by C. L. Polk
I shook my head. “I know it’s your job to find the real story behind an event.”
“It is,” Avia said, her voice soft. “I want the real story, but I don’t want to destroy you by telling it.”
“So you’ll stop looking into it?”
“No,” Avia said. “The wheels are turning on this story. I can’t stop that any more than you can. Let me tell you what else I discovered while I was researching. Ghost sightings were regularly reported in the news and written about in personal correspondence until about forty years ago. Nothing like the Great Haunting we have right now, but it did happen. Until it stopped.”
My stomach did a slow, nauseous roll. “That doesn’t seem like headline news.”
“It’s not,” Avia said. “Not on its own. But as part of a fuller picture, as one piece in a very peculiar puzzle … a puzzle whose pieces are joining as we speak…”
I wished I had a cigarette. I wished I could breathe in its steadying calm, give myself a way to gather my thoughts. She was right. Too much had happened, and I didn’t have a way to head it off.
I wished, suddenly, that I could tell her everything. That she would share my secret and understand what was at stake if those secrets came out. That I could tell her all the things I had once believed in, now shattered at my feet.
“I can’t,” I said, and Avia stroked my arm again.
“You’ll tell me when you’re ready, or when I know so much that trying to keep mum is ridiculous. I will keep looking. I will find the truth. And when that happens, I’d like to run it by you,” Avia said. “But I don’t know if I can sneak back into Government House again.”
“Not without a pass.”
She tilted her head and smiled up at me. “Would you grant me one?”
I had to keep an eye on her. I had to keep her safe from my father. I needed to see her again. I moved past her and opened the door separating my office from the reception area. “Janet, will you draw up a permanent guest pass for Miss Avia Jessup? She’ll give you all the particulars.”
Janet dropped what she was doing to put a pass together. I turned back to Avia, and she stuck out her hand to shake.
“Thank you, Chancellor Hensley.”
“Grace,” I said. “Janet will take care of you. Good afternoon.”
She went out. I stood before the windows, watching a messenger dove feed until I was sure she was gone. She was close to the truth. How could I keep it from her? I couldn’t.
Maybe I shouldn’t. But it was too much of a risk. I couldn’t get that close. I would keep this under control. Mind settled, I turned away from the windows and stepped out of my office.
“I’m out for the rest of the afternoon,” I said to Janet. “I’m off to see my brother.”
Miles and I had to get started interviewing the Laneeri. The sooner we found out the truth behind their attack on Aeland, the better.
SIX
The Lady of Oaks, Attempt Seventeen
I desperately wanted something to eat, and the stone-walled room we had claimed for interrogation was too cold, too damp. It made the man in front of us shiver, his lower jaw chattering. Our cloudy breaths mingled in the air, and Miles spoke to the prisoner again. I had written only his name for our records—Niikanis an Vaavut, the head priest of the bogus surrender delegation. Like the others, he hadn’t uttered a word.
He remained silent, and we didn’t have any more time for him.
“That’s enough,” I said, and Miles wheeled his chair away from the table. I opened the door for him, and we went out. “It’s not working.”
“They’re all trained to resist interrogation, and that was their Star Father,” Miles said. He spun his chair in a tight little circle, facing me. “It will just take longer. Especially because we won’t resort to their methods. In the Palace of Inquiry, each of them would be cradling an injured hand by now.”
I shuddered. Whatever they had done to him, it hadn’t been that. “You’re sure isolation will work?”
“Isolation is a cruelty all its own,” Miles said. “They’re alone in rooms that don’t allow them to reckon how much time has passed. In a few days—”
“We might not have a few days,” I said. “The Queen wants this information now.”
Miles shrugged and drove his wheelchair to the next cell. “That might be a problem. For now, we follow the plan.”
He stopped before a heavy timber door.
“How are you getting along?” I asked. “Do you want to stop for the day? Do you want to eat?”
