He met her eyes with astounding vulnerability. How had he ever perfected the persona they had first encountered? How had Vesperi? “I was nine.”
She pressed his arm, encouraging him to continue.
“They appeared in our courtyard one evening. Not at the stroke of midnight—that would have been priceless—but close. I was scouring the yard for my drindem doll. My father had tossed it from my window earlier that evening. I was too old for it, you see, and he had never wanted me to have one anyhow. If he knew I was out there searching for it that night … I found it a few nights later, wedged between my mattresses. I guess—I guess I have the servants to thank for that. Though why they would ever waste the effort on protecting me, I do not know.”
“Didn’t they care for you?” She thought of Bini who had always been there for her. Bini, who would never have hesitated to keep her favorite toy safe.
He shook his head. “I wish I could say yes, but defeat is the only emotion I ever read from them. It made me determined not to end up the same. That, and the Brothers’ visits. They would tell me stories when I was upset, wondrous tales about a goddess who cared more for me than Father ever could. I grew up certain there was something different and better than what I knew out there. My life has been one of pretending I wanted nothing more than craval steak while knowing granfaylon was out there somewhere, and I would do anything to taste it.”
“I have been lucky, you know.” He gestured toward Vesperi. “Most Meduans never had that knowledge, that hope.”
Nap spoke up. “We have had granfaylon. Flivio, Hamsyn, and me. At our Murat. It is more delicious than you could imagine and worth every bit of the effort it takes to find it.”
Lorne patted Nap’s shoulder. “Thank you for that.”
Nap barely nodded, weariness evident in his stature. None of them could hold out for long, not now, not with Hamsyn’s death. But they could not dally here. They had to go back, to do what they knew was right no matter what else it cost them. With or without a plan.
“I do understand,” Serra spoke quietly. “Although I do not want to, sometimes.”
Lorne took her hand in his and squeezed. “Those are the times we have to remind ourselves it is Madel’s plan, not ours. And it will turn out beautifully, if we let it.”
Nap disappeared into the stable, the rest of them lost in their thoughts, trying to come up with something that might help them figure out how they could stand against the wizards long enough to seek fissures from the other realm and send Vesperi’s flame through them safely. When Nap re-emerged, he had an enormous bow, nearly as tall as he was, steadily gripped in hand—Hamsyn’s Old Girl.
“My prince, I found this inside. We must have forgotten a servant wouldn’t carry it at first, so he left it here to go unnoticed.” Nap held the bow out to Janto. “I think—I think it is meant to be yours now.”
“I cannot.” Janto’s face fell. “I cannot use it.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Serra let Lorne’s hand fall back to his side as she reached for Janto’s instead. “What would Ser Allyn say to hear you refuse this weapon?” Her voice was light and chiding.
“You should take it.” Flivio sounded choked up. “He gave it to you on Braven—you slayed the confounded stag with it. You honestly think he wouldn’t want you to have it?”
“I … I …”
“You will bloody well take it, that’s what you will do. And you will use it to get your prey as you did then.”
Janto gasped, but Serra doubted it was due to Flivio’s acerbic tone—there was nothing remarkable in that. No, there was something else going on in Janto’s mind, something she had not realized before. Something she should have.
Flivio filled in the pieces, rolling his eyes. “Oh, come on, Janto. You think we don’t know what you intend to do? We are cleansing the temple to stop the breeding, and the best way to do that is to kill the Guj and the advers, not just use Vesperi’s flame on those bugs. I don’t know how you intend for us to do it, but we don’t have any other options.”
An assassination mission? The conflict in Janto’s eyes confirmed it. It—it had always been his plan, loath as he was to go through with it. But at least he was not as blind as she, letting herself believe they were only after the claren. Killing the ones in the temple would only forestall them for a time. The advers were horrible men; she knew that before she had ever seen their robes covered in bones. But that did not mean she wanted to kill them, no matter how much they deserved it. She had sensed their fear. They were people, their people.
