The Vacant Throne E-Book

Joshua Palmatier

• Herausgeber: Zombies Need Brains, LLC
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Throne of Amenkor
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 763

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The Skewed Throne has been destroyed, sacrificed in order to stop invaders from the sea, a desperate people called the Chorl, driven from their islands and in search of a new home. But the threat of the Chorl has not ended. They have retreated…and disappeared. With the cracking of the Skewed Throne, their attention has turned elsewhere and Varis does not know why or where. Reeling from the attack, the city of Amenkor in ruins, she has little time to ponder it. Until she begins to experience some of the same visions and powers she had while attached to the Skewed Throne. But that is impossible. The Skewed Throne is dead. She senses nothing when she touches it. And yet… When an envoy from the city of Venitte arrives, Varis finds herself thrust into the politics of the entire coast. This erstwhile ally comes with dire news. The Chorl are on the march up the coast. Their target: Venitte. No one in Venitte understands why, but they need Amenkor's help. Varis has faced the Chorl before…and survived. And she now understands what is driving them to Venitte in the first place. There is a second throne. And the Chorl will stop at nothing to get it.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Other Novels by Joshua Palmatier:

The Vacant Throne

Copyright © 2025 by Joshua Palmatier

Part I: Amenkor

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Part II: At Sea

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Part III: Venitte

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

About the Author

THE VACANT THRONE

Other Novels by Joshua Palmatier:

The “Ley” Series:

Shattering the Ley

Threading the Needle

Reaping the Aurora

The “Well” Series:

Well of Sorrows

Leaves of Flame

Breath of Heaven

The “Throne of Amenkor” Series:

The Skewed Throne

The Cracked Throne

The Vacant Throne

The “Crystal Cities” Series:

Crystal Lattice

Crystal Rebel

Crystal War

Anthologies from Zombies Need Brains/DAW Books:

After Hours: Tales from the Ur-bar

The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity

Temporally Out of Order * Alien Artifacts * Were-

All Hail Our Robot Conquerors! * Familiars..*..Last-Ditch

Second Round: A Return to the Ur-bar

The Modern Deity’s Guide to Surviving Humanity

Solar Flare * Submerged * Guilds & Glaives * Apocalyptic

When Worlds Collide * Brave New Worlds * Dragonesque

The Death of All Things * The Razor’s Edge * Portals

Temporally Deactivated * Galactic Stew

Derelict * Alternate Peace * Noir * Ampyrium

My Battery Is Low and It Is Getting Dark

Shattering the Glass Slipper * Artifice & Craft * Game On!

The Vacant Throne

A Throne of Amenkor Novel by

Joshua Palmatier

Zombies Need Brains LLC

www.zombiesneedbrains.com

Copyright © 2025 by Joshua Palmatier

All Rights Reserved

Interior Design (ebook): ZNB Design

Interior Design (print): ZNB Design

Cover Design by ZNB Design

Cover Art “The Vacant Throne”

by Ariel Guzman

ZNB Book Collectors #36

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions of this book, and do not participate or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted material.

First Printing, Zombies Need Brains Edition, September 2025

Print ISBN-13: 978-1940709840

Ebook ISBN-13: 978-1940709857

Printed in the U.S.A.

Part I: Amenkor

 

Chapter 1

I stood in the middle of a field of wheat, the bristly heads of grain pattering against my outstretched hands. The breeze that rippled through the stalks tugged at my hair, at the folds of my sweat-stained shirt. In the moment before dawn, the world was quiet, expectant.

Then, far ahead over the fields, near the road that snaked down from the city of Venitte into the hills, a flare of light lit the darkness. Harsh and orange, the fire arched up into the sky, and I felt a tug of grief, a pain that bit deeper every time I felt it, still new and raw and fresh. It twisted in my chest, burned at the edges of my eyes, but I clenched my jaw as I watched the fire crest, begin a long descent, fall down and down—

And explode among the trunks of olive trees. In the burst of light when it struck, I saw an army marching through the fields. A moment later I heard screams, faint with distance.

The pain in my chest writhed.

I’d moved before I’d made a conscious decision to move, pushed through the wheat toward the road. As I plowed forward, grain rattling against my legs, catching, holding me back, more fire bloomed and I marked its source, marked my targets. Then I reached the road, broke into a sprint, the screams from my fellow Venittians among the olive trees growing louder. Heart thundering in my chest, I stretched out with my mind, drew the Threads around me, wove them tight, bound them, twisted them, prepared. Ahead, the screams intensified, grew heated, broke into a rumbling roar of challenge and hatred and fear as the two armies met. Sunlight touched the surrounding hills and fields with a patina of gold, although I didn’t need the light. Through the Threads, I could see everything. The Venittians charged through the low, flattened branches of the olives, fire lancing out, roaring through their ranks, leaving behind charred bodies and burning trees, and in the backwash of light . . .

The Chorl—skin tainted a faint blue, like winter sky, tattoos black in the dawn, faces contorted with rage. The Chorl—curved steel swords raised to the sky as they screamed in a harsh, ululating language.

The Chorl—who had killed my wife and two daughters.

Cold, hard-edged rage tingled through my skin, rippled out on the Threads I’d bound around me, and I slowed as I came at the battle from the side. No need to run. There were plenty of Chorl to kill. They’d invaded the Frigean coast two weeks before, invaded the city of Venitte. They’d come from the western sea with no warning, had attacked the port and overrun a significant portion of the city before anyone had known what was happening.

But the Chorl themselves were not my targets. I would have attacked with the rest of the Venittian army if they had been. No, the attack was a diversion, the army bait. I wanted the Adepts, the ones wielding the Threads, the ones who’d thrown the fire that had killed so many in that initial attack on the city.

The ones who had killed Olivia, who’d killed five-year-old Jaer and her older sister Pallin.

