Poisoned Blade

  Amaya steps on my foot to remind me not to start the argument again so I take in a breath and let it out, shifting course.

  “Bettany, Mother is so worried about you. Do you think she can rest if she doesn’t know what’s happened to you? What is Agalar to you that you care more about him than Mother’s peace of mind?”

  “I’ll tell you what he is. He’s not Saroese and he’s not Efean. I despise the Saroese as the greedy conquerors they are. Meanwhile your Efean allies think by rescuing a few hapless prisoners they prove they haven’t rolled over for the Patrons, but all Efeans have ever done is roll over. I want no part of any of this. I’ve made a choice. My choice. I’m going to sail the Three Seas. I’m going to see the world. That’s something that never occurred to either of you, is it? You’re too trapped by your stupid dreams. The day I wash the dirt of Efea from my feet is the day I’ll finally be happy.”

  It’s fortunate we are too far away from the temple and caravan for anyone to hear her words, which evaporate on the wind like the cawing of crows. Tears trail down Amaya’s cheeks but she doesn’t utter a single word. The dry air has sapped all moisture from me.

  “Why won’t you escape now when I am giving you the chance?” Bettany cries.

  “Because this is my choice,” says Amaya quietly with a glance toward Denya, who has paused in her embroidering to look in our direction with an expression of concern on her face.

  I’m too angry to be reasonable. “Why do you suddenly care so much? It isn’t as if you cared before.”

  Bett wipes what I am sure is a tear from her eye. “No, never mind. There’s nothing I can do. I tried my best but you’re both trapped. I love you, but it doesn’t matter, does it?”

  It almost seems she is talking to herself. She gives us each a perfunctory hug, then shakes herself and pushes away through the foliage. She’s leaving us.

  As I take a step after her Amaya grabs my hand.

  “Let her stew, Jes. You know how her rages come in a fury of battering wind and rain before vanishing utterly. We’ll find another way to talk to her on the desert crossing.”

  “Yes, that’s right. I can coax her into a place of calm and then she’ll listen and give up this infatuation with Lord Agalar. In Port Selene we’ll find a way to get her out of his hands and back to Saryenia. Don’t you find it odd the way he calls her Beauty? The way she acts around him?”

  Amaya squeezes my fingers, but it is her weary gaze that startles me. “Yes, there’s something frightening about it all that I don’t understand. Now let Denya and me go before Captain Neartos comes to fetch us. I’m not in the mood to fend him off graciously today. And don’t follow until you’re sure no one will catch us together. We can’t risk this kind of meeting again.”

  Yet I’m too agitated to return to our shelter. The sight of Bett’s back turned to me slaps at my thoughts like regrets. Why did I never take seriously how much she hated our life? She said so all the time! I just never believed her.

  Amaya and I will find a way to change her mind. I have to, because something about her situation stinks to my nose. She’s not right about everything, not like she thinks she is. If only she could have met Kal, who is nothing like Agalar. He isn’t arrogant, and he never ordered me around like a servant. I didn’t hang on his every word.

  Did I?

  Do I really know Kalliarkos, or am I just seeing what I want to see in him?

  The question troubles me. Like a dog with a bone, I can’t stop gnawing on it. I ramble aimlessly through the ruins, following a path dictated by moving away from the temple, away from the Patron life that once ruled my every action.

  Ro-emnu was right. I’ll never be a Patron even though Father pretended we were. Father was lying to himself as much as to us. Maybe Bettany is right that he deserves nothing but scorn, but I can’t hate him as she does. I can’t hate Mother for the choices she made.

  I don’t want to hate. Now that my family and household are safe I can earn my place as an Illustrious without feeling I have sacrificed them to win.

  At length my wandering feet lead me past the corralled mules and the cargo wagons pulled under awnings and into sight of the ramp leading up to the sealed mouth of Lord Menos’s tomb. A murmur of voices alerts me to movement at the base of the ramp, where a small opening that’s little more than a crack cuts into the cliff beneath Menos’s tomb. A pile of bricks sits heaped to one side, a sealed opening recently broken. A splash of color brightens the pile: a bouquet of fresh flowers set on top.

