Prince and the Throne (Fedosian Wars #2)

28. Slowly, Terribly, Poorly

twenty-eight

Slowly, Terribly, Poorly

Sofia realized the horses weren’t typical when they didn’t eat, drink, or rest for two days. They could see at night, weren’t squeamish about the wolves howling in the woods, and the only time the carriage stopped was so one of the occupants could piss. She once tried her luck fleeing into the woods, was captured immediately, and brought back kicking and screaming by Grigori himself.

He beat Niko with a riding crop for losing her, discouraging her from trying it again, but she did hiss, “His brother is going to kill you.”

“A soulless has no brothers. He only has death and his maker.” Grigori slammed the door and banged on the cabin roof. The calmness was skin deep, a falsity like the archmage’s kindness, and he was a volatile and violent person.

If she ran, Sofia realized, this evil man was going to kill Niko. Whatever else Niko was, he was the prince of Fedosia, Aleksei’s brother, and most of all, a scared boy.

Then her mind churned, trying to conjure up a way of killing Grigori. When she got mad enough to wish death upon someone, the stranger would creep in the shadows.

“Give us a name.”

Niko squeezed her hand and flicked his gaze to the front where the driver’s seat was. If Niko could hear the stranger, so could Vasily. She had no idea what was happening but thought only of where Grigori might be taking them and what he might do once he got there.

The Church of Murmia. Sofia shivered with the terrible memories. Beyond the red carpeted narthex she stood in was the nave where the archmage and his synod died. She lifted her gaze at the grand crystal chandelier that had come crashing down the cursed day. It had been repaired and hoisted up since. Right here, on this gold embroidered carpet was where Viktor Guard tore Aleksei away from her and shoved him out the door, and below her feet was the undercroft where he imprisoned Aleksei in the dark and tortured him.

Shadows flickered, making it appear as though the painted faces of the saints were following the nameless stranger, the dark cloaked man stalking their halls. Just as the archmage didn’t see him, neither did Grigori in his mage’s white robe and sash around the waist, picking up relics and icons of the saints, appraising their worth, then setting them down with a heaving sigh of annoyance. They were waiting for Luminary Matvey, and he was late.

Grigori had sent Vasily on an errand. Niko had accompanied them but stayed outside the door.

It had been a while so Sofia went to check on the prince and found him curiously peering in but keeping a distance as one would from an exotic but dangerous creature.

“It’s going to look strange that you’re outside when Matvey arrives, Niko,” said Sofia.

“Should I pull my hood up?” he asked.

“He’ll recognize you,” said Sofia. “You didn’t want to come in?”

“I don’t think I can.” Curiosity was getting the best of him though he clearly didn’t like the church.

“See if you can invite him in, Sofia.” Somehow that sounded like a test and Grigori turned, watching, waiting with his hands clasped behind the back. He’d left his sword on the rack by the door because it wasn’t proper to be armed in the church.

“Come on in, Niko,” Sofia gestured.

The prince tried stepping in, careful, then winced and ran out. “It hurts. I can’t.”

An awful smile split Grigori’s face but he didn’t share what that was about.

Matvey rushed out of the nave and gestured with an open hand. “Your Highness,” he gasped. “They didn’t tell me you were here. Thousand apologies, please come on in. Come, come.” He ushered the prince in and that seemed to work as Niko relaxed when whatever he thought might happen didn’t.

“Mage Grigori. Lady Guard,” Matvey greeted.

Grigori was the queen’s mage and it made perfect sense he’d be with the prince, but because he presumed Sofia was here about the gold dispute, he appeared disheartened now the quarrel involved a mage and the heir of Fedosia. The luminary smiled at his death as he followed Grigori out to the cloister where he was stabbed to death among the rose bushes asleep for the winter. Then his body was folded and stuffed into a wooden trunk and stowed under the seat of a black coach driven by a soulless.

After nightfall, Grigori took Vasily and the coach and left Niko and Sofia at an inn. They sat on a small stool by the fire as all the tables were taken by drunk sailors singing or brawling. No one approached Sofia as Grigori had tipped the largest man in the hall a silver coin to ‘protect the lady’.

The pitiful boy holding a tankard of ale with both hands and staring into the flames said, “I can’t let you go, I’m sorry. It’s not even that I’m afraid he’ll kill me if I do, but I’m just unable to disobey him. You wouldn’t understand because people always have a choice, but I’m not a person. That’s all.”

“It’s all right, Niko,” said Sofia. She’d already decided she wouldn’t leave him. If by grand fortune and the saints’ blessings, she could trick Niko into releasing her, like asking to go to the privy, and successfully escaped, the necromancer would kill the boy. She had to find a way to kill Grigori and free them all, including Vasily. An opportunity would arise, sooner or later. She just had to be sure not to waste it.

