“That depends.” Zaira’s voice dropped low. “After that idiocy in Ardence, I made myself a promise. If the doge orders me to burn down people who don’t deserve it, that’s the line. I’m gone.”
I nodded. “I understand. But if he orders you against Vaskandar? What then?”
“If they invade us, that’s different.” She brushed off the thought of war with the Empire’s most powerful neighbor as if it were an annoying insect. “I’ve heard the stories of the Three Years’ War from the wrinkled old relics in the Tallows. Grandfathers strangled in their beds by bramble vines, children fed to bears—the Witch Lords don’t know mercy. If they come across our borders, I’ll show them they’re not the only demons in the Nine Hells.”
Ahead of us, Marcello stopped at the crest of the rocky spit as suddenly as if the wind had slammed a gate in his face.
“What’s that in the water?” Fear bleached all the color from his voice.
Jerith and Balos hopped up beside him and looked down on the other side of the rocks. Balos clapped a hand to his mouth; Jerith swore.
Zaira and I exchanged glances and ran to catch up with them.
Zaira crested the rocks first, her skirts whipping behind her. She took one look down into the water and gave a decisive nod, as if confirming a suspicion.
“Dead,” she said.
I scrambled up on the low line of rocks with the others and saw what they’d been looking at.
It bobbed against the rocks, caught there by the rising tide, black water lapping against brilliant scarlet wool. I caught a glimpse of dark hair spreading like floating seaweed, bloated white fingers, and the gleam of gold trim on a too-familiar uniform jacket. Then I had to look away, clasping my arms across my lurching stomach.
“Grace of Mercy,” I whispered.
“He’s one of ours,” Marcello said grimly. “A Falconer.”
I couldn’t bring myself to help as Marcello, Zaira, and Balos hauled the body out of the water. When Zaira called me a wilting pansy, I merely nodded, lips tight, and kept my eyes averted.
At least I’d kept my dinner in. Jerith staggered back from the woods to my side, wiping his mouth, even paler than usual.
“Oh, that poor bastard,” he groaned.
“Who is he?” I asked, throwing a nervous glance to where the others bent over the corpse. “Did you recognize him?”
“No. He’d been gnawed on too much. But his name should be on the uniform.” Jerith sank to the sand and rested his forehead on his knees. “I don’t have a problem with dead people. Seen dozens of them. Blood, terrible burns, I don’t care. But not in the water. Not days in the water like that.”
I nodded an emphatic agreement. Thank the Graces the wind blew across my face, carrying away the death-tainted air.
The others rose from the corpse. Balos remained over the dead man, his head bowed. Marcello walked past us to the water’s edge, his face drawn and haunted, and swished his hands in the clean salty lagoon. The pain pulling his handsome features taut cut me like a knife. I started toward him.
Zaira stomped up to us, wiping her palms on her skirts.
“Well,” she said, “that’s a bloater if I ever saw one. A week in the water, at least.”
Jerith lifted his head, swearing. “A week? Verdi!”
Marcello straightened. “I know. It’s too long. His Falcon must be dead, too.”
“Oh, Hells.” I hadn’t thought of that. When Falconers died, their Falcons had several days to get new jesses, or the innocuously lovely golden bracelets leaked deadly magic into their veins, slowly killing them.
It was never supposed to actually happen. Or at least, Marcello believed the intent was preventive only, to remove the incentive for criminals or foreign powers to murder Falconers. I, however, suspected that the doge considered it well worth killing a Falcon to keep them out of enemy hands.
“Who was it?” Jerith asked, his voice strained.
“Anthon. He became a Falconer a year after I did.” Marcello stared out across the lagoon at the Mews. “His Falcon was Namira, an artificer from Osta. They were on leave, to visit her family. But they must never have made it to their ship.”
“What happened?” I glanced over to where Balos stood, solemn and still; I couldn’t see the sad scarlet bundle beyond the low line of rocks. “Did he drown?”
“His throat was cut,” Marcello said curtly. “He was murdered.”
