Olyssi let her tunic fall down over her waist. “Am I a child?”
“Olyssi…”
“Why does it matter? What matters is that while I was sitting in the tavern—”
“And getting sloshed?” Oriana asked.
Olyssi glowered at her sister. “For your information, I didn’t have a single drink.”
“Enough!” Raegon scolded, pounding the table with a fist. He pointed a thick, knotted finger at Oriana. “You, shut up.” And another at Olyssi. “You, get on with it. I’ve a long bloody day ahead, and it will become unfathomably longer if a Valiosian assaulted my daughter.”
“I was sitting there, as I said. And in walked Lavery Opsillian.”
That divulgence had the king of Haeglin sitting up straight, and it forced a silent wow from between Oriana’s lips. Most of the drama her sister stirred up was small stuff, barely worth acknowledging. This, however—this was big. Word had arrived only a few days ago that the newly crowned king of Valios had been kidnapped.
It would figure Olyssi would blindly run into him, Oriana thought. Lady Luck seemed to favor her, if not outright stalk her.
“He was in the company of several vagrants,” Olyssi said. “I confronted them outside and learned they called themselves the Eyes of Aleer. Mercenaries.”
Raegon’s mouth moved as he quietly repeated the name to himself. “Not a group I’ve heard of before. Why is the boy not here with you?”
Olyssi snorted. She patted her wound gently. “Uh, probably because of this? Maybe? Do you think?” Her shoulders sunk and her shadow shrunk as she stared at the pockmarked face of her father—a face that had red flames of anger seething beneath its flesh. “Sorry. I’m frustrated.”
“You weren’t attacked by a Valiosian, then,” Oriana noted. “Why do you lie about everything?”
“It wasn’t a lie. You weren’t there—you can’t possibly understand, but Lavery Opsillian didn’t seem—” Her head bobbed from shoulder to shoulder as she searched for the word.
“Didn’t seem what?” Oriana asked. “He didn’t seem to be kidnapped?”
Her sister shrugged. “For lack of a better phrase, yes. He seemed content. Happy, even. I promise you that he wasn’t scared like a kidnapped eleven-year-old boy should be.” She bit her lip and scampered over to a chair beside her father. “Don’t you”—she swiveled around to her sister—“or you find it strange that a newly elected king could be abducted? It shouldn’t be possible.”
Raegon steepled his fingers. “Lapses in safety happen.”
“When has a Jackal ever not been within fifteen feet of you? Or me? The same would go for Oriana if she wasn’t the black sheep of the family.”
Oriana rolled her eyes at that. She’d long ago shunned protection from the Jackals. Her father had ordered them to continue following her, but after she’d improbably snuck away out of their sight over and over, he’d finally caved to her wishes. No one would harm her, and if they tried… well, she had ways of handling the situation.
“You admitted yourself,” Olyssi continued, “that you had no knowledge of the Eyes of Aleer. So how does a band of unknown mercenaries waltz into Valios, impossibly isolate an eleven-year-old boy who, by the way, is now the king, and get out unannounced?” She leaned in toward her father, the body language of someone prepared to delivery very heavy information. “That doesn’t happen. That never happens. Unless it’s permitted to happen.”
Oriana scoffed. “You cannot be suggesting—”
“What I’m suggesting,” Olyssi said, unusually calm and hinged, “is that the Valiosian Council wanted someone else on the throne.”
Oriana opened her mouth, then closed it. The obvious response was that Valios was an elective monarchy, so the Council could have chosen any successor they wished. But Olyssi would undoubtedly have shot back with the fact that it was an elective monarchy in name only, and she would have been correct. If Craigh Opsillian had been a tyrant or a failed ruler in his people’s eyes, the Council could have looked past his son. But he was not either of those, and Valios’s council undoubtedly knew that you ignore the will of the people at your own peril.
That made Olyssi’s batty theory no less foolish. “That’s not how the world works,” Oriana explained.
