The Twelve Kingdoms: The Mark of the Tala

by Jeffe Kennedy

  This memory, so vivid, hurtled through me like a shooting star in the aftermath of my father’s threat and his clear pleasure in my suffering.

  Uorsin turned and strode off to question his prisoners, unholy glee in his eyes.

  And I, hollow inside, prepared to leave the only home I’d ever known.

  6

  After that pronouncement, no one dared speak.

  I took my clothes from Gaignor while Hugh drew Amelia aside, murmuring to her and cupping her lovely face in his hands. She leaned against him, red-gold hair streaming nearly to the floor, and he laid his cheek against the top of her shining head. They looked like a painting that should be called The Lovers. Ursula watched them too, and for the first time I saw the longing in her. She caught my look and hardened her face, raising her eyebrows at me.

  “I don’t think you really want to dillydally,” she said.

  I could have said a lot of things to that, but I didn’t. I stepped into that close little room and Gaignor helped me strip and don what they’d brought me. Servants’ clothes—trousers, rough shirt, leather jacket—probably a good choice. Gaignor braided my hair for me. She sniffed and had me hold the half-done braid so she could wipe her nose.

  “Why do you weep, Violet?”

  “How can you not be weeping, Princess Andi?” Her voice trembled and she yanked on the braid. “We’re leaving everything we know. Everyone we love.”

  “You don’t have to come with me.”

  “My place is by your side. Would you shame me by refusing my service?”

  I waited until she tied off the braid, then turned and took her hands in mine. Her face showed lines of fear and grief. I wondered if she regretted leaving her home at Castle Gaignor to serve at court.

  “What I ask of you is to stay here and care for Fiona.”

  Her face whitened. “I wouldn’t be able to stop the King if—”

  I shook my head to stop her. “I know. Just . . . do what you can. Ride her and love her, so that if—” Unexpectedly my throat closed, unshed tears running down the back of it. Suddenly it all rushed up and strangled me. I had to push hard to get the words out. “If these are her last days, I want them to be happy ones.”

  Violet understood that at least. She clutched my hands and nodded. “I can do that much. I’ll care for her. Besides, you’re as loyal as the day is long. Nothing will happen to her.”

  I nodded, feeling the weight of all the lies I’d told. The restlessness that had begun prowling my heart lately snarled at Uorsin’s tactics. Had he used something like that to bind my mother to him? There was something, given what I’d seen of his methods.

  I embraced Gaignor and thanked her for her service. Hugh, Amelia, and Ursula waited for me, my sentries still discreetly down the way. The castle clattered with activity, the sounds of carriages and horses heavy from the yard.

  “We’re sending out conscription notices to the villages—and warnings to be on the lookout for further guerrilla attacks. It will also provide good cover for you, to have so many coming and going. You’ll go with Hugh and Amelia in an unmarked carriage,” Ursula told me. Now she looked tired. She would be without us, also. It hadn’t seemed quite real, when Amelia married and went off on her honeymoon. We knew she’d visit. Now the time of our girlhood seemed truly over. We would leave and Ursula would stay here, at our father’s side.

  No telling when, or if, we’d all three be together again.

  I wasn’t the only one thinking that, I felt sure.

  I wanted to ask what she thought of Uorsin’s blackmail. Or if she was used to his tactics.

  She shook her head at me, wearily, as if she read my thoughts. “Don’t worry, Andi. You’ll learn that people behave oddly under extremes. All will come to rights.”

  I knew, though, that she had it backward. The extremes show how people truly are. I wouldn’t forget that lesson.

  I embraced her and Amelia joined us. Ursula tensed, then intertwined her arms with ours in our old three-way hug. We touched the tops of our heads together, staring at our toes. Amelia’s silk rose slippers, my dusty riding boots, Ursula’s gore-spattered steel-tips.

  “Thank you, Ursula,” I whispered into our little silence. “You probably deserved a brother, instead of me. Or a sister less . . . tainted.”

  “Don’t say that,” Ursula’s voice hissed, ferocious. “You are our sister. You were right—what is in you is in us.”

