“The honor of House Celverian?” Ederras wiped blood and melting frost from his brow. He’d already healed the wound itself, along with the worst of the others he’d sustained during his duel with Paravicar Leroung. Her corpse lay under a mangled section of the iron web she’d built, although he imagined it would disappear soon. None of the dead seemed to stay that way long in Citadel Gheisteno. The lesser ones simply vanished, forgotten, and the others were bound to their curses.
“I meant what I said.” Jheraal slid her mace back into its carrying loop. Pain and weariness roughened her voice, but there was deep satisfaction, too. “You’ll have to sacrifice a little of your house’s dignity, same as the others.”
“I don’t object to that if it’s necessary. I just don’t follow what you meant. Khollarix and Leroung were responsible for the crimes done here, I understand that. And I understand that the details of the Crux’s perfidies were probably hushed to protect them. But House Celverian had no part in that. Why would our honor be at stake?”
Velenne tilted her head at him curiously. Laughter hovered at her mouth, despite her exhaustion. “Dearest, why do you suppose your great-grandfather hid the devilheart chain?”
“To keep it from falling into the wrong hands,” Ederras said, regarding her cautiously. He’d seen what Velenne had done—what she had become—when she rained hellfire down upon the paravicar, and it had shaken him profoundly. That was what he had saved in the citadel’s cells.
And what had saved him, several times over. He didn’t quite know how he felt about that. Without her, he’d be dead. With her, he was … what?
“Mm.” She came closer, mending a dent in his left rerebrace by running a slender finger across the steel. The paravicar’s scimitar had hit him hard there, leaving a deep divot in the plate. With a long metal groan, the armor straightened, releasing its painful bite on his arm. “Not at all because his paramour—and former squire—had made it, and he wanted to hide the monstrosity of what she’d created? Not to protect whatever honor she might have had? Or his own? Not even a little?”
He frowned down at her. “I wouldn’t have.”
“Yes, well. That stiff-necked inflexibility is a considerable part of your charm.” Velenne kissed him lightly and stepped away, leaving Ederras to rub the ache out of his bruised arm. “But I suspect Kelvax was more protective of his lover’s good name—or his own. So he hid it. Probably, in part, to conceal what she’d done. And probably, as you say, to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. Unfortunately, since he failed on both counts, the chain will have to go somewhere else now. House Celverian can’t possibly hold it.”
“Neither can House Thrune.” The words were out of his mouth too quickly, too forcefully. She’d have to know that he’d been holding on to that suspicion for a while.
Velenne’s eyes narrowed. He saw the rapid flicker of emotions across her face: hurt, pleasure at being hurt, and then annoyance. “That’s what you thought I came for? To deceive you and take the chain?”
Not anymore. Not if she’d been both wounded and delighted by his guess. That was the one reaction Ederras didn’t think she could feign, and he had seldom been so glad to see it. He could lay at least one of his doubts to rest. “It was a possibility.”
“In that case it is once again my pleasure to tell you that you’re an idiot.”
“House Thrune doesn’t want the chain?”
“Oh, no, we do. Of course we do. But I didn’t come to steal it from you. I rather hoped you would see reason and agree that we should have it.”
“Why should I agree to that?”
“Because I’m both charming and persuasive. When I want to be, which isn’t right now. I’ll give you a moment to figure it out on your own first.” Velenne turned her attention to Jheraal, who’d been picking up her discarded helm. “Do you have any idea where the chain might be? Neither of our late graveknights was carrying it.”
The Hellknight lifted her head and looked around. She started toward the back of the room, under the molten tangle of the spell-blasted iron chains, where a secondary staircase led down. “The assassin said the paravicar had a workshop below the lictor’s throne room. We didn’t see it on the way up, so I’m guessing it must be down these stairs.”
Through a curtain of shimmering snowflakes suspended on threads of silver light, she led them to the paravicar’s workshop. Skeletons immured in ice and zombies with withered, frost-furred limbs stood at the periphery like sentinels. Ederras tensed as they walked past, ready for an attack, but none of the frozen undead stirred.
Maybe they didn’t need to. Paravicar Leroung’s sanctuary was so cold that his breath misted and frost settled on his eyelashes instantly. Even without walking guardians, the chill would drive them out soon.
