Floodpath

by Emily B. Martin

  Standing behind him, I set the edge of my sword against his neck, and he falls still with a gasp. I bend down close to his ear.

  “My turn,” I say.

  He gives a great start, his chest heaving in and out, and strains to look at me without turning his head.

  “The Sunshield Bandit . . .” His face contorts with rage. “How dare you! I’ll have your head for this before the night is out—”

  “Not if I have yours first,” I say, edging the blade just a hair nearer. It barely brushes his skin, and he goes still again, his lips moving soundlessly. I echo his parting words from my cell. “At the moment, you don’t quite have the leverage.”

  He swallows.

  “I have some questions for you,” I say, still behind him. “And if you would like to see the sunrise, you’ll answer them.”

  “Where are my servants?” he demands, a tremble below his bravado. “My guards?”

  “Out and about,” I say nonchalantly.

  “You killed them, didn’t you?”

  “The longer you keep asking stupid questions, the more angry I am getting.” In fact, the guards are only a few doors away, alive and at their posts, and I’m hoping I can keep Kobok quiet enough to avoid any suspicion. The servants were easily deterred by Irena whispering to them who I was and what I was doing—they merely eyed me, and then each other, and then disappeared without a word.

  “Told you,” Irena had whispered to me.

  Still, relying on the unexpected goodwill of strangers has never been a habit of mine. An alert could be raised at any moment, as soon as someone heads down to my cell block. I have limited time.

  I put one hand partway up the blade to steady it against Kobok’s neck. He whimpers.

  “You planned the attack on Tamsin Moropai,” I say in his ear. “You blackmailed the prince to be sure you could keep your job. You made a fake si bracelet to make Kimela the ashoki. And then you stirred the country up against the East to make it seem like you are doing it all to protect Moquoia.”

  “What on earth . . .” His panicky gaze darts around the room, still straining to see me out of the corner of his eyes. “That’s a lie, by thunder! All lies!”

  “You hurt Tamsin and locked her up, and you blamed it on me.” I press the sword until it makes a divot against his neck, just short of breaking the skin. His voice turns to a high rasp.

  “It . . . it wasn’t me! I didn’t start the rumors in court. And I didn’t know anything about Tamsin before today—I thought she died months ago, until the reports came in that she was with you in the ashoki’s coach!”

  “Don’t lie!” I snap. “You knew she was alive—why else would you make the si bracelet? When Veran and Iano left, you knew they might find her. You had to make people sure she was dead.”

  “I didn’t—I didn’t make the si-oque! It was delivered to me! I didn’t know it was a fake—and I don’t know who sent it!”

  “That seems very lucky,” I say. “Why would they send it to you? Why not to the queen?”

  “I don’t know!” He squirms in the chair. Sweat has broken out on his forehead and around his bushy moustache. “I . . . I thought . . .”

  I jostle him and he gasps again. “You thought what?”

  “I thought it might be a threat,” he says quickly. “Someone trying to intimidate me.”

  “Why would the bracelet make you think that?”

  “It was left in my room,” he says. “Not with my mail, but right on my mantelpiece. Someone was able to get into my room. Without murdering my guards,” he adds in a high voice.

  I ignore the last remark. “So what? You have servants.”

  “None of them knew where it had come from. None of the guards saw anyone come in. How did you get in?”

  “I killed everyone, remember?” I remind him. I take the sword away from his neck and come around the front of his chair. “You’re all by yourself.”

  He whimpers again, his gaze flicking over me. Fire and smoke, what an idiot. As if leaving a pile of dead guards outside his door would go unnoticed for more than a minute. I rattle his chair again. “You are not telling me everything. The si bracelet should have been what you wanted. It should have meant things were happening your way. Why get so nervous? Why think someone is threatening you—unless you have done something wrong?”

  “I didn’t attack the ashoki!” he insists again.

  “You’re lying,” I growl.

