Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial

I remember little of what came next. There was much commotion, confusion, and bickering. Stunned by all that had happened and feeling exhaustion slamming down on me, it all passed in a daze.

I recall trying to meet Rosanna’s eyes. Her guard, led by Kaia, bustled her out of the chamber. She couldn’t, or wouldn’t, look at me.

Everything else became noise.

The Storm Knights all but dragged me through the keep. After many winding halls and blurring scenes, I was shoved into an austere room with a dining table, a hearth, and — to my surprise — not a single alchemical lamp.

Inside, Markham Forger waited for me. He stood by the fire, his armor doffed to leave him only in a black-and-gold doublet and high boots, his weighty crown replaced with a thinner circlet.

There were some guards inside, including the nameless First Sword of House Forger, who retained his shadowy helm, the firelight glinting on its twin lightning-bolt crest.

I did my best to stand straight, wary of the four knights who hovered around me with their hands on their swords. My axe had not been returned. Neither had my cloak and rondel. I stood there, bloodstained, injured, my black hauberk battered and rent so it hung like steel rags on my sore frame.

Without looking at me, Markham spoke.

“I should kill you.”

He nodded. “Even after all that. It would be simpler, and those…” He searched for words a moment. “Those angels made it clear I would face no retribution for any decision I made. So I must make my choice based on the needs of the realms.”

Pressing his hands into the small of his back, the Emperor turned to face me. Seeing him closer, I realized he was old. I didn’t know his exact age — over fifty, at least. Yet, like with King Roland, his duties had weathered him well beyond even that. Most of the stocky muscle I remembered him having during the war had gone to fat. Where Rose had kept her beauty, refined it, Markham had become a shadow of the soldier he’d once been.

Yet his eyes remained clear, and his voice strong.

“Why are you here?” He asked me.

I hesitated.

“Did you know?” He continued, his voice steely with suppressed anger. “That they would intervene?”

He let the question hang a long moment. I tried and failed to swallow. “No,” I croaked.

Markham scoffed. “I grew tired enough with sorcery and myth during the war. That whole fucking mess was a playground for wizards and monsters.”

He lifted a thick finger. “If this is some game, some ploy for power—”

I shook my head. “No. I expected to die today, Your Grace. I did not seek death, but I knew it to be the most likely outcome.”

I’d never wanted power. I’d watched it corrupt Lias. I’d watched it weigh my queen down with loneliness and guilt.

Markham narrowed his eyes. “I am not blind, Hewer. I know you’ve been in the castle for weeks, lurking in my wife’s bastion. We both have spies watching the other — we might be married, but she is the monarch of another realm and in many ways my rival, a check on my power. One I agreed to, yet…”

He glowered at the fire. “Believe me when I say I will have answers from her. I know you served her once. Was she part of this?”

“No,” I said firmly, almost growling the word. “I admit she offered me sanctuary, Your Grace, but I kept my work as Headsman as distant from her as I could. Believe me, my secrets caused her grief.”

Markham searched my eyes, then nodded. “I can believe that, I suppose. Still, before those winged women appeared in the court, I half believed she’d been using you as an assassin all these years. I could never prove it, so…”

He waved a hand dismissively and began pacing. The knights did not move, so I didn’t take it as permission to leave. I stood, injured and tired, and waited. His admission of distrust toward my queen, his wife and empress, disturbed me.

Markham stopped when he’d done almost a complete circuit around the table. Cursing, he faced me again. “After that debacle, I cannot have you publicly executed. No doubt the Priory will want it. Damn you, man! Why couldn’t you have just killed Horace quietly?”

I shrugged. “I’m not good at quiet.”

“But you could have?” He asked, his gray eyes hard.

“…Yes,” I admitted.

“Instead you brought an entire cathedral down around their heads.” Markham shook his head. “As far as interviews go, it was a melodramatic one. Then again, I suppose it’s par for the course for you Alder warlocks.”

I frowned at being called a warlock. “This wasn’t an interview, Your Grace. My intention wasn’t to impress anyone. As I said—”

“Yes, yes.” Markham waved my words off with a swinging hand. “You don’t want power. Well, too bad.” He regarded me coolly. “You have it now.”

I blinked, not understanding.

