Threats of Sky and Sea

by Jennifer Ellision

  “You have nothing,” I say. My words are tired but heated. “I’ve only just Revealed, and you’ve no one to train me. I’m as good as useless to you.” I’ll do nothing for him either way.

  He cuts me with a glance and lifts a warning finger. “I. Have. A Thrower. Now.” His raised brow dares me to contradict him. I keep my silence, but my puddle now swirls at my feet. I might be able to control it—maybe. But it seems more prudent to keep my connection with it strong until I see what his plans entail. He continues, “And I shall take Nereidium.”

  Aleta leaps in, expression fearful, but her voice calmly curious. “Your Majesty, you already have me as your ward.” She forces a chuckle. “What more do you need to secure your rule in my kingdom?”

  The king settles back on his heels and rocks once. I can’t break his gaze. He holds me rapt, dreading the idea that I know what comes next. Caden and Aleta’s faces reveal similar feelings. Caden’s eyes are locked on his father. Aleta’s mouth thins to a line. Lady Kat’s grin is so wide it threatens to split her cheeks in two.

  “My son and the princess will marry in a fortnight.”

  Twin hisses as Caden and I suck in our breaths whisper through the unfortunate assembly. Aleta’s eyes shutter. Seeing her emotions there is an impossibility, but her hand clenches and unclenches at her side. The blood’s all but drained from her cheeks, leaving them to match the bone china our meals were served on this evening. It’s too soon. We haven’t figured out how to stop his conquest of Nereidium yet.

  “And, Lady Breena, you will wrest the secret your father keeps from him by the end of that eve. Elsewise, you shall find yourself both motherless and fatherless.”

  The threat hits a dull mark. I’ve always guessed that’s where this would lead. Hasn’t the king been making these threats all along? Only now, I have a definitive date for his agenda.

  I nod, showing that I understand, but I’ll get nothing for this hateful man. Any answers I seek will be for me and others like me. He’s too confident in his power to recognize that I can be a threat to him, but we’ll topple his rule.

  “I thought to keep the young sweethearts waiting a bit longer, but it does seem as though the Makers are trying to usher things along with tonight’s events.”

  “Father,” Caden tries, splaying his hands wide. “This is so sudden. There are dignitaries to contact. Arrangements to be made. You can’t—”

  The king lashes out, his unnatural calm breaking. “I am the king of this realm,” he spits, clutching his son’s collar. Caden looks stricken. His hands go to his father’s wrists, and the king comes to himself and shoves him away. Caden stumbles. “I can do as I wish. The arrangements that you speak of are mere trifles. The plans have already been made. Several months ago, in fact, when I first thought this marriage would take place.”

  Both Aleta and Caden look as though it’s a fight to hold their dignified postures with the sudden weight pressing upon their shoulders.

  “I so look forward to celebrating with you all,” the king says. He offers his arm to Kat, who takes it smugly. The door does bang behind them this time, and the sound reminds me of a thrown gauntlet.

  “What now?” I whisper.

  “Nothing,” Caden says shortly. “We wait.”

  My patience frays. The likelihood that the king will allow me to slip away from his guards for secret meetings now is slim, all but nonexistent. I highly doubt anyone—be they an Adept, nobility, or the crown prince—will convince them to abandon their posts.

  “We had best address the situation now, Highness.” I match him for tone. I understand that he’s just been handed his wedding date, but the problems facing the kingdom and Da’s life rather overshadow that.

  “Lady Breena is right.” Aleta’s voice is hollow, empty of her usual confidence. “We’ll have no other opportunities to speak.”

  I barely catch Caden’s eye as he turns away from us. I’ve never considered him a spoiled princeling, but he’s certainly acting the part now. I grab his arm.

  “You’re the one who wanted me brought into this. We can’t just let this sit. We’ve got a fortnight to come up with and execute a plan. That’s two weeks, Caden.”

  “I understand that,” he snaps. He breathes deeply, calming himself. “I know what a fortnight is, Bree.” He tries for a smile but doesn’t quite make it. “I’m sorry, but I find myself ill-suited to continuing discussions this evening.”

