“Anyone important?” Heron asked.
“One’s from a Seichrenese merchant asking me to kill his rival’s oath-brother.”
“Too petty. Don’t bother.”
“I won’t. The other’s a request for me to assassinate the Lord of Chreon Se from the Minister of Commerce, which I can’t take. The Minister should know better. Chreon Se has both Pahinvari and Alrhen-Xiunian backing, though the goddesses only know how he got it. A war with Pahinvar and Alrhen-Xiun would cost far more than Chreon Se’s trade monopoly in the south.”
“Chreon Se’s half Pahinvari on his mother’s side,” Heron said. “Goddess only knows what he did to get the Xiunians on his side, though. What does Archon want?”
Senne scanned the gilt-edged letter and then looked up. “Is it true that the Lord of Archon hired you to assassinate the previous Lord of Midion?”
“Yes. A long time ago. It was one of my first jobs,” Heron said. “I was seventeen. He never paid me, I recall.”
Senne did the math. “That was when you still accepted blood debts, wasn’t it?”
“Not by choice. It was the King’s policy.”
A blood debt was an old Seichrenese tradition. It amounted to seven times the client’s weight in gold, or the life of the client’s firstborn child.
“He wants to pay it, to get Seichre back on his side. He’s offering his firstborn daughter to be my oath-sister.”
“Can’t he pay with money?” Heron said. “Archon used to be the richest Crescentian state, before our current Chreon Se took over.”
Senne examined the gold leaf on the letter. The paper was expensive vellum, and it breathed hints of delicate floral perfume. “I think he can pay, he’s just unwilling.”
“Then he’s trying to put a spy in your household. That, or he’s just a bit of a bastard.” Heron sipped his pomegranate juice. “You should accept.”
Senne nearly dropped the letter. “What?”
“You can handle a single spy. Or a single unfortunate girl, if that’s what she turns out to be. You need an ally in the Crescent.”
“Heron,” Senne said incredulously, and he raised a single eyebrow at her. “You can’t possibly be proposing that I allow this man to sell me his daughter. What right does he have to do that to her? What right do I have to do that to her?”
“I’m not saying you have to sleep with her,” Heron said. She choked. “I’m saying you should go through the motions of the sworn sisterhood ceremony, get your fortunes told, and have a legal document that represents the fact that Archon owes us a favor.”
“I can’t have another person in my household, Heron, you know that. What if I hurt her?”
“You manage the transformation well. Unless something unexpected happens, it won’t be a problem,” Heron said. “You need an alliance with a foreign power. You don’t have a convenient Pahinvari mother, and Alrhen-Xiun isn’t going to do you any favors anytime soon.”
“I don’t understand. Why is this so important?” Senne said. “What could possibly be worth risking a random Archonian noblewoman’s freedom and safety?”
“Your freedom and safety, Senne, and that of the world. As it is now, you have no connections or backing, which means you have no way to negotiate with the Seichrenese court. Even I had more power than you do. If the Crown gives you an order, you can’t bargain with them, you have to follow it. What if they order you to kill someone you love?”
“That won’t be an issue,” Senne said. She knew better than to become overly attached to anyone.
“What if they order you to start a war? You won’t be able to refuse. The Crown doesn’t always make good decisions. The worst-case scenario is—”
“Total annihilation,” Senne said, a bitter taste in her mouth.
“At least consider it,” Heron said gravely. “You don’t have to commit to anything, but you should at least write back. Meet Archon’s daughter. I would never force you into anything, but I want you to understand what’s at stake.”
“I understand.” Senne cast her veil back over his face, covering the image of Heron’s concerned frown with gauzy gray smoke. “You’ll come with me to Archon, won’t you?” Her voice wavered. “Please?”
“Of course.” He squeezed her shoulder briefly, a burst of warmth that shot down to the shard in her heart. “You’ll survive this. All of it. You’re going to be fine.”
“How do you know that?” she said quietly.
