“Greater good?” Nadya cried, finally losing her temper. “How dare you speak of a greater good, like your kind has any right to pretend you are anything but heretics and abominations revolting against the gods.”
Malachiasz was grinning now, sharp-toothed and dangerous. He lolled his head to one side, lazily closing his spell book. He took a bandage out of his pocket and slowly wrapped his hand. “All right, you win. She’ll be useful,” he said to Rashid.
Nadya didn’t like the sound of that. “Useful? Are you going to experiment on me as well?”
Malachiasz stood and crossed the room until he was standing over Nadya. He was very tall. He took her chin in his ink- and blood-stained hand and tilted her face up toward his.
“You would not be so lucky,” he said, his voice soft, his breath a whisper against her cheek.
“Malachiasz…” Parijahan said.
He released Nadya, taking a step back. “We can keep you safe,” he said. “The High Prince could be right outside the door and never realize the church is even here. I’ve made certain.”
“The High Prince, maybe, but what of Tranavia’s other horrors?” Anna shot back.
Now it was Malachiasz’s turn to go still.
“What?”
“The monsters you Tranavians let foul once-holy churches. What about them?”
“The Vultures do not venture onto the battlefield,” he said, but his voice was strained. One of his hands absently rubbed his forearm. “They haven’t left Tranavia in…”
“About thirty years,” Nadya said. “Funny, that.”
His eyes narrowed, but he shook his head, backing down.
Woven into the darkest of Kalyazi nightmares were the Vultures of Tranavia. Blood mages so twisted by their heretical magic they were no longer human, nothing more than violent monsters. It was true, they hadn’t been seen in Kalyazin in a long time. It was also true they had been one of the final nails in the last of the clerics’ coffins.
If they came for Nadya, she wasn’t sure she could escape so easily this time.
“Why would you help us?” Nadya asked after a beat of uncomfortable silence.
“We’re no friends to Tranavia,” Parijahan said.
Nadya shot a pointed look at Malachiasz. He smiled at her.
“We’re here because Tranavians burned down the last, what, three refugee camps we found?” Malachiasz said, moving back to the tables and hopping up next to Parijahan.
“Three camps, two outposts, one military encampment, and one village,” Rashid said.
“The military camp was before my time,” Malachiasz said, answering the question Nadya was about to ask: how could they ever get him into a military encampment?
“Again, we want this war to end,” Parijahan said simply.
“Don’t we all?” Anna muttered.
“Yes, well, keeping a Kalyazi cleric alive would do that, wouldn’t it? Even with the differences in ideology.”
“It’s a start,” Nadya allowed.
“What if we go further?” Parijahan asked. “The boys kept telling me to wait until an opportunity arose, and now here you are. So, tell me, how do you feel about assassinating the Tranavian king?”
7
SEREFIN
MELESKI
Svoyatova Alisha Varushkina: A cleric of Bozidarka and a seer, Alisha’s visions protected Kalyazin from an uprising in the western provinces. This protection did not extend to her. Years later, a low prince from the west, Dmitri Zyuganov, would burn out her eyes with a flaming poker for interfering with his plans.
—Vasiliev’s Book of Saints
“Your Highness?”
Serefin clenched a fist, reflex causing his index finger to brush against the razor in his sleeve. He forced himself to relax. Being on edge wasn’t going to help anything. “Yes?”
He was relieved to find Kacper trailing along behind Teodore, less relieved to notice Kacper had something in his hand that looked suspiciously like a royal missive. Dread coiled in his stomach.
“Did you speak with my father?” he asked Teodore.
“I did, Your Highness. He expressed—” he paused and Serefin sighed, knowing what was coming “—displeasure at the outcome of yesterday’s attack.”
“Well, he wasn’t here,” Serefin muttered.
Teodore said nothing, and Kacper handed Serefin the missive. He took it gingerly between two fingers. The seal was his father’s. The king generally sent messages via courier instead of with magic in an effort to mask the disappointing reality that he was a less than impressive blood mage. Contact could be made with blood magic—like Teodore had done the night before—but it was discouraged.
“Did this arrive this morning?” he asked.
Kacper nodded.
There was no telling how long it had taken to reach Serefin’s hands. He broke the seal, scanned the letter, became confident that his eyesight was finally failing him completely, scanned it again, and looked up at Kacper with a frown before reading it closely once more.
“Did my father mention this?”
“He did not,” Teodore said.
“Nothing? Nothing at all? Not even the littlest hint that he had been planning this for months without giving me so much as a warning?”
“It would help, Ser—Your Highness,” Kacper said, shooting Teodore an irritated look, “if we knew what the message was?”
“He wants me to return to Tranavia,” Serefin said, handing Kacper the missive and ignoring Teodore’s scandalized expression. “Immediately, apparently, as there’s a matter of an upcoming Rawalyk.”
“What?” Kacper looked startled.
“The ceremony to choose a royal consort—” Teodore started.
“I know what a Rawalyk is—” Kacper said, just as Serefin snapped at Teodore, “He’s aware of the tradition.”
Teodore gave Kacper a dark look.
“I need to go after the cleric, I don’t have time for this,” Serefin said. “We are so close to a turning point with the war, and he wants me to drop everything for a pointless charade.”
“He did mention that the Vultures requested to be sent after the cleric,” Teodore said.
Serefin raked a hand through his hair. Kacper’s eyebrows lifted.
“So he’s stripping me of my command and ordering me home,” Serefin said softly.
Teodore didn’t respond.
It made sense, of course, for the Vultures to want to get their hands on the first Kalyazi cleric in more than thirty years. There was a new generation in the cult, ones who had never seen Kalyazi magic before. It stood to reason.
But Serefin hated the idea of his victory going to someone else. His father was the one who had sent Serefin to the front when he was only sixteen; he wanted a war hero for a son so that was what he got, and all the mess that came with it. It wasn’t fair to ask him to fill a role he had grown unused to for the sake of tradition when they were so near the end.
There would be no arguing. It was not a choice. If he left that day, he could reach Grazyk in a few weeks, potentially longer depending on what they found when they reached the border. If he took only Ostyia and Kacper with him, he could make the journey in even less time. But they were behind enemy lines. Anything could go wrong.