The Lyre Thief

by Jennifer Fallon

  Charisee glanced up at the sky, wondering if it would rain. It had been overcast and humid all day and a downpour would certainly put a damper on things, but the clouds had evaporated and the night was clear. There was no escape from that quarter.

  “May I have this dance?”

  Charisee looked up, a refusal on her lips, when she realized the man asking her to dance wasn’t a man at all.

  “Lord . . . Erlon? What are you doing here?”

  “Asking you to dance.”

  “I’m not sure if my husband . . .”

  “Lord Frederak! May I dance with your wife?” he leaned over and shouted into Frederak’s good ear.

  The old man looked up and smiled. Jakerlon had apparently woken him. “Eh? Yes . . . of course. Be my guest.” He smiled at Charisee, patting her knee with his bony, arthritic hand, “No need for you to sit here watching the fun, my dear, just because I’m not up to it. Off you go. Enjoy yourself. You won’t get a chance to dance much when we get to Highcastle.”

  With a great deal of trepidation, Charisee allowed the God of Liars to lead her out to join the rest of the dancers. She couldn’t believe the sheer brazen gall of him. Or that he would risk appearing here on a night like this. But as she looked around, she realized she could shout the truth about him at the top of her voice, and not a soul would believe her.

  Jakerlon said nothing as he led her beyond the dancers and the crowd and into the shadows beyond, where the now abandoned marquees of the performers stood against the white palace wall, waiting to be pulled down tomorrow once the festivities were over.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, glancing back over her shoulder. Surely she would be missed if she wandered too far from the party.

  “You have a problem, sugar plum,” he told her. “I am helping you fix it.”

  “What problem? The only problem I have is you dragging me away from the wedding table. How am I going to explain . . . ?”

  “Lie.” He stopped and turned her to face him. “I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t quite exceptional at that.”

  “I know, but—”

  “But, nothing,” Jakerlon cut in. “You have bigger problems than missing dessert.”

  “What problems?”

  “As we speak, honeycakes, the palace guard is moving quietly to lock down the palace. By midnight the whole city will be sealed, and there are more than a dozen Harshini on their way here to scan the minds of every guest at the wedding.”

  “Why?” she asked, shaking free of his grip. She hadn’t sensed anything amiss; although the seat beside her remained empty all evening, she’d just put it down to the informality of the wedding feast.

  “The why is not your problem, precious,” Jakerlon said, lifting the closed flap of what had been the fortune teller’s tent, earlier in the day. “She is.”

  The God of Liars gave Charisee a gentle shove in the small of her back, and pushed her inside.

  A single lamp on the fortune teller’s table lit the tent. There was a young woman waiting inside with her back turned. She spun around as the tent flap dropped closed and Charisee gasped with surprise.

  It was Rakaia.

  Chapter

  61

  RAKAIA STUDIED CHARISEE in the light from the single lamp on the fortune teller’s table for a moment. She was almost unrecognizable from the slave who’d balked at taking her place. Her sister was dressed in the gown Rakaia had brought to Hythria for her wedding, and no matter how glad she was not to be standing in Charisee’s shoes or wearing that gown, it still irked a little to think how much better it looked on Charisee than it did on her.

  “Who was that man?” she asked. “I hope you trust him, because if he tells anyone . . .”

  “Lord Erlon is a friend,” Charisee told her. “He won’t betray me.”

  On impulse, Rakaia stepped forward and hugged Charisee tight, relieved she was still alive. And that she had not marched straight down from her room in Winternest all those months ago and confessed everything to Valorian Lionsclaw.

  When Charisee didn’t hug her back, Rakaia stepped back and smiled at her sister, wishing she could reassure Charisee she hadn’t come here to spoil anything. She just wanted to find Mica and leave, but Charisee wouldn’t understand that. “You look amazing, Chari.”

  “You look . . . different.”

  Rakaia smoothed down her blond hair self-consciously. “That was Mica’s idea. He thought changing my hair would help my disguise.”

