by Kate Elliott
“That one,” says Agalar, and I can’t help myself: my hand lifts to my throat as he indicates Amaya. “She’s a mule too.”
Gargaron’s gaze sharpens as Denya and Amaya, belatedly sensing a threat, look up together. Denya blanches and, with a gasp, clutches Amaya’s hand, but Amaya’s expression remains blandly pleasant for I am sure no shock oversets my little sister unless she wants it to.
“Orchid, come here,” orders Gargaron, and she releases Denya’s hand, rises gracefully, and glides forward as if onto a proscenium for a performance. “Are you a mule? You don’t look like one.”
Agalar speaks before Amaya can. “She’s powdering her skin to lighten it. I suspect she irons her hair to get any bit of curl out of it. And her brows are wide, more Efean than Saroese. Small things, but visible to a discerning gaze.”
I lower my hand, hoping no one has caught my frightened gesture. Amaya shows no sign of distress as they examine her. She even turns her head to display her profile to best advantage. Her show of cool confidence would make me want to laugh if I weren’t so terrified for us both.
With a frown Gargaron says, “You’ve been in Garon Palace long enough to know by now that we never employ people with Commoner ancestry. What do you have to say to this accusation?”
Amaya opens her hands to show they are empty, not hiding anything. With eyes cast down in the manner required of Patron girls, she speaks in her prettiest voice with not a hint of anger. “I beg your pardon, my lord, but I must protest most indignantly any suggestion that my mother is common or indeed anything but what she always professed herself to be. As for my father, he is gone, so any secrets he might have hidden I cannot know, but never in my hearing did he speak of Commoner ancestry among his foremothers.”
Denya is the quietest girl I’ve ever met but she speaks up now, her voice so soft I barely hear it. “If I have pleased you, my lord, please do not separate me from an accomplished and competent servant who takes care of all my needs.”
“Lord Agalar, I think you are stretching too far for this one.” Gargaron dismisses Amaya with a wave. “The girl was obviously raised in a proper Patron manner. Furthermore, Denya has soldiered through this difficult journey without complaint and without losing her polish, so I am inclined to let her have her way in this. You may understand that I must protect my own comfort.”
A flash of annoyance curls Agalar’s lips like that of a man unaccustomed to having anything denied him. “I understand some men value comfort over learning, Lord Gargaron. I am not among them. I have traveled the length of the Three Seas in pursuit of medical knowledge without regard to my comfort. Why would I have traveled into the desert if not because there is nowhere else I can so productively study how mining injuries are exacerbated by heat and dust?”
“A good question,” remarks Gargaron in a way that makes my neck prickle, as if he sees something here that I don’t. “Yet it’s true the supervisors at the mine report that you have saved many valuable workers who would otherwise have died. In fact I have many more questions to ask regarding your expertise. Would you consider joining me for a midday feast in the much cooler and more pleasant garden of our house? I can offer date wine, fresh bread, and spiced fish.”
“I accept with pleasure, Lord Gargaron.”
We adversaries wait for the highborn to leave first. Amaya hangs back to place the food in baskets, and scratches her right ear in the signal we’ve arranged. I walk over to the table as if to snatch a handful of candied balls of diced dates and walnuts, then pretend to drop one. We both kneel at the same time.
She whispers, “Have you heard anything about the mine accident? We’ve been to every Garon estate. This is the last place we could hope to find her. What if she and the others were among the victims?”
“I wondered the same thing.”
My expression must be as bleak as my heart, because she blinks away a tear and adds, “I hear there is a hospital in town with a basement where they store corpses. Maybe we can find a way to view the bodies.”
“Orchid!” a steward calls. “The carriage is waiting!”
“Did she say something to you?” Dusty asks breathlessly as we three adversaries follow the rest of our party out of the court.
“Yes. She scolded me for being so clumsy!” I would laugh at his crestfallen expression if I weren’t all twisted up with dread. Amaya is right. If Bettany’s not here, then she’s dead, or she’s lost beyond our ability to find her.
