Seventh moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus
South barracks, Second Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands
‘Tomaz? Tomaz, my love? Call to me, darling. Tell me where you are.’
Tara rushed along the rows of beds with their manacled, staring occupants, easily outstripping her guard, skirts bunched in a sweaty fist and praying none of the soldiers outed her as one of them. She passed an open-mouthed Captain Salter, a man who’d served under her for a year and had never once in that time heard Tara call anyone ‘my love’. He looked down and away.
Too many weeks of eyes-down, mouth-closed hard labour and a dedication to duty that would have astounded Mace, and Valan, her owner, had finally allowed her to visit the makeshift prison and her husband. Valan himself stood by the entrance with the other barracks guards, the door open to clear some of the miasma of sweat, shit and sickness from his delicate nostrils. Tara barely noticed it, both out of respect for the Rankers chained here and because if this went wrong, she could measure her remaining life in breaths, not years.
You better figure out the ruse fast, Tomaz my lad, or we’re both dead.
‘Slow down, wench,’ Bern, the barracks guard escorting her, grumbled, a note of warning in his voice.
Tara gritted her teeth and complied. ‘Forgive me, honoured, I am anxious to see my beloved after so long. I’ve been so worried …’
‘He’s a heathen traitor, an enemy of Rilpor, and a bastard,’ Bern grunted. ‘You want to get anywhere in this life, you’d be better off finding yourself a real man. Your so-called marriage laws count for nothing now, remember. It’s only because you belong to Second Valan that you haven’t been fucked seven ways from midsummer already. Though I bet he’s done a good job of showing you what a real man can do, hasn’t he?’
Tara didn’t answer. Instead she hurried for the row of small rooms at the rear of the barracks, the officers’ quarters, where word had it that the captive high command were imprisoned. Not dead. Not dead yet, anyway.
‘Tomaz?’ she called again, and this time a bearded face appeared at the barred window in one of the heavy wooden doors. ‘Darling!’ she shrieked, running to the door and pressing her face to the bars. ‘I’m your wife,’ she hissed. Major Tomaz Vaunt blinked once in confusion and Tara’s stomach threatened to exit via her throat, and then the guard was unlocking the door and she shoved her way inside and fell into his arms, showering his face with kisses and clutching his unresponsive body to hers.
‘Oh my love, my love,’ she said breathlessly, ‘I never thought I’d see you again. Oh, my darling Tomaz, my husband, my Tomaz.’
Please, please, you fucking idiot. Play along.
She could feel the disbelief in Vaunt’s rigid frame and dug her fingers hard into his back. He coughed. ‘Tara?’ he said hoarsely and squeezed her to him. ‘You there,’ he added a moment later as Tara was swallowing tears of relief, ‘any chance you can piss off for a while? This is my wife.’
The man staring through the door sniggered and made a few comments, but they heard the turning of the key in the lock. ‘One hour,’ Bern said, ‘and if you come out of there with a babe in your belly, you’ll still work until you drop it. No light duties, no extra rations. And if Valan wants to put one in you, you’ll abort it and thank him while you do, understand?’ He spat at them, the thick glob of saliva clinging to the window bar, and left.
Tara gave it a few more minutes, murmuring endearments and pressing kisses to Vaunt’s face and neck. He thawed quickly and soon enough was playing the part of loving husband with vigour.
Eventually, Tara pushed him away. ‘Put a curtain up over the window, my love,’ she said huskily and he grabbed up a blanket, hooked it awkwardly over the frame; they heard a cheer, and more ribald jests that made even Tara blush. As a soldier, she’d thought she’d heard them all. Apparently not. Fucking pig.
Vaunt sat cautiously next to her on the bed, close enough to drag her into an embrace if needed. ‘You’re alive.’
Tara snorted. ‘Of course I’m alive. What do you think I am, some soft Palace Ranker?’
Vaunt’s mouth quirked. ‘No. Though you do appear to be married to one.’
She shrugged. ‘I didn’t fancy being passed around the Mireces, thought a high-ranking husband’d be my best bet. Working so far.’
