The Heart of Betrayal

by Mary E. Pearson

  Across the room, my gaze landed on the wedding dress laid across Kaden’s trunk. It had been finished with little time to spare. Hunter’s Moon was tomorrow. The wedding was to begin at twilight as the moon rose over the foothills. There would be no processions, no flowers, no priests, no parties, none of the fanfare that accompanied a wedding in Morrighan. Vendan wedding traditions were simple, and witnesses were the greatest requirement. It would take place on the eastern wall walk overlooking Hawk’s Pavilion. A volunteer chosen by the Komizar would tie our wrists together with a red ribbon. When we raised our tied hands before them displaying our union, the witnesses would call back a blessing—bound by earth, bound by the heavens—and that would be it. The feast cake of dried fruits that would follow was the greatest luxury, but the simplicity didn’t make the anticipation any less feverish. The Hunter’s Moon and my extravagant red clan dress were embellishments that added to the fervor. I walked over and touched the gown, so carefully pieced together, a dress of many hands and many households. A dress of welcoming, not of good-byes. A dress of staying, not leaving.

  Was this to be my end? Forever a hostage of one kingdom and despised by the others? I wondered if Vendan riders were already in Morrighan spreading the news of my ultimate betrayal to my countrymen. I pictured those who would curse me—the cabinet, the Royal Guard, my mother and father. I closed my eyes trying to hold back tears. But certainly not my own brothers or Pauline. A sob jumped to my throat.

  This wasn’t the story I had written for myself. Not the story of Terravin and salty breezes and love. I crushed the fabric in my fist and held it to my face, staining the hem with the deeper red of my own blood. With Pauline’s image still looming in my thoughts, a more horrible worry overtook me—no one in Morrighan would be considering my traitorous act for long because they would either be on this side of hell scrabbling for roaches and rats to fill their bellies or they would be dead.

  The Komizar’s success seemed assured—unless I could somehow get word to them. Kaden’s promise to protect Berdi, Gwyneth, and Pauline was not enough. All of Terravin wasn’t enough. There were so many more in Morrighan, and none of them deserved this end. The Komizar had mentioned one last winter. That must mean they wouldn’t march until after that? When? Spring? Summer? How much time did Morrighan have? Not much more than I did.

  I jumped when I heard a knock at my door. I wanted no more surprises, and cautiously cracked it open.

  It was Calantha. “I have another towel for you.” She moved aside. “And I brought this.”

  Rafe stepped into view.

  Blood pooled cold at my feet. Was this a trap?

  “I may have only one eye,” Calantha said, “but I perceive far more with one than most do with two. I’ve dismissed the guards at the end of the hall to see to another matter, and the Council is still in session. You have fifteen minutes before the guards return to their post. No more. I’ll be back before then.” She set the towel she had brought down on my bed and left.

  Rafe’s eyes immediately went to my cheek, and I saw icy rage pass through them.

  “It wasn’t Kaden. He didn’t touch me. I’m all right,” I pleaded. “We only have a few minutes.” I didn’t want to waste it on anger and accusations. Rafe and I hadn’t been alone with so much as a private word in days.

  He swallowed his anger as if he could read my thoughts. He started to speak, but I stopped him. “Kiss me,” I said. “Before you say anything else, just kiss me and hold me and tell me it was worth it, no matter what happens.”

  He brushed the hair from my face. “I promised you I’d get us out of this, and I will. We’re going to have a long life together, Lia.” His arms slid around me, pulling me to him as if nothing could ever come between us again, and then his mouth came down on mine, gentle, hungry, the sweetest taste I had ever imagined, all my dreams held tight and alive again in one short kiss.

  We reluctantly stepped apart, because time was so short. Rafe spoke quickly. “Wear your riding clothes in the morning. Say your remembrances from Blackstone Terrace. Do you know where it is?”

  I nodded. Blackstone Terrace was one of many that overlooked the square, but it was rarely used because access to it was more complicated.

  “Good,” he said. “Say them just after first bell. By then, the Council will be thick in their sessions. Stick to your routine so guards who watch from the square aren’t alerted. When you leave, take the outside staircase down to the second level and go through the portal there. It’s a deserted path that only a few servants use. I’ll be waiting there for you with Jeb.”

