Fortune's Fool (Eterean Empire Book 1)

by Angela Boord

  “I had it from him and a man I trust, who knows the truth.”

  He still wouldn’t betray Jon. It made me uneasy, but I held my tongue.

  My father rubbed his chin. Then he sighed. “I can’t let you do this, Arsenault. There are too many risks involved, and we may yet avoid war.”

  Arsenault blinked. “Pallo,” he said. “Mestere…”

  My father waved him quiet. “No. In this I will hear no dissent. I would avoid war at all costs. I will not have the lives of my people based on a man of questionable loyalty. If Lobardin fails, what happens? The Circle hears a case of attempted murder, and the trail leads itself back to you and by extension me, my lands are forfeit, and we submit to the Prinze.”

  “You don’t have to submit to the Prinze,” I said viciously. “You could fight then, too.”

  He held up a hand. “I submit to the law, Kyrra. I said I will hear no dissension in this.”

  “Pallo—” my mother began.

  “It is my decision to make!” my father shouted at her. We both recoiled. I had never heard him raise his voice to her in my life. Then he clamped his mouth shut, and his throat worked as he tried to bring himself under control.

  “I have said all I am going to say on the matter. Lobardin will be banished from these estates, Kyrra will go back to the combing house, and you, Arsenault—you will keep me informed of matters as they stand and when they happen. Is that clear?”

  “Si, Mestere.” Arsenault inclined his head in respect, but his jaw was strung taut and he had his hand on his sword. He held the hilt so tightly, his knuckles stood out.

  “We will not invite war,” my father said again. “I am taking a wife to avoid it. Do you think that makes me happy?”

  He and my mother shared a long, tortured look, and I could barely breathe.

  All of this was my fault.

  I clenched my shirt at my side as if everything could be made better if I only had a sword, but there was no way out of this mess. My father came to stand behind my mother and put his hand on her shoulder, and I realized that we were dismissed.

  “Father,” I said, bowing, “I’ll do as you say.”

  He didn’t look at me. Instead, he just waved me away.

  I turned around with tears in my eyes. Arsenault adjusted his sword and started after me, bowing, too, but then my father said, “Arsenault,” and he stopped.

  “Si, Mestere?”

  “Send my daughter away after the wedding. Don’t tell me where she is. I’ll not want to know.”

  Chapter 27

  On the fifth day of the storm, when the weather finally begins to clear, Charri comes down the stairs to tell us to get out. After five days of being cooped up in a cellar with Silva and Meli and their companions, it’s a relief to be kicked out.

  But when we go, we bring Silva with us. As a hostage for Meli’s silence. Trapped down in the basement for five days with nothing to do but tend to Arsenault, I learned a few things but not what I most wanted to know.

  Silva knows what happened at Kafrin Gorge.

  I promise to send him back after we’re well away. Meli watches me like she’s trying to decide if I’m lying or not. I’ve tried to talk myself into killing her, but I can’t. Two mornings ago, when I woke from another fitful sleep on the floor beside Arsenault’s narrow cot, she had gotten him up and given him a wet cloth to wash his face, and was helping him with a bowl of broth. When his blanket slipped off his shoulders, she pulled it back up and kept up a soft one-sided conversation about the weather so he would stay alert enough to eat. When his head began to dip, she caught the bowl and helped him lie down again.

  After that, I knew I wouldn’t be able to wield the knife. And if I couldn’t kill her, that meant I’d have to keep Silva alive somehow, too.

  After a lot of struggle, Mikelo, Silva, and I get Arsenault to the end of the street. A burned crescent of forest curves past a shattered house and its courtyard. Broken frescoes litter the blackened tiles, and tiny, weedy saplings force their way up through the stones of the garden paths. Red poppies overrun the garden, spilling over every crumbled stone and garden paver, their vaguely narcotic scent heavy in the air.

  Storm wrack—broken branches and shredded young leaves—is scattered everywhere.

