The Midnight Sea (The Fourth Element #1) (15 page)

I knew he already judged himself more harshly than anyone. But Ilyas had done everything humanly possible to fulfill his duty. Even his refusal to engage the necromancers on the plain had been logical. He couldn’t be faulted for losing the fire in the bloody chaos of that dome.

I will not be remembered as the man who brought down the empire, Nazafareen.

I studied the ranks of Immortals lining the stairs to the royal palace. They stood at attention, their scaled armor alternating crimson and sky blue, spears as tall as a Revenant gleaming in the sun. They appeared well-fed and disciplined. Most had been trained from birth for this, human and daēva alike. Seeing them made me doubt that their loyalty to the King could be shaken so easily, even by the promise of freedom.

They were bonded, just like me and Darius. I knew he would never turn on me. He didn’t even want to be released. My anxiety eased a bit until we passed a rectangular building that could only be the Hall of the Numerators. A cluster of them stood on the steps, watching us go by with impassive faces. Daēva hunters. They wore pristine white robes with red hems. In contrast to their plain, even austere attire, these men oozed arrogance, and my unease returned.

The Purified walked with his head down next to me, but we both craned our neck at a statue of the Prophet, some forty feet tall. He had a long beard and flames danced over his open, upraised palm. A male daēva knelt at his side, head bowed as though to receive a blessing. The sculptor had diplomatically chosen not to give the daēva a visible infirmity, but he skillfully captured the ethereal, animal-like grace in the smooth muscles of his body.

I glanced at Darius. I knew he hadn’t forgiven me for lying to him. I also knew his anger was directed at Victor as much as me. He had been burdened with knowledge he didn’t want, couldn’t reconcile.

What Darius needed was rest, I decided. By all rights, he should be in a sickbed, recovering from the injuries he’d inflicted on himself using the power. With any luck, the audience would be a short one. I would tend to him myself afterwards, whether he wanted me to or not.

We ascended the final flight of stairs, past two colossal stone bulls and more bas-reliefs of the King battling lions and other fantastic beasts I had no names for.

“The Hall of a Hundred Columns,” the gate captain said, leading us into an enormous space that reminded me of a stone forest, its tall fluted pillars crowned by animal-headed capitals.

At least fifty Immortals stood in ranks around a throne at the far end of the great hall, along with assorted nobles, magi and advisors. We walked between the center columns, our footsteps echoing on the marble. My palms started to sweat. When we were twenty feet from the throne, the gate captain halted. I lowered my gaze, but I caught a quick glimpse of the King. He was a burly man with a short black beard. A woman stood behind him wearing the flimsy gown of the harem. She had a long, melancholy face, not beautiful in the classic sense but still riveting somehow. One of her eyes was a dead, milky white, the other sapphire blue. She raised a hand to tuck a strand of long hair behind her ear, and I saw a gold cuff around her slender wrist.

The captain shoved the captive Purified to the ground and pressed his forehead to the stone. Ilyas, Darius and I hastily followed suit.

I was whispering a prayer to the Holy Father that the King would go easy on Ilyas when he jumped to his feet. An agitated murmur erupted among the court.

“On your knees, Water Dog!” A magus thundered, stepping forward. “The King will tell you when to rise.”

“I beg forgiveness,” Ilyas said humbly. Then he stood back and pointed to Darius. “But this daēva is a traitor, conspiring to overthrow the King! Arrest him!”

My heart stopped. I instantly released the power and reached for my sword, then remembered they had taken it from me at the gate. The Immortals surged forward, a wall of blue and red surrounding Darius.

“No!” I screamed, as my arms were seized. “It’s not true!” I turned to Ilyas. He refused to meet my eye. “Tell them! We fought necromancers together! Druj! He’s loyal! He’s done nothing!”

“He is the son of Victor, one of the old daēvas,” Ilyas said in a loud voice. “A group of them broke free from Gorgon-e Gaz and stole the holy fire from the Barbican. He pretended to lose their trail. But then I myself witnessed this daēva allowing Victor to escape. They are clearly conspirators. The Purified will confirm it. He is in league with them.”

I thrashed and spat at the Immortals and waited for Darius to seize the power, to wreak havoc. I felt his shock at Ilyas’s betrayal. But he didn’t fight back or say a word in his own defense. He just stood there as the soldiers chained him.

