Into the West, page 1
DAW BOOKS BY MERCEDES LACKEY
THE NOVELS OF VALDEMAR:
THE HERALDS OF VALDEMAR
ARROWS OF THE QUEEN
ARROW’S FLIGHT
ARROW’S FALL
THE LAST HERALD-MAGE
MAGIC’S PAWN
MAGIC’S PROMISE
MAGIC’S PRICE
THE MAGE WINDS
WINDS OF FATE
WINDS OF CHANGE
WINDS OF FURY
THE MAGE STORMS
STORM WARNING
STORM RISING
STORM BREAKING
VOWS AND HONOR
THE OATHBOUND
OATHBREAKERS
OATHBLOOD
THE COLLEGIUM CHRONICLES
FOUNDATION
INTRIGUES
CHANGES
REDOUBT
BASTION
THE HERALD SPY
CLOSER TO HOME
CLOSER TO THE HEART
CLOSER TO THE CHEST
FAMILY SPIES
THE HILLS HAVE SPIES
EYE SPY
SPY, SPY AGAIN
THE FOUNDING OF VALDEMAR
BEYOND
INTO THE WEST
BY THE SWORD
BRIGHTLY BURNING
TAKE A THIEF
EXILE’S HONOR
EXILE’S VALOR
VALDEMAR ANTHOLOGIES:
SWORD OF ICE
SUN IN GLORY
CROSSROADS
MOVING TARGETS
CHANGING THE WORLD
FINDING THE WAY
UNDER THE VALE
CRUCIBLE
TEMPEST
CHOICES
SEASONS
PASSAGES
BOUNDARIES
SHENANIGANS*
WRITTEN WITH LARRY DIXON:
GRYPHON IN LIGHT*
THE MAGE WARS
THE BLACK GRYPHON
THE WHITE GRYPHON
THE SILVER GRYPHON
DARIAN’S TALE
OWLFLIGHT
OWLSIGHT
OWLKNIGHT
OTHER NOVELS:
GWENHWYFAR
THE BLACK SWAN
THE DRAGON JOUSTERS
JOUST
ALTA
SANCTUARY
AERIE
THE ELEMENTAL MASTERS
THE SERPENT’S SHADOW
THE GATES OF SLEEP
PHOENIX AND ASHES
THE WIZARD OF LONDON
RESERVED FOR THE CAT
UNNATURAL ISSUE
HOME FROM THE SEA
STEADFAST
BLOOD RED
FROM A HIGH TOWER
A STUDY IN SABLE
A SCANDAL IN BATTERSEA
THE BARTERED BRIDES
THE CASE OF THE SPELLBOUND CHILD
JOLENE
THE SILVER BULLETS OF ANNIE OAKLEY
ANTHOLOGIES:
ELEMENTAL MAGIC
ELEMENTARY
*Coming soon from DAW Books
Copyright © 2022 by Mercedes Lackey
All Rights Reserved
Jacket illustration by Jody A. Lee
Jacket design by Adam Auerbach
Edited by Betsy Wollheim
DAW Book Collectors No. 1917
DAW Books
An imprint of Astra Publishing House
www.dawbooks.com
DAW Books and its logo are registered trademarks of Astra Publishing House
All characters and events in this book are fictitious
All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
ISBN 978-0-7564-1736-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7564-1737-6 (ebook)
First Printing, December 2022
Contents
Also by Mercedes Lackey
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Dedication:
In memory of Ikaika and Io
Royal fist met commoner jaw with an impact that jolted Kordas’s right arm all the way up to the shoulder. He was vaguely aware that his hand was going to hurt like bloody hells—but that would be later. Right now, he had a good excuse to let his rage take over, and a good target to vent it on. He had the surge of adrenaline powering him, now. A little thing like pain was not going to stop him.
Not now.
Not when pure rage misted his vision.
Not when all emotion from the pure shit he had gone through the last year was piled up behind him like a tempest, and here was a righteous target to unleash it upon.
His target staggered back. Kordas turned his footing and followed the right cross with a left to the man’s unprotected gut, driving all the breath out of him in an explosive, guttural grunt. The man bent over, gasping, and Kordas followed with a knuckle-splitting right-handed uppercut that knocked his opponent right off his feet. The force of the blow sent the man flying backward. Pocketknife, kerchief, one shoe, and a spray of blood parted company with him before he even landed. Kordas would not have minded if the offender had cracked his skull on one of the tree trunks behind him, but luck was with the wretch, and he landed instead on his back, not his head. Crumpling onto the “soft” uneven ground padded by decades of fallen leaves was akin to falling on a pile of bricks covered by a few pillows.
Uppercuts always work. They’re so satisfying, too.
