“Fynn, you aren’t seriously considering letting Henri in that room with our ward, are you?” If he had nodded, I might have thumped his newly mended head. “What if I took Malik’s place instead?”
Both males stared first at the stubborn set of my jaw before eyeing my leg.
“You aren’t—” Henri stopped, reconsidering whatever he’d planned to say. “I would prefer it if you didn’t take on such strenuous duties as of yet. I can last a few more hours before I rest.” He glanced the way he had come. “There’s no point in sleeping yet. Not when a response will arrive soon. I might as well help Malik while I wait.” He grinned at something Fynn told him. “She is.”
“Who is what?” As if I couldn’t guess who they meant. I was the only she present.
A flurry of gestures from Fynn must have told Henri what should have been obvious—I was fast becoming annoyed.
They sighed in unison, and Henri answered him…instead of me.
As my brothers had done before him, Henri latched on to their secret sign language as a means of excluding the lone female in the group. No doubt Asher and Braden would soon join in, and there I would be with nothing but the sound of my own voice for company. The thought set me to growling.
“If you’ll excuse me,” I said, “I have work to do.”
For lack of anything else to do, I returned to the table and began cleaning my station.
“Fynn told me you’re overprotective of those you care about, but not to let it worry me, I would get used to it in time.” Henri watched me for a reaction. “I assured him that wasn’t the case with us.”
I sucked in a sharp breath that hissed through my teeth when I narrowed my eyes on Fynn.
He winked at me. Winked. At me. As if he had done me a favor. As if I should be grateful.
Brothers. If I’d had a knife and my aim back, I would have made his smarmy wink permanent.
Regaining my composure, I asked Henri, “How will you know when your answer arrives?”
“Don’t worry.” He appeared amused by my flustered state. “I’ll know.”
I raked fingers through my hair, wishing I could tug his. “You do realize non-answers generally make those on the receiving end of them think violent thoughts about the person who gives them?”
“My contact is…” Henri appeared to test several words before dismissing the effort with a wave of his hand. “It’s impossible for a person of his station to gain a private audience with the ruling pair without drawing suspicion. Therein lies the problem.” He rubbed his mouth, I think to avoid a yawn. “It would be better for him to wait until Lourdes is receiving, rather than request a private audience.”
“Hmm.” I couldn’t fault the logic of his scenario. “So you might be waiting for a while.”
He canted his head. “Was that non-answer sufficient?”
Fynn’s slight smile as he glanced between us annoyed me enough to change the topic.
“While we wait,” I said, “our skin gets to crawl at the thought of risers swarming the city.”
“It is impossible to breach Erania’s walls,” he informed me calmly. “It can’t be done.”
“But I thought…” I snapped my mouth shut while searching for more polite phrasing.
“When the Theridiidae stormed our city, our gates were opened by their kin from the inside. Their warriors strolled down our streets, welcomed by the traitors we left to guard our clan home. The risers will have no such help. No. The others aren’t at risk from an attack.”
“A riser found the hatch leading into the stables,” I pointed out.
His laugh was tired. “You see the problem.”
“We aren’t in the city.” I had seen no walls, no buildings, nothing but the summer stables.
“We are on the fringes.” He gestured around us. “All this is underneath the wall.”
“You’re saying the risers will trudge to the wall, bounce off it and stumble across the hatch leading to the stables and try their luck there instead?” I frowned. “What in the gods’ names led a person to think that was wise? Why bypass the city’s and the nest’s greatest defense? What is the hatch but a gaping hole in an otherwise—by your estimation—impenetrable stronghold? Who in their right mind thought excavating the nest and linking its tunnels through the stable was wise?”
Rapping his knuckles on the counter, Henri said, “Father used that exact argument against me.”
Having lost interest in our conversation, Fynn walked off, stretching his arms over his head, limbering up while he had the chance.
Turning my attention back to Henri, I asked, “What was your response?”