Chapter Two
A pall hung over our table at Lady Aurica’s dinner party. Marcello barely spoke, and the servants whisked away his plates almost untouched for the first two of the fourteen planned courses. Zaira, on the other hand, attacked her food with even more ferocity than usual. Marcello’s sister Istrella bent over a small pile of fiddly artifice bits she’d brought in her silk purse, a worried frown creasing her brow as she twisted a slip of wire. An old dowager at the next table gave her a disapproving sidelong glance and a sniff for this behavior, but it was just Istrella being Istrella.
I didn’t have the heart to try to support a conversation on my own. I hadn’t known the murdered Falconer or his presumably deceased Falcon well enough to do more than put faces to their names: Anthon had been growing a beard, and rubbed it self-consciously when he talked. Namira had been my mother’s age, with bright sharp eyes and an iron-gray frost upon the tight curls of her close-cropped hair. But it still seemed wrong to be at a party the day after we found a body.
The servers laid a nut course before us, a bountiful harvest of several kinds piled artistically with flowers and greens on a silver platter. Zaira plucked up a walnut; the harsh crunch as she cracked the shell jabbed at my nerves, and I could stand the silence no longer.
“Do they have any idea who did it?” I asked Marcello.
He lifted his head. Shadows beneath his eyes suggested he hadn’t slept much. I hated to see his clean-lined face so tired and worn. I wished I could reach out and smooth the worry lines from his brow.
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense. Namira was an artificer. She designed protective wards and taught new Falcons. There’s no reason anyone would want to kill her, or poor Anthon either.”
Zaira scowled at her plate. “I’d love to get my hands on the bastard who did. Namira was all right.” A sharp crack punctuated her sentence, and she popped another nut into her mouth.
“My mother suspects Vaskandar.” I cast a glance three tables over, where the Vaskandran ambassador lifted a glass with a pair of wealthy importers. “Only because they keep moving troops to the border, even with autumn upon us, and they’re clearly planning something.”
Marcello frowned. “I fail to see how murdering a single artificer and her Falconer would give them an advantage.”
“Namira was a highly skilled designer specializing in runic artifice,” I said. “Maybe she was working on some project Vaskandar was worried about, like a new kind of weapon or battlefield trap. We could look through her notes for clues.”
“You always have good ideas, Amalia.” Marcello smiled wistfully. “That’s one of the things I love about you.”
The word struck me like lightning, despite his casual tone. Love.
He hadn’t used it since that moment in Ardence, when I was dying of poison and we’d parted with little hope of seeing each other again. I think I might love you. I’d tried to forget; circumstances had been desperate, after all. And it would be foolish to dwell on whether he loved me, or I loved him, when I’d made the political decision to remain unattached, at least for now.
Which made me a fool, because naturally I’d thought of it nearly every day in the weeks since.
“Namira was working on adapting some of the lovely spiral runework you find in ancient Ostan tomb murals,” Istrella said unexpectedly, without looking up from her project. “She was going to do more research in Osta. I was quite jealous; I want to go see the wirework artifice filigree in their royal palace someday.”
“Maybe we can go together,” I suggested, and Istrella
flashed me a smile.
“I should have known they were missing.” Marcello dropped his voice so low I could barely hear him. “They were due to arrive in Osta days ago. But because Namira was on leave, I didn’t expect them to report in.” He shook his head, his mouth set in a grim line.
I let my voice soften more than was perhaps wise. “Don’t blame yourself.”
“Who said I’m blaming myself?” He tried a rather unconvincing smile.
“Anyone who knows you.”
“The Falcons’ safety is my responsibility.” He rubbed his forehead. “Especially since the promotion.”
“Promotion! You didn’t tell me you got a promotion.” I’d noticed some extra braiding on his collar, and fancier falcon’s-head buttons, but had just assumed it was a new dress uniform.
He hadn’t told me. The realization pinched and twisted inside my chest. Perhaps he had simply been too busy; or perhaps he was keeping me at a distance.
Istrella glanced up from the wire she was coiling, beaming proudly. “Yes, he’s Captain Verdi now. Second only to Colonel Vasante at the Mews. He can approve funding for my projects himself! I’m quite excited. He doesn’t ask too many questions about safety precautions.”
