Daughters of Ruin

by K. D. Castner

  Iren smiled as she crossed the bridge to the island of the Odeon. The guards had no idea. The guildmasters. Even Cadis. That she had been loosed onto the world. Its shade would be her food, until she could reach her mother.

  She ascended the stairs and entered the Odeon.

  She nodded to the doorman.

  She smiled.

  She made a click, click, click sound.

  The Odeon was built for gatherings. Outside the common hall was a garden palisade. None of the usual balconies designated for nobles. No inner sancta where royals distinguished themselves, even from their lesser cousins.

  Just long garden paths.

  Open porticoes where everyone strolled in leisure.

  What social creatures these Findains must have been.

  Iren crossed the garden without looking up.

  Past two picnics.

  Past a poet’s recital.

  Past three separate games of dice.

  The castle of the Archon Basileus was the only other structure on the small island in the mouth of the harbor.

  Cadis would be within.

  Butting heads with Hypatia.

  Sparring with Arcadie Kallis.

  Flaunting herself for Jesper.

  She was made for such constant melodrama.

  She was a fish back into water.

  So much social pressure.

  So much business conducted over jokes and a handshake.

  It was a wonder to Iren that Findain ever rose to power.

  They ran a country as if it were a primary school, with cliques and guilds and secret societies. Whispers and singing and talent shows.

  Everyone equal.

  Another way of saying everyone vying for attention.

  Unstructured rule by popularity.

  Iren preferred a few magisters, a good debate, and efficient action. Iren entered the gathering hall in the basilica.

  To her credit, Cadis was studying the ledgers of the central banks.

  Hypatia Terzi lounged nearby, writing a letter.

  Jesper stood over Cadis’s shoulder, explaining some of the names on the ledger. Unwritten explanations.

  Jesper stopped when he saw Iren.

  Cadis turned. It was concern on her face.

  Something amiss.

  Iren checked the exits: the entry and two doors, none guarded.

  Three windows, all closed but breakable.

  “Where were you?” said Jesper.

  “Dancing,” said Iren. It came with a sharpened stare.

  They all knew she didn’t dance.

  Now they knew she didn’t answer to Jesper Terzi either.

  Cadis stood from her seat. “Iren, it’s nothing.”

  “What’s nothing?”

  “Come away from the door.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Oh, stop coddling,” said Hypatia. “We know where you’ve been.”

  Iren didn’t respond. If she had to, she could run. All she really needed was the brace on her left arm. It held her knives and thief’s kit. She could sleep in gullies with the homeless.

  At night she could steal into the basilica for her travel pack. A land route to Corent would take two and a half months at this time of year. The plan formalized instantaneously.

  “What were you doing at the docks?” said Jesper. He spoke like a boy trying to speak like a man.

  Cadis touched his arm. She seemed concerned. She was wearing more powder than usual.

  “Now, hold on,” said Cadis. “I trust Iren.”

  Hypatia snorted from her seat. “Then you’re a fool.”

  “She’s my sister,” said Cadis. Then to Iren, “We didn’t mean to ambush.”

  Iren needed more information. What could they possibly know?

  Iren felt blind. “I was at the docks.”

  They must have been following her.

  “What were you doing?” said Jesper.

  “Hopscotch,” said Iren.

  “Why don’t you answer the question?”

  “Because I don’t answer to you.”

  “Iren,” said Cadis. “We already know.”

  “We?” said Iren.

  “Did you think a ship captain of Findain would keep your little secret?” said Hypatia.

  So much for finding an honest man.

  Cadis looked at her with genuine ache and confusion.

  “Just tell us,” said Cadis. “Please.”

  Iren knew she was cornered. Both were. Cadis could hardly stand beside her and keep hold of her tenuous position. She would have to take a tactical loss.

  “Fine,” said Iren. “I went to the docks and asked the captain to send a letter to my mother.”

  That was enough. Cadis seemed relieved. “See?” she said, as if proving an argument she had made earlier.

