Blood Heir

27

Ramson had worn many masks in his life, donning them and shedding them like second skins. He’d always played whatever role he needed to get the job done. Tonight, as he looked at his reflection in the mirror—clean-shaven in his black tuxedo and slicked hair—he felt as though he were simply wearing another mask and preparing for another show.

Except…

Standing there under the softly falling snow with Ana, he’d felt unmasked and raw. Something about this girl lured out the whisper of the boy he’d once been. Something about this girl made him want to be that boy. And his chest was heavy with the possibility of what that might have been were he a better man who made better choices.

Come with me. You could be good.

Ana had been that choice. And in some ways, Ramson had seen it through. He’d made a detour prior to arriving at Kerlan’s tonight. He’d gone to a courier’s cottage in the city and sent out a snowhawk, its feathers pure as freshly fallen snow.

He’d slipped a lock of black hair into the snowhawk’s beak. The animals had an impossibly keen sense of smell, capable of tracking the scent of their prey for miles in the cold, barren mountains of Cyrilia. Once trained, they made for the best type of courier birds.

The note was out, and his plans were in motion. And Ana—she would get as far away from this estate, this city, and his world of crime and darkness as possible. She was born for good. She was meant to fight for the light. And she would carry that faint possibility—the ghost of the man he might have been—on with her.

For Ramson, it was too late for that. The man he’d become believed that there was no good or bad; there were only various shades of gray.

Tonight, he would remember that—when he murdered Alaric Kerlan.

Ramson closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the world was sharper with clear-cut calculation, and he felt a wicked calmness settle into his chest. He was Ramson Quicktongue, future Head of the Order of the Lily. The ballroom lay beneath him, a theater of people in gaudy ball gowns and glittering jewels.

Ramson slipped his mask back on. The world was his stage; tonight was just another show.

The biggest show of his life.

The large clock suspended in the middle of the banquet hall showed seventeen minutes past nine. He had precisely forty-three minutes to find Kerlan, and to persuade him to reinstate Ramson as Deputy. He needed the words penned into the Order’s official mandate.

And then, as soon as Kerlan lifted his pen from the page, Ramson would kill him.

The hilt of his small dagger pressed into his sleeve, a perfect blade no longer than his forearm. A misericord, Bregonians called it, used to deliver the final blow of mercy to an opponent. At a single flick of his finger, the contraption that bound it to his arm would eject the blade into his palm.

For the first time tonight, he took in the hallways with a sweeping glance. Memories rose, unbidden, in his mind. He could still see, on the plush red carpets, the writhing bodies of people he’d disposed of simply because they were in his way—fishermen and weapons traders and business owners who tried to cheat them. He could still hear their muffled screams through the closed doors that led to the basements below. Bit by bit, he’d helped Kerlan clear Cyrilia of anyone who stood in their way, extending the Order’s underground reach like an invisible hand unfurling beneath the broken empire.

No more, Ramson thought as he strode down the halls, away from the music and dancing and light. The carpets were less worn, the walls decorated with gilded frames—paintings of far-off places, mysterious islands, and oceans that glimmered turquoise.

Ramson recognized these places. It had always haunted him that he shared a home kingdom with Alaric Kerlan, that he’d almost traced Kerlan’s exact steps many years past, fleeing from their wrongdoings to establish themselves in a foreign empire. It was as though, in a desperate attempt to free himself from becoming the demon that was his father, Ramson had run onto a path that had made him into a different kind of monster.

The chandeliers above burned brightly, almost jarringly. Kerlan always made his entrances at his parties after nine o’clock. Ramson was getting closer to Kerlan’s living quarters, and he was surprised there wasn’t a guard—

“Stop.”

A figure peeled from the shadows of the next corridor, regarding Ramson with cold eyes. Ramson recognized him. He had a name: Felyks.

“Guests are welcome in Lord Kerlan’s banquet hall,” Felyks said. “His personal quarters are private.”

Ramson smiled a hungry smile. “I’m no ordinary guest, Felyks,” he said, and pulled off his mask.

Felyks did a double take; his eyes went round. His hand twitched for his sword, even as he backed into the wall. “Qui-Qui-Quicktongue.”

Ramson gave a mock bow. “In corporeal form. You seem happy to see me.” His cheery tone dropped. “I want to see Alaric.”

Felyks struggled. “I—I can’t let you do that,” he said at last, and unsheathed his sword. “The Kerlan Estate has rules.”

“Rules that I set in place,” Ramson said, stepping closer to the guard. He relished the way Felyks cringed slightly. “Now let me past, or I’ll be using your body as a doormat.”

