by K Dowling
“Come on,” she says. She tugs at Nerani’s arm. Her mouth fills with tendrils of searing smoke and she coughs.
“Where are you going?” Nerani has found her voice. She withdraws her arm from Emerala’s grasp. Panic is pooling in her dark blue eyes.
“I want to see the tavern.”
“Why?” Nerani snaps, annoyed. She shakes her head. “I’m not going to parade further into this disaster to satisfy your galling curiosity.”
“Someone was shot, Nerani. Killed.”
“We don’t know that for sure.”
The cinders are alighting on Emerala’s exposed shoulders, singing her flesh. “What if it was Rob?”
Nerani hesitates, swallowing thickly. “It wasn’t.”
“How can you know? He went to speak with Toyler today. You said so yourself.”
“That was early this morning,” Nerani says. “I’m sure he’s long gone by now.”
The look that Emerala flashes her cousin is mutinous. Nerani sighs; coughing as she swallows the stinging smoke. “We can’t, Toyler’s will be crawling with guardians. It’s not safe. We’ll go home. Roberts will be there waiting.”
“What if he isn’t?” A thin film of soot covers Emerala’s arms. Her skin itches.
Nerani frowns. Her blue eyes are bright against the streaks of smut upon her face. “He will be,” she promises. Her voice is firm but her lower lip trembles all the same. Emerala thinks that she does not look as certain as she sounds.
All the same, she allows her cousin to take her arm and lead her down the smoke filled alleyway towards home. Her heart thuds heavily against her rib cage, keeping in time with her footfalls against the street. Overhead, the midmorning sun is a muddled white circle of light. It fights to burn its way through the angry screen of smoke that is stretching across the sky. Emerala thinks of the sunrise that morning—of how the sky had been as red as blood, as violent as death. She thinks of Roberts, and of the creases that splinter around his emerald green eyes whenever she does something that causes him grief.
All thoughts of pirates and of guardians and of the open sea dissolve from her mind as she runs.
Please be at home, she begs her brother silently. Please.
CHAPTER 2
Seranai the Fair
The grey-eyed woman’s memories of her childhood are not pleasant ones. Her father, a butcher and a drunkard, belonged to the commonwealth of Chancey. He wed and bed her Cairan mother on a drunken whim and then spent the next ten years of his life regretting his decision with the back of his hand and the smooth leather of his belt.
Cairans are worthless, he would say to her when she was just a toddler, still bouncing upon her mother’s lap. You are worthless.
And so she grew, surrounded by the smells of fermented ale and spoiling meat, hating her mother and her people for poisoning her blood with worthlessness. When her father finally died—drank himself to death they said—she did not cry. She stood beside her mother and watched while they buried him in the dirt.
Spoiled meat, that was all she thought. The bruise upon her cheek had by then faded to yellow. No one ever bought the spoiled meat when they came to see the butcher. It was good for nothing but pig slop. It was worthless.
Standing at her father’s grave, her thoughts ran wild. He may have been gone, but she was still alive, and she did not belong anywhere. He made certain she knew her place before he went.
Her mother’s people adored her. They fussed over her white blonde shock of hair, her startling grey eyes. Seranai the Fair, the Mames called her when she was of age. They admired her flaxen features and her quiet reserve. Such a prim little girl, they said. It was laughable, their praise. Who was to know that she was only submissive because he had beaten her into it? The bruises had long since faded—the feelings had not. Cairan blood was worthless blood.
And so she had grown in silence, biding her time and waiting for her chance to rise into worth.
Now, she stands against the backdrop of a swirling inferno, listening to the rush of screams that hurry towards her through the narrow, empty alleyway in which she stands. The roadway is choked with smoke. Tendrils of blistering orange heat snap restlessly against a soiled grey sky. The Chancian people, drawn like moths to a candle, flock together at the far end of the roadway in order to watch Manfred Toyler’s tavern burn.
Burn it all, Seranai thinks wryly. Burn it to the Dark Below.
The tavern is nothing but a place for thieves and commoners to gather and commiserate against the crown. It is a breeding ground for sedition and everyone knows as much. The Cairan people—her mother’s people—fill the reeking corners with their grime, whispering treason against the Chancian king.
She will not allow herself to be affiliated with such filth, will not allow herself to be aligned with those of the tainted, gypsy bloodlines. Her half-blood heritage is all she can cling to these days—her grey eyes and hair as pale as homespun gold are the only features that set her apart from the olive skinned and blue eyed people on her mother’s side. She is lucky, she supposes, that she took after her father. He never gave her much, but her gave her that. He gave her a chance at slipping through the cracks, at wearing a mask of pale gold to hide her muddled bloodlines.
She turns her back on the burning sights up ahead, her throat burning as she inhales the ashen air. Smoldering flecks of ash swirl past her, alighting upon the exposed skin of her arms with a fiery kiss.
She recognizes the golden figure in the street up ahead the moment she lays eyes upon him. Stalwart and still, General James Byron stands with his back to the rushing sea. He is as silent and as unmoving as a statue, his jaw locked and his expression grim. Only the orange glow of the fire flickering through his impassive brown eyes give any hint that he is a living, breathing man and not merely a golden effigy.
