Chapter XVI #4
Still crouched at Crispus’s side, with the man soaked and flopping in his grasp like a wretched fish, Orden considered.
Even in the sea of red, he kept his wits about him, rather than becoming mindless with the force of it as he’d seen Carian do.
He could have Lucian ferret out the physician’s motivations after the killing was done, but he’d also wanted to take a measure of Ariana’s new serving woman.
Perhaps now he’d manage to avenge his queen and parse the nature of her wet nurse all at once.
Scrambling up, Orden dragged Crispus back along the bank and over to Fia.
“Make him kneel,” she said, and Orden did not have to force it—Crispus fell into the position of a supplicant.
“Please,” Crispus begged. “I claim sanctuary from you and your goddess. Let Raea offer me a haven and save me from a mad king.”
Fia regarded him for a moment, and then her eyes flickered to Orden’s. She reached out, her hand hovering over the crown of the physician’s sodden head.
“I want to know everything,” she said. “How you hurt Ari. How long you’ve been doing it. Why you chose to. Who set you the task. Everything, do you understand?”
“Sanctuary,” Crispus repeated. “Is the enemy of your enemy not a friend? Our queen abandoned your goddesses, offering them only insult.”
Fia shook her head in disapproval. She lowered her hand so that it brushed Crispus’s dripping hair. The movement was careful, intentional, an act of restraint, but at her touch, he began to bleed.
Orden watched in lurid fascination as blood trickled from Crispus’s eyes and ears, from his mouth and nose.
Blood beaded from each of his pores as well, until within moments he was a gory scarlet figure, this time in truth rather than through a trick of Orden’s vision.
Though he stayed on his knees, Crispus stiffened and spasmed, his face transformed by a rictus of pain.
There was an eerie, horrific element of transcendence in his expression, too, as if the pain brought him strange pleasure.
Fia bent at the waist and tilted the physician’s chin upward with one finger, until they were very close and he could not help but meet her eyes.
“Tell me,” she said.
Crispus’s breathing was ragged and heavy, and for a moment his lips parted. Then he shut his mouth tight and shook his head.
Fia took his chin between her finger and thumb and tightened her grip.
The beads of blood became rivulets, and where the physician’s fine clothes had been drenched with water, now they dripped gore.
A cry escaped Crispus, and Orden flushed, reflexively turning away.
It was not an outburst of agony but of release—the sort of sound a man made at the height of his passion, when he could no longer contain the sensations of his body but must give voice to them.
Removing her hand, Fia spoke again. “Tell me.”
Crispus blinked away a film of blood. He did not attempt to wipe his face, and a thin outline of crimson stained the grass around his knees.
“I have expensive habits,” he admitted. “A taste for games of chance, and fine things, and lovers who require gifts to keep them coming to my bed. And I have no ancestral lands, nor a lucrative trade to support those habits with.”
“I keep you well as court physician,” Orden said, but Crispus’s eyes were locked on Fia. It was as if he could see and hear no one besides her now.
“I was approached in secret,” Crispus went on, “by a messenger whose face and form I never see. I’m paid to tamper with the queen.
To keep her weak and prevent her from getting an heir.
I failed with the moon child, Celina—not all my efforts could shake the baby from her womb.
And I failed again with the prince, though his twin at least was stillborn.
I’m not to kill Ariana, though. Only to see she’s delicate and hampered by her own fragility. They pay me for this in Vesperin coin.”
A curse tore itself from Orden’s mouth, and his vengeful wrath was back in force. He made three purposeful strides toward the royal encampment, bent on issuing an avalanche of orders that would empty Honoria of all who could fight and rain fresh destruction upon Vesper.
Fia’s voice lashed out like a whip, calling him back. “Stop. Vesper’s emissaries aren’t fools. They wouldn’t send a faceless messenger, then pay in their own coin. The currency proves only that Vesper has no part in this.”
She touched Crispus one last time, a single finger beneath his chin. “Is that all?”
The physician nodded.
“Take him,” Fia offered, gesturing to Orden. “Wash him and keep him under guard until we reach the cloister. Then my Matria can offer him sanctuary or not, as she sees fit.”