I slid past the first of the Chorl, moving slowly, calmly, their piercing howls surrounding me as they tried to surge forward to the front of the battle. They broke around me as if I were a stone in their currents, not consciously realizing what they were doing, the Threads shunting them to one side while concealing me from their sight. I angled toward the back of their forces, focusing on the source of the fire that still arched up out of their ranks. The Chorl thinned. The road ended, and I was once again among wheat, the stalks trampled into the earth, broken and shattered. Ahead, a Chorl woman in a mud-splattered dress wove the Sight into a tight, blazing fireball and hurled it high into the air, her face strained with effort, sweat streaming down her cheeks, down the cold blue skin of her throat, where corded muscle stood out in stark relief. She was surrounded by ten Chorl warriors and two Chorl priests. The warriors were dressed in a riot of colors— blue, red, orange, green—over crude leather armor. Their eyes were locked on the battle behind me, their bodies tense, hands on the hilts of their swords. The priests were dressed in vibrant yellow-and-red robes and wore necklaces of shells. One carried a scepter of some type of reed and feathers. All of the men were covered in tattoos; on their faces, their necks, their hands. The woman wore five earrings in each ear, the gold glinting occasionally through the long strands of her black hair. She had no visible tattoos whatsoever, her skin flawless.

I slipped through the ring of warriors without them noticing, one sidling away from me as I passed, and halted in front of the woman, looked up into her dark eyes, a surge of regret passing through me that there was only one Chorl Adept in this attack. This close, I could smell her sweat, could hear the priests chanting under their breath on either side of her, could feel the tension coursing around me on the Threads. It reeked of fear, of blood, of trampled wheat.

I glared up into the woman’s face.

Someone like this had stood on the Chorl ships that had entered Venitte’s harbor and attacked the fishing and trading ships, catching them unaware. Someone like this had flung fireball after fireball up onto the cliffs and houses that surrounded the harbor, had flung the fireball that had killed Olivia and Jaer and Pallin.

Jaer. I felt again her charred skin as I clutched her small body to my chest, felt it flaking off beneath my touch.

Only five years old.

The pain stabbed into my chest again, and tears seared the corners of my eyes. The queasy rush of emotion closed off my throat with the hot, sickening taste of phlegm, and I flung out my arms to both sides, gathering more Threads to me as bitter rage flooded my mouth, stained my tongue. I could kill them all with a touch of my hand, could stop their hearts in their chests. They’d drop to the ground, dead before they even knew what had happened. I could send invisible needles of pain into their skin and flay them where they stood. I could call down lightning from the clear morning sky, or open up the earth beneath them and bury them alive. I could kill them all in a hundred different ways, using any or all of the Five Magics.

I chose fire.

In the moment before I ignited the Threads I’d woven around them all—the priests, the warriors, the Adept—the Chorl woman tensed. Through the tears blurring my eyes, I saw her frown, a fireball half formed before her. She sensed something. A ripple on the Threads, a disturbance on the ether. Or perhaps she’d heard the sob that had escaped me.

It didn’t matter. I didn’t give her a chance to react.

I let the fire loose, roared as I ignited the Threads that bound the twelve Chorl men and the Adept together. A roar of grief, of pain that would never end, formless and harsh and guttural. Eyes clenched shut, I felt the shock of the priests and warriors and the woman in the single breath before the fire struck them, before it consumed them, flinging them back with its force, scorching through clothing, through flesh, through bone, as the fire that had charred the flesh from Olivia and Jaer and Pallin had done. I poured all of my sorrow into it, all of my rage, all of the feelings of uselessness and despair I’d felt in the last two weeks as the peace of the Frigean coast collapsed under the Chorl onslaught. And when I felt the last breath of life flee, when the thirteen charred bodies lay around me in a grisly circle, I collapsed to my knees, panting, head bowed, tears still streaming down my face, hands clenched in fists at my sides.

Because the pain still beat with my heart. It burned through my veins, prickled in my skin.

I sobbed.

I should have died with them. I should have died protecting Olivia, my body shielding her from the fire, not the other way around.

I lifted my head, stared at the blackened bodies, felt the rage boil up again, bitter as ash, then turned to gaze up into the lightening sky.

It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

I stood slowly, rage settling around me. A calm rage filled with nothing but grief. With nothing but visions of Olivia on the veranda, held in my arms. Of the scent of her hair, the smoothness of her skin. Of the sounds of Jaer and Pallin shrieking in delight as they played around us.

I turned, cloaked in memories, and waded into the Chorl forces from behind, trailing fire and death behind me.

* * *

I woke with a gasp and an ache in my chest like a hand gently crushing the life from me. I tasted hot, fresh tears, realized that I’d been crying as I slept, my muscles stiff with tension, my body drained, overwhelmed by grief.

But not my own grief. Someone else’s. The man in the dream; a man I knew.

Cerrin.

I dove beneath the river, hope surging forward, the dark room before me shifting subtly, becoming gray and partially visible with the Sight. I could see the edges of the bed I slept in, could see the settee where the Servant Marielle instructed me in writing and math, could see the tables and chairs and the bowl that contained water so I could wash my face. A breeze blew the curtains back from the doors leading out to the balcony, scented with ocean salt and spring night. The balcony overlooked the city of Amenkor. My city, for I was the Mistress.

And we’d survived the winter . . . and an attack by the Chorl.

But at a cost.

I closed my eyes, reached out on the river toward the Skewed Throne, toward the symbol of Amenkor’s power. Cerrin had been a part of the throne, one of the personalities that had been trapped within it, one of the original seven Adepts that had created the throne almost fifteen hundred years before, when the Chorl had first attacked. If I’d been dreaming of him, had lived out one of his memories, then perhaps . . .

The hope that quickened my heartbeat died.

The throne wasn’t there. I couldn’t touch it, couldn’t feel it enfolding me with its power.

Because it was dead. Because I’d destroyed it in order to save Amenkor from the Chorl. From their leader, the Ochean.

I opened my eyes, pushed myself up and to the edge of the bed with a sigh. The tightness of grief in my chest had receded, but not much. I knew I wouldn’t sleep anymore, so I rose and moved across the room to the curtains, stepped out onto the balcony.

As in the dream, the sky overhead was just beginning to lighten with dawn. If the balcony had faced east, I would have seen the eastern mountains lined with golden light.

Instead, I stared down into the husk of what once had been Amenkor, watched the details of the damage done by the Chorl attack emerge as the sun rose. The watchtowers at the ends of the juts of land that protected the harbor were nothing more than heaps of broken stone. The Chorl had destroyed them first, stone and debris arching up and out into the darkness: our first warning that the Chorl had arrived. I shivered at the memory, at the raw power it had taken to destroy them. So much power it had left vortices in the eddies of the river for days afterward.

