Blood of the Underworld (9 page)

When she landed, it was upon a large two-story set of homes, the roof long and flat. Before her, at the edge of the roof, was her nightmare. She wore black and dark purple wrappings, tightly woven around her body. A white cloth covered her face, masking her features. A grey cloak trailed behind her.

Another Faceless.

“Who are you?” Zusa asked as the other woman turned around, her own daggers drawn.

“You?” the Faceless Woman said, her voice revealing her surprise. “Zusa, yes? The betrayer, the murderer of the faithful. They’ve told us of you, warned us of your blasphemy.”

“They?” asked Zusa, her whole body tensing. “I was the last of the Faceless. What cruel joke are you?”

“My name is Ezra,” the woman said, adopting a similar crouch as Zusa. Her body was thinner, and shorter. By her voice and the hint of features she could see through the cloth mask, Zusa guessed her to be young, and very beautiful. “And I am the first of the new. The order has been remade, and it is my honor to deliver you to Karak so we might wash away your sins with blood.”

“My sins?” Zusa asked, grinning. “Which ones?”

“You show your face,” said Ezra. “You are a disgrace. A weakling. My faith will bring you low!”

Ezra’s lithe body uncoiled, leaping out like a viper, her daggers twin fangs. Zusa fell back, surprised by the speed. Twisting to one side, she avoided a stab, then batted away the other. Planting her feet, she ducked low and cut. Ezra blocked with both her daggers, then tried to kick. A foolish move. Zusa spun again, her feet dancing. When she leapt forward, Ezra was out of position, the snap-kick having put her balance at risk. Her daggers flashed in, and found flesh. Ezra screamed, but instead of countering, she tried to retreat.

Zusa gave her no chance. Her grim smile remained. Ezra was younger, faster, but she was clearly new to the order, and could not hope to match the sheer skill Zusa had developed over many long years. She’d fought the Watcher to a standstill. This little whelp of a woman was nothing compared to that. A feint pulled Ezra’s weapons out of position, and then she stepped close, leg sweeping. Ezra hit the ground with a cry of pain. Blood spilled across the rooftop. Zusa fell atop her, knees pressing against her shoulders, locking them in place. With one hand Zusa clutched Ezra’s wrists together, the other pressing a dagger against the woman’s throat.

“You think your faith means anything?” Zusa asked, breathing the question into her ear. “You think it gives you the strength to challenge me? You are a fool, Ezra, as is whomever brought back our order.”

“Kill me,” Ezra said. “I am not afraid.”

Zusa’s eyes narrowed. She shifted her weight, tightening with her thighs so that she squeezed against the two stab wounds she’d given Ezra in her stomach. They weren’t deep enough to be fatal, but they certainly hurt like the Abyss. Ezra clenched her teeth, but Zusa squeezed tighter until she finally let out a scream.

“You should be afraid of me,” Zusa said, pressing the dagger hard enough to draw a drop of blood. It ran down the edge of her dagger, then dripped from the hilt to the dark wrappings. “I can do more than hurt you.”

She picked up Ezra’s wrists, then slammed them down to make her drop her weapons. With her unarmed, she then took her dagger from her throat and began to cut, quick, calculated strikes. She knew where. She’d only wrapped herself in a similar manner for over a decade. The wrappings about Ezra’s face fell to the roof, exposing her small nose, cream-colored skin, and short brown hair. Her hazel eyes stared up at Zusa with a mixture of horror and fury.

“How dare you?” Ezra asked through clenched teeth.

“They hide your beauty to mask their own shame, not so you might earn penance in Karak’s eyes.”

“I will not listen to your blasphemy.”

“You don’t need to.” Zusa put the tip of her dagger against Ezra’s left eye. “Tell me the name of the man who brought back our order, or I will scar your face so terribly you will have a reason to keep it hidden.”

Ezra swallowed and looked away. Zusa could see her trying to be brave, to hold fast to her loyalty to Karak. She shook her head, annoyed. Leaning even closer, she let her cheek brush against Ezra’s, let her lips touch her ear.

