by Various
According to Taavi’s sketches, the tunnel on my right led toward the kitchens and servant quarters. To my left, it would take me toward a quarter filled with interview halls. Neither led into the Treasury Wing, where the jewels were locked away, but I only intended this visit as an experiment. I hesitated less than a moment before I headed left.
The corridor continued in a straight line for a hundred paces. Then came a set of three steps, a sharp corner, and three more steps. Here the passage widened, with narrow tunnels leading off to the side every dozen or so steps. Most of them ended in anonymous brick walls. Others branched off in seemingly random directions. My progress was slow as I stopped frequently to compare Taavi’s maps to what I saw, and more important, as I engraved on my memory which turnings I had taken. So far, I had discovered nothing useful, but the mere act of doing, not waiting or hiding, urged me onward.
I came at last to a square stone room, with another stairwell leading upward. Taavi’s map did not extend this far, but I had a strong impression that the jewels lay in this direction. East. East and south. If I closed my eyes, I could see the shape of the palace unfolding around me. I only needed to proceed directly along this corridor to find the Treasury Wing…
Bells rang the hour, faint vibrations that penetrated even these thick stone walls. I counted three. Less than an hour before Taavi returned to our lodgings. I could explain my absence, but it would go easier if I were already in my bed, or at least climbing the stairs.
I retraced my steps to that original entryway where I spoke the first set of words to extinguish the lamps, followed by the spell to open the door itself.
Nothing happened.
A simple mistake, I told myself. I had used the wrong cadence, mispronounced a syllable. I repeated the words, taking care to focus all my attention on that moment between breath and breath, what my teachers called the balance point of magic. Again, nothing.
I sank to the floor and rested my head in both hands to think.
I had missed a turn, I told myself. I only needed to retrace my steps to the previous intersection and examine each direction. My memory house had never failed me before. It would not fail me now.
Unless you missed more than one. Unless Taavi lied completely with his maps.
Tears of fright blurred my vision. I swiped them away. My training held and the terror receded. Silently I rolled onto my hands and knees to stand.
It was then I noticed a faint gray rectangle at the bottom edge of the wall. I crouched low to the floor and tentatively explored this discovery with my fingertips. What I found was a gap in the wall, the length and breadth of my hand, where someone had evidently removed a brick. An ornate grate, fixed to the outer side of an opening, blocked most of the view, but I could make out a small room, set half a story lower than my secret corridor, and illuminated with a single branch of candles. To my eye, the furnishings were sumptuous—carved benches, a single enormous couch, brightly colored tapestries, and the candle fixtures of gleaming silver and gold—but I suspected this was an interview room for lesser diplomats.
Even as I watched, the door swung open. I froze, certain I would betray myself if I stirred. Two men entered, speaking to each other in low hurried voices. Courtiers—very wealthy ones, judging by the many costly gems they wore. Foreign ones, because though I could not make out the words themselves, the cadence was that of a northern tongue. I could almost understand a word here and there …
Then one man swung around and I recognized Prince Leos Dzavek.
“The Emperor will not allow it,” he said quite clearly to his companion in Károvín.
The other gestured toward the open door. Leos Dzavek shrugged, as if he did not care who overheard them. His companion, however, eased the door shut and glanced around the room. His gaze slid toward my spy hole. I closed my eyes and held still, telling myself he could not see my dark face through the grate.
“Do you think he spies on us?” Leos said. His tone struck me as odd, curiously light and brittle.
“He spies on everyone,” the other man said.
Their voices were alike, both with dark overtones and the rounded vowels used by nobles. Cautiously, I opened my eyes. The second man was making a circuit of the room, poking at the tapestries and fussing with the pillows on the couch. But his manner was distracted, and he soon gave up his useless search and sat down. Now I had an excellent view of his face. I knew at once that this man had to be Leos Dzavek’s brother. They both had the same expressive eyes, the slant of cheekbone that gave the impression of their faces having been hastily sketched by a master hand. This second man seemed a few years older than Leos, no more. His mouth was softer and fuller, with a quirk at the ends, as though he would laugh more easily, but I thought him weak. An unfair judgment, perhaps.
