Beyond the Shadowed Earth Page 15

  She felt compelled to kneel but she resisted the urge. She was Empress, still—she knelt to no one.

  “Who are you?” Eda demanded. “Why am I here?”

  “I want to help you, if you’ll let me.” His voice was rich and thick as honey.

  “Do you have an army?” She scoffed. “I need an army.”

  “Is that what you need?”

  His manner was so quiet, so unassuming that it took her aback. “Tuer betrayed me. He took my Empire. He took my friend, my—my sister. And now he means for me to die. An army is the only thing that can save me.”

  “Is it,” said the man. “I see.” He bent back over the book again, and continued writing.

  “What are you writing?”

  “The stories of the worlds. Endahr’s story is here, and your piece of it.”

  “Then you know how it ends.”

  “It has ended, and yet it is still being written. There are many paths that it could take. Many paths that you could take.”

  Eda scrutinized him. “What god are you?”

  He smiled. “I am not a god, child of the dust. Now. What path will you take? There is a task set for you. There is a story here, for you to follow. Will you follow it?”

  “I follow the path I make for myself.”

  The man lifted his shoulders and turned back to his book. “Think on it, Eda of Endahr.”

  Eda woke alone in the holding cell, the incongruous scent of wildflowers lingering sweet on the air, to find the door ever so slightly ajar.

  She didn’t know how it was possible, whether man or god had unlocked the door, but she also didn’t care. She slowly swung it open, peeking her head out to make sure she was alone before slipping through. The sea air wrapped around her, the burgeoning stars filled her up. She crept around the back of the stables, yanking a damp shirt and pair of trousers off a clothesline, and bolted up the hill.

  She didn’t mean to go to the old family temple, but some instinct pulled her there.

  It wasn’t much of a temple: a narrow doorway looking into a mound of grassy earth. There were symbols carved into the stone doorposts, but she didn’t stop to examine them as she darted inside, panting for breath. She hadn’t been back here since she was nine years old, when she’d met Tuer’s Shadow and bargained Niren’s life away.

  A lantern and matches waited in a wall niche; she lit the lamp and raised it high.

  Shadows slanted through the low-roofed chamber. She knelt in the dust beside the weathered stone figure at the back of the room.

  What was she going to do? Gods gods gods.

  Domin must not find her here, and she didn’t have anywhere else to go.

  Eda tilted her forehead against the stone figure. She screwed her eyes shut and saw Niren, lying dead on her pillow; the Emperor, taking his last rattling breaths; Rescarin, raising his bloody hands; an entire garrison of soldiers poisoned in their beds, burning and burning and burning. She saw herself, dragged onto a high wooden platform erected before the city gates, her head forced onto a block, the executioner’s blade raised high.

  “Stop it!” she screamed at the statue. “STOP IT!”

  But there was no answer.

  She pounded her fists against the stone until blood burst from her knuckles. She screamed herself hoarse.

  But when all the fight had gone out of her she was still alone in a temple that felt like a tomb.

  An Empress who’d lost her Empire.

  An outcast with nowhere to go.

  Eda jerked up and away from the statue. She paced, as she’d done in the holding cell.

  There was an ancient wooden chest stuffed into a hollow in the stone near the back of the temple. Eda hauled it out, opened it, lifted her lantern. The chest was filled with scrolls and books, crackly, crumbling pages bound in faded leather. She pulled one of the scrolls out, uncapped the end of its casing, and unrolled the yellowed parchment. At the top of the page, in shaky handwriting, were the words Of Tuer and Raiva and the Mountain of Sorrows.

  Eda cursed, and let the parchment roll back up again. She had the sudden impulse to touch her lantern flame to the books and scrolls and burn them all to ashes, but something stayed her hand. She sat back on her heels, running her fingers over the edge of the chest; the wood was worn and smooth.

  Ileem’s face rose unbidden in Eda’s mind, his eyes shining in the moonlight as he sat with her on the rooftop and told her about his time in the monastery on Halda. How the Haldans believed that Tuer was hidden somewhere in the mountains.

