Chapter 15
Liana
Liana jumped over the wall in the back alley.
The villa’s garden was a jungle of weeds swallowing the few remaining fig trees.
The brambles tore at her dress and scratched her skin, and she bitterly regretted leaving her riding boots and trousers at the palace.
The nettles burned her as she pushed them out of her path, and sharp, hungry branches grabbed at her hair as she ducked to slip beneath them.
No human hand had touched this wilderness in years.
It had grown and spread in the perfectly impersonal malevolence of the natural world which only cared for light and food and survival.
The lock to the back door of the villa was too rusted for picking, but a narrow, unglazed window beside the door had shutters with a latch that was easy to lift.
Liana slipped into a chamber filled with cobwebs and dust. The darkness swallowed her like a thick, cold sludge, wrapping itself around her limbs, trapping her in its freezing embrace.
Holding her breath, sliding like a fox through a village, she searched the ground floor. A feeling of unease raised the hairs on the back of her neck: the hostile divine magic urging her to flee, to leave this cursed place behind.
The kitchen, the pantry, the storage rooms were all empty, void of any signs of life. In the entrance hall, there were footprints in the dust, leading upstairs. Liana followed them, carefully balancing her weight on each wooden stair to avoid creaks.
Upstairs, a pale, milky light trickled in through the shutters, seemingly unconnected to the bright sunshine outside. Liana paused, listening to the sounds of the house. Nothing moved.
The first door she opened led into a bedroom where the narrow bed had a canopy of cobwebs, and a long-dead pigeon, which must have entered through some hole, lay on the desk. The dust on the floor was undisturbed so she moved on.
The second door opened into a dim room with a clean floor.
It was sparsely furnished: a narrow bed, a writing desk, a chair, a chest of clothes.
A pungent scent of herbs assaulted Liana’s nose, and she noticed another, smaller chest beside the bed.
It was open, and filled with satchels and vials.
As Liana stepped closer, she noticed a heap of dark clothes at the foot of the bed and a curved blade in a leather scabbard.
She knelt down to investigate. The clothes were spattered with blood and the blade was a Seragian yatagan, the same weapon the attackers had wielded. It was the proof she was looking for.
An arm wrapped itself around her throat and an astringent odor filled her nostrils as a rag covered her nose and mouth.
She held her breath instinctively. Someone pulled her backwards, throwing her off balance, making her flail her arms in vain, looking for a hold.
Forced to choose between breathing and suffocating, she gulped in air though the fabric.
A strong, bitter smell engulfed her in its dizzying cloud.
Her vision darkened, narrowing to a white spot on the wall, while the arm tightened around her throat, crushing her windpipe.
Then Liana’s legs found their footing and she pushed backwards, slamming into the nearest wall.
Her assailant yelped and released their grip just enough for Liana to get a lungful of fresh air.
Before they had the time to tighten it again, Liana reached backwards, grabbed their arms, and threw them over her head.
As the body hit the floor, Liana recognized the woman Melia had talked to in the garden.
She turned as soon as she hit the floorboards and grabbed Liana’s ankle, pulling her forward.
Liana lost balance, still dizzy from the vapors, but as she fell, she delivered a kick to the side of Ferisa’s head with her other leg.
The woman rolled towards the heap of dark clothes—and the blade.
Liana threw herself in her path and they both grabbed for the yatagan.
As Liana reached for the hilt, Ferisa’s elbow connected with her jaw.
Pain exploded in Liana’s head, blinding her for long enough for Ferisa to snatch the weapon and roll away from her.
In a heartbeat, they were both up again, staring at each other from opposite parts of the small room.
Ferisa’s eyes, black like two jet beads, shone with arrowfoil frenzy. Liana recognized its bitter odor, she’d seen Seragians use it in the war—it gave them enhanced speed and focus for a while, but burned more energy than the body could produce, turning its regular users to withered husks.
Ferisa didn’t look like she lacked energy, though. She was fast, strong, and surprisingly quiet when she moved. It occurred to Liana that she should have come prepared for more than snooping around.
“It’s you again.” Ferisa crammed the opiate-soaked rag in her pocket, drew the blade, and threw the scabbard behind her. “You fight too well for a common whore. Who sent you?”
Never taking her eyes off Liana, Ferisa locked the door and slipped the key into her pocket; she could afford a short interrogation now.
