Mercurial Page 4

  “What?” she demanded, faintly irritated. “Have you brought more tea to douse me with?”

  His head jerked upward like a startled doe’s, and his gaze skimmed over her outfit. His eyes widened when he noticed she was wearing new clothes. “My—my lady,” he stammered. “I was unaware that the tea spilled on you and not only the carpet, I offer my sincerest—”

  She stepped past him into the corridor, cutting off his apology with a hand wave. He flinched, because a hand wave from her was not usually the forgiving gesture it often was from anyone else, but she didn’t spark her powers, only strode onward without comment. This servant was a misfire, if she remembered correctly, one of the unlucky souls who’d been born to a Smith lineage but held no magic of his own. Such outcasts were sloughed from the ranks of the nobles and given roles as palace servants or army officers. He was right to fear her, as she could easily fire him—either in the job-related sense, or in the burning-to-ash sense—but fortunately for him she had more important matters to attend to at the moment. And she never had found pleasure in unnecessary violence anyway. It was the fear of others that she craved, and that was accomplished neatly enough through the bloody assignments her sister doled out.

  The man scuttled along behind her, trying to find the words for whatever message he was supposed to be relaying to her.

  She saved him the trouble. “My sister requires that I attend Lord Albinus immediately.”

  His features sagged in relief as she slid open the door to the dining car and stepped through. The air was cooler here than the rest of the train, curling over her shoulders in eddies that whispered of mountain blizzards as the train climbed toward the cloud-capped peaks of the Skyteeth. This car was walled with windows from floor to ceiling. It was meant to give the effect of openness to the beautiful scenery as they passed, and it did, but it also made for unbearably chilly meals when they were in the mountains. It also meant this car was the most vulnerable place on the train, as there was far less Smithed metal here to be enchanted with protective magic. It was one of the reasons she never ate in the dining car while on journeys, preferring to take her meals in the safety of her room. An added benefit of that arrangement was the lessened opportunities to interact with any other members of the metallurgy class.

  The servant noticed she’d drawn ahead and hurried forward until he was standing at her side. He bowed again, a short, jerky bend from the waist that nearly upset a nearby cake trolley. The delicate confections resting atop it wobbled.

  He cleared his throat. “The Empress Sarai, long may she live, begs you to—”

  “My sister does not beg.” She continued moving forward through the compartment, heedless of how he had to scurry out of her way, bumping into the trolley again as he did so. Several chocolate curls and a shred of gold leaf drifted to the floor. He grimaced and glared imperiously at the trolley’s attendant, as if she were at fault. The lower-ranking girl flushed and quickly bent to clean up the mess.

  The Destroyer continued onward, weaving between the tables laden with sausages, braided bread, and truffle omelets. The rich smell of food did nothing to tempt her from her course. Neither did the handful of cousins and twice-removed aunts and uncles who waved her toward their tables. She didn’t deign to acknowledge their invitations; they were vipers, every one of them, and if they wished to talk to her it was only in order to glean secrets about her elder sister. Half of them were perpetually involved in some stage or another of a usurpation attempt.

  The messenger servant turned away from the trolley and hastily caught up with the Destroyer. “Your presence is indeed requested in the chamber of the Lord of Copper, my lady. When may I tell the empress to expect your arrival there?”

  To everyone but Sarai and Albinus—and possibly Tal, who likely knew an uncomfortable number of her secrets—the Destroyer’s regular visits to the Lord of Copper were nothing but luxurious skin and hair treatments. Though this servant didn’t understand the vitality of the message he carried, the Destroyer could read between the lines to see that her sister worried she was allowing too much time to lapse between her previous treatment and this one. That may have been true, but the Destroyer could think of nothing else at the moment beyond discovering the secrets of today’s assassin. A spiky, apprehensive sense of betrayal was already fomenting in her chest at the thought of Tal being somehow compromised.

