“That leaves the Falcon in a rather unpleasant position.” I wondered if Zaira knew the Empire would rather see her dead than working for an enemy. “Though I suppose it does remove the motivation to target us.”
“Unfortunately, those ruffians weren’t well enough educated to know that. And you are a valuable political target in your own right. You can’t take risks to protect Zaira; we need to protect you. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
I didn’t like where this was going. “Marcello, I assure you I’m quite accustomed to the dangers of being a piece on the board. You don’t need to protect me.”
His brows pushed together. “Putting aside my own personal concern for your safety, which is not inconsiderable, it’s my duty to keep you from harm. If you would allow me to assign you a guard—”
“Absolutely not.” I could imagine what my mother would say. She’d consider it an attempt by the doge to get a spy in our house, and she might not be wrong. “I do appreciate your concern. But I’m afraid it’s out of the question.”
He tried again. “At least until things become more stable with Ardence.”
Unease settled in my belly. “The Ardentines wouldn’t target me. I have friends there.” I could imagine my mother’s lifted eyebrow at that. Are you really so naive, Amalia? “Besides,” I added, “the security of Raverra is my mother’s duty. If I need a guard, she’ll assign me one.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Marcello sighed. “But I’d worry less if I was sure we were at peace.”
“Myself as well,” I admitted.
There was nothing I could do to make peace with Ardence right now. That lay in the hands of Lady Terringer and the doge. But by all the Graces, I could at least do my best to make peace with Zaira.
Zaira opened the door to her room with a scowl. “Oh, it’s you.”
I smiled. No rudeness from Zaira could sour my mood today. “I’m glad to see you looking well after our adventures a couple days ago.”
Zaira raised a skeptical eyebrow. A bruise across her cheek had attained full splendor, presumably from her scuffle with Orthys’s ruffians. She hadn’t brushed her hair, and the redness around her eyes suggested either recent crying, an excess of wine the night before, or both.
“Yes, I’m chipper as a little bird. Are you here to tell me if I’m a very good girl, maybe someday you’ll take me to the world’s most boring fruit market again?”
“No.” I couldn’t contain the grin spreading across my face. Zaira must think I’d lost my mind. “But I have something for you in the courtyard.”
Zaira sneered. “Another gift?”
“No. Not really. But you should come and see.” I held out my hand, confident. Not much might impress Zaira, but I had yet to meet someone who could resist a mystery.
Zaira brushed past my extended hand and out into the hallway. “Oh, very well. It’s not as if I have anything better to do.”
I let Zaira precede me down the dormitory stairs. I stepped up in time to hold the door for her, gesturing her grandly through. My cheeks were ready to split.
Giving me one last, dubious look, Zaira stepped out into the courtyard.
And then they saw each other.
Zaira let out a wild, wordless cry and dropped to her knees, her arms outstretched. Ciardha let go the leash she held, and the lean, brown hound flung himself across the grass and into Zaira’s arms. His tail wagged so vigorously his entire back half became involved. He put his paws up on Zaira’s shoulders and licked her chin with frantic joy.
Zaira flung her arms around him, laughing, tears shining on her bruised cheek. “Scoundrel! You’re all right! I can’t believe it!”
I exchanged satisfied glances with Ciardha as the two wrestled, Scoundrel sniffing Zaira all over. I pretended not to notice when Zaira dragged a sleeve across her cheek.
“How did you find him?” Zaira demanded at last, her arm locked tight around the hound’s bony shoulders.
“I wandered all around the Tallows, calling his name.”
Her face froze in an odd mix of skepticism and laughter, clearly not sure whether to believe me.
“I may also have bribed a large number of children to help,” I added. “Children are surprisingly knowledgeable about local strays, and love being bribed. Beef bones may also have been employed.”
For a brief moment, good humor crinkled the corners of her eyes. But then suspicion fell over her features, like the shadow of a cloud. “You want something for this, don’t you.”
