Fortune's Fool (Eterean Empire Book 1)

by Angela Boord

  I think, why would a Prinze heir receive a commission to tally prisoners?

  I think, why would Jon want to hide Arsenault beneath the noses of the Prinze, and why would Arsenault let him do it?

  I think, how did Arsenault come to remember my name but so little of anything else?

  I know it can’t be him on that horse but I wish it would be.

  The night air grows cold and I huddle in my cloak, staring up at the stars through the leaves of the trees—patches of night sky like a quilt. The trees interrupt the constellations, so I can’t trace them. There are a million stars out in the clear spring sky, numberless in the way of things that are full of numbers. A million times a million, my tutor used to say, more millions than the Sere have in their vaults. And yet, my father countered, the silk our worms spun could cover the sky.

  Imagine: a net for the stars woven of silk, every spider-thin strand invisible against the darkness. Stars would spill into it like fish, and our silk would snare them until we bundled them up and they became a brilliant blaze, unified from multitudes into one blinding flare, suspended by one strand of silk like a pendant, a teardrop, pregnant with all the tears one ever might have cried.

  I must doze, dreaming of starlight, because the pounding of hooves catches me unaware. I lurch to my feet, hand on my sword, pulse drumming in my ears.

  But the horse passes by in a clatter of steel and conversation, a wind that rustles the cypresses. The horse’s rider is running it, but not for urgency; a woman’s laugh floats on the breeze, and a man’s deep baritone voice.

  Then they’re gone. I’m left standing in the cold air, my breath puffing out of me in clouds. Mikelo lies in a puddle of moonlight, breathing hard and scared but watching me.

  I want to tell him, Go back to sleep. But instead, I sit down, my back against the oak again, and close my eyes. On the inside of my eyelids, I see the imprints of stars.

  Their lights flare and die, until I am left in darkness.

  Chapter 22

  Five years ago, when Arsenault left me to handle Lobardin while he pursued whatever double life he lived in Liera, I woke late after a cold night that would not be my last, my eyes gritty from restless sleep. My arm was better but still sore from where Lobardin had twisted it. I winced, stretching it, and rushed through my morning wash.

  I didn’t think anything of Arsenault’s absence because he was often absent. Having him gone when I woke up was both a relief and a disappointment. My emotions distracted me as I hurried to dress and get out to the yard, where I was sure I would find him.

  I almost ran into Lobardin in the corridor. He stopped me with a hand on my shoulder, and at his touch, I jerked against the wall, breathing hard.

  I had caught him in the dining hall the night before. Put my dagger to his throat in front of the other men. I knew he’d been embarrassed, and I also knew that by then the kacin had worn off and he hadn’t remembered much of the afternoon at all.

  I didn’t know if Arsenault had witnessed any of that or not.

  He chuckled nervously. “Calm, Kyrra; I meant nothing. I’ve just a few tasks for you today.”

  I frowned. “I’ll have to do the chores Arsenault left me first.”

  “Arsenault isn’t here today,” he said, looking down at his shirt. “Which leaves you to me.” He smiled. “I’ll see you at the trash pit at midday. By then I expect you’ll have most of it buried, eh?”

  I clenched my left hand, and my nails bit into my palm. “This is my reward for keeping Arsenault from killing you?”

  One black brow arched. “He found out, did he?”

  “I couldn’t move my arm. I had to tell him something.”

  Lobardin looked distressed. “Truly, Kyrra, I’m sorry about that.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t— It’s been hard. Lately. Maybe you understand?”

  He tilted his head and looked up at me sideways from under a thick strand of black hair. His dark eyes seemed earnest.

  “I don’t understand why you smoke kacin, Lobardin. It’s not allowed and you’re going to get caught one day. My father does not allow exceptions to his rules.”

  Lobardin’s face fell. “So, that would be no.”

  I exhaled and looked up at the ceiling while I thought about what to say next. “I think we share a common problem,” I said finally. “Regarding magic. But I don’t think your solution to the problem will work out in the long run. Is that better?”