“Just a name,” she breathed. “All I ask is a name. Who created you, gave you your lessons, your rules, your training? Do not make me mar your beauty. You suffer enough. Trust me, I know it well, know your loathing, your anger, your frustration that the man you fucked suffered only whipping and a banishment to a new temple while you must spend every waking moment as an outcast, humbled and cowering in hopes of forgiveness by our dear, beloved Karak...”

“You would have me condemn my soul to fire.”

“I would have you speak a name, you stupid girl. Now tell me, or bid goodbye to your eye.”

Ezra breathed in deep, let it out. Zusa sensed the defeat in it, and sighed in relief herself. That relief fled the moment she heard the name.

“Daverik,” the woman said. “Come from Mordeina with the highest blessings of the priesthood.”

Daverik...

“You lie,” Zusa said. “You must lie!”

Ezra tilted her head back as the knife pressed against her eye, and she let out a cry as the tip dipped in and out of the white of her eyeball. Blood pooled, and a red tear slid down her face.

“Do not insult me,” she said. “Now do what you must.”

Zusa thought to jam her dagger through the woman’s throat, but could not. Ezra was only confused, her mind twisted, her faith a noose about her neck. She stood and took a step back as her insides churned.

“I want you to give Daverik a message,” she said.

“Why would he care what you have to say?” Ezra asked, sitting on her knees.

“He will,” Zusa said. “Tell him...tell him Katherine must speak to him, and to find her along the eastern wall tomorrow night.”

Zusa turned to leave, glanced back.

“And tell him to come alone.”

“We’ll find you,” Ezra said, struggling to a stand as the wounds in her stomach bled anew from the movement. “My sisters and I will kill you for this.”

“For what, looking upon your eyes and hair?” Zusa smirked. “We Faceless saw far more of each other than that.”

With a running leap, she soared into the air, leaving Ezra far behind. If only she could leave her troubles behind as easily. Daverik’s face flashed before her eyes, so young, so handsome. Back before she’d been forced into the order of the Faceless, her name stripped away and rebranded as Zusa. Before they’d been caught together. Before her love of him had doomed her to a life as one of the Faceless.

She’d thought him dead. Thought him gone. Thought him forever out of her life.

She’d thought wrong.

“Damn you, Daverik,” she whispered as she ran back to the Gemcroft mansion. “What cruel fate is this?”

6

A
lyssa had slept terribly, and gladly welcomed the daylight that shone through her window. At least she could get up instead of trying to fall back asleep. She bathed, and servants brushed her hair and helped her dress. Through it all, she keenly felt Zusa’s absence. Normally she lingered like a protective angel, but this morning, when she needed her comfort most, she was gone.

“I wish for a small meal,” she told her servants. “Just family at our table, plus Lord Gandrem.”

“Yes, milady,” one said, hurrying off to give the order.

Finally ready to face the day, she dismissed the servants and stared at herself in the looking glass. They’d done what they could, but still she saw the dark circles beneath her eyes, and how puffy her face was. She’d spent much of the night in tears, all in confusion. She felt joy for having her mother back from the dead, and at times it nearly overwhelmed her. Other times she felt terror at losing control of everything she’d built, and if she closed her eyes tight, she could almost hear invisible gears turning, the machinations of a hundred different lords and ladies seeking to use this newfound change against her. Sometimes she wished Melody had remained dead, and then immediately followed this up with shame and regret for such horrible, selfish desires.

Yes, she was very glad the night was done. The last thing she wanted to be was alone with her thoughts. She was sick of them. Exiting her room, she crossed the hall to where her mother stayed. A servant was just exiting, her head ducked low and her eyes to the floor.

“Is Melody dressed?” she asked.

“Yes,” said the servant, a pretty little thing with dark hair. “But I think perhaps she needs a moment alone...”

