Grey just watched, hating himself more and more for not helping the poor pregnant girl. Then again, maybe she’d created her own problems, just as he had, and now she had to live with her decisions. Still, he felt sorry for her, and wished he could do something.
But he couldn’t risk it. If he helped her now, the captain might decide he didn’t need Grey to scrub the decks anymore. And then Shae would have no one to come and find her.
So he gritted his teeth, breathed deeply, and went back to scrubbing, until the sun turned red on the horizon, the waters darkened, and Grey’s palm was so raw it burned.
It had been three days since the incident with the captain’s daughter. Already, the memory had grown fuzzy around the edges, falling into the category of Things That Don’t Matter.
Right? This voyage was all about finding his sister. And anyway, he had no right to intercede in relations between father and daughter.
And yet every time Kyla’s memory began to fade, Grey would find himself thinking about the way her belly had protruded like a ripe melon, how she’d been the first one on the ship to smile at him, to ask about his sister, to seem to care. Then he remembered the way she’d cried out in pain as her father dragged her away by the hair, and how he’d ignored it, pretended it wasn’t happening.
He realized he was no longer scrubbing the deck, but banging the wooden back of the brush against it. Thud! Thud! Thud!
“Oi! Cripple! Keep it down, will you!” one of the seamen hollered. He was doing real work, lashing the sails to a pole, angling the billowing canvas so it would catch the wind just right. Helping to move the ship closer to where his sister had supposedly gone, to the Dead Isles.
Grey muttered an apology and went back to scrubbing.
His infected stump was getting worse, throbbing and stinging.
Another three days passed before he saw Kyla again. He was passing by the captain’s quarters, heading for the bunk rooms, when the door flew open with a bang. “Don’ test me, girl!” the captain shouted.
Inside, someone was crying, and Grey could just make out a round form hunched on the floor, her face covered by her hands.
As if Grey didn’t exist, the captain slammed the door shut and stormed past, muttering, “Her ma wuld roll over in her grave…aye she wuld…”
Grey stood stock still for a moment, listening to the muffled sobbing. Slowly, he raised the heel of his hand to his head, pressing it into his skull. Keep going. Just keep going. Not your problem. Not your fight.
He took a step away, and then stopped. Godsdammit. I must be the biggest fool in the Four Kingdoms…
He turned and opened the door, hissing, “Kyla,” before stepping inside.
The girl’s crying stopped and she turned, her wet eyes peering between curled locks of brown hair. Her hands immediately went to her belly, rubbing it through her clothes. It was like some kind of an instinct. “Grey?” she said.
“I—I wanted—I wanted to—” Why couldn’t he get the words out?
Don’ speak to me daughter agin, ye hear?
If he finished this sentence, was he risking his sister’s life? If the captain found him in his quarters now, Grey knew it wouldn’t matter either way. He’d already crossed a line, and he might as well take advantage of it.
“I wanted to make sure you were unhurt.”
“You did?”
“Aye.”
“Thank you. And I’m not hurt. He didn’t touch me, not with his hands. Only with his words.”
“What words?”
“Whore. Charlatan. No good lass.”
Grey was sorry he’d asked, though he was puzzled by one of the insults. “Why charlatan?”
The girl flinched, as if the word was a wasp that had stung her cheeks. “He says I’m no longer his daughter, that I’m an imposter, a fraud. That his daughter died when my mother…”
She blinked away tears, dashing the few that escaped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Thank you for coming here, Grey, but you should go. If he finds you talking to me again…he will think the worst.”
What did she mean? What was the worst? It dawned on him. Oh. Gods. He would never. She was younger than him, and eight months pregnant, and—
“If you ever need anything, come find me,” he said.
He left, closing the door behind him. He stood there for a moment, breathing, just breathing, mentally berating himself for making such a foolish offer.
Thankfully, another week passed without him seeing the captain’s daughter. Perhaps she forgot about what I said, or didn’t take it seriously. Perhaps she isn’t a fool like me. Or maybe she just doesn’t need me.
