Page 38 of House of Dusk

The Heron had arrived in Bassara late in the second year of the siege.

Whispers flitted through the camp that he had brought some new weapon, one that would end the war by winter.

They had joked about it. Vyria had guessed it was a battering ram, powerful enough to take down the giant bronze gates.

Calchas thought it was a spell—even then there were rumors that the man was a mage who spoke with the voice of the abyss.

Zander said it was trained ferrets that would sneak in and steal the reliquary.

Even Sephre had been hopeful, though she suspected a battering ram was more likely than trained ferrets. Then one day she was summoned to his tent, to report on a scouting mission along the western ridge.

She found him at a worktable. There was a rat—the camp was thick with them—splayed out before him.

Dead. Sliced open, organs neatly parceled out.

Sephre had no idea what the man was doing.

But the look on his face haunted her. A fierce, pitiless focus.

An absolute dedication to tearing free the answers he sought.

He had the same expression now. She was the rat, and he was trying to flay her open, to weigh and measure her organs. To catalogue all the deepest parts of her.

“The Bassarans could have ended it,” he said. “All they had to do was return the Faithful Maiden’s reliquary. They were the ones who stole her from her people, who cursed her spirit. We were there to bring her home. To set her free.”

Sephre bit the inside of her cheek. She’d believed it, once.

That the war was a holy thing. She’d stood at the railing, watching the black prow of the warship slice through the waves toward the isles, her brow slippery with a smear of ash.

The priests had smudged each of them as they filed onto the ships, destined for glory.

And if you fall, know that your spirit will rise anew, and be rewarded in your next life.

For this is a holy quest, to restore the Faithful Maiden to her home, and to her eternal beloved.

But no war was ever holy. She knew that now. Those bones so many had died for might not even belong to the unnamed woman who wrote that journal. It was sickening. All those lives, spent on a lie.

“Is it the Bassarans you mourn?” asked Lacheron. “Or your own people? There were many losses, I recall.”

Zander’s blue eyes held her, agonized, pleading. Please, Seph. She drew a shuddering breath.

“But they were soldiers,” said Lacheron. “They accepted the sacrifice.”

“And what have you sacrificed?” The question wrenched out of her.

For the first time, she saw something raw break through his careful mask of disinterest. Pain.

Regret, even? Had she actually hurt him?

It seemed impossible. And yet the way he stared at her, she might have been holding a dagger to his throat.

Finally, he tore his gaze away. “I lost the one person who mattered most to me. And I know I will never get her back.”

She took hold of herself. She had no sympathy for this man. None. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I can help you. Unless you need something from my herbarium? I have a very good cassia and broadleaf tea, excellent for the bowels. My secret recipe. It’ll clear you right up.”

Foolish words. But better he think her a fool. Let him take insult, and go.

Lacheron didn’t look insulted. He looked...thoughtful? Suspicious? She probably shouldn’t have mentioned bowels. Still, he did not press the matter, only nodded. “No, thank you, sister. You’ve already given me enough of your time.”

He skimmed away back down the steps, leaving her alone with the flame.

· · ·

The wine wasn’t working. It was supposed to dull the pain, and yet the ache was as sharp as ever. How many cups had she had? Sephre tried to lift the jar. Her fingers slid off the slick clay, nearly toppling it. Too many , apparently . And not nearly enough.

If anything, she felt worse. It didn’t help that she’d spent the night on the summit, keeping watch. Drifting at the edge between sleep and panic, expecting Lacheron to return with a dozen strapping soldiers wielding pick-axes and hammers, come to claim the Ember King’s prize.

But the Heron had not returned. Maybe even he drew the line at desecrating a holy shrine. Or maybe he already had some other plan in motion. All she knew for certain was that he would not give up. She had seen the conviction blazing in his colorless eyes, there on the summit. It frightened her.

Maybe it was pure self-interest. Lacheron had helped make Hierax into a king, after all.

Sephre had been, what—twenty-four, twenty-five?

A simple soldier, her days full of training and duty and her own personal ambitions.

Even so, she’d heard the mutterings, watched the officers leaning close over braziers late at night, trading the latest news of the ailing queen, Erycina.