Vaunt shook his head. ‘What the actual bollocking fuck are you doing here, Major?’ he hissed. ‘I mean here, in Rilporin? Last we heard, you were cut off in the city, no idea if you were dead or not. Why didn’t you get out?’
Tara took a second to rub the taste of him off her mouth, her chest suddenly tight at his use of her rank. A reminder of who she really was, not this, this drudge, this slave.
I’m a soldier. An officer. I’m a godsdamned West Ranker.
‘Assassination, rebellion, insurrection. The usual,’ she said flippantly, but Vaunt wasn’t taken in by her act.
His face paled. ‘Assassination? Corvus?’ he guessed and she blinked acknowledgment. He ran distracted hands through his hair. ‘That’s a big ask, Carter.’
She waved it away. ‘First things first: what do you know?’
He looked ready to argue, then slumped. ‘Not much. I haven’t been out of this room since they caught us at the King Gate, even though the rest labour from dawn to dark every day repairing the walls and gates.’
‘All right, listen up. You’re the only captives who haven’t been sold as slaves yet,’ she told him. ‘You and any soldiers still alive in the north barracks, but as I have no reason to go there, I can’t find out who’s left. Everyone else, every other civilian, now belongs to someone. You belong to the city itself, or the Mireces as a group, maybe. I don’t know why they haven’t sold you, but it can’t be out of a sense of fair play. So they’ve got something planned. I’m trying to find out what, but no luck so far. I’ll keep digging.’
‘And you?’
She tapped the heavy metal collar around her neck. ‘Oh, I’m special, I am. I was a gift to Valan the king’s second himself. Hence the need for a husband, though he’s … got a sort of honour, in a way. Hasn’t touched me yet, anyway.’
‘Carter—’
‘I’m your wife. Get used to calling me Tara. And don’t worry about it.’
Vaunt was grim, but he didn’t press and she was glad. ‘What else?’
‘The East Rank has been sent up the Tears and the Gil to subdue the towns and villages and take a tax in food and goods to send here. So that means there’re only Mireces guarding this place. That could give us an advantage.’
‘You want to start a riot?’
‘I want to start a fucking war,’ Tara snarled and then interrupted herself with a string of endearments and a giggle she could tell by Vaunt’s face he never expected to hear from her. The footsteps outside the cell paused and then carried on. More than one guard now, ready with their fists and clubs no doubt.
‘My orders are to kill Corvus and Lanta too, and for that I’m going to need a distraction. I’ll ready the palace slaves to fight and if we co-ordinate with an uprising among you lot, we can take this city back and kill every Mireces Raider we find, those two included.’
‘Shitting hell, Cart— Tara. You want to ghost Lanta and Corvus? That’s insane. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a decent plan, but the risk is huge,’ Vaunt said; then he pressed a finger to her lips and listened hard. Tara held her breath until he shook his head slightly and gestured at her to continue.
‘I think we’re past worrying about risks. Besides, no one knows I’m a soldier,’ Tara said with more confidence than she felt. ‘I’m in a good position as Valan’s property. There’re a lot of logistics to work out, but it’s doable. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t. But it’s not just my orders. That Blessed Bitch Lanta has apparently come up with some insane plan to bring the Dark Lady back from death, a plan that involves Corvus’s sister Rillirin, who’s at large somewhere in Rilpor. Yes, I know how it sounds. The woman’s touched by the moon, madder than a frog in a skillet, but she believes, so if it comes down to it, I reckon she needs killing more than Corvus does. He’s just a man, after all; she’s got the power to resurrect a goddess.’
Vaunt scrubbed his fingers through his short beard. ‘Maybe I’m the one who’s gone mad,’ he muttered, ‘because that’s the craziest bloody story I’ve ever heard.’
‘Try being on this side of the slave collar,’ Tara muttered and then threw Vaunt back on to the bed and followed him down, a leg over his hips. A sudden rattling of the door, shaking it hard enough to dislodge the blanket, and faces crowding the window.
