by Matthew Ward
“He was angry last night. This morning? Who knows? He burns bright and brief sometimes.”
That much tallied with Josiri’s expectations. Maybe he needn’t be a fugitive for ever, after all. “So I’ve heard.”
Constans nodded. “Just keep your head down. If you need me, I’ll be taking a stroll around the Hayadra Grove at dusk and dawn for the foreseeable future. Try not to be conspicuous.”
“I’ll do that.” Altiris tried to express his gratitude, and came up dry of anything save the simplest words. “Thank you, Constans.”
Constans pushed away from the wall and offered a florid bow, seemingly forgetting he didn’t have a hat to doff. “What else are friends for?”
It was with no small relief that Hawkin reached the cover of the estate’s trees. Sothvane had been alive with Drazina into the early hours, with shackles aplenty and little concern whose wrists they were snapped around. Even if no one recognised her, she’d no papers to present. When she’d gone to Old Eiran for shelter, he’d tried to turn her in.
It was getting so an honest rogue wasn’t safe in Tressia.
She needed to get out. Back into the provinces where she could breathe. But that meant help. She daren’t go to the Merrow – or rather Shalamoh, as Kasvin had inferred. No telling where she stood after that night in Coventaj. She’d no reason to trust him, and no leverage to make up the shortfall. So instead, she’d come to Woldensend. The Merrow’s identity wasn’t the only secret Kasvin had let slip.
Though the gardens were strewn with the wreckage of the previous evening’s festivities – at Woldensend, every night was party night – there were no conscious revellers in sight. Plenty had passed out under the stars and slumbered through the dawn beside waning bonfires, reeking of wine, swathed in blankets, propped up against the garden’s statues and surrounded by broken tableware – the dishevelled and the lamentably underdressed alike. Hawkin could have been three days dead and still threaded that insensate mass without disturbance. Indeed, her lithe fingers turned a tidy profit from purse and pocket long before she reached the garden’s inner wall.
From there, a window offered ingress to the house. No guests to be found, and what few servants roamed the halls were no match for a woman who’d learned from the Crowmarket’s finest. Nary a one so much as glanced in her direction as she searched the rooms. Servants’ passages and connecting doors offered a wealth of evasions. Hawkin employed them all.
Before long, she found herself perched on the edge of a luxurious four-poster bed. Drapes twitched in the breeze from an open window hidden behind. Konor Zarn lay sprawled at her side, fully clothed, entangled in bedclothes and his dark hair spread across a makeup-smeared pillow. Less like a man who’d sought slumber than one who’d fallen into bed and passed out.
Revolting.
Hawkin slid a dagger from her belt. “Lord Zarn?”
An eye fluttered and peered drunkenly into the gloom. “Not now, Nadia. ’m trying to sleep.”
A waft of stale wine accompanied the words. Whatever had become of the mysterious Nadia, she was almost certainly better off where she was.
Hawkin pressed the dagger’s edge to his throat. “I’m afraid I must insist.”
Eyes shot wide. Hawkin muffled a cry of alarm with her other hand. The dagger’s twitch sent him back to stillness.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” whispered Hawkin. “In fact, we’re going to be the very best of friends. You’ll get me passage out of the city. In return I’ll not tell any of your rich, influential friends how you strangled one of your bedmates. You do remember Kasvin?”
Eyes widened further, the handsome face struck with horror. He nodded.
Hawkin counted to three and removed her hand. She left the dagger where it was.
Zarn’s throat bobbed. “I… I need a drink.” He moaned. “This is too much. All too much.”
Hawkin’s disgust deepened a rung or two. The last thing he needed was a drink. Likely he was still out of his skull from the night before. She slid away from the bed, careful to keep between his sozzled lordship and the chamber door.
“Call for help and you’ll die.”
Reaching his feet on the third try, Zarn tottered to a dresser and set his hand upon a decanter. Swaying, he wagged a finger back and forth. “I know you, don’t I?” he slurred. “Hawkin… Hawkin Darrow. That’s right. Never did get you into bed, did I?”
Ugh. “My name doesn’t matter.”
