Chapter 10 #3
The old style of address clearly had one purpose only—to remind them all of his real crime. Being his father’s son. “Twenty-eight, Your Majesty.”
“Twice the age at which you should have submitted yourself to the fields—another family’s, if your father relinquished his claim as you say.
You could have petitioned for their return.
Or put in an official request for relocation, if you preferred mine work.
Applied for a position in Reykstoll, if you were of a more academic inclination.
There have been thanes from the domes who became teachers. ”
“Three, yes. In the last two hundred years.” He didn’t mean to say it—but why bother holding his tongue?
Kyrja’s lips parted in surprise. “Three!”
“Thanes under the domes have bred themselves for farming,” her father said. “They do not want to be teachers. They do not receive positions because they do not apply.”
Nik’s snort was quite possibly a death-sentence. But it couldn’t make any difference at this point.
The king held out a hand. “As a self-professed criminal, you will be subject to the Test. Give me your hand.”
The last thing in the world he wanted to do was hold out his hand.
He’d been taught about the Test, just like every other child in Fjordlandi—in all the world, most likely.
He knew that the curved blade gleaming in the king’s hand was made of titanium, which would prime any magic present in a person’s blood.
That a drop of blood spilled into the water in that crystal bowl would make some sign they could read, to tell them if said magic was present.
He knew that, if so, it wasn’t actually activated, Awakened, until the blood of a Blessed was also dripped into the bowl and made its way to his open wound.
Not unrelated to the Test that every young thane underwent when a Fjorder had been chosen for a Blessed Union. A discovery so important it had made Fjordlandi a world power, despite its small size. So coveted they had to protect their coasts from the greed of the other nations.
According to the history Brother Gylfi had taught him, it was only a hundred fifty years ago that they began performing the same Test on criminals, to ascertain if illicit unions were taking place.
If, somehow—though Nik had never been clear on how—this unauthorized, dormant magic was spurring people toward crime. Rebellion. Revolution.
To his mind, it was absurd. No Fjorder he’d ever met would give a second glance to a thane, certainly not engage in the sort of relationship that would produce a child.
They were not people in the Fjorders’ eyes—they were animals built for labor.
Nothing more. Nothing to desire. Even those chosen to be consorts for a Blessed Union reported, when they came home, to being treated more like a broodmare than a family member.
But Brother Gylfi had insisted it happened. He’d leaned close, dark eyes gleaming, and whispered, “Why do you think criminal trials have been all but eliminated? The only crime they really care about is rebellion—and the only proof they need of it is one’s blood.”
Nik lifted his right hand and held it out.
Held the king’s gaze. His blood might condemn him solely because Pab’s ran through his veins—but that wouldn’t make a mark in their bowl.
Pab had been Tested as a young man, when one of the Fjorder women had been chosen for a Blessed union.
If he’d had illicit magic, they’d have carted him off then.
From the tall windows, a strange music stole Nik’s attention.
It sounded almost like a trumpet. No, not almost. It was a trumpet—several of them, playing some sort of official-sounding, intricate call that had every Blessed on the Council spinning toward the windows with far more emotion than he’d ever thought to see from them.
Only Kyrja remained still, confusion on her face that must match his own.
Even the king abandoned the podium and stormed to the bank of windows. “Flames below,” he spat. “They sent their daughter?”
Nik had no idea who “they” were, nor why “their daughter” demanded trumpets nor elicited such a reaction, but Kyrja must have. Understanding dawned across her face. “Princess Perla has come?” To Nik, she added, “The Daryatleans were sending a new ambassador.”
“And they have impeccable timing, as always.” The king spun away from the window.
“Stellan, Ulna, go. I won’t have her reporting to her parents that we didn’t send the appropriate emissaries to greet her.
Show her to a guest suite and tell her I’ll see her as soon as I can, that we’re in the middle of proceedings that cannot be postponed. ”
Because Himmel forbid Nik live another day.
His hand had lowered back to his side when the king moved, but he lifted it again when the man returned. The foreign princess’s arrival might be an interruption, but he knew better than to assume it would delay the inevitable.