It was a beautiful place, though. Ice sculptures of astonishing complexity sparkled against walls cloaked in frigid mist. Within those walls, the paravicar had frozen the corpses of animals in horrifying yet strangely artful poses. Needles of pink ice erupted from the veins of birds subjected to lethal blasts of cold, fanning through their feathers like ghostly second wings. A sea urchin had been captured at the moment of exploding into spines and ripples of colored fluid. Around it, fish had been caught in contorted leaps and convulsions, their glimmering scales sheened with ice that exaggerated the fins and flowing lines of their bodies.
There was an undeniable fascination to the paravicar’s frozen works of art, yet it was more than cold that made Ederras shiver as he turned away. The bone smithy had been bad enough, but this place was worse. The Master of Blades had sacrificed the lives of others to create tools and weapons. Monstrous, to be sure, but that was a purpose the paladin could understand. This place was filled with death only because Paravicar Leroung had wanted to look upon its leavings.
He moved on. Esoteric magical devices hummed and buzzed across crystal countertops, shimmering in every color Ederras knew and many he didn’t. Two immense tables, each fashioned from a slab of ice with runic circles at each corner, occupied the left side of the chamber. Glassy-bladed knives and hooks hung from racks on the walls beside them, and the frost on the floor was pink with a suggestion of blood.
Jheraal stared at the rose-tinted ice. “This was where the lictor had his demonstration. He had a shoemaker cut his own infant’s heart out to show the extent of the chain’s control.” She put her helm back on, leaving the visor open. “That must have been seventy years ago. Maybe more. Before the citadel’s fall, before the Scourge razed all of this to the ground. But the blood’s still here.”
“It might be someone else’s blood,” Ederras suggested.
“It isn’t. I remember … too much. Too clearly.” The Hellknight’s frown was half hidden behind steel. She turned away abruptly, crunching frost under her boots. “But it’s different, too. These knives weren’t made of glass back then. They were metal. The originals are in boxes under Citadel Rivad. These are new.” She took one down, and then another, setting them side by side on a crystalline countertop.
“This isn’t.” Velenne took the devilheart chain from a lacquered box on another table. She showed it to the others, draping it across her palms.
Evil radiated from the chain. Ederras scarcely had to draw upon Iomedae’s favor to sense that. It was manifest in every detail of the chain’s design.
The devilheart chain was a sleek, deadly-looking creation of dark iron ornamented with inlays of red gold, capped at either end by a snarling devil’s head. One side was a wolf wearing a blindfold and collar of spiked iron. The other was a not-quite-human skull, horned and shackled and fading into fog. Midway between the two skulls, halfway down the chain’s length, was a band of intricate gold puzzlework.
Velenne replaced the chain in its lacquered box and lowered its lid. There was a distinct sense of triumph to the curve of her hands as she let go. “It will have to be broken apart, of course, as it was before. One half to the Order of the Scourge for safekeeping, in recognition and reward for Hellknight Jheraal’s role in recovering the artifact. And, naturally, as a rebuke to the Order of the Rack for losing it. The other half to us.”
Ederras looked at her, tense but not yet sure if he should object. Broken in two, the chain wouldn’t function. “I thought—”
“That we wanted to use it?” Her smile was both affectionate and acerbic. “Yes, my love. We do intend to use it. House Thrune hasn’t maintained its power over the cleverest and most challenging empire in the world by passing up useful tools. But it’s not my intention to use it to rip the hearts out of hellspawn. That would be terribly inefficient. Peasants don’t make particularly good soldiers, as we’ve seen, and there are simpler ways to enthrall them, if that’s one’s goal. No, that will not be my recommendation to Her Imperial Majestrix, long may she reign.”
“Then what will you recommend?”
“That we give it to one of our honored allies. Probably House Oberigo, I think. They were useful to us in this endeavor, and they are a clever, dangerous family. They warrant closer watching.”
“You’ve lost me,” Ederras confessed. “Why give it away? Why would Lord Oberigo take it?”
“Because it’s an honor,” Jheraal said. The Hellknight was watching Velenne closely, a wary respect in her stance. “An honor with a trap in it. After I file my report, House Thrune will probably issue some form of reprimand to House Khollarix and House Leroung, whose scions’ sins will become widely known. Of course no overt condemnation will attach to the current leadership of those houses, but—”
“But there will be some small suspicion, yes, as is useful to us,” Velenne agreed pleasantly. She walked over to Ederras and pressed the chain’s lacquered box into his hands, holding his gaze as she spoke. “A few rumors about who knew what, and how directly their families were involved in covering their deeds. A slight weakening of their positions at court. Renniel Khollarix has been getting presumptuous since marrying his grandson to the Charthagnion girl. A touch of humility will do him good.”
