by A K Fedeau
Hector roared with pain and clasped the gash on his left cheek, and Livia turned on her heel and bolted without looking back. She ran past the broken chair, the jugs, the leopard, the drapes, the swords - and she flung open the bronze coffered doors and leaped down the stairs outside.
•••
“Livia!”
Livia barreled down the dark corridor as fast as she could, and her nostrils burned with terror as Hector's voice echoed at her back.
“Li-vi-a!”
Hector staggered after her with blood streaming down his cheek, heaving and gnashing his teeth as he clutched the knife and his face. A fury burned in his eyes as he passed in and out of the lamplight, his breath shallow and ragged, his shoulders hunched like a wounded wolf.
Livia rounded corners and weaved through doorways left and right, trying to lose him in the maze of bedrooms and balustrades. But still Hector pursued her, one plodding step at a time, and the blood dripped through his fingers and left a trail on the floor.
“Guards!”
Hector’s voice grew closer, and Livia flattened herself against the wall.
“Your Majesty!”
“Get out there!” Hector yelled. “Livia just tried to fucking kill me!”
The guards gasped, then sprang into action as they unsheathed their swords, and Livia’s stomach churned as she tried the door handle next to her. It swung open - a broom closet! - so she jumped inside and slammed it closed, and huddled in the stifling dark as her heart hammered in her chest.
She heard the guards’ boots thunder by as she fumbled with the straps of her dress, then kicked her petticoats down to her ankles and threw her feather collar off. She wadded the mass of puffed skirts up and stuffed them on the shelf. She grabbed the pair of shears beside them and shoved them down her front. She swallowed the terror in her throat as she kicked off her shoes, and when the boot stomps faded, she opened the door and burst out barefoot.
“Where did she go?” A guard in the nearby alcove asked.
“Mira’s tits, I don’t know!” Another answered. “I haven’t even seen her!”
Livia found another staircase and shimmied down to the first floor, and took a detour through the dark corridors that led to the archives. The guards’ footsteps beat all around her as a bell rang somewhere in the grounds - and when she ran into the archives, she found no one inside.
Livia let go of her skirt and plunged into the aisles of books, and her lungs burned every time she gulped down another breath. Her feet pounded on the cold tiles through Religion, then Art History - Natural Sciences, Philosophy - Mira’s grace, where is it?! And at last she swerved left toward a dusty case against the wall, and knelt down by the bottom shelf and groped for the secret switch.
“We’re just running in circles!” A guard called out. “How did she get away?”
“Nobody’s that good,” another grumbled. “She has to be here somewhere.”
“Shit, dammit, please,” Livia whispered, as her hand clawed up and down…
Until she finally pulled the right book out and heard a lever click, and heaved the bookcase out and snatched the nearby lamp off its mount.
She ducked into the hidden passageway and dragged the bookcase closed, and took off up the stairs with the lamp clutched tight in her hand. The steps wound left, then right, and cobwebs caught on her bare toes. Livia’s head swam, but she kept going, feeling along the walls. Until finally, her hand brushed against the switch she was looking for, so she pressed it, threw herself against her bookcase, and burst into her room.
Marcus tripped in shock and hung onto the bedpost. “Livia!”
Livia stifled him with her hand over his mouth. “Shh!”
“Livia, your shoulder!” Marcus whispered.
Livia glanced down, too. “What…?”
And she found a slash below her collarbone, staining her neckline with blood.
“Oh, gods.” Livia threw herself on the floor by her bed. “I don’t have time to deal with that. We have to get out. Now.”
Marcus nodded, then darted across the room to the armchair, and grabbed it by the armrests and and shoved it in front of the door.
“What happened?” He asked.
“Hector knows.”
Marcus balked. “About us?”
“About everything.”
“Artemisia?”
“No. But everything else.” Livia flung open her trunk. “I think I can get us out of this, but you need to do everything I say. Everything. Do you understand?”
Marcus pushed the chair an inch further. “Like what?”
