Royal Airs

by Sharon Shinn

  “Though we could still be lying about Rafe,” Josetta pointed out. “If she knew you well enough, that’s exactly what she’d suspect.”

  He laughed out loud. “I see it will take me some effort to return to your good graces! Go collect that troublesome young man and take the empress on a shopping expedition. Maybe she’ll buy something fashionable. And, Josetta,” he added, as she turned away to do his bidding. “If you can bear it, perhaps you could refrain from telling Rafe the secret of his parentage.”

  The words were so sweet they tasted like candy in her mouth. “He already knows.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  In fact, Josetta was only guessing that Rafe knew about his connection to Filomara, because he hadn’t been any more honest with her than Darien had. All he had told her last night was that his mother must have hailed from Malinqua, because she shared one of the empress’s names.

  “Subriella,” he added. “I always thought it was so pretty. I imagine it’s fairly common in that country.”

  “Like Josetta is here,” she agreed. “And Corene and Natalie and Odelia. You can find dozens of them in any classroom in Chialto.”

  “But none of them are as delightful as you,” he said, kissing the top of her head. They were lying together in his room, where she had arrived after a long and stealthy trek through the palace. The queens’ wing, where all the single women were billeted, extended off of one end of the great hall; the king’s wing was built off the other. She had encountered a few servants and a few soldiers on her journey through the shadowy corridors, but no one had stopped her.

  “Your mother must have been well-born, though, to marry a foreign prince,” Josetta replied. “Perhaps Filomara could tell you who she was.”

  “Oh, yes, I can just see having a nice casual chat with her some afternoon,” he said. He had trailed a line of kisses across her temple and down her cheek, and she had thought he was just eager to return to lovemaking, but now she realized he had wanted to distract her. He had figured out the truth, but he didn’t know what to do with it, and he didn’t want to share it until he did.

  If I’m ever queen, all that’s going to change, she fumed as she hurried to her room to slip into comfortable shoes. I will pass a law that everyone has to be honest all the time. Anyone who lies will be thrown into the Marisi to drown. She figured Darien would be the first to go into the water, though Zoe would probably save him. Too bad.

  One of the palace servants was hovering near her door, and she asked the woman to find Rafe and have him meet her as soon as possible in the courtyard. “Oh, and tell him to bring his brother. We’re going to escort the empress of Malinqua around Chialto.”

  Ten minutes later, a small group set out in one of the royal elaymotives, followed by two transports carrying ten guards from Welce and ten from Malinqua. The empress had brought personal attendants of her own, briefly introduced as her cousin and his wife. Then she eyed Rafe and demanded, “And who’s this?”

  Josetta placed her hand on Rafe’s arm and managed to produce a girlish giggle. “Oh—this is Rafe Adova. He’s my—well, there’s nothing official yet, but we—my family likes him very much. And this is his brother, Steff.”

  Filomara’s shrewd eyes took in Rafe’s expensively tailored clothing and handsome face, and she drew her own conclusions. “You’re not going to want to come to Malinqua and marry any of my nephews, I suppose,” she said.

  Josetta could feel Rafe’s start of surprise, but his expression, as always, remained pleasantly neutral. “I didn’t know such alliances were even being discussed,” he said.

  “They were the topic of today’s conversation,” Josetta replied.

  Filomara nodded sharply in Josetta’s direction. “Your sister, though. Did she mean it when she said she’d come?”

  Now both Rafe and Steff looked at her in surprise. “Corene?” Steff asked, sounding a little anxious.

  “She might think she meant it,” Josetta said. “But Darien will have something to say about it. And what he’ll say is no.”

  Filomara grunted. “I liked her. She has a certain fire to her. And bravery in her soul.”

  Josetta laughed. “Indeed, she’s entirely a sweela creature, and one of her blessings is courage.”

  Now Filomara frowned. “All this talk of blessings! It’s very annoying. What does that even mean?”

