The guards at the door were king’s dragoons, not castle guard.
“What’re they doing here?” said Endrit as they approached. The hall was undecorated stone wide enough only for three men abreast. It was intended to make one feel like a mouse, skittering into the veins of a giant stone colossus.
On closer inspection, Rhea recognized them.
“It’s Joram and Lackwood. Just get behind me. They’re not supposed to be here,” whispered Rhea. Endrit stopped. She shouldered her way past him, putting her hand on Suki’s limp form as if she were a sack of potatoes.
The two soldiers must have been promoted to king’s guard recently. Up until then, they’d barely ranked as castle guardsmen. Joram had lost his nose more than a decade ago—in the War of Unification. Lackwood had lost both ears.
The wounds were no longer fresh and pink, and their faces no longer seemed to miss them. They had hardened and wrinkled into somewhat grotesque, mildly comical appearances. Her father wouldn’t have had them in the king’s guard for their looks alone. They were grunts.
“Stop,” barked Joram when they drew within a spear’s length. “Turn around and go back.”
Do they recognize me? If so, they made no bow to royal courtesy.
Rhea looked down. She was still wearing half a dozen royal seals—on her signet ring, in the embroidery of her dress, and on her house jewels. Even if she was tussled and splattered, they should have known.
“Turn around and go back,” said Joram, looking completely unfit in his crimson dragoon gear.
“Yes, we heard you,” said Rhea. The oddness of it still confused her. The dragoons were a small cadre of king’s guard. Is my father nearby? Is he hurt?
“If you heard him, then do what he says.” Lackwood stepped forward with his spear tilted. It was the wrong weapon for such tight quarters. Rhea corrected her thinking. A spear was only the wrong weapon if they were guarding against enemies coming from outside. It was the perfect weapon to hold extended in a narrow hallway, to keep people protected—or trapped—inside.
“We ain’t saying it again. Turn back now, Princess, and go to your chambers,” said Joram. His noseless face puckered when he sneered.
“Then you know who I am?”
“’Course,” said Joram. “Been wiping after you since you was weaning.”
“What are you doing, Joram? Is this some kind of jest?”
Are they seizing this opportunity for some kind of petty revenge?
Rhea had never been challenged. Both dragoons would be dead by morning if she chose. The men leveled their spears at Rhea and stepped forward. Endrit whispered, “This is no dance, Rhea. They’re not jesting.”
Is he saying we should turn back? Can he find another way out? Rhea hesitated. The situation had torn apart so quickly—the guards’ treasonous aggression, Endrit’s uncharacteristic timidity.
“Return now.”
Their spear tips advanced toward Rhea’s chest. She still couldn’t believe it. She had given Joram a gold piece once, for Penance Day. She knew Lackwood was a lowlander—she had seen his kids in the Walltown Market.
“I order you to stand aside,” said Rhea, gathering the remains of her dignity.
“No. We order you to turn back.”
“Fight speed, Rhea,” said Endrit. “Make a move.”
Rhea looked back at Endrit, then at Suki. She had her plan. She whispered, “When I say the word, throw Suki.”
Endrit took a moment to understand.
Does he think me callous? It doesn’t matter.
He nodded.
Rhea turned back. The spears glinted, like a shutting iron maiden.
“Go,” said Joram.
“No!” said Rhea. “You—”
“We’ll hurt you if we need to,” said Lackwood, interrupting.
“Duck!” said Endrit.
She had no time to duck. Over her head, Rhea felt the brush of something pass. It was Suki, still unconscious. Endrit had thrown her like a sandbag onto the spear shafts. Suki’s deadweight took the soldiers by surprise and pushed their spear tips down to the stone floor. Rhea was trained all her life for these moments, even for the possibility of treason.
But it never looked like this in her imagining, never so clumsy and closeted. She was shoved aside before she could react to Suki’s landing. Endrit dashed past the lowered spears before the soldiers could pull them out from under Suki and smashed his fist directly at Lackwood’s face. His nose made a sound like an acorn under a boot. He fell.
