A Crown for Assassins

The slaughter was as inevitable as it was absolute. A scattering of badly armed militia couldn’t begin to hope to defend against this many foes. It was done so quickly that it was hard to imagine what they had been trying to achieve by standing at all. Presumably something to do with honor, or some other nonsense.

“Ah,” the Master of Crows said to himself as he looked through the eyes of one of his creatures and saw a knot of people fleeing into the nearby hills, heading south. He came back to himself and looked over to the nearest of his captains. “A group of villagers is fleeing along a trail not far from here. Take men and slaughter them all, please.”

“Yes, my lord,” the man said. If the work of killing the innocent bothered him, he did not show it. But then, if he had been a man to balk at such things, the Master of Crows would have killed him for it long ago.

The Master of Crows stood in the wake of the battle, listening to the kind of quiet that only came with death. He listened to the crows as they landed to begin their work, and felt the power start to flow in as they consumed their share. It was a pitiful trickle compared to some of the battles that had gone before, but there would be more to follow.

He sent his awareness out into his creatures, letting them speak with his voice.

“This town is mine,” he said. “Submit or you will die. Deliver up all those who have magic, or you will die. Do as you are commanded, or you will die. You are nothing now, slaves and less than slaves. Obey, and you will stave off being food for the crows for a while. Disobey, and you will die.”

He sent his creatures up into the air, surveying the land that he had taken in this first advance. He could see the horizon stretched out far from him, with all the promise of more land to conquer, more deaths to feed his pets.

The Master of Crows did not normally receive visions. At best, his crows gave him enough to guess at what would happen. He was not the witch of the fountain, to pluck at the strands of the future, and even she had not been able to foresee her death. Now, though, the vision came rushing in to him, borne on the wings of his pets.

He saw a child, cradled in its mother’s arms, and he recognized the kingdom’s newly crowned queen instantly. He saw danger behind the child, and more than danger. The death he had staved off so long with the lives of others stalked in this babe’s shadow. It reached out for him, with the innocence of a child, and the Master of Crows recoiled from it, fleeing back to himself.

He stood there in the middle of the town he had taken, shaking his head.

“Is everything all right, my lord?” his aide asked.

“Yes,” the Master of Crows said, because if he admitted to weakness he would only have to kill the man. If any hint of the fear that rose within him got out, then all who saw would die. Yes, that was a thought…

“I have changed my mind,” he said. “We will save conquest for the next town. Raze this one. Kill every inhabitant, man, woman or… babe in arms. Leave no two stones together.”

The aide did not question that any more than his captain had questioned hunting down those fleeing.

“It will be as you command, my lord,” he promised.

The Master of Crows had no doubt that it would be. He commanded, and people died in response. If there was meant to be a child who was a threat to him… well, that child could die as well—along with its mother.

CHAPTER THREE

Emeline stood at the heart of Stonehome and tried to contain some of her frustration as she looked around the stone circle at all the inhabitants. Cora and Aidan stood beside her, which was some support, but when everyone else there was so set against them, it didn’t seem like enough.

“Sophia sent us to persuade you to come back to Ashton,” Emeline said, focusing on the spot where Asha and Vincente sat. How many times had she had this argument there now? It had taken all this time just to get to the point where they would discuss this together at the circle. “There was no need for you to return to Stonehome after the battle. She is building a kingdom where our kind are free, and have nothing to fear.”

“There is always something to fear while those who hate us exist,” Asha retorted. “She could have ordered the Masked Goddess’s churches shut down. She could have seen their butchers hanged for their crimes.”

“And that would have restarted the civil war,” Cora said from beside Emeline.

“Better to have a war than to live beside those who hate us,” Asha said. “Who have done such things to us as can never be forgiven.”

Vincente put it in more measured terms, but wasn’t much more helpful. “This is a place where we have built a community, Emeline. This is a place where we can be sure we are safe. I have no doubt that Sophia has good intentions, but that is not the same thing as being able to change things.”

Emeline had to fight back the urge to shout at them for their stupidity. Cora must have seen that, because she put a hand on Emeline’s arm.

