“But why?” They had leaned closer to each other, lowered their voices in conspiracy.
“Once Karolje takes it into his head that someone has hurt him, opposed him, lied to him, he will drive that person into the ground, even if it is someone so insignificant as a baker’s apprentice. I’ve seen it many times.”
The statement chilled her more than anything else he had said so far. His brown eyes were dark, intent. Not angry or frightened, some other emotion she could not identify. She wanted to trust him, but she had been in Karegg too long. Five years of shrinking away from soldiers, five years of seeing accused traitors hung, stood between her and the prince. Locks and swords and chains everywhere. The constant sound of soldiers patrolling the College grounds. The knowledge sealed away in the library. Once the man who kept a shop across the street from Radd had been taken away and was returned missing a hand.
With his finger, Esvar drew a triangle in the dust, circled it. He said, “Karolje hasn’t succeeded in vanquishing everyone who hates him. He has driven their hate into deep hiding, though. He’s been king for fifteen years. Opposition from the nobles sputtered out within the first year of his reign. Living in the Citadel is like picking your way through broken glass, day after day after day. It’s exhausting.”
His eyes were fixed on her. He knows, she thought. He has put it together. There was nothing of proof, unless he brought her to the Citadel and confronted her with one of the resisters who had been arrested. They would keep one alive for that purpose.
“My lord,” she said, “you had no reason to keep me from being questioned. You had no idea who I was. Why did you interrupt it?”
“Because I’m not him, damn it.”
The intensity frightened her. She had touched a raw wound. “I’m sorry,” she said, and then thought how odd it was to apologize to a prince, to have an ability to hurt him. He was only a few months older than her, but he wore power confidently. She had not guessed the shield had a crack.
“Let me tell you something. I warn you that it’s ugly.”
I don’t want to hear it, she thought. Her mouth would not say the words.
He said, “The first time I killed a man, I was thirteen. They told me he was a Tazekh spy and gave me a spear to run him through with. He was chained to a wall. I was tall then, but not as strong as a man. I didn’t think I could do it cleanly. But I had to. He was a traitor and the king was watching, along with all his generals. So I ran at him and speared him in the gut and then cut his throat with my knife. They cheered, and took me away and got me drunk. I don’t remember much after that.” He was calm. “The next day Tevin told me the man hadn’t been guilty of anything. He’d been an ordinary Tazekh plucked off the streets to be my first kill, and I was an ordinary murderer.”
She knew he had killed, but this was real. Specific. She felt dirty. “Then what happened?”
“Nothing. Everyone had what he wanted. Tevin was starting to push back against Karolje by then, so the king was hoping he could train me to be his replacement. That was the first step. Unfortunately for the king, I didn’t prove to be any more pliable than my brother. But that’s the kind of deceiver Karolje is. He finds a lie that will make the hideous more palatable. You have to remember that when you’re talking to anyone in his sway. No one wants to hear the truth.”
“And you?”
“I don’t like being lied to,” he said. “Or used. Neither does my brother. My goal is to see Tevin on the throne. It would be easy were I to imitate Karolje. Do me the courtesy of assuming I still have a soul.” He stood.
Flushing, she scrambled to her feet. There were a dozen things she wanted to ask and did not have the courage for.
“Mirovian will take you home,” he said, “or to wherever you want to put the money for safekeeping.” He turned and in four long paces was at the door. He put his hand on the knob, paused, looked over his shoulder. “Your father served me better than he knew. Don’t ruin it by being careless.” He jerked the door open and went out. Light flooded in behind him.
Jance stepped in, much too soon. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Anza said. She felt knocked on the head by the last things Esvar had spoken. “It was not what I expected.”
“He knew you.” He was not able to keep all the accusation out of his tone.
She touched her face where the bruise had been. “I was arrested with one of Radd’s clients. The prince freed me. That’s all.”
“That’s all? Anza, that never happens. How the hell did he get involved?”
“I don’t know. I think it was Citadel politics.” She looked at the triangle the prince had made in the dust. “It was a power move; it didn’t have anything to do with me.” Esvar’s Because I’m not him was an answer but an insufficient one.
“You should have told me.”
“Would it have changed anything? If he found out you knew about the arrest, he could have found me at Radd’s. It was too chancy.”
“I would have felt a little safer about the whole thing,” he grumbled, without much force. “Did he try to tie you to the raid at all? Or to the resistance?”
“No. He hardly asked me anything.” Her thought that he had connected her to the missing archer must have been her fear talking. She had better give Jance enough substance to satisfy him. “He told me some things I did not know about my father. He was kind, considering.”
“Considering what?”
“Considering he held all the power. He could have used it as an opportunity to terrify me.”
“He’s taking a risk, giving you all that money,” said Jance. “I’m sure it’s legal, but I don’t think it was approved. It comes with some damn long strings. If you want to change your mind, I’ll take it back.”
“If I was going to refuse it, I would have done that to his face. I’m capable of making my own decisions, Jance.”
“But are they good ones?” he shot back. “I’m sorry. I’m worried.”
“You don’t need to be. Not about this, at least. I’ve been with Radd for two years. I do know something about how the world works.”