  He’s retreating. I feel it as certainly as I feel the ground beneath my feet. He may be plastering on a smile, but he’s falling behind the guise of cordiality.

  “I bid you both a good evening.” He nods once, a quick jerk of his head, and then he’s gone, turning sharply on his heel.

  “Caden.” I swear and make to follow him, but stop, Aleta’s stance catching my attention.

  She’s not quite there anymore. Her eyes are straight ahead, but she hasn’t said anything since voicing her agreement with me. Her shoulders are pulled back to her spine, and her fingertips are pillowed lightly on each other. But her picture of grace is ruined by the deep shuddering breaths she draws. Her hands begin to tremble, and she forms a fist in an effort to stop their quaking.

  I should go up to my room, I think, a bit uncomfortable. Leave Aleta to think in private. She’s never welcomed any words of comfort from me, and it’s not likely she’ll start now. Despite these thoughts, my feet carry me closer without my express permission.

  “Are you all right?” I ask, after a great deal of subtle throat clearing.

  Aleta starts. She turns to me, and I regard her warily. I don’t want to spook her. She’s got the look of a cornered animal, frozen in place before a desperate strike.

  “Yes, Lady Breena. What is it that I can do for you?” Her voice sounds as if it hasn’t been used in a long time.

  “I think we’d best be returning to our rooms now.”

  Aleta blinks and looks around us, surprised to find that we’re not already there. “Right you are. So we should.”

  She glides from the throne room in a daze. I’m at her side, flicking worried glances between her and the guard that meets us at the doorway.

  Upon entering our suite, Aleta moves immediately to the sitting room, where an enterprising servant’s left a carafe of red wine. She pours. The sound of the sloshing liquid fills the room.

  Wine won’t exactly elucidate matters. “Is that the best—”

  Aleta flicks her fingers at me as if shooing away a fly from the wineglass’s rim. I quiet. Aleta’s need for something to wet her lips is greater than my need to talk just now.

  “I’ll join you then.” I pour myself a glass to match and throw it back. Ugh. I’ve always preferred a hearty cider or even The Bridge and Duchess’s watery ale.

  Aleta’s green eyes are fixed on some point in the distance that only she can see, but she gulps back the wine as if it’s water. When she finishes, she breathes like she’s surfacing for air, swiping her fine sleeve across her mouth. The red wine stain smears over the green of Aleta’s billowing dress.

  The palace is quiet around our suite. The banquet’s attendants scattered after my Reveal like ants in a rainstorm. I can just hear the clinking of the guard’s armor outside the door as he settles into position for the night.

  Aleta cups the goblet in her hand, turning it so that the glass catches the light of the lanterns. There are tiny bubbles in in it and gold molded around it. Someone has been lax in their polishing duties, though. The embellishments are tarnished.

  Aleta follows the path of the winding metal with a thoughtful nail. “I suppose you’ve never seen such finery before.”

  The usual mockery of my country life is missing from her tone, but I bristle a little anyway. “No,” I say curtly. “Not until I came to the palace, Your Highness.”

  “It’s glass.”

  “We did have glass in Abeline.”

  It comes out in a snap, but I hadn’t meant it to. I ease a deep breath out of me and settle my goblet back o
n the table. Aleta obviously doesn’t have any further desire to talk about the evening or what the immediate future now holds.

  “I think I’m for bed,” I say, stretching. I start toward my tiny bedroom.

  Aleta’s voice drifts to me, poking me in the back. “Do you know how glass is made, Lady Breena?”

  I do a half-turn. Aleta’s voice still has an odd, dissonant note to it, like someone’s standing on her throat and the result is this strangled croak.

  “I can’t say that I do,” I say, inviting Aleta to say more.

  “I meant shaped, really,” Aleta amends. I wait in silence while Aleta stares, trapped in her own thoughts, at her goblet. “They have some glass, you see, and it might be any shape to start with—a really lovely vase or a misshapen mistake, a disfigured blob. But they can turn it into whatever it is they wish for it to become.

