Oathbreaker

by Cara Witter

  Jaeme wondered what Hugh must think of him for succeeding, but if he disapproved, he didn’t show it. “Good to have you back, Jaeme,” he said.

  Kenton cleared his throat again, and Jaeme realized he’d better introduce the rest of them before Kenton started interrogating his uncle as to the whereabouts of Kotali.

  “These are Daniella’s ladies-in-waiting,” Jaeme said, indicating Perchaya and Sayvil. “And her errand boy and personal guard.” He put Kenton last deliberately, but if Kenton noticed, he didn’t give Jaeme the satisfaction of showing it.

  “Welcome,” Greghor said, speaking only to Daniella, as was appropriate. “I hope you’ll be comfortable here. If there’s anything you need during your stay, please speak to me directly.”

  Daniella executed a perfect curtsy, even in her dirty traveling dress. They’d talked about procuring her something more presentable, but ultimately decided against it. The traveling dress told the story of a girl who fled from her tyrant father in the night. And, as Daniella had pointed out, it wasn’t a lie.

  Gods knew Jaeme had enough of those going around.

  “The honor is mine, your grace,” Daniella said.

  “Please,” his uncle said. “Call me Greghor. Or Uncle, if you prefer.”

  Daniella looked to Jaeme, obviously taken aback by his uncle’s acceptance.

  Told you, Jaeme mouthed.

  The corners of her mouth quirked up in the tiniest smile, and if it hadn’t been indecorous, he would have kissed her on the spot.

  Behind Daniella, he noticed Kenton looking murderously in his direction. Jaeme was trying to figure out what in all hells he’d done now, when he realized it wasn’t him Kenton was glaring at.

  It was Hugh.

  Jaeme turned to his friend and found him staring down at Perchaya as if he’d just seen his first Meisler broad-blade. Perchaya herself seemed to have noticed the attention, as she was staring down at her skirts, her cheeks pink. She stole another glance up at Hugh, and they flushed further.

  Kenton put a hand on his sword.

  “Well!” Jaeme said. “We’ve traveled quite a ways and I promised my companions—er, companion, a rest. Will there be room for all of us, what with the crowd in town?”

  “Of course,” Greghor smiled at Daniella. “Will you be comfortable in Jaeme’s rooms, or would you prefer your own?”

  Daniella’s eyes widened and flicked to Jaeme.

  “She’ll stay with me,” he said, watching Daniella for her approval. She nodded nervously, and he hoped that was due to the awkwardness of discussing sleeping arrangements in front of a crowd.

  Greghor nodded approvingly at Jaeme, no doubt thrilled at what Jaeme had accomplished. Greghor may not have supported the mission itself, but as neither of them had any choice in the matter, he knew the importance of Jaeme’s successful return.

  Gods, if he only knew.

  “Your guard can stay in the barracks,” Greghor said. Kenton recovered from glaring at Hugh long enough to flare his nostrils at this news, and Jaeme smiled.

  “And there is an adjoining room to yours for your ladies-in-waiting.” Greghor paused briefly, looking at Nikaenor.

  “I’ll stay in the barracks too!” Nikaenor blurted.

  They all stared at him for a moment as his face turned red as a beet.

  “Of course,” Greghor said. “It makes sense you wouldn’t want to be alone in a foreign land. I’m sure you’ve all bonded on the long journey.” He didn’t directly mention their excursion to Tirostaar, but Jaeme felt confident that future, more private conversations were coming.

  Jaeme would have a lot more questions to answer.

  Hugh took one step down, leaning over to catch Perchaya’s downcast eyes. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said.

  Now it was Hugh they were all staring at. Jaeme had just announced Perchaya as a lady-in-waiting, and as such hadn’t given her name. Hugh had hardly made her acquaintance, and even if he had, he was a full duke who had never met Daniella, so speaking to her servant first was—

  “Perhaps,” Greghor said to Daniella, taking his turn at saving them all, “after you’ve settled in and had a rest, Jaeme can take you on a tour of the grounds. He explored it so much as a boy, I’m sure he knows secrets even I don’t know about the place.”

  Perchaya looked up at Hugh and gave him a shy smile, and behind her, Kenton looked like he was about to burst a a blood vessel in his brain.

