Fortune's Fool (Eterean Empire Book 1)

by Angela Boord

  “We can’t afford to live in town yet,” Meli says, as she goes to the fire to light it. “But we do well enough.” She forces a smile. “Someday. Lay him on the cot there by the wall; that’s mine.”

  Silva and I are both sweating by the time we lay Arsenault down. His legs slip through my hands and I almost drop him. Then I sink down the wall beside him, flexing my fingers again. My right arm has started up a queer ringing in my head. Without thinking about it, I pull off my glove and push my sleeve up to examine it.

  Meli is in the midst of blowing out the candle, but the light flashes on the metal for a brief instant before it goes out, and Meli’s soft cry and Silva’s sharp intake of breath tell me that they’ve seen it.

  “Dread gods,” Silva says, “what is that?”

  There’s a depression in my forearm.

  A dent. In my arm.

  I run the fingers of my left hand over it, feeling the little dip, like a worn place in a rock where rainwater gathers. A little rut, right there in the middle of my forearm.

  I can’t answer Silva. Instead, I breathe in and out, and Mikelo answers for me.

  “It’s her arm. It’s made of metal.”

  Undentable, unscratchable, indestructible metal. I block blows all the time, and it’s always held up. But now—a dent. Something I have no idea how to fix.

  What will Arsenault’s new scar look like?

  In an instant, as I’ve wondered before, but this time it’s different—I wonder how he got the scar on his face, the one that’s disappeared now. How many lives has he moved through? I remember reading that story about Prince Udolfo and the pirates on the hillside and how he got all the names wrong but wrong in the way of fond nicknames, and now I wonder what he really knew about Vara, the betrothed, and if he figured into the story anywhere himself. Because what I need right now is a faithful fisherman to pull me out of these cold, angry waters that are threatening to drown me.

  It’s a painful, old road to trod, and one I am only going down right now because I have this dent in my arm and he is lying there with a dent in his chest, and I don’t know if anyone can fix either of us.

  The world always falls apart as soon as you sit down.

  “Kyrra,” Mikelo is saying. “Kyrra, are you all right?”

  I lurch to my feet. “Fine. Hungry.”

  But if I’m standing in the dark with only the low fire for light, I can’t tell if Arsenault is breathing or not. I sit back down beside him and burrow my left hand under the cloaks to rest my palm on his chest.

  Dried blood and torn fabric snag on my fingertips. The wound is hot, the new skin as smooth and soft as a newborn’s. The old skin is crusted with blood and wiry with hair.

  “Kyrra,” Mikelo is saying again. He bends down over me so his face is close to mine. His eyes form bright, gleaming pools in the darkness. “You should eat something. We have biscuits in the pack. Meli has jerky. Icini and cheese. It’s Andosino.”

  “They eat well down here,” I say, forcing a smile. “Andosino cheese.”

  Mikelo hands me a piece, and clumsily I find his hand in the dark. Our fingers brush, and I squeeze the cheese too hard with my metal hand and it crumbles to the floor. I can barely feel the smear left on my fingertips. I put my fingers in my mouth and all I taste is the tang of metal.

  In spite of myself, I begin to cry.

  Mikelo’s eyes widen. Still I am crying—wheezing, choking sobs with little noise. The noise has all gone out of me already.

  I put my hand to my face. Cold metal against my hot, salty skin. Mikelo’s boots scrape on the dirt as he backs away. I hear him sit.

  “What—” Silva begins.

  “Hush,” says Meli. “Leave her alone.”

  Any of them could kill me, but my walls have all been breached already; it almost doesn’t matter.

  I lie down over Arsenault’s legs and close my eyes, still weeping.

  I sleep a black sleep. It seeps in so silently, I hardly know I’m asleep at first, and then I know nothing else until Erelf stands before me.

  Ravens flutter down the stairs, alighting on everyone sleeping around me—Meli, Silva, Mikelo. Their scaly talons knead flesh as they walk the line of hips and torso, back and shoulders. Big black shapes swoop into my face, and I try to chase them off with my arm, but I can’t move, so they land anyway. Three more ravens, one on my arm, the other two at Arsenault’s head. The cot creaks and Arsenault shifts, but the ravens remain, settling their wings at their sides.

