Beyond the Shadows

“Logan won’t threaten us forever.”

  “Sis, he’s a good man. A hero. You’re not going to kill him.”

  She smiled dangerously. “Don’t tell me how to rule, Luc.”

  “Terah,” he said.

  “You listen to me. You’ll bitch and moan and fret, like always. And I’ll take care of it, like always. I take the risks, you take the rewards. So why don’t you and your conscience go fuck all the maids, while I get called a slut.”

  “You expect me to believe you didn’t sleep with all those lords?” Luc asked.

  She slapped him. “You bastard. They never laid a hand on me.”

  “So much can be accomplished without hands.”

  She slapped him again.

  “Don’t, don’t do that again,” Luc said.

  She slapped him again. He did nothing.

  “I let them call me a slut,” Terah said. “I let you fuck other women. I wake up two hours before dawn on the nights you visit so a maid can change my sheets so that when my laundress—who’s a Sa’kagé spy—washes them there’s no evidence of us. Why? Because I love you. So I think I deserve a little gratitude.”

  Luc held her stare for a few moments, then deflated. “I’m sorry, Ter. I’m just scared.”

  “Go get some sleep. And come to me after your victory.” Her smile held a promise.

  Luc’s eyes lit with boyish mischief. “How about I come to you now?”

  “No,” she said. “Good night, Luc.”

  “Please?”

  “Good night, Luc.”

  After Luc left and the queen had been asleep for half an hour, Kylar drew his bollock dagger. It was pitted and blunted from the corrosive powers of the Devourer.

  ~Sorry.~

  He reached out to prod Terah. Stopped. There were things more menacing than a pitted dagger.

  Kylar studied Terah Graesin as he’d learned to study his deaders. She was a woman whose bearing and reputation were a greater part of her appeal than nature’s gifts. In this unguarded, unrouged moment, she looked more like a skinny farm girl than a queen: her lips thin, cracked, colorless. Her eyebrows tiny lines. Her eyelashes short. Her nose slightly hooked. Her milky skin marred by several pimples. Her face obscured by strands of loose hair.

  In that moment, he couldn’t help but respect Terah Graesin. She’d been born into one of the great families of Cenaria, but her spirit was indomitable. She had risen past men who despised her for her youth, her sex, her reputation. Terah Graesin hadn’t become queen by accident. But here, Terah Graesin was just a woman alone, about to be woken by a nightmare.

  Sometimes, Kylar couldn’t help but pity the bastards. Durzo had taught Kylar that the best wetboy understood his deader better than the deader understood himself. Kylar believed it, but every time he did something calculated to inspire terror, he wondered if he was trading away his humanity. It was one thing to terrify goons. Was it different to terrify a young woman in the intimacy of her bedchamber?

  But Terah Graesin wasn’t merely a woman. She was a queen. Her idiocy would kill thousands—and she planned to kill Logan, the rightful king. Act now. Doubt later.

  Kylar went to the other side of Terah’s bed and pulled back the covers to give himself space to sit. With the patience of a wetboy, he eased his weight onto the mattress by degrees. Finally, he sat, legs folded, hands draped on his knees, back straight, the face of judgment angry.

  The young queen was sleeping on her side, with her hands tucked under her pillow, so it was easy to grab the thick down blanket and pull it down. Caught between the necessity for patience—any rapid change would wake her—and the coldness of the room which would have Terah reaching for blankets even in sleep, Kylar pulled back the sheet to uncover her nakedness.

  Kylar didn’t look. If anything, he was disgusted. He wanted her off-balance, vulnerable. She stirred. He schooled himself to stillness, sitting upright once more, and began to glow a cool blue, gradually brightening.

  This was the shaky part: a deader’s startle response was involuntary. Scaring a screamer and telling them not to scream was futile. He could wake her with a hand across her mouth, but that wouldn’t give the flavor of terror he was looking for.

  Terah Graesin woke slowly, as he hoped. Squinted, then opened her eyes slowly. Blinked, once, twice as if against the dawn light that usually came in her windows. Focused closer, closer. Then, all in a rush, the Night Angel came into focus, eyes burning with blue flame, puffs of fire escaping his lips with every breath, body alternately invisible, wispy as black smoke, and gleaming hard iridescent black metal muscle. Her breath caught, and a squeak came out. Not loud, thank the God.

