by E. J. Beaton
“It was a sumptuous gift, Your Highness. A little too sumptuous for me. As I tied the laces, I could hear Sarelin telling me I looked like a gilded rooster, puffed up to crow.” She glanced across to where Litany stood. “Rest assured, my attendant has packed it carefully.”
“Oh, good. Do wear it, during that one week of summer you get in Axium.”
“If you will do me the favor of keeping this, in return, for your half-week of winter.” Of course, Litany had not missed her cue. The heavy velvet unfolded neatly from her attendant’s hands, dropping to reveal the full length of the design, the silver embroidery of the name Chamboise curling around a crown. Jale clapped, then seized it.
“But this is personalized! True artistry! I shall wear it sooner than winter—when I reach you in Axium, I shall look just like a local soldier, draped in honest Axium cloth.”
Lysande privately reflected upon the likelihood of that, before hugging Jale farewell.
As they pulled apart, she noted the moisture in Jale’s eyes and considered how light his tone had been, just now—a little too light for someone who had suffered the loss of his own people. “Jale . . .” She searched for words. “Your sister will not be forgotten, I am sure.”
“I intend to build a tomb of white marble, with Élérie’s likeness on top, sculpted by the best-trained artist in Lyria. The eyes will be especially detailed—they looked like widening orbs, sleek and bright, when she was talking. The people will see her as she was. Whole, and full of spirit.” He gave her a small smile. “You are thoughtful, Lysande, and at the risk of repeating my compliment, you listen well. Spare some of that thoughtfulness for yourself. And make some time to listen to your own grief.”
They embraced for much longer this time, and Lysande’s eyes were wet too when they drew apart again. She turned to Dante. The two of them bowed, and Lysande searched for something to say that would keep the conversation light, at least on the surface.
“I hope some morning will arrive when we sit together and talk of northern fir trees, and the winter lights of Valderos.”
“That we shall.” Dante stepped closer to her. “May you grieve Captain Hartleigh in your own time. Years have taught me how to grieve my fallen captains. And one must learn. Take solace in knowing that he died the way he lived: defending the jagged crown of Elira with courage.”
It was a soldier’s tribute, Lysande thought: clear and unembellished. Not the way she would have phrased it, but the way that Raden would have understood.
“May you grieve your own people, too.” She laid a hand on Dante’s arm. “And take your own solace with whomever you please.”
She saw Jale shoot a swift look in her direction.
As she made to join her party, she felt a hand grip her arm. Sun glanced off a bow, the black frame of which was decorated with tiny silver cobras. Lysande tried to affect nonchalance as she turned; by now, she hoped, she was getting better at it. Luca handed the new bow to Malsante and offered her his arm. He was so close that she could hear every syllable, dropped out in that cool voice. “You’ve been avoiding me. Studiously. I suppose one should expect that from a scholar.”
Their last encounter hung between them, so tangible that Lysande could almost grasp it. She felt the scrutiny of his gaze trickling over her, to her boots. “Come to Axium Palace the night before the meeting, Fontaine.”
“Very well.” He shrugged. “Where will I find you?”
She thought of his arms around her as they danced, his body under hers in the library, his hand blasting a jet of water into Derset’s chest, and the way he had looked at her, in the observatory, with his doublet covered in blood.
She thought of how he had raised his palm and sent dozens of guards flailing into the jet-rich depths of the night.
“You won’t,” she said. “I’ll find you.”
* * *
• • •
Now that she could summon fire from her flesh, Lysande would have been satisfied with Litany as her only escort, yet she had a feeling that even if she had been able to explain the situation to her guards, Chidney would not have accepted being parted from Litany’s side. The captain hovered around her attendant, somehow managing to stay close to Litany while keeping the soldiers in order, handing Litany a pouch when she needed a drink and offering her an extra cloak. Lysande surrendered to the inevitability of an entourage. They led their horses from the ship and set off into the central scrub, casting a last glance at the Grandfleuve.
The road seemed uneven, but the horses’ hooves flew over it. Villages sped past. Lysande saw eyes peeping at her out of the windows of houses, only to disappear again.
A crossroads approached: Axium to the north, Rhime to the east. They were trotting down the Scarlet Road for a few minutes before her mare reached a lump in the road.
“Stop!” Litany shouted, pulling her horse’s reins.
As Lysande dismounted and walked over, she saw the lump move. Something sank inside her, but she had seen bodies dripping with blood, by now, and had spilled blood herself, and she gathered herself with only a moment’s pause. Clouds hunkered above the treetops. She bent over the form of a soldier, noting the ring in the man’s ear and the word in foreign script that hung on a bronze disc around his neck: a word carved in one of the wayfarer scripts from the Periclean States. Rolling up the man’s sleeve, she took in the chimera brand on his wrist, black as new ink.
He wheezed, and Lysande’s gaze slipped downward. A fish hook had ripped the bottom of the man’s stomach, and she repressed a noise of disgust; he could have lain here for days. The hook had driven into the belly, cutting through layers of flesh without causing much blood to leak. Every exhalation had to be an agony.
