Beneath the Veil

by Megan Hart

  I didn't hesitate, just slid up the sash and gathered my cloak around me. I flung one leg over. The wood, rotten, creaked alarmingly as I put my not-insubstantial weight on it. I put my other foot down. I stood, heart hammering and certain I would plunge to the cobblestone alley below. The balcony held.

  It was only wide enough to stand with my back to the building, and I inched my way toward the next window. Just before I got there, I lay down on the freezing, splintered wood and pushed myself on my side until my head was just below the window. Piles of guano from the birds that had given the Dancing Dove its name crumbled and oozed beneath me.

  With the light burning bright inside and the darkness out, it was easy enough for me to lift my head and peek in. Lir sat in a threadbare chair, legs spread, his shirt unbuttoned. The drunken man Daelyn had brought up from downstairs sat across from him, prick in his fist and tongue flopping. As I watched, Daelyn poured more wine from the flagon, and the man drank. His pumping motion faltered, and his eyes fluttered. Daelyn slipped onto Lir's lap and began to kiss him. The drunken man let out an appreciative hoot and masturbated furiously for a few more moments. Then, all at once, his hand fell slack from his wilting erection, his head lolled, and he slid off the chair onto the floor.

  Daelyn got up from Lir's lap and bent over the man. "He's dead out."

  "Good. Leave the note and we'll be on our way."

  "Sweet Buck," Daelyn said as he scribbled. "Thanks for the lovely fuck."

  "Nice. It's a wonder you didn't read that downstairs."

  Daelyn made a face a Lir. "It will be enough to convince him his half-remembered lustful fantasies were true. He'll say we spent the entire night, should the need arise, though it won't since nobody could possibly suspect me of taking part in such an escapade."

  "Not you." Lir shook his head.

  Daelyn continued to scribble, but my attention was focused on my fight master. His hair had come loose from its braid and tendrils curved over his forehead and cheeks. His bare chest, which I'd seen dozens of times already on the field, now captivated my gaze as it looked half-hidden by his shirt. The bulge at his crotch told me that no matter what their true purpose in bringing that man upstairs, he'd enjoyed kissing Daelyn.

  Again, hot jealousy flooded me, and this time, it was not at the thought of Daelyn making love to a stranger. It was at the thought of Dae making love to Lir.

  My stomach rose, and I put my hands, stiff and burning from the cold, over my eyes. I was a wreck. A mess. A bundle of emotion and lust, confusion and despair.

  I thought I might be going mad. Love was not for me. Could never be for me. Not even the most casual sexual expression was safe for me to indulge in. I knew this, as I'd always known it. My body was betraying me, but my heart –

  "What's that?" Lir's voice had come closer. "I thought I saw something outside the window."

  In less than the time it took to think, I'd pushed myself off the balcony and hung by my fingertips over the side. The balcony shook and creaked as Lir leaned out to look around. I held my breath, fearing he'd catch my scent or hear my breath.

  "What is it?" Daelyn asked.

  Lir didn't sound convinced of his own reply. "Naught. Let's go."

  The balcony creaked again, louder this time, as they both left the window and came out. My fingers, numb with cold, began to let loose. I cast a terrified glance over my shoulder at the icy ground below, afraid not of being hurt when I fell but of them finding out I followed. The Art had taught me how to fall. I landed on my feet and rolled in the filthy alley, and ended up on my feet.

  My fear intensified in the next moment when three shrouded figures entered the alley, the one in the center being held upright by the other two. I ducked behind a wall of barrels overflowing with refuse. The one on the right paused and sent a low whistle upward. An answering whistle came from above me. I heard Lir and Daelyn's footsteps moving away from me, toward the figures in the alley.

  "Whist!" cried one from below.

  "Who goes?" Lir whispered back.

  "Daelyn's three," came the reply. I recognized the voice of Penryn. "Vermonte thinks Freet here had to puke, and that me and Moravian brought him out. We're supposed to take him back home to bed."

  Daelyn's low chuckle made the hair on the back of my neck rise. "Most well."

  In moments Lir and Daelyn scuttled down the ladder I hadn't noticed earlier. They headed off down the alley, and I followed them. The chimes rang three. The curfew had begun. Though in any other circumstance the Prince Regent of Alyria would have been allowed free passage on its streets curfew or no, Daelyn and his comrades did not flaunt their presence. They had gone far past the poetry house district, past even the merchant district, to the very edge of the city. We passed tight knots of Rosten's soldiers, though most of them had been concentrated around the poetry district, where the posters and pamphlets had been appearing.

  Of course, Daelyn would know where and when each group of guards would be, and when to move past them. In addition, Lir would know how to move past the soldiers on feet quiet enough not to attract their attention. There are some who say a master of the Art can cloud men's minds, and watching Lir that night, I would agree.

  What surprised me was the seriousness of their journey. No laughing. No flirting. No coy comments from Daelyn. Only swift and steady progress through the shadowed alleys and streets toward the edge of the city.

