by J. E. Holmes
Geltir stared flatly and raised an eyebrow. “Are those odious layers of judgment I hear enveloping your words?”
Geltir was a special kind of courtesan. Using only his skill with emblems, never touching his clients but instead burning certain plants with his Inherent gifts of Acuity and Resilience, drawing on the remnant magic left by the Lords, he could impart pleasure to mind and body. Ediline blushed just thinking about it. But she knew he had clients in Sladt. That was no surprise. His business with denizens of her home was how they’d met.
“No,” she said, “never. It’s pity, actually, that you might have to deal with one of them like that.” She’d meant it as a joke, but her delivery fell flat. “I just don’t want to know your clientele, looking out for your professional reputation.”
“Then I will only say that they are someone who has tangential access to Her Brilliance. I can’t verify that is how they heard it, but . . . .” He trailed off and peered more closely at her. He tilted his head, furrowed his brow, and Ediline leaned in to stare back at him.
“But?”
“Princess,” he said, all the playfulness gone from his voice. “Your face.”
She turned away. “I was walking past a window when I was caught by my own stunning reflection,” she said lightly, “and then I stumbled over a step and fell on my face.”
“Ediline, you do not stumble.”
She sighed. “No, I don’t. Just leave it at that.”
“My dear—”
“Please.”
He cleared his throat, and he gently touched her shoulder. “Very well. I’m sorry you had to hear this rumor from me. I hate to see you upset.”
“Thank you,” she said. She needed to focus on their conversation, on what she could learn from him. She needed to continue to push the encounter with Deffren behind her. And she wanted desperately to believe that she wasn’t being offered up as a diplomatic bride.
“How is he?” Geltir asked, and he sounded genuinely interested.
“Who?” Ediline snapped back from her trap of thoughts.
“The visitor, Princess.”
Well, how was he? How to describe it? Her experience with people she found attractive was, at best, absolutely none. “He is cordial and proper,” she said. Geltir gave her an imploring look. “More so than most of my family, that’s for sure.”
“And?”
“He is well-dressed.”
He rolled his eyes. “Aaand?”
“All right, fine. His eyes are dark blue like I’ve never seen, he is tall and handsome with a soft face, he has wonderful shoulders and a trim waist—and my disposition didn’t frighten him away at our first meeting.”
Geltir smiled. “That’s more like it, Princess.”
“I’m glad you’re happy.”
“The predominant religion in Ronrónfa is Ruinism,” he said. “Is he a Ruiner?”
“Yes.” Ediline shrugged. “But I don’t much care if he calls the Lords ‘Tyrants’ or vice-versa. The ruin of Attenia happened seven hundred years ago, so I like not to let it shape my days.” Except for the one way it always did, the one way it never couldn’t—the curse laid on her by Loethe the Traitor, the ninth of the Lords.
“That’s why I like you, Princess,” Geltir said.
“Tell me something,” she said. “You’re the premier gossiper as far as I’m concerned. Is it common knowledge that my father has made a habit of thrusting himself at women whenever it pleases him?”
Geltir made a face. “Don’t say thrust, dear, please. You’ll make me ill.”
She made a face back at him. “Thrust thrust thrust!”
He burst out laughing, and she laughed with him. After he settled, he wiped at his eyes with his fingertips. “Why would you ask something like that?”
“Just got into something of an argument with my brother over that notion.”
“Hm.” He sobered again, and she caught him looking at her, trying to see her face. Yeah, he’d put two and two together. “Regarding your question, I would say the rumors to that effect are common ones, yes.”
She nodded.
“But, if I may, about your handsome attaché?”
“He’s the son of an emissary, not a piece of luggage.”
“The word has two meanings, dear. And . . . his father?” He inched closer and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. To passersby, they would be in an embrace, and others would keep their distance. “Is it true?”
She leaned in. “So I am told,” she said. “What do you know about Ashwin Teshtéshev?”