“That we live, and have lived, underground for three-quarters of every year since our elders founded our clan with the help of our foremothers. In the beginning, our clan was weak. We were also poor. To anyone who asks why we chose this inhospitable land to colonize, what choices did we have? The stronger clans ruled the southlands. There was no room for us to erect our own city. No safety for our people. No guarantees we could keep what we grew or what we made wouldn’t be taken. Our elders knew our survival hinged on our silk, molding it into a commodity that other clans would pay gold to possess. Armed with that certainty, they led our people through the veil, into the northlands.” His words kept a practiced cadence of one familiar with his history. “Here they befriended the Ctenidae clan, who led them to an underground cavern at the base of Mount Ereac. It was small and cramped, but their new allies taught them how to expand the existing tunnels and support them to lessen the possibility of collapse. From that day to this, our clan has never stopped expanding.”
“Ah.” At last I understood. “You ran out of room to safely expand.”
“We did.” He ran a hand through his hair. “We made do for several years, but the quality of living suffered. There were too many families, too many children, too many resources we needed to keep providing for both. Not to mention that a second, though minor by comparison, source of income immerged. Our stable masters turned our ursus stock into the finest in the northlands. The other northland clans buy their mounts from us. As that trade has grown, so has our need for separate areas for breeding, birthing and training the beasts. The underground stables were my solution.”
“It’s an impressive solution.” I meant it. “It’s a miracle of architecture.”
“Thank you, but as you said, it’s flawed.” He sighed. “The expansion was completed before my parents… It was finished some months ago. The plan was to expand the wall so that it covered the mouth of the stables as well as the other emergency hatches I planned for the new tunnels we decided to build. The projects began in the same month and we foolishly expected they would take the same amount of time. The underground workers were protected from the winter storms, and they completed their work on schedule. The workers on the wall suffered setback after setback. It had been decided they would build the new additions before tearing down the old section of wall. For that foresight, I am grateful. It has kept the city safe while we struggle to tame the elements.”
“Then you had no choice.” If too many people lived in too tight a space, especially in one as enclosed as the Araneidae nest was, living conditions would eventually deteriorate into squalor.
“I had other options. I didn’t want to hear them.” He grimaced. “I left my clan vulnerable to attack because of a design flaw. Both the rather conspicuous stable hatch you mentioned, as well as several of the single-person hatches, allow for outside-the-wall access to the heart of the nest.”
“How are those hatches secured?” I asked.
“They use the same locking mechanism as my laboratory,” he said. “I tested it here first.”
“Have any of the hatches been breached?” I doubted they had. “Even by your clansmen?”
“No.” His shoulders bowed. “They are unaware of the vastness of the network I have created on their behalf. Lourdes was kept ignorant until she became maven. I showed her one such hatch, after our sister…�
� He glanced my way. “That is how we lost our sister Pascale. Her beloved, the male who poisoned our parents, helped excavate those tunnels. He knew them well. Pascale and Kellen had used one for meeting in secrecy. She fled that route to be with him, after she realized our parents were dead. That tunnel—I—facilitated their escape. If Father were here, he would—”
“—tell you not to be so hard on yourself,” I finished for him. “Not when she made her own choices.”
“Perhaps, but he would be wrong, as I was wrong to argue with him for the expansion.” His eyes sparked with fresh anger. “If the Theridiidae hadn’t wanted to make a point by entering our city through its front gate, Kellen might have stolen my key and used one of my many hatches to allow them entry.”
“Might have.” I pointed out, “As in, he didn’t.”
“Kellen’s mother is the Theridiidae maven. Regardless of the fact her child had our maven and paladin’s blood on his hands, she is demanding my sister’s head for his death. Kellen murdered our parents, Pascale killed Kellen, and now our clan has gained a new enemy.”
“All over a tunnel,” I mused.
“I see what you’re doing, but our discord spans much farther than the length of a tunnel.”
