The Story Hunter

by Lindsay A. Franklin

  Not enemies, I tried to remind myself. This was Tannie we were talking about. Tannie and her father.

  And the pirate. He was an enemy, anyway. And Dray? Wasn’t Dray supposed to be the enemy of all of us?

  I couldn’t make fluff nor fuzz of that one. What was she playing at, breaking that man out of the dungeon?

  “Sir?” The guard stared at me, a question all over his face.

  “Sorry, what did you say?”

  He cleared his throat. “They blasted a hole through a wall by a passage we weren’t aware of. Then they put some sort of substance over the opening. Like a web. By the time we cut through the strands, they had escaped.”

  “Blazes.”

  “I’ve ordered some men after them.”

  “Good. That’s good.” At least I guessed it was. I had no idea what I was doing.

  I turned to look toward the shadowy corner where the high priest sat, concealed by a cloud of darkness he’d asked me to conjure for him. Still wasn’t sure how I’d done it, but it seemed I could do just about anything Naith asked me to these days.

  Except make bread. That one had stopped working for some reason.

  And none of the powers worked unless Naith was near. I asked why once. He said the goddesses often used him to help others channel their powers.

  He nodded to me now, and that was the signal to pull back the cloud of darkness. I screwed up my face and waved my hand as if drawing a curtain to the side.

  Naith rose from his chair and strode toward me.

  “Your Holiness,” I said quickly, “I’ll send a hundred guards after them, so don’t you worry. We’ll get them back. Them and that prisoner.”

  “No, my son.” Naith lifted his hand to acknowledge the guard kneeling in respect. Then he sat on the throne next to mine—Gareth’s old seat he’d dragged out of some royal storage closet.

  “No? But they can’t have gone far, and sure as sugar they’re headed toward the river. We can still catch them. But I don’t want anyone else hurt.”

  My mind tripped over what I’d seen on that first day. On my way to the throne room and the private apartments Naith had ordered prepared for me. The bodies scattered across the floor like hay inside a barn. I’d protested. At least, I think I had. When I tried to recall the memory, it was like seeing it all through water. Blurred and distorted.

  “There is no need, my lord,” Naith said. “All is well.” He nodded to the guard. “See to it that repairs are started straightaway, and that the perimeter of the dungeon is once again secure. If it is possible, seal up the hidden passageway so that it cannot be exploited again.”

  “Yes, Your Holiness.”

  “And have that Bo-Thyd interrogated. Make sure he is not working for the rebels.” Naith looked at me knowingly. “We can’t have spies and subterfuge, now can we?”

  “I don’t reckon.” Whatever subterfuge was.

  The guard bowed and left. Naith and I were alone. His formal manners disappeared, and I knew he wouldn’t be calling me “my lord” or any such thing now. But the pleased smile remained, so that wasn’t an act.

  But I still didn’t understand why.

  “See, my son,” he said. “All is well.”

  He said that so often the words were probably carved on the insides of my ears by now.

  But I guessed that was probably my fault. All I ever did was tell him I couldn’t do this, that I didn’t know what I was doing and didn’t understand how we were making anything better for Tir. And I asked him about forty times a day if Braith was still alive.

  They had promised. Promised they wouldn’t hurt her. But something in my gut—something wiggly as a waterworm—told me some people’s promises didn’t mean a whole bunch.

  Tannie sprang to mind.

  She had promised to marry me, hadn’t she? And the first thing she did after returning home was punch me in the jaw.

  “Don’t be troubled, my son,” Naith said, and I guessed he took my sour expression to mean I was upset over the rebels’ escape.

  “No offense, Your Holiness, but why aren’t you troubled? You didn’t want them to escape, did you? You told me to keep a close watch on them.”

  “True enough. It was rather shortsighted of me, I suppose, but I did not anticipate that Yestin would think to go to Dray. It was clever, really.” He chuckled.

  I didn’t understand this man at all. The things he found funny . . .

  “But it works out perfectly,” he went on. “Dray will lead them straight to the Master.”

