4 Horror
It boded ill for a land when its officials had to resort to vigilantism to see justice done.
Sarai dismounted on a lone stretch of road in Aelius’s Quarter, squinting at the gated compound ahead.
Midnight draped Edessa in an indulgent quiet.
A brisk wind ferried smoke from the hearths of nearby farms and the crisp scent of crushed pine needles.
Despite being close to the edge of the capital, the road was well-paved cobblestone not a dirt ribbon.
Aelius’s taxes at work. No wonder his people vaunt him as a Saint after such excellent treatment.
Snow crunched under her boots as she steered her mare into the tree line. A familiar black stallion tethered to a pine whickered upon sighting her. Anchoring her mount to Kadra’s, she squinted at a hilltop ahead, to the left of where the road sloped up.
Ten aurei says he’ll be surveying the horreum from there.
Excitement lent her steps a spring. How many weeks had it been since they’d last had a moment alone? She’d thank the Grains Guild for giving them a few hours together if the hav?d assholes weren’t artificially manufacturing a grain shortage.
Conifers creaked as she walked up the hill.
The compound on the other side came into view.
Enormous and two-stories high, the main building was raised on pillars to keep grain away from the damp when stormfall inevitably came.
Ramps slanted up to the main doors, the grounds circled by the high wooden gates that she’d glimpsed from the road.
Unremarkable to passersby but unmistakable when viewed from above—the Grains Guild’s secret horreum, a warehouse and granary.
Though it did seem rather empty. A few spires of smoke coiled above dying braziers, and the score of unyoked wagons on the grounds were as barren as they were.
She wouldn’t begrudge an easy victory. Vigilantism was dangerous these days, especially in Aelius’s Quarter.
And after Kadra’s announcement at the graduation last night.
Gods, he was magnificent. Radiating ice and power. Entirely in control of the chaos, having anticipated every argument down to buying the graduates’ approval.
“Ruin’s breath, that was entirely mad. Yet, I’ve never felt more hopeful about the state of the country,” Anek had murmured dazedly afterward. “Still don’t see the appeal, but he’s devoted to you.”
The worries that had plagued her at the chapel dissipated like spun sugar. She suppressed a giddy laugh, then stilled at the dark figure standing at the top of the hill. Her pulse quickened.
Robed in his customary black with a baldric running crosswise over his shoulders, Kadra’s profile was unmistakable.
A god of the night surveying his prey. Breath left her, replaced by what the wind carried of him—oranges, parchment, smoked wine, and something crisp, uniquely him, that set her aflame.
What a strange thing to yearn for someone when he was steps away.
To want to dangle her feet over the edge of the abyss and ask for it to swallow her.
The moons lovingly lit him when he turned. “Sarai.”
Gods, his voice was so beautiful. She’d missed feeling it clamp around her heart. “I can never take you by surprise.”
The cruel slash of his mouth curved in a smile that always made her heart stutter. He held out a palm, and the world quieted, coalesced into a single, powerful truth when she took it. Home.
Tipping her chin, he searched her eyes, warmth heating his gaze. “I wouldn’t say that. You threw yourself to the wolves at the Hearing.”
Longing thudded through her limbs as she wove her fingers with his. “I couldn’t feed them anyone else.”
A low sigh brushed her cheek. “I didn’t realize it until you began.”
“Look at that, I’ve surprised the mighty Kadra.” She squeezed his hand. “You did too.”
“I try not to be entirely predictable.” He slipped a hand around the back of her neck, a thumb making a hungry foray across her cheek. All at once, she was wordless. Lightning-struck, and so hyperaware that she could feel every whorl on his fingers.
“Thank you for last night.” The words felt wholly inadequate. “This’ll change so much! Though I fear for your coffers.”
“I’m wealthy,” he said with wry amusement. “But, my Sarai, for the sake of my much-weakened sanity, warn me the next time you plan on eviscerating a religious institution?”
“You and Cassandane have been holding the country together by your teeth.” I felt like a burden. “I couldn’t impose.”
“You’re never an imposition.” She flushed when he brought her wrist to his mouth to press a kiss over her veins. A rare public display of affection from a man who was extremely circumspect about whom he allowed to see him without his mask of cool formality.
“Understood?”
