The Lyre Thief

by Jennifer Fallon

  He didn’t say anything, just let her cry, until she pushed him away and sniffed inelegantly. “I’m sorry. I should never have come here and asked this of you. I should go.”

  In response, Kiam bent his head to hers and kissed her.

  Charisee’s knees almost buckled. It was as if the room were suddenly devoid of air. She closed her eyes and slipped her arms around his neck, reveling in the glory of it. For a moment he held her in his arms, his broad bare chest pressed against her, his warm firm lips covering hers, kissing her the way no trained court’esa would ever dare kiss his mistress . . .

  And then he broke away. With a great deal of reluctance, he pushed her away from him and held her at arms’ length.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice ragged.

  Why is he apologizing? Did I do it wrong? “I’ll get better with practice.”

  That made him smile. “I’m sure you will.”

  “Do we need to start with something else?”

  He shook his head. “We’re not starting with anything, your highness. I can’t play this game with you.”

  “But . . . you said you’d help me.”

  “Not with this, your highness. I’m sure you’re bored here and need some sort of distraction, but I made a promise to your sister to see you safely to Greenharbour. She was quite specific about where my duties began and ended.”

  For a moment Charisee was so surprised to learn Adrina might have warned Kiam off Rakaia, she almost forgot herself. “Why would Adrina do that? She doesn’t know anything about Rakaia.”

  “She knows what it is to grow up in the Talabar harem,” he said, dropping his hands to his side. “And I have to say, you’re very good.”

  “Good? Good at what?”

  He walked to door and held it open for her. “This whole innocent ingénue routine you have going here. It’s flawless. Real tears and all. If I didn’t know who you are, your highness, and where you come from, I’d believe every word of it.”

  Gods, Charisee thought with despair. He thinks I’m playing some sort of stupid game.

  This Hythrun apparently couldn’t imagine any daughter of Hablet’s would be allowed out of the harem without the full benefit of expert court’esa training.

  And he was right. Hablet would never have permitted it.

  Charisee burned with the humiliation of her error in thinking Kiam would believe her. Or help her.

  Or that she had so badly wanted him to.

  She also realized, with a sinking feeling in the pit of her belly, that even truth wouldn’t help her now. Even if she confessed every sordid little detail about the deception she and Rakaia had pulled in switching identities, Kiam would think she was playing yet another game.

  With nothing left but the need to escape with what little shred of dignity she had left, Charisee wiped away her tears and smiled at him. “Worth a try, though, don’t you think?”

  He smiled at her, so certain he was right. Charisee could feel her heart shattering into little shards so small and sharp they were actually painful.

  “Worth a try,” he said, opening the door for her. “Goodnight, your highness.”

  With her head held high, she walked to the door, waiting for him to stop her, waiting for him to pull her into his arms and tell her he was only teasing, and that of course he would make love to her.

  But he didn’t move. Didn’t say another word as she stepped past him.

  Not until she was out in the hall did he softly call, “Rakaia.”

  He’d never called her by name before, and for a moment she didn’t react, momentarily forgetting it was now her name.

  “What?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at him, when she realized he was addressing her.

  “If you weren’t you, and I weren’t me . . .”

  She nodded. “I understand.”

  “Goodnight, your highness.”

  “Goodnight, Master Miar.”

  With all the strength she could muster, Charisee walked back toward her own room at the other end of the hall, feeling Kiam’s eyes on her the whole way.

  It wasn’t until she was alone in her room, the door firmly locked, that she was free to throw herself on to her bed and punch the pillow angrily, over and over, cursing herself for being such a fool.

  And cursing the God of Liars for putting ideas in her head, which angered her even more as she discovered how solidly her lie had become her truth.

  There was no way out of this now, short of death.

  Or Rakaia returning to denounce her.

  The bitter irony of her situation was made even worse by the realization that because Kiam was a commoner and an assassin, he would never be permitted to become the consort of a princess. Had he known who she really was, there would be no social impediment to taking a lover who was a slave and a bastard of the Fardohnyan king.

  I hate you, Rakaia.

  Chapter

  35

  RAKAIA SLEPT WITH Mica every night as they sailed southwest toward Bordertown, after the first night she’d tried to relieve his nightmares. They did nothing else. Mica made no attempt to molest her or otherwise take advantage of her proximity. He simply cuddled into her on the captain’s narrow bunk, laid his head on her breast, and slept peacefully for the first time—she suspected—in years.

  The effect on him was remarkable. With no nightmares disturbing his sleep, Mica bounded through each day, full of energy and purpose. He delighted in their journey. He even clambered up the mast once and sang at the top of his voice from the apex. At every opportunity, he entertained the other passengers with funny songs he seemed to make up on the spot. He serenaded the crew with dirty ditties that had them laughing as they worked. Each evening when they anchored near the riverbank for the night, if the weather was fine, they gathered on the deck. Mica would pull out his battered old lyre after their evening meal and sing haunting songs of loneliness and a far distant home that brought a tear to everyone’s eye. Rakaia even caught Delana, the humorless Sister of the Blade, wiping her eyes on more than one occasion as Mica’s last, melancholy note faded into the night.