  “He knows who you are, then?” Charisee didn’t sound too pleased to learn that.

  She nodded. “He won’t betray us, Chari. I promise.”

  “Why did you come here today, Rakaia?”

  “I didn’t come here to cause trouble for you, Chari. I was looking for Mica, actually. I was worried he might . . .” She stopped, deciding it was pointless explaining what she feared Mica might be planning. Nothing had happened all day. She hadn’t found Mica in the crush, admittedly, but Charisee’s wedding day had passed uneventfully. There were no killings, no guests dropping dead from strange songs . . . in fact, other than Charisee mentioning she’d seen Mica earlier in the day, she wouldn’t have even known he had ever been here. “I thought he’d be here, performing. And then I saw you . . . You make a lovely bride, by the way. Red really suits you.”

  “You think I’m a lovely bride? Have you seen my husband?”

  All Rakaia’s long buried guilt came bubbling up at Charisee’s question. She had escaped Hablet’s wrath and convinced herself she was doing Charisee a favor, but they both knew the lie for what it was.

  And yet Charisee didn’t seem to be blaming her. She certainly wasn’t demanding Rakaia march out of this tent and confess the truth, something she had feared was about to happen when Charisee’s messenger found her in the crowd and brought her here to meet her sister.

  “I’m sorry, Chari,” she said.

  “No, you’re not,” Charisee said. “You’re alive and glad to be out of the way, before Hablet finds out you’re not his daughter.”

  “How . . . how do you know that?”

  “I know more than you think, Rakaia,” she said.

  Rakaia felt as if her head was swimming. How could Charisee know something like that? Had Sophany said something to her before they left Talabar? Rakaia’s palms were sweating. The heat in the dark, closed tent was almost unbearable, made worse by the elegant stranger standing before her, who had once been her slave.

  “You know, I never really thought you’d go through with this,” she said, wiping her hands on her skirt. She could feel the sweat beading on her brow, while Charisee seemed as cool as snowmelt. “I really did think you’d chicken out at the last minute, throw yourself on the lord of Winternest’s mercy, and set every Raider in Winternest after me.”

  “Then why did you suggest I pretend to be you, if you thought I wouldn’t do it?”

  “I figured you’d buy me some time to get away.”

  “You didn’t need my help, Rakaia,” Charisee said. “Not when you had the demon child ready to come to your rescue.”

  Rakaia had to grip the table. “How could you possibly know about that?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Do you know where she is?”

  “Who? The demon child? No! Of course I don’t. Who told you this?”

  “The same person who told me they are about to seal the palace and scan the minds of every guest here. The Harshini are on their way.”

  Mica . . . what have you done?

  “Has something happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Charisee said. “And to be honest, I don’t care. But you have to leave this place. You have to leave Hythria. Now. And never return.”

  “What about you? Aren’t you afraid what they’ll find if the Harshini look into your mind?”

  Charisee shook her head. “I have nothing to fear,” she said. “I am a princess of Fardohnya. You are the one lying when you claim to be that.”

  Rakaia felt she was staring a
t a stranger. The Charisee she had always been able to cajole or sweet-talk into doing whatever she wanted was a dim and distant memory. The quietly determined young woman standing before her was a different person. It was as if along with her regal clothes Charisee had found a regal spine to go with them.

  “I’ll go,” she promised. “But only if you promise me something.”

  “What?”

  “That you’ll try to be happy. For me.”

  “For you?” Charisee asked. “You who are tripping around the countryside, free as a bird, while I live every day in fear of being exposed as a fraud. Of course I promise to be happy. Perish the thought you might feel any guilt about what you’ve done to me.”

  “You’re angry at me for leaving.”

  “No, Rakaia, I am angry at you for coming back. You set us on this path and now you are endangering both our lives. So leave me to it. Go. Please.”

  There was no point in arguing about it, although what she expected Charisee to feel about what she’d done still wasn’t clear even to Rakaia. Mica would have said she wanted forgiveness. If Charisee was happy, then throwing her in the path of an eighty-year-old husband and the real risk of assassination would be much easier to live with.

