by Shannon Hale
Then the food arrived, and Razo was distracted from dread—pork skewers, bowls of sweet onions, cucumbers, and watermelon deliciously chilled. Would that the assembly renewed session every night to celebrate with such a feast.
“Ingridan food isn’t so bad,” he said. “Or am I just getting used to it?”
“You’d eat a plate and call it pleasantly crunchy,” said Enna.
Finn just nodded. His mouth was full.
Razo’s idea of paradise was a place where the pigs ran around already roasted, and that night he wondered if he might actually be dead. The pork was tender in the middle and seared on the outside, the chunks of fat crispy. It almost brought a tear to the eye.
Razo was on his ninth skewer when the chief of assembly called out for music. Dasha complied, sitting on a cushion in the center of the hall, a harp on her lap, and coaxed a song from the strings. Razo stopped eating. The music jabbed and tugged as though she plucked at his organs. It seemed a lullaby, but one that made the hairs on his neck feel like pressing needles. He hated for it to stop.
How could she know which string she touched with her eyes closed? Razo stared, fascinated, until Talone approached Razo’s table and knelt behind Megina.
“Lady …” He spoke just loudly enough that Razo could catch his words if he leaned forward. “Lord Belvan just informs me that his men found two burned bodies outside our barracks. They have taken the bodies away from Thousand Years to be buried secretly.”
Razo’s eyes roved the room—Ledel’s men back from the country and lounging at their banquet table, Dasha at her harp, Belvan near the prince, and the assembly members in white tunics crossed with red sashes like long scratches on pale skin.
“Thank you, Captain.” Megina’s voice was steady but full of breath. “Lord Belvan must indeed be a champion for peace.”
“As well, he told me something curious—a merchant complained about a ruckus in the warehouse district during the festival yesterday when all business should have been halted. Belvan’s men investigated this morning and found the place empty but for heaps of freshly burned crates. They know of no reason for the oddity.”
Maybe it’s not a fire-speaker, thought Razo. Maybe the murderer’s burning his victims in a warehouse bonfire before tossing them outside our barracks.
“Captain, was Lord Belvan able to identify the bodies?” Razo asked.
“No. And though he hopes to keep the public unaware of it, he’ll have to report to the assembly. We have just two weeks before they vote about a return to war.”
Razo set down a ceramic mug, cracking the handle, and realized he was spitting angry. Why kill? Just to frame us? And who’s the burner burning? Murders don’t make sense. Why not just cause random fires and blame them on Bayern? Why go so far as murder? His head felt bloated and throbbed with too many questions. So what that he knew who had ink-stained hands when he could not shake anything into sense?
While most of the banqueters stretched and staggered out, Razo lingered over watermelon rinds and dishes of minty honey crystals. He was keeping an eye on Dasha, who after chatting with two ladies in the hall at last strolled his way.
“Hello, tree rat.” Dasha sat beside him and began to pick through the remains of the feast. “I wondered when you were going to come talk to me.”
“You did?”
“Mm-hmm,” she said as she finished a slice of cucumber. “You do drag your feet. I have been away for weeks and weeks, and all you can do is sit there and stare.”
“I wasn’t staring at you….”
“You weren’t? I thought you were.” She studied an empty bowl. “So you were ignoring me.”
“No, I wasn’t.” His head felt even thicker than before, and he rubbed his eyes. “I was looking at you a lot, just not, you know, staring, necessarily.”
“And …?”
“And what?”
She sighed. “And what did you think?”
She wants a compliment, he thought, pleased that he was catching on so quickly.
“And you look really pretty with your hair up like that, prettiest girl in here tonight.”
Dasha’s smile took a long time spreading from one corner of her mouth to the other. “So, you were looking. Well, thank you, but I meant, what did you think about the song I played?”
Razo stared hard at the short rope of pearls around her throat, commanding his face to be still, not to show any color, not to betray his utter humiliation with so much as an eyebrow twitch.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “You look as though you’re in pain.”
