Empire of Dust (13 page)

A furious anger boils within Jacob. Cynane has defiled what he holds so dear. He lunges for the pin, but she writhes away from him. Even restrained, she is fast. He grabs hold of her chains to keep her still, but Cyn lifts her head, slamming her skull against his.

Jacob's body becomes white-hot. A tingle shoots from her metal cuffs into his fingers, then stings up through his arms like an angry bee. The stinging intensifies until it fills his entire body—overwhelming and controlling him. He has lost all sense of self and has become the furious red of his eyelids. Pain sears across his palm, and a curious odor fills the air—the tang of molten metal that pervades a blacksmith's shop. Fighting through the angry haze, Jacob finally opens his eyes.

Cynane's chains glow red.

And as he watches, a link twists open, followed by another one. The cuffs burn bright, curl open, and fall off.

In a heartbeat Cyn sits up, flings off the chains and throws herself at him, managing to wrench her legs free of the quickly hardening mud. Despite her ordeal, she's strong and scrappy, while he is suddenly filled with an exhaustion as immense as the forests between Erissa and Pella. Jacob feels as if a wild wolf cub has jumped on him, thrashing and biting and scratching.

Wildly, he cries out and pushes Cynane hard against the wall, but she scrambles to her feet and races out the open door into the darkness, leaving behind her chunks of what looks like concrete. Jacob makes a step to follow her, but his body does not respond to his commands. He feels as weak as a newborn foal, his legs shaky and awkward. Time has stopped for Jacob. He just stands there, blood dripping down his cheek.

Last time he felt warm blood on his skin, he was on the battlefield, holding a dying Katerina in his arms. Then, he'd also felt something strange course through his blood. Not the burning sting that just overtook him, but a warm, gentle fizz, like the tiny bubbles of sea foam popping under a summertime sun. Like the time in the palace when Kat touched the wound on his arm and it healed.

Both times before, Kat had been there. But today—today she was not. The only similar things between now and those other times was the blood, the leftover exhaustion...and Jacob. In his still dazed mind the impossible thought comes to him:
Me. I did those things. I did that.

As the curious thought tumbles and whips through his mind, men's shouts echo in the courtyard. Boots slap against paving stones.

Timaeus arrives first, panting. Taking in the melted chains, his face twists into a mask of shock and horror. Quickly, he scoops them up and throws them into a cracked amphora in the corner just as High Lord Gideon and Bastian enter.

“The watch just saw the prisoner climb over a wall,” Lord Bastian says, unsheathing his sword with a ringing sound that echoes throughout the room.

“Lord Jacob, put down your sword,” Gideon commands, warning ringing in his voice. Jacob quickly removes his sword belt and throws it on the floor.

Other Lords clamber into the room holding torches and drawn swords, their faces orange in the light of the flames as Bastian speaks loudly for all to hear. “You helped her escape!”

“No!” Jacob says, his heart and head pounding. What must it look like? Cynane, chained and partially embalmed, escaped, and he was the only one watching her. It all happened so fast he is still trying to figure it out. He looks at the men's hard faces, their horned shadows looming monstrously large behind them in the fire's glow. Suddenly he can hardly get his breath. What will they do to him?

“She—she used magic!” he sputters. Standing in front of the cracked amphora, his arms crossed, Tim gives Jacob a nearly imperceptible nod. “She scratched my face and the chains disappeared. She—”

“There is no time for explanations.” High Lord Gideon's voice slashes through Jacob's stuttering explanation. “Ambiorix, have every spare man saddle his horse and search for the prisoner. She might get far in the night, but we will find her tracks in daylight.”

Jacob feels rough hands grab his arms and yank them behind his back. Though his muscles scream as they are stretched, he doesn't do anything to shake Bastian and Turshu from him. The pain doesn't matter—all that matters is what the High Lord will order next.

Gideon's voice rolls out like thunder. “Take Lord Jacob to the dungeon. In seven days' time, he shall be tried by the Inquisitorial Council. If he is found innocent, he shall be allowed to remain a Lord.”

