Just One Knight

by Bridget Essex

  This is what love feels like.

  My mother loved us, all of us, her “blessed thieves,” she’d call us. She made us feel like there was nothing we couldn’t do.

  And, right now?

  That’s how Cinda is making me feel.

  I take a deep breath, glance at the assembled ladies in front of me.

  “It’s…good of you to be here tonight, my friends,” I say, and the words come out faltering a little until I clear my throat. “You had other places you could be, surely. Lellie—you’d be back at the knights’ barracks right now. Tahlia, I know you’d be at the Fox Palace, living it up like the queen you are. Fane—I’m sure you had better things to do than carry a bunch of ladies across country in a basket.” Everyone chuckles, and I do, too, my smile deepening. “And, Cinda…this isn’t the night you asked for. Perhaps…” I take a deep breath. “Perhaps I’m not the knight you asked for. But you’re here, with me, and I’m glad of it. I’m glad that all of you are here with me. I couldn’t have asked for better friends to attempt to this than you. That ring was important to my Ma, and here we all are, together, ready to get it back. I’m grateful you’re here with me. Now let’s do the job and do it well, and there’ll be drinks all ‘round when we get out of this alive.”

  Everyone’s smiling, and they all nod. Tahlia’s grinning deepest of all, and when Fane turns, ready to lead us back toward the palace gardens, she swings an arm around my shoulders, drawing me into a one-armed embrace.

  “Good job. Ma would’ve been proud of that,” she murmurs into my ear, and then she lets me go, looking away hurriedly, probably because she doesn’t want me to see the tears swimming in her eyes—but I do. I smile after my sister, and then I take Cinda’s hand, and we follow along behind Fane as she leads us toward the gardens.

  “I figure the best way to get into the palace is through the kitchens,” says Fane, suddenly all business, her tone and walk brisk. “There’ll be no one there right now, and it’s easy to pick the kitchen door lock—honestly, they often leave the door open. There’s a palace cat who lives in the kitchen, and he likes to go in and out all day, every day, so they like to make it easy on themselves.” Fane grins back over her shoulder. “So we’ll move through the lower quarters and up toward the noble chambers. That’s where the general lives now. I’ve heard she’s having a thing with the queen these days, but…” Fane sniffs. “I’m not sure, so it’s all just hearsay. But she did move out of the lower quarters. Usually generals like to live near the barracks, don’t like to make a big show of being noble, so…it’s odd the general would have moved.”

  “Palace gossip?” asks Lellie, raising a brow. “Fane, I would have thought you above such things.”

  “Well…” Fane takes a breath and rubs at the back of her neck, giving Lellie a sidelong glance. “The queen’s happiness concerns me.”

  Lellie’s brows rise higher, and she looks at a loss for words for a moment. Tahlia glances from Fane to Lellie, worry making her raise her hands, clear her throat.

  “Look, ladies, we have to concentrate. I know you’ve probably never done anything like this before, but if you don’t concentrate on a heist, it can head south in a heartbeat.”

  “No, I’m concentrating. I just want to tell you, Fane, that what we just did together, you and I…it was fun. I hold you no ill will if you’re in love with the queen,” says Lellie quickly, raising her own hands, too.

  “I do not have a thing for the queen,” says Fane, fairly at the same time, so that she and Lellie talk over one another. Fane tries to act nonchalant and utterly fails as she raises her brows, puts on a cooler face, like she’s hasn’t a care in the world. “I just care about my country, of course. I care about its ruler.”

  “Of course,” agrees Cinda, nodding. “I can understand that. Queen Calla—she’s our queen in Arktos—”

  “I know who she is,” Fane snorts.

  “Well, I wasn’t sure.” Cinda grins. “Anyway, we care about her greatly in the city, always want to see her happy. She’s beloved by her people, and I’m sure your queen is beloved by hers. I mean, if she wasn’t, I’m sure we would have heard about it in Arktos—news like that travels. For example, have you heard of the king of Furo? Of course you have, because he’s an asshole.” She says this defiantly, and I turn and stare at her, my mouth actually open.

  I’m so attracted to her in this moment my heart could burst.