He tried to forget about her, cleaning out his wound thrice a day, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. Pus kept leaking out. It was hurting more and more each day, and he was finding it harder to perform his scrubbing duties.
Then, one day when he’d finished his work, he was looking over the bow of the ship at the endless sea of blue, gnawing on a hunk of crusty brown bread and nibbling on pickled sardines. The sea was a mirror, as calm and glassy as he’d ever seen it. The sky, the clouds, and the sun were all reflected in the blue-gray waters, and Grey could almost imagine that if he jumped, he might fall either up or down, the probability in equal proportion, like the flip of a golden coin, tumbling end over end, never landing. He was just contemplating what that might mean, when he heard a voice. “Psst! Grey!”
At first he couldn’t figure out where the whisper was coming from. He looked up, at the crow’s nest, but his gaze only drew a well-aimed wad of spit from the watchman in the tower.
As he wiped the spittle from his cheek with his shirtsleeve, a melodious giggle arose, not from above but from below. He stared down into the churning white-capped ocean, wondering whether the infection in his stump had traveled to his brain, addling his mind.
“No, you buffoon! Down here!”
Grey leaned over further, his gaze traveling down the curving wooden planks of the barnacle-riddled bow, to the figurehead at the front, a rusting sea-green statue of a naked woman with a long fishtail.
And perched atop the statue’s head, her legs crossed underneath her, was Kyla, the wind whipping through her curls, billowing her gray frock all around her, revealing a large portion of her smooth brown thighs.
Grey immediately feared for her. Being big with child, surely her balance would be thrown off. At any moment she could topple over, and then she’d be gone, lost beneath the waves. And yet she seemed perfectly at ease, both hands resting lightly against the side of the ship.
“Give me your hand,” Grey said, reaching down. “I’ll help you back on deck.”
“Why did you offer to help me?” Kyla asked.
Grey didn’t have an answer, because he didn’t truly know himself, but he replied, “I’ll tell you after you’re safe on deck.”
“I like it better down here. Down here I don’t have to be me.”
The words were like knives piercing Grey’s chest. Not because of how awful they were, but because he understood them. It was why he’d changed his name and disappeared into a big city like Knight’s End. To start over. To be someone else.
“What happened to your mother?” Grey asked. Again, the words were out of his mouth before he could consider whether it was rude of him to ask such a personal question.
Kyla looked away, her stare trained out at sea as the wind whipped her hair and dress around her. Grey was sorry he’d asked, fearing he’d made her cry.
But when she looked back up at him, her eyes were dry, her expression fierce. “She died and my father died with her.”
Before he could consider how to respond, or if he should respond, she clambered over the side of the statue, vanishing into a hole in the hull.
Grey and his family—his ma, his da, and Shae—were living in Restor at the time, a traveler’s town on the western road, halfway from the Bridge of Triumph to Knight’s End. One day the Furies themselves rode through the town, their red
robes flowing behind them, their long silver swords flashing. A young boy, Grey was enamored by their energy, how they seemed to command attention from all who looked upon them.
His parents were scared. “Get inside,” they said to Grey and Shae. “Hurry.”
They peeked through the windows as the Furies went house to house, looking for something…or someone. Five houses away. Four. They were carrying torches, though it was not yet dark.
“Son,” Grey’s da said to him. “Protect your sister above all else.”
“I will, Father,” Grey said, although he didn’t really understand what was happening.
“We need to show you something,” his ma said, using tongs to extract an ember from the hearth. “Give me your hand, Shae.”
Shae didn’t hesitate. At only five, she already wasn’t scared of anything. Her mother brought the ember close to the palm of her tiny hand, which immediately bloomed with golden light. A strange shape took form, the lines curling into a crown and then extending to a spindle, which was broken at the end.
