Oathbreaker ch. 10.14 - Reckoning (Patreon)

It took a day for Calerus to wake up. It took less than a quarter of that day for me to wonder if Rosanna was seriously considering ordering my head lopped off.

“You should have brought him to me at once,” she said for the twentieth time the next morning as we stood in the small council chambers above the throne room. She was pacing, which was never a good sign.

“I already told you,” I said as my patience frayed. “I didn’t know why he was here and I suspected he was being hunted. I decided it was best to find out what was going on before I put the whole damn palace at risk.”

“Watch your tone,” Moonbrand snapped. “You are speaking to the High Queen.”

I waited for Rosanna to wave him off. When she didn’t, I turned to the old veteran and met his stare. Moonbrand had seen as many battles as me — more, perhaps — and he seemed a tough statue cast in gray iron and moonsilver. The dimly glowing iris of his right eye, where a lunar elf had touched him as an infant and the source of his name, met my golden eye with level disapproval.

He didn’t look away as many did when I stared directly at them. “You acted on your own, and placed the entire city at risk in doing so. Calerus should have been placed in the custody of the palace guard at once, and the Amaranta should have been the one to make the decision as to what to do with him. She should have been immediately made aware of the danger. Instead, you attempted to hide him in a neighborhood full of commoners. By your own admission, you took matters into your own hands and trusted your own judgement above your liege lady’s.”

“Am I still that?” Rosanna asked me. Her voice was soft.

Silence fell over the room, heavy and dangerous. Moonbrand glared at me, and Kaia was little help herself as she stood near the door and refused to meet my eye. Tzanith was gone, having departed the Karledale to rendezvous with her own queen. I had no allies in that room.

I had more trouble meeting Rosanna’s gaze. “Do you really have to ask?”

“Yes.” She took a step closer to me. She wasn’t in her full regalia that morning, her black hair done in twin braids instead of an elaborate net and her purple gown merely stunning. She did not speak as the Empress then, but as the woman who’d asked me to help her when we were both barely more than children. She wasn’t the cold monarch she often could be, and her emerald eyes held a silent plea. “I understand why you acted as you did, Alken, but you must understand how this will look to the court. I already have the Simorins and their allies picking at my authority wherever they can, and a whole alliance of realms who believe that I am merely the Emperor’s duplicitous wife. Now we are on the eve of war, and the son of one of our greatest enemies — one of the very conspirators who tried to murder all of us just last year — comes here as a refugee and you did not tell me.”

The intensity of her speech made me reel. “I planned to.”

“When?” She took another step closer, almost like we were fencing. “The next morning? The next hour? It was not your first action. You did not bring him to my healers, or alert my garrison, only involving a few others known to be personally loyal to you! Can you not see how this looks?”

It would look like I didn’t trust her. Like I was hiding enemies from the Accord. I understood that, but…

When I didn’t manage to muster a quick reply, Gallow, who sat in the corner sipping tea, raised his hand. “For what it’s worth, Your Grace, Ser Alken is better acquainted than most with what our enemies are capable of. Calerus Vyke is not just a rebel lord brought to heel, but the scion of a clan of heretics and diabolists. Whatever might have driven him this far from his home in Talsyn would be dire indeed, and it was! There were two of the Abgrûdai here in your city last night. I would not have liked to see the damage they might have caused had they gotten into the palace.”

Rosanna remained stern. “I am aware of this. There were still other actions he might have taken.”

I wanted to argue, but I knew it wouldn’t help my case. The truth was, I had taken steps to make sure that I knew why Calerus was here before I passed that information on to Rosanna or her court. I’d decided that I knew best and that everyone else should follow my lead.

When had I become like this? When I was younger, I’d been happy to let Lias and Rosanna point the way and simply follow. But that had been a more blunt man with fewer secrets and less responsibility.

The argument was interrupted when Wynn teleported in. There was a flash of wind and the morning sun seemed to dim in the windows for a moment, then the wizard stood by his wife. He laid a hand on her shoulder and gave us all a winning smile, like a carefree father pleased that he’d done some harmless mischief.