“And meanwhile you’ll honor your loyal allies, House Oberigo, by making them the stewards of House Thrune’s half of the chain, and guardians against any such future treacheries,” Jheraal said slowly, sliding the pieces together as she spoke. “Putting your half of the chain all the way out in Westcrown, and passing over any house with the proximity and resources to make trouble with it.”
“Indeed. So the Oberigos can take on all the expense and inconvenience of looking after it, and all the risk of our annoyance if they should lose it, and meanwhile we’ll have an excuse to inspect their treasury and all their safeguards to ensure that our property is being adequately protected. With periodic re-inspections to see that our standards are maintained, naturally. A great privilege for Lord Oberigo, to be so trusted.” Velenne laughed, inclining her head to Jheraal. “And, of course, Houses Khollarix and Leroung will be jealous of his elevation at their expense. A whisper, a word, and they can all entertain themselves plotting against each other forever. Yes. You’ve seen it exactly. You’re wasted on things as small as murders.”
“I don’t think I am,” the hellspawn demurred. “Although I appreciate the compliment.”
“No doubt the people of Westcrown are grateful that you bother with them.” Velenne returned her gaze, dark and intent, to Ederras. “Do you approve, dearest? Or will you still insist that the perfidious House Thrune must not possess the chain?”
“You frighten me,” he answered honestly. Velenne saw too much, too far, too fast. She planned politics even while they fought for their lives in the ruins of Lictor Shokneir’s curse. That wasn’t a game he’d ever be able to play, not against people like her.
Yet it was, to his surprise, one he trusted her to play on his behalf.
“Good.” She slid her palms over his wrists and kissed him again, the box clasped between their hands. “That’s the most sensible thing you’ve ever said to me.”
When they emerged from the workshop, the bodies of Lictor Shokneir and Paravicar Leroung were gone. The lattice of iron chains, melted and mangled by Velenne’s infernal flames, had been restored to its complicated grandeur, without any trace of the destruction she’d wrought upon them. But the hooks that had imprisoned the hellspawn’s hearts were bare, and there was no sign that the curse of Citadel Gheisteno held their spirits in its grasp.
A victory, Ederras supposed, as they walked away from the empty chains. Some of the captive dead could be freed from this place.
That thought gave him pause. “The garden.”
“What?” Jheraal’s eyes burned gold in the shadows of the stairwell.
“Ochtel. He told us to find him in the garden if we were able to win free. I told him that we would.”
The Hellknight hesitated, but at length her horned helm dipped in a nod. “All right. I suppose it can’t hurt.”
The garden wasn’t hard to find. They’d passed by its door, marked with a window of gray glass, on their march to the lictor’s upper sanctum. No undead had defended that door, though, so they hadn’t gone through it then.
Now they did, and on the other side found a vision of beauty in a place that had none.
The druid’s garden was a wonderland. Tiny golden lights sparkled among ancient trees, silvery shrubs, and banks of rich green moss. Flowering vines draped the cold black stones of the castle’s walls, hiding its charred skulls behind a veil of scented leaves. Tranquility seemed to perfume the air along with the fragrant exhalations of rose and bergamot, peppermint and sweet lime.
In the center of it all, Ochtel sat motionless as a cross-legged gargoyle, his head bowed over his lap. Greasy black hair hid his face. Dirt-smudged linen hid his body. Yet despite all his efforts to make himself nothing, the maimed man could not disappear.
He raised his head as the three of them approached along the garden path. The ruined lips twitched toward a smile, not quite succeeding. His remaining eye gleamed under the shaggy black hair. “I heard … the bells.”
“We destroyed the lictor,” Jheraal said.
“For … a time. Yes.” Laboriously, Ochtel got to his feet. He had to straighten each of his legs with his hands, forcing the unnaturally long bones into place with agonizing, audible pops. “A … measure of vengeance. But … I would ask you for more. Now … that you have won.”
“Freedom.” The druid swept a sleeved hand across his body. He wiped bloody froth from the corner of his mouth, breathing hard. “That is … the boon I ask of you. The … favor. Take me with you. Across the bridge.”
There was a certainty in the druid’s request that gave Ederras pause. “Why?”
