Chapter 16 Silver #2
“Oh, yeah?” I ask. “The same thing you did about him?” The light flashes again, and my eyes are drawn to Merod’s beaten corpse, slumped against the wall in full view.
“It’ll be quicker, that’s for sure,” she assures me with a sneer. “We don’t have as much pent-up anger to work out on you. But the end result will be similar, yes.”
“We?”
The light flashes on her bared teeth. “Yes, we. There were quite a lot of citizens who came down here to work out their personal grudges over the last several days.” Even in the dark, I can feel her smile widening.
“Some even took trophies.” In the next flash, I notice for the first time that Merod is missing several fingers.
And an ear. His hair is chopped in uneven slashes.
I even see a large red stain around his left kneecap that I’d rather not think about.
“Because he conquered you?”
“Because of all of it,” she spits. “Every blow was for a friend or family member whose death was on that man’s head.
For our Prime, Reltas’s father, who was left alive but broken, a man too shattered to lead an empire in shambles.
For those of us who survived and were forced to live in the shell of our former grandeur, ghosts haunting our own city.
We deserved to give him that pain. And he deserved his death, too.
Even if it wasn’t exactly part of the plan.
Can’t blame people for getting carried away when we’ve waited so long for this. ”
I recognize the vehemence in her voice. I’ve heard it in my own, ranting to Vie about the injustices the same man had heaped on our heads as well.
The lightning doesn’t flash again, but I feel like I can still see him there, pale and bruised, his wounds gaping and gruesome.
Ripped apart by the ones he trampled under his feet.
“Did it work?” I ask sincerely. “Do you feel better now?”
She presses the metal harder into my neck, pricking my skin until blood beads beneath it. “Not yet.”
I swallow, feeling the cold of the sword against my side. Does she know I have it? Can I use it to get out of her grip? “What’s next, then?” I ask, just to keep her talking.
The tunnel we’re in is narrow, and she definitely knows it better than I do. That makes escape difficult, but I need to figure something out. Because there’s a deadly intent in her voice. The next time it all goes dark, I move my hand to the hilt of my new blade, suppressing a shiver at its chill.
“Why would I tell you?” she sneers.
“Why not? You’re clearly going to kill me anyway.”
She laughs unkindly. “I suppose that’s true. But it’s your own fault. Can’t have you telling your vapid girlfriend that she has a way out of her betrothal, now can I?”
I shift away from the knife but don’t make a move to run yet.
Instead, I weigh my words, wanting to make the most of this opportunity.
“Right, so, since we both agree I’m dying anyway, tell me: Why does your Prime really want a marriage with Mance?
If it was just about an alliance, she would have gladly agreed to one without all the legal assurances.
She still would, even after all this. I mean, she won’t be happy about the murder of her father, but she can forgive it.
She’ll understand your pain more than you realize.
It isn’t too late for peace.” Despite my words, when the light flickers away again, I ease the sword out of its sheath.
Kiar scoffs derisively. “There is no trust between our realms. There can never be.”
“Between you and Merod? No. But Mance is not her father. She’s not a warmonger.”
“And Reltas is not his father, either. He’s not a coward.”
I flip the blade in my hand, testing its weight in the shadows. “But if what you really want is vengeance, then a straight-on attack makes much more sense,” I push back. “I already know that you have the magic to make large-scale damage. So, again, why marriage?”
“If we conquer you, we’ll have to kill a lot of people. And we don’t want to do that.”
I raise an eyebrow. “So you do have a heart. I’m touched!”
She sneers in the flickering light. “You misunderstand. We don’t want to save them. We want to use them.”
I let the sword settle in my hand, gripping its hilt tightly. “Use them for . . . ?”
She smirks. “Let’s just say the Cliff Realm isn’t the only one he has his eye on.
He plans to take over all of them, one way or another.
Because Merod may have been the one holding the noose, but the other realms didn’t help us escape it.
They all looked away as we swung. So they deserve what’s coming just as much.
The Cliff Realm is only our first stop.”
My gut clenches as I think about the amount of magical ammunition just down the hall. When I saw it, I thought it would be enough to take out the whole Continent, but I didn’t think that was Reltas’s actual plan.
“Where did you get it all?” I ask, tilting my head back toward the room, certain that she knows what it contains.
“The Broken Citadel.”
“Obviously,” I shoot back. “All magic comes from the Broken Citadel, but how did you gather so much?”
She grins, unnervingly at ease. “Everything in there has been brought out by one of our own citizens. Mostly brave volunteers, although some needed to be . . . compelled. They’ve been going in for weeks and coming out with all kinds of fun things.”
My stomach lurches, partially at her words and partially at the way she’s being so candid. She was holding back when this conversation started, and now she seems to have no problem spilling everything. Which means she must be really certain I’m not making it out of this tunnel alive.
My sword is ready, but I don’t strike. If I can get the full plan out of her and then escape, I’ll be able to tell Mance everything.
She might not be willing to start a war just to get out of a marriage, but she definitely would to avoid her citizens becoming fodder for a continental takeover.
I try to keep focused on the conversation, probing to get as much information as possible, even as my mind races.
“But you can’t do that,” I say. “Only members of the royal line can enter the Broken Citadel. It’s in the .
. . uh, one of those stuffy agreements everyone cares about.
Mance would know the one. Anyway, it’s not allowed. ”
“Sangua did it. And they let her fake heir, Azele, rule anyway. Besides, the rules only matter if you plan to continue the system as it is. But if you want to overthrow the whole thing, then they don’t really matter much after all, do they?”
I consider this carefully. “So . . . to be clear, your plan is to make an army out of Mance’s people, equip them with magical weapons your citizens create, and take control of the entire Continent from there?
You have to see that doing that would immediately backfire.
You can’t enslave people and then give them fantastical ammunition.
