Fortune's Fool (Eterean Empire Book 1)

by Angela Boord

  It would be a feast fit for a king, the gavaros said who hailed from lands where kings ruled.

  I couldn’t help thinking that it should have been my feast—a bride’s feast on her name day. Three years had passed since the severing of my arm. I had turned twenty at midsummer and I was now even older than I had thought to wed.

  I wondered what my mother was thinking as she marshaled the estate into action. I saw her sometimes, from a distance as she went back and forth to Liera, Lobardin riding as escort on the high seat of her coach next to the driver.

  One day, I was standing at the door to the barracks when I saw her coach stop. Lobardin opened the door and jumped to the ground, then offered her a hand to step down. I put my hand to my brow to shade my eyes, and Arsenault, who was overseeing some work on the roof of the barracks, saw me watching and came down from his ladder to stand next to me.

  My mother bent over to inspect the roses by the wall that I had only recently pruned, and the wind snapped her pale mauve skirts behind her. Her long, braided, white-streaked hair slipped over her shoulder and fell against the blooms she held up to her face.

  I dropped my hand in surprise. “Her hair,” I said.

  Arsenault wiped his hands on a rag. “It’s been that way for a while. The fiction of dyeing it became too great a task.”

  “She’s letting Lobardin guard her.”

  Arsenault looked troubled and tucked the rag into his belt. “This trip isn’t one that’s been planned,” he said, and walked away from me down the path toward her, sword swinging at his side.

  I wondered if I should go down to greet her too, if three years had been enough time—if perhaps she might welcome it, with this marriage looming over us. Then again, perhaps the marriage meant she wouldn’t want to see me at all. In the end, I remained where I was and watched as Arsenault approached her, bowing slightly.

  I couldn’t hear their words from where I stood. But as it turned out, I didn’t need to.

  Instead, she came to me.

  When she started up the path, my heart began to pound. Arsenault flanked her on one side, supporting her with his arm, and Lobardin flanked her other, keeping his face carefully polite, though as he got closer, I could see the fury in his eyes.

  It took me aback to see him display that much emotion. I looked to Arsenault to see if he, too, had gauged the depth of Lobardin’s resentment toward him, but he wore his warrior’s face—blank, neutral.

  Sometimes, he seemed more like a statue than a man.

  “Kyrra,” my mother said.

  Her voice took me by surprise, and I was startled into looking straight at her.

  She looked much older than she had three years earlier. It wasn’t only the white hair that had nearly conquered the blond. It was the weight she’d gained that left her cheeks plump and jowly with deep furrows under her eyes. Her stays helped trim her waist, but the flesh on her arms sagged.

  She looked like a different woman, except for the hard blue-gray eyes I remembered.

  “Kyrra,” she said again, not smiling. “I know it’s you, even in those clothes.”

  I moved my stump somewhat behind my back and finally found the presence of mind to nod. “Mother.”

  “Lobardin tells me you’ve become quite comfortable in the barracks.”

  Lobardin put on a smug look that mostly didn’t infiltrate his eyes. Arsenault looked a little troubled, but nothing more broke his composure.

  “The men are kind to me,” I said.

  The words made me cringe inside, the more so when my mother’s brows lifted and so did Lobardin’s.

  But what else was I supposed to say? If I had known she wanted to speak to me, I might have donned a mail shirt and come out armed with Arsenault’s sword.

  As it was, my fingers itched for the hilt of my knife, for security.

  “The men are kind to you,” my mother repeated. She looked me over for a moment, then pursed her lips. “And what duties do they have you perform?”

  I flushed. “I perform the same duties as any servant in the barracks. I’m comfortable here.”

  Her eyes softened somewhat. “You look as if you might be. You were ever a challenge, Kyrra.”

  I laid my hand on my side, where my knife hid inside my trousers. It went there of its own accord, but it was only in my mother’s presence that I became aware of the small habits I’d picked up. I rocked back on my heels when I did it, just like a gavaro settling himself for battle.

