Luca wet his lips, gathered his thoughts, and delegated power with his first decision as an actual leader. “The plan is to follow Ula’s direction and connect with the resistance.”
As he answered, Luca turned on his horse to better see the boy behind him, his eyes automatically shooting over Urtzi’s shoulder for any sign of Amarande’s white horse. They were too far, though, and all Luca saw was dusky sky and the silhouettes of the mountains that somewhere beyond view cradled the Itspi in its spiraling red turrets and cloud of juniper trees.
“Well, Ula?” Urtzi called when she didn’t automatically respond. The big Myrcellian had made it no secret he preferred to be a follower, and he had always followed Ula, his longtime partner in the pirate life. They hadn’t once mentioned their former crew leader Dunixi, whom they’d followed right up until the point they abandoned him, leaving him unconscious on the floor of the Bellringe’s royal stable. “Where is the resistance?”
It was a valid question—from Ula’s description, the pro-Otxoa resistance had formed in the days after the Warlord killed the royal family and burned their castle, the Otxazulo, to ash. But not once during his schoolroom lessons at the Itspi had Luca ever learned of the resistance’s existence, or where those loyal to his family hid. For all he knew, they might not even be in the Torrent proper, but somewhere else, safer and away from the Warlord’s deadly fire pits, which were lit nightly with the bodies of dissenters used as kindling.
“Good question. One we need to find the answer to.”
“How—”
“Don’t be so impatient, Urtzi; I was just going to tell you. We begin at a market.”
A laugh played on Osana’s lips as she caught Ula’s eyes over her shoulder. “Does the resistance maintain a stall?”
Osana was new to the group, but Amarande trusted her—despite the fact that the Basilican orphan had switched sides more than once—and given the princess’s natural propensity to wariness, her seal of approval was enough for the rest of them.
“Yes, they’re openly selling their wares of anti-Warlord policy alongside freshly baked bread and strawberry jam,” Ula replied, digging a hunk of stale bread out of her bag. She playfully lobbed it at Osana, who plucked it out of the air right before it would’ve dinged her between the eyes. The group laughed as Osana gnawed off a hunk and Ula turned to Luca. “Where’s the nearest one?”
“Dare I ask why any market would do?” Luca was unsure—but if the ink on his chest had proved anything to him, it was that items of great consequence frequently hid in plain sight.
“A network is a series of points, Luca.”
“The resistance has that many points?”
“They’ve had seventeen years of growth.” Ula smirked. “These points are stars in a constellation if you know where to look.”
“And if we breach any point, we have what we need to be directed to the leader?” Luca asked, before clarifying, “I assume there is a leader.”
“Of course there is.”
“Not to be contrary, but how do you know all this, Ula?” Urtzi asked. “I’ve been with you seven years, and have never once witnessed you take a secret meeting with some Torrentian rebel.”
“You are forgetting the definition of secret, you big oaf. It is a covert operation. You aren’t supposed to know.” She said it kindly, but Urtzi looked to be stricken down to his marrow. “Luca, the market?”
He jerked his chin up the trail. “We’ll split southeast at the next fork in the path. From there it’ll be another half hour at this pace.”
The market in question was the one that served the Itspi, down in the high ribbon of land that called itself a valley. It was a place Luca went at least weekly, filling the castle’s tab with items for his horses—lavender oil, oats, and ointments.
When it came into view, Ula called the group to a halt at a shaded turnoff. Below, the market’s colorful tents swayed, cook fires calling to the dusk. On a summer night, it would be all overfilled cups and blackened hog, song and gossip on everyone’s lips. Even at this distance, its energy was tangible, licking the air with a crackle and whisper.
Ula dismounted, handed her reins to Osana, and dug through her saddlebags. “I will obtain the information.” When the other pirate moved to do the same, she shook her head. “Alone, Urtzi.”
The big Myrcellian stared daggers that would kill any other person but didn’t even touch her. Ula held her stance and her gaze as he grumbled, “What if this covert person doesn’t like you? Doesn’t trust you?”
“They will trust me.”
Urtzi ran a hand through his dark hair. The curls immediately fell right back into place. “You don’t want me to come because I’m not of Torrent.”
“Untrue.” Ula checked her pouch again, then further dismissed his concern by changing the subject. “Do you have more coin?”
“No,” Urtzi answered. “While you and Amarande were spending diamonds, Osana and I were using Renard’s gold to buy that food you enjoyed so much the past few days.” And the food was good—fish fried in summer herbs, and all the pickled vegetables a man could want. “And why would you have to pay the resistance?”
“I don’t. But I will likely have to buy supplies as a show of good faith—they don’t let just anyone enter their network for free.”
Osana reached into her pocket. “Will these help? With the cost?” When her palm opened, inside were five rings, thick and gold, with a well-set stone in each.
Ula gasped. “You stole them from Dunixi?”
Osana shrugged as if she’d simply nicked loaves of bread instead of a person’s most prized possessions. “When I left my post to fetch horses from the stable, I found him out cold. I thought he had bigger things to worry about.”
Urtzi huffed. “His biggest problem was me.”