  Eda felt shaken and raw, seized by a strange frantic certainty. She would go to Halda. She would find Tuer. And she would make him answer for everything he’d done to her.

  She changed quickly into the trousers and shirt she’d pulled from the clothesline and went out into the night, leaving her discarded gown to gather dust with the ruined statue of the god.

  “But how are you supposed to kill a god?” Eda asked. She’d crawled up into her parents’ bed to be with them, because they were all sick with the same crippling fever and she could no longer bear to stay in her room alone.

  Her mother was asleep, her brow drenched with sweat. Her father was awake, his dark eyes glassy.

  “What’s that, my love?” His voice sounded horribly far away.

  “The third way to appease a god you’ve made a deal with,” Eda explained. “How are you supposed to do it? The gods are immortal.” She’d been puzzling over this question the last few nights; she needed the answer.

  A cough wracked her father’s whole body, and flecks of blood clung to the stubble on his chin. He stroked Eda’s hair with trembling fingers. “A god can be killed with the right weapon.” He broke off into another fit of coughing. “Something as old as he is. Something just as powerful.”

  Eda clutched at the buttons on her father’s brocade dressing gown. “But the only things as old as the gods are the Stars and the Immortal Tree, and they’re lost and gone forever.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, little one.” He caressed her cheek. “The stories say there used to be weapons like that, but I don’t know what became of them. You should look in the scrolls in the temple. Perhaps there are answers in there.”

  “I’ll do that tomorrow,” said Eda, suddenly feeling very tired.

  But she didn’t, because the next day she was so ill she couldn’t move, and the day after that, and the day after that. And then she recovered, but her parents did not, and she was dragged off to the capital.

  She forgot all about the scrolls in the temple, even when she made her deal with Tuer.

  She forgot all about ancient weapons forged to kill the gods.

  She didn’t think she’d ever need one.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  EDA REACHED THE SEAPORT JUST BEFORE DAWN, the sky brightening from black to gray to silver, for one fleeting moment the same color as the sea.

  A steamer waited at the dock, its huge smokestacks and dark iron hull dwarfing the more traditional sailing ships. Eda was shocked at how ugly it was. She couldn’t help but think of that day, not so long ago, when she’d tried to persuade her Barons that the steamers were the future.

  She’d never meant her future.

  But it would be the fastest way to get to Halda.

  Eda shouldered her way through the chaos on the docks. Seagulls shrieked and sailors swore at each other, struggling to haul cargo on and off ships. At the end of the quay stood a squat stone building with a sign over the door that read STEWARD’S OFFICE. Eda ducked inside, a bell chiming overhead. The interior was lit by a single lantern, the ceiling low. Sea charts were plastered all over the dingy walls, with a fanciful depiction of the sea god Aigir framed in the center. He was surrounded by his daughters, the Billow Maidens, and an ancient Star blazed brightly from his finger.

  The whole place stank of fish.

  An Enduenan man wearing a blue sash and matching sailor’s cap looked out at her over a worn wooden counter at the back of the chamber. “Can
I help you?”

  “I’d like to buy passage on the steamer to Halda. When does it sail?”

  The sailor eyed Eda doubtfully. “This morning, but it’ll cost a pretty penny.”

  Eda tore the gold wrist cuff from her arm and slapped it on the counter. “I’ll need my own room, with meals.”

  “Gods’ eyeballs, who do you think you are? The Empress?”

  Eda’s fingers twitched for the dagger at her waist that wasn’t there. “Is it enough or not?” It had to be—Eda had the Emperor’s ring as well, but it was far too distinctive to use for currency here—any Enduenan would recognize it. She’d braided it into her hair in the holding cell, saving it to exchange for money in Halda.

  The sailor considered, running his fingers over the cuff. He took it, securing it somewhere behind the counter, then drew out a pen and ink and a blank paper ticket from a drawer. He printed the number 302 on the ticket, and glanced up again. “Name?”

  For half a moment, Eda didn’t know what to say. She swallowed back a demand for him to use her title, hating the sinking feeling that accompanied the recollection that she was now nobody. “Niren,” she said quietly. “Niren Erris-Dahril.”

