The Edge of the Blade

by Jeffe Kennedy

“Of course,” he answered. Too quickly to my mind. “Power allows all else. The promise of becoming Emperor has been the only bright spot in my life since Jenna disappeared. The only thing that has kept me going day after desolate day. Who knows, perhaps even my blessed mother will receive and forgive me then, if I finally achieve what she’s given her whole life to gain.”

  “Is it even possible to unseat him?”

  I felt him lift his shoulder and let it fall in that fatalistic Dasnarian shrug. “Who can say? I have the loyalty of a good portion of Dasnarian armies behind me, despite how I’ve been hamstrung, a grave mistake on my brother’s part. He thought to make me figurehead of nothing, but he handed me a gift there. I thought to fund my efforts with a portion of the Nahanaun treasure I’d hide from him, but there is none to be had. Still, I have plenty of wealth, as you noted, and not all of it in obvious places. I also thought to capitalize on you and your queen, to destabilize my brother. Now it seems he does likewise, reaching across the sea to link the power of your priesthood to the darkest of ours.” He sighed heavily and laid his cheek against the top of my head. “I cannot understand it. My brother was ever ambitious, forever self-absorbed and convinced of his divine right to triumph and rule, but he never sank to these perversions before.”

  “We need to know more.”

  “I’m telling you that—”

  “Listen. At Ordnung a priestess of Deyrr worked magic on our former High King to twist him more than he was already.” Never mind that he’d been fertile ground for it. Apparently so was Hestar. “It could be they’ve done the same here. The temple has been working a long game. Here and in our realm. Whatever their plan, it involves us all, the twisted and the innocent—and those of us who lurk somewhere in between.”

  He chuckled and it helped my heart, to hear him less in despair. “I need time,” I told him. “And access to the temple, to find out about one more thing. Where do you think she’d be living in the palace?”

  “Almost certainly in the seraglio. That would explain why I wasn’t aware of her presence. Though it seems the women would have carried tales, so perhaps not. Still, better to stay well away from her.”

  “This priestess might be my only way of discovering what I need to.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I think it’s better if I don’t tell you.”

  He tensed under my hands and I burrowed them under his shirt, stroking him as he had me, soothing him with my rough fingertips. We’d connected first and best this way. “If you don’t know, you can’t be made to tell. The priestess has mind powers.”

  “You know,” he pointed out.

  “Right—but I can’t unknow it at this point. Take this small protection.”

  “While you won’t let me protect you at all. It is impossible for me to live like this—everything in me, all I was taught and have learned is screaming inside my head to take action, to do . . . I don’t know. Something.” Anger infused the words, but he remained pliant under my hands.

  “I’m not helpless. I’m not a girl raised in the ignorance of the seraglio to go meekly to my fate, with no way to defend myself. You can’t get me out of here without triggering suspicion. The court already gossips that we have a liaison. You can’t jeopardize all you and others have worked for to protect a rekjabrel.”

  “You have never been only that to me,” he said, rough and quiet. “I—”

  “I know. We click. Amazing sex, and we make a reasonably good team, too. Who would have guessed we’d make excellent political bedfellows, too? But you have important things to do. You could become the Emperor of all Dasnaria.” I made sure to pitch my voice low there. “From what I’ve seen, they thriced need you to be. As much as I like you, Kral, I’m a scout, a hunter, a daughter of the hill tribes of Bryn. I am not the woman for you except in the right now. We both know this. Lock me up in one of your beautiful prisons and I’ll die.”

  “You’ll die an uglier death if you’re caught. I won’t be able to stop it. Not without the power I need, and I can’t get that power if I act to save you.” He groaned for the lethally circuitous problem.

  “Fast or slow, death is death. I’d rather take mine on my feet, blade in hand.”

  “Like your mother.”

  He said it softly enough, almost reflectively and after a long pause, that I almost didn’t hear, but that wasn’t what caught me up short. “What?” I didn’t remember telling him that.

