As if sensing his approach, the figure turned its head. Lin. Her eyelids drooped as if in sleep. Her oddly outstretched arms, he now saw, were dripping blood. Darien gasped, saw that a neat wound had been cut in each wrist. A gleam in the corner of his eye—a knife, lying on the ground as if cast aside.
Lin smiled when she saw him, sleepily. “Darien,” she said. “Did I do well?”
* * *
HE woke to sunlight glaring into his eyes, a hard bump sticking in his back. The next moment, he realized he was lying sprawled in the street and immediately jumped up. Then he saw that his harp had been tangled up under one arm, safe, not stolen, and he gasped with relief.
Darien looked around, bewildered. He didn’t recall leaving the Kahishian establishment, and certainly not lying down in the street. Yet his instrument was untouched, and his money pouch—which had been digging into his back—was still heavy.
Now that it was day, he could get his bearings: he was in a cul de sac in one of the old districts. Nearby he recognized the arched doorway of the Kahishian’s tavern. He could see now that it was cut into a wall beneath a much larger building. Double doors now blocked the arch, the steel reinforcements clouded with rust.
Darien knocked at the door. Only silence. He grabbed ahold of the door and wrenched the handle. The shriek of metal grating against metal made him clamp his teeth, and dust billowed in his face. The door would only open part of the way, sealed as it was from the inside by a rusted bolt chain. Within, the room was dark. Sunlight that angled inside fell on piles of rags, broken furniture. The hangings that Darien remembered, the tables—none of it was there. A giant cobweb was strung between the broken legs of an overturned chair.
Darien fell back, letting the doors collapse together again with a clang. For the next hour, he hunted for the remembered doorway in the surrounding streets but couldn’t find any door that resembled the one he had just left. It couldn’t have been a dream—his sleeve was stained dark brown, and when he held it to his nostrils, the bittersweet odor was unmistakable.
He remembered something. Doubling back, he returned to the door. There had been a sign carved above the archway in foreign characters, no doubt in Kahishian. The sign was still there—he recognized its rectangular shape. But now it was smooth stone, with only traces of lettering that had long since faded away.
Destroy it.
Darien shivered even though it was day now, and warm, in Tamryllin of the waking world.
* * *
WHEN he came to Marilla that morning he hated himself for his weakness as well as all the other reasons he could have had, by then, to hate himself. He had vowed the night before that he would never see her again, yet here he was just hours later. Vile as she was, Marilla knew him. She knew him better even than Darien had. If Darien had known him better, Marlen reflected, he would never have been his friend.
She had once been a lady’s maid, he knew, and later on a prostitute. He gathered that a large part of her appeal was an ability to mimic the manner and graces of a lady, for those who fantasized about liaisons with nobility. It was ironic: Marlen wanted her for her savagery. For the way she hurt him without compunction, with guiltless abandon. And of course, the way she reacted when he hurt her back. He hadn’t intended to make her privy to his plans, believing her an ignorant prostitute with no place in his affairs, even though she had never charged him for their nights together. But the day before, seeing her preening before the cracked mirror above her washstand with his leash around her neck, he had changed his mind. He could not have said why.
She was full of energy that morning. It amazed him; he had a headache so fierce it would be a wonder if he could sing today at all.
“Sit down,” she said. “I’ll rub your head.”
“You?” Marlen said. “This isn’t a ploy to get me to expose my neck?”
Marilla laughed gaily and shoved him into a chair. She was disconcertingly strong. “You’re no use to me hungover.”
That was probably as near to tenderness as she was capable, Marlen mused. “We made a mess of things last night, my dear,” he said as she caressed his temples.
“Oh, the boy will be the better for it,” she said dismissively. “Men with illusions are so … unattractive. Though sweet.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I might have revealed Darien to Rianna’s father. With all that I’m taking from Darien, I wanted to leave him at least that—at least her.”
