by Sarra Cannon
“No, I don’t,” she said.
“That’s a shame,” he said, displeasure flickering across his face.
It would have been far better had she been able to claim some engagement. Her lack of invitations alarmed him, and she knew he must be particularly disappointed that she wasn’t to spend the evening with Lach. She had no one to cover for her, though, so it was best she not have to try and invent something plausible. It kept things as simple as they could be, considering the circumstances.
“Don’t wait up for me. I’ll see you tomorrow at breakfast,” he said, and like a dutiful daughter she turned her cheek for a kiss. His lips didn’t even make contact, and then he was gone.
Feeling as though she might fly out of her skin, Cianne forced herself into an appearance of tranquility, taking a few more slow bites of her dinner before wiping her own mouth and leaving the table. She hurried along the corridors as much as she could without giving the appearance that she was up to something. Her heart pounded and her palms were sweating as she threw herself into her room.
Vivie had the evening off, which was good for Cianne. Another servant had already seen to her fire, and no one would venture all the way up to her quarters unless she summoned them, which meant no one should notice her absence from the manor.
Unless anyone sees you spying on them, that is.
She ignored the thought, willing her fingers steady so that she could get herself out of her casual dinner gown and into her leathers as swiftly as possible. Strapping her gear over her back and sheathing her daggers, she climbed through her window and out into the night.
Fortunately for her, a mist was rolling in off the sea, providing her with additional cover. Unfortunately for her, it also decreased the range of visibility, so she had to move more slowly than she would have liked, her sense of impatience rising until she thought it would make her run mad. In the enclave she had no choice but to tail her father over the cobbled streets, keeping to the shadows and maintaining a considerable distance so as to avoid detection. Unlike him, though, she wore boots she’d had specially designed, the soles soft and pliable so that they were soundless, while her father’s fashionable shoes clicked with his every step, helping her to track him.
She slipped up and over the enclave wall at one of her usual spots and resumed tailing her father. Now that they were in the city proper she could do so from rooftops. The height should have provided her with an advantage, but the misty night was working against her. She had to hunker down, eyes straining, in order not to lose sight of him, moving at a crouch that made her thighs burn in protest. Ignoring the discomfort, she kept pace with her father.
No one joined him in his walk. He had turned his collar up and he walked with purpose, head bent, looking like any other Cearovan citizen hurrying to get inside, away from the damp chill. The streets were less crowded than usual due to the weather, and Cianne didn’t notice anyone who struck her as suspicious, but then there was no real way of telling. Would whoever her father’s secret partners were keep lookouts along the streets, taking note of his progress and ensuring that he made it to the meeting safely without anyone following him, or did they try to involve as few people as possible, the better to keep things secret?
He paused when he reached a warehouse not far from the Mallay enclave. A man and a young woman loitered near the door, the woman pressed up against the warehouse wall while the man leaned over her in a manner that suggested they were seconds away from a heated embrace. Daerwyn opened his coat enough to flash something at them, and the man and woman resumed their charade as he slipped through the door.
Relief flooded Cianne. The meeting’s being held in a warehouse made her task much easier as it would offer her plenty of hiding places. True, it meant guards could be hiding as well, but she would take whatever small advantage she could get. Slipping into the building through one of the high window vents would be an easy matter for her, and if she were fortunate she could take up a perch in the rafters, which would give her a bird’s-eye view of everything below her, including any hidden guards. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she said a little prayer to Cearus, asking him to ensure that her father’s and his conspirators’ voices would be loud enough for her to hear, or that the warehouse would have the courtesy of having excellent acoustics, so that their voices might carry.
Skirting the warehouse, she leapt from roof to roof, surveying the building’s perimeter. She saw another man a short distance from the south side of the building, and a couple of women talking and laughing half a street away from the building’s eastern side. Best to assume they were all guards, she decided, and used the western wall as her entry point.
By the time she was inside the meeting had begun. The participants weren’t far from her, but their voices were a murmur that was too hard for her to make out. She had no choice but to get closer. Lowering herself to a beam spanning the length of the warehouse, she hugged it, shimmying along until she was close enough to hear. She would have liked to have been farther away from the participants, giving her more of a lead should she need to flee, but there was nothing else for it.
“…making noise again,” a woman was saying. The warehouse was very dim, which provided cover of darkness for Cianne but made it difficult for her to see who was below. All she could discern was that the woman appeared to have light hair, and that she was shorter than Daerwyn, though nearly as broad. The coiled energy with which she moved suggested a powerful woman, one comfortable with the physicality of her own body.
In addition to Daerwyn and the woman, Cianne saw one hooded and cloaked figure, a man with flaming red hair, and another woman, this one with short, dark hair.
“Aren’t they always?” Elder Borean’s voice came from under the hood. That made two people Cianne knew. As for the others, they were unfamiliar, and she was too far away and the light too low for her to be able to make out the details of their clothing or appearance. Were they Caravanists, as the proximity to the Mallay enclave might suggest? Perhaps at least one was a Coin Master?
“I don’t think you appreciate the gravity of this situation,” the dark-haired woman said. Her voice was a velvety purr, but a steely note lay beneath. “They’ve taken it upon themselves to demand we pay more for their silence.”
