Before leaving Siu Patanal, Saint Daven had stopped by the House Mattius residence in the city, but found it deserted for the season. No servants had been in evidence to ask the master of the house’s whereabouts, so Saint Daven had headed north to Siu Rial and at the blocky, fortresslike House Mattius estate in the City of Blood, where he had delivered the missive from the Helat and foiled an assassination attempt. Still no lordling.

  Saint Daven had been hoping to avoid returning to Blazing Prairie, but the only alternative he could see was calling at every House Mattius residence in the kingdom, playing some idiotic game of run-and-miss with Clarencio.

  “Or we get smart, quit on this, and go home,” Saint Galen suggested.

  “To where?”

  The twins didn’t have a home anymore. Saint Daven couldn’t countenance going back to Thornfield, swallowing the bile, and sending more kids off to die for a king not worth the contents of a latrine pit. And he would never set foot in their first home again, the trapper’s shack outside North Fork. When he and Gale had left there, they’d left for good.

  So they headed east for the Cinterlands holding, where they had served for one short, dark, bloody winter as Lord Paius’s Thorn. They stayed well away from roads, villages, and lords’ estates, sticking to the lonely paths and empty prairie Saint Daven had haunted seven years before, carrying messages of treason for his lordship.

  The evasiveness was partly out of habit, mostly out of desire to avoid people. Saint Daven had never liked being seen. Cutter used to call him “the loony” for it, but Wraith, their commander, had put it to use wherever he could. Turned out a Thorn who could disappear at will was pretty handy for trying to overthrow a king.

  As Saint Daven rode, the land shifted from harrowed field to woodland to endless waving prairie. The black gelding he’d bought from Nimbus was high-headed and high-stepping; he liked to prance when he wasn’t running, but he showed no hint of the noxious nature Nimbus had alluded to. The beast reminded Saint Daven of Mitchi’s prize trotter, a mare named Starlight. While he served them, all of the House Mattius horses had been given names alluding to the night sky except a gray stallion Clarencio had won in a bet from another lordling’s stables.

  “Darkstar?” he suggested while picking burrs from the gelding’s glossy coat. The gelding was blowing his winter coat to prepare for a hot prairie summer, so thick clumps of hair came entangled with every sticker.

  The gelding grumbled at having his hair pulled, but didn’t seem to mind the name, so Darkstar it was.

  ***

  Saint Daven met the first refugees when he was still two nights’ ride from Hotsprings. It was just instinct to use the blood magic to hide himself and the horse when he heard the squeak and rumble of a wagon’s wheels. Ragged, skin dark with soot, eyes red-rimmed, the woman and the boy trudged alongside an oxcart. Inside the cart lay a few blankets, some pots, and an elderly dead man with a blood-soaked strip of skirt wrapped around his head.

  The former Thorn watched them pass, wondering if they knew the old man was dead yet. When they were past, he nudged Darkstar into a canter.

  From there on, even the game trails weren’t safe. The closer he got to Blazing Prairie, the more people he passed going the opposite direction. Some had carts, and some led milk cows with baskets or bundles tied over their necks. Some carried what little they had run with, but most often they had nothing. They came in twos and threes, women, children, elderly. Not many men. Once he passed a huge draft horse with no rider, a healthy, handsome monster that could have come from the lord’s stables. Its fur was singed, its mane and tail short and burnt into frizzled clumps, and it stank of smoke. Saint Daven didn’t show himself to any of them.

  Still a night away, he began to smell the smoke on the breeze.

  Did they burn the whole town?

  They could have been any number of people. Clarencio had obviously made enemies at court, or that assassin wouldn’t have gone after him in Siu Rial. And ever since Paius’s betrayal and Saint Daven’s subsequent year in the dungeons under Castle Sangmere, the former Thorn was always suspicious of the crown and the lords who supported it.

  No one knew when the terraced hilltop had been built or by whom. Angular basalt stones had been hauled in from the savage black lands sometime long before the Kingdom of Night and its denizens had moved in. It was the highest place for miles around, sticking up from the flat grassland and glaring out over the Cinterlands like a challenge to the raiding savages and packs of wild dyre that lived therein. In living memory, there had never been a ghost city over the lord’s estate, though no one knew why.

  The first time Saint Daven had laid eyes on Blazing Prairie, he had been riding scout for Lord Paius. It had been almost midnight, the sky overhead a black sea blanketed in a million sparkling stars. Perched on its terraced hilltop, Blazing Prairie’s colorful glass windows had glinted like a torch in the darkness lit by the fires burning within, throwing sparks of orange, yellow, red, and blue. Even Wraith, always ready with a quip, had been speechless.