  “Yes.” Amelia’s sweet voice smoothed over Ursula’s, no less firm. “You are us and we are you. We always shall be.”

  Those traitorous tears welled up again, and I swallowed them down. I searched for words and found none. “Thank you,” I offered again. It felt weak, but they squeezed me and we broke apart, ducking our faces to wipe our eyes.

  Hugh, who’d been pretending to examine a balustrade, looked over to us. Somehow, even though the dead of night still hung over us, he gleamed with sunlight.

  “Are you ready, my wife and my sister?”

  Amelia and I nodded.

  “Amelia and I shall load up our things, then. We’ll appear to be making a judicious escape in the night.” His usually jovial face carried a new sternness. “Andi—in half an hour’s time, you’ll join the servants loading the carriages. They’ll be watching for you and will show you the hiding place. You’ll have to carry some things, to look like one of them, in case we’re watched.”

  I nodded, feeling a little impatient. Didn’t he realize how practiced I was at disguise? At being invisible?

  “That gives you time to select any of your things you want to bring. Ask the ladies you wish to accompany you to blend in with Amelia’s ladies.”

  “There will be only Lady Mailloux—if she agrees to come.”

  Ursula flicked a glance at Lady Gaignor, then a knowing one at me. She nodded and gratitude filled me. Ursula understood what Fiona meant to me. She would also do what she could.

  “You’ll have to give Hugh your sword,” Ursula reminded me. I sighed. Of course a servant wouldn’t carry one. Not so practiced after all. I unstrapped it and, feeling oddly naked without it, handed it to Hugh, who received it with a grave nod. Yet again I wished I hadn’t left my own dagger buried in Rayfe’s heart. In his shoulder, that is. Why had I seen it buried in his chest? The image flashed through my mind, Rayfe dead in the snow, the center of a scarlet circle, eyes colorless and fixed on a sky they couldn’t see.

  My hand fluttered empty over the hip I’d normally strap it to. Hugh smiled in understanding. He snapped out his own dagger and handed it to me hilt first, sketching a bit of a courtly bow with it.

  “Allow me to share my blade with you, sister Andi. It’s not a pretty piece, but it has served me well for many years.”

  I took the dagger and slipped it out of its leather sheath while Amelia stood on tiptoe to kiss Hugh’s cheek. It was a woodsman’s tool, a working knife with a bone handle and a single-edged blade.

  “Thank you, Hugh.” Moved, I ducked my head and concentrated on threading my belt through the sheath.

  He winked at me. “It’s the least I can do for my favorite little sister.”

  Amelia elbowed him.

  “What? She is younger than I am—by nearly a whole year. Ursula is my favorite older sister.”

  We laughed at his clowning, as he undoubtedly meant us to. Hugh’s world was an enviably sunny place.

  “See you in a little bit.” Amelia worried at her rosy lower lip with her pearly teeth. Hugh ushered her off, and with a last nod to me, Ursula followed them.

  “I’ll help you collect your things?” Violet Gaignor asked me.

  I shook my head, reality coming back to me with all its shadows. “Throw together whatever you think I’ll need.” None of it mattered to me, I realized. The gowns, the jewels, the pretty things. All of it seemed like a lie. None of it meant anything. Except the one thing I had from my mother, which I’d unexpectedly just remembered.

  “Wait—” I grabbed Violet’s arm as she nodded and
turned to do my bidding. “The doll, with the black hair—do you know the one I mean?”

  She frowned as she thought. “The one up on the shelf above your mirror, that ugly old thing?”

  Unexpected relief undid a knot that had formed around my heart, dissolving a pain I hadn’t realized was there until it left. “Yes. I want that.”

  I sounded crazy; I could tell by the carefully bland look on her face. “Perhaps, Princess, you should come look and see if there’s anything else”—more appropriate, she didn’t say out loud—“that you’d like to take with you.”

  “I have something else I have to do. Just the doll—and anything else you think right. I trust your judgment.”

  She nodded and curtsied to me, then bustled down the hallway. I turned to my sentries, not much time left.

  “Would you escort me to Lady Zevondeth’s chambers?”

