by JA Andrews
“I don’t suppose you could teach me to see that?”
Sini shrugged. “I don’t know how I do it. I’ve always been able to.” She held up the finger with the ring. “But for this, I will put serious thought into figuring it out.”
“All it does is heat things up.” Alaric’s voice sounded almost apologetic. “But I figured if we could get a ring to help you light a candle, then we can expand on the idea in the future. Make it more versatile.”
She held her hand out, moving the ring slowly, watching the trail of auburn light.
It was a doorway flung open to the world. Everything inside her shifted toward it. The power that had been trapped blinked at the light. She blew out a long breath. There was a path between herself and everything else. The energy that had been chained inside her like some starved prisoner stirred and shifted into the light. Instead of a meek, weakened creature, a fierce being of beauty and strength stepped forward and spread wings of light.
“It’s the greatest thing ever made,” she whispered.
Alaric let out a relieved breath. “I wasn’t sure it would work. I couldn’t test it without you, but I remembered you had some like it when you first came from the Sweep.”
“I broke those in the elder grove,” she held up her hand to admire the garnet. “If you funnel too much vitalle through them they break.” She smiled at him. “I’ve missed them ever since”
The smile he gave her back was more of a wince, and it occurred to Sini what he had done. He’d created a burning stone. Trapped living energy into an inanimate gem. Officially the Keepers didn’t approve of that sort of thing. It crossed a boundary.
“Do the others know you made this?”
He gave her a half smile. “I’m pretty sure that you, Will, and I are the only Keepers with an understanding of burning stones. I knew you wouldn’t be against it, and there really wasn’t anyone nearby to consult with.” He rubbed at his face, and she was struck again with how tired he looked. “I’m sure when I do, I’ll get some disapproval. Of course, when Will realizes that stones can help move vitalle, he’ll probably ask me for his own.”
Sini considered the ring. Gerone would be concerned that she was using a burning stone. Mikal appalled. Even the Shield might not be thrilled with this solution. “Everyone is right, aren’t they? The Keepers are changing.”
Alaric let out a long breath and ran his hand through his hair. “It feels that way sometimes.”
“Are we changing for the better?”
Alaric shook his head. “I don’t know. But I hope so.”
Sini blew out the candle again and lit it. She grinned at Alaric. “I don’t care. This is the greatest gift anyone has ever given me.”
Alaric pushed himself out of his chair. “I know what it’s like to desperately want to do something you feel like you should be able to do. You have amazing powers, Sini. I think we should keep looking for ways for you to make paths by yourself, but in the meantime you shouldn’t be stranded with no way to use your vitalle. Just in case someone really is trying to harm Keepers.”
Chapter Eleven
Alaric left and she knelt by the fire, pulling together a pile of kindling. She experimented, lighting one splinter of wood, then two at a time. She tried two pieces a fingerbreadth apart, then a handbreadth. The stone was perfect. Held inside it was just enough energy to change vitalle into warmth. Any energy she funneled into it came out in a copper cloud of heat looking for something to warm. If Alaric had made it well, and it seemed like he had, it would last for years.
She played with the flames until she ran out of kindling.
The silence of the room was glorious, and she scooted back until she leaned against the nearest chair, watching the fire dwindle and rubbing her thumb along the new ring.
Eventually the events of the day crowded in, and she replayed parts of the council in her mind. The palace sprawled away past the walls of her room, so different from the peaceful valley of the Stronghold. She missed the open feel of it.
The red cloak that she’d worn from the Stronghold hung next to a black Keeper’s robe. Maybe if she wore that, Madeleine would treat her with more respect. She snorted. Madeleine would probably just point out that the robe didn’t fit Sini well, which was too close to the truth. Wondering if Alaric would encourage her to start wearing it anyway, she grabbed her red cloak and left her room, finding the stairs to the roof above their wing. She stepped out on a wide, flat patio, railed with crenellations. A guard stationed along the wall took note of her before turning back to his watch.
The night air was crisp with the bite of fall. Most of the city stretched out to the south. Torches lit the wider street that still moved with people who hadn’t made it home yet. The bulk of the palace lay south, as well, ablaze with torchlight. Torches ringed the outer walls, illuminating soldiers patrolling, and lit pathways through gardens. Other rooftops held braziers of fire and knots of people.
She cast out, feeling the energy of all the people and all the fires. She spun her ring, contemplating all the things she could do, now that she had it.
Sini wrapped her cloak tighter around her and walked to the northwest corner. Ahead of her a small wedge of the city filled the area between the palace wall and the city wall, and her gaze ran across it without stopping. The city wall snaked down into a shallow valley. Up the far side rose hills thick with vineyards and sprawling estates.
Sini let her attention sit on the specks of firelight scattered through those hills before the weight of the flatness in front of them pulled it down.
The Lees.
It was darker there than inside the city wall. The torchlight burned with more smoke and less warmth. Unlike the straight, wide streets of Queenstown, the alleys of the Lees jutted at odd angles and wound into dead ends as though they’d been crumpled by a giant fist. She found a large burnt-out house that she recognized and tried to trace the streets away from it into familiar directions. But it was too dark and the way too convoluted.
