Daughters of Ruin

by K. D. Castner

  No windows.

  No hearth.

  Each of the sisters had her own private training room. It was Declan’s gift, a secret entrance leading down into a chamber below each of their bedrooms. Among the only things they didn’t share. Rhea was certain he had built the best room for her, though she couldn’t be sure. The sisters kept their rooms private. But she knew. She just knew. The girls had all run up to be the first to hug Declan. And as he hugged them back, Rhea had looked up, and her father had winked a conspiratorial wink. A sly and warm expression that said, We’ll keep the little secret between us. Of course, was it such a shocking secret that a father loved his daughter more than others? Rhea was sixteen now, and knew they were unlike any other father and daughter in the kingdom. And so, perhaps, their secrets were uncommon too.

  Rhea stepped forward and bowed a very slight bow to Endrit.

  He had put his shirt back on. He was dressed no better than a stable hand. He was no better than a stable hand. But, oh, terrible hells could he dance.

  He stood tall and bowed deep, watching her the entire time. Rhea felt a shudder that rattled her earrings. Endrit opened his arms, holding them in the formal waltz position. It was an invitation every woman in Meridan would accept.

  “Care for a dance, highness?” said Endrit.

  The room was silent but for their breathing. Rhea imagined the royal musicians playing as they would the following night in the grand hall at the banquet of the Revels. She steadied her hands. It had to be perfect tomorrow.

  Endrit laughed. “Oh, come now. The marquis isn’t worth a fright, is he? Should I slouch down, maybe snaggle up my face like he does?”

  Rhea smiled, which threw off her concentration. Endrit swung his knees out into a bowlegged stance and twisted his lips into a sleazy grin. He made gross chupping noises with his lips. “Come now, my little sweet. Let me swing you around the room as only lovers do.”

  “Ew! Geez!” said Rhea. “Does he say stuff like that?”

  “I dunno.” Endrit shrugged. “Never met a prince before.” He continued to make awful smoochie faces. As she giggled at Endrit’s hideous caricature, Rhea felt her muscles relax. She breathed out and stepped into his arms, placed her hands into his.

  Rhea looked up at Endrit’s dark eyes and said, “I have to kill you, you know.”

  Endrit nodded. “And what if I kill you first?”

  “Then you’ll ruin the Revels and they’ll probably hang you instead.”

  “That is too bad,” he said. “I was beginning to like it here.”

  Only twelve women in the world were capable of training in the grimwaltz of the high style, because it required two exceptionally rare traits. First, it required a country—or in the case of Maria Fermosa, a criminal cartel secretly running a country. Second, and more specifically, it required one of the twelve sets of crown jewels, crafted generations ago by a master of the extinct Grimlaw Smithy.

  Legend had it that each of the weaponsmiths of the great guild created one set—manipulating precious metals and gems into deadly jewelry worthy of queens and weapons worthy of assassins. Rings with poison caps, necklaces with hidden garrote wires, bracelets suited as much for shielding against sabers as for displaying the elegant wrists of nobility. The empress of Tasan was known for a crown that folded inward into a buckler. Maria Fermosa’s corset was famously lined with diamond mail. “The better to help me sleep on the bed of knives my lieutenants like to set for me,” she’d say.

  Each set hid its own secrets. “Surprise is the only weapon they all share,” said the master Grimlaw before he killed the eleven masters of his smithy and then himself.

  The twelve crown arsenals passed down in the noble families, as did the martial art that governed their use. Just as monks of the steppe had created the art of wielding farm equipment to ward off mounted raiders and the magisters of Corent developed hand-to-hand warfare for the close quarters of the Academy spires, the grimwaltz, too, had a razor-sharp purpose. In formal state ceremonies, diplomatic parleys, and events of public address, the royals were the most exposed and the least armored. Born of the necessity to marry statecraft and spycraft, the tactical core of grimwaltz was defense of political assassination and preemptive murder.

  The battlegrounds arose from the familiar settings: a throne, a feast, a dance.

  Rhea held Endrit as they waltzed around the candlelit chamber.

