2. DREAMS OF SINS PAST

Tyentso’s story

The Soaring Halls, the Upper Circle of the Capital City of Quur

The day of Vol Karoth’s escape, just after dawn

The sunlight was a flare of hot red, glinting off the rolling waves with mirror brightness. Tyentso already had a headache from the reflection, and she wasn’t even manning a position on deck. The splash of waves created a steady background roar against the ship’s hull, counterpoint to the blinding glare. Counterpoint as well to the sound of groaning slaves down in the hold of the ship.

Wait.

She glanced around, blinking as she tried to make some measure of sense out of her view. This was the Misery. She hadn’t been back on board the Misery in years. The Misery didn’t even exist anymore, long since destroyed in a tug-of-war between a kraken and a dragon. But that had never stopped the nightmares. This was all too familiar.

Except in the important ways that it was not.

Kihrin sat on one of the water barrels, watching men work who either couldn’t see him or chose to ignore him. The Stone of Shackles shone a deep blue against his bronze skin. He looked older than the sixteen years he would have been in her memories, with less baby fat in his cheeks and infinitely older eyes.

Normally … Normally in her dreams, he’d be tied to the mainmast by this point, back washed crimson from the cat-o’-nine-tails the first mate, Delon, had used on him. That particular nightmare always started off in those moments when Captain Juval had been forced to choose between killing Kihrin and something arguably worse. When he’d demanded Tyentso summon up a demon to section off a piece of Kihrin’s soul and gaesh the boy as a compromise.

Captain Juval always picked a death sentence in her nightmares. Always ordered her to be the one to carry it out. Every time, Tyentso would know with absolute certainty that if she didn’t carry out the command, she would take Kihrin’s place. And every time, Tyentso killed the boy. No matter how much she screamed inside, she always made the same choice.

She’d always done whatever it took to survive.

“Do you always dream about this?” Kihrin turned his head to stare at her. Instantly, she knew this wasn’t a normal dream. That this wasn’t a dream at all in any typical sense of the word.

“Sometimes I dream about the Academy executing my mother for witchcraft,” Tyentso admitted. “Or my father Gadrith murdering me. Or … Well. My life is a fertile spring for spawning nightmares. Plenty of fuel for any number of horrific scenarios, replayed nightly for my amusement.” She paused, an ugly twisting in her gut. “I dreamed you died, you know. A few weeks back. I dreamed that mimic, Talon, put her hand through your chest.”

A part of her whispered that she shouldn’t be talking about this. That someone might have found a way to intrude on her dreams and use it to ferret out secrets. But she quieted that voice. She knew this was Kihrin. She could feel it.

Kihrin coughed out an awkward laugh. “You know, I really should’ve expected that you’d sense that.”

Tyentso’s heart lurched in her chest, knocked against her ribs. “What? Scamp.” Tyentso loved the damn kid in her own way, but this was nothing to joke about—

He shrugged. “What can I say? Talon put her hand through my chest. I kind of died.”

Tyentso stared harder. “Was this before or after Thaena’s death?”

“After. It’s part of why I’m here.”

“Tell me you didn’t use Grimward. Tell me you’re not a damn vampire now, Scamp.”

Kihrin’s mouth twisted into something a little too sarcastic to be a proper smile. “No, I didn’t use Grimward.” He gestured toward the hold, toward the source of that faint, painful noise. “How many slaves do you think you helped Juval deliver to the auction block? You did this for something like twenty years, right? So it can’t be hundreds. We’re talking thousands, aren’t we?”

Tyentso felt her stomach flip, the knots tangle. “Scamp, I’ve already done my absolution for that.”

“Yeah, but said absolution was with Thaena. And for some reason, I don’t trust the judgment of a woman who was willing to wipe out the entire Manol vané population just to keep”—he paused—“Vol Karoth imprisoned for a few more decades. I wouldn’t trust her to even understand what the word redemption means.”

“So what are you saying, Kihrin? I’m not done atoning?” Tyentso wasn’t sure if she was angry or frustrated. She wasn’t proud of what she’d done, but damn it, she’d been trying to survive …

“You already know the answer to that, Ty. Or you wouldn’t be still having the nightmares.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “Believe me, I know something about committing sins that you’ll never make right. It gets easier—it really does—but you’ll never be able to proclaim yourself innocent.” He glanced at her, for just a moment, but it was enough for her to be certain that he must have heard about what she’d done in the Capital. What she’d done to the high lords.

No. She was definitely not free from sin.

Tyentso felt herself frowning. “When did you stop being younger than me, Scamp? You used to be a child. I could see it in your eyes, in the way you gazed out at the world. But now—” She stood. “You’re not Kihrin, are you?”

