A Trial of Sparks & Kindling (Fall of the Mantle Book 2) Read online

  Cara could do that, at least until she found a way to get to Nathan and the others. They could plan together, maybe get away.

  Had she come all this way to find Frank, only to leave right after achieving her goal? Something was wrong with him. Maybe he was in danger. Red flickered at the edges of her vision. Even if he was in danger, he was hurting her. Some boundaries should never be crossed, and one didn’t knowingly hurt someone they loved. She’d never do this to him.

  Still, she wanted to understand, and was stuck until an opportunity to slip out presented itself.

  Maybe he’d tell her the truth if he thought she was under the influence of whatever it was he poured down her throat.

  Meanwhile, she could fool them all.

  ***

  Cara pretended to sleep when Malak arrived in the morning.

  Malak opened the shutters. “Time to wake up, my lamb.” Her every step jingled.

  Cara rolled over and half-stretched—no big movements—and kept her expression vacant.

  Malak wore a teal skirt and petticoat and had a wolf pelt slung about her shoulders. Hundreds of fine, golden bangles twinkled from her wrists, and her thick, wavy hair was pulled over one shoulder. “Had a good sleep?” She smiled, white teeth and ruby lips. She carried Cara’s breakfast and tea on a tray.

  Cara nodded.

  “Good girl. Let’s get some medicine in you before those pesky emotions come along, eh?” Malak removed the medicine from the tray and fed Cara a spoonful.

  The liquid sloshed in her mouth, and she pretended to swallow, then stood on shaky legs and hobbled to the bathroom.

  “Need help, my lamb?”

  Cara shook her head, shut the door, then spat the medicine into the latrine and went about her business.

  Malak had set her breakfast on the table and smiled again as Cara sat in the grey chair.

  “Here you go.” She passed Cara a bowl of porridge. “Eat.”

  Cara wanted nothing more than to tip the bowl over Malak’s head, but she’d been told what to do and would do it. No trace of medicine flavoured the food or tea—she’d been right about that, at least.

  Everything went the same as it had the day prior. Malak dressed Cara, played with her hair, brought every meal, put her to bed.

  At lunchtime and after dinner, Cara pretended to swallow the medicine, then lay down without another word, eyes closed. Once Malak had her locked in, Cara went to spit it out.

  She’d done it. She’d fooled Malak for a whole day.

  Chapter 4

  Nathan followed Nita through the convoluted passages in the basement of the castle, to the one room free of listening holes in this Creator-forsaken place.

  The stone was spotted with stains, and a number of straight lines in various shades of brown and yellow ran along the walls. Waterlines left by floods. Some lines ran just above the floor, others reached Nathan’s hips.

  According to Pointy, the Valley of a Thousand Hills was in constant danger of floods due to heavy, year-round rainfall or snowmelt. As Collinefort sat in a gap between higher-reaching hillsides, the location formed a natural basin. The flood that left the highest mark in the basement, however, had been caused by Intelligence when too many people had learned of the passages in the walls. After that flood, the rumours had maintained the passages were useless, and people forgot about them.

  Those passages were all but unusable. Pointy had put Greg and Marc to the task of exploring them, and they’d learned that the tunnels had changed drastically from the maps of Collinefort which Pointy and Nita had studied.

  The cold in this part of the castle dwarfed whatever chill lingered in the upper floors. Nathan shivered and rubbed his hands along his upper arms.

  Nita’s lips were tinged blue. “I hate this place.”

  “I second that,” he said.

  Four days had passed since their arrival, only four, but it seemed months had gone by. They hadn’t seen Cara at all in that time, even though she was rumoured to be ill, and they were physicians.

  He couldn’t sleep or hold a thought. The cut on his jaw and his other injuries healed as they should, yet his muscles remained stiff.

  The tiniest thing could put him back in the valley, take him back to the night they’d been attacked. The smell of smoke, the clap of thunder.

