Lady Smoke

by Laura Sebastian

  Czar Reymer takes a step toward King Etristo, towering over him. “You’ve spent your life in your high tower, Etristo, surrounded by your walls and your deserts. You should not be throwing that word around so easily. You don’t know what a real war looks like, but I would be happy to enlighten you.”

  With that, King Etristo is silenced for the first time since I’ve met him.

  “I want that money refunded in an hour’s time and then my son and I are leaving this place before we end up dead as well.”

  Without waiting for a response, Czar Reymer turns on his heel and storms away, leaving King Etristo alone with thunder in his expression.

  * * *

  —

  Coltania and I wait until King Etristo leaves the garden before we emerge from our hiding place in the bushes. Though my mind is a panicked flood at the thought of another murder, Coltania remains quite calm. More than that—she simmers with a quiet anger.

  “That gilded guttersnipe,” she mutters, eyes stuck to where the King stood seconds ago. “I can’t believe he promised the Czar your hand when he promised Marzen the same thing.”

  I stare at her, mouth agape. “Didn’t you hear them? There has been another murder, Coltania, and the Czar made it sound like it was a suitor. It could be your brother.”

  She shakes herself out of her thoughts and looks at me. “No,” she says. “No, it couldn’t be Marzen. We hired food testers and extra guards after the Archduke.”

  I go through the other suitors in my mind, but in my gut I already know who’s been poisoned. After all, if the assassin is going after suitors I’ve shown favor to, there is one glaring probability. Before I can follow that train of thought, I’m already running out of the garden, ignoring Coltania’s cries for me to slow down.

  FOR ONCE, I ACTUALLY YEARN for the stairs, long as the trek would be, because at least I wouldn’t have to stand still and wait, watching countless floors pass me by in the riser. It feels like every level inches by, giving my mind eons to wonder what I will find when we finally arrive.

  Erik, dead. Erik, suffering the same fate as the Archduke. Erik, poisoned. Because of me. Because the Kaiser doesn’t want to kill me; he wants to hurt me, to scare me, to toy with me the way a cat toys with a mouse before devouring it.

  The doors finally open on the Gorakians’ floor and I don’t even thank the riser operator before bolting down the already bustling hallway. Sta’Criveran courtiers in their bright clothes are milling about, speculating about what might have happened. As I run past, I hear only snippets.

  Such a tragedy.

  After all they’ve been through, they really are cursed.

  The boy was too close to Queen Theodosia.

  Maybe she’s cursed, too.

  No, no, no, my mind screams, ignoring those voices as I hurry toward Erik’s room. Just when the door is in sight, a hand comes down on my arm.

  “Theo,” Dragonsbane says, her voice low in my ear. “Come, you don’t want to make a scene.”

  Though the words are sharp, there is an undercurrent of something else in her voice that I can’t put a name to, though distantly I think it might be something akin to kindness.

  There are a thousand things I want to say to her about our last conversation, but none of that matters now. No words matter now. I yank my arm out of her grip and pick up my pace until I’m running, weaving around Sta’Criveran courtiers and ignoring her calling my name.

  I don’t stop until I’m at the entrance of Erik’s room, where two guards are standing at attention, keeping the gawkers from getting too close. When I finally stop in front of them, they exchange uncertain looks.

  “Let me in,” I tell them.

  “Queen Theodosia, the King gave specific instructions that you aren’t—” one of the guards starts, but I don’t wait for him to finish. I take them by surprise and push in between them, forcing my way into the room, only to find no sign of Erik at all.

  Instead, it is Hoa, lying on the ground next to a table holding a bowl of grapes. Her body is twisted at an awkward angle, with a cluster of grapes lying discarded next to her open right hand. Her face is twisted the other way, staring at me with glassy eyes that see nothing and a trickle of black blood dripping from the corner of her open mouth.

  I stumble back a step, bringing my hand up to my own mouth. I’m going to be sick. I’m going to fall to pieces. I don’t know how I’ll put myself together again. Not this time.

