“Take them to the gate and toss them out,” Zan ordered Nathaniel. Then he added coldly, “Your welcome in this city will be revoked. Set foot inside these walls again, you’ll burn. Inside first, then out, and in such pain you’ll wish she had finished you here.”
If more was said, I didn’t hear it. With the last of my energy spent, I felt myself falling, my vision blurring into blackness.
14
Heavens above. Is this the girl? What happened?
We found her in the tavern district.
Put her here. Quickly. Help me get this dress off. What of her attackers?
They’ve been removed from Achlev.
How many?
Two. One of them had this on him.
Stars, Zan. This is coated in bloodleaf. If she got cut with this, I don’t know if there’s anything I can do . . .
You have to try. Do whatever it takes. We need her.
* * *
I woke to brimming sun and sweet smells in a room painted with yellow flowers.
A woman was at the hearth. “You’re awake. I honestly wasn’t sure it was possible.” She placed a mug of steaming broth in my hands. “Drink up. You’ll feel better once you’ve got something in your stomach.”
She had a cheery, doe-like beauty—pink cheeks and soft brown eyes, framed by a wealth of chestnut hair. I guessed she was probably three or four years older than me, though she was several inches shorter. When she turned, her round profile revealed that she was with child, and pretty far along. Despite that, she moved around the room with dainty authority, unbothered by her pregnant condition. “I’m Kate,” she said. “Nathaniel’s wife.”
“Rosemary,” I said, my voice barely coming out as a whisper. I moved the mug in a small circle, watching the liquid swirl inside it.
“Zan told me your name was Emilie,” she said in surprise.
“No. I mean, yes. It is Emilie. But there’s rosemary in the broth.”
“Right.” She smiled. “I like it because it calms the nerves,” she said. “I add it to everything. Not much, but a little.” She gave the pot on the stove another stir, then tapped the spoon on the side.
“Zan brought me here?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“I . . .” I swallowed, a vague echo in my ears: We need her. We need her. “No,” I said. In my cup, the liquid’s surface was undulating in tiny peaks and valleys, disturbed by the shaking of my hands.
Kate took pity on me. “Yes. Zan brought you here.” She gently took the cup from my hands. “You’re very lucky, you know. You almost didn’t survive.”
“I heal fast.”
“Well, the cuts were one thing. I stitched you up as best I could, but I’m a seamstress, not a surgeon. I did a much better job on the tear in your cloak. And being poisoned by bloodleaf . . . it must be the Empyrea’s will that you’re still here. I swear, that’s the only sensible explanation.”
“The knife was poisoned?” My mind was whirring. Bloodleaf? Did the bloodcloth save me? Even now, was someone else dead in my stead? “My bag,” I barked suddenly, desperately. “Where is my bag? I need my bag.” I tried to stand.
“No, no, no, don’t get up. It’s right here. See?”
I snatched it from her, and when my trembling hands couldn’t get the flap open, I turned it upside down and emptied the entire thing onto her floor while Kate watched, slightly agape. Dropping to my knees, I sifted through my paltry belongings until I found the square of silk. I almost cried with relief when I saw that of the three drops, only Kellan’s was faded, and less so than I remembered. The other two were still a deep, dark red.
It was easier to clean up the mess than it was to make it; my hands were already steadier. The last thing I put away was the charm bracelet, from which hung a single remaining charm, the winged horse. I held it out to Kate.
“What’s this for?”
“It’s for your help. Please take it, and I’ll go.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “I can’t let you do that.”
“I have to pay you somehow. I know it isn’t much, but—”
“No, I mean . . . I can’t let you go.” She gave a frustrated grumble. “Zan will be by shortly—he’s been coming about every other hour to see how you’re doing. He wants to talk to you. I told him that, if by some miracle you did wake up, I’d keep you here until he came back so he could at least try. I didn’t tell him you wouldn’t punch him in the face. I think he’s earned it, taking your horse like he did.”
In spite of everything, I found myself smiling. “I already did hit him once,” I said. “But it was more of a really hard shove.”
“Did you, now? He has that effect on people. I’ve gotten a few over on him myself. Mostly when we were children, but still. It counts.”
“That’s because you’ve always been a bully.”
I hadn’t heard Zan arrive, but there he was in the doorway, leaning a shoulder against the frame.
“And where’s my husband?” Kate asked. “You’ve got him doing your dirty work again, no doubt. If I have to clean blood out of any more of his shirts . . .”
“You know it’s never his blood on his shirts.”
“And that’s supposed to make it better?”
He shrugged. “Yes, a little.”
She put her hands on her hips. “I still don’t like it.”
“Don’t worry; tonight it’s nothing dangerous. He’s making my excuses to the king about why I won’t be attending the Petitioner’s Day banquets.”
“Not dangerous?” Kate snorted. “That’s only ‘not dangerous’ because he’s telling Domhnall what he wants to hear.” She leaned over to me and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “Zan’s not really welcomed at any courtly dealings. They used to try to get him to be involved, but he made himself a terrible nuisance and blundered everything he touched until no one could stand it anymore and they quit asking him to come. And that’s really saying something, considering Domhnall is king.”
