The Edge of the Blade

by Jeffe Kennedy

  When I judged things to be quiet, I crept out, sticking to the shadows. I’d made mental note of the areas of the palace Kral had not shown me, so those would be the first I’d visit. I debated leaving the skirt behind in the sitting room, to reclaim it later. It would be too suspicious if I did get caught and anyone recalled that I had been wearing it before. My planned little-foreign-girl-lost ruse might not work, but the chances went way down if I looked too much like a thief in the night.

  But then, my chances of not getting caught went way up without that wide profile. Committing fully to the gambit, I shed the stiff skirt, along with the most conspicuous jewels and most dramatic scarves, hiding them all behind my favored tapestry, then giving Hestar’s overblown face a pat on the cheek. If only I could get the ladies to make me something in basic black.

  On the walls, the watch called the midnight hour, which gave me a quarter hour shy of two to spy about the palace. That might be pushing it to make it to my tryst in the stables, but Kral would wait at least a little while.

  Making my way through the dimmed halls and empty sitting rooms reminded me of moving through a forest—an alien one of overstuffed velvet draped to disguise unforgiving stone. Another ramification of the Imperial Palace’s impressive security: The guard in all their multitudes had grown lazy. No one could penetrate the palace defenses, and all knew it. If one didn’t perceive a threat, the guy next to him would, or the ten guys after that.

  Give me a hyperaware and paranoid scout to patrol a wide perimeter, knowing if anything got past her it would be entirely her fault.

  As it was, I evaded both the stationary guard and those walking their rounds with relative ease. I wouldn’t relax my vigilance, however. Getting comfortable killed many a scout and spy. Still, my heart remained level and my nerves steady, even as I penetrated the men’s section of the palace. In that tower, the bulk of men kept their rooms; Kral had told me that much. Higher rank drew higher rooms. Servant men lived in the lowest tiers, in the portions below lake level. Sounded damp to me.

  Then the entertaining salons. Kral had revealed that much before clamping his mouth on the answer to my question of what sort of entertainment. My guesses proved spot-on as I circled the rooms, peeking in from a dark corridor. Not everyone had gone abed, it seemed, though no one seemed worried about observers.

  Oh, actually, it seemed they expected voyeurs. All along the corridor, curtained alcoves allowed people to peep through eye-holes at the proceedings from shadowed surroundings. It only clicked for me when I chanced upon a male servant pleasuring himself in one, his face nearly glued to the wall. With his back to me and his attention fully riveted on whatever he witnessed, he never noticed my presence.

  Despite my native curiosity, usually piqued by anything that promised to be sexy, I had to force myself into the next alcove to take a look. I didn’t like this. But being a good spy meant observing all I could in pursuit of my elusive prey—even that which turned my stomach.

  It wasn’t all bad. Some of the women, and numerous young men with shorn servant hair, appeared to be enjoying themselves. Others faked it, to my practiced eye, with fixed smiles and dramatic groaning. None of the dominant lovers, if you could call them that, seemed to care. They availed themselves of the bodies with careless arrogance.

  Sick at stomach and heart, I scanned that room and every other for Kral’s presence. Some salons accommodated larger groups, some only intimate couples. Perhaps some rooms existed without access for voyeurs, among whom I now uncomfortably had to count myself, but I obviously couldn’t look into those.

  The deeper in I made it, the more royal the participants and, very often, the more disturbing the sights. I’d never counted myself as sexually squeamish about much of anything at all. In fact, I once would have boasted that I’d seen and done everything anatomically possible.

  Some of the things I witnessed that night left me feeling like a shaken virgin.

  Resolving to find a way later to purify my mind and heart—perhaps I would become one of Danu’s celibate priestesses—I persevered. Bryn never look back. Moving like a ghost, making myself look, then sending regular prayers for this girl or that boy to survive what they suffered, I found my way to the innermost salon.

  The corridor ended in a loop there, forming a nearly complete circle around a good-sized chamber. Various rekjabrel collapsed in naked, and sometimes bleeding, heaps about the room. Some lay alone; others clung to each other. All had been heavily used, probably for hours. I’d put a lover or two through his or her paces all night more than once, but this . . .

