Mortal

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

THE MORNING AFTER PAST GATHERINGS, Roland had woken with pounding in his skull and exhaustion like languor in his limbs as he rolled over to cradle the body next to him, never sure until later whether it was wife, concubine, or other. Such disorientation was synonymous with that celebration to him-the only possible conclusion to the defiant catharsis of the night before. This morning, however, he woke tense, far too clear-headed, and alone.

The thing that had woken him came again: Michael’s unmistakable voice, shouting his name.

He leapt up from the mat where he’d attempted an insomniac’s fitful sleep a scant three hours ago, hurried to the door of his yurt, and squinted into the new morning light.

Michael was running toward him, fully dressed, bow over her shoulder.

“She’s gone.”

She…

It took him a moment to reorient himself and place who “she” might be. Images from the Gathering strung through his mind. The dance, the food, Avra’s heart, Jonathan’s crazed behavior, Feyn…

He looked sharply to the north, the direction of the yurt where they’d kept Feyn under guard. “What do you mean?”

Michael closed the gap between them, slowing to long, urgent strides, panting. “The Dark Blood. She’s gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?”

“Gone. Escaped. With her guard.”

“Which guard? Ours?”

“The putrid Dark Blood she brought with her. I told you it was a mistake from the outset. It was far too dangerous!”

With a curse, he rushed into his yurt, shoved feet into boots, tucked a knife into the waist of his pants, and grabbed his sword and the tunic he had discarded last night. And then he was striding out the yurt and after Michael, who was already running through the sleeping camp toward the horse pen. One of the Nomads he recognized from the late watch was there, hurriedly helping to saddle Michael’s horse as Michael began to saddle his.

“Who was on watch?” Roland demanded, buckling on the sword.

“Narun and Aron,” Michael said. “Aron ran into camp this morning. The Dark Bloods took the horses. Narun is still there.”

Roland pulled the tunic on, pushed the man out of the way, and cinched the saddle girth himself. Then he and Michael were tearing out of the pen, away from camp. North.

Within twenty paces of the two temporary yurts, he could already tell that the unmistakable odor of Dark Blood was gone.

Narun rushed to meet them as they dismounted ten yards from the larger of the two yurts.

“They cut their way out the back. Neither one of us ever heard-”

Roland closed the gap between them with a single stride and slammed his fist into the man’s jaw. Narun reeled back and fell to the dirt, hard. He clawed for purchase and began to rise, but Roland struck again. The guard collapsed to his back and rolled to the side, spitting blood. It streamed from his mouth and nose into a tuft of grass.

“Roland!” Michael hissed.

Roland looked up, hand on the man’s collar, fist drawn back for another blow. He dropped the Nomad back to the earth, kicked a spray of dirt onto the guard’s face, and stepped over him.

Michael stared as he stalked past her, but said nothing.

He flung the door wide and stepped into the yurt. One glance at the precise cut in the thick canvas told the story clearly enough.

He spat to one side.

“We don’t know where she got a blade,” Michael said, stepping in behind him. “We checked them both for weapons when they came. Best guess, she got it somewhere between the Gathering and when Jonathan came to see her.”

“Jonathan came? Here?”

“That’s what they said. To talk to her.”

Could the boy be careless enough to have had a weapon on him? He was losing his senses along with his potency. Even if he did become Sovereign, he’d have to be babysat by the hour. Then again, Jonathan’s ascension was now the farthest thing from the realm of true possibility.

Feyn had escaped to run straight back to Saric. Not only did she have no intention of abdicating any portion of her Sovereignty to Jonathan, she now knew the location of the Seyala Valley and every Mortal living within it.

They could move camp. They could mobilize in hours. But then a far more final option presented itself.

Roland swung around, stepped past Michael and ducked out the door of the yurt.

“We have to call council,” she was saying.

But the council meant delay.

“No council.”

He strode toward his horse, Michael following at his shoulder.

“How long have they been gone?”

“According to Aron, no more than two hours.” She paused. “You’re going to kill her.”

It wasn’t a question.

He swung into his saddle without looking at her. “I will do what should have been done two days ago.”

“Then I’m with you.”

