Black Arcana

His father had died at Blackmere Ford, summoned by Duke Halbrecht after the Empire crossed the western river. The letter had found Lucien three months late in a roadside inn where he had owed more coin than he had blood left to sell. By then, Count Aldren's body had already been burned with the other commanders whose corpses could not be brought home. Gareth had died two days later holding a broken bridge with forty-seven men against an imperial advance. The songs said he had killed twelve soldiers before he fell. Songs always knew how to make death useful.

Cedric had been captured during the retreat from Harren's Field. Ransom negotiations failed. Or perhaps they never began. Nobody spent gold retrieving second sons from imperial cages when the border itself was burning.

Marian had been married to Lord Osric Dane to secure cavalry support from the south. Lucien had received that news from a merchant who described it as fortunate. A necessary alliance, the merchant had said, while counting silver into Lucien's shaking hand in exchange for the last signet ring he owned. Four months later, in a town whose name he never learned, Lucien heard that Lady Marian Dane had thrown herself from a tower window after the household physician declared her too frail for another child.

His mother lasted longest.

Lady Elowen Valehart had written him once. Only once. The letter found him in the Free Roads, folded into a packet of old debts forwarded by men who had better memory than mercy. Her handwriting had been weaker than he remembered. She did not ask him to come home. She did not scold him. She wrote of the garden, of winter stores, of how quiet the estate had become, of how his father had kept every foolish receipt Lucien had ever forced him to pay and locked them not with the ledgers, but in his private drawer.

At the bottom, she had written, Come home when you can bear to be seen. Until then, live.

By the time Lucien came home, she was already in the family crypt.

By the time Lucien reached the gates, Malgrave men were standing on the walls.

By the time Lucien gave his name, they had already prepared the charge.

A deserter was cleaner than an heir.

A traitor was easier to hang than a claimant.

Lucien looked at Malgrave and felt the years of drink, cards, roadside brawls, cheap rooms, unpaid debts, monster-haunted roads, and cowardly laughter rise behind his ribs like bile. He had survived things that should have killed better men. He had crossed forests where the trees whispered in human voices. He had slept under bridges while corpse-moths gathered around his breath. He had drawn Prey Before the Trap moments before bandits loosed arrows from a ridge. He had drawn Band of Swords in a flooded ruin and watched three pale blades dance long enough for him to crawl away from a thing wearing a child's face. He had drawn The Knight once, only once, and a hollow suit of armor had held a bridge against wolves made of smoke while Lucien ran until his lungs tore.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

His F-rank ability had saved him again and again.

And all he had done with those stolen tomorrows was avoid yesterday.

"Say your words," Malgrave said. "Or die silent. Both will serve."

Lucien climbed the first step.

His legs felt strangely distant from him, as though they belonged to some other poor bastard unfortunate enough to be wearing his boots. The second step creaked beneath his weight. The third brought him high enough to see over the heads of the crowd and across the courtyard toward the training yard. He saw a cut on the fifth post, low and crooked. His cut. He had made it at thirteen, swinging too hard with a practice sword while Gareth laughed himself breathless and Cedric declared that even the post had won the duel.

He had hated them too.

Gods help him, he had hated them with all the petty force of a boy who mistook mockery for malice and disappointment for abandonment. Gareth had been arrogant, Cedric cruel, Marian too gentle, his mother too patient, his father too cold. Lucien had spent so long naming their flaws that he never noticed the shape they made around him.

A family.

Broken, imperfect, suffocating, proud, foolish, but his.

The executioner took him by the shoulder and positioned him beneath the beam. Up close, the rope smelled of hemp and oil. Lucien stared at the knot and felt the last of his humor abandon him.

He had imagined his death many times during his wandering years. Dramatically, usually. A monster's jaws. A duel in an alley. A poisoned cup after seducing the wrong noblewoman. A heroic last stand, if he was drunk enough to become generous with himself. Never this. Never in his own courtyard, beneath another man's banner, with servants afraid to mourn him and enemies pretending law was not hunger in formal dress.

The priest approached the platform with the writ in hand.

"Lucien Valehart," he said more softly now, perhaps because proximity made cruelty harder to decorate. "Do you repent your crimes before Crown and Law?"

Lucien looked down at him. The priest was young. Younger than Lucien by a few years, perhaps. His robes were clean, his eyes nervous. He believed enough to be afraid of not believing.

"My crimes?" Lucien asked.

The priest swallowed. "Your desertion. Your abandonment of duty. Your betrayal of station."

Lucien breathed in. The cold air hurt.

"I abandoned everything," he said, and the courtyard seemed to lean closer, hungry for confession. "My duty. My name. My mother. My sister. My brothers. My father. I abandoned all of it long before any levy called me to war."

Malgrave's smile sharpened, satisfied.

Lucien turned his head and spat blood onto the platform.

"But I never sold them," he said. "I never opened their gates. I never gave the Empire a map, never carried a duke's whisper, never bent my knee to a foreign crown. If you need to hang me, hang me for being useless. Hang me for being drunk. Hang me for being a coward who mistook exile for freedom. But do not call me your traitor just because murder sounds better when the law says it first."