Rillirin stumbled up the slick stone steps from the temple, bouncing from the walls in Liris’s wake, and when they reached the top Liris shook her until she squealed. He cuffed her face and dragged her through the longhouse and into the king’s room, threw her at the bed and dropped the bar across the door.
‘Lord, you must not,’ Rillirin pleaded, on her knees, one hand pressed to her stinging scalp. ‘The Blessed One said that you should not touch me, not for three more days. I’m still sick.’
Liris flung his bearskin on to the floor and brayed a laugh. ‘You’ve had a pennyroyal tea to flush my seed from your belly because you don’t deserve a child of mine. You’re a slave, not a consort, and you’ll do as you’re told.’
‘Honoured, please,’ Rillirin tried as he advanced. She scrabbled away on hands and knees, the weakness a blanket slowing her reactions. He can’t. Bana’s still warm, he couldn’t want – Liris pulled her to her feet by one arm and dragged up her skirts, blunt fingers hard against her thigh. The stench of his breath caught at the back of her throat. It was clear that he did want.
Rillirin squirmed and thrashed, but he was too big, too strong. Always had been. ‘No,’ she screamed in his face. ‘No.’
Liris jolted back in surprise, piggy eyes narrow. His breath sucked in on a whoop of outrage, and Rillirin clenched her jaw and screwed up her eyes. Stupid. Stupid!
She was convinced the punch had broken her jaw, and the impact with the stone floor sent shards of white pain through her shoulder. Black stars danced in her vision. Blood flooded her mouth and her shoulder was numb with sick, hot agony.
Liris picked her up and slammed her into the wall, one hand around her lower jaw, grinding the back of her head into the wood. ‘Bitch,’ he breathed. ‘While I normally enjoy our little games, I’m not in the mood for your spite tonight. You do not answer me back, you hear? You. Do. Not. Answer. Back.’ Each word punctuated by a crack of her skull on the wall. ‘You live because I will it, and you will die when I decide. Tonight, maybe, if you don’t please me. Or on the altar to ensure our success in the war to come. Or after I give you to the war chiefs for sport. When I choose, understand? You belong to me. Now keep your fucking tongue behind your teeth and unclench those thighs. I’ve a need.’
The tears were coming and Rillirin willed them not to fall, glaring her soul-eating hatred at him instead. A wild, suicidal courage flooded her. ‘Fuck you,’ she wheezed.
Liris’s mouth popped open and then he leant back to laugh, huge wobbling gasps of mirth. ‘I’ll break you, fox-bitch,’ he promised and his free hand dragged at her skirts again.
Rillirin worked her fingers around the knife hilt digging into her side, slid it out of Liris’s belt even as he forced her legs apart, and jammed it in the side of his neck. He looked at her in disbelief, hands falling slack, and Rillirin pumped her arm, the blade chewing through the fatty flesh and widening the hole in his neck.
Blood sprayed over her hand, her arm, her face and neck and chest, great warm lapping waves of it washing into the room until his knees buckled and he went down. She went with him, knife stabbing again and again, long past need, long past his last bubbling breath, until his face and neck and torso were a mass of gore and torn flesh.
Red with blood, red as vengeance, Rillirin spat on his corpse and waited for dark.
Eleventh moon, year 994 since the Exile of the Red Gods
Longhouse, Eagle Height, Gilgoras Mountains
Corvus, war chief of Crow Crag, paced below the dais. Lady Lanta, the Blessed One and the Voice of the Gods, sat in regal splendour beside the empty throne. The other war chiefs fidgeted on their stools and benches.
The Blessed One would not reveal more of the gods’ plan until the king was present, and the king was not one for stirring himself unnecessarily. Still, the sun was high even this late in the year and Corvus would bet Lanta was as impatient as he. A full-scale invasion with only months to plan; an ally within Rilpor they could use to their advantage. The idea warmed his belly. Invasion. Conquest. A chance for glory such as there’d never been, for Corvus to put his name, and Crow Crag’s, on the lips of every Mireces and Rilporian alive. And yet Liris lounged in his stinking pit like an animal.
The other end of the longhouse was crowded with warriors, complaining bitterly about the storm that had blown in. Slaves hunched and scurried to their chores, and Corvus’s lip curled in disgust as an old man tripped and spilt his tray of bowls across the floor. Dogs lunged for the scraps, fighting around the man’s feet and legs, scrabbling through the ragged furs piled up to keep off the chill.
Corvus kept pacing, fists clenched behind his back and face schooled to patience. He glanced at Lanta, sitting remote and inaccessible as the very mountains, and fought the urge to shake the information out of her, to slap it from her. The Blessed One is not as other women, he reminded himself. She’ll wind my guts out on a stick if I touch her. Despite his own warning, he glanced at her with a mixture of irritation and hunger. She didn’t deign to meet his eyes.
‘The gods wait for no man. Not even a king.’ Lanta’s voice was honey and poison and Corvus noted how the other war chiefs froze at its sound. ‘There is much to discuss.’
Edwin, Liris’s second, jumped up. ‘I’ll go, Blessed One,’ he said and scuttled down the longhouse to the king’s quarters at the end, his relief palpable. They all wanted to settle this and get out from under the Blessed One’s eye. Bana’s death hung in the air like the scent of blood.
Corvus had completed two more circuits below the dais before the yelling began. By the time the others had struggled out of their chairs, he was at Lanta’s side with drawn sword, ready to defend her.
‘The king,’ Edwin screeched as he shoved back into the longhouse. His hands were bloody. ‘The king has been murdered. Liris is dead!’
For a moment Lanta’s calm cracked, and Corvus would’ve missed it if he hadn’t been looking at her instead of Edwin squawking like a chicken on the block. But then the mask was firmly back in place. Corvus’s sword tip drooped on to the dais as Edwin’s words sank in. Corvus opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked at the men gathered like a gaggle of frightened children below him, backs to the dais, eyes on the far door. They were bursting with questions for Edwin, but none seemed keen to approach him.
Lanta picked up her skirts and strode the length of the longhouse, bursting through the door to the king’s quarters and slamming it behind her before anyone could see. Edwin stood outside it, staring at his hands in disbelief.
Liris is dead and the Blessed One is with the body. Eagle Height has no king. Eagle Height is vulnerable.
‘Gosfath, God of Blood, Dark Lady of death, I thank you,’ Corvus whispered. ‘I swear to be worthy of this chance you have given me. All I do is in your honour.’ One of the chiefs turned at the sound of his voice, his mouth an O of curiosity.
‘My feet are on the Path,’ Corvus said, completing the prayer. He took three steps forward, raised his sword, and started killing. The king was dead. Long live the king.
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth