This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews: Chapter 10 - Reactor

When Maggie wakes up cold, filthy, and naked in a gutter, it doesn’t take her long to recognize Kair Toren, a city she knows intimately from the pages of the famously unfinished dark fantasy series she’s been reading (and re-reading) obsessively…

Please enjoy an extended preview of This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews, the start of a blockbuster new epic fantasy series publishing March 31st with Tor Books. Our preview concludes with chapter 10 below—find the previous excerpts here.

Chapter 10

Crap. Crap, crap, crap.

I’d said too much. I’d concentrated so hard on not saying anything that would immediately set him off, that I had put way too much out there. Damn it.

Too late to back out now. Even if I did make something up, he wouldn’t believe me. He was focused on me like a wolf who had spotted a lame bunny.

“Not exactly. I know a version of it.”

“Tell me.”

I didn’t want to go there.

“Tell me what’s coming. Please.”

“A civil war and everything that brings. Slaughter, atrocities, famine. A complete breakdown of society, aided by the invasion of the Crimson Empire and a plague. It begins with three powerful people being murdered one after another, and things really fall apart after the second murder, the assassination of the crown prince. King Sauven isn’t in his right mind already. After losing his eldest son, he becomes unhinged.”

And that was just the start of it.

“During the investigation into that assassination, the capital burns for three days. They will call it the Night of a Thousand Fires. Rellas fractures as the Eight Families revolt and start clawing at each other, trying to get to the throne and pull the Savarics off it. Then it’s tragedy after tragedy. Nobody is spared. Even the countryside endures atrocities. The king’s forces march to meet the rebels and come across a small town called Applegrove. The town refuses to open its gates. The commander in charge takes Applegrove and decimates the male population. Every tenth male, no matter their age, is put to the sword. They spare no one, not even babies. The river by the town runs red with blood…”

The look in Reynald’s eyes made me stop.

“Too much?” I asked.

“Do I die before I rescue my son?”

Danger, danger…

“Look, it’s probably better not to know.”

“Tell me,” he growled.

“Yes.” Technically not true, but true in spirit.

Reynald closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them. “How do I die?”

“During the Night of a Thousand Fires, a woman you don’t know tries to run away from a group of pikemen chasing her. You interfere, and they impale you. You lose the use of your legs but survive for another three months as a beggar on the streets, until a random scrounger slits your throat for the few coins you had managed to gather that day.”

He stared at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said and meant it.

“Clover?”

“I don’t know. Some people have big parts to play, some small. I don’t know what happens to her and Kaiden.”

The blademaster sank into his chair.

The silence lay like a brick between us.

“How does it end?” he asked.

“It’s a mystery.”

The second book stopped with the civil war still raging and the invasion by the Crimson Empire going full force.

“How does Hreban fit into this?”

“I suspect he is the architect of this mess.” I had suspected it since finishing the first book. “I don’t know exactly how he brought this about, but while other Great Families are shocked and reeling, he jumps on a chance to seize authority.”

“As if he were expecting the opportunity to present itself,” Reynald said.

I nodded. “Hreban craves power. He thinks he is entitled to it. Yesterday morning I was walking through the city…”

I told him about the thief. Every gory detail was branded in my mind, and it spilled out of me like a geyser.

“He calls it the contemplation. He doesn’t see people as people, he sees them as tools he can use. In his view, a faulty human tool should be discarded, but not before they fully understand the depth of their failure. That’s why he partially cauterizes their wounds—to prolong the suffering. He wants them to realize the errors that led to their end and have time to contemplate…”

The expression on Reynald’s face cut me off. It was hard, cold, and merciless, as if a different man suddenly sat in his place. A dangerous man who’d made up his mind and wouldn’t be deterred. I almost scooted back in my chair.

“Is this something he does often?”

I sighed. “Not yet, but he will. After the second assassination, Sauven grants him unchecked power.”

“To Ulmar Hreban?” Reynald’s eyebrows rose slightly.

“Yes. Hreban is the one who burns the capital, he is the one who butchers Applegrove, and after he does all that, he starts mass executions. He lines the King’s Way with prisoners in contemplation. Fifty people per batch. They die slowly, while the city watches, and when they pass on, he brings more out. Around-the-clock executions for a week.”

