Fortune's Fool (Eterean Empire Book 1)

by Angela Boord

  I stretch my metal fingers, thinking that maybe I can grab his shirt and unbalance him enough for me to get out from under him—just for a moment.

  And then, before I can move, he lets me go and rolls off the bed. His boots sink into the carpet with hardly a sound.

  I lie frozen on my back on the bed.

  “Here,” he says hoarsely, head half-turned. “If you want to know about Arsenault.”

  My head moves of its own accord, finally, to look at him. He yanks open the drawer of my nightstand and throws something heavy on the end of the bed. I flinch and draw up my legs. But he’s already walking through the sitting room to the door. The door creaks when he opens it, and he lets it slam behind him. The sound echoes, the way everything echoes in my mind.

  I bring my knees to my chest to meet my bound hands. I ball my hands into fists beneath my chin and start to shake. My clothes all smell like Lobardin.

  I lie on the bed for a long time. Maybe the rest of the night. But when I’m finally able to unbend and sit up, I see what Lobardin gave me.

  It’s Arsenault’s book.

  Over the course of the three years I knew him, Arsenault filled more than one book with writings and sketches. The books he preferred were sturdy, leather-bound volumes like this one, square and small enough to slide into a pack or a pocket but large enough to draw a map that could be read without a magnifying lens. The pages were rough, so they would take his metal stylus, and always coated with the dust he ground from burnt bones or sometimes marble if he could get it.

  This book doesn’t have the look of one of his finished volumes, which all developed thick, wavy edges. Instead, it looks as if he tried to destroy it. Black burns stretch in fingers on the covers, and one charred corner looks as if something took a bite out of it. When I open it, gray flakes of ash crumble onto the bedspread along with the puff of bone dust I expect.

  The pages aren’t empty. They’re full of sketches. Women, children, men. Some of them I recognize—a brief glimpse of Margarithe just above where the book has been burned, Jon standing in a Dakkaran shirt behind an enormous heart-shaped leaf—and some of them I don’t. A man who shares the shape of Arsenault’s brows and nose, who could be his brother. Two solemn-looking boys with dark hair, and a young girl with a mane of wild curls and a daisy crown on her head. A woman turns up over and over, with a sweep of hair hiding half her face and a mysterious smile.

  And me. I’m there too.

  For a moment, I think maybe Geoffre took the book from him before Kafrin and Cassis got it that way. But as I work to turn the pages with my bound hands, I realize that this is a new book.

  Not all the sketches and writing are done in the strong, confident hand I remember. Instead, their lines skew and fall off the page, go crooked and unconnected at odd moments. Brown spills spatter across the pages and buckle the paper, and I remember he said he’d decided to drink himself to death. A few of the sketches are actually done in chalk or ink. And then he’s drawn me mostly in poses where you can’t see my face.

  Me, sitting against the stone wall with the armless statue above me. Me with my head down and my hair in my face, stitching his shirt. Me, standing over Etti, tickling the baby’s toes.

  It’s too hard to keep looking at these pictures. Even working from memory and half-drunk, Arsenault had a talent for catching gesture and personality. I wonder if his Sight ever subsides or if it’s simply the way he sees the world.

  But why didn’t he hide these sketches with a glamour? Why did he try to burn them? Was it too hard? Were they too painful?

  I have to lie down and keep the book up against my face to turn each page. I smudge Etti’s baby girl and wince. But then I’m looking at a page full of his writing, the letters slanted with feeling, the silver metal point tinged with burgundy. The words begin in Eter, then switch to Vençalan and modern Eterean, a mix almost any householder could read.

  Dear Tavi,

  I know this letter won’t find you well. It’s a silly thing, to write a letter to your ghost. But I’ve had most of a bottle of rum and no one to talk to but myself, and the bums have already told me to shut up. I’ve seen you following me more than once in the last few weeks…months… I don’t know. Time’s a hopeless muddle and the liquor just makes it worse. But I know you’re there, because you’re always there. You’re the one constant in my life. The thing I can count on when everything else goes to hell.