His sister’s eyes were huge as she stared at the glowing mark. Grey felt a shiver of fear race through him. No! he wanted to scream. Not her. Why her? In that moment he knew exactly what sort of people the Furies were looking for. They called those that bore sinmarks demons, and now Grey knew his sister was one of them.
But he didn’t see it that way. She was a pure spirit, his best friend. And she was only a child, while he’d had his eighth name day and was becoming a man grown. His da’s words pulsed through his skull. Protect your sister above all else…all else…else…
“We have to leave,” Grey said, suddenly understanding.
“Yes.” His ma nodded, tears shimmering in her eyes. That’s when Grey knew she wasn’t coming with them.
“Through the back window,” his da said. “We’ll follow just behind you.”
It was the only lie his da ever told him.
The only thing that followed them was the sound of the Furies breaking down their door and the shouts of a struggle. And then nothing.
Grey awoke screaming, thrashing at the knotted sheets tangled around his body. His stump was pounding like a blacksmith’s hammer on an anvil. A hand burst through the dark, snapping across his face. “Shut yer crippled trap!” a voice said. “Some o’ us are tryin’ to sleep.” It was one of the deckhands, leaning over the top bunk.
Grey stopped shouting before the sailor chose to hit him again. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I need some air.”
He untangled himself from the sheets, balling them up and stuffing them next to his pillow. Then he stumbled above decks, where the salty ocean air immediately stung his nostrils. He stared up at the sky, which was clear and dark, speckled with more stars than he’d ever seen in his life. He wondered whether the western belief in the seventh heaven was real, and if so, whether his parents were there now, looking down on him from the red, green, and gold stars.
He hoped not; because if so, they would know of his failures, his weaknesses. They would know that his only friend was a pregnant girl and that he’d broken his promise and been unable to protect Shae.
The longer he stared at the night sky, the more the stars seemed to form shapes, most of which were random patterns and designs, until he saw it: a mark. A golden crown, connected to a shiny, narrow spindle, which extended outwards…
Though he’d only seen it once, the memory of Shae’s mark was etched in his mind forever. Her mark ended partway along the spindle, almost as if it had been cut off before it could be finished.
To this day, neither Grey nor Shae knew what power her mark gave her, a fact that had never really bothered him until now.
But now he could see the rest of the mark, formed by the stars above.
The spindle continued further, ending when a rectangular piece stuck from the bottom. Grey’s breath hung in the air, his unblinking eyes stinging. The mark wasn’t a crown and spindle at all. No.
It was a key.
A key for what?
I’m just being a fool, like usual, Grey thought as he walked along the deck. He’d finished his work for the day and was too tired to be hungry. And too hungry to be tired. It was certainly one or the other.
But neither hunger nor weariness mattered right now. All that mattered was what he’d seen in the stars.
I saw nothing, he reminded himself. I’m no star-reader. Shae’s mark could be a key, but it could also be some kind of a scepter, or a hairpin, or a pointless trinket given to a child.
And yet he couldn’t get the key out of his mind, how it sparkled with possibility.
A scream shattered what was left of the day, freezing Grey in his tracks. It had sounded like a girl’s scream, and there was only one girl Grey knew of on the ship.
Kyla.
The scream had been muffled by wood and distance, arising from somewhere below decks. Grey rushed toward the stairs, jostling for position amongst the other seamen, who were doing the same thing. “Watch it, cripple!” one of them warned.
The scream fell away, and now there was a lower, different sound, somewhere between a groan and moan. Grey tried to push through the men, who were packed shoulder to shoulder.
“Pathetic girl,” someone said.
“Wrath is punishing her for her sins,” another decided.
Grey’s heart was in his throat, but still he fought his way forward. Some of the men were already turning around and heading back up top, even before the captain’s booming voice rang out. “Let this be a lesson to ye all: Yer sins will always bury ye in the end. Now move along. Leave the whore-child be.”
More men turned, elbowing and shouldering Grey as they passed, but he barely felt the hits.