  Suddenly, I’m seven and she holds me while the Kaiser has my mother’s garden burned. I’m eight, waking up from another nightmare in which I watch the Theyn kill my mother. I wake up crying, but Hoa is there with a glass of water and a handkerchief—the only comfort she could provide with my Shadows watching. I’m nine, ten, eleven, onward, and she’s tenderly applying ointment and bandages to welts from my punishments. For a decade, Hoa lingered in the periphery of my life, but there is no doubt that she kept me alive in the only way she was able to.

  And I couldn’t do the same for her.

  I don’t realize I’m on the ground sobbing until strong arms lift me up and I find myself crying into a cotton shirt. I’m carried out of the room, away from Hoa, and I want to scream, to make this person put me down so I can go back to her, so I can stay with her just as she always stayed with me, but the words die in my throat, drowned out by more tears than I knew I had left in me.

  Blaise carries me back to my room. Some part of me knows that he shouldn’t be here, that it’s dangerous, but he is and that is all I care about right now. Nothing exists outside my tears and the image of Hoa burned into my mind’s eye. I don’t care why he’s here, or how hot his skin is, as long as he keeps holding me. I can’t make myself stop crying, no matter how I try to force my breathing to slow.

  He sets me down onto unsteady legs, but he keeps an arm around my shoulders.

  “Someone should slap her,” I hear Artemisia say, not unkindly. “She’s going to pass out if she keeps breathing like that.”

  There’s a sigh that sounds an awful lot like Heron’s, and sure enough, he steps in front of me, filling my entire frame of vision. He looks torn and for a second I worry he’s actually going to follow Artemisia’s advice.

  “No,” Blaise says, looking toward him in alarm. “Heron, don’t you dare—”

  “She’s going to hurt herself worse if you don’t,” Artemisia says. “Do it now.”

  Heron looks between them, eyes wide, before finally looking to me. He steels himself before taking a step toward me. Blaise moves to stand between us, but Artemisia takes him by surprise, tackling him to the ground.

  Then Heron gently touches my hand and everything goes black.

  * * *

  —

  I wake up in my bed, swaddled underneath the covers, and for a blissful moment I forget what happened before. For a moment, Hoa is still alive. But then that moment ends and I want to burrow farther under the covers and sink into a deep, forgetting sleep once more.

  “Are you all right?” Blaise’s voice interrupts my thoughts, quiet and wary. I look around the moonlit room to find him watching me from the sofa. Heron is fast asleep on the floor and Artemisia is on the other side of the bed, her back to me.

  I force myself to sit up. It feels like someone knocked me over the head with a boulder, and my whole body is throbbing. My mouth feels like I swallowed cotton.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” I say, ignoring his question. It’s a stupid one anyway—how can I possibly be all right?

  He shakes his head, getting up from the sofa and coming to my side of the bed, crouching down beside me and speaking low. “I gave Art my gems for safekeeping. Just until I leave again tomorrow,” he says. “I was getting food in town when I heard the news. I thought…I don’t know what I thought.”

  “You thought I’d need you,” I say quietly, my heart achin
g. “I’m glad you were here.” The confession takes everything I have. He left me, I remind myself, but suddenly that doesn’t matter anymore, because when I needed him, he chose me over his power. Right now, that is all that matters.

  Blaise takes my hand in his and squeezes it tightly, his skin burning hot against mine. “Even without the gems, there’s still a chance I could lose control. If I start to, even a bit, Artemisia agreed to kill me before I could hurt anyone,” he says.

  “That was kind of her,” I say, looking to where our hands are joined, fingers entwined. The pads of his fingers are rough and callused, but they are a comfort all the same. I never want to let him go.

  He takes a deep breath and I worry he’s going to talk about Hoa. I don’t want him to. I can’t talk about her yet or I know I’ll fall to pieces. As always, though, Blaise seems to know my mind as well as I do.

  “Dragonsbane tried to come earlier; she said she wanted to ensure your safety, but I told her you were safe with us,” he says.

