The Heart of Betrayal

  This was Venda.

  The monster was just waking, the soft underbelly beginning to rumble and stir. A horse hitched to a dray and led by a cloaked figure ambled down a narrow street below me. Far across the way, a woman swept a walk, water spraying out to the ground below. Dark, huddled figures stirred in shadows. The dim light bled onto the edges of parapets, dipped in crenelations, spilled across scaled walls and rutted muddy lanes, a reluctance to its slow crawl.

  I heard a soft tap and turned. It was so faint I wasn’t sure where it came from. The door or somewhere outside below me? Another soft tap. And then I heard the scrape of a key in the lock. The door eased open a few inches, the rusty hinges whining. Another soft tap. I grabbed one of the wooden practice swords leaning against the wall and raised it, ready to strike if necessary. “Come in,” I called.

  The door swung open. It was one of the boys I had seen last night pushing the carts into Sanctum Hall. His blond hair was chopped off in uneven chunks close to his head, and his large brown eyes grew wider when he saw the wooden sword in my hand. “Miz? I only brought your boots.” He gingerly held them up as if he was afraid to startle me.

  I lowered the sword. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “You don’t have to explain, Miz. It’s good to be prepared. I could have been one of those monster men coming through the door.” He giggled. “But that little sword couldn’t knock their arse an inch.”

  I smiled. “No, I suppose not. You’re one of the boys from last night, aren’t you? The ones who brought in the carts.”

  He looked down, and red seeped across his cheeks. “I’m not a boy, Miz. I’m a—”

  I caught my breath realizing my mistake. “A girl. Of course,” I said, trying to find a way to take away her embarrassment. “I just woke up. I haven’t quite brushed the sleep from my eyes yet.”

  She reached up and rubbed her short uneven hair. “Nah, it’s the buggy hair. You can’t work in the Sanctum if you’ve got vermin, and I ain’t much good with a knife.” She was willow thin, certainly not more than twelve, with no bloom of womanhood yet. Her shirt and trousers were the same drab brown as the rest of the boys’. “But one day, I’m going to grow it real long like yours, all pretty and braided like.” She shifted from foot to foot, rubbing her skinny arms.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Aster.”

  “Aster,” I repeated. The same name as the powerful angel of destruction. But she looked more like a forlorn angel with badly clipped wings.

  I listened to her distorted assessment of the angel Aster, clearly not what the Morrighese Holy Text revealed. “My bapa says Mama named me for an angel right before she drew her last breath. He said she smiled all full of the last glow, then called me Aster. That’s the angel who showed Venda the way through the gates to the city. The saving angel, she’s called. That’s what—” She suddenly straightened, clamping her lips to a firm line. “I was warned not to prattle. I’m sorry, Miz. Here are your boots.” She stepped forward formally, set them down in front of me, then took a stiff step back again.

  “Where I’m from, Aster, sharing a few words isn’t prattle. It’s the polite and friendly thing to do. I hope you’ll come and prattle with me every day.” She grinned and skimmed her head again self-consciously. I looked at my boots, cleaned and neatly laced. “How did you come by them?” I asked.

  I was pleased to learn that silence was not Aster’s strength either. We had something in common. She told me she got them from Eben. He grabbed them just before they were being sent off to market. My clothes were already gone, but he snuck the boots out of the pile and cleaned them for me. He’d be whipped if anyone found out, but Eben was good at being sly, and she promised I didn’t need to worry. “As far as those boots are concerned, they got up and walked off by themselves.”

  “Will you be whipped for bringing them to me?” I asked.

  She looked down, the pink tingeing her cheeks again. “I’m not that brave, Miz. Sorry. I brought them on orders from the Assassin.”

  I knelt so I was eye to eye with her. “If you insist I call you Aster, then I insist you call me Lia. That’s short for Jezelia. Can you do that, Aster?”

  She nodded. And then for the first time, I noticed the ring on her thumb, so loose she had to hold her hand in a fist to keep from losing it. It was the ring of a Morrighese pageantry guard. She had taken a ring from the carts.