  Her legs spasmed and kicked and she grabbed for the covers. Flailing, she scooted toward the edge of the bed. Kylar sat motionless as a god and reached out only with his Talent. He was still clumsy with this, but he made a lucky grab and caught Terah’s throat with his first try. The hand of Talent pinned her to the bed.

  Drawing up a rigid hand in a striking position called a knife hand, Kylar made it literal by forming the ka’kari into a leaf-shaped blade over his hand. He whispered, “A scream would be a mistake, Terah. Understood?” He used her name to make it more familiar, more creepy when she remembered it.

  Eyes wide, she nodded.

  “Cover yourself, whore. You reek of your brother’s seed,” he said. He released her throat and drew the ka’kari back from his hand. With jerky motions, she pulled up the sheets and held them in white-knuckled fists, drawing her knees up, trembling.

  The Night Angel said. “While you rule my city, I demand you rule well.”

  “Who are you?” she asked, voice tight, still off balance.

  “You will call off this attack. Garuwashi has no food. He can not hold this siege.”

  “You’re here to help me save Cenaria?” she asked, incredulous.

  “I will save Cenaria, with you or from you. Give me two days. Garuwashi doesn’t know how bad it is in the city. He will negotiate.”

  Terah Graesin was already recovering. “He’s refused me. He swore never to negotiate with a woman.” That was news to Kylar. Why wouldn’t Garuwashi negotiate?

  “Not with you then,” Kylar said. “With Gyre.”

  Her eyes lit with fury. “Gyre? You’re Logan’s creature? You were the one who saved us in the garden during the coup! All you cared about was him. You saved him, didn’t you? You saved him and now you want him to get the glory. After all I’ve done to get here, you expect me to let Logan win? I’d rather die!” She stood haughtily and grabbed her robe from a chair. “Now I suggest—”

  Kylar was on her. Before she could even think to scream, he slammed her onto the bed, straddled her, punched her solar plexus to knock the wind from her and clamped a hand over her face. He grabbed a hairpin from her bedside table and drove it through the meat of her arm. He let her gasp in a breath and then filled her mouth with the ka’kari to keep her from screaming.

  Unable to expel her scream from her mouth, air gushed from her nose and blew snot all over his hand. He ground the hairpin back and forth, then grabbed another.

  She bucked and kicked and tried to scream through her nose, so he blocked her nose with the ka’kari too.

  Her eyes bulged and the veins on her neck stood out as she struggled in vain to breathe. She tried to flail, but Kylar had her arms pinned with his knees. He brought the hairpin into her view and touched the point to her forehead.

  Though her throat was still working convulsively, Terah Graesin stilled. Kylar traced the point of the hairpin down her forehead, between her eyes, then across the delicate skin of one eyelid.

  For a moment, he couldn’t help but wonder what Elene would think if she saw him here, doing this. The queen’s terror sickened him, and yet he held the cruel smile on his face. He lifted the hairpin away from her eye so she could see Judgment. “You’d rather die?” the Night Angel asked. “Really?”

  24

  The sight of the Alabaster Seraph growing larger as the punt
approached did nothing to calm Elene. If Elene had read Vi’s letter correctly—it seemed like so long ago now—Vi had ringed Kylar without his permission, with the very wedding earrings Kylar had intended for Elene and himself. Elene had never been so furious for so long.

  She knew it was destructive. She knew it would eat her alive. Only weeks ago, she’d killed a man, and she hadn’t felt the wash of hatred she felt now.

  Elene knew she was being disobedient, holding onto her resentment, her righteous wrath. But it made her feel powerful to hate the woman who’d done her wrong. Vi deserved hatred.

  The punt docked in a small slip magically shielded from the rain and the boatman pointed her to a line. Elene joined two dozen other people, mostly women, who had come to petition the Chantry. An hour later, when she gave her name and asked to see Vi, the Sister found a note about her and sent a tyro running.

  Several minutes later, an older maja with the loose skin and ill-fitting clothes of a woman who’s lost too much weight too fast came out. “Hello, Elene. My name is Sister Ariel. Come with me.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “To see Uly and Vi. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” Sister Ariel turned and walked away without waiting for a response.

