The Defiant Heir

by Melissa Caruso

  We stopped at the first post station for Marcello to report the assassin incident over the courier lamps. By the tautness of his features as he emerged, shaking his head, the conversation had not been reassuring. The courier lamp relay spire loomed behind him, its paired mirrors reaching above the trees to catch the signal from the previous post and send it on to the next one.

  “What is it?” I asked anxiously, hurrying over to meet him in the post station yard as the station soldiers worked with practiced efficiency on switching out our carriage horses.

  “No one had access to that list of our stops on this trip besides Colonel Vasante and the people traveling with us. Even the rank-and-file soldiers in your escort don’t know the details.”

  I stared at him, unease coiling in my belly. “That can’t be right. What about the clerks at the Mews? The Council of Nine? Lord Caulin?”

  “Certainly the Council would have access to the information, but we were really careful about not letting it out this time.” Grave lines pulled at Marcello’s face, making him look older. “So far as I know, aside from the colonel, it’s you, me, Zaira, Istrella, Lienne, Terika, and the officer in charge of our escort.”

  I glanced at the officer in question, Sergeant Andra, a no-nonsense woman with close-cropped hair who’d been a Mews soldier for twenty years. It was no easier to picture her as a Vaskandran agent than any of the others.

  “Someone must have overheard us talking about the trip.” I grabbed at the idea. “Zaira and I were discussing who to bring in the mess hall. Anyone could have heard us.”

  “Did you read off the list of stops the assassin had in that letter?” Marcello shook his head. “I suppose someone might have written it down, and a spy could have seen it. But otherwise, it looks as if the traitor is traveling with us.”

  The impossible knowledge settled over both of us, a burden too heavy to carry alone.

  “We should have gotten Terika to mix up a truth serum for the assassin,” I muttered. “She probably wouldn’t have lived long enough, but it would have been worth a try. It’s a pity Lienne killed her.”

  Lienne. I flicked my eyes to where she stood talking to some of the post soldiers, her hands going even faster than her mouth, making a friend by the smile on the young soldier’s face as she shook her head. It had never occurred to me think Terika’s Falconer might be the traitor; she seemed so warm and kind, and so protective of Terika. But I didn’t know her well, and she’d certainly ensured that the assassin didn’t give up any knowledge she might have had.

  “The worst part of this,” Marcello said in a low and troubled voice, “is that now I have to suspect people I’ve trusted for years.”

  I nodded. But I thought, No. The worst part is that someone you’ve trusted for years has already betrayed you.

  The hills of Callamorne first appeared as a blue haze in the distance. They could have been low stormclouds resting at the ends of the earth. As we drew closer, blue transformed to green and gold: the deep, rough green of pine woods and the dry autumn gold of fields and meadows, making a welcoming patchwork across the soft ridges thrust high against the cloudy sky.

  Then we crossed a river on a sturdy wooden bridge, and we were in Callamorne. The hills reared around us, rocky and familiar, the trees forming sloping secret halls beneath their branches. Immediately the houses were different: peaked roofs to slough off the snow in winter, and log walls rather than whitewashed plaster. They tucked into whatever pockets of level ground they could find, spreading out fields like tablecloths around them. Woodsmoke rose from their fieldstone chimneys.

  I drank in the scent. It brought back a flood of memories: visiting my cousins for the Festival of Bounty at the autumn harvest, when the long tables in the great hall of the royal castle overflowed with the hearty fare Callamorne favored. Red and gold leaves and clusters of purple grapes decorated the scant spaces between the platters, and the warm smells of roasted meat and potatoes filled the chill-touched air of the castle. My cousins and I crawled under the tables, in the long caves made by the fine white tablecloths. Roland pretended to be a Queen’s Musketeer, stalwart and brave; Bree was the monster hunting us through the tunnels. I wanted to be an artificer, full of ideas for magical traps I could set to catch the beast.

  You can’t, Roland had insisted, with the superior air of a ten-year-old explaining the ways of the world to his foolish young cousin. You’re a princess. Princesses can’t be mages.

