Shadow Of The Winter King (Book 1) (6 page)

Such thoughts consumed Vhaerynn, Necromancer and Court Wizard of Tar Vangr, on nights when he had to forsake his comfortable chambers in the palace in favor of some lice-ridden hole in low-city. It happened more often than he might have liked, but such was his duty to the crown and the Blood Ravalis that wore it. He tried to touch nothing.

The Prince must have his diversions.

The grimy city outside the window pane was starting to disgust him, and he focused instead on the reflection of his aged face. His eyes seemed to be shrinking in place as his flesh withered and contracted around them, skin collecting in thick pads that hung over his once-strong cheekbones. It made his nose seem very large and his mouth thin. His cheeks had hollowed out to leave only hanging sinews. It was a half-skeletal face for a man half dead.

Vhaerynn shut his eyes and touched the source of his power: the golden dagger he wore in a sheath around his neck. The blade was older by far than he was—older than Tar Vangr itself—and meant for the hand of a god, not a man. It was a relic from a long dead age, which had escaped the first Ruin of the world—or perhaps caused it. Vhaerynn let its power fill him, breathed easier, and reached out to the blood of those nearby.

From his place in the antechamber, he felt the coursing blood of the prince and his coin-woman in the next room beating in his head, and he expanded his reach elsewhere. All around him, more prostitutes practiced their trade for their clients, Ravalis loyalists one and all. He felt them—knew them—could take their bodies if he wanted with little or no resistance. In this place, men did crude things to women or other men, and hired smallfolk danced and rutted for the pleasure of any who foisted copper coins upon them. Vhaerynn found it pathetic, if only because none of them had the slightest knowledge of true pleasure.

Vhaerynn expanded his reach to taste the beating blood of smallfolk in the street. Down at the docks, only three blocks away, a merchant caravel was preparing to make way across the Dusk Sea. It amazed him that folk actually continued the business of trade in these latter days. Did they seek profit in a crumbling world, or was this merely man’s audacity to hope in the face of encroaching Ruin?

Someone was coming, he realized. Someone he had not seen was even now stalking toward him down the hall, the hilt of a blade grasped in one hand. He had come closer than most would-be slayers, but Vhaerynn had detected him before he posed any real threat.

“If you mean to speak, you might as well do it,” the sorcerer said.

The slayer paused, no doubt trying to determine if the words had been for him. His heartbeat quickened slightly in his anxiety. It excited Vhaerynn.

Vhaerynn reached out with his power and caressed the would-be slayer. The man stood more fully upright, his skin erupting with stimulated nerves. That was just a taste of what the Golden Blade of the Aza could do in the hands of Vhaerynn the Necromancer.

“Speak,” Vhaerynn said again. “The Prince is... indisposed. I will hear you.”

The man stepped out of the shadows, though it was unnecessary. He wore a mask covered with bones: fingerbones, toes, shards of ribs. Vhaerynn could tell at a glance that they were all human bones. “Your ambuscades have failed,” the man said in a gravel-shredded voice. “Your men are dead.”

“I felt this,” Vhaerynn said, unconcerned. The deaths had felt perfectly ordinary—mere soldiers and none of noteworthy Blood. “Your point?”

“Shame, is what it is,” said the man. “It’s almost like your Shroud has betrayed you.”

“Almost.”

“Fortunately, I know where the two traitors have gone and by what means they travel.”

“And you want something for the secret, I imagine.”

“An audience with the prince.”

“Hrm.” Vhaerynn thumbed his thick nose. “I could force the secret from you. I would enjoy it.”

He drew upon the power of the dagger, and felt the blood quicken in the slayer’s veins.

“Perhaps,” the slayer said slowly. “But if I were you, I’d look to set my own house in order. Find any other traitors before they act, rather than going off to hunt those two.”

“My own house.” Vhaerynn finally opened his eyes and saw a man in a death’s head mask, sculpted of leather and bone. “We both know that those of us who possess power have no true houses. Not anymore. Blood is what we have—power in the Blood.”

The masked man returned his words with silence. The mask made his face a barren graveyard, its earth despoiled and the bones revealed. Such a barbaric thing these northern winterborn did, burying the bodies of their dead. In Luether, at least they had the decency to burn corpses so they could not be put to such garish display.

“Unless when you speak of my ‘house,’ you mean the Blood Ravalis,” Vhaerynn said. “Do you mean that traitors yet surround the great King Demetrus? Blood-thieves and slayers?” He stifled a yawn.

