“Stop it, Lia! Stop it now!”
She stared at me, her breaths heavy and furious.
“Don’t you hurt her, Master Kaden! Let her up! Because I know how to use this!”
Lia and I both looked toward the door. It was Aster, and her eyes were wild with fear.
“Get out!” I yelled. “Before I skin you!”
Aster raised the sword higher, standing her ground. Her arms trembled with the weapon’s weight.
“Listen to you!” Lia said. “Threatening a child. Aren’t you the brave Assassin?”
I let go of her and stood. “Get up!” I ordered, and once she got to her feet, I pointed at Aster. “Now tell her to leave, so I don’t have to skin her.”
Lia glared at me, expecting me to back down. I reached for my dagger. She grudgingly turned to Aster, her expression softening. “It’s all right. I can handle the Assassin. He’s all bluster, no bite. Go on now.”
The girl still hesitated, her eyes glistening. Lia kissed two fingers and lifted them to the heavens in a silent command to Aster. “Go,” she said quietly, and the girl left reluctantly, shutting the door behind her.
I thought Lia had calmed down, but as soon as she turned back to me, her wrath had returned. “Royal? You will sleep in my quarters tonight, royal?”
“You know I’d never force myself on you.”
“Then why did you say it?”
“I was angry,” I said. “I was hurt.”
Because I knew everything she had said to me about the Komizar and wanting power was a lie, and I wanted to call her bluff. Because I wanted the Komizar to believe there was an irreparable change in our relationship. Because I was trying to keep her here in my room and safe for one more night. Because everything was flying out of control. Because she was right—I wanted to trust her but I didn’t. Because when I left a week ago, she had kissed me.
Because I so stupidly loved her.
I saw the tempest in her eyes, the waves of calculation crashing and cresting, weighing every word of what she could and couldn’t say. Tonight there would be no honesty within her.
“It’s a dangerous game you’re playing, Lia,” I said. “And it’s not a game you’ll win.”
“I don’t play games, Kaden. I wage wars. Don’t make me wage one on you.”
“Those are brave bold words that mean nothing to me.”
Her lips parted, ready for a biting comeback. “I’m not—” But she caught herself and refused to go on, almost as if she didn’t trust herself to say more. She turned away and grabbed a blanket from the barrel and threw it to me. “I’m going to sleep, Kaden. You should too.”
She was done. I could almost see the weight on her shoulders. Her lids were heavy with weariness, as if no fight was left in her. She didn’t bother to change. She lay on the bed and pulled the quilt over her shoulders.
“Can we—”
“Good night.”
We went to sleep without another word, but as I lay there in the dark, I replayed our earlier conversation in my head. She had hit every note when she explained her decision to marry the Komizar: the resignation, bitterness, throwing my own words back in my face, the regret, the glistening eyes, every single note as if she was singing a practiced song. Her performance was near flawless, but it had none of the genuine weariness that I had just seen now. I’m not going to lie, Kaden.
But she had. I was certain. I remembered her bitter words to me as we left the vagabond camp when I said she was a poor liar. No, actually, I can be a very good one, but some lies require more time to spin.
And now, as I retraced the past days, her claim of trying to build a new life here, her kiss, I wondered … just how long had she been spinning one?
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
RAFE
“Have you taken leave of your senses?” I hissed.
I sat in a dark storeroom off the kitchen that smelled of onions and goose grease. Calantha had left me here to wait while the cook boiled up a poultice for my wound.
“It was an opportunity that dropped into our laps. We can’t all show up as patty clappers and emissaries. How’s the shoulder?”
I pushed his hand away. “It’s crazy. How long can Orrin play the mute? What were you thinking? And who are all those other soldiers that showed up with you?”
“Terrified boys, mostly. As far as they know, I truly am the new governor of Arleston. We ambushed them on the road. Easy pickings. The governor was as soaked as a fish. Nasty fellow. Barely knew what hit him. His so-called guards fairly handed us their weapons in one breath and pledged their new allegiance in the next.”
I shook my head.
“Come on, boy. This is a plum position. I don’t have to slink about, and I can carry weapons without raising a brow.”
“And spit in my face.”
“On your boots,” he corrected. “Don’t malign my aim.” Sven chuckled. “I thought you were going to choke when you saw me.”
“I did choke. I still have a piece of apple stuck in my throat.”
“Most of our way here, I wasn’t sure we’d even find you alive. I prodded that Assassin for miles, but he’s a tight-lipped fellow, isn’t he? Wouldn’t let loose with anything, and the soldiers with him weren’t much better. I finally overheard one of them talking around the campfire about the foppish emissary of the prince.”
Orrin, standing by the door to the kitchen keeping an eye out for the cook, whispered over his shoulder, “That Assassin is the first one we’ll take out.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll take care of him.”
Sven asked about the details of my arrival, and I told them about my proposal to the Komizar, and how I had played on his greed and ego.
“And he bought it?” Sven asked.
“Greed is a language he understands. When I told him our stake was a port and a few hills, it rang true.”
Sven’s expression darkened. “You knew about that?”
“I’m not deaf, Sven. It’s what they’ve wanted for years.”
