The Crimson League (The Herezoth Trilogy) (52 page)

“The Tricentennial.” The men spoke for another hour. It so happened Zalski did think the assassination plot compromised, due to Petroc’s chain and Kora’s use of it. Jonson Peare must be suffered to live, at least through the celebration, at least until the League had ceased to function. To Kora’s unsurprise, destroying his sister’s band of renegades was Zalski’s most urgent business. Her back aching, never daring to open her eyes, Kora did what she could: wait and pray, pray that Zalski would soon walk out, without her; that Argint would let her follow. Finally, the stools scraped the floor again. Zalski took his leave.

Argint wasted no time when the sorcerer had gone. Before Kora could unfold her sore, tense body, she saw her host and his sword before her. He bent down, she was sure with the aim to stab her. She flattened herself against the inside of the desk, and then realized he extended not the blade, but the hilt in her direction. The weapon was sheathed. She took hold, and Argint helped her out and up. She grimaced, stretching the small of her back. Then she looked at him with incredulous vulnerability.

“You didn’t turn me over.”

“You spared my life in Hogarane. Now I’ve spared yours.”

“You could have, you should have, turned me over.”

Argint was unmoved. “I owe you nothing from this point on. Nothing, I can’t make myself clearer. If you come near me again, I will
cut you down.” He jerked a finger in the exit’s direction. “Get out. And be warned, if you so much as startle an individual in this building….”

“That’s not who I am. It’s not, I would never sneak up on someone.”

“Then what would you say you did to that man in my regiment? The one who died at that farmhouse in Hogarane, the one whose head you bashed against the shelving with more force than you did mine? He had a wife and four children. You wouldn’t have known that. I doubt you would have cared. So yes, I warn you, if you should startle a single person on your way out, just one, Zalski educating your brother is the least of your concerns. I will personally see that you pay. Now go.”

“I’ll go, I will. As soon as you check that the way’s clear.”

Argint verified there was no one in the hallway. He shepherded Kora through the door, then slammed it at her back. She made herself invisible and transported, not to Fontferry, but to the road that crossed in front of her parents’ home. From a quarter-mile out she began to walk, her thoughts all twisted, convoluted. She needed to set them straight before facing her companions.

Kora realized, with a jolt, that the last time she passed that bush had been a year ago. Almost a year, when she had gone out for flour and eggs. Had it really been the next day, the following morning, that she first set eyes on the man who just treated her so coldly? That the comrade he mentioned, the one to fly into the room and be thrown into the bookcase, had lost his life? Kora had not touched the man herself; that was the princes’ doing, though technically they had not touched him either. Their telekinesis killed him. What guilt did Kora carry by association? Surely some small measure. And she had never given the guardsman a second thought.

This is war. War, I didn’t ask for this, not for any of it. Let Argint think what he’ll think, I never attacked a person who wore no uniform. I’ve done nothing but try to protect my own. Perhaps I’ve killed; I never murdered. So why…?

The first sight of home wiped her mind, and her conscience, clear. Overcome with nostalgia, she stopped in the road. That old post, it was where she would enter Trenzern, the imaginary kingdom she created with Sedder and Hunt. That oak, across the field, was the tree she used to climb with her journal on lazy summer afternoons. Right here was where Zacry, aged four, fell and twisted his ankle. Sedder carried him back to the house. And there….

Kora crept forward. There stood the house itself, fully in view. Even from a distance the blue uniform of Malzin’s sentry clashed with the wood of the door as he stood at attention before it. Only Malzin herself could say how many men were inside, how many strangers had rooted through Kora’s things, besmirched the very journal she had thought of a mere minute before. Kora marched toward the soldier, her muscles tense.

He won’t know what hit him, the bastard.

She brought herself as close to the sentry as she dared. She drew a breath to let out a spell, one to maim. Before she voiced it, an image flashed across her brain: Zalski, walking up to ambush the League at the Landfill, trying to decide which death-dealing word would cause the greatest pain.

Kora dropped to her knees. She nearly screamed, almost let loose a string of curses to the sky, but the house, the soldier, were too near.

What am I…. What am I doing? What’s happened to me?

Shaking, she settled on the earth.

I have to calm down. I have to, or I’ll do something crazy, something like…. I’ll end up like Petroc. Like Zalski himself. I’ll prove Mayor Peare right. Zalski’s guards here, they violate memories, only memories. Well, memories can’t save me. If this means fewer elites at the Palace when we attack, maybe it’s worth the loss.