Marcello’s eyebrows lifted in alarm. “Maybe I should fix that.”
“Congratulations,” I said, lifting my glass to him, determined to show no hurt in my smile. “I know you’ve been working toward this for a long time.”
Marcello shrugged, tugging at the gold trim on his collar uncomfortably. “Thank you. It’s already not what I expected, though.”
“Oh?” I raised an eyebrow. “More work? More politics?”
“More guilt.” He grimaced. “Colonel Vasante seemed to feel our handling of the Ardence situation showed I was ready for greater responsibility. But I’m afraid I’m already letting her down. With Vaskandar preparing for war, I should have assigned extra guards for all Falcons traveling outside the Mews.”
Zaira grunted. “Punch yourself in the privates about it if you really want, but I’m more interested in blaming His Oily Excellency, there.” She jerked her head toward the Vaskandran ambassador, who had stood to greet a countrywoman, his head bobbing ingratiatingly. “He keeps going off to talk to people in a side room.”
“Does he?” I craned to look. Graces knew I should have been watching him, too, and not letting memories of death and decaying flesh smother my awareness.
He was a middle-aged man, with the look of old muscle gone to seed. A robust blond beard provided a counterargument to the bald spot that flashed each time he bowed. Even his wardrobe struck a compromise: a Raverran-style brocade jacket in Vaskandran forest green. I searched my memory for his name and dredged it up from my last visit to the embassy, when I’d attended a truly grueling tea party with Prince Ruven: Ambassador Varnir.
Zaira was right; Varnir gestured to a door across Lady Aurica’s dining hall, and he and his companion—a tall, graceful woman in a long leather coat edged with jagged Vaskandran embroidery—began picking their way between the tables.
“I’d give a lot to overhear what they talk about,” I said.
Istrella’s head popped up from her work. Marcello had made her leave her artifice glasses at home, and the mage mark stood out bright gold in her eyes, giving them a feverish gleam. “Oh! Really? Let me see what I can do.”
Humming, she produced a tiny pair of pliers and began coiling wire around her dessert spoon. Marcello and I exchanged affectionate glances; leave it to Istrella to come up with an artifice solution to any problem. She slid a few beads onto the wire, then pulled a pin from the unruly pile of her bushy hair and dipped it into a tiny bottle of ink among her supplies. Within moments, she’d scratched out a simple circle and a few runes on the back of the spoon.
“Is that an amplification circle?” I asked, impressed. We had a couple of those in listening posts in our palace, but I’d never heard of anyone knocking one out with the casual speed of a market quick-sketch artist.
“Yes.” Istrella beamed. “I made you a listening device!” She thrust the spoon toward me with the grand air of a favorite aunt offering a sweet. “It’s a bit fragile, but it should work all right while it lasts.”
“Istrella, you are a miracle.”
Zaira grinned and pushed her chair back. “Right, then. Let’s go see what’s so secret it made a diplomat walk away from a free dinner.”
Zaira led me to a hallway adjoining the private room into which our quarry had disappeared. She scanned the short, unremarkable corridor critically; it connected the dining hall to what smelled like the kitchens, adorned by nothing more than a couple of slim potted evergreens and a somewhat tarnished mirror in an elaborate silver frame.
“Right.” She faced the mirror and began fussing with her hair, prodding the artful twists and jeweled pins my maid had spent half an hour arranging. “You lean against the wall like you’re bored of waiting for me, and see what that crazy girl can do with a bit of cutlery.”
I laid Istrella’s spoon against the wall. Tinny voices emerged from it immediately.
“You understand, my situation here is delicate …” That sounded like the ambassador.
“Bored and waiting,” Zaira snapped, without looking away from the mirror.
“Oh! Right.” I leaned back against the wall, pillowing my head on my hands as an excuse to hold the spoon near my ear.
“I want all the information you can get me on these people.” That must be the woman. Her voice was flat and cold, stripped of accent or inflection, utilitarian as a knife. “Their movements, their connections, their patterns.”
“I see.” Paper rustled, and the ambassador was silent for a moment. Then he sighed. “I’m so sorry, but I fear I can’t help you with this matter. I am a diplomat, not a spy.”
