The Exalted

by Kaitlyn Sage Patterson

  Brenna, who’d been studying me thoughtfully, said, “This isn’t the first time someone’s tried to murder you?”

  “According to my mother—” I stopped myself. “According to my adopted mother, there have been at least seven attempts on my life. Seven that we know of, anyway. I suppose this makes eight.”

  “Rich folks really don’t have anything better to do?” Lair shook his head. “So you can’t go back to the palace?”

  “He can go back just as soon as we figure out who’s behind it,” Swinton said. “There are some folks who owe me favors. I’ll get in touch with them and see if we can’t get to the bottom of all this soon.”

  I squeezed Swinton’s hand and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. “You’ve hardly been in Alskad a minute, and already you’ve people who owe you favors?”

  “You’ve lived here your whole life and you don’t?” Swinton teased, and the tourniquet of grief that had closed around my heart after I watched my grandmother die loosened ever so slightly.

  A door slammed at the front of the house, shattering the camaraderie that my siblings and I had been slowly building since I showed up on their doorstep. The sound of booted feet came thundering down the hallway, like a whole regiment of guards. I shot to my feet, heart pounding.

  Fern caught herself, panting, on the kitchen doorway and heaved, “The queen is dead, and the crown prince with her. They say they’ll name the regent in front of the palace tomorrow at dawn.”

  “Where are the others?” Brenna asked.

  “Be here soon. They’re pulling the wagon. I thought you’d want to know about the queen.”

  “Might need to check your facts, pal,” Swinton said.

  I stood and offered Fern my hand. “I’m Vi’s twin, Bo. Ambrose Oswin Trousillion Gyllen. Crown Prince of the Alskad Empire, Duke of Nome and Junot, Count of Sikts, Baron of the Kon, Protector of the Colonies of Ilor and the Great Northern Waste. Nice to meet you.”

  Fern gawked at me. “You’re shitting me.”

  With a twist of a smile, Lair reached over and lightly smacked Fern’s shoulder. “Don’t curse at your brother. Can’t you see? He looks just like Vi.”

  I pulled up my sleeve, revealing the golden cuff around my wrist. “Really the prince. And really Vi’s twin.”

  Fern’s mouth pursed, and she gave me a look full of skepticism. “You can’t be the prince if you have a twin. Only the singleborn get to sit on the throne.”

  “The queen believed that was a particularly ridiculous rule. What do you think?” I asked.

  Fern shrugged. “Not for me to decide. If you are the prince, though, you’d best go tell those guards you ain’t dead.”

  Swinton’s head snapped up. “Guards?”

  “Sure. A whole pack of them. Coming up the block, pounding on doors, riffling through folks’ houses. Can’t say as what they’re looking for this time, but they might cut it out if you let ’em know you’re alive, right?”

  “How close are they?” I asked.

  “They’re at the Holgates’ now. Three houses down.”

  Brenna pushed her chair back and stood. “When was the last time we heard from Dammal?”

  “He’s passed out in the front room,” Chase said. “Right?”

  Tie darted out of the room and was back in one breathless moment. “He’s gone.”

  “Magritte’s knuckles,” Brenna hissed. “I’m going to kill him.”

  My breath caught in my throat. “You think Dammal told them?”

  “I should’ve seen this coming,” Lair said. “He’s a swindler. Of course he went for them. Probably got a reward, too.”

  I rubbed a hand across my scalp, befuddled. Vi had spoken so highly of him, but the man I’d seen had been a drunk at best. And his children obviously didn’t think much of him.

  “Is there a back door?”

  She shook her head. “Can’t go out the back. They’ll have guards on either end of the alley. At least, the Shriven post guards out back whenever they come raiding.”

  “Hamil’s tongue.” I looked at Swinton. “What do we do?”

  “You can hide in the attic until they’re gone,” Tie said. “There’s a hidden room up there. They ain’t found it yet.”

