The Sin Eater's Daughter Read online

  * * *

  I did as she asked. I entered the barren room where my best friend was tied to a chair, his mouth cruelly gagged with dark cloth that cut into his cheeks, his eyes streaming with tears. His wrists were already red where he’d pulled against the ropes that bound him. He’d wet himself; the front of his breeches were stained dark with urine and I blushed, ashamed for him. His head shook wildly from side to side as I approached. He was fifteen, the same age as me. The queen stood in the doorway and watched as I placed my hands on his neck, the only exposed skin I could see. When nothing happened, I thought the Gods had intervened, proving him innocent. Then he shuddered, his body convulsing and jerking, and I pulled my hands away, but it was too late. Blood trickled from his nose and his mouth, and he was dead before me. It had taken less than a minute for my touch to kill him.

  I was still staring at him with wide, unseeing eyes when the queen cleared her throat.

  “You needed to be the one to do it. To see what it meant to be chosen. You cannot take it back, not now. This is your destiny.”

  * * *

  Two harvests have passed since I executed my best friend. Twenty-four Tellings. Twenty-four times I’ve had to walk into the room Tyrek was dragged from and take the poison that made it possible for my touch to kill him. I’ve killed thirteen traitors, including the men today and Tyrek, in those twenty-four moons. For Lormere. For my people. For my Gods.

  Because I am Daunen Embodied, the reborn daughter of the Gods. The world has always been ruled by two Gods: Dæg, Lord of the Sun, who rules in the day, and his wife, Næht, Empress of Darkness, who rules the nights. And once, millennia and millennia ago, when Lormere was nothing more than a collection of feuding villages, greedy Næht decided that ruling the night was not enough for her. She hatched a plan and seduced her husband, tiring him so much he couldn’t rise. Then she took the skies for her own and ruled alone, plunging all the world into darkness. Nothing lived, nothing thrived, and death was everywhere without the Lord of the Sun to light the world and give warmth and joy to the people.

  But as Næht seduced Dæg she conceived a daughter, Daunen. And when Daunen was born, her song as she entered the world woke Dæg from his slumber and he rose back to his place in the sky. Dæg’s return brought light and life back to Lormere, and in his gratitude he vowed that whenever Lormere needed her most, he would return the spirit of his daughter to the world as a symbol of hope. They would know her by her red hair, hair the color of sunrise, and by her voice, a voice so beautiful it could awaken a God. They would call her Daunen Embodied in her returned form, and she would be a blessing to the land.

  However, Daunen was the child of two Gods, light and dark, life and death. When Dæg vowed to return his daughter to the world, Næht insisted Daunen Embodied must represent her, too. So Daunen exists as the balance between both God and Goddess; she must be death on behalf of her mother, as she is life on behalf of her father. Each moon, Daunen Embodied must prove herself chosen by taking the Morningsbane and living despite it. And she must keep the poison in her skin so that her touch would mean death to traitors, as her mother’s touch is death.

  * * *

  Of the two guards with me on the day the queen had me kill Tyrek, one chose to leave his role almost immediately. But before he did, he told me why the prisoners screamed so loudly. He’d waited until Dorin had gone to fetch my supper and then he leaned in, as close as he dared, smiling viciously.

  “You want to know why they scream?” He didn’t wait for my response. “The queen’s men cut them. They take the bluntest knife they can find and they cut them, wherever they please.” He grinned. “And in those cuts they pour brandy. And it stings. By the Gods, how it stings. Brandy burns, little girl. It’s liquid fire in the throat; in a cut, a deep, messy cut, it’s hotter than Dæg himself. Not nice. Not nice at all. Sometimes they do it again and again, for the especially bad ones.”

  He’d paused, licking his lips as he watched my face to see how deep his words cut me.

  “But that’s not why they scream. They scream because of you. Because no matter what the torturers do to them, it’s nothing compared to what you’ll do. So tell me, little girl, does that explain to you why they scream?”

  I never told anyone what he’d told me. I’d seen enough death on my account. Sometimes I can show mercy. Like the queen.

