Serpent and the Throne (Fedosian Wars #1)

19. Pendant of the Sun

nineteen

Pendant of the Sun

Murmia was built on lore. The land used to be swamp five hundred years ago and the thirteenth archmage had drained it as one of the miracles that sainted him. The truth was money, the city had been laid upon Guard gold and it was one of only two ports of Fedosia, the other belonging to the Chartorisky, coincidentally the two wealthiest houses of the empire. The Chartorisky port was two weeks of travel further with a real swamp and a naval base along the way. So, city of lies it was.

A canal ran through Murmia, and it was more convenient to hire a boat than a carriage. During the daylight Sofia had to do much of the talking and Aleksei could only shadow her, brooding with his hood pulled up. His features were very Shield, red eyes and all, and the news of the throne and church falling out had reached the city of saints already.

Other than the canal, money flowed through the city, Elfurian money. Ships carrying grain, fur, wool, timber, copper, iron, and steel left, and Elfurian vessels bringing textiles, tea, sugar, spices, wine, and perfume sailed in.

Sofia spoke to an Elfurian captain leaving port tomorrow about taking them. Her Elfurian was rusty, but his Fedosian was fluent, and she didn’t even need to sell the horses, he just wanted them. Especially Charger, who he fell in love with immediately.

“What happened to a packet ship?” Aleksei asked as they strolled through the city in possession of their horses still. Sofia didn’t mean to hand them over, though the captain had insisted, before they boarded.

“The earliest one leaves in a month, Aleksei.” She lied. They’d said ten days, but a cabin on a passenger ship had been prohibitively expensive. Traveling across the sea was for the wealthy only, she supposed. Besides, now that she was sailing on a merchant ship, Aleksei wouldn’t back out of the journey. He struggled with the thought of leaving his brother, she saw it, but he wouldn’t let her take off with seventy Elfurian men, alone. “It’s all right. If sailors get stupid, you can always kill them,” she joked.

“Sure, I can kill the whole crew. But I don’t know how to sail.”

“Then we’ll just drift at sea forever, you and I.” The horses were behind them on a lead, it was a nice day for walking, and she took his hand. He’d been sleeping, eating even, and she wanted the trend to continue. “I love you.” If she kept saying it, he’d eventually believe her.

‘White Guard?’ the Elfurian captain had asked because Sofia wore the gold pendant of the sun Lev gave her.

‘No, just a silly jewelry.’ She’d tucked it in, but she would find herself playing with it—she too was leaving all she knew behind. It was frightening for sure, but she was holding his hand in public, and that made her… happy.

“Aleksei.”

He looked at her. “Yes?”

“It’s a fourteen-day sail, Aleksei. You can keep in touch with someone you trust, like Zoya, and return should there be an attempt on your brother’s throne. On the other hand, it will take an army nearly a hundred days to travel from north to south, and over six months from east to west of Fedosia.”

“I don’t trust Zoya. I wouldn’t say as far as I can throw her because I can throw her quite far. Besides, your information is a century outdated.” He smiled, pulled her closer, and draped his arm around her shoulder. Being dressed as a commoner was a freeing thing. They didn’t have courtly etiquette dictating the distance they should keep from one another sauntering down a sunny public street. The city reeked of old fish and canal water, but Sofia didn’t mind it the least bit. When she leaned into him, she could only smell him.

“What?” Sofia said. “Had the queen acquired a witch’s broom?”

“No, but she does control the railway,” he said. “It takes sixteen days to go from Bone Country to Seniya.”

Bone Country was what they called everything east of Black Ore, the center line of Fedosia, and Seniya was a Shield city in the west.

“Yes, but how many people could the train fit?” Sofia asked. She understood trains to be horseless carriages and the largest stagecoach for long distance traveling could fit eighteen people, quite cramped.

“Many, I suppose,” Aleksei said. “They haul thousands of tonnes of grain and timber across the country in days.”

“How?” That seemed quite impossible.

