“I don’t always bring you bad news,” Vylaena protested, giving Alaric a look of mock offense. “Besides, you’ll want to hear this. Especially with that potent weariness you’re carrying around like an overweight yoke.”
“Is that different from any other day?”
Vylaena narrowed her eyes, peering at Alaric’s chest. “This is new,” she replied. “It wasn’t here the last time I was.”
“Which was more than two months ago. What have you been up to, Vylaena Azrel? Sacrificing virgins and drinking calf’s blood, or whatever it is you Shadowheart do for fun?”
Vylaena smiled—a rare, warm smile. A teasing smile. “Don’t you read the King’s Paper? It seems I’ve been awfully busy.”
Alaric cringed, gripping the tub harder. “I had nothing to do with that. Father’s advisors control the scribes, not I.”
“Well,” Vylaena continued, meandering across the chamber to examine a hanging tapestry. It was a seascape done in deep, jewel-toned greens and blues that Alaric thought complemented her hair rather nicely. “Thanks to your father I can no longer walk the streets of Cyair without being arrested, which means I’m also unable to access my lynd. I’m here—not to make a report—but to deliver a message and earn some coin.”
She turned, fixing her queer, murky eyes upon him, all traces of humor gone. Alaric did his best to hold her gaze without squirming. “Do you know a man,” she asked, “by the name of Thyrian of Galiff?”
Alaric could barely keep his mouth from falling open. Thyrian? Could he . . . could he have . . . and she . . .?
Alaric’s face must have provided the answer Vylaena wanted, for she continued, “I pulled a sun-crowned warrior out of the carnage of that caravan the city’s been buzzing about. He must’ve found a way past the Guard and into Cyair, because I met him again last night and he hired me to give you this.”
If Vylaena were anyone else, Alaric would have ordered her out until he could dress and meet with her properly. But even though the woman approached him, one arm outstretched to hand him a folded piece of soiled parchment, he felt no embarrassment to be caught in such a vulnerable position. She was a woman, yes, but she was also Shadowheart. His nakedness was nothing to her.
Still. Sometimes he wished he had the power to make her blush.
Alaric accepted the proffered note and carefully unfolded it, his eyes widening as he scanned the cryptic, frenetic script. He glanced up at Vylaena, who watched him with an intense stare, her thoughts well guarded behind eyes of steel.
“It’s in cipher,” he said, holding it out to her. “Take it while I dry off. I need to retrieve the key.”
Alaric exited his bath with haste, scurrying into his bedroom to change into a clean tunic and pants. Then he and Vylaena met in his study, where he fetched a well-worn tome from one of the shelves and sat down to decipher Thyrian’s message.
Goddesses. If Thyrian truly was alive, he’d make an offering to Asta—no, to all three goddesses—this very night.
“Let me guess,” Vylaena said, watching as the prince checked a number on the note and then flipped through the pages of his tome, “Thyrian of Galiff has an identical copy of that book. Or stole one, seeing as his belongings were all burned. Funny. I hadn’t pegged him for a thief.”
Alaric glanced up only long enough to give her a sharp glare before returning to his work. “I’m not answering that. I don’t want to give you any reason to start intercepting my correspondence.”
Vylaena smiled—another genuine one. She was full of surprises tonight. “I’ve read more than my fill of soppy poetry, Alaric. I stopped reading your mail years ago.”
Alaric frowned at her, momentarily forgetting the letter before him. “What? That was one time! And I certainly learned my lesson, I’ll have you know. It seems the only women I’m interested in view sentimentality as some sort of horrible disease.”
Vylaena’s smile hardened into something more guarded—not precisely a frown, but something equally rigid. Alaric could almost sense her withdrawing from him, taking with her all the air in the room, though she didn’t move a toe.
“Besides,” Alaric continued hastily, “I should throw you in the dungeons for reading my mail.”
“You’re certainly welcome to try,” Vylaena replied, a hint of humor returning to the corners of her mouth. Alaric had always thought her lips were extraordinarily pretty; she had an expressive mouth that didn’t belong on an emotionless Shadowheart. If he wanted to try and guess what she was thinking, he knew to look there first.
