I stared at the face in the mirror, trying to recognize it.

I stood in a private room in the queen-consort’s bastion. Clean and comfortably furnished, a still-steaming tub lay on the floor and clean clothes were strewn across a cushioned couch. They’d probably burned the ones I’d arrived in.

I’d lost weight during my imprisonment, and my musculature looked ghoulish, the skin clinging tight after the bath. I’d turned pale from so much time in the dark. Kross had known my powers kept me healthier than most men, so they’d been able to starve me more thoroughly.

My beard grew in an angry, wiry mass, its red darker than the copper tint of my hair, which fell past my shoulders, lank and tangled even after I’d tried attacking it with a comb.

The gold in my eyes seemed dimmer, closer to amber now, the faint light in them almost imperceptible. My cheekbones jutted out like precipices over the hollows of my cheeks, and my lips had thinned into a sour line I couldn’t relax.

I looked drained. Wasted.

I’d always been broad of build, with wide shoulders and long, strong arms. I’d gotten leaner, lost body mass. I looked older than I’d ever had, in a way the lasting youth the Sidhe magic had given me couldn’t mask.

I’d gotten lice, too, in the dark of Oraise’s dungeon.

Going into Rose Malin had been a terrible idea. I’d acted impulsively. I’d believed I could barrel my way through any situation.

I had people relying on me now. This wasn’t a war zone or a demon-haunted wilderness. If I acted brashly, people died.

I was a mess. My eyes fell to a razor and a pair of scissors lying on the vanity.

I tightened my jaw and grabbed the razor.

***

The servant stepped into the room where I was to dine with the Empress ahead of me, bowed low and said, “Master Alken, Your Grace.”

Ser Kaia stood by the door on guard, her clamshell helm once again covering her face. I felt her eyes on me, felt her distrust. I ignored her.

I heard Rose’s purring tenor from within, thanking the servant and permitting me entry.

I took a deep breath and entered a dimly lit, richly furnished dining hall. A table large enough to seat a small company dominated the space, and a hearth crackled energetically on one wall. The hearth’s light mixed with the candle glow of a chandelier above the table, an ostentatious piece carved from glass and metal, fashioned into a scene of hunting elves chasing horned demons around in circles.

I wondered if the piece’s makers found that as ironic as I did.

Even with spring well in season, the heights of the Empress’s bastion kept a lasting chill. Large windows opposite the fireplace gave us a view of sea. The most recent storm had passed, allowing the moons to shine forth over the Riven, casting titan blades of emerald and silver over black waters.

Framed in that moonlight where she stood by the windows waited the Empress of Urn. Rosanna Silvering turned as I entered, her hands folded over her pregnant stomach.

She’d changed her garments in the hour since I’d last seen her. Gone was the cloak of mist, the rich gown and the gemstone hairnet. She’d rearranged her black hair into two braided ropes which hung down the front of either shoulder, framing her neck and breasts. She wore a simpler dress of deep green and sea blues with layered sleeves, tight at the wrists in the popular northern fashion of late.

I felt an old pang — I’d once been very attracted to Rosanna, when I’d been young and foolish enough to believe a lowborn swordsman could have a chance with a royal. I’d learned better, and we’d found a different form of love besides. The love of comrades, of confidants, hard earned through many trials, though it had started to wither well before everything had gone wrong.

It didn’t mean I didn’t still find her beautiful. She was, and age hadn’t tarnished her at all, only given her a poise the stern girl in my memories hadn’t yet fully claimed. She seemed calmer than I remembered, more controlled.

More than that, in my auratic senses she blazed. Many of the high nobility are born with the seed of powerful Art, and though Rose had never cultivated her magic into a technique, she had the unearthly charisma many of her station possessed. It was what allowed her to be heard clear as thunder even when she but murmured a few soft words.

She turned to me, studied me a moment, and then pressed the tips of her ring-laden fingers to her mouth. Not to hide a laugh — the expression was one of shock, even pain.

“Alken, you—”

“Yeah,” I said, self-consciously reaching up to scratch at my hair, or what I’d left of it. I’d shaved my face, and in a fit of pique I’d shorn off my copper locks as well, leaving little more than a thin fuzz along my scalp.

