by Kate Elliott
Even if the Efeans immediately surrendered and begged the pardon of the new king and queen, the chief officials of the Efean rebellion would be captured and sentenced to death in the mines. Kal and my father wouldn’t be able to stop it even if they wanted to. All across Efea there would be a series of executions to set an example and restore order. And everything would go back to being what it was.
But so far the Saroese don’t know how widespread the Efean revolt is. Until they figure it out, we have that advantage.
As for Gargaron himself, I now know how to defeat him.
That leaves Kal, heir to two thrones.
I still love him, and I do still trust him, but maybe there is no way out of the pit of vipers where he’s fallen; maybe he’s already been stung. Maybe there can be only tears and loss, just as everyone has kept telling him and me all along.
Amaya loves tragic stories of heartbreak and doomed lovers. But I don’t.
I like to win.
“We need a bold strike of our own,” I say to my disbelieving audience.
Thynos slaps me on the head just as he would at Garon Stable. “That’s impossible. General Esladas’s firebird veterans and the Royal Army will cut us to ribbons on the battlefield. Add the West Saroese troops to his command, and it doesn’t matter that we outnumber them both in bodies and in righteousness, because we have too many inexperienced recruits with not enough weapons.”
“That’s why we can’t meet them on the battlefield. Our path to victory is a matter of narrow openings, perfect timing, and a daring piece of risk-taking.”
“We’re at war, not on a Fives court.”
“A Fives court is exactly where we need to confront our adversaries.”
He shakes his head impatiently, not understanding and waving a dismissive hand, but I keep going. I can tell the Shipwrights are curious. Maybe their interest is only that of people watching a wagon careening toward a wreck, but I have their attention.
“The Garon alliance hasn’t yet realized you are working for the Efean rebellion,” I say to Thynos. “Meanwhile no one trusts the East Saroese, not even as prisoners. I can’t imagine anyone trusts the West Saroese either, considering they were part of the old Saro alliance just a few months ago.”
“True enough. What’s your point?”
“Convince the royal council to allow you to accompany the East Saroese prisoners to the harbor west of here where the Garon alliance landed. You can argue they must be transferred onto ships to go home there instead of in Saryenia’s harbor. Insist that the West Saroese army accompany you to guard the prisoners. The West Saroese will trust you because you’re married to a West Saroese princess, and Gargaron believes you fight for the Garon alliance.”
“I see. Get both foreign armies away from Saryenia.”
“That’s right. Get those soldiers out of the way. You and the Shipwrights have to meet up with the Garon alliance now as if that’s what you always intended to do. Mis can carry our message to General Inarsis outlining the new plan. We have a brief opening to take control of the city while Lord Gargaron and the monarchs don’t yet know how extensive the Efean rebellion is. We need a single, audacious blow that they won’t see coming.”
“How can that be managed?” he scoffs. “The royal family is in possession of Saryenia and the palaces. They are protected by the Royal Army under the command of the brilliant and ruthless General Esladas.”
“Aren’t we fortunate, then, that I can negotiate with the general?”
25
With a scarf wrapped around my face to conceal everything except my eyes, I clank my spider past fields and orchards and several deserted Efean villages before I come back into sight of the city walls. To the west, the East Saro army is kneeling, weapons thrown to the ground. They number in so many thousands, so packed together, that the fields they’ve trampled in their maneuvers lie invisible beneath them. From ground level I can’t even see the Garon and West Saro banners that must be flying west of them.
The King’s Gate to the city is open, guarded by ranks of soldiers. They cheer as I stamp into view, thinking I am one of the courageous spiders who had a hand in the stunning triumph over Nikonos.
I call out, hoping they will mistake my perfect Saroese and low voice for a Patron man’s since they can’t see my face and body.
“Where is the army assembling? What happened to the king?”
“The king and queen mean to make a victory procession down the Avenue of Triumphs. Victory to you and yours, brave spider!”
What a pang the praise twists through my heart.