“No. I need you here.”

“Not this time, brother. Let the others make preparation.” She flung herself onto her mount and pulled it around. “This time I see it through.”

He was about to assert his demand but then thought better of it. Eliminating the threat Feyn presented wouldn’t put an end to the larger threat Saric presented to all Mortals. He would become Sovereign in her wake-with twelve thousand Dark Bloods at his command. Saric had to die today as well. How, he did not yet know, but to this end Michael would prove helpful.

“Get word to Seriph. Tell him to keep his silence. Meet me on the south side at the river bend.” He spurred his horse. “Quickly, Michael.”

Rom had slept the sleep of one for whom the world might promise to take a turn for the better.

Feyn had come. She’d seen the appetites of life-true life. Not that fabricated existence that came from the work of Saric’s alchemists, but directly from Jonathan’s veins. More important, despite Jonathan’s crazed behavior on the ruin steps, he’d agreed to see her. The guards said he had emerged from her yurt in good spirits.

Rom prayed it was a good sign. He’d seen the way the boy had looked at her the first night they’d gone to her apartment in the Citadel, just after her resurrection. Perhaps Feyn’s regal ways and calculated poise had made an impression on him as much as he on her. But he hoped above all else that Jonathan’s ability to make those near him see might affect her-and deeply. As deeply, perhaps, as it had affected him once.

It had been nine years since Jonathan had opened Rom’s eyes to a vision of Avra at peace. The crippled boy with the penchant for dreaming the second side of reality had been an instrument of the Maker’s Hand that day. Not an erratic man or a blood savior or a living spring of Mortality, but one who helped others see in a way unachieved by any Mortal to date.

Surely, he could help Feyn see as well.

And help Rom to remember.

All of Jonathan’s promises to date had been fulfilled. All of them. Even in the midst of Jonathan’s waning potency and Feyn’s strange and staunch loyalty to Saric, the thought comforted. Jonathan’s promise would not fail this time, either. Years from now, when Mortality ruled the earth, Jonathan’s strange behavior, the conundrum of his waning blood, the growing factions within the Mortals-even Triphon’s death-would be seen as trials rather than defeat.

He closed his eyes and drifted into a half sleep, thinking again of Avra. But this time her face lengthened and her skin paled. Her hair, so auburn in life, darkened to near black. As did her eyes. Until her face was not the face of Avra at all… but of Feyn.

Feyn, who had not taken part in the wild rites of the Gathering and might even now be awake in her yurt on the edge of camp.

Rom sat up. Had the impassive lines of her cheek softened? He didn’t dare hope.

But he did.

He dressed and went out into a camp littered with the evidence of celebration. Spilled cups and empty plates of mostly finished food. Clothing, a random boot here and there, abandoned where it fell. Embers dying in cook fires outside yurts, the pots over them open to any who cared to eat. The drums, still aligned on the steps, their drummers long gone…

The tripod and the slashed bowl of blood hanging like an empty husk over a macabre stain of blood upon the dais.

He turned away, headed for Adah’s yurt, likely empty-she was known to have a lover across camp-but knew he would at least find enough food for Feyn. He made it only halfway there when he saw the guard striding toward him. Relief relaxed the man’s face and he broke into a jog.

One of the Nomads. Up early. Too early.

“What’s happened?” Rom demanded.

“Suri found you?”

“For what?”

The man blinked. “I sent Suri to find you-”

“Why?”

“He went to your yurt just a minute ago. I-”

“I’m not in my yurt, clearly. What’s this about?” He resisted the urge to take the man by the shoulders and shake him. He had run dry of patience days ago.

“Seriph says the Dark Bloods have escaped. The woman and her man, they’re-”

“What?”

The man took a half step back.

Why would she escape? She had talked to Jonathan! She had seen!

But then a different thought assaulted him.

“Where’s Roland?”

“He’s gone after her.”

In that moment, Rom knew two things. The first was that Feyn had betrayed them. Either she’d played him all along, or Jonathan had finally crumbled and undone all that Rom had worked for.

The second was that Roland was going to kill her.

“When?”

The man shrugged. “Half an hour.”

