Mark Lawrence - The Wheel of Osheim

She let me go and I sagged back on to my heels. I’d known what she would say. I’d known she was right too. Or at least more right than the Lady Blue. Old habits die hard, though, and I had to at least try every escape route.

“If I see her in Osheim I’ll kill her with the sword that killed my mother.” I had my own revenge to take, my own fire, and my own measure of the Red Queen’s blood.

“See that you do.” A rare smile on Grandmother’s lips.

I sighed and tightened my cloak about me. “Lucky I set off for Osheim with the key then. Or none of this would have worked.”

Grandmother turned her head, looking past me. I turned too and followed her gaze. The Silent Sister had been standing at my back, uncomfortably close. She met my glance with her strange stare, one eye blind white and full of mysteries, the other dark as any hole. “Luck? We save luck for the endgame,” the Red Queen said. “You’re going to need every scrap of it for the Wheel. Nobody sees into that future, not a glimpse.”

“I guess . . . I’ll be going then.” Bad as Osheim sounded I really didn’t want to stand there between those two terrifying old women a moment longer. “And if . . . if it all works? What then?”

Grandmother made another of her rare smiles, as grim as the first. “The world will keep on turning. This ending will have been averted, or more likely delayed. The Gilden Guard will arrive within the month to take me to Congression and the Hundred will repeat the same arguments that have rumbled on since my grandfather’s day. Perhaps this time we really will elect a new emperor and mend this broken empire of ours.”

It took a moment to realize that the dry hissing beside me was the Silent Sister’s laughter. I took it as my cue to leave.

Snorri and Kara were waiting for me with the horses by the largest of several supply dumps. The boy was nowhere to be seen. I envied his freedom to wander away.

“We’re going?” Snorri raised his voice over the din all around us. Red March soldiers laboured in ant-like chains under the direction of roaring store-masters to break up and distribute the heaped stocks of food and equipment.

I nodded. “Meet me on the main road, up by the big church. I just need a moment.”

“What?” Snorri cupped a hand to his ear but Kara was already pushing him away, her palm against his chest.

She looked back at me over her shoulder. “Don’t run off now!”

I didn’t reply but walked away wondering, and not for the first time, whether she could read my mind.

I wandered the ruins without direction, though remaining within the defensive perimeter. I’d no desire to explain myself to a vengeful Slovian mob. Grandmother had a strong position with a large number of seasoned troops but to hold this ground until I reached the Wheel of Osheim and sealed off the Lady Blue’s last escape would require tactical genius, not to mention all kinds of luck. Her only real hope was that King Lujan would mistake her purpose and hold his strength up at Julana thinking her to be readying an assault against his capital.

I ducked into the roofless shell of a building to get out of the fine rain, blown on a cold autumn wind in such a way that it coats your face and fills your eyes. Standing beneath the arch of the entrance I pondered my options and discovered them to be limited. Somehow I’d found myself headed for the north once more, still bound to the Viking, and by chains I understood no better than the first time. I’d almost been dragged into Hell by the singular force of Snorri’s good opinion of me, though it had taken the force of his arm to get me in there in the end. Now, somehow, the good opinions of many people-from the queen of Red March to that of a heathen child-were driving me into a hell on earth. Quite how so many people had sunk their hooks beneath my armour I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that I didn’t like it one bit. The Jalan who had jumped from Lisa DeVeer’s balcony would have run and kept on running. Had a single year truly wrought that much change upon me?

Something drew my gaze into the sooty interior of the house. It had been a grand affair once. I started to identify objects among the clutter of black on black. The shattered bust of some family saint or elder, the jagged hulls of broken vases. I peered more closely-a sword broken into pieces as if it too had been ceramic. I moved the fragments with my boot, noting the bright edges. Stepping forward and leaning down for a better look, I saw that even the surviving pieces of wood, fallen roof timbers, flameblackened and acrid in the rain, were jagged-edged as if they also had shattered, the breaks ignoring the grain. I stood up, making a slow rotation. Everything around me lay in sharp-edged pieces beneath its black coating, as if the whole room had splintered like glass beneath a single blow.

A framed picture leaned against the wall by the door arch through which I’d entered. The only whole thing in the place. I walked to it, reaching a finger to wipe a clean spot. The soot fell away the instant my fingertip made contact. Not just a patch beneath my touch, but every part of it, flowing down like a piece of black silk sliding from a polished table. And beneath it . . . a man’s face, but not a portrait, my own, staring back at me in surprise from the smooth and unblemished surface of a large mirror.

“Hello, Jalan.” I said it. I saw my lips move around the words. But it wasn’t my voice.

“Get away from me!” Those were my words, and yet my reflection’s mouth stayed closed. It watched me with eyes that were not my own. I tried to turn away but that stare held me.

“I’m not your enemy, Jalan. You want to escape. I want to help you escape. You’re a piece on the Red Queen’s board and she keeps pushing you into danger whatever you do. I can help you play your own game.”

“You’re my enemy,” I said, though she was right about the escaping part. “Your hands are red with the blood of my family and my friends. Too much of it to be forgiven.”

She smiled, her mouth more hers than mine now, curved as I remembered it from Grandmother’s youth. “We show our weakness most when we look upon ourselves, Jalan. I’ve watched you watch yourself. I’ve heard the secrets spoken to your reflection-the doubts-the truths, each confession. We all knew you would be special. You or your sister. And we watched you, but while the Silent Sister studied the paths that might lead you through all your tomorrows, I made a study of the man, took his measure. A coward can forgive himself anything given the right excuse, Jalan. Believe me when I say that the sting of any treachery, whether to the living or to your dead, will last only a moment compared to the joys waiting for you. The freedom to do as you want, unconstrained by troublesome morality, unbound by that nagging voice of conscience which others have imposed upon you, infected you with.”

“Lies,” I said.

“The Wheel is turning, Jalan. It can’t be stopped. The change can’t be stopped. Everything we know will end. The decision is not how to fight it but how to survive it. I’ve watched you and you, Jalan Kendeth, are, above all else, a survivor.”

“Lies,” I repeated, but the worst of it was not that she was almost certainly right about the Wheel being unstoppable. The worst of it was that she was right about me. I could walk away. I could betray any trust to save my own skin. Oh it would hurt, and yes I would curse myself and mope . . . but after? I didn’t think it would break me-not as it would break Snorri if he could ever do such a thing. I didn’t run that deep. I wasn’t made of the same stuff. Snorri was the truth. No give in him. Inflexible. Hold or break, nothing in between. And me? Prince Jalan was a lie I told myself, mutable, adaptable, lasting . . . a survivor. “How can anyone survive the end of everything?”