The Midnight Sea (The Fourth Element #1) (14 page)

Victor coughed again. His teeth were scarlet when he spoke, the words coming out in harsh gasps.

“Would you kill your own father, Water Dog?” he whispered. “Have you sunk so low?”

“Liar,” Darius spat, but I felt the power waver.

“Why did I let you track me? Do you really believe I couldn’t have hidden our passage from a pup like you?”

Darius said nothing, but his face was white as the fur of a snow cat.

“I brought you to the Barbican, Water Dog. I intended to free you. To free all of you.” Victor closed his eyes. Even hanging in the air like a puppet, he gave off a raw, overwhelming magnetism and I wondered what being bonded to such a man would be like.

Perhaps something like being bonded to his son. Because I could see it now. The undeniable resemblance. In the mouth, and especially the eyes, although Victor’s were nearly black. Not the color so much as a shared ferocity that masked deep, half-healed wounds.

“I don’t wish to be free,” Darius growled. “And you’re not my…not my father! How could you know?” His last words almost sounded like a plea.

Victor stared at him, at his claw hand. “They forced me to sire many, many children in that rathole, Water Dog, but I still remember the day you were born. Perfect in every respect. You had your mother’s eyes. She tried to smother you before they could get the cuff on, but the guards dragged her away.”

Darius blinked, emotions spinning out of control, and I felt his connection to the nexus snap. A moment later, Victor flew backwards into the storm and was gone.

Chapter Sixteen

“
H
ow could you not tell me they were unchained?”

Darius paced up and down, his right hand clenched in a fist. I had never seen him so angry.

“I’m sorry. Ilyas said he would kill you if I did.”

A small lie, but I didn’t want him to know that Ilyas had threatened to make Tommas do it. The knowledge would tarnish Darius’s memory of him, even if we never knew what Tommas would have done.

My daēva’s eyes were blue ice, but underneath simmered a white-hot rage. I took an involuntary step back.

The problem with not allowing yourself to feel anything is that it all builds and builds like flotsam, and when the spring melt comes, the banks can’t hold the torrent. Darius was a river in flood, ready to burst. I knew I needed to be very careful.

“Tell me now then,” he said in a deadly voice.

“The Purified stole the holy fire from the Barbican,” I said quickly. “It can break the bond. Victor and others must have done it, but they lost the urn in the fight.”

“It’s gone?”

“Yes. The necromancer who escaped must have it.” I paused. “Victor was whole because the cuff causes the infirmity. The magi lied when they said it was a curse.”

Something in him flickered. That darkness. “Did you know? About Victor?”

“Of course not! I never would have kept that from you.” I looked at him, the blood on his face, and felt an aching sadness. “You’re hurt. Let me help…”

“Don’t touch me, Nazafareen,” Darius said coldly.

“It doesn’t change anything,” I said.

“Doesn’t it? My father is a murderer. I meant it when I said I didn’t wish to be free.” His eyes gathered the light and threw it back. “It’s not safe. I’m not safe.”

“Stop it,” I said. “You’re talking nonsense, Darius.”

“I’d give anything to be like you,” he said. “To be good. But I’m Druj. And I wish you’d stop pretending otherwise.”

“They’re liars!” I yelled, not caring who heard me. “Maybe they lied about other things too. Maybe they lied about all of it!”

“Don’t. I know what I am. Take the power, Nazafareen! I don’t want it.”

“No.”

“Take it!”

I sighed and closed my fist on the bond. Darius raised a shaky hand to his face. The fight was ebbing out of him. It was a wonder he was still standing.

“This isn’t done,” I said to him.

If Victor was his father, I wondered who his mother had been. If her burned remains lay with the other daēvas, or if she had stayed behind at the Barbican. Victor said she had tried to kill her own child rather than see him bonded. The thought made me sick. I had always accepted that the daēvas were our enemies, that they had brought their slavery on themselves.

They were cursed. They were Druj. They rejected the holy fire because their natures were evil. But were any of those things actually true? I knew for a fact that the first wasn’t. Darius had been born looking like any other healthy child. What must the shock of being bonded, being
maimed
, been like for an infant?

King Xeros had banned human slavery when he took power. His reign was a period of enlightenment, tolerance, prosperity. The empire was civilized, and our foes were barbarians.

But what were we really?

I had joined the Water Dogs to serve the light. I believed with all my heart in the way of the flame. And it was very possible that I had spent the last four years of my life helping enforce a system of cruelty and oppression on a scale that boggled the mind.

If it hadn’t been for Ilyas, I might have walked away right then. I don’t know if Darius would have gone with me. I do know the choice would have torn him apart.

But I looked over at my captain, covered in his daēva’s blood, and knew I couldn’t leave him. Not now.