“Surely you love your king and country, and will do this tiny thing to protect them,” the slayer said. “More I’ll say to your prince, and only to him.”

Vhaerynn smiled cryptically. He knew what the masked man had to say. Intriguing. This could work to his advantage. “Enter, then.”

He pushed open the door to the brothel chamber. Though the slayer hid it well, Vhaerynn observed the man walking with a slight limp—an awkward gait borne of a crippling injury, perhaps? Or was it a mistake of birth? Vhaerynn wondered at the identity of the slayer. He longed to taste the man’s blood and know him. He caressed the golden dagger idly.

Inside, Prince Lan Ravalis glistened in the firelight, tough and well-muscled and built like the bear that was his sigil. His was an angular head with a lean, predatory’s face and very little neck, and his mouth stood perpetually open just wide enough to offer a glint of yellowed teeth. He had a woman on all fours and busied himself rutting her like an animal. She was, Vhaerynn guessed, nameless—a peasant who had not earned a name and could not afford to buy one. When Lan saw Vhaerynn and the man in the bone mask, he grunted and waved them inside. He didn’t stop for the interruption.

“You know what I hate about this city?” he asked between thrusts. “The cold. The damn winter never ends, and the twice-damned cold seeps into my bones. I can’t get warm.” He grasped his hired woman by the hair and wrenched her against him with a gasp. “Even the whores are cold.”

“As ice, m’lord.” The woman panted. “Shall I bring you a boy, next? They’re warmer.”

“Wretch.” He shoved her into the rumpled bed and stood. “Bow to your king.”

She crawled toward him and went about her business, face in his lap. Lan put one hand on her head and turned to regard his visitors like a king.

“What rabble have you brought me, Vhaerynn?” he asked. “Does this man have no face?”

“My Lord Ravalis,” said the slayer, but Lan spoke over him.

“You are just like this cursed city,” he said. “Savages, all of you. Everywhere I step in this awful place, there’s a chamberpot, or a pile of horse dung, or a firepit. In Luether, we use machines to do these things, but here you can barely work an anvil, much less an alchemy lab. By the Narfire, your rutting council’s full of jumped-up beggars prattling on about honor and tradition.”

Vhaerynn nodded. “Noble concepts, Your Highness.”

“Noble,
ha
. All I see is a horde of unwashed vermin, so stupid it’s a wonder you even have a high-city, much less a skyship port. Ugh. At least sex for coin requires little training.” He gestured to the prostitute who murmured halfheartedly. “Speak quickly, masked thing, ‘ere I lose my strength.”

The masked man spread his hands. “I would speak to you of the Bloodbreaker.”

That drew Lan’s attention like a polished-bright sword drawn from a sheath, and pushed him over the edge. The coin-woman moaned and tried to escape, but he grasped her hair to hold her in place. He spent himself in her mouth and only let her go, gasping, when he was done. She glared at him, but he seemed to have forgotten her entirely.

“You’ve found her?” Lan reached for his clothes and sword. “Ovelia Dracaris?”

“The same,” the masked man said. “She took passage on a mage-craft caravel this very night. If I’m not mistaken, it will be leaving within the hour.”

“Why do we wait?” Lan slid into his breeches. “Let us go and slay the whore right now.”

The slayer held up a hand. “I have not said all, Your Highness.”

“What more is there to say?” Lan bared his teeth as he fumbled with his shirt. “She killed my brother. She is a traitor and a whore and we must—”

Lan might have meant to impress with his bravado, but Vhaerynn only found it tedious. He could go after the Bloodbreaker himself and slay her with his magic before the prince even finished donning his clothes, but another possibility occurred to him. A chance to make a change in the World of Ruin.

“Will you accept my council or not?” Vhaerynn asked.

“Speak, then.” Lan turned to the coin-woman, who’d gathered up her clothes. “And you—don’t you dare put those on. I’m not finished with you.”

The woman tensed in rage but dropped her robe back to the floor. “As m’lord commands.”

The masked man continued. “The Lord of Tears goes with her.”

“Regel the Oathbreaker, he who was Shadow to the Winter King? He is just a useless old man, one with more reason than any of us to hate her.” Lan looked to Vhaerynn. “Is this true, wizard?”

