by Cara Witter
Regardless, they couldn’t leave without Saara. The best course was clearly to give her time to get to Nerendal and hope to all hells she found a way to signal them when she’d succeeded.
Come on, Saara, he thought. Nerendal chose you. Prove him right.
Daniella and Perchaya moved back into the throne room. “Is there more we can do for the main door?” Perchaya asked. They’d already inserted the heavy wooden bar that would hold the doors closed, though Kenton supposed it wouldn’t be impossible to break the wood by ramming it open.
“The iron table,” Daniella said, and Kenton nodded.
From his place by the wall, Rakal took a step forward. “That is the throne of a god.”
“Your god is missing,” Kenton said. “How long do you think that fake stone sat in his seat?”
Rakal glared at Kenton, and then muttered, “All in the queen’s wisdom.”
Kenton drew the blade up against the queen’s flesh, careful not to cut her this time. “Or the queen’s desperation.”
Aiyen’s muscles tightened beneath his grip, but she wasn’t fool enough to struggle.
Perchaya and Daniella began the arduous task of dragging the heavy table with its iron railing across the floor, crossing the light whorls of color reflected onto it from the ceiling and further spreading the tiny glass shards from the fake Nerendal. The sound of dragging was loud and grating, and for a moment Kenton worried it might draw undue attention from the guards outside the door.
Then the scraping was drowned out by the reverberating sound of the palace gong. Daniella reached up to cover her ears, and Perchaya looked at Kenton in alarm. The noise echoed through the domed throne room, bouncing off the walls, returning to his ears again and again. The gong rang twice more, and then the sound died, though Kenton could still feel the pulse of it in his chest.
“It seems my niece is in trouble,” the queen said, her voice growing more confident.
Kenton’s mind raced. It was most likely Saara who had alerted the guards. He cursed her for charging off without a plan, but more so for getting caught.
This changed things. Saara had outlined for him what would happen when the guards were alerted. The residents of the palace would barricade themselves in their rooms while the guards secured every exit and stormed the castle to secure the queen and her heir. No one else would matter until that task was complete.
Which meant right now there’d be an entire contingent of highly trained guards headed their way. Kenton caught the eye of one of the guards at the bottom of the dais. She looked up at him with an expression of hate in her eyes. Kenton recognized that look. It was the gaze of a soldier who was calculating her odds, ready to give her own life for queen and country.
Kenton needed to get control of this situation. He looked to Daniella and Perchaya. “Take cover,” he said, and Perchaya grabbed Daniella by the sleeve and tugged her behind the iron table, which was now near the middle of the room.
The main doors to the throne room rattled, and Kenton looked right into the eyes of the angry guard. “You,” he said. “Open that door.”
The guard looked at him in confusion, and Kenton looked to Daniella to translate, but the queen beat him to it, saying something loudly in Tirostaari.
Kenton glanced at Daniella, who nodded. The queen had translated correctly.
“Now,” Kenton said. And this time, Daniella beat the queen to the translation.
Which was good. No reason to allow the queen opportunity to send subtle messages to her people that Daniella might not catch.
The guard moved to the front door, removing the bar, and the doors swung open as a group of guards rushed into the room.
“Drop your weapons!” Kenton shouted, making sure to position himself fully behind the queen. “Get on your knees!”
The guards stared at him, stunned, and the first few in the front dropped their swords, even before Daniella shouted out a translation. More blades clattered to the floor, though it took a few seconds for those with crossbows at the back to follow.
“Any sudden movement and my blade sinks into her lungs,” Kenton said. “Do you know what it’s like to drown in your own blood? Because that’s how you will watch her die if you don’t do exactly as I say.”
Daniella translated again, and the guards looked at each other, as if calculating what to do. Kenton was sure there were more outside, just out of sight, still holding their weapons, but at least those inside were following his directions.
So far.
“Come in,” he said. “Close the door behind you. And if anyone so much as lifts a weapon, I swear to your god the queen will bleed.”
Kenton noted several guards staring at the iron table, there in the middle of the room with no stone. A few of them muttered to each other in Tirostaari.
“Silence!” Kenton shouted, and Daniella translated with equal gusto. Then he focused on the guard he’d ordered to open the door. “You. Close the door behind them.” Now that the others outside knew what was happening, they’d be less likely to act in desperation.
He looked back to Daniella and Perchaya. “Collect the weapons,” he said. “And check them, make sure they aren’t hiding any more.”
The women nodded, rising from behind the table.
All right, Saara, Kenton thought. We’ve given you a chance. He prayed to the gods she made the most of it.
Fifty-one
The halls were eerily silent as Jaeme followed Saara back toward the queen’s bedroom. At least the guards in that room had been taken care of, so if they could avoid encountering any more on the way—
Saara stopped as running feet pounded down a corridor to their left. They both flattened themselves against the side of the corridor in time to see Sayvil and Nikaenor burst into the hall, still wearing their work clothes from the saw mill, but without the hoods.
Nikaenor spotted Jaeme first and startled, letting out a loud yelp. The boy recovered quickly and he and Sayvil stepped to the side of the corridor, panting.
