Fortune's Fool (Eterean Empire Book 1)

by Angela Boord

  I wasn’t sure if he’d meant to speak the words aloud or not. They stung me like the prick of a nettle bush. But perhaps—I thought about my father—perhaps he was right.

  I hung my head to cup it with my left hand. “I’m a fool,” I said. “Not you, Arsenault.”

  I heard him let out his breath, then the rustle of fabric and the sound of his boots on the floor as he rose and walked over to me. He pushed my hand away from my head and put his fingers under my chin, tipping my head up so that I had to look at him.

  “I should have killed Geoffre long ago and been done with it,” he said quietly. “But I talked myself out of it. I wanted the time with you.”

  “Are you really going to give me that arm?”

  Candlelight flickered on its surface, turning it almost gold, the same color as my hair. He sank down onto his knees before me.

  “Gods help me, Kyrra, but I am.”

  First, we ate.

  Hard bread, hard cheese, and a few cookies Arsenault saved from the kitchens, crunchy and heady with vanilla. He let me have one of them and some bread. He said I should have had broth and wouldn’t let me have any cheese.

  “You remember how to snare a rabbit?” he asked as he dusted the crumbs from his cloak, upon which he’d set out the food.

  “Arsenault. I could do it in my sleep.”

  “And you know the little mushrooms, the ones that are good to eat.”

  “My mother taught me that,” I said.

  “And the wild asparagus and arugula and—”

  “Why are you leaving me here? I could use that arm as a bludgeon.”

  He cringed. “Gods, Kyrra, I hope not. It isn’t like the wooden one.”

  I frowned, wondering what that meant. But then he began rummaging in his pack and went on. “Go north to Rojornick. I’ll leave you what coin I have, but it’s not much. You’ll have to seek employment. From Rojornick, you should make your way west and south into Vençal to the town of Orienne. Ask for the family of Sereaux, and a man named Enri. Tell him I sent you. I’ll find you when I can.”

  “Arsenault.”

  He stopped and looked up at me. “Why am I sending you there?” he said. “Because this is my battle, not yours. If you died—”

  “That doesn’t—”

  He put up a hand to stop me. “No. That’s most of it but not everything. Geoffre wants all of the Aliente. Go north. Continue your House.”

  “But my titles were stripped, Arsenault, I can’t—”

  “You’re of an old blood, Kyrra. Survive so that you can take back your land one day. Survive so that your Sight may be…”

  Passed on. That was what he wanted to say. But before the words could pass his lips, his gaze fell on my belly. I placed my hand over it self-consciously, then stared at my grubby knuckles resting on the dirty and torn dress I’d been hanged in. I had few curves anymore. My hand pressed the fabric flat against my skin.

  “Did Isia know?” I asked.

  Arsenault shrugged and looked away from me, a flush lining his cheekbones. “I don’t know. The first time I met her was on the road with you.”

  There were two strands of magic inside me, twining around each other. Three now, with whatever Arsenault had done to me. I could feel it sliding up and down my spine.

  It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. I shivered, closing my eyes for an instant. When I opened them, Arsenault had packed up the rest of the food and was on his feet with his hand on my head.

  “How did you move so fast?” I murmured. His face swam in my sight.

  He cursed. The magic moved in me again as he brushed the wayward strands of hair from my forehead with his thumbs. “Kyrra,” he said, his voice tinny and distant. “I have to give you the arm now. The metal needs somewhere to go.”

  “What metal?” I blinked at him. The whole room wavered.

  I wondered if he’d put kacin in the cookies.

  “The metal I pulled to the surface to save you. You’ve a bone shaped out of it, just here.”

  He touched the back of my neck briefly with two gloved fingers. Heat sizzled through me. I sucked in my breath and pulled away from him.

  “There’s no metal in me,” I said. “It just hurts.

  “Metal—mettle, it makes no difference. I’m a Smith, aren’t I?” He slid one arm behind my back and the other under my legs, then hefted me up.

  The room spun. “Put me down,” I said, though I barely knew what I was thinking with all this movement inside me. It felt as if there might be a war going on, a strategic choosing of positions, tactics discussed and discarded. I wondered which magic had the high ground.

