Daughters of Ruin

by K. D. Castner

  They fell to the ground, howling.

  “Come on,” said Endrit.

  He put his hand on Rhea’s shoulder.

  Doesn’t he want to see what happens?

  It occurred to Rhea that more than anyone, Endrit would not.

  The rest of the soldiers stepped into the room carefully. Marta took the opening while one soldier had her eyes down. She lunged forward and stabbed a short sword into the soldier’s throat. A difficult target, hard to skewer with a wriggling opponent. Marta’s hand was steady. She buried it to the hilt, then bounced back. The soldier went down gurgling.

  More guards rushed into the room.

  Had they sent so many for Rhea alone? Were they Findish sympathizers? Were they part of some coup planned by a lesser house of Meridan? All or none could be true.

  They spread into a half circle around Marta.

  “Get out!” she screamed.

  Endrit pulled Rhea’s shoulder. “She’s talking to us,” he said.

  Rhea couldn’t. She reached up and pulled a pin from her hair. She could help. Endrit grabbed her hand. “Don’t,” he said.

  Marta clapped her swords together again. The soldiers flinched. “Get out now!”

  They must have thought she was speaking to them.

  A guard stepped forward and swung a mace. Marta blocked it high, exposing the unprotected area of the man’s underarm. Marta thrust her other sword through his armpit, into his heart. He was dead before he lay down.

  Rhea watched in horror and bedazzlement. She was beautiful. For the first time, Rhea saw her lifelong teacher as the woman she was decades ago, worthy of battle hymns and titles and a statue hewn into the rock face of the guardian hills.

  She was in a category of legend compared to her attackers. But they were too many. Rhea wanted to wrench her arm away from Endrit and launch a dozen knives at the cowards slowly penning Marta in.

  She hated them. And she hated the unfairness of a world that let someone like Marta fall to a bunch of traitor mercenaries. And she hated that it had taken her all this time to realize that what she needed from Marta—what she should have gone to her every day in training and asked for—was how to be brave when all she felt was paralyzing fear.

  Marta felled another.

  They closed in.

  She turned to check behind her.

  A club hit her at the cheekbone.

  It broke her jaw and sent a clatter of bloody teeth.

  Marta fell.

  Rhea would have screamed, if she had the air to fill it.

  Endrit pushed the hatch closed.

  Rhea backed away and folded her arms around herself.

  The night breeze was icy on her bare skin.

  Endrit squatted down in front of her. When she turned away, he followed until she was forced to look at him. His eyes were the only things in the city blacker than black. He whispered, “We have our orders.”

  How can he go on?

  Her vision started to blur and shake, and still he looked her in the eye—no jest or rakish grin, no playacting—he really was as strong as Marta had taught them to be. Rhea got up and followed him as they tiptoed in the darkness, from the back of the thatched roof to a jutting walkway built along the roofs of the alley, until they reached the massive face of the outer wall. It rose three hundred feet upward and was thick enough for two horse-drawn carriages to race along the top.

  Endrit squatted down at the edge of the last building, which nearly butted up against the wall. There was just enough space between the two for Endrit to squeeze himself down to the ground. He left Suki on the edge of the roof. Rhea first lowered her down, then grabbed the ledge and dropped down herself.

  She didn’t need much explanation. Endrit had already opened a hidden porthole into the side of the wall. A smuggler’s gate? Even knowing of such a thing without reporting it to the court of the king was punishable by shackling.

  Rhea looked into the secret passage leading out of the proper city. She had never been to Walltown without an escort of king’s guard and a retinue of attendants to speak with peddlers if she wished to perform charity by purchasing withered fruit or some crude pendant for Anant.

  It occurred to Rhea that most of those attendants, her maids, her horsemen, were probably dead. Perhaps even Iren and Cadis, or Hiram and her father. She was now an orphan.

  If not an orphan, then an exile.

  After that night the kingdoms of Pelgard would descend once again into war. Whether they were alive or dead, the charge of the Protectorate was over.

