by Sharon Shinn
“Although,” she went on, “the instant my father knew why you’d assaulted him, you’d have been out of prison.”
“Even if I rotted in a cell, I still would have done it to keep you safe from him.”
The words sent a warm rush all the way down her spine, but she laughed it away. “Now I wish you’d been stationed at my mother’s house! I would have liked to see you beat up Dominic Wollimer.”
He smiled faintly. “If we ever go back to Welce,” he said, “I’ll do it anyway, if you like.”
She was still laughing when Steff stepped out of his room. “Oh, good, I thought I was late,” he said. “Let’s go down to dinner.”
• • •
To no one’s surprise, Alette was not at the meal, which was even more silent and uncomfortable than most dinners at the royal palace. This evening, there were no outsiders present, only Filomara, her nephews, Melissande, Steff, and Corene.
Filomara set the tone at the beginning by saying flatly, “You will oblige me by not speculating on the unfortunate actions of Princess Alette while we are trying to enjoy our food.” Since no one could think of a single other topic, the table was almost wholly silent. Even Melissande and Jiramondi, the two easiest conversationalists, gave up after a few attempts and just concentrated on their meals.
“Steffanolo, I’d like to speak with you,” Filomara said as the strained dinner finally came to an end and everyone pushed away from the table. Corene noticed the sudden intense interest of the empress’s three nephews, but no one said anything as Steff merely nodded and followed her out the door.
Corene was the next one to leave, and was unsurprised to find Melissande at her heels. They walked in silence to Corene’s room and then collapsed on the pretty furniture.
“This day! So terrible from start to finish!” Melissande exclaimed.
“So what happened to Alette?” Corene demanded. “What did she say to you?”
“Very little,” Melissande answered with a sigh. “While we were traveling home she was sobbing too much to speak, and once we returned to her room, other people joined us right away. Her maid was there and some woman with a cup of keerza—which I suspect contained drugs that would make her sleep.”
“Do you think she’s pregnant? That’s Garameno’s theory.”
“It would be. But I did not get the sense that that was her concern.”
“Will she try to kill herself again?”
“That is my greatest fear,” Melissande admitted. “But I do not think she will be given the freedom to try it. Her maid will most certainly be sleeping in her room now, and I imagine discreet Malinquese spies will trail her wherever she goes.”
“Maids fall sleep,” Corene said. “Spies can be outwitted. If she’s eager enough for death, she’ll find a way.”
Melissande spread her hands in an eloquent gesture of uncertainty. “It is not a way I think I would ever choose,” she said, unwontedly serious. “Would you?”
“I’m more likely to lash out at someone else than hurt myself,” Corene agreed. “But if I felt totally powerless? And greatly afraid? I might. It would depend on how deep the pain was.”
“I think you have just described how Alette feels.”
“Then we should do what we can to let her know she’s not powerless and shouldn’t be afraid.”
Melissande’s light laugh was incredulous. “If you think that, Corene, you have not been paying attention. We are powerless—the three of us. We are closely watched and oddly isolated. We have complete freedom within the palace, but none outside it, so much so that the palace might almost be considered a prison. Surely you must have noticed.”
“I’ve noticed how many soldiers accompany us anytime we step out the door,” Corene admitted, feeling her uneasiness build. She’d been a little on edge ever since arriving in Malinqua, but she’d managed to ignore the feeling most of the time. After today’s events, that might be more difficult. “And I’ve found it strange.”
“Have you also found it strange that no one from Welce has come to visit you?”
“I hadn’t paid attention to that. But I’ve only been here a couple of ninedays.”
“Well, I have been here somewhat longer than that, and no one from Cozique has arrived to visit me. Why is that, I wonder? Ships from Cozique come and go every day in Palminera harbor. Why have none of their passengers come to the palace? We are receiving mail—at least I am—but it is very dull stuff. Are the incendiary letters being withheld? One does have to wonder.”
“I have assumed the empress reads our correspondence—”
“Of course she does.”
“But so far I haven’t written anything that I wouldn’t want her to see. If I wanted to send a private message to my father, I would slip from the palace and go to the wharf and entrust a message with a Welchin sea captain.”
Melissande rose to her feet, shaking out the folds of her silken dress. “Try that,” she advised. “And see how far you get.”
Corene stood up also, feeling more and more troubled. “I’ve never heard you talk like this. How long have you felt this way?”
Melissande had headed toward the door, but now she paused and looked thoughtful. “About a nineday,” she said at last. “When my father answered my latest letter but did not address a specific question I had asked. Which is very unlike my father. And I began to wonder if my mail had not only been read but—edited. I find myself wondering—”
“Wondering what?”
“If we are not free to come and go, we are not simply guests of the empress. We are not here simply to flirt with her nephews and possibly cement an alliance. We are playing some other role.”
“But what? Why would she want us if not as brides?”
Melissande’s pretty face showed no trace of laughter now. “As hostages.”
For a moment, Corene didn’t breathe. “For what reason?”
