The Tearling is not a large kingdom, but it embraces a wide variety of geography and climate. The heart of the country is flat and temperate, much of it rich farmland. In the west, the kingdom is bordered by the Tearling Gulf, and beyond that God’s Ocean, which remained uncrossed until well into the Glynn Queen’s reign. In the south, the country becomes dusty and dry as it reaches the borders of Cadare. On the northern border, above the Reddick Forest, foothills climb into the Fairwitch, an impassable mountain range. And in the east, of course, the Tearling runs a jagged border with Mortmesne. As years passed and the Red Reign of Mortmesne progressed, Tearling monarchs watched this eastern border with deepening unease . . . and for good reason.
—The Tearling as a Military Nation, CALLOW THE MARTYR
Early in the morning, before the sun even thought of breaking the horizon, the Queen of Mortmesne woke from a nightmare.
She lay frozen for a moment, her breath coming quickly, until she recognized the familiar scarlet of her own apartments. The walls were paneled in Tear oak, and everywhere the wood was embossed with dragons, the pattern dyed red. The Queen’s bed was enormous, draped in scarlet silk, seamless and comfortable. But now the pillow beneath her head was soaked with sweat. It was the dream, the same dream that had woken her for two weeks now: the girl, the fire, the man in pale grey with the face she could never quite see, and finally the last flight to the borders of her land.
The Queen rose and moved to the bank of windows that overlooked the city. The borders of the panes were opaque with frost, but her apartments were quite warm. The glassmakers in Cadare created such a marvel of insulation that many claimed they used magic, but the Queen knew this to be false. There was no magic in the surrounding kingdoms but that which she permitted, and she had given the Cadarese no license to enchant their glass or anything else. But the insulation was an impressive achievement. Each year, Mortmesne took a significant portion of Cadare’s tribute in glass.
Below the Queen lay the Crown city of Demesne, silent and mostly dark. A glance at the sky told her it was just before the fourth hour; only the bakers would be awake. The castle beneath her was dead silent, for all of them knew that the Queen never rose before the sun.
Until now.
The girl, the girl. She was the hidden child, Elyssa’s child, she could be no one else. In the Queen’s dreams she was sturdy and dark-haired, with a strong, determined face and her mother’s green Raleigh eyes. But unlike Elyssa, she was a plain thing, and somehow that seemed the worst detail of all, the one that conveyed the most reality. The rest of the dream was a blur of pursuit, thoughts of nothing but escape while the Queen attempted to outrun the man in grey and what appeared to be a conflagration behind him. But when she woke, it was the girl’s face that remained: round and unremarkable, just as her own had once been.
The Queen would have had one of her seers interpret the dream, but they were all merely frauds who enjoyed dressing in veils. Liriane had been the only one with any true gift, and now Liriane was dead. There was no need of the sight anyway. In broad stroke if not in detail, the meaning of the dream was plain enough: disaster.
A thick, guttural sound came from behind her, and the Queen whirled around. But it was only the slave in her bed. She had forgotten about him. He’d performed well, and she’d kept him for the night; a good fuck chased the dreams right away. But she loathed snoring. She watched him with narrowed eyes for a moment, waiting to see if he would do it again. But he only grunted softly and rolled over, and after a moment the Queen turned to stare out the window again, her thoughts already distant.
The girl. If not dead already, she would be soon. But it rankled, to have been unable to find the jewels all these years. Even Liriane had seen nothing of the girl’s whereabouts, and Liriane had known Elyssa well, better than the Queen herself. It was maddening . . . a girl child of known age, with a singular marking on her arm? Even if the child kept the jewels hidden, it should have been an easy search. The Tearling wasn’t a large kingdom.
Where did you hide her, you bitch?
Possibly outside the Tearling, but that would have shown considerable imagination for Elyssa. Besides, any hiding place outside the Tearling would have brought the child under greater dominion of Mortmesne. Elyssa had assumed until the very end that the greatest threat to her child would come from outside the Tearling, and that was another error of judgment. No, the girl was still in the Tearling somewhere; she had to be.
Another snorting rumble came from the bed.
The Queen shut her eyes and rubbed her temples. She hated snoring. She looked longingly at her fire, considered lighting it. The dark thing might give her answers, if she was brave enough to ask questions. But it didn’t like to be summoned, except in the gravest need, and it had no use for weakness. To ask it for help would be to admit doubt of her own ability to find the child.
