Of Fire and Stars

by Audrey Coulthurst

  “And there are some with whom you shouldn’t bother,” Hilara said, following my gaze.

  “Thank you for your thoughts, my lady.” Her comment irked me even though I didn’t owe any loyalty to Amaranthine, especially when soreness from my riding lessons plagued my every move. Besides, I was still upset about our conversation in front of Flicker’s stall. I thought I had finally gotten her to open up, and then she’d shut me out twice as forcefully and made a point of vanishing immediately after every lesson since.

  “Choose your allies wisely, Your Highness,” Hilara said. “Maybe someday you’ll be able to make up for losing the best one you had.” She turned and moved off toward the merchants, her words leaving me chilled in spite of the hot morning sun.

  “She’s as friendly as a hungry mountain bear, isn’t she?” my sister said, walking up as Hilara vanished into a cluster of eager admirers.

  “They all are, unless they want something,” I muttered.

  Alisendi gave me a look straight out of my mother’s repertoire of Meaningful Glances for Misbehaving Young Ladies. “You’ll want things from them too one day. It’s part of the game.”

  I shrugged.

  “Come on,” Alisendi said. “This is supposed to be fun! We get to pick out all the things for your wedding. I can hardly believe my little sister is going to be a married woman.” Her green eyes sparkled with all the excitement mine should have held.

  “Neither can I,” I said. The wedding had always seemed like a far-off thing, and the alliance had always seemed so certain. Now, my future rushed toward me faster than ever, and Cas’s death and the trouble in its wake had my faith in the alliance shaken.

  “You’re lucky. Prince Thandilimon is so handsome. And these Mynarian guards . . .” She stole an unsubtle glance at the rear end of a liegeman as he paced through the party.

  “I can’t believe you said that.” Sometimes it seemed impossible that my sister and I were related. If it hadn’t been for the fact that looking into her face was like looking into a warped mirror that showed a taller, prettier version of me, both of us with our mother’s hair and our father’s eyes, I would have had some serious questions about our respective parentage.

  “Are you still holding out for Olin?” she teased. Ali had always given me a hard time about not fancying any of the boys back home. Her crushes changed more quickly than the wind in a blizzard, but I didn’t see the point in mooning over some other boy when I had always been promised to Thandilimon. Eventually, I got so tired of her harassment that I chose one at random: Olin, the baker’s son. But after a while it became clear that my supposed crush was doomed when Olin started courting Ryan, one of the handsome squires Ali fancied.

  Fortunately, I was spared any further mocking as other young noblewomen surrounded us to vie for my attention. But the girls always lingered within earshot of Hilara, making it clear that they courted her as eagerly as me. With Hilara’s political power she might as well have been queen, and winning my favor was likely only a ploy the girls used to impress her. My irritation increased and my hands tingled in warning as my magic stirred.

  “It’s a warm morning, is it not, Your Highness?” someone said. Behind a table piled high with intricate tapestries stood a short, round man with an elaborately sculpted beard that came to a sharp point beneath his chin. He smiled to reveal teeth tipped with silver. “Your ice has melted,” he said, gesturing to my glass. His words carried the hint of a vaguely familiar accent.

  “So it has,” I said. It wouldn’t have been remarkable, except that a servant had just brought me a fresh drink. The zings running through my fingers let me know exactly how it had melted so rapidly.

  “I thought you had that under control,” Alisendi whispered. All the humor on her face had been replaced with worry.

  “I do,” I said. “It’s fine.” My nerves felt like they were on fire. I needed to calm down. Alisendi and I hung back at the merchant’s table, letting the other girls wander on to the next display.

  Nearby, Amaranthine had escaped the blond girl and was talking to one of the guards stationed by an archway. She gesticulated wildly, telling some story that had the poor liegeman going red in the face. How she could be so friendly with a random liegeman and so cold with me outside of our lessons was utterly baffling—and infuriating. When they both had their laughter under control, she squeezed his arm in farewell and slipped past him out of the party.

