by Kate Elliott
“Jes, aren’t you coming with us?” Maraya asks. Amaya pauses with a hank of flatbread almost in her mouth, and she looks questioningly at me too.
I hurry over to the carriage for fear they will blurt out words that embarrass me. “No. I have to go back to Garon Stable.”
Maraya frowns as she whispers, “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way Lord Kalliarkos has been touching you and looking at you. If he’s hounding you, we can come up with a way to be rid of his attentions.”
“It’s not like that.” Possibly the lamplight is bright enough for her to see the way my cheeks grow hot, but she has already guessed by the cool edge in my tone.
“Jes, don’t be a fool. He’s a prince.”
Amaya lowers the bread. “I think it’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in forever, just like in a play. Be a fool, Jes. Why not? It’ll be the first time you ever lost your head over a person instead of your beloved Fives.”
I push between them, keeping my voice low. “I have to go back to the stable because if I run away Lord Gargaron will send his stewards to hunt me down and then he’ll find out you’ve escaped. As soon as Mother can travel we must get her out of the city. Merry, ask Polodos if he can find out what happened to the servants who were left behind so we can trace Bettany. Amaya, I have to tell you…” My hesitation betrays me.
She clutches my hand as her lower lip trembles. “Is it about Denya?”
The words are hard to say because they will hurt her so much. “Lord Gargaron took Denya to be his concubine. I’m sorry.”
She puts a hand over her face, then lowers it to shake me. “I have to see her. You have to find a way to sneak a message in to her! So she knows I’m alive, and that I haven’t forgotten her!”
“Yes, I’ll find a way.”
“You want to train at the stable, don’t you?” says Maraya. “It’s what you’ve always wanted.”
I nod, because there is nothing else to say, and then I kiss them and the babies. Sweet Safarenwe is asleep but Wenru is awake, staring around with an expression so calculating that I am ashamed of how uncomfortable I feel around him. I thank Cook. Last of all I kiss Mother yet again before the carriage rolls away through open gates onto a dark street.
Kalliarkos steps up beside me, hands clasped behind his back at parade rest. The courtyard in which we stand is wreathed with trellises of night-blooming jasmine, its scent as heady as desire. We are the only ones here, utterly alone. I lean against him, so comfortable that I know this is also a place I belong: standing beside him no matter what people might say. He smiles without looking at me. We don’t even need to speak, just share our triumph in an easy silence.
Then he hooks a finger around one of mine, and I turn to raise my mouth to his.
“Kal! Time to go!”
The speed with which I leap around must make me seem ashamed, but Kalliarkos merely releases my hand and ambles over to his uncle. Thynos has driven up in the carriage we used to go to the villa. He climbs down, giving me a once-over as if trying to determine how far I have seduced his royal nephew despite my few charms.
“This is all very like an exciting and adventurous play to the two of you, I am sure,” he says. “You’re young, and it’s perfectly natural, but it’s not real.”
“It’s real!” objects Kalliarkos.
“Don’t interrupt! I’m impressed by what you accomplished, Nephew, but this budding little blossom of love has to wither now. Let me explain the realities of your situation to Spider, since you obviously have not.”
“He’s told me about his family, Lord Thynos,” I say, but when Kalliarkos presses a hand to his forehead as if plagued with a headache, I’m struck by doubt.
“There are many things I don’t believe you understand about our Kalliarkos, Spider. To start with, Princess Berenise is Kal’s grandmother.”
“I know that!”
“Did I ask you to speak? Then don’t. She is the aunt of the current king and queen. Her first marriage was to King Sokorios of Saro-Urok. At that time she left Efea to live in Saro-Urok as his queen. He died in battle less than a year after their marriage. Because she wasn’t pregnant, his successor sent her to an ill-wishers’ temple there but she escaped before they cut out her tongue. She found safety in the camp of an Efean army that had been campaigning in Saro-Urok in support of Sokorios. That army was under the command of Menos Garon, the uncle of Lord Gargaron.”
“Sent to be an ill-wisher! That’s a terrible story, but what does it have to do with us now?”
