Fortune's Fool (Eterean Empire Book 1)

by Angela Boord

  Truthfully, I hadn’t thought of Ilena much when I sat in the caves. How could I, when there was Arsenault to worry about? I worried that if I saw him, I would find some way to claw the rope from my neck, that I would scream and struggle and fight...

  For nothing.

  My throat clutched at the thought.

  “Kyrra,” Verrin said. “Are you all right?”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Finally, I said, “The tea?”

  Verrin watched me instead of his hands as he fumbled about in the burro’s pack. The donkey shifted and bumped against him, swiveling its long ears, then laying them back flat against its head. Verrin held the skin with the tea in it almost under my nose before I realized he was offering it to me.

  “Thank you,” I said. He tipped it to my lips. I braced myself for a taste like the potion my mother gave me to miscarry Cassis’s child, but when the warm liquid slid down my throat, it tasted mostly of honey marred only by a slight bitterness.

  I drank it all. When Verrin took the skin away, there wasn’t a drop left. He lifted me onto the donkey, which put back its ears, and then he took the lead rope and we set off. As the little donkey lurched along, picking its way with sure hooves up the rocky path and eventually over the top of the ravine and through the long grass, I began to grow lethargic. I felt as if my limbs slowly separated from my body like a boat slips from a mooring. Verrin had to catch me and shove me back onto the burro more than once, so I knew what had been in the tea.

  Kacin.

  She must have used a lot for it to have affected me so quickly. But I remember weeping. I remember Verrin holding my shoulders to keep me on the burro and looking into my face in alarm. I remember the way the first real light of sunrise appeared like a slash of blood on the horizon. I remember saying to Verrin, There is going to be a war and you should take Etti and the children away. I remember saying, My father is going to hang me for Geoffre di Prinze.

  I remember his look of horror, too. Your father wouldn’t do that to you, Kyrra, he said. What father would?

  But he wasn’t from Liera. He couldn’t be blamed for not knowing.

  After a little while, the blur of the world began to be swirled with people, their faces peeking out at me from beneath lace veils and rough-spun hoods like the faces of pansies. They turned this way and that as if they were blown by the wind, and I began to laugh. The people turned toward me when I laughed, and their mouths were all slashes in their faces as if their petals had been torn, and now their jaws flapped like the tatters. I sank down against the burro and closed my eyes, breathing in his dusty burro scent, but that just made me queasy and reminded me of Cassis in the hayloft, and I wanted to cry. My face got sticky and I could feel the stiff prickles of donkey hair pasted to my cheeks, but I couldn’t wipe them off. Verrin pushed me up and wiped them off for me.

  “Thank you,” I whispered to him, loud enough for anyone to hear, I’m sure. “You’ve always been nice to me, Verrin.”

  “What is this talk about?” he said. “What was in that tea, Kyrra?”

  But I just shrugged. When I turned my head, it swung like a gate on a fence. I imagined that my muscles creaked, but then I saw the gibbet kneeling like a penitent in the dirt, its arms raised toward the sky.

  Verrin grabbed my left arm. “No,” he whispered. “The Mestere couldn’t be so cruel! You— His daughter!”

  “Let me go, Verrin,” I said—or thought I said, though even in my own ears, my voice had slurred. “I said, Verrin.”

  “You said what, Kyrra?” He still had his hand on my arm, holding me up but also, as I began to realize, pulling me away with him into the crowd.

  “Come with me,” he said softly. “Come with me now, before anyone—”

  “No!” I shouted and put all my strength into stopping. In his surprise, he let me go and I staggered sideways, falling to my knees.

  “Kyrra!”

  I looked up at him. “No! I said I would for my father!”

  I can remember the horror on Verrin’s face. And then the crowds closed in like a tide, awash with the noise of voices. The two gavaros who’d been with Verrin when I killed Ilena seemed to come out of nowhere. They grabbed my arms.

  “The Mestere passed judgement,” the one with the hooknose said, gesturing over his shoulder with his head. “It’s to be a hanging.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense!” Verrin yelled at them, still holding on to me. “Why?”