I placed my hand on Henri’s arm. “You designed a plan that must have had merit. Your father couldn’t have swayed the elders’ votes. They saw the potential in your proposal, and they elected to pursue your suggestions—at a risk. It’s no more your fault your sister abused your project to escape than it’s my fault my brothers…” I released him. “The point is, you were helping. You wanted better, safer lives for your clan. It comes at a cost. All the rest… No one could have anticipated a betrayal on that scale.”
A muscle in his jaw leapt. “You have no idea.”
“Actually, I do.” I glanced over at my brother, reminded of all we had endured, and decided to trust Henri with one of my own secrets. “Our clan, our family, turned their backs on us.”
Henri held his breath as though afraid one wrong word would silence me.
“Ghedi and I were downriver the night Tau’s wife…” Tears threatened to spill down my cheeks. I bit them back as I always did. “Leona was found in the river. Drowned. Tau was blamed for her death. When our brothers stood up for him, our clan accused Kaleb, Malik and Fynn of conspiring with Tau to kill her. Leona was the paladin’s niece, and there was no consoling Chinedu. Without proof, he couldn’t order Tau’s death, but he also couldn’t bear to see Tau’s face. Chinedu banished them all. When Ghedi and I returned, we pleaded with our parents for aid, but they had disowned Tau.” I met Henri’s gaze. “That was when I knew I had to leave too. There was nothing in Halcidia for me or for Ghedi, so we left.”
In answer, Henri stared into his empty hands. All this talk of traitors and betrayals seemed to have drained the fire that had been fueling him all this while. The skin under his eyes bore black smudges as though he’d rubbed them after penning a letter, as he had often in the last two days.
After a while, he reached out and took my hand. “I am sorry for what you and your family have endured.”
Our talk had given me much to consider. Were risers smart enough to operate the hatches even with the help of a key? Or would a harbinger be needed to locate the hatches, then order the risers to complete the difficult—if not impossible—task of prying a lid from a tunnel? That scenario seemed more than likely to me.
Fynn walked up behind Henri, noticed we were holding hands and gave me two thumbs up from over his shoulder.
“Be careful.” I glanced between them, gaze settling on Fynn. “That goes for both of you.”
Maybe he really had cracked his head worse than we realized in that fall.
Fynn switched his thumbs down, then up, finally settling with them level with Henri’s ears.
Henri watched me watching my brother. “What are your plans?”
To sit here while the cure bubbled, but I could hardly say as much in front of Fynn.
“I was thinking of giving myself that tour of the greenhouse you promised me. Would you mind?”
“Not at all.” He paused before turning to go. “I trust you.”
Why those words tightened my chest, I couldn’t be sure. I bet he didn’t say that often, and never to people like me. He was still making amends, in his way. Worse, I was beginning to welcome it.
Put in his situation, I would have done the same as he had, if not worse, to protect those I loved.
Behind him, Fynn rolled his eyes. Any harder and they would be rattling in his skull.
I folded my arms. “Stop being an arse.”
He made a gesture I was certain meant up yours before trailing Henri to the bastille.
The Fynn who rode to Erania with us hadn’t been this affable in a long while. I had forgotten he could be as jovial as Ghedi still pretended to be. His mood was disconcerting enough, but teasing me about Henri? Where had my surly brother of the past few years gone and who had taken his place?
Chapter 8
Hours into my examination of the greenhouse, which had become appealing after I assured myself for the fifth or sixth time that a watched pot merely continues to bubble, I emerged at the far end of the southland section. Sweat poured down my face, and my shoulder stung miserably. It was a good pain, an agony much easier to endure than the fear gnawing my heart when I thought of Ghedi.
Behind me, the laboratory hatch click, click, clicked in rapid succession.
I cocked my head, expecting to hear the chimes. Not that it mattered. I didn’t know how to open the door. Whoever was out there was stuck. But instead a seal popped, followed by heavy footsteps.
