“I’m fine,” I said, then hesitated.
I could feel myself trembling, alternately hot with rage and cold with terror at the thought of what I would be expected to do as Mistress.
The room behind me suddenly felt both too large and too confining.
I drew in a ragged breath and let it out slowly. “No,” I said. “No, I think I need some air. Take me to the roof of the palace.”
The Seeker nodded, then said in a carefully neutral voice, “You should probably change.”
I glanced down at my sweat-matted shift, rumpled and wrinkled, then glared at both of the guards before closing the door without a word.
* * *
The Seeker guarding the door to my chambers led me to the roof of the palace, halting at the opening to the stairwell with a nod. Dressed in Eryn’s white robes, the predawn air felt chill and close, still damp with the autumn rains and with a bite of winter. As I moved to the low wall at the edge of the roof overlooking the port of Amenkor, I repressed a shudder at the robe’s unfamiliar weight and movement. I was used to close-fitting clothes, shirts and breeches, nothing loose that would interfere with my dagger, with my movements. But the previous Mistress did not have breeches, did not carry a dagger. And someone had removed the page boy’s clothes I’d worn to infiltrate the palace. Her white robes, with bands of gold embroidery around the neck and hem, were the only clothes I could find.
I glared out over the city of Amenkor in irritation, trying not to scratch myself. Things would have to change, starting with the clothes.
On the harbor, ships rocked in the waves, silhouetted against the water by the reflected moonlight. All but those guarding the harbor’s entrance were at the docks, where they’d been since the previous Mistress had blockaded the harbor. A few were loading cargo, by the light of torches lining the wharf, but I couldn’t see which ships in the darkness, could only see vague forms moving in the glow of the lanterns along the docks. Closer in, there was a patch of darkness where the warehouses had burned, the buildings nothing but charred husks.
I felt a weight of guilt settle onto my shoulders, a clench of nausea tug at my stomach. I may not have started the fire that destroyed the warehouse district, but the lantern that had started it had been thrown at me by a boy attempting to save himself from my blade.
I turned away from the black scar, toward the barely discernible streets, the River, and the outer walls of the city.
At the same time, I heard footsteps behind me.
I slid beneath the river, felt the world shift to gray, the sounds of the night muting to a soft wind, and targeted the woman who approached.
Eryn, the previous Mistress.
I tensed, back rigid, comforted by the presence of my dagger at my side, tucked into a makeshift belt. I’d seen little of the previous Mistress since I’d released her from the throne and assumed power. There’d been little time. I’d spent a full day seated on the throne, afraid to let my guard down, afraid the voices would overtake me the moment I turned my back. Eventually, I’d isolated them behind the Fire, stabilized it so that it burned without conscious thought. Only then had I stepped away from the throne.
But the effort had drained me. I’d collapsed in exhaustion almost immediately, been taken to the Mistress’ chambers to rest. When I’d woken, after only a few hours of sleep, the palace had been in turmoil, the guardsmen seething with anger, the servants confused. Nothing had been accomplished, all of Avrell’s time spent calming everyone down.
There’d been nothing I could do at the time, so I’d retired early, still exhausted . . . and dreamed.
Eryn moved up beside me, placed her hands on the stone parapet of the tower, and gazed out over the city. In the moonlight, her hair was blue-black, her skin washed a pale white, as white as the simple dress she wore. She held herself formally, head high, chin lifted. Not arrogant, but assured. The stance of a ruler.
I felt small beside her. And not only because I was two hands shorter and probably less than half her age.
“Couldn’t sleep?” she asked a moment later, after a heavy sigh.
I shifted, slipped into a stance the Seeker watching us would have recognized, and answered, “No.” It came out harsher than I’d intended. I suddenly wondered where she had slept last night, what she had done while the palace was in chaos.
