Oathbreaker

by Cara Witter

  Sayvil made an exasperated noise. “Jaeme’s the one who’s supposed to get the signs. If you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to my room before some servant unwittingly spills my fresh-cut farflower all over the Grishams’ illustrious rug.”

  “Does it stain?” Nikaenor asked.

  “No,” Sayvil said. “But it causes somnolence.”

  Kenton wrapped the chain around the door handle and jerked upward, listening to the satisfying pop of the mechanism. A few quick yanks on the handle and the thing fell off in his hands, allowing him to reach in and pull the bolt from the stone.

  Kenton pushed the door open, revealing a long, dark corridor. There appeared to be some light spilling from far at the end, but the charms on this level of the castle were likely more spaced out—probably because few people would have cause to come down here, other than to retrieve wine or food from storage or pay respects to the dead nobility whose ashes were entombed in the basement vaults.

  “Well,” Sayvil said. “I suppose that rules out covering our tracks.”

  Nikaenor rubbed his arms. “Do you think Jaeme’s uncle will put us in the stocks? Because Saara’s aunt—”

  “No one is going in the stocks,” Kenton said. “Come on. If we can at least find someplace for Jaeme to look, we can tie him up and drag him down here.”

  The corridor smelled vaguely of mildew, and Kenton wondered what water source could be dampening the stone with the castle being so high on a hill. Perhaps one of the sewer canals had a leak, though the tunnel didn’t smell at all like piss or excrement. Somewhere ahead of them Kenton heard the slight tunk tunk tunk of fat drops on stone. He held up the light charm as they walked forward.

  Come on, Kotali, he thought. Work with me.

  “If I didn’t know better,” Sayvil said, “I’d think you were leading us into a trap.”

  “Believe me,” Kenton said, “you aren’t the bearers I want to trap.”

  “Maybe I should have brought Mirilina,” Nikaenor said.

  “Why?” Sayvil asked. “Do you think they can smell each other?”

  “No,” Nikaenor said. “But they’re gods. They know everything.”

  Given the way things had been going, Kenton doubted that. And even if they did know everything, they seemed to have given up the ability to communicate clearly along with their physical forms.

  Also in question was their ability to make even the simplest of decisions.

  “If they know everything,” Sayvil said, “why didn’t Mirilina warn you about the enormous eel?”

  Kenton smiled. They’d all been hassling him about that story since they’d left Haidshir. Kenton was sure there had actually been eels in Mirilina’s resting place, but if they’d been as big as Nikaenor said, there was no way he could have taken the things.

  “It was a test,” Nikaenor said. “And I passed.”

  “Speaking of passing,” Kenton said, stopping at a juncture in the hallway, “there’s a large crack in the stone down there. Why don’t you pass by and see if you can shimmy through?”

  Nikaenor looked doubtfully down the corridor. One side of the crack was lit sharply by a light charm around the corner, and from the crevice emerged enormous roots, black like the Grisham tree above. Nikaenor was the thinnest of them, so if anyone was going to fit through, it’d be him.

  “Do you think there’s rats down here?” he asked.

  “Probably,” Sayvil said, shoving Nikaenor forward by the shoulders. “Now off with you.”

  Nikaenor shuffled reluctantly toward the end of the hall, while Kenton took a corner and came to another door. He tried the handle, but again found it locked.

  He wrapped the chain carefully around it.

  “At this rate you’re going to owe Jaeme’s uncle a fortune in locksmithing,” Sayvil said.

  Kenton blew air through his nose. “Don’t you have some kind of herbal remedy for this? Lock-lily powder? Salve of gear greasing?”

  “No,” Sayvil said.

  Around the corner, Nikaenor gave out a small yelp, followed by the pattering of gravel on stone.

  “I’m all right!” he called.

  “Not that we asked,” Sayvil said.

  Kenton glanced at her over his shoulder. “What’s wrong with you, anyway?” he asked. “You’ve been in a foul mood since we joined you in Haidshir.”

