The Defiant Heir

by Melissa Caruso

“Why are you mangling your uniform?” A loose thread dangled from his sleeve, and I itched to snip it off.

  “I can sew another button on. Take this with you, and when you’re thinking of doing something dangerous, I want you to hold this button and think what I would say to you.” His mouth pulled to the side. “Then you can tell the button to be quiet and go and do it anyway, but at least you’ll be thinking of me.”

  I laughed, and took it from him. The metal was still warm from his hand. “We’ll see each other in a couple of days, you know, when you catch up to us. I’m not going on an expedition to the Winter Ocean.”

  “I’ll still miss you.”

  The moment came when if I weren’t the Cornaro heir, we might have kissed. I felt it settling around us, a brief lull in the wind like the blessing of the Graces, with the sun gilding our skin and a deep quiet between us.

  And he knew it. A warm spark kindled in his eyes, and it was as if the space separating us meant nothing. Understanding connected us, sure and sweet as an embrace.

  “I have to go,” I said, and tucked his button in a secure pocket of my satchel, next to my elixir bottles and my artifice tools and everything else I wanted to keep close to me in case of trouble.

  “I know. I’ll see you soon.”

  I walked away, but the feeling of connection lingered, as if I’d left a piece of myself there with him in the cold, sun-drenched meadow grass.

  The going became slow and precarious as we climbed up into the mountains, heading for Highpass, a remote fort that guarded a footpath through the Witchwall Mountains, and our last overnight stop before heading out to the suspicious artifice circle. I wasn’t certain the coach would make it up the switchbacks and swerves, but Bree assured me she’d seen carriages complete the trip before; still, my bones seemed fit to rattle to pieces on the rocky track.

  Terika, in fine spirits, spent most of the afternoon telling Zaira stories about her grandmother, who lived in a village we’d pass through on the road to Highpass.

  “I can’t wait for you to meet her.” Terika grinned at Zaira, who looked alarmed at the prospect. “Baba likes people who speak their minds. She’ll love you. Just don’t get her started on the time she knocked out a Vaskandran musketeer with a post hammer.”

  Zaira glanced at me. “I don’t know if Her Highness here can fit a stop into her busy schedule.”

  “I’d be glad to,” I said.

  Zaira gave me a Why are you doing this to me glare, and I responded with my sweetest smile. I wasn’t quite interfering enough to push her and Terika together, but neither was I going to help her run away from what might well prove to be the best thing that ever happened to her.

  Terika laid a finger on her lips, donning a thoughtful expression that failed to hide the mischief beneath it. “My baba might not appreciate it if I spring surprise royalty on her. I suppose Lady Amalia could wait outside, so it’ll be only the two of us.”

  “I don’t want to meet your grandmother,” Zaira grumbled. A brief pause before grandmother suggested she’d barely swallowed some unflattering modifier.

  “Why not?” Terika’s sweet voice had taken on a dangerous edge.

  “Because if you make a big show about introducing us, she’ll get moon-mad ideas that we’re thinking about getting married.”

  Terika grinned impishly. “Shall I tell her you’re taking advantage of my maidenly virtue instead?”

  Zaira snorted. “I can’t win against you, can I?”

  “No. No, you cannot.” Terika ruffled Zaira’s hair, which she tolerated with a mock scowl.

  Lienne caught my eye, her cheeks round and bright with amusement. I smiled back, with an inner twinge of guilt that I’d thought she might be the traitor. How could she be, when she beamed with such affection at two of the Falcons whose names were on the Lady of Thorns’ list?

  “Oh, speaking of certain doom.” Zaira dug in her skirt pocket and pulled out the irregular, obsidian-studded flare locket Istrella had given her. “Since we’re going into danger and all that, take this. You need a way to protect yourself.” She dropped it without ceremony into Terika’s lap.

  Terika took it up with great delight and clasped it around her neck. “Why, thank you, Zaira. Now I want to get you something, too.”

  “It’s not a present. It’s a weapon,” Zaira said, with some exasperation.

