by Moira Katson
It comforted her, and she came to sit with him, resting her chin on her arms and basking in the golden glow of the lamp. “I should assume so,” she said, after a moment. “The philosophers agreed to the idea of it, but they’d need to approve of her, wouldn’t they?”
“Not necessarily.” Almeric was staring off into space. “And he’d be a fool if he tried to secure the court’s approval, they’ll never approve.”
“But he could hardly just present one of them without the court even seeing her,” Alleyne protested. “And that man seemed sure he’d be able to dig up secrets, he talked about truthspeakers. I can use knives, but d’you think that’s going to help me if he actually does set a truthspeaker on me?”
“He won’t.”
“How can you know that?” Alleyne frowned at him. “You know every noble house with an eligible daughter will want to tear those women down. They’ll convince him to do it, you’ll see.” When he said nothing, she knew she was close to persuading him. “I won’t last a week there.” Her voice was low. “You heard them saying they’d use assassins if they had to.”
“D’you think they bargained on one of the women being an assassin, herself?” His smile was genuinely amused. “I’d pay to see their faces when they learned that.”
She smiled back before she could stop herself, but shook her head fiercely a moment later. “No. No. It’s different. It only takes once.”
“You said the same thing about getting a blade into the Emperor’s chest,” he shot back. His voice was hard now. “It’s not how we planned it, I know that, but you don’t need to get the crown, all you need to do is get close enough to him once, one time. A woman he expects to make his bride will have ample opportunity to be near him.” He shook his head stubbornly. “And they can talk about it all they like, but no one can prove anything about how you look.”
“You think it’ll be that simple? Maybe the other plan isn’t sure, but we’ve spent years planning it. In this one …” She dropped her head into her hands. “You say I don’t have to get far enough to face the Emperor’s Truthspeaker, but what if that’s the first thing that happens when I arrive? What if I don’t get a shot at him? Gods know it would hardly be wise of them to let some unknown woman be alone with the Emperor.” She began to laugh, and could not stop. “After all,” she managed, “who knows what a woman like that might do? She might try to kill him!”
He looked away from her.
The laughter died in her throat, and all that was left was emptiness. She tipped her head back, staring at the ceiling through blurry eyes. “I’m never going to get out of that alive,” she warned him. She couldn’t look at him. “You’re the one who always says revenge is no good if we’re dead, aren’t you? Well, I’ll be alone in there. If I fail, there’s no other recourse. You’ll never get in to kill him yourself, after that, they’ll realize there are those who would kill him. They’ll be doubling his guard, tripling it.”
“I’ll come with you,” he said instantly.
“Almeric—“
“I will. With the ambassador coming, they need more guards. I heard from one of the laborers today that the lords are bringing everyone they can in from the outer holdings. I thought it might be a good way to learn the lay of the palace, but I can use it to come with you, instead. I can slip in amongst one of the house guards, and from there to the palace guard.” He stood and came to her. “You won’t be alone,” he promised her. His voice was urgent. “And they won’t recognize you.”
“How do you know?” She looked over at him, and her own doubt tasted like ashes in her mouth. She had always trusted him to keep her safe, and now …
“If they do, you lie.” He reached over to tuck a loose braid behind her ear, and she could see his confusion. “It’s what you planned to do when we snuck in disguised as servants, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” She could hear the reluctance in her voice.
“You made this vow at seven years old,” he whispered. “Over half your life—both our lives—has been spent fulfilling it. You know it was almost impossible that we would ever make it all the way into his quarters to kill him, and you knew we wouldn’t likely survive.”
She sat frozen. They had never, never acknowledged this, and in Almeric’s silence, she had doubted what she knew to be true: that this would cost both their lives. To hear him say it was to take the ground out from under her feet.
Almeric squeezed her hands. “But now we do have a chance. This way, we only fight our way out—and we might be gone before anyone even knows.”
She looked away. Her hands clenched together, and twisted.
“What is it?”
“I don’t want to see the nobles,” she admitted. “They let us be chased down like animals. They let our parents go to their deaths and they never said a word for them.” Her voice was shaking. “I don’t want to go back there.”
He pulled her close, and she could feel him trembling as well. For a moment, they were seven and ten again, hands clasped tight together, feet bleeding, huddled in the shadows of the third gate, beyond anything they’d ever known and entirely alone in the world.
“When this is over,” he promised her, “we’ll go. We’ll never see this place again. I promise you, Alleyne.” His voice was muffled against her hair. “I promise,” he repeated.
“But you can’t promise.” She tore herself away. “No one can promise. And I don’t want to go, anyway—I want to stay and help the city and—”
“Alleyne, we talked about this.”
His voice was measured, and she wanted none of that. When he opened his mouth to keep speaking, she plowed on resentfully. “I’ll have to go back, and look them all in the eyes, and smile at people who would knife me the first time they have a chance—some if they don’t recognize me, some if they do. Don’t pretend that no one would try to kill us to gain his favor. I’ll have to smile at the Emperor and pretend to be overawed. I’ll have to lie to him. I don’t want to do that.”
“Why not?” He was genuinely bewildered.
