The King's Blood Read online

  Marcus ran his fingers through the beard that had grown during his captivity. His skin was crawling, but he kept his voice steady.

  “This is the thing you were talking about. The evil that got loose in the world. It’s you?”

  “It’s men like me. The taint in my blood is the sign of the goddess, but it isn’t her power. Her priesthood is given gifts by her. We are the masters of truth and of lies. I told you once that I could be very persuasive and that I was very difficult to lie to. It is this way with all of us. Tell me something I couldn’t know. Tell me true or lie. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Kit, I don’t think that parlor tricks—”

  “I don’t think you’ll find this a cunning man’s small magic,” Kit said.

  “All right. Ah. I stole honey stones from my friend when I was a boy.”

  “You did,” Kit said. “Try again.”

  “The first battle I was in, I lost my sword.”

  “You didn’t. That’s a lie. Try again.”

  Marcus frowned. Something was shifting in the pit of his stomach, and it took him a moment to recognize it as fear.

  “About a month ago, I found a silver coin in the street outside the counting house.”

  “No.”

  “It was copper.”

  “Ah. Yes. So it was.”

  Marcus let his breath out.

  “That’s a good trick,” he said. “Could see how a man might be tempted to use that.”

  “I don’t think it’s the worst thing I can do. I find the spiders can make me impossible to disbelieve. With time and repetition, I can make anyone believe anything. However ridiculous or absurd or dangerous. If it were in my interest, I could convince you that you were a god. Or that your family was still alive but hiding from you. Even if you knew better, even if your mind knew better, your heart would lead you wherever I told it to go. I can do that, and so can they.”

  “And they’re in Antea?”

  “And very close to the throne.”

  Marcus sat for a moment, considering it. The corruption of kings and princes was nothing new. The twist-minded cunning man was a standard character in a thousand songs. And still, there was something about the tiny spider birthing itself out of Kit’s skin that made Marcus shudder.

  “What do they want?”

  Kit considered his thumb. The cut was already closed, neither blood nor spiders leaking out of his body. His voice was almost contemplative.

  “When I was there, I was taught that the goddess would return justice to the world. We were to keep faith and wait for the day when she would send us a sign. A leader whose Righteous Servant we would be, and through him, the goddess would free the world from lies.”

  “That’s a bad thing?”

  “Probably, yes, but I also decided it might not be true,” Kit said with a smile. “I was a very junior priest when I left. Many of the menial, small tasks fell to me. One was to be sure the temples were swept. I didn’t actually sweep. There was an old man who did that. I don’t even remember his name now. But I asked him one day whether he had swept, and he said yes. He had. And he was telling the truth. Do you see? I felt it in my blood, just the way I did with you. Only he was confused. He was mistaken. He thought he had. He was certain he had. He hadn’t.

  “And so I fell from grace.”

  “Over an unswept floor?”

  “Over the proof that someone can be both certain and wrong. In my mind, I began to reserve judgment even on the revelations of the goddess. I cultivated the word probably. Was the temple swept? Yes, probably. But perhaps not. The goddess was eternal and just and immune to all lies, probably. We were her beloved and chosen, probably. But perhaps we weren’t. I became very aware of the division between truth and certainty. I began to doubt. And once I was on that path, there was no hiding it.

  “One day the high priest came to me. He had found a remedy to my unfortunate predicament. I was to be taken to the goddess herself. Deep in the temple, through the secret ways, to her holy cavern. Only the high priest was ever allowed to commune with her directly, you see. But now I was to have that honor.”

  The doves shifted, as if made uneasy by Kit’s voice.

  “Didn’t like what you saw of her?”

  “I ran,” Kit said. “He told me that no harm would come to me, and I believed him. I knew he was lying to me, and I believed him anyway. I told myself that no harm would come to me. That she wouldn’t harm her own. I had faith that what they were doing came out of love for me. As long as I had faith in her, she would not hurt me. And then, like a reflex in my mind, I thought probably. Probably she won’t. But she might. And as soon as that doubt was there, I saw how likely it was that I was being sacrificed. I found I wasn’t interested in finding religious completion. So I left.”