Seranai’s heart constricts tightly in her chest. The air chokes off in her lungs, leaving her throat stinging and raw from the clawing heat of the burning ash.
“James.” His name flies from her lips before she can stop herself—before she can call it back to her. It hangs heavily—damningly—in the air between them. It tastes foreign upon her tongue, his name, so long has it been since she has dared to speak it aloud, even to herself.
At the sound, his eyes snap down towards her. The light from the inferno at her back casts deep shadows in the pits of his face, causing him to look gaunt and pale. Even burning, she thinks, he is uncommonly handsome. A muscle twitches in his jaw and she sees the impassivity of his gaze give way to immediate dislike. She resists the sudden urge to recoil from his glare.
“James,” she repeats, inching carefully closer. The hem of her deep scarlet petticoat drags across the cobblestone like a whisper. “Are you alright?”
At this newest proximity, Seranai can just make out the glistening sheen of sweat upon his skin. His fingers twitch at his sides. The square line of his shoulder, usually tall and formidable beneath his heavy golden cloak, slouches forward ever so slightly. All traces of his usual decorum are gone—burned away, perhaps, by the heat of the growing flames up ahead.
“The city is burning,” he murmurs, although not to her—not to anyone. His brown eyes drift upwards as he studies the smoldering grey of the skies, listens to the shouts of the soldiers and commoners in the streets. “I never gave the orders.”
Encouraged by the doubt in his eyes, Seranai inches still closer. She is starkly conscious of the plunging neckline of her décolletage—the supple roundness of her porcelain breasts above her cinched, hourglass waist. He had not been able to resist her beauty, once, she remembers. James Byron had not always been a soldier. He had been a boy, once, easy to charm and even easier to please. She had fallen for him hard—fallen for him in a way that she had never fallen for the elder, stringent men of aristocracy and politics. They filled her pockets and kept her dressed in fineries, to be sure, but they were nothing to her—only a means to an end.
James Byron had been a beginning.
He loved her, once, she is almost certain of it.
“James,” she says a third time, drawing close enough to touch. There are new lines upon his face—harder lines—but the cool, aloof gaze is as familiar to her as an old dream. The square, clean-shaven jaw and shallow, permanent dimples are the very same that she has traced time and time again in the night.
“James, please,” she whispers, pleading now. “Talk to me.”
She plants her hand gingerly upon the sleeve of his left arm. Her touch causes him to jump as though he has been branded. His eyes snap down toward her face. His lips curl into a grimace and he steps away from her.
“You will refer to me as general, gypsy,” he barks. His voice is cold.
Seranai finds herself suddenly fighting back an uncharacteristic onslaught of tears. The smoking ash tears at her eyes. “Don’t do that,” she whispers. “Don’t talk to me as if I’m a stranger to you.”
The dislike on James’s face deepens still further. “I don’t have time for this,” he growls, pushing past her in the street. Overhead, the soiled clouds break open as it begins to rain. Tepid fingers of water slither down Seranai’s face. She turns with James as he storms away, grasping desperately at his cloak. The sleek, golden fabric slips through her fingers like water, rippling out of her reach.
“James,” she calls out, desperate.
He ignores her, heading briskly towards the sputtering smoke that wheezes beneath the cool reprieve of the rain. The golden line of his shoulders is mottled with dark spots of moisture. He does not look back, not once.
Rage, hot and unbridled, boils deep within Seranai at the sight of his departure. She storms after him, her white locks plastered against her face as she shouts his name into the thundering rain. Her words are drowned out by the shrieking coastal wind, blown in sideways by the sea. Her foot catches upon a loose stone and she loses her balance, plummeting ungracefully to the ground.
There is a sharp pain in her backside and the sound of something snapping—the fragile whalebone of her bustle, she is certain of it. She pulls herself to her feet, her cheeks burning. Up ahead, James has rounded the corner and disappeared. The flames that licked at the skies for hours have sputtered and died, beaten back by the rain.
Seranai stands in the middle of the street and tries not to scream.
Moving off to the side of the road, she takes meager shelter beneath a faded yellow awning. The smell of stale bread reaches her nose from inside the door of the shop. Pressing her back up against the cool brick, she allows herself to cry freely. The stinging salt of her tears mingle with the rainwater that saturates her skin. A feeble whimper is lodged in her throat. She is ruined. James Byron has ruined her—destroyed everything she ever worked for with a look and a smile.
Seranai remembers when she first saw him, sword fighting in the palace courtyard with the young Prince Frederick. She had loved him at once—had loved the slope of his nose, the permanent dimples that bordered his unsmiling lips. Even back then he had been a serious boy—too serious, she would tell him later when he was hers—but that day his mood had been jovial and light. That day, he laughed beneath the sun as his sword sang against the blade of the Chancian heir.
She had never been to the palace before that day, and she has never been since. Her father, still alive, had been commissioned to craft a sword for the eldest prince for his sixteenth harvest day celebration. It was a great honor, and Seranai had been permitted to come along as long as she promised to keep quiet and keep her hands to herself. She had spent hours that afternoon hiding behind her father’s cart and watching James Byron thrust and parry with his sword, his limber muscles dancing beneath the summer sun.
