Toris grabbed me by the wrist, yanking me around to face him. His knife, still coated in Kellan’s blood, was poised beneath my chin. He was calm as he explained. “It was always going to end badly for you. You had to have known that.”
My blood ran as cold as the icy river, crystallizing my grief into hatred. “You want to keep Renalt free from Achleva so much, you’d kill me for it?”
“It is for a united Renalt and Achleva that I strive. There will still be a wedding. A princess will still marry the prince. You just won’t be around to witness it. Lisette was always better suited to the role anyway.”
So that was it. Lisette would go to Achleva in my place, and I would die here.
“And Conrad?”
“Collateral. We need him to keep your mother in line. And unlike you, he’s proven himself valuably malleable. It will be an easy story to sell.” He made his voice sound urgent and distraught. “‘ Don’t you see, little prince? We need to stay undercover to figure out the identities of your sister’s coconspirators. The queen’s life hangs in the balance!’” He laughed and brought the knife in closer.
I wanted to close my eyes, but I didn’t. Let Toris see my face, my eyes, as the life went out of me. Perhaps Simon’s blood charm would work and another’s life would be taken instead of mine—an option I couldn’t bear to think about—but in case it didn’t, I wanted to die angry. Vengeful. I wanted to become a ghost so that I could terrorize him every single day of the rest of his life.
“No hard feelings, Princess,” he said. “You’re just not part of the plans.”
His hands were deft, and the slice he made from one side of my throat to the other was tight and clean. But I didn’t feel the knife. I didn’t feel anything.
His stroke had been absorbed by another.
The Harbinger had materialized in the air between Toris and me—he’d cut her neck instead of mine. But her throat already bore a gash; his could do her no harm now. He dropped his knife, flinching as if he’d been stung. “Aren?”
He saw her. He knew who she was. His gaze was wild and confused, looking from her to me and then back again.
She blinked out as quickly as she’d appeared.
I wrapped my hand around the vial of blood at his neck and tugged; the cord gave way with a twang as I hurled my shoulder into his chest and knocked him backwards to the ground. Then three long strides brought me to Falada’s side, and I swept onto her back, the way Kellan had made me practice over and over again. Still clutching the Founder’s blood, I wound my hands into Falada’s long mane and dug my heels against her side.
She sprang forward without hesitation, her lithe legs pounding the damp, black earth of the Ebonwilde, carrying me away into the welcoming darkness.
10
We are not here. We are unseen. We are not here. We are unseen.
I chanted Simon’s cloaking spell long into the night, well after the blood I’d drawn to cast it had dried. When I was forced to stop and rest or risk falling, unconscious, from Falada’s back, I murmured it into the darkness while I huddled for warmth in Kellan’s cloak, listening to the mournful cries of wolves in the distance. We are not here. We are unseen. After a while I could no longer tell if I was saying the words out loud or if they were just a chorus going round and round in my head. We are not here. We are unseen. We are not here. We are unseen.
When I woke, I did not know at first how much time had passed. Inside the Ebonwilde, there was very little difference between day and night. What light there was was dim and gray, just enough to see the bloodstained slit in the fabric of Kellan’s cloak, marking the path of Toris’s knife, right before Kellan fell.
He fell.
Kellan. My best friend. My guard. My protector. The person who loved me, and—oh, Empyrea!—whose love I had rejected . . . he was gone.
The noise that came out of me then was an unholy cross between a wail and a groan, and I shook there on the forest’s leafy floor, clutching at his cloak knotted in my fists. I rocked back and forth on my knees, coughing and sputtering between sobs, certain that this is what it felt like to drown.
Falada nudged me tentatively with her nose, and through bleary eyes I saw what had gotten her attention: a fox was watching me from the trees. She was impossibly still, with flame-colored fur and eyes like golden discs.
I got to my feet, my breath still coming in rapid, staccato gasps. “He was good,” I told the fox. “He didn’t deserve this.”
She regarded me for another long moment, as if trying to make up her mind about me. Then she bolted back into the forest, gone as quickly as she had come.
