by S. M. Boyce
“Welcome, Miss Catherine Magari,” the Blood said. Her voice echoed and danced along the walls.
Kara’s eyebrow twitched at hearing her full name, but she swallowed the urge to correct it. “Thanks. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“I pray that your time in Ourea has not been altogether horrible.”
“It’s been…interesting.”
The Queen tightened her grasp on her own fingers as she looked Kara over and sighed. Kara’s gut twisted. She’d already disappointed the Queen and she’d barely said anything yet.
“Before I introduce you to my generals, Vagabond, I must prepare you for what is to come. For now, I trust who you are based on Braeden’s word alone, but you must prove yourself when we are in the war room. Are you prepared to do so? They will need to see the Grimoire as proof.”
“I can do that.” Kara nodded. Sweat licked her palms and neck.
The Queen eyed Kara’s empty hands as if expecting something more, but continued when nothing else was said.
“Come, then.”
The Blood retreated to the wall behind her thrones and rapped her knuckles on the stone. A hidden door opened to reveal a torch-lit hallway, but she turned and waited instead of immediately walking through.
Kara shuffled up the steps and passed the thrones, running her fingers against the cool silk fabric that lined the central chair. The touch sent a sharp chill through her bones and into her heart.
She stifled a yelp and cradled her hand. Ice crystals clung to the skin that had touched the fabric, stinging her with their cold fire. The Queen watched her, one eyebrow furrowed in barely contained annoyance. The regal woman stood with her arms behind her back and her chin raised, piercing Kara with cold eyes.
“The Drapes of Hillside are one of our many defenses. Should anyone without the Hillsidian bloodline touch the fabric for very long, they will turn to ice. If I recall the legends correctly, the Vagabond himself dealt with them. I should have hoped that he would write to warn his own Heir to avoid them.”
Kara decided against saying anything and instead locked eyes with the Queen. She did not break eye contact until the Blood turned and led the way down the dark and endless hall.
“You must be wary of the world around you, Vagabond,” the Queen added over her shoulder.
Kara shook her head and followed, cradling her hand as she crossed into the hidden passageway. Once she was through, the door hummed and swung closed. She took a deep breath and continued behind the woman in the trailing gown.
The Blood made a dozen turns, passing doors and hallways and dozens of identical sconces. She maneuvered the halls with practiced mastery, stopping in front of a closed door after Kara was certain she would never find her way out again without a guide.
The Queen rested her hand on the knob, but paused and tilted her head just enough to look at Kara over her shoulder.
“My kingdom is built upon fearlessness, Vagabond. We value strength and cunning above all else. Still, I know the tides are changing. Our ways aren’t long for this world, and I often fear that we will destroy ourselves. Millions will look to you to fill the growing gaps in our armor, but I just can’t imagine how you were chosen for this. You are a child, not a warrior.”
Kara’s cheeks burned. You’re welcome. She wanted to scream. She furrowed her eyebrows and opened her mouth to speak, but before she could respond, the Queen shook her head. Her once-steely eyes trembled, and she clutched the handle for support.
“I desperately hope you prove me wrong,” she said.
The Blood twisted the knob and a flood of daylight broke into the dark hall. The woman dissolved into the room, leaving Kara standing just beyond the hazy midday rays even as she heard her name from within.
The Queen could be right. This could all be a mistake. Kara didn’t know what she was doing. She was twenty. She’d found this war-torn pocket of the earth yesterday. It didn’t make sense for her to care about its problems. If Ourea didn’t want her, she had no reason to try to save it. She hadn’t chosen this.
The clover pendant hummed, warming the skin on her neck, and the little blue stone glimmered up at her. According to the Grimoire, she did choose this. She had, after all, pulled the clover from the book. It wouldn’t have opened for her unless it believed that she was strong enough.
She sighed. If this world didn’t want her, she would try to save it anyway: for her dad, for her mom, and because being the Vagabond was all she had left. Maybe she still had a purpose, even if it didn’t involve the only world she’d thought was real. She rolled up her sleeves and walked into the room, her back arched so much that it ached.
Two of the room’s walls were made of solid windows, which shed blinding light onto a long wooden table in the room’s center. The Queen sat at the head of the table, while men filled the rest of the seats. Some turned to each other and murmured. Others strained to look behind her, certain that she wasn’t the end of the convoy. Braeden managed a thin smile from his place near the Queen and gave her the smallest of waves.
The Queen took a deep breath. “Miss Catherine, these are my generals and advisors. This is my husband, Richard, and my son, Gavin. You have, of course, already met my son Braeden.”
She gestured as she spoke, pointing first to Richard, who sat to her left and looked to be about fifty. His tunic betrayed a muscled build, and he wore a thick golden crown on his neatly-trimmed brown hair. He nodded to Kara and smiled broadly in welcome.
