When he had enough space to whisper something that only Suki could hear, Hiram said, “Now, little one, tell me why you’re crying.”
Suki had already swallowed her louder sobs. She trembled.
“Did you hurt yourself in the crash?”
Suki shook her head, her chin tucked into her chest.
“No? Well, that’s good. It’s good, isn’t it?”
Suki nodded. She even smiled a little at the man’s obvious question.
Hiram looked around, then caught Suki’s eye again. This time, he spoke in Tasanese, a language Suki hadn’t heard since the day her parents sent her away. It filled her with such comfort, as if she’d caught the scent of her own mother.
“Do you remember those two soldiers I sent away? The one with missing ears and the one with the broken nose?”
Suki nodded again.
“What if I told you I’m a misfit, too? Look.” The magister opened his mouth wide and poked a finger back to a space where the last tooth should have been on either side.
Suki giggled at the absurdity of the king’s man shoving his giant hand into his own mouth. Hiram pretended to gag, and Suki laughed even harder. He had a warm smile. “And what if I told you,” he said, “that I was starting a collection of misfits, and now I need a little girl, hopefully with swollen cheeks from crying all the time?”
Suki’s eyes went wide.
“And that all the misfits get latrine duty or my job, and you’d probably rather the latrines?”
Suki thought about it for a moment. “I’ll stop crying,” she said.
Hiram wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “That’s a shame,” he said. “We could have used your small hands for the really grimy crevices.” Suki squished her face in grossed-out amusement.
Hiram stood up and faced them all once again. Marta had joined the other girls. Hiram reached into a pocket of his robes and pulled out a blank roll of parchment and a sharpened piece of graphite. “So then, let’s begin at the moment in the exercise when our expertly trained soldiers, acting as common rogues, take over the carriage and somehow manage to snap the breaking lever, to drop the reins, and spook the horses.”
Cadis and Rhea looked at their boots, unwilling to start. Iren finally spoke. “They didn’t spook the horses. The fire in the baggage rack did, which we started.”
“Why?” said Hiram.
“To spook the horses,” said Iren, as if it were obvious.
“So your plan was to create havoc and hope that it would all come to rights?”
“We didn’t have a plan,” said Rhea.
“Yes, we did,” said Cadis. “We did.” She gestured at herself and Iren. “You wouldn’t listen.”
“Why should I listen?” shouted Rhea, shrugging off Marta’s hand from her shoulder. “You keep acting like the boss, and you’re not. You’re a cheating Findainer.”
“Rhea!” shouted the tutor.
But Rhea was already weeping. She whirled back on Marta, a whole world of confusion and pain darkening her expression. “Why are you defending her? She threw me from the carriage.”
“Wait, what?” said Cadis.
“Don’t lie! You stomped on my fingers.”
“I didn’t,” said Cadis. “I swear.”
“And you cut me!”
She held up her forearm, covered in a blood-soaked bandage.
“But you attacked me first,” said Cadis to no avail.
Nothing would stem Rhea’s fury when she felt small and weak. Even if they believed her, Rhea knew her father would say she was begging for pity.
Hiram scribbled notes onto the sheet of parchment in the palm of his hand. Marta reached out to calm Rhea, but the young queen pulled her arm away. “Don’t,” she grumbled. “We all know what the dirty Findish did.”
For the first time that morning, Cadis’s composure broke, her face reddened, and she took a step toward Rhea. Iren, who had been shaving the fine hairs on her arm with her exhibition dagger, snapped a hand out and held Cadis back with the flat of the blade.
From the ground came Suki’s entreaty. “I don’t know what the dirty Findish did.”
Hiram looked down at the queen sitting at his feet, fiddling with his bootlaces, and smiled. “Very well,” he said. “You’re old enough for the truth.”
He reached down and picked up Suki so she’d pay attention and so she wouldn’t cut herself on the pincer sheathed in his boot.
“The war began when the treacherous Findish assassinated our own good King Kendrick and Queen Valda.”