  She saw me staring at it, and her mouth fell open. “It was my pick,” she explained. “I won’t keep it. I’ll sell it at market, but just for overnight I wanted to feel its goldness all smooth on my skin. I rubbed that red stone all night, making wishes.”

  “What do you mean, Aster, your pick?”

  “The Komizar always gives the barrow runners first pick of the booty.”

  “The governors pick after you?”

  She nodded. “The whole Council goes after us. The Komizar makes sure of that. My bapa will be happy for my pick. The quarterlords, they love rings. This might fetch us a whole sack of grain, and bapa can stretch a sack for a month.”

  I listened to the way she talked of the Komizar, more like a benefactor than a tyrant. “You said always. Are there many carts brought into the Sanctum?”

  “No,” she said. “Used to be just goods from the trading caravans every few months, but now there’s war bounty. We’ve had six loads this month, but this was the biggest one. The others were only three or four barrowfuls.”

  War bounty. The patrols were being slaughtered. Small companies of men were riding to their deaths with no idea that the game had changed. They weren’t chasing a few barbarians back behind borders any longer. They were being stalked by organized brigades. For what? Rings to give to servants? No, there was something else to it. Something important enough to send an assassin to kill me.

  “Did I say something wrong, Miz?”

  I looked back at Aster, still feeling dazed. She bit her lip, intent on my answer.

  A sudden voice startled us. “The door’s wide open. How long does it take to drop off one pair of boots?”

  Neither of us had heard Kaden approaching. He stood in the doorway looking sternly at Aster.

  “Not long,” she gasped. “I just got here. Truly I did. I wasn’t prattling.” She squeezed past him, worried as a mouse with a cat on her tail, and we heard the echo of her footsteps running down the hall. Kaden smiled.

  “You frightened her. Did you have to be so stern?” I asked.

  His eyebrows rose, and he looked down at my hand. “I’m not the one holding a sword.”

  He closed the door behind him and walked across the room, setting a flask and basket down on one of the trunks. “I brought you some food so you don’t have to dine in the hall. Eat and get dressed, and we’ll go. The Komizar’s expecting us.”

  “Get dressed? In what?”

  He looked at the sack dress balled up on the floor.

  “No,” I said. “I’ll wear the shirt I have on and a pair of your trousers.”

  “I’ll talk to him, Lia, I promise, but for now just do what I—”

  “He said I had to earn luxuries like clothes, but he didn’t say how. I’ll fight you for them.” I waved the sword in circles at the floor, taunting him.

  He shook his head. “No, Lia. That isn’t a toy. You’d only end up getting hurt. Put it away.” He spoke to me like I was Aster, a child who had no understanding of consequences. No, worse, like a royal who hadn’t a grasp of anything. His tone was superior and dismissive and more Vendan than ever. Heat bristled at my temples.

  “I’ve swung a stick before,” I said. “What else is there to know?” I pursed my lips and looked at the sword with wide-eyed wonderment. “And this is the hilt, right?” I asked, touching the cross wood. “I played with these with my brothers when I was a child.” I looked back at him, my jaw set. “Afraid?”

  He grinned. “I warned you.” He reached for the other sword leaning against the wall, and I lunged, whacking his
shin.

  “What are you doing?” he yelled, grimacing. He hopped on one leg while he clutched the injured one. “We haven’t started yet!”

  “Yes, we have! You started this months ago!” I said and swung again, hitting the same leg from the side. He seized the other sword and held it out to defend himself, hobbling in obvious pain. “You can’t just—”

  “Let me explain something to you, Kaden!” I said, circling around him. He limped around, trying to keep me in sight. “If this were a real sword, you’d already be bleeding out. You’d be faint, if you could stand at all, because my second strike would have cut your calf muscles and tendons and opened vital veins. All I’d have to do is keep you moving, and your heart would do the rest, pumping your blood out until you collapsed, which would be right about now.”

  He winced, holding his shin and at the same time keeping his sword ready to block other lunges. “Dammit, Lia!”