As we cross the dusty plaza to the carriage reserved for us, I watch Lord Agalar stride up to his own vehicle, a sturdy traveling carriage, which to my surprise is hitched to mules, not horses. He pauses with a foot on the steps leading to the interior.
“Beauty! Come!” he commands, as if calling a dog, then climbs in.
A young woman carrying a scribe’s box—a hard rectangular surface with compartments beneath for writing paraphernalia—hurries forward out of his entourage. She hands the box in to him and jumps up after to sit beside him.
I jolt up short, and Dusty slams into my back.
Mis grabs my arm to steady me. “Jes? Are you all right?”
Agalar’s carriage rumbles away, leaving me out of breath and trembling. Surely I’m mistaken and yet I know I am not, that I could never be mistaken.
The beautiful girl with the scribe’s box is Bettany.
14
The short journey to the Garon Palace compound at the outskirts of town seems to take forever.
“Are you all right, Jes?” Mis asks as I shift for the hundredth time on the bench. I just can’t keep still for trying to figure out how I can possibly find a way to talk to Bettany. Why is she with Lord Agalar? Where are our household servants? Is she all right?
Dusty says, “That foreigner was very rude. Imagine saying such a thing about Orchid! Anyone looking at a beautiful girl like her can see she is Patron through and through.”
“Ah la la,” sings Mis in a tone with a hint of spite, “Dusty is in lo-o-ove.”
Tana taps Dusty’s chest with her stump. “Keep your hands out of the palace, Dusty. Even if a Patron girl was within your reach, which even a servant is not, the last thing any adversary wants is to get caught in the dealings that go on inside those walls. The choices Jes will have to make if a lord wishes to parade her about as his lover won’t be easy ones, and there may come a time when she can’t say no. Like with Lord Kalliarkos.”
“I could have said no!” I snap. “He didn’t force me to anything.”
Tana grasps my wrist and squeezes until I wince. “I do not doubt you thought yourself in love with him. He’s a handsome lad, and a charming young man, and a prince besides. Hard to resist on any count. I was glad to train him for he never showed anyone in Garon Stable the least disrespect. But you walk a delicate rope now. I don’t know what this foreign doctor wants but he seems interested in you in a way I cannot like and that I’m surprised Lord Gargaron tolerates considering his plans for you.”
“His plans for me?” I echo.
“To become an Illustrious,” says Tana with a chuckle. “You’re distracted today. Don’t tell me you’ve taken a liking to that foreigner and his peculiar looks?”
“No, no, it’s just so hot and dry here and I didn’t drink enough,” I babble as we enter the gates. I lean out, hoping to see Bett, but our carriage splits away from the others. They go on to the main house while we head directly for the stable, where we four Efeans eat and sleep.
Yet no sooner do we adversaries reach the dormitory than the captain of Gargaron’s troop of soldiers shows up to tell Dusty and me to report to the dining pavilion just as we are, still in our sweaty Fives gear.
“I’ll come along, with your permission, Captain,” says Tana protectively. “I don’t often see you running errands that a steward could as easily manage. Is Lord Gargaron worried that this Lord Agalar means to steal our Spider?”
“I couldn’t say, Tana.” Captain Neartos treats her with the easy respect all the soldiers show us adversaries. Bes
ides liking the money they win by betting on us, on this journey they’ve been training with us to stay fit, and we beat them more often than not. “But a lord is wise who vigilantly guards his most valuable assets.”
As he leads us toward the main house down a path lined with ranks of sycamore, palm, and fig trees, he gives me a nod. He’s at least thirty, loyal, calm, and good at what he does, just as Gargaron demands all the men be who seek advancement in Garon Palace. Dusty elbows me like he thinks Neartos is flirting, and I elbow him back so sharply that he gasps.
“This isn’t a joke,” I whisper.