I hadn’t been gentle, and my skin felt raw. Cold, too.

“Not a good look?” I asked, trying for humor.

“It just took me off guard,” Rosanna said, recovering. Her eyes lingered on my scars. They’d be much more visible now, without long bangs to hide them.

I shrugged. We sat then, taking our places at opposite ends of the table. I saw the array of food there, and my mouth began to water. I hadn’t eaten well in…

Well, I didn’t hesitate. Once Rosanna nodded her assent, I tucked in. I didn’t come up for air for a while.

“How did your meeting with young Emma go?” Rose asked, after letting me break my fast. She’d barely touched her own food, and played idly with a beautiful silver cup without sipping its contents.

I grunted, dabbing at my mouth with a cloth. I knew my manners were terrible, especially in present company, but I was too starved and too many years an exile to care much. “She’s not happy with me. Emma is… Well, she can be willful.”

“I quite like her,” Rosanna said, smiling faintly.

You would, I silently grumbled. You’re practically two peas in a pod, even if she took more to swordplay than state.

“She’s a strong spirit,” I said aloud. “I’m doing what I can to guide her right, but… It’s hard. Knowing what’s right, I mean.”

“She’s noble born,” Rosanna said, with no particular implication in her tone.

I fell quiet, knowing those words tread on dangerous ground. “Yes.”

When I didn’t elaborate, the Empress nodded and sipped from her silver cup.

Though I still felt loyalty to Rose, and that feeling bordered on something integral in me, I did not trust her. I trusted her even less than Lias, in some ways. She was a monarch, after all, and Emma the last scion of an ancient line.

In other words, a potential tool. I wouldn’t let that become known to the Accord if I could avoid it.

“There’s a demon in your city,” I blurted, half to change the subject.

Rosanna flinched. I could count the number of times I’d seen her flinch on one hand. “You’re certain?” She asked, reasserting control.

“I spoke to it just earlier tonight,” I said. Had that really been tonight? So much had happened so quickly.

“Is that why you’re here?” She asked.

“…In part,” I admitted. “I didn’t know before I arrived, but I have been tracking… enemies.”

Rosanna studied me a long while. She didn’t do anything so crass as narrow her eyes.

“I am tempted to order you to tell me everything,” she said.

I settled back in my chair. “No need. I’ll tell you what matters.”

And I did. I didn’t tell her about my work as Headsman, or the Choir, or anything that would implicate her in matters bordering on heresy. I told her of the Recusants in Caelfall, of their potential alliance with Talsyn, and of my suspicions about their presence in the city.

By the end of my telling, Rosanna was massaging one temple with her ring-laden fingers. “Conspiracy with Talysn. I can’t say I’m surprised. Do you know the Emperor has been in peace talks with King Hasur?”

I blinked. “I did not.”

Rosanna nodded, setting her cup down next to her still-full plate. “If I bring this to him, he will want evidence. He will want to be certain.” She met my eyes, her emerald irises flashing with a steely emotion. “I cannot act on rumor and whispers alone. Not even from you.”

I nodded, having expected as much. “I don’t even know how Talsyn is involved, if at all, only that the Council of Cael — that’s been my name for them — were apparently in Hasur Vyke’s court last year. I suspect they’re here, Rose, I’ve got no proof. I do know the spirit they bound is here, though, and I intend to hunt it down.”

Rosanna lifted her glass as though to toast me. “In that, you have my full blessing. I’d assign Lias to aid you, if I knew where the fox was hiding.” She sighed. “If he’s caught in the city, I may not be able to protect him. I’m not even certain I should.”

I didn’t speak my own thought — that I doubted Lias would allow himself to suffer any consequences for his transgressions, no matter how well earned. I would have my own words for him, in any case.

“What happened between you two?” I asked quietly, my eyes shifting down to the table. In all the years I’d been gone, I’d grown used to the idea that any ties with my friends were severed. I’d never even considered the idea that Rosanna and Lias might become estranged.

I didn’t like it at all.

