Poisoned Blade

by Kate Elliott

  From fountain to fountain in the order of the menageries we spiral into the center of the Warrens until we reach the tomb spider fountain. Young men loiter here, pretending to practice a dance in the open space before the closed gate of the Heart Tavern. Ibi approaches a narrow slit in the wall. Murmured words pass between her and someone inside, and the gate is opened.

  Our companions take the fronds and the basket of knives, and Menoë and I enter alone.

  I’ve never been here at night. A few lamps burn but the shadows hang heavy, although the tables and benches are more crowded than I’ve ever seen. The smell of lentil stew makes my stomach growl.

  I scan the gathering for a familiar face but it’s too dim. People look our way but no one greets us or makes the slightest move to help us along.

  Menoë leans against a wall, pressing a hand against her forehead. “I’m going to faint if I don’t get a drink,” she murmurs. “Get me wine, Spider.”

  “I’m not your servant!”

  She snaps upright, and a hand jerks up as if to slap me before she catches herself and rubs at the smears on her face, the residue of her fancy cosmetics. “I like your father better than I like you.”

  She rests a hand on her belly.

  Before I can scream at her that my father will never, ever love her, Mis appears, wending her way through the tables.

  She hugs me and says, “Come with me.”

  Then she sees Menoë. Her eyebrows fly right up her face and her mouth drops open in such a comedic figure of surprise that I would laugh if I hadn’t just been witness to the deaths of several boys, two scholars, a child prince, and a king.

  “Mis, if you’ve heard the news, and I know you must have, you’ll understand why we have to get out of the city. I remember what you said yesterday about not fighting their war, and I’m sorry to bring a woman here who you don’t want to help, but—”

  “Come with me, Jes,” interrupts Mis. “You too, Doma Menoë.”

  “Who are you to speak so familiarly to me?” She eyes Mis as if my friend is a crocodile gifted with human speech.

  “I ran as an adversary in Garon Stable. But people like me aren’t important enough for people like you to notice, are we?”

  Without waiting for a response, Mis turns and leads us through the supper tables. Here and there people salute with their cups, acknowledging me, and one young man offers his cup as I pass. I gulp down a blessedly cool swallow of creamy goat’s milk. Then I take pity on Menoë and offer her the cup. She recoils, as if I had offered her a mug of scorpions instead, so I gladly finish it myself and with a smile of thanks return it.

  The small terraced semicircle of seats and tables where the mural of the Mother of All presided when I was here before looks oddly blank until I realize the image has been painted over, as if in preparation for a house-to-house search. In my visits to Ro I have never ventured beyond it, but Mis leads us through a gate into a maze of passages so narrow I can’t tell if they are open-air corridors in a giant house or alleys in the most crowded part of the Warrens.

  Mis ushers us down an arched corridor and past a curtain into a bowl-shaped courtyard surrounded by a circular terrace of seats and, above them, high walls that almost block out the sky. I was never in the true Heart Tavern at all, because this is it. By lamplight I see that the walls are painted with a larger version of the mural: the Mother of All seated as a procession of people approaches Her from either side. There are three other curtained entrances, and an unusual number of elderly women—a dame council—sitting on the terraced seats listening to the woman standing at the center.

  “Mother!” I whisper, shocked into speaking out loud. I want to charge over to her as I used to when I was a little girl, anxious for her comforting embrace, and the sheer force of my relief at seeing her alive and healthy makes me realize how tightly I’ve wrapped away my fears these last months.

  Menoë looks stricken as she mutters, “I didn’t know she was so beautiful.”

  Mother is holding a fat and precious baby against her hip as she speaks to the dames. Her mellifluous voice never rises and yet effortlessly carries to all who need to hear it. When she speaks it is impossible not to listen.