“Tithelken rumors of the man are outlandish and should scarcely be believed. Depending on who’s telling it, his brutality is either feared or idolized. Ediline.” His voice was filled with a thick emotion. “This is sudden for you, I know. Be careful, before it’s too late to realize just how careful you need to be.”
She swallowed and nodded slowly. “Right.”
He stepped backward, away from her and the manor glittering in the dark. “Until next time, love. Take care not to stumble.”
“I don’t stumble.”
He bowed and flared out his skirt then seamlessly rejoined the traffic of the bridge. Ediline pulled her cloak tighter, her hood lower. As she walked back, Geltir’s warning and Deffren’s threat sang harmony in her head.
— Chapter 3 —
“It is an abomination. A shard of darkness born from the will of the most heartless traitor in the history of Lanen. It is malevolence incarnate, so much so that I do not believe it can even be thought of as a weapon at all but as a force of evil, the hand of a devil reaching across time. When it was found, I knew, in a piece of my mind I have always ignored, that my reign was beginning its end.”
—The diary of Emperor Gallan III, discovered after his suicide, 698
As a princess, Ediline was not exempt from waking before sunrise, and she believed this to be critically unfair. She also found it exceptionally difficult to do, and so it was that she overslept and subsequently rushed through her beautification and had to run all the way to the front gate of Sladt to meet Javras.
She was winded and sweating too much to be in any way attractive, hair disheveled, and something felt wrong about how her skirt fit. She had only enough time to dress, brush her hair, and apply some face paint to her cheek to disguise the purpling bruise and the small cut from Deffren’s knuckles. She wore again the same necklace that she’d been given the day before.
Javras was seated on a post at the end of the bridge to the gate, idly turning something in his hand as the early sun shone through the treetops. Passersby entering the manor kept a wide berth but nodded politely his direction.
His back was to her. He hadn’t seen her yet. She took a moment to brush down her hair and compose herself. As she walked a wide circle around, she watched his profile emerge, his elegant jaw recently shaved, and she drank in the first glimpse of those dark blue eyes as they moved from the object in his hands to her. Why was he so blasted enrapturing?
She glanced away, at the object in Javras’s hands. “Lords’ bleeding bodies,” she gasped.
Javras frowned and cocked his head. “Does this offend you?” he said. “I had heard you admire weapons.”
It was nothing like Ediline had ever seen—at least in person. A grip as long as two widths of Javras’s hands, wrapped tight in leathers; a polished ivory cross-guard; a long shimmering blade etched with symbols. The whole blade was metal. None of her own weapons—even as a princess—featured any metal at all, it was so scarce in Tithelk.
Ediline’s only thoughts flew to his father and the legendary bloodsword. The Ender, blade of Loethe the Ninth. The weight of her task sat on her shoulders, threatening to drive her to the ground. “I . . . do,” she said. “It’s lovely.”
“Thank you, Princess,” he said. “I forged it myself.”
A piece of her embarrassed anger fled, chased by curiosity. She’d carved her own spears, of course, but this was something else entirely. She wouldn’t hav
e even known the first step. She inched closer. “You made that?”
He nodded, looking down at the blade. He’d been wiping it with a red cloth. He looked back to her. “You didn’t know I can work a forge?”
Shit. This was going excellently. She took another step closer. How did he touch it? Wasn’t it sharp enough to injure him? How did he wield it, knowing it could cut him so easily? She put the questions out of mind.
“I didn’t have any time for research,” she said, putting just enough sincerity in her voice to walk the line between flippant and apologetic. “I didn’t know of your coming.”
He nodded. “Then we are on even footing,” he said. “I hadn’t heard anything about you before yesterday. Of course, I’ve had my keepers ask around about you since then.”
She nearly bit through her tongue. “Oh? Well, I’m sure that, as I am a princess, people don’t really know me at all. Maybe they’ve heard rumors at best.” She cleared her throat. “I wouldn’t put much faith in what people say about me.”
