Queen of Shadows - Maas Sarah J. (читать книги полностью .txt) 📗

Crowds streamed past, not noticing the chained man in their midst or the black-cloaked woman who hauled him closer and closer to the glass castle.

“You remember the plan?” Aelin murmured, keeping her head down and her dagger pressed against his side.

“Yes,” he breathed. It was the only word he could manage.

Dorian was still in there—still holding on. It changed everything. And nothing.

The crowds quieted near the fence, as if wary of the black-uniformed guards that surely monitored the entrance. The first obstacle they’d encounter.

Aelin stiffened almost imperceptibly and paused so suddenly that Chaol almost slammed into her. “Chaol—”

The crowd shifted, and he beheld the castle fence.

There were corpses hanging from the towering wrought-iron bars.

Corpses in red and gold uniforms.

“Chaol—”

He was already moving, and she swore and walked with him, pretending to lead him by the chains, keeping the dagger tight to his ribs.

He didn’t know how he hadn’t heard the crows jabbering as they picked at the dead flesh tied along each iron post. With the crowd, he hadn’t thought to notice. Or maybe he’d just gotten used to the cawing in every corner of the city.

His men.

Sixteen of them. His closest companions, his most loyal guards.

The first one had the collar of his uniform unbuttoned, revealing a chest crisscrossed with welts and cuts and brands.

Ress.

How long had they tortured him—tortured all the men? Since Aedion’s rescue?

He racked his mind to think of the last time they’d had contact. He’d assumed the difficulty was because they were lying low. Not because—because they were being—

Chaol noticed the man strung up beside Ress.

Brullo’s eyes were gone, either from torture or the crows. His hands were swollen and twisted—part of his ear was missing.

Chaol had no sounds in his head, no feeling in his body.

It was a message, but not to Aelin Galathynius or Aedion Ashryver.

His fault. His.

He and Aelin didn’t speak as they neared the iron gates, the death of those men lingering over them. Every step was an effort. Every step was too fast.

His fault.

“I’m sorry,” Aelin murmured, nudging him closer to the gates, where black-uniformed guards were indeed monitoring every face that passed on the street. “I’m so sorry—”

“The plan,” he said, his voice shaking. “We change it. Now.”

“Chaol—”

He told her what he needed to do. When he finished, she wiped away her tears as she gripped his hand and said, “I’ll make it count.”

The tears were gone by the time they broke from the crowd, nothing between them and those familiar gates but open cobblestones.

Home—this had once been his home.

He did not recognize the guards standing watch at the gates he had once protected so proudly, the gates he had ridden through not even a year ago with an assassin newly freed from Endovier, her chains tied to his saddle.

Now she led him in chains through those gates, an assassin one last time.

Her walk became a swagger, and she moved with fluid ease toward the guards who drew their swords, their black rings gobbling up the sunlight.

Celaena Sardothien halted a healthy distance away and lifted her chin. “Tell His Majesty that his Champion has returned—and she’s brought him one hell of a prize.”

Aelin’s black cloak flowed behind her as she led the fallen Captain of the Guard through the shining halls of the palace. Hidden at her back was her father’s sword, its pommel wrapped in black cloth. None of their ten-guard escort bothered to take her weapons.

Why would they, when Celaena Sardothien was weeks early for her expected return, and still loyal to king and crown?

The halls were so quiet. Even the queen’s court was sealed and silent. Rumor had it the queen had been cloistered in the mountains since Aedion’s rescue and had taken half her court with her. The rest had vanished as well, to escape either the rising summer heat—or the horrors that had come to rule their kingdom.

Chaol said nothing, though he put on a good show of looking furious, like a pursued man desperate to find a way back to freedom. No sign of the devastation that had been on his face upon finding his men hanging from the gates.

He jerked against the chains, and she leaned in close. “I don’t think so, Captain,” she purred. Chaol didn’t deign a response.

The guards glanced at her. Wyrdmarks written in Chaol’s blood covered her beneath her clothes, its human scent hopefully masking any hints of her heritage that the Valg might otherwise pick up. There were only two demons in this group—a small mercy.

So they went, up and up, into the glass castle itself.

The halls seemed too bright to contain such evil. The few servants they passed averted their eyes and scurried along. Had everyone fled since Aedion’s rescue?

It was an effort to not look too long at Chaol as they neared the massive red-and-gold glass doors, already open to reveal the crimson-marbled floor of the king’s council room.

Already open to reveal the king, seated on his glass throne.

And Dorian standing beside him.

Their faces.

They were faces that tugged at him.

Human filth, the demon hissed.

The woman—he recognized that face as she yanked back her dark hood and knelt before the dais on which he stood.

“Majesty,” she said. Her hair was shorter than he remembered.

No—he did not remember. He did not know her.

And the man in chains beside her, bloodied and filthy …

Screaming, wind, and—

Enough, the demon snapped.

But their faces—

He did not know those faces.

He did not care.

The King of Adarlan, the murderer of her family, the destroyer of her kingdom, lounged in his glass throne. “Isn’t this an interesting turn of events, Champion.”

She smiled, hoping the cosmetics she’d dabbed around her eyes would mute the turquoise and gold of her irises, and that the drab shade of blond she’d dyed her hair would disguise its near-identical hue with Aedion’s. “Do you want to hear an interesting story, Your Majesty?”

“Does it involve my enemies in Wendlyn being dead?”

“Oh, that, and much, much more.”

“Why has word not arrived, then?”

The ring on his finger seemed to suck in the light. But she could spy no sign of the Wyrdkeys, couldn’t feel them here, as she’d felt the presence of the one in the amulet.

Chaol was pale, and kept glancing at the floor of the room.

This was where everything had happened. Where they’d murdered Sorscha. Where Dorian had been enslaved. Where, once upon a time, she’d signed her soul away to the king under a fake name, a coward’s name.

“Don’t blame me for the piss-poor messengers,” she said. “I sent word the day before I left.” She pulled out two objects from her cloak and looked over her shoulder at the guards, jerking her chin at Chaol. “Watch him.”

She strode to the throne and extended her hand to the king. He reached forward, the reek of him—

Valg. Human. Iron. Blood.

She dropped two rings into his palm. The clink of metal on metal was the only sound.

“The seal rings of the King and Crown Prince of Wendlyn. I’d have brought their heads, but … Immigration officials can get so pissy.”

The king plucked up one of the rings, his face stony. Lysandra’s jeweler had yet again done a stunning job of re-creating the royal crest of Wendlyn and then wearing down the rings until they looked ancient, like heirlooms. “And where were you during Narrok’s attack on Wendlyn?”