Poisoned Blade

by Kate Elliott

“But Your Highness, I haven’t done more than pace through a daily menageries to stay limber and practice a few tricks, not since Akheres Oasis. I’m not ready.”

  “An adversary is always ready, Spider. Do you understand me?”

  The words fall as a threat so I suck in my anger and reply in a cool voice. “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “I am sure you do not,” she remarks with the asperity of the old who can easily perceive when the young are lying. “You are no more of a fool than your father is, Jessamy.”

  That she uses my name makes me very nervous. It’s so hard not to jump up and pace around but I hold still.

  “You may believe I am a weak old woman in thrall to Gargaron’s ambition to rule in Efea through my beloved grandchildren, whom he believes he can control. But you would be mistaken. Let me tell you a story.”

  My whole body tenses, for I am sure there is nothing worse than being told a secret that might kill you. But of course I remain silent. As Mis said, as Bettany said, I’m trapped.

  “As the younger sister of a king and queen I was naturally sent away to marry an ally, who at that time happened to be Sokorios, the king of Saro-Urok. When he was killed by a rival, I barely escaped with my life and my tongue. I was saved by the timely intervention of Menos Garon, whom I married even though his rank was below my own. Menos and I did well enough together. I respected him, and he respected me enough to leave the administrative reins of the household in my hands.”

  “Menos was head of the Garon household, and Lord Gargaron’s father was his younger brother,” I say, remembering what Tana told me.

  “Indeed.” Her nod is like a golden star of approval whose radiance makes me shine. “I have always believed that my husband, and later our son, Kalliarkos’s father, were assassinated. But their deaths were covered up with the explanations of a mining accident and a battle. Because of the nature of their deaths I’ve never had proof, only suspicion.”

  Her gaze has years of weight. She can crush me as easily as she can breathe, and a conjecture that I have in some manner mistaken the genesis of this plot becomes visible on the map in my mind. So I leap.

  “Their deaths allowed Lord Gargaron to become head of the household when otherwise he would have remained a lesser member of the clan.”

  Her smile is no smile. It is a knife, put away into its sheath as she decides not to slit my throat. “Yes, you comprehend the situation. A man willing to murder his own kinsmen in order to take what belongs to them, merely because he covets it for himself, is a dangerous man. There is enough for all, but he is not a person willing to share. Aware of my vulnerability, I have lived a quiet life, built up my treasury, and bided my time for my grandchildren to come of age. Do you understand?”

  “I believe so, Your Highness. If I were in your place I would hope to see my grandchildren become king and queen and leave Garon Palace to the dangerous man who craves it most.”

  “Among the Saroese, women play their role from ‘behind the curtains,’ as the poet wrote. We learn to negotiate through misdirection and trade.” Her face is unreadable, for she is a woman who has survived many decades by never displaying her true feelings. “I made the offer to Gargaron: put my grandchildren on the throne and I will not push Kal’s rightful position as head of Garon Palace.”

  “It was your idea? You had the Fives court built for Kalliarkos without ever meaning for him to become a real adversary?”

  “He is a prince, with a claim to the throne of Efea through me and to the throne of our enemies in Saro-Urok, thanks to his mother’s lineage. The Fives is nothing but a game.”

  I clamp my lips together. The Fives is more than a game if you are playing it for bigger stakes in the world. But I’m not going to disagree with her to her face. “So it was a piece of misdirection to let Kalliarkos train when all along you meant him for the throne.”

  “Yes. You came along at a perfect time. When Gargaron was investigating your father to see if he was the military man we needed for our plan to work, he discovered you and had you followed and studied. Together we determined you might be the vehicle that could put an end to Kal’s senseless daydream.”

  A sick anger twists inside me and I can’t speak. To speak is to die. They murdered Lord Ottonor and condemned his entire household to penury and disgrace. They threw away my mother and sisters and all the people to whom Mother gave refuge under her roof. They treated Kal’s dreams with contempt. All for an ambition that benefits their own selfish desire for power.