“There are no Woed or demons in the city as far as I can tell. I have some spirits I’m friendly with roaming the countryside on our behalf, but our unwelcome guests are long gone. My guess is that they fled through the Wend. There are pathways their kind can access that even elves dare not tread.”

“What of news from the north?” Rosanna asked. “Do you have any guess why Calerus might be here?”

Wynn shrugged. “I can only conjecture until the boy wakes up. We know that the Emperor is fighting the enemy in the Baerns, but none of the spirits I’ve interrogated seem to know what’s happened in Talsyn. That place is a dead zone of information. It always has been under Hasur’s rule, and that doesn’t seem to have changed.”

“The Emperor had forces occupy it after Calerus surrendered,” I said. “There should be forts with Accord captains manning them. If we can break through the barrier of Osheim and get information flowing again…”

We were cut off to the east by the Ignited Lands and the north by the stasis in Osheim. We should have been getting more roundabout news through the Westvales, but that country had been disturbingly silent as well. We were still waiting on word from the emissaries we’d sent to question the Westvaler Houses on their hesitance to join the war against the Gorelion.

“The last thing I need is a war in the heartlands while my husband is waiting for reinforcements in the north,” Rosanna said as she rubbed at her temples. “But we do not have the forces necessary to invade Seydis without the Emperor.”

“And what of the Choir?”

The question came from Gallow. It was spoken calmly, without challenge, but I could almost feel her gold-green eyes burning into the side of my skull. Wynn cast her a warning look which she ignored.

“I already said this at council,” I reminded her. “They’ve been silent.”

“So?” She spoke with a lazy drawl. “Contact them.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“That’s pigswill and you know it. There are a thousand mediums for you to reach out to them. Priests, temples, shrines. They do hear prayers. That’s how you kept contact with them while you were roaming around the realms chopping heads off, was it not?”

I stared at her for a long moment. “You are very well informed.”

Rosanna and the others were also staring at me. None of them had known about the nuances of my old work.

“I’m a wizard, darling.” Gallow’s eyes flashed and her voice lost all humor. “You should contact them. This is their war and it is their fallen brother threatening to devour our Emperor. They were at Tol when he appeared there and they managed to drive him off.”

She was right. I folded my arms and thought about it. “They lost one of their number in the attempt. The Saint of Blood.”

“Why do you hesitate?” Rosanna asked me. She knew me too well.

“I…” I glanced away from her searching eyes. “I may have said some things that were unwise last spring. I told them that I wouldn’t take their orders anymore.”

Moonbrand gaped at me. Kaia started coughing. Wynn tilted his head like a curious bird, and the gesture was so like Lias as to be surreal.

“They are our gods,” Moonbrand almost snarled. “What is wrong with you, man?”

“First of all,” I shot back, “they are not anyone’s gods and haven’t been for a long time. They are the servants of our God-Queen, and they’ve been bickering amongst each other while the rest of us are drowning. I got sick of being a pawn in their conspiracies and half-measures.”

The old knight just shook his head. “You are a very arrogant man, Alken Hewer.”

“Sure. Maybe.” I looked back at the two wizards. “I don’t know if they will answer me. And if they do, they might send me a completely different direction than where I need to be.”

“Or they might send you exactly where you need to be,” Wynn told me softly.

“Neither of us want to suggest it,” Gallow said with obvious distaste. “I have reason to be cross with the Onsolain as well, Headsman, but I speak for all the humans in Urn — we need the Choir. The Gatebreaker and the Traitor Magi together are a threat that could ruin our world. Armies will not solve this.”

“Yet they are still needed,” Rosanna said in her Empress voice. “The Harvestrest Festival approaches, and when the lords of the south gather here I intend to call on them to raise their knights for the Emperor’s relief. If we can gain the aid of the Sidhe and the Onsolain…”

“I understand.” I let out a long breath. “I do. I… I will try to contact them, but I can’t make you any promises. They always have some bigger picture they’re looking at and they don’t take orders from the likes of us.”

