36. Thirty-Six
thirty-six
Erqis and Qavor left the room before the aristocrats could follow them, Neira briskly on their heels.
A long trail of glistening blood led from the main doors to the middle of the throne hall, where a handful of soldiers were clustered around a bundle on the floor. Neira slowed her steps as the buzz of impending danger thrummed through the room, but no one but her seemed to feel it.
Emra, the female soldier who had kept her company during those long days of marching through Brightmere, stepped away from the group to meet her. "Your Majesty."
On your guard . The silken whisper rasped against the back of her mind.
Neira took a deep breath. The smell of blood cloyed thick in the air. "What happened?"
"There was another attack, my Queen." Emra bowed her head, looking contrite.
"Who?" Her entire being felt numb. The high of the victory she had just won against the nobility – gone, evaporated in an instant.
While she had sat there, gloating, the murderer had taken another victim.
Emra's eyes flickered towards the nobles slowly filtering into the hall. "Your Majesty…" She curled her hand around Neira's elbow to pull her away, likely for a private word, but Neira immediately bristled against the too familiar touch.
"Who is it, Emra? Tell me. That is an order." She pulled away and turned to face Emra fully.
As she watched the soldier, her gaze roamed. There was blood splattered on the front of her dark uniform, against the underside of her jaw. A wildness to her eyes, a disorientation of sorts, as if Emra wasn't quite sure what she was supposed to be doing, supposed to be saying.
Emra lifted a hand, scratching her jaw with fingers that had blood congealing in dark half-moons under her nails, something like a dark burn mark on her wrist where the cuff slid back.
"The young Lord Carr," she murmured, but not quietly enough.
Lady Carr pushed her way through the ranks of soldiers and folded in half above the bloody bundle, releasing a wail that shook Neira to the core, so full of pain and anguish it rattled her bones.
Neira shoved away Emra’s grasp and approached. The young Lord Carr was a skinny boy of perhaps fourteen, bearing a striking resemblance to his grandmother. His fine doublet was drenched in blood, velvet and flesh alike ripped open in a wound Neira now recognised. Her eyes met Erqis', who looked as sombre as she had never seen him.
"You did this," Lady Carr sobbed, her voice cracking. She had gathered her grandson to her bosom, heedless of the blood, rocking him like she must have done when he was just an infant. "You threatened us and now… You did this!"
"I didn't." Neira sank to her knees beside her. "I swear to you, I did not." Despite the ragged wound in his chest, the boy's throat was merely grazed. Hope bloomed. "But perhaps I can find out who did."
"Neira." Erqis was watching her intently when she looked up. "Are you sure about this?"
His implications were clear; this could end incredibly messy. She would have to act immediately, and in front of all the heads of the noble houses. What if she couldn’t do it? And what if she could ? What if corpses could lie, and the boy implicated her for some reason?
There were so many possibilities, but Neira only saw one path forward.
"We have to know."
Her magic responded to her immediately, as if her ordeal in the temple had permanently removed the stopper from the well of it. At this moment, Neira felt no hesitation, no doubt. She wreathed her hand in those ghostly tendrils and rested it over the young lord's forehead – and as she caught the spark of him and pulled it back, she willed him to not feel any pain when he came back into his body. If the boy had begun screaming like the ambassador had – she didn't think she would be able to take it.
Intent, Erqis had told her. Unlike the man from Woodhaven, she had not wanted her cat to suffer, nor the servant girl.
Relief flooded through her when the young lord when he opened his eyes without any sign of pain. That familiar, eerie glow twisted in his eyes. He regarded his grandmother without emotion, even as she grasped his hand and brought it to her face, still sobbing, and then turned his serene gaze on Neira.
The queen smiled down at him, tremulous as it felt. "Who attacked you?"
"No name." The breath he had taken to speak that word had rattled in lungs half-filled with blood, and his voice didn't sound like the voice of a boy his age. It lacked all inflection, all tone. All emotion.
Her father had been able to keep an entire court going as if they all had been living beings with thoughts and feelings. Neira wondered if one day she would as well. The musing was accompanied by another touch of those silken claws against the back of her mind, with a touch of desperation that was new. She shook it off, focused on the boy again.
"You don't know the name? Describe them."
Another rattling breath. Across from her, she saw Qavor wince as his Farn nature struggled with the taint of her corrupted magic. And then the flat voice spoke again.
"Tall. Soldier. A cloak…" The gleaming eyes moved, slowly roving over the soldiers clustered around them. "Scar."
Neira felt something in her chest begin to plummet, as though the core of her being had realised something her conscious mind had not yet fully grasped.
Many warriors bore scars.
"Her."
Neira's gaze followed the fixed stare; among the group of shoulders, one in particular was the bloodiest of them all.
One who wore a cloak, pushed back over her broad shoulders. One whose sleeves didn't quite reach her wrists, exposing not burns but dark veins, brands of decay from Neira’s attempts to defend herself that night in Iphila’s temple.
One who stared at Neira now with an odd stillness despite having just been accused of murder.
"Qavor," Neira’s voice was as toneless as the dead boy’s, but her husband's huntsman needed no prompting. He was behind Emra in a heartbeat, twisting her arm behind her back.
