Fortune's Fool (Eterean Empire Book 1)

by Angela Boord

Best to put that moment aside, I told myself, considering that it had no opportunity to go anywhere. But the feel of his body pressed against mine would not leave me alone.

  One night, I came back to my cot after supper service to find a pair of sandals on my bed and Ilena sitting on her cot across from mine. She sniffed as I struggled my boots off. I left my wool stockings on.

  “Tell Mistress Levin I was escorted to the chirurgeon,” she said, turning her head in disgust as I pushed my sock-clad feet into the sandals and bent in half, trying to grab the tie with my teeth.

  I gave it up as a bad job and pulled the knot as tight as I could one-handed. “She’ll ask the chirurgeon and then she’ll know you haven’t been there,” I said in a low voice, trying to concentrate on my sandals.

  “Did I say I wasn’t going? I’ve been having headaches.”

  “Are you meeting Lobardin?”

  I had never seen her with Lobardin, but it was a good guess that if a girl was sneaking out in the middle of the night, it would be to meet him.

  She flushed. “Did I say I was going to see Lobardin? Perhaps it’s someone else I’m meeting.” That small, dark smile touched her lips again.

  My sandals finally tied, I looked up at her. “Can you keep your nails the way you do if you have a baby strapped to your back?”

  Her face grew pinched and angry. “I’m leaving tonight, and you will think up a way to put Mistress Levin off if she becomes too curious. Or I will tell.”

  “I’ll put off Mistress Levin,” I said.

  “Good.” Her smile grew less dark but no less smug. “If Mistress Levin asks after that, you can say I’m practicing devotions.”

  I laughed aloud. “To which god?”

  Her cheeks burned. “I’ll see you in the morning, Kyrra.”

  I can’t say I was sad to see her go. Once she was gone, I realized how exhausted I was. While the other girls were talking, brushing their hair, relating the stories of the day, and darning their socks by the light of the guttering candles, I curled up under my blankets. I didn’t even bother to take off my sandals.

  I was awoken some time later by Mistress Levin, shaking me.

  “Where is Ilena?” she asked as soon as I opened my eyes.

  “Practicing her devotions,” I murmured, still half in a dream—searching that foreign shore for Arsenault but unable to find him. Instead, it was only his name that echoed in my head as I woke.

  “I dispatched Evalo for her an hour past and the chirurgeon said she left some time ago.”

  Evalo was one of the gavaros who guarded the girls’ quarters at night. He was an ugly little man with a harelip and a limp. I could imagine Ilena’s distress at being tracked down by Evalo.

  “The chirurgeon didn’t send her off to pray?” I said, sitting up. “She said she expected to make an offering after she was relieved of her affliction.”

  The mistress snorted. “What affliction? Ilena is as healthy as a horse, and she certainly isn’t that pious. Quit stalling me, Kyrra; I must know where she’s gone. She’s one of our oldest combers, and we need her to teach the younger ones how it’s done.”

  I ran my hand through my hair, mussing it, trying to wake enough to think how I should handle this. “Maybe she took Lobardin for escort,” I said.

  “Lobardin is at his post. Evalo said the doctor told him she had your gavaro as escort.”

  My gavaro?

  What had Lobardin said about Ilena that night in the barracks? She’s draped all over him like a cheap cloak.

  “I thought he was in—” I blurted, then cast my gaze to the floor. “I mean, he’s been gone, hasn’t he?”

  Mistress Levin raised her eyebrows. “Apparently, he’s returned.”

  I clenched my back teeth. “Then she’s probably fine. Arsenault can certainly defend her against brigands.”

  “I don’t think it’s brigands that girl needs to worry about,” the mistress murmured. Then she sighed as if she’d come to a decision.

  “All right,” she said. “Go. As it’s your gavaro, and you’re as like to know where Ilena’s gone as anyone. I just want to know she’s safe.”

  I got up, shivering as I kicked the blankets off, grabbed my cloak from its peg, and struggled it on. Mistress Levin handed me a half-burned candle, then stepped back and folded her hands serenely. “I’ll send Evalo if you’re not back soon.”

  She motioned me out the door and closed it behind me. I was alone in the night, with an entire estate to search, for all I knew. But I thought I could guess where Arsenault might have taken her.

  The grotto.

