Godfire

by Cara Witter

  Daniella nodded a bit too quickly, and Jaeme paused a moment longer, trying to think of something to say, anything at all to make things easy between them again. But Jaeme had a sense that things had stopped being easy—and not just because of the daunting task they had ahead of them. And if he thought too long about the matter, he was frightened at what other feelings he might discover, beyond relief.

  Daniella opened her mouth to say something, but stopped again when Jaeme squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll see you later, then,” he said, and headed off to search the market for a courier who spoke Sevairnese or Mortichean.

  He looked back at the shop only once, but when he did, he found that Daniella had stepped outside, watching him go.

  Forty-three

  Daniella stood at the front of the river boat, watching the looming mountain on the inland stretch of Tirostaar grow ever closer. Cliffs rose on either side of them, cliffs that, ahead, contained the capitol city of Tir Neren.

  They were really doing this; she was really doing this. They were going into what was possibly the most defensible palace in all the Five Lands—and maybe even one of the most well-guarded ones, if Saara’s estimate was to be believed—and they were going to steal a god right out from under the queen’s nose.

  That was the plan, at least.

  The reality was that there was a rather high chance they would all be caught and killed.

  New bearers will be called, she reminded herself. There would still be a chance her father could be stopped.

  But the thought of new bearers only made her feel ill. She’d been traveling with these people for weeks now, and though they all seemed far more, well, human, than she’d expected the bearers to be—and much more prone to petty arguments and eye rolling—the thought of losing any one of them sickened her.

  Nikaenor, so kind and optimistic and trusting, with his wide boyish grin. Sayvil, loyal and quick witted, always ready to defend Daniella against Kenton’s barbs. Saara, who often came across as cold, but who was fierce and driven in a way Daniella admired.

  And Jaeme.

  Daniella’s grip on the ship’s railing tightened. She didn’t want to think much on Jaeme, about how he’d seemed to want to say something to her before he and Saara left early this morning to take a different boat to Tir Neren. How he’d paused in the hallway of the inn after Saara had already gone down the stairs. He’d cleared his throat and met Daniella’s eyes, and something felt stretched between them, something uncertain and fragile. His lips had parted.

  Then they closed again, and the moment was gone. That half smile he used to charm strangers was back on his face, the one that didn’t quite reach his eyes. The one she hadn’t seen directed at her in weeks, replaced by a smile she now recognized as more genuine. He gave her a quick nod and left, without either of them saying anything at all.

  She was loath to admit it, but she missed him, even after so short a time. Daniella had been fairly convinced that she could never be herself around a man after Erich, but Jaeme had an easy way about him, a way of making her laugh and share stories of her own in response to his lively tales. He had turned out to be nothing like the womanizing sycophant she had taken him for back in Drepaine; indeed, he seemed as unimpressed as she was by the trappings of social power. A player in the game, but one of the few who knew all along that that’s all it was.

  If there was something between them—a thought she both feared and increasingly craved—could things be different with him than they’d been with Erich? Could she be different?

  She didn’t have answers for these questions. Better for both her and Jaeme, surely, if there was never reason to answer them at all.

  The wind picked up as the boat passed between the cliffs, though it was blowing the wrong direction, slowing their movement. The captain barked an order to add more wind charms and adjust the sails to compensate.

  As Daniella watched the sailors climb the rigging to the sails, she saw Sayvil emerge from below deck. The wind whipped the woman’s black hair around her face in a way that made Daniella grateful she’d thought to put hers up in a braid.

  Sayvil joined her at the railing, and the two stood in silence, the sandstone cliff ahead rising higher and growing in detail, the sun reflecting off thick striated layers of reds and browns and dull gold.

  “Are the others coming up, too?” Daniella finally asked. “Surely they’ll want to see when we enter Tir Neren.”

