by Rae Brooks
Somehow, through all his irate thoughts, he managed a quick smile at his father. There was no sense in disagreeing with Lavus. Calis and Tareth had both discovered at early ages that any arguing with Lavus led to nothing but public humiliation. “Indeed,” was all he said. He glanced out at the dance floor. “I don’t suppose you two will be joining in the dances?” he asked.
For some reason, he always felt like he should be able to converse with his parents easily. Yet, he constantly felt strained and unable to make conversation. Though, the only person he was able to talk to without having to comb through his words was Lee. That was it, and that was sad. Even some of his other noble friends required the same amount of consideration. Funny—as none of them were very hard to figure out, so they weren’t any sort of puzzle. He just had to watch his words around them.
Lavus looked at his son for a moment as though he were daft. This was the very reason that Calis couldn’t talk to his father, or even his mother. “Of course not. I am above such silliness, son. I cannot say the same for you, though. You need to find a betrothed.” The words were curt—as though Lavus had spent all of his niceness, and he felt no need to bother with it further.
Calis just shrugged his shoulders. He’d prefer to be dancing than talking with his father—and that was quite the statement considering how much he loathed the meticulous steps of the noble dances. He watched them now. The pairs all danced with precision, each part of the pair carefully contemplating every step—even though the male was always the leader.
The whole ordeal was tiresome, in Calis’s opinion. This wasn’t a festivity—it was just another time for everyone to watch their every move and make sure that they didn’t offend anyone else. He sighed. When he realized he’d done it outwardly, he flushed. “Oh!” Claudia exclaimed, hearing him. “Don’t feel as though you have to keep your parents’ company, darling. Feel free to go dance.” She smiled.
Well, at least she hadn’t known why he had actually sighed. Just as he was about to head back down to the floor, his brother approached and offered him a light bow. When their father looked, though, Tareth’s bow was much more dramatic. Lavus said nothing. Claudia smiled, though. “Tareth,” she said gently, “I noticed you have already been flirting the moon away. You think you might actually choose one of these women one sun?”
Tareth smiled at his mother. The two of them, if nothing else, seemed to have a good rapport. Sometimes, Calis enjoyed watching the two of them. He couldn’t be jealous, solely because he enjoyed knowing two people in the house could genuinely get along. “I’ll consider it,” Tareth answered playfully.
He wouldn’t, though, and Calis knew that as well as Cladia and Tareth did. Calis didn’t bother speaking with his brother, as Tareth would surely take it as Calis trying to interfere in the one relationship Tareth had that was better than Calis’s. “Lady Avyon was looking for you, brother,” Tareth surprised Calis by speaking to him, though.
Calis blinked and then nodded his head. “Yes, I saw her. I’m supposed to dance with her.”
“Gossip says that she believes you intend to choose her as your wife. Any truth to that rumor, brother?” Tareth asked. Sometimes, he was the worst gossip of all. Calis wasn’t surprised that his picking up that vigilante’s name was part of the reason the Phantom Blade was known so widely as such.
Though, the topic of conversation was certainly not as interesting as that vigilante. In fact, Calis didn’t like it at all. Surely his parents would expect him to say yes, and if he said yes, then he would set off a chain of events that would send him barreling towards a marriage to Lady Avyon. Instead, he decided to handle things a little differently. He offered a playful smirk as he regarded his brother, who may or may not have intended to put him on the spot like this. “Where in the world did you hear that rumor, Little Brother?” he asked.
This seemed to amuse their mother, as she clasped her hands together and let out a light laugh. “Tareth finds gossip in the oddest of places!” she answered for him.
Tareth nodded his head, as if this were true. He let the issue drop easily enough, which meant to Calis that Tareth had no ill intent in his mention of Lady Avyon. Tareth most likely thought that Calis wanted to marry the lady. He had let his own thoughts on her attractiveness known to Calis on multiple occasions. Even in the few letters the boys had exchanged back and forth in Calis’s time in Dokak, Tareth had often joked about stealing her from him.
