The brief flash of sparkling waters along a faraway beach did not make her pause. Those waters weren’t from her own memories, but associated with the voice that now inquired, “Are you clearing already?”
Helio had taken the opposite approach to show magic. Dressed in the simple slacks, loose shirt and brightly colored vest-style doublet currently fashionable among Kavet’s young men—a demographic he was clearly beyond, as his first gray hairs indicated—he could have been anyone. The only thing marking him as a sorcerer was a discreet silver bracelet engraved with the Napthol’s symbol.
“Take it,” Henna said, anticipating his next question and gesturing to the well-worn carpet.
Helio smiled and carefully set his bag down to unpack. His specialties were potions and charms, which meant that like Henna, he was sometimes mistaken for one of the small magic users who plied their wares down at the docks. Unlike them, his work was more than bluster, snake oil, and a basic knowledge of herbs. He had been hauled before the royal house and almost charged with magical malfeasance the year before when a potion meant to catch a lover’s eye accidentally turned out to be what could only be called a true love potion. He had done brisk business with the charm, unaware of how dangerous it was until after it caused several nasty enough altercations that the Terre became involved.
“What’s that smile about?” Helio asked.
“Apple blossoms,” she admitted, naming one of the key ingredients in the potion that went awry.
He scowled good-naturedly, then went back to setting out his wares. In addition to the vials of potion, he had a few glass containers that flickered with magical light.
Helio was one of only a half-dozen members of their order powerful enough to create foxfire, a magical light that burned for days, weeks or even months depending on the strength of the creator with no need for additional fuel and no danger of setting anything else ablaze. Most of Helio’s were a clear, silvery blue that reminded Henna of sunlight streaming through water. Cold magic like his couldn’t produce heat, but they would still be good for evening reading. They would fetch a good price. More importantly, their presence made it clear to his customers that he was more than a simple witch.
Henna started to turn away, then hesitated. Henna’s skill for prophecy was unique among Kavet’s sorcerers, but even without second sight, Helio often had insight beyond the mundane.
“I keep seeing visions of violence in this place.” She pitched her voice so it wouldn’t carry farther than the other sorcerer. “They aren’t clear, but they’re enough to disturb my work.”
Helio never paused in positioning his wares, but the exercise of setting them out seemed to occupy his hands in much the same way her rune stones did. His gaze went distant as he consulted his knowledge and his power.
“It’s only three days until the Apple Blossom Festival,” he speculated, referring to the upcoming spring celebration. “I’ve heard rumors the Quin intend to protest again. There are also more faces in the city than usual, not only sightseers but men and women of power, here to meet with the Terre. There is always the potential for violence when so many people from such different backgrounds stand in the same place, but I’ve heard nothing of blood.”
She had said nothing of blood, but Helio had heard the word she hadn’t spoken aloud. He wasn’t a mind reader; he simply read between the lines, or more accurately, saw more lines on a page than most others.
“Have you asked Maddy?” he suggested. In addition to being a leader of the Order of Napthol, and Henna’s dearest friend, Maddy had been Terre Jaune’s mistress for more than five years. If something was happening with the royal house, she generally knew of it. “Or Terre Verte?” Helio added.
“Hush, you,” she snapped. Her relationship with Verte was still young and, while she was sure there was gossip, it wasn’t public knowledge.
“I won’t say anything. At least he isn’t married.” Given Helio’s knack for knowing things others tried to keep private, Henna appreciated that his discretion was as well developed as his power. “Though marriage is going to be a question, isn’t it? Sorry. I’ll drop it.”
He finished artfully arranging the last of his potions as if he hadn’t had an entire conversation based mostly on facial expressions he hadn’t even bothered to look up to see. Verte hadn’t said a thing about marriage yet, but he was the only child of the royal house—and the only one likely to be born, given the reigning Terre and Terra hadn’t shared a bed or even had a civil conversation in almost a decade. Any woman seen in the twenty-five-year-old prince’s company was inevitably evaluated by his parents and advisors as a potential spouse.
