The Bridge Kingdom

by Danielle L. Jensen

  Everything he said about Marylyn was true, but it wasn’t the sum of her. Unbidden, memories flooded through Lara’s mind. Visions of her sister carefully caring for a runt kitten, which was now the fattest cat in the compound. Of how she’d listen quietly to any of her sisters’ troubles, then offer the most perfect advice. Of how, as a child, she’d given names to all the servants, because she’d thought it cruel that they should have none. Then the visions cleared, leaving only a still body before her, golden hair crusted with soup.

  “My sister was too kind.” Lara turned her head back to her father, her heart skittering in her chest even as she challenged him. “The future Queen of Ithicana must seduce its ruler. Make him believe she is guileless and sincere. She must make him trust her even as she uses her position to learn his every weakness right up to the moment she betrays him. Marylyn was not that woman.”

  Her father’s eyes were unblinking as he studied her, and he gave the faintest nod of approval. “But you are?”

  “I am.” Her pulse roared in her ears, her skin clammy despite the heat.

  “You are not often wrong, Serin,” her father said. “But in this, I believe you were mistaken and fate has intervened in order to rectify that mistake.”

  The Master of Intrigue stiffened, and Lara wondered if he was now realizing that his own life hung in the balance. “As you say, Majesty. It seems Lara possesses a quality that I’d not considered in my testing.”

  “The most important quality of all: ruthlessness.” The king studied her for a moment before turning back to the Magpie. “Ready the caravan. We ride for Ithicana tonight.” Then he smiled at her as though she were the most precious of things. “It’s time for my daughter to meet her future husband.”

  3

  Lara

  Flames licked the night sky as the group departed, but Lara only risked one backward glance at the burning compound that had been her home, the blood-spattered floors and walls blackening as the fire consumed all evidence of a plot fifteen years in the making. Only the heart of the oasis, where the dinner table sat encircled by the spring, would remain untouched.

  It was still almost more than she could bear to leave her slumbering sisters surrounded by a ring of fire, unconscious and helpless until the concoction of narcotics she’d given them wore off. Already their pulses, which had been slowed to near death for a dangerous length of time, should be quickening, their breathing obvious to anyone who looked closely. If Lara found excuses to linger to ensure their safety, she would only risk discovery, and then all of this would be for naught.

  “Don’t burn them. Leave them for the scavengers to pick their bones clean,” she’d told her father, her stomach twisting into knots until he’d laughed and acceded to her macabre request, leaving her sisters slumped over the table, the slaughtered servants forming a gory perimeter around them.

  That was what her sisters would wake to: fire and death. For only if their father believed them silenced did they have any chance at a future. She would carry their mission forward while her sisters made their own lives, now free to be masters of their own fates. She’d explained all of it in the note she’d slipped into Sarhina’s pocket while her father ordered the compound swept for survivors. For no one must be left alive who might whisper a word about the deception that now journeyed toward a wedding in Ithicana.

  Their journey across the Red Desert would be fraught with hardship and peril. But at that precise moment, Lara was convinced the worst part would be listening to the Magpie’s chatter the entire way. Lara’s mare was laden with Marylyn’s trousseau, while she was forced to ride pillion behind the Master of Intrigue.

  “From this moment forward, you must be the perfect Maridrinian lady,” he instructed, his voice grinding on her nerves. “We cannot risk anyone seeing you behave otherwise, not even those His Majesty believes loyal.” He cast a meaningful glance toward her father’s guards, who’d formed the caravan with practiced ease.

  Not a single one looked at her.

  They did not know what she was. What she’d been trained to do. What her purpose was beyond the fulfillment of a contract with the enemy kingdom. But every one of them believed she’d murdered her sisters in cold blood. Which made her wonder how long her father would let them live.

  “How did you do it?”

  Hours into their journey, the Magpie’s question pulled Lara from her thoughts, and she tightened her white silk scarf across her face, despite the fact his back was to her. “Poison.” She allowed a hint of tartness to enter her voice.

