White for grief—for death.
The Grand Empress’s face was unadorned, her coloring far paler than that of her children. No joy limned her features; no life. No interest in either.
Nesryn lingered in the shadows of the pillar, watching the woman drift farther away, as if she were wandering the paths of some dreamscape. Or perhaps some empty, barren hell.
Nesryn wondered if it was at all similar to the ones she herself had walked during those initial months after her mother’s passing. Wondered if the days also bled together for the Grand Empress, if food was ash on her tongue and sleep was both craved and elusive.
Only when the khagan’s wife strode behind a large boulder, vanishing from sight, did Nesryn continue on, her steps a little heavier.
Antica under the full moon was a wash of blues and silvers, interrupted by the golden glow of lanterns hanging from public dining rooms and the carts of vendors selling kahve and treats. A few performers plucked out melodies on lutes and drums, a few gifted enough to make Nesryn wish she could pause, but stealth and speed were her allies tonight.
She stalked through the shadows, sorting through the sounds of the city.
Various temples were interspersed amongst the main thoroughfares: some crafted of marble pillars, some beneath peaked wooden roofs and painted columns, some mere courtyards filled with pools or rock gardens or sleeping animals. Thirty-six gods watched over this city—and there were thrice as many temples to them scattered throughout.
And with each one Nesryn passed, she wondered if those gods were peering out from the pillars or behind the carved rocks; if they watched from the eaves of that sloped roof, or from behind the spotted cat’s eyes where it lay half awake on the temple steps.
She beseeched all of them to make her feet swift and silent, to guide her where she needed to go while she prowled the streets.
If a Valg agent had come to this continent—or worse, a possible Valg prince … Nesryn scanned the rooftops and the gargantuan pillar of the Torre. It gleamed bone white in the moonlight, a beacon watching over this city, the healers within.
Chaol and Yrene had made no progress today, but—it was fine. Nesryn reminded herself, again and again, that it was fine. These things took a while, even if Yrene … It was clear she had some personal reservations regarding Chaol’s heritage. His former role in the empire.
Nesryn paused near an alley entrance while a band of young revelers staggered past, singing bawdy songs that would surely make her aunt scold them. And later hum along herself.
As she monitored the alley, the bordering, flat rooftops, Nesryn’s attention snagged on a rough carving in the earthen brick wall. An owl at rest, its wings tucked in, those unearthly large eyes wide and eternally unblinking. Perhaps no more than vandalism, yet she brushed a gloved hand over it, tracing the lines etched into the building’s side.
Antica’s owls. They were everywhere in this city, tribute to the goddess worshipped perhaps more than any other of the thirty-six. No chief god ruled the southern continent, yet Silba … Nesryn again studied the mighty tower, shining brighter than the palace on the opposite end of the city. Silba reigned unchallenged here. For anyone to break into that Torre, to kill one of the healers, they had to be desperate. Or utterly insane.
Or a Valg demon, with no fear of the gods—only of their master’s wrath if they should fail.
But if she were a Valg in this city, where to hide? Where to lurk?
Canals ran beneath some of the homes, but it was not like the vast sewer network of Rifthold. Yet perhaps if she studied the Torre’s walls …
Nesryn aimed for the gleaming tower, the Torre looming with each nearing step. She paused in the shadows beside one of the homes across the street from the solid wall that enclosed the Torre’s entire compound.
Torches flickered along brackets in the pale wall, guards stationed every few feet. And atop it. Royal guards, judging from their colors, and Torre guards in their cornflower blue and yellow—so many that none would get by without notice. Nesryn studied the iron gates, now sealed for the night.
“Were they open last night, is the answer no guard wants to yield.”
Nesryn whirled, her knife angled low and up.