  But after all I’m too angry not to speak, because too many lives are on the line to let the most important question go unanswered.

  “Your Highness, how can you trust Lord Gargaron if you think he murdered your husband and son?”

  “I don’t trust him. But he has no blood relationship to the lineage of the first Kliatemnos and Serenissima. He has no possible claim to the throne. Therefore, once my grandchildren become king and queen, it will serve him to keep them there.”

  I have to tell her. If for nothing else, to protect Kal. “Menoë is in league with Nikonos. I heard them plotting that night in the garden when I followed Kal into the pavilion. She means to betray you all.” The words hiss on my tongue, so bitter, and tears sting in my eyes, and I realize I am crying for Bettany—my own sibling betrayer.

  “Certainly not.” Her tone brooks no disagreement.

  Menoë has fooled them all, and there is no way I can convince them.

  “You do not understand the full nature of the situation, Jessamy, daughter of Esladas. Imagine Menoë as queen. Once she gives birth to a boy, that boy—your father’s child—will be formally and publicly announced as the son of Kalliarkos and named as heir to the throne of Efea.”

  “What will happen to my father?”

  “Why should anything happen to your father? He’s too lowborn to make a claim to the throne, and Efea needs his military skill now more than ever. The king and queen are understood to be father and mother over Efea, so any child the queen gives birth to belongs to the king, and of course the ignorant populace will believe it is truly Kalliarkos’s child.”

  “Does that mean Temnos isn’t really Kliatemnos’s son?”

  “No. He is the king’s son in every way. Kliatemnos and Serenissima chose to bind the power more tightly into the family by both marrying and breeding inside it. We will keep our bloodline pure through Menoë. Don’t you hear what I’m saying? In due time, your half brother will be king of Efea.”

  My hands go slack. My shoulders sag. Her words fall like nonsense because they are impossible. As my thoughts hit this unfathomable wall I lose all my strength. I just kneel there as she continues speaking. This is the ordinary way people go about murdering and bribing to gain and hold on to power.

  And now I am truly part of it.

  I know every piece of their plan, one that requires the deaths of Kliatemnos, Serenissima, and Nikonos to succeed, and if I do not go immediately to the king and queen, I am complicit, a traitor. Princess Berenise has made sure of that.

  “Your part in this task, as I was beginning to say, is to capture and keep Prince Temnos’s loyalty.”

  “What will happen to Prince Temnos?” I whisper hoarsely, for I fear to hear the answer.

  “Nothing will happen to him. He’s an invalid, a weak boy who suffers seizures. No one expects him to survive to adulthood. As a rising Challenger, you will work to win the crowd so thoroughly to your side that, when we make our play for the throne, the populace will support us without hesitation, as I believe Gargaron has already made clear. Your reward for your successful part in our endeavor will be to receive all that you desire.”

  She pauses.

  I murmur, with the obedience I have no choice but to show, “Yes, Your Highness.”

  “Very good. Now, I am going inside. You may remain here. Please, go over to the railing and enjoy the view.”

  It is such a peculiar order that I puzzle over it for exactly as long as it takes for her attendants to help her
away, removing all but one of the lanterns, and for the breathless arrival of a person who runs up the steps to the roof.

  “Grandmama, my apologies for being late. I just got word you had summoned me.…”

  He sees me standing at the railing in the outer aura of lamplight and stops dead, then looks around as if unable to believe there is no one else up here, that we are alone.

  That Princess Berenise knows we are alone.

  My hands tighten on the railing. I should reject being used like this, but I can’t take my eyes off him: his dark eyes, the strong curve of his shoulders, the parting of his lips as he takes in a resolute breath.

  He walks over and stands next to me, careful to remain an arm’s length away. His presence feels like a fire illuminating my five souls, the heart of me: I have wanted him from the moment he spoke to me as an equal, adversary to adversary.

  The garden, laid out below, magnifies our silence because there is no wind to rustle its leaves. Under curfew the city rests uneasily, as if holding its breath. Lamps mark the wharves of Saryenia’s famous harbors.

