Prince and the Throne (Fedosian Wars #2)

15. It Belongs to You

fifteen

It Belongs to You

The candles had burned out since they died, slumped over the tables in their chairs, and retched blood on their food and on the floor. Red Carnation, Lev recognized the poison, but it was such a difficult thing to brew, how did Vasily manage? Did turning soulless come with intrinsic talents? Lev covered his nose and mouth with his sleeve because the stench was rancid.

The whole fortress had fallen silent. Was it the well? Was it the food? Something had been tainted.

Semyon threw up in the corner. A thing clambered in the dark and all the candelabras and every stick of candle in the holders and on the stands in the grand hall burst alive with Dragon’s Breath. There were rats on the table rattling the plates and cups, nibbling the poisoned food and some of them were already dead. Yet they kept eating.

“We have to get out here, Syoma,” Lev whispered, slowly backing away and reaching for Semyon who was behind him.

“Give me a moment,” Semyon strained.

“Can’t. No time,” Lev said.

There weren’t any statues in the dining hall. Those were Apraksin retainers, and they all turned at once to stare at Lev and Semyon.

A dragon breathed, lighting the grand hall in an instant yellow glare. Lev grabbed Semyon and fled as the armored Apraksin began coming through the wall of fire. A tall one burst through the flame, screeched, and sprinted toward them. Another breath of fire, and the whole place caught, the woodwork on the wall and the floor cracking and snapping in the intense heat. Wine cups burst, stained glass windows shattered, and the fire took a heaving breath with the fresh draft rushing in.

Lev took Semyon and retreated. He couldn’t control the fire, only cause it—he wasn’t an Apraksin. Mercifully, the soulless were no longer from the House of Fire and had lost their alchemy.

Lev tossed his room looking for his trunk before finding it by his bed. A damned candleholder had been on top, and he’d mistaken it for a dresser.

“Lev!”

Semyon was in his iron armor, swinging by the door to keep the soulless out. He’d sent a few back to the necromancy hell they’d crawled out of but there were more. Through the grace of the saints, it appeared only Vasily had shadow alchemy. The other things had no speech, barely any mind, and just trashed at them with steel without any technique. Lev had to wonder if they understood they were holding the most expensive sword in Fedosia or if they’d trade it for a stick if it had a longer reach.

“Lev!”

“Duck, Syoma!”

Lev found what he was looking for, a chest of gold cuffs he’d had cast, because the one he had on was about to be spent. Dragon’s Breath! He was burning down his own house a section at the time, the last of the Guard heritage homes after the fall of the White Palace.

Bright blaze breathed, engulfing the soulless along with the furniture in the room. His bed caught aflame. Lev collected all the gold he could find into a satchel and grabbed their cloaks as Semyon broke the window and the frame, then they climbed down. They had to get to a tower, somewhere with a single entrance and spiraling steps Lev could rain fire down like breathing into a tube.

Semyon had to shed his iron plates to follow Lev along a railing of the keep, and he dropped the rest of the weight as they climbed the steel ladders of the tower, going up, around, and around, and around. Up inside the bartizan, the soldiers on watch were dead, their throats slit as they were playing cards.

“I’m stupid,” Lev muttered. He’d let Vasily in, though it had felt wrong. “Syoma, are you all right?”

He’d turned ashen. Lev carried the fallen soldiers to one side of the circular space and sat Semyon leaning against the wall. Dark blood had soiled his white armor tunic, but Lev couldn’t inspect his injury because footsteps rushed up the steel ladders. Unlike Vasily, the speechless ones were loud, clumsy, and ran senseless when set on fire.

He roasted them, returned, heard a ruckus outside, found more of them trying to climb the tower from the outside, unsuccessfully, but he had to keep an eye on them, and so the night was spent.

“Is there water?” Semyon asked.

