Wicked Throne, page 13
The Shade can keep my face. Let the empire chase him all over Sangearth. I’ll make a new one. Nyrene and I can leave together.
14
I WAKE AT SOME black hour in the morning, a bodiless mind in a deep, dark ocean.
The ocean breathes.
Preconscious mud slides over my head. I’m shifting, sliding, down where there aren’t voices, or faces. Down where the mud lays thick as the world. I’m a cocoon. In the depths, there’s no pain. It’s not an empty Silence, like the Silence in the wasteland between riftworlds. Oblivion is peace.
Movement in the room. At the bed’s foot.
Mud pushes me into the earth and through the earth, into the spongy, tissue-like limestone cave. Gray mineral deposits bite from the dead-flesh walls.
Soft bedding presses in from all sides. I crank an eye open. Shadows jumble and slide across the ceiling.
Pale ooze glistens on the stalagmites. That sick, sweet odor slithers into my brain. The dark contracts like a fist, squeezing ice into my veins. Razanhi’s here.
He’s going to kill me.
I rush for the cave’s mouth. Too late! He’s coming. He’s right behind me. I shove through the people milling about the cave, dodging an old man and bursting through a teenage group blocking Almathea’s grand staircase. I race down the stairs into a gallery crammed with more people.
Weight jostles the bed. I force my eyes open. Nyrene’s guest room surfaces from the mud. My head’s so heavy. Crushing weight pulls my skull back to the pillow, back under the mud. Warm black earth closes my eyes.
I sprint through the gallery toward the lagoon and the Imperial seagate. People clog the beach so thick I can’t force a path through them. I climb onto their heads and dash across their shoulders. I charge up the dock. The platform appears and my heart flops backward. The gate’s gone. I turn around, looking for another exit through the crowd—
I pull my eyes open.
The crowd—
Razanhi bel Magg glowers at me from the bed’s foot. His sharp cheekbones stick like knife edges from his gaunt, hollow face. His mismatched eyes look like bruises in the red sea that’d been his whites: one yellow, the other ocean blue. His ratty hair dangles around his skeletal shoulders. Dead things ripple under his papery skin. Wings and bird beaks press against his throat from inside. A rat’s tail pushes under his jaw. A large, toothy snout roars under his right shoulder.
He’s a ghast. A weirghast.
I climb backward against the wall, kicking Nyrene’s day sheets off me. Razanhi lopes onto the bed. That same sweet odor pours from his undead eyes while his torn mouth opens in a dark slash. I throw Nyrene’s overstuffed crimson pillow at him. The cushion rips through Razanhi’s chest into the beaded tea table behind him. Blown-glass fish smash to the floor. Razanhi lunges for my throat.
My mind shrinks to a point. I blast him across the room. Green fire explodes from my outstretched hands, lighting up the ceiling, consuming the far wall in a roaring curtain. Razanhi evaporates into glamour sparks.
A glamour?
His bloodshot eyes, hungry teeth, and corpse-blue skin vanish into smoke. The smoke dissolves in the fiery vortex consuming Nyrene’s drapes. Black soot and green fire spill backward, igniting the bed’s end.
Someone pounds on the door. Yellow sparks erupt all around the frame, and the door’s ward system buckles. Broken charge loops explode, blackening the wood. The door smashes open.
Razanhi’s guards and Nyrene appear through the fire. Nyrene ducks between the dozen armored guards and throws the blankets over my head. Strong arms seize me and drag me from the bed. I stumble on rubber legs into cooler air. Burning sheets crackle past my feet.
“Razanhi,” Nyrene says.
Does she see him, too? Is he back? The guards keep moving. They must know he’s already dead. A ghast.
It was a glamour. Holy Nab in hell, a glamour.
She calls his name. We keep moving. Nobody goes back for him. A glamour, or a dream?
“Razanhi,” she echoes. Slowly. Forcefully.
No, damn it, she’s calling my name. Razanhi! I throw on my glamour as the covers rip from over my head. Icy relief shines on Nyrene’s face.
