I rubbed my side. All my jumping about today had awakened the ache in my stitches. I fiddled with the silver cuffs in my pocket. I’d never had something of Nacea to carry with me.
I bathed and got dressed in silence. The quiet was familiar and welcome. No one playing word games or trying to kill me. Nothing to worry about but my own thoughts.
“Where’s the parlor for tutoring?” I made an effort to straighten my hair under the mask, stomach uneasy.
“I’ll lead you,” Maud said over the changing screen. “Don’t worry. You have plenty of time to get ready for your tutor.”
I frowned. “What do you mean by that?”
“Only that you put an awful lot of care into your looks when you go to tutoring.” Maud hummed softly. “More than you do any other time.”
“Such a bitter tongue for such a sweet face.” I straightened my mask again and shook out the long hem of my dress. Wasn’t anything wrong with me caring about what Elise thought.
“Shush.” Scowling the whole way, Maud led me out of my room and down a path.
The air was fragrant as an apothecary. Mint leaves ruffled in the breeze and wind fresh from the orangery blew over our shoulders. Little glass lanterns cast wavy, colored lines from their perches in the overhanging branches, and each footstep was muffled by the carpet of well-cared-for grass. A short, long building glowed with light at the end of the path. The palace spared no expenses.
Wherever they came from.
“Through that door.” She gestured to the building and stomped away, nose in the air.
I took a breath, shaking out my limbs and holding my sore side. Elise looked up as I entered.
A net of gold fine as fishing line held her curls at the nape of her neck. She wore no cosmetics today, and her tunic was plain—long and black, falling in a flow of shadows around her knees, every shade of night mixed within the threads. Pale gold flecked the high collar, and her tightly laced boots covered her leggings. Each movement drew my eyes to the smooth curves of her arms, her hips, and the lines of her crossed legs.
I bowed, flexing my hands.
“I told you,” Elise said with a sigh. “You can stop doing that.”
“They’re teaching me etiquette for a reason.” I stayed bowed, hand out and waiting. Her fingers slid over mine till I could gently grip her wrist the way Erlend nobles did when greeting Erlend ladies. I pressed my lips to her knuckles, shaken by the warmth in her hands and the pleasant brush of her skin against mine. An unfamiliar heat pooled in my stomach. “You smell like lemons today.”
The sharp scent of spring fit her so well.
“I use it to remove ink stains.” She shifted her hand, fingers brushing my lips, and pulled back. “Today?”
“You wore rosewater perfume when we first met.” I took another deep breath, the bite of lemons already fading. “I remember.”
“You remember what I smelled like the first time we met?”
“That night changed my life.” I flexed my hand, off-balance by the prickling feeling coursing up my arm. The warmth of her skin lingered.
She flushed. “That’s a bit of an overstatement.”
“No.” I’d found the poster in her purse for the auditions that night, but thinking I was talking about her would seal whatever feelings she had for me. I needed the history and rumors she knew, and I’d no better way to get them. Wasn’t like lemon was a bad smell either. Pleasant. “It’s really not.”
“Still.” She hid behind a tall book bound in exquisite leather. “We shouldn’t waste time—best to show the Left Hand you’re learning quickly.”
I grinned. “Of course.”
We repeated last night’s lesson with new words, moving through prewritten lists. Halfway through, Elise stopped. She dropped the last word she’d made me read—pretentious.
“It’s odd,” Elise said. “You don’t speak like you can’t read.”
There it was.
I rested my chin on my hands like her. “How am I supposed to sound?”
“Common” was the answer. Merchants and higher-ups said it enough without ever saying it. Rath had been turned down for plenty of jobs he could do because he sounded like an orphaned commoner with no education. Reading was well and good, but people didn’t believe you unless you sounded how they wanted.
And one could sound the part. Spouting off common slang one moment and throwing out old pretentious words the next was part of living in two different circles.
