The Palace of Impossible Dreams

by Jennifer Fallon

  She would rather die. And she had pretty much determined that suicide was the only course of action left open to her.

  Escape was impossible. She couldn’t fit through the cabin porthole. And even if she was willing to take her chances in the open water, there were the five other women chained to her to consider. The shackles they’d worn in Elvere had been replaced by a much more simple, yet equally effective set of chains that kept the women close together, whether they liked it or not.

  Rescue was unlikely. Cayal, the only living soul on Amyrantha who might have the means and the will to rescue her, had no idea where she was. If Tiji had been able to prevent Arkady being shipped out of Elvere as a slave, she’d have done it. Her husband, Stellan, was probably dead by now, hanged by the immortal Jaxyn for his own nefarious purposes; and Declan Hawkes, the King of Glaeba’s Spymaster and her childhood friend—perhaps the only other person she knew who might risk everything to save her—didn’t even know she was in danger.

  And even if he did, what could he do from Glaeba? She was half a world away, on the open sea, sailing toward Senestra.

  She tried not to dwell on the fact that it was probably Cayal’s fault she was here, sold into slavery and lost to everything she had ever known or loved. In his blind enthusiasm for death, he’d thought only of his own desires when he’d so willing left Arkady with his enemy, the Tide Lord Brynden, as a hostage. What was he thinking? Surely it must have occurred to him that the Lord of Reckoning would go for the more immediate revenge, by harming Cayal’s lover—Brynden would have assumed, knowing Cayal, that Arkady could be nothing else—rather than wait for the possible chance to see an end to him, a dubious prospect given they were both immortal.

  What was I thinking, Arkady berated herself silently, to go along with such an idiotic plan in the first place?

  But there was little to be gained by agonising over how she got here. She’d be much better employed finding a way to escape.

  Arkady was neither innocent nor blind. She knew what lay ahead of her, and it wasn’t the wild imaginings of a duchess suddenly confronted with cruel reality. Arkady had been in this place before.

  Thoughts of suicide were not uncommon among slaves, particularly new ones. As a result, the Senestrans wisely ensured their valuable possessions lacked the means to act upon them. Arkady allowed herself a small, sour smile, thinking she and Cayal finally had something in common. We both want to die, and for wildly different reasons, we’re both unable to act upon it.

  At least she could die, she supposed, which was something to be grateful for. Confronted with every deadly weapon known to man, Cayal was still unable to end his torment. Her biggest problem, Arkady knew, would be finding a method that was quick enough to ensure death. She was never left alone, so even if she’d been able to tear her shift into strips to make a noose and then find somewhere in the low, cramped cabin to hang herself—unlikely, given she couldn’t even stand upright—the others would stop her before she had a chance to tie the first few knots.

  No, Arkady needed a method that was quick and irreversible. She would only get one chance at this and did not intend to survive it. The punishment for a slave caught attempting to escape through death would make being handed to the crew of the Trius seem mild by comparison.

  Arkady needed a weapon, although she couldn’t imagine any circumstance that would involve a sailor willingly surrendering such a dangerous implement to a mere slave—and the sailors were the only ones who had what she needed: a knife or a marlin spike preferably . . .

  Or a scalpel, she thought, as the vaguest hint of a plan began to form in her sleep-starved mind. Arkady pulled down the shoulder of her shift to examine the scabbed-over burn of her slave brand. The interlinked chain symbol was hard to make out in the gloom, but she could tell, just from the dull throbbing pain, that the burn was probably healing cleanly.

  Pity. If it was infected, she could ask to see the ship’s doctor and have some hope of being treated. Live slaves were the Senestrans’ lifeblood, not dead ones. They would treat a slave with an infected wound—and the treatment would be lancing the wound to drain the pus.

  To do that, the ship’s doctor would need a scalpel.

  Arkady pondered the idea for a time. If the doctor came to lance an infected wound, and she was quick enough, she could grab the scalpel from his hand and slice through her own carotid artery before anybody had time to react. It was quick, clean, relatively painless, and unstoppable. Once her artery started pumping blood across the cabin, no doctor, no matter how skilled, would be able to stop it. It was a better than even wager that any doctor stuck on a Senestran slaver wasn’t the best practitioner, anyway . . .

