I watched him walk off, wondering at how he had backed down. Wondering about everything. He had saved Kaden, sent food for the hungry, was tireless in knowing his kingdom, from personally retrieving governors to meeting with distant hillfolk. Could I have been wrong about him? I remembered his cruel taunt, You did well, Chievdar, when he pulled Walther’s baldrick from the captured booty. He knew it would bring me to my knees. But it was more than that that fed my doubts about him. It was his eyes, hungry for everything, even my own thoughts. Be careful, sister. My brother’s warning burned beneath my ribs.
And yet, when we stopped at the last hamlet and I saw him embrace the elders and leave gifts, saw the hope that he left behind, and remembered it was he who had saved Kaden from the savagery of his own kind, I wondered if anything I felt in my gut really mattered.
And Morrighan raised her voice,
To the heavens,
Kissing two fingers,
One for the lost,
And one for those yet to come,
For the winnowing was not over.
—Morrighan Book of Holy Text, Vol. IV
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
KADEN
After four days on the road, I decided the gods were against me. Maybe they always had been. No such luck that the governor would be coming my way, half sloshed and late. The brothel in the last town hadn’t had the pleasure of his visit yet, and that was a stop he never missed. He was still somewhere on the road from here to there—or he hadn’t left yet at all.
Damn Governor Tierny. I’d wring his neck when I caught up with him. Unless someone else had already done that job for me.
The weather was miserable, cold winds by day, cold rain by night. The men who traveled with me were surly. Winter was coming early. But it wasn’t the icy winds that were leaving me raw. It was my last night with Lia. I had never told anyone, not even the Komizar, what my mother’s name was.
Cataryn.
It was as though I had raised her from the dead. I had seen her again, heard her voice again, as I told Lia about her. Saying her name aloud, something tore inside of me, but then I couldn’t stop telling Lia more, remembering how much my mother had loved me—the only person who had ever loved me. That wasn’t something I had wanted to share with Lia, but in the dark, once I had said her name, it all poured out, right down to the color of her eyes.
And my father’s eyes. That memory stopped me. I hadn’t told her everything.
Lia. Like a whisper on the wind.
At first I had thought that was all it was, the wind and long hours riding alone. When Lia had first told me her name in the tavern, it had reminded me of the hush I heard riding across the savanna, Lia through the canyons in the desert, Lia, the cry of a distant wolf. Lia wheedling into my heart before I ever laid eyes on her. And then Lia as I stood over her in the darkness of her room, my knife in hand. It was a whisper I finally couldn’t ignore, though I had managed to choke it from my life from the moment I met the Komizar. The knowing had only brought me pain.
I had used it the way Lia had. I had told the lady of the manor she was going to die a slow and horrible death, though I had seen no such thing. I was eight years old and angry that it was my own mother who was dying and not the petty one of my half brothers, a woman who had never shown me any kindness. That was when my first beating came. It was at the hands of my father, not the beggars. They only left scars atop the ones he had already laid deep.
Which one was it, Kaden?
His name was one I would never give up, not even to Lia—but it would be my name on his lips as he lay dying. My name would be the one he uttered as he gasped his last breath, knowing he had been betrayed by his own son. It was a thought that had warmed me for years. Our plans. That moment had always been implicit in them.
We rounded the pass and had started to make our descent into the valley when we saw them coming toward us. I stopped our procession until I was certain who they were. I sighed and signaled us forward again to meet them. We must never grow lazy. But the governor of Arleston had. There would be no neck to wring. He was dead. The squad of men heading our way bore the flags of Arleston, and the man leading them had to be the new governor. A sturdy man, but not young as challengers usually were. I didn’t care. He was headed in the right direction, knowing his duty, and that was all that mattered. I could return to the Sanctum now. I could return home to Lia. The last stray governor had been found.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
RAFE
“That door,” Ulrix grumbled, pointing ahead. “I’ll be back in two hours.”
“It won’t take me that long to bathe.”
“But my duties will take me that long. Sit tight until I come back for you.”
He stomped off, still angry that I had won a hot bath in a game of cards last night. He claimed he’d let me win because I stank, which may have been true.
As much as I wanted an actual bath, my real purpose was to see more of the layout of the Sanctum, and I knew that the bath chamber was closer to the tower where Lia stayed with Kaden. While I had been given some liberties in my movement, traveling alone to a different part of the Sanctum wasn’t among them. I memorized the path we took, asking Ulrix innocuous questions, trying to determine which hallways were the most frequently traveled and where they led. Ulrix, even with his short temper, proved useful.
I opened the door to the bath chamber, and there, as promised, was a tub filled with water. I dipped my hand in. Lukewarm at best, but more than inviting after only being able to wash up with a basin of cold water. There was soap and a towel too. Ulrix must have been feeling generous.
I threw my clothes off and shoved my head in first, scrubbing my face and scalp, then got in and soaked, but the water was rapidly cooling, so I washed and got out before it turned cold. I dried off and was only half dressed when I felt hands on my bare back.
