by Amy Raby
• • •
Hours later, after Rhianne had packed her bag and dressed in a sensible syrtos for travel, she moved a chair in her bedroom and shifted a silk rug several feet to one side. Janto watched, his eyes full of questions.
“This is the tricky part,” she said, kneeling on the floor and working her fingers into a seam between two squares of the parquet floor. “Fingerholds. It’s easier to feel them than see them. Ah—here.” She lifted the entire wooden square out of the floor, leaving a hole that led to blackness.
Janto’s brows rose. “Where does it go?”
“Into the hypocaust,” said Rhianne. “You’ll see. I’m afraid it’s not pleasant in there.” She grabbed her bag and shoved it through the hole. Then she sat on the edge and slid in herself, landing lightly on her feet and wincing at the impact. Her head and shoulders stuck out of the hole.
Janto chuckled. “Not very deep, is it?”
“No. That’s part of why it’s not pleasant.” She ducked into the dark, sweltering tunnel, turned around, and sat. “Come down.”
Janto’s legs and torso appeared through the hole, blocking the small rectangle of light that shone in. Then he crouched and turned about, searching for her in the darkness.
“Here,” she called, igniting a ball of blue magelight.
His eyes met hers.
She crawled to him and pushed him lightly on the shoulder. “Move, please.”
Janto dropped to hands and knees and backed up, twisting his head in alarm when his foot encountered a stone wall.
Rhianne reached up through the trapdoor, found the square of parquet floor, and lowered it back into place. The last slivers of illumination from her bedroom disappeared, leaving them in darkness except for the ghostly blue magelight.
A second ball of magelight flared in front of Janto’s face. He eyed a massive heat-glow mounted on the floor. “How did you discover the trapdoor?”
She crawled past him on hands and knees. The wounds on her back flared with new pain at the movement, but she’d have to live with it for now. Once she was free of the palace, she’d find a Healer. “I didn’t discover it. I had it made. Follow me—you don’t want to get lost in here.”
A scrape of fabric on stone told her he was trailing after her. “And Florian doesn’t know about it?”
“No. I’ll tell you the story. As children, Lucien and I had a tendency to get into trouble—”
“You mentioned that,” said Janto.
“We’d done something, I forget what. Oh yes, we put fish in the baths as a prank on Lucien’s older brothers. As punishment, Florian forbade us to attend the Consualian Games. We’d been looking forward to the Games all season, and I was a newly minted mind mage who’d recently completed soulcasting. I was drunk on the power, and I wanted to show off. So Lucien and I came up with a scheme. A carpenter came to repair a cracked seam, and I used my magic to control him. I made him create that door. And then I made him forget he’d done it. It was wrong of me, illegal in fact, but I was a child and not terribly sensible or ethical. We had a fabulous time at the Games, sitting with the commoners and watching Florian up in his box, looking all stern and imperial.”
“The trapdoor seems to have paid off for you.”
Janto’s voice sounded a little hollow and distant, so she paused and waited for him to catch up. “Lucien and I sneaked out so many times together. That was before he went away to war and lost his leg. I never anticipated I’d use it for something like this.”
“Aren’t these tunnels a security risk? Shouldn’t the emperor be concerned about spies getting into them?”
She gave him a stern look over her shoulder. “Don’t get excited. The floors of the Imperial Palace are spelled to muffle sound, as are the walls, so you won’t hear anything through them. Aside from my trapdoor, there are no exits except the one used by the servants who change the glows. So the hypocaust is not the spy’s delight you think it is.”
She counted heat-glows, turned in the right places, and found the access tunnel. As the ceiling ascended, she stood, shaking her arms and legs to relieve cramped muscles. Behind her, Janto rose to his full height and brushed the dust from his clothes. He pointed to the door ahead. “That’s the exit?”
“Yes.”
“Where are the guards? Are they just on the other side?”
“No,” she said. “There’s a short hallway first. They’re at the intersection of that hallway and the larger one.”
“Good. Let’s go.” Janto headed for the door.
“Are you going to shroud us?”
“Already have. See the shimmer?” He eased the door open, peered out, and beckoned Rhianne through.
The two guards did not look in Rhianne’s direction as she came out the door, but they were so broad in body they took up the entire hallway. “We can’t get past them,” she whispered to Janto, who slipped out beside her.
“Not to worry,” he said, and gave the door a shove, angling it on its hinges to make it squeak.
The guards turned, suddenly alert. “Door’s open,” one of them said to the other.
The other rolled his eyes. “Well, shut it.”
The first guard walked toward the door.
Janto placed a hand on Rhianne’s shoulder and guided her first around the walking guard, then the stationary one. They left the palace through the slave entrance, and Rhianne took the lead, heading for the stables. She needed a horse for her journey, although she would not be able to keep Dice for long. All the horses in the stable were too imperial in appearance, too conspicuous. Also, she was secretly hoping she would need a second horse.
Janto had said nothing about going with her. He’d only said he would help her escape. She’d been afraid to ask if he would go with her, fearing she wouldn’t like the answer, but there was no getting around it. She had to just say the words. When they were almost to the stables, she stopped him. “Will you come with me?”