But what a loss. What price could she place on her childhood? “I shouldn’t have come back,” Kora thought. “I don’t belong here anymore.”

Why had she given all this up? In a way, the ruby had forced her to let it go. Enter a safehouse or join the League, those had been her options. She made her choice with little thought and even less understanding of what it meant to throw her lot in with the resistance. Had she known, she would never have taken that oath.

She remembered, as though from a time as distant as Trenzern’s adventures, how she once told Sedder that if she were to die, she would die with honor. Her head had been filled with romantic delusions: sincere ones, but delusions nonetheless. There was nothing romantic about death, nothing to idealize about the gurgling noises of a man somehow drowning with his feet on the dirt; about the desperation in a woman’s eyes as she pleaded wordlessly for the life of her compatriot; about the gloopy, browning pools of blood left behind when someone had his throat cut after-hours in a warehouse. When Kora first joined the League, she had turned nostalgic about the years spent in the cottage that rose not twenty yards away from her. Now, she would give anything to return to those first days under Menikas’s command. Those days when Sedder was with her, and Zacry in his mother’s care, and the fight had not yet turned personal.

Now the personal aspects consumed her. Her mind forced her, every time she fell asleep, to watch Zalski again send an unbroken jet of water down Sedder’s throat. To see her brother traipse, his chin held high, into the room across from Bennie in that tower. To hear the crunch of a wooden chair and human bone upon impact with a cobblestone street. Kora could hear it now, it echoed in her brain, and she struggled to prolong the sound, to remember, precisely because she
had
lost all idealism, because she had nothing left to force her to keep going if not the urge to avenge Kansten, to make Zalski pay for abducting her brother, to fight in Sedder’s memory.

445

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Rankush Returns

“The Giver bless us!” Bennie cried, when Kora walked in the barn. “The Giver bless us all, we thought….”

Neslan clapped Lanokas on the back, while the prince ran a hand down his face in relief. Hayden looked up from where he sat shredding lettuce, as though his ears did not offer enough proof that Kora was with them, physically sound. Laskenay glided to her feet to ask, “Will Argint help us? You were gone for so long, we took it to mean things either went extremely well….”

Kora shook her head, slowly, firmly, from the spot where she stood in the doorway. The realization that they were on their own began to settle on the group.

“You’re here,” said Neslan. “That’s enough.”

Hayden deserted his greens. “So what happened?” he asked. “If you weren’t hashing out details with the general, what kept you?”

“Later,” said Bennie. “She’s white as a sheet. Kora, come here, you should sit.”

Kora joined the others in a circle on the floor, dragging her feet. Her head was spinning. “I tried,” she said. “I tried everything. I told him about Zalski’s stones, I…. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” said Neslan.

You don’t know what I almost did to that guard.

Laskenay’s lips thinned. “Are you certain you’re not in trouble? Did Argint threaten you?”

“It’s not Argint that’s got me…. I’m a little spooked, that’s
all.
I wasn’t expecting company.” Kora sighed, her hand on her forehead. “And now I have to explain. I’ll just worry you all if I don’t.”

Lanokas told her not to rush, and she followed his advice. Taking pauses, some close to a minute when she needed nothing less to find her voice, she recounted what had passed in Argint’s office. The tale filled Neslan with chagrin, the prince with smoldering ire. Hayden listened in a daze, while Bendelof’s eyes grew to cover her entire face. Kora could not look at her; she knew the girl was imagining her Zalski’s prisoner, enduring the fear that, of all present, only Bendelof had known. Laskenay sat tight-lipped and somber. Somber, she always was somber these days. When Kora reached the point where she finally left the office, she made it seem as though she had come straight to Wheatfield.

Bendelof placed a comforting hand on Kora’s, which was still off-color. Lanokas told Laskenay, “We should never have let her go. She’s been doing too much. She was already at the breaking point, and now this.”

“I’m not broken, damn you! I’m not a weapon or a tool you’ve worn down!”

Lanokas insisted, “Someone else should have gone to Argint.”

Laskenay’s dull tones broke up the argument. “I should have gone, that’s obvious enough now. I’m not making excuses, Kora, but I thought we were doing the best thing, sending you in my place.”

“You were,” said Kora. “You’d be dead right now. There’s no way Argint would have hidden you. He only hid me because I spared him in Hogarane. He would have felt uneasy, turning me over after th
at. Really, we’re lucky it was me there.
I wasn’t expecting Zalski, is all. I definitely didn’t expect to be trapped like that, without magic. I’ve grown dependent on my spells, more than I realized.”

