As he approached the bed, he saw that were new scars cutting through the lovely landscape of her lean, hard body. One was a cut about nine inches in length that ran horizontally beneath her small breasts. Another was a puckered and only barely healed spot on her waist, above her right hip.

  “Arrow?” he asked.

  “Arrow,” she said.

  He bent and kissed it, but then Filia knotted her fingers in his curly hair and pushed his face—and his mouth—lower.

  When she climaxed, Filia punched the headboard above her, hitting it hard enough to shake the bed. Then she was clawing at him, spreading her thighs, locking her legs around his waist, pulling with her hands until he was inside, and then they were moving together. The old rhythm was there, the same choreography of hips and hands, breath and tongues. It lasted a very long time for them, and for a while Kagen did not think he would be able to reach orgasm, because whenever he closed his eyes he saw the dead children at the palace, and his mother cut to rags by the razor-knight. So he kept his eyes open and looked at Filia, and when he saw her eyes fill with smoke and lights, his body responded, and they came together in a sweating, straining, ferocious surge that toppled them over the edge and left them sprawled, soaked, and panting.

  For a long time they lay there, touching but not cuddling.

  “Arrow…?” asked Kagen again, making it a different kind of question.

  “Last winter,” she said. “I was trying to get a caravan out of a pass that was snowed in up in the Cathedrals. You know that bastard of a pass between Zaare and Bulconia? The one just north of Thunder River?”

  “Boneyard Pass? Sure,” said Kagen. “You do know that’s actually in Bulconia, though, right?”

  “Not on my map,” she said, and he knew she was lying. “Bastard border patrol came after us. Wanted to take what the caravan was carrying as a penalty for illegally crossing the border.”

  “Which you did.”

  “Fuck that, so what? It was take a detour or get snowed in for the winter. I mean, it’s not called Boneyard Pass for fun. Besides … you ever spend any length of idle time with spice merchants? They talk about spice. That’s it. Spice. For days on end. I wasn’t in that kind of mood because I’m not actually out of my mind, so I found us a route.” She touched the scar. “It came down to a heated dispute with some Bulconians who took a dislike to me.”

  “You lost?”

  “Hell no. They lost. But one fucker got off an arrow before I cut his throat.”

  Kagen bent and gently kissed the puckered wound. Filia rolled her eyes.

  “You’re such a girl sometimes,” she said.

  Kagen ignored that and lay back, his head resting on laced fingers. “What have you heard about the invasion?”

  “Heard or know?”

  “Either. Both.”

  Filia reached over to the night table for a bottle of wine, took a sip, and offered it to him. He shook his head.

  “Been talking to some folks I know,” said Filia. “That mess in Argentium? Sure, that was their key move, taking out the empress and her heirs. It not only cut the head off the empire but also Argon is the only nation that doesn’t have an active royal family because the first Silver Empress was herself Argonian. So killing Gessalyn also crippled the Argonian government. They had no orders, and the Hakkians targeted the chain of military command, so Argon just fell apart. But it wasn’t their only play. The Hakkians hit every single capital city in the empire, and they did it all at once. From what I heard, they went to great lengths to not attack any of the other ruling families. No royal martyrs except the Silver Empress, which made the move political and historical, but not at all the kind of thing that poets, rabble-rousers, and heroes would spend their lives trying to redress.”

  “Clever bastards,” muttered Kagen. Then he cocked his head. “Any idea how in the fiery hells they managed it? There was no time for any kind of proper resistance. No sieges, nothing like that.”

  Filia took a thoughtful sip and then stared at the bottle with unfocused eyes. “Only thing that makes any kind of sense is magic. And I swear to the gods if you tell me that you don’t believe in magic, I’ll cut one of your balls off and wear it as a pendant.”

  “No,” he said, unsmiling. “I believe you.”

  She cut him an assessing look. “Yeah? What changed your mind?”

  He told her everything that had happened in the palace. Filia sat up, folded her legs, and leaned her elbows on her thighs. “A razor-knight? Are you shitting me?”