He blinked. “You mean run away?”
“Yes.”
His answer was a long time coming. “I can’t.”
“I know there’s risk involved, but . . .” She blew out her breath, trying to settle her nerves. “I love you, Janto. I want nothing more than a life with you. We can run so far away that Florian will never find us—even out of the country, to Sardos or Inya. You choose which.” She took his hands and looked him in the eye. “I don’t care if we’re poor. I don’t care if I’m not royalty. I just want to be with you.”
“Rhianne . . .” He squeezed her hand, and he looked so sad that she knew his answer was not going to be the one she wanted. She felt the tears starting. He folded her trembling body into his arms. “What sort of man would I be if I ran off to enjoy a comfortable life in exile while my people suffer execution and enslavement? If I did that, I wouldn’t be worthy of you. I have to save my country first. If I accomplish that, then you and I can be together.”
“Mosar has fallen!” she said. “Your obligation is over.”
“It will never be over,” said Janto.
“Whatever plan you have, it is hopeless,” said Rhianne. “You cannot retake Mosar. Even if you did, Kjallan forces would take it back from you. You will wind up enslaved or on a stake. My uncle has destroyed your country. Why let him destroy you as well? Let this be your small victory, your way of showing him he cannot win every battle. Come with me, and we’ll build a life together. Please.”
“I can’t do it.” He stroked her hair. “However . . . you could come with me to Mosar.”
She looked up. “And assist in your rebellion?”
He nodded.
She rested her head on his shoulder and sighed. “No. If you take back your country, I’ll be cheering for you, but I’m Kjallan. I can’t fight my own people.”
“Then it seems we’re at an impasse,” said Janto.
In
deed they were; she could see no way around it. Rhianne closed her eyes and warmed herself in Janto’s embrace until she could no longer bear the pain of their imminent separation. Why had she not brought a gift for him, something for him to remember her by? Perhaps she had never truly believed he would refuse her and stay behind. She would give him a well-wishing, since it was all she had to offer. “Soldier’s blessing upon you,” she whispered.
He smiled and drew three fingers down her forehead in the Mosari way. “Blessings of the Three: Soldier, Sage, and Vagabond.”
She reached up and kissed him one last time. Then she headed for the stable, alone.
• • •
Back at the palace, Janto felt Rhianne’s loss keenly, but he knew he’d done the right thing in helping her get away. Augustan was as bad an intended husband as he’d imagined—worse, in fact. He only worried that he had not helped her enough, that he should go with her to protect her and hide her from the guards who would inevitably be turned out to search for her. But he was king of Mosar, and his people needed him. Rhianne was smart and resourceful. He had to trust in her abilities. She had as good a chance of outrunning Florian’s minions as anyone.
He’d been of half a mind to confess his true identity to Rhianne at their parting. What harm would it do now? But then, what purpose would it serve? Their paths were diverging. Let her memories of him remain untainted. She didn’t need to grieve, as he did, about what might have been, had their countries never been enemies.
Donning his shroud, Janto collected paper, ink, and a quill and returned to the hypocaust. In showing him this secret passageway, Rhianne had given him a magnificent parting gift. And until now, he hadn’t even known of its existence! This underground heating system apparently lay beneath the entire palace, a thin layer filled with heat-glows that servants activated or deactivated as needed to keep the Imperial Palace at the desired temperature. Rhianne had claimed it was useless for spying, because it had only one entrance, and spells prevented sound from leaking through the walls and floors, but for all that he loved and trusted Rhianne, the uses of the hypocaust were easily something she might lie about. Or be ignorant about. She cared about him, but she was Kjallan, and, as she had just made so abundantly clear, she would not knowingly betray her people.
In a way, he was glad she’d refused to go to Mosar with him. It was a fool’s errand; he would almost certainly be killed there. Better she should stay here on Kjall and begin a new life.
Gasping in the stifling heat, he summoned magelight and, with paper and ink, mapped the entrance corridor and everything he could see from the place he now sat, marking each individual heat-glow on the map.
Rhianne said that she and Lucien had sneaked out together through the hypocaust. She could have meant they both sneaked out through the trapdoor in her room. But wasn’t it far more likely that Lucien had a trapdoor in his own room? If so, he needed to find that door. The rooms of the Imperial Heir could hold valuable intelligence about the attack, or feint, or whatever it was that was happening on Sardos. If Janto had to map every inch of the hypocaust to locate Lucien’s trapdoor, he would do it.
Hours later, around dawn, guards began pouring into the once-empty hypocaust, and Janto knew Rhianne’s disappearance had been discovered. They crawled up and down its sweltering passageways, searching perhaps for Rhianne herself, or else the exit she’d taken. No doubt they were bewildered, trying to work out how she could have slipped past the Legaciatti.
Their presence made any further mapping dangerous, so he left the tunnels. It was time for a new approach anyway. His all-night study of the hypocaust had impressed upon him the difficulty of mapping the entire system; the structure was enormous. Since his priority right now was finding a trapdoor into Lucien’s room, why not find out where Lucien’s room was located aboveground, and then, back in the hypocaust, map his way directly to that location? He headed into the north dome with that goal in mind.