  Brenna nodded. “Not a word of this, Fern. Go get the others and help them bring in the supplies. Make sure they keep their mouths shut. Chase, clean this up. Lair, stow anything valuable or breakable. You know the way of it. Tie, show these two where to hide.”

  Everyone burst into motion. Fern raced through the house, the sound of her booted feet on the hardwood more mammoth than child. Chase swept the chipped teacups into the sink. Swinton followed Tie out of the kitchen, but I stood frozen for a moment, overwhelmed by the flurry of the family, so practiced at taking care of each other.

  My family.

  Brenna’s eyes met mine, and she smiled. “Come on, brother. Can’t have you show up on our doorstep one minute, only to be carted away the next. Let’s get you hidden.”

  * * *

  I huddled close to Swinton in the tiny attic room, grief flowing through my veins, flooding my heart. The icy air cut through cracks in the roof and siding, and the memory of my grandmother’s death, of watching her life seep out of her, looped through my mind, unwilling to be set aside any longer.

  Swinton pulled Runa’s ruined crown from the inner pocket of his thick military coat and stared at it. Below us, glass shattered and doors slammed as the guards tore through the already ramshackle house. It would be sundown soon, and across the city, in the palace, the council was surely gathered to choose who would ascend the throne as regent until the line of succession could be established. I took the crown from Swinton’s cold fingers and reached up to wedge it between the rafters just over our heads. It should be safe here for now, and at least I would know where it was, should I ever have reason to wear a crown again.

  I shivered, and Swinton wrapped his arms around me. “It’ll all turn out, Bo. As soon as the guards leave, I’ll go back to the palace and find out what’s going on. Rumors will be flying by now, and if one of the other singleborn truly did order the assassin, they’re sure to be strutting around like a cat licking blood from his paws, stomach stuffed with mice.”

  I grimaced. “That’s quite an image.”

  “We’ll have you back in the palace in no time.”

  I wanted so desperately to believe him, but nothing about this day had been as I’d expected. I should’ve been changing clothes for the queen’s birthday supper, and instead, I was shivering in an attic, praying with every fiber of my being that the guards who were meant to protect me wouldn’t find and possibly murder me.

  I hoped Vi was having more luck than I was.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Vi

  “I am learning that it is one thing to feel helpless, and another experience entirely to find that, in the face of something terrifying, my particular skill set is just this side of useless.”

  —from Vi to Bo

  Curlin brandished a thick fruitwood staff as long as she was tall and planted her feet in a wide stance. I flipped one of my knives into the air and caught it in an aggressive grip, the long blade tracing the length of my forearm. We’d wrapped our blades in layers of rags so as not to do any actual harm to each other, so the balance was a bit off, but I’d have to make do. It’d be a real pity to lose our one real advantage to a stupid training accident—even if she did drive me to the edge of my patience.

  I rolled my neck, watching Curlin through narrowed eyes. I’d studied the Shriven all my life, counting the days until they would inevitably come for me. More than a little of my life had been devoted to thinking about how I might survive a confrontation with one of their order. Some of the Shriven fought with mace-tipped chains, but Curlin claimed that those were more for show. I’d also seen them use the wicked-lo
oking weapons they called charmers—terrifying double-bladed swords. They could kill a foe in front and another behind them in a single motion, but if a person could get close enough, quickly enough, they might have a chance to avoid the kiss of steel.

  The weapons Curlin and I worried most about were the staffs. Every one of the Shriven in Ilor carried a long staff like the one Curlin wielded. They were more like extensions of their limbs than weapons to the Shriven, and even though they looked innocuous enough, one hit could cave in a person’s skull faster than their eyes could follow the deadly blow. A body had to be fast to fight one of the Shriven armed with a staff. And not just fast—smart, too.

  The moment Curlin glanced away from me to look at the others circling us, I threw myself into a roll and came up slicing. There were only two real ways to take down one of the Shriven armed with a staff, at least without years of grueling training: get inside their reach fast enough to surprise them, or kill them with ranged weapons. Our youngest recruits were practicing their skills with bows and arrows in the lower field under Aphra’s watchful eye. Most of them had grown up hunting in the kaffe groves, so they were fair proficient already. They’d do fine.

