The days grew longer, and the Crown Prince’s Revenants—as Tamer had taken to calling them—marched toward the imperial city. North of the bluffland, the land flattened into a stinking stretch of boggy mire. Etian sent Barrick scouting one way and Sketcher the other, but their findings came to the same—the fastest way to move an army through would be to stick close to the river and push straight north.

  Fighting for every mile they gained and cursing every slogging step, they felled trees and began laying out a crude log roadway Hack’s five hundred were going to have to improve and widen when they rode through.

  The bogland was warmer by far than the wind-scoured bluffs, with hardly a breath of air, but the warmth brought with it unwelcome guests. Mosquitoes swarmed their work lines, converging on the only furless blood within miles.

  “We’ll all be a withered-up husks before we get out of here,” Arnic muttered, swiping at the air ineffectually.

  “Slather yourself in mud everywhere you don’t have cloth,” Barrick suggested, smearing the rancid brown across his face and arms. “They’ll leave you alone if they can’t get to you.”

  That wasn’t necessarily true, Etian found out. Half the flying monsters were determined enough to fight their way through the crust of stinking mud, and the other half tried their luck inside his ears, nose, mouth, and even his eyes. The horses shied and muttered, their muscles twitching at the continual attacks. Tankard, the war hound with his thick coating of stiff fur, seemed the only one of their number properly armored against the assault, though the heat often left him lying in the mud, panting.

  They burned dried horse dung and green branches around camp, but even that failed to do more than thin out the clouds. The endless whine was maddening. Some days, Etian crushed his hands flat against his ears, trying to block it out, only to fall asleep and hear it in his dreams.

  His lenses were never clean, splotched and spattered with mud and dirty bogwater. He forgot what it felt like to have dry feet. Arnic and a few others said they felt like something was burrowing between their toes, but when they removed their boots, all they found was ugly red inflammation between the puckered white stretches of waterlogged flesh. Their clothes hung heavy with mud and filth, and their faces and arms were a ruin of itching, weeping bites and nail-marks from furious scratching.

  Handsome Jeik was the first to come down with the flux, Rake and Tamer and Arnic soon after, then Marit and potbellied Churl. From there, the illness raged through Thorn and soldier alike, and soon the only ones unaffected were the brothers born with the immunities of royal blood magic.

  Etian worked night and day, laying the road that would get them to the other side of that muddy hell, dragging along the men who could stand long enough to swing an ax or lash logs in place, and only resting when he couldn’t move anymore. His Thorns worked alongside him, slower, sicker, but no less determined to put the bogs and mosquitoes behind them. Etian had been prepared to order them to keep working; he was glad he didn’t have to. Thorns were trained to carry on through adversity and exhaustion that would have killed other men.

  No one mentioned the stench anymore, or the attacks of watery bowels. No one talked at all. They just worked and washed when they could.

  Between laying planks, Izak tended to the men too sick to crawl. With no blood magic of their own, the soldiers were hardest hit by the sickness. Izak ran himself ragged, bringing them fresh water from the river, trying to convince them to eat, and expending huge amounts of healing just to keep them alive. His eyes grew hollow with exhaustion, and his shoulders stooped. Etian worried about his brother, but he couldn’t stop him. Every man Izak saved would be one more who helped take the imperial city.

  For eleven nights, they struggled through the bogs. On the twelfth, finally, mercifully, they hit solid ground. Even Etian found himself caught up in the celebration, whooping as they swung up onto their horses and put as much distance as they could between them and that wretched muck.

  If they had tried to take another village in that sorry state, the march to the imperial city would have ended there. Luckily, the next settlement they came upon was a small fishing camp on stilts, cozied up to the edge of the Salt.

  Etian and Izak killed the fishers, and the Revenants settled in to regain their strength. Barrick foraged medicinal weeds, and Izak made the rounds healing. Etian counted the nights to Summerlight and the Judgment that would come after. The recovery was slow and steady for all but Churl.