Kordas knew better than to fight bare-knuckled, but when he saw the man’s expression, drawing his sword just didn’t come to mind. He could instantly read the guilt on the offender’s very punchable face, and didn’t even break stride throwing the first punch. I love this rage. I want to stay inside this fury as long as I can, and just keep punching. I can kick him, I can throw him, I can snap his joints. I can punch down. And why not? I’m in power. What’s anyone going to do about it? Tell me “no”? The Empire taught me early on, obedience comes from threat of harm. Anyone’ll think twice about crossing me once they see me pound some criminals to paste. I have the authority. I can beat down whoever I want to.
Kordas sucked in air between his clenched teeth.
I want that so much.
Kordas stood over the offender, instinctively stepping into a well-trained boxing stance. Kordas’s vision was still fogged with rage. His hands clenched at the ready, dripping blood and starting to throb. Kordas pulled in his forearms to cover his vitals, and flexed his shoulders, just daring the fool to stand up.
They have no idea of the kinds of rage I keep hidden from them.
The fool was in no shape to stand up. He rolled partly over on his side, doubling into a semi-fetal position, wheezing. There was no other sound but that, and the tense breathing of the crowd that the fight had drawn.
They don’t know how lucky they are, with me. They haven’t seen what I’ve seen.
The downed man’s face was covered in quickly purpling bruises, smears of blood, and a lacerated cheekbone. His body probably looked the same. The way he winced with each intake of breath suggested that there might be a broken rib or two, and he certainly was going to be painfully aware of his sins every time he inhaled or exhaled for at least a week.
Every single bruise and broken bone is deserved.
If his people had been harboring the notion that there was anything “soft” about Baron Valdemar—well, they’d just been disabused of that notion. Word would get around quickly. He hadn’t exactly been looking for an excuse to burn off some of the pent-up emotions from his experiences at Court and the destruction of the Capital, but here it was.
He wanted the blackguard to get up and come at him—while at the same time, he didn’t. The intensity of his fury just moments ago subsided slightly. His rage slammed into the full force of his conscience, and rage broke against it.
But I damned well won’t be a tyrant. I want to be better than that. I want us all to be better than that.
His momentary loss of control made him just a little ashamed of himself.
But just a little.
When the fool on the ground did nothing but wheeze and moan, Kordas stepped back and motioned to the two men of his Guard—that’s what they were calling the loose policing/military group he’d put together, “Valdemar’s Guard”—to come and pick the man up.
“Should we take him to a Healer, Baron?” asked the one who had once been one of his gamekeepers, a tall and weather-beaten man who frankly looked as if he’d be more than willing to add his own beating to the one Kordas had doled out if Kordas asked him to.
“Just long enough to make sure he’s not dying today,” Kordas said, his words coming out sounding harsh and angry. Well, he was still angry,
While the two of them secured the creep—and it did not escape Kordas that the gamekeeper ran his hands expertly over the fellow’s ribs, before forcing his hands behind him and trussing his wrists together—Kordas turned away from the miscreant and his keepers, to address the little crowd that had gathered while he had been occupied with meting out rough justice.
And got angry all over again, because the first thing his eyes lit on was the broken Doll that the fool had been abusing and torturing for his own amusement. The torture hadn’t gone on long before Kordas and his men had come racing up to the little secluded spot among the thickets of barberry bushes the bastard had chosen to conceal what he was doing. But it had been enough time that the Doll’s arms and legs were broken in four places, and there was no telling what other damage had been done that was covered up by the padding and cloth. The sledgehammer the fool had been using lay beside the Doll where he’d dropped it after Kordas tackled him.
The Dolls looked like oversized children’s playthings. But they had been the backbone of the Imperial Palace servant-structure, and had replaced most humans in those functions years ago. Kordas wasn’t sure how long ago that had been; long after his days as a hostage, at any rate, because they hadn’t been visibly performing those functions when he’d been held in the Palace.
Maybe Dolls were only for the elite, then. The hostages were not exactly elite. Oh, of course—an important part of having prisoners is enjoying their suffering, so there’d be humans for that suffering, not Dolls that don’t display suffering. Cruelty was the Imperial Way, and I was raised Imperial. It’s in me. I resent that it is, but I resent keeping it pushed down all the time, too. I can’t let it out long. I can’t let the Empire rule me.
I won’t. I won’t be like them. I can do this and not be like them.
As he lost the blinding clarity of rage, he felt his stomach churning, heard the murmurs of the crowd he had gathered, and took a moment to glance up into the tree branches overhead. His knuckles ached dully, but all the physical labor he’d done the past few moons had certainly had an effect—he wasn’t in the least winded, nor did he feel as if he’d just pounded someone to within an inch of his life. He just felt bruised in soul and fists.
He lost his focus on everything for a moment. It may have been the sizzling pain from his hands that incited it, or the shivers—part of the comedown from adrenaline—but Kordas’s mind was racing. His heart beat rapidly. His skin felt as if it was wet, and stretched thin. Pain was still just information thanks to adrenaline, but that wasn’t going to last. His mind switched from subject to subject, desperate for something self-saving.
