The Crimson League (The Herezoth Trilogy) (60 page)

The refreshments were enough for them all to have a bite, even after they gave half to Bennie. Some color returned to her cheeks. The pain of swallowing must have shown on Kora’s face, because Lanokas kept looking at her with concern. Argint returned just as they were finishing. “Who first?” he asked.

Lanokas answered: Kora and Hayden. Bennie needed more time to rest, and Lanokas should be the one to stay with her, because of his telekinesis. The general disagreed.

“Your life’s the one that matters. You have to take the throne. If they kill you before I get back?”

“I can protect myself.”

“Shut up,” hissed Argint, without warning, “all of you.” Someone was moving down the corridor outside. Running. Argint threw his rope to Hayden and motioned for the Leaguesmen to back against the wall. He took up station beside the door.

The blue-uniformed soldier who entered was a tall man, muscular, with larger than average ears. Before he had time to mark the corpse on the rug, Argint grabbed him and threw him to the corner, keeping him there with his sword. Lanokas brought the man’s own blade flying through the air to his outstretched hand.

Looking beyond Argint, unsettled by the way he had been disarmed, the guardsman glimpsed Zalski’s body and raised his hands above his head. The general told him, “It will bring me no joy, but I’ll kill you if you yell an alarm.” The elite nodded his consent, and Argint rolled his eyes. “You can speak in normal tones, Kant. Have you other weapons?”

“A dagger.” Hayden passed the rope to Kora and went over to confiscate a second knife.

“Why would you barge into Zalski’s parlor? What’s your purpose?”

Kant refrained from answering his former fellow guardsman. In the silence, Kora heard the faintest sounds of—could it be a scuffle? More rushing feet, hurried voices, the words inaudible.

“What news do you bring, soldier?” Argint prodded Kant with his blade.

“The townsfolk are attacking. It’s the crest on the wall. They realize at least one royal’s still alive, or was earlier. There’s at least a hundred of them. And they’re growing.”

445

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Price of Victory

Kora grabbed for Lanokas, missing him the first time. A mob was forming, a mob that would group all sorcerers with Zalski, as Jonson Peare had. A mob that could easily kill her. Lanokas turned her to face him, alarmed at her terror. He brushed a lock of hair away that had fallen across her face. “They won’t touch you. They won’t touch you, do you hear? They would have to kill me first, and they want to reinstate me.”

Wouldn’t they kill him? Mightn’t they, if they were rabid enough and they realized their new king had worked with sorcerer scum? If he revealed any sign of what he felt for her? Desperate, Kora pointed back and forth between Lanokas and herself, indicating their relationship; then she jabbed a finger at his chest and ran it across her throat. He comprehended her warning. “I won’t let them hurt you, I swear it,” he repeated. She shut her eyes, feeling dizzy rather than reassured. “Kora….”

Kora pulled herself together, nodded at him. Meanwhile, the noise was getting louder, and Argint, with Hayden’s aid, had bound and gagged the guardsman.

“What now?” said Hayden.

Lanokas said, “We run for the courtyard. Zalski’s men still hold the Palace, we can’t let them trap us here. Come on….”

He pulled Bennie from her seat, and the four of them, plus Argint, rushed into the corridor. The general lagged behind with his false leg, but only a little, as the others moved slowly due to injury. Lanokas yelled at Hayden to pass one of the daggers to Kora, because she would be the one in greatest danger, he knew it despite his reassurances. She gulped in fear, but accepted the weapon.

“We won’t pay unjust taxes!”

“The tyrant will pay now!”

“No more jailings! No disappearances!”

“Death to Zalski! Death to sorcery!”

“The king’s line lives! Long live the king!”

The people of Podrar, armed with stones, planks of wood, some with kitchen instruments, had forced their way into the vestibule. The bodies of Zalski’s guard littered the floor. The mob had begun to rush up the staircase, to pour into every hallway that led off the entrance chamber, but halted when Lanokas and his fellows appeared, stopped by the shouts and the cheers of the first to lay eyes on the prince, men and women alike pumping fists and raising weapons.

“LONG LIVE THE KING!”

The townspeople let Lanokas and his group through, to the center of the entrance chamber. Four or five men reached out to lay hands on Argint, but the prince jumped in front of him, wielding Kant’s sword. “He’s an ally!” More men made to grab at the general. “An ally, I say!”

“Where’s the sorcerer?” they yelled.

“The sorcerer!”

“Death to Zalski!”

Lanokas hushed the crowd. They consented to leave Argint in peace, more interested in the fate of the usurper.

“Zalski’s dead,” said Lanokas. “Down that corridor.” He pointed the way he had come, and ten or fifteen men rushed to verify his claim. “Don’t kill the other man!” he shouted after them. The outbursts of joy and hysteria swallowed his voice.