“That’s hardly necessary,” came a light, familiar voice with the crystal-clear lilt of Cyrilian nobility. A man had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, by the turn to the next corridor. His indigo silk coat flapped lightly over his slight figure, and his gold-tipped shoes tapped rhythmically with each step as he approached.

“Hello again, Ramson,” said Alaric Kerlan, his eyes twinkling. “I’ve come to extend you a very personal welcome.”

Felyks straightened at the sight of his boss, who strolled past him as though he were a part of the wall. Ramson stood where he was, though something stretched taut within him. He felt rooted to the place as a strange helplessness descended upon him, trapping him under the presence of Alaric Kerlan once again.

“Ramson, my son.” Kerlan’s teeth glinted very white when he smiled. “It’s been so long.”

“I’ve counted every day.” Ramson’s cheeks felt frozen, his mouth stuck in a smile.

“I’m so honored.” Kerlan gestured at the nearest door. “It seems I’d be an extremely bad-mannered host to not have you for tea. Please, after you.”

Ramson stepped through the door to a nondescript study, walls lined with bookshelves that boasted gilded tomes and dusty books, as well as the occasional eccentric piece of decoration—or, as Kerlan preferred to call it, exotic. A jade-sculpted dragon from Kemeira; a curved brass lamp that looked to be from one of the southern crowns; a piece of rainbow-hued rock from the depths of the Silent Sea itself. In the corner was a large brass clock, its rhythmic ticks punctuating the silence.

Yet as Ramson took in the room around him, he was suddenly struck with a realization so stark that it left him reeling. He remembered this room well, too well—it was almost as though he had been standing in it yesterday, rain-soaked and lost and wild, a boy with nowhere to hide and nowhere to run.

After Jonah’s death, Ramson had wanted nothing more than to get away from the military, from his father, from Bregon, from every single bit of the world that he’d thought of as safe and good, but that had betrayed him.

Twelve years old, he’d boarded one of the supply wagons from the military in the dead of night, with nothing on him but a pouch of coins and a name and address hastily scrawled on a piece of paper. He still remembered huddling in the back of the wagon between crates of stale vegetables and rotting meat, watching as the winking torchlights of the Blue Fort grew smaller and smaller.

The wagon driver found him curled up in the back the next morning and kicked him out. Ramson clambered to his feet alone but for the cloud-filled skies, rolling moors, and endless rain in all directions. He was lost then, without Jonah or his compass. He wanted to crawl into a water-soaked ditch and die right there in the mud, but he was too afraid, and he was too angry.

So he put one foot in front of the other, and every day, he told himself, Just one more day. Just one more day and you can see Jonah again.

Somehow, either by the Deities’ will or by some other miracle, he made it to a town. He stumbled into a bar, holding his pouch of dimes and begging for food and water.

Later that day, a group of older boys waylaid him. They dragged him, screaming and kicking, into a back alley, beat him, took his money and his dagger, and left him to die.

Still, Ramson did not die.

When he finally summoned the courage to hobble out of the alley, night had fallen. His lip was cut and swelling, his nose broken, and his ribs bruised, but he was alive.

This was the world as it really was. Not good and bright and filled with light—but rather, the gray place that Jonah had painted for him, where the strong prevailed over the weak and evil triumphed and flourished.

There was no goodness or kindness in this world. Jonah had told Ramson that—and eventually, the darkness had claimed even him.

Ramson begged the first person he saw, an old man in a horse cart, for shelter. That night, he curled up in the old man’s barn, unable to sleep. He pulled out the balled-up, soaked piece of paper with the name. The ink had bled into the parchment and smudged on his fingers when he tried to smooth out the wrinkles. But he whispered the name to himself over and over again that night. A sense of purpose gathered in his heart, filling his veins with a wrathful, churning energy.

In the early hours of the morning, he stole away with the horse and the cart of the old man who had saved him. He boarded a ship that night and never looked back, even as Bregon turned into a small speck on the horizon and then was swallowed whole by the infinite dark sea.

Weeks later and an ocean away, clutching the piece of paper with that name, he found himself in front of the gilded gates of the most beautiful mansion he had ever seen.

The guard laughed when he demanded to see Lord Alaric Kerlan. “I assure you, he’ll want to see me,” Ramson argued in his broken schoolboy’s Cyrilian.

The other guard roared with laughter. “This one’ll give you a run for your pluck, Nikolay!” he chortled.

