Third Daughter (The Dharian Affairs, Book One)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  Aniri twisted out of his grasp and stumbled back. “Never touch me again.” Her voice was raspy with the tears choking her throat.

  A gaslamp on the desk flicked on. “Princess Aniri,” the ambassador said coolly. She stood over the splayed-open aetheroceiver. “If you’re done assaulting my diplomat, perhaps you can tell me exactly what you know about our skyship.”

  Aniri’s heart surged again, this time beating wild with fear. Devesh had deceived her. The ambassador knew about the skyship. Aniri had been caught spying in her office.

  How on earth would she get out of this with her head still attached to her body?

  “I know you’re no friend of Dharia,” Aniri said, summoning as much royal presence to her voice as she could. “I know you’re planning war, and this weapon will be used against the Dharian state. I’ve informed the Queen. She knows everything and is already on high alert. She will be waiting for you. And she knows I am here, so if any harm comes to me, she will consider that an act of war.”

  She hadn’t had time to message her mother about the skyship. She hadn’t even told Janak about it in her fight with him. She had simply fled, feeling sorry for herself and seeking out her lover.

  She was the worst kind of fool.

  The ambassador studied her. “I think not, Princess Aniri. I think you came here hoping to meet your lover.” She glanced at Devesh, and the coldness of her look angered Aniri. Even if Devesh had clearly used Aniri, even if he never loved her, it was obvious the ambassador held nothing but contempt for him. She had used him with more cruel intent than Devesh was ever capable of having. His face flushed, turning darker in the dim light.

  The ambassador drew her attention back by speaking again. “Maybe you were even considering taking Devesh up on his offer of running away to Samir.” She glanced at the schematic. “How unfortunate you stumbled upon the truth first.”

  The door to the outside waiting room flung open, and Garesh marched in, trailed by four guards clad in black Samirian military uniforms. He exchanged a quick look with the ambassador as he entered her office. Devesh stepped hastily back from Aniri, as if she had suddenly burst into flame.

  Panic ramped up through Aniri’s body. She struggled to remain still, not giving in to the impulse to attempt to flee, even though it would be useless. Garesh stopped a few feet in front of her and appraised her.

  “Princess Aniri of Dharia,” he said. “So nice of you pay us a visit.”

  The ambassador tapped twice on her desk, rustling the schematic as she did so. “She knows, Garesh.”

  “Oh yes, I’m quite aware of that,” Garesh said, not looking at the ambassador, but boring a look into Aniri instead. “She knows quite a lot. Tell us, Princess Aniri, what did you think of Sik province? Did you enjoy the weather? I can’t imagine a pampered royal from the plains would last long in the cold embrace of our mountains, but tell me: did you find the view stunning?”

  Aniri curled her fists, mostly to keep herself from slapping Garesh. Her mind whirled. He knew she’d broken into the airharbor. How? Not that it mattered. She would be lucky if Garesh would only take her prisoner as a traitor. More likely, her body would be found at the bottom of the ravine, the victim of an unknown assassin. She mentally cursed that she had left her saber back at the palace. But she still had her dagger. If they were going to kill her, she would take at least one of them with her. She quickly pulled it from its sheath at the small of her back and held it in front of her.

  Garesh looked unimpressed. He drew a pistol from within his dark coat and cocked it back. It contained a single shot, but it was aimed for Aniri’s head. She glanced at Devesh, but he wasn’t looking at her, his horrified gaze fixed on the gleaming barrel of Garesh’s gun.

  She looked back to Garesh. “You won’t get away with this. You can’t simply kill a royal from Dharia and expect no repercussions.” Of course, that wasn’t true either. At most, her mother would go to war with Samir or Jungali or both. But they had the skyship; her mother wouldn’t know what had happened to her until long after it mattered.

  “And why not?” Garesh said with a smirk. “I’ve done it before.”