  “They use a fire, temperature so high it’d forever scar your skin unless you’re a Torcher. Even Egria’s best healer couldn’t help you. They blow at it and twist it and turn it until they think they have what they want. This beautiful thing that fits into their decor. Forged in fire. But at the end of the day, it’s still so fragile. Still so delicate.”

  Aleta’s expression twists into something fierce, and the goblet is clutched in her hand so tightly I’m surprised it doesn’t break. Suddenly, she hurls it at the stone hearth, where it shatters. I jump at the sound.

  This is it. This is where Aleta finally breaks down. I ready myself for it, to care for the girl who had been an enemy and is now almost a friend.

  Aleta’s ferocity melts away as she begins hysterically laughing. “But despite all of the work they put into it, it can still be broken,” she gasps out, clutching her stomach. Tears run down her face as she lifts her eyes to meet mine, a smile remaining melded to her. Her laughter sounds like a sob. Encouragement jumps to the tip of my tongue, but Aleta straightens before I can voice it. She wipes the tears from her cheeks. “They think I am glass,” she says. She’s hard again. “But I am not. I am not delicate. I am stone. If they want to break me, they will have a hard time of it. I am unbreakable.”

  We say no more that night.

  Twenty-Nine

  The sun streaks in through my small window, prying my eyes open with intrusive fingers. It lights upon the chest of drawers on the opposite wall. The chest is weather-beaten but ornate, with swirls of blooms carved into it. Out of habit, I reach under my nightdress and withdraw Da’s medallion, running the chain I’ve procured through my fingers and pondering it as I come awake.

  My eyes are heavy. When I’d retired last night, I’d thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep, but I’ve managed at least a few hours. I stretch in my bed, kicking a leg out from beneath the covers to cool off. A few hours might as well be none; I feel like I haven’t slept at all. My limbs ache, and my thoughts are clouded with exhaustion again. My eyes weigh down more and more with each blink.

  I Revealed last night. There’s no time to waste on sleep. I have to wake up. Reluctantly leaving my bed behind, I move into the sitting area. It’s brightly lit, even more so than my room. It has to be midmorning, at least. I’m surprised none of the servants have come to wake us to break our fasts.

  The washbasin water is cold when I splash it on my face, but it does its job. I’m more awake now. More alert.

  Aleta’s large magenta door is firmly shut, denying entry to anyone who approaches. How lucky for me that I’m finding it a little more difficult to be intimidated by something so simple as a shut door. I’m a Thrower now, and whether the king tries to control me or not, I have an element on my side that I hadn’t before. I feel stronger. I am stronger.

  I rap on Aleta’s door. “The day’s a quarter passed, Your Highness,” I call.

  No reply answers me. She can’t still be asleep? I push my way inside.

  It’s empty. Again.

  How is Aleta doing this? How does she disappear at night, leaving me to discover her missing? And better yet, why does she leave me behind? I’d like to escape the guard just as much as her.

  I search for her exit. There isn’t a possibility that she’s gone through the doors of the suite—the guard is still outside—and the windows are tightly closed. I open one to examine it just in case, sticking my head out. No ropes hang swinging in a breeze. That eliminates the idea that Aleta left that way for a certainty.

  I take a deep breath, enjoying, for a moment, the wind that blows past me, ruffling my hair. It’s grown quite a bit in my months here and hangs past my chin now. I look past the castle, past the gardens. In one direction, there are triangular treetops—the forest where Caden and his men hunted, where I’d had my first real conversation with him. In the other…

  I straighten. The city lies beyond the palace grounds, a twisting and meandering series of stone buildings and cobbled streets. There are patches of colored fabric waving in the wind—green and blue, white with orange lining. I squint. Are those tents?

  They are. It’s a festival caravan. I went to a traveling festival only once, three years ago when I was almost fourteen. The caravan festivals almost never came as far north as Abeline. It was the bad luck of a mistaken route that had led them to the northern province in the first place, Da told me afterward. They’d landed themselves on the Chittering Pass and gone too far to turn around by the time they’d realized it.

  The festival had been a grand time, even in a small village like ours. We’d turned a better profit than we had in ages with the new people in town, had barely been able to keep up with the demand. And the caravan had brought with it their own brew.

