by Sharon Shinn
“When my father accepted your invitation on my behalf, he assumed you would make yourself responsible for my safety,” Jordan said. I had never heard his kind voice so stern. “And yet I find myself wondering if you had any inkling that revolutionaries might be targeting your house. If, in fact, I was invited here to give them an opportunity to harm me.”
Vincent sucked in his breath and tried to maximize his own height, though he couldn’t rise to Jordan’s level. Behind him, his echoes glared in the prince’s direction. “If I had plotted against you so foully, my prince, don’t you believe you would be dead?” he answered. He gestured at the royal guards standing a few feet away, their weapons still at the ready. “There are enough men at my disposal to account for all of yours. But we fought with you, not against you. I am not one of the western nobles who wishes you ill.”
“I hope that is true,” Jordan said. “My father thought we had come close to an agreement with the western provinces. But—”
“You have,” Vincent said quickly. “Those of us who are loyal to the king have persuaded the more contentious lords that the deal will be good for all of us. Renner and his father have proved hard to convince, but we are working with them still.” He paused and glanced around. “I was told he was here in this room with you. Is he among the wounded?”
Jordan looked over his shoulder at his own men, one of whom took a pace forward and said, “He’s dead, liege.”
“Dead? Renner?” Vincent exclaimed. “Oh, no. Surely not. His men brought out a letter of safe passage, stamped with your own seal! Did you never intend to honor that?”
I saw Jordan’s temper begin to fray, though I thought he had done a remarkable job maintaining his calm up till now. “Of course I intended to honor it! But he came at me in a fury—he inflicted these wounds after I signed the paper because he had decided that both of us should die after all. My men found him with a sword at my throat and responded the only way they could.”
“But he is dead?” Vincent repeated. I thought he seemed more upset by this news than anything else that had transpired tonight. “My liege, this is bad. Very bad.”
“It is a tragedy for that young man and his family, but entirely brought upon himself by his own actions.”
“That is not how his father will view it! Lord Garvin will see that he has now lost two of his children to the arrogance of the crown! And the nobles who were undecided about which cause to support will be swayed by this latest execution.”
Jordan put a hand to his forehead; when he dropped it, I thought a smear of blood had been left behind. When he spoke, his voice was level but edged with hostility. “I traveled here in good faith. To try to maintain good relations between Alberta and Camarria. Without offering any provocation of my own, I came under the attack of a violent young man who sought to kill me. And because he is now dead, the nobles of the western provinces will rise up in revolution? It makes no sense.”
“It may make no sense, but you may take my word for it,” Vincent said. “The events of this night have truly ignited civil war.”
Before Jordan could answer, there was another flurry of activity at the door, and I craned my neck to try to see who had entered now. One newcomer was a small, nervous older man who headed straight for Jordan with a low exclamation of concern; I guessed him to be a medic. The others were all women—Sorrell and her echoes, I thought.
“Oh, thank the triple goddess! The prince is unhurt!” Sorrell exclaimed.
The medic was urging Jordan and his echoes over to a set of chairs and calling for someone to bring him more light. He didn’t look up at Sorrell’s words, but he did make an acerbic response. “Hardly unhurt, but he looks very much alive.”
Jordan allowed himself to be pushed into a seat, but he did turn his head to smile at Sorrell. “Thanks in no small part to you,” he said. “My profoundest gratitude, my lady, for leading me to safety. Vincent, I would not be alive to argue with you now if it were not for your daughter’s quick thinking.”
“She has always been most resourceful,” Vincent said, but I thought he spoke with an effort.
One of Sorrell’s echoes pushed forward to stand at Sorrell’s side, which I thought was astonishing until I realized who the figure really was. “Oh, please, my lord—my prince—my echoes got lost during the mayhem and I must find them!” came Elyssa’s anxious voice. “Sorrell thought perhaps they were following Jordan as she led him to safety—”
Jordan had been looking down at his arm, which the medic was laying bare, but he quickly lifted his head to survey her. I noticed that, before she had come looking for us, Elyssa had had the forethought to change from Trima’s plain clothing into her own fashionable purple gown. “Ah, I was sure you must be missing your echoes,” Jordan said. “Yes, they somehow got swept up with my own as we were making our escape and they have been cowering in the corner of the room all night. I have never seen any creatures so helpless in all my life!”
