They were both dressed, armed, and packed for a long journey.
Cadis stared at the mouth of the secret cubby and asked, “Why do you have extra?”
In the compartment sat another pack, riding boots, another set of clothes, and two long swords.
“Those were for Suki.”
Cadis was naive, but she was smart enough not to ask about Rhea.
Iren walked out.
Cadis pushed the loose stone to cover the secret cache.
“Leave it,” said Iren.
When Cadis caught up, Iren handed her a thin bamboo vial, stoppered with heavy layers of wax.
“What’s this?”
“Venom of the corkspider.”
Cadis jolted, as if the vial had bitten her.
Iren led them through the back of the kitchens, to the greengrocer’s loading gate.
“Iren, why do you have all this?”
Cadis had a commander’s tone, which Iren admired.
“Aren’t you glad I do?” said Iren.
“I’m serious.”
“Good.”
Iren opened the loading gate with a key from her ring. Cadis stopped. Iren checked the alley. No one there. Guards must have sounded the alarm. Everyone would be rushing to the ballroom.
“Come on.”
“No.”
Iren sighed. “I have the stash for lots of reasons.”
“Name them,” said Cadis, firm.
“If Suki went mad and stabbed Rhea. If you, eager sister, beat Rhea again and the people of Meridan demanded our heads. If Declan wished for royal concubines. If the missing heir of Kendrick returned to claim his throne. If a tree fell in the woods and crushed Declan’s skull on one of his rides. If Queen Rhea hated her dearest sisters.”
Iren continued.
“If Findish rebels attacked us at the ball. If there needed to be an assassination.”
“Assassination of whom?” said Cadis.
Iren shrugged. “Declan. Rhea. Whomever.”
“By whom?”
“Don’t be silly. By me. Who else?”
“I would believe almost anyone else but you.”
Iren laughed. She put up the cowl of her cloak and signaled Cadis to do the same. “Then you believe too much. Let’s go,” she said.
They stepped into the high-walled alley, careful not to turn their ankles in the grooves of the wagonway.
Shouting and tumult came from the front entrance.
They hugged the dark patches and moved toward the outer gate of Meridan Keep.
They could buy horses in Walltown. Or steal them from stables of the hillside farms.
Cadis’s braided shells made more noise than a peddler’s cart.
They avoided the main thoroughfare.
One of Iren’s first assignments had been to map the route. When she ventured a look over her shoulder, she saw Cadis watching her as if she were a mermaid. She still held her vial.
“Put that away,” said Iren.
“Was it meant for the king?”
Iren scoffed to herself. She still called him king. Still scandalized by the thought of putting the rabid dog down.
“No,” said Iren.
If Iren were going to assassinate him, she would have done it in his sleep with a pickax. But that information wasn’t necessary. Cadis still looked aghast.
She had killed for the first time tonight. She might have realized the lie they had been living. And she had discovered at least some of Iren’s secrets.
Maybe she needed assurance of some kind.
Iren paused in a dark alcove before an open crossroad, below the guard tower at the outer wall. She waited for Cadis’s skittering eyes to look into her own.
Now would be the time to tell her that at least for the time being, they were together. They would protect each other until they were home safe.
This would be difficult. Cadis would have had no trouble with it. She’d just speak. A gift Iren didn’t have. She’d speak and say, “I’m with you, sister.” Perhaps she’d add, “I love you.” And Iren did feel thus. But it was difficult to say, because the evidence was new that Iren had been hiding quite a lot from her dear sister. It would be difficult to explain the two together. That Iren cared more for Cadis than she ever imagined possible. That they were friends. Bosom friends, Cadis would say. But her assignments remained. Her obligation to Corent remained. Iren would have liked to explain this, the possibility for both to exist—sisterly love and sisterly lying—but they didn’t have the time, and she didn’t have the words.
Iren took her hand, the one that held the vial. She guided it to a hidden pocket inside the collar of her cloak, where the vial could be easily reached.
