Daughter of Ashes (Rise of Aiqasal Book 1)

by Moira Katson

  Alleyne had just begun practicing with the dinner set when the door opened and Margery slipped through.

  “They’re back to saying that you must be the most beautiful woman anyone’s ever seen,” the servant reported.

  Alleyne gave a snort. Each woman brought back to the palace by the nobility had been discussed endlessly. While the women from the city were shrouded in mystery, those who resided in the nobles’ quarters were seen by servants and curious nobles alike, and a storm of speculation now raged as bets were placed on which Darion might favor. Each, in turn, was declared the most beautiful woman anyone had ever seen, each more humble and pious than the last, and sure to catch Darion’s eye and his heart, both. Each, likewise, was receiving the same training as Alleyne.

  Or, mostly the same.

  Margery examined Alleyne critically. “You’re holding that wrong.”

  Alleyne only narrowly refrained from hurling the golden goblet at the wall. She didn’t want to learn how to hold a goblet, or walk in heavy skirts, or play any of the dozen card games that were in fashion lately, or learn to read music, or dance. She wanted to sink a knife into Darion’s chest and be done with it. She gritted her teeth and learned these thing only because she could see no other way forward. Baradun could withdraw his patronage at any time if he thought she would not be a suitable leader of Aiqasal.

  Still, as the days wore on and there was no word of when Darion might examine his potential brides, himself, Alleyne began to wonder if he’d thought better of the whole thing.

  Margery saw her expression, and the strength of her grip on the goblet. “You’ve got to think of it as a game,” she advised.

  That, at least, was new. Alleyne looked up in interest. “How d’you mean?”

  “Well, you want to be Empress Consort, yes?” Margery waved a hand to stave off the protest. “You’re not sure, I know, you said so. But you aren’t going home, either, are you?”

  “Mmm.” Alleyne hoped Margery wouldn’t think any more about that. The woman was uncomfortably shrewd, and a good judge of character, besides: best t’know which nobles’ll hit you, isn’t it? Alleyne did not want the woman putting those talents to work here. “So, a game, then.”

  “Aye.” Margery nodded. Her carefully cultivated manners tended to slip when she was deep in thought; she was, Alleyne had decided, the daughter of a barge family, used to carrying goods up and down the Nahida in any weather. Every once in a while, the tell-tale mannerisms slipped out. Now, she pondered, fingers tapping on the table as she chose her words. “The whole court is a game, see?” Blue eyes fixed on Alleyne’s face. “The ones who know that’re the ones who do best. Nerea, she knew it.”

  “She didn’t win,” Alleyne observed.

  Margery gave her a look. “Game’s not over yet, is it?”

  Alleyne had nothing to say to that.

  Margery’s eyes gleamed with humor. “First rule,” she advised, “is not to get cocky. Second is to remember you’re not just playing one game. You’re always playin’ games inside o’ games, aye? How you lift the goblet, what you eat, how you eat, how you laugh.”

  Alleyne groaned and dropped her face into her hands. “It’s too much to learn.”

  “Ye think nobles were born known’ all of this? No—and they still practice.”

  “Then how am I supposed to win?” Alleyne asked, exasperated.

  “Gods above, but you think like a noble sometimes.” Margery crossed her arms. “It’s a game, right? You have to win the game, right? By playing lots of little games. So the first thing is, you do the best ye can t’only play the little games you can win.”

  Margery stared at her.

  “They’ve all just found out they were playing the wrong games, haven’t they?” Margery asked smugly. “The big game isn’t what they thought, and they still can’t learn that. It was just them for so long, and as ‘is lordship says, now they’re all trying to teach these women to be nobles. You’ll never manage that, any o’ you.”

  Alleyne considered the goblet in her hand. Baradun let her peek through a cleverly carved hole in the wall of his receiving chamber so that she could watch the ladies’ mannerisms, and she had been trying to match their flourishes. Now, however … She paused, and lifted the goblet as smoothly and simply as she could.