The corridor appears ghostlike in the green firelight. The guard who walked with me back to the drift house wraps the blanket around my shoulders. Four more guards seal Nyrene’s guest room with magic. White shield barricades spread over her burning door, trapping the green furnace inside.
Captain Hyriath says, “Shall I send for the Black Tower?”
“I can manage a simple hex,” I make Razanhi growl.
Nyrene looks at Captain Hyriath, then me. “Um. No. Thank you, Captain.”
“Shall I search for intruders?”
“No,” I put my face in my hands. “Dismissed.”
Hyriath looks troubled, but he and his men depart. He leaves two guards inside the prince’s suite. Nyrene shoos them out.
I tiptoe back to watch the fire sweeping behind the glowing barricades. Soul’s Pyre. A deadly dark magic curse. I wonder if they recognized the spell, if that’s why they wanted to summon the Black Tower Guard. Oh my God, Ivar de Ryeleth broke into our beloved prince’s bedroom and tried to incinerate him.
Somebody laughs.
It’s me.
Nyrene appears beside me. She pulls my hair away from my face. “Do you want to tell me what just happened?”
“Uh. I’m not certain.”
“Bullshit. Magic flames?”
“It’s called Soul’s Pyre.”
She snorts. “How melodramatic.”
“I didn’t name it.”
Emerald flames lick across the gryphon-fiber rug. Nyrene’s glass fish explode.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“You?”
I try to focus on her wide-eyed, sunken face.
She says, “Was it you? Or did someone else. . . ?”
“Uh. I saw someone. I cursed him.”
She hisses a breath.
“It was a glamour.”
She turns to look at me in full. “Someone? Who?”
“How long have I got before the invasion?”
Nyrene grimaces. She peers into my eyes. “Who?” I don’t know. Perhaps it was a dream. She says, “I’m going to send for a wizard to undo this. And check for an intruder.”
“No.”
“What do you mean no?”
I point at myself.
Her lips press flat. “Not you.”
“It’s a generalized spell.”
“Husband,” she enunciates. “I am going. To send. For someone. To see who tried to kill you. Leave, if you have to go.”
Green flames roar across the barricades, consuming her room behind swirling superheated magic.
I kiss my fist, press my knuckles to the shining barricades, and speak a blessing. The inferno dies.
I drop my hand. I’m shaking.
I say, “I’m going to take a bath.”
Nyrene hooks her arm around my left elbow. She helps me across the royal suite to Razanhi’s bathing room. The lights spring awake at our presence. Their nighttime-yellow glare flattens the black enamel tub and onyx wall into paper cutouts. Nyrene runs water from the industrial black faucet. I wait for her to leave before peeling off the Razanhi glamour and stripping from his nightgown.
She comes back after a while. A light-headed flush ripples from my head to my toes. I’ve never been naked in front of Nyrene before. She averts her eyes, sitting on the black tub’s edge with her back to me.
Nyrene says, “So you were in the royal tower.”
That makes no sense.
“The magician ran a check. Ivar de Ryeleth cast the hex in my guest room. So he tried to kill Azan just now. She also found sleeping potion residue on the wall next to a melted bottle. So Ivar drugged Azan and then tried to kill him.”
I wonder whether Nyrene knows about the potion that numbs memories. I hope not.
Nyrene says flatly, “Elf wizards are running through the palace looking for you.”
“Me Razanhi or me Ivar?”
“Ivar.”
I slouch until the water covers my head.
“Wmmblm?” says Nyrene. “Ahvr?”
I crawl back into the air and turn off the jets.
“Why are Gwynnestri’s wizards operating under our prince’s command? The Black Tower’s on lockdown. Don’t you think that’s too obvious? Locking down the Black Tower to keep our wizards from finding you? What will Mother Sigeld think?”
“I ordered the lockdown this morning. Ygraine came by with visual evidence that I broke into Azan’s workshop. It’s footage of me superimposed over someone else. That means the Shade changed the image before it reached Ygraine’s desk and she didn’t bother verifying it. He knows about the invasion.”
