“Bett!” I stick my hand through the gap, desperate to touch her, to make sure she is real.
“Jes!” Her strong fingers clutch mine. Her skin is grimy with dirt, and she smells like she’s not been allowed to wash for days in the heat of Efea. “How did you find me? What happened to—”
“Mother is fine. She’s alive and well,” I interrupt, because I don’t know how long I have, and Bettany needs to know so she won’t carve out her heart through worrying. “She gave birth to healthy twins, a boy and a girl.”
“A boy!”
“Shh! I can’t be seen talking to you. Lord Gargaron thinks you are all dead.”
“Dead? What happened, Jes? After Father left and you were taken to the Fives stable, the Garon stewards came to escort Mother, Maraya, Amaya, and me away to sit the vigil in the tomb of Lord Ottonor. I switched places with our servant Coriander so I could help the servants and make sure they weren’t mistreated. When Mother never came back I thought surely Father spirited them away to a safe place.”
“It’s complicated.”
“But of course I should have known he wouldn’t make sure they were safe,” she sneers, “not when he was offered a general’s rank and a highborn Patron bride!”
Her insulting tone grates on me, so I squeeze her fingers harder to shut her up. “What matters is that Mother and the rest are alive and well. You have to keep it a secret, though.”
“Why? So no unkind words or proof of Father’s shameful liaison with a Commoner lover will sully his polished reputation as a man of honor now that he is important? He abandoned them, and me, and even you, Jes!”
“He did no such thing. Lowborn men like Father can’t say no to highborn lords like Gargaron. He did everything he could to help Mother!”
“I knew he would dump us the moment we became inconvenient.”
“You can be such an ass sometimes, Bett! Half the time I think you just say these hateful things to prove you can! Now be quiet and listen. Do you know what they mean to do with you?”
She shakes her hand free of my grip and glances over her shoulder at the huddled prisoners, many of whom are looking toward us trying to hear what we are saying and figure out who I am. For the first time her voice quavers as she fights down a shudder of fear.
“We’ve been stuck in this cage for days with no shade and not enough water, and gruel once a day. Half of the women are suffering from sunstroke. I think they’re just waiting for us to die.”
“If Lord Gargaron wanted you dead, you’d not have been fed any gruel. Bodies who can work are too valuable to dispose of so carelessly. Like those criminals they’re loading onto the barge right now. Do you know anything about them?”
“Every day they bring in a cartload, I guess people condemned at the Temple of Justice. They keep the criminals shackled inside the warehouse, away from us, thank the gods.”
“Probably waiting for the barge to arrive. Has anyone said anything to you about what is going to happen?”
“You can be such an ass sometimes, Jes,” she mocks. “Why would you imagine anyone ever talks to us? From things I’ve overheard I’m guessing we’re being sent inland to work on one of the Garon Palace estates.”
“Is there any kind of gap in the fence? To escape?”
“There’s a small gap at the very top of the cage, enough to squeeze through, but I’d have to climb the fence and then go hand over hand up the top bars like on a Fives course.”
“You can do that! Get out the top and lay low on the warehouse roof until the barge leaves. Then swim out to Mist Lake and you can walk back into the city and make your way to where Mother is staying—”
“I can’t.”
“Of course you can. You’re strong enough.”
“No, I mean I can’t abandon the women and children who served in our household and are stuck here with me. Don’t you think that’s the first thing Mother would ask me? ‘Are they safe, Bett?’ I’d never be able to face her. I guess you could abandon them without a second thought because you’re like Father.”
Her scorn whips so hard it chokes me. I can’t even manage a retort as she goes on.
“When I switched places with Coriander, it was so one of us girls could supervise the household while Mother was at the vigil. You didn’t see Mother after you and Father left. She was so brokenhearted she couldn’t stand. She could barely speak. The one thing she cared about was keeping everyone in the household safe. I promised her to protect the people she has always protected. I promised it on my five souls, Jes. I won’t leave them behind. Either they escape with me, or I stay with them. Unless you want to crawl in and switch places with me.”
