“I’ve met some rowdy fish.” I grinned. Rath lived for swimming in the ocean.
He touched his chest, hand fluttering over his heart. “I am, at the very least, a shark.”
“Whale shark.” I opened my arms wide and mimed the big creatures’ bobbing float. “The meekest of predators.”
The nicest of thieves.
He helped me onto the tree trunk, pushed me down the channel, and waved. “I hope river sharks eat your toes.”
The cold didn’t hit till I took a breath. It splashed up my thighs and shivered into my chest, and a teeth-clattering whine kept me from shouting as the log carried me into the tunnel and rammed me into the gate. I lurched forward, nose nearly hitting the bark. The grate door creaked.
I scooted along the log and grasped the bars. Rath was right. Between my fear and the cold, I was shaking too badly to do anything delicate. I pushed the log back and jammed it into the locking mechanism. It cracked and broke open. I drifted through the tunnel.
The other side was deserted, and I climbed up the slick stone walls of the channel to a grassy corner. It took a while to dry my legs and scrape the river gunk from my boots. It wasn’t the worst I’d ever looked.
Which made me feel worse.
The area inside the wall was taller than it was wide. The castle had been built decades before and had nothing on the palace. Gray stone and mahogany wood buildings in sharply angled straight walls made up the bulk of the building, and the stout bottom floors supported four corner towers and a wide center spire. The wind cut between them with a low whistle, rattling the thick shutters on each high window. Winter would place himself at the center of everything.
I crept around the outskirts of the area. Guards and servants wandered the paths. The only proper gate inside was facing the town and wide open, letting through civilians come to talk and tradesmen doing business. If I were robbing the place, I’d have followed them and found the reserves, but Elise’s quarters would be separated from the common folk. She was a lady in a land obsessed with nobility.
I snuck my way around the area until I found a window on the center tower only a little ways off the ground, second story at most, and waited till the paths were clear. Scaling it was easy.
Getting inside was too.
I wasn’t the army he’d spent decades preparing for.
I darted between closets and rafters until a laundress passed with an armful of dresses about the same height as Elise. They were clean and left the scent of washing powder in their wake. I followed.
She knocked on a door several stories up and went in. I found a servants’ closet nearby that had a window and made my way from it toward the room. If it wasn’t Elise’s, I was at least a step closer to her.
And if it was Winter’s, I’d a few things to say to him.
My fingers skimmed an open shutter. I pulled myself up, legs shivering. No one screamed as I made my way into the opening, and I sat half in the window. Elise sat in profile on the bed at the far side of the room.
The blue silk scarf wrapped around her hair was the brightest spot of color in her room. Braids fell over each shoulder, peeking out from under the scarf, and her dark skin was speckled with black, fading ink. Pages upon pages fanned out across her legs like a makeshift skirt. She chewed on the end of a wooden brush pen.
I grinned.
Of course all her bad habits were rolled into writing—she always had ink on her nose and teeth marks on her pens. The tight, little flicker of worry I’d carried in my chest since the last time I saw her loosened. A pleasant, content ease settled over my skin.
She was alive. She was fine. She was still surely, solidly Elise from the tip of her bare toes to the spectacles slipping down her nose.
I opened my mouth to talk, but the sound got lost in my throat. Didn’t matter. She was so into her reading, she didn’t even look up when the window creaked. I tried again.
“You don’t chew on charcoal sticks, do you?” I asked.
Elise shrieked. Her papers scattered. She lunged off the bed and spun to me. The wooden beads at the end of each braid clacked together.
She stared, mouth open. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “Sal?”
I bowed.
“How?” She stuttered. Her chest rose and fell faster and faster. “What are you doing here?”
“My lady,” I said, rising from my bow and sliding from the window. “You missed our last tutoring session. What was I supposed to do?”
And with another soft, gasping shriek, Elise threw her arms around my neck and sobbed.
