Fortune's Fool (Eterean Empire Book 1)

by Angela Boord

  “It doesn’t sound so unfamiliar,” I said. “We have volcanos and hot springs, and you said yourself your cliffs were like Iffria.”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “But then again, everything was different. The food, the people, the grass...”

  “Do you miss it?” I asked.

  It took him a long time to answer.

  “It’s the innocence I miss most. The feeling that the world would just keep going on like usual. I remember an afternoon…” He shifted beneath me, pulling me in closer to him, but looking up at the stars at the same time. “We packed a picnic into a basket and took the boys and Pippa out into the grass for an outing. By that time, there were signs that everything was crashing down. But I was blind to it. I was so bent on the knowledge I was pursuing that I barely saw the boys or Pippa or Sella, even when I was in the same room with them. Then one summer day, Sella came into my workshop and thumped a picnic basket down on my workbench in front of me. I was elbow-deep in a project, probably covered in grime, but she didn’t let that stop her.

  “We’re going on a picnic, she said. In the grass. You are coming.”

  He smiled. “I didn’t realize at first that I’d been given an order. At first, I tried to get out of it. But she just stood there with the blood running high on her cheeks and her hands on her hips. For some reason, it reminded me of when we were much younger and I used to watch her from the boys’ practice yard—trying to pretend I wasn’t.” That heavy sigh returned. “It was only then that I realized how little like herself she’d seemed lately. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard her laugh.”

  It made me uncomfortable, hearing him talk about his wife in this way. But at the same time…I wanted to hear more. I knew he didn’t talk about her to anyone else, and being given this story felt like being handed a gift that was both precious and rare.

  “I took her orders. I went out into the garden to collect the children. The boys were having some game that involved a great deal of mud and complaining. Pippa was about two then, but already trying to join her brothers in everything. When I announced that we would be going on a picnic, the complaining stopped instantly. The boys ran about cheering, and Pippa had no idea what a picnic was but leapt into my arms anyway. She was covered in mud.” I felt his low, quiet laughter as a rumble in his chest. “Which meant I was too, instantly.

  “We walked up into the hills and ate cardamom buns and picked blueberries. Sella showed the boys how to make daisy crowns. I made Pippa one and she crowned me with it. I wore it all that afternoon and into town that evening. Pippa sat on my shoulder, and my two boys ran in front of me, whacking at each other with swords of twisted grass. Sella walked next to me. Laughing. I loved to hear her laugh. It didn’t come easy to her, so when she did…”

  He tightened his arm around me and tilted his face down against my hair.

  “When we got to the house, my brother was waiting for us. He poked fun at me for wearing the crown. He wasn’t married. He had no children. I ignored him. I put the crown on a windowsill to dry, thinking if I could just hang on to that afternoon…”

  I raised my head briefly. “But you have, haven’t you? The memory remains.”

  He let out a long, gusty breath. “Tainted by everything that happened after. Tell me your memories aren’t the same.”

  I couldn’t. And could I say that I would wish him back there, among the grass and the daisies with his family?

  I couldn’t say that, either.

  “What happened to the crown?” I asked. “Do you know?”

  “I broke it apart on the windowsill before I ran. I stuffed the flowers in my pockets. That was all I had to my name for a long time—just my cloak, my sword, and the flowers my daughter gave me. They crumbled, but I couldn’t let them go. So, I Fixed them. They’re made of gold now, but it’s hard to look at them without thinking of what a great failure I have been.”

  I went still, remembering the night I’d stitched his leg, the golden daisies I’d found in the bottom of his chest.

  His daughter’s daisies.

  “I thought I would only be sacrificing myself,” he said, looking back up at the night. “But instead, I sacrificed everything.”

  For the next few weeks, the estate was a buzz of excitement and tension. Servants and serfs worked round the clock, putting in the work with an expectation of enjoying the reward—celebration out from under the eye of the Householder. But I could tell that the gavaros had other things on their mind, and sometimes, as I walked across the courtyard, I heard Arsenault’s voice raised in the practice yard: “Get those shields up and pikes at ready! Quit making yourselves targets!”

