Daughter of Ashes (Rise of Aiqasal Book 1)

by Moira Katson

  Almeric did not see it the same way. “I have told you that she cannot be trusted.”

  “You’ve only met her twice,” Alleyne observed. “And then, only for a moment.”

  There was a moment of silence. She did not challenge him in such things, as a rule. In fact, she could not think of a time when she had, before they came to the palace; it had never occurred to her to do so. When he cautioned her against friendships with the other dock workers, when he warned her not to confide of their past in kindly landladies or fellow street urchins, she had not doubted his advice. He was her elder brother, he knew everything.

  He did not understand this. The depth of her conviction surprised even her. She lifted her chin and gave him her court smile, discomfited by it and yet resolute in equal measure. “Margery serves me,” she said simply.

  “I hope you are correct, then.” His disbelief was palpable. He raised his eyebrows. “So. Why did you call me here?”

  “You never told me Maman was a mage.” She was stung by his tone, and answered more sharply than she might have otherwise, going to a point that would strike him more than Jarin’s strange behavior. Even then, she hoped to see some of her own surprise on his face, and at his guilty look she felt a surge of anger. “Why did you not tell me?”

  “It was never important.”

  “Truly, Almeric.”

  “It was one more secret, and you had enough trouble keeping those you already had!” His voice rang out in the night air and he quieted himself with an effort. “You were seven, Alleyne. You couldn’t be trusted with that kind of information.”

  “I haven’t been seven this whole time.” She stared him down. “You make a lot of fuss over being three years older.”

  “Alleyne.” His voice was weary. “Why question this now?”

  “Because this is not how it should have been,” Alleyne whispered. She blinked back tears and took refuge in her anger. “We should have stuck to the plan we had. It still would have worked. Then I wouldn’t …” doubt.

  She also would not know of the plot. She would not realize that she was furthering the ends of those who desired glory in war, those who did not reckon the cost on Aiqasal’s people.

  She did not notice Almeric’s total stillness until it was too late. “Alleyne.” His voice was even, and far too quiet. “Who told you about Maman?”

  She could see the conversation branching away: she would tell him it was Margery, and he would ask what Alleyne had told the maidservant for her to offer up such information. She could not tell him that she had asked for the truth—for she must not, not ever, tell him that Margery knew everything. The thought of his anger was truly frightening.

  She fought the urge to swallow nervously. “I told you that Lord Baradun mentioned Maman and Papa.”

  “And?”

  And she’d hoped he would make up his own story for the rest of it. She shook her head, as if impatient. “I asked her if it was all true—she said she hadn’t been at court then, but she asked questions and brought me what she learned.”

  “As long as no one traced it back to you,” he said quietly. There was defeat in the words. “If word gets out that Lord Baradun’s ward is asking questions …”

  “It won’t,” Alleyne promised him. She hesitated. “There was more. It wasn’t just that she was a mage, that was only a piece. The story Margery heard was that it was a falling out between mages—Maman, and one who was very powerful and ruthless.”

  Almeric took her by the shoulders. “These are fairy tales,” he said gently. “Nothing more.”

  “Hear me out,” Alleyne protested. “The maid Margery heard this from, she said the plot to take the thrones was real. Hear me out,” she repeated, when Almeric opened his mouth. “Maman and Papa learned of it, and got caught up in it—they didn’t back it, and so whoever it was who had made it, that mage had them executed.”

  There was a long silence. “What of it?” Almeric said finally. “Does it make any difference?”

  “Of course it does!” Alleyne struggled to find the words. “Didn’t you ever wonder what happened?” she asked him finally. “All of it?”

  “Does it make any difference?” Almeric asked again. His voice was raw. “He gave orders to kill us. What did the maid say about that?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. But, Almeric, what if he truly believed Maman and Papa were guilty?”

  “It wasn’t long after they came back from Rasteghai—it’s not as if he struggled with the decision in any way.” He fairly spat the words. “He’s a murderer, Alleyne, it’s just degrees of that.”

