CHAPTER 32 #3
“She thinks she has the second prince, but everyone knows that man grows bored with women after a week. She doesn’t even practice the Three Arts.
She doesn’t sing, she doesn’t dance. All she has is her body, wrecked by childbirth.
Her breasts droop, her stomach has scars, the color of her flower is no longer a fresh pink. ”
You evil harpy.
“Inhan will be done with her in a fortnight, and then the wrath of Hreban will come full force. He does not forgive. The Garden cannot stand against him.”
Hade’s face betrayed no emotion.
“When that time comes, we will have only two choices. We can send her to Hreban and hope he still wants her, or we can deliver her corpse. If she stays here, she will doom us. Would it not be better to let her go? I can take her place. I am younger and more skilled. I’ve kept my body pristine.
Highborn lords fight each other for the privilege of spending half an hour in my company.
I can do so much better than she can. You must see it.
If the survival of the Garden matters to you, you must make the right choice. ”
“Gag her,” Hade said.
A pulse of red tore from the mage. It burst against Arale and jerked her up on her toes, snapping her into a rigid, tortured pose. She must’ve tried to move and been unable to, because nobody could stand on their toes like that without pointe shoes.
“The Garden thanks you for your gracious assistance,” Galiene told me and glanced at the guards. “Show our guests to the East Room. Ciste will be with you shortly.”
It was time for my exit. I turned and followed the guards out, Solentine and Everard in tow.
“May I have her?” the mage asked behind me. “They are hungry.”
“You may,” Galiene said.
As we stepped out of the room, the guards shut the door behind us, but before it closed, I caught a flash of bright gold spiraling out of the mage’s hands. It looked like a swarm of glowing butterflies. As they streamed toward Arale, the look in her eyes was pure terror.
The East Room was lovely. The three of us sat at a large table, enjoying the view of the hill from a large window. Arale’s panicked eyes kept popping up out of my memory, and my mouth tasted like ash. I really wanted to get out of here.
The door swung open and Ciste came inside and sat at our table. He looked about as happy to be here as I was.
“Thank you for agreeing to meet us,” I said.
No response.
I pushed the contract toward him. “Can you tell us if there is a spell on this contract?”
He passed his hand over it and stared at the paper like it was a snake about to bite him. “Burn it.”
What?
“What is it?” Everard asked.
“It is lugur campur,” he said.
“A life chain?” I asked.
Ciste narrowed his eyes. “You speak Sareso.”
Apparently I did. Sareso was the language of magic. That opened all sorts of possibilities, but right now I needed to concentrate on the contract.
“What does ‘life chain’ mean?” I asked.
“When you sign this contract and seal it with your blood, you will be bound to it. If the contract is destroyed, it will kill you.”
Oh my god.
“This a vile thing born of the Crimson Usurper and his death mages,” Ciste said. “It is made with blood and suffering, and it’s been outlawed for three hundred years.”
Three hundred forty years ago, a usurper mage claimed the throne of the Crimson Empire and unleashed a cult of his death mages on the continent.
He reigned for almost three decades, bringing war, slavery, and mass sacrifices everywhere he went until he invaded Rellas, and his legions fell before the meat grinder of Rellasian knights.
In the final battle, Romel Savaric sang his way through the Usurper’s sorcery and personally cut off the dictator’s head.
The Crimson Empire recoiled, Rellas gained a new ruling dynasty, and owning human beings was outlawed in both countries, which made it illegal on the majority of the continent.
The mage stared at us, his dark eyes unreadable. “Should you be found with it, you will be stripped of your name, your lands will be forfeit, and you will be exiled.”
The fractured pieces of an idea that had been floating in my head snapped together.
“What if someone has more than one?” I asked.
“Death.”
Perfect.
This could work. It was a reckless plan that hinged on me being able to read Sareso correctly, and that was a massive, huge if. If I failed . . . It didn’t matter. I had to succeed because we were out of options.
“Last question,” I said. “Why does it push me away when I try to touch it?”
“You have too much magic. It seeks to protect you from harm, so it warns you not to hurt yourself.”
“Thank you,” I said.
The mage rose and walked away without another word.
Everard and Solentine got up at the same time.
“We’re leaving,” Everard said under his breath.
“The sooner, the better,” Solentine muttered.
Three minutes later we were in the carriage, rolling away from the Garden plaza.