Honestly, Calis wished he had done just that. That would have made his life a lot easier, since none of the other women seemed bold enough to fling themselves at Calis so thoroughly. “Well, don’t trust every source you hear,” Calis teased after a moment.
“Tareth, perhaps if you didn’t spend so much time gossiping and spent more time doing things that you ought to be doing—there would be no need to pester your brother with your impudent questions.” Lavus’s intervention in the conversation brought the entire thing to an entirely new low, and the abruptness of it even made Calis flinch.
Surely Tareth would think that he had done that on purpose. Just when the two of them seemed to be rekindling some sort of relationship, Lavus had to ruin it. It felt as though the man was intentionally keeping the boys at odds. He probably was, knowing Lavus. Wouldn’t want two brothers conspiring against him, now would he? Calis decided to try and salvage what he could. “Ah, Father, even you have information sources. Tareth just likes knowing what is going on.”
The words sounded lame, but Tareth seemed a little shocked that his older brother had interceded on his behalf. Lavus wasn’t impressed. “My sources are carefully picked by myself and their information is filtered for years before I consider them reliable. I would never think to ask about a piece of information that I was not entirely sure of. Tareth surely uses peasants within Dark District he frequents. People who wouldn’t know true information if it slapped them in the face. To embarrass himself by asking a question about it is simply insulting to our family name!” Lavus bellowed the words, and a few of the nobles looked over.
Calis flushed, as everyone seemed to realize that he was the subject of his father’s wrath. Well, at least it wasn’t Tareth—or well, maybe it was. “Yes, but…”
Lavus cut him off before Calis could even form any sort of coherent thought. “Silence! You are no better than he is if you insist on defending him. Defending the weak is precisely the thing that gets rulers overthrown! Your brother is a fool and a child. He ought to have been born among Dark District peasants—which is probably why he feels at home, there.”
Tareth’s face had turned a deep scarlet, and he glared away from his father. He turned his back on the conversation, not wanting to hear any more of it. Calis didn’t think he wanted to either, but as his father was glaring at him, he couldn’t very well run away. “Do you understand what I am telling you, child?” Lavus asked, disregarding Tareth’s turning away.
“Y-yes, Father,” Calis answered warily. All he wanted was for this conversation to be over and to be as far from his father as he could possibly get. This ball be damned. He didn’t want to be a part of this. He didn’t want to be near this man who so cruelly dealt with his own sons! Calis couldn’t keep up this charade anymore.
Before Tareth had even gotten all the way down the stairs, Calis nearly ran down them. The only reason he didn’t was because he would have alerted people to himself, and he needed to be unseen right now. His eyes immediately began looking for the only person in the room that he didn’t hate.
A few moments later, he found that person. Lee was perched against the wall, with a glass of wine in his hand. He wasn’t involved in any conversations. That was a good thing. Calis made his way to his advisor with a quickness that he probably should not have been exhibiting. Lee seemed surprised to see Calis. “Calis,” Lee said quickly. “You are flushed.”
“I have to get out of here. Meet me in the courtyard, or stay—I don’t care.” Calis spared one last glance over his shoulder. He could see Lady Avyon glancing up
at the balcony, wondering, doubtlessly where Calis had run off to. That just meant that he had to get out of this room quickly.
He did so. He knew Lee well enough to know that his friend and advisor would be waiting for him in the courtyard with all of the information that he needed. Lee didn’t need to be told when Calis needed his assistance, and that was one of the reasons Calis liked him.
Once Calis escaped the grand hall, the castle was completely deserted. There were no windows along the corridors, so nothing but the flames within the hallways lit his return to his room. Not that there would have been anything more than moonlight at this late shift. His changing room was easy to reach. He flung his clothes to the floor and then kicked them into his closet. He changed into a brown tunic that he shouldn’t have and loose-fitting gray pants.