He felt her pause in her ministrations, as if considering. Then the rubbing resumed, and she said, “It will be well. The masque is a wild time. The boy will not trust his own ears, come morning.”
“Do you think that was Valanir last night?”
“Perhaps,” said Marilla. “More interesting, though, was the woman who was with him. His lover, perhaps?”
Marlen stiffened. “Woman? Are you sure?”
“Certainly,” she said. “Why?”
He didn’t answer for some moments as he considered. There was only one woman he knew of who went about dressed as a boy and possessed the skills of a trained poet, and that same woman had been on intimate terms with Valanir the night of the Gelvan ball. If she had aided him, that would of course make her his accomplice.
“I think I may know who she is,” he said at last.
“Oh, good,” said Marilla, and leaned forward with a dazzling smile. “When you win the contest, I’m sure that’s something Court Poet Gerrard would want to know.”
* * *
WHAT had once been home seemed strange now. Darien paused on the stair inside the Ring and Flagon, lingering to absorb this odd new feeling. He had run up this staircase so many times in the past months that he knew where the faults were, where it creaked. Yet now it was someone else’s staircase, and he felt himself an interloper, an exile.
The place was nearly empty, as most had left to prepare for the contest, or to grab their places on the stones of the Court Plaza.
But Darien knew there was one person who would still be here. He could hear him in a room upstairs, practicing scales, his voice building and building and then falling to an impossible depth.
Yet the door was flung open after Darien’s first knock, as if his friend had been waiting—as no doubt he had. Seeing Darien, Hassen’s face went slack with disbelief. “You look…” Hassen began.
Darien leaned back against the wall beside the door. He laughed a little. “I pray you, don’t tell me how I look.”
“Come in then, come in.”
It was a room Hassen shared with several others, but none were there now. Darien sank into one of the hard chairs.
“So what happened?”
“What happened.” Darien shook his head. “Let me see. Well, you know about the court order I came back to this morning. ‘No participation in the contest—on pain of severe punishment.’ So I thought I’d explore my options—my connections. But Master Gelvan refused to see me. Or was ‘indisposed’—what does that even mean? So I went to the court’s offices. Do you know what they told me? That there is a list of poets who are permitted to participate in the contest. And I am not on the list.”
Hassen looked blank. “A list. How has it come to this?”
“Exactly.” Years of writing, of studying lore from the most ancient texts, as well as from the men who had been selected to pass on that knowledge. Years of knowing—beyond any doubt—that his destiny was to do more.
“Listen,” said Darien. “I have a plan. And it’s important—it’s important that you not be involved, or know about it.”
Hassen snorted. “You just told me.”
“I’m serious, Hassen. It could be dangerous for you to know more. But—there is one thing I need you to do.”
“I don’t like any of this talk.” Hassen planted himself in front of Darien’s chair, a towering, glaring bulk. “Are you thinking of acting against the court? You may as well fall on your sword right now and get it over with.”
“Dying is the last thing
I want.” Darien pressed a paper into Hassen’s hand. “Take this and listen to me.”
* * *
THE Ring and Flagon had been like a home to Darien Aldemoor, as it was for many poets getting their start in the world. He knew with bone-deep certainty that he might never be able to return—yet with the memories the place carried for him now, perhaps that was for the best.
It was not in Darien’s nature to be nostalgic, but he wondered if for the rest of his life his mind would circle back to the brightness of the past year, searching for the fault line that had gradually fissured deeper and wider without his knowing.
In his mind, it had already begun to be words set to music. But for that there was no time.
He knew he had a choice. He could vanish quietly away, taking his dreams with him. Marlen had beaten him this round, but there would be other opportunities in years to come.
Darien didn’t like the idea of doing anything quietly, and he certainly didn’t like the idea of vanishing. Never in his life had he felt so strongly that he was choosing a path—bypassing green meadows for the knife’s edge of a cliff, or a dark wood.
