Braid of Sand

by Alicia Gaile

  “Why?” Raziela refused to stand by as they engaged in yet another indecipherable communication of knowing looks and expressions.

  “Because ever since I walked out on him, Herodes has been trying to win me back,” said his mother with a resigned sigh. “He helped start this war with the Goddess, and when she punished the kingdom for what he sent those brutes to do, he used it as an excuse to renounce her and encouraged others to do the same. Now our people are on the brink of starvation and still he fans the fires of hatred against her.”

  “If you believe in the Goddess, then why haven’t you spoken out in defense of her? Had you done so, she would have heard you.”

  Lady Pomona lifted a thick, dark brow.

  “Do you think I have not prayed for an end to the hunger? No Priestess. The Goddess damned us for what was done. The only sign any of us have that she cares about humans at all anymore is you.”

  25.

  Raziela spent the night by herself. Lady Pomona opened a vacant apartment for her so she could have some privacy. Restless in the unfamiliar environment and her mind still reeling from the terrible change that had overtaken her home, she slept fitfully and woke even more exhausted than when she went in to lie down.

  Thamar came to fetch her at dawn, and this time Raziela didn’t protest when she offered to braid her hair. They were going to the palace to demand an audience with the King before word leaked out that they were in the city already. Though Castien said nothing about their trip to see Mama Dayo, she sensed his displeasure every time he locked eyes with Thamar.

  To her, he said absolutely nothing as they swallowed a meager breakfast of a corn meal mash that was neither appetizing or filling. He didn’t even acknowledge her presence as they donned their weapons, and Raziela accepted the twin golden daggers from his mother. They left Waverly Hall without ceremony. He and his mother, they might as well have been strangers for all the notice they took of each other.

  Their coldness toward each other ratcheted up the anxiety swirling in her belly. Was their strange relationship a sign of what she should expect the rest of the day to bring? Had she been away from Phalyra so long that she simply didn’t recognize normal family behavior?

  “Is the city the way you remember it?” To her surprise, after they walked a couple of blocks and lost sight of Waverly Hall, Castien slowed his pace to walk beside her. Raziela flinched at how closely his question matched her thoughts.

  For what seemed like the hundredth time, she ran her hands through the ragged ends of her braid.

  “I was a girl the last time I saw it, and though it may not seem like it to you, that was a lifetime ago. I do not remember much of the city.” The lie rolled off her tongue easily, but it was as effective as any of the others she’d tried to tell. Her eyes darted here and there, trying to find the gardens and flowers their city had once been known for. She frowned at the dilapidated houses and decaying wrecks of the looted mansions along Millionaire’s Row.

  Her belly rumbled, and Castien winced.

  Barak and Osee joined them several blocks later when they approached Market Square. They emerged from a ramshackle inn with an old-fashioned hanging wooden sign carved into the shape of a goat. Barak strode toward them with a loud greeting. Raziela shied away from him as he pulled Thamar into a one-armed hug and clasped Armelle lightly on the shoulder.

  More people emerged from the Dancing Goat, and a hard bubble of air seemed to expand inside Raziela’s chest. Apart from the five members of Castien’s team, there couldn’t have been more than ten others on the street, but still Raziela felt crowded. Her heart began to race. She needed more room to breathe!

  Beside her, Castien shifted.

  “Osee. Alert the King that we’re on the way. Go by the main road. Take Barak with you. Keep your ear to the ground. I don’t want Kephas to poison too many minds against her before she has a chance to explain herself.”

  “If he’s there already, I guarantee his tongue is already flapping,” Barak muttered, but with two brisk nods they set off at a quick trot. Raziela breathed a little easier once they were gone. Castien’s gaze burned into the back of her neck.

  “Explain myself?” She cleared her throat with all the subtlety of a snow cat unsheathing it’s claws. Fighting with him was a sure way to steady her nerves.

  “You heard what my brother said. You hoarded the fruits of the Sacred Grove for yourself while the rest of our people starved. Men have been put to death for far, far less.”