  “But how—”

  “Do you swim, Lia?”

  “Swim? You mean the river?”

  “Don’t worry. We have a raft. You won’t need to swim.”

  “But the river—”

  He explained to me why it was the only way, that the bridge was impossible to raise without a small army, and the lower river was too far away. “Tavish has it worked out. I trust him.”

  “I can swim,” I said, trying to calm my heart. A raft. Tomorrow morning. I didn’t care if it was the craziest plan in the world. We’d be leaving before I had to marry the Komizar. He asked if there was anything I needed to take. He’d give it to Jeb now to secure on the raft, because there wouldn’t be time tomorrow. I grabbed my saddlebag and stuffed a few things in it, including the Ancients’ books. I grabbed his arm. “But, Rafe, if things don’t go as planned, if you have to leave without me, promise me you will.”

  I could tell he was about to protest but then he paused, chewing his lip. “I will,” he said, “if you promise to do the same.”

  “You’re a terrible liar.”

  He frowned. “And I used to be so good at it. You’re my downfall. But you still have to promise me.”

  I’d never leave without him. Without me as leverage, he’d be going home to Dalbreck in pieces. He could probably already see the lie on my tongue. “I will,” I answered.

  He sighed, and his lips grazed mine again, whispering against them. “I suppose we’ll both have to get out, then.”

  “I suppose we will,” I whispered back.

  My body molded to his, and the seconds ticked by. All I wanted was more time with him. His lips traveled to my neck. “It was worth it, Lia,” he said. “Every mile, every day. I’d do it all again. I’d chase you across three continents if that’s what it took to be with you.”

  I heard a small sigh, and he pulled away. “There may be one snag in our plan, though,” he said. “Griz.”

  “Griz? He seems like the least of our worries. He already covered for us once.”

  A crease deepened between his brows as if Griz made his head ache. “He knows who I am, and it seems he’s well acquainted with one of my men too. When Griz spotted him, he figured something was in the works, and he made it clear he doesn’t want you to leave. He’s one of the clanspeople and expects you to stay here. My soldier explained he was only here to get me out, and Griz seemed to buy it, but he’s keeping a close watch on us.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “Let me understand this correctly. He doesn’t care that Dalbreck soldiers are on this side of the river or about conspiracies and escape plans, just so long as he gets to keep me?”

  “That’s right. We plan on taking him out silently in his quarters if we have to, but as you may have noticed, he’s a big brute—it might not be easy.”

  My blood simmered. Keep me. Like a boy with a frog in his pocket. “No,” I said. “I’ll take care of Griz—”

  “Lia, he’s too—”

  “I’m trusting you, Rafe. You need to trust me on this. I will handle Griz.”

  He opened his mouth to argue.

  “Rafe,” I said firmly.

  He sighed and nodded grudgingly. “Tonight in Sanctum Hall, be sure to talk about future plans. What will happen a week from now and a month from now. Ask about the weather, anything so it looks like you expect to be here. It’s not just the Komizar who misses nothing. The Rah
tan, the chievdars, and especially Griz note every word.”

  There was a light tap at the door. Our time was up.

  “Your shoulder,” I said. “How is it healing?”

  “Just a nick. The cook gave me a foul poultice to treat it.” He bent down and lightly kissed the cut on my cheekbone. “Look at us,” he said. “We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?” But then one kiss led to more, as if he’d forgotten he had to go.

  “No one would recognize us,” I answered. “We’re hardly a proper prince and princess anymore.”

  He laughed mid-kiss and leaned back to look at me. “You were never a proper princess.” His hands cradled my face, and his smile faded. “But you’re everything I want. Remember that. I love you, Lia. Not a title. And not because a piece of paper says I should. Because I do.”

  There was no more time for words or kisses. He grabbed my saddlebag and hurried to the door.

  “Wait!” I said. “I have something else to give you.” I went to the chest and took out a small sealed flask of clear liquid. “It’s a little something I lifted in my travels,” I said. “It might buy us more time.” I told him exactly what to do with it.

  He grinned. “Not a proper princess at all.” He carefully tucked the flask into my saddlebag and left.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Light flurries of snow began to whirl on the wind, but it wasn’t enough to stop me. I found Griz in the paddock with Eben and the foal.

