‘Your will, Blessed One,’ Liris said as the mother of his children reached the altar and looked back at him, for a kind word or a demand for her release, perhaps. Her face rippled when she received neither. The Blessed One smiled and, tearing the woman’s dress down the front, bent her back over the altar stone; the queen’s soft, wrinkled belly undulated as she panted.
‘My feet are on the Path,’ Bana shrieked, and the Blessed One’s knife flashed gold as it drove into her stomach.
Gods take your soul to Their care, Rillirin thought despite herself, her fists clenched at the screams. Yet she didn’t know to which gods she prayed any more, those of Blood or of Light. None of Them did anything to help her. She looked away as the Blessed One dragged the knife sideways and opened Bana’s belly, her other hand pressing on her chest to keep her still. Bana’s screams echoed and re-echoed and the Mireces fell to their knees in adulation.
The slaves knelt too, and one pulled Rillirin down to the stone. ‘Are you stupid?’ he hissed. ‘Kneel or die.’ Rillirin knelt.
Liris’s face was stony and closed as Bana shrieked out the last moments of her life. He stood as soon as it was done and the Blessed One had completed the prayer of thanks. The blood was still running and his war chiefs still knelt in prayer when he shouldered his way through his warriors. Before Rillirin could get away, he reached out a sweaty paw and grabbed her by the hair.
No no no no no no.
‘Come on, fox-bitch,’ he snarled in her ear, hauling her towards the exit. The slaves melted from their path like snow in spring, eyes blank or calculating – her perceived power was something many of them coveted – and the temple rang with Liris’s rasping, angry breath, the pat-pat-pat of blood, Rillirin’s muffled whimpers.
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