Her chest tightened. Her family was somewhere in that maze of alleys, or they had been eight years ago.
Early on, after Vahe had taken Sini from her family, she’d imagined they’d taken the money she’d stolen from the wayfarer and moved into a small house in a neighborhood where trees grew and there was enough food. It gave her comfort, as Vahe dragged her farther from home, to think she’d taken from him enough to at least give her little brothers a better life.
But the older she’d gotten, the more of her parents’ wasted opportunities she remembered. The dull suspicion that Vahe’s money had also been wasted curdled inside her. Her father would have drunk away the money and made his family miserable. Her brothers would have felt nothing but the absence of the little bread Sini had stolen for them each day.
After all this time, after all the vast distances she’d traveled, the Lees were still the same. It’d be foolish to think her family wasn’t.
A glint of auburn from her ring caught her eye. She slid her hand across the smooth surface of the palace stones and the gem left a thin trail of light. Beneath that ring, her hand was still the same one that had stolen bread among the rough walls in the Lees and slaved away in the grass of the Sweep.
Maybe it was also foolish to think she’d changed. Maybe she didn’t belong here anymore than she’d belonged anywhere else.
The door from below opened and the guard greeted someone, but she didn’t bother to turn. The wind picked up, flicking the ends of her hair against her cheek. A chill ran across her neck, and she wished her hair was long enough to cover it.
Steps approached behind her and Sini turned, ready to tell the guard that she required more time alone, but she stopped when she was met with a stiff bow from Roan.
He was quite a bit taller than she was, and a few years older, in his mid-twenties. His grey clothes struck her again as not quite the uniform of a guard, but so stiff they might as well be. He greeted her with a polite “Good evening,” before stepping up to the wal
l beside her, looking out toward the Lees, his hands clasped behind his back. “Mind if I join you?” There wasn’t any question in his question.
Sini turned back toward the wall, her surprise almost chasing the irritation out of her voice. “Who am I to tell the future king no?”
“I’m not the future king,” he corrected her. “Thankfully. I’m only the future lord consort. The line of succession will pass from Madeleine to our children.”
“Well,” Sini said, setting her elbows on the wall, and wishing the lord consort would go pester someone else, “if I’d known I was talking to someone with such meager prospects, I would have told you I do mind, seeing as I came up here for some peace.”
Unlike his reserved responses in the council earlier, he smiled at her words.
“You can’t find peace in as public a place as the guarded private roof above your own private wing.” He leaned onto his own elbows next to her. “For true privacy I suggest locking yourself in your own room or hiding in a remote corner of the library.”
He didn’t say anything else, and Sini let the silence drag on for a few moments. While more relaxed than earlier, he was watchful. He closed his hands into loose fists as though he didn’t trust his fingers to remain still.
She spun her ring more forcefully than before. “What is it you want, Lord Roan, the Not-Future King?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she knew she’d gone too far. The kindness of the old men at the Stronghold had put her out of practice in talking to people who took station and rank seriously.
But he just laughed. He felt nothing like the man from earlier. “The queen has ordered me to protect the Keepers. Alaric I’m familiar with, but I know little about you or Will.”
She waited for him to say more. When he didn’t, she pressed her own mouth closed. It was always like this here, being examined. She was hardly going to help him figure out what the new female Keeper was like. If he had a specific question, he could ask.
When he spoke, it was merely a statement. “I found your conclusions about Lukas from your map work to be interesting.”
“Really? Because you challenged everything I said.”
“I found them incomplete,” he said bluntly. “I found your grouping of events misleading. You were merely using the information to track your lost foster brother, instead of figuring out what a man who is a threat is doing.”
Irritation flared at the accusation, and she matched his bluntness. “So my map work was interesting, but not scholarly.”
He still showed no annoyance at her tone, which was almost irritating in itself.
“You were right earlier in saying it is dangerous to simplify your enemy,” he said. “We should not consider only the aspects of Lukas that show him to be our enemy.” He glanced away from the city and took in her defiant look without emotion. “But I wonder if you are not doing the same thing, only seeing him as your brother.” The edge of his mouth quirked up. “Surely he is more complex than that?”
The day had been too long. She wanted to keep a little lightness in her voice, but it seemed too much to ask. “Am I supposed to believe that you and I are friends and you’re just here to chat with me about my poor research skills?”
Roan looked out toward the dark hills. “Friendship seems like too much to expect after a few hours’ acquaintance, but I hope at some point you will think of me as a friend. And Madeleine as well.”
Sini pressed her lips shut against the answer that sprang to mind.
“We all love Queensland and want the best for it. That puts us on the same side.”
His voice was irritating. It bordered on smug. As though she were just expected to agree with everything he said. “Funny. It didn’t feel like we were on the same side in the council.”
“Feelings are deceptive,” he said dismissively, and her annoyance flared stronger. “Madeleine and I want a strong Queensland. We’re against anything that weakens it.”