Vaunt shouted a curse and tucked Tara behind him against the wall as if to shelter her. His acting was good, and she felt a sudden urge to stay there with him and let him protect her for real. Just for an hour. Just a little while. Please, gods. Please.
Colonel Dorcas’s voice rose loud from the next room – cell – along, and the guards drifted reluctantly from the door again. Vaunt replaced the blanket, threading it between the bars this time to hold it firm.
He came back to the bed and managed a smile. ‘Good ears,’ he whispered approvingly, ‘I’d no idea they were there.’
‘You learn to sense it,’ she said and an involuntary shudder rippled down her back.
Some of the gleam went out of Vaunt’s face. ‘Are you really all right? Have you been hurt?’
‘Yes, I’m all right and yes, I’ve been hurt. What did you think would happen, I’d be showered with gifts? I’m a thing.’ She waved away his concern and her own scalding bitterness. ‘Sorry, ignore that. It’s nothing I can’t handle.’
Again, he didn’t press and again, she was grateful. ‘All right, I’ll let this lot know we’ve got someone on the inside and to be ready to fight. With luck and the Dancer’s grace, they’ll get word to the soldiers in the north barracks too. Anything else?’
‘Code words,’ Tara said. ‘Something to identify friendlies. It needs to be—’
Three metal-on-stone taps on the wall from the next room interrupted her and this time it was Vaunt who jumped on her, pinning her to the cot and forcing her legs apart with his knees.
Tara heard a mumbled ‘sorry’ against her mouth before his hand was inside the neck of her gown and fumbling at her breast band. She stiffened, hooking her fingers into claws to drive at his eyes, when the lock rattled and the door swung open without so much as a knock.
‘Godsfuckingdamnit, sir!’ Vaunt roared, leaping up off Tara and leaving her thoroughly dishevelled, one breast peeking from its restraint and her skirts halfway up her thighs. Vaunt stalked towards the guards smirking and staring and poked Bern in the chest with his finger. ‘One hour, you said. One hour of privacy for myself and my wife. Get the fuck out of my quarters immediately!’
Tara scrunched against the wall next to the cot, tidying herself and not having to fake the shock and anxiety on her face. She held out an imploring hand. ‘Tomaz, darling, don’t. They’ll hurt you.’
‘Listen to the little wifey, soldier,’ Bern snarled, ‘or you’ll lose that fucking finger and more besides.’ The flat of a dagger slapped Vaunt between the legs and he grunted, twitched and took a halting step back.
‘Hour’s up,’ Bern added and Tara slid off the bed.
‘No, it bloody well isn’t,’ Vaunt snapped and this time the guard sheathed his knife and then slapped him so hard across the face it spun him around. His eyes narrowed to murderous slits and Tara stepped quickly past him.
‘Your will, honoured,’ she said quietly, eyes downcast.
‘It isn’t,’ Vaunt insisted, but Tara turned and put her palms on the sides of his face.
‘Hush now, don’t make them angry. I’ll be back soon.’ She kissed him, and even meant it this time, wanting something of warmth and softness to remember. Something real. It seemed Vaunt wanted the same, because he wrapped his arms around her and his mouth parted under hers and his tongue flicked, gentle as a butterfly’s wing, over hers.
And then he pushed her away. ‘Stay safe, Tara,’ he murmured. ‘Do as you’re told and no harm will come to you. I love you.’
‘I love you too. I’ll visit again soon, I swear it.’
Vaunt kissed her knuckles. ‘I’ll be ready,’ he promised, his eyes telling her they all would. She stepped back, nodded once, and then walked to the open door and the waiting Mireces.
‘Touch her and I’ll kill you,’ she heard Vaunt promise as she left the room. It didn’t matter that the threat was empty; it comforted her nonetheless.
Bern fell in beside her, the other guard behind, as they walked the length of the barracks through the shit-stinking, red-stained gloom of a thousand shackled, despairing men. Salter gave her the barest nod, which she ignored.
