Kate rolled her eyes, understanding the sentiment perfectly, despite her undying affection for her. “What is she on about now?”
Corwin ran a palm down his face. “The Inquisition. She can’t seem to grasp why it is we let the golds take children from their mothers.”
“She doesn’t understand. Or maybe she chooses not to.” Kate kicked at a rough patch on the ground, uncomfortable with the topic. “Although I can sympathize with her struggle, on that point at least.”
Corwin shifted toward her. “How do you mean?”
Tread carefully, Kate told herself. “The League holds a lot of power over people, more than I think they ever had before. Now they can come and go as they please, invading homes, destroying families. I was surprised when your father sanctioned the Inquisition.”
“My father didn’t.” Corwin kicked at the ground too, unearthing an everweep, this one with blue petals, glistening with the constant moisture that gave them their name. “Edwin did. He’s responsible for all the changes of late. Even the bridge over the Redrush was his idea.”
Kate gaped, feeling a stab of anger. Edwin had always been arrogant, but she couldn’t believe he would attempt to rule with his father still alive. That stupid bridge had gotten Eliza Caine killed. He had no business making such decisions from the lofty towers of Norgard.
“It’s my father, you see.” Corwin swallowed, the cords in his throat flexing. “The rumors about him are true. He’s sick. Something festers inside him that the magists can’t heal. It affects both his body and his mind. They don’t know what it is, but it came on after the attack.”
But that was years ago, Kate thought. A sickness festering this long sounded unnatural, like magic. Her old tutor once told her that during the Sevan Invasion, the green robes had applied their healing arts to create spells that could cause sickness—fever, boils, watery bowels. That was magist magic, though, nothing like what her father could do. Not that she could explain this to Corwin.
“He goes weeks without speaking sometimes,” Corwin continued. “And when he does speak, it makes little sense. We’ve hidden the truth as much as we can, but someone has to make decisions in his stead. Someone has to rule.”
Why not you? Kate wanted to say, but she already knew the answer. There’d been no sign of uror. Surely by now, odds were there never would be.
“You sound uncertain,” she gently pressed.
Corwin sighed. “That was the first time I’d seen the golds arrest a child. What his mother did was horrible, make no mistake, but Signe has a point. The woman was provoked. My mother would’ve reacted much the same if it had been Edwin or me. I probably would too, with my own son.”
His admission surprised Kate. The first few months after his mother’s death, his grief and rage had been so great he couldn’t even hear the term wilder without needing to hit something. His knuckles still bore the scars. But now he seemed sympathetic to one.
“But then again,” Corwin went on, “it really wasn’t Edwin’s decision to support the Inquisition. It was my father’s plan to sanction it before he . . . fell ill.” Corwin paused and looked at Kate, his expression suddenly guarded. “I overheard them fighting about it the night before, my father and yours.”
Kate stared back at him, not daring to speak or react at all. Of course her father would’ve objected to the Inquisition if he’d known about it. But if he’d been worried about it, why didn’t he tell her? Even afterward, when he’d been imprisoned, he’d refused to see her. He could’ve given her warning. Maybe she would’ve gone to Esh instead of Farhold. Then again, maybe he’d tried to tell her, but Corwin never delivered the message.
Go to Fenmore.
“You’re so quiet, Kate,” Corwin said. “Are you all right?”
She slowly nodded. “It’s just I know so little about what happened that night.”
Corwin scratched at the stubble darkening his cheek. He’d started shaving again since they’d left Andreas, but not every day. “You know more than you did before.” At her sharp look, he made an apologetic face. “Yes, I remember you asking me about it. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you when I had the chance. You had a right to know sooner.”
“Yes, I did,” Kate said, flustered that he remembered more about that night in the Relay tower than he’d let on. She stood, and in a too-harsh voice she said, “Is there anything else you haven’t told me about that night?”
He leaned away from her, brows drawn over his eyes. “No, you know everything now.”