  Aniri frowned, her hand with the dagger wavering in front of her. What was he talking about? Did he mean her father? Was he truly dead after all, and Garesh was somehow involved? He made a motion with his head, and before Aniri knew what it meant, Devesh had grabbed her knife hand. She struggled, but she was no match for his strength. And he was being none too gentle.

  His voice whispered in her ear. “I’m sorry, Aniri. It wasn’t supposed to end like this.” He wrenched her wrist, painfully making her drop the dagger, which thumped weakly on the tapestry that carpeted the floor. He moved behind her and held her securely with his arms wrapped around her, trapping her arms at her sides.

  Garesh returned his pistol to its holster under his jacket and leisurely strolled until he was just out of her arm’s reach. Had hers been free, she would have lunged for his throat. It would have been worth choking him for a moment, even if it had no chance of success. He kicked her dagger, and it tumbled away from her. His entourage of guards must not consider her a threat because they remained by the door.

  “I did try to warn you the harsh mountains were no place for a royal from the plains.” Garesh gave her a patronizing look. “But you royals only listen to each other and the courtesans who pander to your vanity in your courts. And while I would take pleasure in removing one more monarch from the world, I’m not going to kill you, Princess Aniri.” His smile grew. “At least, not yet. It will be convenient for me to have someone officially surrender Dharia to the Jungali-Samirian coalition. Then, when I have no need for you any longer, I will happily toss you out the nearest window.”

  Aniri felt the blood drain out of her face. Ash’s brother had fallen from a window... “You killed the prince’s brother,” she guessed, eyes widening as it sank in.

  Garesh gave an elaborate sigh. “Jungali is poised on the brink of having the respect it deserves, and the royal family would like nothing more than to trade it for a little more wheat. They would keep our country imprisoned as a backwater nation. So, yes, princess, I have no compunction about removing a few royals when they stand in the way of Jungali’s future.”

  The ambassador came to Garesh’s side and handed him a white cloth folded into a square the size of his hand. He gestured to Devesh to bring Aniri closer.

  “You won’t get away with this,” she said, hating the way her voice squeaked. She tried to kick Garesh when his legs came within striking distance. He growled, lunging to smother her with the white cloth in his hand. She whipped her head back and forth and held her breath, but he grabbed hold of her hair and held her still.

  The sickly sweet vapors from the cloth seeped through her nose and finally her body couldn’t help but breathe it in.

  It took a long time, perhaps a minute.

  Through the whole struggle, as the darkness crowded in, all Aniri could think was how Devesh’s arms held her still for her enemies to drug and eventually kill her. The pain gripping her chest came not from the drug, but from the last vestiges of her heart breaking into a thousand irretrievable pieces.

  Aniri awoke with a start when someone hit her in the face.

  She fought through the sickly sweet haze that clouded her mind. Her body was numb. Something rough was pressed against her cheek. Whoever had hit her must have knocked her to the floor. She tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids were impossibly heavy. When she finally managed to crack them open, everything was blurred, and she couldn’t see her attacker. Colorful strands of floor tapestry tickled her nose, and her throat felt stuffed with cotton.

  She coughed and twisted onto her back—at least she could face whoever had hit her—but she saw nothing but ceiling. Her arms wouldn’t obey her commands. It took a lurching struggle to prop herself up from the floor. Once up, she slit her eyes against the sun, which was streaming through a window above a desk that cramped the small room. She swept
a look around.

  She was alone.

  Next to her was a cushioned bench that looked like a bunk, and tangled around her feet was a thin blanket. As the haze in her head cleared, she realized no one had hit her: she had simply fallen off the bench.

  The floor lurched, making her fingers dig into the tapestry to keep upright. Her stomach threatened to climb into her throat. It was no wonder she had fallen off the thin bunk. Eyes now wide and fully awake, she fought her way free of the blanket and braced herself on the bunk so she could stand.

  What manner of floor moves like that?

  Aniri stumbled to the window, holding onto the bookshelves along the way, in case the floor decided to come to life again. When she reached the window, she had to blink several times to make sense of what she saw.