“A half-death.” There was grim recognition in Litany’s voice, and Lysande looked up. “I think someone’s taken justice into their own hands, after the battle.”
Lysande took the mercenary’s arms. Wordlessly, Litany took hold of his feet. It required both of their strength to drag the man into the shade of the closest tree, and she gestured to the guards to keep their distance; she considered sending her attendant away when it was done, for experience told her that Litany could keep the guards at bay, but after a lengthy pause, she beckoned Litany closer.
The man’s breathing reminded her of a stag Sarelin had killed. A poor shot, unusual for the queen, had left it with a punctured lung, until Sarelin’s sword put it out of its misery. A man was not a stag, however. She would not strip the humanity from him, as someone else had sought to do.
“I know a way that might be swift.”
The soldier looked up at her. He did not attempt to reply; the nod he gave was so tiny that it might have been a tremor, yet it was enough.
“Councillor, if you would rather I leave—”
“No.” She met Litany’s eyes, above the dying man. “I need you to see this.”
There was a difference between want and need. You could not comprehend that difference easily, in the inked phrases of a definition; only when you were in the middle of need yourself, sinking to your knees in its alluvium, searching the horizon for a figure, any figure, to haul you out of the cloying sediment, did you understand what it meant to be without choice. Nobody merely wanted to be pulled free by a firm hand. Nobody merely wanted to be seen.
She thought about how little time she had had to think when she had used her power in front of Luca, Derset, and a room full of mercenaries. Looking down the road, now, she saw only leaves stirring and a few motes of dust dancing in the faint breeze.
It was a danger, of a kind, to spend your life in perpetual shadow—was it not? Did hidden people need to make themselves visible? Was it not an act as fundamental to survival as drinking water, eating bread, and breathing air?
Her gaze locked on Litany’s once more. Briefly, she put a finger to her lips.
She dropped to her knees, not touching the man. This was
not like moving an element, where she could channel the fire in her veins. The power resided in her head, not her body, and she knew she had to wait. She reached out with her mind.
The pulse came clearly. She felt the thump-thump, looked down, saw his eyes widen, and closed her phantom hand around his heart. Without hesitation, she squeezed.
The man gave a wordless cry. Lysande compressed his heart until it burst and his lungs ceased to strain, and she felt his primal self dissolving, disappearing into the air, slipping into translucence while his body fell back against the ground. His head slumped. The pendant slid across his chest and he lay still, the look in his eyes neither pained nor peaceful, but empty of everything.
She stood up, the same energy coursing through her again.
It took a few moments for her to notice the way that Litany was looking at her now, and to read all the shades of emotion in that gaze: awe, fear, respect, concern, and something she could not quite make out. Lysande held out her palm and let a jet of flame flow upward, forming a small fireball, before she closed her palm and snuffed the fire out.
“I’ll allow you four questions.”
If she had to pick a number, she would pick the number that Sarelin had always used: the number of the goddesses.
Litany rose, facing her. “Have you always been one of them?”
“No. There was a process of transformation, and I discovered it that way. That is why I was laid up in bed, in the palace . . . they call it a maturation.”
“So you were hiding something!” Litany’s exclamation was almost a yelp. “And you went through it alone!”
“Is that another question?”
“No.” A smile flitted across Litany’s face. “Rather, I would know . . . what is it like, to use such a power?”
There was almost a hunger in her eyes, now. Lysande hesitated.
“There is nothing I can compare it to. Killing with magic is beyond any other act, Litany. It is like itself. That is all.”
It is like drinking without raising a wineskin to your lips. It is like swimming without ever holding your breath. It is like kissing a stranger and then pushing a honed rapier into their chest, hilt-deep. It is like waking to the scent of crushed paradisiac after a long storm. It is like the dance of a quill on a perfectly blank sheet of paper. It is like soaring.
“It must feel easy, or hard, to some degree.”
“Adroit of you, to use a comment as a question.” Lysande tried to whittle down her thoughts. “It feels both easy and hard at once.”
Litany cast a look at the mercenary’s expressionless face. The mixture of jealousy and curiosity in her glance did not escape Lysande.
“You, and the people who aided us in the battle, and your friend . . . will you ever throw your support behind the White Queen?” Litany’s voice trembled slightly.
Lysande knew what it cost her to ask that. She respected the courage of the question, even as something less generous in her resented the implication.
“Anyone I work with is, to the best part of my knowledge, staunchly opposed to her. Listen to me, Litany.” She expected to hear her own voice trembling, too, but somehow, it held firm. “Everything I did, when I first took up the Councillor’s staff . . . I did it for Sarelin. And with every week that passed, I have learned that that is not enough. It is not easy to learn about the savagery of the woman you loved above all things; but I have learned. I do not find her faultless. If I must remedy her wrongs, though, I will do so for my supporters: for my base.” She was speaking too quickly. How did one sound heroic? Should one sound heroic? “I mean, for the people who move the elements, and the people who move nothing but sacks of grain. I will knit this populace together.” She laid her hand upon Litany’s arm. “The White Queen will unravel it until there is nothing left but the hungry points of needles.”