I take the long path around the base of the King’s Hill past the Temple of Justice and reach an intersection with the Avenue of Triumphs right where it starts up its steepest incline. From here I can see up the avenue to the golden sea-phoenix gate of the king’s palace. Its stone wings unfold as if it is about to take flight across the city, reborn from the foam of the waves.
So many people line the avenue that I fear to push forward, afraid I might crush a child. I can’t help but notice that most of the people out celebrating are Saroese, not Efeans. This is a victory for Patrons, not for Commoners.
“Spider! Spider!” The onlookers call my Fives name not knowing it is really mine. They make way to let me through to the street, throwing flowers just as they would at the Fives court. I decide it makes sense to wait here for my father.
Triumphal horns announce the swinging open of the palace gates. Even given how long it took me to cross the countryside to get here, I’m still amazed a royal procession has been assembled in such haste. First march the proud horse guards, the king’s personal cavalry. Their splendid gold uniforms hang tattered and bloody. Some are wounded, with an arm in a sling or a leg wrapped in a stained bandage. They have deliberately left gaps in their ranks in tribute to the men who have fallen earlier today. Half their number is missing. It’s a grisly toll, and yet they shine.
This is the world my father loved and taught his girls to love. I can’t help it: my heart swells as they pass, seeing what he saw in these stalwart soldiers who nobly sacrifice their lives to protect the land they love. Many of the soldiers salute me with their whips.
Next come the royal heralds carrying the white sea-phoenix banners. The fanfare from their curved trumpets announces the royal carriage.
The cheers grow deafening. Flowers pelt the avenue.
King Kalliarkos sits alone in the royal carriage. Like all the processional carriages, it’s open, not enclosed, and shaded by a silk awning. He stares straight ahead, still wearing his field armor and gold-and-purple royal tabard and carrying his feathered lion helmet under one arm. He does not wave or smile. His stiff expression might as well be that of a statue despite the clamor of people calling his name over and over. He stares as into a chasm of horror that only he can see, all traces of easy lighthearted grace erased from his features.
The ecstatic cheers quiet abruptly as the carriage rolls on and the crowd sees what’s behind it.
In a grotesque imitation of a funeral procession, Nikonos’s corpse is tied to the royal carriage and is being dragged down the Avenue of Triumphs to the City of the Dead.
It’s so shocking, so impious, but death has always been the price we pay for our victories. I don’t mourn Nikonos. But I am horribly afraid for Kal. What if the nectar of power is starting to taste sweet to him?
Yet I must stick to the path I’ve chosen through these Rings. If I want to reach the victory tower I have to take the risk that I’m right about him, that he’s not completely lost.
As the next carriage rolls into view, this one escorted by firebird veterans, people recover their breath and cheer with renewed enthusiasm. There sits Father, looking as stern as ever, wearing polished leather armor and holding a gold-studded general’s whip but in no other way adorned with highborn spoils.
I think of Mother weeping tears of joy to see him honored with a general’s rank, on the last day our family was still together.
&nbs
p; I think of what it means that Kalliarkos has placed him in the next carriage, ahead of the lords who ought to take precedence.
This is the opening I was hoping for, and I take it.
I swing in behind Father’s carriage. Of course he notices the movement. His gaze fixes on the dent that shows mine to be the spider he patrolled in for so many years. He’s had weeks stuck inside a besieged city to inventory his army and get news from the desert frontier via messenger pigeon. It’s possible he knows this squad went missing.
He taps his whip twice against the side of the carriage. An adjutant runs up, then darts forward to the infantry honor guard. The infantry adjust their marching order from four abreast to eight abreast so they fill up the avenue, making it a tiny bit harder for me to charge through and attack the king, if that is my goal. Father reaches under the bench and pulls out his sheathed short sword, which he sets on the cushion beside him.