“The holy fire has been stolen?” The King stood. “Where is it?”

“Taken by Neblis’s witches,” Ilyas said. “The other daēvas are all dead. I would have ridden for Bactria to pursue the urn, but I knew I must tell my King what had transpired.” Ilyas dropped to one knee, and I wanted to kick him in the face. “This daēva is very dangerous. I couldn’t arrest him myself. But I’m sure you will see justice is done.”

The King studied him. “What of his Water Dog bonded? Is she a traitor too?”

“No, my King. She is innocent.”

“Then why does she struggle?”

Ilyas did look at me then. I bared my teeth at him. “She is surprised. I couldn’t explain my intention to her lest he discover it and try to run. The bond runs deep, but I believe she can be redeemed. Perhaps if you confine her to barracks?”

“You bastard,” I hissed at him. “You filthy, treacherous bastard. I’ll see you dead—”

“Remove her from my presence.” The King waved a hand.

As they dragged me past Darius, I called out his name. “I won’t let them,” I said. “I won’t—” And then an elbow jabbed into my gut, expertly freezing the muscles that let me breathe. Someone grabbed my hair and yanked my head back. My last view as they carried me out was of a beautiful timber ceiling worked with a thousand faravahars, each feather rendered in lifelike detail.

Flee this place, Darius
, I thought, as blackness took me.
If you were Victor, you’d kill them
all.

Chapter Seventeen

I
lyas was waiting when I clawed my way back to consciousness. I opened my eyes and saw him sitting there at the foot of the bed, leaning on one hand like he’d just popped in for a casual visit. My hands and feet were tied with heavy rope that had been looped around my back, but still I wriggled and twisted in a pointless attempt to kick him.

“Calm yourself, Nazafareen,” Ilyas said.

I shook the hair from my face and glanced around. We were in a small room in the Immortals barracks, by the sound of swords ringing outside the window. The sun cast long shadows across the stone floor. Late afternoon then. A whole day had passed. I reached for Darius through the bond and nearly wept. He was still there. Still alive.

“Why, Ilyas?” I demanded, sitting up as far as my restraints would allow. “Why are you doing this? It’s insanity!”

He studied me. “Did you truly believe I didn’t know? I saw everything. Saw that demon claim him as its unholy offspring. Saw Darius set him free. I knew then why our journey seemed cursed.” Ilyas rubbed his thumb across his own cuff, making tiny circles on the gold. “I thought the Holy Father had turned his face away from me. That I had done something to offend him. But after the plain, it all became clear. Your daēva had somehow conspired with the very same Druj we were chasing.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” I said flatly. “Victor said those things to knock Darius off balance, make him lose his connection to the power. I felt it! Victor broke free on his own, Ilyas. No other daēva besides Darius could have even held him that long. You saw what he did at Gorgon-e Gaz! How can you doubt it?”

Ilyas shook his head sadly. “The bond has tainted you, Nazafareen. The Druj are evil. You cannot see it.”

I stared at him. “If you do not renounce your accusations, I swear before the Holy Father, I will see you burn. I will hunt you to the end of my days—”

Ilyas was at my side in two steps, and the open-handed blow he delivered across my jaw made my head spin.

“That’s enough,” he said mildly. “The King will pass judgment on him tomorrow.”

Several of Tijah’s filthiest curses sprang to mind, but I knew Ilyas would just hit me again. And I needed to keep my wits. Pushing him over the edge wouldn’t help Darius.

“I want to speak on his behalf,” I said, tasting blood. “And I want to see Tijah.”

“No.”

“To which?”

“To both. But I do have an offer for you.” Ilyas sat down again and rested his arms on his knees. I had seen him do this many times, a familiar gesture. It made the hair on my neck rise.

He still looked like Ilyas, moved like him, but the man before me now was a stranger.

“The King, and the Numerators, would prefer that Darius confess his transgressions.”

“He won’t do it,” I said immediately.

“Likely not,” Ilyas agreed. “Which means that he will be executed. That is the penalty for treason. To be given to the fire.”

Pain flared behind my eyes. My breath grew shallow, panicked. This couldn’t actually be happening. Oh Father, they were going to kill him…

“I’ll speak with Darius,” I heard myself whisper.