Cadis looked into her sister’s eyes, waiting for whatever instruction she might have.
Before Iren turned and dashed across the torchlit crossway, to the final gate, she said, “Drink it if we get caught.”
CHAPTER NINE
Rhea
It had never occurred to Rhea, even after years of training in the grimwaltz, that if she was ever caught up in an attack of some kind and she had to defend herself, it would be unlike stabbing dummies in three specific ways—the sound, the mess, and the fact that her knives would not be returned.
It was a small detail to dwell on. Maybe everyone’s vision narrowed when the wider world became as horrific as the ballroom had become.
Meridan guards had rushed in and either killed the last of the Findish rebels or chased them as they ran off. Some even jumped back through the smoldering gap in the wall and grabbed the ropes they had used to climb in, to rush back out.
They left behind them a ruined battlefield. Banquet tables turned over. Broken chairs. Burning tapestry churning black smoke. Bodies. So many bodies. So many men and women—their own visions slowly narrowing into permanent darkness. They were afraid. They shouted for help, for their mothers, for anyone. Anyone living, please come and hold their hands. Be alive around them.
It surprised Rhea that so many didn’t even bother to shout for magisters. They were beyond healing.
Rhea sat in the corner, pressing a patch of her dress onto Suki’s shoulder. Suki remained unconscious. Rhea had removed the sword. The blood had poured out. A guard had run up some time ago—she had no idea how long—and said, “Highness, are you hurt?”
“Get Hiram. Go.”
She expected the magister any moment now. Wherever he was, hopefully he was uninjured. He would come and help. He would know what to do and how to wake Suki.
In the meantime Rhea sat with Suki’s head on her lap, pressing the cloth down and doing her best to ignore all the sounds. The mess she could not ignore, because she sat in the middle of it. A mess of gore, and sweat, and cinder.
Had I made so much of it?
Rhea could not close her eyes or she would see them. The rebels. The one she stuck in the chest with three of the radial stakes from her necklace. He had looked down in surprise, then back up at her, directly, as if wondering why she would ever do such a thing. Then he fell. Those stakes were still missing from the left side of her necklace.
It sat asymmetrically on her chest, making its presence known.
She would see the woman who killed one of her guards. A lithe, masked killer. Rhea had turned around in time to see the assassin unsheathe her blade from her guard’s rib cage.
Rhea had punched her dragon ring into the woman’s cheek. The corkspider venom had ripped through her. She lay now in front of the south gate, every limb crooked and her spine twisted.
Rhea kept her eyes open and hummed to keep the noises out.
Her hair hung down in odd places where she had pulled out her pins and thrown them. She would rather lose them forever than walk around the room dislodging them, plucking them like mushroom caps from a moldy tree trunk.
Maybe Endrit will collect them for me if I ask?
No one knew the secrets of the crown jewels of House Meridan but Rhea. A maid tasked with cleaning might just as easi
ly prick herself on a hidden blade or touch a poison needle with bare skin. It never occurred to Rhea that they would need cleaning. Why did so much never occur to me?
Marta had once said, “Grimwaltz is a dance for one.” Rhea thought she was warning her about lusting for Endrit—a veiled warning in the form of an aphorism that he was too much a gadfly to dance with her alone, or a reminder that he was below her in station. She realized now how silly it was to assume the veteran of two wars had decided to school her on puppy love.
It never occurred to Rhea.
She prayed, though she never prayed, to Anant, god of bounty, god of Meridan, that Endrit was not lying somewhere in the ballroom under the rubble.
Where is that guard with Hiram?
Where is my father?
The king was probably shut inside his chamber with his dragoons. They would never let him out with so many bandits unaccounted for. He would be screaming at them, demanding that they go and find his daughter.
But what if?
He wouldn’t be dead. Impossible. If the Findish thought they would improve their situation, they would be as fool-headed as their carnival plays. She would call all her banner houses and conduct the coronation in a war tent at the vanguard of her infantry on the road to Findain. She would sink every last vessel in the Findain harbor if they killed him.
