The Story Hunter

by Lindsay A. Franklin

“None of us knew how bad it would be.” Father’s face was grim. “I pray they made it to safety. He and the crew are capable fighters, at least, but it would have been better if we’d stuck together. The more allies we have with us, the better. We’ll have to make do.”

  “I’m sorry, General.”

  “It’s not your fault, son. We’ll just be ready to fight our way to the palace, if necessary. And only if necessary. I don’t want to shed any more blood than we have to.”

  Mor nodded, his frown etching lines around his mouth. “Tannie. Will you—”

  “Stay with Diggy. Of course.”

  A year past, when I was still living in the tiny town of Pembrone, nestled in the coastal cliffs of the Eastern Peninsula, I probably would have insisted on being in the thick of the fighting. I would have balked at the idea of being kept out of it, left behind, assigned to protect and guard rather than charge ahead.

  But now I’d lost enough that I just wanted everyone to get across the city in one piece. If that meant I couldn’t be in the middle of the action, that was fine as a fluff-hopper.

  “Diggy,” Mor said to his sister. “You’ll look after Tannie?”

  Diggy didn’t respond with words, but her hands snapped toward two of the six throwing knives she wore strapped about her hips and legs.

  I almost smiled. “You’re asking each of us to look after the other, hmm?”

  He wanted to say something, I could tell. But instead, he just lifted my chin with his hand. Gloved, so that when we touched, our weaver gifts wouldn’t link and cause a spectacle of strands in the middle of Urian.

  “Be safe, Tannie.”

  And then he, with my father, Zel, Warmil, and Dylun—a box full of priceless cargo tucked under Dylun’s arm—slinked back into the street. Diggy and I followed in their wake.

  We had barely gone ten feet before the men were parrying strikes and shoving people away from our group. We crept toward the palace in this way—so slowly, I could scream.

  How much farther? I could see the towers, of course, but we wouldn’t really be close until the perimeter wall came into view.

  “Down!” Diggy’s shout startled me, but I ducked without a second thought. The man who’d tried to grab me got a knife through his hand instead.

  His screams nearly pulled up the contents of my stomach.

  But Diggy didn’t seem bothered. She bent over him and swiftly yanked her blade from his flesh. “I need that.”

  I swallowed hard, willing my revulsion away. “Come on.”

  The faster I could get her through the city, the fewer people would end up with knife wounds.

  Two women barreling toward us might have become two more knife victims, but I got to them before Diggy did.

  I thrust my hand in their direction and shot a strand that looked like flattened rope at one of the women, then turned slightly and launched another strand at the other. The first strand smacked into the woman just as she stretched out her hand toward my throat. It folded around her torso, pinning her arms to her sides. Then it coiled round and round her body until her screeches were cut off by my idea-strand gag.

  In the space of a breath, the second peasant was bound up too.

  I stared at them as they writhed on the ground. My strands wouldn’t hurt them. At least, I didn’t think so. That hadn’t been what was in my mind when I’d imagined them. But why were these women attacking me in the first place?

  “The whole world’s gone mad,” I said, mostly to myself.

  Diggy appeared beside me. “Was it not already?”

  Some distance away, Mor was shoving a thief away from Dylun, who was huddled protectively around the box in his arms. Dylun would die before he let anyone take the box—and the curse cure that lay inside it.

  As I watched Dylun cradle the cure that had saved my life and cost Gryfelle’s, I caught sight of a marble fountain. One of many scattered throughout the heart of the city. The whole core of Urian seemed to be carved of marble, after all.

  But this one was familiar. I was almost certain it was the fountain I’d marveled at the very first time I came to Urian—bound with ropes not unlike those strands I’d just made. The king’s guardsmen had dragged me through the city that first time, but the Pembroni farm girl in me couldn’t help but marvel anyway.

  All that smooth white stone. This one shaped like a perfect bowl.

  Probably by an expert stoneshaper, I realized now, remembering the Meridioni weavers who carved stone with their fingers. I hadn’t known such weavers existed before I’d seen them myself in Meridione.

