Exile

BETSY DORNSBUSCH

NIGHT SHADE BOOKS

SAN FRANCISCO

Exile
© 2013 by Betsy Dornbusch

This edition of
Exile
© 2013 by Night Shade Books

Cover art by John Stanko

Jacket design by Claudia Noble

Interior layout and design by Amy Popovich

Edited by Jeremy Lassen

All rights reserved

First Edition

Print ISBN: 978-1-59780-452-3

E-ISBN: 978-1-59780-453-0

v. 1.0

Night Shade Books

www.nightshadebooks.com

For Mom

Terror is our only enemy.

We defeat it by dying.

—Brînian proverb

Chapter One

“C
ut her throat. His own wife.”

Draken vae Khellian couldn’t escape the whispers. Chains shackled his wrists to a ring in the ship’s hold: the chains were just long enough for him to reach the bucket that served as a toilet. His arms bled from the heavy metal bands and he cramped from sitting in one position for so long, but the physical pain didn’t compare to the agony tearing at his heart.

“Probably thought he’d get off, being the King’s cousin.”

Bastard cousin, Draken thought. Korde knew it didn’t count for much now.

“I heard he was a bowrank commander in the war,”
said another.
“Fought off the coast.”

And decorated for it, too.

Draken had passed the better part of three sevenmoon in the dank prison ship, listening to the sea slap the wooden sides, quivering from rotgut and trying to ignore the whispers from the other three prisoners. They rarely rose to direct taunts, but he heard them all the same.

Draken kept his head down and his eyes slitted at a rat. It edged nearer, whiskers twitching. If it got close enough he could snatch it for the biggest meal he’d had in weeks.

“Truth? Royal blood don’t spare you from what you are.”

The last was louder, spoken by the youngest of the prisoners: Sarc, a lanky boy-man convicted of a rape and murder spree. The beatings and worse indignities Sarc had suffered while waiting for the prison ship had been relieved by Draken’s arrest and conviction. Draken had paid in flesh not only for Lesle’s murder, but also for the double offense of having both royal blood and Brînian blood pumping through his veins. Nobody liked a half breed.

Gods keep him, the other prisoners didn’t know his wife had been gutted and blooded like an animal, as Akrasian magickers did for their black spells. If his fellow prisoners suspected him of magicks, he’d already be dead.

“Land!” Feet slapped the deck and ropes banged as the rigging creaked overhead. “Ho, Captain! Land!”

Draken lifted his head.

“My lens.” The captain’s voice, crisp, clear.

Footfalls scuttled overhead. The rat darted away.

No one in the belly of the ship met the others’ eyes as the hatch overhead opened, admitting cool sea breezes and a rectangle of blue sky. The captain didn’t sully her polished boots on the hold floor. She didn’t even show her face as she called down, “Half-day to Akrasia, dogs.”

Draken leaned his head back and laid his bleeding wrists in his lap. He stared at the patch of sunlight glaring through the open hatch and drew in a breath thick with stinking men, sea salt, rotted fish, and body waste.

Akrasia.

The arse-end of the world.

***

The prisoners assembled on deck to find the ship anchored in a quiet bay. Crisp sea breezes cut through their prison-issue: loose tunics, ill-fitting breeches, rags wound around their feet in lieu of boots. Their hands had been branded with the sigils of their crimes. They’d been convicts long enough to watch them blister with infection and heal badly.

Hollow with hunger, Draken slouched next to the others. His arms felt light and loose without the chains. The cuts on his wrists stung in the sea air. The sun warmed his back as it glared off the shining deck.

The captain, dressed in the bloodstone uniform befitting her station, stared hard at them. Once, Draken had outranked her. Even after he’d left the navy for the secretive Black Guard, they’d maintained an acquaintanceship, frequenting the same balls and occasionally the same skirmishes. She took a step toward him, fingers whitened on her sword hilt.

“By order of the Monoean Crown, it is my pleasure to carry out your sentence of banishment for your crimes against our people.”

The rowboat still swung on its ropes overhead.

“You don’t mean us to swim?” Sarc hissed.

The ship’s crew echoed Sarc in a mocking whine and burst into laughter. Sarc scowled at the sea and shivered. The other three prisoners shuffled their feet. Strictly speaking, the ship had brought the prisoners to Akrasia. They were well within her waters. But forcing them to swim sorely tested the Monoean custom of letting the gods decide their fates in exile.

“We’re due to patrol the Hoarfrost in two sevenmoon. I don’t have time to ferry you to shore.” Her eyes locked on Draken’s. Lips curled in a sneer, she gestured to the rail. “Officers first, Commander.”

Draken walked to the rail and looked back at the captain.

She arched an eyebrow. “Maybe you’ll find your Brînian father there, eh, Draken?”