“Then they’re here! Oh—! I’m so relieved! Where—” She simultaneously did a slow pivot, trying to see into all the shadows of the room, and issued a silent command that all her echoes had to obey. As if my brain had somehow been snapped off of my body, I felt myself lose control over my own arms and legs, even the expression on my face. Completely without desiring to do it, I clambered to my feet and minced across the room to Elyssa’s side, the other echoes at my heels.
Elyssa didn’t hug us, of course, or dissolve into tears of emotion. She merely brought her hand to her heart—a gesture that we all copied—and gave a sigh of relief. I wondered if anyone would think it odd, or even notice, that one of her echoes was wearing her signature necklace while Elyssa’s own throat was bare.
“Thank you for keeping them safe,” she said. “I was so distressed when they were gone.”
Vincent turned on her with a frown. “Yes, well, they were hardly safe here in this bloody room!” he exclaimed. “Sorrell, take Lady Elyssa back to join the others while the prince and I conclude our business. And tell everyone that I have everything well in hand and will share what details I can in the morning.”
“Yes, Father,” Sorrell said in a subdued voice. She took Elyssa’s arm, and her echoes reached out for Elyssa’s echoes, to lead them from the room.
Sorrell had only two echoes to Elyssa’s three, so I was left unpaired. I fell in behind the others as they filed out of the room, and with all my will I resisted the imperative to follow. I couldn’t just walk away from Jordan like this, I couldn’t, not without another word, a final goodbye. If war was truly coming, if the western provinces really did secede, would Jordan ever visit Alberta again? Would Elyssa ever return to Camarria?
Would I ever see him again? It was the question I had asked myself almost every day since I met him.
I could not slow my footsteps—I could not gainsay Elyssa’s command and refuse to walk out the door. All I could manage was one last, despairing look over my shoulder, one final glimpse of Jordan’s face.
But he was watching me, gazing past the body of the doctor who bent over him to bind his arm. Jordan didn’t say anything, didn’t change his expression in the slightest, but he lifted his free hand and kissed the tips of his fingers. I didn’t know if the gesture was a promise or a farewell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
As we set out for home the following morning, the only advantage to sharing a single carriage with Elyssa and Trima was that I was privileged to hear every word of Trima’s furious scold.
We, like the rest of the guests, had slept badly for what remained of the night before staggering downstairs for a late breakfast, where we learned that Jordan had already left. I was so disappointed not to have one more chance to look at his face that I felt physically ill. I had to force myself to eat—or appear to eat—as much as Elyssa did. The servants had done a remarkable job of putting the house back in order and erasing all traces of blood, but there was no erasing the air of palpable shock and horror that still reverberated through every ro
om. It was clear that our hosts wanted us gone with all haste—equally clear that every visitor was eager to decamp without delay. No one lingered over the morning meal.
Trima had overseen the packing while we ate, and ours was among the first carriages to pull away into the busy streets of Wemberton. That’s when the tirade began.
“Never has anyone been as reckless as you!” Trima raged. “You have risked everything—everything!—and it is only by the grace of the goddess herself that Lord Vincent and Prince Jordan did not instantly demand how it was even possible that you got separated from your echoes—”
“Jordan didn’t even seem to wonder! He merely said they had gotten caught up in the chaos. It sounded perfectly reasonable.”
“No doubt he had more to worry about just then, such as how to keep himself alive! But when he gets back to Camarria and begins telling this tale to his father, the king—”
“He will have more to worry about then, too. I heard Lord Vincent say Renner’s death will lead to civil war. He won’t even remember my echoes were in the room with him.”