  “Mmmm,” he said, and straightened up, as if he were pulling himself back together. “Well. You’ve still got midden duty.”

  I pushed my breath out through my teeth.

  “It could be worse, Kyrra. There are other ways I could be seen saving face.”

  “I don’t deserve revenge. You were in the wrong, Lobardin, and you know it.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether I know it or not, dove. All that matters is the parts we have to play; haven’t you figured that out yet?”

  I glared at him and tried to start walking. I needed to eat if I was going to cover that godsforsaken midden by midday.

  But Lobardin moved into my way again.

  “I hear Arsenault has gone to meet with your old lover. To talk to him about some cargo his brother’s supposed to be bringing in.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “A little bird told me.”

  “A little bird?”

  “A bird who sings most beautifully to anyone who’ll listen. What I hear is that our beloved captain is also a retainer to Cassis di Prinze, and how do you think that works? Do you think the Householder put him up to that—a gavaro, with his loyalty for sale?”

  “All of this is news to me,” I said, trying to hide behind a mask like Arsenault’s. “Why shouldn’t the Householder use Arsenault as a spy?”

  “It won’t look good to the men, will it, if it’s spread around?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What are you suggesting, Lobardin? Is this your attempt at coercion? You couldn’t force me, so you’ll pretend I came willingly?”

  “Ah,” he said, and a surprising blush came up on his cheekbones. “No. What I really want is information.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can pass it along.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “He’s given me no reason not to.”

  Lobardin watched me for a moment. “He’s pledged himself to Cassis di Prinze, too, you know. Just as he pledged himself to Pallo d’Aliente. Which is the stronger pledge? And have you thought that he might be getting to you because Cassis or Geoffre put him up to it?” He stepped closer to me. “He wouldn’t be as blatant as Cassis. No, not our Arsenault. He’d be subtle. He’d invite your trust because he’d know that little birds with broken wings do not trust easily. He’d wheedle it out of you until you thought it was safe again. And then what would he do? Do you know how much Geoffre hates you?”

  “You don’t know any of that. You’re making it up.”

  “I’m trying to warn you, Kyrra. You have some inkling about what Geoffre is like, but…you don’t know. Not like I do.”

  “And you don’t know Arsenault like I do,” I said.

  I shoved past him and started walking down the hallway, fast, so he wouldn’t catch me again.

  “Just have a care!” he called after me. “Think about it while you’re shoveling that midden!”

  He was wrong, I told myself. Wrong beyond any shadow of a doubt. Arsenault had told me his story about Jon, and Jon had just had his entire family destroyed by the Prinze, and Arsenault was not trying to keep me close but send me away, and not just away but out of Eterea entirely.

  But Lobardin was right, too. Arsenault was cannier and capable of subtlety in ways that even Lobardin probably wouldn’t understand, and though I’d suspected it, I hadn’t known that when Arsenault said he was following the Prinze, he really meant Cassis.

  But again—I thought of the way he had looked beneath the olive trees
before he kissed me. There had been honesty in that kiss. Hadn’t there?

  “Damn you, Lobardin,” I whispered as I shoved my way out the back door, and crossed the yard to the kitchens.

  I paused long enough for a cup of coffee and a bun, which I ate while attempting to trade small talk with Elinda, the kitchen girl who had a stormy on-again, off-again relationship with Lobardin. It was currently off-again while he—for some reason I couldn’t fathom—dallied with Ilena. Elinda was in a foul mood, and she was complaining about how the boys had not come in with wood until late this morning, and that Margarithe had left with all her belongings, saying she was going home to Carrazone.

  Because Arsenault told her to go, too.

  I was glad she was leaving, that she would be safe but also that she would not be there anymore—a feeling that shamed me—but it probably didn’t shame me any more than knowing I was jealous that he would exact the same promise from her that he had from me.

  She hadn’t been an ass about it, either.

  I took a rag to wrap around my face as I worked and prepared to attack the trash pit.