  “No.”

  “And … what did you call it?” she asked. “Banefire?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought that was just some old myth.”

  “I thought that about the razor-knights,” admitted Kagen. “Did you hear about them blowing up any other cities?”

  “No. They must have saved that stuff for Argentium. Same for the razor-knight.” She scratched the healing arrow scar. “And a new Witch-king. Gods of the fiery Pit. That makes some sense.”

  “It does?” asked Kagen. “How so?”

  “I’ve been hearing that the Hakkians are burning gardens all through the empire,” said Filia. “They’re leaving the towns mostly alone, except where there’s organized resistance, but they’re destroying the gardens.”

  “How does that make sense?” asked Kagen.

  “Well, think about it,” said Filia. “The Faith of the Garden is what drove the empire to smash Hakkia three hundred years ago. When the Silver Empire was first established, all of the member nations agreed to foreswear magic. Hakkia was the exception, because they made the case that magic was part of their religion but in practice was merely symbolic. When it was discovered that they were using actual magic, they sent in the Silver Thorn to crush that custom completely. Seems to me that all they managed was to drive the tradition underground. To make it more secret, and to build a wall of secrecy around it. My guess is that their defeat back then encouraged the Hakkians to delve deeper into the dark arts, and when they felt they were strong enough, they pushed back.”

  “So you’re saying this was our fault?” asked Kagen.

  “To some degree, sure. The Garden wanted magic stamped out. Hell, they wanted it erased completely, and that meant destroying all temples and shrines associated with the Hakkian faith. Religious oppression is hardly a way to win friends. And the Garden always had that double standard of allowing freedom of religion as long as it wasn’t the Hakkian religion. Shove all the centuries of that repression down the throats of a naturally warlike people—hell, any people—and what do you expect? Is it really a surprise that the Hakkians want to pay back in the same coin? Fuck, if I was them, it’s what I’d do. Burn the gardens, kill the clerics and monks and nuns. Wipe them all out. Erase them the way the Silver Empire tried to erase the Hakkian faith.” She took a long pull on the bottle. “Tell you the truth, Kagen, I’m not sure I think they’re wrong. The Silver Empire had no right to crush anyone’s religion. They picked this fight three centuries ago, so it’s hard to come right out and say the Hakkians are wrong.”

  “They slaughtered my family, Filia,” said Kagen. “They butchered the Seedlings and raped poor Hessyla.”

  “Hessyla? Oh, shit … sorry to hear that,” said Filia. “On the other hand, have you ever read the full history of Bellapher’s campaign against the Witch-king? The Silver Thorn’s men weren’t exactly spotless saints. Ever wonder why there are so many Hakkians with dark Therian skin or blue eyes like Vahlycorians and Nelfydians? Soldiers rape. I hate that it’s true, but I’m a realist. It happens all the time, especially when an army is besieging a city. All that pent up anger and resentment and fury. It isn’t sex, you know; it’s control. It’s how they break the will of the people. Your brother Herepath’s a historian; ask him.”

  “Sure, I’ll do that the very next time I see him.” Kagen sat up and glared at her, scowled at the ceiling, and then asked for the wine bottle. “Who’s putting together a resistance?”

  Filia snorted and shook her head. “No one that has a chance. Oh, there are the usual blowhards talking about it over drinks in no-name taverns. Mostly old soldiers who preface everything with ‘In my day we’d…,’ and so on. The real problem is that the submonarchs of each nation are under house arrest. They are, for all practical purposes, hostages to keep the people in line. Which is a smart damn move.”

  “And we can forget help from the gods,” said Kagen bitterly. “But something has to be done.”

  Filia studied his face. “Let me guess—you’re going to try to organize some kind of rebellion, aren’t you?”

  “The thought had occurred to me,” said Kagen.

  “Then you’re either naive or a fool, Kagen Vale,” she laughed. “Or you have a death wish.”

  “We need to fight back, Filia.”

