Palace of Silver

by Hannah West

  Meanwhile, the commander had discreetly led the young and experienced soldiers to the armory rather than the campsite after rigorously testing their loyalties. Even with elicromancers and the element of surprise, our ambush needed muscle.

  Kadri had deceived the Uprising informant about our “plans” to attack the city. We expected Ambrosine to send a scout and ready her troops.

  That scout would find an army of hundreds helmed by Navara, Mercer, and Devorian. But when Ambrosine’s troops marched to meet them, we would spring our attack. Mercer and Devorian would materialize to help us, and Navara would lead the decoy army onward to reinforce us. Since she wasn’t trained to fight, Navara would double back to hide in the armory until the battle’s end.

  The traps we set at the ambush site were simple canvas-covered pits containing sharpened stakes. My snowstorm would hide the coverings.

  When those were ready, sentries stayed behind to keep a lookout while the rest of us returned to the armory. Weapons, waterskins, and stores of food and ale were distributed. By our estimation, Ambrosine’s army would be on the march by tomorrow morning. There was little left to do besides wait.

  Mercer and I huddled with Kadri to try to teach her whatever spells she might need, but her marksmanship gift would be more useful than any spell.

  “I told Glisette she can’t be my tutor back home,” Kadri said, eyeing me. “She’s too bossy.”

  “Glisette? Bossy?” Mercer cocked his head.

  “No matter what conditions I survive, you will always imagine me as a spoon-fed, demanding brat, won’t you?”

  Mercer laughed his deep, resounding laugh and threw an arm around my shoulder. “I see the Ice Queen still hasn’t learned to tolerate jokes at her expense.”

  I flicked his ear, surprising him. “And the Prophet still can’t predict what’s coming next,” I retorted playfully.

  Mercer feigned hurt at my retaliation and Kadri laughed. She’d been cheerful since she’d learned that Tilmorn had been able to heal Rynna from the Jav Darhu’s poison.

  I wandered over to the casks of watered-down ale to refill my flagon, weaving around clusters of young soldiers who couldn’t pry their eyes off of me. Whether it was my beauty, my resemblance to Ambrosine, or both, they studied me like a newly discovered specimen.

  My fingers trembled as I turned the spout. I had survived the raid on Darmeska, but I was just as frightened now. The nightmares had never left me, and I wouldn’t forget the pain of the injuries that Rynna’s nectar had healed. Diversion seemed to be the only tool to assuage my fears. Tipping my full flagon back, I took a gulp and looked around for Sev.

  I found him sitting on a crate, sharpening his hunting knife. But he wasn’t paying as much attention to the task. Instead, he was watching me.

  I smiled. He returned a half smile and refocused on his work.

  I made my way over to him and nudged his boot with the toe of mine. “Are you worried?” I asked, claiming a nearby crate.

  He pursed his lips. “No, not really.”

  “Then why are you so quiet? You’ve avoided me all evening.”

  He studied me for a moment before shooting his steely gaze to Mercer. “You chart your course by him like he’s the North Star.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I see you looking for him whenever he leaves your side.”

  I shook my head. “If I’m looking for anyone, it’s you.”

  He scoffed. “You have your life, and I have mine. Maybe it seemed otherwise for a few days, but it’s just the truth.”

  “He is a dear friend to me. Nothing more.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “More than ever,” I said. “For a time, I thought I loved him. But it was because of what we went through together.”

  “And what about this?” he asked, gesturing between him and me. “Is it temporary? A diversion from the fear and pain? Will we return to our lives and forget?”

  “I don’t want to,” I said, my face heating. I thought of the way I had clung to him in the edifice when I pretended to be his bride, the way he kicked dirt over the fire so we could kiss in the dark. “But you’re warm to me one minute and cold the next. If there’s any hesitation on my side, it’s because I don’t know whether you desire me or are simply going along with it because circumstances thrust us together—”

  He stood up. I thought he would storm off, but he caught my hand and led me down one of the long aisles. We stopped in front of baskets overflowing with fur cloaks, which we would most certainly need on the morrow when I brought the freezing weather.

