Send Me Their Souls (Bring Me Their Hearts) Read online

  I don’t get any time to breathe, though, because the captain has me running water and rations to the crew. They’re heading for Avel, passing over Cavanos to the south and only to the south, considering the news about the valkerax has quickly broken on Breych’s shore. They’re willing to stop for a bare few hours at a hilltop village in Cavanos called Trillmarc, and that’s when we’ll get off.

  We agreed, in the sage’s tower, that Y’shennria’s letter was our best bet, and so we’re heading to Ravenshaunt, where Y’shennria said to visit when I’m free. I’m free now, in a manner of speaking. Freer, at least, than when I was chained to the idea of my heart and the guilt of killing.

  But guilt never really goes. I made the graves for the fourteen men, but they aren’t gone. Just quieter. Maybe the guilt will never be gone, not completely. Maybe you just live with it, until it becomes as natural as part of your body, another limb you move through the world with.

  Maybe guilt isn’t about mourning people but about making them a part of you as you go forward.

  As the ship cuts to the right, Cavanos grows closer. Y’shennria grows closer. I try and fail to tame the constant pangs of giddiness that run through me at the idea of meeting her again. The hum and whir of the thrusters gets stronger toward the back of the ship, a lullaby that, in the quiet moments, nearly puts me to sleep. Fione, on the other hand, is having a far less soothing time. Her retches are so loud, they echo among the mountain ridges like queasy thunder. At some point, Malachite takes over my job of watching her and rubbing her back supportively, and Lucien finds me staring out at the view on the deck, lacing his hands around my waist like a quiet assurance.

  “Busy?” he asks.

  “Not anymore,” I say, leaning back into his chest. The wind whips his dark hair around his eyes. I rub a strand of it between my fingers. “Not as short as I remember it.”

  “I’ll cut it again, if you like.”

  “Absolutely not. Granted, the revolutionary gesture did make me fall for you harder, but your best look is long and shiny.”

  “It’s a pain to wash,” he admits.

  “As if you washed it yourself,” I scoff. “You had servants.”

  “I wouldn’t let them touch my hair,” he insists. “The nursemaids loved calling me difficult for it.”

  “I’ll stop, then.” I drop the midnight strand, but he takes my hand and presses it against his cheek.

  “I’m willing to make an exception.”

  “How charitable of you.” I laugh. The ship turns, the wind battering at our backs now, and the ridge falls away from us, revealing the rest of Cavanos.

  And the smoke.

  Lucien’s body around me tenses hard as rock almost instantly, and both of us straighten.

  “Is that…” I trail off, peering into the distance.

  “Gods,” he breathes. “No.”

  He lunges for the railing, gripping it with white knuckles.

  Marring the perfect emerald roll of the grasslands is a blackened banner consumed by the edges of riotous flames. Smoke billows into the air, tall and wide as storm clouds, taking up nearly the whole eastern horizon. The Crimson Lady, the spires of the castle—Vetris, as big as it is, is completely obscured. King Sref had ordered his troops to burn the forests after his declaration of war on the witches, but not like this. This isn’t one forest, burned by human hands. This is a whole third of central Cavanos up in flame and ash, the ground entirely blackened dead and cratered deep. Not a single tree left, not a stone, not a road or village remaining.

  Everything. Gone.

  She wouldn’t. She— Her mother and father…

  “She didn’t!” I choke out.

  The great wall of Vetris—breached. Gaped open by fire and black brimstone.

  The shake starts in Lucien’s shoulders and works its way to his whole body. Like fire. Like the fire just below him, eating his kingdom. His people. Vetris looks superficially intact, but it’s hard to see details through the choking smoke. I walk up to his back, afraid of it and keening to comfort him all at once. What do I even do? All I can do is what I want to do—touch him. Lightly, gripping his elbow to root him here with me, moving up to his hand. Ice cold.

  What can I even say? Nothing. Except exactly what I want to.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  His throat bobs, and then he whirls, black eyes ink and midnight and stuck like burrs to me. “I have to stop her.”

