The Women's War

by Jenna Glass

  “Please forgive the intrusion,” Zarsha said. His hair was disheveled and loose around his face, and he was wearing a dressing gown open over a thin shirt of white linen and clumsily tied breeches. He held a small luminant in one hand, its dim light just enough to reveal his haggard expression as he sketched a quick and perfunctory bow.

  “What are you doing here?” She instinctively kept her voice low, though she wondered if she should be screaming for help. Surely that was the sensible thing to do when a man unexpectedly appeared in her bedroom doorway in such a state—and when she was wearing nightclothes.

  He shook his head. “It’s a long story, best explained with visual aids. Please come with me.”

  He tried to turn away, presumably to lead her down into the passage, but she grabbed his arm and held her ground. He made a hissing sound of pain and grimaced. Ellin hastily let go, only to find a distinctive red stain on her hand.

  “You’re bleeding!” she cried, leaning forward to try to get a better look at his arm. His dressing gown was of midnight blue, and it was impossible to see it clearly in the dim light of the luminant. He twitched his arm out of reach when she tried to take a gentler hold.

  “It’s nothing serious,” he assured her.

  “What’s going on? I’m not going anywhere until you tell me.”

  “You won’t believe me until you see with your own eyes,” he said. “Please trust me and come. I swear by the Mother you will be safe with me.”

  Having seen no sign that Zarsha held any strong religious beliefs, she wasn’t sure how much weight to give his oath. However, despite all of Graesan’s grumblings, she did trust Zarsha. Not to mention that if he meant her any harm, she had doomed herself the moment she’d opened the door to him. He didn’t appear to be carrying a weapon, but he wouldn’t need one to overpower her.

  “How did you know this passage exists?” she asked as she stepped through the doorway and into the chill of the unheated passageway.

  He flashed her a weak grin as he led the way down the long, dark hall. “I am extremely nosy. I’ve never yet set foot in a palace that doesn’t have secret passages, and I always make it my business to find out where they are.”

  Ellin tied a couple more ribbons on her dressing gown, trying to make herself warmer even as she remembered Graesan’s accusation that Zarsha was a spy of some sort. And wondering if it was because of his familiarity with the passageway that he’d known about her and Graesan. Had he lurked in hidden corners and seen Graesan coming to her room?

  At the end of the hallway was a narrow staircase. Having explored the passageway, Ellin knew the stairs led down to the palace’s ground floor, at which point another hallway would lead to an exit in the servants’ wing. But instead of descending the staircase, Zarsha stopped about an arm’s length short of it. His eyes went white as he opened his Mindseye.

  Ellin gaped as Zarsha reached out to the empty air, grabbing something and pressing it against the wall. The wall turned into a door, and Zarsha’s eyes cleared. She stared at him in openmouthed amazement. His grin had regained some of its customary mischief as he met her gaze.

  “You didn’t know this was here?”

  She shook her head. “My steward will have some explaining to do,” she said, wondering how the man could have failed to give her a thorough map of all the secret passages, for if there was one spell-hidden doorway she didn’t know about, there were surely others. The steward had told Star there were no existing maps and his knowledge was incomplete, but she doubted he was truly ignorant of any passages that connected with the royal bedroom.

  Zarsha shrugged. “He probably figured you didn’t want to know about passages you couldn’t use yourself.”

  She gave him a quelling look. “There’s a difference between whether I can and whether I should. I know in Nandel a woman is supposed to prefer death over the dishonor of using magic, but we in Rhozinolm are more practical.” There had been countless times in her life that Ellin had activated spells herself when it hadn’t been worth the trouble of sending for a male servant to do it for her. As long as it was done where no one could see and people could just assume it had been done by a man, there was no reason a woman couldn’t, for example, light her own luminant. “Besides, I’m less interested in whether I can use it than in whether someone else might use it.”

  Zarsha bowed his head respectfully. “Of course. I merely meant that there is likely no malice behind your steward’s oversight.”

