Sovereign Read online

  They filled their canteens and bathed, doing their best to wash away any lingering Sovereign scent from their skin and hair. And then they slept for two hours against a large boulder near the watering hole before resuming their trek northeast, into the canyon lands.

  She would have insisted they sleep longer, but they now had only five days to accomplish the impossible.

  “THEY’VE SEEN US.”

  “Yes,” Jordin said, gazing down the long valley from a rise overlooking a system of shallow gulches.

  Danger had come to them at dusk.

  They’d spent all day heading toward the northern road into Byzantium, knowing that Immortals routinely patrolled the supply routes into the city, intent on cutting them off.

  The moment she’d picked up their scent, she’d climbed the tallest nearby rise and issued three long, high-pitched whistles in the direction of the faint odor. The call for help had been used by Nomads for decades—it was one she knew well. If the signal had failed, she would’ve tracked them on foot.

  It never came to that. They’d been heard, and four of the black-clad warriors were riding toward them, shimmering specters on the horizon.

  “How do we know they won’t hurt us?”

  “We don’t. But there’s no reason to think they would. Unless you begin acting strange.” She cast Kaya a firm stare. “I am the only one to speak, do you understand?”

  “Of course.”

  “No, not of course. One wrong word and you could get us killed. So you won’t speak at all. Just imagine that you’re a mute.”

  “A mute Immortal.”

  “Something like that. Follow me.”

  Jordin started down the hill to cut the distance between them. Within five minutes the Immortals were fully formed riders on dark horses, their posture that of those who owned the world, warriors protecting their realm. In the wasteland, at least, it was true. Roland had carved out his world and ruled here free and supreme.

  While Sovereigns cowered beneath Byzantium.

  Jordin halted when they were a hundred meters off and let them come. She quickly reviewed their state. The markings on her bow and the steel of her arrowheads were of Sovereign design, so she’d buried them in the sand along with her pack. That left them with only the clothes they wore and their canteens. She’d hidden a single vial of blood in her canteen—with any luck it would go unnoticed.

  Her mission had come to this moment. She had no idea how Roland organized his Immortals or what kind of persuasion might get her to him. She’d killed an Immortal—a feat she would have celebrated just last week. But today, with the hours growing short, it was only one step in an impossible journey. Now she would see her first Immortals face to face. Then she would know.

  The leader of the patrol nudged his horse into a trot and approached at ease. He broke to his left and circled them once, ten paces distant, far enough to avoid attack, close enough to study them with every sense. Jordin couldn’t help but admire the surety with which he rode—it wasn’t caution but simple reason. His eyes peered at her through the slits in his head covering. An Immortal Ripper. A wraith disguised as a man.

  Did she know him from her days as a Mortal? If so, he would recognize her as well, and she’d have to talk fast—and perhaps act faster. She reminded herself that she’d once been able to best the most skilled Mortal in combat. Whatever advances they enjoyed due to the change in them she also possessed.

  The other three Immortals stopped five paces off, horses abreast. No one spoke until the leader completed his circuit and angled in closer.

  “I can see that you have Immortal flesh,” the man said. “But I see nothing else Immortal about you.”

  Jordin dipped her head in respect. “Then you serve our prince well.” She lifted her eyes and met his stare. “As do I.”

  “As a lost vagabond in the wasteland?” one of the others said. “And what of the pretty one beside you?” His eyes shifted to Kaya. “You might serve him better by offering us your comforts.”

  Heat flared up Jordin’s neck. But she would put the man’s simple lust to good use.

  “I doubt he would allow it.”

  “Then you don’t know our prince.”

  “And you don’t know what we have to offer him in exchange for whatever service he desires. Unfortunately for you, what we have is for Roland alone, not for young studs in training.”

  The air went still. She could actually hear the man’s heart beating, like the rhythmic throb of a moth’s wings in the air. Its rate did not fluctuate. The rider on her far left finally chuckled.