“Does she know?”
“No. It doesn’t matter. I’d never allow it to happen.”
Sven peeled back the blood-sodden tear in my shirt and grunted. “It was a stupid move you made tonight.”
“I pulled back.”
“Only thanks to me.”
I knew he’d point that out. Watch your step. If they suspected I was anyone other than who I claimed to be, it wouldn’t bode well for any of us—especially Lia. We’d end up dead, but she’d end up married to one animal and serving another at his bidding. The wedding was three days away. We had to move fast.
“Where’s Tavish?” I asked.
“Still working out the details of the raft. He’s acquiring the barrels to tether together.”
Barrels. In a split-second passing today, Jeb had briefly whispered the escape would be by raft, but I’d hoped I had heard him wrong. I shook my head. “There has to be another way.”
“If there is, you tell us what it is,” Sven said. He told me they had already looked at other options and confirmed the bridge was definitely not one of them. It required too many men to raise and drew too much attention. Traveling on land for hundreds of miles to the lower river wasn’t an option either. We’d be hunted down before we reached the calm waters, and there were beasts in that part of the river that did their own kind of hunting. Orrin had already gotten a taste of that. His calf had been shredded before Jeb and Tavish managed to kill the monster that had latched on to his leg.
They insisted a raft was the only option. Tavish had studied the river. He said it would work. Though the drop and rushing waters sent up a powerful mist, that same mist provided concealment, and there were slower eddies on the western bank. The raft just had to be maneuvered into one at just the right point. It was possible. The other advantage to the river was that it would sweep us out of Vendan reach so swiftly, we’d be miles away before they even managed to get the bridge raised to try to follow, and then they’d have no idea where w
e had exited the river. Orrin said they had left their horses and some of the Vendan horses we had captured roped off in a hidden pasture some twenty miles downriver. It was the perfect plan. So they said. If the horses were still there. If a hundred other things didn’t go wrong. I tried to remind myself that Tavish had always been the architect of details. I had to trust him, but I’d have felt better if I could see the certainty in his eyes for myself. I didn’t know if Lia even knew how to swim.
“How’s your leg?” I asked Orrin.
“Tavish sewed me up. I’ll live.”
“But it needs a dressing too,” Sven said firmly.
Orrin lifted his pant leg and shrugged. The dozens of stitched lines showing above the top of his boot were red and festering, which explained his slight limp. But it had given Governor Obraun and his injured guard a good excuse to join me here. Sven had told Calantha his guard had been attacked by a panther while hunting and was in need of a poultice too.
While we were whispering, Jeb snuck in from another door. “Anyone here need a crap cake?”
I smiled, surveying him head to foot. He was the only one among us who cared about the season’s latest fashion and whether his buttons were polished. Now he was dressed in rags, his hair filthy, and he fully looked the role of a patty clapper. “How’d you get stuck with that job?” I asked.
“Everyone’s happy to open the door for a patty clapper making a delivery. Happy at least for a few seconds.” He made a clicking sound out the side of his mouth, like the snapping of a neck. “We may need to take a few out quietly in their rooms before we make our move.”
“And he speaks Vendan like a native,” Sven added.
Jeb was like Lia, gifted at languages. He seemed to enjoy their exotic feel on his tongue as much as exotic fabrics on his back. But Sven had learned Vendan the hard way—a few years into his service, he was imprisoned, along with two Vendans, in a Lesser Kingdom. They were captured for slave service, as he called it, working for two years in their mines until he and the Vendans finally hatched an escape.
“I gathered that you’re somewhat conversant now too?”
“I get by,” I said. “I don’t speak it well, but I can understand a fair amount. As you saw, the Komizar and some of the Council speak Morrighese, and Lia helped me with some phrases.”
Jeb stepped forward, cracking his knuckles. “I talked to her,” he said.
He had our undivided attention now, including Orrin, who looked back at us over his shoulder. Jeb said he saw her just before the evening meal in Sanctum Hall. He’d managed to make a delivery to her room. “She knows we’re here now.”
“All four of you?” I said. “She wasn’t impressed by our numbers when I told her.”
“Can you blame her? I’m not impressed either,” Jeb answered.
Orrin snorted. “It only takes one person to skewer—”
“The Assassin’s mine,” I reminded him. “Don’t forget that.”
“She gave me useful information,” Jeb continued, “especially about paths in the Sanctum. The place is crawling with them, but some are dead ends. I’ve already been stuck in a few and almost fell down one. She also gave me her winnings from a card game for supplies.”
“That’s what she called it? Winnings?” I said. “More like what she swindled. I lost five pounds of sweat that night.”
Sven rolled his eyes. “So she’s good at cards and tearing off faces.”
“Certain faces.” I looked back at Jeb. “Did she say anything else?”
He hesitated for a moment, rubbing the back of his neck. “She said your mother was dead.”
The words hit me again. My mother was dead. I told them what the Komizar had said, and his claim that the funeral pyre had been witnessed by Vendan riders. Sven balked, saying that was impossible, that the queen was hearty and wouldn’t succumb so easily or quickly, but the truth was we had all been away for so long we had no idea what was happening at home, and a new wave of guilt hit me. They all refuted the story, saying it was only a Vendan lie to torment me, and I let them hold on to that thought—maybe I wanted to hold on to it too—but I knew the Komizar had no reason to lie. He didn’t know she was my mother, only my queen, and telling me had helped strengthen my claim.