“Have we any leverage we can use?” the other man asked. His voice was low, gravelly, and not one Cianne could recall ever having heard before.
“There’s always leverage,” Daerwyn said dismissively. “It’s simply a matter of finding it.”
“I’ll see what I can dig up,” the light-haired woman said.
“They won’t be easily dissuaded,” the dark-haired woman warned, sounding dissatisfied.
“They never are, are they?” Elder Borean asked.
“That is the price we knew we would have to pay in order to ensure conditions remain favorable to us,” the other man said.
No one argued with him.
“What of our friends in Vyramas? What news do they send of this succession battle?” Elder Borean asked.
“It’s no closer to ending than it ever has been,” the light-haired woman said. “Our sources take care to sow the seeds of discontent to ensure the battle continues to drag out.”
“At this rate, none of us will live to see a successor,” the other man said with a sardonic chuckle.
“Would that we could be so fortunate,” Daerwyn said.
“That is good news indeed,” Elder Borean said. “Any other matters of concern?”
“One,” the dark-haired woman said. She strutted from one person to the next, making a circuit of the meeting’s attendees. Every one of them stiffened at her approach. “One of our House members doesn’t want to be a good little boy and tow the line. He’s asking questions. Uncomfortable questions.”
“Get on with it, Farla,” the other man growled. “How close is he?”
“Rather closer than anyone else has been,” she said. “I can’t help but admire his tenacity, to be honest
.”
“You sound smug for someone who was so worried about our miner friends a moment ago,” the light-haired woman noted.
“That’s because I, like my good friend Daerwyn here, know how to deal with the members of my House who run amok,” she said.
“It’s come to that?” Elder Borean asked, sounding weary.
“Like your man Stowley, I’m afraid the boy is starting to connect too many of the dots, wondering how the poor royals—”
“Enough,” the light-haired woman said, moving aggressively toward the dark-haired one. “We get your point. Take care of it, as Elder Borean and Daerwyn did.”
Cianne’s blood ran cold, and she felt so faint she had to clutch the beam, her lungs burning as the force compressed her chest. A violent shiver tore through her, and she clamped her mouth shut to prevent her teeth from chattering. The floor of the warehouse seemed to rush toward her and then away, toward her and away again.
“Mustn’t forget dear Moiria,” Farla, the dark-haired woman, said. “But, then, I suppose she has you to turn to, doesn’t she Daerwyn? So sad when one can’t keep one’s spouse in line.”
Rage swept through Cianne, mingling with the fear until her pulse pounded with such force she felt her head might burst. She wanted to scream, wanted to tear every beam from the rafters and collapse the building in on its occupants, even if it meant she would be crushed along with them.
“…can’t afford to allow ourselves to be divided,” Elder Borean was saying, his voice sharp. He sounded as though he were speaking from the bottom of a well. Screwing her eyes closed, Cianne pressed her face to the beam, a splinter biting into her cheek. She forced her eyes open again, forced herself to watch and listen. “We’ve held ourselves together for twenty years. We can’t stop now.”
“Oh, wouldn’t the other Houses love that? Wouldn’t the nobles?” the other man said.
“Never let yourselves forget that any one of the players would gladly throw another to the wolves, allow them to take the fall,” Daerwyn added in a low voice.
“Find that leverage,” Farla said to the fair-haired woman. “Despite what the rest of you may believe, we cannot make coin appear out of thin air. We have a great deal of it, yes, but there’s only so much to go around.”
With that, the meeting dispersed, the attendees heading out one at a time, using both the north and south entrances. Still clinging to her beam, Cianne didn’t move a muscle. She couldn’t have even if she had tried. She was paralyzed, her limbs locked into place even as the warehouse seemed to whirl around her. The meeting attendees took their lanterns with them, plunging the building into darkness, and she allowed her tears to fall while she waited for her eyes to adjust.
Peeling herself from the beam at last, Cianne’s knees shook as she rose into a crouch. She dashed at her face with her hand, forcing herself to breathe.
I must get to Kila’s, she told herself. I have to get there undetected and tell him what I heard.
Moving was arduous, but she made herself do it anyway. She couldn’t risk something happening to her, couldn’t risk the information she’d gone to such lengths to obtain dying with her. Of all the horrible things she had imagined, she had never once entertained the thought that it could be something of this magnitude. How could she have? How could she ever have dreamed that her father had killed her mother, and was involved in the slaughter of the entire royal family?
Chapter 30
Alarm shot through Kila when Cianne staggered into his lodgings, bringing a metallic taste to his mouth.
“Cianne, what is it? Are you hurt?”
Despite his urgent tone, she didn’t seem to hear him. She stared blindly ahead, as if she were looking straight through him, leaving him sick with fear.
“Are you wounded?” he asked again. When she still didn’t respond, he grabbed her and began moving her limbs around, searching for an injury that didn’t exist. From the way she was behaving he had feared she was suffering from shock brought on by pain and blood loss, but then he realized that though her face was colorless, no trail of blood streaked his floor. Her shock must have been caused by something she had learned.
