Wicked Saints (Something Dark and Holy #1) - Emily A. Duncan Page 0,23
If he took only Ostyia and Kacper with him, he could make the journey in even less time. But they were behind enemy lines. Anything could go wrong.
“I will,” he started slowly, each word a sharp arrow piercing through him, “leave you in charge of the company. You are to take the prisoners to Ky?tri, am I right?”
A nod from Teodore.
“Right. Lieutenant Neiborski will be coming with me,” he said.
Kacper looked relieved, as if he briefly thought Serefin was going to leave him behind. Ridiculous.
“General Rabalska, as well, obviously. I expect you to have the prisoners outfitted and removed from here by tomorrow morning at latest.”
Teodore was aware he was being dismissed. He bowed and Serefin waved him away. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t have to see the man again for months.
He moved through the cold, unadorned hallways until he reached the vast wooden doors that opened out into the courtyard. While they were plain on the back, the fronts of the doors were covered with ornate carvings and icons of saints. Six of them, three to each door. Serefin gazed at them after the doors closed before turning and jumping down the stairs leading to the courtyard where Ostyia was waiting. She was perched on the wall that led to the seven thousand steps down the mountain.
Serefin dropped his pack on the ground and hopped up onto the wall beside her. Kacper sat on his other side.
“I have to go home and get married.”
Ostyia had the decency to wince. “What about the cleric?”
“The Vultures have gone to fetch her.”
“She’ll be dead within a day.”
Kacper shuddered. “I wouldn’t wish that fate even on a Kalyazi. Can you imagine?” He flashed a hand over his face. “Those masks are terrifying.”
The Vultures were a complicated part of Tranavian society and politics. They were the blood mage elite, a cultic sect of individuals, closed off from the rest of their kingdom, living in the hollowed-out carcass of an ancient cathedral in Grazyk under the leadership of a king of their own, the Black Vulture, who sat on the Carrion Throne.
When Tranavia broke from the gods, the Vultures filled in the gaps left behind by the church. They acted on their own, citing magic as a higher voice of command than any mortal king could ever be. The Vultures could have gone after the cleric without permission from the king, but Tranavia had in place a careful balance of power. The Vultures would act as advisors to the throne, but their authority only extended to the realm of magic—which in Tranavia was a vast reach. They skulked through the palace with their iron claws and torn robes, more monster than human, yet revered nonetheless.
For decades, the image of Tranavian politics was that the king kept the Vultures on a careful leash. They were to train the royal children to harness their magic as well as maintain a certain level of security in Grazyk, but they were not to leave Grazyk or Ky?tri, the two cities that housed the cult’s leaders.
They were kept away from the front owing to an unfortunate measure of unpredictability to their actions that made them more liability than asset on the battlefield. That said, Serefin had been through many a battle that would have been turned if they’d had even one Vulture in their midst. But he would never request one. They unsettled him.
Serefin scratched the back of his head as he squinted up at the monastery’s onion domes. The glare from the whitened stone irritated his bad eye. “My father wants the prisoners to be taken to the Ky?tri mines.”
“That’s a lot of activity from the Vultures suddenly,” Ostyia said.
“It’s odd, isn’t it?”
A hush fell over them. Contemplating the Salt Mines where the Vultures held their experiments was hardly pleasant.
“I don’t like this,” Serefin said finally.
Ostyia glanced at him.
“The timing, the Vultures, that my father had this”—he waved the missive still in his hand—“sent instead of just having a mage contact me, which gives me less than no time to return home. I don’t understand what he’s doing.”
It was no secret that Serefin’s relationship with his father was strained. He didn’t know if it was fear, distaste, or the simple reality that sending Serefin away to war at such a young age had put a rift in their relationship. Whatever it was, erratic behavior from the king was becoming increasingly normal, so Serefin didn’t know why all these strange things converging at once surprised him.