She killed for a cause. Will she die for it too?
An unlikely assassin struggles to escape a legendary bounty hunter in Anji Kills A King, the fantasy debut from author Evan Leikam—publishing May 13th with Tor Books. Join us for an extended preview, with new excerpts every Monday through May 5th.
Anji works as a castle servant, cleaning laundry for a king she hates. So when a rare opportunity presents itself, she seizes the chance to cut his throat. Then she runs for her life. In her wake, the kingdom is thrown into disarray, while a bounty bigger than anyone could imagine lands on her head.
On her heels are the fabled mercenaries of the Menagerie, whose animal-shaped masks are magical relics rumored to give them superhuman powers. It’s the Hawk who finds Anji first: a surly, aging swordswoman who has her own reasons for keeping Anji alive and out of the hands of her fellow bounty hunters, if only long enough to collect the reward herself.
With the rest of the Menagerie on their trail, so begins an alliance as tenuous as it is temporary—and a race against death that will decide Anji’s fate, and may change the course of a kingdom.
Chapter 7
Anji collapsed to the dirt, fine grit wafting into her nose. She coughed, more powder coating her blistered lips. Every muscle trembled with fatigue and bone-deep cold; her knees and ankles ached like they’d been hammered into shape by an angry blacksmith.
Unmoved by Anji’s attempts at conversation, the Hawk had set them on a southeasterly course out of Silverton with all haste. Once beyond the town’s sight, she’d jerked Anji away from the Rose Road and onto a smaller track that pointed like a dusty dagger toward the sawtooth peaks eating up the lightening sky.
They’d traveled in stony silence as the stars disappeared, the growing day revealing signs of strife that had plagued Yem and its people: a broken wagon left to weather on the road’s edge, a distant cluster of blackened huts in the lee of a craggy hilltop. They passed an abandoned farmstead, its windows broken out, the once-tilled land gone over to weeds and spiraling dust. Remnants of a windmill lay in a heap on the house’s south side, the sails torn and fluttering on the breeze.
The Hawk had bothered to speak only once, when Anji had stopped to gape at the remains of a man long dead, sitting tied to a fence post. A sign had been looped around his head, the word “debtor” spelled in bold letters. Under the letters was the same strange symbol Anji had seen on the wall in Silverton, the hollow orb over an downturned semicircle. Anji’s insides squirmed at the sight of a black bird pecking at the poor man’s intestines, which hung like blue-gray rags in the dirt. Mouth dry, Anji had asked what happened, but the Hawk had only muttered something about the Sun Wardens and ordered her to get a move on.
Now Anji lay shivering on the ground, curled on her side and listening to the lap of water on rock.
They’d stopped on the shore of a lake so perfectly circular it seemed drawn by a child. Its water reflected the cloud-speckled sky, not a ripple stirring its glassy surface. A copse of stunted trees pocked the lake’s far side, bisected by a rocky stream that weaved into the larger body of water. The road, still visible from their camp, wound like a brown snake into the mountains ahead, so large now Anji felt she could reach out and touch them.
The Hawk slid off her horse, removed the tent and bags and set them in a neat pile, then trudged to the mare and began unbuckling the saddle, seemingly unaffected by the hours they’d been traveling. Anji pulled her coat tighter, the thin leather doing little to warm her trembling limbs.
Must have been out of my mind, she thought, fleeing into the north.
On top of being captured, she was being dragged through the coldest part of the country. Through ceaseless, frigid wind that cut at her cheeks and clutched at her fingers. Here, the sun hung in the sky like an ornament rather than the warm orb it was in the south, soaking the back alley above her childhood home. She longed for afternoons spent on the basement steps, basking with her mother in the warm golden glow with books and cups of tea. Now, however, returning to the city’s warmth would herald only her torture and death. At least she wouldn’t be shivering when she was set into with the knives. Probably. She closed her eyes against the thought.
“You’re not laying there all night,” the Hawk said from above— Anji hadn’t heard the approaching boots over her chattering teeth—“Brush the horse down.”
“I’m your prisoner,” Anji said to the ground, “not a valet. See to your own damn horse.”
Anji gasped as pain erupted in her side. The Hawk drew her foot back again and Anji held her hands out to catch it, but the woman only sidestepped and gave another swift kick to her leg. Anji curled in on herself, waiting for another blow, but it didn’t land. Raspy breaths rattled through the Hawk’s old lungs.
