Fortune's Fool (Eterean Empire Book 1)

by Angela Boord

  I closed the book with a triumphant thump and propped my head on my hand to look at Arsenault.

  Finally, he pushed up the hat.

  “So, that’s how you think it was?”

  “No woman of rank is that stupid. It had to be a ruse.”

  His mouth began to curve upward. “But why would the pirates take her on?”

  “Well, because the princess asked them to, and she’s beautiful. I mean, I expect she was, the way the author goes on about her long, honey-colored hair. On the other hand…she can run a ruse, so she’s probably dangerous. I imagine she’s had lessons in poisoning.”

  “Maybe they were all in it together,” Arsenault said.

  “What—the pirate captain and the princess and the betrothed?”

  “Perhaps Udolfo too. Maybe it was all a ruse.”

  “You mean Udolfo agreed to get rid of her?”

  “Maybe they were just trying to sort things out. Maybe Vara attempted to poison the pirate captain and he found her out, and they had a tempestuous romance, there on ship?”

  “Vara—the betrothed, you mean? No, she’d be too smart for that. She’d make him wait. By the time they set the plan in motion, he’d be mad with desire and ready to give her whatever she wanted. Even her own ship.”

  Arsenault rolled over onto his side to face me. “Mad with desire,” he said.

  There was a deep note in his voice and a look in his eyes that made my heart stutter, but I pressed on. “Of course. And once she’s assured of his good faith…”

  He’d shifted closer while I was talking, and I found that I could barely think of what I’d been going to say next. Things like this seemed to happen more often lately, and I wasn’t sure why. He and Margarithe had lately had a spectacular argument, completely unlike either of them, the sound of their voices carrying through the walls. Arsenault had emerged from the room looking as wrecked as the landscape after a big storm.

  “Once she's assured of his good faith," he continued the story for me, "the pirate captain meets her on the deck of her cutter. After he and Udolfo join in fake battle over her. In disguise so her crew will capture him. And she has him brought to her cabin…”

  Arsenault’s gaze caught mine. I could feel the warm heat of him inches away. Had he moved toward me or I toward him? My heart began to drum and I brushed his sleeve, at the same time his fingers skimmed my hip and he leaned toward me.

  A raven croaked above us.

  I had never seen a man react the way Arsenault reacted to this bird. All the color drained from his face and he was on his feet, drawing his sword faster than I thought possible. He pointed the tip upward, but the bird hopped down the branch, making a sound like a frog.

  I got slowly to my feet. “It’s only a bird, Arsenault. Isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He didn’t lower his sword.

  I came to stand beside him and squinted upward at the raven. It leaned over, cocking its head and puffing the feathers on its neck so they stood out in a ruff. Then it stretched out its foot, showing off the small leather tube secured to its leg.

  “It’s a messenger bird, Arsenault.”

  He let his breath out. The blade of the sword wavered, and then he slammed it back in its scabbard and drew his sleeve across his forehead as if he were wiping away sweat.

  “Well, come here, then,” he said to the bird as he dropped his arm, “if you’ve got something to give me.”

  The bird glided down from the branch to land at Arsenault’s feet. He went down on one knee to retrieve the message, and the raven stood patiently while he did so, picking at the streak in his hair with its beak.

  “How could one tell,” I asked, “if a bird was a spy?”

  Arsenault glanced up at me sharply, then pulled the tube off the bird’s leg and stood up. “Why would you ask a question like that?”

  “I was just thinking of the way you looked at this bird.”

  His glance shifted to the bird for a moment. “Ravens are intelligent creatures. Be careful what you say.” Then he cracked the seal on the tube, shook out the tea-stained parchment inside, and the color that had begun to come back into his face fled.

  “Gods.”

  “Arsenault? What is it?”

  He folded the letter in half, then in half again so I couldn’t see it. His hands shook as he did it.