  I caught Curlin in the belly with one knife and in the armpit with the other.

  “Gut wound!” I called triumphantly. “You’re down.”

  Curlin’s face curled in a snarl made twice as terrifying by the knotted lines of her tattoos. Her staff connected with my ear the moment before Curlin’s fist smashed into my skull. Sharp pain raced down my neck and reverberated across my whole body. I tried to stay calm through the ringing in my ears and the flashes of color and blackness that threatened to take my vision entirely. I threw myself backward in a flashy, impractical round-off that I wasn’t sure I could land. My bare heel grazed Curlin’s jaw, but I’d planned for it and managed to land in a crouch, knives up and head throbbing.

  Curlin slammed the staff into the earth and leaned over, hands on her knees, panting.

  One of the young men in the watching crowd—Pluto—brought a bucket to me.

  “Thanks.”

  I dipped the wooden cup into the water and offered it to Curlin. She took it, drained it and handed it back. I refilled the cup and drank deeply.

  “Good fight,” I said.

  She nodded and clapped me on the back.

  “What’d you see?” she asked the gathered crowd.

  Pluto raised his hand.

  “Vi got in close and went right for the deadliest hits. She was fast and stayed low.”

  I bit back a smile.

  “But?” Curlin asked.

  “She let herself think she’d won,” a familiar voice called through the crowd, sending a thrill up my spine. “She didn’t expect a blow from a dying foe.”

  It’d been only a few days, but Quill’s absence had left a hole by my side and a constant pang in my heart. And even though I tried to keep my mind occupied with other things, I couldn’t stop filing away stories and jokes to share with him. I ached with the desire to hear his sweet laugh, to feel his arms around me, to kiss him. Missing him was a weight that got heavier as each day passed, one that I’d carried in silence. The fact that he’d returned, and so quickly, made my heart sing.

  At Curlin’s nod, I flew through the crowd to Quill. I took his hand and led him away from the press of bodies straining to see the opening swings of the next fight. Curlin claimed that the others could learn a lot from these fights. She said that watching others succeed and fail over and over again gave a body far more ideas than drilling the same exercises morning, noon and night. Her theory was that drills in the morning and sparring in the evening would push our charges into fighting shape far faster than either one alone. I couldn’t argue with her—I certainly learned something new from every fight—but each time my fist brought up a blooming bruise on one of the younglings’ cheeks, I felt guilty.

  When Curlin paused fights to talk about what was working and what wasn’t, or when she dissected each move afterward, I was often taken aback by how much she’d learned from the Shriven. We’d grown up watching the other brats tussle in back alleys in the End. In those days, I’d been terrified that getting even a little angry would make me turn, so I’d run from any fight that came my way. But everything I’d seen must’ve been filed away somewhere, because bits and pieces came rushing back each time someone came at me. Curlin’s knowledge, on the other hand, was encyclopedic.

  Quill followed me up the ladder into the bungalow I shared with Aphra and Curlin. I settled on one of the plush cushions Aphra had salvaged from Plumleen and gestured for him to join me.

  “I think I can scrounge up some tea if you want it,” I offered, doing my best to quickly rearrange my messy curls and kick dirty clothes behind the furniture.

  “No, thank you,” Quill said, and I could hear the smile in his words. “We’ve some business to attend to.”

  “Business?” I asked, letting a slow, wicked smile play across my lips. “I have no idea what you might be referring to, Mr. Whippleston.”

  I closed the distance between us and slipped an arm around his waist, letting my hand come to rest on the slope of his hip. His long, lean muscles radiated heat. The air was thick as velvet around us, and Quill’s sharp, spicy scent mingled with the green jungle smell and became an intoxicating perfume.

  He raised an eyebrow at me and brushed a loose curl away from my face. “You know exactly the business I mean.”