“Brush it down or you don’t eat,” she said, tossing a horse brush to the ground by her head. “I don’t mind getting you back to the city scrawnier than you already are.” She turned and stomped toward the bundled tent.
Anji narrowed her eyes at the brush, but clambered to her knees and snatched it up. She shook her manacles at the Hawk. “It’d be a lot easier if I—”
Fabric cracked like a whip as the Hawk flapped out the length of gray canvas. “Your hands stay bound.”
“Why?” Anji said, standing. “Afraid of what I’ll do with them?”
“Terrified.”
Anji scowled. “I need to wash them.”
Without a word, the Hawk fished inside the large brown sack at her feet and tossed over a sloshing canteen.
Anji splashed some water onto her hands, wincing at the cold. She rubbed most of the day’s dirt away and dried her skin on her soiled pants. Not exactly refreshing, but it would have to do.
“Thank you,” she said, setting the canteen against a rock. “See? You can be civil after all.”
“Stop pestering me and get on with—” The Hawk sputtered and twisted away, hacking and coughing so hard she had to screw her eyes shut.
“Hey, what—”
The woman held up a gloved hand, as though warding Anji away. Anji was too transfixed to think of doing anything other than staring.
“You keep coughing like that. Are you sick?”
The Hawk’s head wagged, nose red, tears running down her wrinkled cheeks. “Just brush the damned horse.” She coughed once more, spat something into the dirt, and set to pitching the tent as though nothing had happened.
Eyebrows raised, Anji crossed the camp. The horse’s tail twitched as she approached, and she made sure to stay within its line of sight.
Last thing I need right now is a hoof to the chest.
“You’re a pretty thing,” she said, touching her palm to the mare’s glistening coat. “Been a rough time for you? Same here, but we’ll get you brushed down and well-fed. How’s that sound?” The horse lowered her head toward the tufts of heather underfoot. Anji looked around at the Hawk, who tore her gaze back to the half-finished tent.
“What’s her name?”
“Didn’t bother giving her one.”
“Every horse should have a name.”
“Call her what you like,” said the Hawk. She snatched up a fist-sized rock and began hammering a stake into the tent’s corner flap.
Anji studied the mare’s brown coat, noting the flattened hairs where the Hawk had cinched the saddle too tight. Her overgrown mane shone inky black where it wasn’t matted with road dust. She whickered and bobbed her head, one eye rolling toward the level plains opposite the mountains.
Kaia and Libby, Anji’s only friends in the laundry, loved a good scandal. They’d all hardly been introduced before the pair had begun gossiping about the girl Anji had replaced. Raven-haired and sulky, the girl had a habit of staring out of windows at the city beyond the castle walls, at the streets the servants were forbidden to walk. A diligent but quiet worker, she’d kept to herself, hardly interested in making friends or causing a fuss. One night, however, she’d slipped into the laundresses’ sleeping quarters well after Matron had ordered them all to douse their lamps. She’d thought, apparently, that she’d gotten away with being out past curfew, but Matron had been awake and waiting for her. The girl had been locked in the castle dungeons for a week, then demoted to cleaning garderobes and toilets. They later found out, through the endless chain of castle gossip, that the girl had been out with a guard she’d met, carousing in upper Happerdam.
The escapade had caused quite the stir at first, but apart from Kaia and Libby, the other laundresses had developed a habit of falling silent whenever the subject had come up. Before long, even Kaia and Libby had let the gossip die. But Anji had spent many restless nights thinking about the girl. All she’d wanted was a night to herself, away from the castle’s confines. The servants were an embarrassment, something to be hidden away from local gentry and visiting nobles, but the girl had simply not wanted to be a thing ill-used and ill-kept, even for one night. She’d been a trapped, tamed thing, at the behest of those who thought her less than deserving of freedom.
“Molli,” she said, patting at the mare’s back. “How about Molli? You like that one, girl?”
Molli only inched forward to get at a fresh bundle of yellow grass.
“Poor girl,” Anji said, “stuck out in the middle of nowhere with a mean old woman.”
The Hawk snorted at her back, but said nothing.
Anji raked the brush against Molli’s flank, and after some time she felt the tension leak out from her neck and shoulders. The work was soothing in a way, like folding linens. Just a series of monotonous motions that eventually left her with a job done. She’d found a sort of comfort in that, locked away for hours in the stuffy confines of the castle basements, brick walls sweating, the reek of soiled sheets and mildewy wash basins thick in the air. She’d been kept there so long she could bring the image up like a stage play in her mind: fourteen servants in matching homespun lined up along rickety tables, scalding water slopping in giant tubs at their backs while they repeated the same motions over and over. Gossip and chatter weaving in and out of their work, Kaia the chief instigator. Anji would participate as she liked, but the hours passed without a word were like traces of gold in black rock. The crinkle of fresh sheets, the smell of lavender and rose petals, cotton and silk chafing at her fingertips.
