"The strength of the butcher bird is the strength of the Empire, for she is the torch against the night. Your line will rise or fall with her hammer; your fate will rise or fall with her will."
When Marcus looks at me, I know for an instant how Cain must have felt when I looked at him. Pure hate radiates from the Emperor. And yet he is strangely diminished. He is not telling me everything the Augur said.
"Did--did the Augur say anything el--"
"That hag hasn't been wrong yet," Marcus says. "Not about me. Not about you. So whether you like it or not, Shrike, Antium's defense is in your hands."
It is deep night by the time we approach the northern gates to the capital. Teams of Plebeians fortify the walls, a legionnaire bellowing at them to work faster. The acrid reek of tar fills the air as soldiers lug buckets of it up ladders to the top of our defenses. Fletchers transport wagonloads of arrows divided into tubs for the archers to grab easily. Though the moon is high, it seems as if there is not a single sleeping soul in the city. Vendors hawk food and ale, and Scholar slaves carry water to those working.
This will not last. When the Karkauns come, the civilians will be forced to retreat into their homes to wait and see whether their brothers and fathers, uncles and cousins, sons and grandsons can hold the city. But in this moment, as all the people come together, unafraid, my heart swells. Come what may, I am glad I am here to fight with my people. And I am glad I am the Blood Shrike charged with leading the Martials to victory.
And I will lead them to victory--over the Karkauns and the Commandant.
Marcus appears to notice none of this. He is lost in thought, striding forward without looking at all those who labor for his empire.
"My lord," I say. "Perhaps take a moment to acknowledge the workers."
"We have a bleeding war to plan, you fool."
"Wars succeed or fail based on the men who fight them," I remind him. "Take one moment. They will remember."
He regards me with irritation before breaking away from his men to speak with a group of aux soldiers. I watch from a distance, and from the corner of my eye I notice a group of children. One--a girl--wears a wooden, silver-painted mask over her face as she fights a slightly smaller girl, who is presumably posing as a Barbarian. The clack of their wooden swords is just one more instrument in the frantic symphony of a city preparing for war.
The masked girl spins under the other's scim before delivering a kick to her bottom and pinning her with a boot.
I smile and she looks up, pulling off her mask hastily. She offers a clumsy salute. The other girl--who I realize must be a younger sister--stares openmouthed.
"Elbow up." I fix the girl's arm. "Hand perfectly straight, and the tip of your middle finger should be at the center of your forehead. Keep your eyes on the space between you and me. Try not to blink too much." When she's got it, I nod. "Good," I say. "Now you look like a Mask."
"Chryssa says I'm not big enough." She looks to her still-staring sister. "But I'm going to fight the Karkauns when they come."
"Then we'll surely defeat them." I look between the girls. "Take care of each other," I say. "Always. Promise me."
As I walk away, I wonder if they will remember the vow they made me ten years from now, twenty. I wonder if they'll still be alive. I think of Livvy, far away, I hope. Safe. That fact is the only thing that gives me comfort. We will defeat Grimarr's army. We are the superior fighting force. But the warlock is a clever adversary and it will be a hard battle. Skies know what will happen in that chaos. Cain's words haunt me: No one is safe. Curse the Commandant for bringing this upon us out of her greed. Curse her for caring more about becoming Empress than about the Empire she seeks to rule.
Marcus shouts at me to get moving. When we return to the palace, it is a hive of activity. Horses, men, weaponry, and wagons clog the gates as the palace guards sandbag the outer walls and hammer in planks across the entrance gates. With so many people coming in and out, it will be difficult to keep the place secure against the Commandant's spies--and her assassins.
Come for Marcus, Keris, I think. Do my work for me. But you'll never get your hands on my sister or her child again. Not while I live and breathe.
As we approach the throne room, there's a buzz in the air. I think one of the courtiers whispers Keris's name, but Marcus walks too fast for me to linger and listen. The throne room doors fly open as Marcus strides toward them. A sea of Illustrian nobles mills within, waiting to hear what the Emperor will say about the approaching army. I feel no fear in the air, only a grim sense of determination and a strange tension, as if everyone knows a secret they aren't willing to share.