  “You said that about your mother, when I asked how she died. You dodged the question and only answered, ‘Blade in hand.’ ”

  “I didn’t dodge.”

  His hand caressed my cheek. “A blatant dodge.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “How did your mother die, hystrix?”

  “How did yours?”

  “She didn’t. Hasn’t. She yet lives in the seraglio, where I may not see her. Not that she’d agree to meet with me, the son who sent her only daughter to perish at the whim of the cruel world.”

  He and I both, eternally chasing after the living and dead ghosts of our parents, trying to become the person they wanted us to be, someone they’d be proud of. “I have a bit of irony for you. My mother was a spy. No, don’t say anything yet. I’ve only told one other person this story, so it’s shy of being heard.

  “Before Uorsin became High King, the twelve kingdoms fought among themselves, often bitterly. When the Great War concluded, that put an end to the overt strife. However, pockets of violence and resistance remained—I’m sure you can imagine.”

  He made a noncommittal sound. Odd how this cozy darkness made it easier to tell the story, like the smoke-shrouded low light of a campfire.

  “I was born less than a year after the Great War ended. My mother used to call me her victory prize.” I coughed a little for Kral’s sensibilities. “Apparently there was a great deal of . . . celebrating.”

  “I thought you told me the women of your people knew how to prevent pregnancy.” His hand dropped to my belly. “You’re not—”

  I slapped his hand away. “No, I’m not and I’m not going to be, so shut up. She chose to have me. She said she wanted to bring some life back into the world after dealing so much death. Anyway. . . maybe this story doesn’t matter.” I’d lost track of why I’d wanted to tell it, to him, hiding in a tack-room pantry when the next hour could bring my death.

  “I want to hear it. You owe me a secret. Who is the one other person you’ve told?”

  “Ursula,” I admitted. “When she was only captain of the Hawks at the time and the day seemed impossibly far away that she might become High Queen.”

  “Tell me. The war ended, but not all was peaceful. Your mother returned to her people, birthed and raised you. Then departed again, leaving her young daughter behind.”

  “Don’t make it sound like she abandoned me. I had a grandmother, plenty of aunts, cousins, and so forth to put meat in my mouth. Plus she had no choice in going. I mentioned that our people roamed the low mountains in the western part of Noredna, northern part of Duranor.”

  “Depending on who sat on the throne.”

  “You pay a lot more attention than you seem to.”

  “It’s not good for a woman to believe a man listens to her—she begins to think to influence his opinions.”

  “You’re insufferable. I don’t know why I haven’t killed you yet, simply to shut you up.”

  He readjusted me to slide within the brace of his muscular thighs, moving his hips suggestively. “I know why. Besides, you promised not to. Stop stalling with the story.”

  “Stop interrupting me,” I countered. He had the right of it, though. I was dragging my feet, and that wouldn’t make the campaign trail any shorter, only slower. “My mother owed allegiance to Duranor, the kingdom that arguably started the Great War. Uorsin rose to power as a general in the Duranor armies, then somehow managed a switch that made him High King of all the defeated kingdoms.”

  “Interesting.” Kral sounded contempl
ative. “Quite the feat.”

  “Magic,” I said, as if the one word explained everything, which I supposed it did. “It was rumored that Salena, Uorsin’s queen, had enabled this unlikely change in the power structure, and Duranor didn’t rest easily with it. Their king, Teodor, sent my mother as part of their tithe of fighters to serve at Ordnung. And to be a spy. She was to report back anything and everything she could discover about Salena and the two young princesses.”

  “You know all of this because her friend brought you the tale, along with your mother’s knife.”

  “Yes. Her friend, lover, and also a spy.” I replaced the stale air and plunged onward. “My mother managed to insinuate herself into High Queen Salena’s personal guard.”

  “Like mother, like daughter.”

  I shrugged. “She was highly skilled, and Uorsin preferred Salena had no male guards about her.”

  “At last,” Kral said in a dry tone. “Something I can understand.”