  How many lives have I lived since you lived yours? I can’t count them, except that I feel as if many men inhabit my skin. Since last you lived, I have committed murder, adultery, betrayal. I have burned villages and executed innocent men and women, struck them down in cold blood as ordered. I have loved and deserted women, and women have loved me and I have failed them, again and again. I have done everything I saw myself doing when Calden took me up to the glacier and made me look into the ice. But every memory I have might only be a dream—or a nightmare—vague as it is, and in the end, meaningless. My only vivid recollection is of the act that set me on this road of exile.

  Your death. And Sella’s.

  I lie awake nights and wonder how I could ever have been so arrogant, so blind. So jealous. How I could have let my anger overcome every other emotion I had ever felt for you, my brother. I loved you. I loved Sella. That’s what makes it so much worse. The anger was over in a moment. But the love went on, for both of you. Only, it couldn’t rewrite that one moment when I thought I could take the place of Justice.

  Then again—I’m drunk enough, I can say this, Tavi—you always did live ahead of yourself, assuming I would pick up the slack and the blame. I’m sure it didn’t occur to you that even though I was a rotten husband and father, ignoring everyone around me as I went ever deeper after Erelf’s knowledge…I loved my wife and I wouldn’t want to share her. Maybe you thought so much of me that it never occurred to you that I could let the magic get out of hand. I know you didn’t understand Sella enough to understand that she would intervene. She trusted both of us and didn’t know how far down the path we had both gone in opposite directions, each of us chasing the magic that called to us like those monsters the Etereans talk about, the ones that sing men to death with their songs.

  I saw one once, you know, a beautiful woman with a beautiful voice who sang me right into the back of her cave. It was a painful death but sweet, too, in a way, and what I don’t understand is why I can remember that but I can’t remember who I was six moons ago before I walked out of that gorge.

  It was like being born from hell, but that’s the way it always feels.

  So, Erelf keeps me turning around. I wouldn’t join you and he never foresaw that Sella would act as she did, trying to save both of us, and now you’re both dead and I keep this godscursed ability to See and Shape, to find the metal in people’s souls. I always think I’m going to redeem myself, but in the end, I make them less than human. That’s the knowledge I gained. You would say it’s not so different than yours. I thought I would be an Artisan, a worker of miracles. But all I have become is a Smith, battering people with the hammer of my will.

  Some day, perhaps the god the Lierans call Adalus will have mercy on me and step in to end this feud his brother carries on. Then maybe I’ll be able to sink into the soil and grow back as something mortal. In every life I live, I become convinced I can change things, but it always seems to end with hardened metal and a sword. I wake out of the battlefield and can’t remember anything but you and Sella, the way you both lay there on the beach with the blood leaking out of you, and the waves spilling over you, washing it away. I remember your eyes, fading like the green sea overtaken by gray water, and Sella trying to reach out for me. Nothing is enough to redeem that act. Nothing will ever be enough.

  Now I write letters to your ghost, begging for forgiveness, knowing you shouldn’t give it, regardless. Because in the deepest hours of night, I still blame you for her death, Tavi, and I can’t forgive that. You lured her away from me and then you put her in harm’s wa
y.

  But I can’t forgive myself, either. I was the one who held the magic. I was the one who held her secret. I was the one who gave her away.

  And now I am the one who’s afraid to die. All these years and I’m still afraid of death—real death, afraid of facing you and her, afraid of meeting Erelf on his own ground.

  War isn’t so bad when you know it won’t affect you.

  Now I’m sitting here in this alley with the other casualties, those of us still walking even though we died inside a long time ago. We’ve got our territories all mapped out. I’ve got my corner and I’ll defend it against anyone who threatens it. You stay away from me, Tavi. I can’t help feeling that I lost too much, last time, and if you step over this line while I’m drinking, I’m likely to get mean. I don’t think the bums would like that. We’d have to have our own little war over the alley, and I’m tired of fighting.