  Saint Daven’s return to the House Mattius ancestral estate came during gray daylight, under a spring sky threatening to rain on the smoldering ruins of the manse and its outbuildings. Ghosts of smoke mingled with the steam rising from the hot springs that bubbled around the terraced hill and gave their name to the village below.

  Hotsprings wasn’t as bad off as Saint Daven expected based on the people fleeing. Most of the clustered houses still stood, but the garrison was a charred ruin with only its stone beacon tower poking up from the ashes, waiting to send up messages in green, red, or white flames to a manse that no longer stood watch on the hill above. Its mud and daub chimneys had gotten hot enough during the fire that the sticks within had turned to char and crumbled, taking the chimneys down with them.

  An army’s camp had sprung up around the village wrapping around from the south to the west side. Cookfires burned, and men and camp followers wandered between the tents. Darkstar rumbled at the sight of the destriers, coursers, and nags picketed out and nosing at the grass. With the blood magic, Saint Daven silenced the gelding. The standards of sworn knights fluttered in the breeze. Saint Daven estimated five or six thousand troops.

  The village was too small for a tavern, but people milled around out front of the public house. Weak sun shone dully on huge piles of weaponry. Metal clanged as men sorted the swords from the axes from the shields and armor. For each piece, they called to the overseers marking them down.

  Staying invisible, Saint Daven took Darkstar around the northwestern side of the terraced hill and hobbled him in a hollow with plenty of green grass grew to keep him busy. Then he crept back into the little town. The twins had grown up tracking prey through the woods with their father; muting footfalls and hiding tracks on open ground came as easy as breathing for the Saints.

  The crowd in front of the public house was made up of men-at-arms in House Mattius colors with hands bound. Soldiers in plate armor and mail stood guard over them.

  One by one, the men of the defeated garrison were led into the public house. Some came out again alive and had their bonds struck off. The rest came out a head shorter. A pile of corpses was growing opposite the piles of arms and armor.

  Saint Daven slipped in through the back of the public house, ghosting through the owner’s living quarters and kitchen, and into the common room.

  A single table stood in front of the hearth, where sat an aging lord wearing a sash of state draped over new copper scalemail. Mosole of House Agata, House Mattius’s southern neighbor. The small House Agata holding included County Rose South, which the Saints had fled as boys, blood soaking their clothes and Mosole’s dyrehounds baying on their track.

  That explained why the roads from the west hadn’t trampled by the passage of such a large force of fighting men. Mosole’s knights and soldiers would have marched on Blazing Prairie from the south.

  Besides the lord’s table and chair, the rest of the furniture in the common room had been shoved back to the walls. Bordering the room were half a dozen guards wearing the uniform of House Agata over shirts of chainmail. Two stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a shackled man in a bloodied House Mattius uniform. By the braid on his jacket, he was the commander who had surrendered the garrison.

  Derig was his name, Saint Daven remembered. Older, grayer, the lines cut deeper into his face. Chief Commander Derig, as Wraith had styled the man in order to flatter him and avoid any conflicts between Lord Paius’s Thorns and men-at-arms. A lifetime ago.

  Saint Daven watched as the next man-at-arms was brought in and made to kneel before Mosole. The boy was barely older than a newly grafted Thorn, as thick and hateful as a hickory stump. His nose and mouth were bloody, two of his front teeth were missing, and the ropes binding his wrists were wet and red from struggling.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “Clarencio of House Mattius has betrayed the king by throwing in his lot with our ancient enemy the Helat.” Mosole recited the words as if he’d grown weary of repeating them. “Will you renounce the traitor lord and swear fealty to House Agata, loyal servants of King Hazerial, or will you have your head struck off for treason?”

  “Lord Clarencio never did no such thing!” the boy roared, earning a gauntleted fist in the mouth from the nearest guard.

  “Just say the words, boy,” Commander Derig pleaded from his spot along the wall. “That’s an order.”

  “Never! Any man who kneels is an oathbreaker! Even commanders!”

  Mosole took a drink of wine, then refilled his cup from the flagon. “I have enough of your ilk to get through today. Swear for the king and House Agata or die.”

  Tears stood out in the boy’s eyes, but he spat a bloody gob at the aging lord. “Take that to your king.”

  Another guard slid up behind the boy, his chainmail clinking with the motion, a bloody greatsword in his hands. Two guards held the struggling boy in place as the first raised his blade. The House Mattius commander looked away. Saint Daven’s stomach sank.

  “No lying king for the Cinterlands!” the boy railed, his voice climbing the octaves. “House Mattius and Lord Paius! Lord Clar—”

  Thwack. The boy screamed, kicking and slipping in the blood. The ugly cut was barely a knuckle deep. The executioner had let too much blood dry on the blade between executions; the crust had dulled its edge.