Not everything. She stared down at him. “How can I believe you when you held back so much?”
Anger flashed in Corwin’s eyes. “How dare you make me feel guilty when it was your father who tried to assassinate mine? Especially when whatever he did left my father a shell of a man.”
“Are you accusing my father of sorcery now?” Glaring, Kate raked a hand across her face to push the hair out of her eyes where the wind had begun whipping it about.
“No, of course not.” Corwin stood, his superior height giving him an unfair advantage in any argument. “But . . . when I confronted Hale after the attack, he told me he was sorry. That if he’d only known what would happen to my father, he never would have done it.”
“Done what? Attack him with a dagger? Like he wouldn’t know what would happen if he did that? It makes no sense, Corwin.”
“I know. I’ve thought the same a hundred times, but it’s what he said, Kate. I was there.”
“And you didn’t ask him for an explanation? For more?” She balled her hands into fists, angrier than ever that she’d been kept from her father.
Corwin rubbed a thumb over his chin. “I did, but he refused to tell me. He refused to tell anyone why he did it. We don’t know if he was an assassin working for some rival to my father, or whether it was a personal grudge, or something else entirely.”
She clenched her teeth. Her father, an assassin? It was absurd. But—“I want to know why he did it,” she said, the words coming out of her in a rush. “That’s the only reason I agreed to come back to Norgard. I need the truth. Can you understand that?”
A strange look passed through Corwin’s eyes, and the anger drained from his face. “Yes. It must’ve been torture not knowing all these years.” He touched her arm and held her gaze, unblinking. “And I promise, Kate, I’ll do whatever I can to help you learn the truth.”
She examined his expression, probing it for any insincerity but finding none. Then she understood, and immediately, her own anger subsided. This was the Corwin she’d known before. This was a peace offering, his way of calling a truce. They hadn’t fought often when they were younger, but when they had, the battles had been epic. Stubbornness was a trait they shared, neither of them willing to admit defeat or wrongdoing, to compromise. For some reason this echo of the past didn’t frighten her like the others. Instead she felt her nerves grow calm for the first time in days. Once upon a time, she had trusted Corwin more than any other person, save her father. She hoped he was someone she could trust again.
With a smile curling one half of her face, she said, “Do you swear with both hands?” This was yet another game they used to play.
With a glint in his eyes, he raised his hands and made a cutting gesture over both palms, following their old ritual with ease. But before offering his palms to her, he stopped and said, “On one condition.”
“What?”
He stooped to pick up the garland. “That you wear this.” He reached toward her and dropped the garland over her brow. His warm fingers brushed the sides of her face, sending a shiver down her neck. He leaned back to examine the effect. “There now. Not foolish at all, but enchanting.”
Finally, he held his palms out to her, waiting for her to complete the ritual.
With her sideways smile, she made the slashing gesture against her own palms, then pressed her hands against his, their fingers entwining automatically. More shivers slid through her, and these had nothing to do with the chill in the wind and
the raindrops starting to bead her face.
They lingered that way for a moment, hand to hand, but then a loud crack of lightning echoed around them.
“Time to get back to camp.” Corwin turned and pulled her toward the path. In seconds they were running through the trees while the thunder rolled and the clouds overturned barrels of rain on them. It plastered Kate’s hair to her head, destroying the garland in an instant. Now more than ever she was glad not to be encumbered with a skirt.
Something was wrong at the camp. Kate sensed it even before the sound of the horses’ screams reached her. Drakes? With her hand on the revolver, she burst through the trees into the campsite after Corwin.
The horses were in a panic. Lightning had struck one of the trees nearby, setting it on fire. All the horses were tied to the same picket line, making the situation even more perilous. One horse was already down, thrashing to regain his feet while the ground turned to mud. Two others were tangled in each other’s ropes, legs threatening to break and necks to snap.