Miles looked up. His smile was reassuring and brave, and I didn’t believe it for a minute. “This is the last of the diplomats. Let’s just get it over.”
“We can take a break. Eat something—”
“No.” Miles’s voice cut like a knife. “When I’m done here, I want a bath. And a drink. And Tristan’s arms around me. Let’s get this done.”
He nudged his wheelchair back. I stepped in front of the door and shoved the long, sturdy key into the lock. Miles guided his chair through the doorway. He halted at the sight of the next woman, who raised her head to stare at us.
Miles stiffened in his chair. “This one. I recognize her from the parade. She smirked at me.” Miles spoke to her then, a rapid string of syllables and tonal stresses that made her swipe at her eyes and glare at him. Miles scoffed at her reply.
“She’s insulting my accent.”
“That’s not very nice.”
Miles shrugged one shoulder. “Notice that she’s speaking. The others didn’t. It’s a way in. What do you want to ask her?”
“What’s her name?”
Miles asked.
“Sevitii an Vaavut,” she replied.
“Any relation to Niikanis an Vaavut?”
Miles asked and Sevitii nodded, her reply curt.
“Her father. Vaavut means ‘Moon’. It’s one of the most common surnames on Laneer.”
Miles regarded the young woman—very young, with the unlined face and thick, lush hair of youth. She hadn’t grown into her face yet—true beauty for a woman didn’t develop until she was past thirty—but she had fine hazel-green eyes made startling by the dark ring around her iris. Still, it was interesting. The delegation Laneer had sent had to be the people they wanted to control the country after the occupation. Why send someone so young?
I thought I knew why. “She’s important. Born important,” I said. “She’s too young to be part of this if she hadn’t been.”
Miles pressed his lips together and shot a question at her, and she gripped the table and snarled back. “Dead in the black. She’s ninth in line to the Star Throne of Laneer.”
He paused to listen to her impassioned speech, translating on the fly. “We will of course suffer the most agonizing torments for eternity after our deaths for harming the destiny of the shining family, but she will bargain for the release of her diplomats and Star Priests.”
“Oh, child,” I murmured, shaking my head at the girl. “How frightened you must be right now.”
Her face went white as Miles translated my words to fit in her ears. I went on, watching a tiny line between the stubble of her plucked eyebrows crease and deepen. “This entire delegation is your responsibility, and you must protect all of them. That’s the obligation of your birth, isn’t it? They’re your people, even though you’re the youngest of them. They were sent to guide and advise you through the occupation, but you’re the true leader of the delegation. Aren’t you?”
Miles had the trick of translating on the wing, speaking my words half a moment after I said them. Sevitii’s eyes went wide, and then she glanced away, dropping her chin as I explained her situation. Then she raised her chin and spoke.
“I am, by the grace of my destiny and the honor of the star lords who shone on my birth. I am the only one who has the power to parley with you, the only one whose word can be bound into law,” Miles translated. “This child is their leader? She can’t be any older than nineteen.”
; “She has an experienced staff, and she’s probably been training for the responsibility since she was in pigtails,” I said. “King Philip was nineteen when he took the throne, and he didn’t do too badly.”
She squinted at us, and Miles spoke her words to me. “What do you want in exchange for our freedom?”
“We want the truth,” I said. “We know that your country launched an atrocious attack on ours using rankest necromancy, that you ensorcelled your own soldiers with a ritual that would bind their souls to an Aelander soldier, gradually taking control of that Aelander’s body. In this way, you brought tens of thousands of murderers to Aeland’s shores—”
“You prattle at me of murder,” Sevitii growled, her face red. “You killed ten times that number, and then trapped their souls in your foul death temples. You accuse me of necromancy, Soul-Eater? You, who devised a way to deny every soul their destiny in the Kingdom of Solace?”
I ignored this outburst. “I want to know who devised the plan. How you learned the spell. How you passed the knowledge on to your mages. Tell us that, and we will arrange to have you transported back to Laneer.”