I spun, and there was Lia, pushing me up against the wall. “What are you doing here?” I said. “You can’t—”
She drew my face to hers and kissed me, warm and long, her fingers raking through my wet hair. I pulled away. “You have to leave. Someone might—” But then my mouth came down on hers again, hard and hungry, sending a far different message than the one I was trying to convey. My hands slid around her waist, traveled up her back, soaking in all the lost time and days that I had wanted to hold her.
“No one saw me,” she said between kisses.
“Yet.”
“I heard Ulrix tell you he’d be gone for two hours, and no one will check on me for at least that.”
My body molded to hers. I could taste the desperation in her kisses, and she whispered about the distant hills of Venda she had seen, endless hills we could get lost in.
“For a few days if we’re lucky,” I said. “That’s not enough. I want a lifetime with you.”
She faltered for a moment, brought back to our reality, then rested her cheek on my chest. “What are we going to do, Rafe?” she asked. “It’s been twelve days. And only a matter of a dozen more before riders return with news of the king’s good health.”
“Stop counting the days, Lia,” I said. “You’ll drive yourself mad.”
“I know,” she whispered, and stepped back. Her eyes grazed my bare chest. “You should get dressed before you catch cold,” she said.
With her so close, I was anything but cold, but I grabbed my shirt and put it on. She helped me button it, and every brush of her fingers seared my skin.
“How did you get out of your room?” I asked.
“There’s an abandoned passageway. It doesn’t lead to much, mostly busy hallways, which makes it useless most of the time, but sometimes opportunity presents itself.” She didn’t seem worried about how she’d get back to her room undetected, though I was. She put her finger to my lips and told me to stop, saying we had precious little time together, and she wasn’t going to use it worrying about that too. “I already told you I’m good at sneaking,” she said. “I have years of experie
nce at it.”
I barred the door and moved empty buckets from a cot to the floor so we could sit. We updated each other on what little we knew. She nestled in my arms, telling me about traveling through the countryside of Venda and how the people there were just like any others, people trying to survive. She said they were kind and curious and nothing like the Council. I told her what I had learned about the pathways from Ulrix, but I held back on some things I had been doing, particularly the weapons I had managed to hide. I had seen the fire in her eyes when she talked about sneaking one from the barrows in the Sanctum. She had witnessed her brother’s brutal death, and I couldn’t blame her for wanting revenge, but I didn’t want her retrieving a knife or sword before the timing was right.
She pushed on my shoulders to make me lie back, and I pulled her with me, my caution crumbling. I wanted her more than life itself. She looked down at me and traced her finger along my jaw. “Prince Rafferty,” she said curiously, as if still trying to grasp who I really was.
“Jaxon is what they call me back in Dalbreck.”
“But I’ll always call you Rafe.”
“Are you disappointed that I’m not a farmer?”
She smiled. “You may learn to grow melons yet.”
“Or maybe we’ll grow other things,” I said, pulling her close, and we kissed again—and again. “Lia,” I finally whispered, trying to bring us both back to our senses, “we have to be careful.”
She pressed her forehead to mine, silent, then settled back against my shoulder, and we talked, almost as we had on our last night together in Terravin, but this time I told her the truth. My parents weren’t dead. I told her what they were like and a little bit about Dalbreck.
“Were they angry when I ran from the wedding?”
“My father was furious. My mother was heartbroken both for me and herself. She was eager to have a daughter.”
She shook her head. “Rafe, I am so—”
“Shh, don’t say it. You don’t owe anyone an apology.” And then I told her the rest, that it was never proposed to me as a real marriage and that my father had even suggested I take a mistress after the wedding if the bride didn’t suit my tastes.
“A mistress? Well, isn’t that romantic?” She leaned up on one arm to look at me. “What about you, Rafe?” she said more softly. “What did you think when I didn’t show up?”
I thought back to that morning, waiting in the cloister of the abbey along with the entire Dalbreck cabinet, pulling at my coat. We’d had to ride all night, delayed because of the weather, and I just wanted to get it over with. “When the news came that you had left, I was surprised,” I said. “That was my first reaction. I couldn’t quite figure out how it could happen. Two kingdoms’ cabinets had worked out every detail. In my mind, it may as well have already been chiseled in stone. I couldn’t understand how one girl could undo the plans of the most powerful men on the continent. Then, when I finally got past my shock, I was curious. About you.”
“And you weren’t angry?”
I grinned. “Yes, I was,” I conceded. “I wouldn’t admit it at the time, but I was furious too.”
She rolled her eyes. “Ha! As if I didn’t know.”
“I suppose it was apparent when I got to Terravin.”
“The minute you walked into that tavern, I knew you were trouble, Prince Rafferty.”
I wove my fingers through her hair and pulled her closer. “As I did you, Princess Arabella.” Her lips pressed to mine, and I wondered if there would ever be a day we didn’t have to cut our time together short, but I was getting worried about Ulrix. He’d been gone almost an hour, I guessed, and I didn’t want to take a chance in case he returned early. When I pushed her away, she promised to leave in five more minutes. Five minutes is hardly enough time to drink an ale, but we filled it with memories from our time in Terravin. I finally told her she had to go.
I looked out the door first to make sure the hall was clear. She touched my cheek before she left and said, “Someday we’ll go back to Terravin, won’t we, Rafe?”