Prince Sartaq leaned against the building wall a few feet behind her, his gaze on the looming Torre. Twin swords peeked above his broad shoulders, and long knives hung from his belt. He’d changed from the finery of dinner back into his flying leathers—again reinforced with steel at the shoulders, silver gauntlets at his wrists, and a black scarf at his neck. No, not scarf—but a cloth to pull over his mouth and nose when the heavy hood of his cloak was on. To remain anonymous, unmarked.
She sheathed her knife. “Were you following me?”
The prince flicked his dark, calm eyes to her. “You didn’t exactly try to be inconspicuous when you left through the front gate, armed to the teeth.”
Nesryn turned toward the Torre walls. “I have no reason to hide what I’m doing.”
“You think whoever attacked the healers is just going to be strolling around?” His boots were barely a scrape against the ancient stones as he approached her side.
“I thought to investigate how they might have gotten in. Get a better sense of the layout and where they’d likely find appealing to hide.”
A pause. “You sound as if you know your prey intimately.” And didn’t think to mention this to me during our ride this morning, was the unspoken rest.
Nesryn glanced sidelong at Sartaq. “I wish I could say otherwise, but I do. If the attack was made by whom we suspect … I spent much of this spring and summer hunting their kind in Rifthold.”
Sartaq watched the wall for a long minute. He said quietly, “How bad was it?”
Nesryn swallowed as the images flickered: the bodies and the sewers and the glass castle exploding, a wall of death flying for her—
“Captain Faliq.”
A gentle prod. A softer tone than she’d expect from a warrior-prince.
“What did your spies tell you?”
Sartaq’s jaw tightened, shadows crossing his face before he said, “They reported that Rifthold was full of terrors. People who were not people. Beasts from Vanth’s darkest dreams.”
Vanth—Goddess of the Dead. Her presence in this city predated even Silba’s healers, her worshippers a secretive sect that even the khagan and his predecessors feared and respected, despite her rituals being wholly different from the Eternal Sky to which the khagan and the Darghan believed they returned. Nesryn had walked swiftly past Vanth’s dark-stoned temple earlier, the entrance marked only by a set of onyx steps descending into a subterranean chamber lit with bone-white candles.
“I can see that none of this sounds outlandish to you,” said Sartaq.
“A year ago, it might have.”
Sartaq’s gaze swept over her weapons. “So you truly faced such horrors, then.”
“Yes,” Nesryn admitted. “For whatever good it did, considering the city is now held by them.” The words came out as bitterly as they felt.
Sartaq considered. “Most would have fled, rather than face them at all.”
She didn’t feel like confirming or denying such a statement, no doubt meant to console her. A kind effort from a man who did not need to do such things. She found herself saying, “I—I saw your mother earlier. Walking alone through a garden.”
Sartaq’s eyes shuttered. “Oh?”
A careful question.
Nesryn wondered if she perhaps should have held her tongue, but she continued, “I only mention it in case … in case it is something you might need, might want to know.”
“Was there a guard? A handmaiden with her?”
“None that I saw.”
That was indeed worry tightening his face as he leaned against the wall of the building. “Thank you for the report.”
It was not her place to ask about it—not for anyone, and certainly not for the most powerful family in the world. But Nesryn said quietly, “My
mother died when I was thirteen.” She gazed up at the near-glowing Torre. “The old king … you know what he did to those with magic. To healers gifted with it. So there was no one who could save my mother from the wasting sickness that crept up on her. The healer we managed to find admitted to us that it was likely from a growth inside my mother’s breast. That she might have been able to cure her before magic vanished. Before it was forbidden.”
She had never told anyone outside of her family this story. Wasn’t sure why she was really telling him now, but she went on, “My father wanted to get her on a boat to sail here. Was desperate to. But war had broken out up and down our lands. Ships were conscripted into Adarlan’s service, and she was too sick to risk a land journey all the way down to Eyllwe to try to cross there. My father combed through every map, every trade route. By the time he found a merchant who would sail with them—just the two of them—to Antica … My mother was so sick she could not be moved. She would not have made it here, even if they’d gotten on the boat.”