He turns his eyes toward Jacob, who feels the weight of their gaze. “If Lord Jacob is found guilty, he shall face the fate of all traitors: immediate death.”

Chapter Twelve

THE HARD WALL
of rushing water thunders behind Kat as she stands in the cave behind the waterfall, just below Ada's fortress. The last time she stood here, the torches on either side of the opening in the back burned a bright welcome. Now they are dark. A splinter of ice-cold fear pierces her heart.

She hears an intake of breath as Hephaestion slips beneath the pounding waterfall to join her. The reflections of silver-blue light dance around the rock walls. Once, she had thought the fractured light looked like guardian spirits, but now she thinks it looks ghostly—more like phantoms of the underworld than protectors of a sorceress queen. She shivers.

A strong hand envelops hers, and Hephaestion squeezes her fingers. A few weeks ago, Kat would have shaken his comfort away, but now she is grateful that someone—even if he is an arrogant aristocrat—is with her.

Her fear melts a little as Heph removes the fire starter kit from the pouch on his belt. For several long moments, his sparks don't hit the tinder, and she feels her heart is going to burst out of her chest if they can't get moving. No sooner has he lit a torch than she pushes past him into the dark tunnel, knowing he will be right behind her with the light.

Kat walks straight into something warm and sticky that coats her entire body. When she opens her mouth to scream, she inhales something gooey that clings to the back of her throat, making her choke. She has run right into a thick, grayish-white netting blocking the corridor from ceiling to floor.

No, not netting. A giant spiderweb.

“Heph!” she calls, coughing and spitting. When she tries to turn around she finds she's stuck, glued to the spot.

He's there in a heartbeat holding two torches, which he puts in the nearest wall brackets, then starts slicing away at the web with his sword until Kat can wrench herself free. She brushes them out of her face and pulls them off her arms, grunting in disgust.

Heph holds a torch up to the dangling shreds. “I've never seen a spiderweb this big. Almost as though a single giant insect created it.”

Panic grips Kat's chest.
Ada.
What has happened to her? Who has done this? Or has Ada done it herself to keep out an enemy, the Aesarian Lords, perhaps? Then she remembers Ada telling her that her own brother spent most of his time in the minds of spiders, so much that it had driven him half-mad. Could he have anything to do with this?

At her silence, Heph adds: “Any spider, small or large, should flee from our torches.” He hands her a torch, takes the other one, and keeps his sword in his right hand. “Let's go,” he says.

They walk cautiously down the twisting corridors. When they come to forks, Kat remembers the way, and finally they emerge in Ada's throne room.

The room is sunk in darkness, the air hot and oppressive. Heph and Kat raise their torches, and the flickering light reveals more webs blocking out the windows and hanging from the huge iron chandelier. When Kat approaches one of the windows, hundreds of tiny spiders scuttle away from the light, and for a moment she feels their surprise and fear.

She whips around, casting her light in a wide circle. The floor is littered with feathers—black, tan, and white. But the dozens of silver bars protruding from the walls where Ada's birds used to sit are empty. Where is Ada? Where are her twin servants with the yellow eyes and beaklike noses?

A movement catches her eye, and Katerina sees a solitary spider crawl out from under a feather. It runs haphazardly, as though it's being chased by some unknown prey. Kat bends down and places a finger in its path. As the hairy bristles of its leg brush her skin, she momentarily seems to be wheeling wildly around the room, desperately searching for escape in a whirlwind of shrieks and feathers and fear.

Movement blurs four of her eight eyes, and she can feel the human part of her wish that she still had eyelids to block out the confusion of her two front eyes.

Sticky silk tears and webs shred in the chaotic flight, and she knows she must spin for protection.
Spin to trap. Spin to hide. Spin, spin, spin...

Suddenly tremors shudder up through her long, spindly legs. Too late! A rush of warm wind—or maybe hot breath—sears the spider's body. She zigzags across the room, not knowing anymore which way is up or which way is down. Lost its home. Lost its siblings. Lost its eyes.

They were afraid. Something evil was coming.