  Twin patches of color blazed to life on her cheeks.

  “I didn’t hoard anything!”

  His smile took on a serrated edge.

  “That will not endear you to my father.”

  “Your father has done nothing to endear himself to me,” she retorted. “If he’s anything like you or your brother then I would be doing everyone a favor if I made an end of him and took his throne. I am certain the Great Mother would support my overthrow.” She shifted onto the balls of her feet, lifting up in an effort to meet him at eye level. Castien didn’t move.

  “Do not expect a warm welcome, Priestess. In fact, if I were you, I’d be praying to my goddess to find a way out of this place.”

  Her eyes widened at the implied threat.

  “If it’s so dangerous then let me go. I can fend for myself.” She might find it difficult to find food at first, but she would figure something out.

  He shook his head.

  “My mission was to retrieve you. I have never failed any mission—ever.”

  “I see why your mother is so proud of you.” The words were stinging wasps slathered with honey.

  Armelle made a choking sound and Thamar’s eyes grew round. Castien started to say something, thought better of it, and shook his head before he kept walking.

  Trouble came for them sooner than expected. The King’s personal guards stood waiting for them when they entered the main square in front of the palace. They wore thick wool capes with the fabric doubled up around the shoulders and fastened with bronze brooches shaped into the head of a wild boar. Raziela reached for one of her daggers but didn’t draw it.

  “You must be getting ready to march in a parade. Surely you don’t think the five of you are going to stop us from speaking with the King?” Castien asked in his deadliest voice as the leader stepped forward with a pair of manacles.

  “We have orders to escort this prisoner to King Herodes.” He took a step toward Raziela. She tightened her fist around the hilt of her dagger and sank into a defensive crouch.

  “She came this far without bolting, I think she can manage a few more steps, Eldron.”

  “I’m shocked you allowed her to come this far at all. We saw the food the Prince brought back from the Temple.” He spat at Raziela’s feet. It missed the hem of her skirts by inches. Her lip curled back from her teeth in a silent snarl.

  “You thought I would waste energy carrying her in over my shoulder?”

  “You’re coming with us!” spat the second, snatching for Raziela’s arm. His fingers closed around her wrist, but she locked her legs and it was the guard pulled off balance.

  “I did nothing wrong, and I refuse to be treated like a criminal when it was your leader’s actions who brought ruin to us all.”

  She looked at him as though he was a grub in her garden, and shoved her way past the other two in the direction of the palace. They recovered, flabbergasted.

  “I’ve never seen Eldron speechless,” Thamar snorted as she hurried to catch up with them. “I sure hope you survive this. You might just become my new best friend.”

  Raziela blanched.

  “I betrayed no one. There is no reason I should be put to death.”

  Thamar exchanged an uneasy look with Castien, whose face had become a forbidding mask. Barak and Osee chose that moment to emerge from behind the columns where they’d been lurking. Several guards jumped as if they’d materialized like apparitions. Barak ignored them and fixed Raziela with a sympathetic look.

&nbs
p; “Perhaps not, Priestess, but that won’t stop the King from issuing the sentence anyway.”

  EVERY INCH OF STANDING room was taken when the doors opened to admit them into the Great Hall. Castien swung his dark gaze like a scythe, clearing a path so quickly courtiers were stepping on the hems of one another’s expensive fraying robes.

  Castien led the way with Armelle and Thamar on either side of him and Barak and Osee flanking Raziela. She kept her face fixed on the glittering throne, but for the first time that he had known her, she seemed to curl in on herself.

  It was the people, he realized. There were too many people and she was becoming overwhelmed. Her breathing grew audible. He flicked his gaze over his shoulder under the pretense of ensuring their protective circle was secure. Her chest rose and fell as she failed to disguise her rapid gulps for air.

  He wished she still had her gorget. It gave her another layer of armor and she looked frail without it. He understood why she’d removed it. He wasn’t fond of wearing chains when he wasn’t a prisoner either.