  “Devid’s on his way back.” The look in his eyes at first was haunted, but, as his gaze roved over my face, it changed to something I had a hard time identifying in him, something that made my heart beat fast.

  It was only later, after we had packed up and found the road again, that I was able to put a name to it.

  The look in his eyes was fear.

  I followed him a long way down the road before he said anything else. I wanted to ask a thousand questions, but the way he held himself stopped me. It was like he had strung himself together with bits of his wire.

  He stopped when we came to the branch in the road that led to the big house, and turned to me.

  “I’m going to see your father now, Kyrra.” He glanced around quickly, as if he was worried someone—or something—might be spying on us in the trees. “Devid is about to land in port with more guns than I ever thought possible. I underestimated the Prinze.”

  “But isn’t that why my father hired all those new gavaros in the past two years? He knows war is coming.”

  “He doesn’t know this war is coming. Not one with this kind of firepower.”

  “Firepower,” I repeated slowly, rolling the unfamiliar word around my mouth as if I could taste it. “Like fire arrows?”

  “No. Imagine stuffing a boulder into the tube of a Saien rocket and then lighting it off. Imagine being able to stand over a hundred feet away and still kill a man.”

  “You’ve seen these guns?”

  “I’ve used them,” he said grimly. “And now, with the number of guns and cannon the Prinze have captured… Kyrra, when I tell you to go, will you go? Will you promise to do as I ask?”

  I had been expecting him to say any number of things, but this wasn’t one of them. “Why would you ask such a thing of me?”

  “You’ve a natural talent with a sword, and that magic always pushing at you. But promise me you’ll go when I ask instead of staying here to fight.”

  “But I am the cause of all their troubles,” I said, shaking. “I am the reason Geoffre will use us to test these guns. Why should I be saved?”

  “Maybe you were the catalyst. But it’s not because of you.”

  “How is it not?” I asked. I needed to hear him tell me it wasn’t my fault, and yet I knew that whatever he said would be wrong, just as I wanted to rest my forehead on his collarbone and have him wrap both his arms around me while he said it but I knew that he wouldn’t.

  Instead, he touched my arm.

  I looked up at him, startled.

  “It isn’t because of you. It began when Geoffre loved your mother but couldn’t have her,” he said. “When she married your father. The Aliente were neutral until then, weren’t they? It was only afterward that the Prinze turned away from the Aliente.”

  “But my mother was Caprine. The Prinze and the Caprine have always been at odds.”

  “Why did Geoffre send Cassis with an offer to carry your father’s silk then?”

  “I don’t know. My mother didn’t know either, but she suspected treachery.” I laughed, but it sounded more like a bark; there wasn’t any mirth in it. “A Prinze makes no gestures without a knife up his sleeve, she said. I thought she was just being paranoid. I thought things might change in Liera then.”

  Now I couldn’t imagine ever having that kind of naive hope. I might as well have been a hundred years old.

  Arsenault sighed and pulled me closer to him, letting me stand in the shelter of his arms. It surprised me more than any news could. “I think Cassis wanted you. Perhaps not to marry…but Geoffre is an opportunist. He needs you for something else. Maybe for your magic,
maybe as revenge… There must be something else. Something beyond his hatred of your father, for him to do what he’s done now…”

  I swiped my arm across my nose and he dropped his hand. “And what has Geoffre done now?”

  “Destroyed Dakkar,” Arsenault replied grimly. “For guns.”

  I tried to wrap my mind around that. Dakkar was a kingdom. How could one man destroy it? And all for revenge on my family?

  “What does it matter the motives when it was my action that gave him the excuse?”

  “We all do things we regret when we’re young, Kyrra. Doesn’t mean we can’t be forgiven.”

  “Do you really believe that?” I said.

  I wanted him to tell me yes. I wasn’t sure I believed it, but right then, I needed the word.

  Instead, the expression in his eyes turned them to two open wounds. He opened his mouth and said, “I —” but it was as if his voice froze in his throat after that.