  Two more nasty blows finally severed the screaming boy’s head from his body. It hit the floor and rolled crookedly away. The guards let the corpse drop into the puddle until it was finished twitching out its death spasms, then they hauled the body outside and kicked the head after it.

  “Waste.” Mosole made a mark on the parchment before him. “Bring in the next.”

  Saint Daven watched through the day and into late afternoon. Out the window, the gray sky turned grayer. Inside, the blood swelled the wood planks of the common room floor until they squished and groaned with every step.

  For each man who refused to switch loyalties, thirty swore for House Agata and the king. The executed were mostly young men throwing away their lives. Boys with no families to provide for, boys who thought they were invincible, boys who thought they were heroes. Their former commander’s head hung heavier with every death, beaten down by the stubborn idealism of youth.

  “That’s enough for tonight,” Mosole finally declared. He stood and stretched, his paunch straining against the glistening copper scale, while the guards led Commander Derig from the public house. The Lord of House Agata shuffled through his parchments. “Eight hundred thirty to add to last night’s thousand and the seven hundred from the night before.” He jerked his chin at the guard by the door. “How many traitors have we got left out there to try?”

  “At least two thousand, your lordship.”

  Mosole gave a humorless laugh. “And all ostensibly sworn to the gaol to avoid the king’s order to swear over all standing armies to the crown. Young or old, Mattiuses never stop looking for ways to worm around the king’s words.”

  “Don’t wager against an Eketra-blessed king, I always say,” the guard said, shaking his head.

  “Don’t wager against House Agata.” Mosole tossed back the last of the wine, then headed for the door. “That fool Zinote got his daughter married to the crown prince for merely intending to inform on the Cinterlands Rebellion. When His Majesty learns that I killed this treachery in its bud, then we shall see the true gratitude of the crown for its loyal subjects, you mark my words.”

  Saint Daven slipped out the public house door behind them.

  “That windbag’s turned his cloak so many times he doesn’t remember which way is out,” Saint Galen muttered. Thankfully Saint Daven had them silenced as well as kept them invisible. “You should cut his throat and finish off his House.”

  “The Hotsprings folks would get the blame.”

  Saint Daven left Mosole behind. The captive men-at-arms were corralled at the southwestern edge of the encampment in a hasty split-rail fence set close to the public house and pile of corpses. House Mosole soldiers walked the perimeter, while the men inside the fences huddled together, spoke in low voices, and tended to the ones too wounded to do either. The attack must have come during the late watches of the day. The men who had been on duty were easy to pick out by their uniforms, ragged and heavy with dirt and blood. But many of the men were only half-dressed or wearing bloody, soot-stained dayclothes.

  The men who had sworn for the king and House Agata were in a section north of camp, kept far from their former brothers in arms. There, they were allowed to move freely between tents and fires and latrines, but still under close watch.

  From the edge of the guarded tents, Saint Daven spotted a house he remembered. While he served Lord Paius, he’d been gone too often to spend much time in town, but he had escorted Mitchi to the little hovel once. The stone shack had been tumbledown then, and it hadn’t improved in the intervening years. The wood stable that had been clinging to it for dear life had given up the fight and fallen, but the low wall of stones defining the small yard still stood. Smoke rose from the chimney and wafted off to join the ghosts rising from the smoking ruins.

  The shack had no door, just a threadbare blanket hanging over its entrance. From inside came the sound of a ladle scraping a pot.

  Saint Daven checked the area to make certain no one was watching, then dropped the invisibility.

  “Hello?” he called.

  The scraping inside stopped.

  “Is Lilicent still living here?”

  Nothing.

  “I… I used to be friends with Mitchi. With Lady Michiala.”

  “Well, don’t stand out there yelling for those invader scum to hear, you fool. Get in here.”

  Saint Daven lifted aside the blanket and ducked under the low lintel. The air in the little stone hovel was close and hot and carried the smell of garlic, liquor, and urine.

  Stirring a cauldron of broth on the fire was the tiniest old woman he’d ever seen, small and wrinkled enough to be a forest spirit. At first he thought she was stooping to look at something on the hardpacked dirt of the floor. Then he realized she was so small and bent that she couldn’t stand up.

  She craned her neck painfully and looked up at him with rheumy eyes. He’d never met old Lilicent in person, only heard her yelling from inside the hovel, a big blustering voice to match Mitchi’s. He should have realized that if Mitchi could be tiny and loud, so could her elderly friend.

  “Oh yes, I can see why that bad little girl made you her… what did you call it? Friend?” She gave a wheezing, toothless cackle and let her face drop back to the floor. “What will you give me if I can guess your name?”