  There was one fatal flaw in her plan, of course.

  The salve they’d applied in Elvere after she was branded had done its job. The wound was clean and healing nicely.

  But maybe, she thought, warming to the idea of a quick and painless death, if the wound looked infected . . .

  Arkady wished her mind was clearer; that she was less driven by hunger, pain and fear. Plans formed in such a hasty manner were inevitably filled with holes and pitfalls, and she couldn’t afford to mess this up.

  If the wound looked infected . . . she repeated silently, wondering how to effect such a deceit. She could make it genuinely infected, readily enough. There was a bucket in the corner of the cabin—she could smell it from here—filled with plenty of material for infecting an open wound. The trouble was, a genuine infection would take a few days to manifest. She needed an infection serious enough to warrant the attention of the ship’s doctor by sunrise.

  Tomorrow morning they would leave Torlenian waters.

  By tomorrow morning, Arkady needed her wound to be angry and red and swollen.

  Still trying to solve the problem, Arkady was distracted again by a noise from the deck above—a thumping sound, followed by taunting voices and cruel laughter. She didn’t know what they were saying, but she’d heard them before, and their tone, if not their words, was easy enough to understand.

  They’re probably tormenting some poor cabin boy. Killing time until they can start raping the female slaves, once we’re on the open sea . . .

  She wished they’d stop. Their harsh laughter was a brutal reminder of the fate that awaited her, one she could well have done without.

  By breakfast tomorrow, I need to be oozing pus.

  Breakfast—when they brought the slaves their one meal of the day. That hideous porridge-like gruel that looked like . . . pus.

  Arkady smiled in the darkness.

  She had the means, after all, to end her life.

  All she needed was a bowl of gruel and an inattentive ship’s surgeon.

  Arkady closed her eyes, and found, surprisingly, that she was sleepy after all. She wiggled a little to turn on her side, elbowing Alkasa’s shoulder out of the way, and mentally shut out the tormenting laughter from above. She finally drifted off to sleep just as the sun crept over the horizon, content that later in the morning she would be dead and the nightmare, for her at least, would be over.

  Chapter 2

  Tiji had travelled by ship before, but never on one so small, so crowded, nor so fast. The little sloop sliced through the waves like it had wings, carrying her further and further from the life she had known toward a future she had always dreamed about, but was too frightened to believe could ever be real.

  The little boat was crewed entirely by chameleon Crasii. No amphibians dragged this craft through the waves. The Liberator travelled at the whim of the wind and the current, and seemed to dance across the wave tops with the joy of her freedom. Now she had her sea legs, Tiji was in a position to appreciate the little craft a lot more than when they’d first left Elvere in Torlenia several days ago.

  That had been a dark time of seasickness and guilt. Fortunately, the seasickness had faded.

  Now only the guilt remained.

  “You’re looking very forlorn.”

  Tiji turned from her
perch in the bow to find Azquil, the chameleon who’d help kidnap her off the streets of Elvere (just as she was on the brink of saving Arkady Desean from being shipped off to the Tides-alone-knew-where as a slave), making his way forward.

  The chameleon Crasii who’d kidnapped her proved to be a highly organised group of reptilian Crasii. Known among their own kind as the Retrievers, that’s precisely what they did. They hunted down and retrieved the Lost Ones—children stolen from their hidden settlements, deep in the humid wetlands of Senestra, by hunters seeking the special skills of the chameleon Crasii. The more successful raiders stole the smallest children, they told Tiji, and then sold them to circuses and freak shows as curiosities.

  And sometimes to spymasters like Declan Hawkes because of their camouflage abilities.

  The Retrievers had sympathised with her when she’d told them about her life in Glaeba, appalled she had been used so foully, first by the circus where Declan had found her, and then by Declan Hawkes himself, whom they likened to an evil tyrant, bent on destroying her spirit with his overbearing control over her. At first she couldn’t understand why. She’d thought her life quite good. Yes, she was a slave, but she’d had a master for whom she would have cheerfully died, an interesting job, was cared for, fed, sheltered and never wanted for anything.