  And then his face changed. He stepped back from her, suddenly watchful.

  “Alleyne …”

  “It’s nothing,” she said at once. The wrong answer, and she did not know how to make it right. “I just never knew, and I wanted to. That’s my right.”

  He ignored that. With a predatory instinct, he knew there was more to it than that. “You’ve seen him again. Haven’t you?”

  “Of course I have. You know I was called in to see him and the Truthspeaker.”

  She had hoped to divert him, and her wish was granted. His eyes went wide. “The Truthspeaker? They said the women had been questioned, but I thought—well, you were cleared.”

  “Yes.” She folded her hands. “There a great many things to tell you.”

  He gave her a look. “You’re just like a court lady when you stand like that.” He meant the words to be cutting, she could tell.

  “You were the one who always reminded me that I was,” she pointed out. She felt a strange confidence growing in her breast. “And does that matter? He did something very strange, Almeric. I could swear to you that he did not look inside my mind at all, only …” The truth trembled on her lips: that Jarin had seen something in her that frightened him.

  “Only?” Almeric asked. He was frowning, worried.

  “He pretended to,” Alleyne finished. There was a strange pain in her chest. She could not recall ever lying to Almeric before she came here, and now …

  They were working toward the same goal. It was just that there were things he didn’t understand, risks he wouldn’t take—and risks he would, like storming the Truthspeaker’s chambers, and killing him before Alleyne could find the whole plot for the throne. She would tell Almeric everything when it was done. Everything but …

  She had a sudden, vivid memory of Darion leaning close to her, his mouth scant inches from hers, and a stab of heat shot through her. She could not speak of that, not when the mere memory of it made her almost sick with anticipation. Her heart was racing again.

  Almeric, thankfully, attributed her look to the memory of the Truthspeaker. His hands were warm on her arms. “No one knows much of the Truthspeakers’ art,” he said reassuringly. “It could be that he is nothing more than a fraud.”

  Alleyne stared back at him wordlessly. She could not say that she knew otherwise without admitting to far more than that.

  “Or perhaps you are protected from him somehow.” Almeric shook his head. “It does not matter. What matters is that the gods have given us another chance.”

  Another chance to kill Darion. She swallowed, nodded.

  “Alleyne.” He sounded so kind that she felt tears come to her eyes. “That day in the garden, there was no way you could have killed him and escaped. There were guards everywhere. Even the two of us together could not have made a retreat—I know I was angry, but I was wrong. Do not take it to heart.”

  “But it’s every time!” The tears spilled out then. She wiped at them with the back of her hand, wanting to burrow against him for comfort and feeling like that was a child’s wish. “It was then, it was in the audience chamber—there were only three of them, I could have done it if I wasn’t such a coward—and in Baradun’s rooms, and that first night …” She dropped her face into her hands.

  “When you were in the imperial wing?” Almeric asked softly.

  “Yes.” Alleyne wiped at her eyes again and looked
up, only to freeze at the look in his eyes.

  “So it was you.” Almeric’s voice was as cold as deepest winter. There was almost a look of satisfaction in his eyes. “You were the woman who was found in the imperial quarters that night. You saw him alone.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Her heart was pounding, she could not think. He was never supposed to have known this. “Almeric—” He advanced on her and she backed away, truly frightened now. “Listen to me, it was the night you and I met the first time here, and—”

  “Don’t try to explain. A woman was found in the Emperor’s chambers, a woman alone, a woman who caught the Emperor’s heart so that he went to visit her the next day and walk with her in the gardens.” His voice held a rising fury, and she saw a strange satisfaction at the look of fear on her face. “Oh, yes, Alleyne, I know all of it. The servants gossip, didn’t you say so? I didn’t dream it was you when I first heard of it. It couldn’t have been you, after all. You would have seized the chance. You were alone with him, weren’t you?” He had reached her at last, her back up against the wall and nowhere to run, and his hand rose. She flinched away, but his fingers only dragged along the outside of her cheek. “What did you do?” he asked softly. “What did you say, that enchanted him so?”

