Daughter of Ashes (Rise of Aiqasal Book 1)

by Moira Katson

  “Are there those in our court who believe it?”

  Margery shrugged. “Who knows if they do or if they don’t? The question is, who stands to gain by saying it—or denying it?”

  She never remembered to think of it that way. Alleyne chewed her lip and watched Margery’s deft hands in the mirror. Her hair was already escaping, tiny strands catching the glow of the evening’s magelights, and Margery frowned at each new stray curl.

  “Do you believe it?” Alleyne asked finally.

  “The plan, or that it was your parents?” Margery asked bluntly.

  “The plan.” She did not dare ask what Margery thought of her parents. The woman had a prodigious talent for understanding the behavior of the court, and Alleyne was not sure her own faith could easily survive Margery’s doubt.

  “It makes no less sense than any other plan,” Margery said, after a moment’s thought. “Even if we don’t accept the whispers about a battle between mages, it’s a difficult thing to lay a credible plot against the throne. There are too many people who might talk. Say what ye will of the Regent, I canna think he’d convict two beloved peers of the realm without good evidence.” She saw the look in Alleyne’s eyes. “Or the semblance of it,” she amended.

  “Then we have to find out where he found the evidence,” Alleyne concluded. “And what it was.”

  Margery sighed. In the act of tying a ribbon around the end of one plait, she looked up to meet Alleyne’s eyes. “Do you think I’m a mage?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because the evidence is likely in the royal vaults, and as to who gave it to him, I’ll wager that can only be learned only from the Regent, hisself.” She examined Alleyne’s hair critically. “And I don’t know how ye’d expect me to get that out of him,” she added flatly. “I’m not trained as a bed servant.”

  “They train people for that?”

  “Sometimes I think you didn’t really grow up beyond the third wall.”

  “I did so!”

  “Are you saying you really came to the palace without even knowing there were tricks to be used?”

  Alleyne met her eyes in the mirror. “I wasn’t here to win the crown.”

  “And why not, then?” Margery went to turn back the covers on the curtained bed. She gave Alleyne a knowing look. “Ye think it was a shame that the court never spoke for ye, ye want them to acknowledge what they did. How best to right matters than to be their Empress Consort? As his wife, you—”

  Her heart gave a strange sideways leap. “I do not want to spend my life looking over my shoulder for enemies.”

  “You’ll only be able to do that if you find them.” Margery was not put off in the slightest. She came to dab perfume behind Alleyne’s ears and in the hollow of her throat. “And you can only do that at court.” She gave a small smile. “Who knows, perhaps the Regent will even come to accept you in time.”

  “He’d kill me before he’d see me on the throne.” Alleyne had not confided in Margery about the conversation in the bathhouse, but it was widely whispered that the Regent was no proponent of Darion’s plan.

  Margery shrugged. “Him against the Emperor,” she said, as if not much troubled by the thought. “Th’Emperor has the Imperial Guard … and I’d wager you’re accustomed to wielding a knife, yerself.” Her eyes gleamed with secrets, and she laughed at the look on Alleyne’s face. “Of course I found it. Couldn’t you think of a better place to put it than under the mattress?”

  “Did you tell …”

  “No. I know what it is to be alone in the court, and I’ve learned to judge who’ll hurt a person just because they can. You aren’t a killer.”

  But that’s something you can learn, isn’t it? Alleyne held the question back and went to the bed obediently. “I don’t want to be Consort,” she said, a futile defiance.

  “Then ye’d best tell His Majesty,” Margery said simply. She tucked the covers in around Alleyne, shielding her from the chill that seeped in through the shutters. “For he’s set to announce his choice in ten days.”

  “Margery!” Alleyne sat bolt upright, the covers coming down around her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought you knew.” Margery shook her head. “Baradun heard of it earlier today. Perhaps he thought you’d be listening at the door.”

  “Well, I wasn’t, and I didn’t hear of it.” Alleyne threw the covers back and rubbed at her face. “What do I do?”