  “We lost,” she said, pounding her fist on her thigh. “It’s over. We can put more soldiers in the field than them, sure, but we have nothing that can match the Witch-king. He conquered every single capital in the empire in one evening. Imagine what he would do if we sent an army after him. I don’t know how much you’ve read about magic, boy, but I’ve read a lot, and there is no way to win this. We’re done, we lost, and that’s it.”

  “So, what are you saying?” said Kagen, getting hot. “That we just bend over and take it? Is that what you’re going to do?”

  “Me?” laughed Filia. “Fuck no. I have a couple of little jobs to do. Unbladed contracts.”

  Kagen nodded. Throughout the west—and even in a few of the countries in the far east—to be Unbladed was to be without liege, country, flag, or master. The Unbladed were outcasts, shorn by disaster, bad fortune, or personal disgrace from whichever noble, king, or country they once served. The Unbladed, despite the name, did not mean they could not carry weapons—but they were forbidden under pain of public torture and execution to carry swords. Swords were reserved for official soldiers and knights. Gladiators were denied anything but a short sword because they were fighters for entertainment rather than oath-bound warriors. Kagen’s failure to protect the Seedlings was well known, and any tin-pot local beadle could arrest him for carrying a blade longer than two feet.

  Kagen’s mother had always mocked the law, partly because few nations allowed women soldiers to carry swords regardless. They were given bows, spears, glaives, and as many daggers as they wanted, but not swords. It was a peculiarity even within the Silver Empire, whose leaders had always been women. Lady Marissa Trewellyn-Vale went against tradition as much as the law would allow, dodging it by calling her short swords “daggers.” That set a fashion, and many women, and even quite a few men, began carrying such weapons. The empress often chided her about it but tended to not notice that some of the Poison Rose’s daggers were—by any traditional standard—really short swords.

  “And then what?” asked Kagen. “You leaving Argon?”

  “Fuck that, boy. I’m leaving the gods-damned west,” Filia said. “I’ll either book passage on a ship heading any-damn-where or I’ll find a few other sane people, form my own little caravan, and head east over the Cathedrals. I heard they’re looking for scouts and guides in Ashgulan and Kortha.”

  He stared at her. “That’s it? You’re giving up? You won’t fight the usurper?”

  “No,” she said firmly. “I won’t. You should know me well enough to know that I play the odds. This isn’t a fight we can win. I won’t join the Hakkians, but I won’t die just to make some damn-fool heroic statement.”

  That was the end of the discussion.

  Kagen took the bottle and drank. And kept drinking. That bottle, and the next, and the next. He did not remember falling asleep, but when he woke he was alone. Filia and all of her possessions were gone. All that she left was a new bottle of wine and a small stack of silver dimes. No note. Gone.

  Kagen grabbed the bottle and drank it down in five long gulps, the red liquid coursing down his cheeks and throat. He used some of the money to buy more wine.

  And more.

  And more.

  Trying to forget her words. Hoping to drink his way past the logic in them. Trying to blur the truth that this war was already over and there was no hope. Trying to forget the small, bloody faces of children who had expected more of him than he could give.

  He fell into the bottle and drank himself all the way to the bottom.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Her name was Safiyya and she lived in a cottage buried deep in the forest that framed the western rim of Lake Lyra in Zaare. Her husband was a soldier in the regional militia, and Safiyya was happiest when he was off somewhere fighting. She preferred that he take his need to hit and hurt elsewhere. When he was home, the cottage walls were unable to contain the sound of his yelling and complaints, the smaller sounds of her protests and attempted explanations, or the sounds of his hands and her screams.

  He husband was home now. He had come home the night of the invasion, bitter and confused, angry and drunk. He’d grabbed Safiyya by the hair and beat her until the lights in her mind burned out. When she woke, everything hurt, and she realized he must have kicked her after she passed out. The house was a wreck, with cabinets open and contents pawed out onto the floor. Wineskins and empty cider bottles lay where they had been dropped when he was done with them. Just as she lay where he’d discarded her. At least last night there had not been more than him venting his frustration on her. He had not taken her while she was passed out. That was something. A small and very cold little comfort.