“Of Meridan,” corrected Suki.
“Yes, the king and queen of Meridan. Our king and queen.”
“I’m a queen too,” said Suki.
“Of course, and we’ll get to that,” said Hiram. “King Kendrick was my friend. He was a good man. And those gold nobles, jumped-up merchants, had him slaughtered for commercial gain.”
“That’s not true!” said Cadis, her whole body trembling.
“I’m sorry, but I was there,” said Hiram. He seemed genuinely torn at the idea and took no joy in hurting Cadis. All the wounds were fresh for everyone. Perhaps it was still too early for such ugly history.
“Fighting alongside the traitors were the Tasanese.”
“I’m Tasanese,” said Suki.
Hiram continued. “They seized the opportunity to rise up and steal the crops of the lowlands, belonging to Meridan, and the hill-country ranches belonging to Corent.”
“My daddy doesn’t steal. He’s king of the world,” said Suki.
Hiram laughed. “Ah, but he does invade and annex and put farmers who disagree into the trees.”
Suki didn’t understand what execution by hanging meant.
“But the Corentine—” continued Hiram, rounding on Iren, “were the most devious. The ever-aloof Corentine, Meridan’s only true allies, refused to honor our treaties and enter the fray. They holed themselves in their spires.”
Iren shrugged. She didn’t particularly seem to care.
“Meridan was gravely wounded, without king or queen or heir—enemies in every direction and friends in none. So, Declan the Giver, a lowly noble, rose up and took back the country he loved.”
Rhea beamed with pride for her father.
“At the Battle of Crimson Fog, he survived an assassination attempt by the Tasanese, who sent their own princess to turn the coward’s knife.”
“Tola,” whispered Suki.
“But Declan was too clever. And though it broke his heart, he sounded the battle horn that very night. Meridan charged the field. More soldiers died in the battle than at the siege of Blantyre, or even by Rotter’s Plague. Most were Tasanese farmers, conscripted by the emperor to take up their sickles for war. The Findish supply lines were also caught unawares. When the sun rose that day, the chroniclers say the dew on the grass was bloodred. The ‘mourning fog,’ they called it. Outside these walls, they say everyone was present at Crimson Fog, because everyone felt the loss of someone they knew.
“Only Declan could unite the kingdoms and make peace. He paid for the mass graves Findain caused. He sheltered the war orphans Tasan created, and Corent ignored. You three,” said Hiram, nodding at Cadis, Iren, and Suki, “are lucky you’ve been allowed to live under his protection, here in Meridan. And you’re lucky to grow up alongside his own daughter.”
Hiram finished his account and put Suki down. Marta glared at him with open disgust. It had all been whispered before in the bathhouses and empty chambers of Meridan Keep, but it had never been said. And never to the girls—the future sister queens of the four empires.
A silence that follows thunder hung about them. None of the girls would look Rhea in the eye. Everything had shifted between them.
Suki looked from Cadis, who wiped a tear from her cheek as quickly as she could, to Iren, who clenched her jaw in silence, to Rhea, who finally understood why Marta was trying to stop her.
At that moment the little girl realized that all the pain in her short l
ife—her sissy’s death, her good-bye to her parents—the massive nightmare that she wished and wished she would wake from, all of it was supposedly her own fault.
A black shroud seemed to fall over Suki’s vision.
The five-year-old shattered the silence.
“It’s not our fault!”
She charged at Hiram, battering his legs with her useless fists.
Hiram didn’t respond. Any response would have made it worse.
In the ensuing tumult, Rhea stood by and watched as Cadis and Iren ran up to grab Suki. She knew now they would never be truly sisters, the way her father wanted. They would never reign together and usher in a generation of peace among the four empires. His great dream of a Pax Regina—peace of the queens—would be a disappointment he would have to endure. And she would be to blame for it.
She watched Cadis, the natural leader, peel Suki away from Hiram’s leg. And she saw Iren quietly sidle next to Hiram, reach into his robe, which had fallen open, and steal a roll of parchment full of the magister’s notes.
