by Page Morgan
I stretched my feet out in front of me. I didn’t know what to think about the reflection in the mirror. It was me, of course…but it also wasn’t. I didn’t want to look at myself any longer.
“Show me…” I hesitated. Even after two years of knowing what I could do, I was still frightened. I didn’t always request. But this morning, someone kept creeping into my mind.
“Show me Bram,” I whispered.
The glass twisted into a maelstrom.
It churned slowly at first, distorting my reflection, the hard surface changing into a silvery liquid pool. It churned faster, thinning out the ripples and then blowing them aside in what looked like a shiver of wind. I felt the shiver under my skin, too, like always. The mirror came alive whenever I spoke to it. It had a pulse I could feel, a second one beating in time with my own.
Now, with all the silver swirls gone, another image appeared. A whitish haze filled the oval mirror. Fog. It hung suspended over a green field of knee-high grasses and mazes of fenced-in paddocks. I might as well have been looking out the loft door. It was my field. And then Bram stepped into view from the edge of the silver filigree. He waded through the grasses toward a saggy-roofed barn.
My barn. I jumped up.
“Clear!” I threw the canvas sheet over the glass as the mirror obeyed my command, wiping Bram’s image away, and then I kicked at the hay, piling it in front. Why was Bram coming here? My feet slipped down the ladder’s rungs and hit the rotting planks below.
“Everett, Everett, Everett,” Bram sang from the barn door. He walked in, his cap in his hand. His eyes flicked up toward the loft. “You look breathless. What were you doing up there?”
I brushed my hands against my trousers as if I’d been forking hay. “What do you want?”
I tucked my fingers into my palms to stop them from shaking.
“Well, I was thirsty.” Bram walked around me. “Haven’t you heard? The prince is getting married. I thought to get a head start on the celebrating.”
“You’ll have to wait until noon, like all the others.” I stormed toward a sack of feed and grabbed the scoop, then showered the floor with kernels. The hens came running while Bram continued to stare at me.
A few months ago, I’d started to wonder if he was sharing a secret with me—if he preferred boys to girls. But then I’d spied him and Trina Petrev behind Bram’s family butchery, their mouths and hips rubbing against one another.
“Now, don’t be like that, Everett.” He emphasized my name the way he usually did. As if it was a joke between us.
I pulled down the short brim of my field hat. “Just tell me what you want so I can get back to work.”
“I bought one of your stud rams last night. Ben said I could get him this morning.”
I pictured the roll of colorful storgs my father had dumped on the table. They’d come from Bram.
“Then go get him. The east paddock.” I threw an extra scoop of corn kernels out for the chickens and hoped Bram would leave quickly.
He stepped up behind me. Close. His hot breath funneled inside my ear. His legs bumped against the backs of mine. The metal scoop slipped in my hand, and I clenched it tighter.
“I’m going fishing after. I’ll wait, if you want to come.”
He was inviting me to go someplace. No one ever invited me to go places. But it was Bram.
“We’d be alone on the river.” His lips brushed against my ear. “You could take off that cap of yours.”
His fingers brushed the nape of my neck, touching my closely shorn hair. I swung around and jammed the scoop into his stomach. He leaped back, laughing.
“Okay, okay, I’ll go by myself.” Bram pulled on his cap and tipped the brim toward me as he left.
I threw the scoop into the sack and whipped off my cap. I ran my fingers through my hair. Not even an inch of growth. His touch had sent a twisted shiver of thrill and unease into my stomach. I didn’t like how he could make me feel two opposite things at once.
He whistled to the stud in the paddock, and when he walked past the barn again, leading the ram on a rope, I hid in Hilda’s stall. I listened to him leave, hating that Bram knew I was a girl, and wondering why the devil he was bothering to keep it a secret.
3
Tobin
The village of Yort wasn’t safe after dark.
