The Palace of Impossible Dreams

by Jennifer Fallon

  Stellan glanced down at Nyah. “Are you ready for this, your highness? It might get a little rough.”

  Nyah nodded solemnly. “I’m the crown princess of Caelum, my lord. I will do whatever it takes to save my throne from the immortals.”

  Ricard looked at Stellan. “Immortals?”

  Stellan shook his head and sighed as he realised it was going to fall to him to break the news to the Caelish Spymaster about the true identity of Lord Torfail and his family.

  “We have a lot to talk about, Master Li.”

  “Apparently we do,” he agreed, staring at them both in confusion for a moment before shaking his head and turning toward the carriage he had waiting to take Nyah home.

  Chapter 22

  “That’s the third one this week.”

  Arkady glanced up from the narrow bed she was wiping down with lye soap and hot water. Its occupant had died several hours earlier. She was disinfecting it before the next patient arrived. “Have the family come for the body?”

  Geriko shrugged, his eyes, as usual, going straight to her bare breasts. One day, she thought, he’ll look me in the eye and the shock will kill me.

  “Won’t make no difference. Doc ordered ’em all burned. ’Sides, who’s gonna care about a dead canine?”

  Sadly, Geriko was right. The canine who had just died was of no value to anybody any longer. The man who owned him certainly didn’t want a dead slave back just to give him a decent burial. That’s why he’d brought his slave here to the clinic in the poorer part of the city, rather than pay a physician good money to visit his kennels.

  “Well, hopefully that’s the last of them.”

  Geriko shook his head. “It ain’t even the beginning, Kady. If this is swamp fever, like the doc thinks it is, we’re all in for a bad time of it.”

  It more than likely was the fever Geriko spoke of. The man who owned the dead canine was a jeweller who had recently been north into the wetlands on a trading mission to secure supplies of nacre, and his slave had fallen ill within a day of returning home.

  “You’ve seen swamp fever before?”

  Geriko nodded, lifting the corner of the mattress so Arkady could get to the base. She wrung out the rag again and kept cleaning as she talked. On average, the clinic slaves worked from dawn until dusk. If she ever wanted to see dinner or her bed tonight, then she had to finish this before Cydne got back from informing the canine’s owner of his fate.

  “Had it when I was a young ’un,” he said. “Near killed me, it did. Took more ’n half the slaves in the Medura compound, now I come to think of it. And Lady Medura, herself.”

  “Cydne’s mother?”

  He nodded. “Swamp fever don’t care who you are. Highborn, lowborn, slave or free, man or Crasii. Takes ’em all.”

  Arkady had vague recollections of her father speaking of some terrible pestilence that ravaged the swampy tropical regions of Amyrantha periodically, but as she’d had no interest in the countries concerned at the time, she’d never paid much attention. The only thing she remembered was her father mentioning they should be grateful that Glaeba’s much colder climate seemed to keep the disease at bay.

  “Is there a cure?” she asked, wringing out the cloth.

  “Not that I know of. Mostly you just tries to stop people vomitin’ and shittin’ ’emselves to death. If you can survive that, you’re usually better after a week or so.”

  “I never realised you were such a medical expert, Geriko,” Cydne remarked, entering the hospital wing from the other end of the room where the doctor’s office was located. He removed his coat as he neared them and handed it to the feline Crasii bodyguard who followed him, before turning to check on Arkady’s work. The feline, a ginger tabby with a white face and chest, named Jojo, accepted the coat and folded it over her arm without comment. Arkady didn’t know her well. Cydne had only recently taken to bringing a bodyguard with him when he visited the clinic. It was an idea of his wife’s apparently, and probably meant more as a chaperone than a protector.

  Cydne looked around then nodded with approval. All six berths were empty. For fear of spreading the infection, Cydne had sent home all the other patients several days ago, when the infected canine arrived at the clinic, accompanied by his rather peeved owner.

  Geriko bowed apologetically as their master approached. “Sorry, sir. I was just tellin’ Kady ’bout swamp fever. She’s not seen it before.”

