Chapter 26 #2
I guess it mightn’t have been that hard to make Torstem’s supporters believe the bastard’s bastard didn’t give a rat’s ass about the royal family given how irreverent he’s tended to act.
And he did it because he could tell the rest of us were keeping something from him? It isn’t as if we totally shut him out.
If he had any clue why our group was starting to fracture…
Gods help me, it’s a good thing I never trusted him enough to reveal my power.
“Fine,” Benedikt says. “Keep ignoring me. But you know what? The more I’ve heard, the more I think these people have the right idea.
What has the royal family done for anyone except the people who fawn and flatter them the best, really?
Why should the exact circumstances of your birth dictate how you’ll be treated for your entire life? ”
My stomach sinks at the caustic note that’s crept into his voice. I had no idea Benedikt was concealing so much resentment behind his carefree attitude.
But then, I’ve only known him for a matter of weeks, barely talked with him outside of the business of our investigation. I saw him as a friend because of our shared cause, but we aren’t much better than fleeting acquaintances, really.
“Everyone else does whatever they have to do to get ahead,” he goes on. “Why shouldn’t I? What have you ever done to earn my loyalty? If I hadn’t—”
He cuts himself off and lapses into a heavy silence. My lungs tighten.
There’s one subject I can bring up without giving any validity to his claims. “The people who brought us here said you failed a test. What makes you think you deserve their loyalty?”
The silence stretches a little longer. “I didn’t know. I wasn’t prepared. They said to carve my whole cheek off, and I only—I only hesitated. I never said no. I simply needed a moment to be sure…”
Carve his whole cheek off. I can’t restrain a wince, echoed by Julita’s presence within my skull.
They must guess at what sacrifice would be most difficult for each potential initiate. Benedikt is a flirt as well as a jokester.
He didn’t know they’d heal him afterward any more than I did, and he was afraid to return to the world with a mangled face.
I’m not sure I can blame him for that. In a way, he has grounds to say it was partly my fault—because I never told him about how that trial went for me. If I had, he’d have known in advance it was only a temporary sacrifice.
For pointing his finger at me to save his own skin—I can assign plenty of blame just for that.
A wave of anger sears through my nausea, choking me.
I gave up my entire life, the small bits of security I counted on, and the anonymity that protected me for so long to help this prick continue his mission.
And the first time things got really hard, he decided I’d make a better sacrifice than any part of him.
I was good enough to sweet talk and kiss, but nothing he couldn’t toss aside the second he needed to save his skin.
Fuck him and his semi-royal airs.
My voice hardens. “I was right then. You knew you couldn’t hold your own, so you watched for someone to take the fall for you. Why would anyone want to count on an asshole like that?”
I turn my back on him, not that he can tell anyway, and sink onto the rough floor with my arm cushioning my head.
I’m not interested in hearing anything else Benedikt has to say. Maybe I can steal a little sleep while we’re stuck in here for however long it takes the scourge sorcerers to deliberate.
Whatever comes next, I’ll be able to face it better the sharper my mind is.
As I close my eyes, it occurs to me that the conspirators never searched us for weapons. My knife is still hidden in my boot.
I might be able to land a killing blow in the darkness, just judging by Benedikt’s voice.
The idea makes me feel sick all over again. It feels so cowardly.
And that’s how it’d look to our captors too, isn’t it? Like I didn’t think I could stand up to him in a fair trial.
No. I need to triumph over him on their terms to have any hope of keeping their trust.
Their terms… and maybe the gods’?
I think hard in my head the way I’ve prayed silently to Kosmel before. Guardian of tricksters, I could use a little luck down here right now. If you want me to survive to keep playing this awful game, you’d better have my back.
No one answers. But a soft pressure comes to rest on my shoulder, like someone setting a reassuring hand there. Like a confirmation that I’m not alone.
Like my father’s touch when I was lying in bed sick or shaken by a bad day. Back when he still cared to try to comfort me.
Unwelcome tears prick at the backs of my eyes. I squeeze the lids tighter closed and tuck my free arm across my chest.
And somehow, with the simultaneously unnerving and comforting impression of a god watching over me, my mind drifts off.
