We shuffled out the door behind her. Karyn transformed into a meek and submissive Dasnarian woman, graceful with her demurely lowered gaze. “Stop swaggering,” she hissed at Jepp. “And look down.”
I kept a hand clasped to my face on the side with the most blood, recalling how my body had felt so weak, so broken. After that rush of overwhelming memory, poor newlywed Jenna lurked close under my skin, and it didn’t take much to summon the proper demeanor. The tears rose up and I let them fall, partly in homage for that girl who’d shed a thousand tears when no one had cared. They’d wanted my obedience and hadn’t cared what it cost me.
Jenna and I would shed our tears. And then we would exact payment for them.
The thick carpets on my bare feet were the same, as were the guards stationed along the hall. They commented on the charms of the women who passed, the lewd references understandable to me now as they hadn’t been then.
And, as if shedding those tears released the last of that dragging grief for all my shattered dreams, the anger began to sizzle in my belly. I stoked it, feeding that fire with all the righteous fuel it required. The women around me—wives, concubines, and rekjabrel alike—murmured amongst themselves as the guards herded us down the hallway. Some had heard the commotion. Others had been with men who’d hastily thrown on armor and grabbed weapons.
Hestar was going out to the challenger, a richly clad woman near us was saying. Who was it? It couldn’t be Kral because… the woman speaking slowed so I nearly bumped into her. She cast a sharp, sideways glance at Karyn, then did a double take.
Uh oh.
“Maybe it is Kral,” she said significantly. “Karyn af Hardie—is that you? We thought you were dead.” Her silver laugh tinkled brightly.
Jepp had a silver dagger at the woman’s ribs, looping her other arm companionably around her. “There, there,” she said in very rough Dasnarian—and male command language. “Poor thing is confused. Too much opos smoke will mess up your brain.”
The woman stiffened, but walked on compliantly enough in Jepp’s unyielding grip. Fortunately we soon reached the staircase where the male guards were required to remain and we descended, a river of silk-clad women, gazes lifting and voices rising now that they no longer need be so meek.
Jepp kept hold of the woman, someone I didn’t recognize, and marched her along, chattering cheerfully in her ear about the technique for gutting a deer. The woman looked faint and occasionally stumbled, but Jepp didn’t let her fall.
“She terrified me, too, the first time I met her,” Karyn confided. “Now I know she’s actually soft-hearted—even sweet—under that brash attitude. She flirts more when she’s nervous.”
I’d dropped my hand, no longer needing to playact for the guards and wryly acknowledged Karyn’s observation. “She and Kral might be perfect for each other.”
“Didn’t take me long to figure that out either,” Karyn admitted.
“Sorry,” I said, belatedly remembering Kral had been Karyn’s husband at the time. “That was thoughtless of me.”
“Not at all,” she replied with a smile. “I never loved him. I wasn’t even alive back then. If not for Jepp, I would’ve stayed that way and I might never have found Zyr. Funny how hlyti has guided our feet.”
Indeed. We reached the bottom of the stairs, the women edging into singles and pairs as they filed through the great brass-and-wood doors that would seal the seraglio. So many memories of those doors—almost all of them from the other side—as I watched the boys leave and never come back, the concubines, rekjabrel and wives going as they were summoned.
The few times I’d passed through those doors, how I’d felt coming back, and how I’d screamed and begged not to be sent through again. Hede, the seraglio enforcer, with her whip, hard hands, and unswerving commitment to the rules still featured in my nightmares. She’d been the one to flog me when I was a child, albeit at my mother’s command, and it had been Hede who tied me to a litter with casual brutality, so I could be carried back for another night of marital torture.
A trickle of cold sweat ran down between my breasts, and I said a prayer to Danu to clear my mind. That was the past. The past couldn’t hurt me.
I am the lion now.
But I braced myself for the sight of Hede. It could be that she’d since died. She’d seemed old to me then, but probably she hadn’t been much older than my mother. Besides, the cruel mistress of the whip had always seemed too tough to die.
But it was a different female guard who stood to one side, a coiled whip hanging from the belt cinching her klút to her waist.