  Captain Neartos stands guard over a file of twelve shackled Efean men, each bearing a criminal’s scar on his cheek. They carry the small but heavy chests marked with the royal seal of gold bullion. The harsh sun washes across the slumped backs of the clearly exhausted men as they shuffle into the crack and thus out of my sight. Neartos draws his sword and follows them inside.

  For a long while the world seems to stand still. Then, so faintly it might just be my fervid thoughts pretending to sounds that aren’t there, I hear a surprised grunt, a scream and a shout, a scrape and a pleading cry. I can’t stop myself from imagining the captain coming up behind each shackled man, slitting each throat as they are helpless to resist. My whole body feels on fire, then goes cold as Lord Gargaron appears at the tunnel’s mouth, as neatly turned out as if he has just come from a palace supper. He stands in the shade with hands clasped behind his back, utterly relaxed and at peace, eyes half closed.

  I ease down to my knees—no sudden movements, nothing that would draw his attention—and roll under the nearest wagon. A bird flutters past. A gust of wind swirls dust along the ground, and I cover my mouth and nose to stop from sneezing.

  Captain Neartos appears with a lantern in one hand and a bloody sword in the other.

  “They are all dead?” Gargaron asks.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  I breathe my shock into the dust of the earth, my throat thick with rage and my heart sickened. Gargaron picks up the flowers and climbs the ramp to leave this propitious offering at the walled-up entrance to his dead uncle’s tomb. After he departs, Neartos carries over a bucket of mortar to the pile of bricks and picks up a trowel.

  I’m too afraid to move so I lie there as he seals up the crack until it looks like just another closed-off minor tomb.

  “Please, O holy one, grant peace to my troubled heart,” I pray in silent words to the goddess Hayiyin, Mistress of the Sea, but in my mind’s eye her features transform to become the face of the Mother of All seated on a mountain surrounded by the hotly flowing blood of Efea. The blood of my mother’s people, soaking into the earth.

  I lie there with the heat baking my bones until he finishes, until he leaves, until a hawk swoops down from the sky to poke amid the disturbed earth.

  Lord Menos’s oracle is long dead. I don’t need to ask her any questions to know what I’ve seen.

  Gargaron is stealing the royal bullion that legally belongs to the king and queen. He’s keeping it secret by killing those involved, all except Captain Neartos. It’s brilliant, really. If he hides the gold, then the king and queen can’t pay their troops, and they can’t pacify Saryenia’s restless population with bread. If I were plotting to take over the throne, it’s what I would do. Besides weakening the current king and queen, he is also amassing gold that will help pay for the soldiers and allies necessary to support Kalliarkos and Menoë’s bid for the throne.

  I never saw it so clearly as now.

  I don’t want to watch these Rings open.

  I don’t want to be part of his plot. But I’m already in it neck-deep by pretending to be friends with Prince Temnos as part of the plan to lull Queen Serenissima into trusting Menoë, by parading my victories in front of the crowd so they will learn to love and support Garon Palace.

  If Gargaron is caught, if the king and queen figure out what is going on while they still have the power to act, they’ll kill him. And they’ll kill Kalliarkos and Father too.

  I can’t let them die. Which mean
s Lord Gargaron has to win, and I have to help him.

  Bettany is right. Whatever she is now, I’m trapped in a way she isn’t.

  17

  Sound carries in the cold desert air: the creak of wheels and the tremor of hooves. The tombs lie two nights’ travel behind us. Dusty, Mis, and I walk rather than endure the rattling and jouncing of the carriage.

  Bettany sits beside the driver of one of Lord Agalar’s carriages, a pale, stocky Soldian woman whom Agalar treats exactly as he treats the men in his employ. All amiability, Bett chats with her like they are old friends, and except for a single glance our way she ignores me. Failure twists in my gut, and I quicken my stride.

  “Let’s run,” I say to Mis and Dusty.

  We move up to the soldiers riding at the front of the line and I call to Captain Neartos, “Just taking a training run. We’ll let you know what the scenery looks like up ahead.”

  He laughs and waves us on, oblivious to the frown on Dusty’s face.

