Chapter 10
Ten
S queezing through the narrow gap was difficult but not impossible, and once I had my head and shoulders through, the rest was just wiggling hard enough to make it.
Outside felt like an entirely different world. The cavern had been so cold it had seeped into my bones, and now, the rest of the world made my skin twitch and tremble, the heat almost too much. I glared at the setting sun, turning to look, trying to get oriented.
Everything was trees and rocks, high hills with forest blocking my view of everything. The trees were so tall they seemed to touch the sun, the lower branches scarred from fires. I had no idea where I was.
In the north, this wouldn’t have been a problem. In the north, I could have asked a passing bird or animal where the Silver City was.
But we weren’t in the north, and asking a passing animal how to get back to the Imperial Capital was likely to end with my head mounted on a pike somewhere. The only magic allowed in the Imperium was electro magic.
Behind me, Tallu grunted, and I turned. Reaching out, I helped him through the crack between boulders, pulling him through when he got stuck. He landed hard on soil littered with leaves from the hardy trees that clung to the side of the mountain. The branches spread wide, providing little shade, but it was enough in the unrelenting afternoon heat.
Turning, I finally got a good look at Tallu. His face was bruised, the skin of his cheek purpling, and one of his eyes nearly swollen shut. His torn clothes exposed his arms, revealing a curling tattoo stretching from shoulder to wrist.
I squinted before realizing it was a dragon made of lightning. The flesh was mottled with bruises, and even though his shirt and pants were soaked, I could see stains of red.
“When you said they cut through your leg…” I frowned at him, squinting until I saw the origin of the blood.
Tallu hissed when I reached out, touching his calf. Carefully, thinking about what Yor?mu would say, I straightened his leg, tearing the shredded fabric off until I could see the wound underneath.
He had underplayed the damage. The flesh was torn open, the muscle almost completely severed. If he was lucky, the weapon had avoided any tendon. As it was, I had no idea how he wasn’t bleeding to death in front of me.
The flesh was hot when I touched it, almost feverishly warm despite the chill of the cavern. The cold water and cold atmosphere must have been helping. Now that we were warmer, we didn’t have much time.
I yanked off my shirt, grabbing a piece of sharp rock nearby and tearing at the fabric until the seams gave. The strips weren’t clean, but I needed to stop the bleeding before the emperor died.
Tallu watched me, his eyes following the movement of my hands, but when I looked up, he was pale, and the moisture on his brow was from cold sweat rather than the river we had been swimming in.
“I’m going to wrap it as tightly as I can. Hopefully tightly enough that the blood won’t be too bad. We still need to get back to the palace quickly.” I waited for him to nod, hyperaware that with each passing second, he was looking worse and worse. His copper skin had gone gray, but it didn’t look luminescent silver like the others in his court.
I couldn’t wait any longer. I wrapped one of the strips higher up on his leg, cinching it tightly, hoping to decrease the blood flow. The other three strips I wrapped around the wound, one just above, the other two in an X pattern, trying to keep the flesh closed.
Finally, I stood and found a tall stick. Offering it out to him, I pointed toward the setting sun. “We need to move. How do we get back to the capital?”
Tallu swallowed, his brows pulling together, and then his shoulders straightened, and he reached up. I grabbed his hand at the wrist, tugging hard and pulling him up to stand. He took the stick in one hand, but I realized I would have to keep his other arm over my shoulders.
“If we get down to the bottom of the mountain, we can follow the canyon back to the city.” Tallu’s voice was strong, even if his expression was pale and pained.
“Should we try to find the road we took to get here?” Then, I answered my own question. “There’s too much of a danger that whoever attacked you is still on the path.”
“Exactly.” Tallu’s lip was damp, and he licked it, a brief flash of pink that was gone before I registered it.
“All right. Down we go.” I chose our way carefully, aware that Tallu didn’t have the strength to go fast and that any speed might lead to further injuries. The loose dirt on the hillside sometimes gave under my feet, and I clenched my jaw, focused on keeping us both upright.
Leave him to die. Let him bleed out on the mountainside.
My entire life, for as long as I could remember, I had been training for just that purpose. Kill the emperor, let his court eat itself alive like a snake consuming its own tail.
Only that had been my job. Eona? had always known it was going to be more complicated than that. She had spent months—years—strategizing with Mother about how to burn the kingdom down.
Her work had been just as arduous as mine, even if the focus had been on court politics. I might be our mother’s revenge, but Eona? had been her plan for success.
