“Lift your eyes to the eastern skies
Wait for the sun, and with it—rise
We will march down the roads gone black with the dead
We will tear down their walls and paint their crowns red”
—A rowing song composed by suspected Red Crown ally Ioseph Ferracora during the siege of Arxara Bay
Eliana awoke beneath a threadbare quilt, in a small dark room, to the unwelcome sight of Simon sitting near her.
He reclined on a wooden chair, one long leg resting on the other, and held a glass of reeking alcohol.
Eliana sat up, remembering to grit her teeth as if the pain from the blow to her head had lingered.
“You have five seconds to tell me where we are and where Remy is,” she said smoothly, “and who knocked me on the head, and where I can find them, before I disembowel you.”
“And good morning to you, dearest Dread,” said Simon, with a salute of his glass. “I must say, you are looking particularly, well, dreadful, if you’ll forgive the joke.”
“Where are my knives?” She realized, with a jolt of shock, that she was no longer wearing her ruined party gown. In fact, she was no longer wearing anything, except for the pendant around her neck.
“You piece of shit,” she said quietly. “Where are my clothes, where are my knives, and where is my brother?”
“Remy is safe and sleeping. Navi as well if you’re curious. Though I’m sure you’re not.” Simon tossed her a heap of clothes. “Aster wanted to tend to your wounds and get that blood-soaked gown off you. Maybe to make up for her sister knocking you on the head and then, it seems, drugging you? I scolded Marigold roundly for wasting quality goods on you, but she was unrepentant.”
Eliana picked up the tunic he had tossed her, grimacing at the frayed hems and patched sleeves. “Who is Marigold?”
“Aster’s sister. Try to keep up.” He knocked back the rest of his drink and set down the glass. “Anyway, every time Aster tried to dress you, you kicked her. But worry not, she’s a tough one.”
She glared at him until he said, “Ah,” and turned around to face the wall.
“Interestingly,” he continued, “you had no wounds that Aster could see.”
Eliana’s pulse quickened. She tugged on underwear, undershirt, and trousers—too baggy for her, not to mention fusty and faded, but at least they were clean.
“Disappointed that I was lucky enough to emerge unscathed from our valiant escape?” She pulled on the stained linen tunic. “I bet you’d love to have seen my body marked head to toe with scars to match your own, wouldn’t you?”
“Actually,” Simon replied, “I wouldn’t.”
She waited for elaboration, and when none came, she examined the jacket he’d brought her—a moth-eaten, bell-sleeved affair with a dull embroidered collar that had once certainly been gaudy and now looked simply pathetic.
“Decent clothes aren’t something you rebels care much about finding, I suppose?” she muttered, nevertheless shrugging on the jacket.
“If you’re finished.”
She made quick work of her wild hair, braiding it into submission. “Give me my knives, and I’ll refrain from hitting you for at least five minutes.”
“Have you always been this unspeakably irritating?”
“Has your face always looked so temptingly carvable?”
“You wanted to know where we are,” Simon said, gesturing toward the door. She pushed past him into a dim stone hallway. A path of wooden planks lined the earthen floor. Following the distant sound of conversation, she turned a corner, passed two doors set clumsily into the wall, and emerged onto a wooden platform overlooking an underground pit. The walls glistened from the slow drip of water.
The pit’s floor was covered in people: refugees, clothed in rags. Faces dark and pale, grown and young, all marked with dirt, ash, and blood.
And around the perimeter—standing watch on platforms, moving through the gathered refugees with supplies and stretchers—were rebels. Some wore rifles strapped to their backs; others carried daggers at their waists.
Suddenly Eliana felt neither tired nor irritated.
Simon had brought her to a Red Crown encampment.
Immediately, she leaned against the platform’s railing, as if overwhelmed by the sight laid out before her. She let out a sigh of pity just loud enough for Simon to hear.
And she began counting:
Two rebel soldiers patrolling the pit’s floor. Six more distributing supplies. Five platforms around the room, one soldier stationed at each. An open crate of potatoes against a nearby stretch of wall; a dozen more, similarly marked, stacked beneath that.
Simon came to stand beside her. His scarred hands rested on the railing next to her own.
The pit’s size? She measured quickly. Maybe one thousand square feet, and twenty feet deep.
The number of refugees inside it? Three hundred, give or take.
“Speechless, Dread?” said Simon. “Allow me a moment of shock.”
She stepped away from him. “What is this place?”
She let her words carry a small tremor, enough for Simon to maybe wonder: Has the Dread’s heart been touched by the sight of such sprawling misery?
