“Aye,” Varalen said. “The two swordsmen, the woman we held first, and the boy.”
“The swordsmen are useless to me,” Elgar said, stroking beneath his chin with the pad of his thumb. “I do wish we could’ve kept the other two a bit longer, though I doubt we’d have gotten anything more from either of them.” He sighed. “I wonder how the lords of the Fellspire have managed to safeguard their treasures for so many years—another thing I shall have to ask Lady Margraine once I’ve conquered it.”
“But not yet,” Varalen said, hoping he sounded uncertain enough that it might pass for a question, and not a command.
Elgar furrowed his brow. “No, not yet, much as I’d like to. I won’t risk moving against Esthrades with so many matters still unsettled. When our little search party comes back, and when Shinsei returns, then I will move the army—not a moment before.”
Unease settled in the pit of Varalen’s stomach. “The commander is … gone from the city, my lord?”
“He is,” Elgar said, without looking up from his maps.
“But so soon after his—”
“After his what?” Elgar snapped, and Varalen did not dare answer. “After nothing. After nothing of significance. Shinsei will serve me well in this, as he has in everything. And that’s more than I can say for you.”
Varalen swallowed. “I am sorry if you disapprove of my plans, my lord, but you seemed to agree with my—”
“Oh, never mind about that,” Elgar said, waving a hand impatiently. “I am pleased enough with your plans, especially of late.”
“You … you are?”
Elgar actually smiled, a thin, pointed little thing. “Your idea to use the prisoners was a better one even than you knew. If anyone is to retrieve it for us, I believe those four will do it—especially with that Lucius Aquila leading them. He seemed such a strong man, and yet he aspires to so little—it’s his own kindness that will betray him in the end.” He tapped his fingertips together. “It isn’t often one encounters people so simple, and what would I have done without them?”
Varalen scoffed. “If all it took were concern about the welfare of someone under your control, you could’ve just sent me to retrieve it.”
Elgar laughed. “Of course that’s not all it takes. Besides, you want much more than your son, whatever you claim to the contrary. There’s nothing simple about you, Varalen, and much that is ambitious. And for a person like that, what I have sent our friends to fetch would prove very dangerous.” His continued smile was unnerving. “Of course, I can’t promise that it won’t prove dangerous anyway, but that’s why I prefer to send others to lay hands on it first.”
Varalen shrugged, though he couldn’t help feeling a bit relieved. “Well, I didn’t fancy a trip to Hornoak anyway.” He followed Elgar’s gaze back to the maps. “So then, about … the second matter I mentioned…”
“Oh yes, I haven’t forgotten that. In fact, it is my hope it will turn out to please me even more than the first.” Elgar swept his finger down the border, then pulled it back in toward the capital. “Tell me more about this little bird who’s been singing for you,” he said.
* * *
Deinol claimed it’d be a shock to rival the fall of Elesthene if they ever saw Seren again, but Seth didn’t doubt her—she wouldn’t have spent all that time hammering out terms with them if she just meant to slip away. Sure enough, she met them outside the city gates as promised. It was somewhat intimidating for Seth to look at the walls from the outside—it had been years since he’d left Valyanrend, and he’d nearly forgotten how terrifying they looked from this vantage point. Perhaps someone else wouldn’t have found them frightening at all: they were only made of stone, without any barbs or spikes to be seen, and no traps more elaborate than cover for archers. But they were so high and so thick and so old that they seemed to him as immovable a reality as time, or death itself. When he was new to the city, he had asked Deinol and Morgan and Roger how the walls had been built, but they had had no answers for him. Valyanrend, they told him, was a city older than the written word itself, and no history book could attest to its founding. The city walls, like the Citadel itself, had the mysteries of their construction lost to time. But however old those walls might be, they had never once been breached—Valyanrend had been taken before, but always from the inside.