  “You obviously don’t know who you’re speaking to. Sephan isn’t exactly young. He does, however, train the best of the prince’s coven. You should watch your tongue if you hope to keep it, pretty.”

  “And here I thought Kaya was the pretty one,” Jordin said.

  The leader nudged his horse a step forward. “Kaya, is it?” he said, looking down at the girl. “And what do you have to say for yourself, Kaya? What kind of service do you and your speaking friend here have to offer our prince?”

  Kaya shot Jordin a quick glance, but the leader stepped in.

  “Look at me, not her,” he said. “Your life’s in my hands now. What’s your friend’s name?”

  Kaya stared at the tall rider as though he were the prince himself, seemingly captivated by those deeply drawing eyes, the sultry voice.

  “I’m not free to tell you that,” Kaya said.

  “Then neither will you be free to live.”

  “She travels with me,” Jordin said. “I speak for us.”

  “You are in my jurisdiction, and you will both answer my questions.”

  “I mean no disrespect. I only say that I command Kaya as you command your men.”

  “You command nothing but my attention, and even that’s wearing thin. Keep me interested, and you might do well.”

  The man regarded Kaya again, dismissing Jordin.

  “What’s your name?” Jordin asked before he could speak. “Roland will want to know who it was that so quickly dismissed the one he himself once trained to be champion. The one who now brings him news that will win him a war.”

  Slowly the leader’s head swiveled back, his eyes betraying true interest for the first time. He glanced back at his men before casually pulling a knife from his belt. He tossed it into the sand at her feet.

  “Show me,” he said.

  “Which one would you have me kill?”

  “Any you think you can.”

  Stillness settled between them, broken only by the buzz of a fly and the swish of a horse’s tail. Jordin was suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to kill them all. How many Sovereigns had these very Immortals massacred a year earlier?

  But attempting to kill any one—much less all—of them would only end tragically. They were battle hardened and keenly alert. And they were her way to Roland.

  “Pick one,” she said.

  “I give you that choice.”

  “Without a direct order, I can’t kill any who serve my prince. But I can assure you that I’ve killed many Dark Bloods. They, not you, are my enemy.”

  The commander sat in silence for an extended moment, then withdrew something from under his black cloak. An apple.

  “Pick up the knife.”

  Jordin bent for the blade, eyes never leaving his. She had straightened only halfway when he nonchalantly flipped the apple into the air.

  Jordin let the world about her slow. Time slowed with it. The apple hung lazily in the shimmering air, a suspended thing, impossibly large. She felt one knee drop to the sand as she reacted without thought. She snapped her wrist to send the blade into the fruit, knowing already that her aim was true.

  But even as the knife left her hand, she saw that the apple was only a distraction meant to test her true skills. The Immortal who’d commented on Kaya’s beauty was already flipping his gloved hand in a throw. A circular blade cut through the air with blazing speed.

  She threw her
weight back, arching her back. The Immortal’s blade hummed past her face, narrowly missing her nose, and thudded harmlessly into the sand behind her. Then she was over on her back in a roll and immediately on her feet again.

  The apple lay on the ground ten feet away, cut in two.

  The Immortals did not move.

  Jordin calmly pulled the circular blade from the sand and tossed it to the one who’d thrown it.

  “I think you misplaced this,” she said.

  He deftly plucked the steel orb from the air.

  “So you have some skill,” the leader said. “My name is Rislon. I need yours.”

  “Mine is known only to Roland. As you can see, we’re still in street clothes from our mission in the city. We made it out on a transport but don’t have horses. Either give us one of yours or take us back to the coven with you now. We’ve wasted too much time already.”

  Rislon stared, but she knew she’d won him over already.

  “You’ll be rewarded, Rislon. I can promise you that the news I bring Roland will be celebrated by all Immortals.”

  He dipped his head. “You’re with me.”

  Kaya glanced at the others, tentative.

