Fortune's Fool (Eterean Empire Book 1)

by Angela Boord

  What use was the arm, anyway? I couldn’t even put it on by myself.

  I wanted, suddenly, to be not alone. I wanted the arm, any arm, something to make me feel as if I didn’t exist in a space by myself. I wasn’t a gavaro, and I would not be invited to the wedding feast. I would eat leftovers in the barracks kitchen, and this was what it meant to be kinless.

  I stoppered the bottle of gazpa and walked with it out of the barracks. Eventually, my feet carried me to the grotto with the armless statue.

  I clambered up the rocky hillside above the spring and the statue and set the bottle down carefully on the rock ledge. From this vantage point the pockmarked limestone statue looked small and pathetic. I boosted myself up beside the bottle, then stretched out on my back on the narrow ledge, careful not to kick the bottle of gazpa.

  Slowly my heart stilled as I lay there, thinking about the armless statue. How old was it? What man had carved it? The Etereans had erected many statues near springs, marking them as holy places or ghost-founts. The mist that spilled up from the bottom of the spring, where the water splashed on the rocks, looked like a ghost. Its cool gray fingers wrapped around my feet, then my legs and my severed arm.

  The mist rose to the sky and I began to imagine figures in it—birds, wolves, horses, men. It spread until the moon was a watery rippling of light, the stars mere wavelets of silver, as if the sky had become a vast, deep pool, its waters too black to show any reflections.

  The images grew in solidity the longer I watched. Claudia, her long hair falling around her shoulders, wept as my father turned away from her; my mother fed the lorikeet in the conservatory, her mouth a hard, straight line, with her back turned to my father as he stood in the door; the cold white marble tiles glared in the sunlight spilling in the window.

  Muslin curtains fluttered in the wind, in a different conservatory. Arsenault stood beside a woman playing a harpsichord, her long, white fingers flying over the keys, raven hair unbound, her shoulders round and small under the fabric of her thin muslin nightgown. She looked up at Arsenault with cat-tawny green eyes and smiled. I know it’s not my husband’s fault. He got a child on that woman. I’m the barren one; come, no one will ever know—my husband avoids my bed these days and seeks his entertainment elsewhere.

  Arsenault frowned as if considering her offer. She let her fingers trail down his arm. His frown deepened. The wind ruffled his shirt, lifted the silver strands of hair that had pulled free of his braid. He wore a blue silk tunic over his white shirt—Prinze blue.

  He hesitated. Then he leaned down and pressed his lips to the lady’s brow. She smiled and closed her eyes, her hand tightening on his. But then he straightened up.

  Not today, Camile.

  Her eyes flew open in surprise. Hurt and jealousy were green colors, lodged there. When her smile returned, it formed a bitter hook at the corner of her mouth.

  Perhaps it’s as they say. No one wants a barren woman. Not even a gavaro.

  You’re married to my lord, Lady.

  Which makes me your lady, too. Do you not find me attractive, Arsenault? Perhaps if I called it a duty?

  He laughed, low and surprised, in his chest. If you’re that desperate, Camile, go ahead.

  She flushed and turned back to the harpsichord. Her arpeggios were vicious, mangled. Not looking at him, she said, I saw you the other day. You were with that Dakkaran smuggler’s man.

  Arsenault’s expression became veiled and careful. Your husband has his appetites, he said. But Camile didn’t look at his face. She scowled down at her fingers pounding the keys of the harpsichord. In the corner of the room, a parakeet squawked, swinging back and forth on the perch in its bamboo cage.

  All the Prinze have their appetites, she said bitterly. They’ll devour you no matter how hard you try to avoid their jaws.

  Arsenault hesitated again. He laid a hand on her shoulder. Her back, so slim and fragile, trembled as she put her face in her hands.

  Then there was a crash, the sound of shattering glass.

  I sat up with a jerk to find that I had kicked the bottle of gazpa. It tumbled down atop the statue and leaked liqueur over the statue’s shoulders, the stumps of its arms.

