I vault over the strongarm’s crushed skull, tossing the small silver key. Morrey catches it. His conscription and my imprisonment have not stamped out our bond as twins. Sunlight streams through as he hauls the doors open and lunges into the fresh air, the other hostages sprinting with him.
Harrick comes flying down the stairs, false fire spewing in his wake. He waves me on, telling me to go, but I stay rooted. I’m not leaving without the illusionary.
We stumble out together, clutching each other tightly to face down a square full of perplexed guards armed to the teeth. They allow us through at Farley’s orders. She shouts nearby, directing them to focus on the tower entrance, in case the Silvers attempt to make a stand.
I don’t hear her words. I just keep walking until I have my brother in my arms. His heart beats rapidly in his chest. I revel in the sound. He’s here. He’s alive.
Not like the strongarms.
I still feel it, what I did to them.
What I did to every single person I ever killed.
The memories make me dizzy with shame. All for Morrey, all to survive. But no more.
I don’t have to be a murderer alongside everything else.
He clutches at me, eyes rolling in terror. “The Scarlet Guard,” he hisses, holding me close. “Cam, we have to run.”
“You’re safe; you’re with us now. They can’t hurt you, Morrey!”
But instead of calming down, his fear triples. Morrey’s grip on me tightens as his head whips back and forth, taking stock of Farley’s soldiers. “Do they know what you are? Cam, do they know?”
Shame bleeds into confusion. I push back from him a little, to get a better look at his face. He breathes heavily. “What I am?”
“They’ll kill you for it. The Scarlet Guard will kill you for what you are.”
Each word hits me like a hammer. And then I realize my brother isn’t the only one still afraid. The rest of his unit, the other teenagers, cluster together for safety, every one of them keeping clear of the Guard soldiers. Farley meets my eye from a few feet away, just as puzzled as I am.
Then I see her from my brother’s point of view. See them all for what he’s been told to see.
Terrorists. Murderers. The reason they were conscripted in the first place.
I try to pull Morrey into a hug, try to whisper an explanation.
He just goes cold in my arms. “You’re one of them,” he spits, looking at me with so much anger and accusation my knees buckle. “You’re Scarlet Guard.”
My soul fills with dread.
Maven took Mare’s brother.
Did he take mine too?
SIXTEEN
Mare
I can’t see Corvium through the low cloud cover. I stare anyway, my eyes glued on the eastern horizon stretching out behind us. The Scarlet Guard took the city. They control it now. We had to skirt around, giving the hostile city a wide berth. Maven is doing his best to keep it quiet; even he can’t hide such massive defeat. I wonder how the news will land across the kingdom. Will Reds celebrate? Will Silvers retaliate? I remember the riots that followed other attacks by the Scarlet Guard. Of course there will be repercussions. Corvium is an act of war. Finally, the Scarlet Guard has planted a flag that cannot simply be torn down.
My friends are so close I feel as if I could run to them. Tear the manacles off, kill the Arven guards, jump from the transport and disappear into the gray gloom, sprinting through the bare winter forest. In the daydream, they wait for me outside the walls of a broken fortress. The Colonel, his eye crimson, his weathered face and the gun on his hip a comfort like nothing else. Farley with him, bold and tall and resolute as I remember. Cameron, her silence a shield rather than a prison. Kilorn, familiar as my own two hands. Cal, angry and broken as I am, the embers of his rage ready to burn all thoughts of Maven from my mind. I imagine leaping into their arms, begging them to take me away, take me anywhere. Take me to my family, take me home. Make me forget.
No, not forget. It would be a sin to forget my imprisonment. A waste. I know Maven as no one else does. I know the holes in his brain, the pieces he can never make fit. And I’ve seen his court splinter firsthand. If I can escape, if I can be rescued, I can do some good still. I can make my fool’s bargain worth the terrible cost—and I can start to right so many wrongs.
Even though the transport windows are tightly sealed, I smell smoke. Ash. Gunpowder. The metallic, sour bite of a century of blood. The Choke nears, closer with every passing second as Maven’s convoy speeds west. I hope my nightmares of this place were worse than the reality.
