He didn’t move. “I can’t.”
“I can’t leave you here.”
He shook his head. “They have my sister, my friends, my guards. Hostages, if they aren’t dead already.”
“You cannot help them from a cell,” Osias said.
“I can’t just run off and leave them. I won’t.”
But she stood waiting. Eyes wide. Agonized. He wanted to reach out and touch her, prove to himself she was real. Instead he relented and moved forward slowly so not to spook her. She shuttered the lantern down again and led them not up the stairs, but back, deeper into darkness, deeper into the dungeon. He followed quietly, his bad knee stiff and aching in the cold, his bad shoulder tight. She gestured him ahead with the lantern and indicated narrow steps that cut abruptly between cells.
He gave her a look but he obeyed. The tunnel was black as pitch but for the shuttered lantern; dank, close, cold. His mother was so silent behind him that he glanced back to make sure she was still there. She glided in her slippers, ghostlike. His mind tangled with questions, but he buried them in the sick knot in his chest, where they’d lived his whole life.
Maybe he didn’t want the answers.
The tunnel went up and a thin pool of grey light stretched toward them. Rain pattered as they exited the palace, the doorway old and sunken so that Draken had to duck. For a moment, he breathed. Sea air, crisp, wet. It cleansed his lungs. The backs of buildings faced them. His mother shut the thick, iron-banded door and turned toward its twin inserted nearby into the great wall of stone. A key, the snick of a well-oiled lock, and it swung open to reveal a narrow staircase, nearly as dark as the tunnel. Osias ghosted behind them.
“Was that Kordewyn?” he asked as they climbed. The next city over, if they had left the palatial city.
“Yes,” she said.
They reached the top of the steps and entered a quiet back hall. A couple of low tables sat against the wall between doors. She touched his bare back to guide him. His skin quivered under her fingertips. She led them around a corner and through lacquered red doors into what must be her apartments.
He paused, feeling dirty in the opulence. Draperies woven in golds and browns cloaked the windows against the cold, plush rugs stretched across the smooth wooden floors, and the walls were covered in faded frescoes and ornate tapestries. The furniture was upholstered in soft fabrics. In the far corner, under a window where the draperies had been pulled to let in the sunlight, an unfinished tapestry filled a loom.
“I had a footman I trust bring you a bath and fresh clothes from your own things. Just through there. When you finish, you may eat. We’ve a little time before they start to work out where you’ve gone.”
He felt his brows drop and he looked at her. She looked back at him with unsmiling patience.
“Aye, then. Thank you, my lady.”
Osias followed him in without asking. Thick hangings cloaked the bed and a fire burned brightly in his mother’s bedchamber. But no tub. He saw another open doorway and hesitantly walked to it … a small chamber with a steaming tub and another small fire. The room was cloyingly hot, welcome after the chill of the dungeon. True to her word, his own things were stacked on a table, Elena’s necklace on top. He let his fingers trail over the chain, wondering how she’d managed it, but he was too filthy and sweaty to put it on.
He stripped and sank into the tub, letting the warmth seep into his skin. He picked up a stiff sea sponge and started scrubbing. The water quickly soured with dirt and ink. “You did this.”
Osias wandered about examining things, his hands clasped behind his back. “You needed help and I found it.”
“How did you know about her?”
Slight smile. “Did you think your past is too complicated for me to unravel?”
“Bruche told you.” The spirit swordhand had been heavy on his mind lately.
“I still have my powers whether Korde likes it or not.”
Draken stared at him. “Did he tell you before he left me … or recently?”
“He followed you across the sea. Very determined, Bruche. I’ve told him I thought it was time for his rest but he refuses to listen.”
Draken sank back in the water with a sigh. He hadn’t imagined it, then.
When he came back out, clad in his own loose trousers, long-sleeved tunic, and pendant, it was to find Sikyra had shed her cloak and knelt by the fire, poking it up. Food was laid but no servants were in sight.