The fox’s appearance jolted me back into reason. I was lost in a forest. If I stayed where I was, I’d die—from hunger, or cold, or a creature with more malevolent intent than the fox. I owed it to Kellan to save Falada. I owed it to Kellan to save myself. I had to keep moving.
But which direction? I was suspended between two impossible destinations. On one side was Achleva. I knew now that Toris was headed there with a plan to pass Lisette off as me, to have her marry the prince and upset the entire monarchial line. On the other was Renalt, where Simon and my mother were—hopefully—still holed away, safe from the Tribunal closing in around them.
I couldn’t go announce myself in Achleva. Toris and Lisette had my brother in their possession and had convinced him I was guilty of conspiring against Renalt and Achleva both. If Conrad corroborated their claims of identity, whether through complicity or coercion, I had no way to prove otherwise. I’d face a charge of treason for even making the assertion.
I couldn’t go to Renalt, either. Simon was keeping my mother safe for now, but if I showed up on their doorstep, the Tribunal would waste no time fixing the mistake they’d made when they killed Emilie. And endangering myself meant endangering Simon, my mother . . .
I took out the bloodcloth, running my fingers over its surface. The three circles of blood remained, but one of them—Kellan’s—had faded to the point of being nearly invisible.
A third choice emerged: keep going. Find another way to get inside Achlev’s Wall. Stay hidden from Toris and make my plans from the shadows.
It was about more than just me now. Whether I liked it or not, the fate of my nation was wrapped up in every choice I made from here on out. A cut had been made in the center of my life. I’d left behind the before and now had to face the after.
I took a step. Then another.
I’ll always consider that decision—to move instead of lying down to die in the Ebonwilde—my first victory.
As I went along, the only breaks in the monotony of the forest were little sightings of the Harbinger. She’d appear and vanish in the space of a breath, always just ahead, always out of reach. Whether Falada and I were following her or she was following us, I was never certain. But as the time drifted past—one day? Two? I couldn’t tell—and my hunger and exhaustion began to toe the edge of delirium, the sight of her became a point of clarity upon which I could fix my attention.
Despite all, Falada never faltered. She carried me through that long darkness and across the edge of the Ebonwilde, stopping only when the trees suddenly broke and revealed the city in the distant basin below, as if she, too, was stunned at the reminder that others existed in the world.
Eons of glaciers had carved out the bowl and left the cobalt-blue water of the fjord, flanked on every side by rocky peaks. At the center of it all, where the mountains and forest and fjord water converged, stood the fortress city of Achlev. Storm clouds hung low and thick over the basin, but there was a perfect circle of clear sky above the city, as if the storm was circling an invisible barrier, angry at being denied entrance.
This was the famed Wall of Achleva—spelled to keep the uninvited from ever passing through its gates, and the reason Achleva’s capital city had never fallen in all the long years of war with Renalt. It was as if King Achlev had hewn it straight from a mountain and reassembled the stones
as tightly as they were cut. Fifty feet tall and at least fifteen feet thick, the wall stretched in an unbroken ring over the crags and hollows and across the narrowest width of the fjord. Behind those unassailable walls was a complicated series of gray towers and steep turrets. The tallest of them stood in the center, pricking the circle of bare sky like a rapier. This was a place meant to endure even the worst assault.
It was a place built to withstand armies and ages.
It was dusk when Falada and I finally made our approach. There were fires dotting the outskirts of the wall, travelers’ camps, mostly. People, I guessed, who’d been ejected from the city and those who’d yet to be invited in. They clustered around the fires in threadbare blankets, and I shrank underneath the weight of their gazes as I dismounted Falada and led her past them.
“You’re a long way from home, aren’t ye, miss?”
The speaker was a man of late middle age, tall and thick, with gray-tinged stubble growing in unkempt patches across his ruddy cheeks and chin. He stood, a hammered tin cup in hand.
“It’s none of your business where I’m from,” I said.
He grinned, revealing a row of yellow teeth spread across his gums in irregular intervals.
“You look tired and hungry, miss. Here, here, come sit with me. Rest. Have a drink.” He clamped a fleshy paw around my wrist.