  I gripped the taper tightly in my hand as I set off down the path. The candlewick gave off a waxy, acrid smell. The night was windy and cold, and I had to walk backward to block the wind with my body since I couldn’t cup the flame to keep it alight. What a sight I must have been. If any bandits remained, I would have been easy prey.

  The first fat sprinkles fell as I left the path for the sparse forest that lay downhill from the gavaro barracks. Deer and dogs had worn a narrow trail through the undergrowth. I found it, and then I blew out my candle and waited a moment while my eyes adjusted to the dark. Twigs and gravel crunched under my feet as I started walking again, but the wind and the patter and spit of raindrops helped hide the sound. Through the trees, the shadows of gavaros rippled on the torch-lit wall of the barracks, but no one turned my way.

  The trail ran uphill and I scrabbled my way along it, feeling it out with my hand and my feet, until I came to the edge of the trees where the little grotto bit into the hillside. The gurgling spring made it hard to hear, but Ilena didn’t have the sense to keep her voice down.

  “Have you really traveled so much, Arsenault?”

  I almost laughed, but there was too much bile in my mouth. She’d probably lean against him and swoon when I stepped out of the trees.

  I ought to step out right now just to see her do it.

  But the low rumble of Arsenault’s voice held me back.

  I couldn’t make out the words, and all I saw were shadows moving, shadows that might as well have been trees bending in the wind. The wind gusted again, throwing rain in front of it, and above the sound of the leaves I heard Ilena’s “Oh!”

  My heart pounded. I was wet now, it was raining harder, but I couldn’t force myself to step out of the trees. Let Evalo retrieve Ilena. I turned to go.

  The brush rustled behind me. And suddenly, someone gripped my shoulders and dragged me back through it.

  I screamed and thrashed before I realized who it was. Arsenault stared down at me and I stared up at him, unable to make out his expression in the dark, except that he had gone stark white.

  Ilena ran up behind him, breathlessly, her hand on her mouth. Arsenault, she called, Arsenault, the way I had in my dream.

  He slammed his knife back into its sheath. “Dammit, Kyrra. I could have killed you!”

  “Of all the women you could take up with, why Ilena?” I said.

  He stood still for a moment, but Ilena filled the silence. “You idiot! I told you to put Mistress Levin off, not follow me to see where I went! Do you want me to expose the both of you?”

  “No one will be exposed tonight,” Arsenault said curtly, then he stretched out his hand to help me sit up. “Ilena was trying to bargain with me. Do you know anything about that, Kyrra?”

  I dusted my cloak. “No. I don’t know why she’s bargaining with you.”

  His eyes lit the way they did sometimes, and he frowned but didn’t say anything.

  Ilena sniffed. “I’m getting wet. Why didn’t you stay in quarters?”

  “Mistress Levin sent me. I had nothing to do with her knowing. You won’t be in trouble.”

  “Mistress Levin knows my character,” Ilena said. She sounded so satisfied, I wanted to hit her.

  “I’d wager she does,” Arsenault said. “Or I’d hope so. Come on, Ilena.” He stood and put a hand on her shoulder. “Time for you to go home.”

  It took
far longer to reach the barracks with Ilena than it would have without her. She insisted on holding Arsenault’s arm the entire way there and as a result slipped often on the wet dead leaves that lined the way. By the time we reached the barracks, the flogging had begun to sound good.

  Then Arsenault said to Ilena, “Lobardin will escort you home. Tell Mistress Levin that since it’s close enough to dawn, Kyrra will stay here to do her work.”

  Ilena turned a deep scarlet. Her two long nails clacked together until it sounded like they must have split.

  “I do not want Lobardin,” she said.

  We were still standing in the rain. Saes and Verrin were on guard duty. They watched us from beneath their hoods.

  “That’s not what Lobardin says.” Saes grinned.

  Verrin chuckled. “No,” he said. “It’s not what Lobardin says, indeed.”

  Arsenault hooked his thumbs in his swordbelt and rocked backward. “Have some manners around the lady.”

  They looked up at him. The flush in Ilena’s cheeks had faded to pale, but at Arsenault’s words, her eyes flashed with gratitude and triumph.

  “I knew you would see the truth of the matter, Arsenault.”

  A silly girl playing a dangerous game. I saw her standing between the two gavaros, and my eyes were opened.

