A Court of Lies

by Kate Avery Ellison

  A Court of Lies

  Other books by Kate Avery Ellison

  A Gift of Poison (The Kingmakers’ War #1)

  A Bed of Blades (The Kingmakers’ War #2)

  A Kiss of Treason (The Kingmakers’ War #3)

  A Circle of Flames (The Kingmakers’ War #4)

  A Shield of Sorrow (The Kingmakers’ War #5)

  Frost (The Frost Chronicles #1)

  Thorns (The Frost Chronicles #2)

  Weavers (The Frost Chronicles #3)

  Bluewing (The Frost Chronicles #4)

  Aeralis (The Frost Chronicles #5)

  The Curse Girl

  Of Sea and Stone (Secrets of Itlantis #1)

  By Sun and Saltwater (Secrets of Itlantis #2)

  With Tide and Tempest (Secrets of Itlantis #3)

  For Wreck and Remnant (Secrets of Itlantis #4)

  In Dawn and Darkness (Secrets of Itlantis #5)

  All Her Secrets

  Once Upon a Beanstalk

  A Court of Lies

  Kate Avery Ellison

  Copyright © 2018 Kate Avery Ellison

  All Rights Reserved

  Do not distribute or make copies of this book, electronically or otherwise, in part or in whole, without the written consent of the author.

  For my tiny tribe

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Acknowledgements

  A queen needs assassins.

  A queen needs spies.

  She needs the gaze of a thousand loyal eyes.

  For she rules o’er a court of poisonous lies.

  —A popular Nyrian tavern song

  Part One:

  Thieves and Liars

  PROLOGUE

  One Week Earlier

  THE THIEVES OF Gillspin feasted in the great hall of their quarters beneath the streets of the city. Some sang drunkenly, sloshing their pints to punctuate their words. Others hunched over their plates, eating with the speed of those accustomed to missing meals. A few of the thieves eyed the room warily, while others laughed and called insults to their fellows. The cacophony of sound filled the air along with the smell of roasting meat and stink of damp straw and stone, wafting into a corridor to the side of the hall where two individuals stood locked in silence, unnoticed by the thieves inside.

  Briand Varryda, dragonsayer, guttersnipe, and now a thief-queen, stood with a knife in her hand, staring at the Seeker-Monarchist called Marl as the words he’d just spoken rang in her ears.

  One thing I saw clearly. If Jehn is to defeat Cahan and the Seekers and ascend the throne of Austrisia, Kael of Estria will die. And he will die at your hand.

  “What did you say?” she hissed at him.

  Marl gazed back at her without blinking. “In the future I have foreseen, one thing is clear. For Prince Jehn to take the throne, Kael of Estria will die upon your knife.”

  “Does Jehn know of this?” Briand asked, her voice low as she glanced toward the doorway, where sound spilled forth. The thieves were singing an old drinking song now. The stomping and clapping made it impossible for anyone but Marl to hear her, should another thief be trying to listen.

  Her heart pounded as she waited for his response.

  “No,” Marl said. The word fell like a stone. “Not yet.”

  Relief was sweet, but still, Briand’s lips curled in a furious snarl. She was trembling, but she held herself still, poised to strike. “Does he even know who you are?”

  “We have never spoken,” the Seeker said. “But I am loyal to his cause because he is the true prince, not that imposter who sits on the throne.”

  “Who are you, really?” Briand demanded. “You say you are a loyal Monarchist, but you are dressed as a Seeker. You claim you see the future, but you have not shared these visions with the prince. You commission your own assassination plots; you speak in riddles.” Her eyes narrowed. “I think you’re something else.”

  The man laughed the kind of arrogant laugh made by one who thinks that the person he’s speaking to is beneath him, and he cannot comprehend having to stoop to explain himself.

  “What does that tattoo on your wrist mean? Is that a symbol of what you are?” Briand asked.

  Marl looked at her coldly. “You ask too many questions.”

  She didn’t falter under that frosty stare. She was a thief-queen now. She was a dragonsayer with the ability to turn a Seeker’s powers back upon them and blast them into unconsciousness.

  She did not fear this man, no matter how much he scowled at her.

  “Why did you kill the Hermit?” she asked then.

  The Seeker’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “He needed to die. It was part of the path of the future. The path to victory.”

  “So… you murdered him?”

  “It was necessary,” the Seeker said coldly.

  Rage filled her. She remembered the kind words of the Hermit, his flavorless stew, and the jokes he told in the morning over breakfast when he was trying to coax a grumpy smile from her. He had been kind to her.

  He had not deserved to die.

  “You’re a butcher,” she said, barely able to contain her anger. “And what about me? Do you plan to carve a hole in my back too in order to put the prince on the throne?”

