by Amy Bai
Devin sagged in his chair. "Thank the gods," he murmured. And then straightened. "Wait. How did we discover this?"
Annan's look was wary. "Her Majesty… asked them."
Asked them? What was that supposed to mean, that Taireasa had brought them in for tea and a polite discussion of…
Oh. Oh, dear gods.
He must have blanched. Kinsey stood abruptly, poured tea into another mug, and set it before him with a firm look. "Drink," he said.
"Are they all right? Is she?"
Taireasa?
No answer but a sense of great weariness and sadness—and then, as she became aware of him, of walls of warm stone rising between them, shielding her mind from his. It didn't feel like a rejection, more like the self-protective effort of an exhausted heart.
"Her Majesty complained of headache, but is otherwise well," Annan was saying. "Your cousins are sleeping, I believe. They came through it with no injury."
Devin was only half-listening now, probing the shuttered sense of Taireasa, the guard she held against not just him, but everything. It was a trick he hadn't learned yet. It felt strangely familiar, and then he understood why.
Walls of warm stone.
Walls of dark ice.
Hearts bound to his own behind each of them.
He might have fallen out of the chair. The world seemed to have moved under him, showing him something from a new angle, undoing and remaking itself around his bewildered gaze.
Was it Kyali he was dreaming of? Was that what she had become, that cold darkness shut in on itself? Oh gods, what had done that to her?
That wasn't his sister. That couldn't be his sister. She could indeed be cold, practical in a way that let her move men around like chess pieces, let her risk and lose their lives for a greater goal and still find a way to sleep afterwards. She had a temper that, when loosed, sent seasoned soldiers running for cover, and her will was hard enough to break stone—but past that was a heart irrevocably loyal, vast and stubborn and silently, boundlessly generous. That was the sister he knew, who trusted seldom but without reservation, who never sang but knew the words to every song he'd written, who preferred little notice of her cleverness and none at all of her compassion. Who would give her life without a second's hesitation for him or for Taireasa.
That sister would never desert her best friend, her brother, her House. That sister would have torn herself apart before letting that happen. And yet she had. And did. Assuming the rest was still true, which he had to believe—that Kyali was somewhere under that immense and awful cold—what would make her choose such a thing?
Taireasa, who never slept. Who curled around a guilt so great it was a wound.
Kyali, with shadows just as heavy under her eyes, and fury in them. Who was, under all that, sad.
Warm stone, dark ice.
"Annan," Devin said faintly. He became aware that both Annan and Kinsey were watching him with more than a little concern. He didn't know how long he'd sat there thinking. He took a sip of the tea, mostly to take that look of growing alarm out of Kinsey's eyes, and found it was already cooling.
"Lord Corwynall?"
"Gods—don't call me that. I hate that. And it's not even true: I can't be Head of House. I'm a Bard. We'll just have to find someone else once we've taken the kingdom back." Never mind that he was wearing his father's ring, or that he was the only Corwynall now wearing a dragon locket.
Two lockets, actually, because he hadn't been able to make himself let go of Kyali's.
"You must have asked anyone who would talk about that night what happened in Faestan castle during the Western uprising," Devin said, and received a cautious, considering nod.
Of course Annan had. He was a spy, an information collector, and since Kinsey had chosen to ally himself with Taireasa, he had a new enemy. He would want to know everything about that enemy.
"What happened?" he asked.
Kinsey shifted in his chair, frowning. "Devin—what are you chasing?
"I don't know yet. Humor me."
"It's a piecemeal story, my lord," Annan said, settling himself gingerly in a chair, evidently wary of the damage his armor might do to the wood. "I've reports from servants, soldiers, throne room guards, cooks, and townsfolk. The Western force that accompanied the barons into Faestan was camped outside the town walls: late that night, someone let them in the town gate and then into the castle. It was not, by all accounts, one of the barons themselves."
"Yes," Devin said, waving impatiently. That much was obvious. "And?"
