River Secrets

by Shannon Hale

  “So either the murderer was careless or deliberately placed the body so the Tiran would discover it before we did.”

  “It’s odd, isn’t it? I mean, if you want to kill a fellow, why not employ a sword? What kind of person murders by burning?”

  As soon as Razo spoke the words, he wished he had not. He squatted and fussed with some rocks on the ground as though looking for something very important and not the least concerned.

  “Yes, who burns?” Talone’s blue eyes stared at him as if right into his head.

  “She wouldn’t….”

  “She has before.” Talone’s stoic expression was betrayed by a line of worry in his brow. “I hope not. I hope it was not our Enna.”

  Razo was remembering the sounds of weeping in the night. No, listen, he was on fire… was coming after me…. And Finn: The man in your dream isn’t real…. Could Enna have done this in her sleep and not known? And if so, whom had she burned? But no, Finn lay each night before Enna’s tent. She could not wander away without waking Finn.

  Razo looked at the body, his skin squirming. No drag marks, which meant it had been dumped. It would be too heavy for Enna to carry, but not for Finn.

  “What are your thoughts?” asked Talone.

  “Nothing, I have none,” he said quickly. “I’m just wondering what we do now.”

  Talone sighed, and it had a mighty sound to it. “We send the body down the river before the Tiran see it.”

  Razo and Talone removed their tunics, wrapping up their hands before lifting the body by ankles and wrists and flinging it into the river. It was frightening to behold how quickly the white torrent grabbed it and pulled it out of sight, how perfectly the water hid all signs of death.

  “I hope you make it to the sea,” whispered Razo.

  Though he was never comfortable with his skinny torso bared, Razo could not make himself put that tunic back on until he could wash off the death touch. He walked back to camp with Talone, his arms crossed over his chest. Wind tickled his skin.

  “Don’t do anything on your own,” said Talone. “Keep your eyes open, and come to me with anything you discover. I’ll do whatever needs to be done.”

  Ahead, Razo saw Enna sitting cross-legged on the ground, jabbering to Finn about something. She was wearing a tunic and skirt dyed dark green, her black braids pinned up to keep her neck free. Razo knew she hated it when her hair touched her neck. She also hated having dry fingertips, music without drums, and potatoes without salt. He knew Enna as well as he knew his own sister and liked her just as well.

  Whatever needs to be done.

  What would Talone do? Razo whispered a wish that Enna was not burning again.

  4

  Thousand Years

  That evening, the Tiran party made camp across the road. Razo stayed out of the way, bored by all the diplomatic nonsense as Talone and Megina formally greeted Captain Ledel, leader of the Tiran escort, and Lord Kilcad, the Tiran ambassador.

  “Look at them, Razo,” said Conrad. He was of middling height and lean, his face innocent with freckles, all belying the fact that he was a deadly good grappler. “Don’t they look well rested? And bathed, too? Probably moseying along while we killed ourselves to get here on time.”

  At the word killed, Razo could not help glancing at the spot by the river. Puddles of moonlight filled hollows in the river sand.

  In the morning, half of the Bayern turned north to accompany the ambassador, Lord Kilcad, into Bayern. Talone’s group continued south with Captain Ledel’s men, who were there to make certain the Bayern were not harassed while crossing Tira. Or that was the official reason. Razo saw the icy malice in many Tiran soldiers’ eyes and thought it would be a miracle if the group could make it to Ingridan without bloodshed.

  At night, Razo set up his bedroll near Enna’s tent and trained himself to awaken at the least sound. Once he heard her sob at things from her dreams and Finn soothe her back to sleep, but that he could tell, she did not leave her tent.

  A morning two weeks from the border, a Bayern camp worker, a girl no more than thirteen years, was pouring water on the breakfast fire when two hulking Tiran passed by. The pot slipped in her hands, splashing water on their boots.

  “Trying to get my attention, are you?” said the fiery-haired Tiran. He looked around, as if making certain his captain was not near, then grabbed the girl’s wrist and yanked her closer, whispering something in her ear.

  “Let off!” The girl struggled, beating her fist against his chest.