  “You see, Kaden, maybe I lied. Maybe I wasn’t just a child when I used one of these last, and maybe it wasn’t play. Maybe my brothers taught me to fight dirty, to gain the advantage. Maybe they taught me to understand my weaknesses and strengths. I know I may not have the reach or the sheer power of someone like you, but I can easily beat you in other ways. And it seems I already have.”

  “Not yet.” He lunged forward, advancing with rapid strikes that I managed to block until he backed me up against the wall. He grabbed my arm that held the sword and pinned it, then leaned against me, short of breath. “And now I have the advantage.” He looked down at me, his breaths coming slower and deeper.

  “No,” I said. “You’ve bled out by now. You’re already dead.”

  His eyes grazed my face, my lips, his breath hot on my cheek. “Not quite,” he whispered.

  “Do I wear your shirt and trousers or not?”

  A hissing breath escaped beween his teeth. He released my arm and hobbled to the chair in the corner.

  “I didn’t hit you that hard,” I said.

  “No?” He sat down and pulled up his pant leg. Just above his boot, an egg-sized knot was already swelling. I knelt and looked at it. It was nasty. I had struck harder than I thought.

  “Kaden, I’m—” I shook my head and looked up at him, searching for words to explain.

  He sighed. “Your point is made.”

  I still wasn’t sure that he understood why I was angered or why I attacked him. It wasn’t just about clothes. “Kaden, I’m trapped in a city with thousands of people who hate everything about who I am. The Komizar demeaned me in front of your entire Council last night. The one thing I can’t bear is that same derision from you. Haven’t you learned anything about me yet? Yes, royals know how to do things beyond counting our twelve toes. You’re all I have here. You’re my only ally.”

  His eyes narrowed at the word ally. “What about Rafe?”

  “What about him? He’s a conniving accomplice to a prince who’d probably like to see me dead more than anyone—a prince who’s betraying my kingdom by proposing deals to yours, and Rafe is brokering the deal for his own benefit. Whatever I thought may have passed between us is exactly that. Past. He was an unfortunate distraction for me too and certainly not an ally. He’s nothing to me but an ugly wart on my good judgment.”

  He studied my face and finally grinned. “And your judgment had a decidedly sharp aim.”

  I looked back at his growing knot. “Is there an icehouse in the Sanctum?”

  He snorted. “This isn’t Berdi’s tavern, Lia.” He limped over to the trunk and rummaged through it, pulling out some trousers and a wide leather belt. “These should do for now,” he said, and he threw them on the bed.

  As a precaution, I gathered up the sack dress from the floor, opened the shuttered window, and threw it out. “Jabavé,” I grumbled after it. I brushed my hands with finality and turned back to him. At least one matter was settled—I would never again be wearing the dress of thorns.

  I peeked in the basket he had brought. “What’s so important that the Komizar has to see us this early?” I asked as I began eating the hard rolls and cheese. The memory of public executions in Morrighan surfaced. They had always taken place just after dawn. What if the Komizar hadn’t believed Rafe’s story after all?

  “He’s leaving to check on Balwood Province in the north. The governor didn’t show, which likely means he’s dead,” Kaden answered. “But the Komizar has some matters here to settle before he goes.”

  Leaving. The word was like music—the best news I’d heard in months. Though I did worry what the matters were that needed settling. I finished eating, and Kaden stepped outside while I finished dressing. I noticed again the splintering cry of the hinges when he opened the door and wondered how I had slept through the noise when he left earlier.

  It felt good to put my boots on again, clean. With clean socks to wear too. I would bless Eben for this tonight when I sang my remembrances. I said them every night now, almost as if I was saying them in Pauline’s stead, as if she were here with me and we were on our way to Terravin about to begin a great adventure instead of me being here alone at the end of this one.

  * * *

  We walked to the Council Wing Square. Again we passed through a maze of hallways, open courtyards, and narrow windowless paths with one lantern barely lighting the way to the next. Kaden told me the Sanctum was riddled with abandoned and forgotten passageways after centuries of being built and rebuilt, some with dead ends and deadly drops, so I should stay close. Many of the walls told stories of their ruin. The stacked rubble sometimes offered up the macabre, like a sculptured arm or a partially visible head of stone blankly staring out from the wall like an ageless prisoner, or a piece of engraved marble block with a note from another time, the letters dripping away like tears. But they were only stone, the same as any other, repurposed to build up the city, an available resource, as Kaden called them. Still, as we entered another dim passageway, I sensed something else and stopped, pretending to adjust the lace of my boot. I pressed my back against the wall. A beat. A warning. A whisper.