  “But what did you write?” said Hypatia.

  “Daughterly things.”

  “Spying, you mean.”

  “We don’t know that,” said Cadis.

  “Why else would you write in code?” said Hypatia. She held the letter aloft. It was Iren’s.

  The captain must have run it over immediately. Hypatia’s underground network was more impressive than Iren had figured.

  “We have our language.”

  “A spy cipher.”

  “So we like puzzles,” said Iren with a shrug.

  “Not such a clever one,” said Hypatia. The noose was tightening. Iren remembered Hypatia had been writing on the parchment when she’d entered. Hypatia read from the letter.

  Two days of surveillance on all of Cadis’s movements, ending with, “Cadis is desperate for their approval as one of their own. She will break soon. The revolutionaries will have her.”

  Hypatia lowered the letter. A triumphant sneer. “I guess I just solved your little code.”

  Iren would have put three blades into her, center mast. But Cadis’s silence was far more alarming. She had flushed into a deep crimson rage. She could never hide an emotion.

  Her hands clenched.

  Jesper seemed afraid to touch her.

  She couldn’t look at Iren.

  She shook.

  Then she lunged for Iren’s face.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Rhea

  Cadis would know what to do, surely. Always the one with poise under pressure. Like Rhys.

  Rhea, in turn, was utterly lost.

  Did my father really make a criminal of me? Would he have thrown Rhys away so easily? Does he really believe that Marta was the leader of the rebels?

  As they sat on the farmhouse porch, Rhea couldn’t look at either of them. Suki had a frantic tremor ever since she awoke. Her eyes darted, glared at Rhea, lusted after Endrit. Her motions were jerky and her sentences scattered. Rhea wondered what the true toll of the attack had been on her little sister—certainly, it was deeper than the wound on her shoulder.

  At least she wasn’t sneaking around the barn anymore, listening to their conversations and pretending they couldn’t see her.

  Suki sat on the grass, on the other side of the broken-down fence, as far away from Rhea as she could be, eating more food. The little thing had eaten twice the portion of Endrit, who busied himself fixing the fence she had obviously broken.

  He didn’t seem to mind. He was never upset at Suki. He always doted.

  Rhea tried to help by clearing the broken plants in the garden bed.

  Why are we even doing this? she thought.

  Have we finally broken under the strain?

  Endrit didn’t seem broken. But the energy had to go somewhere. He dug at the base of each fence post, straightened it out, then packed the dirt again. He was searching for an answer that none of them had.

  “What do we do?” said Rhea.

  “Kill them,” said Suki.

  “The guards?” said Rhea. The plaza had far too many.

  Even the three of them approaching from the rooftops couldn’t hope to beat them. “There are too many,” said Rhea.

/>   “I meant all of them,” said Suki. She stared a thousand yards into the distance, in the direction of Walltown.

  She lifted both hands in the air, in the shape of a ball, and then splayed her fingers outward. “Boom.”

  She’s completely lost her grip on reality, thought Rhea. She turned to Endrit and spoke softer. Maybe Suki wouldn’t hear, or wouldn’t bother returning from whatever mad fantasy she was concocting. “Endrit, we have only a day.”

  “What can we do?” he said, pushing the shovel deep into the dirt with his heel. Only a few days ago, she would have relished watching him at his work.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “We need more information.”

  Then why is he fixing a stupid fence? Why aren’t we stalking outside of Meridan Keep? Why aren’t we trying to save Marta?

  “Do you have a plan?” she ventured.

  “Mmm-hmm,” groaned Endrit as he lifted a shovelful of dirt.

  Then why isn’t he telling me? Does he think me still loyal to my father?

  Rhea snapped a broken stalk from a tomato plant and tied the salvageable remains to the fence for support.

  Am I still loyal? Or better put, is he?

  Rhea couldn’t help but go over the events of the night of the Revels. In the light of her newfound suspicions, her father’s behavior seemed suddenly intricate and insidious. He had escorted her to her chamber that night and stationed a guard at the door.