Ilyas smiled. “Good. If he admits his crimes publicly, the King might consider a lesser punishment. A prolonged stay in the dungeon, perhaps. But, Nazafareen…”

I looked up, into his grey eyes. They were the same color as the stone walls and had as much sympathy.

“If you let go of his leash, or if either of you tries to flee, you’ll burn
together.”

Ten Immortals led me down into the cells beneath the palace. Their leader was a man named Lieutenant Kamdin. He looked a bit like my uncle, with a thick mustache and cleft chin. He was neither friendly nor hostile, just briskly efficient.

They flanked me five to a side, humans on my left and daēvas on my right. All were impressive specimens and the top of my head barely reached their shoulders.

I was relieved to see the dungeons were well-kept, if chilly. Most of the cells were empty. A few ragged souls huddled in the darkness, calling out softly as we passed, but it was otherwise silent. We turned a corner and Lieutenant Kamdin stopped. A dozen Immortals, all wearing the blue, sat on wooden chairs staring through the bars of a cell. I realized they would never leave a daēva prisoner unattended like the others.

“You have five minutes,” he said, opening the cell door with a large iron key.

I stepped inside and it clanged shut behind me. The floor was bare stone, lacking even straw bedding. I saw no food, no water. Only Darius. He stood up when I entered.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he said.

“Don’t be stupid,” I replied, closing the distance between us.

They hadn’t been gentle with him. I saw a fresh bruise on his cheek. Blood matted his dark hair. And he was still beautiful to me. More now than ever. Tears blurred my eyes as I reached out to touch his swollen mouth.

Darius grabbed my wrist by the cuff, gritting his teeth at the pain. He almost seemed to welcome it.

I yanked my hand away. “All right,” I said, stung. “I won’t touch you, then.” I leaned in close. “But I want you to listen to me. They’re going to kill you. Ilyas is a monster. He’ll never recant. He’s our captain. Even if Tijah or me deny the charges, no one will care what we say. It’s Ilyas’s word against ours. All they want is a scapegoat now. Do you understand?”

Something in his eyes seemed to recede, like a turtle pulling into its shell. “Has he threatened you? Are they saying you’re a part of it too?”

“Not really. He’s perverse. Some part of him still wants to protect me.”

Darius sighed. “Thank the Father.”

I wanted to shake him. “It’s not myself I’m worried about!”

His lips quirked in an almost smile. “Then one of us has to.”

I forced myself to take a breath. My usual style was to blurt whatever came to mind and worry about the consequences later. I was not accustomed to biting my tongue, and here I was, doing it twice in one day. But I knew that I had only one chance to convince him of what had to be done. I glanced at the guards. I didn’t think they could hear us, but our time was almost over.

“Darius, please. I’m begging you,” I whispered. “You could blow the doors off this cell before they know what’s happening. I’ll get one of their swords and we’ll—”

He pressed his thumb to my lips. As always, the contact undid me, setting every nerve on fire, weakening my knees.

“No,” he said, although I could feel his own pulse racing. “I am not my father. I will not take lives to spare my own.”

“Then you’re a fool,” I said bitterly, turning my head away. “And so am I, for caring what happens to you.”

Pain creased his features, as though I had dealt him a physical blow. He was so hard to understand sometimes.

“Do you remember the last thing I said to you on the roof that night? After Ash Shiyda?” Darius’s body was rigid with tension, but he didn’t pull away.

“Yes.”

I’d never forgotten a word of it. My reckless needling. His sudden fury. The rain dripping from his hair as he caught my arm and stopped me from falling.

He’d told me that he hated the cuff. Hated
me
.

Darius was so close now I had to tilt my chin up to meet his gaze. I used to think he was made of ice. Cold, unfeeling. But that wasn’t it. He was just protecting himself, and he’d done it for so long, he didn’t know how to stop.

“I meant the first part,” Darius said. “Not the second.”

We looked at each other for a long moment. I wanted him to throw his arm around me, to kiss me hard, to do
something
. But he seemed frozen, still stubbornly clinging to those walls, and before I could do it for him, the cell door was banging open and Lieutenant Kamdin had taken my arm.

“Darius!” I cried, suddenly terrified I would never speak to him again.

“Goodbye, Nazafareen,” he said.

And then he turned his back to me.

I shook Kamdin’s hand off, anger and despair turning my heart to a hard lump in my chest. I hated Darius in that moment. Hated his refusal to see the good in himself. To fight back. He probably thought he deserved this somehow.