  She had never even said hello.

  A surge of magic flew from my fingertips and a flame ignited on the corner of one of the textile merchant’s wooden display racks.

  Alisendi took in a sharp breath, and I grabbed her hand to silence whatever was about to come out of her mouth. But before either of us could speak, the bearded man on the other side of the table flicked his finger almost imperceptibly, and a burst of air extinguished the flame, carrying the smoke away on the breeze.

  I stared at him in astonishment.

  “Master Karov of Sigil Imports,” he introduced himself. “We import the finest weavings from all of the Northern Kingdoms.” He studied me with sharp eyes and a knowing smile, adjusting a tapestry to cover the damaged corner of the display rack.

  I swallowed hard. “Princess Dennaleia of Havemont, at the service of the crown and the Six.” Falling into manners and formality did little to calm my jangling nerves, but I did not know what else to do. My sister also introduced herself, her face still white with shock.

  “I am honored to make the acquaintance of two such lovely ladies. May I interest either of you in a tapestry?” Karov said.

  My gaze skittered over his wares as I clamped down on my panic. If he told anyone I had set that fire, neither Amaranthine nor Hilara would be my biggest problem. Then again, he had also used magic to put it out, so logically he couldn’t implicate me without also incriminating himself. Still, the thought did nothing to settle my nerves.

  To calm myself, I dredged up what I knew about tapestries and tried to examine his offerings with a more critical eye. Tapestry weaving was largely a far-north art, and my mother had a vast collection insulating the castle against the brutal winter winds in Spire City. Unsurprisingly, many of Karov’s weavings were equestrian themed, portraying hunting and battle scenes. Though he showcased a variety of styles that were clearly from different parts of the Northern Kingdoms, every tapestry was tightly woven and of the highest quality.

  “Were these made on a low-warp loom?” I asked, running my fingers across the edge of a small but complex tapestry depicting the mountains of my homeland. A lone mountain bluebird winged across the top of the weaving, bright against the wintry landscape.

  “You have a discerning eye, my lady,” Karov said. “Our imported weavings from the north are all made on low-warp looms in order to achieve the utmost levels of detail.”

  Looking more closely at the image, I frowned. Something wasn’t right about the mountain range—at least as viewed from Havemont. From Spire City, sharp peaks surrounded Mount Verity, not the rolling hills pictured in the foreground of the tapestry. But the lopsided profile of the mountain was unmistakable, if a little misshapen.

  “Where is this from?” Alisendi asked, pointing to the tapestry.

  “The northeast,” he said with a smile.

  My sister and I exchanged a glance. There was only one side of the mountains that gave way to rolling hills, and it wasn’t in Havemont.

  It was in Zumorda.

  And now that I knew that, his accent was unmistakable. Seeing the understanding dawning on my face, he simply tapped on the tapestry hiding the burned spot on the rack and smiled.

  Another threat.

  “How much do you want for it?” I asked. Maybe if I spent enough at his table, I could guarantee his silence.

  “For you, Your Highness? Consider it a gift.” He pulled the little tapestry off the rack and rolled it up, tying it with a thick silk ribbon. “Come see us again. We have many other wares that might interest you.”

  I tuc
ked the tapestry under my arm, grabbed Alisendi, and hurried away. When we had almost caught up to the other noblewomen, I shot a nervous glance back at Karov just in time to see Hilara approach his table. Coin exchanged hands as she purchased something, but with a move so deft I barely caught it, Karov rolled a small sachet into the tapestry before passing it across the table to her. A fresh wave of dismay rolled over me. If they were colluding in some way, it could only lead to terrible things, but I didn’t know what to do with the information. The possibility of my own magic being discovered was too risky.

  “The Six help me,” I said.

  Alisendi began to sketch out the symbol of the fire god in front of her, but I caught her hand.

  “The wind god,” I whispered. “The wind god is seen as more powerful here.”