  “I swear, I didn’t—”

  I straighten my arm against the back of his chair and shove, tilting him on the back two legs. He jerks and gives something between a shriek and a gasp, his feet wiggling feebly in the air. I press the hilt of my sword—not the blade, just the hilt—into the fleshy part of his chin, underneath his jaw.

  “I!” he pants. “I—the records. I thought someone knew, had seen the . . . inconsistencies . . .”

  “Speak plain,” I spit.

  “The laborer records!” he babbles. “Some of them—a few . . . hardly any, but it might appear that some had been falsified. Not . . . not falsified, just . . . filled in with—with the best guess as to where some of the . . . bonds had . . . originated . . .”

  I glare at him, trying to line up his nonsense in my head. Records falsified with where the bonds had originated?

  “You have three seconds to start making sense,” I say.

  “It’s just!” he bursts. “A while ago—before your time—there was an incident, with a foreign monarch. Moquoia was accused of abducting the princess of a minor monarchy. Inquiries were made. I had to protect our industry.”

  There’s a funny ringing in my ears, as if my blade had struck something metal while I was still holding the hilt. When I speak, my voice is dry and detached. “What does that have to do with Tamsin? What does that have to do with Tellman’s Ditch? What does it have to do with right now?”

  “There was a supplier, you see, a transient labor distributor . . .”

  “Sorry, I don’t know those words,” I say acidly.

  “A . . . well, a ring that operated, sort of . . . beyond the administration of the crown . . .”

  I give his chair a thrash. He gasps again.

  “A black market ring! There were many—still are many—and they tend to operate with code names . . . you know this is all classified information, highly volatile . . .”

  Understanding hits me like a lightning bolt. In one swift move, I straighten and let go of the chair. It teeters and then arcs backward to the floor. Kobok groans.

  “You mean Port Iskon,” I say, standing over him.

  “My head . . . ,” he moans.

  I lay my sword along his neck again. “You mean Port Iskon, don’t you?”

  “The Port ring,” he says. “They’d change their name depending on the location. They couriered the laborers from the Alcoran sea routes to the Moquoian border. At that time they were using the name Iskon. When we started getting inquiries from the East, it only made sense to protect our industry from a possible audit . . .”

  “How did you protect yourselves?” I ask. “Why is the name Port Iskon still being used in Tellman’s Ditch?”

  He struggles feebly against the silk cord. “That’s . . . that’s highly classified information, extremely sensitive . . .”

  I put my foot on the rung of his chair and haul on the cord, heaving him upright. His head wobbles on his neck, disoriented. I take his face in my fingers like a vise.

  “You have much more to worry about than exposing classified information,” I say, my face inches from his. “Tell me, did you start using the name Port Iskon on more slave records?”

  “Only the ones from the Ferinno,” he says, his words ridiculous through his pouched lips. “Merely a way to consolidate files, to organize . . .”

  “You used it to cover up the abduction of the Lumeni princess,” I say.

  “Only initially. Then it became a way to notate who might be a citizen, and more likely to have bond restrictions.”

>   “You mean people who might know the laws, or who might have family that know the laws—know that there are always supposed to be term limits. You mean you started using Port Iskon as a way to label workers who never had to be released. As a way to do away with bonds completely. To create slaves.”

  He’s silent, his eyes squeezing shut. I stay there for a moment, clutching his jaw, and then I straighten, releasing his face. His brow knits, but his eyes don’t open.

  “How classified is this information?” I ask. “Does the queen know?”

  “Few people outside my department know,” he replies. “It’s for the stability of the industry. Voluntary bonds are at a historic low, while industry is at an all-time high. Something had to be done to . . . meet the demand. At least temporarily.”

  “It was never supposed to be temporary,” I say. “You forging slave documents would have gone on forever if Tamsin hadn’t started to look into it. That’s what happened back in the spring, isn’t it? She was coming to poke around Tellman’s Ditch, to rustle up some truths she could tell to the court.”

  “I didn’t attack the ashoki.”

  “If you didn’t, and you didn’t make the si bracelet, who did?”

