Against the side of the chapel, the cliff winds seize at my skirts.
The king gazes out at the horizon, pensive, and turns his dark gaze onto me contemplatively.
I find my voice. “You wanted a word with me, Your Majesty?” And that would imply using said words.
“I did.” He clasps his hands behind his back and surveys me.
I fight the urge to squirm under that intent gaze. My eyes fall to the grass he treads beneath his polished shoes. What does he want with me now? Is this confrontation because he wants me to be uncomfortable, like the dinners? He can consider his task achieved. I’ve never felt more out of my element than I do here, with my words held captive by etiquette before a man I detest.
“Your father,” the king says abruptly.
I start, eyes flying up from my study of his stance. Whatever I’d been expecting, it hadn’t been that. “What about my father?” I hear the defensive note in my voice and do my best to correct it with a subservient “Your Majesty.”
“What do you know of the last mission he was on in service of the crown? The treasure he sought?”
What is this treasure the king’s after? A weapon? Whatever it is, he can’t want it for anything good. Embarrassingly enough though, I can answer his question with complete honesty.
“Nothing,” I say. “In truth, Your Majesty, I know nothing of any of his missions. I only just learned of his abilities as an Adept a few weeks ago.”
“Yes, he was one of the greats,” the king muses, lost in thought. “A most valuable asset. It was a pity when we thought him lost to us. And it is a pity that we cannot trust his loyalty now.”
I fixate on that word—asset—and my blood boils at the turn of phrase. The king speaks as if people are things he owns that add value to his estate. I draw my lips tight to keep from telling him how wrong he is. He doesn’t own Da, and he certainly doesn’t own me.
“Your mother?”
I don’t bother asking what he wants to know this time. “Died birthing me, Your Majesty.”
He nods, taking this information in, and rocks back on his heels. His boots shine in the sunlight. “It’s wrong for a child to be parted from a father,” he says.
“Your Majesty?” The odd jump in the conversation throws me. I don’t dare let cautious hope creep into my voice. It’s too much to hope that he may free Da. Free us both.
“I shall arrange for you to visit him,” he says. “A half hour’s time twice a week is fair, I think.”
“I am…grateful, Your Majesty,” I say, struggling to form coherent words, coherent thoughts. Visits aren’t what I’d prefer, but they’re better than nothing. Better than not seeing Da at all, not ever again.
“There is a caveat or two.” He lifts one finger in the air in warning. “First, I may make certain requests of you during your time here. It would do you well not to pretend at defying me.
“During your visits, you may discuss whatever it is that fathers and daughters discuss. I do not care for your petty remembrances and the minutiae of your day that I’m sure you’ll share with him. In return, you must investigate the matter of his last mission. The treasure he was sent to retrieve, the details of the mission. If you fail…” He smirks. “Well, I stand by what I said: it’s wrong for a child to be parted from her father.”
My throat is dry. I’m not sure what the threat is exactly—that I’ll join Da in prison? More likely, the king plans to unite us in death should I fail. But I know before he’s finished speaking that I’ll assent to the king’s terms, despite the fact that his unmentioned “requests” make me uneasy. My ladies are nice enough and Caden seems a pleasant sort, but they aren’t my family. My only link to who I really am is locked in a jail cell. I nod my agreement.
“I am glad we have managed to strike an accord, Lady Breena.” His lips curve up slowly, pleased. He holds out his hand, glittering with rings, and I hesitate, taking his fingertips in hand and bending at the knee, hoping that I’ve struck the right chord of deference.
“He may not tell me anything,” I blurt. Shame burns through me at the admittance, and I drop the king’s fingers, straightening. What if Da still clings to his secrets? “He kept all of this from me for the whole of my life, Your Majesty. It might be beyond me to get to him to reveal anything now.”
The king turns away, lips still curved. As he leaves me, the wind catches his parting shot, tossing it over his shoulder to me as I stand with the ocean at my back, waiting to catch me if I fall.
“Try.”