She turned toward me, eyes narrowed, lips pursed. She looked exhausted as well, dark smudges beneath her eyes, her skin tight, as if she’d been sobbing for hours. It had aged her. Instead of the nearly forty-year-old woman who’d so confidently bested me a few nights before, she appeared fifty . . . and totally defeated.
I found my anger and wariness faltering, forced myself to remember that this was the woman who had almost killed me days before.
“It’s hard,” she said, tight and controlled. “I’ve lived so long with the voices of the throne that now that they’re gone . . .” She grimaced, shrugged, then laughed bitterly, no humor touching her eyes. “I know I’d be dead by now, if you hadn’t come to kill me. I could never have withstood the throne. It was too powerful, and the voices . . . they were wearing me down. They would have driven me insane eventually. But still . . .”
I said nothing. I’d seen the insanity in her eyes in the throne room, seen how much she’d fought to hold herself together at the end.
Eryn straightened. “I think . . .” Her voice had changed, some of the bitterness seeping away. “I think, if you hadn’t come, I would have thrown myself from this very wall.”
I stilled, startled, then shifted forward so I could see down the height of the wall, down past the gaps of the inset windows, past the banners, to the stairs at the wall’s base.
The stone of the steps gleamed white in the moonlight.
Something tightened in my chest, and I pulled back from the edge with a sharp gasp. For a brief moment, the world tilted around me, and I felt off-balance, dizzy with the height. I placed my hands carefully on the stone wall to steady myself and felt the last of my wariness vanish, lost in the thudding of my heart.
“You used to come here often,” I said. “Avrell said that on the night the warehouses burned, you came up here to watch the fire. He said that you smiled.”
Eryn didn’t answer at first. She simply stood, staring down at the stone steps below, her eyes distant. Almost contemplative.
“That wasn’t me standing here that night,” she said, her eyes haunted and lost. “It was the throne.”
For a horrible moment, I thought she was on the verge of jumping as she’d planned earlier. I could see it in her eyes, almost like the madness I’d seen in the throne room before, but somehow more terrifying because she was so calm.
But then the moment passed. Her eyes narrowed and she turned away from the wall, from the steps far below, and looked at me.
“You dreamed,” she said. There was no doubt in her voice. The assured woman who’d first stood beside me had returned.
I thought about lying, but saw no point. She’d been the Mistress for longer than I’d been alive. “Yes.”
She frowned. “That’s unusual. It took at least three months after I assumed the throne before I dreamed. Tell me, what happened in this dream?”
“I drowned,” I said curtly. “A man shoved my head into a rain barrel and I drowned. Except it wasn’t me, it was a boy I didn’t know.”
Eryn nodded, turning back toward the city. “And do you know where this happened?”
“The slums beyond the Dredge.”
“And did you see the man who killed you—or rather, did this boy you don’t know see him?”
“Yes. His name was Corum.”
“Then you must send the Seekers after this Corum. He is a mark. He deserves to die.”
I felt a warm surge of satisfaction course through my blood at the thought. My hand closed into a fist about the hilt of my dagger. Corum
’s face rose sharp and clear in my mind and my jaw clenched with hatred. “I can look for him myself. I can kill him.”
Eryn turned sharply at the harshness in my voice, her eyes going wide in alarm. “Varis,” she said, taking a tentative step forward.
Beneath the river, her movement was slow, almost languid. I’d sunk deeper than I’d intended, had let the world gray almost to black, the city spread out below me—once half lost in the darkness before dawn—now sharp with edges and clearly defined. And there was a tug on the currents, a pull. Nothing focused or clear, but a scent. I doubt I would have sensed it without the added power of the throne behind me. I faced it, reached out for it, and found myself focusing across the buildings of the merchants’ quarter, across the wharf and the harbor, across the real River that emptied into the bay, to where the cobbled street called the Dredge ran into the slums of the city. The scent grew clearer, more intense. As sharp and fresh as new-fallen rain—
And suddenly I knew I could find him, could find Corum wherever he hid on the Dredge, using the river, using the throne. I could already smell his putrid breath, could feel my dagger sliding up beneath his ribs. I could taste his death.