  “Sleep,” Margery advised.

  Alleyne lay back reluctantly. “Perhaps I won’t be chosen.” She could not tell if the sensation she felt at the thought was relief or pain.

  “Little chance of that. He’s seen each of the others once, but never alone.” Margery’s hands stilled on the blankets. “Isn’t it better this way?” she asked quietly. “You can find the truth and stop the plot from the throne more easily than you can from where ye are now. With him as your ally …”

  Alleyne only turned her face away. She might have told Margery more than Almeric would wish, but she could not confide this last piece of the plan.

  Margery waited, but when Alleyne did not answer, she dimmed the magelight and went away quietly, leaving Alleyne to stare at the ceiling and pray.

  Sleep did not come, however, and as the palace descended into its half-slumber, Alleyne pushed back the covers, rose, and slipped out into the palace.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  She found her way to Jarin’s rooms easily this time. With a proper cloak over her gown and a length of cloth wrapped over her hair, she was only another servant, wide eyed with exhaustion, a shadow in the night. She paused briefly at the entrance to the Philosophers Court, but hurried away when she heard the steady clank of a patrol.

  This time, she knocked on the door and waited. There was a distant flare of light in the room—the door to the inner chamber had opened, she supposed—and the door opened to reveal the Truthspeaker’s tired face. The eyes went flat when he saw her, and he tried to close the door.

  It did not work. She was into the room a moment later, driving him back. The door closed behind her with a soft snick and she stared at him in the darkness.

  He did not speak. He swayed slightly; she could smell wine on his breath. He was still wearing his green robes, somewhat rumpled and askew, but not a sound came from the other chamber. He was alone, either studying late into the night or kept awake by his thoughts as she had been kept awake by hers.

  “You don’t look well.” Her voice was soft, an observation she had not meant to give voice to.

  He lifted one shoulder. He had lost weight since she first saw him, and in the half light, the hollows under his eyes gave him a skeletal look. He did not speak.

  “It’s killing you,” Alleyne said finally. “What you’re doing—what you’re preparing to do—to Darion. It’s tearing you apart.”

  He shuddered at the name and his head dropped. “Why are you here?”

  She had not expected to hear such hopelessness. There was no anger left in him. “To ask what is so important to you that you would gamble the future of all Aiqasal for revenge on a man you do not even hate.”

  He began to laugh. It was a sound for nightmares, a sound of utter despair. His voice was hoarse. His thin chest shook with the sound. “Did they send you to test me?”

  Alleyne paused. The conversation in the kitchens came back to her in a rush, the lord questioning Jarin, and Jarin responding with resolve and hatred and grief all tumbled together in his voice.

  But why—why—would he think she was a piece of the plot? She opened her mouth to speak, and the answer came to her in a dizzying rush.

  “I’m not their assassin.” There was a stricken pause. Should she have admitted that? Alleyne went to him, driven by instinct alone, to chafe his cold hands. She looked up into his face. “They will ruin this country and you know it.” Her voice was low.

  “Do not … try to sway me.” His eyes were closed. “I am loyal.”

  “To whom?” The words w
ere flat.

  “To the plan. Pretend as you will. I know what you are.”

  “But I am not!” Alleyne shook her head desperately. “I am not,” she repeated. “And neither are you, not really. You swore loyalty to them—for what reason, I do not know, but you did—and now you repent of it. I say again, you do not want Darion dead, and you do not want the war. What can you possibly want?”

  “Justice.” His lip cracked as he smiled bitterly. “You, of all people, should understand. Justice for all of them.” The last words were spoken bitterly and he jerked away from her. “You, of all people, should understand,” he repeated.

  “Justice for what?” She tightened her fingers around his. He would not answer, and she shook her head. “For whom?”

  “Do you have the first idea how many have been ruined at this court?” He shook his head hopelessly. “This place is nothing but decay. What do you think there is here worth saving?”

  The pieces fell into place at last. “And Darion spoke to you of how he wants to change Aiqasal, and now you are regretting your part in the plan.”