  The raven’s claws shriek against my metal arm as it adjusts itself.

  Erelf winds his way through the sleepers and comes to stand beside me and Arsenault. The moonlight gives his face a silver cast, as if he might be made of metal himself. “Trying to be his protector now, are you?” he says. “Fancy yourself in that role? Would you like to see yourself as you really are?”

  Inside, I’m thrashing. But my limbs lie perfectly still.

  Erelf smiles. “Here,” he says. “Let me bequeath knowledge upon you.” A fog rises from his palm, whitening the room. In that fog are shapes of men, horses, battles—

  I heave my right arm up. It takes all my strength. The raven launches into the air, cawing, and I sit up. “I know what I am,” I gasp. “I’m a Render, a Destroyer. One of Ires’s Chosen. But it’s nothing Arsenault made me. It’s just who I am. I went down that path as soon as I lost my arm.”

  Smirking, his eyes flat and hard, Erelf says, “So, the sparrow has found her voice. Well. And she thinks she’s special. Little sparrow, that is all you are. Misguided, mismade little sparrow, playing at being an eagle. How long do you think you’ll survive in company such as this?” He gestures at Arsenault. “Him, with his guilt, constantly making bad decisions such as the one that gave you that arm. And Mikelo. Shall you delude yourself any longer that you control Mikelo?”

  My sweat turns clammy on my skin. “I think Mikelo is too smart to be taken in by your lies.”

  Erelf raises an eyebrow. “Do you? Well. We’ll see. His judgment in compatriots seems a bit lacking”—he looks askance at Arsenault—“but it might be forgiven him, since his uncle was attempting to woo Arsenault to his side. A process I’m sad to see end, for it gave me much entertainment. But the tides of magic grow and ebb like those of the ocean. Who knows where these currents will carry you. Or him.”

  “Why do you torment him so?” I ask. “A god, so wrapped up in the fate of a human. Why don’t you leave him alone?”

  “Oh. So, he didn’t tell you that, either?”

  “He didn’t want to invite your attention!”

  “Just as every criminal wants to stay out from under the eye of justice,” Erelf says, and then he smiles, bleakly, his teeth the white of bleached bone. “But consider—if not for me, he wouldn’t be alive for you now, would he? He’d have burned at Kafrin Gorge like the others. Or died in other ways—oh, dozens of times by now.”

  I open my mouth to speak, but thought fails me. What do I say to that?

  Erelf’s smile grows more genuine, more wolfish. “If you fly too close to the truth, sparrow, you may get your wings burnt. Did you See into him when you had your sword at his throat?”

  Go ahead, Arsenault had said. Take your due.

  But what had he meant?

  “In this life, he courts death. He’s miserable. He has no memory, no friends. Did you condemn him to more of that when you could have released him?”

  “Killing him wouldn’t have solved anything, especially if you won’t let him die. He would only have forgotten me again.”

  “The woman who killed him?”

  “Men regain their memories!”

  “Who’s to say I wouldn’t have taken pity on him with the next life and left him whole? Or maybe I would have finally let him cross the barrier and die.” His gaze runs up and down me, head to foot. “Perhaps I’d rather have you. You could have taken his place. But now you’ve just condemned him to more torment.”

  I catch my breath. “If I thou
ght you were telling the truth, I would do it. But nothing you say comes out straight.”

  Erelf shrugs. “Truth is rarely what it seems. Ask yourself another question: what are you going to do with Mikelo? And another: what do you mean to do with Cassis? Will it be what Arsenault wants you to do? I’ll tell you another story about Cassis and Arsenault if you like, about the entertainments Cassis holds and Arsenault’s role in them… Cassis is jealous, Kyrra, and more so now. He might have dozens of bastards, but he hasn’t. In the summer, he’ll be casting off his wife, and whom will he marry? Do you think it will be Driese di Caprine? Do you really think so, Kyrra?”

  I don’t think so, but I trust nothing Erelf says. “What entertainments?” I ask, and it occurs to me that Erelf said more so now, and that means… “Cassis and Geoffre know who Arsenault is? And they still employ him?”