“It was a calculated effort,” Zan said. “I did it to gain the freedom I needed to get real work done, unhindered by courtly politics and the irrational whims of that very stable genius.”
“Of course it was,” Kate said sweetly. But Zan didn’t answer; his attention had turned to me.
I did not look up as he approached me, choosing instead to stare at his boots through the escaped tendrils of my hair. On our last encounter, I’d been deliriously burning two deviant brutes half to death. The time before that, I’d dragged him into a hedge and draped myself all over him like a lovesick lunatic. At this point I could go dance a naked jig in the town square and my humiliation could not be more complete.
Still, I was intensely aware of his proximity now. Those seconds together in the rose hedge had shifted something fundamental between us, exposing a strange and unsettling connection we’d been oblivious to before. Zan came to a stop a margin closer than should have been comfortable for our limited acquaintance, as if he sensed the connection too and was now testing its borders.
Determined not to be cowed by him or my own newfound curiosity in him, I forced myself to look him full-on in the face. He reached toward my cheek but paused a mere fraction before touching my skin.
“You’re not going to kick me again, are you?” he asked.
“I’m still deciding,” I answered.
Accepting the possible consequences, he tucked my hair back before crooking a finger beneath my chin, moving my face gently to the side so he could survey the bruises along my cheekbone and my swollen lip.
Pursing his lips, he asked, “I know you’ve been through a lot, but do you feel well enough to take a walk? There’s something I’d like to show you.”
* * *
Moving was much more difficult than I anticipated, but Zan tried to be patient, retaining his air of casual uncaring but still putting his arm around my shoulders to help me when I winced or gasped as we picked over the rough terrain. And it was rough; we left Kate’s house by
the back door, skirting past an old hut and a small pond where a dozen geese watched us with lazy disinterest. The environment was quite different from the center of the city. Old King Achlev had wanted to make his wall into a perfect circle, and that meant enclosing parts of the cliffs and forest and mountain.
“Where are we going?” I asked, looking up at the towering pines.
“Not long now,” he replied, helping me down into a depression that must have been left by a creek on its way to the fjord, before it was dammed to make the pond.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Look.” He parted some tall reeds and pointed to the underside of the bridge.
“I don’t see—”
He moved me two feet forward, and an opening came into view. It was little more than three feet high, framed into a square by old timbers. Probably some kind of defunct culvert. “It requires a slight change of perspective to find it,” he said, ducking inside and motioning me to follow.
The interior of the passage was dark and musty, smelling strongly of mold and muddy soil. “After the wall was erected, a system of canals was built under the city to irrigate the vegetation growing on the inside of the wall. As the city grew, the earliest system was no longer sufficient, so three hundred or so years ago they blocked off some of the old water lines and built newer, stronger ones. Watch your head there. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time reading old books from the archives, and I came across the plans for the old system.”
“That’s what this is? Some old canal?”
“Yes. This is one of the better ones. Most are collapsed or flooded, and impassable. This way.”
The passage forked, one side slanting off sharply to the right, the other carrying on straight forward. We took the right passage, which seemed to descend for a long while before angling back up and winding in a narrow circle. Then, with little warning, we stepped out into the light.
We’d come to a rocky inlet. The water lapped moodily against the shore, sheltered by an overhanging outcrop of stone. In the distant stretch across the fjord, I could see the third of Achlev’s gates, topped with three crowned figures. King’s Gate.
Zan was already going up the rocks, but slowly; they were slick with water and very steep. I followed him, the stitches in my side pulling painfully. From the top, he helped me onto the last big step and then up over the ledge.
We were at the base of a standalone tower, separate from the castle and taller than its turrets by half. It stood in isolation on the edge of the water, cloaked in a thatch of vine that snaked all the way to the pinnacle; it took a second glance to discern that it was, indeed, made of stone and was not a massive structure of greenery that grew tower-shaped on its own.
I toed the vine at my feet. “Is this . . . ?”
“Bloodleaf,” Zan said. “Yes. Best not to get any closer. Most people won’t come near here because of it.”
“What is this place?”
“A monument,” Zan said. “To Aren. Do you know who that is?”
I thought of Toris’s surprise at the Harbinger in the Ebonwilde. He’d called her Aren. I’d been too distraught to consider it then, but was it possible that the Harbinger and the fabled queen were one and the same? “Yes. I do. She was a high mage and the queen of Renalt. She and her brothers were casting a spell when Achlev killed her . . .”
“This is the site of the spell,” he said, “but in our legends it was Cael who killed Aren. They were closing a gateway between the material and spectral planes when he heard a voice from the other side, an enchanting voice that convinced him to kill his sister to stop the spell.” He turned his chin up, wind whipping his hair around the cut of his patrician profile, stark against a gray sky. “Achlev was a feral mage, but his true gift was transfiguration, not healing. He used every ounce of his magic to stop Cael and save Aren, but it didn’t work. Full of guilt at his failure, he constructed this tower in her memory, and then built the city and the wall to protect it.”
“In all of our stories, Cael died trying to save Aren from Achlev, and the Empyrea brought him back to life to serve as her messenger.”