Molli’s left flank finished, Anji started on the right. She leveled a look over the horse’s back, at the Hawk now marching back from the shoreline, her pot sloshing with water. Anji hadn’t even noticed the woman had left.
The Hawk settled on crossed legs in front of the finished tent, dug a bundle out of the burlap sack, and began pulling apart strips of dried meat. Her hands trembled despite the black gloves she always wore.
“Can’t we start a fire?”
“No.”
“It’s freezing, I can’t keep—”
“No fires. Anyone searching would spot us too easily.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Anji, shaking her head. “You killed your own friend—”
“He wasn’t my—”
“And then you killed three royal guardsmen.” Anji threw up her hands, her manacles clinking.
“They were trying to take you.”
“But the constables in Silverton—you weren’t worried about them. Why?”
“Because they—” A muscle twitched in the Hawk’s jaw. Without looking at Anji, she said, “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
Anji shrugged a shoulder and kept brushing.
“You could put up a barrier,” she said, pulling a knot of horse hair out of the brush. “Something maxial? If you can keep me tied like this I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to—”
“If I could do that don’t you think I would have by now?” said the Hawk, wrapping a portion of meat into a wad of brown paper. She scratched at the leather covering her neck and cleared her throat.
“You’ve been coughing,” said Anji. “I’m only saying, a fire would—”
“I’m fine,” snapped the Hawk. “Get to my age and we’ll see if you don’t let out the occasional cough.”
“I think you’re afraid.”
“Fear keeps a body breathing.”
The words caught Anji off guard. A memory flitted through her mind like a bird, of her and her mother nestled together in the rocking chair on their front stoop, her mother’s nail gliding under a line of text while she read out loud, as Anji had nodded off to sleep in her embrace.
“That’s Gale Summering,” said Anji, “from the Fireheart Chronicles. Book three, right?”
For an instant, their eyes met, deep brown and ancient green. Then the Hawk snatched up the blue satchel and, to Anji’s surprise, opened it like any ordinary sack. She fished out a paper-wrapped bundle, tied the sack up with a deft motion, and set it back down.
“What happens if they catch up to us?”
The Hawk slipped a knife from her belt and sliced the package open, held it up to her nose, frowning. “Who?”
“The Menagerie,” said Anji, laying a hand on Molli’s neck as she shied away.
Something rustled behind Anji and she whipped around, eyes wide, but it was only a snow-white raven lifting off from a boulder and away toward the mountain peaks. She felt a hollow ache in her stomach as she watched it disappear into the lightening sky.
The Hawk folded the package back together and stowed it once more in the blue satchel, sealing it tight with a flick of her wrist. “We fight over you, I expect.”
“And you’ll kill them all? People you’ve known and worked with for years? Your own friends?”
“Three against one is foolish.”
“You took on three of the king’s own yesterday,” said Anji, still not quite believing the words as she said them.
The Hawk lifted a bony shoulder. “They weren’t the Menagerie.”
“So you are afraid,” said Anji. “You don’t think you can win.”
“I didn’t say that either.”
“I hope they kill you.”
The Hawk cleared her throat and pulled out a hand-sized hunk of brown bread. She broke off a piece and shoved it in her mouth.
Anji watched the Hawk eat, ignoring the empty rumble in her gut. “Why aren’t you with them anymore? The Menagerie?”
“Not your concern.”
“Sounds like my concern,” said Anji. “For all I know they’re coming to save me from you.”
The Hawk leveled a look at her, chewing in a quick rhythm. “Think you’d be better off with them?” she said, tearing off another piece. “They’d start torturing you long before Linura.”
Anji shook her head. “The Menagerie aren’t torturers. They’re warriors, bound by a strict code of honor.”
Still chewing, the Hawk rolled her eyes, but Anji went on, “I saw you all together once, walking a pair of prisoners through the Water Gate. You had them chained on top of a cart so everyone could see. And the Bear… I’ve never seen a woman so tall, so… regal. Like she was cut right out of a story.” Anji glanced at the Hawk. “One of Gale Summering’s, maybe. Anyway, I’d never seen even one of you before, apart from the dolls some of the other kids had, and there you all were, right in the middle of Mudtown.”