Sartaq watched her, face unreadable, while she spoke.
Nesryn slid her hands into her pockets. “So she stayed. And we were all there when she … when it was over.” That old grief wrapped around her, burning her eyes. “It took me a few years to feel right again,” she said after a moment. “Two years before I started noticing things like the sun on my face, or the taste of food—started enjoying them again. My father … he held us together. My sister and I. If he mourned, he did not let us see it. He filled our house with as much joy as he could.”
She fell silent, unsure how to explain what she’d meant by starting down this road.
Sartaq said at last, “Where are they now? After the attack on Rifthold?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, blowing out a breath. “They got out, but … I don’t know where they fled, or if they will be able to make it here, with so many horrors filling the world.”
Sartaq fell quiet for a long minute, and Nesryn spent every second of it wishing she’d just kept her mouth shut. Then the prince said, “I will send word—discreetly.” He pushed off the wall. “For my spies to keep an eye out for the Faliq family, and to aid them, should they pass their way, in any form they can to safer harbors.”
Her chest tightened to the point of pain, but she managed to say, “Thank you.” It was a generous offer. More than generous.
Sartaq added, “I am sorry—for your loss. As long ago as it was. I … As a warrior, I grew up walking hand-in-hand with Death. And yet this one … It has been harder to endure than others. And my mother’s grief perhaps even harder to face than my own.” He shook his head, the moonlight dancing on his black hair, and said with forced lightness, “Why do you think I was so eager to run out after you into the night?”
Nesryn, despite herself, offered him a slight smile in return.
Sartaq lifted a brow. “Though it would help to know what, exactly, I’m supposed to be looking for.”
Nesryn debated what to tell him—debated his very presence here.
He gave a low, soft laugh when her hesitation went on a moment too long. “You think I’m the one who attacked that healer? After I was the one who told you about it this morning?”
Nesryn bowed her head. “I mean no disrespect.” Even if she’d seen another prince enslaved this spring—had fired an arrow at a queen to keep him alive. “Your spies were correct. Rifthold was … I would not wish to see Antica suffer through anything similar.”
“And you’re convinced the attack at the Torre was just the start?”
“I’m out here, aren’t I?”
Silence.
Nesryn added, “If anyone, familiar or foreign, offers you a black ring or collars, if you see anyone with something like it … Do not hesitate. Not for a heartbeat. Strike fast, and true. Beheading is the only thing that keeps them down. The person within them is gone. Don’t try to save them—or it will be you who winds up enslaved as well.”
Sartaq’s attention drifted to the sword at her side, the bow and quiver strapped to her back. He said quietly, “Tell me everything that you know.”
“I can’t.”
The refusal alone could end her life, but Sartaq nodded thoughtfully. “Tell me what you can, then.”
So she did. Standing in the shadows beyond the Torre walls, she explained everything she could, save for the keys and gates, and Dorian’s enslavement, as well as that of the former king.
When she’d finished, Sartaq’s face had not changed, though he rubbed at his jaw. “When did you plan to tell my father this?”
“As soon as he’d grant us a private meeting.”
Sartaq swore, low and creative. “With my sister’s death … It’s been harder for him than he’ll admit to return to our usual rhythms. He will not take my counsel. Or anyone else’s.”
It was the worry in the prince’s tone—and sorrow—that made Nesryn say, “I’m sorry.”
Sartaq shook his head. “I must think on what you told me. There are places within this continent, near my people’s homeland …” He rubbed at his neck. “When I was a boy, they told stories at the aeries of similar horrors.” He said, more to himself than her, “Perhaps it is time I paid my hearth-mother a visit. To hear her stories again. And how that ancient threat was dealt with, long ago. Especially if it is now stirring once more.”
A record of the Valg … here? Her family had never told her any such tales, but then her own people had hailed from distant reaches of the continent. If the ruk riders had somehow either known of the Valg or even faced them …
Footsteps scuffed on the street beyond, and they pressed into the walls of the alley, hands on their sword hilts. But it was only a drunk stumbling home for the night, saluting the Torre guards along the wall as he passed, earning a few laughing grins in return.
