I shot out of my chair, flung open the door and, before any of them could say another word, stalked down the hall to my room. Hot, wrathful tears spilled down my cheeks. Just when I’d finally felt the burden of being a dimmy lifted from my shoulders, I’d come to realize that I had just as little say in the direction of my life as I’d ever had. Less, even.
It seemed I was of no use to anyone.
CHAPTER TWO
Bo
“Despite having trained rigorously for a position of political power almost every day of my life, not a day goes by when I feel entirely confident that I’ve managed to do the right thing, or even the adequate thing, in a given situation.”
—from Bo to Vi
I paced the length of the council chamber, in part to keep from shivering, but mostly because I simply couldn’t sit still and wait any longer. Despite the fires roaring in the large hearths on either side of the long table, the council chamber was one of the coldest rooms in the palace. Its bank of windows faced north, and no effort had been made to insulate the stone walls and floors with rugs or tapestries. Runa didn’t want the councillors to be comfortable here. She wanted them on edge, the better to see the holes in their armor.
In fact, the whole chamber was uncharacteristically bare compared to the rest of the palace. The only decorations were a collection of ancient, ornately decorated rifles tarnishing on their hooks over each fireplace. Undyed, moth-eaten sheepskins hung over the high backs of the chairs on either side of the table, and the thrones that sat at the head and foot were plain, cushioned affairs draped in furs only slightly less worn than the sheepskins.
The table was the most beautiful thing in the room by a long stretch. Old as the empire itself, and with the scars to prove it, the table had been made from a single slice of a tree trunk that must’ve once measured more than ten feet around when it stood.
“They won’t expect to see you.” The low, measured voice of my grandmother, Queen Runa, effortlessly filled the council chamber. “Some of them will be thrown off guard by your presence here. Allow them the time they need to adjust.”
Swinton, who’d returned to Alskad with me after helping me find my sister, laughed. “He isn’t nervous—are you, Bo?”
I bit the inside of my cheek and studied the spread of smoked fish, soft cheeses and fresh shoots of bitter greens on the table. I wasn’t nervous; I just...felt out of place. I’d come back to Alskad changed, and having seen more clearly into the lives of the people I was meant to rule someday.
But Alskad was the same. The same people, the same parties, the same endless political scheming that did nothing to better the lives of the people of our empire. Though I had never enjoyed it before, now that I was back, I found that I had no patience for the lies and manipulations of the court—and even less than none for the Suzerain, the treacherous leaders of the temple who’d been poisoning our people.
Runa tapped out a rhythm on the table as she studied the collection of gilded perfume bottles that sat, innocuous as a nest of vipers, in the middle of the table.
“Let’s finish reviewing, then,” she said. “The boy in the basement. Which details will you use to convince the royal council that this part of the story isn’t heresy?”
It was the third time she’d asked me about the boy my twin sister, Vi, had seen in the temple basement back in Ilor. Every time I repeated the story, my heart broke a little more for his poor soul. And each time, I grew a little angrier.
In a fair imitation of my accent, Swinton said, “His name was Tobain. He was nine years old. The only thing he’d ever harmed was a chicken...”
Runa cut him off with a glare, but Swinton merely waggled his eyebrows at the queen, grinning, and slid into the nearest chair.
It had taken no small amount of doing, but the moment we’d landed in Penby three weeks ago, Swinton had set his sights on finding every remaining drop of the philomena perfume that had inspired the Suzerain’s horrifying experiment in Ilor. He’d bought two bottles off noblewomen who’d kept them as reminders of investments gone awry. Another turned up in the poorest section of town, the End, purchased for no more than a few tvilling. The fourth was a vial Runa herself had locked away in a cabinet after she’d shut down the perfumeries in the wake of the Ilorian tragedy.