  Cydne reached them and stopped to study Arkady thoughtfully. “Is that right? Well, I suppose it is, given you’re not from around here. I should have thought of that before . . .” His voice trailed off, his face wrinkled with concern.

  “Before what?”

  “Before I exposed you to it,” he said with a shrug. “Oh well, we’ll know if you’re infected in the next day or two. It has a devilishly short incubation period, this wretched fever. Did you burn that body as I ordered?” he asked the big slave, as if the death sentence he had just informed Arkady she had been exposed to meant nothing at all.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then you may return to your quarters until tomorrow. Good evening, Geriko.”

  “Sir.” The big man glanced at Arkady and then bowed to his master and withdrew.

  “You can wait in the hall,” he added to Jojo.

  The feline also bowed politely and left the room, taking her master’s jacket with her. Cydne waited until they were alone before addressing Arkady. “You can finish that in the morning.”

  She nodded and rose to her feet, tossing the washcloth in the bucket of soapy water. “As my lord commands.”

  “Tides, you still haven’t learned a shred of humility, Kady.”

  “Have I given you any reason to complain about my work?”

  “No. But you still act as if I’ve hired you as my assistant, rather than bought you as a slave.”

  “If it helps me keep my sanity to think of it that way, what do you care?”

  “People have noticed your less than humble demeanour.”

  “People?” she asked with a raised brow. “Or one person in particular?”

  Cydne blushed crimson, a trait married life had done nothing to cure him of. “My wife thinks your attitude is too . . . precocious.”

  Olegra, Cydne’s much-agonised-over wife, had turned out to be a thoroughly spoiled little brat of a girl. Pretty, chubby and with a screech on her like a cranky fish-wife, she was seventeen years old, convinced the world had been created purely to amuse her and that Cydne’s purpose as her husband was to indulge her every whim.

  Arkady wasn’t really surprised to learn Cydne’s bride disapproved of her husband’s wii-ah. The Lady Medura had been to visit the clinic on several occasions, none of which had endeared her to the slaves who worked there; or the patients who came there for help, for that matter. She heartily disapproved of his occupation, even more so, of his commitment to working among the poorer citizens of Port Traeker, even though it was a condition of his membership of the Senestran Physicians’ Guild. Unable to comprehend anyone wanting to help the lesser creatures of this world, she had recently convinced herself that Cydne’s dedication to his work was because of his fascination for his batch-bought assistant, and not the dire health of the poor of Port Traeker.

  And that, Arkady had discovered, was the strangest thing of all about this weird Senestran society of which she found herself a part. Olegra was a member of the same strict religious cult as the Torlenian ambassador of Senestra’s wife—the woman Kinta had thrown into gaol for calling her a whore. They worshipped the Lord of Temperance, but their beliefs were nothing Jaxyn would have condoned. The cult abhorred sex for anything other than the purpose of procreation, considered any relationships other than one between man and woman to be an abomination and prayed an awful lot (sometimes four or five times a day) to an immortal who—Arkady knew for a fact—wouldn’t have answered a single prayer, even if he could hear them.

  Arkady couldn’t fathom the cult’s moral code, either. The comple
x and comprehensive rules they followed that governed the conduct of relationships between men and women, didn’t apply to slaves. Leaving themselves a loophole you could sail one of their wretched trading ships through, they’d gotten around that sticky point by refusing to acknowledge slaves as real people. That way, it was perfectly permissible for a man to sleep with a slave, or keep one or two, or even half a dozen as his mistresses—his wii-ah—provided they were of the right stock and any children they bore remained unacknowledged as his heirs. Arkady, being both foreign and makor-di, was unacceptable. Their arguments, according to Cydne, weren’t about him keeping a mistress.

  They were about him keeping the wrong sort of mistress.

  “Does the lovely Olegra think she’ll catch something nasty if you lie with me and then her?”

  “You see!” Cydne complained. “You have no sense of your place in this world at all, Kady. Again, you blurt out things any other master would whip you into submission for even thinking, let alone saying aloud.” He took her hand and pulled her to him. Arkady let him, knowing there was no point in resisting.

