“I don’t know. Because he’s an evil puppet master who likes to toy with people?”
“Exactly,” Luvian said, to her surprise. She was being facetious. “A puppet master, pulling the strings. So we need to know what strings he holds. Understanding that will lead us back to Mael, or whoever he is. We know Vespus is the queen’s half-brother, and that he owns an Alvus tree farm in the north of Rhylla. That he was the ambassador in Rhannon for seven years—”
“Until he was banished for trying to manipulate my father into granting him land in Rhannon,” Sorrow added. “He first went after it during the war, trying to convince his half-sister to not sign the treaty unless the North Marches was granted to him. Charon said it was something to do with the conditions in the north of Rhannon, and the south of Rhylla being the best place for Alvus to grow. He needs the land there for it.”
“But Melisia wouldn’t give it to him. Either in Rhylla, or Rhannon. That sounds like Melisia doesn’t care if her brother’s business fails.”
“I suppose.”
“Which means she doesn’t support it, for whatever reason.” Luvian twisted round and made another note on his papers. “So he tried to prolong the war, and was denied. Next, he asked his sister for the ambassador’s job, and started working on Harun, who eventually sent him away because of it.”
“And in the meantime, he’d already started grooming a boy to be Mael, and Rhannon to accept him through the portraits, as another backup,” Sorrow said.
Luvian nodded, then frowned. “This is a huge amount of effort to go to just to get some land to grow trees on. He’s a lord – half-brother to a queen.”
“Maybe that’s it. It’s pride. Something only he can do, with his ability. Maybe he wants to be seen as special, or worthy in his own right. The only person in the world who can grow Alvus trees?”
Luvian shook his head. “It seems a remarkably unambitious goal for someone like Vespus. Get some land, be a great farmer… And like I said, so much work. Eighteen years of scheming and planning.”
“Charon said it wouldn’t just be land. It would be all of Rhannon. If he put a puppet ruler in charge, he could rule Rhannon through them, as his sister rules Rhylla,” Sorrow finished for him. “Maybe that’s his plan. He wants to play at being king, make himself Melisia’s equal.”
“Maybe,” Luvian said, but he didn’t sound convinced.
Sorrow was suddenly exhausted, too many thoughts in her mind. She lay back on Luvian’s bed, and sighed. She hadn’t expected it to be easy to unravel the mystery of Mael, but all their leads so far – Corius the tailor, long dead; the mysterious painter – had led to nothing but more doubts. There was no sign of the woman who’d supposedly raised Mael. The only solid thing they had was Vespus being in the background, pulling the strings, weaving his web. That was a problem, and one she planned on dealing with.
But still, she wanted, needed, to know whether or not the boy was a fake. She had to know one way or the other. She’d been on the bridge, seen the Archior, and she knew logically he couldn’t be, but as long as there was the tiniest doubt in her mind, she’d never rest.
All those times he’d smiled at her, defended her. He’d tried to make Harun apologize to her. He’d offered to sacrifice himself to the Sons of Rhannon so she could get away.
He believed he was her brother. He wanted to be.
And in the darkest, most secret part of her heart, buried so deeply she could barely acknowledge it, she realized she no longer hated the idea of it.
Even though she knew it was impossible, even though he was trying to take her job, and her home, and Rhannon from her…
Because if he was her brother, then she wasn’t alone.
But she couldn’t let him in until she knew for sure.
She couldn’t do anything until she knew for sure. So she had to find out who he really was.
“What’s the plan, then?” she asked.
“Focus on ‘election stuff’.”
Sorrow heard the smile in his voice and reached for one of his pillows, throwing it at him.
“Concentrate on wooing everyone at the Naming, and then channel that into efforts in Rhannon.” The pillow landed back beside her head, and Sorrow tucked it beneath her.
“And what will you be doing?”
“I will be using my enormous brain and intellect to cope with being your advisor and continuing to investigate Vespus, and Mael.” He paused, and then the bed dipped as he sat beside her. She turned to look at him.