We knew that the perfume wasn’t exactly the same concoction the temple was using to poison the diminished, but I certainly felt better knowing it was safe in our hands. Furthermore, it was all the proof we could procure without storming the temple itself. Swinton, wary of the fact that he might have been secretly dosed at some point in his life, had stayed well away from the stuff, but both Runa and I had each taken a single, cautious sniff. It had a light, almost citrusy scent, like sunlight and greenery and the first bloom of spring. It didn’t smell like violence distilled in a bottle.
I picked up where Swinton had left off. “Tobain’s mother had made him wring the chicken’s neck for supper. He had eyes like cherrywood knots. The temple in Ilor was a nearly exact replica of the temples here in Penby, which is, to be frank, remarkably impractical. The people in Ilor build their houses with wide windows and fans to cool the rooms for a reason—the temple there trapped the heat of Ilor like an oven.”
“Good,” she said. “Now, just remember—sit up straight. Don’t fidget. Try not to let them rattle you.”
Since my return from Ilor, my grandmother had kept up a near-endless soliloquy on the ideal behavior of a monarch. I must dress with care and richness, but never gaudy vanity. I must walk more determinedly, but less quickly. I must speak at a softer volume in a loud room and with greater volume in a quiet one. I mustn’t eat with too much enthusiasm or too little. And on and on and on.
But when we’d spoken about this meeting, this conversation, her only requirement was that she be the one to actually inform the council of the temple’s crimes. She insisted that, were I to bring the news before the council, I’d be laughed out of the room. Any respect I’d gained as the future leader of the empire would be shattered. I must function only as a witness.
Swinton swung his feet up onto the table, one ankle over the other, and leaned his chair back, studying his nails. I bit back a smile and watched Runa out of the corner of my eye. She’d immediately warmed to Swinton upon our arrival, charmed by his outright refusal to treat her with the same obsequious, pandering respect that she got from nearly everyone else in the kingdom. They’d settled into a playfully antagonistic rhythm over the past few weeks; a rhythm that I would have enjoyed immensely, had I not been so nervous about the meeting of the council that was set to start in less than an hour.
It was truly a thing of beauty, watching the scoundrel I adored tease and chivy the most powerful woman in the world.
Runa looked up from her papers, and her face paled in horror when she saw Swinton’s boots propped on the ancient table. It didn’t take her long to regain her composure, though, and her eyes were twinkling when she said, “Young man, do you know anything about the history of this table?”
Swinton looked at the table and yawned. “Can’t say as I do.”
“Perhaps you will consider removing your feet and allowing me to enlighten you.”
The story of this particular table and the tree it came from was one I’d been told a thousand times or more—as had every child in the Alskad Empire—but I’d never heard Runa tell it. I leaned in, unrepentantly excited to hear the history of my nation recounted in the queen’s own words.
Long ago, in the earliest days after the cataclysm, the first empress and her people journeyed north, camping and scavenging what food they could manage. So little of the earth had been habitable then, and the empress had led her people over miles of devastated land, searching for a place where they might settle. Somewhere safe from the earthquakes and floods, the hurricanes and tsunamis, and the shards of the fractured moon that still rained from the sky.
One night, having walked as far as they could, the group set up camp in a clearing in the woods, beneath an enormous old tree. One of the children was sick, and in hopes of keeping the disease from spreading, the empress gave her tent to the mother and child so that they might isolate themselves from the rest of their family.
The empress nestled her own blankets among the roots of the ancient tree and quickly fell asleep. Her rest was not peaceful, however, for in the middle of the night, she was startled awake by a resounding crash and a hair-raising jolt of electricity.
The tree had been struck by lightning. The empress got to her feet, and as she stood, looking up into the branches, the tree swayed and heaved. Before she could call out a warning to her people, the tree crashed to the ground. But rather than falling on the hundreds of souls who’d survived their long journey, the tree fell away from the group, harming no one. And instead of sending the empress, standing at the base of the trunk, toppling head over heels, the roots lifted her high above the crowd.
From her high vantage point, across a path cleared by the enormous tree’s fall, the empress saw the Penby harbor for the first time.