  I thought it might be Arsenault’s. I didn’t know whether to feel assured or frightened by that.

  “You never spoke of Erelf before,” I murmured as he laid me down on the carpet. “Why do you speak of him now?”

  “Because I’ve already chosen to give myself away,” he whispered.

  Then he leaned over and kissed me. I lifted my hand to his hair, but my fingers only slid through as he straightened up and reached for the bag with the arm in it.

  “Go north,” he said as he unwrapped the rest of it. “Trust that the fates will weave your pattern true. Switch sides if you have to.”

  A gavaro. That’s what he wanted me to be.

  “And you?” I said, struggling to beat back the tide of magic that washed through my blood. “What about you?”

  His jaw tightened. He drew another, smaller bag out of his packs and emptied it on the floor. The blades he’d given me, so long before. He arranged them on the carpet like a chirurgeon’s, his mouth a grim line. “I have to fight Geoffre. And Erelf. But trust me, Kyrra—I’ll find you when all of this is done.”

  I forced the words out of my mouth that I knew I had to speak. “My father will give you up. If his plans were to trick Geoffre.”

  “I know,” he said. “But it’s a chance I’ll take. And you must go north and then to Vençal,” he added, forestalling my protests. “Enri Sereaux. Remember his name. You can’t let your Sight fall into Geoffre’s hands. He’ll warp it, and then all the deaths of your household will have been in vain.”

  I frowned. “Am I that important, Arsenault? Or are you merely trying to get me to leave you?”

  He glanced at me from the corner of his eye, then laughed. “Don’t you think I should know better by now? I’m telling you the truth.”

  I smiled, too. But, dammit, there were tears in it again.

  “Close your eyes,” Arsenault said softly, scooting over to sit closer to me. He brushed a tear away gently with his thumb. “It’s going to hurt.”

  I never wanted anything save honesty. If I thought he’d lied to me before, this at least was true—it did hurt.

  He had a bowl in his pack and a few skins of water, which he set out beside me. A bottle of imya. And the blades. The first thing he did was to rub one of them with imya and slice through the end of my puckered stump.

  It was a deep cut. It hurt. I bit my lip hard and tried to ignore the sound of my blood spattering the bowl. “Hold on,” Arsenault said. He breathed in deep, then breathed again. The feeling of the room changed around us.

  Whatever was in my spine began to slither and buck, to move with agonizing but determined slowness up my back and over my shoulder blades. I writhed, trying to get away from it. Arsenault held me down as the silver squeezed out of me, molded itself to me, wrapped itself around the arm that Arsenault held to my stump.

  Knives sank into my flesh, deep, writing their runes on my body, in my blood. I heard myself screaming. But it might have been somebody else lying there. It could almost have been a dream.

  Except even now, I can feel the knives tearing open the seams of me as if I were merely a dress to be altered. The knives opened me up and I poured forth, bone, blood, flesh, magic, metal—because Arsenault was right, there was metal in me, and that metal flowed into the dead arm he forged to my body and made it live.

  Once, I opened my eyes a
nd I saw his face, slick with sweat, taut with strain, eyes closed, but smiling.

  After that, the pain didn’t seem so bad.

  In the end, though, my body couldn’t take it. I don’t remember anything else clearly until I woke up eight days later.

  Everything else is a dream. A dream of Arsenault holding me, rocking me when the pain took me too hard. Of my lips on his mouth and his hands on my skin and the salt of sweat and tears on my tongue. Of the way he tipped the water glass so I might drink when I was fevered. The weight of his hand on my stomach, his breath soft and light on the back of my neck as he slept.

  And then on the morning of the eighth day, I awoke and he was gone. I lay by myself in my own bed in my own chambers, with a new silver arm growing out of my flesh, Arsenault’s sword beside me, and a suit of men’s clothes hanging in the closet.

  I got up and looked for him, but I knew he was gone. I looked everywhere, and then I went back to my room and sat down on my bed. I wrapped myself up in the black cloak he’d left for me, with the comb and the wolf in the pockets, and I wept.

