The King's Questioner

by Nikki Katz

  Kalen never went back on a promise.

  CHAPTER

  24

  They were up with the sun, waiting in the front hall, restless and anxious to return to Mureau and get away from the bounty hunter.

  Cirrus was the only one able to eat a full meal. Luna was already pale at the thought of getting on the water again, and Kalen and Reign had shared a pastry.

  They had paced a web of circles and lines into the floor by the time the door flew open and Belrose walked in.

  “Fancy finding you all here.”

  Kalen was surprised to see the captain, figuring Jasper or another sailor would have been sent to fetch them. Then again, they were no ordinary passengers. And Belrose had yet to discover that he would be carrying not one, but two members of royalty.

  Cirrus and Kalen clasped hands with the captain, and they introduced him to Reign, who smiled quietly. They grabbed their bags of clean clothing, having washed them the night before and let them dry near the hearth all night, and followed Belrose out the door into a morning heavy with a brewing storm. The wind whistled a miserable tune, and dark gray clouds collected on the horizon.

  He led them down and across the streets until they finally hit the jagged line where the land met sand and the pier lifted up and away to the glittering glass walls of the inner city. Instead of encouraging them onto the wooden platform, Belrose pointed to the left, and they followed the lip of grass that butted up against the beach.

  “Where are we going?” Kalen had assumed the shortest path would have been straight to the harbor.

  “You’ll see.”

  The land began to incline, jutting upward from the sand, which narrowed and then disappeared at a rocky wall just in front of them. They finally reached the beginning of the wall, the land now level with the stone. The expanse of sea spread beyond, a blanket of blue except for the flash of whitecaps reflecting the sunlight. The wall widened and extended to their right as it wrapped around the bay to protect the city from the crash of the incoming tide, a narrow edge that sliced apart two worlds—a troubled sea and an awakening city. The outside was built as a battlement with alternating crenellations and merlons, and the wall walk followed to what looked like a building at the end. As they drew closer, Kalen could make out the shape of the lighthouse.

  The group finally reached the building’s base. The walk had widened, and the structure was narrow enough to slip around to the opposite side. Kalen was the last to make his way along the rough lighthouse wall. He reached the opposite end and stopped short as he spotted Belrose’s ship anchored a few dozen yards from the wall’s edge.

  The captain directed them to a ladder cut into the wall, where they made their careful way down the stones to a dinghy. Belrose and Kalen rowed the small boat to the ship, and within minutes they had boarded.

  It was midafternoon by the time the anchor was weighed and the sails raised. The wind caught the canvas, and the vessel began its journey to Mureau. The foursome headed to Belrose’s quarters to ask what had happened in their absence.

  “The Impérial left the day after you did,” Belrose said.

  “But you don’t know where it went?” Kalen asked, looking at Milo.

  He shook his head. “I stopped tracking it.”

  It made more sense to start tracking us, Kalen thought. Aloud he said, “I assumed as much.”

  “There was no reason,” Belrose said. “They most likely traveled to the island or returned to your country. In either case, they didn’t get what they wanted.”

  Kalen stared out the window at the horizon. He wouldn’t be surprised if the Impérial’s crew had finally discovered the location of the island and gone there. Perhaps he and Luna should have removed the chest or buried it somewhere else, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it now. They could only focus on their impending arrival.

  Jasper banged in through the door with a gust of wind at his back. “Sir, the storm is closing in. We need to begin preparations.”

  Outside the window the dark gray skies blended with the sea as if to form a barrier with no means of escape.

  Milo and Jasper walked out, with Belrose at their heels. He turned at the last second and rubbed at his temples. “I’m going to have to ask that you all go belowdecks. The crew is worried, and I need them focused on the ship.” He glanced at Reign.

  “Of course.” Kalen asked after the enclosed room that had held the chest. “It may make sense if we stay there.”

  “You can stay wherever you need. The crew won’t be sleeping much.”