  “You, pretty Kaya….” He jutted his chin toward the first one to call her that. “Ride with Sephan.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  FEYN STOOD before the one-way window of the observation room, a misleading name for a chamber that was not truly a room at all, but a cell set apart from the ancient dungeon deep beneath the Citadel. Neither was it often used for observation. Few had the stomach to peer at Corban’s most intimate investigations. Ammon, she noted, was conspicuously absent.

  A lone electrical fixture hung dormant from the dungeon’s pocked stone ceiling. Torches were far more effective in moments like these. Two of them illuminated opposite ends of the ten-foot cell, hissing at the occasional drop of sweat from the ceiling. The iron bars of the cell had been replaced by a wall with the single one-way window. The heavy door, adjacent to the window, served as the chamber’s sole entry. One entry. One exit. Usually by means of a wheeled cart for the one seated in the chair.

  The chair was high-backed and heavy, with sturdy ironwood arms and legs. Its hard seat and broad arms were accustomed to struggle and indifferent to it. But the figure seated on its unforgiving seat had not yet struggled once.

  Rom.

  Inside the cell, Corban stepped away from a short, steel table situated just below the torch on the right, long syringe in hand. He paused thoughtfully before the chair, momentarily blocking her view.

  “How many of your kind still live?” the alchemist asked.

  “Enough.”

  “Enough to what? Make more?”

  To this Rom said nothing.

  “Where are they hiding?”

  Silence from the chair.

  “We have the means to make you tell us everything, you know. You must realize that.”

  If Rom did, he gave no indication.

  “Did your old alchemist, the one you called ‘the Keeper,’ track the changes in your blood from week to week, or once a month?” he said. His voice through the concealed speaker sounded thin to her ear, nasal and unappealing.

  Silence from the chair.

  “It would help me a great deal to know what changes he found in your blood and at what specific intervals he studied it. I assume he accumulated quite a body of research with as many conversions as you claim to have undergone.” He turned, syringe in hand, and paused, unbothered by Rom’s silence.

  He stepped closer, leaned over the arm strapped to the chair, and inserted the needle into Rom’s vein. The leather restraints around the arms and legs of its occupant had long been reinforced with heavy steel bands. Even Seth had been unable to break free of them when he’d been brought down to have his loyalty tested.

  For the first time since she had come to stand before the window fifteen minutes ago, Rom lifted his head, his gaze drifting just to the bottom of the wall below the window.

  His face was smudged, as much by the grimness in the cell they’d kept him in as by the sport the guards had made of him. His hair had come loose from its binding to hang in his face; several peppered strands plastered against his neck. A recent cut had dried above his eye. A darkening bruise swelled his right cheek.

  “I admit to my own puzzlement,” Corban said as the syringe in his hand filled with blood. “I haven’t seen any astounding differences in your blood to explain the color of your eyes. Perhaps a draw taken from a living specimen will reveal something more. In the meantime, I’m curious. If you will indulge me—why do you call yourselves ‘Sovereign’?”

  Another moment of silence passed before Rom spoke for the first time. “Because ours is a new kingdom.” His voice rasped with thirst but was void of defiance and strangely calm.

  The alchemist lifted his head from his task and considered him. “But there is only one kingdom.”

  “How would you, a dead man, know this?”

  “There is only one world and one world government. One Maker of my life, one new Order under that Maker.”

  “Only one that you can see.”

  “Do you live in a different kingdom then?” the master alchemist asked. He said it lightly, in the way one indulges the slightly unhinged. “Have your followers seceded from the government of this one?”

  Corban had glanced down at the syringe and didn’t see the quirk of Rom’s mouth. But Feyn did. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “And you consider your leader, the dead boy Jonathan, your true Sovereign?”

  “He was, and is.”

  “It doesn’t seem so, given that he’s dead and that our liege lady is Sovereign.”

  “My Sovereign lives.”