  In the midst of this riot of life and death, Mikelo and Silva grunt as they help Arsenault to the ground. He breathes hard and blinks sweat from his eyes, then leans against a wall leveled to the height of his shoulders. The bottom strip of a fresco remains intact on the plaster—a row of bare feet, the knees of a kneeling man.

  “Kyrra,” Arsenault says, rubbing his chest. “Where are we going?”

  He isn’t quite himself yet—whoever that may be. Today is the sixth day. A hazy pain glaze still floats in his eyes and he’s been rubbing his chest a lot, as if he might scratch the new skin out. If my experience is any pattern, he’ll clear tomorrow, but he’ll be weak. He hasn’t eaten much, though sometimes he’s awakened as thirsty as a man in the desert.

  “I’m going to buy clothes for you,” I say, “and some horses. I’m taking Silva with me. Mikelo will stay.”

  Mikelo and Silva both look up at me in surprise, and Arsenault looks troubled. “You’re taking Silva?”

  “I can’t leave him with you. He’s going to help me in the horse market.”

  “Then you’re still going to finish Tonia’s job?”

  I rub my forehead. I’ve had five days to do nothing but think, and I still haven’t figured out what’s going on. I can’t imagine we’ve slipped out of Geoffre’s sight, which means he must have wanted us to get at least this far, and if that’s so, what is his true goal? Does he want me to kill Cassis? Or does he merely think it entertaining to set Arsenault and me against each other?

  “Kyrra,” Mikelo says softly. “I could ask my uncle for asylum—”

  I let my hand drop and turn to face him. “Your uncle won’t give me asylum. He wants something else out of me, but I don’t know what it is. The only way to find out is to play the game.”

  “Is it?” Arsenault says.

  Something in his voice makes me turn. His gaze catches mine, and I remember the last time we talked about games we had to play and my naive assertion that we could escape. There is something different in his eyes now since Mikelo healed him, less confusion but more question. I suppose my behavior with Silva at the inn didn’t help.

  A flush comes up on my cheeks and I look down at the pavers.

  But then Razi and Vadz are between us, too.

  “You could leave,” I tell him. “If you wanted to. But I have to do this.”

  For the five years I allowed him to fight these battles on his own. For not doing what Jon thought I could do, long ago. If Arsenault hadn’t tried to protect me, I might have killed the family then and stopped the war before it started. Then Vadz could have gone home to Aleya and Razi would still have his arm.

  Arsenault’s expression darkens. “I’m not a coward.”

  “I meant I’d save you from this fight. It’s mine now, and I know you think I ought to stop, but I can’t.”

  The tight line of his lips softens. “I won’t leave you,” he says.

  I nod, a sharp dip of my chin, but inside I am more relieved. What would I have done if he’d said yes?

  I turn my attention to Mikelo and Silva. Troubled lines mar Mikelo’s face, and Silva looks stormy, left out, unable to follow what I’ve been saying.

  I rise and grab Silva by the arm. “Come on. We’d best be off.”

  “Why don’t you just kill me and get it over with?” Silva says after we turn the corner onto the street.

  I made him dress in his finest clothes before we left so we could fit in with the householders in town. He’s wearing a sky-blue shirt of medium-grade silk given to him by a patron. Not fine enough to be spun from Aliente worms, but silk nonetheless.

  “And risk your sister going to the Town Guard?”

  “We both know that you’ve managed it to
so you could kill me and she’d never know before it was too late. Meli’s a soft touch.”

  “I don’t think she’s as soft as you think she is.”

  “So, you use me before you kill me, then make your escape. If you want me to trade services for horses like Meli did the other night, you can do it yourself.”

  “I don’t think your services are worth a horse, Silva.”

  Silva laughs—more of a cynical bark. “Oh, that’s fine. Go ahead and throw barbs. See how easy it is to perform with a man like your captain looking daggers your way.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be trained for those situations?”

  “For situations in which a woman with a metal arm hires me to taunt a wanted traitor responsible for the deaths of hundreds or thousands of men? I’d like to know the madam farsighted enough.”