“Please. Sit and eat. My cousin provided you little courtesy as of yet. I hope to remedy that.”
Osias asked if he could smoke and Sikyra nodded. Soon the softly cloying scent of Gadye smoke drifted through the room. The Mance remained standing and apart, listening.
Draken sat, still cautious. The food was blessedly hot and delicious; he’d forgotten how much he missed the familiar grainbread, mutton, and shellfishes from the Outer Hills and Sister Bay.
“You should know. Earlier, with the king, was a ruse to draw the rebels out. My cousin simply took it too far.”
He ate for a moment, quiet, trying not to think of Soeben, dead on that bloodstained slab. “The King is a crafty man.”
“He has to be. His life is in danger, his whole line is threatened, and with it the world.”
Cradle tales, Draken thought, but he didn’t dare say it.
She sat across from him. “But don’t blame him. It was I who thought to use you in this way.”
He looked up at her, chewed, swallowed, said nothing as he reached for his cup. Halmar would be having fits, his eating without tasters. “You knew who I am?”
“That the Prince of Brîn is my son? Yes.”
“How?”
“Your father made no secret of who he was, not with me.”
Draken absorbed this, drank more wine. That tidbit could mean any number of things. No point in doing anything less than jumping in. He was back in Monoea, where someone might stab him in the back but at least they maintained no pretense that they were doing anything less. “Did he brag on his royal blood as he raped you?”
She reached across the table and slapped his cheek. Hard enough to snap his head to the side. Hard enough to make his eyes water.
“Is that what you think you are? Rape get? You should be ashamed.”
He stared at her, stunned. It had been easier thinking she’d been raped, that she’d been the victim. Instead she’d broken strict mores without regard to consequence. Pleasure, then. That was all his life amounted to?
He waited for the sting, and his sudden fury, to settle before replying. “Aissyth’s father banished you from court and left me a slave. What was I to think?”
She shook her head and sat back gracefully, her hands folded in her lap like sleeping snakes. “You think our King is so cruel to take my child and banish me from court after a rape? No. I was punished not for being a victim, but for pursuing a slave for a lover and daring to bear his child.”
His brows climbed. “You mean to say you loved my father?”
“I mean to say I wanted him. And when I found out I was pregnant, I wanted his child.”
An itchy apprehension spread through Draken. He had no idea what to say so he just reached for his cup again, downed the wine. When he lowered his cup, the pitcher was in his mother’s hand, ready to pour. He held his cup out but didn’t drink when it was full.
She set the pitcher down. It clinked, metal on stone. “You had a brother, did you know?”
Had. Past tense. Draken set his cup down and rested his hand on his knee. “You were married?”
“Of course not. Who would have me after I fouled myself with a Brînian slave and had a mixblood son?”
He couldn’t really blame the court, knowing his father. Fouled, indeed. “Priests in Akrasia claim sundry are tainted. It’s why they’re enslaved there.”
She snorted. “Priests and their laws. Don’t quote them at me.”
“That treads close to heresy,” Osias said, though his tone was mild. He’d some
how managed to glide up to Draken’s elbow. There was another chair, but he remained standing.
“What have the gods ever done for me? They stole my two sons. I’ve no use for religon.”
“I’m the last one to defend the gods,” Draken said. “What was his name?”
“Laethyn.” Her voice lost its sharp edge. “A shooting accident … so I was told. It wasn’t so long ago he died, not even a Sohalia before you left.”
The name was familiar. A brother. He’d had a brother, here, underfoot at Ashwyc, and he’d never been told. “What was his work?”
“Royal Huntsman. The King was fond of him, rather as he is fond of you.”
Draken snorted. “He has a funny way of showing it.”
She ignored that. “After Laethyn died, I realized my mistake for keeping my distance. I realized what I was missing with you. But before I could get my courage up to approach you, Lesle had been killed and you were …” She looked down, smoothed her hand over her thigh.