“You serve the Witch Lords.” Even through the spoon, I could hear the warning in her voice.
“Yes, of course,” the ambassador soothed. “But, forgive me—you are not a Witch Lord. And I dare not risk eliciting any more ire from the Raverrans. My position …” His voice faded. I shifted to bring my ear closer to the spoon, ignoring a glare from Zaira as she pretended to check her lip paint.
“The Lady of Thorns commands this,” the Vaskandran woman snapped. “She will accept no refusal. More than your position is at stake.”
The Lady of Thorns. There was something familiar about that name, but the memory eluded me, dancing just beyond my mind’s grasp.
A long sigh vibrated through Istrella’s device. “Very well, very well. I’ll see what I can do. But I beg you to be circumspect, for both our sakes.” Whatever paper he held crackled again. “Wait. Some of these people are here tonight.”
“I know,” the woman said. “Best you not think of it.”
“Why is this one circled?”
A moment of silence. I held my breath, straining to hear the answer.
“That’s between me and my lady,” the woman said at last.
The ambassador muttered something I couldn’t make out. Then, louder: “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Don’t you dare do anything at this dinner! You’ll get us both arrested.”
“You do not command me.”
“You’ll ruin all the deals I’m working on for the other Witch Lords!” There was a tearing sound, as if he’d ripped the paper in half. “You may have your orders from one Witch Lord, but I serve all seventeen. If you barge in to the middle of my negotiations and start causing major incidents, I’ll have to answer to the rest of them for … Where do you think you’re going? I’m still talking to you!”
Zaira let out a sharp sigh. “I told you, I’ll be done in a minute!”
I jumped, startled. Istrella’s spoon came off the wall. A server carrying a tray with bowls of fragrant seafood bisque passed by, hurrying from the kitchen.
“Graces wept. You’re hopeless,” Zaira muttered. “I might as well just kick you next time, if you’re going to react like that.”
“
Sorry.”
“Did you learn what you needed? I can’t keep this up much longer.” She nodded approvingly at her reflection.
I glanced past her, to the main hall, and saw the ambassador stalking back to his table, his face red with anger. There was no sign of the woman.
“We should get into that room, if we can,” I said. “They talked about a list of names, and it sounded like he might have thrown it away. If we can find the pieces, it might tell us something.”
“Should be easy enough.” Zaira jerked her head toward the dining hall. “Come on.”
She led me not to the side room door but to a table near it, which held a gilt-edged guest book for writing messages to our hostess. Zaira bent over it with apparent interest. I’d learned enough from our adventures in Ardence to play along, studiously avoiding glancing at the door, no matter how much I wanted to.
“Too many people watching,” Zaira muttered. “Wait here and write in the guest book, to look busy, and I’ll go get them to look the other way.”
I bent dutifully over the guest book as she moved off, not without some trepidation at the thought of what Zaira might consider a suitable distraction. Lady Aurica was one of the backers for my Falcon reform act, and the last thing I wanted was to ruin her dinner party.
I dipped the silver-tipped guest book quill in the provided ink and began scribing a message thanking Lady Aurica both for the occasion and for her commitment to a better future for Falcons in the Empire. It couldn’t hurt to leave that where other guests might see it.
“Ah, Lady Amalia,” came a smooth, soft voice at my elbow. “Still pursuing your noble dream of untethering the Falcons, I see.”
I started, spattering fine drops of ink across the page. I’d had no idea anyone was standing so close to me. I turned to face the speaker and nearly dropped the quill when I saw who it was.
Lord Caulin, a mouse-haired slip of a man, officially advised the doge on Raverran law. But due to my mother’s position on the Council of Nine, I knew his true role: the so-called Chancellor of Silence, an unofficial and highly secret post that oversaw the imperial assassins and liaised with the criminal underworld. He had a reputation for being quiet, efficient, and completely ruthless in achieving his ends. He radiated such nondescript diffidence that my eyes tried to slide off him, but I knew better than to underestimate him. The man was dangerous.
The Defiant Heir Page 2