I could play both parts. I could do it. I would do it.
Even though right now, I felt as taut as a bowstring pulled, ready to release the arrow and realizing that I had to build the target I needed to hit.
Fine.
New plan: kill Rute, bring whoever on the council was left back to the capital. Then kill Tallu.
“The city should be there.” Tallu’s voice interrupted my thoughts. We had finally reached the bottom of the mountain. A lazy stream wound between rocks. “The river reaches the city.”
“Do you know a back way into the palace?” I asked. “If they attacked you on the mountain, there’s a chance they’ve infiltrated your court.”
Tallu’s face went still, except for a twitch of pain on his cheek. He nodded. “My Dogs were fighting them.”
“The Dogs inside the cavern were fighting them. Two were left outside.” I needed him to understand, even as part of me wondered why.
We didn’t have time to wait. I felt the pull of his weight on my shoulders. His good leg was getting weaker, either from blood loss or exhaustion. His knees trembled under him, and we began another limping walk, following the stream.
After a while, he said, “Let us hope that they died.”
“You hope your own soldiers died protecting you?” I kept my voice steady, even as the anger built in my throat. How very like the Imperium. He was exactly his father’s son.
“It is better than the alternative!” Tallu snapped. “That my own guard has been corrupted from within.”
“Oh, far better,” I murmured, and Tallu was either too tired or too distracted to hear the sarcasm in my words.
We walked for hours until the sun set, the last light reflecting orange around us. Then the dusk dimmed until finally we only had moonlight to guide us.
“We cannot keep going,” I said, wincing after I rolled my ankle on an unseen rock.
“I am not sure I can start again if we stop.” Tallu’s words were slurred, his eyes sliding to the side and his chest trembling as he gasped for air. The blood loss was getting to him.
“We need water,” I said, the dryness in my throat painful. Each time I swallowed, the sensitive skin inside my throat seemed to catch on itself. “I need rest.”
“I thought northern men were trained to go days without food or water, to carry their kills on their backs?” Tallu asked. Normally, I would have seen his words as a provocation, but his eyes were closed, although he still managed to put one foot in front of the other.
“Are you suggesting that I carry you on my back like a buck I killed with a bow and arrow? Or perhaps you think that we lie in wait under the snow and tear out the throat of our prey like wolves?” I shook my head. “We have pack animals carry our kills. And if we brought no pack animals, we have our wolves. And no one can survive without food or water for days. When they go on hunting trips, the men might not take much melted water, but they have the snow—they melt that for water.”
“The men?” Tallu asked. “You never went hunting?”
Not that sort of hunting. My blades and bows had been sharpened for a different sort of prey.
“My job has always been to guard Eona?. You pointed out that the marriage was our key to peace. It was too much of a risk for me to go hunt.” It wouldn’t do for some bear or wolf to take me out, not when my job was so important.
“Well, hopefully, I weigh less than a bear anyway,” Tallu slurred.
“Not by much,” I muttered, adjusting the fall of his arm across my shoulders.
“I’ll have to speak with the royal chef,” Tallu said, his words a struggle. “If I weigh as much as a northern bear. Too many heavy foods.”
“Oh yes,” I said. “Do speak to them. I demand a husband who’s as light as a bird. Who can float like an air mage.”
“An air mage. Now you demand too much. I have seen how Velethuil eats, and I crave sweets too much to let myself eat his diet of leaves and berries.” Tallu stumbled, and I grabbed him tighter around the midsection, pulling him close. “I like cake.”
“What kind of cake?” I asked, desperate to keep him awake.
“The kind my mother used to make. Do you think if I die, I will see her? I barely remember her face anymore. I remember her hands in my hair, the song she would sing to me.” Tallu’s words slurred, and no matter how much I prodded, he couldn’t say more.
“I have killed men,” I said, more to say something, to block some of Tallu’s gasping, impossibly harsh breathing. “There was a pirate whaling ship. From the Tavornai islands, but they flew a pirate flag. It had been plaguing our waters for weeks. Our whales give birth only once every few years so if they killed any of the new calves, the population would be damaged more than it already has been.” The war with the south had not been kind to our whales. Although, even in good times, a whaling ship wouldn’t have been tolerated in northern waters. “I was told to take care of it.”
Tallu’s breathing was still rough, but he seemed to be listening, his breath calming, although there was still a dangerous drag, as though each inhalation was a struggle.
