by Amy Bai
It turned out to be a cul-de-sac, gods help him, and Cian wasn’t going to hold Emayn much longer.
Desperate, he turned, and turned again, trying to tell just from the look of the shut doors if any of the rooms’ occupants would welcome a general’s son with trouble on his heels. Listening hard, he heard, with a certain despair, Baron Brisham’s nasal voice behind one of the doors. The words were muffled, but the anger in his tone was enough to make Devin pause.
“We shall have to… if he does not accede… for her own sake.”
“There are other options.”
Curiosity held him in place. He didn’t recognize the other voice, though it was easier to make out. It didn’t sound like a servant, or a soldier: Brisham, rumor had it, treated his staff like unwelcome houseguests, and they spoke to him softly. This person had the tone of an equal, or at least someone who thought he was.
Baron Brisham of Sevassis province had arrived only a mere month after Kyali had disappeared into the mountains, dragging a train of attendants and cooking staff with him and kicking up a storm of gossip and confusion. Western barons came East only for the great affairs of state—none of which, so far as he knew, were planned for some time.
It had made his father suspicious, which in turn made Devin wary. He stepped closer and tried to listen simultaneously for Brisham’s words and Emayn’s footsteps.
"And what of the other one?" the baron asked.
"No sign. But we know where she has run to, my lord."
"Not good enough!"
A shout from the main corridor had him leaning away from the door: Emayn had escaped Cian and Alys.
“What was that?" Brisham snapped from inside.
Devin spun and ran, even knowing it was pointless; there was nowhere to go. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel its beats in his temples, and it had nothing—well, little—to do with his magic tutor's wrath.
Had they been talking about his sister in that room? And if so, did that mean more of the West than Baron Walderan wanted Kyali dead?
Anger grew in him, grew so fast he didn’t have time to swallow it down with reason or cool it with caution. And with it, inevitably, ever since the day he'd picked up a fiddle and shattered all the windows on the first floor of his father's house, came his unruly Gift. He flinched as the tallow candles in the sconce across from him flipped out of their holders to rattle on the floor. He pressed his back to the wall on the other side of a jutting lintel, then pressed his hands to his forehead.
“Not now,” he hissed.
He was in more than enough trouble already.
Emayn's steps came to a halt. There was a scrape as the door that hid Baron Brisham first unlatched and then slid open, and Devin pressed further back, hopeless as it was. He didn't think he could look Brisham in the face right now and pretend all was well. He thought he might strike the man. He was actually shaking with fury.
"Devin," came a whisper from just beside him, startling him badly. He looked around, seeing nothing, and then the tapestry to his left twitched.
What in the hells?
"Get in here!" the tapestry whispered fiercely.
Not about to question the provenance of such a well-timed gift, Devin flung the tapestry over himself, received a faceful of dust, and saw Taireasa looking up at him from a shadowed space in the stone wall. She got a fistful of his doublet and yanked with unexpected strength, pulling him utterly off balance. He fell forward into a darkness that smelled of dank stone and moldering linen and Taireasa’s perfume, which had lilacs in it. His face was mashed into the soft wool covering her shoulder. The princess, apparently not as embarrassed as he was by this unintended familiarity, grunted, then got a better grip on him and hauled hard. His knee scraped over a sharp lip of stone as he came sliding all the way inside.
“Close the door!”
He turned around as best he could without outright sitting on her and pushed at what turned out to be a very heavy block of wood with a veneer of stone on the outside. It swung shut in total silence. Taireasa scrambled out from under him, elbowing him in the neck in the process, and stood. The brisk rustle of cloth suggested she was brushing herself off, but it was pitch black and he couldn’t see even the faintest outline of her. He sat for another moment, hearing the distant rise and fall of voices outside the wall.
Gods, it sounded like they were a league away in a cave, not within arm’s reach.
Her hand closed over his collar and tugged, then moved to his sleeve as he stood. He followed her silent direction through a series of turns, one hand out to feel the crumbly smoothness of very, very old stone.