Reading didn’t teach you words like “pretentious” and “hypothetical.” People said them all the time. Seeing them on paper didn’t magically make you know what they meant. It helped, but it wasn’t the only way.
“I’m sorry.” Elise’s fingers tightened in her lap.
“Why?”
“I feel like I’ve insulted you.”
“You have.” I shrugged, pushing the papers we’d been using aside. “The way people talk doesn’t mean anything. Only means you had private tutors and a fancy education that taught you how to talk a certain way, and I didn’t.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“You keep doing that.” I smiled wide enough so she could see it through my mask even though most of me was still fuming. And confused—Erlends never apologized. “I didn’t know nobles could do that.”
“Could do what?” She narrowed her eyes behind her glasses and tilted her chin up.
“Apologize.” I tapped the table with my right hand—drawing her attention away from her collection of supplies—and swiped a handful of paper and charcoal sticks with my left hand. She didn’t notice. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Elise laid her fingers over mine, dark smudges shadowing her skin. “What? You’ve got the look of someone thinking of what to say.”
I hid my laugh with a cough. “All those names you taught me yesterday worked out well.”
“Really?” She sat up straighter, resting her chin on her other hand. “Did you write them down, or did you recognize them?”
The push and pull, like scamming a mark. Enough flattery to get her to talk but not enough to get her suspicious.
“Really.” I met her eyes and ignored her other hand still on mine. “With all the messengers running around, I recognized a few names. Your handwriting’s better though. And I met Lady dal Abreu. Her husband’s Lord del Contes?”
Elise nodded. “Do you know how to write her name?”
“No.” I pushed the paper toward her, hoping to get her talking about the divide between the nobles.
She pushed it back to me. “I’ll spell it. You write it down.”
Lady, she must’ve been an annoying child.
I spelled the name right at least. She set me to copying letters and words after that, working on my writing. I traced the lines of her name onto the side of the paper.
“You always live here?” I asked.
“No.” She wrote out new exercises for me. The books stacked next were history and medical books, words I didn’t recognize stitched to the fronts. She flipped through one and stopped on a page full of calculations. She must’ve been teaching another auditioner about numbers. “I lived at home until Our Queen requested my presence. She needed tutors and scribes, and I wanted to see court.” She paused, fingers tracing the tear on one page. “I preferred studying with others, and the war left everything…”
She trailed off, the achingly familiar sound of bad memories in her voice.
“Ruined?”
She shook her head. “Damaged. If it were ruined, it wouldn’t have been fixable. I was too young to be a proper scribe, but Our Queen wanted people who remembered the war, and Isidora agreed to take me in. I think she just wanted another sibling, something to focus on that wasn’t grief. Father didn’t think Hinter was a place for me then anyway—a broken land full of broken men back from war. He wants me to go back now, but returning home feels final. I’m still not ready.”
“I remember the sounds—catapults and crashing rock,
screaming, bodies hitting the ground.” She shook her head. “I didn’t realize how scared I was until I left. I’m responsible for everyone in Hinter, and I know I could never protect them from that. Not without help, so Our Queen called and I answered.”
The chasm in my heart usually reserved for Nacea pitched. Elise wasn’t old enough to have damned Nacea. Living off the legacy, sure, but she’d no part in it. She’d lost things too—her mother, her home, her childhood.
I reached across the table and squeezed her hand. She returned the touch.
How easy it was to recognize a pain you knew.
“I’m glad you didn’t see the shadows,” I said and meant it. No one deserved that but especially not Elise. Especially knowing—actually knowing—the scars of our childhood still lived in her too. I smiled back at her. “But I’d like to hear about living with Our Queen and Lord del Contes and all. What’s life at court like?”
At least prying wouldn’t drag up all her bad memories.
“Hectic.” She handed me a new list of words. “Most of the high court lives here year-round, and everyone else is constantly coming and going. Lord del Contes likes to wander—I’d swear he knows everyone on the grounds.”
And yet I’d never seen him.