  I’m tired, Tavi. Go away, and leave me alone.

  My metal fingers spasm and crinkle the pages. They crunch like dead leaves. I try to get up, and that only wrinkles them worse. I don’t know what to do, but I have to get away from this godsdamned book.

  His wife. Did he kill her or was it an accident?

  Did I ever know him at all?

  I cross my hands, palm down, in front of my chest and heave myself up without touching anything. Then I slide off the bed onto the carpet, taking deep breaths and looking up at the door, trying to think. For the moment, I push aside all the secrets I have just learned about Arsenault, things I should have heard from him, and all the questions and fears they’ve spawned within me. For the moment, I must think about the circumstances of the letter.

  Arsenault wrote it after Kafrin but before Jon found him, sitting in an alley. Maybe he was too drunk to use his glamour, and when he realized what kind of information he’d been putting in the book, he’d tried to burn it. Somehow, one of the Prinze had found it and rescued the book from the fire.

  But why bring the book here? Cassis couldn’t have known that Tonia di Sere would hire me to kill him. So, why would he have brought the book here and put it in my old room?

  The carpet’s smell makes me nauseous, so I get up and walk into my old sitting room. The combination of colors strikes me as garish, unworthy of such a high-ranking house; the purple clashes with the autumnal oranges and reds of the bedchamber. It’s as if these rooms are only a display of wealth. As if Cassis wanted to crush my memory by taunting me even in my absence.

  Maybe Cassis is trying to tell me that he knows who Arsenault is and can use him against Geoffre.

  I lean my head back in the chair and stare up at the ceiling, whose fresco has been newly refreshed. I expect to find it changed, obliterated, to reflect Prinze ownership but the fresco remains as it always has.

  Ekyra stares back at me, golden hair streaming in the wind.

  She stands barefoot on a wooden platform above a crowd of men. The artist painted her in deep blue, which is why my chambers were all varying shades of that color. Her dress ripples in the wind. You can tell it’s silk. No other fabric shimmers like that.

  In her left hand she holds a sheaf of wheat. A bag of coins hangs from her left wrist. Children play on her left side, laughing and cherubic, amid coffers from a dozen foreign ports.

  Her right side is different. Her right side is coated in shining silver plate. Her right hand holds a sword, and instead of children frolicking at her feet, there are skeletons. Dancing.

  Ekyra is Fortune. She isn’t Justice.

  But what must I now be?

  All those rumors of Prinze soldiers, all those soldiers in Karansis...and Geoffre letting me live in order to send me here... He was preparing to deal with his son in a way much more ruthless and efficient that merely disowning him. Geoffre wanted Cassis’s powerbase snuffed out and him with it.

  And Cassis knew it.

  In the war of spies, perhaps he and Lobardin had ferreted out the information that Arsenault worked for Tonia di Sere. Since Jon wanted to support Cassis, might he not have made that information available to Cassis? Cassis would then have known that he could split Arsenault away from Geoffre, that Geoffre didn’t even know who he was. Perhaps they expected Arsenault to receive Tonia’s directive to kill Cassis. And when Arsenault got here...then what? What was Arsenault supposed to do?

  Jon bears no love for the Prinze after what they did to his country. He won’t support Cassis for long. What he wants, I think, is for Geoffre and Cassis to kill each other on the field of war, leaving only Devid to pick off so that Mikelo can take the chair. But if Jon wants that, why has he let Arsenault and Mikelo become hostages?

  To use Arsenault as bait?

  The thought makes me sick. I want to put my hands on my stomach. I clench my fingers against the silk of my dress instead.

  Why would Jon let Arsenault fall into this kind of pit?

  I know the answer to that as swift and sure as I know I’ll leave Cassis and Driese here to fight out this battle however they please.

  Jon is a prince. Jon would sacrifice men, women, and children for the good of his country.

  He’d sacrifice Arsenault, too.

  A muffled bang draws me from my thoughts. It’s like the bite of an insect. I bring my head up from the back of the chair and listen, trying to discover its source. The sound comes again, followed by a rumbling crash.