  Was he protecting me from the attack?

  If so, why didn’t he tell me?

  Was he unsure?

  She had felt such a zigzag of emotions in the market square, when she saw he had taken some sort of awful injury to the leg. Why had he protected only her, if he knew? And what of Hiram? Where is he? Was he killed in the attack?

  Declan must have barely survived. Rhea felt overwhelmed and empty at the same time. She knew the man who had raised her was long gone. And perhaps he had only ever been there in her near-blind devotion.

  As she considered the depth of her father’s involvement in the deaths of hundreds in the Meridan court, Rhea rolled a leaf of March mint, a Corentine medicinal plant, in the palm of her hand. It was known to have a calming effect. Rhea closed her eyes and thought of Iren.

  How did we come to this? How did we let the years come between us? Will we all stand against one another on the battlefield?

  For a long time the three were silent—Rhea reliving her childhood, revising each and every interaction with her father; Suki eating all of their rations while running some sort of hedge maze in her mind; and Endrit frantically digging fence posts as if it would save his mother.

  Tomorrow they would execute the only mother any of them had ever had. It was nearly sundown when Endrit finally smacked his shovel into the dirt and cursed. “It’s not here!” he said.

  Rhea looked at Suki.

  Did she know what he was doing? By the look of her, she didn’t.

  “What isn’t?” said Rhea.

  Endrit sighed. “When we left. Escaped. She told me to look in the garden.”

  “For what?” said Rhea.

  “I don’t know.”

  So that’s why he was digging.

  “What did she say exactly?”

  Rhea had never seen him so worried. He who laughed at all the cares of the world. He who had giggled two nights ago when she’d snuck into his bed, afraid of the visions she had seen in her dreams. She had curled in to him for warmth and comfort. He had been both. A lighthearted rake. Nightmare, frustrations, fears—they were all moods too rich for the likes of Endrit. Now he kneeled before a broken fence as if all those blithe and bonny years had turned—in the span of a few hours—into the weight of the Great Ocean.

  “She said, ‘Don’t worry and look in the garden.’ That’s all.”

  It didn’t sound like Marta to be so careless in her instruction.

  “Did she say it exactly like that?” said Rhea. “Don’t worry? Look in the garden?”

  “I think. Don’t worry. Be careful. Be calm. I don’t remember.”

  “Wait. She said ‘be calm’?”

  “Maybe. Yes. Why?”

  Rhea held up the leaf to the March mint. “Maybe it was a clue.”

  Endrit grabbed the shovel and rushed to her. Rhea stood aside to let him dig up the plant. On further reckoning, it was the only foreign plant in the entire garden. Suki ran around the fence gate and helped dig by scooping with her hands. She had never cleaned so much as a dish, and here she was dirtying herself. Is it for Endrit? Has she fully snapped?

  All other thoughts were cast away when Endrit stepped onto the shovelhead a sixth or seventh time and they all heard a muted but unmistakably metallic clang.

  Endrit stepped back and dug a wider perimeter. Rhea joined in.

  It was a soldier’s strongbox, about the size of a loaf of bread, made of ironwork, with inset hinges to be waterproof. On long campaigns, officers kept letters from their lovers, ducal fiats, maps, and personal items within. Often, it was the only part of them to return from war.

  Endrit pulled out the box and didn’t bother looking for a key. He set it on its side and set the tip of the shovel into the tiny lock. He stomped onto the shovelhead and cracked the box like an oyster.

  The night had snuck upon them. It was too dark to read anything. Endrit carried the box inside the house with Rhea and Suki right behind him. Suki was clasped to his heel like a pup, leaving Rhea to strike the flint and light the oil lamps.

  When she approached with two large lamps to light the table, Endrit had already emptied the box.

  Parchments, mostly. They each grabbed a bundle and began to unravel them. “This is a bunch of commendations,” said Suki. “Medals from King Kendrick.”

  “This is a personal letter from Queen Valda,” said Endrit.