During the day, women and children walked the narrow, wagon-rutted lanes throughout the wool village, going about their chores without trouble. But by the final toll of the carillon bells in the fortress’s high tower, they were required to be back indoors.
Only Frederic’s men were allowed free roam of the dark. I’d memorized the burrow-like warrens by the time I was eleven, the first year of my training. Before, the streets at night had frightened me. I’d grown used to being hurried home as the sun lowered in the sky, never setting so much as a toe out in the dark.
Things were different now, though not because Yort had changed. It was the center of Morvansk, the empire having evolved into a collection of industrial villages like this one: wool factories, dyers, tanneries, ironworks, clay and paper makers. Each village provided something another village could not do without. It limited trade with the five other empires, though Morvansk had aligned with four of them.
All four of Frederic’s elder daughters had strategically wed influential nobles in Noone, Granlaut, Urstat, and Fijord. Klaven was the fifth and final empire with which Morvansk needed to unite, and it just so happened that Mara was Frederic’s fifth and final daughter. A marriage made political sense. So why did Mara believe it was not what her father truly wanted?
I shook my head. Mara’s doubt didn’t matter. Potential enemies lurking in the shadows did. Walking through the low village after dark was something only certain men dared do—those with blades. I kept one in each boot, two at my waist, and another tucked up each of my sleeves in a metal springing contraption that easily released with a quick flick of my wrist.
At a corner tavern, the lane twisted to the east, continuing on a gradual climb away from the low village and into the heights. The tavern gave off bright mantles of light and noise. Most men would welcome warmth over shadowy streets. But light and noise meant people. People who thought they knew me. Three such people were outside the tavern, lounging on the front steps.
They spotted me through a haze of tobacco smoke. One, Grigory, rose to his feet, his sloping shoulders and block jaw darkly outlined against the tavern’s light.
“All finished dining with the emperor? Where’d you sit, his lap?”
I often enjoyed imagining what it might be like to use one of my blades on Grigory’s fat, useless tongue.
“Bet he ate out of his hand, too,” his friend added with a snort.
Without a word, I turned and started up the hill. I had been in plenty of scrapes with Grigory Karev before the emperor appointed me as huntsman. After that, I’d ignored him. It drove Grigory mad.
“Leave him alone. He’s had a hard day chasing squirrels,” Grigory called after me, working laughs and whistles out of the others.
The hot urge to face him nearly brought my legs to a halt. To Grigory, and to the rest of Yort’s villagers, I was a glorified hunter. It had to stay that way, too. Rumors of the truth at the fortress were one thing; common knowledge of it among the villagers would be another. If my family ever learned what I was… I didn’t know what I would say. I didn’t know what they would say. Or do.
It was the only thing in the world that frightened me.
I left the tavern and its scum behind, climbing toward the homes set higher on the hills. Our cottage in the heights had been a gift from the emperor. An advance, he’d called it. The diamond-latticed windows, rounded shingles, carved shutters, and brick walk winding around flower and herb beds had driven my mother to tears the day I showed it to her for the first time. After a life spent in the claustrophobic lower village, she considered the modest cottage a castle. She’d been so proud, and with her tears wetting my shoulder, I�
�d known then and there that I could never tell her the truth. That I’d been caught poaching in the emperor’s forest, and in a rare display of leniency, Frederic had given me a choice: Do his bidding, obey him no matter the task, or hang. Simple choice. Until I learned what he required of me.
“Tobin!” Kinn bounded up from a square pillow before the hearth as soon as I walked inside. His schoolbook slid from his lap. “Did you bring us something?”
My brother bounced off my hip, his hands reaching for the small leather purse tied to the inside of my coat. Twisting side to side, I managed to keep him grabbing, missing, and grabbing again until he broke out in exasperated giggles.
“Enough, Kinn, let your brother be. He doesn’t have to bring home a sweet every night, does he?” Mother shooed him away with a quick tap to his head of shaggy blond hair. She rose to her toes, her frame short and round, and kissed me on the cheek. “You missed dinner.”