“Well, for the gods’ sakes, don’t get reckless.”
A board in the house creaked. She bent down and picked up the bag. “Let’s go,” she said.
They rode to her flat without speaking. Outside the building, he said, “I don’t want this to be the last we see of each other, Anza. It’s been too long as it is. I’m not on duty all the time.”
“It might be dangerous for you,” she said.
“I’ll take the chance.” He wiped sweat off his forehead. “There are times I want to talk to someone about something other than weapons or women or Citadel gossip.”
That was as close as he would get to saying he was lonely. “All right,” she conceded. “But we have to be careful. And neither of us has much time.”
He nibbled on his lower lip. “I’ll think of something.”
* * *
Home, she locked the money into her strongbox and sat at the table, head down. She should report to Sparrow. Tell her that there were tensions in the Citadel, that Prince Esvar at least was not aligned with the king. She did not want to. Sparrow would decide he was a weakness to exploit, which was an unfair exchange for the respect he had shown to her.
Damn it, that was what Jance had meant by strings. She was supposed to use anything she could against Karolje. She was letting herself be swayed by a false intimacy, by the respect Esvar and his power paid to her father. If the situations were reversed, Esvar would not hold back. Taking the money that had legitimately been her father’s did not count as resistance.
A wisp of thought floated upward. Would Esvar fight against the king? Could he be used not as a flaw in Karolje’s rule but as an ally?
If she told any of this to Sparrow, Sparrow would conclude it was too dangerous for the resistance not to cut Anza off. If it got found out and she had not told, Sparrow would think she was a spy. A hint to Irini, perhaps? Vague word of a rumor?
&nb
sp; Esvar might be lying about everything. Perhaps he did intend her to be a spy, gullibly passing on information in order to weaken the resistance. She would have to be truthful and let Sparrow judge.
She swore aloud this time. Esvar was likable, that was the problem.
The Rukovili was beside her on the table. She picked it up. Mirantha had marked one poem with a sprig of lavender, and Anza had read it a dozen times. It was about harpies. And loss:
Songs of ugly hunger, early death
Where lost breaths are swallowed breath
by breath.
The sonnet ended with a line that sent a thrill of pleasing fear up her back: The wicked tooth, and harpies own all twilights. The bird of darkness, of death, of secrecy. Of hidden power.
What had the queen thought, reading that poem over and over, all the years before she died? Had it been a shelter, or a painful reminder? It had mattered enough for her to mark it. Had it said the things she could not? Anza tried to imagine what Mirantha had felt when Karolje killed her lover. Grief. Fear. Rage. Anger could shred you into pieces. She must have been so terribly lonely.
Lonely and frightened, with no one to support her. Voiceless. Yet Karolje had considered her enough of a threat to kill. That was a perverse sort of triumph.
What reason had Esvar had to return the book?
It was a move. Anza did not think she was his opponent, though. It was his father he fought. How did giving her the forbidden book strike against Karolje?
Perhaps not a move. Perhaps a symbol, sending this thing that had been the queen’s away from the Citadel. A defiance of the past. An effort to protect what he had not been able to protect.
She went to her chest and dug through it. Mirantha’s journal fit familiarly in her hands.
She had it nearly memorized. She opened it anyway. The air in the room filled, as it always did, with the scent of lavender. She read again, slowly, the few passages that described Esvar.
I am proud of Esvar, and worried too. I don’t know what will happen to him when his father comes back. He is clever, and brave, but he likes to fight. He is encouraged in it by the soldiers and servants. I ordered his guards to break it up if he fights unfairly. I won’t have him be a bully. He still listens to me, and I have told him to save the fights for the exercise yard. A good leader doesn’t need to knock people over to command.
But if the war drags on long enough for him to be sent south, or if Karolje comes back and takes him in hand, I fear the king will manage to use the violence to twist my beautiful boy into his own image. I am afraid this may already be happening to Tevin. I have written to my family and asked them to watch over him, but I have had no response. Karolje may have intercepted the letter.
Which man had Anza seen today? The beautiful boy grown up as his mother wished or as his father wished? If the real him was hidden and hidden and hidden, how was what he showed not the real him? She touched the paper, thinking of how much was missing. What Mirantha had not dared to write must be recorded somewhere. In the stones of her room, in Ashevi’s bones, in her sons’ memories.
She should send Esvar the journal. He had a much better right to it than she did.
While I was at the execution this afternoon, my room was searched. Nothing was taken, but they didn’t bother hiding the search. I don’t understand why. The trial and all its spurious evidence were done a week ago.
Impalement. He was staked, not ganched. They cut his hands and feet off first. I thought they would blind him, but Karolje must have wanted to see horror in his eyes.
It was done publicly, in the center of the city. It looked like it would rain the entire time. Karolje stood between me and Tevin, where he could watch us, so we could not look away or touch each other. He made Esvar come too. I am afraid that alone will be enough to ruin him. Ashevi screamed. I thought he wouldn’t, but at the very last he did. He couldn’t help it. I have arranged his burial.
I have no tears left. I have not had any since that night.