  Kenton pulled up on the chain. This time, though, the mechanism didn’t break under the strain. Kenton reached into his pocket, wishing he’d brought at least a wire with him for picking. He was also certain there were Vorgalian charms that could help with this, but he wasn’t about to go hunting for a mage shop in the city right now. Though that wasn’t a terrible idea to do before they left Grisham.

  “I’m fine,” Sayvil said. “Sunny as ever.”

  “Right. You’re beginning to rival me for grumpiest of our group. Keep it up and Daniella and Jaeme will give up mocking me and start in on you.”

  Sayvil shrugged with her whole arms, so her hands flopped at her sides. “Fine. I know you don’t care, but since you asked, I miss my husband. That’s all. I haven’t been away from him for this long since we were kids.”

  “You don’t happen to have a lockpick on you, do you?” Kenton asked.

  Sayvil shook her head. “Also, you could at least offer condolences. I’m baring my soul to you here.”

  Kenton knew he shouldn’t have brought it up, but now that he had . . . “You knew each other when you were young?”

  “Yes,” Sayvil said. “He was always following me around like a lost puppy, and I wouldn’t give him the time of day. He found out I liked the Ballad of Simmion, so he learned to play it on his friend’s lute. And when I wouldn’t listen, he rubbed nettlebane all over his arms and came into the apothecary for some rash cream, and then played it for me with his hands all broken out in boils.”

  Kenton inspected the light charm and was rewarded with a pin that secured the chain in place. He yanked it free and set both the charm and the chain on the floor in front of the door, and then set to work with the pin. “It was the boils that did it for you, then?”

  There was the sound of another dim yelp, then more gravel, and Nikaenor’s footsteps rushing toward them.

  “There are rats!” he shouted down the hallway at them. “Big ones!”

  “Big as the eel?” Kenton called back.

  “It wasn’t so much the boils,” Sayvil said. “As the bravery. He sat there wincing and playing off key and I thought, well, he is kind of cute. Took him another few years, though, to win me over entirely.”

  “An impressive tactic,” Kenton said dryly.

  Sayvil huffed. “Right. Because you’re the king of courtship. If I find you some nettlebane, do you think you could finally figure things out with Perchaya?”

  Kenton nearly choked.

  Gods, did everyone know?

  “Doesn’t anyone care about the rats?” Nikaenor trotted up, his footfalls interfering with the delicate sound of the dropping pins inside the lock.

  “Hush,” Kenton said. “I’m concentrating.”

  Sayvil snorted, but, blessedly, she did stop talking.

  At last, Kenton heard a telltale click. “There,” he said, twisting the doorknob open.

  “Did you find anything besides rats?” Sayvil asked Nikaenor.

  He shook his head. “No. Just a crevice in the wall, and the big burly roots, and water leaking through a crack in the stone. There was a bunch of moss growing at the bottom and I think that’s where the rats—”

  Kenton pushed the door open and swore loudly, cutting Nikaenor off.

  There, on the other side of the door, lay a body across a stone table, naked from the waist up. A boy’s body. Kenton snatched the light charm off the floor and raised it in the air, and found that the boy’s eyes were closed, his body still as if in
death. But his flesh still held color, except where it had been dyed by dozens of sharp, twisting tattoos. Kenton recognized the nature of the marks, if not their exact meanings.

  Blood magic.

  Nikaenor shuffled his feet in the hallway behind Kenton. “Is he—”

  “Dead,” Kenton said. “Or worse. Stay in the hall.” Kenton drew his sword and entered the room. Daniella had said something about this—Diamis using dead bodies to communicate. There was supposed to be one in Peldenar and one in Drepaine.

  Had one of those been brought here, or was this a different body entirely? How many sets of twins might Diamis have managed to capture over the years?

  Kenton walked up to the boy and poked his arm with the tip of his sword. The body didn’t flinch, but blood did flow, trickling down the boy’s arm and pooling on the stone. The appearance of blood didn’t wake the boy, but Kenton still carefully kept himself positioned between the table and the door, prepared to defend Sayvil and Nikaenor if necessary.