She returned to the kitchen corner, where the butter dish and a bowl of boiled potatoes sat on the table.
“He misses dinner nearly every night,” Lael muttered from another pillow in front of the hearth.
My sister paged through one of her schoolbooks, a pheasant quill tucked behind her ear and tangled within her dark curls. She was fourteen and nearly finished with lessons at the village school. The emperor offered my tutors at the fortress to my sister and brother too, but I hadn’t wanted Lael or Kinn there on a daily basis. They would have likely heard whispers about me.
The corner of Lael’s mouth pulled into a frown. She then turned back to her book.
“As long as he gets a bit of food in his stomach before bed, I don’t care when he eats.” Mother picked up the bowl and scooped the last helping of potatoes onto a tin plate before placing it on top of the stove for warming.
Though we lived prominently in the heights, her hands were still rough from yard and housework, and she wore the plain brown and red linens and white cottons she always had, along with a colorful blue scarf tied neatly around her head. She didn’t like to rest and refused to hire workers for chores she claimed she could easily do.
As I shrugged off my coat and hung it on the peg, Kinn struck gold in the purse. He pulled out a caramel wafer the size of his fist and gazed at it with one of his gap-toothed smiles.
“Lael, do you want yours?” Kinn asked, reaching back in.
“I’m full.” She was wary of gifts that came from the fortress. She seemed to be the only one who was uncomfortable with our reliance on the emperor’s favor.
“Sit, sit,” my mother said. I pulled out a chair, and she ran her plump fingers through my hair. “Emperor Frederic allows his huntsman to sport such a long mess of curls? You should let me trim it.”
I rearranged my tousled hair once she finished mussing it. “The boar I bagged this afternoon wasn’t so offended.”
She set the warmed potatoes in front of me, no doubt expecting me to eat every bite. I wasn’t hungry; I’d already eaten in the fortress’s kitchen with the cook and servers. But I dug into the potatoes anyway.
“Kinn, did you do well on your addition tables today?” I asked.
He climbed onto the chair beside me, a string of caramel between his lips and fingers.
“I got a few right.”
“We practiced last night for an hour.”
Kinn said nothing, content to lick his coated fingers.
“You got them all right then,” I added.
“Leave him alone.” Lael slammed her book shut. “He did his best, even without a horde of court tutors to drill him.”
Mother spun around from the dish bucket, ready to defend me once again. I held up my hand. I’d set myself apart from Lael and Kinn when I’d lied and said the tutors were only available to me.
Mother sighed and turned back to scrubbing the dishes. “If you’re done with your studies, Lael, you may join me.”
I finished my potatoes about the same time Kinn devoured the second wafer. I slid my plate into the soapy water and searched for something to say to break the tense silence.
“Are the pigs fed?” I asked Lael. She wiped a mug and slammed it into the stack with the others. “And the hens?”
“Yes.” She turned her back to me. “I’m finished, Mother. May I turn in now?”
I leaned against the long pine counter as our mother nodded, her clear, gray eyes troubled as Lael walked swiftly to her small room.
Lael didn’t usually argue or pick fights the way most sisters did. She just chose to ignore me. To tiptoe around me. I’d prefer an argument to that any day.
Lael paused in the doorway to her room, turning to glare at me. I held her stare. I wanted to be wrong, but when she looked at me like that, it felt like she knew the real reason we lived in the heights. Why I often came home late, or left for days on end for hunting excursions.
Something about her stare said she knew the truth.
I stepped through the passageway door hidden behind a tapestry in one of Emperor Frederic’s gathering rooms and swallowed a spate of cold dread. I’d been summoned, and I was almost certain I knew why.
The secret duct of stairs and corridors emptied into various rooms throughout the fortress, but this one, four stories above the dungeons, led directly to Frederic’s chambers. In my pocket was the wax sealed note that arrived at the cottage before dawn. See me before morning carillon, it had read. The handwriting belonged to Frederic’s attendant. Most likely, he was sending me somewhere—unless he’d learned of my visit with Mara.
