Shadow Of The Winter King (Book 1) (7 page)

She made it two more shaky steps before the gray shrouded her skin entirely. She aged on the spot, purple veins pulsing across her flesh, and her eyes sinking into their sockets. She collapsed, falling apart into a skeleton on the floor, and billowed away to dust within a heartbeat.

Vhaerynn breathed in deeply as new life—her life—flooded through the dagger and into his body. It poured strength into his muscles, relieved his grinding bones, and filled his mind with a lifetime of memories not his own. These he pushed away like a bit of cobweb—troublesome but irrelevant. How he loved his golden dagger, the finest gift he had ever received.

The sorcerer glanced at the window where the masked slayer had disappeared. The man had the temerity to claim a name that was not his to wear, but no matter. He saw, in his reflection, that he looked different: his skin brighter, his cheeks fuller, his eyes more vibrant. He looked younger.

The blessing of the Red God.

Vhaerynn turned his gaze to Lan, intrigued to see his reaction. The necromancer knew some of the Bloodbreaker’s plans, of course, but he’d purposefully not revealed any of them to Lan. The junior Ravalis Prince could be...unpredictable.

The prince was looking out the window toward the docks. “Ovelia Dracaris,” he said. “How long I have waited for you.”

Four

The Dusk Sea

A
day had passed
and Tar Vangr had long since faded to invisibility astern when Ovelia decided to make the first move.

All around the
White Dart
placid water reached to the distant horizons, slowly shifting between shades of gray. The seeming peace was a trap, though: just that morn, Ovelia had watched an unfortunate sailor lose his footing and slip over the side. The water darkened around him, nearly to black, and he slipped beneath the waves within heartbeats, before anyone could do more than cry for help. Though they might let a ship pass in peace, the corrupted creatures that dwelt in the Dusk Sea were not to be denied.

Mustering herself, Ovelia joined Regel at the rail where he stood watching the deadly waters pass around them. He wore simple leathern breeches and a loose black shirt that allowed him mobility. A thick cast of gray covered his chin and throat as well—he’d not shaved since leaving Tar Vangr.

“Do you think they’re following us?” Ovelia nodded northward. “Will those clouds part and reveal Dusters in an ornithopter, do you think?”

Silently, Regel looked into the waves spreading in the
White Dart
’s wake. He held his fledgling sculpture in his hands, sending chips of it into the sea.

Ovelia ran her hands up her arms, fighting a chill. “Fersi claims to have a trick to elude pursuit. But what if I chose wrongly, and he is in league with the Ravalis? I feel... Something is amiss. I know it.”

Paranoia, her father had told her, was a skill rather than a curse. It was a blade to be sharpened, and a shield to be polished. “Many will find your suspicion tedious,” Norlest had told her, “but they will thank you when your caution saves their lives.”

Regardless, if Regel had something to say, he kept it to himself.

At least they were making good time. The mage-wrought caravel would take three more days to cross the sea, assuming they had to stop only once more for the ship’s mage to do maintenance. The lost time could not be avoided: a brand new dust-magic engine could operate unmanned for fifty days without stopping, but Ovelia could not remember the last time she had seen anything
new
. Growling and clanking, the engine propelled them at a speed of fifteen knots without wind, leaving a trail of sickly gray smoke that lingered over the sea. Like all magic, the ship left its mark on the world.

Ovelia looked across at Regel, the silent conflict between them stealing her words. Since Tar Vangr, Ovelia slept behind a locked door, listening to the deckboards creak under Regel’s footfalls as he watched outside. They rarely spoke, even when they took meals with Captain Fersi.
Especially
not then. Adept at reading folk as she could be, she could never say what Regel was thinking.

“Enough,” she said.

Regel looked at her.

“This silence between us cannot stand,” she said. “If we’re to do this, we need to know each other again. Learn each other’s styles. Trust each other.”

Regel gazed off into the morning sea, his expression unreadable. “Steel then?”

“Steel.” She nodded.

“We will draw a few eyes,” Regel said. “Are you so eager to shed your pretense as a refined noblewoman?”

“Let them watch—they have been watching us enough already.” Ovelia ignored the eyes that lingered on her whenever she stepped out of her cabin, but she had noticed them, of course. The captain in particular watched her, though he was subtler than the others. She tried not to think about that. “And besides, all women of Tar Vangr fight, do they not?”

The answer seemed to please Regel. “I’ll get practice blades.”

