The Way Into Chaos

by Harry Connolly

  Shocked, Cazia stayed perfectly still while the footsteps receded down the stairs. Did the prince really think her brother would make a better king? Sadness suddenly filled her so full that tears welled in her eyes. Lar should never say such things aloud, especially not to a killer like Tyr Treygar.

  Fire and Fury, Lar needed a bodyguard to protect him from himself.

  Cazia went down the stair more slowly, not wanting to hear any more and all too aware of what would happen to her if she emerged from the passage with tears on her face. Pagesh, Bittler, and Jagia’s footsteps passed and faded. At the bottom of the stair, she slipped through another panel into a disused map room.

  It was empty. Perfect. She crept out from behind the shelf of scrolls and walked quietly toward the propped-open door at the entrance. She peered through.

  Doctor Whitestalk, sitting at a desk near a window, glanced at her without interest. The scholar had a sparrow laid out before her and she cut it open to expose its innards. Cazia watched her pick something out of the body--a tiny organ, obviously--with her thumb and index fingers. Those were the only fingers she had left. She’d gone hollow years ago when she was barely older than Cazia herself, but without her fingers, she could no longer cast spells. All she could do was consult with other scholars, when she felt moved to talk.

  According to rumor, she’d been a medical scholar before she’d become a wizard and she had used her healing magic to create terrible things. No one would specify what those things had looked like, but Cazia’s imagination ran wild.

  A young woman in a pale robe approached Doctor Whitestalk, her posture deferential. Although Doctor Twofin had never explained why, scholars who had gone hollow had a special insight into spells and spellcasting, which they shared with the tower on rare occasions. It was enough to keep them off the gallows, whatever their crimes.

  Instead of responding to the young woman’s question, Doctor Whitestalk lifted the bird’s organ to her mouth and touched it to her tongue. Her expression was flat, devoid of any human emotion. Her cheeks were streaked with tears.

  I won’t have you going hollow under my tutelage. Think of the consequences!

  Shuddering, Cazia stepped through the doorway, only to have someone seize hold of her ear. It was Doctor Winterhill.

  “What have I told you,” he said in his dull, blubbery voice, “about creeping about in my map room? I won’t have you smudging my work, you little sneak!”

  “The prince gave me permission,” Cazia said, trying to act as though having her ear nearly pulled off the side of her head wasn’t painful at all.

  “Bad enough you are permitted in the tower at all,” Winterhill insisted. “No Freewell in all of Kal-Maddum has permission to study the imperial maps. Now get out before I have Twofin ban you.”

  He shoved her toward the yard. The other scholars sat glowering at her, so she lowered her head and hurried after Pagesh and the others. Even inside the Scholars’ Tower she had Enemies. For now.

  Bittler had already left the girls and headed toward the gym. Cazia watched as he hunched his shoulders and took a circuitous route to avoid a cluster of palace guards.

  For all the good it did him. One of the guards threw a pebble at him. They all laughed as Bitt winced and clutched at his upper arm.

  They weren’t supposed to be doing that anymore but there was little anyone could do to stop them. If Bitt complained about the guard--or if Cazia complained about Doctor Winterhill--they would simply lie about what happened, and their superiors would never take the word of a traitor’s child over one of their own. They had all learned that lesson while they were young. As the prince, Lar should have had the authority to put a stop to it, but somehow he didn’t. No one seemed to take him seriously; Cazia still wasn’t sure why.

  Things would be awful for a month afterwards--they would find wet linen in their beds, scorching amounts of salt in their food, and grubs in their rooms. It wasn’t worth striking back.

  The truth was, the Palace of Song and Morning was very large, but the only safe spaces within it for her were inside the circle of her friends with Lar, or in the practice room with Doctor Twofin. Even her tiny chambers were Enemy territory.

  In her room, the fire had been lit and a bowl of bread and salt cheese set beside her bed. The maid--never “her” maid, not considering how often the girl searched through her things for Song knows what--had laid out Cazia’s new green dress with beautiful white swirls at the sleeves and hem. While Cazia washed and changed, the maid returned and laid out a white scarf and a string of tiny blue gems to tie back her hair.