“And what would you know about how the world—”
“There’s precedent,” Raegon interrupted. “You two are too young to remember, and since neither of you read a modicum of history I doubt you’ve learned, but many years ago, a small family vanished from the Gap. They didn’t vanish literally, of course. They were killed, all of them. The short of it is they placed their youngest son in a cellar and crafted a poorly designed plan to frame a rival family for his disappearance. The falsity was later discovered, and allies felt betrayed. The end.”
Oriana hadn’t heard of that little footnote in history, but her father’s assumption she knew little of the past couldn’t be farther from the truth. She simply preferred to study the important bits of history, the stories people had forgotten. The tales that had turned to myth.
“A capital kingdom would not make that kind of decision,” Oriana said.
Olyssi peeled her blond hair out of her eyes. “Are you friends with the Valiosians? Are you privy to their thoughts? Ooooh, tell me, sister, what are they thinking? I bet Lady Aylee is probably thinking of fuckin’ Bastion Rook’s cousin, huh? What’s his name? Aumin? Worst-kept secret in all of Avestas.”
Oriana glared at her.
“Tempers are rising,” Raegon said, voice drenched with gloom. “The Rooks and Torbinens are at each other’s throats, and we’ve got our hands full with Plorgus’s new queen, Maya Plommen. She isn’t very interested in acknowledging our treaty of the Bitterwoods. To add salt to Avestas’s wounds, Wrokklen is in economic upheaval.” He rubbed his wiry chin in contemplation. “It won’t take a great deal of weight to overburden the world; whatever is happening with Lavery Opsillian—conspiracy or not—could do it.
“I’m not eager for war,” he added. “A grand festival would be timely.”
“And costly,” Oriana noted.
“We have the coin. If the Gravendeers play world diplomats and soothe tempers, we’ll have more political capital than at any point in our existence.”
Olyssi shook her head and offered her father an irritated sigh. “If I’m right about Valios, they won’t come to a grand festival. Not here. They’re directly responsible for almost killing me. The Council would be laughably stupid to step foot into this kingdom.”
“If you’re right,” Raegon said, “then we need to learn more—information that can be gathered most effectively if Valios’s Council is under our own roof. I have a plan to draw them here.”
Olyssi stuck her head forward after waiting several moments for her father to continue. “Which is?”
“They wish to rework our trade agreements. They’ll come if I beckon them. Oriana, draw up the invitations. I’d do it myself, but I’m busy with the damned Maya Plommen.”
“I’m busy too,” Oriana said, annoyed. Ever since her father had decided to groom her for the throne, he’d expected her to fall in line and jump when he said the word. But she had matters of her own to attend to, and they were magnitudes more important than organizing a grand festival.
“I will do it,” Olyssi said.
“You will not,” Raegon answered. “Your sister has been tasked with the responsibility, and she will fulfill that responsibility.” He stared hard at Oriana, his blue eyes narrowing like thin, sapphire-tipped daggers.
There was a time those eyes could goad her. But Oriana Gravendeer had long ago disallowed fear and intimidation to manipulate her. She held her father’s glare, saying nothing.
“She doesn’t want the responsibility,” Olyssi said. “I do.” She pulled her chair in closer to her father. “Allow me this opportunity, Father.”
With furrowed brows the color of snow, Raegon pursed his lips and took a long moment of silence. He dismissed himself from
the table. His leather boots clacked across the marble floor. He paused briefly before Oriana.
There was no shake of his head. No quiet words buried within a scathing voice. Only the stillness of a stern face mired in disappointment.
He walked on, departing the throne room through a door that led into the Hallway of Kings.
Olyssi happily drummed the armrests of her chair. “Little sister always gets what she wants.”
Oriana set a course toward the throne room door. “You’re hopeless,” she said. A quip from her sister chased her as she left the keep. She ignored it.
The sky outside was blue and the sun bright, but Oriana felt little in the way of warmth. The miserable sickness that churned in her stomach and began clawing its way up into her chest had nothing to do with the little spat she and her father had just had; those were normal enough. And it had nothing to do with the gloomy atmosphere hovering over Haeglin; Olyssi’s bloody arrival had shaken people, and rumors had undoubtedly begun spreading.