He didn’t react to the taunt. Slave children and bastards learn early to ignore slights and set-backs. Instead, he concentrated on his surroundings. Given their time at sea, where the sun sat in the sky, and the topography of the coast, Draken suspected they might be near Khein. During his time with the Black Guard, Draken had interrogated many Brînian soldiers. Their statements and the tactical briefings he’d been privy to suggested the Akrasian Crown kept a sizeable stronghold at Khein as a buffer between the coastal wilds and the capital city, Auwaer. But who knew how accurate this information was, or where exactly he was. Draken wondered if his wife’s murderer had come back through Khein, through this very bay, or even come back to Akrasia at all.

The captain drew her sword. “Best jump, Commander. Given the opportunity, I’d slice you up and leave you for the errings. Swimming is better than a killer like you deserves.”

Her opinion of him mattered little. Naught did, now. He turned to the rail, raised his hands over his head, and took to the water in an arcing dive. The sea closed about him like liquid stone, driving the air from his chest. Whenever he shut his eyes he saw his wife and this time was no different: hanging by her wrists from a gamehook in the kitchen, her slack face untouched, blonde hair curled down her back, still beautiful despite the gaping, empty slash running from her delicate throat to her womanhood. Gods willing, errings hunted this small bay and would tear him to pieces, end the grief that ate him from the inside every waking moment and plagued his restive dreams.

He only sank a little, legs moving slow in the current. His lungs burned without air, but the water soothed his hurts and aches. The sea always had. Lesle, too, had loved the ocean. But she surely couldn’t rest in Ma’Vanni’s watery paradise while her murderer walked free. Again he wondered if her killer walked Akrasian lands, working magicks with Lesle’s innards and blood.

The thought sparked a burst of hatred, temporarily replacing his grief. Draken opened his eyes to stare at the play of sunlight on the sea over his head. Maybe he could find her murderer and stop the magic. Maybe he could find peace for Lesle, at least. Not the first time he’d thought it, but this was the first time the possibility seemed real.

His arms started moving and his legs kicked. Good fortune his cousin-King’s navy had taught him to swim.

When he cleared the water, he collapsed in a shock of sea grass. The swim had unwound the rags tied to his feet. His back and legs quivered with exhaustion. He heard a quiet dripping of someone else leaving the water and roused himself. But the warning came too late. Sarc leapt on him from behind, fists pounding Draken’s aching back. A sharp blow rang through his skull.

“It was you!” Sarc shouted. “If she didn’t hate you so much, she wouldn’t have made us swim, Brînian half-blood bastard!”

Draken threw the smaller man off with a grunt and spun, only to greet Sarc’s fist driven into his stomach. Draken registered they were alone—the other two banished prisoners hadn’t managed the swim.

The Monoean Navy had trained Draken to fight with fist and knife and bow, and he’d risen to special assignment with the Crown’s Black Guard, hunting the remnants of the Brînian army after the Decade War. “Mopping up,” his cousin-King called it. Truth, he’d spent the last few years wielding more scrolls than fists, but his body recalled what to do.

Draken barreled into Sarc. The boy-man flailed out, but Draken shoved his arms aside and slammed his fist into his face. Sarc struggled, tried to guard himself. Draken held Sarc’s arms down and pinned him to the rocky shore.

“Do not follow or I will kill you,” Draken said. “Do you doubt me?”

Sarc stared at him, breathing hard and stinking of the sea and rotted teeth. He shook his head.

Draken hit him again, feeling the younger man’s jaws snap together. He drew his fist back a third time, but Sarc’s eyes rolled white and he fell limp.

Draken stared down at the stinking boy-criminal, fury roaring in his veins. This was different from killing in war or hunting out hidden enemies. He wanted to hit Sarc again. He wanted to feel wet blood between his fingers. He wanted to make a man, any man, pay for the crime against his wife, for his conviction and banishment.

But Sarc was not that man.

Draken swallowed hard and let his hand fall to his side. He had done enough. Sarc wouldn’t follow him.

As he walked away into the trees edging the rocky beach, Draken glanced skyward, but no moons lingered this morn. None of the Seven Eyes had witnessed his transgression: a trained soldier attacking a civilian. Still, he would make his prayer of reparation in the night and do someone a good deed in turn, find his way back into the graces of the gods. If such a place existed for him any more, and if any Akrasian would accept good will from an exiled half-blood enemy.

Doubtful, if the thickets were symbolic of the welcome he could expect. They caught Draken’s rags as if the very forest didn’t want him to pass. Brambles stung his bare feet. He slogged on, picking his way through, staring at the strange foliage until a root tripped him up. He fell to his hands and knees, stunned. His eye traveled up its tree. It was smooth for about three arm-spans until giant, sail-sized leaves branched out, shading him from the sun. Gray creepers snaked up the trunk. He reached out to squeeze the vine. It bled molten silver, staining his fingertips. He’d heard of such, but thought them fantasies of his Akrasian and Brînian prisoners.