The Councillor

by E. J. Beaton

  Derset’s lip was curling—the first sign of anger since he had burned his robe—and she could see herself scorched like that cloth if Sarelin’s name passed through her lips again. It was never really grief, she thought. Not really. Those times he had turned his countenance away from her, he had been hiding this—the kind of rage that had boiled too long—yet she had seen what she herself felt. Had she not written her own pain onto his face?

  “It must have taken a lot of skill, to deceive everyone after you joined the White Queen. I have to admire you, despite everything.” She dropped her voice to a murmur. “Convincing me for so long. Most people would take years to learn that kind of skill.”

  “Oh, it was simple.” He smiled. “I knew the two words most powerful to an orphan.”

  “Which are?”

  “‘My lady.’”

  Now she wanted to scream at herself for being so stupid, yet her palm itched again, reminding her what she was aiming at. Keep talking, like Titarch.

  “The poem you were reading—Inara’s sonnet. Wanting to be hunted. Wanting to be pierced by love. Was that in memory of Sarelin, too?”

  “I bribed a page-boy to tell me about your chamber in the staff tower, before we met. What you kept there. What you cherished most. He sounded impressed by the sight of your translations; according to the little sneak, you had eight volumes of Inara.”

  Lysande bit down on an angry retort. “When you responded to my touch,” she said, “how much of it was real?”

  “How much of anything is real? When we feign at playing a personage from dawn till dusk, how much of the actor becomes the role?”

  She shook her head. “I have been a fool.”

  “Or have I been?” He was not smiling any more. “It began with feigning. That much, I admit.”

  She drew a shaky breath. “Let us not wander from the point. That point is your decision—which may yet be changed. Look beyond your fury. You know it was ignorance that truly kept the rulers of this realm from reaching out to elementals, Henrey.”

  “Of course, you would defend the crown. You were raised by a tyrant. Once she walked in starlight for me, too, every step gilded, as firm as the goddess of valor.” He looked away, a vein in his forehead pushing outward, as if it might break free of the skin and form an angry spur. “Believe me, I understand why you feel as you do, making excuses for her—I’m sure you’ve spent your life being told the Iron Queen was good and the White Queen bad, and it’s made the brute into an idol for you. But there can be no defense of her kind.”

  The itch in her palm was growing by the second. She would have given a hundred cadres to rake her nails across and claw at the flesh.

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “I loved Sarelin. She was the only person who ever loved me. In a way, she taught me how to love. But I know some of her deeds were unjust. She shouldn’t have let the executions go on. We should have welcomed the hidden people among us and written their freedoms out in ink, not flecked their bodies with the sacred paint of their own blood.”

  It hurt to say the words. If Sarelin was an idol, the statue had been smashed ever since she understood how Charice could flee from a mob, how a young boy in the desert could wear the face of a skeleton, and how she herself could feel like one of the enemy.

  “You must see, though, Henrey,” she said, “crushing women and men while we raise elementals is not the answer. Diversity is our strength. Is that not our motto?” She held her expression firmly in place. “And if you think the people need another silverblood enshrining a hierarchy, no matter whether she calls herself Brey or Tacitus . . . then you fail to understand the populace at all.”

  The fund for the poor, the survey of the realm, the law about vigilantes. They were not final measures but the beginning of a process.

  This is where it all pivots.

  He stared at her, and she caught a glimpse of the Derset she had known, though it was trapped under something else. He rose from his chair and walked over to her.

  “I’ll give you one minute to choose,” he said, laying a hand on her shoulder. “You gave me your time, after all.” The words landed heavily upon her.

  The itch in her palm spread and burned with a fury that surprised her, and she grabbed hold of her hand, realizing, too late, that she had not hidden her concern from his view.

  “It’s not possible,” Derset said, his eyes flicking to her palm. “It should take three weeks . . .”

  Lysande winced again. Unlike the pains before her transformation, the burning did not seem to be disappearing. Three weeks. It had only been nine days since her maturation, as Luca had reminded her. Every soldier in the room was staring at her.