  He snorted. “Aren’t we bold now that we believe we are untouchable.”

  She ran her tongue over her dry lips, feeling the heat of the sun rising behind them. Then she allowed herself to slip into the pool of calm her Master of Meditation had taught her to employ when strategizing, among other things. “I poisoned the soupspoons.”

  “How? You didn’t know where you’d be seated.”

  “I poisoned all, save those set at the head of the table.”

  The Magpie was silent.

  Lara continued, “I’ve been taking small doses of several poisons for years to build up my tolerance.” Even still, she had purged herself the moment she’d had a chance, vomiting again and again until her stomach was dry, then taking the antidote, the dizzying malaise the only lingering sign she’d ingested a narcotic at all.

  The Master of Intrigue’s tiny frame tensed. “What if the settings had been altered? You might have killed the king.”

  “She clearly believed it worth the risk.”

  Lara tilted her head, having noted the jingle of bells on the horse’s bridle as her father had ridden up behind, the creature festooned with silver rather than the tin the guards’ mounts wore.

  “You guessed that I intended to kill the girls I didn’t need,” he said. “But instead of warning your sisters or attempting to escape, you murdered them to take the chosen’s place. Why?”

  Because for the girls to fight their way out would’ve meant a lifetime on the run. Faking their deaths had been the only way. “I may have spent my life in isolation, Father, but the tutors you selected educated me well. I know the hardship that our people endure beneath Ithicana’s yoke on trade. Our enemy needs to be brought low, and of my sisters, I was the only one capable of doing it.”

  “You murdered your sisters for the good of our country?” His voice was amused.

  Lara forced a dry chuckle from her lips. “Hardly. I murdered them because I wished to live.”

  “You gambled with the king’s life in order to save your own skin?” Serin turned to look at her, his expression green. He’d trained her, which meant it was within the king’s right to blame him for all that she had done. And her father was known to be merciless.

  But the King of Maridrina only laughed with delight. “Gambled and won.” Reaching over, he pushed aside Lara’s scarf to cup her cheek. “King Aren won’t see you coming until it’s far too late. A black widow in his bed.”

  King Aren of Ithicana. Aren, her soon-to-be husband.

  Lara only vaguely heard her father give the order to his guards to make camp, the group intending to sleep through the heat of the day.

  One of the guards lifted her off the back of Serin’s camel, and she sat on a blanket while the men set up the camp, using the time to think of what was to come.

  Lara knew as much as—probably more than—most Maridrinians did about Ithicana. It was a kingdom as shrouded in mystery as it was in mist: a series of islands stretching between two continents, the land masses guarded by violent seas made more treacherous by defenses the Ithicanians had placed in the waters to ward off infiltrators. But that was not what made Ithicana so powerful. It was the bridge stretching above and between those islands—the only safe way to travel between the continents ten months out of the year. And Ithicana used its asset to keep the kingdoms who depended on trade hungry. Desperate. And most of all, willing to pay any price the Bridge Kingdom demanded for its services.

&n
bsp; Seeing her tent was erected, Lara waited until the men had placed her bags inside before slipping into the welcome shade, curbing the urge to thank them as she passed.

  She was alone for barely the length of time it took to remove her scarf before her father ducked inside, Serin on his heels. “I’ll have to begin training you on the codes now,” the Master of Intrigue said, waiting until the king was sitting before ensconcing himself in front of Lara. “Marylyn created this code, and I daresay that teaching it to you in such a short time will be a challenge.”

  “Marylyn is dead,” she replied, taking a mouthful of tepid water from her canteen before carefully closing it again.

  “Don’t remind me,” he snapped.

  Her smile was filled with a confidence she didn’t feel. “Come to terms with the fact that I am all who remains of the girls you trained, and then I will not need to refresh your memory.”

  “Begin,” her father commanded, and then he closed his eyes, his presence in her tent for propriety’s sake, only.

