Esvar clamped his mouth shut, holding back words that would only ally him more firmly with Karolje. Goran’s surprise and affront were genuine; he could not have expected that death to be laid at his feet so many years later. But he had not yet said the words that mattered: I didn’t do it. A guilty man might say them, but an innocent man would never omit them. Goran ought to know that.
“My lord chancellor. My dear cousin,” said Karolje. “The motive is clear. The boy would have been next in the succession. My son, not yours. As my son Prince Esvar has convincingly noted, you would have been in the way. I have never wanted you dead, but this crime arises from your imagination, not mine.”
“It arises from his imagination, if any. For the argument to work, he would have to claim that you wanted him dead as well.”
“He’s made that claim.”
“He’s mad.”
Perhaps I am, thought Esvar. If so, he was not fit to rule. He remembered more of his mother’s words, her fear of the chancellor, her pity for Tahari. She had not been mad and neither was he. Poor Tahari. He wished he had not exposed her.
Goran had stood to face him. “Did you fabricate this? Or are you deluded?”
“You can’t expect me to answer that, can you? Be quiet.” It felt good, that little snap of anger, a jab he had long wanted to make.
Another knock. This time the guard admitted a Truth Finder. Not, Esvar was relieved to see, the man he had used in the Green Court. Goran paled. Esvar clasped his hands together behind his back, making it more difficult for him to use them on either chancellor or king. He would have liked to be invisible. If Karolje set the Truth Finder on him, far too many secrets would be exposed.
Karolje said, “Would either of you care to retract anything you’ve said?”
Esvar shook his head. Goran hesitated, then followed suit. He was going to try to bluff his way through it, the fool.
The king pointed at the chancellor. “Begin with him. There is one question. Has he smothered an ill child, nine years ago?”
“My lord,” said the Truth Finder, stepping forward.
He stood between Goran and the door. The chancellor turned, shoved the Truth Finder out of the way, and fled before the startled guards could stop him. Their pursuing footsteps slapped loudly in the corridor. He would not make it far.
“It seems you are vindicated,” said Karolje. “It’s the spymaster you’ll want to dislodge next, I suppose. I advise you to wait.”
Esvar wanted to be gone, away from this evil place. Karolje’s malevolence coated his skin and filled his lungs. Anything he did or said—even silence—ceded authority to the king. There was no way out. He would be safer himself in a dungeon, where the games were over and he had nothing to confront but actual darkness.
“Silence?” the king asked, mocking. “There won’t be a trial. But I might not execute him right away. He still has uses. I could even pardon him.”
“Why?” Esvar could not keep it in. It was a larger question, encompassing years of actions, interrogating Karolje’s core.
“You can’t expect me to answer that, can you? Be quiet.”
If Esvar had been armed, he would have attacked then. The rage rushing through his head was dizzying. He spoke, and his voice was not his at all, it was someone else’s coming from the hollow box that was his chest.
“I don’t want your crown. Ever. I wish you joy of it. But you don’t know what joy is, do you? That’s where you will always fail.”
He stalked out, expecting every moment for Karolje’s voice to freeze him, for the guards to take him. Nothing happened.
In his rooms, he prepared to do the only thing he could think to do. He gave the orders, and half an hour later, just as the bells were tolling midnight, he rode out with Marek and two men he considered loyal, his saddlebags packed. He did not intend to return.
RIVER STOWED ANZA in a small house not too far from the Temple. The fog burned off with the rising sun, and when Anza left the house, the bright morning was as if the day before had never happened. But Jance’s death was still sharp in her waking memory. At least she had not had nightmares.
She had money. River had appeared earlier with a few coins and a change of clothing, along with a promise to retrieve her possessions from her flat. She feared Esvar might have set a guard, and she made River swear he would not kill anyone for the sake of getting her belongings. They could no longer know for sure that every soldier was an enemy.
She found a coffeehouse a block away from the Temple and settled down with a cup of coffee, a sweet bread, and a wedge of cheese. The sugared frosting on the bread formed a spiral. Sparrow had begun getting the word out. Be ready. The raid on the armory must have succeeded.
The shop was crowded, a few day workers and crafters and a much larger number of shopkeepers and clerks. Anza sipped her coffee, thinking. Slowly the conversations of other people edged into her awareness. Esvar’s name caught her attention. It was a common name, but she heard both princes missing and then chancellor, and she went alert. Esvar too? she thought. But had he left, or was he in the dungeons or dead? If he had left, where was she to find him? She was already on edge, and she felt herself approaching panic.
She heard executed, and her heart skipped. The man who had said it, a large grey-haired man with brown skin, was well-dressed, and she took him for a merchant of some sort. He continued to his companion, his voice not especially low, “With Goran dead and Karolje’s sons missing, that puts the succession in doubt. Anyone could be king next.”
Goran dead? That changed things. Slowly she reclaimed her calm.
“If Karolje ever dies. But the princes will show now, I expect.”
“If they are living. One has to wonder why the king hasn’t found Tevin yet. He’s losing his touch.”
“Or his subordinates are. There will be more of them going to the block.”
Another man said loudly, “If you’re going to talk treason, do it somewhere else.”
