The Fall of the Dagger (The Forsaken Lands)

by Glenda Larke

  “There’ll be no regret.” Sorrel raised her chin. “Not ever.”

  “Not even if you look into those eyes of an innocent child, and you see who looks back at you?” She wasn’t talking about herself, Sorrel knew. Mathilda was coming as close as she ever would to acknowledging who had fathered the twins.

  “Not even then,” she said gently. “We will raise these children with love and kindness, and that will make the difference. They are your children too. Don’t forget that, Your Grace. The Royal House of Betany runs in their veins.”

  “I have only one child,” she said, straightening her back and releasing Sorrel’s hand. “Never say otherwise, Sorrel. Not ever.”

  When Sorrel rejoined Ardhi half an hour later, she waited until they were in the open outside the main entrance of the keep before she spoke.

  “We have what we wanted,” she said, clutching Piper’s hand tightly as they crossed the grassed area of the inner bailey. “Mathilda has agreed to everything. We’ll have a house in the city, overlooking the water, and we will bring Piper to the castle twice a sennight to play with the prince-regal. Mathilda still doesn’t want to have anything whatsoever to do with Piper personally, though.”

  He halted in the middle of the bailey and glanced around to make sure there was no one to overhear. “Tell me everything.”

  “In the city, as foreign nobility and an expert on foreign trade, you will be granted a position of power in the Lowmian Spicerie Trading Company. You will also be numbered among Karel’s tutors, in order to give you access to him.”

  “Nobility? Even though I am a disgraced member of my own family, cast out of my own land?”

  “I didn’t actually mention that.”

  He chuckled. “From a mere company language tutor to company director, that’s quite a promotion! And what is the Regala Mathilda offering you?”

  “Lady-in-waiting, by virtue of my marriage to said foreign noble.”

  He chuckled. “As if you needed marriage to be important!”

  “Don’t laugh. She insists that you obtain a suitable surname. Foreign or not, you have to abide by Lowmian conventions.”

  “You can help me make up one.” He chuckled. “We’ll think of something suitably pretentious! But you – a lady-in-waiting? Won’t that be tedious?”

  “Oh, yes, if I actually had to act as one and live at court. But it’s just a title enabling me to come and go. I will find ways to amuse myself, never fear. At the moment, raising Piper will suffice!”

  “She will be fine,” he said, suddenly serious. “Sri Kris has never moved in her presence.”

  Not yet, she thought. Maybe never.

  Only time would tell.

  “And using the feather piece on the prince-regal?” he asked.

  She snorted. “Her Grace has offered the small shrine at her summer palace as a sacrifice because the shrine keeper adores Karel, and not too many people would notice if it suddenly vanished.”

  “You don’t like her much, do you?”

  “Not much. I don’t think she’ll ever change. But then, what kind of a life did others ever extend to her? She was only ever to be a token offered to a monarch on a royal plate.” Glancing down at Piper, she added, “At least her daughter will have more choices and a better life, and I think her son has every chance to be cleansed of his father’s sorcery.”

  “A happy ending?”

  “Who would have thought?” She smiled and held out her hand to him. Piper grabbed it before Ardhi could, and then the child reached for his hand too.

  Together they swung Piper between them, laughing, as they walked away from the keep towards the archway to the outer bailey.

  Above, from one of the windows in the Regal’s solar, the prince-regal watched, his nose and hands pressed to the glass.

  “Who’s that, Mama?” he asked, his gaze fixed on Piper.

  Mathilda turned to peer out of the window, and frowned when she saw who had caught his attention. “Oh, them,” she said dismissively. “No one that matters, darling. Come, sit on my lap and I’ll tell you a story about a brave little prince and the treacherous snake who came to a bad end…”

  Acknowledgements

  The first glimmer of this story was born more than twenty years ago in Malaysian kitchens, gardens and forests, while I was delving into activities as diverse as cooking with South-east Asian spices, working in the conservation of tropical birds and exploring remote rainforests and islands.