Then the Chorl’s black ships had knifed into the harbor, where they’d been met by the trading ships, and the real battle had begun. What ships remained from that attack were anchored off the shattered piers, both Amenkor and Chorl ships alike. In their haste to retreat, harried by Amenkor guardsmen and militia, the Chorl had left some of their own ships behind. Small boats ferried men to and fro between them even now. The wharf itself had been utterly destroyed when the Chorl drove their ships into the docks.

From there a clear path of destruction wound upward, from the wharf up through the lower city, through the twisting streets, through the marketplaces, to the gates of the outer wall of the palace. Buildings had been consumed by fire, stone walls collapsing under the heat. Hastily constructed barricades had been breached, the chairs and tables and crab traps used to make them tossed aside. The Chorl had destroyed everything as they came, might have razed the entire city in their fervor, but they’d been intent on reaching the palace, on reaching and seizing control of the throne.

They’d almost succeeded. The gates to the three walls that surrounded the palace had been breached in the span of an hour, the Ochean and the Chorl Servants—the women like me that could wield the river; the women Cerrin had called Adepts in the dream—had blown the gates apart. Only Eryn, the previous Mistress, had been able to slow them, and only then with my help.

I stared down at the jagged holes in the three walls, tasted again Eryn’s desperation to hold against the combined strength of the Ochean and her Servants. They’d linked their powers somehow, so that the Ochean’s power had been augmented by her Servants.

We’d never had a chance.

But we’d prevailed in the end. After I’d killed the Ochean—and in the process destroyed the throne—Captain Catrell, Keven, and the rest of the guardsmen and militia had driven the Chorl back to their ships, had driven them back out to sea. The Chorl had retreated, and hadn’t been seen since.

On the balcony, overlooking the blackened buildings and streets of Amenkor, I straightened, felt a tightness in my chest. We’d survived the winter, the late winter planting ready to be harvested in another few weeks, the early spring planting already in the ground. The shipment of grain from the northern city of Merrell—promised to us at the beginning of winter—had finally arrived over the treacherous northern road. The Dredge was intact, left untouched by the Chorl, as well as the eastern portions of the city.

We were wounded, but we’d survived.

I knew the Chorl would be back. They wouldn’t stop attacking the coast, couldn’t stop. Because they couldn’t return to their homeland. I’d seen it destroyed through the Ochean’s eyes when she’d attempted to seize control of the throne. The Chorl had simply retreated to the Boreaite Isles off the Frigean coast. To regroup, to plan. They couldn’t stay on the Isles forever. There were too many Chorl for the islands to support.

But for now, the fact that we’d survived their initial attack was enough.

I took one last long look out over the charred city, plans already forming in my mind. We’d had two weeks to burn the dead, to grieve, to clean up and take stock, to begin drilling the citizens in their own defense in case the Chorl returned. It was time to start building again.

* * *

“No, no! Take the reusable stone over there. The rest pile up on the side street so that we can cart it off later.” Avrell shook his head, one hand on his hip. The other arm was tied up in a sling across his chest, his shoulder hurt during the attack on the walls. The First of the Mistress, Avrell oversaw the administrative details of Amenkor, which included its rebuilding.

He turned as he heard my escort’s approach, his posture stiffening, becoming more formal as he raised one eyebrow in question. He would have folded his hands inside the sleeves of his dark blue robes if he could have, but the sling wouldn’t allow it. “Mistress? How may I help you?”

“Actually,” I said, “I came to help you.” I reached down and picked up a chunk of shattered stone, what had once been part of the outermost wall of the palace. We stood where the gates had held the Chorl at bay…for approximately ten minutes. Weighing the stone in one hand, I glanced around at the jagged edges of the wall to either side, at the debris that lay in a fan spread outward from where we stood into the outer ward. I could see how much force had been behind the explosion in the pattern of stone, could see where the stone arch over the gates had collapsed in upon itself once the wall had been breached. Buildings to either side of the wide street leading up to the palace had been shattered in the blast, walls caved in, windows and doors nothing but gaping, empty holes. One entire building had sagged inward, on the verge of imploding. It reminded me of the Dredge. Except this damage was new, fresh. The pall of dust still hung in the air, the broken stone sharp with edges. On the Dredge, everything would have been coated with the slick ruin of age, would have reeked of decay, would be worn smooth with defeat.

A narrow corridor had been cleared through the debris immediately after the attack, to allow access between the city and the palace, but other than that, everything lay where it had fallen.

I turned back to Avrell with a grunt. “And I brought helpers.” I motioned to Keven, my personal escort, and the remaining guardsmen behind me. They shifted in surprise, until Keven gave them a harsh glare.

“You heard the Mistress,” he barked. “Let’s move some stone! Arcus, you take the left, I’ll handle the right. Move, move!”

I grinned as Avrell’s eyebrows rose in surprise, then reached down and picked up a few more chunks of stone, moving to toss them into the discard heap. All around us, the men and women of Avrell’s work detail paused in surprise as well, then grinned as the guardsmen joined them. They’d gotten used to the guardsmen being in the city since the attack.

Avrell watched until he was satisfied the two groups were working well together, then turned back to me, taking up a position halfway between the pile of stone I was digging into and the heap that would be carted out into the city.

“You shouldn’t be doing this,” he said in disapproval.

“Why not?” I gasped, straining as I hauled a stone a little too heavy for me to the reusable heap.

“Because you’re the Mistress.”

I snorted. “And…?”

Avrell pursed his lips but didn’t answer.

I motioned to Avrell’s work detail. It was composed of only fifteen men and women, all of them still lean from the harsh winter, most from the lower city— the portion above the wharf but below the walls. I knew there would be other work details like this one spread throughout the city. Catrell would be at the wharf, overseeing the cleanup there; Nathem—the Second—would be doing the same on the Dredge, which had been left mostly untouched, and in the lower city. Darryn was in the marketplace, training any citizens who would come in the basics of swordsmanship and self-defense. “You need the help, Avrell. And we don’t have enough people to let anyone rest.” I paused as the words sank in. “How bad is it? Do we have anything other than estimates yet?”