  There was a movement from his left—the arc of a scarlet sleeve. A rock flew before Castien’s arm could block the petty attack. He needn’t have bothered. Raziela’s hand jumped up to snatch the rock inches from her face. Her fingers clenched around it until her knuckles threatened to break through her skin. With unerring precision, her eyes found the face of the lady who’d thrown it. The woman squeaked and tried to shuffle back as if she expected Raziela to leap on her and bash in her skull. The people behind her pressed together, refusing to give her an avenue of escape. They were eager for bloodshed. The woman’s. Raziela’s. They didn’t care.

  Raziela looked from the woman to the rock and back once more. The look she left her with said plainly, if I were to use this, I wouldn’t miss. She dropped it and continued on her way.

  Strangely, the attack seemed to settle her. They reached the foot of the throne, and once Raziela was delivered to the King, Castien caught his team’s eyes and they melted back toward the walls. It would not help Raziela to appear as though she had allies. Herodes needed to believe she was defenseless, and if they had to break her out, they’d meet less resistance if the soldiers weren’t already on their guard.

  “I specifically ordered that you appear before me in chains. How dare you stand upright like a courtier when you have committed one of the most heinous crimes our people can commit.” Herodes sat forward. He expected a cowering apology, but what he got was a contemptuous sniff.

  “I committed no crime,” Raziela said, shifting her weight as she tried to ignore the crowds of people staring at her—glaring, hating everything she stood for.

  “No crime?” Herodes just about overturned his throne. “Our people were left to rot in the streets while you pranced around in the garden of that sorceress gorging on vegetables and fruits. We had nothing!”

  “It is not because of my actions that you were punished.”

  “You dare! You dare point your dirty finger at me?”

  “You were the one who ordered the raid on the Temple, were you not?”

  “You vile, despicable girl! I should have you tied to the stake and roasted over a pit!”

  “Fancy that. Serving the Goddess is outlawed, but killing the innocent doesn’t even make you flinch.”

  Castien’s jaw clenched to hide his smile. She was digging herself a deeper and deeper grave, but he was enjoying every minute of it. He couldn’t remember the last time a prisoner had stood before his father and hadn’t wet themselves from fear of what the King would do to them.

  “I’ll hear no more of this! Guards, see that she’s given the deepest, darkest cell in the dungeon. Perhaps a few weeks of isolation and starvation will give her time to consider what she did to her people.”

  “You will hear what I have to say!” Raziela declared, surprising everyone, including Castien. “If you want the Great Mother’s blessings restored then you need to abandoned your ridiculous pride and ask for her forgiveness. Why should she restore any favor to you if you refuse to admit you did anything wrong?”

  “I want nothing to do with that faithless cow!” Herodes snapped. “Great Mother? Ha! She left us all to starve.”

  “I don’t deny that’s unforgettable, but I was told a story in which you inflicted that same fate on your own son. Yet he stands in this very room before you. Are you saying he is a bigger man than you are?”

  The Great Hall shuddered at her audacity. King Herodes veins stood out on his temples like leeches attached to his skin. His eyes didn’t so much as twitch toward where Castien stood.

  “Anyone who so much as mentions Naiara in my presence will feel my wrath. Is that understood? As for you, I’ll see you thrown into the deepest pit in our dungeon and we’ll see what comfort your precious Great Mother is to you down there.”

  The ringing silence was all the answer he was interested in. He glared around, daring anyone to so much as whisper Naiara’s name. Satisfied that his subjects were duly terrified, he settled back on his seat.

  “Throw her in the dungeons. If she doesn’t tell you everything she knows about the Great Mother’s Garden willingly, extract it by any means necessary and leave her there to rot. No food. No water! If she turns her back on us then we shall turn our backs on her as well.”

  The guards closed in. At the first clank of their armor, the vulnerability in Raziela’s eyes hardened into cold purpose. As an ambassador, she was unsure of herself. As a warrior, she assumed her true form.