“I haven’t been able to guess.”
NINE
“I want to try an experiment,” Corene said to Foley the next morning.
She had woken up practically with the dawn, despite the fact that she had lain awake for hours, wondering about Alette and thinking over Melissande’s words. But she wasn’t tired. Curiosity and disquiet stalked through her mind, leaving her energized and on edge. She hadn’t waited for Emilita to arrive, but had dressed herself in one of her unadorned Malinquese outfits. She’d pulled her curly red hair back in an unflattering style and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible, and then she’d gone knocking on Foley’s door.
“All right,” he said.
“When I first met Leah, she asked if I could come and go freely from the palace. And last night Melissande as good as said that I wouldn’t be able to leave the grounds without an escort. I want to find out.”
He surveyed her a moment, noting her ensemble and assessing what it meant, and nodded. “We should go out a less public way than the front entrance, then,” he said.
She laughed. “Of course you have found such a route already.”
He grinned. “Of course I have.”
He led her toward the end of the corridor, to the door that Liramelli had used the other night, but he followed the stairwell down instead of up. They emerged into a warren of hallways that she guessed the servants took as shortcuts to the various sections of the white wing. Indeed, she could hear voices and footsteps, the occasional clatter of china, drifting to them from invisible sources, but they didn’t encounter anyone on their stealthy journey.
They finally exited through a door that opened from the northern wall of the palace and onto a graveled walk bordered with vigorous vegetation. Corene wouldn’t have classed it with the other gardens behind the palace—it was more like greenery that had been pressed into service to make a workaday pathway appear to be a pleasant promenade. Here they did run into maids, footmen,
and gardeners, already hard at work at this early hour. They all looked startled to see Corene, and none of them seemed fooled by her unassuming attire.
“Someone will inform the empress’s staff that you’re leaving the premises,” Foley murmured when they passed a footman wrestling a heavy box toward one of the side doors. The young man stared at them wide-eyed before remembering to drop his gaze in respect.
“I suppose that’s good,” she answered. “If they don’t see me go, how can I know if they’ll try to stop me?”
Foley knew a back path that skirted the courtyard, though it quickly looped back to intersect with the main road leading from the palace. By this time they were a few hundred yards from the front doors—not easy to spot, if someone was looking.
“Do you want to stay within the walls of the inner city, or try to get past the soldiers at the main gate?” Foley asked.
“For today let’s stay inside,” she decided.
His only answer was a nod, but another fifty yards down the road, he veered to the right. Corene followed, looking around with interest. They were in the red granite part of town, and all the sturdily built houses seemed to glow with a friendly warmth. It was still early, but windows were being opened and doors thrown back; she could catch the cheerful sounds of women talking to each other over their chores and men coaxing their horses to behave. The scents of baking bread and frying meat drifted from the kitchens, and she suddenly remembered she hadn’t had breakfast.
“Do you think there are bakeries or cafés around here?” she asked.
He glanced down at her. “Did you bring any money with you?”
She was crestfallen. “No.”
“I did,” he said, amused. “I’m not sure there are shops, but I think vendors drive in every day. Delivering milk and eggs and meat and flowers.”
“Let’s look for vendors.”
She was quickly distracted from that task just by noticing the path they were taking. The road wasn’t particularly wide—barely big enough for two small carriages to pass—and made of red cobblestones worn smooth with centuries of use. And since it was part of the giant labyrinth that enclosed the palace like two cupped hands, it followed a constant gentle curve instead of a straight line.
Until they came to a corner that wasn’t a corner, but the road doubling back on itself, parallel to the way they’d just come, but one street farther from the palace. Such a tortuous route would make it difficult to achieve any real distance from their starting point, she thought. Of course, Jiramondi had told her that several straight new roads had been constructed to overlay the old ones, allowing residents to travel through the walled city with more efficiency. She and Foley hadn’t come across one of those useful spokes yet, though she had spotted dozens of straight-line footpaths cutting between houses, connecting one whorl of the road with another. Some of the footpaths were paved, some were dirt and gravel, and all of them looked well used.
“This would be an easy city to get lost in,” she commented.
Foley shook his head and pointed at the pillar crowned in fire, much closer here than when she viewed it from the palace. “You might not know exactly where you are, but you can always orient yourself by the towers,” he said.
“Oh, yes. That’s good to remember.”
He glanced down, his face serious. “If we ever get separated—if you leave the palace for some reason when I’m not with you—go to the tower of fire and I’ll find you there.”
“I can’t imagine I’d ever leave the palace without you.”
“I hope not.”
Corene spotted another of those shortcut footpaths—this one mostly mud, though at least it had dried during the past two days of sunshine—and tugged Foley down it. The houses they passed between were close enough to touch on either side. If the windowsills had been low enough, Corene wouldn’t have been able to resist the temptation to peek inside.