The necromancer nodded. Hearing the beat of a man’s heart was the easiest of all his magic, and the slayer’s had not fluctuated. “All the more reason to wait,” Vhaerynn said. “We must know what they seek. Whatever cause unites them, it must be a powerful one. Let this one follow them. In the meantime, we watch the Burned Man, and we wait for a sign.”

Lan looked displeased, but he nodded at length. “Very well.” He looked to the slayer in the bone mask. “What is your business in this? Did you come for coin, or is there more?”

The slayer bowed. “I have business of my own with the Lord of Tears and the Bloodbreaker.”

Lan scowled. “You northerners and your intrigues,” he said in disgust as he shrugged into his doublet. “You scheme and you plot but you
do
nothing while the world slips into Ruin around us. You are no better than the barbarians who took my home. The Children that will slay you in your beds one day.”

A shadow loomed behind Lan, and he flinched away. Even the slayer in his bone-mask seemed too surprised to react. For Vhaerynn, who had felt the coin-woman move and draw the hidden dagger from the bedside table, stopping her was simple. He reached out to her blood and seized her limbs, so she froze in place like a statue. Her chest heaved and her eyes were wild.

Lan looked at the knife she held over him, then at Vhaerynn, then back to the woman. “Found your courage, did you, whore?”

“No.” She spoke through gritted teeth. “I can stomach your mongrel insults to my people, but you called us Children of Ruin. I’ll see you dead for that.”

Lan took the dagger from her frozen hand and put it to her throat. He pressed it into her skin, and delicious blood trickled down the blade. “I might have rutted you once more and sent you on your way, but now I’ll take my time. With this blade instead of the one Ruin gave me.”

“It’ll be an improvement,” she said. Fearless, even as Vhaerynn squeezed her with his magic.

Lan’s smile became a grimace. He held the dagger before her eyes. “Open your mouth.”

The masked slayer stepped forward, hand going for a blade. This, Vhaerynn found interesting. Lan’s callous treatment of the coin-woman was to be expected—even among the chauvenist Ravalis, Lan’s disdain for women was legendary—but why would it bother the slayer so, that he would stand against his would-be employer? The man
was
winterborn, of a people with a misguided sense of honor.

“Your Highness,” Vhaerynn said. “The woman is nameless. Nobody. Surely it would be a waste of a fine doublet to spill her blood upon it.”

Lan hesitated. He cut a little more, and the coin-woman could not even flinch. “You and your wisdom, necromancer.” He looked to the slayer, who had noticeably calmed. “And what is your name, if you have one? I would know those who claim to be in my service.”

“I made no such claim—our interests simply align in this matter. I will do as you wish. My name is Davargorn, but you may call me
Mask
.” He turned to the window. “Now if you’ll pardon me—I’ve a caravel to catch.”

He stepped out the window of the brothel and fell into the night. There was a rush of air, and then a black form swooped away through the darkness like a raven. Vhaerynn tasted the dull smoke of magic.

Vhaerynn breathed deeply of the sweet scent left by his guest. Now that he had tasted it, Vhaerynn would recognize that particular blood anywhere.

“Patience, Prince,” Vhaerynn said. “You will have your prize—your brother’s whore, and his worst foe. Both to do with as you wish.”

“Very well.” Lan grunted at the coin-woman. “What of this one? My desire is gone.”

Vhaerynn released his blood hold. The woman collapsed to the bed, writhing in pain from the blood magic. “Rest easy,” he said. “Your offense is easily forgiven.”

Even in the midst of her agony, she looked at him defiantly. She reached for her robe, sat up, and brushed past them. She laid a finger against her cheek—the sign of the Circle of Tears. Damn. Word returning to the Burned Man was the last thing Vhaerynn needed tonight.

Heedless of the sign—if he’d seen it, he’d not recognized it—Lan caught the woman by the arm. “I don’t pay if you don’t finish your job.”

She slapped Lan, which made him smile. He returned her a punch to the stomach, and she doubled over. Still, that Vangryur honor rose in her, and she would not make a sound of discomfort. Instead, she rose and limped toward the door.

Vhaerynn grasped her wrist with a strength that belied his aged body. She struggled to no avail. “Alas,” he said. “You’ve heard far more than you should.”

He drew the golden dagger with a ring of steel and scratched the woman’s hand, then released her. The woman looked to him, confused, then stepped away. She made for the door, but shivered and fell to one knee after the second step. Her hand had turned gray and dead, and the corruption was creeping up her arm from the slight wound.