They came to a door, which Daria unlocked using a key she drew from the bodice of her gown. Beyond the door, a narrow stairway wound down into utter darkness.
“This leads to a sally port on the west side of the castle,” she said. “Whoever these men are, they won’t know of it. Few do. Or did. You’ll need to find your way past one of the outer gates, but that end of the castle will draw fewer men. No one uses it.”
“Where should I go?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Someplace far away.”
“I…” He’d intended to say that he had no money, no food, no means of leaving Daerjen. But this woman would be alone in a castle filled with assassins and soldiers. He couldn’t bring himself to complain. “I’m grateful to you,” he said.
He held out her sword, hilt first, but she shook her head. “You’ll need that more than I.” A bitter smile touched her lips. “Besides, what use would an old woman have for a battle sword?”
“Thank you, minister. May the Two protect you.”
“May They protect us all. Go.” With a bent finger she touched Sofya lightly on the tip of the nose, drawing a laugh from the child.
Tobias slipped the blade under his belt, shifted Sofya in his arms, and started down the stairway. He trailed his fingers along the rough wall. Within a tencount, the dark enveloped him, leaving only the touch of stone and the tight twisting of the steps to guide him. His footsteps echoed, his breathing mixed with Sofya’s, sounding too loud. Above him, something clicked and his heart jumped. He realized it was Daria closing the door.
He descended, one nerve-racking step at a time. Had he missed the port? Did this stairway pass the doorway and continue into a cellar? He considered going back, but didn’t. If there had been some trick to finding the port, the woman would have told him so.
The stairway ended abruptly. Tobias tried to lower his foot to a step that wasn’t there, nearly stumbled. The landing was cramped, and every bit as dark as the stairs had been. He felt along the wall and soon found a small latch. He pressed it, heard a metallic click, pulled hard. The door gave grudgingly, but made not a sound.
Pausing, he set Sofya on the stone floor. He pulled out the powder purse he had taken from the minister of arms and reloaded his weapon with hands that still trembled. He hung the weapon on his belt, picked up Sofya again.
The sally port opened onto an expanse of deserted ground covered in tall, wispy grass. Directly in front of him loomed the castle’s outer wall, ponderous and impenetrable in the gloom. Daria had said there was a gate nearby, but of course it would be guarded. He needed to know by whom, and by how many.
As soon as he crossed through the grass and pressed himself against the outer wall, he spotted it. It stood perhaps forty strides ahead, lit by torches mounted in sconces. He couldn’t fight his way through with Sofya in his arms, but neither could he leave her lying on the grass. He started toward the portal, placing his feet with care, his gaze swinging between the arched gate and the battlements atop the castle walls.
He had covered about half the distance when a man emerged from the gate into the yard separating the castle from its outer defenses. Tobias flattened himself against the stone, thanking the Two for the shadows cast by the castle’s inner wall.
A second man joined the first. They weren’t dressed as the assassins had been. They wore blue uniforms and each carried a sword and a musket. Soldiers, then. The torchlight was too inconstant for Tobias to be certain, but this blue appeared far paler than that worn by Aiyanthan guardsmen. And what would men from the Axle be doing here? That left Sheraigh, Hayncalde’s chief rival among the houses of Daerjen.
He waited, hoping the soldiers would be content to survey the yard from where they stood. Soon enough, they entered the archway again. Tobias started toward them once more.
He wasn’t yet certain how he would carry the princess by the men. He knew only that he couldn’t remain in the castle. And Daria had said this gate would be less heavily guarded than others.
Dried blood covered Sofya’s face and stained his clothes. He must have had blood on his neck, brow, cheeks, and temple, not to mention his back where he had been stabbed. His wounds grew more painful with every step. But he could do nothing about any of this until he escaped the castle.
He reached the gate and without hesitating entered the arched passage. At the echo of his steps, the men spun and raised their muskets.
“Halt right there!”
Tobias raised his one free hand.
“Who are you?”
“I’m with the Travelers,” he said, thickening his native accent so that he sounded more like a Trevynisle gaaz cutter. As proof of his claim, he pulled out one of Filt’s apertures.
The guard eyed the device, but then pointed at Sofya. “Who’s that you’re holding?”
“The daughter of a castle servant.”
“A servant? Why’s there blood on her face?”
“Her mother showed up when she shouldn’t have, tried to get in our way.” He shrugged, feigning indifference. “She’s dead now.”
“So where are you taking that one?”
“Lanes near the wharves. One like this’ll fetch a fair price on the night market there. Slave traders like to get ‘em young. Easier to train that way.”
Tobias had heard of slave markets operating in some of the cities of the Labyrinth and Oaqamar. He didn’t know if Hayncalde had a night market as well, but he guessed these men wouldn’t know either.
“You Northislers make me sick,” the second guard said.
Neither man accused him of lying.
“You’re just jealous the gold won’t be goin’ in your purse.”
“I should shoot you where you stand.”
“How’d your captain feel ‘bout that?”
The men exchanged glances. After a moment, both lowered their muskets.
“Get out of here, you shit-skinned gaaz-demon,” said the first man. “If I see you again, I will shoot you. That’s a promise.”