  So Josetta launched into a quick explanation and ended up by offering to take the empress to a temple to draw her own. “Or, rather, we will draw them for you,” she finished. “Because the blessings have more power when they are bestowed upon you by a stranger.”

  Filomara seemed reluctantly intrigued. “That seems like an exercise that might be entertaining,” she conceded. “I would be willing to do that.” Josetta smiled. “But first let’s stroll through the Plaza of Women and shop.”

  • • •

  Filomara didn’t seem like the frivolous type who would enjoy spending hours sorting through fabrics and considering jewels. So they just made one quick pass through the open bazaar of the Plaza and a more leisurely stroll through the shop district where the very expensive boutiques had their permanent locations. Josetta couldn’t resist taking the empress to the cobbler’s shop run by Zoe’s old friends Melvin and Ilene, because she knew how much Ilene would relish a chance to wait on visiting royalty. And, in fact, Filomara was so pleased with the selections on hand that she bought three pairs of shoes in fifteen minutes. Josetta thought it might have been the first time she had seen the empress smile with real pleasure.

  From the cobbler’s shop they headed straight to the little temple Josetta had last visited when she pulled new blessings for Corene. She pointed out to Filomara the subtle touches that reflected the five elements—the fountain, the flowering plants, the hovering butterflies—but Filomara just nodded briskly and stepped inside. This clearly was not a woman who bothered much with nuance.

  “You can take some time to move from bench to bench and meditate yourself into a state of balance,” Josetta said, speaking quietly so she didn’t disturb the three people inside who appeared to be doing just that. “Or we can simply draw blessings for you and go.”

  She wasn’t surprised when Filomara said, “Oh, let’s just get this done with. Draw the blessings.”

  So the six of them clustered around the barrel, though the cousin and his wife expressed no desire to participate in the ritual. Josetta nodded at Steff, who looked nervous at being the first one to pick a blessing for the empress. He took his time rummaging through the barrel before pulling a coin and handing it to Filomara. She studied it by the smoky temple light, then showed it to Josetta.

  “What does it mean?” she asked.

  “Endurance,” Josetta replied. “It’s a torz trait—a symbol associated with flesh and earth.”

  Filomara made a sound that seemed to indicate approval. “I like that. I feel like I have endured a great deal in my life.”

  “Now Rafe,” Josetta directed. He took a little longer than Steff had to toss through the blessings; Josetta suspected he was trying to avoid pulling a ghost coin, so he might be fingering each disk in turn. When he finally made his selection, he presented it to the empress, who again held it up for Josetta’s inspection.

  “Power,” Josetta said, smiling a little. “A hunti trait—wood and bone. Again, it would seem to be accurate.”

  “I like the notion of power,” the empress agreed.

  Josetta dipped her hand into the barrel. “And I will pick your final blessing,” she said. She had thought the coins might be recalcitrant, as they had been for so long with Rafe, unwilling to grant blessings to a foreigner. But her arm was barely wrist-deep in the pile before she felt a disk scalding against her palm. She retrieved it and held it up for everyone to see.

  “The glyph for surprise,” she announced, and it was all she could do to keep from laughing. Even Rafe, who
was always so adept at schooling his expression, had to bite his lip and look away. “A coru sign. Water and blood.”

  The empress looked somewhat displeased, though she accepted the coin from Josetta’s hand. “I don’t care for surprises,” she said.

  “No, I have had my share of unpleasant ones,” Josetta admitted. “But now and then—there have been a few big, spectacular ones that I rather liked. Maybe the same will be true for you.”

  Filomara stood for a few moments gazing down at the coins in her hand. “So what do I do with them now?” she asked. “Keep them? Return them?”

  “It’s up to you. People who are just looking for guidance on one particular day usually toss their coins back into the barrel, unless they’ve drawn one that they especially like. People who are receiving their random blessings for the first time often keep them as souvenirs. Though they frequently have the blessings reproduced in more permanent and specialized forms.”

