Sovereign Read online

  THE PLACE Jordin had chosen lay near the mouth of a small canyon. She’d once holed up in the narrow passage at the end of the ravine to escape a band of Dark Bloods. That was before the Blood War that pushed Feyn’s warriors back into the city. To call it a passage overstated its dimensions. It was more of a crack in the canyon wall, which jutted skyward on either side. Only two paces wide, it ran deep, a hundred meters at least.

  Unaided by the Immortals’ acute sense of smell and oblivious to Jordin’s hiding deep within, the Dark Bloods had passed by the fissure, waiting at the mouth of the canyon until nightfall, when they’d given up and headed back to the city.

  During the long hours of waiting them out, Jordin had noticed the precarious balance of the boulders perched along the western rim of the fissure. The narrow passage was practically a death trap.

  It was to that place she took Kaya. There, they worked with the small shovel for several hours, loosening enough boulders to make for a crushing landslide along a twenty-meter section of the cliff wall above.

  They stopped an hour before sunset. They were running out of time, and setting a trap would prove useless without baiting it. Even if they managed to bait and spring the trap, they would have to survive—no easy task in the proximity of any approaching Immortal. And no Immortal traveled alone; others would be nearby to come to his aid.

  “I don’t see why any Immortal would be stupid enough to enter,” Kaya said, peering over the cliff. “They travel on horseback. Can they even turn a horse around down there?”

  “There’s room if you know how to handle a horse, and trust me, they do. I could.”

  Jordin stood and scanned the horizon again. Her nerves were tingling. The greatest advantage was their own scent, which Immortals would hopefully pick up and follow into the canyon, if all went according to plan. They would have to make sure the Sovereign blood she’d brought in her pack did its work.

  “How can you be sure they will come?” Kaya asked.

  Jordin reached for her pack and pulled out the thick glass vessel filled with Sovereign blood, red and rich in the late sun. “What Immortal can resist the scent of Sovereign blood?” she said. She looked at Kaya who stared, wide-eyed, at the blood. “Do you know why they hate it so much?”

  “Because they can smell the scent of the one they betrayed.”

  “That’s right. And now Jonathan, in his own way, will lead them to us.”

  “To us?”

  Jordin lowered the jar. “That’s where it gets a bit dicey. We’ll need some luck. We have to be here to send the boulders down, so we’ll be exposed, but the scent of the blood is much stronger than our skin. With any luck, they won’t be able to isolate us.”

  “We have to depend on luck?”

  “Or Jonathan’s providence. Take your pick. I can tell you this: if they start to come up this hill, I’ve got seven arrows and nine knives that will put up a decent argument. We won’t go down without a fight.”

  “Wouldn’t it be safer to hide?”

  “Hide where?”

  Kaya looked around and shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe we could bury ourselves in the sand.”

  “You don’t think they would see the disturbed earth? Besides, we’d suffocate.”

  “It was an idea, at least.”

  Jordin grinned. “Yes, it was.” She stroked the girl’s hair. “You’re thinking. That’s good.”

  Kaya returned her smile.

  Through the day she’d become increasingly thankful to have Kaya with her. Kaya had rekindled an ember of her own faith. Death had yet to smother the idealism of Kaya’s youth. The girl reminded her of herself once. She’d been a Nomad orphan, taken in and protected by Roland, to whom she’d vowed her lifelong service. Then Jonathan had come and given all Nomads blood from his veins, and their world had forever changed.

  She had always been the quiet one who watched from the edge of the campfire, unnoticed by the others. But Jonathan had noticed. She’d fallen in love with his gentle and quiet ways, and he’d returned that love in a way only he could, as much with his eyes as with his words or his blood, which he gave willingly to any who wanted life.

  She would have gone to Hades itself to save Jonathan, as Kaya would now. The girl’s spirit was infectious. Her simple love refused to be denied.

  “Tonight this blood, not a hole in the ground, will keep us hidden.”

  “Hopefully,” Kaya said.