Solentine pulled the coif off his face. “Is there no low Hreban won’t sink to?”
“Apparently not,” Everard said.
“I have to go to the harbor,” I said.
The two of them turned to me.
“Hreban’s grandfather was an evil, hard son of a bitch, and he had high hopes for his grandson.
Ulmar grew up by his desk, and from the time he was a toddler, Ulmar saw people fawn, bow, and scrape before his grandfather, while their hearts brimmed with contempt and hate.
Ulmar doesn’t trust people. He trusts signatures.
He is compulsive about putting things in writing, because his grandfather taught him that people lie, but once you have their signature, you have them in your grasp. ”
I pointed at the contract. “This is irresistible to him. A foolproof way to ensure that he isn’t betrayed.
These contracts can’t be easy to get, and they don’t come cheap.
The mercenaries on Otrade’s crew wouldn’t have lived long anyway and if they were caught, even if they implicated Hreban, their word doesn’t matter without proof. ”
“And yet he wasted a contract on Tillmar,” Everard said.
“He can’t help himself,” I said. “Knowing that he holds the power over their lives in his hand and he can snuff them out at will keeps him warm at night. This is what he lives for. Silveren would never sign one of these, but . . .”
“The Butcher might have,” Solentine said. “His magical talent was minor. Even if he felt the pressure of the spell, he wouldn’t know what he was signing.”
“So there’s a contract out there that has Hreban’s name, the Butcher’s, and the Sun Margrave’s,” I said.
“If this is exposed, nothing will save Hreban,” Everard said. “Sauven is desperate to reinforce the support for his bloodline. His dynasty was founded on killing an enslaver. Sauven will not miss the opportunity to do the same.”
“And he will make it as public as possible,” Solentine agreed. “Especially since Colart Jenicor is the target. It will be the loudest trial since they convicted Ralinbor’s wife.”
I faced Everard. “This is it. This is how we stop him. We expose this, and the whole of Rellas will rise to bring him down.”
“But to do that, we need the contracts,” Everard said.
“Hreban would never keep these contracts at his house. Too much risk,” Solentine said.
“We don’t have to look for them. I know where they are. But getting to them will be difficult, which is why I need to go to the harbor.”
“Where in the harbor?” Everard asked.
“The Ribs Bazaar.”
“I will take you,” Solentine promised. “We are dropping you off at the house, Ramond. And this time, for the love of all that is holy, stay put. If you are discovered and she is caught with you, there will be Void to pay.”
The largest aquatic animal species on Earth was the blue whale, one hundred feet long and roughly four hundred thousand pounds.
I remembered those useless facts because when I was seven years old, our teacher told us that a blue whale was as long as three school buses put together.
The idea that any animal could be that large had exploded my baby brain.
The largest aquatic animal in the West Ocean, on the coast of which Kair Toren was located, hadn’t been determined because the ocean was deep and liked to keep its secrets.
However, this was a world of monsters, and one day, decades ago, one of those monsters had died and washed ashore at the poor section of the Kair Toren wharf during a terrible storm.
The monstrous creature was too large and too heavy to move, so the city took it apart where it fell.
The fishmongers had carved off its flesh and harvested everything they could use: the scales, the protective spines, and some of the innards.
The Chamber of Works claimed the head and carted it off to be displayed at Eagle Roost. The Mage Tower sent its mages for the monster’s tail and the rest of its insides, which were delivered to the Tower for research and use in protective talismans.
When Kair Toren was done, only the creature’s ribs and spine remained.
Over the years, sun, wind, and rain stripped and bleached the skeleton. Eventually, a market sprouted inside of the rib cage. Sail canvas was strung on top of the bones, rugs were brought in for the vendors to sell their wares, little stalls sprang up all around it, and the Ribs Bazaar was born.
The bazaar quickly became Kair Toren’s version of a tourist trap and for good reason. I was looking at it now, and it was at least two hundred thirty feet long and thirty feet tall. The biggest blue whale in our world would be this monster’s newborn.
I walked into the front entrance of the bazaar, where the giant vertebrae sticking out above my head hinted at the remnants of a neck.
Rows of vendors sat on rugs along the walls, offering baubles, cheap jewelry, talismans, phony remedies, shells, scrimshaw, weird sea creatures encased in glass and resin, and other useless oddities. In other words, tourist junk.