  Sometimes, he looked at Pointy or Nita and didn’t recognise them at all. He’d learned of their ties to Intelligence back in Aelland, but everything had become real on the night of the attack. Pointy and Nita had been trained to protect their charge and survive in every scenario. They were lethal.

  The way they’d reacted, the way they’d moved—nothing like physicians.

  If only that was all. He could blame them and be done, but Pointy and Nita hadn’t been the only ones who’d acted unlike physicians that night. Too often Nathan became lost in the memory of the weight of the desolator’s rifle in his hands, the trigger shifting when he moved his finger, and the echo of ignited gunpowder as the bullet propelled into another person.

  He had killed. His mother’s face flickered in the back of his head. He’d killed again. Maybe, if Pointy hadn’t done that after, when he’d slit the throat of every fallen enemy. His best friend, a trained killer.

  Still, Pointy’s skills might come in handy while Celestine was about. A trained killer had their uses.

  From the darkest recess in Nathan’s soul crept a shadow. There was something that could make him feel better. Help him cope. Maybe sleep.

  Nathan inhaled deeply. Get it together.

  Pointy was more than a trained killer. Four days, but he’d accomplished much. The plan was to build his own network in Collinefort, so he befriended the people—the servants and bakers and guards—and learned what he could from them. His name was legend around here.

  Lucky that Marc had found a room free of listening holes in a quiet corner of the basement, and they had a space to unwind.

  The farther Nita led him, the emptier it became. Most soldiers were out training or on duty, and the staff were at work on the upper levels.

  Despite the chill wind trapped in the basement, the mouldy stench endured. Probably courtesy of the unseen drip-drip disturbing the quiet. Every door or branching hallway looked the same, yet Nita knew where she wanted to go.

  When she stopped in front of a door identical to the others, she glanced at Nathan over her shoulder. “Will you find it again?”

  “No.”

  She tutted. “I’ll draw you a map.”

  Marc and Greg were inside, each with a mop. They’d lit a coal oven, and glorious warmth embraced Nathan when he entered. Here, at least, the musty smell wasn’t as strong, though it lingered under chemical compounds and sterilising liquid.

  “Good to see you, physician.” Greg’s skin was sallow, eyes bloodshot.

  “And you.” Nathan shook his hand.

  Marc set down his mop. “News?”

  “None.” Nathan sighed. “Have you seen her again?”

  Marc had found a place by the keep wall, from where he had a clear view of Cara’s suite. He’d spotted her once, but the shutters had closed soon after, and Cara hadn’t gone near the window since.

  “No.” Marc locked his jaw. How had Nathan ever believed this was Pointy’s son? Angeline, Pointy’s sister, was Marc’s mother, and the resemblance was uncanny. But then, the same resemblance existed between Pointy and Angeline.

  “If she’s sick,” Marc was saying, “someone should be treating her.”

  “I know,” Nathan said.

  “But she’s not bloody sick, she’s just being kept from us.” Marc jerked the mop across the floor and mumbled to himself.

  A table stood in the middle of the space, already covered in documents, maps, and a floor-plan of the castle.

  “Everything is Pointy’s.” Nita rolled her eyes. “He knows how to take over a room.”

  Her own supplies stood on another table against the far wall. The samples of the cure for rot she’d made in the sl
ums, and bottles of the remedies she’d brought along when they’d left Aelland filled a shoddy shelf above this table, next to the ironite ingots they’d used to walk through the Mantle. Since Frank had ordered Nita to continue work on the cure, his people had provided her with the rest of the equipment and ingredients, some of which weren’t available in Aelland.

  Five round, wooden stools stood near the tables, and three large containers of water took up all the space on the floor beneath a shelf next to the coal oven. Cups had been set out on this shelf, in front of small containers of tea and sugar.

  “I’m going to hang around the wall.” Marc propped up the mop in a corner and wiped his hands on his trousers. “Maybe today’s the day I see her again.” He left.

  So much medicine in this room. Bottles and bottles full. Within reach. Nathan blinked away the thought.