  I jumped up on the railing and down into the paddock.

  “What happened here?” Griz asked, clumsily motioning to a place on his own cheek that mirrored mine. His hair flew wild in the wind.

  I glared at Griz but didn’t answer, instead turning to Eben. “How’s the training going, Eben?” I asked.

  Eben looked at me warily, sensing something was amiss and not just because of my bruised and cut face. “He’s a fast learner,” he answered. “He’ll walk on a lead now.”

  Eben rubbed the horse’s muzzle, and the young horse calmed at his touch. Their connection was already evident. The way of Eben, Dihara had called it. There is a knowing between them, a way of trust, mysterious but not magical.… A way that requires a different kind of eye and ear. I reached out and stroked the star on the foal’s head.

  Griz shifted impatiently from foot to foot.

  “Have you named him yet?” I asked.

  Eben hesitated, glancing at Griz.

  “Don’t listen to the counsel of fools, Eben.” I pressed my fist just below my ribs. “If you feel it here, then trust it.”

  “Spirit,” Eben said quietly. “I gave him the same name.”

  Griz’s patience was exhausted, and he motioned toward the rail. “You should be going—”

  I lit into him, my voice loud and sharp. “I’ll leave when I’m ready to leave, do you understand?”

  “Eben,” Griz said, “leave us alone for a minute. The princess and I—”

  “Stay, Eben! You need to hear this too, because who knows what other nonsense these fools have filled your head with.”

  I walked up to Griz and poked him in the chest. “Let me make this perfectly clear to you. Though some might seek to make it appear otherwise, I am not a bride to be bartered away to another kingdom, nor a prize of war, nor a mouthpiece for your Komizar. I am not a chip in a card game to be mindlessly tossed into the center of the pot, nor one to be kept in the tight fist of a greedy opponent. I am a player seated at the table alongside everyone else, and from this day forward, I will play my own hand as I see fit. Do you understand me? Because the consequences could be ugly if someone thought otherwise.”

  Eben looked at me with mouth agog, but Griz stood there, in all his hulking, menacing mass, looking more like a chastised schoolboy than a fierce warrior. His lips twitched, and he turned to Eben. “Let’s run some circles with Spirit.”

  I saw the surprise on Eben’s face that Griz had called his horse by name.

  I guessed that Griz had gotten my message. Now if he would only remember it.

  * * *

  By the time I got back to the Sanctum, the wind was howling and the flurries had turned to driving snow that pelted my face. It was again just as Aunt Bernette had described, the cruel burning side of snow. I kissed two fingers and lifted them to the heavens for my aunt, my brothers, and even for my parents. It wasn’t so hard for me to believe anymore that snow could have such different sides. So many things did. I pulled my cloak close about me as it tried to whip free. Winter was marching in with a vengeance. There would be no remembrances on the wall this evening.

  Upon my return, a guard was waiting for me with a message.

  Wear the brown.

  Even with all the busyness of his Council meetings, the Komizar still managed to send a message. No detail was too small or great for him to control.

  I knew why he chose the brown. It was the plainest of my dresses, certainly drab in his eyes, but all the better to contrast and showcase the red he’d have me wear tomorrow. I had no doubt he’d ordered the snow itself as the perfect backdrop, and surely he’d ordered the sun to shine in the morning so as not to deter the crowds.

  I dressed as he instructed, but there was more to put on besides the plain brown dress.

  I lifted Walther’s baldrick to my lips, the leather soft and warm against them, the ache in me as full as the day I had closed his eyes and kissed him good-bye. I put it on and pressed it against my chest.

  Next came the tether of bones, full and heavy with gratitude. I wore my hair loose and flowing about my shoulders. There was no need to show off the kavah tonight. By now, everyone in the Sanctum knew it was there.

  I put on the amulet bought in the jehendra, a ring of pounded copper that had been offered by the Arakan clan, a belt of dried thannis woven by a girl on the high plains of Montpair. The welcome of Venda came to me in so many ways, each gift heavy with hope.