  “I’m no longer your daughter,” I said. “Surely, that has made me less challenging.”

  The words just came out of my mouth. But it was like watching a knife blade pass over someone’s arm: the cut opened first, and then the blood welled up.

  My mother laughed.

  “You might think so, wouldn’t you? Just dash you away with a swipe of the pen, and my life would be easier? But do you truly see how easy my life has become?”

  Gods. I hadn’t spoken to my mother in three years; I didn’t want our conversation to begin where it had left off the day I put on my serf brown and went with the summoners to have my arm severed. So, I did what any gavaro would do when faced with an onslaught he didn’t want to meet.

  I retreated.

  “This battle doesn’t need to be fought here,” I said, trying to make my voice soft. “I know the straits you’re in.”

  She laughed again, more bitterly this time. “You can’t begin to know what place I’m in, Kyrra.”

  “Then why did you come to see me? Only to disapprove of my clothing and the place where I sleep? Arsenault must have told you about me. Or has Papa kept his designs from you, too? Is that what this is about?”

  She went pale, and I felt sick. I wanted to look at Arsenault, to see how he had reacted, but I couldn’t. I had to look at my mother. “You don’t know, Kyrra,” she said again, viciously. “You’ve spent three years down here on your own, outside of the Circles. The plotting that has gone on behind this wedding would astonish you. Your father wanted me to let you know that you will be under the eye of all, no matter that you no longer bear the name Aliente. To warn you.”

  Oh, blessed gods, Mother, please not in front of Lobardin.

  My alarm must have shown, because she closed her mouth and turned to Arsenault. “You will bring her to the house this evening. Make sure she’s dressed appropriately.” Then she turned to Lobardin. “Help me back,” she said, and he inclined his head to her while looking sideways at me.

  Arsenault said, “Go easy on the way home, Messera.”

  She paused for a moment but didn’t turn around. “I will ride as I see fit.”

  Lobardin held out his arm to her, and she took it and turned her back on me. As they picked their way down the path, my eyes began to burn. Accidentally, I lifted my stump to wipe the burning away.

  “What does she want me to do?” I said as I hurriedly swiped my eyes with my left hand. “What is appropriate dress? I don’t belong in that house.”

  Arsenault sighed. “No,” he said. “You don’t. Come on, Kyrra.”

  I looked up, my vision blurring while I willed myself not to weep. I would not declare that kind of surrender, not while Arsenault was standing right in front of me.

  “Why?” I said. “Will you dress me like a doll and deposit me back in my mother’s arms for the evening? Surely, it won’t take that long for me to muss my hair and put on a skirt.”

  “Your mother’s warning is well heeded, that’s all.”

  “Well heeded?” I watched Lobardin help her into her coach. “Lobardin heard it. If he still fights for the Prinze, it won’t matter where I am or what I do—they’ll find me out, though I don’t know what else I can do that will hurt my House.” I looked up at Arsenault. “Is there anything else?”

  He shrugged, but he looked troubled. “Just come with me, Kyrra. The gods help those who help themselves.”

  With that, he walked inside, and I knew it was because of the workers on the roof. But I couldn’t help wond
ering, knowing something of his relationship with gods, which gods would be the ones to help us.

  He led me through the barracks, stopping only to pick up a cloth-wrapped bundle from the chest in our room. Then we were out the back door, avoiding the throngs of servants washing and beating linens, and gavaros cleaning their own uniforms, shining their boots and their swords. Both groups probably wondered why I wasn’t with them, but Arsenault’s presence was enough to make them shut their mouths.

  Had I suggested to my mother that I made my own way in the barracks? It wasn’t mine. My way lay always in Arsenault’s wake. I’m sure she’d seen that.

  I felt like weeping again.

  Arsenault didn’t stop until we came to our little grotto. The armless statue stood in the spray from the spring, watching me blandly out of its pockmarked face.