  I began writing the first book of this trilogy at the beginning of 2011, and the last touches were added to this, book three, at the end of 2015. It has therefore consumed five years of my life – at a time when we were also moving house (and continents!) from Asia to Australia.

  There have been many people along the way who have helped, in one way or another, too many to thank here, but I do need to mention my long-suffering husband, and my beta readers for this volume: Alena Sanusi, Karen Miller, Tehani Wessely, Donna Maree Hanson and Jo Wake. Then there’s Jenni Hill, my wonderful editor at Orbit, and Joanna Kramer and all the rest of the Orbit team who had a hand in producing the three books with their magnificent covers. The maps – which I love – were done by Australian artist, Perdita Phillips.

  Most importantly, though, I need to thank you, the reader.

  You make it all worthwhile. Every time you buy a book, every time you rate a novel, or write a review, or mention what you are reading to someone else, you make the effort that goes into the creation of stories worth the labour. This year it was you who voted for book one, The Lascar’s Dagger, to win two speculative fiction awards, the Tin Duck for the Best WA Professional Long Written Work, and the Australian Ditmar Award for Best Novel (which I’m honoured to say I shared with another Orbit author, Trudi Canavan!).

  So thank you, dear reader.

  extras

  meet the author

  Photo Credit: B. M. Noramly

  GLENDA LARKE was born in Australia and trained as a teacher. She has taught English in Australia, Vienna, Tunisia and Malaysia. Glenda has two children and lives in Erskine, Western Australia with her husband.

  Find out more about Glenda Larke and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at www.orbitbooks.net.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  THE FALL OF THE DAGGER,

  look out for

  THE LAST STORMLORD

  Book One of the Stormlord Trilogy

  by Glenda Larke

  Shale is the lowest of the low—an outcast from a poor village in the heart of the desert. In the desert, water is life and currency, and Shale has none. But he has a secret. It’s the one thing that keeps him alive and may save all the cities of the Quartern in the days to come. If it doesn’t get him killed first…

  Terelle is a slave fleeing a life as a courtesan. She finds shelter in the home of an elderly painter, but as she learns the strange and powerful secrets of his art she fears she may have traded a life of servitude for something far more perilous…

  The Stormlord is dying in his tower and there is no one, by accident or design, to take his place. He brings the rain from the distant seas to his people. Without a Stormlord, the cities of the Quartern will wither and die.

  Their civilization is at the brink of disaster. If Shale and Terelle can find a way to save themselves, they may just save them all. Water is life and the wells are running dry…

  CHAPTER ONE

  Scarpen Quarter

  Scarcleft City

  Opal’s Snuggery, Level 32

  It was the last night of her childhood.

  Terelle, unknowing, thought it just another busy evening in Opal’s Snuggery, crowded and noisy and hot. Rooms were hazed with the fumes from the keproot pipes of the addicted and fuggy with the smell of the resins smouldering in the censers. Smoky blue tendrils curled through the archways, encouraging a lively lack of restraint as they drifted through the air.

  Everything as usual.

  Ter
elle’s job was to collect the dirty plates and mugs and return them to the kitchen, in an endless round from sunset until the dark dissolved under the first cold fingering of a desert dawn.

  Her desire was to be unnoticed at the task.

  Her dream was to escape her future as one of Madam Opal’s girls.

  Once she’d thought the snuggery a happy place, the outer courtyard always alive with boisterous chatter and laughter as friends met on entry, the reception rooms bustling with servants fetching food from the kitchens or amber from the barrels in the cellar, the stairs cluttered with handmaidens as they giggled and flirted and smiled, arm in arm with their clients. She’d thought the snuggery’s inhabitants lived each night adrift on laughter and joy and friendship. But she had only been seven then, and newly purchased. She was twelve now, old enough to realise the laughter and the smiles and the banter were part of a larger game, and what underlay it was much sadder. She still didn’t understand everything, not really, even though she knew now what went on between the customers and women like her half-sister, Vivie, in the upstairs rooms.

  She knew enough to see the joy was a sham.

  She knew enough to know she didn’t want any part of it.