  Josetta touched her necklace, drawing Filomara’s eyes to the charms hanging there, and added, “Zoe wears a bracelet holding her blessing glyphs. Corene wears rings. Some people have them made into artwork. If you like, we can return to the Plaza and shop at jewelry stores that will carry the charms in many sizes and several kinds of metal.”

  She fully expected Filomara to toss the coins away and say, “No, I’m done with this nonsense,” but the empress lived up to her final blessing. “I would like that,” she said. “A necklace, perhaps, to remind me of my sojourn in Chialto.”

  “Excellent,” Josetta said, leading the way out of the temple. Foley, who had stationed himself at the door to await their reappearance, barked a command, and all the other guards instantly deployed around them. “We could go to one of the stalls in the Plaza or one of the fancier boutiques in the shop district.”

  “Something simple will do,” Filomara said.

  “Then the Plaza it is. It’s easier to walk there, unless you’d rather take the elay—”

  Before Josetta could finish the word, their cavalcade was plunged into violence. There were horses—riders—the sounds of men shouting and metal clanging and weapons firing. Josetta hadn’t even completely registered what was happening before rough hands grabbed her and thrust her toward the haven of the temple. She barely recognized Foley as he deposited her there and charged back into the fray.

  “Rafe!” she cried, because she couldn’t see him in all the commotion. “Steff!” She knew Foley wanted her to cower inside the temple, but she couldn’t, not until she knew what was happening to the others—why it was happening. She strained to see through the swirling mass of bodies and animals, flinching every time another firearm detonated.

  There seemed to be five soldiers on horseback, dressed in unfamiliar black livery, trampling through the Welce guards and the Malinquese escort. Is someone trying to assassinate Filomara? Josetta wondered, looking around frantically for the empress. But Filomara had been shoved out of the way by her own guards, four of whom formed a tight circle around her while the others engaged in fierce combat.

  It wasn’t Filomara the soldiers had targeted. It was Rafe.

  She realized this just as one of the men on horseback raised a weapon to his eye, clearly sighting down a long barrel aimed straight in Rafe’s direction. “Rafe!” she shrieked, abandoning the protection of the temple to scramble toward him. But one of the Welchin guards caught her before she could take three steps and hauled her firmly back. She heard the loud report of the weapon firing and she screamed again.

  “Let me go to him!” she cried, fighting against her captor, whom she finally recognized as Sorbin.

  In reply, he dragged her closer to the temple door and struggled to open it against her mad flailing. In the end, he contented himself with shoving her hard against the doorframe and flattening himself over her. No harm could reach her without going through his body first. She could just see over his left shoulder and, helpless, she watched the rest of the battle play out.

  Five against twenty made terrible odds for the attackers, but they had two enormous advantages: They were on horseback, and they had more sophisticated weaponry. City guards tended to carry swords, not firearms, a custom that could cost them dearly in this encounter. The street was littered with bodies in the uniforms of Welce and Malinqua, but only one of the riders had been brought down. As Josetta watched, another one of the weapons made its distinctive explosive sound, and another Welchin soldier fell.

  Where was Rafe? Where was he? Josetta breathlessly scanned the mass of heaving bodies, trying to find his face. He couldn’t be dead—surely he couldn’t be dead—or the invaders would have ridden off by now.

  There—dodging through the milling bodies to evade two riders charging at him from different directions. Josetta screamed his name again, and Sorbin fearfully gazed over his shoulder to watch the action behind him. The riders were fast, but the cluttered terrain impeded them. Rafe slipped off the roadway and into the waist-high ornamental shrubbery that lined it along both sides.

  He had figured it out, then. That these men were after him. Some of Ghyaneth’s soldiers, probably, having tracked him down at last. Head ducked low, he dove through the thick, prickly bushes, the foreigners in close pursuit. But the thorns on the stubby branches grabbed at the horses’ legs and caused them to rear and snort. Just as one pursuer quieted his mount and lifted his weapon to fire, Rafe plunged straight back at them, making the horse shy and almost unseat his rider.