  Kalen led the way to the galley to gather food in case they were hungry for the supper hour. He grabbed two lamps, handed one to Cirrus, and kept one for himself. “Reign and I will take the closet space; you two take the cabin where we stayed before.”

  He and Reign entered the windowless room. It had appeared smaller in Belrose’s memory. The corners had seemed to close in on his vision, but the compartment itself more than accommodated the two of them. A pile of blankets rested on top of a shelf that stored books and a stack of rolled maps. He hung the lamp on a hook on the wall, grabbed the blankets, and spread the top one on the floor. He laid down the food in the middle, slid off his cloak, and sank beside it. Reign settled next to him.

  “So, they don’t like me?” she said.

  “Fondness isn’t the issue, although I imagine the crew isn’t thrilled any of us are on board.” He braced his hands against the floor as the boat rocked violently. Reign reached in to grab biscuits and pickled meat out of the basket Kalen had hastily put together. They ate in silence, and Kalen’s thoughts began to race, thinking of Reign and her past and her fight to control her emotions. It all stemmed from the king banishing her.

  “Do you hate him?” Kalen glanced at her in the flickering light.

  “The captain?”

  “No, sorry,” Kalen said. “I was thinking of the king.”

  “I can’t hate him; I don’t know him. I have empathy for what he did. He mourned his wife and blamed me. I understand that, but in some ways I think it would have been more merciful to kill me then.” Her voice had fallen so low he barely heard her.

  A crash of thunder rumbled the walls, and Kalen could only imagine the lightning that must have slashed the sky a mere second before. Belrose shouted orders and footsteps echoed, but after that it was mostly silent except for the perpetual sound of howling wind.

  Reign’s fingers clenched, relaxed, and clenched again. Kalen scooted closer and wrapped an arm around her. Her head fell to his shoulder, and his cheek rested against her hair.

  “I know you had a hard journey to get to this point,” he said, finding it easier to talk without her pale eyes searching his, “but I’m glad you’re here.”

  She didn’t answer. They sat in silence, the boat swaying beneath them, the thunder rolling outside the walls, and their breath falling into unison. Eventually they sprawled, side by side, on the blanket. Their fingers laced together; they stared at the dark ceiling above as footsteps pounded along the deck.

  “Should you offer to help?” Reign asked. “They might appreciate another body.”

  Kalen shook his head, his scalp rubbing against the hard floor. “If they need me, they will come down and ask. Belrose won’t hesitate. Until then, I’ll stay here with you.”

  “My brother is the one who is afraid of the dark.”

  “I know,” Kalen said, but he didn’t want her anxiety building here if the storm continued to worsen.

  Or at least that was the reason he told himself he stayed.

  * * *

  THE STORM LASTED through the next day. Reign and Kalen spent most of the daylight hours in the cabin with Luna and Cirrus, where they talked about Ryndel and made plans. Reign interrupted with questions about the city, the politics, and how one person might have obtained so much control without anyone noticing.

  At that, Cirrus stormed upstairs.

  Reign’s concerned eyes followed him, but Kalen assured her he was p
robably asking himself the same question she had voiced aloud.

  They returned to the closet for another night. The storm began to ease, and Kalen and Reign lay in the confines of the damp room.

  “You’ve seen into my head,” she said, rolling onto her side to face him. “Why not give me a glimpse into yours? What’s your worst memory?”

  He lay in silence, eyes staring at a spot on the ceiling.

  “The day my brother was kidnapped.”

  “What happened?” A breeze of compassion drifted over him.

  He had never talked about it with anyone. Never. But Reign was right, he had seen much of her dark past, and he felt obligated in a way to tell her.

  “My mother had taken him to the marketplace to shop for whatever it is that she shopped for. Mathew was timid, tentative, so I’m not even sure how he strayed away, but he must have, because suddenly he was missing.”

  Reign laced her fingers through his gloved ones and squeezed them.