Not a child anymore. I must stop thinking of her that way. The girl would be nineteen now, and Elyssa hadn’t been a complete fool. Wherever the girl had gone, someone had been training her to survive. To rule.
And I can’t see the jewels.
Another disquieting thought. In the dreams, the girl never wore a necklace; there was no sign of either sapphire. What did that mean? Had Elyssa hidden the jewels somewhere else?
The slave was now snoring steadily, waves that began innocuously enough but built to a crescendo of sound that was probably audible in the bakeries twenty floors below. The Queen had handpicked him for his dark skin and aquiline nose, a clear sign of Mort blood. He was one of the Exiled, a descendant of Mort traitors banished to the western protectorate of Callae. Although she had sent them to Callae herself, the Queen still found the idea of the Exiled strangely exciting. But a slave who snored was no use to anyone.
On the wall beside the window were two buttons, one black and one red. The Queen considered for a moment and then pushed the black button.
Four men came through the door, nearly soundless, clad in the black of the palace guard. All of them had swords drawn. Ghislaine, her guard captain, was not among them, but of course he wouldn’t be. He was too old to work nights anymore.
The Queen pointed to the bed. The guards pounced, laying hold of the snoring man, one to each limb. The slave awoke with a gasp and began to struggle. He kicked a guard with his left leg and rolled over, fighting his way toward the end of the bed.
“Majesty?” asked the ranking guard, gritting his teeth as he held on to a flailing arm.
“Take him down to the lab. Have them remove his tongue and uvula. And sever his vocal cords, just in case.”
The slave screamed and struggled harder as her guard worked to pin him to the bed. One had to admire his strength; he freed his right arm and left leg before one of her guards planted an elbow in the small of his back. The slave gave a shriek of agony and ceased his struggles.
“And after surgery, Majesty?”
“Once he’s healed, offer him to Lady Dumont with our compliments. If she doesn’t want him, give him to Lafitte.”
She turned back to the window as her guard hauled the still-screaming man from the room. Helene Dumont might well want him; being too stupid to hold up a conversation, she liked her men quiet. The shrieks became abruptly muffled as the guards closed the door, and soon they faded altogether.
The Queen tapped her fingers on the windowsill, considering. The fireplace beckoned her, almost begging her to light it, but she was certain that would be the wrong course. The situation wasn’t that dire. The Regent had hired the Caden, and despite her disdain of all things Tear, even the Queen didn’t underestimate the Caden. Besides, if the girl did somehow manage to reach New London alive, Thorne’s people would take care of her. One way or another, by March, the Queen would have the girl’s head on her wall and both necklaces in hand, and then she would be able to sleep, dreamless. She stretched out both hands, palms up, and snapped her fingers. Far out on the western horizon, near the Tear border, lightning flickered.
She turned and went back to her bed.
The third day of the journey began well before sunrise. Kelsea rose when she heard the clink of arms in the darkness outside her tent and began to dress, determined to break down the tent herself before one of the guards tried to do it for her. She was about to light the lamp when she realized that she could already see. Everything in the tent was lit with a thin, sickly glow, and she easily spotted her shirt in the corner. But her shirt looked blue.
She looked around cautiously, seeking the source of the light. It took two complete turns before she realized that she was casting no shadow on the tent walls, that the light was coming from her. The sapphire around her neck was glowing, giving off its own light, not the cobalt glitter that it always reflected in firelight but a deep aquamarine blaze that seemed to come from within the jewel itself. She clutched the pendant in her palm and made a second discovery: the thing was giving off actual heat. It was at least twenty degrees hotter than her body temperature.
Uncovering the stone, she watched the blue light dance across the canvas interior of the tent. The sapphire had lain around her neck all of her life, and other than its annoying habit of popping free of her clothing, it had never done anything remarkable. But now it was radiant in the darkness.
Magic, Kelsea thought wonderingly, staring at the cerulean light. Like something out of one of Carlin’s books.
Reaching down, she grabbed her cloak and dug into the pocket for the other necklace. She pulled it out eagerly, then sank back in disappointment. The companion jewel looked exactly the same, a large blue sapphire in the palm of her hand. It gave off no light.
“Galen! Help me saddle!”
The voice outside, a gruff rumble that Kelsea already recognized as Mace’s, brought her back to herself. There was no time to marvel at the light; rather, she needed to conceal it. She dug in her bags for her thickest, darkest shirt, burgundy wool, put it on and tucked the necklace beneath, then pinned her hair into a tight bun and covered it with a thick knitted hat. The jewel lay like a tiny warm coal between her breasts, radiating a pleasant heat that cut into the bitter cold of early morning. Still, it wouldn’t keep her warm all day; she donned an extra layer of clothing and her gloves before venturing outside.