Alyssa dismissed her, and despite her advice, knocked on the door. No answer. She turned the knob and gently pushed it in. Stepping inside, she found her mother sitting on the edge of the bed. The image shocked her breath away. Melody wore an emerald dress that had long remained in the storage, Alyssa too short to wear most of her mother’s clothing. It looked like an image from the past, and she could almost imagine her childhood self sitting beside her, book in hand. Except tears were in her mother’s eyes instead of the smile she’d known in the past.

“Are you all right?” Alyssa asked, strangely timid in her own house.

“I will be fine,” Melody said, dabbing at her eyes with a cloth. “I just miss him, is all.”

“Father?” Alyssa asked, sliding beside her on the bed.

Melody smiled softly.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “But let us not dwell on that. Mindy said you have prepared us breakfast, so let us go. I don’t want to keep John waiting.”

Alyssa’s cheek twitched at that. John Gandrem was staying in their mansion as an honored guest, and was very much a father to her son. When Melody had introduced herself, John had seemed quite taken, and they’d talked long after Alyssa left them to retire for the night. Idly she wondered what a union between Felwood Castle and the Gemcroft estate might mean for her son. So much added wealth and land...

She shook her head, dashing the fantasies away.

“Indeed,” she said. “I would hate to be rude.”

In their grand dining hall, John and Nathaniel sat beside each other in the center of the long oak table, looking humorously insignificant compared to the food stretched out before them. They had not begun eating yet, and Alyssa was not surprised. John was most particular with his manners, and that was partly why Alyssa had first sent her son to be fostered in his hall. John stood at their arrival, and Nathaniel quickly followed. She smiled at her son, looking so small and youthful beside the older lord, dressed in fine green robes and a thin silver crown across his forehead.

“I fear your servants misunderstood,” John said, tilting his head in disrespect. “We are only four, yet they cook for forty.”

“The rest will eat after we are done,” Alyssa said, taking a seat opposite her son. She glanced to the upper corner of the room. “And it is five, not four. Come down, Zusa.”

Just a shadowy spider, Zusa climbed down from the tall rafter, hidden in shadows that clung to her most unnaturally. Raking a hand through her hair, Zusa joined them without a word or smile. Alyssa looked to her plate, already simmering with meats, eggs, and a choice of sweetbreads, and felt her stomach twist.

“Do you feel well, dear?” Melody asked.

“I’m fine,” Alyssa said, forcing herself to nibble on some bacon so they would leave her be. From the corner of her eye, she caught Zusa’s troubled expression.

“What is it?” she asked softly as John and Nathaniel started up a conversation about some jousting tournament to start soon on the outskirts of the city.

“We must speak soon, in private,” her friend said. “One is of a personal matter, the other of Lord Victor and his foolish crusade.”

“Crusade? What are you talking about?”

“Not now. And we must speak with Terrance. If he has made even the slightest error, your life might be in danger.”

Terrance? Alyssa was baffled. Terrance was a distant cousin of hers, a young man she’d promoted four years ago to be her master of coin and trade after the previous advisor had secretly worked against her, eventually making an attempt upon her life. So far as she knew, Terrance was a good man, careful. How could an error by him put her life at risk?

“Zusa, I don’t like how vague this...”

“Milady,” interrupted a servant at the door. She was young, and looked flustered. “A man seeks an audience with you, and says it is quite urgent.”

“It can wait,” Alyssa said, harsher than she meant. John glanced her way upon hearing the tone of her voice, but wisely kept his mouth shut.

“Yes, of course, milady,” said the servant. “It’s...well, he has many soldiers with him, and is very insistent that he speak with you.”

“Soldiers?” asked Melody, her eyes widening.

“It’s nothing,” Alyssa said, pushing away her barely touched plate. “I will meet with him, though he better pray to the gods his matter truly is urgent. What is this whelp’s name?”

“Lord Victor Kane,” the servant girl said, bowing quickly before hurrying away. Alyssa paused a moment upon hearing the name, and she looked to Zusa, whose eyes met hers. A warning went unspoken between them.