“Are you satisfied that we are private, Andreas?” Leos said.
“Yes. No. At least we are rid of that damned steward.”
“Temporarily.”
Both grinned, strange unsettling grins that made me think of hungry wolves. I had the strong impression neither loved the other.
“So speak,” Leos said. “Why do you think the Emperor would grant your petition?”
Andreas made a fluid gesture with one hand. Gems glittered from his wrist and fingers. Like Leos Dzavek, he also wore jewels set in both cheeks. A sign of rank? Or merely the fashion of the Károvín Court?
“He won’t. Not at first. But we might make concessions—”
“No. We cannot cede Duszranjo—”
“Not that.” Andreas ran his tongue over his lips. “We mustn’t cede land, I agree, but there are other concessions we might make without shame.”
He went on with a complicated explanation of what the Emperor might or might not agree to. All of them revolved around Károví agreeing to tributes in return for keeping a measure of autonomy. Or rather, House Dzavek retaining such authority. He was utterly transparent. I wondered that the Emperor tolerated him. I wondered that his brother did.
Apparently his brother was not as much of an idiot. “You are a fool, Andreas. The Emperor wants the northlands, and he will take them. As for Károví, he spent too much gold and too many lives to give us up.”
“How do you know? This new war will distract him. It does already. And it’s much more possible than your own plan about the jewels.”
I drew a sharp breath.
Leos Dzavek turned slowly toward the spy hole.
I did not wait for more. I scrambled to my feet, not caring how much noise I made, and fled back through the corridors to the panel where I had first entered the secret passageway. My blessed memory did not fail me, even in my panic. I recited the words to open the secret panel and escaped into the public corridor. Empty, but in the distance I heard footsteps. It took all my will not to gallop away toward the nearest exit. Do not run, I told myself. I am an old woman, an old Veraenen woman. I begged a morsel from the kitchens. No one will remember me.
My pulse hammering at my temples, I shuffled slowly to the nearest exit. Luck continued to favor me. A new pair of guards flanked the doorway. Neither of them acknowledged my presence. I continued my slow pace down the side street, around the corner, until I regained the same empty courtyard where I had stowed my cloak and haversack.
Ei rûf ane gôtter …
I recited the spell to undo my latest mask. I had practiced this spell a hundred times or more under my tutors’ direction. This time, whether because of my grandmother’s added magic or the panic I felt, my bones ached, and I could feel my flesh and skin melting, crawling from one shape to another. My throat squeezed shut, and I was convinced I had lost myself and my face.
I am me, myself. Arbija. The rest does not matter.
Three miles lay between me and my lodgings. Already I sensed exhaustion nibbling at the edge of my awareness. Working swiftly, I retrieved my cloak and haversack and erased all evidence of my magical working. The half hour bell rang, startling me with its shrill tones. I am not too late, I
told myself. Not yet. Taavi might have discovered my absence, but he would only know I had disobeyed the healer’s orders. Besides, I had my excuses ready. I was muttering those same excuses to myself as I set off at a jog for the nearest avenue …
… only to run directly against Taavi Matlik.
I staggered backward. Taavi caught me by the shoulders. “Irene.”
“How…”
How did you find me? Why did you find me?
“… you lied to Nedda…”
My pulse leaped quick and sharp at those words. I would have staked all my lives that Nedda Korbel never suspected me. Only when the yammering in my skull subsided did I comprehend what Taavi was saying.
“… idiot. You might have died. Three already have because they thought themselves well.” His voice scaled up to an almost shout, then dropped into a hoarse whisper. “I saw you leave the university library. I followed you toward the palace, but then you vanished like smoke. What were you doing?”
Making the same mistake my sister did.