“Exiled.”
“Gone,” she whispered, her shoulders tight. “I had done nothing for you and it was too late. Aissyth had his hands tied once it was known how Lesle died. If he’d allowed you to stay, he knew you would stop at nothing to solve her murder. And if it all came out, his dissenters would have used it against him, accused you of using magicks, accused him of defending someone using magicks. They would have used you against him. He had to send you away to protect you.”
“To protect himself.”
“To protect the Crown,” she said firmly.
It made a grim sense. Too much sense. He reminded himself that though she was his mother, he didn’t know her. Was it truth? “Did King Aissyth get you up to this? Telling me?”
“No. He’ll be angry that you know.”
“Why?”
“Because it betrays how much you mean to him.”
Draken snorted. “He banished me. He just tried to kill me—”
“I told you. A ruse to draw out the rebels.”
“Brilliant. Even better. He used me.”
“Kings always use people.”
His wife was dead. Elena waited at home with his child. Men had died in the attack on Seakeep, good men on both sides. He shook his head. “I don’t even know what you’re trying to convince me of.”
She leaned forward. “Help Aissyth fight the threat to the Crown.”
He felt for the Queen’s necklace around his throat and gripped the chain. “This isn’t my kingdom any longer. This is not my fight.”
“Perhaps not. But your new home is threatened by these Landed rebels. Ashen, we call them.”
“Aye, I’m familiar. One of them enlightened me as to their interest in us. But Monoeans discarded magic long ago and have gotten on fine without it.”
“Yes but these Ashen, they believe magic is the will of the gods. And they believe you’re godsworn. They would make you an emperor if you let them.”
“Nonsense.”
“It’s not. I’ve been studying them for Sohalias. Why do you think Laethyn died? A hunting accident, my arse. He was shot in the eye and the throat. Two arrows. They were trying to get me to stop investigating them for the King.”
“Do you know a ship captain called Yramantha?”
“Yes, the same who carried to exile, isn’t she?” At his stare, she shrugged. “I’m nearly as invisible as servants. People talk around me. Yramantha is Ashen. Odd that. They usually only let men act. Maybe they thought since you knew her she could better persuade you.”
A chill slid through him and cold sweat itched his back under his woolen shirt. They had gone to great lengths to get him to Monoea. “She threatened to kill Elena if I didn’t come.”
“They have the determination of the faithful and many blades on their side.”
“Which sect?”
“Moonminster. You can pick them out because some have started marking themselves with ashes. And they wear a moon sigil on their tabards—three twined crescents. Shows how brazen they’ve gotten.”
“Aye, I’ve seen it.” He didn’t know much about Moonminster Faith except that they were fatalists. He looked at Osias, whose smoke clouded the air around him.
The Mance shook his head slowly. “Fatalists who worship doctrine more than the gods.”
Draken frowned. “There are temples in Akrasia, but Moonminster is illegal here.”
His mother shrugged. “Last I heard, so was killing Princes and rebellion against the Crown.”
He thought of the blood on the pavers in the courtyard at Seakeep, of war on his shores, of thousands of Monoeans invading Brîn and Akrasia. Of the Moonlings and Gadye captured and enslaved for their magic. Noble Akra-sians fighting and dying. His own wild, gallant Brînians massacred. Even the powerful Mance couldn’t fight off ten or twenty thousand Ashen if they dared breach the gates of Eidola. The Banes would overrun Akrasia again, destroying everyone and everything in their path.
“And if I refuse to cooperate?”
“They already threatened your Queen, did they not? How valid was the threat?”
It was a moment before he could answer. “They had her necklace and a lock of her hair to prove they could get close to her.”
Her brows raised. “Impressive, though I doubt an Ashen could get so close to an Akrasian Queen. They must already have allies in Akrasia.”