She felt the chill of exposure. In speaking of such things, and in using her power of the mind, she had laid herself bare, twice over, and now she waited . . . and waited. So this was what it felt like to be seen.
“I cannot claim to be a true Axiumite heroine, Litany. I have worked in the shadows, sometimes, when I could not work in the light.”
Slowly, the girl nodded. “Working in the shadows. That, I know well.”
“If we are to continue down this road together, you must accept what I am. You must accept it and support it. In return, I would offer you a greater role, by which I do not only mean money, but a position that everyone recognizes. You shall be my Mistress of Defense, newly created.”
Litany placed her hand upon Lysande’s. “I accept your nature. Not that it is my right to accept or no. I know you bear no love for the White Queen; I have seen what you risk.”
“And the position?”
“It is a lot to consider.”
“Then consider it.” Lysande patted her hand once and let go. “Give me your answer when you can be sure. I shall appoint no one else in the meantime.”
She folded the mercenary’s arms across his chest, brushed his sleeves, and turned back to the road. She had barely taken a stride when Litany’s voice called after her.
“You owe me a fourth question.”
“Catch up, then.” Lysande smiled at the ground.
Noiselessly, Litany closed the distance to reach her side. When she spoke again, it was in a much quieter voice. “Did you enjoy . . . releasing him from suffering?”
Lysande swung onto her mare and turned to the road ahead. A nod was all she managed as she glanced across at Litany, but she felt sure that the girl understood.
* * *
• • •
The palette of Rhimese colors spread over the land again, bright, but not glaring like the desert. The Flavantine could be glimpsed from time to time, meandering between pairs of conical trees or flowing alongside cobbled streets; from hidden alleys and walled gardens, the voices of water murmured. Lysande pressed a hand to her temple as they guided their horses through a town arch. She was not distracted. It was just that the thought of mixing blue flakes, sugar, and water, of heating the ingredients and watching them shiver and melt, listening to the soft fizzing of the liquid, and drinking . . . then feeling the anvil-blows in her chest and the burning of her forehead, before a hard-won taste of oblivion . . . it all prompted a pang to run through her. Every now and then she clutched the reins a little too tightly, and the leather bit into her palm.
The closer they got to Pescarra, the more her thoughts slipped. She noticed the temptations of Pescarra’s cheese-sellers without stopping, leading Litany to an inn tucked at the end of an alley where a fig tree spread its branches. Her attendant stood guard outside.
The door on the second floor did not yield. Lysande knocked.
“Who goes there?” a woman said.
“One who brings fire without carrying wood.”
The door creaked open and offered a sliver of a burned cheek. A second later, Six pulled it open. “Your aim’s getting better, I hope,” she said, waving Lysande through.
Lysande could not quite hide her smile. She did not need to ask where to go—there was only one door at the end of the room, and in the next room, a double window greeted her, admitting a deluge of light.
“Ah, Signore Prior.” Three looked up from the table, his hair spilling across his shoulders. “Anyone who could resist Pescarran smoked would be an uncouth boor. Have a bite.”
He pulled out a chair. She sat, and took a piece of smoked cheese from his plate. The taste was enough to prevent her from speaking. As Six took the chair beside them, Lysande did not miss the glance that passed between the two Shadows members; nor did she miss the small mark on Three’s wrist, shining unusually bright against his skin, like a smudge of oil.
Perhaps the Shadows have their own kind of discipline, she thought. Or perhaps he merely got it in the battle.
“I am sorry for your loss,
my dear.”
The statement caught her in the chest. She had expected a question about the Council or a comment about the battle—something practical and straightforward.
“We were close; I am sure you understand how it can come to be like that. I have tried to reconcile all I knew of Lord Derset with his betrayal.”
“Indeed.” Three raised an eyebrow. “But I was referring to Captain Hartleigh.”
A tide of guilt ran through Lysande, crashing against inner rocks. “Let us make sure Raden did not die in vain, then. Let us meet the White Army’s power,” she said.
Both of them, Lysande suspected, were now thinking of soldiers dropping from the air, landing wherever the White Queen wished to put them. She tried not to shiver.
“I shall not attempt to conceal what we now know: Chamsak had the eggs.” Three shook his head. “We should have guessed, but a weapon sounded like some kind of device.”
Lysande pictured Six driving back the chimeras with her air, once more. She felt less than triumphant, though, when she remembered the way the golden orbs had regarded her during the battle, the jade eyes, too, locking on to her own.
“Let us speak of strategy in a little while. I have plenty of suggestions.” Three leaned back in his chair, his sharp features half-lit by the sun, half in shadow. Lysande was conscious of Six straightening against the wall, and of both their gazes. “There is a woman you will need to work with. Have I mentioned that we have agreed to take on a new member? She insisted upon waiting in the garden. Indeed, she seemed to take a great interest in speaking with you.”
The oranges had ripened in the little haven behind the inn. Sunlight poured through the gap in the trees, the branches trimmed just enough that they did not meet, a golden line separating the two halves of the garden. Lysande made her way to the stone bench under one of the trees and sat, facing the woman on the opposite side, watching her companion’s fingers peel back the skin of an orange.
“I thought you would have been loath to bargain with them,” she said.