  Rhea knew Marta was a decorated general in Meridan’s army, but she’d had no idea of such a close relationship with the king and queen.

  Rhea unrolled a large sheaf—schematics written by a magister of the build. “What is it?” said Suki, pulling the front down flat on the table.

  “It’s a technical map,” said Rhea. She recognized the upper floors immediately. “It’s Meridan Keep.”

  All the dungeons and catacombs below it were nearly double the size of the aboveground chambers. Some they had never seen before.

  “Why would she have this?” said Endrit.

  And without waiting for an answer, he rose from the table and marched to a chest in the corner.

  “We can get her,” he said, as he opened the chest and pulled out a hunter’s bag and light leather armor. “We can get her tonight.”

  “Yes!” said Suki. She ran over to pick out a blade from the weapons rack above the hearth.

  Are they both mad? A map wasn’t enough to storm a castle. A map that could have been well out-of-date. And what of the guards? Would they subdue and kill more of her countrymen?

  “Wait,” said Rhea. “Can we finish looking, at least? Do we know that this is what Marta wanted us to find?”

  Suki sighed aloud. “It has to be,” said Endrit. “She knew she’d be arrested. If I’d gotten her clue, we would have had days to plan.”

  He had a manic energy that Suki seemed to feed from. They crisscrossed the house, preparing for a stealth invasion.

  But if Marta wanted him to have the map, she would have told him directly, “Dig under the March mint.” Why give a vague clue? Did she think she would survive to meet them? Her words were only meaningful if they were last words. If she had arrived at the house, they would be nothing but basic advice to stay calm.

  Rhea untied the last bundle. It was another letter from Queen Valda, wrapped around a metal plate or talisman, which Rhea could not yet see, because it was itself wrapped in polishing cloth. Rhea began with the letter:

  Marta, I hope you will remember me as we once were, in my father’s house—two maidens, hardly come of age, on such separate paths. Do you recall how many hour
s you would train with the master of swords in the same yard as I would paint a bowl of olives? Do you remember eating an olive and setting the pit back in the bowl—with such elaborate care, as if not to disturb my work? How we laughed at the time. How much more we laughed when I unveiled the painting at Father’s court with that pit rendered for all to see.

  Oh, Marta, I know we have let our sisterhood fade. I had Kendrick to worry over. You—you were leading his campaigns. But love me, if you would, and pity a sister who comes to you now begging.

  Taylin is all I have, and you well know he was hard-won. He has Kendrick’s puckish smile already, and he is not a week old. I have never seen Kendrick frightened as he is now, even with all the banner houses of Meridan swearing allegiance. He hears whisper of horrible plots. This magister from House Ferimore calls himself Hiram Kinmegistus. Do you know him? He has returned from the academy as so many second sons do, with eyes as hungry as the shinhounds always slobbering at his heels.

  I have not left the birthing chamber, Marta. I pleaded that Kendrick stay too, but you know him. I fear there are knives waiting for us in every shadow of Meridan Keep. And worse still, Taylin is their target. Marta, I shudder and weep and beg you. Take my son and hide him. Protect him from all the hideous scheming and betrayal.

  Oh, Marta, take him for at least a while, until we can be sure of his safety.

  Name him after that master of sword you liked so much.

  Tell him the truth only when he is ready. Tell him his mother did not stop kissing him until the moment a cruel world pulled him from her grasp. And please, Marta, tell him to be a good king.

  Love, love, love,

  Valda

  Rhea’s hands could hardly unwrap the polishing cloth, they shook so hard.

  Is it possible?

  “Endrit,” she said. Her mouth was dry, and she was unsure the sound had made it across the room. “Endrit,” she said again.

  He must have made some confirming noise. She wasn’t sure.

  “Endrit,” she said.

  “Yes. Yes, what is it?” said Endrit.

  “What did your father do? What was his profession?”

  “Why?” said Endrit, then responded anyway. “He was the master of sword before he died. He trained my mother.”