Traitor (A Crown of Lilies Book 1)

by Melissa Ragland

  She took another long, silent sip of her wine. My own still sat untouched in my hand, forgotten as I watched the most formidable woman I’d ever known pour her deepest, darkest truths out onto the floor before me.

  “And then there was Brigid,” she continued. “Sweet girl. Far too gentle for that place. Tommy was mad for her from the start. When Fenton took her….”

  I felt the shift, felt the room darken a shade around us as the sheer fury of that memory gathered on my mother’s face.

  “I found Tommy kneeling on the bed, covered in his father’s blood like some feral beast.” Deep green eyes welled with angry tears. “I hated him for it,” she whispered savagely. “I had spent three years watching, waiting for the right moment. He was mine.”

  I swallowed, afraid to make a sound.

  Her eyes flicked to me, that ruthlessness all but vanishing in the span of a moment, carefully buried where she’d always kept it, where no one but her could see.

  “Tommy took that from me. And I took the blame for him. That is the debt that bought your ships.”

  It took me a moment to muster my voice.

  “They believed you killed him?”

  “It was an easy enough story to swallow. Who among us had more reason to want him dead?”

  “But why? Why would you protect him?” I balked incredulously.

  She fixed me with her practical stare, the soul beneath bruised and aching. “Because Tommy had sat by my bedside for two months, forcing stew into my mouth when I begged him to let me die. Because I wanted to disappear, to get as far away from Dockside as possible, and it was as good a reason as any to leave.”

  Amid the long silence that followed, I finally remembered the glass in my hand and drained half its contents in a single draught.

  “I don’t understand,” I forged on, pressing the silence for more, as though knowing would somehow make the whole of it easier to stomach. “How did you ever meet Father?”

  The corner of her mouth twitched with the hint of a smile. There lay a memory she enjoyed reliving. “When the War broke out, I was running a crew in Venici.” She considered me. “A few years older than you are now, if I remember correctly. Nothing puts coin on the table like war, and I had plans to capitalize on it. So, when Amenon sent your father to oversee a shipment of armaments in Petrion, I offered my services.”

  My mind wandered, wondering what that particular first encounter must have been like.

  “The King had his own spies, of course, but when I proved my resources were significantly more extensive, he agreed to pay my price.” A private smile flickered across her lips. “Your father was every inch the loyalist. At first, I found him tiresome and overzealous, but so were many of the young men, every one of them eager to prove their mettle.” Her smile faded, eyelids flickering. “They all are until they see battle. I built my network over the course of the three years that the War raged. My crew provided troop positions, supply lines, battle plans…” She watched my face carefully. “…Assassinations. We were very… effective.”

  “And your price?” I asked quietly.

  My mother smiled softly at me. “A new life.”

  It took me several days to process, during which I was quiet and removed, preferring to spend my time drilling in the garden. For a mercy, my parents left me undisturbed. On the fourth day, after I’d washed the sweat and grime from my skin and dressed in clothes more appropriate to my station, I came to them in the study.

  They watched me silently, two pairs of eyes waiting with aching hearts. I understood, then, that they were afraid I would hate them for the lie. My mother, especially, very nearly trembled with it. There was steel in her, still, but I was her flesh and blood. Her child. I could wound her deeper than anyone in the world with my rejection.

  I was the daughter of a whore’s get. Amenon must have known. I wondered how many others.

  In the end, it didn’t matter. You are what you choose to be – what you mold yourself into.

  She had chosen. I could, too.

  I crossed the room to the desk where they stood. Smoothing my gown, I drew myself up before them, raising my chin a fraction and laying claim to every bit of what I was.

  A soldier. A spy. An heir.

  A predator.

  “I am what you made me, and I am grateful for it.” I met my mother’s eyes. “I am proud to be your daughter.” I held her gaze a long moment, reinforcing the sincerity of my words before turning my attention to the map on the desk. “What’s next?”