“My horse!” Rom snapped, spinning back toward his yurt. “Now!”

Roland and Michael had tracked Feyn and her guard to the south; the scent of Dark Blood clung like webbing to the leaves and branches.

There were the more mundane signs as well: broken twigs, crushed grass, hoof scuffs on rocks, horse sign and tracks on soft earth.

They rode hard, rarely speaking except to affirm what the other had already seen. Two hours, the guard had said. Even riding at twice the Dark Bloods’ speed they would require two hours to catch them. Any slower and Feyn would reach the city before they could stop her.

The sun was high when they crested a hill and first sighted the two Dark Bloods watering their horses by a stream.

With a click of his tongue, Roland signaled stop and dropped from his mount. Leaving it to Michael to secure the mounts, he released the reins and crouched behind a low boulder.

Feyn stood by her horse, gazing toward the south. Her escort was on one knee, inspecting the right hoof of his mount.

Michael lowered herself beside Roland, breathing steadily. For a moment neither spoke. They hadn’t been seen and the wind was in their faces, filling their nostrils with the stench of death. Roland had never expected to so welcome such a putrid odor.

“Less than a hundred paces,” she whispered.

“I need to talk to the woman,” he said. “They’re fast, remember that. Don’t expect a second shot. The wind-”

“I was shooting into the wind when I was five, brother.” Her bow was already in her hands. She notched her first arrow. “Just to be clear, you want the warrior dead-”

“-and Feyn’s horse. We may need the other.”

Michael gave him a casual nod, lifted her bow, drew the string back to her cheek, and sighted. She pulled in a long breath, adjusted for both wind and distance, then released her fingers.

A soft twang and the arrow flew into the wash with blazing speed. In the space of an instant it buried itself in the Dark Blood’s ear with a distinct thunk. The warrior jerked and then dropped to his side as though clubbed. The moment he did, his horse reared back from the stream.

“Her horse!” Roland snapped, and launched himself forward, over the crest and down the hill.

Feyn was spinning, looking frantically for the source of the attack until she saw him closing and froze, eyes wide.

Michael’s second arrow whipped overhead, narrowly missed the Sovereign, and sunk into her horse’s neck, just behind its jawbone. The animal bolted into the stream, whinnying as it fled into the brush beyond, leaving Feyn abandoned and empty-handed.

“Run and the next one is for you!” Michael cried.

Feyn glanced up, saw she had no escape, and went very still. Roland slowed to a walk at the bottom of the hill, now only ten paces from her.

“So we meet again,” he said.

Though her face was striking, her scent was an offensive bouquet-a strange mixture of defiance, anxiousness… and grief. Perhaps grief most of all.

She was fond of the warrior, he realized with surprise, flicking a glance at the Dark Blood’s fallen form.

He stopped before her. Her skin, so unnaturally white, seemed paler than even a moment ago.

“Running was your downfall. Now they all know the truth.”

Her lips tightened over her teeth. Her hair was disheveled, loosed from its simple braids. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand you, my lady, all too well.”

“You understand nothing about me, or my allegiances.”

“Is that what you call blind loyalty to your brother?”

“I’m talking about the boy.”

He barked a laugh.

“Do you understand anything of the thin line I’ve walked since waking from stasis?” she demanded. “Did you just expect me to run out and proclaim my allegiance to the boy?”

“After betraying us at the Citadel, you claim allegiance to the boy? No. It may have been nine years ago, but it is no more.”

“True. It’s faltered. None of what was supposed to happen has come to pass. And no matter how much Rom thinks I can work a miracle in the senate, my hands were tied the moment I was brought out of stasis before Jonathan claimed his majority.”

“You’re loyal to no one but Saric. Or is it only to yourself?”

“I died once, and what did that gain me? Die and you will see how it changes your perspective on life. No. This time, I mean to do things my way.”

He slipped his knife from its sheath and squatted, one leg forward. Spun the blade in his hand. “Maybe you should try dying twice. It would help my perspective.”

“Kill me and lose the boy’s most powerful ally.” Her nostrils flared. Roland took in the scent of indignation, of anger, fear. And of something else he could not name.