He splashed a measure of brandy into a filthy glass. Rather more across the dresser. “Kasvin… Such a pretty lass.” He knocked back the contents of the glass and belched. “Such a pretty… I’m going to be sick!”
The dagger’s threat forgotten, he stumbled towards the drapes.
“No! Wait!”
Cursing under her breath, Hawkin ran after him, free hand clawing for his shoulder. She reached him just as his desperate hand closed around the velvet folds.
Too intent on preventing his escape, Hawkin barely saw Zarn change direction. She certainly had no time to avoid the punch to her gut.
As spasming lungs fought for air, Zarn twisted the dagger from her grip and slammed her against the wall, hand clamped about her throat.
Eyes bereft of both drunkenness and worry bored into hers. “Let’s start again, shall we?”
Thirty-Eight
Rosa woke with medicine’s bitter aftertaste on a cotton tongue, and the cloying scent of balm thick in her nostrils. Winter sunlight crept about thin drapes. And yet there was shape enough to the bedchamber to warn of the unfamiliar. A low ceiling. Walls decorated with flowing patterns, dark against pale plaster. Furniture full of flowing shapes, where she’d grown up surrounded by stark practicality. And everywhere, the glint of gold. A delicacy of leaf and gilding that perfectly complemented oaken curve, rather than smothered it.
Stomach tight, Rosa reached for the bedcovers. Pain jolted from wrist to shoulder. A dozen other harms screamed for attention from beneath silk bindings. She pinched her eyes shut to hold them at bay.
“You’d do better not to move. The lunassera are skilled, but they’re not miracle workers.”
That voice. She knew it, but for a frustrating moment couldn’t place it.
Haldravord. The eternal from the marketplace. Her saviour.
Rosa forced her eyes open and tracked the voice to its source. There. Between wardrobe and door. Jaw-length auburn hair, marred by a perfect badger stripe above the brow, her shadowed likeness almost twin to Sevaka’s, but her gaze cold, clinical. A formal gown of blue silk, though Rosa noted its skirts were slit to the thigh so as not to constrict movement. In Tressia, the dress would have been thought provocative, even unseemly. But it seemed likely she wasn’t in the Republic any longer.
Surrendering to the dull ache in her neck, she let her head fall. “Oh. It’s you.”
“Charming. I did save your life.”
As Rosa’s eyes adapted to the gloom, she decided the other’s resemblance to Sevaka was little more than skin deep. There was no laughter in her eyes, and little kindness. “I didn’t ask you to.”
“Doubly charming.” The eternal folded her arms. “My name’s Apara Rann.”
“Not Kiradin?”
“My mother gave me up to save me being an embarrassment.”
All too easy to credit. “But you are Sevaka’s sister?”
A thin, bittersweet smile. “She bears that burden, yes.”
“And you’re a kernclaw.”
The smile faded. “No more than you’re a soul-hungry apparition. The past is the past.”
Anger growled. Rosa had trapped herself in the Raven’s service through error. No vranakin wore a kernclaw’s feathered cloak unwillingly.
“Why save me?”
“Because we’re family.”
Rosa gave a tired snort. “Family? You almost killed Sevaka.”
“And I killed our mother. I took commission for our brother’s death, though I didn’t know him at the time.” Apara folded
her arms. “I did all these things, but was responsible for none.”
Rosa sneered. “A likely tale.”
“Choice is the privilege of wealth, and freedom. Now I have both, I’m trying to do better. Last night marked the first blood I’ve spilled in many years.” Eyes narrowed. “Scorn is apparently my only reward.”
Prettily spoken, for a vranakin. But fine words made poor shroud for foul heart. There was an angle to this. Where the crow-born were concerned, there was an angle to everything. “Where am I?”
“Tregard. The Imperial palace.”
Rosa fought to hide dismay. No longer a ritual sacrifice, but a hostage against fortune. Thirava’s pleasures exchanged for an Empress’ cold calculation. She couldn’t know how little collateral Rosa was worth. Viktor had proved that at Darkmere. Sevaka might attempt to sway him, but when had Viktor ever yielded to another’s will? The brief vigour of waking bled away.