“But I don’t want you to get bogged down in that obsession and sabotage your own campaign. Especially now you have the Sons of Rhannon to take on that duty.” He smiled at her. “If we can somehow prove he’s an imposter, then the election is undoubtedly sewn up. But, even if we can’t prove it, I think you can win anyway. I know you can. So your job is to focus on that.”
Sorrow reached for his hand and squeezed. “You’re a good advisor. A good friend. I’m so glad to know you,” she said as she released him.
Luvian stiffened, closing his eyes, and Sorrow wondered if she’d upset him. “Of course you are, who wouldn’t be?” he said finally, opening his eyes and sitting up. “Let’s go and find these kishkies.”
They took Dain with them to the restaurant Xalys had recommended, asking for a table for three. She seemed confused to be included, and Sorrow couldn’t blame her, given the way she’d treated her so far. Sorrow was ashamed of her behaviour, and so she made an effort to talk to her while they waited for their food.
“Where are you from?” Sorrow asked.
“The East Marches,” Dain replied.
Sorrow waited to see if she’d add anything else, but when it became apparent she had no plans to, she asked, “What made you choose to join the Decorum Ward?”
“It’s a job,” she said in her soft-as-velvet voice. “Papa is dead, Mam’s not up to much and I’m the eldest of five. We needed money, and it pays. Besides, there aren’t a lot of jobs out there and I’m… Well, I’m big. It made advancing through the ranks a lot easier. And the higher you go, the more money there is, so…” She trailed off, head lowering a fraction, and Sorrow’s heart twisted in sympathy for her.
She knew what it was to have few – or no – choices about the path your life took. Dain was doing what she had to, for herself and her family, and that was something Sorrow had come to understand. And if Dain felt that way, perhaps others in the Decorum Ward did too. Perhaps they needed a chance somewhere else.
“Do you like it?” Sorrow’s voice was soft.
Dain stared at her, and Luvian turned to her too.
“I don’t like throwing my weight around,” Dain said, her voice barely a whisper. “I don’t like bullies. Or cowards. The two tend to go hand in hand. I don’t want to become one.”
Sorrow understood then why Dain had stood up for her at the bridge.
She smiled at her guard. “A lot of things are going to change when I win the election,” she said as their food arrived. “For everyone. For you, if you want. I’ll probably need a constant bodyguard, someone I employ.”
Dain nodded, her eyes lowered, and Sorrow reached for one of the kishkies.
The pastries were nice, lightly spiced meat inside a flaky shell, dusted with icing sugar. The combination of flavours and textures was strange but incredibly tasty, and the owners were delighted to have Rhannish guests. They’d brought out more varieties than the table ordered, and plied them with honey wine. Like all Rhyllians they spoke Rhannish, and Sorrow leant over to Luvian and told him that when she was chancellor she wanted to make learning Rhyllian available to everyone.
“All the languages,” she’d said, her voice slurring gently. “All of them. If I had an ability like the Rhyllians, it’s what I’d want. Imagine it.” She tried to say something in Rhyllian, mangling the phrase and causing the Rhyllians at the table next to theirs to look disgusted.
“That’s enough wine for you.” Luvian looked a little worse for wear himself. For once h
e’d taken off his frock coat and was sitting in his shirtsleeves, the cuffs rolled up to his elbows, revealing surprisingly toned forearms. He tried to take her glass from her, but she slapped his hand away, and drained the contents.
“That’s enough wine for me,” she said as she put the glass down a little harder than she’d meant to. “Come on, we have an early start.”
It was the wine that made Sorrow do it.
They were walking back, chattering loudly, when Sorrow saw the shop. The sign on the door said open, and so she paused, bending down, pretending to adjust the buckle on her shoe.
“Are you going to be ill?” Luvian turned and asked.
“No, my feet hurt. New shoes.”
“Do you need me to carry you?” He looked serious.
“No, I’d snap you like a sapling. I’ll sit down for a minute. You go on, Dain can walk with me.”