  “Maybe not, but I have the right to know about secret passages in my own palace.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me.” He opened the door and stepped through, holding it open for her as she followed. “I will give you a map of the passages I’ve discovered, in case your steward leaves anything else out when you ask for the full details.”

  Ellin followed in thoughtful—if somewhat resentful—silence as Zarsha led the way through a series of halls and doors, none of which she’d known existed. It was downright humiliating that a foreign prince knew more about the layout of her palace than she did, and it made her wonder if she’d been harboring an unrealistic assumption about the power she held as queen. What other secrets were being kept from her?

  After an almost dizzying series of twists and turns, Zarsha finally opened yet another secret door. Ellin blinked to find the doorway blocked with the back of a tapestry, which Zarsha swept aside. Tentatively, not sure what she was walking into, Ellin slipped under his arm and the tapestry and found herself in an aggressively masculine bedroom.

  The first thing she noticed was the elegantly rustic décor, very unlike most of the palace. The colors were all muted and earthy, the furniture solid and heavy-looking, with only the most basic of adornments. Clearly, the room had been decorated with the express purpose of housing guests from Nandel, for whom simplicity was a way of life. A forest green silk counterpane lay crumpled on the floor by the massive dark wood bed, revealing densely woven white sheets marred by a splash of blood. Stepping closer, Ellin saw one of the pillows was rent and bloody, with a flurry of stained feathers spilling from the tear.

  Beside the bed, a small night table lay on its side. Water from a fallen metal cup pooled on the floor around a broken luminant. On the floor, halfway under the bed, lay a dagger, its blade stained with blood.

  Ellin took it all in in a series of quick glances. The scene, together with the blood that was drying on her hand, told a clear story. She turned to Zarsha. “You were attacked.” It wasn’t a question.

  He nodded. “Luckily, I’m a light sleeper.” He grimaced. “Not light enough to avoid this,” he said, holding up his arm, “but it could have been a lot worse.”

  “Let me see,” she said anxiously. There were more pressing issues than his injury—for instance, the identity and fate of his attacker—but she found herself reluctant to face them and all their implications. The diplomatic disaster of having Prince Waldmir’s nephew attacked while her guest was unthinkable.

  Zarsha put down the small luminant he’d been carrying—it was hardly needed in the bedroom, which was brightly lit—and slipped off his dressing gown to reveal a bloody tear in the arm of his shirt. “It’s not bad,” he assured her. “My sleeve and the pillow took the brunt of it.” He pushed the sleeve up so she could see the short length of bandage he’d wrapped around his forearm right below his elbow. There were spots of blood on the bandage, but the edges were starting to dry, which suggested the wound was no longer bleeding. “It stings like a bastard, but it’s shallow and barely more than an inconvenience.”

  Ellin was relieved he wasn’t hurt more seriously, but it meant she could no longer put off the question she dreaded. “Who attacked you? And what happened to him?”

  Zarsha hadn’t made much effort to clean up the scene, hadn’t even bothered to change his shirt, so that probably meant he hadn’t had time to dispose of a body. But if he hadn�
�t killed his attacker, then where was he?

  Zarsha’s face went grim, and his whole body visibly tensed. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, then huffed out a heavy sigh and shook his head. “There is no gentle way to do this.”

  He strode to a heavy wooden wardrobe across the room and threw the doors open.

  “No!” Ellin cried, raising both hands to her mouth in shock and horror.

  On the floor of the wardrobe, thoroughly trussed and gagged, his eye and his lip swelling from bruises, sat Graesan. The eye he could still open widened when he saw her, then he ducked his head, his shoulders and back drooping as he curled in on himself as if to escape her gaze.

  Ellin’s heart pounded in her throat, and no amount of willpower could stop the tears pooling in her eyes. Her immediate thought was that there was some kind of mistake, that Zarsha had to be lying. But there was no mistaking Graesan’s body language as anything but guilt and shame.

  She’d known Graesan was angry about her refusal to send Zarsha away. And she’d also known he was worried about what Zarsha would do with his dangerous knowledge of their affair. But she never could have imagined he would do this.