  We take a sip of water before settling into a steady, ground-eating run, the sort we adversaries take outside the city walls several times a week to build endurance. Mis and Dusty pound easily along beside me. We so often run together during training that their presence pours through me as strength.

  The desert spreads out around us. Everything is flat except the spikes and ditches of my thoughts. The almost full moon has passed its zenith and begun to descend to the west, its light strong enough to wash the nearby stars into invisibility.

  I say, “Dusty, Orchid’s not going to fall in love with you.”

  “You don’t know that,” he mutters. “She smiled at me seven times.”

  Frustration at the hopelessness of his infatuation grinds against my lungs, and I have to settle myself back into the flow or I will get out of breath from choking on the things I can’t talk about.

  “A Patron-born girl like that won’t look at you unless you’re a rich Illustrious, Dusty,” says Mis.

  I change the subject. “Is that your ambition, Mis? To become a rich Illustrious?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugs with a half-cocked grin on her good-natured face. “After this trip I’m not sure that being an adversary is what I want anymore.”

  “How can you not want to be an adversary, Mis? You’re good.”

  “Yes, I’m good, but I’m not relentless like you are. I enjoy running the Fives, I really do. I love training. Running these trials out here in the provinces has been exciting and fun. But I just can’t be what you are, Jes.”

  “Sour and no fun?”

  She and Dusty laugh.

  Mis elbows me without breaking stride. “You’re not sour. You just never ever stop running trials in your head. I can’t live like that.”

  “What about you, Dusty?” I ask. “Haven’t you always dreamed of being an adversary?”

  “No.”

  The blunt answer throws me off my stride. They get ahead and I have to put on a burst of speed to settle in beside them.

  Dusty usually seems easygoing but a harder piece of him surfaces as he talks. “I grew up a mule in an Efean village where no one had a good word to say about Patrons. The other kids would beat me up on the street if they caught me, which is why I’m a fast runner. The only respect I got was on the Fives court. So I assumed being an adversary was the only way a person like me could belong. The truth is, when I was little I wanted to be a soldier like my father. I used to dream I might actually meet him until I came to Saryenia and realized that even if we did meet, no Patron man would acknowledge me as his son. Then I met you, Jes. Your father treated you like his own child.”

  “I am his child.”

  Dusty goes on eagerly. “I saw you salute your father from the victory tower at the Royal Fives Court and how he saluted you back, the day you beat Lord Kalliarkos. Everyone saw an honored Patron general acknowledge a daughter like you. Don’t you realize how amazing that was for every person who witnessed it?”

  “I never thought of it that way.”

  “If your father isn’t ashamed to acknowledge you, maybe I can find my father and he will be proud of me.”

  “I hope so, Dusty,” I say, even though I’m sure it will never happen.

  His comment spins like Rings through my head. Is this what Ro-emnu meant? Is this why Commoners respect me, and Patrons take notice? Not because I’m a successful Challenger but because I’m a successful general’s acknowledged daughter?

  Our steady pace, the slap of our footsteps, and the scrutiny of the stars become the whole of my world. Saryenia breathes, and talks, and stinks, the crush of people and the constant activity an incessant hum both day and night. Out here under the desert sky, the emptiness makes us seem like the tiniest creatures in the world, no more significant than bugs. In a way it feels freeing.

  The dry air has sucked all moisture from my mouth, and I’m wondering if we should pause for water when I see a strange movement on the horizon like a kick of dust and a lurching, fluttering tree.

  “Did you see that?”

  “See what?” Mis asks.

  Wind rakes along the earth, throwing dust up into our faces, then sighs and goes quiet. Probably the movement I saw on the horizon was just an eddy of wind spinning coils of dirt. Yet I can’t lift this uneasiness from my shoulders. Father taught us to listen to what itched at us.

  “There!” shrieks Mis so loudly that I jump.

  Four white scorpions scuttle across the road a stone’s toss ahead.

  We all freeze. They vanish into the rocky verge.

  “I hate scorpions,” mutters Mis. “I got stung in the foot once.”

  Dusty shrugs. “Scorpions only sting humans if they feel threatened. In my village we used to milk their venom.”