Luvian shrugged and began to head to the inn, pausing once to look back at her. She made a pantomime of grimacing and rubbing her heel, watching through her hair until he’d turned a corner and was out of sight. Then, looking at Dain, she pressed a finger to her lips and beckoned her towards the shop.
When they arrived at the inn, Luvian was standing at the bar, having an animated conversation with the barkeep, and he turned to wave Sorrow over.
She pointed at her shoes, faking a limp, and then disappeared up the stairs to the corridor the Rhannish party had hired for themselves, Dain guarding the corridor this time not from danger but from her advisor, while she slipped into Luvian’s room and left a parcel on the bed, smiling to herself.
She’d bought him a set of clay paints, three brushes, and a small sketch pad. She didn’t know why, only that she’d wanted him to have them, because once he’d wanted to be an artist and maybe it wasn’t too late. She wanted to give him something to thank him. Something to give him the hope he’d given her. The same kind of friendship. For the first time since she’d lost Rasmus, life felt as though it had something worth fighting for in it again that was more than revenge. Something long-term.
Adavaria
Adavaria was a maze of dense stone streets and cobbled pavements, so different to Rhannon, and Sorrow drank it all in. Where Rhannish houses and shops were usually squat, white buildings, spaced apart to help the heat escape, Rhyllian buildings were tall, at least two storeys, pressed together in rows with only the occasional alley to separate them. Chimneys emerged from the slate roofs, perches for the maglings – dark, small birds that were considered pests by the Rhyllians, but that Sorrow, who’d never seen them before, found oddly sweet.
It was a pretty town, Sorrow realized, as they moved slowly along, progress hampered by pedestrians and other carriages. Doorsteps were scrubbed clean, lined with mats decorated with Rhyllian script. Outside one door a fat orange cat lazed, watching the carriage with an unimpressed look on its squashed face. The doors themselves were painted brightly; cheerful curtains framed windows that housed window boxes full of flowers Sorrow didn’t know the names of. There were wreaths of flowers on every door too, and Luvian told her they’d been made especially for the Naming, and would be tossed down to carpet the streets when the queen and her husband took baby Aralie on her first tour of the country.
Sorrow admired it all. It would be easy to make Rhannish towns look as lovely as these, and she asked Luvian to add it to her plans.
People turned curiously as the carriage made its way along the wide streets, pointing it out to each other, some even waving. At Luvian’s quiet command Sorrow waved back, surprised when the people responded, more of them turning, coming out of their homes and from shops to see what the fuss was about.
“I wonder if we could do the same thing on the way home,” Luvian said, pulling out his ever-present notebook.
“Here? Or in Rhannon?” Sorrow remembered the Sons of Rhannon, and thought of all the things that could be thrown at her, or fired at her, as she leant out of a carriage.
He looked thoughtful. “Yes, in Rhannon too. Dain will be there, and it’ll make you look confident and unafraid. Good leadership qualities.”
“Great,” Sorrow said through her teeth as she smiled out at the rows of Rhyllians.
By the time they arrived at the castle, both of Sorrow’s arms ached from waving. They drew up to the gates, and Luvian gave their names to the forbidding-looking guard who approached the carriage with a slim folder in his hands, crossing them off as he found their names on the list within.
“Who’s that?” He nodded to Dain.
“My bodyguard, Dain…” Sorrow realized she had no idea if Dain was a first name, a surname, or even a nickname.
“Dain Waters, sir,” Dain offered. “Commander Dain Waters.”
The man looked at his list. “We weren’t expecting a third member of the second Rhannish party.”
“Surely we’re not the first to bring staff?” Luvian said.
“You’re the first not to tell us,” the Rhyllian said, deadpan.
“She’s a new addition,” Sorrow said. “I don’t know if news reached you of the incident in Prekara two nights ago, but I was attacked. Commander Dain was assigned to me for my protection that night.”
The guard gave her a long look, and then silently passed the list, and a pen, through the window.
Sorrow wrote Dain’s name, and role, and where she was from, beneath her own details, and handed the folder back to the man, who read it, and then raised his hand to open the gates.
