A Court of Lies

by Kate Avery Ellison

  “What shall we do with him?” Crag asked Briand in a quiet rumble.

  Briand studied the man called Maggot, who was moaning in pain. Blood poured from his nose in a waterfall of red, staining the front of his dirty shirt. He looked barely more than a boy. “Dungeon,” she said. “Until I can decide.” She paused, then addressed the thief directly. “Can you read?”

  He blinked at her. “What?” He had a thick Kyreian accent.

  “Can you read? Austrish, Tyyrian, Dzani, anything?”

  “No,” he said, suspicious. “I can’t read.”

  “Hmm,” she said with a hint of a smile. “I have a punishment in mind for you.”

  ~

  Briand found Nath in the dining hall, surrounded by a gaggle of beggar children and midway through a lecture about ancient history. The topic had sounded dry as a Syrian creek bed to Briand when Nath suggested it, but the children were lapping it up, eyes wide and mouths hanging open.

  “Then Lord Yarrow thrust the sword through his opponent’s stomach,” Nath was saying, slashing his arm to demonstrate. “He spilled the other king’s guts on the ground in a fountain of blood, and the king died in a fit of agony.”

  Ah. That was why they were so attentive. Nothing like a little gore to keep the children delighted. Briand noticed that the youngest of the children, Pip, stayed closest to Nath’s side. He’d adopted Nath as a father-figure, and Nath, though he grumbled about it, watched out for the child as fiercely as he complained at the lack of proper food and sunlight in the thief quarters.

  Nath’s voice rose in excitement as he reached the climax of the story. “Lord Yarrow wrenched his sword free and held it aloft in the sunlight.” The tutor lifted his arm, enacting the pose, and the children oohed. “The king’s army fell to their knees at the sight, because, having killed the other man, now Lord Yarrow was their king.”

  “Like Guttersnipe,” one of the beggar children piped up helpfully, pointing in Briand’s direction.

  “Er, yes,” Nath said, taking notice of her and adopting a more somber expression as he dropped his arm. “Exactly. Anyway, that was how Estria became part of the kingdom.” He glanced up at Briand, who leaned in the doorway with her arms crossed. “All right, children. Go on. Learn your letters by tomorrow, or I’ll have you all strung up by your ankles.”

  The children didn’t look remotely worried by the threat.

  “Are you going to tell us about the Battle of Tasglorn tomorrow?” a little girl with tangled locks and eyes the color of mud puddles asked hopefully.

  Nath cleared his throat with a look in Briand’s direction. “Ah, perhaps.”

  “You promised!” another child said indignantly.

  “Yes, well. Work on those letters, and we’ll see.”

  They scampered away, and Nath approached Briand.

  “Isn’t the Battle of Tasglorn a bloodbath? Heads on spikes, that sort of thing?” she asked when he reached her.

  Nath scratched the back of his neck. “Ah, well, I was planning on telling them about a little-known part of the battle, where, ah, a small troop of men did nothing but watch the walls of the city. They lived to fight another day. Sanitary stuff, really.” His mouth pulled down in a frown. “Don’t look so disapproving.”

  Briand laughed. “I haven’t the faintest idea how to raise children, and these children have seen a great deal of bloodshed already. They seem to like the stories, anyway. Gory stories sound like an excellent way to hold their attention.”

  Nath muttered something under his breath about Cait and the scoldings he’d already received. Then he took a closer look at Briand, and he straightened with concern. “What happened?”

  Nath was always so perceptive. No wonder Kael had found him an invaluable part of the party whenever they had a mission. Thinking of Kael sent a dagger of pain through her heart, and she jerked her thoughts away from such ruminations the way she’d yank a lazing horse away from a field of tall grass and back onto the road. She would think nothing of Kael. Absolutely nothing. She would not think of his dark gaze and hard-won smiles, or his quiet certainties and his blasted honor, or his dry humor and solemn dutifulness, or the way he managed to make a group of scrappy misfits into a family loyal to the death…

  A family who had been torn apart, thanks to Prince Jehn’s decree. A lump of anger filled Briand’s throat, threatening to choke her.