  It’s generally well known that King Charix of Furo is, in fact, an asshole. And though the braver subjects of Arktos will say this unflinchingly, it’s almost as if it’s bad luck to say so.

  Furo and Arktos have never been friends, but lately, the relationship between our countries has been downright nasty. When King Charix staged the coup in our palace only a few days ago now, it was handled deftly and quickly by our knights and no real harm came to anyone in Arktos…but I know that folks were frightened, are frightened.

  But, it seems that Cinda is not one of those folks.

  “We’re not big fans of him here, either,” says Fane dryly, her head to the side. “The rules and laws he’s been bandying about on his own people are barbaric. You’ll find no love of King Charix here in Bright Coast.”

  “Last full moon, he banned Moonborn.” Lellie’s voice is quiet as she lifts her chin.

  I glance sidelong at my best friend—the pain is obvious in her voice.

  “Can you imagine?” she murmurs. “He said that anyone who was Moonborn must leave Furo. And he did it on the full moon to be as cruel as possible. Can you imagine?” she repeats, her voice soft, aching. “I care about it, because I’m Moonborn,” Lellie says then, tilting her chin up, gazing at Tahlia and Cinda with a quiet strength and nobility in her gaze. “But I think it’s something we should all care about.”

  I reach out and wrap an arm around her shoulders, squeezing gently. I can feel her shaking with anger as she curls her hands into fists. Her face is white as the stars.

  Lellie and I have been friends since I came to Arktos City three years ago with my dreams of knighthood. Lellie was already a knight when I arrived, but she never felt that she was better than me. She was always funny and sarcastic, but with a heavy dose of compassion that endeared her to me right away…which happened about a moon into my job of being an Arktos knights’ stablehand.

  Long before my friend, Kosta, was a squire, she was a stablehand, like me. Most of the people who want to become knights aren’t women…they’re girls (which makes me stand out like a sore thumb even more). You must train for knighthood for many years, so for those who want to become knights, being a stablehand isn’t a very long job, and you become a stablehand when you’re fairly young…

  So Kosta was just a kid, but I saw a lot of my sister in her, and I loved her fiercely. We’d only known each other for about a moon when she took me aside. “It’s my Moonborn ritual tomorrow,” she’d told me, searching my face, “and I want you to come as one of my witnesses.”

  I was deeply honored and told her as much. Lellie was the other who Kosta had asked, and together, Lellie and I set out for the temple the next night.

  Lellie told me on the way to the temple that she was a Moonborn, too, and it’s why she’d taken Kosta under her wing. “Deciding when to do the ritual can be hard, and she wanted to know my opinion. And, speaking of opinions,” she glanced at me with twinkling eyes, “you may have, perhaps, brought a bit much for the ritual offering.”

  I shrugged around my very large armful of wheat. “I…wanted to be prepared. My goddess usually likes large offerings, so…”

  I’m bound to the Goddess Fox (of course), the trickster goddess, and the rituals at her temple are a little…well. They’re interesting. I’ve, of course, taken part in the festival rituals for different goddesses in Arktos since I arrived, but since I was raised worshipping Fox, I hadn’t been to another goddess’ temple, at the time.

  And I was impressed.

  I loved how beautiful the Moon Goddess’ temple was, all s
ilver with pretty, blue-inlaid tiles on the floor in crescent patterns. The statues of the goddess were all iridescent, forever shifting in your line of sight, and the pool in the very center of the floor was as blue as the sky as darkness falls.

  The ritual was moving. The priestess, presiding over it, spoke about the fact that Moonborn are born with bodies that don’t match their hearts. The moon changes how it looks, from full to new, but it is always the moon, and so, too, will Kosta still be Kosta, no matter how her body looks. Her body, right then and there, did not have a vessel, her body had a phallus. But she was still Kosta, still a woman, and the phallus was not what she knew she should have. So, if she wished it, she could enter the pool, and the goddess would transform her body to match her heart.