  Yes they can, Bree had retorted hotly. Princesses can be whatever they want.

  I couldn’t remember if that particular argument had ended in a fistfight, but they often did, when Bree and Roland were young. Thank the Graces they’d stopped doing that, anyway; it had been terribly awkward to sit by, an outsider to their squabbles, waiting anxiously for them to laugh and be friends again.

  This time, I couldn’t hide under tables. The Callamornish people, unlike Raverrans, were not content to allow diplomacy to occur behind closed doors. They preferred grand public gestures and heartfelt speeches.

  Shrines to the Graces stood beside each house we passed, and more of the tiny wooden niches with their simple statues, weather-worn ribbons, and melted candle ends seemed to mark every other mile by the roadside. Callamorne took religion far more seriously than the more secular Raverra did. I’d have to remember to watch my tongue. I tried to think of a good way to suggest to Zaira that she do the same but decided she’d only take that as a challenge.

  Zaira. Graces, I needed to talk to her. I didn’t think I was imagining things; she was deliberately ignoring me. At first I thought I’d offended her; then I realized the last thing Zaira would do when she was offended was sulk in silence. She’d rip me up one side and down the other like a ruined seam.

  So I’d managed to actually hurt her, which was worse.

  It was hard to find a moment alone with her; I couldn’t precisely bring up a delicate personal matter when we were crammed into the coach with three other people. But when we stopped to water the horses at a stream, and Terika was engaged in chatting with Lienne, I saw my chance.

  Zaira had wandered a short way down the bank, then sat down and started chucking rocks into the current. I followed after, and plunked down awkwardly at her side.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She gave me a weary glance. “You say that all the damned time. I’m getting tired of it.”

  “All right then, let’s just say I wish I could take back what I said last night.” I threw a pebble into the stream, too; it disappeared into the rush without a splash. “About being afraid of you.”

  Zaira grunted. “Apologies aren’t worth the spit used to speak them if you don’t mean it.”

  “I do mean it,” I protested.

  She turned skeptical eyes on me. The sunlight caught in their deep, murky brown, bringing out the black circles of the mage mark around her pupils. “Don’t make yourself a liar. You are scared of me. Everyone is.” She frowned, and tossed another stone into the river. “Except Terika.”

  “She’s good for you,” I said softly.

  “She should be afraid of me. One way or another, I’m going to break her heart, if I don’t kill her first.” She said it in a matter-of-fact tone, as if she were talking about the common inevitability of rain.

  “Give good things a chance to happen.”

  Zaira’s eyebrows, I had noticed over our time together, had a lot to say about my judgment, none of it positive. “You’re a history scholar. Tell me, do your books talk about fire warlocks?”

  “Of course.” Fire warlocks tended to leave broad, ashy holes in the pages of history.

  “I bet the fire warlocks in those books always live happily ever after, surrounded by friends and family.” Zaira’s voice dripped sarcasm.

  They did not. I dropped my eyes to my mud-spattered boots. “Still …”

  “Let’s say I don’t blame you for being scared,” she said abruptly, “and leave it at that.”

  “But I’m not sca
red of you,” I insisted. “Not of the real you. It’s the way you get when the balefire takes over that’s …” I trailed off.

  “Terrifying?” she supplied.

  “Well, yes.”

  Zaira fell silent. I looked up and found her weighing a rock in her hand, staring off across the water. “I don’t know her,” she said in an odd, quiet voice.

  “Who?” I asked uncertainly. I searched her words for some sarcastic bite or blunt mockery, but I couldn’t find any.

  “I never remember a damn thing, when the fire takes me. Only the burning, and the joy.” A shiver shook her. “But I think it’s me.”

  I stared at her, transfixed, not sure what to say. “You,” I repeated at last, in the barest whisper.

  “Just like it’s still me when I dream.” She looked at me, and I was unprepared for the raw honesty in her bottomless dark eyes. “That balefire that makes you wet yourself—you might like to pretend it’s not a part of me, but you’re wrong. It’s me. That burning girl is me, even though she’s a stranger.” A bitter-edged smile crossed her lips. “Like a drunk who gets mean and then forgets it in the morning. With as much of a headache, like as not.”