“I can’t tell you. I’ll explain later.” Livia tossed Marcus a black cloak, then pulled out her own. “Follow my lead. Don’t speak to anyone I haven’t spoken to.”
Marcus caught the cloak. “Why? Where are we going?”
Livia looked up at him with anguished eyes. “Marcus…”
“We’re so close…”
“Marcus, if you don’t trust me now, you’re going to get both of us killed!”
Marcus turned up his eyebrows as Livia pulled out her own cloak - then pinned the one she’d given him to his shoulder.
“All right.”
“Good.” Livia stepped into a pair of boots and lifted her hood. “Come on!”
Marcus lifted his, too, and blew out the lamp on her dressing table.
Livia locked the trunk, kicked it back under her bed, and climbed through the secret passage with the pilfered library lamp. The instant Marcus followed her in, they heard the guards’ feet down the hall, and they plunged the room into darkness as they heaved the bookcase shut.
•••
The two emerged from the palace tunnels into a cistern, where water dripped from the ceiling and rushed from a huge copper pipe.
“Where are we?” Marcus asked.
“Shh!” Livia ran down the stone ledge. “I don’t know who else is down here. I don’t want to find out.”
Livia grabbed Marcus’ hand and dragged him down a winding path, past rows of crackling torches and iron gates choked with moss. Marcus splashed through puddles and rats skittered out of their way, as the drainage rushed beside them and their breaths echoed off the walls.
As they snaked under the city, they heard an unearthly sound, muffled through layers of dirt and rock from the streets above. Something thumped. Something clattered. Something pounded the cobblestones, and a hundred indistinct voices blended into a warbled cry. It started soft, but it grew louder with every twist and turn they took, until it grew to a fever pitch and rumbled over their heads.
“Mira’s blood.” Livia gazed up at the ceiling. “What’s that noise?”
Marcus put his hand on her shoulder and shepherded her along. “I don’t know!”
And then Livia took a sharp left and yanked Marcus aside, where a young man with a crescent pin on his cloak brandished his knife.
“Oi!” The lookout stood up straight. “What are you doing here?”
“Let me through!” Livia barged through the archway. “I’m a friend of Hamid!”
“Shit.” The lookout took a cautious step away from her. “You know Hamid?”
“I do.” Livia pointed to Marcus. “And I can vouch for him. Now come on!”
The two of them bowed their heads and followed the lookout through a narrow tunnel with crumbling pillars and a pair of feeble lamps. All around them, thieves and urchins slunk into the shadows, and their curious eyes blinked at Marcus and Livia as they passed.
“What happened?” The lookout asked.
“It’s a long story. We have to get out of the city. Now.” Livia tightened her grip on the lamp and explained without pausing for breath. “I have a safehouse off the Red Road. We just need to make it there alive.”
“What do you need? A cart? Horses?”
Livia nearly tripped. “Whatever you’ve got!”
The lookout stopped at the mouth of an underground canal, where an old man stood by a boat and a makeshift mooring post. L
ivia gathered her skirt around her knees and leaped into the boat, and she stole a glance back at the lookout as the old man untied the rope.
“I don’t care what you have to do. Find Hamid.” Livia scrambled aside as Marcus climbed in. “Tell him ‘the crow has fled the hawk’s nest.’ He’ll know what that means.”
“Mira’s blood.” The lookout gulped, but gave her a firm nod. “All right.”
Marcus squeezed Livia’s hand, and the boatman set off into the unknown.
CHAPTER 19
When Livia awoke the next morning, she found her head on a flat pillow, under a scratchy blanket in an old, broken-in bed.
She yawned and rubbed her eyes and squirmed around beneath the sheets, and gazed at the room around her to try to orient herself. Stucco walls. A thatched ceiling. An old dressing table and wardrobe, and an alder tree outside the window, its branches scratching the glass.
“Marcus?”
No one answered.
Livia hoisted herself up. Must be downstairs…
But when she twisted her shoulder, pain shot through her collarbone.