  Handsome Jeik poured broths of river fish and wild spring onions down his potbellied cousin’s throat, and Barrick brewed teas for him, but Churl could hold none of it for long. Izak even got the pikeman to drink his blood, saying he had tried something similar to heal the pirate of a grippe years before. But Churl’s body wouldn’t accept a binding from the blood magic, royal or otherwise. After the first night, he couldn’t get away from camp to empty his bleeding guts. After the second night, he gave up on moving entirely.

  “He’s dying,” Etian told Izak while they stood watch later that day. The words sounded dull and tired in his ears. “Waiting here isn’t going to change that.”

  Izak said nothing, just stared hollow-eyed into the fire and nodded.

  Churl took the news better than the rest of the men.

  “At least we got that way built through the bogs,” he said when Etian told him. “Hack and his boys ought to make it out before they take sick.”

  When his wet-eyed cousin Jeik said his goodbyes, Churl croaked, “Come by on your way back. Might be I’ll have grown you some nice daisies by then.”

  Etian left a filled waterskin and Churl’s pike, but they couldn’t afford to waste food on a dying man.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “I’ll make sure Handsom Jeik gets that pension to your family.”

  “I know you will, Josie.” Churl winked at him, then shot the soldiers and Thorns a grin. Tankard pushed his face up under Churl’s arm and whined, but the pikeman shoved the war hound away weakly. “Give them pointy-ears the strong gods’ hell from me, boys.”

  As they rode away, Churl started singing that song about the bull and the maidens, punctuated with the occasional grunt of pain. The song faded as the river camp disappeared behind bands of river birch, cedar, and willow. Handsome Jeik and several of the men looked as if they wanted to turn their horses back and go beg Churl’s forgiveness.

  Etian hardened his heart and kept them moving north.

  ***

  The Khinet ambassador and his wife got their first sight of the Helat imperial city an hour after the height of midday, cresting one of its famed Seven Hills to look down upon a glittering sprawl.

  Thimeriastor’s great buildings were constructed of cut quartz, jade, and marble. The Councilorium, the Hall of Seven Hills, Star’s Rest, Sun Home, and the Diamond Palace perched on the western bank of the Salt River, while Moon Rise and the Jade Temple stood on the eastern, all throwing brilliant shards of sunlight. Across the muddy river stretched three bridges of ivory marble, banded with copper greened by the centuries. Even the common buildings that filled in the spaces between seemed to have been meticulously cut and polished.

  Tears welled in Kelena’s eyes. In all her dreams and visions locked in the trunk or out of it, she had never imagined that something so beautiful could exist.

  “Lucan, the firstborn son of Helat, built the Diamond Palace to replace the first castle of stone when his father died,” Shaden Second-Son explained, a soft note in his normally even tone. “The Hall followed soon after, then the Councilorium and the Jade Temple after he died. A few generations later, the dynastic homes began being built in the same style.”

  Through the grafting, Kelena felt Alaan’s admiration. He held no love for the Helat, but he appreciated the craftsmanship.

  The thoroughfares of Thimeriastor were wide and straight, some paved with cobbles and others with huge marble slabs. The horses’ shoes struck sparks on the marble, and the carriage wheels rumbled.

  Down a side avenue, Shaden pointed out one of the Glittering City’s many markets as they passed. The hawking of the merchants, the merry tune of musicians, and the rich scent of spices and herbs trailed after them. There were potter’s rows, streets of weavers and tailors and chandlers, armorer’s lanes, smithies of both white and black. The city seemed to have a neighborhood and guild for every imaginable type of artisan.

  Out the window, children ran alongside their carriage, laughing and shouting, pointed ears sticking up through their long hair.

  “They look so happy.” She didn’t realize she had spoken until Clarencio took her hand and squeezed it.

  A glance at her husband told her that Clarencio was as enchanted with the city as she was. His handsome features showed a measure of strain—in choosing to push on to the imperial city rather than stop at midday, he had missed a dose of opal sap—but his excitement seemed to be winning out over the pain.