His eyes were open, staring unseeing into the storm. I didn’t know how much he had heard. But I was fairly certain he had been unconscious at the end.

“We’re not telling Ilyas any of this,” I said to Darius in a low voice. “Victor broke free and disappeared. That’s all.”

Darius didn’t reply.

“You didn’t see him at the Barbican. He was unstable even then. With Tommas…” I trailed off. “Please trust me on this. We can’t tell him the rest of it.”

Darius gave a short nod, then stalked away. Tijah was over by Myrri. She’d made a quick retreat when she saw the look on Darius’s face. I knew she would keep his secret if I asked.

“Ilyas.” I dropped down beside him. “Are you all right?”

A stupid question. He was very far from all right.

Ilyas’s left hand found the cuff, started rubbing it again. He had aged in the last hour, not from losing the bond but from grief. It pulled the corners of his mouth down, stretched the skin tight around his grey eyes. When they finally turned on me, I found I couldn’t read them at all.

“I’m terribly sorry about Tommas,” I said. “We all loved him. If there’s anything…” I cleared my throat. “Anything you need. Anything I can do. Just speak the words.”

I looked at Tommas, so pale in death, like a marble statue. Thank the Holy Father he hadn’t risen again.

“A wight took my sister,” I said. “A year before you came. It’s why I joined the Water Dogs.”

Ilyas nodded thoughtfully, as though I had just told him it would rain tomorrow.

I sighed and took a breath. “Victor is gone. Darius couldn’t hold him. But we know he doesn’t have the holy fire. So it must be the last necromancer. He’s probably heading for Bactria. What would you have us do?”

“We ride for Persepolae,” Ilyas said brusquely, pushing to his feet. “If I’m correct about our location, it’s less than a day’s ride.”

“Yes, captain,” I said, ignoring the uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

He crouched down and laid his scarlet
qarha
over Tommas’s face. Ilyas’s shoulders hitched as he whispered a prayer. When he stood, his face was empty again. A mask.

“Why is the prisoner not bound?” he demanded.

“What?” His shifting moods threw me off balance.

“The Purified. He’s a traitor. Tie him up!”

“He hasn’t shown any sign of trying to run away,” Tijah pointed out. She’d walked over to join us.

“I don’t care,” Ilyas seethed. “He’s part of this conspiracy. Bind him.”

She shrugged and did as Ilyas asked, using rope from the saddlebags.

“Please don’t tell him about Victor,” I whispered, as I held the Purified’s hands together. Ilyas had gone to round up the remaining horses.

She raised an eyebrow. “That he’s Darius’s daddy?”

I scowled. “Yes.”

“Poor thing,” she said, and I didn’t know whether she meant Darius, or Ilyas, or both of them.

“I’m serious, Tijah.”

“Just like you didn’t tell me about the fire?” she asked.

“That’s different! I had no choice. And I was going to anyway. But I never got the chance.”

She cinched the ropes tight and stood back. The Purified kept his head down, but I knew he was listening to every word.

“You keep your mouth shut too,” I hissed in his ear. “Or you may not live long enough to see the King’s dungeons.”

“I am loyal to the Prophet, Water Dog,” he said calmly. “Your threats mean nothing to me.”

“The Prophet?” I laughed. “Whether or not your cause is just, I doubt very much if he’d approve of what you’ve done. Queen Neblis will thank you though, I’m sure.”

“Neblis?” His delicate, boyish features sagged.

“Yes. That’s who has it now, or will soon enough.” I felt eyes on my back and saw Ilyas staring at us from across the dome. “Just keep quiet about Victor. If you’re an ally of his, which you seem to be, he’d want you to protect his son, wouldn’t he?”

The Purified swallowed like he had a rock wedged in his throat.

“Tijah?”

She returned my gaze, tilted eyes steady. “Of course. You’re my sister.”

I blinked back sudden tears. It was a miracle any of us were still alive. I could have lost so much more this day. I could be Ilyas. Half my heart ripped out, mourning something that never was. For it’s not the loss that undoes us in the end, I realized. It’s the regret, for words unspoken, small kindnesses withheld.

If Ilyas was not the satrap’s bastard, if he didn’t look like a barbarian, would he still be such a hard man? Maybe not, maybe so.

And what was I? Was I Four-Legs Clan? A Water Dog? A heretic? I still didn’t know.

“Why did you help them?” I asked the Purified. “Tell me why. Please.”

“It is the will of the Holy Father,” he said simply. “He wants his children to be free.”

Dawn broke as we rode out onto the plain. It was a red dawn, the sun refracting through the settling dust until it seemed the whole world was on fire. I’d snatched a few hours’ sleep curled against Tijah’s back amid the wreckage of the battlefield. Somehow, her hair still smelled nice, like the lavender-scented soap she used at home.