  Rakaia couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d been so happy.

  The politics of the Talabar Royal Harem were far behind her. She no longer listened for noises in the night, wondering if it meant someone was coming for her or her mother. She hadn’t spared Charisee a thought in days. It was liberating, not being a princess. There was no rank on the boat other than passenger or crew, all lorded over like a benign dictator by the captain of the Maera’s Daughter, a brusque, white-haired Fardohnyan named Drendik.

  The crew knew she was Fardohnyan, but seemed to have no curiosity about where exactly in Fardohnya she came from. She supposed they were used to carrying all sorts of passengers up and down the river. It really wasn’t their job to inquire into their passengers’ lives or business. They assumed she was Mica’s wife—or at the very least, his lover—and when Mica did nothing to disabuse them of their assumptions, Rakaia decided to play along. As disguises went, there probably wasn’t a much better one for a runaway princess than to be thought of as the wife of a penniless traveling troubadour.

  They reached Bordertown some ten days after they sailed from Vanahiem. By then Rakaia was firmly entrenched as Aja, the Fardohnyan wife of the young Karien minstrel, who had entertained them so willingly on their journey. They left the boat, waving to the crew as they stepped down the gangplank, shouldered their few belongings, and headed into the town to find an inn prepared to trade a meal and a bed for the night, in return for the entertainment Mica could offer.

  The Bordertown docks were huge and busy and quite frightening for a girl raised in the sheltered world of a royal harem. She slipped her hand into Mica’s as they pushed and shoved their way along the wharves for fear of losing him in the crush. There must have been a score of boats tied up, in various stages of loading or unloading, both river craft and seagoing vessels. The air reeked of fish and was filled with so much yellin
g, haggling, and cursing that Rakaia had to shout at Mica to be heard when she asked if he knew where they were going.

  Nominally located in Medalon, the town—although it was large enough to be called a small city these days—sat close to the northern border of Hythria, the western border of Medalon and the southern border of Karien. The population was an almost equal mix of the three nationalities, along with a large contingent of Fardohnyans who sailed their goods to Bordertown, where they were either loaded into river barges for their journey into Medalon, freighted south into Krakandar by caravan, or loaded onto seagoing vessels destined for Yarnarrow in the north.

  Rakaia and Mica were almost to the end of the docks when a line of smart red-coated Defenders halted them, marching in perfect unison toward the docks under the command of a mounted officer, and quite a few other mounted dignitaries, including one man wearing a long green robe and a large medallion on a heavy silver chain that marked him as the town’s mayor. They stopped to watch the troops march by, impressed by their discipline and precision. Fardohnyan troops weren’t quite so sharp or so well dressed, Rakaia thought, although she couldn’t say for certain. She’d only ever stood on the walls of the harem and watched them parade from a distance.

  “Where do you suppose they’re headed?” she asked Mica as they waited for the road to clear.

  Mica grinned. “The docks.”

  She punched his arm. “You know what I mean.”

  Still grinning, Mica shrugged. “Maybe they’ve gone to arrest someone. Maybe, since the mayor is coming along, somebody special is arriving.” He turned and looked back the way they’d come. The crowd was falling away from them, moving back toward the river, following in the wake of the smartly turned out soldiers. Unable to see over the heads of the crowd, Mica climbed up onto the half-loaded bed of a nearby wagon to find out what all the excitement was about.

  After a moment, he bent down and offered Rakaia his hand. “Here. Come see.”

  She let him pull her up to the wagon bed, which afforded them a clear view over the crowd to the river beyond. The Defenders had spread out to clear one of the wharves and lined the dock to ensure a clear path to the road. Out on the river, a ship was approaching. It was a huge seagoing sailing ship, being towed toward the wharf by two oared tugs, each manned by a dozen or more brawny, dark-skinned men who looked to come from the Trinity Isles or even somewhere further south, like Denika.

  She studied the ship for a moment, feeling the blood drain from her face.

  She knew that ship. On one of the rare occasions she had been allowed out of the harem, she had sailed the Talabar harbor on it.

  “We have to go,” she told Mica, jumping to the ground.

  “What’s the hurry?” he asked, looking down at her with a puzzled expression. “Don’t you want to find out whose ship that is?”

  “I know whose ship that is,” she told him. “And I’m leaving. Now. You can come with me or not.”

  Without waiting to see if he was following, she shouldered her pack and headed away from the wharves, feeling ill to the pit of her stomach.

  A moment later, Mica caught up with her. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Whose ship is it?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You said you knew,” he said, not willing to drop the subject. He skipped ahead and planted himself in front of her. “It’s Fardohnyan, isn’t it?”

  “You could tell that from the flags,” she said, pushing past him.

  “Is it someone you know?” he called after her.

  “Of course not.”

  He skipped ahead again, and stopped her with a wide grin on his face. “I think you do. I think you know whose ship that is and you want to avoid him.”

  “That’s very clever of you, Mica. Get out of my way.”

  His grin faded. “Has he hurt you in some way, Aja? I can take care of him for you if he has.”

