by E. J. Beaton
The front row of the platform bent down into a bow; behind them, the next row followed, and the next; an old man at the back stooped last, his withered frame just managing to bend. Lysande looked at them all, taking in the tops of their heads. She bowed again. The second time, she was conscious of the effect of her bow, and Perfault’s words swam in her head. Confidence before the nobility. Humility before the people.
The word Prior filled her ears, and she was not sure if it was the sharp movement or the sound of her name that caused the dizziness when she straightened up.
Of all people, she could act. There had to be more that she could offer; more than bows and smiles and waves. A wave had never bought a loaf. Bowing did not pay for grain or offer an uncracked pot. It did not protect you against Questers riding through the desert.
The chanting, the cheering, and the churning of the river: it all merged into one rhythm, following her as they sailed on. Yet it was the boy’s face that stayed in her mind: the hollow cheeks, the neck like a notched rope, and the eyes, shining so brightly in that skull. Those eyes never left her, even after the ship had rounded the bend.
* * *
• • •
The snarls of grass and the parched soil that had surrounded them all morning ceded, and the brown of the riverbank gave way to gold—a vista of undulating sand, stretching for miles. Lyria’s territory, Lysande noticed, contained only a few trees that pushed up from the desert like forks, their branches bristling with spines, and tiny pools in the sand crawling with mosquitoes. Insects slipped beneath their collars and sleeves on deck. A flying beetle stung Litany on the nose, and Lysande tried to slap mosquitoes away, but by the second day, a trail of little dark blots decorated her ankles, wrists, and the crooks of her elbows. She did not envy the archers standing at the rail.
Below the deck, the atmosphere felt little better, thanks to a current that surged and roared; guards and nobles alike retched into pails, and Lysande decided to spend most of the journey above. They were lurching through one of the coils of the Grandfleuve when the prow of their vessel bumped Cassia and Dante’s craft, and a crowd of Valderrans turned.
“Ahoy there!” Jale shouted, waving.
Dante was among the group staring back at them. He waved, but only for a moment. The Valderrans were shirtless in the heat, and a few of the noblewomen around Lysande giggled and pointed, yet Dante locked eyes with Jale, unheeding. His face creased deeply.
“Have Prince Chamboise and the First Sword fallen out?” Lysande said, turning to Derset. Nothing could stop the surge of warm curiosity through her.
“I do not like to give tongue to rumors, my lady.”
“Yet I would know them, if they exist.”
“Well, it is only speculation.” Derset ran a hand through his hair. “But since Prince Chamboise agreed to marry Mariana Ferago, there have been whispers that Dante Dalgëreth objected to the match—that he spoke passionately against it behind doors. It is only gossip, as I say. Whispers that should be taken with a spoonful of salt.”
As Dante left the prow, Lysande realized where she had seen him glare like that: at the dinner table in the Room of Accord, when Gabrella Merez had questioned him about his lack of spousal prospects.
“Do you think that Dante might be in love with Princess Ferago, my lord?”
“I could not say.”
“You cannot venture an opinion on love?”
Derset smiled wryly. “I know plenty of devotion. In that area, I might venture, if a goddess should approve of my ministrations.”
Lysande was not blushing. She was just a little heated by the Lyrian sun, she told herself, turning her face away from Derset. She refocused her attention on Dante and Jale.
There was a more likely explanation, of course. But Sarelin would have called it a poison brew—an idea so stupid that it was akin to drinking your own poison by accident. A First Sword of the north might marry a woman or a man, a suitor with gray hair or honey-brown curls, a noble or a new sword-champion . . . but the one person they might not marry was a southerner. Dante would know that as well as anyone. Lysande guessed that if he did not, the scowls of his guards would remind him.