I wake at the scrape of footsteps over the uneven floor. My head jerks up as I blink to clear my bleary eyes.
A thin stream of light is seeping down the passage from the narrow cave opening. Day has arrived.
Hurrah.
As I push myself into a sitting position and swipe at the grit that’s stuck to my face, I don’t bother to glance Benedikt’s way.
I don’t want the shrouded figure approaching us to see any reaction I wouldn’t be able to control, looking at the man who tossed me to the wolves.
In the faint daylight, the black shroud looks even more unsettling than at night.
It’s like a loose, hooded robe that falls all the way to the wearer’s feet.
I can now see there are slits for sight cut in the black cloth that falls from the top of the hood, but the face beyond them is too shadowed for me to make out even the glint of its eyes.
“Come and let the gods judge who should earn our trust,” the man says in the voice that might be Torstem’s.
Even though the strategy was my suggestion, an ominous hollow forms in the pit of my stomach.
I hold myself stoically still while one of the other shrouded figures unlocks the manacle from my ankle, but Benedikt can’t restrain his restlessness. “What’s the trial?”
“You’ll see.” The leader beckons for us to follow him.
I don’t spot any of the other scourge sorcerers when we emerge from the cave, but I suspect they’re somewhere nearby. Braced in case they need to intervene.
The possible Torstem points at two particularly expansive pine trees about twenty paces apart. “Stand by one of the trees marked with the All-Giver’s sigil. You’ll find what you need there.”
Every nerve on edge, I head toward the tree that’s slightly closer to me. As I come up on it, I make out the sigil of the All-Giver etched into its bark—upside down, like Julita mentioned she’s seen it before.
The scourge sorcerers think they can call the Great God back to our level. What more ridiculous hubris could there be?
Any confidence I’m feeling drains out of me as I reach the base of the trunk and see the objects waiting for me.
A large wooden bow leans against the tree. A quiver with several arrows lies on the forest floor beside it.
Oh, fuck.
Julita’s presence shifts with obvious agitation. It could still be all right. I don’t know that Benedikt is that wonderful a shot.
He doesn’t have to be wonderful to best me. I’ve only handled a bow once in my life, and that time I don’t think I clipped a single target.
I pick up the bow, testing its weight, and finally look toward my betrayer. Benedikt is staring right back at me, his hand clenched around his own bow… and a trace of his usual smirk curving his lips.
He was there for the hunt when I showed off my ineptitude at archery. Great God smite him, he must be silently crowing over how easily he’ll beat me.
“You have a minute to prepare yourselves,” the lead man calls out in his magically warbled voice.
“You will stay within reach of your tree. Once the trial begins, you will shoot at your opponent until one of you is too injured to continue. But if you kill them, your victory is forfeit. May the gods guide the one who deserves it.”
As his voice fades from the crisp autumn air, my gut plummets all the way to my feet.
He wants us to destroy each other without killing. Like the mutilated accomplices who sacrifice so much for the scourge sorcerers’ demented cause.
He’s not just testing us against each other but evaluating our willingness to maim for our convictions as well.
My fingers tighten around the bow. I sling the quiver over my shoulder and slide out one of the arrows easily enough.
Across from me, through the mottled shadows cast by the leaves overhead, Benedikt’s smirk has only grown. Curse it all, he doesn’t look the slightest bit guilty about what he intends to do.
He’ll tear me to pieces with his arrows until I’m slumped bleeding on the ground, and then he’ll waltz back to the college to pretend he has no idea how I went missing. He’ll learn all the king’s plans for protection and feed them back to the scourge sorcerers.
Or I could tear him apart and leave him for the conspirators to murder.
Even after everything, I can’t say that I want the man in front of me dead. He can’t be that horrible, can he, after all the good things he tried to do before?
Just so incredibly misguided.
But faced with his triumphant smile, with the selfish excuses he gave me yesterday echoing in my ears, I can’t say the idea of hurting him makes me feel all that guilty either.
It’s a matter of survival. Me or him. And if he survives, a whole lot of people other than me could die because of it.