Ah, she thought, but the Dread has no heart.
“Crown’s Hollow.” Simon moved toward a set of stairs at the side of their platform. “Come. I’ll show you.”
She didn’t follow him, let some fear rise into her eyes so he’d think her nervous. “Tell me here.”
“This is not Orline, Dread. Follow me, or Red Crown will make your life as miserable as you’ve made theirs.”
Her laugh was shrill, unconvincing. Underestimate me, Wolf. I dare you to do it. “That would take some doing.”
“You’ve made this war a game for yourself, but here it is not a game, not for these people. And if you flaunt your kills in front of them, I will show you no mercy.”
The ferocity in his voice startled her. For a moment Eliana could find nothing to say.
Then she said scornfully, “You think you know me,” and moved to join him. “But you’re wrong.”
“And you don’t know this war,” Simon countered. “You will, though, and soon. Consider this an introduction.”
He said nothing else, and she was glad, for as they descended into the crowd of people, she could think only of the stench, and the low buzz of too many living, breathing humans crammed into too small a space. Children huddled in makeshift tents. A woman sharpened her knives as a tiny girl at her knee watched, wide-eyed. A young man read to his dozing companion by the light of a dying fire.
The air was a sea of sweat and filthy clothes and sewage. Worse than that, though, was the unifying expression the refugees wore. There was a hollowness to their faces—a hunger, an exhaustion—that pushed at Eliana’s ribs and turned her throat sour.
She couldn’t imagine what they had seen, and she didn’t care to. She had her own past of horrors to contend with, her own sleepless nights.
“How can you live with it?” Harkan had asked her, when they were both twelve years old. He had recently learned what Eliana was training to do and seemed to be struggling with how to talk around her, now that he knew what she could do with a knife.
“With what?” she had asked, concentrating on cleaning the set of blades her mother had purchased for her. First they must be cleaned, Rozen had told her. Take your time. Get to know them. They will need names.
Names? Eliana had asked, giggling.
Yes, Rozen had answered, her gaze the tiniest bit sad. They will be the truest friends you ever have.
“How can you live with knowing that you’ll kill people?” Harkan had nervously watched her work. “Good people.”
“It’s easy,” Eliana had replied. Back then, the gravity of what she was doing had sat heavy in her stomach like a stone in a never-ending sea, but her mother had instructed her that if she didn’t learn to tuck away that sick feeling, it would consume her. So Eliana tried on the face she had been practicing in the mirror every morning—thoughtless, bored, sly—and said to Harkan, “It’s the only way to stay alive.”
Harkan had shaken his head and looked away, as if the sight of her was something he could no longer bear.
“I don’t know what’s happening to you,” he had whispered, but he had stayed nonetheless, helped her clean her blades and name them. “Arabeth,” he’d suggested for the wicked, jagged one, even allowing a ghost of a smile when Eliana approved. Once that was done, he’d crawled into bed and held her until falling asleep.
But Eliana had not slept that night. She’d lain there beside Harkan, her eyes squeezed shut, wishing she would wake up in the morning and all would be as it should. Her father would return home, the Empire would be gone, and King Maximilian would still be alive.
Harkan would look at her like she was his friend again and not something terrible and new.
Saint Katell, Eliana had prayed, hear my prayer. Send us the warmth of your wisdom. Light the dark path before me.
Find the Sun Queen. Tell her we’re waiting. Tell her we need her.
She had turned her face into her pillow, tears coursing silently down her cheeks. Tell her I need her.
In the dim light of Crown’s Hollow, Eliana focused on the back of Simon’s head.
How can you live with knowing that you’ll kill people?
Good people.
She ignored the murmuring refugees at her feet and told herself, Don’t look at them.
Don’t look.
Don’t.
Instead she listened to the rebels bustling through the crowd. Passing out food, standing bored on the platforms, squeezing through the narrow spaces between the pit walls and high stacks of crated supplies, they began to drop whispered treasures.
“…Lord Morbrae arrives tomorrow…”
“The raid…two miles northeast…”
Lord Morbrae. Eliana knew the name: one of the Empire’s roaming royalty, he moved from village to village, outpost to outpost.
Something brushed Eliana’s wrist. She flinched away and looked down.
A refugee woman with a black scarf tied around her wrinkled, pale head reached for Eliana with a watery smile. Her arm was mottled with burn scars, skin shining taut in the spotty firelight.
Eliana barely resisted the urge to slap her.
Don’t look at them.
Don’t look.
Don’t.
Simon, however, gently grasped the woman’s hand and knelt down to speak to her.