The eastern sky showed only a thin line of cornflower against the shadow of the hills. As Kelsea approached, Galen broke from the group packing the horses and brought her several pieces of half-cooked bacon, which she wolfed hungrily. She broke her tent down alone, pleased that no one came to help. Carroll gave her a nod of greeting on his way to the small copse that held the horses, but his face was still shadowed, and he looked as though he hadn’t slept at all.
Kelsea packed the tent onto Pen’s horse before turning to her own saddlebags. Even May the mare seemed to have softened toward her overnight; Kelsea held out a carrot from a pile that Mace produced, and May seemed content to eat from her hand.
“Hawk, sir! Two of them on the eastern horizon!”
Kelsea scanned the lightening sky but saw nothing. The stillness was unnerving. She had grown up in a forest filled with hawks, and their high, savage cries had always chilled her blood. But this silence was worse.
Carroll had been tightening saddlebags onto his horse. Now he stopped and stared at the sky overhead, mulling something over. After a moment he called, “All of you! Over here now! Pen, finish getting that fire out!”
The men gathered around, most of them carrying supplies. Pen came last, his face smudged with ash. They began to distribute the supplies among the various saddlebags, but Carroll barked, “Leave them!”
He rubbed his bleary eyes. “We’re being hunted, lads. And my heart tells me they’re drawing close.”
Several of the guards nodded.
“Pen, you’re the smallest. Give the Queen your cloak and armor.”
Pen’s face tightened, but he nodded, unclasped his cloak, and began to shed his armor. Kelsea reached into her pocket and grabbed the second necklace, burying it in her fist, before drawing off her own cloak. They began to buckle Pen’s armor onto her body, one piece at a time. The iron was incredibly heavy; several times Kelsea had to stifle a grunt as each new piece settled upon her frame.
“We’ll split up,” Carroll announced. “They won’t be a large company, and we have to hope they can’t track us all in force. Go in any direction you please, so long as you don’t go together. We regroup on the Keep Lawn.”
He turned to Pen. “Pen, you’ll trade horses with the Queen as well. If we’re fortunate, they’ll put all their energy into tracking the mare.”
Kelsea swayed slightly as Mhurn settled a breastplate against her shoulders. It was flat, made for a man, and her breasts throbbed painfully as he began to buckle it in the back.
“Who goes with the Queen?” asked Dyer, looking as though he prayed it was anyone else.
“Lazarus does.”
Kelsea looked up at Mace, who stood behind Carroll at the edge of the group. His expression was as disinterested as ever; Carroll might as well have instructed him to guard a particularly important tree. Some of Kelsea’s doubt must have shown in her face, for Mace raised his eyebrows, clearly daring her to argue.
She didn’t.
Carroll smiled bravely at the group of men, but his face was haunted; Kelsea felt death on him, could almost see it as a black shadow that waited over his shoulder. “This errand is our last together, but the most important. The Queen must reach the Keep, even if we fall seeing it done.”
He made a sign of dismissal, and the men turned to leave. Kelsea summoned as much force as she could. “Hold!”
“Lady?” Carroll turned back, and the rest stopped on their way to their horses. Kelsea looked around at them all, their faces hard and resolved in the ashlight of morning, some of them hating her, she knew, deep down where their honor wouldn’t allow them to admit it.
“I know that none of you chose this errand, but I thank you for it. I would welcome any of you in my guard, but either way, your families will be taken care of. I swear . . . for what it’s worth.”
She turned back to Carroll, who was watching her with an expression she couldn’t read. “We can go now, Captain.”
“Lady.” He nodded, and the men began to mount their horses. “Lazarus, a word!”
Mace stomped up to the two of them. “You’ll not take my horse, Captain.”
“I wouldn’t dare.” A small smile creased Carroll’s face. “Stay with the Queen, Lazarus, but distant enough that you’ll not be tracked as a pair. I would make for the Caddell and then follow it to the city. The tide will cover your tracks.”
Mace nodded, but Kelsea had an odd flash of intuition: he’d already evaluated and rejected Carroll’s advice in a heartbeat, choosing his own direction instead.
“You’ve no time for stories, Lady, but our Lazarus is a renowned escape artist. If we’re lucky, he may perform his greatest trick.”