  “Ha-ha.” But the levity helped the tightness in my chest. “My mother became friends with Salena, though the queen had nearly lost her mind by then. She’d always been strange with her witchy ways, a Tala sorceress and shape-shifter, but marriage to Uorsin destroyed her, bit by bit.”

  “Not all marriages have to be that way,” he countered quietly.

  “Tell that to Karyn,” I retorted, and he sighed. “No one knows what she found out, but my mother had told her friend that Salena had confided in her, that she had information to take back to King Teodor. My mother waffled, however, feeling guilt over betraying the woman who believed her to be a friend, and delayed, apparently with some wild thought to persuade Salena to leave with her.”

  “Truly?”

  “My mother thought that Salena, as a Tala, would thrive in the mountains and forests of our people, that she might regain her sanity. A second-place solution, as she couldn’t go home.”

  “Would she have—left the security of her home, her husband?”

  “No, but not for the reasons you’re thinking. I don’t think my mother could have known it, as I only discovered much later that Salena could have gone home to Annfwn at any time and chose not to for her own reasons.”

  He didn’t say anything, but his silence was speaking.

  “This story is taking far longer to tell than it should. My mother was discovered, exposed as a spy, and Uorsin set to make an example of her. She outwitted them, wrested free, stole back her knife from a guard, and cut her own throat.”

  Kral’s breath went out in a low whistle.

  “In that moment before she—” Danu take it, my throat actually clogged with the old grief. The sights of the evening had really gotten to me. “She called out to her friend to bring me the knife with her blood on it, to tell me this story, so I’d know she’d died as she wanted to, blade in hand, to preserve what she believed in.” I wiped the heel of my hand hard against my nose. “That’s why I told Ursula. I wanted her to know . . . who I was. So I wouldn’t be serving her under false pretenses.”

  “How did she react?”

  I laughed, the sound a little watery though my eyes were dry. “She called it an interesting tale and left it at that. With her you don’t always know what she’s thinking.”

  “So I recall.” Kral sounded somewhat amused. “A born queen, then, knowing how to play the strategy, to never reveal the wins or the losses within.”

  “Like you. You’re not an easy read either.”

  “Perhaps.” He sounded like he was thinking of something else. “And I know why you told me this story tonight.”

  Oh? I didn’t. Not really. Except . . .

  “This is why you won’t leave. You think to stick until the end, to find the information you’re meant to, perhaps to save Karyn, perhaps more of them, as your mother wished to save Salena.”

  “Perhaps,” I echoed him. “I know I can’t save them all, but I can’t do less than my mother did. She died, blade in hand, for what she believed in.”

  “She died an empty death spying for a king she didn’t love, leaving a young daughter behind to fend for herself.” Kral’s voice had gone harsh. “And you’ll do the same—cut your own throat rather than choose wisely and take your chance to escape.”

  “Which reminds me—someone searched my bags and took my mother’s knife—can you get it back for me?”

  He laughed, without humor, and laid his forehead against mine. “You are the impossible one. You want me to hand you the blade of your own self-destruction?”

  “A dramatic gesture is worthless without good emotional resonance,” I agreed. “If that priestess tracks me down, I want every weapon possible at my disposal.” I kissed him, partly to stop further argument, but mostly savoring the taste and feel of him. At least we’d had this, this thing that burned so hot between us, against all reason. This was clean and real enough to sear away all that ugliness.

  21

  Kral accompanied me back, stubbornly arguing that, if we were caught, he could spin a better story about late-night—or early morning, I pointed out—meetings than I could to explain my wandering about. Fortunately, we made it to my sitting room cache undetected, Kral frowning at me as I dug out the discarded pieces of my costume.

  “You left a fortune in jewels behind a tapestry in the common area of the palace?”

  Oh, had I? It really hadn’t occurred to me one way or the other. “I didn’t know they were real.”

  “Of course they are. Would I have you outfitted with anything less?”

  I would have hit him, but I was occupied with buckling on the dratted skirt. “You’re not supposed to be outfitting me in anything, Your Imperial Highness. We have no relationship, remember? You’re really quite bad at this secrecy thing.”

