Chapter One #3
“That’ll do,” Roshan says, just as shouts and sparks light up the night.
Magic arcs into the air from crossbows, thudding into the wood of the building, and I can see the ice spreading on the inside from the impact.
Someone crashes against the door, and the sounds of clanging swords ensue.
Orange flames shoot into the sky as the earth trembles.
“Go now!” Hamid says as the doors rattle. I don’t know when he locked them, threading a metal bar through the handles, but the workshop is secure for the moment.
The trapdoor is a tight fit for both men, but they manage to squeeze through before I yank it closed, throwing the inner bolts.
Again, it won’t deter anyone for long, but it will buy us some time.
The storage room is pitch-black and smells musty and unused, but I know the small space like the back of my hand.
We quickly clear the way, shoving bags of sand, old tools, and metal sheets aside, before pushing on the doors leading up and out.
They’re rusty and the creaking sound is loud.
Hamid goes first—and the sounds of a scuffle instantly filter in.
“You stay here,” Roshan tells me. “I’ll go.”
Furious, I yank at his shirt. “I’m the Starkeeper. You’re the king, so you stay put. I’ll go.”
I’m out the door before he can argue or stop me with some horseshit overprotective chivalry.
I’m the only one with natural magic here and he knows that.
My starlight flies out of me toward the grappling shapes on the sand and identifies Hamid at the last second.
It incapacitates the two other men immediately and soundlessly.
“Thanks. Are they dead?” he pants, limping back toward me.
“Unconscious,” I say, and glance over his shoulder, my magic lighting their faces. Both men are unfamiliar—neither of them looks like he’s from here. More sounds of conflict pierce the air, the noise of two swords loud in the night. “Roshan, the tavern!”
Panicked, I start to sprint toward it, ignoring his hushed warnings to wait.
My magic crackles, the simurgh inside alert.
There’s no movement around the back of the inn, and I signal to the two kingsguard to stay in their positions at the door.
Clem is crouched near a side window, her weapons at the ready, and I run silently over to where she is.
“What’s the status?” I ask, just as she demands, “Where’s the king?”
“With Hamid,” I reply. “Behind me. How many assailants?”
“At least five,” she says, “with a dozen hostages in the main part of the tavern. Aran is in there, too.”
My stomach roils, though I know Aran can handle himself. While my magic is fueled by the raw akasha in my veins, he uses jādū—a crystal form of magic—to amplify his runes. He is a more than capable master runecaster.
Unless there are too many of them.
Clem had said at least five hostiles, but more could be hiding out of sight, biding their time.
This whole offensive appears to have been orchestrated very carefully, which means whoever is the leader in there had to have had information from someone on our side who was privy to our plans.
They had to have known that we were staying with a smaller contingent of guards.
The knowledge is gutting—we have a traitor, and it could be anyone.
“And my father? Amma?”
“Both inside.” She turns to Hamid. “You need to take the king to safety. I’ll stay with Suraya and get the situation under control.”
“No!” Roshan snarls. “The Starkeeper does not leave my side.”
I flinch at his unusual vehemence, more so when his fingers fall and tighten over my wrist. Despite the words being similar to his ones earlier, they don’t evoke the same feelings of warmth.
The edge of anger feels more possessive than protective.
But I have more pressing things to worry about than sifting through Roshan’s mercurial emotions, namely my family’s safety.
“Calm down, caveman,” I mutter, and ease myself out of his hold. “No one’s going anywhere until we can figure out how to defuse the situation. I’m the least exposed. My magic will protect me, so I can go in there and see what they want.”
“Suraya.”
I stare at Roshan. “Do you have a better idea? They’ll kill anyone else.
What you three need to figure out is who leaked information.
Barely anyone outside our inner circle and your war council in Kaldari knew that Coban would be our first stop or, even worse, that we would be remaining here overnight.
All the cities of Oryndhr were told to prepare, but the order for the tour was only announced this week to the aldermen out of an abundance of caution.
This assault was planned. These mercenaries are not disgruntled villagers.
People in many cities hated the previous regime and were punished for it. ”
The three of them exchange dark looks.
I don’t wait for Roshan’s assent before slipping around the side to the front and boldly banging on the door.
I can hear his growl of displeasure, but with him, it’s always better to ask forgiveness than permission.
He’d wrap me in wool if he could and tuck me away like a precious jewel.
It would be sweet if we didn’t have any other option.
But there aren’t enough soldiers to storm the tavern, and even if there were, the risk of innocents dying in the crossfire is too high.
“Open up!” I yell. “I’m not armed and here to talk!”
When the door cracks open, I walk in with both hands in the air to multiple weapons pointed at me.
I’m not too concerned about those, but I am worried about the ones aimed at my father’s head.
Aran’s, too; he’s crouched down beside my father, blood spilling down his cheek from a nasty cut on his temple.
I scan the room, relieved to find Amma sitting in one corner with no sign of injury or fear on her face. She looks utterly furious.
I smile at her before staring down each of the men. More than double the five Clem had initially counted . . . and there could be more hiding.
“Who are you?” I ask them, trying to determine which one’s the leader.
One sneers, a man with a half-shaved head and long upper braid pointing a crossbow at my father. Him, then. “Where’s the false king?”
I lift my brows. “The false king?” I echo. “He has a blood claim to the throne, and I seem to recall he’s the one who saved your homes, lands, and families from being destroyed by a usurper god who intended to yoke Endara into subjugation.”
“We have no quarrel with you, Starkeeper,” the aggressor says, though his voice is belligerent with skepticism. Stories of my power have traversed the land, but men out here haven’t seen it. Most of those who have are dead.
