Энтони Райан - Queen of Fire

“The Maidenʼs arm points home,” he said.

She nodded, lowering her gaze. “Aspect Caenis is dead.”

He winced as the pain hit home, a slashing stroke of instant grief. Sagging a little, he went to the podium, resting his hands on its heavily chipped edge. “Your husband told you this?”

“Brother Lernial, whom youʼve met I believe.”

“I didnʼt know the Seventh Order were permitted to marry.”

“ʼCourse we are. Where dʼyou think all the little brothers and sisters come from? Weʼve always been more a family than an Order, ever on the hunt for new blood though.”

He sighed a weary laugh. “How did it happen?”

“A battle. The details are vague, my husbandʼs gift is a tad erratic, ʼspecially when coloured by so much grief. A rather terrible encounter, from what I can gather. Your red men are a ghastly lot indeed. It seems the queen secured victory in the end, so I doubt they number nine thousand any longer.”

Caenis… He had seen him only once at Varinshold, a brief exchange at the gates of the Blackhold. “Many trials await us, brother,” he had said. “I can only wish you well.”

Caenis, who had laboured to tutor him on the Orderʼs history, with only marginal success in the end but still he cherished the lessons. During his ordeal in the pits he had occupied the time between combats by delving into memory, attempting to recall Caenisʼs many stories, knowing they somehow kept him anchored in the Order, kept him a brother and not a slave.

“The Aspect and I were brothers once,” he told Merial. “I learned much from him.”

“As did I. He was my master, yʼsee. Weʼd meet in secret, whenever the Order could spare him. He taught me so much, the Faith, the mysteries…” She raised her gaze once more. “The stars.”

He touched his hand to hers for a second. “I grieve for your loss, sister.”

“I told my husband,” she said as he turned away, “about Lady Reva, and everything else.”

“Did you divine anything regarding the queenʼs intentions?”

“Only that they are unchanged.” She turned to the city spread out before them, fires flickering amidst the many ruined buildings, the pyres still burning beyond the walls. “On to Volar,” she murmured.

“Who were they?”

He stands in the street outside the bakerʼs shop, looking down at the girl and her mother once more.

“How can you be here?” he asks.

She moves into view, wearing the face he remembers, the face she wore when they killed together. “You dream, I dream.” She nods at the mother and child. “Did you know them?”

He sees then that the face is not truly the same, the cruelty, the madness not quite gone, but diminished, as if this shared dream somehow strips away much of her waking self.

“No. They died when the city fell.”

“Always so intent on drowning in guilt, beloved.” She moves closer, stepping over the corpses that carpet the street to cast an incurious glance over the lifeless mother and daughter. “Itʼs always the way with wars. Battles rage and the small people die.”

An old, long-stoked anger builds in his breast. “Small people?”

“Yes my love, the small people.” Her voice carries a note of weary impatience, like a tutor lecturing a child on an oft-forgotten lesson. “The weak, the petty, the narrow of mind and purpose. Those, in fact, who are not like us.”

His rage builds, stirring words he had longed to utter during their journey of murder, unchecked now by any binding. “You are a pestilence,” he tells her. “A blight upon the world, soon to be wiped away.”

Her face betrays no anger as she looks up, only a faint smile, her gaze sad but also rich in knowledge, reminding him of just how old she is, how many corpses she has seen. “No, I am the only woman you will ever love.”

He finds himself drawing away, though also unable to take his eyes from her face. “I know you feel it,” she says, following as he retreats. “However deep you bury it, however much rage you stir to drown it. You saw the future we could have shared, we were meant to share.”

“A vile illusion,” he says in a whisper.

“Our child will never be born,” she says, implacable now. “But we will make another, heir to a dynasty so great…”

“Enough!” His rage is enough to give her pause, the heat of it sending a ripple through the ground, threatening to tear this dreamscape apart. “I never wanted any part of your insane plots. How could you imagine I would ever surrender myself to your ambition? What madness drives you? What twisted you into this? What happened on the other side of that door?”

Her face becomes utterly still, eyes locked on his, not in anger but naked terror.

“You dream, I dream,” he tells her. “A girl, lying in bed, weeping as she stares at her bedroom door. Do you even remember it when awake? Do you even know?”

She blinks and takes a slow, backward step. “There were times I thought of killing you. When we travelled, sometimes I would take my knife and lay it against your neck as you slept. I feared you, although I told myself it was only anger at your many cruelties, your practised hatred. Somehow I knew my love for you would kill me, and so it proved. But I have not a single regret.”

She reaches for him, and he doesnʼt know why he lets her touch him, why he allows her hands to trace over his own, why he opens his arms and welcomes her into an embrace. She crushes herself against him, and he hears the restrained sob in her voice as she whispers in his ear, “Itʼs time you came to Volar, beloved. Bring your army if you like. It doesnʼt matter. Just make sure the healer is among them. If I do not see both of you in the arena within thirty days, Reva Mustor dies.”

The leader of New Kethiaʼs former slaves named himself as Karavek, apparently the name of the master he had beaten to death during the first night of riots. “He stole freedom from me, I stole his name,” he said with a thin smile. “Seemed a fair exchange.”

He was a large man, somewhere in his fifties, with grey-black hair sprouting in an unkempt mass from his once-shaven head. However, despite his size and fierce appearance his voice told of an educated past and a mind keen enough to fully appreciate the reality of their circumstance, unalloyed by the glow of recent triumphs.

“Volar is not New Kethia,” Karavek said when the Meldenean made his formal request for alliance on behalf of Queen Lyrna. He had arrived at the governorʼs mansion in company with a dozen fighters, all bristling with weaponry and regarding Fleet Lord Ell-Nurin with a naked suspicion that bordered on hostility. “This city is a village in comparison.”

“There are many still in bondage there,” Frentis said. “As you were.”

“True enough, but I donʼt know them and neither do my people.”

“The queen has granted all in this province a place in the Unified Realm,” Ell-Nurin said. “You are now free subjects under her protection. But freedom carries a price…”

“Donʼt lecture me on freedom, pirate,” Karavek growled. “Half the slaves in this city died paying that price.” He turned to Frentis, lowering his voice. “Brother, you know as well as I how precarious our position is. Any day now the southern garrisons will march to reclaim this city for the empire. We canʼt fight them if our strength is off dying in Volar.”

Victory at Volar will end this empire, Frentis wanted to say but felt the words die on his tongue, knowing how hollow they would sound. “I know,” he said. “But myself and my people must sail to Volar, with any willing to join us.”