Yor?mu had told my mother that the first time I killed a man couldn’t be when it mattered the most, when any hesitation would mean the failure of all those years of training and planning. So, rather than warn the whalers off, my mother had sent me after them. The elves of Tavornai were stronger than most men, but I was faster, and I had trained for that sort of hunting.
“It was night when I arrived and night when I finished. My father and the person who trained me in swordplay arrived when I lit a torch, signaling it was done.” Yor?mu had been proud. My father had been something else. The expression on his face wasn’t horror, but it was closer to that than pride. “I think he was surprised I was that capable, as I had never been out on the ice to hunt. He’d never seen me kill anything. In the north, we feed our dead to the sea serpents. They feasted that night.”
Tallu’s arm was a slack deadweight on my shoulders.
Above me an owl let out a low, cautious sound.
“Sister?” I called up.
“Whoooo?” the owl asked.
“How far to the city?” I couldn’t keep the owl in my sight, its feathers blending into the murky shadows.
“I know of no city, brother.” The owl’s voice was musical, a tonal shift between her words as she decided to claim me as kin.
“How far to people?” I asked. “Do you know which way?”
“Follow the river,” the owl said. “People kind always like the river.”
“Thank you,” I said, but my throat was almost too dry to make out the words.
The tall trees that had been sparse on the mountainside grew thick this close to water. They dropped massive seedpods that rolled around on the ground, as hard as rocks and impossible to see against the dark forest floor. Moonlight shone in when it could get past the thick upper branches, the forest shrouding itself.
In the daytime, it must be a pleasant walk, a remote hike along the stream, shaded by ancient branches, the scent of the wood pleasantly permeating the air.
All I could think about were the predators that lived in the woods, the ones that came out at night, when hunting was easiest. Of course this was how I’d go. Killed not by one of the Emperor’s Dogs but a literal wild dog in the forest.
Light came to me slowly, and I barely noticed, too distracted by my circling thoughts. I was so focused on making sure that we both made it that the signs of civilization startled me. Bugs circled a flickering electric light on the wall of a small building up ahead, and I stopped, staring for so long that Tallu lost his strength, collapsing against me entirely.
“Help!” I yelled, or tried to, but my throat was so dry, all the moisture making the word no more than a croak. Swallowing desperately, I tried again. “Help us!”
The door to the cabin cracked open, and I couldn’t see who looked out. Let it be some poor mountain dweller. Let it be someone who could help us.
And when had it become us ? When in the long trek had Tallu become more than a weight around my neck that I carried like a stone ready to drag me to the bottom of the ocean?
The door opened fully, and a tall man came out, broad across the shoulders. He wore a shirt and pants but no jacket, and based on the rough, stained fabric, it might have been the only clothes he owned. Behind him, a shorter woman stood in the doorway, a bow in her hands, the arrow nocked, although she hadn’t aimed it yet.
The man approached, and I grabbed hold of Tallu with both hands, wrapping my arms around his torso, trying to keep him off the ground.
“Help. Please.” I kept my Imperial as formal as I could, trying to remember how to turn a request into something he would be forced by the rules of hospitality to accommodate.
“Who are you?” he demanded, and I was too tired to do more than repeat my request.
My legs trembled, finally giving out, and the forest floor softened the blow, but my knees still felt the impact. As soon as I hit, I felt every muscle in my back pull with pain, tense and agonizing.
The man continued approaching until he stood over us, frowning. “Where did you come from?”
“The Dragon Temple.” I tried to gesture back in the direction we had come from, and the man stared off in the darkness.
The woman came off the porch, bow still held in her hands, and when she saw the state we were both in, she said, “Bring them in, Liku.”
He turned, and I couldn’t see the expression on his face, but the woman shook her head once, and then the man’s shoulders slumped. He reached down, and for a second, I had trouble letting go of Tallu.
I’d been holding him up for hours, keeping him safe for hours, so how could I let him go with this stranger?
The man eased him from my grip, picking up the emperor as though he weighed nothing. The woman crouched next to me and helped me to stand. I tried not to lean on her as we stumbled back to the cabin.
Inside, there was one small room, bedding rolled and tucked in the corner. A wood-burning stove warmed the cabin, and everything smelled of smoke. The woman eased me onto an animal pelt in front of the stove and poured lukewarm tea from a pot on a nearby table. She spooned in some sugar, sweetening it.
As I sipped the drink, the man gently placed Tallu on the pelt. He inhaled sharply.
“This is Prince Tallu.” The man shook his head once. “ Emperor Tallu.”