  “Aye,” Margery said, in quiet satisfaction. “They’re all trying to be nobles, none of ‘em really asking themselves what it means that he wants a commoner. It’s not just for a bit o’ new, he’s not that type of man. There’s somethin’ he wants—and somethin’ he doesn’t, aye?”

  “Well, yes … but they’ve been doing nothing but ask what it means.” Alleyne practiced the goblet lift as she spoke.

  “Sure, and they’ve been gettin’ nowhere, have they? The Emperor’s playing his cards close to his chest. No one’s going t’know what his plan is before he’s good and ready, if you ask me—and you’re only the second one who’s had the sense to,” she added.

  Alleyne looked over at that. “Who was the first?”

  “His lordship, of course. He knows how much servants know. He’s still more merchant than noble, that one.” It was clear that this was a compliment.

  “Mmm. So, I shouldn’t even try to behave as a noble.” Alleyne looked down at the dinner set. “I have to come up with it all, don’t I?”

  “Aye. And remember, especially with card games—don’t play if you don’t know it as well as they do. And a word of advice, girl, is that you’ll never know the game as well as they do. They’re born with cards in their sleeves, those ones.” She curtsied as the door of the bedchamber opened. “My lord.”

  “Some coffee, please, Margery.” Baradun sounded weary.

  “My lord.” Margery began to pick up the remnants of Alleyne’s breakfast.

  “My lord, are you well?” Alleyne stood as he approached, and made a curtsy of her own, simpler than she would have attempted yesterday.

  “Perfectly well, thank you.” Baradun sank into one of the nearby chairs. “Please, sit. I only meant to ask how your studies were progressing.” His eyes followed Margery absently as the woman whisked away through the servants’ door. “I trust Margery has been an asset to you?” he asked, when the maidservant was gone.

  “Very much so, my lord.” Alleyne considered. “How were your visitors?”

  “Much preoccupied with you,” Baradun said absently. “And the presentation to the court. No, there has not been any word yet,” he added, when he saw Alleyne’s interest. “And I would bet that the Regent has not yet met the others, and neither has the Emperor. Of course, both of them have been preoccupied with the peace treaty.”

  “With Rasteghai?” Alleyne looked up briefly from her practice with the goblet.

  “Yes. Perhaps you’ll not remember it, but some years ago, there was an incident—the Regent sent emissaries to broker a peace treaty in the Rastegh court, and they conspired, instead, to overthrow Darion. Alsebrun, the family was.”

  Alleyne froze.

  Baradun, thankfully, didn’t notice. “They were executed, of course, along with their contact in the Rastegh court—it was a plan to take both thrones, you see, and it had been long in the making.”

  Her parents would never have done such a thing. She tried to think of something to say, anything at all. “It’s good that they were executed, then.” The words tasted like ashes in her mouth.

  “Mmm.” Baradun rubbed at his beard, frowning. “Don’t bring it up at court, mind you—it was a bad business. The lord and lady who did it, no one would have suspected them. It was a shock. Until the confession, none believed it, and to tell the truth—don’t say this, either—some didn’t even believe it, then. They said the family was framed.”

  Alleyne was shaking, through from anger or grief, she could not say. Some had doubted? Little good that had done. None had spoken for her family.

  Baradun swallowed uncomfortably. “That last was … please, forget I said it. It is nothing but court gossip, quite ben
eath a candidate for the throne.”

  Somehow, Alleyne managed to nod.

  “As to the rest of it …” Baradun shook his head. “No. Perhaps it is better not to say.”

  But she had to know. She had to hear this. “You’ve said we shouldn’t allow for surprises. It’s not like the incident itself is gossip, is it?”

  “You’re right, of course. Whoever is Darion’s Empress Consort should know of the event, at least.” But Baradun still looked troubled. “It was a bad business,” he repeated. “The Emperor … took the betrayal hard. There’s a rule, in the court, that a traitor’s crimes are theirs, and theirs alone. They shall blame no one for their actions, but neither shall anyone else bear the burden.”

