Five Dark Fates (Three Dark Crowns, #4)(71)

‘Where’s your guard?’ she asks, watching him wander the shop, touching this jar and then that, sometimes impressed, sometimes disdainful.

‘Outside.’

She looks through the window. One warrior, armed with a sword, stands before the entrance.

‘One guard. This really is a shoddy rebellion.’

‘You are not wrong,’ Pietyr says. ‘When your Legion Queen and her commander race off alone, without advice of counsel or any preparation. The war gift. It is so impulsive.’

‘They care about each other, if that’s what you want to consider impulsive,’ Arsinoe snaps defensively, even though had he been anyone but Pietyr Renard, she would have agreed. ‘And they’ll be back soon. So don’t get any ideas.’

‘Soon. If they return at all.’ He pulls a jar of hemlock off a shelf, removes the cap and inhales deeply. Then he replaces the cap, and Arsinoe watches the jar disappear down his sleeve as if it never was.

‘Aren’t you usually supposed to wait until no one is looking?’

‘I thought you might indulge me. You know, poisoner to poisoner?’

Arsinoe narrows her eyes. He has his color back, whatever color an Arron can be said to have. And he is as handsome as ever in his haughty, deceptive, murderous way.

‘The guard outside,’ he says, and nods to her, ‘she thinks me soft. That I would not make it far in these wilds if I tried to run. She thinks I do not need much guarding.’

‘And is she right?’

‘That I do not need much guarding, yes.’

‘Oh, really?’ Arsinoe finishes tying a bundle of herbs and drops it into a drawer. ‘So you don’t intend to run back to Katharine as soon as you spot the chance?’

‘I will not deny that I want to see Katharine very badly. Almost as badly as I do not want to see her.’

There is more than fear in his voice. There is dread, and Arsinoe is surprised to find that she believes him.

‘What is she?’ she asks. ‘What can she do?’

‘I do not know. Perhaps not even she knows. When she sent the dead queens into me, I think it was by accident. A reflex.’ He smiles weakly. ‘Or perhaps I do not want to admit that she would try to kill me.’

‘She sent the dead queens into you, so she can send them into anyone?’

‘I do not know.’

‘You don’t know, or you won’t say?’

He rounds on her, eyes burning.

‘I do not know. But I think you should assume that she can.’

He leans against the shelves. He is awake but not fully recovered. Perhaps he never will be.

‘It’s odd to see you so dejected,’ Arsinoe says, and he lifts his head. ‘I always thought of the Arrons as such a hard people. Driven, if a little lacking in passion. Yet here you are. And your broken heart is plain to anyone looking.’

‘Broken-hearted and a fool. I should have known what she was becoming. I should have always been afraid of her. Yet how could I be when she was not a monster to me? Take care, Queen Arsinoe. I thought I was safe. But no one is.’





BASTIAN CITY




Jules and Emilia ride hard from Sunpool, pushing their horses to the limit with Jules’s naturalist gift and trading them for new mounts when they can go no farther. When they stop at night, Camden hunts for them, and Emilia builds fires. They speak little and keep moving. It is when they skirt south past the capital that they know they are too late.

The path of the army is impossible to miss. A great number of mounted cavalry rode out toward Bastian City in haste. And a great number had already returned.

Emilia studies the tracks. She looks ahead, to the east. No smoke rises from where Bastian lies. Or at least not enough to see from such a distance.

‘The horses are tired,’ Jules says.

‘Push them again. One more time. Please, Jules.’

They ride on. The closer they get, the more uneasy Jules becomes. They have passed no bands of wounded. No fleeing survivors.

‘Perhaps the wall held,’ she says, ‘and the army couldn’t make headway.’

Emilia says nothing. She nudges her horse with her heels.

Bastian City is visible for a long time as they ride, and they stare at it, searching for movement. As they near the wall, they see the holes, the places where it has been breached by catapult. There is still no smoke, and all is quiet. As if the city has been abandoned.

They tie their horses outside of the wall, and Emilia runs inside, sword drawn.

‘Emilia, wait!’

But she need not have worried. They are far too late. Inside the city, Emilia stands amidst a carpet of bobbing heads and shifting wings. Carrion birds and seagulls arguing over the feast of dead. There are so many of them that the ground seems to seethe.

‘Emilia—’

‘Get them out!’

Jules hesitates. The birds are terrible, but the sight of what they hide could be much worse.

‘Get rid of them!’ Emilia kicks at the gulls and slices black feathers from the tails of crows.

Jules takes a breath.

‘Go.’

The birds lift their heads as if waking from a dream. At once, they take wing, stirring the foul air and revealing the fallen that they fed upon.

‘We should hurry,’ Jules says, watching them fly high above the city. ‘Someone may have seen that.’