  “You may tell her I have other important business to attend to, and will present myself in Albinus’s chambers this evening.” That should be enough time to interrogate the assassin. Though, she realized, it might also be beneficial to interrogate Tal as well. Or perhaps interrogate the assassin in front of Tal or vice versa; if they were acquainted, a threat to one of them might force the other to tell the truth.

  She glanced over her shoulder. Tal was walking three steps behind her and slightly to the side as always, his gaze calm and alert, his expression blank—but she could still see that stain of new, pink skin on his hand, could still hear the echoes of his cry and sense the uneasy tension it had wrought in her.

  She would not include him in the interrogation. Not yet, anyway. She would likely have no trouble wrenching the truth out of the assassin on her own—and if not, well, that was when she could reconsider Tal’s inclusion in the process.

  Soft, whispered Sarai’s voice in her mind.

  “Strategic,” the Destroyer bit out aloud. Several nearby breakfasters glanced up in surprise, then carefully looked away and went back to their conversations—albeit rather stiltedly—when they saw it was her who was talking to herself.

  The Destroyer’s shoulders squared, and she wrenched open the next door so hard it cracked loudly against the interior wall. Perhaps she ought to visit Albinus sooner. He’d invented her medical treatment—a specialized transfusion process—to counter a childhood poisoning that still wreaked havoc on her mind and body when she went too long between doses. Her growing unsteadiness today could mean she was risking losing consciousness or even going into a fugue state, the way she had in a few prior instances when she’d let her treatments lapse too long.

  But still, the prison car pulled her forward like a lodestone. Her medicine could wait a few more hours. She swept a glance back over her shoulder, taking in Tal and the servant. “I will go on alone from here,” she told them both.

  Tal froze mid-step, his gaze snapping to hers. She tried to read the emotion framed in his expression, to see if he’d guessed she was headed to the prison car, if he worried for the girl she was about to question. But Tal had become skilled at hiding from her; she couldn’t guess what he was feeling.

  “Yes, my lady,” was all he said. He pivoted and strode back toward her chambers, his steps a clipped, staccato drumbeat. The servant followed.

  She stepped through the doorway and pulled the door closed behind her. Two cars later, the cool air turned downright frigid, draping itself heavily over her as soon as she moved into the prison. She banished the chill with a snap of her fingers, cloaking herself instead in a flickering shawl of sparks. The warmth of her magic licked eagerly at her and brightened the dim interior of the prison with pops of dazzling white and orange.

  Behind bars of unyielding iron, prisoners winced and huddled, curling into themselves at the sight of her and shielding their eyes from her magic. Several of them moaned and whimpered, and a few began openly sobbing. The coppery tang of blood sank cold tendrils down her throat with each inhale. She ignored all of it. She had already burned their town, her sole duty for this journey. She had no further business with these folk.

  She stepped forward, her boots cracking like cannon shots against the sheet-metal floor as she surveyed the prisoners, searching for the girl from this morning. She found her easily. The assassin was the only one not cowering in her single-occupant cell, sitting instead with her legs crossed, wearing a haughty expression that spoke nothing of the pain she must be in. The blood on her shoulder glistened black in the bursts of light.

  “My guard has imp
eccable aim,” the Destroyer said conversationally, tilting her head as she stopped outside the cell. “You never stood a chance, you know.”

  The assassin bared her teeth in a smile. “Lovely to see you again. Why don’t you come in? I’d be happy to stain more of your clothes with my blood. Or your blood.” She delivered the words in a careless tone, but was panting with the effort of it by the end.

  “Such bravado for one so young,” the Destroyer murmured.

  “Please, I’m two years your elder. It’s only all the murder that makes you feel so old.”

  The Destroyer reached toward the bars and skimmed one with a finger. The magic within the metal recognized her touch and the door to the cell swung open on silent hinges. She stepped onto the threshold. It was time to begin the interrogation proper. She held out one hand and allowed her magic to seep through her skin, curling to life as a surly red flame in her palm. “What are you called?” she asked.

  The girl remained seated, her smile widening. “Your doom.”

  Irritation and something else—a faint nudge of admiration, quickly smothered—stirred. “When you fled after your ill-fated attempt at some murder of your own, my guard reacted as if he recognized you. What do you know of him?”