“Just a strained … toe. Ahem. Anyway, that’s what I meant, that you looked pretty while playing the harp. You sounded pretty.”
“Thank you.” She hooked a finger in her pearls, the action reminding Razo to look up. “I wanted to talk to you about the Bayern and how the situation has been over the summer. Do you have time tomorrow morning?”
“Yes,” said Razo without hesitation.
“I thought we could go riding through the heart.”
“Good,” said Razo, thinking that riding in a public place would be safer.
“On second thought, how about by the ocean?”
“You’re right, that would be better,” said Razo, now realizing that anywhere too public might be even more dangerous. He straightened for whatever she might say next, and no matter what it was, he was ready to agree.
Then he went cold, as if all his blood drained out of him from his head through his boots. He was ready to agree. No matter what she said. She has people-speaking.
Isi had told him about people-speaking, how it was a talent like Enna’s fire and wind speech. He had been around people-speakers before—they were charming and persuasive, yet they planted an uncomfortable sensation in Razo’s mind, made him itch where he could not reach. And they had been safe only once they were dead.
“Perhaps if you liked we could—”
“I, uh, I should go,” he interrupted, standing and knocking an empty platter to the floor. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Razo scuttled away. He had barely fled the uncertain lamplight of the banquet hall for a dark corridor when a hand grabbed him and pulled him against a wall.
“Pela,” said Razo like a sigh of relief. “I thought you were Tumas at first. What’re you doing?”
“I baked this special for you.” Pela stood close to him, holding a pastry in both hands. She smiled, her two bunches of yellow hair bobbing.
“Uh, thanks, but I…” He was about to make an excuse why he could not take it, but she looked so much like a rabbit, cute and pathetic at once, he could not bear to hurt her. “But I don’t have anything for you. But thanks.”
He examined it as he walked away, and despite having just gorged at a banquet, his stomach burbled gleefully. It was his favorite kind of turnover—flaky crust, pears and syrup oozing out, with some dark red berries he’d never seen before. He raised it to his lips but stopped. Somehow accepting a gift from lap-sitting Pela felt like lying behind Dasha’s back.
Probably her people-speaking power over me, thought Razo. He was passing by the kennels and tossed the tartlet to a large brown dog, who snapped it out of the air and gulped it whole.
The next morning, Razo wheedled Finn and Enna up early, begging their company, and they followed him to the stable, yawning, pillow marks still imprinted on their cheeks. They sat on their horses and waited at the Bayern stables for Dasha.
“Enna, you’ve spent more time with a people-speaker than I have—”
“Ick. I really don’t want to think about that. Ever again.”
“I know”—Razo craned around, trying to spot Dasha among the early-morning errand runners—“but if Dasha’s one of them, then it might explain how she’s able to move the bodies around, you know, persuading others to do stuff for her. She doesn’t seem like a murderer, but the people-speakers I knew can seem so friendly and innocent and pretty and—”
“Hello!” Dasha rode up on a
gray stallion, her orange hair in two neat braids. She wore white trousers with her tunic, and her lummas was dyed a dazzling Bayern turquoise, making her eyes appear the same bright color. “Are Enna and Finn joining us? What fun! I brought plenty of victuals”—she patted a basket tied behind her saddle—“so shall we go?”
She tapped her mount forward. Razo glared at Bee Sting when she followed without a prompt.
They rode through twisting side streets, Dasha begging details of what the city had been like during the blistering summer months. Razo could not speak fast enough, could not leap forward quickly enough whenever she wanted a thing, and could not pass Finn and Enna enough meaningful looks over his shoulder.
They were sitting on a blanket in the sand, watching the surf stroke the shore, when Dasha held up her hands and laughed, as pleased as a fish in a stream. “I am stickier than a stickle bush, I’m so drenched in peach juice.” She hopped up to rinse off her hands.
“So, am I right?” he whispered as soon as Dasha was beyond earshot.
