Fortune's Fool (Eterean Empire Book 1)

by Angela Boord

  There are. The men who were distracted by serving girls and boys are looking up at us. Silva watches us without the alarm or surprise I would have expected, maybe thinking about that name Geoffre in conjunction with all the things Arsenault accused me of doing. Courtesans are trained to keep secrets, but he doesn’t look like he’s had the same training. His cheeks are flushed.

  We’re in Karansis. Close to Aliente lands.

  Another twinge sings through the metal of my arm.

  The girl is coming back with the innkeeper, whose hands are white with flour dust. For a brief flash of a moment, I see my mother standing in my room, wiping her flour-dusted hands on a red towel that fluttered limply in the breeze, the ghost prints of her hands upon it waving to me as she told me, Think.

  But then Arsenault comes close to me again, close enough that he can lean down and say quietly into my face, his words vibrating with the emotion that he seems to be keeping under wraps with iron bars. “You are going to get all of us killed.”

  I am not immune to emotion either. But my control isn’t made of iron. The magic surges up in me and I shove him backward. It’s just a reaction, one I can’t help. He got too close. He stumbles, one step, then stares at me with his hand on his sword hilt.

  “And how was I to know about this relationship?” I say. “I want to trust you, but how can I?”

  The expression on his face is raw. But I still can’t read it. He takes a quick step toward me with his hand on his sword, and the innkeeper shouts out behind him, “I’ll have no trouble in my establishment! If you wish to accost the lady, do it outside.”

  I gather my resolve again. That stupid, reckless grin twists at my mouth. “Do you wish to accost me, Arsenault? If so, by all means, let us leave.”

  A fight would be honest, and I’ve had enough talking. To pit steel against steel, then we might know where we stand. If he’d cut me down, I want to find out so we can get it over with.

  My heart beats so fast, it makes my breath come short.

  Mikelo says, “Andris.”

  “Where did you go before Kafrin?” I say, steeling myself for this, too. “Did you go over to the Prinze then? That would have been like you, to stage everything until all the players were in their positions…and then abandon them at the last moment. Did you maneuver my father into that gorge, Arsenault? Did you abandon him in spite of everything I asked you?”

  He’s wrong about me and dramas. I’m no actor. It was supposed to be a ruse, to press him, but now it isn’t. Now I just want to know.

  He leans forward. “I don’t remember what I did before Kafrin Gorge. I don’t remember working for the Prinze or not working for them. All I know is what I am doing now, in this moment. If you wish it to be a fight—”

  The innkeeper says, “Get out!”

  “Gods, yes, Arsenault, I wish it to be a fight! I want to know who you are now. I want to know if you killed Vadz and shot Razi!”

  The words rip out of me, but, gods, the look on his face.

  He did it.

  He was the assassin.

  He whirls around and almost runs toward the door, the cloak smacking wet and red against his calves and the legs of chairs he knocks into as he goes. Men look up at him, but he doesn’t stop. He shoves the door open and disappears into the night. The door slams after him, loud in the lull we’ve created.

  I dart around the table and Mikelo grabs my arm. “Who are Vadz and Razi?”

  I jerk away without answering. Mikelo comes after me.

  The innkeeper shouts at her employees to get back to work.

  “It’s an argument,” she shouts. “A simple argument. Keep your seats. Silva, back to work.”

  Silva hesitates, then jerks the towel out of his belt and throws it down on the table. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  “It’s only a woman!” the serving girl calls out. “Silva!”

  “No, Meli,” he calls back. “It’s him, it’s finally him.”

  Silva’s words almost don’t register on me as I shove the door open with my right hand and clatter down the steps. Arsenault is nearly running down the street. I watch him veer into an alley, and I run to follow him, with Mikelo and Silva chasing after me.

  Arsenault stands beside some crates, bent over, with his hands on his knees like he’s been hit and now he’s just trying to breathe.

  “Go back inside,” he tells Silva.

  “No,” Silva says, his voice taut with emotion. “I’ve been waiting for you ever since the Prinze burned our village and took our women. I vowed I’d never be caught so helpless again. I’d never let them take another woman.”

