Poisoned Blade

by Kate Elliott

  “When Princess Berenise was younger she made the journey to the mines and the tour of the estates. Lord Menos always accompanied her. He died in a mine accident here.”

  “Why was he buried with an oracle? I thought only kings and lords who are head of their clan or palace did that.”

  “Lord Menos was head of Clan Garon at that time. When he died, the title passed to his and Princess Berenise’s son. That son died in battle, and the title would have passed to his son, Lord Kalliarkos, but Kalliarkos was only two years old at the time. Menos’s younger brother—Lord Gargaron’s father—was dead by then too, so Lord Gargaron took over as head of the household.”

  “Does that mean Lord Kalliarkos is the rightful successor to be head of Garon Palace when he comes of age?”

  “I never thought about it,” she says, surprised. “Gargaron has always been lord since I’ve been part of Garon Stable.”

  She finishes her notes and lies down. As soon as she is asleep I grab a waterskin and leave our shelter. The ruins make it easy for me to sneak up to a spot where I can overlook the servants’ gate into the temple. A din of wheels announces the arrival of three carriages and two supply wagons, all pulled by mules. Lord Agalar has arrived, just as he promised. He steps down from his carriage and strides to the back of the line, where two armed men mounted on sturdy desert ponies are bringing up the rear. One is a dark, bearded man with a dreadful scar that has seamed shut an eye; the other is fair-haired like Agalar and even resembles him a little. The scarred man leans down as Agalar speaks, then gives a gesture of assent, like a salute, and the two men turn and ride back the way we all came in. Agalar enters the temple with his retinue through the servants’ gate, as Gargaron would never do.

  Soon after, Denya emerges from the gate, holding a parasol over her head and with Amaya carrying a basket behind her.

  “It’s a shame women aren’t allowed to walk in the temple garden, Doma Denya,” says Amaya in the voice actors use to make their words carry without sounding like they are shouting. “Perhaps we can find shade by that lovely pond for our picnic, where I am sure no one will be rude enough to bother us. I forgot a blanket to sit on. Just a moment.”

  That’s all I need.

  I work my way in toward the center of the ruins through a maze of half-fallen walls and dead ends. Finally I stumble onto a clear path down a string of stone-lined pools of different shapes and sizes. It brings me through a partially collapsed tunnel that doubles back twice through a thick wall before opening onto a circular plaza that forms a rim all the way around the perfect circle of the tiny lake. The statue of the goddess, twice life-size, rises on a plinth at the center of the waters. Footsteps crunch. Denya and Amaya approach, having found their way here by a different route.

  “Bettany is here,” I say breathlessly.

  “I know. Gargaron told Denya earlier that we would have Lord Agalar’s company on the desert crossing. When I went back inside just now I managed to pass word to Bett to meet us here as soon as she can. Search out a private place for us to talk. Denya can keep watch and warn us if someone comes.”

  I seek out the highest remnant of wall and scramble up. Amaya and Denya laugh and chat as they lay out a blanket and little baskets of food in plain sight. They look radiant together, embraced by blossoms and lake and sky. Beyond them lies a tangle of overgrown salt cedar, perfect for hiding.

  I shade my eyes and turn a careful circle to make sure no one is sneaking up on us. Even though I can always say I am practicing for the Fives by climbing walls, I can’t be caught with Amaya.

  The morning light softens the shapes and edges of the ruins but it’s still instantly obvious this was once a circular complex separated into four distinct building styles. A maze of tiny passageways and tinier rooms might be likened to Pillars, and a cluster of slender towers, many still intact, resembles an orchard of stone trees. The Inkos temple stabs right through two of the sections, all right angles and strong lines.

  A plink grabs my attention as a fragment of stone strikes the wall I’m standing on. I drop to a crouch. Bettany stands below me, where the maze of alleys dead-ends into the wall that encircles the lake. She climbs up, and we scoot down to a lower section, out of sight of the temple, and sit together, legs dangling.

  A breeze swirls around us, bathing us in the scent of flowers.