“You hope he won’t remember—you hope he won’t start wondering. And you hope the governor’s wife doesn’t start counting bodies. ‘Wait. Didn’t Elyssa come downstairs with only two echoes? How did three of them end up in the room with the prince? And why was an echo wearing Elyssa’s favorite necklace?’”
“No one will bother with any of that. Jordan was attacked on Alberta soil! And Renner of Orenza is dead! That’s all anyone will care about.”
“Well, your father will care.”
“And I suppose you’re going to tell him? Because I certainly won’t.”
“No one will have to tell him if you suffer the consequences you deserve.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Trima nodded darkly. “You were off with that boy, weren’t you?”
Elyssa actually laughed, a low and taunting sound. “He’s hardly a boy.”
“No, that’s right, he’s a man. A man with no land, no prospects, no future except to be caught and executed as a traitor to the crown. And yet there you were, running after him—dressed as me and lifting up your skirts like any common merchant’s daughter—”
Elyssa yawned and turned her head to look out the window. “So what if I was?”
“So what if you get pregnant?”
There was a long silence in the carriage. “I didn’t get pregnant last time,” Elyssa said finally.
“You were lucky! Do you think you’ll be lucky twice?”
“We were careful.”
Trima loosed an exclamation of scorn. “The only way to be careful is to keep your knickers on and your legs shut tight.”
“Don’t be vulgar.”
“I’m not the one doing vulgar things.”
There was another long stretch of silence while Elyssa continued to look out the window and Trima continued to glare at Elyssa. “If I get pregnant, I’ll marry him,” she said.
Trima almost screeched. “You will not! A man like that? Who’s nothing? Your father won’t permit it.”
“I don’t care what my father says.”
“He couldn’t possibly support you. He couldn’t possibly want to marry you.”
“He loves me.”
Trima snorted. “Love doesn’t provide food and bedding, does it? Does he even have a place to call home? Or does he expect you to live in some squalid cottage with his mother and his brothers and his sisters and all their babies?”
“I love him.”
Trima leaned forward and spoke each word with venomous precision. “You don’t have the faintest idea what love is.”
Elyssa turned her head to give the maid the coldest, blackest stare I had ever seen on her lovely face. “Maybe because no one has ever loved me.”
We completed the trip in one very long day, continuing on even after the sun had gone down, and we pulled up at Lord Bentam’s house a couple of hours past full dark. Elyssa didn’t bother waiting for the rest of us to disembark before she stalked into the house, and she didn’t bother binding the echoes to her again, either. The three of us climbed slowly from the coach, then stood uncertainly in the courtyard as the servants swarmed around the vehicle, unloading luggage. Should we go upstairs to our room? Or should we follow Elyssa to her father’s study, where I was certain she was even now pouring out the story of Renner’s attack? What behavior would seem most normal? Which course of action would be less likely to rouse her anger?
Should we just stand here all night, shivering under the light of a high half-moon? Or should we turn back to the road we had just traveled and begin hiking in the general direction of Camarria—
My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Trima berating the footmen. “Careful with that trunk! You don’t want to spill all of Elyssa’s underthings into the mud!” She must have turned and caught sight of us, because she spoke again in a completely different tone.
“What are you doing out here like this? Did she— Oh, that wretched girl. I suppose she just left you—Well, come along, then. Inside. I suppose you’re so stupid you’d just stand out here all night and freeze to death. Come on.”
She herded us into the house and up to our suite, then gave us the hastiest possible cleanup before nudging us toward our beds. I wanted to point out that we hadn’t had dinner, and luncheon had been hours ago. But obviously I couldn’t say any such thing. And truthfully, I was just as happy to be safe in my own room with the door shut and Elyssa nowhere in sight. The minute Trima left us alone, I sighed with relief.
