Page 42 of Deadly Maiden (Dragons and Darkthings #1)

Wyntre

“Prove to me that I can trust you. That I can trust that the Sisters of Arteos are against the king and will help to overthrow him,” I say to the sister. “And your name is?”

“My name is nothing. Sister Five will do. For proof, I can offer you some information about the intentions of the king. If that does not suffice, you may have a communication with Sister Paloma.”

“Try me. What do you know?” I cock my hip, all the better to look past her and check the two enforcers. They are securely restrained.

“That the king and queen want you to raise their long-dead daughter from her state of frozen death. An ice mage is helping preserve her body.”

“So I was told. You only confirm what I knew. Though it is nice to see that is true.” Nice. I’m being facetious. I am wholly disturbed and furious. I may not be in a good state to bargain or to judge the truth. “What else?”

I resist massaging between my eyes.

“Shall I disrobe so you may write to the sister? I will instruct you on how to scribe on my flesh.”

“Fuck me.” Now I do rub my forehead. “No. That sounds tedious, and I’m not sure it will convince me any more than…” I wave my hand randomly. “Than anything.”

I’d heard the rumor they can communicate instantly by writing on their flesh. Just the offer to allow me seals the deal better than any information. It is a somewhat concealed secret, more a rumor, and she has shared this without any fanfare.

“May I keep the enforcers? Do as I wish with them?”

“Of course. We have no allegiance to the king.”

Straight speaking. I pause to think this through. While I am here, doubting their aid, Rorsyd suffers.

“What exactly was the king asking of me? The whole of it. I don’t think you told me this.”

“No. I did not. The exact demand was this. You have seven days to surrender yourself to his men. If you do not, Rorsyd will be drowned in the sea off Tensorga. Though we know that after you surrender, he will demand you raise his daughter.”

Seven days. That’s so little time. If Andacc is not ready… “Can you get in touch with a man called Andacc?”

She smiles. “The leader of the Church of the Usurper? Yes. Within a day I can have a sister with him.”

“You know of Andacc?”

“We worship Artreos. We also like to know what is happening throughout the kingdom, beneath the surface. We collect information.” Again, that enigmatic smile. “And no, we have not told the king about Andacc or his impending rebellion, though the king has other sources and has been warned by them.”

“You are spies? Collecting information sounds like spying.”

She shrugs. This is the first body language I’ve seen apart from that smile. Are the sisters spies?

“Perhaps. You might say this.”

I may be wrong, but I am convinced of their honest…well, their betraying intentions. This has to be a huge advantage, but is it enough?

“I have only seven days. In one day I will return here. Have that sister with Andacc and ready to talk, to scribe. Okay?”

“Yes.”

As I leave, I call the undead to follow me, and to bring the two soldiers. I may have a use for them, if I can overcome my squeamishness. First, I will need to read some more and search Slaedorth.

One day. I’m frittering away a day while Rorsyd is hurting.

And if Andacc cannot hasten his rebellion…

I jog back to the fortress, placing the undead in their original positions, except for those bringing the enforcers. I leave the enforcers in the area between the gate and the silver door, restrained, of course. Bringing undead inside the fortress seems unwise.

Yet my parents did so.

Even as I walk the corridor to the library, I’m making plans. I should write this down so as not to mess myself up and end up delivering ice cream not undead.

Seven days. Even with a plan, this may be impossible. Same as my idea to make Asher alive again. I should fit that in as well. He feels essential to the future.

I don’t bother sitting. I lean over the books, muttering, jotting notes, making a list.

The floor plan shows where the gheist and etharum stores are kept, and where to find the armory. Everything we missed is downstairs, where it’s gloomy, where Rorsyd and I feared to tread too far. Another corner door in a side room branches out like the ribs of a skeleton. As I trek back down those stairs, skipping along in my eagerness and fury, I have already chosen how to make use of my undead.

There is no time to learn how to create more of them. No time to do it even if I could. I know this. My thousand will have to do. Nine hundred and forty-three. Though I’ve never counted them, I know them and their number as if they are a part of my body.

One day before I can speak to Andacc. Seven to the last day of the king’s demand.

My main desire is to rescue Rorsyd. Helping the uprising is number two.

I need my undead at Tensorga. I know how to get them there, if Andacc can clear the way.

I want my gheist pistol to have more bullets, and I want spare warnite crystals, and more darkthing matter.

The armory is the first room I find. Bullets, yes, and chests, and a wall racked with spears, swords, every damn weapon a woman on a mission could wish for.

“Asher! Can you start to carry these outside. I want to arm the undead.”

Though I doubt he quite gets the full meaning, he begins to do this, making an awful clatter as he drops swords and spears on the way out. After gathering as much bullet ammunition as I can carry, I move deeper into these hidden rooms.

It is dark, yes. Unlike Rorsyd, I have no fear of ghosts. I am unsure what exactly I was afraid of down here. Nothing?

Yes, nothing.

I fear absolutely nothing down here in the guts of Slaedorth. If anything dares to accost me, it will suffer.

The room marked as the storage room for etharum…the door swings open. I crack my knuckles and stride in.

“ Yesss .”

Wall-to-wall crystals and ampoules. Most are strung together like a mammoth abacus, linked to the fortress’s lighting or power, I think? I imagine the spaghetti of metal wires is what that must be. I fill a bag, stocking up on everything. The next room contains the vats of darkthing matter. The walls of this room, and the previous one, are thinly iron-clad.

Which is why I failed to detect all of this.