At least Helio had taken Henna’s mind off blood.
When Verte had first approached her in the market, Henna had been flattered by his attention and intrigued by his magic. She had expected that they would have a brief, meaningless affair; Verte was known for those. When Henna had decided sleeping with him would only lead to unwanted complications, she had assumed he would lose interest.
Instead, her declining his sexual advances meant they had more time for conversation, debate, and exploration. She got to know the man and, damn it, discovered she liked his company. Worse, he seemed to enjoy hers.
Most people would consider that a good thing, but it left her needing to make a decision: If this became more than a spring fling, could she stand to be the partner of a prince?
Given the close relationship between the Order of Napthol and the royal house, there was no option for them to be strangers—this vision, and her need to follow up with one of the Terre about it, was only one example of the kind of thing that would take her across the market frequently for the rest of her life. If she already knew she had no interest in sitting on that throne, it was time to say, “It’s been fun, but we should both move on,” before they became too emotionally entangled and threatened the peace of their future business relationship.
As she ducked back into the Cobalt Hall to wash up and eat, she was no closer to a conclusion than before.
Compared to the glistening palace across the city square, the home of the Order of Napthol was modest, made of native granite with none of the imported marble décor, gadrooning, and cornices of the more ostentatious building. On a clear day, dawn light brought out the blue and purple mineral swirls in the outer walls that gave the Cobalt Hall its name, but that was the only marvel of its architecture.
Inside, it felt like home. The entry hall was vast, as if in another day and age it had been intended for grand balls, but the other rooms were cozy and welcoming. The kitchen had always been Henna’s favorite spot, with its long, low-slung stone hearth and stove where the more culinary-inclined initiates kept a constant revolution of stews, bread, and “experiments” going.
Today, a vat on the stove held a dense venison, buckwheat, and apple stew, and several loaves of crusty dark bread waited beside the hearth. It was good, simple food that fed the belly and comforted the soul.
Henna was mopping the last bit of stew from her bowl when an anxious-looking novice peeked in to say Terre Verte was asking for her. The young man was clearly uncomfortable leaving the prince waiting on the doorstep, but even a Terre didn’t enter the Cobalt Hall without an invitation from a full initiate.
Henna left her rune stones in her room and traded her light day cloak for a heavier one in deference to the cold she knew would sneak in behind the departing sun. Spring in Kavet was a tricky season, capable of vaulting ahead to days that felt like summer or slinking back to the chill and snowy flurries of winter without warning.
She smiled as she saw him waiting on the front step, occasionally exchanging a nod of acknowledgement with a passer-by who caught his eye or called a greeting.
It was technically correct to say Verte’s garb and appearance were the height of fashion. His dove-gray shirt, which she knew would have been buttoned to his throat and completed with a cravat during visiting hours, was now left informally open at the collar. Instead of a full, form
al jacket, he wore a green and blue patchwork-style doublet that comfortably hugged his lean form and brought out the flecks of sea color in his otherwise charcoal eyes. His cinnamon-brown hair was long enough to hang to the bottom of his shoulder blades, and it, too, had been released from its braid—probably because he knew she loved to twine her fingers in its silky length.
It took a moment too long to realize Verte’s attention had turned from the market crowd to her, and he was watching her stare with quirked lips. “Approve?” he asked.
She smiled, unashamed of her frank assessment of this lovely man. “I think I saw Helio wearing that same vest today,” she teased. Helio’s hadn’t been hand tailored.
“If not, he will be tomorrow.” The reason it was only technically correct to call Verte fashionable was that his style created many of the trends.
Verte offered his arm. “Would you care to join me for a walk in the gardens?”
“I would love to.” The Terre gardens were miraculous, filled with species that grew nowhere else in the world. Some speculated the most exotic plants and animals were, perhaps, not from this world at all, but had actually come through tiny cracks between the mortal realm and the ones after. Having seen the gardens up close now, Henna suspected there was some truth to the rumor.