“One other thing,” Jeb said, then shook his head as if thinking better of it.
“Go ahead. Say it,” I said.
“I like her, that’s all. And I made promises to her that we’d all get out. We damn well better keep them.”
I nodded. I couldn’t consider any other option.
Orrin blew out a puff, ruffling his straggled hair. “She scares me,” he said, “but I like her too, and hang me, she’s—”
“Don’t say it, Orrin,” I warned.
He sighed. “I know, I know. She’s my future queen.” He went back to the door to watch for the cook.
We caught Jeb up on other details, including the loss of Dalbreck soldiers, the match between me and the Assassin, and how Sven’s face was almost fed to the hogs.
“It was a sealed kettle ready to explode in there,” Sven said. “But it’s safer that she genuinely hates us for now—safer for her and us—especially since Orrin and I are so visible. Let’s keep it that way for a while.” Sven ran his hand along his scarred cheek. “She’s only seventeen?”
I nodded.
“She carries a lot on her shoulders for someone so young.”
“Does she have any other choice?”
Sven shrugged. “Maybe not, but she came close to revealing her hand tonight. I had to shove her back in her chair.”
“You shoved her?” I said.
“Gently,” he explained. “She started across the room to come between you and that Assassin.”
I leaned forward, raking my fingers through my hair. She acted impulsively because I did. The strain was making us both careless.
“Here she comes,” Orrin whispered and sat back on the bench next to me.
The door swung open, and the cook eyed the roomful. She mumbled a curse and plopped down a pair of tongs and a steaming bucket at the end of the bench. She pulled a stack of rags from under her arm and dropped them next to the tongs. “Five layers. Leave it on overnight. Bring back the cloths when you’re done. Clean.”
She pushed back through the door, her charming instructions complete, and we were left with the suffocating fumes of the yellow-green mixture filling the room. Jeb noted that the stench of horse manure was preferable to the poison the cook had brewed. How it would help a wound, I wasn’t sure, but Sven seemed confident. He took a hearty whiff of the putrid substance.
“I’d rather have a dose of your red-eye,” I said.
“So would I,” he said longingly, “but the red-eye’s long gone.” He took great pleasure dipping the pieces of cloth into the hot liquid and placing them over my gash and Orrin’s festering leg wounds.
“For dragging her all the way across the Cam Lanteux, that Assassin seemed none too fond of her tonight,” Sven observed.
“He’s more than fond of her. Trust me,” I said. “He’s just incensed that she agreed to marry the Komizar while he was away. I know she had no choice. The Komizar’s holding something over her—I just don’t know what it is.”
“I know,” Jeb said. “She told me.”
I looked at him, dread flooding through me, waiting.
“You,” he said. “The Komizar said if she didn’t convince everyone that she had embraced the marriage, you’d start losing fingers. Or more. She’s marrying him to save you.”
I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes.
For you. Only for you.
I should have known when she added those words to the prayer. They had haunted me ever since she said them.
“Don’t worry, boy, we’ll have her out of here before the wedding.”
“The wedding’s in three days,” I said.
“We’ll be sailing down the river by then.”
Sailing.
On barrels.
CHAPTER FIFTY
The big day the Komizar promised me began with a fitting for a wedding dress. I stood on a block of wood in a long, barren gallery not far from his quarters. A fire roared in the fireplace at the end of the room, chasing some of the chill away. Every day had grown colder, and a puddle of water on my window ledge from last night’s rain had turned to ice.
I watched the flames lick the air, hypnotized. I had almost told Kaden last night. I came close, but when he said it was a game I wouldn’t win, I feared he was right. All it took was one misstep.
A confession was on the tip of my tongue but then the smug exchange between Kaden and the Komizar at the end of the evening had flashed through my mind. There’s a strong bond between them. They have a long history together.
I could almost admire the Komizar for his brilliance.
Who better to have as his Assassin than Kaden, so intensely loyal, so loyal he would never challenge the Komizar? So loyal he would set aside a knife even in a fit of rage. Kaden was forever in his debt, an Assassin who couldn’t forget the betrayal of his own father and who would never repeat his treachery even if it cost him his own life.
“Turn,” Effiera instructed. “There, that’s enough.”
The army of dressmakers were a welcome distraction. Though a special dress was not customary in Vendan weddings, the Komizar had ordered one, and he wished to supervise the fitting as it progressed. He would issue his approval before final work was begun. It was to be a dress of many hands to honor the Meurasi clan, but he had specified the color was to be red, which Effiera and the other dressmakers had clucked about all morning, trying to find just the right mix of fabrics, and seeming satisfied with none. They pieced together scraps of velvets, brocades, and dyed buckskin.
They pushed and prodded with their pieces, and a dress finally took form on me as they pinned and unpinned, a labored nervousness to their work. They were used to crafting dresses from their tents in the jehendra and not under the supervision of the Komizar.
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