  “I know.”

  Our words are simple, said simply, and yet anything but. Scratch the surface and below are a thousand-thousand clockwork arms, spinning and whirring. History. Battering the two of us as we fall through it without a choice.

  we made every choice to be right here, right now.

  The hunger is right. I made the choice to do this. To go down this path. To stop Varia. Lucien’s hands grip mine, tight.

  “I’m going to use it for good.” I pause. “I’m going to use the hunger in me to put things right this time.”

  He leans in, forehead to forehead, and gives a shuddering gasp. “I’ll help you. My magic is yours. Whatever you need, it’s yours.”

  “I need you—” It’s my turn to swallow. “Just as you are, right now. Brave as you are. Scared as you are. Hopeful as you are. Just like this.”

  Before now, I never knew an embrace between two people could feel like one trembling body, one trembling heart, one person made from two, made from nothing, made from chance and choice and love.

  6

  SERPENT

  LIKE SALVATION

  The news about Vetris spreads around the crew like the fire that’s consumed it.

  Lucien stays at the railing for hours until the wind changes, east-northeast to south, or so the captain says. The smoke then clears, and we can finally see it. Vetris, in flames.

  Vetris, ruined.

  I kick myself. I should’ve told him—I should’ve told him I saw her near the grasslands in my dreams. I didn’t. I didn’t, and now…

  your mistrust will kill them all.

  I push the hunger down and breathe. Nothing to be done. There’s nothing to be done now. The fourteen men taught me this, and taught me it well. It’s the past. Lesson learned. I have to learn from it.

  Even if I told him I saw her near Vetris in my dream—what could we have done? She’s so powerful. We can’t weaken the bond between the valkerax and the Bone Tree, not yet. What would it have done, other than cause him great grief?

  The exact grief he’s feeling now.

  Fione, with nothing left in her stomach and half recovered, pulls her weary self over by the railing and offers Lucien her brass seeing tube first. And then he offers it to me, his face stone and yet green on the edges.

  The white walls rot gray with ash and smoke, the glistening palace’s spires are fragmented and broken, the body of two massive valkerax impaled on them and dripping blood down the palace’s marble walls. The Crimson Lady is torn asunder, its two perfectly cleaved halves crushing scores of houses below it. Vetris’s only hope against Varia’s magic, the entire reason I was sent into Vetris instead of a witch—now nothing more than red rubble. Red, strewn with long white shapes. Valkerax, dead. Dozens of them. But not hundreds. The dense army camps ringing the city are scathed by fire and craters and broken horses, dogs feasting on the remains.

  Crows—black ones—wing in heavy murders over what’s left of the city.

  Vetris lost.

  Just like that. As easily as that. All the combined might of the polymaths, all of Cavanos’s army, the thing the witches feared so dearly—defeated. Vetris won the Sunless War thirty years ago, against the might of the witches and their Heartless and their magic. But against the valkerax…

  The seeing tube is strong, but not strong enough to see the individual details—whether or not the aquifers are intact, how many
bodies there are.

  “South Gate sustained the heaviest damage, looks like,” Malachite says dully. “And the noble quarter is completely trashed. Judging by the valkerax corpses, it wasn’t an instant attack—the royal family might have had time to evacuate.”

  It’s a kind word, meant for Lucien. But the prince’s expression doesn’t so much as twitch. And the swirling in my gut says otherwise. The palace is rubble and sand. No one could’ve lived through that.

  “There’s not enough dead valkerax—which means she didn’t even send her main force.” Fione’s voice is cold, compact. Only what’s necessary. Her way of dealing. “An auxiliary would be enough to do this—twenty or thirty.”

  Just twenty, just thirty…did all this? I know how big the valkerax are, how powerful. I trained Evlorasin, for New God’s sake! But still, I’m aghast. Lost for words, for thought. Lucien says nothing, seeing tube riveted to the city again. Malachite pats him once on the shoulder, then wisely steps back to give him room. The beneather makes his long-legged way over to me.