  I shook my head to clear it.

  Two men and a woman sat in a loose grouping of chairs in the center of the room, in various states of undress. Hestar, surprisingly pudgy without his shining armor. The woman I didn’t know, though she was recognizably Dasnarian with her robust height and golden coloring. Her eyes, however—those I knew well. Coal dark and deathly, like Illyria’s had been. Even to my magic-numb senses, she glowed with cold power. It dripped off her, and, in the shifting torchlight, her straight waterfall of hair seemed to writhe of its own accord, as if composed of snakes like the monsters of the old stories my gran liked to tell over the campfire.

  The other man, older than I recalled, his hair white, face lined, and chest thin in the swathe revealed by the black robe he wore—gotcha, High Priest Kir. A naked young man knelt trembling at his feet. Kir toyed with the long blond curls, every once in a while tugging so the young man winced. Never a word of protest, however.

  They talked quietly among themselves, too low for me to overhear much beyond the tone, which was distressingly like that of lovers in afterglow.

  I should go. Leave them to it. Not my job to do more.

  Do not engage. Recon only.

  Besides, my internal sense of time ticked toward my meeting with Kral. To find out his plans. No way I’d do him that night. I’d never felt less like having sex in my entire life. In all truth, I only wanted a jug of Branlian whiskey and an unoccupied cave to hide in. I might never stomach the taste of mjed again, the sweet smell of it hung so heavy in the air.

  Or that could be the smell of death. Not fresh, bloody, well-earned death, but old and corrupt. I studied the used-up rekjabrel with newly opened eyes. One young woman who lay nearest me on her back, legs still splayed, her face turned toward me, stared with blue eyes that blinked only occasionally. The stupor she lay in, what I’d taken for the languor of hard use, all could be signs of that undead life. This magic looked to be more refined than Illyria’s, whose techniques led to living dead with no remnant of personality, no native intelligence, and bodies that crumbled about them. This woman knew enough of her state for despair to fill her otherwise blank stare. But her chest did not rise and fall with breath.

  None of them breathed. Not even the blond man at Kir’s feet.

  A clammy chill washed over me. Time to get far, far away from this corruption. I moved silently as always, but a slither of warning slimed over the edge of my awareness.

  Almost unwilling, I looked.

  To find that priestess of Deyrr staring directly at me.

  20

  I’d been pinned by a predator’s gaze before. Danu knew—I’d stared into the eyes of an enraged bear. None had terrified me like this.

  But they’d all taught me to do better than stay rooted to the spot.

  I lost no time disappearing myself from that poisonous awareness. Moving with extra care, because I recognized my own panicked state, I retraced my path only far enough to take the first branching corridor that would lead me away from the salons. A scout who fears being spotted will be. Something about that frantic state sends up alarms to every animal sense. Prey, it screams. I’m afraid. Come and take me.

  So I calmed my heart, steadied my breathing, and thrust aside all I’d seen, along with the slick, viscous sensation of the priestess’s gaze. When servants and guards passed, I hid easily in time, my hearing and the fine hairs of my skin attuned for the leas
t sound, the slightest hint of alarm.

  It never came.

  I went to the stables, partly because that had been the plan and my scattered wits couldn’t quite assemble enough to settle on another. Also because, if the priestess did alert the guards to a trespasser, I’d do better to not be anywhere they expected.

  Also, the sweet warmth of hay and horses helped immeasurably. The sound of their hooves scraping through straw as they shifted, the whuffing of their great lungs at rest, all of it so grounded in the natural world that it steadied me as little else could.

  Except the fierce strength of Kral’s arms enfolding me.

  I might have trembled a bit, allowing that purging of the fear and tension. Hopefully he’d mistake it for my usual lust. Okay, maybe not, as I clung to him, breathing in the clean scent of man, even his daily Dasnarian spiciness a comfort in the face of the rest.

  “Did you have a close call?” he whispered against my hair. “You’re so late I feared you’d been caught. Having you meet me was foolish. We won’t do it again.”

