Battles of Salt and Sighs by Val Saintcrowe

CHAPTER FIVE

“NO.” THE WORDescaped Magdalia’s lips, a wail. “No, no, no.”

The Croith walked towards her, a cold smile wreathing his features, which were familiar to her, because she knew him.

He crouched down in front of her, resting his elbows on the tops of his legs, looking her over. “Well, look at you. All grown up.” His gaze dragged itself over her and she saw the light in his eye, the way he was looking at her—

“No!” She got to her feet. “You can’t be the Croith.”

He gazed up at her, still in his crouch. “Oh, I thought you would have figured it out, after everything.”

A sob escaped her lips and she covered her mouth with both hands, gripped by horror.

“You were never exactly intelligent, I suppose.” He sighed, shrugging.

“How dare you?” she snapped.

“You do seem to have developed other assets, however.” His gaze settled on her chest.

She hugged herself. “Duranth, stop it.”

He chuckled, long and low, deeply amused. “Do you remember when you were in love with me? You must have been, what, four years old? I was nine. And you told everyone you were going to marry me when you grew up until your nurse informed you that humans can’t marry fae, and that you must think of me as properly below your exalted station in life.”

“I never said that,” she said, shaking her head furiously. “I don’t remember it, so… it can’t have… no.” She did remember it, of course, because she had loved him. But she’d been a child, an idiot child, and she hadn’t understood anything then.

Over time, she had left behind all that childish whimsy and seen him for what he was—a sort of dear pet, beloved but not her equal. And even at the end, when she’d tried so hard to save him from her father’s wrath, it had only been out of a sense of that sort of love, not… nothing like what he… when she was a little girl, she hadn’t understood anything about marrying someone, and—

“Don’t you remember your promise?” His voice had dropped suggestively.

All right, so maybe it had been sort of like that, but not really. She didn’t have any true feelings for him.

Suddenly, she realized something. “Your hand.”

He laughed. “Oh, it’s rather lifelike, hmm?” He reached over, and she saw a leather strap and a buckle—bone, not metal—which he undid, and then he tugged his hand off and tossed it at her.

Clumsily, she caught it. She wasn’t good with things like that, but he was only standing a few feet away. Even so, she fumbled it, nearly dropping it. She turned it over. It was an artificial hand, encased in a leather glove.

He held up the stump. “You did a good job healing it, of course. Look how smooth. No scar tissue at all.”

Her heart stuttered. She didn’t want to think about that. “I’m sorry about your hand,” she whispered.

“Yes, it was cut off because of you, wasn’t it?” He smiled at her, a particularly nasty smile.

“I wish I could have helped you,” she said.

“Well,” he said with a shrug, “I hope you still wish to help me, Magda.”

“What do you mean?”

He held out his good hand, palm up.

Wordlessly, she put his artificial hand into his hand.

He busied himself with reattaching it. “You know what we can do together, and so I want us to work on that and to put it to good use.”

“No,” she said. “For the fae rebels? You think I would help you in your mad attempt to overturn the empire?”

He glanced at her. “Oh, so patriotic now, are we? I thought little Magda never paid attention to such things.”

“Well, perhaps I didn’t,” she said, “but your armies came and killed everyone. All them dead, bodies piled up around remnants of my sister’s wedding feast, and…” Tears began to stream down her face.

“Couldn’t have anyone coming after you, could I?” he said. “It was either kill them now or kill them later when they tried to rescue you, and this was easier. Besides, we’ve had our eye on the Villa Prantia for a while. It’s a nicely strategic place to hold for the army, and we will soon have conquered the entire Tertia Island. Now, I sent my best cohort for you, of course, that should please you, but they’ll have left by now. I’m sure lesser men can mop up what is left of Tertia Island.”

She didn’t know what to say to this.

“Oh, see how I trust you, Magdalia?” He smiled at her. “I tell you my strategies. I am quite willing to share much with you. Everything, in fact.” His voice dipped down into a low register when he said that.

“And all I have to do is sell out my country and my people,” she said.

“And surrender to me, completely,” he said in that gravelly voice of his.

In spite of herself, she felt a bit of a thrill. No man had ever really spoken to her this way before. There had been Cassus, who had followed her around in the capital like a little spaniel dog, but she had been so young then, and Cassus had been so… oh, she didn’t know, but the fact that he was so devoted to her made her feel as if, somehow, he was not worthy of her.

She lifted her chin, looking down her nose at him. “You forget yourself, Duranth.”

He laughed. “Little Magda is going to be difficult, I see. I hadn’t thought you would be. I had thought all it would take would be a bit of flattery and you’d be putty in my hands. Perhaps I haven’t tried hard enough.” He tapped his chin, casting his gaze up to the ceiling as if thinking. “Let’s see. Magdalia, has any man ever told you how lovely you are?”