  Still, I didn’t want to torment either my father or Arsenault more. “Walk her back, Arsenault,” I said. “I made a mistake. You shouldn’t pay for it.”

  “If Ilena doesn’t want Lobardin for escort, I’m sure Saes will walk her back. I’ll take your post until you return.”

  Saes grinned crookedly and cocked his head. “And such a lovely night for a walk with a young girl. Will you take my arm?”

  He held it out for Ilena, but Ilena only pursed her lips. “You’ll both regret this,” she said. “You’ll see that I carry through on my promises.”

  “As do I,” Arsenault replied. “Now go with Saes, Ilena. I’m doing you a favor.”

  Ilena laughed, but there was a flimsy edge to it. “A favor? I am out here walking in the rain, and still you wish to entertain yourself with that armless harlot?” She spit in the mud at my feet. “A witch is what you are. Child-murderer. Kinless.”

  My trembling palm pressed against the length of my dagger, hidden in my pocket. Ilena leaned forward, but the world had slowed and her words mired in my head as if they were stuck in mud.

  Murderer. Witch. Kinless.

  Every bit was true. And yet she wanted what I had.

  I began to laugh. The gavaros stopped in surprise. Ilena took a step backward, and Arsenault straightened up.

  I held my hand against my dagger, and my right arm began to throb.

  “Shall I put a curse on you, then?” I said, leaning toward her. She backpedaled, down the curving path away from the gavaros, whose hands had gone to their swords. “Flog me, for all I care. I’ve lost an arm and a lover, and taken a life. Will you be my next? I’ll hang and be glad, I swear it.”

  Her face was the color of the moon. The torches lit her up so I could See all the way through her, into her fear and her jealousy. Maybe her mother did beat it into her, never allowing her to feel good enough, but she tended it with the same care she tended the notches on her long, curved nails.

  Steel hissed free behind me. “Speak not so lightly of sorcery,” Arsenault said, and came to stand beside me. “There’s been enough said here already.”

  His words doused me like water. Ilena burst into tears, and I began to shake.

  It started in the hand I no longer had. First, my phantom fingers began to tremble, and then the whole ghost of my arm, a shaking so fierce, the thought entered my head that I would shake it off, it wasn’t connected to me so well anymore.

  I raised my face to Arsenault. “My arm,” I said.

  Saes came to get Ilena, took her by the elbow, and guided her away.

  “Kyrra.”

  “My arm.”

  I tried to grip it, to stop it. But then the shaking spread to the flesh of me, the corporeal sections other people could see, and I sank to my knees in the dirt.

  Kyrra.

  Was that who I was? A woman had been named Kyrra once, but was it me?

  Witch. Murderer. Harlot.

  I saw through Ilena and into myself.

  “Kyrra, come. Kyrra.”

  But there was no Kyrra. There was only this shaking, nameless woman, who had faced down a serf-girl in the rain.

  Arsenault picked me up and carried me into the barracks.

  I awoke feeling as if my tongue had been weighted with lead and swollen to fill my mouth. Perhaps I had been ill, as Margarithe thought, and that was why I had been cold for weeks. Or perhaps Ilena had cursed me. I wasn’t cold now. My skin felt as hot and dry as paper fed to a fire.

  “Arsenault,” I croaked, but my voice didn’t sound like my own. The room danced around me like a summer mirage—the silk tapestries with scenes of orange trees and maidens playing lutes, the gold candlesticks, the wrought-iron bed canopied in lace and blanketed in velvet and brocade.

  My old room. I closed my eyes and wept for joy.

  When I opened them again, Arsenault sat in front of me and the room in which I lay was his.

  “Lie down, Kyrra,” he said. Tepid water sopped across my forehead, leaving beads that dried too quickly. The cloth blurred; watching it, and him, left me dizzy. I wanted to sink into the pillows until the cool white linen covered me like a blanket of snow.

  “Take some water. Kyrra.”

  The rag swiped my lips. I opened my mouth and licked away the moisture that remained. Sleep might have overtaken me; I drifted in and out for days.

  “Drink,” he said, sliding his hand behind my head. I did and choked, and then began to shake again, and he pulled the blankets up around me—piles and piles of blankets until I felt like a mole shivering under the earth.

  “Is this plague?” I asked.

  Arsenault laughed, low and tired. “I doubt it.”