There was a demon sitting in the chair in my office, and he was contemplating murder.

“It’s not that simple,” I told him. “Right now, the only thing Hreban is guilty of is killing the thief.”

“That’s enough for me,” Reynald said.

“You and I are on the same page. Hreban perpetrated torture and murder. He should be brought to justice. But killing him now would just postpone the inevitable. People like him rise to power not because they are incredibly capable but because the situation is ripe for it. Hreban murdered that boy and dumped his body to test Kair Toren. If eliminating Hreban could solve this problem, the city would’ve roared in outrage. Instead they let him get away with it.”

Reynald’s expression turned calculating. “Rellas has become accustomed to the Great Families wielding unchecked power.”

“Yes. And the higher he rises, the less accountable he becomes. Power attracts supporters. After Hreban receives the royal mandate, he reaches out to the Order of the Redeemer. Silveren has misgivings but in the end he sees a way to elevate his order above the Defenders and the Conquerors. The Redeemers become Hreban’s enforcers.”

“You’re telling me that a holy order willingly chooses to support Ulmar Hreban? The man despised by the entire knighthood?”

“Yes. By that point enough things happen to throw the other two knight orders off-balance. They leave Kair Toren, and Silveren jumps on that opportunity. With knights at his back, Hreban is unstoppable. Competing merchant guilds who wouldn’t do business with him enter losing deals to curry favor. Councilors who denounced him crawl to his house bearing gifts to save themselves. In the end, nobody can keep him in check.”

“All the more reason to remove him now.”

“But even now, before any of this happens, Hreban is likely not alone. He must’ve made alliances and bargains. If you kill him, whoever is working with him will simply take his place and continue.”

And Reynald and the kids would still be in danger. The nightmare would still come to life.

I shook my head. “No, this will be complicated. I can’t just eliminate Hreban. I have to dismantle him while the entire kingdom watches. He thinks he is untouchable. I will reach out and touch him. I know his secrets. I’ll drag all his dirty laundry out into the light for everyone to see. It will take time, money, people…” And I didn’t have any of that.

He leaned forward over my desk. “I will do this with you.”

“No.”

He gave me that Reynald look, the same one he had treated me to when I announced I would sell myself to Derog.

“I’m capable—”

“Three hours after we met, you sold yourself into slavery and then died.”

Well, yes, it sounded bad when he put it that way.

“You need help. You need me to keep you alive.”

“You have done enough for Rellas,” I told him. “You served the country for twenty years. You fought and bled for the kingdom. You deserve to rescue your son and go far away from here, to live a calm, safe life. Matheo needs a living father.”

“I’m a knight,” Reynald said. Steel vibrated in his voice. “I swore an oath to defend my country. A kingdom isn’t land or cities, it is people. If what you say is true, we are on the threshold of great suffering. I will do whatever it takes to shut that door.”

“No. There will be consequences.”

“We will deal with the consequences.”

I wasn’t explaining it very well, and the danger he radiated made it harder to think.

“I’ve already meddled to save someone, and then you and I came here and killed Derog and his crew. Now an entire sequence of events won’t happen, and I don’t know what will happen in its place. I only know what was supposed to happen. I may have made things worse.”

“I doubt it,” Reynald said.

“Our actions will alter the future in unpredictable ways. What if we stop the assassination of the crown prince and King Sauven is assassinated instead? What if your son is blamed for it and dragged through the streets chained to a horse? What if you die? What if Clover dies? You won’t come back to life like I do.”

Here is a giant sack of what ifs, deal with it.

“I have six brothers,” Clover said from the doorway.

I turned. She stood on the threshold, her face pale, her body rigid. Oh great. “How long have you been there?”

“Since I asked you if you could see the future,” Reynald said.

“And you didn’t mention it?”

“She has a right to know.”

I raised my hands. Really?

“While we are on the subject.” Reynald looked past me at the open door to my bedroom. “Come out.”

I turned in my chair.

Kaiden crawled out from under my bed on all fours.