At that moment, though, the place’s magic was of secondary interest. The garden was also blessedly private. Here on the front steps of the Cobalt Hall, she and Verte maintained a formal, awkward distance, wary of all the eyes that followed him. Once they were alone, Henna looked forward to accepting the promise implied by that partially unbuttoned shirt.
Wings in the sky.
The image slapped her the moment she put a foot down on the city square’s cobbles. Verte’s arm under her hand was no longer warm and firm and tantalizing. Instead, her fingers felt the slickness of Osei scales and the heat of their immense reptilian bodies. Ignorant people called the Osei dragons, but someone who used the term where one of the Osei could hear would regret it; a true dragon, or lesser wyrm, was a smaller, dumber, mundane creature—as much like an Osei as a crow was like a hawk.
“Why do I keep seeing the Osei?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. Verte probably thought she was being discreet. He didn’t know why her throat would tighten and try to choke back those words. Her history with those beasts was one of the many things she needed to tell him if they were going to continue seeing each other.
Tonight, she thought. I really will tell him tonight. I’ll tell him all of it, and he will agree this relationship is a bad idea.
He shot her a startled look, then shook his head ruefully. “This is what I get for courting a seer. I’ll tell you what I can once we’re alone, but my parents have agreed we should keep the news quiet, so I can’t share everything.”
My parents have agreed was, for Verte, a powerful statement. Terre Jaune and his queen Terra Sarcelle rarely agreed on anything, often out of principle instead of opinion. If they had agreed on silence, Verte would want to honor that.
Henna intended to convince him otherwise. She needed this answer.
Chapter 5
Verte
Despite his having come here almost daily for years, to Verte, the twining of nature and magic that defined the royal gardens was still awe-inspiring. Some of the plants, such as a dwarf weeping lemon tree, had been transplanted from distant countries in the last decade, since Verte’s mother had started creating warm foxfire spheres to keep them alive through the winter. Others grew nowhere else in this world; they were products of magic, and if they had peers anywhere, it was in the divine realm, not the mortal one. The power they exuded was enough to give even a mundane individual a sense of tingling expectation; for a sorcerer, it was exhilarating, like a sweet champagne massage.
All day long, Verte had looked forward to drawing Henna into his arms, and breathing in her spicy scent mingled with the heady aroma of the honeycreepers. He wanted to feel her body against his, and hear her heart in time with the pulse of magic.
Instead, he didn’t dare reach for her. Tealyn was on guard by the garden gate, and Verte nodded a greeting as they passed, but Henna remained distant and introspective.
When she passed the graceful, fernlike bellflowers, whose blades sang like wind chimes when they rustled in a breeze, she did not reach out to set them dancing as she had before. Tiny nocturnal hummingbirds with sparkling, gemstone wings fluttered around the silver-leafed plants, and one trumpeted a challenge at Henna as she passed, but Henna didn’t seem to notice.
“Are you all right?” Verte asked.
He expected her to ask about the Osei again. He didn’t share her gift of prophecy, but he had seen the moment a vision had crossed her mind, and suspected it had prompted her earlier question.
Instead, she turned to him, green-brown eyes direct and challenging as she asked, “Do you know why we haven’t made love?”
He opened his mouth, then shut it, aware of how treacherous the conversation had just become without knowing how or why. He waited, hoping it was a rhetorical question, but when Henna provided nothing else he ventured the only response that seemed safe: “You said to stop.”
That stop had been disappointing—especially the most recent one, which had come while they were sprawled full length along the garden path, after she had deftly removed his shirt, at the moment he attempted to return the favor—but he had respected it. He could think of a dozen reasons she might have made such a choice, ranging from not liking casual sex to not wanting to jump into a physical relationship with royalty. Not all women saw his title as an advantage.
“It’s not that I’m not interested,” Henna continued. Her lips curled up as her gaze traveled down. “I didn’t want to have to tell the whole long story in the hopes of having a little fun.”