  I rarely exercised my royal powers of command. In my life up until then, I hadn’t needed or cared to. It always felt vaguely unsavory to me. Now I wielded my meager authority like a weapon. The sentries didn’t want to take me to Zevondeth, but they also dared not refuse me, despite my dubious status. Wondering if Dafne was even now cursing my name, I followed them to another wing of the castle, wasting another few precious minutes of my small window of time in the long walk.

  Lady Zevondeth was just returning to her bed when her maid announced my arrival. She met me in her antechamber, wizened face creased in cranky lines. She didn’t care for my summons, either.

  “Princess Andi, what an unexpected honor to have you grace my private chambers—and at such an inconvenient time for you, I’m certain, what with all the carrying-on.”

  Her chambers practically dripped velvet. Small braziers of coals set in strategic spots, along with fires in two fireplaces, brought the room up to a high-summer daytime temperature. Her windows were covered over with tapestries. Likely sealed over, too, given the thick unmoving air, stale with old perfumes. Cloistered in this room, she considered the fighting, the suffering prisoners even now being dragged to the dungeons, the dead and dying being sorted and cast onto pyres or hospital beds, a bit of “carrying-on.”

  Unexpected fury consumed me and I nearly pulled my borrowed dagger on her.

  “Oh, this is an exceedingly convenient time for me, Lady Zevondeth. I have questions for you.”

  “Might an old woman sit, then, and be comfortable?”

  “Fine. This won’t take long, and then you can tuck your frail bones back into bed.”

  “Speak, then, child—though I doubt I have any answers for the likes of you.”

  Ah, there her true nature peeked out. Took a teensy bit of pressure. Which questions to ask, though? So little time to find out everything I needed to know, most of which she wouldn’t want to tell me.

  “How did you come to be my mother’s attendant?”

  Surprise softened her face. “Someone told you that? Such ancient history. I hardly think it matters now.”

  “It matters to me. Tell me.”

  “You don’t have as much power as you think you have, Princess. Full well I know what a precarious position you’re in.”

  “Then you have nothing to lose.” I didn’t bother to wonder how she knew what only a few should.

  She laughed at that, a sound like an old horse coughing. “You have no idea what I have to gain or lose. But”—she held up a crooked finger—“I am willing to be bought. Send your men to wait in the hallway.”

  They protested, of course, and another precious minute was lost while they shuffled out to wait with Lady Zevondeth’s maid outside the door. Lady Zevondeth hobbled over to the chair by the fire and sat, raising an eyebrow, defying me to say anything. Waiting for my offer.

  “What’s your price? And how do I know what you’ll tell me is worth it?”

  “Oh, it’s worth it. You do not hold what I want in high regard.” She beckoned to me, holding out a hand that trembled with palsy. Uneasy, I went to her and laid my hand in hers. Her grip, stronger than I would have thought, held me while she picked up a slim silver knife from the marble-topped table beside her. She shushed me when I tried to pull back, and pricked my finger with the razor tip of the blade. My bright blood welled up. She caught it in a glass vial, letting my hand go and corking the little bottle. Gazing at it in satisfaction, she gave me a little smile while I sucked on my stinging finger. I imagined it turning into little birds and flying away.

  “What will you do with it?”

  “Does it matter? I thought you wanted other answers.”

  I did. I nodded.

  “Salena had no manners when Uorsin wed her. No understanding of court politics. And she had that odd . . . feral quality. I had a school at that time—the best in Duranor—to teach all the refinements to noble young ladies.” She sat up straighter in her fancy chair. “Yes, you didn’t know that. As commanded by the old King of Duranor, I closed the school, sent my girls home, and taught your mother. I made a queen out of her—my finest creation. My masterpiece. And she let it all go.”

  I stared at her, unable to assemble my thoughts, and she inclined her head, regal, pulling an impassive mien over the hatred that had flashed so briefly, like a green shadow over her face.

  “That answers the question you asked. Because you paid a high price for it—higher than you know now—I’ll answer the questions you didn’t know to ask. She would have honored that contract. It was her dearest hope to return with you to the Tala, to her own people. Uorsin knew it, too. We could all see it. Once she delivered Uorsin his third child, as required by the contract, she planned to take you and raise you among the Tala.