  “I think I shall die.”

  “You won’t. The first time, everyone thinks so.”

  “This isn’t my first fever,” I told him. My teeth started chattering, and he tucked the blankets in tighter around me.

  “Your body’s at war with itself right now. It will take some time to sort things out.”

  I felt him touch me, stroking my temple with his thumb.

  “Save your tenderness for Margarithe,” I said, trying to knock his hand away and roll over.

  Arsenault sighed. I opened my eyes a crack and watched him rub his brow. His braid was untidy; both black and silver strands had pulled out of it. The white shirt he wore was stained with tar on one shoulder, and there was a scratch at the corner of his mouth.

  “Were you in Liera for Jon or my father?” I murmured.

  “Both, I suppose,” he said. Pottery bumped a wood table. “Here now, Kyrra. Drink again, only a little now.”

  I leaned forward with his help to take the cup. This time, I kept the water down better. My throat eased.

  “You were spying on the Prinze.”

  “You might say that.”

  “You cut your lip.”

  He lifted the back of his hand to his mouth. “It’s not that bad.”

  “How?”

  He looked uncomfortable or perhaps I imagined it. My vision shimmered with fever, and it was worse when I looked at him. A nimbus of light blurred his features, following his hand when he moved it. He didn’t speak, but somehow, the answer leapt into my brain in a tumble of images that felt like memories.

  “I never visited Liera with Cassis,” I muttered, closing my eyes. “Who is that woman?”

  “Cassis has taken a wife,” Arsenault said reluctantly. “Camile di Sere.”

  Camile. I remembered her. Dark hair and green eyes. Lips so lush and pink that all the girls at the courting parties were jealous and immediately tried to pinch their own to make them look like hers. She was lush all over, dressed in her indigo Sere silks.


  “Of course,” I said. “Camile. May they have many happy returns.”

  I felt like I was choking again. I sank down into the pillow and turned my head toward the wall. Yellow and blue sparks slithered across my dark eyelids like silkworms, and I wished they would spin me a cocoon.

  Perhaps Arsenault thought I was asleep. Fabric rustled, and his hand settled on my left shoulder. He rubbed the curve lightly with his thumb, and then his arm folded along the back of my arm and he put his forehead down on the pillow. His hair—silky, cool, and loose—brushed the skin of my neck.

  He spoke into the pillow in a low, quiet voice, as if he didn’t expect me to be listening. “If only I had been there, Kyrra, to keep you safe. And now—may the gods forgive me for anything I do to you.”

  He remained as he was for a time that was too short. Then his warmth disappeared from my back. The chair rattled and his boots scuffed the floor as he walked away.

  A bottle uncorked.

  “Damn you, Erelf,” he murmured. “She already has to deal with Ires’ battle magic. Why should you claim her too?”

  I knew the name Ires. He was the god of war—driven insane with grief when Tekus and his children killed all his kin and usurped their powers. Only Ires had escaped and that because no one, god or mortal, could defeat him. They could only trick him and shackle him deep within the earth, where he remained, still radiating his strange and horrible magic out into the world of men.

  But…Erelf.

  The name echoed in my head.

  I knew no one by that name, no man, no god. And yet the sound of it woke something inside me. I spun long, silky strands of thoughts that held no meaning, and betrayed myself by shouting out his name. Sometimes, I woke myself up, and Arsenault would be covering my mouth with his hand, saying, “Hush, don’t call him!” So, I began to know that there was magic in the room and not all of it was in Arsenault.

  I fell into dreams and not even Arsenault could call me back.

  In my dreams, I was an eagle, circling high above my father’s lands. My gold pinions flashed in the sun, and the updrafts ruffled the feathers at my throat as I sent my cry out across the blue. My eyes were as sharp as the sharpest of blades. I dove and climbed, watching as the black shapes of humans crawled about far beneath me, swords flashing in the sun, horses roiling and milling into each other, banners snapping the air. I saw Cassis sitting astride a gray Ipanzer that slammed its hindquarters into my father’s horse. I saw the pounding mess the horses’ hooves made, how at close quarters they trampled bodies of gavaros I had once known. I saw the stark look of terror on Cassis’s face, the mud that spattered his cheeks, the blue and gray threaded through his mail shirt. He’d lost his helm. His brown hair was tousled and wild.