Rhea regained her composure when she saw Joram let his spear fall and drew a knife from his belt. He lunged at her. Rhea grabbed the hand holding the blade before it could stab her stomach.
The two wrestled for control of the hand. Rhea shouted, “Get Suki!”
Joram began to bend her arm backward, but Marta had taught them both: Determine the battlefield, determine the victory. It meant the one who controlled the terms of the fight would likely win it.
The hardened dragoon would happily play a simple brutish game of arm wrestle with the winner stabbing the other in the chest. Rhea was too smart for that.
She put a knee in the man’s groin. The man groaned. Rhea twisted and kicked the side of the guard’s knee. It bent under him. She let go of the knife-wielding hand in the moment her opponent lost balance and used both hands to grab the guard’s head. She smashed it into the stone wall like a coconut. The guard dropped the knife as he collapsed to the ground. When she looked up, Endrit had lifted Suki and pulled the wooden door open.
“Come on. Come on.”
Rhea stepped over the fallen guards. Outside, signal fires burned bright, in high alert. Otherwise the night was starless and black. Had clouds rolled in so quickly since she had been on the balcony, admiring the moon?
“They’ll be after us soon,” said Endrit as they ran down the ramp toward the courtyard.
“You didn’t kill yours?” said Rhea.
“Why in the world would I kill him?” The way he said it seemed to accuse Rhea of murder. How am I supposed to guess at all these lunatic situations? What is appropriate and what is murder?
“I don’t know,” she said, sounding like a child, even to herself. “Why in the world did you throw Suki at them before I said the word?”
Endrit didn’t respond. There was no response. Her plan had worked. Rhea ran alongside him. Somehow she was even more irritated by his nonresponse.
Is he dismissing me entirely? Of course not. It was a stupid question.
Still.
She wondered if Joram would survive having his skull smashed into the stone. If not, she wondered what Lackwood would do without his decades-old partner. She told herself this was the price of treason. She tried to remember them both as sneering ogres. Then she wondered if Endrit had seen how hard she had hit Joram.
Rhea knew she was doing it. She watched herself as if through a glass. Watched as she twisted herself into contortions—wanting his approval, pestering him for it, all the while fearing she didn’t deserve it and lashing at him when he didn’t realize the impossibly heavy portent that each of his silences carried.
And worse, the Rhea who watched herself and knew all this made constant alternate appraisals—disgusted with her own need and at the same time desperate for the need to be met.
She should have acted differently in the hallway.
When they crossed the courtyard and entered the torchlit half-moon around the gate to the inner city, they heard a shouted voice from a guard tower above them. “There! At the beggar’s ramp!”
They were spotted.
Rhea looked over her shoulder. The door to petitioner’s arch had been thrown open. Joram still lay on the ground, bleeding from his skull. Lackwood leaned on the doorframe, holding his bloody nose and pointing at them. Two more soldiers had arrived. They raced down the ramp toward Rhea and Endrit.
Endrit kicked at the door. It didn’t budge.
Rhea ran around him before he kicked again.
&n
bsp; “I got it. I got it.”
She lifted the latch and opened the gate inward.
“It’s a pull,” she said.
They stumbled into the inner-city maze, where nobles built their banks and ateliers cheek to jowl—jostling one another for real estate, pushing into the narrow streets. The inner city was abuzz with private parties from the Revels, spilled out drunkenly into the cobblestone streets. The blast must have been nothing but a loud festival noise to them.
Nearer to the castle, the merchants had heard the alarm calls. They had run out with their apprentices, boarding up their storefronts in case of riot. The soldiers chased Rhea and Endrit through the crowds. Rhea followed Endrit, who knew nearly every inch of the inner city. He took sharp turns off hidden corners.
He and Marta had a small street-level apartment, even though they were below the homo nobilis. Her father had given it to them so that they could come to the castle every day without the hours of waiting at the outer walls, where customs officers inspected every cart and person before allowing entrance.