Annan shrugged, eyes lighting with the challenge. "And I'd bet my blade the person or persons who let the Western force in is the same one passing messages to Tuan now."
Kinsey's head snapped around. "Ah," he said, an admiring sound. "Now that's a thought. And it would rule out the Corwynall cousins, except that Taire—that Her Majesty has already done so. Anyone not in the castle at the time would be cleared of suspicion."
"Was it the same person?" Devin said, momentarily distracted from his aim. "Who let them into the town, and into the castle. The same, or more than one?"
Annan's face showed a flash of surprise, then intense thought. "Good question," he said.
A disturbing question, actually.
"What about Taireasa? What do they say of her? Where she was, how she escaped?"
She'd hidden, he knew that. Hidden in the same passages she had once pulled him into to save him from his old magic tutor's wrath; hidden and waited until a large enough force had gathered, then taken the stables and the northern gate and fled to the mountains. But she never spoke of it. Wouldn't speak of it, and since she'd lost both her parents that night, along with her throne, Devin had never wanted to press her. He knew too well how grief could cut.
Annan worried his lip, slid Kinsey's abandoned mug of tea over and sipped it, then made a face, presumably at the temperature. "Her Majesty was in her rooms at the moment the attack began. She escaped through some servants' passage in the walls, I am told, and remained hidden under the fortress for three days, gathering refugees and supplies before leaving for the Fraonir lands."
"Where was my sister?" Devin asked, and Annan met his eyes uneasily.
"My lord…"
"She killed the Western barons, Captain. You've no need to spare my feelings. I've heard enough from servants to know what my sister did, and that it was what allowed them to escape. But where was she before that?"
"In Her Majesty's rooms. They had dinner brought there, anyway."
Annan had pieced the night together just as thoroughly as Devin had hoped. "But she was not with Taireasa in the chambers under the castle," he said.
"No, lord. She appeared just before they left for the mountains."
"Then she didn't take the servants' passageway with Taireasa."
It came clear, then: so brutally, appallingly clear he could see it happening.
Two girls in a royal bedroom, listening to fighting outside the door. One the heir to the throne, one just returned from two years of sword study. Both loyal to the last breath to one another. Kyali had grown up under a general's tutelage. Kyali knew the Western barons would never stop looking for Taireasa if they met the mystery of a locked and empty room. They would have found the hidden doorway soon enough. Kyali had renounced the throne just that day, to keep Taireasa safe from the West's machinations.
Kyali wouldn't have hesitated.
"She stayed," Devin murmured, horror making his skin prickle. "She stayed behind."
Dread was weighing his bones down into the chair, blooming into a sick knot in his stomach. Taireasa's Gift, which had woken that night. Her terrible, silent guilt. And Kyali, who was twisted around herself, burning up with anger, pulling away, always away from the closeness he and Taireasa shared, the space in their hearts where there could be no secrets. Who had learned that she could heal from wounds that might otherwise be mortal.
Oh yes, the edges of this secret were sharp. They were going to carve him in two.
>
Devin drew a burning breath as Kinsey's hand closed over his. He realized only then that he was weeping. Kinsey's eyes held dawning comprehension, and more compassion than he could stand to see right now. Annan sat back, gone wooden and unreadable, but his hand on the stolen mug of tea had closed into a hard fist.
Devin shut his eyes, retrieved his hand, wiped at his cheeks. Stood, needing to lean on the table to find his feet. The whole world was changing into something else around him. The sick dread in his belly had a direction.
Oh, Kyali, gods.
"I think I need some air," he said, which wasn't much of an excuse, but he was barely able to think, let alone speak.
He didn't make it more than a few steps before a terrible pressure filled his head. Pain and fear spilled through him, pain and fear and a sense of betrayal. HELP, he heard—and then she was gone, gone as completely as though she had never been there at all.
"Taireasa," he gasped, and flung himself at the library doors, fear greater than he had ever known roaring over him. Annan and Kinsey were right behind him.
* * *
There were too many damned doors into the castle.