  Only queens trained with the crown jewels. But other forms of the martial art had spread among the commoners. Mothers would slip their daughters a razor bracelet before they went riding with a suitor. “Be happy, my love, but always take a bit of grim,” they’d say. “Just in case.”

  The high style prized elegance and discretion over explicit warfare. Hundreds of years ago, the emira of Corent—Iren’s ancestor—was said to have kissed a would-be assassin on his cheek and injected a paralyzing toxin with the hand draped behind his neck. She sat him down. The musicians played on. No one saw him stiffen.

  Rhea’s toe clipped over Endrit’s foot and she stumbled the next step. She cursed her own clumsiness.

  “It’s okay,” said Endrit.

  It wasn’t okay. Tomorrow was the Revels, when each of the sisters would perform for the crowds to showcase their training for the year. Cadis would fight like a typhoon and astonish them. Iren would flow as subtle and sublime as a zephyr, and Suki would shine like a wildfire.

  As they traced an intricate pattern around the wooden dummies, Rhea asked, “Has Cadis polished her routine?”

  They twirled a figure eight around two dummies that Endrit had arranged to look like a quarreling couple. Endrit smirked and looked away, as if sharing some joke with another partygoer. He was always the one that other men tried to impress—even if he was below them.

  “Come on, now, Rhea,” he said.

  “Come on, what?”

  Endrit didn’t respond.

  Rhea hated that. When he expected her to know things. And the knowing was somehow being grown-up enough to see things as he did. She hated it even more that she did know in this case. She knew he would have said, “I keep your secrets, Princess.” Meaning he’d keep the others’, as well.

  Endrit lifted his arm to let Rhea take the inside turn under it. As her back was turned, Endrit reached behind him and pulled a thin filleting knife—of the kind Findish sailors used to cut rope and clean fish.

  When Rhea whirled around to face him, Endrit kept the knife behind his back. With his other hand, he pulled her into his chest. He smelled like barn hay, sweat, and horse liniment.

  This part of the dance was an intimate struggle between them. Rhea wanted to see what he held behind him, but Endrit thwarted the attempt. She stepped forward into the space that Endrit’s foot vacated. He held her in a cross-body lead, so that she faced in the same direction.

  Her shoulders nested across his chest. She craned her neck upward to keep eye contact. She felt his breath waft over her lips.

  They turned around the room. Any audience would see the blade glisten behind Endrit. But only sparring dummies shared the floor.

  They stepped and cross-stepped, back and forth, feint and parry. With his firm hand on her lower back, Endrit always managed to turn Rhea before she could see the knife. They tangled and clutched, until finally the moment they both knew was coming, when the flautist would stand for a trilling climactic solo, and Endrit sent Rhea into a wild free spin toward the middle of the floor.

  Rhea twirled at the center of the chamber hall with one arm above her head like an automaton in a music box. Her other hand rested on the ruby brocade hanging from her neck. She felt her skirt billow and corrected her balance for the weight of the sparkling jewels she wore. Her back arched. She spun on the ball of her foot and felt graceful for the first time all night.

  And more than anything, she felt watched.

  As Rhea straightened out of the spin, she lowered her arm. Endrit extended his hand and she took it. They knew the flautist would hit a note at this
point that sounded like a goldfinch being crushed in a doorjamb.

  Endrit reeled her in. She spun toward him. As she did so, Endrit lifted the knife and stabbed just as Rhea turned in to his arms.

  The knife whistled downward.

  It clanged on the ruby brocade, nestled in Rhea’s palm. The delicate gold chains strapped it around her fingers so that it held firm—and armored the inside of her left hand.

  The tip of the fillet knife found a socket in the brocade to stick itself.

  She stared at Endrit.

  He whispered, “You’ve got this. Fight speed.”

  Rhea’s hand shook, holding off the pressure, until she wrenched her hand and sent the blade scudding across the stone floor of the chamber.

  In the same motion, she pivoted her hips and dug a right hook into Endrit’s ribs.

  He grunted and let go.

  Rhea dashed away, to a safe distance.

  In the moment’s reprieve, Rhea made a formal ready position and inserted the point of the dragon ring on her right hand into the well of the sun-shaped ring on her left. With a twist, the head of the dragon punctured into a compartment of the sun ring and coated the tip in corkspider poison.