  A trumpet sounds the hour, the sound rising so suddenly that I jump. When the horn fades he speaks.

  “How are you come to stand here in Garon Palace, on the roof of my grandmother’s pavilion, Jes?”

  “I was told you had summoned me, but when I got here it was Princess Berenise who was waiting.”

  “I did not summon you. But it seems Grandmama knows you are here.”

  “Yes, she does.”

  “She summoned me, as she often does. She likes to eat an evening supper here atop the roof.”

  “I know nothing of that, my lord.”

  “You’re right to be suspicious of me. I said things I regret after the victory games, because I felt humiliated and I wanted you to feel hurt too. What I’ve seen in battle has made me see how selfish I was, how small the world I lived in before, how little I could see of what really goes on beyond the palace walls.”

  “My lord—”

  “Please let me finish. I’ve chewed over these words for days. When we met up again in the desert I wanted to tell you that I’d gotten over my anger, but I couldn’t speak to you when we were with the scouts. At camp your father was so adamant that you and I never be alone, and I was not about to confide in you with him present! And then on the journey here Uncle Gar was with me day and night.”

  “I do not expect you to say anything, my lord. Your anger is understandable. You could have said much worse after the Fives trial. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not sorry you defeated me!”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t be. I knew you would say that.” He laughs curtly, and I can hear that for all his fine words, losing his dream—his senseless daydream—still hurts.

  “I’m sorry for what it meant to you,” I say.

  “What it meant that day, and what it means now, are two different things.” He shifts impatiently, rubs his eyes. “I’m not an adversary any longer. I can’t be an adversary, or at least not in the Fives. I see that now.”

  “You are heir to two thrones, my lord. Your grandmother just told me so.”

  He is so fiercely not looking at me that I flush self-consciously. As he inhales I tense in the way a good adversary does right before she leaps into Rings.

  “What did she tell you?” he asks.

  And so I tell him, because I have to see for myself how he reacts, where he nods because he already knew and where he winces because he’s as appalled and disgusted at their plans as I am. When to my utter relief he nods and winces in all the right places, and I finish, I bow my head and wait.

  He takes in a slow breath and lets it out. I don’t rush him although I feel his presence beside me as I would feel the promise of a brilliant fire on a cold desert night.

  Finally he moves, and I startle, but he’s just pointing into the night.

  “Look at the lights on the water.”

  The sea spreads as a mantle of darkness, broken at the horizon where stars pour upward into the vault of the heavens. Distant spark-bugs float between sea and sky: the prow and stern lamps on ships far out on the water.

  When he lowers his arm he places a hand on the railing so close to mine I could exhale into him. The temptation to lean sideways and brush my shoulder against his washes so strongly over me that before I realize it my shoulder touches his. He starts. At once I straighten to attention as if Father stands behind us, watching to see that a gap is fixed between his daughter and the lord she must not desire.

  “We could run away,” he whispers. “We could join a mercenary company and leave and never come back.”

  Oh how it hurts to hear those golden words.

  Oh how it hurts to answer.

  “I can’t leave my mother and siblings. I just can’t.” I can’t—I won’t—be Bettany.

  An unexpectedly sweet smile paints his lips. “I knew you would say that.”

  “I’m sorry, Kal.”

  “Kal?”

  How that name crept out I cannot imagine. “My apologies, my lord.”

  “Oh no, no, now you’ve said it and I can’t unhear it.” He rests a hand over my hand and turns to face me so that courtesy impels me to turn to face him, and thus we stand with the heady aroma of jasmine drifting up from the garden and the vast dome of the heavens our starry crown.

  “Jes,” he whispers.

  It is the easiest thing in all of creation to kiss him.

  I test his lips to mine as our hands clasp and our fingers intertwine.

  “They’re using us,” he whispers.

  “I know.”

  “They’re letting us know they won’t stand in our way, as long as we do what they want.”

  “I know.”

  “Jes—”

  “I know.”