  Since trade had opened up through East Ford again, blue had become the current thing, but Cazia thought it would be too showy for a hostage, even though the stones had been a gift from the prince himself. So it was green and white for her, with a white hat made of stiffened linen to protect her face from the rain. The gems she wore hidden underneath. It didn’t matter to her that no one else would see them. In fact, it made her enjoy them more.

  It was still early when she hurried to Pagesh’s room. As expected, Pagesh and Jagia were frantic to be ready for the start of the Festival. Jagia was all in red and gold--a beautiful combination that made Cazia want to change immediately. Pagesh emerged from her bedchamber in a red-on-white dress embroidered with rose petals that was so unlike her usual mud-stained robes that Cazia actually gasped.

  “You both look beautiful,” Cazia said.

  Pagesh made a face. “Girl clothes. They always bring out the marriage proposals.”

  At nineteen, Pagesh had been fending off suitors for years. She was Tyr Simblin’s only acknowledged child, and King Ellifer wanted Simblin’s heir to marry someone loyal to the empire. Pagesh herself wanted to spend her days in the garden—she had little interest in anything else—but the queen had made it clear that she would soon be returning to the Simblin holdfast, and that she would be bringing a husband along.

  Cazia honestly felt sorry for her. Only a year before, Cazia had asked the queen for permission to stay at the palace when Colchua returned to the family holdings. She planned to devote her life to studying in the Scholars’ Tower, and the Enemies who worked there would have no choice but to accept her. She would make them.

  It had been a risky thing to say, she learned later. Queens were trained as scholars--in limited ways, but still--and Cazia’s lineage put her in line for the throne behind Lar, Jagia, her own brother, and Ellifer’s brother and sister.

  However, Queen Amlian had understood she wasn’t interested in sitting on a throne. She was learning to read, to set things on fire, and to hit targets with her darts. At the end of this Festival, there would be a new Gift to play with; whatever it was, Cazia wanted to be part of it. If the Italgas could give her that, they would have her utmost loyalty even before Lar was crowned.

  Pagesh said goodbye to her maid with a kiss and they hurried into the hall. Bittler, Timush, and Colchua were already waiting for them. All three looked handsome in the king’s gray and red. Even Bittler, almost.

  Col made a fuss over their dresses in his half-mocking way, although of course he was gentlest with little Jagia. To Pagesh, Timush said quietly, “You look wonderful, but I think I prefer you in those muddy field clothes.” She did not smile nor did she look at him. She only stared silently at the floor. For his part, Timu accepted her silence as a kind of distance between them that he did not know how to cross.

  On their way to the courtyard, one of the servants contrived to tip over a bucket of dirty water as they passed, but Cazia had been watching for it and hopped out of the way.

  “Oh, excuse me, miss!” the girl said, unable to disguise the sneer at the corner of her mouth. “And you in such lovely clothes.”

  Cazia and Pagesh both glared at her with enough hatred to kindle a flame, and the girl retreated down the hall.

  Enemies everywhere.

  As they rounded the next corner, Col started joking about the Evening People and Lar’s song. Like everyone aroun
d them, they’d talked all their lives about putting on a show or doing some sort of crazy mime at their first Festival, but nothing had ever come of it.

  Except with Lar. The only one who knew anything about this song of his was Col, and he wouldn’t say a word.

  Their bootheels scuffed the pink stone as they hurried through the empty halls.

  Chapter 3

  Lar’s valet had laid out three suits for the prince to choose from. While Tejohn stood against the wall and waited, they discussed each at length. Eventually, the prince combined two, choosing a bright red linen coat with a green-and-yellow-checked shirt. Tejohn wouldn’t have dressed a clown in those colors, but the prince could do as he liked. He always seemed comfortable with his choices, even when he made them sober. The queen wouldn’t like it, but she had asked him to make sure the prince arrived sober, not fashionable.