Chapter Eleven
Elise’s nose pressed into the curve of my neck and shoulder. A wet spot seeped into my shirt, and I wrapped my arms around her, fingers sliding up her back till I found the bare skin of her neck. Her spectacles pinched.
“Hold on.” I pulled back and very slowly took her spectacles off. “Don’t want to break them.”
She sniffed and rested her forehead against mine. “I have another pair. I don’t have another you.”
The words hit my lips, and she tightened her grip on me, nails digging through my clothes and into my skin. Her eyelashes brushed my cheeks.
“I had hoped we would meet sooner rather than later,” she whispered, her lips catching mine.
I pressed forward. Elise sighed and kissed me back, and her tongue parted my lips, barely, quickly, only enough of a taste to be a promise. I swallowed and pulled back
Being with her was already tempting enough, but being with her like this would make it impossible to leave. And I’d have to leave eventually.
She kissed me quickly again. “I hadn’t hoped for this smell, though.”
“That’s your river’s fault,” I said. “Not mine.”
She brought up one of her hands to flick my nose and hit my cheek instead. “You leave my river out of this. I’ve been trying to get those waterways fixed up for ages.”
“And why listen to the smartest person in Hinter?” I paused. Swallowed. “Elise, if I could get you out of here—”
“No.” She shook her head, braids slapping against my arms, and narrowed her eyes. “Did you get my note?”
I nodded.
“Then you shouldn’t ask me that,” she said. “I’m not leaving. I can do more good for the people of Hinter and for Igna here.” She stiffened and rolled back her shoulders. “And if you are here to take me home, you can swim out the way you came because you do not understand as well as I thought you did.”
“I’m not. Don’t worry.” I tightened my grip on her and laid my cheek against her shoulder. “Just wanted to check. I’m here for those Erlend rangers stealing Igna kids. Thought you might know more about them.”
Elise had her own life to live like I had mine. I had to let her live it as she wanted.
“Good.” She tugged my wet sleeves. “Spectacles, please.”
I chuckled. It was nice to see her fully, without my mask blocking her arms or sides of her face. I settled the spectacles on her nose and slipped the arms behind her ears, shifting the braids aside with careful hands. They clinked as they moved.
A steady sound, quickly familiar and quietly comfortable.
I traced the shell of her ear from top to bottom and trailed my fingers along the round edge of her jaw until I hit the peak of her chin, then the soft dip of her bottom lip and little valley between her nose and mouth, and finally the far corner of her right eye. I straightened her spectacles and kissed her freckled nose. Elise smiled.
“Good to see you’re as charming as ever.” She pulled me toward the bed and squeezed my damp sleeve. “How are only your arms and legs wet?”
“Thief secrets.” I winked. “How’d you know I’d take the tunnel?”
She pushed me into a chair. “The guards marked the three grates as in need of repairs or extra guards, so I marked them all as fixed on the paperwork. It’s the easiest way for me to get Alonian-born Erlends away from the rangers and south to safety.”
He
r nails drifted to my neck, catching on my collar, and I shuddered.
I’d missed her cleverness and touch and the slight sting of the lemon cleaning tonic that clung to her skin.
“You all right though?” The little rumble of panic I’d carried in my heart for Elise since her abduction was fading. “What’s happening here? Looked like rations getting handed out, but Erlend can’t be in need of that yet. And I’ve got rangers flaying folks along the border, missing kids, severed ears.”
“I’m all right. I am certainly better off than most of Hinter will be soon.” She raised a hand to her mouth, rubbing her chapped bottom lip with a thumb. Old bruises and healed cuts marred her hands. She kept her other hand angled away from me. “My father made a mistake and showed Weylin’s hand too soon. Weylin was not fully prepared for war, and he’s making my father pay for it. I managed to convince him to directly pay half of his debt, but the rest he is repaying in the form of supplies and food for the army.”
I held out my hand to her. “The Erlend army can’t already be out of supplies.”