  “I’m amazed they took down that many valkerax,” he mutters at my side.

  “Likewise,” I say softly. “But I suppose the majority of the king’s forces were gathered in the city at the time.”

  “Except that just means they have nothing left to fight back with. That’s why Varia hit it first, probably: hamstring the bulk of their forces at once, and they lose all hope.”

  I watch Lucien’s hawk profile. “He wants to be down there. With his people.”

  “Sure. But that’s not gonna stop Varia. He knows that. We all know that. Our best bet’s Windonhigh. Find what we need to know, get out, and use it against her.”

  “Fione’s taking it too well.”

  “Nah. She’s just hiding it.”

  “And you?” I ask. “You seem awfully calm.”

  “I’m used to losing a lot of people at once.” He sighs, resigned. “Comes with the territory of hunting bloodthirsty giant wyrms, you know? Doesn’t mean I don’t feel it; I’ve just learned to deal with it. You’ve gotta deal with it, or it drags you down into despair. Big endless pit.”

  I nod. “Yeah. I know.”

  “’Course you know. But the nobles over there don’t. They’re different from us. I mean, they do know, but only in theory, in war tactics. Books. Concepts and tutoring. Not reality. So go easy on ’em.”

  “I’ll try.”

  He pats me on the shoulder the exact same way he did Lucien, then heads over to the captain at the helm. The crew’s whispering can’t be contained, filtering in from behind me.

  “Begods, look at the state of it.”

  “Spirits save us—valkerax. My grandpa’d be rollin’ in his grave if he could see this.”

  “There’s none left to see. None but corpses in Vetris now, I reckon.”

  “Ach, shhh! Don’t ya know that black-clad one’s the prince of Cavanos?”

  “And I’m a sage-duke. A prince wouldn’t be up here bumming with us. He’d be down there, fighting or fleeing or whatever it is royals do during war.”

  “We’ve still got the whole armada, don’t we?”

  “The valkerax keep in Cavanos, there’s nothing to worry about. Let ’em rampage, long as they stay away from my wee ones cross the mountains.”

  I feel it suddenly, like a latch clicking into place. My limbs go numb, zinging as if asleep, and Lucien seems suddenly…bigger. Taller at the railing. He’s a vacuum pulling my eyes in, my body in.

  Magic.

  “Lucien!” I stagger as the airship gives a massive heave. The crew crows about turbulence, and I manage to scramble off my knees and toward the prince. “Lucien! What are you doing?”

  He won’t turn to face me, but his hands on the railing are already pitch-black up to the wrists. The wind whips his hair back and forth, erratic. I know that wind. The wind before teleportation.

  “Don’t!” I shout over the howling. “Lucien, it’s too far away; you’ll hurt yourself again—”

  “Again?” Malachite catches my arm as the ship gives another heave.

  “He’s—” I gesture wildly at the prince’s back. “His right eye, it’s gone! Using magic beyond your physical limit is— He’s going to teleport down there—”

  Malachite snarls a beneather swear and launches himself forward, grabbing the railing and Lucien’s shoulder all at once.

  “Luc, look at me—”

  And he does. He tilts his dark-haired head over to his bodyguard, his friend, and the hawk-eyes I know so well are eclipsed, no whites to be seen. Black and only black, deep and endless.

  “There’s no time.” Lucien’s voice comes out even, still as water. “We go.”

  “Mal!” I reach for his hand, grabbing Fione’s and pulling her toward Lucien. Fione’s moment of confusion, Malachite’s tense brow of realization, and then the feeling of being pulled inexorably somewhere, in one arrow-direction by the guts, the sounds of the howling wind and the uneasy crew and the creaking airship evaporating into total silence. Blue sky, white sky, and then black. Nothing but black.

  With the faintest pop, color flicks on again—crimson flames licking old wood buildings. Sound crashes down on my ears all at once: screaming, crying, hysterical shouting, and the crackly eating noises of fire. A village. We all stagger forward into a village on fire, Lucien clutching his left hand to his chest and panting.