Kelsea’s armory was complete. Pen shrugged her green cloak over his shoulders, where it sat tightly. “Godspeed, Lady,” he murmured, then was gone.
“Captain.” Kelsea thought of Carlin and Barty standing in the doorway of the cottage, their dreadful false optimism. “I’ll see you shortly in front of my throne.”
“No, Lady, you won’t. I’ve seen my own death on this journey. Enough for me that you sit there.” Carroll mounted his horse, his face drawn with a terrible and hopeless purpose. Mace reached up a hand, and he grasped it. “See her safe, Lazarus.”
He spurred his horse into a trot and vanished into the forest.
Kelsea and Mace were left standing alone. Their horses’ breath steamed the air, and Kelsea realized anew how cold it was. She picked up Pen’s grey cloak, found a pocket inside the breast, and shoved the second necklace deep inside before putting the cloak on. The camp around them seemed very empty, nothing but a pile of dead leaves, the wisps of smoke from the fire, and the skeletal branches of trees above their heads.
“Where do I go?” she asked.
“Through that treebreak to your left.” Mace helped her mount Pen’s horse, a deep brown stallion a good hand taller than her mare. Even with Mace’s help, Kelsea groaned at the effort to haul both her body and Pen’s armor into the saddle. “You’ll ride north for only a few hundred feet, Lady, and then circle back east until you ride due south. You won’t see me, but I’ll be near at hand.”
Feeling the great size of the horse beneath her, Kelsea admitted, “I don’t ride very well, Lazarus. And I’ve never really ridden fast at all.”
“I’ve noticed, Lady. But Rake is one of our gentlest stallions. Ride him with a slack rein and he won’t attempt to throw you, though you’re unfamiliar to him.” Mace’s head whipped up sharply, his gaze fixed above Kelsea. “Go now, Lady. They’re coming.”
Kelsea hesitated.
“Christ!” Mace slapped the horse’s rump and Rake leaped forward, the reins nearly jerked from Kelsea’s hands. Behind her, she heard him call out, “Dolls and dresses, Lady! You’ll need to be tougher than this!”
Then she was off into the woods.
It was a terrible ride. She took the stallion in the wide circle Mace had described, her whole body itching for the moment when she could go straight and pick up speed. When she judged the circle wide enough, she checked the moss on the rocks and began to ride south, Pen’s grey cloak flying behind her. For a few minutes the armor weighed heavily, seeming to rattle her whole body each time Rake landed on his front hooves. But after a bit she found that she could no longer feel the weight of the metal at all. There was nothing but speed, a pure, clean speed that she had never achieved with Barty’s aging stallion. The forest flew by her, trees sometimes far off and sometimes so close that the tips of branches whipped against her mailed body. A freezing wind screamed in her ears, and she tasted the bitterness of adrenaline in the back of her throat.
There was no sign of Mace, but she knew he was there, and his last comment recurred to her every few minutes while she rode, making her face flush with warmth even beneath the numbness imparted by the wind. She had thought that she’d been very strong and very brave during this journey; she had let herself believe that she had impressed them. Carlin had always told Kelsea that her face was an open book; what if they had all seen her pride? Would she ever be able to face them again?
Stop that nonsense right now!
Carlin’s voice thundered inside her head, stronger than any humiliation, stronger than doubt. Kelsea clamped her thighs more tightly against Rake’s sides and urged him to go faster, and when her cheeks threatened to turn warm again, she reached up and slapped herself across the face.
After perhaps an hour of hard riding, the woods cleared for good and Kelsea was suddenly down into pure farmland, the Almont Plain. Carefully tilled rows of green stretched out as far as she could see, and she mourned inside at the very flatness of the land, its sameness. There were a few trees, but they were only thin leafless trunks that twisted upward toward the sky, none of them sturdy enough to provide any cover. Kelsea rode on, finding lanes between the rows of crops, cutting across fields only when there was no other way through. The farming acres were dotted with low homesteads made of wood and hay-thatched roofs, most of them little more than huts. In the distance Kelsea could also see several taller, stronger wooden dwellings, probably the houses of overseers, if not nobles.
She saw many farmers; some of them straightened to get a look at her, or waved as she flew by. But most, more concerned with their crops, simply ignored her. The Tear economy ran on farming; farmers worked the fields in exchange for the right to occupy the noble’s land, but the noble took all of the profits, except for taxes paid to the Crown. Kelsea could hear Carlin’s voice in the library now, her tone of deep disapproval echoing against the wall of books: “Serfdom, Kelsea, that’s all it is. Worse, it’s serfdom condoned by the state. These people are forced to work themselves to the bone for a noble’s comfortable lifestyle, and if they’re lucky, they’re rewarded with survival. William Tear came to the New World with a dream of pure socialism, and this is where we ended up.”