  Alleyne wanted to scream to him to get on to it, and she forced herself to be still; the air coming off the gardens smelled of the same sweet grass she remembered …

  “He was young, none of us expected he would …” Barardun passed a hand over his brow.

  “What?” Her voice was harsher than it should be.

  “He had the whole family killed,” Baradun said quietly. “There were two children, a boy and a girl. I’ve thought of it often, lately.”

  Alleyne closed her eyes against tears. She wanted to weep and weep, and instead she must lie. She must keep him from wondering why it was that he was suddenly reminded of the Alsebrun family. She should turn the subject, or say prettily that Darion would never do such a thing again—

  “Did no one speak for them? The children?” Her voice was broken. There was too much hope there, and it was tearing her to pieces. She knew the answer to that question.

  There was a long pause. “No,” Baradun said at last, heavily. He was not one to lie. “No one. We were warned not to, that he had his mind set on it. There were rumors that they escaped—the children—but I often thought, well … I think we only told ourselves that out of shame.”

  Alleyne could not speak. She sat with her hands clasped and tried not to scream, to lash out at him.

  The knock at the door startled them both. Alleyne looked away, pressing her nails into her palms to steady herself as Baradun got up to answer the door in the other room.

  “My lord, I bear a letter for Melisande.”

  Her head jerked around at the voice, and she blinked the tears from her eyes as she hurried out of her bedchamber.

  There, in the doorway, resplendent in the uniform of the palace guard, stood Almeric. He bowed, courtly to the last.

  It was all she could do to walk to him gracefully rather than running to throw herself into his arms. She needed the comfort now. She had not allowed herself to think of him, and now her homesickness pressed on her, suffocating. She saw his gaze on her, wondering, and remembered how she must look: her hair taken from its tiny braids and now in a wealth of dark curls, seed pears and ribbons woven through it, bangles at her wrists, gold embroidery on her skirts. Their eyes met as she took the scroll, and she saw him note the tears in her eyes.

  “I will take my leave. My lord, my lady.” He bowed deeply and his eyes lingered meaningfully on the parchment.

  She did not dare nod in answer, and she twisted her hand in the fabric of her dress so that she would not reach out her hand to catch him and keep him here. She wanted to beg him not to leave; seeing the door close behind him made the tears well up anew in her eyes.

  “That’s the imperial seal,” Baradun observed when Almeric was gone. “What does the letter say?”

  The imperial seal. She broke it with more force than was strictly necessary and unrolled the letter. She had told Baradun that the priests taught reading lessons beyond the walls, though she had hidden just how well she could read.

  “It invites me to present myself to him on the Day of Elius.” She frowned. What day was it? She had lost all track of time since she had come here.

  “Seven days.” Baradun’s brows snapped together. “I’ll summon the seamstress. I’ve been thinking, perhaps we should dress you in different fashions entirely. Something simpler, I think.”

  He walked away, murmuring to himself, and only when he was gone did Alleyne dare open the scrap of parchment she’d found inside the scroll:

  Meet me at the east stables, two hours after midnight.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It was said that the palace never truly slept. Lords and ladies—not to mention maidservants and stewards—flitted to and fro on assignations, lone figures in cloaks; the kitchens were quieter, but their fires were never banked; philosophers studied—and argued—late into the night in the academy libraries; guards sat late over games of dice. Even in Baradun’s rooms, it was likely that he would work well into the night, writing letters and balancing ledgers.

  That night, Alleyne was lucky. Baradun had decided to entertain guests, and the sound of her movements was covered by the laughter and harp music coming from the main room. She eased herself up and wrapped a woolen blanket—found earlier that day in a cedar trunk—around her shoulders as a makeshift cloak.