  I let out a mirthless laugh. “I’m sure she took that well,” I say. “She had a deal with Etristo, you know. It’s why he’s helping us—in exchange for Water Gems.”

  He doesn’t say anything for a moment, then lets out a long exhale. “I wish I could pretend I were more surprised.”

  “I thought her capable of an awful lot before,” I say. “But this is somehow worse. Ampelio was right—her help comes at too high a cost, Blaise. I don’t want it anymore.”

  I expect him to argue with me, to remind me that we need her and her fleet, that we wouldn’t have gotten this far without her help, no matter how many strings were attached. Instead, he surprises me by nodding.

  “Then cut ties,” he says. “You have the Gorakians and the Vecturians and the refugees. Dragonsbane’s help isn’t enough to tip the scales one way or another. This plan will live or die on its own either way.”

  I swallow. “We’ll talk about it with the others tomorrow. We shouldn’t make plans without them. It’s Art’s mother, after all,” I say before taking a deep breath and asking the questions I’ve been dreading learning the answer to. “What happened? How did Hoa…” But I can’t finish. My voice breaks over her name.

  Blaise looks away, understanding well enough. “As far as we’ve been able to surmise, the grapes were meant for Erik, but after he left, Hoa moved into his rooms and…” He trails off, and I’m glad he doesn’t finish the sentence.

  “The Kaiser is killing suitors,” I say. “I was never the target.”

  “Why, though?” he asks, frowning. “That doesn’t make any sense. The Kalovaxian sailors were very clear—the Kaiser wanted you dead or alive. He has nothing to gain from attacking them instead.”

  I shake my head, which screams in protest. “Because he may want me dead, but he wants me alive more. You remember the discrepancy in the rewards. He wants me suffering. He wants to be the person behind it, even if he isn’t holding the whip himself.”

  Blaise nods slowly. “I’m sorry, Theo,” he says after a moment.

  The words are a stab to my gut, and again I see Hoa in my mind as I last did, lifeless and empty.

  “How am I supposed to tell Erik?” I ask after a moment, my voice cracking. “He’d just gotten her back and I…He told me to take care of her and I couldn’t even do it for a few hours.”

  “He won’t blame you,” Blaise says. “There was nothing you could have done. It’s the Kaiser…it’s always the Kaiser.”

  “He’s taken all of our mothers, hasn’t he?” I ask him quietly. “Yours, mine, Heron’s. Even Søren’s. And now Erik’s. Artemisia is the only one of us left who has a mother still.”

  “I think he took mine, too, in other ways,” Artemisia says suddenly. I wonder how long she’s been awake—if she heard us discussing her mother a moment ago—but before I can ask, she rolls over to look at me. I let go of Blaise’s hand so I can turn toward her as well, the two of us facing each other like some kind of bewitched mirror. We look nothing alike, but staring into her eyes in the moonlight, I think I see a ghost of a similarity there. We must both have our fathers’ eyes; it’s not a physical similarity but a reflection of something deeper. A fire that I think we must have inherited from our mothers.

  “She was different before the siege. Softer, I suppose, though I don’t think she’s ever been soft. Happier. Less hungry all the time. Less angry at everyone who couldn’t satiate her. But then the Kalovaxians captured my brother and me, and I was the only one who managed to come back….I don’t think she ever forgave me for that.”

  For a moment I don’t know what to say. Blaise is similarly struck by silence. He concentrates on the duvet beside me, picking at the stitching idly to keep from looking at her. I think he’s worried doing so will open something between them he’d rather keep closed.

  “I don’t think she’s angry with you for surviving, Art,” I say. Hard and unyielding as Dragonsbane is, that seems cruel in a way I don’t think she’s capable of.

  “No,” she admits. “But I was the one who got us caught—I was the one who was reckless and foolish and it was my fault we ended up in that mine. The least I could have done was get him out, but I didn’t.”

  It’s such a rare moment of vulnerability from Artemisia that I don’t know quite how to reply. Even breathing too loudly feels like it will break the spell that’s fallen over us.

  “I’m sorry,” I say finally.

