He attempted to push the recollection from his mind, but it crept back into the forefront of his thoughts—as it always did when he was presented with the garden. It seemed something he was destined to think on again as Jax neared the gated entry. Erion stopped short.
“Are you certain you want to do this, Baldair?” He glanced down the hall, already feeling like a thief in the night.
“What do you think my brother will really do?” Baldair took hold of the gate, pushing forward and crossing the threshold of the gardens. “He doesn’t own this place. It’s as much mine as it is his.”
Erion exchanged a look with Jax. If there was one thing that everyone in the Imperial Palace knew, it was that the rose garden was Prince Aldrik’s. Pity upon the man who questioned the
fact.
“I think Aldrik is busy with other things.” Jax whispered reassurances as he pushed into the garden with a shifty look of his own.
Jax seemed sure enough, but he wasn’t exactly a measuring stick for the true conditions of any situation involving Prince Baldair. His friend took his position as all-encompassing, and Baldair ordered them to trudge onward. Erion watched as Jax didn’t give the matter a second thought. There was a dull, aching reminder that Jax didn’t see his life as his own any longer—the crown owned it outright.
Erion had already gone too far in saving Jax from execution. He should step away from meddling further. If Jax didn’t want to see all the possibilities he still had before him, that was the other man’s issue. But Erion couldn’t help himself from wanting more for Jax.
He pushed the thoughts away for now and continued on with a begrudging sigh, easing the gate back into place.
He could still see the shrubs where they had chased that stupid cat around for hours years ago. Erion cast a shameful glance at the tree where Aldrik had confronted them, in the start of a brotherly feud that had been left unchecked for far, far too many years. One that was still mostly unchecked.
“It’s back here.”
Erion cast his eyes skyward, uttering a quiet prayer to the Mother in thanks that the opening to this stupid passage was nowhere near the greenhouse. If they went in there, Aldrik would know, without a doubt. But if they didn’t, there was a chance they’d manage to avoid the ire of the Crown Prince for another week. It was already shaping up to be a long summer.
“In here.” Jax led them into a small shed against the back wall of the garden.
The air was thick with stagnancy and the potent smell of peat. Tools of all varieties lined the walls, hanging on pegs, waiting for their owners to return. Erion took quick stock, wondering if the Crown Prince actually used any to tend the grounds. He could not imagine Alrdik with his sleeves rolled to his elbows, dirt covering his hands.
“How did you find this?” Baldair asked as Jax shimmied behind sacks of manure.
“I found it coming from the other direction,” Jax explained. “Was stocking some things in the Tower and stumbled upon an illusionary wall. Led out here.” He lifted a grate off the floor.
“You actually took a Lady of the Court down here?” Baldair remarked when they were halfway down the ladder.
“Don’t worry; I went first to catch her if she slipped.” Jax’s grin was heard as much as it was seen in the dim light that filtered from the hall below.
“More like to look up her skirts!” Baldair’s laughter competed with the sound of the grate closing overhead.
“Do you fault me?”
“I’d almost be disappointed in you if you didn’t.” Baldair gave Jax a stumble-worthy slap on the back.
Erion shook his head and kept walking through the time-worn gray maze that Jax had led them into.
“I think we upset the prude of the group,” Baldair teased.
“I am not a prude,” Erion insisted defensively.
“No, but you are the only one of us who has yet to take a woman to bed.”
“There are more important things in this world.”
“Spoken like a true prude!” The prince laughed.
Erion just shook his head. “I have no desire to rush into bed with a woman.”
“Is that you or your mother talking?” Baldair jabbed. Even Jax couldn’t conceal a snicker.
“I’m not dignifying that with a response.”
“One of these summers, we’ll break you of her clutches.” Baldair threw an arm around Erion’s shoulders, as if he really was about to whisk Erion away into a world in which expectations weren’t what they were.
“Where are we, anyway?” He found himself desperate to change the topic. Structurally, everything still seemed up to par, but, visually, it had been lacking the touch of another living person for what appeared to be decades.
“Some old and forgotten escape, I’m sure,” Baldair mused, glancing through the slim windows.
“I doubt it.” Erion stopped to study a faded portrait. “There wouldn’t be adornments in an escape passage.” Brush strokes of oil peeled away in cracked chunks from the canvas, flaking to the floor like rose petals. The eyes of the man were familiar, as was the golden crown that pointed upward like rigid stony sunbeams. “Is this your grandfather?”
“I think it may be.” The prince inspected the portrait. The family resemblance in the eyes was undeniable. “I don’t see any mark of Adela though.”
“Why would it be here?” Erion exchanged a look with Jax.
“Don’t you know how he died?”
Erion knew that the current Emperor declared himself ruler of the main continent with the hazy notion of a god-given decree. He also knew that everything before the Empire had been inexplicably stricken from the records. Pre-Empire traditions and histories weren’t outlawed outright, but they received such little mention that it was almost hard to believe the Empire was a mere thirty-five years old, not centuries.