  Nita beckoned to her table. “Grind these, will you?” She handed Nathan bunches of dried herbs then took one of the stools.

  Nathan found a mortar and pestle and broke the leaves into smaller pieces to grind.

  Nita peered over her shoulder. “Greg, will you see what’s keeping Pointy?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And make sure Marc stays out of trouble.”

  Greg gave a nod. “He’s been pining hard for the princess. Takes the current circumstances as some sort of personal affront. As if he could have predicted what the king would do.”

  “None of us saw this coming,” Nita said.

  “I’ll keep an eye on him.” Greg left.

  Nathan ground up bunch after bunch of herbs. His fingers were soon covered in bright yellow, reddish-brown, and sap-green residue. The powdered herbs released various earthy or spicy scents, some sickly sweet, some pungent.

  Nita heated water, measured, and mixed a variety of ingredients into different bowls. Her mixtures caused new smells, more demanding than the herbs on their own. Smoke rose from the burner in bluish plumes, acrid and ticklish in the nose, like the onset of hay fever. She mumbled to herself, low and fast, or hummed as she methodically wrote the measurements and the steps of her processes in her small, neat hand.

  Liquids bubbled and steamed, rushed through clear pipes, and plip-plopped into beakers. Something of home, of Nita’s apothecary in Roicester, echoed through the sounds of her work.

  Nathan wanted to leave—they all did—but with Cara so thoroughly out of reach and so many guards patrolling the hall to her room, Pointy hadn’t yet found a way to extract her. Besides, what would they do once they got her out? Run away, with an entire resistance to follow, angry at the people who had kidnapped their princess?

  Everything was in ashes.

  Hours passed, during which Nathan replayed it all in his mind—his father’s cancer, rot, civil war, Frank, Celestine, Collinefort. His mother’s death. Addiction and need. The night Clarke died, and Cara was assaulted. He returned to the man he’d killed more than anything, and each time he revisited that topic, the heaviness in his stomach increased tenfold.

  Before long, his hands shook as he worked. Imagery from that night slammed into him. The metallic and smoky smells, the frantic pulse of his heart. Pleas from injured people—people physicians were supposed to protect—and blood. So much blood. Human matter stuck to Blizzard’s paws and maw. Chunks of scalp and hair scattered on the grass.

  He pulled the trigger again. His enemy fell again.

  Nathan’s gorge rose, but he swallowed it down. He reached for the surgeon within, but not even that stilled his rattling insides. It had been self-defence. Had he not taken that shot, he wouldn’t be alive.

  And last time?

  His mother’s heart glinted in the surgical lights. Gooey and pink and beating. The scalpel in his hand. Just a nick, but so much blood. So much blood. She bled out in front of him, because he’d made a mistake.

  A killer.

  Every emotion he’d experienced after his mother’s death was back and had brought a friend.

  The drugs sang to him. Nine years since he’d last been high, but all he needed was in here. He could soar. Forget. Not that he’d throw away all those years of sobriety for a single high.

  You could have more than a single high.

  No. He’d worked too hard. Pointy hadn’t even looked at Nathan. He’d come, every day, but he’d been so hurt, so disappointed. All his friends, his father. That raw concern, their faces that wouldn’t smile. The years it had taken to rebuild their trust. Never again—no matter what happened.

  “Right, time’s up.” Nita passed him a new bunch of herbs and arched an eyebrow.

  “What time?” Nathan asked.

  “You’ve been pining too, and not just for Cara. What’s going on, Nate? You know you can tell me anything.”

  He rolled his neck and moved his shoulders about. If she knew what he’d been thinking, she’d likely forbid him from coming here again. “I don’t really want to—”

  “Sorry, I won’t accept that answer today.”

  “All right. How long does it take to get over murdering someone? You and Pointy have some experience there I lack.”