He bit back the teasing query, “Just a little?” and took the more appropriate cue. “Long story?”
With a few quick tugs, she loosened the ties on her bodice and used the slack to pull her blouse down on one side. For a moment, his gaze was riveted on the expanse of smooth skin he longed to touch and the soft, round breast she had almost entirely bared. But then she shifted so he saw the back of her shoulder instead.
The first thing he noticed was a coin-shaped tattoo of the three-wave symbol of the Order of Napthol. Most sorcerers chose to wear their symbol on a piece of jewelry, not their skin, but a tattoo wasn’t shocking enough to warrant such a dramatic reveal.
Verte stepped closer, since it was clear there was more she wanted him to see. At the edge of the bared skin, he spotted the pulled white flesh of old scars. Just the tips of what he imagined were longer lines were visible before the marks disappeared under her clothes. His breath caught. Had she been whipped? He had heard of sailors being flogged. Such brutal treatment might explain why she had left her previous seafaring life, and if the marks of that cruelty were numerous, it could explain why she hesitated to bare her body to him.
Then he saw it. The tattoo had been inked over another character. He squinted, but couldn’t quite make it out. “What was the first tattoo?” he asked, confident that was what she was waiting for.
“It was the symbol of the Ninth Royal House of the Osei,” she said. “Not all Osei mark their property, but the Ninth House is so close to Tamar’s coast that slaves who flee the island can sometimes swim ashore. Marking them ensures they can be identified and returned.”
Henna had never been coy, but the dispassionate bluntness with which she shared the fact caught him off guard. It implied a history Verte could imagine all too well, and wished he couldn’t.
“The Osei marked you as a slave?” He couldn’t keep his voice as neutral as hers. He only hoped she would understand that the horror in his tone was in response to what had been done to her, not how he felt about her.
“I was a slave,” she said. “The ship I was on hit poor weather. We were damaged, drifting and out of fresh water for two days before the Osei spotted us. In exchange for saving us, the
y claimed all surviving hands. I managed to escape and made my way to Kavet four years later. I was sixteen by then.”
He wanted to reach for her, pull her close, and swear no one would ever dare hurt her again. It was a chauvinistic response Henna would not have appreciated, both because her tight shoulders and crossed arms suggested she didn’t want to be touched at all in that moment, and because she wasn’t the kind of person who wanted pity and coddling. She wanted what she had asked for—an explanation about her visions of the Osei—and she had offered this demonstration as the only argument she needed for why she deserved that explanation.
As a compromise, Verte offered his hand. After a moment, Henna took it and squeezed it like a lifeline, edging closer to him.
He said, “Kavet has more freedom than most other countries, but the situation with the Osei remains intolerable. Over the next two weeks, we’ll be hosting delegations from Silmat, Tamar, and the Osei to renegotiate current treaties.”
“That’s why I keep seeing them here.” He hated to hear her voice so hollow. How had she survived, coming of age amid such monsters? How had she freed herself? Another time, when Henna wasn’t clearly more concerned about the future, he would ask. “They are here . . . or will be. Which ones?”
“The Third Noble house.” The Third Noble House and the eighteenth common house were almost as close to Kavet as the Ninth House was to Tamar. “If it goes well and we are able to come to an accord, the First Queen will attend the final days of the negotiations to give her consent and seal.”
There was more he wished he could tell her, but he had to watch his words. He trusted Henna not to do anything stupid, but the fewer people who knew the whole plan, the better.
She shook her head, shrugging her blouse back onto her shoulder as she demanded, “You think you can negotiate with them? Osei aren’t people, Verte. They can look like humans if they want, but they don’t think like us. Some people say they are deliberately cruel, that they can be so feral they will eat humans when other prey is lacking, but that’s like saying a cat is being deliberately cruel when it crushes a bug. They cannot comprehend why we object when they claim us.”
Of the Divine Page 4