Kyali had set guards on them all, had men walking the halls in pairs, but the sense that it wasn't enough, that she was missing something that would cost her everything, followed her everywhere. It hovered over her meetings with her officers, it soured her tea, it swallowed her thoughts and stole the little sleep she got, until she was wandering the halls in a haze of exhaustion and worry.
They still hadn't found the traitor, and Taireasa had paid such a terrible price.
Bryce and Bran were asleep now. She had made herself meet with them after—after. Had told them of her mad idea to send three hundred men down the Maurynim river on rafts, because at least there were two men, now, that she knew beyond a doubt she could trust.
Had asked, nearly choking on her own hypocrisy, if they'd be willing to lead such a force.
It was days away, maybe weeks. Which was good, because her cousins were not at all recovered from the ordeal she and Taireasa had put them through.
They had accepted—sounding, gods help her, grateful for the chance.
Kyali shoved her way through the hidden door in her office and leaned on the wall, breathing, only breathing. The sandwich she'd eaten gods only knew when was trying to come back up. Her heart was fluttering in her chest. Ice was no longer a wall stretching up to the skies, it was slick and treacherous under her feet. She didn't know anymore what to do, how to keep moving forward, how to save Taireasa, how to avoid Devin, how to go on living the way she had. How to stop sensing them both just outside that thin, failing barrier.
She had laid her hands on her brother's bleeding chest and opened the door between them herself. It wouldn't shut again now.
The sandwich did come up. She staggered away from the mess, wiping her lips, breathing in pattern, but breathing didn't help. Nothing helped. Inside her it was all rage and burning, the terror and fury of being helpless, the knowledge of finding and then sweeping past her own limits. Watching Bran and Bryce learn their own the same way, through pain, had been almost more than she could bear. Watching Taireasa pull herself apart to achieve it, and then to fix it, had been even worse. And it hadn't accomplished a single thing. They still didn't know who among them was Tuan's man.
Someone could be with Taireasa now.
Her feet were taking her back into the passages and toward the royal apartments before she could process that thought fully. Kyali stopped, turned, then turned again, unable to decide. As she was hovering there like an idiot, unable to muster the wit for even so simple a decision as which way to go, a faint whisper of sound told her she wasn't alone in here anymore. She pressed herself against the wall instinctively, though the rational part of her said it had to be a Cassdall officer. Aside from her, they were still the only ones who knew about these passageways.
The footsteps were soft, careful. They shouldn't be.
They were coming her way.
She drew her daggers, because the sword was too big to be useful in here, and waited. It took forever: whoever it was, he wasn't a fool. Kyali wished she could shut her eyes. The gleam would give her away if the man had a light.
A figure materialized out of the deep shadow where the passage branched off toward the kitchens, moving slowly, looking around every few steps. There was something familiar about the shape of him, which wasn't what one would expect of a soldier: tall and broad but rounded, softened, not a man who spent much time using his muscles. Kyali folded her daggers up into her sleeves and crouched, feeling something prickle at the edges of her awareness.
The man drew closer, became the faintly outlined figure and dimly lit features of Earl Donal.
Kyali stood.
He started, one hand flying up to his broad chest, and breathed a curse. "Who… ah! Lady Captain," he said, his voice horrifyingly loud in the tunnel, like he was hoping to bellow up an armed guard to get him out of this. "Just the ma—ah, woma… just the officer I was planning to find."
"Keep your voice down, sir. What are you doing?"
An expansive wave. He had something in his hand: paper, by the sound of it. "I found a door, Lady Captain, a door hidden under a wretched old wallhanging by the dining hall. It's remarkable! It led me here. I deemed it best if I—"
"Shhhh."
"Sorry," he said, and went on in a hoarse whisper that would wake the dead. "I was saying, I took it upon myself to discover where the door led. But this place is vast. I thought perhaps I'd better warn you about it." He stopped, gaze on her. "I see you already have some awareness of this. You are an attentive officer, Lady Captain."