“Ally? You all but admit your loyalty is to no one.”

“Yes, I questioned. But that was before what I saw last night.”

“And what did you see last night? A mad boy bathing in blood?”

“I saw something that I understand,” she hissed. “Better than even you, Prince.”

“And what was that?” His elbows rested on his knees, knife twirling loosely between his fingers. “That what I said was true? That we would crush your brother’s army, no matter how strong? That you needed to run to warn him?”

She took a deep breath and lifted her gaze to Michael, coming up behind him with the horses.

“I saw you would never trust me,” she said, her eyes back on him. “Now you prove it.”

“You’re right. And now you prove why I can’t trust you.”

“You know nothing of my intentions.”

“And Rom does? You must have had quite the romp in the meadow with him.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t know him as well as you think. But you’re right. He doesn’t know me. I’m not a girl any more than he’s a naïve boy. There is an entire machine waiting for me.” She jutted her chin in the direction of Byzantium. “One backed by my brother whom I have to manage. You can’t know how dangerous he is.”

“There, you’re wrong. I have every idea.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I died for Jonathan once. Does this mean nothing to you? Do you understand all that I have done?”

He raised his brows and grinned. “Enlighten me.”

“You not only owe your life to him for the blood in his veins… but to me.”

“Why did you run?”

“I knew you had no intention of allowing me to leave. Rom perhaps, but not you. If I don’t take more blood tonight, I die. I’m dependent on Saric’s blood, or didn’t Rom tell you? It doesn’t matter. We both know you wouldn’t have let me leave on my own, having seen your camp.”

“And yet by fleeing on your own you seal your fate even more.”

“So now you kill me. And what does that win you?”

“All Dark Bloods must die. It’s the only way for my kind to survive.”

“Are you so blind? Or do you simply refuse to see that I can help you?”

“You can help me by revealing where Saric holds his forces.”

She gave a brittle laugh. “And lose all of my leverage? No. I am your key to destroying Saric.”

“Are you? Then show me your intentions. Tell me where his fortress is.”

“Even if I did, you would stand no chance.”

Roland stood up and walked closer, rounding to her left, knife snug in his right hand.

“Kill her now and be done with it,” Michael said.

“You of all people know Rom’s request is impossible,” Feyn said, voice now tight. “Putting Jonathan in power with Saric alive will only invite a full-scale war. I didn’t create this mess; I was resurrected into it. Now I have to fix it. My way.”

“The only way I’m willing to consider is via the death of all Dark Bloods,” Roland said, glowering at her through lowered lids.

“You can’t provoke war. You’re outnumbered!”

“I don’t think you realize how powerful we are.”

“Oh, but I do, and I tell you… it’s not powerful enough.”

Roland flipped the knife. “Then there’s no reason to prolong the inevitable.”

He stepped behind her and grabbed her hair. Jerked her head back, exposing her neck.

“No bargaining?” he said. “No begging for your life?”

“No,” she whispered. “We both know you never had any intention to let me live.”

Roland laid the blade against her throat. “You’re right.”

He was about to express a final passing word of consolation-as much as he hated the Dark Blood there was something noble in this Sovereign who’d once given her life for Jonathan. But two things quickly came to his attention: The first was the drumming of horse hooves, of a single rider quickly approaching. The second was that the rider was upwind. He couldn’t determine whether the rider was Mortal or Corpse, Dark Blood or Nomad. Killing her now, he might lose a valuable hostage and any leverage she offered.

Then he knew. The leader of Keepers had discovered them missing and followed them. Rom, come to save his woman.

Roland’s first impulse was to pull the knife across Feyn’s throat and be done with it. He was in no mood for weakness, a trait that seemed inexorably ingrained in Rom’s psyche. But the sight of Feyn’s veins pumping their black blood onto the ground would prove too much for the man. They could not afford division now. Perhaps in Feyn’s attempt to escape Rom had found an ounce of sanity.

“Hold still. Not a word.”

To Michael: “On my right, stay hidden, bow ready.”

She ran in a crouch to a tree, upwind, dropped to one knee, bow strung already.

Roland held his ground, watching the crest of the hill.