  Many steps later, they stopped at a hospital floor with hundreds of beds, lining the circumference of the Seraph. Most of the beds were empty, but Sisters with green sashes moved among those that were occupied, sometimes touching the walls, which immediately turned transparent, letting in the diffuse morning sun.

  “Is Uly ill?” Elene asked.

  Sister Ariel said nothing. She led Elene past dozens of beds. Some of the girls on them had arms or legs wrapped in gauze, and here and there, ancient-looking magae slept, but most of the injured had no obvious wounds. Magical wounds, Elene supposed, didn’t always leave evidence on the body.

  Finally, they stopped at a bed, but the woman on it wasn’t Uly, it was Vi. It took Elene’s breath away. She had thought from the glimpse of the redhead on the trail that she’d never seen Vi before, but she had. Vi had been at the fateful last party at the Jadwin estate. That night, Vi had come as a blonde, wearing a dress that was a scandal in red. Elene remembered the swirl of emotions she’d felt that night clearly: shock that someone would wear such revealing attire, judgment, fascination. Elene—and every other man and woman—hadn’t been able to take her eyes off the woman. Immediately after those first emotions, without ever losing her outrage, she’d felt jealousy, longing, the sick-stomach sensation of not measuring up to such beauty, wishing that she could attract such stares, and knowing she never would—and would never wear such clothes even if she could—but wishing all the same that she might, just for a few moments. Vi was that woman, and if anything, with her glossy flaming red hair rather than what must have been a blonde wig, Vi was even more striking.

  Then, as Elene stepped closer to the bed, she saw Vi’s other ear. She wore a single earring, mistarille and gold, sparkling in the morning light coming through the walls. It was half of the exact pair of beautiful wedding earrings Elene had pointed out to Kylar. The wash of emotions Elene had already been feeling suddenly had a boulder dropped in it. This was her competition? This . . . creature had ringed Kylar? No wonder he’d chosen her. What man wouldn’t?

  Unnoticed, Sister Ariel had come to stand beside Elene, and now she spoke, her voice barely a whisper. “When she’s asleep, I see what a beautiful woman Viridiana would have been.”

  Elene shot a look at the Sister. Like she could be more beautiful?

  “She is brittle and sick and hard and abused. Her character is as base as her body is beautiful. You’ll see, when she wakes. She is a walking tragedy. The trade she was taught would wreck anyone with a soul. You know that from Kylar’s experience. But Vi didn’t just learn a sick trade, she learned under Hu Gibbet—all too often literally under him, from the time she was a child. Whenever I—old and fat as I am—see her asleep, I still get jealous. I still forget that Vi’s beauty has been no friend to her.” Sister Ariel paused, as if captured by a thought. “In fact, the only friend she ever had—male or female—was Jarl, and the Godking compelled her to kill him.”

  Elene didn’t want to hear it. “What’s wrong with her? I mean, why is she here?”

  Sister Ariel sighed. “Our initiation doesn’t only require aptitude, it requires focus. Vi has aptitude to an almost appalling degree. She is as Talented as she is beautiful. I was and am worried that learning that may spoil her. Learning our art properly takes patience and humility, and women with enormous Talent tend to lack both. So I pushed her into the initiation immediately. With what she’s done and been through in the last weeks, she had no focus at all, almost no will even to live. It was nearly a death sentence.” She shrugged. “Elene, I know Vi has done you great wrong. These marriage rings are ancient. I’m studying the rings now to see if it’s even possible to break the bond. I don’t have high hopes. And I know—she confessed—that she ringed Kylar when he was unconscious. The other Sisters don’t know that. It is considered one of the greatest crimes among us. Even if she did do it to save a country, and to save Kylar himself, Vi surely deserves whatever vengeance you would give her. If you choose, you should be able to wake her. If you wish to stay here at the Chantry, rooms will be provided for you. If you wish to speak with Uly, she should be finishing her morning classes in two hours. I will be in my room if you need me. Ask any tyro—any of the young women dressed in white—and they will take you wherever you wish to go.”

  With that, Sister Ariel left Elene alone with Vi.