“It is much worse than you think and the army much larger than any of us knew. I haven’t had a chance to get out another note, but Weylin has collected nearly every Erlend boy to fight, and they are very happy to go to war against the shadows of Igna that killed their parents or uncles or friends ten years ago.”
“Course they are,” I said. “Erlend rangers are leaving flayed folks all up and down the border. How they going to feel when they find out it was their king killing them this whole time?”
“The people of Hinter are my responsibility no matter where their parents were from—Erlend or Alona or if they still quietly claim Igna citizenship—and if I leave, my father will not look after them as he should. He sees them as pieces, not people. They are his to use to meet whatever ends he seeks.” Scowling, she showed me her hand. “He has not apologized. It was my fault for fighting, so he says.”
She was missing three nails—first, second, and forth. Her thumbnail had been torn in half. Scabs speckled the nail beds.
I winced. “He’s not—”
“No,” she said quickly. “Erlend tracks inheritance by bloodlines, not family name. If he loses me, his family dies out.”
“Like that’s the worst outcome of you dying or getting hurt.” I kissed her knuckles and stroked her wrist. “How they ever going to believe someone like you is on their side?”
“Not easily.” She stayed standing before me, gently pressing my hand to her side. Her hips were still round, my fingers barely spanning from hip to rib, but I could feel the lack of her, the weight worry and work had taken away. “He’s holding out hope that he can save me from my disastrous ways since Lena managed to rein me in as a child. I’m pretending it’s working.”
“I’ve met your Lena.”
Elise grinned. “Really? Is she safe? Is she with Our Queen?” I opened my mouth to answer but Elise rambled on, gesturing wildly. “Of course she is! She’s very clever, and she was always furious with Weylin. He gifted her her land, you know, but only after she showed him that she’d been running it behind her father’s back for years. If Hinter and my father hadn’t joined Igna, I’d not be able to inherit. Lena told me all about it, how to play Weylin and all his lords at their own game.”
“I’m glad you had her.”
Mostly. She was getting under my skin.
“Me too.” She sighed and pulled away, drifting to the pile of papers on her bed. “You mentioned children and rangers. I’m not surprised by their involvement in the murders, but I had noticed several children gone. Until now, I had assumed they’d run to Igna.”
I shrugged and stood. “They might’ve, but the group I used to run with had a kid get snatched, and we found some of his things on a ranger.”
“If I thought Weylin needed it, I would say he’s collecting children for work, but he’s got civilians for that, the ones who couldn’t be drafted.” She beckoned me to the bed. “I’ve only seen one group of rangers, and they were missing a member.”
“That’s the group I’m after then.” I tripped over a book in the middle of the floor and stumbled.
Elise let out a breathy laugh. “They scare me. I didn’t meet with them, but I’ve seen them. It was one of the older groups under Caden de Bain. My father hates him. Says he’s so far gone into his violence that most of his blood probably isn’t his anymore, and his underlings are much the same, taking joy in their jobs. The only useful thing I know isn’t even that useful—they brought news of a spy in Our Queen’s estate. A servant. Said they had fulfilled their ‘end of her deal,’ whatever that may be. It’s the first I’ve heard of it, and I have trouble believing Weylin would hire a woman. He hates us so.”
A servant spy. It’d be good cover and enough freedom to work. And it was the opposite of what everyone expected.
I’d have to tell Nicolas.
“How you know the rangers take joy in it?” I asked.
She shuddered. “They make a game of it, I think, if what I heard was them discussing children. A drinking game.”
Disgusting.
“But Caden de Bain was here?” I moved the stacks of research between us aside and scooted closer, my thigh flush to hers. “And his rangers?”
“Four of them and Bain.” She nodded. “If my father didn’t hate Bain so much, he’d have tried to set me up with one of the rangers. He’s lying to himself and assuming I’m attracted to dangerous men, not dashing people of relative good looks and comparable morals.”
Relative good looks. If half our conversation weren’t sad, I’d be howling
“You meet a lot of those here?” I grinned and leaned in close. “Get robbed by anyone with manners as monstrous as their complexions?”