  And so she scurried through the reception rooms with her laden tray, hugging the walls on her way to the kitchen. A drab girl with brown tunic, brown skin, brown hair so dark it had the rich depth of rubies, a timid pebblemouse on its way back to its lair with a pouch-load of detritus to pile around its burrow entrance, hoping to keep a hostile world at bay. She kept her gaze downcast, instinctively aware that her eyes, green and intelligent, told another story.

  The hours blurred into one another. Laughter devoid of subtlety drowned out the lute player’s strumming; vulgar banter suffocated the soft-sung words of love. As the night wore on, Scarcleft society lost its refinement just as surely as the desert night lost its chill in the packed reception rooms.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Terelle noted Vivie flirting with one of the younger customers. The man had a sweet smile, but he was no more than an itinerant seller of scent, a street peddler. Madam Opal wanted Vivie to pay attention to Kade the waterlender instead, Kade who was fat and had hair growing out of his nose. He’d come all the way downhill from the twentieth level of the city because he fancied the Gibber woman he knew as Viviandra.

  Behind the peddler’s slender back, Terelle made a face at Vivie to convey her opinion of her sister’s folly with the peddler, then scurried on.

  Back in the main reception room a few moments later, she heard nervous laughter at one of the tables. A man was drunk and he’d lost some sort of wager. He wasn’t happy and his raised voice had a mean edge to it.

  Trouble, she thought. Rosscar, the oil merchant’s son. His temper was well known in the snuggery. He was jabbing stiffened fingertips at the shoulder of one of his companions. As she gathered mugs onto her tray, Terelle overheard his angry accusation: “You squeezed the beetle too hard!” He waved his mug under the winner’s nose and slopped amber everywhere. “Cheat, you are, Merch Putter—”

  Hurriedly one of the handmaidens stepped in and led him away, giggling and stroking his arm.

  Poor Diomie, Terelle thought as she wiped the stickiness of the alcohol from the agate inlay of the stone floor. He’ll take it out on her. And all over a silly wager on how high a click beetle can jump. As she rose wearily to her feet, her gaze met the intense stare of a Scarperman. He sat alone, a hungry-eyed, hawk-nosed man dressed in a blue tunic embroidered with the badge of the pedemen’s guild.

  “This is empty,” he growled at her, indicating the brass censer in the corner of the room. “Get some more resin for it, girl, and sharp about it. You shouldn’t need to be told.”

  She ducked her head so that her hair fell across her face and mumbled an apology. Using her laden tray as a buffer, she headed once more for the safety of the kitchens, thinking she could feel those predatory eyes sliding across her back as she went. She didn’t return to replenish the censer; she sent one of the kitchen boys instead.

  Half the run of a sandglass later, she saw Vivie and Kade the fat waterlender heading upstairs, Madam Opal nodding her approval as she watched. The sweet-smiling, sweet-smelling peddler was nowhere in evidence. Terelle snorted. Vivie had sand for brains if she’d thought Opal would allow her to dally with a scent seller when there was a waterlending upleveller around. A waterlender, any waterlender, was richer than Terelle could even begin to imagine, and there was nothing Opal liked better than a rich customer.

  Terelle stacked another tray and hurried on.

  Some time later the bell in Viviandra’s room was ringing down in the kitchen, and Madam Opal sent Terelle up to see what was needed. When she entered the bedroom, Vivie was reclining on her divan, still dressed. The waterlender was not there.

  “Where’s the merch?” Terelle asked.

  “In the water-room,” Vivie said and giggled. “Sick as a sand-flea that’s lost its pede. Drank too much, I suspect. I was bored, so I rang down to the kitchen. Now you can have a rest, too.” She patted the divan and flicked her long black hair over her shoulder. “And Kade’s not a merchant, you know. He lends people water tokens. Which means you should address him as Broker Kade. Terelle, you have to learn that sort of thing. It’s important. Keeps the customers happy.”

  “Vivie, if Opal catches us doing nothing, she’ll be spitting sparks.”

  “Don’t call me Vivie! You know I hate it. It’s not a proper name for a Scarpen snuggery girl.”