The knowledge jerks Katerina from the spider's brain and she falls hard on the floor, her torch rolling away. The blind spider disappears into the corner shadows.

Loss and dread creep into her veins, and there's an empty feeling in the pit of her stomach. The mercenary on the ship was right. Ada is truly gone: fled, captured, or dead. And once again, Kat is too late.

Too late. Too late.
The knowledge consumes her like a massive tide, taking her breath away.

She's too late to save the Carian sorceress, too late to help the one remaining connection she had to Helen.

She clutches her head as if that might help squeeze out the pain inside it. What's the use of her powers if she can't control them and can only use them to discover, too late, atrocities she is unable to stop? Is she doomed to end up alone—all her loved ones dead—left with just her own mind driving her to madness?

“Katerina, what's wrong?” Heph's voice comes from far away, as if he is speaking through water. Tears sting her eyes, but she doesn't want to cry in front of Heph. Not after he found her in the meadow, reeling from the news about her family in Erissa.

She heaves in a breath, trying to focus her vision on the dark walls around her.
Pull yourself together
, she tells herself, breathing deeply again before looking at Heph. “I'm just...worried about Ada,” she says.

She holds out her hand and Heph pulls her to her feet. She picks up her torch and sets it in a wall bracket behind Ada's throne, which she pretends to examine, as if looking for some clue. It is a masterpiece of craftsmanship, the back a spreading peacock tail of green agate, turquoise, and lapis lazuli. The arms are peacock heads with onyx eyes and silver beaks. The golden seat rests on four carved ivory legs, each one ending in long, fingerlike talons. Kat places a hand on the top of it and closes her eyes.
Ada.

She hears sounds that remind her of her foster mother, Sotiria, ripping old clothing into rags for cleaning.
Sotiria
... It seems she can't get away from painful memories no matter how hard she tries. Bright light enters the room from one of the windows. Blinking rapidly to clear her eyes, she sees Heph attacking the next web, ripping open the thick spider silk. When all five windows are clear, letting in cool, fresh air, he approaches Kat, sweat running down his cheeks.

“That's better, isn't it?” he asks, and she can hear forced cheerfulness in his voice. “Less...tomblike, anyway.”

“She was the only one who understood.” Kat's voice sounds brittle, dry like the herbs Helen used to hang upside down from the rafters.

Heph wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. “Understood what?”

Kat walks unsteadily to one of the windows where long shreds of tattered spiderwebs dangle in the breeze. She looks over the green valley below and begins to speak. “My m—Helen, told me never to speak of my strange ability with animals.”

She takes a deep breath, then turns away from the window to see Heph, his dark eyes fixed on her. “I can... It's hard to explain, but I can feel what they feel. Hunger. Fear. Curiosity. Pain. Pleasure. I know what it's like to be a fish in cool, dark water, a bird gliding through the air, a goat chewing on weeds.” She laughs bitterly. “I can even...talk to them in a way, though not in words.”

Heph's face is still, expressionless. She wishes she could understand him as she does birds and horses and even hellions.

“Helen said never to speak of it,” she continues. “That the world could be dangerous for people like me. And I didn't. I never even told my best friend.”
Jacob
. Her dear, sweet, strong Jacob.

A thought occurs to her: Jacob doesn't know.

It is unlikely he would have heard the news of what the queen did to his family. Jacob deserves to know the truth and to mourn for them properly. Then again, part of her hopes he'll never have to find out.

She turns back to the window, and her heart sinks again at the sight of an empty sky. No kestrel wings its way toward her with secret messages. Not today. Maybe not ever again.

She suddenly feels Heph standing beside her. “Go on,” he says, touching her arm.

“When I came here, Ada told me I have Snake Blood. Like her. Do you know what that is?”

“I heard something, once.” She can make out the frown in his voice though she continues to stare out at the sky. “The legend that long ago, gods mated with humans and created two kinds of Blood Magic, Snake and Earth Blood, right?”

She nods. “Yes.”

