WHEN CASSIA TROD BACK into the temple for dusk rites, she saw that the sunsword and Anthros’s fire were
gone from the doorway to the crypt. She suspected those who had placed the herbs and flowers were
gone from court as well, one knew not where.
The king often made public examples of those who committed private misdeeds, while a public act
of defiance, such as trying to drive away His Majesty’s guests, would surely cause someone to simply
disappear and no more to be said of it.
As the sun disk shuddered down over the crypt, Knight flattened his ears against his head, but
Cassia could not hear the noise that disturbed him. The bronze sun came to rest at the western end of
the temple. Amachos drew out the dusk invocation. At last his words faded, and the crowd
responded. The day was over. The night had begun.
Cassia’s heart pattered faster as she followed the court back out to the greensward. Not a trace of
dusk light lingered on the open side of the valley, where the sun had sunk beneath the western horizon.
The moons had yet to rise, but it wouldn’t be long now.
The unease that had kept her on edge all afternoon now made her stomach knot painfully. She
welcomed the tension nonetheless, for it kept her alert and sharpened her senses. She smelled the
wild hawthorn, juniper, and spruce that grew beyond the green. She heard the birds deep in the woods
calling back and forth. Their voices grew a little louder every moment.
King Lucis now occupied the Mage King’s chair. He sat in the northern seat, facing distant Orthros,
from whence the Hesperines would come. The golden glow around him seemed to come from
everywhere and nowhere, but even magic could not gild a monster.
The royal mage’s apprentice stood nearby, his hands fidgeting as he adjusted the spell lights. The
young man twitched glances between his master and the king as if he feared execution should they
dislike his display. He would do well here.
The only occupant of the dais younger than the apprentice was Caelum. He occupied his usual
place befitting the king’s heir, a chair set up to the throne’s right. Cassia did not envy her half brother
that seat. But that was the extent of sympathy she could feel for him, seeing his customary expression
of indolent dissatisfaction.
She could make out the shape of the palace to the south. Torch flames dotted its ramparts and
towers, tiny lights pushing back against the deep blue sky and its many pale stars. Figures slipped
away from the crowd toward the black refuge of the king’s house. What a singular night, when anyone
regarded that place as a welcome escape. How those returning to the palace must pity all who were
forced to remain on the green to greet the Hesperine embassy.
But Cassia had paid dearly so she could be here at this moment, and she would have paid an even
higher price to trade places with the free lords, advisers, and mages who now took their positions
behind the dais in order of precedence. This was indeed a singular night, when she coveted any
precedence at all in the king’s company. Forcing herself to go near him tonight would accomplish
nothing, however.
This was not her opportunity to get near the Hesperines. For that she must wait.
The people in front of her stopped so suddenly she nearly ran into them. The crowd stilled. Then it
shifted and parted. Knight pushed against her legs, and she trusted his instincts, stepping back with the
others to make way.
Through the gap came dozens of men and women driving a bull in their midst. They were farming
folk all, with drab, worn garments and bodies made hard by lifelong labor. The beast dug its heels in,
thrashing its head, and the men strained at the ropes that bound it.
One of the women slapped it with a switch of sunsword. Red stained one white flank, and the bull
began to bellow. The voices of the crowd rose to be heard over its outcries. The woman switched the
beast again, and the other farmers with her took up a supplication, wailing a prayer of protection to
Anthros over and over. An ancient prayer, words the Mage King might once have uttered.
These folk were beyond weaving circles of branches and not so easily removed as flowers. They
came within arm’s length of Cassia as they hauled the bull toward the temple, and she saw the stark
lines of their faces, the sweat soaking through their clothes.
When they reached the steps, they forced the beast onto its side. The man in the lead knelt before
the door of the temple and drew the sickle he carried on his back. He laid the blade before him on the
steps and called above the wailing women, “Mage of Anthros, will you not come out? Will you not
make even one offering? Our children need protection. Shield us from the creatures that are coming!