You’ve got to be kidding me. “Kaiden! What are you doing hiding under the bed?”

“I heard you crying. I thought something bad happened.” He stared at Reynald. “How did you know I was there?”

“I heard you,” Reynald said.

“I was very quiet!”

“Quiet enough for them. Not quiet enough for me.”

Kaiden sat on the floor, his face stunned.

“You said every tenth man in Applegrove will be put to the sword,” Clover said. “I was born in Applegrove. My parents are there. My grandparents and my brothers, our whole family is there. I don’t want any of them to die.”

“You may want to convince them to move,” I told her.

“Where would they go? My father is a blacksmith, like his father and his father’s father. Our family has lived in Applegrove for generations. You can’t just pick up a forge and carry it off in your pocket. My father isn’t going to uproot the family and abandon everything we’ve built just because I tell him that my new lady knows the future.”

I would have to address this my lady thing, but right now I had bigger problems.

“If you die—”

“If I have to die so my family is safe, I’ll do that,” Clover said. “I’m not a knight, but I’m not afraid. I used to be. I used to think that as long as you didn’t get involved and kept to yourself, you’d be safe. But that isn’t true. I also thought that death was the worst thing that could happen to you. That isn’t true either.”

“You are a child. I don’t think you understand the full gravity of this decision.”

“She’s seventeen years old,” Reynald said.

Right. He was knighted at seventeen after a bloody battle, where he’d cut his way through enemy forces. Different world, different expectations.

“I’m in, too!” Kaiden announced.

Great.

“You—shush.” I took a deep breath. “The three of you are asking me to gamble with your lives. Think about the people involved. These are the Eight Families. All of them are horrible bastards. I saw Ramond vi Everard once. I didn’t even get a good look at his face, and he scared me half to death.”

Reynald blinked. Everard’s name always made an impression. He was the scary bastard all other scary bastards were afraid of. I had to strike while the iron was hot.

“The Sleepless Duke divides the world into friends and foes. You either obey him, or you are against him, and if you oppose him, he will kill you, your family, your neighbors, your pets, and just to be thorough he will burn your house and salt your fields. He solves every problem with violence, and if that doesn’t work, he applies more violence. He is just one of the people who will be drawn into this mess up to their eyeballs.”

Clover looked worried. Kaiden looked undeterred, but he was barely twelve.

I met Reynald’s gaze. “You may have to cross blades with Everard. Think about it.”

In a fight between Everard and Reynald, Reynald would lose, and he knew it. It would be an amazing fight, but Everard had the Fatefire.

Reynald’s light eyes turned resolute. “Thank you for your care for me and my son. However, I’m not the kind of man who runs and hides from his responsibility. I will not teach my son to take the coward’s way out.”

His face told me that we were done arguing and I had lost. I looked at Clover.

Clover raised her chin. A determined spark lit up her blue eyes. “Do either of you know how to run a household? Where to purchase supplies and at what prices, which traders are reputable, how to balance a budget?”

“No,” I said.

Reynald shook his head. His lips curved in a small smile.

“I know the prices, so we won’t get swindled. I know the right traders, I know medicine, I know etiquette, I know how to file the right forms with the government.”

She had a point.

“If we do this, Maggie will need to look like a lady. I’m proficient in hair, cosmetics, and attire. I can dress you in the latest fashion, so you will present the impression you want to the world. You have a huge house and no idea how to take care of it. You can’t even do your hair properly. You need help.”

I opened my mouth. She didn’t let me get the words out.

“Maggie will be the head of the household, Reynald will be head of the household guard, and I will be the steward maid. I’ll be staying here. I won’t let my brothers die. The Hreban Family will not take anything else from me. And I owe Reynald and you a debt for saving us. I pay my debts. I will help save Matheo and destroy Ulmar Hreban. This is settled. Come, Kaiden.”

For once Kaiden didn’t argue. He jumped to his feet and followed her out.

Okay then. I looked at Reynald.

“You heard her. It’s settled,” he said.

The hell it was.

“I will do this with or without you, Maggie,” Reynald said. “I need to know if you have my back. If you don’t help me, I’ll have to change the future myself, and I have no idea what happens next. In or out?”