“Like Keepers?” Sini demanded.
Roan stood and faced her, folding his arms across his chest. “You have to admit that the Keepers aren’t at full strength. Of the six still at the Stronghold, two are dying and one is only capable of caring for the animals.”
“You know nothing about Rett,” she snapped.
Roan held up his hand to stop her. “Everything I’ve ever heard about him says he’s a good man. But you can’t tell me he’s an asset to Queensland like a Keeper should be.”
Sini clenched her mouth shut. Her hands curled into fists and her fingernails dug into her palms.
“I’m not disparaging the man.” He sounded sincere, if still pompous. “But if you take out those three Keepers we’re left with the Shield, Gerone, and Mikal. We all know Mikal has no interest in coming back to court, Gerone would rather care for the Keepers at the Stronghold, and the Shield…he hasn’t left that valley in forty years.”
“But he is in constant communication with the queen. And if he left the Stronghold, he would lose access to the library. Which he consults often.”
Roan looked unimpressed. “The Keepers here are Alaric, who’s about to become a father with all the distractions that entails, and Will, who’s just biding his time until he can leave court. Possibly to go to the Sweep and look for a woman.”
“And don’t forget me,” Sini snapped. “Who’s too young to be helpful.”
“You are young.”
She bit back the obvious response that she was only a handful of years younger than him, and no younger than Madeleine at all, since even in her own mind it sounds petulant.
“And your time on the Sweep means that you haven’t trained with the Keepers as long as most young Keepers who come here. So you can understand our hesitancy.”
“Because only time spent being trained among the elite of Queensland can produce a worthwhile education?”
Roan considered her calmly. “Correct me if I am inaccurate in my understanding of your history, but you had no formal education at all before joining the Keepers. Few lowborn girls attend school, and how much could you have learned from the barbarians on the Sweep?”
“Those barbarians taught me to read and write both the common tongue and runes. From the clan chief I learned politics, warfare, history, literature, and magic.”
Roan raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize you admired the Roven so much.”
“I didn’t say I admired them. There are many things in their culture I dislike, slavery predominate among them. But writing them off as uneducated barbarians is insulting and unwise.”
She waited for a harsh answer, but he considered her words and gave a thoughtful sort of hmm. “And before the Sweep, while you lived in Queenstown, did you receive any education?”
“I didn’t live in Queenstown.” Sini flung her hand at the dim buildings over the wall. “I lived in the Lees.”
“The Lees are right there against the wall. That’s part of Queenstown as much as the hills and vineyards beyond it.”
She stared at him. He was an odd mix of highborn pretentiousness and measured consideration, and it mollified the indignation that was all too ready to flare up in her today. “There’s more difference between the Lees and Queenstown than there is between…say…a lord consort and a slave. It’s its own small world. The city guard doesn’t bother with it since it’s outside the wall. There isn’t enough money in the whole place to feed a tenth of the people in it. They’re forgotten and ignored, left to their own devices. They care nothing for dukes or queens or lord consorts. They haven’t heard of Madeleine, nor would they care about her if they had. They have no loyalty to anyone but themselves, because no one else is going to see that they eat.”
Roan turned an indignant look on her. “The crown has several programs to help the Lees. Food donations, labor projects.”
Sini snorted. “The crown deals with corrupt overseers who pocket the money and hire the work out to their friends. When the donations of food come, they’re scooped up by the street bosses and kept for
themselves.”
He frowned. “There have been four schools started there, at the expense of the crown.”
“I lived there for twelve years. I never went to school a single day, nor knew anyone who did. The school building nearest me had so many rooms it was used as a brothel. I did my best to never pass by it.”
“We’ve hired three teams to update the roads, rebuild the central square, and clean out the city fountain.”
Sini laughed. “I don’t know what the city fountain is like now, but it was where my mother did her laundry. It didn’t clean the clothes really, but it took out most of the smell.”
Roan turned to look indignantly into the Lees. “Everything we’ve done is wasted?”
“They assume it’s the government’s job to waste things.”
He turned toward her, his brown drawn. “What would you do to help it?”
“I…I don’t know. It needs more than food or education. Or even money. Those are all part of it, but they need something more. The Lees has no faith in itself, no hope. It needs a reason to be more than it is. It’s missing…heart.”
Roan looked at her for a long moment, then turned back to the dimmer patch of the world that held the Lees. His face was set in an irritated frown. “Tomorrow I want to discuss this with the queen and Madeleine. Be thinking if you have any specific ideas.”
Sini tapped her lips, considered his words for a moment. “Why are you driven to do this?” She gave him a wry smile. “Love of country?”
“As unimaginative as that sounds, yes. The moors of Gringonn sit along the southern border of Greentree and the poor from there come into Queensland all the time, searching for a place of safety for their families. The moors are lawless. The government of Gringonn is too weak to exert any control over the north. Small warlords have free reign there, and the power struggles between them destroy the lives of the common people. Having a strong central government keeps the common people safe. Or it should.”
“Having a strong government quite close to the Lees isn’t keeping it safe.”