And what of my sisters? Rhea had not seen Iren since the pledging ceremony. Has she gone to bed? Is she hiding in her room?
Underneath her reserved and brusque exterior, Iren was a frightful and timid girl. Rhea had seen her cry when she read letters from home—and once, almost, when Cadis called her siren, a silly jest on her silent nature. She would be curled under her bed, no doubt, writing to her mother.
As for Cadis, Rhea preferred not to think of her. Finally, after all the years of suspicion, Cadis had proven herself the treacherous bestiola that she was. She was probably riding back to Findain at the head of a gang, whatever remained of the raiding party, laughing at King Declan’s naive trust in her. Rhea had known it all along. On a level deeper than bone and marrow, she felt the irregular vibration of a heart bent toward evil and chaos.
In Meridan, the soldiers would say, “A Fin’s heart sings for gold of any color.” It meant they were selfish and inconstant—pursuing random business opportunities. There was no principle, no oath, no sisterhood they would not betray. And now she’d finally done it. She had destroyed the Protectorate, killed innocents, killed Suki perhaps, pulled them all into war. And if she wanted war, then Rhea would . . .
“Rhea?”
It was Endrit. His voice came from across the ballroom. “Rhea!”
Blessed Anant, he is alive.
He ran across the room. Rhea cried out with relief, “It’s you!”
An odd thing to shout. Her mind was too much alight with a thousand different thoughts. But suddenly only one. He was alive. His mouth and chin were bloody, but he smiled.
When he arrived, she noticed his formal clothes were wet. His upper arm had bled through the bandage and stained the outer jerkin. “Where were you?” said Rhea.
“Looking for you.”
Is that really so? “You weren’t in your chamber,” he said.
“Why would I be there?”
“I saw you leave and took the long way around to catch you. After the blast, the fighting spilled out into the halls. I’ve been trying to—”
His eyes went to Suki, and he trailed off the subject. “What happened?”
He didn’t wait for Rhea to respond to begin inspecting Suki’s injuries.
“She attacked me. I think she panicked. A rebel got behind her and stabbed through her shoulder.”
Was that a cruel thing to have done? She had presented Suki in the very worst light.
“You saved her,” said Endrit, as he lifted her hand and looked under the bloody fabric.
“I killed the rebel. Yes.”
Am I so disloyal as to claim all of Endrit’s admiration for myself? Rhea quickly added, “But Suki was probably just confused. She protected lots of innocent people . . . before she lunged at me.”
Endrit smiled at the unconscious Suki. “That’s our Susu,” he said. “Nothing if not unpredictable.”
Rhea laughed a little. It was the right decision.
Endrit began to untie the silk laces at the front of his shirt. “When I tell you, remove the cloth and pull the strap of her dress out of the way.”
Rhea nodded. He was still calm. All around, soldiers ran and called to one another. Outside, the fighting continued.
“I was waiting for Hiram,” Rhea explained, so he wouldn’t think her useless. He pulled a silk string all the way out. His shirt fell open. Bruises lined his right side. Two ribs were swollen.
“You broke two ribs.”
“Me?” said Endrit, grinning. “Why would I do such a silly thing to myself?”
Is he only so rakish when undressed?
“Now,” he said. Rhea lifted the cloth from Suki’s shoulder. The blood flow was slowing. A good or a bad sign? Rhea didn’t know.
Endrit strapped the shirt lace around Suki’s shoulder above the wound and made a tight knot.
He must have fought his way back to the ballroom. A spear handle or a club could have made such injuries, or two strikes from a gauntlet—but none of the rebels had such heavy armor.
Endrit tied off the lace and began to remove his shirt.
“Tell me what happened to your mouth, then.”
