“I’m sure I want justice for my brother,” she says. She still speaks in the same soft, shy voice I’ve known for years, but there’s stone underneath now and I know it means there’s no way she can be persuaded to go home.
There’s a moment of silence, then Elvar speaks up in a decisive and much happier tone of voice. “Your offer of assistance is most appreciated, Princess Radha, and I’m delighted to welcome you to Kali. Come, I’m sure you’d like to rest. You must be tired after your journey.”
His voice trails off as he and Guinne guide her across the bridge. The others follow.
I spin round to Sybilla as soon as the others are out of earshot. “I need a favor.”
“No,” says Sybilla at once.
“You don’t even know what I want!”
“Of course I do. You want me to abandon my position as your guard and protect that interloper instead.”
I blink at her in surprise. “Well, yes. And don’t call her that.”
“And to repeat my original answer: no.”
“Sybilla, we have to keep her safe,” I insist. “Please. I can’t let Rama’s sister die, too.”
Sybilla stamps her foot in anger. Literally. “You understand that you’re just like the rest of us now, don’t you?” she snaps. “You’re not protected by a magical flower anymore. Have you forgotten what happened in Shloka already? You can be hurt now, Esmae. You can be killed! And you want me to leave you to it? No. I refuse. Rama may be gone, but don’t you dare forget that I am your friend too and I won’t let you push me away.”
When she’s finished, she glares at me, brows drawn ferociously together, daring me to fight her on this.
“I’m not doing this to push you away,” I tell her quietly. “I haven’t forgotten you’re my friend. I’m asking you to do this because you’re my friend. I know I can trust you. I know she’ll be safe with you. She won’t be safe with me.”
“I need you to promise me—promise me this isn’t some ploy to keep me out of the way while you go out there alone.”
“I promise. I swear this is about Radha, not me.”
Sybilla huffs, a sound of combined irritation and defeat. “I’ll give you half,” she says. “Half my time with her, half with you. And when I’m not with you, someone else from the Hundred and One better be. Got it?”
I don’t deserve her. “Yes, Captain.”
“Just so you know,” she grumbles, starting across the bridge in the direction the others went, “I will not be polite to the interloper just because I have to protect her.”
I smile unexpectedly. “Is that what you said to Max when I first came back to Kali?”
“I am neither confirming nor denying that.”
I follow her back into the royal sleeping quarters of the palace. We check in on Radha, to whom Guinne has tactfully given one of the empty suites Rama didn’t stay in when he was here, and I introduce her to Sybilla. I leave them to it and return to my own rooms.
By the time I’ve had a bath, it’s dark outside and the night lamps have the soft light of a crescent moon. I put on a sleepshirt and check my tech for the palace schedule. Elvar has retired early for the night, Rickard has gone to visit his son’s family, and Guinne and Max are at a charity banquet at the University of Erys. My own schedule has the banquet inked in, as well, but I doubt anyone actually expected me to go.
There’s little chance of me bumping into anyone I want to avoid right now, so I use the rare opportunity to roam the palace freely. Well, sort of freely. Jemsy from the Hundred and One trots behind me on his bodyguard shift, trying and failing to be a discreet, invisible presence. It makes no sense to me whatsoever that this earnest, sweet boy with far less training than me is supposed to guard me, but this is one subject on which Uncle Elvar and I don’t see eye to eye. “There is no such thing as too much caution,” he insists.
My mind is like the thorn forest outside the palace, knotted and vicious and screaming and never, ever still. There’s scarcely a thought in there that doesn’t get too close to the jagged edges of the leaves, and there are no memories that haven’t been swallowed up by the vicious, cruel branches of the trees. To touch any of them is to hurt. Still, I let my thoughts trace a careful path across the woods, so that I can pin down the best way to get to my brother, but I always stay away from the sharpest, thorniest places.
I end up in the conservatory, of all places. In the heart of the room, beneath moonlight slanting in from the domed glass roof, the gods’ altar looks back at me.