“There’s plenty outside,” Lev said. “I’m waiting for the day to turn a bit brighter, and we’ll go to…” The town’s name escaped him, but he knew it was less than twenty miles. “Soon, Syoma. We’ll get out of here soon.”

Lev cleaned and bandaged Semyon’s wound with a part of his shirt, but Vasily’s weapon had been laced with poison and now it was corrupting the blond bear’s flesh, pus oozing at the onset of gangrene. It wasn’t something Lev could figure out an antidote to, and he needed a real physician.

The soulless fell silent after the sun rose, but daylight was so short, and Lev didn’t dare waste any of it. He went to the stables. The Apraksin had taken their own horses, and everyone else’s was… dead. The well was poisoned as well, he realized. The horses had died from drinking water.

He found a workhorse outside the granary. The poor creature was tied to a hitching post and probably had been outside all night. The driver was dead in the servant’s quarters along with all the help Lev had, and the cooks had died in the kitchen. One had fallen onto the open firepit and had roasted. Lev would scorch it all, but he couldn’t afford the alchemy, and hoped the crest of his family was strong enough to keep the necromancer—he had to accept the truth there was a necromancer—from entering uninvited. Guard knights would bury them once they returned.

Lev would rather wait for them than wander in the open, but Semyon’s situation was urgent. They had to get to the town before dark, and he ran up the stairs of the watchtower after he hitched the lightest sleigh he could find to the workhorse. He put hay down for him in the meantime, but the watering would have to wait.

Semyon looked like shit. The baby blue eyes had turned murky, and he was flushed with fever.

“Come on, Syoma. Get up.”

Letting him walk down the steps was taking too long so Lev carried him on his back, complaining about his weight.

“Woah, you hitched the sleigh?” Semyon smiled weakly. “Didn’t think you’d know how.”

“Shut up, you heavy bastard.” Lev set him down on the open sleigh, threw his cloak over him, and learned to drive which wasn’t hard, but it was maddening how slow it went. He couldn’t whip the horse though, it was the only one they had.

The road to the town was a slog, Lev had to get off and push the sleigh more than once because the horse was too weak. Judging by the light it took them nearly three hours to get there, and all of it had been a waste. The cluster of cottages along the road, the town hall, the brothel, the inn, all of it was empty, not a single soul, not even a dog, and unless these people abandoned what little grain they had and left their homes in the middle of the bone cracking winter, they were all dead, and now Lev had thousands of soulless to account for.

He could return to Usolya and just not invite any more dead in, drink wine, and wait for Konstantin to come with light magic and proper mounts, but he wasn’t alone, and Semyon needed help. The Menshikov gone, Apraksin was the closest but for all he knew Vasily was at home right now, spinning lies to have them killed on sight.

“Syoma, we have to go to Pulyazin. Hang in there, all right?” Lev knew the vicinity of the Ivory Fortress on a map, but he’d never been there.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Semyon whispered, his lips blue.

Lev would head northeast. That was all he got with the roads buried under snow. Pulyazin was the largest house in the east, and Lev hoped the fortress was obvious and easy to find. The word ‘ivory’ worried him though, making him think the fucken thing might be white in all this snow.

He found live horses in the town stables for visitors, which further confirmed the people were all dead. Travelers didn’t leave their horses behind. Lev saddled a lively one for himself, but Semyon wasn’t in riding shape. They still needed the sleigh and would have to travel at the speed of it.

On an even terrain, Lev managed a steady trot, but the Ivory Fortress was nearly a hundred miles from Usolya. He didn’t expect untrained horses to trot all the way. The traveler’s horse maybe, but not the workhorse, not a chance, so the distance was fifteen hours at least, if the calm weather held.

“We’re getting there, Syoma, just hold on.” Lev twisted in his saddle and looked back when Semyon didn’t respond. He looked to be sleeping.

White Palace had a physician, Eva, second only to the old bastard Baltar, but she died when Father decided to defend the palace without sending out any of his people. Resentment stewed but for the first time, Lev tried to let it go. Anger for the dead was a chain he needed to be free from, to be able to think, act, and drum up the courage needed, heading toward the darkening horizon.