  The first guard reached for her. His mouth twisted with impatience as he closed his hand around her wrist—or at least he tried to. Raziela whirled. Snatching his wrist, she slammed her bicep into his armpit, and flipped him over her head.

  The breath was still whooshing out of him in a guttural groan when she straightened to face the rest of the guards, now holding their swords.

  Not until that moment had anyone seen her as anything other than a misguided young girl, but as soon as she drew her daggers and sank into a battle stance, the guards fumbled to draw their weapons, but it was too late. She had already charged their line head on.

  The aisle between the rows of benches was too narrow for more than two guards to stand side by side at the same time. Raziela shouldered her way past the first two, knocking one into the lap of a woman wearing a voluminous scarlet gown. She shrieked and covered her face as he crashed on top of her and knocked her to the floor.

  Four more guards waited to intercept her. A woman with a shaved head was the first to block Raziela. Before Raziela could bring down her sword, the woman caught her wrist high above her head. Their eyes locked for a moment, and the guard drew back with a small cry of alarm. Raziela’s dug her heel into the woman’s instep and then she was off and running again. She drove her elbow and the hilt of her sword into the face of a man who thought he could get behind her to try to bring her down.

  King Herodes was being ushered away from the fighting by two of his guards.

  “Kill her! Stop her!”

  Two more steps and Raziela would reach the doorway, but the King’s shouts brought more guards running. They leveled spears at her and she skidded to a stop.

  Castien stepped into the empty space behind her. She pivoted in a fan of silk skirts. He threw up an arm to block her before she lopped off his head.

  “I’ll clear the path. If you want out of here, you’ll have to run.”

  She blinked.

  He threw his weight against her, slinging her to the side so he could charge the guards. He caught the end of one spear and tore it from its owners hands. Then with all his strength behind it, he swung it like a club. It caught its owner square in the chest, and he toppled sideways into the woman next to him.

  Quick as a hare, Raziela darted through the opening between them and disappeared in a whirl of lavender skirts.

  26.

  For all the King’s shouting, once Raziela made it past the second wave of guards she didn’t encounter any more opposition. The colonnade
was empty past the large fountain of nymphs with their hands and faces turned up to catch the spray of water that didn’t flow.

  Two guards had been posted on either side of the doors into the palace, but as Raziela slowed to check their positions, she was shocked to find them already incapacitated on the ground.

  There was no time to make sense of it. The sound of voices echoed behind her and booted feet stamped across the tiles. She threw open the doors and took the long white marble steps two at a time.

  “A moment!”

  Whipping around, she saw a thin woman shuffle toward her with her feet wrapped in wreaths. An old towel was wrapped around her body in a makeshift toga.

  “Anything you can spare. Please. I have children to feed.” She held her hand out to Raziela.

  “I’m sorry,” She panted, backing away and trying to glance back toward the doors of the palace. “I can only pray the Great Mother’s blessings find you in your time of need.”

  The woman paused, and the feverish gleam in her eyes hardened. She held out her hand again, raking Raziela from head to toe, taking in the richness of her High Priestess robes.

  Shouts rang from the ramparts above.

  “Close the gates! Lock down the Square!” Figures moved on the rooftops and in shadowed corners—more of the King’s guards coming for her.

  Raziela shot off down a side street to her left. A great wall had been added to the city, but furrowed lines of farmland were visible through an archway. The portcullis started to drop as the orders to lock down the city spread. Dropping her sword, Raziela gathered her skirts with both hands and ran at a full sprint down the hill. The iron bars struck her shoulder as it crashed to the ground. She hissed as the force sent her sprawling to the dust.

  “Open it! She’s escaped!” Two men in scarlet jerkins hauled at the winch that would raise the portcullis again. Raziela ran, knowing she would need every second she could grab to put distance between them. Whatever crop was sown in the field was only ankle high, offering her no cover.