by Claire Merle
She walks through an enchanting passage of crisscrossed crescent arches. Arches which start on her level and end higher up, joining to the vertical network of turrets, palace apartment and courtyards. Plants hang like long arms from overhead balconies. A buttressed glass room blocks the fading light, and a twisting stairway starts two levels up, and keeps climbing higher than the eye can see.
Footsteps patter and echo. A nearby bird takes flight.
Calmi turns.
The woman running towards her shouts, “News of the Prince!”
She falters, lifts a trembling hand to push back her long hair. “Is he dead?” Her voice is steady but the fear is there, hidden inside her.
“He has just arrived at the palace, My Lady. The Queen greets him as we speak.”
Enough. Calmi has chosen a fast-working poison, and I may only have minutes before it shuts down my organs. It is not much, but at least I know she fears the Prince's death as much as I fear Kel's. I move to the edge of her mind to slip back out.
She runs across the drawbridge of an austere castle, shoes clattering on the wooden slats.
Panic jumps through me. How is this possible? I have been folded further down into her past! But I was so close to the edge. There was no resistance. Getting out should have been as easy as blinking.
“Sixe! Sixe!” she shouts, spinning around the castle's small courtyard. Open doorways ten, twenty, thirty feet high spill from the sheer walls into thin air. An ill kept man, clothes ragged, face weathered, steps into the light almost twenty feet up. Like a rat in a drain tunnel who cannot escape because escape would mean falling to his death.
I test the contours of the memory, searching for an exit.
“Sixe,” she pants. “I need my herb basket. Quickly! In the western field by the brook. The slave girl's baby has come early. And bring something to make fire. We must hurry. She's very sick.”
I sense a small gap. In my mind's eye, I move towards it, imagine myself on the other side. The outside.
She is in a field, crouched before a girl my age. The girl's bare legs are bent up at the knees, held there by another woman. Blood covers the girl’s hands and dress. A baby’s head pokes out from between her legs. Thick dark hair covered in a greasy white substance and blood.
“Sixe, hold the head. I have to push on her stomach.”
She moves around the girl in childbirth and the woman holding her legs. As she places her hands on the girl's belly, feeling the contours of the baby, the girl starts convulsing.
“No, no, don't hold her. Give her space. Wait!”
The seizure ends. “We must get the child out now or they will both die!”
I change tactics to escape her mind. I push myself through the viscous, transparent film enveloping the memory. I have the sense of puncturing the seal and reaching the outside, but time folds again!
She is eight years old, running through a field of yellow wheat. In the distance, smoke billows to the sky. A small brick house is on fire. She is running so fast she trips on her long skirt and lands face down with a thump. The fall winds her. She rises slowly, pushing hair from her face and gazing at the charred house. On her knees, she starts clawing at the ground, tearing up stems of wheat. In a frenzy, she rises, batting the crop until her arms bleed, tramping it beneath her boots, screaming in rage.
The man with the weathered face, Sixe, limps towards her. She claws the mud where she has pulled up the grain, draws her soiled nails across her cheeks, scratching the dirt into them. Sixe takes her hands. He holds them for a moment, and gives a tiny shake of his head.
I mentally kick and punch at the edges of the memory. I am too far down. Too far into her past, and each time I think I have found a way out, I am swallowed further in. The panic mounts. How much time has passed? Five minutes? Ten? If I do not get out now, if I do not answer her questions, will she let me die?
She is a child, younger than Kel. Lord Strik stands beside her in the castle entrance, four guards watching over him. She stares at the high courtyard walls with their strange arched doorways. Doorways you could step through and fall to your death on the cobbled ground below.
“This is your home now,” he tells her. “Sixe will always know where you are. It is his talent.” Strik switches to a language of short, clipped sounds where sentences seem only two or three words long. And he is using the voice. She stiffens, scraggly hair falling over her lowered face, hands rough and cut, the skirt of her dress two sizes too big. Still using the voice, he says, “You cannot leave. You will never leave the lands around my home without my permission.”