Liana spat out the blood that had filled her mouth.
She’d cut her cheek when Ferisa elbowed her.
Her head swam, either from the kick or from that blasted rag.
One quick scan of the room told her there were no other weapons.
Ferisa was no ordinary opponent. Coils of darkness gathered around her in a slow spiral dance, the mark of the goddess Liana wanted to avoid at all costs. She didn’t have to ask Ferisa who had sent her—she knew.
“Do priests now meddle in politics?” Liana asked. “Do you serve your goddess or Roderi of Elmar?”
Ferisa blinked in surprise.
“But she’s not a murder goddess, nor a goddess of war,” Liana continued. “This is not a divine mission you’re on, but a purely human revenge spree for insults real and imagined.” It was a wild guess, but it hit the mark.
“You know nothing about my purpose,” the priestess said.
“That may be true, but I know everything about the consequences of what you’re about to do.” Liana spat out more blood. “You think peace is a cowardly solution? You think Elmar has suffered too much to give up so easily? You want the rest of the kingdom to taste blood?”
“Who are you?” Ferisa growled.
“I’m someone who’s seen the war you’re about to start. The kingdom will bleed, yes, but Elmar will lose everything.” Liana’s words were slow and deliberate. “You will all die.”
Ferisa shot her an unpleasant smile. “Do you think I care about dying?”
“I know you don’t,” Liana said. “But you’re irrelevant, a tool too dumb to see how it’s being used. Nobody cares if you live or die.”
Ferisa bared her teeth at her. “If you tell me who sent you, I promise to kill you quickly.”
“The gods sent me,” Liana said in a flash of perfect clarity. “And I’m going to stop the Black Lord.”
The time for banter and bravado was over.
Liana read Ferisa’s intention a moment before the priestess lunged at her, and she jumped back, avoiding the blade.
Liana was fast, but in this small, locked room, she was barely fast enough to avoid getting killed.
No matter how many times she dodged the blade, she had no chance of stopping Ferisa with her bare hands, not while the priestess’s eyes glimmered with arrowfoil and Liana’s head was all muddled with poison.
Her heel bumped into something hard, almost throwing her off balance once again. She risked a glance behind her. It was a small medicine chest. She bent down, avoiding another slash, and grabbed it. The precious glass vials clinked when she shook it.
“Don’t touch that!” Ferisa cried.
“You want it?” Liana threw the chest at Ferisa, its contents spilling out and falling on the floor, where they burst like overripe fruit. The priestess screamed. Liana turned, pushed the shutters open with her shoulder, and jumped through the window.
She landed in a writhing mass of brambles. The fall kicked the air out of her and the thorny tendrils grabbed her limbs, cutting her clothes and skin.
Above her, Ferisa looked through the window, her face twisted in rage. “I’m coming to get you,” she said.
Liana writhed in panic, a rat entangled in oakum.
The more she struggled, the tighter the shrub held her, piercing her flesh with its long thorns.
A death by a thousand cuts, an agony that was the sum of all the smaller pains assaulting her twitching body.
Like a trapped animal, she panicked, hurting herself.
Only when she heard the back door open did she finally pause, cursing herself. She was a forest creature, she knew how to get out of a thicket.
“Where are you?” Ferisa called, a note of amusement ringing in her voice.
Holding her breath, Liana made herself small and lithe, a young lynx prowling through the underbrush.
Lightly, she slipped out of the thorny embrace.
The shrubs were reluctant to let her go, leaving long, deep scratches on her arms and legs.
She winced in pain, but kept moving towards the wall, quiet and invisible.
Yet, the faster she crawled, the further away the wall became.
Like in a bad dream, moving was an illusion.
A swish of the blade splitting the air warned her to duck. Not fast enough: The sharp steel bit into her upper arm.
“Do you think you can hide from me in my own garden?”
Liana rolled over and delivered a savage kick to Ferisa’s knee.
The priestess yelped, losing balance, swinging at Liana and missing her chest by a hair’s breadth.
Blood poured down Liana’s arm. She cursed, retreating through the shrubs, which suddenly seemed as tall as a maze, blocking her path to the wall. No garden was so large among the crowded houses of Abia.
She was being stupid, thrashing around in panic where she should have been cunning. She blinked quickly, and when that didn’t help, she licked the tips of her fingers and rubbed her eyes.
Now she could see.