I let my legs collapse beneath me. Taavi caught me and folded me into his arms. He was much taller than my first impression. No doubt because he was always curled up in chairs like Biss. He wore no cloak, not him. He was like me with his northern blood, and there was but a single layer of cloth between my lips and his skin. I drank in his scent, that wondrous clean invigorating scent of soap and herbs and wool. And, oh, I felt a stirring of desire, too, for this whimsical and beautiful young man.
I pulled myself away, though it felt like tearing skin from an open wound.
“I’m sorry,” I said harshly. “I was bored—bored with sitting and staring at my four blank walls for days and nights. I thought … If nothing else, I thought could visit the library and read a few books. Perhaps you do not understand that. I would not expect it, after all.”
I kept my gaze cast downward. I could not see his expression, but I could judge his reaction by other, less overt signals. His grip on my shoulders loosened. I felt the graze of his fingers down my arm, the puff of warm breath that stirred my hair, and the awkward way he shifted a step or two back.
“You frightened me,” he said softly.
“I know. I’m sorry. I meant to tell Nedda, but I didn’t want to spend half the day arguing. I only meant to walk a bit, Taavi.” And then, because pity was a valuable tool, I let my shoulders slump. “Could you help me back to our rooms? I am so very tired.”
Wordlessly, he took my haversack from my shoulder and wrapped an arm around me. He had to bend low at first to avoid clasping my breasts by mistake. I wanted to laugh. And truth be told, I wanted him, which brought a shock of much-needed misery. We were a mismatched pair in so many ways.
“I can hold onto you,” I said. “Or you can leave me to follow.”
He gave a painful laugh. “Never. Take hold as you must.”
Ours was a slow, shambling progress from the palace district, around the several bends of the Gallenz River, past the University district and into our own quiet neighborhood. It took longer than absolutely necessary, because Taavi chose the winding back streets instead of the most direct avenues, but for that I was grateful. My grandmother’s magic had faded into nothing long before we reached our lodgings, and I did not have the freedom or the strength to renew it.
Home. Eventually.
Taavi propped me against the wall, as if I were a walking staff, and unlocked the door. I shuffled into the foyer myself and paused again. I tilted my head back and regarded the two flights of stairs winding upward.
“Shall I carry you?” he asked.
“No. Thank you.”
It took a full measure of stubbornness and more. However, I gained the second floor on my own. Taavi lingered at the doorway, but by the time I turned my key in the lock, he had vanished into the streets. The lodgings were empty, which was a blessing. I lurched through the common room to my own bedchamber, where a small black-and-white cat slumbered in my sheets.
“Go,” I said to Biss.
Biss must have recognized the tone of command because she fled at once. I fell down and dragged the quilt over my shoulders. My last memory was that of a cat’s rumbling purr against my back.
* * *
Autumn drifts into winter, with a slow inexorable progress, each day colder and grayer than the last. Even so, the Erythandran season is a timid cousin of Versterlant’s dark ice-bound months, when storms ravage our coasts, and the winds thump and pound against our households until even the thickest stone walls shudder.
I recover my strength and return to my studies. I convince my new magical docent that I might be competent, but not especially gifted. In lectures, I take careful notes, and never offer any opinions. My brief exploration of the palace and its secret corridors has overset me. I want no official attention directed toward my abilities until I can decide how to proceed.
To my relief, my lodging partners vanish into their studies as well. Nedda labors over her final thesis, which she will defend in spring. Klera murmurs complaints about unreasonable demands of certain professors for this referat or that colloquium, but she, too, spends half the night locked in her own room with her books. Her interim exams take place next summer, and she cannot advance unless she proves herself. Taavi …
I see nothing of Taavi after our confrontation.
Just as well, I think. His stay of execution is over. And I? I cannot let any beautiful young man, however charming, distract me from my duty.
* * *
True winter came the week of Long Night.
What I thought to be Veraene’s coldest, darkest season had been but a prelude. The day before the longest night, a storm poured down from the northern plains. Snow fell in sheets, only to be scoured away by the wind, to fall again and again, until it lay so thick, there would be no sight of bare ground until spring. The University had sent out runners the previous day to say the Masters had canceled all lectures and practicals until the second week of the new year.