  CHAPTER 32

  “Hydrax?” I asked, my eyes narrowing in confusion. Our western neighbors had been too caught up in their own civil wars for the last two hundred years to be much of a concern for Alesia. Though the current monarchy had re-stabilized the nation over the last few decades, the Hydraxian court was well-known as a nest of vipers far more ruthless than the one in Litheria. Here, a spiteful noble might spread some vicious bit of gossip that ruined your chances at a decent marriage. There, they’d just slit your throat and be done with it.

  “Rumors of a secret alliance surfaced over a year ago,” Mother informed me, nodding pointedly at the letter in my hand. “Now, it seems those rumors have been confirmed.”

  The report spoke of a wedding, an ornate and private affair, having taken place in the midst of winter.

  “Princess Hasha?”

  She nodded solemnly. “Queen Hasha, now. Her father was assassinated two months ago.”

  “You think she’s in league with Persica?”

  “It would explain the Hydraxian delegation last spring. Gauging the landscape.”

  “They could have simply been here to congratulate the King.” Though I didn’t really doubt her assessment, the words had arisen out of long-established habit, the doubting voice an essential part of our lessons.

  I noticed the corner of her mouth quirk in a nostalgic smile. “No such delegation arrived for Cerya. That, combined with their comments to Augustus, leaves little doubt.”

  My mind flicked a spark to the fore. “Adrian mentioned Hasha had a sand lion cub when he was there to court her many years ago.”

  My parents exchanged a glance. “Persica sowing the seed long before her father was willing to marry her off.”

  “How is she holding power?” I asked, bewildered. “I thought Hydrax was a strictly patriarchal succession.”

  My father passed me a second report. “With an iron fist, we are told.” The missive laid out numerous descriptions of brutal public executions of detractors, including the uncle who was slated to inherit the throne. Anyone who had spoken up against her or accused her of her father’s murder was summarily put to death.

  “And her alliance with Persica?”

  My mother spoke up again. “Queen Hasha is also Empress Hasha.” Her solemn gaze fixed mine. “We now face an enemy on both fronts.”

  I considered it a moment. The entire eastern border of Alesia was held by scions of Tuvre. The Persican army would be hard-pressed to force their way through, but in the west, a sporadic collection of garrisons served as the only defense, with the exception of Frii in the north. Alesia had grown complacent in her years of peace. Hydraxian troops could overtake the western regions quickly unless they were warned to mobilize.

  “We need to send to the western provinces,” I said. “Tell them war is coming.”

  “Your father leaves in two days.”

  He nodded. “Under the guise of seeing to our estate in Laezon. You and your mother will remain here.”

  “All of Court thinks we are disgraced,” she added. “We must act the whipped dogs and remain behind cowering before the throne.”

  I bristled at that. “Lazerins do not cower.”

  Though he offered me a small smirk, an edge of warning crept into my father’s tone. “Pride can only get you so far, Elivya,” he cautioned. “You and your mother will probe the Court for potential allies. I will see to rallying the West.”

&
nbsp; He departed two days later. We made no fanfare, only exchanged hard embraces and sent him on his way. As he and his company of guards and servants disappeared out the gate, I sent a silent prayer to the Mother to keep him safe.

  Not a week after he left, Crofter’s Castle finally broke its months-long silence. A royal decree was issued and flyers posted about the city, one delivered solicitously to our house by a hired courier. My mother’s eyes flashed with anger as she read the words. Handing it brusquely to me, she muttered something unintelligible but unmistakably crude.

  I scanned the decree. In essence, it informed the public that more priests from Persica were arriving to assist with the spreading illness, and were to be given every assistance by order of the King.

  “What does this mean for us?” I asked.

  She paced the foyer, arms crossed and fingers drumming. “It means they are going after the people, weakening any chance of rebellion before it can begin.”

  “How?”

