Fortune's Fool (Eterean Empire Book 1)

by Angela Boord

  My cloak ignites with the sparks from the pan.

  “Damn dikkarro!”

  I throw the cloak at Vanni’s gavaros, who have materialized from the shadows with the gunshot. I jam the spent pistol into the waistband of my skirt and grab Mikelo’s arm, yanking him with me.

  He stumbles into me, then gets his feet in order. He’s coming. Even without the gun. “Where are we going?” he gasps.

  “Not the kitchens!” I tell him. “Not the kitchens! Not the kitchens.”

  I’m babbling, trying to stem the black tide that wants to pull me under. I need to be able to think to get out of here. But the magic wants me, and if only it was the kind of magic I could use to bend the steam into a cloak, but it’s not.

  Arsenault’s ironshod boots slide on the stone floor behind us. I don’t want to believe he’ll haul me back, but I don’t want to put him in that position. Because I didn’t kill Vanni, and Geoffre’s in the kitchen.

  There are gavaros everywhere, Prinze and Caprine, getting in each other’s way, milling up as they try to protect their masters. It’s chaos. This is too much like battle, and I’m going to go down.

  I throw all my remaining willpower into visualizing Arsenault’s map. I was an easily bored student but not a bad one; my memory isn’t perfect, but it’s good.

  Mikelo and I are running back toward the stairs. But the steam room should be to our right.

  There. Disappearing into the wall is the small channel that takes hot water and spills it into the cold salt water pumped into the steam room. I can smell sage from here.

  I pull Mikelo with me. He looks up, startled and frightened, as I yank him toward the narrow opening in the wall where the U-shaped channel disappears. “Come on! This will slow them down.”

  “But—Kyrra—I don’t think I’ll fit…”

  The opening is small, but I think Mikelo’s slight enough to make it. The steam room will be connected to the dressing room and then to the receiving room and out the front door, if we can manage it.

  “You’ll fit,” I say.

  “You don’t have a gun,” he says. “You can’t make me—”

  The hot, knee-deep water smells so strongly of sulfur, it makes me dizzy. I shove him toward the dark cleft. “If you start to become a liability, I will kill you. Now move.”

  He stumbles into the blackness. “Oh, gods, Kyrra.”

  “Keep going. Are you claustrophobic, too? Come on. Your shoulders aren’t that broad…”

  “I’m going to get stuck. I’m going to get stuck.”

  Behind me, men curse. Standing at the opening, unable to follow us in. Arsenault can’t follow. He’s too big. Do I hear his voice, too?

  I draw my sword to hurry Mikelo along. He stiffens when he hears the hiss of steel. But the runes on the blade flare and streak up my arm, lighting the slick wet darkness.

  “Kyrra?” he says, sounding young and terrified. “What is that light?”

  “It’s magic, Mikelo. Not long now.”

  “There’s an opening. It drops down. And the steam…”

  “Drop,” I say. “Into the water.”

  “Into?”

  I shove him and he falls, feet-first, flailing his arms, about five feet down into a pool that’s covered in a sheet of steam. When he splashes into the water, a figure obscured against the side moves violently.

  “What?” a man exclaims. “What are you doing?”

  I jump after Mikelo. The cold water is a shock after being so warm, and thank all the gods it only comes up to my chest. My metal arm screams with the change in temperature.

  The man tries to clamber out of the pool. I lunge forward and drag him back down with my left hand, swinging my right fist into his temple. He crumples and slides under the water.

  “Mikelo!” I whisper. “Hold him up!”

  Mikelo grabs him. I pull myself out of the water, grab the man’s shoulders, and start hauling him off.

  “What are you doing now?” Mikelo says.

  “Hiding. And then we’re going to steal some clothes.”

  I rip the wig off Mikelo’s head and drag the man into the hallway, where I cast the wig down and make wet footprints leading toward the dressing room. When he wakes up, he’ll get help and show them my misdirection, or the guards will find him and see it themselves. Then I run and slide back into the pool with Mikelo, who’s shivering with his arms wrapped round his chest.

  Gavaros are coming down the hall now.

