She snorted. “Please. When has a dungeon ever held the likes of us?”
As if on cue, heavy, clomping footsteps alerted them to the presence of a Koravian guard lumbering into the chamber. He approached wordlessly, peering down at Scratch over a full brown beard. In Ivinscont, beards were forbidden for members of the Kings Guard. If Frances took the throne, Scratch might advise her to let her Guard keep the beards. The effect of wild hair over a proper uniform was a touch terrifying.
“Keyes,” he growled. “Ursus. You’ll follow me.”
Scratch heaved herself to standing, shooting James a triumphant smirk before blinking away spots of dizziness. She hadn’t had a proper meal since leaving Nana’s, and the hunger was starting to get to her. She found an uneasy balance as the guard opened their cells and led them out of the dungeons, Scratch and James following the hulking man like a pair of dazed ducklings.
For fifteen years, Scratch had heard tales of Koravia, those black horses and wild-eyed riders wielding potion-dipped spears, trampling innocent Ivinscontians underfoot. She had imagined that Koravia’s castle would be somewhat akin to a dark manor on a hill, with green, smoky plumes from alchemical chambers off-gassing through turret-y chimneys, turning perpetual night starless. The sort of place that attracted stray lightning bolts and feral black cats, wizened witches prowling the halls with phials of poison clinking under their threadbare robes.
After everything else, Scratch should have expected to be wrong about this, too.
The Koravian castle looked like the Ivinscontian castle. Eerily so. Just as in Ivinscont, paintings lined the walls here, depicting scenes of military triumph. In them, Scratch could easily spot the Ivinscontians: bloody throngs of crimson fighters, teeth bared, weapons crude but efficient. There were axes and bludgeons alongside the broadswords and lances, poking through the churning metal and horseflesh that composed the undulating Ivinscontian force. The national crimson had looked so prim in Ivinscont’s pictures. Here in Koravia, it was a split vein. No, a disembowelment, visceral and gushing, offal and debris spewing forth in a wet, violent wave.
The rugs in Koravia were similar, too. And the paneling, the brass, the busts, the heavy doors lining halls wide enough to ride a chariot through. The differences were scant, the most prominent being the color: blue instead of red. Calming but impersonal, like the still surface of a sleeping lake. And speaking of lakes: there were nature scenes here. Every third painting or tapestry was meadow instead of war, or valley instead of war, or even small idyllic village instead of war. These pieces looked newer than their bloody brethren, the colors more vibrant and with fewer spots bleached pale by sunlight.
Scratch was admiring a particularly pretty tapestry of a dog resting among blue flowers when the guard stopped abruptly to rap on a shut door.
“Ursus,” he growled. “You’re here.”
James hesitated. “Where are you taking her?”
The guard didn’t answer, instead narrowing his eyes and curving his impressive body, casting a shadow over James’s slighter frame.
“Th-there, you said? Good show. I’ll just . . .”
The door swung open. “James!” Vel cried, ducking out into the hallway. His steps stuttered to a halt when he reached the guard. “Oh.”
“I’ll go in, shall I?” James swallowed, pointing toward the room. “Sorry, Scratch.”
There was movement from inside. “Scratch?”
And, oh, the voice made her ache. Its low, bassoon timbre lit by the hot coals of Brella’s tight, restrained anger. And the hope in it, a simple, golden thread that tugged at Scratch’s soft places. Maybe it was the blood bond. Maybe it was something else, something terrifying and needy. Scratch wanted to crawl inside the voice and sleep for a few days, wrapped in the overwhelming warmth of it.
“No, Brella.” Vel gripped James by the arm and dragged him into the room, James mouthing apologies until the door closed with a rug-deadened thunk.
“Well.” It took locking her knees and squeezing her fist to keep her from ripping open the door and flinging herself into Brella’s arms like the weak-willed idiot she felt herself becoming. Instead, she tried on a smile for the implacable guard. “Where are we off to?”
