Dred picked off another coward, this time breaking his neck with a skilled twirl of her chains. His body flew forward, then dropped, and a few Queenslanders cheered. They didn’t need to see her dive into the melee to believe she could hold her own. She’d carried them to this point, but sometimes a queen had to step back and open her hands. When they won the day, the Queenslanders would’ve earned their revels, and they’d appreciate the victory more, feel more invested in the new territory. These lessons, she’d absorbed from Tam without realizing he had been teaching her statecraft.
Who the hell are you, spymaster? More to the point, where the hell are you?
Dred glanced over her shoulder and was unnerved to find the Speaker standing just behind her, just outside her peripheral vision. Trying not to be obvious about it, she angled her stance. If he thought he’d murder her during the battle and blame the enemy, well. She put her back to the wall, just in case. Silence fought like a shadow, slipping from victim to victim with her garrote. It shouldn’t be possible to execute men with such surgical precision in such a mess, but the Handmaiden was like Death itself, hardly visible between the moving lattice of lights. Only her long gray hair showed when she moved, like the dingy shroud on a corpse come back from the netherworld to reap men’s souls.
Shaking her head at the thought, she looked for Einar again, then realized he was in trouble. Her heart in her throat, she pushed forward, but there were too many bodies between him and her, too many allies. She lashed out with her chains, but if she killed a bunch of her own men while striving to reach the big man, she’d face a rebellion, so her movements were abortive, fruitless. Still, she shoved and jabbed with a small blade, driving deeper into the mob. Einar had come too deep alone, and the remaining enemies backed him toward the wall. There were eight of them, at least, focused on taking down the most obvious threat.
“Come at me!” she shouted. “Think how pleased Grigor will be when you bring him the Dread Queen’s head.”
Four of his foes turned, started pushing toward her. That’s right. This way. It might be tough to take out four men in such close quarters, with Queenslanders jostling her from all sides, fighting, grunting, spitting, and bleeding. I’ll manage. I have to.
“No,” the big man roared.
Like a berserker, he wheeled into the fight, leaving himself open to knives and fists and shards of metal. The idea that she’d take the blows for him clearly maddened him, drove all ideas of caution and self-preservation out of his head. All around her, the scrum tightened so that she could hardly move her shoulders, let alone breathe. More bodies surged between them; she couldn’t even see Einar anymore.
“Help Einar,” she ordered.
But her words were lost in the chaos of the fight, in whirling darkness. A few men tried to find him, but they couldn’t spot him, either. Bodies surged, a flurry of blows and the unearthly screams of men dying in agony. Reckless, she lashed at anyone who got in her way, whether they were wearing a light helmet or not, and the crowd parted. The big man took two blades in the stomach as she watched, helpless, only three meters away. Two more sank into him, then Grigor’s men frenzied, stabbing, kicking, punching. Einar dropped to his knees. She spun her chains and yanked one of them away, snapped them free and stunned another.
“To me!” she shouted.
The Queenslanders rallied, fighting the enemies who had focused on the big man. One by one, they died, and the tide turned. That broke the enemy’s will, so that Silence’s people surged in and executed them, little resistance left. She pushed forward and knelt beside the big man, whose breathing sounded awful and liquid. Blood in his lungs. Blood everywhere. In the dark, it gleamed nearly black on his skin, and he was covered in it. She put her hands over his wounds—or she tried—but there were too many.
“Get me some bandages.”
Einar fell back onto his elbows, too weak to kneel. His eyes reflected like winter ice, set in an incredibly ugly face. Somehow, he mustered the strength to cover her hands with his own. “Bandages won’t help, and there’s no surgeon to patch me up. Do the right thing, my queen.”
Tears knotted her throat, burned in the back of her eyes, but the Dread Queen wouldn’t let them fall. Dred wished she had the freedom to weep, but all eyes were on her, and she still had to finish this with the Great Bear. She couldn’t afford to show weakness.
“If you prefer,” she said quietly.
Einar managed a quick nod. “Better to have it done swiftly . . . and by your hands. It’s impossible for me to imagine a better end than this.”
“Picture the last beautiful thing you saw,” she whispered.
The big man closed his eyes, blood trickling past his lips as he said, “I am.”
“Good-bye, my friend.”
As she sank her blade into his chest, he opened his pale blue eyes for the last time and whispered, “It’s you. It’s always been you.”
He closed his eyes and saw my face? Her heart twisted. Deep down, she’d suspected how he felt about her, but she hadn’t pursued it. First, she was too broken, mad with pain inflicted by Artan, and then Jael arrived. If he hadn’t, she might’ve eventually invited Einar into her bed instead of letting him sleep beneath it. He’d done terrible things before being shipped to Perdition . . . But so have we all.
With grief eating a hole in her heart, she closed his eyes with bloody fingertips. “I’ll miss you, big man.”
Then she pushed to her feet in a silent rage. The Great Bear will die for this.
40
Never Dead to Us
This is my fault.
The room was awash in blood, bodies everywhere. Long before his palace days, he had worked in a slaughterhouse, butchering meat when he was scarcely big enough to hold the tools. That place had been clean and orderly in comparison to this. There had been more of a sense of respect for life and for the value of the animals being processed for consumption.
This . . . this is monstrous.
Though he had willingly signed the deal that landed him here, for the first time, hate swelled in him—for his fellow man, for the people who had put him here. For a few seconds, he even hated the queen of Tarnus, for whom he had given up everything. She’s the rightful ruler, he told himself. And though it took fifteen turns to finish that game, it ended as it always must—with her on the throne and me in exile.
They always need someone to blame.
Staring at the body of the man who had been the closest thing Tam had to a friend in this hellhole, pain swelled in his skull until his temples felt like they might burst. If he’d listened to Jael when he’d pressed them to leave, he might have reached Einar before it was too late. Instead, he’d gone against all experience, chosen mercy instead of expedience. And look where it got me.