  “Under, under!” I whisper, and I pull him down with me, under the water.

  We hunch down, balled up in the water. I look up to the surface coated in steam and I might as well be inside a mirror, looking out.

  Looking down at me is Arsenault.

  His face shimmers, the years erased. The scar flickers in and out with each ripple of the surface. My breath burns in my lungs and I want to reach up to him, to touch his hand.

  Then I blink and it’s not Arsenault at all. Another man with dark hair walks the rim, not looking down. He ushers his fellows out quickly.

  When the room empties, Mikelo and I burst up to the surface. Mikelo gulps air. “They didn’t buy that,” he says. “They must be waiting for us.”

  “Maybe.” And maybe Arsenault did have something to do with the gavaros passing us by, the same way he had something to do with Cassis and his gavaros passing us by in the Day Market all those years ago when I hid with him in a doorway. I tilt my head back to catch my breath and look up at the ceiling.

  It’s covered in a mosaic of ravens. Their obsidian-chip eyes glint in the dim candlelight of the chamber.

  Watching us.

  Thick cotton robes hang on hooks lining the walls, and Mikelo and I strip off our wet clothes and change after the man in the hall comes to his senses and staggers away, calling help. Nobody returns; they all think we’ve gone back upstairs.

  “Quick, now,” I say, keeping my sword and gun bundled up inside my robe. I fish out the rings I stole from my pockets and hang my old clothes on a hook beneath a robe.

  “Are we to go naked?” Mikelo says.

  “We’ll retrieve clothes from the dressing room. Come on.”

  “They’re going to recognize me. And you.”

  “We’re thinking on our feet, Mikelo. Arsenault always used to say if you act like you belong, people usually won’t look twice.”

  “Arsenault. Andris. Would he have hurt you?”

  “I didn’t want him to have to make that decision.”

  “The man you shot mentioned a gavaro…”

  I let my breath out. “Arsenault. Look, Mikelo, something very strange is going on, and Arsenault and your uncle are at the center of it. I don’t know what’s happening, but I’m going to find out. It would be easier if I didn’t have to threaten you to come with me, but you’re still my insurance.”

  “Insurance.” He smirks and flips his wet hair out of his face. “Yes. I do always seem to be of use to someone, don’t I?”

  “Would you rather be of use to me or to your uncle?”

  He puts both hands in his hair and musses it up. “Neither. I don’t know what to do, Kyrra. I don’t want to be in line for the heirship. Five years ago, I barely knew I had an uncle.”

  “I’ll make your decision for you, then. You’re coming with me.”

  “Will Andris meet us outside?”

  “I’m sure he’ll follow us.”

  Mikelo turns and narrows his eyes on me. “Are you getting rid of him?”

  I laugh. “You don’t know him very well, do you? I’m not going to give him away to Geoffre, in case he’s running a ruse or…”

  In case he really is broken and that’s what’s wrong with his memory.

  I stutter back into my sentence. “… in case he’s telling the truth. About his memory. But I’m sure he’ll follow us. Whether he’s ordered to or not.”

  Mikelo frowns. “I’m not sure I trust you without him.”

  “I’ve only been honest with you, Mikelo. You kn
ow exactly where you stand with me. Can you say that for your uncle?”

  His frown deepens and he rubs at the healing wound where I stabbed him last night. “I suppose you have a point. But I don’t understand why you’re leaving Andris. If he was your gavaro.”

  Every action I’ve taken over the past three days has been like playing a game of indij I’m losing. This one is a big gamble but I hope to make it pay off.

  “If they all have to chase us, somebody is going to reveal his hand.”

  “So, you’re still going to kill Cassis?”

  I take a deep breath. “I don’t think I have a choice now, do I?”

  Chapter 21

  By sunset, Mikelo and I are on the deck of a Vençalan caravel bound for Iffria. Geoffre expects us to take the hard road through the hills, but after we slid out of the bathhouse wearing our suits of stolen clothes, I visited a countinghouse to change my stolen jewelry and bought passage on this ship. We’ll take the road that hooks around the southwestern edge of the Aliente estates. From there, it climbs through the lower pass to enter our game lands from the west. It’s actually the easier route, though somewhat more roundabout.