  I turned to Arsenault. “Why are we here?”

  In response, he set the bundle down on the wall and unrolled it.

  It was a sword. It was nothing as fine as his sword but still well made. The blade was short and plain, and the hilt wrapped in supple brown leather. I would be able to wield it one-handed; I saw that in an instant.

  “It’s mine?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I had it made for you some time ago.”

  “And you’ve just given it to me now? What part of my mother’s warning are you heeding by giving me a sword?”

  I stepped forward and ran my finger down the flat of its blade. There were no etchings as there were on Arsenault’s blade. Just cold, smooth metal.

  “I don’t understand why I matter to the Houses anymore,” I said.

  “The Prinze will be here. That’s why your mother was warning you.”

  “It didn’t sound like a warning. It sounded more as if she wanted me to step back into my place.”

  Arsenault flipped the sword around, offering it to me hilt-first. “That might be where your mother feels you’re safest.”

  I clenched my left hand into a fist. “What right has she—”

  “Take the sword.”

  I closed my fingers around the hilt reflexively as he put it in my hand. “You want to spar? Now? This sword is edged.”

  “We’ll run through the forms so you can see how it behaves. It’s different than a blunt.”

  If I had ever had an edge in a battle with my mother, it had long since dulled. I hefted the sword in my left hand. “It’s a risk to have me come to the house. If my mother wants us to look proper.”

  “Trim up your stance.” He pushed my shoulder back with one hand, my hip sideways with the other, then tapped the back of my knee with his foot. I bent it in response.

  “Why are you giving me this sword now?”

  He moved away from me. “Do you have to ask?”

  Is war so close? I wanted to say. But I didn’t.

  He knew, and I knew, and my mother knew. I imagine Lobardin knew as well, and it frightened me to have left him alone with my mother in that coach.

  “You let Lobardin go,” I said.

  “Bend your elbow,” he told me.

  I bent my elbow. “Is he working for the Prinze?”

  “Recite the runes.”

  “Dammit, Arsenault!” I let the sword drop and came out of my stance. “Will you answer my questions or not?”

  He pulled his sword. It sang out of its scabbard and flashed in the sunlight. “I said,” he replied, in a calm, unshakable voice, “recite the runes.”

  I knew them in my muscles now, but I could also see them in my head as I had learned to write them, a smudged row of black spikes, intertwined.

  “Efsag, irdmar, jorn,” I began in frustration, reciting the first three of twelve. “But I don’t see—”

  He came at me. It was quick and unexpected, the fluid movement of a man to whom such movements were embedded in the flesh.

  I barely got my sword in front of his. The blades caught and rang with the blow.

  “Arsenault!” I shouted.

  “Come on, Kyrra,” he said to me over the blades. “Follow the runes. Don’t think.”

  Then he brought his sword down, and I had no choice but to follow him.

  If I say it was like a dance, I will sound tawdry; every poet describes swordplay thus. Swordplay is not like a dance. You move not with your partner but instead to overpower him. But blood was not our end, so perhaps our swordplay was like a dance—a dance born of anger, not love.

  The two have ever been entwined for me, anyway. Angry at my mother, I spent it on Arsenault, and he was there to meet me. I was never under any illusion that he didn’t know exactly what he was doing, giving me the sword on that day.

  He finally knocked me in the dirt. When I hit the ground, it was like waking up. I noticed the bruises and scratches that marred my skin, and the sweat that dripped from my forehead into my eyes. Arsenault stood above me, grinning, breathing hard, sweat dampening his brow as well.

  I sat there, aching for a moment, trying to remember where I was.

  Then I laughed. “By all the gods, Arsenault, my mother said I was to look appropriate.”

  His grin caught a twist of wryness. “This isn't appropriate for you?”

  He sheathed his sword, then put out a hand and helped me up. I hurt all over.