“That is a relief,” he said. “I’d begun to worry that you were entirely perfect, from what I was hearing.” He smiled, frankly, and Ediline couldn’t help but allow a smile drawn out of her in response. There was something brightly charming in his other expressions, but this smile was authentic, like he was relieved and now comfortable.
Right through her it cut.
He lifted the blade until it was vertical, the reflected sun dazzling. She took a step back then two forward. The light shimmering off the blade elicited a deep gasp somewhere inside her that didn’t come out. It was beautiful, like art. It was dangerous, which only made it more enthralling. Excitement buzzed in her chest.
He offered the sword handle bit toward her. “Would you like to . . . ?” he said, with a slight tilt of his head.
Ediline recoiled before she could help it. “I couldn’t!” Then she exhaled, pushing that gasp from her and trying to ease that bubbling feeling. “Or, I shouldn’t. At least . . . not here.”
He glanced around at the bridge. A few people passed them. “Not here?”
“There will be more people going about their business soon, and they might rightly be more alarmed than I was at the sight of you brandishing your weapon. Then, on top of that, if I were seen holding it, people would surely take that the wrong way.”
“Is a princess not allowed to have a weapon?”
Ediline put on her best haughty expression. “I am the eighth born of the royal line, and I can do what I please. I happen to love weaponry.” His expression changed, the honesty gone out of it, as if Javras needed to be reminded of Ediline’s position before remembering how to compose himself. “However, it could be misconstrued as a progression of our relationship that you may not want to be made public.”
He paled. “I apologize,” he said. “I had forgotten—”
Ediline waved a dismissive hand. “Actually, I would love to hold it, just not here. I’ll take you someplace private.” She turned away as soon as she said it. “What I mean is . . . .” She spared half a glance back and made sure he saw her playful smile. “Try to keep up.”
She darted into the gathering mist that drifted up from the mangroves, the thick humidity just on the verge of being hot, and dropped down into one of Sladt’s many tricky walkways. When she heard the rapid pound of Javras’s footsteps, she couldn’t help but release a cry of excitement and redouble her speed.
This was her home, much as she hated it at times. She knew the layout, which walkways dead-ended and which secret little tunnels would take her where she wanted to go. She’d spent her whole life here, in the bridgecity and the dense jungles that insulated it.
But, if that gave her the advantage over Javras, he failed to acknowledge it. By the fourth ramp, he ran alongside her. A fine sheen of sweat layered his brow, just like it must have layered hers. His blonde hair was stuck to it with the moisture in the air. A wild, joyous grin crossed his face, and his eyes flashed to her. She grinned back and laughed.
Then she ran into a wall.
Her shoulder hit it and she bounced and whirled. Great shots of pain crackled from the point of impact, and immediately she lost balance. She spun, feet tangled up in themselves, then hit a railing—bright new pain in the bruise from the night before—and the breath was all at once driven from her chest.
The world tipped as she went over headfirst. She jolted to a stop, a firm two-handed grasp around her calf. Despite the blood rushing to her head, the pain, and the dizziness, she found clarity of mind remarkably easy to grasp.
What of her Inherent Grace? Why, oh Lords why, had it decided to abandon her now?
She looked up—down, rather—and saw the precipitous drop to the river below. A fall from here would likely kill her, but she didn’t feel fearful at the moment. She felt scandalized! Tipped upside-down, skirts and all, with Javras holding her legs above her.
She reached down—up, rather—and took hold of the walkway, level with her hips, and heaved herself toward it. “Pull!” At the command, Javras pulled her up by her legs, and after a moment of red hot exertion, she was up at the level of the rail again, and together they hauled her back over.
Ediline dropped her knees, partially to get her blood flowing downward again, partially to hide her fierce embarrassment. Her heart rattled her chest. Her face burned. Her breath was hard, and her chest and shoulders ached from the sudden, sharp use of those muscles.
“Are you all right?” Javras said.