  The girl shrugged her uninjured shoulder. “Never seen him before in my life. What do you know of him?”

  “I know that he is mine, and I will suffer no threat to him.”

  An honest expression flicked across the girl’s face at last. She mastered it quickly, but she wasn’t nearly as practiced at concealing her emotions as Tal, and the Destroyer had more than long enough to recognize the fury and anguish that tightened the girl’s eyes and twisted her smile into a brief snarl. “He is not yours,” the girl said in a low tone void of her earlier bravado, “and it is not me who poses a threat to him.”

  The Destroyer’s anxiety deepened a touch. Such strong emotion spoke of a close bond. It was as she’d feared, then—Tal did indeed have some sort of personal connection to the assassin.

  A sudden anger cracked to life, swallowing up her anxiety. How dare this girl presume a claim to Tal, to the sole person the Destroyer could trust with her safety in a palace full of pretenders?

  She stepped closer to the assassin and knelt down gracefully, her cape pooling behind her on the damp floor of the cell. Staining more of her clothes, indeed, she noted ruefully. “It wouldn’t do to have you bleed out before you get to your trial. That wound ought to be cauterized,” she said, and kept her eyes on the girl as she held out the hand with the flame and pressed it hard against the girl’s shoulder.

  The girl screamed and jerked. To her credit, she managed to turn the flail into an attack, driving her head forward into the Destroyer’s chest. The Destroyer twisted smoothly away before the blow could do more than graze her ribs.

  The coppery tang of blood turned acrid and smoky as the Destroyer pulled her hand away from the assassin’s wound and brushed off her palms, giving the girl a few seconds of respite to consider her situation. “Perhaps you wish to give me your name now,” she suggested.

  The girl was on her hands and knees, fingers splayed against the floor. She took a shaky breath. “Thank you for that,” she said. “I’ve been demanding they bring a doctor in here to see to my wound before I bleed out…but it seems I no longer need to worry about it.”

  The Destroyer considered the girl for a long moment. The earlier nudge of admiration crept back in and this time would not be smothered. She struggled with it briefly, but her fortitude was already weakened by having gone too long without her medical treatment, and after only a few seconds she gave in.

  She leaned forward and inclined her head. “My name is Elodie,” she told the girl quietly. “And now you may thank me in truth, because unlike torture, my name is a gift I have given no assassin before.”

  Few people remembered the Destroyer’s true name. It was a secret long kept hidden, not because public knowledge of it represented any sort of threat, but because she needed her sister’s empire to see her as a weapon—merciless, unbendable—and not a person.

  Sometimes, though, she missed the syllables of her real name spoken aloud. Such an unpresuming name it was that her parents had given her. If they hadn’t been long dead, she might have asked them what they were thinking, to give a deadly princess such an incongruously sweet name.

  The admission caught the assassin off guard. She eyed her as she pushed herself weakly to a sitting position. “What…what do I care about your name?” She panted. “You are nothing but the Destroyer to me and to everyone I care about…and that’s the only name you’ll ever hear from my lips.”

  The words should have meant nothing. The Destroyer had heard far worse from the lips of far more powerful people. But somehow, in her weakened state, the declaration sank its roots into her soul and bloomed black with thorns.

  She shoved to her feet, snagging her cape on a bolt in the floor in the process. It tore off a frayed shred of wine-colored fabric. The Destroyer barely noticed. Her magic crackled and grew, lashing itself into a whirlwind that threw violent orange light against the bars of the cell. “Then perhaps,” she hissed, her words blending with the snapping of flames, “I should bring Tal in for my next visit to your cell, and we might see what it takes to convince him to give me your name.”

  The girl’s gaze found hers and all traces of bravado fell from her expression. Defeat took its place—hooding her eyes, carving shadows into her features as she bowed her head. “Nyx.” The word shuddered and cracked.

  Elodie accepted the name: the first true thing this girl had told her. Her fire, sated, died down to sparks. She crossed her arms—to hide how her hands trembled, though she wasn’t sure why—and let her lips thin into a satisfied smile.