  She rubbed his shoulder. “You don’t.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t get over killing someone. Ever. Cold blood, self-defence—doesn’t matter. You remember them, you know their faces, and you see them again every time you operate on a patient. You wonder if you deserve your robes. You wonder if anyone would let you heal them if they knew the truth. When you see your reflection, you wonder if you deserve to be alive when the other person died at your hand. Then you convince yourself you did it for someone you loved, or for your motherland, or to survive. And you go on. The guilt never goes away, though.”

  Nathan gaped. “Well. That’s not the answer I expected.”

  She shrugged. “It is what it is. Guilt gets easier to ignore.”

  “What if I have to kill again?”

  “You kill again. You just add another face to the gallery. You don’t get over killing, but like ignoring the guilt, the actual killing gets easier. I don’t know if that’s good news, but that’s the reality.” She stirred the contents of one of the bowls and studied him over the rim. “I’d love to tell you otherwise, but you probably will kill again. This is war, and it’s going to get worse as the season turns.”

  Nathan chewed on it awhile.

  “You remember what they told us when we had to dissect cadavers for the first time?” Nita asked. “That we had to hold onto our humanity, and not forget the patient’s? That if we’d been happy about cutting up people, they’d have expelled us?”

  He sniffed. “I just recently gave Cara the same speech.”

  “It applies here, too. If you hadn’t felt the way you do, I’d have been seriously concerned.”

  Hadn’t he told Cara the same thing back in the morgue? “Noted.”

  “How many did you shoot that day? I saw you fire at one guy.”

  “Just the one.”

  “Oh. For what it’s worth,” Nita said. “You didn’t kill him. Your bullet went into his lung. Mine went into his skull.”

  A numbness settled over Nathan like a second skin. “You?”

  She grinned. “Scared of me now?”

  He shook his head. “You’re still my friend. I trust you with my life.” The words became true as he said them. No death Nita or Pointy had caused could ever make them mean less to him. They were family. Deadly family, but they did what they did to protect Cara and the innocent people hunted by the Sanctus Sect. They were good. Even if they were planning to invade Aelland.

  “Good to know.”

  They continued to work for another hour, then Pointy arrived. “Rumour has it the king’s looking for you, Nathaniel. You’ve been summoned to his personal quarters.”

  ***

  “Your majesty.” Nathan bowed. What was the protocol when meeting Mordian royals? The same as for the Aellish, or was there something different? And was there a special set of rules for informal
settings, like meeting a king in his personal suite? He should have paid attention in school.

  “Ah, Nathaniel. None of that, just Frank will do.” He sat on a moss-coloured armchair at the foot of his bed and indicated a rosewood bench with fern pillows across from him. “Please, make yourself comfortable. I apologise, but I must finish this. It won’t be a minute.” He turned his face back into the report he’d been reading when Nathan had entered the room.

  “Of course.” Nathan sat, crossed his arms and tried to breathe normally. The spicy incense smoking from a shell-shaped container on an end-table in the corner didn’t much help with normal breathing.

  Was this the end? Probably. A physician was a fool to think he could love a princess.

  Maybe hear what he wants before jumping to conclusions, idiot.

  A crystal chandelier threw a beam of bright light over the spot where Frank sat and made hexagonal patterns on the walls and furniture. Nothing in the room matched, though it appeared someone had tried to coordinate everything using shades of green.

  The enormous canopy bed seemed ancient, its varnished birch posts carved with intricate leaves and flowers, while the emerald velvet draperies around the posts had gathered enough dust in the folds to create a new green hue. The bedding, bottle green silk, had faded where the sun fell, and strands of golden beadwork had broken off and been lost in places. The pair of closets, in contrast, were constructed of pine that hadn’t been left long enough to dry. The side panels warped, and the doors were riddled with small cracks.

  The stone floor was covered in reed mats or animal pelts so old the fur was gone, leaving only patches of discoloured leather. Shutters made of many kinds of wood covered the arched windows. The end-table, chair and bench in front of the bed, and a large standing mirror were the only other objects in the room.

  This wasn’t as much a royal suite as a collection of old and new. Things from back when Mordian Intelligence had run this place, and things constructed by the resistance as the need arose.