Solace Arisen (21 page)

“Aren’t you afraid?” the commander asked Ari. When she didn’t reply, he shouted at her, “Are you deaf that you don’t answer me? I’ll make our haughty lady sufficiently humble to go before the sovereign.” He wrested her arms from the soldiers holding her and shoved her onto her back in the snow. Frantically digging her heels into the snow, she tried to scramble away, but the soldiers swooped around her, grabbing her arms and legs. The commander threw a wicked grin at Degarius and said to the men holding him, “If our spy looks away, gouge out his eyes.”

The commander pulled her dress up. “Riding breeches?”

Ari tried to kick him, but the soldier who had her legs pressed all his weight into them. She cried a wordless noise that was angry, defiant, and frightened all at once. The commander tore at the breeches.

A powerful urge in Degarius’s gut told him to spring like an animal, to lash out in mad, indiscriminate violence to gain her a moment more by drawing the attention to him, but twenty years of discipline tempered him. He snapped his head back into the nose of the soldier holding him, yanked his arms free, then turned around and swept his foot under the guard, sending him down. The guard with Assaea came rushing, ready to lop off Degarius’s head. Degarius ducked, grabbed the guard’s leg, and pulled it out from under him. As the guard started to fall, Degarius twisted his leg. The guard landed facedown and lost his grip on Assaea. Degarius snatched his sword and, finally giving into his rage, slashed furiously in a wide circle.

The scraping sound of metal grating against rock stopped everyone. The soldiers gawked as the bolts attaching the metal grid to the fountain wall popped.

“Hold the grate down,” the commander screamed as he got up from his knees and off of Ari. “It’s trying to get out.”

The soldiers rushed the grate and threw their weight upon its edges.

The draeden sunk to the bottom and the grate settled back onto the wall. The men let out a nervous, relieved cheer.

With a thunderous
boom
, the grate flew into the air, taking with it the men who’d been holding it down. The draeden, with its wings closed tight against its body, had launched upward.

Hot air wafted over Arvana. The commander pulled her to her feet. She made a desperate lurch to the side. She had to get away, had to find the Blue Eye. He grabbed her arms and pushed her toward the pit. Planting her feet, she tried to stand her ground, but her shoes slid in the mud from where the draeden’s heat had melted the snow. He shoved her harder. She teetered backward.

Suddenly, Nan was behind the commander. He raised his sword.

Arvana flinched. The commander shrieked, let go of her, and his body collapsed at her feet. From behind her came a loud ruffling sound.

“Run!” Nan clasped her hand and tugged her to jump over the dead body.

She glanced backward as they raced to the pump house. The draeden, rising up to full stature, was opening its wings. It dwarfed the trees. White circles appeared around its eyes.

Heat flashed against her back. The trees burst into flame.

They were at the pump-house door.

The draeden’s head crashed through the burning trees.

She opened the door and darted inside. Nan had just crossed the threshold when a column of flame jetted past.

The Blue Eye. She bent beside the dead cleric and found his stiff hand. The relic wasn’t there. It had to be here. She rifled through the folds of his robes. Nothing. The floor. She clawed the dirt. Nothing. “It has to be here.” Her glance darted to the pumps. A chain hung over a section of tubing. No relic. She raked the floor beneath the tube. There! She clutched it in her palm. “I have it.” She grabbed the lamp and dropped into the tunnel. Nan was behind her.

To the left was the section of tunnel they’d already traveled. It led back to the Worship Hall. Their errand didn’t lay in that direction.

A blast, like a thousand pieces of wood splintering, exploded overhead. The draeden must have sheered away the pump house. Evening light filtered into the tunnel, and then it went dark again.

They ran to the right.

The tunnel shook with a roar, like a wave crashing the shore but a hundred times louder. Bits of mortar dropped from the tunnel ceiling. A shower of dirt obscured the meager lamplight. Lina’s map flashed into Arvana’s memory. They had to keep going straight to get to the atrium.