  “Nyx,” she repeated. “Good. Now, we can talk.”

  NYX BELIEVED IN EXACTLY ONE THING, and that was her brother Tal.

  He was why she had trekked to that doomed mining town yesterday. He was why she was here now, kneeling on the floor of a mobile cell made filthy with blood and magic. And he was why she allowed the Destroyer—a murderess framed by intractable iron bars, wearing a twisted crown and a cloak of fiery power—to believe that she, and not Nyx, had the upper hand.

  Her mouth tasted of copper and salt and agony. She spat onto the floor but a veneer of blood still coated her teeth, so she put it to good use and smiled at the girl in front of her. “Sure,” she said, forcing the word out between labored breaths. “I can probably free up…a few minutes from my schedule to ignore more of your questions.”

  The Destroyer’s thin smile didn’t waver. Her hands were shaking, though. She probably thought she was hiding it, but Nyx had always been accomplished at reading people. Nyx was getting to her—which only meant more pain for Nyx, of course, but that suited her purposes just fine.

  “Do you care so for Tal, that you would defend him at the cost of your name?” the Destroyer asked.

  Nyx shrugged, albeit carefully, since her whole body stung with the echoes of fire as if sparks were clogging her veins. Her tongue and throat stung particularly, though that wasn’t because of the Destroyer’s torture; rather, it was the aftereffects of the foul potion she’d downed last night that still lingered and burned. “My name’s not worth much,” she replied.

  One of the Destroyer’s delicate eyebrows arched. “And yet you required torture to give it to me.”

  “You’re not worth much either.”

  The Destroyer snorted. The sound caught Nyx off guard. It didn’t match, just like the Destroyer’s name didn’t match. The sister of the Iron Empress should have a name that brought to mind vipers and nightshade: something elegant, graceful, deadly. She shouldn’t have a kind name, and she shouldn’t snort like some amused commoner. And she shouldn’t look so small, either—even when she’d gripped Nyx’s arm with a burning hand earlier, Nyx had been struck by how petite and even breakable she looked. She was beginning to worry that the ordeal she had prepared herself for
bore little resemblance to the girl who actually stood before her.

  Nyx shook herself. Neither the Destroyer’s name nor her habits had any bearing on the situation. Nyx was here to kill the Lady of Mercury and free her brother, and she could do neither if she couldn’t focus. She turned her attention inward, wrapping herself around the core of hate that had been hardening for two years now—ever since she read that goddamned letter Tal left for her the day he pledged himself to a monster. Nyx’s old rage simmered easily back to the surface, and her focus sharpened.

  There. That was better.

  The Destroyer was watching her. “You have strong feelings toward me,” she observed.

  Internally, Nyx cursed. Apparently she wasn’t the only one good at reading people. “You’re not my type,” she retorted. That was certainly true enough. The Destroyer’s cruel, cold beauty couldn’t hold a candle to Helenia: the kind-hearted, no-nonsense girl back in the mountain ward who’d tearfully promised to wait for Nyx in the case of her potential—though unlikely—survival.

  “Why did you try to assassinate me?” the Destroyer mused, as if to herself. “To avenge Tal? To free him? That is impossible without my death, which, fortunately for me, you have already proven yourself incapable to achieve.”

  Nyx said nothing.

  The Destroyer held out her hand, the one with a flame curling just above it. Its fire flickered dull orange. Nyx wondered what the color meant, whether it had to do with her mood or with how much energy or magic she had left. There was so much the Saints didn’t know about the metallurgic class, and about the Destroyer in particular. The handful of non-noble Smiths born each year usually had pitifully small amounts of metal in their blood, far too little to allow for accurate studies, and no prior mercury Smith in any class had ever survived early childhood due to the volatility of incendiary magic. The few brave Saint spies who’d managed to infiltrate the palace had been able to smuggle back a little more intelligence, but not nearly enough to deconstruct the lethal puzzle that was the Destroyer.