Seeing my look, Markham’s expression turned even more stern. “What did you expect? You’ve gone public, man. You want the Accord to sanction you? That comes with consequences.”

He began to pace again, gesturing sharply as he spoke. “Appearances matter in these things, and that means formalities. Responsibilities. I can’t have one of my subjects roaming about chopping holy heads and burning churches down where he will. If you wanted to keep doing that, you should have stayed a renegade.”

He stopped after he’d drawn just shy of arm’s length. The First Sword stepped closer, the motion almost mechanical. I felt the tension of the guards like an electric current against my skin.

With eyes hard as fire-forged steel, Markham said his next words. “From now on, you serve the Accorded Realms. That means you obey me, so long as you reside in my lands. Very likely, I will have you restored as a full lord. Perhaps I will even have your excommunication lifted, if I can get the College to agree.”

Those words stunned me. “Your Grace, I—”

“Quiet,” Markham ordered. “I am not done.”

I fell silent. Though he stood almost a head shorter than me, I felt no give in this man. In that moment, he was every inch a king.

“It will take time to get my fellow monarchs to agree on the details,” the Emperor said. “But we will formalize your role. The Accord is young — there is room for such things. We will need to determine how your joint responsibilities to the Sidhe will be handled, which I will have to consult the Oradyn on. As for the Choir…”

He shrugged. “Well, I imagine I can do little about that. Should they have orders for you, then that is between you and the gods, though I will protect my own.”

He glared at me, and I recognized the threat for what it was. I nodded.

“I will find other ways to make use of you in the meantime,” Markham continued. “You will have duties, the details of which I will have to you soon. You will attend councils, and uphold my laws. It is the same I expect for any other member of the peerage.”

While my mind reeled with the implications of all this, the Emperor of Urn grinned, revealing missing teeth. It was not a friendly expression. He reached out to clap a heavy hand on my shoulder.

“Congratulations. Your stunt just made your life much more complicated. I will use you hard, Lord Alken.”

I managed to swallow, nodded, and bowed my head. “Thank you for your mercy, Your Grace.”

Markham snorted as he turned his back on me. Then, almost conversationally he said, “I know there were rumors about you and my lady wife, back in her home country.”

He turned back to me, his expression neutral. “Should I be concerned?”

I lifted my chin, my pride stung. I did still have some. “I am not cuckolding you, Your Grace. The Empress and I…”

“If you tell me there was nothing there,” Markham growled, “I will call you a liar. She spoke of you once. I remember how she looked.”

I thought about it a moment before answering. “We were young, once.”

“Hmph. Well, step lightly there.” Markham moved back to the hearth, where he had begun the conversation. “There will be much attention on you from here on out, and her. Some will make the connection that she was originally your liege lady. People will talk. Where there are no dirty secrets, they will be conjured. If I were you, I’d keep my distance from Rosanna Silvering.”

He waved a hand — his right hand, now free of the golden gauntlet. I realized most of the fingers were missing, and what remained had been marred by grievous burns.

“Begone with you. If you try to flee the city, I will declare you an outlaw and an apostate, and send my knights.”

Some days passed. It all went in a strange, surreal blur. In some ways, it felt anticlimactic. I was ignored for the most part, and the tensions erupting in the streets of the capital took most of the court's attention.

I tried to get a message to Rose through Kaia. I had much to speak to her about. I needed to explain myself, get her advice, and tell her about Lias.

I got a very terse response from the Empress’s knight in answer.

“Leave her be. She doesn’t want to see you.”

I accepted that, and the pain that came with it, and didn’t trouble her again.

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Markham’s words kept floating in my head. It made sense, when I let myself dwell on it. It must have looked like I’d attacked the Priory to prove my worth to the Accord.

I had, I admitted to myself. At least in part. I’d planned to appear before the court during the night I’d spent with Catrin, and resolved to kill Horace Laudner.

Catrin…

I pushed that pain out of my thoughts, burying it deep. I still didn’t know what to do with it. There was more to grapple with in the meantime.

I’d told my queen I didn’t want power, then I’d gone and claimed it the night I’d split Rose Malin’s face with sorcery. I had been the spark that'd finally caused violence to erupt in the city, the very thing she had been trying for years to avoid through diplomacy and careful intrigue. I wonder if she saw this as betrayal. After Lias, it must have hurt.