Erycina had three children, but succession in Helisson was often a messy business, given that an inheritance of spirit could be as—or more—important than mortal parentage.

The fates of Erycina’s blood heirs was proof enough of that.

One dead, having eaten “bad snails.” Another disappeared, supposedly fled across the sea in a fit of religious fervor to walk the Bleeding Sands.

The third bundled off to the flying hills for his own safety, having been identified as the most recent incarnation of Lygo the Luckless.

And into that void stepped Hierax. He’d always been popular with the generals, in large part due to his family’s monopoly on the trade in tin, so vital in the forging of bronze for weapons and armor.

He’d even married a Scarthian bride, to ensure he alone controlled the imports from the northland.

But even that might not have been enough to open the door for Hierax, if it weren’t for the prophecy of his Fates-touched daughter proclaiming him the Ember King reborn.

Convenient, of course. Even Sephre—naive and desperate to believe in something—had wrinkled her brow over it. But only briefly. Because the streets were full of bards singing the tale into surety. Every trusted soothsayer confirmed it. If there were any voices of dissent, they went silent.

On the day before the royal investiture, Sephre had stayed up half the night polishing her armor, combing out the crest of her helm so it would fall in a perfect crimson cascade.

It had been exciting, thrilling. There was eager talk of new campaigns, new chances for glory under King Hierax, who promised that Helisson would rise as a second empire under his rule, regaining all that was lost in the cataclysm.

It sounded rich and fine, something to be carved in stone for all the ages to witness.

That eager girl with her shining armor and her shining notions felt like another person to Sephre now.

Not a stranger, exactly. More like...

a younger sister. If only she could reach back through time and shake her.

Tell her that glory was a sword with no hilt.

That it sliced you open if you tried to wield it.

What would have become of her, if she’d been less naive? Would she have left the army? Returned to her father, to sheep and high mountains and the life that had once chased her away with simplicity and tedium?

Or maybe she would be dead. Hung from a thorn tree with a severed tongue, like the governor of Tarkent, and her husband, and two of her children.

Because the governor’s teenaged son had sung a ridiculous song about the Ember King trying to woo the Faithful Maiden with a series of increasingly large and suggestive vegetables.

Because anything that questioned the glory of the Ember King was a threat to Hierax’s power.

Like, say, the fact that the Faithful Maiden had not died in her supposed lover’s arms, but had instead fled to Stara Bron and hidden his most powerful weapon beyond his reach and named herself faithless. That the bones he had waged a war over might not even be hers.

“Sister?”

Timeus stood in the herbarium doorway, the early evening shadows etching his cheeks and wide eyes.

The knot in her belly relaxed, just slightly.

She could use a distraction. Something uncomplicated that even she couldn’t corrupt.

He was a good lad, and she’d missed him.

“You’ve excellent timing, Brother Timeus.

” She set her palms to the table to hold her wine-soaked world steady.

“How would you like to learn the proper way to grind plessuda root? I promise, it’s not nearly so tedious as it sounds. ”

He shifted his weight, reminding her of the first day he’d shown up in her garden.

“What’s wrong?” Her voice went sharp, honed by a series of terrible possibilities. Halimede, dead. The dagger, found.

“N-nothing, sister,” he stammered. “I’d be happy to learn how to grind plessuda. But...I was wondering...that is...I need your advice.”

Sephre blinked. Since when was she wise enough to give out advice? “Did you forget how to tell the difference between the skinbite and the mint?”

“Smooth must shun, jagged harms none,” he recited. “No, it’s that...well . . . Sibling Vasil wants me to take the crimson vigil. They said we need every ashdancer we can have ready to face what’s coming.”

Sephre let out her breath, caught by an unexpected burst of pride, sweet enough to drive back the despair that had been swamping her. “When?”

“Tonight.” His smile flared and faded. “Or...some other time...whenever I’m ready.”

“Vasil thinks you’re ready.”

“I suppose so.” He eyed her. “But do you ?”

“That’s not advice,” she said. “That’s permission. And you don’t need it.”

His expression twisted, wrestling with this. He didn’t believe her.

“Do you want to be an ashdancer?” she asked, more gently.