“Dolls,” said the Hawk under her breath.
Anji continued, brushing a difficult knot from Molli’s mane. “The crowd was so thick I could hardly see, all cheering and shoving. The Bear called the Ox over and they stopped and waved and tossed out a handfuls of Celdia. Then the Goat and the Lynx and… and you. You all waved and even though you were wearing masks I swore I could see you smiling.”
“Likely Goat was,” said the Hawk, leaning back on her palms. “He loves bringing prisoners in. Like a parade, every time we came home.”
“You were out catching murderers,” said Anji, as though she were explaining the concept to a child. “And rapists and corrupt politicians. Why wouldn’t you be happy to bring them to justice?”
“Do you even know what that word means, girl?”
That caught Anji short. She narrowed her eyes and said, “It means someone gets what was coming to them.”
The Hawk rubbed at the bridge of her nose.
“You’re a fool if you believe they’re in it for anything but the cruelty they’re allowed. We followed our tenets, for a time… but they’ve been twisted as the Wardens have gained power.” The Hawk measured out another sliver of meat, portioned a hunk of bread, and set them on a bare rock at her side, gesturing for Anji to eat. “Does your song mention Lynx’s affinity for skinning children? What about the Bear? Any lyrics about her boiling debtors alive?”
As grisly as the words were, Anji chose not to believe them. What did this woman know? She’d likely been thrown out for being a crochety old bitch. “And what do you do it for?”
“I did it… for the money, of course. Assuming the price was right.”
Anji gave Molli a final glance over before stowing the brush on the saddle. She strode around to sit opposite the Hawk, wincing at the pain in her back. “A million Rhoda,” she said, and snatched up the meat and bread. She crammed the lot into her mouth, ignored the cramp in her jaw as she chewed and continued, “Never understood how little slips of paper could pass as money. Silver I understand—it’s valuable by itself. But paper? Doesn’t feel as real, somehow. I escaped with twenty-four Celdia. Took me three years to stash it all away. Even as I left, I knew it wasn’t enough to get to Conifor.” She picked up a stone and tossed it into the dirt. “Should have waited till I had a full Rhoda at least.”
The Hawk sniffed.
“Suppose it’d have been easier to hide from you. Could’ve folded it up and hidden it in my shoe or something. What are you going to use all that money for?”
“We’re not here to get to know each other.”
“It’s a long trip. Might as well talk to pass the time.”
“I don’t make friends with assassins.”
Anji guffawed, and a sliver of gristle shot onto her knee. She flipped it off. “If I’m an assassin after killing one man—one who deserved it, I might add—what does that make you?” She pointed to the pair of swords sheathed at the Hawk’s belt. “How many throats have you cut with those?”
“You know nothing about me, girl,” said the Hawk. “I’m through with all that nonsense.”
Anji rattled her manacles. “Could have fooled me.”
“I think that’s enough out of you.”
There’s the crack, Anji thought.
“Shame we don’t have any arrows to hand. You’ll have to skewer them the old-fashioned way.” She widened her eyes. “But no, I forgot—you quit. You’re through with such violence, aren’t you?”
“I’m warning you, girl.”
“Of course,” Anji said, clapping her hands together, “you’re a walking storybook. A wise old warrior, so tired after a life of gutting peasants and chasing after criminals… but you’ve hung it all up, right? Now you’re sailing straight. You’re better than all that now.”
“That’s none of your—”
“Oh, this is perfect,” Anji went on, cackling. Pain lanced through her nose when she laughed, but she ignored it. “A washed-up bounty hunter coming out of her well-deserved retirement just for me. It must be so difficult for you, after swearing off torture and murder for good, to kill four people just to bring me all the way back to—”
“I said shut your mouth!”
The Hawk rose to her knees, chest heaving, knife drawn at her side as the shout echoed across the lake.
“Ah, ah,” said Anji, manacles clinking as she patted her chest. “Worth more alive, remember?”
“I could cut your stinking tongue out.”
How is she so fast? Anji thought. Aunt Belle couldn’t draw a knife like that even in her prime. Anji felt that rush of familiar panic, like a rising wave. Perhaps she’d pushed a bit too far. “I’d prefer the gag, myself,” she said lightly, though her pulse still pounded in her ears.
The Hawk settled back, her lips a hard line.