Rosanna smiled. “You know, as much as what you just said should terrify me, I’m glad to hear you speak as a man and not just their weapon. I wondered for a while if you might be… too changed.”

I’d wondered that as well a great many times. I returned her smile and accepted that as a good sign after our argument. “For now, we need to know why Calerus is here and what’s going on in Talsyn. Whatever it is, it might be just as important as the Gorelion attacking Isengotta.”

“Ioannes and his clerics are tending to our royal guest,” Moonbrand said, his frustration with me retreating behind his usual mask of implacable formality. I regretted our disagreement. I liked Moonbrand. He’d been loyal and true to Rosanna through the civil war against her uncle and all the apocalypses since.

But he was right to distrust me. I wasn’t a Knight of the Karledale anymore and I hadn’t been in a long time. Did he suspect there were secrets I was keeping from them, and especially from Rosanna?

After that meeting, Kaia spoke to me at the door. The tall islander looked troubled and she kept toying with the ivory handle of her sword.

“You know why she’s angry at you, don’t you?” The ex-mercenary’s strong accent had faded somewhat, but it still had a habit of making her words sound more aggressive than she’d intended.

“I don’t need you piling on, Kaia.” I rubbed at my temples, then winced as pain shot through my scars — it wasn’t the burning ache that warned me of a nearby demon, but they’d been itching terribly since the past night.

She sniffed and ignored me. We were nearly of a height, and she wasn’t cowed by the surliness in my tone, but she did change the subject. “Have you noticed how often that witch has been hovering around the Empress?”

I glanced to where Gallow and Rosanna stood talking by the balcony doors. Rosanna looked troubled, and Gallow placed a hand on her arm. Kaia was almost squirming at the sight.

“She’s been here less than a week and she’s already worming her way into her ear,” the bodyguard growled.

I lifted an eyebrow. “Is that jealousy?”

“Do you know what we call their kind in my home country?” Kaia asked. When I shook my head she said, “Lumejaatar. It’s difficult to translate, but the closest I can compare it to is One Who Has Eaten The Fruit.”

“What fruit?” I asked.

She shrugged her armored shoulders. “Old story. A long time ago, a seer of a great tribe traveled to the land of the gods and ate an apple from a poisoned tree. It allowed her to see the true faces of the gods. Behind their beautiful masks, they were old and diseased, eaten by maggots, horrors from the worst of nightmares.”

I felt a kernel of unease begin to form in my chest. “What happened?”

“She returned to her people and told them that the gods were false, that they were the monsters of our oldest stories masquerading as holy spirits. She roused many great heroes of our past and compelled them to try to slay the gods and upend their kingdom. There were wars. They committed atrocities, those warriors, and in time they became like monsters themselves, the demons of our own myths who even now wander vanhe kö, Old Night, butchering all who meet their gaze in their hatred. They cannot see the beauty in anything, for they’ve peeled back the world’s skin and now only see the rot. For this, the seer is our greatest heretic and we do not speak her name.”

“It sounds like she was trying to do what’s right,” I observed. “To free your people from tyranny.”

Kaia shook her head. “You don’t understand. We don’t believe the gods are evil because they hid their true faces, or that the truths they guard make them tyrants. They were the old keepers of wisdom, deathless, and that which is deathless is cursed, for not to die is to always be dying. We are not meant to look beyond their illusions for the same reason that we do not dig up the dead. The world is beautiful, but that which lies beneath its skin is frightening to we who live. The seer saw past the skin of beauty and mistook the burdens of the gods as proof they were false, and so she acted foolishly.”

“I suppose I can see the lesson there,” I allowed. I’d rarely heard Kaia say so many words in one conversation, or believed the blunt adventurer was capable of poeticism. “What does this have to do with Gallow and Wynn?”

