Fortune's Fool (Eterean Empire Book 1)

by Angela Boord

  “I thought you said you had to pay for yours.”

  He forced a bleak smile that didn’t look like a smile at all. “In a manner of speaking. Just because a person is born with the ability to do magic doesn’t mean that person will actually be able to handle the magic. Magic is like an ocean. It will carry you with it whether you want it to or not unless you build walls against it. Sometimes, walls cost more than you’re willing to pay.”

  “So, how do you hide your writing?”

  “It’s like building a waterway. I divert the magic with my will, to do what I want it to do. In this case, I’ve locked the magic into the book with a rune on the cover. But it makes it easier if I write with metal. My magic responds better that way.”

  “I wondered why you had no ink. I’ve never used a metal stylus before. It took me a long time to write those words. Not just because I had to use my left hand. Is that also what you did with the silver?”

  He cast me a sideways look, then took a bite of his sandwich. When he was done chewing, he said, “Yes. I took something I Saw inside the silver and gave it form.”

  The way he said saw made me think that he was not talking about regular sight. “And is this how you go about the world, Seeing into things and bending them to your will?”

  He let his breath out heavily and shook his head. “Kyrra, if I teach you to use a sword, will you stop wielding your words like blades?”

  “Arsenault, I was merely asking. I wasn’t accusing you of any wrongdoing. The only magic I’ve ever been acquainted with is the kind in stories.”

  “Really?” He arched an eyebrow.

  “Why should I know anything about magic, Arsenault? I have no reason to lie.”

  “Mmmm.” He ate the rest of his sandwich and looked like he was thinking. “No magic at all?”

  “None. This is Liera. We’re merchants, not sorcerers.”

  “Geoffre di Prinze thinks otherwise.”

  “Geoffre di Prinze,” I said slowly, “is very much a Lieran. I think that’s what my mother tried to tell me, and what I wouldn’t listen to. He’ll use whatever means he can to further his House.”

  Arsenault looked troubled. We had come now to the little grotto with the armless statue where he brought me to practice dagger strokes. “I think you’re right,” he said. “I think he’s bought the Forza somehow. But I didn’t get a chance to ask all my questions. Lobardin and I rode next to the commander in the wagon on the way home, but I wasn’t in any shape to think and I didn’t want to give him away to the rest of the gavaros. It’s bad enough that Lobardin knows.”

  I leaned against the wall. “Why did my father hang him, then? Did he not know you wanted to question him? Or did he question the man himself?”

  “I don’t know. Your father was in his study this afternoon and occupied with accounts. I learned the man had been hanged when I went down to the caves and discovered him swinging on the gibbet.” He sat down on the wall, wincing as he lifted his injured leg and rested it atop the wall longways. “Would there be a reason your father wouldn’t want me to find out the connection between the Forza and the Prinze, if there is one?”

  “Of course. If the Forza have gone over to the Prinze and attacked us and it becomes public knowledge, then my father will be beholden, as Head of House, to declare against the Forza. If the Prinze are allied to the Forza, then the Prinze come to their defense and we have a war. He’s trying to avoid war at all costs.”

  Arsenault looked at my arm and I knew what he was thinking. Or at what cost? But he didn’t say anything. “You think the Forza were just trying to provoke your father? Does that mean there are more bandits in the hills—actual bandits?”

  “There are always more bandits, Arsenault. Just like there are always more gavaros.”

  He snorted. “I suppose you’re right. They come from the same pool of men. Why do you think they tried to steal the eggs, then? Not just for the silk?”

  “Maybe for the silk. If the Prinze could grow silkworms, then they could make and sell their own silk. They wouldn’t need us at all. And then they have something valuable to trade for spice.”

  “But they’d need your trees. They’re a city House, aren’t they? No space to grow mulberries?”

  I nodded. “The trees would grow too slowly, anyway. But I think you could probably have figured this out for yourself, couldn’t you?”

  “I had some suspicions, but I needed them confirmed. And I have something else for you out here.” He reached down into an alcove set in the wall and pulled out a long bundle wrapped in fabric.