  I wonder if Arsenault thought we would take the hill road too, or if he remembers enough about the routes to and from my father’s land that he tried to search for us on the docks, expecting us to take this ship instead. We slunk out through a hot, angry crowd, gavaros facing off with steel drawn, Geoffre patrolling the edges, Madame Triente standing on the front steps with her arms outstretched, trying to calm everyone down. I expected to see Arsenault among her circle of gavaros, but I didn’t see him anywhere…only felt the protection of his magic in the sword at my side, helping me stay hidden the way it often did. Or maybe that belief has merely become a superstition. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell.

  I hate leaving him. But if I’m going to learn where he stands, this is the way to do it. I’m confident he’ll track us, but where will he meet us? Will he bring Geoffre’s spies down on us or will he show up alone?

  I hardly know how I feel anymore.

  Mikelo braces his hands on the gunwale and squints out over the grass of the wetlands on the coast. Bands of pink and orange streak the western sky—harbinger of a warmer season maybe, or just the false light preceding the sanval’s warm, wet, howling kiss. He’s wearing a Caprine green cloak and tunic—both irony and disguise.

  “Have you ever been away from Liera?” I ask. He’s been quiet all afternoon, walking grimly beside me, doing what I tell him but offering me nothing. Now that I’ve got him, I need more information.

  “My uncle only moved me to Liera after the wars started. Before that, I lived in Baleria with my mother.”

  I search my knowledge of geography. “Where is Baleria? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “A long way from here. It’s small. Quiet. Mostly farmland. There’s no reason why you should know it.”

  “Is it Prinze?”

  A householder’s daughter is an expert at lineages, almost as good as the genealogists the Houses employ to keep correct kin records. If I’ve never heard of Baleria and I’ve never heard of him, then both might as well have been conjured from the air.

  “No. It’s where my mother lived. If she had any House ties, she never told me what they were.”

  I’m surprised. I’ve been leaning on my elbows on the gunwale, watching the gulls wheel over the marshes, but I turn to face him now. “Your mother was kinless?”

  He stiffens and looks down that proud Prinze nose at me. “I don’t think my mother was Lieran. She wasn’t kinless.”

  “Then who were your kin? Where did she come from?”

  “She… It’s not important. She didn’t name names when she talked about her past.”

  Fallen from somewhere then.

  “And your father didn’t live with you?”

  “My father died. Before I was born or when I was very young.”

  I try to remember what happened to Geoffre di Prinze’s younger brother. He did die, some years ago, when I was small. A fever, I think. He made Geoffre’s scouting voyages for him, searching for new sources of cargo, and would have had the opportunity to father a few bastards in exotic ports.

  “If you’re Renzo’s son, then you have brothers ahead of you—his legitimate sons. Doesn’t he have two?”

  “Two sons and a daughter,” Mikelo says. “But Georji is a drunk, and Zio ran off to Vençal two years ago after the Sere found some money and one of their servant girls missing.”

  “He’s ever been the black sheep,” I say. Zio was the sort of boy who was always in trouble for some sort of harmless social transgression the rest of us wished we’d had the courage to make. It didn’t surprise me that he’d been forced into exile.

  Mikelo tightens his hands on the railing and watches the black water lap the ship’s hull. “Well,” he says. “I’d put my faith in their claims before mine, but it appears I may have been mistaken.”

  For a moment, it’s quiet. Most of the sailors have gone ashore. We’re left here with the skeleton crew, who talk to each other in low voices and only when they need to. The Vençalans don’t care much whom they carry; they try to stay out of Liera’s politics.

  “So, you really did leave him,” Mikelo says abruptly. “Didn’t it bother you?”

  “What?” I tear my gaze away from the mirrored surface of the water, startled by the change in subject.

  “Andris. Arsenault. Whatever his name is. I didn’t think you would leave him, but you did.”

  “I told you why.”

  Mikelo leans on the railing. “I didn’t know whether to believe you. Andris never spoke of his life before the wars.”

  “No,” I say. “He wouldn’t have.”

