Ruin of Stars

by Linsey Miller

  “Come in a bit before that,” Riparian sad softly. She brushed a piece of fallen snow from Elise’s cheek. “We need to talk about how to convince Gaspar you’re as loyal as your father.”

  I stiffened. Elise sighed.

  “Of course.” She glanced up at the fog-white clouds seeping over the mountains and down to us. “I’m sorry I’m making this difficult. I really did think Erlend was over except for Weylin’s lands.”

  “You were surviving.” Riparian grinned, all teeth. “I won’t let him hold that against you, and now you know all the little things about Igna I and your father don’t because of your place on their court. That will help.” She patted Elise’s arm. “Come back inside when you’re ready.”

  Elise nodded. “I will. Thank you.”

  The moment the door shut, Elise whispered, “You were right.”

  “I know.” I tugged the hem of the cloak until she turned to me, hidden in the shadows, and wiped away the tears running down her cheeks. “Lena de Arian is Riparian, and a decade ago, she helped destroy Nacea. A few days ago, she murdered the only person living I could call family, and now, she’s doing it all again—all those missing children, all those ears, all those flayed corpses on the border. She had a hand in all of that. She’ll kill anyone to keep her power, to keep Erlend in power.”

  I couldn’t ask the question I desperately needed an answer to, but Elise answered it for me.

  “I don’t know how to stop her.” Elise sniffed and ducked. “She showed me her ledgers, her bookkeeping records, and it was the first time I’d seen them. She wants me to be her successor. But those numbers, they can’t be right, or if they are, Sal, Triad save us if they’re right, because it means she’s been responsible for more deaths than you think.”

  More than a nation?

  “Everything was so unsteady as a child, but she was always my constant.” Elise took my hand in hers, fingers so tight it hurt. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you. She did so many good things, but at such steep prices. She funded my public school in Hinter.” Elise shuddered. “She pulled the money from an Alonian-based business. We always had to stick together, Erlend women, but this—”

  I pried her fingers from around my hand.

  She laughed softly, sadly. “I feel like my entire life is a lie, and, any moment, the ground will fall away.”

  I wanted her to the know the truth, to be as good as I’d thought she was, but I didn’t want anyone else to know this world-shattering pain. It was like having to remake yourself, finding out the one person you trusted was a lie. It was like dying.

  “What’re you doing here?” I asked. “With her, then?”

  “She can’t stay in power. Gaspar del Weylin cannot stay in power. My father cannot stay in power.” She licked her chapped lips and shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I am not doing it or anything for Erlend.”

  I nodded.

  “The missing Hinter children her guards took. They’re here. I know they’re here, and I need to see her ledgers again to find them.” Elise tapped her temple. “I have lists of names, and I’m going to find them and save them from Lena. All the times I supported her—when she supported me—I have to make up for.”

  I nodded again, the cold, sharp pain that had lodged in my ribs after our last meeting melting away. “I know where some of them probably are, and they’re mostly fine.”

  She stared, eyes glazed, and shook her head. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sal,” Elise said, voice dropping. “Lena de Arian is a monster.”

  “I know.”

  She sniffed. “How’d I not see it? I’ve known her since I was a child, and tomorrow she’s set up a demonstration of how to make shadows.”

  “I know that too,” I said.

  “I trusted her.” She leaned into the breeze and took a deep breath, flecks of snow catching on her veil like white blossoms on rolling, green hills. The wind stole her tears. “I trusted her more than I trusted my father, more than anyone else in this world, and she has—”

  I laid my hand across hers, our gloves keeping us apart. “I know what she’s done and what she’s doing. You don’t have to say it.”

  It hurt to speak the truth into the world when it was the last thing you wanted to be real.

  “I know we have a lot to talk about that can’t be said here, but we have to stop this.” She turned her whole face to me, and the shadows brought out the bags beneath her eyes and red tinge to the whites of them. Her fingers laced through mine again. “I’ll stop this if it’s the last thing I do.”