He looked at the woman, his eyes wide. I watched something pass between them, and I felt my whole body clench. I could take him. I could take him. Even exhausted and bruised, I could take him.
I knew it was a lie I was telling myself, because this man had the build of a brawler, but the looping tattoo of the Imperial military darkened his shoulder. What if he was in on what had just happened? The thought was nonsensical, but the look that the man shared with the woman was dangerous.
“Emperor Tallu,” the woman said, her voice precise and quiet. “The emperor is here.”
“We were attacked.” I looked between them, trying to read whatever was sitting unspoken in the room. This was worse than not being familiar with Imperial hand gestures. This was the language between partners who had known each other for so long that language was unnecessary.
The woman swallowed, then looked at the man.
“Undress him, Liku.”
She turned away, taking a long breath, exhaling sharply before standing. She put a kettle on the stove, and soon, it was boiling. Then, she went to a long wooden box, taking out a roll of fabric.
“Are you sure?” The man’s voice was hoarse. He swallowed. “Are you sure ?”
“The emperor cannot die here! He cannot die on our floor.” The woman turned to look at him over her shoulder, clutching whatever she’d taken out of the box in her hands. “What hell would we bring on ourselves if he died here?”
The man’s shoulders slumped, curling in before he shook his head. Liku stripped Tallu, his hands working efficiently, as though he’d stripped unconscious men before. Or dead men , I thought, and my mind paused there. Tallu didn’t stir.
The electric lights in the cabin flickered, and when Tallu was down to his undergarments, Liku stood and walked over to one of the lights, closing his eyes.
A small bolt of lightning flashed from his hand, hitting the electric lights and causing all four of the lamps to glow a brilliant white.
“You’re an electro mage?” I asked dully.
It made no sense. An electro mage who was military trained was a valuable commodity. My mother didn’t let me go hunting because of my value, and the military would pay handsomely for a man with his skills. So why was he here? In the middle of the forest, wearing the clothes of a peasant?
Liku turned back to the woman, and she carried her small burden over to Tallu. Crouching, she settled on her knees and unrolled the fabric bundle.
“He’s bleeding out. Even if I stop the flow, if he makes it to the capital, his leg will have to be removed. Too much damage, and the wound is already infected.” She looked at me, and in the bright light, I realized that even if she had some imperial blood in her, she was from somewhere else. Her skin didn’t gleam like a full-blood Imperial’s did. Her eyes were slightly too wide, and her ears were hidden by her long, pale silver hair.
She was from the Blood Mountains.
“If he gets back to the capital the way he is.” I nodded. “But there is another option?”
The woman looked down, unrolling her tools. I didn’t recognize any of them. They looked dangerous, like torture devices. These were not the tools of the healer.
“Liku, take the oldest hen,” the woman said.
“Miksha,” Liku said. He looked at her, his eyes wide, his hand moved, palm flat, in a slight up-and-down motion. I recognized the Imperial gesture—supplication, a desperate plea.
“The oldest hen. Kill it and bring it here.” Miksha didn’t look at him, instead going to the table and emptying a large, wide bowl that had fruit stacked in it. One of the round fruits rolled off the edge of the table, and Miksha ignored it, wiping the inside of the bowl with the hem of her shirt.
Shaking his head, Liku left through the front door, not slamming it. Instead, his anger was expressed in the short motions of his arms, the abrupt way he turned away from Miksha.
“Tallu must survive this,” I said. “I didn’t drag him down the mountain for him to die.”
“You’re from the north?” Miksha stared at me, her eyes going from the top of my head down to the expensive imperial clothing I was wearing. “You know what happens if he lives.”
“I also know what happens if he dies now. He must survive this.” It was the closest I had come to admitting my true purpose in the Imperium, and part of my stomach clenched, nearly dropping out with pure terror. The man—Liku—was clearly an imperial soldier. Although whether he was a runaway or had retired from service was unclear.
And she was a— My mind faltered, unable to even think the thought clearly.
The door opened, and Liku brought in a dead bird, its neck cleanly snapped. Miksha took it in her hands, bowing her head and saying a brief prayer of gratitude. Then, she took one of the wicked-looking knives from her supplies and sliced through the hen’s neck. Blood flowed into the large bowl.
Dipping both palms into the liquid, she sat up straight, the blood beginning to glow bright red as though some invisible heart was pumping it through the air. When I saw her eyes, I shivered. They were bloodred, the whites gone.
Miksha was a blood mage.