  I'd expected to see Daelyn and his crew putting up more posters, leaving more leaflets, perhaps even scrawling some words on walls. Instead, they ducked through a narrow gate I recognized. Just outside the walls were joba melon fields, with other fields beyond that. Beyond that – the mountains that bordered Alyria and kept us from contact with Elitan.

  I paused inside the gate and watched them move across the field. The moon had risen, and without the buildings to block it, cast a silver sheen over the frost-covered ground. Their feet crunched in the remains of the joba vines. Five figures, standing tall, on what mission?

  Not even the Prince Regent would have adequate explanation for this.

  I couldn't risk going through the gate after them, not across the open field, through the bright moonlight. However, I'd spent enough days supervising the loading of my uncle's wagons to know my way around this area. They were heading toward a ramshackle, three-sided hut that in the growing season housed refreshment for the follies who worked the fields. I could reach that shack from behind, by scaling the fence a bit further down and creeping up through the grove of low vesta bushes.

  Close to the front edge, the bushes grew nearly up to the shack itself. I wriggled through the bushes' thick trunks, below the lowest of their branches, until I lay almost directly in front of the small building. Vesta bushes are low growing, but dense, and while the branches carried their share of deadly sharp thorns the length of my forefinger, and I kept my belly pressed to the frozen ground.

  From my vantage point I could look without obstruction toward the shack's open front. Four other dark figures huddled in the shadows, and in another moment, I saw one more separate from the darkness and step toward Daelyn and the others.

  The moonlight was bright enough for me to see that figure's face as it leaned forward to give Daelyn a kiss of greeting, and what I saw made me bite my tongue to keep back my gasp of surprise. It was a woman, clothed in dark trousers and doublet, but no coat or cape to hide the clearly rounded shape of her figure. Her hair hung to her shoulders beneath a fur-edged cap, fur gloves shielded her hands from the cold, while boots on her slim legs came to her knees and were also edged and tied with strips of fur. She had the same cheeks, the same nose, the same full and pouting mouth as the Prince Regent of Alyria.

  Daelyn drew back from her kiss and held both her hands in his own. "Greetings, Sister."

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I'd thought all the other offspring of King Harrigan had died. To hear Daelyn address a woman as "sister," to hear the word turned from an obscenity into a salutation of affection
– I should not have been shocked after all I'd already experienced with him. But I was.

  "Lir," said the woman and stepped into his arms for a kiss of greeting. "Gerard is with the others."

  "How many, Carinda?" Daelyn asked.

  "Seven, this time. Four children." Carinda waited until another of the dark figures stepped out from the shadows before continuing. "Two boys, two girls."

  "And the women?" Daelyn asked. "They're prepared for the journey?"

  "We got the supplies you sent. They're dressed as warmly as we could make them. We have the food at the first hiding place. We should be there well before dawn."

  The man who spoke was short but broad-shouldered. His clothes were serviceable and drab, the sword at his side without ornament but lethal looking just the same. His hair was shorn so close to his head I swore I could see glints of scalp through the dark scruff. I'd never seen a man with hair so short; I'd once seen a man convicted of thievery whose thigh-length locks had been cut to just below his ears, and that had been considered an intense punishment. What sort of crime had this man committed to be so shorn?

  "Gerard." Daelyn clasped the other man's hand and pumped it up and down in a gesture I didn't recognize. No kiss of greeting. They clapped each other on the back hard enough for the slap to echo around them.

  The man did the same with Lir and the others, then stepped back to Carinda's side. From the darkness inside the shack I heard a baby's snorting whimper and the familiar sound of a cradlesong I'd thought I'd forgotten long ago.

  "If they're ready," Daelyn said, "we should go."

  Gerard nodded and went back inside the shack to return a moment later carrying two small bundles. When one of them squirmed, I realized he held children. The moonlight shone across the face of one, peeping out from its blankets, cheeks smooth and eyes wide with wonder.

  I'd heard the stories of women and their spawn gone missing but I hadn't imagined them to be organized escapes. It made sense, now. Women fleeing in the night with babies in their arms could not get far without someone to help them. Where would they go, and how would they do it undetected? Now I knew how. I didn't know where.

  "Step lively," Carinda said, and the three women came out of the shadows.

  None of them wore follyblankets. All wore the same dark, plain clothes of Carinda and Gerard. Two of them carried bundles, smaller than those in Gerard's arms. As I watched, a bundle wailed and the woman holding it drew it close to her chest. With swift, efficient fingers, she slipped open the buttons on the front of her cloak and then her doublet, and tucked the child inside. The babe quieted at once.

  Daelyn handed Carinda a clinking sack. "There's enough in there for you get them started in Elitan."

  The third woman, the one without a child, burst into muffled weeping and threw herself at Daelyn's feet. "My lord, my lord, may the Invisible Mother bless you!"

  "Hush." Daelyn gave a quick glance around. The field was deserted, but was not hidden. "Rise you up."

  "You helped my daughter and her three children escape already. I thought I'd never see her, or them again. But thanks to you, we'll be free!" The old woman's smile was as bright and shining as the moon above. "And so I says bless you, my lord! Bless you and yours!"

