“Are they still in Litheria?” I pressed.
He nodded. “House Caerus has been banished from Court. Amenon has locked himself in his quarters. He refuses to see anyone, not even the babe, but rumor has it he allows one man and one man alone into his presence.”
“From the delegation?”
“A priest of their brutish faith.”
I knew little of Persican Empire. So far from our borders, I had never bothered to study the nation or its religion. Making a mental note to rectify that oversight, I pressed on.
“What about my parents?”
“What about you?” Aubrey added at nearly the same moment.
Augustus shook his head. “When I left, Damien had still not broken through to him. I called at the castle daily myself, to no avail.”
I sorely wished I could speak with my mother. “Should we return home?” I asked, my voice sounding small and childish to my own ears.
His eyes glinted kindly as he favored me with an affectionate smile. “You may be like a daughter to me, Elivya, but I am not the one to decide that for you.”
He drew a travel-worn letter from his breast pocket and passed it to me, the Lazerin crest imprinted on dark green wax. I cracked the seal and scanned it quickly. My mother’s elegant hand flowed across the page, every graceful stroke tugging at my heart, her voice echoing in my head. Adrian wasn’t the only one I missed.
“Well?” Aubrey pressed after a moment.
I looked up to find all three of them watching me intently, Quintin’s face a stone mask, a soldier waiting for his orders.
“They want us to stay put for now,” I said. “There’s too much uncertainty back home and, quite frankly, nothing our presence could do about it.”
Augustus nodded. “As of yet, there is no immediate danger, but it’s safer for you here.”
“And you?” his son asked.
“Officially, I am here consulting the renowned Elan poets for a tribute to our late queen.”
“And unofficially?” I pressed.
“I am here to keep an eye on the lot of you through the winter.” He paused. “And to give Damien room to maneuver.”
I understood, even if Aubrey didn’t. One trusted friend could reach out to you in your grief, and you might be willing to accept. But two, and the offer of comfort was quickly received as pressure – as a threat, violently rebuked.
“Your parents will send news with the first ships in the spring,” Augustus added solemnly. “Then we will decide whether to return to Alesia.”
We talked late into the evening, pulling every last detail from the Royal Poet, or what few he knew regarding the situation. I knew his ignorance was likely my mother’s design, but it still frustrated me to be left so grossly uninformed. While a loyal friend and good man, Augustus had no head for intrigue, and letting slip some scrap of clandestine knowledge in the wrong company could put sources at risk.
After his father had begged off to bed, Aubrey and I lingered at the kitchen table. The hollow look of shock still plagued my friend’s handsome face, all his lively color gone. I shifted my gaze to Quintin, a silent request. One corner of his mouth twitched in response, and he heaved himself to his feet with unusual effort.
“Dawn?” he murmured. I nodded, and he disappeared into the house.
The small earthenware cup between Aubrey’s hands had long since ceased its steaming, the soothing tea within gone cold, untouched. Lyra had taken one look at him and put the kettle on with a mother’s infallible insight. She’d given us all a cup, but I knew she’d made that tea for him alone.
I didn’t press, just sat there beside him at that creaky old table and waited for his mind to churn through all we had learned. My own fairly spun with it, a knotted rat’s nest of how and what and why, with no answers anywhere near at hand.
“What do we do?” His whisper sliced through that thick silence sooner than I had expected.
“We listen,” I replied hollowly, echoing my mother’s lessons. “We listen, and watch, and learn all we can.” One glance his way, and I was locked in place, those bright amber eyes dull and dim and fixed upon mine. He knew about my training, about the things my mother had taught me. He and James were the only ones I’d ever told, my drunken slip to Quintin notwithstanding. Even with Adrian, I’d danced around the subject, letting him believe I was simply clever and observant.
“And then?” he asked, his voice hoarse, eyes entreating.
I didn’t know. I honestly hadn’t the slightest idea what we would do with whatever information, if any, we managed to gather about Persica and their intentions. I only knew what my mother had taught me; the last resort when all your options evaporate and you’re left twisting in the wind.