The king’s carriage halts at the wide intersection where the processional way meets the Avenue of the Soldier. The slope of the land and the height of my spider give me a good view as a pair of closed carriages rolls up the Avenue of the Soldier from one of the western gates. Attendants wearing the gray of palace stewards swarm the forward carriage. When the door opens, a frail Princess Berenise is assisted into the royal carriage, where Kal greets her gravely. After her grandmother is settled, Menoë steps out, needing help to negotiate the steps because of her pregnancy. Her hair is braided into a beribboned fan studded with jeweled flowers. Her exquisite features appear serene as she acknowledges the crowd’s cheers by raising a golden fan.
She sees Nikonos.
She walks over and kicks the corpse in the face.
Kal’s eyes widen, and he flinches so minutely that most people wouldn’t notice. Nor would they notice how he takes in a breath and uses the air to straighten his back and lift his chin to a posture of grim rigidity. Extending a hand, he assists his sister into the rulers’ carriage beside him.
I almost miss Lord Gargaron’s arrival. I don’t see which carriage he came from, but he goes straight to Father with a thin smile that might as well be a dagger. He considers the sword Father has set on the cushion, then takes it upon himself to set it back under the bench out of easy reach. Father does not react as Gargaron seats himself opposite, just as if he too is a victorious general sharing in the day’s great triumph.
And of course, he is.
We descend amid the crowd’s adulation to the Square of the Moon and the Sun, and we cross it to reach Eternity Temple. The reason for dragging Nikonos’s corpse to the City of the Dead escapes me until Kal gives an order to halt the carriage inside the arched tunnel.
He stands and calls out in a tone that sounds reckless, and thus quite unlike him, as if he’s thrown prudence and consideration to the winds. “Let the High Priest of Lord Judge Inkos present himself before us. Do not delay.”
Menoë tugs on her brother’s arm, clearly angry with him. He ignores her and waits.
Gargaron shakes his head impatiently and says to my father, “Good Goat. This is unseemly. Go tell the boy we need to move on.”
“He is king, my lord, and can make his own decisions,” Father says with a defiance that amazes me.
“Can he? Whose tactics just won that battle for us?”
“Mine, my lord. But it was his choice to lead the charge, rather than have me do it.”
“Foolhardy and rash! I knew the rank would be too great a strain on his weak character.”
“Quite the contrary, my lord. He strives to be a better man and a good king. During the siege he insisted on riding out every morning among the populace. He made sure rations were fairly distributed, even refusing to eat more than what any common citizen could expect for a daily meal—”
“Is that what you call a good king?” Gargaron raps his whip on the carriage door. “Enough! Do as I say, General!”
Father glances back at my spider, then climbs down. As he walks forward to the king, Gargaron sits unprotected in front of me.
I could slice his head off with my fore blade. He wouldn’t know what hit him.
And I’d be captured and executed on the spot, and not even Father or Kal could save me. My goal is to safeguard the Efean rebellion, not to satisfy my personal anger.
This is why people who leap into the obvious openings in Rings don’t succeed.
I have to bide my time.
Father reaches the royal carriage. Because I can see over everyone’s head I get a full view of Menoë when she greets him after so many months apart: she smiles effusively, her expression like an open bloom. They look each other in the eye as two people might who have been intimate as equals. Color heightens in her cheek as he nods at her in polite greeting before addressing the king.
What Father says to Kal I cannot hear. What the king answers I cannot hear either, of course, but Father stiffens as if the king has rebuked him.
The gate into the inner temple swings open. The High Priest arrives. Every gaze follows him as he goes straight to Gargaron rather than to the king.
“Your Holiness.” Kal raises his voice so everyone must hear and witness, so the High Priest must stop in his tracks and turn. “Twelve times in the last three months, during the siege of Saryenia, we have come here to Eternity Gate to speak to our cousin Serenissima, who we placed in your care. Twelve times we have been refused entrance. Today we will not move from this place until we speak to her. If we must, we will command our honor guard to search the premises.”
The High Priest sways, caught on a wave of fear. “Lord Gargaron! Can you not counsel sense into your nephew?”
