Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial

Interlude: Daughter of Shrikes

The days after Rose Malin burned passed in a mad rush. All the great and mighty lords of the Accorded Realms gathered, with all their kings and all their kings’ men, and they rushed about like stunted cockatrices with their heads lopped off.

Emma almost found it amusing. No, she did find it amusing, though no one else seemed to enjoy the joke quite so much as her.

Lot of trouble over some bugger priests, she thought as her wandering steps brought her to an upper terrace of the Fulgurkeep. Ancient pillars held up the roof above her, connected to a short wall on one side over which the great fortress dropped steeply down to lower parapets and crashing waves below.

Her gaze went out over the city, where smoke still rose here and there. Priory sympathizers had been rioting, blaming the Houses for the murder of Horace Laudner, Grand Prior of the Arda. Two weeks had passed since the old power monger’s death, and the guard were just starting to get things under control.

Emma sniffed at the scene. Of course, he goes and makes such a fuss and the nobility still gets most of the credit.

And what did he get? Work. Always more work. And he seemed content with it, the masochistic brute.

Well, he’s not so grumpy nowadays. I suppose I have that blood wench to thank for that. Emma’s lip turned up in a self amused smirk as she ran her fingers along the short wall, which rose just above waist height to her.

“It amuses you?”

The voice was cold, angry. Emma would know that self righteous quiver anywhere. She kept the smile and paused, letting her fingers linger on the edge of a pillar.

“It does, in fact.” Emma turned, seeing a young woman only a year or two older than her standing a ways down the hall. Lisette had changed dramatically since she’d quit the priorguard. She wore a yellow cloak over white robes now, the garments of a Synodite adept — the arbiters of the Aureate Church, rather than the shadowy kidnappers and torturers of the Priory.

“People are dying down there,” Lisette said, her brow furrowed over sky blue eyes. “You shouldn’t laugh at them.”

“They are dying down there, yes.” Emma waved a dismissive hand at the lagoon city. “And I am so very far up here. Perhaps I would be more aggrieved if I could smell the violence. But I find the air quite pleasant high up, don’t you?”

She grinned. The priestess was not amused.

“Does it please you to play at being wicked?” Lisette asked.

Emma adopted a frown, while inside her smile widened. “Play? Why, my dear girl, haven’t you heard? I am the official squire of the Fell Headsman himself! I have an image to uphold, for both of us.”

Lisette let out an angry breath through her nostrils, adjusting the mantled yellow cloak she wore. She didn’t seem altogether comfortable in it, and it had so many flappy bits. It almost seemed like the sort of thing that might be caught by a sudden squall, carrying the poor cleric off into the gray skyline above Garihelm like a flustered yellow bird.

“None of this is funny,” Lisette snapped. Emma realized she’d been smiling again, though not at what the cleric believed. “You think he enjoys this? That he wanted it?”

Emma shrugged and turned, beginning to make her way along the pillars again. “I don’t know. You were there the night he massacred the Priory, not I. I was babysitting.”

She still hadn’t forgiven him for that. He’d promised her they would fight side by side, after that fiasco following their arrival in the capital. Then he’d gone off on his own again. Emma had understood the reasons, of course, but that didn’t mean it did not irk her.

Still, she couldn’t complain at the results. It had been touch and go there for a bit, but now…

She was so very high up.

Emma sighed as she heard all the rustling cloth the cleric had draped herself in move.

“I still don’t understand your role in all of this,” Lisette said as she began to follow, keeping a distance behind. “I know you are highborn. It’s obvious by the way you talk, and how you… treat people. Is this all a game to you? A way to gain power?”

The bloody clericon still hadn’t gotten over their conversation in Myrr Arthor, the great cathedral at the center of the Bell Ward. Emma could see it even from here, its high spires rising over the bay on a tall hill, almost rivaling the island palace upon whose walls she stood.

Almost. The Church was an institute of scribes and preachers. All the power lay with the Houses, with the ancient bloodlines of warlords and knights who’d conquered this land long centuries ago. Emma hadn’t forgotten it, and the Priory had been reminded of it.

“Power, hm?” Emma said in a ponderous tone. “Everything seems to turn on its axis, don’t you think?”

Yes, she thought darkly. Had things gone different, I’d be in Venturmoor and married, with very different prospects of advancement ahead of me.

This was more dangerous, but far more fun. The opportunities were delicious.