They sat in silence but for the howling wind, the flapping canvas at the Hawk’s back. Anji wiped her greasy hands on her soiled pants. It wasn’t much to eat, but it gave her something to focus on apart from the slow dread creeping into her every moment, rising like a high tide with her chained to the beach.
“If it makes you feel any better, I can’t kill you either.”
“I wasn’t much worried about that.”
“I mean the tether,” Anji said, fingering the invisible binding. “It’s a maxial charm, right? It’ll never break if you die without the disarming incantation.” She chuckled. “I’d have to haul your corpse around, still on the run. Not exactly a nice thought.”
A terse silence passed, then the Hawk said, “How would a laundress know that?”
“You hear all sorts of things in a castle,” said Anji airily. She jerked her head toward the blue satchel. “That bag is maxial too, isn’t it?”
The Hawk said nothing, but Anji pressed on.
“The coin in there, the one you said felt full of maxia? Well, it is. My mother—” Anji bit her lip, then said, “She found it. She gave it to me before she died.”
The Hawk’s mouth twisted, but she looked away, clearly uninterested in Anji’s sad story.
“Can I have it back?” Anji said. “It doesn’t do anything else, and it’s the only thing I have left to remember—”
“The coin stays in the bag.”
Anji got to her knees. “Please, I can’t sleep without it,” said Anji. “It’s mine, and I—”
The Hawk locked Anji’s gaze. “Nothing is yours,” she said. “Not anymore.”
“I’m not going to do anything with it,” Anji said, hating herself for the desperation coating the words. “I just want to hold it.” She inched closer, licking her lips despite the cold. “Please.”
“You need to get back—”
“Just for a moment, I just want—”
“I said get back!”
The Hawk rose to her knees once more, hand clamped to a sword hilt. Her shoulders rose and fell in a rapid pace, like she’d just run a full sprint. Anji found herself kneeling before her, stopped short by the ugly twist of the woman’s mouth, the hatred filling her green eyes.
“Fine,” said Anji, settling back with a sigh. She wiped at the corner of one stinging eye. “I just thought—”
“Shut up.”
“Would you stop interrupting me for one fucking—”
“I said quiet!” the Hawk hissed, gathering up her mask. She slipped it on and rose to her feet, her hand still squeezed around her sword’s hilt. “Someone’s coming.”
Anji narrowed her eyes. She heard nothing save for the clap of water on the shore and the ever-present wind.
But no, the bump and thud of wagon wheels became barely discernable over the breeze, bringing with it the sound of low voices.
Without thought, Anji bounded across the camp, putting herself between Molli’s flank and the Hawk’s back. “Who is it?”
“Quiet,” said the Hawk.
A heartbeat later, the wagon crested over the slight rise ahead. It gleamed brilliant white, its gigantic golden wheels flashing in the sun. Anji’s mouth fell open at the sight of what drove the wagon toward her.
A pair of monstrous black birds pulled against their tack, their hooked, pale yellow beaks the length of Anji’s arm. Their heads bobbed with every step, white irises with pits of black holding Anji in their gaze, studying her with an eerie intelligence. Taller than any horse, they strode on slender, scaled legs, three-toed feet digging grooves in the earth. A squawk issued from one of them, echoing over the low-lying hills.
On the wagon’s flatbed sat a cage made of iron and dark wood.
Though Anji couldn’t quite tell what lay inside the cage, she could make out the figure sitting on the wagon’s box. A bent old woman in plush robes of purest yellow.
A Sun Warden.
Chapter 8
The wagon trundled down the slope, rocking side to side. Whatever lay in the cage shookwith the motion, piled like a mound of filthy rags. Something hairy and gangly draped through the gap between two of the bars.
“Not a word,” murmured the Hawk. But for the first time in days, Anji didn’t feel much like talking.
Her only true brush with religion had been born out of necessity. In exchange for a bit of food, she’d attended sermons given by the poor priests of the Order of Inheritance in their dusty cathedral. The Order’s weekly allowance of potato bread had kept her from starving as a street urchin more than once. But where those priests had kind, jovial faces, the woman approaching now could have melted a candle without flame just by looking at it.
The Sun Warden hunched forward, her face pallid and fixed in a heavy frown, cheeks and lips sagging with wrinkles. Dark sacks welled under each heavy-lidded eye, contrasted with thinning snow-white hair she’d pulled back in a tight bun. She hunched forward, neck outstretched, elbows perched on her knees, the oversized robe swallowing the subtler angles of her body. Her gray eyes narrowed as the wagon drew within twenty strides, darting from Molli to the tent to the half-open bags at the Hawk’s feet, then finally snapping to Anji.