“Well, let us get on with it and plan this,” Flivio finished. “We have a better idea of what will happen now. Maybe that will help us this time, so we don’t lose someone else.”
Janto clasped the Old Girl in one hand as he began to speak. Serra spared little attention to him, unable to come to terms with what they had to do. As Janto laid out a new plan, ironing out the details with Flivio and Nap, Serra tried to stop her stomach from heaving. She knew she would help, regardless. It was too late to back away now. But it did not feel right, not like following the Brothers’ instruction always did, despite how she’d resisted them.
Lorne seemed to have none of the same concerns, concentrating fully on what the others plotted. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe slaughter was what the Brothers had intended. Vesperi would act as bait, they decided. The Guj considered her the only threat to his collection of claren. They would use no subterfuge this time, except a role Lorne would play at first. Serra muttered, “Of course,” when Janto asserted her main task would be the same it always was, using the sight. They could not afford falling into another trap while setting one of their own. As they considered the obstacles, an image of Ryn Gylles speaking fast with amusement came to her mind.
“Then we are agreed.” Janto’s voice broke through her thoughts. “I think we should ascend right away. There is no point in waiting.”
The others nodded in assent, and they again started up the winding path. But Serra grabbed Janto’s wrist, holding him back. The words she spoke echoed Ryn Gylles’s that day in the cave — “Your life is your own, child. And so are your choices”—and she knew only she could say them.
“There are always other options, Janto.” Her vision steadied. “Everything we—and they—do is a choice. Madel gives us all the right to make them for ourselves. You do not have to take that away from those men.”
When she saw the relief wash over him, she knew he understood.
CHAPTER 55
JANTO
It was locked. Janto refrained from kicking the ostentatious doors that had earlier stood so freely open. “I don’t suppose we can knock?” He didn’t need Lorne’s chuckle to know the answer. The door being closed against them should have been the first obstacle they considered. The Guj was not a man who made foolish mistakes—greedy ones, Janto hoped, but not foolish.
Flivio took an oddly shaped rod, nearly as thin as a pressed metal thread, out from beneath his robes. The Meditlan maneuvered it into the keyhole.
“You are a lock pick?” Vesperi’s dark eyes shone with surprise. “But I did not think Lanserim need fear a thief. You are all too noble and busy singing about sunshine and …” She was utterly flummoxed.
“We all have our layers.” Flivio finagled the pick farther into the hole. “Even prissy, gallant Lanserim. This ‘talent’ is why I was sent to the Murat. My town council thought it showed promise.”
Nap grimaced, but the rest of them laughed, their voices blending together joyfully, this little band of six that had been seven a few hours ago. Then Janto laughed too. If we are marching to our deaths, we may as well enjoy it.
The locking mechanism clicked, and the doors shifted open by the smallest of cracks. It was barred from inside, and Janto heard a shout and feet rushing to shut it. The advers moved fast, but Vesperi moved faster, holding her palms up parallel to each other and sending a thin stream out of both. The sizzle and smell of burning wood came next, only enough to snap the bars
free from their hinges. Janto was impressed. She had never done something that precise without Serra’s hand to guide her.
Nap shoved his way through the doors before they could be closed, and the rest of them hurried to follow, raising their scarves. Subterfuge was useless now. Well, almost.
The Deduin adver waited for them inside the hall. More advers filled it than before, their whispering a trickling brook as it echoed. The ones who had not rushed the door hung rolls of pounded levere from column to column in haphazard lines as though decorations for a party. News must have spread that it had blocked Vesperi’s magic. Thank Madel, it does not absorb it. Lorne spoke right away, wasting no time. “Adver Votan, I am sorry we left in such a rush earlier. We did not expect that sort of welcome.” His tone was playful, and Janto hoped, convincing.
The adver waved a hand in front of him as though starting a ritual, but nothing happened. “You can give it up now, young Granich. Especially after that display at the door. You have a wizard with you. You will not gain admittance into this hall.”
“But I thought only the Guj had real wizards?” Lorne laughed. “You must have been seeing things.”