  As the day approached, I grew increasingly more glum, thinking on the promise I had made to Arsenault and to my father. I didn’t see how I could honor such a promise, if it came to war, and yet I had given my word. It was like a knife driven into my flesh: no matter which way I twisted, it cut me.

  The nights after the first, Arsenault himself came to the combing house and waited in the shadows just beyond the building, practice swords in his hand and his own at his side. We went together to the grotto, to take up arms against each other while the armless centurion looked on. And then with that impassive stone gaze behind us, we flung our weapons down into the dirt and took each other there on the ground. I still can’t smell the scent of crushed grass without thinking of those nights and his sweaty, leaf-speckled skin against my own.

  One night, Arsenault came to me with news.

  My parents meant to show the Prinze that I had been debased, that they had conformed to the letter of the law. So, on the day of the wedding, I would be part of a drama staged just for Geoffre di Prinze.

  “You’ll be out back of the kitchens, carrying a platter,” Arsenault said as he paced along the stone wall in the little grotto. I had done my sword practice and earned a huge purple knot on my forearm for my lack of attention, though Arsenault had pulled the blow. I’d barely slept since moving back to the combing house. My mind was a clock, marking the time left until the wedding.

  I sat on the wall, wanting to rub my left forearm. As a sort of stopgap measure, I rested my arm carefully in my lap as I listened to Arsenault.

  “Someone will come into the kitchens to give you a signal, to tell you when to carry out the platter, because you must be within sight of the Prinze. When you can be sure that Geoffre is looking at you, you’ll drop the platter—or let the food slide off, whatever you like—and then another serf will come up behind you and clout you on the head for your stupidity.”

  He’d reached the point in his pacing when he was closest to me. I could tell he didn’t like the idea. Neither did I.

  “And am I to cringe and gather the bread out of the dirt? Perhaps kiss his toes in the bargain?” Though my arm throbbed, I couldn’t remain still at such news, so I scrabbled a loose stone out of the wall and hurled it into the spring. It plopped and sank, invisible in the darkness.

  Arsenault scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I can’t reason with your father, Kyrra. He still thinks the best course is to appease Geoffre. I don’t think he accepts that Geoffre wants all his land, even after all the spying I’ve done for him.”

  “My father lives by an old code,” I said bitterly, propping my head up on my fist. The action made me wince, but I felt as if I must do something with my good arm, and nothing felt right. “He refuses to believe that everyone doesn’t abide by its rules.”

  Arsenault leaned on the wall beside me. In the moonlight, the light streak in his hair stood out stark against the black, but I couldn’t read the expression in his eyes. “It will be his downfall.”

  I bit my lip and picked up another stone and turned it over in my hands. It glinted in the dim silver light, veined with quartz. I had never realized how much like quartz my father was. Brittle and crystalline, admired for its color…but not a stone to make buildings. In the end, quartz had little use.

  I pitched it into the water as hard as I could.
/>   “Kyrra,” Arsenault said. “We’ll find another way. Your father is wrong to have you humiliated like that.”

  I raised my head. “Do you think I worry about being clouted for the sake of my family?”

  “No,” Arsenault said. “But the only thing having you grovel in the dirt is going to save is Pallo d’Aliente’s pride. It won’t do more than that.”

  I tried to work up a sense of outrage. I wanted to tell Arsenault that it was untrue, that my father loved me more than to use me to uphold some doomed code of honor maybe he only half-believed. But my name didn’t even belong to me anymore. So, what purpose would I serve beyond that of a scapegoat for spilling the bread?

  I hardly knew what I felt.

  “Do I have any choice at all?” I asked Arsenault.

  He stared at me, silent. I held his gaze. Then that muscle stood out rigid in his jaw, and he turned toward the statue that stood guard over us.