Jaeme put a hand on Nikaenor’s shoulder. His eyes were red and swollen, and tracks of tears glistened down his cheeks. “Are you all right? What in the gods’ names are you doing here?”
“He’s fine,” Sayvil snapped. “The powder barely touched him. What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be down in the sewers.”
“Long story,” Jaeme said, still eyeing Nikaenor with concern.
Saara cut in. “The jewel isn’t in the throne room. It’s in a bedroom up this hallway. Kenton still has my aunt, so we need to hurry.” Her eyes narrowed. “Where are the kites?”
Nikaenor hung his head, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “We got caught. And arrested.”
Sayvil shook her head. “Aiyen must have raised security, after all. They were checking faces.”
Jaeme couldn’t help but be impressed, not that they’d been arrested, but that they’d clearly managed to free themselves. But gods. How were they going to get out of all this without kites?
They’d have to figure something out. “Come with us,” he said. “We’ll get the jewel and then go back for the others.”
They all fell silent as a group of guards crossed one of the connecting corridors and then charged out of sight.
“They’re headed to the throne room,” Saara whispered.
Jaeme’s heart thudded painfully. “We have to go back there.”
“Later,” Saara said, turning to head up the hallway.
Jaeme grabbed her by the shoulder. “No. Now. Did you see how many guards there were?”
Saara shrugged him off again. “All the more reason to make this quick.”
“The gong rang,” Jaeme said. “We need to get back in the sewers, back to the others, and get out of here before someone gets killed.”
Gods. Daniella. Had Kenton already lost control of t
he situation in the throne room? Jaeme had left the grate open for them, but would they be able to use the opening or would they be followed into the enclosed space?
He needed to be there to open more grates, to get them out.
Sayvil looked from Jaeme to Saara, then held up her hands. “The Sunstone is what we’re here for,” she said. “We’re the bearers, and we’re all here. Kenton’s willing to play with other people’s lives; he’d better be willing to give up his own.”
It wasn’t Kenton Jaeme was worried about.
Saara grabbed him by the arm. “At least come as far as the bedroom. You can take the sewer grate from there.”
But Jaeme couldn’t go with them, couldn’t leave Dani alone there to die. “Where’s the nearest drainage to the sewer?”
Saara glanced at him impatiently. “The tap room. Through there.”
They’d already been to the bedroom and taken care of the guards there. Saara should be able to get to the jewel. She wasn’t even close to being in the most trouble at the moment. Jaeme moved down the hall in the direction Saara had indicated. It was easy to identify the tap room—the servants had left several large decanters of water sitting on the stone floor outside.
“Get the stone,” Jaeme said over his shoulder. “And then get out. I’m going to help the others.” Then he opened the door to the tap room and stepped inside.
Nikaenor’s eyes had stopped burning like the fire of Nerendal, but that didn’t stop him from considering rinsing them out with the buckets of water sitting outside the tap room Jaeme had just gone into.
Even turning scaly might be worth it.
But Saara was already heading toward the opposite direction, toward the bedroom with the jewel in it—which seemed like a kind of blasphemous place to keep a godstone, only a step above keeping it on a shelf above the privy—and Sayvil grabbed his arm and dragged him forward. They passed another few buckets and pitchers sitting in the hallway—some servant must have abandoned them in the to wait for the threat to pass and the palace to return to normal.
Which he hoped happened after he and his friends escaped, not after they were thrown in some deep dungeon to starve to death.
Saara stopped at an intersection of hallways, and Nikaenor waited with Sayvil behind her as she peered out to make sure it was clear. Nikaenor cast one last, longing look at a pitcher sitting two doors back, thinking that a drink might also be nice. Dungeons weren’t likely to have a lot of fresh water.
And because he was looking behind them, he was the only one to see two guards enter the far end of the hallway, headed to the throne room too, most likely.
At least until they spotted Nikaenor and his friends. One of the guards yelled out something in Tirostaari and began charging after them.
Sayvil yelped and grabbed his arm again, but he tugged it out of her grasp. They could run, but they’d either end up farther from the godstone or lead the guards right to the bedroom. He couldn’t let them stop Saara. He couldn’t let them hurt his friends.
Nikaenor’s eyes caught once more on a pitcher of water resting on an abandoned cart.
He had an idea.
“Go now,” he hissed to the women, and then he dashed to that pitcher. But instead of taking a drink or splashing it in his eyes to clear the pepper, he dumped the whole thing over his head.
Pain ripped through him, across his head and face and shoulders, and then passed just as quickly.
The guards froze about ten feet from him, their grip on their weapons loosened by shock and horror at his fish-man form—the hair become spines, the gills on his sunken cheeks, the sheen of his scales. And for the first time in his life, Nikaenor was proud of the reaction he caused.
He hissed for good effect, and their eyes widened. One of them even took a step backward and muttered something in Tirostaari under her breath.
Behind him, he could hear Sayvil and Saara running down the corridor toward Nerendal.