  “It’s your name. And you’re not Scarpen. You’re Gibber, like me.”

  “Not any more. Opal’s right when she says ‘Viviandra’ has class and ‘Vivie’ doesn’t. And why shouldn’t we be lazy occasionally? I deserve a rest! You think it’s easy pandering to the tastes of the men who come here? You’ll find out when your turn comes.”

  “I’m not going to be a handmaiden,” Terelle said. “I’m going to be an arta. A dancer, like the great Arta Amethyst. In fact, I am going to be greater than Amethyst.” To demonstrate her skill, she bounced to her feet, undulated her hips in a slow figure of eight and then did the splits.

  Vivie groaned. “You are such a child! You won’t have any choice in the matter, you know. Why in all the Sweepings do you think Madam Opal paid Pa for the two of us? So as you could be a dancer? Not weeping likely!”

  All hope vanished as Terelle glimpsed the darkness of her future, crouching in wait just around a corner not too far away. “Oh, Vivie! What sort of handmaiden would I make? Look at me!”

  She hadn’t meant to be literal, but Vivie sat up and ran a critical gaze over her. “Well,” she said, “it’s true that you’re nothing much to look at right now. But you’re only twelve. That will change. Look at how scrawny Diomie was when she first came! And now…” She sketched curves with her hands. “That jeweller from Level Nine called her luscious last night. A plum for the picking, he said.”

  “Even if I burst out of my dresses like Diomie, my face will still be the same,” Terelle pointed out. “I think I have nice eyes, but Madam Opal says green is unnatural. And my skin’s too brown, even browner than yours. And my hair’s too straight and ordinary, not wavy and black like yours. No load of powder and paint is going to change any of that.” She was not particularly upset at the thought. “I can dance, though. Or so everyone says. Besides, I don’t want to be a whore.”

  “Opal will stick a pin in your backside if you use that word around here. Whores sell their bodies on the street for water. We are trained snuggery handmaidens. We are Opal’s girls. We do much more than—well, much more than whores do. We are, um, companions. We speak prettily, and tell stories and sing and recite and dance, and we listen to the men as though they are the wisest sages in the city. We entertain and make them laugh. Do it properly, like I do, and no one cares if we don’t have fair skin and blue eyes and straw hair like Scarpen Quarter folk.”

  “Opal says I’m the best fan dancer she’s seen for my age.”


  “Maybe, but she can’t teach you, not properly, you know that. You’d have to go to a professional dancer for lessons, and that’d cost tokens we don’t have. Opal’s not going to pay for it. She doesn’t want a dancer, or a musician, or a singer—she just wants handmaidens who can also dance and sing and play the lute. There’s a difference. Forget it, Terelle. It’s not going to happen. When your bleeding starts, the law says you are old enough to be a handmaiden and Opal will make sure that’s what happens.”

  Terelle lifted her chin. “I won’t be a whore, Vivie. I won’t.”

  “Don’t say things like that, or Opal will throw you out.”

  “I wish she would. Ouch!”

  Vivie, irritated, had leaned across and yanked a lock of her hair. “Terelle, she’s given you water for more than five whole years, just on the strength of what you will become after your bleeding starts. You know that. Not to mention what she paid Pa. She invested in you. She will spit more than sparks if she thinks she’s not going to get a return on her investment. She won’t let you get away with it. Anyway, it’s not such a bad life, not really.”

  But the crouching shape of her unwanted future grew in Terelle’s mind. “It’s—it’s horrible! Like slavery. And even barbarian Reduners don’t own slaves any more. We were sold, Vivie. Pa sold us to those men knowing we would end up in a brothel.” The bitterness spilled over into her voice.

  “This is not a brothel. It’s a snuggery. A house for food and entertainment and love. We have style; a brothel is for lowlifes with hardly any tokens. And I am not a slave—I am paid, and paid well. One day I shall have enough to retire.” She picked up her hand mirror from the divan and fluffed up her hair. The reddish highlights in the black gleamed in the lamplight. “I think I need another ruby rinse.”