There was so much to think over. So many fresh memories to treasure, so many new worries to keep at bay. I had held Jordan’s hand, he had kissed the scars on my body, he had promised to find a way to free me. But the world had flung itself disastrously closer to civil war, and the whole kingdom might soon flare into violence. Worse, I might never see Jordan again. All my happiness was tinged with apprehension, all my fears made bearable by hope. I fell asleep trying to sort out the tangled swirl of emotions, but they followed me even into my dreams.
The following two weeks were strange, fragmented, and full of an anxious excitement. From what I could tell, messengers were flying all over the province—probably all over the kingdom—carrying the news of the attack in Wemberton and the death of Lord Renner. What conversations I was able to overhear centered on how many troops could be raised, what kinds of provisions could be commandeered here in the dead of winter, and how much funding would be required. The prosaic calculations of war.
But, alarmingly, I had limited opportunities to skulk behind Elyssa and listen to her father’s confederates make their plans. She had returned to Lord Bentam’s house in a black and sullen mood, and it showed no signs of lifting.
The first day we were back, she didn’t get out of bed at all. Maybe she needed the rest after the adventure we had just been on. But she wasn’t much livelier the next day, or the next. She slept late, she napped often, and she spent hours locked in her suite, pacing slowly back and forth or simply staring out the windows. I felt her rub the palm of her hand along her flat belly, over and over again; I could almost read the confusing, conflicting thoughts in her head. She was terrified that she might be pregnant, but a small part of her felt a mutinous trace of hope that she might be carrying Marco’s child. And mixed with the fear and the hope was a gnawing, ungovernable desire to see him again—and a dread that she would never have the chance.
Naturally, while she stayed within the suite, the echoes and I remained prisoners in our own small room. I was even more restless than Elyssa, less interested in lying abed sulking, and more likely to be pacing the floor. The other echoes took their cues from me, and we spent many an hour walking back and forth between the window and the door, our shoulders touching as we navigated the cramped space, our footfalls absolutely silent.
Other times, we merely sat on our beds and stared at each other. There was nothing else to do. More than once I wanted to throw my head back
and scream.
Now and then, Trima brought trays of food up for all of us, but that stopped shortly after the first week. “Your aunt Hodia says that if you can’t come down for breakfast, you must not be hungry enough to eat,” the maid reported. “So come on. Out of bed with you.”
“Well, I’m not hungry.”
“Get up anyway. Here, you can wear the purple dress. That always cheers you up.”
Still protesting, Elyssa finally climbed out of bed and let Trima wash and dress her. In another half hour, she had flounced out of the room, allowing the door to fall shut with something like a slam.
Leaving me and the echoes behind.
We were already on our feet, lurking near the inner door, waiting for Trima to come in and dress us. But Trima vanished when Elyssa did and didn’t even return with trays of food. The echoes and I waited a few more moments, staring at the door, but fairly soon it was clear that breakfast was not going to be on our agenda. There was nothing to do but sit back down on our beds and start looking forward to the noon meal.
But no one fetched us for lunch, and Elyssa didn’t return until mid-afternoon. I could pick up a renewed sense of energy from her that made me think she had been outside in the fresh air, perhaps strolling through the garden. But the exercise hadn’t improved her mood any. She went straight to bed and didn’t get up again until Trima returned to dress her for dinner.
Once again, she left the echoes behind.
I was starting to get concerned. We could go a day without food, I supposed, but what if this neglect stretched longer than a day? Elyssa would bring us down for meals whenever there was company in the house, but what if days went by before Bentam entertained any high-ranking visitors? Would Hodia notice how long the echoes had been absent? Would Trima remember that even echoes had to eat?
Had Elyssa finally decided that she was done with echoes forever? Was her plan to get rid of us simply through neglect?
Would she really allow us to starve to death?
At the moment, the most pressing concern was thirst. We had had nothing to drink since the previous night’s dinner, and my tongue felt thick and dry inside my mouth. I waited until Elyssa had been downstairs for a good fifteen minutes, then I cautiously opened our door and crept out into the suite, the echoes at my heels.