“What is it you would ask of me, Lithos?”
“Would your mother still welcome you, after you fought alongside Pietra and attacked your homeland?” he asks.
“Would yours welcome you, should her boat find our shores again?”
Witt’s eyes close; his hands tighten. My words hit old wounds, still open.
“I’ll answer first,” I say, sparing him speech. “She had me at her side when she could not see my face. She’ll have me again, though I stood with the enemy.”
“Caul or not, you see much and know more,” Witt says, his eyes now open and upon me. “Learn of Stille. Hear their plans. Know what they fear now that the sea has become an ally. For what they fear is what we must become.”
I nod and make my exit. I arrived in the Lithos’s chambers a Feneen advisor who fought alongside the Pietra. I leave as a Stillean who returns to his birth people to spy upon them.
And the Lithos believes it was his idea.
CHAPTER 18
Vincent
Vincent slides past Rook, one of the few guards he trusts, at the door to the bedchamber he shares with his wife. They are of an age and as boys played more than a few games of ridking together, wagering with snakeskins they had found, or ancient oderbird eggs, hard as rock. Now they are men of duty, and only nod to each other as Vincent eases the door closed behind him.
He had expected to find Khosa asleep, but their room is awash with light, Khosa propped up in bed, head bowed over a scroll. She is so lost in her reading that she doesn’t notice his entrance, and Vincent takes a moment to look at this woman he married but cannot seem to reach.
Her hair is up in a simple knot, the complicated forms the castle girls torture it into abandoned for the night, the crown of Stille—one he still thinks of as his mother’s—resting on her dressing table. Khosa’s mouth twists as she reads, and he wonders if she is aware that the emotions she struggles to show freely at other times are amply visible on her face when she is lost in lines of ink.
A small gasp escapes her, and Khosa’s hand goes to the neckline of her sleepshirt—which he can’t help but notice has slipped farther downward than she would allow if she knew he was in the room.
Cursing himself for always being a gentleman, Vincent clears his throat.
“Oh, Vin.” She glances up, a real smile on her face, whether from something she’s read or his presence, he does not know.
“What is that?” he asks, nodding toward her reading.
“I’ll explain,” she says, eyes back on her scroll. “Oh, and watch your step.”
She’s a moment too late, and Vincent bumps into a pile of loose sheaves that splay across the floor. Khosa gasps and dives from the bed to keep them from the fireplace, her sleepshirt billowing around her and exposing more of her skin than Vincent has ever seen before.
“I’ll get it, Khosa,” he says. “You should . . .”
She stares at him blankly from her hands and knees, unaware of her gaping neckline as she pulls the sheaves back into order until he motions to her.
“Oh! Apologies,” she says, blushing as she returns to the bed, papers crushed to her chest.
“What have you got that is so interesting?” Vincent asks, only to see Khosa turn a brighter shade of red.
“Excuse me?”
“Not your . . . the . . .” Bereft of words, the young king can only motion toward the pile of scrolls on his side of the bed while he feels a flush creep up his own neck.
“Ah . . . bits of unknown history.” Khosa moves them onto her lap, making room for him in the bed. He joins her, though he is still in his dayclothes, not wanting to spurn the invitation.
“I find it hard to believe any history is unknown to you,” Vincent says, grabbing a sheet at random.
It is true that his wife’s knowledge of Stille’s history rivals even his own, though she was raised in the bucolic village of Hyllen. Her Keepers had found it prudent to sharpen her mind as much as possible so that other shortcomings might be overlooked.
“Even I can’t know what is written in books kept from my hands,” Khosa remarks, trading the scroll she holds for another. Vincent is about to ask for an explanation when a hastily scribbled line on the page he has catches his eye.
Dagmar’s corpulence has become so great that the attendants were required to grease the sides of his soaking bath to remove him from it today.
“Dagmar?” Vincent’s brows come together in confusion. “He was my seven-times-great-grandfather, much renowned for how he sat a horse. No beast could carry such a load as they describe here.”
“Perhaps his better days were in the past,” Khosa says, glancing over. “Do you know how he died?”
“Wasting sickness,” Vincent says, a lesson learned well, now repeated verbatim. “He secluded himself in a wing of the castle to spare his family the sight.”
“Or . . .” Khosa lifts a sheet from a pile beside her, already read. “He drank himself into oblivion and destroyed whatever rooms he inhabited during fits of rage, one of which ended with him falling down the stairs of the leeward wing and breaking his neck.”
Vincent takes it from her hand. “Where did you get this?”
“The Curator,” Khosa tells him. “It seems that the histories of Stille exist twofold: the versions we are taught, and the truth of what actually occurred.”
“This one seems recent,” Vincent says, reaching for a freshly inked page before she can stop him.
The young King Vincent is a regicide, his mother a murderer, though none would call the deed badly done.
“Quite recent,” Khosa says quietly. “I did not mean for you to see it.”
“What harm can there be in my seeing it in writing?” Vincent asks. “I know well what I did.”