Rosanna sighed. “It’s complicated. Lias has always been difficult. Even when we were young, he believed his abilities placed him above the laws of men, or their opinions. You remember.”

I did. “It got worse, I’m guessing.”

“I thought giving him real political power would keep him grounded,” Rosanna explained. “His efforts during the war against the Recusants definitely helped earn him respect, but it was I who pushed the Azure Round to elevate him to a position of influence.”

Rosanna laced her ringed fingers together and studied me over them. “He started courting factions from across the Riven Sea. He formed personal connections with the Edaean Guilds. He oversaw smuggling operations, even before we lifted the ancient ban on trade.”

I frowned. Lias had gotten involved with the criminal underworld? That didn’t seem like him.

“He cowed criminal groups and brought agents over the Riven,” Rosanna said. “He used his influence and his personal power to silence those who stood in the way of even laxer trade laws — members of the Church, nobles, even commoners representing our own native guilds who worried their own livelihoods would be threatened.

“Forsaken Throne,” I cursed. Lias, what were you thinking?

“I think he believed he was helping,” Rosanna added, her eyes drifting toward the windows. “The task of rebuilding was monumental, and Lias has never been hesitant to wield any sort of power. But he went too far. He started ignoring the Accord’s rulings, even defying Markham, both in subtle and overt ways.”

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

“What tipped things over the edge?” I asked.

“Last year, an earl who’d been pushing back against our reliance on the west, even threatening to leave the Accord and take many of his allies with him, was found in his gardens, suffocated to death by a statue.” Rosanna hesitated, then folded her hands and sat back in her chair. “Lias told me in private it had been his doing. I told Markham, and Lias was barred from the city.”

The room suddenly felt very cold. It took me several minutes to find words. “I’m surprised the King didn’t have him put to death.”

“We had nothing but my word as evidence,” Rosanna said. “And you know he wouldn’t have allowed himself to be taken into custody. My husband made the rational choice. A compromise. We hardly need another magi as our enemy.”

Lias had told me none of this. He’d let me believe he and Rose were still in common cause, that he just wanted to help. Hell, he probably did.

But even still, Rosanna painted a very dark picture of our old friend.

“That’s a lot,” I admitted.

Rosanna nodded, and showed no contrition. “It is.”

“What will you do?” I asked.

Rosanna thought a moment before answering. “About Lias? Nothing for now. I have enough on my plate. If he forces my hand, he will not find it gentle. For now, though, he brought you to me. I will assume he means well until he proves otherwise.”

I nodded, even though the food I’d just eaten suddenly sat very uneasy in my gut.

“I’m not the girl I was,” Rose said suddenly, her demeanor becoming contemplative. “That spoiled child who bridled at every offense, who demanded the world be as she willed simply because it displeased her.”

She turned her eyes to me, and had something of the dragon in that regal countenance, in those bright green eyes. “But I will not be idle when my family is threatened by zealots and greed bleeds my lands dry.”

I clasped my fingers together. “What do you need from me, Rose?”

Rosanna smiled wanly, then winced. One of her hands moved beneath the table to her stomach again, and I thought perhaps she might have been in pain. She didn’t seem far on in her term. Her third child, I thought with wonder. I still saw the teenage princess in my mind, hair covered in leaves and eyes full of murderous ire toward the world.

“Need,” she repeated my word back at me. “That’s much of my life these days. Need, need, need. There’s so much that’s needed of late.”

“Whatever it is,” I noted, “it must be something you can’t rely on your own people for. That Kaia seems big enough to crack skulls for you.”

“I imagine she is more than willing,” Rosanna said with a knowing smile. “But I do not need doors broken down and my own people terrified.”

She leaned closer. Though we were separate by more than ten feet down the length of that table, there was a note of furtive conspiracy in the motion.

“The Inquisition is searching for something in the city,” she said. “Or someone. The Presider has been asking questions and making covert threats to many members of the peerage. Everyone is too scared of him and his veiled thugs to do anything about it. The wiser courtiers know that even if something were to be done about him, the clericons would just appoint another like him. The tides of power have shifted.”

