The Untold Tale (The Accidental Turn Series Book 1)

by J. M. Frey

  “Yes, of course,” I acquiesce, not entirely convinced. “The point is that no one knows that you and I have departed Turn Hall, and you therefore cannot be seen in Kingskeep in the company of the Shadow Hand.”

  “True. Then, why go to the king at all?” Pip asked. “Why not just get in, get the goods, get out?”

  “I need to give him my progress reports regarding the Viceroy’s latest schemes, as well as the border skirmishes between the lords down in the Southlands, and let him know what we’ve come for. It wouldn’t do for him to allow young Master Gyre to try to challenge me over a small bit of sparkle. The king will keep our theft quiet.”

  “So, we’re just going to, what, steal it from the kid?”

  I turn in my saddle to try to find her eyes in the blue-tinged gloom. “You were the one who suggested that we avoid the heroic path—sneaking and study, I believed you advocated.”

  “True,” Pip allows. Her bottom lip plumps a bit, and then she sucks it back between her teeth, her pout aborted. “I did. I just . . . I guess I kinda wanted to see what you would do in a sword fight.”

  “Talk him down, my dear,” I admit.

  Pip’s smile is nearly enough to light the tunnel, and the skin all over the back of my neck and ears goes hot.

  “My dear?” she echoes.

  “I . . . that is . . . i-i-if you pre-prefer a . . . dif-dif-different pet n-name. O-o-or n-none at all—”

  “It’s fine,” Pip allows, grin softening to something genuinely pleased and content, and then spreading immediately into something wicked and altogether too alluring to be comfortable while I am squashed into a saddle. “Sugarlumps.”

  “No,” I say immediately. “Not on y-your l-li-life, Lucy Pi-Pi-Piper.”

  “Honeybunches?”

  “N-No.”

  “Pookiebear.”

  “Pip!”

  “Right, well, you’ll have to give me time to come up with something else, then,” she laughs. Her breath is a warm puff against my heated neck, which seems to just warm it more. At length, she suggests: “Bao bei.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “‘My treasured one.’”

  “Bao bei,” I repeat softly. “Very well . . . my d-de-dear.” I clench my tongue between my teeth, annoyed that our moment has been ruined by my blasted stutter. I turn back to face the direction we are heading and click Dauntless into a slightly swifter pace.

  Pip squeezes my middle once in answer and lays her cheek against my shoulder blade, her thighs soft and warm where they frame my own. Dauntless plods gamely forward; the Wisp, pleased that we are moving—flighty creatures that they are, they hate being still—trills. For a brief moment, all is perfect with the world.

  Ten

  I release the Wisp as soon as we reach open air, and the little blob of blue light chitters in happiness, whizzing around Dauntless’s feet. My horse is unimpressed, and when the creature zips off to try her metaphorical hand at the hedge maze, he snorts.

  “How will we light our way back?” Pip asks, watching the Wisp go.

  “Oh, this one likes the lantern,” I say, helping Pip descend from Dauntless, and then following her to my own feet. “She won’t go far.”

  Leaving Dauntless in the maze, I lead Pip through the leafy avenues, hand in hand to keep her from getting lost. I cannot quash the joy that shivers across my skin at the feel of her fingers twining with mine, even through my gloves. Even as we are on our way to find the first item that will help take her away from me forever.

  I am determined to enjoy my time with Pip, however short-lived it may be, because, and I am certain of its truth the minute I realize this, I love her. And will continue to do so, no matter how briefly I get to hold her in my life.

  By the Writer, I’m starting to sound like some ridiculous poet in Bevel’s accounts of my brother’s adventures. Useless old sop.

  Instead of exiting the maze, we turn down another dead-end, and this time, I Speak Words of Revelation into the vines. Pip’s eyes glaze slightly as I Speak, her ear cocked toward me, and when I finish, she snaps back, annoyed. “I still can’t hear Words.”

  “It is no great loss.” I try to reassure her as we pick our way around the plant life, which has pulled back to reveal a stone viaduct just tall enough for us to pass through on foot, lit by mounds and mounds of overgrown, glowing moss.

