Bright Thrones
By the instrument of law I release the slave known as Bettany, daughter of Kiya, from all constraint and debt. She shall be free and unencumbered by obligation to any lord or clan for the whole of her life, and may go wherever she wishes. Guaranteed on this day by Agalar of Nerash, son of Eudes, lord of Nerash.
“There!”
He left the document on the bench to dry. A fountain trickled over to one side, half hidden beneath slats sagging with thick vines and ripening grapes. He stalked over to clean brush and inkstone, glad to get away from Pearl’s heartless scrutiny. Bettany had never belonged to him. He was just a way station as she found her path, whatever that path might be. Let it be what it was. Treat the wound you are faced with, and don’t waste time wishing it had turned out another way.
He shook water off the tip of the brush. “It’s not up to us anyway. She already has a family.”
“All of us have families we’ve left behind, for one reason or another. Sometimes people make new families.”
The slap of footfalls alerted them to another person approaching.
Pearl tucked the papyrus into her sleeve rather than returning it to the box. “I’ll take charge of this on her behalf.”
Bettany barged in under the arbor with her usual impetuous stride. Because the fountain stood in a deeper patch of shadow, she did not notice Agalar as she strode over to Pearl.
“I did as you suggested and talked to my sisters but it makes no difference!” Her anger broke in an onslaught of words. “They go on and on about how I need to be freed, but they are the ones who are trapped. They lie to themselves about everything. Father abandoned us the instant we weren’t convenient for him anymore. Mother knew the day would come and yet loyally served him like the cow she is. Maraya thinks of herself as smarter than everyone else but even she drank down the lies, studying for their Patron Archives because her Saroese looks give her the chance, and then falling for the first Saroese man who looked twice at her. Amaya cares only for the attention of her pretty Patron friend. Jes serves the lord who destroyed our family because all she cares about is her own chance for glory in the Fives. I can’t rescue people who refuse to see they are prisoners!”
“You gave them no hint of our plans?” Pearl asked.
“Of course not! Even if I had, neither of them will listen to me because they don’t want to see the truth about their stupid dreams. So I’ve made my choice, if you meant what you said about sailing the Three Seas with your crew. I will see the world they turn their backs on!”
She burst into noisy, furious sobs.
Pearl caught Agalar’s eye and gestured with her chin that he should take himself off before Bettany realized he was there.
He walked in a haze of frustration and self-loathing to the elegant chamber he’d been assigned. There he tossed and turned and sweated on an elegant bed surrounded by elegant silk hangings, the life he’d never been born for. The lie he was living. He had a sister too, one who was waiting for him to return, his partner in crime. They had unshakable obligations and a price on their heads. He had nothing to offer a beautiful, intelligent, passionate person like Bettany. She would be better off with the Shipwrights. But knowing it was true did not make the thought of losing her palatable.
* * *
When their parties left that night—they had to travel at night in the desert—he did the job he’d been assigned. He rode in Lord Gargaron’s luxurious traveling carriage and kept the man occupied with a stream of questions. Men like Gargaron loved to pontificate, and it kept him from noticing the gaps in Agalar’s knowledge that might clue him in that his companion was not the man he claimed to be.
Beauty rode with the Shipwrights, playing the servant that everyone in the Saroese party thought her. Not once did the sisters speak to one another. It was as if they traveled in three different worlds, and maybe in the end that was the truth of their lives.
Night after night they crossed the stony desert. During the day Agalar dozed intermittently under the shade of an awning, with either Flint or Sunny to guard him as if they believed he might run away into bare hills baked under the sun where not a single cloud offered respite. As if they believed he would abandon his sister.
Sleep never comforted him; it only brought nightmares.
So it was with a sense of relief that he saw their rendezvous, Crags Fort, rise before them. The upper fort was built at the edge of a vast escarpment that ran east and west as far as the eye could see. Because of the steepness of the cliffs, the locked chests of gold ore had to be unloaded from the wagons and hauled down to a lower fort by means of a ramp and winch.