“So you serve the Empress now? I never thought a vranakin could fall further.”
“Out of friendship. She’s a good woman.”
“She’s an honourless despot.” Old memories gave the accusation bite. War without declaration. Poison offered beneath a friendly smile. The Eastshires stolen. “Sarans were ever thus.”
Apara drew closer, the first flicker of anger in her tone. “The Hadari Empire was falling into ruin, bled dry by decades of war. Now even the poor have food and shelter. Commoners are treated as something more than hands apt to hold a spear. When I first arrived, the only law was royal decree. Now magistrates enforce justice for pauper and privileged alike.” She halted, composure returning. “If this is tyranny, I wish it had come to Tressia long ago.”
Rosa scowled, reminded of what the Republic claimed to be, and seldom was. “It doesn’t change her past.”
“She’s made mistakes,” Apara said. “She’s trying to move beyond them. That’s all any of us can do.”
It wasn’t so much the words that struck a chord with Rosa, as the tone. They mirrored the mood in which she’d recently driven many a chisel into undeserving timber. She resented both. “So I’m to be your redemption? A path to divine reward?”
“I’ve seen gods up close. I want no redemption they can offer. You’re alive. Don’t overthink it.”
Truth, or a sop to defuse argument? Sifting Apara’s claims for verity was an effort fast sliding beyond reach. All Rosa wanted to do was sleep. “Am I a prisoner?”
Apara hesitated. “In truth, I’m not sure. Bringing you here has strained the Empress’ friendliness.” She twitched a shrug. “She’s not fond of you. Something about broken truces and the slaughter of routed warriors. I didn’t care to ask. I’ve no right to judge another’s past. More than that, I’ve committed no few transgressions along the way. I’m to be called to account once I leave you. It may be I’m no longer welcome in the palace, or even the city.”
Rosa found no lie behind the words, only melancholy. “Then why bring me here at all?”
“Because you needed help, and I didn’t know where else you might find it in time. You’ve already slept for most of a day. The lunassera gave you an even chance of never waking up. You’re tougher than you look.”
Rosa’s suspicions ebbed. Tiredness was part of it – sleep called her with every passing moment. But it wasn’t the whole. She felt moved to offer something in return.
“She speaks of you… Sevaka, I mean. Not often, and never for long, but you’re in her thoughts. You should see her.”
Apara turned away. “I haven’t the right. Not after what I did.”
Rosa snorted. For the first time, they’d something in common. “For a woman who wants me to leave the past in the past, you’re very attached to your own.”
“So Josiri tells me.”
“Josiri Trelan? How do you know him?”
Apara flinched. “We speak, from time to time.”
Her reaction betrayed a loose thread, but where did it lead? “Another friend?”
“No. He’s too close to Droshna for that.”
A face that had thus far only flirted with anger now tightened with hatred. Of a sort Rosa had seen gazing back at her from a dozen clumsy sculptures. “Why do you hate Viktor?”
Apara reached for the door. “There are four guards in the hallway, and others beyond the window. If you offer any trouble, they’ll kill you.”
“That’s probably wise, as I’ll surely kill the Empress if I see her.” Rosa forced the snarl from her voice. “Tell me about Viktor. Please.”
Apara paused, hand on the doorframe. “Because he smothered me in shadow and made me his puppet. He broke me into pieces I was a year putting back together. Because even now I wake from nightmares, terrified my thoughts are not my own, but his.” Turning, she shot Rosa a defiant glare. “I don’t expect you to believe me.”
The gaping hole Viktor had opened in Rosa’s memory loomed larger than ever. No matter what she’d done since Darkmere – no matter how many sculptures she struck, how far she ran or the causes she threw herself into, there was no closing it. “I believe you,” she said softly.
Apara held her gaze a moment longer, then left the room without a word.
“What were you thinking? Bringing that woman here?”
Melanna seldom employed that particular tone. It withered wayward courtiers and broke the stubbornest of warriors. Servants described it as being fit to rust gold, though never in her presence. She felt diminished whenever she used it, as if it were a concession to failures past – failures she should have recognised, and avoided. But sometimes, it was the only tone that would serve.