She has loved him since—loved him from afar in the years after her father’s death, loved him when he took a knee before Rowland Stoward and pledged his allegiance as a soldier. She loved him even as she encouraged the love of other men—as she accepted their gifts and their baubles, as she used their standing to claw her way into worth.
When finally she revealed herself to him, young and innocent as he was, he had loved her too. At least for a time. How stupid she had been, to fail to see the end coming before it arrived and slapped her across the face.
James was promoted to general three harvests ago. The elevation came as a surprise to everyone in Chancey. He was young—too young, they said—and not born of nobility. And yet Rowland Stoward favored him. James had become like a son to the king in the wake of Frederick’s untimely death. Rowland wanted to give him everything, but he could not give him a place in his court—not James, the son of a fisher and a maid. Even Rowland’s hands were tied when it came to the laws of royal inheritance. Instead, he bid James kneel before him as he raised him up to a position of power.
Seranai should have seen it coming.
This can’t go on, James said to her one night. His golden regalia glittered in the moonlight as he thrust her hands from his. What will people say?
None of the desperate pleas that rose to his lips were able to convince him to stay. He walked on without a word, his shoulders squared against the sound of her sobs.
Months rolled into years. If James saw her on the streets, he acted as though she did not exist. His cold eyes were void of any recognition. Her heart broken, Seranai gathered up her resolve and forced herself to move on. She had spent years using her looks and her charm to claw her way to the top of society and suddenly she was back at the bottom rung of the ladder.
James Byron was a disappointment, to be sure, but she will not allow one little bump in the road to deter her from pursuing what is rightfully hers—a place in the Chancian commonwealth.
Seranai sighs, feeling tired. Beyond the tented overhang the rain is slowing. It feels, to her, like the calm before the storm. When did it become night? She did not notice the darkness creeping across her skin like a blanket. She fidgets against the shattered whalebone netting of her gown, feeling annoyance rooting within her as her backside throbs.
“Roberts!”
The disembodied voice that is carried down the road by a gust of stinging wind draws her back into the shadows. Her cautious grey eyes study the street in the darkness. Up ahead, she can just make out the lean figure of a man hesitating upon the drenched stones. His curly black hair hangs down into his eyes. Seranai wonders when he turned the corner, and how long he has been standing there. She ought to have been paying better attention. It is not wise for a woman to be out alone this close to the slums of Chancey once night has fallen.
A second figure emerges from a nearby door. The man with the unruly dark hair tenses visibly at his appearance. Seranai strains her ears to hear the conversation that passes between them. The second man in the street is a full head taller than the first. His rounded shoulders are slightly bowed as he leans in the black-haired man’s direction.
“Are you Roberts the Valiant?”
The black-haired man is silent for several moments. Seranai frowns at the mention of his Cairan title, quickly losing interest in the interaction. She has never cared for the matters of her people, and even this proximity to them, now, makes her skin itch with impatience.
“I am,” the man called Roberts answers at last. Suspicious, he adds, “Who wants to know?”
“Nobody,” the second man says. Seranai glances up at the implication in his tone, feeling her breathing catch in her throat. Even from where she stands, Seranai can see the man flash Roberts a knowing grin.
A memory springs to the forefront of Seranai’s mind with startling clarity. She sees herself as a child, clinging to her mother’s hand in the marketplace. Her father had just died. It was the custom of Cairans to offer gifts to grieving widows, and so for days after his death men and women arrived at the door with baskets full of all sorts of food and goods. That morning, however, as they stood in the marketplace, a dark man approached them. He handed Seranai’s mother a glittering golden band set with blood red rubies. Her mother gasped at the sight.
Who is this
from? Her trembling voice barely rose above a whisper.
Nobody. The word was swaddled in the man’s sugared laugh. And then he was gone.
Later that night, as Seranai watched the light of the candles dance in the faceted surface of the gems, she asked her mother the question that had haunted her all afternoon.
How can something so beautiful come from nobody at all?
Not nobody, darling. Her mother smoothed back her white locks of hair. Her eyes were red and raw from crying. The Cairan king.
But why wouldn’t he just say that?
We don’t speak our leader’s name out in the streets.
Why not? Seranai was intrigued, but only mildly. She yawned, and the red light of the rubies stretched and glimmered between her fluttering lashes. Her mother smiled down at her with sadness in her eyes.
It wouldn’t be safe to acknowledge his existence. Not within hearing of the Chancians and their loyalties.
Seranai thought of the lavish king that resided within the great, grey palace walls. He had just recently heralded the coming of his second son, sending a parade of courtiers and jesters alike dancing wildly through the narrow streets of Chancey—flanked as always by an army of golden guardians. She had been mesmerized by the grandeur of it all—the untouchable opulence.
I thought King Rowland was our king.
At that, her mother’s gaze went dark. She stared off into the shadows, her lips pressed together in a thin line. When she spoke, her voice was careful.