He’d remembered what I told him in the Knight Vanquisher Plaza almost word for word. Wow.

His lips curved.

“What about Matheo?”

“My son is safe for now. He will wait for me.”

“Are you sure?”

“I can bear to be separated from him for a few more months if it means he will grow up in a peaceful kingdom. Let me join you. Help me save my son from a future of suffering.”

I gave up. “Then I am in.”

“Good.” He stood up. “I’m going to drop off the bodies. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

I stood up, too. “I’ll help you.”

“It will be grisly work.”

“I said I was in. I’ll manage.”

I took a deep breath and followed him down the stairs, to a basement full of corpses we needed to load onto the boat.

* * *

Dead bodies were heavy as hell.

I knew this. It was one of those academic facts you learned from reading, never expecting to encounter it in real life, until you had to drag eleven corpses about a hundred feet through a stone passageway and then carry them over a grassy bank to a boat in the middle of the night.

In the fantasy books filling my shelves, heroes slung limp humans over their shoulders with a manly growl and then hauled them like they weighed nothing. The level of bullshit involved was criminal. Reynald was a lot stronger than me, and he grunted, strained, and took frequent breaks.

Finally, all the corpses were in. Reynald paused on the dock and held his hand out. I took it—it was rock steady—and he carefully helped me into the boat. He put his hand on the mooring line and stomped twice on the dock boards.

I glanced at him.

“For luck,” he said. “It’s tradition.”

This world or ours, sailors were superstitious everywhere.

Reynald freed the mooring line, climbed into the boat, and started tying and untying various ropes. The sail caught the wind, unfurled, and the boat slipped into the current, still slightly rough from the recent rain. Reynald secured the lines and moved to the big wooden rudder at the stern, about a foot from where I sat on my bench. The corpses, trussed up in canvas, lay on the bottom of the boat like cordwood.

We sat silently, watching the estates of Anchor Drop slide by, darker shadows in the night, marked by an occasional lantern. The sky above us was smudged with clouds.

When Reynald told me he’d bought a boat, I defaulted to one of those small fishing boats people towed behind their trucks all over Texas highways as soon as the summer heat started. Which was ridiculous, but that was where my brain went. What Reynald had purchased was nowhere near that.

The boat looked like something ancient Vikings might have taken upriver to raid the English monasteries. Except it was less of a dragon boat and more of a swan. It sat low in the water, a graceful, sleek wooden vessel about thirty feet long and seven feet wide with a single mast supporting a complex moss-green sail. Its sides curved from the raised stern, swooping low in the middle, then rising again at the bow, crowned with a small figurehead of a horned sea serpent. The serpent sported a mouth of scary teeth, and they weren’t wood. Someone had ripped those fangs out of the mouth of an actual marine monster and glued them in. You had to admire the dedication.

The boat sped down the river. We rounded a bend, and the current dumped us into the much wider, calmer Dokkon, the main river of Kair Toren. The cold breeze flung moisture and a hint of salt in my face.

We skirted a wooded island with roofs peeking through the trees, passed a big trader ship with a bloated hull, and then two people in a small fishing boat. They didn’t pay us any mind, and I didn’t look too closely at what they were doing either.

The river widened. Docks crowded the banks, with wooden ships of all sizes moored for the night. A sea of dark masts and stowed sails rose on both sides. A few more minutes, and the Dokkon carried us out to sea.

The ocean spread before our boat, endless and calm. The clouds melted away, and an enormous sky reigned above, studded with glittering stars. Three moons spilled their light on the water: Prata, a giant silver crescent with gold tiger stripes; Drao, a much smaller ruby-red waning gibbous; and Broe, the smallest of the three, a grass-green, last-quarter moon. The view took my breath away. I smelled the briny salt water, I felt the wind and the steady movement of the boat under my feet, so it had to be real and actually happening. But it was so… magical.

We turned left and kept going, farther from the mouth of the river, within the view of the coastline.