“Who do you travel with? These people are not servants. Their wretched garb cannot hide that.”
They had given up pretense, no eyes skirting the floor. Better to be alert for whatever came their way. Vesperi’s eyes flashed silver. Good. She was keeping ready.
“I travel with Lanserim.”
The sounds of the advers’ whispers rose from a trickling to a steady stream, and they broke off their work, ends of levere rolls dangling.
Lorne pointed at Flivio first, giving the introductions as they had planned. “A friend of the prince’s, Flivio of Meditlan. And here”—he took Serra’s arm, breaking off her gaze from where it had been trained down the hall—“is the prince’s formerly betrothed and lady of Meditlan, Serrafina Gavenstone. Isn’t she gorgeous?” Lorne pursed his lips in appreciation.
Votan clearly gaped at each introduction, though cloth obscured his mouth and those purple, dead eyes showed no reaction.
Lorne clapped Janto’s shoulders next and made sure to speak loudly, enunciating each syllable fully through the cloth. “And here we have Prince Janto Albrecht, heir to the Lanserim throne, ruler of all lands that fall under Madel’s hand.” A collective gasp rang through the hall, and the whispers’ volume rose from a flowing brook to a rushing one. “I do hope you will treat him nicely. He has come a long way.”
Adver Votan laughed, a hollow sound. “You have fancy friends. I imagine Saeth waits outside the door? Or mayhap the imposter god you dare to name? But never mind all that—I cannot wait to hear who this second woman is. Queen Lexamy, perhaps? I had thought she would be older by now.”
The disbelief was expected, and Janto hoped Vesperi’s introduction would also go as planned.
“No.” Lorne raised his voice loud enough the whole hall could hear in case Adver Votan was not privy to knowledge of the weapon. Janto prayed someone listening was. They needed Vesperi to be as wanted here as his father had claimed. “This is Vesperi Sellwyn, and I am fairly certain the Guj will want to know who he had chased out of his hall earlier this evening.”
One pair of feet waddled with great speed over the tiled floor, and by the time its owner reached them, the man was huffing. Rounder than Jerusho, his body slumped in a way Janto’s friend’s never would. The adver leaned in close and whispered, “You will come with me.”
“What’s this, Nouin? The Guj said I was to—” Anger almost made Adver Votan appear alive. Almost. What came next succeeded in proving it.
“Do you want a repeat of the last time you interfered, Votan? Complain again, and I will let you come with us.”
The Deduin recoiled, and at last, Janto saw emotion in his eyes: fear—abject, terrified fear. It made Janto realize, along with the words Serra had whispered in his ear before they headed back up the temple mount, that he had to give this man a chance. He had to give all of them a chance—a choice.
Adver Nouin walked down the passage they had taken earlier, beckoning the group to follow. Janto held back, considering the few dozen men gathered in the foyer. The fact that he would be the first Lanserim most of these men had ever had address them only gave him pause for a moment. He cleared his throat.
“If you value your lives”—he glanced at Serra who stopped with the rest of their group at his voice, and she gave him a nod of encouragement—“you will leave this place.” He had the advers’ attention, whether or not they believed who he was. The hall was silent. “You don’t deserve to live, not after what you have put my people through.” He gritted his teeth, thinking of Hamsyn and Mar Pina, and of Vesperi also, on the floor of Sellwyn Manor cradling her father’s skin. “But you deserve the chance to. Leave this place and this life behind, and you will live. Stay, and Madel Herself will destroy you.”
He rejoined the others and the whispers behind him rose to a waterfall pitch. Then the advers acted. They left. The priests bolted toward the front doors, except for a few who stayed back, uncertain. Most disappeared in seconds.
“Did that happen?” Janto turned to his friends. “Did they really heed my warning?” So many people spared, and he had thought they would doom them all. He swung Serra around and placed a kiss on her forehead. “You are brilliant.”