And though he strives to keep his voice light, he knows his wife’s ear catches the strain. There is weight in the ink at his fingertips, a dark realization at seeing his name linked with villainy. He will not be able to stand at the elbow of future Stilleans and detail the calumny of his father: the women who paraded under Dissa’s nose, the unwanted advances toward Dara and his own wife, Khosa. Unless . . .
“Is there much written of my father?”
“Much and more,” Khosa says, indicating a pile near the window. “Though I’d advise lighter reading.”
“Such as?”
“You may appreciate this one.” Khosa hands him a sheaf, edges brittle with age. The lettering is dark slashes, written in frustration.
Every Arrival Day Runnar’s measurements are taken, and every Arrival Day he blots the ink and pens measurements more suited to his grandiose sense of self. I record here his actual height, weight, and various other body parts, for posterity.
“Filthy fathoms,” Vincent says, eyes scanning the columns. “Runnar was shorter than I am!”
“Other body parts?” Khosa repeats.
“Yes.” Vincent feels the flush that had subsided surging again. “The Scribes are very . . . thorough.”
“And?” Khosa glances at the sheaf Vincent holds, quick eyes making short work of what she sees there.
“It appears that I am the bigger man.”
To Vincent’s surprise, Khosa giggles. He made such jests in her presence before they were husband and wife, finding her appreciative of ribald humor. But given the pristine state of their marriage bed, he has stopped, not wanting her to find some buried complaint within his words.
Perhaps he erred in this, he thinks as he watches Khosa return to her reading. The friendship they shared before marrying has stumbled beneath their careful handling of each other, politeness taking precedence over familiarity. And while he wishes Khosa could be his wife in more than name only, he regrets that their marriage has made words between them stilted, the bones of their friendship rickety.
“Tides,” Khosa says, catching her tongu
e between her teeth as she finds something particularly interesting. “Apparently your Runnar was quite the son of a sea-spine.”
“How so?” Vincent takes the page she offers him, but something other than his ancestor’s actions gains his attentions.
The Given has produced an heir, though it be male. It has been left for the Feneen.
“Khosa,” he says quietly, fingers brushing against her sleepshirt. She glances up, traces of their shared laughter still on her lips. Vincent watches as her mouth falls into a straight line.
“A male Given,” she says to herself. “How can that be?”
Vincent only shrugs. “How is Runnar remembered as a benevolent ruler, standing tall among men?”
“Yes, but . . .” Khosa’s hand goes to her mouth to gnaw upon a fingernail, a habit he remembers well from watching her work over tide calculations. “In order for the line to be unbroken, this Given would have to provide a female heir.”
“Perhaps she did, at a later time,” Vincent says. “Or maybe this marks the end of the blood of one of the Three Sisters?”
“It could,” Khosa agrees. “The histories I know share only that the lines other than my own ended, not how. But still . . .”
She continues to stare at the parchment in her hands as if the ink there may liquefy again and change shape, taking on a form more amenable to her previous teachings. “A male Given?”
“Left to the Feneen,” Vincent adds. “Could the child still live?”
“Doubtful,” Khosa says. “The other lines failed long ago; the child would have passed time out of mind.”
Vincent does not mention that if he had lived, the male Given could have produced heirs of his own. Khosa is quick enough to know as much without him saying, and with Ank firmly planted on the side of the Pietra, they will find no answers to questions down that path. She blows out her bedside candle, all their shared laughter now mere echoes in the dark room. The queen slips off to a troubled sleep, but the young king allows his candle to burn as he lies motionless, still dressed, not able to unsee his own deeds set down by quill, and wondering what has yet to be written about him that may need to be hidden.
CHAPTER 19
Khosa
Khosa wakes to the sound of the sea, with her face pressed against the iron bars of her window, limbs smacking frantically against the stone to reach what her body desires most.
In her mind, she screams for Merryl to help, to pull her away from the call of the tide and what waits for her beyond. But only her mind screams for survival; the rest of her is determined, dancing toward the sea no matter what the obstacles. Stone, iron, even the mauling of her own flesh is inconsequential once the dance has begun.
It passes, as always, and Khosa slides to the floor in exhaustion, fresh bruises blooming on her arms and legs, the tender skin of her face swelling from where she bashed her head against the bars. Blood trickles from her lip, and she sucks it away before she cries for Merryl, knowing the sight will upset him.
She calls out, but her voice is weak and inconsequential. Khosa crawls toward her bedside table, knocking aside a pile of the hidden histories she had so carefully stacked the night before. With the last of her energy, she wrenches the table covering away, bringing a pitcher of water, her bedside lamp, and a stone etching of the Stillean lands to the floor with a crash.
Merryl is through the door in an instant, his capable hands pulling her to her feet. Even though she knows he means only to help, she can feel his skin against hers, and her gorge rises. The previous night’s wine comes up, along with what little dinner she’d taken before diving into the hidden histories. Her guard is unshaken, settling her still-trembling body onto the bed and covering her with blankets before tending to his sullied armor.