  Again, her eyes moved to the entrance to the hall of thieves. Where was Nath? She might need to fight this man.

  “You are not so clear to me most times,” the Seeker admitted. “It is as if you are obscured with a mist.”

  “But you definitely, certainly, most assuredly see me stabbing Kael of Estria to death, leading to the inexplicable crowning of Jehn?” she said. “You’re certain you did not make a mistake?”

  His brows drew together with displeasure. He was probably not used to having his important visions mocked so soundly. “Yes, I do. The vision was clear. I made no mistake.”

  Her thoughts whirled. She should imprison him. Interrogate him for more information. But he couldn’t see it coming. She’d have to get him to let his guard down, to think she was impetuous and enraged without a plan.

  And where, oh where, was Nath when she needed him?

  “Get out,” she said. “Get out before I knife you myself.”

  Marl smirked. “There’s the guttersnipe I remember. Impetuous, furious, ready to bite. I shouldn’t have worried—you’ll do my work for me without intervention, I think. All Kael of Estria will have to do is look at you wrong, and you’ll put steel between his ribs.”

  “I don’t have to listen to you insult me in my own quarters,” she snarled. “Out.”

  “You granted me sanctuary,” he replied with snotty irritation. “Are you reneging on your word, thief-queen?”

  “I am throwing out a murderer,” she shot back, spinning her knife in her hand as her mind raced through solutions. The easies
t way to get him down would be to turn his powers against him. Knives were messy and wouldn’t lead to simple unconsciousness.

  Her eyes dropped to his hands. He was not wearing gloves.

  She needed him to try to manipulate her mind if she had any hope of knocking him unconscious.

  “What have you seen about me?” Briand demanded, angling to pick a fight. “Tell me!”

  “I cannot see your future,” Marl said, holding up a hand. “But I see truths about your friends.”

  “Truths,” she repeated coldly. It was easy to throw a growl into the word, because she was furious. She glared at him, radiating with anger inside. She twitched her knife and made sure he saw her do it.

  Marl frowned at her gesture.

  “The one who betrayed you is alive,” he said, his eyes going remote again as if he were searching through something only he could see, sifting and seeking. “Alive, and in a… a cage. A cold cage. And the ones you seek are closer than you think.”

  The one who betrayed her? Who did he mean? Jehn? Kael? She had a momentary burst of panic at the thought of Kael in a cage. Had he been kidnapped again?

  “A lot of people have betrayed me,” she replied, keeping her voice calm and her inner turmoil hidden behind a mask of confidence that the queen of Nyr would envy. “Care to be a little more specific? And what’s this about a cage?”

  “That is all I saw,” he said.

  The ones you seek. Her heart beat fast. Did he mean the guardians?

  “What else?” she asked, but Marl only shook his head.

  He was being very uncooperative. The desire to stab him came back strong.

  “Any other cryptic messages you feel like bestowing before I knife you?” Briand said.

  “You are making a mistake,” the Seeker-Monarchist said. He took a step backward. “We could have a mutually beneficial arrangement, you and me. Just as I had with Rags.”

  “Where I spy for you and you toss a few coins in my bucket? I’m not interested.”

  “It was hardly a few coins,” Marl said with a snort. “How do you suppose she afforded all of the fine wines and spirits she kept?” His eyes flicked over her once more, and he paused. His brow wrinkled. “How did you kill Rags?”

  One half of Briand’s mouth hitched upward in a ghost of a smile. “What, haven’t you already seen the answer in a vision?”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” the Seeker-Monarchist said with annoyance. “I see only remote things when I look forward, and then only in fragments.” His eyes fell on her forehead as if tempted to pluck the memory from her.

  Do it, Briand silently urged him. Touch me and see what happens. Her nerves stretched tight in anticipation.

  Instead, Marl turned away.

  She was going to lose him. Time to abandon trickery. She lunged, the knife slashing through the air and piercing his cloak. He whirled on her, throwing her back against the wall with a well-timed cut of his arm against her collarbone.

  Briand’s spine slammed into the stones, the blow punching the breath from her lungs. Bands of white light sparked across her vision. Her ears rang as she crumpled to the ground, gasping for air.

  By the time she’d grabbed her knife and hauled herself up again, the man with the lion tattoo on his wrist had disappeared, leaving her with a throbbing head and a thousand worrisome questions.

  She would never kill Kael to make Jehn king, that was certain. But was Kael deluded enough to throw himself on a blade she might happen to be holding?

  ~

  Auberon slept fitfully these days. He pushed himself hard, fighting the inevitable succumbing to his need for rest, wresting as much as he could from his body and mind for as long as possible before he was forced into unconsciousness by sheer exhaustion. Most times, sleep crept up on him like a determined and skilled assassin, taking him unaware.