Endrit had grown up in those streets, delivering parcels to the homes of the nobles, and later, playing kick-n-stick with the noble children. The soldiers kept up for only a little while, pushing people out of the way. But Endrit knew the little ways, and soon they were clear.
They had wended through two mercantile districts, around the mercato centrale, down to the lowest corner of the inner city.
The streets were empty and dark in the shadows of the giant outer wall. Rhea knew this was a shifty neighborhood, because the buildings didn’t have stone crests over the doors, indicating the lower houses of the Meridan banner men. Not even the crests a merchant family could purchase, marked with three coins on their left hemisphere, where swords, sigils, or scrolls usually went.
These buildings were for other uses.
Gamblers halls, courtesan guilds, even syrup dens for the opium eaters—but all of the highest order. Any tavern in Walltown had gamblers, but inside the walls, in the inner city, the homo nobilis expected a carpeted affair, among fellow high rollers, attended by well-dressed croupiers. The men and women of the guild were companions as well as lovers. Some had even ensorcelled a noble into marriage and jumped “from the bed to the banquet.”
Does Endrit know any of those women? Rhea had only ever seen them on the arms of horse-nobles—knights who saved a duke in battle and won a title.
They were always beautiful, brazenly so, and smiled as if they knew exactly what the world wanted. Rhea sensed them speaking a thousand secret languages—the sway and turn of their hips, the looks and flutters of the eyelashes, the subtle touches, the sordid laughs—each as foreign and mysterious to Rhea as ancient Tasanese.
Have they tested their skills on Endrit? Is he friends with the sellswords who guard the doors of the gambers halls—or worse, the leachers of the opium dens? Is he so low?
Rhea looked up at the shuttered windows with candle lights of every color shining behind them and wondered about the people inside.
Endrit stopped in front of a nondescript door in the back of an alley. “Here we are,” he said.
Rhea had never been to Endrit’s home before. It was only one story, with old reed thatching. Rhea’s chamber was easily thrice the size of the entire building.
Endrit knocked three times, paused, and then twice more.
“I thought Marta liked to garden,” said Rhea. There was no spot of ground in front of the apartment. It butted up to the gutter.
“She does,” said Endrit.
Does Father know that? Surely he would have given them a cottage with some acreage in the back?
The door of the apartment opened without a noise. Marta was dressed in full armor.
Had she returned so quickly from the ball?
She took Suki from Endrit. “Come in. Come in.”
Rhea ducked into the low doorway. Marta closed it quickly behind her. “Where are the others?” said Marta. Does she mean Cadis and Iren?
“Couldn’t find them,” said Endrit.
“Are they together at least?” She lay Suki down on a cot as she spoke.
Endrit shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“They’ll find each other,” said Marta. She examined Suki’s bandages as efficiently as a battlefield magister. She lifted Suki’s eyelids, then looked at the inside of her bottom lip.
Rhea noticed a purple streak spread across Suki’s gums.
Marta touched it. She extended her hand behind her, at Endrit. Endrit reached into his pocket and handed her a small leather pouch.
“What is that?” said Rhea.
“Paste of the poppy,” said Marta. She stuck a finger in the pouch and spread a bit more inside Suki’s lip. “It will help her sleep.”
Endrit must have applied it when he bandaged her, thought Rhea. Before she could ask, Marta stood up. She placed the pouch back into Endrit’s hand with a nod. He had done well. Endrit seemed to stand a little straighter as he gave his report. “Insurgents are fighting up the main corridors to the king’s chamber. The king’s guard have sealed the exits to the castle.”
“The dragoons?” said Marta.
Endrit nodded.
“Did you engage?” said Marta, alarm in her voice.
“Yes.”
Marta clicked her teeth. Endrit spoke over it. “They attacked us. And no one died.”
Rhea didn’t offer a rebuttal.
“Did they follow?”
“Yes, but we lost them.”
“Did they know you?”
“Yes.”
“It was Joram and Lackwood,” said Rhea.