Kaia inclined her head as she looked me in the eye. “They’ve both ‘eaten the fruit.’ They have seen beyond the veils of this world and know the faces of the gods. For this, they can’t be trusted. They hide some truths and wield others like weapons to turn the unwary into their pawns.”

“Rosanna is no one’s pawn,” I said with surety.

“Maybe not.” Kaia sighed. “But I don’t trust them. I don’t like how much time the Empress has been spending with that woman.”

“For what it’s worth, I agree with you. But we can’t be looking any gift unicorns in the mouth right now, especially not when they come with High Art.”

Kaia nodded reluctantly. “I know. Consider this warning a repayment of my debt to you. I know you spoke with her on my behalf.”

I shrugged. “I used to be her First Sword. I know she can be demanding.”

“What will you do?” Kaia asked me.

“Wait for Calerus to wake up and tell us why he’s here,” I admitted.

“Fair. Well, be ready. My hands are itching.”

After that meeting, I went to the infirmary. It was a whole section of the ancient palace managed by the local clergy. Legend had it that the chapel-hospital had been here before the great castle of House Silvering, the monks within having tended to Harren Lupercal before he founded his new dynasty. I got directions from a novice and went to the room where they were tending to Hendry. Penric leaned against the wall by the door, his arms folded and his cap lowered over his eyes.

I paused. Of course, Lisette would be the one tending to her friend. “Are they all in there?” I asked.

“They are,” he said and gestured for me to go in.

Waiting for me in the room was Emma, dressed in the dark underclothes of a Karlesian knight now. She stood by the bed that contained Hendry. The young knight was shirtless, his broad right shoulder swathed in bandages and the arm hung in a splint. He looked pale, but he was conscious. Lisette sat by him, her fingers fidgeting nervously and still glowing from auratic expenditure. Someone had laid Vicar over a chair facing the door.

Penric came in behind me and closed the door. It had barely clicked when Emma started in.

“So when were you going to tell us?” She demanded.

Inhaling through my nostrils, I met her amber gaze. “Tell you what, Ser Emma?”

She sniffed at my use of her new honorific. “About Evangeline’s knights, for one thing.” She paused and lifted her eyebrows. “And about the fact that you apparently used to be a demon’s lover.”

I closed my eyes. Of course, she’d heard everything on the street the last night. The demon’s comments, as well as my own admission to Sidsel. And Lisette had been there too, an unwilling audience caught between Fidei and I.

“Don’t get me wrong.” Emma spread her hands, masking her obvious anger with dry humor. “I’m not one to judge your tastes or condemn you for a bad choice or two in your youth, but this seems like something we should have known.”

“Why?” I asked, letting my voice become harsh. “Why does my history need to be your business? Any of yours?” I swept my gaze across the group and found my attention landing on Vicar. “What did you tell them, Crowfriar?”

Vicar’s eyes were not glowing to signify his awareness, but his half-psychic voice did emanate from the black pelt. “Very little, other than that they should ask you their questions. Our pact prevents me from sharing your secrets without permission, as you know.”

I did know that, but I was angry and he was an easy target. Lisette stood up and walked closer.

“Alken,” she began in a hesitant voice. “I am a trained scribe of the Clericastia. I know how to recognize many of the Adversary’s aspects. That was a succubus — a lust demon. They’re smarter and more subtle than many of their kind, and they have power over dreams and human psyches.”

“Your point?” I asked, though I knew where she was going.

Lisette set her jaw stubbornly, and I saw a bit of the thorny girl I remembered from my journey with her and Olliard between Vinhithe and Caelfall.

Emma cut in and responded for her. “Her point is that we should have been forewarned if you had some infernal vixen after your blood. For one thing, didn’t you think it possible that she might have tried to get to you through one of us?”

I winced. I had thought that very thing.

“What if it’s compromised you?” Lisette asked. “If it manages to get into your head and starts controlling you—”

“That won’t happen,” I insisted.

“How can you be sure?” Lisette asked me. “It—”

“She,” I snapped.

They all stared at me.

