to survive this with his sanity intact, he couldn’t.

Letting her hand fall from the dragon, she seized hold of Kagan’s face, dragging him around to meet her gaze. There was terror there, plain for all to see, agony too, but only one who knew him so well could have recognized the ecstasy. All of the awful weight that he had been bearing through his centuries of exile sloughing away to expose the man that he once was beneath. Tears shone in his eyes that had nothing to do with the awful pain and everything to do with being with his dragon once more.

“You need to let me in. You need to share it.”

He was still beyond speech, almost beyond thought. He managed only a spasmodic twitch of the head, left to right, before the next racking agony locked all of his muscles up once more.

“You need to let us carry our share.”

Orsina had thought the words were her own, but they echoed in her mind, spoken from her mouth, but coming from the dragon. Kagan was locked down so fully that even his bondmate’s thoughts could not reach him.

Forcing his eyes open, twisting against the spasms of his muscles, she held him in her gaze.

“Let us in.”

Something made it through the pain, the confusion, and the fear, some spark of recognition and understanding. The blockade that he had placed around his mind eased.

Pain took Orsina. She could feel every inch of the damage she’d done. She could feel every nerve as it grew back into place, burning its way back into existence. Every wet pulse as flesh was restored. Itching was almost as persistent as the pain; those parts of him that grew back were so raw and fresh, even the faint breeze was enough to irritate. He screamed, Orsina screamed, even the dragon let out a roar that sounded more pained than furious. Then it was done.

Kagan was whole. All three of them were whole.

They gasped for air in perfect synchronicity, and then there was a moment before they each managed to remember which body was their own. Orsina tried to spread her wings. Kagan tried to push the hair back from his face. Finally, Kagan managed to croak something out in Arazi, which was answered by the dragon with a rumble.

An unfamiliar emotion poured out from the pair of them, encompassing Orsina, filling up her heart until tears ran down her face. She might have called it love or joy, but no word seemed to do the sensation credit. It was like coming home. It was like having a family that loved you and would always care for you. It was all of the things that she had never had, and now it overwhelmed her.

Kagan caught her in a hug, even though he was still too weak to stand. The dragon laid its head down atop the pair of them. The heat of her flames still radiating down through the soft scales of her throat to warm them. Kagan was the first to speak, though his voice, too, was choked up with emotion.

“Orsina, meet Yelena.”

“We’ve met,” Orsina and Yelena said together. Words and meanings echoing between them. Kagan let out a laugh that turned to coughing.

“As heartwarming as this little family reunion is, we really do need to be going.” Harmony’s voice cut through the clutter of shared feelings. She stood in the doorway, her arms crossed over herself, tension still ringing through her, though she’d borne witness to a miracle. “There is an entire army upstairs that wants us dead. It might be sensible to not be here by the time they arrive.”

Orsina launched herself out from the huddle of scaled bodies, crossed the room, and froze, awkward and bashful at the last moment, before casting all concern aside and throwing herself the final distance into Harmony’s embrace.

Her hands pinned Harmony’s face in place as she’d done with Kagan in his moment of agony, but it was not for any arcane healing purpose, though the brush of their lips did feel like some sort of magic when it finally happened. The two of them clung to each other, as though the winds of fate might have torn them apart again at any moment, and when finally their kiss was done, Harmony was visibly flushed and tongue-tied.

“I… have changed my mind. No hurry at all.”

Orsina let out what could only be described as a giggle, and Kagan coughed again, less because his lungs had just regrown and more because he felt the need to interrupt.

“We need to go,” he grumbled.

Approval of this idea washed over Orsina from the direction of Yelena. Orsina sighed. “All right. All right.”

Yet despite that, she found that her hand had slipped down, and her fingers had interlocked with Harmony’s. “What is the plan?”

Her rescuers were sheepish for a moment too long.

“You didn’t have a plan to get back out?”

Harmony and Kagan looked away from her, and she couldn’t help but laugh. “You came all this way to save me and…”

Harmony’s own laugh was so soft anyone else might have missed it. “We were mostly focused on the getting-here part, if I’m entirely honest.”

Kagan was less circumspect. “You’re the plan. Find you. You use your powers. We all escape.”

“Oh.” She was momentarily stunned.

Harmony squeezed her hands. “It’s nothing more than you’ve already dealt with easily enough. There are many Arazi, but we have surprise on our side.”

“Except with Konus,” Kagan couldn’t help but mention.

Orsina’s eyes closed, and she tried to push her anxiety down, but it trickled out of her and into the others.