“Every piece is a tool. A weapon.” I settled my hand over his and gave a squeeze. “In the spring, we go home. And with any luck, we’ll go well-armed.”
I slept poorly, and as a result, was sloppy and distracted the next morning. Quintin whacked me smartly on the shoulder with the flat of his practice sword when I missed a block.
“What the hell!” I barked, my voice echoing into the vast gymnasium. It drew a few looks and I immediately bit my tongue.
He pointed the weapon at me. “You’re not focusing.”
“How can you?” I snarled, rubbing my shoulder.
“Fretting over what you can’t control does nothing but weaken you. Stay here.” He gestured to my head. “And here,” he repeated, pointing at the sand beneath our feet. “Again.”
I made a concerted effort to push my worries from my mind and focus on the now. For his part, Quintin pressed me relentlessly, not giving me time to wander. Still, the previous evening’s dark revelations hovered over us both, and even my father’s unwavering Tuvrian seemed uneasy.
“Did it help?” he asked afterward, as we wove our way through the crowded mid-morning streets.
“What,” I replied, dodging a cart piled haphazardly with clay pots. Its driver shouted a continuous string of admonishments to anyone in earshot as he barreled blindly down the thoroughfare.
“Whatever you said to Aubrey,” he clarified, sidestepping a trio of students with ease. “He looked liable to faint last night.”
“He’s afraid.”
“Clearly.”
“And with good reason,” I added firmly.
“So that’s a no, then.”
“I gave him what little I had to offer.” Quintin glanced my way, and I gave my head a disgusted shake. “Second-hand wisdom from someone far more capable than me.”
“All knowledge is second-hand,” he pointed out.
I ignored his sage reply, scowling at the crowd and ruminating on my own inadequacy in silence. My commander spared me another glance, the moment’s distraction nearly causing him to collide with a pair of porters pushing handcarts of luggage up the street. I watched him skip out of the way with a muttered curse and realized why he was asking about Aubrey. He was just as unsettled as the rest of us.
Too proud to admit it. Typical.
“We’re on the other side of the sea,” I said when he’d fetched up beside me once more. “But that doesn’t mean we have to sit on our hands.”
We turned the last corner on our way back to Lyra’s, the crowd thinning. The rows of houses glided past as our boots ate up the marble pavers underfoot.
“We gather what information we can,” I continued. “From the wine shops and the professors and whoever else we can get to talk about Persica.” When we reached the stoop of our boarding house, we paused and I turned my solemn gaze on Quintin. “And we train. Harder. Longer. Until I’m not entirely worthless with a blade.”
He quirked one brow at me, the side of his mouth tugging upward in tandem. “How long, exactly, do you plan to be here?”
With a sneer, I thumped his shoulder sourly and he followed me inside, the slight huff of a laugh out his nostrils the only evidence that Tuvrians actually did have a sense of
humor.
Though the house was significantly more modest than he was accustomed to, Lord Augustus didn’t press the matter when we refused his offer to relocate to more lavish accommodations. We had grown fond of our short-tempered Lyra, and the addition of his two manservants was an unaccountable luxury in itself. I no longer had to draw my own baths. Many of the more physically demanding aspects of upkeep were addressed, including replacing some clapboards and rehanging some shutters on the exterior of the house. Before the worst of the cold settled in on Agorai, our modest dwelling was in fine fettle.
Winter dragged on, dull and damp. There were no more plays, the open-air theaters too miserably frigid to sit in for any length of time. Lectures, too, became a chore. No longer could we gather in parks or public squares to debate in the glorious midday sun. Instead, we crowded into halls within the confines of the university, lit with braziers that barely kept the chill away. The great stone structure seeped the cold into every dark space, and even Aubrey couldn’t bear to expose his hands and scribble notes in his journals.
