Page 1

SENARIA

“What have I done, condemning Senna to such a fate?”

–Quote from the hidden journal of Amund Wraithion.

“Hurry,” the boy said, his gray cassock flapping like the wings of a startled bird. “The red priests will kill him.”

“Where?” I asked.

“The small chapel. Not far.” He gestured toward the stone floor. “Watch out for the blood.”

I’d already stepped in it, the blood. Not on purpose, but in the low light I hadn’t seen the smears across the floor, and now it oozed cold and sticky between my toes.

The boy looked down and frowned. “You wear no shoes.”

“I like to feel where I walk.”

He considered it before asking, “Can you see through that veil, or are you blind?”

“I see you.” A shudder rolled through him, but this acolyte was not the enemy. He was merely the messenger, trying to survive .

Overhead, the cathedral’s arched ceiling faded into shadow, and the massive pillars held up nothing but gloom.

Chandeliers hung from black chains, blind sentinels without mage lights or candles to light the way.

Beneath my feet was a mosaic in blues, golds, and reds—the images of forgotten kings and the demons they fought against.

From the high windows, milky light fell in angled slices; once, painted glass had filled those windows, but only memory lived there now.

Incense chased the damp and dark with a mix of cloves and black roses.

The forbidden Altar of Orm lay in pieces.

Deep in the darkest voids, votive lights guttered, faint coals wrapped in ruby glass, gleaming like drops of heart blood.

Some said it was a bad omen, those flames in the wreckage, as if war fires still smoldered.

But the flames were tribute candles. Penance candles. Left by the families of the condemned.

The chilled air brought bumps to my skin; I refused to rub them away. Not when the acolyte watched my every move. He’d make a good red priest one day if they beat that innocence out of him. Already, he was gangly and bruised, but still eager to report to his mage masters.

Finally, he said, “The king owns you.”

“Yes.” The king did own me, but not the way the mage priests owned the boy.

“They call you Silk.”

Or the king’s fist behind the white veil. There were other names, but Silk was as good as any.

“Then it’s true,” he said. “You kill people? ”

“No. I don’t kill them.” But people died because of what they told me.

“You lie with your magic.” The boy marked his steps to keep the required space between us. “You make a man believe what isn’t true until he betrays himself. Tells you things.”

“I offer mercy,” I said, while the birds roosting in the broken places swirled upward with rustling wings, as if they argued the point.

I let them rustle and kept my thoughts to myself.

The boy hurried on. He was young for an acolyte, barely more than a child, but perhaps he’d had no choice.

Poor families often sold their magically gifted sons to the Davinicus priests.

Few people had any magical talent in our world, and to have enough for the red priests meant hope.

It meant food for families on the edge of starvation.

It meant a safer life, and the power of the warrior priests in crimson cassocks, wrapped in broadswords and magic, lured even those with the weakest mage abilities.

But magic was not always coveted. More often, magic was despised.

Magic like mine.

I wasn’t a military genius or a healer. Around the great libraries, my skills were useless, with none of my father’s scholarly ability.

I couldn’t seduce like the king’s favorite courtesans.

But what I could do was unlike any other magic ability.

I could get into a man’s mind, alter his reality.

Make him believe the untruth when the truth was right in front of him .

What I had was a psychic ability, a liar’s magic, useful to the thief or the interrogator. Or the king, who often had need of both.

And in this world, where people were ranked by their talents and their usefulness to the crown, I was…useful.

The king called me his justice speaker, the inquisitor behind the veil. Silk was the embodiment of Judgment—blindfolded while she searched a man’s soul—and more than one prisoner had confessed his sins, believing he boasted to his friends or his lover and not to me.

Some said it was the same betrayal, what I did with my magic. Mental treachery at the king’s command. Creating an illusion. Tricking men into confessions they’d never share if they realized the consequences.

But my illusions were nothing compared to what the red priests did to find the truth. They cared about the torture, and I supposed, the blood. The screams.