Kagan lumbered over to her, even though it seemed to physically pain him to be separated from his dragon. “You can do this. Together, we can do this.”

“I…”

“It’s all right.” Harmony brought a hand up to push Orsina’s curls back from her face. “We’re all together now. We have a dragon on our side! It’s all going to be fine.”

“If I do this… If I call my shades…” Her voice cracked. “I don’t know what will happen.”

“You’ll win.” Harmony smiled at her. “Just like you always do.”

Orsina pulled back from her, tremors running through her body at the memory. “Last time, after the… I lost myself. The shades took over. I don’t know if I… If I do this, I don’t know if I’ll be able to come back. I don’t know… who’ll be coming back.”

Kagan and Harmony met each other’s eyes. Some silent communication passing between them. Orsina didn’t know what they were thinking, nor did she care to. The awful truth of it was, she’d been unwilling to call her shades until she had realized that her death would bring Kagan’s along with it. Now it wasn’t just the two of them, but Yelena and Harmony too. All of them were going to die when the Arazi came for them. Her friends, the people who were closer than friends. She had no choice.

Casting a glance back to the dragon, she asked, “Can you fly?”

The emotion that echoed back was something like contempt. Kagan and the dragon spoke together. “Can you breathe?”

It was enough to draw a strained laugh from her. “All right. Everyone mount up.”

Without the usual livery, it was not so easy to climb onto a dragon’s back, nor to keep themselves in place, but Kagan and Harmony did their best, assisted all the way by the subtle adjustments of Yelena. When they were as secure as they were going to be, Orsina stepped up in front of the dragon and laid a grateful pat on the end of her nose. “Ready?”

Yelena radiated her readiness to fly again. To be free again. To live.

Orsina smiled, holding that thought close, as comfort. Drew one last steadying breath and forced a smile. “Try to keep up.”

They were trapped deep beneath a mountain, tons upon tons of stone separating them from their freedom. It was a prison forged for dragons. A place that raw power alone should never have been able to penetrate. A winding maze that would allow their captors every opportunity to stop them, to kill them, to drive them back into the deep darkness they were clawing their way out of.

Orsina looked up, let her defenses fall, and released her breath.

What had been air, became fire. The blinding blast of flame as the soul of the dragon rose within her changed as it left her lips, becoming hotter, brighter, more. So close to the font of the life flowing through Kagan into her, it was as though there was no limit to the life she could pour into her shades without delay. A never-ending supply of fuel for the fire.

If she could see anything other than that blinding column of light, she might have spotted Kagan and Harmony exchanging looks, remembering where they had last seen a white beam of destruction like that being unleashed, but she did not see, and she did not know. She could not recognize anything that was happening around her.

Only the dragon, the power, and the flame.

From the outside, it must have looked and sounded as though the volcano was erupting. A concussive wave rocked out over the makeshift town, leveling tents that had been pinned in place for generations, knocking grown Arazi and wyverns off their feet, flinging molten stone high up into the air, where it struck aslinda-dragons and clung to their scales like fire never could.

But from down there in the dungeon pit, all Orsina and her companions could see was the light. Rock that had stood the test of ages sloughed away from that light, any that did not melt and evaporate in the impossible heat. Even the dragon had to shield her eyes, lest she be blinded by the radiance of the flame.

All the air in the cavern burned away, and they found themselves breathless. They clung now to the dragon’s back as much for some point of stability in the midst of the endless roar as from any plans to fly. It was only when Orsina stopped and they could see the distant stars as pinpricks above that they finally began to move.

Orsina launched herself straight up, a cohort of shades carrying her as fast as any dragon had ever flown. For poor Yelena’s atrophied wings, it was almost too much just to get off the ground, but within a few beats they rose and went on rising, chasing after the tail of the comet that was Orsina. Inch by perilous inch, through the empty column of molten stone, heading towards the open air at last.

Inevitably, she broke the surface first, and before the dragons circling about her knew what was happening, death was among them. The first wave of death and destruction from the explosion in the volcano was nothing compared with the storm she unleashed. Fire and ice, slicing out into them in a swarm of sickle blades. Reaping the harvest, separating wing from body, scale from flesh. Head from neck.

Even next to the battle with Espher, it was the single worst slaughter of dragon-kind that had ever occurred, and Orsina showed no signs of slowing. The girl herself had no killer in her, but the shades she had invited inside her mind were killers one and all. Even old Mother Vinegar had taken life when it was necessary, when she decided it was the better option than not. So, she took it now, through her protégée, through plagues and poisons carried out on blades of wind, blighting those dragons that did not fall to the elemental chaos. Poxes and plagues that would spread and kill more and more, even beyond this battle.