  Her breath was coming in gasps. She had never been so frightened in her life, and where her fear of the Emperor made her feel as if she were soaring, high up in the heavens, beyond any mortal sphere, this fear narrowed her world to the tiny, dark room, and the utter terror of what was coming.

  “You wanted me to enchant him.” The words were strangled.

  “So you could get him alone!” His voice was a sudden roar. He shoved away from the wall with an oath, turned to pace across the room. When he looked over his shoulder at her, there was no warmth there. “Tell me truly, Alleyne … why did you not kill him that night?”

  “I …”

  “Don’t even think of lying to me.” The words were soft.

  She hung her head. “He was only a man,” she said finally.

  “What?” Whatever Almeric had expected, it was apparently not this.

  “I expected him to be … like a statue.” Alleyne swallowed. “I thought he would be cruel, he would … hit me or try to use me. He’s a murderer, isn’t he? I thought he would be different. I thought it would be easy to hate him.”

  “Is it not easy to hate him?” His tone was like silk.

  “I hate everything he is.” The words were a prayer. A wish, rather than reality. “I didn’t mean to find him that night, though. I came out of the servants’ corridors and he was just there. And he laughed and was kind to me and I—I just ran, that was all, Almeric, I just ran, I didn’t enchant him! I kept seeing the blood in my head, blood everywhere, and he was smiling at me and I was so afraid.”

  She shuddered when she felt Almeric’s arms around her, but he was holding her close, whispering her name as he rocked her, and she felt herself start to relax.

  “We should never have planned on it being you,” he murmured against her hair.

  Alleyne craned to look up at him. “It made sense.” The fact helped her regain some of her footing. “They’d underestimate a woman, you always said so.”

  “But I was asking my little sister to kill.” He looked genuinely miserable. “I didn’t even think of it that way.”

  “I was the one who said we should stay.” Alleyne pulled away and folded her arms over her chest. “Precisely for that reason.”

  “Yes, but—what do you know of killing?”

  “What do you know of killing?” She gave him a look when he shrugged his shoulders. “Exactly. It wasn’t—” She broke off. She did not know what to say. It had been a miscalculation, evidently. She clenched her hands and tried to wash herself of the shame.

  “I’ll do it.” Almeric’s voice was smooth and even.

  “What?” Her eyes flew to his.

  “I’ll kill him. I should never have asked you to. Of course you didn’t want to kill, Alleyne, you were always so kind as a girl. You’re so gentle.”

  Her pride was pricked now. “I’ll do it.”

  “You’re not a killer,” he told her simply. “It’s not a failing.”

  “I will do it.” Her voice was hard. “Me.”

  “Do you want to?”

  She refused to let herself answer that question. All she knew was that the thought of Almeric going to Darion, running him through with a sword and leaving his body to be found in his rooms, filled her with panic. She could not let him do it.

  Fear made her inventive. “There are only four of us left. The candidates, I mean. He will have to come see me again, won’t he? I will do all I can to play the innocent and encourage him to defy his uncle and see me alone.”

  “But—”

  “I failed,” she said bluntly. “And I’m ashamed of that. If you do this now, I will always know that I failed Maman and Papa. Don’t … don’t do that.”

  It wasn’t even true, and it surely was not fair, but it worked. She had known he could not be cold to her when she spoke such a sentiment. Almeric’s eyes closed for a moment.

  “Very well. One more shot. You have two days, Alleyne.”

  “I need to find the truth of that plot.” The words came to her lips and she held his gaze. “They are still out there. I need to confront them. Listen to me. We want to kill Darion and go, but it isn’t that simple anymore. If I kill him—when I kill him—I cannot live with knowing that I started a war, Almeric. And don’t say it wasn’t my plan. I know of it. I cannot behave as if it does not exist.”