Kitten and Clover are still at my sides, their hands gloved and flat upon their knees. Ready to grab me, ready to hold me down. The other guards, Trio and Egg, perch above, on the transport skeleton, harnessed to the moving vehicle. A precaution, now that we’re so close to the war zone. Not to mention a few miles from a city occupied by revolution. All four remain vigilant as ever. Both to keep me imprisoned—and to keep me safe.
Outside, the forest lining the last miles of the Iron Road thins into nothing. Naked branches fall away to reveal hard earth barely worthy of snow. The Choke is an ugly place. Gray dirt, gray skies, blending so perfectly I don’t know where the land ends and sky begins. I almost expect to hear explosions in the distance. Dad said you could always hear the bombs, even from miles away. I suppose that isn’t the case anymore, not if Maven’s gambit succeeds. I’m ending a war that millions died for. Just to keep killing under another name.
The convoy presses on toward the forward camps, a collection of buildings that remind me of the Scarlet Guard base on Tuck. They fade into the distance in either direction. Barracks, mostly. Coffins for the living. My brothers lived in those once. My father too. It might be my turn to keep up the tradition.
As in the cities along the coronation tour, people turn out to watch King Maven and his retinue. Soldiers in red, in black, in clouded gray. They line the main avenue bisecting the Choke camp with military precision, each one dipping their heads in respect. I don’t bother trying to count how many hundreds there are. It’s too depressing. Instead, I clasp my hands together, tight enough to give me another pain to dwell on. The injured Silver officer in Rocasta said Corvium was a massacre. Don’t, I tell myself. Don’t go there. Of course my mind does anyway. It’s impossible to avoid the horrors you really don’t want to think about. Massacre. Both sides. Red and Silver, Scarlet Guard and Maven’s army. Cal survived, that much I know from Maven’s demeanor. But Farley, Kilorn, Cameron, my brothers, the rest? So many names and faces who probably assaulted the walls of Corvium. What happened to them?
I press my fingers to my eyes, trying to keep the tears back. The effort exhausts me, but I refuse to cry in front of Kitten and Clover.
To my surprise, the convoy does not stop in the center of the Choke camp, even though there’s a square that looks perfectly suited to another of Maven’s honeyed speeches. A few of the transports, each carrying scions of several High Houses, peel off, but we speed through, pressing on, deeper and deeper. Even though they try to hide it, Kitten and Clover grow more on edge, their eyes darting between the windows and each other. They don’t like this. Good. Let them squirm.
Bold as I feel, a shadow of dread falls over me too. Is Maven out of his mind? Where is he taking us—all of us? Certainly he would not drive the court into a trench or a minefield or worse. The transports pick up speed, rolling faster and faster over earth packed hard into a roadway. In the distance, artillery cannons and heavy guns stand in hulking wrecks of iron, twisted shadows like black skeletons. Within a mile, we cross the first trench lines, our vehicles snarling over hastily built bridges. More trenches follow. For reserves, support, communication. Weaving like the passages of the Notch, burrowing into frozen mud. I lose count after a dozen. Either the trenches are abandoned or the soldiers are well hidden. I can’t see a single scrap of red uniform.
This could be a trap, for all we know. The scheming of an old king meant to ensnare and de
feat a young boy. Part of me wants that to be true. If I can’t kill Maven, maybe the king of the Lakelands will do it for me. House Cygnet, nymphs. Ruling for hundreds of years. That’s as much as I know about the enemy monarch. His kingdom is like ours, divided by blood, ruled by noble Silver houses. And afflicted by the Scarlet Guard, apparently. Like Maven, he must be bent on maintaining power at all costs, through any means. Even collusion with an old enemy.
In the east, the clouds break, and a few beams of sunlight illuminate the harsh land around us. No trees as far as the eye can see. We cross over the frontline trench and I gasp at the sight. Red soldiers crowd together in long lines, six bodies deep, their uniforms colored in varying shades of rust and crimson. They pool like blood in a wound. Hands on ladders, they shiver in the cold. Ready to rush out of their trench and into the deadly kill zone of the Choke should their king command it. I spot Silver officers among them, denoted by their gray-and-black uniforms. Maven is young, but not stupid. If this is a Lakelander trick, he’s ready to fight his way out. I assume the king of the Lakelands has another army waiting, in his own trenches on the other side. More Red soldiers to discard.