Orden saw it in Fia’s eyes. She had no expectation that he would allow Crispus to live. For a moment, he thought of disappointing her. Of doing as she said and letting Honoria’s older power rule on the physician’s fate.
He was who he was, though. Once more, he dragged Crispus to the river.
“Time for your washing,” the king muttered, and he saw a moment of sick hope on Crispus’s face, that perhaps Fia’s will had prevailed.
This time, Orden was quick. He plunged Crispus’s head beneath the water, holding on until the man’s thrashing ceased, and then keeping him down an extra minute for good measure. When he pulled Crispus’s body back up, the man’s jaw lolled, slack and lifeless, his eyes a staring blank.
Fia watched as Orden hoisted the physician’s bulky corpse over one shoulder, the way another man might carry a slain deer.
“What you did to him,” Orden said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing before.”
The wet nurse shrugged. “It’s an old talent, from before the cloisters even.
The tale goes that the blooded touch was misused, for violence and domination, and so the Beloved Three gave us the cloisters and our blood prohibition to enable us to walk rightly before them.
To use the blooded touch is considered the basest thing a child of the goddesses can do, but followers of Raea are permitted to shed blood in order to heal. With Crispus gone, Ariana will heal.”
Orden shifted beneath the soaking burden of Crispus’s body. “Could you kill with that?”
“I already did. From the moment I used the touch on your physician, he was a dead man. If I hadn’t finished him quickly, by calling the rest of the blood from his veins, he’d still have died within a matter of days. It would have been slow and painful.”
Orden felt a pang of regret. After all the anguish and hardship Crispus had caused Ariana, it would have been fitting for him to suffer. Ah well. Life could be wasted fretting over what might have been. Hitching the corpse up higher on his shoulder, Orden turned for camp once more.
“My lord. As I have the opportunity to ask, I would like to know why. Why are you pursuing this new war with Caervallion?” Fia’s voice called him back, and when he turned, she showed no shame over her impertinence in questioning Honoria’s sovereign.
“It is unraveling every alliance you have worked so hard to forge, and it will bring great hardship to Honoria, as well as heartbreak to your queen. I may not approve of you, or of your people, but you do not strike me as a man who would relish any of those ends. So why? What possible purpose can this conflict serve?”
Orden took in a breath once more, to fortify himself against the surge of red that was sure to rise up at the wet nurse’s glaring disrespect.
But it never came. With the twin weights of Crispus’s body and her question bearing down on him, he found he could not answer truthfully, but neither could he lie.
“It is necessary,” Orden ground out.
He carried on, and this time the nurse did not stop him.
As Orden went, an idea began to take shape.
He knew something about Fia now—something she’d be loath to have others discover.
And she seemed truly devoted to Ariana, willing to risk religious censure for her queen.
She’d make a useful playing piece, Orden thought, and do a creditable job as Matria.
The woman was halfway to an Inver already.
Let her have a cloister, the companionship of the queen, and free rein to vent that latent viciousness, and she could be the pathway to the new Honoria he desired.
Yes. If Ari would flourish with a chance to stand beneath the light of the Beloved Three again, how much brighter would she shine with a friend as Raea’s Matria?
And Fia, given her loyalty to Ariana, would deny the Invers nothing if it was asked on behalf of their queen.
It was all so tidy, so perfect an arrangement, that Orden felt as if he’d been struck by inspiration from the very gods.
The din of their temporary encampment reached him before he emerged onto the road. As Orden came into view with Crispus over his shoulder, gasps rose up and Gaius the guard captain hurried to him.
“My lord! Was there trouble in the woods, or some accident?”
“Neither.” Orden dropped Crispus’s body carelessly, letting it sprawl in the center of the roadway. “I felt like doing a little hunting. The game was would-be assassins.”
Gaius’s brows shot up, in surprise and consternation. “I ought to have had men follow you when you left camp, my lord. Whatever punishment you decide—”
Orden raised a hand to silence him. “Peace, Gaius. I was never in danger. It was my queen that this dog threatened.”