“I know because I know you.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The royal palace in Archon was always cold. The walls breathed chill like they were carved from a glacier, and the sparse monochrome tapestries that dotted the walls did little to warm them. Lord Archon didn’t believe in carpets. Captain Haol’s boots clicked on the marble, but Annara’s tattered sandals made no sound.
She shivered as she walked. She could feel the eyes of the servants and courtiers on the back of her neck. Some looked at her with disdain or open hatred, while others looked at her with pity. She straightened her spine, stared straight ahead, and smiled.
In the throne room, the spotlessly white marble gave way to gilded arabesques and creamy stone veined with black and gold. The throne itself was an antique, a wide, large chair piled high with black velvet and fur. Elaborate stone wings spread out from the back, each delicate white feather carved in exquisite detail.
Lord Archon watched Haol and Annara dispassionately as they both knelt. He wore a coat fit for a king, heavy and white and covered in silk embroidery like frost, with a black-flecked ermine collar. He was older than she remembered. The skin around his eyes drooped, and he held himself more delicately than he had when Annara was young, as if his bones had turned to glass.
“So you’ve returned,” he said. “I’m glad you’ve decided to be sensible about this. I was concerned you might try to kick up a fuss.”
“I wouldn’t dare, my lord,” Annara said bitterly.
“You’ll have your title back, of course,” Lord Archon continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “You’ll be princess of Archon again. And then we shall send you off to Seichre and finally wash our hands of you.”
“I appreciate my lord’s generosity.” Kneeling was starting to hurt. A cold ache from the floor crept into her knees.
“With any luck, the assassin-nobles will take good care of you.” He kept the sentence ambiguous, apparently out of pure spite. Annara smiled at the gold veins in the floor, which seemed to infuriate him. “What are you smiling about, girl? Take her away.”
Haol helped Annara to her feet. “Yes, my lord.”
“Not you,” Lord Archon said. “Irvynne. Get her cleaned up. We can’t present her to Lord Wraith dressed like that.”
A noblewoman detached herself from the watching crowd and dragged her towards the doors. Annara jerked her sleeve free, and Irvynne didn’t try to fight her. She was an unfamiliar face, even younger than Annara. She had probably joined the court from one of the other islands— Ervon, maybe, or Midion.
She led Annara to the east wing of the palace, where the rooms for visiting aristocrats and foreign ambassadors were. They paused outside the white wooden doors. Irvynne was pretty, with pale golden hair and soft, well-manicured hands. The expression on her face was icy.
“You might have gotten your title back,” she said suddenly, “but you’ll never be a princess.”
“You must be new to the court if that’s your idea of an insult.”
Irvynne flushed. “My maids will take care of your appearance. For what it’s worth, though, I hope Lord Wraith cuts your throat in the night. Even if Archon won’t punish you, the goddesses will, traitor.”
“Noted,” Annara said. She watched Irvynne stomp away, her head held high.
✽✽✽
Nearly four hours later, Annara sat on a four-poster bed in the guest bedroom, watching light glint off the blades of a pair of pearl-handled scissors. Her hands stung. Irvynne’s maids had scrubbed them ruthlessly, trying to get the dirt out
from under her fingernails and the callouses off her palms, and her skin was still slightly red. It hadn’t worked, either. The dirt was gone, but her hands were still rough enough to catch on the fluid fabric of her white silk dressing gown.
Someone knocked on the door, and Annara tensed.
“It’s just me,” Haol called. “Can I come in?”
“Oh, thank the goddesses, I thought it was Irvynne and her damn maids again. Come in, Haol.”
Haol poked his head in the door. “You look nice.”
“Mm. I suppose.”
Haol sat next to her on the bed. “I passed Irvynne in the hallway, by the way. She looked furious.”
“Oh, she hates me. She’s very young, very loyal to my father, very… susceptible to the stories about my mother. She’s just another one of those people who thinks being the Traitor Concubine’s daughter makes me a traitor by association.”
Heron turned to look at her, a complicated sort of bitterness written across his face. He opened his mouth, but Annara spoke first.
“I need you to cut my hair.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s traditional. By returning to court, I’m breaking my vows as a nun.”