Ahead something shimmered in the water like a spill of faint fluorescent paint. Reynald steered for it. The swirls of faint blue and pink drew closer and closer, rippling through the water. The boat slid through them, and I saw the outlines of glowing algae suspended like a floating island over the ink-black depths. Tiny fish with luminescent fins darted through the frilly leaves.

The boat slowed to a leisurely drift.

Reynald let go of the rudder, fiddled with the lines, and sat on the other bench across from me.

“It’s lovely,” I told him.

He nodded. He seemed lighter, almost carefree. “I’ve always liked the ocean.”

“When did you learn how to sail?” He had been born in the northern highlands, a rough region bordering Selva’s mountain range. Once upon a time his people had been sea raiders who invaded Rellas and settled deeper inland, but they’d given up their sea legs a couple of centuries ago.

“During the Corios campaign.” His voice was quiet and light. “They had us raiding the coastal forts in small boats, trying to keep the defenders guessing when and where we’d show up.”

Corios, meaning the “middle sea,” was a landlocked sea about twice the size of Lake Superior. It cleaved the continent in two, separating Rellas in the west from the Crimson Empire in the east, and it was a bad-tempered sea. Its storms sank a lot of ships, to the delight of the marine monsters swimming in its depths.

“The second week in, our captain took an arrow to the chest and went overboard. The wind blew us farther from the coast. We drifted for hours before we figured out how to work the sails. I decided that sailing was something I should know how to do.”

“You’re a very good sailor,” I told him.

He smiled. “Thank you.”

It felt like we had stopped moving completely. We just hung there, between the ocean and the sky, watching the trails of three moons shine on the water.

“What are we waiting for?”

“The wind,” Reynald said. “We’ll need it to pick up before we start.”

I didn’t mind if the wind didn’t pick up for a while. It was so beautiful here, almost romantic. Floating on a starry night across a magical ocean, just me and Reynald… And eleven corpses we needed to dispose of. So Kair Toren.

Reynald stirred. “About Hreban…”

“Yes?”

“I know a bit about him. He was born rich, like his father, and his grandfather. Generations of wealth.”

“The gift of Mirror Heart is wrapped in gold,” I murmured. It was a line in the first book.

“And misery.”

True.

Each of the Eight Families had their own special brand of magic. The Everards had the Fatefire, the Arvels had the Enduring Flame, and the Hrebans had the power of Mirror Heart, meaning they knew exactly what someone was feeling. They could tell when people lied. They knew when their opponent was unsure, desperate, or terrified. It made them excellent judges of character and brought them unimaginable wealth.

From a very young age, Ulmar sensed people’s hidden motives. They approached him and his family with smiles on their faces, pretending to be solicitous and loyal, while he soaked in their greed, jealousy, hatred, and derision. It convinced him that he was inherently superior, and that people were fundamentally selfish and needed discipline and punishment to be useful.

“Ulmar is a reflection of what he feels,” I said. “He sees people as sheep, a stupid, panicky commodity to be bought and sold. He isn’t the sheep dog that protects the flock. He is the shepherd with a big heavy stick.”

Taking a tour through Hreban’s head killed your will to live. He had forever ruined empath and telepath characters for me.

“The other seven Great Families hold him in contempt,” Reynald said.

I had caught some of that in the books, but it was nice to get a first-person account. “Why?”

“Rellas is a kingdom of knights and merchants. There is a reason why knights are listed first. We are surrounded by enemies on all sides. Without the protection of the knights, the merchants would not exist.”

“But the Hrebans are not the only non-martial Great Family.”

Reynald nodded. “True. However, the other three contribute in their own way. The Yolentas provide steel for weapons, the Jals produce grain for provisions, and the Graives build roads and castles. The Hrebans buy and sell a great many things but produce little. They made their money trading in luxuries and precious metals, and they are proud of it, which is why their crest is awash in gold. Gold is soft and heavy, Maggie. You cannot make a sword out of it.”

Also, true. Not that Ulmar hadn’t tried. Once he’d decided that he wanted power, Hreban realized that he needed martial achievements. Ten years ago, he got his chance. An impregnable castle had rebelled, and Sauven needed someone to go and sit on it until the rebels saw the error of their ways.