  We dumped most of our waste in pits that had to be covered with dirt when they were full. Gavaros dug them, hoping not to put their shovels into a plot of land that had already had a full pit dug into it. The pit was home to all the refuse the barracks created that couldn’t be burned or turned into compost—bones with little pieces of muscle and gristle still clinging to them, chicken heads, broken crockery and glass, empty liquor bottles, the contents of all the chamber pots. It stank even on the coldest days.

  Serfs covered up the trash pit. Gavaros didn’t want to deal with it. The dirt saved from the digging of the pit formed a huge cone next to it, and the trick was to climb up on the pile of dirt and toss shovelfuls down, using the dirt as something of a shield. That way, you didn’t have to get too close until it was nearly covered, but you also had to have strong arms, to heave the dirt that far.

  Covering up the pit was the hardest job in the barracks for me.

  The pit had warmed under the sun until the sick-sweet-dead smell made me want to vomit. I wrapped the rag around my face and tucked in the ends to secure it without tying—which I couldn’t do one-handed—and picked up the shovel that stood in the dirt.

  My tactic was first to scrape as much dirt as I could from the closest side of the pile, then, when the trash on my side was mostly covered, to shovel the dirt onto the other side. That, at least, might cut down on the stench and speed the process.

  I settled my feet securely in the small runnel of pebbles and clods of clay at the bottom of the pile, and stretched out with the shovel to knock a spill of dirt down onto the trash.

  Splashes and pattering marked the dirt’s descent. I looked down to see how far the dirt would spill, and to gauge how much dirt I might have to shovel onto the other side. Then I stood there still, staring at what lay, half-buried in dirt and sausage casings, on top of the mound of trash.

  An arm.

  At first, I thought it was real, the arm of a woman cut cleanly above the elbow, then tossed carelessly in the waste pit. But when I looked more closely, I could tell it was made of wood—light-colored, striated with bands of pink and lavender. I hesitated a moment, then knocked the debris from it with my shovel. A leather harness with dull metal buckles gripped the end, where it would attach to the bicep. The hand bore long fingers the same size and shape as my own.

  I drew back from the lip of the pit, shaking, and looked up expecting to see Lobardin. But no one was there. It was just me and this arm.

  Had Lobardin known about the arm? Was that why he assigned me the task?

  I was shaking so badly, I could barely hold the shovel. I tried to make myself bury the arm, but I couldn’t. In the end, I dug it out of the trash and left it on the ground beside me as I worked. I buried all the rest of the trash and then I took the rag from my face and wiped off the arm and wrapped it up and took it down to the stream with me to wash.

  Then I went back to the barracks and laid it on Arsenault’s bed.

  And I waited for him to come back.

  But Arsenault stayed gone—longer than he ever had before. I began to wake in the night, my heart racing, sure that Cassis had caught him out in Liera and killed him. Then I would look wildly to his bed only to see the wooden arm lying there, its buckles gleaming in the moonlight, and the shadows of ravens ruffling their feathers outside the window.

  Finally came the night when the dry, southwest wind blew, laden with the heat of far-off deserts, and Lobardin walked in with news in triplet: Ricar di Sere’s death, the guns, and my father’s announcement that he would take a second wife.

  Lobardin delivered the news about the guns and Ricar first. He had a pike in his hand and he thumped it on the floor, loudly. “I’ve news!” he said. “The Householder informs me that we are in a period of mourning for Ricar di Sere, who was lost at sea off the coast of Dakkar. The Householder will be attending his funeral, so many of you lucky bastards will get to be part of the escort he brings with him into the city. And we shall all wear black for a week.”

  “What was Ricar di Sere doing off the coast of Dakkar?” Saes said in a low voice, leaning over me so Verrin could hear.

  “Well, you know what Arsenault thought,” Verrin said.

  “The Householder shouldn’t have him on these damn fool errands now.” Saes’s green eyes flicked in my direction. “Apologies, Kyrra.”

  I trailed my spoon through my noodles. “I have no say in my father’s affairs.”

  “Did Devid make it back?” another gavaro asked Lobardin.