The problem for him presented itself as soon as he looked around. Inside the fort’s outer wall were two courtyards: an outer area where wagons were being unloaded to transfer to the ramp, and an inner citadel surrounded by a second, higher wall. He and his people could not afford to get trapped inside the citadel, but Gargaron had already invited him in to take cooling refreshment. It would look suspicious to refuse outright.
Pearl came over from the supply wagons. “Bett says we can play for time by asking to see a Fives trial. There’s a Fives court outside the fort walls that the soldiers built for themselves.”
“Bett?”
“That’s what she goes by. She told us her name.”
He had to suppress a wave of envy that Pearl referred to Beauty with such careless familiarity.
“She’s also hoping to keep her other sister out of the fray,” Pearl added. “The fancy one is safe inside the citadel but her twin is at risk. What do you say? We’d like to help her.”
“You like Bettany enough to do this favor for her?”
“She’s an asset. Smart. Fierce. Strong. Can cook and mend. She has skills as a healer. And she’s willing to learn to fight.”
“Unlike me.”
“You’re not a coward. I don’t mean to say that.”
“I made my pledge to not use violence before I met you. My oath to the gods, if there are gods, is to sustain life. But the idea of a Fives trial is a good one.”
And it was easy, always so easy, to demand favors and receive them when he spoke using Lord Agalar’s voice. Lord Gargaron proclaimed himself too hot and travel-worn to watch adversaries compete with nothing at stake, but for Agalar’s sake a soldier was found to complete a group of four—there had to be four—competitors. Agalar made a great to-do about gathering his entourage about him and processing out to an enclosure surrounded by a mudbrick wall. Inside, an awning shaded a viewing terrace that looked over an assembly of obstacles: tall climbing posts, a maze made of movable canvas walls, ropes, and beams, a lane of off-kilter boards for balancing, and several slowly spinning hoops turned by a man pushing a gear.
Bettany sat beside him. “My thanks.”
“For what?” he asked peevishly, and was immediately ashamed of himself for begrudging her the new life she was planning with the Shipwrights.
She sat close enough that he could shift to brush against her, as a lover might do, but of course he didn’t. Yet his gaze kept sliding sideways to study the curve of her jaw and the tight line of her mouth. Her lips pinched together even more tightly as her sister entered through the gate and ran over to join the other adversaries. The girl called Jessamy had the grace and confidence of a person who knows her body will do whatever she asks of it.
“She wouldn’t listen to me about running away from all this.”
“You did everything you could,” he assured her, wishing he could clasp her hand.
“It should have been enough that I asked her to leave. But it wasn’t.”
She spoke with the harshness he now understood was used to fight back tears. She didn’t weep; she stormed, so filled to the brim with frustration and caring and hope and despair that she was on the edge of spilling over with every breath. If only he could comfort her but he dared not touch her. Lord Agalar of Nerash had never showed the least scrap of compassion; the only speech the young lord had ever heard was his own voice or
that of people praising his brilliance. It’s why he never paid attention to the boy assigned to be his servant, the one who was smarter and more skilled at medicine and indeed at every intellectual discipline an entitled young lord was required to study. Lord Agalar of Nerash took those who served him for granted because to him they didn’t count as people.
Bettany’s twin had climbed up one of the poles. Poised at the top, she stared in shock at something going on inside the walls of the fort, then whistled a shrill warning. An alarm trumpet blared from inside the fort’s watchtower. A crow took off flying.
A priest who was also watching the Fives turned to Agalar and said, “Get you and your people to the citadel, my lord. We’ve come under attack.”
The priest leaped down the terraced seats as Agalar stared, for once at a loss what to do.
Bettany said, to Pearl, “My one sister is safe inside the citadel but I have to convince Jes and her companions to hide. Come on!”