I offered mercy in the only way I could, searching a man’s mind. Finding innocence or guilt with less pain…and afterward, if I cried about what I did for the king, no one was around to see the tears.

The boy turned where the transept crossed the nave, and I followed. I’d been told about a prisoner, but not about his crime. Had he rebelled against the king or against his miserable life? Was he old and resentful or young and foolish?

Had he begged for Orm’s salvation when it was forbidden? Or was he someone who lied, cheated, killed?

In the stone corridor, wall torches spit black fumes.

Pained male voices echoed. Along the walls were iron cages, large enough for a man to sit with his knees drawn up.

I shuddered at the number of men, the deprivations they endured.

One wasted soul scraped something metal against the cage bars, the sound erratic, tired.

A fresh rivulet of blood ran between the floor stones; I walked through it since the hem of my gown was already stained. But it was as the king decreed. The king said blood stains reminded men of justice and consequences, and I should be proud of the red.

I looked neither left nor right. Ignored the curses because I’d heard them all before. The reek of urine and despair filled the air, and I forced myself to enter the abandoned chapel—a space deserted only by the living. Draped over a wooden brace was a body.

Above the body, a massive painted window spilled rainbowed light.

The image featured a benevolent king with his hands outstretched.

And the callousness in men who displayed death like an offering curdled my stomach.

Was this the prisoner I was here to question? Had they already killed him? We were rivals, after all, the priests and I. Looking for the same confessions…

But no. The priests would not defy the king.

The body was there to unsettle me, and I stood stiffly as men filed into the chapel and stood against the chiseled walls.

The red cassocks, and the hoods concealing their faces, marked them as red priests.

Black leather belts and broadswords marked their purpose.

Gauntlets covered fisted hands where bands of silver crisscrossed in the distinctive pattern—three straight lines crossing to form a six-pointed star.

The mage star. Deadly stars of magic and power and brutal righteousness.

We would never get past it. The priests hated me. I feared them. But I was the king’s justice speaker, and not even these warrior priests could keep me out of their minds if I invaded them. Such was my magic, my gift .

“We grow impatient,” one priest growled, his voice like grinding rocks. “Show us the king’s fist.”

Fear nicked my composure, but I was here at the king’s command, and I would be Silk—although I would not do it in front of a gray-cassocked boy.

I focused my magic until I was deep in the boy’s mind, finding the details…

how his name was Wilem, and his family had indeed sold him for what amounted to a year’s worth of grain and a fishing job for his father.

He relied on bravado when he was afraid, leaving me little hope for his future, and it was easy enough to prompt the offer Wilem made to the nearest priest.

“With your permission, sir,” he said, “I will guard the outer door.”

The priest flicked his hand, but as Wilem hurried away, suspicious mage magic flicked toward me. I let it pass without reacting.

“Where is the prisoner?”

“Here.” The priest gestured and a wooden cupboard door opened.

Bile burned in my throat. The contorted body fell onto the floor.

Young, male. His cheek pressed against the stones.

Ropes restrained him, ankles drawn up and bound to the wrists tied behind his back.

Another rope circled his throat, and every time he struggled, he also strangled himself.

The prisoner’s clothes were homespun and repaired—torn now and bloody. No shoes, what I would expect. Lanky brown hair was wet and longish, even for the current fashion, crusted with mud and woven with the bulbous amber waterweed that was such a nuisance in the nearby harbor.

A seaman then, or a fisherman, although he was close to my brother’s age, sixteen or seventeen. But like Nikias, this boy was too young to be in the hands of the red priests, and I focused not on him but on mercy . The illusion I had to cast.

I dropped to my knees, smoothed the hair from the prisoner’s bloody forehead.

It was easy enough to use my magic when he was in distress.

I hooked into the emotions, followed them into his mind.

Soothed the fear and slowed his raging heartbeat.