Tobias ground his teeth. For all his fear of being ostracized because of his skin color, this was the first time in his life anyone had used such an epithet against him. It was all he could do to keep himself from pulling out his pistol.
“You’re welcome to try,” he said. This time he wasn’t playing a role.
He pushed past the men, half-hoping they’d try to stop him.
“You should take her to a brothel instead, you bastard,” one called after him. “You probably like them young and dark like that.”
Tobias faltered in mid-stride, but at a small sound from Sofya walked on. Getting away: that was his goal.
He knew the men stared after him, and he refused to glance back. With a bit of luck, it wouldn’t occur to them to wonder why he left the castle through this gate if the wharves were his destination. He counted on their unfamiliarity with the city, and their disgust with him, to keep them from asking questions. Those things only delayed the inevitable.
“Wait right there!”
He quickened his stride.
“Hey, you! Gaaz-demon! Stop where you are!”
He had almost reached a street corner, and now he broke into a run, angling across the lane, clasping the princess so closely she cried out.
The flat, hard report of a musket echoed down the lane, but the ball missed him, whistling past. Tobias ducked into the nearest side street, ran to the next byway and turned again, heading downhill into the city, away from the castle, the wharf, anything he knew. He heard the men behind him, shouting to each other, their footsteps tracking him like hounds. Every slap of boot leather on cobble betrayed him, and the princess, too.
He ran down yet another unknown alley. After a few steps, he halted and backtracked to that last intersection. The men had yet to come into sight. He crept across the lane he’d been on previously and set out in the opposite direction, deeper still into the city. He walked with the stealth of a thief, thankful for Sofya’s silence. He went some distance, le
aving behind the more comfortable houses nearest the castle for smaller homes with tiny yards and garden plots.
Passing a small stone house, he noticed a masonry chimney creeping up the structure’s side. He left the road, walked to the other side of it. He tucked himself into the narrow niche shaped by the chimneystack and the house wall, and lowered himself to the cold ground. Sofya stared at him, her gaze glassy. She would be asleep soon.
He had no money, no food. If Sofya was half as weary and hungry as he, she would sleep poorly and wake in a terrible state.
But no one would see them here. They could rest, perhaps sleep. And Tobias could figure out what, in the name of the God and Goddess, he was going to do next.
Chapter 18
18th Day of Kheraya’s Ascent, Year 647
It crept into Mara’s thoughts while she slept, insinuating itself like a cat seeking attention. By the time she opened her eyes to the gray glow of morning that seeped at the edges of the Windward Keep’s shuttered windows, it had settled at the base of her skull, not quite pain, but distracting, uncomfortable.
She rose with the others, pulled on her tunic, skirt, and robes, and filed across the middle courtyard to the refectory for the usual breakfast fare: fatted bread, tasteless hot porridge, a few ancient pieces of dried fruit. From there, they descended to the lower courtyard, where Master Saffern drilled them in their sword work and marksmanship.
All of this under the watchful stares of Oaqamaran soldiers atop the battlements of Windhome Palace, grim in their uniforms of brown and black. Some carried muskets, others crossbows. As always. As it had been every day she could remember since her arrival in Windhome as a small girl. Yet today, something about the guards bothered her. Something that had little to do with her hatred for them.
She was aware of the Belvora as well. Four of them circling over the palace grounds on membranous wings. Mara feared them even more than she did the Oaqamarans.
High gray clouds covered the sky, and a warm, heavy wind blew in off Safsi Bay. Occasionally rain fell on them in thin squalls; at other times the sun seemed on the verge of burning through. Saffern remained the same as ever: grave, determined, stern.
When he released them to their studies, Mara all but ran to the nearest tower, relieved to be free of the weapons master.
After training came their daily consultation on the latest naval and land battles in the various wars ongoing throughout Islevale: the Westisle conflict, the blockade skirmishes in the Inward Sea, the insurrection on Vleros. As one of the older Spanners, Mara would be expected to help pilot companies of soldiers the next time they were called to Travel. She needed to pay strict attention to all that Mistress Feidys told them.
The mistress’s chamber smelled of mold and old paper. Dusty shelves, filled to overflowing with worn volumes, lined the walls. A map of Vleros, Milnos, and the Bone Sea isles lay uncurled on a table in the middle of the room. Feidys herself stood at her desk, shuffling through rolls of parchment, her broad back to the door as Mara and the other trainees entered, her black hair tied back and piled atop her head.
As the last of Mara’s classmates entered and took their seats around the table, Feidys faced them and began without preamble. “Reports from Vleros speak of more gains by the rebels. The seat of the provisional government is safe for now, but in smaller towns and villages, the old royalists are showing more resilience than expected.”
The mistress crossed to the map, and tapped a stubby finger near the southern bend in Vleros, a long, thin isle often referred to as the Bow. “This is the site of the most recent fighting,” she said without inflection, “and the most likely place where soldiers will be needed. Those of you trained in the use of the tri-sextants should be ready to Span on little notice.”
Mara, Delvin, and Nat shared glances.