“No robberies recently.” She kissed the tip of my nose. “Only a few wet rats sneaking in through the window.”
I scowled, exaggerating the expression till she laughed, and leaned against her shoulder. “And people think you’re an upstanding, nice young lady.”
“Oh, many do not.” She whistled and rolled her eyes. “My mother was Alonian, which is clearly the seat of all my troubles.”
“Clearly.” A locket I’d not stolen, one from the night we’d first met, still hung from her neck. “The problem isn’t them having nonsense ideas about what ‘lady’ means.”
“Absolutely not.” Elise touched my arm, sliding toward the head of the bed with an expectant look.
I swallowed. My nerves hung in the back of my throat, heavy and uncertain and blocking any words I might’ve said, and Elise only grinned, a soft, ruddy red rising in her cheeks.
“I know you can’t stay for long,” she muttered. “We should make the most of it.”
I glanced at the notebook in her hands. “You mean reading, don’t you?”
“Hush.” The blush on her cheeks darkened, hiding her freckles. “We can do two things, and if we’re going to talk about bad things, we should be experiencing pleasant things, don’t you think?”
“Course, my lady.” I bowed at the waist. “What do you want?”
She scowled and laughed so hard her spectacles slipped off. “Just come here.”
I did. She pulled me into the space between her legs until my back was against her chest and her arms were around my waist, the book she was holding out in front of us. It was a map of the world, and she pointed to a continent far to the east, over the mountains shadowing Hinter, across the large expanse of Berengard, and over the Shattered Sea.
“Eredan and its Conquered States,” she said. “My father’s family lived there over five hundred years ago. It was ruled by a king and his court that traced the power of nobility, magic, and inheritance through the bloodlines of noblemen, each one a descendant of their first king.”
Nacea had honored blood. It was the seat of the soul, and all souls had a right to live as they needed, an innate right to preserve the sanctity of their selves. We thought it important. Cherished. We’d not valued one type
over the other. It was all the same. Everyone bled. Everyone deserved to live.
“Please don’t call me by my title when we’re together like this.” Her spectacles bumped my ear. “I know you’re joking, but I don’t want to take advantage of you. When we met, I was noble and you weren’t.”
“I won’t anymore,” I said, even though I was certain she didn’t know the meaning of the words. Not really. “I liked you because you didn’t use it against me. You played with it, but not a lot. And I’m Opal now. I outrank you.”
She rested her chin on my shoulder. “I’m not going to be scared of someone who couldn’t even rob me.”
“You keep bringing that up.” I took a breath and got a nose full of grape oil and lemon. “Didn’t happen that often. You being pretty and talkative caught me off guard. I was a very fearsome thief.”
“And you are a very fearsome Opal. Yet I am fairly certain I could explain each of your kills as justified.” She sighed. “We’re very similar, only different sides of the same moral choices.”
Elise’s side of moral choices was somewhere left of just and right of nice-enough-to-trust-assassins.
“You don’t know what I’ve done.”
How many deaths I’d taken joy in.
“You killed Horatio del Seve for pleasure, yes, and you were going to kill my father.” She paused, took a breath, and softly said, “He deserved it though, and you showed mercy when I asked for it. I’m inclined, knowing the rest, that Horatio deserved it too. They would have killed many, many people. But did you kill him to save others or to take joy in it?”
“Bit of both, if you want me to be honest.” I stiffened.
She tightened her grip on me. “I like you honest. I like you as you. I’m not as innocent as you think.”
“I know.” I leaned my head back against her shoulder till I could kiss the hollow behind her ear. “You’re still a better person than most.”
“If you say so.” She shivered. “I’m going to learn everything I can about Erlend and Eredan and Gaspar del Weylin’s odd, old traditions, and I am going to use that to tear them down. We do not deserve the power entrusted to us any longer.”
Ruin of Stars Page 7