  Endrit bored down on her with clenched fists. He opened with a left. Rhea smacked it down with the brocade in her open palm. He winced as his knuckles cracked on the stone. He swung with a heavy right. Rhea ducked under and punched twice on the same rib as before. This time she pulled short before stabbing him with the poisoned ring.

  Endrit staggered back.

  But not long.

  He lunged with a vertical knee and caught Rhea’s chin in her crouched position. Rhea’s eyes flashed white. This part always hurt at full-contact fight speed.

  Rhea moved with the impact and hit the ground at a midroll.

  She scrambled behind a dummy to buy time to regain her footing and to reach for a hairpin. As Endrit approached, she flicked her hand and launched two of the weighted pins at his face. Endrit lurched sideways.

  The darts planted into the face of the dummy.

  The audience would understand the dummy was a stand-in for the attacker. Already, between the poison ring and the darts, she had killed two would-be assassins.

  Endrit strode forward, reached down, and grabbed a broadsword from the belt of a dummy. Without hesitation, he marched toward her, raised his sword, and struck down across her body.

  Rhea dove under the angled blade. She followed the motion into a sideways somersault. She ended in an alleyway formed by dummies standing in two rows. Endrit pressed the attack. He dashed around the dummies to one end of the rows.

  His heavy blade would be carried only by soldiers or royal guards attempting to kill her, a simulation of the ultimate betrayal and a grim reality—the possibility of her own bodyguards turning coat of arms.

  Her father used to whisper, “Even our men. Even Endrit or Marta. If they turn, you put them down like rabid dogs.”

  She couldn’t blame him for worrying. It was betrayal and assassination that had taken the last king and queen of Meridan. She knew he was determined never to let that happen again. In the advent of such a paranoid outcome, Rhea would be woefully disadvantaged, just as she was now, with Endrit approaching.

  Rhea gave ground and reached for more throwing blades. More and more locks of her hair tumbled onto her shoulders as she pulled the pins and sent them flying at Endrit.

  He marched inexorably forward.

  She showed off her precision. It had gotten even better over the last year.

  Dummies on either side of Endrit sprouted gems between their eyes as he approached.

  A whole unit of blackguards, dead.

  Rhea stood at the end of the row.

  Endrit closed the distance and swung again.

  This time she caught it up high, early in the swing, with the side of her thick bracelet. A delicate shield for hacking blades.

  Endrit slashed down again and again.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Rhea counted in her head.

  High block.

  Step back.

  Low block.

  Step back.

  The blows made her entire arm jolt. On the last step, she had a disarm maneuver that was new to the routine, the one that could maim both of them if she failed.

  Don’t falter. Don’t falter, she thought.

  Endrit swung the sword sideways at her neck, like a scythe cutting the heads of wheat. Instead of deflecting the strike, Rhea stepped to meet it. She blocked with her inner forearm—bless the smith for making her bracelet strong. When the sword clanged on her bracelet, Rhea followed it with her left hand and hit the blade up by the hilt with the brocade in her open palm.

  The sword twisted between the two opposing forces and wrenched out of Endrit’s grip. The blade caught Endrit’s shoulder, slicing the tunic as it flew off, clattering on the stones.

  Endrit winced, but he didn’t drop a step.

  He grabbed Rhea around the neck, just above her choker.

  She pulled two of the black stone sunrays from her necklace and made the motion of stabbing just inside his collarbone on either side.

  Endrit let go, as any assailant would have been dead by then.

  They moved into the big finish: a series of sparring drills where Endrit attacked from every direction—swinging wildly, changing forms from the Corentine ridge-hand to Tasanese grappling. Rhea exhausted the rays of her sun necklace, cutting off kicks at the knee, meeting “vicious with vicious,” as her father would say.

  She was an exhibition of cold, efficient, and most of all, lethal control. That was the heart of grimwaltz and the heart of a ruler, after all—control.

  The dummies in the dark room each found a new way to die.

  The wound on Endrit’s shoulder bled.

  The left side of his tunic was nearly soaked.

