I simply had to survive until I found an heir. Promised to Anure, I couldn’t conceive a child without bringing his fury upon me and Calanthe. And I’d die before I’d have a child of his abominable blood mixed with Calanthe’s. A pretty prison I found myself in.
I gave Glory a moment while she bent her head over the ring in stunned admiration—who could blame her?—breathing in the fragrance of the living orchid. True Calantheans sense the magic in the gorgeous bloom, even if they don’t know what it is they feel, and the encounter is nearly a religious experience. Perhaps Calanthe Herself whispers to them. No one has ever said, and I won’t ask. I try not to rush the moment.
But finally I set my feet on the stone floor and used the leverage of the Glory’s grip to rise. More to snap her out of it than because I needed to. I wasn’t that old. Court rituals, however, have taken the place of the magic spells we practiced before Anure killed all the wizards. Though empty rituals like welcoming the Morning Glories arguably do little to protect us, we nevertheless cling to their assiduous practice to fend off disaster.
I suppose it makes us feel better, though disaster seems to find us regardless. Magic had deserted us, leaving us only with science to fight the monsters. I sometimes entertained the notion of skipping some rituals—or even controverting them—as a test. But the risk of finding my way into even worse trouble always seemed too great, especially just to satisfy my curiosity.
So I followed the dance steps, allowing the Morning Glory to take my head scarf, which she would keep as a memento. In my rare whimsical moments I imagined thousands of my scarves, stained from the oily sweat of sleep, enshrined in towns, cities, and villages across the realm. I really didn’t want to know what they did with them.
I only wished the nebulous comfort of the orchid ring had enough magic to silence the rest of the world, to banish the nightmare images that clung to my thoughts in sharp-edged fragments, refusing to disperse.
As my ladies and Glory helped me into my bath, I used the quiet to clear my mind. They washed, dried, then oiled me from toe to scalp. A practical aspect to the custom—the Glory could attest to my continued good health, my nakedness hiding nothing, dispelling the rumors that I was anything but a human woman for those spies of Anure’s in my court. Not that any Glory would say so if she detected otherwise, which was why every one was carefully chosen for her connection to true Calanthe. A discretion and loyalty that cannot be shaken.
The daily sameness of the bathing ritual usually allowed me to order my thoughts—and my plan of attack—for the day. But missing the dreamthink left me in the grip of the nightmare images. If only I could wash them away, too, along with the sticky dregs of the night.
These dreams had been more specific than usual. A wolf fighting heavy chains, howling in hoarse rage, shedding fire and ash as the sea churned beyond, bloodred and crimson dark, bones tossed in the waves, white as foam. Then the tower that fell into a pile of golden rubble, then to fine sand, the grains sliding against one another with soul-grinding whispered screams.
I often got fragments like that—memories of the forgotten empires and abandoned kingdoms, mourning their lost kings and queens, forever replaying their deaths and destruction.
But in these dreams, I’d been present. I’d stepped close to the wolf, ignoring the falling tower, the distant cries of the flowers as they burned, shedding crimson petals into the sea to stain the waves, and put my hands on the wolf’s chains. He savaged my bare hands with his fangs, my blood running into the sea also, staining it. Screaming with the pain, Calanthe fell in fire and ash while I ignored Her cries and persisted in my foolish task. Breaking my fingers on the wolf’s manacles, I tried to free it, knowing it would be the death of me, the ruin of all I loved and had vowed to protect. Then, in place of the wolf, a voiceless man stood, holding out an empty hand. A demand. A question.
None of it made any sense. There was nothing I could do to help the world.
I’d considered asking my diviners for their interpretation, but some quality of the dreams made me afraid to describe them aloud. If I knew any wizards, I’d ask them. Calanthe spoke to me in Her own ways that even my brightest philosophers could never understand—especially those not born on the island. No matter how many invitations I sent to bring the best, brightest, and most creative to Calanthe, no one had ever answered the call who could answer my questions.
The land communicates in images and symbols, in the blooming of the flowers and the fall of the rain, the songs of the birds and the swish of fish through the waters, whispering into my dreamthink self, sometimes in the florid movements of the orchid ring. My father only hinted at how I’d have to learn to interpret what Calanthe tells me before he died so precipitously. In this, as with so many things, I was on my own.
I had to consider that the change in the dreams meant something dire.
An omen. A warning.
But of what?
2
The imperial soldier screamed as I swung my hammer in a remorseless arc. The sound stopped, silenced by the satisfying crunch of his skull collapsing. Mad joy filled me, along with the taste of blood and grit—and the sweetness of vengeance.
But only until I sighted the next target. Leaping, I used the momentum to swing my bagiroca and punch it into the soldier’s kidneys. The thick leather bag filled with heavy stones dropped him to his knees. I brought round the rock hammer in my other hand in a counterswing to the head that crumpled the man. With him down, I took out another soldier trying to sneak up on Sondra’s back, cleanly crushing him with the same one, two strike. Freed to focus on her opponent, she launched into a sequence of furious slices, her sword flashing in the sun, reducing the soldier to a bleeding pile to join his fellows.
“Thanks, Conrí!” she called, flashing a satisfied smile. A feral, lethally sharp smile, and one that mirrored my own, no doubt. After all the years of chains, labor, and lashings, none of us tired of this—the freedom to strike back. The clean rush of retribution and victory. If only for that moment.
I roared, pointing the army behind me to surge forward, and we both wheeled to find the next volunteer to die. A phalanx of soldiers approached from the off side and I launched myself at the nearest of them, muscles singing with power. Here was the strength they nurtured by forcing me to labor for them in the mines. Here was the hammer they handed me to crush the rocks they coveted. They created me, all that I am, and I relished using it to beat their evil brains from their useless bodies.
Sweat ran in hot cracks through the dust coating me, hair whipping into my face driven by the coastal wind. Ignoring all of it, I chewed through their ranks, mentally howling the mantra of my revenge. Rocks. Hammer. Rocks. Hammer. Like a hero of the old tales, except there was nothing good or noble left in me. The child prince called Conrí had died when he’d been imprisoned and then escaped from the mines as the King of Slaves. They meant to mock me with it, but I owned the title. Rocks. Hammer. Rocks. Hammer.
The imperial soldiers fell before my might like wheat before a farmer’s scythe. The Slave King’s gruesome harvest, making the worthless into fertilizer.
One sweet day it would be Anure returning to the shit he sprang from.
A boom crashed over the landscape. False thunder shook the already faltering ranks of the enemy. Weak as well as worthless. Only the spineless and morally corrupt could stomach working for the false emperor, especially since we’d offered them the honorable alternative of joining the rebellion. The defense broke, imperial soldiers scattering. Some ran for the forest bordering the Keiost plain. Others for the city that would no longer be their haven.