All of us had betrayed one another, in various ways over our lives. Rosanna had sent me from her court to increase her standing in the realms, placing me with the Table. Lias had abused her trust and earned the wrath of Markham Forger. Then I had done this.

It was all an ugly cycle.

On the third day after my impromptu trial, I stood on an outer wall of the palace, looking out over the capital. Smoke still rose from some parts of it — more consequences. The cynic in me knew this sort of thing would have happened anyway, and probably worse, as tensions between the Houses and the Priory grew to a head.

Even still, I couldn’t help but feel responsible.

Emma leaned against the parapet next to me. She dressed well, though I noted the hint of dwarven chain mail beneath her fine, billow-sleeved shirt.

I still wore my hauberk, and my red cloak. No point walking about in disguise anymore. Faen Orgis had been returned to me, and hung at my side, its handle shaved and its power sleeping, sated by all the blood I'd let it drink.

“So, I hear talk they intend to put you on the Emperor’s council.” Emma waggled her eyebrows, an almost suggestive gesture. “Not a bad outcome, eh milord?”

I glowered at her, even though I knew she teased me. “Do not call me that.”

Emma shrugged, and kept her lips calmly pursed. “So, are we going to stick around?”

I nodded. “I had to make a choice eventually. I can’t protect the people I care about from outside the walls. If I want to face my enemies, whoever they might be, I need to be where they are. And they are here.”

I thought of Yith, still lurking somewhere in the shadowed guts of the city. I thought of the Vyke twins, and Hyperia’s satisfied smirk.

“What made you do it?” Emma asked, curious. “I’m used to bull-headedness from you, Alken, but that night with the Grand Prior…” she shook her head. “It was madness. I thought you were trying to suicide. I was quite annoyed.”

I snorted. A sea breeze, warm with the approaching summer, stirred my hair. Thinking about the question a while, I realized I had an answer.

“Laessa,” I said. “That night, when Horace arrived to accuse her of being a witch, and those boys stood up for her… I wanted to as well. And I couldn’t. I’d trapped myself in the shadows, and I realized how much it tied my hands.”

“So it’s all for chivalry?” Emma asked, frowning.

I shook my head. “There’s more. I put Rosanna in so much danger. If I’d been caught, and tied back to her…” I sighed. “I don’t know, Em. I’ve felt like a ghost for a long time. I looked at my future, and I saw myself fading. If I’m going to do this job, be Headsman, then I should do something with it.”

I didn’t know if that would quiet all those heads in that forest in my dreams, or make their deaths mean something more. Even still, I couldn’t go back now.

“Besides,” I added. “I meant what I said. The elves have some authority over me. Men should, too.”

“And women,” Emma quipped. “Mostly women, with you.”

I went to nudge her, and she deftly shifted out of the way.

“So what now?” Emma asked, growing serious.

I looked out over the city, and the vast lands beyond. War torn, confused, angry. There was so much of it.

“I’ll do my duty,” I said. “Best I can. I’ll be Headsman, whatever that ends up looking like. Make no mistake, Emma Orley, our lives just got much more complicated. We have a legion of enemies now we didn’t have a week ago.”

“Politics,” Emma said, enunciating the word carefully. “Oh, such joy. Will you let me assassinate people for you?”

I scoffed. “I’m not going to say never. All the angels in Heaven can vouch for us, but I’m not going to pretend like we’re righteous. I kill people. You…” I waved a hand. “You’re some sort of scion of darkness. We’ll figure it out.”

“Fair enough.”

Emma’s eyes turned. I followed her gaze, seeing a young woman with shiny black curls and a green dress approaching along the wall. She had Ser Jocelyn with her, along with Esmerelda Grimheart and her older brother, Lord Harlan. The mercenary and Grimhearts stopped a ways back as the woman in the green dress approached me.

“Lady,” I said, inclining my head.

Laessa Greengood regarded me coolly a moment. “All those times I tried to get you to tell me who you really were, I certainly didn’t expect this.”

I had no defense. “You understand why I couldn’t tell you, then?”

Laessa nodded. “My life became very dark the night you entered it, Alken Hewer. Even still, I should thank you.”