“Kill all tyrants!”

“All sorcerers!”

“Kill that one! That one there!” A woman, perhaps thirty, jabbed a slender finger in Kora’s direction. “That’s Porteg, I saw her use magic in the street!”

“She’s one of them!” screamed an older man.

“The worst of them!” cried four of five together. At least, it sounded like four or five. Kora dropped her dagger, a cold terror freezing her feet to the marble. Her companions jumped to shield her from the advancing masses, beating the closest ones back.

“She’s a loyalist!” shouted Hayden. “A bloody loyalist! Always has been!”

The mob stopped pressing on them, but continued presenting its case.

“She wants to steal Zalski’s seat!”

“She’ll manipulate the king! She has to die!”

Lanokas tried to calm them. “She can’t speak! Can’t speak, cannot cast spells, not one. In God’s name, isn’t one of you a doctor?”

“I am,” said a man three yards away. Those next to him pushed him forward.

“Examine her, her vocal cords are gone.”

The doctor laid rough hands on Kora’s neck. He pulled her mouth open and peered into her throat. “They might be gone,” he said. “They look to be. In this light I can’t be certain.”

The mob grew more restless than ever. “She’ll always be a sorceress!” cried the woman who had first pointed Kora out. Dozens of voices sounded at once.

“Always!” “A sorceress at heart, a slave to magic!” “She’ll go to the Healing Pool she will!” “Nothing’s uncleansable save sorcery and wine stains!” “Death to sorcery!” “She’ll betray us like he did!” “She’s no different! None of them are!”

Lanokas, Bendelof, Hayden, and Argint had by now formed a ring around Kora. She dared not summon her protective shell, dared not demonstrate the slightest proof of magical ability. Magic she had cast that morning held her bandana in place, but she quaked to think the fabric could slide away and the crowd label her an imposter of a hero thanks to the ruby, which remained her last and only secret. Within seconds, the mob shoved Hayden aside. Someone yanked Kora’s hair, while more hands grabbed her clothing and threw her to the floor, facedown. She could do nothing, could not even plead. A pipe struck her shoulder, and Bennie started a tug of war with the twenty-something who held it.

“ENOUGH! ENOUGH,
I AM YOUR KING
!”

Even Kora shrank, frightened by the booming echo of Lanokas’s voice. The crowd desisted in stunned silence. A middle-aged matron stood poised with a broom to strike Kora’s head. Lanokas fixed her with a haughty glare.

“I am the king.” He ripped the implement from the woman, tossed it to the ground. “There will be justice in my realm, not mob rule. I will pass sentence on her.”

With the single word
sentence
, Kora knew what would happen next. He would keep the promise he had given her the only way he could. He would save her from the mob by stripping her of everything himself, everything but her life.

“On your feet,” he barked. She had never heard Lanokas speak with such ice in his tone, such hatred. Though she knew it was an act, it shook her to the soul, and she had to pause when she had risen to her knees, aching all over, her shoulder smarting. “Your feet!” he bellowed. Hayden moved to help her stand, but the royal ordered him back. Kora mustered the strength to support her own weight. She forced herself to meet the king’s eyes, though they burned her own.

“Kora Porteg, I banish you from my realm. You have until nightfall to remove yourself from Podrar and two weeks to reach the coast. The
eastern
coast: there will be no trips to Partsvale and its Miracle Pool. My order will secure you a ship. Should you set foot again in Herezoth, the consequence is death, to which by the power of my office I hold every man and woman here solemn witness. You understand what I’m telling you?”

Kora understood. She understood that he feigned the odium of his tone just as surely as the threats he levied were genuine, genuine because nothing less would allow her to escape the Palace walls. He had finally accepted what she had been explaining since they shared that first kiss behind Wheatfield’s barn: that he belonged in Podrar, she anywhere he was not.

“I asked you a question. Do you understand?”

Kora inclined her head, dropping submissively, shakily, to one knee. Lanokas lifted her by the chin. His touch was firm but gentle; he was careful not to press against her throat, and sure that for one second no one could see his face, as close as it was to hers and as low, he allowed his expression to change. His features softened into ones Kora recognized, the ones in which she had always found counsel and consolation. A brightness returned to the depths of his eyes that told her as clearly as if he had spoken, in a fraction of the time words would have cost, “I consider, and will always consider you, my equal. My last memory of you will not be you bowing before me.”

Then he was gone. The stranger he had become returned with such suddenness that Kora’s heart jumped, and she stumbled two paces back, to distance herself.

“Have you lost your hearing? I told you to stand before me. You have your orders, sorceress. If you hope to complete them, you had best be gone. This instant.”