  He flinched at her words. “He is as guilty as the rest of them!”

  “Is he?” She had seen her guess hit home. “What I believed him guilty of, he might not be. What has he done since, that you think—”

  “You fool.” The words were soft, but there was a weight of years behind them. “You think he is innocent of that? Is that why you have not yet acted?”

  “I have … not had a chance.” She looked away from him.

  “You think you will prove him innocent,” Jarin accused. “You hope that if you only tarry long enough, the maid who serves you will unearth something to exonerate him. She will not, I tell you now.”

  “How do you know?” She flared up at that. “Since coming here, I have learned that he might well have believed my parents guilty.”

  For some reason, Jarin flinched at that. When he spoke, his voice was rough. “Ask him, then. He will not lie to you.”

  Her hands clenched around the rough fabric of the cloak. “I will.”

  “Will you?” He looked over at her, a shadow of a smile on his lips. “Or are you afraid to?”

  She drew herself up. “That is none of your business.”

  “If you are our assassin, it surely is.”

  “I am not!” She searched desperately for words. “Believe that or not as you will,” she said finally, turning his words back on him, “but I am not. That is why you told Darion I was loyal, is it not?”

  He hesitated. Nodded.

  “You were wrong,” she told him simply. She remembered the Regent’s surprise and felt a wave of pity. Whether it was habitual caution, or some long-dormant memory, he knew she was a danger to his nephew. He had hoped to expose her then, and now … She shook her head. That was not important now. “And if it is not me,” she asked Jarin, “then what is their plan?”

  For the first time, uncertainty crossed his handsome features. He walked slowly to one of the tables and sat; he moved like an old man.

  “If it is not you,” he said at last, “then there is another assassin somewhere in this palace, another one seeking Darion’s death. You know where suspicion will fall, and so you know how it must happen: no witnesses, or very few. You … you were perfect: if the court did not learn your true identity, you would be an example of why the edict was always misguided.”

  “There would hardly be a reason to prove that if Darion was dead,” Alleyne pointed out.

  Jarin ignored that. “And if they did learn who you were, you would seem to be carrying on your parents’ legacy.”

  Alleyne made a strangled sound, and Jarin smiled almost cruelly. “You really don’t understand the court, do you? How is it that you can be so naïve after what happened to you?”

  “Death is simple. Running is simple.” She tried not to spit the words at him, but her tone was far from even. “Do not call it a failing that I do not understand the way everything in this court is twisted, and twisted again. Life was simpler outside the palace.”

  The humor faded from his face; in its wake, he looked almost wistful. “I remember the city beyond the third wall,” he said finally. “I ran there once, myself.”

  Despite herself, she was curious. She drew closer. “When? Why?”

  His expression closed off. “It is not impor … it is not for you to know.”

  She looked down at the ground. She was shaken by the depth of grief in his tone, she did not know what to say to him. Had he, too, suffered loss at Darion’s hands? He must have.

  “You should go.” He had turned his back on her. He walked slowly to the door of his inner chambers. When he stopped, he did not look back. “Choose as you will with Darion; I will not stop you. But know this—if you do not kill him, you will buy him no reprieve. He will still die, and soon.”

  “When?” She forced the word out.

  “’In good time.’” Jarin lifted one shoulder as he quoted, a courtly gesture to the last. “Or so I am told.”

  His act of nonchalance disgusted her. “I will stop you.”

  “You will not.” Now he did look at her. “In another world, we might have been allies.” His eyes were not unkind. “But you were not made for this world, and I would see you free of it.”

  “Why? Why do you care?”

  Almost she thought he might answer her truly, but after a moment, he only shook his head. “Do not ask Darion for the truth,” he told her. “You do not want to hear it from his lips. If you are going to kill him, do it soon—and if you are not, leave now. You have seen the court, you know how this ends if you do not leave.”

  She shook her head. She did not know. “How?”