  In the stories Dad used to tell, it was never a good idea to let a forest spirit pretend to have power they didn’t.

  “Mitchi told you,” he guessed.

  “Don’t speak the name of the dead in this house,” Lilicent scolded him. She shook her head and stirred the cauldron. “Friend indeed. Do friends say secret vows to each other? Do they make a babe together? Oh, I suppose sometimes. Friend.”

  Saint Daven watched the broth eddying in the pot and said nothing.

  “Did you go see her, sleeping in her hallowed ground?”

  Saint Daven shook his head, then remembered that the old woman couldn’t see anything but the dirt in front of her face.

  “Not yet.”

  “That bad little girl,” Lilicent muttered fondly. She sighed. “What a spell you put on her, playing hard to get like that.”

  Saint Daven snorted. He’d been so green out of Thornfield that he could barely talk to a woman, let alone think to play hard to get.

  Lilicent slurped from her ladle. “I don’t suppose her ghost told you to bring me a good stiff drink, did she?”

  “No.” I don’t talk to Mitchi. If I started, I’d never stop.

  “Pity. I haven’t had anyone to get fall-down drunk with since she passed. Well, don’t just stand around gawping, I can hear your stomach growling from here. Bring us those bowls before you decide to snap an old woman up.”

  The broth she spooned out was thin and clear. The only solid in his bowl was a skin from a garlic clove, but he was hungry enough that he drank the first bowl down and dipped out another. If he had time, he should put out a few snares. The old woman could probably do with some meat as much as he could.

  Lilicent lingered over her first bowl, talking more than she drank. “I take care of her, you know. She’s well warm in the ground. The hot springs keep every sleeper cozy, even the nobles in their fancy lead-lined caskets.”

  She was still talking about Mitchi, he realized. He wondered whether that was meant to be comforting. His wife and his daughter rotting in warm ground rather than cold. He drank his broth.

  “You’re not much of a conversationalist.” Lilicent had to lean down to drink from her bowl; her bent back wouldn’t straighten enough to lift it to her mouth. Her long, lumpy nose touched her broth as she slurped. A bead hung off the end. “That bad little girl liked that about you, though. Moon-eyed girls always think quietness means hidden depths. Closed mouth, empty head, I say.”

  “Likely right. Do you know where Clarencio went? Some folks in the camps are saying Shamasa Redoubt, some are saying into Helat territory.”

  “Soldiers don’t tell an old lady those things. They want to know where the roots are and the cheese and the eggs, and do I have any meat, and shut your trap, old woman.” She turned her head and spat. “Strong gods grind Mosole and all his dogs into the ground under House Mattius bootheels. That’s where they can find the night-forsaken roots.”

  If there’d been a time for that to happen, it was already past.

  “What do you want with his lordship?” Lilicent asked.

  “His lordship—Lord Paius—was right to want to overthrow the king.” Saint Daven had stood in the shadows for seven years, watching a steady stream of boys swear their blood and blade and soul to serve a king and queen and lords who used them up and tossed them away like their souls and their loyalty meant nothing. Not one man in all that time, royal or noble, had been worth the Thorns they grafted. He had served the only one. “We all thought so, Wraith and Cutter and me.”

  “I told you not to speak the names of the dead here.” But her face softened. “Except for Lord Paius. Him we would do well to have back. We won’t though, no matter what these young fools are saying. That king cut Paius into pieces and sent him all over the kingdom.” She shook her head. “Never sent a single bit of him home to lie beside his wife and their children, and he’ll never get back, not in that many pieces.”

  Lilicent shook her head. “No, Lord Paius is long gone from this world. Too good for it, you might say. But all this talk about the father doesn’t tell me why you seek the son. Confide in an old woman and maybe she’ll witch you up a divining stick to find him.”

  In the stories, confiding in a forest spirit was always a mistake.

  “Instead, why don’t you tell me why so many of the garrison are kneeling and swearing to the king?” If he’d learned one thing about Cinterlanders when he served Paius, it was that they saw his lordship as their only authority. Kings were distant creatures who stayed away because House Mattius kept them back.

  “His lordship’s orders,” Lilicent said. “‘If they come, you kneel’—our Lord Clarencio said, that sweet smart boy, strong gods save him—‘if they come, you kneel. I make null any oaths they force upon you so long as you remain true to House Mattius in your heart.’ I had it from Naini, and she had it from Jarik himself before the servants emptied his lordship’s manse and fled that cockalock horse lord’s army.

  “Lord Clarencio knew the invaders were coming. And he made preparations to come back and bring the strong gods’ hell with him. You wait and see if he didn’t.”

  my patreon. If you don't, come back next week and let's party Cinterlands-style.

  e