When everything had finally settled:
The carriage reset and doused of its flames.
The horses calmed by Endrit’s soothing words and bribed with his apples.
Two new soldiers called to play the bandits.
Only then did the servants return to cleaning the coliseum as if they had seen nothing.
Hiram’s shinhound returned from delivering his message. The king’s man nodded at Marta and bade the sister queens farewell.
So the four girls from four countries found themselves again in a new royal carriage, riding peaceably along, awaiting an attack.
Rhea wished desperately that they could go back to the first run and work it out among themselves. She had never had siblings before and didn’t know how permanent the damage could be.
She tried to break the silence.
“Maybe we could do the same plan again?”
It was the best olive branch she could offer, admitting that Cadis’s idea had worked for the most part. Though, of course, it was doling out tasks that caused their fight in the first place.
Cadis stared straight at a button in the upholstery. She shook from the intensity of her focus on that one point—a taut rope on a ship at storm.
Rhea added, “But this time I’ll go on Iren’s side, so we don’t get in each other’s way.”
Iren glanced up, nodded silently at Rhea, and then returned to picking her nails with her dagger. Suki sniffled. Her job was to stay in the coach until the bandits were fought off. Then she would crawl over the rigging and saddle one of the horses to bring them to a stop. She had been raised on horseback and could do the job even while pouting.
The very first unveiling of the hitherto queens would make a glorious climax to the festivities of King Declan’s Revels. The entire coliseum would marvel at the martial skill and cunning of the future rulers of the world. But most of all, the people would find comfort in the fact that the heirs to the four thrones and four armies loved one another like sisters.
Rhea tried to intercept Cadis’s stare by leaning into it. “Cadis? Does that sound good?”
It was Cadis’s plan. Of course it sounded good. Rhea realized too late that making Cadis speak wasn’t an olive branch, but just another kind of knife.
Cadis snapped her gaze to Rhea. Her eyes shimmered but held strong.
“Yes,” she said, unblinking. “That’s fine.”
THE KINGDOM OF MERIDAN
TEN YEARS LATER
CHAPTER ONE
Rhea
First from the others was Meridan’s own
Lost a mother when she won a crown
Her daddy jumped up and defended the throne
Dance little queen, but don’t . . . fall . . . down.
—Children’s nursery rhyme
Rhea put up her hair as Endrit took off his shirt in the chamber below the private bedrooms of the castle.
Her maids were sent away.
The candles lit the room with warm halos floating a-pixie in the dark.
Rhea’s thick black curls took dozens of jeweled floral pins, stabbed in every direction, to stay aloft in the formal style.
As she fumbled in front of the full-length mirror, Rhea glanced at Endrit’s reflection. The years of assisting his mother in their training had made him the envy of all the noble sons at court, who seemed to be made of lesser mettle. Where the young lords would call for water and stop their coddled sword work at the first pain, Endrit had been the sparring partner—and punching bag—to the sisters, without the luxury of raising two fingers and storming off.
He was seventeen and looked like the flattering portraits hanging in the royal hall. Shoulders broad and tapering down across a barrel chest, and a taut abdomen. Rhea knew he kept his light brown hair a medium length because it looked soft and sandy when he lay under the trees in the orchards, regaling the swoony village girls with tales of castle comforts. And he knew it looked menacing when it hung wet over his obsidian eyes, in the heat of a fight.
After he pulled the linen tunic over his head, Endrit reached up and ran a hand through his wet hair. The third reason he kept it that length was to reach up and flex his arms and his abs and catch the princesses watching him in their mirrors.
Endrit smiled with mischief.
Rhea flushed and looked away. “Put your shirt back on,” she said.
“Excuse me, Princess, but it’s stifling in here. Some of us aren’t used to castle fineries.”
“Like clothing?” said Rhea.
“Like indoor heating,” said Endrit.