“We will,” I whispered, because that was what she needed to hear, but as the door shut behind her, I knew if we ever got out of here, I would never take her back to anywhere in Morrighan, including Terravin.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I tried to stop counting the days as Rafe had told me to, but each day that the Komizar took me out to a different quarter, I knew we had one less. Our outings were brief, just long enough to show me off to this elder or that quarterlord and those who gathered around, planting his version of hope among the superstitious. For a man who had little patience for lying, he sowed the myth of my arrival freely, like seed thrown by handfuls in the wind. The gods were blessing Venda.
Strangely, an equilibrium settled in between us. It was like dancing with a hostile stranger. With each of our steps, he got what he wanted, the added devotion of the clans and hillfolk, and I got something I wanted too, though I couldn’t quite put a name to it.
It was a strange pull in unexpected ways and times—the glint of the sun, a shadow, the cook chasing a loose chicken down the hallway, the smoke in the air, a sweetened cup of thannis, the brisk chill of morning, a toothless smile, the resonance of paviamma chanted back to me, the dark stripes of sky as I chanted eventide remembrances. They were all disconnected moments that added up to nothing, and yet they caught hold of me like fingers lacing into mine and drawing me forward.
The advantage of having Kaden gone was that I was left to my own devices at night. In his rush to make arrangements before he left, Kaden had only told Aster to come and escort me to the bath chamber if I requested it and help me with personal needs, but he hadn’t defined what those needs might be. I assured her my nighttime request was one of those needs. It turned out she was happy to conspire with me. The Sanctum was far warmer than the hovel she shared with her bapa and cousins. I had asked her if she knew of a way to get to the catacombs without passing through the main hallway. Her eyes grew wide. “You want to go to the Ghoul Caves?” Apparently Eben and Finch weren’t the only ones who called it that.
Griz was right. The little urchin knew every mouse trail in the Sanctum—and there were many. In one of them, I had to get down on my hands and knees to crawl through. As we walked through another, I heard a distant roar.
“What’s that?” I whispered.
“We don’t want to go that way,” she said. “That tunnel leads to the bottom of the cliffs. Nothing there but the river, lots of wet rock, and bridge gears.” She led me down an opposite path, but I made note of the way. A path that led to the bridge, even though it was impossible to raise, was something I wanted to explore.
We finally emerged into a wider cavelike tunnel, and the familiar sweet smell of oil and dusty air welcomed us. I thought at this hour it would be empty, but we heard footsteps. We hid in the shadows, and when the dark-robed men shuffled past, we followed a safe distance behind. I understood now why it was called Ghoul Caves. The walls weren’t just made of broken ruins. Human bones and skulls lined the path, a thousand Ancients holding up the Sanctum, poised to whisper their secrets—ones Aster didn’t want to hear. When she saw them and gasped, I clapped my hand over her mouth and nodded reassurance. “They can’t hurt you,” I said, though I wasn’t so sure myself. Their empty-socket stares followed our steps.
The narrow path led in a steep downward slope to an enormous room, one that bore the art and architecture of another time, and I guessed that it might date all the way back to the Ancients. Deep in the ground, and perhaps sealed away for centuries, it was in remarkably good repair, and so were its contents. It wasn’t just any room but a roomful of books that would make the Royal Scholar pale—it dwarfed all his libraries put together. At the far end, I saw the robed men sorting books into stacks and occasionally tossing one into a mountain of discards. Similar mountains were scattered throughout the room. Partially hidden from view was a wide curved opening to another room beyond this one. Light poured out o
f it, bright and golden. I could see at least one figure inside hunched over a table writing on ledgers. This was an extensive organized effort. Passing shadows flickered across the floor. There were others in that room too. Those who sorted the books in the outside room occasionally took one in to them. I desperately wanted to see what they were doing and what the books were that they studied.
“You want one?” Aster whispered.
“No,” I said. “They might see us.”
“Not me,” she answered, showing off how low she was able to crouch. “And it ain’t really stealing, because they burn those piles in the kitchen ovens.”
They burned them? I thought about the two books I had stolen from the Scholar, both of their leather covers scorched with fire. Before I could stop her, Aster darted out, quiet as a shadow, and snatched a small book from the discards. When she ran back, her little chest heaved with excitement, and she proudly handed me her prize. It was bound differently from any books I had ever seen, razor straight and tight, and I didn’t recognize the language. If it was some form of Vendan, it was even older than the Song of Venda I had translated. That’s when I knew what they were doing. They were translating ancient languages, which explained why the services of skilled scholars were needed. I knew of three other kingdoms besides Morrighan that had a stable of scholars with any measurable skills—Gastineux, my mother’s homeland; Turquoi Tra, which was home to mystic monks; and Dalbreck.
Since they had discarded this book, I knew it wasn’t important to them, but at least I knew now what their purpose here was—deciphering a saved tomb of books, the lost books of the Ancients. For a society where few of its people even read, this was an odd scholarly activity. My curiosity burned, but I fought the urge to confront and question them because it would reveal my nighttime wanderings and put Aster at risk as well. I tucked the book under my arm and nudged her toward the pathway of skulls, and we hurried back to my room.