“Where did you come from?” Ryber cooed, scooping the cat into her arms. “Are you a stowaway from the Ring? You are, aren’t you?” She nuzzled the cat’s ear, which was missing a corner, and at Stix’s face of mild horror, she shrugged. “I like cats. Plus, they’re good luck around here.”
This was undeniably true, for as the saying went, Six-fingered cats will ward off mice. Not that Stix had ever heard that phrase before her arrival in Saldonica. Now it and the rest of the rhyme were everywhere her bespectacled eyes could land. On small signs inside the inn, carved into walls over tavern booths, etched into rings, or recited by merchants and pirates and innkeeps alike.
Three rules has she, our Lady of the Seas.
No whistling when a storm’s in sight.
Six-fingered cats will ward off mice.
And always, always stay the night for Baile’s Slaughter Ring.
Nonsensical, though catchy when sung to a tune—and apparently effective at luring gamblers to Saldonica every year for the main fight in the arena.
Once in the room, Ryber deposited the tabby by the door and Stix toppled onto the cot they alternated using. Technically tonight wasn’t her night, but she didn’t think Ryber would argue. She knew what the voices could do. Her Heart-Thread Kullen had endured something similar.
Initially, when these memories had begun in Stix’s brain, carried by souls that apparently lived alongside her own, Ryber had expected it would all make sense immediately. “A few memories,” she’d said. “It only took Kullen a few memories before he recalled all his past lives at once.”
Good enough, Stix had thought, and she’d waited patiently for her voices to do the same. But after two weeks of them shouting louder at Stix every day, of a ceaseless headache and sleepless nights, Ryber had been forced to admit that Stix’s Paladin soul might be different from Kullen’s. That maybe the only way to finish releasing her own ghosts was to do as the voices wanted: come this way, keep coming.
So they had gathered up their few belongings at the Sightwitch Sister Convent, including a new pair of spectacles for Stix, and they’d traveled southeast. First to the Pirate Republic. Then to the Slaughter Ring. And soon, they would enter the heart of it all.
“At least we’ve gained access to the Ring, right?” Ryber settled onto the edge of the cot.
“Not sure the price was worth it.” Stix hauled a pillow over her head. It didn’t quiet the voices, but the weight was comforting. When the tabby crawled onto her belly, though, it ruined the effect. She lifted the pillow and glared. “I did not invite you.”
“Come here.” Ryber gathered up the cat, plucking free a few claws. “It just wants to comfort you. And look! It has six fingers.”
“She,” Stix said, “has six fingers.”
“She?” Ryber peered into the tabby’s face.
“Hye,” Stix murmured. She slung the pillow over her head again. “The voices tell me she’s a she.”
“In that case, we should name her Baile.” Ryber switched to a syrupy voice that Stix had never heard before. She promptly decided she hated it. Or maybe it was just the words she hated, knowing that Ryber believed Stix to be a Paladin. Knowing that Ryber accepted it all so easily while Stix could barely keep her sanity intact.
She prayed every night to Noden that her mind would stay wholly hers. That it wouldn’t fracture into past beings like Kullen’s had.
They never spoke about that part—about the fact that Kullen was gone with only an ancient fury to remain.
Stix also prayed every night that Vivia was safe. The news of Serafin’s takeover had reached Saldonica two weeks before, and Stix had hated learning she hadn’t been there when Vivia had needed her most. What sort of Threadsister was she? What sort of first mate?
It was an open sore inside Stix’s chest. Always oozing, always pained. Worse, she couldn’t stop poking at it. When she had been at the Sightwitch Sister Convent with Ryber, she’d poked. When they had been on the road, traveling with dreary slowness through the Sirmayans and then the Contested Lands, she’d poked. And now here in Saldonica as she and Ryber tried every day to get into the Ring, she poked.
Vivia had to wonder where Stix was, vanished for a month. Stix might have sent Cam to deliver a message about magic doors and raiders, but she had no way of knowing if the boy had ever made it through. No way of knowing if Vivia had even believed him.
By the Hagfishes, Stix wished she’d never left Nubrevna. Hye, remaining would have led her into a different sort of nightmare, with voices screaming at her and memories surfacing. Her mind understood all that had happened. Her heart, though …
Oozing, pained, a scab she couldn’t stop poking.
It was with Vivia on her mind that Stix dozed off—specifically of Vivia’s crown. Stix had only seen it once, tucked away in a tiny, forgotten playroom that was so obscure, no one would ever find it. Vivia had held the golden crown with a strange sort of terror while Stix had eyed it with a strange sort of awe.
That crown belonged on Vivia. It was hers and always had been.
* * *
Stix stands surrounded on all sides by thick forest and white-capped peaks. Snow falls, and nearby, a river churns, its dark waters moving beneath a stone bridge.
A man in black furs strides her way. In his hand gleams a silver sword. On his head shines a silver crown, and for the first time, it occurs to Stix that he is a king. That, although she and the others were never meant to rule, he has taken power like an Exalted One.
He points beside Stix, and she realizes with a start that she isn’t alone in this grove at the heart of a mountain range. She cannot turn her head though, she can only slide her eyes sideways to where a woman lies on her back, a blade thrust through her belly. Silver pools around her, glowing with power. Magic entwined in her very blood, and where the raw magic moves, fissures gouge into the rock.
Two paces away, on his knees and crying, is a man with scars down half his face. He looks at Stix. “I am sorry.”
It is all right, Stix wants to say, for she loves that man, Bastien. Yet no words come; she cannot part her lips to speak.
Bastien doesn’t turn when the Rook King arrives. He doesn’t turn when the Rook King calls out, “Is your fury quenched? Is your wrath complete?” Nor does he turn when the Rook King unsheathes a saber at his hip.
Only when the king comes to a stop before Bastien, does Bastien finally twist his head. “I will find you,” he rasps. “In the next life, I will—”
The king slices off his head. The man’s words end. His head flies to the ground, blood spraying and mixing with the silver. Then the Rook King fixes his dark gaze on Stix. “It will all be over soon,” he tells her before his blade arcs out and crashes against her own neck.
Only as the sword cracks against stone does she realize why she has been locked in place. Only when it cuts through the rock—three swings it takes him—does she realize she has been encased in granite.
Then blade bites into flesh.
At least, she thinks before she dies, the people oppressed by the Exalted Ones have been freed. At least she and the others accomplished this one small task before they were betrayed and their worlds came to an end.