  “Time to go, Princess,” said Endrit, nudging her forward. She would have to go first, so Endrit could walk backward, dragging Suki behind them by her underarms. Rhea gathered herself, then ducked into the secret door.

  “Don’t call me that,” she said.

  She was no longer a princess.

  “What should I call you, then? Rhea?” he said, struggling to pull Suki, as he kept his head down in the low tunnel.

  Rhea peered into the darkness as she said, “Queen. You should call me Queen. I’m likely all that Meridan has now.”

  A leaden silence.

  Then she heard a sputter and a guffaw.

  “Pfffft!” said Endrit. “Yeah, I’m not going to do that. Don’t be so dramatic, Princess.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Cadis

  “What do you think Rhea is doing right now?” said Cadis. She had been trying to win a smile from Iren for the past few hours to no avail. They rode on stolen horses from the unattended stables of a tavern in Walltown. Iren seemed to know of it already, as part of her escape plans.

  “I’d say singing a chorus of ‘Yes, Daddy, it was Cadis all along,’ or if Declan’s dead, weeping seductively in the shirtless arms of Endrit.”

  Nothing but a shrug from Iren. She was as dutiful and intractable as a millstone. A little one, thought Cadis, smiling to herself.

  “Declan’s not dead,” said Iren. “But you’re probably right about Endrit’s shirts. They never seem to stay on, do they?”

  Finally. A sign of life.

  The horses needed a rest after their long sprint out of the stables to the outskirts of town and finally on to an obscure caravan route that made an arcing path toward Findain. They let the horses plod, but Iren wouldn’t allow them to stop. Under different circumstances, it would have been an ideal country stroll. The birds had been uncaged recently from their winter nests and sang ballads to one another. The road wended through the hillocks of the midlands between Meridan and Findain—tree-covered hills, mild enough to farm, if the sanctions allowed.

  Copses of trees dotted the hillside and a series of rivers streaked it.

  It was midmorning. The sun shone and gave Cadis renewed hope that they would reach Findain—she would see Jesper and her cousin Denarius again—and the horrors of the previous night would recede, like a treacherous coastline from memory, as they sailed onward. If only they managed the long journey without getting captured.

  “Do you think Don Sprolio has patrols in the area?” asked Cadis.

  “No,” said Iren.

  “How do you know?” said Cadis. “A couple enterprising scouts could be over that hill, waiting to ambush.”

  “Sprolio brought his sons to the Revels,” said Iren.

  Cadis had been avoiding mention of the Revels.

  “Were they handsome?” said Cadis.

  “Not with soiled breeches and cut throats, no.”

  Cadis sighed. Iren had rebuffed every attempt at idle distraction, as if she had been constantly revisiting the events of the night—examining them like a dead bird—to expose the intricacy of their inner workings.

  Cadis was no more interested in the Sprolio boys than Iren was. But she knew the value of a little chatter to pass the time, to examine shared experiences. “Fine,” said Cadis, “be sour. I’ll sing to myself.”

  “Don’t sing.”

  “It’s an expression. I wasn’t actually going to sing.”

  Iren t
ook a flitting glance over her shoulder as they crested a hill. “We’re being followed,” she said.

  Cadis immediately hunched down in her seat. She acted as if she were pulling a stone from her boot as she looked behind them, but they were on the downward slope of the hill. Cadis waited and was rewarded some minutes later, when a lone figure rode into view. She was too far away for Cadis to learn much.

  “Stop looking,” said Iren.

  “How do you know she’s following us?”

  “When we stopped at the last creek, she stopped so she wouldn’t pass us.”

  “I knew it was suspicious that you wanted to pause for a drink.”

  “The horses were thirsty as well.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not the Iren I’m beginning to know,” said Cadis, hoping she’d take the barb in jest.

  “I was also resting for you.”

  Cadis acted shocked by the insult but smiled through it. Iren betrayed the slightest smirk. “You don’t need to worry about me, sweet sister,” said Cadis.

  “You took such a beating,” said Iren. “I thought you could use some time.”