“Yes.” She smiled, knowing he saw the same weariness in her that she did in him. But rest would have to come later. She tilted her head toward the horreum. “I met with Guildmaster Ioratius weeks earlier, and he swore up and down that this year’s yield of grain was abysmal. How did you find this?”
“Gaius did.” Kadra followed her gaze. “It’s a trap.”
“What?”
“Nothing has stirred beyond that fence in the last half hour.” He contemplated the unmanned wooden gates into the horreum. “Our arrival was anticipated.”
“I knew it was too much to hope that we caught them off-guard,” she sighed. “By the Saints and Wretched, all this grain piled here while the north begs—” She paused at the grim set of Kadra’s features.
The callused hand curled around hers thrummed with tension, the divot in his brow deepening the longer he examined the compound.
Apprehension bubbled in her chest when his eyes altered, an unearthly cold brewing within.
There’s that look again. As though he had penetrated deep into corners that she couldn’t see and found something almost… frightening.
“Kadra?” she whispered, and he blinked—as close to a jolt as one would ever get from him—turning to her with unflinching intensity. She wet her lips. “What is it?”
He shook his head with a faint smile, another avoidance of the same question. “Be careful, yes?”
“Always.” Pulling out the pin in her armilla, she pricked her thumb and pressed the blood into beshaz to tear a few ligaments in the event of battle.
He strode down the hill to the wooden gates and raised a hand. She waited for lighting to collapse the wood to ash as he usually did during their bouts of vigilantism. But his hand dropped. The same eerie expression tightened his face before he brought both palms to the gates and pushed.
They swung open.
Her breath fogged out in a rush. Something’s wrong. Trap or otherwise, the Guild would never leave the place unlocked. Catching Kadra’s gaze, she tilted her head left. He nodded and veered right.
One step, another. Nothing stirred within the dark arches of the horreum’s three entrances. The quiet that draped the grounds didn’t belong to winter, devoid of its windy whistles and creaky boughs. Only a half-dead brazier sputtered at their invasion.
Where is everyone? The hairs on the back of her neck rose to full mast when no Guildspeople ran out, weapons aloft.
Did something drive them away?
“Empty?” she mouthed to Kadra, who gave the barest shake of his head, indicating the footprints in the snowy dirt, cased in half-frozen puddles from a bout of stormfall hours earlier.
All leading in. None going out.
Realization lanced through her along with a bolt of fear. If no one had left and no one was outside, then that only left…within.
Kadra’s features grew harder. Ice threaded through his eyes as they entered the granary.
With the flick of a finger, he lit the oil lamps in one sconce then another, unveiling a labyrinth of brick storerooms, piled high with sacks of maize, wheat, barley, even rice—near impossible to grow in Ur Dinyé’s cracked soil.
Yet, underneath the earthy scents lay something sour, cloying.
Dread gripped her tighter with their every echoing step and the lack of challenge that met them. Ahead, the hallway forked in two, the paths forming a pair of dark eyes daring them to approach.
Kadra’s steps slowed. Her heart stuck in her throat at the stillness that came over his taut features, his pupils blooming large as he stared at the left path.
What do you see? she wanted to plead. Do you say nothing because I can’t help?
“I’ll take this one,” she whispered instead.
He had barely begun to turn to her with mild surprise when she grabbed the closest oil lamp and strode into the dark, her heart beating out of her chest. Another step, three more, and her head whipped up at a familiar stench threading the air.
Blood.
She ran. Gooseflesh swept her skin as she sped through room after room, uncaring that she was dripping lamp oil in her haste because something had happened here. And it had been far worse than a nation’s worth of stolen grain.
Turning into a hallway, she recoiled. The oil lamp slipped from her shaking hands to fragment on the tile, fire licking at the spilled oil and spreading in a pool. Bile crawled up her throat at what it illuminated.
Blood undulated on the floor in thick ripples, only a tiled step stopping it from flooding the horreum. Within that red sea stood contorted bodies in the Grains Guild’s livery, piled against each other like rats who’d been petrified in the act of fleeing a ship.
She had seen Death’s work before, but this had been no gentle going into the afterlife.
Jaws agape, eyes bulging, the Guildspeople lay frozen in a horrible rictus of pain.
They formed a blockade in the hallway, outstretched limbs still desperately clawing for salvation from gods that had taken them anyway. Gray already mottled their skin.
What monstrous act was this?