  She shook her head. Rakaia wanted to leave, but there was one small problem. “I still haven’t found Mica . . .”

  “I’ll speak to Lord Erlon. If Mica is still here, my . . . friend will find him. I’ll have him get Mica out of here too, before they seal the gates. But you mustn’t wait for your minstrel here in the palace grounds, Rakaia. You must get out of here before they try to question anyone.”

  Charisee turned to leave, but she stopped with her hand on the tent flap and looked back over her shoulder at her sister. “I’m glad you’ve found someone and I’m not happy, Rakaia, but I’m not truly unhappy, either. I have a chance, however short it might be before Hablet’s assassins catch up with me, to have a good life. Please don’t ruin it for me.”

  “I’ll be gone before you’re back at the bridal table. I promise.”

  Charisee nodded and left the tent. Filled with too many confusing emotions to sort through right now, Rakaia waited impatiently for a few minutes and then followed her. By then, there was no sign of either Charisee or her strangely compelling friend.

  Rakaia hurried along in the darkness beside the empty tents to the gate, where sure enough, as Charisee had predicted, the guard was being quietly doubled. The gates were closed but as she approached one of the guards gave the signal to open them.

  She moved to get a better look and realized there were more than a dozen white-robed Harshini from the Sorcerers’ Collective waiting outside. In the lead was an assassin and beside him stood the High Arrion of the Sorcerers’ Collective. Rakaia didn’t know her on sight, but she knew what those robes and diamond-shaped pendant meant.

  The gates swung open and Rakaia dashed through in the confusion of the Harshini arrival, almost shaking from fear of being called back and interrogated. But she got away clean. As soon as she was out of the palace walls, she picked up her skirts and broke into a run, certain that whatever was about to put an end to Charisee’s wedding day had something to do with Mica and the revenge he wanted to take on the Wolfblades.

  Her only hope now was to get back to the boat, wait for Mica, and then make him undo whatever it was he had done . . . providing of course it could be undone and he hadn’t just murdered the entire Wolfblade family while Charisee was enjoying her wedding feast.

  Chapter

  62

  “WHAT DO YOU suppose is happening at home?” Damin asked as they waited for the door in the cliff face to open. R’shiel didn’t know how long they’d been here. In the perpetual twilight of Sanctuary, time was an elusive creature that didn’t like to be pinned down.

  “Adrina probably hasn’t even noticed you’re missing, Damin.”

  “I probably missed the wedding.” Damin didn’t sound particularly upset at the prospect. He stretched his feet out and crossed his arms. “There’ll be hell to pay for that. No pun intended.”

  “What wedding?” Mandah asked as she paced in front of Damin and the cliff door, waiting for it to open. R’shiel still wasn’t sure if she was coming with them or intended to wait here until they returned—assuming, of course, they did return.

  “Adrina’s younger sister is marrying the man who raised my mother,” Damin told her. “All for the greater glory of Hythria. I was supposed to give the bride away at the ceremony.”

  “Raised your mother? Founders, Damin, how old is the groom?”

  “Eighty-something, give or take.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Mandah said.

  Damin appeared amused by Mandah’s righteous indignation. “You know, I’ve always imagined that’s what Rakaia is going to say the first time she sees her husband naked.”

  R’shiel’s turned to him, frowning. “Rakaia?”

  “Her Serene Highness, the Princess Rakaia of Fardohnya. One of Adrina’s countless younger sisters sent to Hythria like a brood mare off to market so her father can guarantee access to the trade routes through the Highcastle Pass.”

  “That’s not a common name. Rakaia.”

  Damin shrugged. “Never really thought about it. Why?”

  “It’s just . . . It’s odd. I met this Fardohnyan girl a few months ago named Rakaia. She wasn’t on her way to Hythria, though. She was heading out of Hythria, actually, into Fardohnya through the Widowmaker Pass.”