  I start to laugh, but it’s right on the edge of crying. “Even the godscursed serving boy thinks he’s got to protect me from you now. Why did you do it? Did Jon tell you to?”

  Arsenault stays bent over, breathing hard.

  “I knew Jon was lying—” I begin.

  “It wasn’t Jon!” Arsenault says, and stands up so suddenly, I take a step backward, dragging Silva with me.

  “Then who—”

  “It was me. I heard what you said to Tonia. I followed you.”

  I drop my hand from Silva’s arm. “In the Night Market? And the silk warehouse? And—Razi?”

  He nods.

  “He lost his arm, Arsenault! I had to hold him down while they cut it off!”

  “Oh, gods,” Mikelo whispers behind me. Arsenault stares at me, his hand on the hilt of his sword, his face sheened with sweat.

  “It is you, isn’t it?” Silva says suddenly. “I wasn’t sure when you walked in, and I got distracted by her, but I’d remember your face no matter how much you tried to change it. You’re the traitor captain.”

  Arsenault’s sword scrapes out of its scabbard with a strong steel hiss, and he levels the tip at Silva. My hand goes to my own sword in reflex.

  “You’ve no part of this,” he snarls. “I don’t know what the Prinze did to your village. This isn’t about old wrongs. War is war.”

  Silva’s face screws up in anger. He moves closer to Arsenault. He’s young and willowy, shorter than Arsenault and unarmed as far as I can see. That doesn’t seem to matter to him, though. “You’re the man who sold out the Aliente. You could have helped us and your men! But you didn’t. You just let the Prinze burn everything.”

  Arsenault stares down at him for a moment, the muscles in his face rigid, the same way I’m staring at him. What in all the hells does this boy know?

  But then Arsenault whirls away from Silva and faces me.

  The words I say next seem to be pulled up out of me without my consent. They’re just pain, bubbling up like hot mud in one of Kosemi’s pits. “You said you would never betray me, either, but you hurt everyone around me. Why?”

  Arsenault edges backward. He still holds his sword.

  “My father burned. That was your fault, too, wasn’t it?”

  Beads of sweat on Arsenault’s forehead glint in the torchlight. “Pallo said— He ordered— Geoffre told me he was moving the army up the other side…”

  He shakes his head groggily. The blade of his sword wavers and dips.

  “You made me a promise, Arsenault.”

  “Silva!” Mikelo shouts.

  Too late. I swing around to see Silva lunge at Arsenault with a knife. I put my hand to my sword, but Arsenault is closer; he whirls around to face the boy, his sword swinging down in a reflexive blow that Silva can’t hope to block. The boy’s painted skin goes white beneath its pasted-on colors.

  I throw my arm up into the arc of Arsenault’s sword. The impact rings up my shoulder, through my collarbone, and into my back. Pain blinds me for a moment, and with the shaking in my bones, I can hardly tell that I’ve gone down on one knee in the dirt. The metal of my arm and all my bones are singing like fire bells.

  I lurch to my feet, groping for my sword. Mikelo grapples with Silva, yanking him backward, trying to get a grip on his wrist so he’ll drop the knife. There’s something wrong with my ri
ght arm. It’s out of balance. On fire. My fingers finally spasm shut on the hilt and I pull the sword out of its scabbard.

  “Arsenault,” I gasp. “Why were you in that gorge?”

  Is that horror on his face? “Do you think I haven’t asked myself that question? For whom I really fought?”

  For whom I really fought.

  The singing won’t let up. It wraps me in its cloak of pain and fire. I can hardly see Arsenault through its shroud.

  I hear the words come out of my mouth like someone else is speaking them. “Were you my father’s spy or Geoffre’s? He sent you into Liera, but you led him down into that gorge. Didn’t you. You shot Razi because you’ve always worked for the Prinze.”

  Those nights we were on the road, I practiced saying words that would push him, like a lawyer at a trial. I gambled that he would chase me and show his hand. I gambled that if I could keep playing my part, if I kept pushing him, that maybe I could lay him open. Maybe he would see it was all wrong and I could recover the man at the bottom.

  But the singing in my arm grows louder, and I fear that I have miscalculated. I suspected but didn’t believe that Arsenault had killed Vadz and shot Razi. I didn’t want to believe it. And I did not factor Ires and his magic into my equations. This blinding need of the god to find and repay betrayal.