“Because it feels…” She shook her head helplessly. “Dirty. It’s cheating. I thought I was going to go in there, tell him who I was, see in his eyes that he knew he was finally paying for what he did to Maman and Papa. There was honor in that. I don’t want to pretend to be someone else, simper at him, laugh at his jokes, have to smile when he speaks to me.” Her disgust at the thought made it difficult to speak. It came with a twist of shame and she pressed her hand over her stomach, shoulders hunched, trying to disappear into herself. “That’s … not playing fair.”
“I think that, given the fact that he dies at the end in either case, you can assume neither is better or worse than the other.” Almeric sounded annoyed.
Something inside her snapped.
“Then you lie to him,” she said flatly. “You convince him you’re his friend, and trustworthy, and you stab him when he isn’t looking. You do it.”
She pushed herself up and was gone a moment later, the door slamming behind her.
Chapter Five
The proclamation was made three days later. A shipment of red tea leaves had come in from the far south, and Almeric had wheedled his way into a job for both of them, unloading it from the barge. The day was hot and the sun harsh. Even the ever-present breeze along the river did not seem to touch the heat. Gulls cried as they wheeled high above, expressing their displeasure at this most unsatisfactory shipment: no fish at all, only useless dead leaves.
Still, it was a good job, and the workers moved quickly. Tea leaves smelled sweet, and aside from an excessive amount of shouted cautions at the laborers, the merchant was in a good mood, anticipating good profits in the markets inside the second wall. Not all merchants would be accordingly generous with pay, but this one was, and merchants had a way with faces, everyone knew that. Better he remember hard workers, and allow them all to help with his next shipment. By unspoken agreement, they were making good time as they stepped lightly along the deck of the
barge and carried long, flat crates to the carts.
They were just done, perched on the wharf and taking sips of the water provided—another kindness—when there was a commotion in the markets uphill. A disturbance was making its way from the Gate of Aiqasal east, toward the river. As it grew closer, they could see the crowds were rippling away to create a tight circle, pressed every outward by a ring of guards.
Almeric scrambled up the rigging of the barge, heedless of the merchant’s exasperated call, and held out a hand to pull Alleyne up next to him. There was a palanquin inside the ring of guards, making its way over the rough ground, and a woman in dun-colored robes; a priest of the four gods. She was riding a donkey instead of a horse—as was their way—and she dismounted as the curtains of the palanquin were set aside and a man emerged.
He was noble, you could tell from the absolute terror he was in of being surrounded by the riffraff beyond the third wall. He looked around himself nervously, and a predatory amusement settled over the crowd. They wouldn’t do anything, oh, certainly not. Not with those guards and their spears. But it didn’t do a man any harm to be scared, and you got your amusement where you could.
Alleyne settled back against the rigging with a faint smile. The last few days had been full of silent reproach from Almeric, and she had been wavering—though she would never tell him that. This was a welcome distraction.
Until she realized what it must be. She froze.
“Citizens.” The noble raised his voice at last. It carried over a suddenly-quiet market, disturbed only by the crying of the gulls. “Emperor Darion, second of his name, has issued a proclamation. Five days hence—”
“What’s that?” Almeric murmured. He pointed.
Alleyne squinted into the crowd. Ripples showed the passage of many others through the crowd, but it was some time before one of them emerged into the thinner crowds by the docks. The man’s arms were overflowing with a stack of paper, unbelievably costly.
“He’s carrying pamphlets.”
She didn’t answer. Her hands were clenched around the rigging, and she was trying to remember how to breathe. This was nothing to do with her, she reminded herself.
“—welcome to present themselves at the Gate of Zuaba to be evaluated by the chosen emissary of the Emperor, himself, may the gods preserve him.”
The market descended into chaos, and Almeric gave a low whistle.
“He’s actually doing it. I didn’t think he would. Won’t even let the commoners past the second wall, though.” He raised his eyebrows at Alleyne before remembering the past few days, and looked away hurriedly, clearing his throat. “Shall we go get dinner?”
Alleyne bit back a retort. Almeric had learned long ago that the more he argued, the more Alleyne dug in her heels. Now, accordingly, he was using silence as the most effective tool in his arsenal—though it was a silence that fairly vibrated with tension, and his affect of nonchalance was beginning to grate on her nerves. She followed him down the rigging, muttering a series of oaths that no nobly-born lady was supposed to know.
The rest of the workers were crowded around one of the pamphlets. The women were receiving sly nudges and shouts of encouragement, and Almeric pulled Alleyne back.
“Come on. We should go.”
“I want to see.” Why she did, Alleyne wasn’t sure, but she moved though the crowd as if pulled by an invisible rope. She elbowed a few of the workers aside and reached out to snatch the pamphlet away.
“Oho!” One of the men laughed. He nodded at the closest women. “Watch out, Sia. This one wants your place.”
Alleyne didn’t answer. Her eyes were riveted on the pamphlet, not on the words—THE EMPEROR SEEKS AN EMPRESS CONSORT FROM AMONG THE PEOPLE—but on the drawing. A court artist had rendered Darion’s face in startling detail, so lifelike that she almost wondered if would move: if the lingering smile on his full lips would grow, if he would speak.
