Prince and the Throne (Fedosian Wars #2)

29. Good, Bad, Terrible

twenty-nine

Good, Bad, Terrible

Five dead horses with muscles and tendons ripped from overuse, and the sixth one walking around with flesh falling off and frightening the good people of Murmia… Lev burned them all. They found the carriage and there was a trunk under the seat with dried blood and stains but no body. Who did he kill? Was it Soful? The prince was too valuable of a hostage to stuff into a wooden box. Had his sister been turned soulless? And if she had, would he be able to do what was necessary?

Lev’s concern with Aleksei was no longer that he didn’t care for Soful because he clearly did, but that he was mad. They needed to have a talk and Lev pulled Aleksei aside after he beat a port patrol with the man’s helmet for being mouthy and unhelpful. The man narrowly escaped with his life.

“Aleksei.” Lev pulled him aside under a cotton tree naked for the winter. A rowboat carrying passengers glided by them in the canal. The city stunk and was sinking into the ocean while drowning in the sewage it reeked of. They were flushing the latrines into the water was Lev’s guess.

“What?” the captain of the sentinels snapped.

Murmia wasn’t a small city, and the sentinels had spread out each with their own task, and it was Lev’s good fortune he was stuck with Aleksei.

“Did anyone ever tell you your temper isn’t helpful?” Lev asked.

“Yes.”

“So rein it back a bit, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Aleksei exhaled. “What am I going to do if they already left?” Despite having brought a map of Elfur, his plan too had been to ride down the carriage. Five days into the pursuit, Lev couldn’t understand how they weren’t catching up to the necromancer till he saw the horses an hour earlier. Their mounts had the disadvantage of being living things with limits. Had there been any doubt among the sentinels Grigori was a necromancer, the sight of the horses extinguished it.

“I don’t know,” Lev said. “But let’s first find out where they are. This whole thing may be a ruse from Grigori to get us to sail to Elfur like assholes while he circles back and takes over the throne, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I really need that name from your sentinel. If I knew who he was, it’d help me understand what he’s doing,” said Lev.

“Yeah,” Aleksei said.

A good thing about sentinels was they were used to taking orders and having knowledge of dark alchemy was giving Lev authority.

“This is a Guard city. The church would be the beating heart of it.” Lev pointed a chin at the Church of Murmia, the grandest building in the city visible over all the rooftops. Uncle died there. The sight of it gave him chills, but it had to be done. “Let’s go meet Matvey. He’ll be able to help. If not, let’s kill him.”

“Yeah.” Aleksei didn’t like the building either and frowned at it. “What killed the archmage?” he asked while they walked toward the church.

“I… actually don’t know. It may have been a thing he was working on. Sometimes alchemy bites back. Or it may be Grigori. What killed your queen?”

“Age,” said Aleksei. “She passed in her sleep.”

“Right, and I have a ten-inch cock.”

“Right, and I’ve never seen you stumble around Raven in the nude, blasted out of your mind.”

“Have I?” Lev pondered.

“More than once.”

“Good times,” Lev reminisced.

“For you, perhaps.” Aleksei strode ahead and Lev picked up the pace.

“Did you ask Soful to marry you?”

“Yes.”

“The answer is no, by the way.”

“I could just kill you and throw you in the swamp.”

“I wonder if this fucker even exists,” Lev complained when Matvey wasn’t at the church.

“I’ve seen him around,” Aleksei said, taking him seriously.

They were in the nave and Lev tipped his face at the domed ceiling of the saints where the archmage had been… lodged. They’d repaired it since, but the paint didn’t match and was more vibrant at the center than the faded saints further away.

“How may I help you?” A parson came out from the back and addressed Aleksei. Although an old man, he was new at the church. Lev hadn’t seen him before, and he didn’t recognize Lev either.

“We’re looking for Matvey, Parson,” said Aleksei.

“The luminary isn’t here, I’m afraid. He’s caught the fever. Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Where does he live?” Aleksei asked.

“Actually, let’s not go there if he’s sick,” Lev interjected. “We’re looking for someone and need help getting the word out to the innkeepers and sailors. Who is in charge here?”

“Well, the luminary,” answered the parson. “But who might you be looking for? I can ask around.”

“Sofia Guard.” Lev dropped the family name to be taken more seriously, and as he understood it, Matvey and Soful knew each other. “She may have been traveling with—”

“Lord Vasily Apraksin and Mage Grigori,” said the parson. “Lady Guard was here yesterday. She sought a meeting with the luminary.” The parson looked proud. “I was here myself and it was wonderful to have met a living Guard.”

Yesterday, that was good news and Lev felt the bright lights of hope shine down upon him.