She swallowed. “Stop it.”

“Your eyes are like the stars in the sky in the depths of night and your skin is as pure as the babbling brook and your breasts—”

“Stop.” Now there was iron in her voice.

“Your breasts,” he said firmly, stepping closer to her, “are round and high and firm. And untouched? You’ve been waiting for me, haven’t you?”

She looked up at him. Now, she was trembling, and she wasn’t sure why. Rage, she thought. It must be rage.

She had loved him, but he had never been like this. Well, perhaps at the end, perhaps then, but she had still loved him then, because she remembered everything they had shared together when they were children.

Duranth had first come to the attention of her father as a small fae boy who was uncommonly talented. It wasn’t that fae were considered lacking in brains or intelligence, per se. On the contrary, they were all thought to be in possession of cunning and wily minds which they used entirely for evil.

But he was a child, and he was no threat.

He was adorable, a little boy with his dark blue eyes and hair, who would screw up his childish features to concentrate as he added large sums in his head. He could add anything—subtract or multiply or divide it too—in moments.

He was the entertainment at dinner. Her father loved trying to trip him up, checking every time that the boy spat out a number, working the sums himself and clapping him on the back in congratulations.

Her father took such a liking to him that he allowed Duranth to attend lessons with her and Onivia. Not with the boys, of course. Her father wasn’t going to raise Duranth to learn history and war strategy and crop rotation, but he didn’t mind educating the boy to read and to play music, which Duranth took to with surprising skill.

He had an affinity with instruments, only needing a small bit of instruction with them before he was able to play them. He need only hear a tune hummed before he could reproduce it on a piano or a flute or even a fiddle.

So, it was no wonder that she had fancied herself in love with him. He was five years older than her and so very accomplished and he was always kind to her.

Everyone was kind to her, so this in and of itself perhaps might have meant nothing. Magdalia did not remember a time in her life in which her comfort and happiness had not been paramount to everyone around her. People planned their lives around her, and they always had.

It wasn’t just kindness with Duranth. He had been her friend, and he had treated her like a friend, not a cosseted thing to be placated.

No one had known about her magic then. They wouldn’t know about it until after the incident with her dog Csaer. Back then, she hadn’t realized this, but of course she understood now that he’d had something to do with it, with her magic manifesting in that way.

But she didn’t need him around to do magic, of course. It was only that maybe he’d woken it in her somehow.

She never thought of it in that way, and she found it made her uncomfortable.

She had loved him. They had played together as children. He had been a slave, but he hadn’t done any work back then, because she had not allowed it. She had demanded his presence as her companion and playmate, and they had gone on adventures together, rambling through the wilds of the surrounding areas near the villa.

He had such an imagination, Duranth did. He would spin some tale for them both. They were explorers who had traveled to another land by boat, and they were encountering strange, fierce animals which they must escape if they wished to live. They were king and queen of a kingdom and they must protect it from an advancing enemy. They were on a quest to find a special spear from the heart of the jungle, and they had to bring provisions from the kitchens so that they would not die of thirst.

She remembered how easily he could get her to go along with his little imaginings. “Pretend you’re excited,” he’d say, and she would do as he asked.

But then, somehow, too soon, he was simply too old for it all.

He would have indulged her forever, she thought. He was no idiot, and he was happy enough to be a fourteen-year-old boy spinning stories for a nine-year-old girl, even if other boys his age would have disdained such a companion, because the alternative—of course—was laboring in the fields. What boy of any age would make a different choice?

It was only that her father interfered. It was just on the cusp of impropriety, he said, and he took Duranth away.

She sobbed and begged, but her father was stone.

And so this was when she had learned the way to manipulate her father. What a sweet papa you are, she would say to him. What a good and indulgent and kind papa.

And when he was eating out of her hand, she would pounce.

That was how she got Duranth a job in the house, as her brother Romus’s manservant, even though Romus was far too young for a manservant at that point in time. It meant that Duranth was often free to sneak around with her, something he was wary of doing now, only because he knew the consequences if he was caught.

The year that it happened, he was sixteen and she was eleven, and they were innocent—well, she was innocent, but maybe, she didn’t know, the things he was saying to her now made her wonder.

Had he thought of her that way then?

He was the Croith. Perhaps there was no perversity to which he wouldn’t sink.

She did not play for hours on end with Duranth, not anymore, but sometimes he would come with her in the afternoons to go out to the train tracks. A train came through in the heat of the day, and she liked to put metal things on the tracks to flatten them. She liked to stand back and watch the train go past, listen to its clacking and feel the power as it rushed past them, breaking the air with it speed.