I am catapulted from Lady Calmi's mind, thrown abruptly back to the living world, without understanding how.
Blue wing-tipped birds dip and dart across the ceiling. Something sour fills my nostrils and sits on my tongue. Bile climbs my throat in waves, never quite reaching my mouth.
I cannot move. Heaviness invades my body, but somehow my chest still rises and falls, and I manage to swallow, though it's painful.
Lady Calmi peers over me. I try to adjust my eyes to focus on her face. She dabs a pungent smelling cloth on my lips and cool liquid dribbles into my mouth. When my eyes finally obey my will and meet hers, she simply looks at me, then sits back on the low table, staring.
I tell my fingers to move. Down by my side, where she cannot see, the little one twitches.
“I did not know the poison could put someone into a trance,” she says. “I have never heard of it.”
“Have you given me the antidote?”
“I cannot question you dead. Yes, I have given it to you.” I keep ordering my fingers to respond. Twitching one, then the next, then the next. “Why have you come to the Ruby Palace?”
“I met your grandfather,” I say, hoping to distract her as I regain movement.
Her eyes sharpen. It is the first true reaction she has given. “Where?”
“We travelled through his lands from Lyndonia.”
She rises and goes to stand by the balcony window. She gazes out so I can only see her profile. While she is not looking, I use all my will to inch my hand down the divan. My fingers graze the bone handle of my knife. “Grandfather saw the Prince?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Then we haven't much time.” She turns, her forest green dress shimmering in the sunshine, reflecting in her eyes. I cannot blame the Prince for wishing to defy his father and refuse the Rudeashan princess so that he could marry Lady Calmi. Her uncanny beauty is like her grandfather's voice; there is a strange power to it.
“Much time before what?”
“Before grandfather grows tired of waiting.”
When she speaks of Lord Strik, everything about her—voice, stance, eyes—are more empty than usual. She holds no affection for the man who brought her to his castle, and used his influence and the man Sixe to keep her on a leash. Fear. Obedience. But not love.
I wrap my knife into the cup of my palm, practice squeezing it.
“I do not understand why the Prince has brought you here,” she says. When I do not answer, she walks to the table, and bends down to tuck several fallen herb packets into her wicker basket.
She has given up and is leaving. I need more time! I curl my toes, and hunch my shoulders, coaxing muscles to respond, wheedling back control of my body.
Once her basket is packed she leans over me. “Tell Prince Jakut I must speak to him.”
“I do not imagine you have many friends, Lady Calmi, if you go around poisoning people and then asking them for services.”
“I do not,” she says.
“But it looks like you are in desperate need of one.”
“If I had come to you as a friend, and asked why the Prince has brought you here and what has happened to him, would you have told me?”
“No. But what makes you think it is the Prince and not the Duke who brought me to the Ruby Palace?”
“The Duke?” she says, as though only just considering it. “The Duke is not a fool.”
“And the Prince?”
“The Prince is the kingdom's only hope.”
I sit up fast, head-butting her. Pain screams in my chest and my muscles moan in agony, but I have the advantage of surprise. She reels back. I grab a fist of her hair with one hand, jerk her towards me and press the tip of my knife into the vee of her throat.
“We now know you were bluffing, Lady Calmi. The question is, am I?”
No reaction. No shock. She is utterly numb to violence. For a brief instant, I wonder what happened to her in Lord Strik's home. What happened to her mother and father?
“Are you an assassin?” she says.
“I will ask the questions. What happened to the Prince's escort?”
“Five of grandfather's men went with Prince Jakut to the north. Grandfather said they would protect him, but I expect they had orders to make sure the Princess of Rudeash and the Prince did not meet. Grandfather's men must have slaughtered the rest of his escort. I expect it was so the Prince would not be suspected of betraying the Carucan army. So it would look as though he was targeted at the same time as his father.”
“Did Prince Jakut betray the Carucan army?”
