When Vortalis spoke to Holland, he always met both eyes, and in that flecked gaze, Holland felt like he was being seen.
“You know what happened to the last Antari?” Vortalis was saying now, leaning forward into Holland’s space. “I do. I was there in the castle when Queen Stol cut his throat and bathed in his blood.”
“What were you doing in the castle?” wondered Holland.
Vortalis gave him a long, hard look. “That’s what you take away from my story?” He shook his head. “Look, our world needs every drop of magic, and we’ve got kings and queens spilling it like water so they can have a taste of power, or maybe just so it can’t rise against them. We got where we are because of fear. Fear of Black London, fear of magic that wasn’t ours to control, but that’s no way forward, only down. I could have killed you—”
“You could have tried—”
“But the world needs power. And men who aren’t afraid of it. Think what London could do with a leader like that,” said Vortalis. “A king who cared about his people.”
Holland ran a finger around the rim of his glass, the ale itself untouched, while the other man drained his second cup. “So you want to kill our current king.”
Vortalis leaned forward. “Doesn’t everyone?”
It was a valid question.
Gorst—a mountain of a man who’d carved his way to the throne with an army at his back and turned the castle into a fortress, the city into a slum. His men rode the streets, taking everything they could, everything they wanted, in the name of a king who pretended to care, who claimed he could resurrect the city even while he drained it dry.
And every week, King Gorst opened throats in the blood square, a tithe to the dying world, as if that sacrifice—a sacrifice that wasn’t even his—could set the world to rights. As if the spilling of their blood was proof of his devotion to his cause.
How many days had Holland stood at the edge of that square, and watched, and thought of cutting Gorst’s throat? Of offering him back to the hungry earth?
Vortalis was giving him a weighted look, and Holland understood. “You want me to kill Gorst.” The other man smiled. “Why not kill him yourself?”
Vortalis had no problem killing—he hadn’t earned his nickname by abstaining from violence—and he was really very good at it. But only a fool walked into a fight without his sharpest knives, Vortalis explained, leaning closer, and Holland was uniquely suited to the task. “I know you’re not fond of the practice,” he’d added. “But there’s a difference between killing for purpose and killing for sport, and wise men know that some must fall so others can rise.”
“Some throats are meant to be opened,” said Holland dryly.
Vortalis flashed a cutting grin. “Exactly. So you can sit around waiting for a storybook ending, or you can help me write a real one.”
Holland rapped his fingers on the table. “It won’t be easy to do,” he said thoughtfully. “Not with his guard.”
“Like rats, those men,” said Vortalis, producing a tightly rolled paper. He lit the end in the nearest lantern. “No matter how many I kill, more scurry out to take their place.”
“Are they loyal?” asked Holland.
Smoke poured from the man’s nostrils in a derisive snort. “Loyalty is either bought or earned, and as far as I can tell, Gorst has neither the riches nor the charm to merit his army. These men, they fight for him, they die for him, they wipe his ass. They have the blind devotion of the cursed.”
“Curses die with their makers,” mused Holland.
“And so we return to the point. The death of a tyrant and a curse-maker, and why you’re so suited for the job. According to one of the few spies I’ve managed, Gorst keeps himself at the top of the palace, in a room guarded on all four sides, locked up like a prize in his own treasure chest. Now, is it true,” Vortalis said, his eyes dancing with light, “that the Antari can make doors?”
* * *
Three nights later, at the ninth bell, Holland walked through the castle gate, and disappeared. One step took him across the threshold, and the next landed in the middle of the royal chamber, a room brimming with cushions and silks.
Blood dripped from the Antari’s hand, where he still clutched the talisman. Gorst wore so many, he hadn’t even noticed it was missing, pinched by Vortalis’s spy within the castle. Three simple words—As Tascen Gorst—and he was in.
The king sat before a blazing fire, gorging himself on a feast of fowl and bread and candied pears. Across the city, people wasted away, but Gorst’s bones had long been swallowed up by his constant feasting.
Occupied by his meal, the king hadn’t noticed Holland standing there behind him, hadn’t heard him draw his knife.
“Try not to stab him in the back,” Vortalis had advised. “After all, he is the king. He deserves to see the blade coming.”
“You have a very odd set of principles.”
“Ah, but I do have them.”
Holland was halfway to the king when he realized Gorst was not dining alone.
A girl, no more than fifteen, crouched naked at the king’s side like an animal, a pet. Unlike Gorst, she had no distraction, and her head drifted up at the movement of Holland’s steps. At the sight of him, she began to scream.
The sound cut off sharply as he pinned the air in the girl’s lungs, but Gorst was already rising, his massive form filling the hearth. Holland didn’t wait—his knife went whipping toward the king’s heart.