And the killing. The killing, the fighting, it had been … ah, gods, it had been sweet.
He had left this place once with his best friend’s blood on his hands. Come back here bound and humiliated, a prisoner, contemplating his own death. And now here he was made king. I didn’t used to think I wanted to be king, he thought.
A strange thing to think.
A voice called, loud in the still cold air. ‘We’ve found it.’
Ah, gods. Marith turned, walked to where his soldiers were moving. He walked slowly. His heart beat very loud.
‘My Lord King, we’ve found it.’
Marith rubbed at his eyes. Looked down. Looked away. Looked down.
His father’s body was stretched on the earth before him. Face down in the dust. Broken apart. Torn into shreds by his son’s blade, like hands devouring consuming him. I killed him, Marith thought again. I killed him. Ah, gods.
Marith bent, knelt by the body, stared. Dead eyes stared back at him. A look of astonishment on his father’s face. Had not believed that Marith would do it, even as the sword came down and down and down.
‘Talk to him,’ Thalia had said to him, one night only a few days ago, standing on the walls of Malth Salene looking at his father’s besieging campfires. ‘Can you not talk to him?’
He killed my mother. He told everyone that I was dead. He hated me. He was ashamed of me. What could I say to him?
The air hissed and writhed around Marith. Darker, colder air. The sound of waves crashing on the rocks of the shore beneath. His own heartbeat, like the beating of a bird’s wings or the thunder of horses’ hooves.
‘Bring the body down to Toreth,’ he ordered the soldiers. ‘Preserve it in honey. We will return it to Malth Elelane. Bury it with honour there.’ Malth Elelane, the Tower of Joy and Despair, the seat of the Altrersyr kings. Home. My father’s father’s grave, he thought, and his father’s before that … All the way back to Altrersys, and to Serelethe herself, the mother of Amrath. The mother of a god. She who began it all. Who doomed me to this. Dragon born. Demon kin. The bloodline of the Altrersyr, whose very name is a whisper of pain and hate.
The air hissed and writhed around him. His father’s dead face. Flies were crawling on its open lips.
‘Marith,’ his father had cried out, as he killed him. He remembered that. Bringing his sword down, again, again, again, his father breaking, falling, shattered into pieces, crying out his name as he died. ‘Marith. Please.’
Can you not talk to him? Killing and killing. His sword so bright. The crash of bronze, his sword blade on his father’s armour; his father had tried to defend himself against him, tried to strike him back, the two of them hacking at each other, so close to each other, strike and strike and the ring of bronze. ‘Marith. Marith,’ his father had cried to him. And he’d struck his father so hard, feeling his father’s body break beneath his sword blade, flesh and fat and bones and bloodshed, his father’s body opening up red and ruined beneath his sword strokes. Tear him into pieces. Hurt him. Empty him. Blood and blood and blood.
A king, Father! Look at me! I am a king!
Marith thought: he must have hated me.
Marith turned away from the body. The soldiers were lifting it awkwardly, in pieces, falling, flopping about, the head flopping back, black dried blood crusted on its throat. He thought: don’t run; in front of the soldiers, my soldiers, don’t run. And there in the burned earth before him a pile of tumbled stone, smudged with colour beneath the smoke, the mark of carving still clearly visible, the smooth curve of polished stone. The head of the statue of Amrath from the chapel, perfect and unharmed, cleanly severed at the neck.
He thought: don’t run. Not in front of the soldiers. My soldiers. Don’t run.
He went back towards his horse, stopped, stared round him, walked across the ruined ground north towards the cliff edge and the sea. There on the headland the ground was undisturbed, grass still growing, purple heather, the last yellow flowers of gorse, all the petals ragged and browned from the recent snow. A man’s body, a dagger clutched in a raised hand. A child’s body, eyes open to the sky. A mound of dark earth, topped with a stone carved with the crude image of a horse.
Carin’s grave. It had watched the battle, seen Carin’s murderer wade through blood triumphant and victorious, seen Carin’s family and Carin’s home destroyed.
‘I’m sorry.’ There was a flask of wine at his belt: Marith poured a libation over the gravestone. ‘You … perhaps you deserved this, Carin. That you did not have to see this. What I have done.’
The stone gave no answer. But they had always avoided speaking of what he was. Marith rubbed his eyes. All done here. All that had held anything for him here was dead and gone. He mounted his horse, rode down the golden paved road back to Toreth. The soldiers followed, carrying his father’s body on a bier, the eyes still staring up astonished into the grey sky. The air hissed and writhed. On the sea, the shadows of clouds ran. The sea was as cold as iron and the light did not dance on the waves. At the gates of the town the cheer rang out to greet him.
‘King Marith! Ansikanderakesis Amrakane! Death! Death! Death!’
A single ray of sunlight broke through the clouds. Shone on Marith’s silver crown.
A king? He wore a crown, men knelt at his feet, he was first-born heir to the White Isles and his father the last king was dead. But the house of the king was far away on another island, his younger brother sat there on the throne of Altrersys in his place, the men of the White Isles believed him dead. King of a single town, a fishing port, his seat a fish merchant’s house with tall narrow rooms and worn floors. So glorious a place from which to reclaim his own.
Perhaps, Marith thought for a moment, it had been possibly foolish to raze the one fortress he had possessed to the ground. Burn the world and piss on the ashes and end up sleeping in a lumpy old bed with mildew stains on the wall. A triumph indeed.
There were sea-worn stones and bird feathers hanging on leather thongs beside the house’s doorway. They rattled as he went past. The owner of the house, the future Lord Fishmonger, the wealthiest herring merchant in Toreth Harbour, knelt like the rest as Marith entered. His hair was greasy, dandruff caught on his shoulders, beneath the perfume Marith was certain he smelled of fish. But he’d handed his house over so happily, so gladly, his face had been all bright with eagerness to let a blood-soaked boy throw him out of his lumpy old bed. Surely the greatest honour a man could ever have, that.
Lord Fishmonger looked nervous. ‘My Lord King,’ Lord Fishmonger said nervously. Marith thought: I must find out his name, I suppose. ‘My Lord King …’
Thalia came down the stairs. The sun came in through a window onto her face. She wore a white dress with pink and green flowers on it: in the golden light, with her brown skin and black hair, she looked like a may tree in bloom. Marith closed his eyes. Opened them. Too bright to look at. The sunlight was bright on her, and her face was nothing but light.
She was holding her cloak in her arms.
She looked at him for a very long time. Seemed about to speak.
He thought: she is leaving me.
He thought: I have made it safe for her to leave me. And now she will go. The realization struck him: she did not choose to come here with me. I rescued her from a stranger’s violence; she came here with me as a prisoner; she was trapped with me in a fortress under siege. And now that I have broken the siege she will turn and walk away.
She’s too good for me, he thought. Parricide. Vile thing. King of Death.
Lord