  Serin began his instruction on the code. It needed to be entirely committed to memory, as she couldn’t bring notes into Ithicana. It was a code she might never even use, its usefulness entirely predicated on the King of Ithicana allowing her the kindness of corresponding with her family. And kindness, she’d been told, was not an attribute the man was known for.

  “As you know, the Ithicanians are exemplary codebreakers, and anything you manage to send out will be subject to intense scrutiny. There’s every chance they’ll break this one.”

  Lara held up her hand, ticking off her fingers as she spoke. “I should expect to be completely isolated, from both the Ithicanians and from the outside world. I may or may not be allowed to correspond, and even if I am, there is every chance our code will be broken. There is no way for you to reach me to retrieve a message. No way for me to send something through their people, because you’ve yet to swing the loyalties of a single one.” She balled her hand into a fist. “Other than escaping, which means an end to my ability to spy, just how do you expect me to convey the information to you?”

  “If this were an easy task, we’d have accomplished it already.” Serin extracted a heavy piece of parchment from his satchel. “There is only one Ithicanian who corresponds with the outside world, and that is King Aren himself.”

  Taking the parchment, which was embossed with Ithicana’s crest of the curving bridge, the edges trimmed with gilt, she examined the precise script, which requested that Maridrina deliver a princess to be his bride in accordance of the terms of the Fifteen Year Treaty, as well as an invitation to negotiate new terms of trade between the kingdoms. “You want me to hide a message within one of his?”

  He nodded, handing her a jar of clear liquid. Invisible ink. “We’ll attempt to entice messages from him to give you the opportunity, but he’s not prone to frequent correspondence. For that reason, we should return to studying your sister’s code.”

  The lesson was tedious work and Lara was exhausted. It took all her self-control not to sigh with relief when Serin finally departed to his own tent.

  Her father rose, yawning.

  “Might I ask a question, Your Majesty?” she asked before he could depart.

  At his nod, she licked her lips. “Have you seen him? The new King of Ithicana?”

  “No one has seen him. They wear masks, always, when meeting with outsiders.” Then her father shook his head. “But I have met him, once. Years ago, when he was only a child.”

  Lara waited, her palms soaking the silk of her skirts beneath them.

  “He is rumored to be even more ruthless than his father before him. A harsh man, who shows no mercy to outsiders.” His gaze met hers, and the uncharacteristic pity in his eyes made her hands turn to ice. “I feel he will treat you cruelly, Lara.”

  “I have been trained to endure pain.” Pain and starvation and solitude. Everything that she could possibly face in Ithicana. Taught to endure it and remain true to her mission.

  “It may not come in the form of pain, as you understand it.” Her father took her hand and turned it over to reveal her palm, studying it. “Be wary most of all of their kindness, Lara. For above all, the Ithicanians are cunning. And their king will give up nothing without demanding his due.”

  Her heart skipped.

  “The heart of our kingdom is caught between the Red Desert and the Tempest Seas, with Ithicana’s bridge the only safe route beyond,” he continued. “Neither desert nor sea bends to any master, and Ithicana . . . They’d see our people impoverished, starved, and broken before they’d ever allow trade to flow freely.” He dropped her hand. “For generations, we’ve tried everything to make them see reason. To make them see the harm their greed causes the innocent people of our lands. But the Ithicanians are not men, Lara. They are demons hiding in human form. Which I’m afraid you’ll find out soon enough.”

  Watching her father depart the tent, Lara flexed her hands, wanting to wrap them around weapons. To strike out. To maim. To kill.

  Not because of his words.

  Dire as her father’s warning was, it was one she’d heard countless times before. No, it was the slump of his shoulders. The resignation in his tone. The hopelessness that briefly showed itself in his eyes. All signs that despite everything her father had put into this gambit, he didn’t truly believe she’d succeed in her mission. As much as Lara detested being underestimated, she hated those who mattered to her being harmed even more. And with her sisters now free of their shackles, nothing mattered to her more than Maridrina.

  Ithicana would pay for its crimes against her people, and by the time she was through with its king, he’d do more than bend.