  “She came home, frantic, and dismissed my tutor so I could go find my father. Everyone went searching for Mathew. I thought … I thought he was dead.” He swallowed. “I was the one who found him. On the edge of the woods on the opposite side of town from the marketplace. He stood there, his eyes blankly staring ahead. Nothing was amiss. Not his clothing, not his hair. But he wouldn’t speak. Hours passed. My mother bathed him and tried to feed him, but he wouldn’t do anything.

  “My mother hated … hates most likely still … my ability, but she asked me to go inside Mathew’s mind to see what had happened.”

  “He hadn’t wandered off. He had been taken by zealots who were intent on eradicating magick. They took him because of me, to see if he had any abilities. Pushed him, prodded him, threatened him, but he could only sit there and cry. They released him ten hours later. I struggled to tell my mother this, as I knew she would only blame me further. I can still see the hatred in her eyes as she bundled Mathew close to her.”

  “And then?” Reign asked, her hand still in his.

  “They left. My mother, my father, and my brother. In the middle of the night, just gone. A note sat on my brother’s bed, explaining they couldn’t risk living with me anymore and that the king would take me in.”

  “So you were abandoned, too.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

  He nodded.

  “Have you ever heard from them?”

  “Not a word.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  He turned toward her, their faces merely inches apart. Her lips were slightly parted, and he was suddenly distracted with the desire to kiss her. He wondered if it was her own longing that pulled him in, or if the desire was his. Based on the way his skin hummed in her vicinity, he felt confident that his feelings were not the result of magick, but he still found himself pausing.

  They stared at each other, basking in the comfort of similar backgrounds, shared pains. Finally, the ship settled as the storm relented. Their eyes closed, and they fell asleep, fingers twined.

  * * *

  THE AIR WAS dense with fog and salt, heavy on Kalen’s face as he and Reign climbed the stairs the next afternoon. Above deck, the clouds had thinned enough to let weak rays of afternoon sunlight pass through. The water had calmed, and for that they were thankful. Kalen and Reign had gotten little sleep with the constant listing of the boat, but the crew looked even worse for wear, bleary-eyed and yawning as they lounged wherever they could find a somewhat dry surface.

  Luna rubbed at her eyes, her face pale, most likely from a night filled with nauseous swaying, while Cirrus leaned nonchalantly against the rail, his perfect hair somehow motionless in the gusts of wind.

  Mureau was a speck on the horizon, and they watched in silence as the city grew larger in front of them. The sun kissed the water’s edge by the time Belrose lowered the sails and directed Jasper to row the foursome to shore. He then turned to face the group. “Be safe and I wish you the best of luck.”

  They shook the captain’s hand solemnly and thanked him before boarding the tender with Jasper. They navigated slowly and silently toward the coastline. The sun shone down, but the wind continued to lash around them, whipping up sprays of water that might as well have been rainfall. It gathered in Kalen’s hair and on the back of his neck, with the occasional drops coursing down his spine beneath his shirt.

  “Here’s to hoping you don’t need our services any time soon,” Jasper said as they spilled out of the small boat onto the rough wooden dock. He dipped his oars into the shallow water to row silently away.

  They turned away from the sea and braced for their homecoming.

  CHAPTER

  25

  They swept up the docks only to slow as they heard shouting ahead.

  “Hoods up,” Kalen said. His gloved hand found the hilt of his dagger, and he edged along the street, keeping as close to the warehouse walls as possible.

  Around the corner, a throng of sailors clustered in the middle of the street. They scuffled with one another, fists flailing and swords drawn. Shouts and accusations echoed down the main street as more men shuffled along, having stumbled out of the taverns.

  Tension wafted off them, more sour and tangible than the sweat dripping down their backs as they fought. There was no evidence of magick, but if Belrose’s earlier assessment was correct, the King’s Law had been inciting further unrest while they had been gone from the city. Many of the same sentiments as at the riot Kalen and Luna had stumbled on the night they left Mureau were being thrown around, only this time stronger and more definitive.

  “It’s time. We need to act soon.”