“I don’t want anything,” I replied, exasperated. “I’m trying to make friends, Zaira. Sometimes friends help each other out, and don’t need anything in return.”
Scoundrel interrupted by stabbing his nose into Zaira’s eye. She sprawled on the grass, laughing, and he sniffed and licked her face until she sprang up and ruffled his shoulders and haunches, making him squirm with delight.
“Friends, eh?” The bright, pure smile she had for Scoundrel packed up into something more guarded as she cast her eyes at me. “That’s an easy word to say when you’re the one holding the prison keys.”
“I know.” I spread my hands, helpless. “I can’t change what’s happened. I don’t have the power to set you free. But given you’re stuck with me, yes. I truly do want to be your friend.”
“Hmph.” Scoundrel rubbed his head up under her chin, and Zaira’s eyes softened—for him, not for me. “I don’t know about friends. It’s not that simple, rich girl. But I’ll remember this.”
I couldn’t tell from her tone if that was a promise or a warning. But looking at the two of them together, I didn’t care.
For the moment, Zaira was happy. I’d take that as a gift from the Graces, whether she liked me any better or not.
“Ardence is on the brink of rebellion, Vaskandar is knocking at the gate, and you use the fabled wealth and influence of house Cornaro to find a dog?” Amusement softened the edges of Marcello’s incredulity as he leaned across the age-scarred table in the Mews dining hall so only I would catch his words.
“Look at her,” I said, “and tell me it wasn’t worth it.”
He glanced across the hall, which was mostly empty at this hour save for a few tables of soldiers grabbing a quick meal, to where Zaira and a couple of girls nearly her age clustered around Scoundrel. They rubbed his proffered belly, chatting and laughing as he gazed up at them adoringly. They’d been there for at least an hour, lavishing affection on the dog and talking animatedly with each other.
“You’re right. She’s interacting with someone without threatening or offending them,” Marcello murmured. “I’m so proud.”
I smothered a laugh. “Come on, now. They look like they’ve been friends for longer than this morning. This can’t be the first time.”
“She’s made a few friends among the Falcons,” Marcello admitted. “She and Terika also flirt outrageously with each other.” He gestured toward one of Zaira’s companions.
So Domenic had competition. I wasn’t sure whom to cheer on, though the day Zaira took my romantic advice would be the day Celantis rose back from the ashes.
I noticed a small knife rode Zaira’s hip now; Marcello must have decided, after the incident in the Tallows, it was best to give her a means to defend herself besides balefire. Jesses gleamed on her friends’ wrists as they laughed at whatever story she was telling them. One girl covered her mouth.
Then I made out a few of the words drifting across the hall, and my cheeks heated. “What is she telling them?”
“Ah … perhaps I’m less proud than I thought.” Marcello adjusted his uniform collar. “Sorry, my lady.”
I cleared my throat to drown out the climax of Zaira’s story. “If you don’t mind me asking, Marcello, how come I never see your Falcon?”
“Istrella’s not one for company, I’m afraid. Though I think she’d make an exception for you.”
“Oh? Is she shy?”
“Not really. She just prefers books to people.” He waved
an arm up toward a window tucked high under the vaulted ceiling. “She rarely comes down out of her tower. I keep telling her she should, but she’s always puttering around with some project up there. She could change the world if she would finish more of them.”
There was an exasperated warmth in his voice. An unexpected jealousy stirred in my chest. “It sounds as if you have a great fondness for her.”
“Of course I do! She’s my little sister.”
“Ah!” I tried not to let relief color my voice.
“I told her about you, and how brave you were in the Tallows. She was more interested when I said you’d studied artifice.” He laughed.
That’s right, his Falcon was an artificer. “I’d like to meet her.”
Marcello’s face reddened unaccountably. “I’d be delighted to introduce you. I think you’d like each other.” He gazed up at the window, as if he could see through stone walls to watch her. “She’s why I became a Falconer, you know. When she went to the Mews, I went with her so she wouldn’t be alone. But most of the time, I think she forgets I’m here.”