What had been done to him by those magi in Karnopolis? Those pious old men?

I scrubbed a fist across my eyes, unwilling to let the Immortals see me weep. Lieutenant Kamdin kept his gaze straight head. He struck me as a decent sort.

“Where is the Purified we came with?” I asked him as we walked down the corridor. “I need to see him. Only for a moment.”

Kamdin hesitated. “He’s here, in one of the eastern cells.”

“Please. It could save a man’s life. I don’t even have to go inside.”

He sucked his teeth, the mustache wiggling up and down. “I don’t suppose it would do any harm.” He eyed me sideways. “I heard you killed a necromancer.”

“Together with my daēva. I couldn’t have done it alone.”

Kamdin’s brows drew down. “Dark times are upon us. The King’s eyes are on the western front, on Eskander and his Companions, but I wonder if the worse threat isn’t at our backs to the north.”

“Neblis.”

“The Bactrian witch has been quiet for too long,” he growled. “Some say your daēva is in league with her too.”

“What? That doesn’t even make sense. We fought a hundred Druj to get here!”

“I didn’t say I believed it,” Kamdin said gruffly. “But his fate is for the King to decide.”

He escorted me to a cell four turnings from Darius’s. The Purified had slightly better conditions, I saw. He knelt on a threadbare blanket, eyes closed and mouth moving in prayer.

I floundered for his name but couldn’t remember it. “Magus?” I whispered through the bars.

He looked over. Holy Father, he was young. His cheeks were still smooth as a boy’s, without a trace of beard.

“I need to know. Will you tell the truth tomorrow? When the King passes judgment?”

The Purified looked confused.

“About my daēva. Darius. You know he had nothing to do with stealing the fire, don’t you?”

“It is an evil to lie,” he said, making the sign of the flame.

I returned the gesture.

“Fear not, child. My soul is bare to the Holy Father. He knows I am clean of sin. That I only carried out his will.”

“Yes, I know,” I said impatiently. “But you must tell them that Darius is innocent.”

He considered this. “None of us are innocent. But I will tell the truth.”

I nodded. It was the best I was going to get.

When they brought me back to my quarters, Ilyas was waiting. I wondered if he had sat there the entire time.

“Well?” he asked.

“I assume you made the offer yourself,” I said. “Before you asked me to.”

He stared at me. “Yes.”

“Then the answer is still no. Because if you think I’m going to beg him to confess to something he didn’t do, then you don’t know me at all. And if you think Darius would do it, then you don’t know him either.”

Ilyas gave a strange, shuddering twitch. Revulsion contorted his features into a grimace, there and gone in an instant. Then he rose and left without another word. I heard the door lock behind him.

I was still sitting on my bed, staring into space, when an Immortal brought a plate of food several hours later. Just looking at it turned my stomach.

Who could help me? The answer was no one. I was a stranger here. Kamdin had treated me decently, but he could hardly be counted as an ally. I had hoped Tijah would come, but so far I hadn’t seen her since we’d entered the gates. Either Ilyas wasn’t allowing her to visit, or she thought Darius was guilty. It had to be the first. I didn’t believe Tijah would turn her back on me if she had any choice.

At least they hadn’t tried to break our bond. They couldn’t, not without the key to the cuffs, which was with the magus in Tel Khalujah. That meant that when they carried out the execution, I would feel every moment of Darius’s agony when they gave him to the fire…

I pushed this thought away, but it kept returning. How had everything gone so terribly wrong? I used to look up to Ilyas. He was my mentor. Brave, selfless, loyal. I had trusted him with my life.

But there had always been a hidden fault line in him. Buried deep, invisible to the eye, like the crevasses in the mountains I’d known as a child. Bring the right pressure to bear on precisely the right spot, and he would shatter.

First the escape, then the Barbican, then Tommas. He might have held together if not for the last. I knew that losing his daēva had been by far the hardest blow.

I didn’t want to end up like Ilyas. Tortured, despising myself for loving a demon. But Darius wasn’t a demon. He was worth a thousand of these supposedly good men. These men who claimed to walk in the light even as they grew rich and powerful on the backs of the daēvas. It was all one big, unforgiveable lie.

If only I could make Darius see it too. For I knew in my heart that he was the only one who could help himself.