  And then I went north. Just as he’d asked me to.

  Part VI

  Chapter 34

  Now it’s come full circle. Once again, I’m alone in my rooms, Arsenault is gone, and Geoffre threatens the walls. Except this time, I’m in the thick of the battle. This time, I fight in the trenches.

  But first I have to get out of here.

  I take a quick inventory of the room. Someone swept these chambers clean of sharp edges, and I’d wager it was Lobardin. Since I can’t find anything sharp, I’ll have to make it.

  I have a washbasin, a pitcher, a few cloths, a candle—burned low now—and a bottle of imya. I think Lobardin intended to wash out my wound before I distracted him from his purpose.

  So, it’s merely a question of timing. The washbasin is made of porcelain. The key will be to push it off the stand when the next cannonball strikes the wall.

  A muffled whine issues from outside. I close my eyes and count silently, one, two, three... then I give the basin a hard shove with my chin. It topples off the stand and onto the floor. The crashes of porcelain shattering and rock falling are almost perfectly timed.

  I learned a few things about artillery while I was in the north. But I don’t fool myself that no one can hear outside the room.

  “Everything all right in there?” a guard calls. Not Lobardin.

  “Was that more cannon fire?” I shout. I fall to my knees. Every movement I make to use my hands is laborious, contorted, and slow. But I’ve got what I wanted—a host of wicked-looking porcelain shards. I lean over and pick one up without letting myself think about how I’m as like to cut my own throat as I am to cut the rope. I don’t have much time.

  The guards scuff about in the hallway outside the door to the sitting room. Cursing, I curl my metal fingers around the shard and hide it in my palm, then drag the bedspread off the bed with my left hand and my elbows. I step on the puddled fabric to help it onto the floor, and I’m still kicking it under the bed—dragging the shards along with it—when the door opens.

  Two guards come through the sitting room into the bedroom. Both are young, one with auburn hair, the other dark-haired and dark-eyed. The redhead approaches me, hand on his sword. They both wear guns.

  “That noise sounded like it came from in here.”

  “I heard nothing save the cannons. Are we in immediate danger, or is this to be a siege?”

  He circles me warily, gaze flitting over the room but never leaving me for more than an instant. The other guard backs off and steps over to cover the other flank. The shard grows warmer in my hands.

  “We’re not in immediate danger, no.” He ducks his head. “What’s that?”

  I turn. A bit of red shows underneath the bed. “I don’t see anything,” I say, swearing in my head.

  He gestures at the floor with his elbow. “That. Tallou, hold her a moment.”

  Damn.

  The dark-haired guard steps toward me as the other crouches down to look underneath the bed. “What’s this?” the red-haired guard mutters, pulling out the bedspread.

  My guard—Tallou—slides his fingers between the rope and my left arm. In the same moment that the auburn-haired man opens the bedspread to find the shards, I spin toward Tallou. Tallou stumbles into the point of the shard I hold upward in my right hand.

  He cries out in pain as he jerks his hand free and puts it to his face. Blood wells up through his fingers and drips down his hand.

  “Tallou!” the other guard shouts. Tallou is on his feet again in a moment. I careen backward into the nightstand, on purpose. The bottle of imya rocks and topples over, rolling onto the stone floor, where it shatters. Glass and imya splatter everywhere, and a large puddle of clear liquor spreads toward the bedspread.

  The lit candle in its holder skitters down the top of the table but doesn’t fall off.

  The guards look at me with sudden comprehension, right before I sweep the candle off the nightstand with my right elbow.

  The imya catches immediately. Flames race greedily over its surface, orange and blue, onto the soaked edge of the bedspread, which flares up in the other guard’s face, catching on the imya-splashed patches of his trousers.

  He roars, beating at the flames.

  “Deppe!” the dark-haired guard yells. “I’ll bring you water!”

  “No—her! Get her!” Deppe yells back.

  But I’ve already jumped the flaming imya and I’m running for the door.

  It’s closed, of course, and I ram it hard with my shoulder, dropping my elbow down onto the handle. The door latch clicks open. I stumble out into the hall.