“I don’t know,” Aleksei confessed. “I haven’t been out of Krakova much and the train only runs from Seniya to Bone Country. I haven’t seen a train, but I imagine they are monsters because I do know what they carry.”

“Really?” Sofia frowned. Guards didn’t know much about them beyond their existence because it was commissioned by the queen, the rails laid with Skuratov iron, and the machines run by the Durnov.

“I believe Elfur has them as well, these trains. Maybe we’ll be able to board one,” he said.

“What? You mean Elfur isn’t just children sacrificing necromancers chanting in a cave?” she asked.

“According to the archmage, it is,” Aleksei said. “But I suppose their money isn’t evil.” He gestured at the city.

“When you put it on the collection plate, it purifies, don’t you know?” Sofia saw some sailors stumbling out of a kvas house, and exclaimed, “Aleksei, do you have money?”

“Not a whole lot, but yes, why?”

“That’s a kvas house.” She pointed across the street. All Aleksei saw was the drunk men and frowned. “They have beer. I want to try,” she said.

“That’s a brothel,” he said.

“They sell beer!”

“They also sell company, Sofia. It’s not a place for a lady.”

The thing with Aleksei, she learned, was she could get him to do anything if she pestered him enough, leaving Fedosia, sailing on an Elfurian ship, accompany her to a brothel…

They left their horses at the stables for a few coppers and headed to the kvas house, a different one. There was a whole street along the pier made of kvas houses on both sides. Aleksei wore his gear inside his sleeves but wouldn’t take them off, shifted his sword into a saber to fit in at least, and kept the hood of his long cloak up over his head.

Once inside, he admitted it was not a brothel although the same clientele. Drunk merchants and sailors were merry, someone played the balalaika, the floor was covered with sawdust, and a woman wearing a bonnet and a large apron, not a courtesan, brought them a jug of kvas when Sofia requested it. The tables were naked wood and instead of stools, they had benches.

Sofia inspected the yellow liquid in the mug which looked suspiciously like frothing piss, then took a sip anyway, and exclaimed, “Saints, it takes like bread!”

As pleasant as that had been, it didn’t taste as though it had much alcohol, and when she inquired about it she learned kvas wasn’t beer. She ordered beer and that one was less pleasant. She still liked it, though.

She tried to get Aleksei to drink, and he said, “I’m barely sane, Sofia, why do you want me to be drunk?”

“What do you do for fun?” she asked. The drunk men dancing with each other in the corner were having fun. One had on a lady’s bonnet.

“Drinking is fun?” was his question.

She shrugged, then noticed he was just giving her a hard time. He smiled with his eyes, and they were gorgeous. Everyone was drunk, it was dim, and no one cared, so Aleksei had taken off his hood.

“Not the way Lev drinks,” she said, dodging his hand as reached across the table to touch her hair. He was going to mess up her hairdo because that was funny to him. “He doesn’t want to take up the archmage’s mantle and struggles with that. We all have our demons, I suppose.” She gnawed on the sentiment for a moment, then said, “You two don’t get along. Is it over Zoya?”

“What do you mean?”

“Lev is, or was I suppose, courting Zoya Chartorisky, and the girl clearly favors you over my brother.”

“He’s only pretending to court her. He couldn’t give less shit about Zoya.”

“I believe he fancied her,” Sofia insisted.

“If you say so.” Aleksei had various smiles—sad, pretend, amused, mocking, when he was about to punch a drunk in the face, when he found something Sofia did endearing, when Charger behaved… endless and all equally handsome, but a smirk he had on just then told her he withheld something, therefore letting her win.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said.

Yeah, she was right. He wasn’t telling her something. But it wasn’t anything bad. He simply found it amusing. So she let it be.

Then the smile vanished because a drunk sailor two tables down made a vulgar gesture at Sofia and the said sailor was about to get his flicking tongue pulled out of his laughing mouth by an unstable sentinel. It was time to get out of the beer house. Sofia finished her drink and got up. Aleksei tossed a few coppers on the table, and they headed toward the door.