“But that’s— Annara, your family is supposed to do that.”
“Who else am I supposed to get to do it?” Annara said. “Oh, excuse me, Lord Archon, I know you hate me because I remind you of the concubine who tried to strangle you to death, but could you please give me a haircut?”
“Point taken,” Haol said shakily.
She pressed the scissors into his hands. “Go on, then.”
“Sit on the floor.”
Annara sat, and he gathered her long hair in his hands. It was light brown, and so desaturated that it looked gray in the right light.
“How short do you want it?”
“Shoulder-ish. Maybe a little shorter.”
He started to clip off strands of her hair. The weight slowly faded from her shoulders. Everything felt lighter. She leaned back against Haol’s legs. They could have been children again, best friends mock-fighting in the courtyards of Archon and sipping lemonade, before the complications of wealth and status and the lack thereof crept in and turned them stiff and bitter.
For a minute, Annara let herself close her eyes and relax, feeling the warmth in Haol’s fingertips. Eventually, she would have to open her eyes and accept that they weren’t children, and nothing would ever be the same, but for now, she just sat and listened to the bite of the scissors.
CHAPTER SIX
The delegation from Seichre wouldn’t arrive for several days. The journey from Seichre to the Crescent was short, less than a day by boat, but chartering a vessel appropriate to one’s status took time.
In the meantime, Annara tried to stay as far away from the Archonian court as possible. She quickly fenced her stolen painting, with the reasoning that it would be easier to be caught with an unexpected pile of cash than famous stolen goods. She said a proper goodbye to her sisters at the abbey. Then, suddenly, Archon received word that the Seichrenese delegation was staying at a hotel on nearby Ervon, and it was time to negotiate.
But first, it was time for Annara to pick out her outfit. Who would she be in Seichre? Who would she be to Lord Wraith? It all began with a first impression, and for Annara, choosing her disguise was the first step towards choosing her personality.
She would be someone who understood duty, she thought, someone loyal to her city. Pretty, but not too pretty. Politely demure, but firm when pressed.
She chose a long, high-collared tunic in Archonian white and a cream-colored coat with a small ring of golden fur around the hood. She hesitated on the shoes, debating between an elegantly feminine pair of white satin heels and a battered pair of work boots, before she eventually decided on the boots. Lord Wraith was an assassin. It wasn’t a clean profession. He would respect someone practical.
Last but not least, she wrapped a white silk sash around her waist. Its ends hung down near her knees, heavy with golden fringe. She tucked her old familiar knife into the sash, discreet and near her back but still easy to access in emergencies.
Haol frowned at her when he saw that. “Are you sure you want to go armed?”
“It’s a kitchen knife, Haol,” she said, showing him the thin, nicked blade. “Lord Wraith could snap it in half in a heartbeat. He’ll know I’m not trying to defend myself against him.”
“If you say so,” Haol grumbled.
The diplomatic delegation from Archon was led by Irvynne, the noblewoman who hated Annara. This had irritated Annara so much that she had stolen all Irvynne’s quill pens and hidden them in a desk drawer in one of the palace’s guest rooms. As far as she knew, Irvynne hadn’t noticed yet.
“All right,” Irvynne said, to Annara, Haol, and the small collection of servants and diplomats that accompanied them. “If any one of you messes this up for Archon, you’ll be fired before you know what happened to you.”
“Weak threat,” Annara stage-whispered to Haol. “A metaphor or two might help. Do you think Irvynne knows what a metaphor is?”
“Who said you could come?” Irvynne snapped at her.
“Lord Archon’s orders,” Haol said. “Her fate is being decided, after all.”
“Hm,” Irvynne said. “As long as you behave yourself, Princess Archon.”
“When have I ever not behaved myself?” Annara said.
They met with the Seichrenese nobles in a small room in the hotel, hung with swaths of blue velvet curtains and wallpapered in shiny oceanic teal. A curtain of diaphanous deep blue silk divided the room in two. A man in black sat in front of the curtain, and Annara could dimly sense a figure reclining in a chair behind it.