Give the god of war blood, so our children will not be a blood sacrifice to the dark goddess—”
The rest of the man’s words went unheard amid the pounding of boots and the whisk of swords
leaping from scabbards. The king’s men were up the stairs and upon the gathering before the man had
time to fall silent. The women’s laments gave way to screams.
“Children of Anthros, be still.”
The mage’s calm statement brought instant silence. The guards paused, swords raised, their hands
still closed around the peasants’ arms and collars. Only the bull continued to groan.
Amachos stood silhouetted in the doorway of the temple, where there had been nothing but night
insects swarming about the spell lights. “These good people have brought a fine sacrifice to their god.
How can Anthros not be pleased with such devotion?”
The kneeling man bowed his head, pushing the sickle forward, which earned him a knee in his side
from one of the guards. The farmer grimaced, but found breath to speak. “Please, Honored Master.”
“I will gladly dedicate your sacrifice. However, such an act should not be performed in the dark,
but in the sunlight. On the morrow, bring the bull here once more for noon rites, and we shall honor
the god.”
The man jerked up his head. “But the monsters come tonight. We will not be safe until tomorrow.
Since before our fathers’ fathers’ time, the Hesperines have roamed unseen in these lands with no
Equinox Oath to bind them. Who knows what dark deeds they have committed? What more might they
do to us tonight if they walk in unchallenged, with no sacrifice to keep their evil at bay?”
“Calm yourself, man. We mages have protected you these many centuries, even when the Oath
lapsed. We have never allowed Hesperines to dishonor the gods within Tenebra, nor does your king
invite harm into his land tonight.”
“Will their vile acts go unpunished?” cried a man somewhere in the crowd. “Will you not drive
out the monsters?”
“Drive them out,” other men called in unison. “No treaty. Drive them out.”
The women’s wails split the night again.
“Silence,” said the mage.
The cries ceased again, but not the murmurs. Cassia could hear them all around her, the words no
one had dared speak since the Beacon had ignited.
“The Hesperines don’t want peace, only our blood...”
“...invited them to a feast, not a negotiation. They’ll tear out our throats and drink us dry before the
night is through!”
“Thieving monsters. They come for our children! They’ll take them...my little ones...”
“...and desecrate our dead...fornicate with corpses and then our women...”
“Beware their seduction. To lie beneath a Hesperine is to welcome your own death.”
“If you’re fortunate. They spill no seed inside you, only blood, and if you live through it, you’ll
turn into one of them.”
“Silence!” Light flashed in the mage’s upraised hands. “We should not perform the sacrifice here
and now, not when the Hesperines may arrive any moment and behold a sacred act they are unfit to
witness. We will perform the rite tomorrow.”
“You do not protect us!” The farmer’s voice broke. In one motion, he closed his hand around the
sickle and leapt to his feet. “May Anthros accept our meager offering.”
He spun on his heels and brought the sickle down. Inches above the bull’s throat, the blade spun
away and clattered to the stone. The man pitched forward onto the beast. The guard behind him
planted a boot on his back and retrieved a sword from between his shoulders, releasing a rush of
blood in the blade’s wake. The bull let out one roar after another, and the crowd echoed it.
Cassia did not join in their useless raving. Were they really so shocked? Had they expected their
disobedience to end any other way?
The guard moved his sword into position at the bull’s throat, as if silencing it could silence the
people too. But he halted before his blade touched the animal, his attention riveted on something
beyond the crowd. The bull blinked, sighed, and lay quietly.
Cassia recognized its calm. Its sense of safety. She knew what she would see if she followed the
guard’s gaze.
She looked. The silhouette of the trees had changed. The branches were no longer bare, but
covered in birds of every size and shape, the only heralds of the embassy’s arrival.
The Hesperines stood on the slope above the greensward like natural shapes that had grown there
over centuries and not merely appeared just now.
Cassia felt like she was a small child again, looking up at their tall figures to gaze upon their
perfect faces. Their dark, flowing garments were just as she remembered, coated in embroidery that
caught every shard of light. How could anything alive stand so still?
Something unbearable tore open inside of her, and she wanted to howl as the bull had. But she
stood silent.