  “I get the feeling it wasn’t as straightforward as that.” “It wasn’t. I’ve spent years, decades now, in the world we never saw. It is more complicated than the priests of the goddess taught. Truth and lies, doubt and certainty. I haven’t found them to be what I thought they were. I dislike certainty because it feels like truth, but it isn’t. And I think I have had some inkling what it is for a whole people to become certain.”

  “And what’s that like, then?”

  “It’s like pretending something, and then forgetting you were pretending. It’s falling into a dream. If justice is based on certainty, but certainty is not truth, atrocities become possible. We’re seeing the first of them now. More will come.”

  “Probably,” Marcus said, and Kit’s laughter startled the birds into flight.

  “Yes,” Kit said as a dozen small feathers floated down around them. “Probably. But it seems likely enough that I feel obligated to stop it. If I can.”

  “And you’d do that by… ?”

  “There are swords. Dragon-forged and permanently venomed. We had several at the temple, but I have found the location of another. I believe that with it, the goddess can be killed, her power broken. And so I am going to find it and go back to my home. And I will go to that sacred cavern at last.”

  “That’s a stupid plan,” Marcus said. “It’s more likely to get you killed than anything else. How am I supposed to fit into this?”

  “As my sword-bearer. The spiders in me dislike the blade. I don’t believe I could carry it all the way back myself. I think you could. Of all the men I’ve met in my years after the temple, I believe that you particularly could.”

  Marcus shook his head.

  “It all sounds a bit overheated and dramatic, Kit. The paired adventurers rushing to find the enchanted sword? Are you sure this isn’t an outline of some old play about defeating a demon queen?”

  Kit chuckled.

  “I have spent a certain amount of time onstage. My perspective on the world may come from standing on the boards. But I believe I’m right all the same,” he said. And then, gently: “Come with me. I need you.”

  “You’ve got the wrong man, Kit. I’m not some sort of chosen one.”

  “Yes you are. I’ve chosen you.”

  The excitement—the joy—that woke in Marcus was like being pulled by a wave. It was what he’d wanted, what he’d been wordlessly longing for all the dire, grinding weeks in Porte Oliva. And now God was giving it to him on a gold plate. He dug in his heels.

  “I can’t. Cithrin’s in Camnipol. I have to protect her.”

  “Do you think you can?”

  “Yes,” Marcus said.

  Kit raised a finger. His smile was gentle, half amused and half sorrowful.

  “Remember who you’re talking to. I know parlor tricks,” he said. “Do you think you can?”

  Marcus looked down at his filthy hands. The nails were cracked and broken from scrabbling at his restraints. He didn’t have a blade or enough coin to buy a meal. Something thickened his throat.

  “No.”

  “Neither do I,” Kit said. “Neither does Yardem or that unpleasant notary the bank brought in. And I would be willing to wager that C
ithrin doesn’t expect it of you. If she’s in need of rescue, I don’t think her strategy will be to wait meekly for her adoptive father to fix things.”

  “She’s not my daughter. I don’t think of her that way.”

  “If you say so,” Kit said.

  “All right, that’s going to get annoying,” Marcus said.

  “Marcus, it seems to me your life in Porte Oliva is over. Perhaps there’s a way to return to it, forge it into armor that doesn’t bite when you strap it on, but I don’t see how.”

  “When Cithrin’s back. When she’s safe.”

  “No one’s safe, Marcus. Not ever. We both know that. I believe you’re looking for a noble cause to die in,” Kit said. “As it happens, I have one. If we win, it will save Cithrin and countless other innocents besides. Or tell me you’d rather go back to enforcing loans, and I’ll leave you.”

  His belly felt heavy, the truth of his situation pressing against him like being buried in sand. Still, he managed a smile.

