“Good girl,” Jepp murmured. “And that would’ve creeped me out too. But the dead don’t rise to haunt us, no matter what the stories claim. Unless Deyrr animated them,” she added. “Also creepy.”
“Fortunately Deyrr is done for.”
“Yeah.” She grimaced. “Now we only have living monsters to deal with.”
“By dawn they might also be done for.”
“Your mouth to Danu’s ear. My hand to Danu’s blade,” Jepp affirmed.
“All right, soldiers,” Kral declared as he and Harlan emerged from the shadows. “Time to get aloft.”
“Are you sure you want to carry me?” Marskal asked Zyr. “Zynda says that Kiraka can handle all three of us.”
“Yes, yes, mossback,” Zyr sneered with a wave of his hand at Marskal’s lanky frame. “I’m rested, this is the plan, and you don’t weigh much more than Karyn does. Why—afraid I’ll drop you?”
“I did beat you in that last match of I Eat You,” Marskal said with such blandness that I’d have thought nothing of it, if Zyr hadn’t glowered.
“You cheated,” he growled.
“Using a blade against claws isn’t cheating. It’s evening the odds,” Marskal replied. Zynda blew smoke over him, lowering her head, and he laughed, leaning against her snout and stroking it. Kral was similarly saying goodbye to Jepp in a far more lusty fashion—she apparently wasn’t that mad—and Karyn and Zyr embraced, sharing a long kiss.
Harlan and I looked at each other, somewhat bemused. “Our fault for ditching our own spouses, I suppose,” he commented.
“Ursula didn’t sound annoyed,” I replied, “so far as I could tell.”
“No, she didn’t to me either. Worried though. As Ochieng sounded. So far as I could tell,” he added with a smile.
Yes, hearing tone via Jepp via Andi hadn’t been easy. “We’ll just have to return safely so they can fret over us—and so we can make it up to them.”
“Good plan.” He gave me a penetrating look. “Speaking of, are you doing all right?”
“Are you?” I shot back.
He shook his head slowly, not negating, but thoughtfully. “It’s a helluva thing, isn’t it, us going back there. Into the lions’ den. On purpose.”
“Yes.” I pressed my hand to my fluttering belly. “I keep thinking I smell jasmine.”
“Maybe it’s the klút?”
I lifted a fold from my shoulder and sniffed it. “Oh, Danu take me. Yes. Glad to know I’m not crazy. Not in that way, anyhow.”
“When you go inside the palace…” He hesitated, searching for words. “You might remember things.”
“Believe me, Harlan, I’ve never been able to forget.”
He inclined his chin somberly. “No doubt. I know you can do this,” he said with such grave confidence I knew he meant it.
“I can,” I agreed. “And it occurs to me, that we are the lions now. They have no idea we’re coming after them. They think they’re safe, but they aren’t. They’ve owed us a debt for a very long time, and it’s accrued a great deal of interest.”
He grinned, a bloodthirsty quality to it. “Time for them to pay up.”
Yes. Yes, it was more than time.
~ 13 ~
Karyn had the most experience flying, so she sat in front, and Jepp insisted on rear guard, so I ended up in the middle again—sandwiched between silk-clad, curved bodies this time. Zynda stayed low, so we wouldn’t get too cold, but the wind blew chill enough for me to be glad of their warmth. Jepp slid an arm around my waist and sniffed my neck. “You smell good.”
“It’s the klút,” I informed her.
“No, I think it’s you.” Her breath whuffed over my skin. “Can I taste?”
“You may not,” I replied firmly.
“You ever try a woman?” she asked.
“I’ve only ever been with Ochieng,” I replied.
“Only one lover, in your whole life?” She made it sound like I’d told her I’d only ever eaten bread and water.
“Well, there was my horrible late ex-husband,” I said, “but I don’t count him.”
“No, he absolutely doesn’t count.” She was quiet a moment. “Still, only one lover ever, and a guy. Maybe Ochieng would be open to mixing it up. He’s super hot, too.”
I had to laugh. “I thought you were monogamous with Kral.”
“Yeah.” She was trying to sound glum about it, but I could tell she didn’t mind. “But fantasies and flirting are still totally fine. It’s good to think about fun life things, you know?”