“How am I supposed to scare nobles into submission when I’m Opal if they’re not here?”
“So humble,” she said dryly.
“You don’t like me for my humility.” She liked me because I was dangerous and new to her. I was a mystery. Safe but dangerous enough to pique her rebellious interests.
“And yet.” She paused to correct my writing—too sharp again, a point where there should’ve been a curve—and held up another new list. It was a miracle she’d not shown me every word in existence already. “I am not fond of arrogance. Perhaps I don’t like every aspect of you.”
I frowned. “You flirt a lot for not liking me.”
“Get used to holding this but no ink yet.” She swapped out my charcoal for a brush pen. “I said an aspect of you. Everyone has flaws.” Tipping her chin down, she glared at me over her spectacles, somehow looking down at me despite both of us sitting. “Like my mistake earlier.”
Only nobles could be helpful and infuriating all at once.
“Flirting to get what you want isn’t a court thing. People do that all over.” I brandished the brush at her, completely unused to the thin grip.
She laughed. “Of course they do, but they don’t remember what perfume I was wearing when we first met.”
The memory of rosewater lingered. My memories of her lingered, but no matter how warm they were, they were dangerous. “But talking to you isn’t like flirting in court,” she said softly. “I like talking to you. And thank you for correcting me earlier.”
No one had ever thanked me for that.
“You’d be foolish to do more than flirt.” I tried to smile to clear the ache in my chest, the teasing tone in her voice helping. I must’ve hit my stitches. That had to be why I was feeling so unsteady over her. “I’m dangerous, and I could die at any moment.”
“Terrible combination.” She glanced at the candle clock in the corner and plucked the pen from my hands. “Wick’s out. I suppose we’ll have to continue tomorrow.”
Elise ran me ragged with words, but talking to her was pleasant.
At least I’d grabbed the charcoal. If Seve had anything useful to say before dying, I’d make him write it down.
I nodded. “If I’m still alive.”
I would be. Tonight, I’d watch Horatio del Seve, and tomorrow, he’d be dead.
“You’ll be alive.” Elise shuffled my papers into a pile and pushed them aside. “I have faith.”
From her lips to The Lady’s ears. A little extra luck wouldn’t hurt. Curling an arm around my side to quiet the ache in my chest, I stepped out of Fifteen’s way. He must’ve been her student studying numbers. A red glare shone through the leaves over his shoulder.
“Evening,” I said and bowed my head like Ruby had taught us.
Fifteen returned the gesture and stepped around me. The door slammed shut before I could even catch a word of Elise’s greeting for him.
Didn’t matter. She’d told me what I’d needed so far.
“You can’t make time for training, but you make time for tutoring?” Ruby leaned over till our faces were even. “And I had such high hopes for you.”
It took everything within me not to flinch away from his unnatural face. “You said training’s optional.”
“But highly recommended.”
“I went to yours.” I turned to face him, no need for any other unearthly creatures looming over me. The man behind Ruby lingered in the shadows. “I only skipped healing.”
“Medicine.” Ruby dismissed me with a wave. “It’s called medicine now. Has been for a hundred years.”
“You’re being awfully hard on Sal,” the other man said. He stepped forward, nearly twice as tall as me and drenched in runes—ink shaded the back of his one remaining arm, dripped down the arches of his bare feet, and lined the lids of his black eyes. Only two men bore those marks, and one was dead.
I bowed to Lord Nicolas del Contes just as Ruby had taught us.
“Don’t drop your shoulders. It’s rude.” Ruby huffed. “You will be in etiquette tomorrow, or I will nail you to a chair until you know all your table manners.”
Nails and table manners were the least of my worries if Nicolas del Contes was spying on me, but I nodded anyway. “Of course, Lord Ruby.”
“It would be rude to send a Nacean to study under Isidora—so much bloodletting.” Nicolas drew a finger across his throat, stopping at the same spot I’d stabbed Grell. “Curious that you’d even audition.”