At the Warden’s side sat a reedy man in a waist-length white coat and black breeches that flapped in the wind. His silver hair was combed over a balding pate. Anji thought she’d never seen a man with a face so set in a grimace, like everything he saw was the color and smell of shit. His eyes were a purple so dark and brilliant they seemed to dim the light of day. A Maxia, so infused with time’s mysterious essence it was impossible to guess his true age. He looked into Anji’s eyes, and she felt the wind that had been buffeting them settle for an instant before picking back up again.
The Warden leaned over and whispered something in his ear, still glaring at Anji and the masked woman as the wagon came to a stop.
The Hawk stepped forward with a palm raised high, but she kept her other hand close to her belt. She dipped her mask and ran a slender finger down the middle of its face.
“Warmth to you, Illuminess,” she said, her mask muffling her voice. “My heart lifts to see a Warden of Sun so far—”
“You travel without your companions, Hawk,” said the Warden, her voice cutting the air like a knife. “Explain. And know you speak before Illuminess Hectate, Fifth Column Cleric of the Sun Wardens, under the One’s ever-watching eye.”
Anji chanced a glance at the Hawk, who inclined her head and went on with even more deference.
“My superior was ordered by High Cleric Escadora to dispatch the Menagerie, Illuminess. As to my traveling alone, it serves only to bolster the Menagerie’s precision and efficiency. To better spread Their Warmth.”
“Indeed,” said Hectate. “You have proof of this order?”
The Hawk produced a thick piece of folded vellum, atop which she placed a wad of Rhoda fastened into a shining silver clip.
Both figures atop the cart might have been statues for all they moved. After an interminable period of stillness and silence that made Anji want to scream, however, the Warden held out a hand.
The Maxia muttered a strange, complex series of words. The slip of paper and the Rhoda floated out of the Hawk’s fingers, across the space between them, and into Hectate’s waiting palm.
Without acknowledgment of the sheer amount of money the Hawk had just handed over, the Warden slipped the Rhoda into her robes and unfolded the paper, her eyes darting across the surface. After a moment of windy silence, she creased the vellum and tossed it spinning back to the Hawk, who snatched it out of the air.
“Your prisoner,” said the Warden, “of what is he accused?”
“I cannot say, Illuminess,” said the Hawk, her mask twitching toward Anji, who took an involuntary step back.
The Warden’s eyes widened. She drew herself up straighter and said, “You dare withhold information from me?”
“I keep to strict tenets, Illuminess,” said the Hawk, her posture not folding one bit. Anji’s brows rose. If anything, the woman was standing even straighter. “I am forbidden from announcing my charge’s crimes.”
The urge to admit she’d been the one to kill Rolandrian flashed through Anji like a bolt of lightning. The Hawk was obviously terrified of the Sun Warden and her Maxia companion. How satisfying it would have been to defy the woman in front of her betters. To feel the waves of disbelief rolling off her captor, to finally have the upper hand, to do something of her own accord. But that tiny victory would die in an instant. There was no telling what twisted tortures the Maxia could summon while keeping Anji alive for the real show in Linura. Anji almost laughed: the only thing keeping her safe at present was the Menagerie’s stupid tenets.
But why was she willing to break them before? Why not now?
The Maxia leaned to whisper in Hectate’s ear.
With an impatient wave of her hand, Hectate leaned against the bars of the cage at their backs. “Have it your way then, hunter. I care not what the vermin did.”
“Of course, Illuminess.”
The Warden reached into her robes and drew out a bulging, fist-sized sack of silken gray cloth, tied at the top by a white string. With twitching fingers, she unclasped the string, then withdrew a bright blue marble of rock sugar. She slipped it in her mouth, sucked loudly, and said, “Do you have a scrying sheet?”
“I do not, Illuminess,” said the Hawk. “I’m afraid that privilege rests only with my cadre’s commander.”
The Warden tutted around her candy. “Unwise,” she said, more to herself than to the Hawk. “So you’ve not heard… One of your companions was found dead near Olangar. The Lynx.”
The Hawk’s mask twitched side to side as she said, “I had not, Illuminess. A tragic loss to my cadre.”
“Tragic, yes. The report suggests the nature of his wounds was… unnatural. Butchered by his own arrow.”
“Many dark forces plague the land of late, Illuminess,” said the Hawk.