Livia gasped and grimaced as she crumpled into her lap, and she held the cut and breathed until the pain faded to a throb. When she pulled her hand away, she found her fingertip smeared with blood - and it all came back to her, the opera, Hector’s bedchamber, the knife.
Oh. Livia’s head sank into her other palm. Right.
She put her finger on the cut again and pressed to stop the blood, and as she waited, a dull, anxious ache settled in her gut. Better look for Marcus. No. Better search the place for weapons first. If they come for us, I have to be able to defend myself.
And then, as she stared at her toes, she realized something else.
Mira’s blood. I can’t tell Artemisia what’s going on.
She sat up straight and sucked her finger to clean off the blood, then ran through her options. No carrier pigeons. No horse to deliver the news herself. No couriers, no nearby inns, no Syndicate dead drops - nothing to do except sit, and wait, and worry about it, and hide.
Well, she told herself, you can’t do anything until you start your day.
Livia stood up and shuffled over to the dressing table, and opened its wide, creaky drawer and emptied it out. A hairbrush. A toothbrush. A small white bowl to wash her face. A vial the size of her pinky finger of clear moonflower oil. She shook it, took the stopper out, and sniffed it - still good - so she downed it in one gulp and set the vial aside.
But when she picked her dress up off the dresser chair, Livia examined the armpits and put it down. Gods, no. She fumbled under it for her short stays and laced them around her chest, and with a puff of dust, she heaved open the wardrobe doors.
She coughed until the dust settled, then poked her head inside, and thumbed through the hanging ribbons until she found an old white dressing gown. But something piqued her interest, so she laid it on the bed, and sifted through the other clothes to see what else she could find. A few threadbare day dresses from a social welfare shop. A midnight cape Hamid bought her for a heist in Jormunthal. A gray maid’s uniform from when she spied on a treasonous duke, and the leather jerkin she bought with the pay from her first Syndicate thieving job.
And then she dug deeper and pulled out a faded maroon tunic - the one she’d worn the evening she met Queen Delphinia.
Livia sighed and bit her lip as she held the tunic up, and tucked a long, fraying thread back into the plain neckline. She gave it one last look, then hung it up beside the cape - and slowly shut the wardrobe doors and picked up her dressing gown.
•••
Once Livia had gotten dressed, she crept down the dark stairs, and tiptoed into the small kitchen at the end of the hall.
She found Marcus stripped down to his leggings, boots, and turtleneck, and steam puffed up to his face as he tended something over the fire. Livia held onto the doorway as he poked at it with a spoon, and when she craned her neck forward, she smelled garlic and frying meat.
Go on, Livia said to herself. You have to talk to him sometime.
So she pulled her dressing gown around herself and spoke up.
“What’s all this?”
“Breakfast.” Marcus answered without looking at her. “I figured it was the least I could do after I almost got you killed.”
Livia examined the rest of the kitchen. A sunny window. Pottery against the wall. A shelf with dishes and iron cookware, all covered in a layer of dust, and a pair of stools at a wooden table, with used utensils on a chopping board.
“It’s not much,” Marcus muttered, to fill the empty air. “It’s just potatoes and sausage with a little garlic, flour, and milk.”
Livia hesitated - and then she asked, “Where did you get it?”
“There’s a farm down the road from here.” Marcus left the spoon to rest on the side of the pot. “Their fence was broken. I helped the husband nail it back into place. They wanted to pay me in coin, but I asked for something to cook instead.”
Livia bit her lip and didn’t ask anything else.
“Don’t worry,” Marcus added. “They didn’t ask me who I was.”
Livia shuffled closer and peered over the edge of the pot, and sure enough, she saw the potatoes bubbling beside the garlic cloves.
“I didn’t know you could cook.”
“You have a generous definition of ‘cook.’” Marcus stepped away from the fire. “One of my sergeants taught me to make this. I must not have told you about that.”
“No, you didn’t. What happened?”
“Well…” Marcus walked over to the shelf - “I was traveling with a convoy to the Severin capital.”
Livia cut in. “When was this?”
“Oh, about five years ago.” Marcus searched the shelf, but didn’t find what he was looking for. “We’d barely left the fort when we were run down by a mercenary regiment.”