Hayden sat rigid, his eyes glassy. He had not so much as tapped a finger since Kora mentioned the sorcerer’s arrival. Now he said, “I can’t believe the General didn’t kill you. I just can’t fathom it. Zalski’s general?”

“He considered killing me, he had to.”

“So who is this man?” asked Hayden. “Seriously, he makes no sense.”

Lanokas said, “Not all who work for Zalski have no scruples. You know that.”

“Yeah, but generally the higher-ups share his ideals.”

Neslan said, “There’s one thing that puzzles me more than Argint. Only one. And that’s where the hell we’re going to go now.”

“Go?” said Bennie. “We’re gonna leave?”

“We have to, don’t we? Maybe not this second, but soon. I’ll bet anything the guard’s working its way north, bit by bit, and by this point we’ve established a presence in Fontferry.” Neslan turned to Kora. “I know you told us everything you remember. There’s no chance you passed something over? Did you hear something, anything
,
that could give us a clue where Malzin’s men are?”

Kora shook her head. “Argint was careful. Flawless. The one time Zalski nearly let it slip, he stopped him. He even made sure to comment he wouldn’t stop searching Yangerton, because Yangerton, well, he’d mentioned they already cleared it.”

Lanokas narrowed his eyes. “So was he warning you the city isn’t safe? Or keeping us rootless, flushed in the open?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t imagine he said anything to help us, though.”

Laskenay agreed. “So, do we keep on at Wheatfield? Or do we change location?”

The decision to stay, at least for the moment, was unanimous. If the guard arrived, within hours they would learn their game was in the vicinity, that was true. But the League would need mere minutes to transport out of harm’s way.

“And if they don’t announce their presence?” said Lanokas. “I doubt they’ll march into the village wearing uniforms. They’re hoping to surprise us.”

Laskenay’s voice was soft. “We have three weeks, Lanokas, maybe two and half before we’re destitute. Your brother took Rone’s money. We have Hayden’s winnings, nothing else. And I won’t let you gamble again,” she said, as Hayden tried to speak. “We can’t risk what funds we have. We can’t risk
you
, you were nearly attacked last time.”

A knot formed in Kora’s throat. “So we, we’re taking action in three weeks? Going after the Palace?”

“Argint was right about one thing,” said Laskenay. “We’re desperate. But we aren’t just any six desperate people. We have the possibility—albeit a small one—of ending Zalski’s reign. Should we not, rest assured the good people of Podrar won’t forget what we attempted. Nor will my….” Laskenay’s voice cracked. “Nor will my brother.”

“Well-spoken,” said Neslan.

“Three weeks,” said Kora. She rose. “I’m sorry, I’m sure you want to start planning. You should start planning, but right now I need some air. I’m going to the river. I don’t know how long I’ll be, so don’t wait. When I come back, I’ll be fifty times more able to contribute. Right now, I….”

Neslan motioned for her to hush. “No one thinks you’re being selfish.”

“Go,” Bennie told her. “And don’t rush back, don’t deprive yourself of a second if you need it.” Kora nodded, weakly, and left the barn.

The clouds above the river threatened rain, though the day had been dry. Kora, invisible, climbed into the lower branches of an oak along the bank. From the spot where she settled, she could just make out Teena’s inn across the water. A chill wind blew, but Kora did not mind; she just pulled her tattered cloak close around her.

Kora had always felt at home in trees, felt safe, removed from, lifted above, the stresses of her life. Here, the pounding of
three weeks
over and over inside her chest—her heart yelled it in time with its beat—pained her less.

She had barely escaped with her life from Argint’s office. One word from him, one nod in her direction, and Zalski would have found her. Kora grew faint just remembering, and dug her nails in the tree, leaned back against the trunk to steady herself. How much longer could she expect her luck to hold? Not through an ambush. Not through another chance encounter.

Which was precisely why, she told herself, her next encounter with Zalski could not come by chance. She relaxed her grip on the branch that supported her. She started to appreciate that, come what may, the fight would be over in less than a month. No more wondering who would die next, or when the guard would discover the League. No more waiting for Zalski to learn a new trick that had the potential to damn them all. Even if the League did fail, Kora might lose her life in the struggle and not be captured. That would be a victory in itself; it would anger Zalski, prevent his revenge.