Lorne patted him on the back. “Don’t think too much of it, my prince. You threatened the only thing an adver values when it comes down to it—his life. And after a claren attack and our display earlier, they may have realized Mandat Hall is not as unassailable as they’ve believed.”
Adver Nouin’s shock at the mass abandonment was the same as Janto’s, but he composed himself more quickly. “We must not delay. The Guj is leaving soon to travel to King Ralion’s court.”
They reached the end of the corridor, and the adver unlocked the levere-lined door. The second door, at the end of the narrow hall that had trapped them before, was open. Janto’s skin tingled in nervous anticipation. Serra stared intently down the corridor then shook her head no. If they were lucky, they had killed most of the claren earlier. But what of the wizards? They were being led straight back into the room where they had lost Hamsyn and nearly all been killed. My masterful plan, letting us be pinned up like lamtas by a lake filled with sheven.
Janto braced himself to see Hamsyn’s body, but to his shock, Adver Nouin stopped well short of the room at the end of the hall. Instead, he lifted the corner of one of the hideous tapestries. There was a door behind it, painted to blend in perfectly with the white walls. Clever. The Guj was no idiot.
Adver Nouin knocked on the door, and it pulled open from the inside. A slight and hairless man held it, frilled ridges of skin bunched around the tops of his ears. His eyes darted fast as he took in their group. If not for the robe of bones, Janto might have believed him a brother of Sielban. The likeness amazed him, but not enough to miss the quiet clatter of Flivio slipping his metal rod on the floor to wedge the door open as they followed the Rasselerian through another passage. The advers did not notice. Maybe, just maybe, they would pull this off.
CHAPTER 56
SERRA
The adver led them to another room much more cramped than the fake quarters they had been trapped in earlier. Torches lit it dimly, and levere sheets layered the walls from waist-height upward. Two wizards stood in far corners and one hovered by a round table where another adver sat. They waved their arms in continuous circles, humming words together. No wind blew or ethereal ice shards whirred, so they were not attacking, at least not yet.
Serra focused her sight to peer more deeply at their movements, but as she made to do so, another pair of eyes bore into her from the adver with the Rasselerian features. He peered inquisitively, and she dropped the sight. Vesperi’s magic was known, but they had found no reason why hers should also be exposed. This man’s gaze pierced too sharply.
Lorne broke her out of the stare with a squeeze of her hand. The gall of
that boy. Even now, he lost no opportunity to make a move. She glared at him until he dropped her hand again. Her eyes itched to sweep the room, but she couldn’t, not with that Rasselerian in here. At least they wore scarves already.
The adver at the table wore a robe so covered in bones no fabric could be seen. When he stood, they clattered, and he towered over the others, making it obvious who he was. Nothing had ever bent the Guj’s back, though he was the oldest person in the room. Adver Nouin whispered in his ear, and the Guj smiled, a ghastly effect against the backdrop of his robe.
“Vesperi Sellwyn.” He walked over to Vesperi, clasping her hands unbidden. She jerked them back. “I am so glad you have come to join us. You are the spitting image of your father, though he has not come to Qiltyn in years. How is he?” He moved his eyes slowly up and down her form with obvious appreciation. It made Serra’s skin crawl.
“He’s dead.” Serra admired the way Vesperi always kept her voice so steady. “The creatures you are keeping as pets destroyed Sellwyn.”
“A pity. Your father was one of my most loyal lieges, never skimming off my tribute—”
“You mean King Ralion’s tribute,” Lorne interjected, playing at bored. “Or are we speaking freely? I did not think honesty your style.”
The Guj frowned before quickly reasserting his smile. “Your group and I have moved past such particulars, don’t you think … Granich, is it? That’s the name Votan gave after you fled from my wizards. I would not have remembered it myself. Lesser houses are not worth bothering about, though I may need to reconsider that stance. They do not usually storm into my home.”
“And this”—the Guj darted forward, taking Janto by the hair and shaking him—“this is an Albrecht. You look so like your uncle Gelus before I swung my axe through his arm at the plain of Orelyn.”
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