Guards appeared with a litter. Nicol Joannis motioned them forward. As they carefully shifted Khandarr onto the litter, his throat gave a convulsive twitch. He turned his head toward Valara and met her gaze—one penetrating look—before Joannis signaled the guards to take him away.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HOURS LATER, VALARA Baussay sat in the corner of her cell, knees drawn up to her chest. Her stomach had contracted into a hard painful knot. The guards had not brought supper, nor had they returned her slop bucket. A small grate in one corner would do, but she wished the men outside her cell would look away, just for a few moments.
They wouldn’t of course. These were the second pair to take the watch. They were awake, alert, and angry. She heard them discussing what punishment Joannis or Khandarr would order for her. If they meant to frighten her, they had succeeded.
I trusted too soon. I promised too much.
She had expected Veraene to welcome Dzavek’s enemy. She had hoped they would negotiate with her. Whatever the cost, in money, in concessions, she would have promised it. Once back in Morennioù, she could have renegotiated the terms of their alliance.
They don’t want an ally. They want a hostage. And why not? I would do the same.
The hour bells rang—six clear soft tones. Midnight. Five more hours until dawn. Khandarr would return tomorrow. She was sure of that. Any competent mage-healer could restore the man’s wits. Khandarr himself could do the rest. Once he had recovered, he would bind her with magic and rip the truth from her throat. She had to escape before then.
You tried once. You failed.
Then I must try again.
She had panicked before, that was all. The spells guarding this prison were strong and complex, but she had made a delicate examination of them over the past several weeks. Only the bars and floor stones were steeped in magic. Unless she misread the signs, she could escape to Autrevelye before her magic triggered the prison’s spells. She had been too slow before, too befuddled from the magic Karasek had used to drug her.
She counted to ten to steady her nerves. Her heartbeat slowed as her gaze turned inward.
Ei rûf ane gôtter. Ane Lir unde Toc. Ei rûf ane gôtter. Ane Lir unde Toc.
Magic coursed over her skin. She no longer saw the torchlight or prison walls, no longer felt the stone floor beneath her. She was rising slowly through a viscous ocean. Far above, she saw a vast empty cavern, where shadowy hills rolled and surged toward the horizon. Higher still, a glittering band of lights streamed through the sky. The void between lives, which lay upon the edge of magic.
Noandnoandno.
A force struck her chest. The current scattered. She was falling, falling, falling through darkness while monsters shrilled and the ocean roared.
“—thought that blessed magic was supposed to stop—”
“—if we hadn’t watched—”
One of the Osterling guards hauled Valara up from the floor and pinned her against the wall. The other flung a bucketful of water over her. She coughed and sputtered and cursed.
“Good enough,” the first guard said. He drew a knife and laid it against Valara’s throat. “I’ll stay with her. You go for the governor. He said to report anything.”
Valara struggled to speak. Not Joannis, she wanted to cry. Tell Joannis and you tell Khandarr. It was Khandarr she feared. Khandarr would rob her of the emerald and turn its magic against Morennioù. She knew it.
She had to summon the magic again. She had to call the spells laid down in the prison stones. It might give her a chance to escape. Ei rûf ane gôtter …
… ei rûf ane Lir unde Toc unde strôm unde mir.
The words rang in her skull like the great bells of the Morennioù castle. An unknown signature overwhelmed hers, and the scent of magic rolled through the air. A brilliant light exploded in the cell. Valara’s sight blurred into white and then shadows. Magic drenched her, and her skin burned. Pure magic—she would have one taste, and then it would consume her.
… a river of shadows. An inhuman voice. A burst of light. Nothingness …
She knew nothing except darkness at first. Moments trickled away, unnumbered. Then a change to the blankness surrounding her. It was like emerging from a deathlike sleep. Or even death itself, she thought. Perhaps a newly reborn soul had one moment of awareness such as this before the knowledge of all previous lives faded into nothing.
More slowly she became aware of her surroundings. She lay stretched out on a hard stone floor. Her skin felt hot and sensitive, as though she’d handled fire, and the wooden ring on her finger buzzed with magic. Groaning, she levered herself to sitting. Someone had hung a lantern on the cell wall. She blinked to clear her vision.