It was a simple plan—inevitable since he had constructed it within just a few hours. He first visited the home of a friend he knew, one who happened to owe him a favor. There he made an acquisition, for a fee, and concealed it in his cloak. This was the first—and most easily accomplished—part of his plan.
As Darien approached the streets leading to the Court Plaza, he noticed that others were on their way, no doubt to reserve themselves spaces with a good view of the stage.
Darien smiled. He did enjoy a good performance.
He chose the house carefully: it belonged to a lord for whom he had sung many times. The family was summering in his northern estates, he knew, for they had told him. They abhorred the crowds that accompanied the fair. And there was no escaping those crowds if they remained at home, for their house faced onto the Court Plaza. A magnificent location, they asserted, at any other time of the year.
There would still be guests there today, Darien knew, by the windows and on the balcony. Friends of the family who would watch the contest from their privileged height while nibbling tiny sandwiches and sipping aged wine. So much the better: if any of the servants caught sight of Darien, he could claim that he, too, was a guest. I represent House Aldemoor, Darien imagined saying, tilting his nose toward the sky. I am so bloody special.
He realized he was giddy with excitement, made an effort to calm himself. Giddiness would not be an asset in the next few hours.
Flaunting his harp and ring, Darien had no trouble gaining entry to the home, blending with the guests as they filed up the stairs to the topmost floor. He reflected that under other circumstances, he would have been thrilled to snare such a coveted spot, and would have boasted of it afterward to his friends—and enemies.
Yet now it was only a means to an end. While the guests congregated on the balcony—more than one woman eyeing Darien, for he had made several conquests in just such a setting, where the wives were bored and idle—he slipped away to an adjoining chamber, where it was quiet. And where he could climb onto the windowsill and from there, pull himself up along the outer wall and onto the red tiled roof. It was dangerous, but he found a flat surface where he could drop into a sitting position. Now to wait.
From this height, the crowds were a dark sea, and the palace and temple joined by the Court Plaza all the more splendid. Darien could see gilded detail on the palace towers and light through the stained glass of the temple windows nearest the roof. Wonders that had been crafted to pay tribute to the grandeur of gods or royalty, whether any man could see them or not.
And he could see the cordoned area of seats, where Rianna and her father would be. For the first time since he’d begun this enterprise, Darien felt a pang of remorse. She would, justifiably, want to kill him for this.
It was windy up here, warm as a breath that ruffled Darien’s hair and filled him with a kind of peace. Lulled by the wind and the distant hum of the crowd, Darien let his mind linger on memories.
They had met in the spring, at a party in Master Gelvan’s home. It was a moment entirely unlooked-for; Darien was not interested at the time in any entanglements past a night or two. That spring he had pleasantly drifted through the pick of Tamryllin’s wealthier women, and some common ones, too. It was precisely in such a manner that he had procured the honor of playing at one of Master Gelvan’s dinners: an older, generous paramour had made the connection for him. Darien still recalled her fondly.
He and Marlen had been singing a duet together, a piece of comic raillery with a dark heart, such as Marlen enjoyed most. They took pleasure in discomfiting Eivarian high society with skewed versions of its cherished ideals, and knew—a bit contemptuously—that their audience found guilty enjoyment in them too.
As they sang, Darien caught sight of Rianna Gelvan, wide-eyed and curious. She seemed preternaturally solemn, as if regarding them from a distance. Their music interested her, but it did not touch her.
When they were done, Darien did not yield the floor to another musician, as had been the plan. Instead, after conferring hurriedly with Marlen, he began to sing again. This song in traditional meter and melody; a tale of a heroic man-at-arms and his love. One of his earliest songs, glowing with the idealism he had brought to the halls of the Academy when still a boy.
Sensing his purpose, Marlen had withdrawn to stand a bit behind Darien, playing the soft refrain but contributing no vocals, letting him sing alone. And Darien was not even sure what he’d intended until he raised his eyes, briefly, and saw Rianna’s face, saw a flush in her cheeks and her eyes fixed upon him with a glow he had seen before, many times. But never had it meant to him what it did now.