We enter a lovely garden with a bathing pool, three altars heaped with flower wreaths in front of statues of the gods, and a pavilion shaded beneath an arbor of thick-flowering jasmine. Gargaron and Agalar are seated beneath the arbor, being served by Denya rather than any of the servants. The graceful way she pours wine and decoratively arranges helpings of food on their plates is exquisite, revealing her as a girl raised with meticulous observance of Patron customs. But every time a servant appears bearing another platter of food she flinches nervously, then settles when she sees it isn’t Amaya. She’s afraid for her around Agalar, just like I am.
Neartos has Tana, Dusty, and me stand in the shade at a corner of the arbor and takes up a station behind, exactly as if he is guarding us. I don’t see Bettany or indeed any of Lord Agalar’s entourage, and it’s incredibly frustrating that I can’t go looking for her.
“So, you hail from the Shipwright territories, is that correct?” Gargaron is asking as he picks at the delicacies on his plate. “Shipwrights are infamous as mercenaries. Some are said to hire themselves out as pirates and thieves.”
Agalar offers his cup to Denya to refill. “I can’t answer for the life and work of others. For my part, as I said, I am traveling the Three Seas to gain experience in treating different categories of disease and injury.”
“Thus your interest in our gold mine?” Gargaron says with a lift of the eyebrows that makes me smile despite myself, because he’s so good at the sardonic stare.
“Mining injuries hold a particular interest for me.” Apparently Agalar has all the sensitivity of a rock because he doesn’t seem to notice Gargaron’s skepticism. “Why does most air give us life while noxious air trapped beneath rock may choke life or even burst and explode when it meets fire? What happens to the lungs of men who breathe in dust for years?”
“There are mines in other lands you might have visited with far less trouble.”
“The desert conditions, the type of rock here, and the mining technique unique to this area all create special complications that can’t be found elsewhere. If you would like to come along later this afternoon to the Akheres Town hospital I would be happy to have you watch as I perform a surgical technique I invented that should save the leg of an injured man. One of your skilled mine workers, mind you. You will not witness another doctor as proficient as I am.”
Gargaron laughs outright. “You are young to say so.”
“Youth is a condition that will correct itself with time. I cannot say the same for incompetence.” He looks around. “Ah! Here are the ‘adversaries,’ as you call them.”
“Yes. I’m curious why you are so interested in them.”
“The human body interests me, Lord Gargaron. How do we breathe? Why do some run fast and others slowly? What mix of traits allows adversaries to excel in your game of Fives while this lovely young woman, Doma Denya, can pour wine without spilling a drop and yet would struggle to complete a single obstacle? Are you certain you won’t sell the mules to me?”
“I’m certain, but if Captain Neartos will call in a few of his soldiers, I will have them run through a menageries together and you can compare the soldiers to the adversaries.”
“That would be delightful!” says Agalar, but a flicker of displeasure mars the words, and I think he is lying; he isn’t delighted at all.
Nor are we delighted, given that we are the ones forced to pace through a full round of menageries in the glare of the hot sun. But fortune favors me, for once we are finished, overheated and thirsty, Gargaron dismisses us to the kitchen to get drink and food. Tana returns to the dormitory and makes sure Mis joins us.
The kitchen is another pavilion, open on all sides, and includes a dining shelter like that in Garon Stable for the servants. Here I find Amaya flirting masterfully with the men and women of Agalar’s entourage, Bettany among them. Trust Amaya to find a way to get close to her! Agalar’s people are as mixed in their looks as sailors, as if the doctor has been collecting specimens from every shore of the Three Seas. In all the weeks we have traveled with Gargaron we Commoners have never been allowed to sit and eat at a table with Patrons, even lowborn ones, but Agalar’s people wave us over without the slightest hesitation. A young woman with the same straw-colored hair as Lord Agalar starts flirting with Dusty, Mis grins as several young men address her with the brash manners of foreigners, and two older people begin grilling Tana in broken Saroese about the ins and outs of the Fives.
Several speak to me, but it’s hard to concentrate when I have to force myself not to stare at Bettany. She sits at another table with the scribe’s box in front of her as she writes on a roll of papyrus. She doesn’t even look up from her work, nor does Amaya have any excuse to venture past her because a full mug of beer and a full bowl of lentil stew sit untouched at her side.