“It’s not treason to state facts.”
“It’s not you as decides what treason is. And I don’t want to be tainted by your talk. I’m a loyal man. Shut your mouth or get out.”
In a different place or among different men, it would have turned into a brawl. The grey-haired man swigged his coffee and left. His companion, who was ten or fifteen years younger, left less than a minute later. The man who had yelled at them settled smugly back into his seat.
Were those genuine rumors? Or was the grey-haired man a resister trying to spark something? Hell, the loud man could be in the resistance too, drawing attention to the first two men.
Who in this shop would obey the call to rise?
It’s about more than killing soldiers, she thought. More than violence. Violence was the surface of it, the cover, the igniter. The resistance was about how one lived in an unlivable world. She had known she had to fight Karolje’s injustice, but the people who had no weapons, who had families to protect, who were maimed in body and spirit by his rule, fought too.
No other talk of Karolje was loud enough for her to hear. After she finished her coffee, she got up and went outside.
Facing east, she was almost blinded by the brightness of the sun on the Temple dome. If Esvar had fled from Karegg or gone into hiding, there was no use in her looking for him. But the Temple was a refuge of sorts. He had looked there for his brother. He had mentioned it when she asked him where he would go. Karolje had not flat-out killed Esvar when he had the chance, so he might not violate sanctuary this time. It all depended on what the king wanted from his son.
She walked to the Temple and stood a while on the square, looking at the ancient cobbles. The sun played in the leaves of the mulberry trees. She could not tell where the execution pyre had been situated; the stones had been scrubbed clean of char and blood. There was the balcony the soldier had shot from. She imagined holding her bow, the weight comfortable in her hands, an arrow on the string. She was ready to fight, to be a soldier.
; A horse clattered, several horses, and she turned around. She recognized Esvar with Marek and two other men. Relief, wordless, all-encompassing, spread through her. She took two steps toward him. Three. He swung down and strode toward her. Neither ran, but she could see an urgency in his pace that was matched by her own.
They met. Their arms went around each other. For the first time since Jance locked the door of her flat yesterday, she felt safe. She pressed her head against his chest, listened to his heart. It was suddenly very hard to keep from weeping.
“Anza,” he said. “I feared you were dead.” His embrace tightened.
“I got out and found a place to hide.”
“So why are you standing in Temple Square in broad daylight?”
“Why are you?” she asked, pulling back from the embrace to look up at him. He was so damned tall. “I heard a rumor you were missing. The only place I could think to look was here. Is the rumor true?”
“Not missing. Gone. I left the Citadel openly. I spent the night in a rather nasty inn.” His arms dropped. “Will you come with me into the Temple? I want to talk to one of the priests. I intend to ask if I can stay here.”
“Karolje will send troops in to take you if he wants.”
“I know. I don’t want to be sheltered. I want to be seen. No more fighting from the shadows. Come inside.”
She was reluctant to go into the building. Radd’s death was too close. “I’ll wait here,” she said. “Have your talk with them first.”
“All right.” He reached for her, drew his hand back before he could touch her. Words spilled out of him with the same jerkiness. “I’ve renounced it all. Karolje offered me the crown last night. The terms were unconscionable. Worse than that, evil. I should have left right away. But I didn’t, I stayed talking to him, and I made several mistakes. I was—manipulating things so that he would offer terms that were acceptable, gods help me. I wanted to be king. So I had to leave.”
You are brave, she thought. Tears pricked her eyes. Sparrow had warned her against sympathy for him, but Sparrow was wrong. If he had to face despair alone, he might well throw up a shield of evil to protect himself.
Her hand went out toward him. He grabbed it. The roughness of his calloused palm rubbed against her skin, and her bones ached from the force of his grip. Carefully she raised his hand to her mouth and kissed it. A lover’s kiss, not a vassal’s. Then she released it.
“Go,” she said. “I’ll wait on the steps.”
He nodded, turned, walked to the steps. Marek dismounted and joined him. Their shadows fell blue and long.
She waited until they were in the Temple to follow them and sit on the warm stone. The wall and the row of trees lining it cut off some of her view of the square. A man muttering to himself was hunched over a piece of bread on another step, closer to the wall. Despite the heat, he had on a ragged cloak, its hood brought up over his head. His beard was matted. If she looked as much a beggar as he did, the priests might try to drive her off. And what would she say then, that she was waiting for the prince? They would laugh in her face.
The sun felt good, as though yesterday’s fog had leached all the warmth out of her. The soldiers waiting at the bottom of the steps, holding the horses, were alert. She hoped Esvar was right to put his trust in them.
The bells rang the hour while she waited, the toll loud enough that she put her hands over her ears. The sound echoed off the buildings. Several harpies swooped over the square and came to rest in the trees, invisible in the dappled leaves.
In the quiet that followed, she became aware that something had shifted in the world. The light, the warmth, should have calmed her, left her relaxed as a lazy cat. Instead she felt edged by danger. She was reminded of the night she had found the journal, but this tension was larger, greater than one locked room. Her fingers drummed nervously on the stone. Something was building. Did it extend all over Karegg?