Tremendous things, trains.

She was in awe of them.

But that day he didn’t come, not at first. He was sometimes asked to do other tasks in the house. He would deliver messages or assist with serving food at dinner or help to get the fires going in the kitchens.

So, her only companion that day was Csaer, her small dog, named whimsically after the highest position in the empire. Csaer was nearly as imperious as an emperor, and she spoiled him to the extent that she herself was spoiled. He was fed choice cuts of meat and had been trained to use a chamberpot and he slept in her bed with her.

He had never charged the train before.

She screamed at him, of course she screamed.

She ran after him, of course she did.

But the train—well, she loved Csaer but she loved her own life as well, and there was a point she was not sure it would be safe to pursue him anymore, and he had clearly lost his little doggy mind, and she didn’t know why that was.

How could he possibly have thought he stood a chance against the streaming, hulking, chugging metal steam engine? Why was it that today of all days, he misinterpreted the train as a possibly adversary?

She would never know why he did it.

He bounded into the side of it, and he was thrown into the air, high in the air, and she heard him squeal, but then…

Well, when she got to him where he lay on the ground, his body was twisted in such a way that she knew he was dead.

She sobbed over the dog, burying her hands in his fur even though it was bloody and even though parts of his skin were split and horrid things were slithering out of him. She loved him that much that she would still touch him, even in that.

She was so caught up in it that she didn’t hear Duranth’s approach.

Then, his shadow fell over her.

She looked up at him. He was tall, slim like the fae often were, with graceful arms and long fingers and finely carved facial features. His hair was cut short, and his nose and ears were pierced with iron. He knelt down next to her and looked down at Csaer.

“What happened, Magda?”

She sniffled. “He ran at the train. I tried to stop him.” A sob escaped her lips.

“Ancestors save us,” he breathed, and she knew he was upset because fae were forbidden to mention their ancestor worship, and if a dominus heard, he would likely have a slave whipped for it. “I’m so sorry, little Magda. You loved him.”

She wiped her nose, letting out another ugly sob.

He reached out for her.

Their hands touched.

Something went through her, then. She didn’t know what it was, but she felt it, and it was like… well, it wasn’t bad, it was good, a sort of current of comfort, but it startled her, and she looked up at him in shock.

He was staring at her also. “Did you feel that?”

“What is it?”

His grip tightened on her and he suddenly turned his attention to the dog. Deliberately, he put his hand into the dog’s fur. “I want to try something.”

He must have known about his magic then, but he’d hidden it from her. She knew the tales of the Croith, who had been strong with magic all his life, even with the metal piercing his skin, even in the villa, and he had slowly grown in strength over years and years until he’d broken out.

Duranth’s story, although she hadn’t known about the magic, at least not then.

She was still touching Csaer, and when he put his hands on the dog as well, she felt as if they made a closed circle, the current of pleasant, strange comfort that had flowed into her when she and Duranth had touched now circling through them and through Csaer as well.

Who twitched.

She gasped, and she would have pulled away, but Duranth’s grip on her tightened. “Not yet.”

Csaer started to move.

She suddenly could feel the insides of Csaer, and all the places where he was torn or broken glowed. She… she urged them to go closed, to knit themselves back up. And they did!

Suddenly, Csaer was up and moving, and he was back together.

She was stunned.

Duranth let out a little laugh.

She picked up the dog. He smelled like blood and bile. He did not lick her face or act joyous or anything of that nature, but he was alive and moving.

He was healed.

“What did you do?” she said.

“Must have been you, dominissa,” he whispered. “You must be a Favored one. I felt you knit up the skin. I thought… once or twice, I saw the flowers seem to bloom brighter where you walked…” He rocked back on his heels, shaking his head.

She dragged her hands over the dog, who didn’t acknowledge this. Something about Csaer was wrong now. She didn’t want to touch him, which was strange, because when his guts had been getting on her skin, she hadn’t cared, but now…

She set the dog back down on the ground.

Csaer dutifully followed her back to the villa, but he never uttered a noise. He did not eat when food was put in front of him.

She had him bathed, but he still smelled of blood. That night, he did not leap into her bed as he usually did, and she found she did not want him against her in the night.

When she touched him, she couldn’t help but feel as if he was too cold, as if he was still dead.

The next morning, he was lying on her floor, bloody, his entrails seeping out, like the way he had been by the train. She had to explain what happened, but she left Duranth out of it, because she didn’t want him to get in any trouble.

Her father sent for a man from the capital, one who could test for magic, and he held her hand in his and said she was Favored and talented that she must come to the capital and be taught to use her gift.