  She swallowed hard and took back the reins of her runaway thoughts. She was a thief-queen now. She could not let her imagination gallop around like a mere guttersnipe might.

  Nath, arms crossed, was still waiting for an answer.

  “I had another hopeful try to challenge me,” she said.

  Nath shook his head. “Again? These thieves are not, as a group, trained fighters. When are they going to realize they’re no match for you?”

  “I think Rags purposefully kept them weak and untrained,” she said. “To keep herself from being challenged. She was old and frail. No doubt she was fearful of being ousted.”

  “She was a Seeker,” Nath muttered. “She had powers. I’m sure she used them to her advantage.”

  For a moment, Briand felt a sting of envy at the ability to reach into someone’s head and see if they intended to be disloyal. If she could sort through the thieves this way, see which ones still harbored the hope of killing her and taking the mantle of thief-queen or thief-king for themselves…

  “What did he try?” Nath asked. “Anything original?”

  “Knife in the dark passage between my chambers and the main thoroughfare,” she replied.

  Nath rolled his eyes. “And where is your would-be assassin now?”

  “I send him to the dungeons. I thought maybe you could teach him to read.”

  Nath pointed a finger at her. “Stop using me as punishment! Reading is a useful and necessary skill.” He paused. “Make Crispin do it. I’m busy with the beggar younglings. Their knowledge of our kingdom’s history is abysmal.”

  “And here I thought you didn’t like children,” Briand said.

  “I don’t,” Nath said. “I loathe them. But at least these ones are quiet, and they listen to every word I say.” He gave her a look. “Unlike some I could mention.”

  “I listen to your advice, Nath,” she said indignantly. “In fact, I am here to ask it.”

  He sat on one of the benches and folded his hands. “Oh?”

  “I think we should train the thieves to fight.”

  “Are you mad? When they keep attacking you?”

  “We need the ability to defend ourselves,” she said. “We need security. I don’t want a weak and scattered group. I want a force to be reckoned with.”

  Nath frowned. “So, you want to give them swords and teach them to use them on you?”

  “I want to build a family. If we can inspire the thieves to loyalty—”

  “They’re thieves!”

  Briand sighed. “They’re just people. Battered, frightened people who’ve never had anybody to care about them or show them they have the slightest worth. They’re scattered and disorganized now, yes, but perhaps, if they had something they believed in, they would rally.”

  Nath smiled faintly. “And I used to think you cynical.”

  “I am cynical,” Briand said, a hint of a reluctant grin stretching her lips. She kicked a puff of dirt from the floor at him and turned away. “Sparring lessons after dinner?”

  She’d been pushing herself hard to get better at hand-to-hand combat, swordplay, and other means of defending herself. Thieves were trying to kill her, the bars had disappeared in the dream dungeon, and the Seekers were an ever-present threat. She needed to be able to fight in close quarters with a much larger opponent if need be.

  “After dinner,” he agreed. “Have you seen Cait? She was looking for you earlier.”

  Briand left him to find Cait. She was glad to see Nath in such good spirits. She hadn’t told him about what the Seeker said several days ago about Kael’s death being necessary to win the
war.

  She hadn’t told anyone.

  ~

  The dragonsayer found Cait in one of the large, empty rooms that had once been used as water reservoirs. Now, lichen spotted the cracked stone, and muddy stains marred the floor. A few beggars and thieves sat around Cait while the young noblewoman examined their clothing. A pile of red fabric lay at her feet. She’d previously declared to Briand that a thief-queen needed clothing to fit the part, and she’d taken it upon herself to make the Scarlet Blade, dragonsayer, and thief-queen of Gillspin a wardrobe suited to those titles. She’d enlisted the help of all of the thieves skilled with needles.

  “Briand!” she exclaimed at the sight of her friend. “These people are brilliant. Look at what they’ve done with the fabrics available to them. This patchwork is so cunning, so innovative.” She held up a cloak, sewn from a dozen different patterns and colors of red. The effect was, Briand thought, rather suited to a thief-queen. Some of the reds must have been taken from stolen goods previously belonging to nobility, for the fabrics flashed and shimmered like saasa silk. She liked it.