“Do you regret joining, then?” I asked.
“No. I have plenty of regrets, but becoming a Falconer isn’t one of them. I can do a lot of good here. I can help mage-marked children find safety and peace.”
Zaira threw herself down in an empty chair at our table, snorting with disdain. “Peace? Is that what you call it?” The girls she’d been talking to had their heads together now, whispering and giggling. Zaira waved an arm at them. “The Falcons are part of the military. If a war breaks out, you’ll be throwing us all into it. How about that, Mister Bringer of Peace?”
Marcello grunted. “Do you really think if Raverra didn’t protect them, no one would make them fight?”
Zaira scowled, but said nothing.
“You know Terika?” Marcello nodded toward the older of the two girls Zaira had been talking to, who now was drawing something on a scrap of paper that had the other girl breathless with laughter. “Her gift is alchemy. She was born in a remote village in Callamorne. Before word of her reached the Falconers, an assassins’ guild bought her from her father. As soon as she was old enough to stir the magic into potions without spilling, they put her to work making Demon’s Tears. Have you heard of it?”
My breath stopped in my throat. “Yes,” I whispered. But Marcello and Zaira didn’t notice.
“It’s a deadly poison,” Marcello went on. “It takes several hours to kill, so if you’re lucky enough to find an alchemist before it’s too late, they can brew a draft to counteract the poison and keep the victim alive; but they have to take that elixir for the rest of their lives, because there is no true cure. If the poison runs its course, no one can survive it.”
My fingernails dug into my palms. I tucked my hands under the table so the others wouldn’t see.
“The poisons that girl made killed dozens of people before she was seven years old.” Marcello’s voice was fierce but quiet. “She doesn’t know. We got her out and brought her here, where she makes potions that cure, not kill. So yes, I call it peace.”
I stared at the alchemist across the hall. She laughed and swatted playfully at her friend, who must have said something outrageous, by the grin on her face. She could be the one who had made the poison that still flowed in my veins. The timing was about right. We’d never found out who had tried to kill me.
“So you helped one girl.” Zaira’s voice sounded less sure than usual, her brashness hollow. “I was doing fine without you.”
“I could tell you more stories like that, I assure you,” Marcello said. “But what about you? Was the day we found you the first time your balefire hurt anyone?”
Zaira’s face paled, and her lips pressed together. I almost reached out to her, but stopped myself. I doubted she liked being touched.
“I know it’s hard to control,” she snapped. “That’s why I don’t loose it often. Believe me, if I used it on every wretch who deserved it, I’d have burned down the Tallows long ago.”
“But it would only have been a matter of time,” Marcello insisted. “You couldn’t have gone your whole life without needing to defend yourself. Once your secret got out, countless people would seek to use you, or to murder you. You already had to kill Orthys’s men. It would have gotten worse and worse, until you became like a fiery angel of death, bereft of humanity.”
Zaira gave him a sharp-edged grin. “You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”
But Scoundrel whined and licked her hand. I didn’t need his cue to see the pain buried in her eyes.
Marcello let that pass. “It’s not fair, of course. And I wish we had a better way. But please do understand that no matter how it seems, we are trying to protect you.”
Emotions passed over Zaira’s face, a series of doors opened and shut into anger, grief, pain, and finally a deep and abiding cynicism. “Oh, certainly, all you want is for me to be safe,” she said. “Safe, and willing to burn down any poor bastards who don’t toe the imperial line.”
Marcello grimaced. “That’s not what I want.”
“That’s because you’re the sort of credible fool I’d rob blind six times on a Sunday.” Zaira rose. Scoundrel danced his eagerness to follow, staring at her with adoration. “You keep on lying to yourself, Lieutenant Jailer. Go ahead and believe the Empire snatches up all the mage-marked for our own good, and not for our power.” She shook her head. “Your table is boring and depressing. I’m going back to Terika.”