After I hastily drink two cups of cool well water and eat a bowl of stew I excuse myself more loudly than I need to and walk out of the kitchen courtyard. Once I reach the path that rings the outer garden, I step behind the massive trunk of an ancient sycamore to wait.
The moment Bettany comes out of the kitchen gate and onto the path, alone, I make a dove’s soft coo. She pauses, I coo again, and she figures out where I’m hiding and hurries over. The silent heat of the afternoon pours over us as we embrace, two people bound together for longer than either of us can remember.
“I thought I’d lost you,” I whisper.
For a moment we cling to each other but, so quickly it startles me, she pushes me away.
“I can’t take long or someone will come looking.”
Her frown falls like the weight of a tempest about to break over me. There’s always been something wild and impossible about her, the part Father could never comprehend because it went against everything he himself is and everything he thought girls were meant to be. The rest of us found our own ways to relate to him; Bett never tried—she just raged and stormed in an undisciplined way that never accomplished anything. I brace myself now as she shakes her head in her usual infuriating manner.
“I didn’t think I’d find you with Lord Gargaron. And Amaya too! I suppose she couldn’t bear to be separated from Denya.”
“You knew about her and Denya?” I ask, distracted from the urgency of our situation by this glimpse of our old life.
“Everyone but you and Father knew about Denya, Jes. You because you’re oblivious to everything except the Fives and him… well, never mind him. He’s nothing to do with us anymore.” She grabs my arm and shakes me. “Listen! I convinced Agalar to buy you and Amaya from Gargaron.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“You have to come with me.”
“I’m an adversary now.”
She pulls back. “It’s always the Fives with you, isn’t it?”
“There’s nothing wrong with me wanting to be an adversary.”
“Except that you are running for a Patron master.”
“I could ask the same of you! Why are you with Lord Agalar? Where are the household servants? Are they condemned to the mines?”
“Even I didn’t think a group of innocent women and children would be marched with criminals all the way to the mines. But we were. It was an awful journey.”
I press a hand over hers where she is still holding on to my arm. Whether fighting or laughing, Bett and I have always relied on each other, held each other up, listened. “Did anyone die?�
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Her body goes as taut as a tightly strung rope. “We all survived the trip, if that’s what you mean. Do you know what they use women and children for at the mines?”
Suddenly I don’t want to hear. “Hauling rock?”
“Yes, hauling baskets of debris out of places too narrow for men to get into, but also as rewards for the prisoners to get them to work harder.”
“Oh gods, Bett…” Words choke in my throat and a wave of horrified dizziness makes me stagger. I catch myself on the tree trunk.
Yet her expression lightens, and her chin lifts in triumph. “We were spared that because of Agalar.”
The relief that washes through me leaves me unable to speak. Wind rustles in the trees and, in the distance, I hear the buzz of laughter and chatter from the kitchen, a reminder that Bettany is traveling with a group of foreigners whose languages we can’t even understand.
“What do you mean?” I ask when I’ve got my voice back.
She glances around to make sure no one is on the path or wandering the outer garden. “He was already at the mining village, studying injuries, as you must have heard. When we arrived the supervisor asked him to inspect all the prisoners to see who would be best fitted for which work. I knew what kind of work I was intended for. So when I was brought to him and saw he was a foreigner, I begged him to save me and the others. And he agreed.”
“Why would he agree? Did he want you for himself? He called you Beauty. Like a dog.”
“He gives all his people nicknames. It’s just his way.” But she looks away to hide her expression from me.
“What aren’t you saying?” I demand.
She chews on her lower lip, her face in profile. Bettany’s beauty is that of fierceness melded with perfection of feature: eyes, chin, cheekbones, brows, and lips all so fine and proportional that sculptors and artists sometimes came up to her on the street to beg that she might model for them, although of course Father would never allow it. Her frame is tall and voluptuous but I can’t help but notice that she’s thinner now than when I last saw her.
