Over the years Zosia had dreamed countless nightmares, and fought her way through nearly as many waking ones. Never before had she experienced this particular combination, however, of stirring from a bad dream to find herself exactly where the nightmare had left off: hunched over in this devildamned throne.
She shifted about in the all too familiar seat, pulling her dew-chilled furs up around her cold neck and scrunching her eyes tighter in defense against the evil sunshine that was trying to jimmy its way inside her bleary skull. This was Zosia’s luck all over. The one bloody time she would have welcomed the dark clouds that usually hung like a leaden halo over the Black Cascades they went and burned off.
Choplicker gave his customary whining yawn to signal the start of the morning, but she clung to her exhaustion, desperate to pull herself back under. As her devil got up and padded around, Zosia pretended his nails were clicking on the pine boards of her old kitchen instead of the obsidian floor of the Crimson Throne Room. She was only ever truly happy in dreams and the spaces between them, now, and in this familiar drowsy fantasy if she could just fall back asleep for a little longer when she awoke it would be to Leib stroking her heavy head, whispering in her ear that she had promised him apple scones if he let her sleep in, and here the sun was already halfway up the aspens …
The dream soured. They always did. She had made him his favorite treat but he couldn’t appreciate them; the monstrous young knight had placed Leib’s severed head just out of reach of the plate of pastries, and try as her dead husband might to stretch out his tongue across the checked tablecloth he couldn’t lick up more than a few crumbs …
No. Zosia shut that shit down, trying to replace the hot horror of her vision with cool black nothingness. Dawn had been creeping over Diadem’s rim before she’d drifted off, and if she could just get comfortable on this cruelly designed hellchair before her conscience woke up enough to start needling at her she could get some much-needed rest and … and …
And it was too late to fall back asleep. The memory of finding Indsorith in the dungeons prodded at her more insistently than the sun or any nightmare. Even half-asleep Zosia now realized what a stupid, hopeless venture it had been, carrying the dying queen all the way up here to the top of the castle and then spending the night forcing juice down her throat and cleaning her wounds when she was already too far gone to ever come back. Bad as the Burnished Chain had worked over their rival for control of the Crimson Empire, it was Zosia who had inflicted the final tortures … not that Indsorith had even seemed aware of what was happening to her by that point, her moans and gasps simple animal response to the worst kinds of provocation.
And for what? To make Zosia feel a little better, to tell herself she’d done all she could, when the more humane course would have been to put Indsorith out of her misery down in her cell as soon as she’d found her. But no, Zosia had done exactly what she always did and got so hung up on hoping she could make a difference that she didn’t even notice she was making matters worse until it was too late. Indsorith was just the latest victim of Zosia’s sanguine streak, but by all the devils in the First Dark she would be the last—from this day forward Cold Cobalt would be as hopeless as she was, well, hopeless.
“You’re sitting in my chair.”
Insistent as the sun had been to get all up in Zosia’s face you’d think it would cut her some slack when her eyes snapped open, but no. By the time she’d rubbed her face and properly taken in the impossible sight of Indsorith standing before her, naked save for bandages, the younger woman had begun to sway in place. Zosia barely got out of the throne in time to catch her as she fell. Her skin didn’t feel as hot as it had the night before, and some of the color had come back to her ashen flesh, but it was a wonder she could even sit up in bed, let alone wander all the way out here. She shivered in Zosia’s arms, slipping under again, and as Choplicker merrily trotted beside them Zosia lugged the Crimson Queen back to the royal bedchambers, marveling at the girl’s tenacity. Who would even want to come back from that kind of a hurt?
Except Zosia knew the answer to that question already, having been there herself, or close to it. If you want vengeance badly enough you can bounce back from almost anything.
“Zosia.” It was more of a sigh than a word as she tucked Indsorith back into her damask blankets. Her jade eyes were half-lidded but weren’t rolling around in their orbits anymore. “You … you really came.”
“Of course I did,” said Zosia, and Choplicker knew better than to contradict her with one of his little chuffs. That, or he was too busy enjoying the lump in Zosia’s throat as she patted Indsorith’s shoulder. “Think you can stay awake a little longer? I’m going to whip you up another of my Star-famous juicy ghee drams.”
Indsorith winced, and Zosia forced a smile. “If you’re well enough to worry me half to death getting out of bed, you’re damn sure well enough to take your medicine.”