‘Get yer wet, did he?’ Bern asked as they reached the exit; Valan was just outside. Tara didn’t answer. ‘Asked you a question, bitch,’ he grunted.
‘I am an officer’s wife,’ Tara said, ‘and that is no sort of question to ask a lady.’
Bern’s hand was big enough to encircle her throat and he slammed her back-first into the wall next to the door. ‘You are a fucking slave,’ he muttered, teeth stained and cracked and foul breath blowing in her face. ‘You are fucking nothing.’
‘You’re right,’ Tara gasped, struggling to prise his fingers away. ‘I am a slave. I am Second Valan’s slave. I belong to him, not you.’ Her collar was biting into her neck under his hand and she could feel the sting of skin parting.
‘Asked if he got you wet,’ Bern grunted. ‘You don’t answer, I got to find out for myself. Don’t need no fucking permission for that.’
‘Stop,’ she choked. ‘Please. Please, honoured.’
The worst of it, she thought as Bern’s fingers dragged up her skirts and she pushed at arms thicker than her thighs, wasn’t even what he was doing. It wasn’t that she couldn’t kill him without revealing herself as more than a simple slave woman, even though she could practically taste his death she wanted it so badly.
No. The worst was that she could just make out, over his shoulder, the faces of both Major Vaunt and Colonel Dorcas at their windows. Dorcas turned away, unable to watch, but Vaunt was bellowing threats and curses in their direction. Tara closed her eyes.
You die first, Bern.
Believe me, shithead, you die first.
‘What is this?’ The voice was soft and cold and very, very lethal. Bern disappeared, to the sound of flesh smacking flesh and tearing cloth. Tara looked down at a long rip in her skirt. Her thigh was visible, as were the red fingerprints Bern had left in her skin. The man himself was sitting on his arse and clutching his bleeding mouth.
She fell to her knees in front of Valan. ‘Forgive me, honoured, forgive me. I didn’t want … but he insisted and I, I was afraid. My husband is so angry, but …’ She let the tears come, tears from weeks of fear and responsibility and grief. ‘I told Bern that I belong to you now.’ She whispered the last, casting a guilty glance in Vaunt’s direction, and then dared to look Valan in the eye. ‘Although my heart forever belongs with Tomaz. Please don’t hurt him for my error, lord.’
Valan hauled her to her feet, not unkindly. ‘The error was not yours. The error was Bern’s, who failed to realise that a slave collar means a woman is fucking claimed by another.’ He roared the last in Bern’s face and all of them flinched.
Bern fought his way to his feet. ‘Just checking that fucking Ranker hadn’t had a go at her,’ he whined. ‘Didn’t want you raising no bastard of a Rilporian.’
‘Touch her again and I’ll cut your cock off, roast it and make you eat it – do you understand?’
Bern spat blood. ‘Aye, Second,’ he said, tone sullen and eyes defiant. ‘I understand.’
‘Get out.’ Bern and the other guard sidled through the barracks entrance and Valan glared at the men chained closest. They turned away. He put a finger beneath Tara’s chin and raised her head. ‘Did he hurt you?’
She looked into his face and let a hint of fire show through. ‘Yes. But that is the lot of a slave, isn’t it? To be hurt.’
Valan’s mouth twitched, as though he appreciated her answer even as he didn’t deny its truth. ‘Bern won’t bother you again, but if he does, tell me. Work hard, do as you’re told, and you can visit your husband again.’
‘Yes, honoured,’ Tara said and followed him from the barracks, absurdly grateful for his intervention. Vaunt’s kiss was still on her mouth, but it was Valan who’d kept her safe.
Seventh moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus
Red Gods’ temple, temple district, First Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands
‘Sire, how may I serve?’
If Corvus resented having to trek through the city to the temple in order for her to ‘serve’ him, it didn’t show on his face. Nothing showed on Corvus’s face but what he wanted people to see.
She padded out of the shadows of the temple and watched him drink in the sight of her, the godblood adorning her skin, the marks and the wisdom they imparted painting her in truth and promise and hope. The blood of the Dark Lady, stained forever in swirls and sigils on Lanta’s body, tingling and whispering like the breath of a lover.