Come closer, it taunts. Make an offering. Talk to us.
I take a step closer. My bare feet press into the cold of the marble beneath them, into the ridges of the gods’ symbols carved into the floor. Then, an anomaly, a place where the marble is chipped and scratched. I look down. It’s the wolf symbol of the god Valin, with lines gouged across it.
I step back. I don’t want to talk to the gods. There is no god I have known who hasn’t betrayed me.
I leave the conservatory and go to the war room instead, the parlor where the maps, charts, and tech have been set up. This is where we strategize, assess new information, and argue.
The room is empty, so I flick a hologram of the star system into the middle of the parlor and study the shapes and borders. Forty mortal countries, several planets, and an unknown number of celestial realms. I focus on the Forty Territories. Arcadia and the several territories that have agreed to alliances with Alexi are colored deep gold, while Kali and Shloka are the only two places colored red. Fifteen territories remain silver, sworn to neither side so far, including Wychstar.
I swipe across the tablet to zoom in on the Elba part of the hologram, then access all the information we have on Elba and King Yann. He’s in his late forties, a relatively handsome man with dark blond hair. He has six children and is a widower. Three times over. And Elba’s gold reserves are just as enormous as Grandmother said they were, based on the Financial Guild’s data.
“I don’t like his eyes,” Jemsy says unexpectedly behind me.
I look over my shoulder at him, then study King Yann’s face again. His blue eyes seem unremarkable. “Are you sure it’s the eyes?” I ask. “Or is it the three dead wives?”
“Probably the second one,” he admits.
I consider the face hovering in the air in front of us, and then I say, “Jemsy, do you want to go on a secret mission?”
“Always!”
“Good. And you’ll need your brother and sister, too.”
I zoom out of Elba and back to the whole star system again. I tap on the tablet and place bright blue dots on the hologram to mark where we know Kirrin’s Blue Knights were four months ago, two months ago, and today. The dots are scattered all over the galaxy because Kirrin, like all the gods, has followers just about everywhere. There’s even a dot on Kali to denote that there are known Blue Knights here, too, but their dot hasn’t moved over the past four months. They appear to have chosen their kingdom over their god.
But the other dots show a marked difference. Their original places are scattered, but the dots from two months ago and then from a couple of days ago show that they’re converging, moving closer and closer to Winter. This is the pattern Rickard meant, the movements that suggest they plan to meet Alexi in Arcadia.
I frown at the dots, tracing trajectories across their paths. The numbers don’t add up. The vast majority of the Blue Knights are citizens of other territories and don’t answer to Kali, so why not just travel straight to Arcadia? Why have they moved slowly over the past couple of months? The pace and pattern feel like they didn’t want to draw attention to themselves, but why would they want to hide their intent to join my brother? To avoid tipping us off about their involvement? Maybe, but we’ve expected them to join him for months now, so it was never likely to catch us by surprise.
My eyes are raw and tired, but I don’t go back to my rooms. I look at the blue dots on the hologram and then look at them some more. Somewhere in that map is a secret my broth
er doesn’t want me to know. Sleep can wait.
CHAPTER SIX
Max shuts the door of his darkened suite behind him. He’s not much more than a silhouette in this light and I can’t see his expression, but the slope of his shoulders looks tired. He drops an earpiece onto the table and runs a hand through his hair, leaving some of it sticking up at the back. He crosses the suite to his bedroom and doesn’t notice me in the armchair in the corner near the bed.
My mouth is dry. I was going to speak to him as soon as he came in, but now I can’t make any words come out.
Max flicks on the low lamp on the other side of his bedroom, his back to me. He shrugs out of the jacket he wore to the banquet and reaches to undo his cravat.
“Max.”
He turns. “Fuck’s sake,” he says, a whole lot calmer than I would have been if I had found an apparition in my room, “How long have you been there?”
I shrug. “We need to talk.”