  “Someone in the castle is doing blood magic,” Sayvil said.

  Someone. But this was buried and locked in the under-girth of the castle—not someplace just anyone would have access to.

  And someone had to have been reporting on them to Diamis. Beyond watching them somehow through Nikaenor’s eyes, the most plausible explanation was that Jaeme’s letters had been intercepted.

  But if Diamis was trying to worm his way into Mortiche, it would make sense for him to first develop a relationship with the nations on the coast, those places where his troops would need to first put boots on the ground. That would make Greghor and Hugh the most likely targets.

  Only one of them, however, had been getting letters from Jaeme. That didn’t absolve Hugh, but it made him unlikely to be the sole traitor.

  “Greghor,” Kenton said. “He’s always known where Jaeme is. He’s been reporting to Diamis all along.”

  “No,” Nikaenor said.

  Sayvil hesitated. “Can you prove it?”

  Kenton shook his head. “I don’t have to. I’m not looking to unseat him, only to protect us. We can’t stay here any longer.” He stepped out of the room and shut the door firmly behind him, pausing to use his pin to reengage the lock. “Let’s go. Jaeme and I need to have a little chat.”

  Thirty-four

  Daniella stormed up the great staircase of Castle Grisham, no longer happy to be here in Jaeme’s home. It wasn’t that the Dukes Council was so petty and offensive. Daniella had been surrounded by rude and intolerable nobility her entire life.

  But listening to Jaeme sit there and discuss her like she was nothing more than—

  “Daniella!” Jaeme called, and she heard his boots echoing on the floor as he ran to catch up with her. She closed her eyes, steeled herself, then wheeled around.

  Jaeme stood panting at the bottom of the steps, while she was halfway up, her dress trailing down onto the step below her. He stared up at her, eyes wide, and she guessed it was her expression that had made him stop.

  Jaeme held up his hands. “I’m sorry. That conversation obviously got away from me.”

  Daniella gave him a hard look. Of course it had bloody well gotten away from him. He’d hardly said anything to stop it. “Did it? Because at any time you could have told them they were being inappropriate.”

  Jaeme took a step up and reached out to put his arms around her, but she backed up the steps rapidly, and he stopped again. “I know. But Latimer and Osborne sit on the Council. I’m already in a tenuous position with them, because technically I’m not part of my uncle’s direct line, so they had to approve—”

  Daniella sighed in frustration. “Since when do you care what they think of you? All you ever talk about is how awful the Council is, how hypocritical, how dishonorable. But now you’re willing to lick their boots to keep your seat at their table?” The words tumbled out of her, shocking even her with the anger behind them.

  “No,” Jaeme said, looking shocked himself. “How can you say that? Just because I don’t respect them doesn’t mean I have to disrespect them to their faces by—”

  “No,” Daniella said, feeling her whole body flush. “Of course you can’t disrespect them. Much better to disrespect me by allowing them all to talk about me like I’m a commodity to be parceled out in a trade agreement.”

  Jaeme rubbed his forehead. “Obviously they shouldn’t have done that. I’m not trying to defend them. They’re despicable—”

  Daniella threw her hands in the air. “It’s not them I’m mad at, Jaeme. I’ve been put down by nobility for my entire life. To me, that’s just another day. But you.” She glared down at him and realized how true it was. She’d never thought Jaeme would treat her that way.

  Not after all they’d been through together. Not after all they’d become to each other.

  Jaeme seemed to be waiting for her to finish. Tears crept into her eyes, and if she didn’t keep talking, she was going to break down and cry, which would ruin her righteous indignation.

  “You think having me here is an asset,” she said. “You say you love me, but then you talk about me so calculatingly, like this has all been political for you. Why not just tell them you’re in love with me, and you won’t have them discussing our marriage, which you have never once brought up to me, by the way.”