I did understand that. When Zynda’s wings stopped their steady pumping and she went into a silent glide, I knew we must be approaching the Imperial Palace. Craning my neck to see, I soon spotted it. Though I’d only seen my home of eighteen years from the outside that once, the image had seared itself into my memory.
It looked much the same, though smaller from our height. The mirror-still lake surrounding the edifice reflected the towers, walls, and turrets—all brightly lit with torches and fire pits—making it into a kind of star that had points going down as well as up. The sheer polished stone looked cold even in full summer, and the barren perimeter all around the lake was a sterile expanse of black, surrounded by the deeper dark of the thick forest.
I also saw what I hadn’t had the wit or experience to note before. Guard stations dotted the lakeshore—facing out, from what the others had reported—and supposedly another set just within the forest boundary faced in. I couldn’t see those in the impenetrable night, but the soldiers on the torchlit walls stood out clearly. So Dasnarian in their precise spacing and rigid postures, their black beetle armor shining with firelight.
Karyn strung her bow, then drew a few arrows from her quiver, and laid them against her thigh. We planned on stealth, but prepared for the worst.
“All right, Andi,” Jepp muttered. “You see? Good. Tell Zynda to make a pass so I can pick my tower.”
Zynda obediently angled to circle. I held my breath, as if that would keep the soldiers manning the walls from spotting us. We were losing altitude on the glide, and I kept feeling like I wanted to flap my arms or something to pull us higher.
We made a full circle of the Imperial Palace, Jepp muttering to herself—or to Andi—and I finally began to assimilate just how huge the complex was. The seraglio had been large enough to comfortably hold several hundred women, but I’d never quite framed my mind around how much larger the rest of the Imperial Palace must be. It was like a city, condensed and piled on top of itself behind sheer walls.
“Ask Zynda for one more pass,” Jepp murmured, “if she can do it without flapping. It was definitely one of the towers on the far side.”
“We’re so low,” I whispered.
“I may have excellent long sight,” Jepp replied quietly in my ear, “but even I need to be closer to pick out the exact unlit window I want. And we want to be sure, because she’s going to have to flap her wings to hover long enough for us to drop onto the top.”
I began to wonder why this plan had sounded good. It was a terrible plan. So risky, so much that could go wrong.
Zynda glided around, and we all held still. It seemed impossible that the guards didn’t look up, didn’t sense the enormous dark shadow blacking out the stars as she circled overhead.
“That’s the one.” Jepp pointed, sighting along her arm, Karyn leaning back to get the right angle. “Got it?”
“Two archers atop,” Karyn said quietly. “One is easy. Two is a problem.”
“Drop me first and I’ll kill the second.”
“All right.”
“No,” I said. “We need Jepp to talk to Zynda and Andi. I’ll do the drop.”
“You’ll have to hang from the rope. Might be a high fall, hard bounce—then you’d have to react fast.”
“I can do it.”
“Get ready then. Remember: land lightly, knees flexed. Bounce.”
“I’ve got it, Jepp,” I replied. Definitely Kaja’s daughter.
She chuckled. “Kill the lights, Andi.”
It felt like when a dust storm suddenly blows in—or like when the magic barrier moved—scraping over my senses and making my ears pop. The air compressed, then expanded, and all the torches and pit fires winked out, leaving us in blackness.
Zynda dipped a wing sharply, pivoting on the point and angling us nearly sideways. I yipped in alarm, holding onto the rope harness in a desperate grip.
“Steady,” Jepp murmured. “Like dancing with a partner, go with her lead.”
“Like you ever let anyone lead,” I muttered back and she laughed softly.
Karyn raised her bow, the arrow placed against the string, but hanging without tension. “I can’t see a thing,” she said. “Zynda is going to have to point me.”
“Over her left shoulder. On my mark,” Jepp replied. “Ivariel, get in position. I’ll count down.”
I drew a small dagger and clenched it in my teeth. Not an ideal maneuver and Kaja would’ve had sharp words for me, but I needed both hands to climb. Carefully shimmying down Zynda’s side, I told myself it was like doing tricks with Efe as she galloped and tried to shake me off. I wasn’t hanging in midair off the side of dragon, poised to plummet to my death. No, no—because that would be foolish and risky.