Sevitii clamped her mouth shut. I slipped my hands into my pockets and waited, but she might as well have been a statue. But I had gotten a great deal from her, and I knew just how to press on her sense of responsibility and her fear of making a major mistake to start the flow of words again.
Miles gazed at her, calm and expressionless, but he kept his hands still, laced together across his stomach. I had to get him out of here. He deserved that bath, and the drink, and the comfort of Tristan holding him. I folded my arms and gave Sevitii an appraising look. “All right. She’s talking, and she has the authority to talk. Do we leave her in here?”
“No,” Miles said. “Let’s try honey rather than vinegar. Do you ever use the Chancellor’s suite?”
For naps. For silence. I’d planned on sleeping here instead of going back and forth between the palace and Hensley House, but I let it go. “Only occasionally.”
“Can we borrow it? Find her clothing and personal effects?”
“We’ll have to take out the weapons. We’ll need guards. But I can have her situated in a few hours.”
Miles nodded. “Let’s do it. We’ll put the other Laneeri back in their cells. Sevitii is the key, and if the others think we’re doing something barbaric to her, maybe they’ll bargain for her safety.”
I rose, and together we left Sevitii without a word, locking the door behind us. “Thank you, Miles. I couldn’t have done that without you.”
Miles nodded, rubbing his stomach. “I never imagined I’d become an inquisitor. It’s hard on the gut. How’s the storm?”
He knew a bit about how it felt pounding across my scalp. If he’d dared, he would have held my hand and eased the pain like he used to when we were children. He knew how it hurt. But I couldn’t tell him that fear surged in me, chilling my hands and stealing my breath. I couldn’t tell him how tiny I was, how insignificant I felt against the immense, whirling power coming to bury us. “We’re facing it tonight,” I said. “I need to sleep. And eat. And a hundred other things.”
“Sevitii wanted to talk to us,” Miles said. “That’s good. We can find out the truth about— Oh, Your Highness.”
Severin Mountrose had just come around the corner, sack-suited and elegant in stormy gray flannel. “Sir Miles. Dame Grace. All is well?”
“Very well,” Miles said. “We’re ahead of schedule. I thought we’d need a few more days. But their leader is eager to speak to us.”
“Excellent,” Prince Severin said. “That will give you plenty of opportunity to get the truth. Grace. Will you eat with me, after the session tomorrow?”
“I’d be delighted,” I said.
He nodded to us. “Excellent work, both of you. Please excuse me.”
He continued on his course, strolling through the prison as if it were a garden path. I lingered in the intersection and watched as he turned left, his footsteps’ echo getting fainter and fainter.
“What are you doing?” Miles asked.
“Shh.”
I listened, and the rhythm of his steps changed as he climbed the stone stairs to the Tower of Sighs. Severin was visiting the mages of the First Ring—no. I knew better.
Severin was going to see my father.
I grasped the handles jutting out of Miles’s wheelchair, pushing him through the halls. “Do you mind if I run off and arrange Sevitii’s transport? I want her in comfort before sundown.”
* * *
I had seven hours before I had to lead the ritual. It would have to be enough. All I had to do was put in the request with the guards to station sentries outside the doors to the Chancellor’s suite, with a list of who was permitted inside, down to the last servant. I’d have to walk all the way through the palace to put in the orders, so I dragged weary feet along the passages connecting Government House to Mountrose Palace until a hallway full of tall, elaborately dressed Amaranthines blocked my path.
I regarded the backs of long coats over heavily embroidered tunics, the ornamented braids their fashions preferred. I shuffled along behind them, listening to the warm murmur of their conversation—not quite Samindan, but frustratingly close. I fancied if someone would speak slowly, I could pick up a word here and there. What did it mean that the Amaranthine tongue sounded like the first language of literature and mathematics?
“Grace!”
I shook off my thoughts and smiled at Aife. She had broken through the crowd to clasp my hands and draw me into the center of the procession. “We’re going to the Gallery.”