  In the darkness, it looked like blood.

  Two nights later, Arsenault came back.

  The moon was waning now, no longer full but still bright. I had left the shutters open for the breeze, but there was no relief from the heat.

  At the door’s soft creak, I awoke immediately. I opened my eyes but didn’t move, frozen with my hand clutching at the mattress. The scuffing footsteps didn’t sound like Arsenault’s.

  He came into the room with his back to me, wearing no tunic or armband, just a plain white shirt. He made his way carefully to his bed. Then he stopped and cursed when he saw the wooden arm.

  “I found it in the trash heap,” I said. I kept my voice low but it sounded loud in the dark. Arsenault whirled, hand immediately going to his sword. He stood for a moment, then let his breath out in one long exhale.

  “Lobardin had me work the midden; he must have seen it, too. It happened the day you left. It’s been two cycles of the moon now that we’ve been waiting for you. Where have you been?”

  He pushed his unbraided hair back from his face and sat heavily on the bed, shoving the arm out of the way.

  I watched in growing alarm as he began untying the laces of his shirt. None of this behavior was like him. “I knew I didn’t hide that arm deep enough. I half-hoped you’d come to your senses, found it, and left. You could have passed yourself as a boy.”

  “Where would I have gone? With Margarithe?”

  “Thought you might have sympathized with her.”

  He pulled his shirt over his head and threw it into the corner of the room, where it caught on the edge of his worktable and fluttered in the sick breeze.

  “You should close the shutters when you sleep,” he said.

  “But it’s so hot.”

  “Worse things than heat roam the night.”

  I laughed. “A bandit would have to have balls the size of my fist to walk up to a barracks full of gavaros. What could he gain?”

  Arsenault stared at me.

  I blushed.

  “It’s no matter,” he said. “I’ve only been around too many women lately.”

  “Arsenault.”

  He sighed. “Forgive me, Kyrra; I’m just not myself tonight, that’s all.”

  Then who are you? I wanted to ask.

  He started to lie down on the bed, bumped into the arm, grabbed it and pitched it out the window. It crashed into the trees on the other side of the path. Then he lay down and stretched out, folding his hands behind his head, shirtless but still wearing his dust-covered boots.

  I watched, more than a little stunned.

  Though we lived in the same space and I often saw him working in the yard, I had rarely caught even the briefest glimpse of him without his shirt. He was always careful to dress and undress only when the blanket was hung, dividing the room. The only other time he went shirtless was doing manual labor with other men in the heat.

  But now the moonlight slid along the rounded silhouette of his shoulders and outlined the hard planes of his chest and the leanness of his stomach. His trousers had pulled down past his hip, exposing the notch of his hipbone.

  A heat that had nothing to do with the weather rose within me.

  But diverting my attention to the clothed parts of him was hardly better, given the way the silk trousers clung to his thighs.

  I made myself step back and consider the larger picture. Big, light-colored splotches of dust mottled his trousers. He must have ridden hard to reach the estate before daybreak. Why had he risked himself riding at night?

  I swung my feet onto the floor, and his head shifted toward me, hair slinking down the side of the pillow. “What are you doing, Kyrra?”

  His voice sounded thick. Sleepy.

  “Where do the Prinze think you go when you come back here? Do
they know you work for my father?”

  “No,” he said. “And I’d like to keep it that way.”

  I noticed that he didn’t answer the other question. I took a deep breath and pressed on.

  “Why did you ride so hard to make it back? You’ve been gone two months. Do you have news for my father? Were you worried about being discovered?”

  He looked in my direction for a moment, then turned away. In the dim white light I could see he’d closed his eyes. “Little bird,” he murmured. “You ask too many questions.”

  Little bird. That was what Erelf called me. Not Arsenault.

  I eyed him warily, then I stood and walked to his bed.

  “Did Camile di Prinze finally break you?”

  He opened his eyes. His pupils were too large, like they had swallowed the gray.

  Kacin, then. That was why he was acting so oddly.

  “What do you know about Camile di Prinze?” he said.