And sucked in a breath of surprise.
Both guards lay motionless, one inside the cell and one in the corridor. The open door swung on its hinges, creaking. The rest of the prison lay in deep and unnatural silence.
Valara released a shaky breath. What had happened back there? She had called on the magic current. It came and—
She stopped and sniffed. Her own signature hung in the air, like a fox slipping through the bracken. But another, much stronger and more vivid, overlaid it. A signature as bright as star showers. No, something far more alien. A signature that belonged in Autrevelye.
Was it you? she asked the emerald.
No answer. She crawled over to the nearest guard and touched his throat. His skin felt cold and stiff. His mouth, half open, looked dark and cavernous in the dim light. She bent closer and realized with a shock that his mouth was filled with blood. She examined the second guard. He was dead, too.
Unnerved, she ventured from her cell. Torches burned at the far end of the corridor. Their light cast a ruddy glare on the walls, sending rippling shadows over the stones, but nothing moved, and no voice broke the silence.
She peered into the cell next to hers. There was just enough light to make out three bodies. Two men lay motionless on their pallets. A third sprawled over the floor, as if felled in the act of standing. Valara’s throat tightened in dread. Had she killed them as well? She couldn’t tell if they breathed.
It didn’t matter. Here was her chance to escape. She hesitated a moment, then hurried back to her cell and rifled the guards’ pockets, thinking how she had always been a thief in all her lives, whether queen or prince or a common soldier in the service of Leos Dzavek. Her search yielded a handful of coins, two daggers with wrist sheaths, and an oversized tunic, which she wrestled off the smaller guard. She wanted shoes, too, but their boots were too big. In the end, she settled for what she had. She could steal shoes later.
Valara fastened the sheaths to her wrists, stowed the money in a knotted corner of the tunic. It wasn’t nearly enough to bribe a ship’s master to take her home, but it might feed and clothe her until she could get far enough beyond Osterling’s cursed magical guards. Then she wouldn’t need any ship. She could walk home through Autrevelye.
The scent of magic and a bright signature welled up around her. You must not go home. Not yet.
The great voice penetrated her bones. Now she recognized it. She’d heard it speaking on the ship just before the storm. She’d thought it a fever-dream from the magic used to subdue her. But now she understood. It was the emerald—Lir’s emerald. It was alive. She had not imagined it.
City bells rang the next hour. There was no time to question or explore. She ran.
* * *
GALENA HAD DREAMED of the bells long before she woke. Bells and more bells, the count leaping from one tower to the next, as though time chased itself through Osterling’s dark streets. Their voices rose in volume, until they became the shrieks of winged monsters, so high and pure her bones ached and terror gripped her stomach. Coward, Ranier Mazzo had whispered. Go fight them and die. Do you dare?
She woke to a single bell ringing the first hour past midnight. It was quiet in the garrison sleeping quarters. Moonlight slanted through the reed blinds, and a warm salt-fresh breez
e filtered through the room, carrying with it the scent of rain and the coming summer.
I am a coward, she thought, lying in her cot.
A coward without honor. Ranier had said that outright the day before. He’d stepped into her path as she trudged from harbor watch to cleaning duty. Tell me what that word on your face means, Alighero. I know you must.
She told him, in exactly the words given by Lord Joannis. It had been hard. Her voice choked, and the mark on her cheek buzzed with magic. Worse, much worse, was the sight of those she had called her friends. A few others from her file—Marelda, Tallo, Falco—averted their eyes, but she noticed that no one defended her, even when Ranier went on to mock her viciously in the low sweet voice that Aris had loved at first, then had come to hate.
They think the same as him. They just don’t say it.
Harbor patrol had turned out to be a kindness. She bunked in different quarters. She stood guard with almost-strangers who ignored her. She could almost pretend that she’d transferred to a new garrison, far away from Osterling Keep, where no one knew about her shameful past. If they asked about her mark, she could claim it was a badge of honor.