  I smoothed down the wrinkles of her thin gloves and pressed my thumb into the underside of her wrists, where my ink once stained. “That’s why I like you. I’m stealing Riparian’s ledgers tonight. You want to help?”

  The silence between us stretched—awkward, tense, an unwanted gap—until two voices from the room drifted onto the balcony.

  “She’s odd,” one said.

  “Her mother was Alonian.”

  That whole line of thought was why we were in this mess.

  “Can you punch them as well?” Her huff escaped as a puff of white fog. “While you’re stealing the ledgers?”

  I nodded. “How many times?”

  “I’ll let you know how many times they utter more Erlend-bloodline nonsense and we’ll start from there,” she said dryly, scowling. She smoothed down the feathery, little hairs along her hairline and straightened her veil. “Lena’s quarters are two stories up with a window facing east. She wakes at dawn every day. No exceptions.”

  And she was gone, the warm fit of her hand over mine fading. The door didn’t shut all the way behind her.

  I watched for a while, listened at the crack and turned our conversations over and over in my head. Two young lords watched her too. She called them over once and asked for their help translating the old Erlenian on a tapestry. I grinned.

  “That can’t be right,” she said softly, glancing at them with wide eyes and a pout. Elise was many things, but she was not naive. “The old Erlenian conjugations aren’t the same as modern ones.”

  He blushed. “Right, of course, sorry.”

  “You make it hard to think,” his friend said. “Of course it’s not that simple.”

  “Of course.” Elise smiled. No teeth. No tenderness. “My mistake.”

  I nearly fell off the balcony from rolling my eyes. How’d they turn them not knowing Old Erlenian into her fault?

  Erlends.

  She was running circles round them with barely a dozen words and a glance, and I’d been shocked she lied to me. It wasn’t even much of a lie.

  It was just too much.

  I was still attracted to her—not just her face and the way she moved her hands or how the scar on her lip stretched when she smiled. She knew me, all the good and bad, and being able to see that took knowing in a way others couldn’t. We knew loss. We knew sacrifice.

  She was still nice. It wasn’t bad to think the best of people, to want people to be as good as you thought them. I’d done that with Our Queen and her Left Hand.

  I’d been loving a simplification of her, the version of Elise de Farone my mind wanted her to be, not who she was.

  That wasn’t fair to her. I had to learn to love her fully, wholly, all the parts of her, good and bad and in between, because I definitely wasn’t all good. Probably not even half good.

  About as bad as these Erlend lords.

  But only about.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Riparian’s room was all function—a large desk full of locked drawers and covered in a writing pad, two chairs with just enough cushion to be bearable and straight enough to put anyone sitting in them for too long on edge, and a wall of carefully hung maps crisscrossed by green and blue threads. A series of brown threads, supply lines, hugged the river ways. No ledgers or papers in sight.

  Most folks kept important things in safes or secret drawers, and Riparian was m
ost people. The locks were good quality though, and she’d a flint-steel strike ready to light the whole blasted thing on fire if I hit the wrong lock pin. Nine pins, a keyhole too thin and long for most picks, and a soft ring of gold around the lock face. This was a dal Russo, handmade by the most popular locksmith in Igna. Figured.

  I’d not pick this without help, but she had to keep the key on her. Wasn’t like they blended in with normal keys. I placed everything back as it had been and peeked into the room connected to this one, which contained a large bed and a wardrobe blocked by a locked traveling chest. She must keep the key on her.

  I clucked my tongue against my teeth—she did keep it on her and I’d thought it pretty, not purposeful.

  The study door clicked, unlocking. I darted forward, left the bedroom door open just enough for me to see, and crept under the large wardrobe. Dust puffed up around me. I held my breath.

  Don’t let her walk in here. She was too clever to not notice the cloud.

  “I need Hinter’s updated numbers,” Riparian said, voice the rough, low tone of travelers.