  “Kenton thinks a nobleman would be above being impressed by such things,” Sayvil said. “Which means that Perchaya, as his noble wife, also has to be. In reality, I think he’s still practicing speaking condescendingly to Nikaenor.”

  “He has to practice that? Condescension seems to come so naturally to him.”

  Sayvil smirked. “Well, he has to practice doing it in Mortichean.”

  Daniella smiled, though it was hard to be truly amused with those knots in her stomach getting tighter and tighter as they approached the capital city.

  Jaeme and Saara should be hiding in the city by now, waiting for their part.

  If they hadn’t already been caught.

  Daniella forced herself to breathe slowly, steadily. She flinched when she felt Sayvil’s cool hand on top of her own.

  “We’ll make it,” Sayvil said. “We’ll get the stone, and Kenton will be insufferable about how he was right.”

  Daniella squeezed Sayvil’s hand, though she still wasn’t used to such gestures of friendship. Was Sayvil really her friend? Perchaya? She thought so.

  She hoped so.

  “I appreciate that,” Daniella said. “But how can you be so sure?”

  “Because Kenton is always insufferable.”

  Daniella laughed, and the knot in her stomach eased the slightest bit.

  Sayvil grimaced as the wind whipped her hair into her face once more, then removed her hand from Daniella’s to hold it out of her eyes. “I suppose when you wanted to break out of Peldenar so desperately, you didn’t imagine you’d be running headlong into this.”

  This. Sayvil surely meant the sheer madness of their purpose here in Tirostaar, but there was more. Being a witness as prophecy was fulfilled, prophecy that had only ever been a scholarly exercise to her. A life separate from her father, from his strings and snares. Or at least as separate as her life could be while he was surely in pursuit. Seeing cities and lands that had only ever been real to her in books. Friendship, maybe. With Perchaya and Sayvil and Nikaenor, at least. With Jaeme.

  Or maybe Sayvil meant all of that, too.

  “No,” Daniella said softly, the wind stealing her words away the moment they left her lips. “I didn’t imagine any of this.”

  The two women stood against the railing as the river wound its way into the gap between the two looming cliff faces and they entered the city of Tir Neren.

  Daniella had read about the city, of course, and her Tirostaari tutor had told her of it—a whole city built into the cliff faces, with homes and markets and industry, all stacked on top of each other and deep into the rock. She thought she’d been able to picture it, but the reality was something else entirely.

  The city was built into the cliffs, the two sides facing each other across the wide, boat-filled gash of the river. But this was no mere warren of caves scattered across the rock, people poking out of them like so many gophers in a garden.

  The city was beautiful.

  Though it had been created by human hands, Daniella could not fathom how. Instead it appeared as if the gods themselves, in the prime of their power, had walked among the rocks and shaped them, taking the jagged cliff face and molding it into dwellings with ornate entrances, framed by carved columns of stone. Shops nestled into the stone beside what appeared to be the front of large manor houses. Stairs ran in jagged paths from one level to another. Even the stairs felt natural, as if the cliff itself was beckoning its peop
le ever higher.

  At the upper levels of the city, balconies jutted out from the larger buildings. Silk banners draped from some, multicolored glass baubles dangling from others. Many larger balconies were filled with lush green gardens, with flowering vines spilling over the edges.

  People, so tiny from this distance but colorful in their bright silks, filled the walkways along each level. Driving goats up the stairs. Calling to each other across balconies. Hoisting supplies using a system of rope pulleys attached to the rock face.

  In the air above the river, dozens of large kites sailed across the divide. Couriers, maybe, and city guards, patrolling their domain. As they neared the palace, there would be palace guards up in the sky as well.

  Tonight, Jaeme and Saara would be among them.

  Daniella tore her gaze from the implausible contraptions that suddenly seemed too fragile, too unpredictable, despite how Saara had said she’d used a guard’s kite to escape from the palace.

  “No tidbits to share about the city?” Sayvil asked, as if she, too, had been so caught up in the sights of the city that she’d forgotten they could talk as well as stare.