Finn shrugged.
“There’s something wrong with her, no doubt,” said Enna.
“I knew it!”
“No, no, I mean something else. … Ugh, I wish I were better at wind-speaking. Isi would be able to tell. I don’t think she’s a fire-speaker. The heat is different around her, somehow…. But nothing makes me think she’s a people-speaker. What makes you—”
“How could you miss it? Just the sound of her voice makes my chest feel tight, and my face gets hot and my mouth goes dry whenever she’s near. It’s getting so bad, all I have to do is see her and I’m already thinking, What does she want? What can I do for her? She’s got some power over me, there’s no question, and what else could it be?”
There was a heavy pause, then Enna burst out laughing. Finn smiled at his boots.
“What, what?” Razo looked back and forth wildly. “What did I miss?”
Enna rolled her eyes. “This is delicate, and I’ll admit that I’m not at my best when things are delicate.” She stood and stretched. “I’ll go help Dasha scrape off the stickiness. Finn, would you…?” She gestured at Razo with her head.
“What is it?” Razo asked when Enna was gone. “If you and Enna knew that Dasha was an enemy all along and kept me ignorant for your own amusement…”
Finn balked at speaking, even more than normal, and kept running a finger on the inside of his collar as if his shirt scratched his neck. “It’s just … have you thought, Razo, that maybe what you were talking about isn’t because she has people-speaking, but might be that you’re, you know…” He looked at Razo hard, his eyes unblinking.
Razo was about to explode with impatience because he did not know and this game was getting dull and … then he knew. The thought rushed him like wildfire hitting an autumn wheat field. He felt his face burn, and he shook his head casually as if he did not know, then wished he had not, because Finn was forced to actually say it aloud.
“…falling in love with her.”
Razo’s voice stuck in his throat. He coughed. “I…uh, that’s just, that’s…”
“I found another in my saddlebag!” said Dasha, returning with a fig-and-egg cake in hand.
Enna was behind her, and whatever expression Razo had plastered on his face made her turn her back and double over in hysterics.
“Are you all right?” Dasha’s look skipped to each person. “What did I miss?”
“Didn’t you hear it?” asked Razo with some pressure in his voice. “Enna just let out some serious gas. That was coarse, Enna-girl, and not funny a whit.”
Finn snorted once as though trying very hard not to laugh. Enna’s chuckle stopped short, and she glared back at Razo.
Razo shrugged, his mouth miming, “What?”
Only when the party was mounted and returning up the beach, Finn and Enna in the lead, did Razo let his attention return to Dasha. She was watching the sea, her gaze lost where the horizon was misty. With the conversation hushed, the sound of waves pierced him again as it had the first time, whispered an ache of loneliness, made him feel full of secrets. The way Dasha watched the water, he thought she would understand.
In love. That’d be just my luck.
Razo grumbled to himself as he stabled Bee Sting and ambled back to the barracks. There was a commotion around the kennels, and something was lying on the ground. Razo thought if it was another burned body, he might as well cut his own throat. As he neared, he heard one man say to another, “Dead. Just up and died in the night. Wasn’t even sick yesterday.”
Razo slithered through the throng and saw—it was a large brown dog.
17
Daggers in the Assembly
Four days after the death of the dog, Razo paced outside the barracks. He had not returned to the pastry kitchen and had so far avoided Pela, though lately everything he ate tasted a little off. He hoped it was just his imagination. Now Thousand Years was abuzz with the gossip that two of Ledel’s men had deserted after the last feast day. According to Ledel, the men had been enamored of a group called Manifest Tira. With new blood in their ranks, Razo suspected Manifest Tira would creep out and bite soon.
He should try to chase them down. But how? Were they the burners? Was Dasha involved? And how could he find out without hanging around her and confirming to Enna and Finn that he really was infatuated? The problem became harder and crunchier the longer he chewed, and he feared he might crack a tooth on it.
“Hello!”
