by Vale Aida
Iyone had known fear like this only once before, by the Marigold Bridge, in the instant before the Thorn’s hood had fallen away to show her Shandei’s face. “Who are you?”
The man smiled. “My name is Dervain Teraille, though you may have heard me called the Empath. We have a mutual friend.”
Iyone saw only a flurry of skirts and sleeves. With astonishing speed, Josit knocked her chair over and kicked it like a barricade between them and the false servant. One slim hand shoved Iyone behind her. The other caught up the flask of scalding wine and flung it full into the man’s face. He dodged, but not fast enough; some of it splattered on his face and shirt.
“Gods!” he exclaimed. His glee, undeniably genuine, reminded Iyone of Savonn. “Look at you. No wonder Her Magnificence fears you more than anyone living.”
“She should,” said Josit. A long dagger had materialised in her hand. Iyone glanced at the handbell, wondering if she could reach it fast enough, but Josit shook her head. “If you move, he’ll throw a knife at you.” She looked back at the Empath. “What have you done with Savonn?”
Iyone stared at her. She had never seen Josit like this before. And yet, parallel to that thread of thought ran another that said, I have seen her like this every day. Josit, familiar old Josit, vivid as a viper coiled round an ankle. So small, so fearless, with the black curls spilling loose down her back. Iyone knew someone else with curls like that. Iyone knew someone else who stood like that, with the same arrogant grace, steady hand grasping a blade like a dancer’s baton—
Only one child. The final puzzle-piece clicked into place. Brilliant, Iyone thought. The genius of the deception lay in its simplicity, its utter audacity, so brazen it had been under her nose the whole time. Savonn. Of course. Of course.
“Something amuses you?” the Empath asked. He was looking at Iyone, and at length she remembered that she was in imminent danger of death. She had said nothing, nor—she was quite sure—had her expression altered. “I understand. I feel the same, when I think of Savonn. He will be here in a few days. He is detouring to Evenfall, you see, to commune with his ancestral ghosts. I thought I should pay you a courtesy call while he was away.”
So he was alive. Alive and free. But what about Hiraen? “Oh,” said Josit. She gave the dagger a few thoughtful spins and lowered it to her side. “You’re one of his conquests. Let me try to remember which one. Not his first, and by no means his last, but certainly among the most exotic. How is he?”
The smile slipped a little, then regained its footing. “Afraid, I think,” said Dervain Teraille. “With good reason. After all, he will soon be in prison.”
Surely he must have been able to hear the timbre of Iyone’s thoughts. He looked round at them both, drawing out the suspense like a master showman. “What, has he not bragged to you of his escapades? We used to pass each other information in exchange for certain favours. The death of his old commander, for instance. What was he called? Merrott?”
It was a name Hiraen had brought up before, in passing. “And in return, he told me so much about these forts in the Farfallens,” Dervain went on. “It came in handy when I needed someplace to keep all the Marshal’s bandits. I expect Savonn was delighted when it got his father killed. He hated the man, did you know?”
Iyone fought down a wave of nausea. Savonn, her brother in mischief if not in blood. “Of course I know,” Josit was saying, perfectly composed. “Your story fails to entertain me. On the other hand, it will almost certainly interest a man called Willon Efren. If you wished to blacken Savonn’s name, you should have gone to him instead.”
“Have no fear,” said the Empath. “I have already sent him a tip. Can you imagine what he will think when he learns that his colleague is meeting a Saraian spy? His men ought to be here any moment. He will—oh, forsooth!”
Josit hurled the dagger at his face. It struck the wall, knocked over a porcelain vase, and sent it crashing to the floor. Iyone saw her chance. She ducked round Josit, flung the door open, and flew into the hallway. “Guards! Guards!”
Most of Josit’s retainers had gone with Zarin to Medrai, but a few remained. Someone called, “Mistress?”
“Intruder!” she shouted. “Up here! Hurry!”