  I folded my arms, a gesture I hadn’t made in a long time, then dropped my stump and held it behind my back so he couldn’t see it. He wasn’t the only one being careless tonight; I had forgotten I was only wearing my sleeveless shift. I suddenly felt exposed with my arm out of its covering.

  “Nothing,” I said, turning around, cradling my stump before me. “I only thought she might have been one of the women you spoke of, down in Liera.”

  The bed creaked and dirt crunched behind me as Arsenault sat up and put his boots down on the floor.

  “She was,” he said. “Cassis smokes his nights away and lies with other women. If he’s still able to father children, he’ll have ten bastards by winter unless Geoffre has something done about it. But Camile remains barren and loveless.”

  “I saw it,” I said. “In a dream. Down by the grotto.”

  My admission didn’t seem to surprise him. He sighed. “She’s insistent.”

  I bit my lip. “Perhaps…” I said—grudgingly, forcing myself, “perhaps you should have lain with her. Does she suspect you?”

  “I don’t think so. It won’t matter if she tells Cassis about my associations with Jon, because Jon supplies him with his kacin. That’s where he thinks I go when I’m gone—to guard Jon’s runs. He and Jon have an agreement.”

  “Still,” I said.

  “Did you want me to sleep with Camile?”

  I let all my breath out and stared at the floor. “No. I was just trying to think like a householder.”

  “To be ruthless, you mean.” Arsenault paused. “I left Liera like I did because otherwise, I was going to knife Cassis.”

  “What?”

  I looked over my shoulder but I didn’t turn around. Arsenault was looking out the window.

  He faced me. “All I can think about when I watch him work is what he did to you. And then, if he’s not dragging me with him to a bathhouse or smoking den, he wants me back at his townhouse, ‘guarding’ Camile. Bastard. He’s trying to turn me into a whore.”

  I turned around slowly. “Cassis…wanted you to sleep with his wife?”

  “I couldn’t take it anymore. But if I put a knife in his back and got caught…Geoffre would be able to turn his cannons on your father unmolested, and I’m no closer to learning what he really wants. The only ones left in his way are those damn Caprine spies fooling themselves that he doesn’t know who they are.”

  “Are you sure the Prinze don’t suspect you? Maybe it was a test with Camile and you failed it.”

  “Right. See what happens when a gavaro is caught in bed with the wife of a Prinze in the line of succession.” He breathed out raggedly. “And I won’t say I wasn’t tempted. Camile’s a beautiful woman. A very lonely, very beautiful woman.”

  I looked down at my bare toes on the dirt floor and tried to wriggle them into the hardpack. “Camile was always the most beautiful among us. A real prize. Cassis was lucky to get her.”

  For a moment, Arsenault didn’t speak. Then he said, “Kyrra. Cassis is a bastard with a pretty smile. You would have broken him in two. And Camile is like a porcelain doll that’s been cracked.” He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees so he could hang his head and rake his hands through his hair. “You deserve so much more. More than a liar like me can give you, that’s sure.”

  What could I say to that? I didn’t say anything.

  “Jon thought I ought to make the arm,” he said finally. “He wanted me to give you something that would make you look like anybody else. He thought you probably hated the Prinze enough to do anything he asked, to get back at them.”

  “What did Jon want me to do?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. He’s floated me a number of ideas, and I’ve harpooned all of them. The first was to put you out among the Prinze serfs, but they’d recognize you in a heartbeat. Then he thought maybe he’d put you among the Sere…which wasn’t quite as bad. But still, what are the chances they wouldn’t know who you are? In our latest letter, he put forth the idea that you could disguise yourself as a boy, sneak into the house, and kill the family yourself.”

  I felt as if time had stopped, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the room.

  What if I disguised myself as a boy and became an assassin? I could learn to use poisons. I would use something slow-acting on Cassis. Something to humiliate him in public before it killed him.