He frowned as he glanced around at those working. “Nothing precise. But at this point I don’t think we’ll ever have anything precise. We lost almost half of the militia in the attack, mostly men from the Dredge. Darryn’s men.”

I grimaced. Darryn had been a dispossessed mercenary, relegated to the Dredge when the White Fire had scoured its way across the city and sent the trade routes into a death spiral, cutting off his source of income as a guard-forhire. I’d gone against Baill’s and Catrell’s wishes and put him in charge of the militia after he’d helped quell one riot and interceded in another to save Avrell’s life. But Captain Baill had ended up betraying us to the Chorl, and Catrell had changed his mind after training with those from the Dredge for a few weeks.

And Darryn had done well, keeping those on the Dredge alive as best he could, protecting the warehouse and kitchen we’d set up there to feed them. During the Chorl attack, he’d led the Dredge in a raid on the Chorl’s flanks, had kept the Chorl out of the slums altogether.

Since then, the people of Amenkor had been calling him Lord of the Dredge. Not the most gratifying title, but fitting. It was also the reason he’d been chosen to teach the citizens how to fight. They already trusted him, and he could relate to them better than Catrell.

“And what about the people? What about the guardsmen?” I asked.

“There were casualties among the people, but it’s hard to judge how many. If we include the Dredge, we never had a viable count to start with. We lost some to starvation, others to disease, and then the Chorl arrived…”

I stopped hauling stone, caught Avrell’s gaze. “How many?”

“Three to four hundred. Maybe more.”

I winced as if punched in the gut, the sensation similar to the pain that Cerrin had felt over the loss of his wife and daughters. Similar, but not the same. Not as visceral; not as deep.

“And the guard?”

“A third of the men died in the attack, about eighty overall.”

I lowered my head a moment, closed my eyes, then straightened and returned to sorting stone. I’d known the losses had been bad. I’d watched the columns of oily black smoke rise from the stockyards to the east of the city, where the bodies had been taken to be burned to prevent the spread of disease. Some of those burned had been Chorl, but not all.

The smoke had marred the sky for four days.

“What else?” I asked, shrugging the grisly image aside.

“We’ve cleared the majority of the streets between here and the wharf as you directed. I have men inspecting the watchtowers now, to determine what’s necessary to make repairs there. The engineers are already arguing about how to repair the three gates and the walls.”

“Good,” I said.

“May I ask why?”

I halted, wiped sweat that had mixed with grit and dust from the stone from my forehead. My shirt stuck to my back, my hair lying in sweaty tendrils across my forehead and neck. “What do you mean?”

“Why rebuild the watchtowers, the walls, when we know the Chorl can destroy them so easily?” he spat, his free hand motioning toward all the debris, his face twisted into a scowl. He shifted where he stood, unable to look at me. “Why waste the effort?”

The bitterness shocked me, and hidden behind that, the fear.

Then I remembered. He’d stood on one of these walls during the battle, had watched the Chorl approach, had felt the wall crumbling beneath him.

And he’d been helpless, unable to do anything but choke on the dust and escape before the shattered stone crushed him.

“Because,” I started to say, then hesitated. Avrell needed more than a flippant answer.

I moved toward him, caught his gaze, held it, my expression stern, harsh. “Because the Chorl will come back, Avrell. And the Chorl—the warriors themselves—can be stopped by the walls, by the watchtowers and the gates. The Ochean and the Servants destroyed the walls last time, and the Ochean is dead.”

“There will be another,” he said hoarsely.

“But we’ll be better prepared for her and the Chorl Servants next time. With Darryn’s training, the citizens will be better able to defend against the Chorl warriors. I’ve learned a few things about the Chorl and their Servants since then. And I intend to learn even more.”

He heard the emphasis I placed on the last sentence. His brow creased in confusion, then smoothed in comprehension.

We’d found more than the dead in the debris of Amenkor. But only a few knew about our captive—Keven, Eryn, Avrell, Catrell, and Westen, the captain of the Seekers; the Seekers and Servants who guarded her; and the guardsmen who had found her, of course.

Avrell’s eyes searched mine, and then he nodded.

“What about the wharf?” I asked, brushing dust off of my clothes.

“The engineers and carpenters say it can be rebuilt easily, in comparison to the rest of what needs to be done.”

“Good. Have them start on that as soon as they’re ready.”

“And where are you going?” he asked as I moved toward Keven.

“To visit Erick,” I said, and then, my voice laced with hatred, “and after that, our . . . guests.”

* * *

There were two guardsmen outside the door to the chambers I’d had Avrell set up for Erick, one of them a Seeker. He nodded as I approached, murmured, “Mistress.”

“Tomus,” I said. I knew all the Seekers by name; had trained with them under Westen’s direction. “How is he?”

Tomus didn’t need to answer, I saw it in his eyes and felt something grip my heart and squeeze.

I dropped my gaze, not willing to let Tomus see the pain, then straightened my shoulders with an effort and stepped past the two guards to the door. I heard Keven following, almost ordered him to wait outside . . . but Erick had chosen Keven to take his place as my personal guard after I’d sent him on the trading ship we’d used as a lure to draw the Chorl out of hiding. It had been a trap, one that those on the ship hadn’t been expected to survive.

And only one of those on the ship had.

I stepped into a room harsh with sunlight, glanced sharply toward the servant inside, to the healer Isaiah who’d been assigned permanently to Erick’s care, the same healer that Borund had found to help William when he’d been stabbed by Charls’ men. Isaiah met my gaze without flinching, stood abruptly behind the desk where he’d been sitting, one hand keeping his place in the book he was reading. He was thin—we were all thin after the winter—but his was a natural thinness, not one brought on solely by starvation. A slim build, narrow face, sharp features. Lanky brown hair peppered with gray fell down over the narrow glasses he wore for reading. He was dressed like a merchant’s apprentice: white shirt, brown-cloth breeches, shoes rather than boots. Except, unlike an apprentice, his breeches were tied off at the knees and beneath those, visible from shoe to knee—

I halted. “What are those?”

Isaiah frowned, caught off guard. “What are what, Mistress?”