  One of his hands laced its way into the curls at the base of my neck while the other snaked around my waist and drew me still closer to him. The tug of his hand in my hair, the thudding of our hearts—who could rightly tell where my heartbeat began and his ended, pressed against each other as we were—every inch of my body ached to be closer to his. I pushed myself onto my toes and kissed him.

  Kissing Quill was like sinking into the ocean. Not the icy, harsh waves of Alskad’s shores, but the warm turquoise waters of Ilor. His lips against mine suspended time, pulled the aches from my muscles and reset the rhythms of my soul. That kiss made me indestructible and sent waves of shivering heat down my spine. When we finally let each other go, we were both breathless.

  “Oh,” I said. “That business.”

  Quill’s laugh was all summer thunder and mountain streams. “I do love you, Vi, but I did come back for a reason. We should find the others.”

  * * *

  For most of the time I’d spent with the resistance, the inhabitants of our little group were spread across the mountain, tending to all the various chores that kept us limping along. But when I slid down the ladder, I found the camp swarming with activity. Rarely had I seen it so overrun with people scurrying from place to place. Each face was clouded with grim determination, and where just hours ago, most folks would’ve stopped to say hello or check in with Quill, not a person in the camp seemed to have time for more than a polite nod. Even Quill, who’d been on the mountain less than an hour, could sense the net of tension tightening over the camp.

  “Tell me it’s not been like this since I left,” he said.

  I shook my head, scanning the crowded clearing. “No. Something’s wrong. Do you see Aphra?”

  A calloused hand grabbed my wrist, and before I’d a moment to gather my wits, Curlin pulled me stumbling into a bamboo-slatted storeroom beneath one of the bungalows. Quill followed close on my heels. Aphra was perched on a barrel, waiting.

  “I’m glad to see you all well,” he said. “I’m sorry to skip the civilities, but it’s imperative that we speak. As soon as Mal and I got back to town, we had a message from Biz and Neve.” Quill grimaced. “Their camp was overrun with the Shriven, and they were forced to retreat deep into the mountains. I have an idea of where they’re headed, but it’s unlikely we’ll hear from them again soon, and I suspect the Shriven are close on their tails. They need our help.”

  “And risk our own neck
s?” Aphra scoffed. “More than likely the Shriven have already caught up to them, and they’re long dead and burned by now.”

  Curlin turned, the full force of her dark blue eyes glaring in the torchlight. The sharp lines of her tattoos obscured her features and made her stare that much more intense. “I hate to say you’re wrong, Aphra, but you can’t afford to forget that the Shriven are human. They’re smart and well trained, and they’ve had the fear wrung out of them, but they’ve faults just like anyone else. They can be beaten. They can be outwitted. This heat, these mountains, this terrain? They’re all beyond the scope of what the temple trained us for. The Shriven will adapt, like anyone, given time, but if your rebels are holed up on a mountain they know well, I’d put good money on them over the Shriven, at least for a time.”

  Quill nodded to Curlin and continued, his voice weary. “It doesn’t look good for them, though. They’ve no way to come or go. No way to get supplies in or messages out. I imagine they’ll be able to pick off any of the Shriven who get too close to their camp, but it’s only a matter of time before they either starve or the Shriven blaze a trail up the mountain, traps and lookouts be damned.”

  “So what do we do?” Curlin asked.

  “We help them, obviously,” I said. “We’ve been training. Not for long, but we’re not completely inept.”

  Aphra picked up the thread of my thought. “We do have the element of surprise. We should help them. They’re probably looking for Vi, after all. We’ve got a duty to them.”

  Quill cleared his throat. “That’s not quite true, and you know it, Aphra. It was the Shriven’s work at Plumleen, and the Shriven who shoved Vi into a place of notoriety. We don’t know what their objective is, but even you know that Vi didn’t ask for this.”

  I thrust my hands into my pockets and squeezed my eyes closed. “I’ll go. I’ll fight. But anyone who doesn’t feel ready stays, and I’m not taking any of the brats. They don’t have nearly enough training. They’ll just end up hurting themselves or us.”