Fairmist Page 2

  The princess kept her gaze on Magnus the entire ride. When they reached the slinks’ cave, she watched him with absolute faith, knowing he would save her. That was what champions were for.

  Darven remembered the light in her blue eyes dying when he lifted her from the saddle and placed her on the slope. She had changed then. Docile mouse to wildcat. She screamed, leaping on Magnus as he mounted, clinging to his leg. He removed her silently, and they had all galloped away.

  Magnus had never looked back, but Darven saw his tears.

  Darven suddenly realized he had paused overlong in his reminiscence, and turned his attention back to Salandra. He should lie to her. He should tell her the official story, but he had promised he would answer her questions.

  “She screamed for us to save her,” Darven said.

  “And her father let you take her?”

  “He ordered it.”

  She hesitated, and her voice was a whisper he could barely hear. “Why do they lie about it?”

  “Because we must all have the courage to live up to the legend,” he said. “Because it is the most noble sacrifice anyone can make. You are saving all of our lives.”

  “My sister is...” she began, and her voice caught. She cleared her throat and continued. “Ree is brave like that. There was never anything she wouldn’t face down. She’s a Ringblade, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “She would have ridden to the slinks’ cave. I can do no less.”

  He nodded.

  Then she whispered, “I don’t want to die.” It was not meant for him. It was a plea so soft it wrenched his heart. Perhaps she meant it for the Faia.

  She went silent. They crested the rise, and a slope of broken shale led down to a hole in the ground. The slinks were in there. Hundreds of them. Thousands. He imagined them crawling over each other like roaches, longing to emerge and devour the world. Instead, they would only devour this one girl.

  They stopped at the edge of the slope, and she turned in the saddle. He memorized the slope of her nose, her smooth cheeks. She looked down at the distant hole in the ground.

  “What is your name?” she asked quietly.

  “I am Darven,” he said.

  “Tell my sister...” She hesitated. “Just tell her I was brave.”

  “I will.”

  He dismounted and helped her off Snowfall. She began walking down the loose shale, picking her way carefully.

  Darven clenched his teeth. His five Highblades stayed on their horses behind him, unmoving, and he thanked the Faia that they could not see his weakness.

  Darven served the empire. He had collected his scars with pride. “Never Sever the Line” was the Highblade creed. It meant standing shoulder to shoulder with your brethren against the empire’s enemies. It meant obedience to the emperor. It meant protecting those who could not protect themselves. They were all strands in a great web, and one severed line could mean the destruction of all. Highblades held that web together.

  He watched until Salandra reached the cave and started down into that dark abyss. He had composed himself by then. He mounted Snowfall and yanked on the reins. The big cat let out a huff and turned.

  He did not wait for the screams. He and his Highblades rode out directly.

  It was another two-day ride to reach his home. He had a small cottage in the duchy of Felesh, a wife and an eighteen-year-old son who was already a soldier in the Benascan wars. Lawdon would take his Highblade test when he returned at the end of the year.

  Darven’s escort left him in his yard and rode on to Thiara. He gave Snowfall his dinner and the drugs that kept him docile, and put him in the special stable that had been constructed for him.

  Darven entered his house. Veenda was there, her lovely shape silhouetted against the afternoon light, her brown hair filled with more gray than he remembered. He had only been gone a week, but she seemed older every time he returned.

  She always stood in the main room when he arrived, off to the side, letting him know she was there, but she never said anything. It was an agreement they had. They did not talk about the Debt of the Blessed.

  They watched each other for a long, silent moment. In the early days, her eyes had been filled with love when he returned from his duty, and perhaps sorrow for him. But not anymore. Her gaze looked the same as the old sentry’s from Moondow. Silent rebellion. His own wife despised him. The emperor had given his daughter to the slinks as the first Blessed, but the Imperial Wands gave nothing. They only took.

  He nodded at her, feeling like he wanted to say something this time, but he found no words. He wanted to tell her about the bravery of Salandra Gell. No one else would remember her courage except him, and that was a sharp jewel that cut his heart, priceless and painful. The slinks have won, he thought. We yet live, but they have destroyed us after all. Was this what Magnus suddenly realized? Was this what drove him to madness and dishonor?

  He turned, went into his equipment room and closed the door. He took off his cloak and hung it up, removed his belt and dropped it onto the little bench. He sat down and removed the crystal from his tunic, set it carefully on the desk next to a box of scrolls for writing reports to the emperor. The crystal was cool now. It wouldn’t grow hot until he was called upon again. Again and again.

  Darven bowed his head, trying to find that purpose that drove him forward, that dedication to empire and emperor, but there was only an empty hole where it had once been.

  He took a scroll from the box, carefully unrolled it and dipped a quill into the inkpot. He kept his promise and wrote a short letter to Ringblade Ree: Salandra’s last words, her last request.

  He set two flat stones at the top and bottom of the scroll to keep it from rolling up, tossed fine sand upon it. He glanced at the belt on the bench next to him. It had two sheaths on it. One for his dagger and one for the wand.

  He took the dagger from the sheath, touched the edge. He had sharpened it before he left. A Highblade always kept his weapons sharp. One of the first lessons.