  And now, that pure, spotless fountain ran with blood.

  I stared up into the vacant eyes of a man whose throat had been slit. His body was draped over the top tier of the fountain, and it seemed he’d been placed there on purpose. It reminded me of how Gareth would display the heads of his enemies around the capital when he had a mind to.

  Or so I’d heard.

  This man was one of Braith’s guardsmen. He wore the black uniform of the palace guard. I wondered if that fact alone had sealed his fate or if he had done something specific to inspire such wrath.

  It didn’t matter. His blood splashed over the side of the fountain in a grim shower.

  Blood and marble, marble and blood.

  Diggy stood near me, her face a blank mask. “Come on.”

  I obeyed, and we caught up to the others at the palace wall without incident. They hadn’t been idle while they waited. Already they’d agreed to approach the guards with weapons concealed but ready. As soon as necessary, they would draw and fight our way inside.

  “And once we get in?” I asked. “We march to the throne room and demand to know what they’ve done with Braith?”

  Zel’s eyes were heavy with pain. “Or we look for my family.”

  That hit me like a punch to the gut. “Oh, Zel. We’ll find them. We will. We have to.”

  He nodded, but that heavy look didn’t lift. I knew it wouldn’t until Ifmere and Dafyth were safe in his arms.

  Mor and Diggy were fussing about something. “You can’t walk in like that,” Mor was saying. “Your knives are strapped all over your legs in plain sight.”

  Bare legs, I knew he was only just restraining himself from saying. He was rather scandalized by the grazer-hide shorts his sister insisted on wearing, no matter how cold she was. They had been comfortable for her on the island, and part of me wondered if she refused to put on trousers or a dress simply because she knew it nettled Mor so much.

  “I’ll stand behind that one.” She pointed to Warmil. “He’s big enough to block me, mostly.”

  Mor rolled his eyes, but we didn’t have time to fight about this. “Fine.”

  And just like that, we were walking toward the guards standing at the front gate—soldiers who may or may not kill us on sight.

  They dressed differently than the palace guards under Braith’s or Gareth’s rules—their uniforms were dusky green and deep red. I thought about the slain guardsman in the fountain. I guessed I wouldn’t want to be wearing a black uniform right now either.

  Father opened his mouth to speak, but one of the green-clad guards cut him off by raising his hand. Then the guard leaned a bit closer, squinting. He looked the rest of us over, one by one, settling for an uncomfortably long time on me.

  “It’s them,” he declared finally. “Fewer than he said, but definitely them.”

  Everyone’s fingers flexed near their weapons, though the guards didn’t seem to be making any moves to attack. Instead, they pulled the doors open and nodded. “The steward’s been expecting you.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  TANWEN

  Mor grabbed my hand, then Diggy’s. “Stay close,” he warned us quietly.

  I noticed my father’s strides were unnaturally long as he fought to keep some distance between the guardsmen leading the way and the rest of us. They had taken his sword, but I was sure he had at least one blade concealed elsewhere. He was a walking weapon, in any case. They
couldn’t very well take away his fists without some doing.

  The guards bringing up the rear made me feel rather less confident than I might otherwise. However Father might be able to subdue the two guards in front of us, we couldn’t make a clean escape from behind.

  In truth, escape wasn’t much on my mind at all. My thoughts whirled like violent wind strands.

  Why was the steward waiting for us? How did he even know us?

  The palace was nearly empty, and our footsteps echoed in a way that couldn’t feel natural if you’d ever heard the bustle of the hundreds of servants and courtiers and nobles and advisors and ambassadors and guards who usually lived there.

  Or . . . used to live there.

  I fought the nausea again. Was that version of the palace at Urian a thing of the past? Was Braith’s rule truly to be so short?

  She could have ushered in a golden age for Tir. If only Tir had given her a chance.

  Maybe this was what the palace would be now. A ghost of her former self. A shell—hollow and soulless.