She needn’t have bothered, for Apara stood her ground with the calm, polite certainty of a woman who found no fault with recent actions. “Should I have let her die?”
Yes. A woman who broke a flag of truce, as Orova had done at Vrasdavora, deserved to die. She who’d torn a fleeing army to ruin at Govanna Field deserved to suffer. How swiftly years of tolerance fell away. How quickly aspirations became lies. The anger – that howling, hot pressure about Melanna’s heart – belonged to a vanished princessa, not the Empress. Aware that she fought a losing battle with composure, Melanna stared down at the thin desk and its bundle of interrupted paperwork.
“And the rest? Impersonating a lunassera?” Her voice surely carried beyond the chamber’s thin walls to Immortals beyond. In the throne room it would have echoed like thunder. She lowered her voice. “Killing Silsarian warriors? My subjects?”
“Thirava doesn’t hold them so. Just as he doesn’t hold your laws to be his.”
Apara’s reply maddened precisely because of its truth. “I suppose you expect me to treat Orova as hospitality demands?”
“That’s your decision, my Empress.” Still, Apara offered nothing but calm. “She need only recover enough to manage the passage of Otherworld, and I can return her to Tressia. Keep her in shackles until then, if that is your will.”
“I should have her executed, and you cast from the city.”
“Then perhaps you and Thirava have more in common than any of us believed.”
A smile softened the words, Apara plainly believing herself out of danger. Temptation flared to prove her wrong – punishment for thinking to know an Empress’ mind. Melanna’s father had done similar with his closest friends on many occasions. But she was trying so hard not to be her father, save in ways Kaila might respect.
“You presume a great deal on our friendship.”
“I know. And I’m sorry.”
“But you’d do it again?”
Apara hesitated. “Yes. You’ve set me a very clear example, savim.”
The unabashed flattery dispersed anger’s dregs. “Apparently that example extends to forgiving those who seek my death.”
The smile broadened. “Can there be more decisive way to prove yourself her better?”
“You’re speaking like a courtier.”
“I’ve been practising.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.” Melanna
sighed and sank into a chair. “Why didn’t you ask me first?”
“I was worried you’d forbid me,” said Apara. “I imagine that’s why Haldrane didn’t tell you she was still alive.”
“Haldrane?” Melanna threw her a sharp glance. “The river of my days is muddied enough without those I trust keeping secrets.”
Distaste chased the smile from Apara’s lips. “Do you suppose Haldrane has ever told you everything? I’d cousins like him. Full of preening cleverness that little reflected their ability.”
Melanna shook her head, reminded again how little love was lost between thief and spymaster. “His ability is sound and, though I regret the necessity, there are many things I’m better off not knowing. An Empress’ hands must be clean, even when they’re slippery with blood.” And there was already so much blood on her hands. “But it wasn’t Haldrane I meant.”
Apara nodded contritely.
Melanna sighed. “So long as the Lady Orova remains confined, I will visit no harm upon her. If she sets foot beyond her quarters without leave, she dies. Am I understood?”
Apara dipped a curtsey. “Of course, my Empress.”
She retreated from the chamber, leaving Melanna alone with the morning’s unfinished business. She sat in silence, thoughts not on the stack of reports and missives, but on Apara’s deeds. Leniency was a fine, if dangerous, trait in an Empress. Had she relented because Orova was deserving? Out of Apara’s friendship? Or simply to prove herself a better woman than once she’d been? Would it have changed her reckoning had Apara acted thus against someone other than Thirava? If she’d shed Icansae blood, and not Silsarian? Melanna found the lack of ready answer more unsettling than the inciting deed. The infuriating dichotomy of rule: that an Empress must be certain in all things, save her own mind.
A knock came at the door.
Melanna glanced up. “Yes?”
Tesni entered, a sheaf of papers in her hand. “Delivered a few minutes ago, savim. I apologise for keeping you waiting, but it seemed a conversation better left undisturbed.”
Melanna sighed a smile and took the papers. “You’ll flourish here.”