I scowled. So they’d shared who I was, and he knew enough about Nacea to be annoying.
“Fine, fine.” Ruby dismissed me with a wave, walking away. “At least make good use of the time you have for skipping medicine. We’ll know.”
“Why are you spying on nobles?” Nicolas fixed me with a glare so cutting I was sure magic had returned if only to strip all my secrets bare. “Or are you just having some fun?”
“Exactly.” I bowed to him again and memorized everything about him as he swept away after Ruby. “Just having some fun.”
Twenty-Five
I wandered after that, half wanting to follow Ruby and half wanting to run back to my room and pretend it hadn’t happened. Nicolas del Contes couldn’t know what I was up to. And even if he did, he couldn’t stop me. I just had to be sneakier than him.
And thieves had been better at skulking about long before nobles even knew the word.
A muffled curse—the sound of words trapped behind a linen mask—broke through my annoyance. An auditioner. I peered around my tree.
Five.
Leaving his room.
He locked his door behind him and fiddled with something I couldn’t see. His servant, a nervous-looking girl lacking Maud’s straight back—too nervous to keep from mussing up her hair—trembled beside him. He tossed the key at her, and she tucked it into her chest pocket. She flinched with each move of his hands.
“Stay out.” Five flipped up the hood of his cloak and stomped away from her. “I’d rather have no servant than a useless one. Wash my clothes, fix my meals, and learn how to do your job.”
Bad luck getting Five. He was probably used to a herd of servants doing everything and anything he wanted, exactly as he wanted—not one new servant struggling to keep up.
I waited for Five to leave. His servant stayed, taking deep, calming breaths.
I pulled off my mask, face painfully bare, and fixed my hair. I might’ve been in black, like every other auditioner, and wearing secondhand clothes, but the tunic was proper and fancy. I pulled the silver cuffs from my pocket and snapped out the hinges, folding open the silver filigree like blossoming petals. They should never have been pried from dead arms. They needed new memories.
Just like I did.
I raced down the trail so I could walk toward the servant. Busying myself with cleaning an imaginary speck from my cuffs, I marched straight toward her. The servant glanced up and started angling away from me. I veered into her path.
I crashed into her. We stumbled into each other, arms tangling in an effort to stay upright, and I slid my right hand over her shoulder. My fingers scooped up the key from her pocket and my other hand gripped her arm, righting us both and keeping her attention away from my fingers. The key fit well between my second and third fingers. She tried to pull away.
“I’m so sorry.” She bowed with her arm still in my grip, gaze darting to the silver on my wrist. “My apologies.”
“It’s fine. Really.” I grinned and helped her up. She’d be starved for kindness after dealing with Five, and she had to think I was some silver merchant come to the palace for business. Best she remember my words and wrists but not my face. I flicked the key down my sleeve. “I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”
I drew out my words like Rath did—the telltale dialect of the Alonian coast and not at all how I normally spoke. Now to show her I’d not lifted the key.
“No harm done.” I spread out my arms and splayed my fingers. “I’m not hurt. You’re not hurt. No foul.”
She nodded, eyes still wide and mouth drawn. “Thank you. Have a good day.”
“I will.” I smiled one last time and took off to Five’s haven.
His room was as bare as mine. A pile of dirty clothes was in one corner, bloody bandages beside them. Scuff marks—the footprints placed like Ruby’s sword stances—marred the floor, and a long bow half as tall as me leaned against one wall with a quiver full of arrows. A military-issue sleeping roll was propped against one wall.
It’d been used recently. The cloth was wrinkled, and dust that wouldn’t be found here clung to the edges.
I’d found the archer.
Wasn’t enough to get Five disqualified, but it was good to know.
I snapped a thread from one of his clean shirts and knotted it around the key, hanging it at eye level on the wall across from his door. To let him know he wasn’t safe.
Fear and nervousness would make him twitchy and force him to make bad decisions. I needed him twitchy.
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