Lady Smoke

by Laura Sebastian

  The men who would demand proof of my virginity, slighted because I don’t trust them. I could laugh at the irony if I weren’t so angry.

  “No slight intended, of course,” I say sweetly. “In the meantime, I would like to be able to visit Prinz Søren in the dungeon at my leisure to ensure that he’s being treated fairly.”

  King Etristo’s expression turns icy once more.

  “My dear, now I am beginning to feel slighted by your lack of trust.”

  I keep my smile pasted on. “Again, not my intention, Your Highness. But I do think it’s necessary for my peace of mind.”

  King Etristo grits his teeth, but after what feels like an eternity, he nods. “Very well.”

  I dip into a shallow curtsy before turning and walking out of the room, my Shadows at my heels.

  * * *

  —

  Artemisia, Heron, Blaise, and I barely have time to settle back into my room before Dragonsbane thunders in, her expression a storm cloud. For a moment, I think she’s angry about Søren being arrested, but of course that’s ridiculous. If she had her way, he’d still be in the brig of the Smoke.

  “You shouldn’t seek an audience with the King without me present,” she snaps. “Do you have any idea how foolish you’ve made yourself look?”

  I let the venom in her voice roll off my back.

  “The King arrested my advisor and I handled it,” I say coolly. “I daresay I got further than you would have, since you do little more than jump when he tells you to.”

  She reels back as though she’s been slapped. For a moment she looks like she wants to skin me alive right here, but I hold my ground.

  “I have Astrea’s best interests at heart,” she tells me. “And it is in Astrea’s best interests not to insult the most powerful ally we have.”

  I can’t help but snort. “He isn’t an ally,” I say. “If he was, he would give us troops himself. He merely sides with whoever can get him the most money. If the Kaiser was willing to pay enough, he’d turn on us in an instant. Right now, my marriage dowry is worth more, so I have some power. I’m going to use that as best I can, and if you don’t do the same, you’re the fool.”

  “Theo,” Artemisia whispers, a warning I don’t heed.

  Dragonsbane’s eyes are full of ice-cold fury. “Leave us,” she says to my Shadows, her voice barely louder than a hiss.

  “We stay with the Queen,” Heron tells her firmly.

  I meet Dragonsbane’s stare without flinching. I’d like nothing better than to keep my Shadows close right now, but I have a feeling what Dragonsbane has to say isn’t anything I want anyone else to hear.

  “Go on,” I say. “This won’t take long.”

  “Theo…,” Blaise cautions.

  “Go,” I repeat.

  My Shadows exchange wary looks, but they file out, leaving me alone with Dragonsbane. I would be lying if I said I didn’t fear her still, but I’m careful not to let it show—she can sense fear and she preys on it.

  “The Kaiser made an attempt on my life,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “Here, where King Etristo promised me safety. A man is dead because he underestimated the Kaiser’s reach, and instead of looking for the Kaiser’s real agent, he’s arrested Søren. Meanwhile, whoever actually gave that girl the poison is still out there, and it’s only a matter of time before they strike again. I’m not safe here.”

  “No,” she says, voice level. “You aren’t safe here. But you don’t want to be safe.”

  At that, I can’t hold back a laugh, but even I am surprised at how biting it comes out. “Are you saying I want to be murdered?”

  Her expression remains placid. “I’m saying,” she says slowly, “that you want to be a queen, and that is not a safe role to play.”

  “I don’t want to be a queen. I am a queen,” I correct her. “And that is a fact that you seem to forget unless you can use it to your advantage.”

  Now it’s her turn to laugh. “Queen of a country that doesn’t exist anymore,” she says. “A queen without a crown, without a throne, without a coronation. What, exactly, do you imagine you’re queen of? Three silly subjects who follow you like a mother duck because a man told them you were special and they were silly enough to believe it?”

  I stumble back a step, but she isn’t done.

  “I’m trying to help you, but you’re too stubborn and self-important to understand that,” she says, her voice rising. “Gods, you’re just like your mother.”