  “Weapons make the best presents,” Lienne said, tapping the gleaming hilt of her rapier fondly. “This one was a gift from my sister. She knows what I like.”

  “It’s all right, Zaira.” Terika patted her knee. “I know you don’t have a romantic bone in your body. I won’t get the wrong idea. And neither will my grandmother.”

  The village nestled by a lake in a hanging valley, a picturesque scattering of slate roofs and red-painted barns, complete with a tiny temple to the Graces in the center of town. A scattering of goats surrounded the village, grazing among lichen-crusted rocks, with forested peaks looming above them. In spring, when the meadows blazed with wildflowers, it must have been idyllic.

  But Terika, gazing out the coach window, frowned. “There’s no smoke coming from the chimneys.”

  “Guess we’ll have to skip it,” Zaira said. “No grandmother meeting for me.”

  Terika ignored her, pressing her hand to the glass. “I don’t see Old Arghad on her porch. And Lorran never leaves his goats untended. Something’s wrong.”

  She opened the coach window and leaned half out of it, Lienne seizing her belt to make sure she didn’t tip out onto the road, and yelled to the coachman to hurry. I glanced out the window, startled; the village did look eerily still.

  “Maybe they all died, and I don’t have to meet the withered old hag at all,” Zaira muttered to me, her voice pitched low.

  But Terika ducked back into the coach just as she said it. Her face went pale as paper, freckles standing out like flecks of blood.

  “What did you say?” she demanded.

  Zaira grimaced. I nudged her toe with mine across the coach, willing her to apologize. But she crossed her arms and said, “You heard me.”

  Terika pressed her lips together. Then she leaned out the window again and called, “Stop the coach! I’m getting out.”

  “Don’t be daft,” Zaira snapped.

  Terika whirled and jabbed a finger into Zaira’s chest. Her mage mark stood out boldly in eyes that shone with emotion, but her voice stayed calm. “I put up with a lot from you,” she said. “But you do not disrespect my grandmother.”

  The carriage wheels squealed and rattled to a halt. Terika pushed past Zaira and clambered out the door without waiting for the driver to unfold the steps. Lienne shot Zaira a stern look and followed.

  In a moment, they were up and mounted on horses, and the coach rumbled into motion again. Now it was just me on one bench, Zaira opposite, and the silence between us.

  I didn’t chew on it for long. “Go after her and apologize,” I hissed.

  “She should know I talk like that, and it doesn’t mean anything,” Zaira said sourly. “If she’s got a wasp up her arse about it, that’s on her.”

  “Why are you being so cruel to Terika, of all people? I thought she was the only person you—” I broke off. Zaira stared at the jess on her wrist, avoiding my eyes. “You did this on purpose,” I realized. “You’re trying to drive her away.”

  “So what?” Zaira looked up now, her eyes sparking with anger. “There’s only two ways things can end between us. I get her killed, or I break her heart. I’d rather pick the latter and get it over with.”

  “You’re right that there are two ways it can end,” I snapped. “But one is that you find happiness with a wonderful girl, and the other is that you act like a fool and make both of you miserable for no reason.”

  “Believe what you want.” Zaira leaned back, crossing her arms. “But I told you, I’ve been looking down the road ahead. And what do you think happens to Terika when Raverra’s enemies figure out she’s the fire warlock’s weak s
pot? Or when that withered old bastard of a doge does, for that matter?”

  She had a point. But that was the price for power in the Serene City.

  “We protect her!” I threw my arms up in frustration. “I’ve been my mother’s weak spot for my entire life, and it’s been fine!”

  Zaira stared at me in apparent disbelief. “You’ve been nearly killed or kidnapped half a dozen times in the few months I’ve known you, and you’re only kept alive by a potion. You call that fine?”

  Before I could form a reply, the coach lurched to a sudden stop. Zaira had to grab the edge of the window to keep from being thrown into my lap. I banged an elbow as the bench heaved beneath me and then was still.

  We exchanged a frozen instance of a glance, then both stuck our heads out opposite windows to see what was happening. My heart thumped as if it still rattled around the inside of the coach.