  Eventually, they made their way into the main courtyard. Controlled chaos was a kindly way of describing the work being done there, and the king and queen were in the thick of it.

  “My prince! There you are!” Kolbi Arriya raced up the stairs and clutched at the prince’s sleeve. She was the king’s shield bearer, which had once been an honorable position for a talented and well-born young warrior, but in these luxurious imperial times had become a counselor and royal secretary.

  She scowled at the prince’s clothes, then at Tejohn. Kolbi herself wore the Italga gray and red, although her clothes were rumpled and soaked through with rain, sweat, or a combination of both. She would not be joining the royal family at the dais looking like that. “You know where to go, my prince? Be sure to let Sincl know if you want to sing first, last, or somewhere in between. He will accommodate you.” She rushed breathlessly toward the food tables without waiting for a response.

  Lar laughed, then stopped at the top of the stairs and looked out over the throngs of people. The king covered his face with his hand and turned away in irritation at something one of the chief servants was telling him; the queen stepped in smoothly to resolve the problem. Lar seemed to find the whole thing amusing. “Twenty-three years between Festivals. Do you think my bride will do as well?”

  Lar was betrothed to the daughter of the head chieftain of the Indregai Alliance. The girl lived inside the Morning City and was as much a hostage as the Freewell children. When she came of age, they would marry, forging a peace with the people of Indrega and allowing some troops stationed in East Ford to be relocated to the turbulent west.

  Tejohn could not help but notice that the prince had asked if his bride would organize the Festival as well as his parents, as though he himself couldn’t be bothered. “I have not met her, my prince.”

  “She’s a terror. Only twelve years old and already thinks she’s sitting on the throne.”

  Tejohn nodded politely. Typically, no foreigners would be allowed inside the walls of Peradain at all. She and her retainers would be locked up for the next ten days in her big, comfortable house with a watchful guard all around. She would not get within five hundred feet of the Evening People until her marriage was consummated and she’d proven herself loyal to the empire. If that was even possible.

  Tejohn gestured toward the royal dais. “Perhaps we should take our place.”

  “Not up there,” Lar said, then began moving through the crowd toward the yard below. “I want to wait in the pen with the other singers.”

  “My prince—”

  “Not now, my tyr!” Lar was unexpectedly fervent. Almost fierce. “This...production my parents are putting on may please the Evening People and it may please the merchants and generals and scholars and...and everyone. But I am here as a singer. I will sing my song--which is not a bawd, I assure you--and then I will find a jar of wine and do as little as possible for ten days.”

  Tejohn studied Lar’s expression. For this, he finally shows some spine? “My prince—”

  “After my song, I will no longer need a chaperone and you can go where you please, but right now, you will come with me to the singers’ pens. I’ll wait there, just as you once did.”

  They crossed the courtyard and entered the winter garden at the north end of the yard. Singers and musicians, most of them looking ill-rested and underfed, lounged on benches or sat beside the evergreen shrubs. It was obvious none recognized the prince, because none thought to jump up and offer him their seat. Lar didn’t seem to notice; he moved to the wall overlooking the courtyard and dais.

  Sincl found them by the rail and solicitously arranged for the prince to sing the last song of the day, at his request. One of the musicians began to nervously pluck at his lap harp, and Sincl rushed toward him to give the man a sharp kick. Tejohn was glad to see his back; the performance master was a jittery, sweating, nervous wreck.

  Down in the courtyard, the tents had been erected long ago, and most of the commotion now centered around the food tables. Servants arranged identical delicacies on each of the six tables: sourcakes, onion soups, pickled compote, leaf rolls, wet rice, and more. The Evening People did not eat animal flesh, so for the rest of the Festival, there wouldn’t be a roasted chicken breast, boiled snake, or stuffed lamb’s heart to be had for any amount of gold anywhere in the Morning City.

  Palace guards came through the garden, searching the singers for weapons. Their commander was named Kellin and he was an old friend of Tejohn’s. They were of an age, often playing cards or sparring in the gym. He seemed on the verge of asking a question, if only he could think of a way to say it.