Zan scoffed. “Do you really think that if the Empyrea was to grant immortality to one person in all of human history, she would choose the man who would someday found the Tribunal? No, if I have to blame one of the brothers for what happened that day, I’m going to go with the one who made a career of murder afterward.”
In Renalt the Empyrea was both the benevolent creator of our spirits and the vengeful decider of our fates. It never occurred to me to consider how contradictory each version was to the other. I struggled to reconcile with this new idea, even as I was relieved by it. “I’ve never thought of it that way,” I murmured. “My whole life, I just assumed . . .”
“That the Goddess supposedly responsible for making you who you are despised you for it?” Zan paused, giving me an assessing stare, and I had the distinct impression that he could see into me. Through me. Like I was little more than a glass case, with every cast-off thought and childish emotion cluttering my shelves on clear display. “It’s not hard to guess why you’re here, Emilie. Especially now that the princess and prince of Renalt have recounted the Tribunal’s attempt to dethrone your queen. The city of Achlev has ever been a place of refuge for people targeted by that organization. Most are not endowed with any special gifts, magic or otherwise; they come simply because the mere suspicion of witchcraft in Renalt is enough to warrant investigation and execution. The princess seems to be one of these unfortunate few; it’s obvious she has no real talent for magic, no matter what the Tribunal has insinuated.” He stopped. “But you do.”
I closed my eyes.
“You worked in the castle, didn’t you? That’s how you met Simon. And that’s why you didn’t want to be seen when the Princess Aurelia and Prince Conrad went by; you knew they’d probably recognize you, and that frightened you.”
This was my chance. I could tell him everything. My hands were clammy, my heart pounding. Zan could bring my case to Valentin—they were cousins, after all. I could let it all out right now. My story was on the tip of my tongue. I simply had to open my mouth and speak it. I could tell him my real name, tell him about Toris’s betrayal, about Conrad, Lisette . . .
Lisette. If I revealed her now, what would be done to her? She’d committed treason of the highest order, but she seemed to think she was doing the right thing, protecting Conrad and Valentin . . . from me. I remembered her bright eyes when she was ten years old, clutching my letters from Achlev’s prince. She was the one who’d answered them, not me. With her golden hair and bright blue eyes, she resembled Conrad more than I did. There was a chance that, if I did confess my identity, they wouldn’t believe me. I could be punished, jailed, hauled off into a gibbet just for the insinuation that Lisette was an impostor.
And if they did believe me, then Lisette could face as much or worse. Despite everything that had happened between us, I could not forget that for the last seven years, she could have borne witness to my witchcraft and didn’t.
I realized Zan was watching me, waiting for a response. I swallowed and commanded my hammering heart to be still. “How are they?” I asked. “The prince and . . . the princess?”
“They’ve been through an ordeal, to be sure. But they rely very heavily on each other. The princess is very protective of him, and he adores her. It’s almost enough to make me wish I had a sibling.”
“Be glad you don’t,” I said, feeling an ache in my stomach that had nothing to do with the wound in my side.
“Do you?”
“A brother,” I answered. “I’m afraid we didn’t part on very good terms. I’m pretty sure he hates me now.”
“Because you’re a witch?” My eyes darted to his, and he continued. “You fled Renalt not because you were afraid of being accused of being a witch, like the princess. You fled because you are one. Twice now I’ve seen you use magic. You almost killed two men with nothing but blood and your bare ha
nds.”
“Are you going to have me arrested? Send me back to Renalt? Please,” I said, my voice cracking. “Please don’t.” I can’t leave my brother here alone, even if he’s safe with Lisette. Even if he hates me.
“That’s not what I brought you here for.”
“Then what did you bring me here for?”
“Look.”
He drew my attention across the wild garden and sweeping stone terraces adorning the base of the castle to a stretch of tall grass in the northwestern quadrant of the grounds, where several horses were grazing. As I watched, a mare of brilliant white broke into a gleeful gallop across the open space, head high and mane flying.
“I can’t let you take her,” he said. “And I’m sorry for that. But I wanted you to see her. You can come visit her whenever you like. Take the passageway. The grounds are fortified to keep intruders out, but you should be able to come and go through the tunnel without trouble. I should warn you that Princess Aurelia and Prince Conrad are installed in the west wing of the castle, so you might want to avoid that area if you prefer not to run into them.” He stopped. “I’m not going to just parade Falada around, like you accused me of doing. That isn’t why I needed her.”
“Why, then? What good is she to you, if not for that?”
Taking a deep breath, he said, “That’s just it. She does no good for me at all. And if it wasn’t for you, I’d probably have already killed her.”
I recoiled, dumbstruck. “What can you possibly mean?”
“Let’s get out of this wind,” he said, “and I’ll tell you.”
15
The storm came on quickly. In the minutes it took for us to walk from the tower and across the terraces, the sky outside of Achlev had turned from gray to slate to billowing black. The clouds could not cross the barrier, but the wind did; as Zan led me up to the top of the castle wall, I lost the scarf that covered my hair and now the tendrils were whipping my face and arms like lashes.
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