  As she navigated the maze she had built up in her memory, she took care to move slowly and reluctantly, like a servant dragged from her bed and sent on an errand. She could not take the main hallways. Being who she was, it was too dangerous to pretend that she was going to meet a lover. Anyone could recognize her later as Baradun’s offering to the Emperor, and she could not take the chance of being unceremoniously thrown out on her ear before she had a shot at Darion. Instead, she traced a path below the palace proper, through the abandoned kitchens. She had prepared an excuse for if anyone stopped her there, but the rooms were quiet, heat still clinging to the great ovens and hearths, not even rats scurrying in the darkness.

  Almeric waited for her in one of the courtyards near the stables, hovering beyond hearing range of where the stable boys slept on piles of hay. The stables were some of the quietest places after dark, the hostlers being fiercely protective of the horses within. Alleyne wondered at Almeric’s choice, for they would be more easily lost in a crush, but she could not bring herself to care overmuch—she was too grateful for the chance to see him. She half-ran across the gorgeous marble of the Peacock court and threw her arms around him. Her fingers clenched against his back. The tears spilled over her lashes this time.

  “Alleyne?” He pulled away to look at her. His eyes lit once more on the curls, the gown, and came back to rest on her face. “Are you well? Are you safe?”

  “Yes.” She wiped her eyes. “I’ve missed you, that’s all.”

  “And I missed you.” He pulled her back so she could rest her face on his chest. The feel of his arms was comforting. Home. “The first night you were gone, I didn’t know what to do with myself.” He held out a cookie for her, flower shaped: “I thought you could use a taste of home.”

  He was right. She took the cookie, smiling. “I didn’t know what to do, either,” she admitted. Her first night in the palace Baradun had ordered a dizzying array of dishes brought from the kitchens, each more delicious than the last, and she had picked at them and wished she were home. That night already seemed a world away.

  “I sat on the roof all night,” Almeric told her. “I was praying that you were safe. And you are safe, aren’t you, Alleyne? Truly?”

  “As safe as I can be.” Almeric was the one who was good at lying, not she.

  A thought came to her, and she ducked her head to hide a sudden smile.

  “What is it?” He was craning to look at her face.

  “You’re the one who should be here,” she explained. “I bet you still remember it all: which fork to use, how to make a toast, how to bow.”

  “Maybe.” But he was grinning, and she knew he did remember—he’d no doubt been practicing those things in his head since they ran away. He nudged her. “I wish I could watch you try, I bet you’re hopeless at it all.”

  She gave him a thump on the chest, crossly, and nibbled at the cookie he’d brought. “I don’t have to be good at that.”

  They remembered where they were, th
en, and by instinct, both of them looked around themselves.

  Nothing stirred in the shadows, and Alleyne let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. “I just have to be good enough to … see him. I just need one chance.”

  “Not just that,” Almeric said urgently. “Don’t be hasty, wait for a good opening. Don’t let yourself be blinded, remember you’ll need a way out. You might need to wait until you can be … well, until you can be alone with him.” He swallowed uncomfortably.

  “Alone?” She winced at the timbre of her voice and leaned in to whisper fiercely. “What if I don’t make it that far? And it could be months, Almeric.” She could hear the panic building in her voice. Always the anticipation, always the fear. If she had to face months more of it— “I can’t wait that long. I swear to you, I can’t, all I want is to go home—”

  “Shh, shh.” He took her face in his hands, the way their mother used to do. “It’ll be over sooner than that—I heard he wants a bride to present to the ambassador.”

  That stopped her dead. “So soon? How d’you know?”

  “One of the guards overheard a message that was sent: that the Emperor and his bride would be glad to welcome the man to court.”

  “The nobles would pay a fortune to know that.” Alleyne chewed her lip. She lifted her shoulders when she saw his frown at the turn of phrase. “It’s how the servants talk. And it’s true, anyway, the nobles are all going mad—they don’t know a thing.”

  “You’ve been speaking with the servants?”

  She bridled at his tone. “You’ve been speaking with the guards, I’m sure. And how did you think I got here? I didn’t just hope, I listened, like we always do.”