Jepp’s captive edged toward the guard, opened her mouth, then squeaked as Jepp poked her with the blade and pushed her firmly through the doors.
“You won’t get away with this,” Jepp’s captive hissed. “My husband is His Imperial Highness Prince Leo and—”
Jepp shut her up with a hard yank of the woman’s hair. As soon as we passed the guard, I reached back, pulled Leo’s wife through the doorway and into a thick stand of ferns, pinning the struggling woman against a palm tree that had stood there since I was a girl.
Like I said, Dasnaria is not a place of rapid change. Or, really, much change at all.
Covering the woman’s mouth, I stared into her eyes. “You will be silent,” I commanded with imperial iciness. “For I am Her Imperial Highness Princess Jenna, and I outrank your ass.”
The woman’s eyes widened—in shock, disbelief, or the urge to kill, I didn’t know—then a voice I hadn’t heard in over twenty years spoke behind me.
“Jenna?”
~ 15 ~
I released my cowed prey and spun. Inga.
For a moment, I experienced that weird double vision, the disorienting overlap of past and present. Inga at seventeen and Inga over twenty years later. The same, so much the same. Her hair gleamed in the same golden curls, and she was still so lovely with those extraordinary aqua eyes—and also sharper, honed, with a weary wisdom in place of the starry enthusiasm that had once shone in those eyes. And she carried herself like an empress.
Had it been the same for Harlan, seeing me again? I thought maybe so.
“Inga,” I breathed. And then we were in each others arms, weeping and laughing at once.
“Get Helva,” Inga called over my shoulder. “Fast as you can. Hurry!”
“What is the meaning of this?” Leo’s wife tried to pull us apart. “I’m reporting this to—”
“One word,” Inga said with slicing authority, a blade of reprimand, even as she held on to me. “You speak one word without my permission, Jasmyra, and I will crush you.”
“You can’t run my life, Inga,” Jasmyra hissed, glaring at me. “I don’t know who you are, but everyone knows Jenna is dead. I’m informing the Dowager Empress.”
“Don’t you—” Inga began, but I stopped her.
“Please do,” I said pleasantly. “In fact, you may inform my mother she can expect to receive me in a few moments.” I was keeping an eye on the door—as were Karyn and Jepp—and the flow of women had slowed to a trickle. Soon they’d close and bar the doors, keeping us safe while the men battled. Sealing us in until someone let us out again.
A shriek echoed across the lagoon, making me whip my head around, blade in hand. Jepp had pulled a blade, too—then quickly vanished it into a fold of her klút, giving me a sheepish smile. A lean arrow of a woman streaked around the manmade lake, her klút hiked up around her knees as she ran, dark blond hair streaming behind her.
Helva launched herself at me, and I caught her with the strength of years of resisting being toppled by a mischievous elephant. “I knew you’d come back for us. I knew! Didn’t I tell you, Inga? Didn’t I!”
“You did,” Inga agreed with a soft smile, then looked at me. “Helva never doubted.”
“But you did,” I replied, seeing it in her face.
“Inga is the practical one.” Helva said it like an insult, releasing me and wiping her tears.
Inga tipped
her head in rueful acknowledgment. “It has been a long time,” she pointed out. “First Harlan never returned, then we do get word of him, but his spy Jepp had never heard of you.”
“Scout,” Jepp corrected, swaggering over now that the guards had put the bars on the doors. “Hey Inga, Helva—you’re both looking exceptionally lovely.”
“Well, this is a day,” Inga observed, each of them embracing Jepp. Inga looked past her and her eyes widened. “And Karyn, too. All our disappeared are returning, like ghosts drawn back to the tombs of our ancestors.”
“That’s not a grim analogy or anything,” Jepp muttered.
“We Dasnarians are a grim lot,” Inga observed, but Helva rolled her eyes and shook her head behind Inga’s back. When her sister sent her a suspicious glare, Helva beamed with innocence. It was as if time had stood still in this place, which looked exactly the same as the day I’d left. So much so that I shivered inside—and had to remind myself I could leave anytime.
Well, once someone let us out.