  Cadis gasped. “Are you referring to the black eye?”

  “And split lip.”

  “And split lip that I got before besting you completely?”

  “A technical victory.”

  Iren knew Cadis prized panache and style as much as technical victories. “All right, then,” said Cadis, enjoying a bit of conversation for the first time that morning. “If that’s how you want it.”

  Under her breath, Iren said, “Ready your bow.”

  Cadis did so by bending forward to pet her horse on the neck. She reached back and pulled her bow from her pack and placed it on her lap.

  “And what about the ball?”

  “Did you do something interesting at the ball?” said Iren.

  She goaded her horse into a quick trot.

  Cadis followed. Iren continued. “You must have said some very clever things to keep the attention of all those boys.”

  “Do you have sociability lessons for me?” said Cadis.

  “Not really,” said Iren. “Maybe daub some powder on those bruises.”

  “Thank you, Governess.”

  “And the dress—”

  “You said you liked my dress!”

  “I lied,” said Iren.

  “I think you’re lying now,” said Cadis. “Don’t be mean to my dress.”

  “I thought I saw one of the courtesans from Endrit’s alley wearing one half as tight . . . and twice as long.”

  “Ha!” said Cadis. “Maybe she had less to be proud of. Besides, you wore that weird two-piece thing.”

  Iren shrugged.

  “And I saved your life,” said Cadis.

  “Then we’re even, since I spared yours in the melee.”

  “What? You did not let me win. Say you didn’t let me win.”

  They pressed the horses until they passed a dense grouping of myrtles. Iren turned abruptly behind the trees and stopped. She jumped off her horse and ran up to a tree trunk. Cadis followed, pulling an arrow from her quiver as she hid.

  They watched and waited as the figure of the lone rider grew closer and closer. She hadn’t seen them stop.

  Cadis whispered, even though she didn’t yet need to whisper. “Do you think Hiram sent her?”

  Iren nodded.

  “Do you think he’s conspiring with the old houses?”

  “What?” said Iren, turning to look at Cadis.

  “Who else would have the money to outfit a group and make them look like Findish rebels?”

  “Why would they?”

  “I don’t know—to kill Declan. Hiram’s from an old house, and he’s obsessed with the idea of Kendrick’s heir.”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t know that,” said Cadis. She knew if she insulted Iren’s intelligence, she would get her to talk.

  The rider had sped up, perhaps feeling uncomfortable for having lost them for so long.

  “They could all be in on it. Once they’ve assassinated Declan, they could put a puppet on the throne as the rightful heir and start a war with Findain at the same time.”

  Iren scoffed at the idea. “You’re writing bad theater.”

  “How would you know?” said Cadis.

  Iren could never suffer faulty logic. “The rider is a dragoon.”

  Before Cadis could ask, Iren said, “I know because she rides heavy in the saddle. She’s used to cavalry armor. And she’s terrible at this kind of pursuit. Hiram’s spies aren’t idiots and would never follow so close.”

  The rider was within arrow shot. She slowed and fumbled with something in her lap.

  “So Declan sent her?”

  Iren nodded. Cadis wasn’t as naive as they all believed her to be. But she refused to blame Declan for every hangnail in their lives. Maybe Iren had been listening too much to Suki. “You think he’d try to kill us—?”

  Before Cadis could answer, Iren cut her off and rose from her crouch.

  “—the bird,” said Iren. “Take the bird.”

  Cadis looked up just as the rider let fly a pigeon. It flapped up and up in their direction. Cadis took a knee and nocked her arrow. The bird scooped over the copse of trees and banked into a tight circle. The angle was terrible.

  Iren was already up. She sprinted out of their hiding place, at the rider, who made a yelp of surprise. She kicked her horse and yanked the bridle to turn it around.

  “Take the shot!” shouted Iren over her shoulder.

  Cadis cursed and released the bowstring. The arrow flew. The pigeon shrieked as the arrow nicked its feather, but continued on.