“I am trying to explain to you how the endless wars between Efea, Saro-Urok, East Saro, and West Saro are complicated by the shared kinship of their royal families. You see, King Sokorios was fighting against his cousin, a man named Elkorios. And indeed Elkorios became king of Saro-Urok after Sokorios died. Elkorios did not want Princess Berenise to return to Efea lest she marry some other Saroese prince who with Efea’s backing would then challenge him for Saro-Urok’s throne. But she escaped Elkorios’s plot by marrying Menos Garon and returning to Efea with his army.”
Kalliarkos breaks in. “That’s not the only reason she married Menos. My grandmother harbored her own ambitions. She’s like you, Jes. Always running the next game in her head.”
Thynos examines me to see how I will take this disconcerting compliment, but I wisely say nothing.
“Twenty years later she set in motion an elaborate scheme of revenge against King Elkorios for killing Sokorios,” Thynos goes on. “She began by contracting a marriage between her only son and my sister—Kal’s mother. For you see, my sister is the niece of Sokorios and the daughter of Elkorios.”
I shake my head. “This is so complicated that only Maraya could love it. Does this mean you are the nephew of one king and the son of another, Lord Thynos?”
“I am Sokorios’s nephew, yes. His sister was my mother. But I am not Elkorios’s son. Several years after my mother gave birth to my sister, Elkorios divorced our mother so he could marry the king of East Saro’s daughter. After the divorce our mother married again. Her second husband was my father, and he raised my sister as if she were his own. He was a good man. He died in the wars.”
“I am sorry for your grief, Lord Thynos. But what is your point?”
“My point, Spider, is that you don’t understand these Rings you’re running through. On his father’s side, through Princess Berenise, Kalliarkos is the great-grandson of Kliatemnos the Third and Queen Serenissima the Third of blessed memory. On his mother’s side he is the grandson of King Elkorios of Saro-Urok and great-nephew of Sokorios the Short-Lived. Such a prince is as rare as rubies and more precious than gold.”
Kalliarkos snorts quite indelicately.
“These matters are far out of my reach,” I protest.
Lord Thynos’s eyelashes flutter as he chuckles, but it’s obviously no joke to him. “You don’t see it yet, do you? You haven’t spun it through your web.”
“See what?”
“Our Kal can inherit two thrones.”
“I just want to run the Fives,” says Kalliarkos, his voice ragged with emotion.
“You and your quiet little dreams, Kal.”
“Let Menoë have the glory,” he says bitterly. “She wants it.”
“Yes, but your precious sister made a mess of her first marriage. A bloody murdering mess. Now she rusticates with humble and lowborn General Esladas in the hope that as his star rises no one will notice how far hers fell. She’s just fortunate Gar didn’t have her bricked into a tomb.”
Kalliarkos mutters, “Even I wouldn’t wish that on her.”
“Never let down your guard, my young nephew,” says Thynos harshly. “Gar will callously discard you the moment he thinks you’re not worth anything to him. He’ll find a way to punish your defiance if you don’t obey him.”
“Do you think I don’t understand?” His anger scorches. “I know Jessamy believes we are fighting a noble war against our implacable Saroese enemies who want to rain fire down upon our ci
ties. But we are really just fighting over the corpse of the old empire. Brother kills brother over the right to rule a strategically located city. A son inherits, and is overthrown by his uncle. A woman marries her brother to consolidate their holdings but afterward divorces him to marry a cousin with better territory and more riches. A wife is murdered so her husband can marry a king’s daughter. Or maybe she gets wind of it and murders her husband first. I refuse to be thrown into that game. I would rather walk through a pit of vipers than go to war!”
The words hit me like a slap in the face.
“I’m not mad at you, Jes,” he says hastily. “Your father is an honorable man.”
Thinking of my mother, I don’t know how to answer him, so I say nothing.
“We’re all tired,” remarks Thynos, glancing around the empty night courtyard. The light has begun to sift from black to gray, heralding dawn. “I’ll have one of Nar’s men escort her back to the stable. You and I can drive together to the palace.”