  “More like the Grace of Victory, with her flaming sword,” I said, my voice coming out hushed and husky.

  “No, not a Grace. The Demon of Death.” Zaira stood, brushing dirt off her skirts. “And nobody in their right minds would court the Demon of Death. So Terika must be mad as a magpie.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said lightly. “If she can put up with the things that come out of your mouth on a daily basis, balefire must seem a small matter by comparison.”

  Zaira laughed, loud enough to startle a pair of crows in a nearby tree. They cawed in protest, amplifying the harsh sound of her mirth. Then she grabbed my elbow and hauled me companionably to my feet.

  “Oh, she likes my mouth right enough,” she chuckled. I felt my face go scarlet. “Come on, back in your coach, before you pass out from all that blood going to your head.”

  For the next two days, as we wended through the steepening hills, rain sheeted down from leaden skies; our outriders dripped miserably, hoods up and hunched against the weather. I invited Marcello into the carriage, but he shook his head, water dripping from the curling tips of his hair.

  “It’s best that I remain out here, my lady,” he told me through the window. “I’m on duty.”

  Thoughts of traitors and volcanoes kept me from entirely settling to my reading as the coach clambered and bumped up into the hills. Istrella seemed distracted as well, frequently looking up from her project and frowning as if there were something she wanted to say, but each time she sighed with apparent frustration and returned to her work.

  At last, Istrella lifted the finished device from her lap. It appeared to be a necklace, bounded with great lopsided chunks of obsidian.

  “For you. It’s a flare locket.” She held it out across the coach to Zaira, with a bit of a resigned shrug, as if accepting its flaws. “So you’ll have something other than your balefire to fall back on. Though I hear you’re quite good at stabbing people with knives, too.”

  Zaira took it, bemused. “Uh, thanks.”

  “It seems to use an awful lot of volcanic glass for a flare locket,” I said, trying to sound casual and not at all alarmed. “Is there a reason it needs so much power?”

  “That’s a good question.” Istrella tipped her head, as if thinking it over. “I suppose you could say I made some enhancements. I wouldn’t open it if you don’t need to.”

  Zaira’s grip on the locket chain became more cautious. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.

  I was about to ask what sort of enhancements when something caught my eye through the coach window: a lone figure standing on a boulder at the edge of the bluff that fell off beside the road. He gazed out over the fog-cupping valley, with its ragged pines catching shreds of passing clouds against the dark hills. Wind ruffled the feathers at his shoulders and the black tips to his pale hair, and a crow perched on his shoulder.

  “Stop the coach,” I called.

  Zaira glanced out the window. “Oh, him. Stopping for a tryst in this weather?”

  Terika climbed half over Zaira to peer at Kathe. “Mmm, nice view, though.”

  Zaira laughed and put an arm around her waist. “Might be worth getting your dress muddy for, eh?”

  “I’m going to go see what he wants,” I said loudly, pushing open the carriage door before we had completely stopped moving.

  “Oh, I’ll bet you are,” Zaira chuckled.

  I picked my way across the muddy road toward the rock on which Kathe stood. I could feel the eyes of our escort on me, Sergeant Andra’s hard stare, even the curious horses—and especially Marcello, who sat still dripping on his bay mare. The crow on Kathe’s shoulder watched me approach for a moment, then gently nipped the Witch Lord’s ear and took off. Its wings beat the air with ponderous grace as it sailed to a nearby pine tree.

  Kathe turned to face me, the yellow rings in his eyes standing out as one bright splash of color in the gray landscape.

  “There you are. Come on, there’s someone you should meet.” He hopped down from the rock, his cloak rising about him like wings.

  I glanced back at the two dozen soldiers staring at us. “Is it far? And hello, I’m delighted to see you, too.”

  Kathe grinned. “Far enough to make your guards worried, but I’m afraid you have to come alone.”