Ochtel didn’t blink. For once, the disfigured man met his eyes steadily. “To have … a vengeance that will last. I want mine … as you had yours.”
They took him.
Jheraal and Ederras alternated the burden, carrying Ochtel down the stairs and through the halls when his weakened legs gave out. Despite his height, the druid weighed next to nothing. Under his shroud, he was a skeleton in a parchment shell.
He couldn’t have walked across the bridge. Ochtel winced and covered his eye against the blaze of the skulls’ green gaze, shuddering on Ederras’s back as guilt buffeted his body. The druid never uttered a word of complaint, but it would have been impossible for him to force his tortured form through those wracking waves of memory.
Halfway across the bridge, the paladin understood the second reason Ochtel could never have walked free from his prison. As they left the reach of Lictor Shokneir’s will, the druid began to fall apart.
The first time Ederras had seen him, he had thought the man’s disfigurements were too severe for him to possibly survive. Outside the bent reality of Citadel Gheisteno, that turned out to be true.
It started with his fingers. Their stitches unraveled, dropping chunks of suddenly dead flesh across the bridge’s stones and skulls. Then the decay spread to his limbs. His arms shriveled in the enveloping folds of his shroud. The bones of his legs clacked loose in his skin. Ochtel’s hair fell from his scalp, drifting into the dark mist that cloaked the bridge’s chasm.
A few steps from the bridge’s end, a sigh escaped Ochtel’s withered lips. “Artuno,” he mumbled, the words so delirious and slurred that Ederras could hardly understand them. “I’m sorry. I’m free. I’m coming.”
He was dead before they finished the crossing. Gently, Ederras disengaged the wasted arms from around his neck and lowered Ochtel’s remains to the mountain road. There was even less left than he’d imagined. A skull, a torso. Bones clad in fragile, yellowed skin. Everything else had fallen away during their passage. “I wish we could have done more for him.”
“He got what he wanted,” Jheraal said. “The garden will die without him. That’s one thing Lictor Shokneir can’t restore. A vengeance that will last, indeed.”
“I’ll take his bones to be interred with honor. Perhaps he had family somewhere. Friends.”
The Hellknight shrugged, unmoved by sentiment. She looked to Velenne. “Can you sense your dog yet?”
“Yes. Come.” Gathering her paneled skirts, the diabolist led them up the mountain road.
In a small cave burrowed into the stone, beyond a windswept ledge spattered in fresh blood, they found Vhaeros and the hellspawn children.
The blood didn’t belong to the children. A dead drake lay in the cavern’s depths, its spiky green scales glazed with a pink slush of half-frozen blood. More blood painted the children’s cheeks and chests in pentagrams and circled crosses. One of them wore the drake’s horns on her head in a creditable imitation of an Asmodean cleric’s headdress. The children sat in a circle around a smokeless crimson fire, chanting clumsily but enthusiastically in unison, while Vhaeros looked on with indulgent amusement.
“What is this?” Jheraal paused at the cave’s mouth, taking in the strange and grisly scene.
The children stopped chanting. Turning and standing, the hellspawn girl wearing the drake’s horns answered her proudly. “An offering to Our Lord Asmodeus, Prince of Darkness, Ruler of Hell.”
“I see.” Jheraal absorbed that, then motioned to the drake. “Did you kill that?”
The girl shook her head, blushing and stammering slightly. “N-no. Vhaeros brought us here to stay warm. We’d only been here a few days when the dragon came and attacked us. Vhaeros killed it. He saved us. Then he said that we should give thanks and praise to Asmodeus for protecting us with fang and fire in our hour of need.”
“Praise to the Lord of Hell!” the other children chorused.
Vhaeros wagged his shaggy tail, offering a fair imitation of a doggy grin that didn’t quite disguise the gleam of malicious laughter in his eyes.
“Yes. Praise.” Jheraal glanced at Ederras, clearing her throat to hide a smile. “Well, he did save them. From a drake. Apparently.”
Ederras refused to look at Velenne. He didn’t know whether he would laugh or shout at her if he did, and neither would have been appropriate, so he kept his gaze fixed on the children. “Let’s wash them off and get them back to Westcrown.”
“Can I keep the horns?” the girl asked, clutching them worriedly.
“Yes.” Now he really wasn’t going to look at Velenne. But he knew what the answer would have been, if he had. Laughter. And shouting. Both. Nothing ever easy, and everything he wanted. “You can keep the horns.”