She raced after the priest, the others following. As the sound of fighting rang in the air, Agalar trailed after them, feeling disoriented and unsure as he never was when he had a patient in front of him.
“Hey!” Bettany called to the cluster of confused adversaries. “Just stay in the Fives court, don’t get involved, and I promise you it will be all right.”
Her sister stepped into her path. “People are already dead! We have to go!”
“Will you listen to me, Jes? You won’t be in danger if you stay out of sight. They’re only after the gold—”
“That’s what worries me! What will the attackers do when they find out the gold they’re looking for isn’t there because Lord Gargaron—” She broke off, looking from Bettany to Agalar. The shock of realization made her ball her hands into fists.
Isn’t there.
How could the gold not be there?
Gargaron was inside the citadel, out of reach, so Agalar couldn’t question him. But the sister knew something vital.
He stepped forward to confront her. “Where is the gold, if not in the cargo wagons?”
The girl drew in a shocked breath but it wasn’t for him. She was staring at her sister with an expression of utter horror and betrayal.
All of his plans, his sister’s safety, his mother and younger brother’s freedom… he’d learned to suppress his temper but it surged now. So he behaved as mercenaries and soldiers, who used violence to force compliance. He drew the sword he wore while traveling, the one that allowed him to masquerade as a lord. He meant only to scare her, but an older woman bolted between them: Her body the sacrifice to protect the life of a child she was responsible for.
Her body the sacrifice to protect the child.
He went numb. He couldn’t move. From the corner of his eye he saw Sunny moving forward, and the guard then shouted in an accent cruelly like Agalar’s own, “Get after them! Kill the priest and destroy the spiders! Move!”
When the woman did not get out of the way, Sunny’s sword came down on her head and cleaved her.
She collapsed at Agalar’s feet.
Memory struck like a cobra, its venom sinking deep. His breathing grew ragged and shallow. The world grew a thousand shadows, each stained with blood.
He is a young child standing in a field overrun with fighting. A soldier looms above him wearing an expression contorted with fury, yet a woman jumps between him and the soldier. The blade comes down. The tumult rages on, dragging the assailant away from him. For a long while he is afraid to move so there is nothing but the warm blood slowly congealing and growing cold as the bitter night drags on, as the stars watch indifferently. Eventually he shakes the body and calls to her, he begs her to wake up, to get up, but she never moves again.
A hand pushed him so hard he stumbled backward. “You useless coward,” sneered Sunny. “I knew you would freeze when it mattered.”
Finally his gaze cleared. The enclosure’s gate stood wide open and everyone had scattered. Bettany and the others were all gone while he had stood in a stupor. Shouts and trumpet blares rang out. Clouds of dust boiled heavenward as the Shipwrights’ accomplices—a troop of East Saroese soldiers—swarmed the fort amid the clamor of fighting.
Screaming nearer at hand broke his paralysis. He ran out of the Fives court to see Bettany shouting at an armed soldier who was dragging away one of the adversaries. It wasn’t her twin—where her twin had gone he did not know—but regardless Bettany shoved her body between the soldier and the girl, breaking the man’s grip.
“Move off!” The soldier raised his sword.
“Halt! Put down your sword!” He raced into the fray and threw himself in front of Bettany.
Let the sword fall on his head.
But the blade did not come.
Agalar’s lordly clothing, his foreign looks, and his male glare set the soldier back.
“My lord, I’m just following orders. We need laborers to help with the wagons we’ve captured as we return across the desert.”
“Please, my lord.” Bettany tugged on his arm. “Let the girl go. Please, for my sake.”
Wagons began to emerge from the fort. The Garon Palace gold shipment, now taken as a prize of war, headed southeast along a path that ran parallel to the great escarpment that starkly divided the upland desert from the coastal plain.
The sight of all those wagons jogged his memory, pushing it back to the last exchange he’d had before that blacked-out break. The gold they’re looking for isn’t there.
Sunny trotted up. “What’s the trouble here?” he growled.