“Oh my God.”
“It’s all right. The elves will work our seagates during deployment and provide magical support for our new strategy in Vorsmad.”
“Are we still deploying tomorrow?”
“Yes. We’re going to ambush the ambush waiting for us, if the Shade’s been leaking information to his former captors, and carry on as planned if he hasn’t.”
Nyrene nods. Her slender back shifts under her dressing robe. Yellow night light caresses her outline. I pour foam gel into the bath and turn the jets back on. She blurts out, “A lot of people are scared to take baths.”
“What?”
“People are washing with rags. Because Momaggos was murdered in his bath.”
Oh. “If the Shade goes hunting for Razanhi, he’ll see me. I removed the glamour before I got in.”
Nyrene turns around and looks me in the face. “You know you’re very smart?”
“Sometimes I’m smart by accident,” I confess. If she likes what she sees, would she ever say?
Nyrene smiles and turns her back.
I say, “But I think it’s safe to speculate the Shade is one person not interested in catching Ivar de Ryeleth. I’m too convenient a scapegoat. Whether I’m alive or dead, so long as I’m supposedly still at large—”
Nyrene hangs her head. “I wish you had consulted with me before naming yourself a villain. You’ve got to show them someone else is to blame. I can’t do anything to stop it.”
“The magician said I cast the hex. Who cast the glamour? In your guest room.”
“What glamour?”
“I didn’t hex thin air. I felt someone climbing onto my bed.”
“I think you were dreaming.”
“I was awake. Someone was there.”
Nyrene says, “Nobody was in your room.”
“I saw—” Razanhi as a ghast. Dead. He vanished when I blasted him with a hex. He vanished like a glamour. I finish, at length, “Something. Have her search for residual magics, she’ll find—”
“She did. Ivar—”
“I wasn’t dreaming. I was awake. Or I was hallucinating.”
“Don’t say that.”
Eeesh. Don’t want to go down that snake hole. She’s right.
Nyrene says, “I want you to step down a hero when my husband comes home.”
She’s with his child. It ripples through me. Her back looks the same as it always has. Her voice sounds the same as it always has. How can she be the same when everything’s changed?
She says, “I hope this invasion is successful. You don’t think he moved the Ash Womb from Vorsmad after learning we plan to invade?”
“I couldn’t say. If we annihilate the ghast hive, that could be enough. I’m certain he doesn’t want to summon their dragon. One problem at a time.”
“I want you to be a hero. I pray every night the whole world finds out what you’ve done. I want them to know you traded your freedom for their lives. You. Not Azan. I want to watch that happen. So. Stop using yourself as a villain. Don’t dig yourself deeper into a hole than you already have.”
“I want you to come with me when the war is done. We’ll leave the city together. I’ll take care of you.”
Nyrene grows still.
“Whatever’s holding you back, I don’t care about that. Even if you’re with child. . . .”
But she looks at me, eyes sharp. I wasn’t subtle enough. She knows I know.
“I just want to be with you,” I say.
Nyrene leans back. “That’s not fair.”
“Tell me you don’t want me.”
“No. You don’t get to make demands for our relationship.”
Everything I want to tell her is a demand, then. She doesn’t have to stay here. I want her. I don’t care. Razanhi doesn’t need her or deserve her. She can make up her mind later. She can trust me. I won’t hurt her.
Well, now she knows. I’ve said enough.
Nyrene says, “This is my own burden. You won’t tell Deercat, you will not tell the councilors.”
So she hasn’t told anyone. Does Razanhi know?
“There’ll be no announcement until there’s for sure something to announce. Do you hear me?”
“Yes.” The intensity in her face pulls a rip cord in my heart.
Nyrene sits on her heels and plays with the bath condiments, arranging soap and oils and gels so she can read the labels and then rearranging them so they’re a line of warriors facing the wall. She looks at her lap. She looks at me. She pokes my right arm draped along the black tub’s edge. She smiles an old, old smile, and she’s the same Nyrene she always was. “Where’d you get that scar? Is that a scar?”