I hesitate.
She laughs harshly. “I thought not. You could, though. The Patrons wouldn’t be able to tell us apart.”
“You and I don’t look that much alike.”
“We all look alike to them.”
“Then they won’t notice if you’re gone!”
“Every one of us in here is listed on a manifest. If even one goes missing, they’ll notice. So tell me how your beloved Fives skills can get all of us out of here without being caught and I’ll come watch your next trial.”
I snap back, “The money I earn running the Fives is what feeds our family now! Don’t scold me! I’m doing my part! I rescued them from—”
A whistle interrupts me.
“Shweet! Spider! Where’d that girl go, curse it? His Lordship will whip us if she’s not in the carriage waiting to go.…”
Footsteps thump on the ground as two grooms lope around the corner of the warehouse.
Over at the wharf lamps swing, and a man calls out, “Load the women and children now. We want to get out on the lake before dawn.”
I grab for her arm. “Climb, Bett! Quick!”
“I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. Oh gods, I want to, Jes! I want to get out of here, but I can’t do it, not when Mother gave me this task.” A wild tide of fear swells in her rising voice, and she leans into the slats, doing her best to embrace me through the rough wooden bars that separate us. I feel her tears as she presses a cheek against mine. “Go! Hurry! Don’t get caught if it means you’ll get thrown in here with me.”
“I’ll find you!”
“Of course you will. Jes to the rescue!” She breaks away with a laugh that sounds more like a choked-down scream of hysterical fury, and staggers away as if she’s been stunned by the slam of a hammer.
I’m so ashamed. I haven’t done enough to help the people who rely on me.
At the wharf end of the corral a gate is opened, and a steward shouts at the prisoners to line up. When I try to take a step away my legs almost give out, as unsteady as if I’d been ill for days, and I sag against the bars, staring at my sister’s back as she slides into the crowd of waiting prisoners. She doesn’t look at me but surely that is only because she knows a look will give us away if anyone sees, if anyone guesses. Surely it isn’t because she truly scorns me, as she has long claimed to scorn Father.
“Spider?” Two grooms hurry up.
“I ate too many pancakes, made me sick to my stomach on top of everything else.” I wipe the back of a hand across my lips for good measure, hoping the awful smell from the cage will hide that I was no such thing.
They laugh. “Probably too much to drink. Not that you didn’t earn it! Come on, Adversary. Let’s beat the lord to the victory tower.”
We get back to the carriage just in time, them grinning with excitement at the close call and me pretending that our race to get back without being seen is the same as a trial, and maybe it is. Lord Gargaron strides out of the warehouse and climbs in. At first he says nothing as we roll through the lamplit streets, passing from light into shadow into light again, and head up the King’s Hill into the Palace District.
My hand feels crushed from Bettany’s grip but it is the accusations she flung at me that hurt most. We love each other, we do, even if we fight. How can I manage to track her down and rescue her and the s
ervants while also secretly funneling money to my family and training for the Fives? All without Lord Gargaron becoming suspicious?
“You have the oddest look on your face, Jessamy.” Lord Gargaron’s gaze bores into mine like he wants to use a pickax on my thoughts and hack out my secrets. “What are you thinking?”
Startled, I wait too long to reply.
His smile is a knife in my heart. “You can’t hide your rebellious nature, can you? Your defiance is what makes you a good adversary. Don’t ever believe I don’t understand what you are, or that I don’t know you would beat me to the victory tower if you could. Which you can’t. I am the one adversary you can never defeat.”
8
My friends are sitting up late under the thatched awning of the dining shelter, huddled around a single lamp and clutching mugs of beer. As my footsteps crunch across the courtyard they leap up.
“We thought for sure we’d lost you in the stampede,” Mis cries, running over to hug me. “We saw the militia arresting people, looking for that poet.”
