Two Thousand Years Later
In the high pce of Siu Rial’s temple, bathed in the pale green glow of the ghost city that hung upside down overhead, Queen Jadarah lifted her bloody to the strong gods. Covered in gore to her elbows and knees, she screamed for the deities’ attention, their approval, their guidance.
From the priests surrounding the altar rolled a deep, resonating t.
King Hazerial VI of House Khi looked on in calg silence as the mad queehe sacrifice, still steaming in the cold night air, at the ter of the stoar. It was too young to even utter a cry. Would the strong gods sider this a worthy ?
His queen cimed they would be pleased. Royal blood was a finer and rarer vihan the on red spill of the street urs whose bones littered the high pce. As the only non-priest allowed to perform these auguries, Jadarah must know.
The mad queen fought the dying bor pains rag her body to raise the killing knife. Her screams reached an ear-shattering cresdo as she pluhe bde into the ti.
New blood poured, purple-b the green light, running into the troughs at the altar’s edge. So little of that vital liquid in the newborn body. Barely enough to flow down the els.
King Hazerial’s eyes narrowed.
There could be no doubt that the gods could hear the mad queen. This was the most holy of pces in the Kingdom of Night, perched at the peak of Siu Rial, the City of Blood. Here the tallest pinnacle of the strong gods’ ghost city reached down from the sky until it nearly touched the tallest pinnacle of the earthly city, an otherworldly mirror in pale green ghostlight.
The strong gods must smell the blood, too, st though it was. The st curled the king’s own tongue and filled his mouth with anticipatory saliva, calling to the hunger deep within him. Within all Children of the Night.
Ahere was no response from above.
Oar, the steaming sacrifice squirmed no more. Perhaps it was too young after all. Royal blood or not, it had not survived long enough for its suffering to ehe strong gods’ notice.
The priests raised their arms, digging into their flesh with glinting ceremonial daggers. Their ting rose to a frenzy. Queen Jadarah carved at the motionless sacrifid howled, her voice splitting into tones both too high and too low for any other soul to reach. Their frantic refrain vibrated through the stones of the high pce, buzzing up through the soles of the king’s boots.
A gasp of wind. All air was sucked from the high pce. The wet sheen of blood disappeared from the altar’s troughs. Light shined from within the bloody lump of meat at the ter.
The mad queen staggered back, grinning triumphantly, gory k her side.
The dripping lump of gristle and bone rose into the air above the altar. It shone shtly that its half-formed boood out dark within. Its shadowed jaws opened and issued forth a hissing roar that echoed in the space betweey above and the city below.
“HE WHO SEEKS VICTORY FOR THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT,
TO SCE THE CHILDREN OF THE SUN,
TRAP A DROP OF O IN A SEA OF BLOOD AND STEEL.
DRIVE DAYLIGHT INTO EVERLASTING NIGHT
WITH THIS SCE OF THORNS.
THE CURSE REVEALED,
NIGHT WILL POSSESS THE DAY.
THE BIRTHRIGHT OF BLOOD RENOUNCED.
THE ELDER TO SERVE THE YOUNGER ONCE MORE.
A BLASPHEMIES ECHO
AND ARE OVERTHROWN.
THE THRONE.
THE THRONE.
THE THRONE!”
***
“You would charge the Prince of Night for his time?” Izakiel hauled the giggling whore onto his shoulder and smacked her taut rear. “I’d say that’s a flogging offense.”
“This is a pce of business, Yhness!” Despite her amusement, she mao vey disbelief aplenty in his title. “Flogging costs gold, just like everything else!”
Izakiel headed for the stairs, and the whore shrieked with breathy ughter. He suspected she wasn’t only skeptical of his cims to the thro also of his ability to safely transport her up the steps, given the way he was reeling.
With a small expenditure of royal blood magic, he turhem both into a puff of curling bck smoke, took a step, and resolidified them at the top of the stairs. Only twenty feet or so, nothing close to the distance he could actually smoke step, but in an enclosed spad as drunk as he was, it was safer to go with the minimum.
Which still had great effect. The whasped in delight.
Izakiel smirked. Nobles with the blood magic could do much, araordinarily gifted oners could do some, but only the royal family had the power to smoke step.