Dal and the others were trying to free the horses, but no one could get close enough to get them undone, and they couldn’t just cut the rope either. Not with the horses so panicked and straining to run. They would be food for the drakes if they got away.
With the horses’ fear invading her mind, Kate acted on instinct. She reached out to the entire herd with her magic. It was easy, her neglected ability hungry for the use and nightfall still far enough away not to impede the magic. She’d only rarely compelled so many horses at once, but it wasn’t any harder than shouting to a crowd, a matter of projection. With a single thought she calmed them enough to get them free of the ropes.
The whole thing took no longer than a moment, and so it was only later, once things had settled, that Kate noticed the strange way Master Raith kept looking at her, the expression obvious without his mask to conceal it. With a jolt of fear she understood her mistake. A single lapse, made on instinct, and yet it was enough to condemn her.
For Raith’s penetrating look, so sinister in the flashes of lightning, could only mean the magist had seen what she was.
14
Corwin
CORWIN HAD NEVER BEEN SO glad to see Norgard. Not even after the two years he’d spent away from it. The last night on this return journey had been far from idyllic. Although they managed to get the horses freed before any suffered permanent damage, and the magists had eventually put out the fire, the rain lingered all through the night. Corwin barely slept, and when he finally woke, he was damp to his bones with a stuffy nose and aching head.
The ride through the rest of Jade Forest and into the countryside on Norgard’s western border was subdued. Despite the bright, cloudless day, no one felt much like talking. Foolishly, Corwin had thought things might be better today between him and Kate, after their private conversation, but she seemed even more withdrawn than before. He wasn’t sure what had possessed him to seek her out last night, other than a desire to dispel the weary tension between them. If she was to live in Norgard again, they needed to make peace, for both their sakes. But the only notable difference was that she had opted to ride next to him at the front of the group for once.
When the city at last came into view, Kate drew a loud breath and let it out with a rapturous exhale. “Gods, I’d forgotten how beautiful it is.”
Corwin took in the sight as well, trying to see it through her eyes. It wasn’t hard to feel that same sense of awe. A gleaming white wall, festooned with round turrets capped in pale-blue marble, surrounded a chaotic sprawl of colorful buildings and streets, each one like a wrapped present set about with streamers and ribbon. At the center, Mirror Castle seemed to nest amid the splendor of colors like a giant, rose-gold-hued dragon guarding its treasure hoard. The castle claimed its name from its seven towers, each with a conical roof made of obsidian so polished it reflected the sun like a mirror, setting each point aglow. That and it was home to the Mirror Throne, of course.
“It is at that,” Corwin said. The air tasted better here, light and fresh when he sucked in a lungful. The grass was richer, tall and green among the everweeps, and the sky bluer than anywhere else in Rime. Than all the world.
But the best sight of all was the horses in the pastures that covered the land beyond the wall, mile after mile of split-rail fencing. Grays, chestnuts, bays, blacks, spotteds, they feasted on the grass, stopping only long enough to drink from nearby streams or water troughs or to pin their ears at the foals and yearlings who played around them, snorting, bucking, and kicking in youthful merriment.
Beside him, Kate seemed to drink in the sight of the horses, her eyes lingering on each one they passed. He wondered what she saw, which ones caught her attention and which she passed over with less interest.
Soon they reached the opened city gates. Two massive horse statues stood, one on either side of the entrance. They weren’t identical but asymmetrical complements of each other. The left one, carved in sleek ivory, was leaned back on its haunches, just coming up to a rear, muzzle pointed skyward. The right, carved from glistening onyx, black as pitch, was in full rear, its head curved downward, forelegs striking.
Signe let out a whistle as she stared up at them in awe.
“They are named after the horses of Noralah, the goddess who founded the city,” Kate said, glancing at her friend. “Niran and Nalek.”
“Magnificent,” Signe replied in a breathy voice.
Corwin flashed a grin at Kate. “Remember when we changed their names to Pie and—”
“—Pig,” she said with a nervous titter. “We should’ve been struck dead for blasphemy.”