“And this, my children,” Nedda said, “is why I spent the past day shopping in the markets and neglecting my thesis. We shall have a proper Long Night celebration.”
She had laid in enough supplies for a dozen students—firewood, candles, pastries, boiled eggs, and more I could not guess at. She had also acquired six jugs of good red wine, with sugar and spices for mulling. I stared at the abundance with some misgiving. “How many friends have you invited?”
“No one but us. Why? What is wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing.”
I joined in the effort to unpack the dishes and organize them. Klera kept tasting the various items and making comments. Nedda left us to our work and began to arrange the firewood in our hearth, which also surprised me.
“You don’t douse your fires on Long Night?” I asked.
“We do,” Klera said. “But not until midnight. First we must celebrate our friendship…”
“… and then we write our heartfelt wishes on paper…” That was Nedda.
“… and then we cast them into the fire,” Klera went on. “So that Lir might read our hearts, and Blind Toc grant our fondest desires. What does your family do, Irene?”
“We write our burdens on paper,” I said slowly. “Our griefs and difficulties. Then we burn them with a prayer to the gods to make us free.”
Klera shuddered. “So grim.”
I protested that description. “It’s not grim. Not at all. It’s … It’s like asking the gods to take away a mountain and bring you light.”
My response brought a long silence from my lodging mates. Klera fussed with the wine bottles. Nedda and Taavi glanced at one another, then continued to unpack the bags of meat pies and bread. “A lovely rite,” Nedda said. “Perhaps I should do something like that.”
Only Taavi, who had silently assisted in the preparations, had nothing to say. We had not spoken since that day when he followed me to the palace. He is angry with me, I thought. I would have to make amends in the new year.
&nb
sp; We lit the kindling with our tinderbox. We used no magic this night, not even the more ordinary spells for candles. Soon a grand fire blazed in our hearth. Nedda handed out the pastries, which were stuffed with ground lamb and rice. There were also stewed apples, honeyed figs, and loaves of wheat and rye bread, which we sliced into thick portions to toast with sharp cheese. Once the wine was mulled, Klera became merry and sang a rude song she had learned from her brother. I pretended to recall an old folksong from Fortezzien.
When the city bells struck the hour before midnight, Nedda confiscated our wine cups. She set a tray with pens and ink pots between us and handed out sheets of fine vellum.
“Write,” she told us. “Lay aside the old year, the old griefs. Ask the gods for what you most desire.”
I pretended to study my own paper while I secretly observed my companions. Klera required only a few moments before she dipped her pen in the nearest inkwell, then wrote in swift flowing script a series of lines. A poem, or something like it? She folded the paper twice over without waiting for the ink dry. “The gods can read the writing from my thoughts,” she murmured, as she passed the folded square to Nedda.
Nedda turned away her hand. “You must cast it yourself, my love.”
They smiled at one another, so sweetly that I wanted to weep. It was the wine, the late hour, the darkness that was like the void before Toc made the sun and moon.
Klera evidently did not trust her aim. She wrapped her paper around the end of our iron poker and thrust it into the fire. It caught fire at once. The next moment, the flames had consumed it entirely.
“My turn,” Nedda said. She stared hard at her paper, then wrote a single word in the center of the sheet, and flung it into the fire. The vellum lit with a crackle and a blaze. Nedda was grinning. So was Klera.
“You next,” Klera said to Taavi.
“Not yet,” he replied. He bent over his sheet, which was still blank. “I cannot have the gods mistaking me. Do you mind?” he asked me.
I had thought I knew my burdens and my desires, but at Taavi’s words about mistaken intent, I had to reconsider. I wanted … How to say it clearly? I wanted freedom for my people. But I did not want that freedom to come at a cost to innocents. Was it possible? If Erythandra insisted on gathering more lands into its empire, there could be no guarantee for anyone’s safety, only a temporary reprieve.