  “Hopefully.” She stood and headed south, along the rim of the canyon. “Let’s go.”

  It took them half an hour to dribble tiny drops of blood every fifty paces beginning directly beneath the section of loose rock above, out of the canyon, and up the rise west of the ravine where they splashed it on the ground.

  The wind drove north as it always did this time of year, carrying the scent deep into the wastelands. Any Immortal within miles would know a Sovereign had passed this way and would follow the trail into the canyon thinking a wounded Sovereign had sought refuge for the night.

  The sun was below the western horizon, and dusk was upon them before they settled into a hollow between two large boulders that offered cover and a clear view of the canyon below. Jordin’s bow and her seven arrows rested against the stone to her right; four knives waited in their sheaths, two on each leg. Three more at her waist, two on the ground.

  “Now we wait?” Kaya said.

  “Whisper,” Jordin said in a hushed tone. “They can hear as well as they can smell.”

  For fifteen minutes they sat in silence, both lost in thought. Jordin rehearsed the play in her mind a dozen times. How many would come? Two, if it was a scouting party based on the Nomadic way, which she assumed Roland still practiced. Four or more, if it was a patrol. A dozen, if they were headed into the city, where they might split into two groups, penetrate with ruthless precision, leave dead Dark Bloods in their wake, and be gone before Feyn’s commanders knew they’d been breached.

  Roland undoubtedly relished his lethal reputation, but he had so far failed to cut through the layers of Dark Bloods to the Citadel where Feyn ruled untouched. Knowing him as she had, it was a failure that no doubt ate at the Immortal Prince. She was counting on it.

  But none of that mattered if she couldn’t reach him alive, however detestable the thought of being in his company might be.

  “When will it happen?” Kaya asked.

  “Hopefully tonight. I just don’t know how often they range this far south. If not, we try again tomorrow night.”

  “That long? Then why are we whispering?”

  “Because for all we know, they’re coming already.”

  Kaya slumped back against the boulder, clearly disheartened. She hadn’t grown up hunting with the Nomads, who learned early in life that patience was the better part of catching or killing any prey.

  “It’s all right, Kaya. We’ll manage. Better here than under the city, right?”

  “But two days?”

  “Let’s hope not.” Mattius had given her a week, but she’d said nothing of Reaper to Kaya. There was no telling what would happen to their loyalties if they reached Roland. The man would tear the world to shreds if he knew the Sovereigns held a virus that would kill all Immortals. No one could know.

  She touched Kaya’s knee. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe this will all lead to Jonathan. If so, he’ll be proud of you. Think about that, rather than two sleepless nights.”

  They waited deep into the night with nothing but darkness before them. Eventually, even whispering became too dangerous. They had to listen carefully for the slightest disturbance. Twice, Kaya tried to start conversation. Twice, Jordin cut her short.

  “What was it like?” Kaya asked suddenly. “Kissing Jonathan.”

  The question caught Jordin off guard. Thoughts of silence slipped from her mind, replaced by the memory of Jonathan’s embrace that day of his death. Of the tender, innocent, beautiful man who could wield a sword with the best warriors when he gave himself over to it. Of how effortlessly h
e’d cut down the Dark Bloods before surrendering himself to Saric’s sword.

  The memory swallowed her, leaving anguish in its wake.

  “Jordin?”

  “It was beautiful,” she whispered. “I held Bliss in my arms.”

  “Do you think a man will ever hold me like that?”

  Jordin looked at her in the soft starlight. What young woman would not want what she’d had, if only for a short time?

  “Of course. I can’t imagine a man in his right mind who wouldn’t want to hold you like that.”

  “I’ll never have that if I die.”

  “You won’t die, Kaya. I won’t let you.” She said it for the girl’s sake. She said it for her own. She hoped it was true.

  “Isn’t becoming Immortal like death?”

  “Maybe. But we aren’t Immortal, are we? So right now we can rest in Jonathan’s love. Both of us.”

