One of the vizers choked. Eleven snapped their gazes away. And one—the one who always opposed Vivia the most—simply picked at a hangnail.
Vizer Serrit Linday. Ever unimpressed. Ever unamused. Ever an urchin spine in Vivia’s heel.
Her fingers curled, heat rising up her arms. She sometimes wondered if this might be the famed Nihar temper that her father so desperately wanted her to have.
But no. No, it wasn’t. The flame was already dying, her mask already teetering at the edges. Just keep moving.
She set off for the head of the table, clicking her boot heels extra loud, extra hard on the flagstones. Let them think she was reining in her temper.
Clouded sunlight sifted into the Battle Room through a single glass window. It beamed onto the limp banners from generations past and highlighted just how much dust coated everything.
One of the window’s dozen panes was broken and boarded up, leaving Vivia with a crude shadow to march through before reaching the table’s head.
Six of the vizers saluted at her as she stalked by; seven did not.
Resistance. That was all Vivia ever met these days, and her brother had been the worst of them. He had argued her every command and questioned her every move.
Well, at least he was no longer a problem. Now, if only the High Council would join him.
Will she become her mother, the vizers all wondered, the queen by blood but with madness in her head? Or will she become her father, the Nihar vizer who now rules as regent and for whom command comes as easily as breath?
Vivia already knew the answer. She knew it because she’d decided long ago to be a Nihar through and through. She would never become her mother. She would never let madness and darkness claim her. She would be the ruler the High Council expected.
She just had to keep acting. Keep moving. A little bit longer, and with no looking back. No regrets. For even if the High Council finally handed over the title she was born to, they could always snatch it back—just as they had done to her mother in those final days thirteen years ago.
Vivia reached the end of the table, with its worn finish and chipped corners. Thick vellum maps covered the time-pocked surface. Nubrevna, the Sirmayans, the Hundred Isles—all of the Witchlands could be examined at the stretch of an arm.
Right now, maps of the city lay open with fat rocks weighing down the curling edges. Curse them. The bastards had started the meeting without her.
From war to waste removal, nothing happened without the High Council’s input. Yet all final decisions fell to the King Regent.
Or now, since Serafin rarely left his bed, the final decisions fell to Vivia.
“Princess,” Serrit Linday crooned, leaning onto the table. Even though he was only a few months older than Vivia’s twenty-three years, he wore old-fashioned robes. The kind Marstoki scholars and ancient spinsters favored, and like all Lindays, he wore the Witchmark of a Plantwitch on the back of his hand—a hand he was currently flexing as he rapped impatiently at the table.
“We were just discussing your plans to repair the dam, and we feel it best to wait. At least until after the funeral. The dam has lasted several years—what will a few more matter?”
Pretentious prick. Now Vivia’s temper was actually sparking, although she kept her face bored.
To think that she and this vizer had ever been friends growing up. The Serrit she’d played with as a child was now Vizer Linday, and in less than a year, since replacing his deceased father on the council, Linday had become the worst of the thirteen noblemen standing before Vivia.
Noblemen. Every single one of them male. It shouldn’t have been that way, of course. The Lindays, Quintays, Sotars, and Eltars all had female heirs … who conveniently never wanted to leave their lands. Oh, but can’t our brothers/husbands/sons go instead?
No. That was what Vivia would say once she was queen. Whoever bears the vizerial bloodline stands at this table. But until then, Vivia had to live with the yes passed down by her great-grandfather.
“Now, Your Highness,” Linday went on, offering a smooth smile around the table, “I ran the calculations as requested, and the numbers are very clear. Lovats simple cannot support any more people.”
“I don’t recall asking for calculations.”
“Because you didn’t.” Linday’s smile widened into something crocodilian. “It was the Council that requested it.”
“Highness,” came another voice. Squeaky in a way that only Vizer Eltar could produce. Vivia swung her gaze to the rotund man. “The more people who enter the city, the more we vizers must shrink our portions—which is impossible! We all have our families and staff arriving for the prince’s funeral, and at our current rations, I cannot keep my own beloved family fed.”