Marta clicked her teeth again and paced. The apartment was a small flat made up almost entirely of two cots, with a bureau beside each, a weapons rack big enough to outfit a full garrison, an alcove with a chamber pot, another across the way with shelves for pickles, cheeses, and bread. On Marta’s bureau sat a row of books—military histories. On Endrit’s was a mess of animal figurines and what must have been a dozen tokens of favor—a silken scarf, a sachet full of lavender, even a few letters sealed with the rouge from a kiss. They were scattered among the toys of his childhood as if all part of a boyish game.
Is this really Endrit’s home? Suki had bigger stables for Helio.
It took Marta no more than three paces to resolve her plan. She marched to the door and pulled the iron pin on two of the three hinges. Rhea had no idea why.
As she did so, Marta said, “We don’t have time. Endrit, get Suki. Rhea, push my bureau aside.”
Rhea didn’t understand, but she knew better than to question Marta. She walked to Marta’s bureau and examined the side. It moved easily—Rhea assumed because it was nearly empty and was made of cheap wood. After removing the hinges, Marta strode over to the weapons rack and grabbed a black bag.
Endrit lifted Suki again and joined Rhea. The bureau was pushed all the way to the side, revealing only a smooth stucco wall.
Is there some sort of secret trapdoor? If so, how did they hide the seam so well?
Endrit bumped Rhea’s shoulder so she’d look at him. He pointed up. Rhea looked. Above the bureau was a patch of reed thatching lashed together into a small square.
“No one ever looks up,” said Endrit, grinning.
Marta had returned to the front door and begun pouring iron caltrops, sharp enough to pierce horse hooves, across the doorway. Rhea thought for a moment, Won’t the door sweep the caltrops aside?
“Go to the safe house,” said Marta.
“Wait. You’re staying?” said Rhea.
“I have to find Cadis and Iren. I’ll meet you at dawn either way.”
Endrit opened the drawers of the bureau into stair steps and nudged her. Rhea complied out of a lifelong habit of obeying Marta’s orders. She stepped onto the bureau, onto the books, and pushed at the patch in the roof. It lifted easily. Rhea slid it sideways, to rest on the roof, then hoisted herself out again, into the dark night.
The air was cold on her
bare skin. The run through the city had made her sweat, and the dress was not made to be warm. Rhea braced her feet on two wooden beams and turned to pull Suki up. While she struggled to lift Suki out, Rhea saw Marta down in the apartment. She held Endrit’s face in her palms and kissed his forehead. Rhea could tell she was saying something to him. He nodded, with a look of seriousness in his eyes that Rhea had never seen.
A heavy gauntlet banged on the front door and rattled its lone hinge.
Marta pushed Endrit toward the bureau and whirled around.
“Go,” she said. “Do as I said.”
Endrit bounded up the bureau and out onto the roof. He whispered, “Shhh,” to Rhea. They could hear the soldiers, just over the side of the low thatched roof.
Another banging knock.
“Let us in, by order of the king.”
Marta pushed the bureau back in its place and shut the drawers. She looked up at Rhea and Endrit one last time, then ran to the door. Endrit slid the patch over the roof, but Rhea held his hand. They let a sliver remain open to see through.
Marta moved across the room like a stalking cat and waited by the door for the third set of knocks.
The door rattled.
“Open or we break the door,” said the officer.
On the last knock, Marta went to work. She leaned over the razor-sharp caltrops and silently pulled out the door latch and the last hinge.
The door now stood completely untethered to the frame. If the soldier knocked again, it would simply topple inward. Marta squared herself in front of the door, took a step back, and lunged forward. Her push-kick had all the form she had always taught them. Chamber the knee. Push with the hip. Explode out.
Her boot smashed into the door. The door smashed into the soldier’s chin and went down with him.
Rhea heard a clamor of guards, shouting, charging over the fallen door.
Marta unsheathed two short swords and stepped back into the room. She clanged them against each other and shouted, “Hiya, hiya!” as if to rile them further.
Rhea realized it was to keep their attention while she stepped gingerly backward, over the caltrops. The first two guards crippled themselves on the spikes the moment they jumped into the room.
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