  I’m standing in my solar, scrubbing my hands, rinsing, repeating it again and again in the small basin, when there’s a knock on the door.

  “Enter.” I reach for a cloth to dry them, though they still don’t feel clean, as I turn to greet my visitor.

  Dorin stands before me, bending into a small bow.

  “Forgive the interruption. A hunt has been called, my lady.”

  “Now?” I look at him. I can’t think of anything I want to do less than chase an innocent creature through the woods. I continue rubbing the cloth over my hands, hoping his next words will be to tell me that I don’t have to go, that’s he’s merely letting me know the queen’s plans for the day.

  “The queen has insisted you attend, my lady.”

  I turn away, closing my eyes and then opening them again when the eyes of the dead men stare back at me. Why is there a hunt today? We rarely hold them at all, but today … ? I want to go to my temple. I want to close the doors and think of nothing. I want my hands to feel clean.

  “I’ll leave you to prepare, my lady,” Dorin says, and retreats.

  I stare after him, a knot forming in my stomach. There’s no point trying to send a message to plead my absence, to beg to be allowed to go to my temple. She knows I’ll come. I could have sent one man or a hundred to their deaths this morning, and still I’ll go because she has ordered me to. My family can’t afford to lose the coin and food she sends to them each moon, and she’d withhold it if I displeased her—she has before. She knows I won’t risk my sister suffering any more than she has to on my behalf; she knows the guilt I feel for leaving Maryl behind. She knows me, and I’m a good little puppet, easy to control if you know which strings to pull—and the string attached to my sister is the one to tug for my obedience. But even if that weren’t the case, she speaks with the Gods’ authority. It is their will that I take life. If this is what they will, I can’t challenge it.

  When I leave the room, my cloak around my shoulders, only Dorin waits for me.

  “Where’s Rivak?” I ask, looking for my other guard.

  Dorin purses his lips. “Reassigned, my lady.”

  Today keeps getting better and better, I think to myself, though I’m not surprised. Almost all of my guards have left within a few moons of taking on their duty. Though the men the queen chooses are trained to kill, quickly and without mercy, only one man I know is strong enough to stay in the company of a girl who could kill him with a single touch … The rest petition for reassignment, and it’s always granted. It’s my belief that the queen prefers it that way. After all, a guard who stayed with me might stop fearing me, might even grow fond of me and switch his allegiance to me. She could never allow that. Save for once—once she allowed it—though I doubt she realizes it.

  Dorin has been with me from the beginning. He’s older than the king, grizzled, streaks of gray in his neatly trimmed beard and at his temples. He has kept his hair long, wearing it tied at the nape of his neck, and his eyes are hazel and watchful. He is the consummate guard, gruff and professional, and I know we’re not friends, but we are something. I live in fear of the day he’ll be taken from me, too. We know each other’s movements now; it would be hard to wrong-foot him. Like a long-married couple we know how the other dances, and I don’t have to fear him making a mistake.

  “So it’s just you and me, then?” I say.

  “Temporarily, my lady. Trials were held yesterday and I believe the new guard will join us later today. I’m to take him through the role while you are at the hunt. The Queensguard will be your escort there, as always.”

  “Was Rivak reassigned after the Telling?�
� I say, trying to keep my voice level.

  “He requested to be moved some time ago, my lady, but the queen had not yet approved a new guard. I understand she has now.”

  “How long do you think this one will last?” I smile ruefully.

  “Not as long as you deserve, my lady. Come, we don’t want to keep Their Majesties waiting.” He smiles quickly, kindly, and I feel the knot inside my stomach tighten.

  He walks ahead of me down the stairs and I keep back, my hands by my sides as I follow carefully, praying to the Gods that I can keep him.

  * * *

  The party is assembled, the ladies clad in green and silver, the men in hunting blue and gold, and me in my scarlet cloak. The queen likes me in red; she believes it emphasizes my role, and so most of my gowns and cloaks are red. The dogs lope around the king, snapping their jaws, their eyes trained on him, waiting for his word. I hate those dogs, more than almost anything.