“Three,” came Jepp’s soft count.
We dropped, angled into a tight spiral, I clung like a burr, deciding it would be a good time to pray to Danu for assistance.
“Two.”
Zynda leveled out, going in for a straight glide. The shouts of men drifted up, and I could barely make out the black silhouette of the tower. I’d reached the bottom of the ladder, watching the rapid approach of the looming tower, bitterly regretting that I’d impulsively volunteered. This would be a dicey move even if I’d practiced it a hundred times. What in Danu had I been thinking?
“And….” Came Jepp’s soft warning. “One!”
Zynda swung her head and the tower lit with the blue glow. One guard yelped. The other already crumpling with Karyn’s arrow through his throat. Zynda backwinged. The rope swung.
I let go. Bounce, I told myself.
The impact thudded up through my ankles and knees—but I was on the tower!—and my strong dancer’s legs held, serving me well as they always had. The guard gaped at the impossible sight of me: a klút-clad, bejweled woman dropping out of the sky. He recovered and charged me. I spun, cutting his throat, and then crouched, waiting for an alarm to be sounded.
Lots of shouting, but it sounded disorganized. I sorted the Dasnarian military commands, not hearing any indication of orders sending guards to my tower. Sneaking up to a crenellation, I peered over the edge. Darkness and chaos. Then a blaze of light.
Kral, fully armored, stepped out onto the barren periphery between lake and forest, Harlan a step beside and behind him. “Hestar!” Kral bellowed, his strong male voice carrying over the water and cutting through the shouts of soldiers, silencing them. “I challenge you for right to the throne of the Dasnarian Empire. Show yourself, you cowardly worm!”
Well, fuck me. That had not been in the plans. Not the ones they told us about.
A whoosh of wind had me looking up, just as an immense black shadow moved to block the stars, the beat of Zynda’s wings as she hovered whipping my loose hair around my face.—and Jepp dropped lightly beside. “Good bounce,” she said. “But what in Danu’s freezing tits does that lunkhead think he’s doing?”
“Hestar!” Krall bellowed again. “I claim the bjoja at haseti. Fight or yield!”
“The boh-jah thing again, more recompense?” Jepp asked with exasperation.
“That was at satt. This is at haseti—a challenge of honor for the right to rule,” I explained. “As a legitimate son of the previous emperor, Kral can challenge Hestar’s for the throne. Single combat.”
Jepp cursed foully, then stood to grab the dangling rope ladder and steady it for Karyn’s climb down. “Did you know about this?” she demanded in a hush, when Karyn dropped beside us.
“No, but I’m not surprised,” she replied. “It is an excellent distraction, you have to admit.”
“I admit no such thing,” Jepp snarled. “Can he win?”
“I don’t know,” I confessed.
“It’s not something women would know,” Karyn added quietly. “I know he had many reasons not to try it before.”
Jepp cursed again. “Why do I even ask? I’m fucked either way.”
As my eyes adapted to the dark—and as the watchfires were relit, I realized—I could see she was rigging up a rope to the crenellation. “If that Dasnarian brute thinks he’s going to stick me in this Danu-forsaken place, prancing about in silks and jewels—no offense—he’s even thicker-skulled than I thought,” she muttered. “Cover me.”
Karyn nocked an arrow and edged up to the parapet as Jepp dropped over the side. Hoarse shouts echoed up from below, the palace stirring as orders were relayed. “She’s in,” Karyn told me. “Your turn.”
I sheathed my blade and crawled over the edge, shimmying down the rope. At least it wasn’t swinging from a dragon. My shoulders were going to ache for weeks, however. If I lived through this. Firm hands gripped my hips, pulling me toward a window ledge, and I felt with my feet for leverage.
“I’ve got you,” Jepp whispered. “Let go.”
I released the rope, sinking my weight so I wouldn’t overbalance, and Jepp helped me step into the room. “You’re a natural,” she said, giving me an approving pat. “Come down, Karyn.”