He chuckled and patted the barrel next to him, inviting her to take a seat. “Relax, Tyentso. I really am Kihrin.”

“But why—?”

“I’m also S’arric,” he said. “And, uh, much as it pains me to use the damn title, I suppose from a technical point of view I’m also Vol Karoth.1 Which is why we’re meeting in a dream instead of in person. It’s kind of difficult for me to be around people at the moment. At least, it’s difficult for me to be around anyone I care to keep safe.” He made a sweeping motion with his arm. “We’re also having this chat in a dream because Relos Var has a couple of ways to eavesdrop on people, but as far as I know, not a single one to spy on a dream.”

Tyentso didn’t sit on the barrel. Instead, she stood there and contemplated Kihrin with dread itching through her veins as all the color washed out of the world.

Vol Karoth? What the fuck had happened to Kihrin while she was busy playing emperor?

Her fingers began moving of their own volition, the desire to do something so intense that she couldn’t resist it.

Kihrin smiled at her. “It’s still me, Ty. Same soul. Same memories. Just more of both.” The corner of his mouth twisted. “The body’s new. Or should I say really old? The original, as it were. Can’t say I don’t miss the newer version, though, because boy, do I ever miss the newer version.”

Tyentso took a deep breath. He sounded like Kihrin. Sounded like Kihrin in a way she had a difficult time imagining Vol Karoth ever would. The ship seemed to tilt, and she realized it was just that she’d sat down on the barrel, after all.

“Fucking hell, Scamp,” she muttered. “Does Teraeth know about this?”

“He does,” Kihrin admitted, after a beat of hesitation that spoke volumes about how well that conversation must have gone. “Has anyone gotten around to telling you he’s King of the Manol these days?”

Tyentso blinked, then shook her head and looked away. “I guess I’ve missed a few things.”

“But not Thaena’s death.”

She scoffed. “No, not Thaena’s death. I felt that one.” She’d nursed an ugly, hollowed-out feeling ever since, all the purpose and clarity that had been there for her for the past few years evaporated like seawater on board the Misery’s deck. Nothing left behind but stains and salt. “I don’t even know what happened to her. It wasn’t you, I hope.”

“The short version is that Thaena insisted on the vané conducting the Ritual of Night, only it turned out that the vané were never a separate race. They were just humans with a much better educational system. So it didn’t work. Apparently, Doc had known and kept it from her, and she was so angry that she murdered him—”

“Fuck,” Tyentso muttered.

“—then she used an enchantment to force Teraeth to carry out a ritual that would have killed every citizen of the Manol to gain the power she needed. She intended to use that power to recharge the faulty control crystal keeping Vol Karoth’s prison intact. Of course, a bunch of folks went to stop her, and it was big and it was nasty.” He sighed. “Taja died. Argas and Galava too. And at one point, Thaena picked up Urthaenriel. A huge mistake: it broke the enchantment she had on Teraeth. So when she tossed the sword to the side in order to better concentrate on killing me, he picked it up and used it on her.”

The whole world seemed to just go dark, the breath freezing inside her lungs. She ground her teeth and covered her mouth with a hand. She couldn’t imagine it—and yet she also absolutely could. There was never any anger worse, any betrayal worse, than the ones committed by the people who were supposed to love you.

“Oh,” she said.

“So a few things. First is that it’s apparently possible to be a demon without being evil, although currently there are only two examples of the not-evil kind, and they’re both children of Qoran Milligreest, so I’m not sure what that says about the Milligreest bloodline.”²

Tyentso blinked at him. “What.”

“Janel and Jarith are both demons. In Janel’s case, you probably wouldn’t even notice because she’s possessing her original body, but Jarith’s a different story. And I’m explaining this to you because it’s rather important that you not kill him.”

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The idea that Janel had been infected was bad enough—she’d liked that girl—but Jarith? How was she supposed to believe—her brain latched on to a more immediate issue. “That implies I’ll have the opportunity.”

“Contacting me is tricky at the moment. Jarith can manage it. And it’s difficult to stop him from going wherever he feels like, which makes Jarith my official go-between. If you need a message to reach me, all you have to do is tell him.”

“You’ve got to be fucking joking.”

A flicker of irritation crossed his face. “Trust me, he’s not terribly happy to be a demon either, Ty. But it is what it is. And there’s an excellent chance you will need to be able to send messages to me. In the meantime, I’ve asked him to watch your back.”

“I don’t—” She closed her eyes. Tyentso didn’t even know Jarith Milligreest. He’d been born after she’d been exiled from Quur.

Poor Qoran, though. He’d be devastated once he figured out what had happened to his son.