“ ‘Dark forces.’ ” The Warden bit into the candy, the hollow crunch sending a cringe up Anji’s spine. “Vagrancy is the plague, hunter,” she said, swirling the pieces around her ancient mouth. “Neither spirit nor demon walk the earth without the One’s design. Your friend was likely robbed, raped, left to bleed out on the rocks.” She swallowed and waved a hand. “The price paid for arrogance.”
“Of the Design are we so made to serve.”
Anji had given up trying to figure out the deeper meaning of this conversation. Her gaze drifted past the Maxia to the cage at his back, the thing inside now shifting, its matted fur tangled with bits of straw and slivered wood.
“You,” said the Warden, pointing a gnarled finger at Anji. Anji blinked and looked around. She hadn’t realized she’d been stepping toward the cage. She had to find out what was inside.
The Warden popped another rock sugar between her lips. It clacked against her teeth as she asked, “Have you seen a Dredger, boy?”
Biting her lip, Anji shot her gaze to the cage once more.
The Hawk gripped her arm above the elbow, her fingers digging into Anji’s skin. Anji hissed a breath, white pain shooting through her sore muscle.
“Answer when the Illuminess speaks to you.”
Anji leveled a look at the Illuminess, now stowing the bag of sweets back into her robes. The woman swept a blue-veined hand toward the cage, her lip curling. “Quickly, Alphoronse, the criminal would like to see. A demonstration before we depart?” She jabbed her finger at Anji once more. “You wish to see the fruits of idleness, child? The sequelae born of the earthly disease of delight?”
Still in the Hawk’s grip, Anji staggered toward the cage, into which she was now afforded a clearer view.
The bottom of the enclosure was filled with soiled straw, black and brown and soaking wet. A fresh gust of wind pushed the stench of stale urine into Anji’s face, making her nose crinkle, her eyes water. White-winged snap flies buzzed in lazy circles around the inside of the cage, flitting from the bars to the snout of the creature inside, its eyes yellow and piercing and staring a thousand miles away. Its mouth hung in a rictus snarl, bile and pus and shining saliva coating its thin gray lips, its pale gums where mangled teeth stuck out at awkward angles like broken fence posts.
“Miserable thing,” said Hectate, following Anji’s gaze.
“Where are you taking them?” asked Anji.
“Them? There’s only one, you stupid boy.”
Anji gestured at the cage. “I don’t know what gender they are.”
Hectate sputtered laughter, sugary saliva splatting against the wagon bed’s boards. “As though you looked upon a baker in his shop! You’d so soon grant personhood to such vileness? Better to befriend a Scorphice in its den. And you can thank the One there’s iron between you and the wretch too, else it might have your face for a meal. Wicked, gluttonous, despicable creatures, the lot of them. We’re taking it from town to town, to show the populace the scum slinking under their feet. Folk must see with eyes as yet unknowing the consequence of indulgence, of meddling with the One’s own flora, plumbing the depths where Their Warmth does not shine.” She rapped a knuckle on the cage’s top, and the Dredger flinched, letting out a pitiful snarl.
“Observe,” she said, waving a hand at Alphoronse.
The Maxia murmured again, eyes flashing, and a swirl of dust lifted from the ground, collected in a disc, and hovered to the grated top of the Dredger’s cage. With a soft thwump, the disc fell inside, sprinkling dust over the Dredger’s back and the splintered cage bottom.
The Dredger unfolded like a spider, its gangly limbs snapping and cracking, the matted fur and hard bits of scale that ran down its arms and legs glistening in the light. With a snarl, the creature was on all fours, running its snout along the wooden planks of the cage, snorting up the dust and grit, mewling and panting and spraying dirt up past the bars. The noise startled the giant birds in their harnesses, tack jingling as they flapped their miniscule wings.
“Desperate for the stuff,” said Hectate. She let out a throaty cackle, watching the creature, her eyes wide with fascination and hatred. “They’ll snuff up anything resembling a powder. Not too bright once the transformation has taken place. Like I said”—she grinned, her teeth shiny with sugary spit—“gone to animal madness.”
Anji had to look away—her stomach churned at the sight of the poor thing, still snuffling about and now letting out a frustrated sob, its emaciated shoulders racking back and forth as it combed every last inch of the cage floor, leaving wet streaks against the wood. A dull pain radiated from her elbow. She’d nearly forgotten the Hawk’s hand still clenched around her arm, fingers digging like worms into her flesh. The Hawk stared silently at the Dredger, rigid and unmoving.