Stepping into the closet, he found some work boots that he’d convinced his servants that he needed for the travel to Dokak. He shoved his feet into them, and immediately felt more comfortable than he had in the tight black ones. Glancing across to the mirror in the room, he ran his hands through his hair—ruining any pretense of neatness that had been bestowed upon it by his stylist.
Surely, he still didn’t look like an ordinary Dark District resident, but he looked ordinary enough. Pulling his brown cloak over his shoulders, he opened the window to the changing room. He shimmed out to the other side and eased the window back down. He certainly couldn’t exit through the grand hall, and he was used to climbing out the window.
He used the stones of the castle walls to ease himself down to the ground, which was three stories below him. Finally, once he deemed himself close enough to the ground, he leapt from the wall. Landing in a patch of grass, he pulled himself up and stayed close to the wall as he made his way to the courtyard.
Like the rest of the things about Castle Tsrali—the courtyard was overdone. There was a large, black fountain and unnatural flowers growing all around it. The gardens would have been pretty if Calis hadn’t been so unnerved by their colors. Garden lanterns draped across it, with the same mirrors that had been in the lanterns in the grand hall. The moonlight danced along the flowers and created a strange feel.
Footsteps behind him startled him only for a moment before he turned to see Lee, dressed in a very plain green tunic. So Lee knew what they were doing as well. Calis shouldn’t have been as impressed as he was. “Are you going to tell me what happened as we go to this most certainly scandalous event?”
Calis offered his friend a smile and nodded his head. They both headed towards the Dark Wall. Lee led the way since he was the only one who knew where they were going. Neither of them wanted to converse too much in the courtyard about which nobles could be lurking. Once they were sufficiently far enough away from the silly ball, Calis began his explanation.
Firstly, he gave Lee only the facts. They had established this process a very long time ago. If Calis was going to vent to Lee, his advisor wanted to know the story before Calis’s emotions cluttered it. When Lee had given Calis the ultimatum, he had assured him that this would help Calis as well. Calis had found that it had, and it was a process of which he’d grown rather fond. Once he’d finished with the unedited version, he informed Lee of why it bothered him.
As they both pulled themselves up over the Dark Wall, Calis was still talking to Lee. “I don’t even want my father’s bloody position, and yet all he can do is flaunt it in Tareth’s face. Tareth isn’t precisely stable. I just don’t want a civil war on top of this business with Cathalar. Father has enough enemies. I don’t want to make them too.”
They reached the top, and Lee actually responded—which was rare. Normally, he just watched Calis and listened without interruption. “You would be a better ruler than Tareth, unfortunately,” he said. “And both of you better than…” He cut himself off—surely knowing that words like that could get him hanged.
“I’m aware,” Calis said. This wasn’t necessarily a compliment. Only Lee’s acknowledgement that their current ruler was a fool and a barbarian. Telandus would fall in the war, and Calis knew that. “It won’t matter. Once Father finally pushes Lord Veyron to war—Telandus will not survive.”
Lee looked a little mournful, but there was no denying that simple truth. Cathalar was not without faults, but Veyron was nothing like the brute that Lavus was. He ruled his lands forcibly, and was not liked by all, but he certainly was not hated by all either. While Lavus’s life had been filled with one drama after another, making enemies constantly—and never failing to be whispered about in distant lands, Veyron’s only moment of notoriety had been the unfortunate loss of his second-born son.
Calis didn’t know much about it. Only that the boy had left Cathalar, after giving his father fair warning, and had not been heard from since. Calis was sure that he was dead, as even a competent person didn’t survive in the wilds for five years. And if the boy had escaped into one of the other lands, surely they would have reported to Veyron. For months, everyone had searched for the kid.
This impressed Calis more than anything, for if he had ever abandoned his family then he would be sought after for execution. Veyron had not only accepted his son’s decision, but he had attempted to find out if his youngest son was alright.
“Tareth is my brother, fool that he is, and I don’t want him to hate me,” Calis said as they both dropped into Dark District.