  “It is,” she insists. “I want to hear them.”

  I have nothing to say to that save platitudes that I am certain would be unwelcome, so I keep silent. We walk in the damp chill of the abandoned viaduct for several long moments until, eventually, we reach a fork in the path. There are three possibilities, and I choose the northernmost, which will take us to the servants’ entrance in the palace pastry kitchen. It is empty this time of night, the evening’s cakes and pies sent to the king’s table already, while tomorrow morning’s sweet rolls are left to rise under cheesecloth on the hulking great rolling table.

  The room itself is unlovely and perfunctory. The palace is really rather more of a castle, a squat stone thing plopped onto the highest hill of Kingskeep by rulers thousands of years out of memory. The throne room dome is the only concession to beauty, being hewn of jadeite, and is a relatively recent addition, in terms of dynasties. The original builder’s concern had been security, not beauty, so the rest of the castle is made of common rock and mortar, and the only adornments to its façade are the green flags and banners that King Carvel Tarvers had mounted around the doors. The rich, jewel-tone green is the Tarvers family color.

  It is far more dynamic and attractive than House Turn’s boring russet.

  The Kingdom of Hain holds a strange fascination with finding the balance between the natural beauty of wild-grown foliage and the human tendency to want to organize chaos. The palace grounds and the outer bailey wall reflect that topiary poetry, the vegetation carefully tended so as to appear to be growing organically, a contradiction of meadow flowers in rigid arrangements and meandering gravel paths that actually spell a sigil of protection with their crisscrossing lines.

  The inner bailey is paved with boring limestone, and the castle’s original wall remains low and plain. But the outer wall is made of a rare monk-spelled moonstone, so it glows on nights where the moon has waned to its thinnest, lighting the grounds and the town below with enough of a gentle luminescence to allow people to find their way without being obtrusive. This wall is carved with statues of the great kings and queens of Hain, each generation adding a new statue to the wall when the ruler dies. The statues are patterned after a mold taken of the rulers’ faces on the day of their coronation—the moment they became king or queen—and the statue faces outward, watching over Kingskeep and Hain for all eternity.

  Personally, I find it unsettling. All those eyes.

  Little of this ostentation appears in the kitchen, though. The only decoration these plain stone walls bear are recipes. They have been scribbled in charcoal or carved around the bread oven, the sinks, and the pantry doors, the favorite dishes of long-dead rulers scratched into the stone for safekeeping by long-dead cooks.

  There is also a basket of going-stale breads from this morning’s breakfast on the giant worktop. I pilfer one and secret it in a pocket of the cloak for the ride back to the taverna, and then leave Pip seated in the corner of the kitchen furthest from the main entrance. She is in a scullery maid’s apron, just in case someone comes in and spies her.

  The trip up to the king’s study is quick, thanks to the servants’ passageways. Like the rest of the palace, the study is perfunctory and purpose built. The bookshelves are carved into the stone walls, and King Carvel—or, I rather suspect, Queen Bretrandy—has attempted to soften the harsh lines with overstuffed furniture, expensive rugs, and elegantly draping swaths of Tarvers-green fabric.

  When I am assured he is alone in the room, I step out from behind an arras and clear my throat to catch his attention.

  The king, broad of face and shoulder—and now, in his declinin
g years, also of belly—starts. He softens and grumbles at me. “Shadow Hand, you always scare the wits from me.”

  “Were that true, sire, you would be a village idiot by now.” I step into the light of the lamp on his desk and push up my mask. “Well met, sire.”

  He takes my extended hand in friendship. “Well met, Master Turn. And for the love of the Writer, call me Carvel when it’s just us two, aye? What brings you ‘round my way? Have you any more news on this dreadful collecting spree the Viceroy is on?”

  “Unfortunately, yes, sire—Carvel. It culminated in him finding the means to call down a Deal-Maker spirit.”

  The king’s age-yellowed eyes widen in understanding and horror. “By the Writer. What did he dice for, do you know?”

  Uncertain how much to say, I only nod.

  “Is it a danger?”

  “No,” I say. “No, it is not. What they gained, it would . . . not be tamed by him, or Bootknife, and has fled their power. It is no longer a threat, I assure you.”