  Jaeme stumbled over his words, and a wave of dread crashed over her. She’d expected him to snap back quickly that of course his motives weren’t political. Gods, were politics part of the reason? The very thought that he might have ever been using her made it hard to breathe.

  “Of course it wasn’t political,” Jaeme said finally.

  But he was rubbing his palms together, like he was nervous about something.

  “Gods, Jaeme,” Daniella said. “What’s going on here?”

  Now Jaeme was the one glaring at her in righteous indignation. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I said I’m sorry. But I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

  Daniella stared at him, at a complete loss. It might not be what she feared—gods, she hoped it wasn’t that—but there was something wrong. She was sure of it. She’d sensed it even before the conversation at the banquet, and she cast about, trying to put her finger on exactly what it was.

  “Something is off,” she said finally. “First, everyone is happy to see me, and don’t seem to feel like my presence poses any kind of a problem to them. Then they’re arguing over what they’re going to do with me, but not about whether or not they should have allowed me in the gates to begin with. It’s as if . . . as if they were expecting me. And not just because you wrote a letter, but because this somehow fits into their plans, and now they’re only quibbling about how best to proceed.”

  Jaeme looked stricken, his mouth gaping briefly. “That’s ridiculous. Of course they’re talking strategy. They’re the leaders of Mortiche. It’s their job to try to turn every situation to their favor. And I’m sorry I didn’t interrupt them, but I didn’t think you’d be so touchy about the whole thing.”

  Touchy? What had happened to her Jaeme, the one who would never be so dismissive of her feelings? She was reminded of the story of the Stone Maiden, about a woman who was seduced by a prince’s kindness, but when they returned to his kingdom, he changed, growing cold and distant, until her broken heart finally turned her to stone. Daniella wanted desperately to believe that the Jaeme she’d known these last months was the real one. But really, could she know that for sure? “The whole thing? The whole thing where we’ve never even mentioned marriage? Where you’ve never told me if that’s your intention, never asked if I would consider it, and then you let an entire table of men who you hate talk about us like it’s their decision what happens between us?”

  Jaeme’s face hardened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know the idea of marrying me would be so distasteful to you.”

  Daniella sighed in exaspe
ration, even as her heart pounded unevenly. “That’s not what I said.”

  Jaeme didn’t look convinced.

  This was going nowhere. “I don’t want to talk about it right now. I’m going to bed.” She turned and stormed up the stairs, hoping that Jaeme wouldn’t follow.

  But somehow, her heart still ached when he didn’t.

  Daniella sat alone on the center of the bed she shared with Jaeme, staring up at the spiral engravings on the bed posts, questioning whether she hadn’t overreacted.

  The truth was, she would have loved to discuss marriage with Jaeme. She didn’t know if that future would be possible for them, given who she was and the uncertainty of all of their futures. But she’d certainly let herself play out the fantasy while lying in his arms at night—she and Jaeme, sharing a life together, their souls bound to each other. She wanted that future and would have loved to hear from him that he did too—even if he was just as uncertain as she was that they could have it.

  Perhaps she shouldn’t blame him for not bringing up the topic when she could just as easily have done so. But for him to let those dukes discuss it so cavalierly, so publicly—

  She sighed, trying to think it through rationally. Yes, Jaeme should have found a way to tactfully put an end to the whole affair. But he’d probably been as startled by it as she’d been, and these were men of higher rank, men who had power over his inheritance, since he wasn’t the proper heir to Grisham. They could insist that Jaeme’s direct line was tainted by treason and pass the title to his closest cousin, since Greghor had no sons.

  Daniella had never known Jaeme to have a hard time speaking his mind, though. He wasn’t easily flustered, except by her, it seemed. He should have defended her. He should have been willing to stand up for her to the dukes, consequences be damned. And something was off about the way they were discussing her, as if they were asking all the wrong questions. As if, perhaps, Greghor had consulted with them all about her arrival, and they’d had that advance knowledge to create some kind of plan. She supposed she couldn’t fault him for the tactical choice, but if Jaeme knew and refused to acknowledge it—