She took up her silver glass again and sipped its contents. She placed it down before speaking more. I recognized the old habit. Gathering her thoughts, calculating, saying nothing she didn’t mean for me to hear.

“The Church is steadily becoming a more powerful entity than the Accord can handle,” The Empress said. “Even as this is happening, the Priory and its fist, the Fifth Cantos, is becoming more powerful than any other faction within the Church itself can handle. They’re putting their own preosters in chapels across the countryside, and appointing their own clericons into positions of power. There’s even talk of reviving the Knights Penitent.”

I clenched my right hand into a fist, remembering Oraise’s claim he intended to do just that. The confirmation didn’t comfort me, not at all. “The Presider wants to bring you down,” I said. “I don’t fully understand why.”

“Because I’ve been openly challenging the Priory,” Rosanna said bluntly. At my surprised look, she flashed a thin smile. “The Church has always been meant as an advisor to the Houses. They are our historians, our healers, our scribes and councilers. They began as an order of scholars, not priests.”

She leaned forward. “The Priory represents a change in that, one that’s been pushed before, but is now a very real possibility. They would turn the Church into a true theocracy, one that rules all the realms in God’s name. I am but one of various voices in the nobility and the clergy opposing this.”

She shrugged, and ate a bit off her plate. She even ate gracefully.

“I am not surprised Oraise wants to find something to use against me,” she said, after she’d finished the bite. “But I will not stand idly by while he bullies my courtiers and his wolves run rampant through the streets. However, I cannot simply have him killed.”

She said this with brutal casualness.

“He is just a tool for the Priory,” Rosanna continued, “and they are a stronger force these days than any one kingdom. What I need is information. What, or who, is the Inquisition looking for in Garihelm? Why are they being so brazen in searching for it? If I know, if I can perhaps find their quarry first, then I gain leverage. If I have something incriminating I can bring it before the Emperor.”

“So you want me to figure out what the Presider is looking for and find it first, basically?” I looked out at the seascape beneath the citadel, frowning.

Rosanna nodded. “Yes.”

“Do you have any other leads?” I asked. I picked up a silver fork and gesticulated with it, like I was pointing out spots on a war map. “Is Forger—” I caught Rosanna’s flinty expression and sheepishly corrected myself. “Is the Emperor aware of what’s happening?”

“My husband is aware,” Rosanna said with a heavy sigh. “But he can do little. Oraise has been given full powers to root out heretical elements in the city. He wouldn’t dare take members of the nobility into custody, not without damning evidence, but he’s come close. And if Markham tries to curb the Presider’s excesses he may face censure from the Church. That could become disastrous.”

I pursed my lips and couldn’t help the sarcastic edge that slipped into my words. “The mighty King Forger, afraid of the Clericon College. Isn’t this the same man who fashioned the Accord and cast the Recusant armies down?”

I didn’t say the rest of what I thought — that if the priests ruled Markham Forger, then he was little better than a puppet. Maybe the people were right to lose faith in him, my own feelings not withstanding.

There had been several times in my life I’d seen the look that crossed Rosanna Silvering’s face. Flint waiting for tinder. A wrath that had cast down three ancient Houses and risen her from penniless refugee to sovereign. Rarely had I seen it directed at me, and I felt a very sudden and visceral urge to sink into my cushioned chair.

“The Emperor,” Rosanna said icily, “has all of his attention fixed on the stability of our confederation. He needs to keep his fellow rulers appeased, convince them every day anew that he deserves to be First Among Equals. Make no mistake, Alken — you may not be fond of him, but Markham is holding our world together right now. If the Priory claims true power, it will make Lyda’s Plague seem a pleasant memory. No one the most dogmatic members of the Church deem anathema will be spared the torch.”

She didn’t need to clarify that I was included in that, as well as many I’d called ally. She let the words sink in before continuing.

“The Emperor can do nothing openly. Neither can I, for that matter. We start fighting the Church, and people will call us tyrants and rise up. Many nobles, despite the fact that they’d be just as like to burn with us, would happily see us fall and think themselves pious.”

