Fortune's Fool (Eterean Empire Book 1)

by Angela Boord

  I fought the urge to take a big breath and looked up at the ceiling instead.

  A huge image of the god hanging upside down covered the stucco above me, his antlered head bent backwards, white neck stretched by a cord that tethered him to his own ankles and suspended him from an olive’s massive branch. This was the part of his story near the end. Adalus was shot dead by an arrow his brother loosed, and then his brother flayed his skin to make a mantle. After his brother flayed him, Adalus was revealed, and when his brother saw truth, he wept. Adalus, watered by his brother’s tears, sank into the ground to rise the next year as a field of self-sowing wheat that gave such a bountiful harvest, it could never be matched.

  I had no idea what the story could have to do with Arsenault. Maybe the god wanted me to see truth, too.

  The kind of truth that felt like an arrow wound.

  My father and Arsenault were rising from their seats, and I tried to become like the fist I made of my hand—small, unnoticeable, closed in on myself.

  “See that my daughter has sandals for spring and summer,” my father said as they walked past me. “And make sure she wears them. When she was a child, she used to look for any excuse to kick them off and run barefoot in the grass.”

  He smiled. I huddled in my cloak, pressed as far back against the wall as I could.

  Arsenault was standing right in front of me now. “She’ll wear her shoes, my lord. I’ll see to it.”

  “You ought to go down to Liera as soon as your leg can take it. I’m sure Geoffre will be expecting you.”

  I froze like a rabbit.

  Was my father using him as a spy? Is that why he had run from Cassis in the Market?

  But did my father know about Jon and the house on the Talos? Did he know about the kacin smuggling and the magic and how Jon had paid Lobardin to murder a Qalfan citizen?

  Arsenault nodded, sharp and short, and my father stepped past him and out into the night. Once my father was on the other side of the door, Arsenault looked straight at me.

  Our eyes met. There was no pretending he hadn’t seen me. I thought surely he would open the door and expose me. I clutched the edge of my cloak so tightly, my knuckles stood out white.

  But Arsenault only touched the door as he walked away, letting his fingers trail along the wood.

  When I was sure he was gone, I came out of my hiding place, stiff-legged with cold. I touched the place on the door that Arsenault had touched, and stared up at the picture of Adalus that covered the wooden planks of the ceiling.

  Then I looked down at the place on the door. There was a runnel where Arsenault had traced his finger, lined with ruddy gold that shone like blood in the candlelight.

  The next day progressed in misery, from Mistress Levin swatting my feet to wake me, to Arsenault finding me hiding in a corner of the kitchen, wrapped up in my cloak and my ugly green-and-brown scarf, dozing when I was supposed to be stirring the soup.

  “I don’t think she feels well,” Margarithe told him with some concern when he asked me to come with him, but he said nothing, just waited on me to slide off my stool and then followed me out the door.

  We walked in silence to the little grotto with the armless statue, with me growing angrier and angrier and him watching me out the corner of his eye.

  “I’d like to exercise with you today,” he said, unbuckling his swordbelt and stripping off his tunic. He set both on the stone wall. “I think my leg has healed enough.”

  “It looked like it hurt you last night.”

  “Well, I don’t think—”

  “You don’t think teaching me sword will give it that much exertion.”

  He rocked back on his heels the way that gavaros did, and scratched his beard. “Kyrra,” he said finally. “My leg isn’t healed enough to do my usual exercises. You’ve only just begun. Today, all we’re going to do is come in and out of guard.”

  “You’re just humoring me. Keeping me out of the way like my parents used to. Wayward Kyrra, causing trouble again, maybe if we give her fencing lessons…”

  Arsenault stared at me.

  My mind was wandering the way my feet used to. I felt thick as half-frozen mud. I sat down cross-legged in the dirt, snuggling my knees inside my cloak, and tried to shepherd my thoughts.

  “I know you only do what you’ve been hired to do.”

  “I’ve been hired to do a number of things. Which are you talking about?”