  Kaya sat cross-legged, staring beyond the cliff at the darkness. Silence stretched between them for a minute. Nearby, a lizard scurried over a pile of loose pebbles.

  “Do you feel his love now?” Kaya asked.

  That was the question, wasn’t it? The one that had taken up permanent residence in all of their minds.

  “Sometimes,” she said. “Not enough.”

  “Then why be Sovereign?”

  Jordin knew the answer, but it didn’t warm her heart. She remained quiet, thinking that in her simple way, Kaya voiced the impossible irony of Sovereignty itself.

  “If we have Jonathan’s blood and are like him, shouldn’t we feel his love at all times? And if love is so beautiful, why does everyone seem to live in misery?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think they’re pretending. I think they’d rather be Immortal to feel the love and peace they once felt.” She paused. “Is that why you’re going to become Immortal?”

  Jordin blinked in the darkness. Was it? Maker, no. Then why did the question bother her?

  “No,” she said.

  “But you’re still sad, even though you have Jonathan’s love in you.”

  “Because I’m only human, Kaya. I lost the love of my life.”

  “He’s not gone.”

  But he’s not here. “Don’t you miss him?”

  “Yes. But I’m not miserable.” Like you, Jordin heard without Kaya saying it. “He saved us from death and gave us love—so why is everyone so miserable? He saved us.”

  “Yes, of course. And one day we’ll all relish that love. But today we survive.”

  “What good is ‘one day’ when that day doesn’t come until you die? Then why survive at all?”

  Jordin wanted to tell her that she was thinking in too-simple terms. But there was also strange magic in the simplicity of her logic.

  “You still feel him, don’t you?”

  She should. And in some ways she often did. But not the way Kaya meant, like breath itself, every moment, made possible by the very blood in their veins. It struck her then, as clear to her as a blue sky. Something was wrong with their understanding of Sovereignty. Somehow they’d missed the whole point.

  “Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

  Why she felt such annoyance at Kaya’s obvious questions was beyond her. Weren’t these the same questions she’d asked herself a hundred times? But it was there, niggling beneath the surface: somehow, they were getting it wrong.

  “We have to be quiet now, Kaya. Ask Jonathan in your dreams. Maybe he can answer.”

  “I’ve decided,” Kaya said, ignoring the urge for silence.

  “Decided what?”

  “I’m going to do whatever you do…. if we get the blood.”

  The faint sound of a jingling tack drifted to Jordin’s ear. Or was it? She held up her hand for silence and listened.

  There, again, the sound of a horse’s hoof on rock.

  The Immortals had come.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  FOUR. All mounted on black horses, shadows swathed in pitch black from head to foot.

  Jordin lay on her belly, peering through the scrub at the cliff’s edge. The Immortals came slowly into the wide section of the canyon to her far right, guided by scent. The scent of Sovereign. They appeared not to have a care in the world—what was this to them but a wounded animal whose misery they would end with a single blow?

  But they weren’t stupid. Their apparent ease was as much caution, finely tuned to the night terrain around them. The scent had brought them, but acute sight and hearing would serve them now…. as well as that sixth sense known only to those who lived to prey or be preyed upon.

  Jordin held her bow in her right hand, heart pounding against the rock face beneath her chest. She could not deny her envy at the sight of them. While Sovereigns cloistered hungry and hunted beneath the City of the Dead, these Immortals burned with vibrant life that screamed superiority even in perfect silence.

  Neither could she deny her hatred. Hadn’t they spit on Jonathan’s grave in choosing that very life? And yet, if she succeeded, she would save the very lives of those she hated.

  For Jonathan and the sake of his legacy.

  The lead rider stopped halfway into the canyon, the other three two horse lengths behind. She knew they did not study their surroundings as much as know them. Perhaps she was giving them too much credit. They would bleed as easily as she.

  Kaya crept up beside her. Jordin pressed a hand to her arm, demanding absolute silence. Kaya laid her cheek on the ground but then eased her head up to see.