  “About that…” I say. With a flick of my wrist, I have the knife out of my wrist sheath and in my right hand. His eyes widen at the sight of the naked blade, and then he looks around wildly as if searching for an escape. But I’ve led him into an empty street that ends in a box with a collapsed wall. Our only company is a flock of pigeons and a couple of cats, poking through the trash.

  “You’re mad,” he says in a strained voice. “You’re just mad.”

  “Have you figured out who I am?”

  He looks startled. “Your name is Kyrra. You’re not the only Kyrra in the world.”

  “True.” I push up my sleeve so he can get a good look at my arm. I bound my right hand with linen rags before I left, in place of my gloves. But the rest of my arm is covered only by my sleeve.

  His eyes widen, and I let my sleeve fall back into place.

  “Arsenault fought for my father,” I say.

  Silva stares at my arm, then at me. His eyes grow even wider, and his voice shakes when he says, “You’re Kyrra d’Aliente.”

  “Shh,” I say, putting a linen-wrapped finger of my right hand to my lips. “No one goes by that name anymore.”

  “Then why—” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and lets it fall. “Your father’s captain—he was treating with the Prinze…”

  “How do you know that?”

  Silva bolts. But I’m ready for him. I lunge with him, catching him by the shoulder with my right hand and slamming him against the wall of a crumbling building. He gasps in pain. I settle my knife against the hollow of his throat.

  “I said, how do you know that?”

  “I saw him with Geoffre di Prinze.”

  “And what made you think that Geoffre wasn’t holding him prisoner?”

  “I saw him come out of the Prinze tent. He had no escorts, no guards. He walked out of the camp just as the Aliente troops started moving down the gorge. He was gone when the Prinze lit the fire.”

  “When they lit your village?”

  “The camp. We were shepherds. We had grazing rights on Imisi and Aliente lands. That village was our camp in late summer. It was there, so we used it.”

  “At the south end of the gorge.” I’d hardly call those buildings a village. Lean-tos were set up in the ruins of old Eterean buildings. A common thing, in the Eterean countryside.

  “The wind blew up from the south.”

  “You think Geoffre let Arsenault go because they had a deal. Arsenault would desert my father in his time of need, and my father would lead his troops himself, directly into the way of danger. Is that it? Or do you blame Arsenault for more? If he was in Geoffre’s tent, what do you think he was doing there?”

  Silva’s eyes darken. It’s interesting how his eyes change color, blue to indigo—such a dark color, like a twilit sky. “I don’t know what he was doing there. But I can tell you what he wasn’t doing there. He wasn’t doing anything for us. The Prinze torched the buildings, slaughtered our sheep—took the women, my mother, my sister—”

  His voice closes off. But it doesn’t matter that he stops talking. You can see it in his eyes what happened.

  Men don’t think at such moments. Neither villains nor victims. I stood in the middle of one of the worst massacres in Rojornicki history and it was the same. The thinking comes after. In dreams and odd moments, when the crash of thunder becomes the exact sound of a cannonball crushing the wall of your room, or when the clank of table knives sends you scrambling for your sword.

  “So, you wanted to kill him for that?” I say. “For something the Prinze did to you?”

  “He was in Geoffre’s tent! He walked away! No one stopped him. They were setting the torches as he went. He was the Aliente captain. He had a responsibility to do something.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Roped to one of the buildings. I tried to drag my sister away from one of the Prinze gavaros, and his friends beat me and tied me there. Then they forgot about me.” His chest heaves. “I saw everything.”

  I take a deep breath.

  “Arsenault’s greatest talent was in making himself trusted, and my father used that talent to its utmost. My father would never have led his troops into that gorge himself. There must have been something else at work there, something you weren’t privy to. There must have been something…”

  Something Geoffre did to Arsenault in that tent.

  Something someone told my father.

  Silva shifts and I jam the knife back against his throat, but he leans forward anyway. “If you believe the best of him, then what happened in that alley? He attacked you!”