  When I hesitated, he gestured to me with it. “Go ahead. Take it.”

  Something hard lay within the linen wrap. I put it down on the wall and unfolded it.

  A dulled metal sword lay there. A practice sword with a battered, nicked hilt.

  “I thought you were joking,” I said.

  “Why would I be joking? Here, pick it up.”

  “But, Arsenault—”

  “You said yourself there are always more bandits. Do you want to know how to defend yourself or not? A knife is fine, but a sword gives you more reach. Pick it up.”

  “I’m on the edge of the law here, Arsenault.”

  “It’s a practice sword. It doesn’t have an edge.”

  Hesitantly, I wrapped my hand around the hilt and lifted it. It wasn’t as heavy as I thought it would be. Holding it felt awkward but somehow right at the same time. I turned it so the flat lay toward me, and raised it so I could look at it.

  “But why, Arsenault? Why are you doing this?”

  He didn’t reply. Instead, his stick came whistling upward toward me. In reflex, I jerked the sword down, meeting his stick in a resounding crack and turning it aside.

  He grinned. “Because it’s in you. Like magic.”

  When I made my way to the combing house after I helped serve dinner in the barracks, a small leather packet lay waiting for me atop the blankets. Ilena sniffed when she saw it. “Payment, no doubt,” she told the others, and they all laughed. I picked the packet up and felt its outlines but didn’t open it. I already knew what it contained.

  Arsenault might be keeping the practice sword away from me, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer when it came to the dagger.

  I rolled over and tucked the packet into the straw that formed my mattress. Arsenault had run me through my first lesson in the rune-style swordwork he practiced that afternoon and I was exhausted. I pulled the silver wolf out of my pocket instead. I had been carrying it around with me since I’d stolen it, always meaning to put it back on Arsenault’s table. By now, my fingers knew it. Drifting in that place between sleep and wakefulness, wrapped in the musty smell of wool and sweat and straw with the girls murmuring around me, I felt my flanks lengthen and grow strong, my arms—both of them whole—stretch to become forelegs. I grew hairy and feral, burned by the scent of game nearby and blood.

  I was a wolf, gray-furred, scarred, loping along a pine-gnarled ridgeline above the pounding surf of an unfamiliar sea. The moon glowed bright on the black water, limning the sea oats on the dunes with its silver light. The tang of salt mingled with the prey-smell quivering in my nose. Saliva warmed my mouth.

  I padded down the ridge, out of the trees, and onto the sand. The sand crumbled between my toes and itched the pads of my paws, but I hid in the grass, and the wind masked my passing. The world was murky, but I didn’t need sight. Scent gave the world its edges, and I maneuvered it with great skill.

  The prey I stalked was an elk, an old male, with a velvet rack of antlers spanning more than my human length. It lay on the tideline, little tongues of waves licking its shins, and kicked feebly at the gulls fluttering around it, diving in whenever they could to steal a piece of meat from its wounded side. It smelled of blood and musk, salt and sand.

  I crouched in the sea grass. Then I pounced.

  Birds flapped away, squawking. The elk bellowed, raised its head, and bucked weakly. I dodged its antlers, then skittered
back to sink my teeth into the meaty entrails the birds had begun dragging from its body. The elk bellowed again, in pain, and I gave my head a fierce shake and tugged away a long, glistening loop.

  The elk looked at me. Its eyes were black and human, deep as the cloud-scarred sky above us. I wondered, what color were a wolf’s eyes?

  And then I was no longer a wolf. I was a woman, and I was not staring at an elk but at a man.

  He was old—or young. His gray hair, long and unbraided, blew about in the wind. Lines furrowed his face like the surface of the sea out beyond the breakers. But his limbs were lean and taut as a youth’s.

  Hunter, he said. What do you want?

  I looked down at my hands. Both were there, but they were covered in blood, down into the creases of my palms. I rubbed them on the skirt of my dress but the blood remained.

  Hunter, why do you wear those clothes?

  Hunter, what is your wish?