  Darven put the dagger expertly against his throat and slashed. It stung, and he felt his life’s blood gush down his neck. A good cut. An honorable cut.

  He shivered, and with the last of his strength, he put the dagger back on the bench over the wand. Blood dripped and smeared across the belt.

  Brave Salandra.

  Never sever the line.

  Part I

  The Faia and the Forest Girl

  Chapter 1

  Grei

  Grei had swallowed the lie. He had closed his mind, numbed his heart, and told himself the Debt of the Blessed kept them alive. But the Debt had killed them all; they just couldn’t bear to admit it. It had peeled away their sense of rightness until they weren’t people anymore. They were walking husks with dead hearts.

  The sacrifices had to stop, or he had to die trying.

  His mind was clear and sharp now, and he saw every detail around him. It was past Deepdark, and the floating droplets of Fairmist glowed like tiny moons in front of him. The eternally wet cobblestones reflected their light back, making a painting of smeared stars.

  He let his breath out slowly and looked across the deserted courtyard around the Lateral Houses. There were no Highblades to be seen.

  It had been seven years since the Forest Girl had kissed him, put whispers inside his mind and made his heart fit together like puzzle pieces. Everything had made sense in that moment. Nothing made sense after. And Grei had let her whispers fade away.

  He believed now that her whispers were the rightness in his heart. They were the indecipherable truth, the only sliver of sanity in this slinked empire. And he had betrayed her. He had broken her off like a branch and tried to bury the memory.

  He’d only been a child when she kissed him, and the dead-hearted people of Fairmist, his father included, had told him the whispers were wrong; they’d beaten the rightness out of him. He’d tried to please them. He’d tried to make something else matter more than the Forest G
irl. He’d tried so hard.

  But the Debt of the Blessed had taken another child this spring. Another and another and another, endless. One every month from somewhere in the Thiaran Empire. Grei clenched his teeth. He couldn’t go back in time and make his ten-year-old self braver or stronger. He couldn’t save the Forest Girl, but maybe he could save someone else. Maybe he could pull down the lie and find a way to stop the Debt of the Blessed.

  Tonight, outside The Floating Stone, Grei’s rebellion ignited. The newcomer Blevins had flashed a bit of treason that reflected Grei’s own, and Grei had moved toward him like the floating droplets moved downhill:

  “What do the slinks do with the Blessed, anyway?” Blevins asked. “Why only one a month?”

  That arrow sank into Grei’s mind, quivering.

  The right question was: How do we get rid of the Debt? But in seven years, the big drunk was the only person to question the Debt’s purpose at all, and he had the courage to say it aloud, in the middle of the tavern. Everyone else turned their attention to their beers, but Grei drifted to the man.

  “Why?” Grei asked. “Why only one a month?”

  “I don’t know,” Blevins responded. “But somebody does.”

  “Yes. Where?”

  Blevins gave him a squinty gaze and a dark chuckle. “You want secrets, Stormy,” he painted the nickname on Grei like they were friends, “Shake the secret-keepers. The Ringblades are the slithering serpents of the empire. They go everywhere, hear everything. Ask them.”

  And her whispers, the gibberish whispers of the long-dead Forest Girl, returned.

  Those whispers tickled his mind now as he looked at the Lateral Houses, small castles created by the Faia hundreds of years ago, their bulk held up by magic. They looked like they had fallen over on their left sides but hadn’t made it all the way to the ground. They were perfectly level with, but five feet above, the cobblestones. Only a single, twisting walkway connected each to the ground like a tether to keep it from flying away. He had watched Highblades enter before. Gravity mindbendingly shifted beneath them as they stepped forward, slowly turning sideways to match the door.

  The Lateral Houses were supposedly the home of the Highblades and Ringblades in Fairmist. Except there were no Ringblades in Fairmist. No one had ever seen one. You couldn’t walk down the street without tripping over a Highblade. But there were no Ringblades.

  Grei ran across the courtyard of glistening cobblestones and slid underneath the Lateral House on the far left, sending up a spray of water.

  Two of the Houses had Highblades coming and going at all hours, but the third stood empty, waiting for a Ringblade to pay Fairmist a visit.

  He crouched forward through the haze of floating droplets. Water trickled down his face as they touched him. Only when they contacted something did the droplets fall, finally acting like water did in the rest of the empire.

  He glanced up at the tons of stone above him, and the back of his neck prickled. A stray thought ran through his head: What if the Lateral Houses fell if touched, like the water? He hunched lower and kept moving.

  He reached the far side and waited at the edge of the shadow. No one shouted. There was no high-pitched Highblade’s whistle.

  He focused on the Forest Girl’s whispers in his mind, quiet and beautiful. Whisper whisper whisper. Rising and falling. Maddeningly indecipherable.

  He craned his neck and looked up the side of the wall, taking care to stay within the house’s shadow. He’d have to be quick.

  With a grunt, he lunged into the droplet-filled air, turned and leapt onto the house, clinging to the sideways window. He pulled the steel shim from his sleeve and shoved it into the “bottom” of the window to his left—

  —but the unlocked window slid sideways without effort, and it stunned him. Were the Highblades and Ringblades so confident that they felt no locks were needed?

