“Kassens.” Grecht spit on the ground. “Slaves now.”
Sariyah had told us Kasse had fallen to Akyre. “Are there many?”
“All of Kasse are our slaves now!” said Grecht proudly. “Working to rebuild Akyre after what they’ve done. Do not even look at them, Sir Lukien. Why should a nobleman soil his sight with shit?” He looked at Cricket. “My pardon, young lady. Who is your companion, Sir Lukien?”
“My name is Cricket.”
“Cricket?” Grecht tittered. “From Liiria as well?”
“No,” replied Cricket.
“But from the continent? Master craves news from the continent. He awaits! Please come.” He dragged at my sleeve. “This way, please.”
“Our horses.”
“Yes, yes.”
Grecht howled to the women in the pathetic garden. A pair of them dashed forward, brushing the dirt from their tattered dresses. The older one took the reins of my horse without even a glance, but the younger one, a few years older than Cricket maybe, locked eyes with her, her mouth falling open as she studied Cricket’s shiny hair.
“Move!” barked Grecht and gave the girl a slap.
“Hey!” hissed Cricket. “Don’t touch her!”
Grecht reared back. “Girl?”
“This is my squire,” I said quickly. “Too quick to anger, but she belongs to me.” I handed Cricket’s pony to the young one from the garden. “Take care of the animals. Hay and water if you have it. Grecht, please let us see your master now.”
Grecht pulled up his flapping sleeves. He nodded anxiously and led us through the courtyard toward the lopsided gate, hanging open on its rusted hinges. The ancient place looked every bit its age, with moss climbing up the walls and slimy water trickling down. The crooked turrets that had somehow been blasted out of the mountain’s dour face suffocated the sunlight and flaked dust onto our heads. Once past the gate, the oily interior of the castle warmed us with fiery torches. Dogs and filthy children crowded us. Grecht kicked them aside. The walls of the cavernous hall still had outlines where tapestries and paintings had once hung. Now weapons clung to the bricks, mostly morning stars and blood-stained axes.
And there were soldiers, lining the way to the open chamber at the end of the hall. Now I knew what had spooked that refugee boy. Now I knew why Sariyah had called them soulless.
The Legion of the Lost.
Their dead eyes watched us as we passed, their faces smeared with paint, their fingernails pale as they clutched their pikes and flails. White hair drooped beneath their battered helmets. No breath drew from their half-alive bodies, but there was sentience in their features still, some remaining spark of humanity that kept them in this world.
Malator, are they alive? I asked.
Their bodies live, replied the Akari. But their souls dwell elsewhere.
These were the men I’d come to save, and suddenly the folly of my mission came clear. Akyre was no longer a kingdom. Something-maybe war, maybe famine, maybe both-had eaten away its civilized self. This is what Cricket had fled: the tons and tons of sorrow that buried her memory. I could barely stand myself suddenly. I had dragged Cricket to this? The sight was barely fit for a grown man’s eyes. Surely a girl could only be scarred by it.
I dreaded reaching the end of the hall, and when we did I stopped to let Grecht enter the chamber. Inside were more of the soulless fighting men and slaves, the soldiers at blind attention, the slaves naked and piled one atop the other in some feat of grotesque sculpture. Muffled cries came from the human mound as children poked at it with sticks. Another pile, this one of skulls, crowded around the wooden throne, as though the man atop it had used the bones for stepping stones. King Diriel sipped from a goblet, his bloodshot eyes watching us over its rim. He listened as Grecht announced us. At his side stood the man who’d broken my neck.
“Master, this is Lukien of Liiria!” chittered Grecht. He bent all the way down to the base of the skulls, his little palms on the floor. “He’s from the continent, Unrivaled. He came all that way to glorify you!”
Diriel placed his goblet on the arm of his great chair. He wore no shirt, just a red robe open over his torso so the world could see his ribs. A crown of jewels capped his long, dark hair, but he wore no other gems or gold. Scuffed boots, the kind a military man would wear, slowly tapped the floor as he considered us. When he grinned, a mouthful of filed teeth displayed, pointed like a badger’s.
I wanted to flee, not out of fear but out of sheer revulsion. I had seen madmen before, but not like this one. Even Akeela at the worst of his madness-a madness I myself had driven him to-hadn’t compared to this. Diriel radiated lunacy. He leaned over and whispered to Wrestler, and the two of them gazed at Cricket. Wrestler nodded his bald head and folded his arms snake-like over his huge chest. He was exactly as he had been that day in Arad, shirtless, his stance full of challenge, and when he looked at me the grin he gave told me how satisfied he’d felt to break my neck, the way a man might feel when copulating.
“Come closer, Liirian,” said Diriel. “The girl, too.”
His voice was a syrupy lisp, the result of his self-sharpened teeth, I supposed. I made sure Cricket was right beside me before moving. My hand was ready for my sword. Grecht scurried away as we approached the throne, nearly tripping on a rolling skull. Wrestler kept his eyes on Cricket. His tongue poked out to lick his bottom lip.
“Great King, my name is Lukien,” I said. “But you already know this. May I ask how you know my name?”
I didn’t bow or avert my eyes. I looked right at Diriel instead. The king sniffed at my etiquette.
“The girl,” said Diriel. “What is her name?”
“Cricket!” answered Grecht.
“Did I ask you, dwarf? Let her speak!”
“Cricket is my name,” replied Cricket stiffly. “I’m Lukien’s squire.”
“Squire?” Diriel laughed, turning to share the joke with Wrestler. “What sort of knight chooses a girl for his squire? Unless you mean she takes care of your other sword.”
“She is my squire, and I am her protector,” I said calmly, but anger made my face hot. Diriel wasn’t a king-he was a creature, and being polite took all my will. “She’s come to help me in my mission, my lord, at great peril to herself.”
“What peril?” asked Diriel. “If you mean my bodyguard, yes, he has an appetite for youngsters. He’s already told me of your meeting. He offered a price for her and you refused.”
“That’s right, and I’ll refuse it again,” I said. “We’ve no slaves where I come from, my lord. It’s not our way. For me to barter her would be immoral.”
“The morality of the continent. Dog shit.” Diriel shifted and the crown on his head tipped forward. “You asked how I know you. I know you because I know everything, Lukien of Liiria. I know you’re in the employ of that sodomite Anton Fallon. I even know that Wrestler snapped your neck like a chicken bone before you ever reached Isowon. Wrestler doesn’t lie to me, so I ask myself how it’s possible for you to be standing here.”
“Then you don’t know everything, my lord.”
“But I believe in miracles. Seeing you makes me believe, Sir Lukien. I hear from Isowon that you are immortal.” Diriel shrugged. “So it must be true. Now I ask myself, why does Anton Fallon think to threaten me with an immortal soldier, when I have so many of my own? Unless you come to plead for him. Have you? I see no repayment for the money he stole from me.”
“We’re not in his employ,” I said. “Not any longer.”
“No?” Diriel got out of his chair with a great big frown. “I have an army barely a day’s march from Isowon. Does he know this? I will have the mummy powder he promised and the money he stole from me! And yet he sends no one to plead for mercy?”
“I do come to plead, mighty Diriel, but not for Anton Fallon.”
“Ah, so you want something!” Diriel’s deduction made him grin. “You come to barter after all. I will pay a good price for the girl. We won’t call it slavery if it offends you. A gift, let’s say.”