  “No. Well, yes. But not what you think.”

  “What, then?” Kral took my face in his hands, tipping it up though he couldn’t possibly see me in the pitch darkness. His thumbs brushed over my cheeks. “Are you weeping?”

  “No. I never cry.” I dragged myself away from him. No leaning on him. Especially him. For all I knew, he’d been in that chamber of horrors, doing those . . . I couldn’t think about it. Scrubbing my cheeks dry, I did the same for my scalp, hoping to stimulate the wits within. “I need you to tell me something.”

  “Isn’t that what we’re here for?” He sounded wry. “As the throwing-yourself-into-my-arms portion of our entertainment appears to be over.”

  I shuddered at the word “entertainment,” the rich desserts I’d consumed because I’d been bored listening to music—bored!—rising sour in the back of my throat. “Yes. Yes, it is. But first I’m going to ask you a question and you’d better answer it honestly.”

  “I’ve never lied to you.” He sounded somber, darkly grave.

  “You’ve also judiciously refrained from giving me the whole truth. That’s understandable. So have I.”

  “Is that so?” His voice had gone icy, and I imagined the chill blue of his eyes. For a moment I regretted letting go of him. His body, at least, would provide a compass for the man inside. I hoped.

  “When you came to Ordnung, you told Her Majesty that a man in pink robes had been glimpsed in Dasnaria.”

  He was silent a long moment. “And she told you this.”

  Well, not me directly, but close enough. “Yes. She asked me to ascertain his presence here.”

  “Then you’re a spy. This explains much. I perceive the plan now—Lady Mailloux was to play distraction as ambassador while you skulked in the shadows, spying out information I freely offered as a matter of goodwill. And the shape-shifter . . . A pity, there. I suppose that you’ve also lost her sorcery. Was she meant to fly you both away again once you stole what you needed?”

  More’s the pity, all right. I’d give a great deal for Zynda to spirit me away from this piss hole, though Kral wouldn’t know she didn’t have an avian form large enough to carry even Dafne’s petite frame. I scrubbed my scalp again, wishing the slick sickness away. “You recognized the priests of Glorianna at Ordnung and found one’s presence at the Imperial Palace, consorting with the Temple of Deyrr, as odd as we did. Don’t try to dazzle me with your protestations of goodwill, Kral. It served your purposes to dangle that tidbit.”

  “Why are you coming clean now?” he asked out of the darkness, one of his swift interrogation strikes.

  I almost didn’t answer. No way could I trust him. But somewhere around that bruised place in me, something whispered that I couldn’t afford to not trust him. That I’d already made that potentially fatal choice. If he were part of all this—if he’d done those things I’d seen, knew what Hestar dabbled in—then I might as well be dead. I couldn’t fight that priestess, not without allies. She’d looked right through the wall and known me for who I was. My gut screamed the truth of it. I’d rather find out now than wonder if this man who’d smiled at me and kissed my hair, touched my body, had also taken undead rekjabrel. If he had, I’d break my own vow and try to kill him; then he’d be free to kill me without voiding our pact.

  I might suffer in some hell of Danu’s contrivance, but the bower of Glorianna’s arms had always sounded oversweet and deadly dull to me anyway.

  “Jepp.” Kral took me by the arms, which absurdly made me feel better, though it should have bothered me that I hadn’t realized how close he’d remained. “What happened tonight? I know you were at the concert.”

  “Did Inga tell you I would be?”

  “No.” He went quiet. “I swear I can scent you. I get a whiff of forest-fresh air, a taste of the heat of your skin.” He stroked my arms, shoulder to elbow, skimming over the knife sheaths. “It makes no sense, and I am a man who relies on that which makes sense.”

  “Then you won’t like what I have to tell you.”

  “Tell me anyway.” He drew me against him, cupping my head so I once again leaned into his strength. Call me a fragile female, but I took the comfort offered. In a few minutes, I would learn to stand on my own again.

  “I saw him. The priest, a man we suspected when you mentioned his presence. His name is Kir.”