  It was a glorious feeling.

  Then I saw the bruises on my arms and ended up staring at my stump.

  “Less than a month,” I said.

  Arsenault was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You’re as ready as many gavaros I’ve trained. More than some. Some of them only come in with fencing lessons.”

  And it hit me, what my mother’s invitation meant. What Arsenault’s gift of a sword meant. I had known it, but I hadn’t understood. Now comprehension pierced my heart.

  “Less than a month,” I said. “You think the Prinze will attack in less than a month.”

  He put a hand on my left shoulder and then slowly, mindful of his promise, also on my right. “I wish you would go. There's no reason for you to stay here.”

  “No reason?” I said. “How can you say there is no reason?”

  And then I did weep. Finally, viciously.

  I let the sword drop to the ground and he held me against his chest. For a long time.

  My parents wouldn’t see me in daylight. As the day progressed, my bruises grew sorer and sorer, until by evening, my left arm was so stiff, I could barely move it without wincing. But the waiting was far worse.

  Arsenault and I attended our own chores in the early afternoon. I went back to our room for the sontana nap, but Arsenault didn’t meet me there, and I spent most of the time pacing, drinking his brandy, and sweating, wondering what I ought to wear to the villa. But finally, the drink and the heat put me to sleep.

  I awoke with an aching head that didn’t make the evening any easier. I put off the decision of my appropriateness until after I’d bathed and washed my hair. I came back to the room in the purple twilight to find Arsenault waiting for me.

  He sat at his worktable, dressed in doeskin trousers the color of coffee with cream. His hair gleamed black and wet and hung loose over his shoulders. The armband of burgundy Aliente silk shone in the lights from the candles dotting his table. The candles illuminated the lumps of metal scattered on the tabletop and made them glow, too.

  He held an ingot of that odd whitish metal he’d bought in Liera. It looked different in the candlelight, as if it had been shaped. He closed his fingers on it and stood up.

  “Are they having us to dinner?” I asked.

  A faint trace of amusement flickered in his gray eyes. “Have you decided to wear your robes, Eterean-style?”

  I’d snuck in the back door still wearing my towel. Now I stared at my blue guarnello with the pink roses on the bodice and then at my trousers. The dampness from my bath turned to sweat while I stood there, and the shutters rattled with a hot wind that brought no relief.

  “You’re not donning armor, Kyrra.”

  “Would that I could,” I m
urmured.

  He was no help at all. But I had determined not to ask him for his advice in this matter. I made my own decision.

  I put on the trousers. I had a white linen shirt to wear with them, but no armband.

  “Do you want me to braid your hair?” Arsenault said when I was finished dressing.

  Braiding my own hair was still the only thing I hadn’t learned to do. With his help, I usually kept my hair cut level with my chin, but when he was gone for so long, I hadn’t asked anyone else to do it, and now I had enough for a short, gathered braid.

  I shook my head. I would wear my hair loose in the manner of men attending fashionable dinners, the way he did.

  He said nothing but smiled, running his hand through my curls as he bent to kiss me. Then he belted on his own sword, and we went together to the big house, he with his sword on the outside, me with my knife hidden inside my trousers, in the sheath against my hip.

  I felt as if I were marching to war.

  A male servant whom I didn’t recognize met us at the door. My appearance seemed to take him by surprise; he stared at me for a moment, then bowed hastily and showed us inside.

  “Bona sorro. The Householder and his wife are waiting for you upstairs in the drawing room. If you’ll follow me…”

  He turned and began walking down the uncarpeted tile hallway. Arsenault made to follow him, but I couldn’t help staring at the floor.

  “Where did the carpets go?” I asked.

  The servant glanced at us nervously. “They’ve all been sold.”

  “Sold?” My eyebrows arched. “These carpets were woven by Salafin himself.”

  Arsenault put his hand on my shoulder and leaned down to speak in my ear. “Many things have changed. Just go.”