“So this is where you two hare off to,” he murmured. He felt Taireasa’s fingers clench over his wrist and was sorry: she still went wet-eyed and hard-jawed whenever Kyali’s name was mentioned.
“They go all over the castle,” she said shortly, not bothering to keep her voice down now, and she let him go to fumble after something in the dark. A moment later there was a scrape and a rattle, then flame blossomed between them, casting their shadows hugely onto walls of pale, small, close-fitted stones and crumbling mortar. She shut the lantern’s door and lifted it up between them, making Devin wince at the sudden light. “We’ll be near the kitchens if we keep going this way."
She knew her way around these odd tunnels very well, it seemed.
Afraid to say anything else that might upset her, he brushed at his clothes, giving her a moment to collect herself. His anger was fading, though slowly. Taireasa swept something from his shoulder and then turned, arms folding and shoulders hunching, to stare at a wall.
“Hared,” she said, her voice low and unhappy.
“She’ll come back, Taireasa. It’s not forever.”
“It’s years, though, isn’t it?”
He’d been trying not to think of it that way. “Yes,” he said, sighing. “It is. Can you say it’s not necessary?”
One shoulder drew up in a shrug. She didn’t turn to face him. “Of course it was necessary,” she muttered. “That doesn’t make it fair. Who were you running from this time?” she asked, just as he was opening his mouth to say something sympathetic and probably irritating.
“Oh, Emayn.”
“He found out about the song?”
“He heard it,” Devin said mournfully and Taireasa snorted, scrubbed at her face, and finally turned around. In the uneven light of the lantern, her face looked older, and tired, and... puffy, as though she had been weeping.
“Taireasa... why are you in here?”
“Baron Brisham proposed,” she said, sounding more defeated than he’d ever heard her before. It hurt him, hearing that tone from Taireasa.
She had been in his life ever since she and Kyali had met, nearly a decade ago. They had been instantly inseparable, and Taireasa had become a familiar presence at the Corwynall estate: a jumble of thin limbs, messy curls, strong opinions, and mischief, her easy laugh and brash daring the complete opposite of (and perfect match for) his quiet, arrogant, serious little sister. The two of them had been his playmates, and opponents; the victims of his pranks, and his occasional tormentors. Taireasa was like a second sister to him, and seeing her like this made him want to go back to the cul-de-sac so he could, in fact, strike Brisham right in his pompous face.
“You’re sixteen,” Devin said, and cringed at the way his voice echoed in the closeness of the tunnel.
The look she sent him was part scorn, part rueful affection. “I’m a princess, Devin. We do tend to marry earlier. And he suggested the wedding might take place after I’m of age.”
“How generous of him,” Devin growled, and had to run his hands through his hair and take several deep breaths, lest he knock the lantern over with his anger and disgust and set the place afire. He thought about telling Taireasa what he’d overheard—but she was already so upset, and really, he’d no proof, only a handful of words and a suspicion. He leaned against the wall, then remembered how the mortar had been crumbling out of it and str
aightened, knowing his doublet was probably already ruined. “I hope you told him you’re already spoken for.”
The startled flicker of her eyes lifted his spirits a bit. “To whom, pray tell.”
He linked arms with her, pulling her in the same direction she’d been pulling him just a moment ago. “Why, to me, of course. Dashing, handsome, melodic, charming… me. How could that old vulture hope to compete with such magnificence? Just think how he’d screech if he heard you were betrothed to one of the other two heirs he’s supposed to choose among when they vote for you to be queen.”
Taireasa laughed and let him lead her, though they both knew he had no idea where he was going. “I believe that violates at least a few laws, not to mention the fact that they may not vote for me, and you well know it.”
“Of course they will,” Devin scoffed. “Look what their other choices are. They’re hardly going to choose me or Kyali to rule the kingdom. Can you imagine? You’re the king’s daughter, you’re sensible and wise and, most importantly, you’re not a sword-brandishing, war-mad Corwynall.”