Except that—Kora clutched the branch again—her dying would do nothing of the sort, if he had her body. If he made her corpse a public display. Were Zacry to hear of that, were her mother, God forbid, to see it….

Kora realized her leg was swinging, and she let it hang limp. Her foot went numb.

I don’t know that Zalski would…. No. No, there’s no use thinking of this. It’s beyond my control. I don’t have the energy, the time. I have to make sure this attack is an honest opportunity, that’s what I have to do. I can’t distract myself.

Kora glanced at the sky, to see it was starting to clear. The wind was moving the clouds along, and the edge of the front had appeared. Staring at the patch of blue, Kora felt her confidence wax.

She needed to keep moving, that was all. Like the clouds. She could not let her fears paralyze her. Bennie, Neslan, Lanokas, they were all afraid, but they would not stop their forward progress. They would not dwell on mothers, or brothers, on tortures and executions. They would plan the assault that would give them a chance for survival, all else aside, and Kora would join them in their task.

I can do this. I can focus on this last objective. Where Mother is, what to do about Lanokas, the soldiers at home—those damn soldiers!—the time will come to worry about that, if we succeed. If we don’t succeed, well, then I won’t have to bother, I won’t be
able
to bother. But I’ll know I prepared the best I could.

Kora took one long, deep breath, and then another. They did her good. She had not breathed freely all day, not all week, if truth be told. Her nerves had been too taut anticipating her tête-à-tête with Argint. Well, she had failed in that, failed dismally, but her heart still beat, if only to risk itself once more in three weeks’ time.

Clearing her mind, focusing on respiration, Kora found some measure of peace, a peace that even took the nip from the air as her thoughts, before she could stop them, returned to one word, one name. Her numbed foot stole the wind’s sting; its feeling returned painfully.

Lanokas
.

Indefensible, illogical, the sense of security he gave her. Even dangerous; he had no great powers against an army, or a sorcerer. Imagining otherwise was worse than fantasy, it was folly, and would lead to a number of deaths besides her own. Except that…. No, Kora held no delusions he could protect her. But his words steadied her anyway, and his touch gave her strength, almost as much as Sedder’s had. The thought of the guard torturing Lanokas ate at her, had been gnawing at her confidence, unrecognized, since Laskenay first mentioned a final stand.

Kora loved him. There seemed small use denying it; what he had done for Zacry the week before had done her in. Her fears did not concern the king Herezoth stood to lose. No, she cared what Lanokas
would lose, not blue blood but a life’s blood as crimson as anyone’s. If Kora cursed his birth, it was not only because Zalski hunted him for his name. The prince’s station would drive him from her in victory, as death would do in failure. If only she knew what awaited him, could guarantee he would not suffer!

Zalski might take pity on the others. There’s at least a chance he’ll kill them quickly, but not Lanokas, and not me. Definitely not me. He’s determined to break us first, I know he is, and we’re going to walk right up to him.

Because we have to. I know we have to, there’s no other way.

If he is to die, God, if you can’t, or won’t, save him, at least don’t let them torture him. Please,
I know they’ll try. You owe me something, God. If you’re putting me through this, I’m sorry, but you damn well owe me
something
!

And so Kora prayed to the Giver as she had never prayed in her life. She prayed for the League and its success, for her mother and brother, for Laskenay’s son, for herself. She prayed for the souls of those she had lost. She confronted the worst that might lie ahead, and three hours later, after the sun sank, she knew she could imprison her demons even if she could not slay them. She could hold them at bay and devote her energy fully to the League’s last mission. It was time to return to Wheatfield.

* * *

Kora returned to the river a week later, though she went to the opposite bank. This time Hayden and Lanokas joined her to wash clothes and fetch water.

The last seven days had dragged on even longer than preparing for Argint had: group consultations, strategy sessions, study sessions of maps that Lanokas spent the first days drawing, they were never-ending. Kora, who had never been able to stand doing laundry—especially in Fontferry, because of the time it took to find an unoccupied, secluded spot—Kora found herself volunteering for the task, just to escape from the barn. The three Leaguesmen had been washing for fifteen minutes, too tired to really talk, when Kora realized how intently Lanokas stared at the current while he scrubbed a couple of tunics. She knelt beside him with a dress to wash; Hayden was filling buckets some yards upstream.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“Nothing in particular.”

Kora cocked an eyebrow. “You’ve been pretty focused,” she said.