Carlin had hammered this point home many times, but it was very different for Kelsea to see the system in front of her. The people working the fields looked hungry; most of them wore shapeless clothes that seemed to hang from their bones. The overseers, easily identifiable on horses high above the rows of crops, did not look hungry. They wore broad, flat hats, and each carried a thick wooden stick whose purpose was painfully clear; when Kelsea rode close to one of them, she saw that the end of his stick was stained a deep maroon.
To the east, Kelsea spotted what must be the house of a noble: a high tower made of red brick. Real brick! Tearling brick was a notoriously poor building material compared to Mortmesne’s, which was made with better mortar and commanded at least a pound per kilo. Carlin had an oven made of real bricks, built for her by Barty, and Kelsea had wondered more than once whether Barty had bought the bricks off the black market from Mortmesne. Mort craftsmen weren’t supposed to sell their wares to the Tear, but Mort luxuries commanded a great price across the border, and Barty had told Kelsea that anything was available for the right price. But even if Barty wasn’t above doing a bit of black market business, he and Carlin would never have been able to afford a brick house. The noble who lived there must be extraordinarily wealthy. Kelsea’s gaze roved over the people who dotted the fields, their scarecrow cheeks and necks, and dim anger surfaced in her mind. She had dreaded being a queen most of her life, and she was ill equipped for the task, she knew, though Barty and Carlin had done their best. She hadn’t grown up in a castle, hadn’t been raised in that privileged life. The land she would rule frightened her in its vastness, but at the sight of the men and women working in the fields, something inside her seemed to turn over and breathe deeply for the first time. All of these people were her responsibility.
The sun broke the horizon on Kelsea’s left. She turned to watch it rise and saw a black shape streak across the blinding sky, there and then gone without a sound.
A Mort hawk!
She dug her heels into Rake’s sides and relaxed her grip on the reins as far as she dared. The stallion picked up pace, but it was futile; no manned horse could outrun a hawk in hunt. She glanced around wildly in all directions and saw nothing, not even a stand of trees to give them cover, only endless farmland and ahead, in the distance, the blue gleam of a river. She dug beneath her cloak for her knife.
“Down! Get down!” Mace shouted behind her. Kelsea ducked and heard the harsh whistle of talons hitting the air where her head had been.
“Lazarus!”
“Go, Lady!”
She crouched against Rake’s neck and took all pressure off his reins. They were tearing down the length of the country now, so fast that Kelsea could no longer distinguish the farmers in the fields, only a continuous blur of brown and green. It was only a matter of time, she thought, before the horse threw her and she broke her neck. But even that idea brought its own strange freedom . . . who could have predicted she would survive this long? She found herself laughing, wild, out-of-control laughter that was instantly cut to shreds by the wind.
The hawk swooped in from her right and Kelsea ducked again, but not soon enough. Talons punctured her neck and ripped through the skin. Blood, thick and warm, oozed down to her collarbone. The hawk soared off to her left. Kelsea turned to track it and felt the gash in her neck pull wide open, sending a shot of pain all the way down her right side.
Hooves were pounding up behind her on the right, but Kelsea didn’t dare turn around; the hawk was circling in front of her now, preparing to come for her eyes. It was far larger than any hawk she’d ever seen, a deep, dark black rather than the usual brown, almost akin to a vulture. Suddenly it dived for her again, talons outstretched. Kelsea ducked a third time, throwing up her arm to protect her face.
A sound of muffled impact thudded above her head. Kelsea felt no pain, waited a moment, and then peeked above her. Nothing.
She glanced to her right, her eyes tearing with the pain of movement, and found Mace alongside her. The hawk’s body dangled from the spiked head of his mace, a pulpy mass of blood, feathers, and gleaming innards. He shook the handle truculently until the bird fell off.
“Mort hawk?” she called over the wind, trying to keep her voice steady.
“For certain, Lady. They’re like no other hawks in the world, black as midnight and big as dogs. God knows how she’s breeding them.” Mace slowed his stallion and looked Kelsea over, his gaze assessing. “You’re wounded.”
“Only my neck.”
“The hawks are killers, but they’re also scouts. A party of assassins will be behind us now. Can you still ride?”