"You're not particularly war-mad, Devin," Taireasa said dryly.
"Well. By association. Which will be more than enough to put the barons off me."
"Fair point," she sighed, and freed her arm to go peer down a branch of passage that looked darker than night, but smelled faintly of bread. She set the lantern down. "This one."
"Does it lead straight into the kitchens?"
There was a flash of teeth in the dimness. "Closer to the wine cellars."
"Marry me now," Devin begged, and she giggled, sounding much more like herself, thank the gods. "I never knew you were carrying such useful secrets. Where else do they go?"
"Oh, everywhere. Perhaps I'll spend the next few years here, creeping out to steal food after night falls."
"Gods, Taireasa, surely you told him no."
"My father did."
"And?" He felt like he was missing something and pulled her around to look her in the face. “So?”
"This is the second time he's asked," Taireasa said in a small voice.
"Tell him no again! Say it until he hears it. If he's fool enough to think—"
"You don't know! You've no idea how—" She waved his words away with an angry sweep, then paced off to glare at the floor, hands on her hips. The lanternlight threw her shadow over the tunnel in pieces. "We've gotten letters from all the other barons of the West and most of the lesser Western lords supporting it. Baron Cyrnic suggested that the vote would go more smoothly if I were settled, Walderan said that relations with the whole West would improve… they said that I would be a better… a better… oh."
Taireasa put her hands to her head and breathed carefully, every line of her shouting misery and hurt. “They said I would be a better queen if I had someone with experience in matters of state to guide me.”
The anger he’d gotten mostly under control leapt out of his grasp and the lantern slid a full handspan sideways and tottered, but thankfully didn't tip over. Taireasa flung it a startled glance, then him a wary one. Devin barely noticed.
"Gods damn them, then! Taireasa, you aren't considering this. Tell me you're not. King Farrell would never stand for it—and your mother would burn Sevassis to the ground first."
“But what if they’re right?”
There was no response to that she’d hear right now, so he gave her the only one he could: he pulled her into the circle of his arms and held tight. They didn’t embrace often—he might think of her as a sister, but she was still the daughter of another House, and royal, and beautiful, and rumors bred like rabbits in these halls—and she stiffened in his hold before heaving a sigh and slumping to lean on him. They stood that way for a few moments, until they were both a little uncomfortable, and then separated. Taireasa wiped her face on her sleeve.
"They're not," Devin said firmly. "They're wrong and you know it, just as you know they're only doing this to stir up trouble and get some concession or other. Why King Farrell doesn't just raise the trade tariffs on their wine, or levy some new 'contentious bastard' tax on anyone who holds a landed title, I don't know; it would shut them all up for years, I swear."
She put a hand to her face and leaned against the crumbling wall, her shoulders shaking. It took him a moment to realize it was laughter—prudently silent, but so hard she wheezed, and flapped her free hand at him.
"Gods, you are your father's son," she gasped.
"Oh, come now, he'd never suggest anything so silly."
"He'd suggest it and mean it," Taireasa contradicted him merrily. "I take it back. You are a war-mad Corwynall, to the very core. Oh, dear gods, that's wonderful. Thank you, Devin."
He was still stuck on the notion of his father making such a suggestion, whether in jest or seriousness. It was hard to picture. He followed her, content to be quiet now that she had composed herself, and held the lantern when she crouched to get her ear close to another of the odd little doors that led to the rest of the castle.
He was definitely going to remember about these tunnels. Escaping Emayn would be so much easier now.
Taireasa pressed on a clever iron latch hidden in a seam and the door cracked open in total silence. She peered out, ducked quickly back in, and then peeped out again after a long moment. She tugged the handle of the lantern out of his fingers and blew it out, then set it far to the side of the door.