“Those,” I said, motioning toward his legs.

He glanced downward, still frowning. “Ah. You mean my stockings.”

“Stockings?”

“Yes,” he said, a little sarcastic. “Something to cover my legs when I wear shoes instead of boots. To keep warm.”

“They look . . .” Stupid, I almost said, but caught myself, fumbling for something else instead.

Isaiah raised an eyebrow and waited, shifting where he stood.

I was saved by Erick, who sighed heavily and stirred.

Both Isaiah and I looked toward the bed, and both of us moved at the same moment, Isaiah unconsciously placing a small rectangular stone in the book to hold it open. We went to opposite sides of the bed, Isaiah leaning forward to scan Erick’s face, reaching for his wrist to take his pulse. The servant assigned to assist Isaiah moved up beside him, a damp cloth in one hand; I felt Keven halt behind me.

I stared down into Erick’s face and tensed.

Erick’s gray-brown hair lay matted to his head with sweat, his skin held a sick pallor I’d seen on the Dredge a hundred times. Those who’d looked like this had been avoided by even the deepest denizens of the slums, the threat of disease on the Dredge a constant fear. He was covered in scars—on his face, on his chest and arms and shoulders—most of them old, achingly familiar to me after days upon days of training with him, but some were new, given to him by the Ochean, by Haqtl—the leader of the Chorl priests—and by the priests that had tortured him to find out about the Fire. A Fire I’d placed inside of Erick so that I could see who attacked the ship we’d sent as bait. In the process they’d learned of the Skewed Throne.

And that had led them to Amenkor.

My hand itched, fingers opening and closing into a fist. I wanted my dagger, wanted its weight in my hand, wanted the comforting feel of the handle pressing into my skin. I wanted to hunt, to kill, the instinct trained into me by Erick on the Dredge. But I choked the instinct down, tasted bitterness and blood as I did so, and swallowed hard.

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.

Isaiah shook his head. “I don’t know. He should have healed completely by now, at least in body, if not in mind. He should have woken, should be conscious. His wounds have healed a little, but not as they normally would have, and the fever, the tremors…He should have healed. It’s as if something is actively stopping him from healing.”

The servant brushed Isaiah’s arm, and he took the proffered cloth, wiping the sweat from Erick’s brow. Erick moaned, the sound long and low and torn. Isaiah grimaced, then caught my eye.

“I’m not certain there’s anything else I can do.”

I heard the dry bitterness in his voice, saw the grudging defeat and despair in his eyes. He’d been dealing with Erick for the last two weeks, first down in the back room of a tavern on the wharf, where Westen had stowed Erick after retrieving him from the Chorl ship where he’d been held captive, then later when we’d moved him up to the palace. At first, Isaiah had been optimistic, claiming Erick would be awake and moving around within a week. But then, after a week had passed, after ten days . . .

Erick began trembling, shudders running up through his body, his arms flopping at his sides, dead white and lax. It hurt to watch, hurt even more when Isaiah and the servant reached out to control him and he cried out, face twisted with pain, tears squeezing from the corners of his eyes. I felt an invisible hand clench around my throat, felt my lungs burn as Erick’s trembling intensified, his cry escalating into a scream—

And then the trembling stopped, Erick’s body falling back to the bed, his scream cut short, breath escaping in a long, wheezing sigh.

Isaiah, hands on Erick’s shoulders, weight leaned into Erick’s chest, hesitated a moment, then drew back. “I just don’t know what else to do except wait.”

We stood a moment in silence.

Then I said, “Keven, catch me.”

As I dove for the river, I heard Keven say, “What?” Then I Reached for the Fire inside of Erick. I hadn’t tried to Reach inside anyone since destroying the throne—there’d been no need—but now I wanted . . . no, needed . . . to know whether Erick was suffering. And so I Reached for him.

Except it wasn’t as easy without the power of the throne behind me.

I gasped as I hit a wall, as if something were trying to hold me back, to keep me from stretching outside my body. But I gathered all of my anger—all of the pain of watching Erick day after day in this state, all of the guilt I felt for sending him on a mission in which I knew he might be killed—I gathered all of that emotion into a sliver-thin blade and thrust it through the wall, pierced it with a sharp pain, and then I sped across the short distance to Erick, to the Fire that burned in his soul as behind I heard Keven curse and catch my body as it sagged and fell—

And then I was inside Erick, and the pain . . . the pain burned.

I writhed beneath it, drawing the Fire up higher around me, blocking the pain out, separating myself from Erick, until I huddled inside the Fire, completely free, gasping. The pain had been unexpected, because there was nothing, no wound, no visible reason why Erick should be in such pain.

But he obviously was. And perhaps from here, I could figure out why.

As the last of the burning sensation faded, I gathered myself, then Reached out and touched the Fire, let its protective flames relax, let what Erick felt seep inward so that I felt what he felt. But slowly.

I hissed when the pain first touched me, crawling across my skin like a thousand stinging ants. I held the pain constant, until I’d grown used to the sensation, and then I relaxed the Fire even more. The prickling of ants increased steadily, penetrated deeper, until it felt like a heavy blanket of needles, hot and piercing, just beneath the skin.

And then the pain leveled out. It still seethed against Erick’s skin, but it no longer grew in intensity.

I drew in a ragged breath, held it a moment, then released it in a sigh. I felt Erick’s chest rise and hold, heard him sigh through his own ears. His heart pulsed in his chest, strong and steady. Here and there, through the blanket of needles, I could feel smaller aches, recognized the places where he’d been cut while being tortured, where there were wounds that were not healing as fast as Isaiah expected. But these wounds were minor. His body was trying to fight the stinging needles, trying to heal that pain instead.

But it couldn’t. There was nothing tangible for it to heal. It was pouring all of Erick’s energy into a hopeless battle.

I turned my attention away from Erick’s body, began searching for Erick himself.

I found him curled in upon himself in the deepest recesses of his mind. He lay huddled, trembling slightly, but not moving. This was how I’d found him on the Chorl ship, the pain inflicted upon him so great he’d retreated into himself, shut himself off from the world.

And his situation hadn’t improved much since then. We thought we were healing him. And we had to some extent. His muscles no longer felt bruised, no longer hurt from kicks and blows. His chest and neck no longer ached from screaming. He’d healed a little.