“Where are they now?” Aleksei asked.

“I’m not sure, actually. Perhaps you can ask the luminary.”

“The archmage lived in the church, no?” Aleksei asked, suspiciously eyeing the two-story inn conjoined at the sides with taller buildings like a child in between his parents. One was a brothel, clearly, and the other was some type of textile mill, rolls of fabric being carried in and out.

“Well, the parson said Matvey didn’t want to get the chapter sick with his fever…”

“Church of Murmia has towers, Lev, rooms people never use,” said Aleksei. “He could have locked himself in one if he was concerned. He’ll get more people sick at an inn. I don’t like that he lied.”

“Maybe he just likes whores.” Lev gestured at the brothel. One of the women loitering outside the door and fanning herself while soliciting the men walking by turned and sneered at him. “Not you, darling. You’re lovely,” Lev said.

Aleksei stood there scanning the rooftops and the buildings across the street. A carriage passed by, splashing slush on Lev’s boots.

“Come on.” Lev pulled Aleksei. “One way to find out.”

“Don’t eat, drink, or smoke anything he offers,” Aleksei said as they stepped through the door.

“What am I? A dog?” Lev threw up his arms when Aleksei yanked him back and went ahead of him.

“If he offers you wine, you’ll drink it. So, don’t.”

Well, he had a point.

Except for the candles lit enough to set the wooden inn on fire, the luminary’s room wasn’t half bad. Lev could see fucking a whore in it. Matvey was in a plain cloak and held a handkerchief over his mouth as he coughed.

Not wanting to get sick, Lev tried to open the window, but the shutters were stuck closed. Hence the candles, he supposed.

Aleksei remained by the door, scanning the room as though Grigori might jump out, and Lev introduced himself to the luminary who was a humble looking man who smiled and bowed a lot—swindlers rarely looked like swindlers. He’d have a word with the old bastard about forging the archmage’s gold, but perhaps now wasn’t the time. He sat down at the table and the luminary poured wine for him.

By habit, Lev reached for the cup and Aleksei snatched it from the table and set it on a stand.

“Breathe, Syoma.” Slip of the tongue because Lev wasn’t used to being in Aleksei’s company and it was something Semyon would have done. Toward the end at Usolya, Semyon had been taking away Lev’s wine, kind of a lot.

“Get to it, Lev,” hissed Aleksei. He’d been anxious since he heard the parson say Sofia’s name. Lev was too, but wine was how he dealt with nerves.

“You met with my sister yesterday, Luminary?” Lev leaned back into his chair and looked down at his lap, loading his opium pipe.

“Lady Sofia, yes. She was in the company of His Highness and Mage Grigori,” said Matvey. Lev didn’t have to be looking at him to know Aleksei was making him uneasy, pacing around the room and looking behind furniture, and under the bed.

“Where are they?” Aleksei was behind Matvey, and the luminary looked over his shoulder.

Lev gestured for the luminary to answer as he blew out thin white smoke, the scent a sweet release as death might be to a suffering man.

“The lady didn’t share where they were staying but I heard the mage say they were leaving tomorrow. A packet ship for Elfur, I believe.”

“Tomorrow from now or did he say tomorrow yesterday?” Aleksei asked. It was a reasonable question, but the luminary looked confused.

“I am to meet the prince later on today,” said Matvey. “Why don’t you sit down, Semyon? And we’ll wait for them together.”

Aleksei was in civilian attire with a plain brown cloak draped over him, and Lev had just called him Syoma, a common endearment for Semyon. So the luminary made an honest mistake mixing up the names, Lev would have thought, but here was the trouble…

Aleksei slammed Matvey’s head onto the table, and the tip of a darksteel blade pressed against the luminary’s nape. “We’ve met many times, Matvey. You’ve been to my home. What is wrong with you?”

On the train to Krakova, Lev had gone over his interactions with the soulless, over and over, thinking how he could have done things differently. In hindsight, there had been so many signs as loud as the tolling of a church bell. For instance, Vasily wouldn’t address anyone by name unless someone else called them first. The soulless didn’t carry memories of who they were pretending to be, confirming nothing of the deceased remained except for their appearance. They came with language, not sure about literacy, and knew generalities of the world such as this was a table and Lev was a Guard, but any specific knowledge, such as what darksteel exoskeleton looked like compared to Skuratov iron, they had to learn for themselves. Where the boundary was and how that worked, Lev didn’t know. He wasn’t a necromancer, but Matvey was a soulless, sure and true.

“Hands, hands, Aleksei! Watch his hands!” Lev sprung up from his seat. “They carry poison, be careful!” He ran over the table and some chairs because he’d suddenly forgotten he had a blade.