“To see the princess,” he muttered gruffly, striding down the hallway without waiting for a response. Scratch dashed after him, weary and bedraggled.
“Should I change?”
He didn’t slow. “Into what?”
She folded her arms over her chest. “Fair point.”
The princess waited only a few paces away in another shut room. Scratch felt herself panic, her mouth dry and heart speeding. She gulped. “Are you sure I shouldn’t change into something—”
The guard knocked on the door, silencing her. It creaked open and a squire popped out, primly dressed in Koravian blue, his silver hair tied in a neat knot at the nape of his neck.
“If you’ll follow me,” he offered, his voice low and emotionless. And, knowing that fleeing would be entirely useless, Scratch did.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The squire offered a single hand.
“Uh . . .”
“It’s a hand, not a weapon,” he assured her archly.
She eyed it. “I’m not used to . . . y’know. Hands.” She meant being treated like a lady, but he seemed to understand. He cocked an eyebrow.
“Very well. You may follow.”
He led her to a small, plush settee. She plopped onto it, bouncing against the tightly packed firmness. The whole room was done in shades of green and pink, a near-sickly spread of pastels. Large-paned windows stretched almost the entire length of the far wall, opening onto an interior courtyard. Through the evening darkness, Scratch could make out what appeared to be the tops of large topiaries.
The squire knocked on a second door within the room. Then he turned back.
“She’ll be in in a moment. I’ll be just outside.”
Scratch felt herself tense. There was something soothing about this fussy little man, and she didn’t want to see him go. Gods, she was wrecked—a lifetime trusting no one and suddenly she was leaning on absolute strangers because they offered her a hand.
“Uh, very well.”
His lips twitched, and he exited without a word. The room was silent once he left, the sort of silence that one could never come by in the echoey, drippy confines of a dungeon cell. This was silence dampened by pillows and rugs, soft and unnerving. In the space Scratch’s thoughts were surprisingly loud.
“Sergeant Major Keyes.”
She hopped to standing, her underfed brain swirling in protest. “Your Highness.”
Frances took a seat opposite the settee, smoothing her skirts over her lap. Her gown today was a deep, rich purple, like the colors of Ivinscont and Koravia blended together. Her hair was tied back, the black and white of her locks striping down either side of her head. She wore a simple golden circlet, not quite a crown but also not not a crown, a rather smart choice for a country-less princess taking refuge in another regent’s castle.
“Sit,” the pricess said. Scratch obeyed. “I suppose you’re not best pleased to see me.” Frances wasn’t looking directly at her, instead pointing her words somewhere over Scratch’s head.
“And why would that be, Highness?”
“Because I threw you in the dungeons. We don’t need to dance around it.”
She shifted in her seat. “I don’t blame you for that.”
Frances snorted, then caught herself, raising a delicate hand to her mouth. “I did it. Who else is there to blame?”
“As I see it, you didn’t have much choice.”
Frances met her gaze, vibrant green eyes narrowed. “Don’t try to flatter me, Sergeant Major. I haven’t the time.”
“I’m not.” She attempted a small smile, but it felt false. She let it drop away. “I’m an asset to you as either a price or a fighter. If I’m a price, I’ll be in the dungeons anyway. If I’m a fighter, you’d want to see whether my loyalty
would survive a trip to the dungeons. Am I right?”
Frances nodded tightly. “Yes.”
“Right. Meanwhile, you only had Brella’s word for my changed allegiance. Maisie, I’m sure, told you a great deal about Brella. You know Brella bribed someone in your castle to give her written decrees. You know that she gives information to Kyrians and Westerners about how their rights have been stripped by your father’s regime. All of this means that, while Brella has a great affinity for justice, she has little time for the rule of law. She’ll put her nation above everything, but she’ll do whatever’s necessary to do it. You can trust that her motives are good, but that you might not understand them. She respects you, but it’s likely she respects her methods more.” She paused, pressing her lips together, watching for any change in Frances’s expression. There was none. “You also know that she and Maisie fight like two penned bulls, which can’t help your image of who she is.”