  He certainly knew how to reassure a lady. “And who would I be meeting?”

  “It’s a surprise.” He held out his hand. “This isn’t a trap, I promise.”

  I regarded his slim, elegant fingers dubiously. This was a terrible idea. My Callamornish cousins used to make up grim and gruesome stories about children coaxed off into the wilderness by Witch Lords in disguise; it had probably never occurred to them to invent a heroine foolish enough to follow one into the woods without the need for any trickery.

  Kathe knew it. The gleam in his eyes dared me to come with him anyway.

  I sighed. “If this ends with my bones carved into necklaces for foxes, I’m going to be very put out.”

  “Never fear. Foxes don’t like jewelry.”

  I turned and waved cheerily over my shoulder. “I’ll be right back,” I called. “Sorry to make you wait!”

  Even from fifty feet away, I could see the whites of Marcello’s eyes as they widened in alarm. But I took Kathe’s hand, feeling the tingle of power under my fingertips like unspent lightning, and let him guide me down a short rocky slope to a path that vanished into the gloomy forest.

  “This is the part where, traditionally, I am eaten by wolves,” I said lightly, to mask the racing of my heart.

  “Crows, in my case,” he corrected me. “Though I get along reasonably well with wolves.”

  The air under the pines was cool and damp, but it held a faint trace of woodsmoke from nearby houses, reminding me that this was Callamorne, not the wilds of Vaskandar. I let my shoulders relax a little. “I’ve read that vivomancers tend to favor a particular animal or plant they identify with most closely, even though their powers work on all of them. Is that how Witch Lords get their titles?”

  “Of course. It’s always easier to work with your preferred animal—like speaking in your native language, even if you know dozens of them fluently.”

  “What do you do if there’s already a Witch Lord with your animal’s name?”

  Kathe’s teeth gleamed in the shadows. “I imagine you’d have to kill them.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was joking.

  Soft gray light poured through the trees, and we stepped out into a forest of charred black trunks, rising like picked-over bones against the cloudy sky. A sloping hill of green stretched beneath them, knee-high trees and grasses rising up to fill the gap left by an old fire.

  A woman stood among the blackened spires. A green velvet gown with cape and train flowed from her shoulders, strikingly out of place in the f
orest; it swept a half-circle through the coarse brush and ashy twigs behind her as she turned to face us. Her hair fell in three pale braids down to the backs of her knees, crowned by a delicate golden circlet shaped into a pattern of artfully woven briars. The mage mark shone venom green in her eyes.

  “You’re late,” she said to Kathe in a silken voice, rich with resonance and power. Then her gaze fell on me, and her lip curled. “And what is this?”

  I stiffened. Before I could retort, Kathe squeezed my hand and released it, offering the lady a slight bow. “Forgive me. I couldn’t pass up this opportunity. My lady, may I present the Lady Amalia Cornaro. Amalia, meet the Witch Lord of Sevaeth—the Lady of Thorns.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Kathe might as well have hit me in the face with a tree branch. I stared, stunned, the damp air crystallizing to frost in my lungs. What was an enemy Witch Lord, the dreaded Lady of Thorns herself, doing in Callamorne, half a day’s ride from the capital?

  The lady’s eyes narrowed to poison-green slits. “Amalia Lochaver Cornaro? Is this a gift you bring me, Crow Lord?”

  Dozens of tiny green shoots sprang up around the hem of her gown, curling skyward in graceful spirals. They sprouted thorns as they grew and began leaning in my direction.

  Kathe laughed. “Hardly. Lady Amalia and I are courting. I thought you two should meet.” He sounded completely, infuriatingly at ease. But then, he didn’t have a Witch Lord glaring murder at him.

  “Charmed,” I said, clipping the word off like a withered rose.

  The Lady of Thorns gave no acknowledgment that I’d spoken. “You’re courting a Lochaver?” she demanded of Kathe. “What is the meaning of this? I come to discuss a deal with you in good faith, and you flaunt my enemy in front of me?”