  They are different from the dogs in the village near where I grew up; they won’t cower at a cross word, or show their bellies for a kind one. These dogs have long, heavily muscled legs; their large heads are flat and broad. Part alaunt, part mastiff, part something wilder and deadlier, their fur is coarse, speckled and mottled with brown and gold. I’d get no pleasure from stroking them, even if they allowed it. Their mouths grin and leer, and there’s nothing behind their eyes—looking into them feels the same as looking into the eyes of the men I executed this morning. They are blank, without conscience, without soul.

  I know all about souls. Before I became Daunen Embodied I was the Sin Eater’s daughter.

  * * *

  The smell of the dogs fills the hall, musky and rancid with meat and death, and I see the queen cover her face with a delicate shawl. The dogs dislike dead flesh. They prefer to eat the life from their victims as they pull them down, and they are always eager to hunt. They know what it means to be gathered here, and their excitement, their pacing and circling, leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I hope today they aren’t hunting for a man, or a woman. I hope today they are hunting for an animal.

  When I first saw the queen set the dogs after a prisoner, a thief who’d plundered one of the lords’ manors, I nearly vomited my breakfast onto the floor of the hall. I knew she did it—the whole realm knew the queen’s punishments were unusually cruel—but to see them, smell them, hear them as they ripped the man apart was too much. Even for someone like me, it was too much. Dorin covered for me, telling the queen I had complained of being unwell all morning. I was sent back to bed to rest; a healer was dispatched to poke at me with a glass rod and feed me tea brewed with rank-smelling herbs. Since then I’ve been haunted by nightmares of the dogs coming after me, after my sister, after Tyrek, after Dorin. I wake bathed in my own sweat and shaking, convinced I can smell them in the room. No crime deserves that fate, no matter what the queen says. But then I’m sure the people would say the same about what I do, even if it is traitors to the realm that I execute.

  “Twylla,” the cold, clipped voice of the queen calls, and I dip into a low bow, a reaction born of the same instinct that makes a mouse cleave to the ground when it hears the hoot of an owl. “Blessed Telling,” she says, and the court murmurs it after her. “You may go to the temple after the hunt.”

  I lower my head in further acknowledgment. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  Two of her guards walk to my side, keeping an embarrassing amount of space between us. When the great wooden doors open we descend the stairs to the horses that are saddled and waiting, the queen and her guard, me and mine, and then the rest of the court.

  I climb onto the broad back of my mount without help; the Queensguard stand dumbly watching me struggle, then urge my horse forward to join the queen’s train. Horses are immune to Morningsbane, and I run my fingers through the tips of her mane where it falls onto my skirts. It’s pleasant to touch something warm, something living, and know she won’t suffer under my touch.

  Blank eyes staring, blood dripping onto stained wood.

  I shudder and my fingers tighten on the mare’s mane, but the action draws the queen’s gaze and I flick the hair away and wind the reins around my fingers instead.

  She leads us off ahead of the king and the hounds, and I breathe a soft sigh of relief. I’m glad today we ride out separately and don’t follow the men as they hunt, and I suspect I’m not the only one. The laughter of the dogs unsettles the horses even more than it does their riders. And there have been times when they’ve tired of their quarry and taken down a horse and rider instead.

  As we ride I gaze up at the mountains. We are bordered on three sides by them; they cradle the realm like a new mother would her child. The town of Lortune and the castle sit at the most easterly point of Lormere, and parts of the castle are built into the rocks, so it seems as though the sprawling outbuildings are born of the mountain itself and trying to escape it.

  “A natural fortress,” my mother once said. “Lormere will never fall because of the mountains.”

  We’re lucky with the geography of the kingdom, or so I’m told. The mountains make it impossible for anyone to invade us, and we have the vast and dense West Woods to shield us, too. We always have the high ground: The West Woods grow on an incline to the plateau where Lormere thrives, so we have the vantage point over our enemies.

  Beyond the West Woods lies the realm of Tregellan, our sworn enemy for a time. A hundred harvests ago we were locked in a bloody war with them, a war they started, but Lormere prevailed and a treaty of peace was signed by our royal family and the Tregellian council.