  “I have no idea!” he says, opening his eyes. “I told you, it was left in my room. I thought someone was threatening that they would finish what she’d begun—that they’d expose my department’s methods. With the prince missing and war building with the East, my department can’t handle a public relations nightmare on top of everything else.”

  I lift my sword, and he flinches, his breath rising shallowly in his throat. I set the point against his chest, my palm halfway up the blade. “So you decided to scramble your records in Tellman’s Ditch? Tell me—all those years ago, when you realized you’d somehow trafficked a princess, why didn’t you just return her?”

  A look of sincere consternation crosses his face, as if the idea is absurd. “There were over two hundred people processed through the Port Iskon ring that particular month. We could hardly know which one she was—and if we returned her, there would be complaints about the others. We would have had to return the whole shipment.”

  My sword point drops back to the floor, and he draws in a deep breath with it gone. He fidgets against his cords—the longer I stand there, staring at him, the more anxious he becomes. Finally, his nerves get the best of him.

  “So what now?” he asks, and despite the sweat on his brow and upper lip, he manages to sound angry.

  “I’m thinking,” I reply. “You’ve given me important information—not the answers I was hoping for, but good enough, I think.”

  “For what?” he prompts. “Even if you kill me, you’ll never get out of the palace alive. Everyone from the ministers to the staff knows what you look like. You’ll barely get to the atrium. And even if you do, what then? Knock on the queen’s apartment door? Hope she’ll sit and listen as the continent’s most notorious bandit slanders her country’s industry?”

  “Hm,” I say, tucking the blade of my sword under my left arm. “I think she might listen to me.”

  “Why? Because you have a sword?”

  “No. Because it was me, all those years ago.”

  “What was you?”

  I roll up my right sleeve. There’s probably symbolism in baring my unsealed slave brand, but I’m not interested in that at the moment—I just don’t want to bloody my cuff. “I’m not the Sunshield Bandit. I’m the damned princess of Lumen Lake.”

  His face creases in confusion. “What—?”

  I make a fist and punch him in the face.

  His head slams back against the chair, and then rolls sideways. He groans, his eyes blinking at different times. I sheathe my sword back in my belt and go to the large, gilded wardrobe in the corner. I rifle among the silk robes and nightcaps—he has a whole wardrobe just for sleeping clothes—until I find a stack of embroidered handkerchiefs. I select two and carry them back. He groans again as I get nearer, a purple mark in the shape of my knuckles blooming under his eye.

  I ball up one handkerchief and stuff it in his mouth, then tie the other one around his head to keep it in place. He rouses just enough to struggle again as I take the long end of the curtain cord and tie his feet to the chair legs.

  “You just sit tight for a little while,” I say, patting him on the shoulder. “I’m sure someone will be in to check on you when you miss breakfast tomorrow.”

  He muffles something through the handkerchief, but I turn and head back to his adjoining parlor, closing the door behind me.

  I go to the middle of the room and look up at the fancy glass skylight, a few drops of rain spattering my cheeks. Irena’s anxious face appears in the opening. Getting in had been an easier job than I thought—the rivets around the glass panels came up easily, I suppose for quick replacement when one cracks. There were even anchor brackets for workers to tie harnesses to, which made things even simpler. Irena twitches the rope dangling over a small puddle on the carpet.

  “Ready?” she mouths.

  I nod and twist my fingers through one of the loops in the ropes, the kind the window cleaners use throughout the palace. The descent wasn’t too bad, but I’m dreading the upward climb. I breathe as shallowly as I can, but I can’t stop my ribs from searing against my sides as I labor up, the rope ladder swinging with each step. The worst part is wriggling back through the open pane—Irena helps me slide over the slick glass until I can lie, panting, on top of the skylight, my palms pressed to my sides. The rain drums around us.

  Irena coils up the window-cleaner’s rope and replaces the open panes on the skylight. Lightning flashes overhead, illuminating the tile roofs and glass skylights of the palace. Bad place to be right now.

  “Did he confess?” she asks.