The Queen had then gestured to Gavin, a young man on her right who watched Kara from the seat next to Braeden. Gavin peered over his hand, which he had placed over his mouth at the introduction. He was built like his father, but blond, and she couldn’t read his expression.
“My friends, this is the Vagabond,” the Queen announced.
The room hushed. Leaves scraped across the glass as the wind rustled through the world outside. A chair creaked, but otherwise, everyone was still.
Council
Braeden gauged the room’s reaction as the Queen revealed that Kara was the Vagabond. She stood by the entry as the door swung closed behind her, her eyes scanning the reserved faces at the table. Most of the yakona frowned. They seemed to be waiting for the Queen to laugh, as if Kara was an uninteresting joke.
Richard, however, couldn’t contain his excitement, and there was no doubt in Braeden’s mind that the king was debating which question to ask first. It seemed as if the man had forgotten to breathe.
When Braeden was a boy, Richard had recited the Vagabond’s legends from memory before bed each night. The stories had sparked his hope that someday, he could be a vagabond, too: that someday, he could be free.
The Queen’s generals leaned back in their chairs and shook their heads, grumbling when they once again found their voices.
Braeden turned to look at his adoptive brother Gavin, who watched Kara without blinking as she took the only available seat across the table. Her lips formed a thin line as the room hummed. Gavin’s face was smooth, but his eyes were ravenous. His gaze flickered over to Braeden, and he shifted in his seat when they made eye contact, but the hunger in his expression couldn’t be hidden. Braeden sighed, annoyed. That look meant the wheels in Gavin’s mind were churning out ways in which this could benefit him.
“Welcome, Vagabond,” Richard finally said. The grumbles and mutterings hushed. “How did you come across the Grimoire?”
“Yes, we are most curious,” someone else said. It was General Mino, who looked Kara over and shook his head. He towered in the seat next to her, almost twice her size.
“That’s a long story.” Kara chuckled, but the room didn’t laugh with her. She cleared her throat. “I was hiking and found a lichgate, but I didn’t know what it really was at the time.”
She described the door in the mountain and how the roots inside had dragged her into a sunken library. She’d opened the Grimoire and read about the Vagabond.
Here, Richard leaned in closer. Braeden suppressed a smile.
Kara continued and, when she explained how Deirdre had found her in Ethos, she told the invented story that Braeden had given her in the market. He released a quiet sigh and relaxed his shoulders. She’d been alone in the cage, she lied, and had been alone when she went to the Stele.
“Do you know how to find your way back?” Gavin interrupted, leaning his elbows onto the massive wooden war table.
“Sorry, I have no idea.”
Gavin grumbled under his breath and leaned back once more, hiding his mouth with his hand as Kara continued with the altered tale of how the muses had helped her escape. The room gasped at their mention. Everyone leaned in closer, now, finally interested in the tale. If the muses had helped her, their faces said, the tides had just changed considerably.
The Queen, however, did not react to anything Kara said. The woman’s face was as solid and smooth as Gavin’s, untouched by the thoughts Braeden knew to be racing through her overactive mind. Once, a year ago, he’d asked her what she was thinking when they’d been in a similar war room because a fleet of soldiers from another kingdom had ventured too close to the Hillsidian border. She’d shared her strategy with him and assembled ten times as many soldiers as she’d needed, reasoning that these foreign yakona were likely scouts sent to find Hillside and its villages. She’d led the attack herself and killed twenty soldiers within fifteen minutes. No one threatened her kingdom and survived.
Braeden had never again asked what the Queen was thinking.
He shifted his gaze around the table. General Mino, with his coal-black skin contrasting the gold trim of his tunic, leaned his massive, muscular form as far away from Kara as possible. He scowled when he caught Braeden looking at him.
Braeden broke eye contact and watched Kara. As she spoke, no one interrupted. No one questioned her story. They didn’t even clear their throats. Everyone simply waited, unwavering and still, as she spoke and often averted her gaze from Gavin’s particularly intense stare.
In all fairness, Braeden had tried to prepare Gavin during their impromptu sparring match after Adele had ordered him out of Kara’s room, but the Hillsidian prince had a habit of not listening.
“…and then I was knocked unconscious.”
Kara stopped speaking. Braeden blinked his way out of his thoughts and back into the war room. Chairs squeaked as the Queen’s council turned to face him, and he realized that Kara had already described as much as she knew before she awoke in Hillside.
The truth was he’d run into the house seconds before Deirdre had shoved Kara into the glass cabinet. Fear coursed through him when he saw the thick trails of blood surging over the shards of glass. He’d worried, then, that the Vagabond—his one chance at freedom—was going to die.
He’d lost control.
Kara, lying almost unconscious on the floor, hadn’t known what exactly came to her rescue. She hadn’t known that he let the smoldering darkness within consume him, but he didn’t think he could have won without its help.
His hand twitched beneath the table from its place on his knee. He forced a soft, steady breath in an effort to keep calm.