  It isn’t the first time someone’s said that to me, but it’s the first time it’s been an insult.

  “Don’t talk about my mother!” I don’t realize I’ve shouted until I see the look of surprise on her face and her eyes dart warily to the door. “My mother was fifty times the person you are,” I continue, careful to keep my voice low.

  She looks at me for a long moment before letting out a sharp bark of laughter and crossing to the wine cabinet. She spends a quiet moment picking out a bottle and uncorking it and pouring herself a glass, filled nearly to the brim. She takes a long swig, draining nearly a quarter of it, then looks back at me.

  “You aren’t the first person to say that, you know,” she says. “Maybe not fifty times, exactly, that’s a bit dramatic, but the same sort of thing. ‘Stand straighter, like Eirene.’ ‘Smile like Eirene.’ ‘Why can’t you be more like Eirene?’ I don’t think a day went by when I didn’t hear it at least once. It got to be where the sound of her name felt like someone was hammering a nail into the base of my skull.”

  She pauses to take another drink, but I’ve heard enough.

  “It wasn’t her fault you were jealous,” I say.

  But that only makes her laugh again. “Of course I was jealous. But no more so than she was of me. ‘Kallistrade,’ she’d say, ‘you’re so lucky you don’t have to take decorum lessons.’ And ‘I wish I didn’t have to get up at sunrise to greet the Guardians with mother.’ And ‘Why can’t I spend the afternoon riding horses like you do?’ She asked me to switch places with her often enough, but I never wanted to. I didn’t want to be crown princess any more than she did.”

  “That’s a lie,” I say. “My mother loved being Queen.”

  Dragonsbane shrugs. “I wouldn’t know about that,” she says. “I left before she was crowned and I never went back, but she certainly didn’t care for the training.” She takes another drink, a smaller one this time, before looking at me thoughtfully. “You’re lucky that you didn’t really know her.”

  Her words feel like cold water down my back. “Did you just say that I’m lucky my mother died?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Dragonsbane says, rolling her eyes. “But it’s nice, in a way, to have her preserved so purely in your memory—a perfect mother and a perfect queen, brilliant and kind and valiant. She’s practically a goddess in your mind, isn’t she? I suppose all girls must feel that way about their mothers at one point. There’s always a moment, though, when that illusion of perfection shatters and you realize that your mother is just a person, same as you, flawed, with her own vices and blind spots. You’ll never have that epiphany, and yes, I do think you’re lucky for that. In a way.”

  For an instant, she looks so heartbroken that I’m not sure whether to slap her or apologize, but as quickly as that sliver of vulnerability appears, it’s gone once more, sealed away behind her hard, impenetrable eyes.

  “Your mother was a fine queen, from what I heard,” she says. “She did her duties without complaint and she was well liked, but she will always be the queen who lost Astrea.”

  “That wasn’t her fault,” I protest. “She couldn’t have known the Kalovaxians were coming.”

  For the first time, Dragonsbane falters, hesitating just long enough that I can see a choice weighing behind her eyes, before she steels herself.

  “She did,” she says slo
wly. “I sent her a letter months before the attack, warning her that they were coming.”

  “You’re lying,” I say, but my stomach sinks. I don’t want to hear this, but I can’t bring myself to walk away either.

  She ignores me and continues. “She called me a liar,” she says. “Said I was an embarrassment, sailing around and calling myself a pirate.”

  I have a bevy of insults I want to throw at her, denials that I’m aching to say, but none of them makes it to my lips. I have to remind myself to breathe.

  After a moment, her expression softens just a touch. “Perhaps I should have let you go the rest of your life with that pure, uncorrupted view of her in your mind.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I say, even though a small part of me does. She has no reason to lie about it, after all.

  Dragonsbane takes another drink. “I loved my sister fiercely, all illusions to the contrary aside. She was my complete opposite, and also the other half of me. But she was a flawed woman.”

  She pauses, finishing off her wine before looking at me with clear eyes, frightening in their ferocity. I don’t let myself flinch away from her.