The source of it becomes apparent moments later, as the waves of Illustrians part to reveal a small blonde woman in bloodied armor standing beside a tall, equally blonde woman heavy with child.
The Commandant has returned to Antium.
And she has brought my sister with her.
XLII: Laia
The day Mother gave me her armlet, I was five. Nan's curtains were drawn. I could not see the moon. Pop must have been there. Darin, Lis, and Father too. But I remember Mother's crooked smile most clearly. Her lapis eyes and long fingers. I sat in her lap trying to tuck my cold feet into her warm shirt. You're not Laia, she'd said. You're an efrit of the north trying to turn me into an icicle.
Someone called out to her. Time to go. She whispered to me to keep the armlet safe. Then she wrapped her arms around me, and though she squeezed too tightly, I did not care. I wanted to pull her into me. I wanted to keep her.
We will see each other again. She kissed my hands, my forehead. I swear it.
When?
Soon.
The courtyard gate creaked as she slipped through it. She smiled back at me and Darin, huddled between our grandparents. Then she stepped into the night, and the darkness swallowed her up.
* * *
I reel from what the Nightbringer showed me, from the crawling feeling of him and his kin all over my mind. I hold the armlet Elias gave me and I do not let go. I'm free of the jinn now.
As I stumble away from the Forest, as the voices of the ghosts peak, I move more swiftly. The Dead will rise, and none can survive. Shaeva's prophecy rings in my mind. Something has gone terribly wrong within the Waiting Place, and I need to get as far away as possible.
I run, trying to remember again what I am meant to do, trying to get the Nightbringer's voice out of my head.
Musa marked a village on my map. I must get there, meet his contact, and get to Antium. But before then, I need to pull the shards of my mind off the ground and put them back together. I cannot change what is done. I can only move forward and hope to the skies that before I meet Cook again, I've made my peace with what she did to Father and Lis. With what she endured. With what she sacrificed for the Resistance.
I make my way northwest. A pair of hills rises a few miles ahead, with a dip in the middle that should shelter the village of Myrtium. Musa's contact is meant to await me there. Since it's Martial territory, I should use my magic to become invisible. But I cannot bear the thought of more visions, of seeing more pain and suffering.
I cannot bear the thought of seeing her. I think of Darin. Did he know about what Mother did? Is that why he tensed up every time I spoke of her? I wish to the skies that he was here now.
Rattled though I may be, I have the wits to wait until dark before I creep toward the village proper. The summer night is warm, the only noise a gentle breeze blowing in off a nearby creek. I feel louder than a horse with bells on as I slink along the walls.
The inn is the central building in the village, and I watch for a long time before getting closer. Musa told me little of his contact, for fear that the knowledge could be extracted by our enemies if I am caught. But I know that he is not a Martial and that he will be waiting within the inn, by the fire. I am to cloak myself, whisper to him that I've arrived, and then follow his instructions. He will take me to the Mariner Embassy in Antium, where I'll get ma
ps of the palace and the city, information about the Blood Shrike and where she will be--everything I'll need to get in, get the ring, and get the hells out.
Gold light spills out into the streets from the inn's wide, rounded windows, and the taproom is full, with agitated conversation drifting out in bits.
"If the Shrike can't stop them--"
"How the bleeding hells is she supposed to stop them with only--"
"--city will never be taken, those pigs don't know how to fight--"
I keep to the shadows, trying to see into the inn from across the street. It is impossible. I must get closer.
The inn has a series of smaller side windows, and the alleys around it are quiet, so I skitter across the square, hoping no one sees me, and climb onto a crate, peeking through one of the windows. It offers a decent view of the room, but so far, everyone here is a Martial.
I peer past the barkeep, through the thicket of serving maids pouring out drinks and lads delivering plates of food. The long bar is crowded with villagers, all of whom seem to be talking at once. How the hells am I supposed to find him in this mess? I'll have to cloak myself in invisibility. I have no choice.
"Hello, girl."