The campaign promised to be long and boring, with minimal casualties and few opportunities to show off, and nobody except Hreban wanted to deal with it. For some bizarre reason, Sauven decided to let him.

Hreban was given two battalions of the King’s Army, all seasoned troops to compensate for his inexperience. He marched them to Lerem Castle, and then he hurled them against the walls again and again, in defiance of every military strategy and against the advice of his knights, until the defenders literally ran out of soldiers and arrows. He took the castle in a month, but he lost more than sixty-five percent of his army.

After, when Sauven screamed and threw things at him, Hreban countered that he had saved the kingdom money because none of those casualties would need to be paid and new soldiers could be recruited for less. To Hreban, the loss of experienced, battle-seasoned veterans meant nothing, because in his view, people were expendable and infinitely replaceable. There were always more of them. He would’ve made an excellent modern CEO.

That campaign made Hreban into a laughingstock among the knighthood. He had never gotten over it.

“If what you told me is true, then the Fool of Lerem Siege suddenly became a master strategist,” Reynald said.

“As I said, it’s likely he has allies. Someone with a greater vision who is behind him steering his boat.”

“Do you know who that is?”

“No.” I knew who it wasn’t, but that still left plenty of suspects.

He gave me a long, probing look. “There is something you’re not telling me.”

There was a whole lot I wasn’t telling him. “Yes.”

“You mentioned there would be three murders. The second is Kiel, the crown prince. Who are the others?”

I really didn’t want to have this conversation. Let me out of this boat.

“I don’t want to tell you.”

I should’ve thought of some clever answer, but instead the truth came out.

Reynald studied my face. “You don’t trust me.”

“I do trust you. I told you about my magic. I’m alone in this boat with you.”

I’d been in his head. Reynald would kill me if I became a threat, but he would never backstab me.

“Then what is it?”

Reynald was a knight kardar, from kar, an old word for banner. In battle, he led his own detachment of knights and fighters with junior officers under him. He was used to being in command. He also had serious doubts about my ability to get things done. Oh, he believed I could see the future, but like he said, my first plan had ended with me dying. If I wasn’t careful, he would bulldoze right over me, wreck the flow of events beyond repair, and then get himself killed. He knew just enough about the future now to royally screw things up.

I had to earn his trust. I had to demonstrate that my schemes worked, and that I was capable. I had to come up with a brilliant plan… and I had nothing.

Making grand pronouncements about bringing Hreban to justice was good and all, but now I had to actually do it, and when I tried to come up with a plan, all I got was a dark emptiness with a faint buzzing sound. The enormity of the stakes paralyzed my poor traumatized brain. If I made a mistake, Reynald and the kids would die and Rellas would collapse. No pressure.

I had to buy some time.

“You’re half right,” I said slowly. “It is a matter of trust. You don’t know me, Reynald. If I told you to do something right now, would you do it?”

“If I understood the reasons behind it and agreed with them.”

“Exactly.” I nodded. “You wouldn’t act just because I told you to.”

His eyes narrowed. “So, you’re expecting blind obedience?”

This conversation was going off the rails in a hurry.

“Not at all. But I know you. Once you decide on a course of action, you follow through even if it is unwise, like the time you decided to climb into an underground catacomb in Gassargand alone, without telling anyone. You knew there would be a monster waiting for you there, a monster you and three other experienced soldiers had failed to kill the first time around, and you climbed in there anyway.”

“It had to be done.”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. That I will tell you what I know and then you’ll decide to do something about it and get yourself killed.”

“I’m resilient.”

“I know. But in my version of the future, you still died. And unlike me, you didn’t come back from it.” I sighed.

He pondered me.

The best defense was an effective offense.

“I’m not completely dense, Reynald. I know why you didn’t tell me that Clover was standing there or that Kaiden was hiding under the bed. You realized that I cared for the kids, and having both of them there would convince me to lean on you. It’s one thing to talk about the kingdom ending and people dying, but it’s completely different when two children are standing in front of you, and you know you are their only hope to survive. You have no resources, except for the deadly blademaster in the room willing to lend a hand.”

His face shut down.

“I understand why you did it.”

He waited, his expression blank.

