Page 18

M orcant played his part in the pantomime as if critics and accolades awaited him in the wings. Deep concern, genuine shock at the sight of the worms, fighting back nausea, profuse apologies.

All the while, Emery stood stock-still. Only Ambrose, close enough to touch, could see him shaking.

He expected Emery to defend himself, to apologize, to say anything at all, but as Morcant began to rattle off a thousand apologies of his own—“I’m so sorry.

I’m sure it was some mistake. He’s deeply troubled and acts out at times.

Please don’t blame him, I should have known. ”—Ambrose could see the futility.

Morcant’s theater played out exactly as he’d intended.

It still galled him that Emery didn’t fight back. In that moment, he couldn’t tell if it was the ravenous enchantment on his soul that yearned to carve Morcant’s heart out, or if that anger was all his own. He’d never had a stomach for unfairness.

Such protective instincts. It’s why I chose you. But be wary of extending your kindness to those who’d take advantage.

Emery turned to flee, and Ambrose quit the stage to follow.

He’d retreated to a secluded spot, crouched over and heaving into a hedge. Ambrose, who’d seen maggots feasting on far worse things, might have considered it an overreaction, but the hex was probably exacerbating Emery’s disgust.

Ambrose looked around. They were alone in a gated portion of the gardens. No one was around to see or overhear them. He dropped invisibility.

“Are you all right?”

Emery let out a wheezing, humorless laugh. “Ah, yes, projectile vomit. The obvious symptom of someone who is truly well.”

“Maybe this will help.”

He held out the hex object. It was the first time he could properly examine it. Formed from locks of hair tied and knotted together, it made the shape of a man. The hair had been frayed together densely, but the color was quite distinct.

Emery looked up from the hedge. “Is that my hair?”

“Hellebore used it to place the hex on you,” Ambrose said. “I assumed you might know how to destroy it.”

Emery’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“No.”

“Then why did you?”

“You’ve been … accommodating with me.” Ambrose shrugged. “Is it so hard to believe I don’t enjoy watching you suffer?”

“Yes. Making people suffer was your whole thing.” Emery hawked and spat, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist. “I don’t buy your sweetly acquiescent guard-dog routine for a second.”

Ambrose tried not to look hurt, and apparently failed.

“See? That!” Emery said. “Your sad puppy eyes aren’t fooling anyone who knows the first thing about your history, so just drop it.”

“It’s not a mask. I truly—I only did what I had to, back then. I didn’t enjoy it.”

Emery stared at him as if the force of his gaze could serve as truth serum.

Ambrose squeezed the hex object in his fist. “Would you truly prefer to starve than believe me?”

Emery didn’t answer at first, but when Ambrose took a step back, he held a hand out. “Let me see it.”

Ambrose handed it over, glad to be rid of its sticky magic.

“I don’t even want to know how she got hold of so much of my hair,” Emery muttered. Using a match, he burnt a dried petal from his tithe belt until the flame turned blue. Then he set the hex focus alight.

It caught easily. Emery dropped it, the flame devouring it in seconds before winking out, leaving a black stain in the grass.

Immediately, color returned to Emery’s cheeks. “I’m starving.”

“I wouldn’t recommend eating one of your cinnamon buns.”

Emery laughed dryly. “I’ll have to make more.”

“Why didn’t you tell someone Morcant hexed the food?”

“Do you honestly think they’d believe me?”

“No, but it makes you look more suspect to stand by and say nothing.”

“I look suspect regardless. Protest too much, you’re guilty.

Not at all, you’re guilty. A moderate amount?

Too calm, you’re guilty.” Emery sounded angrier with Ambrose than his situation.

“You lived during an era of monarchs and dynasties. Tell me. How often did someone wronged by the witch king ever see justice?”

“The witch king was a just and noble—”

Emery had the audacity to snort. “You believe that?”

“Everything he did, he did for good cause. He was a good king.”

“He was a tyrant ,” Emery spat. “He accrued wealth, power, and magic to secure his position against his rivals and hunted anyone who might threaten his reign. He didn’t care who he exploited in the process because if any of them became a problem, he had a universal solution: you.

He could throw you at anyone who stood against him. ”

The voice in Ambrose’s head hissed, This liar seeks to turn you against me.

“They were traitors, criminals, agitators—”

“Fancy words for people who got in his way. You’re just proving my point. If it’s a peasant’s word against your king’s, who did you and his councilmen believe, and what happened to you if you disagreed with him?”

“You were not there. I was. I knew him. He was my—” Ambrose tasted copper. “—friend.”

Emery huffed in disbelief. Shaking his head, he got to his feet. “People that powerful don’t have friends. They have victims and sycophants. You were just lucky enough to be the latter.”

“I served him willingly, gave my life for him willingly.”

“So willing, you bear the brand of his compulsion around your neck and the scars of his spells on your skin?” He snorted derisively. “I suppose it’s easier to pretend to love your chains than break them.”

Ambrose recoiled. His first instinct was to refute the argument. He’d sworn obedience to the witch king. It had been his gift because he loved the man, believed in his cause and the world he sought to build.