  “If she wasn’t surrounded by a two-hundred-strong entourage, then it wasn’t our Rakaia. By all accounts, she’s a holy terror. ’Rina calls her the Tantrum-Throwing One.”

  “Whoever the girl was that I met, she was definitely high-born. She told me she’d been sold into slavery to settle her father’s debts. Or did she?” Looking back, R’shiel couldn’t recall. “I might have just assumed it, now that I think about it, and she didn’t bother to correct me.”

  “It is odd,” Mandah agreed, stopping her pacing long enough to ponder the problem. “I mean, what are the chances of there being two Fardohnyan high-born girls named Rakaia in Winternest at the same time? You don’t suppose . . . ?”

  Damin rolled his eyes. He was sitting on a rock opposite the cliff, waiting like the rest of them for the door to open. “Gods, you two! Listen to yourselves! You see intrigue in everything!”

  “How do you figure that?” R’shiel asked, wondering if she should rethink her decision to take Damin with her through the door. She’d forgotten how irritatingly sure of himself the High Prince of Hythria was.

  “Two girls named Rakaia and immediately there is a plot afoot? How do you know the one you met wasn’t lying to you, R’shiel? Maybe she just liked the name. Or maybe she was telling the truth and it was her name? The simplest reason is usually the right one, you know.”

  “Speaks the man who decided the woman he would eventually marry was a screaming shrew based on a great deal of third-hand gossip and the word of a man negotiating the surrender of his army.”

  Damin smiled, unperturbed. “Ah, but you see, my wife is a screaming shrew. She just chooses not to scream at me.”

  “I can’t for the life of me imagine why not,” Mandah said, resuming her pacing. “Isn’t there some way you can open that door?”

  R’shiel shook her head. She’d examined the door closely and tested her power against it to no avail. This was Death’s realm, and her power, which in the real world was almost unlimited, was severely restricted here. “It will open when it’s ready.”

  “Where do you think it leads?” Damin asked. “I mean, there are seven hells, right, each one of them progressively better, depending on how deserving you’ve been in this life?”

  R’shiel turned to look at Damin, not sure where he was going with this. “I suppose.”

  “You suppose?” Mandah asked, appalled. “You’re about to step into hell, R’shiel, and you suppose?”

  Damin wasn’t smiling. He seemed to be in agreement with
Mandah. “My point is, some of these hells are going to be better than others. Right?”

  “Of course.”

  “So which one is on the other side of that door? The one full of butterflies and fluffy kittens or the hell full of flesh-eating lava monsters? Do they get better or worse the further in you go? And do you even have a plan for getting out again?”

  R’shiel really hadn’t thought about any of that. Like a bride who couldn’t see past the altar, all she’d dreamed of for more than a decade was finding her way here, to bring Brak back to the life Death had ended so unfairly and prematurely to save her. Somehow, she’d assumed that once Brak agreed to return, Death would let them both go.

  She hadn’t counted on fighting her way in and then out again.

  “I don’t know,” she confessed.

  “Will your magical powers work in hell?”

  R’shiel shrugged. “I don’t know that, either.”

  “You really haven’t thought this through, have you?”

  She wanted to deny the charge, even though it was patently true, when the edges of the door began to glow. Around her head, like a tiny gusts of wind, the air began to move as the gathered spirits waiting in Sanctuary were drawn to the opening. Sanctuary must be full of them, she realized. Full of the spirits of the truly dead, waiting for their chance to enter the afterlife properly, to find the hell they’d made for themselves during their mortal lives.

  Turning her face up to feel their butterfly kiss on her cheeks as they clustered around the door, R’shiel wondered why she’d never noticed them before. She’d lived here for months after Joyhinia tried to kill her. Perhaps it was because only here, standing in front of this plain, inconspicuous door, was she exposed to a high enough concentration of them to notice. The Harshini had never said a word to her about this door or where it led, either, but in hindsight that didn’t surprise her. The Harshini couldn’t lie, but they’d never had to because she had never posed the question.