They actually listened to him for once. He let out a roar, like he used to do when he would pretend he was a Nichtee and chase a giggling Tam or Esta around the house. Instead of running away like he’d hoped, though, one of the guards narrowed her eyes and spat out a word that sounded fiercer than any sound he could make. She raised her sword. Whatever she’d said apparently brought new courage to her fellow guard, who did the same.
With a yell, they both charged him.
Nikaenor’s stomach dropped and he said a word that would make his mum douse his tongue in lye, and then he was the one running, turning down a corridor that was hopefully not the direction Saara and Sayvil had gone.
If he was about to end up on the pointy end of a guard’s sword, at least he could do it far away from his friends.
Perchaya’s pulse, which had been racing quickly enough before the gong rang and signaled every guard in the palace, now felt quite ready to burst out of her skin.
Collect the weapons, she told herself. Kenton’s got this under control.
Except that as much as she believed in Kenton, it was obvious that things had been out of his control since Saara picked up that fake jewel. And approaching the kneeling but still well-trained guards and taking weapons from them while they undoubtedly plotted ways to kill her with their bare hands wasn’t helping reduce her panic.
Perchaya bent down nonetheless, picking up a sword and carrying it to rest on the iron table with the others.
Daniella looked back at her, her expression as terrified as Perchaya felt. It helped calm her somewhat, though. Daniella was afraid too. And she was going to do this anyway, follow Kenton’s lead and do whatever they needed to give Saara time.
Perchaya could do no less.
So as Daniella said something in Tirostaari that made several guards glare at her and pull daggers from their boots and lay them on the ground, Perchaya picked them up, one by one.
“Check her sleeve,” Kenton yelled. “And under her hair. Make sure she doesn’t have anything hidden there.”
Perchaya ran her hand under the braid of a guard, who gave her a nasty glare, and checked her collar for weapons, but came up with nothing. She hoped this was because there was nothing to find and not because she didn’t know what to look for.
Soon they had a pile of daggers and swords and even a few spiked metal pieces that were worn over the knuckles, each taken from a guard whose glare promised death the moment they could move without threatening their queen.
Except for one.
Perchaya froze, bent halfway down to pick up another sword, when she saw Daniella patting down the forearms of a guard towards the front of the cluster, a mere fifteen feet from the dais. This guard wasn’t glaring at Daniella, or even seeming to notice her.
This guard was staring at the queen.
Perchaya looked back toward the throne, where Kenton held the queen tightly, his blade to her throat. And though her back was arched so that she had trouble looking downward, it was clear that she was at least trying to make eye contact with someone in that vicinity. The fingers of the queen’s left hand twitched intermittently, which Perchaya had thought was a nervous tic.
But then she noticed that the guard was making the same kinds of motions with her fingers.
Perchaya’s pulse raced. She opened her mouth to warn Kenton, but before any sound could come out, the guard knocked Daniella back with one elbow, reached for the silk sash around her waist with her other hand, and jumped to her feet in one smooth, quick motion. She’d pulled out some kind of long thin tube, which she brought to her mouth, and the warning Perchaya had meant to give became a wordless cry as something flew from it, towards Kenton.
A dart, which hit the queen squarely in the chest.
Too late.
Kenton saw Perchaya pause and look back at a guard near Daniella, but he saw the motion from the guard a heartbeat too late. He jerked to the side, pulling the queen w
ith him, but the blow dart was too quick.
The queen gasped and arched backward, the slim black dart jutting out just below her collarbone, bobbing as she sucked in breath. Her knees buckled, and Kenton fought to hold her upright.
The guard who’d shot the dart charged forward, and the rest of the stunned guards erupted into a blur of motion and fury, spurred on by Rakal’s hoarse yells.
The queen seized up in Kenton’s arms, flecks of foam spraying from her lips as she coughed and collapsed. The guard who’d shot her continued to charge at him, forcing Kenton to choose. Cut the sputtering queen or defend himself.
He let the queen’s body drop to the floor as the other guards scrambled frantically for their weapons.
The guard running for him hadn’t bothered to find one. Her first barehanded punch caught him hard just below his ribs. He twisted, blocking her incoming kick, and knocked her off balance. She stumbled over the twitching body of her queen. He plunged a dagger into her left side and wrenched it out again, shoving her body into another guard who was only now joining the fight.
Behind them, the room had erupted, and Kenton didn’t have time to locate Perchaya and Daniella before the oncoming guards forced him to take two steps back, putting the large wooden throne between him and the half-dozen guards who were all but on top of him already.
And these had their weapons.
The guards dodged around the throne, and Kenton turned his back to it, covering his flank. He slashed and parried and fought with everything in him, cutting down one, then another. But there were too many, and they were too fast. He turned to avoid one blade and caught another as it glanced across his chest. Warm blood oozed into his shirt and down his stomach. He gritted his teeth and stabbed that guard in her shoulder. She cried out, jerking backwards and taking the dagger from his sweat-slick grip.
He reached to pull another dagger from his boot, but had to roll aside instead to avoid a kick aimed squarely at his head. As he grabbed that guard’s leg and twisted it to hear a satisfying crunch, he caught a momentary glimpse of Perchaya toward the back of the room.