She stood, paced. The soldiers watched her for a moment, then turned back to the square. Across the square a vendor unfurled his banner. The design on the banner was the spiral. She stilled.
The beggar got up and shuffled off, head lowered, toward the other side of the square. Three sparrows were picking at the crumbs of bread he had left, and she walked over to them. They flew away. On the stone where the man had been sitting, a rough spiral was drawn in chalk.
Esvar came out not much later and said, “You and I need to discuss things. We can go through to the priests’ garden again if you don’t want to be inside.”
“All right,” she said, and followed him up.
The garden was all green and golden, the water in the fountain sparkling in the sun. There were small rainbows in its mist. He said, sitting on the bench, “There are fountains in the Citadel garden. And pools. My mother loved them.”
Anza bit her lip and sat beside him. “I couldn’t keep it from you any longer. I needed you to know she had strength. Were you very angry with me?”
“No. A little, at the beginning, but you didn’t do anything wrong and I knew it.” He stared at the fountain. He was about to say something difficult. “Tell me how you found it.”
“Jance and I snuck into the library. He had a key to one of the rooms in it. I went in. There were books on the shelves. The Rukovili, and others that had belonged to your mother. They’re all illegal now. The journal was with them. I looked at it, and I read it, and I knew whose it was. I didn’t want her to be hidden any longer.”
His throat moved. He twisted to look at her. He laid his hand against her cheek, and she pressed her own hand over it. Her body was quivering like an animal’s. He kissed her, slowly. She wanted to respond with passion, with hunger, but she held herself back. She could tell he was in pain.
He said, “Last night the king—my father, I have to say it, that’s what he is—he got the truth out of me about Goran killing the boy. My other brother. He killed the chancellor for it. I don’t care about that, but he was proud of me, before he mocked me. I can bear anything but his approval.
“And while this was happening, while I was trying to figure out what to do next, I thought about the journal. I thought about my mother. I understand why she had to write things down; you can’t be sure anything you remember is real when you’re dealing with Karolje. I remembered a few things she wrote. A few things I had heard someone else say. I knew—and this is the real reason I left, I suppose, not because the Citadel was poisoning me—I knew then a truth.” He gripped her hand. “Sparrow is my mother.”
She required no convincing. It all fit. Sparrow’s hardness when she talked about Karolje or the princes, the way she had held Esvar’s wooden globe, the initial refusal to see Esvar at all. Her skills at strategy and knowledge of the Citadel, her leadership. The Mirantha of the journal had been sad and frightened and desperate, but she had also had the nerve and certainty that Sparrow did. The core of justice.
She said tentatively, “Will you tell her you know?”
“No. It’s her secret. If she wants me to know, she will tell me.” He paused. “Once I saw it, I was afraid Karolje would use a Truth Finder on me. If he did, I might have revealed everything. I’ve become my own liability.”
“She sent the journal away with the books. She didn’t need to do that. She could have burned it. It was meant to be read someday, probably by you and Tevin.”
Esvar said, “I doubt that when she sent it away she imagined she would be leading a resistance twelve years later. She didn’t know she would be concealing herself.”
What did Sparrow—Mirantha—want for her sons? The first time Anza talked to her, she had said, The gate to power is locked by accident of birth or by force or both, and it must be unlocked. That had sounded genuine. Her motives for fighting Karolje were clear, but would she fight Tevin too? If she thought he had become like his father, she would.
“I thought my mother’s body had been sunk in the lake,” he said after a silence. “I used to look out at all that water and consider how well it
kept secrets. Karolje made me look at her bed with the blood on it. I believed him at first, that it was Asps. Tevin convinced me otherwise when I was older. I threw that at Karolje, and he said it was Tevin’s lies. He’s lying, I know that, but I’m not going to rest now, wondering what happened instead, how she escaped. What if Karolje knows she’s still alive?”
“That was a dozen years ago. What would he have done then?”
“Kill anyone who might shelter her, any of her friends from my grandfather’s day. I was too young, but Tevin would have known if he killed those people. So Karolje must think she’s dead.”
“That gives you an advantage,” she said. “I’m not sure how, but it’s something you know that Karolje doesn’t. That’s power of sorts.”
“I’ve had enough of power!” he burst out.
She slid closer to him and put her arm around his waist. His face twisted briefly. It might be a long time before he learned again how to weep.
“What next?” she asked.
“I don’t want to see her again, at least not until this is over. You should remain the go-between. If you can, knowing this.”
“I can.” A bird chirped in a tree. She looked up at the light splashed upon the branches. It wouldn’t last much longer; soon the sun would be high enough to lose its golden quality.
Esvar said, “What happened yesterday?”
“They broke in on us.” A flash of sword, a bloom of red. “I got out the window. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Did they hurt you at all?”
“No. I hurt myself a little.”
His arm went around her shoulders. Don’t say it, don’t say it, she thought. She could not bear to know he loved her, not yet. Not when the world was so fragile. She needed the armor of silence between them still.
“I didn’t have time to read your letter,” she said quickly.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. Everything is different, now that I know who she is. The man who wrote that letter is already gone.”
The Vanished Queen Page 36