Shadows moved across the wall, yanking Aleksei back, and Lev reacted by… burning the place down.

“We could have questioned him,” Aleksei said, while they watched people toss water into the fire, trying to keep it from spreading into the brothel next door. Folks at the fabric mill were trying their best to save the rolls they had.

“He was going to kill you. It doesn’t take much. I saw Vasily slaughter four druzhina in a beat. Druzhina, Aleksei, and Vasily was a scrawny bastard.”

Aleksei frowned, his face dark against the orange of the blazing inferno. “What was that? The shadow… alchemy?”

“Wouldn’t call it alchemy. There is no gold or trade. It’s something some soulless do.”

“Doesn’t have to be a soulless, though, right?” Aleksei turned to him.

“Have you seen that anywhere else?” Lev asked.

He shrugged.

“That’s what I thought. No one else does that. Shadow alchemy is always in reference to a powerful soulless, and by ‘powerful’ I meant they speak and at least pretend to be human. I’ve seen others who were just walking corpses. The Apraksin retainers, the last I saw them, had been reduced to simple grunts, and they used to be rowdy bastards.” Lev tapped Aleksei’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go find out what packet ship is leaving tomorrow, without tipping the fucker off. All right?”

“Yeah.” He’d grown uncertain. Something was on his mind, but what did Lev care?

The ocean was a void at night, pitch black and endless. Lev didn’t want to be surprised by another soulless and ceased his inquiries at the dock after dark and headed to the church. He gave his family name and warned the parsons Grigori was a necromancer. They didn’t know what to do with such a wild claim, but they let Lev shelter on the hallowed ground.

Restless, he paced in the nave in the deep of the night. Hearing the heavy wooden door slam with a thud, he waited, drawing his saber in the house of the saints. It was Dominik, he’d come in without needing permission, and the gold on his vambrace was bright and shiny still. Lev sheathed his sword.

He sat down on the gilded steps to the gold wall of the saints, where he left his wine, and stretched out his legs.

Dominik walked the length of the aisle. Taking in the sight, he whistled. “Guards sure are wealthy.”

“There’s a cup over there.” Lev pointed.

“That’s for sacred water. It’s probably blasphemy.” He sat down next to Lev, knocking on the gilded steps. “A Shield sitting on the altar. This is also probably blasphemy.”

“Probably.” Lev took a drink. “Where’s Aleksei?”

“Trying not to lose his mind. Captain walks very close to the redline. It’s better to give him breathing space when he gets agitated.”

“What happened at the Red Den?” Lev asked.

“What happened at Usolya?” he asked.

“Vasily Apraksin turned into a soulless and killed Semyon Skuratov.”

“We’re walking through living lore.” Dominik gazed up at the saints. “We found Vasily at the dead house. He’d drowned and washed up ashore. Except for some burn scars, he looked like himself. It’s strange. You’d think monsters would look different.”

“What do monsters look like?” Lev asked.

“Like us, apparently.” Dominik shrugged with a single shoulder.

“I take that back, actually.” Lev took a drink. “The last I saw Bogdan had two heads. It wasn’t an attempt at creating a soulless. The dark alchemy was botched purposefully. Just jumbled parts except they’d animated because of the presence of the dver. ”

“Like an incomplete alchemy?”

“Yes, exactly that,” said Lev.

Aleksei and his dozen sentinels entered and strode down the aisle. He was starting to feel like an ally because Lev felt better seeing him. The same couldn’t be said for the scarred sentinel, though. Lev didn’t appreciate how the old man had come after him as though they had a personal vendetta. And how did he know Grigori’s name when no one else did?

“We searched every anchored ship. No one has seen Sofia or the prince,” Aleksei said. “And there is no packet ship leaving tomorrow… Fuck.” He sat down on a carved wooden chair by the collection plate on a stand and grimaced as he rubbed his knee.

Lev had his own injuries too, but drinking helped, opium helped more.

“Port patrol will assist us in combing the city at first light, Captain,” Ruslan said.

“Captain, I spoke with a stevedore who’d seen the prince,” Dominik said, rubbing his hands and looking at the calluses on his palm.

“And?” Aleksei asked.

“Should you go into the red, no one here can pull you out,” said Dominik, warily. But he had a way of speaking the truth, Lev was learning. “It will be a deleterious way of dealing with the crisis, Captain.”

“I know that,” Aleksei said. He appeared calm but Lev saw the sentinels back away from their captain, not drawing attention to their movements and floating away quietly.