You had to walk nearly a hundred yards from the walls before you’d find any trees, and they were mostly crooked and skinny, like weary travelers aching for a rest. It was at the edge of these trees that they found Seren, rifling idly through the contents of a leather satchel. She closed it when she saw them and then stepped away from the tree she’d been leaning against. “That’s all you’re bringing?” she asked.
They’d given Seth the cloth sack containing all the food they’d been able to scrape together; as he wouldn’t be doing any of the fighting, it was only fair for him to take the first turn with it, although the others had promised to relieve him in due course. Beyond that, Lucius and Deinol had little more than their swords. Deinol shrugged. “It isn’t all that far, is it? And it’s not as if there’s nowhere to stop along the way.”
“It’ll seem long enough to you, I don’t doubt,” Seren said. “But have it as you like.”
He nodded at the satchel. “How’d you put all that together so quickly?”
“It was easy enough.” She slung the satchel over one shoulder. “I had it all beforehand—I just never brought it into the city. I wasn’t about to risk it in a place like that. It was a good thing, too—if I had brought it, those blasted soldiers would still be pawing through it.”
Deinol was frowning. “A place like that? A place like what?”
“A place with its own army of pickpockets, of course. Gods, you Hallerns really are touchy about your precious capital, aren’t you?”
“You Hallerns?” Lucius asked.
“That’s what I said.”
“No, I mean—you aren’t from Hallarnon?”
“No more than you are, unless I’m much mistaken. And I’ll thank the gods for that after what I’ve had to contend with here.” Her smile was biting and dry rather than warm, one side of her mouth tugging crookedly upward. “I assume you wanted to leave straightaway? I don’t need a map to get us to Hornoak, but there’s something I wanted to ask you first.”
That made Lucius give a smile of his own. “Finally managed to stir your curiosity, eh? I bet I know what it is, but you’re free to ask.”
She dropped her gaze to his sword. “Are you a shinrian?”
Lucius’s eyebrows rose. “I take it back—that wasn’t in the slightest what I was expecting. I don’t mind answering it, but you first. Where do you come from?”
Seren hesitated, but it wasn’t out of reluctance; she seemed to be trying to pick the right words. “I was born in Esthrades,” she said at last, “so if I ‘come from’ anywhere, I suppose it’s there.”
“But…” Lucius said.
“But I left Esthrades when I was very young, and…”
“What, you never went back?” Deinol asked.
“I went back,” Seren said. “It just took a long time. Many, many years.” She didn’t say more, but Seth thought he understood, and maybe the others did too.
Deinol cocked his head. “Why so long?”
She shrugged. “I wanted to make sure the person who came back was different from the person who left, I suppose.”
“And was she?” Lucius asked.
“Yes and no—not so much the same as I’d feared, yet not as different as I’d hoped.” She sighed. “I suppose that’s always the answer, isn’t it?”
“Not always. Not in my experience, at least.” Lucius folded his arms, tapping his fingers against his elbows. “I am a shinrian, though that title means less than you’ve probably heard. I did live in Aurnis, for as long as it existed. But my reason for staying away is the opposite of yours—neither Aurnis nor I can return to the way we were, so I’ve chosen to make my home somewhere else.”
He tightened his fingers against his arms, pressing his lips together. “Someplace better suited to the person I am now.”
CHAPTER NINE
The Gods’ Curse was an easy thing to find on any map: an empty, colorless ribbon that stretched from coast to coast, dividing Issamira from the rest of the world. On the maps it was easily spanned, less than half an inch thick on all but the very largest ones, but Eirnwin had told him it stretched on for leagues. It took a full day to ride through it, and that was if your horse was fast and you knew the way. To the Issamiri, who sent their youth to learn it as a rite of passage, it was a boon, a natural line of defense against invaders. But its name bespoke what the rest of the world thought of it.
There was a saying about Issamira and the Curse—most deserts had oases, it went, but Issamira was an oasis with its own desert. Yet the Curse was no true desert, for though it was made entirely of dust and sand on weathered stone, it was not especially hot, just barren and dead. No crops would grow there, and the sun barely ever shone, obscured by the intermittent sandstorms that were as common as sunsets.