As the tires of our transport hit the other side, Clover tightens next to me. She keeps her electric-green eyes forward, trying to stay calm. A sheen of sweat gleams on her forehead, betraying her fear.
The true wasteland of the Choke is pocked with craters from two armies’ worth of artillery fire. Some of the holes must be decades old. Barbed wire tangles in the frozen mud. Up ahead, on the lead transport, a telky and a magnetron work in tandem. They sweep their arms back and forth, wrenching any debris from the path of the convoy. Bits of coiled iron go spinning off in every direction. And, I assume, bones. Reds have been dying here for generations. The dirt is littered with their dust.
In my nightmares, this place stretches on forever, in every direction. But instead of continuing forward into oblivion, the convoy slows a little more than a half mile beyond the frontline trenches. As our transports circle and weave, arranging themselves in a half-moon arc, I almost erupt with nervous laughter. Of all things, in all places—we’re stopping at a pavilion. The contrast is jarring. It’s brand-new, with white columns and silky curtains swaying in the poisoned wind. Constructed for one purpose and one purpose alone. A summit, a meeting, like the one so long ago. When two kings decided to begin a century of war.
A Sentinel wrenches open my transport door, beckoning for us to step down. Clover hesitates a half second and Kitten clears her throat, urging her on. I move between them, escorted down onto the obliterated earth. Rocks and dirt make the ground uneven under my feet. I pray nothing splinters beneath me. A skull, a rib, a femur, or a spine. I don’t need more proof that I’m walking through an endless graveyard.
Clover is not the only one afraid. Even the Sentinels move slowly, on edge, their masked faces sweeping back and forth. For once, they think of their own safety as well as Maven’s. And the rest of the remaining court—Evangeline, Ptolemus, Samson—they idle by their transports. Their eyes dart; their noses wrinkle. They can smell death and danger as well as I can. One wrong move, one hint of a threat, and they’ll bolt. Evangeline has discarded her furs for armor. Steel coats her from neck to wrist and toe. She quickly frees her fingers from her leather gloves, baring her skin to the cold air. Better for a fight. I feel the itch to do the same, not that it will help me at all. The manacles are strong as ever.
The only one who seems unaffected is Maven. The dying winter suits him, making his pale skin stand out in a way that is oddly elegant. Even the shadows around his eyes, dark as always, black and bruise-like, make him tragically beautiful. Today he wears as much regalia as he dares. A boy king, but a king all the same, about to look into the eyes of someone who is supposedly his greatest opponent. The crown on his head seems natural now, refitted to sit low across his brow. It spits bronze and iron flames through his glossy black hair. Even in the gray light of the Choke, his medals and badges gleam, silver and ruby and onyx. A cape, patterned with brocade red as flame, completes the ensemble and the image of a fiery king. But the Choke consumes us all. Dirt speckles his polished black boots as he walks forward, fighting the deep instinct to fear this place. Impatient, he casts one look over his shoulder, eyeing the dozens he dragged here. His fire-blue eyes are warning enough. We must go with him. I am not afraid of death, and so I am the first to follow him into what could be a grave.
The king of the Lakelands is already waiting.
He sprawls in a simple chair, a small man against the massive flag hung behind him. It is cobalt, worked with a four-petaled flower in silver and white. His milky-blue metal transports splay out on the other side of the pavilion, arranged in mirror image to our own. I count more than a dozen at a glance, all of them crawling with the Lakelander version of Sentinel guards. More flank the Lakeland king and his entourage. They don’t wear masks or robes, but tactical armor in flashing plates of deep sapphire. They stand, silent, stoic, with faces like carved stone. Each one a warrior trained from birth or close to it. I know none of their abilities, nor those of the king’s companions. The court of the Lakelands is not something I studied in my lessons with Lady Blonos centuries ago.