I was staring at his offending hand and wondering which would be a more effective way to decline his invitation—kicking him in the groin or gouging out his eyes—when a raucous laugh came from nearby.
“Go ahead, Darwyn. Put the lassie on your lap. Get friendly. I’d pay a gold sovereign to see what happens when Erda comes back and sees it. Maybe this time she’ll get yer other ball.” The man was pulling down papers tacked to the wall every few feet and gathering them into a pile in his arms.
Darwyn released his grip on my wrist. He said defensively, “It was just a nick, Ray. Erdie didn’t mean it. I still got both my balls.”
“For now,” Ray replied, tugging another paper down with a laugh. Darwyn glowered at him and went back to his place next to his fire, self-consciously crossing his legs.
“Thank you,” I said to my would-be rescuer. “Mr. . . . ?”
“Thackery. Raymond Thackery.” He shifted his pile of papers into one arm and rubbed his close-shorn white hair with his free hand. “Darwyn isn’t even the worst of ’em, miss. This place is crawling with the unseemly, who’d do a lady harm if given the chance.”
“And you, Mr. Thackery?” I asked tenuously. “Are you one of them?”
He barked another laugh. “Gonna get right down to it, aren’t ye? I could say no, but there’s no real way to tell, is there?”
“Please, sir. I just need someplace to rest, just for a little while. And some food and water for my horse.”
“Nothin’ comes for free, miss. I won’t try to peek beneath yer dress like ol’ Darwyn there, but I ain’t in the habit of feeding every stray that comes along, neither. You got any money?”
“No, I don’t. Sorry.”
He gave a nonchalant shrug. “Too bad. Best keep moving, then. Unless . . .” He scratched his chin. “Your horse. Is she an Empyrean?”
My eyes narrowed. “I’m not selling my horse.”
Another paper came off the nail with a yank and joined the stack. “I’d give you a fair price, seeing as how she’s in such bad shape. The girl’s half-dead.”
“No. Not for any price.”
“Everybody has a price. I’d sell my mother for the right price.” He shrugged again. “But she’s a scheming harpy, so the price would probably end up being pretty low. Too bad for you, though. I’ve got fresh straw in my stable, and I was about to sit down to some vegetable soup.” He put his back to me.
“Wait!” I fumbled in my pocket and pulled out my charm bracelet, twisting off another charm. “Would this work?” I opened my fingers to reveal the topaz gryphon, rearing on its hind legs, claws outstretched and curled tongue extended.
He raised an eyebrow. “Well, now. I suppose that would suffice.” In a blink he’d snatched it up and hidden it away in the ragged folds of his clothing. “This way now, miss.”
He led me past several other camps, gathering papers as he went. “Royal decrees,” he said, sensing my curiosity. “King Domhnall issues a new one every few days and has them posted everywhere, in and out of the city, generally demanding thanks for things he didn’t do and praise for traits he doesn’t possess. Every time, we think his proclamations couldn’t get stupider . . . until the next one.” We stopped at a ramshackle structure of sticks and twine propped against the side of the wall, a few thin skins draped over the top. “I use ’em for kindling, see. Only thing ol’ Domhnall is good for: starting fires.” He crouched next to a smoking fire pit, crumpling the stolen decrees into balls and chuckling to himself as each new one smoldered and caught flame.
“This is your stable?” I asked with chagrin. “And what is that smell?”
“Oh, that.” He knelt next to the fire and pointed above his head. “That’s just ol’ Gilroy.”
I cast my eyes upward to see an iron cage creaking high above our heads, chained to a hook on the wall’s battlements. A gibbet. And inside, a jumble of bones and moldering flesh that had once been a man. My stomach heaved painfully, too empty to yield any relief by retching.
“Gilroy was a friend of mine,” Ray said, giving the remains a deferential tip of his cap. A ghostly face peered out from between the bars, returning a salute that Ray would never see. “Got on the wrong side of His Majesty. Beat him fair and square in a card game. Next thing any of us knows . . .” He drew his thumb across his neck. “Gilroy kind of deserved it, though. He should never have gone to the Stein and Flagon. It’s Domhnall’s favorite whorehouse; everyone knows that. And he definitely shouldn’t have sat down to a card game with the brute, no matter how slobbering drunk he was. But nobody ever accused Gilroy of being a genius.”