I learned his name was Sevyn, the sole provider for three orphaned children and an old woman with maimed hands, and I murmured, “You are safe now. You can tell me.”

Sevyn smiled with cracked lips, revealing broken teeth.

In his mind, he wasn’t bound and lying in blood.

Instead, he saw himself curled warm and safe in the arms of the old woman.

He heard her voice, not mine. Felt her crooked fingers, not my cool hand brushing against his hair.

Deep in the illusion, he breathed, relaxed, and believed… what I needed him to believe.

He said, “You told me not to go.” Sevyn had been fishing at night—a forbidden act, but minor as infractions went.

Many people broke the law to feed their families, and the king ignored the crime to keep the frustration tamped down.

For the fishermen, the risk was minimal—unless they were caught by a red priest when the priest’s mood was foul.

“We hooked something strange. A fish, longer than I’ve ever seen, blue-finned, flat. White enough to be dead, but it fought us something fierce. Nearly lost the boat. One man came from the frontier. He said it was a doomsday fish. Said it meant disaster.”

“Had you met the man before?”

“He was a stranger.”

“Why was he fishing with you?”

“Vargr wanted him. Said he’d tell us about the Malice Moon, that we weren’t close to being prepared.”

“The Malice Moon comes every seven years,” Silk said. “Why is this time different?”

“Bad this year. People are finding things. In the desert. In the sea. The rebels know all about it. They say the magic is fading. Vargr said we should join. Help ourselves because the king doesn’t care shits for us.”

“The mage magic is fading?” Mage magic kept our lands safe when the Malice Moon made its transit, and if the power of the red priests was fading…so dangerous, this confession. In front of the priests that Sevyn accused.

But I was the king’s justice speaker, his fist. And if there was a danger to the king...

“What proof have you?”

“One red priest spoke of it…how the rebels were right about the magic… ”

“Does the priest plot against the king?”

“He didn’t say.”

But there was something wrong with this confession. Wrong with Sevyn being bound, tortured by mage magic. Wrong with the urgency to kill him before he revealed what he’d seen.

And this boy was so like Nikias, the innocence and idealism…My pulse stuttered. Nothing merciful lived in this interrogation. Sevyn would be killed. I had no doubt. The priests would do it with glee, and I was here to witness the death.

But Sevyn hadn’t taken part in any rebellion. He’d overheard the wrong information. He’d never brutalized the weak, or betrayed his king. And what the priests had planned…

Each passing second became a stone on my heart, crushing while I stared at the ruined body on the wooden rack and realized I wasn’t here to interrogate Sevyn. To discover his innocence or guilt.

I was here to see that I had no influence. Not even with the king’s favor. I could not stop what would happen next. Sevyn was already close to death, and he suffered while I struggled, when I had to be Silk. Cold, hard…delivering mercy…

I stood and turned toward the nearest priest, slipping my magic past his defenses, planting the impulse in his mind…because a death that came swiftly, unexpectedly, was mercy.

The priest slid his broadsword from the scabbard. I listened to the soft whoosh as the blade sliced. The thump before Sevyn lay motionless and at peace .

But as ruby-colored blood spread across the floor, my heart raced. I’d learned too much. Perhaps I’d even uncovered some threat against the king that the red priests wanted hidden.

Even worse was the way I’d used my magic, invaded a priest’s mind, and forced him to do my bidding.

In unison, the priests reached for their broadswords. As the blades left the scabbards, the sliding rasp had me shaking. I sank deep into my magic, reached for some illusion I could use and found nothing. No way to change their intentions. No ability to flee.

I braced against the cramping in my throat. This moment was meant to frighten me. I was Silk, the king’s justice speaker…They would not dare…

“Enough.” The king’s voice rumbled as he stepped from the shadows, a looming force that made the priests bristle.

I dropped to my knees, pressed my forehead to the floor where Sevyn’s blood was cooling.

“Sire.” My fingers trembled against the stones. “Your will is mine.”