The odd indented bull’s-eye mark inside my right arm. Just below the elbow.
“Is it a stamp of approval?”
I smile. “Certainly.”
“I’ve never seen anything like that. Azan has a few magic scars, but they don’t look like this.”
“Please don’t talk about Azan’s magic scars.”
She smiles and glances at her feet before turning back. “What spell made this?”
I hold my arm up to study the mark. “I don’t know. I must have had it before exile. I don’t remember where I got it. I don’t remember it, either.”
“I think it’s a stamp of approval.” She lays her thumb on the shallow indent.
If you change your mind.
She closes her fingers on my forearm. She strokes her thumb over the muscle. Nyrene gets up and walks out.
Three body servants arrive an hour before sunrise with Razanhi’s black wizard’s armor.
“Please leave that here,” I say, “and send Lady Trold a message. I’ll command from Almathea. I need a closed-loop divination scope, a monitor for every channel, and I want the rig assembled in my office. I’ll be joining her via mirror in a few minutes.”
“You’re not going?” Nyrene closes her bedroom door behind herself. Azan’s body servants bow and hurry out.
“Not with the Shade here. I’ve got to make sure he doesn’t try anything.”
“All right. Good luck.” She strides back into her room and closes the door.
I go to Razanhi’s office to wait. An elf mage brings my scope and enchants the rig to connect my office with the war tower and then adds one-way feeds from the leaders in my joint invasion. Trold’s face appears in the lower right, followed by a dockside view in the upper left where the military seagate froths open under an orange predawn. Our legion’s unending ranks crowd the wide armored dock. Prince Kemdislat, who’s commanding the aerial fleet, appears center right. The center left’s reserved for ground commander. After a glitch, Deercat’s big dumb face appears.
Damn it. Who gave Deercat a command? When did he get back from the merfolk kingdom?
“On your command, sir,” Beurnock says from View Five, an aerial shot of the council chamber. “Fleet is ready.”
“Fleet is ready,” Kemdislat chirps, cocking a rakish half smile.
“Good morning, Azan.” Deercat inclines his head. “Ground is ready.”
At least I’m not going to Vorsmad with him. I can mute his audio pickup from my office, which I couldn’t do if he needed to hear my voice in real time to stay alive. The less he hears me talk, the better. If anyone could tell the difference between Razanhi bel Magg and Ivar, it’d be him. I thumb the switch.
“Let’s go,” says Lady Trold.
This is how the war begins. Discharged magic flashes from the seagate, white foam crashes over the violet lip and pours into the void. Sunrise paints the armored warriors red like birth, red like death. The fleet hums above Almathea’s finest, supplemented by goblin shadow knights, a merfolk blood host, and elven ravagers.
“Proceed,” I say.
Kemdislat’s fleet dives into the portal, vanishing squadron by squadron. Razanhi’s enchanted windows vibrate with the delayed engine blast. A breathless pause follows—then the gate’s teeth-rattling roar as the fleet teleports.
“Fleet is at target,” reports Councilor Euri from the Red Tower, View Five.
Nyrene lets herself into the office, along with Lady Ygraine.
Ygraine growls, “Pardon me, Your Highness. I’ve been trying to reach you all morning. What with the lockdown, I had to escape the tower by enchanting myself to look like a bowl of petunias being pushed on a cart by a footman, which wasn’t very dignified. I’ve brought you breakfast, if it’s any consolation.” She sits and indicates the plate on her lap.
No. She’s here because I spooked her and now she’s keeping an eye on me, lockdown or no.
I gesture that the spymaster can find a place in the corner.
“Thank you.” Ygraine rolls over to where she can see my scope and its channels. “Parsnip?”
“No. Thank you.”
“Tea?”
What’d she put in the tea? Truth serum? A Reveal spell? “I’m—fine. Thank you.”
Ygraine pours herself a cup and holds it with both hands, watching me while she sips. I turn back to the scope.
“Wraith Squadron, Night Squadron, set a perimeter,” Kemdislat says. “Mark enemy movement aboveground.”
“Void.”