I have said that Karolje did not hesitate at all before pronouncing sentence, but I don’t know that. I don’t remember anything of the trial. A woman went each day and watched, but she was not me. She watched, regal and emotionless, a queen, and I lived outside of time and light. If I had gone in with her, I would have wept and cursed and raged.
I am a danger to my sons now. Anytime I see them, speak with them, Karolje will think I am corrupting them. There is no way to leave.
I have walked in terrible places and done terrible things. Karolje would have driven me mad if I had not had my sons to protect. But he will kill me soon. I can see it in his eyes. He has had his Truth Finders trying to pry secrets from my mind. But what they want to know is not held in words or thoughts, and they cannot understand that.
When I am gone, Karolje will pay.
Then empty page after empty page.
Feeling hollow, Anza closed the journal. She had been so immersed in what Mirantha wrote that for a moment her surroundings seemed alien and strange. Poor Esvar. He had survived, at a cost she could not imagine. The queen had been Disappeared, into a twilight not of her own making, with no goddess to avenge her. Only her sons. He would not be able to do it alone.
Anza was not sure she would be able to help him.
MIRANTHA
It has happened. We are lovers again. I was so afraid.
There was an Asp attack in the city that did a great deal of damage, and the men were meeting until very late. I went to the chapel to offer libations for the dead, and he was there. He took me to a room where we used to go, and we gave each other pleasure, though for so short a time. When I think of it I can still feel the desire in me. I worried that the happiness of it might show on my face when I came back here, but I am certain it didn’t. When I returned, my maid asked what had upset me. I told her it was the attack.
It was a terrible attack, so there was reason to be upset. Nearly fifty people were killed, many of them children. It was a Naming in the Temple for the new son of one of the lords, and the building was crowded. An Asp found his way in and set off several explosions. He was killed too, but Korikos has as many Asps as he could ever want, so retribution will not stop the war. At times I think that the war will not be over until every young man in both countries has died and the blood has so soaked the earth that it will never come out.
In the spring, Karolje returns to the war in the south, and this time he takes Tevin, who is twelve. He has appointed a cousin as his chancellor and named him co-regent with Mirantha if he dies. Goran is third in line to the throne, and she is afraid that if Karolje dies, neither of her sons will live long under a regency. She is sure Karolje has planned this to keep her from trying to kill him. He came to her every night for a week before leaving, and she knows he wants another heir.
She goes to the Temple to pray in public for the army’s success. For her husband’s life. There are three priests. The Hierarch pours the oil into the bowl and leads the prayer for the army. Old words, familiar words. Chants, a hymn, a prayer by each priest. At last it is her turn. A ritual for the god she does not believe in. More than anything she would like to summon the harpy goddess, to become the harpy goddess, to be winged and taloned. The darkness of the Temple feels like twilight.
She kneels, and the Hierarch dips his fingers into the bowl. He puts a hand on each side of her head, the oil and water running in droplets across her skin, and blesses her. She rises, a queen, a supplicant, and turns to the audience. Esvar is seated in the very front, next to Ashevi. Incense smoke swirls in the still air. She brings her hands together, palm to palm, and touches her thumbs to the center of her chest. Then she spreads her arms.
A priest strikes a bell. The gong deepens and resonates as it spreads through the room, and she thinks the sound will lift her from her feet. It ceases, and she walks alone down the long aisle of watching people. The smell of incense and oil is ingrained in her skin and hair. She wishes it was lavender.
Her carriage waits for
her outside the Temple grounds. Her servants come, and Ashevi and her son. She wants to take Ashevi’s hand but is aware of Esvar, silent as always, his dark eyes observing everything. He is very still for a child of his age, just turned seven. She must shape him while she has the chance.
In the Citadel she retires to her rooms and has her maids undress her. They banter cheerfully, as she has encouraged, and she does her best to draw them ever further out without losing her dignity. She puts on a long blue dress that brings out the blue of her eyes and the shine of her hair. Her heart and body tell her to go to the chapel, to wait in false prayer until she can embrace her lover in unholy passion. Her mind tells her to be wiser, and she obeys her mind.
She sends for Esvar and goes to the pools in the garden to wait, to sit in the gazebo and sink into the sun and the rose perfume and the splashing water. Two guards stand at the entrance to protect the queen’s meditation and, more significantly, to watch for Asps.
Esvar comes, accompanied by a single guard who waits at the trellis with the others. Karolje’s edict that she is not to be alone with her sons is enforced inconsistently in his absence. The boy sits on the bench beside her. He is tall, all arms and legs, and his toes touch the ground where another child’s wouldn’t. She takes his hand and holds it between hers. His brows and hair are as black as Karolje’s.
“You and I have only each other right now,” she says.
“I wanted to go.”
Esvar had made no secret of his desire to be a soldier with his brother. “I know. You’re brave, but it’s your work to stay here and learn what you need.” She takes a breath. She should not be this tense talking to him. “Do you know how a lever works?”
“Yes. Nihalik explained it. It spreads the force over distance to move something heavy.”
“Show me.”
He looks around. There are no loose sticks or rocks for him to demonstrate with, but he is wearing a small knife. He draws it and removes his shoe, which he puts on the bench. With the tip of the blade he lifts the shoe.
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