  King Carvel nods and sighs, satisfied that if I have told him so, it must be truth. Sometimes, I wonder what kind of power the Shadow Hand holds over Hain. It would only take one man with one selfish ambition to ruin centuries of devoted service and pervert the king’s rule.

  “What was the Viceroy after?” Carvel asks, pouring out a tumbler of whiskey for me from his private reserve. I take it and wait for him to have his own, toast to his health, and then sip. “And your health, too, Master Turn. What was it?”

  “The destruction of Kintyre, as ever, sire.”

  “Blast that man,” Carvel spits. “For all the good your brother has done my kingdom, he sure knows how to make an enemy and foster a grudge.”

  “I am very well aware, sire,” I say, trying to keep the bitterness of a childhood with Kintyre from my voice. The king has no need to know that Kintyre has made himself as much my enemy as the Viceroy’s, though far less viciously.

  I take the respite in our conversation to lay new correspondence on the king’s desk. Carvel flicks his eyes at the letters, all sealed shut with Tarvers-green wax and addressed in Tarvers-green ink, and sighs.

  “So much for getting to bed at a reasonable hour,” he grumbles. “Betts will be annoyed.”

  “It is nothing that won’t keep, sire,” I assure him. “Do not anger my queen over this.”

  “Happy wife, happy life,” he agrees and tosses back the whiskey. I take this as my signal that the conversation is over, but then Carvel hoists his not inconsiderable self back to his feet and goes to his liquor credenza once more. He comes back with the whiskey decanter, and I sigh inwardly. Tonight is going to be one of those confession nights, and I am anxious to be away, to collect Pip and get Dauntless comfortably stabled for the night. And we still have to break into Gyre House, too.

  Yet, I cannot decline when my king holds out the decanter and offer my still mostly full tumbler for a top-up.

  “Speaking of wives,” he starts, and I bite my tongue to hold in a groan. “Word from your Chipping has it that you’ve got a pretty young lady holed up in your mother’s chambers.”

  “She is merely a traveler who grew ill on the road and is recovering in my manor. I don’t know where this gossip of her being my betrothed comes from. I really don’t.”

  “A woman would be good for you, Master Turn. Get you to, eh heh, unwind a bit, see?” He waggles bushy yellow eyebrows at me and smirks over the rim of his tumbler.

  Oh, by the Great Writer; romantic advice from my king. I resent the insinuation that Pip exists only for my gratification, and I flip the Shadow’s Mask back down onto my face to hide the blush of anger that is climbing up my neck. “I do beg your pardon, sire, but I have one more errand I must perform while on palace grounds, and the night is getting on.” I set the tumbler down on the king’s desk, right by his elbow so he can partake of it as well, as I know he will.

  “Eh, right then, right,” he mutters.

  “With your permission, sire, I shall take my leave and make my way to House Gyre.”

  “Oh, there, aye?” he asks, the sparkle of curiosity in his eyes. “What’s the boy done?”

  “Nothing of note, as is the usual case with the young men of noble birth—” Carvel bursts into amused guffaws, interrupting me, and I wait for him to have his fill of mirth before I continue: “But he has something in his possession which I require for another task. I shall return it through you within the year.”

  “Very well,” the king says, sweeping a fat, square hand through the air magnanimously. “Just don’t let me hear that you got caught out by that fop. I’ll quell any of his squawking if he realizes the theft.”

  “My thanks, sire.” I sweep a courtly bow, made all the more dramatic by my smoke-like cloak, and vanish back behind the tapestry.

  ✍

  Pip is exactly where I left her, clearly bored out of her mind and surrounded by the crumbs of another sweet roll. I wonder what the cinnamon on her lips would taste like, but instead of asking, I wave her along with me to a different servants’ corridor.

  The palace is comprised of several buildings on a large, walled compound within the fortified city of Kingskeep. Interspersed with manicured lawns and cultivated ponds are the main castle itself, the stables and livery, the entertainment hall and sporting yard, and the homes of ten of the most titled and wealthy families in the court.