  “Your mother was a mediocre queen,” Dragonsbane says quietly. “You could be a great one. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be here. But it isn’t something that will come easily. It will not come fairly. It will not come without sacrifices and I’m tired of being treated like your enemy for pointing that out. If you won’t give up everything for Astrea—your pride, your independence, your friends—you will never take her back.”

  When I say nothing, she sets her empty glass down on the credenza and walks toward the door. Hand on the knob, she pauses.

  “All humans make mistakes, and your mother was no exception. She loved you dearly and she loved Astrea, and I believe she thought she was doing the right thing. She was human, no more and no less.”

  FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE leaving Astrea, my dreams aren’t haunted by Cress’s ashen face. Instead, I see my mother, but not as I remember her. I see her as she would be now, with the same creases around her eyes and mouth that Dragonsbane has. Her hair isn’t the same vibrant auburn that it used to be, though it hasn’t turned gray. It’s simply faded, pulled over her shoulder in a single long braid. On top of her head is her crown, only it isn’t really her crown at all—it’s one of the ash crowns the Kaiser used to make me wear. Though she sits still, ash flakes down onto her white chiton.

  She looks at me with sad, heavy eyes, but when she speaks it’s with Dragonsbane’s voice.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. I wait for her to say more, to explain to me why she ignored her sister’s warning and let the Kalovaxians take us, how—with one decision—she let Astrea fall to ruin. How she so easily handed me over to a man who made my life a terror for a decade.

  But it’s only a dream and she can’t have answers that I don’t already know, so all she does is apologize and apologize and apologize until I finally wake up, my mouth tasting of ash.

  The sky outside my window is still dark, lit only by stars and a sliver of a moon, but I know I won’t be able to sleep again tonight. My mind is still whirring, repeating Dragonsbane’s words about my mother over and over again.

  Artemisia is fast asleep on the other side of the bed—though it’s so big she doesn’t even stir when I slip out, carefully tiptoeing around Heron’s large form that doesn’t quite fit on the sofa. He refused both Art and me when we offered to switch with him. Blaise must have gotten restless and gone back to his own room at some point.

  I remember falling asleep with all of them around me. There was never a conversation about whether or not they should stay. Whoever is actually working for the Kaiser is still on the loose and I don’t think any of us trust the Sta’Criveran guards.

  I should wake one of them up—especially since someone tried to kill me last night—but it doesn’t seem right to force them up at this hour just because I can’t sleep.

  Besides, I don’t want any of them with me when I visit Søren.

  Quietly as I can, I pull on a dressing gown and take my dagger from its place on my bedside table, wedging it between the gown and the sash around my waist. I step into the slippers next to my bed and tiptoe out the door, closing it behind me with barely more noise than an exhale.

  Still, even with my dagger, I shouldn’t go alone—especially since I doubt I could do much more with it than wave it around and try to look menacing. Even just walking down the hallway, I find myself on edge, glancing behind me every few minutes as if another assassin is going to spring from the shadows. One very well could.

  This was a stupid idea, but even as I acknowledge that fact, I can’t bring myself to turn around. I make it to the riser and step inside, relieved to be near another person.

  As far as I know, he could be an assassin. If he is, though, he’s in no hurry. He stares at me blankly, waiting for a destination.

  “Fifteen, please,” I say, naming the floor Erik directed me to before, where the Gorakian delegation has been housed.

  He nods curtly and begins to crank, sending us gliding down. As smooth as the journey is, I still can’t help but grip the bars of the riser wall behind me. No matter how many times I do this, I don’t think I’ll ever grow used to it. Luckily, it’s only a moment before we pull to a sharp stop and he opens the door.

  As soon as I’m out, he closes the door again and the riser lowers away, leaving me alone in a dark hallway, lit only by moonlight filtering in through the windows. Ahead of me, the hall is lined with doors on either side, but I have no idea which one is Erik’s. Though I visited Hoa here, it was an entirely different place then, bustling with life and people who directed my way. Now I don’t even know how to begin to guess which room is which.