“Then...” There's a silence and Kat imagines all the strange things that have happened since she's arrived in Pella flashing in front of Heph's eyes. Her ability to call the hellion—the vicious flying panther in King Philip's royal menagerie—to battle with the Lords, her sudden lethal prowess with a shield and sword, the gazelles. Finally, he speaks again, “And Alex... Him, too?”

She nods. “Yes, but different from mine, I think. I'm more comfortable with animals and insects while Alex understands people better than me. It's what will make him a great king, one day.”

Heph considers this, then nods slowly. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, you're right.”

“Besides Alex, as far as I know, only Ada shares this gift. She was the first one to explain I wasn't a—a freak. She gave me hope, but now all hope has flown away with her.” She puts her head in her hands, feeling the tide of devastation rising inside her, threatening to pour out. She has been holding it in ever since they left the palace, punishing herself, silencing her emotions.

Pressure on her shoulders turns her from the window, and she lowers her hands to look into Heph's eyes. Sunlight reflects in them, and for the first time Kat notices they are not just a uniform dark brown. Black striations dance through them, with tiny stipples of amber, and they glow with an inner fire. “We still have a mission, Kat. And I need you.
Alex
needs you.”

“Everything I touch gets ruined,” she says, breaking free of his grip, a tear slipping down her face despite her best efforts not to let it. “Don't you see?” Her voice breaks. “You'd be better off continuing without me.”

“That's not how it works,” he says firmly. “This is about Alexander. This is about Macedon. It's not about your self-pity.”

His words are like a slap. “Self-pity? You don't know anything about how I feel.”

“Maybe I know more than you think.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means we all have our losses. But we can't afford to be selfish,” he snaps back. “Alex—your
brother
—sent us to help him and you cannot collapse into a puddle of tears because Ada is gone.”

Her cheeks burn as the truth of his words becomes shame in her heart. “I love the prince but I have room in here,” she says, slamming her hand against her chest, “for more. It seems like you can't understand that. Are you really just Alex's plaything?” She knows the question is a barb. She hopes it stings. “Don't you have any desires of your own?”

For a second, she thinks she's gone too far. Now his eyes are black. Blacker than the sea at midnight, and she can't tell what he's thinking. “I do,” he says gruffly, and then he leans forward, closing the gap between them.

His lips touch hers and suddenly he's kissing her, hard and deep.

And she's kissing him back.

Heat floods her, rolling in waves from her head to her toes. She leans in, and his tongue curls around hers even as one of his hands finds her waist. The pain is still inside her, but it pulses now, hot and passionate, surging into her fingers until she can't help but let them run through his hair. His body is taut against hers, lithe and wiry, so unlike Jacob, who felt more like he was carved from a massive piece of stone.

Jacob
.

Kat wrenches herself away from Hephaestion, races across the throne room and into the dark corridor, trying to breathe. She reaches the end and pushes open the heavy arched door before hurtling into Ada's room.

The windows are covered here, too, thick with webs and dust. She sinks her hands into the spider silk and pulls, the material tearing apart like unspun wool, the little fibers cutting hairline fissures into her palms.

Jacob flashes before her, his warm brown eyes shining with happiness as he stands with her in his mother's vegetable garden and slips something into her hand. “You see?” he says in the memory, smiling as she examines the brooch he made for her. “It's flecked with gold. Like sunset on the river. Or the gold flecks in your eyes.”

Touching her lips, she remembers their first kiss in the pond the day before he left for Pella and their world started to fall apart.

She hears footsteps and her anger flares again. She turns to see Heph standing awkwardly in the doorway, holding a torch. Looking at him, she knows he is the exact opposite of Jacob. Tempestuous, unpredictable, and contradictory, like fire on wind. How could she care for two such different men?

“I'm sorry, Katerina,” he says. “I shouldn't have... I won't do it again. I promise.” He takes a few halting steps into the room. “But I understand more than you think,” he says and stops, keeping distance between them. “I, too, lost my family. I thought I found a new one in Pella, but now even that seems uncertain. I don't...” He pauses, and she notices for the first time that there is a boyishness in his face, the look of someone who is tough because he has had to be, forced to hide the vulnerability inside. “I don't know
where
I belong.” The final words come out like a whisper.