Something shattered in the solar. Iyone ran back inside, her heart in her teeth. “Josit?”
The Empath was gone. The room was a wreckage of glass shards, tendrils of mist drifting in through the broken window. Josit was peering down into the garden, wind gusting through her ringlets. “He jumped out.”
A guard poked his head into the room. “Mistress.” He took in the carnage, the whites of his eyes showing. “There are men here to see you. Lord Efren’s men.”
Someone else shouldered him aside. Iyone, her sense of the ludicrous so far suspended it threatened to lift off into space, saw that it was Cahal. His sword was already drawn. “Where’s the spy?”
Sense returned, along with the first vestiges of a counter-deception. “He jumped out the window,” said Iyone. Her voice shivered with adrenaline, but that was fine. It made her sound angry. “What took you so long? We sent word to Lord Willon ages ago.”
Cahal opened his mouth. Then he shut it again. Gaining steam, Iyone trundled on. “Why so shocked? Of course Josit sent the tip herself. Why else lure this fellow here? Are you planning to arrest him or not?”
Cahal stared at her. Then, without another word, he pushed back into the hallway and shouted an order. In a moment, they saw him sprint across the yard, a troop of Efren men pouring after him.
Josit turned away from the broken window, moving her head as if with a great effort. Her gaze seemed to go right through Iyone. “That was quick thinking. But I think, my dear, we have been outplayed.”
“No,” said Iyone. Her shoes crunched on broken glass and porcelain, producing a series of loud, furious snaps. “Willon won’t believe him. He isn’t that stupid. I’ll make him see sense myself.“
“You amateur,” said Josit. “What have I said? Sentiment makes you slow and stupid. Have you worked out his plan, or must I break it down for you like baby’s food?” She did not wait for an answer. “The Empath will let himself be caught and interrogated. Willon will be ecstatic, of course, to have captured one of the generals who slipped through your father’s fingers. All the more if the man gives him an excuse to get rid of me.”
“Even Willon can’t—”
“The Empath,” said Josit, speaking over her, “will keep his silence, feigning loyalty to me. Then Willon will give him to the torturers, and he will tell them everything he wants them to believe. About Savonn. About me. And they will eat it all from his hand. There are no liars on the rack, after all.”
Out of the fog, the alarum-bells were tolling. Once, twice, thrice. To arms. To arms. Between shallow breaths, Iyone said, “Was it true? What he said about Savonn?”
The pause lasted just a beat too long. With her musician’s sensibilities, Josit ought to have known better. “Don’t credit everything you hear,” she said. “Savonn is, for the most part, a harmless romantic who watches too many plays. I thought you knew him.”
“So harmless he got his father killed?”
Josit gave her a sharp look. “He did not, though Kedris gave him every reason to. As fathers go, our Lord Governor was particularly unkind. You wouldn’t have guessed it, watching him smile and throw coins in public. The Empath is right. Savonn loathed him.”
“Merrott—”
Josit picked up a malachite jar from the sideboard, turning it over and over in her hands. “Savonn had no choice in the matter. Kedris forced his hand. And he has been trying to make amends ever since. Have you never erred?”
“Often,” said Iyone, with a calm she did not feel. “But as a rule, I don’t make my mother cover up for me.”
A trembling hush. Very slowly, Josit turned around. “What did you say?”
On a better day, Iyone would have bided her time, keeping her revelation to herself until the perfect moment arri
ved. Now she unleashed it with just the basest of motives, the need to hurt. “Only one child was born in Danei’s convent that month,” she said. She had burned Shandei’s letter, though not before she learnt it by heart. “Savonn. But he was born to you, not Danei. She must have miscarried, and you passed off your son as hers. Otherwise he would have been raised in slavery. Does he know? Did Kedris?”
Deliberately, Josit opened her hand. With a crash, the jar joined the rest of the debris at their feet. “Wily girl,” she said. Her voice was a rasp of steel. “So clever you would dissect even a tomb. Savonn doesn’t know, but of course Kedris did. Danei was never even pregnant.”