He didn’t laugh at her, which was a good sign. Now that the moment of danger had passed, she realized that she had just run into a wall and nearly fallen off a building because she’d been caught in the gaze of a beautiful man. Presence and Grace, that was supposed to define her. With cruelty, her reputation ruined. Embarrassing and clumsy.
“Thank you,” she said. “I suppose I should have listened to my mother all these years, telling me not to run without looking where I’m going.”
“Mothers are at times wise.”
“Did your mother ever give you any wisdom you disobeyed?”
“Not to chase after princesses.”
Ediline caught herself mid-swoon and managed to strangle it into a laugh. It was the first time she’d broken through Javras’s carefully molded appearance. The veneer of propriety was split by a single crack at his roguish remark.
“I presume, Sesér, that you did not take this opportunity to gaze up a princess’s skirts.”
He grew serious. “I certainly did not.”
“Is that so?”
“If you discover that I did, Princess—”
“How might I discover that, exactly? An eyewitness? Clairvoyance?”
“You will have to take my word for it, then. I hope my word carries weight with you.”
She blinked, her gaze caught in his, her will to do anything else melting to a puddle. “It does,” she said. After the words left her, it was as if there was nothing else inside her, a breathless space where nothing mattered except this moment. Then, with great effort, she forced herself to turn away from him.
“Princess,” he said. “Were you hurt?”
“Only my pride,” she said.
“I saw—”
“So you did look?” she said.
“Not at all,” he said. “Around your middle, it was bruised.”
Courtesy of Deffren. “Oh,” she said. She turned away. If he was looking more closely, he might notice the mark on her face. Deffren had been right about one thing—she was good at making things up. “I’m too adventurous for my own good. You’ll find I’m riddled with minor bruises and a few unpleasant scars.”
“I’m sure they aren’t so unpleasant.”
“No,” she said, mouth dry, “if one were interested, I suppose they might not be.” She cleared her throat. “Shall I resume our tour?”
“Might I recommend a safer pace this time?”
She blushed. “You may, but just this once.”
The someplace private she
’d wanted to take him was actually not far ahead, and actually not far off from where she would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her. She just preferred to arrive with her bones intact.
At the back corner of Sladt was a long sturdy ladder to the riverbed below, where, when the water level dipped, a small shelf of land emerged from the lazy flow of the river. The ladder served as an emergency getaway, and the way up top was locked behind a gate. Luckily, Ediline had stolen a copy of the key.
Javras eyed the ladder with wonder, an impressed little tilt to his lips. She descended first. When she came to the bottom of the ladder, she was thick in the mist of the river, the air serene. Birds called and other creatures yipped and croaked and bellowed periodically, but the sound of the city waking above them was drowned out by distance and the thick air.
She stood at one end of the tiny island so that, as Javras came down the ladder at the other end, he was obscured by the mist, and she could only perceive the idea of his shape.
“This is a good place,” Javras said.
“What makes it good?”
“It’s a good secret place to have. I guess it’s the quiet. In a city, you don’t get to know the quiet too frequently.”
In a bridgecity, the so-called silences were creaking wood and rope and the dull chorus of distant bustle. The Everquiet, the buzzing non-sound that fell with the dark, was rare in the city where lights glittered from sunset to dawn. She imagined the expansive plains of Javras’s homeland, flat and dark and devoid of sound, like being swallowed by nothingness.
“I’m glad you like it,” she said. “Can you see me?”
“I can.”
“And?”
“It’s pleasant.”
“I’m glad to hear it is so,” she said. She was caught by a tangle in her chest, all jittery and full of lights. She cleared her throat. “I’d like to inspect your sword now, if I may.”
He drew it and held it aloft. She saw the gleam of it, its sharp length. She wanted to know how it felt to hold, the heft of it in her palm weighing down her arm. She wanted to know the ease with which it sliced through the air, through bark, through anything. It was a sword, yes—foreign, dangerous, frightening—but she was Tithelken. It was a beautiful weapon, and she wanted so badly to hold it.