It took Alaric a good ten minutes to decipher Thyrian’s message, and once he’d read it fully, leaning over the parchment with cautious eagerness, he turned to Vylaena.
“You were right—it’s him. And I must ask for your help.”
Vylaena looked at him from her post near the door, where she leaned, cross-armed and stone-faced, against a bookshelf. “My help has a cost.”
“Doesn’t it always?” He tried to keep the terseness from his tone but some of it slipped through.
Vylaena either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “What do you need?”
“I need you to take me to Thyrian and then get us both safely back to the palace.”
Vylaena blinked. Alaric watched as she mulled this over, her lips tightening ever so slightly. Her odd grey eyes churned, black and white fighting for dominance in the flickering lamplight.
“Why not send the Royal Guard?”
Alaric pursed his lips. She knew full well why not. “Father controls the Guard, not I.”
“And he can’t just walk up to the front gate and tell them who he is?”
“I wish it were so easy. But no; the Guard won’t speak to just anyone—let alone admit them onto palace grounds—unless they’re drowned in perfume and driving a gilded carriage. I doubt he’s in any condition to back up claims of his identity.”
Vylaena’s tone was cold. “That caravan was targeted specifically, and you want me to escort the lone survivor through Cyair? At night? With the crown prince in tow?” Her stare intensified. “Do you have a death wish, Alaric? If Thyrian is as important as he’s rapidly appearing to be, he’s certain to have a bounty on his head. I’m surprised the man’s survived this long on the streets, even with his sun-crowned Mark.”
“Good thing you’re Shadowheart.”
Vylaena let out a hard breath. “I want two thousand lynd. Hard gold, not a transfer or a letter of credit.”
“Fine.”
Vylaena’s mouth twitched. She was likely surprised he’d agreed so readily and wished she’d named a higher sum. “Fetch that little knife you call a sword, then,” she ordered. “And put on a cloak—black, with a hood, if you have one. If you’re so eager to be reunited with this man, we should be on our way.”
9 | The Ether
It was painfully easy to leave the palace undetected, even with the prince slowing Vylaena down. He’d stayed quiet, at least, even though his eyes had widened and his mouth had shriveled into a thin line when she’d whisked him out of his bathing room window and onto the tiled roof, to a secret door hidden in the side of an old guard tower. Vylaena had constructed the door herself, in fact—back when she’d first started working as the prince’s eyes and ears in the city.
She wasn’t exactly an accomplished judge of character, but she’d studied Alaric long enough over the years that she didn’t fear his giving up her secret path. She knew he felt alone enough in that castle that he’d hang onto any link to the outside world out of subconscious desperation. He wouldn’t risk it disappearing.
The crude door opened to a long, curving stone staircase that spiraled into the depths of the castle proper. Vylaena didn’t wait for the prince—what other choice did he have but to follow?—and hurried down the crumbling steps without a backward glance. Their footfalls might’ve echoed in the empty, stone-walled space if not for the cheap, patched carpet Vylaena had painstakingly stitched together and lain atop the stairs. And so the only sound was the soft,
careless rustle of Alaric’s breathing.
Darkness enveloped them the moment they turned their first full circle. But Vylaena didn’t need light—she knew precisely how many steps it took to reach the bottom. Once they had, and Alaric had hissed an apology for bumping into her, Vylaena crouched and felt for the handle of the trapdoor concealed beneath the last edge of rug.
“Hood up,” Vylaena whispered as she pulled the door open.
They lowered themselves into a small, empty chamber that smelled of dust and old air. A thin line of golden light traced the foot of a solid oak door with an oversized doorknob.
Vylaena went to the door at once, unlocking it with a tiny key she pulled from a concealed pocket. She pulled the door open a crack, peering into the room beyond, and then turned to Alaric.
“Quickly,” she ordered in a low voice.
✽✽✽
Alaric followed her through, finding himself surrounded by tall shelves filled with old green-glass bottles and thick, dusty cobwebs. Vylaena locked the door from the outside this time, then tugged on Alaric’s sleeve.