He would be thirty by now, and he had grown into his face. That was the only thought in her head. She had seen this face almost every night in her dreams, but it had been the face of a younger man. Of course he would have grown older, she thought stupidly. He wasn’t a child anymore.
He had been an awkward boy, with more height than he knew what to do with. The features were those of a man, and he’d worn them uneasily. He had grown up since then. He wore a beard now, around a mouth that was no longer overlarge, but almost sensual. He had the high cheekbones she remembered, heavy arched brows, the high forehead. The large eyes that had once been wide were now heavy-lidded, however, and the artist had captured the command in that gaze.
Blackest night, running over the soft grass of the gardens, her hand in Almeric’s, almost sobbing with exhaustion but knowing she couldn’t cry out. They were behind her, coming for her. She’d heard the tramp of feet marching toward their family’s apartments.
She swallowed hard. The sounds of the marketplace were back and all too loud. Her hand had clenched around the piece of paper.
“Too much work, not enough beer.” A hand clapped her on the shoulder.
“Or too much beer already,” another retorted. Sia snatched the paper away from Alleyne. “Don’t think you can keep the Emperor all to yourself just by keeping the paper, girl.”
“No. I—” Alleyne was backing away, shaking her head in apology, but she still couldn’t take her eyes from that face.
The wall was ahead of them and she couldn’t climb it, she didn’t know how. Almeric tried to haul her up behind him, but she was so tired. She backed away, sobbing.
Then she heard the scream. The maidservant had stayed behind, telling them all would be well.
She climbed.
“Alleyne?” Almeric was making a path for them through the marketplace, his eyes on the building that housed their tiny set of rooms. He gave a quick glance down at her. “Are you well?”
“I think I’m going to throw up.” She was leaning against him heavily. Her stomach heaved and she kept her mouth shut.
“What was it? Your face went grey. Should I get one of those flyers?”
“No!” The cry was desperate. “No,” she said again, measured. “It was nothing. Just remembering … him.”
“Our new Emperor,” their mother said. She lifted Alleyne up, careless of their dress robes. “Do you see him? He will be wise and just, Alleyne, and he’s sending Maman and Papa on a very special mission.”
He didn’t look wise, young-Alleyne thought, wrinkling her nose. He looked like his crown was a bit too big and his chair wasn’t very comfortable. She didn’t say that, though. You never said things like that at court, Maman had been very clear. You only said things about the Emperor if they were compliments.
“I like his eyes,” she said.
Her mother had laughed. “Well, maybe you can tell him that. I’m sure he’d love to hear it.”
“Don’t let her say that.” Almeric had been eight then, and very conscious of his dignity. His five-year-old sister wasn’t helping matters. “He’s the Emperor. He talks about serious things.”
“I should think he’d be glad of the diversion,” their mother said lightly. “Losing his papa so young.” She lowered her voice, the way she did when she said things that weren’t entirely wise. “I should think he’d be very scared.”
Two years later, she’d been dead, executed in the great courtyard in front of the Gate of Sin-namir. She had died safe in the knowledge that with her confession that she and her husband had failed the Emperor, her children would be spared. It was the way the court worked. It had always been the way the court worked.
Only, that night Darion had sent soldiers for the children as well. An example, the proclamation said. No one could defy the Emperor. It was a betrayal of Aiqasal, itself. The line must be ended.
And when the Imperial Guard had come for two scared little children, when the nobles had looked out their windows, ready to turn the fugitives in, the world beyond the third wall had shielded them. Alleyne knew there had
been people who saw them in the days after that. She’d caught eyes lingering on the two of them in the tatters of too-nice clothing. But no one beyond the third wall had even thought of turning them in.
How could she go back? How could she leave this place?
“I have to—I have to go.” She pushed Almeric away. “I have to be alone.”
“Alleyne, don’t—“
She didn’t wait to see how he finished that sentence. She just ran, ducking away from him in the crush of the marketplace, and though he tried to follow her, she was smaller, easily lost in a crowd.
Feet pounding on cobblestones, on rough paving stones, on the shallow stairs by the cart ramps, on dirt and gravel.
She had never thought, until now, what it would be like to creep through those gardens once more, see the familiar halls. It didn’t matter how she got into the palace, whether it was scaling the walls or being ushered through in a pretty dress. It didn’t matter if she fought her way to the end of the hall with blood on her sword, or if she was dancing and feasting her way to the imperial quarters.
Either way, she was going to have to face him.
Chapter Six
She wound up in a tavern off the river, close and crowded, stinking from the tallow candles that gave off more smoke than light. She found a place near the back, away from the crush of laborers shouting and merchants still dealing, and curled her hands around her mug.
She’d had a plan, and that plan was to get roaring drunk, but she had forgotten to account for the fact that she hated beer. Accordingly, she was staring morosely into a full earthenware mug when Almeric found her. Herbs floated in the foam at the top of the glass and she skimmed her fingers through to pull them out; it seemed a never-ending task.