“All of you go about your business,” Inga commanded with the cool ease of someone expecting to be obeyed. The lingering women dispersed, dragging their feet at their missed opportunity to eavesdrop on hot gossip, and Inga moved us away from the foliage and into a clearing.
“Dare I ask if anyone else has returned with you?” Inga lowered her voice, and I recalled how there was no privacy in the seraglio. No conversation could be held unheard. This was as close as it got to privacy—being certain no one lingered nearby, or behind the walls.
“Let’s call it a family reunion,” I replied as quietly, raising my brows.
“Kral is here then.” Inga looked at Jepp and Karyn, standing close as sisters. “So, you are both his wives now?”
They looked at each other and laughed. “Jepp is,” Karyn explained. “I’m married to another now.”
“We’re not exactly married,” Jepp protested. “Neither are you, for that matter.”
“Yes, we are,” Karyn replied smugly. “In the Tala way. And once we’re done here, Zyr and I will visit my family at the Hardie estates and he’ll sign the contracts with my father.”
Jepp snorted with laughter. “Poor Zyr.”
“He loves me,” Karyn replied with dignity, “and he wants me to be married in the tradition of my people as well as his.”
I tried to imagine coaxing Ochieng into negotiating and signing contracts with Hestar to confirm our decades-old marriage, and nearly laughed aloud. Ochieng would do it if I asked—and would probably pull it off brilliantly in his smooth, diplomatic style—but I didn’t need that from him. Quite the opposite, as I’d moved past allowing any of my brothers to handle my life for me, even Harlan. But I understood Karyn’s need to tie that off, especially since she actually liked her family.
That gave me a pang, so I focused on Inga and Helva, still beaming with joy at seeing me. I liked some of my family, too, and those were the people worth paying attention to. “Our other brother is also with us,” I told them.
Helva clapped her hands together and jumped with joy, more like a girl than a woman in her mid-thirties. Inga smiled, and urged her to quiet. Then she turned serious eyes on me. “Where are they?”
“The question of the hour,” Jepp growled. “The idiots are probably dead by now.”
Helva gasped, hands going to her throat as if to hold it back, her warm brown eyes full of alarm. “What?”
“That’s probably overstating,” I said, shooting Jepp a jaundiced glare.
“Yeah, well, we spies are a grim lot,” she snapped back, and I recognized that worry and frustration rode her. She’d much rather be out there, guarding Kral’s back, than locked inside with us.
“We won’t be here long,” I promised, hoping that would be the case.
“Feeling the weight of all that water crushing down, too?” Jepp stared at the ceiling suspiciously. “Gives me the series willies to know we’re basically in a stone cage under a big frozen lake.”
“It’s summertime,” Karyn corrected.
Jepp stabbed a finger at her. “How much you want to bet me that water is cold enough to shrivel even your generous tits to nothing?”
Inga and Helva watched with bemused expressions. I glanced around, making sure Inga’s edict had kept the area clear. The women had obeyed her, as they once obeyed Hulda. Interesting.
“Listen,” I said, catching their attention while Jepp created a distraction, continuing to complain about drowning, “Kral, Harlan, and other friends are outside. They were to create a distraction for us to sneak in here—but then we heard Kral issue the bjoja at haseti to Hestar.”
They exchanged glances. “That explains the recall and sealing,” Inga said, tipping her head at the barred doors.
“Can Kral defeat Hestar?” I asked.
Inga looked thoughtful. “It will be interesting to find out.”
“Well, it’s more than a philosophical question,” I replied with some aggravation.
Inga raised a single brow. “Someone went and got an education.”
“I did.” She didn’t fool me. Inga was no longer ignorant either—and she was being cagey with me. “We’re counting on the guys to get us out of here after I deal with my mother.”
“I see. So, you’re here because you promised us that you’d return, and to take revenge on your mother. Anything else you plan to accomplish before you leave again?” She had an edge to her voice, ice in her pretty eyes.
“Jenna wouldn’t leave us again,” Helva said staunchly, then studied my face with dawning grief. “Or will you?”