“What is it?” he asked, guiding her into a chair, touching her face with gentle hands. “What is it? What’s happened? What can I do?”
He was so distracted, so distraught by her catatonia, that he didn’t notice they had company until someone seized him. Pinning his wrists behind him, his captor pressed a blade to his throat.
“What were you doing at that warehouse?” a familiar voice growled in his ear.
“Cianne,” he choked, straining to reach for her even though he knew it was futile. A woman he’d never seen before had her arm around Cianne’s shoulders, a blade held to her throat as well. “Don’t harm her. Please, I beg you, don’t harm her. She’s not well.”
The woman holding Cianne flicked her eyes toward Kila’s captor, who tightened her grip on him.
“What were you doing at that warehouse?” his captor repeated.
At last the voice pricked the bubble of panic surrounding him, and he tried to no avail to turn his head so he could look at her face.
“Chief Flim?” he asked, his voice ringing with disbelief.
“I won’t ask you again.”
If Kila thought he’d been worried before, he had known nothing. His fear was so palpable he felt as if it could crush him. He had been so certain no one had seen him, that he had made it back to his lodgings without anyone following him. Staying far from the warehouse, he had walked in a wide circle around it, studying the streets, searching for any clue he could find. He hadn’t seen a thing that had given him pause, and that worried him more than anything.
“Do you think I’ll answer that?” he asked harshly. “You may as well slit my throat now, spill my blood all over this floor.”
“Flim,” the other woman said, her voice high and thin.
“What?” the chief barked.
“This is Cianne Wyland.”
“What? They know. House Staerleigh knows,” the chief said, and now she was the one who sounded terrified.
To Kila’s surprise, Cianne snapped out of her stupor. While her captor was distracted, she bent back her assailant’s finger, causing the woman to cry out and drop her dagger.
“Don’t move!” Flim ordered, the words cracking through the room, even though she spoke in a low voice. “I will kill him.”
“Not if I kill you first,” Cianne said in a rasping voice that sounded nothing like her own.
“Stop,” Cianne’s assailant gasped, cradling her injured hand against her chest, her face white. “You don’t understand. She’s Annalith’s daughter.”
“Why are you talking about my mother?” Cianne asked, so viciously her assailant flinched away.
“I’m not letting him go until I know why they were at that warehouse,” Chief Flim said. She hadn’t let her guard down in the slightest, and Kila wasn’t about to test her. The pieces were all jumbled, and he couldn’t make sense of anything that was happening, not why the chief and this other woman were in his lodgings, not why Cianne was acting as though she’d lost contact with reality, and least of all why the other woman was bringing Cianne’s long-dead mother into the discussion.
Well, I suppose I’d best talk, then. See if I can’t figure out what’s going on and use it to find a way to get us out of this mess.
“We’ve been looking into House Staerleigh for weeks,” Kila said, trying to catch Cianne’s eye. It was no use as she was staring wild-eyed at her assailant.
“Why?” Flim asked.
“Because we suspected they had something to do with Toran Stowley’s death.”
The blade eased away from his throat a bit. Not enough to convince him it was safe to move, but enough that cold steel no longer bit at his neck, which made him feel considerably better.
“I thought we had an agreement.”
“Oh, well, forgive me for worrying about trusting you,” Kila said, his t
one dripping sarcasm. His adrenaline was pumping. “Clearly that was a mistake on my part.”
Letting out an irked noise, Flim eased up a little more but still didn’t release him. Kila deduced she worried it might not be the wisest course of action, considering that Cianne’s murderous glare was now directed at Flim.
“Cianne’s not involved. I would have known,” the other assailant said, her eyes creased at the corners in pain.
“Would you? What if she’s being recruited?” Flim asked.
With a bitter bark of a laugh, Cianne said, “Considering my own father has been lying to me about everything for the last decade, he must be using the subtlest of all recruitment tactics. You’ve been lying too, apparently.” She rounded on the other woman, who cringed.
“Cianne, who is that?” Kila asked.
“Vivie. My maid.”
“I thought you were suspicious of the House members,” Kila said to the chief.
“As you know, trust is a fragile thing,” she snapped.
“Stop. We all need to stop,” Vivie said. Keeping wary eyes on Cianne, she pulled herself up off the floor, her uninjured hand held out in a placating gesture.
“I want to know why you brought up my mother,” Cianne said, and it was obvious she intended to be anything but placated.
“Because your mother is alive.”
“Vivie!” Flim snapped.
Cianne blanched and swayed on her feet. Vivie used her good hand to prod Cianne back into her chair.
“We’re not working with the House,” Kila said. Gaping holes still prevented him from seeing the full picture, but he was beginning to put the pieces together.
“How can my mother be alive? Where is she?” Cianne demanded, directing a fierce glare at Vivie.
“I’ll tell you everything, I promise. But first we need to know what you were doing tonight. It’s important, Cianne. I wouldn’t make you wait otherwise, I hope you know that,” Vivie said, her voice strained.
“No. First you tell me where my mother is. You tell me who you are and what you’re doing,” Cianne said. “I won’t tell you a thing I heard until I know that.”