“Yes, but the blood will leave a trail.”
“About ten miles southwest is the stronghold of a noblewoman who was loyal to your mother. Can you make it that far?”
Kelsea glared at him. “What sort of weak, housebound woman do you think I am, Lazarus? I’m bleeding, that’s all. And I’ve never had such a fine time as on this journey.”
Mace’s dark eyes brightened with understanding. “You’re young and reckless, Lady. It’s a desirable quality in a warrior, but not in a queen.”
Kelsea frowned.
“Let’s go, Lady. Southwest.”
By now the sun had risen fully over the horizon, and Kelsea thought she could see their destination: another brick tower outlined against the blue shimmer of the river. From this distance, the tower had the dimensions of a toy, but she knew that upon approach it would rear many stories high. Kelsea wondered if the noblewoman who lived there took toll from the river; Carlin had told her that many nobles who were situated next to a river or road took the opportunity to squeeze extra money from those who passed by.
Mace’s head swung back and forth, as though on a swivel, while they rode. He had tucked his mace back into his belt without even bothering to clean it, and the hawk’s innards gleamed in the morning sunlight. The sight made Kelsea feel slightly sick, and she turned to study the country around her, ignoring the pain in her neck. They were undoubtedly in the center of the Almont, the great farming plains of the Tearling, with nothing but flat land in every direction. The river up ahead was either the Caddell or the Crithe, but Kelsea couldn’t determine which without knowing how far west they’d ridden. Far to the southwest, she saw a smudge of brown hills and a darker stain of black against it, possibly the city of New London. But then sweat dripped into her eye, and by the time she could see again, the brown hills had vanished like a mirage and green land stretched as far as she could see. The Tearling felt enormous, much more so than it had ever looked on any of Carlin’s maps.
They had covered perhaps half the distance to the tower when Mace reached out and slapped Rake’s rump, hard. The stallion whinnied in protest but lengthened his stride, tearing off toward the river so suddenly that Kelsea nearly fell from her saddle. She tried to jog with the stallion’s movement, but the wound in her neck seemed to tear open each time Rake’s hooves hit the earth, and Kelsea fought to ignore a dizziness that rose and fell like the tide.
For a time she could hear only Mace behind her, but gradually her ears picked up the unmistakable sound of hooves, at least several sets in pursuit. They were gaining, and the river was approaching at an alarming pace. Peeking over her shoulder, Kelsea saw her worst fears confirmed: Caden, four of them, perhaps fifty yards back, their bright red cloaks flying in the wind. Hearing of the Caden in her childhood, Kelsea had asked Barty why professional assassins would wear such a bright and distinguishable color. Barty’s answer was not comforting: the Caden were such confident killers that they could afford to wear bright red and come in daylight. Those cloaks sent a clear message; something inside Kelsea froze at the sight of them.
Behind her, Mace snarled a curse before shouting, “On the right!”
Looking around, Kelsea now saw a second group of men, perhaps four or five strong, cloaked in black, bearing down from the northwest, angling to intercept them before they reached the river. Even if Rake was strong enough to outrun both parties in pursuit, Kelsea would be cut off when the river forced her to turn. The river was wide, perhaps twenty yards across, and even from this distance, Kelsea could see that the deep green water flowed rapidly along, occasional spits and sprays betraying underwater rocks. It was too fast and wild to swim, and no boats were visible. Kelsea saw no option, but still her thoughts wandered back helplessly across that vast green land that stretched to all horizons, the fields covered with people. Her responsibility.
If she could gallop west along the riverbank, she thought, both packs of pursuers would be forced to follow her along the water’s edge; there would be no more angles for them to cut her off. They would probably catch her anyway, but it would extend the time during which a miracle was possible. She tightened her grip and rode headlong for the river. Blood from the wound on her neck spattered across her chin and cheek with each stride.
When the water was perhaps fifty feet away, Kelsea yanked on the reins, trying to take the other riders by surprise with a right turn. But Rake misinterpreted the movement and stopped short, and Kelsea went flying, taking in a confused muddle of inverted river and sky before she landed flat on her stomach. Her wind had been knocked out so completely that she could only chuff out small puffs of air. She pushed herself up, but her legs wouldn’t respond. She tried to force breath in and only managed a hitching gasp. The sound of approaching horses seemed to fill the world.
To her left, a man shouted, “The girl! The girl, damn you! Deal with the Mace later, take the girl!”