Seventeen
Days pass and I hear no more from the king on the subject. He’s absent from dinners, something I’m not inclined to complain about. Despite his claims that the king is a good father, Caden is noticeably relaxed when the king isn’t around. He jokes more, laughs often. Princess Aleta acts as she always has and stays silent, speaking only when spoken to as Lady Kat watches us. As far as I’m concerned, the fewer meals I have to endure in the king’s presence, the better. Though I am anxious to see Da again.
I’m thankful when my ladies tell me I’ll be permitted to take luncheon in my rooms. I haven’t quite adjusted to thinking of them as mine. The dusty gold plating surrounding me is uncomfortably distant from the small room where I’d had one wooden chest and a pallet on the floor drowning in quilts.
After a meal of tea and chilled cucumber sandwiches, Gisela rings for maid service to fetch the dirty dishes and practically pushes me out the door. I need to attempt to socialize with others in my class, they tell me. They think that joining in on the ladies’ sewing circle is the best way to do that.
“I don’t really know how to sew.”
I figure it’s best to tell them now before we walk the entire length of the castle to get there and they have to stand in the corner, embarrassed for me. It’s a thing I’ve discovered they do, my ladies. When I can’t find it in me to be embarrassed over something, they suffer the emotion in my stead. Last week, when I’d confused an ancient knight’s young wife for his daughter, Gisela looked as though she’d melt into the floor.
The ladies halt, turning to me with heads tilted like dogs who have heard a curiously new sound.
“You cannot sew?” Emis asks. “You jest. Truly?”
“Really, truly,” I confirm. “I can sew a patch onto clothes, fix a tear, or attach a button. That’s about it. I assume the sewing that you mean is more of the embroidery sort?”
They don’t answer but turn to each other, silently conferring. Gisela frowns, shaking her head. Emis sighs. I study the vaulted ceilings and wait patiently.
“How do you feel about gardening?” Emis asks finally.
I perk up. If it’ll keep me out of the sewing circle and in the open air, I feel excellent about it. “Better than sewing, that’s for certain. I used to take care of a few herbs for Da. I’m still a novice, but how hard is it to pick up a trowel?”
Gisela nods decisively. “It’s decided then. We’ll escort you to the garden.”
They make me change first, into a plain dress made of a stiffer material. Emis stands before me and mimes for me to hold my arms out so that she can slip the sleeves over them. I groan, fidgeting, and receive a lightning-quick pinch for my trouble. Right. Groaning isn’t ladylike. My arms grow heavy from hovering in the air.
“I’m nearly seventeen. I can dress myself.” The complaint is one of habit now.
“Lady Breena, there are twenty buttons on the back of this shift. They lead from your waist all the way up to the back of your neck. How, pray tell, do you propose to contort yourself in order to do them up?” Gisela asks me with exaggerated interest.
I still in response.
They take that as a signal of my cooperation and hook the buttons hurriedly, affixing the skirt over my shift. A hat is pinned to my head. “To protect you from the sun,” Emis explains.
Upon our arrival, I learn that the so-called “garden” is no simple patch of herbs. Blooms burst out at me when I come upon an iron gate. Ivy twines itse
lf around the bars. The plants and flowers come in all colors and shades imaginable. A clean, fresh scent floats from a delicate periwinkle blossom. A slightly more earthy one from a lavender bloom.
“I get to work with these?” I ask, heady with the scents and sights before me.
“Unfortunately, no. These are the duties of the king’s garden staff. He employs several Shakers that he allowed to retire from his forces. It’s the more delicate side of their gift. You will be working with the roses alongside Princess Aleta.”
Just Aleta? It occurs to me that it’s odd that it will be only the two of us, and I wonder at it aloud.
“The princess is…particular,” Emis says. It takes her a moment to find the right word. “Her garden is a small bequeathal that His Majesty bestowed upon her. She permits only one lady to assist her at a time, so that she may monitor her work. In such warm months as these, most prefer the shade of the indoors, so her schedule has been quite free.”