“We don’t study much Southern history in the Crossroads,” Erion said simply, not wanting to offend the very Empire Baldair’s family built.
“Aren’t you supposed to?” the prince teased.
It still stung. Something about the quiet eradication of Mhashan’s history sat uneasy with many Westerners, even those who weren’t alive for the fall of the final King in Norin. The idea that they were supposed to study Southern history before their own...
Jax was silent as well.
“I’ve always been taught that he died of illness—autumn fever or some-such,” the prince trailed off on the last word.
“But…” Erion plucked the hanging word from the air, giving it sound.
“Well, there were always rumors.”
“Rumors of?” It was Jax’s turn to pry.
Baldair was having far too much fun spinning his tale of suspense. “Of his assassination.”
“By who?” If Baldair thought regicide was scandalous, he needed to spend an extra hour or two in Western history books. “Some uncle, or a disgruntled peasant?”
“By the infamous and legendary pirate herself, Adela Lagmir,” Baldair spoke as though it should be a point of pride. “Which is why I’m expecting some kind of mark…”
They looked back to Jax, but the man shook his head.
“Not here. Farther still.”
Jax led them behind a sculpture, a secret passage in a secret passage, and further into the depths of the palace. Unlike the hallways they had just walked, this felt like a hidden path. The weight of the castle and all its stone pressed around them, weighing on their chests and shoulders.
They emerged from behind a bookshelf into a meager room, a few effects littering the sparse furniture. Erion didn’t actually know how the lower classes lived at times. “Are we in the Tower now?” he asked.
Jax nodded. Erion walked to the opposite door, bolting it to prevent any awkward encounters.
Baldair had yet to move from where his eyes had fixated on a threadbare rag hanging on the wall.
“Is that the symbol?” Erion asked, squinting at it.
“It certainly is.” Excitement was
alive in Baldair’s words. He turned, looking around. “What if this was her room?”
“How did we make that logic leap?” Erion had whiplash from it.
“She was a Waterrunner. She would’ve lived in the Tower, no doubt keeping her business a secret.”
“Isn’t it far more likely that this is just some forgotten room of someone obsessed with her?”
The prince pulled books off the bookshelf and thumbed through them. Erion nearly remarked how they were someone’s things. But the fact was, as the Prince, Baldair could rummage through whatever he pleased. “Look at all of these. Ships… seafaring maps… histories of coastal towns… all things Adela would want to know.”
Erion couldn’t believe the madness was being entertained for so long. “Listen to yourself. You’re acting as though we’ve really found some long-lost key to long-lost treasure.”
“What if we have?”
“What if it’s all a joke crafted by your brother?”
That made Baldair think a moment. “Well, for his sake, it’d better not be. I’d hate for Father to find out about this girl he’s sneaking around with.”
There was no limit to the depths each prince would sink to when it came to tormenting the other.
“That path.” Baldair turned to Jax. “The one that broke off, where did it lead?” The prince gestured toward the tunnel they had come in on.
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s find out!”
There was no hope of reclaiming the situation, so Erion just had to allow himself to be dragged along. His mind told him they were wasting time. That wandering through the depths of the palace was not an effective way to be spending his days at the Imperial Capital.
But secretly, he felt excitement catching up with his feet. It was fun to dream wildly and do with abandon. And there wasn’t a person alive who could evoke such in Erion, or Jax, like Baldair could.
Down they spiraled into the belly of the palace, nearly slipping over rough cut steps that wound through dank passages covered with a thin algae-like slime. Erion kept peering around the corner, apprehensive and enthralled at what they might find next.
After a near eternity, the path ended, opening up into a large underground spring. It was so cold their breath plumed in the air as white ghosts escaping through their noses and mouths. Erion wrapped his arms around himself, focusing on keeping the chill from chattering his teeth.
“Jax, more light,” Baldair commanded with a sidelong glance at Erion. “And heat.”
“You’re too good to me, my prince.” Erion knew when he was being teased and would tease right back, even if he was thankful for Jax transforming the tiny bobbing flame that led their way into a large fire that burned brightly against the ceiling.
The water was as clear as glass. The light cut through right to the bottom of the shallow spring, distorted only mildly by the slowly sloshing movements. In the far corner was a shadow that Baldair caught sight of at the same time, judging by the bobbing of his head.
“What do you think that is?” he asked, continuing well before anyone else could propose a theory. “A way out? Do you think it’s a way out? It must be with the current, right?”
“It could be, but who would dare swim it?” Erion shivered just looking at the water’s depth. It gave the illusion of being simple and easy. But he had no doubt a man would freeze to death in mere moments of submersion. And to press forward without fire meant to go blind into a cave without knowledge if it would ever open.
“A Waterrunner,” Jax answered thoughtfully. “A Waterrunner could swim it easily, using the water to help propel them… Immune to the cold with their powers over ice.”
“And just as Firebearers can’t be burnt, Waterrunners can’t drown,” Erion added with equal musing. This couldn’t really be happening. He couldn’t be giving in to this madness.
“A Waterrunner, like Adela.” Baldair was downright bouncing off the walls in his excitement.