“You’ve been avoiding me for the better part of three months, but now we need to talk?” He savagely tugs his cravat off, exposing the hollow of his throat and the rapid pulse there. “Okay, have at it. What do you want to talk about?”
“The Blue Knights don’t make sense. The pattern doesn’t make sense.”
He undoes the top button of his shirt, shaking his head. “Have you been to sleep at all?”
“What does that have to do with anything? I’m not wrong.”
“Esmae,” he says, quieter now, “I don’t know if you’re wrong. Knowing you, you’re probably right. We’ll study the pattern again. Tomorrow, when you’ve had some sleep.”
“I’m awake now,” I say, “And you’re the only one who can help me figure this out. There’s something here that Alexi doesn’t want us to know and we need to find out what it is. Why don’t the Knights want us to know they’re moving towards Arcadia? They have no reason to hide that, it’s not exactly a secret who they follow, so it doesn’t make any sense.”
Even I can hear the too high, urgent, overtired pitch of my voice. I stand up, as if this will somehow demonstrate how not tired I am. Max gives me a look that says he has not been convinced by this genius maneuver, but then he says, “That’s a good question.”
“What?”
“Why don’t they want us to know they’re going to Arcadia?”
I nod. “Exactly!”
And then my knees wobble and I sit down on the edge of the bed. I guess my burst of energy is over.
“You must know why I’ve been avoiding you,” I hear myself say, not looking at him.
“No, not really.”
“I know you’re angry.”
“I usually am, yeah,” he says. “Aren’t you? There’s a lot to be angry about. I’m angry Rama died. I’m angry you started a war I worked so hard to prevent. I’m angry about all the other people who will die. I’m angry Alex betrayed you. I’m angry that you won’t look at me anymore when just a few months ago we—”
“We what?” I can’t help but bite back. “We kissed? We cared just a little too much? Where was it ever going to go? You’re the crown prince and I’m the changeling no one ever wanted.”
He swallows. “I did. I wanted you.”
“What about now? Now that I’m the war princess, the one who undid all the work you did, the one who’s forcing you to fight the boys you love to defend the father you love. Do you still want me now?” I stand again, shaky. “The day I left to take Rama into the stars, you told me you wouldn’t give up on me. And I’ve avoided you ever since in case I look in your eyes and see that you’ve given up on me after all.”
“How can you know what you’d have seen if you never looked? You should have looked.”
“What else could I have seen? I see it in everyone else’s eyes. Rickard, Grandmother, Bear. Even Titania wanted more from me than this, and I let her down too. My own mother has been afraid of me all my life! Soldiers died in the ruins of their ships today and you know what I saw on their faces when they looked at me? Hate. Alex is my monster, but I was theirs. All the people who have died in this war already, all the blood, all the white fire and ash, it’s because I won’t stop.”
“Alex is responsible for the consequences of his choices,” says Max, “So is Kyra. It’s not your fault she was so afraid of you she sent you away, and it’s not your fault he murdered a boy in cold blood. And you’re not forcing me to fight anyone. I’ve made choices of my own. I’ve been plenty of people’s monster.”
“And the rest?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to; we both know there’s no defending the rest of it. He knows I could stop trying to tear my brother to pieces, but I won’t. He knows the cost of my rage and ruin.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I have eighteen messages on my tablet when I wake up. Nine are the usual invitations to different events in the kingdom, one is from Mistress Li thanking me for the gifts I sent the kids at the sanctuary last week, four are from Elvar to the entire war council, one is a summary of all the previous day’s news from around the star system, one is from Sybilla complaining bitterly about how implausibly nice Radha is, one is from Radha asking me if I have time to show her around Erys later today, and one is from Ilara Khay.
I stare unhappily at Radha’s message for a moment before opening the one from General Khay. It’s just one line.
TRAINING AT MIDDAY.
What? I activate my earpiece, which immediately connects me to Titania, and she says, “You’re confused about the message from General Khay, aren’t you?”
“How do you know that?”