  Tears flowed freely down her cheeks, and pain knifed through her whole body. Likely Graesan had been convinced he was doing this for her own good, that he was trying to protect her from their guilty secret, but no good intentions could overcome the crushing sense of betrayal that descended on her.

  “I’m so sorry, Ellin,” Zarsha said, his eyes full of sympathy.

  Graesan’s head shot up, and he glared at Zarsha’s back, no doubt indignant over Zarsha’s familiar use of her name. While it was patently inappropriate, this hardly seemed the time to be concerned about protocol. No protocol in the world would cover how a suitor should behave when revealing to the woman he’s pursuing that her lover tried to kill him.

  She took a deep, shuddering breath and scrubbed at the tears on her cheeks. She could not afford to lose herself in heartbreak. Not now. There was too much at stake.

  For the span of a couple minutes, she stood there quietly, focusing on breathing, on fighting back the roiling emotions that tried to cripple her, on letting her reason be her one and only controlling force. And as she did so, she noticed two glaring incongruities in the situation.

  Graesan had been acting as her secretary for the last month, but he was still a trained soldier, and he would never have risen in rank to master of the guard if he weren’t a very good one. How had Zarsha, a spoiled prince’s nephew lying unarmed and helpless in his bed, managed to fight Graesan off? Even after he’d missed with that first strike, Graesan should have been able to overpower him.

  And since Zarsha apparently had fought Graesan off, why was Graesan still alive? And why had Zarsha brought her here instead of a squadron of palace guards?

  The tears dried up, and the emotions subsided into the lockbox she’d built in her heart. She looked back and forth between Zarsha and Graesan.

  “I’m impressed that you managed to fight off an armed, trained attacker while you were unarmed and supposedly asleep in your bed,” she said as her gaze settled on Zarsha. “How did you manage it?”

  “I’m good in a fight.”

  “So it would seem. Perhaps in Nandel it is customary for lords to receive more extensive training in the martial arts than it is here in Rhozinolm?” Any man of the nobility would have learned swordplay growing up, but only those with a military nature would keep up with it as adults. What use had a courtier for swordplay except perhaps for fun and a spirit of competition?

  “We are a warlike people, so yes.” His face was now a bland mask, giving away nothing.

  He knew about secret passageways in the palace that even she as queen hadn’t known of. And he was an experienced enough fighter to subdue a trained soldier even when unarmed and taken by surprise. Perhaps Graesan’s assertions that he was a spy were not born of jealousy, after all.

  “If you ask me a direct question, I will give you the truth,” Zarsha said. “I will never lie to you. But some truths are best left unspoken.”

  It was as good as an admission, and it certainly explained why he had remained in Rhozinolm so long after their engagement fell through. It also explained why he had spent so little of his adult life in Nandel, why he had traveled from court to court to court.

  He was right, however, and this particular truth was best kept silent. If ever he was caught, they would both be able to claim she knew nothing. She turned her attention to Graesan, who was unable to meet her eyes.

  “Why didn’t you kill him?” The emotions she’d been locking down tried to make an escape, and her voice cracked. A vision flashed through her mind of Graesan’s body lying dead on the floor. She hastily thrust it away.

  Zarsha crossed the distance between them and took her clenched hands in his, giving them a squeeze. Graesan made a muffled sound of protest from behind his gag, but they both ignored him.

  “Because you love him,” Zarsha said.

  Strangely, she found herself flinching from the gentleness of his tone, and she was unable to meet his eyes.

  “The sensible thing to do is kill him and dispose of his body,” Zarsha continued. “Erase all signs of a struggle, and simply make him mysteriously disappear. You cannot afford the diplomatic ramifications of an attempt on my life, and the best way to hide it is to hide him.” He jerked his chin toward the wardrobe, then let out a heavy sigh.

  “If I were being completely practical, I would have done it already and you would never have known what happened to him. But I couldn’t do that to you, not after everything you’ve already lost.”