23
Lucien Florian Nigellus, heir to the Kjallan throne, tugged an ear as he studied the Caturanga board. Should he make a bid for the Soldier? Or was it time to put his Traitor into play? He raised his eyes to the young man sitting across from him in case his opponent’s facial expression might offer him any clues. Trenian was a student he’d discovered at the palaestra, where young officers-to-be were trained. At the end of the season, Trenian would earn his officer mark, and when that happened, he’d be transferred to a distant battalion, but Lucien intended to keep an eye on him from afar. He admired sharp minds, and this boy was one of the most promising Caturanga players he’d met. At the moment, Trenian looked absolutely guileless, which meant he had a trick or two up his sleeve.
Lucien moved the Traitor.
The door that led to his rooms groaned on its hinges.
“Gods curse it,” he muttered, studying the altered board as he awaited Trenian’s move. The boy was setting a trap for him, somewhere. But where? He called to his door guard, “Can it wait, Hiberus?” When there was no answer, he glanced up. Florian was striding into the room.
A bolt of fear shot through him. He seized his crutch, pushed back his chair, and stood. Trenian rose awkwardly, aware that he should not embarrass the higher-ranking Lucien by standing faster and more smoothly, but not wanting to appear disrespectful to the emperor.
It was clear from the length of Florian’s stride and the tightness of his jaw that the emperor was angry about something. Lucien swallowed nervously. What had he done this time? He never tried to upset Florian. Indeed, he’d done his best to stay on the man’s good side. “Father.” He inclined his head as the emperor approached.
But Florian just kept coming. He strode to the small rosewood table upon which sat the Caturanga board, tucked his hands underneath it, and upended it, using his magically enhanced strength to fling table, board, and pieces across the room. “This. Useless. Game!” he shouted.
The board landed askew and broke. Pieces rolled along the wooden floor and under chairs and tables. Trenian stood frozen, horrified.
Lucien met the youngster’s eyes. “You’re dismissed,” he said. “Go.”
Trenian left the room as swiftly as he could without breaking into a run.
Florian advanced on Lucien.
Lucien took a step backward. “Is something wrong?”
Florian answered with a blow across Lucien’s face that might have broken his jaw if his war magic had not signaled him to turn his head. Still the impact knocked him backward and off balance. He staggered.
“Oh, stand up,” said Florian. “Sapskull.”
Lucien set his peg leg and crutch firmly on the floor and recovered his balance. He worked his jaw, blinking rapidly. When Florian hit him, some childish part of him always wanted to cry. It was embarrassing and stupid, and he was never going to let that part of him have its way. Another part of him quivered with the furious desire to strike back, but that was an urge he absolutely had to suppress. No one attacked the emperor and survived.
“Rhianne is missing,” said Florian.
Despite his still-rattling head, those words shocked him. “What do you mean?”
“Just what I’ve said. She’s run away.”
Lucien lifted his eyes to Florian’s, perplexed. Hadn’t he placed Legaciatti in front of the hypocaust exit just to prevent that from happening? “How did she get out?”
“It appears there was a trapdoor in her room leading to the hypocaust,” said Florian. “But you already knew that. Didn’t you?”
Lucien steeled himself for another blow. How was he to answer such a question?
“You must have known,” continued Florian, carefully enunciating each word, “because you placed Legaciatti in front of the hypocaust exit.”
“I was trying to stop her from getting out.”
“You failed, because she got out anyway!” cried Florian.
“I’m sorry,” said
Lucien. “But I did my best to prevent that from happening.”
“You didn’t think to tell me about the trapdoor? I’d have sealed it up, put her in another room entirely—found some solution better than a couple of guards.”
Lucien shook his head ruefully. “The trapdoor was something she used as a child. You were so angry with her already. I didn’t want her to be in even more trouble. But how did she get past the Legaciatti?”
“We’re going to find out,” said Florian. “But right now I’m more concerned with you. How do you feel about facing a treason charge?”
Lucien gulped. “I tried to stop her from getting out!”
Florian frowned. “I don’t care what you intended with your foolishness. You withheld information that led to her escape. However”—he held up a hand to forestall Lucien’s protest—“I came here to grant you the opportunity to demonstrate your loyalty.”
Lucien’s neck prickled. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like this. “And how may I do that?”
“You will find your cousin,” said Florian. “Some of your colleagues in the north, when you were in charge of White Eagle battalion, said you were a savvy tactician. Prove it. Use your best tactics and find Rhianne.”
“Battlefield tactics and locating a runaway aren’t the same thing.” Lucien’s mind raced. What if he tried his best and couldn’t find her? She was smart, and Florian hadn’t told him how much head start she had. Would he face a treason charge if he didn’t succeed? He supposed deliberately failing at the task wasn’t an option.
Florian’s brows rose. “Are you making excuses?”
“No.” He swallowed. “Have you considered that maybe you should just let her go? She’s ungrateful and unreliable. Let her suffer on her own.” He couldn’t resist the opportunity to perhaps save his cousin from the fate the emperor intended for her.
Florian’s brow arched upward. “Let her go?” He spoke the words as if they had a funny taste.