Another roar. Ahead, a stone fell from the ceiling. And another. The tunnel was collapsing. They had to get out. A darker area loomed to the right. This tunnel led to Alenius’s bedchamber. As they turned into it, a flame shot through the corridor where they’d been. The draeden had its snout down that tunnel. There was no going back that way, even if it led to the atrium.

They ran deeper into the tunnel. Another flame lit the corridor they’d left. They were safe, for the moment. The draeden was far too huge to get actually into the tunnels. Arvana paused to collect her breath. She held up the lantern. Nan’s glasses were gone. He was squinting at her.

He nodded to her hand that clutched the relic. “Do you think the cleric opened it?”

“No.”

He smiled and laughed in deep relief. “Maybe we still have some surprise on our side.”

A gloominess darker than the tunnel’s shadowed her voice when she had to tell him, “The cleric knew who I was.”

“For all love—”

The tunnel rumbled again and pea-sized chunks of mortar rained into her hat. The draeden might not be able to fit into the tunnel, but it was determined to destroy them. They had to get out.

Not far ahead was a well-worn flight of wooden steps instead of a ladder.

Atop the step was a white door with a gold doorknob.

A cleric crawled from under the stairs. He had a knife.

D
egarius approached the knife-waving cleric, a boy in plain blue robes who reeked of onion. He was so slender that taking him would be like swinging a scythe through a single stalk of wheat. It was against the little bit of morality Degarius figured he had left to kill or wound such a boy, but if he didn’t relinquish the knife, there was no choice. He raised his sword and kept his voice low in case someone was in the bedchamber on the other side of the door. “If you drop the knife and let us pass I won’t harm you.”

The boy stopped waving the knife but still clenched it in his fist. With the same frantic desperation with which he waved the knife, he looked at Ari and said, “You’re the Judge they said was coming.”

Damn it. Evidently all the eunuchs were expecting her. “Drop the knife. Now.”

Smoke began to choke the tunnel.

“Don’t judge me. Not yet. Let me make absolution.” The boy raised his chin and rolled his gaze to the close ceiling of the tunnel.

“No, I—” Ari cried, but the blade was slicing across his throat.

Degarius turned and took the hand that covered her horror-stricken mouth.

“I’m not a Judge,” she said, not to the boy who was slumping to the floor, but to him.

You’re Paulus, a shacra
. He pulled her after him up the stairs.

The door with the gold knob flew open and Degarius, with sword poised, charged into a chamber walled with mirrors. An elderly cleric holding a metal candlestick stood beside a bed draped with diaphanous gold curtains. For all love, first a boy and now an old man. But it wasn’t the time for scruples. A single thrust of Assaea dispatched the cleric.

A gasp came from inside the shrouded bed. Degarius threw the curtain aside. A Lily Girl, her blonde, waist-length hair beaded with sapphires, was sitting up in the bed and hiding her face behind her crossed arms. Between sobs she said, “You’re not supposed to see me. Kill me. Please.”

Degarius shook his head and thought of his grandmother. She must have wept in this room.

The Lily Girl lowered her arms. Tears ran pink rivers into her white-powdered face. She gave a pleading look to Ari. “Lady, please help me. I’m a chosen one. I don’t want to carry a monster inside of me.”

The floor rumbled.

Degarius’s blood went cold. It was as the Solacian superior said. Draeden were born of girls—Lily Girls. The elderly cleric was making sure the girl would perform her wretched duty. Any scruple Degarius had in killing him was relieved. Alenius was going to be next. There was no justice too brutal to compensate for what Alenius had done to his grandmother, her family, to what he would do to this girl.

In clumsy but intelligible Gherian Ari told the Lily, “I won’t let that happen.”

“Do you know how to get to the atrium?” Degarius asked the Lily.

“Go right outside this door. Straight all the way down the hall. Then right...no.” A panicked shadow crossed her face. Her lips trembled. She was going to cry again.