He glanced at Osias. “We’d thought of it but we can’t work out who. Aarinnaie did uncover an islander nêre—a bloodlord—plotting against me. Shares that sigil with the Ashen. Harbors a grudge against Father—something political. And there’s my inheriting out of wedlock.” He set down his table knife. “Aarinnaie. The others. We have to get them out straightaway.”
After a hesitation, his mother reached over and laid her hand over his where it rested on his knee, pale skin against dark, smooth against rough. Her nails were trim and neat, her fingers soft. He had to resist pulling his hand away, not because he loathed her touch, but because he feared she loathed his.
“Lady Sikyra,” he said, not quite a question.
She gave him a tentative smile and for one horrible moment he thought she would ask him to call her Mother.
He willed his hand to relax under hers. “I don’t know how to fight a Monoea that is determined to conquer Akrasia.”
“How did you win your throne?”
A sore spot. His throne was neither earned nor won. “It was given me by my father and then by my Queen.” And by the ruddy gods.
“And how did you win the heart of your Queen?”
His lips parted. Lies and subterfuge. At last he shook his head. “I shouldn’t have done.”
“Do your people love you?” she asked.
“Aye,” Osias said. “They do.”
Her gaze traveled over Draken’s face, his locks, over his shoulders and down to their joined hands. “Talking to you now, it is made clear to me, for if I saw you on a road or at court I would not know you as my son. And yet, your manner urges me to love you.”
He shook his head, bewildered. They’d only known each other a little while, less than a candle-burn. He didn’t know if he could trust her. He didn’t want to.
And yet something in him surged. “How? How do I beat them?”
“One word at a time,” she said softly, her fingers squeezing his.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sikyra held out a key on a ribbon, the one from the outer doors. “Use this to make your escape. Do you remember the way?”
He nodded. “And how will you make yours, my lady?”
“This is my home. I’m not going anywhere.” She gave a delicate shrug and rose to her feet.
He followed suit. It was past time to go. “Are my people housed in the guest corridors?”
“The one with the blue varnished doors.”
He nodded. He knew it. “Will you come?”
“No, I cannot make an appearance where I might be seen. The King values my advice, but quite privately. I am still banished from c
ourt.”
“Banished … yet you live in the palace.” Skulking about in tunnels and secret staircases.
She gave him a sad smile. “It is the Monoean way, is it not? A lifetime alone for a few nights of pleasure?”
She took up his cloak and laid it over his shoulders, smoothing the fabric down over his back and straightening his damp locks. An odd, tingling warmth trailed her touch. The back of his neck heated.
“What will you do now?” she asked. “Will you help Aissyth?”
“I cannot. My loyalty is to my Queen now, and Brîn.”
“Stop the rebellion here and it will never reach your shores.”
He wanted to refuse her even as he thought he should ask her to come back to Brîn with him when this was done. But he had no idea if he would survive the day to do any of it. And would she even want to go? He faced leaving her … again. It hadn’t meant much before, when he didn’t know her. Now it was all changed.
He could see the beauty she’d been, the fine bones under her creased skin, the shape of her eye, the curve of her lips, her silky, fair hair. He wondered again what she must think when she looked at him. He was so different; his build, his skin, his hair, his scars. All of him.
He couldn’t refuse her. “I’ll do my best, my lady. Thank you.” He dipped his chin to her, shamefully curt, and strode out.
He pulled up his hood, walking without having to think where to go. This time of year it was chilly in the corridors sometimes, for no fires warmed them. Many people moved between the rooms with cloaks on. Still, it would be best if he were able to reach his sister undetected.
“What will you do?” Osias asked.
He shook his head. “What do we really know but what she’s told us? That this is a religious revolution? That the King was using me to suss out his assassin?”
“It worked. It makes sense.”
“Rebellion makes no sense, not for the Landed. None of them are hungry or wanting.”
“Except, perhaps, for religion. For magic.”
He snorted. “And Rinwar sends his son to kill the King? To what end, when it announces his involvement?”
Emissary Page 21