  Over the mountains at their most northerly, where the rock gives way to the outskirts of Tregellan, and stretching north and west until it meets the sea lies the lost kingdom of Tallith, virtually abandoned for half a millennium. All that’s left of it now are small hamlets locked into perpetual fights for land with their neighbors. Tallith was once the richest of all the kingdoms, back when Lormere was nothing more than a few feudal villages in the mountains governed by the queen’s ancestors. But after the royal dynasty died out, Tallith fell into ruin and the people left, at first in trickles and then in droves. Some settled in Tregellan and others traveled on, braving the woods and the height, and came to Lormere. It’s said that a quarter of Lormerians have Tallithi blood in them, and you can see the quirks sometimes, when a child is born with the Godseye or with the gray-blond hair the Tallithi were famed for.

  We ride in silence and the forest around us hushes as we make our pageant through the trees. Lormere is fertile, but the altitude means a lot of the land is best used for livestock. We can grow our own potatoes, turnips, parsnips, rye, and beans, but grain doesn’t thrive here. We have to import it from the north of Tregellan, where they have abundant farmland next to the river that separates Tregellan from Tallith. All of the fish and seafood for our table comes from Tregellan, too, fished from the river or brought upstream by the fishermen who brave the Tallithi Sea. It puts those foods at a premium. Before I came to the castle I’d never eaten white bread.

  There is a rustling in the trees to our left and we all turn; the Queensguard draw their swords. A moment later a pine marten bursts from a bush, chattering angrily as it shoots up into an old spruce. One of the ladies laughs softly and the guards re-sheath their swords, looking embarrassed. The queen rides before me, our guards forming a ring around us. Her long chestnut hair gleams in the dappled sunlight that falls through the gaps between the oak and linden and spruce trees.

  She is beautiful, her profile proud when she turns to check her convoy is in order. Her skin is pale and unblemished, her cheekbones high and her eyes dark, as are those of all her family. The royal line breeds dark, good looks; their blood stays true. It’s become the fashion at court for the ladies to mimic the royal coloring; those with pale hair try to color it using dyes made from bark and berries, with varying results, and more than one lady has nearly blinded herself adding atropa to her eyes in an attempt to obscure a blue or hazel iris. Next to
them, with my red hair and green eyes and freckled skin, I look like a being from another world. Which I suppose I am.

  * * *

  Deep in the woodland to the north of the castle a golden pavilion waits for us, pennants at each crest snapping when the breeze rushes past. Beneath the peaks, a long table is buckling under the weight of more food than the company could possibly consume: roast boar, candied duck, gingerbread dumplings and thick goulash, breads and puddings. Silken carpets imported from strange, exotic places cover the forest floor, and slippers for us line the edges. When the queen dismounts we do the same, exchanging our riding boots for slippers and taking our seats. As I take my seat on the right of the queen’s elaborate chair, pulling it as far from hers as I reasonably can, two of the serving girls glance at me, furiously exchanging whispers before the larger one pushes the other toward me. I look away, but not before I see the victorious friend smirk with satisfaction.

  “Some wine, my lady?” The girl forced to serve me hovers at a safe distance, holding a carafe in her hands.

  “No,” I say. “I’d like some water.”

  The girl bobs a dainty curtsy, hurrying off and returning with my water. As she approaches I stiffen, holding my body stock-still. She leans so far to pour it that she spills some onto the table and I watch as it soaks into the golden tablecloth, ruining the silk. She ignores the dark stain, instead scuttling back to her friend, where she resumes her whispering.

  When I first came to the castle and was told what would happen if I was touched, it made me feel special, powerful like the queen. No one could ever hit me, or pinch me, or take things from me again. It also made me spiteful. When I didn’t get what I wanted I would waggle my fingers at the servants, delighted when they blanched and tripped over themselves to grant my requests. But back then I’d thought the purpose of the Morningsbane was to prove my worthiness. The servants realized, though, that I was a weapon. I can’t blame them for their hatred now; if I hadn’t been so naive, I might not have been so cruel to them. But it’s better for them if they do stay away, lest Tyrek’s fate befall them, too.