  “I didn’t think so,” I whispered.

  We were quiet for a time. I listened to the gurgle of the spring and the shifting whisper of the wind in the beeches. A branch fell to the earth somewhere, and we both looked up, watched, waited. No one came. It was only the wind.

  “You’ll go soon,” Arsenault said.

  “I want to stay.”

  “I know.”

  “Does Isia’s magic still work within me?” I asked.

  His warrior’s mask crumbled, just for a moment, and let me see the man inside.

  I turned away from that, to stare at the lumpy, severed outline of the stone statue. Then I felt his magic.

  It was like the touch of his hand: strong, sure, a little bit rough, but not in a bad way. It made me shiver, wanting him to touch me. But he just watched me, the shadows etching his face until it became like the statue’s, gaunt and worn.

  “You know that it does,” he said, his voice pitched low.

  I reached out for his shoulder. “Then there’s no possibility of me passing on my blood. There’s no reason for me to leave—”

  “That isn’t the only reason for you to go,” he said in a low, intense voice, pulling me down off the wall so I stood in front of him. “You have a magic of your own. You know that. If you stay here, Geoffre will want it. And his patron will want it too.”

  “His patron?” I laughed. “Since when does the most powerful man in Liera need a patron?”

  Arsenault looked at me askance. “Everyone has some kind of patron.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “You know. Why do you think he changes all the statues?”

  Erelf. Goosebumps ran over my arms with the next breath of wind, and I shivered. “Geoffre dedicates himself to—”

  Arsenault covered my words with his hand and pressed me close to him. His palm tasted and smelled like singed metal. “Shh,” he said. “Don’t say it. Don’t think it. It’s enough that you know.”

  He took his hand away. “But what does that have to do with me?” I asked. “Is it because of you?”

  He flinched. “No. Not only because of me, but if you were to stay... Kyrra, I’ve led you into deep-enough waters already.”

  “I’d rather die with you than live knowing you’re dead.”

  A peculiar expression passed over his face, as if he wanted to tell me something but couldn’t. He moistened his lips, then tightened his hands on my arms. “If I live, I’ll find you. You have to believe that. And if I haven’t found you and it’s safe…I hope you’ll look for me. But my dying—that’s not enough reason for your death. Dying is easy. It’s living that’s hard.”

  “Arsenault, my existence has been dishonorable enough.”

  “You could at least do a dead man the favor of allowing him to think you’re alive. If you fight with your father, you’re doomed. If you go elsewhere...there’s a chance you’ll live, and your House name and your magic will stay alive too. I meant what I said to your father; there’s a man in Vençal I want you to see, and I can put you on a boat or send you overland. He’ll be able to guide you and answer any questions you might have and see you employed, too. And then”—he paused—“and then you’ll be alive to seek revenge in the end, won’t you? If you die, who will seek vengeance?”

  He watched me for a reaction. I narrowed my eyes at him. “You don’t mean that. You’re only trying to get me to agree with you.”

  He let all his breath out in a rush. “Gods, Kyrra—isn’t it enough to know that I can’t bear the thought of your death?”

  I tilted my head so I could look him in the eye. “And isn’t it enough to know that I can’t bear the thought of yours?”

  He stopped and stared at me. In his eyes, there were secrets waiting to be read…wanting me to read them. Magic swirled around us. But before I could say anything—before I could grab on to it and See what it wanted to show me—he tore himself away, walked into the clearing, and picked up his sword.

  “Arsenault!” I called. “Arsenault, wait!”

  As he walked into the brush, I ran after him. I bent and grabbed the hilt of my own sword from the ground as I ran. “Do you think it all goes one way?” I shouted. “You can’t treat me like this! Don’t I deserve some answers?”

  I stepped on a rock. Its point dug into the soft flesh of my bare foot, and I fell heavily into a tree, wrapping my left arm around it to keep from falling. I cursed as Arsenault’s back disappeared into the trees.