But not enough. Because the pain hadn’t stopped.

I drifted down beside him, reached out and brushed his forehead, a gesture he’d done to me a thousand times since he’d first found me on the Dredge, vomiting over the dead body of the second man I’d killed.

His body hitched at the touch and I leaned in closer.

Erick.

Another hitch. The trembling halted a moment, then resumed.

Erick, it’s Varis.

Erick shuddered with a sob, his body pulling in tighter upon itself, his emotions twisting—regret, defeat, tenderness, and sorrow. Disappointment. But not with me. With himself.

He thought he’d failed me.

I felt my own heart clench, felt something hard and hot lodge in my throat. I stretched out, enfolded myself around him, pulled him in tight. And everywhere our essences touched I sent out comfort, sent out relief, sent out joy that he was alive. It pulsed through me, the same joy I’d felt when I’d first found him, only this time devoid of all the accompanying rage. I’d expelled that rage when I’d cracked the throne, when I’d released its power and destroyed the Ochean. You haven’t failed me, I whispered, sending the sentiment through the contact, pushing it forward. You’ve never failed me…Father.

Erick sobbed, something inside him releasing. I held on, letting the emotions flood through him, letting them flow outward and away.

A pang of guilt bled through me, and I felt tears burn my own eyes. I should have come sooner, should have checked on him sooner. I should have tried to reach him here, through the Fire.

No.

I stilled, pulled away from his essence. He still curled in upon himself, but the trembling had stopped and the sobbing had quieted. The tenderness and sorrow remained, but the regret, the defeat and disappointment, had been replaced by weariness.

His eyes were open, focused on me.

No. You came soon enough.

I shuddered, swallowed against the hardness lodged in my throat. I couldn’t speak.

Varis. His voice caught, edged with pain. His eyes closed as he winced, then opened again, his essence hard and intense. A Seeker’s essence. An assassin’s essence. Make it stop, Varis. Do whatever you have to do, but make it stop.

Then his eyes closed and he retreated. Back into himself, back into the protective shell he’d hidden behind since the trading ship The Maiden had been captured and he’d fallen under the Ochean’s and Haqtl’s control.

But he no longer felt as tense.

I retreated back into the Fire, the sensation of the stinging needles fading, then pushed myself up and out, catching a flicker of my body slumped over into a chair hastily pushed up to Erick’s bed before I fell back into myself.

I gasped, felt tremors sinking into my arms even as I drew in a breath, tasted the salt of my tears on my lips. “Gods!”

“Mistress,” Keven said, stepping forward smartly, kneeling at my side. I tried to raise a hand to my face, to scrub away the last sensation of burning skin I’d pulled back with me from Erick, to wipe away the tears, but I couldn’t lift my arm. “Mistress, are you all right?”

“Give me a moment,” I said. Reaching for such a short distance, for such a short time, had never been this taxing.

I grimaced. Because of the throne. I’d used more of the throne’s power as support than I’d imagined in the last few months. I’d come to rely on it. I’d have to be careful. I could overextend myself without thinking, counting on the throne to supplement me when the throne no longer existed.

“Here.”

I glanced up, even the simple act of lifting my head difficult.

The servant held out a cup of tea, the scent from the steam intoxicating. I smiled, took a sip from the cup as she held it up to my lips, the tea sending warm tendrils of energy down through my limbs. The tremors in my arms quieted.

The servant nodded as I found the strength to take the cup from her.

Behind her and Keven, Isaiah fidgeted, his thin features pinched with worry.

“What did you find out?” the healer asked, voice curt.

Keven glared at him, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“He’s in a lot of pain,” I said.

Isaiah frowned, brushed past Keven to lean over Erick’s body. “What kind of pain? Where’s it coming from? I couldn’t find anything broken internally, no shattered bones except the rib that I’ve already reset. Is it his liver? His spleen? Something bleeding internally? What about—”

“It’s none of those things,” I said weakly, and suddenly I remembered the Chorl ship, remembered finding Erick in excruciating pain, body crumpled on the floor of the Ochean’s shipboard chambers, the room rocking gently with the waves. I remembered prying open one of his eyes, taking in the folds of silken cloth hanging from the walls, the pillows that covered the floor, all shades of blues and greens and gold.

And I remembered the Chorl priest who had guarded him. The man had goaded Erick, thinking it was Erick looking out through those eyes, not me. And when the priest had seen my rage over what they’d done, seen that rage reflected in Erick’s eyes, he’d reached forward and done something on the river, something I couldn’t see, something I could only sense.

The blanket of burning needles had covered Erick then, and with a touch by this priest, that blanket had erupted into molten agony—agony that had almost killed Erick. The priest had brought Erick to the edge of death… and then had backed off, had released whatever pressure he’d applied to the river, and the pain had subsided.

My eyes darkened, and I caught Isaiah’s gaze. “It’s the river,” I said, and Isaiah’s brow creased in confusion. “The Chorl did something on the river. That’s what’s keeping Erick from healing. They’ve cast some kind of spell over him.”

“Can you break it?” From Keven and Isaiah both, short and sharp.

I stood, felt the others step back. All except Keven, who shifted forward to my side, in case I needed the support. But the weakness had passed. I set the cup of tea aside and moved toward the bed, sinking beneath the river as I went.

Carefully, I searched the river around Erick from head to toe, feeling his essence in the eddies and flows as I looked, breathing in the pungent scent of oranges that I associated with him, with safety. . . .

Then I shook my head.

“I can’t even sense it, whatever it is.”

“Which means what?” Isaiah this time.

I frowned. “I don’t know.” And then I thought of the guests currently residing in the palace’s prison, of one guest in particular. “But I know someone who might.”

* * *

As we left Erick’s chambers, I told Keven where I intended to go. His brow creased with disapproval, but without a word he motioned one of the escorting guardsmen to gather a few extra guards to accompany us.

“You should also summon another Servant,” he said, catching my eye briefly as we moved. “Just in case.”

I shot him a dark look. “I can handle it.”

He grunted. “She almost escaped the first time she woke. She laid out three guards before we even knew she’d regained consciousness. If Marielle hadn’t been there . . .”