  Which, Jaeme thought, might make the rest of their lives considerably easier.

  “Yes,” Kenton said. “Let’s all have a look around.” And Jaeme realized that his period of benefiting from Kenton’s desire to charge forward had come to an end. That this tour was now to be entered into at the request of a supposed guard.

  Gods, they were all terrible at this. “Well then,” Jaeme said, motioning toward the front doors. “Shall we?”

  Daniella put her hand on his arm in the traditional style, and Jaeme escorted her through the front doors of the castle, almost as if they were really coming home.

  Twenty-four

  Being back in his quarters was almost enough to make Jaeme feel as if the last several months had never happened. At least, the parts he wanted to forget. He rather liked escorting Daniella through his parlor, past the carved mahogany furniture, and to his bedroom. His stately four-poster bed with the carved wooden canopy looked just as he’d left it, if considerably more inviting.

  Daniella yawned. “I don’t suppose the others would allow us a nap before we see the castle.”

  Jaeme smiled. From the droop of her eyes, he imagined she meant a literal nap, not a metaphorical one. “Go ahead,” Jaeme said. “I’ll ask the others to give us some time.”

  When Jaeme stepped into the hall and rapped on the door of the neighboring servants’ quarters where Daniella’s “ladies-in-waiting” would stay, Kenton opened the door. “Well?” he asked. “Where to now?”

  “To nap, actually,” Jaeme said. “I came to tell you that Daniella would like to rest before we tour the grounds. We’ll come get you later.” Jaeme smirked. “In the barracks.”

  Kenton opened his mouth to argue, but Perchaya pulled him away from the door. “Oh, let them rest,” she said. “We all know why we’re here, but we’ve been walking for days, and we’re not even fully recovered from the last disaster. Give us a few days to breathe out of Diamis’ reach and we’ll all be ready to head to Andronim after Jaeme finds his stone.”

  Jaeme was careful not to agree to that. He wasn’t feeling pulled anywhere except toward Daniella at the moment—and certainly not in the way he’d been drawn to Nikaenor and Saara like iron to a lodestone.

  Kenton grumbled something, but then slumped into a chair made from willow boughs, clearly intending to remain here and spawn rumors about the propriety of Daniella’s staff instead of retreating to the barracks. Jaeme should have guessed as much. Kenton couldn’t stand for even a nap to happen without him.

  “I’ll send word when we’re ready,” Jaeme said. With any luck that would be in quite a few hours. Perhaps if they waited long enough, Kenton would head to the barracks, after all, and the rest of them could go on without him.

  Jaeme would hate to leave Nikaenor out of it, though. Given the boy’s previous fondness for tales of the knighthood, he imagined Nikaenor would enjoy a tour of Castle Grisham more than anyone.

  Shoes tapped down the hallway after Jaeme as he headed back to his rooms, and he turned to find Sayvil following him.

  “When I said we need a nap,” he said with a sigh, “I assumed it was implied that I meant Daniella and I—”

  “We need to talk,” Sayvil said. She looked around, as if Diamis might have spies stationed behind the statue of Jaeme’s grand-uncle Leopold in the alcove down the way. “Not here.”

  Fine. At least it wasn’t Kenton. Jaeme he
ld open the door to his parlor and ushered her in. Daniella had already closed the door to the bedroom, and while he didn’t imagine she’d locked it, since she’d be expecting him to return, he saw no reason that one of them shouldn’t get some rest.

  Jaeme pivoted on the woven rug, which was emblazoned with the image of knights of old sparring with dueling shields that were a sight taller than they were.

  Sayvil shut the door behind her. “Is the stone really here?”

  Jaeme threw his hands in the air. “We’ve all been through the deepest layer of hell. Is it so unreasonable that I might need a few days before I can figure out exactly what I’m feeling, about stones or otherwise?”

  Sayvil regarded him with a level expression. “So, you have no idea if it’s here or not?”