“Varis, no!”
Eryn’s voice was hollow, distant. But then she slapped me, hard, the stinging sensation piercing through the eddies of the river like a blade. I pulled back from the edge of the city with a jerk, snapped back into myself at the edge of the palace wall hard enough I stumbled back. Eryn was already there, holding me up, steadying me. Her face was a steel mask of terrified anger, cold and stark in the moonlight.
“Never do that again!” she spat. “Never reach out like that using the Sight or the throne!”
“But I can find him,” I gasped, still disoriented. I felt an urge to vomit, but fought the sensation down, swallowed hard as I caught my balance. “I can scent him—”
“No!” she growled. “It’s too dangerous. Reaching like that, extending yourself out so far. . . .” She shook her head. “You could lose yourself, never find your way back. Previous Mistresses have been lost in such attempts before. No. It’s better to send the Seekers. That’s what they’ve been trained for.” She squeezed my shoulder, locked gazes with me, her voice brittle. “Tell me you will not try that again. Tell me!”
I nodded, still feeling sick. “I won’t.”
“You’ll send the Seekers?”
I nodded again.
The terror began to fade from Eryn’s eyes. “Good.” She loosened her grip and stepped back, eyeing me carefully. Then she sighed. “Good. Now you should get some rest. Avrell and the others will want to talk to you tomorrow. There are things you must decide on, and decide on quickly, if Amenkor is to survive.”
“If it’s to survive what?”
Eryn hesitated, her eyes searching. But I was still shaking from the . . . the Reaching into the Dredge.
Eryn’s mouth turned in a sudden frown. “Winter,” she said. “If we’re to survive winter, of course.”
Then she turned and walked steadily to the stairs, without looking back.
* * *
I stayed on the tower to watch the dawn. To the east, over the hazy shadow of mountains, the sky lightened. I’d never seen what lay beyond the city of Amenkor, had always been hidden inside the streets, unable to see what was outside of the walls and buildings. From the tower of the palace, though, as the sun rose, I could see how the city crowded around the enclosed bay and the River. To the north, the Dredge ran up into the decaying buildings of the slums, which clung to the rocky cliffs of the northern portion of the harbor before reaching the top of a ridge and spilling over beyond view. To the south, the land fell away steeply from the edge of the outer wall of the palace toward a coastline dotted with windswept trees. A road cut through the landscape in both directions—north and south—intersecting another road heading from Amenkor to the east, toward the mountains.
I stared at the road and the River snaking out into the foothills of the mountains, eyes wide. The entire landscape was covered with trees, more trees than I’d ever seen, could ever have imagined. I followed the dense forest as it faded into the haze at the base of the mountains, noted a cleft in the peaks in the far distance: the pass that led to the lands beyond.
As the sun rose higher, dawn slipping away, I turned back to the city below.
Amenkor. The real Amenkor.
My Amenkor.
I leaned forward, stone gritty beneath my palms, and stared out over the streets, over the water of the river and the harbor, over the two juts of land that reached out to enclose the bay, protecting it. Barely discernible in the distance, at the ends of each jut of land, I could see two towers, like sentinels at the harbor’s entrance. And before that entrance I could see the Mistress’ ships blocking the water-course, preventing all ships from entering.
And leaving.
I frowned. But I shrugged aside the sudden uneasiness and turned back to the city. Lights had been doused and people had begun to emerge into the streets. As the cries of the dockworkers and hawkers on the wharf began to filter up to the tower, I turned to where the Seeker waited patiently. With a nod, we descended.
Erick was waiting outside the Mistress’ chambers. He was alone, aside from the palace guardsman I’d left outside the door earlier, and he smiled when he saw me, the skin crinkling around his eyes.