She watched the land. A plume of smoke rose from a fire, on which a few bone people were roasting something. She checked the sand for any sign of movement, wondering all the while about the look between Dante and Jale, and the way Dante had leaned across to his friend and begun speaking at the banquet in Axium, as if there were no one else in the Great Hall. Had Jale’s face not lit up, too, upon seeing the First Sword? They had drawn close to each other naturally, as if they did not need permission to inhabit each other’s space.
Her mind had run ahead to several possibilities, since she had watched Dante holding the bejeweled sword in the maze-garden, rehearsing his speech. If she really had borne witness to the makings of a proposal, then perhaps some prelude had taken place . . . a declaration of amorous sentiments, or perhaps even a dialogue. There was a language of touching and caressing, of advancing and seizing. Something in the way Dante looked at Jale told her that he could speak that particular language very well.
They would not take such a risk, surely, surrounded by soldiers who sang “The Land of Gold and Blue.” They must guess, as she did, that the queensflower had been left on the Valderran table in Axium for a purpose, and that there was no way better to rekindle an old north-and-south enmity than by blending it with magic.
The ship cut smoothly through the clear water. By the third day, Derset had removed his jacket and boots, and Litany had stripped down to her drawers, but as their leader, it seemed inappropriate for Lysande to remove her doublet. For the first time, she gazed at the flimsy skirts and gauzy overlays of the Lyrian nobles with envy. She joined Derset, who was reading a book of poems at the rail, frowning as he perused one particular ode, and though Lysande could not see the whole text without making her curiosity obvious, she managed to glimpse the first line: If ever I should choose to hunt.
She had an odd feeling that she had read the full poem, but she could not recall it, and the gap in her library of memorized pages bothered her.
On her other side, Chidney and Litany discussed the speed of sail and the methods of navigation, Chidney guiding Litany’s hand in the direction of the topsails and somehow forgetting to let go of her fingers. Lysande could not help smiling as she watched them; it was like watching a bear paw gently at a kitten. While the pair debated the chance of wind, her thoughts drifted to Mea Tacitus as a young girl, cleaning Sarelin’s chambers and darning her clothes.
A pain stung her throat, and she clutched the rail.
“If you are seasick, my lady, I can fetch you a pail.”
“Thank you, my lord. But it is only a slight—”
The agony that ripped through her struck lower this time: a stabbing in her chest, entering her lungs. She steadied herself with one hand.
“My lady, you are unwell.” Derset placed his hand gently on her arm.
“So it appears.” The deck began to wobble. “But I think I would rather do my retching in private. You stay here, my lord. Litany, with me.”
In her room, she unlocked the chest where she had stowed the remedy Luca had left outside her door, and drew out the little glass tube. The contents swirled about in the vial, glistening the color of ripe tangerines. She toyed with the stopper.
I will be fine, she told herself. In an hour’s time, the effects of all that scale will probably disappear.
Yet she uncorked the vial and handed it to Litany. The attendant drank a little of the potion and waited a half-minute to gauge the taste before nodding and handing it back. Taking a sip, Lysande closed her eyes.
As the first drop of liquid slid down her throat, the pain dissolved, melting away and leaving a viscous coating in its wake. One mouthful cleared her chest entirely.
“Sun and stars,” she breathed.<
br />
There was enough in the vial for one more swallow. The glass clinked against the wood as she locked it back in the chest. She inhaled, feeling the air rush in.
The heat had become oppressive in the windowless room, and in her haste to return to the deck, she almost ran into Lord Malsante. “Prince Fontaine requests your company, Councillor,” he said.
She found Luca by the prow, his hands folded behind his back, gazing out at the Grandfleuve. A table and chairs were set up next to him and a tactos-board laid out.
“I don’t know about you, Prior, but I find this heat brings on boredom.”
“This is your request?” She eyed the board. “A game of tactos?”
“You might indulge me for a quick bout. I’ve beaten envoys, priests, and nobles, but I am yet to defeat a scholar.”