“So sorry,” she manages to whisper, as he wipes himself clean.
The guard shrugs, tossing aside the dirty linen. “My little girl has messed me more than that, some nights. Don’t worry yourself over it.”
He pulls a footstool to the side of the bed. “Shall I send for the king?”
Khosa shakes her head, even the small movement draining her.
“I know you would not upset him, but he needs to be aware—”
“My husband knows I dance,” she manages to say, but Merryl only eyes her sternly.
“But does he know that you do so more often, and each time more violent than the last?”
Khosa drops her eyes. No, she has not told Vincent that her fits have increased, or that the last time the strength of her dance tore the bars from their stone setting when Merryl pulled her away from the window. He’d replaced it himself, once she’d fallen into stillness, sparing her the indignity of an explanation to the ironsmith.
“Khosa . . .” Merryl sighs. “I know you would not worry him, but I’m sworn to protect you from all that would do you harm. That extends to yourself.”
“I cannot help that I dance,” Khosa says, too weak to swipe away the tear that escapes.
“No, but you can help being as stubborn as a hay mule . . . my queen,” he adds as an afterthought, earning a smile.
“I have always been the greatest danger to myself, Merryl,” she chides. “Nothing has changed in that.”
“Some things have,” he corrects her. “Vincent is your husband, not only the royal blood of the land you would have perished for. He carries true feeling for you and would mourn not just the loss of a ruling queen, but of a wife, should I fail in my duties.”
Khosa is silent, her eyes drifting downward in the heavy lethargy that always follows a dance. “I know he cares for me,” she breathes. “I care for him too, in my way.”
“Aye, but you’ll not be the one left behind if you go to the water,” Merryl reminds her. “Your cares for him will cease, and him left to wonder what more he could have done for the woman he loves.”
Too tired to respond, Khosa manages a slight nod to acknowledge the guard’s point.
“I know it myself,” he goes on. “This helpless love for another. If there were something amiss with my child or wife, and one in my circle knew, and kept quiet . . . well, they’d sharply regret that choice.”
Khosa swallows once, the tears now sliding freely. “I hear,” she says. “And I will tell him . . .”
Merryl moves to pat her hand, then thinks better of it, rising to go. The door latches behind him before she finishes speaking.
“. . . when I am ready.”
* * *
The girl who comes to tidy Khosa’s chamber doesn’t blink at the fouled bedding, instead dropping the queen a conspiratorial wink as she rests in a fireside chair. Those who tend her have grown accustomed to the queen’s stone face, so Khosa is spared the need to manufacture the expression appropriate for a shared secret. Her Keepers trained her well, but only for the reactions that would be necessary in her short time as the Given: happiness, delight, joy, pointed interest. She was given no lessons on how a reigning queen should respond to a maid who believes she has discovered her sovereign is with child.
Khosa keeps her hands folded across her midsection as the girl changes the linens, removing the mess that Merryl’s touch caused. The queen watches as the girl tips her a curtsy, her eyes sliding inquisitively to Khosa’s lap. Once the girl tells the other servants that the queen has early-light illness, there will be no end to the fussing and hovering, when Khosa would prefer quiet solitude.
“Is there anything else you’ll be needing?” the girl asks.
“No, thank you.” Khosa waves the girl away, anxious to return to her reading.
She’d been enjoying herself the night before, and not only because Stille’s past is more checkered than most would believe, but because she had gained knowledge that few others hold. Even before Vincent joined her, Khosa had learned of tunnels not unlike the one leading into her library—she could call it hers now, as queen—which had been built to
serve everything from secretly moving lovers through the castle to growing a strain of igthorn that thrived on complete darkness.
“Or to hide a stray body,” Khosa says aloud as she spots Cathon’s writing at the top of a pile near her feet. She reaches for it, ignoring that her hand shakes as she holds it.
The Curator picks his nose.
“And lives to pick it still,” she says, discarding the slip of paper for another. Her fingers fall upon a bound manuscript, cording so loose that the pages fan as she pulls it onto her lap.
“Tides,” Khosa says under her breath as one breaks free, floating perilously close to the fire. She snatches it in midair and curses herself when it crumbles at her touch. Carefully, she smoothes what is left.
And so left Harta the sailor from Stillean shores, never to return.
Khosa chokes back nervous laughter at the echo from her conversation with Donil near the beach, but stops short as she reads it again.
“Harta the sailor,” she says carefully. In Stille no occupation is considered lowly. The sconcelighters and trapmen alike can bring concerns to the king and queen in person and expect to be seen. But a sailor is unheard of in a country where no boats are built, and the word is written hesitantly, as if the hand that held the quill was unsure of its spelling. Khosa slips the last page back into place before moving to the door.
Merryl falls into step beside her as she exits, eyeing the book clasped to her chest, its pages nearly wider than her shoulders.
“I need to unbind these pages,” Khosa says to him without preamble. “They are too brittle to be turned. Do you have a dagger on hand, by chance? Good. Also, fetch the Curator for me, please.”