  My wish was to rid my hands of blood. I kept wiping them on my skirt.

  Please! I said.

  But you are a hunter. He frowned, as if he didn’t understand me. You have eaten the flesh. You have swallowed blood. You have done the things a hunter does.

  No, I told him. I stole a wolf. It’s Arsenault’s. He’s the hunter.

  And yet you are dreaming this dream, on these shores.

  He stepped toward me. I backed away, my bare feet sinking into the sand. He placed his hand on my shoulder and bent down to squint at me with his elk’s eyes. The wind tossed my hair into my face, and he pushed it away.

  Don’t touch me! I said.

  You came to me. I was wounded. See my side?

  I looked down at the gaping wound in his side. Blood ran in rivers down his thighs, and he pressed against me the way a wounded man does when he is at the end of his strength.

  You have taken away, he said. You have eaten. You are a hunter and you may not go back.

  But I must return; I can’t stay here!

  He chuckled.

  Daughter, things are not always as they seem.

  And then he was gone. In his place there was an elk, bounding across the dunes, and a man standing atop the cliff with a bow.

  No! I shouted when I saw what the man meant to do, but too late. The arrow was already loosed. It caught the elk in the side, and he tumbled into the waves with a deep, throaty bellow.

  In the way of dreams, I looked up and saw the man bring his bow down.

  It was Arsenault.

  I had dreamed for hours, but when I woke, the moon hadn’t yet set and everyone was still asleep. I lay there thinking in the dark, my heart the loudest sound. The elk-man in my dream reminded me of Adalus, the Dying God, the god of harvest and of springtime. I didn’t know why Adalus would visit me or what he had to do with Arsenault.

  I pulled on my boots, then grabbed my cloak and rose as quietly as I could. I made my way past the sleeping combergirls and out into the night. The cold day had become a cold night, kissed by a winter that did not want to go. I had spent most of the day being colder than everyone else, and now it seemed like I would never warm up.

  My feet bore me unthinking to Adalus’s shrine, where I was surprised to find my father.

  He didn’t see me come in. The shrine of Adalus was built around the trunk of an old olive tree. Not even the largest man could span its girth with his arms. The tree rose up through a hole in the roof, and the ceiling around it was painted with scenes of harvest, grain, springtime, death. My father sat on the dirt floor in front of the tree with his legs crossed, his back to the door. Stands of candles on the other side of the olive threw shadows out behind him.

  Arsenault sat beside him.

  “So, the Forza were trying to steal my worms,” my father said. “And you think it’s because Geoffre di Prinze wants to start a war.”

  “He’s raising troops,” Arsenault said.

  I stopped in the doorway, unsure whether or not to enter. The thick wooden doors remained always open this time of year, so the sound of opening and closing didn’t betray me. I dodged behind one of them and peered through the crack between the door and the wall.

  “And you say he’s also been talking to the Amorans.”

  My father sounded tired, but he sat with his back straight, his head up.

  “The word I’ve had is that Geoffre is going to dispatch Cassis to Amora. His elder son’s still out with the fleet. There are rumors that they’re rounding the Cape. My contact says they’re after guns.”

  Guns. A hopelessly foreign word then. A new spice? A drug like kacin?

  I pressed my face to the door and tried to still my breath to hear better. The oak planks with their big iron nails were rough and cool on my face. My toes began to grow cold and I knuckled them under in my boots in an attempt to warm them.

  “Do they exist?” my father asked, turning to face Arsenault. Candlelight rippled down his profile—the straight, sharp-edged nose I had inherited, the waves of his steel-streaked black hair.

  Arsenault dipped his head. “They do, my lord. I’ve seen them.”

  My father sighed. “And this raid from the Forza… You think the Prinze were going to pay Dakkar with my worms?”

  Arsenault winced as he stretched out his leg. “I think it’s a reasonable explanation. Dakkar doesn’t have the means to produce silk, but they import a lot of it. Right now, they receive most of their silk from the Saien, but you know how jealously the Saien hoard the secret of their silk.”