  “Luc!” Malachite turns to him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Help…them.” He points with his right hand at the village. “Go.”

  “Lucien—” Fione starts forward.

  “Go!” His roar is louder than the fire for a moment and his eyes, now normal again, flicker over to me, wordless and pleading.

  go, the hunger echoes him faintly. But he’s put no magic behind it. It’s not a command. It’s a wish. A desperate request.

  “C’mon!” I snag Malachite by the chainmail. “We’re pros at this by now, right? You check the buildings still standing, Sir Fireproof. Fione—let’s gather the survivors and get them to a safe place.”

  Lucien’s eyes soften in gratitude. Malachite tries to argue for one second, sees the look between the prince and me, and makes the decision to dash into the blazing walls of fire. I take off downwind, and Fione trots after me, keeping up surprisingly easily considering she just spent the last couple halves retching.

  “Not a fan of the sky, huh?” I shout back, passing her my handkerchief to cover her nose and mouth.

  “Certain parts of me aren’t keen on the sky, apparently. The polymaths say every day we should try to learn something new about ourselves.”

  Her dry joke gets me, but only for as long as it takes for me to see a little crowd of huddled children by the remains of the town well, smeared with ash and fear. I gather them up with promises of their parents, and Fione offers a few of the more dazed-looking ones water from her skin.

  “What happened?” Fione asks a child gently. They gulp water greedily, and lower the skin only to point wordlessly at the ground.

  There, in the perfect ashen detail of the dirt, is a massive scratch mark. Four lacerations deep and long in the earth, punctuated by a titanic paw impression, white fur and scales scattered about.

  Valkerax.

  It might still be around. Lucien—I can’t be worried about Lucien. Not now. He teleported us from an airship who knows how many miles in the air to the ground. To a village somewhere in Cavanos. All four of us. By himself. It took three witches to teleport just me from Nightsinger’s house to the Bone Road. And after Varia teleported herself and me to the Tollmont-Kilstead mountains, she was so exhausted I had to carry her the rest of the way to the Bone Tree.

  He’s hurt himself. He had to, to do this.

  I shake my head, gold hair sticking to sweat. I can’t think about that now. He wants me here, doing this. Not worrying
about him. But I can’t help it. If he keeps going like this—if he keeps trying to help people with his magic without regard for himself, he’ll…

  The children follow behind Fione and me like exhausted ducklings, too scared to even cry or complain. The only thing that makes them jump is the occasional crack of wood as another village building collapses. The smoke’s not thick enough to obscure vision—the southwardly wind mercifully wicking most of it away. Less casualties, then, at least by smoke inhalation. It’s the little things in life.

  Ingeniously, Fione uses her seeing tube to point me in the right directions—east, a pair of elderly men; northeast and between the burning market stalls, four teenagers trying to persuade a terrified cow to move. It finally decides moving’s the better option when I lovingly bite its flank as hard as I can with all my Heartless teeth. The children don’t follow me after that, preferring Fione and the more human adults, and I can hardly blame them; I wouldn’t trust a lady with fresh cow blood on her mouth, either.

  At last we catch up to the majority of the village, stripped down to near-nothing and forming a long chain of sweaty bodies between the secondary well and a burning building, passing buckets upon buckets of heavy water to each other. On the frontlines, another chain of humans frantically shovels as much dirt onto the fire as they can, swapping in another villager when one starts to buckle. It’s an incredible display of human cooperation, but it’s a futile one—the building looks to be on its last legs, and the rest of the village is faring no better.

  “What is that building?” Fione asks.

  “The main granary,” one of the teenagers speaks up. “For winter.”

  “The most important building in the village,” I muse.

  “If we lose it…” An elderly man trails off at the look the children give him.

  “You won’t.”

  The new voice comes from behind us, and we whirl. In my heart I already know who it is—always. Lucien. He looks better than when we first arrived, his left hand no longer cradled by his right. Maybe…maybe he didn’t hurt himself? No. He’s just hiding it. For me. For all of us.