For such beauty I would destroy my life
Much as a god may unmake the world.
He had sung those words with his eyes trained on her face, drinking in the ivory perfection of her skin and the gold of her hair. And then lowered them again to his harp, an unmistakable quickening in his heart. As if all the brightness of the year, his and Marlen’s year of freedom, had been arrowing in the end, unexpectedly, toward this.
Afterward they had met in the garden, in moonlight, within the shadows of a moon-white cherry tree. There had been no need to plan it; they both had seen the other moving toward those shadows and knew it was for the same purpose.
Darien did not touch her that night; they only talked. But he had known even then that his course was changing and that from now on, Rianna Gelvan would be a part of it, however improbable that might seem.
And now, on a rooftop at the Midsummer contest when he ought to have been on the stage, he was about to change his course yet again. But still that course, somehow, would be with her—of that he was determined. The triumph of his quest and their love would someday make the greatest song ever sung, a story to be told again and again. Darien would not be like the dry old men who had taught him the lore of poetry; like Valanir Ocune, like Edrien Letrell, he would first live what he was destined to create.
The grey-robed figures were gathering on the platform. Darien felt grim watching them. His own robe still lay folded in a chest in his old room at the Ring and Flagon. He had never worn it, and now perhaps never would.
From his cloak, he brought out his new acquisition. That summer Darien had written a poem for a craftsman he’d befriended, a birthday gift for the man’s wife. He was thus able to acquire today, at minimal cost, a small crossbow and arrows. It was a device exquisite in its compactness as a toy. But the arrows were steel-tipped: no toy at all.
He had always had a talent for the bow. It was true he had not practiced in a long time; and it was also true that he would have only one shot now, two at most. I must be mad, he thought. And yet. There was something in the feel of the bow and the set of his shoulders as he drew that felt right, like the crescendo to a song.
Destroy it.
Nickon Gerrard paced with majestic
solemnity down the length of the platform, passing each of the robed contestants, at last arriving at the flagon of sacred wine.
With a prayer and a peculiar lightness in his heart, Darien let the arrow fly.
CHAPTER
12
A GASP rippled through the Court Plaza; all eyes focused upward at the roof where a figure stood outlined darkly against the sky. Though he was no bigger than her thumbnail from this distance, Lin knew him at once by his voice.
“Lord Gerrard! Over here!”
Her heart thudded with shock and a deep sadness. No, no Darien, she thought. I liked you.
And she thought also of Rianna Gelvan and the multiple knife edges of heartbreak.
Darien Aldemoor had flung his arms wide, like a street performer announcing his next act. “Friends, I have been betrayed,” he called, and his strong, trained voice soared to fill the perimeter of the square. “I, Darien Aldemoor, have been cast out of the contest for one reason only: my former friend, Marlen Humbreleigh—whom you see before you today—could not bear to share the honor of victory with me.”
Nickon Gerrard was busy during this: with an imperious gesture, he commanded the guards to ascend the roof. They began to force their way through the crowds.
“If a man’s ambition can so corrupt the contest,” continued Darien, “then it is not sanctified before the gods. And while my friend’s greed is largely to blame, the real fault lies with the court, who have made our art a mockery.”
Now audible gasps were filling the plaza. In Tamryllin, a man who said such words had thrown away his life. Though in truth he had already done that from the moment the wine was desecrated.
A tall man onstage came forward, flung back his hood. Marlen Humbreleigh stood smiling, shook his head. “It grieves me that you were cut from the contest, Darien,” he called. “But to place the blame on me is unseemly, don’t you think?”
The guards were halfway across the plaza, Lin saw. It would not be long now.
“It’s all right, Marlen,” Darien flung back, his voice ringing with bright clarity across the vastness of the plaza. “I forgive you. I forgive you for the weak and power-hungry man you are. Here, then, is my message to you.”
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