As usual, it didn’t faze Quintin. While my teeth chattered and I huddled close to my friend on the wooden benches in the lecture halls, the Tuvrian sat behind us, wrapped in his same wool cloak, unaffected.
The wine shops were kept blessedly well-heated, both by roaring hearths and a multitude of patrons’ bodies. It seemed to be the only form of recreation in the winter. Well, that and one other. Among certain company, the act of love was considered a sacred and celebratory thing, to be shared freely. We were invited to one such event during the midst of the winter, but I quickly declined for the three of us. That was not the kind of gossip we needed to follow us home.
Aside from warmth and lewd invitations, our time in the wine shops also kept us informed with what limited news made its way to Agorai overland. Makednos had been folded into the Persican empire, and Dacia was expected to follow within the year. As a strange country with no central ruler, the reports out of Dacia were fragmented at best. In lieu of a unified society, the nation consisted of a collection of nomadic tribes, each with their own leader. Though the clan chiefs met annually to maintain some semblance of peace, all attempts at alliance had failed and the Persican army was picking them off one tribe at a time. Those who refused to submit had been slaughtered.
Whispers from home of a great winter sickness trickled in, though not enough to affirm the truth or the scope of it.
Between and after lectures, Aubrey practically interrogated every professor who would bother to engage with him about Persica. We learned little of use, most of Elas having little or no dealings with the distant empire. What geographical and historical details we gained were trivial at best. The wine shops proved to be the superior source of information, biased and unreliable though it was. Still, Aubrey persisted, venturing out in the mornings while Quintin and I spent long hours at the gymnasium. When I protested at the risk, he assured me his father’s manservants accompanied him on such outings, and I had no choice but to relent.
Lord Augustus spent much of his time at the Senate, the ruling body of Elas, housed in a vast marble complex at the heart of the city. One hundred men made up the chorus of politicians, led by a single Imperator who had no voting rights unless the main body found itself at a stalemate. I was told such a thing never happened. Instead, the Imperator’s primary function was to maintain order among the rabble of wealthy merchants and guild leaders. It all sounded ridiculously chaotic to me. Nevertheless, Augustus made regular trips to the Senate while we were away at lectures for the day. He was a skilled orator, but despite his best efforts, he made no headway. Elas would not go out of its way to contest Persica.
After long months, the worst of winter passed and the days began to warm once again. News came more frequently, though none of it good. The first blush of spring had taken hold of Agorai by the time my parents’ letter arrived, delivered by a ragged dock boy who fidgeted and darted off down the street as soon as he received his copper. Augustus tore the letter open, eyes devouring its brief message before he passed it to me.
“A cipher,” I breathed, skimming the senseless words. Unsigned, the low-quality paper had been sealed with a common courier’s brand, my mother’s elegant script scrawled across the surface.
“From the War,” Augustus confirmed in a grim tone. “Never thought I’d see the like again.”
Aubrey hovered behind me, peering over my shoulder. “What does it say?”
I’d practiced, of course, decoding the pages of fake letters she’d concocted to teach me such things. I’d taken to it far faster than some of the other skills she’d attempted to impart to me. I’d no great talent for preparing poisons or picking pockets, but ciphers had always come easily. Tiny puzzles made of words, their secrets lie beneath pattern and key. Some of the codes my mother had put to me had taken me hours or days to untangle. This one, though, was all too familiar; the first cipher she’d ever taught me. It took only a handful of moments to find the true message beneath.
“Elas is no longer safe,” I translated aloud for everyone’s benefit. “Return by the same means in which you left.”
“Captain Russo,” Aubrey murmured. “He must have brought the letter.”
I raised my eyes to find Quintin’s, pale and unsettled and fixed on me. His face had hardened into that immovable soldier’s mask, but I could still see the glint of unease beneath. My hands clutched the missive tight enough to crinkle it as I shared the final piece of my mother’s message.
“The wolf will be waiting.”