  She shrugs and rolls over again, turning her back to me.

  “I don’t need your pity,” she says. “But the Kaiser ruined my family, too, even those of us who survived him. He ruins everything.”

  Venom is not a new thing for Artemisia—it infuses all her words and it has as long as I’ve known her. It fills up her every glare and makes her every movement potentially lethal. Still, I don’t think I’ve ever heard her so full of hate before.

  I inch closer to her and reach out to touch her shoulder gently. I expect her to shrug me off, but instead, after a moment, she softens and I wrap my arms around her. She turns toward me and buries her face in my shoulder. I don’t realize she’s crying until I feel her tears against my skin.

  I MUST FALL BACK ASLEEP, BECAUSE the next thing I’m aware of is a light knocking at my door. I sit up, blinking the exhaustion from my eyes. Heron and Artemisia are still sleeping and oblivious to the visitor and there’s no sign of Blaise at all—he must have left again, I realize with a pang. The knocking starts anew and I climb out of bed, slipping my dressing gown over my nightgown and fitting the dagger beneath it so that it’s secure at my hip.

  I tiptoe toward the door, careful not to wake the others. Even though I know that an assassin wouldn’t knock, I still hesitate before opening the door.

  “Who is it?” I whisper.

  “Coltania,” a voice whispers back.

  I let out a sigh of relief even as irritation prickles at the back of my neck. I think I’ve had my fill of Coltania and her bribes and bargains. I’ve had enough of pretending I want anything to do with her smarmy brother.

  Still, I might yet need her to get Søren out of prison, so I open the door.

  Coltania stands there in the same black, high-necked gown she wore earlier. In her hands she holds two mugs of tea.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you,” she says, though her words are crisp and perfunctory.

  “You did,” I tell her, stepping out of the room into the hallway and closing the door behind me so as not to wake my Shadows. I’ll be back in bed before they can miss me.

  “Apologies, then,” she says, though she doesn’t sound sorry at all. “I was just awake and thinking about how upset you must be after yesterday. I understand you and the Ojo were close.”

  The Ojo. She means Hoa. I’m glad she doesn’t say her actual name—I don’t think I could stand hearing it right now, especially from the lips of someon
e who didn’t know her.

  And you did? a voice whispers in my mind.

  “I’ve known her most of my life,” I say, and that at least is the truth.

  Coltania’s sympathetic expression falters at the blunt acknowledgment. “Well, I thought you might like some tea and a friend to talk to. Shall we take a walk so we don’t wake your advisors?”

  I have friends to talk to, I think. Friends who aren’t trying to get something else out of me.

  But I still need something from her. I need Søren out of prison. So I force myself to take one of the mugs.

  “That’s very kind. Thank you, Salla Coltania,” I say, following her down the hall toward the riser. “How are you and your brother faring? I’m sure you’re both quite shaken, all things considered.”

  “It’s been difficult,” she admits. “We discussed following the Czar’s lead and leaving ourselves, but Marzen decided against it. He’s quite brave.”

  The last thing I want is to hear her sing her brother’s praises again. I’m too exhausted and heartbroken to even pretend to care one whit about the Chancellor. Instead, I take a sip of the tea, wincing because it’s too hot and much too bitter. Even after I swallow it, the aftertaste remains. It reminds me of the way wood smells, but mixed with grass after a rainstorm and with an undercurrent I can’t put a name to. It might be the foulest thing I’ve ever tasted.

  “I’m sorry,” Coltania says, seeing my expression. “I wasn’t sure which type you liked, so I just made you my favorite. It appears we don’t have the same taste.”

  “It’s fine,” I say, even though it isn’t. She opens the door to the riser and I follow her inside, nodding toward the operator. “I’m used to drinking coffee, I suppose. The way we make it in Astrea is much sweeter. It’ll just take some getting used to.”

  “Acquired tastes are usually the most delicious, once you actually acquire them,” she says. “The garden, please,” she adds to the operator. The door closes with a metallic clang and the operator begins to turn the crank. The riser starts its journey up.