“The stevedore remembers a boy with red eyes,” said Dominik. “Remembers him because of the unusual eyes, and it drew his attention because a ‘tall bastard’ with a longsword was beating him. He remembers Lady Sofia because she was the most beautiful woman he’d seen all his life, and because she tipped him ten silver coins when he carried her luggage to her cabin. He’d never had such wealth.

“She was traveling with the tall bastard and the boy with peculiar eyes. They boarded a packet ship headed to Elfur, he doesn’t know which port, and left this morning. The beautiful lady had said she was traveling with her uncle.

“I paid him four coppers to take a truth potion and retell the story. It did not change.”

As Lev watched, Aleksei’s eyes turned bright red. He closed them, and sat quietly, shifting the cross of his legs but nothing more.

Lev frowned at the scarred bastard. He looked gutted but that could be an act. Lev knew nothing of him. “I’ll have that name now, Eugene,” Lev said.

“You may have it in Elfur,” he said. “There must be a ship leaving soon. We’re going to get the prince back.”

“Dog,” said Lev. “My sister tipped the stevedore so he would remember her. When she says Uncle, she doesn’t mean the archmage or my father. I already have a name, but I’d like to hear you say it. That is, if you know it at all.”

“Who the fuck do you—”

“Name, Eugene,” Aleksei whispered, barely audible but he was heard. His eyes still shut, he rubbed his temple.

Eugene fidgeted, his hands and eyelid twitching, then he sat down on the red wool carpet, took out an opium pipe with shaking hands, and lit it. He exhaled slowly, then said, “Fuck if I know.”

Aleksei opened his eyes, and they were normal. Still looked like old blood but typical for a Shield. Lev frowned at himself for having gawked at him for so long. He cleared his head with a shake.

“Who speaks Elfurian?” Lev asked. Dominik raised his hand and that was it. “Aleksei?”

He shook his head.

“And here I thought you were a highborn,” said Lev, then realized this wasn’t the time. “All right. We’re going to go get my sister and your prince. If you don’t speak Elfurian, I don’t need you, unless your name is Aleksei. The larger our number, the more attention we will draw. So, Aleksei, pick one more sentinel. Not him.” Lev pointed at Eugene. “Let’s get our shit in order, and we leave on the next ship. If you have any questions, shut up, because I don’t give a fuck.”

“Ignat, Dominik, stay,” said Aleksei. “Everyone else, return to Raven. Esenov is now acting captain. Dismissed.”

The sentinels obeyed their captain except for Eugene who remained seated. “Aleksei, take me. I will be useful.”

“You’re dismissed for good, Eugene,” Aleksei said. “I’m letting you retire rather than ask for your life because when Niko returns, he’ll be upset should he find you dead.”

“My life has no meaning without that boy,” said Eugene.

“That’s what makes you dangerous, Eugene,” Aleksei said. “Because Niko loves you, I’m being a friend right now. But that will change if you test me. Tonight is not the time.”

Eugene sat there smoking, taking his time, but with a heavy sigh, he finally got up, grabbed his gear, and headed toward the exit after the sentinels. Then turned on his heels, having decided on something, returned, bent by Aleksei, and whispered in his ear.

“I understand,” said Aleksei.

Eugene straightened, nodded, and headed for the door. He looked back once more, narrowed his one good eye at Lev, then stepped out and closed the door behind him. He’d been the last to leave, and only Lev, Dominik, Aleksei, and Ignat remained in the nave.

“Lothar of Dohnan, that’s the name I got,” said Lev.

“Like Fredrik of Dohnan, the Elfurian King?” asked Dominik.

“House of Dohnan is a large clan with dozens of nobles, mostly minor, but a few are very powerful, like King Fredrik,” said Lev. “The trouble with Lothar is supposedly he was executed by Fredrik himself four decades ago, and why would I know such a fact about an Elfurian noble, you say?” Lev tapped his pipe on the gilded dais. “Because Lothar of Dohnan is the last known High Priest of Vrata Nochi before the church of necromancy was disbanded and its priests executed. Where dark alchemy is concerned, he is an equivalent to what my uncle was, an archmage.

“His brother Moriz stole my aunt Yelizaveta and took her to Elfur. If you ask Soful, she’ll say her father loved her mother, and if you had asked anyone else in my family, they would have said he took her forcefully. I don’t know.

“Now, there’s good news, bad news, and terrible news. The good is he’s Soful’s uncle. He’s probably not doing vile things to her. We all thought it, and now I’ve said it. The bad news is we’re dealing with a high priest, and all you got is me. The terrible is I can’t think of any other reason for a Dohnan to abduct a Fedosian prince than as a declaration of war.