  Trailed by Maud carrying a tray of two teacups and one slice of a large cream tart, Riparian led a nervous-faced Elise into her study, and North Star followed a little ways behind them, speaking softly with the guard at his side. Elise and Riparian waited for him to quiet and nod before sitting down. The guard ran off.

  “I’ve memorized them.” Elise sat in one of the chairs before Riparian’s desk, well outside of my sliver of view, and Riparian sat at her desk. “How would you like them?”

  “Relay them when I ask. Just like old times,” Riparian said, smiling. “Gaspar, do you want to stay for them, or will my morning report suffice?”

  “My curiosity can wait.” His feet stopped near Elise’s chair, the door blocking both their bodies. “I wanted to make sure our dear Elise was aware of her new responsibilities?”

  “I believe so.” Elise shifted, the familiar sound of her breath cut off by the movement.

  Riparian leaned back in her chair, tea cup covering her mouth. “It’s only that with you living with them for so long, we didn’t expect your loyalties to change so swiftly.”

  “They didn’t.” Elise’s voice went up. She must’ve tilted her head to the side. Played naive. “You told my father to fit in, so we fit in.”

  “You were unaware of that plan,” Riparian said quickly. “Though we don’t fault you for your work in Igna, but we will need everything you know tomorrow morning.”

  Elise grinned, the soft, little look she used when playing at gentle charm. “Of course. Do you want me to write it down beforehand or only specific parts? Some of what I know is quite number and map heavy.”

  North Star patted the back of her chair. “You are in excellent hands.”

  I held back a groan at Riparian’s slim smile. Excellent hands to strangle Elise. She might’ve been a good liar—and she might’ve been good at lying by omission—but Riparian wouldn’t believe the Triad was being truthful if they spoke to her. She assumed the world lied as much as her.

  “A rare specimen of her sex, possessing both logic and steadfastness,” North Star said. “She is an excellent mentor, and I look forward to our upcoming conversations.”

  I winced. Elise recrossed her feet.

  Riparian’s only tell was the tightening of her jaw. “You’re too kind, Gaspar.”

  Her tone didn’t even change. How long had she been responding to backhanded compliments?

  Elise’s face never changed. “I look forward to what she can teach me.”

  Riparian watched him leave, her face dropping soon as the door shut. “I know you, Elise, and something is wrong. What is it?”

  I edged forward to see better.

  Elise leaned forward in her chair, calm and steady under Riparian’s gaze. “The rangers took three Hinter children north. I just want to know what happened to them? I had been teaching two of them mathematics.”

  “Children?” Riparian pulled back. “Three children? That’s all?”

  “Yes.” Elise stiffened. “They’re from Hinter. I’m responsible for their well-being.”

  Her voice hitched.

  “Lady de Farone.” Maud bowed near Elise’s shoulder and offered her a fresh slice of lemon for her inky hands.

  Elise accepted it. “Thank you.”

  And in the moment when Maud paused to stand and blocked Elise from Riparian’s sight, Elise let her expression fall into a weary-lined, watery-eyed scowl. She inhaled and shook the look from her face before Maud moved. Maud must’ve seen but she didn’t so much as blink.

  Lady bless her, but she was playing a dangerous game. Elise still had important things to do. People to save. Books to write. Thieves to stare down. She couldn’t die putting herself in danger like this.

  Elise balled a hand in her skirt. “Does he always talk to you like that?”

  I was a fool for thinking her deathly honest—this was better. She knew how to play the game. She’d tear herself down to save her own, and I should’ve respected that.

  Still, while some of what she said was rude, I was a killer.

  I guess neither of us was perfect.

  “A small price to pay, but if any of them ever approach you, come to me.” She leaned across her desk and took Elise’s hand. “It’s a small price to pay, their disregard, for what our positions allow us to do for our people.”

  “All of our people?” Elise asked softly.