Something crashed to the ground in front of her. Kelsea looked up and saw Mace, his sword raised in one hand and his mace in the other, facing down four men in red cloaks. The Caden were all quite different in appearance, dark and light, tall and short. One even had a mustache. But each face had the same hard, blank look: disciplined ferocity. The light-skinned assassin got through Mace’s guard and raked the point of a sword across his collarbone. Blood spattered across the Caden’s face and sank into the scarlet of his cloak, but Mace ignored the wound, reached out with one hand, and jabbed his attacker in the throat. The man in red collapsed with a gargling, choking sound, his windpipe crushed.
Mace backed up to stand directly in front of Kelsea now, waiting, a weapon raised in each fist. Another Caden rushed him and Mace dropped to his knees, his sword slicing through the air. The Caden fell to the ground, shrieking in agony. His right leg had been severed just below the knee; blood fountained from the stump in bursts, soaking the riverbank a deep red. After a moment, Kelsea realized that she was watching the rhythm of the man’s dying pulse, his heart pumping out his lifeblood onto the sand.
Dimly, she realized that she should do something. But her legs still weren’t responding, and her ribs ached horribly. The two remaining Caden came at Mace from each side, but Mace ducked them neatly and buried his mace in the side of one man’s head, crushing it in a spray of blood and bone. Mace didn’t recover quickly enough; the last assassin reached him and sliced him up the hip, his sword tearing cleanly through the leather band at Mace’s waist. Mace dove beneath him, rolled once, and came to his feet with the grace of an animal, swinging the mace with crushing force against the assassin’s spine. Kelsea heard a snap, a sound like Barty breaking a branch of greenwood, and the Caden thumped to the ground.
Behind Mace, Kelsea saw that the black-cloaked men had arrived and dropped from their horses with swords already drawn. Mace whirled and charged forward to meet them while Kelsea watched with a sense of disappointed wonder . . . it seemed such a waste for him to die here. She’d never heard of anyone beating one Caden swordsman before, let alone four. She took her hand from her neck and found it slick with blood. Was it possible to bleed to death from a shallow wound? Barty had never covered death or dying.
Someone reached beneath Kelsea’s arms and flipped her onto her back. Black spots danced in front of her eyes. The gash in her neck tore wider and began to pulse with warm blood. Her legs splayed out, the feeling in them reawakened to horrible life as though shards of glass were being driven into her calves. A face loomed just above hers, a face the color of pale death with fathomless black holes for eyes and a bloodstained mouth, and Kelsea screamed before she could help it, before she realized that it was only a mask.
“Sir. The Mace.”
Kelsea looked up and saw a second masked man standing in front of her, though his mask was a mercifully plain black.
“Knock him out,” ordered the man in the white mask. “We’ll take him with us.”
“Sir?”
“Look around you, How. Four Caden, all by himself! He’ll be trouble, for certain, but it would be criminal to waste such a fighter. He comes with us.”
Kelsea hauled herself up, though her neck shrieked in protest, and reached a sitting position in time to see Mace, bleeding from numerous wounds now, surrounded by several black-masked men. One of them darted forward, quick as a weasel, and brought his sword hilt down on the back of Mace’s head.
“Don’t!” Kelsea cried as Mace crumpled to the ground.
“He’ll be fine, girl,” said the white-masked man above her. “Get yourself together.”
Kelsea dragged herself to her feet. “What do you want with me?”
“You’re in no position to demand answers, girl.” He held out a flask of water, but she ignored it. Black eyes gleamed behind the mask’s eyeholes as he studied her, peering closely at her neck. “Nasty. How did that happen?”
“A Mort hawk,” Kelsea replied grudgingly.
“God bless your uncle. His taste in allies is no better than his taste in clothing.”
“Sir! More Caden! From the north!”
Kelsea turned northward. A cloud of dust was visible across the acres of farmland, deceptively small at this distance, but Kelsea thought that the party in pursuit must be at least ten men strong, a reddish mass against the horizon.
“Any more hawks?” asked the leader.
“No. How shot one down.”
“Thank Christ for that. Tie up the horses; we’ll take them with us.”
Kelsea turned to look at the river. It was deep and wild, the far bank covered in trees and shrubs that overhung the water for at least five hundred yards downstream. If she could swim the width of the river, she could probably manage to pull herself out.
“What a coveted prize you are,” the leader remarked beside her. “You don’t look like much.”
Kelsea whirled toward the river. She didn’t make three steps before he grabbed her elbow and threw her toward a second man, nearly the size of a bear, who caught her neatly beneath the arms.