I nearly jump out of my skin. When the hooded figure appears behind me, when her voice rasps a greeting, all I can think is that the Nightbringer has somehow followed me here, to this tiny village. That he is playing more tricks on my mind.
But the figure steps forward and lowers her hood to reveal moon-white hair that never belonged on her and midnight-blue eyes too shadowed to be familiar and violently scarred skin that I never noticed was unwrinkled until now. Her fingers are stained a deep, strange titian. Her diminutive height disorients me. All these years, I thought she was tall.
"Girl?"
I reach out a hand to touch her and she shies away. How can this be real? How can I be staring into Mother's face, after so long?
But of course, it is real. And the Nightbringer somehow knew she would be waiting--why else torment me with her true identity? He could have shown me who she was weeks ago, any time I used my invisibility. But he didn't. Because he knew this is when it would hit me the hardest.
Part of me wants to run to her, feel her hands on my skin, hold them in my own. I wish Darin were here. I wish Izzi were here.
But the part of me that thinks Mother is stifled to silence by the darker part of me that screams Liar! I want to shout and curse at her and ask her every question that has plagued me since the moment I learned who she is. Understanding dawns on her face.
"Who told you?" Her cold eyes are unfamiliar. "Can't have been Musa. He doesn't know. No one does--except Keris, of course."
"The Nightbringer," I whisper. "The Nightbringer told me who you are."
"Who I was." She draws up her hood and turns to the darkness. "Come. We'll talk on the way."
Marrow-deep panic grips me when she turns from me. Don't leave! I want to follow her. And at the same time, I never want to see her again.
"I'm not going anywhere with you," I say, "until you tell me what the hells happened to you. Why didn't you say anything at Blackcliff? You slaved for Keris for years. How could you--"
She clenches and unclenches her fists. Just like Darin when he is upset.
I dip my head but she will not meet my stare. Her face twitches, her mouth curving into a grimace. "Listen to me, girl," she says. "We have to go. You have a mission, do you not? Don't bleeding forget it."
"The mission. The mission. How can you--" I throw up my hands and walk past her. "I'll make my own way. I don't need you. I don't--"
But after only a few steps, I turn back. I cannot leave her. I missed her for so many years. I have longed for her from the age of five, when she was taken from me.
"We've a long road ahead." Nothing about how she speaks sounds like the mother I knew. This is not the woman who called me Cricket, or tickled me until I couldn't breathe, or promised me she'd teach me how to shoot a bow as well as she did. Whoever she is now, she is Mirra of Serra no longer.
"There will be plenty of time for you to scream at me on the way. I'd welcome it." Her scarred mouth lifts in a sneer. "But we cannot delay. The Blood Shrike is in Antium, and Antium is where we must go. But if we don't hurry, we'll never get inside."
"No," I whisper to her. "We settle this first. This is more important, and in any case, you must have a dozen ways of sneaking in--"
"I do," Cook says. "But there are tens of thousands of Karkauns marching on the capital, and all the sneaking in the world won't do us a whit of good if they surround the city before we get there."
XLIII: The Blood Shrike
Faris and Rallius are both pale as ghosts when I meet them in Livia's quarters, rattled by what they have just survived, each bleeding from a dozen wounds. I have no time to coddle them. I need to know what the hells happened out there--and how Keris got the best of us again.
"It was a Karkaun attack." Faris paces back and forth across Livia's sitting room while her women settle her in her bedroom. "Two hundred of those woad-loving demons. They came out of bleeding nowhere."
"They were waiting," Rallius growls as he ties off a bandage on his leg. "Maybe not for the Empress specifically, but for an opportunity, certainly. If Keris hadn't shown up with her men, we'd have been in a bad spot."
"If Keris hadn't shown up," I say in irritation, "Grimarr and his hordes wouldn't have either. She's working with them. She did this so she could get to Livia. Thank the skies for you and the other Masks. She must have realized she couldn't kill you all, so she decided to play the hero instead."
Devious, true, but just like the Commandant. She is always adaptable. And now the Plebeians in the city are hailing her as a hero for saving the life of the half-Plebeian heir--as she probably knew they would.
