Nathaniel built me. The capstone of his achievement. The success story that followed his failure with Marco Howl’s ancient, mutant corpse. He needed someone good with a blade. Someone who could cut through a group of the king’s high guard. He found me in the pages of his own genealogy, brought me back to become a nameless, faceless assassin.
“And you are something like my great, great, great, great grandnephew: Caliph Howl.”
Caliph sat in a stupor. The winter morning they had left for Greymoor snapped back to him with clarity now.
Caliph is playing in the yard when Cameron and Nathaniel exit the house. They look cross with each other. Caliph comes running up to them with a small shout and jumps to the top step.
“Caliph, settle down,” Nathaniel chides.
The three of them pause on the front steps while Nathaniel fiddles with something under his cloak.
Caliph traces his fingers over the massive oak portals with iron animals that stare straight back when Nathaniel turns his key inside the lock. Snow lands on their iron snouts and dusts the steps.
Nathaniel produces an earthen bowl of some steaming liquid he has sheltered beneath his cloak. He holds it by the lip with two fingers and swirls it gently as though it is a wand.
A smooth sheet of fluid breaks over the lip and falls, splattering deep crimson across the stone. It melts the feathery flakes at once, drinking them into itself.
Nathaniel traces a three-stroke design in it with the toe of his boot and says something in the Unknown Tongue. What is left of the clotting fluid in the bowl, he places in front of the doors and with a deathly thin smile walks out into the falling snow.
“When will we come back?” asks Caliph. His voice sounds oddly muffled under the swirling flakes. He stands on the steps looking down at the warm fluid with casual interest.
“I told you not to think about that,” Nathaniel snaps.
Caliph crouches down and touches the puddle lightly with one thumb. He holds it up for Cameron to see, a dark red oval on his young skin.
“You shouldn’t touch it,” Cameron says softly.
Caliph shrugs and jumps down the steps with one heroic leap.
“Why? It’s just blood. We’re all going to die. It’s unavoidable.”
Nathaniel’s laugh echoes through the snowy forest near the yard. “Speak for yourself, boy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Caliph said slowly. “I wanted to see you—” He forced himself to spit it out. “My reasons have changed for needing to see you. I guess . . . I suppose . . . I needed to remember. Everything is wrong. My uncle, my history, this war . . . I don’t like being king. I’m not even sure I like who I am.”
Cameron sipped his cup and winced. The milk was still hot. “There, you see? The Blue General can be wounded by hot milk.”
Caliph was glad to chuckle, anything to break the awful oppressiveness of their previous topic. “There’s a lesson there, I suppose.”
“Mmm.” Cameron nodded and swallowed. “The lesson is . . .” He held his cup aloft. “That the world is made up of very small things. This conversation for instance.”
He took a somewhat more cautious sip. “If you don’t like being king, run away.”
“What?”
Cameron nodded. “I’m serious, run away—you’re king, what are they going to do to you? It’s a small thing. A little choice you wake up in the morning and make. Pack a sandwich, walk out the gates and head in any direction you want. I did it once.”
“I can’t believe this is the advice you’re giving me.”
“It’s not advice,” Cameron corrected, setting his cup down with a clink. “It’s the way it is. You can just as easily stay. Every day you have the same choice, leave or stay. Either way, do what you have to. Don’t run this kingdom because you feel the weight of a million sheep farmers on your back. They will survive with or without you.”
“Tell that to the ghosts of Fallow Down.”
Cameron picked his cup back up. “Tell me, do you think you could have saved them?”
“I had no idea such a thing could even happen. It’s completely beyond anyone how or why—”
“That’s right. This kingdom will go on living and dying with or without you. Those farmers beyond the city wall are just as much alive as you are and they have their own ideas. They don’t sit around hanging on every word the High King speaks. A country is made up of millions