Dark was a fitting title for it now, as most of the flames were put out and the entire district was lit only by the moon. The sounds that usually accompanied the district were silenced, with no carts being pushed about for trade, and no women wandering about with their gossip. No, now Dark District was quiet.
Unsettling as it was, the change was welcome after the events at the ball. Calis wouldn’t have cared if there was no dance, he would be content to stay in this colorless place for the entire moon without a single companion. “Tareth resents you, and I wouldn’t say that his feelings are far from hate—but I would hope that he sees how desperately you try to hold his favor, when his favor should not matter to you.”
This was true. Calis had no reason to stand up for Tareth the way he did, and if Tareth had been Lee—he would have acknowledged that and known that his brother cared for him, but Tareth was not Lee and that meant that he probably didn’t even realize. In fact, he may have thought Calis was patronizing him with some of the defense. “My brother is not overly bright,” Calis reminded Lee.
Once again, Lee was unable to contest the point. Tareth had let himself slip through the cracks due to his dimwittedness. “For now,” Lee said logically, “try not to worry about it. There isn’t anything that you can do about your brother’s foolishness or your father’s arrogance, my friend.”
“Fair enough. Show me this dance you promised me,” Calis said with his best attempt at a smile.
The advisor just nodded his head and started off into Dark District. Lee probably knew the streets better than Calis did, as he wasn’t watched so closely and was able to come and go into Dark District more freely. The guards didn’t insist on accompanying Lee when he used the gate. “The girl that told me about this dance is actually a friend of the girl that phantom boy saved. She’s changed her name and appearance and all that.”
Calis was immediately a little cheered up by this fact. Perhaps this moon could be salvaged after all. He pushed away the worrying thoughts that his father would be looking for him, especially after how he’d run off. But no, Lavus would never bother. “Who is the girl?” Calis asked.
“Her name is Katt,” Lee answered. “She is apprenticed to the healer in Dark District. The healer’s name is Amaral. I know very little else, as our exchange is usually formal. I give her the coin, and she gives me the information she deems relevant, or that I ask for.”
Katt. What a funny name. Calis could never have imagined any noble being named such a simple name, though he rather liked it. “The girl apparently suffers fits,” Lee continued. “So she is seen regularly by this healer.”
; “Fits?” Calis asked.
“Yes,” Lee answered. He seemed to be thinking very carefully about his next words, as if he wasn’t sure what to say. “Terrors, in a way, she screeches about things she doesn’t remember when the fits end. Her parents believes she tells the future.”
Calis frowned. “I’m sure they do.” Peasants, of course, had their own flaws. Their lives were so unhappy that they tried to change everything into a fantastical event that meant that they were special. Calis didn’t blame them nearly as much as he blamed the nobles for their faults.
The two of them continued. If Calis had been with anyone else, he would have wondered if Lee knew where he was going—but Lee would have admitted that immediately. He wasn’t the sort to waste time with much pride. “I hope the girl doesn’t recognize me,” Lee said dismally.
“Just tell her you were curious,” Calis answered. “If someone recognizes you, the rumor would die quickly. Nobles don’t seem to understand that an advisor may as well as be as important as the noble himself.” Lee smiled at the veiled compliment, but said nothing to acknowledge it.
“Ah, there,” Lee said, stopping for a moment, and gestured.
Sure enough, when Calis glanced to where the man pointed he saw many more lanterns. There were also people and voices whispering at his ear. They were still a ways off, but now he could see that this was a lively event. “Shall we go?” Calis asked.
Lee nodded, and they both started towards the building. As they neared, Calis realized that the building he thought was one was actually several buildings that all had their doors open to allow people in and out access. People dotted the area, laughing and drinking. There were tables in front and behind the buildings. They weren’t long or elaborate—they held no table cloth, and they were round.
The buildings that the dance seemed to be inside of were fairly rundown, clearly not belonging to anyone. They were probably abandoned, or used for storage. Dark District would never have expected one of its residents to accommodate them. The dwellings weren’t large enough for that, Calis was certain.