“No trouble.” The soldier gave an obedient bow to Agalar and moved away after his fellows, who were herding a few male prisoners toward the departing wagons.
Bettany was speaking rapid, urgent Efean to the other girl. With both hands, she shoved her toward the Fives court gate. “Let her go!” she said defiantly to Sunny.
Agalar placed himself between Sunny and the Fives court. “Let her go,” he echoed. “Before our allies head off with those wagons, has anyone checked to see if there is really gold in them?”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say!” Sunny laughed. “Why wouldn’t there be gold in them? You think this is all some long con by Lord Gargaron? Maybe he’s flying the gold to the king by messenger pigeon, one nugget at a time! Ha ha ha!”
Bettany stepped on Agalar’s foot.
“Just have them check,” said Agalar, blinking hard as he tried not to react to the pressure. “You and I don’t get paid if no gold is delivered.”
Sunny always responded to being poked by the stick of self-interest. “It can’t hurt to see.”
He trotted away.
“They’ll find gold in the wagons,” said Bettany in a low voice.
“What did your sister mean, then?” he demanded. “Why would she think there was no gold?”
Her gaze measured the Fives enclosure. The adversary she’d saved had vanished into its maze. The corpse of the dead woman lay still, blood congealing around her on the dirt. Grief stung his eyes and he had to look away. Bodies had been left sprawled throughout the outer courtyard of the fort too, men killed in a battle over wealth. Inside the citadel, of course, Lord Gargaron and his inner circle were safe. Wasn’t that how it always went in the world?
“Jes has a habit of jumping to conclusions rather than thinking things through,” Bettany explained. “The king and queen would become suspicious if no gold was delivered from mines they know are being worked. But if Garon Palace controls the account books, then it would be easy for them to deliver less gold than they’d mined, and no one the wiser if they have a good place to hide it. People like Lord Agalar of Nerash would know all about those kind of accounting tricks.”
The heat was making him dizzy. Surely that was why her piercing gaze, like a dilator, seemed to be separating his skin away from the wounded truth that he worked so hard to conceal.
“Which is why I don’t think you’re really Lord Agalar of Nerash,” she added.
For the first time, he felt no barrier between them, no caution on her part, none of the required deference that the powerful men of the world demand from those they rule and those they trample.
She seemed to realize the change in that moment as well. Her loss of deference brought a flood of harsh words.
“I don’t know what happened to you inside the Fives court, why you froze up like that. Why you speak with one voice among the highborn but act so differently away from them. Why you take orders from Pearl but aren’t part of the crew. I don’t know why you’re here except you are a good doctor. But if you aren’t really Lord Agalar of Nerash, then is the document that frees me legally binding? Also, you’ve lost your hat, and your cheeks and nose are turning pink so you’d better get out of the sun.”
Hearing her speak to him with such a lack of restraint was exhilarating. He leaned alarmingly close and with a smile said, “I can’t wait to introduce you to Sorshia.”
“Sorshia?” She rocked onto her heels as if taken aback. “Who is Sorshia?”
She looked so like a girl feeling a stab of jealousy that a giddy urge to laugh welled up. “My sister.”
“You never mentioned her before!”
The shock of the attack, of violent death, of the realization that they were going to succeed: it all stripped away his usual caution. The desire to confide became overwhelming. “She was required to stay behind when I came on this expedition, as a surety that I would return rather than run off. Not that I would ever abandon her…”
Too late he heard his own words. If only he could have bitten off his tongue before he spoke.
She looked toward the Fives enclosure with its open gate, empty obstacles, dead woman, and missing sister. A sister who might be dead because Bettany hadn’t warned her of the attack. Her chin trembled. Her shoulders tensed. Tears leaked, and she angrily wiped them away with the back of a fist. She was a storm front waiting to break, and yet struggling to hold it in.
Hastily he said, “I was speaking of myself, not… You did everything you could.”