  I walk slowly down the hall, hoping for some kind of sign, but each oak door is exactly the same. Even the designs carved into them and the cut-crystal doorknobs are identical. Being alone again is beginning to make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. If an assassin wanted to attack, this would be the perfect moment—they could do the job without any trouble and then blame it on the Gorakians, who don’t seem to have many friends in Sta’Crivero to begin with.

  Tilting my head, I look at the doorjambs for light bleeding out, a sign that someone inside is awake. It’s well past midnight, so most of them are dark, but eventually I find one that isn’t and knock softly.

  There’s a long pause before footsteps thud softly toward me and the door creaks open. A small, wiry Gorakian man appears, with a gleaming bald head and round spectacles perched on the end of his hooked nose. He peers at me irritably, his forehead heavily creased. He might not be happy with me for interrupting whatever he was doing, but at least there is very little chance of him being an assassin.

  “I…I’m sorry to bother you,” I tell him. “I’m looking for Eri—I mean, the Emperor. Which room is he staying in?”

  He frowns and I realize that he doesn’t understand Astrean. I open my mouth to repeat myself in Kalovaxian since he’ll probably understand that after living through the Kalovaxians’ occupation, but he speaks first.

  “Emperor,” he repeats.

  Relief courses through me and I nod.

  The man leans out the door and points down the hall away from the riser, but there are too many doors for me to make out which one he’s pointing to. He must realize this as well, because with a labored sigh he shuffles out of his room and leads me to the door he means, knocking much louder and longer than I would have. I suppose it’s a good thing, though, because it’s a few moments before Erik finally answers the door, eyes half-hooded with sleep. He blinks blearily at us for a moment, as if trying to make sense of the picture before him.

  “Tho—Queen Theodosia?” he asks in Kalovaxian. “Master Jurou? What’s happening?”

  The man—Master Jurou—frowns and launches into
fast Gorakian that I can’t make out a word of. I don’t think Erik can either, because all he does is stare at Master Jurou and wait for him to finish. When he does, he looks at Erik, waiting for a response Erik has no idea how to give. Master Jurou realizes this and gives a loud harrumph before stalking back to his room and closing the door with a slam.

  Erik winces at the loud noise. “I see you’ve met Master Jurou,” he says.

  “I didn’t know which room was yours,” I admit. “Who is he?”

  He opens his mouth to answer before closing it and frowning, considering the question. “He’s…an alchemist,” he says. “Best in Goraki, even before the siege. If we’re being honest, I’m not entirely sure what he does, but everyone seems to think it’s very important. As you can see, I don’t speak Gorakian, though my mother’s doing her best to remedy that. Something to do with gold, I think.” His frown deepens and he shakes his head, eyes refocusing on me.

  “What are you doing here, Theo? It’s the middle of the night.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I tell him.

  “And you decided to share your misery with me? Very thoughtful, but I wish you wouldn’t have,” he says, yawning around the last couple of words.

  “I want to go visit Søren,” I say. “And since the Kaiser has a bounty on my head, I don’t think it’s wise for me to go down to the dungeon alone.”

  “Not unarmed, though,” he notes, nodding toward the dagger at my hip.

  “More for show than anything,” I admit. “You saw me yesterday—I’m more likely to hurt myself if I try to wield it.”

  “Fair enough,” he says with a sigh. “Let me grab my sword and we’ll go together. I wouldn’t mind seeing Søren myself.” He ducks back inside, but before the door closes behind him I hear him mutter, “Though I’d rather we’d waited until daylight to do it.”

  THE DUNGEON BELOW THE STA’CRIVERAN palace is the kind of place that doesn’t get many visitors—in fact, it has the feel of a place that one doesn’t enter expecting to leave again. The riser operator balked when Erik and I asked him to take us down here, but when I told him the King had given me permission he begrudgingly acquiesced, though as soon as he dropped us off he couldn’t leave fast enough, whirring off back to the surface before the doors had even closed behind us.