  The road ran through Terika’s village, drawing a dusty line between a few houses and a small store that clustered along it. The rest of the farmhouses scattered across the valley like fallen gray stones, streaked with soot and weather. A thick silence lay across the road, somehow deepened rather than shattered by the blowing and stamping of half a hundred horses and the rattle of harness and coach wheels.

  A deep cold settled in my belly. Terika was right. This large a party arriving in such a small village should draw attention. Curious children should be running out to greet us, and even the crankiest old codger should at least twitch back a window curtain to look. But the stone houses lay deathly still.

  Except for the front door of the second house down the road, which swung loose and free, banging against the wall once, then again more softly, as if someone had just pushed it open.

  The moment stretched longer than it had any right to. Lienne’s hand fell to the hilt of her sword. A few soldiers slid nervous palms up the musket barrels on their shoulders.

  Then a man staggered out of the house, lurched a few steps toward us, and fell face-first in the dirt of the road.

  Chapter Sixteen

  For a frozen moment, all I could think was that Zaira had somehow cursed the village, and everyone was dead. But the fallen man’s back rose and fell with harsh, labored breath.

  Terika slid down from her horse and ran to his side. Lienne drew her pistol and covered her Falcon’s back, scanning every doorway and window, every barrel and stone.

  Bree called to the Callamornish soldiers that made up half our escort, “Eyes out! Braegan, take your squad and search the houses for more people. Don’t touch anything!”

  I threw open the coach door and hurried over to Terika, who now knelt next to the man in the road. He seemed unconscious; his skin was pale and clammy. Terika peeled back his eyelid, smelled his breath, and touched deft fingertips to his wrists, throat, and forehead.

  “Is he sick?” I asked, fear of plague roiling in my stomach.

  Before Terika could reply, cries came from the houses the soldiers had entered, one after another.

  “There’s a family in here! They’re alive, but they don’t look good!”

  “Found an old man … Argh, no, I think he’s dead.”

  “Six in here! Two conscious, all too weak to move. They need water!”

  The weight of my apprehension doubled with each cry of discovery. The instinct to flee, to get out of here and away from any possible contagion, pulled at me with strong hands, urging me to run.

  Bree took command, dispatching a couple of soldiers trained in the rudiments of field medicine to triage the sick, and sending more to check the outlying houses, and still others to bring water and see what else the stricken villagers might need. Zaira stood back with a hand pressed over her nose and mouth, eyes wide, the stark dread on her face of one who has seen plague before.

  But I didn’t smell sickness. There was a different scent on the air, dissonantly sweet. Something very like … lilacs.

  “Terika?” I asked, my voice betraying me with a slight quaver. “Is it poison?”

  Terika rose, suddenly, and cried out, “No one touch the water!”

  A pair of soldiers stopped in the act of hauling up a bucket from a well beside one of the houses. Fear whitened their eyes, and they dropped the bucket back with a clatter and a hissing slither of rope.

  “Banebriar,” Terika said, her voice tight and her face grim. “I’ve seen it before. The Lady of Thorns sends it creeping across the mountains from Sevaeth, its roots seeking drinking water to release its poison. We need to act quickly, or everyone here will die.”

  Zaira dropped her hand from her face and took a step toward Terika. “What can I—”

  Terika ignored her, turning to Bree. “Please.” Her voice scraped from her throat, hoarse and raw from strain. “Can you send someone to check on my grandmother? She lives in the farmhouse up on that hill, beyond the pine grove. I need to know if she’s all right.”

  Bree nodded and sent a soldier immediately. Then she asked, “I’ve heard of banebriar. Is there an antidote? Tell me what we need to do.”

  Terika closed her eyes for a moment, her lips moving.

  This was her home. It sank in, like muddy water through a picnic blanket. Terika’s grandmother had raised her; all these people were her neighbors and friends and family from before she came to the Mews, and from all her visits after. And now she had to try to remember alchemical remedies she might have learned five years ago when for all she knew, her grandmother could already be dead.