  Almeric hesitated.

  “Help me find out who they are,” Alleyne told him softly. “As soon as we know, as soon as we can expose them to the court, then it doesn’t matter who sits on the throne, does it? We can kill Darion then.”

  Her brother wavered, but she knew he could hear their father’s voice in his head, reminding him of what war cost a nation. He sighed. “Very well.”

  Relief made her knees weak, and she knew better than to ask herself why. “I have to go. I will send for you if I learn more.”

  “Alleyne.” His voice was even, stopping her on the threshold. “Find the information quickly. We’re in this too deep as it is. If you cannot find the truth, if you cannot finish this—I will.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The days passed quickly. Darion came to pay his respects, always accompanied by the Regent, always perfectly behaved in front of his uncle, but the visits were brief. The Emperor was much occupied with the coming visit of the Rastegh ambassador, now nearing Aiqasal’s borders, and the court, already guaranteed to be a swirl of activity with the edict and the selection of a bride, had reached a fever pitch. It had taken little time for those nobles without a candidate to rally behind those with one. A not-insignificant number had aligned themselves with Lady Dianne’s family, the Kelladros clan. Some had even decided to lend their support to the young women brought from the city and otherwise lacking allies, perhaps in the hopes that the women would remember their kindness later.

  The bulk, however, had seen the way the wind blew and had come to pay their respects to Baradun. There were those who spoke heartily of joint trade deals, those who had just now remembered what a fine boy Teros was—not a boy any longer, truly? Married? Oh, what a shame. And he had a daughter? Was she betrothed yet?—and a great many who had no excuse at all for their presence and merely came to set eyes on the fabled Melisande. There were so many that Baradun had Alleyne locked in the tiny bedroom and its adjoining reading room. It seemed that hardly a group came to see Baradun without at least one member surreptitiously trying the door, and meanwhile there was nothing for Alleyne to do but read and pace.

  And worry. With every passing day that Margery could find no further information, Alleyne heard the whisper of her brother’s threat: if you cannot finish this, I will. Locked in these chambers as she was, how could she find Jarin and demand the truth?

  But to sl
ip out into the halls would be as terrifying as it was tempting. With each meeting came the familiar surge of fear, never dulled, that a noble would see the slant of her mother’s eyes or her father’s full mouth. Her parents’ execution was not so far from the courtiers’ minds as it might be: as the court prepared for the Rastegh delegation, Margery reported that she heard murmurs of the Alsebrun name.

  “They wonder if the matter is truly ended,” she told Alleyne at the end of one long day. “There’s a rumor that the Rastegh King is not best pleased to be making a peace with Aiqasal after what happened.”

  “Oh?” Alleyne met Margery’s eyes in the mirror. She was sitting, trying to be patient as Margery took the ribbons out of her hair and formed two plaits. It was uncomfortably luxurious to be attended to this way, all the more so while Alleyne sat on a cushioned seat, dressed in a silk dressing gown. In her mind’s eye she could see the little rooms she and Almeric had shared, with thin pallets on the floor, only a single change of clothes and not even a comb for their hair.

  Her eyes, sliding closed in contentment, jerked open when Margery’s comb found a snarl.

  “Ye’re half-asleep,” the maid observed. “Is it so tiring, being shut up in a room? I can continue on the morrow, if you’d like.”

  “No.” Alleyne shook her head, a constrained movement with her hair still grasped in Margery’s hands. “Tell me.”

  “Well, it’s said that the king thinks yer mother and father seduced his sister.”

  “What?”

  “Not like that—they told her she could have the throne, if only she overthrew her brother, and they’d make Aiqasal a patron state to Rastegh. The king still hates their memory, it’s said, and those who believe that story think the offer wasn’t even real, but that Aiqasal wanted to reclaim Rastegh for its own, not the other way around.”

  Alleyne considered this. Her instinctive defense of her parents was not worth giving now; Margery knew her opinions on the matter. But the rest of the court …