She curtseyed and he offered a stiff nod in return, declined wine or water or food. Annoyed, then, and straight to business. Lanta suppressed a sigh.
‘We have thousands of slaves and not enough food to feed them all,’ Corvus said. Lanta blinked. What did she care about stinking Rilporians? ‘You said we would offer a mass sacrifice to bring back the Bloody Mother, and yet there is still no date set for the ritual. May I know the reason for the delay, Blessed One?’
‘You think hungry slaves determine when a work as great as this will be carried out?’ she asked. ‘This is why you come to me, interrupt our devotions, our ritual-crafting?’ She stood in a swirl of skirts. ‘I don’t have time for this.’
‘Hungry slaves are rebellious slaves,’ Corvus said doggedly, staying her with his voice. ‘I have sent Fost to bring home the women and children from the mountains; soon the city will have even more mouths to feed. You told me to spare as many lives as possible for your great rite and there are two prison barracks bursting with angry, hungry soldiers and I cannot keep them alive indefinitely. Would you have me take bread from our young to give to them?’
‘I would have you do your job as king and sort out such matters. Do you need me to wipe your arse for you as well?’ She was tired and frustrated – the ritual they needed didn’t exist and she and high priest Gull had no previous lore to draw upon – but still, she shouldn’t have said it. The temperature in the room plummeted, chilled by the ice in Corvus’s expression.
Lanta inhaled through flared nostrils. ‘Sire, forgive my hasty words. I am very tired. I thought I had made myself clear – the slaves will be needed in the great rite that restores the Dark Lady to us in the body of your sister’s child.’
Corvus thumped the arm of his chair. ‘You want me to keep them alive until – when, Yule? Another half-year? Impossible!’
‘This is the richest country in Gilgoras, Sire. Are you telling me you cannot find enough grain to feed slaves a starvation diet? I need their bodies and blood and fear, not sleek muscles and healthy minds. They can be raving skeletons for all I care, just keep them alive.’
‘We trampled through most of the Wheat Lands during the siege. We have ruined half the crop.’ Corvus was standing too now, anger gleaming just below the frustration.
‘Then it is a good thing we only need to feed the half of the population that walks the Dark Path,’ Lanta snapped. ‘Sire, please. I don’t have time to come up with all the answers for you. Back in Eagle Height you made it clear that I should confine myself to spiritual matters while you dealt with the rest, and now you come here expecting me to magic bread out of the air and take control of those very matters you have excluded me from. I cannot. I will not.’
‘We will have a rebellion on our hands, Blessed One. Slaves and Mireces will die in that rebellion.’
Lanta gritted her teeth. ‘You swore that everything you did was for the glory of the gods. They need more than glory now; They need an act of faith so enormous that it returns the Dark Lady to us. All other considerations are as nothing in the face of that. What we are attempting has never been done and I will not have you jeopardise it. I will not, so I don’t care where you get it from, just find the food and keep my sacrifices alive until I need them.’
Corvus’s hand was squeezing the hilt of his dagger, but not in threat, she thought. ‘You ask too much.’
‘The gods always ask too much, Sire,’ she said softly. ‘And we always provide Them with what They demand. We are Mireces; sacrifice is in our blood.’
He had no answer to that, of course, as she’d known he wouldn’t. It furthered his frustration and added another crack in the bond that had united king and Blessed One thus far in their great conquest. Corvus stalked from the temple without another word, and when he was gone Gull detached himself from the shadows and joined her.
‘You are concerned?’ he asked.
‘He was the perfect king to lead us to victory – even a victory such as this, that cost us our Bloody Mother. But is he the king to rule Rilpor in the gods’ names? Is he the king who will do all that is necessary to see Them ascendant?’
‘You doubt his loyalty?’ Gull was surprised.