  Daniella considered. “The palace took over two hundred years to build. It goes the deepest into the cliff face of all the buildings in the city, and deeper into stone than any other known inhabited structure in all the Five Lands.”

  Sayvil frowned. “And we get to go all that way inside. It’s a good thing none of us are claustrophobic.” But claustrophobic or not, she didn’t look particularly thrilled with the notion of being underneath so much rock.

  For her part, Daniella didn’t think any place could feel as stifling as Castle Peldenar, no matter how deeply it was buried.

  More orders from the captain sounded out, and sailors rushed about tugging on ropes and pulling in sails. The boat listed to the side and approached a stone dock jutting from the cliff face. As they drew closer, the sailors threw heavy ropes to waiting workers, who tied them to the cleats. The boat shifted and groaned as it gave a last tug against the ropes and anchor holding it in place.

  Sayvil drew in a breath. “Time to check on the others.”

  But before either of them could do more than take a few steps toward the cabin, Kenton emerged from below, holding out a hand to help Perchaya up.

  Apparently, Kenton’s noble disinterest in the city was overcome by his inability to sit around doing nothing for a moment longer than necessary.

  “My lord,” Sayvil said with a small curtsy and head incline. “My lady. Should I have Nikaenor bring your baggage up?”

  “He’s already fetching it,” Perchaya said, her voice a little too clipped. “Thank you.”

  As far as Daniella knew, Sayvil had little experience with ladies-in-waiting, but she had settled into the role as comfortably as any good play-actor. Perchaya and Kenton, however, appeared much less comfortable in their respective roles. They both wore the fine clothing they’d bought in Pendarth for this purpose—fashions cut in a style that wouldn’t have been terribly out of place in southern Mortiche, but which made use of Tirostaari silk and bright glass beads. Nobility coming to visit another country often purchased clothing there, to both show respect for their hosts and to bring back the latest fashions to show off to their friends and enemies back home.

  On the surface, it worked. But Kenton kept picking at the gathers of silk around his wrists like he wished he could take one of his hidden daggers to the fabric. And Perchaya walked too stiffly in her wide skirts, the way young noblewomen practiced before their debuts, before they’d settled into walking gracefully without effort.

  Not that Daniella herself was particularly good at playing the noblewoman, despite the numerous attempts by her governess to teach her. But years of watching the nobility at parties and functions had given her a keen eye to spot the way they carried themselves—the confidence and, well, entitlement they projected as naturally as breathing. Even someone like Jaeme, who disdained politics and social climbing, still inherently exuded that air of nobility in his movements and stance, in the way he looked at the world.

  Kenton and Perchaya clearly didn’t, and Daniella could only hope this wasn’t as immediately obvious to the Queen of Tirostaar as it was to her.

  We just need to fool them long enough to get into the palace and have a meeting in the throne room with the queen. That’s all.

  Much of which would come down to her playing her part well.

  That thought wasn’t overly comforting. Being a translator while shopping in Pendarth was a far cry from doing so during parts of the plan on which their lives depended.

  Nikaenor started bringing up the trunks, looking only slightly put out that he was stuck doing this by himself. Like Kenton and Perchaya’s clothes, the trunks themselves were part of the pretense—nice, leather-tooled trunks large enough to contain several days’ worth of gowns and other finery, though they really held the group’s packs and worn travel clothes, as well as the things they’d picked up in Pendarth.

  Kenton glared at the city around him like it personally offended him by keeping the godstone out of his reach. At least his glare of superiority rendered him more noble-like.

  Daniella was just about to discreetly tell Perchaya to stop using the wide boning of the skirt around her hips as a hand rest, when four men began walking up the planking from the dock to the boat. The three in back were dressed rather plainly in loose pants and short boots, with fitted yellow tunics with green embroidery, the colors of Tirostaar. The one in front, though, his dark hair hanging long around his clean-shaven face, was clearly a high-ranking official of some sort. He wore an elaborately-patterned stole draped over his shoulders, which hung down past the flared ends of his fitted coat. Beads attached to the end of the stole caught the sunlight and scattered little dots of multi-colored light across the ship’s deck as he approached.