After equipping me with a small trowel and shovel, some miniature garden shears, and a watering can, they show me the way to the flowers in question: white roses. Intricate things, the petals spiral in on each other. The lithe figure of the princess is crouched in the dirt, hands busy with the shears as someone holds a parasol above her. Her dark hair spills over her back, loose and unbound.
My ladies nod at me encouragingly, and I kneel beside the princess. “Good day to you, Your Highness,” I say.
“Good day,” Princess Aleta says without moving her eyes from her roses. She examines the roots critically and paws through the fresh dirt with her trowel.
This is a different sort of gardening from my herbs, when simple watering and trimming would do. I tentatively reach my trowel into the dirt and sift through it, careful not to disturb any of the roots.
“It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?” Wonderful way to make friends, Bree. Comment on the weather.
Aleta only trims a few leaves from the bushes.
I lick at the beads of sweat forming on my upper lip, trying not to be obvious about it. It’s so hot here in the capital. I’d been thrilled to get out of the confining walls of the palace after spending the past few days holed up inside but hadn’t thought forward to the sweltering heat.
“It’s a bit warm. I’m from the north, you know. It’s probably snowing there now. I don’t know how it’s so warm here.” I feel as though I’m chattering on, but no one stops me.
“It’s likely you passed the Makers’ Margin on your trek. It accounts for the barriers in seasons in the realm,” she says shortly.
“Oh. Yes, I guess that must be it.”
She turns back to her roses, and I rack my mind for something else to say. If I can make a friend out of anyone, it should be the princess. She doesn’t seem like she wants to be under the king’s thumb any more than I do. Though she doesn’t seem particularly eager to be my friend either.
“I thought that roses were red,” I say, a half-question. The flowers that Da middle-named me for look pale and unassuming without the scarlet color to them.
“These are white,” the princess snaps.
A stab of irritation gouges me. “Yes, I can see that,” I say waspishly. She doesn’t have to be so curt. “I wondered why.”
“And, had you asked, I would have answered you.”
I stake my trowel into the dirt and face her. The princess is carefully toeing the line of rude and polite, slipping ever closer to rude. I don’t need friends like her. “Have I done something to offend you, Your Highness?”
“Your very presence offends me.”
Curses rise to my lips, but I stifle them. I had wanted honesty from someone in the castle, and here I’ve found it in the form of a girl who glares at me, the sun shining into her eyes so brightly that they seem yellow.
“You wonder why there is a lack of red in my rose garden. Look around you. Do you see red blossoms anywhere in the king’s gardens? Have you seen it anywhere in the palace decor in the time that you have been here?”
I open my mouth, but close it again, a fish tossed onto dry land. No, I realize. The flowers in the royal garden had been purple, blue, yellow—but none were red.
The look on my face answers for me. “There are two colors to which specific meanings are assigned by the Egrian king. Violet—all shades of it—are reserved for the royal family. Red roses grow only outside the dungeons. Red means death. Murder. Someone who has taken another life.”
No wonder Lady Kat wears the color so often. She’s boasting.
Aleta pushes herself to her feet and nods to the attendant behind her, who hurries to her side with the parasol. She’s ready to leave. I scramble to my feet as well, absorbing this new information. In Abeline, colors are just colors. It’s not a custom—or law, whatever it may be—that’s made it that far north.
“But you must know that, surely,” Aleta says. Her words are an innocent bundle of firewood in a hearth, safe until the wood shifts and the embers still glowing beneath it leap out to burn me. “Your father must don red quite often.”
A rushing sound fills my ears. How dare she? The princess doesn’t know Da. She knows nothing about him to throw out accusations like that as it pleases her.
“My father is not a killer.” I don’t mean to shout, but I do mean to say it. The people here expect too much of my silence. I won’t stay quiet on this. Da is many, many things. The longer I’m here, the more I learn about him. But a killer? I refuse to swallow that elixir. I may not know all the facts of his past, but I know his heart. He’s a good man.