Frances smirked. “You’re wrong about that. Maisie can fight with anyone. That’s part of her charm.”
Scratch was momentarily struck by how young Frances looked. Despite the worry lines and layered frock, she was just a kid. “Your Highness, if I may, what day is it?”
Frances’ smirk faded away. “The first of Balladeers.”
“So, tomorrow—”
“It’s my birthday, yes.” She smoothed her hair, though it was already perfectly in place. Her shoulders rose just a touch. “I’ll be eighteen.”
Scratch stepped away from that potentially dangerous path. “Right, well. You only had Brella’s word that I had defected. That, and your impression of who I am.”
“What do you suppose my impression of you is, Sergeant Major?”
“I’m the strategist who built the octagon.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” Frances rose to pour herself a cup of tea. She didn’t offer any to Scratch. “You may be a strong soldier, but I doubt you’re the only bright mind in the Ivinscontian Guard, despite Brella’s warning of your dangerousness.”
“Of course.” She nodded in deferential acknowledgment. “I mean to say that I wouldn’t fault you for thinking that I believed in your father’s cause.”
“You don’t?” Frances retook her seat, delicately balancing the teacup in two manicured fingers. “You’ve made a great deal of conquest for a nonbeliever.”
“The truth is, Highness, I didn’t do it for any goal aside from my own advancement,” she admitted, sitting in a truth that wouldn’t have bothered her only a week before.
“Hardly better. If you’re not hells-bent on invasion, you’re cravenly fighting for your own personal glory. How does that make you trustworthy?”
“I’m not saying you ought to find me trustworthy.” Frances froze at that, but Scratch went on. “Your name, Princess Frances of Ivinscont—”
“There are a few more names in there, but go on.”
“Yes, Highness. Your name has always held meaning. You are the most recent in a long line of royals. I am not.” Her palms began to sweat. She carefully laid her hands flat on her thighs. “I believed I was worth nothing. That I had to achieve something great to mean anything at all.”
“And now?”
“Now.” She looked away, then back again. “Now I’m not quite sure, but I’m beginning to think I hold some value outside of my accomplishments.”
The princess took a perfectly executed sip of tea. “Where are you going with this, Keyes?”
“I’m telling you that I understand why you put me in the dungeon.” She paused for a beat, then, “What I don’t understand is why you didn’t have anyone advising you to do so last night.”
Frances set down her cup. It rattled, just slightly. “I had Maisie.”
“Your lover.” She spoke quickly, because Frances was beginning to redden. “She has no military experience.”
“She is a member of an organization that has effectively undermined the Ivinscontian royal family,” Frances replied tartly.
Her own family, but Scratch didn’t press the point. “So is Brella, but she has a blind spot where strategy is concerned. Neither Shae has spent any time in the castle. They haven’t dealt with the king or his advisors, nor do they know what it’s like to go to war.”
“And you do.” Frances leaned back, her gaze assessing. “I stand by what I said, by the way.”
Scratch knit her brows, thinking back over their conversation. “When do you mean, Your Highness?”
“In Ivinscont. When we smoked Roselap in that little alcove. Nice spot, by the way. I hadn’t known it was there.” She crossed her legs, resting the teacup on her delicate knee. “I knew a secret passage out of the dungeons, but I didn’t know about a little strip of grass on my own palace grounds. It’s odd what you miss when you don’t know to look.”
“I found it by accident,” Scratch admitted.
“I found it by following you. You know, I presume, that my father was on track to make you Lady Commander.”
Scratch braced herself for the pain that wrapped around that loss. It came, but it had dulled significantly, a bruise fading to yellow and green. “I do.”
“You were the exception, and you might have changed the way he looks at people with backgrounds like yours. We’ll never know, of course.” She tapped her teacup. Dink, dink, dink. “I thought that if he could see you clearly, then maybe he could be led to clarity on the invasions.”
“His priority was expansion. If he saw me as anything, it was a tool toward that end.”