But it was difficult to form the words when the collar felt like an incriminating counterargument choking his conviction.

He knew how it looked. If he’d been such a willing servant, why had the witch king needed the compulsion charm in the first place?

The answer shamed Ambrose too much to speak of it.

Footsteps approached. Ambrose returned to the safety of invisibility just as Hellebore came through the ivy-covered gate. At the sight of Emery’s wan complexion and the wet bushes, she said, “Really? They’re only maggots. Not like you ate any.”

“If you’re not offering anti-sick elixirs, off you fuck, Hellebore.”

“They want you to clear out your stand.”

“I’m sure the maggots will sort that out for me.”

“He’d go easier on you if you stopped acting like a maggot yourself, you know.”

Emery snorted. “Thanks for that sage bit of advice. I see it’s worked wonders for you.”

Hellebore made a throaty noise of disgust. “Just sort your stand out and get out of here, all right? I don’t want to be a crossfire casualty when you piss him off again.”

Emery watched her stalk away, his hands clenching and flexing. After a beat, he stuck his hand in his pocket, and a corresponding shiver ran down Ambrose’s spine.

A moment of prickling anticipation followed, then Emery said to the vacant space, “ Follow the plan. Kill Morcant Van Moor. ”

Ambrose felt the burn of each rune etched in his neck scald him with the compulsion to do just as he said.

By midafternoon, most of the stands were cleared of goods. Emery disposed of the remaining cinnamon buns.

The compulsion order had effectively diminished the burden of sympathy Ambrose had felt for Emery, but he resented the fact he’d never gotten to try one.

He’d lived only a few days of this era, during which he’d partaken of the food, and it was tragic to see the buns at the bottom of a garbage bin.

It was almost a relief to wish death on Morcant for petty reasons like wasted food, rather than because he was cruel to Emery, who could be generous but also intolerably mistrustful.

Reactive. Haughty. Ambrose didn’t understand him, and understood less why he felt foolishly protective of him.

His kindnesses are all conditional. He would do you none if you were not useful to him. Do not let the goodness in your heart blind you to the darkness in his.

Ambrose knew he should accept the truth of the witch king’s words. Emery had killed his familiar and plotted to murder his professor after a few punishments and petty humiliations.

Yet Ambrose sensed there was more to his story.

Morcant ascended the steps leading to the statue with a lit torch in one hand.

The heat from the flame cast him and the others in a melting mirage.

He spoke to a small group of men and women, all over the age of sixty with similar demeanor and dress to Philomena and her husband, who had, understandably, left.

Flanking Morcant was a boy Ambrose recognized from the guild.

The third year with numerous facial piercings and a burn scar. Ambrose thought he was called Dalton.

Ambrose had a good view of the proceedings from behind the statue. He stood at the same height as the horse’s hocks and could use its leg as a barrier between himself and Morcant’s retinue.

The cold stone under his hands grounded him. When the time came, all he had to do was phase through the material and destabilize it. If the whole thing came down, nothing but a miracle could save Morcant.

He would have to ensure no one else was nearby, but he doubted Morcant would share the limelight of his speech.

“We should let you get on with it,” an elderly man with a moustache was saying.

“Yes, it is that time, isn’t it?” Morcant agreed.

The crowd dispersed, except Dalton, who glanced nervously between Morcant and the torch he held.

Once the faculty members descended the steps, Morcant turned to hand it to him. “Now’s the time.”

In the torch’s light, Dalton looked waxy. He wiped sweaty hands on his pants. “I don’t know if I can.”

“It’s perfectly safe,” Morcant said.

Ambrose’s arms burned with remembrance. When confronted with fire, he felt the same fear now shining on Dalton’s scarred face. The boy reached for the torch once more, but Morcant thrust it toward him, and he startled back like a spooked horse.

While Dalton looked ready to bolt, Ambrose prepared for his moment—he might only get seconds. He sank his hands through the stone leg of the horse. Magic turned his veins to ley lines and poured like acid into the statue, finding the weak points.

He had minimal experience using it this way. Under most circumstances, the matter his magic cleaved apart was more … human. The marble took longer to shatter as his magic searched for something meatier to sink its teeth into.

“Don’t make a scene,” Morcant said. “You want to face your fears, don’t you?”

“I do! I just—” The boy’s eyes reflected a recollection of pain so searing that the past seemed present. People were beginning to whisper. They could hear the exchange.

Ambrose had to focus hard to push his magic into the weak points of the statue, to eat away through dense marble.

Dalton’s open hand made a fist and dropped to his side. Shame made his voice creak. “I can’t.”

Morcant withdrew the torch. He said, just loud enough that the audience could hear, “Of course. I wouldn’t want you to feel uncomfortable.” But with his back to the crowd, they couldn’t see the sneer painting deep shadows across his face.

Ambrose could. Morcant looked like a revenant in firelight.

The hunger within turned ravenous. Raging. It surged through the marble, destabilizing its weakest attachments.

Dalton fled down the steps to Morcant’s parting shot:

“Should have known you didn’t have the balls.”

Just as the horse’s stone testicles broke free, fell, and clipped Morcant’s skull with an audible crunch.