Folding her hands behind her back, Emma did a hop-skip forward as she turned sidelong to the cleric, maintaining her condescending smile. “Being honest with you, Lis… can I call you Lis?”

“No.”

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“Right. Well, Lizzie, you’re quite right about one thing.”

Lisette’s pressed lips grew even thinner. Emma continued without losing her faint smile.

“This outcome is quite pleasing to me. After all, I’ve found myself with far more opportunities than even a month ago. Living beneath everyone’s notice had its perks, but…”

Emma spread her hands in a shrug. “Now I don’t need to be quite so… quiet.”

She turned to the end of the hall again. She could practically feel Lisette’s angry blue stare boring a hole into the back of her neck. Again, she sighed. “Did you need to tell me something, or are you just planning to follow me around? Make certain I don’t do anything terribly villainous.”

Emma heard Lisette come to a stop. She did as well, waiting, her head bowed and her eyes closed. Never let them see what you’re truly feeling. Be a wall upon which anger and love break, and you shall be truly mighty.

She still remembered her grandmother’s lessons.

Though she didn’t see it, Emma knew Lisette drew herself up in prim and proper fashion by the rustling of cloth.

“Her Grace would like to deliver a message to your master.”

Emma’s heart skipped a beat. “Oh?” She said, struggling to maintain her blasé tone. The Empress had been ignoring them ever since the trial, partly for political reasons but mostly for deeply personal ones, so much as Emma understood.

She had seen the pain it caused. Had Rosanna Silvering decided to speak to him again?

“Your rooms in the Empress’s bastion are to be cleared out,” Lisette said in a cool voice. “You will be responsible for obtaining new lodgings. Further, all the codes at the sentry posts are to be changed, and neither of you will have access to Her Grace’s treasury. Ser Kaia is seeing to the details.”

Emma worked a moment to school her features before speaking. “I see. Well, thank you for telling us.”

They hadn’t been staying in the bastion since the trial, anyway. Catrin had helped them get lodgings down in the city. They’d moved a few times, trying to make sure no one could track where they slept. They couldn’t do it forever.

That will hurt him.

Why do I care? He was always just a means to an end.

Emma started walking. She’d barely taken three steps before Lisette spoke again.

“God is with you both. We all saw it that day in the throne room. You should keep hope, and—”

Emma turned so sharply, the movement so casual and fluid, that it stopped Lisette’s words dead. Keeping her motions languid, not taking her hands from behind her back, she closed on the cleric in a single long step.

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Without meeting the other woman’s eyes — Emma’s remained downcast, her words soft — she put every ounce of her grandmother’s acidic poise in her voice. She added some of her godmother’s too.

“The gods are with us,” Emma said in a low, deadly calm tone. “Why, Lizzie, don’t you see? That’s just the thing everyone is so afraid of. And it is the reason we are so very cursed. Don’t you remember the second angel?”

Lisette’s face, already pale — she’d gained more freckles since she’d left the priorguard, Emma noted — lost most of its color. She reached for the auremark dangling from her neck, an almost habitual motion, and clutched it.

Emma let herself smile again, though this time the expression had more teeth. “If you ask me, the gods should mind their own business. Perhaps the opinion of an iconoclast warlock such as myself means little, but it looks like their garden is getting a bit singed.”

She waved a hand to the smoke, then shrugged. With a note of annoyance, Emma realized that Lisette was taller than her. Not by much, but enough to notice. On impulse, she reached and tweaked the tassels hanging from the cleric’s mantle. Lisette blushed angrily.

“I preferred you in black. Ah, well.” Emma shrugged and turned.

Lisette collected herself around the seventh step Emma had taken. “You are very good at hiding it. Your fear. But I know you’re scared. For him, for yourself, for all of this. This is your homeland too, Emma Orley.”

Emma, who had been — and still in most ways that mattered was — Emma Carreon, laughed. “This land abhors me. You would too, if you truly knew me.”

“That is for me to decide!” Lisette called after her. “I will pray for you both.”

“Pray all you like,” Emma muttered. What would that help? The ones all those prayers went to hated her, and always would. That had been true from the moment of her birth.

Her good mood thoroughly ruined, Emma passed from the open air hall to a more traditional parapet. The dark stone of the Fulgurkeep loomed high, with the Emperor’s private sanctum above.