  And now I have let the god into my head and the god’s words are coming out of my mouth instead.

  Arsenault swipes a hand across his forehead. “I don’t know,” he says. “Kyrra, listen to me: I don’t know.”

  The singing wells up inside me. I can smell the odor of bodies burning. The salt tang of fear-sweat. Words come out of me, but are they my words? “You made me believe you. You made me promises, but they were just as worthless as anyone else’s.”

  “Kyrra,” he says. “Kyrra.”

  You knew he was ruthless. You knew your father was wrong to trust him, because he sold his loyalty. Why would he have any loyalty to the Aliente? To you? Was there any reason?

  Which god is talking now?

  I didn’t factor Erelf in, either.

  These two rotten gods, tearing me apart, trying to use me for their own purposes.

  Arsenault is speaking, I think. Maybe Mikelo too. But I don’t hear them. I hear only this one voice.

  He sells his loyalty. He’s lied to you before.

  No. They weren’t lies. Not exactly. They just weren’t entire truths. Why would he have given me this arm? Why would he have sent me off into safety? Why would he have made me those promises?

  Vadz lost his life and Razi lost his godsdamned arm.

  A Fixer picks and chooses what he’ll shape. Why did he choose your hate? He might have chosen your capacity to love. He made you what you are, Kyrra.

  Doubt drags me down, wrapping me in its net. There is a part of me that flounders against it, but that part is distant, the part of me that calls Arsenault! Arsenault! but is never heard. The part of me that did not go into the making of my arm.

  “You broke your promise when you hurt everyone around me. You betrayed me after you said you never would.”

  This is not going in any way like I planned. I only wanted to push him, but now I’ve pushed myself until I no longer know what I believe. And I see that there is a part of him that is struggling too, like that part of me that says, Stand down! Except that Arsenault made me this way, and somewhere in my bones, I know the voice that is not mine speaks truth.

  Then that sliver of recognition in his eyes is submerged by the rage I know, distantly, is mirrored in my own.

  “I never betrayed you,” he says.

  His blade twitches.

  Without thinking, I bring mine up to block it. Our swords scrape and clang together, and in an instant, we both look into each other’s eyes, as if in surprise that we have come to this moment.

  The last strip of my vision snaps and darkness engulfs me. I fall into its embrace, and the singing inside me rages in triumph.

  Efsag, irdmar, jorn… The stances sing through my head, buried in my muscles. These movements I once made with this man, the closest we ever came to dancing. Efsag, irdmar, jorn… The words lose all meaning in the battering of swords. I block blows with my arm that would cleave an arm of flesh, and the sound rings out into the night and into my head.

  But I am not here.

  I am somewhere in the dirt, swept down the tunnels of my own veins, adrift in my own blood. I should be bleeding on the ground by now. He’s a better swordsman, but he doesn’t have my arm. And he doesn’t fight the way I do.

  It’s always like this. The darkness catches me like an ocean wave and tumbles me along its bottom, scouring me in the sand until I don’t know where the surface is. And I awake to find myself standing on a battlefield, bodies strewn at my feet.

  Arsenault was wrong when he called it battle magic. It is a madness, an infection in the mind—vengeful, mad Ires reaching out from within the earth to satisfy his rage. It seeks any available tool, and if it finds one, it swings it like a hammer.

  I can hear my own lunatic laughter as if someone else is laughing. Arsenault grunts as he struggles to block the blows I pound him with. I’m only strong when I’m fighting because it’s the magic, not me. I’d be stronger if I didn’t struggle against the blackness, but I bob up and down like a cork in the tide.

  I think Mikelo tries to stop me, but I fling him away. I don’t hear him scream, so I think he’s still alive.

  Kyrra, Arsenault says, stop.

  I can’t, I answer him.

  Is it this arm he made me? Did he open up this channel so that it would grow wider and wider and harder and harder to close?

  Everything goes black again, and when I come up from it, I have him against a wall, pinned, with the point of my sword at his throat. He stares at me the way a man does when he knows he’s about to die—except there’s something else there, something quiet on his face that lets me know he’s already dead.