Livia sank onto the nearest stool to stay out of his way.
“Now, the northern countryside is full of hills, and back then we didn’t know them that well. So it was easy for them to surround us before we knew what we’d done wrong.” Marcus opened the cabinet under the shelf and pulled out two wooden bowls. “Long story short, we ended up packed into a cave for the night. We couldn’t fight back until the rest of the convoy arrived.”
Livia laid her arms on the table and took her bowl when he set it down.
“Eventually, the cold caught up to us, and we realized our supplies were pretty grim. We had weapons and blankets, but not much to eat.” Marcus grabbed a cloth to protect his hand. “Until this young sergeant stepped forward and said we had salt pork and potatoes. If we could find flour and water, he could work with that just fine.”
Livia watched as Marcus heaved the pot off the waning fire.
“So he made this, more or less. He’d learned it from his grandmother. He apologized and said it tasted better with garlic and milk.” Marcus set the pot on the table, then grabbed two spoons out of the cabinet. “But we didn’t care. We were so grateful, we all pitched in.”
“Even you?”
“Of course. I wasn’t going to sit there and watch my troops do all the work.”
Livia picked up the cooking spoon, and her stomach growled as she served them both.
“Ligari told me after the fact that I’d done wonders for their morale. I said it was nice, but I wasn’t trying to.” Marcus sat down across from her. “She said it made me…” he shrugged - “more human, or something. I don’t know. I guess seeing their colonel chop potatoes was probably good for a laugh.”
Livia pushed her sausage back and forth to let the heat out.
“I’m sorry.” Marcus looked downcast. “I don’t know why I’m talking so much.”
Livia ate in uneasy silence as his story sank in, and she waited for Marcus to take his first bite before she spoke up again.
“Is he still alive?”
“The sergeant?”
“Yes.”
“He is,
but most of his unit’s gone.” Marcus fished out more garlic, then stuck the spoon back in the pot. “They were run down at the border. Only he and a few others survived. I gave him a guard post in the capital. Keeps him out of the fight.”
Livia took a melancholy bite of potato. “Oh.”
“At least, that’s what I last heard.” Marcus let the heat out of his bowl, too. “I’ve been away from the front so long, everything could’ve changed by now.”
Marcus put his spoon down as his eyes wandered toward the wall - and then they drifted down to the table, tired, pensive, and lost.
“Marcus?” Livia asked.
“Hmm?”
“What’s wrong?”
“You know,” Marcus began - “my father said once, ‘Marcus, it takes a certain kind of man to do this job. You’re not in it for glory. You’re not there for the gilded uniform.’” He propped his chin on his hand and spoke in a soft, reflective voice. “‘You’re there to lead by example. Be firm, but someone they can trust. And that means doing everything in your power to bring them back alive.’”
Livia listened and half-heartedly stirred her potatoes.
“‘The rank was there before you, and it’ll be there after you’re gone. It’s not yours. You’re just taking care of it for generations to come.’” Marcus rubbed his temple and studied the bottom of his bowl. “I let them down, Livia. I ran away when they needed me most.”
“You were trying to bring them home.”
“And they’re still there.” Marcus shook his head. “I failed every single one.”
“Well…” Livia clenched her teeth - “I failed the woman who saved my life. So where do you think that puts me?”
Marcus didn’t respond.
Livia held her forehead. “I’m sorry, I didn’t…”
“I know.” Marcus cut her off. “It’s all right.”
A bird chirped on the windowsill, and the air thickened between them again.
“Thank you for breakfast,” Livia murmured.
“I told you, it was the least I could do.”
•••
As the sun set that afternoon, Livia turned the upstairs rooms upside down, digging through trunks and cabinets and opening every drawer.
There has to be something, she thought, as she unpacked a wicker chest. A dagger, or a disguise, or something to tell her where to go next. But all she found were blankets, so she stuffed them back in and slammed the lid. Dammit, I was so stupid! Why didn’t I make a contingency plan?