Waiting at the rail for him to return, Ovelia watched the crew haul lines, mend sails, and perform the countless other tasks required of a ship at sea. Morning wind and spray caught at her cropped hair, and her weather-cloak pressed tight against her wiry frame. Idly, she ran her fingers through a curl of her hair. The crimson roots had shown in the mirror just that morn: she could conceal her mingled heritage, but the Blood of Summer would never truly leave her. Dracaris was a southern blood, so its folk had red hair, sun-kissed skin, and hazel eyes, though her mingled blood left Ovelia paler than most southerners.

The only other feature Ovelia bore of the winterlands—her sharp nose—came from her northern mother, a lowly maid in the winter palace, unnamed and unmarked. To hear Norlest speak of her, on one of the rare occasions he’d done so, she’d had an unbreakable spirit, which had attracted him with irresistible force. The honorable Norlest had named the maid—Aniset—and wanted to tie her to his Blood, but the Old Gods of the Nar did not give him the chance. The newly named Aniset had died bringing their child into the world, and Ruin had made Ovelia a murderer from her birth: a Bloodbreaker too, if Aniset (the first and only of her name) could be called the last of her own Blood.

A cursed child, marked by ill fortune—was it any surprise she sowed Ruin in her wake?

Ovelia had loved her father dearly, and she remembered many nights crying herself to sleep after seeing the wistful way he looked at her. Ovelia thought of Orbrin the Winter King, his own sad look and his blood on her hands. She remembered what she had done to Lenalin’s son Darak the day of his birth, and what she had done in Lenalin’s own bed that tenth anniversary of her passing. And lastly, she thought of Regel, and how badly she had hurt him. Was she doomed to betray everyone she ever loved?

She sensed Regel and had more than enough time to settle herself before he offered her a practice sword. He held up a wooden shield. “Do you still hide behind one of these?”

“A swordsman has to be an idiot not to, unless he wishes to die.” Ovelia seized the shield and strapped it to her left arm. “What’s your excuse?”

“Confidence.” Regel tested the balance of his blunt sword: straight, unlike his favored falcat.

More of the crew were watching them, suspicious and expectant. Half of them suspected “Lady Aniset” was more than she seemed, and half only wanted to leer. Ovelia would give them a show.

Ovelia stepped away and loosed the ties of her weathercloak. The bulky garment slid from her shoulders to the deck. Beneath, she wore a red vest laced over a half-shirt that left her shoulders bare. It was one of Serris’s outfits, and far less modest than anything Ovelia might have chosen for herself.

Regel nodded approvingly. “Serris has such...
dramatic
taste.”

Ovelia rolled her eyes. “It will serve well enough.”

Too well, Ovelia thought, by the looks of one sailor who threw her an obscene gesture. In another lifetime, she might have taken the offending fingers for his insolence, but this was not Tar Vangr where such things were not tolerated. And she was the Bloodbreaker now—she had no honor left.

Ovelia saluted and took a defensive stance, sword low.

Regel held his sword high, hanging toward Ovelia like a spear.

“You still take a high guard?” Ovelia asked.

Regel considered her coolly. “Fight low only when you have a shield. When you are a coward.”

“Trying to rattle me already?” Ovelia turned her buckler slightly, both to emphasize it and to prepare her move. “You can surrender now if you’re so scared.”

“Hmm.” Regel stood still as a statue, practice sword in hand.

“Well?” Ovelia pursed her lips. “What stays you?”

The first attack came fast. One instant Regel stood like stone, the next his sharp steel sparked off Ovelia’s sword and shield. They stood locked together, weapons high. Ovelia twisted the sword aside and thrust back, matching speed for speed. Regel parried and dodged a step back, casting her attack wide.

Gasps and fire-curses rose from the crew of the
Dart
: none would expect such speed from a man past his fortieth winter or a noblewoman. They had suspected anyway, of course, but now they knew without doubt: it would not do to trifle with their passengers.

“I thought we were merely sparring,” Regel observed, his voice and face blank.

“Say on, turncloak.” Ovelia swashed her blade against her dented shield with a hollow ring of steel. “Your first cut would have taken my head.”

Regel brushed back an errant spike of hair from his face. “You blocked it.”

“And if I hadn’t?”

He shrugged.

Ovelia understood well enough the warning he’d delivered with that blow. Regel had never been one to give easy tests, be they of steel or anything else. “I’ll start with Rising Heron,” she said.

Regel nodded, his face blank.

She struck with the technique Norlest had taught them: an upward cut at the sword arm. Regel parried perfectly, dropping his blade point-down to deflect her slash up into his cross-guard. He could have locked the sword wide, but instead he stepped forward in a counter and laid the flat of his sword against her throat.

“Well?” she asked.

“Dancing Deer,” he said, and pulled away.

