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  Singer’s Reward

  Part Five of The Vastness

  Blake Hausladen

  Rook Creek Books

  Published 2018 by Rook Creek Books, an imprint of Rook Creek LLC

  Copyright © 2018 by Blake Hausladen

  * * *

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  * * *

  Edited by Deanna Sjolander

  Cartography by Author

  Contents

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Also by Blake Hausladen

  About the Author

  70

  Queen Dia Vesteal

  Yarik Yentif

  The carriage was cramped.

  Ghemma, the smallest of us, was shoulder to elbow with Dagoda’s corpulent matron. Burhn and I sat across from them, large body facing small, our legs almost irrevocably intertwined. The babies occupied our collective laps, and despite her claims otherwise, the matron seemed allergic to them. She sneezed loud enough to disturb the horses and looked perfectly miserable. This made Ghemma smile, though each wet sneeze fell heavy on Burhn, whose wounded face and battered nerves had not healed.

  He sat stony, throughout, making no complaints or requests. I loved him for it. It was a complicated enough ride already. Our route took us through the center of the Kaaryon toward the town of Courfel and the constant challenge of Hurdu or Hemari patrols.

  “Gifts for Yarik from Dagoda,” was all the driver had to say to keep us moving, and it happened only once that a Hurdu took a look for himself.

  “Bermish. Figures,” he said and tucked his coins away before hollering at us to move along.

  I overheate often as I thought through the countless variables of the coming encounter. Would we reach Yarik? Would he remember me? Would he keep us as hostages? Would he care at all about the dark clouds over Berm?

  Regardless of who we ended up in front of, I knew a thing or two about magic, Chaukai, and druids I could bargain with to keep us alive.

  All that mattered, was that I’d put Yarik’s army between myself and Geart. The thick layers of their cordons and patrols, I hoped, would prove a more substantial obstacle for the shambling caribou than the swamps.

  We reached the breastworks of a massive camp, and survived inspection by a captain and then a colonel. The matron knew both by name, so the carriage rolled on. The camp was immense, and the place we finally stopped was surrounded by tall yellow linen walls that flapped in the breeze and hid both the sights and sounds of the camp. Three tents filled the immense space, and we were ordered out and ushered into the smallest of the trio.

  The matron moved us straight through the space, skipped both the food and bath there, and hurried us into largest tent.

  The wide space was a gloomy version of a Deyalu apartment, layered in rugs and pillows. Yarik sat in the center at an empty desk lit by two lantern stands on either side. I’d never seen a lonelier figure in all my life.

  He looked up but seemed not to see us.

  “Which of my cousins thinks me depraved enough to lay with a Bermish mother?”

  The matron began to tremble and let go of my arm.

  “Lord Yarik, this is not Dagoda’s usual faire. I present to you Dia Yentif, wife of your brother Barok and their two infant children.”

  His eyes stared into mine. His chin didn’t jerk, his chest didn’t puff out. He sat back instead and looked exhausted. “You made a mistake bringing her to me.”

  “You have gold enough to compensate me for snatching her here to you, assuredly?”

  “Compensate you? You think me in charge here? My cousins will open your throat for not bringing her to them first. Run away and see if you can make it out of here alive.”

  She yelped and fled as fast as her skirts would allow. Burhn looked ready to do something foolish but Ghemma took his arm and sat with him upon a pair of low pillows.

  I eased across, adjusted my sleeping darlings, and sat opposite Yarik and his barren desk.

  He didn’t move. He stared across as if someone stood behind him, yelling at him to be still. He was in a cage as terrible as the one his father had raised him in—perhaps as terrible as the one I had been raised in. Of all the scenarios I’d contemplated, none included feelings of sympathy.

  The carriage from Dagoda’s rumbled away and the sound disturbed him. He was slow to see me. “Dia.”

  “Yes, Yarik. This is Cavim, and this is Clea. They are your niece and your nephew. Would you like to hold them?”

  The tortured man blinked and twitched. “Niece and nephew? Barok’s children?”

  “Yes, would you like to hold them?”

  He took a deep breath as though he was waking from a bad dream but did not believe it. “Of the million impossible things that have happened this year—I cannot—why are you here?”

  “Yarik, I need your help.”

  “You need me?”

  “Hessier terrors from the Bunda-Hith have been unleashed. I flee from them now. I need your help to get across the river.”

  He shook his head. “Nothing gets across. Rahan has a dream witch that can read our thoughts. Every boat we’ve sent has been sunk.”

  “But you will help get us to the river.”

  “Help? I’ve been no help to anyone.” He scratched at the scars Barok had given him and stared at Cavim. Something of a smile tried to appear.

  “You have a son, too?” I asked.