  Elene looked around as the Sister disappeared. There was suddenly no one else in sight. She touched the knife at her belt. She could kill Vi and simply leave. She’d killed now. She knew how.

  She squeezed her eyes tight shut. God, I can’t do this.

  After a long moment, she breathed, unclenched her jaw, willed herself to relax, opened her eyes.

  Vi lay as before, beautiful, peaceful, graceful. But instead of imagining her again at the Jadwin estate, attracting lust and jealousy like a lodestone, Elene imagined her as a child. Vi had been a beautiful child in the Warrens as Elene had been a beautiful child in the Warrens. Neither had emerged unscathed. Elene looked at Vi and chose to fix that child-Vi in her mind’s eye, the beautiful, carefree little girl with flame-red hair before the Warrens had sullied her.

  She’s never had a friend. Elene didn’t know if it was her own thought or the One God’s voice, but she knew instantly what He was calling her to do.

  Elene breathed deeply, frozen to the spot. It’s too hard, God. There’s no way. Not after what she’s done. I want to hate her. I want to be strong. I want to make her pay. She spoke, and raged, and complained about the justice of making Vi suffer, and through it all, the God said nothing. Yet through it, she felt His presence. And when she was finished, He was still there, and Elene knew her choice was simple: obey or disobey.

  She breathed deeply one more time, then sat in the chair beside Vi’s bed and waited for her to wake.

  From the stairs, staring through a crack in the door, Sister Ariel breathed for the first time in what seemed like many minutes. She released her Talent and eased the door shut. Another gamble, another win. She hoped her luck didn’t run out any time soon.

  25

  After a two-hour wait with the nervous master of the docks, the Mikaidon came to collect Solon. The Mikaidon was the keeper of civil order in Hokkai, an office that not only put him in charge of law enforcement but also gave him considerable political clout, as he was the only person who could investigate and search noble persons and properties. Solon recognized him. “Oshobi,” he said. “You’ve risen in the world.”

  Oshobi Takeda grunted. “So it is you.” He wore the regalia of his office like a man who used it as armor, not ornamentation. Oshobi was perhaps thirty, muscular, and imposing. He wore his plumed helm open, of course, showing the electrum rings of Clan Takeda framing his right eye, with six steel chain
s connecting behind his head to his left ear. The fishes on his helm were gilded, as was his galerus, the leather and plate armor covering his left arm. His trident was as tall as he was. The type of net that dangled over his back, draping cloak-like from spikes on his shoulders, was usually edged with lead weights to help it spread out when thrown. Oshobi’s net was weighted with small daggers. It could be used not only as a net, but as a shield or even a flail by a skilled warrior. Given the numerous scars and rippling muscles on Oshobi’s bare chest, Solon guessed that a skilled warrior was exactly what Oshobi Takeda had become. He had grown into his name. Oshobi meant the great cat, or tiger, but Solon remembered the older boys calling him Oshibi: little pussy. Solon couldn’t imagine anyone calling him that anymore.

  “I request the honor of an audience with Empress Wariyamo,” Solon said. It was a calculated statement, not asserting his own status, and recognizing hers.

  “You’re under arrest,” Oshobi told him. In a blink, he lifted the net from the spikes on his shoulders. He looked like he wanted an excuse to use it.

  The man was a cretin. Solon was a mage and Oshobi should remember it. Of course, Solon didn’t look like one. After his decade serving Duke Regnus Gyre, he looked as hard and scarred as a warrior himself, albeit one with unnaturally white hair growing in. “On what charge? I do have certain rights, Mikaidon. If not as a prince,” he brushed his unpierced cheek, “then certainly as a nobleman.” His heart fell. So Kaede was furious. Should he be surprised?

  “Your brother gave up all the Tofusins’ rights. You can walk, or I can drag you.”

  What did my brother do? Solon had been at various schools learning magic for his brother’s entire reign and Dorian’s prophecies had sent Solon to Cenaria at the time of Sijuron Tofusin’s death. They hadn’t been close; Sij was a decade older than he was, but Solon’s memories of him were pleasant. Apparently, Oshobi’s weren’t.

  Solon said, “That’s a tough one, Oshibi.”