“I know,” I said, thankful that Marielle had been there. I bit my lip, was about to concede to Keven’s advice when Eryn, the previous Mistress, rounded a corner twenty steps away. She wore a simple white dress, embroidered at the cuffs and neck in blue and gold. Soot stains marred it from the knees down and the edges of the sleeves. One black handprint was clearly visible on the front, as if she’d clutched her left side. She halted when she saw us approaching and smiled.

“Good,” she said, matching our stride and falling into step beside me. She smelled of ash and sea salt. “Exactly who I was looking for. I went down to the wharf with Catrell and his group and have news from the engineers looking at the damage.” She paused and frowned when Keven and I turned right at the next corner and began descending to the lower levels of the palace. “Where are we going?”

“To visit our prisoner,” Keven grumbled, although he’d relaxed somewhat now that Eryn had joined us.

“Which one?” When no one answered, Keven’s expression only tightening, her lips compressed into a tight line. “Alone?”

“Not anymore,” I said, suppressing an irritated sigh. “What about the wharf?” Before she could answer, she broke into a violent fit of coughing, enough that she was forced to halt, one hand pressed up against the wall for support, the other clutched over her stomach. Keven and I traded a glance, but knew that Eryn would only wave us away if we tried to help her. Since the collapse of the innermost wall—the wall Eryn had held for a short while against the Ochean and her Servants with the help of myself and the throne—Eryn had felt shooting pains in her stomach, had had coughing fits like this one. The healers could find nothing wrong, but I’d been lurking inside Eryn during the battle, inside the Fire I’d placed inside her just like the one I’d placed inside Erick. I’d felt the damage when the Ochean had thrown her power against the invisible shield Eryn had erected to protect the wall. I’d felt the tearing pain, the taste of bile and blood at the back of my throat. And I’d choked on the dust as her shield failed and the wall began to crumble.

Something inside Eryn had been damaged in the process, something that didn’t seem to be healing. But unlike Erick, this damage was internal, as if something inside had been bruised.

And it wasn’t getting any better.

We gave Eryn a moment to collect herself as the hacking coughs ended, the silence awkward. She waved us forward again, her face twisted into an impatient grimace, as though she hated the fact that the coughing couldn’t be controlled.

“The engineers say,” she began again, her voice rough, “that the wharf is in better shape than it looks. The Chorl rammed the docks, but for the most part the damage was confined to the planking, not the pilings and supports. Catrell should be able to clear away the splintered planking and have it replaced within a few weeks. The wharf will be as good as new.”

“And what about the ships?” We’d descended another level, the texture of the corridors changing. Above, in the palace proper, the walls were mostly white or an eggshell brown, like sand, except for the inner sanctum where the Mistress’ chambers and the throne room were. There the walls were the gray stone used to build the original palace thousands of years before. It had grown as Amenkor grew, the original outer walls subsumed in the expansion.

Here, the eggshell walls had given way to gray stone again. We were within the confines of the original palace, but deeper. Much deeper than I’d ever been before, even deeper than when Westen, the captain of the Seekers, had led me down here to test me, and later train me.

“Regin says—”

“Regin?”

Eryn’s eyes grew grim. “Yes, Regin.”

“What about Borund?”

She sighed. “Borund hasn’t come out of his manse since the Chorl’s attack.”

My eyes narrowed. I knew why. I’d watched as Borund fled the wharf, the Chorl overrunning the docks. But we needed every able-bodied man if we were going to recover fast enough to face the Chorl again with any chance of winning. “I’ll deal with Borund. What did Regin say?”

“That the crews of the ships are working as fast as they can to repair the damage, and to upgrade the ships’ defenses. They’re also checking out the Chorl ships left behind, looking for weaknesses, for ways to defend against them if they attack again. He has three trading ships that are seaworthy already. He expects two more can be made seaworthy in the next week. The rest are going to require longer to repair.”

We drew to a halt in front of an unobtrusive door. Unobtrusive except for the two guards that stood outside, both Seekers I knew. They nodded as we approached, stepped to either side of the door. They radiated a constant tension, their stances deceptively relaxed. I felt myself slipping into the same posture, my hand brushing against the handle of my dagger without thought. All of the guardsmen in Keven’s escort had tensed; word of what the prisoner had done when she first woke had passed through the guards like wildfire.

They’d been caught off guard before; they didn’t intend to have it happen again.

“What about the other prisoners? The thirteen Chorl warriors we captured as they retreated?” Eryn said abruptly. “Would you like to check on them?”

“No,” I said. “Not now.”

Eryn stiffened at the curtness of my tone, at the rage even I could hear at its edges.

“Should I remove the warding?” she asked. Her voice had dropped, become guarded, and as I slipped beneath the river, the world graying around me, I breathed in the sweat of fear, sensed her wariness and knew she had already raised a protective shield around herself, had readied it to extend to the guardsmen if necessary.

“I’m ready.”

I saw the currents of the river roil as she reached forward toward where the protective warding that shielded the room had been tied off earlier and twisted the eddies, releasing the warding.

The reaction from inside the room was instantaneous, the door crashing inward on its hinges, wood cracking into stone, a blade-eddy—swift and deadly—slicing out from the interior darkness—

But it met the barrier I’d placed across the door, the blade-eddy shunted harmlessly to one side.

Someone inside the room shrieked in frustration, tried to slam the door shut, but I held it open with minimal effort and moved into the opening, Eryn a step behind.

Using the river, I could see the room, could see the corners, the rough stone of the walls, the straw pallet and chamber pot to one side. A wooden platter that had contained food—bread and cheese and water—sat beside the pallet, barely any crumbs remaining. The Chorl had been starving as well; no food had been wasted this past winter. And standing against the far wall, body tensed, one hand thrust forward, palm flat, chin lifted in arrogant rage—

A Chorl Servant.

The hatred I tasted was instantaneous and bitter, tightening inside my chest like bands of iron, making it hard to breathe.

Behind, I heard Keven order torches brought forward, the room flickering in the new light, revealing the Chorl Servant’s long black hair, her stained green dress. Her posture didn’t change, her nostrils flaring as her glance darted around the room, following the guardsmen as they positioned themselves behind Eryn and me. But she didn’t attempt to use the river, or what Eryn called the Sight.