  It was this way now. One moment, he was sitting at his writing desk, scribbling letters to those whom he needed to sway to his side, and the next moment he had his back to a wall of rough stone. The smell of dungeon rot hung in his nostrils, and the rasp of old straw shifted beneath his hands and thighs. Faintly, he heard the gurgle of the lake outside the walls.

  He was in the shared dream again.

  Auberon lurched to his feet, his heart slamming in his chest.

  Did this mean she was alive?

  He had not met her in dreams in weeks. He had not seen a single glimpse of her, not since that day that he’d frantically tried to revive her drowned body.

  Every time he woke, he was slugged with the sick feeling of loss. No dreams, no dragonsayer.

  She couldn’t dream if she were dead.

  His gaze fell on the opposite side of the cell.

  The dragonsayer sat across from him, back to the wall, one leg curled up against her chest, the other stretched out straight. She wore a bodice and shirt of dark crimson, and close-fitting black trousers. She had a knife in her hand.

  He trembled with relief. He put out a hand to steady himself.

  She was alive.

  Stupid, foolish moisture sprang into his eyes, and he blinked it back. He was such a fool. But he was so relieved. So very relieved. The feeling flooded him, making him giddy. He wanted to laugh.

  She was watching him silently. She had a restless quality to her tonight, even more so than usual. It crackled in the air like a fire.

  Did she remember what he’d done when he’d feared her dead? How he’d rushed to her side and breathed air into her mouth while he begged her to live?

  Auberon crossed his arms and swallowed the questions that crowded on his tongue. His face was a mask as he arranged his features into a smirk that gave nothing away regarding his foolish sense of relief and joy—joy? Was that the word for the golden liquid flooding his veins?—at the sight of her alive.

  “Sleeping in your clothes, dragon girl?” he said as he gave her another once-over.

  “So are you, it looks like.” She spun the knife over the back of her hand. It was a pretty trick, one she’d probably practiced for months. “Is high society in Tasglorn so busy that you do not have time to change before falling into bed? Or are you on the road again?”

  “Fishing for information, are we?” He leaned one shoulder against the wall, smirking to conceal his delight. Lords, he was an utter fool to be so happy to see her. But he was ecstatic. The rocks he’d been carrying around in his chest had disintegrated, leaving him with a weightless feeling.

  “Don’t pretend you aren’t doing the same,” the dragonsayer responded sharply. But her tone had no bite to it, and she shifted toward him with an eagerness that he noted silently.

  She was not unhappy to see him either, he surmised.

  That observation pleased him more than it should. He scolded himself. The dragon girl certainly wasn’t delighted in the mere prospect of his company. They were not, as they had so vehemently established some time ago, friends.

  Words she’d said to him once echoed through his mind: We’re the only two things quite like each other in the world, I think. You’re the only one who understands what it’s like for me.

  He pushed away the feelings that stirred in him.

  They were enemies. No matter how idiotic he might feel at times.

  When he spoke, he spoke in the voice of an enemy. Cynical. Wary. Betraying none of his weakness for her. “You want something,” he guessed.

  The dragonsayer’s lips twitched. Her eyebrows drew together the way they did when she was debating whether or not to obscure the truth.

  He was right.

  That was when Auberon realized, with a spark of shock, that the bars that separated them were gone. The moonlight poured through the window, almost as bright as sunlight, pooling on the uneven stone floor between them.

  The dragonsayer noticed it at the same moment as he did. She went still, her knife freezing in her hand, her limbs bracing and muscles twitching in readiness, as if he would charge at any moment to strangle her. Her face, as she turned it t
o him, was a kaleidoscope of startled, wary, frightened expressions. The moonlight illuminated her features starkly. She rose smoothly into a half-crouch, as though she thought he would charge her.

  The fear that passed over her eyes in a flash sent a knife of regret through him. He deserved that. He was a monster in a silver cloak, a demon in gloves. Of course she feared what he might do. He was a despicable creature.

  The pain was like poison in his veins.

  They stared at each other, each waiting for the other to make the first move. Auberon saw her throat bob as she swallowed.

  “Stay away,” she breathed.

  Auberon held up a gloved hand as if to say, of course.

  She relaxed slightly but kept her knife ready. “How… how can the bars be gone?”

  Vaguely, he remembered the bars vanishing when he’d tried to reach her the last time he’d seen her here in the dream, when she’d been unconscious and not breathing. Had he disintegrated the bars between them by sheer force of will?

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Auberon said. His heart was beating fast again. Had he permanently manipulated the dream environment? What did this mean? Could he do it again? Could he destroy the walls of the cell?

  And if they could, what waited on the other side?