  It took a long time for Safiyya to get up off the floor. Her body was a collection of pains held together by sheer will. She touched her face and felt the bruises, the cuts. One of her teeth was loose, and there was a clump of her hair on the floor, the roots red with her blood.

  Safiyya stood and listened for the sound of him. If he found her still bloody and the place a mess, he would punish her for it. Always her. Everything was her fault. Even their lack of children was her guilt to own, despite her husband’s first wife also being “barren.” At least until they divorced and she married the baker and had six children, one each year.

  Safiyya could not make herself clean the cottage, though. She was too badly hurt—more in mind and heart than in body, though every time she moved the grating of broken ribs sent shocking waves of pain through her. It was all she could do to go outside to the privy, where she pissed blood and then vomited until her stomach was empty and churning.

  Once outside, she stood swaying, weeping, lost.

  The garden looked so beautiful, and that contrast between her life and this one tore at her.

  But it also pulled at her.

  With shaky and uncertain steps, she walked deeper into the garden. The sun had only just risen above the trees, and there were shadows in a dozen shades of purple and lavender draped across everything. The trees that embowered her garden were filled with dozens of songbirds, their many voices somehow blending into a concert that made sense if she did not try too hard to listen. Meaning crept into the back of her thoughts and whispered secrets filled with subtle promises.

  It made her smile.

  That was such a strange thing, because Safiyya could not remember the last time she had smiled. Not the false smiles she wore to please her husband and try to coax him away from his anger. No. This smile felt real. It felt old, like an artifact of uncomplicated joy from some age past, rather than something merely remembered.

  She stood on the flagstones in bare feet. The stones were damp with cool morning dew and there was the smell of seawater in the air, even though her house was hundreds of miles from the ocean. It was like that sometimes. Scents from faraway places found this place. Found her. Shared with her.

  Why had she forgotten that? It used to be her daily reason for smiling. When had she left that behind?

  And why was it back now, when things were so wretched?

  All around her the flowers were coming awake, stretching their petals like arms reaching out with a morning yawn. A trellis of pink and white roses climbed in a graceful arc over the flagstone path, and the morning’s first bees drifted sleepily from one to the other. Along the fence wall were the pleated green folds of lady’s mantle, and here and there were the chartreuse flowers. The white flowers of the thornless beneden, cousin to the blackberry plants, thrust upward with joy at the new day, and pale blue delphinium revealed their yellow hearts. A caterpillar sat dozing atop a tulip bulb and hummingbirds flitted among the orange poppies.

  Safiyya stood watching the morning light pour its colors into the day. There were so many shades of green, from the lush grass to the leaves of sycamore and oak and maple. Scents rose from mint and thyme and rosemary, conjuring a potion of enchantment in the air.

  Above her, strung from fifty arms of the intermingled trees, wind chimes of wood and bamboo, metal and glass, tinkled in the air. Never too loud. Never intrusive. She’d made them from junk collected in town and hung them back when she was a newlywed. Their sound was a joy back then. More recently she’d tied them all with string to keep them silent, because the noise was one of the many, many sparks to her husband’s anger. Now all those strings were cut and the wind conspired with the salvaged junk to play the sweetest songs.

  Safiyya walked deeper into the garden. A green turtle watched her from the bank of the runoff that led from her property down to a stream. She could hear the gurgle of the water as it tumbled over stones on its way south. On impulse she stooped to set her cup down on the path and then followed the runoff through the trees. A mockingbird flitted from branch to branch, regaling her with borrowed songs learned in a hundred places. A sound made her turn and she saw a rabbit vanish beneath a clutch of hosta. It made her smile.

  The runoff widened as it spilled into the stream, and Safiyya stood on the bank, her toes sinking into the mud. Sunlight had found the water and it glimmered on the ripples. She saw a flash of silver and realized that it was a fish.

  It surprised her, because she never knew there were fish here. She’d not seen one before.