They’ll rebel immediately. They’ll destroy you. ”
She shrugs dismissively. “I’m not too worried about that. If they fought for Merod, then they’ll fight for us. Besides, once Reltas is Mancella’s husband, he can use her seal to make any decree he wants. And when the people see their beloved Prime at his side, supporting him, they’ll fall in line.”
I start to shake my head, but then remember the knife against my throat and still. “Mance would never do that. No matter what you threaten her with. Not for my life, not for her sister’s life, not for torture, not for anything.”
“I’m not too worried about that, either.”
Alarm blares in my ears. This is the information I’m missing. The crucial piece. “Why not?” I demand.
“Because I was one of the first to go in, and I came out with something pretty useful. But I’m tired of this conversation now. You’ve been a diverting opponent for the last few days, but our contest has reached its end.”
She makes a move to slash across my throat, but I’ve been expecting it and I’m faster, falling sideways and swinging upward with my sword at the same time, hoping to either disarm or wound her.
To my surprise, though, ice shoots out from the tip of the blade, leaving a sheet of frost suspended in the air in front of me. Kiar’s eyes widen, but before she can recover, I slice through the air a couple more times, making a full ice wall between us, then I take off at a run.
Unfortunately, running in a root-filled tunnel is not the wisest choice. I trip and go sprawling, the lightning flashing only long enough for me to watch my sword go flying from my hand as the dirt rises to meet me, sharp ice arcing in every direction.
With a scream of frustration, Kiar plunges her knife into the wall behind me, but the ice only freezes over it, and she barely withdraws her hand in time to avoid it fusing to the ice as well.
Then she goes quiet, looking for an opening, her form blurry through the frost. I wrench my foot from the root, wincing as it throbs, and go quiet, too, waiting this time for the lightning to show me the path forward.
Because there aren’t just roots anymore; there are new, haphazard walls of ice, too.
And I don’t want to accidentally bump into one and end up with my foot frozen to the floor.
“Clever,” Kiar says dryly in the darkness, and I take that to mean she didn’t find a weakness in my fortification.
I exhale, only to tense again when I hear a rustling sound.
It seems like she’s rifling through her bag.
Why isn’t the lightning flashing anymore?
I get to my feet, wondering if I should risk trying to run again anyway.
“Only magic can affect other magic, right?” Kiar asks behind me. And my heart sinks. She must have some other magical weapon in her satchel. Maybe even something that will kill me on the spot.
I feel in front of me with my toe, only to hit something cold and fast-spreading. I withdraw quickly, cursing. Did I accidentally make myself a cage? Where’s the light?
The rustling stops. She seems to have found whatever she was looking for.
“Not the command I would have preferred to use right now, but it will probably do,” she mutters to herself.
Then she raises her voice, clearly speaking to me now.
“I told you I came out with something fun, didn’t I? Hopefully you will, too.”
The light finally flashes in time for me to see her make a sudden move with her hand behind the ice. And then something small and round, like a seed, bursts through the wall and hits me square in the forehead.
I falter in confusion, and through the hole in the ice, I catch the edge of her smile, just as the object hits my skin.
And continues right through it, cutting through skin, flesh, and bone as easily as it cut through the ice.
I reel back, expecting pain. Afraid that my head will burst open like the wall did.
But that’s not how it feels at all. It feels .
. . almost like my head is full of dirt, and the seed she threw is digging down into it and implanting itself.
Growing. I feel my mind being split by its roots, and my thoughts distorting around them.
I claw at my forehead in terror, but the skin there is already smooth, even as I feel the roots sprout and spread, invading my very mind.
“What is this?” I demand.
When the lightning blazes again, I see my eyes in the polished surface of her suspended knife, and the veins in the whites of my eyes have turned green.
They’re vines, stretching toward my irises.
I have a second to realize that this is what was wrong with Merod’s eyes when I first saw him.
Then suddenly I am possessed with one thought and one thought only, a command that has burrowed itself into my brain.
ENTER THE brOKEN CITADEL.
And immediately that’s all my body wants to do.
Even as I rage against the idea, I am singularly focused on getting to the Desert Realm, where the Broken Citadel lies.
Here, underground, there’s no way to determine which way is north, but the magic seems to know.
Against my will, I take a first step in that direction. And then another.
“So . . . you can control bodies,” I process aloud. “You can make them fight even if they don’t want to. That’s how you plan to get Mance’s people to go to battle for you. How you plan to get Mance to command them.”
I strain against my own muscles, trying to get myself to stop, but my legs keep moving and my hands even uncork a bottled explosion to take down the wall blocking my way.
Without my consent, they throw it, and the inky magic hovers in the air for a moment before bursting into fire.
Kiar cackles as the wall comes down, crumpling in the face of the hovering black flames.
And my traitorous body just walks right through them, in the direction of the Citadel, forcing me to duck and weave to avoid getting burned.
“That’s right,” Kiar says, picking my pockets as I walk, reclaiming the rest of the bottled explosions that I stole.
“Killing you would have been nice, but there’s a certain tragic poetry in making you a recruit in our new army.
Plus, as a bonus, this will tear Mancella apart.
And I find myself very interested in doing that right now. ”
Ignoring her words, I strain as hard as I can, veins popping in my neck, but my legs continue to amble forward.
I can move my arms a little, but when I try to grab onto a root to hold myself back, they lock up and won’t let me.
I can only use them if I’m not hindering the overall goal planted in my mind.
My only consolation in all this is that it will take me forever to walk to the Broken Citadel. Weeks, easily. Maybe I can get deliberately lost. If I do it right, I can delay this long enough for someone to catch up and restrain me. And that will give us time to find some kind of magical cure.
As if reading my mind, Kiar smiles. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I can get you a ride. You’ll be at the Citadel by morning.”