  “I’m guessing whipping me into submission is your wife’s suggestion.”

  “You mustn’t speak of my wife in that tone.”

  “Then how should I speak of her?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.” He traced a finger gently down between her breasts, before pulling her even closer and burying his face in her hair, as if the scent of it was some sort of heady nectar.

  “Aren’t you worried I might be infected with swamp fever?” She’d schooled herself not to flinch from his touch. If she didn’t resist, she didn’t get hurt, and she knew how to escape the feeling of being used, even if it was only in her own mind.

  “It doesn’t matter if you are. I survived the last outbreak. I’m immune now.”

  “Well, that’s all right then.”

  He didn’t seem to notice her sarcasm. “Olegra doesn’t understand me like you do.”

  Tides, Arkady thought. Where did you get the idea I understand you?

  He bent his head to her breast, murmuring, “We’ve time before I have to go home . . .”

  “Now who’s acting as if I have an opinion? Or a choice?”

  He lifted his head from her breast, looking quite wounded. “Have I ever taken you against your will, Kady?”

  Every single time, she wanted to reply, but survival demanded she keep the truth to herself. The only way out of here was down, if Cydne took it into his head to be rid of her. If she was thrown out of this clinic and sent back into the general slave pool, her life as a makor-di would get much much worse. “No, you’ve never taken me against my will.”

  Clearly, he didn’t accept her at her word. “Would you lie about such a thing to me?”

  “Of course I would,” she said. “I’m a slave. Slaves tell their masters what they want to hear all the time. It’s the basic flaw in your social system.”

  He studied her face for a moment, as if he suspected she was mocking him, and then lust won out. He kissed her, his tongue thrusting between her teeth, as his hands fumbled at the knot on her loincloth. Arkady didn’t resist. She even kissed him back after a time, resigned to the inevitable.

  There are worse ways to survive, she reminded herself, although as Cydne pushed her down onto the narrow bed reeking of lye soap and recent death, she couldn’t, at that moment, think of a single one of them.

  Chapter 23

  “Stellan Desean is still alive.”

  The king and queen looked up from their breakfast, alarmed by Jaxyn’s dramatic entrance and his even more startling news.

  And so you should look startled, you flanking fools, he thought, striding across the dining room to the table where Mathu and Diala—still posing as Queen Kylia and looking every inch the innocent girl she was pretending to be—sat eating their breakfast as if they didn’t have a care in the world. It was a rare sunny morning and the balcony doors were open, letting in the fresh air. Diala reached out and covered Mathu’s hand with hers in a comforting gesture before turning to look at Jaxyn.

  That she maintained the fiction she felt anything for this boy-king irked Jaxyn no end, but he didn’t have time to do anything about it now.

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, I just thought you both needed an interesting start to your day,” he said, rolling his eyes impatiently. “Of course I’m sure.”

  “You said he was dead,” Mathu said. “Tides, Jaxyn, we gave him a state funeral.”

  “A little pre-emptively, it seems. Turns out the charred corpse we thought was the Duke of Lebec was someone else’s charred corpse.”

  “How do you know he’s alive?” Kylia asked.

  “Because in a heroic gesture of good faith toward our neighbours, he’s just returned the missing Princess Nyah to Caelum.”

  Mathu stared at him, still looking confused. “How can that be . . .?”

  Jaxyn leaned against the mantel and crossed his arms. “I don’t know the details. All I know is that Daly Bridgeman got a report this morning from Caelum informing him Princess Nyah is alive and well, and returned to Cycrane a few days ago in the company of the former Duke of Lebec.”

  “So you fixed your little problem, then?” Diala asked, a direct reference to their last conversation on the topic of spies in Caelum, which he chose to ignore.

  “Oh, and just to make things interesting, our not-so-dead duke has asked Queen Jilna for asylum.”

  Even Mathu knew what that meant. “But she wouldn’t dare! Stellan was being tried as a traitor against the Glaeban crown. At the very least, he’s an escaped prisoner. Giving him asylum is tantamount to an act of war.”