  “Mestere’s orders,” the gavaro said, and they both began pulling me away from Verrin, who cursed and yanked back.

  I felt like a rag doll.

  “Let me go, Verrin!” I yelled.

  Verrin looked at me helplessly. The other gavaros tugged me away from him. He reached for me, but I pulled away.

  “I told my father I’d do it. It’s what I want.”

  I started laughing—mad laughter, kacin-sparked. My feet thunked on the wooden steps of the gibbet, but I didn’t stop laughing. Not even as they settled the noose around my neck.

  Then my father stepped up onto the platform.

  Everything grew quiet. Even me. My father came closer and I waited for him. Tears pricked my eyes, but I fought them back. It was hard, with the kacin. The gavaros behind me had to hold me up. “Steady, now,” one of them murmured.

  At those words, my father stopped and looked at me. He didn’t stand next to me or touch me. He simply watched me for a moment. His gaze glittered with tears he didn’t shed. For a brief moment—one I might have imagined—his face twisted and he looked as if he’d lose his resolve and reach out for me.

  The kacin made it hard to be cold. But I willed my face stony and I turned away from him, shrugging off the gavaros who held me up. I stood upright on my own in the noose.

  When I glanced back at my father, he’d turned his head, too. He looked old now, older than I ever imagined he could be. The skin on his face hung gaunt on his cheekbones.

  “It is unfortunate that our festivities are marred with such proceedings, but justice is justice,” my father said. “This serf girl broke my proscriptions on edged weapons and killed another girl. My will is that she die by hanging.”

  His expression was hard as a blade when he said it. I was proud of him. But maybe that was the kacin, flooding me with elation that, at last, I would do what was honorable and true.

  I looked over the crowd as the gavaros behind me checked the noose and adjusted my feet over the trapdoor. My gaze snagged on a row of pansies in the front—Geoffre and Devid, staring up at me with their fierce blue eyes; Cassis, his eyes wide and dark and brown.

  My vision blurred and I stumbled. The noose pulled against my neck and the hooknosed gavaro cursed and bent to shove my leg back where it should go.

  When I looked up again, I saw Arsenault.

  He stood at the edge of the crowd, wrapped in a beggar’s brown robes. His hood fell back a little when he looked up at me.

  My heart wrenched.

  Then there was a thump as a gavaro kicked over the lever for the trapdoor. I moved my head, but the door flew open too fast and the noose caught my neck and yanked me up, hard.

  The sensation of air beneath my feet and the blinding crush of pain from the rope were the last things I knew.

  I felt like I was floating. Death, free from pain. I looked down on myself from somewhere above: my body hanging limp like that doll torn between the gavaros. The noose creaked as it slowly twisted.

  I remember everything so clearly, as if I were just another bystander eager for spectacle. I remember the way my hair hung down in my face in wild golden curls sparking with the new day’s sunlight. I remember how the sky rolled itself out like a bolt of blue silk, shimmering with morning. I remember the way the crowd leaned forward as a whole, as if it were a single animal.

  Was I dead? Had the rope snapped my neck? These questions meant nothing. I simply was, floating free, restless to be away.

  Then someone shouted my name.

  KYRRA! />
  The word boomed in the stillness, and the day, so silent, fell into pieces and slammed into me. I tried to dodge the power of that voice, but something in it skewered me and wouldn’t let me go.

  Kyrra! it came again. Kyrra kyrra kyrra KYRRA

  Until it ceased to be my name and only a word, a sound, a hook in my flesh.

  What? I cried out. Oh, let me go—

  It was Arsenault.

  I saw him suddenly, standing in a space all his own with his hood thrown back, staring up at me—not my body, but me—his eyes wild. Wind whipped his black hair away from his face, and his cloak had fallen askew so I could see the hilt of his sword jutting from his hip. It flashed silver in the light of the sun. The silver, the gleam of metal, fascinated me. My gaze was drawn to it like a flitting moth.

  Hold on, Kyrra!

  Arsenault, it was my choice! No one forced me.

  And it’s my choice to bring you back, he said in a determined voice. My love.

  My heart felt as if it had been clawed in two.

  I was dead. I would never see him again.