Thrills tingled down Iyone’s spine, the thrills of resolution. That explained everything. A pillow in one’s girdle could give the appearance of an advanced pregnancy, but the trick would not stand up to closer examination. Hence the secrecy. The seclusion from her own family. “She couldn’t?”
Josit laughed. “Who knows? She didn’t try very hard, and I didn’t encourage her. She and Kedris despised each other.”
Finding her voice, Iyone said, “So you bore Kedris’s child instead.”
“Yes,” said Josit. “It was an arrangement that suited us all. He got himself a brilliant if occasionally treasonous son. Danei did not have to risk her fragile health to carry a child she did not want. My heir was brought up in a noble household, safe from Marguerit’s long arm. I had always longed for children.” Her lip curled. “I got my freedom out of the bargain, too. So we were all happy. If only the Andalles had found it in their strange hearts to love one another, we could have stayed that way.”
“But Marguerit must have suspected,” said Iyone. “That’s why she had Savonn abducted.”
Josit gazed unseeingly at the mess on the floor. “It took her a long time. Do you know why?”
So close, now, with truth only a handspan away. “Tell me.”
“There were three likely children born at the end of my confinement,” said Josit. “One is Savonn. An actor of frivolous repute for most of his life, and therefore of little interest to my sister till recently. Another is a Saraian named Nikas, who was born to Terinean slaves and believes himself to be my son, though his undistinguished parentage has long been proven beyond doubt. Marguerit finds him useful from time to time. And the last, my dear—”
“—is me,” said Iyone. It was just possible, if she tried hard enough, to feign indifference. “But I was born in Cassarah.”
Josit’s smile was bitter. “Do you know,” she said, “I have often wished you were my daughter. You have more of me in you than Savonn ever will. But now—”
“Now Marguerit is after him, and the Empath is going to turn the Council against you.” Iyone was thinking hard. The puzzle was so neat, so expertly designed, it seemed impossible that she could have anything to add. But of course she did. She, Iyone, who could almost have been a queen’s heiress. “Well, I can’t do anything about the latter. You’ll have to flee. It serves you right, after all you did to Shandei and the Efrens. But the former…”
“You have a solution?”
The question was not a rhetorical one. For once, Iyone had devised a riddle not even Josit could solve. “Birth registries can be forged,” she said. “Mothers can be induced to lie. The child could just as easily be me. Why, the idea must have crossed Marguerit’s mind by now.”
More loudly, Josit said, “What is your solution?”
She could kill Iyone here and now and blame it on the Empath, or the Thorn, and no one would ever know. Ecstatic with victory, Iyone found she could not have cared less. “I will keep your secret,” she said. “I will tell Marguerit, if I have to, that I am her niece. I imagine she would find the idea quite terrifying.”
“And the price?” asked Josit.
Unlike her other meticulous plans, Iyone had given none of this any prior thought. She knew what she was risking. But for this, perhaps, it was worth it. “That you write and sign an affidavit to the Council. Confess to the Rose Killings, and clear Shandei of all blame. I will help you escape.”
Josit laughed. Her eyes were dark and wild with rage. “And if Savonn lives? What will you tell him?”
“Whatever I please.” Savonn was the last person in the world to deserve truth from her. “Do you want him to know?”
Josit’s shoulders rose and fell. “No.”
“I may tell him. Or I may not. It depends.”
Josit gazed around the room: the harpsichord, the books on the shelves, the delicate long-legged chairs. Iyone saw what she was thinking. If she went on the run, all this must be left behind. These, and the home she had built, and all the gardens she had tended with her own hands. Even Kedris’s grave.
She was a graceful loser. From her, Iyone had expected no less. “Clever daughter,” said Josit at last. “You have won only by chance, but all the same, I have enjoyed our game… I will do one more thing for you before I go, though you have not asked for it.”
Iyone knew what it was. Still, she said, “Yes?”