  The instant the name left her lips Eda wished she would have said something, anything else.

  But the sailor printed Niren’s name in bold black letters and handed the ticket to Eda across the counter. “Board quick, Miss Erris-Dahril. The ship won’t wait for you.”

  Back outside, Eda squinted in the sunlight, clutching the ticket so tightly the sweat from her hand made the ink smear. She walked out to the steamer and quickly climbed the gangplank.

  A handsome steward in a smart cap looked at her ticket and escorted her across the main deck of the ship, down a set of stairs and through a narrow doorway into an even narrower corridor. It was carpeted in bright red, and the doors that marched in an orderly fashion on either side of the corridor were painted with gaudy gold embellishments. The steward led her to the door with the number 302 emblazoned on the front of it, and waved her in.

  “Meals are served in the galley twice per day. You’re responsible for washing your own clothes and linens—one of the girls will show you where. Daily water rations are brought to your room every morning, and lamp oil is available if yours runs out, just ask. Is there anything else you need?”

  Eda gaped at him, her mind still snagging on the fact he expected her to wash her own clothes.

  The steward tipped his cap. “I hope you have a pleasant voyage, Miss Erris-Dahril. Welcome aboard the Empress of Enduena.”

  And then he was off down the corridor again, leaving Eda to gape after him, belatedly realizing he was talking about the name of the ship and not her.

  She snapped her mouth shut, tight with the knowledge that the gods were mocking her, even here.

  She stepped into her cabin. It was shockingly small: to her right was a narrow bunk with a single thin sheet; to her left, the tiniest closet she had ever seen in her life. A porthole looked out of the back wall, a washbasin on a stand just beneath, with a chamber pot tucked discreetly in the corner.

  There was nowhere for her to sit unless she wanted to clamber up onto the bunk, so she collapsed onto the floor.

  Somewhere overhead a bell clanged, and the vessel rumbled beneath her. The horizon through the porthole tilted left and right and left again, and Eda was suddenly aware that the steamer was moving, her body helpless to its subtle rocking. She took another look through the porthole, which turned out to be a mistake.

  She barely made it to the chamber pot before she was suddenly, violently sick.

  She didn’t notice that the ship had pulled out from the dock, that Enduena was shrinking fast and far away from her.

  Everything was awful, inescapable motion.

  The rock of the steamer beneath her hollowed-out body, the sway of the overhead lantern.

  The air smelled of sickness, and the sheets balled up in both hands were slick with her own sweat.

  She didn’t know how long she had been lying there—she didn’t even remember crawling up into the bunk like a half-dead slug.

  She was sick again, and then lay back on her pillow, shuddering. Her lips moved in a soundless prayer to Aigir, the sea god, to have mercy on her.

  She slipped into dark dreams; she saw bodies twisted on the ballroom floor, Niren dead between pale sheets, Ileem’s cruel smile, Tuer’s bloody sword. Even in her nightmares she couldn’t escape the motion of the wretched sea.

  She woke in the dead of night to the face of the steward glowering at her in the lantern light, the silhouette of another man hovering just behind him. “I’m afraid there’s been some mistake,” said the steward.

  Her body felt too heavy, her head like it was filled with sand. Still the ship rocked and rocked and rocked. She writhed with the agony of the nausea that wouldn’t go away. “What’s … wrong?” she managed.

  “This cabin belongs to this gentleman.” The steward waved at the man behind him. “You were shown here by mistake.”

  “I have a ticket,” Eda hissed through gritted teeth. She tumbled headlong from the bunk and scrabbled in her pocket, pulling out the crumpled piece of paper. She held it out to him. Another wave of nausea hit her and she clutched her stomach, trying desperately not to be sick again.

  He gave an exasperated sigh, as if she were being very tiresome. “You were a last-minute passenger, and the dock steward should never have promised you a cabin. I’m here to move you down to steerage where you belong.”

  “I paid for this ticket! Please. Please.” She was sobbing. She was begging. The Empress of half the world, and she was begging on the floor like a dog.