  I almost ran into Dylun when he stopped in front of me. Mor’s steadying hand helped me regain my balance. I glanced up in annoyance, wondering why Dylun had come to such an abrupt halt. But of course. We were at the throne room doors.

  My stomach churned at the thought of some usurper—why was it always a usurper?—sitting in Braith’s throne room.

  The guards paused at the doors, and one of them said, “He’s asked to see you right away, so go on in.”

  “Don’t try anything,” the other warned. “You may have been important to the former queen, but you don’t have allies here. The steward is well protected.”

  I imagined piecing together my story-strand halo-head that had devoured quite a few bad men in this very room when we brought Gareth to justice. Maybe I could summon that creature again if I thought about him hard enough, and he could rip this steward to pieces. Then we’d see who was well protected. They could take all our blades, but like my father’s fists, they couldn’t take my strands.

  If they understood what that meant, these guards wouldn’t be smirking right now.

  Mor’s fingers squeezed mine, and I glanced down at our clasped hands. My hand was lit up, white-hot, and his glove was smoking a little.

  Oops.

  I willed my anger to calm, my emotions to settle. You have to control it, Father always said.

  A few long seconds passed, and my fingers dimmed. Mor’s glove stopped smoking, and I squeezed his hand back.

  The guards pulled open the doors and stood aside. I had seen this room with a poison-green carpet when Gareth ruled as king and a sparkling silver one when Braith was queen. But now, I frowned. The carpet wasn’t really a carpet at all. And come to think of it, Braith’s and Gareth’s hadn’t truly been carpets either. They were more like ceremonial runners that matched the story strands that unfurled in tales of each ruler. So the throne room carpets were more like banners, I supposed, than actual carpet designed for walking on.

  But this was . . . strange, even by those standards.

  A long piece of brown grazer-hide leather stretched from the doors at the back of the room to the dais on the opposite side. It had been stitched together in several places—I wouldn’t want to meet the grazer big enough to make a strip of hide that long, thanks very much.

  As I walked down it, my gaze pinned to each inch I passed, the leather pulled up a tempest of emotions, unbidden. We moved cautiously toward the dais, and the only thing I could guess was that it reminded me of home. Of my leather vest worn over my traveling dress and my satchel and—

  “Don’t be shy. Come on in.”

  I froze. That voice. So familiar, I’d never forget it.

  But . . . here? My mind stuttered over it. Of all the things that didn’t make sense today, this was the worst. The most upside down. The most impossible.

  I couldn’t bring myself to lift my eyes. I wanted to shut them tightly instead. To pretend I hadn’t heard it and to will myself just about anywhere else in the world. But my focus stuck hard to the leather, because of course I knew now why it stirred my heart and kicked up a storm of conflict in my mind.

  It was the exact grazer-hide leather of a certain farmer’s floppy hat.

  One awful moment passed, and finally, I looked up.

  And there he was, clearly having just stood—from where he’d been seated on Braith’s throne. The shock of straw-colored hair, the one that used to catch the Pembroni sunlight as it fell across his face when he walked me home in the evenings, was slicked back, and his beard seemed to have grown in a little thicker. His nose, for once, was not sunburned, and I supposed one didn’t spend much time in the fields when one was staging a coup to remove the rightful queen.

  But it was him, just the same, and the big, triumphant grin that split his face set my insides boiling.

  “Ho, Tannie,” said Brac Bo-Bradwir, my very best friend in the world.

  I don’t remember sprinting down the rest of the leather runner, and I don’t remember deciding to throw a punch for the first time in my life.

  But I well remember the satisfying crack of my fist against his jaw, and I remember Mor’s and my father’s voices, shouting for me to stop. Probably afraid I was going to get run through by a couple of Brac’s guards.

  In that moment, I couldn’t have cared less.

  “How could you?” I shouted. “What have you done? How? How did you do this? Why?”

  Strong hands grabbed me under the arms and pulled me away from Brac. The fool stood there like a statue, mouth dangling open. Apparently, it had not been the reception he had been expecting.

  That made two of us.

  “Brac, how could you!” Fury doused me from head to toe.