Ramson was furious. “You don’t know who I am,” he snarled. “You don’t know how much value I’ll be to Lord Kerlan. And I’ll wager you that if he finds out you turned me away from his gates, you won’t live to see your family the next morning.”

The two guards howled with laughter.

“My, my. I certainly hope I haven’t garnered that kind of a reputation among the neighbors.”

Ramson spun around.

A slight man in a purple bowler hat stood before them. He was middle-aged, but he was the same height and build as Ramson, with a mop of receding brown hair and a twinkle in his eyes. Dressed in an ordinary shirt and breeches, he looked like a friendly next-door neighbor.

The guards stilled, their faces molding into casts. “Lord Kerlan,” they murmured.

Ramson stared. He’d heard his father speak of how the Bregonian criminal had fled to Cyrilia and built an empire on thievery and coercion, one with almost as much power as the Cyrilian throne. Alaric Kerlan was a legend and a monster, a sinister man in the darkness with a smile that sliced.

Yet now he stood at the height of an adolescent boy, a friendly beam on his face. Could this really be the man whom his father spoke of with such bone-deep hatred, that Admiral Roran Farrald sought to bring down?

“What is it that I can do for you, boy?”

Ramson of the Quick Tongue was at a loss for words. He spluttered inelegantly, “I can… I can help you.”

Kerlan looked amused. “What’s your name, boy?”

“R-Ramson. Ramson Farrald.”

Kerlan’s lip curled almost imperceptibly. “A Bregonian boy, then,” he said. “Invite him in, Nikolay. I’d like to hear what brought a young Bregonian so far from his homeland.”

Kerlan had known whose son Ramson was—of course he had known. But Ramson’s arrogance had blinded him. Half an hour later, he found himself in a room, wearing an oversized vest and breeches, with silk slippers replacing his mud-caked boots.

The room was lined with shelves that were neatly stacked with leather-bound books. When Ramson looked closely, he could see gold letters shining off their spines. A large red carpet sprawled across the middle of the floor, tucked beneath an ebony coffee table. The room wasn’t filled to the roof with gold statues, but its opulence pulsed subtly in the lapis lazuli–laced designs on the table and the rare Kemeiran vases dispersed across the shelves.

“Well.” Ramson jumped; he hadn’t even heard the door open. Lord Kerlan drew a gold fountain pen from his breast pocket and gently shut the door behind him. “Have a seat, son. Ramson… was it? Would you like some tea? You look half-frozen.”

Ramson numbly sat himself on the red velvet couch across from the coffee table. Lord Kerlan was still looking at him with that glimmer of amusement in his eyes, and he realized he hadn’t responded to the question. “No,” Ramson said, “thank you.”

Lord Kerlan dipped his head. “Very well.” He strode over to the coffee table, flipping his golden pen between his fingers as he did. “What can I do for you, Ramson Farrald?”

Ramson parted his lips. He had been rehearsing this line since that night in the barn, when he’d lain on the hay, unable to sleep and aching in every joint and muscle fiber. “You know my father, Roran Farrald.”

Lord Kerlan had been shuffling through a stack of papers; he paused, and his eyes flicked to Ramson’s face like the tongue of a snake. “I do.”

Ramson leaned forward, gripping the edges of his seat so hard that his knuckles were white. “I want to help you destroy him.”

That had been a lifetime ago. The boy who had been heartbroken and angry at the world had died seven years ago in a dark alley. Someone else had crawled from the mud that day and risen to take his place. He stood in this room now, calm and cold and clad in a black silk vest paid for by the blood of his trades.

But part of him knew that he wasn’t any less lost than the broken boy of seven years past.

“Well.” Kerlan shut the door and moved silently across the room. Ramson was used to it. Kerlan had a way with the shadows.

He stood before his coffee table, wearing his confidence like an expensive suit and carrying that same twinkle in his eyes. One only had to step closer to sniff out the stench of power clinging to him, to catch the rotting smell of greed and corruption hidden beneath layers of kologne. The Farrald boy of seven years ago hadn’t seen that: to him, Kerlan had been a means to an end. A means to end his father, who had taken everything from him.

But Ramson Quicktongue saw everything.

“Sit, my son,” Kerlan said, and seated himself in front of the coffee table, gesturing for Ramson to take the seat across. Behind him, the great brass clock tapped down the seconds. “I thought my runners were mistaken when they brought news of your escape. It seems like I was the one mistaken.”

Ramson matched the smile playing about Kerlan’s lips. “I’ve come a long way for you, Alaric.”

“So convince me why I shouldn’t send you right back.”