  “That,” my father said with a wry smile, “is unfortunately the fault of my own ancestor. But do the Dakkarans love silk enough to trade for guns?”

  “The Dakkarans like silk enough to trade the Prinze a few guns. Enough for your engineers to figure out how they work and build their own.”

  “Ever the Lieran way,” my father said. “To steal the knowledge of others and make a living off it. But you think Geoffre means to turn the guns against me.”

  “If Devid is successful.”

  “And will he be, do you think?”

  I could only see Arsenault’s profile, half-hidden by the metallic strands of hair above his scar. But I heard the way he tried to smooth the worry from his voice. “If we’re able to get through a word in warning, the B’ara will fight them. But Geoffre may have other means at his disposal.”

  “Other means?”

  “Magic.”

  My father waved his hand. “Rumors. We live in an enlightened age, Arsenault. You can’t tell me you still believe the old fairy stories?”

  “Magic may be dwindling out of the world, Mestere, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone. Geoffre knows how to find it, and he’s been collecting it. For what use, I don’t know, but I doubt it will be good for his rival Houses.”

  My father frowned. “How am I to fight guns and magic then, Arsenault? Perhaps I ought to negotiate now. Geoffre’s never lost anything he’s determined to have.”

  “Except your daughter,” Arsenault said. “He didn’t take Kyrra.”

  “No,” my father agreed, looking haggard in the candlelight. “You’re right. He did not take Kyrra.”

  I caught my breath. My mother told me that Cassis had denied my hand, but had my father denied Cassis instead? Anger and shame flared inside me, and the ghost of my right arm throbbed the way it did sometimes. It hurt so badly and so suddenly, I had to bite my lip so I wouldn’t grab at the phantom.

  “Nor did he take my wife,” my father said.

  Perhaps I was still dreaming. What would Geoffre di Prinze have wanted with my mother?

  “Mestere?”

  Arsenault sounded as confused as I felt.

  My father sighed. “Geoffre used to watch Carolla. When she danced with me at the courting dances. He knew he couldn’t have her since she was a Caprine, but he wanted her anyway. Maybe he even loved her. And then I married her. I suppose you ought to know it’s been personal for a long time. Not only since Geoffre’s son dishonored my daughter.”

  In the quiet that
followed, I could hear the sound of flames consuming hundreds of wicks. Shadows seemed to flicker darker over my father’s face. Arsenault sat waiting for him to speak again, still and straight as a pike.

  Then my father sighed and the night got going again.

  “How is she, Arsenault? You’ve not brought me news in a while.”

  The ghost of a smile touched Arsenault’s lips. “Her temper keeps her alive, as ever.” Then the smile disappeared. “I’ve moved her to work at the barracks. To keep a better eye on her.”

  “The barracks? Do you think that wise, Arsenault? My daughter among all those men?”

  “She’s in the kitchens and she can hold her own. I wanted her away from the silk. In case there were more raids.”

  “You don’t think it’s because of that foster I sent home, do you?”

  “Vanni? If it got out what they were doing, they might try to say so—to put up a smokescreen. But you could easily prove a violation of hospitality. There were enough witnesses.”

  “It could still be used against me. I’m walking a fine line, Arsenault, asking you to watch out for her. If I step too far afoul of it…Geoffre will have me in the Council.”

  Arsenault’s beard obscured his mouth in the dark. But he didn’t bother to alter the scowl in his voice. “You’re going to have a fight no matter what you do, Mestere. Wouldn’t you rather know your daughter’s safe when it comes down to it?”

  “Of course,” my father sighed, rubbing his brow. “But I have a responsibility to my House, too. Kyrra understands that.”

  Arsenault made a sound that could have had many meanings. Mostly, it was just a rumble.

  “Keep doing what I pay you to do, Arsenault. And be thankful you’re not in charge.”

  My fingers and toes had gone numb with cold. I pulled my wool cloak tight around me and slid down the wall to hunker in that small space behind the door, my icy feet tucked under me.

  So, I was just a commission after all. A commission and maybe a tool for Jon.