“I had no idea a visit had been scheduled.”
“It’s a sop.” Aife swept it away with a dismissive wave. “I told the majordomo that I wished to saddle my mount and ride through Kingston, and he was beside himself. He said there were too many logistics involved, and he couldn’t possibly arrange anything without proper planning.”
The hallways were lined with servants on their knees. I tried not to look at them. Aife saw a young girl in a starched cap and veered away to touch her head. The girl looked up, radiating awe. She stared as we continued past. “I can push for a formal parade if you want one.”
Aife groaned. “I don’t want a parade. Or a pageant. Or even the upcoming ball, to be honest. I ask the servants if they’re happy and they assure me that they are, but I remember those people in the square when we arrived. Ysonde’s reports from the birds talk of ragged people, cold and hungry and lining up for food. I want to know what’s truly happening.”
And hiding the truth from Aife might not be so good an idea. “I could bring you some of my reports,” I said. “I don’t have anything that covers the past few weeks. Do you get newspapers? You must be getting newspapers.”
Aife gave me a scowl. “I can’t read them. I understand you because of a spell. Your writing is meaningless to me.”
We stepped past the hallway and into the soaring, well-lit rotunda that housed the Aeland National Gallery. A ten-foot stone statue of Queen Agnes bore the weight of the heavy golden crown of the Aelish kings, restored at last to her rightful head. She wore a sword at her left hip, a symbol of her ascension through battle. Bare toes peeked out of the gleaming folds of her gown and cloak, curled against the cold damp of the King’s Stone. Leaning against her leg was a curly-coated lamb, signifying the Queen’s childhood as a shepherdess who learned the ways of war and the sword.
Aife craned her neck to stare at the statue’s sober expression.
“Good Queen Agnes, the founder of Aeland’s restoration,” I said. “The Hundred Knights arrived to her keep after their exile and swore to fight and serve her, if she would consent to give them a home. She did—and the Hundred Knights are the ancestors of the Hundred Families, who continue under the same oath as their elders.”
Aife had turned to me halfway through my recitation. “And where did the Hundred Knights come from?”
“A kingdom lost to legend,�
�� I said. “It was said to be a series of islands erected by magic in the middle of a vast lake. It was supposed to be a beautiful place, where the knights only drew their swords for sport and no one ever died. No one has ever found it, not in years of searching.”
Aife’s expression went from curious to carefully, eerily blank. Her golden-brown skin lost the rosy glow that made her look so radiant. She remained silent a heartbeat too long before she said, “You’re speaking of a place that exists only in stories. An explorer could circle the world a thousand times and never find it, or the ruins it left behind.”
She regarded the statue, tense enough that the cords of her neck stood out. I dared to touch her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” She blinked twice and nodded, flashing the tiniest reassurance of a smile. “I was taken by the sadness of it. You and your fellow Knights don’t know where you came from.”
“We came here. This is our home,” I said. “We swore it a long time ago.”
Aife nodded one more time and turned away. “And these landscapes?”
“A seasonal exhibition,” I said. “They’re mostly from in-country.”
I didn’t want to look at them. These squares of peace and abundance put a knot in my stomach. Aeland was under two winters’ worth of snow, with a major storm pounding on my skull. The ouranologists had issued warnings this morning, and Kingston dashed about trying to find food and firewood to wait out the storm.
The Blue River had frozen as if it were the month of Snowglaze, halting the last cycle of trade from in-country to the city. We were getting hungry, while the people in-country had plenty. Whatever fury we couldn’t stop here would blanket Aeland in more snow. Come spring, snowmelt would rush through their cheerful river valley towns, sweeping their homes and crops away in floods.
“What are they all looking at over there?” Aife asked. She moved to join the crowd of Amaranthines surrounding a painting. I knew which one it was.
“The Lady of Oaks, Attempt Seventeen,” I said. “By the master Briantine.”
Aife’s brow furrowed, and then her eyebrows shot up her forehead as she came close enough to see it.