  Kosta entered the pool, and there was so much light, light as soft as moonlight. When she emerged, she looked different. She looked happy. The priestess blessed her, there were offerings made to the goddess, and then, of course, there was a feast. It was a happy day, but what was even happier was how Kosta went about life then: with a surety and joy. The priestess, that day, said being Moonborn was as natural as the changing tides…seeing how Kosta changed, with the ritual, was a joy in my own life.

  The King of Furo, in his declaration, said that being Moonborn was an “insult” to their god of war. How any god or goddess could not want their people to be happy was and is something I cannot fathom. Why would anyone worship a deity that did not love them wholly?

  “I’m sorry, Lellie,” says Cinda, here and now. She takes a deep breath—there’s a firmness to her jaw as she shakes her head. “The moment I heard that the king of Furo banned people, I hated him completely. I’m so sorry, Lellie,” she repeats firmly. “He’s an asshole. Everyone knows he’s an asshole.”

  Lellie nods to her, her face soft. “I’d heard that not everyone is as good about Moonborn as Arktos…but they were just stories. It’s naïve to assume that all cultures will accept you, but I’ve never met anyone who didn’t…until I met some men from Furo.” She shakes her head, obviously upset. “Being Moonborn doesn’t come up all the time, of course, but I mentioned something in passing about the Moonborn temple in the city, and they spat on the ground at my feet. This was a week ago. I am obviously still shaken about it.” She clears her throat, looks around at all of us. We had been talking while we were walking, but now we stand still.

  “The world, right now, is changing,” says Fane softly, her gaze gentle as she looks at Lellie. “I heard what happened, with the Goddess Cower in Arktos…how she escaped, how she personifies pure darkness. I know you captured her again,” she nods to us, even as Lellie, Cinda and I all shudder. “But, even with her caged once more, there is a darkness rising…I know there have been peoples who’ve said that for many years, probably since the dawn of time…” She chuckles, but there is no humor in it. “But doesn’t it feel like something’s changing? There’s a great deal of unkindness in the world. Pain. Suffering. It’s all going to come to a head before it alters for the better.”

  “That’s…not very hopeful,” murmurs Tahlia, and Fane pauses for a moment, gazing down at the ground.

  “No. I think it’s as hopeful as it gets.” Fane looks up finally, her eyes flashing with a brightness I haven’t yet seen. Could all of that bluster, flirting and bravado hide something deeper? Fane shifts her weight back on her heels, spreads her hands. “This world is going to change for the better. But only if people fight for what’s right and good relentlessly.”

  We don’t say anything more as we walk toward the palace gardens, the lot of us lost in thought.

  We enter the gardens, and then through them. There’s a small alleyway that leads to a cook’s garden, and the palace towers above us, but it begins here, in the lean-to stone shed that’s attached to the kitchen.

  Fane goes up the two squat steps and tries the door handle…

  And the kitchen door opens.

  “Thank goodness they weren’t worried about a siege,” she tells us, turning and giving us a wink before she disappears into the darkness of the kitchen.

  Without the moon and stars above us, it would be impossible to have found this place—there are no magelamps back here, burning brightly. But, still, moonlight and starlight don’t cast much radiance, and when we step inside, it doesn’t take very long for our eyes to adjust to the dark.

  The place looks quite like the palace kitchen in Arktos—either way, it’s too dark to make out much more than base similarities (there’s the hearth, there’s the bread oven). We silently make our way into the corridor beyond, and I’m relieved that, out here at least, there are softly glowing magelamps along the wall, dimly lit, but with enough light to see the corridor stretching before us.

  “Aren’t you a bit worried that we’ll be spotted?” asks Tahlia then, pausing. She has her hands on her hips, and she raises a brow at Fane, who stops, too. “It’s just that…normally, when you steal something, you make a bit of an effort to hide yourself. Maybe I didn’t make myself clear, but we’re here to rob the place.” Her tone is light and joking, but there’s genuine worry to her eyes.

  “What would you have had me do, lead you through an open window?” asks Fane, her brows up.

  “I’ve gone through quite a lot of windows in my day,” replies Tahlia, snorting. “Windows are, in fact, a very good way for a robber to gain admittance to a premises without getting caught.”