  “You will be twisted until you hardly know yourself.” Certainty and experience were heavy in his voice; it broke on the words. “You will be turned against all that you love, and you will love all that you must destroy. That is what the court does. Alleyne …” He took two steps toward her and checked himself. “Go now,” he said fiercely. “If you believe anything, believe that you do not want to hear him speak the truth. Believe that you are not safe here. You are not a killer.”

  She had been drawn in by his words, but now she stepped back, drawing herself up. “I can be.”

  “Then you will lose all that you are,” he told her flatly. He was gone the next moment, the door to his inner chambers closing with almost excessive gentleness, and she was alone in the darkness.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Did she ask Darion for the truth of it, or did she not? Alleyne spent the next morning in solitude, wordless as Margery fitted her with another exquisite gown. So close to the announcement itself, Baradun had decreed that Alleyne always be attired fit for an Emperor. Her gowns seeming to be no more than any serving girl might wear until one saw the perfection of the fit and the elegance of the fabrics. Were Darion to arrive at Baradun’s rooms without notice, he would find Alleyne reading quietly, a vision of the simplicity Darion craved in this jeweled, lying court.

  The fact that the simplicity itself was a lie elicited only dull acceptance. What was that lie, compared to the others she had spoken? She was drowning in lies. She did not need Jarin’s warnings, nor did she need to wait to see if his prophecy would come true. Hadn’t she already been twisted beyond recognition?

  If she ran, however, that would be a defeat. It would be to sacrifice everything—without hope of recovery. There was only one path forward: stay, and find the truth. It would destroy her to know she had been broken and defeated, to leave without hearing Darion’s confession.

  She waited as dawn broke, and an early storm rumbled in the north, covering the gardens in a patter of rain. She waited as the sky cleared and she read a slim volume of poems about Empress Sele, written by her common-born consort. It was her own book, presented to her by Baradun, the first thing she could remember owning beyond the clothes on her back.

  She could take no joy in it. Even the beauty of the poems seemed a reproach. Wh
en Margery appeared with a tray of fruit and tea, Alleyne accepted the distraction gratefully. She was so absorbed in peeling an orange that she did not notice Margery’s distracted silence until the woman dropped a tea glass, spilling the scented liquid across the rug with a muttered oath.

  “What is it?” Alleyne dropped to her knees on the rug, retrieving a filigreed spoon and several lumps of sugar.

  “You’re not supposed to be doing that,” Margery said shortly. “You’ll get tea on your skirts.”

  Alleyne sat back in the chair hesitantly, and at length, Margery sat back on her heels and sighed.

  “I can’t find any trace of this plot,” she said at last. “For the throne. For the war.”

  Alleyne tilted her head curiously. “And that disturbs you?” She had not guessed that Margery would take the quest for information to heart.

  “’Course it does.” The woman fairly snapped the words, her merchant accent emerging more strongly than usual. “Ye think only nobles can care about plots fer the throne? I got a brother they’d call fer the army, you know, and my family runs goods from Rasteghai sometimes—that, and all caravans’ll be in danger if there’s a war. But what do you care about that?” The resentment was clear in her voice.

  “I …” Alleyne shook her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. You’re right, of course.”

  “I am.” Margery seemed somewhat mollified by the sentiment. “And I know ye know it—a bit, anyway. Ye told me so the night you asked for my help.”

  “It’s one thing to know, and another to understand.”

  “Huh?” Margery frowned over at her.

  “It’s something my mother used to say.” Alleyene poured the tea herself, trying to remember what she’d been taught about how one held one’s arm, and how one handed a cup of tea over. “Sit. Tell me where you’ve looked. At least if we’re finding nothing, we know where there’s nothing to be found.”

  “I’m not so sure of that,” Margery said darkly. “Lots of servants who used to be around, and no one’s seen ‘em lately. Now, they might’ve gone to estates, or found work in the city, but there’s a lot of them, and even if they did disappear after overhearing a mite too much …” She shrugged. “There are a lot of secrets people would kill for, not just this one.”