She does not answer straight away, but tilts back her head so the blade no longer scratches her throat. I loosen my hand on her hair. Adrenaline crashes through my body. Did he do it? Is Jakut a traitor after all?
“Yes,” she says. “Indirectly. He allowed it.”
My ears ring with blood. He might not have killed his escort, but the Prince is responsible for the death of hundreds of men, including his own father.
“And how does this make him the only hope for Caruca?” I sneer.
“It was the only way.”
“For the two of you to be together,” I spit, adrenaline pumping through me.
“The only way to gain grandfather's trust and kill the old man,” she answers.
Forty
The door to my chambers whips open. Tug sweeps in, hand on his scabbard, every muscle tensed. He takes in Lady Calmi and me, my knife still inches from her throat, my fingers wrapped around her hair. As the guard appears behind him, Tug kicks the door shut in his face.
“You're putting the knife to good use, I see,” he says. Unlike the soldier, Tug's scabbard lies on his belt at a horizontal angle. The hilt meets the blade in a small fold of metal rather than a cross. He stands steadfast, taking in the smear of blood between Calmi's eyebrows, the basket of herbs, Lady Calmi's beauty. My heart pounds, but the adrenaline rush is over. I am starting to tremble. My body is still weak with poison.
Lady Calmi and the Prince betrayed the King and his army so they could kill Lord Strik. Should I believe her? A lifetime of brutality and fear might explain Lady Calmi's decision, but what reason could the Prince have for such a treacherous endeavour?
“Lady Calmi?” Tug says. I clench my teeth. How did he know it was her, yet I missed it? Frowning, I release her hair.
“The assassin's assistant,” she says to Tug, stepping back from the divan, lowering her eyes in a greeting of respect. Tug's gaze flicks to mine, trying to catch up with what is happening. “The Prince should not have hired you,” Calmi continues. “It makes no difference you are a girl. You will not get near Grandfather. He has four skilled assassins guarding him at all times.”
Energy drains from my body. I sink to the divan. My forehead burns. A cold sweat breaks across me.
“It's the poison,” Calmi says. “The antidote needs more time to neutralise the effects. You gained mobility far quicker than expected.”
Tug straightens, left hand moving for his scabbard.
“Otherwise,” Calmi continues, oblivious to his reaction, “you would not have caught me by surprise.” She brushes a finger over the cut between her eyebrows. “I will not underestimate you again.”
Tug sweeps the scabbard to his side, pops the guard, twists the sword away from his body and draws it without a sound. The curved blade swings high in the air and comes down as he lunges towards her.
I bite my lip to stop myself from shouting. I don't want the Queen's soldier bursting into my chambers. Tug means to scare Lady Calmi, not injure her, but the strike is startlingly close.
Calmi flinches, wide eyes fixed on the silver steel, which is now a fingernail's width from her neck. Tug's grip is steady, not a shadow of a doubt in him at the skill he wields, or how close he has come to drawing blood.
“What is the name of the poison?” he demands.
“Blue Death.”
“Show me the antidote.”
She glances at the blade, expressing her will with nothing but a look. Tug understands as well as I do. He arcs the sword away, his movements precise, smooth, though I imagine it has been half a lifetime since he last used such a weapon.
I notice now he is close-shaved. His long hair washed and trimmed. He wears black trousers and a white shirt, wide sleeves drawn in at the wrists. It is the traditional dress for Carucan mourning, reminding me we are expected to attend the King's ceremony of departure in less than an hour.
Lady Calmi hooks out a necklace from beneath her dress. A thumb sized phial dangles on the end. She unscrews the lid and hands Tug the miniature bottle. He sniffs, dabs the liquid on his tongue. Then hands back the bottle, neither of them saying a word. But he is satisfied, because he returns the sword to its scabbard. He withdraws from the center of the room to stand before the closed bedroom door.
I wonder if he's playing his role as assassin's assistant. Calmi takes his retreat as a signal to continue talking.