“It could all be rumor,” Erion reminded the prince.
“All good rumors have some truth!” Baldair insisted. “They say Adela murdered the King—” he was far too gleeful about the untimely death of his grandfather. “What better access than living in the palace? That being her room makes perfect sense! They say she stole his ‘crown treasure’ and fled to the sea. What better way out than this?”
“Next you’re going to tell me that you want to go find this long lost treasure.”
Baldair grinned like a fool.
“Oh Gods,” Erion groaned.
“They say it went down with her ships in the barrier islands. But—” Erion was beginning to hate the word ‘but’, especially from Baldair’s mouth, “—what if it didn’t? What if we
have a chance to uncover the truth of where and how it was moved?”
“How?” Jax asked the question the prince so desperately wanted from him.
“How? With the only other bit of information the legend holds: Adela went east to the closest port, Oparium. Which is where my family so happens to have a summer palace.”
It was all too neat. The secret room, the clues of the lost pirate queen, the convenient reasoning for Baldair to leave the palace. Prince Aldrik was crafty to an admirable degree.
But as the prince slung his arms around Erion and Jax’s shoulders, that same infectious feeling of excitement returned.
“Brace yourself, soldiers. I think it’s time we embark on the most precarious mission yet.”
“What?” Erion was indulging the prince. Isn’t that what his mother told him to do? Wasn’t that what he should do as a Le
’Dan? He frantically tried to justify his actions in the framework of his upbringing so he could give himself over to enthusiasm in full.
“I think it’s time that we…” Baldair drew out his words for mock suspense. “Go to the beach.”
4. JAX
HE HADN’T LEFT the Imperial Palace in three years.
Jax shifted in his saddle and took a deep breath of the salted wind. His eyes fluttered closed of their own accord, and his spirit embraced the familiar air despite himself. That was one undeniable quality of the sea—it was the same, no matter where you went. You could visit the white sand beaches of the West, the marshy deltas of the East, or the cliffs of the South, and it would give the same greeting.
He reopened his eyes and looked to the town below. The pitched, wooden-shingled rooftops of the city compacted between sheer cliffs reminded him of where he was and why. That no matter how the wind felt, or smelled, he was not home.
He had no home.
“Do you see it, over there?” Baldair pointed with a wave of his arm. “What do you think?”
“It’s not much of a palace,” Erion remarked arrogantly.
Jax had been to the Le’Dan estate as a boy and knew of its grandiose buildings designed to communicate one singular thing: how powerful they were. The thought almost made him think on his own family’s modest estate.
You have no family, the voice that lived to remind Jax of his position in the world chimed in.
“It’s bigger when you get closer,” Baldair insisted defensively.
“Do you use that line often?” Jax grinned wildly, pushing away reality with his own construction of who he was—the mad dog that followed the prince to the ends of the world.
“You know I have no need of it.” The prince snapped his reigns, chapped by the joke but still in good spirits.
Erion looked to Jax. “Do you actually know he has no need of it?”
“Winter makes Southerners crazy.” Jax kept the ruse.
“Say nothing further; I truly don’t need to know.” Erion chuckled and spurred his horse forward, leaving Jax to take up the rear, the servants they had brought from the palace behind him.
Broken away from the town, separated by a small stretch of thin wood and short rocky outcropping, was a stately manor house. Smoke plumed happily from its chimneys, a signal that word of their arrival had successfully come a
head of them. Within a low stone wall topped with connected iron spears, they were welcomed at the stables by the matron of the manor, a woman whom Baldair greeted with the southern term for grandmother, “Nana,” despite having no actual relation to her.
There were more than enough staff for the three of them, and the usually unoccupied summer palace was brought back to life. With no responsibilities, the three were left to their own devices, which quickly became searching for any sign of Adela. But other than a few books on local legend that mostly told them what they already knew, there was not a scrap of information to be found.
On the third night, Baldair decided to ask some of the local staff attending them over dinner in the manor’s lavish dining room. Specifically, a footman who was overseeing the management of their courses.
“I have a question for you.”
“How can I be of service?” The man gave the prince his undivided attention, pausing his fussing over the silver soup tureen atop a thin table on the perimeter of the room.
“I’ve heard a few rumors about these parts.”
Jax settled in his chair. It was almost humorous to watch Baldair try to be subversive. Baldair was about as good at it as a maiden trying to perform surgery with an axe.
“What sort of rumors?”
“Pirate rumors.”
The man stilled.
“I’m told Adela Lagmir made this area her base of operations after gaining notoriety.” Baldair continued, completely oblivious to the servant’s obvious discomfort.
“Can’t say I know much about the blight of the seas.” He looked like a spooked cat and quickly retreated from the room. In poor form, the young girl who had been attending them as well disappeared behind him without being summoned or dismissed.
“Was it something I said?” Baldair asked no one in particular.
“Do yourself a favor, prince, and don’t go asking about the blight of the seas in these parts,” Nana cautioned. “You won’t find many friendly to anything that could evoke her curse.”