  The sound of footsteps echoed outside. A moment later, a Periclean woman burst through the door, panting. Lysande impelled her knees not to quake.

  “My lord, Raquefort said to send word. We’re losing ground.”

  “What?” Derset stared.

  “The Rhimese. They came out of the gardens. It was like a flood of black. At least three hundred, my lord. And the Axium Guards have been carving up our force—their second group poured out of the palm garden.” Lysande realized, with a jolt, that this news meant hope.

  “Goddesses below.” Derset added a curse Lysande had not imagined he was capable of voicing, and squeezed the dove. “I thought we had the Rhimese and Axiumites trapped.”

  “They must have moved before the ball. There are too many of them. After Captain Hartleigh fell, that other Axium captain led the whole force forward, calling out Hartleigh’s name as a battle cry.” The woman directed her gaze down. “There are elementals in their army, too. Two of them. Every time we seem to gain some ground, they shoot fire and air at the chimera.”

  Showing her pleasure did not seem like the wisest course. So Luca must have lied to her about the number of his guards. Most inconveniently, it seemed, she could not be angry at him now.

  And Chidney, rallying the guards in Raden’s name. Her heart did not dare to knock against her ribs. She hoped that Litany was watching out for the captain as they fought, shadowing her amidst the tangle of bodies, arrowheads, and gore-flecked steel.

  “And the Councillors?” Derset said. “Tell me, did Crake, Raquefort, and that idiot Rimini do their job?”

  “They’re trying, my lord. But the big Valderran and the blonde boy are fighting side by side, and every time they get near one, the other one steps in to defend.” Lysande had an image of Dante and Jale working together to fight off their enemies. It was not a pleasant one for the enemies. Alone, Dante’s axe-swinging would have sundered bone and gristle, and alone, Jale’s leaping and weaving would have seen fighters cornered, but together . . .

  “We can’t break the Pyrrhan ranks, either, though Raquefort’s doing her best,” the messenger said.

  Even as Lysande’s shoulders tensed, she forced herself not to make a sound.

  Derset put the dove down on the table. His hand movements were becoming less and less controlled. “And Fontaine?”

  The woman looked down and stammered over her answer for a moment. “My lord,” she said, “Fontaine is—”

  The next word came out in a gargle. Spit flew from the soldier’s lips; her eyes bulged, and an arrowhead protruded from her chest. She staggered, but the cry in her throat did not find its way out.

  “Late,” a cool voice said.

  The woman toppled to the floor. Luca stepped around her body and walked into the observatory, only to be seized by half a dozen guards; his arms were pulled behind his back, his bow snatched, and his quiver of arrows removed from his hand, but he did not attempt to struggle. The Pericleans marched him over and shoved him into the chair opposite Lysande. She saw that his doublet had been smeared with blood across the swathes of red silk. Smoothing down his sleeves, he smiled at her.

  Not for the first time, Lysande thought that Luca Fontai
ne might be a little bit mad.

  Several of the captains strode over to Derset and exchanged words. As they talked, Lysande leaned across to Luca. “Three hundred Rhimese archers?” she whispered. “Did you forget to mention those?”

  “As I recall, you said you only had a hundred guards. There was at least double that number carving up the Pericleans back there. Interesting arithmetic, no?”

  The fiery itching in her palm flared up again, prompting her to wince.

  Derset walked back, and the captains dropped back a little to allow him to approach the end of the table, where he loomed over Luca. “Here he is. The clever prince of Rhime.”

  His eyes flicked from Luca to Lysande after he spoke. He was watching for her reaction, she realized, belatedly, and the look betrayed something more than passing interest.

  “Oh dear. Lovers’ quarrel?” Luca said.

  “We’re not—” Lysande began, just as Derset said, “Something like that.”

  Luca’s face was impossible to read. Derset passed Luca’s bow to one of the captains, who dropped it on the floor and stamped on it. The woman’s boots snapped the frame.