“It was, Urtzi; it was.” He was, indeed, the reason their former pirate leader had been abandoned on the floor of the Bellringe stable to begin with, having punched Dunixi straight in the temple when he forced Urtzi to decide between following him or following Ula. Now, Ula grinned at him as she dropped the rings into her pouch and cinched the cord. The market bell chimed then—seven times. “I should be back in an hour. Maybe two.”
“At least take a horse,” Urtzi offered. “You’ll get back sooner.”
“The saddle and sire are clearly of Pyrenee—King’s Crest knows what’s missing from its stable. It’s dangerous enough that they’re all we have anyway.” Osana glanced away at this—her error. “No.”
Urtzi sighed. “Will you ever agree with something I say?”
“I just did. About you owning our former leader. I’ll be back to disagree with you more as soon as I can.”
Ula made to move around him but Urtzi secured his stance, arms braced across his tree trunk of a chest. “We always do everything together. How will I know you will be fine?”
Luca nodded. “Yes, how will we know?”
Rather than answer his question verbally, Ula yanked down the neck of her tunic, revealing a tattoo—the looping pads of a paw print. It was much smaller than Luca’s wolf but in the same general location over her heart—five distinct pieces, in an identical satiny ink and abstract style of angles creating an organic object.
“Is that what I think it is?” Osana leaned so far over the shoulders of her horse it was a wonder she could stay in her saddle.
Ula drew in a deep breath. “The sign of someone beholden to the Otxoa. There are not many of us left. Not everyone in the resistance has a tattoo like this, but as a general key to open doors, it is a good one.”
Luca’s mouth went dry. “Beholden? To the Otxoa?”
Ula’s golden eyes, which Luca had always thought looked so much like his own, did not flinch. “My parents served the royal family.”
CHAPTER 3
THERE was no funeral at the Bellringe. Not yet.
The people of Pyrenee did not mourn Crown Prince Renard.
The chapel bells did not ring in the prescribed
song they’d last performed four years earlier after the final, pained breath of King Louis-David.
In fact, not a letter had been sent. The rulers of the Sand and Sky had not been notified. The wedding guests were quarantined within the castle. And the servants to the grounds. The gates were closed tight, and with them, the stories of what had happened that night.
All at the order of Dowager Queen Inés.
No one questioned any of it. Which was good for them, because Inés did not have a moment’s patience for anyone who would endanger her very carefully laid plans.
Her son had been murdered, the assailant and her merry band of pirates were still on the run, and she must stave off war long enough to have everything fall into place.
Rather conveniently, the only person who would bother to defy her was missing and dead to her anyway.
The Dowager Queen lit the candles within her council room. That morning as she’d received her moon cycle treatments from Medikua Aritza, clouds had rolled into the mountains from way off on the Divide, full of rain and heavy air that seeped into the walls of the Bellringe and fit her mood.
As she lit the last taper, the jewel of a room flickering with light, a procession of maids arrived from the kitchens, trays filled with thick cuts of venison, parchment-thin slices of cheese, plump grapes, and crusty bread, still warm from the hearth. Ice clinked from within frosted pitchers as they plunked the heavy crystal on the runner bisecting the long, marble-topped table.
As if hearing the dinner bell, the councilors began to trickle in. There were ten in total—the Dowager Queen did not skimp on advice. Today, though, she planned to accept none.
“Please, fill your plates,” Inés said, gesturing to the food before her. “This will likely be a long meeting. Captain Nikola, once you are ready, please give an update on the whereabouts of Princess Amarande.”
Word had come as expected from the group of Bellringe guards in pursuit after the disastrous wedding: The princess was nowhere to be found. The leader of Renard’s guard, Captain Nikola, was seated at this very table to formally relay these matters, as well as to discuss next steps. The captain was not much older than Inés’s sons—he eschewed food to speak right away, nerves clear as he got to his feet to be better heard.
Brave boy, standing within her line of fire empty-handed.
“Most likely, the princess slipped past the lines of our soldiers at the border, and made it safely back into Ardenia,” he was saying. “There is a possibility she is in the Torrent, given she’d managed to escape with her stableboy and at least two of the kidnappers who escorted him across that wasteland.”
With either outcome, the Dowager Queen needed to be prepared, but it frustrated her to no end that she couldn’t put a finger on the location of the princess. War was a much easier possibility to stomach with a hostage from the other side.
Councilor Laurent cleared his throat—he was the oldest of the group, bald, with milky eyes and failing teeth. “The princess and her stableboy left with the people who kidnapped said stableboy in the first place? What are we to make of that?”
The Dowager Queen answered quickly. “Either they inspire loyalty or the kidnappers were never truly on the opposing side.”
“Don’t we have one of the kidnappers?” asked Councilor Menon, who was the youngest of Inés’s advisors but still a good decade older than herself. “An Eritrian was found unconscious in the stable and taken into custody. I believe he has been relegated to the dungeon, along with the others who were in Prince Renard’s hired party.”
The Dowager Queen had given that order, yes—that anyone who had been traveling with Renard and was not a sworn member of the guard be detained. She did not realize that a kidnapper had been one of them. “Has he been interrogated?”