“You think that I’m your best chance at saving Matheo.”

If I was missing back home and not in a coma or just dreaming in my bed while the events here passed before me at a thousand minutes per second, my parents would be frantic. My dad would do anything and everything to find me and bring me home. He would sell his soul to the devil if it would help. I was Reynald’s devil, and I was sitting right here.

“I give you my word that I will do everything I can to keep your son alive. You asked to join me, not the other way around. So trust me and be patient. Let me prove to you that my way is the best way.”

I tried not to hold my breath. He’d notice.

“Fair enough,” he said. “Since we’ve decided to be straightforward with each other, you’re right. You do have a blademaster on your side. I will protect you. No more heroics. No more dramatic dying.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Good. Then we’re on the same page.” He nodded. “I like that turn of phrase. It’s clever.”

I had brought a new idiom to Kair Toren. Heh.

A breeze fanned me. I tasted salt on my lips.

Salt! That was it! That was the thread I could tug on. So many things hinged on it.

But how the hell would I pull that off? Not only it would be dangerous and complicated but if we managed to… The mercenaries. Holy crap, what would I do about the mercenaries?

This wouldn’t be just altering the flow of events. This would be like hitting it with a hammer. Here I was worrying about Reynald crashing through the timeline like a battering ram, and I was contemplating dropping a meteorite on it.

“I understand your point,” Reynald said. “But I do not like being kept in the dark. Do you at least have a direction?”

“Yes.” I had a direction, all right. I just wasn’t sure we could pay the price.

“Then I will trust you for now. Let’s see it through.”

The unspoken but was loud and clear. If I failed, that would be the end of our alliance. He would strike out on his own, and who knew what sorts of havoc he would wreak.

I had to get my shit together and fast. If we went after the salt, I would have to deliver at all costs.

A breeze stirred my hair.

Reynald rose and grabbed the first corpse by its shoulders wrapped in canvas. “The wind is up.”

I picked up the legs, and we heaved the body overboard. It hit the water with a heavy splash. Ten corpses followed, sinking below the surface.

“Won’t the bodies float back up when they start to decompose?” I asked. The last thing we needed was for Derog’s dead crew to wash ashore with the tide.

“Hold that thought.”

He pulled a small barrel from a spot at the front of the boat, unsheathed a knife, and pried the snug lid open. A stench hit me, reeking of rotting fish and something else, something sickening and gross.

I gagged.

Reynald emptied the barrel into the water and tossed it into the ocean. He moved through the boat, fast like he was on solid ground, and pulled a line. The sail unfurled, and our vessel slid across the sea. We turned left, drawing a wide U around the spot where we had dropped the bodies.

Something moved beneath the luminescent ocean as we sped by.

I looked over my shoulder.

A huge triangular fin pierced the surface, trailing a long yellow spike. Another. A third… A massive body broke the surface, half as big as our boat. I caught a glimpse of broad armored jaws, and then it dove under. The ocean behind us churned as if boiling.

“What bodies?” Reynald asked and gave me a wide smile.

Planter 9

It was well after midnight. I sat in my office again and watched the three moons in the night sky in the open window. I had unlocked the shutters and slid the glass aside. Reynald warned me that it was a safety issue, but we were on the third floor. Coming back to the house after that boat ride felt almost stifling. My brain kept tripping and thinking I smelled blood. The brisk night air was so refreshing.

Tomorrow I would clean this house until the last traces of the slavers disappeared. That was my mother’s trick. When we moved during my childhood, as my father got transferred from one duty station to the next, my mother would always clean the new apartment or house before we moved in. She claimed that once you cleaned a place, you made it your own.

I missed my family so much.

The house was quiet, the room filled with soft comfortable light from a couple of lanterns. Clover had stayed up until we came back, brewed “restful” tea, and served it to me without being asked, as if I were some sort of princess.

I picked up the cup and drank from it.

The moons looked back at me from a foreign sky.

I had never thought of myself as a violent person, and yet I had beaten a man to death with a club. I’d killed someone with my own hands and then helped to feed the evidence to a monster fish. And I hadn’t done any of those things normal people were supposed to do after they resorted to violence. I hadn’t cried. I hadn’t gotten sick. I didn’t feel a lot of guilt.