  “Yes. Almost two now, I think. I’ve never met him though. He’s in Escandi, maybe. Or Rundi.” He continued to trace his scars. “I didn’t mean for Barok’s mother to die. Could you possibly believe me? I remember both of them, my mother and his I mean. They would walk together with us. They were good friends. Barok would always run away and throw things at the swans. I walked with them in the sunshine, holding both of their hands.” He took another terrible breath and looked at me again. “I almost killed you, too, didn’t I?”

  “You tried very hard. I’m clever though.”

  “So many people died when you got away. Half the Deyalu’s servants vanished the next morning. It took days to replace them all.”

  “You didn’t mean for that to happen either.”

  “Didn’t I? I think maybe I did.”

  There was not much left of him. I kept very still and searched for a way to win his help, but it was a dance across a cracking sheet of ice.

  “Sing to him,” Ghemma said.

  Yarik’s head came around as if he’s not known she was there. He stood up out of his chair ready to yell, and all at once my throat burned as my noun broiled up out of me as though I was Barok drawing his sword.

  flesh man sapphire breast birch wolf raven rabbit maple water

&nb
sp; Yarik fell back into his chair as I repeated the verse, over and over. His eyes shimmered with a light that came from me. My ears growled with thunder. Ghemma took my children into her arms and crossed with them to Yarik. I sang and sang while Ghemma handed my children to him. She stroked his face as he cried, looking from my son to my daughter. Clea began to glow blue and Cavim red. Yarik stood up, his eyes clear and urgent.

  “Dia, stop.”

  But, I could not—would not stop. Never would I let the song go!

  Burhn was there then, his ears bleeding. He sang with me but put the words out of order. I stumbled on them and my song crashed to a halt.

  Yarik’s eyes were tearing and he blinked blood that ran fast into his white. He seemed not to care and was looking into Cavim’s eyes when he sang a word of his own.

  water

  He collapsed back into the chair. Ghemma propped him up and rescued the children while Burhn snatched my arm to keep me from toppling over.

  Blood was everywhere. From my nose, I think, and Burhn’s ears, and Yarik’s eyes.

  “They will kill you all,” Yarik said. “You must flee.”

  “Help us.”

  He searched the room, but that day was not a good one for him to learn how to be clever. I could trust him, though, and that was enough.

  I leaned across the table. “Priests will come. Take credit for the song.”

  “But I didn’t sing it all.”

  “You learned enough. We will hide here amongst the pillows. When they come, sing your word at them and make them leave. Yell like it’s the good old days.”

  “Then what?”

  “Just that for now. Get ready.”

  I could hear the yelling outside and pulled my companions behind a sedan full of pillows and draped us with a throw.

  “Get out,” Yarik yelled at the first man who enter and something, likely a chair, smashed against one of the heavy tent posts.

  “We heard a song. Where did it come from?”

  “From me,” Yarik yelled as then screamed the song at them.

  WATER WATER WATER

  He howled in pain and triumph. He threw things at them as only a Yentif could, and the tent became as silent as when we’d entered.

  We eased out of hiding. Men still prowled beyond the tent, but none were moving to enter that I could hear. Yarik was sitting cross legged on the floor. The desk was split in two. Chairs and sedans had been flung in every direction.

  “Are you alright?” I asked.

  “That hurts a lot.” Blood was smeared across his face, neck, and the top of the broken desk, yet he wore a smile from ear to ear. “Now what?”

  It was the same grin Barok wore on his happiest days. He had the same hair and the same bright teeth.

  What had been the difference between the two of them, all those days ago, if any?

  I offered him my hand and helped him up. “Call for a carriage with a small boat. Tell them you know how to kill Rahan’s witch and need to get to the water’s edge.”

  “Yes. What fun. Get under cover. I will whistle when it is safe to come out.”

  Then he ran outside, hollering at the top of his voice.

  “You trust him?” Burhn said.

  “I must and I do. Get back under here, now.”

  We hid while Yarik yelled. A carriage rolled in and he screamed at the drivers and bodymen until they fled him.

  He whistled his father’s birthday song, and we hurried out to find him standing in the driver’s box with the reins in hand and whip at the ready. A small boat had been lashed across the top of the cabin.

  “Inside,” he said and we’d barely managed to get the door closed before we were off.

  The camp around us was a chaos of screaming men and horses.

  “Get out of my way!” Yarik howled, “I’m going to kill the witch!”

  Our pace was beyond hazardous and we struggled to keep the cabin door shut as we bounced along. Ghemma curled into a ball clutching the children, and all Burhn and I could do was press her into the seat to keep her from bouncing onto through the thin doors or onto the floor.

  Then Yarik worked the brake and called the horses to slow. We came to rest with the carriage pitched left and forward.