Even so, the dark blue vats are big enough to swallow a goat or two. I still cannot feel the darkthing matter. And when I peer over the edge of the neck-high vat, there is nothing inside.

I sprint from one vat to the next. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Only the fourth vat contains a puddle of the stuff. Half a bucket at most.

“I did not need this news.” I clasp my head in my hands, rummaging up through my hair. “I have no time to create more.”

And this could be my most potent weapon. I’d need men with dead flesh, decaying wounds. I am not eating up the rest of Anathema. Never ever.

How then?

Tomorrow, Andacc will want to know my plans.

Asher returns many times and most of the armory is now spread before Slaedorth’s walls.

The undead mill about, as usual, ignoring the heaps of swords and spears. I think I can get them to take up arms? If not, they can club enforcers and Aos Sin soldiers to death with their ripped-off arms? Something like that.

I make myself eat lunch while I choose my next step. Everything is a rush. If only I could slow down, but the clock is ticking.

While packing the rucksacks, and repacking them, I decide I will do something I was already considering. Will this make me evil? I don’t know. It will probably scar me for life.

I negotiate the main corridor, barely seeing anything as I pace toward the rectangular glow of the front door where the hinges leak light. Is this worth trying? If I succeed, I could have an ally beside me in battle that no one else could have foreseen. This would also give Andacc more options.

I eye the enforcers where they sit, surrounded by my undead. Fear makes their faces pale and their hands tremble. Perhaps this is a merciful gesture?

No, it is evil, and it will scar me.

They speared Rorsyd, or their comrades did. That that fires me up.

I make a sweeping gesture to command the undead and watch as they hold one of the men in place then smother his head until his screaming stops, his breathing becomes muffled gasping, and then all I can hear is this terrible sucking as he strives to drag in air. It goes on for a minute, two minutes, maybe three. Then…nothing.

His legs shake, and he stills. They release him and step away. The sound of him crumpling carries.

The birds roosting above have flown away. The very air has shivered.

The second man is down on his knees begging me not to hurt him.

I do not hear his words. I shut him out.

“Done,” I whisper. Sweat dribbles down my temples. I have two samples, only, to try this with. My one advantage—I know healing like my parents never did. This is my true excellence in necromancy.

Two chances. I don’t know how to create undead. Healing though. Is this that?

Worth a try.

I open my clenched fist and release the darkthing sphere imprinted with the TOD brain from Harrod, that I brought from the vat. I send it into the newly dead man. I walk up to him, my eyes rolling up as I penetrate the essence, as it seeps and creeps deeper.

Some of his brain is alive still and I can tell what I am doing is impossible in every way, without going further. He is dead and this is useless. I’m doing this wrong. I cannot heal him, leave his brain unoccupied, then imprint it with another. He’s unsalvageable, by me.

Thank the gods, I have the other brain imprint in my pocket.

Haste makes waste. So true.

I withdraw my presence, leave him to fade away completely. The blackness spatters out of him, vaporizing as it hits the air. Wasted.

My parents might have caused him some awful wound and watched it fester for days, turn to dead flesh, then they’d have killed him and extracted darkthing matter. I suspect that’s what they did to some of the men and women on the slabs below.

I don’t have the time to do that. I don’t even have the guts, or the lack of morals?

I frown at this poor man, then dare to look at his kneeling friend, or whatever he is, locking my focus to his eyes. I see you.

I’m sick, aren’t I?

I’m rescuing Rorsyd and the kingdom. Remember that.

“Your name? Are you his friend? Were you?”

He stalls, terror in his eyes, his hands, in the rocking of his body. “I’m Tasker. No. Not a friend. Just, I knew him.” He sneaks a look at the body, swallows. “Please, not that.”

“No. Not that.” I reassure him as I bring the second imprint from my pocket. The darkthing sphere rolls coldly over the skin of my palm.

Last chance.

“Hold him,” I murmur, though there is no need for words.

Once he’s restrained and gagged with undead hands, his head forcibly bowed, I release this second sphere. Again, I close my eyes as it enters the rear of his head, wriggling though hair, skin, and the bone of the skull. It reaches brain and I spread both hands, mimicking the spread as it splits into a thousand tendrils and worms deeper.

I go as far in as I can, then I halt the movement of the darkmatter, letting it dissolve and push the imprint onto this man. When I’m satisfied with the stability, I have my undead release him.

He wavers on his knees.

“Who are you?” I ask.

He’s silent, bewildered, shaking his head, clutching it as if he worries it will topple from his neck.

“Who. Are. You?”

“I…I am Donder. I think?”

Darkness rushes in and reigns with a clawed hand that rips me from reality. Oblivion calls.

His screams reach me, faintly.

From somewhere far, far away.

Sound, smell, light rampages back into existence.

I’m on my knees with my head blasting apart in an agony that reverberates with what he is feeling.

When he falls into a silence that’s as sharp as a descending axe, I lift my head. I know he is dead. I felt him go.

It hasn’t worked. It simply failed, except for one or two seconds where he thought he was someone else.

As I lever myself onto shaky legs, get my feet under me, I brush at my wet face and find blood has leaked from my eyes. I focus on Donder…no, Tasker’s corpse, on the wide stretch of his mouth, the way his eyes are open and staring at nothing. Curls of his blond hair are glued to the ground with liquid—drool or something else.

I killed him. The other man had it easy.

I smear the blood across my mouth as I seek to stop myself gasping in horror, then I vomit all over the ground.

Scratch that notion. No more of this messing around. I have only a few hours left before tomorrow comes and I am?—