When Prince Landon had been alive, his father had made the Curse his responsibility; he spent half the year ranging it and the lands beyond, and the other half at the palace in Eldren Cael, learning the ways of government. Whenever Reglian outriders had come across him and his men, they brought back tales of how he seemed to know every inch of the Curse, how he went his way unimpeded by even the thickest sandstorm. But Prince Hephestion, it was said, had only ever visited the Curse once, for his coming-of-age; he had lost his horse almost immediately and had to wander back in disgrace, and his mother had forbidden him from ever venturing so far again.
It was the Curse that Alessa would have to cross, if she were ever to reach Issamira at all.
Kel pushed his chair back from the desk and reached for his crutches, easing his weight onto them and turning his steps out into the hallway. Alessa was in her room as usual, but although there was a book open on her lap, her face was turned up and away, not out the window but sideways toward a blank spot on the wall.
Kel might’ve learned to walk quickly, but he’d probably never be able to walk quietly, and Alessa turned as he crossed the threshold, smiling at him. “Kel, there you are. I was just thinking about you.”
“You were?” She had looked so distracted, whatever it was. “What about me?”
She looked down at the book on her lap as if noticing it for the first time, and nudged it shut. “I was looking out the window—not now, earlier, in the small hall. There were children playing in the streets, and one of them had crutches a little like yours.”
“He did?” He sidled over to her, showing off how smooth and facile he could make the movement. “Was he fast like me?”
She shook her head, and it was as if she were shaking something off, finally turning her full attention to him. “Not at all. It seemed terribly hard for him to keep up with the others, I’m sorry to say. But he made me think of you, and of how much you’ve accomplished.”
Kel settled into the chair next to hers. “Remember when I took the stairs to the great hall for the first time?”
She laughed, lilting and genuine. “How could I forget? Eirnwin was convinced you were going to kill yourself, but he didn’t dare stop you once you’d started.”
“Father was worried too,” Kel remembered, “though he tried not to show it. But not you. You knew I could do it.”
“Mm.” She leaned back in the chair, gaze flicking slightly away as if she were seeing it again. “I was worried for you … other times. But not that day.”
“And what about you?” Kel asked. “No one ever worries about you.”
She looked sharply back at him again, her eyes going wide. “You do. Too much, I’m afraid.”
He shook his head. “I’ve been coddled always. If I ever wanted to do anything for myself—even walking!—I had to make it known. If I’d just done nothing, if I hadn’t ever told people to leave me be, they’d just have … taken care of everything. That was natural for them. But where you were concerned, everyone always just left you to yourself.”
“That isn’t true,” Alessa said. “Just look around us.”
Kel looked at the room that was always kept so painstakingly clean, the servants instructed not to allow so much as a single speck of dust. “That may be so—”
“It isn’t only that,” his sister said. “I wouldn’t be in any sort of health today without a healer. It’s just that there’s only so much he can do. You don’t say that people have been inattentive to you because they’ve been unable to fix your legs—it’s the same with me. I have an impediment, and I’ve just got to live with it; being fussed over all the time isn’t going to help, and I don’t like it any better than you do.”
“But the pain—”
“Oh, Kel, I’m not blind,” she said. “There are days when your legs hurt you; I’ve seen it. There are days when you ought to let Eirnwin carry you, but you never do. You suffer through it, because that’s what you’ve decided.” She smiled, a tad reproachfully. “You could allow me that much pride, at least.”
“But when my legs do hurt,” Kel said, “or even when they don’t, everyone’s always like to smother me. They offer me help whether or not I ask for it. But if you don’t ask, they ignore you altogether.”