“I’m not being controlled,” I insisted.

“Case in point,” Emma said with a hard look. “This succubus took Lisette hostage and hurt Hendry. It might have done worse. She very obviously has a grudge against you. I’ve read a book as well, Alken. Succubi are known to isolate their prey, to make them paranoid and obsessive. Considering you kept this a secret from us…”

“I get it!” I held up a hand to forestall further barrage. “I understand how this must look, but I am not compromised.”

Vicar, compelled by our pact to say nothing, kept his silence. I felt his condemning regard like a pressure against my skull. I knew that if my powers hadn’t been corrupted by necromancy, my tongue would have been aflame.

Emma’s own anger boiled out. “You seem to have a very poor memory. Do you not recall what happened to Catrin?”

“Careful,” I warned her.

She ignored me. “Yith wore her like a glove and almost managed to destroy us. It killed Penric and Mallet, don’t you remember? Or perhaps you’re so addicted to being the tortured soul that you were willing to accept that happening again, is that it? Perhaps you even wanted it.”

My hands clenched into fists, and the temperature in the room abruptly plummeted. The afternoon sunshine in the windows went dim, like a stormcloud had passed overhead, and the shadows at the edges of the room deepened dramatically. Voices whispered in them, and eerie shapes seemed to move at the corners of vision.

The others had varied reactions. Lisette visibly shuddered, her face going pale. Hendry grit his teeth in a silent hiss. Penric stirred, reacting to his necromancer’s fear, and his hand went to the belt knife at his waist. Only Emma and Vicar did not react.

Our breaths were frosting now. My former disciple and I regarded one another, and Emma didn’t so much as flinch at the living darkness that’d filled the solar.

“I’ve made you angry,” she observed.

“Yes,” I agreed in a quiet, cold voice.

“Good. Then maybe you’ll listen. I regret what happened to Catrin too, Alken, and I would very much like that to not happen to one of us. You’ve been keeping secrets. Those two vampires. Your past. Do you really trust us so little?”

Lisette recovered and cut in. “Alken, we just want to help you. Being isolated is exactly how this kind of evil works on you. If you need to be protected, or cleansed…”

“I do not need cleansing,” I said more harshly than I’d meant. “I don’t need an intervention either. You all seem to be forgetting that I’m your commander, not your damn friend.”

“So that’s how it’s going to be?” Emma asked in a clipped voice.

“That’s how it is,” I snapped. “You all agreed to it.”

Their expressions were guarded. Hendry was looking at the covers of his bed. His injuries were like an indictment. He’d been wounded by fiends before and it left him with a body wracked by pain and infested with corruptive metal. I felt some of my anger bleed out and the room brightened again as the spirits drawn to my rage retreated.

“Are you alright?” I asked him.

He shrugged his unwounded shoulder and winced as it pulled at his injuries. “The claw went pretty deep. It’s funny, you know? If I still had normal bones, it would have shattered my shoulder. Damn strong, that demon. The clericons say the wound is infected, but there’s no sign of any sort of parasite. As long as Lisette keeps it clean and purified, it should heal alright.”

“The Cold Iron is doing more than any hallowed aura,” Vicar cut in. “It is poisonous to demonkind. We use it to weaken and cage them. Jon Orley’s spear is probably saving your life, boy.”

Hendry winced. “I see.”

“It could have been much worse,” Emma agreed. “Which is why we’re having this conversation.”

“Who is she?” Penric asked.

The others waited for me to answer. I breathed in, took a grip on my temper, and only then did I realize how fast my heart was beating. I wasn’t just angry as I stood in that room, but also afraid. Tzanith and Vicar already knew, but part of me was still ashamed of this secret.

“It’s complicated,” I hedged.

Emma arched a dark eyebrow. “Complicated how? Obviously she seduced you. You… how did you put it last night? Used to be together.”

“…We did.” I folded my arms, feeling cornered and anxious. “I was in love with her.”