The choice should be simple, if not for the power roiling in my chest.
The only way I can win is to use my magic. I don’t stand a chance of hitting him effectively unless it or some divine intervention guides my arrow. And Kosmel has never offered any physical assistance before.
I’ve sworn so many times to keep my riven soul under wraps. The only time I released it on purpose, the city was literally on the verge of crumbling.
What will the cost be this time?
How many times can I use it and still stay sane enough to rein it back in?
How many will die if I survive… and turn more into the monster every riven eventually becomes?
Benedikt notches his arrow. I have only a matter of seconds left to decide.
As I grip my bow, a swell of resolve rises up inside me. The same iron conviction that came over me when I lay dying in the Domi’s back hallway.
I want to live. There’s more I want to do.
Maybe, like then, I should let the gods decide just as I told the scourge sorcerers I would.
I position my arrow against the bow and open my mind to the trickster godlen with his wryly divine voice. If I ask my magic to guide my arrow, will you see that I don’t hurt anything I would regret?
My pulse stutters with the overwhelming voice that resonates through my body for the first time in weeks. I can guide the backlash, my wayward rogue. But you have to pull the string. The choices you make here can only be yours.
I swallow against the dryness of my mouth.
Yes. It’s my life. My choice.
I’m playing this game to win.
A mortal man’s voice reverberates through the forest. “Begin!”
My hand looses the arrow.
The bowstring twangs, and my power leaps with it. I hone it onto the arrow, narrowing it to my target with all the control I can summon.
Just this act. Just this once.
Land one shot so Benedikt can’t shoot another.
I might not be much of an archer, but I know how to deal an effective wound. Benedikt needs his arms to shoot.
So I simply have to disable them.
The power ripples through me, pulling the arrow on course—and part of me senses a branch somewhere far off in the woods cracking as it wrenches away from its natural direction.
So much of my focus is on my magic that I barely remember to jerk myself away from the arrow Benedikt aimed at me. The vicious tip slices through the sleeve of my tunic with a stinging line of pain and thuds into the trunk behind me.
The break in my concentration jostles my magic. My arrow plunges into Benedikt’s shoulder—into the fleshy outer muscle, not right at the center of the joint where I’d have rendered his arm useless.
Benedikt sputters a curse and snatches at another arrow, his bow wobbling in his damaged but not disabled grasp. I whip another projectile of my own out of my quiver and notch it as quickly as my hands can move.
Please, please, please. I don’t want this to turn into the torture session the scourge sorcerers must be hoping for.
I don’t risk allowing any magic to speed my movements. Even with his injury, Benedikt moves faster than my inexperienced fumbling.
A second arrow thrums through the forest. As I leap to the side, my bow sways in my grip.
I have to do this. I have to end this—now.
Gods help me, truly.
I yank back the string and release before Benedikt has a chance to position a third arrow. My second careens toward him, my heart aching with the power bleeding out of me, hurtling it straight to its mark—
He tries to dodge, but my magic either catches him or makes the arrow veer. It slams home, digging into the sinews that attach his arm to his torso.
An anguished groan bursts from Benedikt’s lips. His arm sags, the bow slipping from his grasp.
He slumps back against his tree, blood coursing in a wet streak down his tunic. His fingers dangle limply. He gropes for the bow with his other hand, but there’s clearly no way he can shoot one-armed.
“No!” he shouts. “No, I swear, I was telling the truth. I don’t know how—“
A black-shrouded figure emerges from behind the tree and smacks a rod against the top of Benedikt’s head. He topples over, limp as a sack of potatoes.
My stomach heaves. It’s all I can do not to hurl the remains of last night’s dinner onto the earth by my feet.
I did it. I won.
But every inch of my skin feels as clammy as if I’m about to die too.
My magic flails around me, desperate to deal out more vengeance, and I clench my hands as I drag it back inside me.
A couple of broken branches. Not too horrific for payment.
As if that’s the most awful thing about this situation.
The man who’s probably Torstem steps toward me, his voice unnervingly warm. “An impressive showing, Ivy. The gods must smile on you. It’s our honor to know your loyalties lie with us.”