Right after that Zosia would go exploring and see if she could get some answers as to just what in the happy hells had happened to Diadem; hard to decide which was more unsettling, the riots in the streets or the shuttered, deserted castle. Hoartrap had insisted that the return of the Jex Toth signaled a mortal threat to the entire Star but hadn’t been specific about how exactly that would come to pass—was whatever had happened here in the Imperial capital the beginning of the end? Then there was the question of what was taking Ji-hyeon and the rest of the Cobalt Company so long to arrive. According to the plan they should have already come through the Gate and stormed this very castle. Zosia rather doubted they’d simply overslept, too …
But all that could wait. Zosia wasn’t very well going to save the Star all by herself, but she could take care of the wounded woman in front of her. First, though, she had to look after herself—a sit on the royal chamber pot, a hunt for kaldi beans in the servants’ kitchen, a hurried breakfast of hazelnuts, dates, and whatever else she scared up, and retrieving that comfy seawolf mantle she’d forgotten back on the Crimson Throne. That order.
Hurrying through her chores and picking up the forgotten fur from where it lay draped over the arm of the fire glass throne, her nose wrinkled as she noticed Choplicker had carried out his own foul business on the nearby onyx cathedra. What a ridiculous monster he was. No wonder they got along.
By the time she had come back in, built the fire in the hearth back up, and made another concoction, Indsorith was dozing again. She stirred when Zosia sat on the bed beside her. Obediently lifting her head to sip the warm drink, she stared up over the chalice at her savior, and Zosia returned her gaze, the two women really looking each other in the eye for the first time in over twenty years. Indsorith had been little more than a child the last time they had met, and while she couldn’t yet be forty, the crown had aged her prematurely. That, and being locked in a dungeon for an as-yet-undetermined amount of time. Down all the years Indsorith had remained the same in Zosia’s mind, a spotty teenage queen with a big chip on her bony shoulders, and now she was a full-grown woman—and a stout one at that. But then Indsorith had surely thought of Zosia as she’d been in the prime of her life, not as a worn-out, sad-eyed old widow.
“What happened?” Indsorith asked as she settled back into her pillow, her cracked, buttery lips shining in the firelight.
“Was planning on asking you the same thing,” said Zosia as she set the chalice back on the table and gave Choplicker a threatening point of the finger—he was looking ready to jump up on the bed beside them. “How long did they have you locked up down there? And where’d everybody go?”
Indsorith shook her head, the movement so faint her long, coppery hair didn’t rustle the bedding. Her eyes settled on the battered crown Zosia had left on a neighboring pillow. “I don’t … they drugged me. There was a ritual … but …” Indsorith closed her eyes, and Zosia was about to stealthily remove herself from the room when the queen looked back up at her. “The Witchfinder Plains. Were you there? With the Cobalts?”
“Until last night,” said Zosia, and in her state Indsorith didn’t seem to notice the strangeness of that fact, given the distances involved.
“The Fifteenth Regiment caught you. That was when Y’Homa took me … and the rituals, and the Gate … the things beyond the Gate … they’re coming … they’re coming …”
“What’s coming?” Zosia didn’t scare easy, no she did not, but her hackles were good and raised now.
“The end … the end is here …” and Indsorith was fading again, eyelids fluttering, and hungry as she was to hear more, Zosia knew the woman needed rest more urgently than her liberator needed answers. She started to rise when Indsorith whimpered, as though the words hurt to say, “Don’t go.”
“I won’t be gone long, and Chop will be here the whole time to keep you safe, so—”
“Please.” Indsorith’s sunken eyes were still closed, and they scrunched tighter in a vain effort to dam back the wetness beginning to seep out around the edges. The utter ruin of the Star seemed to be off to a roaring start right here in her capital and the Crimson Queen expected Zosia to sit around playing nursemaid?
“Of course … Your Majesty,” murmured Zosia, settling back onto the bed as Indsorith shuddered beside her, the relief on the woman’s bruised and scabbing face so sincere Zosia found her own eyes stinging. It had been so long since somebody had relied on her to take care of them that she didn’t even know what to do, her hand hovering uncertainly over the invalid. Zosia always had such steady hands, no matter how dangerous or frightening the encounter, but now her whole arm was trembling … and she only found her steel again when she gave in to her impulse and tenderly stroked the woman’s brow. The grimace melted from Indsorith’s face and her breathing grew steady, and Zosia caught herself humming one of the Kvelertakan folk songs she would softly croon for Leib when he was sick—it was the only time he could guilt her into it, since she had never cared for the sound of her own singing.
The tune stuttered on her lips at the memory, but instead of letting the grief silence her, Zosia seized up the words to the ancient song, and in the tomblike quiet of Castle Diadem she sang to the sleeping queen of a crumbling empire, the devil at her feet keeping time with his tail as they waited for the world to end or Ji-hyeon to arrive with the Cobalt Company, whichever came first.