The palace was built on that very spot, the forest around it cleared and the wood used to build the city. And the tree that had cleared the first empress’s way to the ocean was used to build furniture for the palace, furniture that has been used by generation upon generation of Alskad’s queens. The trunk was fashioned into the council chamber’s table, where the most important decisions in the kingdom have been made since the settling of Alskad. The throne was carved from the roots of the tree, and the dais on which it stood from the branches—turned upside down, just as the tree had once been.
When Runa finished the story, Swinton glanced from the table to me, to Runa and back to the table again. Grinning, he said, “Well, aren’t we a sentimental bunch? All that for an old, battered table?”
“You feel no call to respect the history of our empire?” Runa asked.
Swinton gave her an indulgent smile. The kind of smile you might save for a precocious child. “Your empire, Runa. Not mine. Not my home, either.”
A knock at the door interrupted the queen’s sharp response, and she gave Swinton a wry smile as she shuffled her papers back into place.
“We’ll continue this conversation later. Have no doubt about that,” she said, plucking her crown from the table and settling it onto her head. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, I would hate to keep the council waiting.”
Swinton got to his feet and crossed the room. He wrapped his arms around me and gave me a kiss, his scruff rubbing my freshly shaved cheek. “You can do this, Bo.”
I smiled at him, hoping that his confidence would bolster me into someone who might be mistaken for a future ruler, at least in the low light of the council chamber. At Runa’s nod, I pressed a switch hidden on the side of the fireplace. The stone wall sank back, revealing a dark landing and a narrow set of stairs that led directly to the rooms I’d been given on my arrival. The suite of the heir to the throne. I assumed there was another such passage that led to Runa’s rooms, but though she’d entrusted me with many secrets in the weeks since I’d returned from Ilor, I knew that for every truth she trusted me with, she kept three more hidden.
Swinton gave my hand a final quick squeeze and dashed up the stairs, and I closed the secret passage behind him, steeling myself for the trial that lay ahead of me.
CHAPTER THREE
Vi
“Over the past few weeks, I’ve realized that I never really learned how to trust. I’ve spent my whole life guarding against people bound and determined to hurt me, so much so that I don’t know how to let those guards down. Now that I see it, though, maybe I can find a way to change.”
—from Vi to Bo
I slammed my bedroom door closed behind me with no regard for the Whipplestons’ feelings or for Noona and her brother, who were likely already asleep in their rooms downstairs. Tears coursed down my cheeks as I whipped a satchel from its hook on the back of the door and set about awkwardly tearing clothes out of the chest of drawers one-handed, flinging them onto the bed. I couldn’t stand to be in this house for another minute, the Shriven hunting me be damned.
For weeks—weeks!—I’d been twiddling my thumbs, waiting idly as Quill told me he was searching for the resistance, when he’d known exactly where they were all along. I’d waited through half-truths and lies while he and his brother tried to decide what was best for me.
Me, a woman grown. A woman who’d been fending for herself while Quill had tried to hide behind a forest of excuses.
The audacity, the sheer gall it must take to think himself so much more capable than me, was infuriating. I didn’t need his help or anyone else’s. I would end the temple’s stranglehold on Ilor myself, even if it meant tearing each haven hall down, stone by stone, with my bare hands.
There was a soft knock, and I flew across the room, throwing the bolt down. “Go away.”
“Vi, don’t be so ram-skulled,” Curlin called through the door.
Ignoring her, I dug through the thin blouses and undershirts in one of my drawers, feeling around for the small leather pouch that held my pearls, my only real wealth, my last remaining connection to Alskad. The pearls I’d spent years cultivating and harvesting back in Penby harbor, hoping they’d someday buy me a life away from the temple. A life of peace. I double-checked the knot that held the pouch secure and looped the long cord over my head and around my neck, tucking it between my breasts.
“If you could look past your pride for a tenth of a second—”
“This isn’t about pride,” I seethed, even as the words left the tinny taste of lies on my tongue. “Now go away. You wouldn’t understand.”