  “Unchain me before you go?”

  Kit rose, put his hand on Marcus’s shoulder, and turned him around. It took only a few moments, and the leather strap that had bound Marcus for what seemed like a lifetime fell away. Marcus scratched at the skin where the restraints had been, reveling in the freedom of being in command of his own body. One of the doves hopped back in through its hole and took a place on its perch.

  Kit stepped back. The silence between them was woven from light and dread. Marcus had put his life in this man’s hands more than once. He knew he could turn away now, go and exact vengeance on Yardem and try again to find Cithrin. The idea was still profoundly pleasant, and like all pleasant things, suspect. Kit waited.

  It was idiocy. It was doomed from the start. Diving into ancient mysteries and solving the problems of the world in some grand, transforming gesture was something for the daydreams of children who didn’t know the world.

  “These priests. Their goddess. They’re as bad as you make them out?”

  “I believe they are.”

  “And this magic sword of yours. Where is it supposed to be?”

  “In a reliquary on the northern shore of Lyoneia.”

  Marcus nodded.

  “We’ll need a boat,” he said.

  Dawson

  D

  awson locked his jaw shut as they beat him. They were young men for the most part. He knew their names, he knew their fathers. Two at least had played games with Vicarian when they had all been children together. There was a bowl of water beside the entrance, and the strips of wet leather cut more than dry would have. Others carried sticks or the wide wooden handles of axes without the metal head. It had taken so little time to take the youth of the empire, noblest blood in the world, and turn them into thugs. Dawson stood until his knees buckled. Laughter filled the air. He couldn’t defend himself. Couldn’t shout them down. So instead he locked his jaw and denied them the pleasure of hearing him cry out. Likely it only goaded them to worse violence. That was fine. He wasn’t here to take the easy path.

  He found himself on the floor, the water pail pouring over him. He sputtered, trying to draw breath from someplace in between the deluge and the stone. A voice he didn’t recognize called the halt, and someone kicked his side as casually as he might have punished a lazy dog.

  Hands gripped him under his arms and lifted him up. His mind felt fuzzy, confused, and distant. He was being carried somewhere he didn’t want to go, and all he could remember was that it would be beneath his dignity to complain. A door opened somewhere and he landed on filthy straw that despite its thinness and the stink of it felt as comfortable as his own bed. His mind failed him for a time. Next he felt anything, it was a soft cloth cleaning the raw wounds over his ribs where the skin had split. Everything hurt. The old man tending to him wore chains on his wrists and neck and a filthy smock. It took Dawson what felt like a great deal of time to remember where he’d seen that face before.

  “My thanks, Majesty,” Dawson managed. His throat seemed to have spasmed at some point, and his voice sounded strangled though there was no one touching it.

  King Lechan nodded.

  “Don’t speak yet,” he said. “Rest.”

  There were no marks on the king of Asterilhold. No bruises on his face or old blood blackening his prison garb. Here was the man who had plotted to slaughter Prince Aster, and it was Dawson whom they tortured as a game. He wanted to find it unfair, but he didn’t. He understood the difference between how you treated an enemy and how you treated a traitor. They didn’t see that they were the ones betraying the traditions and nobility of Antea. They were the ones handing the throne to a bloodthirsty clown and his foreign masters.

  Only, of course, it had been his fault as well. He should never have agreed to let Palliako be protector to the prince. It had only seemed convenient at the time. It had seemed innocuous. How could he have known it was the stray spark in a dry forest?

  He rolled to his side as the enemy king protested, and forced himself up to sitting. He almost vomited. He would have if there’d been more in his belly. The cell was smaller than he’d thought. Ten feet from side to side, twelve deep. His kennels were larger.