“The Eteans were supposed to capture the King, not kill him,” she says. “But Prince Jakut knew the risks. My grandfather is not a man of his word. And when he arrives, he will want to know what happened to the men he placed inside the Prince's escort. If he suspects Jakut had anything to do with their disappearance, he will be displeased.”
Tug steps forward, not able to bite his tongue and stay out of matters for long.
“Am I to deduce that you and the Prince are such fools you have duped Lord Strik, and invited him to the Ruby Court so you may kill him?”
“Someone must try.”
“Many have tried. Strik still lives.”
“It is not a reason to give up.”
“And who will actually murder your grandfather, if you manage to get him alone?” Tug stalks towards Calmi, muscles rippling as he makes his full height and presence felt. “You? The Prince? The Prince isn't capable, and if you were, you would have done it already.”
“Grandfather is surrounded by skilled assassins. Even in his home, even when he sleeps. I've tried other ways, spent years learning all kinds of poisons—those hardest to detect. Two food tasters died. When my grandfather realized I was behind the poisonings, I was punished.”
The corner of her eye twitches. I expect “punished” does not capture the trauma she was put through. She is telling us all this to gain our trust. She does not realize I am Uru Ana and have already seen the hate she bears for Lord Strik.
“A score of men as strong and able as yourself,” she says to Tug, “would not be enough to stop him. Besides, Grandfather suspects everyone. It would be impossible to get close enough. And if you did, just one word from his mouth would halt you in your tracks. But the Prince is different.”
“Why?” I ask, my voice husky.
She fiddles with the handle of her medicine basket. “Grandfather wants him,” she says after a short pause. “He has heard of the Prince's reputation in the Ruby Court. A reputation fostered by King Alixter. Weak, frivolous, lustful, arrogant. The ideal puppet for ruling Caruca. He doesn't think Jakut is smart enough to be the enemy. And he assumes the Prince's desire for the throne is driven by greed and lust.”
I shake my head, biting the inside of my cheek. Let us hope Jakut has more than a bad reputation to protect him!
“If Prince Jakut has told you nothing of this,” Calmi says, “nor hired you as reinforcement, why are you here?”
Tug scratches o
nce down the side of his clean-shaven jaw. Neither of us will answer her question. She is Strik's granddaughter. She may want him dead, but she cannot know the Prince has lost his memory. Not yet. Perhaps never.
“What has kept Lord Strik from the Red City?” I ask.
“He was cast out of Rudeash as a young man. He is kept out by a power greater than his own. Perhaps it is this power, or something similar that protects the Red City.”
I glance at Tug. The tattoos replacing his brows flex. He went to Rudeash and found no one in the Rudeashan kingdom with powers similar to Lord Strik. Heard no rumours of such things. He does not believe her.
“If such a power exists,” I say, “why did you speak of your grandfather's imminent arrival? The city is protected.”
“I lived in his house for fourteen years. I watched him grow bolder, greedier, crueller. He has been gathering forces all across the country. His lands have grown closer and closer to the Red City. The power keeping him away weakens. I am convinced he sent me here as part of a larger plan to seize the kingdom.”
“We have come from the north,” Tug says, “travelled hundreds of miles across the kingdom and never seen or heard of any such armies.”
“Grandfather is prudent. My friendship with Prince Jakut has given him an unexpected opportunity to advance his plans. But with or without us, he will not strike in an expected manner. The Red City will be under siege before the Queen even knows what's happening. And when he attacks, it will not be unarmed soldiers that die. But men, women, children who have no means of defending themselves.”
Tug and I exchange a look.
“You think it isn't possible?” she continues. “Thirty years ago Grandfather turned Caruca against a peaceful people using only lies, fear and rumour. He manipulated King Rex to outlaw the Uru Ana, and it was the King's soldiers and the Carucans themselves who did the rest—burning Uru Ana, chasing them from their homes, arresting them.
What Grandfather really wanted was slave labor to harvest his lands and work in the crystal tundra mines. He will do the same again. He will use the ignorance of the people to take the throne. And we will all become his slaves.”