  Corban’s right brow arched. “Does he?”

  “You think him dead. But then you also think you’re alive.”

  “I am very alive, as you can see. Your so-called Sovereign, on the other hand, is quite dead. And yet you say you live and I do not, and that a dead boy is Sovereign and our liege lady is not. Clearly you see the madness of your twisted logic.”

  “Jonathan came to bring a new kingdom. Not of political power—I know that now—but a kingdom of life. I’m a part of that kingdom. In truth, I’m more Sovereign than your ‘liege lady.’ ”

  “Black is white with you, and white is black.”

  “How do you know what black is, what white is?”

  “Because I see truly.”

  “Do you?”

  “The evidence certainly points in my favor. There’s nothing to suggest superior life in your blood at all.” Corban withdrew the needle and paused. “And yet you believe yourself superior, don’t you?”

  “I consider myself alive,” Rom said, eyes on the alchemist, the green of them vivid even in the chamber’s shadows. “Alive in a way that you can never be. Feyn, on the other hand, can and will taste true life.”

  Corban moved toward the table, not once showing any sign he was bothered by Rom’s claims. “What evidence do you have of this so-called life?” he asked. “There’s the color of your eyes, certainly, though alchemists have engineered such variations for centuries. There’s your stench. There’s a slight variation in your blood, but nothing else. Do you have any abilities I’m unaware of?”

  Rom sat still for a few beats, then spoke quietly.

  “Only life itself.”

  The alchemist went on as though he hadn’t heard him, and Feyn wondered if indeed he had not. “The Immortals have a highly evolved sense of perception, we’ve observed. You, I recall, have experienced that. But we haven’t noted any such attributes in those of your so-called Sovereigns.”

  No answer.

  “You don’t have the strength or speed of a Dark Blood, nor the supergenetics of one. I would even say that you’ve aged significantly since I saw you last.” He withdrew the vial from the body of the syringe and lifted a pen to label it. “Do you have the long life expectancy of the rogue Immortals?”
r />   “No.”

  He set the vial in a wire rack. “Then what does this…. ‘life’…. offer you, exactly?”

  “Hope.”

  “Hope. In the next life?”

  Rom hesitated. “Bliss is a mystery, understood by none.”

  “I see. So then hope for this life.” He lifted a small pair of scissors and returned to the chair. “And yet in the midst of this life you’ve gone underground to escape the systematic extermination of your cult.” He bent to one of Rom’s fingers and cut off a portion of a fingernail. “You’ve all but been wiped out, I understand. Your life doesn’t seem like much of a life at all.”

  There was unmistakable satisfaction in the alchemist’s voice as he straightened. He turned. “You’ve given up so much, and for what? What have you gained?”

  “All that you have lost.”

  “And yet I’ve lost nothing.” He returned to the table and dropped the clipping into a small vial in the rack. He retrieved another syringe—a smaller one—and stuck the needle through the rubber stopper of a vial. Filled it. He returned to Rom and slid the needle into his shoulder through his shirt without preamble.

  Rom showed no sign that he felt the pain, though it had to be excruciating.

  “I can find no marked advantage over a common Corpse other than simple emotions.” He tossed the syringe quietly into a bin and then withdrew a silver instrument from the pocket of his lab coat. “You have no evidence to show me that you have this new life you claim to possess?”

  Silence. But Rom’s eyes were clear, his expression unflinching…. even as Corban leaned over with the instrument, which resembled a cigar cutter, and cut off his smallest finger with a hard snick.

  Now Rom’s face trembled and his breathing thickened.

  “One piece of evidence only,” Corban said. “It’s all I ask.”

  “I can’t,” Rom said through a tight jaw. Blood drizzled from the stump of the finger to the floor. Visible beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. “I simply know.”

  “And what is knowledge but belief that it is knowledge?” the alchemist said, carrying Rom’s finger to the table. “No one who’s deceived ever believes he is wrong.”