Soren ducked his head, shoulders rising toward his ears. He didn’t speak, and neither Callisto nor the governor offered him the comfort he so obviously yearned for.
“We’ll make of him a warden for Maricol,” the governor said, the ancient words ones she’d heard countless times.
It would involve years of brutal training to ensure his survival, years of building resistance to poison through the application of toxins. He would be changed by way of alchemy into someone who could walk the poison fields and face revenants without dying, but the making of a warden had never been kind, and not all tithes survived the process.
Neither did all wardens survive encounters with star gods. The governor was dead within the week of a heart attack, his body burned on a pyre and a new warden voted in to take his place. The secret he’d shared with Callisto was kept in his death.
Soren was but the first of many tithes that trickled in that year from Ashion, most of them children orphaned by the Inferno and sent as that country’s payment per the Poison Accords.
And as was the way with all tithes, Callisto knew Soren would learn to forget where he came from.
Seven
MELERI
What remained of the city of Amari was draped in black ribbon, grief an almost tangible thing. From the gas lamps to the surviving buildings, to silken threads tied around the arms of every single person still loyal to the throne, it was impossible to escape.
Meleri Auclair, Duchess of Auclair, watched with dry eyes as what remained of the House of Lords argued amongst themselves in the old parliament building—turned into a museum long ago and now hastily reverted to the job of government—on the western side of the Serpentine River. The space was too small for how large the country had grown over the centuries, but the current parliament building had burned the same way the palace had during the Inferno.
The old chamber was cramped and smelled vaguely of smoke, as did most of Amari. The country’s flag, that of a black wolf’s head in side profile surrounded by red fire flowers on a white background, with the Wolf constellation picked out in gold thread at each corner, hung behind the empty Lord Speaker’s seat. Other heraldic flags bearing bloodlines’ coats of arms hung from the walls and ceiling. Meleri eyed them, cataloguing the ones that belonged to bloodlines who would have no new names added to any genealogies from here on out.
Despite the crowd of representatives below, Meleri knew there were more than a dozen empty seats to contend with, lost to Blades. She clenched her lace-gloved hand into a fist over the skirt of her gown, not for the first time bitterly glad no one in the Auclair bloodline had the ability to draw from the aether and cast magic. Theirs was a bloodline that had always chased after power of a different sort. It seemed that focus had saved them from eradication.
Too many bloodlines had come to an end on the night of the Inferno. Broadsheets were still reporting the names of families recorded as ended now. The one connecting thread amongst the dead, blatantly recorded over the decades, was the distant ties to the throne those families once had.
Genealogies served to keep a record of bloodlines, many of which had survived the poison of Maricol since the Age of Starfall. Meleri’s was one of those, but they had long since lost the touch of starfire that had burned so brightly in the Rourke bloodline. As with the Westergard bloodline, the Auclair bloodline served the throne, even if Meleri knew they had failed in this, their most sacred duty.
She shifted on the hard wooden seat, the stiffness of her corset easily ignored beneath her blouse. Meleri prided herself on knowing the political makeup of parliament—who could be trusted, who could not, and who could be blackmailed with the right rumor—but the Inferno had changed everything. Whatever rose from the ashes, Meleri would have her work cut out for her when figuring out where the ruling class stood.
A pity she would have no queen to report her findings to.
Meleri came from a family of spymasters, heading up the Clockwork Brigade. Her network of cogs—from the lowest of scullery maids to the most gifted of inventors—passed along a sea of information that was distilled into warnings and threats for the throne to take action against. She should haveknownthis attack upon her country was in the works. She should have known Daijal would not tolerate damage to their country’s wealth, built on the backs of debt slaves as it was.
She had not, and that guilt would eat away at her bones like the fire in a crematorium for years to come.
“War will not bring back the Rourke bloodline,” her husband argued from below, his voice rising over the others. “Daijal is most likely prepared to answer with the full force of their army at even a hint of troop buildup along our western border. We are not in a position to win that fight.”
“They have broken the armistice. If that is not an act of war worthy of such a battle, then what is, Lord Auclair?” a woman snapped.
Meleri’s gaze skimmed the crowd before settling on her husband. Julien had removed his top hat, holding it and his cane in one hand as he gestured with his other, the blond of his hair almost white beneath the light of gas lamps. The Auclair bloodline ran through Meleri, but like many spymasters before her, she had allowed her partner to take up the family’s seat in the House of Lords while focusing on the intelligence that landed on her desk.
Politics was an omni-sided fight, and one person could not handle it all. She had delegated tasks at the beginning of their marriage twenty years ago when she was newly nineteen. It allowed Julien to learn the political ropes of parliament through her father while she remained by her mother’s side. When her parents inevitably stepped down, she and Julien had taken over, partners in everything they did.
Except something had changed in the last year. He no longer touched her as he once had, and they slept in separate beds. He was polite in the way of a stranger, even to their children, and all attempts to reconcile had been for naught. At first, Meleri had suspected an affair, but no evidence was procured by her cogs.
The knowledge that he had, perhaps, simply fallen out of love with her was a grief of its own, nestled in her chest where her heart had once beaten. Perhaps if she had not been so focused on her own bloodline and more focused on the one sitting on the throne, none of this mess would have happened.
But what was burned was ash, and there was nothing she could do.
Nothing but bear witness.
The telegram she had received that morning, sent in code, was folded in her silk purse, as heavy as lead. The words would be meaningless if intercepted, but the news they carried had left her cold.
Princess Eimarille Rourke had survived the Inferno and been seen in the Daijal court.
The Iverson bloodline had been Rourke once, long ago. They’d broken off during the civil war and taken half the country with them at the time, the separation shielded by an armistice. Meleri’s own bloodline had been severed, with distant relations in Daijal leaving the Auclair name behind in favor of Khaur. For all the years between then and now, the familial connection could still be found in the genealogies and the Clockwork Brigade.
Meleri knew King Bernard would claim kinship with Eimarille, distant as it was, and the law would see it as such in both countries. Eimarille, Meleri knew, was Bernard’s way to the Ashion throne.