Except you know you can’t. The magic won’t let you.
It was a pleasant dream, nonetheless. So she lay there, eyes closed, imagining herself with new friends, a new regiment. A chance to prove herself …
The garrison bells tolled. Galena’s reverie broke. She sighed. Two hours until watch. No more sleep tonight, that was certain. She could lie here in misery, dreaming of the impossible. Or she could report to the harbor early. Old Josche wouldn’t mind. He’d set her to work cleaning weapons or some other useful task. He might even tell Commander Adler.
She dressed in silence and gathered her weapons and gear. Outside the garrison, moonlight washed over the streets and towers. The prison building was dark, except for one window. The fort above was little more than a looming presence on the cliffs. A quiet night, the guards outside the barracks gate told her.
Quiet and empty. She had come to love the night watch, though she had not expected to. Osterling had a different face, painted in moonlight, inked in shadows. As she jogged down the main avenue, she spotted a few lamp-lit windows, but otherwise the city slept. Harbor duty was much, Josche told her the first night. Except when it was. Then he told her stories about when raiders swooped through the shoals to attack.
She had just crossed the second market square—not far away from Mistress Andeliess’s pleasure house—when a movement off to one side caught her attention. She stopped, hand on her sword, and peered into the darkness. Runners often carried messages between the city walls and headquarters, she told herself. But a courier or runner would not hide in an alleyway.
The stranger darted from one doorway to another. Suspicious now, Galena sprinted toward the alleyway’s entrance and peered down its length. Tall buildings blocked out the moon. All Galena could see were shapes and movement. And one tall lanky figure. A young man, judging from his height.
The boy glanced over his shoulder and took off at a run. That decided her. He was a thief. Galena launched herself after him. The boy dodged right into the next street, then right again. The chase took them back toward the main square, past the inn and the pleasure house, and into the merchants’ quarter, where the boy veered into a side alley. Galena followed, laughing to herself, because she knew how this chase would end.
She rounded the corner into the courtyard. There were no exits, just one door chained shut. The boy was scrabbling at the latch, muttering strange words, but swung around to face Galena, hair swirling in a dark cloud. A forgotten lamp burned in a window overhead, casting a dim circle of light over him.
No, her.
Galena stopped, her heart thudding faster. I know her.
It was the woman she had sighted on the beach, the day of the battle. She was bone-thin and nearly as tall as Galena. Her eyes were dark and narrow above flat cheeks, her complexion like the dark golden sands of Osterling’s shores. She wore a prisoner’s uniform underneath a shapeless tunic with a guard’s badge sewn at one shoulder. Her feet were bare.
The woman raised both hands. The sleeves fell back, revealing two wrist sheaths and their knives. Galena paused, wary. She drew her sword and rocked on her feet, ready to defend or attack as she needed to.
“Ei rûf ane gôtter,” the woman said. “Komen mir de kreft.”
The air turned dense, like the morning fog rolling in from the sea. Galena scrambled backward, but not quickly enough. The cloud swept over her, and the world went blank.
When she came to, Galena lay at full length on the hard paving stones. Her head throbbed, her eyes refused to focus. She groaned and stirred. That was a mistake. Pain lanced through her skull. She choked back a surge of bile and groaned again.
Cool fingers pressed against Galena’s temples. A woman murmured in an unknown language. The fresh green scent of pines filled the air, taking away the nausea. More words spoken in that unknown language, like water trickling over stone, then a command delivered in Veraenen.
“Stand up.”
Galena blinked and focused on the woman standing over her. The prisoner. She fumbled for her knife, only to find the sheath empty. Sword gone. Both knives missing. The woman had taken everything.
“Stand up,” the woman repeated. She held a knife to Galena’s throat.
“What do you want?” Galena croaked.
To her surprise, the woman gave a soft laugh. “What do I want? Too many things.” Then all the humor vanished from her face and she leaned over Galena. “I want a way out of Osterling. Get me past the gates.”
Galena noticed she hadn’t promised to release Galena after she escaped. So she was smart, too. “What if I say no?”