  She takes my hand just as she used to when we were little girls, before she started hating everything in our lives. Her presence at my side is the most familiar thing in the world, like we are tucked back in the womb together, not that I have any memory of that time. A part of me that I hadn’t known hurt quite this badly finally relaxes into memories of a happier time before this storm broke over us.

  “I’ve been so worried about you, Bett,” I say in a low voice.

  “How did you manage the rescue?” she asks. “Are you sure you can trust the people who took them away?”

  “Yes.” I start to explain, but stop. “I don’t want to say more until you’re free of Lord Agalar.”

  “What makes you think I want to be free of Agalar?”

  “I am not climbing up there, not in this dress!” Amaya’s voice interrupts my reply. She stands at the lakeside base of the wall, staring up at us. “If you haven’t found a better place, Jes, we can go talk in the cover of the salt cedar without being seen.”

  “Bossy as ever,” remarks Bettany.

  In the old days, Amaya would have poked back, unable to help herself because she felt we older girls picked on her. Instead she gives a shrug, like she can’t be bothered, and walks toward the feathery shrubs.

  “The way you and Amaya used to squabble seems so pointless now,” I say.

  Her face looks drawn and worried as she watches Amaya vanish into the foliage. “Jes, I—never mind. I’ll say it to both of you.”

  I follow her down the wall. We push through branches to find Amaya in a tiny clearing, seated on an ancient stone bench placed right at the edge of the pool. She leaps up and hugs Bettany.

  “Oh, Bett, I was afraid we had lost you.” Releasing her, she wipes tears from her eyes. “But what about the rest of the household? They’re safe, right?”

  I break in. “I haven’t had opportunity to tell you yet, Amaya. They’re free.”

  Amaya’s shriek is followed by more tears, and she grabs both Bettany and me by the wrist, drawing us close. “If only Maraya were here to see how we got the better of that awful man. How did you manage it?”

  “Bettany and Lord Agalar got them to pretend to be dead, killed in the collapse at the mine.”

  “Oh, that is brilliant!”

  “It was Agalar’s idea,” says Bettany in a tone that makes Amaya pause and look more closely at her.

  I go on. “I found Efean men willing to smuggle them out of Akheres. They’ve promised to convey them to Mother.”

  “Do you trust these strangers?” Amaya asks.

  “I do. They’re associates of the poet.”

  Amaya’s mouth quirks. “He likes you, you know. Even if you don’t want to see it.”

  I clench my jaw, feeling a blush crawl up my cheeks.

  “Where is Mother?” Bett asks sharply.

  I’m grateful for her question, because I don’t want to think too closely about why I feel embarrassed at the thought of Ro. “I don’t know precisely where she is, but I know she is with Efeans we can trust because they do not love our Saroese masters.”

  Bettany laughs with her usual spark of derision. “So you are Efean now, Jes? No longer Father’s good little Patron daughter?”

  Amaya pinches the skin of Bett’s arm hard enough for her to exclaim as she flinches back. “Stop it, Bett! At home you always acted like you were better than the rest of us because you played the rebel who made a show of rejecting everything Father stood for while still benefiting from it. You just enjoyed the attention you got from being angry all the time!”

  “Why shouldn’t I have been angry all the time? I wasn’t lying to myself l
ike the rest of you were. Father abandoned us the instant we weren’t convenient for him anymore. Mother knew the day would come and yet loyally served him like the cow she is.”

  “That’s not fair!” Amaya and I cry together.

  “Maraya drinking down the lies they tell in the Archives, hoping her Patron looks will get her a pass where Jes and I could never hope to walk. Fine for her, isn’t it? And then of course doting over the first Patron man who spoke to her kindly—”

  “Polodos is a good man!” objects Amaya.

  “Yes, and dull as wash water.” She waves dismissively in the direction of the picnic. “I suppose you think the attention of a pretty Patron friend makes you not a mule while meanwhile all the other Garon servants are whispering that you’re on the catch for that captain.”

  “You don’t understand me at all.” The way the sunlight cuts through the salt cedar, pouring across her, gives Amaya’s shadow the look of a cat’s, arching and hissing like she is about to scratch.