“I get it,” I said, lifting a hand to stall her. “I’m sorry.” I showed her a weak smile. “Maybe I’m still a bit bitter. Your husband did strip me of my titles, remember?”

I didn’t need to mention what we both knew — he’d been the mouthpiece for the Clericon College in that, as well.

The ice left Rosanna’s visage and she seemed mollified. “I remember. And I understand. Only… He isn’t a bad man. He’s a soldier and a statesman. This business with the Faith caught many of us off guard. Things got worse after that bishop was killed in the east.”

I dearly hoped she didn’t see my flinch.

“As for other leads,” Rosanna said, glancing toward the window. “I have had some of my own people investigating this. Nothing dedicated, you understand, lest the Presider know I’m on the hunt. This has been going on for months, but so far? Nothing of substance has come up. I believe some other elements of the Church may know more. I have considered asking the Abbey — they’ve always been easier to deal with — but the priesthood has withdrawn into itself. Tensions between the aristocracy and the clergy are high, and I haven’t gained any cooperation. If someone knows something, they’re damn well keeping it to themselves.”

She sipped from her cup, the motion almost petulant. I almost smiled. That was more like the Rose I remembered.

“You said the Presider is questioning nobles,” I said. “Surely someone’s let something slip? Have you questioned the people he’s questioned?”

“I’ve had my people make inquiries,” Rosanna admitted. “Whatever else can be said about him, Oraise isn’t a fool. He’s left few crumbs for anyone else to follow and no one is willing to tell my allies much. They either distrust me or they’re scared of him, or both. Sometimes they mean well, and they think siding with him is the pious thing to do. They don’t understand he is no man of faith himself — he’s just using the power it gives him.”

I wasn’t certain I agreed. Oraise had displayed a quiet zealotry, a dedication bordering on fever. He’d controlled it, channelled it, but I suspected that cold, terrible man very fervently believed he did God’s will.

I frowned, tapping a fork against my plate idly. “Whatever he’s looking for, he thinks he can find it through the aristocracy. What about the commoners?”

“There have been reports of the priorguard in the streets,” Rosanna told me. “Nothing like you’d expect. No raids or beatings, no suspected heretics taken into custody. The Priory is popular right now. I imagine they don’t want their dog taking an axe to that good will. Still, the man’s become more brazen these last weeks. He’s moved from questions to covert threats. It’s almost like he’s trying to scare a fox out of its den.”

That was my thought as well, hearing all the details.

“I think he might be hunting the same thing I am,” I said quietly. “Woed attacked one of the Priorguard safe houses tonight, the one where they held me. I think the demon was attacking them in retaliation.”

Yith’s “disciples” had been there as a raid, unless I still missed something.

Rosanna frowned. “That means Oraise might be getting close to finding whatever he’s looking for.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. “When Oraise interrogated me, he seemed uninterested in anything I had to say about cults and demons. The man’s an enigma.”

We fell quiet awhile, both retreating into our own thoughts. I chewed on everything Rosanna had said even as I chewed on the lavish meal I’d been offered.

After a while I said, “I’ll help. Or, I’ll try. But I need you to understand something before we go further.”

The Empress of Urn nodded, frowning slightly. She didn’t say anything, waiting for me to explain.

“I have my own reason to be here,” I told her. “I’m a soldier, and a terrible spy. I’m here to punish murderers, and hunt down a monster. I’ll help your people where I can, but I have my priorities.”

Rosanna sighed. “You’re still just as insolent as you used to be.” She smiled to take any reprimand from the words. “But you’re right. As I said earlier, Alken — you can walk away from all of this and face no hostility from me.”

“I don’t know why you’d want me for a subtle job,” I grumbled. “Don’t you have spies for this?”

“I do have them, yes.” Rosanna’s smile changed into something a wicked queen in an old fable might wear. “And believe me, I am using them. But you always did have less conventional tactics. Perhaps you can turn something up with that blundering about of yours?”

“Is that really what you want to call it?” I asked, pained. Inside, I suspected a very different motive — just like Lias had said back at the Fane, I was an outcast with no lingering political connections. A useful cat’s paw, which Rosanna could easily disavow if I were caught again.

