Chapter 31 #2
I can handle this. I know my way around a blade.
I can make a strike look fierce while avoiding any vital organs or major blood vessels. A superficial wound.
The drug gives me even more of an excuse. They can’t expect me to aim properly when my balance is off kilter, can they?
The shrouded figures around us raise their voices. “Test him! Test the king! Find out what he’s worth.”
The teenage girl darts forward and slashes with her knife. She clearly isn’t experienced, but she slices through the man’s silk tunic so blood wells against the fabric.
The nobleman lunges forward next, with a breath hissed through his teeth. He stabs the false king in the chest just below his shoulder.
As more blood spurts out, the man grunts. That’s the only sign he’s affected by the wounds.
I’m next. I grit my teeth and push myself forward, honing my mind as well as I can through the partial haze.
Whip out my hand. Hit him right there.
The blade glances off a rib, just as I intended. The impact reverberates up my arm, and the false king wobbles.
I bite back the apology that leaps up my throat and stumble to the side.
The woman from the city steps toward the stand-in, her knuckles pale where she’s clutching her knife. She stares at him, at the blood staining his clothes. Her body sways.
Her voice comes out slurred. “I don’t… To attack the king…”
Torstem makes a swift motion. Two of the other conspirators grab the woman and drag her away.
“Wait!” she cries out. “I can do it. I could. I just—I just wanted to be sure.”
“If you aren’t sure already, it’s too late for you,” Torstem announces, his voice booming through the clearing. “The gods will decide where you belong.”
In a grave somewhere with no one knowing what really befell her, no doubt.
My innards lurch between the impulse to leap in and defend her and the need for self-preservation. I hold myself still, telling myself this is the right choice.
Would saving her be worth blowing my entire mission? She’s been on board with everything the scourge sorcerers have asked of her until now—how reasonable a person can she really be?
My rationalization doesn’t alleviate my growing nausea. As one of the scourge sorcerers clamps a hand over the woman’s throat and they disappear between the trees, I avert my gaze.
The older man hurtles at the false king as if determined to show how very willing he is in comparison. He rams his knife into the other man’s abdomen at an angle that might pierce the liver.
I restrain a wince. That’s it. We’ve all shown our dedication—or not.
Now they’ll bring out their healer woman and—
Ster. Torstem strides up to the false king from behind. “It’s too late for this king. He’s betrayed us all with his claim to the throne. Now we bring him down!”
He slams a dagger of his own right between the man’s ribs, deep enough to pierce the heart.
I only just catch a yelp of alarm before it bursts from my throat. My power flares fiercer.
That’s the threat. That’s a man who’ll kill just to make a point.
As the false king staggers, raising no more protest than a groan, my magic tugs at me to heal his wounds. To cast away the villains who staged this vicious “ceremony.” To—
No. No, I can’t.
I yank it in, and my head spins. A burning sensation spreads across my skin as if my power is trying to sear its way out.
I fumble to suppress it, and I think it senses my drugged weakness. It lashes out with a sharper pain straight through my lungs. I have to clamp my mouth shut against a grunt.
One of the shrouded figures drags the false king into the woods in a different direction from the woman who failed the trial. I swing myself away from them, tensing every muscle in my legs to hold them steady against the onslaught.
I let a little magic free only a few days ago. Gods only know how hard it’d be hitting me if my power wasn’t partly sated.
Oh, gods, Ivy, I’m sorry.
Julita’s sorry? What for? She sounds honestly anguished.
I sputter a puzzled guffaw, which hopefully sounds like derision toward the false king.
My ghostly passenger squirms in the back of my head.
I thought I recognized the smell—Borys and Wendos used a potion like that sometimes to supposedly help them tap into the ‘power of their inner mind’ or some rot like that.
It simply made them act like idiots. I would have warned you, I just— I figured you could deal with it yourself.
You handle so much else without needing my help.
Despite her apology, resentment taints those last words. But between my unsteady mind, the magic I’m still grappling with, and a sudden blaze of fire before me, I can’t focus on Julita right now.
The shadowy heap I noted at the far end of the clearing is a big heap of firewood. One of the scourge sorcerers has set it alight. The flames surge up toward the sky, warbling like their disguised voices.
Torstem waves us toward the bonfire. “Come! Let us treat the traitor king the way he deserves. Offer him up to the gods whose will he ignored!”