  I spoke again, stammering. “N-not all of us begin wars, though.”

  “No,” he said raggedly. “And maybe it will take a long time to redeem some of us.” He took a deep breath and faced me again. “But you might redeem yourself. If you stay alive. Far more than if you demand to stay with your father.”

  “But I would fight for my father.” I felt shaky as I touched his sleeve and added, “And you. You must know that, Arsenault.”

  He looked down at my fingers on his shirt. Slowly, he brought his hand up to rest it on my forearm. “Is it so hard to understand why I would want you to go?”

  I hoped I understood what he was trying to say. I was afraid to hope it, but I wanted it badly. Only not like this.

  “Am I such a bad swordsman? Have I not been learning—”

  “Kyrra.”

  “You’re a gavaro,” I said, with tears in my eyes. “You’ve seen recruits come and go—”

  “I’m a man,” he said.

  He tightened his hand on my arm, pulled me up against him, and kissed me.

  I stiffened for an instant in shock. But then I pressed myself against him, tightening my fingers on his shirt to pull him closer. He crushed me against his chest with his other arm, so tightly that any other time, I would have felt as if I was suffocating. Except now I still felt too far away from him; I couldn’t get close enough. Everything neither of us had been able to say was in that kiss—a year or more of waiting, of wanting, mixed now with the fear that everything would be lost.

  “Promise me, Kyrra,” he said when he pulled away, his voice rough. “Promise you’ll go when I tell you to. That you’ll do whatever it takes to stay alive.”

  “But where would I go?”

  “Out of Liera. Out of Eterea. Somewhere your Houses don’t reach.”

  “And abandon my family?” The words came out like a mouthful of thorns. “You?”

  He lifted his hands to my face and stroked my hair back. “Kyrra. Even if you go, you’ll carry me with you everywhere.”

  He leaned down to kiss me again.

  Oh, those unfortunate words.

  I wrenched out of his arms. All I could see, for a blinding instant, was Cassis on a moonlit night in the garden, when the heat wrapped our bodies in sweat and dust. I carry you in my heart when we’re apart, he’d said. I’ll carry you there always.

  “So, you can just use me up and get rid of me, is that it? That’s why you’ve waited till now, when it won’t make a difference! You can just send me off and you won’t have a single entanglement!”

  Arsenault stared at me, that wounded, raw look back in his eyes. I stood there, clutching my stump, staring back at him, breathing fast and hard.

  Then the muscle in his jaw twitched, and his expression darkened. “I say nothing to you I don’t mean,” he said in a quiet voice that was somehow as angry as my shouting. “And if you think I’ve only waited so I could take advantage of you…”

  He reached inside his tunic, pulled out the letter, and threw it at me.

  I raised my hand in reflex but couldn’t catch it. It hit the edge of my hand and tumbled to the ground. I was still staring at it when his boots crunched in the dirt. By the time I looked up, he was already walking down the path to the big house.

  “Arsenault!” I called.

  He disappeared around a bend in the path without looking back.

  Chapter 17

  The fleet has docked, the missive read. I send this news by a messenger you know well. It won’t fall into enemy hands.

  My own hand was shaking as I held the letter. I sat huddled in a hollow at the base of a big olive tree, wishing the roots of the tree would reach up and drag me down into the earth.

  Since that didn’t seem likely to happen, I tried again to read the letter.

  Nineteenth day of the Blood Moon, in the First Year of the Reign of the Ibuu Adayze dom B’ara

  It was written in ancient Eter, a language hardly anyone knew anymore. Arsenault knew that I had studied it, but I was surprised that he knew it. The thought quickly turned bitter. Two and two always added up to five with Arsenault, and I didn’t know why I should be surprised at anything anymore.

