Snow Like Ashes(13)

That wasn’t Herod earlier. Of course it wasn’t. Herod wouldn’t waste his time mingling with the city master; he would be here, with the locket half, waiting to intercept thieves.

Herod finishes transforming until the only thing light about him is his golden hair, green eyes, and pale skin—the rest of him is shadow, a testament to his master’s evil. He’s huge too, his head nearly brushing the ceiling, and thick in the shoulders, the body of someone who was born holding a sword. Which does not sound like a fun birth for his mother.

I lean forward to launch my chakram but Herod lunges off the platform, takes one step through the sewer gunk, and throws his body at my knees. I trip off the walkway and go down in the middle of the sewage, my breath knocked out by both Herod’s body and the sudden immersion in feces. He grabs the chakram and slides it onto the walkway, out of reach, before pinning my arms above my head in a painful twist, sneering at me as feet thunder down the staircase. The not-Herod and his men have broken through the door.

This could have gone better.

I wiggle in his hands, something in my pocket digging into my hip—a weapon? No—Mather’s lapis lazuli ball. The only thing it’s good for now is as a painful reminder of Mather, of Winter, of how he’ll never forgive himself if anything happens to me.

Herod’s fingers tighten around my arms and I flinch. His grip is just above my one remaining weapon—the knife in my sleeve.

“Sir!” A soldier rushes into the sewer. It’s the not-Herod, slowly morphing back into his own form. I’ve heard stories of the magic Angra uses his conduit for, beyond controlling his people. Tales whispered when people returned from missions in bloody tangles of broken limbs, memories shared in the heat of fever and agony. Angra uses his magic to induce visions so real they drive his people mad, to snap Spring traitors’ bones and tear out organs while his people still live, and for transformations like this one.

As Herod drags me up, the only solace I find is that both of us are covered in sewage.

“Bind her. We’re taking her to Angra,” he orders, and steps way too close to me as a soldier loops rope around my wrists. “Scared, soldier-girl?”

I force myself to look him in the eye. I don’t have the luxury of fear. When we’re at camp in the safety of our tents and Sir explains all kinds of horrific possible deaths to me, I can’t be afraid. Fear is a seed that, once planted, never stops growing.

But I was there when Gregg, one of our soldiers, stumbled back into camp six years ago. He and his wife, Crystalla, had been captured while on a mission in Abril and thrown into the nearest work camp. Gregg told us about it, babbling in the grip of madness about the toiling work, the decrepit living conditions—and the brutal, inhuman way Angra made Herod kill Crystalla. Gregg barely escaped with his life, and even that he lost a day later, when the injuries Herod gave him proved too much for his body to handle.

A tremor runs through me, and I know Herod saw it. That seed of fear.

I cannot die like Crystalla.

A soldier lifts me onto a horse and ties my wrists to the saddle. Hope flutters in my chest—they didn’t check me for weapons. Whether because of the chaos of my intrusion or the need to get the locket half out of Lynia as fast as possible, I don’t know—but I still have my knife. I still have a chance.

Herod eases the locket box from the hole and holds it for a moment, looking up at me. That face, that mocking twitch around his lips—this is the monster in Gregg’s story, the one Angra uses to destroy his enemies in the most brutal ways possible. Angra doesn’t like getting his hands dirty, not when he can watch as his puppets dance around in such glorious shows by using his Royal Conduit to control them. Why be the dog when you can be the master?

Herod tucks the box into the saddlebag nearest me. Before he mounts, he grabs my chakram off the walkway, tossing it between his hands and eyeing me with that taunting sneer. He leaps onto his stallion and slides the chakram into the saddlebag on the other side of his horse. There’s no way I can get it now.

“You try to escape and you’ll be dead long before we reach Abril,” he warns.

I suck in a breath, twisting my wrists as imperceptibly as I can until my knife drops into my palm. “And I’ll kill you before all of this is over.”

Herod smiles, the bloodlust on his face glowing more strongly. Nausea twists my stomach in unrelenting knots—he likes when I fight back. Something to keep in mind.

With a shout, Herod tells the men to leave. He grabs my horse’s reins and pulls me forward, my leg bumping against his saddlebag. I can feel it, the small square box pressing into my shin. The only thing separating it from me is a layer of leather.