‘Never,’ Lanta responded instantly, and was a little surprised to find it was the truth. ‘I doubt his … ability. Corvus is a killer and a leader of men, but is he a governor? Can he provide for his people and keep the slaves in their places? When he killed King Liris, he took over an established and stable world. This one he is building from scratch and I don’t think he knows how. I don’t think he really wants to.’
‘He wants to go to war.’
Lanta rocked her head from side to side. ‘He knows war, but he knows subjugation too. Sending the East Rank rather than Mireces to occupy the towns and villages was a master stroke – it’s easier to give up your liberty to people who look and sound like you. But taxes and crops and laws? Where’s the glory and excitement in that?’
‘Do you want him removed?’ Gull asked.
Lanta pursed her lips. ‘Not yet: we need stability, at least for now. Corvus understands the importance of keeping the slaves alive; despite his frustration here, he will not risk the great rite out of pettiness. But he needs aid, someone who can teach him what he needs to know, provide answers to the questions he doesn’t know how to ask.’
‘I may be able to help with some of the governance,’ Gull offered. ‘I was a silk merchant here in Rilporin for a decade. I understand trade, supply and demand.’
Lanta turned away from the door through which Corvus had exited. ‘Your offer is generous, but I need you here. Corvus will monopolise you if he thinks he can pass such things into your hands. But if there are others among the slaves who would suit …’
Gull nodded and left her, understanding her moods well enough, and Lanta wandered through what had once been the Dancer’s temple and was now sworn and blooded to Holy Gosfath and His absent Sister-Lover. Not dead. Absent. It was the only way she could bring herself to think about it despite the great work they were preparing, despite her every waking – and some dreaming – moments being dedicated to it.
She passed the godpool, sanctified now with the blood of scores of sacrifices so that the once-clear water was red-tinged and thick, clotted and reeking. It was unpleasant, but the last of the Light needed to be chased from this newly hallowed place. Besides, it served as a potent reminder to any slave who thought to raise the defiant eye to their betters.
As always, her footsteps led her outside and into the temple square, to the wooden, open-sided shelter that had been erected over the place where the Dark Lady had been taken from them, the ground still stained with Her divine blood, much as Lanta was herself. There was someone in the shrine, kneeling on the unmarked stone and staring fixedly at the black droplets just in front of him. He looked up at her approach, and scrambled to his feet.
‘Second Valan, forgive me. I had no wish to intrude on your prayers.’
He bowed, his eyes running hungrily over the marks on her skin. He wanted to touch them, as he wanted to touch the stains on the stone. He didn’t dare. ‘It is I who should beg forgiveness. If this place belongs to anyone, it belongs to you.’
Lanta sat on one of the benches circling the shrine and gestured for him to join her. ‘It belongs to us all, Second. You are welcome here whenever you wish, but if you are looking for Corvus, he has left.’
Valan was silent for a while. ‘I was not,’ he said. ‘I came here to pray for my family. Their journey is long and may be perilous, and Ede is only three.’ He met her eyes briefly and Lanta noted the flash of indecision. She gave him a reassuring smile. ‘I worry my daughters won’t remember me,’ he confessed in a rush. ‘What will they have been through while I was here fighting? What trials or sicknesses that I could not comfort? They might not even be alive now.’
Lanta was surprised. Valan rarely spoke of his family and she couldn’t even remember his consort’s name. Such open love was rare among Mireces men, such loyalty even rarer. ‘Their lives will have been what the gods decreed for them,’ she said. ‘Be at peace knowing that if they suffered, they did so to prove their devotion. But there is no saying they did,’ she added.
They sat in silence for a while longer. ‘You are a good man, Valan,’ Lanta said and he blinked in surprise. ‘I hope Corvus knows how lucky he is to have you as his second.’
‘The honour is mine,’ Valan said automatically. ‘My life to serve.’
‘Yes,’ Lanta said, examining him in light of the idea sitting fresh and a little shocking in her mind. ‘We are all put in Gilgoras to serve the gods and do Their will, whatever it may be.’ She stood and he rose with her. ‘I will pray for your family,’ she said and strode back towards the temple before he could respond.
Tasuta katkend on lõppenud.