  Jaeme sunk into an armchair. The room hadn’t been used in months, but the servants had kept it free of dust. “I don’t know,” he said. “This is the only place I’ve wanted to be, but I don’t know if that’s the call, or just my good sense suggesting that perhaps wandering all over the Five Lands when every person in every damn nation seems to be out for my head—”

  “Jaeme,” Sayvil said. “Do you even want to find Kotali?” She crossed her arms and stared at him, her long, dark braid wrapped around her head like a crown.

  Gods. She was behaving more like royalty than he was. And perhaps it was the shock of that that brought out the truth. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t want to find the damn jewel. I don’t want the world to end. I know what it all means, and I’m no fonder of the idea of the Second Age of Blood than anyone. But I didn’t ask to be chosen, and I’m still not completely sure that I am.”

  He expected Sayvil to lay into him, to tell him to hurry up and do his job so that the rest of them could get back to the bloody job of saving the world, but she didn’t. She gave him one simple nod. “I thought as much.”

  Jaeme squinted up at her. “What?”

  Sayvil waved a hand at him dismissively. “I’ve been dreading finding Arkista. I prayed to her for twenty years and she never heard me, and now I’m supposed to do her bidding?” Sayvil shrugged. “It was one thing when it was nothing more than a theory. We all thought that Kenton was crazy in the beginning, and we only followed him because we didn’t dare part with Saara for fear of losing our minds. But the nearer we get to Andronim—” Sayvil shook her head. “I at once want to go, and I don’t. Saara got a kingdom out of the deal, but Nikaenor lost his father. The boy is wrong. Being chosen isn’t a blessing. It’s a gods-damned curse.”

  Jaeme blinked at her. “Do you really believe that?”

  Sayvil frowned at the ground, scuffing the toe of her shoe against the rug. “The way I see it, I miss my husband so much my bones ache, and if Arkista had done so much as mention when she called me that I was going to be gone the better part of a year, I might have, I don’t know, thought to bring him with. I’ve been dragged all over the Five Lands, nearly dying a dozen times over. What happens if I’m killed one of these times, as I easily could be?”

  She paused, and Jaeme realized she expected him to answer. “Arkista will call a new godbearer,” he said.

  “Exactly.” Her gray eyes narrowed angrily, though it didn’t seem to be him she was mad at. “The gods knew how dangerous all of this was going to be. They picked people they didn’t mind throwing into the fire to see if they burn. We’re not blessed. We’re expendable.”

  Jaeme’s hands shook. That made an awful kind of sense. If Kotali was looking to choose someone good and valiant in his service, he would have picked someone like Hugh.

  What was Jaeme to him? A traitor’s son. A knight so disillusioned with his own oaths he ignored them.

  “I wish he hadn’t picked me,” Jaeme admitted. “Saara and Nikaenor both knew where to look, but I don’t feel anything at all. And maybe that’s because I still don’t believe. Kotali never did anything for me. He let his so-called knighthood stone my father right in front of me, and he didn’t do a thing, so I’m not sure why I should lift a damn finger for him. Maybe I won’t be able to find him because I’ve seen a dozen miracles and I still don’t believe in my own god.”

  Sayvil nodded. “But do you think Kenton’s right about Diamis?”

  Jaeme’s shoulders slumped. Kenton had to be right. Daniella confirmed his claims, and Jaeme wasn’t about to accuse her of lying. Not to mention the things they’d seen, the Sevairnese soldiers traveling with blood mages, the relentless way they’d been pursued that could only be the product of extreme spying or magical means, Saara’s fire and the wall of water and the voice in the palace at Tirostaar commanding them all to fall down at Saara’s feet.

  “Yes,” Jaeme said. “I think he is.”

  Sayvil drew a sharp breath. “Then people are going to die, Jaeme. People we love, strangers we’ve never met. Your own vassals. Do you care about them?”

  Jaeme’s throat closed. Of course he cared. He’d agreed to let his uncle bequeath the duchy to him because he believed he would do good things for its people, but now he wondered if he’d been wrong.

  “I’m not the person you need me to be,” Jaeme said. “I’m just here for Daniella. I’ve always been honest about that. The rest of you should go on without me. I don’t know where Kotali is, and I don’t know that I ever will.”

  Sayvil stared at him for a long moment. “You know we can’t do that, don’t you?”

  Jaeme put his head in his hands. He knew.