  Was I simply spooked by a ghoulish hallway?

  Jezelia, you’re here.

  I stood abruptly, almost losing my balance.

  “Coming?” Kaden asked.

  The thrum disappeared, but the air was cold in its wake. I looked around. Only the scuffle of our movement filled the passage. Yes, spooked, that was all. Kaden moved forward through the passage again, and I followed him. He was in his element, that was certain, as comfortable walking through this strange city as I was disoriented. How foreign Terravin must have been to him. And yet it wasn’t.

  He had easily fit in. His Morrighese was flawless, and he had sat back in the tavern ordering an ale like it was a second home to him. Was that why he thought I could just slip into this life as if my old one never existed? I wasn’t a chameleon like Kaden, who could become a new person just by crossing a border.

  We walked up a winding flight of stairs and emerged in a square similar to the one we’d arrived in yesterday, but of course it wasn’t square—nothing in Venda was. On the far side, I could see stables with horses being led in and out by soldiers. Loose chickens scratched and strutted, feathers ruffling as they skipped to avoid the horses. Two spotted hogs rooted in a pen near us, and ravens twice the size of any in Morrighan squawked from their perch high on a tower overlooking the square. I spotted the Komizar in the distance, directing some wagons that were rolling through gates as if he were a sentry. For the leader of a kingdom, he seemed to have his hands in everything.

  I didn’t see Rafe, which brought me some uneasy relief. At least he wasn’t here with a rope around his neck, but that didn’t mean he was safe. Where had they put him? All I knew was that he was somewhere near the Komizar’s quarters in a secure room. It might be no more than a barbaric cell. As we approached, the guards, governors, and Rahtan saw the Komizar stop and turn toward us. They turned too. I felt the weight of the Komizar’s scrutiny. His eyes rolled over me and my
new attire. When we stopped at the edge of the crowd, he strolled over to give me a more critical inspection. “Maybe I didn’t make myself clear last night. Certain luxuries, like clothing and shoes, have to be earned.”

  “She earned them,” Kaden said, nearly cutting off the Komizar’s words.

  There was a drawn-out hushed moment, and then the Komizar threw his head back and laughed. The others did too, boisterous guffaws, one governor punching Kaden in the shoulder. My cheeks burned. I wanted to kick Kaden’s other shin, but his explanation kept the boots on my feet. Just like soldiers in a tavern, the governors enjoyed their coarse entertainment.

  “Surprising,” the Komizar said under his breath, shooting me a questioning glance. “Maybe royals do have some use, after all.”

  Calantha approached, followed by four soldiers leading horses. I recognized the Morrighese Ravians, more booty from the massacre. “These are the ones?” the Komizar asked.

  “The worst of the lot,” Calantha answered. “Alive but injured. Their wounds are festering.”

  “Take them to the Velte quarterlord for butchering,” he ordered. “Make sure he distributes the meat fairly—and make sure they know it’s a gift from the Sanctum.”

  I saw that the horses were hurt, but the injuries were gashes that could be cleaned and dressed by a surgeon—not mortal wounds. He dismissed her and walked over to the wagons, waving for the Council to follow him, but I saw Calantha’s lone pale eye linger on him, the hesitation as she turned away herself. Longing? For him? I looked at the Komizar. As Gwyneth would say, he was easy enough on the eyes, and there was something undeniably magnetic about his presence. He exuded power. His manner was calculating and demanded awe. But longing? No. Perhaps it was something else I saw in her glance.

  The drivers of the wagons were busy loosening tarps, and the Komizar spoke with a man carrying a ledger. He was a thin, scruffy fellow—and seemed oddly familiar. He spoke softly with the Komizar, keeping his whispers away from the governors’ ears. I stepped behind the others, peeking through the backs of the Sanctum brethren, studying him.