The babe hurried over, cradling a rock. Approaching the High Druid, he held it aloft, like the rarest of treasures, and presented it to him. I winced at the sight of the jagged shard of bloodstone, chipped from a relic. I could snatch it. Swallow it, perhaps. Ortake it to… “Oh, how splendid!” Father accepted the gift, holding it to the sconce light. Beneath the mesh, I bit down on my lip, harder and harder until the need to claw it from his hands no longer blazed.
“What a keen eye you have, Willur.”
“It’s a present.”
“I am honoured, my child, but perhaps we could offer it to the Blood God? Gain His favour?”
The young boy’s head tilted. “I thought we offered ourselves?”
A deep chuckle. “You do little one, you do. And what have I told you?” His hand cupped the boy’s chin.
“It’s an hobor.”
“Honour.”
“Honour,” he repeated slowly, eyes searching for appraisal.
“There’s a good lad. I shall keep this and give it to Him.” He pocketed the rock, patting it with a large hand. “Go and play, Willur. I’m conversing with His Holiness.”
“Yes, Father.”
He tottered off, leaving us alone once more.
“You get them to call you father?” I demanded, rage a balm to the craving.
He scoffed. “Am I not a father to all? ‘Tis harmless, Lycandor. They love me, and I do so love them.” He swiped his tongue along his bottom lip, and the perfume of incense and honey fogged the air, strong enough to war with the grace. Strong enough to make me retch. Hedidlove them. I resisted the urge to spit on the floor. “If your efforts are not fruitful by the morrow, she dies, alongside the others. I’ll have her drowned, face smothered with a cloth… There are endless ways to stop the beating of one’s heart without spilling blood on the floor if we still do not yet know its secrets.”
I bit down on my tongue hard enough to draw blood, a lick of iron coating my mouth. “Why kill her when there is much to be learned?”
“She is hope—a hope that turns heads. Already there are murmurings. The Dendralis pulpits are loud, but the whispers of gossip are louder. The offerings have stopped, and Thromarra will grow too comfortable. They need fear, Lycandor,fear, for without it, hope becomes a weapon rather than a tool.”
“Too much fear, you turn them feral. Nothing bites quite like a cornered animal.” I dug my fist into my thigh, hard enough to bruise.
I’d run out of time, for without a decree, without a pardon…there was nothing I could do. “Not enough, and they’ll make mincemeat of us, regardless. Succumbing be damned, even rock can crumble, and we are not invincible, my son, even though it may seem that way.” “Not invincible?” I scoffed, knowing if it were the truth, I’d have exploited it long ago. “What could topple a mountain?”“Or a Cor Tower?” he rebuked. “Perhaps something that can tremble the earth.” He moved to face me, blocking my view of the chaise and the children who played there. “She is dangerous, and I’m not fool enough to deny it.”
“You need to giv—”“Enough!” We stood, nose to nose, chest to chest, mirrors of mesh; one I longed to shatter. “Has succumbing driven you to madness? What, because you cannot bed her, you want to keep her instead, as if her cunt will ripen like the vine and not shrivel with the rest of her? Her death is inevitable, and you must crush the seed before it can sprout.” He relaxed his shoulders. “They call you the Butcher, do they not? I had hoped you’d be a scythe, not a cleaver, but it seems you are neither. And what use have I for a wooden sword? Make no mistake, I will have not a single chink of metal mismoldered in the Dendralis’ link. Another tree is almost secured. I’m depending on you to organise the crusiax to defend Thromarraif necessary, if they retaliate, as unlikely as that is. Tonight, someone tastes her blood. If nothing happens in the ‘morrow, she and the others will die. I decree it.”
He turned from me, abandoning our conversation to make for the chaise. A child clambered into his lap, straddling his knee, running a hand along his veil and watching the metal dance.
I found myself staring…and thinking, andcraving.
Grace stalking at my heels, I mounted the stairs, hoping, by some unfathomable miracle, that a decree awaited me in my office, some blessed twist of fate and mercy ensuring it had been delivered in the two turns since I had been absent. All would be well, then. I could take her, takehim, through the templum’s belly, out of its bowel, to the ship, to the fane, to sanctuary. But with no decree, there’d be no town, no village, no godsdamned rock in all Thromarra to smuggle them to. I would have to watch them die.Herdie. Like all the ones who’d died before, and unable to do a damned thing about it.
I breached the surface and moved through the sanctum, heading towards my office with fool’s hope and a realist’s resolve.
But then, I smelt it—potent, salt-laced, floral.
Fear.
Herfear.
Chapter thirty-seven
Lycandor
The Lesson
“What hast thou done?” the voice of blood crieth unto me from the ground. -4:10–11 - The Book of Dendralis