“Am I not king?” Kal cries, breaking out of his formal speech. “Do I not rule Efea? Menoë, is there some other claimant I’m not aware of?”
When she rests a hand on her pregnant belly, I am shocked even though Princess Berenise once told me that my father’s son by Menoë would be the next king of Efea.
Kal lifts his chin. Anger spills from him like poison. “Ah, I see. Well, I have some time before I’m no longer useful to you. So hear me clearly, Your Holiness. Bring Serenissima out or I will enter. Or else confess to me that she is dead, as I suspect she is.”
“Your Gracious Majesty…” The High Priest glances around as if seeking an escape route, then remembers that he is the most powerful priest in the land and has the support of Lord Gargaron. With pompous outrage he gathers himself up. “I don’t know what it is you want from me that you dare speak to the gods’ most holy representative in this disrespectful way.”
Of course Kal is too smart to accuse the High Priest in public of colluding with Gargaron to kill Serenissima. But even I don’t expect what comes next.
“I want them all released.”
“All of whom released, Your Gracious Majesty?”
“Every girl and woman currently residing in Eternity Temple must be released, now, into the custody of Queen Menoë.”
Released. At first I am sure I have misheard him.
Kal has already gone on. “To show these innocent women the proper respect due to their dedication to the gods, the blessed and benevolent queen will take them into the queen’s palace as attendants, where they may serve Efea with equal honor.”
“I will?” says Menoë.
“Of course you will.” Kal’s corrosive tone bleeds into the air. “It’s a big palace. You can put Mama in charge of seeing they are all peaceably settled. You can give their number a flattering name, the Queen’s Most Honored Guard of Maidens or some such.”
“You can’t do this,” says the High Priest in a trembling voice.
Lord Gargaron does not move, only watches, and that worries me, but not more than Kal’s caustic tone and reckless demeanor as he plunges on.
“I. Am. King. You wouldn’t want to have the highborn clans hear how for all these years the daughters they dedicated to a chaste and holy life in the temple have in fact been foully mistreated and even killed. Would you?”
An offended
silence greets this accusation. Soldiers look at one another in shock. Officials whisper, and a few even hiss to hear the temple profaned with such a charge.
As if pressed past endurance, Princess Berenise finally speaks. “You may congratulate yourself for what you believe is a daring reform, Grandson, although I assure you that Saryenia’s populace won’t see it the same way you do. But have it your way. Take your uncle Gargaron to make sure that the women have all been released. He won’t see anything that will shock him.”
“Good Goat,” mutters Gargaron to himself, subtle shades of discomfort written through his frown as he hears the threat in the princess’s words. Yet he is required to act obediently to the wishes of a woman who outranks him.
Kalliarkos and Gargaron proceed inside with the fearful High Priest and several of the honor guard, including, I note, Captain Helias. My betrayer.
Surrounded by enemies, I have to tread carefully, spider and all.
I shift my right fore blade just enough to draw my father’s attention. After a polite interval he withdraws from the royal carriage and returns to stand by the back wheels of his. With hands clasped behind his back, not looking at me, he says, “Identify yourself, Soldier.”
“Father,” I say.
He raises a hand to forestall further words, then pretends the gesture was merely to scratch his ear. “Abandon this spider elsewhere in the city. Go to our old home and await me. Let no one see you. I’ll clear a path.”
He waves aside the infantry troop behind me, giving me enough room to clank back out onto the square. I don’t dare look back, not until I reach the far edge of the square. Only then do I halt and swivel around to wait, because I have to see if Kal really did it.
After some time a strange procession emerges from Eternity Temple. First comes a group of priest-wardens moving with the faltering walk of people sure they are about to be punished for what they are doing. They are followed by a double line of highborn Saroese girls and women of all ages, on foot, well over one hundred. Drab scarves cover their hair. Most are hiding their faces behind those same scarves, but some of the younger girls stare in delight at the new wonders unveiled this day, because they’re not yet resigned to the darkness.