Merry laughter of the men and ladies of the night who kept them company quieted as a sailor with a voice like a silver bell sang a prayer for the souls claimed by the sea. It was then followed by an exultation to the saints believed to watch over Fedosian waters, asking for mercy for those departing in the morning.

“I came to be as a child,” Niko said, the flames caught in his scarlet eyes dark with sadness. “Suddenly there was light, and this world was beautiful. Grigori was the first person I saw. He told me I was a prince and that I was lost, and he’d take me home. There was so much to learn because I didn’t remember anything. They told me it must be because I nearly drowned and that I would be better soon. I never got better. I was sick a lot and I wasn’t allowed to go outside or play with other children. Later, I learned Grigori was making me sick to keep me alone, so people didn’t notice I was different. He also lied and said I have a blood illness so people wouldn’t touch me with jewelry.” He shook his head. “Aleksei would come, bring me things, teach me things, play with me, and keep me company when I was bedridden with fever.

“He made me feel not alone, and when I found out he was my brother, not cousin, I was happy. We played with shadows, not like I do now, but as children did with cutouts of things. Sometimes he would make a horse with his hand and make it gallop. One time we were shadow dueling with paper swords. He’d made a dragon with his darksteel because he was a sentinel then. I was supposed to rescue the princess… My shadow grabbed him and dragged him across the room.

“It scared him, and I knew I shouldn’t have done that. Eugene had been telling me not to do that. He was always my protector, but because he also nagged, I hadn’t taken him too seriously.

“Aleksei didn’t speak to me for a while after that. I would sit by the window and see him in the courtyard with other sentinels, but he wouldn’t come over, and when I called him, he’d pretend he didn’t see me.

“Then one day he just returned, brought me a horse, he said, and wanted to teach me to ride. He never mentioned the shadow again, and I wondered if he’d dismissed it as a dream. He has waking dreams, you know, where he speaks and walks around but he isn’t awake. That’s his mind crossing into the red haze.

“I killed Burkhard, and he pretends not to know that. The night I killed my mother, he was awake when I came into the queen’s bedchamber. He’d been crying for a while and I went to beg her to stop, but it was one of her mad days and she wouldn’t. She was hurting him but that wasn’t why he redlined. It was me.

“I tore her as I would a paper cutout dragon, and her watchmen too. It makes no difference how big or small you are. After they were in pieces, I tried to help him and that was when he redlined. He was afraid of me.

“He pretends that didn’t happen. He’s very good at that, putting things away and not seeing them again. That’s how he deals with hurt. But his mind is so cluttered with the things he doesn’t see, once in a while he trips on a thing, because they are still there, and becomes sad or angry.

“Because you make him so happy, I hoped one day you could help him clear out the mess… But life is more sad than happy, isn’t it? Yet I still want to live because the other is just nothing. I have no soul to go to the stars and I’ve been here only a little while.

“It hurts I’ve taken you from Aleksei. It hurts I lied to Eugene. I will never be free of the maker, but I watched as Grigori promised a false thing to Eugene to use him. Unlike Aleksei, Eugene doesn’t pretend. With his one eye, he sees more than anyone else with two. He’s probably dead now because he walks too close to the truth.

“Grigori made me believe I was Nikolas so others would too, but when I was ten, he gave me revelation and I saw what I was…” He trailed off and fell silent as the singing of the sailors continued, drunker and louder than it was before.

Sofia would reach over and take his hand, but he wouldn’t let her move. “Niko,” she called, and he turned to her, blinking as though he was just seeing her. “It will be all right,” she said.

“No, it won’t. Sometimes living gets so sad I wonder if it’s better to return to the dark. I’m sorry for all the trouble. It certainly wasn’t my intention to hurt people when I came into this beautiful world full of things I wish I could do.” Then the prince was quiet and listened to the sailors for a while.

“Do you know where it has lice in Raven?” Sofia smiled. They were in an inn, and it wasn’t as awful as Aleksei had claimed the last time she’d been in Murmia.

She didn’t expect the prince to know and had only meant to pull him out of the melancholy mood, but he said, “Dungeon. When Burkhard was alive, he used to imprison and kill people in the Raven dungeon. Why? It’s no longer there.”

“Oh, just the sentinels talk about lice more than expected,” said Sofia. “I wondered why. That’s all.”

Niko thought for a while, frowning, and her plan worked till the prince said, “Not many. Just Aleksei, and it’s because Burkhard used to lock him in the dungeon a lot. He got fleas and lice, got bitten by a bunch of things, and had to shave off all his hair. That was long ago, though.”

Every story Niko told was more miserable than the last. “Do you want to get married?” she asked.

“No, but I want dogs to like me.”

“Have you tried feeding them?” she asked.