  “You know which, Arsenault. I heard the whole conversation last night.”

  “If you heard the whole conversation, then you know your father uses me in many ways. Guarding the silkhouse and rousting out bandits, for one.”

  “Spying on the Prinze?”

  He put his hand on the hilt of the practice sword and drummed his fingers against it. “You did hear everything, didn’t you?”

  “I said I did. And it isn’t such a stretch to put it together with Jon hiding in that house on the Talos, and the way you were acting in Liera. When we ran away from Cassis, it wasn’t just me you were trying to hide.”

  “If the Prinze had found only me, I wouldn’t have worried. In company with you…that wouldn’t have gone well for either of us. Worse for you, though. I doubt if Geoffre’s done with you.”

  “He hates me that much?”

  “I think he wants you more.”

  “If he wanted me, he could have had me. Easily. All he had to do was send Cassis to my father with a proposal of marriage. I would have gone eagerly.”

  “But you came with the Aliente attached. He didn’t want the Aliente. Just you.”

  “Not me,” I said bitterly. “Just my fertility. No one wants me, do they? No matter how far I’m cast down in the dirt, I’m still the daughter of the Aliente Householder. I might as well be a doll.”

  I picked up a pebble from the dirt and threw it. Hard.

  “That might be how the Prinze see you.”

  “Dear gods, Arsenault,” I said, looking up at him. “Can we not just be honest with each other for once? My father commissioned you to see me safe. The only reason you’ve kept me as close as you have is so you can keep an eye on me. For pay.”

  Arsenault’s hand tightened on his hilt, even though it was only a blunted practice sword, and his stance took on the look of a gavaro who thought he was about to see action. “Your father wanted me to keep an eye on you. He told me that when I was hired. But it wasn’t why I was hired.”

  “What were you hired for, then?”

  “My military experience. I was recommended —”

  “By whom?”

  When he didn’t answer right away, I knew.

  I swore and leapt to my feet. I had the blunt practice sword in my hand, but I pointed it at him as if it were real. “If you’re playing my father over for Jon, Arsenault—”

  “I’m not playing your father over. I signed a contract, and I honor my promises.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not playing you over, either.”

  “When have you not played me, Arsenault? In Liera, when you drugged my wine? Or maybe that was more honest than when you helped me buy that godsdamned blue guarnello because it matched my eyes! Everything you’ve done to help me, it was just a way of earning your pay.”

  He looked troubled first and then angry.

  “Your father wanted me to keep an eye on you, but he couldn’t hire me to be your bodyguard without violating your sentence.” He paused. “And are we talking about the dress you bought in Liera? Can a man not pay you a simple compliment without it becoming a conspiracy? The blue does bring out the color of your eyes!”

  “And you were only saying so because my father wanted you to be kind to me!”

  “You think your father wanted me noticing the way your dress looked on you?”

  “A man might make comments on the color.”

  “A man notices the color last,” he said, leaning toward me with his eyes flashing. “After he notices everything else!”

  I blinked and stepped backward,
taken momentarily by surprise. But then even that made me angry.

  “No,” I said, unwilling to be baited. “You made me see. I thought my father was so straight for the law. But the chirurgeon he hired for me when my arm was cut off…wasn’t that also a violation of my sentence?”

  “You said a boy took care of you sometimes.” Arsenault finished the sentence like he was spitting. “How was that a violation of your sentence? If you’d had real Qalfan care, your arm wouldn’t look like it does now. And you wouldn’t have spent so long fighting fevers. Months, wasn’t it? Is that what I heard?”

  The blood ran away from my face. “When have you seen…”

  “In Liera. Your stump is ragged and all over scars where that hack bled you.”

  “He said he had to let the humours out. Because of the fevers.”

  Arsenault cursed. “He was a hack. I’ve seen what real Qalfan doctors do. Your father may have hired that chirurgeon, but he did it within the law. The way he’d treat any of his other serfs. If he’d had the balls—”

  “It’s so simple for you, isn’t it?” I shouted at him. “You give your loyalty to whoever pays you. But if you were born to a House, you would know what it feels like to be trapped. To be played like a card and treated like nothing!”