  Da’d shooed me off to try it. “Go have fun, Breena Rose. And bring us back a sample of their wares.”

  I’d been happy to oblige. There had been games of strength and mysticism. A fiddler had pulled his instrument, and I’d whirled around the square in a mad, turning dance that I could barely keep up with. Their brew was excellent, something called Starter Cider. I’d drank too much, laughed a lot, and kissed a boy I liked—the farmer’s son—square on the lips. I could have gotten lost in it all.

  Lost. My mind refocuses itself, fixing on the streets. There’s an idea.

  If we can somehow make it out of the castle, could I really lose myself in the city? More importantly, could the king lose me there? I can see the mass of bodies from here. None of them know me. They’re not permitted in the palace, so they’d never recognize my face—or even Da’s or Aleta’s. Somehow, my intentions for escape have come to include her, too. If I escape the stronghold, maybe I can disappear, evading the guards and blending in with the crowds long enough to make contacts and save enough coin to hire a way out of Egria altogether.

  Another breeze rustles past me, and I shiver. My skin is still wet from washing my face, and the breeze is cool, sending goosebumps skittering over my arms. I clasp the window shut hurriedly, rubbing warmth back into them.

  A scrape sounds from Aleta’s room. She’s back…somehow. I dart into her room to see her throwing all of her weight against her wardrobe. I’ve never seen her in a state of such…disrepair. Her dress is rumpled and streaked with dirt. Her hair hangs loose in strings, some plastered to her neck, and her skin glistens with sweat.

  I clear my throat loudly to catch her attention. “Pleasant night?”

  “Help me with this,” Aleta says, ignoring my sarcasm. She continues to strain against the heavy oak furniture.

  “You could have picked a better time for redecorating,” I mutter, but I join her. My back goes to the side of the wardrobe as I push against the ground with my feet. The wardrobe gives, sliding slowly across the floor until it occupies a new spot on the wall.

  “Why exactly was that necessary?” I pant when we’re finished, putting a hand to my side to ease a cramp. That’s the most manual labor I’ve done in months.

  “I needed to hide it better.”

  “Hide what?”

  “The entrance, of course.” Aleta eyes me in a manner that suggests I’ve forg
otten which direction is up.

  Of course. I could smack myself for being so obtuse. How else would Aleta slip in and out past the guards? Of course this doddering old castle has a secret passageway besides our meeting room. Probably multitudes of them.

  I turn and examine the wardrobe with renewed interest. “It’s behind that wall then? Where does it lead?”

  “Underground. It deposits you just inside the city.”

  Inside the city? “Then we can—”

  Aleta cuts me off by shaking her head, seeing where my thoughts are leading. “Using it to escape won’t work, I’m afraid. It’s near a post of the king’s guards—Adepts, at that. There’s always a man or two outside. I’ve never even opened the exit, just peered out.”

  I sigh, deflating. Another road that leads to nowhere. “Why the excursions into the tunnel then?”

  She shrugs uncomfortably at my questioning look. “It’s nice to pretend that escape is possible, that’s all.”

  Hours later, I pace. I tell Aleta that it helps me think, but she tells me to think somewhere else because I’m driving her mad.

  So I move back to the sitting room and circle the sofa, skirt the edges of the room, and try the door, thinking to pace the halls, whether shadowed by a guard or not. The door’s locked from the outside.

  No charade of freedom left for us then, is it? My lip curls at the doorknob, as if it’s responsible for my position. Pacing isn’t doing me any good. My thoughts are a riptide, pulling me along. I can’t direct them, only pray for release.

  Da’s still trapped, and so am I. So is Aleta. Da will be killed. Aleta and Caden married. And I’ll be—what? The king’s prized Thrower? Conscripted into his navy? I rub at my eyes. This is all wrong. I haven’t even turned seventeen.

  Haven’t you? The echo of Lady Katerine’s words come back to me. I jerk my head up, eyes widening.

  Had Da lied about my birth, too?

  My thoughts are interrupted by a click, a creak, a few footsteps, and then the clearing of a throat. My head whips to the door to see my ladies entering the suite.