“They don’t like the soulless, Sofia.” He pursed his lips. “Where is Grigori?” Calling the necromancer by his name, rather than addressing him as Maker like Vasily did, was his way of retaliating, Sofia thought.

“What happens to you when he dies?” she asked.

“I don’t know, and don’t tell me anything you don’t want him to know.”

She nodded. “Can you release me for a moment? I just want a drink. I won’t run away.”

He did, and she ordered a beer, but before she did that, she leaned forward and squeezed the prince’s gloved hand. “It’s all right. It’s not your fault because it’s not your doing.”

“It doesn’t make it any better, but thank you for trying.”

Sofia’s beer came, and Niko had been holding a full tankard the entire time. “To better days,” she toasted. “Try it. It’s quite good.”

Niko sniffed it first, took a little sip, frowned, tried again, considered, then took a gulp and approved.

But for the fire crackling and some snoring of men who’d fallen asleep in their chairs, the hall had grown quiet at dawn when Grigori returned. He looked older than he had been yesterday, but life returned to his pale face and bony frame as he ate and drank and warmed by the fire. Then as they were leaving, he stabbed a drunk pissing in the alley, and the alchemy under the long sleeves of his robe glowed as the necromancer drained the life out of the unfortunate sailor, the man’s hair greying, and his body shriveling and aging till it turned into an old corpse.

The vigor returned to Grigori. He had a spring in his steps, and hummed as he strode with his long legs along the wet, sandy earth, the horizon brightening over grey frothing ocean. Sofia, Niko, and Vasily followed him, all carrying his luggage.

The dawn was chilly, and the air tasted of the faint salt of the ocean and carried the pungent odor of Grigori’s pipe which he smoked as he walked. Sofia didn’t know if he realized the light was too weak to cast a meaningful shadow and Niko’s hold on her was non-existent. But she didn’t run. She’d see it through and try to free Niko and Vasily. All she needed was the necromancer’s name.

When Grigori stopped and turned, Sofia panicked thinking he’d somehow heard her thoughts, but he took his leather bag from Vasily, and said, “You’ve outgrown your use to me. Go into the water.”

“I can’t swim, Maker,” Vasily said.

“Walk then, go on, boy.”

“Yes, Maker.” He turned and walked toward the waves, whispering as they lapped on the cold beach.

Vasily reached the edge of the water and looked back at Grigori who said, “Go on, then. Go on.”

He marched toward the blue horizon, trudging, then struggling onward as the waves became larger. A wave pushed him back and he fell but got up and fought on.

“What are you doing?” Sofia asked. “He can’t swim, he told you.”

Grigori didn’t answer and just watched as he smoked his pipe. Vasily was going to drown, Sofia realized, and broke from Niko, tossed Grigori’s luggage, and ran after him. Deceitfully calm the water looked but the waves were an immense force as they shoved Sofia back.

She didn’t swim well and flailed in the freezing water, dragging her drenched cloak, as she yelled after the young Apraksin lord. “Vasily! Go back!”

He kept going forward, deeper, beyond Sofia’s reach.

“I want to live! I want to live!” she heard him yell over the waves, and watched as he disappeared under them.

She floated there for a while, being pushed and pulled by the waves, nothing but the ocean and her.

Then she realized she was drifting out and turned back. She shivered as she walked out onto the beach where Grigori was stomping on Niko.

“There’s no shadow, Grigori!” the prince was yelling.

“You have hands, boy. If you don’t need them, I can cut them off!”

“No, please!”

Sofia wiped her face and got salt in her eyes. “You’re a cruel bastard,” she said as she passed Grigori. “There had been no need for that.”

“The irony of you calling me cruel.” He had Niko by the throat but dropped the boy, and his eyes shone with hatred when he turned to Sofia.

She took a step back.

“Moriz was my brother,” Grigori said, retrieving his ruined leather haversack from the wet sand. “Now, let’s go home.”

“Home?” she asked.

He gestured at the port where sailing ships awaited. “Alten.”

Elfur? Sofia balled her fists. Though the allure of her long lost home called her name, a faint voice in the breaking waves, the words of another were louder because he was closer, a shadow cast by nothing standing on the water. “Give us a name.”

“Lothar of Dohnan,” Sofia whispered.

“We do not accept. Give us another name.”

“I’ve given you a name. Lothar of Dohnan.” Sofia’s wet dress was cold as it furled around her in a sudden gale.

“We do not accept the name of Dohnan.”

“Why? Tell me why!”

The stranger left without answering.

Because she had said his name, the necromancer turned. “I’m pleased you know me, but now let’s go. We have a boat to catch.” Then he said to Niko, “Unless you want to go searching for Vasily, I suggest you gather Lady Sofia and follow me. If we miss our ship, I will kill you both. Slowly, terribly, and very poorly as far as deaths go. Now, get to it.”