  “Unless you want to murder Kenton,” Sayvil said, “he’s not going to move more than half a mile from you until he sees that damn stone in your hand.”

  “Probably not even then.”

  “You mean once you kill him, or once you’re victorious?”

  Jaeme stared down at the rug and shook his head. “Either.”

  Sayvil nodded. “We’ll rest a few days. And I’ll do what I can with Kenton. But there’s only so much resting we can do, even if we’re safe from the soldiers.” She hesitated. “You’re going to have to figure this out. I hope you know how much I wish I didn’t have to say that, because gods know I’m next.”

  Jaeme looked up at her and sighed. She was right. He knew she was. “Thanks, Sayvil.”

  She nodded and left, and Jaeme collapsed back in his chair.

  People were going to die. Lots of them. What was worse, Daniella herself would be wrenched away from him and treated as a gods-damned weapon instead of as the incredible, beautiful person she was.

  Okay, Kotali, he thought. Where are you?

  But if the stone could hear him, it didn’t answer.

  Twenty-five

  Kenton walked beside Nikaenor to the entrance hall of Castle Grisham, considering the place as they headed to meet the others for the tour. Nikaenor exclaimed over everything they passed—the bright tapestries, the banners of the various nobility hung beside the rooms in which they were staying, the expansive ceiling of the entrance hall.

  Kenton, on the other hand, remained quiet, considering where in this castle he would hide a jewel. Had the gods-damned place even been around as long ago as the Banishment? He made a mental note to ask Daniella. No doubt she’d know more about it than even Jaeme did.

  “Oh!” Nikaenor said, pointing at a pane of leaded glass with an image of a shield with the Grisham crest.

  “You might want to save some of that enthusiasm for the tour,” Kenton said.

  Nikaenor pinched his lips shut with visible effort.

  Kenton supposed he shouldn’t squash the kid’s spirit. To Kenton, it was just a castle, stone upon more stone, military practicality outweighing the need for the marble arches or vast domed ceilings found in Tir Neren or the Andronish palace. Though ultimately, he felt much more comfortable in a place designed for war rather than ostentation.

  He’d be even happier if he discovered this was actually Kotali’s resting place, and not just la
ziness or insubordination on Jaeme’s part. Not that these were mutually exclusive.

  They reached the center of the entrance hall, where Jaeme had asked them to meet when he and Daniella were finished with their “nap.” Kenton spoke in a low voice, so as not to be overheard.

  “If you were Kotali,” he said to Nikaenor. “Where in this castle do you suppose you would hide yourself?”

  Nikaenor’s eyes widened as he considered that. “Do you really think he’s here? In Jaeme’s own house?”

  Kenton shrugged. “Saara was raised by Nerendal’s light. Mirilina rested not a mile offshore of the town where you grew up. It’s possible the gods all chose people who were physically close to them.”

  Nikaenor looked around quickly, as if he might find the Earthstone lying idly in a corner.

  “Of course,” Kenton said, “two isn’t a pattern, and Nerendal was in the open, so he might be an exception anyway. There’s no way to be sure.”

  “Still,” Nikaenor said. He opened his mouth to continue, but was cut off by Perchaya, who descended the stairs from the rooms above, having changed into clothes Jaeme’s staff had provided.

  She was stunning in a simple, low-belted blue gown, her light hair braided back. Kenton’s heart pounded faster at seeing her; it had been doing so ever since his realization in Foroclae, the realization which he had been trying to ignore but which was stubbornly resistant to his best efforts.

  Even in Mortiche, away from Diamis’ soldiers, they couldn’t afford distractions.

  “That’s a beautiful dress, Perchaya,” Nikaenor said, and Kenton felt a bit irked that the kid had beaten him to it.

  “Thanks, Nikaenor,” she said. She self-consciously smoothed out the satin skirt, and Kenton noticed she had new white satin gloves on, too—good thing such things were in fashion here, because he didn’t want any questions about why Daniella’s lady-in-waiting would be wearing a ring with Drim etchings, even if Mortiche hadn’t turned on the Drim as staunchly as the rest of the mainland. “I guess a lady-in-waiting dresses better than I would have thought.” She smiled. “I see you got some new clothes, too.”