The man in black smiled as they walked into the room, but she could only tell he was smiling from the way the corners of his eyes moved. The lower half of his face was covered by a black silk veil. He looked like he might be in his thirties, but the streaks of gray in his smooth black hair made him look older.
“Lord Wraith, I presume?” Irvynne said grandly.
He sat back and crossed his legs. “You presume incorrectly. I speak on Lord Wraith’s behalf, but that title does not belong to me anymore.”
The figure behind the curtain shifted slightly. So Lord Wraith is a title, not a single person, Annara thought. Interesting.
Irvynne blushed. “I meant no offense, sir.”
“None taken. Please, sit. You may call me Retired Lord Wraith. The person behind the curtain is the current Lord Wraith.” He spoke Xiunian, which was a very diplomatic choice of language. He didn’t deign to speak Crescentian or force the Archonians to speak Seichrenese.
“I am called Irvynne, that is Captain Haol, and this is Princess Annara of Archon.”
Retired Lord Wraith watched her with unabashed interest. His eyes were so dark that the pupils were indistinguishable from the irises, and they glittered with lively fascination. It wasn’t a hostile or judgemental gaze, but the mild politeness of his expression could have masked anything.
“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintances,” he said. “Let’s get down to business, shall we? What, exactly, is Archon offering?”
“You see our offering there,” Irvynne said grandly, gesturing behind her at Annara, whose mouth twitched slightly.
Retired Lord Wraith raised a single, devastating eyebrow. “You’re going to have to be a bit more specific.”
“She can be anything my lord wants her to be,” Irvynne said. “She was raised a princess, but she was pious enough to spend her teenage years as a nun, so she knows how to cook and clean. She’s not bad to look at, either, so she wouldn’t disgrace you in front of the Seichrenese court.”
The figure behind the curtain said something sharp in Seichrenese. Retired Lord Wraith narrowed his eyes.
“I agree,” he said in Xiunian. “Say what you really mean, Miss Irvynne. Are you offering a servant? An alliance? A concubine?”
“Which would you pref
er?” Irvynne said sweetly.
The figure behind the curtain shifted and sat forward. They started to speak, low and apparently incensed, but Retired Lord Wraith held up one black-gloved hand. He took a deep breath. Annara could see his teeth glint behind his veil.
“Lord Wraith and I seem to have the same opinion on this matter,” he said. “If the Lord of Archon thinks he can buy his blood debt by selling us his daughter, he is even more of a coward than I thought he was. Does he take the assassins of Seichre for slavers and procurers? This offer is reprehensible to anyone with a shred of humanity left. Assassins rarely make moral judgements, but I am willing to make an exception for you, Miss Irvynne.”
Irvynne’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. Retired Lord Wraith seemed to have stunned the rest of her retinue into silence. Annara decided to step in.
She coughed lightly, stood up, and knelt directly before Retired Lord Wraith, who raised an eyebrow at her. Haol frantically gestured at her to sit back down, but she ignored him.
“I am the princess of Archon, honorable lords. Please allow me to offer my presence in Seichre as the mark of a political alliance between your house and mine.” She looked up, not at Retired Lord Wraith, but past him, at the person in the shadows behind the curtain. “This is a decision made by my own free will. I have no desire to be your concubine, but I recognize my duty to my father and to my city, and I am determined to fulfill it. This alliance could be incredibly beneficial to us both.”
Retired Lord Wraith raised both eyebrows and leaned back a little in his chair. “Senne? What do you think?”
“I don’t need a servant or a concubine,” the figure behind the curtain said in Xiunian.
Lord Wraith’s quiet voice slipped through the silk curtain like a well-sharpened knife. She had used the Xiunian feminine pronoun to refer to herself. Annara wondered if Senne was her name, or just another title.
“But I do need an alliance with the Crescent,” Lord Wraith continued, in that same cool, silky monotone. “If you are willing to represent your city, I will accept your offer and clear your father’s debt. Think carefully, princess. Are you really willing to tie yourself to a foreign assassin for the sake of duty?”
Traitor Princess, Assassin Saint Page 4