  “I have never heard this name. You saw him inside the palace, or have you grown wings of your own so that you flew off to Jofarrstyr to espy him?” His tone made it partially a joke, with a thread beneath that suggested he considered it a real possibility. Funny that it reassured me that he was no more certain of me and what might lurk in my head.

  “In the palace, yes. In one of the private entertainment salons with your eldest brother and a priestess of Deyrr.” It seemed wiser not to say Hestar’s name, though I couldn’t say why.

  Kral’s grip vised on me, nearly crushing me, so tight I couldn’t draw breath for a long minute. Perhaps he’d kill me right then. The enemy spy caught in her own web. At this point it would be a mercy killing. I’d sooner put a blade to my sisters’ throats than allow them to be so abused and unprotected. In light of what I’d witnessed, I could see Kral’s point in preferring to kill a woman he loved than see her subjected to . . . that.

  “You are a fucking fool,” he finally whispered, his hands easing, stroking over me as if checking for injury. “You could have died right there and I would never have known what happened to you. Or worse, I’d—” His words choked off.

  “Worse, you’d encounter me as an undead rekjabrel in your own entertainment salons.”

  “Don’t even say that.” His voice had gone ragged. “You have no idea what they could have done to you, if they had any idea that you’d seen them. You’re beyond lucky that—”

  “She saw me. She looked right at my hiding spot and recognized me.”

  “How could she have?” He sounded reasonable, rational and logical, but fear surged beneath.

  “I don’t know. How can you smell me across a room? I’m telling you she knew.”

  “But I’ve heard no alarm. If she’d mentioned your presence there, my brother would have this place swarming with guards.”

  “Okay.” I took a breath, let it out slowly. “Okay, that’s what I figured. So she’s playing her own game. That means I have time.”

  “Time for me to smuggle you away. Surely now you see the need; you’ll let me protect you.”

  “No.” I shook my head against him, then pulled back. Not all the way, just enough. “I have a job to finish. Karyn arrives tomorrow, yes? Give me until then. Once you’ve released her from the marriage, I’ll smuggle myself out with her and make my own way from there.”

  “You’re so confident she’ll want away from me.” He sounded grim, and somewhat bereft.

  “I understand now why you didn’t want her here, but yes. I do think she’ll make that choice. I think you believe that, too, which
is why you agreed to the plan. Do you think she’ll lead you to Jenna?”

  “How could she? Jenna is gone forever. I don’t know what my sisters told you, but there is no reason to think she lives. So many searched for her, including me. I resigned myself to her death years ago.” His voice sounded hollow. “I’ll carry the guilt of that forever.”

  “Which guilt—that you failed to protect her or that Harlan was the one to save her, when you would have condemned her to an abbreviated life of misery?”

  “All of it. I acted in my own selfish interests, yes, but she would have been better off married and safe than at the mercy of the cold world. That is the way of things.”

  “Kral.” I dug my nails into his skin, just enough to command his attention. “Stop saying that stupid phrase. It’s just an excuse not to see things differently. You’ve been in the larger world. If anyone would, you would know that the worst awaited her in this place. Or at the hands of the man who’d murdered four wives.”

  “We don’t know that.” Kral at his most stubborn. “Gossip and tale-telling. Besides, he died only a year later. She would have outlasted him and stood to gain a huge fortune, several estates.”

  “Enduring what evils until then, and after all that, controlled by who?”

  “Me, I suppose,” he admitted grudgingly. “But I loved her. My only full sister. I would have seen her safe and protected . . .”

  “Yeah,” I said, when he trailed off. Perhaps his skull had thinned; that sense might be leaking through it and penetrating his brain. “She would have gone from one keeper to another. Some things are worth more than all the wealth in the world. Freedom is one of them. Harlan knew that.”

  “Harlan.” Kral spoke his baby brother’s name as if tasting it anew. “Ironic that the one of us who least craved power fell into the lap of it.”

  I let that go. Harlan had gained what he did because he didn’t want power, but Kral likely would never see that, thinning skull or not. “Is that what you crave, what you want more than anything—the power?”