  “You know what they say about necessity and invention,” Briand replied.

  A few of the thieves gave her cautious nods of acknowledgment when she looked at them. Most did not know what to think of her yet, but she had some supporters, at least.

  Cait stood and brushed grit from her skirt. “I’m making you a bodice with hidden pockets for more weapons. You can keep rope on you in case you need to strangle someone.”

  Briand raised her eyebrows but didn’t comment.

  “If we could get more fabric,” Cait said, not noticing Briand’s expression or choosing to ignore it, “we could make things to sell after we’ve finished outfitting you and everyone else in this place. It’d be a way to make some honest money.”

  “Well, as honest as however we obtained the fabrics,” Briand said.

  Cait frowned at that, momentarily stumped, but then she waved a hand. “These merchants are all crooks,” she said. She studied Briand’s face. “What happened?”

  “Are you and Nath both turning into soothsayers?” Briand demanded. “How is it that you can look at me and know I’ve been in a fight? Am I so blatantly transparent?”

  “You have a scrape on your forehead, and dirt on your cheek,” Cait said with amusement.

  “Another assassination attempt,” Briand said, feeling on her face for the scrape. “By a man called Maggot.”

  Cait sighed. “Weasel, Rags, Maggot… if you could choose your own name, wouldn’t you pick something a little nicer?” She looked at Briand and seemed to remember that her friend’s chosen moniker was Guttersnipe, for her face reddened.

  “It’s a point of pride, in a way, to own your own rejection and lowliness, make the insult a chosen name,” Briand mused. “Speaking of which, have you chosen your thief name?”

  “I was thinking of going by Sunshine,” Cait said. “Or perhaps Rainbow.”

  “An interesting choice,” Briand said, keeping her face straight.

  “Don’t you laugh at me, Briand!” Cait said, wagging a finger at her friend. “This place needs a little sunshine. We can’t all be named things like Dirt and Pond Scum.” But she was laughing too, her eyes crinkling.

  Cait seemed happier, Briand decided. She had a vibrancy to her that she’d lost after Sobin died. She joked often, despite the rather grimy and dreary circumstances they found themselves in. “I don’t know, Pond Scum has a certain ring to it.”

  Cait sighed and shook her head dramatically.

  “Well, Sunshine,” Briand said. “We’re having sparring practice after dinner. Don’t be late.”

  They all had to stay sharp if they wanted to survive this dangerous place. It was full of stabby people.

  ~

  Before dinner, Briand held court in the same tradition as Rags, where all the thieves and beggars came with their earnings for the day to put their tax to the queen in a big bucket at the foot of her throne. They lined the walls, each waiting his or her turn. Among them were a few travelers from other places, people who wanted to lay low and avoid the inns. One of the thieves looked like Kael until he straightened and met her eyes, and she swallowed as her heart stuttered.

  She was not going to spend the rest of her life pining.

  She was not.

  Still, her pulse was jumping at the thought of the man she loved. The man she’d lost.

  Briand moved one hand restlessly and bit back a curse as the rough wood of the throne bit at her arm. She picked a splinter from her wrist, vowing to replace the thing as soon as possible with some other building material.

  One by one, the thieves approached her throne of barrels and crates and paid their dues, money that they would use to buy food and fuel for everyone’s survival. As the coins plinked into the bucket, Briand’s eyes roved across the line of waiting supplicants.

  A figure in a dark cloak stood at the back, hood drawn over a bowed head, gloves pulled over folded hands. They were hunter’s gloves, made of soft brown leather, not the sleek, slick ones favored by the Seekers. Still, the sight of gloves made her stomach clench and her muscles tighten.

  She eyed the figure, watchful and wary. As the line moved forward, she kept her eyes on that hooded head.

  The coins rattled in the bucket at her feet. The thieves shuffled forward and muttered their allegiance.