Eliana looked away, arms folded tightly across her chest. A hot wave of anger rose up her throat—that the woman had dared to touch her, that Eliana had wanted to slap her, that Eliana hadn’t slapped her.
That this room was crowded with people too weak to make a life for themselves in the Empire’s world.
And that Simon was forcing her to walk among them.
She stepped away to lean against a column of rock, gazing about the room with practiced disinterest while her mind kept counting: four doors up above, by the platforms, and four more on the floor level. One stood maybe twenty feet away. Where did they lead? Tunnels?
A pair of rebels exited the nearest door, arms packed with folded bandages.
Eliana lowered her head as they approached, hunched her shoulders, closed her eyes. A dozing refugee, tired and alone, that’s all she was.
“…Monday morning,” whispered one of them, hurrying by, “we’ll blow them all to the Deep—”
“Let the angels wrestle with His Lordship for a while.” The second rebel guffawed. Nobody talked about angels without it being a joke. Not unless you were mad or a child who believed the old stories.
Like Remy.
Eliana listened closely as the rebels passed.
“Not sure even the angels deserve Lord Morbrae among them…” said the first, and then they had passed out of hearing range.
So. She would need to give Simon the slip and roam about until she found someone willing to confirm the scattered bits of information, but if it was true, tomorrow morning, Lord Morbrae would arrive at an Empire outpost two miles northeast of Crown’s Hollow.
And the day after, the rebels would raid the facility, taking down one of the Empire’s strongholds.
What to do with that knowledge, if anything, Eliana didn’t know. But she filed it away with a smug twinge of satisfaction.
“Contemplating your vile past?”
Eliana opened her eyes and shot Simon a nasty smile. “Finished chatting with your girlfriend?”
Simon gestured toward the nearby door, which stood slightly ajar. “After you.”
She pushed off the wall. “So where do they come from, these refugees of yours?”
“They come from everywhere. Ventera. Meridian. Even from as far south as the Vespers if they have a strong enough boat.”
“And you feed and house them? Treat their wounds and illnesses?”
At the door, Simon stopped her with a touch on her arm. She turned back to him with a coy grin, but the innuendo on her lips died at the look on his face. He considered her in silence, like he was trying not only to read her face, but to look even past that and find a deeper truth.
Look all you want, she thought savagely. You’ll find nothing good.
“Yes,” he said at last. “We treat their wounds and illnesses.”
Eliana ignored the disquiet in her belly, gave him a slight hard smirk. “There are many such Red Crown camps throughout the country, I assume?”
“Yes.”
“Your rebellion might be more successful if you didn’t spend so much time nursing the damned.”
The door before them opened.
“Revolutions mean nothing if their soldiers forget to care for the people they’re fighting to save,” said a new voice. Two men stood there, and a woman. The man who had spoken was short, slight, pale-skinned with wild copper hair, and when Eliana’s gaze dropped to his waist, where a smallsword hung in plain view, the man clucked his tongue.
“Ah-ah,” he said, wagging his finger at her. “There will be no violence tonight.”
“Give me my knives and my brother, or I’m afraid I’ll be forced to disobey.” Eliana clucked her tongue. “And I was so hoping we could be friends.”
The other man, tall and muscular, with dark skin and black hair cropped close to his head, moved his hand to the revolver at his belt.
“Don’t bother,” said the first man, placing a hand on the other’s arm. “She’s afraid and lashing out.”
Eliana burst out laughing. “You think I’m afraid?”
“Everyone’s afraid. You’re just better at hiding it than most.” The man’s eyes flicked to Simon. “So Simon says, at least.”
Eliana’s laughter died, but a deadly smile remained. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”
“Ah! Of course. How rude of me. I am Patrik, and I oversee Crown’s Hollow. This is Hob,” he said, gesturing to the other man. “My lieutenant and also my husband. And I believe you’ve already met Marigold,” he added, gesturing to the woman on his left.
She was older, with weathered brown skin and gray braids, and a malicious gleam in her eye. “I hit you on the head.”
Eliana grinned. “And I’ll soon return the favor.”
Patrik clasped Eliana’s hand, gave it a firm shake. “And of course I know you, Eliana Ferracora. Yes, I know exactly who you are.” When he smiled at her, it was not without kindness, but Eliana knew the glint of a killer when she saw one.
“Cause trouble in my home,” he said cheerfully, “and I will cut you from skull to navel, no matter how much I like your brother. And no matter how much Simon likes you.”
Simon gave a dismissive scoff, but Patrik was already guiding Eliana through the door. “Now then,” he announced, with a clap of his hands, “who’s hungry?”