  I feel sick. Like I’m lost in a snowstorm, different truths swirling around me, blinding me. It all seems to be true, but maybe none of it is. Or only some of it. I grasp for something solid only to find that it all melts in my hand. If this was a game of indij, I’d be lost by now, penniless.

  I’ve never played any game so badly.

  “What does Geoffre want Arsenault to do for him?” I ask.

  “Down to asking me questions, are you? Perhaps you should ask, What does Geoffre want Mikelo to do? Perhaps you should ask yourself, What am I going to do now?” He chuckles. “This battle is too complicated for you, little bird. You’ve alighted in the middle of the field, and now you’re caught, about to be trampled by the hooves of a thousand horses.”

  I know he’s a god but I can’t help saying, “If you see truth from all sides, how did you let Arsenault slip past you? He must have bested you, for you to hate him so much. And he’s done it again, hasn’t he? Slipped right through your hands. Mikelo did that. Did you not see Mikelo coming, either?”

  I push myself up off the cot and stand on my own feet, with my dented arm naked in the moonlight glinting like a sword blade.

  He takes a step backward—a slight step, no more than a shift of his heel.

  “Do you really deal in truth, Erelf, or is it only lies when it comes to yourself? What is the truth about you?”

  He pales in anger. Then he leans down so that I fall under the shadow of that damn black hat that looks so much like the ones that gavaros used to wear…the one that makes him look so much more like Arsenault.

  “Look to yourself first,” he says. “What are you going to do now, with the knowledge that you’ve stolen a man whose magic Geoffre di Prinze has shaped to do his bidding? That whatever you do to Cassis will be the wrong thing? That no matter what you might tell yourself, with any action you might have taken, you gave Arsenault up to death? Whether it’s the death of the body or of the mind, it makes no difference, because you are responsible for both of those. Ask Arsenault about those entertainments. Dig in those holes in his brain and see what you find at the bottom. See if you can find Geoffre there, and then ask yourself again, What am I going to do about it?”

  He straightens up, tips his hat, and smiles. I don’t like that smile at all.

  “And think about what I said, too, about a trade.”

  He holds his hands up and all his ravens lift into the darkness until they blur together, a blackness rushing into his palms.

  Then the darkness swallows him, too, and all that is left is a shimmer in the air.

  I eat in the darkness while everyone sleeps, but the cold, hard sausage tastes foul to me, the peppers in it too dull, the meat nearly rancid. I don’t know if it's because the sausage is bad or if my taste for food has fled with my courage.

  I fumble about the shelves for the unbottled wine. My metal fingers thump on the wooden keg in the corner, and I can’t seem to close them on the tap. My metal arm is curiously without feeling this morning.

  Dirt crunches, then Mikelo reaches around me to push the tap down. “Here,” he says softly. Wine splashes into my wooden cup, sloshing onto my hand, the front of my dress.

  I’ve forgotten I’m wearing a dress. I suddenly want, very badly, to bathe and change. I want my trousers, clothes familiar and brave.

  I push the tap handle back up myself. “I need to talk to you.” The darkness out the windows is graying. I can almost see him, but I feel and hear the way he steps backward more than anything.

  “About what?” he asks.

  “Mikelo.”

  Silence for a moment.

  “I hardly know who to keep secrets from anymore.”

  “I suffer from the same affliction. Is there a cistern outside? Anywhere we can get water?”

  Mikelo nods. “Meli said so, last night. You were—”

  I don’t want to be reminded of how I was. I wave his words away.

  “Where is it?”

  “In the yard, by the far wall.” He hesitates. “I’ll come with you.”

  “You won’t,” I say. “You’ll stay here with Arsenault. Do you think I trust that boy and his sister?”

  “Do you trust me?” Mikelo says softly.

  What would be trusting him more—to have him sit with Arsenault or to send him up to get water alone, to give him the chance to escape?

  “I trust you with Arsenault,” I say.

  “What are you going to do about Silva?”

  “I don’t know. The smart thing to do would be to kill both of them as soon as Arsenault can move. I don’t like relying on either one.”