“It took me a while to get free of the crowds.” I’m fortunate they don’t realize I’m the one who abandoned them, and that they never saw me talking to Ro. I have to compound my dishonesty by quickly coming up with a plausible way to encourage Mis to take pity on me, one that will pass muster if Gargaron hears that I mean to leave the stable again. “I guess I’ll just have to spend Rest Day here. I had planned to go shopping in the Lantern Market tomorrow, but after that horrible incident I don’t want to go back.”
“I thought you would go home to visit your mother,” Mis says. “Doesn’t she live here in the city?”
I shrug, making a sad face that feels as false as my story. “My mother had to leave after my father’s promotion. I don’t have a home to go to anymore.”
“Oh, Jes! That’s awful. You’re welcome to come with me to spend the day with my family.”
“Truly? I’d like that. Thank you!”
Her smile is so warm that shame pricks me, because I am using her, she who has only ever offered me friendship. But I brush aside these feelings. In war a soldier must be ruthless in order to survive.
Yet when I go to bed, sleep does not come. Every slight noise jolts me, even a sigh as one woman turns over. I’m stretched so taut I think I hear the creep of moonlight across the roof. My thoughts skip from Bettany to Mother to Father, and spin over and over until I’m dizzyingly tumbled back to the way Kalliarkos held me close, the touch of his warm lips to mine, the way he looked into my eyes and said, “You’re here with me because you want to be.” Because I am the girl who chose him for himself, not a girl chosen for him by his interfering relatives.
I have to let him go.
I have to concentrate on those I’m responsible for, those I can help.
As gray lightens to pink, the cook and her assistants begin bustling around in the kitchen. Gira, Shorty, Mis, and I get up. We take a long, leisurely wash in the bathhouse, and Mis combs out and oils my hair before binding it under a scarf.
Then, hand in hand like Efean girls everywhere, she and I stroll down the King’s Hill. We make our way along the straight streets of the Patron districts of the city, past the large compounds of the well-to-do and into the more modest streets where ordinary Patron folk live. Once I lived in an orderly neighborhood like this, in a tidy compound hidden from the street by walls and a gate. We pause at a tiny neighborhood vegetable market so I can buy flowers as a guest gift for the women of the household and a packet of honey candies for the household children.
The transition from the grid-plan Patron-built streets into the Warrens comes abruptly as we cross under an arch not even wide enough for wagons. On Patron-drawn maps of the city the streets don’t change their straight appearance, but once inside, the lanes and alleys split off in random directions. They smash into sudden dead ends or circle in loops that bring you back to where you started, usually at one of the fountains where people gather to talk as they fill pots with water.
More than once we have to make way for men pushing carts stacked with raw linen from the weaving sheds and sheets of papyrus bound for West Harbor. Women file along with pots of water balanced on their heads and babies tucked in slings on their backs. Whenever a passing woman or girl greets Mis, she always introduces me. Among Commoners, not to exchange names is the same as an insult, like pretending not to see someone because they’re too unimportant for you.
Mis’s home resembles a mudbrick beehive with its series of interconnected small rooms, some roofed and some open to the air, some dug into the ground as storerooms and some three stories tall. The place reeks of scent because Mis’s family distills perfumes in one section of the compound. My nose itches so much that, just as she brings me forward to present me to the women of the household, I sneeze loudly.
“Blessings on your five souls, child,” says her grandmother, who as the eldest is the dame of the household and thus the ultimate authority.
I present the dame with the flowers. Everyone approves my choice of chrysanthemum and papyrus for their combination of lovely color and practical utility.
After I’ve washed my hands in a basin, the dame sends a child to fetch a warm bun sweetened with fig and honey, because it is the tradition of Efea to greet all guests with food. “Let you be welcome at our table.”
After I have complimented the bun’s delicious flavor and moist texture, Mis is given permission to take me to the kitchen and treat me like family. I’m set to chopping dates to bake into bread for the midday dinner, which is the main meal of the day. I like working in the kitchen in the company of her family. Jostling about surrounded by women and children is what I’m used to, but even the camaraderie of Mis’s friendly household cannot soothe the chafing burn deep in my heart as I wonder what my mother and sisters will have to eat today, and where Bettany is now, somewhere out on Mist Lake crossing toward a life of bitter servitude.