  “She often said to me that if you were to marry a man of the Tala, she wanted you to grow up knowing their ways. She didn’t want you to suffer as she did, lost among a foreign people. She had some other reason that you needed to grow up among the Tala. Something to do with the mark. She seemed to think something would harm you if you did not go to them.”

  “What?”

  She squinched up her wrinkled face as if she smelled something bad. “Who knows? She made less and less sense as time went on. She should have known, though, that he’d take the opportunity to betray her wishes. She stopped him from having his greatest desire, so he took his revenge by denying hers. Toward the end, they had only hate for each other. The way he treated her . . .” Zevondeth shook her head, gazing at the fire.

  “I think she would have taken you the day you were born, had she not owed Uorsin a third child. She should have gone before he destroyed her completely.”

  “And it took her another five years to quicken.”

  “She waited five years to quicken,” Lady Zevondeth corrected me sharply. “Don’t underestimate her as Uorsin did. He laid with her often, but her people believed that less than five years between babies weakens the mother and produces sickly children. Even for you, she wouldn’t jeopardize her third child’s future. She was a demon on the subject. She always said you three were the whole reason for everything she’d done.”

  “But then she died of childbirth fever.”

  “So they say.”

  “Don’t you know? You nursed her, I hear.”

  Lady Zevondeth looked weary. An old woman dwarfed by her velvet chair, canny eyes filmed with age.

  “How and why does death take any of us? She had much to live for, but in the end, she failed to survive.”

  “You said he destroyed her.”

  She looked away, into the fire. “I’ll deny it, should you repeat that, and you are the one marked for the Tala, carrying the taint of traitor to Uorsin’s kingdom, not I.”

  The dismissal was clear and I was out of time—the sentries knocking on the door, calling me to go.

  “Thank you,” I said, though I’d paid for the information. Perhaps dearly, according to her hints. I nearly snatched up the little vial, the crimson of my blood gleaming in the firelight. It would tip the scales, though, something in me knew. Fair was fair. I turned to go
.

  “Andromeda,” she called after me. I looked back, and she sat forward in her chair, a strange smile twisting her thin lips. “The bear never gives up what he believes is his. He kills to keep it and he’s very good at killing. And he’s always hungry. He’s starving for the one thing he could never have. Beware of where his appetite reaches.”

  I pulled open the door and began running. So I would not be late, I told myself.

  Even the clatter of my armored sentries jogging behind me didn’t quite drown out Lady Zevondeth’s coughing laughter.

  7

  From my nest among the trunks and bundles on top of Hugh and Amelia’s carriage, I watched the fingernail crescent moon riding high in a sky turning from darkest night to the pure blue of dawn. I pressed my sore finger, still bleeding a little, against my thumb, savoring the bruised pain. It seemed fitting, somehow, that I should hurt, even in such a minor way.

  Only you can stop all this.

  Though I’d been awake all night, my mind wouldn’t settle enough for me to sleep now, as the groomsmen tucking me into the baggage had advised. They’d made me a surprisingly comfortable spot amid the softer bags, padded with blankets, a thoughtfulness for my comfort that warmed me. The way they all wished me Glorianna’s protection and vowed to protect me with their lives dug under my skin.

  If my mother had lived, I would already be among the Tala. I tried to picture that girl and failed. I would have grown up Tala and perhaps their ways wouldn’t seem so strange to me. Maybe they wouldn’t have found me so strange. No one would have died protecting me, defending this honor I supposedly carried around with me like a precious jewel. Now, for the first time, I thought about turning myself over to Rayfe. Ending all of this, as he’d asked in my dream.

  The implied warning, though—that bothered me. If my mother believed I might lose my mind if I married into the Tala, going to them full-grown—perhaps everyone was right that I needed to be saved from that. The thought fed my many fears. Salena had been nearly feral, Lady Zevondeth said. Did the Tala live like animals, roaming the Wild Lands, foraging for food and pillaging helpless villages?