  “I only wanted to know where he stood. What game he was playing, if he was playing one.”

  “And that’s why you used me to taunt him? What made you change your mind?”

  “He wears burgundy,” I say—the simplest explanation. Silva wouldn’t understand the rest, and I’m not sure he needs to know anyway.

  “And that’s enough for you?”

  “It means more than it seems.”

  “You just wanted me for my story. And now that I’ve told you, you’re going to leave my body in the dust.” He closes his eyes and tenses, in preparation for the wound. “Go ahead, then. I’m ready.”

  “Do you believe what I said?”

  He opens his eyes in surprise. “I— I’ve not seen anyone wear burgundy in Karansis,” he stutters. “The Prinze have banned it.”

  “It would have been daring if he was only wearing it to fool me, wouldn’t it?”

  Silva’s eyes flicker and his brows pull down, like he’s coming to a conclusion he doesn’t want to make. “Suicidal. The Prinze would have hauled him into jail and hanged him in the morning.”

  “You’ve heard stories about his magic, haven’t you?”

  Silva eyes me warily. “Stories.”

  “They’re true. Sometimes, magic gets out of hand. The fight we had in the alley was magic getting out of hand. Burgundy is the truth.”

  “But he did nothing in the Gorge! He just walked away—past the soldiers!”

  “Do you think maybe he was trying to take his place beside my father so he could save everyone?”

  Silva falls silent.

  I slide the knife back into its sheath and drop my arm. “Help me buy the horses. Then you can leave.”

  Silva’s brows arch. “Just like that?”

  “Look,” I say, “maybe your sister is a soft touch, but she’s had enough pain in her life without you causing her more, don’t you think?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that if you make me kill you and force her to carry through on a promise of revenge, you’re going to ruin her life. All that work she’s ashamed of, all those hours she puts in so she can save some coin are geared toward getting the both of you out of Karansis. Not just her, you. You’re the only family she has left, yes?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And so, not only does she have to work on her back to get you out of here, she also has to keep you from haring off on some damn fool mission of honor to avenge something she’s just trying to put in the past so she can move forward. And here you are, fi
xating on it so she can’t forget it either.”

  “But what else am I supposed to do?” Silva says in anguish. “I couldn’t do anything then, and you’re telling me I still can’t do anything about it? I might as well have never been untied from that building!”

  “Haven’t you been listening to a word I said? Go back to your sister and let her know you’ve decided to drop your quest for vengeance. Make your money and take her out of here. That’s how you help her best.”

  I’m aware of the irony of what I’m telling him, but just because I can give good advice doesn’t make it the kind of advice I can take myself.

  “But I can’t go back to the Youth. And none of the reputable houses will hire me. I’ve tried.” He runs a hand through his hair, tousling his curls as he stares at the ground. “I make a poor courtesan.”

  “Your technique did want a bit,” I’m forced to admit, and I watch his expression sag even further. For some reason, I feel the urge to cheer him up. “But there are men who like the passion you do have, aren’t there?”

  He gives me an odd look. “My patrons don’t care about me, as long as I play their games. Just like you. Sometimes, I’m not good at playing along.”

  Those kisses I paid for have given us an intimacy I wish we didn’t have.

  “Well, then,” I say. “Help me buy my supplies and maybe you can try your hand at something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Show a little initiative. Sell ghost tours around the murder markers on Murderer’s Ridge.”

  He darts a glance at me and then, as if he’s doing it against his will, he laughs. I smile in return. People eventually fill in the gaps around us as we walk out of the alley and toward the market, and there is no opportunity to speak anymore. Nothing has been resolved, but something has at least been patched.

  He’ll leave us alone. I don’t know where he’ll go, but I won’t have to worry about the Karansis Town Guard barring our exit on information they got from him.

  Mikelo is still there when I get back. He scrambles to his feet at my approach, clutching the sword in both hands. The horses dance behind me as I pull them to a stop, and one of them—a sturdy bay who reminds me of the horse I left in Liera—whiffles my hair.