  She was flying. Higher than the precipice outside the prince’s estate. Higher than the cable carriage. So high her eyes could barely make sense of it. The clouds weren’t above her but at the same level. The mountains of Jungali were spread below her, their frosted tips transformed into an expanse of snow-covered fields. She was so high the mountains seemed flat, like crumpled fabric below her.

  She was aboard the skyship.

  There was no other explanation, and as she gripped the edge of the window, the thrum of the engines tickled her fingers. Her limbs were still awkward—the vapors Garesh had used made them heavy and numb—but the vibration hummed through them. Then she heard the beating of the blades: the propellers must be nearby. She peered out the corners of the window, craning to see the ship around her, but there was only a trail of steam and smoke behind and an expanse of earth thousands of feet below. As she watched, the mountains turned flat and golden. Smooth, brushed fields replaced the rough texture of the forest.

  They were over the flatlands: Dharian territory.

  She leaned away from the window and against the edge of the desk, her bandaged hands braced against it. The skyship was headed to Dharia, where her mother, the Queen, would have no warning, no defenses against the bombs the skyship must be carrying. No one knew where she was. Devesh had abandoned her, leaving her to die in Garesh’s grasp.

  She had been a fool of the highest order, just as Janak had thought all along.

  She could see now why Janak despised guarding her. She was the daughter of the man who stole—and then abandoned—the woman Janak loved. He could have resigned his commission as raksaka and left the court. Or stepped down and tried to win the Queen’s heart. But he did neither of those things. Faced with the worst, he remained true to his calling to serve the Queen, in whatever task she set before him. Even when it meant guarding her Third Daughter: a younger, more reckless version of a man he loathed. Janak had performed his duty under the worst of circumstances, whereas the king had fled the court when it suited him.

  And she had proved to be just like her father.

  Janak must think she had truly run away. The prince would surely decide she had run off with Devesh rather than keep her promise to marry. Whatever Garesh’s true purpose for her, she had no doubt it would end in her death. And who knew how many others would die because of her foolishness?

  Her face ran hot with the shame of it. She pressed her wounded palms to her eyes, trying to keep the tears from coming. If Janak were in her place, he wouldn’t sit crying like a child. He would do his duty. He would find a way to foil Garesh’s plans and protect the Queen, no matter the cost.

  Aniri dropped her hands.

  The tiny cabin was richly appointed, possibly the captain’s keep, but it had been stripped bare of anything that might resemble a weapon, leaving only the desk she was leaned against, a few trinkets and books on the shelves, and the bunk. A door stood opposite her. She was certain it was locked, but she hurried across the floor anyway, stumbling once as the ship swayed again. The air tossed the skyship far more than she would have expected. She tried the knob, but it rattled without effect. A loud pounding on the door startled a gasp out of her and forced her to step back.

  “Settle down in there,” a rough voice said through the wood. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  They had posted a guard outside her door.

  Aniri stepped back farther, running her bandaged hands across her face. She had to think. Escape seemed unlikely, but eventually Garesh would come for her. She had to be prepared. What was he planning for her, and how could she ruin it? He was keeping her alive and bringing her along for some reason. Maybe it was as he claimed—so she could officially surrender Dharia to him. She had no intention of doing that: her life would end shortly after anyway, and by the Queen’s breath, her final act would not be surrendering her country to her enemies. Or maybe he would use her as a hostage, threaten the Queen with bombs from the sky and the death of her Third Daughter? She could deny Garesh that possibility, spare her mother that choice, if she was no longer alive when they arrived at the capital.

  She looked to the window and slowly crept toward it. It might be possible to break. Her dagger was gone, but they’d left her cloak. She dug in the pocket and pulled out the tiny clockwork shashee with its strong armored legs. It fit easily in her hand. She held it with the legs protruded, ready to pound on the window. Her stomach churned. How long would it take to fall thousands of feet? Would she die of fright before striking the earth?