She was a monarch, and would use anything and everything. I’d once resented her for it, but I understood the world better now.

Rosanna stifled a laugh. We might have said more, but just then a knock came at the door. The Empress suddenly looked… Scared. Alarmed.

She covered her reaction quickly and stood in a decisive motion, masking any emotion behind her usual regal grace.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing.” She took a deep breath. “Nothing’s wrong. There is someone I would like you to meet.” She turned toward the door and commanded, “Enter.”

The door opened and a maid shuffled in. She ushered two smaller figures forward, both of whom ran to the Empress without hesitation.

They were children. Two boys. One, the larger of the two, had his father’s deep brown hair and serious dark eyes. He stared at me and stepped forward just enough to put himself between me and his mother. A brave little knight in a steel gray doublet and golden buttons.

The younger acted more his age. He had his mother’s raven dark hair and green eyes, and he hid behind the Empress’s skirts to peer at me, balling rich fabric in his fists as though it were a shield.

Rosanna placed a gentle hand on the younger boy’s head and her other on the older’s shoulder. I’d never seen such a warm expression on her face, not in all the long years of war, intrigue, and dire prophecy we’d faced together.

“Alken, these are my sons. I wanted you to meet them.”

I hadn’t realized I’d risen from my own seat until I stepped forward. Still, I kept my distance.

I realized, in a flash of self-insight, that I was afraid of those two boys. Not because of who they were or what they might become, but because of what I was, and the danger I represented to them and their family. I wasn’t the royal champion any longer, not the Alder Knight to be trusted.

I was the Blackbough, the Headsman, the Choir of God’s weapon and demon-marked. Melodramatic, maybe, but true.

Why did Rosanna tolerate me in that room? Why did she still treat me like family, rather than send me from her palace at the point of a sword?

I didn’t deserve to be there, to be shown those two princes like a trusted uncle.

Rosanna didn’t seem to note the pain in my eyes. She gently pushed the two princes toward me. “Malcolm, Darsus, this is Ser Alken.” Ser Alken, she said. “I have known him for many years. I’ve told you stories, remember?”

“He fought your cousins,” the older boy, Malcom, said. He didn’t sound like a seven year old. He’d probably been born not long after my trial at the ruins of Kingsmeet, but he spoke with the cautious deliberation of an experienced courtier. It was uncanny.

He frowned at me, as though I represented some odd puzzle. “You said you wouldn’t have met Father if not for him.”

Rosanna glanced at me with a secret smile and said, “That’s true. He was my champion. My best knight.”

“Ser Kaia is your best knight!” The younger boy, Darsus, protested. He scowled at me. How old was he? Four? Five? Could he really string that many words together already?

The Empress laughed, almost girlishly. “Let us hope we never have to test that.”

I would never, for all the years I lived and strange shores I traveled to, forget that moment. All those years I’d been wandering like an avenging wraith — killing who I was told to kill, avoiding my old life and any reminder of it, resenting its memory — I’d given myself fully to trying to find some sort of penance, believing all the while I didn’t deserve it.

And there Rosanna stood. She’d made for herself a family. A kingdom. She was putting her all into creating the kind of world she wanted to live in, for her children to live in.

And what had I done? Remained trapped in the past, fighting the ghosts of the past? Losing myself to violence, teetering on the edge of apathy?

How many times had I thrown myself into a battle I knew I couldn’t win, secretly hoping it might be my last?

What had I done? What had I been doing?

It didn’t matter, I realized. What mattered was what I did next.

I knew. From the moment Rosanna had asked for my help, I’d known.

I had thought my world had died that day, when a monster wearing the face of someone I’d thought I loved had told me everything I fought for was a lie. But the world remained — wounded perhaps, but not dead. There were still things worth fighting for in it.

Maybe I couldn’t be redeemed, but redemption was a selfish thing to fight for anyway.

My battles were far from done.

I stepped forward and knelt before the two young royals, just like the knight I’d once been. “It’s good to meet you, my lords. I am at your service.”

End of Arc Three

image [https://i.imgur.com/ZLwj1Qs.png]