  “I’m quite sure Tryan knows that,” Diala muttered, dropping her innocent façade for a moment.

  “Tryan?” Mathu asked.

  “I meant Lord Tyrone,” she said with an ingenuous smile, smoothly covering her slip. “I always get those names muddled up.”

  “Do we know where Nyah’s been all this time?” the young king asked Jaxyn with a frown, which was some small comfort. Apparently he was capable of taking something seriously.

  “According to the story Desean’s putting about in Cycrane, she was kidnapped from Caelum by agents of Glaeba. He’s telling them he discovered her whereabouts in prison, broke out of gaol during the fire, saved her from a fate worse than death and then nobly escorted her home. He’s making it very clear she was a prisoner of Declan Hawkes, your majesty, which, by implication, means she was being held by you. Hawkes was your spymaster, after all.”

  Mathu pushed away his breakfast, his appetite vanishing with Jaxyn’s news. “But I knew nothing about any of this!”

  “Won’t make much difference to the Caelish, I suspect.”

  “Mathu’s got a point, though,” Diala said. “He can’t be held responsible for something Hawkes did on his own.”

  “He’s Glaeba’s king,” Jaxyn pointed out unsympathetically. “He’s responsible for everything that happens in his kingdom, whether he knows about it or not.”

  “But it’s all lies!” Mathu complained. “And because Hawkes is dead and not here to contradict him, Stellan thinks he can get away with it.” He stood up and began pacing the room. “How could he do this to me? I thought he was my friend.”

  Jaxyn wondered if it was worth taking the time to remind this ignorant and mightily offended young king that the man he was accusing of lying about his involvement in the kidnapping of Princess Nyah was the same man he’d ordered his own spymaster to trump up charges against in the not so distant past. “Stellan was probably asking himself the same question about you, your majesty, while he was sitting in court listening to the line of witnesses you’d arranged to perjure themselves to convict him of a crime we all know he didn’t commit.”

  “It wasn’t my idea! You said it was better to try him for murder than accuse him of being a sodomite,” Mathu said, turning on Jaxyn. “You said it would save the family from scandal.”

&nbs
p; “And it would have,” Jaxyn pointed out reasonably, “had your cousin the decency to stay dead. My plan involved executing him, remember? Had we followed that plan, we wouldn’t have this problem.”

  “What do you think they’ll do?” Diala asked, the question about much more than the Caelish queen. They both knew the Empress of the Five Realms was behind this, and that Stellan had played right into their hands by giving them a perfectly legitimate reason to go to war now, before the Tide was fully up. A battle fought once the Tide Lords could all call on their full powers, served nobody, and would more than likely destroy the kingdoms they were squabbling over.

  But a good old-fashioned war . . . one with human and Crasii soldiers to throw into a bloodbath . . .

  Well, that would achieve the same result and leave at least the victor’s kingdom intact, to be enjoyed to the full, once the Tide peaked and they became gods once more.

  Damn you, Stellan, Jaxyn thought, angry at himself for underestimating both the man’s political acumen and his desire for vengeance. Fine time you pick to develop a spine.

  Fine time you pick to get even with me.

  It wasn’t often Jaxyn misjudged someone so badly. Certainly, he couldn’t remember the last time a jilted lover had managed to get one up on him.

  He turned to Diala. “They’ll rattle their sabres at us for a while, I think. Tyrone won’t formally declare war until he’s in a position to attack us, but you can be sure that will be the moment the formal declaration is delivered.”

  “What do we do about Stellan?” Mathu demanded. He hadn’t moved much beyond Stellan’s betrayal. The fact that Glaeba was teetering on the edge of war didn’t seem to have registered with the young king yet.

  “Ask for him back,” Diala said. “No, better yet, demand his return. List all his crimes, real and imagined, and warn Caelum they are interfering in the business of the sovereign state of Glaeba by offering to shelter such a heinous criminal.”

  “Will that work?” Mathu asked.