Page 23

Now that was a much more persuasive argument. If I were dead, she’d never be able to extort anything out of me ever again.

After a moment, I nodded, and began the unpleasant process. Stabbing pain hit me as sharp crystalline edges jabbed into my esophagus. It was worse than I remembered. It always was. Like coughing up a razor blade. Sunbeam nickered in sympathy and gently laid his head on my shoulder.

Gruoch watched me for a short time, but quickly grew bored. Yet another thing that hadn’t changed since childhood. “How are ye gitting tae the Red Empire, anyway?” she asked, turning to Yudit. “Across the strait and then overland?”

Yudit shook her head. “That would take weeks. We’ll sail down the coast.”

“Dangerous. If thare’s a storm, it could blow ye directly intae the Swamp of Monsters.”

I spat a diamond out onto the grass. A big one, worth a king’s ransom. It was covered in blood and mucus. Mostly blood. Gruoch could clean it herself, as far as I was concerned. She didn’t appear to mind the mess, regarding the newly created gemstone with a wide smile.

Six more to go.

“Thanks for your concern,” I rasped. After a few more of those, I wouldn’t be able to speak for days. “But we’re not going to get shipwrecked and end up in the Swamp of Monsters.” Why did everyone doubt our ability to sail a boat without meeting disaster? There hadn’t been a storm this late in the season for years. I swallowed down a mouthful of blood and started forming the next jewel in my trachea.

She shrugged. “Suit yerselves, then.”

Part III

We Get Shipwrecked and End Up in the Swamp of Monsters

Interlude

Diamonds and Toads and Windows and Phlegm

All right, yes. It turns out that “winter storms seldom occur so late” is not at all the same thing as “winter storms never occur so late.” Feel free to gloat if you successfully made that prediction.

Before I get to that, though, I imagine some questions have arisen about the odder aspects of my family.

It’s a story that begins a number of decades in the past. Years before I was even born.

Once upon a time, if you will.

Once upon a time, there was a duke and a duchess who had a daughter named Gruoch, and they loved her very much. The duke and duchess were forward-thinking and shrewd, and had enriched their people and their lands. Under their governance, hospitals and public schools were founded, a great iron bridge was built to span the gorge to the north, and the duchy won the Sexiest Fief in Ecossia contest for ten years running. When the Red Empire’s invasion brought war to the island, the duke and duchess both fought valiantly in many battles, aided in no small part by their wise and knowledgeable stallion, Sunbeam.

In the waning days of the war, when Gruoch was perhaps nine years old, Sunbeam began to notice that she was…odd.

He first became aware of this when one of her parents’ knights, wounded beyond all possibility of recovery, was housed within the castle so he could spend his last days in whatever comfort the duchy could provide.

“Is he going tae die?” the young girl asked the horse gravely.

“I fear he is, child,” Sunbeam answered.

A gleam of excitement sparked in her eyes. “Can I watch?”

The horse next noticed her predilections after one of the war’s final battles, a conflict which brought the fighting to the very gates of the castle itself. The duke and duchess were ultimately victorious, and in the quiet that followed the enemies’ retreat, Gruoch went out to the field of combat to study the dead they’d left behind.

“An arrow in the eye, how interesting,” she remarked as she passed the corpses. “A gut wound—must hae taken him a lang time tae die, that’s fun—and, och! What’s this? A full decapitation, hurrah! I cannae wait until I’m old enough tae make some corpses of mah own!”

“Now that,” Sunbeam murmured to himself when he overheard, “is some seriously disturbing shit.”

When he told the duke and duchess of his concerns, they at first dismissed them. They argued that Gruoch might be developing an interest in medicine or anatomy. But over the months that followed, the truth of her behavior made itself more and more evident, and they were forced to conclude that their beloved daughter had homicidal tendencies.

Though they’d been content with a single child for many years, they decided then to pop out some more in quick succession—one, two, three, four, five, six over the next six years, as alike to each other as cuttings from the same stem. Traditional Ecossic names like Gruoch had fallen out of fashion, so these children were given imported foreign names such as Yudit, Nicki, or Drusilla.

The reason for this sudden childbirth spree cannot be known for certain. One possible explanation, however, can be found in the idiosyncrasies of Ecossic law. For while Ecossia is not so backward a country as Tailliz, where women cannot inherit a title at all, it is backward enough that women are only allowed to inherit if there is no man around to do so instead. For neither primogeniture, capability, intelligence, nor generosity of spirit can, apparently, supersede the possession of a dick and balls.

So the duke and duchess may have been trying to produce a male heir who could someday oversee the duchy instead of Gruoch. Alas for them if this was their plan, for not a single one of their children turned out to be a boy.