  But she didn’t break down with wails or shrieks, or go running off to find the people she loved. Her eyes flew open, and she nodded, with firm resolve.

  “I can make the antidote. I have most of the ingredients, and I know where to gather the rest locally. But it’ll take time to collect everything and brew it.”

  Bree leaped into action, commanding soldiers to search the town and bring Terika everything she needed. Purposeful bustling immediately replaced horrified staring. After a long string of commands, Bree turned to Zaira and me.

  “Can you continue on to Highpass? Tell them what’s happened, and have them send more help?”

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  Terika was already pulling bags out of the coach, muttering about alchemical supplies. A soldier helped her heave out her things; Lienne called for the Raverran soldiers to find her a good worktable, untainted water, and candles.

  Zaira took half a step toward her, then turned away, grimacing. She didn’t say anything to Terika before climbing into the coach.

  “If you won’t apologize, aren’t you at least going to say good-bye?” I asked her, as I clambered in after her.

  “Didn’t you see her? She’s a bit busy right now.” Zaira slouched in her seat. “I won’t deny I stepped right in a pile of dog dung, there, but I never did do anything by halves. Now she’ll know she’s better off without me.”

  Then the coach was rolling, and it was too late for parting words. Zaira stared out the window after Terika’s back as she disappeared into a house, arms full of ingredient bottles, soldiers coming behind her with alchemical supplies.

  “They’re in good hands,” I murmured.

  “Damned right they are. Terika’s the best.” Zaira sighed, and touched gentle fingertips to the window glass. “I can’t believe they were actually all dying. That old hag had better survive.”

  The coach bumped to another unexpected stop. I exchanged alarmed glances with Zaira; we were barely more than an hour out of the village, not even halfway to Highpass. Sergeant Andra rapped on the window, and my spine tensed. If she was the traitor, this could be a trap.

  “Callamornish runner coming,” she announced, in clipped tones. “Looks urgent.”

  Zaira and I descended warily from the coach, stepping out into a stiff, icy wind that cut along the mountain ridge we were climbing toward Highpass. The forested flanks of the ridge fell gently away on either side, and I could see the green cradle of the village fields below. A footpath intersected our road from the east, r
unning along the mountainside above the village; it was along this narrow dirt track the runner came, waving desperately, one arm clutched to his side, with the frantic staggering gait of one driven to run past his own endurance.

  Zaira swore. “He was one of the guards we left with Terika.” We’d split our forces, both Callamornish and Raverran, leaving two dozen in the village to protect and help Terika and Bree, and taking two dozen to guard us for the remaining few hours to Highpass.

  “But he’s not coming up the road from the village,” I muttered, frowning.

  Our remaining escort gathered around us, some of them sliding off their horses to go meet the approaching runner. But he shook off their help, lifting his head to call out a ragged gasp of a message:

  “The princess needs reinforcements!”

  The Callamornish soldiers in our escort dismounted and began grabbing guns and powder horns at once.

  “What happened?” I asked, hurrying toward the messenger, but Zaira practically bowled me over on her way past.

  “Is Terika all right?” she demanded, her hands curling to fists at her sides.

  The soldier struggled to catch his breath. Sweat drenched his temples, despite the deep chill in the air. A pale fuzz marked his upper lip; he seemed barely old enough to wear a uniform. “Princess Brisintain and the alchemist, Terika …” He sucked in a breath, even as his Callamornish fellows pressed a water flask into his hand. “They took a dozen of us and went to gather some ingredient from a place Terika knew.” He pointed back over his shoulder, at a notch in the eastern slope of the mountain we were climbing. “There, up the mountain, right by the border. But we stumbled into a Vaskandran raiding party. The princess ordered me to run to intercept you, to ask for help.”

  Shame quavered in the boy’s voice. She’d done it to spare him, and he knew it, and it was killing him.

  Oh, Hells. Bree. She could be dead by now—and Terika, too.

  Corporal Braegan and his squad were already slinging muskets over their shoulders. “How many?” he demanded.