No, the nasty, despicable feeling that had firmly rooted itself in her throat came from a much darker place. Her father was right—tempers were rising. It seemed unavoidable that the Torbinens and Rooks would soon go to war, and Plorgus’s new queen would poke and prod at the Gravendeers. Toss in Lavery Opsillian’s disappearance and… well, it wouldn’t take much more to throw the world into conflict.
And this was a problem. It was too early for war. Oriana’s plans hadn’t yet matured. And they weren’t the sort of plans one could rush along.
She hurried down the city’s spire, making her way to the western disc.
Jin jumped off the back of his wagon. “Oh, good. I was beginning to worry. I always worry. Worry for the worst, hope for the best. Best way to live, I think. Will she be okay?”
“Unfortunately,” Oriana said. “I’ll take the wagon to my estate. I hope you don’t mind.”
Jin threw up a pair of hands. “No, no. Privacy and such, I understand.”
Oriana offered him a weak smile and climbed into the front seat. “Rings and necklaces, I assume?”
Jin’s payment for meat came in the form of jewelry. He and his wife ran a business on the side, selling precious metals and gems and bangles and rings, the sort of stuff that, if you hawk your wares well enough, you can retire from the messy life of a butcher.
Jin didn’t know how Oriana got her hands on so much jewelry, and he made it a point never to ask. If he ever learned the truth, he probably wouldn’t find it very interesting. Being the daughter of a king provides you with many advantages, and even more if you’re the daughter of a king who presides over a city of unmentionable wealth.
“Bracelets too, this time around,” he said. “Runnin’ low.”
With a snap of the reins, the mule plodded along. Oriana guided it down the steps, into the heart of the spire. Slowly and meticulously, the mule advanced down precipitously steep paths, hemmed in by jagged walls of rock that at times felt like they would squeeze you like a vise.
Oriana’s estate stood within the shadow of Haeglin, a mile or so behind the twisting, turning vertical pinnacle of carved earth and rock. It sat upon a hilltop and, from the viewpoint of your ordinary passerby, it seemed less impressive and blander. Unexciting. Even when her father and sister visited, they couldn’t begin to fathom why Oriana had chosen this run-down, dilapidated manor as the gift for her eighteenth birthday.
Olyssi had remarked that only the black sheep of the family would choose such a piss-poor gift. She’d called Oriana the black sheep, the unwanted stepsister, the big mistake, and a handful of other hateful names since they were children. She said Oriana didn’t look like their father or late mother. Why did she have red hair when their parents had blond? Why were her eyes green and the family’s blue? Why did she have a small, round face and Olyssi a long one?
If Olyssi only knew just how different Oriana truly was. She’d have probably stabbed her by now, right in the heart. Maybe even would’ve lopped her head off. All in the name of pureness and goodness and righteousness. People—no, things—like Oriana Gravendeer weren’t supposed to exist. Not anymore.
The mule hauled Oriana and the cart up her well-manicured sloping lawn. Her father and sister and mostly anyone else who came to visit would have seen a pockmarked manor with thigh-high grass, snakes wiggling between the stalks. They would’ve seen a barn half-collapsed, a windmill whose rusted blades no longer spun. The creek that cut through the center of the estate would’ve been diseased and putrid.
But the reflection in Oriana’s eyes painted a brilliant canvas of beauty and grace and elegance. Fences had been slathered with a fresh coat of white, and new slats of lake stone had been laid on the walkways. Goats kept the lawns nice and tidy, while small fish jumped from the rippling creek.
All of this existed within an illusionary locus. That’s not to say the goats were make-believe or that the fences were conjured imaginations; everything was real except the bubble of space that surrounded it. Had that bubble been torn down, the desolate, derelict manor would have been fused with the well-kept and well-groomed one, resulting in a manor that shared characteristics of both.
Oriana had created the locus—an illusionary space rather than an illusionary object, which was called an illusionary figment—six years ago and it’d grown into a thriving community since.
In the distance, a circle of children gathered around a robed man and woman.
“Bring it out,” the man said to one of the children, who had her hand extended, fingers grasping at air. “Ah, ah. Forceful persuasion does nothing. Soothe it, understand it. There you are. A little more, now.”
