The Wheel of Osheim (The Red Queen's War 3)

“Martus!” A cold certainty tightened in my chest. “Send for word of my brother!”

Garyus lowered his head. With effort he lifted a hand and motioned, two fingers extended. A bloodied soldier stepped out from beside one of the royal guards, the smaller man hidden by the larger until now. He stopped five yards from the throne. The tattered uniform announced him an officer of the Seventh. Numerous thin cuts on his hands and face suggested a recent encounter with a rag-a-maul.

“Captain Davio was to report once our business had concluded,” Garyus said. “Speak what you know, Captain.” Garyus motioned for the man to step closer.

“General Martus . . .” The captain choked, and grabbed his jaw as if to wring the emotion from his voice. “Prince Martus, your highness . . . he . . .” Davio pulled his hand away, leaving both cheeks blood-stained. “He led the charge. There wasn’t any fear in him. Ran straight into that unholy windstorm. I saw him cut two ghosts in half as the wind tore at him. We were battling the possessed, but General Martus just made straight for the centre of it. I lost sight of him . . . and then it was over. The wind died. Rags and glass and stones falling out of the sky . . . and the possessed running wild, no organization to them any more.”

“And my brother?” I knew the answer.

“We found him in the middle of it, sir, your highness. Cut and torn. I looked for a pulse but I could see he was gone, sir. I called for men to carry him to the palace, and I saw his sword close by. It happened while I was picking the blade off the ground.” He fell silent, staring at some memory, and I thought Garyus would have to ask, but just as we reached the point at which one of us must speak, the captain jerked his head toward Garyus and continued. “His eyes opened. General Martus’s eyes opened and I thought he would rise like the others we’d lost, crazed and dead and needing to be cut down. The lads all raised their swords and axes . . . we’d set aside our spears and found whatever we could that would cut. Them without swords had woodsmen’s axes, butcher knives, whatever we could find . . . Nobody wanted to be the first to strike him. Not with him being a prince, and our general.

“But he didn’t leap up. His body . . . moved . . . but it was like something was eating him from the inside. His bones . . . we heard them snap and it looked like he was full of serpents, writhing. All his flesh sunk in . . . only his eyes didn’t change.” Davio choked back a sob. “They kept watching us. And then . . . and then . . .”

“Just tell us the facts, Captain,” Garyus said, not unkindly. “They’ll leave fewer scars the quicker you speak them.”

“Yes, Steward, sir.” He drew a breath. “And then the thing escaped him. A red bloody mess it was, like a skinned dog, only with his eyes, with General Martus’s eyes. It ripped out of him like he was a sack they’d put it in to drown, and it ran, quick as quick. Batran Deens tried to stop it. Fast hands, that man. He threw himself at it as it passed. Got both arms round it. But the thing slipped through and left him screaming. Everywhere he’d touched it the flesh was melted off him, gone . . . I saw bones in his arms.” The captain dropped his head, staring at the floor.

“There’s the Dead King’s compensation,” I said. My sister was in the world at long last. I felt nothing—only hollow.

We stood in silence for a moment, contemplating the depth of the shit we stood in. I’d burned my father, burned half the city I lived in, lost two brothers, and gained a homicidal unborn sister all in the same day. I doubted it was possible to fit more misfortune between two sunrises.

Garyus spoke first. “You need to take the key north.”

“That’s madness. The Dead King will catch us and take it!” I didn’t feel safe behind Vermillion’s walls any more but I felt a damn sight safer than I would outside them.

“The Dead King didn’t catch you all the time you spent travelling from Trond to Umbertide. You were months on that journey.” Garyus looked to Snorri as if seeking confirmation. “It’s when the key is still that he finds it. While it is here the whole city is at risk.”

“Where would we take it? You want us to just keep running until we fall off the edge of the world?”

“The dead outside our walls are not the greatest threat we face, Jalan.” Garyus studied his palm. The Red Queen had the same mannerism when thinking.

“There is a greater threat?” I felt rather than saw Snorri turn to watch me. His question seemed to burn unspoken on the back of my neck.

I raised my hands. “I will concede that the imminent end of the world is a bigger problem. And . . .” I swivelled sharply to stare up at Snorri. “I don’t want to hear a damn thing about Ragnarok. It’s not like that at all. It’s that stupid wheel of yours, it’s going to crack the world open. Or rather it’s allowing us to do so. Or rather it’s allowing people like the Lady Blue and Kelem and the Dead King to do so. So yes, we’re all going to die. And we may not even get a chance to destroy the world because the machines the Builders left behind are probably going to ignite a whole bunch more suns and burn us off the face of the Earth to stop that happening . . . Either way, it’s not good.”