Page 53 of A Crown of Lies

“You’re right,” he said after another long pause. “What right does anyone have to any crown? The Divine have given me this vision for a reason. It is my great burden. The crown will be heavy, and it will not be won easily. They will resist, you know, and Ostovan has no army. How will we prevail?”

A cold wind whispered through his mother’s tomb, rasping against the sarcophagus wall. The torch flame twitched and danced with it.

“Yes,” said Michal excitedly. “I see, I see!” His smile fell. “But what if Queen Olga has a son? I cannot kill my own half-brother. Well, because he’s my kin! I know, mother, but there are some lines even a prince should not cross. Killing a babe in its cradle is reprehensible, even to me.”

After a moment, he hung his head with another sigh. “Yes, of course, you’re right. The Divine has given me a task. This is my trial. My divine calling. Like Saint Caius, I shall obey the higher calling.”

He kissed her again and carefully climbed out of the sarcophagus. The lid felt lighter as he slid it back into place, even as his heart felt heavier. Finally, Prince Michal knew what he had to do. It would be painful, and bloody, but wasn’t that true of every birth?

Seventeen

Thesoundofclashingsteel and wood filled Greymark’s courtyard. It was early on the fourth day of training, and Rowan was exhausted. Though the healers had seen to the cuts and bruises Simeon and Divina had left him with, his body still ached. All he wanted to do was crawl back into bed and sleep the day away. It was a perfect morning for sleeping in, too. Fog clung to everything, and the air had cooled well below the normal temperatures for that time of year.

Thankfully, there had been no frost. Most of the remaining harvest would survive the cold shock, but only if the farmers brought it in soon. Ieduin might get his way after all when the farmers reported early from their fields. The unfortunate side effect of that would be a smaller than usual harvest, which would be even worse on their already strained stores.

Rowan tried not to think of that as he brought his targe up, blocking Rixxis’s war hammer. She pulled the blow at the last second, dampening the impact, which she didn’t have to do. The small, round wooden shield strapped to his arm had been reinforced with leather to spread out the impact, and he had plenty of padding on his arm to take the hit. He shoved the shield up, redirecting her war hammer and exposing her entire upper body. Her eyes flared wide, and she leaned back as the blade came to rest against her neck in what would have been a fatal cut.

“You can hit me harder, Rixxis. I promise, I can take it,” he said, pulling back to reset.

She frowned. “You can, but that tiny wooden shield on your arm might shatter if I hit it full force. The bones in your arm with it.”

“Better a broken arm than death,” he said.

“I don’t mean to kill you.”

He grinned and winked at her. “I can think of worse ways to die than fighting a beautiful woman.”

His words had the intended effect, and she flushed red before advancing on him with a good swing that he easily dodged. He moved up beside her, sword coming in under her arm where there’d be a gap in her armor. She spun away, but he was prepared, and she nearly backed right into the dirk peeking out from beneath his targe.

Rixxis scowled, frustrated, and backed away. “That’s not fair.”

“If you expect a Greymarker to fight fair, you’ve got another thing coming,” he said. “Ready for another?”

Before Rixxis could reply, Ieduin interrupted them, stomping out into the practice yard with a handful of papers in one hand and a steaming mug of coffee in the other. “I don’t believe it! I don’t fucking believe it! Those assholes have fucked everything up!”

Rowan lowered his weapons and frowned at the approaching elf. Despite the coffee, Ieduin looked almost as tired as him. Ieduin had been asleep when Rowan left him, but gone when Rowan returned, which had left him disappointed. He’d been hoping for another round.

“What is it?” the king asked.

“Reports from the scouts I sent out to Dagh Cairn,” Ieduin said, holding up the papers. “And you’re not going to like what they have to say.”

“Oh?” Rowan lowered his shield and sword.

“The entire structure apparently collapsed,” Ieduin read. “Traces of magic everywhere. When they started digging through the rubble to investigate further, guess what they found? You’ll never guess. Not in a hundred years.” Ieduin lowered the papers.

Rowan knew, but he was careful not to let it show on his face. “What did they find?”

Ieduin cleared his throat and read directly from the report. “We uncovered human remains and quickly decided, out of respect for the deceased, to recover them. The dead seemed to have other ideas. They started climbing out of the rubble after us. We made every attempt to fight them with minimal damage to the bodies. However, we found the only foolproof way to put them down for good was to break them into small enough pieces they no longer presented a threat.”

Ieduin lowered the papers. “The damn thing bit one of my people! A fucking dead man! The only good news is we grabbed a straggling bandit and questioned him, though he had nothing useful to say. Kept going on about ghosts and the Wild Hunt, swearing up and down that the Thief himself and his minions had killed his fellow bandits or run them off.”

Rowan let the point of his sword rest in the dirt. “Shouldn’t you be pleased apparitions have done half your work for you?”

“Pleased?” Ieduin snorted and walked over to lean against a nearby fence, scanning the page again as if it would say something different. “I’m furious! Do you know how many resources I had tied up in this mission that won’t happen now? And not just that. With everything else I’ve got to deal with, now there’s some vigilante out there taking matters into his own hands.”

“A vigilante?” Rowan frowned.

“Well, yeah. You don’t actually expect me to believe a bunch of gods and ghosts killed dozens of bandits?”

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