Ilyas refused to leave Tommas behind, so we wrapped his body in blankets and slung it over the back of Ilyas’s horse. I wondered if he planned to take him all the way to the Middle Sea when this was done. Perhaps carrying out Tommas’s last wishes would give him some measure of peace. But the haunted, blank look had not left his eyes, and I doubted it would for a very long time.

We found the Royal Road, heading almost due north to Persepolae. After several hours, the desert gave way to rolling hills, then grasslands. We stopped at a river and filled our water skins. I took the chance to wash, scrubbing the sand and blood—a foul mix of human, daēva and Druj—from my tender skin.

Darius rode apart, lost in dark thoughts. His walls were back but I had no wish to intrude on his emotions. Just as Ilyas clutched the cuff, Darius clutched the faravahar he wore on a chain around his neck, so hard it left a deep mark in his palm.

The woman sat behind me, swaying silently in the saddle. I had tried speaking to her several times and finally given up. We would hand her over to the magi. Perhaps they could discover where she came from and return her to her family, if any of them still lived.

The Royal Road switched from dirt to paved stone. We came over a rise and I saw the southern wall of the capital, set against a dramatic backdrop of sheer cliffs. It was pierced by two gates. Burning braziers flanked the first, but not the second. A steady stream of people moved in and out, mostly through the first gate. The handful of travelers using the second all wore shades of blue.

“Darius and Myrri must pass through the daēva gate,” Ilyas said. “We’ll split up and meet on the other side.”

Persepolae was built on a terrace, with the palace complex at the top. The Royal Road wound through a bustling unfortified town of mud-brick houses where the servants and artisans lived. A few noble mansions were also scattered through the valley outside the gates, but only the royal family, their attendants and the garrison of Immortals were allowed to reside within the walls of Persepolae itself.

“What’s your business here, Water Dogs?” the gate captain asked warily, eyeing the body draped over Ilyas’s saddle and the bound Purified.

I noticed that the burning braziers had been placed so that anyone wishing to pass through the gate would be forced to ride directly past them.

“I carry an urgent message for the King,” Ilyas responded. “We come from Tel Khalujah.”

“Then I shall escort you myself,” the captain said. “Dismount. My men will see to your horses.” He paused. “And their burden. Who is it?”

“His bonded,” I said.

The gate captain did not wear a cuff himself, but he immediately understood and his stern features softened a bit. “We’ll bring him to the daēva garrison. You can collect him after the audience.”

Ilyas looked at Tommas’s body and hesitated, biting his lower lip. He ran a hand through the tangled red-gold mess of his hair and gripped a chunk of it in his fist.

“I’ll stay with him,” Tijah said.

Ilyas finally nodded. “Swear to me you won’t leave his side,” he said. “I won’t have him touched.”

“I swear it.”

I watched Darius and Myrri ride up to the second gate. The guards roughly seized their arms and held them up to scrutinize the cuffs, then waved them through.

“We’ll take charge of the prisoner,” the captain said.

“Bring him along,” Ilyas said. “The King will want to question this one himself.”

Once we reached the other side, our cuffs were matched to our daēvas. The old woman was given into the care of two servants. Myrri went with Tijah and the horses. It was better for them to stay away from the palace anyway, I thought. Tel Khalujah was a backwater, but this was the summer capital of the empire. It was more than possible that Tijah’s father had sent men here looking for her. Almost five years had passed since she’d fled Al Miraj, but someone could easily remember her description.

Darius fell into step beside me as the gate captain led us down a long, straight boulevard to the first set of stairs leading to the enormous platform of the palace complex. One side was open, but the other had been carved to depict a procession of people from all parts of the empire, bearing gifts as tribute to their ruler.

Ilyas walked with his back straight and his eyes fixed on the gate captain. I imagined he was thinking about what he would tell the King.

I had never seen Artaxeros the Second, of course, but I’d heard he had the gift, as did his father and grandfather before him. We’d only had three rulers since the founding of the empire two centuries before. Xeros the Great was thrown from his horse shortly after the construction of Persepolae. Artaxeros I reigned for the next one hundred and fifty-seven years, until he too died suddenly, of a mysterious wasting illness that even the stamina bestowed by the bond couldn’t save him from. There were whispers that he’d been poisoned, but no one dared to voice them publicly since the prime suspect was the new King, his son, Artaxeros II.

He’d taken the throne a little over a decade ago. The magus at Tel Khalujah said he was a just man, if not the brilliant strategist his father had been. I clung to this hope as we approached the palace. That the King would not blame Ilyas for all that had happened.