Her fear filled the room, reeking of piss and rotten fish. She’d been confined to this room for two weeks. The palace Servants brought her food, cleaned the chamber pot, changed the straw in her pallet. No one had attempted to speak to her after that first day.

We’d had other things to attend to.

Now, I glared at her across the expanse of the small room, thinking of the destruction in the city below, thinking of all of the men and women who had died, thinking of Erick. I clenched my jaw at the defiant look in her eyes, at the cold tension in her blue-tinged skin, and the iron bands around my chest tightened. The rings in her ears, four on each side, glinted in the torchlight.

“What have you done to Erick?” I asked, voice hard.

Confused shock radiated from Eryn, tightly controlled, an emotion I only sensed on the river. The other guardsmen shifted, edged forward as their own shock slid into anger.

The Chorl Servant sensed the change, her eyes darting once toward the guardsmen, then back to me. She didn’t understand what I’d said, didn’t understand the coastal language. But she could sense the rage.

Uncertain, the scent of her fear spiking, she lashed out with the river. I slapped the eddy aside, moved forward with two sharp steps, and wrapped my hand around her throat, shoving her back against the stone wall, my hand squeezing. Her skin felt smooth beneath my grip and I could feel her blood pulsing beneath my thumb, beneath my fingers. She cried out, swallowed against the pressure I’d put against her windpipe, gasped. Her hands clawed at my grip, and she choked something in her own tongue that sounded like a curse. Her black eyes blazed with hatred, but, aside from the hands clawing at my arm, she didn’t struggle.

I could squeeze, cut off the flow of blood in her jugular until she passed out. Or I could shove my palm forward, crush her windpipe and kill her.

“What did you do to Erick?” I repeated.

“Varis,” Eryn said behind me, her voice calm, reasonable, yet filled with disapproval. “Varis, she can’t answer you. She doesn’t know what you’re saying.”

I ignored her, focused completely on the Servant, on her blue-tinged skin.Skin that stoked the rage, fed it as images of the attack on the city flashed before my eyes, images of fire, of the watchtowers exploding, of ships and buildings burning, walls collapsing. Because of these people. Because of her.

My jaw clenched and I squeezed, cutting off her breath.

Her eyes flew wide. And for the first time I saw true fear beneath the arrogance, beneath the hatred.

And I saw something else as well.

She was younger than me. Fourteen perhaps, maybe younger.

The age I’d been when Erick had first found me on the Dredge.

My intense hatred stumbled, faltered. The muscles in my forearm relaxed imperceptibly. The urge to wring an answer from her surged forward, almost overwhelming—

But it halted at her fear. A familiar fear. An instinctual fear.

I relaxed my grip and she heaved in a strained breath, the hands that had tightened on my wrist loosening. Then I pulled back, let her go.

She slumped against the wall as I turned, gave me a hate-filled glare that I chose to ignore.

“You won’t get anything from her by threatening her,” Eryn said quietly but harshly as I approached the door.

“I agree,” Keven said, motioning the rest of the guardsmen out into the corridor. “What do you want us to do with her?”

I halted, frowned as I turned to watch the Seekers close the door behind us, catching a glimpse of the Chorl Servant through the opening. She still huddled against the far wall, her shoulders now slumped, her hand massaging her throat. The arrogance lay over her like a cloak, like a shield, but the defiance . . .

I recognized the defiance.

I drew in a short breath, reset the warding over the door, then said, “Move her somewhere close to my chambers.”

“What for?” Eryn asked.

I caught her gaze. “We need to teach her our language. I want to know what they did to Erick. And I want to know how to end it.”

 

Chapter 2

“Mistress’ tits!” Eryn expelled a frustrated breath and opened her eyes. Her gaze immediately found mine. Sweat beaded her brow and tension etched the corners of her mouth and eyes, her lips pressed into a thin line. “I’m sorry, Varis. I can’t find anything at all. I can sense something, but . . .”

My shoulders tightened, even though I’d been expecting the answer. “Show me.”

She nodded, and then we both dove beneath the river. The world faded to gray, background noises softening, melding into a hushed wind, until the only thing in focus was Erick lying on the bed. I could feel Isaiah and his assistant in the background, blurs of gray on the general world of gray, could sense the guardsmen outside the opened doorway, but I pushed all of that to the side, concentrated on Eryn’s presence as she manipulated the river over Erick’s body. The eddies shifted beneath her touch, and I edged forward, following her movements.

“Whatever it is,” Eryn said, her voice brittle beneath the river, distinct and sharp, “I can sense it best right here.”

The eddies indicated a region just over Erick’s heart, above a small puncture wound in his chest, its edges a purplish red. I grunted. “The Fire I placed inside Erick is there,” I said. “Are you certain you aren’t sensing that instead?”

Eryn’s lips pursed. “I’m positive. I can sense the Fire as well, even though I can’t see it. It has a different flavor, a different taste.” She paused, her brow creasing in thought before she continued. “I’m not surprised the two are located in the same position, though. The heart is a focal point, a source of great energy. It would make sense to connect something of power—like the Fire, or this…this blanket of needles—to such a source.”

I frowned, pushed forward on the river to where Eryn had indicated and tried to sense what Eryn sensed. “I don’t feel anything.”

Eryn leaned over Erick’s body. “You’re in the right area. You can’t feel it? It’s like…like a strand of spider’s silk brushing against the back of your hand.”

I closed my eyes, let myself sink into the sensations of the river where I hovered. The currents flowed around me, soft and soothing, pulsing with the beat of Erick’s heart, flush with warmth. Beneath, I felt the steady heatless flame of the Fire I’d placed at his core. I could smell the lavender soap used to wash the sheets of his bed, could smell the musk of his sweat beneath that, along with the scent of oranges. I let the scents enfold me, comfort me for a moment, and then I opened myself to the river, relaxed into its flow, searching. . . .

Nothing but Erick’s presence. Nothing but the stench of Eryn’s increasing concern. No spider’s silk brushing against skin. No tingling from some layer of the river I couldn’t see. No taste. Nothing.

I rose with a sharp jerk. “I can’t feel anything,” I said, the words curt.