Alessa considered it, stroking the side of her jaw with one finger. “Perhaps it’s because they can see where you must hurt, so they’re always reminded of it. But on the outside I look the same as everyone else.” She stretched slowly, straightening her back. “Or perhaps it’s because you’ll be king one day, and they know you’ll need to be strong. They just don’t realize you are already, so they’re too eager to prop you up—for their own peace of mind as much as anything. But for me … I don’t suppose it matters whether I’m strong or not, so they don’t mind that I’m weak.”
I mind, Kel thought, but he knew she’d only smile sympathetically at him if he said it. “It matters if you can’t cross the Curse,” he said instead. “And you can’t.”
Her lips drew together. “No one knows that I can’t.”
“They must know you’d put yourself in great danger to make that journey. You must know it.”
She sighed. “We’re all in danger, Kel. Even you and I are, even at this very moment.”
“So what if we are? Why does that mean you have to do something to rescue us? If it’s so important for me to be strong, why isn’t anyone asking me to do something?”
“Because you’ll—”
“Because I’ll be king, yes. Does that make you disposable?”
“Yes,” Alessa said, without a trace of hesitation.
Kel picked up his right crutch and slammed it back down onto the floor, and Alessa bit her lip to hide her smile. “Well, you’ve made your opinion on the matter plain enough. That doesn’t change the truth of it.” He was still wondering how to respond in words when she spoke again, her gaze half turned away as before. “You know, I’ve never heard you complain about your legs? Not even when you were such a young child that you might simply have asked why you were different, out of puzzlement more than anguish. But you never did, not once. Yet here I am about to be married—a common enough occurrence for someone my age, I’m sure—and you act like it’s the cruelest injustice you ever heard of. It’s quite perplexing.”
“You know what else I never asked?” Kel said. “I never asked why I was a prince, and other boys weren’t. From the moment I could understand anything, people told me that I would be king one day. Only me, of everyone in Reglay. So who can say whether I’ve really been fortunate or unfortunate? There are far more cripples in the world than princes.”
She smiled at that, and reached out to ruffle his hair. Kel almost forgot that he was angry, but then he remembered.
“You asked why I wasn’t a princess, though,” Alessa said. “I remember that.”
“I did ask that.” He curled his fingers loosely around the crutch.
“Alessa, do you want to go?”
She touched his hand. “I want to help. If going is the best way for me to do that, then so be it.”
Kel scowled. “Why is it the best way? Just because my father’s decided it is?”
“You say that like it’s a strange idea,” she said. “He’s the king. Of course his decisions are final. One day yours will be too.”
And that was a strange idea. What would happen if he ever made a mistake?
“I don’t want you to go,” he said. “Please.”
His sister shook her head. “It’s already been settled, Kel. This is how it has to be.”
“You don’t deserve—”
“I deserved much worse,” she said, very quietly. “Few bring more shame to a house, especially a royal house, than bastards. Yet His Grace has treated me as his own daughter.”
Kel clenched his fists. “Would he send his own daughter away like this, do you think?”
“Yes,” Alessa said, meeting his gaze easily; Kel was the one who had to struggle not to look away. “I believe he would.”
Kel was fully prepared to slam his door as hard as he could the moment he returned to his chambers. But as soon as he crossed the threshold, he found Eirnwin sitting in the armchair, a musty book open in front of him, and surprise drew him up short. Eirnwin, unlike Alessa, was actually reading, but he looked up when Kel walked in. “Something amiss, my lord?” he asked.
Kel took hold of the door, but he shut it carefully, making no more noise than the scraping of the latch. Then he flung himself down onto his bed, letting his crutches clatter to the floor. “Don’t act like you don’t know, Eirnwin.”
“Alessa,” Eirnwin said, and moved the book to the nearby desk. He kept it open, though, to mark his place.
“Yes, Lessa.” He paused. “And Father.”
Eirnwin stretched his legs out in front of him. “And me, I suppose.”
“Yes,” Kel said. Why not? “You could’ve kept arguing with him.”
“To what purpose, my lord? His Grace has decided.”
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