As Sofia passed by the crude sailor’s table, he tried grabbing her skirt. She hoped he didn’t need his hand too badly because that got broken, and after they’d stepped out, she said, “Murmia is a Guard city, Aleksei. Perhaps it’s not too keen to draw attention to us.”

“The most common thing that happens in a drunk house is fighting over a woman,” he said. “No one will care.” He was probably right.

According to Aleksei an inn smelled of unwashed crotches and had lice, his words, and as the day fell they headed to the barn they’d rented a little ways out of the city. From the outside, the barn was leaning a bit and appeared as though it might collapse, but the interior was solid and clean. The family they’d rented from mostly stored grains in the place, it looked like, and it being the sowing season, the barn hosted reaping tools, a few sacks of grain, one open sleigh for the winter, and nothing else.

Aleksei got feed for his horses, watered them, and let Tempest out to graze because he didn’t run away, but kept Charger in the barn, explaining, “He fidgets. I think he’s trying to go home.”

“Red Manor?” Sofia asked.

“Yeah, he knows where home is.” He petted the horse. “He’s a good boy.”

That made Sofia sad as they would be taking the horse back to Elfur again, but a small price to pay to keep Aleksei from the wretched queen.

The barn smelled of fresh hay, and as she sat down on a bale she asked, “This is better than an inn, you say?”

The family had brought them ‘dinner’ which was a few small potatoes, that was all—money well spent.

“Do you see lice?” he asked, brushing Charger.

“No.”

“Does it smell like feet?”

“No.”

“Better than an inn,” he said.

‘You’re an odd child,’ she wanted to say sometimes because on certain things he acted like a boy. But what would that make her? So she bit her tongue.

“Aleksei, you’re twenty-two?”

“I think so.”

“What does that mean?” Sofia got a ladle of water from the bucket to brush her teeth but didn’t like his answer and frowned.

“They assigned me a birth date in the imperial army. That’s what I go by, but I don’t know.”

He was surely the saddest boy to ever be born to a duke. No one brought him a training sword or miniature pony for his birthday. But there was no point in rubbing that in.

“Aleksei, can you read?”

He turned to her and cocked his head. “Yes, why?”

“Do you speak any other language than Fedosian?”

“No.”

“Can you play the piano?” she asked.

“No.”

“Any instrument?”

“No, and I also don’t know any dances. What’s your problem?” He laughed.

“For a duke, your father was a cheap bastard, you know that?” she couldn’t help remarking bitterly. The late Gavril Illeivich, even with all his gambling debt would pay for his daughters’ tutors. “Hey, didn’t you ask me for a dance when we first met?”

“Had you said yes, I would have managed.” Aleksei smirked. “How hard could it be?” He’d gotten a brush from the city today and was making good use of it untangling Charger’s tail.

Sofia was surprised Charger didn’t kick Aleksei in the face. That creature was an ill tempered bastard. She tried to pet him, and he nearly bit her. Whenever she walked by too close to him he eyed her as though she owed him money.

After Sofia was done washing her face, brushing her teeth, and still waiting for Aleksei, she asked, “Does he fight, then?”

“What?” Now he was bent fiddling with the horse’s hooves and glanced up at her.

“Does a warhorse fight?”

“It means he’s smart, brave, maneuvers well, and he’s not afraid of other horses, people, loud noises, sudden lights, smell of blood, yelling… battle shit.”

“The last bit sounds like an extension of brave,” she said, growing sour as Aleksei showed more attention to his horse than to her. She wouldn’t mind him brushing her hair.

“The last bit is training. Bravery is innate. Rhytsar, Lev’s horse is pretty brave, but I bet I can spook him well with Starfall.”

“What’s Starfall?” she asked.

“A potion that makes a big boom,” he said. “It’s meant to scare soldiers and horses. Not incendiary, it’s only sound and fury.”