  “Now, listen here, Tannie.” He rubbed his jaw with one hand and held his guards at bay with the other. “You don’t understand. A lot happened while you was gone.”

  “I don’t understand?” My voice pitched almost as shrilly as Lady Gwan’s. “There is nothing—nothing—that could possibly make me understand this. You straw-headed, cheese-for-brains, dumber-than-rocks simpleton!” I had more where that came from.

  But only one thought seared my mind.

  I marched back onto the dais and stood on tiptoe to glare fire straight into his eyeballs.

  “Where is Braith?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  BRAITH

  Braith stared at her mother. It was her, wasn’t it? Perhaps, in the flickering firelight of this dark place and still recovering from whatever drug she had been forced to inhale, Braith was mistaken about the identity of the figure before her.

  But then the woman smiled, and there was no question. One does not forget her own mother’s smile.

  Frenhin Ma-Gareth pulled the black hood from her head, and her long pale hair tumbled out across her shoulders. “Braith, darling. Welcome.”

  Braith fought for her voice, fought to choose a question from the million tumbling through her mind. “Wh-what are you doing here? What is this place?”

  The black-shrouded figure—so strange, since Braith was used to seeing the former queen in fine gowns with jewels and detailed embroidery—moved closer. “This is a little retreat of mine. I call it the Craigyl.” She held out one hand as if showing off a finely appointed room. “Do you like it? Not quite as cozy as my chambers in the palace, I grant you, but I didn’t exactly have the choice to stay, did I?” The false smile dropped. “You saw to that well enough.”

  Braith shook her head, clearing cobwebs from her mind. “I don’t understand.”

  “You never did.”

  Braith eyed her warily. “What do you mean?”

  “When I gave birth to a daughter, I had such hopes. Someone born in my image, cut from my cloth. Someone to lead alongside me. Instead, I got you.”

  “But . . .” Braith stammered. “But I did lead. I sat on Father’s council. I tried to be a good leader for the empire.”

  Frenhin laughed. “Oh yes.
Council. As though that’s where the empire was conceived. As though that’s where the hardest battles were fought and the true victories won. Foolish girl.”

  Braith spoke slowly as realization washed over her. “You were the one behind Father’s reign. You were helping him rule. . . in secret.”

  Frenhin laughed again, hollow and mirthless. “The Master”—she bowed—“at your service. I did not have a right to the moniker when I chose it, many years ago. I hadn’t been a master of anything yet. Not of my life, not of my gifts. Not even of my own future. But names can be aspirational, don’t you think? I wanted to be like the marionette masters, in complete control of their stringed slaves.”

  “Slaves? Is that why you encouraged Father’s land lust? So that your empire might provide slaves for you?” Braith pulled on her shackles—gently, so as not to make noise. If she could keep her mother talking, perhaps it would give her some space to think. Some time to devise a plan.

  Frenhin snorted derisively. “No, silly girl. He was the slave. He, and a great many others. My marionettes needed to be powerful, and I made them so. I chose my toys carefully.”

  Braith stopped her clandestine investigation of her surroundings. She stared at her mother. “Father was not powerful when you chose him. He was just a soldier.” She paused, churning over the bleak implication. “But you made him powerful by making him king. So . . . it was you who planned and executed King Caradoc’s murder?”

  Frenhin crouched low, dangerously close to her captive daughter. “Of course. You honestly thought your father could mastermind such an incredible coup? Or anything, for that matter? Your father was a talented captain with a hunger for adventure and riches and no love for our dark neighbors to the south and the west. I knew he would make the perfect conqueror. The perfect tool to win an empire. But if you think for a moment he had any capacity for plots or machinations, you are even more oblivious than I realized.”

  “You plotted all this when Father was a captain in the guard?” He had barely been a grown man then. Twenty, at most. Braith had always thought her father had worked his way through the ranks, meritoriously rising until he was a close advisor of Caradoc—a true member of the king’s council. But now it seemed that position had been gained through other means altogether. That it had always been part of a larger plan.