Emra did not fight back. She did not protest her innocence, did not struggle for her freedom. She merely went to her knees, still staring at nothing, no one, but Neira.
The other guards pointed their blades at the accused, and Erqis opened his mouth to say something, flames already flickering at his fingertips. Neira shook her head and took a deep breath. One task at a time, even if Emra’s silence, her obedience, was somehow even more terrifying than if she had fought.
"Lady Carr, I have to send your grandson back."
"No," the woman rasped, scrabbling at her sleeve. "Please. Your Majesty, please…"
"This is not life." Although she hated it, Neira met the woman’s eyes – there was nothing left of the assertive, confident head of House Carr who had defied her just moments ago. This was nothing but an old woman grieving her grandchild. "He deserves to have his soul descend."
She could feel the connection she had with the boy, felt his spark respond to her. This wasn't like it had been in the temple, when the sudden attack had abruptly severed her connection with the afterlife’s cradle. As long as Neira held this bond, she could still send him back.
Lady Carr searched her face for any trace of mercy, of relenting. Neira could not allow herself to sow false hope here. She looked down at the boy who was still regarding her serenely, stroked her thumb over his brow.
"Sleep," she told him, more for the benefit of his grandmother than his. Slowly, gently, she loosened her grasp. The spark drifted away, back into the shadowed hands of the gods, where it would be ushered into the next state of existence.
The false life fled from the body and with it, Neira felt cold. Gods, she felt cold. Cold and numb, the high of the meeting ebbing away and leaving leaden exhaustion in its wake.
Erqis offered his hand, something she gladly accepted to rise. Her skirts felt damp and heavy where she had knelt in the blood.
She had been betrayed.
The feeling that elicited was far too familiar. Then, just like now, there had been only one question she could think of.
“Why?”
Emra smiled at her. "It needs to feed."
"What?"
"Feed. It needs."
Neira’s stomach curdled. Not even Erqis’ presence soothed her, not even when he tucked her into his side, the line of his body tense.
"What needs to feed?"
"Life. Feed – life. Needs."
Neira caught Erqis' concerned look, watched him share the same with Qavor, who stood as still as a statue, dread crawling over his face.
The very same dread was trickling up Neira’s spine. There was something very clearly wrong with Emra. A possession, an influence – but Neira had just roused a life and taken it again, in front of countless witnesses, and the longer Emra stammered about something having to be fed life, the quicker suspicions would fall on the queen herself.
"Qavor, let her go. Step back."
“Your Majesty-”
“Now.”
As loyal as Qavor was, that very same loyalty made the huntsman happy to disobey orders he thought would lead to the direct harm of his king – and, now, of his queen. Neira thought, at first, that he would flat out refuse. Erqis, beside her, was already telling Qavor to belay the order.
To her surprise, it was her command that Qavor ultimately obeyed. He released Emra, drawing his blade and resting it against her throat, should she make any sudden moves.
But Emra merely gazed up at her from where she knelt, her eyes glazed over, awaiting her judgment. "Emra," Neira’s voice was quiet, but it carried in the throne hall. "You have been accused of the murder of several people in our employ – Ira, their names?"
The young officiar stepped forward, clearing his throat quietly as he opened his tome again. "Tamsin Worren, who worked as a laundress; Otan Prosk, an apprentice officiar." The young man swallowed thickly, his grimace a mere twinge on his face, all the emotion he allowed himself. "And Nellius Carr, heir to the Carr title."
A thin wail rose again from behind them.
Emra seemed to have not heard the accusations – or didn't care.
"You are also accused of attacking me four nights ago in the temple of Iphila, Voice in the Gloaming, where I prayed for the souls of the deceased,” Neira continued. It was not entirely true, but no one else needed to know the truth. She waited for a beat, but still there was no reaction. "Do you deny it?"
"Life. Feed. Death. Feed ."
The queen swallowed around the knot in her throat. Emra had been almost a friend at one time, a kind presence aiding her during the most difficult time of her life. Someone she would have liked to meet again, maybe hire into her own employ. A trusted presence. Someone she could have relied on for years to come, similar to how Erqis relied on Qavor. But there was nothing left of that kind woman now.
Whatever had taken Emra had taken all of her.
"I sentence you to death for your crimes."
She could smell the first smokey traces of Erqis fuelling his flames, but this was something she had to do herself. Neira reached out and placed her hand across Emra's eyes. Her magic flowed from her, obeying her unspoken intention, greedily seeking out the spark within the soldier – although it was less a spark, when she found it, and more a gleam. Emra was still alive, after all. But her tendrils wrapped around it regardless, tighter and tighter, until her life was compressed into the tiny kernel Neira had come to recognise.
This time, she did not send it into the dark, the way she had the young Carr’s.
Black veins burst under Neira's fingers, travelling from Emra's eyes to the sides of her face, down a throat working silently around a scream that wouldn't rise.
Emra tensed, then fell still.
And then rose, her movements jerky and wooden.
In the absolute, horrified silence of the throne hall, Neira gazed up at her creation, hoping she had done the right thing.