“You don’t need convincing. You haven’t killed me yet, which means news must have reached you that I have something to offer. Something worth more than any Trade or deal you’ve made in your entire life.”

Kerlan tapped a gold fountain pen against a large jeweled ring on his middle finger. “Some similar whispers might have found their way to me. My yaeger certainly did sniff something strange about that young dama.”

It seemed Igor and Bogdan had done their jobs and passed the word on—exactly as Ramson had orchestrated. Ramson hid a smile and matched his former master’s metal-gray stare. “Ever heard of the Blood Witch of Salskoff?” he asked. When Kerlan was silent, he continued. “I’ve brought her to you.”

Kerlan chuckled, tapping his pen twice, precisely on the tip of his finger. “No, you haven’t, Ramson. Not without something in exchange.”

“I’ve learned from the best.”

“You crawl out of prison, show up on my doorstep with no ranking, and now you want to make a Trade with me? I don’t know whether I should admire your bravery or laugh at your stupidity.”

“Yet still you continue to entertain me. You’re known to dispose of useless guests within seconds of a meeting, Alaric. It’s been over a minute, and you’re still listening to me.” Ramson leaned forward on the coffee table. “You want my Trade.”

Kerlan’s eyes crinkled in the cunning way they always did when his subordinates did something right. Ramson still shuddered to imagine what those cool gray eyes looked like when a member of the Order did something wrong. “Go on, dear boy.”

“Reinstate me as your Deputy, and I’ll use the Blood Witch to whatever ends you wish. I’ll hunt down the moles in the Order. I’ll bury our enemies. I’ll make the Order invincible.” Ramson forced a cruel grin. “She’s powerful, but she’s volatile. And it just so happens I’ve gained her trust. I know how to manipulate her, and that’s closer than anyone has ever gotten to her.”

Kerlan rubbed his heavy ring against his fountain pen. The sound was like grating blades on bone, and it seemed to help him think. “You failed me, boy. I gave you a mission—personally—and you failed. You know how I view failures… especially among my ranked officers.”

“People learn from their mistakes. I happen to be very good at it.” Ramson tried not to think of the night Kerlan had sent for him and given him the most difficult job in the seven years of his tenure at the Order. Kill the Emperor, Kerlan had said, in this very room. Kill him, and if anyone finds a trace of evidence that you did it, I’ll be first to volunteer you for the gallows.

Ramson had been on his way to Salskoff when he’d been intercepted several days later. The Whitecloaks had arrested him without cause, without trial, and left him to rot in Ghost Falls.

During those sleepless nights within the grime-covered walls, when the stench of sweat and piss had become too much for him to bear, one single thought had haunted him over and over again. If he hadn’t been stopped, would he have finished the job? How far would he go to remain loyal to the Order?

Kerlan was silent again, and Ramson pushed these thoughts aside. Now was not the time for useless sentiment. “I knew what failing meant for me, Alaric. Our interests were aligned. The leak came from your side. And I’m going to destroy it.”

The grating of the ring stopped. Kerlan looked up at last, and he was smiling. Not for the first time, Ramson had no idea how to interpret his master’s smile. He’d seen that expression when Kerlan had promoted him to Deputy. He’d also seen it seconds before Kerlan slit a man’s throat.

“I had already made up my mind,” Kerlan declared, and Ramson’s stomach tightened. Even before Kerlan went on, Ramson’s mind was racing six, seven moves ahead, mapping out the many directions this conversation could take. “I just wanted to see you fight for it. You know I like playing with my food.”

Ramson glanced at the clock. Forty-eight minutes past nine. Only twelve minutes, and Ana would be out of here safely.

He needed to stall for a little longer.

“You keep looking at the time, my son,” Kerlan said, and Ramson snapped his attention back. “Are you waiting for someone… or something?”

Cold gripped Ramson. Kerlan never spoke without deliberately choosing every word. Ramson’s voice sounded distant even as he said, “I wouldn’t want you to be late to your own party, Alaric.”

“Ah, very well, then.” Kerlan drew out a piece of parchment from one of the drawers of his desk. He began to meticulously unscrew the cap of his gold pen, each twist causing a shrill squeaking sound that sent shivers down Ramson’s spine. “Shall we make this Trade? I’ve been looking for a replacement Deputy ever since you left. I haven’t found anyone nearly as close in cleverness and ambition as you, Ramson.”

Ramson bowed his head. The dagger in his sleeve shifted as he leaned back in his seat. “I’m honored, my Lord.”