  “Go ahead,” he rasps. “Do it. Take your due.”

  I look at him in confusion. “My due?” My throat feels too swollen to speak, and I don’t know what he means. My due? For not protecting my father? For what he did to Vadz and Razi?

  The blade wants his neck, but I run my thumb down the hilt, fighting it off. Metal and metal, my arm and the sword do not understand the thoughts that clog my heart.

  In that moment of hesitation, Mikelo cries out. A wolfish howl from someone else begins, and I swing around to see a blur of gold, the glint of a knife, a body that shoves its way into me.

  Silva hits me before I can react. Arsenault jerks his sword, but not in time.

  Silva’s blade plunges into his chest.

  It grinds past a rib and sinks deep. Silva’s fingertips meet Arsenault’s flesh. He wiggles the knife back out, and blood gouts up around the blade and spills over his fingers.

  Arsenault’s sword slips from his hand and clangs on the pavement. The battle-dream ends. Ravens caw from the rooftops above me, shrieking in delight.

  I hurl Silva out of the way to get to Arsenault.

  Mikelo comes running. He grabs Silva by the shoulder and punches him in the face. Silva makes a hunh sound and drops the knife with a clatter. Blood from his nose spatters me, but my hands are coated in Arsenault’s blood anyway. I can’t hold his weight and he slides down the wall, listing into a stack of crates that rattle on the stones of the alley.

  Mikelo stands behind me, breathing hard. “Is he dead?” he asks.

  My words have left me. It doesn’t seem real, what’s happening. Arsenault looks down at the knife wound in his chest, then up again at me. But this time, he lifts his hand to my face. His thumb scrubs past my cheek.

  “Kyrra,” he whispers. “How has it come to this?”

  My heart snags and then begins to drum. There is something new in his eyes and his voice…

  I catch his hand before it drops. “You remember me?”

  “I knew you couldn’t be dead. That memory I had about
the serf girl, it was the wrong girl. Just Erelf tormenting me with false information, but I couldn’t quite remember...”

  His eyes flutter and his chest heaves. “Arsenault!” I shout, squeezing his hand tight in mine, as if I am not the reason he sits propped up in an alley with a gaping hole in his ribs.

  “I always remember in death,” he whispers again. “All of it. Everything.” The muscles of his hand bunch with effort, just to twine his fingers with mine.

  In his grip, the metal fingers of my right hand burn, a bright flaring pain that makes me lurch forward into him, catching myself on his shoulders.

  “Mikelo,” he gasps. “Get Mikelo.”

  “Why?” I ask. “What use is Mikelo to you now?”

  “Don’t argue,” Arsenault whispers. “Just get him.”

  “Mikelo!” I call, and Mikelo leans down over me, there all along.

  “You came for me,” he says to Arsenault. “I thank you.”

  Arsenault waves his fingers weakly, in dismissal. “I need you to heal the wound.”

  “What? How? I—”

  And then I understand.

  Mikelo must be a Fixer too. What else would make him more valuable than Geoffre’s own sons?

  “Heal him!” I say. “If he says you have the ability, you do!”

  Mikelo’s face is ashen. “What? What?”

  “Mikelo, don’t pretend you don’t understand. Do you want him to die?”

  Mikelo trembles. “No. But, Kyrra, magic…”

  “I won’t die,” Arsenault says, touching the wound with hesitant fingertips. His mouth hooks in a bitter, painful smile. How much pain must he be in, or is he numb? When they cut off my arm, the pain was bigger than the world. “Erelf bars me from the afterworld. But he’ll take all my memories. It’s how he tortures me. He’s the god of knowledge.”

  “You didn’t trade them for magic? Arsenault!”

  “I wasn’t lying. Just couldn’t tell you the whole truth.” His mouth twists into a bleak smirk that quickly disappears. He lifts his hand with great effort and rests it on the back of my head, pulling me down so that my forehead rests against his. “Don’t let him take you away again, Kyrra. Please.”

  I close my eyes, his breath faint against my face. “If you let this man die, I will kill you, Mikelo,” I say without moving, “and I care nothing about the price Geoffre has on my head. Do you understand?”