“Why so little bread today? Have grain prices gone up that much?” Mis asks one of her sisters, a strapping giant who kneads dough with powerful hands as she replies.
“Prices have gone up but the real problem is short supply. People are saying the king is exporting grain to raise money to pay the army.”
“But the royal family controls the gold mines,” I say. “Doesn’t he pay the army with gold?”
The sister shrugs. “I don’t know. All I know is there are lines to buy grain now. We hear rumors that Patron households are hoarding grain for fear they won’t be able to buy more later. Poor people are starting to go hungry.”
Midday dinner is a leisurely meal. Mis’s family treats me with the greatest warmth, including me in their conversation about the Fives, my recent victory, current plays, what people are saying about the war on the Eastern Reach, and the growing market for Efean perfumes in the three kingdoms of old Saro across the sea. I haven’t felt so relaxed since before Lord Gargaron ripped apart my family, but at the same time I calibrate the point where I can politely distribute the honey candies to the children and excuse myself on the pretext that I have to run errands.
By the time I leave, people are settling down for their afternoon nap, which suits me because it means so few folk walk the streets that I can make sure I’m not being followed, not that I have seen a single Patron high- or lowborn on these twisty lanes. If Gargaron had hired a Commoner spy to keep track of me it would be harder to tell, but there is nothing suspicious about a young adversary stopping at a tavern to drink a bowl of Efean-brewed beer.
I smile at a man leading a laden donkey. “Blessings of the day, Honored Sir. I’m from out of town. Can you tell me how to find the Heart Tavern?”
His eyebrows rise toward the heavens, then drop. “Ask at Cat Fountain, Honored Niece,” he answers in the formal way.
Cat Fountain lies next to the Warrens’ entry arch. Here I question a woman filling a jug with water, and she tells me to ask at Ibis Fountain. So onward, fountain by fountain, Elephant, Snake, Dog, Falcon, and I reali
ze I am circling inward toward the center of the Warrens in the same order in which we adversaries pace out the menageries. At last I reach the center of the district, fetching up at an eight-spouted fountain in the heart of the Warrens. A tall man pretends to nap in the shade, but his suspicious gaze follows me as I approach.
“Blessings of the day, Honored Cousin. I’m looking for the Heart Tavern,” I say.
“Blessings, Cousin. Sadly, I’ve never heard of such a place.”
“I’m looking for the poet Ro-emnu. He said to speak the words Efea will rise.”
“Ah!” He leaps up and walks to a closed gate. As I follow he gives me a sidelong look-over. “You one of Ro’s sweethearts?”
I snort. “Me? Why would I want to be his sweetheart?”
“Poets are irresistible to some people.”
“And repellent to others!”
He grins. “Maybe so! The Mother of All gave him the poet’s true gift, though. Everyone knows that.”
He pushes open the gate and ushers me into a spacious courtyard shaded by arbors thick with flowering jasmine and hyacinth. Men and women face each other around circular tables crowded with mugs and pitchers of beer. Many seem to be debating in low voices, while others are trading verses from plays as if engaged in a contest to see who knows the most lines. Several are working in small groups, heads bent over papyrus, and in one shady corner a quartet works its way through the movements of a dance not unlike the graceful lines of the menageries.
Bit by bit they notice me, and piece by piece each conversation ceases as everyone looks my way. Self-conscious at their scrutiny, I look for Ro-emnu and finally spot him alone on a semicircular terrace of tiered stone seats that half surrounds a small raised stage. He’s so engrossed in his work that he hasn’t noticed the uneasy lull. His lips move in soundless speech as he rapidly sets words onto a scroll of papyrus clipped to a slate writing board set across his legs. As if my gaze is a spear that has wounded him, he looks up. When he recognizes me his lips press together in a gloating way that makes me stiffen. Not even a polite smile! So I don’t offer one either as I approach.