Vivia sighed. “More food is coming, Eltar.”
“You said that last week!” he squealed. “And now the funeral is in six days! How will we provide food for the city?”
“Additionally,” piped up Vizer Quihar, “the more people we allow in, the more likely we are to let enemies into our midst. Until we know who killed the prince, we must close the Sentries and keep newcomers out.”
This earned a chorus of agreements from around the table. Only one man stayed silent: the barrel-chested, black-skinned Vizer Sotar. He was also the only man with a fully operational brain in this entire room.
He flung Vivia a sympathetic wince now, and she found it … well, more welcome than she cared to admit. He was so much like his daughter Stacia, who served as Vivia’s first mate. And were Stix here right now—were this Vivia’s ship and Vivia’s crew—Stix would lash out at these weak-willed vizers instantly. Mercilessly. She had the temper that Nubrevnan men respected most.
But Stix was inspecting the city’s watchtowers today, like a good first mate, while Vivia was trapped inside, watching slimy Serrit Linday quieting the vizers with a wave.
“I have a proposition for the High Council. And for you, Your Highness.”
Vivia rolled her eyes. “Of course you do.”
“The Purists have offered us food and the use of their compounds. Across Nubrevna and beyond.” He motioned to a map that Vizer Eltar was so conveniently unrolling at the perfect moment. “Our people could be safe, even beyond our borders, if the need arose.”
Sotar cleared his throat, and in a sound like stone on stone, he declared, “Placing our people outside Nubrevna is called invasion, Linday.”
“Not to mention”—Vivia planted her hands on the table—“there must be some cost to this. No one—not even ‘noble’ Purists—act for free.” Even as she voiced this argument, though, Vivia found herself staring at the unfurled map.
It was a simple outline of the Witchlands, but paint had been dripped wherever enemy forces were closest to Nubrevna. Yellow for Marstok, speckling the east and south. Black for Cartorra, scattered in the west. Blue for Dalmotti, gathering in southern waters.
And finally red, thick as blood, for the Baedyed and Red Sails pirates circling Saldonica and the Raider King’s armies, still far to the north … for now. Heavy rains kept the Sirmayan Mountains water choked and uncrossable.
Come winter, that might change.
Vivia dragged her eyes from the map. From all those colors and all the senseless death that they might one day become. “What do the Purists want, Vizer Linday? What is the price for their food and their walls?”
“Soldiers.”
“No.” The word boomed from Vivia’s throat. Explosive as a firepot. Yet as she straightened, sweeping her gaze across the table, there was no missing the interest that had settled over the Council. A collective relaxing of vizerial faces.
They had known what Linday planned to propose; they’d agreed to it long ago.
Serrit Linday ought to be castrated for this.
Vivia tossed a look at her only ally and found Sotar’s dark face withdrawn. Disgusted. He, at least, was as surprised as Vivia by this turn of political sidestepping.
“The Purists,” Vivia sai
d, “will turn our people against the use of magic.” She launched right to march around the table. “They consider magic a sin, yet magic—witches!—are the one thing that have kept Nubrevna safe and independent. You, Linday, are a Plantwitch! Yet you see no problem in giving our citizens and our soldiers to the Purists?”
Linday smirked as Vivia strode past, but other than a slight tipping back of his head, he offered no response.
“What about your family’s Stonewitchery, Quihar? Or your son’s Glamourwitchery, Eltar? Or your wife’s Voicewitchery?” On and on she went, until she’d reminded every single vizer of the witches that mattered most to them.
Each imbecile Vivia passed, though, was suddenly quite interested in the state of his cuffs. Or his fingernails. Or some stain on the wall that only he could see.
Until Vivia was back at the head of the table. Then, it would seem, tiny Vizer Eltar suddenly found his testicles, for he piped up with, “At least if our people are with the Purists, it is fewer mouths to feed at the prince’s funeral.”
For a moment, those words knocked around in Vivia’s skull. Prince. Funeral. They were a meaningless descant to the beat that thumped in her ribcage.