Kerlan gave a delicate pause. His wrist brushed the contract parchment. “Of course, you’ve heard the old story of the Cat and the Lion?”

Ramson frowned. “I have not.”

Kerlan set his pen down, eyes crinkled in what would look like kindness to anyone who didn’t know the man. “It’s an old Bregonian story, son. I suppose your dead mother would never have been able to tell you.”

Ramson kept his face blank.

“The Cat was the predecessor and master to the Lion,” Kerlan continued. “The Lion begged the Cat to train him in all sorts of skills. ‘Master,’ the Lion would plead, and the Cat would take pity on him and teach him something new each day. And with each passing day, the Lion grew—quicker and cleverer and more ruthless. He wanted to overthrow the Cat—to become the ruler of the mountain.

“One day, the Lion turned on the Cat. He used his strength, his stamina, his size, and his sharper claws to fight. But the Cat was older and more cunning, you see. There was one trick he hadn’t taught the Lion—and that was to climb trees.” Kerlan steepled his fingers, rings flashing. “And that was how the Cat survived. He knew the danger of having an apprentice too close to him in ambition and intelligence; he knew it would be his downfall, so he’d kept one last trick to himself.”

Kerlan fell silent, his gray eyes boring into Ramson, a small smile curling his lips. Ramson’s throat was dry; his heart pounded and his mind raced.

Slowly, Ramson flexed his hands, feeling the bulk of his dagger against his forearm.

“And that is why,” Kerlan said softly, leaning forward, smile widening, “I believe it is against my self-interest to hire a Deputy who is going to try to assassinate me in this very room.”

Ramson was on his feet by the time Kerlan finished the last word. He flicked his wrist; the dagger slipped out with a schick, blade glinting in the lamplight. He leapt onto Kerlan’s desk, drew his hand back, plunged—

And his arm went limp. The blade clattered on the surface of Kerlan’s oak desk, Ramson’s fingers dragging uselessly on top. For a moment, Ramson stared in astonishment at his arm. He heard Kerlan laughing.

A strange feeling crept up his entire body—it was the way he’d felt back when he’d been on the streets and hadn’t eaten for days. It felt like his muscles had atrophied and given out, as though all the strength had been drained from him.

He gasped and crumpled to the floor. Move, he commanded his body, but his arms were still as stone on the plush red carpet, as though they didn’t even belong to him.

Polished black shoes rounded the desk. Kerlan bent and slowly, deliberately, picked up the dagger Ramson had dropped. “Fine little blade,” he murmured, and then his gaze dropped back to Ramson. The expression on his face almost resembled pity, but Ramson knew better. Kerlan was savoring this moment.

From the hallway outside, a woman slipped in. Her hair, so black that it caught a blue sheen beneath the lamplight, and bronze skin marked her to be from one of the Aseatic Isles kingdoms. She leaned against the wall, tall and athletic, watching Ramson like a cougar watching its prey.

“How careless of me,” Kerlan sighed, tapping his temple and looking genuinely confused. “I forgot to introduce you. Meet Nita, our newest member, and Deputy to the Order of the Lily.”

Ramson’s head spun; it felt like his muscles had melted into water and his lungs were collapsing upon themselves. As though from a distance, he heard Kerlan continue. “I think she would be classified as a flesh Affinite, though her Affinity lies in manipulating strength. Strength in your muscles, in your organs, in your heart…”

Even as he spoke, pain throbbed through Ramson’s chest, sending spasms of nausea shooting through him. He choked a gasp.

Kerlan chuckled. Nita smiled. And then there was the cold, hard drag of a blade on his cheeks as Kerlan held Ramson’s dagger to his face.

Terror locked its grip across Ramson’s throat. He’d seen Kerlan torture men; he’d stood there and handed Kerlan the scalpels.

“As I said, dear boy, I like to play with my food, so don’t worry. I’m keeping you for later.” Kerlan stood, brushing off his immaculate indigo suit and pocketing Ramson’s dagger. His shadow fell over Ramson, blotting out the world. “I’ll have to beg your pardon and take my leave for now. I do hope I’ve been a good enough host. But after all, I have a ball to get to—there are some rather important guests tonight, I’d say.” Kerlan’s teeth flashed. “And, it seems, I have a very special girl to find.”

No. But Ramson’s scream was trapped in his throat, his body paralyzed as he watched Kerlan’s retreating back disappear into the hallway outside. And then Nita stepped forward and the pressure on his chest increased, his throat constricting, his body growing numb.

Black spots dotted his vision, and soon he was drowning in darkness.