“Oh, but he is,” Aleta says. She moves her attendant aside with one hand and pushes close to me, a finger prodding my shoulder. She moves so quickly, almost eagerly. Like she’s been waiting for this confrontation. My ladies don’t stop her, and I don’t think they should. I want to hear what she has to say, so I can tell her why she’s wrong. The princess stands a head taller than me. She breathes hard, like a dragon. I half-expect smoke to unfurl from her nostrils. “And if you wonder why your presence offends me?” Her whisper is dangerous. “You may think on your parentage, Lady Breena.”
She backs away before I can demand her meaning, back into the shade of her parasol, and spins sharply on her heel, retreating down the dirt path, her attendant struggling to keep pace with her.
I realize I’m panting as if I’ve just run up a flight of stairs.
“Ridiculous,” I mutter, swiping angrily at the dirt on my knees to occupy myself. I wipe a hand along the back of my neck to catch the sweat that drips there. Tears sting my eyes, an after-effect of the anger that’s beginning to ebb, and I press the heel of my palm to them.
The princess left her tools behind, and Emis and Gisela are collecting them silently, not responding to my comment.
“Ridiculous,” I say louder, wanting their confirmation. “Can you believe her?”
They avoid my gaze.
Doubt drips into my thoughts. No. Horror brushes over me. Do Aleta’s words have some credence?
I snatch the princess’s gardening shears from Gisela’s hands and hold them behind my back, waiting for her and Emis to meet my eyes. They couldn’t be more unwilling, but both do so and there’s pity in their eyes.
“Is my da what she says?” Please, I think desperately. Makers, please give me this. I dearly want them to contradict me.
A breeze blows past, pulling at their hair. They don’t answer, and my heart sinks.
“Is he what she says?” I raise my voice, not liking the harsh, commanding tone that emerges. But I will have an answer, one way or another.
“We don’t know, my lady,” Emis says, finally. She puts a placating hand on my wrist and gently takes the shears from my hold. “The matters between the Court Rider and His Majesty were kept quite confidential. There were rumors, of course, but…” She trails off.
“What rumors? What did people say?” I demand. I have a right to know, don’t I? He’s my father.
Emis shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I’ll no
t cloud your judgment with unsubstantiated claims.” She retreats into silence and busies herself with opening a parasol to shade me. “You’re flushed, my lady.”
They’ve given me the honesty I wished for again, but somehow, Emis keeping quiet on the subject of rumors does nothing to assuage my fears. I leave the parasol’s shadow in a daze, collecting my things to go inside, my movements jerky.
Wishes, I am finding, are fickle things when they turn on you.
Eighteen
The next day, my “education” begins.
Perhaps the king has forgotten his talk of allowing me to speak to Da. Perhaps he’s given up on the idea that I’ll be able to wrangle information from him. Regardless of whatever thoughts whirl about his head, he sends a summons to my room after dressing one morning that I’m to meet with a tutor named Larsden “or face difficulties.”
I scoff at that. As if I don’t already face difficulties. The threat’s nonsensical.
This must be the first of those “favors” he mentioned, but I’ve never resisted learning, even if that learning has been limited to things like stews, ales, and letters until now. Da didn’t have much in the way of books beyond the Creation Scrolls, and I didn’t care to study those. Anything else he had was a study of the political history of faraway lands like Nereidium, Clavins, and the wars across the nations.
I’d teased him about them. “Live in the present, Da!” I’d said a few times, closing his open book and shoving it behind my back with an impish grin. “Isn’t it better to focus on the war we’re to wage on Jowyck’s profits tonight?”
That, of course, had been before I’d understood so much of our present to be tied up in his past.
The king doesn’t realize it, but he’s done me a favor. My ladies are at a loss as to what to do with me. I can’t go to the sewing circle, and I’d rather sit in the cells with Da than endure another prickly meeting over thorned bushes with Aleta.
That thought gives me pause as I set off for my lessons. I wonder how Da’s doing. Are they feeding him decently? Is it dark in the cells? Hot? Damp? Despite how hard I’ve tried not to let myself wallow, my thoughts have a way of turning in on themselves, back around to Da.
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