“It will be fine,” she whispered. “They’ll see sense eventually.”

“What you call ‘sense,’” Asha snapped from the other side of the stone circle, “I call a betrayal of our people. We are safe here, not out in the world.”

Emeline shot her an angry glance. Asha couldn’t have heard Cora’s whisper from there, which meant that she’d read Cora’s mind. That was more than rude; it was dangerous, especially when Asha had been the one to teach Emeline how to pull memories out of someone.

“People are free to come and go if they wish,” Vincente said. “If Sophia really does deliver a kingdom where our kind are free, people will come of their own accord, without the need for emissaries.”

“And what will it look like until then?” Emeline replied. “What will it look like when all those with gifts are hidden away, as if they are ashamed of them? Will it look like we are no threat, or will it give people space to claim that we are plotting in secret? For the old rumors to reappear?”

The hardest part about the crowd around them was that it was impossible for Emeline to gauge what effect her words were having. With another crowd she could have reached out for the feel of their thoughts, or at least listened to them talking to one another. Here, the conversations were silent things of thoughts flickering back and forth, well directed enough that she wasn’t a part of it.

“Perhaps you have a point,” Vincente said.

“They do not,” Asha replied. “They are the ones who have made us less safe, by making it so that people know where we are.”

“We haven’t told anyone,” Cora said.

Asha snorted. “As if they couldn’t have taken it from your head. If you weren’t sent by the queen, I’d take every thought you have for that.”

“No,” Aidan said, putting a protective hand on Cora’s shoulder. “You wouldn’t.”

Vincente stood, his full height more than impressive enough to calm things. “That’s enough bickering. Asha, the new defenses will be more than enough to protect us, even if people find us. As for the rest of it… I suggest a seeing.”

“A seeing?” Emeline asked.

Vincente made a gesture that encompassed the crowd around them. “We join our minds together, and we see what will result from each action. It is not perfect, but it will help us to decide what we must do.”

The idea of joining her mind to so many others was a worrying one, but if it would give her a chance to persuade them, Emeline wasn’t going to hold back.

“All right,” she said. “How do we do it?”

Simply connect your mind to the others’, Vincente sent. They are waiting.

Emeline reached out with her gift, and now she could feel the minds of those around the circle waiting for her. They were open now in a way they had not been before. She took a breath and plunged in amongst them.

She was herself, and not herself, both an individual mote of thoughts and the larger cloud of them that drifted together. With so many of them in one place, there was power here that was more than one person could ever have possessed. That power drifted into focus, and Emeline felt Vincente’s hand guiding it with what she suspected was skill borne of long practice.

Concentrate on the future, he sent. On seeing what will happen if—

He didn’t get further than that, because in that moment, a vision overtook them with the force of a forest fire.

There was fire in the vision. It flickered over the rooftops of Ashton, consuming, destroying. Soldiers in ochre uniforms marched through the streets, killing as they went. Emeline heard women screaming from inside houses, saw men cut down as they fled in the streets. The vision seemed to float through the streets, barely giving them all enough time to take in the carnage as they headed for the palace.

Around them, the destruction of Ashton made Emeline ache to watch it. The slaughter was horrific, but strangely, the loss of the places that she’d grown up around was almost as bad. Seeing barges burn on the river made her think of the one she’d tried to escape the city on. Seeing the marketplace filled with corpses instead of stalls made her heart break.

They reached the palace, and the Master of Crows was waiting. There was no mistaking who he was, in his old-fashioned long coat and with his birds circling. Even in this image, the sight of him made Emeline shudder, but she couldn’t look away. She watched him marching through the palace, killing with such ease that it almost seemed inconsequential to him.

The image shifted, and he was standing on a balcony, a baby in his arms. Instinctively, Emeline knew that it was Sophia’s child. There was a shine to her that reminded her of Sophia’s thoughts, and Emeline wanted to reach out to protect the child.

There was nothing she could do here, though, except watch as the Master of Crows lifted the baby, as he held her above his head. As the crows came down to feed…