After Kate delivered her last project, we walked for a while among the spice vendors. Strings of garlic cloves and garlands of thyme and rosemary sprigs draped across their booths like necklaces on a fine lady. “It’s Petitioner’s Day,” Kate said. “The king gives audience to his people in public court once every month or so, hearing grievances, delivering sentences, conveying proclamations. We’ll have to hurry. Zan said to have you back by the midafternoon. That’ll be harder to do once the trials begin.”
We’d come to the main square, which was swarming with people. Several men were taking seats on the platform constructed at the foot of the immense castle steps. “Are those the lords?”
“Yes. See that short, round one in the purple brocade? That is Baron Ingram. And the one with the silver hair? Castillion. To his left is Ramos. Then there is Achebe. And over there is Lim, and—” She stopped before naming the young man on the farthest end. He was blandly handsome, with a charming smile on his face.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“The fiancé I told you about? That’s him. Dedrick Corvalis.”
On the high platform, the king was in place upon the heavy velvet chair that had been dragged out to serve as his throne. Far behind him I could make out the shining waterfall of golden hair that could be nobody but Lisette. Beside her sat Conrad, looking every bit a prince. He was wearing a trim white coat with gold buttons meant to look like medals. His back was straight, his hands folded tightly in his lap. I could tell he was trying desperately to keep from squirming. I felt a pang; he needed a toy to fiddle with, like the ones I used to give him to help him stay calm and alleviate his distress.
Toris loomed over them both, dressed like a Renaltan lieutenant. There was a bitter taste on my tongue; it was Kellan’s spare uniform he wore, missing only the cloak. I wondered if he’d stolen Kellan’s name as well. Hearing him referred to as Lieutenant Greythorne might be more than I could take.
To Kate, I asked, “And which one is Prince Valentin?”
She shot me a sidelong glance. “None of them. He doesn’t come to these things. He’s never liked being in front of a crowd.”
It seemed a common trait among princes, I mused. But at least Conrad was out here trying to do his duty.
The king rose. “Good people,” he began, his teeth stark white against his ruddy skin. “It is written in our laws and traditions that the king must regularly hold audience with his people so that you may bring your grievances and lay them before him to mediate and so that he may hear the charges against imprisoned accused and grant fair judgment upon them. Today is that day. Come, petitioners. Speak, and your beloved king will hear you.”
Kate snorted and said under her breath, “He thinks if he tells everyone enough times that they love him, it must be true. I’m surprised he hasn’t issued a decree about it yet. Stars above, he is the worst kind of idiot.”
“What kind of idiot is the worst kind?” I asked.
“The kind whose wholehearted, foundational belief is that he’s a genius.” She tipped her head toward a nearby wall where Domhnall’s notices were tacked one on top of another, several layers deep. I squinted to read the most recent of them:
It is hereby decreed that the third day of the third week of each month, the Castle de Achlev will be opened to Lords and Citizens wishing to express their love and thanks to King Domhnall de Achlev, whose tireless efforts on Achleva’s behalf have led to increased prosperity, wealth, and happiness among all inhabitants . . .
“The worst part is,” Kate continued, “that he’s too stupid to know when he’s being manipulated. The lords fawn over him, reinforcing his delusions of grandeur, and he signs any law they put in front of him. Like this, see?” She pointed to the stand, where a young man’s case was being heard. “That’s a lord’s nephew. He was caught doing something unspeakable, but his family is wealthy. Watch.”
As the vile details of his charges were being read, the young man remained unperturbed. When it was finished, a woman stepped forward. “I am Sahlma Salazar, a royally sanctioned healer here in Achleva. On request of this man’s family, I have done a full review of his health and have found it to be woefully compromised.” She gave a hard, racking cough; it seemed her own health was also woefully compromised. “I regret to inform the king that the subject is too ill to stand trial at this time and recommend that he be committed to the care of his family until his health has returned.”