“I shall clear the way for you,” said Josit. “I shall kill Willon Efren.”
28
As the rushing Morivant swallowed the plunging sun, belching forth in its place a gauzy river fog that settled heavily over the walls and housetops, Shandei rode back into Cassarah.
Making good on her threat, she had abandoned the convent, swindled a hapless ostler out of a horse, and galloped home. On the way she had taken pains to ask for news of Emaris, and learnt with mingled pride and alarm that not only was he alive and well, he had also become something of a hero. The disappearance of Savonn Silvertongue and his friend did not interest her as much. The Captain was an eccentricity; this was hardly the strangest thing he had done. She was just glad it was Hiraen he had taken with him, and not her brother.
Bundled up to the nose in coats and furs, she got through the Salt Gate without being recognised. Carts jostled past her at the entrance, and the familiar reek of home—the mire of horse and human, fish and water, fruit and musk—rose to assault her senses. She stabled her stolen mare and set off on foot at once for the Safin residence. She wanted to call on Iyone. After so long away, she needed to see a friendly face.
She was passing a row of tidy blue-walled houses on the Street of Hyacinths when shouting erupted at the street junction ahead, accompanied by the unmistakeable chink of mail. Armed men, coming her way. That was never a good sign. She looked around, searching for the source of the disturbance, but save for a man pushing a wagon some way ahead, she was quite alone. A chill took root in her stomach. The Efrens were onto her. Somehow or other, they knew she had returned, and now at last they would catch her.
Common sense returned. No one knew she was coming back except Iyone, and in any case the city guard could not have mobilised so quickly. Still, she ducked toward the nearest house and swung over the low fence into its yard. The windows were all dark; the residents must be asleep. She scanned the terrain. The clamour was coming closer. There was a bush she could crawl under, but it would give only meagre shelter. Then her eye fell on the sturdy apple tree next to it, and she made up her mind.
She shed her outermost cloak and scrambled up the branches. From there, it was an easy slither onto the housetop. Almost as soon as she threw herself flat on the roof, hands searching desperately for purchase among the bricks, the front door of the house flew open and light streamed onto the lawn. “Ama! Apa!” cried a child’s high voice. “Look! The Saraians are coming!”
A woman answered in rebuke. Then the door slammed shut again. Shandei stilled. The prospect of an invasion, bandied about in every tavern she had visited from Terinea to Cassarah, seemed distant and surreal now that she was behind the city’s high walls. It was impossible. Marguerit could not be marching so soon. And besides—
From her vantage point, she could see the men fanning out to block the end of the street. She glimpsed their livery—cream and bronze—and the bare steel in their hands. Efren men, not Saraians. Then a f
igure broke loose from between two houses farther up the row, and pelted down the street towards her.
His auburn hair shivered like living flame. She had met him but once, at a funeral months ago. Even now she could have picked him out of a crowd in a heartbeat. Relief dizzied her, and left her vision smudged with tears. She was not the quarry of the hunt after all. The man had halted just beneath her, in the shadow of the apple tree. As soon as the guards came closer, they would see him.
It would have been easy to stay where she was until the Efrens caught him and left. Instead, she pushed herself onto her elbows and leaned out from the roof. “Hey!”
At first there was no answer. The man’s silhouette had joined the mass of shadows pooled under the fence. She swung herself back to the tree, squinting down with her face pressed against the rough bark of an upper branch. A foot scraped on the cobbles. Then the darkness seemed to part, and out of its midst came her redheaded diviner.
He stood in the lane just beyond the house, out of sight of the windows, a ruffled figure in a plain brown servant’s tunic. Perspiration glistened on his forehead, but he was not panting. “Daughter of Rendell.”
He remembered her. She had not expected that. “They’re coming this way,” she whispered, as loudly as she dared. “You’d better get up here.”
He glanced at the house behind her. The child and his parents must still be inside, tucked away from the commotion behind the shuttered windows of their house. He said, “That would not be wise.”