“You do know I can see literally every digital thing in the kingdom, don’t you?” she replies primly.
“Then maybe you have some idea about what the hell this means?”
“Hmm,” she says, in a tone I know too well. It’s her I don’t want to tell Esmae something tone.
“Titania.”
“Someone may have suggested to the war council that you should get more training in right away.”
“I train all the time.”
“With a seasoned general. Rickard has been in favor of it for a while, so he sent a message to General Khay last night and asked her to do it. There’s a lot she can teach you.”
“There’s a lot a lot of people can teach me,” I say, exasperated. “I like learning! But that doesn’t explain who suggested I needed to be taught something new right now.”
She doesn’t answer.
“Oh my god, it was you.”
More silence.
“Why? Because of yesterday?”
“Yes!” she says, too quickly. “Because of yesterday. Because you still act like you can’t be killed, and you still fight like you can’t be killed, and you need to learn how to fight like a person who can.”
I stand in the middle of my suite, glaring at nothing in particular. “You’re right,” I say stonily, “But just so you know, Titania, Amba liked to decide what I needed behind my back, too. And look how that turned out.”
Titania makes an outraged sound. “They’re not at all the same thing!” When I don’t reply, she huffs. “I can’t promise I’ll stop sticking my nose in your data, but I promise next time I’ll talk to you before I send messages to anyone else. Okay?”
“I’ll take it.”
“Also, it’s just past midday.”
I groan. I take a minute to brush my teeth and get dressed in a clean set of the dark gray fitted trousers, dark gray tunic, vest like liquid silver, and silver vambraces that all Kali’s warriors and soldiers wear. I zip on the sturdy black boots they made for me in the armory, almost weightless and with technology that absorbs sound, and take a shortcut down to the training fields. Which is to say I climb down the palace wall from my balcony.
General Khay and another woman are waiting for me under one of the trees in the field. On the opposite end of the field, I see Max and Sybilla with the Hundred and One, which makes me wonder who’s with Radha.
“You’re late
, Princess,” General Khay says. She’s a tall black woman with brown eyes, thick black hair that frames her head in tight spirals, and a dainty dancer body that hoodwinks literally everybody into thinking she’s an easy opponent. She’s not. She hides an unbelievable amount of speed and skill under her armor. Today she’s in just a shirt with long sleeves, gloves, the same fitted trousers as me. No vest or vambraces.
“I know, I’m sorry.”
“No matter. This is Laika,” she adds, and the other woman comes forward to give me a quick smile and curtsey. “I don’t believe you’ve met before, but she’s one of the finest warriors in my fleet and will be helping me train you.”
“It’s a pleasure, Princess,” Laika says. Her voice is soft. She’s soft in general, with light brown skin, a round face, a stout, stocky shape and long brown hair that makes a cloud around her face and shoulders. She doesn’t have any of her armor on either.
I greet her, then address them both. “Should I take my vest and vambraces off?”
“Only if you wish,” says General Khay. “We didn’t wear ours because they would have been an inconvenience today. More layers to deal with.”
That makes no sense to me and doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with Titania telling me I have to stop fighting like I can’t be killed. “General, what kind of training am I here for?”
“Master Rickard told me that in your training with him, in addition to war theory and strategy, you covered the practical use of all the usual weapons, wing war, basic control of a spaceship, and unusual terrain. Is that correct?”
“That sounds right, yes.”
She nods. “That means you didn’t have the opportunity to train in combat against unusual weapons.”
I frown. “Not specifically, but part of what I learned with Rickard was how to adapt to unexpected situations. He made me practice that a thousand times.”
“It’s a vital skill,” she nods, “but some specific training can’t hurt. Here, Princess, is an example of an unusual weapon.” She takes off her shirt and gloves. She has a sleeveless vest on underneath, but her arms are now completely exposed. More specifically, the mechanical prosthesis she has instead of a left arm is exposed.
House of Rage and Sorrow Page 3