A single guard wearing the scarlet colors of Morvansk stood within the passageway, blocking the exit into the emperor’s chambers. He stepped aside as I approached. In Frederic’s vast chamber, a small fire smoked in the hearth. The crest of Morvansk was everywhere: on tapestries, dark mahogany panels, stained glass, stitch work, armor.
Frederic entered from his balcony and I straightened my spine and shoulders, clasping my hands behind me.
“You are always so prompt.” He closed the balcony doors behind him. “It’s one of your finest traits, Huntsman.”
I hadn’t known he admired anything other than my discretion and unyielding loyalty. Frederic walked to a throne-like chair in front of the hearth. He was tall and muscular, his dark beard showing just a few streaks of silver.
“Please.” He sat and extended a hand toward the matching chair beside him.
I’d have rather stood, but did as requested. I sat forward, not wanting to recline or seem in any way as if I enjoyed being there with him. He had given me everything: an unrivaled education, the finest clothes, food, and weapons, and most important of all, the ability to take care of my family. But I knew enough to understand I was replaceable.
Frederic lifted a decanter of dark, plum-colored brambleberry wine from a silver tray on the table beside him. He drank a glass every morning, afternoon, and evening, the ritual unbroken for as many years as I’d known him. He claimed it was for digestion. I couldn’t have cared less about his health.
He poured his daily glass, and while waiting for him to sip his wine in peace, my eyes drifted to where a massive, gold-framed mirror, draped with black fabric hung to the left of the hearth. Why Frederic kept a mirror behind drapes was a mystery, but it was the three steps leading to a small golden dais at the base of the mirror that had always caught my eye. Did the emperor climb those steps and stand on the gilded dais whenever he peered into the mirror? It seemed an odd thing, to be so close to the glass. I had never seen him look into the mirror. I’d never seen the face of the mirror at all; the drapes were always pulled together whenever I visited this chamber. But I always seemed to find myself looking at it, wondering.
The emperor set down his glass, and I peeled my eyes away from the draped mirror. “You’re aware my youngest daughter, Mara, has accepted the hand of Orin of Klaven?”
The dread I’d swallowed earlier reappeared in my throat.
“Yes,” I answered. Had someone seen me entering or leaving Mara’s chambers?
>
Frederic laced his fingers over his stomach, appraising me. “I am sending you with her to Pendrak, as part of her royal caravan.”
I let out a breath, everything inside me unclenching.
Pendrak was Klaven’s royal court. It made sense that Mara would visit Orin. She had probably never met her future husband. What didn’t make sense was my joining her.
“You’ll provide the caravan with game for the fire pits each night on the journey,” Frederic explained. Two nights. That was the length of the journey to Pendrak. There was no need for fresh game for the fire pits, and the emperor and I both knew it.
“What is my true mission, your majesty?”
Frederic slipped his fingers inside his vest pocket and removed two scrolls of parchment, one secured with red ribbon and the other with blue. These kinds of scrolls, each the length of my hand, were mostly used for quick messages, delivered by his couriers.
“Once you arrive in Pendrak, you’ll deliver this note to the princess.” The emperor extended the red-ribboned note. I tucked it inside my coat pocket.
“And this one, to Orin.” He gave me the blue-ribboned note.
“I am to be…a messenger?” The drop of my stomach went on and on, into black nothingness. I was being demoted?
“Of course not,” the emperor answered. “You will deliver both of these notes the first morning after your arrival. You will then go to the forest glade, behind the fortress, where the river cuts through.” I memorized his directions, quickly figuring his knowledge of Pendrak’s landscape came from the battle he’d waged on it a decade before.
“There, you will wait for my daughter to arrive. She will be alone.”
Alone. The word threaded an invisible rope around my throat.