  “How long do you think the new king can control the foreign soldiers who put him on the throne? The city is quiet now, but I believe the calm will not last. It is my advice that first all the children be sent out of the city to their kin in the countryside, but in small groups so the Saroese do not suspect. If Efeans flee in a rush, the invaders will panic. They’ll use the turmoil as an excuse to loot the city and abuse, enslave, and kill the inhabitants. This is how the Saroese behave in their wars overseas, for I have heard firsthand accounts of their uncivilized behavior. But if the invaders—and our new king—believe we are docile, then our movements won’t be checked, for now.”

  “This way, Doma Menoë.” Mis leads us down a passage and holds aside a curtain to reveal an alcove tucked into the retaining wall.

  In the shadows the servants of Garon Palace stand crammed together. I see Darios and even Talon, a slim shape at the very back like she’s trying to hide all trace of herself. What I don’t see are any of the Efean adversaries and servants from Garon Stable.

  Beneath a single lamp a frail, ancient woman sits slumped on a couch, toying absently with a pearl-studded gold bracelet like it’s a scrap of ribbon. She glances up wearily, looking like a defeated old woman forced to weep for lost loved ones one time too many. When we step forward she drops the bracelet as from suddenly nerveless hands.

  “Menoë! Oh goddess in her merciful glory! I feared the worst!” She begins to weep in the most undignified manner, quite unlike an imperious royal princess.

  Menoë runs to her and buries her head against the princess’s leg. Sobs shake her whole body. “Oh, Grandmama! He made a fool of me again. I hate him. I hate him!”

  I slip back past the curtain to find Mother. She has to hide from them, and yet Menoë has already seen her. How could everyone be so careless?

  “Jessamy? Is that you?”

  Mother appears in the passage, having abandoned the dame council midspeech.

  “Oh, Mother,” I cry, and after all I do run to her and hug her—as well as I can with an infant in the way.

  The obstacle is Wenru, the sweetest-faced and chubbiest baby you could ever see until he recognizes me and his expression takes on an entirely too-mature look of calculation. He thinks a moment, clearly considering ways he can get rid of me, then opens his mouth and wails.

  I grab his ear and hiss, “Shut up!” in Saroese.

  He shuts up.

  “Jessamy!” Mother scolds. “Your movement startled him, that’s all!”

  She holds him out to the young man who stands behind her. I’m aghast to see Ro-emnu accept the baby with the ease of a person accustomed to the child. Ro looks sleek, assured, and pleased with himself, like the disruption in the city is the best part of a thrilling play he’s concocted.

  “You liar!” I push into Ro’s space as Wenru turns his little face into Ro’s shoulder, hiding from me.

  “Poets only speak truth, sullen schemer.” He strokes the baby’s head to soothe him, but it’s the lazy smile he turns on me that feels like a caress. “That is the obligation we hold in service to the Mother of All. If poets lie, we lose our gift.”

  “You promised you would take her to a safe haven!”

  “And I did. I brought her home to her own people.”

  “Jessamy, please remember your manners,” says Mother in her kindest voice, which means she is annoyed.

  I flush at the reproof.

  She takes my hand and smiles, and it’s as if the sun has come out. “Do not fret yourself. All is well. I am myself now. I insisted that Maraya and Polodos leave the city some weeks ago, so they are well out of the way, for which we can thank the money you sent to us. What of you, Jessamy? I can tell you are in good health, but there is a shadow in your eyes.”

  “Yes, Mother.” But I’
m not sure I want her to know the truth of what I’ve done.

  “However, you and I will have to speak later because there is much to accomplish tonight.”

  “That’s right,” says Ro cheerfully, handing Wenru back to Mother. “Lord Kalliarkos called in the debt I owe him. We’re going to smuggle his family and retainers out of the city.”

  “Where is Kal?” I ask.

  Mother looks sharply at me, guessing everything from my tone and my use of his name.

  Ro frowns. “I told him not to do it, but of course he wouldn’t listen. Once we had the others safe here he took two Garon soldiers and returned to the Fives court to look for his uncle Gargaron. But they never came back.”