They emerged onto a street that was a little more run-down and a lot more lively than the ones they’d traversed so far. Corene guessed it was more of a workingman’s neighborhood, and residents were rushing off to their jobs as shop owners, sales clerks, ladies’ maids, groomsmen, artisans, brewers, and milliners. About half the people were on foot; many of the others rode clever four-wheeled contraptions that they pedaled furiously to keep in motion. Horses were rare, and usually pulling a wagon instead of serving as somebody’s mount.
One of the wheeled conveyances skimmed past them, ridden by a middle-aged man and hung with five big wicker baskets. Corene inhaled the appetizing aroma of fresh-baked bread, and on impulse she ran after him.
“Are you delivering bread? Can I buy some?” she panted in halting Malinquese when he noticed her and came to a stop.
He named a sum that she couldn’t convert quickly in her head, but she thought it was probably shockingly high. She didn’t care. She motioned Foley over, said, “Don’t even haggle,” and practically snatched the loaf out of the baker’s hands. She’d ripped it in half and swallowed her first very large bite before the man pedaled off. Foley pocketed his change and joined her where she sat on a bench at the side of the road.
“I saved some for you, though I really think I could eat the whole thing,” she said, handing over his portion.
“I should probably let you have it all, but I’m starving, too,” he said, and tore into it.
That made her laugh. “No, no, you should never let me be rude and selfish! I’m too inclined to be both. I don’t need the encouragement.”
He chewed for a moment, gazing down at her thoughtfully. “I don’t think you’re rude and selfish,” he said at last.
That made her eyes widen. “You don’t? Everyone else does.”
He just shrugged and took another big bite.
After a moment’s silence, she said, “So how would you describe me?”
He thought that over, too, but not as if he was trying to decide how to word a polite answer. “Outspoken,” he said at last. “Unafraid. Intelligent. Angry. Sad.”
She had lifted the bread to her mouth to take another bite, but at that she dropped her hand and just stared at him. She would have said outspoken was just a more courteous way to say rude, and even the people who didn’t like her would generally concede she was intelligent. But she wasn’t used to the other adjectives.
Most people didn’t care if she was angry or sad. She had figured that out a long time ago. Her mother certainly didn’t; her father would have expected her to fix, or ask him to fix, whatever situation was troubling her. Zoe and Josetta cared—maybe too much. They would have wrapped her in soft cotton and patted her hair and soothed her to sleep if they had seen her raging or weeping. And both of them (if she was being perfectly honest) had seen her throw a tantrum or two; but they had put her ill-humor down to a seventeen-year-old’s moodiness, or an overreaction to some specific irritation.
But Foley was right. Corene couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t felt both emotions, coiled inside her rib cage like malevolent snakes, hissing through her blood. Oh, she had plenty of days where she could be delighted or amused or astonished; she did not walk the world in some perpetually morose and snarling state. But they were always there, those unattractive serpents, undulating through her thoughts and dreams.
She was not who she wanted to be. And not only did she not know how to make herself over into someone else, she wasn’t even sure who she wanted to become.
She didn’t say any of that. She didn’t even pose the question that had intrigued her since they embarked on this adventure: Why did you agree to come with me to Malinqua? Instead she asked the one thing she’d always wanted to know. “Why were you never in love with Josetta?”
That took him by surprise. He actually coughed on his last bite of bread, and gave her a reproachful look. “I don’t think that’s suitable conversation,” he said.
“I don’t ca
re. I want to know.” When he still didn’t answer, she elucidated, “Josetta is perfect. She’s kind and good-natured—much stronger than people give her credit for—and absolutely loyal. If you’re not steady on your feet and you need to lean against someone, you can lean against Josetta until the world falls down.”
“That makes her sound hunti,” he said. “But she’s not.”
“No, she’s elay. She looks inside people’s souls. And she loves them for the right reasons—because of who they are, not for what they have. And she’s beautiful, and she’s gracious, and she’s a princess, and it doesn’t make sense that you could be around her all that time and not fall in love with her. But you never did.”
“As you said. She’s a princess. Not meant for someone like me.”
“Oh, phooey,” she said inelegantly. “People fall in love all the time with people who are too good for them. And the history of Welce is full of stories about royal heirs who took commoners as lovers. It just doesn’t make sense that you weren’t in love with Josetta.”
“Sometimes people don’t make sense,” he said.
“Is it that you prefer men? In Cozique, Melissande says, such people are called sublime. Isn’t that nice?”
“No. I mean, yes, it’s nice, but no, I don’t prefer men.”
“Is it that you can’t love anybody? Because some people can’t.”
A small smile played around his mouth. “I’ve changed my mind. You are rude.”
“Well, I want to know. And you know I’ll keep asking until you answer.”
He was silent a moment, regarding her, as if trying to decide if she would make good that threat. She met his gaze squarely, her own expression unyielding. Yes. I really will.
Finally he spread his hands. “When I was first assigned to watch her, she was just my job. But I quickly began to feel protective of her—because back then, until Zoe took a hand in her life, she was as lost and at risk as anyone could be. It was a pleasure to watch her come into her own, to figure out who she was and what her place in the world should be, and to do it so gracefully.”