  Soon, the figure stepped before her. The torches flickered in their brackets. The sky above had turned dusty with stars.

  The figure did not lift his or her hood, which was not unusual, but Briand’s skin prickled with awareness. Marl?

  She reached down and put her hand on the knife at her belt.

  “Yes?” she said, her voice coming out imperious and cold.

  “I hear you offer shelter for travelers,” a gruff male voice said.

  “If the pay is good,” she said.

  The figure stretched out a hand and released three gold dubois into the bucket. He lifted his head, and part of the hood fell to the side, revealing a sliver of a face.

  A face she’d know anywhere.

  Kael.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE WORLD AROUND Briand went momentarily silent as if all sound had been sucked away, leaving only the thud of her heart as she stared, frozen, at the dark cloaked, dark gloved man standing before her. A hint of muscular forearm was visible where he’d parted the cloak, and a glimpse of his jaw and eyes before the shadows and the cloak rendered the rest hidden, but... It was him.

  Kael’s gaze collided with hers, sending a lightning bolt up her spine, and she felt as though she were falling off a cliff.

  A vein throbbed in his throat as he waited for her reply.

  Briand had imagined this moment a hundred times, mostly when she couldn’t fall asleep at night. Most of the times involved her leaping from the throne and pressing her blade to his neck and demanding to know why he’d broken her heart.

  The others had involved some form of kissing.

  Now, tangled in that stare of his, she was frozen.

  One edge of his mouth lifted in the hint of an infuriating smile, and Briand’s whole body went ablaze with anger. How dare that bastard smile at her? And how dare her stomach twist into a delicious knot at the sight of it?

  She burned with fury. And longing.

  Mostly fury.

  ~

  Kael gazed up at the dragonsayer, waiting for her reply to his request, his muscles strung tight. He was of a mind to stride up the steps of her throne and sweep her into his arms.

  If he dared do so, she’d put a knife in his ribs, judging by her expression.

  He wouldn’t fault her for it.

  Lords, she was fierce. She took his breath away, sitting like an empress above this ragged court, blazing with fury. A flush stained her cheeks, and her eyes glowed. A vein pulsed in her throat, giving a hint at her pulse despite her icy stillness. He watched the way her fingers twitched at her knife, but she held herself steady. Regal.r />
  She was resplendent.

  Kael had the fleeting thought that if she and the queen of Nyr ever met, they might be great friends. They were both utterly ruthless, fearless women. But the queen of Nyr was as cool and remote as the moon, similar to Valora. Briand had the restless energy of a barely-contained wildfire.

  She skewered him with her eyes. He was paralyzed beneath her gaze.

  Had she any idea what a fool she made him into when she looked at him like that?

  ~

  Briand brought her rebellious emotions under control. She lifted her chin, doing her best impression of Maera when the spy was playing a haughty noblewoman. Her voice, when she spoke, was steady.

  “That is sufficient. Welcome.”

  Kael’s mouth twitched again. He gave her a nod, his hood falling back over his eyes, and stepped toward the archway that led to the dining hall. His cloak was a sweep of shadow behind him as he vanished into the darkness.

  She stared after him from her throne, eyes narrowed, heart still pounding.

  What was he doing here?

  ~

  Though he was exhausted from the journey, Kael lingered in the shadows, watching the proceedings from a shaded alcove as the thieves stepped before the splintered throne one by one. The dragonsayer barely had to speak a word to them—her witching gaze had them quaking before her.

  She was stunning in her guttersnipe court. She wore her knives and rags as beautifully and fittingly as another queen might wear gold and pearls. He still saw a glimpse of the girl who’d climbed the ramparts of her uncle’s castle and gambled with the guards. Back when he was a younger and more rigidly uptight ass of a person. He’d scolded her for gambling in those days, but it looked as though she had gambled herself into a crown.

  One of the men, at his turn, tried to withhold his full payment, foolishly gambling on the hope that she didn’t know what he owed her, and Briand leaned forward, her shoulders tight and her mouth a sword of derision.