Feidys went on in greater detail about the fighting, describing the latest string of rebel victories throughout Vleros. The former royal city, located near the middle of the isle, wasn’t yet in danger of falling, but only because reinforcements sent from Milnos still reached the provisional leaders. A few of the trainees interrupted her with questions, but most listened and kept their mouths shut.
Mara wasn’t the only trainee in Windhome who had been brought up hating the autarchy and their allies in Milnos. Far from it. But so long as Oaqamaran soldiers guarded the ramparts and stalked the palace corridors, none of them dared say a word. Even the chancellor was from Oaqamar.
He shouldn’t be.
The thought surprised Mara, heightened her unease. Because she knew it was true.
She thought it possible that many of the masters who taught their lessons, Feidys among them, felt as she did about the autarchy. They would be even less free to speak their minds than she.
There had been a time, beyond her memory, but within the lifetimes of many in Windhome, when the palace had been independent, a bulwark, some said, against Oaqamaran aggression. Feidys would have said that was a topic for history lessons, not strategy.
In time, Feidys steered their discussion to the naval skirmishes among the isles of the Inner and Outer Rings surrounding Daerjen. As with the conflict on the Bow, the Inward Sea battles were being fought against proxies of Oaqamar’s autarch. Mara forced herself to concentrate.
Yet the alien notions that had stolen into her mind overnight continued to distract her. She wrote down what the mistress told them, studied the maps she laid before them. Throughout the lesson, though, a single thought repeated itself in her head, as soft as a whisper, as insistent as the tide.
None of this is right.
She had no idea what the words meant, or what “this” might be. She was overwhelmed, though, by the sense that she didn’t belong there. Not in the classroom, not in the palace, not even on Windhome, which had been her home for more than ten years. She couldn’t explain what she felt, but neither could she ignore it or banish it from her thoughts.
“You all right?” Delvin whispered.
Feidys shot a glare in their direction.
Mara nodded, keeping her eyes on the mistress.
Delvin continued to watch her, and she resisted the urge to glance back. It occurred to her that even they weren’t immune. She and Delvin had been a couple for seven turns now. Almost eight. In that time, she had come to care about him. Today, along with everything else, that felt… off. She should have been with someone else. She just had no idea who.
At the ringing of the late morning bell, the trainees left Feidys’s chamber for that of Wansi Tovorl, the palace Binder. Delvin walked beside her, tall and arrow thin, casting looks her way, concern furrowing his brow.
“You sure you’re all right?”
“Yes. I mean, I’m fine. Just… I didn’t sleep well, and I feel strange today.”
“Strange meaning sick?”
“No, it’s not that.”
“Then what?” He halted and held out a hand, forcing her to stop as well. “What is this, Mar?”
She stared past him, conscious of the other trainees walking around them as if they were stones in a stream. “I– I’m not sure I belong here.”
“It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”
Her eyes met his. He grinned, and she answered with a reluctant smile. “That’s not what I mean. I feel…” She averted her gaze again. Standing this close to him made her uncomfortable. When was the last time that had been true? “Just something’s not right. I shouldn’t be here. None of us should. Or maybe we belong here, but not like this.”
She chanced another peek at him and wished she hadn’t. He regarded her as he might a madwoman, or, worse, a child with an overactive imagination.
“That sounds a little crazy. You know that, right?”
Mara scowled, pushed past him, and walked on.
“Mar!”
She refused to stop.
“Would you wait?” He fell in step with her again. “I’m sorry. But what you said… None of that makes any sense.”
“You�
�re right. I was… I’m just tired.”
“It sounded like more than that.”
“I know how it sounded, but now I’m telling you what it was. Let it drop, all right?”
He huffed a sigh. “Fine.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence. She knew what he was thinking. They were supposed to meet in the upper courtyard after the evening meal, as they did most nights. Many of the older trainees went there to pair off and share kisses, sometimes more. She thought the soldiers watched this as well, but most of the trainees didn’t care. Let them watch, Oaqamaran bastards. Closest they’d get to any of them.
Delvin wanted to ask if she still intended to meet him. She wasn’t sure she did.
Binder Tovorl watched the trainees stream into her chamber, blue eyes magnified by thick spectacles, her skin pale almost to the point of translucence in the light of half a dozen oil lamps.
“Take your seats,” she said as the last of them hurried to their places. “Several of you are behind in your work. We have need of more sextants and apertures. Your milling and planing tools are before you; your pieces, whatever state they happen to be in, can be found where you left them. Please get to work.”
Mara retrieved her half-completed sextant from the rough wooden shelf along the chamber’s back wall, took an open seat as far from Delvin and Nat as possible, and set to work, planing the leading edge of her golden sextant with care, occasionally pausing to measure the piece with a sector. Aside from the rasp of files, the ping of metal hammers, the scratch of millers and planers, the room was silent. Wansi meandered among the tables, peering over shoulders, and at times pointing out small flaws in the trainees’ work.
Most days, Mara dreaded her toolwork as much as she did her time on the training grounds. Today she welcomed it. That niggling intuition in the back of her mind faded, forced into the background by the task at hand. When the midday bell rang – far too soon – she put away her work with uncommon reluctance. She cleaned her space slowly, waiting for Delvin to leave.
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