  He’d bleed.

  Another four nights of travel north saw the red sand dunes giving way to rolling hills covered with dry brush and stubby trees, then craggy mountains that seemed to touch the sky. They followed narrow ravines, and slowly, the climate began to shift, the endless brown dirt broken by patches of green and the occasional brilliant bloom of flowers. The dried creek bed they followed turned muddy, and several hours later, the caravan was splashing through sluggish water, but beyond that, the earth was bone dry. Harsh and seemingly unlivable.

  Men, women, and children stopped working in their fields to shield their eyes, watching the group pass. They were all skinny, wearing threadbare homespun clothes and wide-brimmed straw hats that shielded them from the ceaseless sun. They survived on the sparse crops and boney cattle they raised; there was no other choice for them. While, in prior generations, families were able to earn enough at their trades to purchase meat and grain imported from Harendell through the bridge, Ithicana’s rising taxes and tolls had changed that. Now only the wealthy could afford the goods, and the working class of Maridrina had been forced to abandon their trades for these dry fields in order to feed their children.

  Barely feed them, Lara amended, her chest clenched tight as the children ran to line the caravan route, their ribs visibly protruding from beneath their tattered clothes.

  “God bless His Majesty,” they shouted. “God bless the Princess!” Little girls ran alongside Serin’s camel, reaching up to hand her braids of wildflowers, which Lara draped across her shoulders, then across the saddle when they grew too many.

  Serin gave her a sack of silver coins to disperse, and it was a struggle to keep her fingers steady as she pressed them into tiny hands. They learned her name soon enough, and as the muddy creek turned to crystal rapids racing down the slopes toward the sea, they shouted, “Bless Princess Lara! Watch over our beautiful princess!” But it was a growing chant of “Bless Lara, Maridrina’s Martyr” that turned her hands cold. That kept her awake long after Serin had finished his lessons each evening, then filled her head with nightmares when sleep finally took her. Dreams where she was trapped by taunting demons, where all her skills had failed her, where no matter what she did, she could not get free. Dreams where Maridrina burned.

  And every day, they traveled closer.r />
  As the earth turned lush and moist, the caravan was joined by a larger contingent of soldiers, and Lara was moved from the camel to a blue carriage pulled by a team of white horses, their trappings decorated with the same silver coins as her father’s horse. And with the soldiers came a whole retinue of servants tending to Lara’s every need, washing and scrubbing and polishing her as they traveled to Maridrina’s capital city of Vencia.

  Their whispers filtered through her tent walls: that her father had kept the future bride of Ithicana hidden in the desert all these long years for her own safety. That she was a treasured daughter, born of a favored wife, hand-selected by him to unite the two kingdoms in peace, her charm and grace destined to see Ithicana grant Maridrina all the benefits an ally should have, which would allow the kingdom to thrive once more.

  The very idea that Ithicana would concede so much was laughable, but Lara felt no amusement at their naiveté. Not as she took in the desperate hope in their eyes. Instead, she carefully stoked her fury, hiding it beneath gentle smiles and graceful waves from the open window of the carriage. It was a strength she needed, given that she’d heard the other whispers, too. “Pity the poor gentle princess,” the servants said with sorrow in their eyes. “What will become of her amongst those demons? How will she survive their brutality?”

  “Are you afraid?” Her father pulled the carriage curtains closed as they approached the outskirts of Vencia, much to Lara’s dismay. It was the city of her birth, and she hadn’t seen it since she’d been taken from the confines of the harem and brought to the compound to begin her training at the age of five.

  She turned to him. “I’d be a fool not to be afraid. If they discover I’m a spy, they’ll kill me and then cancel the trade concessions for spite.”

  Her father made a noise of agreement, then pulled two knives encrusted with Maridrinian rubies from beneath his coat, handing them to her. Lara recognized them as the ceremonial weapons that Maridrinian women wore to indicate they were wed. They were supposed to be used by a husband in the defense of his wife’s honor, but typically they were kept dull. Decorative. Useless.