  Riparian’s lips pursed. “It would be best if you left your ‘honorable’ notions about gender in Igna. Marianna da Ignasi is failing for a reason, and her inability to keep order is part of that.”

  Least Moira was still going to let me kill Riparian. Course, Elise might get their first. She’d hooked her feet around the chair legs and nearly ripped a hole in her dress from grasping it so tight.

  After that, Elise didn’t speak except to relay a handful of numbers, settling for tightly wound silence that snapped every time Riparian so much as wrote a new number in her ledger.

  And before Elise left for the night, after Riparian had tucked her ledger and key away, Riparian said, “I know it is hard stomach loss and young love, but your Honorable Opal is dead, and you cannot cling to him here.”

  “Don’t worry.” Elise turned and smiled. “They wouldn’t want me to anyway.”

  I buried my face in my hands. Riparian let out a breathy sound somewhere between laugh and sob, and she shook her head.

  “There’s a guard outside. She’ll escort you to your quarters next door and will protect you all night. If I were you,” Riparian said, “I would use tonight to think about your place here, darling, and what losing it means.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Riparian didn’t take long to get in bed. She left two candles burning, one on each side of the study, and bathed alone, no maid to help her. She checked beneath the bed and locked her bedroom door before crawling beneath her quilts and pulling a book from beneath her pillows. I let her read and watched till she fell asleep. She cried too, but I looked away for that.

  The necklace with the dal Russo key never left her body.

  I crept out from under the wardrobe. Riparian’s steady breathing didn’t change, scattering her hair across her face with each exhale. She slept on her side, and with her back to me, I used a thin wire from my pack to snake the necklace out of her nightgown and unhook the clasp. It took ages to tease the key from the chain without waking her. My legs ached from crouching so long.

  But it worked.

  Key in hand, I returned to her study. Three shadows flickered at my feet and the knowledge they were real again, in the depths of the earth beneath my feet, shuddered up my arms until I had to take a moment to breathe before unlocking the drawer. No fire flared when I finally got it open.

  Three ledgers full of information sat atop a lockbox of old jewelry, and in the very back sat a bundle of old letters, each addressed to Lena from Elise. The first one was eight years old, in a child’s sh
aky script. I tucked the bundle back into the drawer.

  I’d not be able to take the ledgers to Moira and return them before Riparian woke up to miss them, but I couldn’t copy the ledgers—even if I followed her numbers perfectly, it’d take ages and she’d notice the missing paper.

  Elise.

  I tucked the ledgers under my jacket and put everything else back in place. The door to the hallway rattled, and I froze. The handle turned, and I dashed for it, the handle slipping through my fingers.

  The door opened. One of the guards, a young man with straggly, brown hair and the itchings of a first-time beard along his jaw, stuck his head through the crack. I froze.

  “I’m sorry,” Maud’s voice echoed down the hallway. “Could you help me? I’m quite lost.”

  The guard pulled away without seeing me.

  She kept him talking long enough for me to shut the door and work my way over to Elise’s window on the outside of the tower. Adella’s climbing knives kept me from falling from the tower wall, my fingers shaking too much to keep me steady. I leaned my forehead against Elise’s window before knocking.

  I wasn’t looking forward to any conversations Elise and I would have, but I still wanted them.

  The window creaked.

  “Sal?” Elise’s soft tone eased the itching at the back of my neck, racing up my arms and burrowing in my skin. A shadow in me. “Sal? What are you doing?”

  “I need you.” I lifted my head. “I need your help.”

  She opened the window and tugged me inside. “What’s happened?”

  She agreed to copy the ledgers before I’d finished asking, and I let her have them, choosing to collapse in the corner of her quarters instead. She’d been in bed but not asleep. Her braids were wrapped in a plain silk scarf, and a robe covered her night gown. She curled her bare toes up against the cold.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you about Riparian,” she said softly after a long silence had passed and my breathing was under control. “And that I never told you I’d been sent to be robbed and pick which thieves got posters.”