  "Come on, old mother," said Gerard gently. "'Tis time we're on our way."

  "We'll need the distraction at the gates," Carinda told Daelyn, who nodded and looked back at his mates.

  "I know. We'll take care of it."

  "Once we're out of the city itself we should be all right. Unless Rosten has set up a border patrol?"

  Lir coughed. "He's already got troops all over the city."

  "But they're spread too thin," Daelyn put in. "I made sure our dear Lord Rosten got a piece of important information about some insurgence going on on the other side of the city tonight. His guards should be there, instead."

  "He won't be spread too thin much longer. Already he's ordering more troops." This from Freet. "Vermonte told me."

  Daelyn's head swiveled. "Did he?"

  Carinda made a sharp noise. "If what Freet says is true, it's all the more reason to step up our actions. I'll be back in a fortnight. Will you be ready?"

  Moravian spoke up. "Penryn, Freet and I have planned a hunting expedition for next week. We'll leave the next set of supplies at the usual places."

  "If that bloody Book Monster doesn't interfere." In the moonlight, Freet's red hair shone like fire. "I overheard him promising some of the other Council of the Book members he'd send soldiers along with any hunting party, for its safety." Freet sneered and spat on the ground. "What are they afraid of? That the women who've run off are living feral in the woods, ready to pounce on any man who enters their territory?"

  "And emasculate them with their bare hands, no doubt." Daelyn spoke with cool amusement. "They're starting to become afraid, Freet. That's all. I have every confidence that even should Rosten send his tag-alongs, you and the others could lose them with no problem."

  The cough shot out of my mouth before I could stop it. Though I muffled it with my fingers, the noise was like glass breaking. Every head snapped toward the vesta bushes. I scrambled back, and the thorns pierced me in a dozen places. I tore away, and more caught me. The harder I struggled, the more fiercely they stung.

  Without hesitation, Gerard handed off the bundles to the women and strode toward the bushes. Heedless of the thorns, he reached in and grabbed me by the hood of my cloak. The cloth tore as I struggled. He yanked, let go, reached again and found the top of my head.

  I thought he might tear off the top of my scalp when he pulled. The branches broke and snagged on me as he yanked me free of their grip. In the next moment, he'd tossed me to the ground in front of him and sent a kick to my midsection that thieved my breath.

  "Hold!" Daelyn's voice was shocked, but firm. "Hold, Gerard!"

  I blinked and my vision swam into focus to see Gerard's blade pressed to my forehead. His teeth bared, his head shorn, he looked feral.

  Six months before I'd have pissed myself with fear, but I'd been training with Lir. I had a bit of beast in me, myself. Coiled Serpent got me away from his sword, and reverse Leaping Tiger got me to my feet. I couldn't knock his blade from his hands without a weapon, but I could avoid his next slash. I whirled and got behind him, acting totally on instinct, filled with the Art and the power of my body. I kicked up, high, and caught Gerard's shoulder hard enough to knock him forward.

  Carinda drew two daggers from her belt. Her arms whirled and swung, and whirled again. She made moves I hadn't learned, or even seen, and in a minute she had one blade to my throat and the other pressed to my gut.

  "Is this yours, Brother?" The way she said the last word made Daelyn look at her sharply.

  "Let him go," he said, and she did, with a push to make me stumble.

  "You stupid whelp!" Lir cuffed the side of my head.

  "I wanted to know where you go at night, and why you come back so late, with bruises and dirt instead of poetry and love bites."

  Daelyn looked at me. "It's not your concern."

  "You told me in the beginning that anything that had to do with you was my concern." I paused. "And you should know I would have supported you with all I have."

  His sister moved next to him, and again I was struck by how much they looked alike. It was still odd for me to see a woman's face, see her hair long and unbound like a man's, see her stance and garb masculine. There could be no mistaking her femininity, though. Her body curved lushly. Her face, free of cosmetic, shone in the moonlight. She was fierce and wild and as beautiful as Daelyn.

  "This is your fetchencarry?" She turned to Daelyn. "Somewhat young, isn't he?"

  To my mortification, Daelyn laughed. "He's young. And impetuous. Aeris, this is Carinda Avigdor Delessian of Elitan. My sister."

  I bowed in front of her. "I'm honored."

  "You should address the queen as my lady," Gerard growled from behind me.

  "Aeris has likely never heard
such a term as that," said Carinda with a light, trilling laugh much like Daelyn's. "You can call me Carinda."

  "He's lucky to be able to call you anything at all," put in Moravian from behind her. "Gerard nearly put his sword through his head."

  "But he did not," Carinda said speculatively. She looked at Lir. "You've been teaching him, no?"

  "More fool I," growled Lir. "For it seems he's learned naught."

  "I wouldn't say that," she replied and gave me another speculative look. "He got away from Gerard. Most impressive."

  "Still, the question remains unanswered," said Daelyn smoothly. "What were you thinking of? Do you know what you risked by coming here?"

  "Does he know what danger he's put us in?" added Penryn with a spit near my feet. "Damn stupid kid."