Of course, a on whore might not know any of that. Not much ce that she had upper-css patrons wandering into her low street wh house in the middle of the day, when most good little Children of Night were preparing for bed or feasting the sunlit hours away. At best, she must think he was a wealthy mert’s son who could afford enough bloodsves to waste his magic impressing dies of the day.
Not that Izakiel had to work very hard to catch a feminine eye. He was well aware that he was handsome. His strong House Khi features and thick, dark hair always drew admiring gnces, but it was the sed set of dimples that the dies truly could not resist. O bored iher side of his mouth when he smiled; the other was alresent, cut like notches high on his cheekbones.
As if this weren’t an overwhelming enough advantage, he was taller and fitter than most of the patrons littering the ugly red waiting chamber below, who dispyed the fat and famine lifestyle of the lower csses. Izakiel was youoo, at a lusty seventeen years old, but as the prince liked to say, he whored like a man twice his age.
“I’m Teikru-blessed,” he told the whore. “I should be charging you.” He hauled his slipping burden higher onto his shoulder and started for a suite. “Of course, that es with the royal guarantee: your full and utter satisfa, or I’ll return every you pay me.”
She cackled and pounded his back with hard little fists. “If I believed every fihered rooster who crowed that he was the Prince of Night, I’d never make any gold to be stolen by them, would I?”
“Iing theory. Let’s put it to the test.”
The door of the wh house crashed open below.
“Prince Izakiel, by order of the king, you are to return to the castle at once.”
Izakiel’s drunken grin evaporated. He sloshed around to face Vorino, one of his father’s Royal Thorns.
With one hand, Izakiel steadied the whore on his shoulder, and with the opposite, he grasped for the grimy railing, missed, grabbed again, and this time found it.
“This is a crisis, Vorino.” The prince adopted a serious expression. “We’re a nation at war, and I believe I’ve found a spy for the Het. Don’t those ears look as if she’s bluhem? My father will uand that this interrogation ot wait.”
As the royal sword tutor, Vorino had long ago bee immuo the prince’s charm. Mule-Face, Izakiel used to call him back when the priill desded to attend sword lessons, due to that long, narrow, stubborn tehough Vorino’s hair was lohan the current fashion—perhaps in a vain attempt to hide his protruding ears—the Thor his face -shaven irend Izak had set for the court.
Grafted by King Hazerial six years previously, Vorino was in his mid-twenties and no doubt as wild about women as any other healthy young man, but the Thorn showed hy toward Izak’s predit.
“I’m authorized t you ba ribbons if I have to, Yhness.” For emphasis, he moved his hand to his hilt. Even that small motion was as smooth and deadly as an ambush predator preparing t.
Thorhe most elite and legendary swordsmen in the kingdom. Those grafted to the king were magically pelled to protect their sn’s family with their lives. When that directive came into flict with their master’s orders, however, they could also thrash the light out of any one of his brats.
“Ten minutes,” Izakiel bargained. Seeing no leeway in Vorino’s expressioried again. “Five! I get the answers I need in five.”
“Five?” the whore cried. “I knew you weren’t Teikru-blessed!”
“Trust me, darling, you’ll be singing my praises with the strong gods in half that time.”
“This is not the day, Prince Izakiel,” Vorino warned.
Over an open distand at night, Izakiel could outpace the older man with a long-distance smoke step. In an enclosed spad in the midst of day, however, the Thorn’s rigorous training and myriad enhas would outdo him in a matter of minutes.
“Light burn me!” Izakiel let his head roll ba frustration. “Then when is the day, Vorino? Answer me that.”
“Your brother’s birth celebration and seeing-off—”
Izakiel let out a groan loud enough to drown out the Thorn. He didn’t care a drop of spilt blood for what his father wanted, but Etian… He owed his brother at least his prese the feast.
The pri the whore dowher of them was ughing now.
“You really are him, then?” Her face was drained of color beh its white powder.
Izakiel gave her a tragic smile. “I’ll make good on my offer another day. That’s a royal oath.”
One of many that he intended o fulfill. Although, there were only a hundred or so wh houses in Siu Rial, and he did run through them. By act, he might just keep his word.
Izakiel faced the waiting Thorn.
“All right, you night-forsaken dyrehound, you’ve treed your quarry, dragged it to ground, and shaken the life from its body. Return it to your master.”