  “You always wanted to be a captain’s wife,” retorts Bettany.

  “Of course, before Father abandoned us, a marriage with an army captain was my best hope of getting a household of my own and a husband who was gone for months or years at a time to the wars. But now I don’t have to.” Through a gap in the foliage we can see Denya in the distance, bent intently over a bright red silk ribbon she embroiders with expert stitches. “Denya is saving up all the gifts and money Lord Gargaron confers on her. I have my gold from Prince Temnos. When Lord Gargaron settles his attention on a new concubine, as men always do—”

  “Father didn’t!” I object.

  “Oh, leave off defending Father.” Bettany laughs humorlessly. “For once I’m honestly interested in what Amaya has to say.”

  As Amaya relaxes her position shifts and the feathery leaves fragment her shadow into an ordinary patch of shade. “Efean women live in households headed by women. Why can’t we? Denya and I are thinking of selling masks and ribbons in the market. We plan to earn enough money to support our own household as well as our destitute mothers. Her mother also suffered when Clan Tonor fell.”

  Bettany’s lips twist like she is about to say something mocking, yet after a pause she relents and gives Amaya a sisterly peck on the cheek. “That will certainly be shocking, to see the daughter of General Esladas selling masks and ribbons in the market.”

  “It’s odd,” muses Amaya. “When Father left us to die in a tomb it freed me from thinking I had to do things the way he thought proper.”

  “He had no choice! And he didn’t know about the tomb!”

  “You always make excuses for him,” Bettany sneers.

  But Amaya squeezes my hand, and she replies in a calm but determined voice. “You weren’t the one bricked up, Jes. But when the lives we had before were torn apart, I finally saw that I had other paths I could take. Like the way you can see multiple paths through spinning Rings.”

  “Like the way Jes used to arrange her food on her platter to simulate a Fives court until Father caught her doing it?”

  We all laugh, and my heart feels light as air, floating on the shared memory.

  The water lies as still as a mirror. Bending over, we see our faces side by side. Bett looks the most Efean of us four girls, as dark and beautiful as Mother, just as Amaya looks more like Father with straighter hair and the golden skin of the Saroese. I’m the one who looks most like both our parents, Efean and Saroese parts shared out equally to make up my whole. Anyone looking at me knows exactly what I am, whereas Bett and Amaya can slide into one half of what they are. Studying my reflection, I think again of Ro’s words, about how I can use this to my advantage. I’m not one or the other; I’m both and neither, just as the land of Efea itself can never be as Saroese as old Saro and yet is no longer the Efea it was before the Saroese came.

  Towering above the water, the goddess watches her daughters with benevolent concern. Her arms are filled with bounty and her curly hair is fashioned as ropy strings. I suddenly realize that she does not resemble in any way Hayiyin, Mistress of the Sea, who has prim lips, Saroese eyes, and straight hair flowing down her back all the way to her feet.

  Amaya’s gaze has also drifted up to the statue. “She looks a little like Mother, doesn’t she?”

  My thoughts run back to Ro-emnu sitting in the Heart Tavern. To the words the waiter said to me. “She reminds me of a painting I once saw. What if…” The thought is so staggering, going against everything I’ve been taught, that it’s hard to force through my lips. “What if this statue was carved and erected before the Saroese came? What if Hayiyin was copied after the Mother of All? What if the Patrons stole Her from us?”

  Bettany waves an airy hand in a disparaging way that really irritates me. “No, it is Hayiyin. Agalar explained to me that all representations of the Efean Mother of All are copies of Hayiyin. They look similar because they are made by a conquered people who wish to identify their old beliefs as being as strong as those of the people who conquered them.”

  “How would he know? He doesn’t even live in Efea.”

  “He knows more than any person I’ve ever met, besides being a brilliant doctor.”

  “Yes, and he seems quite satisfied to tell everyone how brilliant he is too. After all your complaints about Mother giving up everything to stay with Father all those years, I never thought I’d find you like a bridled mare following docilely along behind that arrogant doctor—”

  “Don’t call him arrogant! He has the right to be treated as the scholar he is.”