She crossed to the other young Falcons across the hall.
When Zaira was out of earshot, I captured Marcello’s gaze and dropped my voice. “She’s right, you know.”
“That I’m a fool?”
“That you might have to send them to war.” I thought of those green stones on the Council’s map, and the Shadow Gentry plotting a “response” to the false Falconer incident. “I don’t like the idea that we brought Zaira back to the Mews just to force her to kill people, Marcello. But it could happen anytime.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “Some of them, like Jerith and Balos, I could send into battle with a clear conscience. They’re soldiers. But others, well, I’ve had nightmares.” He pressed his lips together.
A young man in a Falconer uniform hurried across the hall toward us, his footsteps scattering echoes around him. He reached our table and saluted, clutching a paper to his chest.
“Lieutenant Verdi. I have the full report from the garrison at Ardence.”
Ardence. My heart quickened.
Marcello rose. “Tell me.”
“We’ve verified none of the Raverran military forces stationed at the garrison were involved in the incident, Falconers or otherwise. And no one knows where the supposed imperial writs and letters came from. Not the garrison, and not the Serene Envoy. We haven’t been able to trace them.”
My shoulders began to relax; I’d braced for worse news. But Marcello asked, “What else?”
The Falconer laid the paper he held on the table. Elegant, formal script stood out boldly from the creamy vellum, and the imperial seal weighed down the bottom with red wax, the winged horse of Raverra rearing in a circle of nine stars.
“This is one of the letters. The seal is genuine.” The young Falconer’s voice quavered. “An artificer at the garrison in Ardence checked it, and we checked it again here at the Mews. It’s the real thing.”
I gripped the table as if I could steady the tilting world.
Marcello turned to me. “Who has access to the imperial seal?”
“The doge, the Council of Nine, and anyone to whom they directly and personally impart imperial authority,” I said.
“No one else?”
“That’s all.” I closed my eyes. I could see my mother’s imperial seal, heavy with gold and purpose, resting in an artifice-locked secret drawer in her desk. She loaned it to Ciardha on occasion, when she needed proof she was acting on La Contessa’s authority. I had never touched it. “My mother told me whe
n I was little that if I tried to take hers without permission, the protective wards on the seal would knock me out for a week and turn my hand green. I have no idea if that’s true.”
“I see.” Marcello addressed the Falconer. “Have you told the colonel?”
“Yes. She said I should show you and the other senior officers, sir.”
“Tell her I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
The young Falconer saluted, gathered up the letter, and left. Marcello braced himself against the back of his chair, as if he needed it to hold him up.
“What will the Falconers do?” I asked. My breath felt too thin to support the question.
Marcello shook his head. “This is beyond us now. We don’t have the information or the authority to pursue it further. We have to trust the intelligence services and the Council of Nine to take care of it.”
I dug a nail against the tabletop, as if I could bore a hole through the wood. It would be easy enough to plunge back into my books and forget. To leave it to my mother and the doge and their ilk to unravel this scheme and soothe Ardence into peace.
“We can’t let this go,” I said. “We have to do something.”
“Us, personally?” Marcello spread his hands. “What can we do?”
“I don’t know. But there has to be something. You say leave it to the Council, but I’ll be on the Council someday. I have to learn how to do these things.” I jabbed a finger at him. “And you’ll be in charge of the Falconers, so you don’t get to dodge this either.”
“All right.” He nodded gravely. “We’ll figure it out. Though I don’t have any idea how.”
“Neither do I,” I admitted. “Not yet.”
But a glimmering started in the back of my mind. I could think of two entities that might benefit from starting a war between Raverra and Ardence: the Shadow Gentry, who wanted to break away from the Empire; and Vaskandar, which could take advantage of the Empire’s moment of weakness to make another attempt at seizing Loreice.
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