I halted, the Seeker who accompanied me stepping to one side behind me. My eyes narrowed in anger, my hands tightening in the folds of my white robes. I hadn’t seen him since he, Borund, and Avrell had convinced me to kill the Mistress. Like Eryn, he appeared haggard, older than he was.
“Varis,” he began.
“Don’t,” I said, cutting him off, moving forward and past him to the door. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Varis, wait.”
I stormed through the antechamber into the Mistress’ rooms, paused when I saw the neatly folded page boy’s clothes stacked on the chest at the bed’s base, then turned and strode to where the curtains were drawn across the glass doorway that led to the balcony. I halted before them, but did not pull them back.
I heard Erick enter behind me, heard the door close.
“Varis.” His voice was hard, commanding. The same voice he’d used to train me to be an assassin in the slums of Amenkor. But things had changed in the last few weeks. He was no longer my mentor, had not been my mentor for two years, since I’d left the Dredge. Neither he, nor Borund, nor Avrell, could command me now.
I spun. “What?”
Erick stood just inside the door, back straight, eyes dark, jaw tight, clearly angry. He crossed his hands over his chest, spaced his feet a shoulder’s width apart, and said nothing. The scars that lined his face, that marked him as dangerous even when he was relaxed, stood out in the light.
For a moment, I saw him as he had appeared on the Dredge almost four years before, when he’d found me: cold, arrogant, and unreadable. A guardsman. A Seeker. I was nothing then. A wisp of a girl barely surviving off the dregs of Amenkor. Gutterscum. I’d looked no further than the next rotted apple or scabbed potato.
But he’d changed all that. I’d discovered he wasn’t as cold and arrogant and distant as he had seemed.
The anger I felt began to ebb, to drain away as the silence between us deepened. But it didn’t vanish completely.
“Did you know?”
His forehead creased in confusion. “Know about what?”
“Did you know it was a trap! That they sent me to kill the Mistress simply to get me into the palace, to get me to the throne room?”
He shook his head. “No.” A flat denial. No hesitation.
I looked hard into his eyes, wanting to believe him, and found them completely open, nothing hidden. The tension in my shoulders released and I turned away. “Good,” I said, my voice still sharp, even though I felt a wave of relief. I hadn’
t realized how betrayed I’d felt, how horribly deep it had cut me, until I’d seen him.
Behind, I heard Erick move a few steps farther into the room.
“I don’t think Borund knew either,” he said. “He and Avrell only wanted me to convince you to kill the Mistress. They thought I’d have a better chance at it than they would by themselves. They thought you trusted me. Neither one of them mentioned anything about you becoming the Mistress.”
I grunted without comment.
Erick was quiet for a long moment, then added, “It took them a long time to convince me that killing her was necessary. And in the end they didn’t convince me that she was insane. You did.”
Startled, I turned to see his face. “What do you mean?”
He moved forward, until he stood only a few paces away. “You knew that something was wrong with the Mistress when she sent me to kill Mari. You knew Mari wasn’t a mark just by looking at her. After that I began to question every mark the Mistress sent me after. By the time Avrell and Borund approached me, I already knew that the Mistress was insane and that something needed to be done. But I didn’t know what. All they had to do was convince me that killing her was the only option.”
“But you don’t think Borund intended for me to become the Mistress? Or Avrell?”
“Borund, no. I don’t know about Avrell.”
I thought back to that meeting only four days before. I’d thought then that Avrell was hiding something, that there was something he wasn’t telling me, something he’d kept back. I hadn’t gotten the same sense from Borund or Erick. Was it possible Avrell hadn’t known the Mistress’ plans? Had he been manipulated by her as well?
I shook my head in annoyance and moved to the chest where the page boy’s clothes rested. On top of the neatly folded linen shirt lay a key.
I reached down and picked it up. It was the key to the room that held the archer’s niche I’d used to bypass Baill’s guards during their watch. Avrell had given it to me, along with the page boy’s clothes.
The Throne of Amenkor Page 33