As we approach, the king comes into better focus. I stare at him, trying to see the man beneath the crown of white gold, topaz, turquoise, and dark lapis lazuli. For as much as Maven favors red and black, this king favors his blue. After all, he is a nymph, a manipulator of water. It’s fitting. I expect his eyes to be blue as well—instead, they are storm gray, matching the hard iron of his long, straight hair. I find myself comparing him to Maven’s father, the only other king I’ve ever known. He stands in stark contrast. Where Tiberias the Sixth was hefty, bearded, his face and body bloated by alcohol, the Lakelander king is slight, clean-shaven, and clear-eyed with dark skin. As with all Silvers, a gray-blue undertone cools his complexion. When he stands, he is graceful, his sweeping movements akin to a dancer’s. He wears no armor or dress uniform. Only robes of shimmering silver and cobalt, bright and foreboding as his flag.
“King Maven of House Calore,” he says, inclining his head just so as Maven steps onto the pavilion. Black silk slithers over white marble.
“King Orrec of House Cygnet,” Maven responds in kind. He is careful to bow lower than his opponent, with a smile fixed firmly upon his lips. “If only my father were here to see this.”
“Your mother too,” Orrec says. No bite to the words, but Maven straightens up quickly, as if suddenly presented with a threat. “My condolences. You are far too young to experience so much loss.” He has an accent, his words finding a strange melody. His eyes twitch over Maven’s shoulder, past me, to Samson following us in his Merandus blues. “You were informed of my . . . requests?”
“Of course.” Maven juts a chin over his shoulder. He glances at me for a second; then, like Orrec’s, his gaze slides to Samson. “Cousin, if you would not mind waiting in your transport.”
“Cousin—” Samson says with as much opposition as he dares. Still, he stops in his tracks, feet planted several yards from the pavilion platform. There is no argument to make, not here. King Orrec’s guards tighten, hands moving to their array of weapons. Guns, swords, the very air around us. Anything they might call upon to keep a whisper from getting too close to their king and his mind. If only the court of Norta were the same.
Finally, Samson relents. He bows low, arms sweeping out at his sides in sharp, practiced movements. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
Only when he turns around, walks back to the vehicles, and disappears from sight do the Lakelander guards relax. And King Orrec smiles tightly, waving Maven forward to face him. Like a child invited to beg.
Instead, Maven turns to the seat set opposite. It isn’t Silent Stone, isn’t safe, but he settles into it without a blink of hesitation. He leans back and crosses his legs, letting his cape drape over one arm while the other lies free. His hand dangles—with his flamemaker bracelet clearly visible.
/> The rest of us congregate around him, taking seats to match the court of the Lakelands now facing us. Evangeline and Ptolemus take Maven’s right, as does their father. When he joined our convoy, I don’t know. Governor Welle is here too, his green robes sickly against the gray of the Choke. The absence of Houses Iral, Laris, and Haven seems glaring to my eye, their ranks replaced by other advisers. My four Arven guards flank me as I sit, so close I can hear them breathing. I focus instead on the people in front of me, the Lakelanders. The king’s closest advisers, confidants, diplomats, and generals. People to be feared almost as much as the king himself. No introductions are made, but I quickly realize who is most important among them. She sits at the king’s right-hand side, the place Evangeline currently occupies.
A very young queen, maybe? No, the family resemblance is too strong. She has to be the princess of the Lakelands, with eyes like her father’s and her own crown of flawless blue gems. Her straight black hair gleams, beaded with pearl and sapphire. As I stare, she feels my eyes—and she stares right back.
Maven speaks first, breaking my observations. “For the first time in a century, we find ourselves in agreement.”
“That we do.” Orrec nods. His jeweled brow flashes in the weakening sunlight. “The Scarlet Guard and all its ilk must be eradicated. Quickly, lest their disease spread further than it already has. Lest Reds in other regions be seduced by their false promises. I hear rumors of trouble in Piedmont?”
“Rumors, yes.” My black-hearted king concedes nothing more than he wants to. “You know how the princes can be. Always arguing among themselves.”
Orrec almost smirks. “Indeed. The Prairie lords are quite the same.”
“In regard to the terms—”
“Not so fast, my young friend. I should like to know the state of your house before I walk through the door.”