  Azquil and his friends didn’t think that was anything to get excited about.

  Despite her protests, the Retrievers were convinced she’d been held against her will. She couldn’t explain to them, especially Azquil, that her loyalty to Declan was motivated by affection not fear.

  In fact, when she mentioned she loved Declan, even though she’d meant it in the most platonic sense of the word, the young reptile had looked at her with great concern and whispered, “Among our kind, such a relationship would be considered, well, more than a little unnatural. Perhaps it would be wise not to mention, to others, your . . . attraction . . . to this male of another species.”

  “I’m not attracted to him.”

  “You claim to love him.”

  “I love seafood too, but that doesn’t mean I want to settle down with a lobster.”

  Azquil had laughed then and hugged her. “You are such a delight, Tiji. Most of the Lost Ones we retrieve are such tragically damaged souls. I’ve never met one with a sense of humour before.”

  Tiji had smiled too, and felt her skin tones flickering, which was the chameleon equivalent of a blush. It wasn’t his compliment that had made her feel that way, however; it was the fact that he hugged her.

  Tiji was quite taken with the notion of being hugged by Azquil.

  It wouldn’t do to let him know that, however. She had no idea of the customs among her own people about that sort of thing. For all she knew, Azquil had a wife and a dozen younglings hidden away in the swamps and he was just being nice to another “tragically damaged soul” he’d rescued.

  “I was just thinking,” she said, as Azquil settled in beside her, looking over the railing to the water below.

  “You seem to do that a lot.”

  “Are we not a thoughtful species?” Tiji found it strange that she had to ask that, but she knew nothing of her own people; not their traits, their likes and dislikes, their fears . . .

  “Thoughtful, perhaps,” Azquil said. “But maybe not as lost in it as you seem to be. Is something troubling you?”

  She nodded, seeing no point in lying. “I’ve abandoned my friends.”

  “You talk of the humans who enslaved you, Tiji. They were never your friends.”

  “I wasn’t mistreated, Azquil.”

  “The Trinity says that if you cage a bird and shower it with the best food and endless affection, it won’t alter the fact that the bird cannot fly free.”

  “I wasn’t caged,” she said, not sure who the Trinity was, and not particularly interested in their homespun wisdom. “I had diplomatic papers, for pity’s sake!”

  Azquil smiled at her tolerantly. “Tiji, please, I am not trying to demonise your former slave-masters, who, by the sound of it, were better than average. It’s just, well, freedom can take some getting used to. The Trinity says finding the courage to move on is the only thing that stops us looking back.”

  “When I look back, all I can think of is seeing Lady Desean in that slave wagon, heading for the docks, on her way to the Tide-alone-knows-where. My job was to keep her safe, and I let her be sold into slavery.”

  “You didn’t let her do anything. This human woman you fret about so, is not your responsibility.” He leaned forward and took her hand. “Can you not see that, Tiji? Can you not see how conditioned you are to believe their self-serving lies? This woman was your master, and yet, when an ill befalls her, you somehow believe it was your fault.”

  “I should have done something!” she insisted, pulling her hand away. This guilt wasn’t going anywhere soon and she needed to explain—even to someone who patently didn’t care about the fate of the Duchess of Lebec—why she felt responsible.

  “What could you have done?”

  “I . . . don’t know.” And that was the rub. There was probably nothing she could have done to prevent Brynden taking his revenge on Cayal by selling the one person on Amyrantha the Immortal Prince seemed to care about into slavery.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this is bothering you so much you’re barely eating. Perhaps, if I understand better . . .”

  Tiji smiled, feeling her skin flicker in a multi-coloured blush. “Actually, me not eating has more to do with your cooking, Azquil, than my despair.”

  “Even so,” he said, smiling, “it’s eating you up. You will never be truly free until you have put this behind you.”

