Feast of Fates (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 1) (55 page)

How did you escape?

Mouse stumbled a step.
Kings be fuked, that’s unnerving. No warning at all. Whatever you did to him was enough. He unchained me as soon as we were alone in what was surely that Lenora’s room. Pictures of her and clothing like this cloak. She looked so much like me…though I have no sisters, no family. Anyhow, I’m not sure what he wants, or what this other stray that you seem to have tamed wants. I know how he stares at me sometimes in that way that men do. And I shan’t be bedding the man; I’ll tell you that. I hardly do that with live ones and certainly not those without a pulse
.

I doubt you have to worry about that
, thought Morigan, but she held that thought inside. Of course, a resemblance to a lost love and an inexplicable connection between the two might be expressed first as desire. Yet beneath that yearning, love had many shades, and the colors often bled together, so what was confused for lust was indeed another emotion. Obviously, Vortigern had said nothing to Mouse, or perhaps had still to untangle it all himself. Better that these secrets be tended in their own gardens for now, considered Morigan. Leaving the matter as it was, she had another conversation to have. She wrestled against her eagerness to speak until they had come to a mothballed pantry and descended into a webbed and hollow tunnel gleaming
with dampness. Kanatuk produced a flameless sphere of yellow light that he used to illuminate the way. In these metal halls, dank as they were, Morigan at last felt the weight of oppression lifted from her. They were still prisoners in the Iron City, but no more bound to a cell. She would not shatter her Wolf with false hope if she called to him. And she did. While the distance or some other hindrance made it as if they were shouting to each other across a valley of wind, he heard her, and his whisper graced her in turn.

I am…not out of danger…but…I am not alone
, she told him.

When he said that he was crossing the Feordhan with Thackery, she leaned against the wall to catch herself, mingled a cry and a sigh of joy, and then hurried along in the darkness. The Wolf pawed the confines of her chest and did not leave her ever after.

III

“What a cockup,” spat Gloriatrix.

The trip from the Crucible to the Blackbriar estate was a few sands by skycarriage, and she came with her guard as soon as the news had disrupted her afternoon pruning. Disdainfully, she pointed at the corpse that had congealed on the floor.

“One of yours, I take it?” she asked.

The Broker was crouched on all fours on the carpet; he looked up and gnashed his teeth. “Yes, my Queen. Number Twenty-two is missing, though. He had better be dead, or he is a naughty, naughty boy.”

“And Vortigern?”

Sorren, slumped in the room’s only chair like a fainted woman, lazily answered. “Gone. I am sorry, Mother.”

“Failures, each of you,” she hissed.

Sorren clawed at the arms of his chair. “It is very tiring, what I do! To twist the flesh! To rule the bones! To make the blood boil! You do not know how tiring! The secrets, they ache as they are torn from me! You would not know the fever! The burning of it all! Like poison! Argh!”

She watched him rise and huff like a mad bull, stomping his feet and cursing, and knew that there was no way to help him in this state. The
riflemen posted at the broken door peered in, but she waved them at ease and went to sit on the bed while her son calmed his temper.

Her son had not always been a lunatic. For most of his life, he was a soft-spoken, delicate child. The kind that would read as his brother climbed trees. After his strategic wedding to the Blackbriar heiress, she had expected that he would be a quiet, studious hermit. A man with a beautiful, wealthy bride who would dwindle in silence while she and Vortigern set to ruling the Black City. What a mind Vort had for chicanery, and what a waste that it was never realized. For some time, though, it appeared as if the fates would unfold as she planned. Through the marriage, she and her sons were given distance from the wretched mantle of Thule—for they
all
became Blackbriars, spurning the custom that the woman should take her husband’s name—and she would go as far as to declare them happy: as happy as Menosians can be.

A cleverer mother would have seen the signals before her family collapsed—the cautious glances and smiles that Lenora and Vort slipped like schoolyard notes to each other. She was the one who had heard them plotting in the gardens. She was so furious at the mention of Thackery’s name that she did not stop herself from telling Sorren. She was unprepared for his reaction. Being so gentle a soul, the darkness that possessed him in that instant made him unrecognizable.
Kill the child
, he commanded, this embarrassingly soft sorcerer who had never killed a creature in his life.
I shall deal with my brother, and Lenora, and you will never question what I have done
.

Sorren’s innocence died along with his brother. Yet the fates demanded more blood, and Lenora disappeared the night that the pale walking ghost that was her lover returned with her mad husband. Sorren did not search for her until suspicions grew grim, for he wanted her to grovel for his pity. He was raging when they found Lenora picked and chewed by ravens several mornings hence, and he bitterly said,
It’s too late to bring her back. I shall have to work on another vessel
.

Madness had taken him, and Gloriatrix left Blackbriar for the safer walls of the Crucible after that—walls warded in iron and magik, though she wondered if her son could breach them if he truly wished. The events of that murderous night had warped more than his psyche; they had changed his power. He’d gone from sorcerer to nekromancer in an instant. She did not ponder this, as she did not want to know what species of horror her son had
become. No one could truly raise the dead. No nekromancer in Menos, Eod, or any in the history of magik. Once the fire of life was out, it could never be fanned again. What her son had done to Vortigern was an abomination, but she would not dare to tell him that, for who knew what form he might find more fitting for his mother. Particularly if he was to learn of how she, who had reprimanded him for his failures his entire life, had failed him in the act of blood that he had demanded of her: to kill the bastard child.