  The Master? The waterworms in my gut set to wriggling again. “Who?”

  Naith’s smile faded. “I . . . that is . . .”

  “You mean the goddesses?” But I could tell he didn’t. He’d made a mistake.

  I just didn’t know how or why or what.

  “Yes, my son. My masters, the goddesses.”

  My face screwed up in confusion. How could Dray take Tannie and the others to the goddesses? They were but carved statues.

  Didn’t matter. Naith wasn’t giving more—least not at the moment. “Where Dray’s taking them . . .” I trailed off, and it almost felt like my tongue was tied in a knot. I tried again. “They won’t be hurt, will they? I don’t want more bloodshed. There’s been enough of that already.”

  Naith smiled pleasantly, and a sense of peace wrapped around me. “Don’t worry, Brac. Dray will lead them exactly where they need to be, and all will be set to rights. I swear it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  BRAITH

  Frenhin smiled down at Braith, who was still tethered helplessly to the wall. “Ah yes. Kharn.”

  “Where is he?” Braith repeated. “If you have harmed him, I swear, I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” Frenhin laughed. “I’m sorry, dear, I don’t mean to mock. But really. Look at yourself. You are quite literally chained to a wall in a cavern in an unfamiliar secret hideaway. You have no allies, no hope of escape. And yet you still seek to threaten me.” Her smile changed—warmed, somehow. “I hadn’t thought it possible, truly.”

  Braith glared. “Hadn’t thought what possible?”

  “You have actually fallen in love.”

  Braith forced every muscle to obey so that nary a twitch of pain, a shred of emotion, showed.

  “It won’t change things, darling,” Frenhin said, leaning back in her chair. “It’s only . . . it amuses me that the ice princess is capable of some human emotion.”

  “I am capable of many. I have displayed them often. Perhaps they are simply feelings you cannot understand.”

  The smile dropped from Frenhin’s lips. “Enough.” She snapped her fingers.

  A pair of soldiers dressed in uniforms not unlike the palace guardsmen, except of the deepest gray instead of black, entered the room. They dragged a man between them.

  “Kharn,” Braith choked. She couldn’t will the tears away now that she actually saw him, doubled in half, bloodied and unconscious.

  Frenhin pointed to Braith. “Bring him there,” she ordered the guards.

  The thick, metallic scent of blood filled Braith’s nose. A sticky, coagulated mess covered half of Kharn’s face. Braith’s eyes searched him for the source of the wound—there, just along his hairline. Where they’d hit him with the hilt of a sword, she now remembered.

  His eye had swollen shut. Bruises, some fresh and some healing, covered every inch of his exposed skin. They spoke to a beating far worse than the single blow he’d endured in the palace garden as he tried to protect her—tried to give her time to escape.

  “Bring him closer, please,” Braith begged.

  The guards glanced at Frenhin, and she nodded. Her smile glinted in the firelight.

  The guards dragged Kharn beside Braith, and she pressed her cheek against his. Warm.

  He was still alive.

  “Take him there,” Frenhin commanded. She pointed to a set of irons identical to Braith’s, driven into the same wall where Braith sat chained, but in the far corner. Well out
of her reach.

  “Please, no.” Braith cast a desperate glance at Kharn. “He needs a physician. Don’t chain him there.”

  “And what would you give to have him chained closer? Or to receive the care of a physician?”

  Braith stilled. Leverage. These were lessons in politics her father had tried to teach her. Lessons, she now realized, he had probably learned from her mother.

  Find what your enemy loves most. Find the thing they value above all else. Then threaten that thing. Use it. Exploit it. Kill it, if you have to, in order to force your enemy to surrender.

  Frenhin’s laugh pierced Braith’s thoughts. “You see, darling? If I want anything from you, I will be able to extract it.”

  Fire snaked through Braith’s veins, through the veins of the ice princess, threatening to melt her resolve and render her a quivering puddle. A puddle willing to do whatever Frenhin demanded, as long as no further harm came to Kharn.

  But she could not give up. Kharn needed her to be strong. And so did the people of Tir.