"Go clean up," I say. "Triple the watch around the Empress. I want her food tasted a day in advance. I want one or the other of you present when it is prepared. She doesn't leave the palace. If she wants to get out, she can take a walk in the gardens."
The men leave, and I go over and over what they have said as I await the arrival of Dex, whom I sent to get Livia's midwife. When he finally returns--after hours--it is with a different woman from the one I'd personally chosen to tend to Livia.
"The first one is gone, Shrike," Dex tells me as the new midwife bustles into Livia's rooms. "Left the city, apparently. Along with every other midwife I tried to track down. This one only came because she's a Mariner. Whomever the hells Keris Veturia sent to frighten all those women probably didn't have a chance to get to her."
I curse, keeping my voice low. Keris saved my sister from the Karkauns because it suited her needs--the Plebeians sing her praises. Now she'll seek to kill Livia quietly. Plenty of women die in childbirth, especially if they are delivering without a midwife.
"What of the barracks physicians? Surely one of them can deliver a baby."
"They know battlefield wounds, Shrike, not childbirth. That's what midwives are for, apparently. Their words"--Dex winces at my wrath--"not mine."
The new midwife, a skinny Mariner with gentle hands and a booming voice that would put any Martial drill sergeant to shame, smiles at Livia, asking her a series of questions.
"Keep this one alive, Dex," I murmur. "I don't care if you have to put a dozen guards on her and live with her in the Black Guard barracks. You keep her alive. And find a backup. This cannot possibly be the only midwife left in the entire city."
He nods, and though I've dismissed him, I notice his reluctance to leave.
"Out with it, Atrius."
"The Plebeians," he says. "You've heard that they're rising in support of the Commandant. Well, it's . . . gotten worse."
"How the hells could it get worse?"
"The story about her murdering the highborn Illustrians who wronged her has been making the rounds," Dex says. "The Paters are infuriated. But the Plebeians are saying that Keris stood up to those more powerful than her. They're saying that sh
e defended a Plebeian man she loved--that she fought for one and took rightful vengeance. They're saying the Illustrians who died got what they deserved."
Hells. If the Commandant now has Plebeian support instead of Illustrian, I haven't hurt her at all. I've just managed to shuffle her list of allies.
"Let the rumor play," I say. At Dex's nod, I sigh. "We'll have to find another way to undermine her."
At that moment, the midwife pokes her head out, gesturing me into Livia's quarters.
"He's strong as a bull." She beams at me, patting Livia's belly with affection. "He'll bruise a rib or two before he joins us, I'd bet my life on it. But the Empress is doing fine, as is the child. A few weeks more, lass, and you'll be holding your precious babe in your arms."
"Should we do anything for her? Some sort of tea or . . ." I realize I sound like an idiot. Teas, Shrike? Truly?
"Goldrose petals in goat's milk every morning until her own milk comes in," the midwife says. "And wildwood tea twice a day."
When the woman is finally gone, Livvy sits up, and I am surprised to see a knife clutched in her hands. "Have her killed," she whispers.
I raise an eyebrow. "The midwife? What--"
"Goldrose petals," Livvy says, "are used when a woman is past her due date. They're meant to make a baby come more quickly. I'm still a few weeks away. It wouldn't be safe for him to come now."
I call Dex in immediately. When he leaves, weapons in hand, Livia shakes her head. "This is Keris, isn't it? All of it. The Karkaun attack. The midwives leaving. This midwife."
"I'll stop her," I vow to my sister. "I don't expect you to believe it, because all I've done is fail, but--"
"No." Livia takes my hand. "We don't turn on each other, Hel--Shrike. No matter what happens. And yes, we must stop her. But we must also keep the support of the Plebeians. If they support Keris now, you cannot speak against her publicly. You must walk that line, sister. We cannot put this child on the throne if the Plebeians don't see him as one of their own. And they won't--not if you cross Keris."
* * *
Evening sees me in Marcus's war room, locked in an argument with the Paters, wanting nothing more than to beat all of them into silence before doing what I wish.