  He pressed his lips into a firm line, pushed himself up and tumbled through.

  Gravity shifted, and he fell sideways like someone had shoved him. He was expecting it, and flipped in mid-air. His feet hit the previously vertical floor and stuck.

  The vertigo was powerful, tried to pull him off balance. He waved his arms and managed to stay upright, then glanced out the window.

  All of shrouded Fairmist was on its ear. The joy filled him unexpectedly, and in that single moment he felt right. This was where he belonged, not broken down by the delegate’s torturers, not moving in the walking death of Fairmist’s citizens, but here where the whispers rushed through him like a breeze. Here, he wasn’t a boy they could bend. He was a man. The thrill spread through him, and he laughed.

  “Are you amused?” asked a woman’s voice.

  He spun, his joy constricting in his throat.

  Backlit by the glow of the window across the room, the Ringblade stood ready. Her arm was high, a wide circle of sharpened steel in her hand.

  Time stopped. Grei was caught. He hadn’t expected to see a Ringblade. No one ever saw a Ringblade. He had hoped to find writings, secrets left behind, something to explain the Debt of the Blessed and how it might be stopped.

  “How did you get through the window?” she asked in a calm voice.

  He looked at the window, then back at her. Clearly she had seen him and how he’d entered. She meant something different, something he didn’t understand.

  He mastered himself. She would kill him, but maybe he could discover something before he died. Or maybe he could jump through the window and escape, run far enough to tell someone.

  “I’m looking for answers,” he said. “About the Debt.” The words sounded too loud and too raw. It was like speaking treason straight to the delegate’s face.

  He couldn’t see her expression, only the black silhouette of her body. He tried to see what she had been doing before he broke in. There was a rumpled bed next to her, clothes draped across the bedpost. Was she wearing anything? He squinted, trying to see her better, but the light behind her made her body dark.

  “What is your name?” she asked. She lowered her weapon.

  “Grei,” he said.

  “Don’t move, Grei,” she said, turning her back to him, facing the bed. She was naked. He shifted—

  She spun, flinging the deadly ring. It whizzed by his ear, clanging twice off the corner walls behind him. He dropped to the floor, his heart in his throat. The weapon rebounded to her, and she caught it with the sound of ringing steel. Her catching hand was protected by something, a gauntlet.

  “Don’t move,” she repeated quietly.

  His heart hammered, but he let out a long breath and stood up again, with a full view of her this time. She was in her twenties, several years older than he. She had shoulder-length brown hair, an oval face, and very large brown eyes. Her breasts were full and round, with sickles of moonlight lighting their curves. The muscles in her arm stood out starkly in the window’s light, the ring poised to fly again.

  The whispers changed. Their sibilants morphed into voices, repeating something, a sing-song refrain. It was still all gibberish —no words—, but the change filled him with a rush of joy, and he felt invincible.

  “Kill me then,” he said.

  She paused. “Are you slinked?” she asked.

  She thought he was unhinged by the slink sickness that ravaged the minds of those who thought too much about the Slink War.

  “No,” he said. Grei’s whispers weren’t like that. He was sure they weren’t like that.

  The corner of her lip turned in a smile. “Then you’re a brave one,” she said. Her arm lowered. “Or are you stupid?”

  “I’m dead already. You, too. Just like them out there.” He gestured to the city of Fairmist outside the window. “What does it matter if you kill me again? I need the secrets you keep, and I mean to have them.”

  She paused, as though she was about to say something. Instead, she sat on the bed, crossed her legs. She made no effort to cover herself. Instead, she beckoned to him.

  He
cleared his throat. “I want to know about the Debt of the Blessed. It has to be stopped.”

  She watched him, then patted the bed next to her. “You sit here,” she said.

  He hesitated, then went to her and sat down. Every hair on the back of his neck stood on end. She was so lovely, but she was also a Ringblade. A silent serpent of the empire. This woman slit throats in the night, killing those the emperor told her to kill.

  Her fingertips touched the back of his neck. “I’m going to ask you a question,” she said softly, like a lover. “And you're going to answer me. If I think you’re lying, well…” She held his gaze with hard brown eyes, and he understood the deadly meaning. “But if you tell the truth, I will give you secrets.”

  After a quiet moment, he nodded.

  “The Faia built these houses,” she said. “They decreed that only protectors of Fairmist may come here. Highblades in the first two houses, and Ringblades here. Any civilian who even touches a Lateral House runs away. You are not the first thief to try to break into the Lateral Houses. But you are the first to succeed. So my question is this: How did you get through that window?”

  He reached for the unused shim in his sleeve. “I was going to—”

  She caught his wrist, fished out the slender piece of steel.

  “You’re a thief?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “A protector of Fairmist?”

  He thought of the Highblades. “No,” he said with disdain.

  She paused, cocking her head to the side. “You’re telling the truth.”

  “The truth is what I want to—”

  She slid her fingers into his hair and kissed him, pressed her body against him.

  His heart fluttered like a frantic bird. Her lips were full and soft, and her tongue touched his. She gently held the back of his neck, keeping him close. Threads of warmth spread through his chest, and he put his arms around her.