  She lifted her eyes to meet her mother’s. “Then you had better keep us both alive, hadn’t you? You cannot use us if we are dead.”

  “Romantic.”

  Braith ignored her. “Bring us food and some water.”

  Frenhin paused a moment, considering her daughter. “Very well, then.” She snapped her fingers, and the guards responded.

  They placed the slumping Kharn against the wall in the corner and locked him in place with shackles around both his wrists. Then they brought a tray of bread, cheese, and some kind of dried meat—though barely enough for one person, let alone two. Cups of water were next. Kharn’s was placed on the floor beside him.

  “Wake him,” Frenhin ordered.

  Braith held her breath. It would have been kinder to let Kharn remain unconscious, perhaps, for the time being. But a guard was already shoving a cloth soaked in something pungent under Kharn’s nose.

  He sniffed twice. His eyes flew open. He coughed, and blood sprayed from his lips. “Not a good nap.” Kharn cleared his throat, then coughed again. He glanced up at the guard crouched before him. “Ready to go another round already?”

  How often had they wakened him just to beat him again?

  “Kharn?” Braith said gently. “I’m here.”

  He jerked his head around—too fast, and he winced. “Braith?” Relief flooded his face, followed by alarm. “No. What are you doing here?”

  “Do not worry.” Braith smiled. “All will be well.”

  Kharn raised the one eyebrow that wasn’t caked in blood. He glanced at Frenhin and the guards, then back at Braith. “I hope you won’t think me a terrible pessimist if I disagree with you, my love.”

  Braith almost laughed.

  “How long have you been here?” Kharn asked Braith, casting a withering glare at Frenhin.

  “I don’t know. I was drugged and brought here.”

  Kharn swore under his breath. “But they have not harmed you otherwise?”

  Braith paused, unsure how to answer.

  “That’s enough catching up for now.” Frenhin smirked. “Let us move on to something more entertaining.”

  Kharn shook his head. “Why are you doing this? What could have happened to you to corrode your soul so thoroughly?”

  “Corrode? You sound like my dear daughter. She believes all people are good if given the chance to be. No one acts less than nobly unless some catastrophe corrupts them or some opportunity eludes them.”

  “You think me very naïve, indeed.” Braith looked away.

  “Is it not so? I thought that was why you always advocated for the utter dregs of society.”

  Braith turned back to her mother’s cold smile. “Of course I do not suppose all people are good and noble. I believe every person, no matter their class or heritage, is capable of both the utmost nobility and deepest evil. Most of us live in the space between, choosing one or the other every moment of every day.” She paused, considering Frenhin. “I fear you have found an unfortunate extreme.”

  Frenhin placed a hand to her chest. “That was truly stirring, Your Majesty. Moving and profound. If only your courtiers were here to listen.” She smiled coolly. “You always did have a weakness for impassioned speeches.”

  “Most politicians have worse vices.”

  True amusement danced in Frenhin’s eyes. “Don’t I know it.”

  Braith fell quiet for a moment. “Do you deny it, then? That something happened to set you on this path? Because truly, Mother, even you must see the evil of your deeds.”

  “Ah, Braith. You do not understand. My deeds are not evil. I am not corrupted. It’s not as simple as all that. I am merely committed—willing to go to great lengths to make things right.”

  Braith glanced at Kharn. He kept his head low, but the keen light in his good eye told Braith he was absorbing every word. He knew as well as Braith that Frenhin’s answers could hold the key to getting them out of captivity.

  “And what needed to be set right?” Braith asked. “For surely you can see that this is madness—that what you have done has made everything truly and terribly wrong.”

  Frenhin’s tone turned as sharp as a blade. “You know nothing of which you speak. Your grandfather had to be avenged.”

  In all Braith’s years, her mother had barely spoken of Braith’s grandparents. Both died before Braith was born. She knew neither had been of noble blood—that her mother was the daughter of a middle-class merchant. But nothing more had ever been said about either of them.

  Now Braith was curious. “What do you mean? What happened to him?”