Endrit tore off the clean sleeve of his shirt and began wrapping Suki’s shoulder. With a free hand, he touched his mouth and looked at his fingers. The blood seemed to surprise him. “A beautiful Fin found me in the hall looking for you. One of those brutish women, probably a warlord from those islands on the North Coast. She grabbed me and tried to take me home to be her prize.”
Endrit focused on pulling strips from his shirt and wrapping the bandage. Rhea tried to excavate the truth with her searching looks.
“She grabbed you?”
“Like a love-struck knight, just scooped me up.”
“What did you do?”
“I told her my body was hers, but my heart would always be in Meridan.”
“Be serious.”
“Then I kissed her ear.”
“Stop jesting, Endrit.”
Endrit looked up. The playful tone drained completely. “If you want to stop jesting, then we need to talk about leaving here right now. Anything else doesn’t matter,” he said.
Rhea was uncomfortable looking into his eyes. Is he joking? Is he traumatized by battle? Why would we leave? My father and the magister will be coming for us.
Rhea didn’t follow the sudden turn and resented the lack of warning. “No,” she said. “Tell me.”
“I bit her. I bit the raider on the ear until she let me go.”
Rhea had no response. Why did he have to make me twist it out of him? To punctuate the moment, Endrit looked at the body of the masked Fin nearby, reached over, and yanked the half-buried hairpin out of his head. It made a wet sound, like pulling a boot out of mud.
He tossed it back to Rhea. Then he rose. His own bandage was layered with three shades of crimson to brown.
He leaned over, gently lifted Suki’s limp form off of Rhea’s lap, and slung her over his good arm.
“Well?”
Rhea rose to her feet, but she shrugged with her hands. “What?”
“Time to go, Princess.”
Is he annoyed with me? “Don’t speak to me like that.”
Why is he mad? She had done nothing. Rhea knew a fight would be childish. However she expressed it—that she wasn’t weak for caring what had happened to him—it would seem like petulance, like a demand to be comforted. And this wasn’t the time. She breathed, as her father had taught her, then spoke. “Hiram and the king will be here soon.”
“No, they won’t,” said Endrit. “The rebels are pushing toward his chambers. We have no idea if a second wave is coming. Meridan troo
ps are probably riding in from the garrison, leaving the outer gate shorthanded. What would you do if you had planned this?”
“You mean if I were Cadis?”
Endrit didn’t give any hint of his opinion on Cadis. “What would you do?” he said.
Rhea sighed. “Obviously, I’d use this to divert attention from some larger goal. I’m not an idiot. And Marta taught me just as well as she taught you, so don’t pretend you know everything.”
“That’s my point. We don’t know. But we can’t stay here.”
He was right, and Rhea hated that he knew it.
“Fine.”
It suddenly occurred to Rhea that she had done nothing useful since the moment he’d arrived. He had seen her sitting, like some distressed maiden, waiting for others to help. He had bandaged Suki, found her a pin, and held her hand as he guided her thinking. And he was right.
Am I really so—
She didn’t finish the thought.
Rhea flushed with shame. And she wished she could explain that he hadn’t seen what she had seen. He hadn’t been there when the slaughter started. And he hadn’t fought or killed or seen someone he loved look at him as Suki had looked at her, with hate. And after all that, he had found her in a distracted moment. A lapse in judgment.
That didn’t make her weak.
And he shouldn’t have even thought so—not after knowing her for so long. He shouldn’t have spoken to her like his fool.
As they ran out of the ballroom, Rhea didn’t look back, but let the bloody hairpin fall from her hand. She didn’t want to clean it. She was a queen, and she didn’t have to.
“Get behind me,” said Rhea as they approached a pair of guards at the petitioner’s arch. They had fled down a long set of stairs that ran parallel to the massive grand entryway used for nobles and ceremonial processions. The stone-wrought stairs were for utilitarian use. When locals from Walltown arrived at court to plea for the king’s favor, or families of criminals came to beg clemency, they used the petitioner’s arch. Rhea and Endrit used it now, as they knew the garrison soldiers would pour into the grand staircase.
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