  He was probably right, so Tiji took a deep breath and gave Azquil an edited version of what had happened since she’d left Glaeba. She told him of the death of the King and Queen of Glaeba; about how Arkady had been disinherited because her husband was implicated in their deaths. She told him of Arkady’s friend, Chintara, the Imperator’s Consort, who’d arranged to hide Arkady in the Torlenian desert at the Abbey of the Way of the Tide, without actually mentioning that Chintara was the immortal Kinta. Or that Kinta’s lover, Brynden, the Lord of Reckoning, was holed up in the abbey, awaiting his chance to take Torlenia as his own, once the Tide returned.

  She told them of running into Cayal, the Immortal Prince, although she didn’t refer to him as that. She called him Kyle Lakesh, the name he’d been using when he was a condemned prisoner in Glaeba. She told Azquil how Kyle had saved them from a sandstorm and then escorted them to the abbey, where he was heading anyway to ask a favour of an old enemy.

  And then she told him of the deal between Kyle and the monk at the abbey (neglecting to mention the monk was actually the immortal Brynden), resulting in Arkady being left with him as a hostage, while Kyle went to fetch another . . . friend . . .

  And then she explained how she was supposed to meet up with Arkady in Elvere, only to discover the monk had betrayed Kyle and sold Arkady into slavery.

  When she finished her tale, Azquil searched her face with concern. “And you somehow think this is your fault?”

  “I should have followed Arkady. I know I probably couldn’t have stopped Bryn . . . the monk, selling her into slavery, but I could have bought her out of it again. I had diplomatic papers on me and she’s a member of one of Glaeba’s most prominent families.”

  “Then don’t you think someone else will go looking for her?”

  “Anybody else looking for Arkady at the moment is likely to want her arrested or dead,” Tiji predicted grimly.

  “Then your duchess is probably safer where she is.”

  “What do you mean, safer? She’s a slave, Azquil! Who knows what they’re doing to her.”

  Azquil wasn’t moved. He shook his head. “You claim you were well looked after as a slave. In fact, you almost resent having been granted your freedom, you’re so adamant on that point. Why, then, do you assume
this human woman’s slavery will be any more onerous than you insist yours was? Perhaps, like you, she will find a good master and gain the very protection she went into the deserts of Torlenia to seek.”

  Tiji couldn’t really answer that, and in the end she didn’t have to, because at that moment a school of dolphins surfaced beside the Liberator’s bow and began racing the little sloop across the waves. At the shout of delight from the Crasii at the helm, which alerted them to the dolphins’ presence, everyone on board hurried to the side to watch them leaping out of the water, laughing delightedly at this good omen.

  Despite herself, Tiji couldn’t help but be enchanted by the smiling creatures leaping so joyfully across their bow. She was soon laughing so hard she could pretend, for a time at least, that Arkady’s fate wasn’t going to be as bad as she feared.

  Chapter 3

  Declan Hawkes woke to the sound of rain on the shingles. He lay there for a time, in the darkness, listening to the downpour, the sound comforting and ordinary. It was just before dawn; his ability to sense such things now magnified beyond belief since surviving the fire that had made him immortal.

  A few feet away, on the other pallet they’d crammed into the lean-to beside Maralyce’s cabin to cater for this influx of unexpected visitors, Stellan Desean’s deep even breathing indicated the former Duke of Lebec was still sound asleep. Declan guessed the others in the cabin would still be asleep too. Shalimar would be snoring softly on the pallet in front of the fire, while Nyah, the little princess Declan had rescued from Caelum, would be curled up in a ball beside Maralyce, still not used to having to share a bed with anybody.

  It wasn’t long, however, before other things intruded on Declan’s peaceful contemplation. He could feel things now that he’d never felt before; knew things—like exactly what time it was—without knowing how. He could, if he concentrated, feel every single raindrop, sense the tension that held its shape, and its pain as it splattered on the ground. It was as if, along with immortality, he had acquired another sense; one that let him touch things on a hidden level not accessible to mortal men. The ability both fascinated and frightened him because he knew what it was.