“Oh?” I asked, tilting my head. “What for?”

Laessa’s dark eyes were fixed and serious, no distracted grief in them this time. “All of this — revealing yourself, slaying the Grand Prior — some of it was for me, wasn’t it?”

Emma scoffed, making no effort to hide it.

Laessa ignored the other noblewoman. “Am I mistaken?” She asked, her gaze intent.

When I didn’t reply at once, Emma’s derision turned into a sharp stare directed at me.

And why not? I couldn’t deny it.

“Had you not killed him the way you did,” Laessa said, “and then thrown yourself at the court’s mercy, I know I would have taken the blame. The whole city would have assumed me responsible for his death, or my family. Especially after he called me a witch in front of half the peerage.”

She dipped into a deep, graceful curtsy. When she rose, her face was very calm.

“I owe you a debt,” she said. “Even still, I must avoid associating with you. You understand?”

I nodded. “I do.”

“Then that is all there is to say." She sighed. “I wish you luck, Ser Headsman.”

I smiled. “That might be a bit premature.”

She waved a hand dismissively, then turned to leave.

“I half expected her to propose,” Emma muttered when the Greengood girl had gone.

“Let’s go,” I said. “Unless…”

“I’m not abandoning you.” Emma sighed. “Don’t be droll. This is really quite good for me! I might became a real squire, rather than just an informal one.”

We returned into the shadows of the great palace, with gargoyles and knight-sentries watching us closely. Emma chatted away, though I recognized the subtle tension beneath her youthful energy.

I felt it too.

The remnants of the Priory lifted up a new leader four days after Rose Malin burned. Grand Prior Diana Hallow publicly announced that she intended to maintain her predecessor’s accusation of Laessa Greengood. The trial of arms to determine the girl’s innocence, and fate, would be held during the Emperor’s tournament, only a few weeks away. The first day of true summer would coincide with the opening lists. In the meantime, the summit continued.

Lisette officially left the Priory, appearing instead in the Empress’s retinue as a cleric-sister of the the Synodites. When next I saw her, she wore the yellow cloak and white robe of an Aureate adept.

We spoke little, and her work as an aide for the Empress kept her well away from me. Even still, I felt glad to see her out of that order of secrets and brutal dogma. I’d meant what I said. Her Art had been made for healing.

There were still priorguard, but they moved less openly. I didn’t take their lessened presence in the city as a permanent victory. The Priory had begun out in the country sides, in sleepy churches and rural monasteries, and I suspected its ideology would continue to fester out beyond the walls, especially as times got darker.

Of Oraise, I saw and heard nothing.

I was largely ignored, though I knew that wouldn’t last long. Soon, Markham would have orders for me. Eventually, the Choir would as well. I also had the invitation from Maerlys Tuvonsdotter to fret over. And the Vyke twins, and the demon Yith.

And my dreams.

On the fifth night after Rose Malin, I wandered a set of back streets in the city. Rows of houses in varying states of disrepair or neglect, most of them communal tenements, rose to either side of a weathered stone path. I could still make out scars from the siege here. There were the burnt carcasses of churches, and whole sections of homes and shops knocked down by violence without being lifted back up.

Suspicious eyes watched me from windows, and urchins, or changelings, skulked in the alleys. The glinting eyes of wild chimera, come in from the wilderness or bred in some hidden lab from the city’s past, watched me from the shadows. Another remnant of Magi plots.

I wore my armor and my red cloak. I had resolved not to go about incognito, not unless it was truly necessary. I could use glamour to hide myself if I needed to, and drift about the city as a ghost to all except the gargoyles, the Hidden Folk, and the truly dead.

And the dead did follow me, whispering and mocking. I ignored them, knowing they would have the chance to say their piece next time I slept.

Eventually, as I wandered the deep labyrinth of Urn’s largest city, night drew near. A shadow spread over the capital, like the reaching claws of a yawning cat. I passed down a narrow street which widened out beneath a steep length of steps, and found my destination.

Well, found isn’t quite the right word. You don’t find the Backroad. You get lost, and it draws you in.

A single building, larger than most in the row and crammed between its neighbors like the bloated offspring of some avian brood parasite, loomed over the street. Light shone from its four stories, and a rickety sign hung over cobblestones, swinging as though caught in a breeze.