  The steward wasn’t moved. He grabbed her under the armpit and hauled her upright. Her knees buckled beneath her; she couldn’t walk unassisted.

  She could barely keep her eyes open as she attempted to walk with the steward. He half dragged her from the cabin and through the narrow hallway, then across the upper deck, swathed in moonlit silver. It made her feel as if she were caught in a dream, the kind that makes your body heavy, your legs sluggish. She blinked and was on the rooftops, staring into Ileem’s gleaming eyes.

  The steward nudged her ahead of him, down a set of cramped iron stairs. She tripped on the last few, landing in a heap on the lower deck, lit by a lantern affixed to the wall between a row of metal rivets. The motion of the ship was worse down here; her stomach cramped, and she was sick in the corner.

  The steward cinched open a heavy metal door and brought her into the dark space beyond. It smelled of vomit in here, of sweat and sour milk. She had the dim impression of rows of pallet beds, of the hundred-odd people lying on them. Some were sleeping. More were moaning and hunched over buckets.

  Toward the back of this awful place was an empty pallet. Eda collapsed onto it, the nausea and exhaustion blurring the edges of her vision.

  “Nothing personal,” said the steward.

  And then he was gone.

  She slipped into a place between dreams and waking, aware always of the sea’s jarring, stomach-wrenching motion but seeing things she shouldn’t if she were truly awake:

  A door in a mountain.

  A god in the dark.

  Shadowy spirits, devouring the sun.

  Beneath her, the rush of wide wings.

  Inside her, nothing but sorrow.

  She moaned and wept in her sleep, and eventually, someone was beside her. Soft hands touched her brow. The rim of a porcelain bowl met her lips. She tasted salty broth and swallowed, once, twice, before she pushed the bowl away.

  She slept a little easier, after that.

  Later, much later, she opened her eyes to find lanterns glowing softly from the walls all around the wide room. People talked in groups around their pallets or played at dice on the floor. The door to the lower deck was open, letting in a breath of salty air.

  She felt woozy and weak, and had no wish to move from the pallet. She trembled where she lay, tears oozing fr
om her eyes and soaking into her pillow.

  A shadow passed before the open door—she recognized the silhouette of her god. For an instant he paused and turned toward her. His eyes pierced her through.

  And then she blinked, and he was gone. This, too, was Tuer’s doing. He showed how much he despised her even in the middle of the sea.

  I’m coming to find you, she thought, I’m going to make you answer for everything you’ve done to me. Everything you’ve taken from me.

  Niren. Ileem. Her parents. Her Empire.

  I’m going to drive a knife into your heart, and see what color a god bleeds.

  Once more she let the blackness claim her.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  WHEN EDA WOKE AGAIN, SHE FELT A little steadier, and made the mistake of trying to sit up. Instantly, her stomach wrenched sideways and she collapsed back onto the pallet, desperately fighting the nausea.

  “Slowly,” came a woman’s wispy voice beside her. “You have to take it slowly, at first.”

  Eda gingerly turned her head, and the woman came into focus: she was dressed in the Enduenan style, her hair cloud-white, her brown skin wrinkled and spotted with age. But the way she carried herself, even while seated, displayed her nobility, and her strength. Her eyes were watery, unfocused—as if she were mostly blind. “Don’t worry, little one. The motion won’t bother you after a while. In a week or two, you won’t even feel it.”

  Eda groaned and ground the heels of her hands into her eyes.

  The old woman laughed, which turned into a wheeze. She coughed into a handkerchief.

  “Are you all right?” Eda croaked out, bewildered that the person it seemed had been caring for her was in perhaps worse shape than she was.

  “Just old, my dear. An ailment that comes to all, in time. I came to sit with you because I can’t bear to see a creature in such torment. And because you remind me of home. I’m Lady Rinar. From the province of Duena.”

  Southwestern Enduena—Eda had never been there. She felt a keen sense of loss as she wondered if she’d ever have the chance to.

  Carefully, Eda eased herself to a sitting position and glanced around the packed room. “Who are all these people?”