  After making sure we had privacy, he turned to face me. “I didn’t mean to be cold. I just wanted to give you space with him, if you wanted it.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Glisette,” he breathed. “I care for you, and I have from the moment I realized you were different from Ambrosine. You’ve surprised me every day since.”

  “I have?”

  He nodded.

  “You’ve surprised me too,” I said. “I thought you were rude.”

  “I can be.”

  “And humorless.”

  A smile crossed his lips. “Only to people who don’t know me. But you know me better than most already.”

  I leaned back against the shelf, planting my hands on my hips. This time, I wanted him to come to me. I blinked up at him, letting my eagerness show on my face.

  He stepped closer and propped his hand on the shelf above my head. “I’d like to kiss you again,” he said softly.

  “By all means.”

  His callused fingers streamed through my hair as he pressed his lips against mine. A moan escaped and I kissed him back, tugging him flush against me in the shadows.

  But a flagon bounced off the ground, jarring us, and several soldiers responded to the gaff with rowdy laughs. No one could see us, but the ruckus served as a reminder that we weren’t alone.

  We gradually pulled apart, Sev’s breaths heaving with desire and his starry eyes studying my mouth.

  “That should give you something to fight for,” I said. “I mean, other than your seven brothers and sisters, your mother, your princess, your kingdom—”

  “My what?” His voice rumbled against my mouth. “I’ve forgotten everything but the taste of your lips.”

  I grinned. We stole every second that we could but eventually forced ourselves to rejoin the others.

  “Enjoy yourself?” Kadri asked quietly as I sat beside her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re glowing.”

  I laughed, though worry hedged out my momentary joy. Tilmorn had returned from healing everyone who had the slightest ache or ailment, but Navara, who had been following him around to watch him work, was nowhere to be seen. “Where’s Navara?” I asked.

  “She said she was going to pray,” Kadri answered. “Poor girl. She’s frightened.”

  Yawning, I stood up. I would need to rest for tomorrow, especially to generate a powerful storm. But until everyone else started unrolling their pallets and snuffing out the candles, I wouldn’t be able to sleep.

  The vault door was cracked open. I decided to slip out and find Navara in the abandoned Edifice of the Holies, perhaps make one more attempt to call down a deity.

  When I stepped into the Edifice of the Fallen, the dark whispers returned.

  But this time, they laughed. A thousand voices mingled as one, all laughing at me.

  I spun around to the portrait of Themera to stare her down, tell her I was not afraid. I half expected to find her bloodred lips parted in laughter.

  But I found Navara sprawled on the dirt floor of the edifice, her eyes a bright, reflective silver.

  “Navara!” I tried to shake her awake while the guards trampled down the stairs at the sound of my cry. I set my head against her chest to listen for a heartbeat and whimpered at the sound of silence. Her skin was so cold, and her irises glinted like salmon scales.

  A breathy chuckl
e made the hairs on my neck prickle. I looked up at the edifice mirror, standing open on its hinges, and found a shadowy outline of Ambrosine surrounded by a dark glow, like the ring around the moon during an eclipse.

  I could have used the same shattering spell I’d used while trying to escape Ambrosine’s illusions in the palace. But I reeled back and drove my first into the glass, roaring with anger.

  The mirror burst into shards. The laughter stopped.

  Navara heaved a breath like she’d been drowning and finally surfaced. She blinked away the silver from her wide, wild eyes, and one of the guards helped her stand.

  “She tricked me,” she gasped. “I thought it was real.”

  “Thought what was real?” I demanded.

  Navara stumbled forward and clutched my sleeve. “She looked like an old woman who approached my parents and me on the street when I was a child. She offered me a perfect apple, but I was afraid of her because she was bent and covered in warts. I was so young and I didn’t know better. So I said no and ran away. Later, Mother told me that I couldn’t be a true leader if I did not look upon everyone with kindness.” She coughed and massaged her throat. “I always regretted not taking the gift. It used to make me think I would be a terrible queen. I hoped my parents would have a son so I wouldn’t have to be.”