  “Kyrra—”

  He took my arms. Both of them.

  Once, long ago, my mother and I traveled to the seaside to vacation with her Caprine sister. I ran into the waves, only to be knocked off my feet and scoured along the bottom until my uncle hauled me out like a fish.

  This was like that. A mad rush of memories and anger and fear. I felt as if I was being pushed down onto the block again with my arm held tight. And then…

  Black somersaults.

  I have no memory of what happened next. The next thing I knew, Arsenault had me pressed up against a tree. His mouth was at my ear, his breath warm on my skin. “Kyrra,” he was saying, his voice low and infused with a shaky calm, “Kyrra, come back up. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  I turned my head toward the sound of his voice. It was muffled, like he was speaking into a pillow. Darkness fuzzed the edges of my vision.

  “Kyrra,” he said again.

  “What,” I answered thickly.

  He exhaled and rested his forehead against the tree trunk. He still held my left arm pinned tight against my side. My fingers opened and something hard slipped from their grasp and clanged on the stones. His body lost some of its tension, but his shoulder, chest, and hip kept me in place.

  “I will never touch your arm,” he said. “Unless you ask me to.”

  My gaze careened over him. There was a long rip down his right sleeve. “Arsenault?” I asked, beginning to feel scared. “What did I do?”

  The wind tossed my hair around and he smoothed it away from my sticky cheek, back behind my ear with his thumb. My heart slowed in its race toward panic only to stutter for a different reason.

  “You were hurt. Badly. Sometimes, memory plays tricks on the mind. A man thinks he’s in danger when he isn’t. And also…I did See something in you.”

  “What was that?”

  “A talent for the dagger and the sword, like mine for metal.” He paused and shifted, turning his gaze toward mine. A touch of humor lit his eyes. “Maybe a predilection for battle, too.”

  I dredged up a bit of a smile. “Are you telling me I’m a shrew?”

  That drew a longer smile from him. “More like a mountain lion.”

  My smile grew. I felt him relax. But we were still standing there against the tree, our bodies pressed together. For the first time in days, I was warm. The tense fear drained from my body and all my muscles unwound. I sagged into him, letting my head tilt into the hollow of his throat. He combed his fingers idly through my hair and relaxed his grip on my wrist with his right hand so that my fingers could brush his—so lightly, I shivered and raised my head.

  “You’re cold.” He had leaned down, close enough that I could feel his breath on my cheek, the brief, soft brush of his beard on my skin.

  “No,” I said, scarcely aloud, just an exhaled breath over his lips which were now next to my own.

  I looked up from the curve of his mouth to find his gaze rising in the same way to mine, a dark warmth in his eyes. If either of us had made the most minute of movements, our lips would have touched. Instead, we stood there, our hearts beating in wild fright, as if we were deer surprised in the forest.

  He backed away from me suddenly, leaving me against the tree and opening his mouth as if he wanted to speak. Then he pressed his lips closed, that unaccustomed flush coming up on his cheeks along his beard, and he turned, limping back to the wall to grab his tunic and sword.

  “Arsenault?” I said, stepping away from the tree, my heart still drumming in my ears.

  “I don’t do what I do because I’m paid to,” he said, his voice rough. Then he paused and added, in that same voice without turning around, “But this isn’t for us, Kyrra. You’re the kind of woman who ought to have a promise…and I can’t make you one.”

  Chapter 12

  I remained in the grotto for a long time afterward. At first, I couldn’t seem to move away from the tree. Then I bent and scooped up a handful of sticks and dirt and hurled it at the armless statue.

  Eventually, I left to go back to the kitchens for supper service.

  I was just coming out of the grotto into the first curve of the path when the brush rustled. It reminded me of the way the gavaros had moved in the trees before the bandit raid. I whirled, touching the dagger in my pocket. A twig snapped and more brush rustled, and then someone dressed in white and tan burst out of the brush into a run.