He turned, the sun catching his dark hair from behind, and the look in his eyes made her silence a sharp response. Something eddied in those eyes, a dark ripple of intent. Tiberus reclined on the chair closest to her, so she took the other, and Luca scooped up his cobra and sat down. After they had both studied the board, he slid one of his guards forward two squares.
Lysande made an advance of her own. They watched each other over the board. Move by move, they began the dance of Elira’s oldest game, sliding the pieces or moving them in jumps . . . guard, noble, city-ruler, queen, king, or chimera: each attacked in a different way. Lysande had always been able to anticipate how her opponent would play, from calculation, and from years of practice in the staff kitchen.
Luca’s moves proved challenging. Bluffing, then striking, and sometimes capturing three pieces in one go, he played without letting his emotions show, working his guards and city-rulers and only moving his queen and king when he needed to take an important piece. His fingers moved silently across the squares. She yielded several of her guards early in the game, taking the opportunity to note his responses. When her first princess toppled over, he folded his arms. “It won’t work on me, you know,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m not Sarelin Brey, Prior. I know when someone is letting me win.”
Lysande stroked a fallen guard on its head, considering the formations on the board. “No need for my submission, then.”
“You mean to survey my strategy and use it against me. I am quite aware.”
It was as if he knew that she had a series of diagrams of tactos moves in her compilation of political notes; as if, somehow, it was discernible in her face.
“Perhaps I will win, and you will submit,” she said.
His little half-smile curled the corners of his mouth.
She shrugged and picked up her queen. Her hand skipped over the board, taking five of his pieces, mercilessly exposing the flaws in his formation and knocking down his monarchs. She rested her own queen in the back corner, surrounded by her guards. Luca’s silence lasted for longer than she had anticipated; he gazed down at the ruins of his army with one hand propped against his chin. Lysande let her eyes wander over his fingers.
“You’re contemplating whether to yield now or to finish the game and be officially decimated,” she said.
“Aren’t you forgetting something, Prior?” He picked up his chimera. “A whole army of guards . . . a queen and a king . . . they are nothing to the most powerful piece on the board.”
After a fleeting pause, he moved quickly, sliding the chimera out in a diagonal line: not to attack her own as was customary, but to place it equidistant from her queen and king. The act threatened both monarchs at once. It was so audacious that it stole her breath, and for the first time, she realized, someone had made a move in tactos that she had not foreseen.
“You were pretending all along,” she said.
He gestured at the board, where only six pieces remained: three black and three white. “Shall we begin the game, now?”
She noted that his collar had slipped as he leaned over. Without the ruby or the cloak, more of his throat was exposed than before. She could not say how or why she did it, but her hand reached toward him and wrapped around one side of his neck.
The flesh felt tender, as if she could reach through it and touch the very pulse.
The deck around them had gone unusually quiet, and a glance showed her a ring of guards and attendants watching, all of whom found things to do immediately upon catching her eye. Excellent, Lysande thought. We are the main entertainment for the voyage. Derset was watching her too; he caught her eye and looked away at once. She turned back to meet Luca’s gaze. He was sitting still. He had not removed her hand from his neck, but his eyes flickered over her face. Slowly, Lysande slid her fingers across the soft skin of his throat.
Some games you played by moving stone pieces. You calculated the moves, strategizing carefully. Other games, you played without knowing why, steered by a force beyond your control.
Pressing the skin was an art: a sculptor’s touch was needed, careful but firm. It might have been her imagination, but she thought his pupils had widened. He looked away quickly, and she took her time before pulling her hand back, removing her fingers one by one. A whole variety of parts of her body had awakened. She was not about to let it show.
She examined the board. There were only a set number of strategies that could be used at this point, and it all depended on which one Luca chose. She pretended to consider her queen’s position and stole a glance at him. His eyes were definitely brighter now.
Reaching out, she seized his wrist and held it for a few seconds, this time making certain of the flare of interest across his face before she let go.
“You have a crushing grip, Prior.”
“I do apologize. It was a moment’s whim.”