“Which will be never, of course,” Kate said under her breath. “A year or two ago, a real petition went before the king, asking that he grant sick, imprisoned criminals access to healers. It was meant to save the lives of the poor, who were dying before they could come to trial for trivial crimes—stealing bread, inability to pay a landlord, that sort of thing. Domhnall issued one of his glorious decrees just as he was asked, but with the addendum that the prisoner must provide payment for the healer. And so this is what we ended up with: the poor still can’t afford to be treated for their illnesses and they still die, but now the wealthy can buy their way out of crimes. All they have to do is pay a healer to give false testimony and then pay Domhnall to accept it.”
We moved on through the crowd while the king agreed to Sahlma’s recommendation, and two more cases were pleaded and dismissed before we got halfway across the square. A third defendant was on the stage now, shuffling forward with irons on his wrists and ankles.
“I know that man,” I said, surprised. “He was the one who brought Zan to me in the traveler’s camps.”
“Raymond Thackery,” said the king, “you have been accused of forging royal documents and using them to smuggle the uninvited across the wall, thus sullying our great city with the worst of the undesirable: vagrants, beggars, whores—”
Thackery scoffed. “Since when did you have a problem with whores, Majesty?”
The king’s face turned from red to purple. “Do you deny these charges, Mr. Thackery?”
“I do indeed,” Thackery said. “If they was not born here or invited by royalty, they would not have got in, simple as that. Thus”—he grinned at borrowing the king’s own word—“it ain’t smugglin’.”
“Then please, Mr. Thackery, tell us which person of royal lineage is unlawfully providing you with these invitations.”
“Lots of possibilities, right? I bet you’ve got little bastards crawlin’ all over the city, haven’t ye? But no, I won’t give ye a name. What I’m doin’ ain’t unlawful.” He rolled from his heels to his toes and back again with an air of pride. “And the identities of my business associates is confidential. You know better’n most, I never outed you for all those opium deliveries, now, did I?” His grin widened.
“I will hear no more!” the king roared. “How dare you level these false accusations at me?”
“False accusations, Majesty?” Raymond did not seem to understand the trouble he was in. Or if he did, he’d given himself over to his fate and was determined to cause as much chaos as possible. “Facts is facts. Wishin’ ’em false and declarin’ ’em fake don’t make it so.” He raised his hand. “I swear, if you let me go, I won’t tell ’em about the pantsless parties you host once a month at the Stein and Flagon, either.”
The king spat out, “Raymond Thackery, you are hereby condemned: forty days in the gibbets for your treacherous falsehoods.” He seemed to have forgotten all about the smuggling charge. To the guards, he said, “Take him.”
“Forty days? My ol’ friend Gilroy got fifty! Come on, you gotta at least give me as much as him!”
Under her breath, Kate said, “Most don’t last ten.”
I stopped to watch, mesmerized and horrified as they gagged Thackery and dragged him to a waiting cage of iron at the wall. They clapped him in, one guard attaching the gibbet to a chain while another, waiting above on the parapet, cranked a pulley and the cage began to rise.
I hoped, for his sake, that Ray did not end up like Gilroy. To die in the gibbets would be terrible; to have your spirit trapp
ed there with your moldering remains would be a misery almost unfathomable.
I never thought I’d view the Tribunal’s executions—hangings, beheadings, burnings—as merciful.
17
When we returned, Zan was waiting impatiently, shifting from foot to foot on Kate’s doorstep. “You’re late,” he said crossly.
“Not true,” Kate said, “and you know it.” Hands on her hips, she added, “Did you do what I asked?”
He gave an impertinent shrug and a half nod.
Delighted, Kate grabbed my hand and pulled me down the walk. “This way,” she said.
We didn’t have to go far; Kate led me to the hut behind her house, the one next to the goose pond. We waited while Zan worked the lock of the hut with a rusty key, and when the door finally opened, it did so with a groan.
“Zan, you were supposed to clean it first,” Kate said, swiping her finger across a dirty table.
“I did.”
Kate pursed her lips. “I suppose this is what I get for assuming cleaning is something you’d know how to do.” She turned to me. “Do you like it? I know it’s small—I’ve only ever used it as an extra place to store my dried herbs and extra bottles of tonics and preserves. I’m sorry it’s such a mess—that’s what we get for letting Zan draw here unsupervised—but it’s not terrible, right?”