“Of course, Your Highness. I questioned him personally,” Nikola answered. “He had no immediately useful information. He was already unconscious and therefore not in the chapel when his companions helped the princess escape.”
Inés blinked at the captain. “But surely he knows where they might have gone?”
Nikola was slow to nod but did. “The kidnapper specified that he had a ship at the Port of Pyrenee but could not produce a harbor slip. Still, we followed up by sending a party to the port. The harbormaster had no record of the ship in question.”
She stared at the boy. He was a good informant, but occasionally his youth was a tremendous problem. “Did the kidnapper give you the name of the ship?”
“Yes. The Gatzal.”
Inés toyed with the cheese she had piled on her plate—for once, she had no stomach for it. “Captain Nikola, did you and your party bother to interview anyone beyond the harbormaster?”
There was a pause as chairs creaked, others shifting to get a look at the young captain as his posture stiffened. Nikola smelled danger—everyone did. As well they should. “No, Your Highness. We did not think it reasonable to waste time on a lie.”
Inés sighed. “While I understand that, I do not believe you’ve done your due diligence, Captain. You questioned a single person, an official voice that is easily bought—one pouch of gold can remove a ship from the record books and put an easy lie to a harbormaster’s lips. Why did you not take the time to talk with the eyes of the harbor? The scalawags, fishermen, beggars? They have the time to be curious, many know their letters, and more than one could have likely identified the ship, if not the unusual arrival of a blood-soaked girl in my wedding gown.”
The Dowager Queen let her rebuke hang heavy in the air. Nikola did not dare address any of it verbally. Instead, he pressed his shaking fingers into the lip of the table.
“It matters not.” With a wave, Inés relieved the captain from standing, and the boy sank to his seat. “What matters now is that we prepare our retaliation for the princess’s actions and plan for what Ardenia may do if she has returned there. They will feel the victim, though it was my dear Renard whose blood was shed.”
Councilor Laurent yet again cleared his throat. For the past year, it seemed he could start a conversation no other way. “Your Highness, that begs another question. What of the matter of succession? Our hands are tied with Prince Taillefer missing. Ought we search for him—use the resources we had put into finding the princess and pivot to locating the current heir?”
The Dowager Queen raised an eyebrow as sharp as the best dagger. “You misspeak, Laurent. Taillefer is not the heir.”
There was a very long pause.
Finally, the old man began again, labored and somewhat confused. “Forgive me, Your Highness, but with Prince Renard deceased, the second son—”
The Dowager Queen bared her teeth. “Prince Renard’s loss of life is directly and unequivocally the fault of Taillefer, who hired the kidnapper pirates in the first place. Wherever he is, we shall no longer call him prince and he shall have no claim to this throne.”
Laurent’s wrinkles trembled in surprise. “You … you would disown him, Your Highness?”
“I already have.”
“Your Highness, unfortunately, there is an official protocol for a matter such as this.” A woman’s voice—Colette, another ancient one.
“Make it official then,” Inés snapped.
Menon waded in, brave. “I am afraid we cannot do that without solid proof.”
Inés’s frustration grew. “The pirate has proof.”
Eyes shot to Captain Nikola, who clearly did not wish to be admonished again, but had the information the table sought. “With all due respect, Your Highness, he has a splitting headache and his word cannot be trusted.”
The Dowager Queen gritted her teeth. Perhaps her circle had grown too large—a smaller group meant less disagreement. Inés drew in a swift breath and looked down her nose at the full table. “May I remind all of you that the wedding was not completed and no coronation occurred; therefore, I am still the Dowager Queen and regent to Pyrenee. If you will not assume Taillefer disowned and relieved of his title at this very moment, you will
at least recognize that I am the only monarch in this room, and therefore, it is my word that takes precedence. Do you understand?”
A few murmurs rounded the table—though the acknowledgment was not enough for the anger that seethed beneath her silks and lace.
“Do you understand?” she demanded, her gaze as piercing as it was direct—no one at the table could escape it.
“Yes, Your Highness,” rang out in unison.
“Good. Captain, get what you need from the pirate. Council, I demand that, once I have the necessary proof per whatever statute causes you to currently defy me, we begin the process to strip Taillefer of his title.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Inés continued without producing any expression close to approval. “I do not anticipate that process will take long; therefore, Captain Nikola, I request that you round up your best men and create a plan to put your efforts into locating Taillefer. He is to be tried for treason for his part in the regicide of his brother.”
Nikola did not hesitate to answer. “Yes, Your Highness.”
The Dowager Queen huffed through her nostrils. “Captain, so that we are clear on your orders: Pirate first. Then a trip to the harbor, questioning not only about the princess but also about Taillefer. Then, based on your findings, a complete, multifaceted plan of attack for retrieval of Taillefer by breakfast the day after tomorrow, not a moment later.”
The young soldier accepted the order and left immediately. When he was gone and the doors creaked closed, Colette drew herself up straight. “Your Highness, while I agree with you that this is the best course of action, I would be remiss if I didn’t make mention that, considering how the Basilican crown changed hands fifty years ago, Taillefer could appeal to the ruling parties of the Sand and Sky that he is the rightful heir.”
The Queen Will Betray You Page 2