“There’s usually a token guard somewhere in the cellars. He’s often passed out—likes to sample the wares—but let’s try to avoid him nonetheless.”
Alaric nodded, following as Vylaena led him through the wine cellar, marveling at row after row of bottles. He hadn’t even known they had a cellar just for wine. But then again, wine came when it was called for, and he’d never really wondered much more than that.
The thought embarrassed him. I must be better than this, he told himself. Enserion needed him to be. He needed him to be. But how to remedy his own ignorance, he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t even leave the palace without permission from the king.
Well. He supposed that wasn’t entirely true. Not tonight, anyway.
They encountered no guard, passed out or otherwise, and instead turned into an adjoining corridor lit sparingly by flickering torches. It smelled musty here, too—and the stones beneath Alaric’s feet were littered with old rushes and dirt. There were no windows, and it was eerily silent. Alaric could hear nothing apart from the tap of their boots against stone—no laughter from a flirting courtier, no yelling of guardsmen at the sparring rings, not even the tell-tale sounds of one of the trade rooms: the whirring of the looms or the clanging of the blacksmith’s hammer.
“Are we still in the castle?”
Vylaena shot Alaric a look that clearly meant I’m not in the mood for questions. But then she nodded. “Beneath, actually. Servants use this passage to get from the castle proper to their dormitories ’cross the way. Helps in bad weather—haven’t you ever wondered why you’ve never seen a maid in a soaked shift, even though it’s been pouring for two days straight?”
No, Alaric hadn’t wondered. His embarrassment grew. How could he ever hope to run a kingdom when he didn’t even understand how his own house was managed?
His thoughts were cut short when Vylaena slowed, stopping before another nondescript door. She pulled the same tiny key from her pocket and unlocked this door, too, pulling Alaric inside with her.
“Merciful Yrsa,” Alaric choked, lifting his hand to his nose.
The servant’s passage, Vylaena had learned upon her first arrival in Cyair, ran directly next to an old sewer line that had been bricked off when new pipes had been installed fifty years prior. It had only been a matter of boring from the new system into the old, and then installing the door. It had cost Vylaena a good bit of lynd, but it had proved useful in the years she’d been living in the city.
“I should’ve asked how you always got in unnoticed,” Alaric murmured, impressed by her handiwork. “I underestimated your cleverness . . . and your tolerance for the smell of piss.” He followed with slow reluctance as Vylaena set off deeper into the sewer, a shadow of amusement pressed against her lips.
✽✽✽
The Deeps was no place to bring the crown prince, but with Alaric’s hood low over his face and the glint of cold steel at his hip, he just barely passed as one of its patrons. The sewer muck decorating his plain leather boots certainly helped with the misdirection. Still, Vylaena kept her eyes open and her hands ready for any sign that one of the tavern miscreants recognized him.
A cursory scan of the crowded room showed no sign of Thyrian, and a quick word with Skin informed Vylaena that he’d not been seen since the night prior. So she had little choice but to push Alaric into one of the private alcoves and wait.
“If anything happened to him . . .”
Vylaena eyed the worried prince with a pointed glance. The melancholy in his chest prodded her with sticky fingers. “If he survived that caravan,” she pointed out, “then he can survive a few nights in Cyair. Even the Assassin’s Guild has only one or two sun-crowned warriors, and I don’t know of any mercs around here with the Mark. If he’s truly blessed by the goddess then Asta will keep an eye on him.”
Alaric’s face was pale, even in the murky, yellowish light. “I feel . . . I’m not certain he’s going to come here tonight.”
“Your Knack?”
He nodded.
Vylaena was beginning to suspect she should’ve negotiated a more substantial reward for this job. “He said he’d be here,” she replied. “Let’s give him some more time.”
But the night slipped past. It was hard to tell how long they waited, being underground and too far from the city bells to hear them toll. But when the crowd started to thin and Skin disappeared into a back room to count the night’s lynd, Vylaena turned to Alaric.
“He’s not coming. And we need to get you back to the palace before someone notices you’re missing.”