  The night before, he had confided to her that he feared they would reach the imperial city only to find the same squalor and casual evil as they had left behind in the Kingdom of Night.

  “But you and Shaden have been discussing Helat beliefs this entire journey,” she had said. “You must know how the Helat feel about everything by now.”

  “Your Thorn’s suspicious nature must be rubbing off on me.”

  Her rebuking frown had made him chuckle. “Only a joke, love. If Alaan’s suspicions keep you safe, then I’m all for them.” He sighed. “It’s an irrational fear, I know. We’re more likely than not to find the Helat exactly as Shaden says. But I’ve always worried that I was the insane one for thinking there must be more meaning to life than pleasure-seeking and power over others.”

  For that, Kelena had loved him so much it felt like her heart would burst. Even if Clarencio was wrong and there was no more meaning, at least his questioning of it had lifted one empty little Nothing out of the darkness.

  ***

  The Khinet ambassador and his household had been afforded a residence in Sun Home, a quarter of the city devoted to the noble families of the Sun Dynasty. Shaden Second-Son named Houses as they passed residences. The proud West Seas whose men-at-arms all wore pearlescent armor, the dark-clad Skullhalts, the Red Mornings with their crimson enameled longknives, the Cloudbanks, the Piercers, the Winterlights—who, according to Shaden, had not been named for the Khinet-born’s yearly festival.

  There were dozens more, and the names soon began to run together for Kelena, but she forced herself to pay rapt attention and keep the conversation flowing. Beside her, Clarencio’s features grew tighter by the minute, and when he spoke it was only in one-word replies. The lurching of their wheels over the cobblestones must have been agony for him.

  The manses towered, sometimes reaching as high as four stories. Many had colonnades that wrapped around each story, and each successive tier was wider than the last, so that they stretched like squared archways over the streets. Waving mildly from the rooftops, Kelena caught sight of greenery, thick exotic leaves as long as she was tall in some places, twisted branches colored with white and pink petals in others, and here and there curtains of vines dotted with flowers of blue, purple, orange, and maroon. Sunlight sparkled off the spray from fountains just out of sight.

  “Roof gardens,” Shaden explained. “Our people have a deep affection for growing things, even in the heart of the city. In warm weather, many families prefer to take their meals in their gardens and pass the days in the sun. When the summer reaches its hottest, some even sleep and bathe on their rooves. Your home has one as well—though, perhaps Her Highness would prefer to enjoy it at night.”

  Kelena smiled. “I might manage to spend some daylight hours up there, provided I have my parasol. Do you live in Sun Home as well, Shaden?”

  “My family has moved into our Sun Home residence for the summer, though my wife retains her maiden dwelling in Moon Rise.”

  “Your wife lives separately from you?” Kelena asked, aghast.

  “Rarely. Gwynyss and I are of opposing ancestral dynasties. She is of the Houses of the Moon, where I am of the Houses of the Sun. We would see our children raised equally as a part of both her family and mine, which is simpler to accomplish with residences in both districts. We move between them as required.”

  The carriage turned down another wide street and began to slow.

  “We have arrived.” The Helat pointed out the window. “Your residence.”

  The structure was made of sunny orange-red stone and plaster. Arched and columned porticoes wrapped around the first three levels, and flowered greenery peeked over the rooftop’s low wall.

  Uneasiness bled into the grafting from Alaan as he studied it. He must be wondering how best to defend a building with that many potential entrances and exits. Kelena prayed silently that the bedchamber, at least, would be windowless and well away from the portico.

  Clarencio braced himself against the lurch of the carriage as it braked.

  “I should have thought to ask before now, Shaden,” he said in a tense voice as he massaged his thigh, “but how much of an insult is it to the other dynasties that the ambassador from the Kingdom of Night has hired a residence in Sun Home? Was there a more neutral ground we should have sought out?”

  Shaden’s face hardened. “The other dynasties will take it as they will take it. Their emperor is still Tragion. They will respect his throne and its right to shelter its allies for as long as he still sits upon it.”