The crowd opened passage to the threshold. A constant, though dull, stream of insults and threats began. Hayden and Bendelof walked on either side of Kora, the first with the sword the king had dropped for him to retrieve, in case someone tried to harm the sorceress. No one did, though a number made rude gestures. Bennie placed a hand on her back at the worst of the comments, when people called her shameless, or a rat, or swore they would hunt her family.

Kora’s guides led her safely through the courtyard, then through the small throng that had gathered outside the gates. Word of the king’s ruling had spread, and though Kora expected an arrow to come flying out of nowhere, her banishment either appeased the citizenry, or no one man was willing to accept the execution that awaited should he violate royal command and murder her himself.

No one dared to follow Kora. The three Leaguesmen only stopped when they reached a quiet street two miles away, empty and narrow, lined with cabins. There Hayden said, “I should get back to Lanokas. He’ll need me, he’ll need any help he can find. He’s got a monster of a task ahead, righting Zalski’s mess.”

Kora bit her lip. She could feel her cheeks turn red, her eyes stinging. Hayden took her hand. “Listen, he didn’t mean a word of it.”

Kora nodded. “Even so,” said Bennie, “that show will be hard to forget.” Kora nodded with greater fervor, and Hayden embraced her. She broke into sobs in his arms.

“We won,” he told her. “Zalski’s reign is over. Don’t forget that we won, not ever. Damn, but I’ll miss you! You’ll adapt though. You’ll do fine over there, wherever
there
is. Things will look up, you’ll see.”

Kora held on to Hayden three or four minutes longer, perhaps longer than that. She needed to feel one of her friends that close to her, to give at least one of them a proper goodbye. When she finally let him go, it was with some measure of peace. After all, she had known she would have to disappear one way or another. She was never fighting for them, for strangers. She fought for herself and for hers. Hang those yellow-bellied, ungrateful monsters. Hang them all! They would never deserve a king like him. They didn’t deserve him; she
deserved Lanokas.

Rexson, now. King Rexson. A man Kora would never know. But then, she had fallen in love with Lanokas, not a king, and it was Lanokas she would remember without any sense of bitterness, only a profound nostalgia. Lanokas had been a confidant, a trusted companion: an equal, as she read within his gaze. Rexson never could have been. What did Kora know about court, about state affairs and etiquette?

She felt nostalgic already for the days of the League, as horrible as some of them had been. Nostalgia was less painful than other emotions: than the grief she would feel if she let herself think of Laskenay, or of Neslan; than the guilt of knowing she must abandon her mother and Zacry again, this time for good; than the anger and spite, the shame and the heartache that threatened to overcome her if she considered how her country, her home, would until she died and for centuries thereafter villianize her.

The shame, in particular, brought her to finally comprehend how Lanokas could have considered suicide. Why did it have to be him, of all people? Why had he been the one to demoralize and defame her? Through his order, to validate their curses and ensure that her legacy would be one to be spat on? She would have preferred he let them kill her, to lose her life but maintain her dignity. To be robbed of that, and by someone so trusted, so admired—it was more than Kora could bear, especially alone in an unknown place. The most sensible way, the only way, she could imagine to cope was not to cope at all.

No, those people would just celebrate if I threw myself off the ship. I won’t let them, no, not on account of my killing myself. I want them to be miserable. Let the
ir fears of me eat them alive. L
et them wonder if I’ll return to do as Zalski did. They deserve that uncertainty if they can’t see that I’m different, that I loathe everything he stood for. I’ll live just to spite them. I’ll live because of Sedder, because I was the reason he put himself in harm’s way. For Zac, I’ll live for Zac. What would he think of me, when he heard I died that way?

Just to consider the point caused too much pain. While the three Leaguesmen stood in silence, Hayden had placed his arm around Kora’s shoulder. Now he said, “I have to ask, do you grudge what Lanokas did?”

If Zalski had destroyed Kora’s voice, the king had ripped bare her heart and crushed it before an audience that likely would have paid to see the spectacle. That second injury ran deeper, even in a physical sense—each breath seared Kora’s lungs; a tightness developed in her chest that would not go away—but not every wound is one to be justly resented. That was one thing Kora had learned over the last year. She shook her head. She did not grudge Lanokas.

“Should I tell him you don’t blame him?”

Kora nodded this time. The king should know
she held nothing against him. S
he was certain he considered himself a beast, though she owed her life to his ferocity, to his act’s credibility. He would struggle to forgive himself, and would have no Neslan to help him see how guiltless he really was. But he had Hayden. Yes, Hayden was already taking steps to give Lanokas, to give
Rexson
, the support he would need. Thank God for Hayden!