  There was nothing I wanted more than to leave this place, to disappear with Rafe into a world of our own and pretend Venda had never existed, to pretend these last few months had never happened, to start our dream afresh—to have the better ending Rafe hoped for. I ached for home in a way I hadn’t thought possible, and I knew somehow I had to get there to warn them. But I couldn’t deny a stirring in me too. It caught me in unexpected moments—when a servant girl, ashamed, fluttered her lashes downward, when I caught a rare glimpse of Eben the child, when Effiera echoed her mother’s words—the claw, quick and fierce; the vine, slow and steady. When a tentful of women measured, fitted, and embraced me with their clothes, and I felt the expectation sewn into them. They’ll clothe their own, even if they have to piece together scraps to do it.

  And maybe the stirrings overtook me the most when I was with Aster. How had I come to love her in such a short time? As if on cue, she tapped on my door and entered. She had a cart and her chosen army with her—Yvet and Zekiah. They were too small to be barrow runners but were able to earn a meal in the kitchen by doing other tasks.

  “We’re supposed to gather your things for you, Miz, and haul them over to your new quarters. If that’s all right with you, that is. But I think it has to be all right, because the Komizar ordered it, so I hope you don’t mind if we fold up your clothes and put them in this here—” Her face flooded with worry, and she rushed toward me. “What happened to your cheek?”

  I reached up, touching my cheekbone. I found it hard to lie to Aster, but she was too young to be drawn into this. “It was only a clumsy fall,” I answered.

  She frowned as if unconvinced.

  “Please,” I said, “go ahead and move my things. Thank you.”

  She clucked like an old woman, and they went about their work. If all went well, I’d be in my new quarters for only one night. They gathered the belts and underclothes that Effiera had given me first, then went on to the dresses. Aster grabbed the towel on the bed that Calantha had brought, but as she lifted it, something heavy fell from it and clattered to the floor.

  We all sucke
d in quick breaths. My jeweled knife. The one I’d thought was gone forever. Calantha had had it all along. Aster, Yvet, and Zekiah gawked at the knife, took a step back, then looked at me. Even in all their innocence, they knew I shouldn’t possess weapons.

  “What should we do with that?” Aster asked.

  I knelt hastily, scooping it up as I grabbed the towel from Aster. “It’s a wedding gift from the Komizar,” I said and wrapped it up again. “He wouldn’t be happy that I was so careless with it. Please don’t mention this to him.” I looked up at the three wide-eyed faces. “Or to anyone.”

  They all nodded, and I shoved it into the bottom of the cart. “When you take these things to my room, please unload the knife carefully and place it under all my clothes. Can you do that?”

  Aster looked at me, her expression solemn. She wasn’t buying any of it. None of them were. Their innocence and childhoods had been stolen long ago like Eben’s. “Don’t worry, Miz,” Aster said. “I’ll be careful and put it in a real good place.”

  I started to stand, but Yvet stopped me and leaned forward to kiss my injured cheek, her little lips moist against my skin. “It won’t hurt for long, Miz. Be brave.”

  I swallowed, trying to answer without turning into a blathering fool. “I’ll try, Yvet. I’ll try to be as brave as you.”

  Betrayed by her own,

  Beaten and scorned,

  She will expose the wicked,

  For the Dragon of many faces

  Knows no boundaries.

  —Song of Venda

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  KADEN

  I sat at the Council table, listening, nodding, trying to add a word when I could, but once again Lia had commandeered my thoughts. With every drop of blood within me, I was certain I needed her here. That she needed to be here. But it seemed almost impossible now.

  I had known.

  I knew what he was planning, and I said nothing because it was everything I thought I wanted—“the steps to justice,” he called them—and I wanted justice. That’s what I had called it too. But I knew we were twisting words. It was vengeance, pure and simple. It was all that mattered. I was certain that the day I looked into my father’s eyes and eased him into his last breath, my own breaths would grow fuller. That the scars I bore would miraculously disappear and be forgotten. Any price seemed worth that prize. Innocents die in war, Lia. I had said those words countless times to myself as justification, even when I learned of Greta’s death. Innocents die. But now I pictured Berdi dishing out extra helpings of stew, myself dancing in the streets of Terravin with Gwyneth and Simone … and there was Pauline, as kind and gentle a girl as it was possible for any earthly being to be. They had names now. Their faces were sharp and clear, while the face of justice had grown dim.