The room was even darker than the night outside, and I waited, smoothing my hair and checking the folds of my klút—then sighed as I met with a stiffening wet spot. Blood, no doubt. So much for blending in with my fancy borrowed outfit. Jepp pulled Karyn in with a muffled thud as they both fell to the floor.
“Sorry, sorry,” Karyn muttered, and Jepp snorted.
“If you wanted to get me on my back, then—”
“Jepp!” Karyn cut her off, sounding aghast. I’d found the curtains hung by the window and pulled them across, then felt around for a candle I knew must be nearby. There it was, and a flint striker conveniently close. It took me a couple of tries, but I got the candle lit. Pleased with myself, I glanced around the room…
Inside me, Jenna wailed in terror. In this room—or one just like it—I’d been strung up naked, blood running down my arms where the marriage manacles cut into my young skin. And Rodolf, he…
He…
A red-black wave welled up and swamped me. Like the river at Nyambura at full flood stage, it tumbled me like a piece of kindling, dragging me under to drown.
~ 14 ~
“Breathe.” Jepp’s voice came from a far distance. “Breathe, Ivariel. In and out, nice and steady. You’re safe. I’ve got you. Just breathe.”
“Here, it’s as cold as I can manage,” Karyn said.
A cool, damp cloth wrapped the back of my neck. I was kneeling on the thick carpet, my head held firmly down by Jepp’s practiced hand as she stroked my back with the other. “That’s it, honey,” she crooned. “Even breaths. You’re safe. All is well.”
I opened my eyes, taking in the elaborate Dasnarian design of the plush carpet. “I’ve invaded the Imperial Palace and am hiding from the guards of a brother who’d kill me on sight. Or worse,” I commented drily. “I think safe is the wrong word.”
Jepp released my head with a chuckle of relief. “And she’s back. Nothing wrong with the good sense Danu gave you.”
I sat up slowly, aware of the distant rushing in my ears. Karyn stood by the door, holding a dagger. She’d had to leave the too-obvious bow and quiver on top of the tower. She gave me an anxious look. “What happened?”
Feeling as if I’d been stepped on by an elephant—and even if they don’t mean to do it, it’s crushing like you wouldn’t believe—I scrubbed my hands over my face. “Bad memories.”
“I thought you didn’t leave the seraglio,” Jepp said.
“Except after my wedding, when
I was summoned to serve my husband, in a room very like this one.” If not this exact one. Probably they were all pretty much the same though.
“Shit, Ivariel.” Jepp looked horrified, her face pale and eyes huge and dark in it. “I didn’t think.”
“I didn’t either.” Though Harlan had warned me. At least crazed Jenna had receded quickly and left me in rational control again. I got to my feet, carefully not looking around. “What’s happened?”
“Lots of commotion, but we can’t see the duel from here.” Jepp looked thoroughly annoyed, which at least brought the snap back to her eyes.
A fist pounded on the door and we all jumped. Karyn flattened herself beside it. Jepp and I drew our blades. “All women back to the seraglio!” a male voice shouted, then moved to hammer on the next door down.
Jepp looked to me and Karyn. “Recalling the women to safety?” she asked.
We nodded and she grinned. “That works into our plan just fine. When a group of women goes by, we’ll join up in the parade and head meekly to the seraglio. Except I don’t know what we’re going to do about the blood on Ivariel’s klút.”
I looked down at the well-spattered ivory silk, the blood drying to brown in the smaller spots, but still brightly crimson in the biggest, and dampest, circle. Karyn grimaced, giving me a wary look. “Not to incite any more bad memories, but she wouldn’t be the first woman to return from a night of bed sport with blood on her klút. Her own.”
She was right, I realized. All those nights I staggered—or was carried—back to the dubious safety of the seraglio after Rodolf was done with me, I’d been battered and bloody. No one had blinked an eye. “Fortunately I know how to play that role,” I commented.
“If you say so.” Jepp looked appalled, but nodded crisply, then went to the door to ease it open. “Here comes a group, let’s slide in behind them. She drew a loose fold of her klút over her head to hide her short hair. Karyn handed her a thin shawl of silk to cover her brown skinned bare arms, which would excite notice. Jepp peeked out the door again, glanced back at me. “Showtime,” she whispered.
The Lost Princess Returns Page 10