Kihrin took her silence as an opportunity to move on to the next topic. “The second thing is that soon you’ll be receiving the news that Vol Karoth has escaped his prison—broken free entirely. I’m sure Relos Var felt it as it happened, and if Xaltorath doesn’t already know, they will soon. At which point, both will start their endgame scenarios. In the case of Xaltorath—” He shrugged. “I suspect Xaltorath’s just looking for power. Tenyé and as much of it as they can manage. Which obviously we have to deny them.”

“Obviously,” Tyentso agreed, numb.

Kihrin grinned at her. “But the bigger problem is Relos Var. I know what he wants, but I’m less sure about exactly how he intends to get there.”

“Okay, I’ll play. What does Relos Var want?”

“He wants to puppet-walk my ass into the Nythrawl Wound and use me to seal it from the other side. For the moment, he thinks he needs Urthaenriel to do it, because when last he checked, Urthaenriel could be used to control Vol Karoth.”

Tyentso narrowed her eyes. “And that’s no longer true?”

Kihrin grinned, wide and bright and achingly mischievous. “That’s no longer true. But don’t tell him. I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

Tyentso snorted. “And I assume this is why you’re coming to me. You know you made me promise I wouldn’t return that stupid sword to you just because you asked, right?”

“And that hasn’t changed,” Kihrin said, “but it does mean that Relos Var is going to be coming for you.”

She scoffed. “Why? He shouldn’t have any idea that I have it. I haven’t told anyone.”

“I don’t think that matters,” Kihrin said. “Look, I know that we’ve all been raised on stories of Godslayer, or Urthaenriel, or whatever you want to call the damn sword. We all know that you can’t use magic to find it, but”—he gave her a sharp look—“that’s not entirely true. I could sense that sword even when I was mortal. I don’t think it’s just me. I’m willing to bet metal that nine dragons out there, including my dear brother, all share that same connection. The first time Relos Var dropped by the Upper Circle to have a drink at the Culling Fields, he knew exactly where Urthaenriel was hidden.”

“No,” Tyentso protested. “No, that doesn’t make any sense, because if that were true, Kaen wouldn’t have been hunting the four corners of the globe for the thing. He just would have asked his court wizard, Relos Var.”³

“Why would Relos Var volunteer that information to Kaen before he was ready? More, why would Relos Var remove the sword from a location where it was secure and he could retrieve it anytime he felt like it? That sword was hidden in the perfect place. But now? Now we’ve put Urthaenriel where he can’t reach it anymore. That’s going to be a problem for him. A problem he needs to fix. He will make a move against you. He has to.”

That made a certain ugly sense. And it would certainly put Relos Var in a spot, wouldn’t it? Kill Tyentso and the Crown and Scepter reverted back to their “base” positions in the Arena until the next Contest. That meant weeks, at minimum, before a new emperor was crowned. Until that happened, the Vaults were closed off to everyone but the Immortals themselves—who hated Relos Var.

Depending on what Xaltorath was up to, Relos Var might not have weeks.⁴

“Wait. Who has the Stone of Shackles?” Tyentso asked. That was how her father, Gadrith, had gotten around the situation before, after all. He’d just switched bodies with the current emperor, neatly giving himself a throne in the process.

Kihrin said, “Not Relos Var.”

“Thank fuck.”

“Oh, my sentiments exactly,” Kihrin said. “I figure that means he either has to bribe you, enchant you, or extort you. That last one probably by threatening someone you care about. You know how he loves moving at people through their families.”

Tyentso let out a bark of laughter. “People I consider family is a fucking short list, Scamp. And something tells me Var can’t threaten you any harder than he already is.”

Kihrin didn’t respond for a moment. He was staring out at nothing—or maybe he was looking at the spot on the mast where they’d whipped him. It was hard to tell. “You mean to tell me you wouldn’t care what happens to Qoran Milligreest?”

Tyentso’s gut clenched. She wanted to say yes. It had been over between the two of them for a very long time, and the relationship hadn’t ended on good terms. Even so. “Shit.”

“Told you.” At least he didn’t sound smug about it. Mostly resigned.

It still made her defensive. “We haven’t become lovers again, you know. I’d have sooner chewed out my own tongue. He broke my fucking heart, Scamp. I have no desire to let him stomp on it a second time.”

“That doesn’t change my question. You would care, right?” He glanced over at her.

“I’d be really sad at Qoran’s funeral, Scamp,” Tyentso snapped. “But I wouldn’t give Relos Var a fucking thing.”

Kihrin smiled, although if he was impressed or just hearing what he’d expected was more difficult to gauge. “Fortunately, it won’t come to that.”

“How do you figure? If you’re right, it’s either this or try to sway me with an enchantment, and knowing that bastard, it’ll probably be both.”

“Because it’s part of the plan. He’s going to come at you for Urthaenriel. And I want you to let him succeed.”