“Aleksei, leave that horse alone, and come over here,” she said. The scarlet gaze flicked to her. “Right now,” she demanded.

He smiled and tossed the brush. All right, maybe this was why Charger didn’t like her. They both vied for his affection. He walked to her like a normal person but then he jumped, making her scream because she thought he was going to fall on her, but he caught himself and rolled over, lying next to her on the hay, and laughed.

“Do you want to see a star fall?” He reached behind his back.

“In here? No!”

More laughter because his hand was empty.

“The saints know you should do that more often.” She turned on her side and caressed his face.

“Scare you?” He arched a brow.

“If that’s what makes you laugh, then yes, you may scare me with more nonsense.”

“May I ask why you killed your husband?”

“He made me angry,” she said. Had Gavril Illeivich been alive, she might have mentioned he hit her once or twice, but seeing as how he was beyond the dver, there was no need to disturb his peace by speaking ill of him.

“Do I make you angry?” he asked.

“Never, darling.” She kissed him. Her answer wasn’t he’d never make her angry, but she’d never harm him, either with words or deeds, never. When she climbed on top of him and bent down, her necklace fell out and dangled in between them.

He held the pendant for a moment, then whispered, “White Guard, the house of the sun.”

“Red Shield, the house of blood and literal shields.” Their crest was a shield, black on red.

“We’re not very creative,” he said.

“You have straws in your hair,” she said.

“Better than lice.”

“Oh yeah?” She pressed her mouth against his and moaned as she reached inside his trousers and grabbed him. “That’s mine, you hear?”

“Yes.” He ran his hand through her hair, but the exoskeleton snagged a strand. “I’m sorry.”

He had to take off his shirt to shed the darksteel attached to him because he’d worn them inside his sleeves. The harms he’d done to himself were numerous, but she said nothing as that would only make him feel bad. He hadn’t added to it since his confession and that was good enough. Soon they would all be old scars, she hoped.

“For all that is holy, why are you so beautiful?” He held her face, just his hands, no metal.

“You saying such things make me worry you’re going to lose interest when I’m older. Beauty fades, Aleksei.”

“Not yours.” He pulled her and held her. “Not ever.”

Sofia grumbled because Charger was pawing. Plop, plop, plop in her sleep, the bastard had been doing it for a while and nickering, pacing restless, and snorting right in her face.

“Shoo, you awful creature.” She pushed his muzzle and sat up.

Wrapped in Aleksei’s cloak, she was naked under it and got up to collect the pieces of her attire from the barn floor which was earth layered with some straw. She found her dress first, slipped into it hastily, and had to push Charger away because the horse was sniffing Aleksei.

“Shush, Charger. Don’t you see he never sleeps? Let him rest a tiny bit. He can brush you in the morning, you selfish creature.”

Aleksei was out cold, finally catching up on years’ worth of rest. Through the space in the barn doors, she could see it was still pitch dark out there. They’d leave at dawn, but she wanted Aleksei to sleep till then. Once on the ship, he’d get paranoid about the sailors whisking her away at night and not sleep either—she had an inkling.

Searching for one of her boots and her necklace, she sifted through the straw. Just as she felt the pendant, the jagged edge of the gold sun, Charger whinnied loud enough to wake the dead, and reared.

“You awful creature!” she yelled, as Aleksei sat up, gasping.

A firebug, it looked like, whizzed into the barn through the crack in the door and flew into Sofia’s hand. It scared her. She looked down and the gold sun was pulsing.

“Aleksei!” she yelled.

He scrambled to get up and look for his gear, as the doors flung open, and then everything was blinding. She thought she was falling through the sun.

“Just go to sleep, you troublesome girl,” she heard the archmage say.

Sleep, echoed in her mind. She felt her knees buckle but didn’t hit the ground and kept falling instead, far, far down as the world above grew dull then faded, faded, becoming black, silent… then nothing.