  “He hasn’t hurt me, Mica. It’s not what you think. I’m just tired, and hot, and you said we’d find somewhere to sleep that’s not rocking as soon as we got to Bordertown. I’ve had enough of the Glass River and I don’t care who else is sailing on it. Can we just go? Now? While all the crowds are down at the docks?”

  He studied her curiously for a moment and then nodded. “On one condition.”

  “What?” she asked in exasperation, aware that every moment they lingered, the ship was getting closer to the dock.

  “Tell me who is on that boat.”

  Rakaia debated arguing the point, and then she shrugged in defeat. He wasn’t going to let this go until she answered him. “The ship is called Wind Dancer. It’s the royal Fardohnyan flagship,” she told him with a sigh.

  “What’s a flagship?”

  “It’s the king’s own ship, Mica,” she explained.

  “Then king of Fardohnya is on that ship?”

  “More than likely.”

  Mica stared at her for a time and then took her hand. “Come on, then, we need to get some supplies.”

  She almost stumbled, he jerked her forward so unexpectedly. “Supplies? What supplies?”

  “We need to change your hair color,” he told her as he hurried her along the road toward the large central marketplace. “Maybe even cut it shorter.”

  “What . . . why would I do that?”

  He stopped and looked at her. “Because you don’t want to be found by the king of Fardohnya.”

  Rakaia didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know whether to be alarmed or relieved that Mica had so easily figured out her secret. At the very least, even if she hadn’t just given most of it away, he suspected enough of the truth to want to help her hide.

  Impulsively, she leaned forward and kissed him. “I just love you sometimes.”

  He beamed at her. “One day, you’ll love me all the time.”

  His grin was infectious. It made everything seem like a grand adventure. She laughed as he pulled her forward again, no longer afraid, but rather exhilarated by the thought that Hablet was approaching Bordertown with no idea the daughter he thought was on her way to Greenharbour was in the same town, traveling with an itinerant troubadour, and having the time of her life.

  Chapter

  36

  ADRINA TOOK TO hearing petitioners in the main hall of the Greenharbour Palace. Usually reserved for receptions and balls of the grandest kind, the hall was lit by sixteen massive chandeliers made—ironically, Adrina always thought—from Fardohnyan crystal. The chandeliers were not lit during the day, relying on the tall geometrically patterned stainedglass windows lining the walls to illuminate the hall, which could comfortably accommodate almost a thousand people.

  Holding court here, making supplicants to the High Prince walk all the way down the empty hall to the twin thrones at the far end, gave Adrina time to gauge their mood, their demeanor, and their level of respect for their foreign-born High Princess.

  It was important people realize she held the regency and acted with Damin’s full authority, even with him incapacitated. The long walk gave petitioners time to contemplate the importance of the person to whom they were about to speak. Adrina could tell by the confidence of their stride and the set of their shoulders if they were here to ask a boon of the High Princess or demand it.

  Adrina sat on Damin’s throne—rather than the smaller one on the right that she normally occupied during formal court sessions—watching the next supplicant approach, hoping he was thinking exactly that.

  “Lord Foxtalon,” Darvad announced.

  She glanced up at Damin’s step brother-in-law, rolling her eyes. “Oh, goody.”

  Darvad smiled. She liked the earl of Dylan Pass. He was married to Damin’s older stepsister, Rielle, and had come to court at Damin’s request when the previous Lord Chamberlain retired some six years ago. Adrina had wanted her base-born half-brother, Gaffen, the current lord of Greenharbour Province, to take the job, but Damin had denied her request. They’d had a blazing row
over it at the time, but she had come to see the wisdom of her husband’s choice. Although he was now officially a Hythrun citizen, sat on the Convocation of Warlords, had adopted the Hythrun House name of Sharkspear, spoke Hythrun, lived like a Hythrun, had a Hythrun wife and four gorgeous Hythrun children, and had never done anything to suggest he held any lingering loyalty to his Fardohnyan roots, Gaffen was still an object of mistrust. Damin had already taken a Fardohnyan wife, he reminded her. He wasn’t going to get away with his closest advisor being Fardohnyan too without causing all sorts of trouble he could easily avoid by picking a Hythrun.

  Fortunately, Darvad was a practical and pragmatic man, and a good diplomat with little desire to be a politician. He was Damin’s cousin on the Bearbow side in addition to being his step-brother-in-law. That made him family and in Hythria, it also made him trustworthy.

  The contrast between her own family, where treachery was a game she’d learned to play before she could walk, and the Wolfblades, who were so loyal to each other—and to Damin—that she sometimes found it unsettling, never ceased to amaze her.

  “Please tell me he wants an audience to announce he’s migrating with his entire wretched family to live in a tent on the steppes of southern Denika.”

  “Chance would be a fine thing,” Darvad replied in a low voice. “He claims to be here to offer his help.”

  “Chance would be a fine thing,” Adrina repeated with a sour smile, and then turned and smiled down from the podium at the lord of Pentamor Province as he stopped at the foot of the dais.

  “Lord Foxtalon,” she said. “To what do we owe this honor? I thought we wouldn’t see you again in Greenharbour until the end of summer for the convocation.”