“Don’t try to run from us, girl,” the leader told her, his voice cold. “We might kill you, yes, but the Caden will kill you, and give the Regent your head as a prize.”
Kelsea weighed her options and decided she had none. Five masked men surrounded her. Mace lay on the ground twenty feet away; Kelsea could see him breathing, but his body was limp. When one of the men finished binding Mace’s hands, two more picked him up and began to bundle him onto his horse. Kelsea had no sword, and didn’t know how to use one anyway. She turned back to the leader and nodded her consent.
“Morgan, take her on your horse.” The leader turned and mounted his own horse, raising his voice as he did so. “Quickly now! Watch for outriders!”
“Up, Lady,” Morgan said, his voice surprisingly gentle in contrast to his massive frame and black mask. “Here.”
Kelsea placed her foot in the makeshift stirrup of his hands and hauled herself onto his horse. Her neck was bleeding freely again; the right shoulder of her shirt was soaked, and scarlet rivulets had begun to drip down her forearm. She could smell her own blood, a coppery odor like the old pennies Barty kept in his keepsake box at home. Once a week, he would polish them meticulously and then show them to Kelsea: dull round copper coins with a stately bearded man on the face, remnants of a time long gone. It seemed strange that a good memory could be triggered by the smell of blood.
Morgan climbed up behind her; Kelsea felt the horse settle appreciably under his weight. His arms provided a sturdy frame on either side. Kelsea ripped the fabric of her sleeve until she had a patch to press against her neck. The wound definitely needed stitches, and soon, but she was determined not to leave a blood trail on the ground.
They galloped along the river’s edge. Kelsea wondered where they could go, for the river certainly ran too fast and wild for the horses to swim, and there was no sign of a bridge. Glancing north, Kelsea saw that the group of red cloaks had changed direction and were now on a direct course to intercept. But the masked men around her gave no hint of where they were going, whether they had a plan of escape. The leader rode in front, and behind him another man rode Mace’s stallion with Mace thrown across the saddle, his inert form bouncing with each of the horse’s strides. Kelsea could see only a little blood, but his grey cloak covered the bulk of his body. All of the masked men seemed singularly focused on the road ahead; they didn’t even turn to track the progress of her pursuers, nor did they look at Kelsea, and she felt another pang at her own helplessness. On her own, she would have been dead in a heartbeat.
“Now!” the leader shouted.
The earth turned beneath Morgan’s horse and they galloped headlong into the river. Kelsea shut her eyes and held her breath, preparing for the icy water, but it didn’t come. All around them the current roared wildly, freezing droplets scattering in the air and soaking Kelsea’s pants to the knees. But when she opened her eyes, she found that they were incomprehensibly crossing the river, the horses’ hooves splashing with each step, yet striking solid ground.
Impossible, she thought, her eyes wide with astonishment. But the proof was before her: they were cutting a broad diagonal across the river, each step bringing them closer to the far bank. They passed between two boulders jutting upward from the water, so close that Kelsea could see patches of deep emerald moss slicked across the surface. She thought of the glowing jewel around her neck, and almost laughed. The day had been full of wonders.
When they reached dry ground, the group of horses immediately cut into the woods. For the second time that day, Kelsea found her face whipped and snapped by trees, but she tucked her chin into her chest and made no sound.
Deep in the shade of a massive oak, the leader raised his hand and they brought their horses to a stop. Behind them, the river was barely visible through the trees. The leader brought his horse around in a circle and then sat motionless, staring back toward the far bank.
“That should puzzle them for a while,” one of the men muttered.
Kelsea turned, ignoring a wave of dizziness, and peered through the branches of the oak. She could see nothing, only the gleam of sunlight off the water. But one of the black-masked men chuckled. “They’re stumped, all right. They’ll be there for hours.”
Now she could hear their pursuers: raised voices and an answering shout of “I don’t know!”
“The lady needs stitching,” Morgan announced behind Kelsea, startling her. “She’s losing too much blood.”
“Indeed,” the leader replied, fixing Kelsea with his black eyes. She stared back, trying to ignore his mask. The face was a harlequin, but much more sinister, awful in some way that she couldn’t put her finger on. It reminded her of nightmares she’d had as a child. Nevertheless, she forced herself to sit up straight and stare back at him while blood pooled in the crook of her arm. “Who are you?”
“I am the long death of the Tearling. Forgive us.” He nodded, looking over her head, and before Kelsea could turn around, the world went dark.