  The riders started forward again at a slow walk. One of the horses snorted softly. They heard a gentle clucking sound as its rider calmed his mount and then the muted plodding of horse hooves along the canyon floor.

  The Immortals would assume they had nothing to fear. They were in pursuit of a Sovereign who possessed none of their expanded senses, and a wounded one at that, caught in the wastelands where all Sovereigns feared to tread. Any conflict here would be welcomed by the Immortals as sport.

  They didn’t stop until they’d reached the entrance to the fissure. For a long stretch they sat mounted in silence. When they spoke it was with few words, which Jordin couldn’t make out. She kept her head down and begged the Maker to push just one Immortal inside the trap.

  Finally the one to the right of the leader nudged his horse, guiding it into the fissure. He silently slipped his sword from its scabbard and rode deeper into the narrow passage.

  From where she lay, Jordin could take him with a single arrow, but doing so would only defeat her purpose. If she took one out, the others would come after her and then return for the body of their fallen comrade. They never left their dead, and she needed the body.

  Only when the rider was directly below them did Jordin ease back, roll to her left, and place her palms on the rock they’d set to trigger the landslide. With a final glance at Kaya, whose eyes were wide in the dark, she gave the boulder a shove.

  It tipped, hung in precarious balance for a moment, and then lazily rolled over the edge. The sound of tumbling rock broke the stillness as the boulders careened down the wall, taking others with them. With a rocky clatter punctuated by loud thumps, they crashed down into the passage and landed in a thundering crescendo that echoed through the canyon.

  Behind the sound, a cry of alarm—a whinnying horse cut short as rocks crushed rider and mount.

  The trap had been sprung, but it was only the beginning. In an instant, the three remaining Immortals would realize that they’d been led into a trap.

  “Hurry!” Jordin whispered.

  She rolled away from the edge, came up in a crouch, grabbed her pack, and ran north along the cliff top, keeping away from the Immortals’ line of sight below. They had to execute the escape with precision—one misstep and they would be caught.

  Jordin had sprinkled the blood leading directly east, away from the canyon and toward the city for a good two miles, knowing that pursuing Immortals would follow the heady scent. She just didn’t know if they’d turn back when
the scent weakened or conclude that their prey’s wound had dried and continue the hunt.

  Jordin led Kaya north, a hundred meters to the end of the passage, slinging her bow and the knapsack over her back. She dropped onto a small ledge, then she reached back to help Kaya down. For the moment they were safe, out of sight.

  Hooves pounded in the distance. They were in pursuit, making their way out of the canyon to the top of the cliffs for a quick kill before returning to their fallen comrade. It’s what she would do.

  It took them only two minutes to scale down the steep slope they had descended twice in rehearsal, dropping onto the sand at the bottom from a ledge seven feet high.

  Jordin rolled to one knee and listened as Kaya dropped down beside her. A thin cry sounded ahead, from the direction of the rubble. It was possible one of the others had stayed to try to help. It no longer mattered; they were committed.

  “You good?” she whispered to Kaya.

  “Good.”

  “Stay behind me. Here.” She shoved one of the knives into the girl’s hand. “Just in case.”

  Kaya stared at the blade as if holding one for the first time. The girl could shoot a bow relatively well, but knives were not her forte by any means. For that matter, the bow wasn’t either.

  Jordin unslung her bow and notched an arrow, ready in the event that they were not alone. The first order of business was to find the body, alive or dead. If alive, they would have to kill the rider and harvest the blood. If dead, their task would be much easier.

  She ran forward in a low crouch. The sand softened their footfall.

  The first sign of rock came at fifty meters—smaller boulders that had rolled the farthest from the pile, just visible to her in the darkness ahead. She pulled up at the sound of a call from an Immortal, apparently searching for the fallen warrior.

  No reply. The first was dead or unconscious. Considering the rubble, she guessed the former. Not even an Immortal could survive such a pounding.

  So they’d left one for the rescue, which could pose a problem. Now she had to make a choice—either try to kill the living one or wait, hoping he would leave to meet the others on the cliff top when they returned.