“Then I make certain you can’t warn anyone else.”
Her tone was cool and composed, but the hand gripping the knife shook slightly. Desperate enemies make dangerous ones, her father always said. “What did you do to the others?” Galena asked.
A heartbeat of hesitation. “They sleep.”
She killed them.
Galena squeezed her eyes shut against renewed dizziness and considered her situation. This young woman knew a great deal of magic. She’d killed a dozen guards or more. She’d broken free from a prison with strong magical shields. Even if Galena took her by surprise and wrestled the knife away, the woman could probably murder her with a single word.
“I can’t help you alone,” she said. “And I need my weapons.”
“No weapons.”
“Very well. But I can’t get you away from Osterling by myself. I know someone who can, though.” When the other woman hesitated, she added, “If you don’t believe me, you can kill me now.”
The woman frowned, tight-lipped. “You promise? You promise to get help?”
It was not exactly a lie, Galena told herself. “I promise. Come with me.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
MIDNIGHT. ILSE STARED at her ceiling, hardly more than a pale square above her, illuminated by moonlight. Her thoughts remained frozen. No, not exactly frozen. More as though she had succumbed to useless panic, which robbed her from any useful activity. So she lay there, counting the slow thump of her heartbeat. Waiting, waiting, waiting for the day to begin and her enemies to come.
One quarter, two, three.
As from a distance, she heard the next hour bell ring. A single soft peal. They had entered the interval between one day and another. Like the void between lives, she thought. Like the moment between one breath and the next.
Tomorrow Khandarr would question her. It was too much of a coincidence, her presence here, where the Károvín ships had foundered. She could tell from his manner that afternoon. She knew too much about Raul Kosenmark. She only wondered why he had not bothered before.
She rubbed her hands over her face. No use lying in bed. She rose and stalked into her study, scowled at the map of southern Fortezzien, spread over her desk, which she had abandoned earlier. I
ts contents were not encouraging. Osterling sat on the point of the peninsula. A spine of rocky hills extended its entire length, and into the mainland. On both sides, the shores were narrow, populated with small towns and fishing villages, which were connected by a single highway. There were garrisons, too, each within a day’s ride of each other. Besides, Khandarr would have notified the fort and harbor watches the moment he arrived. They would stop her at the gates.
She could attempt to cross into Anderswar, and from there to Tiralien.
Another questionable choice. Even if she could dare such a thing, Khandarr could track her to Raul’s doorstep.
No, there was no escape. Except one.
Her gaze flicked toward her books. The scroll from Lord Iani hid between two massive dictionaries of the Erythandran language. Not yet, she decided. Not until she was certain about Khandarr’s intentions.
A small voice whispered, Coward.
I am a coward. I like my life and my self.
The candle flame shuddered, sending a cascade of shadows over her desk and hands.
Shadow, ghost, death. A link of words came too easily. It was a child’s game, she told herself. She had left the game behind when she escaped her father’s house in Melnek. Briefly, she wondered about her childhood friend Klara, with whom she had so often passed an afternoon with such pastimes. They had talked about lovers, years ago. Ilse hoped Klara had found her artist, someone who loved beauty as much as she did.
The thought of Klara brought her other friend to mind, Kathe. Kathe who had tended her through sickness. Who taught her how to mince garlic, and stir a sauce to the smoothness of silk. Who stayed her friend even after she left the kitchens to become Berthold Hax’s assistant, then much later, Raul’s beloved.
I lied to her. I told her I left Raul because I wanted children. She thinks me selfish.
Or was it a lie?
Ilse folded the map together and set it aside. Walked over to her bookcase and knelt. Her limbs felt numb, her body removed at a distance, as she commanded her hands to seek out Lord Iani’s scroll and extract it from its hiding place. It unfurled at a touch, revealing a foot of thick dark parchment with the words of the spell written in old Erythandran. Ilse glanced over it. She had only to speak those words to take herself beyond Khandarr’s questions. They would save Raul Kosenmark and all his shadow court. She didn’t even need to provide a key for unlocking her memories.
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