Then the words settled like sand in a tidal pool, and Vivia gripped the nearest map. Crushed it in a white-knuckled grip. This feeling she did not have to fake, for only a week ago she’d argued against that funeral with every breath inside her. A waste of expenses, she’d shouted. A waste of precious materials, people, and time! The dam needs fixing and the people need feeding!
The Council hadn’t listened, though. Nor had her father. Of course not. Merik had been everyone’s favorite. He’d had the Nihar rage, and he’d had the good sense to be born a man. Easy, easy—that was how Merik’s life had always been. No resistance. Whatever he’d wanted, he’d gotten.
Even his death had been easy.
Before Vivia could offer more choice words on the funeral, Linday chimed in, “You make an excellent point, Eltar. We must properly honor the dead, and we cannot do so with this many people in the city.”
Hagfishes claim him. Now that Vivia considered it—really considered it—castration was much too good for Linday. He deserved to be drawn, quartered, eviscerated, and then burned until none of his rotten core remained.
“Besides,” he went on, more animated now that he held the room’s attention, “all of our families will soon arrive for the funeral. We should not have to skim our own portions to feed a city overrun—”
Instantly. Mercilessly.
Water erupted from the pitcher at the center of the table. Thirteen perfect coils of it, one for each vizer—even Vizer Sotar.
“Enough.” Vivia’s voice was low, and the water locked in place mere inches from each man’s throat. Half had their eyes squeezed shut, and the other half were twisting away. “No Purists. Ever. Food is on the way, and we will continue to allow Nubrevnans into the city.
“And,” she added, sliding her water whip a smidgen closer to the vizers, “you all could stand to lose a bit of fat from your bellies, so as of tomorrow, your rations will be reduced by another quarter. If your families are hungry, then tell them to stay home.” She stepped away from the table, pivoting as if she were about to leave …
But she hesitated. What was it her father always did so well? Ah, yes. The terrifying Nihar smile. She mimicked it now, looking back at the table. At the fools who inhabited it. Then she let the water flow, with perfect control, back into the pitcher.
It was a reminder that she was not merely a princess, nor merely a ship’s captain. Nor merely the rightful queen of Nubrevna—if the Council would just agree to hand over the crown.
Vivia Nihar was a Tidewitch, and a blighted powerful one at that. She could drown them all with a thought, so let Serrit Linday and the rest of the High Council try to cross her again.
No more stalemates because they thought her unqualified and unhinged.
No more tiptoeing around a room because women oughtn’t to run. To shout. To rule.
And above all: no more blighted regrets.
FIVE
The Bloodwitch named Aeduan hated Purists.
Not as much as he hated the Marstoks, nor as much as he hated the Cartorrans, but almost as much.
It was their certainty that angered him. Their condescending, unwavering certainty that anyone with magic should burn in hell-fire.
At least, he thought as he approached their grimy compound on the easternmost edge of the Nubrevnan border, they treat all men with equal venom. Usually shouts of Repent, demon! Pay for your sins! were reserved for Aeduan exclusively. It was nice to have the hate spread around.
Aeduan was late coming to the compound. He should have met his father’s contact two days before, but instead he’d run all across Nubrevna, hunting a ghost for two weeks.
Now here he was, hundreds of miles away and facing crooked pine walls perched atop a hill’s limestone edge. The compound looked as sick and barren as the land on which it rested, and Aeduan passed splintered trunks and ashy soil before he reached the two men guarding the tall entry gate.
Though both men wore matching brown Purist robes, neither had the look of an anti-magic cultist—nor the scent of one on his blood. Battlefields and tar. These were men of violence, and they proved it when they lifted crossbows at Aeduan’s approach.
“I seek one of your priests,” Aeduan called to them. He lifted his hands.
“Which priest?” asked the skinnier of the two, his skin Marstoki brown.
“A man named Corlant.” Aeduan slowed so the guards could see that his hands were empty—for of course, his knives were hidden within his buttoned-up coat. “He should have recently arrived.”