  He sighed out the breath of a man clinging to patience. “I brought you here. You’re my responsibility. That would be true regardless of any other . . . activities.”

  Said activities still had me throbbing and mentally breathless. My certainty that I wouldn’t want to have sex again any time soon had been shattered by Kral’s searching kisses and devastating touches. I hesitated to apply the phrase, but we’d made love in that little closet with an intimate urgency and emotional intensity I didn’t care to examine too closely. Except that what I’d seen had rattled me so thoroughly that I wasn’t my usual self.

  Nor was he, in some way I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

  Neither of us had spoken much since, particularly about that. Still, I had the impression that he had been as taken by surprise as I. We’d lingered far longer together than we should have, unusually reckless for us both, and yet I couldn’t regret it. Dread hovered at the edges of my vision, a sense of impending doom that whispered I’d better enjoy what I could while my head remained acquainted with my neck.

  Also, I felt human again. Maybe that was the thing about human contact—it reminded you what you fought for. That was a common pitfall among warriors of all stripes, to focus always on the battle while failing to remember the very thing we thought worth fighting for in the first place.

  “Hurry.” Kral cocked an ear at the sounds from the walls. “The dawn guard is changing over. The day patrols won’t be so lackadaisical.”

  He’d noticed, too, then. “That’s everything. Now what?”

  “Too late. Sit.” He pushed me toward a chair, quickly splashed wine into two cups, poured the rest of the bottle into an urn, set the empty on a table between us, and sat in the chair opposite me. “Drink.”

  The wine tasted oddly sour to my morning mouth, but I did as he said, observing over the rim how he loosed his clothing again, giving himself the look of a man who’d sat up in conversation all night.

  “That said, Ambassador,” he began in a loud voice, loading it with exasperation, “His Imperial Majesty has made himself perfectly clear on the subject and I cannot—what?” He snapped the last at a startled guard who opened the door.

  “I beg your pardon, Your Imperial Highness.” The guar
d bowed deeply. “I did not mean to interrupt your meeting.”

  Kral waved a disgusted hand. “Just as well. The ambassador and I will not reach an understanding anytime soon. Arrange to escort Ambassador Jesperanda back to her rooms. I must dress for court.”

  “Yes, Your Imperial Highness.” The guard came to stand by me, clearly torn between observing decorum and dragging me bodily out of the room. I saved him the trouble of making that decision—and the dagger wound I’d inevitably deal him if he tried—by rising and stepping out of his reach. Discretion be thrice-damned, I had run out of patience for diplomacy. I wanted to kill things and this guy would do nicely for a start.

  “Thank you, Prince Kral, for your time tonight.” Because I couldn’t resist, and by Danu if I couldn’t kill something, I could at least dance along another edge, I added, “We may not have reached an understanding, but I myself am quite satisfied with this night’s work.”

  I turned and walked out before he could articulate the sharp-edged thought that glinted in his eyes, leaving the poor guard to catch up in order to “escort” me. At least he saved me having to test my skills at avoiding the door guards and working the locks myself. When I reached my rooms, Sunniva met me with perky greetings, as if I hadn’t been away all night, and began filling the bathing cistern with water she’d had heating by the fire. She’d likely been tending it all night, which gave me a pang of conscience. Still, I hadn’t asked her to do it. I had asked my pair of rekjabrel to leave me be, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen. They weren’t exactly my jailors. I felt sure they reported on my movements, however.

  Hopefully only to Inga.

  While Sunniva worked, I lingered at the window, studying the changing of the guard and the landscape beyond. Letting the crisp predawn air clear the last dregs of horror from my mind. Once, in a former life, if I found myself awake at this hour, I would have gone out to hunt, the animals and I moving through the crepuscular light in our ancient waltz of tracking and evasion. They’d be out there in that dark forest.

  But I would not.

  My quarry lay inside stone walls and corrupt minds.