  She glanced at me. “They’ll use their influence to turn public opinion. If they can convert even a portion of the populace to their faith, they’ll sow enough discord to undermine our efforts.”

  I was skeptical. “What could they possibly do to convince people to turn against their own country – their own heritage?”

  She halted and faced me. “Faith is a beautiful, terrible thing. Religion can twist ignorance and fear into cruelty. This emperor, this divine leader, claims to be the embodiment of their god Al’Rahim. Those he fails to conquer through spectacle, he conquers by force. You’ve seen the reports from Makednos.”

  I had. The sultan had soundly disavowed the emperor’s magic as trickery and charlatanism. A month later, he and his entire family were slaughtered.

  “What do we do?”

  I watched her mind land on a course of action, but it was clearly not one she relished. “I need to talk to Tommy.”

  It was all I could do not to pace the stone floors of the kitchen as we waited in the near-dark that night. Only a single lantern and the smoldering coals in the hearth offered any light to illuminate my mother’s carefully-composed face. I tapped my thumb on the hilt of my belt knife until a sharp glare from her stilled me.

  Patience was never my strong suit.

  Finally, when I was on the verge of setting out into the city to hunt the bastard down myself, the back door creaked open and a cloaked figure slipped inside. I’d not seen the contents of the letter she’d sent, but I’d know that short, angular frame anywhere.

  “Fuck me, it’s true,” he breathed into the dark. One hand pushed his hood back and dragged through a mop of silver-and-brown hair.

  “Hello, Tommy.”

  Mother sat upright and rigid in her chair, her voice steady. I leaned back in my seat with one hand still resting on the hilt of my knife.

  “Ana.” Sharp hazel eyes flicked to me and he raised his brows at my attire. “In the house, as well? Not very ladylike.” I ignored his taunt. “Why am I here?” he demanded.

  “You are here because I need your help,” she replied.

  “I don’t owe you anythin’,” he growled, turning on her. He thumped his chest with one fist. “My debt is paid.”

  “It is,” she admitted with impeccable calm. It threw him off-balance, since he was looking for a fight. Gods, it was as natural as breathing to her. “I need your help all the same.”

  I knew that tone; quiet, slightly vulnerable, a hint of pride and a poorly-couched plea to make a man feel like saving her. She’d taught it to me as well, though I doubt I could ever have employed it so masterfully.

  He almost resisted. Almost. I saw in his face that he knew it was a ploy, but he took the bait all the same. Rubbing one hand over his stubble, he sat.

  “What do ye want,” he murmured.

  “I need your network. Nothing that would take your boys off their usual routes. Just a mockingbird game.”

  He nodded, clearly glad it wasn’t anything quite so dangerous as forging royal missives. “And the song?”

  “That the Persican priests are spreading the sickness.”

  He snorted a laugh at that. “You’re joking.”

  “We need to sow seeds of distrust among the people. This is the best way to ensure they remain suspicious of foreign influence.” I felt a pang of regret at the reminder. That same distrust would make the gezgin’s plight even more difficult.

  “A war of opinion, then, is it?”

  She nodded gravely. “For now, yes.”

  He watched her for a long moment, then his eyes flicked to me and he began speaking in a lilting tongue altogether unfamiliar to me. Beneath his piercing gaze, I held my mask of indifference firmly in place, unwilling to let him see my surprise or lack of understanding.

  And then my mother replied in the same strange language, the airy, twisted words rolling off her tongue with ease, and I realized why I couldn’t make out a single familiar phrase. I’d studied the tongues of Hydrax and Lettigallina, the harsh, halting dialects of Krajin. I had mastered the Elan language beneath the tutelage of the King’s Poet. But I’d never touched a single syllable of Lloegran, and with Tommy’s lineage, I’d no doubt that it was the waylanders’ tongue they spoke.