She still had her daggers in her grip, but they stayed in her sleeves. Gods knew she'd been waiting for just this to happen, though almost anyone else would have been better: the man was as subtle as a wild boar.
"What's in your hand, Earl Donal?" Kyali said—or started to say. He was on her in a second, much faster than she'd ever guessed he could move, shoving her back into the cold, dirty wall, one hand coming up, and what was in it now was definitely not paper.
The panic was instant, overwhelming. It brought something else with it, something that wasn't her, was firelit and frightened, was startled and so tired she knew it had to be Taireasa. The double vision was badly disorienting. Kyali yelled into the arm Donal shoved up against her face, brought her knee up, unfolded the daggers from her sleeves. One scraped over his ribs and he shouted; the other clattered to the floor when he struck her arm so hard it went instantly numb.
Kyali ducked without thinking about it, felt his blade pass just over her head. Taireasa was in danger, Taireasa was furious and terrified, was seeing something, someone, someone wrong and twisted and sorry and she couldn't tell who—
A blow struck her face, knocking her off her feet. Donal threw himself on top of her, hand scrabbling after the dagger in hers, his considerable weight knocking the breath out of her.
The panic swallowed her whole, left no room for anything else. She was back in Taireasa's bedroom and the pain was huge and awful but not as bad as the shame of being helpless, the shaking rage, the sick comprehension that she was going to die and that it was going to take a very long time. She screamed and heard it echo, which wasn't right.
She was in the tunnels. On the mountain. Not in Faestan.
This time she had a blade, this time she wasn't tied. This time there was only one of them.
She arched up and slammed her head into his chin, wrenched the dagger free and drove it deep. Then again, and again. Again. He stopped moving after the third blow, but she kept going. She couldn't stop until she was sure, very sure, and dead men weren't dead till they stopped bleeding.
Oh gods, Father!
HELP, Kyali heard, right in her head, blowing down all the walls, opening all the doors.
She left Earl Donal dying or dead, drew her sword, and ran as fast as she had ever run in her life.
CHAPTER
23
The wine tasted heavy and bitter, like it had gone bad. Taireasa grimaced and, looking around to make sure no servant was nearby to see, spat it back into her glass. It had made her tongue strangely numb. She stared at it for a moment, frozen, then snatched up her tea mug. The water was scalding, but she rinsed and spat into the fire four times anyway, until the numbness went away.
Then she sat, shaking like a leaf in a storm, and tried to decide if lack of sleep was a reasonable explanation for such paranoia, or if she was going mad.
It had been a very hard day.
"My lady?" Camwyn, her day maid, said, peering into the sitting room with a look like she expected to get a shoe or a glass of wine in the face. "Is the wine not to your taste?"
For no reason at all that made her laugh, and then she couldn't get it stopped. Taireasa put her hands over her face, giggling madly, a little frightened by the shrill sound of it. When she finally got herself under control and wiped her eyes, Camwyn seemed horrified. Behind her stood Maldyn, looking grave and worried, and almost as tired as she felt.
"Her Majesty should have supper now," he said calmly, and Camwyn left with plain relief to go order a plate from the kitchens. "You should at least try to eat, my lady," he added, seeing Taireasa's face.
"I suppose," she mumbled, and tried to breathe herself back to some kind of equilibrium. Her chancellor sat in the other fireside chair, glancing once at the abandoned glass of wine, steepling his fingers and frowning at the flames. Taireasa leaned back, letting him think. He'd get to what he wished to say in his own time. Maldyn was the most unhurried man she'd ever known.
Finally he shifted in the chair. "The Maurynim plan," he said, sounding hesitant, perhaps a little offended. It had barely had time to become a plan: Kyali had mentioned it only yesterday, the notion of rafts and soldiers and a far swifter, quieter route to the lowlands. A small force, not meant to overwhelm an enemy, only to help repel an attack.
"Yes," Taireasa said.
"I have doubts, Majesty. It is rash. But… I know very little. Could you explain?"
He glanced at the wine again.