“Would you let go?” Anji said, jerking away, and to her surprise, the Hawk released her grip. Anji nearly tripped over her feet, massaging the sore spot on her arm.
Hectate inclined her head at the Hawk. “Everything you hate, isn’t it, Hawk? Perhaps when you’re through with this one you could help us round them up.”
“What does it want?” said Anji, her curiosity battling the unease building in her chest.
“Quiet,” snapped the Hawk, but Hectate waved the question away.
“Peace, Hawk,” she said. “We are on a mission to spread knowledge, after all. Alphoronse?”
The Maxia cleared his throat. “It is addicted to a stimulating powder,” he said. His voice was much higher-pitched than Anji had anticipated. “A drug which has gained in popularity these past years and recently been outlawed. Apart from general euphoria, it bolsters mental acuity, provides endless energy, and enhances eyesight, hearing, and taste. With it you can work and fight for days without sleep, though the eventual physical toll it takes on the body is substantial, as you can see. It has an incredibly short half-life, resulting in a withdrawal which makes the user lethargic, yet strangely affable and loquacious. Amazing concoction, really—the refining process consists of—”
“That will do,” Hectate cut in, slicing at the air with a wrinkled hand. “Don’t teach the lout how to make the stuff. Fascinating as the effects are,” she sneered at the cage and the Dredger now curled back into a ball at its corner, “one need only observe the end result. Monsters, all. I say we eradicate the lot, save what we use for demonstration. Hopeless, pathetic curs racing to the grave. And all for some ground-up coral.” She slapped a hand against the cage, her voice rising. “Was it worth throwing your life away?”
“Coral?” said Anji, ignoring the tension emanating off the Hawk still hovering at her side.
The Maxia’s mouth twisted. “Coal coral, to be exact. Native to the Kalafran coast. The polyps themselves have no effect, but the black exoskeletons are harvested, dried, then ground to powder. The Spurs call it Rail.”
Anji had no idea what a Spur was, but before she could ask, Hectate continued.
“Ingenious, I’ll admit,” she said, “what these addicts do for a high. They dive for it, risking reef sharks and sting jellies. Coal coral only grows on certain types of rock, volcanic stuff…” She snapped her fingers at Alphoronse.
“Basalt, Illuminess.”
“Basalt, yes,” said Hectate, “horrid black stone—unnatural. Those mangy Inheritance priests used to build those awful cathedrals out of it.” She sniffed. “Gaudy structures.”
Anji thought that was rich, coming from a woman in a robe of such a bright yellow she’d have had to shade her eyes if not for the bank of dark clouds rolling in from the west, eating up the sun and its light. Hectate hobbled back to her bench, sat, and slipped the sack of candy out again.
“Listen to us,” she said, squinting at the lowering sun, “prattling on.” She slid another piece of rock sugar between her lips. “We’d best hasten to Silverton while the weather agrees with the road.”
The Hawk inclined her head and shoved Anji out of the way as Alphoronse got to his seat and gathered up the reins. He twirled the leather around one slender hand and looked around the camp as though seeing it for the first time, his violet eyes finally landing on the Hawk.
“Forgive me if I’m mistaken,” he said slowly, “but I was under the impression that of your cadre, only the Goat was trained in maxia.” He gestured toward the invisible tether around Anji’s ankle. “You’ve managed quite an impressive pair of charms— strong, both of them. And efficient for one unattended.”
The Hawk didn’t flinch. “An undeserved boon from our esteemed leader, Maxia Alphoronse. The High Cleric saw fit to teach me charms of Seizure and Sealing. You know how he rewards those who please him.”
“Indeed,” said Alphoronse. “I do, however, detect a third pooling on your person? Perennial, but weak…”
“A trinket,” said the Hawk, “of mere sentimental value, I assure you.”
This seemed to be enough answer for the Maxia, though he didn’t look like he quite believed the Hawk. Anji wondered how the Menagerie compared to the Wardens. Where did the Maxia fit in? And had the Hawk left her old companions or not? If she hadn’t, why had she killed the Lynx? She felt like a tiny boat in a roiling storm, though for now at least it seemed she was undetected by the forces blowing about.
“You are full of surprises, Hawk,” Hectate said as Alphoronse flicked the reins. The wagon rolled forward. “Fare well with your charge.” The Maxia turned to cast a final glower at Anji, then snapped the birds into a full trot, up to the road above and on to Silverton.
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Anji Kills A King
Excerpted from Anji Kills A King, copyright © 2025 by Evan Leikam.