Rhea parried the jab with an unimpressed eyebrow. “Do you suffer a lot of cold nights, curled up with the old tabby cat?”
Endrit’s romantic exploits were the subject of endless teasing from the sisters . . . and endless speculation.
“I don’t know about that,” said Endrit. “Mrs. Wigglefoots never scratched so hard.”
Endrit turned to show a crosshatch of scars on his ribs stretching across the muscles of his back. Each was from Rhea, Cadis, Iren, or Suki missing their mark, swinging wildly, or losing control during their blade work over the years.
Rhea had no witty riposte.
The scars were deep and irregularly healed, as if some had been carved into already-scabbed tissue. Rhea remembered when she was first learning to throw her weighted knives, when she didn’t know to aim at the smallest target possible and was easily distracted. Endrit provided the human prey.
And if he wasn’t so skilled at diving clear, she would have skewered him a dozen times. As it was, she knew she was responsible for many of those graze marks along Endrit’s ribs. “Don’t feel bad, Princess,” said Endrit as he walked about the room, lifting the wooden dummies back onto their stands. “Some of these I remember fondly.” Endrit was the only one allowed to call the sisters “princess” in that puckish tone, and only in private. Rhea liked it when he did, because it made him feel like more than just the servant they had abused all these years so they could become masters of their arts. It made him feel like a friend.
Rhea finished with a last pin in her hair. Her head almost wobbled under the weight. Rhea didn’t spend any more time in front of the glass, not to admire herself as Cadis did. She simply used the glass to make sure her hair was ready for a royal ball and turned away. Not in disgust. Though maybe when she was younger. No, not disgust. Duty. Drive.
She was too busy to fuss about her thick mane or her inelegant posture. She was beautiful enough—though not as lovely as Cadis. And elegant enough—though not as regal as Iren.
Rhea caught herself thinking such thoughts and asked herself, And what about Suki? How do we measure against the youngest? Her answer was a welcome joke. She was certainly brave enough, but she would never be as wild as Suki.
Rhea straightened her red silk ball gown and said, “Aren’t you ready?”
“No,” said Endrit, lifting the last wooden dummy. “And neither are you.”
H
e threw a golden armband he had retrieved from the floor. Rhea caught it and clasped it around her left wrist.
It was a chunky piece of jewelry, made finer by delicate scrollwork patterns cut into the gold in the shape of a shining sun. It matched the elaborate necklace Rhea wore—the masterpiece of her family’s crown jewels. The lavish necklace began as a black lacy choker, set with hundreds of white diamonds all around and a giant ruby the size of an apricot at its center. Radiating from the ruby’s setting were long, thin, round black stones that tapered into impossibly sharp points.
When her father had first clasped the necklace around her neck on her thirteenth birthday, he’d told her they were the teeth of the crest-beast of their house—the onyx wyrm. It had been that evening after the shared birthday ceremony for all four sisters. Of course Rhea knew there were no dragons in the world, but she liked that her father told the tale as their ancestors would have, the way he had done when she was very young—before the war, before he had to treat her like her sisters, with no public sign of favor—like a bedtime story.
He looked at her in the mirror and she knew it must have been difficult for him, too. To pretend he had four daughters. To raise four queens—to pick up the burden their families had so recklessly dropped. She looked at him and saw a widower, a father, a great king. He was almost teary when he said, “You look a bit like your mother.”
As Rhea remembered the moment and stared into the same mirror as that evening, she touched the eight black diamond spikes that lay across her bare neck, reminding Rhea never to look down.
She was dressed for a coronation in full regalia. Nothing in the basement chamber shined as brightly as the crested sun-shaped ring on her right hand or the pointed dragon-shaped ring on her left.
Only Endrit and her father had seen her in ceremonial dress.
The wooden dummies stood around the open space in haphazard groups as if they were revelers at the grand ball. The walls of the basement space glimmered with weapon racks. A few punching bags hung in the corners. A replica of the throne of Meridan had been shoved to one side.
Daughters of Ruin Page 2