  27

  Ro and I work our way through the alleys of the lakeside Market District, headed for the King’s Hill. He pushes a cart filled with caltrops, nails bound together in spiky tangles that we can throw in front of vehicles and horses if need be. The caltrops are concealed by twists of straw, but I can hear them shift and knock together like all my doubts. Three long sleeveless servant’s vests lie folded on top, borrowed from Berenise’s people and weighed down by a covered pot of red coals and a sealed jar of oil.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” Ro says. “You should go back so we can get you out tonight with the others.”

  “You know I’m not going back. Why do you even bother to say it?”

  He halts, sets down the cart, and before I realize he means to do so, takes my hand in his. There’s a heat in him I never expected, and it sparks too much warmth in me.

  “Jessamy, if this doesn’t work—”

  I shake him off, troubled by the sound of my name on his lips. “This isn’t the time.”

  “Will you ever think it’s the time?” he says.

  “No.”

  I can tell I’ve hurt his feelings, but I start walking anyway. We have to go faster. It’s taking too long.

  He lifts the handles of the cart and comes up beside me. “It’s still a bad idea for you to be out here. Too many people know your face.”

  “You have an exaggerated opinion of my fame. Anyway, I’m disguised as a boy.”

  His gaze skims down and then up the short linen keldi whose hem brushes my knees, the overly large vest meant to hide my breasts, and the cap crushed over my bound-up hair. “No, you aren’t.”

  When he glances away, hearing a noise, I wish he would look back at me. Instantly I’m furious at myself for being flattered by his attention, for allowing a boy’s flirting look to distract me from the urgent life-and-death seriousness of this expedition.

  “I told you to stop, Ro,” I mutter, yet I can’t help but feel out of balance. I go on in a harsher voice, because my face is still burning. “Why did you agree to come? You don’t love our Patron masters.”

  “My obligation to Lord Kalliarkos will not be fulfilled if he is killed when I might have done something to prevent it. And I intend to be quit of all obligation to him.”

  “How are you getting his people out if all the city gates are guarded?”

  “We Efeans have our own secret gates and hidden ways.”

  His answer reminds me of the other question I need to ask but whose answer I’m afraid to hear. Yet I can’t allow fear to control my steps, not now, not ever, so I blurt it out.

  “Why were none of the Efeans from Garon Stable at the Heart Tavern? Like Gira and Shorty?”

  “They were, but the dames decided it was better to send them home to their families. Ah!” He chortles in a way that makes me grind my teeth. “Were you afraid that Lord Prince Captain Kalliarkos showed his true ugly face and left them behind?”

  “I wasn’t!”

  “You were! Or at least you feared he might have. Ha! I will say this for him, so noble and righteous as he is: he brought everyone out of the palace and the stable, Patron and Commoner alike.”

  Now I feel worse than ever, hating myself for doubting Kal. I fear that he is captured and already dead with a sword through his gut. Like Temnos.

  When Kal and the two soldiers left the Heart Tavern, Ro sent trackers with them, people Kal can use to relay messages or to scout as they look for Gargaron. A band of Ro’s accomplices shadows us along rooftops, ready to pull us out if we’re spotted. Other groups like the women who saved Menoë and me brave the streets, delivering goods to locked-in Patrons hiding in their compounds while at the same time gathering intelligence.

  Ro taps me on the arm and I step back against a wall and draw the dagger they’ve given me. A youth pads out of the darkness—the fourth person who has found us and delivered news. Ro listens intently to a whispered message, then sends the lad on his way.

  “What did he say?” I ask impatiently.

  “There’s a tracker with news from Kal waiting for us in the plaza of the City Fives Court.”

  It’s like the start bell has rung, and we need to get up the ladder onto the court before it’s too late. I push off the wall, ready to run. “Let’s go.”

  He yanks me to a halt. “Why not leave Lord Gargaron to his fate? Let the Patrons murder each other. What’s it to us?”

  I roughly twist my arm out of his grip. “Ask me again when Kal is safe.”

  “Who are you, Jessamy?” he says to my back as I stride away. “Who are you loyal to, really?”