  “Get back you, all of you,” Yarik howled. “I’ve terrible magic in me. It will kill you all!”

  Men screamed and fled him. The door opened onto a sloped and muddy shoreline. Yarik jammed his head inside. “Who wants to sing with me?”

  We blinked at him, and I said, “We don’t know a song that can kill Rahan’s witch.”

  “I know that,” he said with a terrible laugh. “I want to sing something big and colorful, like last time. Something to make them stand back from me for once and bow to me for real.”

  “Of course.”

  We follow him out onto the slope above the muddy beach. The air was full of gnats and the mist of recent rain. It was a lake, not a river.

  “Where is the city?”

  “There. Rahan damned the river and flooded everything. The entire Priests’ Quarter has been underwater since autumn. You can see the ruins of the Tanayon poking up there. He’s a fucking murderer, that one. Be careful with him. Can we sing now?”

  I could not manage it, but Ghemma’s voice rose as if a bird on the wing. A sharp heat rose with it that knocked the insects out of the air and blasted away the mists. Her many hundreds of nouns blazed away, splashing the clouds above with color. Yarik strained to hear it, and he flinched three times as words bit their way in before he fell to his knees. My skull felt smashed, and I hit the ground next to Yarik.

  Burhn took Ghemma into his arms and stopped her song with a kiss. She swooned and kissed him back with furious passion before realizing the bundles squish between them. She kissed the children upon the forehead and fell onto her rump with a thump in the mud.

  Burhn hurried to the carriage, untied the boat, and dragged it toward the shore.

  Yarik was chucking through his pain. He poked my arm and laughed as though he’d told a joke.

  His grand smile tugged a laugh up from me as well, and we helped each other up.

  “Come with us,” I said.

  “Could I? How fantastic a notion. But, no. Rahan would take my head the moment I crossed. Go. I’ll keep them busy.”

  “You are your mother’s son, Yarik Yentif.”

  “Botten. That was her name.”

  “Yarik Botten, I am Dia Vesteal,” I said and offered him my hand. He kissed it before his nervousness had not scratching at the blood dripping from his ear and eyes.

  Burhn tapped me on the shoulder. “No paddles. Just a boat.”

  “Ha!” Yarik shouted, before he raced back up to the carriage, yanked the cabin door off its hinges, and punched at the lattice and boards until he’d split it in two down the middle.

  “Here,” he said, handed them to Burhn as though it was the cleverest thing he’d ever done. Perhaps it was.

  “Farewell, Yarik.”

  “Tell Barok I am sorry. He won’t believe you, but tell him anyway.”

  “I will.”

  He turned then and started toward the men and priest who would be on the way. We pushed out onto the darkening waters of Lake Rahan, and made good use of Yarik’s parting gift.

  71

  King Barok Vesteal

  The 70th of Spring

  The road beyond Bessradi’s west gate was a dusty cloud from my fast-arriving army.

  “The children are close,” Leger said while Evela and the rest gathered with me in a storied park north of the Iron Arsenal. The information was welcome but not new. He and the rest of the soul-irons had been burning steadily brighter since we entered the city, and powerful magic had been banging away at Chaukai ears throughout the night. If it wasn’t for the rivers and the damned lake, I would have sent them charging in every direction. Instead, I waited on my brother Rahan to emerge and explain himself.

  “He better not have them.”

  “He would
not keep them from you,” Evela said. “His son and I are in your care.”

  “How many wives does he have now?” I asked.

  “Do not be cruel to me. He will arrive here momentarily, and you will hear what he has to say.”

  The rest gathered with us remained still as statues, every pair of eyes searching, every bow and spear ready.

  The greencoats working to make camp behind us had one eye on the banners held aloft around me. They’d managed the force march through the night without complaint, and if Rahan had crossed me, those banners would go down and the men of Edonia were ready to do to Bessradi what they’d done to Alsonvale.

  The first to move down through the gates of the Arsenal Fortress was a phalanx of priests and Sermod followed by Avinda. He did not look well and was wise to move with his magical brethren along the wall to the corner of the park.

  Rahan was next, followed by a cohort of officers and nobles. I knew none of the men with him. He and I crossed alone into the center of the park, each carrying a roll of vellum circled with the same silver-green ribbon Evand had use to tie his correspondence.

  He eyed my soul-irons while I eyed his priests.

  “We are supposed to be civil,” I said.

  “Bit different than the last time we met here.”

  “You have a lake now.”

  “Not much to look at. Stinks as bad as river did, too.”

  “Just as many things rotting things at the bottom,” I supposed.

  He laughed, but it was the kind I’d last seen on the Deyalu. “Do you remember the races father used to have across the river?