Whatever damage Orsina had dealt to the mountain had been just the beginning. As Yelena cleared the channel that cut through the stone, fresh lava was already oozing after her, the walls collapsing in on themselves. Whatever tentative stalemate that stone and flame had held through the centuries this place had been a town was over now, and from deep beneath the earth, rumbles echoed out.

Orsina’s escape may not have been a volcanic eruption in the true sense, but it was the harbinger for one. So many of the Arazi had been gathered here in this desolate place by Konus’s command, and now they would die here, for no better reason. As she rose into the smoke, first one then another of the ringed volcanoes began to rumble.

Even from so high, the screams could be heard. These were not warriors marching off to invade; they were not soldiers or kings intent on war. They were just people trying to live their lives, and she was killing them.

It was horror enough to cut through the control the shades exerted over her mind. Enough to make her stop, to make her hesitate.

That was all that the surviving dragons needed. En masse, they pivoted in their flights towards her. So many even now that they were beyond counting, all flocking together, all hunting her, together. Following their instincts.

Orsina hung there in the air speechless and addled by the rush of power as they came for her. Then from below, a dragon struck. Yelena rammed into her, thrusting her head up and knocking Orsina tumbling back along the length of her elegant neck into the waiting arms of Kagan. She spun off to the side, air knocked from her lungs, and only his vast reach kept her from going farther. He caught her and hauled her into a tight embrace as the dragon soared on.

All of her thoughts were a jumble. Everything she had sealed away as infected with the shades’ influences mixed with what she already knew, who she thought she was. Whatever clean distinction there had been between her mind and those of the shades was gone. When she looked about at Kagan and Harmony lit up from below by the mountain aflame, they were strangers to her.

One sorrowful thought that might have been her own flitted through: Even with his scales, Kagan was more human than she was now.

The dragons were coming for them, more of them than could even be understood, angling in from anywhere that the winds might carry them, and through Yelena, she could see them all, every line traced through the air, every possibility that they might have flown.

She wrenched herself free of Kagan, stumbled to an unsteady balance between Yelena’s wings, and gave herself over to slaughter once more.

Buoyed up by the rising thermals from the spreading lava below, the dragon soared. Her own course clearly marked in Orsina’s mind. All of the crossing points where they would be intercepted by one aslinda or another a tangle of threads. The amalgam of shades filled her up, and she began to cut those threads.

This was not the explosive chaos of before, the destruction reigning over all. This was methodical, calculated. The first dragons that would intercept them were met with blades of air and ice, killing those that stayed the course, diverting those that had more sense. Then the next wave, and the next. Some who survived swooped out and circled back for another run at them, but not a one had come close enough to breathe their fire yet.

Yelena stayed the course, passing through the air where the dragons died, and with each one, the dragon within Orsina feasted on their shades and became more. Instinct ruled the aslinda; this was their territory, it was being violated, they could not tolerate it. If they had only listened to the rational minds of their riders, still down on the ground in the midst of the chaos, filled with all-too-human terror, then perhaps they would have turned away.

On and on the slaughter went, moments stretching out into minutes, life flooding out of Orsina and being hauled back up into her through the soles of her feet at the very same pace. She was in equilibrium, unchanging as she changed everything around them. As she changed the living to the dead, and the dead to fodder for the parasite in her soul.

It went on, and on, and on, and on, and only when Yelena could see no more dragons and the ground flying by beneath them changed from ash to the familiar barrens of the steppes did Orsina finally stop.

She turned to look down upon her family, Kagan and Harmony and the dragon that carried them all. Her hair was afloat in the air, as though she were submerged in the deep still water of Greenteeth’s pool. Her lips were blackened with soot. In the air all around her, fragmented memories of the shades she had captured and set to work seemed to appear and fade as fast as her many flickering shadows.

When Harmony and Kagan looked up at her, they were afraid. Terror was writ on their features, and though it should have wounded her to see them so frightened by her, the dragon within Orsina delighted.

It was only right. She was powerful, and they were not.

They should be afraid.

To be concluded in Thronebound.

Thank you for reading The Last King: Bloodbound. Please consider rating and reviewing the book on Amazon, as well as any of your other favorite book-discussion sites. Thousands of books are published around the world every day, all competing to gain traction and attention from readers. If you enjoyed this book and want more like it to be published in the future, then reviews are one of the best ways you can support us.

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David & G. D.