Lisette’s shoulders fell and her blue eyes filled with sympathy. “Oh, Alken. That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”

I scowled. “It’s not… it’s not just about what… damn it, I shouldn’t have to explain any of this! It’s just another demon, and she’s our enemy. We have some history, and none of it matters because I’ll do what I have to, and that’s all you need to know.”

“It’s not like we’re all going to mock you for it,” Emma told me. “I’m sure it’s embarrassing to have been seduced by a hell strumpet, especially for one of the Archon’s old paladins, but these things happen. I mean, not to be facetious, but I imagine a being made for seduction would be good at it. It’s how my great-grandmother killed my great-grandfather, after all.”

I didn’t much like being compared to Jon Orley. Astraea, Emma’s ancestor, had convinced the poor fool that she loved him and then cut his heart out on their wedding bed. The most horrible part was that she probably had loved him. The analogue was stark, and only added to my legion of doubts.

“I’m the one who taught you how dangerous the Abgrûdai are,” I reminded her.

Emma shrugged. “Learned experience, I assume.”

Lisette came to stand beside Emma. “Those marks on your face are from her, aren’t they? They were bleeding when you spoke to her last night.”

I reached up to feel at the grooves on my cheek. “They are.”

“And what if you do end up being compromised?” Penric asked. “You already proved you’re stronger than the lot of us. How do we protect ourselves?”

From me, he didn’t need to add. I chewed on the question.

“You’ve led us through a lot of scrapes, boss.” Penric spoke softly, but there was more emotion there than I’d heard from him in much of the time since he’d died. “But I almost met my maker last night, for real this time. That demon lass put that bolt through my heart and I just… stopped, like a damn puppet with its strings cut.”

I grimaced at that. “The bolt was made from petrified eardewood. It puts undead into torpor, which is what I made it for. I’m sorry, Pen.”

He shrugged. “She jumped us good. She’s tough, that old fling of yours. Which is why we’re having this talk, ye’ ken?”

“I ken. And… I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. But you have to know that this is difficult to talk about.”

“We don’t need all the private details,” Hendry offered. “But who is she? How do we deal with her? She’ll show up again, she made that clear enough.”

They were right. I sighed and paced to the window, which overlooked a small garden enclosed in the castle’s walls. There were monks tending to the flowerbeds and trimming the trees.

“I can tell them of Pernicious Shyora,” Vicar offered. “I know as much as you about what she’s capable of.”

Hendry grimaced. “Scary name.”

Lisette’s expression darkened. “She was scary. I don’t know if I’ve ever been that scared. I can still feel her nails against my neck, her voice in my ear...”

Hendry and Emma both cast the cleric worried looks. Penric was still watching me with his blinded eyes, a parting gift from the last Abgrûdai we’d fought.

I realized something that I hadn’t when I’d first entered the room. They were all shaken. They remembered Yith and how difficult it had been to beat, how badly the demon wounded us before I’d finally managed to destroy its physical form and send its spirit back into the darkness. Penric died fighting the demon. We’d lost Mallet, another of our group, and Beatriz had decided to leave the company rather than face anything like that again. Now we were up against more enemies just as dangerous and wicked as that monster.

No wonder they were so upset with me for keeping secrets from them. Them and Rose. When had I stopped trusting the people around me?

The truth was that I’d never really had much trust. Whenever I offered it, someone got hurt or betrayed me. I was knife-shy and paranoid.

“And I’m still cross about the Mabsworn,” Emma added. “There was no reason not to warn us about them. It’s not like we’d have thrown you to the inquisitors.”

“I did plan to tell you about Alaster and Sidsel,” I said with a sigh, then made a decision. “Fine. Vicar, fill them in on the important details on Fi— on Shyora. Tell them what you can about Daobog too. When those two show up again, we’ll be ready for them.”

When I turned to the door, Emma stopped me. “What will you do now?”

“I’m going to find out why Calerus is here,” I said as I turned the latch. “And why Shyora and Daobog wanted him badly enough to fight all of us at once.”