Lev rode through the night, stopping only to piss and get water for Semyon—not in that order, though. The morning came later than yesterday, and tomorrow it would be even later. The way Fedosia lay on the map, you went further north as you traveled east, and the daylight hours grew shorter with the miles. The northern terrain was made of monstrous mountains and evergreen forests cloaked in snow as far as the eyes could see. All of the tsardom’s timber came from here and in return, they got grain for they had very little land they could farm.

The only good thing the Shield ever did was when the red queen had laid steel tracks across the country during her reign. Lev had never seen a train before because they ran between Seniya, Shield city northeast of Krakova, to Pulyazin province, and he hadn’t been to either. The archmage hadn’t allowed the queen to lay her tracks over Guard lands, the machine went around them.

But he saw one today. Winter having swallowed the roads, he got lost, but he found the steel tracks and had been following them hoping there would be a town at the end of it.

The train was loud, frightened him at first when he saw the white steam over the tree line and didn’t know what it was, and as it passed, it rattled, shook the forest, created a draft, and hurled snow.

He stood in amazement at the angry machine, puffing and huffing, and hauling carts the size of cottages behind, and smiled at having seen the thing.

After it passed and the sound faded in the winter winds, he turned to Semyon. “Syoma, did you see that?”

He didn’t answer, so Lev dismounted to check on him. The hot breath had frosted his blond lashes, and his clothes were drenched in cold sweat, then frozen.

“Syoma.” Lev shook him. “Get up and change your clothes. The cold will ease your fever a bit too.”

“It’s all right.” The white of his eyes were yellow when he opened them. “Do you remember the spell to vanquish evil?”

“Illuminate, yes.” Lev went to his horse and dug through his saddlebag for a dry shirt.

“When I die, take my heart, Lev. You’re the last of the guardians now. You’ll need it.”

“Shut up, Syoma. No one is taking your heart. Come on.” He helped the blond bear up and changed his shirt, stupid tight on him because Lev was much smaller. He didn’t inspect the wound. He could smell it, and it was way beyond anything he could do. They needed a real physician. “We’ll be at the Ivory Fortress before nightfall.”

They had to reach the Pulyazin today because Semyon wasn’t making it another day. If wills could move fortresses, Lev had enough of it to pull the tower and the mountain it sat upon closer.

“No one’s taking my heart, says you.” Semyon strained to lift his hand and touch Lev’s face. “You already have it, don’t you know? Take it. It belongs to you anyway.”

“Shut up.” Lev got peeved. Who needed to be crying out here, tears stupid and frozen on his face? Fuck, he was wasting time. They had to go. He tucked in Semyon and mounted his horse, which he’d named Star because the bay horse had a star shaped white patch on his forehead.

Feeling incredibly alone in the white forest, nothing but the wind whistling through the treetops, Lev rode after the train. There had to be a town—had to. Snow crunched, the tack jingled, and Star’s breath steamed.

“Lev, what is that song you sing?” Semyon asked from the back, not sounding too ill just then. A fool’s hope sprung eternal, and Lev was a fool.

“Which one, Syoma? I sing many songs. I’m quite talented.”

“I don’t know. Any, I guess. Will you sing a tune?”

“So the soulless can find us faster?” Lev asked.

“Please.”

“Well, since you said please, I guess I’ll be pretty.”

Lev knew which song he was talking about. It was a lewd song his mother used to sing, about spring maidens inviting men into the woods. When they were boys, Lev had been singing it to make Semyon laugh, but they were in the woods, and the blond bear misunderstood him and kissed him. They were eleven and thirteen. Lev was older but shorter.

They were in the woods again, and though it wasn’t spring, Lev sang as he rode along steel tracks. He thought Semyon was humming along but it could have also been in his mind where it was spring and warm with the White Palace just beyond the bend.