  “We need to expand our borders. Down with the confinement.”

  “Down with the king!”

  Kalen glanced at Cirrus, whose lips pressed together.

  Suddenly he felt compelled forward. An invisible thread, leading him toward the eastern end of town, in the direction of the castle. The din had quieted, and the crowd had all turned to face the same way as Kalen. The pull released, but several of the men began to move almost blindly away from the harbor in that direction.

  Cirrus’s eyes widened as he looked at Kalen. “Did you feel that?”

  He nodded.

  “I did, too,” Reign said with a shudder. “What was it?”

  “I don’t know,” Kalen said, “but something is definitely going on. We need to find Ryndel.”

  “Shall we check with the harbormaster first?” Luna asked.

  Ryndel was known to spend time there, inquiring after civilian trade and naval movements. With the prince and the Questioner having disappeared, Kalen imagined the Law asked for information there even more frequently. It seemed worth exploring before they moved inland.

  “If we get separated, let’s meet at the castle walls,” Kalen said as they made their way across the docks.

  Reign’s gaze shifted to every part of the port, seeming to soak up all the details. Kalen encouraged her to pull her cloak tighter around her face, and they ducked their heads as they made their way toward the stout building that housed the harbormaster.

  Muted lamplight shone from within the room, but there didn’t seem to be any movement. Luna slipped closer to listen at the door and then waved them all away.

  From the port they wove through alleys and into the streets beyond. Kalen turned to Luna. “What’s the fastest way to the Sea Serpent?” That was the tavern where Kalen and Luna had last seen Ryndel. He might be there further working the crowd.

  “Fast but safe,” Kalen told Luna.

  “I’m guessing rooftops aren’t an option?”

  “No, let’s stick to the roads.”

  She tilted her head to the right, down another alleyway. The buildings closed in, and the space was narrow. Kalen led the group as he sprinted through puddles and around a pile of what looked like fabric scraps but smelled like rotting compost.

  Reign threw her arm up to her face and covered a cough.

  “Don’t worry,” Luna said. “The re
st of the town is much better kept.”

  Kalen and Cirrus exchanged a glance. Mureau could definitely use some cleaning up.

  The street was surprisingly empty when they reached the tavern. The same barkeep glanced up as they slipped inside single file. His eyes narrowed, only to widen again when Cirrus stepped through the doorframe. “Your Highness.”

  “I wasn’t here,” Cirrus said.

  “Of course.” He bobbed his head like a marionette. “What can I get you? On the house of course.”

  Cirrus looked tempted for a moment but then shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. “We only wondered if the King’s Law had been here recently?”

  “No,” the barkeep said. “I can’t imagine he’d have interest in my establishment.”

  “Has there been much unrest this past fortnight?” Kalen asked.

  “Yes. Foreigners coming and going. Although nobody much cares to be here tonight.”

  Kalen felt that sudden tug again. Like they were one, they leaned in the direction of the kitchen. Everyone but Luna, who drummed her fingers on the sticky bar top. “Anything else you can tell us?” she asked.

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  The pull released, and Reign shuddered again. “What kind of magick is that?”

  “Is it magick?” the barkeep asked. “It’s been happening all day. It’s uncomfortable if nothing else.”

  “We’re going to find out,” Cirrus said as they moved to the exit.

  “I’m glad to see you safe,” he called to Cirrus. “Be careful, though. Everyone’s looking for you.” His eyes cut to Kalen. “And you as well. You might want to be extra careful.”

  Great, Kalen thought. He gripped the key at his chest as they regrouped outside.

  “Shall we try Ryndel’s residence?” Luna rubbed her hands together. There was nothing that girl liked more than breaking into a noble’s home.

  Kalen led the way into an alley and made a couple of sharp turns. He stepped onto the cobblestone of the next cross street, only to nearly be impaled as a guardsman yanked a sword from his scabbard and pointed it at a group of men standing opposite. “In the name of the king, tell me your intentions.”