Ari removed her coat and gave it to the girl. “Put it on.” The Lily looked confused, but did as she was told. Ari then took off her hat. She pressed the hat into the girl’s hands and motioned her to tuck her braided hair under it.

The girl put on the hat and Ari began shoving braids up into the deep crown. “Tell her she has to show us how to get to the atrium, and then she must leave the palace right away, find our coachman waiting before the Worship Hall, and tell him Lord Degarius said to take care of her.”

He hesitated. Not because he, or his coachman, wouldn’t take care of the girl, but because Ari had given up her coat and hat. Either it was a noble act of mercy or she didn’t expect to need them.

“Nan, tell her.”

It was an act of kindness, he decided as he spoke Ari’s words to the girl. He couldn’t step into the hall thinking otherwise.

The Lily rubbed her eyes, smudging pink circles into the death-pale powder.

“Give me your handkerchief, Nan.”

Ari dabbed his handkerchief to her tongue and wiped the remaining powder from the girl’s face.

Degarius listened at the door. It was quiet. “Let’s go.” To the Lily he said, “Take me to the atrium, and then remember what I said.”

The Lily Girl led them through a maze of hallways to a double set of heavy doors guarded by two sentries who, with suspicion, watched them approach.

“Halt!”

“Look at us!” Degarius shouted and shook a fist while he eased his other hand inside his coat for his sword. “It’s chaos out there. Look what happened to me—a cabinetman. Look what happened to my wife. To my daughter. Why aren’t you doing something?”

While the sentries looked at Ari’s filthy ripped dress, the tearful girl in the fur coat, and each other in confusion, Degarius, in one swift move, drew his sword and slashed it across their necks. For a stunned moment, they remained standing, their eyes wide circles of terror. Degarius shoved them out of the way and they collapsed against the wall. The Lily Girl’s hands flew to cover her eyes. Without his bidding, Ari grabbed the Lily’s elbow. Thank the Maker, Ari kept her wits about her.

Degarius cracked the door. It was nearly sunset so the vestibule outside was crowded to the edges with cabinetmen and their wives who were waiting to enter the atrium for dinner and to hear the declaration of war. They were murmuring anxiously to one another as a regiment of soldiers came thundering through. The soldiers were probably leaving the atrium to help subdue the draeden, but the cabinetmen didn’t seem to know what was happening.

The three of them couldn’t just walk out into the vestibule. Covered with dirt, they looked like they’d been through hell. Ari had the Blue Eye. She
could
take them all. Degarius didn’t want that, though, not if he could help it. “Ari,” he whispered, “I’m going to try to create a diversion to get rid of the cabinetmen.”

She nodded.

He opened the door, stepped into the vestibule, and shouted, “Countrymen, follow the guards. The Worship Hall is on fire. It was Sarapostans. We need all hands.”

The cabinetmen poured toward the exit, but some of their wives lingered.

“You, too,” Degarius shouted at the women. “Because of your fine dresses will you stand here while the hall burns?”

Shamed, they followed their husbands.

“Go,” Ari said and nudged the Lily Girl to join the women.

The thought flashed to Degarius that if someone had been so kind to his grandmother, none of this would have happened. He held his hand to Ari. She took it. Together they waited for the vestibule to clear. How thin and soft her hand was. It was the farthest thing on earth from a warrior’s hand. She wasn’t going to fight The Scyon with her hands, though. It would be soul-to-soul combat. Her spirit was deep and good, enduring of trials, and steadfast. After everything that had happened, she still loved the Maker, still loved him. Some might call that foolishness. But he understood it. In any battle, against any odds, he’d keep swinging his sword. She held onto her love as tightly as he held his cause. Perhaps there was no one better to have the Blue Eye. Perhaps The Scyon feared no one more than a Maker’s woman.

A line of guards remained before the atrium door.

“I can’t take them all,” Degarius whispered. “They’re soldiers. They accepted their fate. Understand?”

“What do you want?” an atrium guard asked.

Ari squeezed his hand, then let go.