  I lurch out of the chair too fast and pay for it with vertigo. There are no windows in this room, which makes it defensible, but I curse the walls for what they keep from me. Another loud bang pops the air.

  Cannon fire.

  I’m to the door before I even realize it. Throwing my right elbow into it.

  “Lobardin!” I shout.

  Every thud sends spears of pain into my head, but I keep at it, whacking the wooden door until splinters fall at my feet like pine needles. Dimly, through the rush of blood in my ears, I hear more whining and crashing, pops and thuds, and I fill in those sounds with the screams of men, screams I can’t possibly hear.

  “Lobardin!” I yell again, and he finally flings open the door.

  I stumble out into the hallway, into Lobardin’s chest. He catches me by the arms and holds me there. His eyes have a hunted, haunted look in them, and his hair hangs down in them in unruly black spikes, as if he’s been running, or as if he never thought to re-braid his hair after our struggle in my bedchamber.

  “It’s Geoffre,” he says, breathing hard. “Geoffre’s attacking.”

  Chapter 33

  I could lay the blame for Geoffre’s seizure of Arsenault those many years ago at Lobardin’s feet, for planting the seed of revenge in Ilena’s mind. Or, if I wanted to, I might lay that blame at my father’s feet, for presenting me with a decision I couldn’t back out of honorably.

  Or I could bear the blame myself, for failing to see the consequences of that decision. I sought only to do what was best for my House. But in truth, my House was made of cards, and it was the single breath I took to utter the word yes that sent them tumbling down.

  Yes to Cassis in the conservatory.

  Yes to my mother’s potion.

  Yes to my father, when he asked me to give my life to appease Geoffre.

  But there was no appeasing Geoffre, then as now. I should have known that Arsenault wouldn’t stand by and let me hang. But I thought it would all happen too fast. I thought that the gibbet would be guarded, that he wouldn’t be able to overpower the guards to reach me. I thought that perhaps my father would have sent him away.

  Verrin led me out of the cave in the gray dawn light and bound my left arm to my waist with a length of rope. He knotted it loosely at first. “Please,” I said. “Let it press into my skin a little.”

  He looked up at me, a shadow of suspicion passing over his face. He’d spent the past two days sitting outside the caves, guarding me, so he had news from only the servants who brought him his meals, and those servants were undoubtedly instructed in silence by my father.

  “Why?
” he asked. “I’m to take you to the villa. The only reason you’re tied is because the servant said you were supposed to be. Otherwise, I’d leave you loose. You’re going to see your father.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t tell him I wanted my hand tied tight so I wouldn’t try to claw the rope from my neck—if hanging was indeed to be my death. I’d convinced myself of it, sitting in the caves, but in the dim morning light, I experienced a moment of panic. What if it wasn’t the rope? What if it was something else, something more horrible?

  I didn’t think I could stand dismemberment. Not after my arm.

  Verrin put a hand on my shoulder. “Kyrra. Maybe the ropes are too tight already.”

  “No,” I said. “Tighter. Please.”

  He eyed me askance. “All right,” he said. “And once you’re on the burro, the boy brought tea for you to drink. To improve your constitution.”

  I almost laughed, it was so like the prelude to the execution of my arm. Except this morning would do away with the rest of me. Abruptly, I sobered. “My father is kind,” I murmured, casting my eyes down at the ground.

  “Your father didn’t send it,” Verrin said. “Your mother did.”

  “My mother thinks much of me, then.” I wondered what was in the tea...but then it struck me: did it matter? If it killed me before I hung, that would only be a blessing.

  “You’re acting strangely this morning, Kyrra,” Verrin said as we walked to the little donkey tethered near the cave’s mouth. It stamped its front foot and brayed. “Not like yourself.”

  “It’s just the time I’ve spent alone. And killing Ilena.”

  “I hadn’t thought it affected you that much.”

  “I’m still a woman,” I snapped. “Not a monster.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. You had to kill her, Kyrra.”