  Not stopping to think or to pull my dagger, I gave chase. If it was a Forza or a bandit, I would have been in trouble, but that didn’t stop me. Whoever it was might have seen Arsenault and me in the grotto and, more importantly, might have heard what I said to him.

  I took a shortcut off the narrow path from the grotto to the barracks, yanked up my skirts to jump a fallen log, and by the time I was down on the other side, I could tell I was chasing a girl. In the space of a few breaths, I was upon her. I grabbed the back of her guarnello and threw her down on the pine needles.

  It was Ilena.

  She stared up at me with wide, frightened eyes and breathed in big gulps, winded by the short run. I stood above her, itching to put my hand on my dagger. Maybe it was just my recent bout with Arsenault, but I found it harder to tether myself to this world in which I was supposed to be living.

  “Don’t hurt me!” she cried out.

  “Would you hush?” I said. “You’ll have the patrol on top of us, and I’m not sure you want that if you were spying on Arsenault. What were you doing hiding in the brush?”

  “Nothing. Sitting.” Her eyes flashed triumphantly as she realized I really wasn’t going to hurt her. “Listening.”

  “You were spying on Arsenault.”

  “I didn’t mean to spy on Arsenault,” she said. “I only wanted to spend some time on my own.”

  She diverted her eyes, as if embarrassed to admit her true purpose. I wondered if her mother had been at her again.

  “But you and Arsenault were already here,” she continued. “With blades. So, what could I do but hide in the brush?”

  “You could have turned around and left! Did you hear the conversation?”

  “I saw you with a dagger, Kyrra No-Name. You’re not supposed to have a dagger.”

  Maybe she hadn’t heard me say that Arsenault was working for the Prinze, then. My insides unknotted a little. Then again…

  “When did I have a dagger?” I said. “I had a blunt practice sword.”

  Ilena laughed in surprise. “He certainly wasn’t acting like you were using a blunted weapon. He worked hard to turn you away, and then he got you up against that tree.”

  My face flamed, and she colored a little, darkly. “He said it was because of my memories,” I said.

  “It doesn’t
matter, does it? I can still tell the Householder.”

  Regardless of what Arsenault said, I knew my father meant Arsenault to protect me. But would he have any choice but to discharge Arsenault if he found out Arsenault had given me weapons? My father dealt a stern justice. I had seen corpses swinging at the end of a rope for fighting a duel. What would people say if my father broke those laws, but only for his daughter?

  Ilena had risen and now she was stalking off down the path toward the barracks.

  “Wait!” I called. “Ilena, why would you do such a thing?”

  She glanced back at me over her shoulder with a dark little smile. “I obey the laws; that’s why. There isn’t anything you can do.”

  I knew what the smile meant then. My shoulders drooped. “Nothing,” I said. “Not anything.”

  “Well.” She slowed almost to a stop. “Maybe something. Maybe I’d like to leave quarters sometime. At night.”

  “That’s dangerous.”

  “Will you help me or would you rather take your flogging?”

  Did I really care if she ran into danger? She probably wanted to see a gavaro. I just hoped it wasn’t the gavaro I thought it was.

  I sucked in all the words I wanted to scream at her. “You give me little choice. When will you need to leave?”

  “I’ll let you know,” she said, and swept away like a lady finished ordering her servant.

  I didn’t see Arsenault at supper that night or for the next few days. I wondered if he had gone to Liera or if he was just avoiding me. I spent my time in the kitchens, trying to trade for jobs near the fire. Judging by the clothes everyone else wore, the weather had begun to warm, but I shivered unless I wore all my winter clothes, all at once.

  Margarithe worried about Arsenault’s absence and she worried about me, too. She had me read aloud instead of pounding bread dough so I could continue to sit on the stool beside the simmering kettle of soup, and I almost regretted my jealousy toward her. But I couldn’t look in her face without my own coloring, and since I wasn’t sure who had the right of it, me or her, it only made things worse.