  I rubbed her shoulder and thought of the twisted memories Ambrosine had shown me in the mirrors. Myron must have told her this story.

  “I didn’t want to make the same mistake again,” Navara said. “So when the old woman offered me the apple, I took it. I had a bad feeling, like before, but I knew my mother would want me to. I took a bite, and then I couldn’t breathe. I was choking. The woman’s face changed to Ambrosine’s. That’s the last thing I remember until you came.”

  “You were a child, Navara. That moment didn’t mean anything.” I took her hand in mine. “You have already made a good and valiant leader. Come, let’s go back inside.”

  As I stepped over the glass to lead her in, an icy fear pierced my heart. If Ambrosine could find Navara in a mirror, did that mean she had found our army? That she knew of our plans? Or perhaps all she knew was that Navara was hiding in an Edifice of the Fallen. The whole country was full of them. Surely, she wouldn’t be able to tell one apart from the other.

  Did Themera, who pursued me so relentlessly, know where I was, or was she reaching out blindly from the darkness to which the Holies had banished her?

  If Themera knew where I was, I decided, Nexantius and Ambrosine would have found us by now.

  Hopefully, Ambrosine had found Navara in the mirror because she could not find her in person. Hopefully, she had had merely chanced upon her nemesis on some other plane, the shadow universe of reflections that she and Nexantius ruled together. Otherwise, she would be here.

  I resolved to finish this, to make sure Navara survived no matter what it took from me.

  But it would not be easy. Navara was growing in power and beauty, and Ambrosine’s envious heart would not rest until one or both of them were dead.

  THIRTY-NINE

  KADRI

  I TESTED the draw of the bow from the armory. Compared to the gorgeous bow Rynna had given me, it was lousy. But everything crafted by human hands seemed lousy by comparison.

  Despite the early summer rain, the dawn was too warm for the heavy furs, leather gloves, and winter boots we wore. As the squadron gathered around and prepared to move out for the ambush, sweat beaded on my brow and raindrops tickled my scalp.

  I stood next to Glisette, a quiver packed with arrows slung over my shoulder. Her brows sketched a rigid line, and there was worry in her eyes.

  Our scout had reported that Ambrosine’s army was indeed on the move, marching south on the road from Halithenica.

  Sev stood beside Glisette with a crossbow in his gloved grip and several knives strapped to his belt. He wore his weapons as naturally as Glisette wore flowing dresses—like he had been born wearing them.

  In front of the broken edifice steps, Navara mounted a bay courser the commander had brought from camp. She looked like a little girl, straddled across the twitching muscles of the warhorse’s broad back.

  But when she drew her sword to speak to the anxious, sweating warriors, she seemed to fill out, to grow taller, stronger, and less afraid.

  The elicromancers were satisfied to stay in the shadows and let her give off her own light, brighter than any elicrin stone in the eyes of her people. The army seemed wary of us anyway—especially of Glisette, who looked too much like Ambrosine.

  “An impostor sits on our throne,” Navara said. “I refuse to let my great kingdom fall at the feet of a liar and snake. The people of Perispos will rise up and reclaim what belongs to us.”

  This earned a cheer from the soldiers. She punched her sword in the air, feeding on their enthusiasm. As she led the horse back and forth in a jaunty, proud parade of one, the wet wind raked back her short hair, showcasing her lovely features and the fire in her deep brown eyes. I could see her arm trembling with the weight of the sword, but I doubted her admirers cared a bit.

  “The people of Perispos are strong,” she went on. “We are warriors at heart—sons and daughters of Atrelius. We may be mortals, but we will long outlive the queen’s tyranny.”

  The responding cheers and hollers were so loud I felt them vibrating in my chest.

  “She’s good at this,” I said to Glisette.

  “She is,” she agreed.