An infinitesimally small ensorcelled sphere the color of acidic green hovered at the girl’s fingertips. Then it vanished, sucked back into the plane it had come from.
The girl fussed, clearly frustrated.
“Progress,” her instructor said, “happens slowly. You did well.”
“Next month,” Oriana said, approaching them, “you might be able to stick it in a bottle and keep it as a night light.”
The children perked up at the sight of Oriana, as if she was hauling ice cream and candies in the back of her cart.
“Miss Oriana!” shrieked a boy. “I lit a candle today!”
A girl beside him rolled her eyes. “Only ’cause Instructor Giffen helped you.”
“I still did it!”
Oriana smiled. She pulled the reins, idling her mule. One of the instructors, a woman, came up to her.
“Brynn and Gamen arrived with the newest shipment while you were gone,” the instructor said, her voice hushed.
“Already? That was unexpectedly quick.” She’d sent Brynn and Gamen, along with several sorcerers, to the coast near Torbinen weeks ago. She was expecting a new shipment of whelps—from Baelous, across the Glass Sea—and possibly a few sorcerers too, although the latter were becoming increasingly difficult to recruit.
“There was a small problem. One of the crates hadn’t been locked properly. Two escaped, but Gamen and the others caught one.”
“And the other?” Oriana asked.
With tightly drawn lips, the instructor shook her head. “Gamen said he was too quick. They couldn’t deploy a net in time. He flew away from the Torbinen proper, thankfully.”
Oriana frowned. She climbed out of the wagon, hiking her dress up so the wooden panels wouldn’t shred the fabric. She’d learned that little trick when her favorite skirt was referred to in the past tense.
“He’ll probably go back across the sea,” Oriana said. “The poor thing won’t make it far.” She rapped a nail on the wagon bed. “Have the custodians organize the food, please. I’ve got a few things to take care of.”
She grabbed a fist-sized chunk of wet meat from the wagon and strolled toward a yawning mouth carved into a risen lump of earth. From there, she went down, down, down, into an abyss. All of the children hated coming down here, and Oriana couldn’t blame them. It wasn’t a pleasant descent. The farther
down you went, the darker it became, till even the faintest blur of light had been purged. She’d gone down here hundreds of times, and still halfway through she felt herself walking faster, as if the shadows were alive and chasing her.
Nearing the core of the cave, veins the color of ice spidered up the walls and across the floor. When Oriana reached the bottom, she stood on what resembled a rug made of sleek volcanic glass, fractured by zigzagging bolts of ice. A pair of torches stood before a chain sheet that served as a doorway into the next room.
High-pitched cries, some meek and others furious, bored inside Oriana’s skull. If she listened closely enough, she heard a whoosh. And she smiled.
She unhooked the chain sheet from the wall and stepped inside. Another chain curtain hung before her. The chains weren’t her idea, but they were a good one. It provided for a two-door system in which, even if one of her lovelies escaped during her comings and goings, it’d be trapped by the second door.
Dragons, after all, are too curious for their own good. Especially young ones.
“Hi, sweetie,” Oriana said as she walked into the well-lit den. A whelp darted down from a nook high in the wall, hovering around her. Its scales were starting to come in, but mostly it was a raw-skinned baby who was so very vulnerable.
Several other whelps came down to see Oriana. One landed on her shoulder and chirped at the fatty steak in her hand.
“Sorry, dear. This isn’t for you.”
On a platform, Hohm—one of ten dragon tamers under Oriana—stood before several perched dragons. “Up,” he said, and the dragons lifted their heads. “Down. Shake. Good.” He threw each of them a sliver of meat from a bucket.
“I heard we have new residents,” Oriana said.
The man wiped his hands clean. “Fres just took ’em into quarantine. A couple are lookin’ pretty shoddy. Eyes sunken, that kinda thing. Prolly just a little scared.”
Undoubtedly scared, Oriana thought. If she was taken from her family at such a young age, she’d be crying crocodile tears and shivering. But this was for the best. For them, for her… for the world.
The Dragon Thief (Sorcery and Sin Book 1) Page 10