CHAPTER 28
Lyra made her farewells the night before, tearing up a bit as she kissed us firmly on the cheeks, insisting that she couldn’t bear to see us off in the morning. At dawn, we hired porters to cart our trunks to the docks, where Captain Russo and his crew were waiting. After exchanging a somber greeting, he saw to the loading of our belongings and we pushed back from the dock before the sun had fully cleared the horizon. Over the course of another three miserable weeks at sea, we pieced together what had passed in our absence from the jumble of superstition and unfounded rumor provided by Captain Russo’s crew.
The Royal Physician and his family had returned to their home province of Caelin in disgrace. The King remained closeted in the palace. What few nobles dared to press for his attention were viciously rebuked and chased from the halls. Yule had passed unmarked at Crofter’s Castle for the first time in centuries and the Court was abuzz with speculation, but whatever was happening behind those walls was kept carefully contained. The babe was reported to be hearty and hale, though no one had actually seen him. He still had not been named.
All our faces fell when Russo himself revealed that the darkest of the rumors were indeed true. A great sickness had begun to spread in the winter months, first claiming livestock, then children and elders, eventually decimating entire villages. There was no pattern to it, pockets of illness appearing sporadically across the countryside. Fear had settled on the common people like a shroud. Physicians out of Caelin and Theria had traveled to the affected villages, but neither the source nor the mode of transmission could be identified. Many of them died for their efforts.
A vast migration of peoples fleeing the violence in Dacia and beyond streamed across the eastern border. Wagon trains of nomadic peoples wandered the countryside, received with a mix of pity and hostility, varying from place to place. Many believed it was the gezgin, as they were called, that brought the illness. Others believed it was poison, and turned on their neighbors. Whatever the cause, thousands had died, and more were likely to follow.
When we drifted into the Bay of Brothers, filthy and grim, I felt the first minuscule ray of hope in a long while. At the far end of the immense wharf, a cluster of familiar ships sat docked, dark blue flags fluttering in the wind high atop their masts. Clutching the railing, I strained my eyes to scan the crowds. The sapphire ring, strung on a chain beneath my clothing for the last year, burned hot against my skin.
There. I spotted him, sleek black hair shining in the midday sun. My heart leapt into my throat when his eyes found mine and the whole of his face lit with joy. The deckhands couldn’t move fast enough to secure the lines. Still in my tunic and breeches, I leapt over the railing as he had done so many months ago, weaving my way through the bodies on the dock. Then he was there, wrapping me in his arms as I buried my face in his chest.
“Elivya,” he breathed into my salt-crusted hair. I clung to him as dock hands settled the gangplank into place.
“Eleven months and you couldn’t wait two more minutes?” Aubrey’s annoyed voice called from behind me. It made us both laugh, but our levity was short-lived as Augustus ambled over, porters close behind with our belongings.
“On with you,” he huffed. “No time to dawdle.”
Horses waited for us on the wharf, along with a modest carriage for Augustus and a cart for our trunks. We followed Adrian’s lead through the labyrinthine streets of the port city, eventually arriving at an elegant stone house with a tall iron gate. The Van Dryn sigil marked a banner over the entryway, a silver compass rose atop a field of dark blue. Inside, I reveled in the sight of long-missed luxuries, ample rooms well-appointed with plush couches and ornately carved tables polished to a gleam.
“Samuel will show you all to your quarters. Baths and fresh clothes have been prepared for you. Take your leisure, and we will reconvene for supper later.” At his direction, a well-groomed chamberlain guided my three travel-worn companions off into the house. Adrian took my hand. “And you, come with me.”
His private quarters took up a significant portion of the upper level, with an immense bedroom and several other well-appointed spaces, including a sitting room and study. He led me through them to an adjoining privy, a large copper tub steaming invitingly. A young handmaiden bobbed a curtsy as we entered, and began helping me undress. Adrian backed out of the room, flashing me a smile before pulling the door closed behind him.
Traitor (A Crown of Lilies Book 1) Page 31