  When Navara finished, we wished good luck to her, Mercer, and Devorian, who were going off with the decoy army. Glisette clung to her brother for a long time, long enough that we had to run to catch up with the rest of the soldiers following Commander Larsio to the ambush site.

  Many of our fellow ambushers carried short spears that could be easily thrown from treetops or bushes, while others, like me, carried bows and quivers. Glisette carried a sword. But armed with her elicrin stone, she probably wouldn’t need it. I remembered the wall of ice she had created to break down the bridge at Darmeska, and the fluttering fear in my belly stilled for a moment.

  We moved stealthily, hiking for an hour through mist-shrouded forest hills before we had to navigate around the traps at the ambush site. The high-branching beech trees with smooth gray bark had been stripped of some of their leaves in Glisette’s first storm, but the silver firs crowding around them offered enough cover for us. I tried to toss my rope around a strong limb and succeeded on the fourth try. I bit off my gloves so I could tie a secure friction knot like Sev had shown me, then looped the rope into a makeshift harness and hoisted myself high, mounting a strong branch. Grateful for the strength in my healed ankle, I reeled in the rope and tucked it into my pack.

  A few dozen other soldiers did the same, while many others took their places in the low brush. I saw Sev claim the tree next to me and watched Tilmorn cross to the other side of the road.

  Glisette approached the edge of the forest. I looked out from the green boughs to the rolling hills and found the outline of Halithenica, a tiny shadow at the horizon.

  Even this far away, I could distinguish a mass of warriors marching down the road.

  My heart sank to my bowels, and my grip on the sturdy branch weakened. I had survived one battle, but what if that was thanks to sheer luck?

  Glisette stood next Commander Larsio, waiting.

  It seemed an agonizing eternity before the army drew close enough that my eyes could separate one soldier from another.

  Most of the army was infantry. A small cavalry pulled up the rear. Their ranks formed a long, thin line that snaked down the road, which was ideal for an ambush; we could engage small numbers of them at a time. Some might even turn back or scatter when they realized they had encountered an attack. We had planned for that.

  I had told the altar girl, Damiatta, of our plans, pretending I hadn’t noticed how her eyes sparked with cunning. Thanks to her information, Ambrosine and her commander thought they had no reason to be alarmed. They thought
they would beat our army to the valley beyond the woods. They anticipated a pitched battle that would give them the upper hand.

  Glisette and Commander Larsio exchanged glances. The time had come.

  The battle was beginning.

  I closed my eyes and thought of Rynna, of Rayed, and of Valory, who suffered in stillness and despair. I thought of all the homes I had known and loved, from the lush, stormy Erdem to the sunny beaches of Beyrian, to the mystical beauty of Wenryn. I thought of Lucrez, who had been so brave and unexpectedly selfless, and Perennia, who had died trying to hold her fractured family together.

  When I opened my eyes again, Glisette had lifted her hands, preparing to bring wrath down on her sister’s army.

  Hunkered in the high branches, I sank into my furs for warmth, bracing myself for what would come.

  The biting wind howled in my ears until they ached. The rain turned to hard sleet, and then to swirling snow. Glisette shaped the storm with her gestures like a potter shaping clay.

  It stalled over us, churning until I had to shield my face. When I dared look again, a thick layer of snow covered the ground.

  With a great thrust, Glisette pushed the storm out from the forest toward the fast-approaching infantry.

  Helmets flew off, and even a few crest-shaped shields caught gusts and blew away. Most of the cavalry dismounted and tried to harry their horses onward, but the beasts preferred turning their rumps to the freezing wind.

  Good. The infantry would be exhausted by the time they reached us.

  Glisette backed into the forest and let her arms drop, palms down, as though taming a wild beast. The winds dissipated. The fresh snow settled down quietly around us. Then the precipitation turned back from snow to misty rain.

  Ambrosine’s army regrouped as much as possible and pressed on. I repositioned myself in my tree to find the best firing position. My fingers brushed the fletching of an arrow in my quiver, anxious to send it flying, anxious for this to be over.