They all seemed so intent on pointing out villains. Yet, the greatest man in the Accorded Realms ruled from a fortress that looked like something a dark lord would dwell in. Emma wondered if any of them saw the same irony in it she did.

It was beautiful, the Fulgurkeep, but only when viewed close, when you saw all the art inside, the austere architecture, felt the subtle pressure of aura ancient masons had worked into the stone to prevent it from collapsing under its own weight.

A gentle rain pattered down on her head, pleasantly cool with the growing warmth of the approaching summer. Gargoyles, some of them alive, watched her, their glinting eyes full of distrust. They clutched halberds and cruel axes carved from iron and solid rock, deceptively still.

Emma sniffed at them as well. With a thought, she could have her own monster by her side. She’d been warned against using Qoth, but times were harder now. Alken had gone back on his previous stance, if not his trepidation, and encouraged her to keep the familiar close. He feared assassins, and worse.

She glanced up at the gray sky. There had always been rain in Venturmoor, and mist. She hated rain. She missed snow. There had always been snow on the high hills of the Westvales. That had been a cold country, clean and still as a painting, but beautiful. She hadn’t seen it since she’d been twelve, but she would always consider it home.

Thinking about home, and her past in general, worsened her mood. Clenching her jaw, Emma quickened her pace. She needed to deliver the Empress’s message and help figure out next steps. Alken was attending court, as had been more often the case lately.

As she often did when she was angry, Emma clutched the sword at her hip. The red metal of the cairnhawk worked into the hilt, and the red ruby its talons clutched, was as familiar to her as her own palm, her own heartbeat. She could still remember the day Brenner Hunting had handed it to her, and told her that her parents’ coach had gone off a cliff.

On a lower parapet, a pair of Storm Knights walked the fortress’s winding walls. That put another unwelcome face into Emma’s thoughts. She paused next to a stone angel, its wings weathered to nubs by generations of storm.

She considered the figures in their brassy steel, their dour blue capes.

She had been very cruel to Hendry Hunting. The boy had taken the message, and avoided her since. Even still, she had to admit to surprise that he’d helped them get into the court that day. She’d expected him to be sullen, to become her enemy.

She could handle enemies. She understood them. But hating someone, while also knowing the reason you hated them had nothing to do with their own actions, was more complicated.

Do I hate him? She wondered. I hated his father. And I certainly would have hated him, had our betrothal gone through.

She had tried to find some interest in Hendry Hunting, but he’d been such a sad, uninteresting boy. Always moping about, haunting her steps, trying to make her happy in the hopes his future wouldn’t be a miserable cage. She had no doubt some of Hendry’s feelings had been genuine, but…

God. She was turning into Alken. She had no interest in romance.

But thinking about Hendry, and the damned choir girl, made Emma’s teeth itch. They both annoyed her, the bleeding hearts.

“Wearing your emotions on your sleeve? Anastasia would chastise you.”

Emma froze, shivering as a sudden and very familiar prickling sensation crawled across her flesh, like the stems of barbed roses had suddenly brushed her from toe to neck. Her eyes turned to the dreadful, beautiful voice.

It had come from the statue of the angel. In that same moment, the smooth stone of the effigy’s featureless eyes cracked and crumbled away, revealing empty pits.

“Godmother!” Emma stepped back and lowered her head demurely, clasping her hands in front of her navel. The excitement — and the fear — came as it always had when her patron made an appearance.

The empty darkness of the onsolain’s eyes, though they had no pupil or iris to indicate where they looked, fell on Emma. She could feel that focused attention, like a pressure against her temples. The faint, serene smile ancient masons had carved into the angel statue’s lips was also very familiar.

“I am pleased,” Thorned Nath, Angel of the Briar, said from within the statue. “Cleaving to the Alder Knight’s side has done you well, my godchild.”

Swallowing, her throat feeling very dry, Emma nodded. “Thank you, godmother. I do not regret the decision.”

“Oh?” Nath chuckled. “I wonder if he would be pleased to hear it. In any case, I wished to congratulate you on your ascension. With the Headsman of Seydis now a recognized peer of the Accorded Realms, your own prospects have been elevated.”

Greatly daring, Emma let a bit of irony slip into her voice. “And yours as well, godmother?”

“Ah! My dear heart. You know me well.”

The rush of guilty excitement Emma always felt when her dark patron spoke to her became tempered by a more cautious emotion. Trepidation.