“Not at all. The gods have a sense of humor—a wicked one, in my experience.”
It was strangely quiet as they approached, hardly any shepherds or farmers in sight. But the moment the guards standing in the watchtowers realized it was Corwin at the gate, they sounded the bells and shouted down onto the streets, “Prince Corwin has returned!”
The cry was soon picked up by others in the city, until it became a collective roar. “Prince Corwin! Prince Corwin!”
Kate reined her horse back almost at once, moving to the middle of the pack as if she feared being recognized as well. He couldn’t blame her wanting to go unnoticed here.
Despite the crowd, they traveled quickly through the winding streets on their way to the castle. Unlike those in Andreas, the paths here had gentle slopes, some up, some down. The buildings weren’t nearly so tall either, allowing for plenty of light and an open feel. They were also more pleasant to look upon, that wrapped-present appearance still maintained up close. They came in all shapes, some squat and short with shutters painted in fanciful patterns and awnings trimmed in tassels or ribbons, others sleek and refined in contrasting, complementary colors.
Corwin smiled and waved at the people calling his name, but he wondered at the fervency of their greeting. It was nearly as great as when he’d returned from his long absence. But that time he’d been gone two years, not just a matter of weeks. The people in the street were pressing in to touch him, fingers brushing his boots or his horse’s sides. It brought luck to touch a returning prince, but it was a gesture normally reserved for times of war. Then again, maybe the people believed he had been at war, of a kind. By now, every newspaper in Rime had carried the story about his brush with death on the road to Andreas. He wished he could’ve kept it secret same as he had his time spent away. At the thought, he glanced down at his vambrace, making sure it remained in place. How foolish it had been to get that tattoo. I never thought I was coming back here.
His hope had been to enter the castle quietly, not drawing attention to his companions until after he had a chance to discuss things with Edwin. He’d sent word ahead that he was bringing guests with him, but he’d been vague on the details. He knew any objections Edwin or the high council might have about Kate would fade once they learned that she had saved his life and introduced Corwin to the revolver; but it was something he wanted to explain in
person, the pen too cold a medium for expressing such events.
But by the time they reached the castle gates, he saw that there would be no quiet entrance. A squadron of royal guards in their blue uniforms awaited their arrival. Captain Jaol stood at the head of the guard, his gaze fixed not on Corwin but somewhere behind him. On Kate, Corwin suspected. The chief duty of the royal guard was to ensure the king’s safety, and Jaol had been captain of it for nearly twenty years. He’d been there when Kate’s father had nearly killed the king, and every line on his face spoke of his animosity toward the traitor’s daughter.
Determined to deflect it for now, Corwin waved in greeting. “Captain Jaol, how nice of you to greet me personally.”
Jaol bowed, revealing the bald patch on the top of his head. He was a tall man, slight of build and with a nose like a twig snapped in half. “Welcome home, your highness,” he said, coming up from the bow. “We received word of your arrival, and I’m glad to see you are well and whole again.”
“Thank you. It’s good to be well and whole.”
Jaol didn’t smile at Corwin’s poor attempt at cheek. He motioned behind him. “Your brother is in the courtyard. There’s been a bit of excitement this morning.”
Excitement? Corwin arched an eyebrow but didn’t ask for more. Not when he could hear the commotion from here. He dismounted and handed his horse to one of the grooms who had rushed up from the stable the moment they’d arrived in the bailey. The others in the company followed suit.
Master Raith, who’d been riding at the back of the procession, led his horse to the front and bowed to Corwin. From behind his mask he said, “Your highness, with your permission, I will give my fee summary to the clerk, then be on my way. I’ve business at my order’s house.”
“Of course,” Corwin said. “Thank you for your service. If I may ask, would you mind keeping me informed of any news you hear about the daydrakes?”
Raith inclined his head. “And I would ask you the same. My order is the most at risk from these attacks.”
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