  “Arsenault!” I yelled after him. “ARSENAULT!”

  But he just kept walking. I cried out, in wordless pain and frustration, and hurled my sword after him as far as I could.

  But it was a paltry throw and, like our words, resolved nothing.

  My lack of sleep began to show.

  Combing stopped a few days before the wedding, and the combergirls were given linen napkins to embroider with the initials of my father and Claudia d’Imisi. Their long nails sometimes made it difficult for them to grip the needle and, sometimes, to see what they were doing. The task of helping them fell to me.

  Most of the mistakes the girls made were honest ones, and I didn’t mind picking up their dropped needles. But Ilena sought only to humiliate me.

  “Hand the needle to me right this time, Kyrra. How do you expect me to hold on to it when you give it to me that way? Can’t you do anything properly?”

  It was the sixth time she’d dropped the needle while working on the same napkin. Mistress Levin wasn’t around and most of the girls were off collecting their bread for the midday meal. Ilena stared at me, her black eyes oily with hate, the napkin resting hardly stitched in her lap. She settled her hands atop it and her fingernails clacked together.

  I gritted my teeth. “You’re doing this on purpose.”

  I’d spoken quietly, but the remaining girls in the room stopped their stitching and looked up at us. Ilena tightened her hands on the napkin and leaned toward me. “Pick up my needle. Now.”

  I thought about picking up the damned needle and ramming it straight through her palm.

  Instead, I grabbed her by the laces of her bodice and yanked her forward to the edge of her chair. I noted with satisfaction the way her face turned a pasty beige. But she still glared at me, not backing down.

  The few girls around us gasped. Chairs screeched, and I thought I heard the door open and running feet scuff the dirt floor. I shut it out. Nothing existed except me and Ilena, and this pent-up anger I hadn’t had an object for in a long, long time.

  “I am not going to pick up your damn needle!” I said. “You’ll get down in the dirt yourself—and tell Mistress Levin, for all I care. I won’t be treated like this!”

  Ilena’s eyes narrowed. “You’re an armless girl and a gavaro’s whore,” she whispered. “You ought to be crawling about in the dirt.”

  I wanted to hit her, but I couldn’t hit her without letting her go, so I shoved her back in the chair as hard as I could. The chair tottered with the sudden shift in weight and started to fall. Ilena’s eyes grew round with fright and she cried out, flaili
ng so that she smacked one of her hands against a small wooden table. The chair and Ilena made a great clatter, but Ilena had already started wailing, “My nails!” before she hit the floor.

  Two of her three perfectly trimmed oval nails lay sheared and white against the brown dirt floor, leaving her fingertips ragged and bloody. She kicked the chair off her legs and crawled over to her torn fingernails. She picked up the broken tips, closed them in her hand, and cradled her hand against her chest.

  “My nails are more useful than you are,” she said. Her eyes were watery with tears, and her dark hair had pulled out of her braid and floated in fuzzy mussed tresses around her face, which was smudged with dirt and already turning blue-green where one pole of the chair had caught her in the cheek. “It should be you lying in the dirt,” she said. “But you still think you’re the Householder’s daughter. You and Arsenault, running off Lobardin because he didn’t grub after Arsenault like a worm. It should be you in the dirt!”

  Ilena began to weep. Her tears made little black wells in the floor.

  I stood perfectly still. The anger, quick as it was, leaked out of me just as fast.

  I had nearly forgotten about Lobardin, with everything else to worry about. Would Ilena try to avenge him by striking back at me? Or Arsenault?

  I was nothing. I wished Arsenault and my father could see that. But Arsenault was my father’s captain and his spy, and Geoffre di Prinze could not be allowed to discover him there, on my father’s land.

  I wondered, briefly, if Arsenault realized just what sort of danger he might be in with Lobardin elsewhere and not under his nose as Jon had intended. Probably, he did.