She made her way down the castle steps, and the royal guards fell in stride, trailing like shadows in her wake. She passed the silver-clad Vir at the bottom of the stairs, and then the crowd that lined the path. Merchants and sailors, tailors and bakers, parents with children in their arms, all of them bound together not by their age or dress, but by the bandage wrapped around their palms.
Servants stood waiting at the castle gates, their trays piled high with sugar buns for those who had already made their offering. The first of three rewards for the first of three tithes.
A reminder that this was not just a day of sacrifice, but celebration.
As Kosika neared the altar on the path, the air took on the copper scent of blood, and the crowd cleared to reveal a statue of a man, poised above a shallow basin, the surface shimmering red.
The stone figure was larger than life, though folded beneath its weight, depicted on his hands and knees. The man’s head was bowed beneath an unseen force, his shoulders hunched, his shirtfront torn askew, revealing the binding spell once burned into his chest by Athos Dane. Holland’s carved stone hands pressed into the bottom of the basin, so that as it filled, the blood rose over his shins and wrists, and made it look as if he were sinking, inch by inch, into the pool.
Kosika approached, stopping only when she was close enough to look up into Holland Vosijk’s face. To see the pain in his jaw, the furrow of his brow, the eyes, cast in different shades, one pale, the other black.
Just like her own.
“First you were a servant,” she said softly to herself. The words were not for the crowd. They were private as a prayer.
She pulled the silver blade from her hip and drew it across the meat of her forearm, one swift, deep cut. Blood welled, and spilled into the waiting pool, rippling the surface. Kosika ran her fingers over the weeping cut, and touched them to the collar of the basin. Unlike the rest, this part was made of frosted glass instead of stone.
“As Steno,” she said, and the Antari spell took shape in the world, breathed into life by her power. The surface of the basin rippled like a pulse, and the glass walls shattered.
Blood spilled like rain over an awning. It splashed, and pooled around Kosika, staining her white clothes. It poured out until the basin, which was no longer a bowl but a plane of flat stone, was empty, and Holland’s hands revealed themselves, stone fingers splayed against the rock.
Kosika stood there, as blood leached up the hem of her white cloak, and soaked into the soil of the courtyard, turning it the black of loam.
The first tithe was done.
* * *
SEVEN YEARS AGO
Sunlight danced across the ceiling.
That was the first thing Kosika saw when she woke up—at least, she guessed it was a ceiling, but it was so far away. The stone walls surged up, and vaulted overhead, but the ground beneath her was too soft to be ground, and too soft to be a bed, even though that’s what it was. A bed so big she could lie in the center, her arms and legs thrown wide, and not come close to reaching the sides. And for a moment, that’s what she did, her mind blissfully blank as she looked up at the light on the ceiling, and tried to remember—where had she been? On top of the wall with Lark, staring up at the sky, and then—
She heard a sound.
It was quiet, the soft tap of a pebble hitting stone, and Kosika sat up, wincing at the sudden pain in her head. She touched her temple and it all came rushing back, the thieves and the struggle and Lark and the soldiers, and then she was scrambling across the pillowed ground, trying to reach the edge of the bed.
“Oh good,” said a voice, “you’re awake.”
Kosika jerked around, and found a girl sitting cross-legged in a nearby chair, elbows balanced on her knees. She had fair hair drawn back in a braid, and a narrow face covered in scars, as thin and white as seams.
On a low table in front of her was a game board, half the figures black and gold, the rest silver and white. They mingled on the board, and a few lay cast aside, as if in the middle of a game, but if she’d been playing, it must have been against herself.
“Who are you?” asked Kosika. The sound of her voice made her temple throb, and she reached up and touched her head.
“I’m Nasi,” said the girl. “If it’s any consolation, the soldier who hit you has been arrested.”
Kosika didn’t understand. She’d been struck a dozen times by a dozen people, and no one had so much as said that they were sorry.
“If you ask,” continued Nasi, “they might even kill him.”
Kosika winced. She didn’t want to kill anyone. “Why did he hit me?”