Perhaps, though, this timing was of the Giver. Perhaps this Princess Perla would see what was happening in Fjordlandi. Perhaps she’d report it to her parents. Perhaps they could put pressure on the king to change, or else prove to be the allies Kyrja needed to take her rightful place.
Isidor’s fingers were cold as ice as they gripped Nik’s, and the man didn’t hesitate a moment before slicing the metal blade over the pad of his index finger.
It was sharp enough that he scarcely felt it, though blood was quick to well and bead.
The king turned his finger over and shook it so that the drop fell into the water.
What did they even look for? Nik saw nothing in the bowl but what he expected—a cloud of red dispersing into the clear.
But the king narrowed his eyes and examined Nik’s right palm as if waiting for it to reveal the future. Isidor’s face went dark, foreboding. And somehow looked, to Nik’s eyes, darkly pleased. “Test one, passed. No Blessing.”
It should have been good, right? Nothing illicit. Nothing illegal. But that “one” pricked at him. And the fact that the drummer beat out a rhythm again seemed like a bad sign.
Kyrja was frowning again. “What do you mean by Test one? What other is there?”
The king didn’t even look at her. “There is much you don’t know, Valkyrja. That you were never meant to. I would have shielded you forever from knowledge of the Curse, but since you demand such burdens…”
“The Curse?” What was he talking about? Nik had never heard of a Curse aside from the one in the Words that the first parents had brought down upon all humanity with their sin.
The princess’s face went still. Cold. “What Curse?”
“It arose with the worst of the revolutionaries, a century and a half ago.” The king sheathed the metal blade and reached to the other side of his waist, where a matching sheath waited.
The blade he pulled from it, however, was odd.
Dull. It didn’t look like metal at all, but like stone.
Dark gray. Flint? “Around the same time that Queen Arden was discovered to be born of a seraph. We could only assume that something similar happened here, but with a daemon instead of an angel.” He met Nik’s gaze again, palm outstretched. “Left hand.”
He wanted to resist. Refuse. But he lifted his hand and gave it to the king.
Kyrja shifted closer. Dropped her voice low. “What are you saying? That there is dark magic? Evil? You don’t even believe in the Giver, much less—”
“I believe in what I see.” The king sliced Nik’s finger with the stone blade, and this one made him wince—it was far duller than the metal. “And what I’ve seen is a rise in evil, greed, and disruption among the thanes.”
“Among us?” Nik jerked his hand away, though the blood had already welled, already spilled into the bowl—his previous drop having dispersed enough that he could barely even tell the water wasn’t pure.
The king kept his gaze on the bowl. After a moment, a cruel tilt to his lips said the impossible, even before he declared, “As I suspected. The true Blade gave me a hint, the second unmistakable confirmation. The Curse.”
“What?” Kyrja had been looking at Nik, silent encouragement in her gaze, but at that, she turned her attention to the bowl.
He was lying, he must be. And she would see it.
Call it out. Just like she’d called out the injustice of this faux trial.
As the Heir, she had to verify everything here in this room.
She would refuse, and while Nik didn’t see how that would save him, it would at least mean he wouldn’t go to his death with a Curse proclaimed over him.
His palm itched. He rubbed it absently with the uncut fingers from his right hand, then halted. Looked down when heat seared his fingers.
His left palm was glowing, a bright ring rising to the surface. Nik stumbled back, as if he could escape his own hand, crashing into someone who stopped his senseless retreat. A Vektor, given the clang of the ceremonial spear and the rough hands that shoved him back to his position.
The king was still smirking. “Valkyrja, do you verify the Cursed mark on the felon’s palm?”
Nik lifted his eyes, met her gaze. Her face had washed pale, but it wasn’t horror in her eyes, like he expected.
Like he knew filled his own. It was…apology?
“I verify a mark on the accused’s palm.” The words were a whisper.
“Much like the one on my own, but with flames within the rings instead of snowflakes.”
A rebellion, that rephrasing. But one that couldn’t possibly matter.