  Kyrra!

  The sound of my name was a sharp snap, like a slap in the face. I turned toward it, and there my clarity ends. Pain lanced me from every direction, molten and hot, dripping down my spine.

  I screamed. Everything was a muddle. I thought I saw my body lift up out of the pit on its own, surrounded by a nimbus of silver. The noose loosened and twitched its tail as if it were alive. It untangled from around my neck like a snake, its frayed ends like fangs, hissing, spitting.

  My body thumped to the wood like a carcass of meat. Still. Dead.

  Let me back in! I screamed.

  I beat at it, consumed by pain, but I could find no way back. A moment before, I had wanted to die for my House, but now I did not; Arsenault had set that hook in me and it drew me back like a fish. In my heart, I didn’t want to die. And that was what Arsenault had seized on.

  He stood there, on the platform. He’d thrown off his cloak and pulled his sword. I heard screams. There were thumps on the platform like bootheels and he gathered up my dead body and ran.

  My head bumped against his chest. He whispered words I didn’t understand, and then—

  How shall I explain this? It can’t be explained.

  I was dead, my soul was in the air, and then—it wasn’t. Then I was opening my eyes and opening my mouth to cry out, but when I did, something hot and scalding flooded out of it and burned my chin.

  Not vomit. It wasn’t vomit.

  I thrashed, trying to free my left arm. I choked, tried to draw breath and couldn’t—

  Kyrra, oh dear gods, it has to come out of you now...

  I opened my eyes again and I was on the ground in a copse of beeches, lying on my stomach. Arsenault’s boot was next to my face, his hand twisted in my collar, holding me up so I wouldn’t drown in whatever was pouring out of me. I coughed again, spewing out more and more of the scalding liquid that burned me inside.

  The pool sparkled in the light. Almost, I wanted to touch it.

  It was silver.

  “Arsenault,” I tried to gasp, but the word wouldn’t come out—only a rasping croak that died in another fit of retching.

  I felt his hands at my back, then my arm sprang free. I would have fallen on my face, but he caught me and gently wiped away the silver liquid from my chin with his sleeve. He shook it out onto the ground, where it ran away in little drops, then hardened in the dirt.

  “Arsenault?” This time, I managed a hoarse whisper. I turned my head weakly so I could look at him.

  He pushed my hair away from my face. “Forgive me, Kyrra,” he whispered. “But I couldn’t let you go.” Then he glanced over his shoulder and picked me up again, heaving himself to his feet.

  The movement hurt. I cried out, but Arsenault rolled me so that his chest muffled it. “Into the brush,” he whispered, “and I’ll be back for you.”

  I stared up at him, wide-eyed. “Arsenault, you can’t—”

  He didn’t answer. He kicked some briars out of the way and laid me down in a thicket, then covered me up with brush. “I’ll be back,” he said.

  He brushed his lips against my brow before he left.

  I drifted away, though I struggled to stay alert and watch what happened. All I could see were boots, anyway—the flash of brown and black as Arsenault fought off the men who chased us.

  “Leave her be!” he shouted once, sword flashing. I closed my eyes as pain shot through me, kin to the silver in his sword, and when I opened them, someone else spoke.

  “Arsenault—don’t make us kill you! We’re only following orders!”

  “Then, dammit, if you don’t want to kill me, stand with me—the Prinze will be here soon enough.”

  “She’s dead, Arsenault—let the Mestere have her body.”

  “She’s not dead, and anyone who hurts her will get a stomach full of my sword.”

  “Traitor!” an unfamiliar voice called out. “He’s betrayed you all and us, too. Give him up!”

  My heart went cold. I recognized that voice. It was Federico, Cassis’s gavaro.

  I bit my lip. The taste of metal seeped again into my mouth. I wanted to spit it out, but I dared make no sound. I swallowed it instead.

  Leave him to me.

  Cassis’s voice, joining the fray, venomous and cold.

  The sound of struck steel reverberated in my head. I imagined them circling each other, swords out, until one struck a blow...

  A man cried out. Then a hand swept away the gorse that kept me hidden and male arms picked me up, threw me heavily, but not ungently, over one shoulder.