“Your name?” asked the second man, his skin black as pitch and his accent Southlander—though which nation, Aeduan couldn’t guess.
Upon giving his name, both men lowered their crossbows. The Southlander led the way through a side door near the main gate.
The interior of the compound was even grimier than the outside, all churned mud and clucking chickens and crude huts that would topple beneath a determined breeze. A string of men and women leaned against the main wall, each with baskets or empty sacks, waiting to enter the nearest hut. None spoke.
“They listen to one of our priests,” the Southlander explained. “Then they get food for their families.”
“They aren’t Purists?”
“Not yet. But they will be.” As the man uttered this, a boy stumbled from the hut, blinking as if coming up from a dream. In his arms was a basket.
Unbidden, a memory stirred in the back of Aeduan’s mind. Another child, another basket, another lifetime, and a monk named Evrane, who had saved him from it all.
Evrane’s mistake. She should have left Aeduan behind.
“You are late.” The words cut across the courtyard. Like mud from a riverbank, they slid into Aeduan’s ears and oozed down his spine.
Instantly Aeduan’s magic stirred. Wet caves and white-knuckled grips. Rusted locks and endless hunger.
Then from the faded wood of a hut, a shadowy shape peeled off. One moment, there were only the shaded planks. The next moment, a towering rope-thin man with Nomatsi features was standing beside it.
The mere presence of the priest grated against Aeduan’s power with a primal sense of wrongness. Like watching an earwig scuttle across the room. The urge to smash Corlant would forever coil in Aeduan’s muscles when they met.
Corlant flicked a lazy wrist at Aeduan’s guide. “Return to your post,” he commanded.
The Southlander bowed. “Blessed are the pure.”
Corlant waited until the man was back outside the compound before slithering his attention to Aeduan. A long stare passed between them, with Corlant’s eyebrows rising ever higher. Three deep trenches carved across his pale forehead.
“Has anyone ever told you,” Corlant said eventually, “that you look more and more like your mother each day?”
Aeduan knew when he w
as being baited, yet Corlant was a friend of Aeduan’s father. They’d grown up in the same tribe; they now thirsted for vengeance against the three empires. So as much as Aeduan might wish to crush Corlant—and might even imagine doing so from time to time—it was not a dream he could ever actually satisfy.
Once it was clear that Aeduan had no intention of answering, Corlant moved on to business. “Where is the money, boy?”
“I’m getting it.”
“Oh? It is not here, then?” Corlant’s nostrils fluttered, yet it wasn’t with anger so much as hunger. As if he sensed something was amiss like a leech smells blood upon the water. “I was promised silver talers.”
“And you will have them. Not today, though.”
Corlant fidgeted with his chain, a smile curving up. “You’ve lost the money, haven’t you, boy? Was it stolen?”
Aeduan didn’t answer. The truth was, when he had returned to the tree trunk where he’d hidden the money he had earned from Prince Leopold fon Cartorra, he had found only an empty iron box and a handful of coins.
Lingering near the box had been a familiar blood-scent. Of clear lakes and frozen winters. It was the same person who’d conspired with Prince Leopold to betray Aeduan, so immediately Aeduan had set out to track it.
But after trailing west for a week, that smell had winked out entirely, leaving Aeduan with no choice but to give up and come here empty-handed. Money or no, he was still meant to meet Corlant for his next orders.
“Does your father know about this?” Corlant pressed. “For I will gladly tell him when next we speak.”
Aeduan gazed pointedly into the middle distance before answering, “The king doesn’t know.”
A bark of laughter from the priest. He dropped the chain with a hollow thunk against his chest. “Now this is unexpected, is it not?” He spun away, aiming for a cluster of huts in the back of the compound, and leaving Aeduan with no choice but to prowl after.
Chickens careened from Corlant’s path, as did more men in brown robes. Men, Aeduan noted—the Purists were always men. Aeduan followed, careful to stay a footstep behind. Not because he felt Corlant deserved the lead, but because it pleased him to watch the man constantly crane his neck backward to speak.