He struck once, twice, then feinted the third strike to her left ear. She anticipated the real cut—the fourth of the deer’s steps, a reverse strike at her right cheek—and raised her blade alongside her face to block it next to her head.

“Good,” Regel murmured. “Now—”

Ovelia thrust her shield at his nose, and he narrowly dodged. His eyes gleamed.

Warning received, she thought, and returned.

They traded blows under the rising sun, and the crew of the
Dart
put their work aside to watch in silence. The sea air was still but for the shriek of steel, the groan of a gouged wood buckler, and the heavy breath of the duelists.

After a time, Ovelia and Regel stopped calling out the moves they would perform and fought without pause. Their duel became a fluid thing, and individual exchanges melted into unconscious movements. Their minds fell silent and they communicated with their bodies. Ovelia could not say how much time passed in this familiar dance. The years fell away and they were once again young, each full of the other’s pain, each the answer to the other’s need.

Regel was excellent. Though his age might split forty and fifty, he had the strength and speed of a much younger man. Ovelia used feint after twisting strike—some Norlest had taught her and more she’d devised herself. She tried forthright attacks and deceptive turns, then jabs and slices, then thrusts in varied time. Regel dodged or parried every one, even when Ovelia thought for certain he would falter. He was the faster, she the stronger, but they fought with equal skill, and neither could touch the other.

Then, inevitably, the delicate balance cracked.

Toward the aftcastle, Ovelia saw Fersi emerge from his cabin, fingers working at his laces. His eyes found the duel and burned into Ovelia. He smiled knowingly.

Ovelia tried to lose herself again in the swordplay, but the distraction broke her rhythm. She and Regel could not match each other, and he surpassed her. Regel had already won.

A particularly strong blow rang off her buckler. He struck her shield over and over, his blows falling harder and harder until her arm trembled.

She fell to one knee under his assault. “I yield,” she said.

Heedless of her surrender, Regel hacked at her buckler-guarded arm like a woodsman worrying a log. The shield groaned and shuddered as he pulled back to strike again.

“I yield!” Ovelia said.

Regel’s sword struck her shield squarely, and it splintered. Her arm fell limp and burning at her side, and she got her sword up in time to deflect Regel’s next strike barely wide of her face. It rustled her hair and cut through the left shoulder of her vest, biting into the skin beneath. Had Regel’s practice sword been sharper, it would have taken her sword arm clean off.

Blood spattered the deck, and she exhaled sharply—in pain and a sickly sort of euphoria. “Stop,” she cried, her voice delirious. “I yield!”

Regel’s ears seemed deaf and his eyes clouded. He did not hear her—did not know her. He was death, she realized, and his rising sword would bring hers.

And oh, how she
loved
him for it.

Something groaned deep within her, a dam swollen nigh to bursting. Deep within, sickness and fury warred with one another. She wanted to die, and she wanted so very badly for him to be the one to kill her. But not yet, by the Old Gods. She needed to make amends. She needed justice.

Ovelia planted her feet beneath her and lunged forward. Her whole body shivered as her cut shoulder crunched into Regel’s midsection, but—thank the Nar—he fell backward. Ovelia felt his blade skip along her back, tearing her vest. Dizzy with pain, she straddled him and lifted her useless sword—nicked and dented and, Old Gods,
bent
—only to toss it clattering to the deck.

“Regel.” She gasped for breath, heart beating in her throat. “Regel!”

His body trembled and she could feel his muscles clenching between her thighs. He opened his mouth to speak—a vow of love or a malediction, she did not know.

Ovelia kissed him.

All her thoughts fled as Regel returned the kiss in full. Need blazed within her, and she could not touch enough of him at once. She had to be part of him. All the weariness and the pain of her wounds built to a rising tide of fire that—

“Lenalin.”

The name between Regel’s lips shook her. Lenalin, he called her—the woman he had loved and the woman she had so desperately wanted to be.

Instantly, the heat between them went out like an extinguished torch. Ovelia found Regel’s eyes and saw a question there. He had many questions, none of which she could answer. He had never truly known her, because he had never hurt her so badly. She drew away, feeling cold and small. Regel’s blow had split her vest, and she wore blood rather than cloth over her right arm and chest. Against the pulsating pain, the left side of her body felt foreign to her, like a withered vestige and not her own flesh. She shivered in delight and loathing.

Fumbling the torn vest up, Ovelia saw the shocked and hungry gazes of the men, could read the lust on their sweaty faces. “Gods,” one of them whispered. “What just passed?”

Why bother trying to explain it? If Regel had never known her, as close as he had been to her, how could these men comprehend her for what she was?