  The door opened and the high priest stepped in. The congenial smile was gone as if it had never been. No scowl took its place, and no frown. Basrahip might have been wearing a mask of himself cast from stone. Nothing about him moved. Dawson was gratified to see the lump of a bandage under the priest’s cloak where the knife had bit. Four men in leather armor with swords and daggers at their sides followed him, taking the door like the personal guard of a king. Dawson turned his head and spat out a bright red clot of blood.

  “Where is Prince Geder?” Basrahip asked. His voice was distant thunder.

  “There is no Prince Geder,” Dawson said.

  “You’ve killed him.”

  “No. He’s not a prince. He’s Lord Regent. That’s not a prince. Aster is prince and king, and Palliako is nothing more than a placeholder until he takes his father’s throne.”

  The priest’s eyes narrowed.

  “Where is Geder Palliako?”

  “I don’t know.”

  One of the guards drew a dagger. More torture, then. Dawson was ashamed to feel himself drawing back from the prospect.

  “And the little prince? Aster?”

  “I’ve been looking for him since this began.”

  “To kill him.”

  “To give him my loyalty and my sword against you and Palliako.”

  Basrahip finally managed an expression. His wide brow kinked and furrowed. He sat on the ground in front of Dawson, his legs tucked under him. Dawson saw the guards glance at one another, confused.

  “You are speaking the truth to me,” the priest said.

  “You’re not worth lying to,” Dawson managed.

  Basrahip’s amazement was almost comical.

  “You treat truth as a kind of contempt? Oh. You are corrupt to the soul, Lord.”

  “I don’t answer to you,” Dawson said. “You’re a bit of dirt that pulled itself off the riverbeds of the Keshet and started taking on airs. You aren’t worthy to clean my shoes. You don’t belong in the same city as Simeon. You don’t deserve to breathe the air he breathed.”

  “Ah,” the priest said, as if understanding something. “You are in love with this world. You fear the coming of justice.”

  “I don’t fear you or your whore of a goddess,” Dawson said.

  “You don’t,” Basrahip agreed. “That is another mistake. But you cannot tell me where Prince Geder is, so you are insignificant. You have lost, Lord Kalliam. Everything you love is already gone.”

  Dawson closed his eyes. He had the urge to roll to his side, pressing hands over his ears like a schoolboy refusing to hear a scolding, but he knew the priest was right. He had wagered everything that Palliako could be stopped. He’d lost. It didn’t matter that he’d be remembered as a traitor. To live for the legacy was only a way to pander to men as ye
t unborn. All that mattered was that his nation had been taken from its rightful rulers. Not even taken. Given away.

  It was over.

  The assault on Klin’s estate had been brutal. No swords rang, no arrows flew. But for two days, the priests had shouted at them. Their voices grew more annoying than flies. The same words, again and again: You have already lost. You cannot win. At first, Dawson had led the others in their refusal and mockery. As if they could be talked to death. Let them waste their breath until Bannien returned. Or if not Bannien, Skestinin. Every hour the priests spent talking was one less that they had to live.

  But slowly, unmistakably, the laughter and bravado had hollowed out. Dawson had felt the growing suspicion that perhaps hope was fading. Perhaps time was allied to the enemy, and another passing day wasn’t something to welcome or hope for. He didn’t say it, nor did any of the others. It was in their eyes.

  He’d been asleep when they came for him. The door of the withdrawing room had burst open in darkness, guardsmen with swords drawn pouring in. He’d leaped up. Even now, he could hear Clara screaming his name as they hauled him down the corridors, through the courtyard, and to the night-black streets. Odderd Mastellin had led them, his jutting chin making him look belligerent without seeming any less sheeplike. In the square, the siege tower was quiet. The priest stood before it. Behind him, in the light of the torches, the common men and women of Camnipol stood silently, like a collection of statues constructed at Basrahip’s whim. The sky above was black, and the torchlight drowned the stars.

  “I’ve brought Kalliam,” Mastellin shouted. “I’ve brought him. Me. It’s the proof that I’m loyal. I’ve captured the enemy of the crown.”