  “You should be flattered,” said the larger soldier, laughing. “You’re too ugly to deserve the attention.”

  Finn was the first one to spring forward. He shoved the Tiran, freeing the girl from his hold, and put himself between them. His hand was on his sword, but he did not draw it yet.

  A moment later, Enna was beside him. “Apologize to her, or I’ll teach you manners that’d put your mothers to shame.” The Tiran laughed. “I said apologize, you filthy, fungus-breathed, privy-licking—”

  “What did this Bayern call you?” asked the bigger Tiran.

  “You heard fine,” Enna said slowly, her glare crackling mad.

  The orange-haired Tiran’s voice was like grinding stone. “No Bayern woman insults me.” He pulled a dagger from his boot.

  Razo had stayed put until then, leaving the interfering to those more capable, but there was a Tiran with a dagger, and Enna might burn it from his hand and reveal herself as the fire-speaker, or she might do worse.

  Razo leaped forward. “Take a deep breath, everybody.” He eased himself between Enna and the Tiran. “Let’s just—”

  There was a tweak in Razo’s side as if someone had pinched him. He looked down and saw the hilt of the dagger sticking out of his body.

  Sounds and sights and feelings began to twist together, turn upside down: Enna saying, “Razo, Razo”; the larger Tiran running away; the stab-happy lurch just staring at his hand; a breezy pain zipping out of Razo’s middle, tingling all over his body; the air silty as a riverbed in his lungs. He saw the blood, his blood, and just before he fainted, he thought, Good thing my brothers aren’t here to laugh.

  For a few days, things were murky, though that may have had something to do with the sappy substance the camp cook and surgeon kept shoving between Razo’s lips. The bitter flavor clung to the back of his throat and made everything he ate taste like ashes.

  “Will it leave a scar?” Razo asked the cook when he felt well enough to sit up in the back of a wagon.

  “Without a doubt,” he said.

  “Not in Ingridan yet and already a scar,” said Razo as Enna and Finn rode up beside the wagon. “That doesn’t bode well, I say. And you two’ll be next.”

  “We don’t have your luck,” said Finn.

  “At least you won’t have to worry anymore about dagger boy,” said Enna. “Captain Ledel relieved him of his rank, weapons, and clothing and left him to starve days from the nearest village. Pretty harsh, I thought, for just tickling you.”

  “Ha.”

  By the time Razo could ride his horse, Bee Sting, again, the Suneast River had split into a massive delta, forming dozens of smaller rivers, and in the long stretches between their banks, barefoot farmers planted in fields so dark, they oozed greenness. As they rode forward, Ingridan stood up taller and taller on the horizon. All the buildings were white, all the roofs red, and the sameness reminded Razo of an army in uniform or some fluffy, frosted dessert that gushes out of its bowl. He liked the idea of the dessert better.

  “Where’s the ocean?” he wondered aloud.

  “You cannot see it from this vantage.” A Tiran soldier with hair so pale that it was nearly white rode up beside him. He had removed the blue jacket of his uniform and rolled up his tunic sleeves. Razo wondered if Captain Ledel, who was a terror for order, would notice and reprimand him, but the soldier did not seem worried. He reached out his hand. “I am Victar, third son of Assemblyman Rogis.”

  Razo hesitated b
efore shaking his hand. “I’m Razo.” That did not seem like enough. “Sixth son.” Victar appeared to expect more. “Of my ma in the Forest.”

  Victar had a pleasant smile. “With so many sons, it’s no wonder you are a professional soldier. I as well may have little to inherit and must earn my own way.”

  “Inherit?” Razo laughed. “That word’s too fancy by half. In the Forest, everybody’s just as poor as everyone else.”

  “You are very open to admit as much. In the city of rivers, only the dead can close their mouths, so the saying goes. If it crosses my mind, I might reveal what you just said in any tavern or barracks.”

  Razo shrugged. “Go ahead, though I don’t know who’d care.”

  Victar kept riding beside Razo and appeared disposed to chat, so Razo learned that to be considered for an assembly seat, one must be a noble and have land worth at least four hundred thousand gold fulls (which Razo gathered were a type of coin). When he inquired where Bayern’s Own would be housed in Ingridan, Victar spoke of Thousand Years.