“I never said I disliked it.”
Lysande could feel a current eddying inside her.
“I’ve never had a colleague,” Luca remarked, sliding his chimera to the left. “I suppose you’ve heard this from Dalgëreth—he always tries to attack my image with the subtlety of a man wielding a blunt axe—but I prefer to work alone. It’s not that I shun company. It’s just that I like to work among equals.”
“That excludes everyone else, I presume.”
“Almost everyone.”
“Your modesty is intensely charming.”
“You should be pleased, Prior.” He blocked her king and captured her last guard in a single move. “There aren’t many people I place in the category of similar wit.”
Had he been on the verge of saying something more? Lysande was determined not to speak of touching his throat a few moments ago; it felt like a challenge not to mention it again. He had veiled that bright look, and she managed to match his insouciance. As she was contemplating her next move, a man in black armor approached, drawing near Luca. “Your Highness, Lady Fabbriani thought she saw fire.”
“Where?”
“Over to the east, Your Highness.”
Luca followed the man’s finger to look, and surprise spread across his face. “Fire.”
Lysande turned to see a ball of flame speeding through the air toward her.
Everything seemed to happen at once—the deck became a blur—guards running at her; several Rhimese soldiers shielding Luca; Litany speeding at her, hands outstretched, so fast, impossibly fast; but Derset arriving first, from her left: Derset knocking her to the ground. His knee wedged between her thighs, pinning her against the deck. Flames rained down around them. A few smaller fireballs struck the deck, and guards rushed to stamp the blazes out, leaving black and twisted wood. Women and men shouted furiously to each other, waving away smoke. Lysande felt Derset’s hands gripping her shoulders and tightened her grip on the solid warmth of his torso, pulling them closer together, feeling the thumping of his heartbeat.
Warm. The world was warm, and soft, and quiet. There was only the gentle heat of Derset’s body, and only that sound. Thum
p. Thump. She could feel it through his skin, a fragile, flightless thing: a prayer.
Then the incantation of his heartbeat dissolved. She saw Raden rushing through to the side of the ship, pushing Lyrians out of his way. “Elementals!” he cried. “Over there!”
As the archers opened fire into the desert, she glimpsed several people sprinting behind a dune. The deck was still smoking. She and Derset leaped to their feet and looked away from each other quickly. He glanced back just as she did. She moved a slight distance away from him, and then they were checking each other over for wounds before rushing to the rail, Lysande feeling a fogginess in her mind. The balls of fire had stopped coming, but Cassia and Dante’s ship was aflame, an embroidered leopard smoldering on one sail. Something quivered behind her, a movement of rope, a shifting of shadows: Litany dropped from the rigging to land on the deck.
“Look, Your Highness!” Freste cried, pointing to the desert.
The sand sped in a ridge along the top of one dune. To Lysande, it looked as if the desert itself was moving—chasing their attackers—but as she watched, she spotted four people running behind the bandits, their ragged cloaks flying in the wind. She picked out a sheaf of white hair streaming in the sun.
The sand whirled and reshaped itself into the form of horses. Four golden beasts chased the attackers. “Downstream, and spread some sail before they strike again!” a sailor in the rigging called.
Three held his hand up, angling his wind. Several of the bandits stumbled in the force of his gust. A ball of water arced over the top of the speeding sand-horses, sent by a woman who looked like Six, and struck one of the bandits on the neck. Lysande leaned on the rail, staring. She watched the stricken woman fall to her knees, screaming a cry that was whipped away by the wind. It happened so fast that she almost felt sympathy—especially since the woman wore clothes that were ripped and patched, and her face was haggard, like the bone people.
A little respite does not sate an appetite for liberty, but increases it. For the first time, she understood what Three was sacrificing, to work against the White Queen; it was all too easy to imagine the Shadows siding with these rebels, otherwise, and she wondered to what degree commitment could be measured: weighed and sifted, like flour.