  Josetta thought Rafe would run back into the covering chaos of the general fight, but he surprised her—he surprised the attackers—by grabbing the stirrup of one rider and swinging himself up. The horse made a furious sound of distress and stumbled badly, crashing deeper into the shrubbery. The wild, unbalanced weight on its back seemed to madden the creature, and it bucked and reared as it tried to dislodge both riders. The two men were punching and clawing at each other, and it was impossible to tell who had the advantage, though Josetta could see that the foreigner had tossed away his weapon so he could use his hands at close quarters. The nearby soldier divided his attention between trying to calm his mount and readying his weapon in case Rafe proved victorious—or offered a clear target.

  A ragged cheer dragged Josetta’s attention back to the bigger conflict, where she saw only one rider remaining on horseback. He was surrounded by a furious mob of defenders from both nations, and it was clear they were willing to sacrifice every last man if it meant pulling him to the ground. He wrenched his horse away from a Malinquese soldier and got off another shot at a man in Welchin livery, but he was done for; even Josetta knew it.

  There were terrible sounds of an animal screaming, men shouting, and large bodies falling, and Josetta’s gaze swung back to Rafe’s desperate battle. She was horrified to see him lying on the ground a few feet past the line of shrubbery, his body limp and still. One horse and its rider lay spasming a few yards away, where they must have fallen when their gyrations caused the animal to crash. The remaining soldier steadied his mount with his knees and used both hands to lift his weapon.

  Josetta hadn’t even drawn breath to shriek when a body hurtled from the general melee and dragged the attacker off the horse, then pivoted to fling him straight into the tangled border of thorns. There was a struggle, the hard sounds of grunts and curses, and then a strangled cry of a man being choked to death. The unearthly sound was almost the only noise in a place grown suddenly, eerily quiet.

  Josetta risked a quick look around. All the horses were riderless. All the Welchin and Malinquese soldiers were brushing themselves off, investigating their own wounds, or dropping to the ground to check on their fallen comrades. Filomara’s phalanx of guards were straightening up and moving away from the empress to join their fellow soliders in assessing the carnage left behind.

  “Let me go now,” Josetta panted, shoving at Sorbin, and he swiveled aside to free her.

  She was so frantic to g
et to Rafe that she slipped and almost fell as she dashed away from the temple. There were so many bodies on the roadway; she knew she should stop to see how many brave souls had perished defending her. But all she could think of was Rafe, still lying facedown and motionless on the ground. The man who had saved him now pushed himself to his hands and knees and crawled to Rafe’s side, his hands going to Rafe’s exposed neck to search for a pulse. As Josetta tore through the shrubbery to reach them, he looked up at her.

  Foley. Foley who had dedicated his life to protecting Josetta, and was now determined to protect anyone else she held dear.

  “He’s alive,” Foley said as she dropped down beside him in the dirt. “Bad shoulder wound, but that might be the worst of it.”

  She wanted to burst into tears, but she didn’t have time. “I’ll attend to his cuts. Send someone for help. Then make sure the empress and her attendants are safe inside the temple. And Steff! Where is he?”

  “I’m here,” said a voice behind her. She turned to see Steff standing there, his face pale with shock, his left hand pressed to a long, ugly graze on his right arm. “Is he—is—”

  “Alive,” she said quickly. “But I need to bind him up.”

  He came to his knees beside her and for a second she thought he might pass out; maybe his own wound was deeper than it looked. But he pressed his lips together and drew on some inner source of strength and said, “I want to help.”

  “Good. Then help me turn him. Very gently.”

  In the background, Josetta heard the sounds of battle cleanup—soldiers conferring, officers shouting, horses being captured and calmed, bodies being dragged to the side of the road—but she focused all of her attention on the task before her. Rafe’s shoulder was a mess, pierced by a projectile, which appeared to have gone straight through his body. The blood flow was already starting to slow, but there was black residue on his skin, and dirt and debris ground into the wound.