The tantrum finished after a spell of kicking the numberman’s corpse so violently that Gloriatrix’s skirt was splashed with blood. Spent, Sorren flung himself back in the chair. She waited a few more specks before attempting reason.

“I am sorry, my son. You try so hard to please me. Elissandra will be here soon. I am sure that there are footprints all over this manor. Ones that our eyes are blind to. A hair, a drop of sweat. That is all she needs. We shall find Vortigern and the witch soon.”

“And the girl,” added the Broker. He had remained in his position during Sorren’s rant and was spattered in red whorls, which he did not seem to mind.

Gloriatrix found the freak as appalling as he was interesting. She shook her head to break the spell and asked, “What girl?”

“The one who looks like the lady in the pictures,” said the Broker.

Finally, he noticed the gore and began the queerest ritual of licking a curled hand and then rubbing his face with it. It was animalistic, though Gloriatrix could not say from which bizarre species. She had to shake her head again to focus.

“Lady in the pictures? Who? Len—”

“None of your concern,” interrupted Sorren, his voice tight. “A pet project of mine.”

A pet project? Lady in the pictures?
thought the Iron Queen. Threads were being woven outside her web. Dangerous threads. With secrets that threatened to disturb the deeply packed graves of the past. While she waited for Elissandra to arrive, the blood-soaked chamber became ever more stifling. And she had only a preening, metal-faced man and a son that was hollowed out and filled with wickedness for support. Should her fortunes turn, she realized, her own grave had been dug.

XIV

WHISPERS FROM THE EAST

I

T
he
Red Mary
left Thackery and Caenith upon the rocking wharf like two sailors come home from war. Only in what was a reversal of the tradition, men flamboyantly waved and cried from the bow of the ship instead of from the shore as it retreated into the waves. In the day it took to cross the Feordhan, Jebidiah’s men had proven fine company, even if they were interested in Caenith in ways that he would never consider. Affectionately, he remembered the raucous feast and minstrel show they had provided while the
Red Mary
cruised along last eve. He gave an enthusiastic wave back to the seamen. His spirits knew no bounds now that Morigan had secured some measure of safety.

“They certainly liked you,” smirked Thackery.

“I am likeable,” said Caenith with a smile.

“Yes, you are.”

With a nudge to his companion, Thackery turned toward Blackforge. From the corroded wharf that wrapped around a wall of grim rock, to the listless folk who shuffled, facedown, in drab gray habits, Blackforge was a stark contrast to the liveliness of Taroch’s Arm. It stank less than Taroch’s Arm did, too, yet what smells it bore were of iron and sweaty
fear. A thick morning fog had coated the docks, and the sails on boats hung like heavy-shouldered mourners. As the companions started down the planks, the city on the hill forbiddingly revealed itself through tentacles of mist. Blackforge was a city of longhouses and cabins painted dark by coal-burning hearths, which grew up a casual stone slope like an unusual forest: one not unlike the steep vales of the Black Grove, a woodland outside the city from where the lumber for these buildings had been hewn. Overseeing the city was the grandest longhouse, which crackled with torches and fluttered with grim banners bearing the image of a hammer striking an anvil. Stone roads and steps snaked through Blackforge, and the companions soon found themselves off the wharf and climbing through sparsely populated neighborhoods. People were about, though the streets were light of steed or feet. Occasionally, Thackery and Caenith spotted pale faces peering from windows. At alehouses, bards plucked limp, out-of-tune melodies, and patrons kept to themselves and stared into their drinks with empty eyes. Thackery had always known Blackforge to be a despondent port, as the masters of house Blackmore were miserly rulers who taxed their fief to near poverty; however, its misery superseded its reputation. To divert his attention, Thackery struck up a conversation with his companion.

“Have you…spoken with Morigan again?” he whispered.

“Not as I am accustomed to,” muttered Caenith. He strode beside Thackery for a while before stepping into an unused alley to explain himself. “Not with the same clarity that I should. I know that she is out of immediate danger, and I catch hints of where she is and of what she is doing. However, conversations between us are broken, at best.”

“Conversations? You mean in your head?”

“Yes.”

Thackery pondered over what might interfere with the sort of farspeaking Caenith was describing. He snapped his fingers as it came to him.

“The feliron! Of course! It’s a mineral than dampens magikal aptitude, and the mines of Menos run deep with it. The bulwark of the Iron City is fortified with it, too: it acts as a repellent against spycraft or sorcery. Nullifies all magik within a certain range, come to think. While I doubt she is standing near the wall—or at least, I hope not—the feliron must be affecting the link
between Morigan and yourself. Once we get within the iron wall, it should resolve itself.”

Contemplating the trials ahead, Caenith’s brow wrinkled with despair.

Encouragingly, Thackery cuffed his fellow’s arm, and then shook his hand from the numbness, having forgotten how hard the man was. “We will reunite with her soon, I promise. First, let’s keep our chins to the ground and get out of Blackforge. I expect that the sword of the queen and that other man—familiar, he was—a master of the watch, I think, though I can’t recall his name. In any event, they’re surely on our tails now.” Thackery scratched his chin. “They were looking for one or both of us, though I cannot say why.”