Steady now. I don’t want to tremble. Everyone gets the shakes, but I don’t want to look weak and undignified. Carefully, now. Don’t show anything wrong. Keep that appearance going for their confidence. He caught himself from tripping, twice, as he walked over to the helpless Doll, lying in a heap against a tree trunk. It wasn’t one he recognized, but it was wearing someone’s old shirt and trews, so old, patched, and threadbare that he was fairly certain they’d been taken from the common rag pile that had been established along with the other common supplies. All of the Dolls had discarded the Imperial tabards they wore as soon as they’d escaped to freedom, and the ones who had attached themselves to a particular individual or family generally wore clothing donated by that family. The rest wore whatever they could find. It hardly mattered if they wore nothing, really, but they seemed to sense that people found an unclothed ambulatory cloth creature much more unsettling than a clothed one, so the ones who weren’t given clothing generally found it for themselves somewhere.
He squatted down on his heels next to the poor thing. “Are you going to be all right?”
He wondered if the Doll had a name. Or if they had even decided to call themselves something. Some of the Dolls had taken the initiative to name themselves, and had put some sort of identifier on their person. They were, as best anyone knew, multiple genders—an easy enough concept that only the most superstitious of Valdemarans took issue with, out of fear—and were natively androgynous in voice and form. He couldn’t see anything on this one, but that didn’t mean the creep who had tortured it hadn’t torn off such a thing. This Doll also didn’t have anything in the way of features other than the stitched-in eyes and mouth all of them were given at their creation. With permission, some of the children and younger folks had been clothing and decorating Dolls as a sort of hobby when their work was done, but at the moment the majority were still in the state this one was. So far, only dense Imperial ink would stick to their sailcloth “skin.” Paint either didn’t stick at all, or peeled off when dry. The ones with painted faces had faces painted onto canvas, which was then stitched onto their heads.
“Thanks to your intervention, Baron, this one survives to be repaired,” they replied, politely, as if they weren’t in agonizing pain. They were, and he knew they were, because he’d asked Rose about injuries to the Dolls, and she had told him that yes, they did feel pain when they were injured, and that the mages who had stuffed the Air-spirits called vrondi into these very material Dolls had said they were supposed to feel pain to keep them from mangling themselves as they went about their duties.
Kordas doubted that. He thought that the mages had been ordered to make them capable of pain so that the plethora of sadists that inhabited the Imperial Court could get pleasure from torturing something that couldn’t fight back. So far as the courtiers were concerned, there was an endless supply of Dolls and no one cared about what you did to them or how you treated them. There would be more by day’s end. When it came to anything in the Imperial Court, the cruelty was the point.
The Doll clearly saw his concern. “Lord Baron, these injuries are less than the torment of enslavement. You put an end to the Capital and Court, and freed us from that suffering. It is well worth this sort of inconvenience to be here with you.”
And that just made Kordas feel worse.
This sort of inconvenience? Life-threatening assault, incomprehensible agony, and still they try to be positive. May I show that kind of bravery on my darkest days.
A fact of a noble’s life is the inevitability of harming others. All a noble could hope to do, were they so inclined, was reduce the amount of damage. At every turn since going to the Capital, Kordas had failed far too often at reducing damage. Thinking of his people, he turned thief, and escalated his grand larceny at every turn. Spying, conspiring. Distraction ploys turned lethal. A well-intended diversion tumbled downward in untold deaths, and the destruction of a place that represented centuries of history.
There was something malevolent about that place, he’d thought many a time. Environments change people. That deceit, madness, and cruelty seeped into me, too. Now, the Emperor and Court were ash, the Capital a debris-strewn lava plain—and that wasn’t guilt-free. The habitat, the wildlife, people’s pets, visitors. Probably a twenty-mile radius of the city was incinerated or boiled away. I only meant to trick and save. I wound up a destroyer for it. I can’t deny that. I can’t get away from those facts.
But I won’t let that be the sum of me.
He hadn’t meant to draw the attention of a massive Earth Elemental to knock the Palace to the ground and swallow what was left. He hadn’t meant to murder the Emperor—well, briefly he hadn’t. He’d only meant for a diversion, so he could escape with his people so far from the Empire that the Imperials would never be able to find them.
But on the whole, he couldn’t find it in himself to regret that it had all happened that way. The place had been a cesspit, fed by everything that was bad in humankind, embroiled in endless war, and led by a madman. There was no way to “reform” that place that he could conceive of, and no real way to reform the Empire. It had been that way for a very long time. Long enough that it had been his grandfather and father who started the plan to escape the Empire in the first place.
And I did give people enough warning to get out, even if all they escaped with was the clothing on their backs and their lives. Most of them didn’t end up at the Lake, but some did by accident. Now they’re far away by a lake and a forest, not cozy in their ancestral homes. And the same goes for my own people. No stability but what we can manage for them. Strange sounds, smells, unknown animals, even the weather is different. It’s a new kind of suffering, but they are alive.