“Are there canals beneath here—nearby sewers that might connect to the Torre?” Her question was little more than a push of air.
“I don’t know,” Sartaq admitted with equal quiet. He smiled grimly as he pointed toward an ancient grate in the sloped stones of the alley. “But it would be my honor to accompany you in discovering one.”
CHAPTER
14
Yrene didn’t care if someone came to murder her in her sleep.
By the time the solemn, candlelit vigil in the Torre courtyard had finished, by the time Yrene crawled to her room near the top of the Torre, two acolytes propping her between them after she’d collapsed at the base of the stairs, she didn’t care about anything.
Cook brought her dinner in bed. Yrene managed a bite before she passed out.
She awoke past midnight with her fork on her chest and spiced, slow-cooked chicken staining her favorite blue gown.
She groaned, but felt slightly more alive. Enough so that she sat up in the near-darkness of her tower room, and rose only to see to her needs and haul her tiny desk in front of the door. She stacked books and any spare objects she could find atop it, checked the locks twice, and stumbled back into bed, still fully clothed.
She awoke at sunrise.
Precisely when she said she’d meet Lord Chaol.
Cursing, Yrene hauled away the desk, the books, undid the locks, and flung herself down the tower stairs.
She’d ordered the brace for his horse to be brought directly to the castle courtyard, and she’d left her supplies at his room yesterday, so there was nothing for her to take beyond her own frantic self as she hurtled down the endless spiral of the Torre, scowling at the carved owls passing silent judgment while she flew by doors now beginning to open to reveal sleepy-faced healers and acolytes blinking blearily at her.
Yrene thanked Silba for the restorative powers of deep, dreamless sleep as she sprinted across the complex grounds, past the lavender-lined pathways, through the just-opened gates.
Antica was stirring, the streets mercifully quiet as she raced for the palace perched on its other side. She arrived in the courtyard thirty minutes late, gasping for breath, sweat pooli
ng in every possible crevice of her body.
Lord Westfall had started without her.
Gulping down air, Yrene lingered by the towering bronze gates, the shadows still lying thick with the sun so low on the horizon, and watched the unfolding mounting.
As she’d specified, the patient-looking roan mare was on the shorter side—the perfect height for him to reach the saddle horn with an upraised hand. Which he was currently doing, Yrene noted with no small degree of satisfaction. But the rest …
Well, it seemed he’d decided not to use the wooden ramp that she’d also ordered crafted in lieu of a stepped mounting block. The mounting ramp now sat by the still-shadowed horse pens against the eastern wall of the courtyard—as if he’d outright refused to even go near it, and instead had them bring over the horse. To mount the mare on his own.
It didn’t surprise her one bit.
Chaol did not look at any of the guards clustered around him—at least, more than was necessary. With their backs to her, she could only identify one or two by name, but—
One stepped in silently to let Chaol brace his other hand on his armor-clad shoulder as the lord pushed himself upright in a mighty heave. The mare stood patiently while his right hand gripped the saddle horn to balance himself—
She stepped forward just as Lord Westfall pushed off the guard’s shoulder and into the saddle, the guard stepping in close as he did it. It left him sitting sidesaddle, but Chaol still did not give the guard much thanks beyond a tight nod.
Instead, he silently studied the saddle before him, assessing how he was to get one leg over the other side of the horse. Color stained his cheeks, his jaw a tight line. The guards lingered, and he stiffened, tighter and tighter—
But then he moved again, leaning back in the saddle and hauling his right leg over the horn. The guard who’d helped him lunged to support his back, another darting from the other side to keep him from tumbling off, but Chaol’s torso remained solid. Unwavering.
His muscle control was extraordinary. A man who had trained that body to obey him no matter what, even now.
Tower of Dawn Page 17