“Do…” She swallowed again. “Do you have some task for me?”

“I am not your mistress!” Nath laughed, which was very unsettling from those stony, still lips, which did not move. “I may be quite occupied soon, as will all my brethren. Powers move in the land, my sweetling, and I am afraid what aid we might give to our chosen will become quite… distant. Your mentor will not be able to pull a stunt like he did before the iron king and be so lucky again, I think.”

Emma nodded. “I will be cautious.”

“I doubt it.” Nath fell quiet a moment, and Emma got the sense the spirit’s attention strayed from her.

Then, in a less whimsical tone, Nath spoke again. “You are in much danger, my godchild. All this realm is. I can speak little of it, for it is all very tangled.”

Emma tried for humor. “Do you not prefer things that way, godmother?”

“…I much prefer when I have tied the bramble vines myself,” Nath admitted. “But know this — it is not only Alken Hewer’s enemies you must fear. As you gain power, and a name of your own, there are still those who have not forgotten your true name.”

Emma felt a chill. “You mean the Carreons?”

“The Carreons were a High House,” Nath said. “Their power reached far, and they had many loyal vassals. Even after a century of decline, some still cleave to their shadow. Step lightly, and use what tools you may. The tarnished knight is right in this, at least. Whether you desire power or no, you will need it to survive and protect what belongs to you. Do not spurn it.”

Once again, Emma’s eyes drifted to the knights. Nath, who had been watching her since she was a child, knew her mind.

“You do not need to feel love to wield it. It can be a mighty weapon. Among the most keen.”

Emma frowned. “You believe I should use the Hunting boy? Take advantage of his feelings for me?”

“It would be prudent. Can you afford to spurn tools? You will be hard pressed to find friends in the Headsman’s shadow. Take his example.”

A cocksure face drifted through Emma’s thoughts. Imperfect, crooked-toothed, with hungry eyes and mussed hair. “I don’t think Alken would appreciate the dhampir being described as a tool,”she noted.

“But she is one! A very useful one, and dangerous. Oh, to have a Child of Ergoth held so close…”

The statue trembled, pieces of it flaking away and falling. Emma felt a chill.

“It remains to be seen whether your master will be wise,” the fallen Onsolain continued, musing. “Perhaps you may guide him to wisdom?”

Emma took a deep breath through her nostrils, steadying her nerves. Keeping her thoughts wrapped in the most haughty voice she could, she nodded. “I shall consider your advice. Thank you, godmother. And I should thank you for before, as well.”

“Hm?” The stone angel let out a sharp sound. More cracks had begun to appear around the eyes, widening them into web-shaped ravines. The dark spirit’s presence was eroding the vessel.

“You saved my guardian’s life,” Emma said. “And likely mine. Not to mention the future I seek. You have my gratitude.”

She turned and waved a dismissive hand. “I really must be going. These chats are always so… pleasant.”

“That’s better!” Nath laughed. “I shall be watching you, child. I have such high hopes.”

When Emma turned, the statue was empty of any dark presence. Most of the head had crumbled away, and briar vines — grown up from some lower garden of the tiered castle over weeks of neglect — ate through it. How had she not noticed that before?

“Tools, is it?” Emma glanced at the knights again. Such an ugly word. Alken would much prefer the term friends. Then again, all his friends seemed prone to betraying him.

Emma had never had any friends. Everyone had been too scared of her growing up. When she’d been quite young, and Qoth had been given to her, she’d thought him a friend for a time. That foolishness hadn’t lasted long.

How did she even know what one was? She had enjoyed teasing the choir girl, but she doubted the feeling was mutual. Alken was more like… a very big, very surly brother? And Qoth a willful, murderous cat. He even took the form of one, sometimes.

She would think about it. For the time, though…

Bells began to toll in the city, drawing Emma’s eyes back down to the lagoon. Spread across all its many islands, the city stirred with some intangible but very real quality, a pressure like the approach of a storm.

Her eyes were drawn to one island in particular, where a ring of high walls formed a long, oval pit, a cleft splitting the end which faced the east, where the rising sun would shine through it.

Soon enough, it would be full of roaring crowds, clashing steel, and singing phantasm. The boiling power inside Emma, a legacy as real and deadly as the heirloom sword at her hip, began to stir.

The Emperor’s tournament started soon.