  They carried on for several minutes, the tone and tenor of their voices all I could use to guess at the content of their conversation. Both maintained as immovable a mask as I kept painted on my own face, despite the apparent gravity of the sentiments they exchanged. Though I didn’t know Tommy, I knew my mother well enough to pick out the emotions weaving through the nonsense of her words.

  Sorrow. Regret. Old amity buried beneath old anger. All of it couched in a reluctant plea for aid.

  At length, something in Tommy’s eyes softened and I caught a glimpse of the kind boy beneath the sharp-edged man.

  “Alright,” he sighed, sparing me one final curious glance.

  She pushed a pouch of coin across the table to him. “For your birds.”

  At first, I thought he might refuse it, but Tommy was a profiteer at heart. He tucked the pouch into his tunic and stood without another word, disappearing out the door and into the night.

  Spring turned to summer. We watched and waited. Reports came every few days from various parts of Alesia, always anonymous, usually coded. My mother explained somewhat to me of how her network operated, though in hindsight, she never told me anything of substance. It was too dangerous, she claimed, for everyone involved. Should our intrigues go awry and I be captured, what knowledge I had would be pried from me. I, of course, vehemently protested such a thing, but she just smiled her sad, knowing smile.

  There are ways, she said, to break even the hardest stone.

  It was a perilous path we were on, and things would surely get worse before they ever improved. I could only imagine the methods to which she referred, but even those were plentiful and terrifying. In the end, I concluded that even I, with my stubbornness and pride, was a risk in the wrong hands. It was better to not know.

  Instead of learning the placement of every strand of the web, I learned where to go should I need help, who I could trust to hide me, signs to watch for that marked safe-houses around the major cities. As it turned out, not all of it was her own network. The underworld of illicit actors had its own code, its own backbone. There was a level of camaraderie amongst thieves and spies that blurred the borders from one crew to another. It was slight and fragile, but it was there and could be relied upon in times of great need.

  I feared the day I might have to depend on it.

  Afternoons were spent with Aubrey and Augustus, largely to maintain appearances, though I never told either of them as much. In light of recent events, we began studying Persica and its strange religion. My mother had called the emperor ‘the divine ruler’. As it turned out, that was no exaggeration. They quite literally believed he was the physical embodiment of their god, Al’Rahim. He housed the god spirit, which passed to his eldest son
at the time of his death.

  Theirs was a strict and brutal faith, rooted in magic and sacrifice. The more we read about the Divine Origin, named so due to their core belief that their god was the root of all in existence, the more prohibitions we discovered. Among them, a sacred disdain for the act of love, unless performed for the sole purpose of procreation. In particular, they considered the ‘unclean congress’ between two men or two women especially abhorrent. That day’s lesson put Aubrey on edge. To me, all of their myriad rules seemed bizarre and nonsensical, but I let him rail nonetheless, pacing before the fire and very nearly spilling his wine as he gesticulated angrily.

  It was the core virtue of sacrifice I found most disturbing. Not only were devotees expected to prostrate themselves daily before their god – or in his absence, a representation of Him – but also to seek out the faithless and bring them forth to be cleansed. This rounding-up of the tainted was considered a sacred charge, something to be celebrated. There were even specific instructions for the redemption of those brought before the priests. Reading them turned my stomach. Those who could not be saved in the flesh were purified by flame, their souls sent to Al’Rahim’s eternal kingdom in the sky.

  Above all, it was the emperor’s sacred duty to unite the world under his rule, bringing all the peoples of the earth into the light of Al’Rahim’s holy Truth: that He was the one true god, and all others were false deities.

  We spent weeks reading various holy texts, accounts from bystanders in Rume and Makednos, studying drawings of the temples and idols and tools of redemption. By the end of it all, I felt truly ill. My mother was glad for it, though, and pressed me for summaries of what I’d learned each day. You must know your enemy, she said to me. She’d not had the time nor the access to Chamberlain libraries to do such extensive research. For once, I actually felt like I was contributing something to our cause, and it made the lessons with Aubrey more bearable.