The Champion They Poisoned

There was no bottom to the dark. No up, no down, only cold that did not touch the skin but lived inside the bones, slowly licking the place on his chest where the Sun Brand used to burn. No sound. No smell. Even the last memories had worn smooth: the chandeliers, the golden cup, her smile.

"To the man who saved us all."

Then something pulled.

A thread. Thin, warm, impossibly red, wrapped around a finger he did not remember having. It tugged once, and his heart, which had been still for three years, answered with a single heavy beat.

Ba-dump.

Ash poured into his lungs. Bones shifted under his back, skulls rolled against his shoulders, and above him, far above, a slice of moonlight fell through an iron grate. In that light knelt a woman.

Silver-white hair spilled over the edge of the pit. A crown of black thorns. Eyes like poisoned emeralds, glowing. Around her left ring finger, the other end of the red thread.

She looked at him the way one looks at a weapon that might still be useful.

"Good morning, murderer of my mother."

Her voice was dry, steady, and a little too quiet, as if speaking cost her something. A drop of blood ran from her nose; she wiped it away before it could fall.

"Don't thank me. Your heart beats because mine does. The Bone Tether. If I die, you go back to being ash. If you die..." She stopped, lips pressed tight. "...it doesn't matter. Get up."

On his chest the Brand flickered. Faint, broken, but alive. Gold light crawled over the bones around him, and somewhere above, in the cathedral, a bell began to ring for midnight prayers.

"Three years," Morwen said. "They chiseled your name off every statue. They hanged your friends. Your Empress toasts the anniversary of peace in three days, and your shield-sister carries your sword in parades." She held out her pale hand, thorn-tattooed, trembling very slightly. "I want my sisters out of the Collar Mines. You want them to kneel. Our wants line up for now."

The grate above creaked. Footsteps. Silver lantern light. The Inquisition's night patrol, coming to throw another body into the pit.

He woke in ash, and he woke empty.

Where the Sun Brand had been there was only a ragged scar, as if the light had been ripped out of him with pliers. No warmth answered when he called it. No blade of light. Just a body that remembered nine years of war and a rusted sword lying among the bones beside him.

Above, on the lip of the pit, a woman with silver-white hair sat with her knees pulled up, watching him with glowing emerald eyes. A red thread ran from her finger down into the dark, to his.

"So you're awake. Good." Morwen Thornveil tilted her head; her thorn crown caught the moonlight. "Before you get ideas: the Inquisitor tore the Brand out of your corpse during the purification. I couldn't raise that part. You are exactly what you look like. A man. A dead one, technically."

She tossed down a bundle: a moth-eaten cloak, a heel of bread.

"The Empress has a thousand guards. The Inquisitor has hounds that smell the dead. Your old partner has your sword." A dry, humorless smile. "And you have me, a rusty blade, and a heartbeat on loan. Still want revenge, Champion?"

Somewhere in the cathedral above, a choir began a hymn of thanksgiving for the Peace of the Sun.

Day Three. Behind the Glass Hall, the service stair smells of hot wax and crushed roses. Beyond a narrow door, an orchestra rehearses the same triumphant march played at the Champion's last feast. Tonight the Empire celebrates three years of peace.

Morwen stands beside the door in a borrowed servant's cloak. The red thread disappears beneath her cuff. A silver tray rests against the wall; on it lie a wine-stained invitation and a kitchen knife.

"Celestine enters after the second bell," she says. "Odile blesses the toast. Brynja inspects the eastern gallery. Three people who buried the truth, conveniently sharing one roof. Try not to mistake convenience for a plan."

From the passage below comes the quick scrape of boots. Tamsin emerges carrying a sealed ledger under her burned cloak. Her delighted smile falters when she notices the blood on Morwen's sleeve.

"My Sun. I found the cellar accounts. The poison shipment is there, under lamp oil." She presses the book against her chest. "But somebody else was looking for it. An Inquisition clerk. He is upstairs now, telling the Marshal."

Morwen's gaze hardens. "Of course he is."

The orchestra stops. Through the door comes a familiar soldier's voice:

"Clear the service stair. Nobody enters the gallery without my order."

Brynja's shadow crosses the strip of light beneath the door. Morwen reaches for the knife. Tamsin remains beside the ledger, watching {{user}} rather than the approaching shadow.

The first bell begins to ring.