“No,” Alaric said, his lips thin and his face haggard. He clenched a fist atop the table. “No—I know where he might be. Or at least where he might’ve been staying. And if we can’t find him there, one of the priestesses might be able to tell us where he—”
“The temple?” Vylaena hissed, drawing back. Rutting Ether. She’d not stepped foot in a temple in . . . well, she couldn’t even remember. And that was a very purposeful choice.
“Yes,” Alaric replied, his features hardening with resolve. “I’ve met Thyrian only twice, but we’ve written for years and I consider him a close friend. I know he takes solace in Asta’s guidance. If Thyrian were to take shelter anywhere, it would be at her temple.”
Vylaena opened her mouth to protest, but the prince had already slipped from the booth.
Rutting Ether. She scurried from her seat and trailed Alaric as he climbed the twisted staircase back to the main sewer, then stopped him with a firm hand on his shoulder.
“We can come back tomorrow, Alaric. Or I can. You can’t wander the city all night; someone will notice you’re missing from your rooms.”
“Vylaena, my dear, you’re the only visitor I’ve had to my bedchambers in years,” Alaric teased, though his voice was flat. He rubbed his star-born Mark, a flourish of copper lines that swept over his brow, with one hand. His eyes were clouded; for a moment Vylaena thought they glowed faintly, like the last vestiges of a setting sun, but she blinked and the illusion was gone.
“This is the path I must take,” the prince said at last, turning from her. “Leave if you wish; I can find my own way.”
As desperately as Vylaena wanted to avoid the temple, there was still the matter of her lynd, and she wasn’t going to get paid if her employer got himself killed. She took a hard breath and strode forward to catch up with Alaric, who’d already wandered down the channel.
“Fastest way is to the west,” she snapped. “If you continue on that way, you’ll run yourself into Mad Oryn’s territory, and he’d just as soon cut off your thumbs as invite you to tea. And my price has gone up three hundred lynd.”
Alaric merely nodded.
It took them nearly half an hour to reach the temple square. They climbed through a street grate into the filmy haze of predawn starlight, emerging into an alleyway opposite the great Cyair Temple.
The temple itse
lf was a magnificent structure: forged of actual etherstone some untold centuries ago, it was one of the rare structures in Enserion—or even in all of Aethryl—built to last. No touchups or tweaks, regardless of its building material, were required to keep the building whole. Vylaena had often wondered if that was in part due to the presence of the goddesses themselves, who’d been known to enter such holy places through the body of a willing host. The thought made her frown.
Vylaena knew Ikna would hold sway at this hour, and she didn’t welcome the sight of the temple as it stood at nighttime: shining and black as obsidian, seemingly made of one single rock sculpted to perfection by a master artist. The structure and ornamentation were spiky and harsh, with towering spires that practically pierced the sleeping sky. It was something born of nightmare, something Vylaena might have glimpsed in the ether-riddled shadows of the Elderwood. Twisted and menacing, its front doors a gaping maw of darkness, Vylaena was not surprised to find they were the only people in the vicinity. Very few ventured to the temple while the sun slept beyond the horizon.
“Come on,” Alaric hissed over his shoulder. He’d already started climbing the entryway stairs.
Vylaena pursed her lips, debating whether it would be better to cut her losses and run. The thought was quickly doused by an irritated prick of anger. It was only a building. A building made of etherstone, and in its nocturnal manifestation, yes—but still just a building. And she would not show weakness in front of the prince.
Vylaena held her breath as she crossed the threshold and stepped into the dense darkness of the temple, an eerie chill washing through her. For a moment the darkness was so complete she almost drew her sword, fearing an ambush. But then a bleary light, ice-white tinged with blue, blinked into existence, like a nocturnal creature opening its eyes at the appearance of its long-awaited prey.
The main chamber was barely discernible; the harsh white fires that burned on iron sconces in a double line down the center of the nave made little headway cutting through the blackness. She could see the wide, dark blue aisle runner beneath her boots and the severe, straight-backed iron pews to either side, but the cold light did not penetrate the darkness any farther than a few feet in any direction.
Ether-Touched (The Breaking Stone Trilogy Book 1) Page 8