  It had to be Arsenault, but I didn’t have the energy to notice.

  Everything went black.

  I woke to the sound of horses.

  Not the clop of hooves, as if we were riding, but simply the sound of them—snorts and whickers, the ring of a shoe tapped against a rock, the heavy stomp of an impatient foot in the dust. For a moment, I thought we were in the stables, but then someone shoved me up and over his shoulder onto a horse, and when I slitted my eyes open in surprise, I realized we were in the middle of the woods.

  The movement and whirl of vision made my head reel. I closed my eyes again. More hands tugged me from the other side, and my face scraped horsehair. I tried to help, to clutch for the reins, but I was too weak. The black tide rushed in again, washing me out with it when it receded.

  When I woke again, I was still on the horse, but there was a man mounted behind me now, and air wafted past my face. My head rested in the crook of his arm.

  “You know the path?” a woman’s voice asked.

  Isia, the strega. Why was she there? I struggled to open my eyes, but they were so heavy.

  The man who held me moved. His shirt rubbed against my face, and his stomach muscles moved beneath it, lean and warm. My head bumped something hard in his cloak, something heavy. A gun? I fought to open my eyes, seized for a moment with the fear that it was Cassis who held me, not Arsenault.

  “I know it,” the man said, breathing hard, and I wanted to weep with relief; it was Arsenault. He settled me on his lap more securely, the reins falling over my stomach.

  “I’ll ride with you,” another man said. Verrin. Had Verrin run to get Arsenault? Was that why—

  I realized I didn’t know what happened. I wanted to wake up. I wanted to ask my questions. But it took too much effort, just wanting all that. I sank down again, and the sounds of conversation grew distant and muddled, though they never disappeared.

  “No,” Arsenault said. “Go back to the villa. They’ll need all the hands they can get. Everything is unraveled.”

  “Arsenault, if I had known he would sentence his own daughter to death...”

  “I’ll hold it against him, but don’t you. The Prinze brought enough gavaros for a fight, and they’ll all be looking for me. The Mestere will be putting them off. He’ll need help.”

  “And what if they find you?
They’re not that far behind. Whatever it was you did—”

  “They’re occupied,” Isia put in, sounding somewhat bemused. “And Arsenault is right, boy; the Aliente need someone they can trust back there. The Messera didn’t send us out here to allow her daughter to be captured again.”

  My mother sent Isia with a horse?

  “I made a vow,” Isia said in a low voice, which seemed to be directed at Arsenault. “I vowed that Carolla’s children would live. Now that vow becomes yours, too. Do you swear it? Will you uphold them?”

  “I will,” Arsenault said. I felt him reach out his hand, as if to touch Isia.

  But I wanted to shout, I am Carolla’s only child! How could Isia not know that my brother was dead?

  “Ride, Verrin,” Arsenault said, “and I’ll be back within a fortnight.”

  Damn the man. He was going to take me somewhere and leave me. I fought to move, to open my eyes and pound at his chest until he let me go, but all I could manage was to slit my eyes open and clutch at his shirt.

  For a moment, his eyes met mine and a worn, sad smile curved his lips. “Hold on, Kyrra,” he said.

  “Arsenault,” I choked.

  But he’d already touched his knees to the horse’s side. The horse bounded forward, legs churning, and all I could do was hold on.

  “May Fortune ride with you!” Verrin called out.

  I wanted desperately to laugh.

  I don’t know how long it took to ride to the lodge. I knew that’s where we were going, because when I roused myself to look around, we were often traveling uphill. But I don’t remember much of the ride, just that sometimes I would wake and we would be tucked into the trees at the side of the road, Arsenault sleeping at my side with both of us covered up in his black cloak.

  One night after my strength had returned a little, I reached out and touched the corner of his eye, where something glimmered and caught the light. “Arsenault?” I whispered.

  He said nothing but took me in his arms and rocked me back and forth, his lips pressed into my hair. I could feel him weep, but his tears were silent and it was only his chest moving. I didn’t know what to do, so I held him, too, until I fell asleep, and then in the morning, we were moving again, all uphill.