  And then we don’t speak until I am so breathless that I am the one who has to break it off.

  I stare at him because in all my dreams over and over I imagined this moment, that he would still care, and now that it is here it feels like it couldn’t possibly be happening.

  A man coughs.

  I spin to face the intruder, but Kal grabs my shoulder. He catches my eye, and with a look settles my pounding heart. I am not alone. He is with me. We are together.

  In a more dignified manner, we face the single lamp and the man standing beneath it.

  Lord Gargaron studies us with that thin smile on his thin face.

  Defiantly I grasp Kal’s hand.

  He says, coolly and sardonically, “Uncle Gar, how unexpected to find you invited to come up to take the view from Grandmama’s private roof.”

  “Do not pretend you aren’t both perfectly aware of what this means, and the reward you will receive if you both play your part.”

  Somewhere in Garon Palace a woman laughs, and I wonder: Is it Gargaron’s wife, pleased to hear he has passed Denya on to another man? Kalliarkos’s mother, rejoicing that her son has come home safely from the war? Lady Menoë, exulting in the unfolding of her cunning plan to smile to their faces and then stab them in the back?

  “Why change your mind, Uncle? Why throw us together now when you did everything to keep us apart before?”

  “What makes you think this wasn’t part of the plan all along? When I sent you to the Eastern Reach, Kal, I knew it would either make a man of you or break you so you would cease attempting to defy me. All I needed was for you to give up your naïve dream of being an adversary on the Fives court and accept that you are an adversary in the only game that matters.”

  “Heir to two thrones,” murmurs Kal. “My inescapable fate.”

  “Until your corpse walks to its tomb, you will never be free from the responsibilities laid on you by your birth. Now, Spider, you have a trial tomorrow. A steward will escort you back to the stable. Study this.”

  He holds out a scroll.

  Kalliarkos snatches it out of my hand before I can unroll it. “What is this, Uncle?”

&
nbsp; “It is for the adversary, Kal. Not for you.”

  Kalliarkos pulls it open enough to reveal a schematic that I instantly recognize as an engineer’s design for the configuration of a Fives court.

  “It is the configuration of the Fives you’ll be running tomorrow,” Gargaron says to me as Kal slaps it closed. “Memorize it, and then burn it.”

  “But that’s cheating!” I cry. “I don’t want to win by cheating.”

  “You can’t demand an adversary cheat,” says Kal. “Besides the dishonor—”

  “As if anything matters besides the dishonor!” I interrupt.

  “Truly,” he agrees, “but besides that, cheating will get her barred from the game for life.”

  “Cheating! Is that what you young people call it these days?” Gargaron’s brow wrinkles as a measure of his disdain. “You are so sheltered, both of you. Have you not noticed we are at war? Threatened by the armies of old Saro, all three kingdoms allied against us? Our own Royal Army is in retreat, and the king cannot give them the resources they need to fight. Do you think Kliatemnos is able to lead Efea through this calamitous time? Do you?”

  Kal holds out the scroll to his uncle. “The Fives has nothing to do with this war.”

  “Of course it does. Nothing we do is separate from the times we live in. It is your ancestor Kliatemnos the Second who codified the rules that adversaries follow. It is gold that builds a Fives court, and money and prestige that honor the winners. We win or we die, Kal. If Kliatemnos and Serenissima rule, Efea falls. Do you not see it? They cannot win, just as you could not win against Jessamy. That is why she defeated you, and why we must defeat them. To save Efea.”

  He grabs the scroll from Kal, unrolls it, and holds it open so lamplight glows on the papyrus. I mean to look away but my gaze follows the lines like bees follow the scent of blooms to flowers: I don’t look because I want to win by cheating; I look because it is a Fives court and I have trained for years to study everything about the Fives.

  “How did you get this?” I ask. “The administrators and engineers are meant to be irreproachable, on pain of death.”

  “The administrator Lord Perikos had a favored son, the child of a concubine I grant you, but you of all people should know how a man can favor his concubine and her children above all proper sense and reason, Jessamy.”