Great God smite us, he doesn’t really mean—
Even as horror wrenches through me at the thought that we might be burning the man he fatally stabbed before the fellow’s soul has departed, three of the scourge sorcerers drag a figure far too big to be any living human toward the fire.
The wavering orange light glances off stitched together clothes stuffed with straw and a crown that looks like it’s made of painted wood tied to the sagging burlap head.
Nice to know the psychopaths draw the line at burning a man alive. For the moment, anyway.
They really aren’t hiding their intentions now. There’s no mistaking the clear message: they want King Konram dead.
They tried to kill Prince Jacos too. I still don’t know if they murdered his older son, Prince Dunstam, years ago.
Maybe I can find out at least one vital fact while they’re in a sharing mood.
The shrouded figures motion us new recruits over to haul the straw figure the last few paces to the bonfire. I picture the flames leaping out to catch on their shrouds with an uncomfortable sense of satisfaction and clamp down on my magic when it wriggles up to offer its services.
As I join the others in grasping the straw-stuffed cloth, I let my legs sway a little more, my head loll with our movements. The drunker I seem on their drug, the less they can blame anything that comes out of my mouth on my conscious intentions.
“Death to the unworthy king!” I holler for extra credit, and heave at the figure in time with my current comrades.
The fire roars around the straw figure. In a matter of seconds, body, head, and crown are completely consumed by the flames.
I step back from the heat that prickles at my face, letting a wobble creep into my steps. “There he goes!” I babble, and turn to one of the shrouded figures. “Is this what you did to Prince Dunstam? Gotta get rid of them one by one, right?”
Ivy, Julita says nervously, like a warning.
But the scourge sorcerer just chuckles without revealing anything definite. “Everyone will get what they deserve in the end.”
I lean closer, tilting my head to the other side and slurring my words. “But really. That was you—us—what we’re doing here— He didn’t really get sick. You took care of him, didn’t you? We should celebrate that too!”
A hand claps onto my shoulder, followed by a voice that makes my pulse hitch.
“We should look to what we can do in the future, not dwell on the past,” Torstem says.
Which doesn’t answer the question either. I don’t know whether they’re trying to cover up their crime or take subtle credit for a “victory” they can’t actually claim.
But with the leader of the conspiracy standing over me, I’m not going to push my inquiry any farther.
I aim a goofy grin at him. “Of course! Let the king burn!”
This one, anyway. What have they done with the living one? Is he still living?
Maybe if I can figure out what they’ve done with his body, that’ll be another useful bit of proof.
I lean into my drugged act, playing up my dizziness to maximum effect. I’ve watched plenty of drunken louts all through the outer wards to know what effects an intoxicant can have on the body and mind.
I raise my fist in the air. “The other fake king should burn too! Let’s send him to the gods. Where is he?”
When I stumble off toward the woods, I’m prepared for one of the conspirators to drag me back. But they must assume I won’t remember much—let alone be able to do much—in my current state.
Or maybe they trust my loyalty enough now that they don’t care what I see.
I stagger between the trees, allowing myself to trip on a root and sprawl in the dirt. Twigs cling to my skirt when I push myself upright.
“Ouch,” I mumble, keeping up the dazed act for anyone who might be keeping watch.
Two tiny, darting presences whip past me with a tingle of agitated energy, tossing my cloak over my head. I yank it back in time to spot a faint glint flitting off through the forest.
Daimon. The spirit creatures don’t appear to have enjoyed the scourge sorcerers’ ceremonial burning any more than I have.
Which direction did the villains take the false king in? I fight through the real haze in my head to solidify my sense of direction.
I think… that way. I meander toward it on a rambling course, as if I’m weaving through the forest mostly at random.
Of course, the conspirators might have carted him off in another direction once they were out of sight. I’ll just have to keep roving around, playing the fool, until I stumble on his corpse or they call me back.
I scramble over a log and bumble through a clump of bushes. Then the toe of my boot hits something that makes an odd clinking sound.
Like… like pottery.
I do my best not to freeze up. Instead, I act as if I’ve tripped again to give me an excuse to end up on my hands and knees.
My fingers close around shards of fired clay.
In the darkness, I can barely see them, but I feel more chunks everywhere I touch. Far more pieces than a snake or a rat would break into.
My fingers close around a nob that feels like the shape of a nose. A chill sweeps through my body, turning my blood icy in my veins.
Gods help us all… Are the scourge sorcerers conjuring entire human beings?