  “It’s so sweet to see you crawling on behalf of a lord who calls you Beauty instead of your name. One who orders you around like a dog!”

  “You’re more of a dog than I am. Running as an adversary in a lord’s stable! Garon owns all five of your souls. Agalar paid my indenture fee and hired me as his assistant. He says I am as promising an apprentice as any young man. In the Shipwright territories, there’s nothing unusual about a woman being a scholar or a doctor. He says I have a healing gift.”

  “Is that what he says?”

  “If you’d seen him pull people back from the brink of death, if you’d watched him sew up a man’s crushed leg, you’d not mock. He can teach me things no one else can. You’re just jealous it was his idea that made it so easy to rescue our household. You think he stole the glory you wanted!”

  Her ingratitude hits like a punch to the face. “Amaya and I searched all over Efea for you. And it was me who found allies in Akheres to help us after you didn’t know what to do next!”

  “I think you’re just afraid Agalar is smarter than you. It must be hard not having Father around to make you feel like the best of us all the time.”

  “I never said I was the best of anything!”

  “You never had to say it. Once you became obsessed with the Fives all you wanted us for was to cover your tracks.”

  Amaya steps between us. “Would you two stop fighting? We’re supposed to be celebrating, not arguing! Bett, I know you resent how the Fives took Jes’s attention, but there’s no point holding a grudge now that our old life is gone—”

  “You resented the Fives?” I slump down on the bench and stare at her. “All your silences? All your screaming? That was about the Fives?”

  “Oh, Jes! Please! It’s not always about you. Yes, I was jealous you had so little time for me, but that’s only part of it. Don’t you see? While Maraya was studying for the Archives and you sneaked out in secret to your Fives and Amaya wrote poetry and plotted an advantageous marriage, I watched you all lie to yourselves about who we really are.”

  Amaya crosses her arms and taps a foot impatiently. “We don’t have much time, and I’m not interested in listening to you lecture us, Bett.”

  I stand, because I can’t think sitting down, and grab Bettany’s hand. “Amaya’s right. We don’t have much time, so let’s not argue about our old life. Bett, listen to us. I know this doctor dazzled you and that you feel obligated to him because he saved
you. But you don’t really know anything about him. You’ll be completely at his mercy if you leave with him.”

  She opens her mouth but I speak before she can.

  “Hear me out! Amaya can smuggle you a waterskin and some food and you can walk back to Akheres to the people I met there, join the household servants, and return with them to Mother.”

  “What makes you think I want to return to Mother?”

  I blink, too stunned to reply.

  “You and Amaya are the ones who should escape with me,” she adds with an intensity that startles me.

  “I’m not leaving Denya!”

  “I can’t go,” I object. “I’m an adversary now. How can you not want to return to Mother?”

  “I could ask the same of you that you ask of me! Both of you should run away from what is nothing more than servitude to a Patron master. I can’t even imagine how dangerous it must be for you, Amaya. A concubine’s servant has no protection. What if this Captain Neartos decides he wants you for himself?”

  “Believe me, I know every trick to keep out of the way of the men in this household. As long as Denya pleases Lord Gargaron, I’m safe.”

  “You said yourself the favor he shows her won’t last forever.” Now it’s Bett’s turn to grab Amaya’s hands, an affectionate gesture she rarely made at home. “You have to get out. Both of you!”

  “Why?” says Amaya. “We’ll be back in Saryenia soon enough. Once we’re there we’ll send a message to the poet, and he’ll tell us where Mother is.”

  “It’s a dangerous eight- or ten-day journey through empty desert with wagons full of gold. Aren’t you afraid of bandits?”

  I snort. “Lord Gargaron has done this run many times, always with soldiers as escort. I think he understands the danger. Anyway, Father used to be in charge of the northern desert frontier. He scoured the land clean of bandits years ago with his spider scout patrols.”

  Her caustic laugh rakes like nails scratching on my skin. “Do you ever listen to how you worship Father when he never did anything to deserve it, Jes?”