  “I told Jon you’d be dead before you got out the door. But Jon…”

  Arsenault stopped and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

  “Devid di Prinze and Ricar di Sere razed his home. His father is dead, his wife is dead, his children…” Arsenault shook his head. “Since I didn’t see it happen, it doesn’t seem real. They called me Ari, you know, all the boys did—Adayze’s Edo started it. Jon’s boys used to climb all over me when I came in the house. I would turn Dayo upside down and swing him around like a sack, and he’d shriek with laughter. Biyo, I just let hang on my back, and he would pretend I was a turtle and he was the shell. And yet they were twins.”

  His voice grew hoarse. I knelt in front of him. Hesitantly, I put my hand on his knee.

  He brought his head up, lowering his hands.

  “I don’t fault you or Jon for thinking of using me. I just don’t know why you would risk yourself like this for a man who was once your master…or for pay.”

  “Jon fights my fight more than I fight his in many ways.”

  “What fight is that, Arsenault?”

  “Against Erelf.” He sought out my hand, entwined his fingers in mine, and stroked along the edge of my thumb with his thumb. Then he put his other hand on the back of my head and pulled me in closer to him so he could tilt his forehead against mine.

  “I’ve had too many dreams of you, Kyrra,” he murmured. “I think they’ve begun to suspect.”

  “To suspect you work for the Aliente?” I asked. Could he hear the tremble in my voice? His leg was warm beneath my hand, the steady caress of his thumb on mine maddening.

  “No. To suspect that I can See.”

  “But how would they know?”

  “Geoffre’s dedicated himself to the god.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means the god works through him. He’s directing the Prinze not just for their benefit or his. He’s doing what Erelf wants him to do. That must be why he’s collecting magic.”

  “What will he do with it?”

  “I don’t know. Too hard for me to find out without the god finding out. If Cassis hadn’t smoked so much kacin, Geoffre would have had me.”

  I edged forward and leaned into him, sliding my hand farther up his leg. He still had his other hand in my hair, and that thumb moved absently down the curve of my ear.

  “It’s too much to risk. Stay here, Arsenault. Don’t go to Liera again. Utîl’s contract is coming up. My father must see that you ought to remain with the men.”

  “I wish I could,” he whispered. “I wish I could take you away from all these games. But for now, the games define us.”


  “Only if we let them. Why don’t we stop. Just for tonight.”

  I disentangled my hand from his and moved it up his thigh again. Smooth, slick silk, damp from his sweat, brushed my fingertips. The muscles of his leg tensed.

  He lifted his head. His face was very close and his eyes searched mine. “I’ll be myself again in the morning,” he said in a strained voice.

  “That will be too long.”

  Now that the words were out, I couldn’t unsay them. But I didn’t want to. I wasn’t the same girl Cassis kissed in the conservatory. I was a woman now, and I made my own choices, knowing what they were.

  I inched my hand up farther, feeling along the cords of his muscles, as far as I dared.

  “You’ve been gone too long,” I whispered. “I’ve missed you. I don’t want to keep missing you.”

  His gaze roved over my face and settled on my mouth.

  “Kyrra,” he breathed, like something inside him had loosed. Then he brought his lips down to mine.

  It was not like the kiss beneath the olives.

  It was not like kissing Cassis.

  Cassis and I had always been in a rush. It was a race to get each other out of our clothes, and then everything was over much too quickly. In spite of that, there had always been an artful aspect to Cassis’s kisses which puzzled me, as if he were kissing according to a guide.

  But Arsenault was not like that. His mouth was warm and soft at first, in invitation. And when I accepted, he drew me against him, kissing me so thoroughly that I felt like I was full of him—his scent of tea and musk, the wiry brush of his beard against the corners of my mouth, the faint taste of ale.

  The room had seemed so empty and quiet without him.

  His lips sought the corner of my mouth, the skin of my neck, my ear as he pulled away. There was a hungry light in his eyes when he spoke, finally. “Will you stay with me, then? Tonight?”

  I let my fingers run through his hair, his beard—over his scar, the lines of his face, well-loved.

  “Yes,” I said.