  He carried himself more like a noble than either Kenton or Perchaya, even though he was surely the steward, sent to welcome them.

  Daniella sucked in a breath, praying that all her years of study of the Tirostaari language wouldn’t disappear in a fit of nerves, and took a step forward.

  Not surprisingly, the Tirostaari official paid her little attention. He stopped farther back from Kenton than she would have expected, at least until she remembered that Tirostaari considered it rude to stand too close to a stranger until the traditional niceties had been exchanged. He bowed his head sharply, placing his palm flat against his forehead as he did so.

  Fortunately, Saara had prepped them all on the proper Tirostaari greetings. Kenton and Perchaya returned the gesture. The rest of them, posing as non-nobility, did not. That gesture of respect was only for people of high status to give to one another.

  “Lord Jaemeson and Lady Perchaya of Grisham,” the man said in lightly accented Mortichean. “We received the announcement of your arrival yesterday. The queen is looking forward to making your acquaintance.”

  Daniella glanced nervously back at Kenton; they’d worried the queen would send someone who spoke Mortichean, as he was posing as a Mortichean nobleman, but they’d been hoping that perhaps her envoy would speak Sevairnese instead, the language typically spoken in cross-border formalities. No such luck, it seemed. Kenton spoke Mortichean decently well, and the days and days of practice had certainly improved his accent, but it still didn’t sound like that of a native speaker.

  His expression didn’t betray any nervousness of his own, though. “We thank you, and most especially your queen for her hospitality on such short notice.”

  Daniella’s heart hammered against her ribs. This was his best pronunciation yet of that well-practiced line, but his vowels still sounded too drawn out, too languid.

  She studied the face of the official for any sign he’d noticed. Had his mouth tightened slightly?

  Kenton continued on with their rehearsed speech. “Our love of the soun
d of the Tirostaar language is great, and we have brought with us a translator,”—he gestured here to Daniella—“so that we may be able to conduct our business with the queen in her native tongue.”

  The first time Kenton had rehearsed that horrifically formal mouthful, Jaeme had laughed so hard he’d inhaled part of his drink. Nearly choking to death may have been the only thing that saved him from Kenton punching him in the face.

  Daniella had worried then that even this part of the plan—the smallest and seemingly easiest by far—wouldn’t work. But Saara assured them that if Kenton could speak a few flowery, formal sentences, they should be fine. Apparently bringing a Tirostaari translator and being willing to converse in Tirostaari with the queen’s high-ranking officials would show great respect for the queen herself. The queen, in return for the gesture, would insist during their meeting with her that they conduct their business in Sevairnese—still the language of international commerce, even though it was now the language of their mutual enemy—allowing Kenton to avoid using his accented Mortichean except for the phrases they’d rehearsed.

  Judging by the relaxing of the official’s expression, as if this was all perfectly expected, it was working.

  “You honor us, your Grace,” the man said in fluid Tirostaari. “I am Rakal Suvin, Her Majesty’s Steward and member of the High Order of Flame. My servants will carry your things as we escort you to the palace.”

  Daniella’s eyes widened at the mention of the High Order of Flame. She’d read about that order. To be initiated into the priesthood a man needed to touch the Sunstone. Since even the barest of touches against skin could burn off an entire finger, most of them chose to touch it with their one of their toes—

  Daniella’s gut clenched as she realized what the sudden silence in the conversation meant. They were waiting for her to translate.

  Rakal’s dark eyes flicked over to Daniella.

  Her mind stuttered to remember the Tirostaari words and their Mortichean counterparts. A bead of sweat trailed down from her hairline to her shoulder blades.