  “But…in cold blood…”

  “Tender heart, Mikelo.” I sigh. “Sit beside Arsenault. Make sure they stay in the basement. I’ll be back in a moment with some water.”

  “Can you carry it? It looked like something was wrong with your arm.”

  “I’m just going to go up by myself. Where are the buckets?”

  “Here,” he says, and hands me one.

  I take it and head up the stairs. The wood floor creaks beneath me though I try to be quiet, but the house seems to be uninhabited. I push open the door and walk out into the night.

  The sky looks like a pierced piece of silk fabric, the last few stars still visible against the midnight blue to the west. In the east, layers of cloud stack, bright bloody red.

  A sanval morning. The storm will move in by nightfall. I wonder how badly the ceiling will leak when the winds howl and the rain pours down.

  At least we’ll have more water. The cistern, a thick stone cylinder that sits on the undamaged side of the house, half-hidden by clumps of thistle and overgrown bougainvillea, is low. A stone pipe runs down from the gutters of the house to sluice rainwater from the roof into it.

  I fill the bucket and wash my face and my left hand. Smears of dried blood have left black spots on the gray wool of my dress. I dip the end of my skirt in the water and scrub at them. But blood stains. I’ll never be able to rub them out.

  Sun-yellow forsythia bushes line the path. As I walk slowly by carrying the bucket, their fronds brush the top of my head and drop petals in my hair. The flagstones are littered with yellow, nearly gray in this early light. Blue plumbago creeps in the shadows of the forsythia, and daffodils sweep into the turns in the walk. Tall favas grow jammed against the house wall, already dangling tiny, speckled pods.

  Life continues as it always does, amid the ruins.

  What have I accomplished by going out to get the water myself? Probably nothing. I go back into the house, back down the dark staircase, back into a place that’s almost like night.

  “I don’t know how they live here,” Mikelo whispers to me when I come back. “It’s so dark.”

  “They sleep in the daytime,” I tell him. “They’re awake all night. Their mistress should have given them permanent rooms.”

  “Why would anyone choose to live here instead?”

  I shrug. “To get away, maybe. To feel like someone else for a while.”

  Mikelo sits on the floor beside Arsenault, leaning against the wall, his long arms draped across his knees. “Because of their job.”


  “They need to eat,” I say as I kneel beside Arsenault, who shudders in his sleep. I use my knife to cut off a piece of skirt for a rag, then dip the rag in the water and lay it on Arsenault’s forehead. Water streams down his temples. “But they don’t want to be defined by that role.”

  “Perhaps I can relate. I needed to eat too. So did my mother.”

  “That’s right; you’re a bastard, aren’t you?”

  Mikelo winces. “It’s a harsh word. But I suppose in some ways, it’s not so different than being a refugee lucky enough to find a wealthy patron.”

  He’s quiet for moment, watching as I swab Arsenault’s hot forehead with the wet rag.

  Then he goes on. “When I was a young boy, my mother lived with a merchant who rode the caravans. He was a man of no particular House…not exactly kinless, you understand, but his origins were in some question. My earliest memory is of sitting on his saddle, clutching the pommel as we swayed in a line, heading a train of donkeys down a rutted, narrow road. I remember the way the dust swirled around us. And for some reason I remember his hands—he had fine black hairs on his hands that curled over his knuckles. But I don’t remember his face well. Just his big black beard.

  “My mother lived with a number of men over the years. She never made me call any of the men father. None of them looked anything like me anyway. To be fair, my mother looked nothing like me either—she had long dark hair and dark eyes. I always thought she was beautiful, but then, she was my mother."

  The ghost of a smile touches his lips, then disappears as he continues his story.

  “This merchant was as close to a father as any I’ve ever had. That’s why the memory is one of my fondest—just sitting in the saddle with him while he pointed out the different birds and plants along the way. By the time we reached Dakkar, my memories are much more vivid. It took us two years. We lost much of the caravan to raids and fevers. The merchant himself died, but my mother found another to take her in, one who rode further to the front of the line. He was cold, but he had a lot of money, and when we got to Dakkar, he had even more because he was one of the men who traded with the B’ara for guns—just arquebus and not many of them, but somehow the networks managed to smuggle them north.”