“Well,” Kara said. “I don’t know how we got out of there.”
“I knocked Deirdre unconscious,” he lied, forcing a smile as he mimed jabbing an invisible head in front of him. His face was calm, hiding the nerves fluttering in his gut. More than a decade of lying had its advantages.
“And you didn’t kill her?” General Mino slammed his fist into the table. “The isen, especially Deirdre, are some of the greatest threats the kingdoms face!”
“That’s enough, General.” The Queen dismissed his outburst with a wave of her thin hand. Mino crossed his arms and sat back in his seat.
“I doubted she was far from waking up,” Braeden lied again. “Since Kara was hurt, we needed to get out of there.”
He’d actually fought Deirdre for at least another ten minutes, breaking through walls and windows before the sirens had started. The isen tried desperately to run for Kara at every chance, but he threw her across the room or through a sink each time she turned away from him. Once the sirens began, she paused, watching him long enough to accept that she would lose if she stayed. She retreated.
“You knocked her out cold, huh? Impressive!” Gavin patted him on the shoulder. Braeden forced himself to smile at the compliment, but Gavin was already watching Kara again.
The Queen nodded once. “You did well, Braeden. Miss Catherine, thank you for sharing your story. You are welcome here anytime and for as long as you please. We of course wish for you to make Hillside your home, as it once was for the first Vagabond. Whatever your quest becomes, we will guard you and guide you through it.
“That said, the other kingdoms will want you to visit them as well. You obviously understand by now that the weight of your presence in our world again means more than just welcome. The thick tensions that have grown between our kingdoms for eons will only ignite further if you are hoarded here, and we can’t risk an unnecessary war. You aren’t ruled by anyone, but I ask that you go. Otherwise, the Bloods will think that I have kept you here as a weapon.”
“Mother, the other kingdoms don’t have to know that she’s real. We could explain away the rumors,” Gavin said gently, smiling to Kara as he spoke. His tone made Braeden want to punch him in the mouth, but he shook his head instead and tried to guess at the half-formed plot boiling in his brother’s mind.
The Queen sighed and massaged her temples. “Gavin, they already know. One day you will see that the world has much keener eyes than you. Don’t be foolish.”
“I simply believe that we shouldn’t throw her back into the fray so soon. She should be allowed to rest.”
“By no means would we do such a thing. If you choose to leave, Vagabond, we will supply you with everything you need. The other kingdoms will meet us in a safe location, where our men will be forced to wait while they take you to their Blood.”
“No one trusts each other here, do they?” Kara peered around the table and even caught Braeden’s eye for a second.
“It has always been so,” the Queen said, shaking her head. “Only two yakona have ever seen all of the kingdoms beside the Stele: The first Vagabond and our era’s Blood Aislynn of Ayavel. Even Aislynn is blindfolded when she’s brought into the city. She has been granted this right in recent years only because of her, shall we say, unrelenting quest for peace. But ours is a deep and bitter hatred. Your Grimoire will know.”
“Yes, Kara,” Richard said. “May we see it?”
“Of course.”
Kara rubbed her pendant with her thumb and held her breath. A funnel of gleaming blue ash spun from the necklace and assembled on the table in the shape of a large book. The glow dissolved, congealing into a dark red leather cover. Even though he’d already seen it once before, Braeden caught his breath as the thousand-year-old book became solid on the table.
This was it. The answer to his decade-long search sat in front of him, just waiting for the right question. For his question.
He forced himself to lean back and blink the lust from his eyes. He took a deep, quiet breath, but his heart wouldn’t stop racing. General Mino had seen his reaction—that much was clear from the way Mino’s scowl deepened—but it was too late to do anything about that. Braeden busied himself with looking at Kara and pretending nothing had happened.
She grinned and ran her fingers over the cover, apparently oblivious to how silent the room had become. No one breathed as she toyed with the great book’s corners, tracing its edges.
“What have you learned thus far?” the Queen asked.
Braeden’s intuition flared. Something was amiss with the question.
“I can see someone’s most influential memory,” Kara answered. “I figured that you wouldn’t want me to demonstrate it, though, since it’s such an invasive thing for me to see.”
Richard raised his hand. “I would be honored, actually.”
Braeden laughed and the flash of worry
thawed in his gut.
“I would rather see the Vagabond’s gift for myself,” the Queen interjected. “But in private. Kara, would you grant me a moment once the gentlemen have left?”
“Oh, well, of course.” Kara raised her eyebrows.
Braeden did not envy whatever she was going to see.
“We must first discuss Deirdre,” the Queen continued. “If she is working for Blood Carden, then Ourea is a darker world than I thought.”
“I suspect that she serves only as a double-agent to Niccoli.” Mino grunted in annoyance. “She would learn intimate details of the Stele in that manner. I don’t see their alliance as a threat to us.”
“Wait. Who’s Niccoli?” Kara asked.