  “That little trick of yours with the Bastillonians wasn’t bad,” Luca said. “Making them think we ambushed them—nothing says ‘we’re tearing up the agreement’ quite like a flaming prince, does it? But if you lose today, you must know, it’ll count for nothing. I’ll win back Ferago.” Luca smiled. “One of my people’s already got her hooks into Merez.”

  Lysande remembered Carletta Freste walking arm in arm with Gabrella Merez. She wanted to groan for missing the importance of the detail.

  “Boast all you like. You’re an arrogant half-breed.” Derset’s lip curled again. “You should have stayed in your castle in Rhime or stuck to banditry like your brother. A bastard has no business in ruling.”

  “Ah.” Luca leaned back in his chair. “I’m afraid you’re ignoring the difference between my brother and I. Raolo was a bastard by nature, you see, a real venomous, black-livered, ill-natured scraping of a man; whereas I’m just a bastard by name.”

  “I couldn’t care less.”

  “Perhaps you should. It’s odd that you, with all your schemes and tricks, never found the time to give my name some thought. My mother was born in Lyria, you see, and she knew the desert long before she sought work in an eastern castle. She gave me my name. And in ancient Lyrian, Fontaine means . . .”

  Lysande remembered walking through the courtyard in Castle Sapere, watching the water flow with no source; standing in front of the water mill that had produced its own light in Luca’s castle and wondering how it worked; crouching behind the pavilion at the ball and hearing Carletta Freste say, “Prince Fontaine designed the fountains in the pools.” She saw the jets and arcs of water that had put out the chimeran fire in the battle: jets to which Three had refused all claim after they splashed and quenched the flames; and she saw Luca standing by the great fountain under the Lyrian sun, giving her the clue that she had not recognized.

  In the ancient Lyrian, it was “fontaine de vivre.”

  “Water,” she said, softly. “Fontaine means water.”

  The blast of liquid caught most of the guards and knocked them over, flooding the room. Derset’s legs slipped out from under him, and he grabbed on to the side of the table. Luca blasted the guards again, curving the jet of water around; Lysande had never seen anything like this, even in the weeks since meeting Three. The power of the tide from Luca’s palm swept everything in its path.

  Vases jumped from their shelves. Glasses smashed on the floor, fracturing into shards, and the screams of the Pericleans cut through the air as they were washed from the observatory. Over the edge and into the blackness they tumbled, flailing as they fell.

  “Get back, Prior,” Luca shouted.

  He took her by the hand and pulled her into the doorway. The touch felt molten, a shock of skin. They both unclasped their fingers. Pausing for less than a breath, he held his arm out and sent out a fresh flood. The wave whipped around the room, aiming for the guards who were clutching the furniture. As he controlled it, his eyes flashed black fire, glinting and flaring. She gaped for a moment, watching his countenance harden, until she realized that some of the Pericleans were copying Derset and grabbing hold of the table.

  There was an opportunity here. No one was going to stop her if she moved first, surely. She reached inside her doublet and drew a dagger out, and the blade came smoothly from the pocket, so smoothly, as if it wanted to be free.

  “Prior, I won’t tell you again! Go to the battle! Tell the others to come up!”

  But she was not listening: her eyes were assessing the position of the chandelier.

  One throw would be enough if she could hit the half-loosened bolt at the top. She lined up her eye with the target, and her hand with her eye, concentrating hard. No need to dwell on the old chant now—restrain, constrain, subdue was a motto for a different woman, a woman who now resided in the past. Lysande’s wrist flicked.

  The dagger did not fly. It dropped as flames came out crimson-bright from her palm. Her flesh burned fiercely, yet somehow, she felt no pain.

  The fire flowed from her without her control; it shot out and sped to the top of the chandelier, and she watched it as if she were watching a spectacle put on by somebody else. For the first time, even the return of her craving could not distract her, the yearning now lowering its head beneath a force of her own making. It curled up, dulled, but not gone. The flames burned with an incandescent luster until the metal had melted through, dissolved, and the whole structure gave a lurch.