  The final stunt was a subtle routine that began with Endrit grabbing Rhea’s wrists. Some of Marta’s best choreography. Rhea stepped out to break Endrit’s balance and twisted her hands around to grab his wrists. They struggled for leverage.

  The music the next day would swell—every stringed instrument in full volume. Then, just as abruptly, the music would drop.

  Rhea and Endrit straightened, hand in hand.

  They were back in waltz position as if nothing had happened.

  Except now Rhea’s curls were untamed and unbearably hot. Her hands still shook, twitch reflexes still set to caution. Endrit’s tunic was a sopping rag—sweat and blood. He said, “Well done,” but his grimace gave him away. He was hurt.

  The chamber was a slaughterhouse strewn with two-dozen dummies—stabbed, poisoned, or crippled.

  They each stepped back, bowed, turned, and bowed again to the pretend audience.

  Rhea instinctively angled her bow in the direction where her father would be sitting—the king’s balcony of the Royal Coliseum.

  The instant they finished, Rhea rushed to Endrit’s side. “I’m so sorry,” she said, helping him take a seat.

  Endrit took the help, but didn’t seem to need it.

  “Don’t worry. That was perfect.”

  “I cut your shoulder open.”

  “They want realism. Your dad would have loved it.”

  Rhea paused a moment from examining the shirt.

  “You think?”

  “I’m telling you, Princess, it was perfect.”

  Rhea took a moment to relish the idea of gaining back the honor she had lost after the Revels of the previous year. No one told her she had lost it, but she saw it in the eyes of the king and in the way Marta patted her on the shoulder and said, “Good work. Learn from this and you’ve won.”

  She only ever said that to the loser.

  Rhea had certainly lost her sparring exposition to Cadis. In front of all the nobles of Meridan, Rhea had dropped to a knee before the future queen of Findain. It may as well have been surrender—a banner that read THE BLOOD RUNS THI
N IN MERIDAN KEEP. The entire crowd had been stunned. Her father, who loved her—she knew he loved her—still couldn’t hide his disappointment.

  It wasn’t his fault. Rhea knew she had caused him endless jibes in the court of public opinion. Rhea had subordinated the house of Declan to a bunch of treacherous Findish merchants in one clumsy step.

  She heard a voice.

  Endrit’s.

  Rhea snapped out of her memory to see his obsidian eyes peering at her.

  “Where’d you go, Rhea?”

  “Nothing,” said Rhea. “Take your shirt off.”

  Endrit laughed. Rhea added, “So I can see your cut, you dandified peacock.”

  “Of course,” said Endrit. “And anyway, to the victor go the spoils.” He gave a cheeky grin.

  Rhea rolled her eyes and helped him pull the sleeve so he didn’t have to move his left shoulder. The cut was shallow. It would be scabbed by tomorrow.

  “We have bandages in the outer hall,” said Rhea.

  “We’re done? Are you saying all I had to do was stab myself?”

  Rhea pressed down on Endrit’s shoulder. He howled with laughter and pain.

  “You’re lucky we got it perfect,” said Rhea, standing. “Otherwise I’d make you go until you bled out.”

  “A noble way to die. I’m sure there’d be a royal funeral.”

  “A royal funeral? Ha! We’d flop you down behind the barn,” teased Rhea. She left the jewels scattered around the private chamber: the pins stuck in the dummies, the blades of the sun necklace embedded in several wooden posts. She’d return the next morning.

  “I suppose that’s fair enough,” said Endrit. “That happens to plenty of royals too.”

  When Rhea and Endrit walked into the common hall that connected the rooms of the four queens, Rhea was disappointed to find her sisters and Marta there, thus ending her privacy with Endrit. And Rhea’s sisters seemed disappointed to see a shirtless Endrit—not because of his partial nudity, but because he was in that state with Rhea.

  The six-sided room had one door on every wall—four leading to the queens’ rooms, one coming from the throne room, and one for the servants to use coming from the kitchen.

  At the center of the room sat a giant round oaken table large enough to seat fifteen and sturdy enough to stage a Tasanese circus. The sisters ate their meals at the table, studied there for Hiram’s exams, and on nights such as these, when they couldn’t sleep, they convened around it to while away the hours.