Startled, Razo took two steps back, his heels hit a stone, and he fell on his backside. Dasha stood over him, as pleased as if she were looking at a litter of bunnies.
“I scared you! I never scare anyone.”
“No?” Razo hopped back up and adopted a posture that said he was completely unruffled, never had been, and in fact was ready to do something manly like lift boulders or swallow live worms. “You frighten me regularly.”
“Would you say I’m terrifying?” She lifted one eyebrow.
“Alarming, at the very least.”
“Oh, good.” She hooked her arm through his and began to walk, easily knocking his composure off its feet, until he noticed that her shoulder was touching the top of his arm and he could see the part in her hair. He was taller than Dasha. His gait turned into a swagger.
“And where’re we going?”
“The assembly. They asked for Lady Megina today, and you’re the first Bayern I came across.”
“Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know, but when the chief of assembly calls, you don’t dawdle.”
It was past midday when all the Bayern gathered, entered carriages, and made the slow, bouncy ride into the heart. The scene around the assembly was calm and quick in the supple heat of early autumn, the sky a bottomless blue. The ambassador promenaded across the plaza, smiling and waving. Razo felt raw and exposed, missing the protection of the prince.
The door guard outside the assembly collected swords, daggers, and slings. A Tiran man pushed his way in front of Dasha. He was perhaps twenty years old, with hair cut short, his robes sharply white. Razo took him for some assembly member’s aide who had taken too long on an errand. When the door guard asked for his weapon, the man held up his arms to show that he wore no sword. There appeared to be something darker than his white robes at his waist beneath his lummas, but Razo decided it was just a fold in the fabric.
Talone ordered Enna to stay with half of Bayern’s Own outside. He did not trust the assembly door guard to keep back any armed fanatics who might try to come in after the ambassador. Finn, Razo, and the Own’s best grapplers, including Conrad, accompanied the captain inside.
The walls of the assembly were curved, high windows piercing the white stone dome. The sixty assemblymen and -women in white robes and scarlet sashes sat on rows of steps that wrapped around the chamber. When the door minister announced Megina, the current debate paused. All faces turned to see the Bayern, then outcries arose like birds startled from a wheat fi
eld.
“Something’s not right,” said Talone, reaching for the sword that was not there.
The chief of assembly stood in the speaking circle at the lowest point of the room. “Quiet, please. Lady Megina, why have you come?”
“Lady Dasha gave me a message, saying you requested my presence.”
“I am here, honored chief,” said Dasha, stepping forward. “The message came from your aide, Tophin, just after the third bell.”
“I apologize, Ambassador, for your inconvenience,” said the chief of assembly, “but I sent no message.”
“How odd. But as I am here, may I take this opportunity to address the assembly?”
The chief stepped aside, offering the circle.
“Lady Megina, we should go,” Talone said in a low warning.
“We have less than two weeks before they vote,” Megina whispered. “I can’t pass up this chance.” She began to descend the wide, shallow steps.
No sooner was she beyond Talone’s reach than two men rushed forward, coming between the ambassador and her guards. One shoved Talone, knocking him back against the steps. Razo reached for the man, his fingers just grazing his tunic. The other man had already gained the circle, and he pulled a short dagger from his side, seizing Megina around her waist.
Talone hollered, and the Bayern leaped forward. The first thug pulled his dagger and shook it at them.
“Stay back! We will speak, and you will hear us or she dies.”
It was the young man who had pushed through the line. Razo cursed his own stupidity. The assassination of an ambassador was something even those Bayern eager for peace would not be able to ignore.
“This assembly is disgraced by harboring enemy spies and kissing our brothers’ murderers,” said the first villain.
They were walking Megina up a set of stairs, apparently seeking a wall at their backs. Razo scanned the chamber. When the ambassador and her captors reached the top, they would be directly below a ledge. Razo started toward it till he glimpsed Talone with Conrad and another grappler, climbing a pillar. Razo stayed back, thinking he would only get in their way.