  Prior, she thought. Fire. Luca was right. There was no coincidence at all.

  Tiers of pointed crystal dropped onto the table and the floor, spearing whatever they landed on. Screams rose above the roar of water and flames: a guard floundered with a piece of crystal in his neck, collapsing onto a woman in a helmet who had been impaled three times through the back, her body spread-eagled on the floor. Lysande saw mercenaries scramble out of the wreckage, coughing. They were swept by Luca’s tide, and only one managed to duck in time: a captain cowered under a half-smashed chair, shouting a curse.

  Lysande bent over, gulping down air. The fire that had come out of her hand had left her drained. Her chest ached, and her mind seemed to be going in multiple directions. Looking up, she noticed something moving on her right.

  “Look out!” she cried. “Luca!”

  Bloodied arms wrapped around Luca’s body as Derset tackled the prince to the ground, smacking him into the stone. The two of them rolled over and over. Luca seized Derset by the hair, but Derset twisted free of his grip and slammed Luca bodily against a table leg. Lysande had no time to intervene, nor to regret the accident of using Luca’s first name: she dodged a dagger whistling past her head, and looking up, she saw the soldier with the chimera on her breastplate, clutching a longsword, running at her.

  The fire would not return. She was pathetically weak, like a fevered patient who had been bedridden for a week, and she fumbled at her doublet.

  Still undoing the buttons, she ducked under the woman’s arm as she charged. She should have been dead in an instant, but somehow, she was running past. She doubted that she could really reach into her pockets to draw a dagger in time to avoid being slaughtered, and then she remembered Sarelin forcing her to move, telling her to stop thinking. Be the blade. Her hand pulled a dagger free, and she positioned it with a firm grip while she counted to three, then whirled around, just in time for it to meet the neck of the soldier coming at her.

  The woman stared, her eyes opening wide. Lysande pulled the blade out of her throat. It emerged red.

  She lowered her weapon slowly. The woman unfastened her armor and lay on her back, chest heaving. The crest on her doublet gleamed in bronze thread. No—not a crest, but the head of Fortituda, goddess of valor. The same goddess Sarelin had sw
orn by. The soldier’s breathing ceased.

  “Prior, if you’re going to do me the indignity of rescuing me, now would be a good time,” a voice called behind her.

  Lysande spun around. Luca and Derset had moved on from wrestling on the floor and were fighting rapier to rapier, so furiously that neither had a chance to cast their element. Perhaps they were emptied and weak, like herself. Luca was slashing quickly, but Derset was no poor swordsman.

  “Really, Prior, any time now!”

  She sprinted closer to them, summoning all the strength in her body, until she was nearly in a delirium of effort, holding her palm out. No flames coursed through her fingers. Clenching her teeth and endeavoring to imagine her fire, she felt the dead weight of her arms and assessed her odds of throwing another dagger with any accuracy.

  Shuffling through all her memories of Sarelin, Lysande searched for something: a piece of wisdom or advice that would guide her; and the gold dagger and gold quill Sarelin had presented her with aligned in her mind. Blades and words.

  She reached inside the doublet for the quill and found herself probing an empty pocket. It was gone. She reached again. No stem; it was really gone. The fact bounced around her mind, rebounding and rebounding, until she forced herself to move past it.

  “Did I ever tell you that I am a third child?” she called out.

  Derset had Luca pinned to a wall, their rapiers crossed, but the pair of them looked across at her.

  “You said that to me, Henrey, while we stood with the sand of the Arena caking our boots and the crowd baying around us. You offered me a piece of your life, just the right size for me to grasp, memory-hewn. ‘You can learn to stand before crowds . . . even to like it.’ You added that. I remember how my feet became a little firmer when I heard you say it. Not because I believed your words, but because I could tell you believed in me. I don’t think you had a single strategic thought in your head when you put your hand on my shoulder.”