  Lobardin schooled his features. “Devid did indeed make it back,” he said. “And he brought ten galleons full of guns with him.”

  Ten galleons. I clenched my spoon and stared, as did everyone else in the room. I didn’t have to feign surprise; Jon had mentioned no numbers in his letter.

  “They can’t be selling all those guns.”

  “To foreign markets. Not to us.”

  “They’ll turn the guns against the Aliente.”

  “Now’s the time to check your contracts, looking for an out.”

  Nervous laughter rippled through the room. “I’ve never seen a gun,” said one of the green recruits. “Can’t be worse than arrows or pitch fire.”

  Lobardin laughed. “My friend, you’re an innocent. Once, I saw an Onzarran merchant shoot a man with a gun only as long as your arm. The ball went straight through his stomach and out the other side from thirty paces away. When the man hit the ground, I went up to see what the wound looked like. The hole was big enough to put your shoe in.”

  “Bullshit,” Verrin piped up. “Thirty paces, Lobardin? What could do that kind of damage at thirty paces?”

  “Well,” Lobardin said, resting the pike against his shoulder and beginning to roll up his sleeve, “I’ve a scar in my arm that will prove I know all about guns. I was shot by one once. Rather irritated husband. Ball just grazed me, but that was enough.”

  He flexed his arm so everyone could see the mark on his bicep, a U-shaped scar that could have been from anything.

  “Why didn’t it go all the way through you, then?”

  Lobardin pushed his sleeve down. “Guns have range, just like bows. I was already running away. The man the merchant shot didn’t have the sense.”

  Saes snorted. “If you had any sense, Lobardin, you wouldn’t have been messing with the wife of a man who could afford a gun in the first place.”

  “Enough.” Utîl pushed his chair back with a screech and stood up. Silence immediately fell over the hall, but I wondered why he’d let the conversation go on as long as it had. “Lobardin,” he said, “if you’ve more news, get on with it, but I’ll not have you inciting rumors in my camp.”

  Lobardin bowed, a gesture just short of mockery. “I do have other news, as it turns out.” He straightened up. “The Householder wishes to let it be known that he will take another woman to wife, and that the engagement i
s effective as of now, to the daughter of Haral d’Imisi. The marriage will take place on Fortune’s Night, on these grounds. His wife, the current mistress”—Lobardin’s gaze darted to me—“will not step down as Messera. We are to prepare for guests and will be allowed at the feast.”

  There were whoops of joy and relief; for over three years, everyone had expected my father to take another wife, to get another heir, and the worry engendered by his stubborn and inexplicable resistance had wormed its way through every part of the estate.

  But I sat, stunned by the news. Claudia d’Imisi was younger than I was. She was pretty enough, with her long, golden-brown hair and her pink-pinched cheeks, and she had a head on her shoulders, too, which would be something my father would look for in a wife. Yet…she wasn’t a wife; she was only a girl. A girl I had known when we wore our hair in twin braids and dressed in lacy pinafores and played with dolls.

  I put my spoon down. “If you won’t be needing me, Verrin…” I said.

  His brow furrowed with concern. “No. I imagine we’ll be drinking tonight. Play a hand of indij, Kyrra, if you’d like.”

  I shook my head. “I think I’ll have my drink alone this evening,” I said, and he nodded.

  “And perhaps Arsenault will be back in the morning,” Saes added.

  “Perhaps he will,” I said, not smiling, and left the table.

  My hands began to tremble. Everything I had heard screamed war. But Utîl cared nothing for the future. His contract was up in a month.

  What had my father done, charging Arsenault with not two but three jobs?

  I went to the kitchens and liberated a bottle of gazpa from the shelves. Gazpa was our own special liqueur, brewed with the mulberries from our trees. My father had sometimes let me take small sips from his glass. I couldn’t help thinking of him as I took the bottle back to Arsenault’s room and stared at the arm on Arsenault’s bed. The first drink I took was hesitant, the way I had sipped the rich red liqueur from my father’s glass. But its warmth was so welcome, I took the next swig from the bottle like a gavaro.