  Mis shudders. “That is so disgusting.”

  Nothing moves as we wait to see if there are more scorpions. Silence embraces us until its smothering blanket makes me sneeze.

  “Blessings on you,” says Dusty hastily.

  I inhale quickly because of the old superstition that a sneeze can expel your souls. No one wants to dislodge any part of their five souls, especially at night, when untethered shadows roam and may devour souls knocked loose from their moorings in our bodies. So my heart is pounding as I scan the road in front and behind. The angle of moonlight catches in hoofprints left in the sand blown over the road.

  “A large party is riding the road ahead of us. Don’t you find that strange?” Again a flash of movement against the horizon catches my eye, then vanishes so quickly I can’t be sure I’ve seen it. “Let’s go back. We can’t see the carriages.”

  We run back. I fall in beside Neartos.

  “Hey, Spider.” Like the rest of the soldiers he has come to see me as an amulet of good fortune. My victories bring them luck and winnings. “Have a good run?”

  I may not like the way he looks at Amaya but that’s not going to stop me from letting him do his job. “I thought I saw something, although maybe it was just the wind kicking up dust. Hoofprints too. A company of riders not too far ahead.”

  “Easy to see bandits everywhere when you’re carrying the royal gold,” he agrees genially. “There haven’t been problems with bandits for years along this road, not since your father cleared them out when he was in charge of the spider scouts. But we’ll keep our eyes open. Also, we’re coming up on the Bone Escarpment and Crags Fort. Sometimes people mistake the rock pillars around Crags Fort for men.”

  “My thanks, Captain.”

  Before dawn the flat plateau starts crumpling like the gods took a giant rake and cut into the soil. Still too nervous to rest, I walk alongside as the road winds between towering pillars of rock. The sound of our passage echoes strangely until I realize I am hearing a steady thumping woven into the noise of our wheels.

  Two spider scouts clank out to inspect us. The stolid mules merely flick their ears, but the nervous horses have to be reined aside as the spiders approach. Each as tall as two men, the eight-legged metal construct
ions stamp heavily over the ground, able to brace themselves on four or six or eight legs as needed. Four of the legs end in clawed metal feet for stability, and the other four end in pincers or blades. A brass carapace protects the soldier tucked into the belly of the spider. Although the soldier guides the legs with levers, what powers the metal creature is magic. The priests have learned how to pour a life spark into metal.

  Their thudding walk reminds me of the day in the Ribbon Market when a spider scout captured Ro and inadvertently killed a child. I would have been taken too, if Kalliarkos hadn’t intervened. I run to our carriage and jump in to get out of their way.

  Mis grabs my hand as a spider clumps down the line of wagons, its soldier surveying each vehicle. “I hate them. Don’t you?”

  “No. My father started in the army as a spider scout. He showed us girls how to control one. The hardest part is feeling the constant sting of the spark that buzzes inside it. It’s like a wasp vibrating against your skin.”

  She shudders. “They say the spiders are given life by cutting the sparks out of living men. Don’t you think that’s awful?”

  I wince, remembering how the king coldly killed an innocent lad to save Temnos. “My father used to tell us they got their sparks from desert spiders.”

  The sun breaches the eastern horizon as we reach Crags Fort, which is built on the upper rim of the Bone Escarpment, a vast cliff wall named for the bones of unknown creatures that fall from it when rare cloudbursts of rain wash away at its edges. I walk to the brink to take in the view, trailed by a scolding crow.

  From one horizon to the other no break mars the escarpment except here, at Crags Fort, where a scar like the cut of an ax has chopped out a wedge in the cliff. The fort stands at the top of this steep canyon down which we must travel to reach the coastal plain. The trail down is too narrow for wagons, so people, horses, and mules will descend via the trail while our cargo will be winched down and loaded into a new set of wagons at Canyon Fort below.

  Half of our contingent of Garon Palace soldiers are already riding down the narrow trail to secure our cargo. Up here a giant mechanism of ropes and pulleys is being readied as chests and baskets are transferred into wheelless carts with copper bottoms that will scrape down the incline, controlled by the ropes.