  Centuries ago, the queen who’d ruled at the Keep married her three sons and eight daughters off to lords and ladies from as many different Chippings as she could manage, in order to solidify her rule over them. But she’d found it increasingly difficult to be separated from her beloved children, so she had holiday homes built for each of them within the palace grounds. The houses each reflect the architecture and preferred motifs of each Chipping, ranging from very ornate, abstract designs to extremely blocky, geometric lines.

  Now, this insular village of the privileged has devolved into more of a playground for the foppish, and is the chief meeting place of the Noble Marriage Market. I am grateful every day that House Turn was not prominent enough to be given a manor on the palace grounds. I have escaped the fate of the silly and sparkling creatures that flit through court, nothing between their ears but schemes for the next title they can add to the litany their family already possesses.

  Pip and I cross along an avenue that connects the palace to Gyre House, keeping close to the privet hedges so that our shadows will not stand out in the light of the torch-lamps that run along the walkways. We sneak around to the back of the house, where I know young Tritan Gyre keeps his apartments. The windows are shuttered tightly, and I cannot tell if there is any light on inside. Blast it. The whelp may still be awake.

  “Here, next door is dark,” Pip says, pointing to what may be a valet’s room next to Tritan’s apartment. “We can go in there.”

  “Excellent thinking.”

  “I’m lightest,” she says. “Can you give me a boost, and I can try the latch?”

  We both tighten our sword belts, and Pip dons the soft cloth cap she had been carrying in her trouser pocket to disguise her hair. I make a cradle of my hands for her to step onto and boost her high enough that she can grab the sill of the window on the second floor and jam her toes against the lintel of the window below it. She reaches up and pushes on the shutter; sure enough, it gives.

  It also lets out such an alarming creak that Pip nearly slips off the stone.

  “Shit!” I hear her hiss, and I am about to ask her if she wants to come back down again when the lights inside the room flare to life and Tritan Gyre’s squirrelly face appears over Pip’s head.

  “What have we here?” he asks the night, and then, in a flash, he has his hands wrapped in Pip’s jerkin and is yanking her inside and out of my sight.

  The last thing I hear Pip yelp as she is hauled bodily into the house is: “Whoa, fuck!”

  ✍

  One of the great advantages of being the Shadow Hand is that when you knock urgently upo
n a door, the person opening it is usually quite startled to see you on the other side. The butler gasps and falls back a step, giving me room to shove past him and race toward the foyer stairs.

  In the upper level of the house, I can hear shouting—a chorus of raucous men’s voices, and, above that, Pip’s polecat snarl: “Get that sword out of my face!”

  “Come on, boy,” comes Tritan’s reply as I round the landing and shoot up the next set of stairs. “If you’re going to lurk about, you have to be ready to answer with steel when you get caught!”

  “I wasn’t lurking!” Pip shouts.

  “And he’s not a boy, neither!” comes another young man’s shout. Pip squeaks as if pinched and fury darts up my spine, lending my legs extra fuel as I clear the stairs and pound down the hallway. “Not with this arse!”

  “Get your hands off me!” Pip snaps. I draw Smoke as I run.

  I slam back the door to Tritan’s gaudy apartments just in time to slap the back of a young buck’s knuckles with the flat of my blade. The youth yelps and withdraws his questing hand, cradling it to his chest.

  “Manners, Master Vintus!” I snap in my best Shadow’s Hand voice, deducing his parentage from the color of his hair—a caramel brown—and the crest sewn onto the breast of his Vintus-orange waistcoat.

  “The Shadow Hand!” he replies, inanely, and dives out of the room, past me and down the hall.

  The rest of the assembled fops, about ten in total, press themselves against the horrendously busy wallpaper of the salon, eager to be out of sword-reach. All save Tritan Gyre, who plants himself before me, Pip between us, and sneers. He has his own sword drawn, and on his head is a Gyre-blue velvet cap with the silver filigree feather stuck in the hatband as if it were a cheap silk flower. The whole room reeks of candle smoke, too-sweet sherry—a youth’s drink—and boy.

  “Oh, is she one of yours, Shadow Hand?” he growls. “Abysmal spying job.”