"Come on," she whispered, and leapt out like a cat, letting in a flicker of daylight as the tapestry covering the door flapped around her. Devin threw himself after her, then quickly leaned out of the way as she pushed past him to pull the door shut with a grunt of effort. For a moment they stood together under the tapestry, stained by the sunlight shining through its colors, dust hovering thickly between them, both of them flush with success and the hilarity of a trick accomplished well and without consequence. Devin felt a fleeting envy for Kyali, who had done this so many more times, and who probably knew so many more secrets. He'd had their cousins, childhood friends and rivals and co-conspirators in a thousand mad plots, but what his little sister had with Taireasa was something else altogether, precious and uncompromising.
No wonder Taireasa was so wounded by Kyali's leaving.
He was getting maudlin. He flapped the tapestry up and ducked out from under it, then immediately started brushing himself off, because with the daylight shining on his clothes, he could see that he looked like a sculpture of himself, made of dust and old mortar.
Taireasa strode to the end of their little hall and looked around the corner. "Let's go, then," she sighed, tucking her hand in his elbow as he joined her. "We ought to cross the kitchens, but there'll be serving staff everywhere. Much as I'd rather not, we'll have to cross the main corridor."
"Just walk like you belong," Devin suggested. This should be interesting. Her eyes were still puffy, and he looked like he'd rolled in some strange pale dirt. He hoped Brisham heard about them walking the halls this way: that would give the old bastard something to worry over.
"I always do," Taireasa said, her voice cool and amused, her court smile fixed firmly in place as they entered the main corridor and met the first of many shocked stares. "I always do."
CHAPTER 4
Mornings were the worst.
Kyali had never thought of herself as a slugabed—her father had the household up as soon as the sun rose, a habit that had taken root in her, if not in Devin—but the Clans were up well before dawn even during the long bright days of summer. She rolled off her mat with a sigh, having grown accustomed to this over the last year, if not accepting of it, and fumbled in the dark for a comb. Her hair seemed to have wrapped itself about her face in the night. Her arms were stiff and sore—a state they had been in since the first day she'd arrived in the mountains to learn the Fraonir way of the sword—but they weren't as bad as they had been a week ago. She stretched them carefully. Around her, at a small distance, she could hear Clansfolk rising: the soft murmur of greetings, a rattle of metal
, the crackle of a fire being brought back to life.
An impatient scratch at the canvas wall of her tent.
Arlen had beaten her again; he did every morning. One day, she promised herself, she was going to wake earlier than her teacher, and perhaps on that day she might even get through her lessons without doing something that made her look like an idiot.
"I'm awake," she called, pulling on her boots, trying to make that statement true.
"Not so long as you're in there and I'm out here, you're not," Arlen said dourly, sounding as though he were standing right over her. Kyali finished securing lacings, pulled her hair hurriedly into a braid, straightened her trousers out, and pushed the flap of the tent back, trying not to scowl. It was hard not to believe, like some superstitious villager, that her sword teacher could see in the dark… among other things. Arlen always seemed to suspect what was in her head, no matter what she put on her face.
Which was still better than Saraid, her teacher in the Gift, who actually did know what was in her head.
It had been a long year.
"Yes, I can be awake even when you can't see me," she retorted, unable to keep the edge from her voice. There was a grunt from Arlen that might have been laughter. He was a tall, broad shadow in the faint pink light of a false dawn, arms folded, the long line of a sword arching over one shoulder. Kyali smothered a yawn and bowed, one hand in a fist over her heart, the other on the hilt of her sword, which was belted at her side.
"Landanar," she murmured, the title of respect for a Fraonir master of the sword.
"Student," her teacher replied. "Since you're so awake, girl, you can start with the Forms, I'm sure. All of the Forms."
Oh gods. She felt her shoulders trying to slump, and stopped that.
She followed him past the main common hearth of the Darachim Clan, where Mathin and Marya were putting the great kettle on for porridge, to the practice clearing, which was empty and calm and filled with that soft pink light. She set her feet carefully, drew the sword, and breathed in the pattern he had shown her. Arlen came to face her at a careful distance and unsheathed his own blade.