  She gave me a worried look but complied, and we reentered the group of noblewomen.

  As the sun beat into my skull and I prepared to make my way toward the next cluster of party guests, a stab of envy for Amaranthine hit me. She didn’t have to cope with underhanded threats from courtiers and Zumordan merchants. By now, she could be anywhere: back in her rooms, riding her horse over the hills, or even out in the city. She had the freedom to do anything she wanted, at least until the king and Thandilimon thought better of it. Although Thandilimon was nice enough, and Amaranthine was certainly difficult, it bothered me that he acted as though he knew what was right for her. Someone as proud as Amaranthine would never bow to anyone, whether it was her brother, her father, or her husband. It wasn’t in her.

  And with everything that had gone wrong since my arrival, I was starting to wonder if it was in me, either.

  TEN

  Mare

  MY SCHEDULE FINALLY LINED UP WITH NILS’S A FEW weeks after Cas’s funeral, so we escaped the castle and headed for the Pelham. There wasn’t much time between Dennaleia’s afternoon lesson and a stupid music performance later in the evening, but it was better than nothing.

  The city had changed since my last time out. Merchants kept their windows shuttered, and strangers on the street avoided eye contact. Every other building seemed to be tagged with the white circle of the Recusants. Some had black slashes through them—the mark of the fundamentalists who opposed them.

  Upon arrival at the pub, we shoved our way into a secluded booth away from the cluttered tables near the bar, hoping to avoid any fights. I slapped a coin down on the table that a mostly toothless barmaid soon replaced with two battered mugs of ale.

  Nils made a face after his first sip. “This stuff tastes like horse piss, as always.”

  “I don’t want to know how you came up with the basis for that comparison,” I said. The ale didn’t taste that bad—it had an uncomplicated zing to it that was perfect for a blazing-hot summer day, and the Pelham had a deep enough cellar that it was served remarkably cold.

  “So what’s the plan?” Nils asked.

  “Watch. Wait. Drink your damn pint,” I said. Hopefully some answers would come our way if we kept our ears open, but mostly I was glad to be out. Between paranoid courtiers and extra guards everywhere, I’d had enough of the incessant itch of eyes on my back.

  “And what do you plan to do with the information we glean? Have you thought any more about talking to your father or brother?”

  I shook my head. “Only if I discover something compelling enough.”

  “This is about more than Cas, Mare. It’s a chance to get leverage with them that might help you later.” He nudged my foot under the table.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I’m asking what you plan to do with your life. Have you thought about it? I’m pretty sure the king and your brother have. Why do you think your father parades you past strings of nobles every time you actually eat dinner at the royal table?”

  “To keep me out of his way.” I sat back in my chair, uncomfortable with his line of inquiry. “He doesn’t care what I do as long as I don’t meddle in anything that actually matters.”

  “No. It’s so he can marry you off to the first person who expresses interest.”

  “I have some choice in the matter.” What Nils said was true, but I didn’t want to admit it.

  “You say that, but he could make your life difficult enough that marriage would seem like a better choice than whatever else he put in front of you. It’s like training a horse—make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard.”

  “Who says marriage is the right thing for me? Just because everyone else is riding their horses backward off a bridge doesn’t mean I ought to.” Though I’d happily train Flicker to do just that if it meant avoiding marriage to some idiot of my father’s choosing.

  “It’s an analogy. Plans for you must be on your father’s mind, especially now that Princess Dennaleia is here and Thandilimon’s role will change. It’ll affect you as well.”

  I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Okay. You’re right. But I don’t have a bastard’s clue what to do. I don’t see a way out.”

  “You’re cleverer than the whole Directorate put together. You’ll think of something.” He reached across the table and gave my forearm a firm squeeze.

  “All I can do for now is keep a sharper eye on their plans,” I said. “Lord Kriantz invited me to a music performance tonight. I was going to try to find a way out of it, but maybe it will be an opportunity to find out what my brother and father have been doing.”