It was dim, the only light coming from one grimy back window. There was a stone fireplace with a hook for a kettle, a small table and rickety chair. The walls were lined with shelves, mostly containing rows of colored bottles and jars of herbs, but two or three were completely crammed with papers and pencils and charcoal sticks of varying lengths. I lifted a sheet of paper from a stack and had to turn it twice to make sense of it. At first glance it looked like a mess of furious black charcoal marks zigging and zagging in no meaningful pattern. But as I looked at it more closely, an image began to emerge from the chaos. It was a detailed study of a bird’s wing, I realized, but it was so unlike the fussy, meticulous renderings that populated books and paintings that I wondered if I’d ever actually seen a bird before. This was less a catalogue of traits—feather, beak, bone, breast—and more an encapsulation of all the joy and terror of flight. It was breathtaking.
The paper was tugged out of my hands mid-stare. Zan added it to a stack he was hastily trying to straighten before giving up and roughly shoving it out of sight. Sheepishly, he said, “Just make a pile in the corner there. I’ll come collect everything later.”
I turned back to the sparsely equipped room. “I love everything about this,” I said happily as I lowered myself onto the single cot set up in the corner. It creaked mightily in protest. “But I have no money to pay rent.”
Zan started to say something, but Kate gave him a pointed glare before smiling sweetly at me. “No rent is needed. Zan will cover it with the money he owes you for borrowing your horse. Won’t you, Zan?”
He gave a tightlipped nod. “Of course.”
“And he’s going to pay you a wage,” Kate added.
“Yes, but not until after—”
“A daily wage. With a bonus when the work is done.”
I tilted my head. “A gold statue in my likeness, I was told.”
“It will be erected in the town square the next day,” Zan said, beleaguered. “On my honor.”
“Don’t let him sculpt it himself,” Kate said. “His drawings are all right if you know what you’re looking at first, but his sculptures . . .” She cringed and shook her head.
“Can we go now?” Zan said, sounding snippy.
Kate had already grabbed a broom. “Would you, please? It looks like I have some work to do.”
* * *
“Were all those drawings really yours?” I asked as Zan helped me down into the culvert. “You don’t look like an artist.”
He gave me a sideways glance. “You don’t look like a blood mage, and yet . . .” Inside the passage now, Zan was setting the pace, which could only be called a meander. “I got very sick when I was a child, had to spend a lot of time indoors; my mother started me drawing to stave off boredom. But I got sicker. Even lost my eyesight for a while. Shortly after that, I lost my mother.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Was she sick too?”
“Sick of caring for me, maybe.” He paused, trying to be delicate, but I knew what he was trying to say. “I was ill constantly. It took a toll. Don’t look at me like that. It was a long time ago.” He waved me forward at the fork. “This way now.”
Instead of taking the turn out toward the tower, we continued straight, up a slightly ascending slope. He maintained his unhurried pace.
“You don’t have to go so slow for me today,” I said. “I heal very quickly.” I put a hand to my injured side. “I hardly feel it anymore.”
“Who said I was going slow for you?” he asked.
The new alley came to an abrupt end beneath a square drawn in dim light. A trapdoor. Zan gave it a tug, and the hatch swung down, a frayed rope ladder along with it. He went up first and then steadied me as I climbed after him.
I wanted to ask him more about his drawings, but he put his finger to his lips as a warning to keep quiet while he reset the door and the ladder. We were in a cellar, surrounded on all sides by barrels of ale and shelves lined with bottles of wine. Outside the cellar room, sad cries echoed around the stone chambers. “The dungeon is that way,” he said quietly, lips close to my ear. “It always sounds like this on Petitioner’s Day.” He cast his eyes around the corner. “It’s clear. Let’s go.”
The grandiosity of the castle did not end at its façade; the interior was just as intricately decorated, if not more. Polished timber buttresses soared into vaulted ceilings decorated with intricate floral reliefs. Everything was painstakingly carved and painted with rich, heady colors. Gold, burgundy, lapis, purple . . . it was hard to tear my eyes away.