With a wrench, I realized Helva had truly believed I’d come home to stay. Inga, however, watched me with the cool knowledge that I never would. And I wouldn’t. I had no desire to be empress. My home was in Nyambura, with Ochieng, and my family—human and elephant. The knowledge came as a relief, a release of tension I hadn’t realized was knotting me up from the inside out. The certainty came so suddenly and clearly that I wondered if Danu had a hand in it.
“I cannot stay. My home is elsewhere now,” I told Helva. “I have a husband, children. You could come with me.”
“Leave Dasnaria?” Helva made it sound like I’d suggested we fly to the moon. “But—”
“We can discuss all of that later,” Inga interrupted smoothly, putting an arm around Helva’s waist and drawing her away from me, as if to protect her. “What else, Jenna? There’s more. I see it in your face.”
“Ivariel,” I told her. “I changed my name when I went into hiding, and it’s how I think of myself now.”
“You are always Jenna to us,” she replied with certainty. “There is no shame in being who you were. At least Jenna was a sister to me.”
Those words struck my heart, and I remembered the day I said goodbye to them. “I meant to come back long before now,” I said, my voice hoarse with old tears. “But the years slipped away.”
“Why would you want to come back to this?” she replied, stiffly, but not unkind. “I didn’t expect you to come back. I know what this place did to you. But you might have sent a letter.”
“I… didn’t think you could read,” I said, feeling wretched as the words came out of my mouth.
Inga raised a pale brow. “You’re not the only one who spent these last decades enriching herself. You bought our freedom with your suffering.”
“So, we thought we’d better put it to good use,” Helva put in. “We haven’t been napping and eating pastries all this time. Well,” she amended, “not only that.”
“Indeed,” Inga said. “This place may look exactly the same—which is not an accident—but you will find that the balance of power has shifted somewhat.”
“You have been writing to Ursula,” I realized.
“I did the actual writing,” Helva informed me proudly. “I’m better at subtlety than Inga.”
Inga made a face. “There is a time for subtlety and a time for assertive action.” She turned her sharp turquoise gaze on me. “Wha
t is the rest of your plan?”
“I thought to rouse the women of the seraglio to take over the palace.” When I said it, the plan sounded ill formed, full of holes, but Inga nodded.
“I’m glad to hear that my seeds have taken root,” Inga said with a smug smile. “Everything is in place. I assume you plan to rally the women with your triumphant return, now that Deyrr has been defeated at your hands?”
I found myself gaping at her. “Is there anything you don’t know?”
“If there is, my spies will pay for their lapse.” She smiled with glittering resolve. “Go deal with Hulda. You’ll save me doing it. I should warn you… You won’t find her remorseful.”
“Rather the reverse,” Helva said with a grimace.
“Color me unsurprised,” I replied, and we shared a moment, as we had over breakfasts, all those years ago when Hulda had ruled our lives with an elegantly jeweled fist. “I’m ready for her.”
“Do you need back up?” Jepp asked, proving that she’d been listening all along. Excellent spying skills for a humble scout.
“No,” I said. “This is something I need to do alone.”
“Jepp and Karyn can help us spread the word among the ladies of your return,” Inga said. “When you’re finished with your mother, we’ll pull the lever on our trap. I think you’ll find it most effective.”
I considered her. I didn’t know if I’d given much thought to how Helva and Inga had spent the years, how they’d have used the freedom of unmarried women. Jepp had said she’d seen my sisters in Hestar’s court, but I hadn’t known how to credit that. “I feel rather less than an avenging rescuer now,” I admitted with some chagrin.
Inga thawed at that. “Don’t. Without your example, with what you did for us, we might not have thought to lay the groundwork for what will happen today.”
Helva nodded, a harder expression on her pretty face. “Now we stage our revolution.”
~ 16 ~
My mother’s apartments hadn’t changed much either, except that they’d accreted layers of lavish decorations and treasures. She’d accumulated an amazing amount of stuff—but I supposed she had nowhere else to put it. Her wealth was borrowed, as women couldn’t truly own property, so she had no option but to pile it into her apartments. As much power as she’d cultivated, it couldn’t free her of the seraglio.
The Lost Princess Returns Page 11