  “The prince’s palace. Its full title is the Palace of the Power That Will Stand for One Thousand Years, so named by the prince who built it.”

  “And has it?” asked Razo. “Stood for a thousand years?”

  “We won’t know for another seven hundred.”

  “Victar!” a Tiran soldier called, anger twitching his face. Razo recognized him as the one who had run away from the stabbing. Razo laid his arm across his belly.

  Victar lowered his voice and barely moved his lips. “That is Tumas. He was close friends with the disgraced soldier who wounded you, and I heard him rant that it was your fault, that you thrust yourself on the blade on purpose.”

  “Ha, that’s lovely. I’d hope I’ve got more sense than that.”

  “But a man like Tumas won’t hear reason. He is not an easy foe, Razo. He has many friends and they will try … Just, avoid them, if you understand me.”

  “Great, already the Tiran want me dead.”

  “Not all of us. Good luck, Razo.”

  Victar waved farewell as he rode ahead, and Razo waved after him, then felt ashamed, naive, to have been friendly at all. Just a year ago, Victar was someone Razo might have tried to kill in battle. What a strange circumstance, how unsteady it made the road feel. He patted Bee Sting’s neck.

  The road spilled into a broad, paved avenue coursing through the center of the city. Half the Tiran soldiers led the way, and the remaining ten brought up the rear, like jailers herding convicts to the gallows. Ingridan citizens eased out of shop doors and leaned from upper windows, arms folded, gazes hot.

  They crossed the avenue’s second bridge, this one spanning a river four horses wide. Razo liked the rivers, blue tiles covering their banks, giving them a smooth, clean look.

  Every few blocks, crowded tenements and grand palaces pulled out of the way of paved squares. Often there were trees, though nothing like the wild, deep Forest that Razo knew. These trees rose slender from planter boxes, their foliage trimmed round on the bottom and pinched off at the top in the shape of a candle flame. Others wore their greenery in perfect balls and shook glossy leaves and tiny white blossoms, their odor claiming both tangy and sweet flavors at once.

  Razo was peering into a courtyard’s turquoise-tiled fountain as he rode by when something struck him on the cheek.

  “Go home!” A group of boys a few years younger than Razo stood in the square, their hands dripping with soggy pieces of orange fruit. Razo wiped the pulp from his face and flicked it at the back of Enna’s hand.

  “Ew,” she said, shaking it off.

  Another fruit whizzed past their heads, making Enna alert. A third might have hit Finn, but a wind blew it curiously off course, and it slammed into the nose of Tumas, the Tiran soldier directly behind them. Enna was careful not to smile, staring to the side with an extremely proper expression.

  “Good shot, Enna-girl,” Razo whispered.

  Tumas cursed at the boys.

  “What are you going to do, blue jackets?” One of the boys planted his feet and raised his fists. “You lost us a war, and my fists bet you’ll lose a street fight.”

  Tumas wheeled his horse out of formation and cantered at them. The boys pulled their bolder compatriot into an alley, and Captain Ledel ordered Tumas back.

  Razo was not particularly eager to keep the seething soldier as a foe and offered him a friendly grin. “My ma used to soak her hands in fruity water. Maybe it’s good for our skin?”

  “The first chance I get…,” said Tumas in the hollow manner of one always congested. He sniffed and rode ahead without finishing the threat, leaving Razo to imagine.

  The avenue merged into a broad crossroads, and at last they caught sight of the palace. It nestled between two rivers, far behind iron gates, and proclaimed its magnificence not with towers or banners, but simply by its immensity. Razo counted four stories, forty-four front-facing windows per story, and guessing there were two other wings with a large courtyard in the center … he calculated in his head, a trick Talone had taught him for estimating enemy troops from the number of wagons or tents.

  “How big?” asked Finn.

  “Averaging three windows per room,” said Razo, “I would guess over five hundred rooms in the main structure, not including outbuildings, barracks…”

  “That’s too big,” said Enna.

  “… stables, gardens and gardener shacks, separate servant quarters, and I’d guess a dairy, animal workers, a mill, all self-sustaining—”

  “What do you do with five hundred rooms?”