And then, abruptly, he was alone in the narrow corridor, staring into the captain’s quarters. The captain’s frame filled the doorway, but Grey was looking past him, through the narrow gap. The first thing he noticed was Kyla, collapsed on the floor. The strange guttural, almost animal-like noise was coming from her.
The second thing he noticed was all the blood.
Fifteen
Unknown Location
The Beggar
He awoke to whispers, which were, at first, as unascertainable as the sound of the wind, but which slowly came into focus:
“Four dead. Four dead. Four left. Four. Only four. Then peace. Death, then peace. My fate. Mine alone. Mine mine mine minemineminemineminemine SILENCE!”
The last word was the roar of a lion, echoing through the darkness and making the Beggar flinch.
And then: “Are you awake?”
The Beggar said nothing, wracking his brain for anything that might explain his current plight. It all came back to him in a rush: being captured by the Empire; Empress Sandes coming to him, plotting to use his plague against her enemies; and then the unexpected appearance of the shadowy boy, who grabbed him, who pushed him, who made him kill her.
Oh gods, what have I done? the Beggar thought. But it wasn’t a thought, he’d spoken the words aloud.
“Not you,” the voice said. “Me. You were just a tool. I am the Kings’ Bane. But you can help me.”
“How?” The question came out before he could stop it.
The bearer of the voice shuffled closer. The Beggar blinked, his eyes adjusting to the murk, which was turning gray. He was garbed in a thick cloth—the boy’s cloak, he remembered. He could just make out the curve of a hairless, pale scalp and the young boy attached to it. The boy seemed to be shaking slightly, his entire body trembling.
“Don’t come any closer,” the Beggar said. “I’m dangerous.”
Bane ignored his warning and moved closer still. “You’re not the dangerous one,” he hissed. “The kings and queens and emperors and empresses are the dangerous ones. Their pointless wars result in thousands of deaths. I only want eight, and then the violence can stop. We can have peace.”
“But how do you choose?” The Beggar had never been able to choose. Death came to him like flies on feces.
“The ruler in each kingdom must die, as well as their true heir.”
The Beggar frowned in the dark, rocking his body to sit up. Pale orbs stared at him, too close for comfort. He crab-walked back three paces. “But what if the ruler isn’t a warmonger? Or what if their heir wants peace?”
“They are all warmongers!” Bane screamed.
The Beggar was so shocked by the force of the outburst that he fell backwards. “What do you want from me?”
Bane staggered and then fell to his knees, shaking even harder. He breathed deeply for a few moments, as if trying to gather his strength before responding. “I want you to be my partner. I want you to be my friend.” The boy’s tone had changed. He sounded so…young. So innocent. Not like the killer he was. Then again, the Beggar heard a bit of himself in the boy. Bane crawled closer, still shaking. “I don’t fear you like the others. We could be brothers. On my own, I can cleanse the kingdom of those who would destroy it, but it will be a slow process. I grow weak each time I use my powers. Exhausted. I sleep for days, sometimes weeks. But you…if you help me it will change everything. Peace will dawn upon the Four Kingdoms before winter comes. Here. Take my hand.”
The Beggar shrank back from the ghostlike fingers that darted through the gloom. “No. You’ll die.” Wait. Wait. Perhaps that would be best. Yes. He could kill this murderous boy and then die himself. Would that redeem him? No, he knew, but still, it would be better.
“I’m wearing gloves. Thick ones.” The gloved hand grabbed his before he could squirm away. The fingers squeezed, and Bane’s face eased closer, until he could feel the boy’s breath on his face. “Now we are one in purpose. Swear it.”
“I—I—” Even through the gloves, Bane’s hand felt warm in his. The human contact was like nothing he’d ever felt. For once, there was no fear, no shame, no regret. Just a connection between two people. Two would-be strangers. Was this boy really seeking peace? And if so, could he truly be a part of something so important, so noble? He had nothing left to live for; except perhaps this. “I swear it,” he said.