Now, here in the vast room, the the Night King’s voice shattered her reverie, pulling her back to the present. “Well, Magdalia? Have you been waiting for me?”

“No,” she said, thrusting out her chin. “No, of course not. Half a dozen of your fae soldiers passed me around on the ship here.”

He stiffened. “You’re not serious.”

“Deadly serious.”

“I’ll kill each and every one of them,” he said flatly.

“Good,” she said.

He snorted. “You’re lying.”

“Well, you’ll never know now, will you?” she said.

“I was very specific in my instructions to them,” he said. “And they wouldn’t dare defy me in that way.”

“Because they fear you, the Night King,” she taunted. But, well, she had heard the stories, that the Croith could kill with a single touch. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t know that Duranth could do such things, because she’d seen it.

“They do,” he said simply.

“Well, I don’t fear you,” she said, “because you’ll never be the Night King to me. You’ll always be Duranth, my little playmate, my little pet.”

“Oh, no, little Magda, you see, that’s where you’re wrong. It’s not that way between us now at all. You are my pet. My silly little admiring idiot girl-toy, and you will do whatever I ask you to.”

“Never,” she said, nostrils flaring.

“It’s funny watching you pretend you’re noble, that you have scruples, or that anything at all matters to you beyond your own comfort. I will make you a padded, gilded cage, Magda, and you will adore it.”

“Well,” she said, “thus far, there has been nothing comforting or padded about my treatment.”

“Ah, with the gang rape.” He snickered.

She glowered at him. “I hate you.”

“You don’t,” he said. “You never have.”

“I do now,” she said. “I couldn’t… not after what you have done to my family, not after you have taken everything—” Her voice broke.

“Mmm,” he said. “Yes, so brokenhearted over your loved ones. You haven’t cared a bit about them until now, but in death, you become devoted. Let’s just see to your comfort, then, pet, and we’ll see.” Abruptly, he turned on his heel and left the room.

She was so stunned, she didn’t know what to do.

She was alone there, and she looked around at the empty room. Now, she realized that the paintings hanging on the wall were not the original ones. She could see the shadows from where the other paintings had hung. Likely, someone had taken down portraits of the dominus who’d lived here and his ancestors. These paintings of nature had been put up to replace that.

Finally, she went to the door, but it was locked.

Only a short time later, however, a fae guard came for her. “Come with me.”

“No,” she said, putting both of her hands on her hips. She was aware she sounded like a toddler, but she didn’t care.

He put his hand on his pistol.

“The Croith won’t let you damage me.”

“He says you’re quite adept at healing and that you can heal yourself, so that I should be careful not to hit anything vital, but otherwise I should feel free to shoot you at will.”

She was appalled. “He would not say that.”

“He did,” said the fae.

“How is it so many of you can hold pistols anyway? You can’t all be half-bloods.”

“The blood is quite intermingled these days. Your existence attests to that. You are so strong with Seelie magic,” said the fae. “But no, there is a theory that the magic is changing and adapting, that it is the ancestors giving us strength to rise up against our oppressors. I’d be happy to continue this discussion, of course, but let’s do it as we walk. If we delay the train, the Night King won’t be pleased.”

“Train? What are you…?”

“Yes, we’re going to the capital, of course,” said the fae. “That is where the Croith’s headquarters are.”

“And what do you mean Seelie magic? That’s the most ridiculous thing I think I’ve ever heard.”

“If you want any answers to that, you must walk with me.”

She huffed. She debated. What should she do? She could likely heal a gunshot wound, although she’d never been shot before. But Duranth had watched her heal the bruise from where her father had struck her once, so he did know of her healing capacities. She glared at the fae, but then she fell into step with him.

“Where did your magic came from?” said the fae.

“It’s from Fortune,” she said. “I am Favored. Sometimes humans are—”

“Sometimes humans have enough fae blood to manifest magic,” said the fae. “Yours is oddly strong, of course, or so the Croith says. He thinks you are the other half of the ancient prophecy, about two fae, one of each court, who can combine to bring vast swaths of the dead to life.”

She stopped walking.

“Dominissa.” The fae turned on her, hand on his pistol again.

She started to walk again, swallowing. She’d been taught about that prophecy. It was one of the reasons that the Seelie had left, because their magic could be twisted up with the Unseelie magic to create abominations.

Like Csaer,whispered an ugly voice in the back of her head.

No.

She would not help him. She would never help him.

The fae took her to the train, where she had her own spacious sleeping compartment, richly decorated with velvets and silks, stocked with a shelf of books for her entertainment, and food was brought for her to eat. Duranth had apparently remembered her favorite dishes.

But if he thought he could buy her this way, he was sadly mistaken.