Frances gently nodded in acknowledgment. “You’re right, of course. But he was blind to anything outside of his own stubborn views. I thought that seeing you was deviation. It wasn’t. You had just made yourself the perfect, undeniable option. You fit yourself into his scheme.”
There was no reason to be offended. Still, it prickled. “And what could he have seen if he knew to look?”
“That the annexations were putting Ivinscont in danger,” she said fiercely. “Of course Koravia knew that he was taking countries. That my father was trying to make himself a stronger opponent if Koravia decided to attack again. The Koravian king also knew that he would have to attack before my father got too strong to defeat.”
Scratch swallowed. “Oh.”
“The king here is different. Instead of annexations, he’s formed peace treaties with neighboring nations. If Koravia decided to attack Ivinscont, five other armies would join them.”
“Well.” Scratch pursed her lips, thinking. “Your father wasn’t worried?”
“He thought that if he just got stronger—stronger, stronger, stronger—there would be nothing to worry about.” Her eyes were narrowed, the lines beside them pronounced. She shook her head. “He’s a fool.”
“Yes,” Scratch replied. “A fool with two new additions to his country. A fool who has a rather successful army at his back.”
“Of course you’d know all about that.” Frances eyed her, carefully tracking Scratch from pale head to scuffed boots. “And you think that, because you know how his army works, you should be my Lady Commander?”
“I’m not trying to be your Lady Commander.”
Frances stilled. “You’re not?”
“No,” Scratch said. “I want to be your Hand.”
It had come to her the night before while she watched Frances waffle over whether to lock her and James away. Frances needed more people, people with skills she didn’t have. Not that she wasn’t doing well on her own. Frances was formidable at seventeen and had already enacted a plan that threatened her very existence, let alone the fate of the people over whom she reigned. She had taken a leap, either recklessly or bravely or, most likely, a combination of the two. If nothing else, Scratch wanted to see that up close.
Frances was young. She had run without a real advisor and with no guarantee of success. Scratch might not have been in possession of that level of bravery, but neither did she have that degree of recklessness. She wasn’t idealistic, not yearning for a just nation like
the one Brella envisioned. Her mind wasn’t built for conjuring a destination, it was built for carefully laying each plank on the bridge that would lead there. Frances wanted to build; Scratch was a builder.
The princess reached absently for her teacup. She held it in her hands. She sipped. “Go on.”
“Strategy is of the utmost importance to you right now,” she said, feeling the momentum in her voice, the stirring in her chest. “I’m a strategist.”
“All right.” Frances rose and began to walk around the room, tapping her fingers against the teacup. The purple hue of her dress was so jarringly rich against the frippery of the room. “Why else?”
“I’ve spent the past decade in the Ivinscontian palace. I know how it operates for the most part. I’ve had to be observant.”
“And why is that?”
“Every social grace I have, I learned,” she said, remembering the sensation of moldy apple cores slipping between her skinny fingers. “I don’t know if you know this, but being an outsider as I am, eyes are always on me. If I fail, it was expected. If I succeed, I’m the exception. I have had to learn how the world operates because it does not operate for me.”
“Interesting.” Frances moved to the sideboard to refill her teacup. She paused. “Would you like some tea, Scratch?”
Hope unfurled a tentative petal in her chest. “Thank you.”
“Of course. How do you take it?”
“Milk and one sugar, please.”
“Perfectly proper indeed.” Frances grinned while Scratch tried not to think too hard about the reality of a princess serving her tea. “Any other professional recommendations to share?”
She received the tea with a quiet nod of thanks. “I’ve changed a great deal since I left the palace.”
Frances retook her seat. “Yes, I’ve seen your haircut.”
She grinned self-consciously, scratching at the back of her neck. “I’m less afraid, too.”
“I wasn’t aware that the architect of the Western Wilds annexation was afraid of anything.”
“Mostly, I was afraid of losing the life I had built. Then I lost it.” She shrugged. “There’s not much left to fear when the worst has already happened.”
Walk Between Worlds Page 19