  “Not just him, dear.” Frenhin’s voice was controlled again. “Our family. It was always supposed to be for our family.”

  She rose and began to pace. “My father had been due to receive a rather important appointment. Steward of Trade. It would have changed everything for us.” Tendrils of smoky-gray story curled from her fingertips as she spoke, and Braith tried not to show her surprise.

  She hadn’t realized it before, but it made sense. The strands of fire, these streams of smoke that seemed to come automatically as Frenhin spoke—Braith’s mother was a storyteller.

  “Our family would have been provided for,” Frenhin said. “The cares of the middle class would have been removed from our lives at last. It really is the cruelest position to be in, the middle class. To be so close to wealth, so near a life of ease, and yet unable to grasp it. Always striving for prizes just out of one’s reach.”

  Braith’s mind filled with images of starving peasants. Those who had not enough to feed their children, let alone themselves. She thought of the enslaved farm laborers in the southern part of Tir, along the Meridioni border, and of the Haribian servants who worked the docks along the western coast, little better than slaves, desperately hoping to provide a life of better opportunity for their children.

  But she did not argue. She let her mother continue on.

  “I was fifteen years old, and Father’s appointment would have changed everything for me too.” Frenhin lifted her chin, and in the firelight, Braith could almost imagine her mother as a fifteen-year-old girl—pale, beautiful, and proud. “I would have been courted by the noble class. I could have become the wife of a duke or a governor. Perhaps even one of Caradoc’s lesser nephews might have noticed me. There were so many of them, you remember.”

  Braith heard Kharn draw a long breath. Of course he remembered. These were his elder cousins she spoke of—his own flesh and blood.

  “But instead, do you know what Caradoc did?” Frenhin’s smoky tendrils flared with fire. “He gave the position to some Meridioni. Said it would strengthen diplomatic relations. Said that my father, born and bred of Tirian stock, was less qualified to serve as Tir’s Steward of Trade.

  “It ruined him. He was a laughingstock.” Her features hardened, uglier and angrier than Braith had ever seen them. “The Tirian merchant passed over for a dirty foreigner. He was crushed—destroyed—and his bu
siness never recovered. Not only did we not obtain the position we sought, we lost whatever wealth we’d had. We were ruined. When he saw that he could not offer the better life he dreamed of to me and my sisters, he went mad with grief.”

  “What sisters?” Braith had never heard of her mother having sisters.

  “You can be rather simple sometimes, Braith. Do you think I could have ever gotten close to Caradoc’s court again carrying my own disgraced family name? Thankfully I had never met the king face-to-face, so all I needed was a new name—a new identity that did not carry the shame of being Wallyth Bo-Ashgoff’s daughter.”

  “So you picked a new name for yourself.”

  “Of course. But surely you understand. My real family would have known the truth. And my sisters and mother would have noticed if I was suddenly a courtier. And certainly if I became queen.”

  Braith’s heart stuttered. “You murdered them too.”

  “Disposed of. Yes.”

  Braith stared at her, unable to comprehend her detachment—and the dissonance of her actions. “In order to avenge our family, you killed them.”

  “It sounds rather silly when you phrase it like that. But it was the only way.”

  “It was . . . a position in the government.” Braith fought to control her shaking voice. “He was merely passed over in favor of another. And all this for that one simple act? All this death and pain, sorrow and destruction?”

  “You didn’t see what it did to him!”

  Columns of fire sprang toward the ceiling from Frenhin’s hands. Braith and Kharn shielded their faces from the heat.

  “You weren’t there! You can’t imagine what it was like, watching my father descend into madness, driven there by the selfish whims of a foolish king.”

  “Perhaps not.” Braith spoke into the fire. “But I do know what it was like to watch my father go mad with greed. I know what it’s like to watch him speak to people who aren’t there as though he hears voices in his head. And what it’s like to know that my own mother killed my father.”

  Frenhin let the pillars of fire die and considered Braith. “Fair enough, my dear. I suppose we have both suffered.” She sank onto her chair again. “No matter. That is all in the past.”