“But you see, if you have a quarrel with the king, you have one with me.” I pull a nearby chair out, flip it around, and straddle it. “Now, let’s be civil. I’m Suraya Saab. My father under your arrow is the owner of this tavern. Who are you, and what house are you from?”
I can hear his teeth grinding from where he stands. “I am Sandar of Eloni, House Regulus.” He points at a tall man with golden skin and a thick auburn beard. “Alderman Rubias of Eloni, House Antares.”
“An alderman, my stars, and you’re both far from home,” I say with an impressed expression. “What grievance do you have with King Roshan, pray tell, that you attack him in my home under my hospitality?”
“He’s a bastard,” the redhead grinds through his teeth, “and led the Dahaka. The rebellion stole from us for years. He’s untrustworthy and undeserving of the crown.”
I nod again. “Harsh words. But where were you during the battle of the capital? Where were all your men who find it so easy to prey upon unarmed villagers now? Does doing this—forcing people to their knees in their own homes—make you feel powerful?”
“Kill the bitch, Sandar, she’s nothing but a traitor, just like her king,” one of the other men growls from the side—a fox-faced grunt holding a glowing crimson mace.
Seeing me staring, he lets one of the red-hot points on the mace touch a hostage’s shoulder, making the poor man at his feet groan.
It’s Cyrill, I realize, one of the tavern’s regulars and the man who had accompanied my father to the capital to save me from Javed.
Cyrill is kneeling beside my former childhood nemesis, Simin, one arm around her quaking shoulders.
They’d been dancing earlier in the tavern, with Simin flashing her pretty new engagement ring. Silent tears track down her cheeks.
I want to send them a reassuring look, but I don’t. I’m hoping to end this with the least amount of carnage possible, and even with the increased control I have developed in recent months, thanks to Aran’s tutelage, my magic can still be volatile.
Because, if I’m attacked, my simurgh will defend me at any cost—that is a certainty. She is waiting alertly under my skin, flexing her wings with a flick against my senses as if to assert she’ll never let anything happen to me.
“The Starkeeper is a lie,” someone else says from the back.
With a slow lift of my brows, I let my magic roll along my forearms, the runes there lighting up in silvery symbols and spirals as the akasha in my blood makes itself known.
“Parlor tricks!” Alderman Rubias says, his eyes full of suspicion and contempt. “The monarchy is spinning stories to control us, to control the houses and diminish our influence. The House of Antares was on the brink of exposing the Imperial House’s lies and the seed of their corruption.”
“By ‘seed’ you mean the dead Queen Morvarid?” I ask. “Because as far as I know, she was the unhinged magi resurrecting a dangerous god.”
His face twists at my sarcasm. “She was the prophet who meant to cleanse her house of the rot eating away at its very foundations,” he shouts, a fanatical tone to his voice that makes me stiffen. “She was to usher in a new age for those who served! Who still serve!”
My breath catches at the last. Suddenly, the situation becomes infinitely more dangerous.
Nihilistic arcanists are unpredictable. We’d known that there would be pockets of Morvarid’s rabid supporters lingering throughout Oryndhr, especially in Eloni, but to be faced with them here in Coban is surprising.
But it solidifies my suspicion that this incursion wasn’t by chance.
“I was there,” I say. “I know exactly what the queen planned to do and how she intended to do it. She embodied the rot you speak of, and yet here you are, praising her. What is it you think you can do in her name now that she’s dead?”
He glares, and I can sense the darkness of his spirit, roiling within him. “Call in the false king. Tell him to surrender to his fate or we will execute everyone here, including your family.”
“You know I can’t let you do that,” I say. “Because if you hurt a single hair on their heads, I promise you will find yourself in unspeakable agony.”
He nods at someone I can’t see, and I feel the blade at my neck a heartbeat later.
Icy tendrils lace across my throat like eddies of frost, but there’s something else imbued in the blade, not just ice.
There’s a power within . . . some kind of underlying death magic.
I quell the instant roar of my simurgh and the burst of akasha in my blood that wants to incinerate the steel at my throat.
Where and how would they have gotten a weapon like this?
Or better yet, from whom?
The man sneers. “You’re flesh and blood like any of us, so pay attention.
That blade will freeze your blood from flowing and eat away at your organs if you so much as twitch in a way I don’t like.
And the little light show on your arms means nothing, Starkeeper.
” He spits the name like it’s a curse. “The oracle might need you alive, but trust me, we can bleed almost every drop of you and still keep you breathing.”
Exhaling, I blink. The oracle?
My gaze drops to Aran’s, and I see the alarm and suspicion spark in his gaze. This is new. Despite Roshan’s hopes for a united peace throughout the realm, confirmation of an antagonist changes everything. Who is the oracle? I need to get the alderman talking.
“Such a good boy, following orders,” I taunt, trying to keep my face neutral while my simurgh roils beneath my skin against the corrupted magic it can sense from the knife still pressed to my throat.
Soon, I promise her. “If you’re not the true leader, then who is?
This oracle? Maybe the grown-ups should be speaking. ”
“I am the starsdamned leader,” Alderman Rubias hisses.
“Are you sure it isn’t the oracle?” I press. “You seem uncertain.”
His eyes shoot daggers. “No.”
“Who are they?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” he says.
I fold my arms, ignoring the razor-sharp blade cutting into the flesh of my neck. I don’t do anything to heal myself, letting the blood drip down my skin.
The alderman’s eyes snag on it and brighten. “See? The Starkeeper can bleed. Now, get me your king or we’ll sever your spine!”
Knowing I won’t get more out of him, I let my lip curl. “No.”
It’s the only thing I utter before I let my simurgh loose.