“Where is Henri?”
I whirled at the sound of an unfamiliar voice. “Who are you? What are you doing in here?”
The male was of average height but thick with muscle. White-blond hair made me question his age, but there were no wrinkles on his face that I saw, though it was hard to tell beneath his scars.
His gaze swept the room before settling on me. “I could ask you the same.”
Alone I might be, but I was far from unarmed. I clutched my wheels, backing myself closer to where a row of pots steamed and hissed due to no heat source I could see. Gods only knew what was in them, but if he pushed my hand, then we would find out as their contents splashed down his face.
I changed tactics. “Is Henri expecting you?”
He savored his response. “That would be telling.”
“That is the general idea. When I ask a question, it is with the hope it will be answered.”
The male scowled at me and the pots at my elbow. “His letters made you sound so…nice.”
“Letters.” I slowed my retreat. “Are you his contact from inside the nest?”
He cocked his head. “Aren’t we all inside the nest?”
Mimicking his oh-so-helpful tone, I clarified, “The side of the nest not host to the plague.”
“Ah.” He blew into his hands then rubbed them together. “How do you know I haven’t just come in from the cold?”
I scoffed. “The exit hatch is well guarded. I have every confidence you couldn’t have breached it without Henri’s say-so. If he had given you permission, which he wouldn’t have, or if one of the guards had given you access, and they wouldn’t have, you would have an escort now, but you don’t.”
Otherwise—key or no key—Asher or Braden would have sank an arrow through his eye socket before allowing that door to be opened while risers were so near.
“Every confidence? That’s a sight more faith than Henri has in his own work. Impressive. It does amaze me the variety of females who get their backs up over him. You realize unless half of his family died, he won’t inherit the nest? His sister or her future children or her brother Armand would rule first. He does have wealth, probably more gold than someone like yourself can imagine. Is it the thought of his purse that warms your bosom?” His smile framed his slender fangs. “What can you hope to gain? You can’t think
Maven Lourdes would sell Henri so cheaply. Not one of her own.”
“Granted, I haven’t known Henri long, but I would have noticed a price tag hung around his neck. I doubt his sister or anyone else can sell what they do not own, and Henri is very much his own person.”
“Oh it’s there,” he assured me, “and you aren’t the first not to see it.”
I took a moment before responding. Henri was royalty. My status, well, I had none. Once this all ended and Henri resumed his life, I might be tossed aside in favor of a more suitable female. But if a brush-off was impending, I wanted him to dirty his own hands. Not Lourdes. Not Edan. Henri.
“As you said, he is in no danger of inheriting the clan or his sister’s duties, so I fail to see what business it is of yours if he and I are friends—or anything else for that matter.” I smiled thinly. “As to the warmth of my bosom, well, it suffices to say that you will die curious of its temperature.”
He made a thoughtful sound in the back of his throat. “You’re all hiss and spit.”
“Teeth and claws is more like it.” I waved him on. “Come closer and I’ll show you.”
“I don’t think so.” His grin widened. “My wife wouldn’t fancy claw marks on me she didn’t put there herself. Thanks for the offer. I’ll do you a favor and make sure she never learns of it.”
“Ah, how gallant you are. Threatening females and keeping secrets from your wife.”
He bowed to me. “If you had met me before Marne made a somewhat honest male of me—”
“—she would know what a right bastard you still are.” Asher’s voice carried from the doorway my visitor had left cracked. “What are you doing here, Edan?”
Edan. The male Braden had complained of substituting his roll with paper. That explained him having a key. At least now I had put a face to his name.
Though Edan stood his ground, Asher kept an eye on him while he made his way to me.
“I came to speak with Henri.” Edan chuckled when Asher placed himself between us.
If Edan’s disdain bothered Asher, he showed no signs of it. In fact, he made a point of removing a dagger similar to the one he had stabbed me with and placing it in my hand where Edan could see.
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