  Tallou’s boots clatter over the threshold.

  And I’m running.

  I know this building better than any of them. This lodge was the site of my childhood summers and autumns, a childhood spent evading my nurses and wriggling through close and empty spaces in the walls. I have a map of this place in my head.

  “She’s out!” Tallou cries behind me. “Ware!”

  Who is he warning? The servants? Most of the fighting men are out on the wall. But just off my father’s chambers used to be a set of large guest chambers; my guess is that Driese is there, along with most of the servants. I turn right down a narrow, ill-lit hall to avoid them, just in case.

  Tallou is gaining on me. I can hear his breathing just behind me, and his blade flashes in the torchlight. Down the hall I go, down the twisting, turning spiral staircase. I stumble and careen off one wall, trip down three or four steps at once, and hit the bottom running.

  “Stop,” Tallou says, breathing hard. Then he starts to laugh, a wheezy kind of laughter. “You know you’re going to be killed anyway! We were supposed to bring you out at noon!”

  “Noon!” I call back. “Why so late?”

  A doorway yawns before me, off to the right. The room I’ve been looking for.

  I keep going straight until the last possible second, then I jag through the door. It brings Tallou up short and gives me an instant to get into the room without him.

  It’s a large room and nearly bare. My father called it the War Room. In Eterean times, the lords of the fortress would gather here with their officers to plan their defense. Frescos of death and dismemberment in all their gory wonder line the walls, every one. The Etereans had a deft touch for detail.

  The room is also supposed to be haunted.

  As a child, I was intrigued by the ghosts more than by anything else. I used to go exploring for them, trying to excavate their bones from the cracks in the stones.

  One afternoon, among the cobwebs in a forgotten closet, I found a passage.

  I dart inside the closet and throw myself at the wood door, making sure I hit with my right elbow out. The door splinters as Tallou clatters into the room. “Where are you?” Tallou shouts, and I kick the rest of the door in—cursing women’s soft slippers. I grit my teeth against the pain and launch myself through the hole
, into the dark tunnel it reveals.

  The air stinks of damp. Cobwebs cling to my hair and face. The chipped contours of the carved stone floor shove themselves up against the soles of my slippers. It’s like walking barefoot and blind, and Tallou’s behind me, standing in the closet.

  “Dread gods,” he breathes.

  I hear a ratcheting click behind me. “Come out or I’ll shoot,” he says shakily.

  He can’t see me. If I’m quiet—

  “I said I’ll shoot! Do you want me to kill you?”

  My eyes are adjusting to the darkness, but I don’t see the way the ceiling starts to slope. My forehead scrapes the rock, and I let out an involuntary curse.

  The sound of an explosion behind me sends me scrambling down on my knees, throwing myself immediately prone. Lead shot crashes into the wall beside me, scattering chips of rock into my hair, biting my face. I press my face flat to the floor—slimy with mold and damp. For a moment, everything is just an echo of the shot; smoke hangs acrid in the air and the ball rolls around the tunnel like a memory you wish you could forget. I start inching myself forward on my elbows before the smoke clears. Behind me, the sound of hesitant footsteps taps itself out against the stone; he’s coming to see if he killed me, I guess. If I can make the first turn-off, I might be able to hide—

  But I can’t move fast enough. He’s upon me in a moment.

  He reaches down to feel my leg, and I kick out as hard as I can.

  He yelps—an undignified sound, but then again, this room is supposed to be haunted. I shove myself forward with my toes, and the sound of my dress ripping fills the tunnel. Then I try to scramble to my feet, but Tallou grabs my legs and brings me down to the floor again, hard.

  Pain blots everything hot and black for a moment. I kick, twisting around onto my back, but his fingers scrabble over the rope and then he hauls me back toward him, grunting, breathing hard. The lines of his face appear out of the darkness like a ghost’s, eyes wide and scared.

  But when he gets close, I do what I have to do. I don’t want to do it, because he’s too young and he’s just following orders. It’s different from being in a battle, but the same, too. Sometimes, you look at the other man’s face and there’s a space where both of you become more than toy soldiers.