“Enjoy your stay, Miss Ventaxis.” The man’s voice was a fraction warmer as the carriage lurched to life and they entered the castle complex. “Welcome to Castle Adavaria.”
Castle Adavaria was situated on an island, at the end of a long, narrow drive over the water. Luvian leant out of the window, peering into the huge lake that surrounded the castle.
“What are you doing?” Sorrow asked.
“Legend has it there are merrow in there. Merpeople. They help guard the castle by sinking any boats that try to reach it and eating the sailors.”
“That’s not true.”
“Only one way to find out,” he grinned.
She didn’t believe him – surely Rasmus would have told her about it – but that didn’t stop Sorrow gazing out of the window too. She did feel safer here, though, she realized. No one could get to the castle over land without dealing with guards, and even if someone did manage to row across the lake, the fifteen-foot walls that bordered the island would deter anyone from trying to get into the castle, where they would only face more guards anyway.
Though the entire complex was referred to as “the castle”, it was actually multiple buildings acting as satellites around the main keep, which was home to the royal family. The keep was the oldest liveable part of Castle Adavaria, built as a replica of King Adavere’s castle, which had long since fallen victim to the weather. The rest of the complex was a hotchpotch of buildings: working spaces and chambers, guest quarters, the palaces of nobles who lived at court, servants’ housing, a theatre, and even a small market square, all showcasing centuries of Rhyllian architectural trends: pastel walls, soaring columns, exposed beams.
“All of the buildings are connected by those paths,” Luvian told her with a tour guide’s certainty as she stared at the covered walkways that stretched between the buildings. “Adavaria has the second highest annual rainfall in Rhylla, so it makes sense. There’s even a kind of awning that rolls down to cover it completely, in case the rain falls at an angle. It has windows cut in and everything.”
“Fascinating,” Sorrow said, more sharply than she meant to as she spotted a tall Rhyllian emerging from the main keep. A heartbeat later she saw it wasn’t Rasmus and relaxed slightly. “Sorry,” she said to Luvian when she saw his wounded expression. “I’m anxious to finally get out of this carriage.”
As she said it, the carriage rumbled to a stop alongside a flight of stone steps leading to a small, pastel-blue palace. The doors at the top of the stairs opened at once, and a Rhyllian
woman with pale gold hair appeared, resplendent in a purple long coat and carrying a slim folder, tripping down the stairs and opening Sorrow’s door.
“Arventis li Rhylla, Miss Ventaxis. Welcome to Rhylla,” she said in Rhyllian, then Rhannish. “We’re delighted to have you here. My name is Deryn. And you must be Luvian Fen,” Deryn said as Luvian climbed out. “Arventis li Adavaria. Be welcome in our land and home.”
She paused as Dain climbed out. “We weren’t expecting a third person…”
“No, this is Commander Dain, my bodyguard. After an incident in Rhannon we thought it prudent,” Sorrow said.
“I’m not sure we have room…”
“I can sleep on the floor of Miss Ventaxis’s quarters,” Dain said.
“You cannot.” Deryn looked outraged at the mere idea of it. “We won’t have guests on the floors like animals. I’ll see what I can do.”
“You are kind,” Luvian said in Rhyllian.
Deryn appeared slightly mollified by his use of her language. “Yes, well. Shall we?” She led them up the stairs, Dain following silently, into the hallway of the castle. To the right Sorrow could see a cosy parlour, the walls covered in rose-patterned paper, tall vases of the same bloom on the tables dotted between damask-covered chairs and love seats. In the corner stood a small bar, complete with attentive-looking Rhyllian butler, who nodded at them as they passed.
“We call this building the small palace,” Deryn said as she opened a door on the left to reveal a small but well-stocked library, before leading them to a short passageway lined with abstract prints, and up a well-worn staircase to the second floor. “Long ago it was used as the home of the royal children, but Her Majesty’s great-grandmother changed the practice and kept her children with her at the royal palace. It’s been used as guest quarters since, though this is the first time it’s been full.” She gave Dain a concerned look.
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