  I shake my head, my eyes closed against the rain thumping my face. “It wasn’t him—at least, he gave a convincing performance, and his story makes sense with his panic at Tellman’s Ditch. But he did confess to something else. I just have to figure out how to get the information to someone who matters before they get me on the scaffold.”

  Distantly, a bell begins to ring. Irena pauses to listen. I open my eyes.

  “I’m guessing that’s not a good sound?” I ask.

  Irena grimly shakes her head. “It’s an alert. They’ve probably found your cell.”

  And the cell guard. Wincing, I sit up and hitch my bandanna over my nose. “What are our options?”

  “To get you out? We have a few choices.” She gets to her feet and holds out her hand. “This way.”

  I take her hand and get to my feet. Breathing carefully, I follow her back among the narrow roof walks. But we’ve only descended one flight, opening into a narrow staff hallway in the eaves, when footsteps thud around the corner. I wrench Irena behind me and am pulling my sword out, blinking away spots from the pain in my sides, when a young boy comes barreling around the corner. He skids to a halt mere inches from being spitted on my sword, his eyes wide as apples.

  “You!” he gasps.

  I adjust my grip. “Me.”

  “The Sunshield Bandit!” he exclaims.

  “So they say.”

  “Wait!” Irena whispers, hurrying around me. “Wait a moment—it’s all right. What are you doing up here, Rin?”

  “Closing the hatches,” he says, still goggling at me. “We’re on lockdown—they say the bandit escaped her cell.” He puts his hands to his forehead. “I didn’t think you were real! My brother tells me stories about you when I have nightmares.”

  My sword drifts downward. I’d always assumed I was the source of nightmares, not the other way around.

  “She has to get out of the palace,” Irena says. “Which ways are still open?”

  “Not many,” he says. “You might try the cleaning ladders by the red gardens.” We start to move past him, but he stops us. “That’s not all, though. I don’t think I was supposed to see, but I was waxing the floors in the guard wing.”

 
“See what?” Irena asks.

  “The prince,” he says, nearly trembling with the excitement of the night. “Prince Iano is back.”

  I reach forward and take his shoulder. He gasps again, sagging like a rag doll in my hand.

  “Was he alone?” I ask. “Or were there others with him?”

  “There were others,” he says. “I’m not sure how many.”

  That’s all I need to know. I whirl back to Irena. “Let’s go.”

  “The guards, though—they’re looking for you . . .”

  “If we can get to Iano and the others, it won’t matter if they find me,” I say. “Can you get me there?”

  She bites her lip, but nods. “Follow me.”

  I sheathe my sword, and we charge back into the shadowed palace.

  Tamsin

  Iano, Soe, and I huddle, dripping, under a stand of tree ferns. Enna snuck us into the palace through the west guard gate. We look so bedraggled that when she explained we’re palace staff returned from a journey, her story wasn’t questioned at all. Now we cluster between the ferns and the rain-streaked glass, wringing out our clothes into the garden bed. Enna and her cadre stand a few paces away, not doing anything to lessen the strange sight we make—three ragged travelers gathered conspiratorially at the edge of the public halls, flanked by armed guards and a wet coydog. Rat has already rolled in the rich mulch of the indoor gardens and is now digging under a doomed ficus.

  “The problem is, we don’t have enough time,” Iano whispers, raking his wet hair behind his ears. “It won’t be long before someone recognizes us, and word gets to my mother.”

  Or our enemy, I sign grimly.

  “Right,” he says. “So, the question is—what do we do first? Find Fala? Look for Lark? Ask about Veran?”

  I purse my lips. Lark is most important.

  Soe stirs. “But this enemy of yours—if you can’t identify them, you don’t know who to trust, or avoid.”

  “So should we go to Fala first?” Iano asks.

  What about your mother? I ask. If we go to her right away, she could stop any execution order and buy us more time.

  “Or it might give your enemy more time to strategize, or get away,” Soe points out. “If they hear you’re in the palace, it takes away our element of secrecy, and surprise.”