On This Unworthy Scaffold, Heidi Heilig [best books to read for success .txt] 📗

For a moment, I wonder if I should pretend not to have heard him either. Yet while the villagers have fled, I know Leo is watching. So I rein the dragon in, glaring at the men standing before me in the mud. Then I look at the prisoner and falter. The red stains on his shirt are crusted and old; he lifts his head, and his face is a gray ruin.

This man is already dead.

I suck air through my teeth, and the taste of rot tickles the back of my throat. I spit into the water, and the spirits of little fish scatter, shimmering. If they are near, then Le Trépas isn’t—souls flee his presence, as well they should. But this walking corpse is the first sign I’ve seen of the old monk since his disappearance . . . at least, outside of my nightmares. My heart beats faster—not with fear, but with excitement. If Le Trépas has left the capital, it might be easier to track him down and kill him.

“You must be Jetta Chantray,” the first soldier says, jolting me out of my reverie. His eyes flick between my face and the dragon’s teeth. “The nécromancien.”

“How did you guess?” I say wryly, but the soldier doesn’t risk a smile. Though he looks too young for his rank, the epaulets on his shoulder gleam. “And your name, lieutenant?”

“Charles Fontaine,” he replies crisply, his hands still in the air. “I’m hoping to speak to the king.”

“You mean Camreon?” The question tumbles out of my mouth before I can stop it, and I can’t hide my surprise: the armée backed Camreon’s brother Raik for years.

“The very same,” Fontaine says crisply. “Formerly known as the Tiger, and rightful heir to the kingdom of Chakrana. We came to ask his aid.”

Suspicion creeps in. Chewing my lip, I glance over my shoulder. The Tiger is approaching, much more cautiously than I had. “With what?”

“This, to start with.” Fontaine nods toward his prisoner. “I don’t suppose it was your handiwork?”

My lip curls. “When I raise dead men, they heal.”

“Le Trépas, then.”

“It looks that way.” Any soul that suffers a cruel death would become a n’akela; Le Trépas had made many in his time, including the spirits of his own children. A body occupied by a vengeful spirit had an icy-blue glow in their eyes, but this prisoner’s eyes are a soup in their sockets, like cooked rice left for days in the bottom of a covered pot. He isn’t even Chakran, I realize with a start. His matted hair is light brown under the soil and fluid, and his stained shirt was once armée green. Likely one of the soldiers that fell during the battle at the temple—but that’s far west from here. “Where did you find him?”

“The plantations, just a few kilometers downriver,” the lieutenant replies. “There have been several attacks on Aquitan civilians in the area.”

My stomach clenches, queasy. When I was a shadow player, we performed in quite a few of the fine homes along the Riv Syr. Our best patrons, the Audrinnes, owned most of the land there. “Are there survivors?”

“If so, they’ve fled. Or been taken to the capital for deportation,” the lieutenant says darkly.

“And the dead?” I press him. “Were the corpses all raised, like this one?”

“Many were,” the lieutenant replies. He glances again at my dragon’s teeth. “I must admit, I never would have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. I was sure the old stories about nécromancy were just that: stories. But even stranger, all the dead we found carried the same message.”

“A message?” I frown. “From who?”

“It isn’t exactly signed,” Fontaine says delicately, his hands still high in the air. “Do you want to see it?”

I open my mouth to answer, but Camreon has come up behind me on quiet feet. “Why don’t you tell us what it says?” he calls from a distance, his gun pointed at the lieutenant.

“I can’t.” Fontaine wets his lips. “It’s written in Old Chakran.”

Cam raises a skeptical eyebrow, but a thrill goes through me at the thought. The language had been forbidden by the Aquitans—I had only just begun to learn it myself. The message must be from Le Trépas.

What could it say? Is it for me? I hear his voice sometimes, half in and half out of a dream. He teaches me like he used to, sharing his secrets—spells and magic—but when I wake, I can’t remember the words.

“Show me,” I say eagerly, and Fontaine lowers his hands. But rather than reaching into his pocket, he pulls back one half of the prisoner’s shirt, like a bizarre sideshow curtain. The message is carved into the skin of the corpse’s chest.

My stomach flips, but I cannot look away. Ragged wounds, black blood, bruised skin . . . on top, the symbol of the Tiger—four slashes, like claws. And below it, a deep V, like a book just cracked open, or a vessel ready to be filled. The Keeper, the third deity. “Knowledge,” Camreon reads, shaking his head. “Less a message than mutilation.”

“So it’s meaningless?” the soldier says, and I slide from the dragon’s back to get a closer look.

“The symbol usually has an accent,” I explain to him, the way Camreon had so recently begun to teach me. “Depending on where it is, it changes the meaning.”

“Not enough to matter,” Cam calls, but I peer at the mottled torso, the mud sucking at my bare feet. “Stay back, Jetta!”

Rolling my eyes, I lift the other flap of the filthy shirt between the tips of my fingers. “He doesn’t have a weapon, Cam.”

“Anything can be a weapon,” the Tiger retorts, but I ignore his warning. There, down low: a stab wound under the point of the V.

“‘Know your enemy,’” I translate, with a sense of satisfaction—I don’t know much old Chakran, but I’ve been studying. “It’s part of the proverb. ‘Know your enemy and know yourself, and you’ll have nothing to fear.’”

“It doesn’t matter,” Cam snaps. “Come away!”

Annoyed, I take a