  “It’d only make sense in a siege, though those gates aren’t built for sieges, only really useful for keeping out the riffraff.”

  “Bayern’s capital was made for defense,” said Finn, “but Ingridan assumes it’ll be doing the attacking.”

  Razo slowed Bee Sting as they neared the gates. “Once we’re inside, d’you think they’ll just…?” He ran his thumb across his throat.

  “They can kill us just as easily in the street,” said Finn.

  “Let ’em try,” said Enna. “I’ll gut their city first.”

  That thought did not comfort Razo much.

  The group halted beside a stable as several Tiran emerged from the palace. They wore tunics with a skirt, or leggings for the men, and a swath of loose fabric wrapped around their chests and over their shoulders, all the cloth white, pale blue, or peach. Used to the vibrancy of Bayern dyes, Razo thought the lack of color indescribably boring.

  A man in a white robe introduced himself as Lord Belvan, head of forces at Thousand Years. He wore his graying hair slicked back, which drew more attention to his beak nose but also gave him an open, honest aspect.

  “I hope to see this arrangement work, Lady Megina,” he said. “We lost many good people in that conflict. Let us bury our dead and keep living.”

  Razo wondered why the prince was not there to talk about peace. Surely Isi and Geric would be the first to welcome the Tiran ambassador at the Bayern palace gates. Razo shrugged internally. His ma always said that fancy folk were as peculiar as pig bladder balloons and not quite as fun.

  A flicker of orange color teased Razo’s attention.

  “May I introduce Lady Dasha,” Lord Belvan said, indicating a girl of about sixteen years. “Her father, Lord Kil­cad, is Tira’s ambassador to Bayern, and while he sojourns in your country, she has agreed to stay at Thousand Years and act as liaison to your people.”

  She had orange hair. Razo had never seen anyone with that hair color except that swine who’d stabbed him on the journey, and the swine had not been nearly so pleasant to look at. She was wearing a pale peach cloth wrapped around her dress, and her legs were bare at her ankles but for the leather straps of her sandals. If Lord Belvan said anything else, Razo did not hear it—he was completely mystified, or embarrassed, or perhaps enthralled, by those ankles. He had never seen a girl in public with naked ankles before. Now he wondered why. Were ankles bad? Those ankles di
d not look bad. A mite bony, perhaps, but ultimately intriguing.

  He twisted to swat at a fly and found Tumas staring at him, though in a much more uncomfortable manner than he’d been looking at the girl’s ankles. He nudged his mount a little closer to Enna and Finn.

  A bath and change of clothes later, Razo sat at the welcoming banquet, trolling his fork through his plate, hunting for something appetizing. Everything was fish. Even the leeks and onions were steeped in fish sauce that was thickened with honey until it was cruelly sweet. He bit into a purple vegetable so sour that it made him suck in his cheeks. The thought of home felt emptier than his stomach.

  And to irritate him further, there were no chairs. Apparently it was Tiran fashion to lounge on pillows at a banquet table and eat with one hand, but Razo did not lounge so much as sprawl. Finn slouched. Enna sulked.

  As soon as they could get away, Razo and Finn sneaked with Enna to her chamber in the palace. Though the rugs and bedclothes were made in drab, unhappy colors, Razo still thought it much more comfy than the barracks where he and Finn were housed. Razo had spent years under one roof with five snoring brothers and was not eager to relive the experience.

  “It’s a strange city, no mistake,” said Razo the fourth night he and Finn camped out on Enna’s floor. “In Bayern, it feels like the city wall was built to keep the Forest from marching back in, but Ingridan forgot there was ever anything but city. The only bits of dirt I’ve seen are the fighting circles near each barracks. Still, you’ve got to admit that paving everything keeps it clean—”

  “I don’t have to admit anything,” said Enna.

  Razo sighed. In the past, Enna had been treated vilely by a Tiran man and apparently still had not healed from it. Razo could not help wondering if that old hurt might not provoke her to do stupid things. To change the subject, he brought out a dry plum cake he had swiped from the dining hall. When Enna pestered him to fetch some milk to wash it down, he threw a pillow at her face.