  She swallowed and pounded the tiny shashee against the window. It made a small scratch and the window rattled. She struck again and again, trying to hammer the same spot to force a crack, but it just lanced pain through her bandaged hands. On the fifth or sixth strike, the shashee shattered into a thousand clockwork pieces and littered the thin rug on the captain’s floor.

  Tears filled her eyes at the destruction lying around her boots. All the prince’s plans for peace were similarly in ruins. All her efforts to keep her country from war had likewise failed. All her attempts to avoid the peace-brokering marriage were for nothing. The boy she loved was merely a spy who had betrayed her and her country. Her father was a coward who had abandoned her long ago. Everything she thought she loved was pieces on the floor, destroyed by her foolishness and wishful thinking.

  She beat at the window with her fists, pounding it with her anger and shame. Her hands were as useless as she was, only causing her pain and having no effect on the scratched window. Air slowly leaked out of her, her assault slowed, and eventually her shoulders caved forward into stillness.

  She failed even at this.

  The expanse of bright blue sky outside the window burned her eyes. The clouds were blurred by her tears. The glass had stopped her, but the truth was, jumping to her death was the coward’s way out. She would rather die by Garesh’s sword.

  And she was done being a fool.

  She angrily wiped her cheeks, and as her vision cleared, she could see a trail of smoke billowing up from the fields below. A dark line had been drawn on the earth, and orange flames danced around it, igniting a wildfire on either side that was quickly spreading through the dry grasses. The line followed the skyship, traveling in their wake as they flew deeper into Dharia.

  The butterfly.

  Aniri sucked in a breath. The skyship was thousands of feet up in the air. That line on the earth... it had to be a dozen feet across. Somehow the butterfly was gathering the brilliant sun which shone all around them and focusing it down into that enormous crystal, producing a single, flaming beam of fire and destruction. It was consuming even the earth and igniting walls of fire on either side.

  And they were heading for the capital.

  Aniri shrank back from the window. Garesh wasn’t simply going to drop bombs on the capital city or hold her hostage. He was going to turn the city, the capital of Dharia, her home, into cinders.

  Aniri searched the desk with renewed urgency, looking for something, anything that could serve as a weapon or a way out of her prison in the captain’s quarters. There was nothing but a few scraps of cable communique and a map of the kind she had seen before in the ambassador’s office. The capital of D
haria was clearly marked. Aniri’s chest tightened. Her mother was there. Her sister, Nahali, and her unborn child. The heart of her country beat in that city.

  Aniri rifled through the drawers, but they were similarly empty. She hurried past the bookshelves, her hands skimming them as if she could conjure something that would help by touch, but there were only a few heavy books and a tiny clockwork bird.

  Then a shuffling sound came from the door, and a loud thump as something hit it. The door rattled, but held. And a moment later, a grinding sound, like a Samirian’s mechanical key. Aniri grabbed the heaviest book from the shelf, a tome with gilded wings titled Aerophysiks, and rushed the door, poised to bludgeon whoever was coming through. She had no idea what she would do from there.

  The doorknob twisted. Aniri held the book high and back, ready to swing. As the door opened, she swung with all her might, aiming for the head of the person coming through.

  The person ducked back, and the book slammed into the door, knocking it open farther and throwing Aniri off balance. She stumbled away from the door, but managed to bring the book around for another swing.

  She jerked back when she saw who it was.

  “Ash?” Her voice was hoarse, still raspy from the vapors. “What are you...? How...?”

  His hands were up, but he was smiling. She let her hands drop, so she wasn’t threatening him with the book anymore, but words still tangled in her mind as she tried to make sense of him being on board the ship.

  His rugged work pants were tucked into leather-laced boots. He had a double belt hung with tinker tools, their weight held up by suspenders over his rough brown shirt. His overcoat seemed like he was hiding something under it. Goggles were pushed up on his forehead and fingerless gloves encased his hands.