“Jes and I must arrive at the stable together so that Uncle Gar doesn’t suspect why she was really gone,” says Kalliarkos. “Half the people there already believe we have something between us. Everyone in the palace wonders why I don’t keep a concubine. When Uncle Gar hears of it, he and I can have an argument over why it is beneath me to have a Commoner lover.”
Never in all my life would I have believed a highborn lord like Kalliarkos could speak of someone like me being his lover and not bat an eye nor look ashamed. But when he catches my eye, I know we have passed the point of feeling ashamed because there is nothing to be ashamed of.
“It’s a bad idea, Kal.”
“You don’t have a better one. Uncle Gar can’t be allowed to guess what we’ve done.”
Thynos offers Kal the reins. “Very well. If you wish to become a man, then I suppose I must treat you as a man and let you make your own decisions and deal with the consequences.”
Kalliarkos grasps his hands. “Thank you, Uncle. Blessings on you. But Jes and I are going to walk, as if we’ve come from the Lantern District.”
Thynos extricates his hands. “I have to send a pair of Nar’s men to shadow you. Don’t be surprised to see them behind you. Adversaries are required to be back by Firstday dawn, so hurry.”
On deserted back streets lit by cheap lanterns we pass a pair of old women sweeping up horse dung into a wheelbarrow. Now that our adventure is over, an awkward silence pools between us. When we reach the West Gate of the Lantern District with its brass wheels we pause in the square to share a mug of barley beer from a yawning street-side vendor. An air of spent revelry and sad loss permeates the gloom. The soldiers and foreigners who would normally pack the district’s “pleasure wharves” have all gone to make ready for war. The brass water clock ticks down the night, the last trumpet filling up for the dawn fanfare.
Thirst quenched, we walk side by side, not touching. A pair of drunks stagger behind us, propping each other up. I wonder if they are Inarsis’s men, always someone within sight of Lord Kalliarkos. In his own way he has been as protected and restricted as my sisters and I were.
As we head uphill into the palace district I find my voice at last. “Will you get into trouble for taking Ro-emnu out of prison?”
“I’m a prince, remember? If the king and queen complain to my grandmother, she will tell them to go soak their heads in a vat of urine.” I’m so shocked to hear such an impiety casually flung into the air that I can’t speak. He takes my hand, squeezing it as he chuckles with excitement. “Can you believe what we saw? I had no idea the City of the Dead was built on top of a vast complex where people must once have lived.”
I think of sparks like fireflies and my brother waking up from death. I think of Amaya eaten by a shadow, and the watery mist that brought my mother back to herself.
“Either my tutors never told me the truth or they don’t know it themselves,” he adds. “They’re all Archives-trained. I thought they knew everything. What now, Jes? What about us?”
In the empty street, knowing my family is free, I feel bolder than ever. “Why don’t you keep a concubine? Most lords do from an early age.”
He stops dead and tugs me to a halt. Right there in the middle of the street he kisses me. His lips are cool, and at first their pressure is light. It is his hands I feel more, solid along the small of my back. I savor the way our bodies fit neatly together. As the kiss deepens, the spark of my being heats, and it twines the cord of its life into the spark of his, setting off a flare of brilliant light within our hearts.
We break off. My eyes flash open, and I’m a little dizzy.
His gaze is wide and questioning. “Because she wouldn’t be you, Jes. You’re here with me because you want to be. Any concubine I had in the palace would be spying on me for my uncle.”
I think of poor Denya. “Is it really nothing but a pit of vipers?”
“Yes.”
Footfalls crunch up the street behind us, and we step apart. Inarsis’s two men still shadow us, no longer pretending to be drunk. To the east the sky lightens.
“Come on,” he says.
As we walk I think of the victory procession held for my father, the way the crowd went quiet when the royal carriage passed. With each step a new pattern begins to unfold in my mind’s eye. “Kliatemnos the Fifth and his sister Serenissima the Fifth are not popular rulers, are they?”