  Especially since he doesn’t seem to remember it.

  “I didn’t know he supported my claim. As far as I knew, he was just a guard.” Mikelo shifts awkwardly. “You have to believe me when I say I never knew my uncle wanted me for heir. He gave me a host of boring jobs. I always thought an heir would be treated better.”

  “He was probably keeping you alive, out of the fighting. But I imagine more people knew. Maybe even Zio. He probably wanted to be in line for the succession less than you do. Were you allowed to call him brother?”

  Mikelo glances at me, but it’s hard to read his expression as the night grows darker. “I wasn’t allowed to call him anything at all. My uncle kept me away from him. I only met him once, when I first came to Liera. I was introduced to him and Georji and Laila in the receiving room of their townhome, and what Zio said was Oh, thank the gods there’s another one.”

  “Did Renzo have more bastards?”

  “If he did, I’ve never met any. I think Zio was talking about males in the line of succession. He seemed relieved.”

  “I imagine he would.”

  “You sound as if you don’t mind Zio.”

  “Except for the way he looks, he’s hardly Prinze at all. And harmless. He’s probably a gavaro now.”

  “But he’s forsaken his duty.”

  “Are you doing yours?”

  Mikelo is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “Andris fought for your father. Didn’t he.”

  “Yes. A long time ago.”

  “I think my uncle was wrong to hire him. I think you were wrong to leave him. Word will get out that I’ve been kidnapped. The Caprine might try to kidnap me themselves if they think they can prod my uncle that way.”

  “It would be foolish of them.”

  “Still.”

  I smile a little, in spite of myself. “Are you trying to convince me to let you go?”

  He grips the gunwale so hard, his knuckles turn white. Then he releases it and hangs his head. “I don’t know what I’m trying to do,” he says. “I don’t know who to trust. I don’t know that I can trust anyone.”

  I lean down beside him, folding my flesh arm over my metal one. “Welcome to Liera, Mikelo.”

  Mikelo and I disembark the Vençalan tramper at
the village of Cales, halfway between Liera and Iffria.

  In Cales, the trade is for relics. The road from the coast to the hills is an old one, lined with crumbling shrines full of ghosts and traversed in the spring and summer by flocks of pilgrims. At the hills’ feet, the apricots are in full bloom and flowers fill every stall in the market. Interspersed with the flowers are votas—amulets of amber and iron, talismans of twisted human hair and bone, and little wooden hands, arms, and feet with conjure spells written on them, for healing. As the season warms, the number of pilgrims will grow until they peak at high summer, when it’s proof of dedication to brave the fevers in order to prostrate oneself before the gods at Sybal, Tekasius, Sefrana, Karansis.

  I decide that we, too, will walk to Karansis, where we can join the old Eterean road into the mountains. Some of the richer pilgrims go on horseback, in litters, with retinues. But I don’t want to call attention to the two of us. Just in case Geoffre’s spies have picked us up, I change my clothes again—a rose silk gown with dark patches where the stick caught in the dye and another set of leather stays where I can hide my dagger—and then we sell our fine cloaks and buy plain brown ones, dried fish, biscuits, and wine.

  Then we begin walking.

  Cales is built on a small sliver of flat land that hugs the sea. The road climbs suddenly, as roads often do on the eastern Eterean coast, winding its way through jagged black cliffs that stand off from the shore like obsidian blades. At the top of the ridge, one can look out over the water toward the misty coastline of Amora and back up the coast to Liera. To the northwest stands Mount Kosemi, its peak bare and brown, the only peak in this section of the range unwreathed with snow; instead, gray steam plumes from its crater, leaving the sky above it dingy as an unwashed scrap of cloth. The black, lava-scarred slopes of Mount Kosemi bear lush orchards of figs, olives, almonds, and apricots, but at a price; the orchards are only fifty years old, the previous trees having been destroyed in a powerful eruption in which Kosemi blew most of its north side. They say that long ago, Ires, the god of war, was shackled deep inside Kosemi by his fellow gods when he lost his mind. From Cales the mountain looks slumped, like an old warrior in defeat.