  Ricar di Sere is lost, and three of his ships with him. What they will tell you is that the ships were casualties of a battle, that the powder they carried lit them up like holiday rockets—well, that much is true. They went up in streaks of orange fire and rivaled the fireworks the gunsmiths lit for my father’s coronation. But the Prinze captain shot his cannon at Ricar di Sere’s ship. My sister was in the tower and she saw it. Do not believe anything the Prinze tell you.

  My family is lost. When the Lieran ships first appeared on our shores, my father gave them his protection. The Lierans promised my father trade in silk and carpets, and though my father was suspicious and I told him to be careful, he pledged them safety in his house according to tradition. He gave them wine, kacin, whatever they wanted. He wasn’t worried. Why should he have been? Are the B’ara not descended from Lion himself? Why should he worry about a bunch of whiteskins, pasty and weak from the voyage, teeth loose from lack of green food or fruit? What could they possibly have threatened us with?

  But sometimes the smallest insect causes the most damage. Think of Siki, the mosquito. Think of the great harm his bite does, the thousands of people he fells with his tiny proboscis every year.

  The Lierans were like that. Mosquitoes. They even turned on each other in the end. If it weren’t for you, Arsenault, and the services you have already rendered my family, I would despair. But you give me hope. Now you are in a position to seek vengeance.

  The Lierans poisoned my father with an unfamiliar substance not even his tasters could identify. His tasters died too. Then the Lierans killed the guards of the armory and began unloading powder and guns. They laid waste to the citadel with the big cannons and razed the rest. We were deep in the dry season, and Mdembu lit like a torch. We were not expecting it. We had grown too arrogant, and it made us blind. By the time we mobilized my father’s retainers and their men, the flames were already roaring around us.

  My sister and Edo are alive, as am I—but Jemma is dead and so are my boys. What am I to do, Arsenault? I had not seen them for years and now I will see them no longer. I feel as if I have become a wooden puppet animated only by revenge.

  Adayze and I pick up the shattered pieces of the royal city and send this bird through the ndabik, hoping it will reach you in time. My sister will assume the throne, and I will leave soon for Liera. The Prinze left behind a garrison, but what is left to govern? Everything has crumbled to ash.

  In trust,

  Jonawak dom B’ara

  Jon Barra.

  I put the letter down in my lap. Then I spread it out on the ground and folded it carefully into a square again, four corners for each of the Houses now involved in this web: Prinze, Caprine, Sere, Aliente. We were the least powerful.

  But Geoffre loved Carolla.

  Arsenault was right; my father had never dealt much with the Prinze. Only in the year or
so before my affair with Cassis had he extended his hand to Geoffre, because the Caprine couldn’t give the money for his silk that the Prinze could. Did my mother ever wish she’d married Geoffre, who had might and power as well as two sons, when all she had was a headstrong daughter and a record of miscarriages, a stillborn boy buried beneath the cork tree?

  My brother didn’t even have a name.

  She visited his grave often the first few years, placing armfuls of daffodils atop it in the spring, leaving trinkets she’d found in the market, little silver bracelets and rings and rattles. I used to watch her through the garden hedge, but the sight of her crying frightened me. She stayed in bed for weeks after he was born. My father begged and argued and ordered, but she remained encased in her blankets as if she were trying to spin herself a cocoon.

  I turned the letter over as if I could make it form a different shape by changing the angle at which I looked at it. I was six years old when the baby was born. My birthday was at Midsummer. The baby was born in winter—I remembered that, because it was snowing when the Adalusian priests laid the coffin in the ground. I remember the snowflakes drifting down lazily out of the metal sky and melting on the lid of the tiny pine coffin. I remembered his little blue face when they laid him in the coffin, the tuft of his dark hair. My mother wasn’t there, and I remember leaning against my father, the warm grip of his hand on my shoulder.

  Geoffre had visited us the previous spring, coming from Karansis on his way to Padera in the interior. He brought hyacinths and dried figs. Apricot blossoms packed in a crate with mountain ice. My father welcomed him for the week, but all week his face looked too tight, as if it was a mask he wore and not a real face.