  I keep walking, because it’s easier than admitting I no longer know.

  A winding street leads up to the saddle of high ground linking the King’s Hill and the Queen’s Hill. Between the two, the City Fives Court stands as a dark bulk, lightless and empty. Soldiers patrol the surrounding streets but give only a glance at a young man pushing a cart beside a boy carrying a jar of oil, which I position to conceal my chest.

  A youth slides out of the night and falls into step beside us, a slim girl who, like me, is dressed as a boy. She’s carrying a basket of dried fish so pungent I try not to breathe through my nose.

  “Ro! Thank the Mother I found you. Did you get the message Kal sent to the Heart Tavern?”

  “No. It must have come after we left.”

  “He hoped you would come. With the adversary.” Her gaze flashes toward me, and I wonder how she came to feel so comfortable with Kalliarkos that she can refer to him in such casual terms.

  “What’s your news?” I ask, more sharply than I intend.

  She looks at Ro, and he nods. “We got word that Lord Gargaron was taken prisoner at the Fives court and conveyed under guard to Garon Palace. So Kal’s going in to try to rescue him. He says the adversary will know the route to take.”

  “Very good. Tell our spotters to hang back and spread out in case we need to make a fast retreat, and then return to the Heart Tavern and give your report to the dame council.”

  I add, “If we’re pursued, it would make sense to have people place obstacles in the streets, overturned carts, slippery fish, things like that to help us get away.”

  Ro coughs. “I think we know what we’re doing, Spider.”

  The girl slinks into the shadows as a group of Efean men cart barrels across the Fives court’s plaza in front of us. There’s just enough moon and lantern-light that a subtle hand signal passes between the leader of the men and Ro. We fall in at the end of the line as the group heads up the King’s Hill toward the high slopes where the most noble Patrons have built their palaces. When a soldier calls to us to ask our business, the group’s leader replies in stumbling Saroese that we are bringing water to fill the cistern in the barracks behind the king’s palace. Higher up on the hill Ro and I split away and head toward Garon Palace along quiet lanes I’ve come to know well.

  Fortune favors us. The lamps along the lower end of the street aren’t lit, and the closed gates of the stable aren’t guarded.

  However, lanterns blaze at the main gate into Garon Palace. Wagons heaped with furnishings, fabrics, and chests of belongings stripped from the pavilions and storerooms are lined up on the street outside. A buzz of activity still hums from inside, and men wearing the hawk of
East Saro stagger out to dump more goods into the wagons. Nikonos’s allies are looting the Garon riches.

  “This way,” I whisper.

  We lodge the cart off to one side at the nearest intersection and put on the calf-length servant’s vests. I pull on my Fives trousers beneath, in case I have to climb, as Ro pours oil over the straw.

  I tie the third long vest around six caltrops. As we creep noiselessly into the stable, its eerie silence and complete abandonment make me feel I have entered a tomb. There’s enough light from over the wall and from the stars and moon that we reach the bathhouse without tripping on anything, but past the entry curtain it is pitch-black.

  “Hold on to me,” I whisper.

  “At last!” he murmurs, tucking a hand along my waist, and I want to kick him for that too-sweet tone. How can he joke?

  Instead I lead him through the changing and washing chambers to the inner pool.

  “You have to stay here, Ro, and guard this end.”

  His fingers tighten on the fabric of my vest. “I’m coming with you.”

  “No. I need you to guard our backs. If there’s trouble, come through the tunnel to warn me. If you don’t, then I’ll know it’s safe to come back.”

  He releases me. “Or that I’m dead and your enemies are waiting to kill you.”

  “I’m hoping they’ll refrain so I can kill you myself.”

  “Not up to your usual standard, Spider, but not bad under the fraught circumstances.”

  As I start stripping down to my undergarments, he adds, “What are you doing? Oh.”

  For once he says no more. But I hear his breathing, which seems a little unsteady; his presence is so intimately close and yet impossibly distant because my head is too in the game.