Only, there was no wind.

A skinny woman with short blond hair waited outside, like any working girl drawing customers into a brothel. She chewed on a length of wheat, her eyes bored, one shoe pressed against the wall at her back.

I stopped near her, nodding my head in greeting. “Joy.” I jerked my thumb at the sign. “Back Row? I didn’t realize the Keeper had a sense of humor.”

Joy took the stalk out of her mouth, rolling her pale brown eyes to me. “You’d be surprised.” She tilted her head to the door. “She’s in.”

I nodded, and moved into the inn. A wave of warmth and sound slammed into me. A sizable crowd had gathered inside.

I recognized some faces. Karog was there, talking to a group of changelings I recognized from the Drains. He noticed me and went silent. Others began to take the same cue. No doubt they’d all heard about what had happened in the palace as well. I ignored them, my eyes searching for only one face. The pit in the center of the taproom roiled with fire. Just as always, I let it singe my hand in passing, the creature inside sniffing curiously.

A variety of dubious characters watched me, some interested and some hostile. Some were human. Most weren’t, not entirely. This place had long been where the outcast and the misbegotten had made connections and done business in my homeland. There were nobles too, vagabond peddlers, mercenaries, and perhaps some lesser sorcerers. Knights too, of the roughest sort, blackguards all.

Now that I’d put myself in a position where scruples would be much more difficult to keep, I considered that I might need to do real business here. It didn’t sit well with me, but…

I’d sown these seeds. I’d made my choice. I had another to make.

The Keeper, an old man with features reminiscent of a vulture, wrinkled and balding, his gray hair long and lank, greeted me with a neutral nod. I returned it. I knew what he was now, but I wasn’t going to do anything about it. Not yet. This was his domain, with laws as ironclad as any faerie court.

In some ways, it was exactly that.

Dis Myrddin sat next to the Keeper. He saw me and grinned, leaning over to say something to the man behind the bar. The Keeper scowled, but didn’t reply to whatever was said. The master of the Backroad tilted his chin up, toward the upper floors.

I set my jaw and moved forward, ignoring all those eyes. The noise receded behind me as I passed into a long hall lined with doors, all private rooms.

Moving through them, I heard sounds within. Muffled laughs, snippets of conversation, arguments, moans of pleasure, or pain. From the floor above, I heard a rhythmic thumping sound.

My jaw tightened. I knew the Keeper was master here, that he might be mocking me, but…

I also knew what this place was.

I went to the end of the hall, not quite sure what to do next. I felt foolish. I’d hoped she would be in the taproom. I couldn’t just start knocking on doors.

Damn it. I turned back, intending to quit this before I—

A door behind me creaked open. I turned to see a long-limbed, brown-haired shape step out of it. Her eyes were sleepy, her movements languid, her chestnut hair even more disheveled than usual. She wore a thin dress and a bodice with most of the strings loose, the garment slipping off one shoulder.

She saw me, and blinked. “Alken.”

I inhaled through my nostrils, steeling myself, and dipped my head. “Catrin.”

“I…” The satisfied languor in her face fell away, replaced by a more nervous emotion. I heard rustling from the room she’d exited, then a big man stepped into the doorway, scarred and muscled, with a thick beard and unkempt black hair.

He didn’t wear a shirt. It made the bleeding wound at his shoulder very visible.

“Problem?” He asked, glancing between us. I saw him tense.

“No, no.” Catrin bit down a half-formed word, maybe a curse, as she turned to the man. “It’s fine, he—”

I turned back toward the taproom. “This is a bad time. I’ll come back later.”

I didn’t plan to come back.

Catrin did curse as I started to walk away, rushing after me with a hurried apology to the man in the room. I heard him laugh as he closed the door.

“Hey, wait!”

She grabbed my arm. My left arm, at the crook of my elbow. I paused, gritting my teeth as I suppressed the urge to jerk away.

Instead I turned to her.

“I heard about the palace,” she said. “Everyone’s heard.” She gave me a shy smile. “You want to talk about it?”

I don’t know what my face looked like, but her smile faded as I stared at her. Then, calmly, I nodded.

“Let’s talk.”

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