  “So you brought me here to convince me to condemn him myself.” She closed her eyes tightly, wishing this were nothing but a terrible nightmare.

  “If you think it’s best he should die, then I will take care of it for you,” Zarsha confirmed. “As I said, it’s the practical thing to do, the only sure way to keep a secret. And make sure he doesn’t try something like this again.”

  She swayed on her feet and felt as if she might be sick. Zarsha was still holding her hands, and he gave them another squeeze.

  “But I also want to present you with another alternative. It’s very risky, and it would require your man’s cooperation. It’s probably irresponsible of me even to suggest it.”

  Ellin opened her eyes. She would happily grasp at any straw he offered, and he knew it. “What alternative?”

  “Well, clearly he has to go. You cannot keep him close to you when he has shown himself dangerous and done something he surely knew you would not approve of. I know you love him, but you cannot trust him, not anymore.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” she snapped, hating him for rubbing her face in it.

  “I can hire him away from you and send him to Nandel. I spend very little time there, as you know, but I do have an estate and a staff which operates it in my absence. That includes a security force, and though he would have to take a significant demotion, he can serve on that force.”

  “In Nandel,” she murmured, her heart breaking all over again. She couldn’t imagine taking Graesan back into her bed after tonight, but to send him to the land she herself had so dreaded…

  “The only alternative is death. And if the murderous look he’s giving me is any indication, he might prefer that alternative.”

  Zarsha finally let go of her hands, retrieving the knife from under the bed. He carelessly wiped the blade on the already-stained sheets, then crossed to the wardrobe and bent toward Graesan. Ellin almost cried out in alarm, but before a sound left her throat Zarsha had cut the gag and pulled it from Graesan’s mouth. He then squatted so that their eyes were on the same level.

  “Before you say something we all might regret,” Zarsha said, “consider that if you refuse my offer, you will have a swift release from your suffering, bu
t you will condemn Ellin to live with your death on her conscience for the rest of her life.”

  Graesan jerked backward as if he’d been slapped, as if he’d never even begun to consider anyone’s feelings but his own. Ellin had always thought him sensitive and kind, had thought he’d seen her as a friend and equal as well as a lover. But tonight proved she’d been wrong about him in oh so many ways. He didn’t respect her enough to trust her decisions. He didn’t trust her love enough to tolerate a rival. And he didn’t love her enough to take her feelings into account before trying to kill the man he saw as that rival.

  “I made a huge gamble by not killing you,” Zarsha continued. “I gambled that she would not want you dead and that I would not be putting that terrible decision on her conscience, and I gambled that your love for her is genuine and you would spare her that pain. Don’t you dare destroy her just because you can’t stomach the thought of working for me.”

  Graesan made a disgusted growling sound and spat at Zarsha’s feet. “Someday, she will see you as the menace that you are, and she will wish I had succeeded.”

  “That may be,” Zarsha said with a brief ironic grin. “The question is will you be around to see it, or will you be buried in some secret grave when it happens?”

  Ellin held her breath as the two men stared at each other, both temporarily ignoring her. There was no missing their mutual desire to end the other’s life. Zarsha had refrained for her sake, but could Graesan swallow his pride? And how could she bear it if he didn’t?

  Eventually, Graesan turned to look at her, and the anger and hatred on his face faded. There was longing and sorrow and pain in his expression, but there was love, also. He lowered his head and closed his eyes.

  “I’ll go.”

  * * *

  —

  With a rueful smile, Chanlix remembered the day when she’d blushed and stammered in embarrassment because Tynthanal had seen her ankles as she waded in the cooling waters of the spring. Now here she was, knee-deep in the water with the back of her robes pulled between her legs and tucked into a belt in the front to create impromptu breeches. Her toes curled into the sand, and she turned her face up into the warmth of the setting sun, enjoying the sense of peace she always felt in this place. The young trees had grown tall enough that there were pockets of privacy to be had along the spring’s edges, so she could wade and relax unobserved.