  “I’d have never asked this lovely lady to go through a window,” says Fane firmly. She takes one of Lellie’s hands in her own, and brings the back of that hand up to her mouth with a mild suggestiveness to her smile. “I mean, look at these hands—they’re much too delicate to scrabble up a wall!”

  “Delicate?” Lellie actually laughs at this. “I’ve killed quite a few people with these,” she says mildly. It’s only partially a joke—she’s gone on quite a few campaigns in the few years she’s been a knight. I wouldn’t doubt it.

  “Well, either way, climbing walls is taxing work,” sniffs Fane. She gives Lellie a wink when she drops her hand. “But I did mean what I said—I’d never ask you to go through a window.”

  “Because doors are so much more lady-like.” Lellie is dissolving into giggles at this point.

  “I hate to be rude,” murmurs Tahlia, putting a finger in front of her own lips with a wince, “but, usually when you’re out robbing, you keep the conversation to a minimum. That whole dratted being caught thing.”

  “Sorry,” Lellie murmurs, wincing, too. “I don’t think I’m cut out for a life of crime.”

  “Well, I’m certainly not going to recruit either one of you at this point,” Tahlia grins at Fane and Lellie, and then glances at Cinda with an appraising brow raised. “Maybe you. I guess we’ll have to see how you do. A life of crime just might suit you.”

  Cinda shrugs. “The only thing I like to steal is a taste of cake batter. I don’t think I’m cut out for it, either.”

  “Well, the thieving life certainly didn’t suit her,” murmurs Tahlia, gazing at me a little wistfully. “Ah, well, we all have our strengths, yes? And we need to work within our weaknesses. And, right now, we all need to try to pretend to be robbers, whether we are or no. Good?”

  We all nod, and then we move along the corridor on quiet feet. I have to admit, it’s a little odd to be brazenly walking down the hallway like we belong here. Fane is a Draco, yes, but the rest of us are clearly not, and if anyone from the palace saw us here, there would certainly be questions. We have no alibi, not even a made-up story at this point. I wrack my brains, trying to think of something I could say to someone, should we be caught. I’m settling on the not-very-good “we wandered in here accidentally—we were partying for Wild Night! We’re very drunk! So sorry!” when we hear a noise down the corridor in front of us.

  “Oh, this is very bad,” murmurs Cinda quietly, looking at me with wide eyes. “Is this very bad?”

  “Only if we get caught,” Tahlia breathes, and then she casts about, ducking
her head into a room off the side of the corridor, and when she sees no one in it, she motions over her shoulder to us. “In here!”

  That is, of course, always a terrible plan. For one, the people heading down the corridor toward you could actually he headed toward the very room you sought shelter in. But it can’t be helped. There’s no place else for us to go.

  “I just think this was a terrible plan, coming in through the ‘back door,’ using the hallways in plain sight,” Tahlia whispers as we crowd together in the dark, unlit room as footsteps echo in the corridor outside the shut door.

  “You hired me to get you here and get you inside the palace. You didn’t hire me for subterfuge,” Fane snorts softly. “They’ll be gone in a heartbeat—I’m surprised there’s even anyone here at all. Between the Hero’s Tournament in Arktos and Wild Night in the city, there shouldn’t be anyone here.”

  “Well, we’re here,” mutters Lellie dryly. “And Tahlia’s right—we’re waltzing in here as if—”

  In the dark, Fane holds up her hand, and Lellie’s about to keep talking, but we hear the footsteps a little too loudly. It sounds like someone’s coming right for this room.

  “Fuck,” Tahlia mouths at the same time as the door’s pushed open.

  “What about in here?” comes a coy, flirtatious voice, a woman who sounds a little bit inebriated and a little bit turned on.

  “No, no, that won’t do,” comes another woman’s voice. “Too obvious. Someone might find us, and I do not want to be interrupted.” There’s a soft growl to her voice. “Let’s try a little farther along.”

  The door shuts, the footsteps recede, and everyone in the room breathes an audible sigh of relief.

  “To whoever decided not to use that room—may that be the best sex you ever have,” Tahlia blesses them, and then we ease out into the hallway again. “Let’s get this over with. Go, go, go,” murmurs Tahlia, all but shoving Fane at the small of her back.