There was a distant rumble of voices and music from somewhere in the heart of the castle—the Petitioner’s Day banquet was being prepared, Zan said—but the halls were largely empty. When a servant, on his way to some task or another, did hasten past, Zan ducked into a pocket of shadows and pulled me in with him before we could be seen. “Why are you sneaking around?” I hissed. “Isn’t this your home?”
When the coast was clear, he replied, “I find it advantageous to keep my comings and goings to myself; there are too many people who think they know better than I how I should use my time.”
I understood that notion all too well. I’d spent my whole life doing the same.
The library, when we finally came to it, was an enormous circular room, two stories high, with a sweeping balcony on the top level. The tiles beneath our feet were black-and-white marble, and dangling from the pinnacle of the ceiling was a chandelier of crystal stars that clinked and turned in a slow orbit around a shimmering blown-glass moon.
And there were books. Everywhere, books.
“Blood of the Founder,” I breathed. “This is incredible.”
“You don’t have libraries in Renalt?”
“Not like this,” I said. “There’s only one book they want us to worry about: the Founder’s Book of Commands.”
“Explains why Prince Conrad loves this room so much. He spends much of his free time here. Drags his sister with him, too. This afternoon I wasn’t sure they’d leave in time for me to bring you today.”
“Oh?” I said, trying not to sound overly interested. “And what books did he want to look at?”
“Books on pirates, treasure hunts. Things like that.”
My feelings were all mixed up: I wasn’t sure if I should be happy that Conrad was reading about pirates and that Lisette was taking good care of him or jealous that she was doing so at my expense. “You were with them?”
“Some of the afternoon, before they were called away to watch the Petitioner’s Day spectacle. I know you’re wary of Aurelia, Emilie, and I respect your decision to keep your presence here a secret, but
I don’t think you have anything to fear. She seems lovely.”
I immediately imagined him drawing her with those decisive charcoal strokes, to commit her beauty to his memory. I’m ashamed to say that the rush of renewed distaste I had for Lisette at that moment had little to do with Conrad. “I’m sure it looks that way,” I said curtly, “but looks can be deceiving, can’t they?”
“You tell me,” he said, but before I could ask him what he meant, he turned lazily on his heel and I had no choice but to follow him. He led me to a sheltered corner of the library, where a cushioned window seat beckoned, a pile of books beside it.
“I made good use of my time this morning.”
Vitesio’s Compendium de Magia. Wilstine’s Essays on Blood Magic Theory. There was even an anthology on the uses of feral magic for increasing crop yields—soybeans included—alongside dozens of other texts and histories, all in pristine condition.
“I may cry,” I said, reverently touching the bindings.
“Please don’t,” Zan said. “Many of those books were brought here after the Assembly of Mages was dismantled. They’re very valuable. I don’t want tears all over them, wrinkling the pages and running the ink. You can find references to Achlev’s spells here”—he lifted a book and placed it in a new pile—“here, and here. I’m still trying to find his original writings, but you can use these to get started.”
Zan left me there to immerse myself in the materials while he went off on his errand. I settled myself into cushions with the volumes on my lap, eager to read from books left uncensored. But I had turned only to the first page when I heard voices nearby.
“Do hurry,” a girl said. “The banquet will begin soon, and we can’t be late. It’s just a toy—is it really that important? And are you certain you left it here, and not in the Great Hall?”
“I know it was in here. I had it by the window.”
My eyes tracked to the other side of the seat. Sure enough, a small object was resting there: a metal figurine with shifting pieces, small enough to hide in the palm of a hand. I knew it immediately; I’d used it as a prize for one of the seek-and-find games I played with Conrad, something to help him sit still and calm during the most tedious of his princely tasks. I didn’t know he still possessed it, much less that he had carried it with him all the way from Renalt—I’d never seen him take it out during the journey, not once. But there it sat on the library seat, left behind mid-transformation, halfway between a hound and a hare.
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