Outside, Curlin heaved a heavy sigh and slid down the door like a wave being pulled back by the tide, blocking the dim lamplight that filtered beneath the crack in the door. “What wouldn’t I understand? Promises? Truth? Sacrifices? At some point you’re going to have to hear my side of things, you know.”
Rolling my eyes, I grabbed a handful of socks and stuffed them into my bag. I didn’t need to hear her excuses. I’d been there the day she promised, with me and Sawny and Lily, the best friends of our childhood—now cold in their graves—that none of us would ever join the ranks of the Shriven. That nothing in the world could make us walk away from the one thing that had kept us from losing hope in the bleak landscape of our shared childhood: our friendship.
And I would never forget the day I came back to the room I’d shared with Curlin all my life to find her things gone, her side of the room bare, as if she’d never been there in the first place.
Curlin rapped on the door again. “Vi. Come on. Let me in.”
Sawny might have, in time, forgiven her for joining the Shriven. But I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Even if she’d once been the person I trusted most in the world. And if Mal and Quill could lie to me for all this time, I couldn’t rightly see much use at all for trust anymore. My throat tightened, and I closed my eyes, reaching for the tiny flicker of comfort and stability that tied me to Bo, no matter how far away he was. I didn’t want to cry anymore. My heart was cracking, crumbling in my chest, and the only thing I could think to do was seal it up, pack it away in ice and clay until I’d accomplished what I’d set out to do. Until I’d broken the Suzerain’s death grip on the people of Alskad and Ilor once and for all.
I scanned the room, looking for anything I’d forgotten, and perched on the edge of the bed to pull my boots on. I wasn’t entirely confident I could saddle my horse, Beetle, one-handed, but I couldn’t stand to be in this house another night. If Quill refused to help me find the rebels, I would find them on my own.
And if they didn’t want my help? Well, then, I would just have to find another way to stop the temple.
I slung my bag onto my good shoulder, flipped the lock and opened the door. Where I probabl
y would have tumbled backward into the room if I’d been in her position, Curlin was on her feet in an instant, her sharp eyes assessing every detail and narrowing as she realized what I had planned.
“You’re not leaving.”
I tried to shove past her, but she was quicker and a great deal stronger, and her wounds had healed much more quickly than mine. With one hand on the doorframe, she cornered me, trapping me inside my room. “See if you can stop me,” I hissed, aware of Mal and Quill just down the hall.
She pushed me gently backward, careful to avoid my shoulder, and closed the door behind her. “You’re just going to walk out into the night, with the Shriven combing the town for you? Have you lost all good sense? Mal and Quill want to help you. They’re trying to help you. If you’d just stop being such a stubborn ninny, you’d see that.”
“They’re trying to wrap me in cotton wool and stick me in a drawer to rot,” I snapped. “I didn’t decide to stay behind when Bo left so that I could lounge about drinking tea and eating Noona’s pastries for the rest of my life. I stayed to fight. And if they’re not going to help me take down the temple, I’m going to find someone who will.”
Curlin studied me, eyebrows knit together. “Well, if you’re going to insist on leaving, I’m coming with you.”
“Forget it. There’s no way.”
“Your shoulder’s not healed, and you haven’t got the foggiest idea how to conceal yourself from the Shriven, not to mention the fact that you don’t have any idea where you’re going. I, at least, have overheard things in the temple that might help us.”
I crossed my uninjured arm over my sling, gripping my elbow as pain radiated out of my still-knitting joint. She wasn’t wrong, and I kind of hated her for it. “I don’t trust you.”
Curlin grinned, a roguish smirk so familiar and so surprising, I took a step back. She snorted a laugh and rolled her eyes. “And why would you? You’ve not talked to me in years, aside from the two days the anchorites made me watch you before they sent you here, and the one when I threatened you with the most horrifying side of the temple’s many misdeeds. You’ve no reason to trust me. Not yet, at least.”
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