  Tejohn knew what the question would be and he didn’t think he could bear to hear it. “I’m here as the prince’s guard,” he said abruptly. “I have no song to sing.”

  Kellin nodded, looking a bit disappointed. Never a man for frivolous words—or serious ones—he clapped Tejohn’s shoulder, bowed to the prince, and moved on. When his men had finished, they moved on to the actors in the next garden.

  “Col!” Lar called happily. The prince’s friends swarm around them. The Freewell girl was there, and so was her older brother; Bittler had indeed brought him, but he hadn’t convinced them to wash. Still, someone who didn’t know them would have though them respectable.

  Lar and the Freewell boy embraced as though they hadn’t seen each other in months. Tejohn hated to admit it, but Colchua Freewell did look more like a prince than Lar Italga: his face was broad and handsome, his smile bold. “We couldn’t let you make a fool of yourself without us to jeer from the crowd!” Colchua said.

  “Thanks, Col,” The prince answered. “I can always rely on you.”

  “Nervous?” The Bendertuk boy asked, grinning.

  Lar nodded yes while he said, “Absolutely not. Why should I be?”

  They laughed and talked about inconsequential things as a shadow passed slowly over them. A flying cart circled above the palace. It settled down on top of the Scholars’ Tower and, judging by a flurry of movement Tejohn could barely see, discharged a few men before floating away again.

  The Freewell girl broke away from the group and stood beside Tejohn at the garden rail. The dais where the king and queen would stand was below them in the courtyard. It wasn’t proper for singers, actors, mimes, and clowns to stand on higher ground than the royal family, but the portal would open down there, in the usual place, so the rightful order had to be upended. Merchant families, palace servants, notable scholars, and honored guests lounged on balconies, or leaned out windows, or sat on the edges of roofs or promenades.

  But there were no tyrs in attendance. Not the loyal ones, not the treacherous ones, none of them.

  “Those men down there are palace guards, aren’t they?”

  The Freewell girl pointed to a line of men standing fifteen feet behind the thrones. Each held a tall pole with a different colored streamer attached. “Those are athletes,” Tejohn answered, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. There weren’t supposed to be any guards or soldiers in the yard when the portal opened, but of course, Kellin also had a duty to protect the king and quee
n. “They’ll be competing in the games.”

  “I recognize them.” If that was true, she had sharp vision, and that made him even more suspicious. It wasn’t rational, but few important things were. “They aren’t carrying weapons, though, are they?”

  “The Evening People can sense weapons, so no, the athletes are unarmed.”

  “Then why... Oh! They’re each holding a pole and streamer, and I’ll bet there’s a sharp metal point at the bottom, right? A spear point?”

  Tejohn wondered if she was trying to goading him somehow. “The metal tip allows the pole to be set into the ground. They are not weapons.”

  “Right,” she answered. “And those skull-crackers you’re wearing on your wrists are just jewelry.”

  There was a sudden flash of light, and a sound like far-off lightning. Tejohn jolted upright, startled. The portal was opening, and soon the Evening People would appear.

  The servants who were not supposed to be in the courtyard rushed into the palace. Everyone else hurried to take up their positions, even the king and queen. The scholars, “athletes,” and servants accompanying the royal family--and even the scholars were considered royal bodyguards, although Tejohn was careful not to show his opinion on that--assumed postures appropriate for welcoming respected guests. In the garden, the singers, actors, and other wastrels pressed against the rail, crowding around the prince and his entourage for a proper view.

  The flash of light returned, and the disc appeared. It hovered in the air on its edge like one of Twofin’s hoops, and the surface was like a pool of water with bright sunlight reflecting from it. At first, it looked larger than Tejohn remembered, almost as wide as two men lying heel to crown, but no, it was the same.

  The Freewell girl shifted position, and he realized she was in a perfect position to fire an iron dart at one of the Evening People as they came through. Tejohn tensed, ready to slam his metal bracer onto her collarbone if she drew something from her sleeve or began to cast a spell, but her hands never left the railing.