  Iren bore down on the rider. The horse began a gallop. Iren flung a knife hidden inside her sleeve. It planted into the woman’s back.

  The rider fell.

  The horse galloped away.

  The arrow landed twenty yards away.

  The pigeon disappeared into the horizon. Cadis ran over to the body, which Iren had already begun looting.

  “I missed,” said Cadis, when she arrived.

  “You didn’t miss once yesterday,” said Iren. Matter-of-fact.

  “Well, I missed. I don’t usually aim at birds or a woman’s back.”

  “They’re big targets,” said Iren—her mouth tight at the corners.

  Iren pocketed a coin purse and a ring bearing the dragoon coat of arms. “We have to change course,” said Iren. “They’ll have our location in a few hours.”

  Cadis wanted to ask how Iren had been so quick to identify the carrier pigeon, how she knew the spy would report her intel at that particular juncture, or if that had been a coincidence.

  After seeing the rucksacks hidden in the kitchens, Cadis had begun to suspect that very little was coincidence where Iren was concerned.

  Cadis watched as her sister rummaged through the clothes of the dead woman, checking the lining of her vest and the heel of her boots with the practiced efficiency of an undertaker.

  Who is she? thought Cadis.

  Little Iren who liked to embroider.

  Quiet Iren who never fussed.

  Cadis thought of a faraway evening, so many years ago, when they had just arrived in Meridan. Cadis lay in her chamber bed, ten times the size of her bed back at home, in a dark stone room, staring at the flickering light beneath her door and wondering if strange guards would steal inside to throttle her.

  When the door finally opened, she clenched tight the dagger under her blanket. But no looming shadow filled the doorframe. Nothing did. It was as if the door had opened and closed. A mouse had stolen into her room. Cadis noticed only when her blanket rustled and Iren climbed in next to her.

  For a long time, they lay without speaking, almost nose to nose. Cadis didn’t know what to do with the knife. Or what to say. It had all been so new. They were strangers yet. Iren had been scolded already for acting sullen. Cadis was already the one Rhea hated most.

  Iren
stared at her for what seemed like half the night. When she spoke, Cadis almost mistook it for a sigh.

  “Are you scared?” she said.

  Cousin Denarius had not raised a dormouse.

  “No,” said Cadis. Her voice was loud. Anything above a whisper was like a scream. But Iren didn’t wince. She didn’t seem herself scared. She simply took the information in and considered it, like a thresher parsing through chaff.

  After another interminable silence, she said, “Are you interested in being friends?”

  Cadis had never met someone as peculiar as Iren. Back home, Jesper had become her friend after he flicked her ear really hard and she hit him in the face with a rotten peach.

  “Okay,” said Cadis.

  Iren nodded, but didn’t seem happier to know it.

  “Have you had a friend before?” she asked.

  Cadis nodded. “Yes.”

  “Good,” said Iren. “Then you’ll know what to do.”

  That seemed to conclude the subject as Iren settled herself into Cadis’s pillow and closed her eyes.

  Cadis stared at the peculiar girl from Corent. She seemed like an entirely different creature. After a while Iren broke the silence, when she whispered, “You can put that knife away. We’re friends.”

  Cadis didn’t know how she had known, but she tucked the knife back under her mattress. For a long time she couldn’t sleep with a stranger in her bed.

  Eventually, she woke up with her friend curled up next to her.

  And ever since, Cadis had been steering their relationship—reminding Iren when it might be appropriate to apologize, or seeking out her company when she buried herself too long in the archives.

  She hadn’t known quite the magnitude of the task she had accepted all those nights ago—to be friends with Iren.

  As Cadis watched Iren outwit the king’s spy, run her down, kill her, and immediately loot the body, she considered—for the first time since that night so long ago—that it had all been a calculated shadow play. That she had been used in the way that a puppeteer uses. Perhaps she had done it to avoid suspicion. That all those years of friendship were no different than a terra-cotta mask, a costume Iren could put on to seem the happy child, the docile princess, the queen with kitten teeth.

  Maybe Cadis was as naive as they believed.