And I didn’t regret it. I would do it again. Because tonight five children slept safely in their beds without fear of being abused. This house would never again be used to steal kids from their parents and then sell them to the highest bidder. Maybe I just thought I was a nonviolent person because in my old life nobody had ever backed me into a corner with a knife to my throat.

This was a different world, and it played by different rules. I didn’t have the safety net of social services and law and order to back me up. There was no 911 to dial. Funny how you take things for granted until they are gone.

If I went through with my plan to stop Hreban, I would likely die again, no matter how determined Reynald was to keep me alive. Worse, I would have to kill again. And I would have to somehow keep Reynald, Clover, and Kaiden safe.

It scared me so much, I shivered. If I was one of those isekai heroines I’d read about, by now I would be well on my way to building an empire by inventing popcorn or nail polish, or purging the blight with my holy powers, or taking control of a village of goblins and earning their undying loyalty. Instead, I was here, trying to cobble together a half-assed plan. I felt stupid and scared. I was in so over my head, it wasn’t even funny. Keeping it together through today was my limit.

I would have to be very careful not to get too arrogant. When I woke up in the Garden, I thought I could just nudge a few things but keep the flow of the events mostly the same. That was hubris. I was too far in now and the changes I brought were irreversible. Just because I knew one version of Kair Toren’s future didn’t mean I could accurately predict what any one of the people involved would do in the next moment. We would need informants, which meant we would need money…

Solentine slipped through the window and landed soundlessly on the floor. He was dressed in gray and black from head to toe. A soft doublet hugged his body, leaving the sleeves of a black shirt bare. Black gloves, black boots, black sash, black belt with an assortment of knives, and a gray hood.

“Hello there, Ezio,” I said. “Imagine meeting you here. Killed any Templars lately?”

“I understood none of that.” He leaned against the windowsill.

Of course not. References to twenty-first-century video games were solely for my own amusement.

He tilted his head and studied the room. This whole thing with him framed in the window in that sinister getup with the moons above him was unbelievably cool. If I didn’t know he was a horrible bastard who could murder me in less than a second, I would have fainted in my chair from the sheer badassery of it.

“Love what you’re doing with the place.”

“Thanks.” If I screamed, Reynald would come running, but it would be too late.

“What have you done with the corpses?”

Had the Shears seen us dump the bodies? I needed to say just the right thing… “I could tell you, but I have to charge.”

Ha! Oh wait, he wouldn’t get that either.

Solentine looked at me. “You’re a mystery, Maggie.”

And he already knew my name.

“You speak like a native of Kair Toren, but nobody remembers you. You have no friends, no lovers, no parents, or employers. Nobody recalls you entering the city. You simply appeared as if by magic.”

You have no idea how right you are.

I smiled. It seemed better than some half-baked witty comeback.

“I gather you’ve decided to stay?” he said.

“For a while.”

“Good. I enjoy mysteries.”

He tossed me a small purse. I caught it. It was light. Cheapskate.

“Your payment. We’re even.”

“Then our business is concluded.”

Solentine smiled. The hair on the back of my neck stood right up.

“Oh no. I have a feeling we will be seeing a lot of each other in the future. Close the window after I leave, Maggie. There’s no end of unsavory characters out there.”

He leaped out into the darkness.

Okay. That was the second-coolest thing I had ever seen in real life. Everard riding in was the first. And as soon as my hands stopped shaking, I would shut that damn window.

I pulled the strings of the purse open. Judging by the size and weight, he’d paid me less than ten nomas. You’d think the life of his agent would be worth more. Oh well. Every little bit helped.

I emptied the purse onto the desk. Six gold coins clinked and shone in the lantern’s light. A small fortune. Solentine, you beautiful bastard.

Things were looking up.

Buy the Book

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me

Ilona Andrews

Volume 1 of Maggie the Undying

Buy Book

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me

Ilona Andrews

Volume 1 of Maggie the Undying

Volume 1 of Maggie the Undying

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Excerpted from This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me, copyright © 2026 by Ilona Andrews.