“So, before hundreds of thousands of people die and both countries turn to cinder, let us four assholes try and stop it. We’ll most definitely fail. Write your mothers a letter, I’d say, but you are sentinels, you have no families.” He blew a raspberry. “Any questions?” There weren’t, they just stared at him. “So, why you, Ignat?” he asked. He wasn’t familiar with the sentinel.

“I’m handsome, dauntless, and I never lie.” He winked. He was not handsome. That was a lie. He was so blond his lashes were white. He looked like Fedya had the man been two decades younger.

“Aleksei?” Lev asked.

“Going to need a moment, Lev.” Aleksei got up and headed for the door.

“Is you being temperamental going to be a continuing theme?” Lev asked.

“No.” And out the door, he went.

Great. Lev emptied his cup.

“Is you being drunk going to be a continuing theme?” asked Dominik.

“Yes,” Lev said, and poured wine. “And don’t forget high.”

The voyage to Hohendahl, the largest civilian port of Elfur, was fourteen days in good weather, and Lev's shoulders sagged at how tiny the cabin was. More cramped than a coach, the bed secured to the bulkhead was narrow like a wooden coffin.

He clunked his bags on the top bed and whispered to Dominik who was settling into the bottom one, “Watch my shit, yeah? There’s a lot of fucken gold.”

“Sure.”

Lev headed out, passed merchants with obnoxious perfume in the tight passageway, the wife of one smiling at him, and went up the ladder to the deck. He’d never been on the water and the constant yawing was making him feel drunk though he wasn’t, and he wanted to barf.

While he was retching over the railing on the sunny wooden deck of the passenger ship, someone handed him a handkerchief. It was Aleksei. Lev took it. “Thank you.”

“Can you swim?” Aleksei asked.

Growing suspicious he might throw him overboard, Lev backed away from the railing and bumped into another perfumed woman. The odor assaulted his nose.

“Why?” Lev wiped his mouth.

“I’ve never been at sea,” Aleksei said. “In case this thing sinks, I need to know who can swim and who can’t.”

“I swim,” Lev said. He could swim in the lake and was hoping it was the same, or at least close enough. “Can you?”

“Yeah,” said Aleksei. “So everyone swims. That’s good at least.”

“Soful doesn’t,” Lev remarked. “Not very well, I mean. I tried to teach her but she just splashes and goes nowhere.”

“My brother can’t swim.” Aleksei put his hands on the railing and squinted at the port city. “We’ll see, I suppose.”

“You keep saying brother, do you mean cousin, Aleksei?”

“Sure.”

“He’s Burkhard’s kid, isn’t he?” Lev stood with his back against the railing, trying to get comfortable and conquer his unease with this floating coffin.

“I never said that.”

“Right.” Lev puffed his cheeks. “Sure as hell he isn’t Saint Neva’s child. Nikolas looks like you, and you look like Burkhard.”

“Fucken hate him,” Aleksei said.

“Burkhard?”

“Lev.” Aleksei turned to face him. “I’m not educated. I don’t know shit about Elfur and the same goes for dark alchemy. I’m wholly depending on you, and I’ll protect you with my life. It’s your call where we go from here and what we do, but don’t stab me in the fucken back, all right? We can do that once we’re back in Fedosia.”

“ If we get back.” Lev sneered.

“Don’t do that.”

“Just so you know, I’m full of bad calls,” Lev said.

“Don’t do that, either,” Aleksei said.

The bell rang, the gangway retracted, and the mooring lines were cast off. Sudden fear threatened to overwhelm Lev and he battled the urge to jump over the railing and swim back as the ship began moving and the passengers hooted and clapped.

What the hell was he doing going after a high priest? He was in over his head and grossly inadequate. He wished he hadn’t known who Lothar Dohnan was. Sometimes ignorance was bliss.

“Just so you know, during my last encounter with Lothar, I lost and got Syoma killed. I don’t know how to kill a high priest. Soulless, sure, but not a high priest.”

“The same as you kill any other man, living or not,” Aleksei said. “You’re not alone. Just get us close enough.”

“Right.” Lev exhaled. “I’m going to be sick, a lot.”

“That’s fine.”

Lev leaned over the railing and looked at the frothing water, hissing as the ship sliced through it.

I’m going to Elfur, Syoma. Lev squinted up at the sun and found a smile. I hope you’re watching. I hope you’re impressed. I may come see you sooner than I thought, so, save me a seat next to you, yeah?

So, this was courage, being scared shitless. Lev laughed. A thing was often defined by its opposite, wasn’t it? Courage by fear. Light by darkness…

Hold on to your feathered hat, Lothar of Dohnan, because Lev of White Guard is coming to define you.