  “That’s a start.” He nodded.

  “Doesn’t help me figure out the future, though.” I needed to get away from my family. There had to be a way to do it without shackling myself to someone I had no use or feelings for.

  “The princess has to be trained, and that will buy you some time. Or you could always make things simple and marry down.” He winked at me suggestively.

  “Nils!”

  “Kidding, kidding,” he said. “Although pretending to marry me might work if it weren’t for my job at the palace. Pulling off a false marriage under that much scrutiny would be tough.”

  “If the marriage were false, I’d rather marry a woman,” I said. “At least then no one would be able to question the legitimacy of it based on lack of children.” No matter how vague my life plan was, spending half a year out of the saddle to have a baby definitely wasn’t part of it.

  Nils flipped his mug to signify the need for another drink and scanned the room for our server. She was sprawled across the laps of two men who looked like they had never seen reason to bathe, giggling as one of them dropped coins down the front of her dress.

  “Looks like my refill might take all night,” Nils grumbled.

  “There’s one way to remedy that,” I said, and took off for the bar before Nils could talk sense into me. The corner we’d been sitting in was too quiet anyway.

  “Six help us,” he said, and hurried after. The late-afternoon crowd near the bar wasn’t too wild yet, but they did seem close to the bottoms of their pitchers.

  “. . . magic-loving scum is going to ruin our kingdom,” a bearded man ranted. “Heard the arrow that killed Lord Casmiel was augmented with magic. If those slimy Recusant bastards can enchant arrows to fly farther and strike true, they must be plotting a war right here in our streets!”

  His audience at the surrounding tables muttered their agreement. We’d stumbled into a group of fundamentalists. I ordered two more mugs of ale and pretended to ignore the conversation in hopes of hearing something useful, keeping my head down like the hooded woman hunched over her drink beside me.

  “It had to be magic. The spears would’ve caught ’em otherwise,” an older man at the table said.

  Nils tensed at the slang word for liegemen, and I put a steadying hand on his arm.

  “Those magic-lovers ain’t that hard to catch,” a woman said. “They all have that same slippery look about ’em. And white paint on their hands.”

  “Hear, hear!” someone else said, and swung his mug of ale through the air, splattering half the others at the table.
>
  “Caught one walking down my street just yesterday,” the bearded man said. “He tried to scare me off with a handful of sparks. Made sure he’ll think twice about doing that again.”

  The whole group chuckled in an unfriendly way that made me edge closer to Nils.

  The woman next to me whirled toward the bearded man and drew a serrated knife from her belt. “I’ve been looking for you,” she growled, and plunged the knife through his hand.

  The man shrieked like an animal. Not only was his hand was pinioned to the grimy bar, but the flesh around the blade began to smoke as the knife grew white-hot. I stared, frozen in horror. Sure, I’d heard of magic, but I’d never seen it used like this before.

  “Magic-loving bitch!” someone shouted. The fundamentalists overturned their table, but the woman apparently had allies throughout the room who leaped up to meet them. Fists flew. I stumbled back into Nils, fear making my stomach drop.

  “You killed my husband, and I hope you burn in the Sixth Hell,” the woman said to the man she’d stabbed.

  She turned toward me and I caught a glimpse of bloodshot eyes and short, sandy hair before Nils yanked me from the fray and out a side door into a filthy alley. I dashed for the road, dismayed that we’d chosen not to ride. Horses like ours would have likely been stolen from the hitching rail outside the Pelham before our drinks were even served, but having them would have made for a faster escape.

  “Let’s go this way!” I pointed to another alley halfway up the next block as the tavern fight behind us started to pour into the street. We leaped over a rag-clad man lying unconscious in front of the entrance who reeked of urine and stale beer. Nils matched my stride and then pulled me the rest of the way through the bad part of town at a pace I could barely match, my lungs burning and my mouth dry.

  “We are not going back there,” Nils said as soon as we entered one of the side gates through the castle wall.