“Not at all,” he says blithely. To speak critical words about them is nothing to him! “My cousin Kliatemnos sits in his palace and carouses all day with his honey cakes. He sends his brother Nikonos into the field to fight his battles. Everyone knows Serenissima despises her husband and prefers their younger brother Nikonos in every possible way.”
“Poets are arrested for murder for making such scurrilous accusations.”
He laughs. “I’m not a poet, but I’ll tell you the truth anyway. Kliatemnos and Serenissima have a sickly twelve-year-old son but everyone suspects Nikonos is the real father. Can you possibly wonder why I want nothing to do with all of that?”
Anise’s warning. Thynos’s explanation. Kalliarkos’s angry flood of words. The path through the Rings is starting to open.
Words fumble out of me. “If I were a man like Lord Gargaron and I wanted more power in the world, I would marry my disgraced niece to the best general in the kingdom. I would force my unambitious nephew to march with the army and take credit for that general’s victories. That would give the nephew a princely burnish and prestige.”
His fingers clutch my elbow as if to warn me to be silent. But I go on, because Rings never stop turning until one person reaches the victory tower.
“In a time of war, an unloved and weak king and his sickly underage son may be deposed for the good of the kingdom, especially in favor of a bold military prince like Nikonos. But even Prince Nikonos may meet with an unfortunate accident on the battlefield if he has enemies on his own side. And a queen who bet on the wrong horse will find herself put out to pasture. Which leaves you and your sister next in line to become king and queen.”
His voice is so soft I barely catch the words and yet his tone rings harder than I have ever heard it. “Do you know what it means to be king in Efea?”
“The king must defend the country from its enemies and honor the gods in the proper way so their peace will shelter the land.”
“The king sits atop a mountain of treasure. All bow before him because his will is law. His army defends not the country but his power. That’s why I don’t wish to be a part of it. But I also don’t despise the army and its soldiers, Jes. I’m no coward, or at least I pray I will never act the coward’s part.”
Driven by secrets, he quickens his pace, and I hasten to keep up.
“Uncle Gar thinks I’m soft, that I don’t see the nature of his plans. He pretends to want what is best for me but I won’t be his pawn. I want to be an adversary who runs my own game.”
We turn at last onto Garon Street. I reach for his hand, and he clasps mine with mo
re strength than I expected.
“I shouldn’t have involved you, Jes.”
“You know I’m not afraid.”
He has the strong hands of a climber, and when his grip tightens on my fingers, it crushes. “You should be afraid. They are monsters waiting to eat us.”
Above, the high heavens shade to a vibrant purple while the eastern horizon glows with pink and a band of light rims the world. Behind, the two men shadowing us have vanished. The guards at the stable gate see us. Kalliarkos tries to shake his hand out of mine but I hold on until their gazes drop down to our linked hands. They squelch smiles as they straighten to parade attention, offering a salute to the only male of princely descent who lives in Garon Palace. Farther up the street lie the upper gates: the monumental gate to the main palace compound, which is ablaze with so many lamps that the lights smear together, and beyond it the servants’ gate where Garon Street ends in a wall. The guards there have seen us too.
I release his hand as if we only now remember we ought to do so. He offers a pleasant smile and an agreeable nod to the startled guards at the stable gate. As they open the pedestrian door they mumble greetings—“My lord prince, a good wakening to you”—in the voices of men who have been allowed to greet him before and are still grateful that he acknowledges their existence. But oh how they struggle not to stare at me, for they are Patron-born men who serve Patron lords, and I am what I am in their eyes.
As I consider how to make the most dramatic farewell, he pulls me into the stable courtyard. At this early hour the kitchen girls have already begun stoking the clay oven, soaking millet and barley for porridge, and sweeping around the tables to make sure no brown scorpions or striped asps linger on the tile. The cook appears with her baskets and two assistants, ready to head down to the market to buy her perishables. Tana and Darios sit sipping at tea whose flavor is so strong I can smell the aniseed from here. Several other early risers are emerging from the barracks, yawning and rubbing their eyes.
“Make it convincing,” whispers Kalliarkos into my ear, the words as startling as the thunder of a hailstorm that drowns all hearing, all sense of the world outside the shell you live in.