Gilroy’s ghost made a crude hand gesture at him from the confines of his cage above.
“Oh, well,” Ray said. “At least with Gilroy around, nobody tries to encroach on my territory. And he serves as a good reminder.”
I still had my hand over my nose. “Of what?”
“Of the fragility of existence, of course. And that King Domhnall is a bastard who reacts to losing a game of cards by executing the winner and then immediately issuing a decree banning cards altogether.” He stood and shoved a bowl of something into my hands. “There. Eat up.”
The soup was little more than tepid water and a few bobbing chunks of what might have been vegetables once. “Thank you,” I said with as much sincerity as I could muster, and led Falada to the rickety stall.
At least the straw was relatively clean, as Raymond promised. I took a few sips from the bowl and let Falada have the rest as I ran my hands over her white flanks. “That’s a good girl,” I murmured. “You have served me so well. Kellan would be proud of you.”
The sound of his name aloud struck like a dagger in my heart, and I finally succumbed to the grim cocktail of exhaustion, rage, and bitter grief. With my back to Achlev’s Wall, I sank into the straw, buried my face in my knees, and closed my eyes.
Part Two
Achleva
11
It was still dark when I woke to the sound of voices outside the stall. The first belonged to Raymond Thackery, but the second was younger, clearer.
“She’s real pretty, I tell you what,” Ray was saying. “A little bit bedraggled and dirty, but real pretty. Long hair, nice legs. A little skinny for my tastes, but probably a decent ride, I’d say.”
“I want to see her before I pay you a thing, Thackery.”
“I know your tastes, Zan. She’s exactly what you’re looking for, I swear.”
I cast around in the dark for something—anything—I might possibly use to defend myself, eventually prying one of the knobby sticks from the wall with a prayer that its removal wouldn’t bring
the whole structure down on top of us. When the door of the stable opened, I was blinded by the glare of a lantern.
“Not an inch closer!” I raised my stick, squinting into the light. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
“You? You think he’s here for you?” Ray burst into hooting laughter. The other person, the man he’d called Zan, lowered the lamp until his face was bathed in the yellow light, and I was startled at the sight of him. Simon? I thought. How could—
But it wasn’t Simon, of course. This man was taller, younger . . . probably only a few years older than I was, twenty-one or twenty-two at the most. His eyes were not brown but green, and his face was leaner. He was less well kept, too; his dark hair was ruffled and windswept, long enough to brush the collar of his leather jacket and the loose linen shirt underneath. But despite that, his clothes were well made, like Simon’s—the work of a skilled tailor. And perhaps most telling of all, he wore a ring in the shape of a raven, wings outstretched. The Silvis signet, I was sure of it.
He cocked his head, eyebrow raised. “You can put your . . . uh, weapon . . . down,” he said. “It’s not you I’m here for.” He looked meaningfully at Falada.
“I already told him, she’s not for sale.”
He turned to Ray. “Can you give us a minute?”
Ray nodded and walked away, still snickering to himself.
“All right, let’s skip all the simpering and sighing. I am purchasing your Empyrean, and I will pay whatever you ask. I’m not in the mind to negotiate; simply tell me your price and we can get on with it.” The young man took out a pouch, heavy with coins, and waited for my response.
“There is no price,” I said through gritted teeth. “She is not for sale.”
“Really?” He put his coins away. “How long has it been since you had something to eat?”
I lowered my stick just a little.
“Your hands are shaking,” he continued. “There are dark circles under your eyes. I’d say it has been at least two days, maybe three, since you’ve had a meal. I know you didn’t try Ray’s soup, because you gave it to her.” He nudged the empty bowl, licked clean by Falada, with his boot. “Probably for the best; I have little faith in Mr. Thackery’s culinary skill.” He took me in, examining my stark Renaltan servant’s dress. “Tell me, what is a Renaltan girl doing in the travelers’ camps? No companions, half-starving, sleeping on a pile of hay in a dirty stable . . .”
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