A Court of Lies

by Kate Avery Ellison

  “We are not friends,” she said coldly.

  A flicker of something—loneliness? Sadness?—crossed his face, but then he blinked, and the vulnerability vanished into a smooth smile as if it had never existed. “Of course,” he agreed. “We are enemies—but sometimes, enemies can become allies when faced with a greater, mutual concern.”

  “Where is Jade?” Briand said, growing impatient. “And why do you need my help?” She was worried about the Seeker woman, but she wouldn’t show Auberon that. She wouldn’t give him a single shred of weakness to exploit.

  He could not be trusted.

  “I need a dragonsayer,” Auberon replied.

  “What for?” Nath demanded, breaking the silence of the others and stepping forward with his hand on his sword.

  “Because I need to summon a dragon,” Auberon said.

  A coil of something that was not quite fear and not quite curiosity curled in Briand’s chest. She stared at the Seeker.

  Why did he want to call dragons?

  Nath scoffed. “Why would you ever think that our dragonsayer would help a despicable creature like you?”

  “Have you ever heard of Ikarad?” Auberon asked instead of answering that question.

  It was as if a chilly wind blew through the room when he spoke the word.

  “I haven’t,” Briand said warily, when no one else spoke. “What is it?”

  “It’s a Seeker prison,” Nath spat. “A remote death trap that officially doesn’t even exist. If that’s where his sister is, she’s as good as dead if she isn’t already.”

  “He’s right,” Kael said, and something in his voice sent goose bumps across Briand’s skin. “I think I know where you’re going with this, Auberon. It won’t work.”

  A muscle in Auberon’s jaw twitched, but he didn’t acknowledge Nath or Kael. He didn’t take his eyes from Briand’s. “I know she is alive,” he said. “She’s managed to send me a message.”

  “If your sister is alive and in Ikarad, she’s very soon going to be beyond helping,” Nath said. “So what can the dragonsayer possibly do about it?”

  Briand glanced at Nath—his face was the color of ash. He looked terrified.

  Auberon lifted his chin. “She and I are going to rescue Jade.”

  Kael gave a curt nod, as if he’d expected Auberon to say as much. He rubbed a hand across his chin, his eyebrows drawing together, and Briand imagined he was mentally putting together the pieces of whatever plan Auberon had not yet revealed.

  The others, however, were flabbergasted.

  “Rescue her?” Tibus repeated with a growl.

  “You aren’t going anywhere with Briand,” Nath said. He pulled out a knife as he spoke. “Not without us.”

  “Fine,” Auberon said, as if he’d been expecting this. “I’ll need a few extra bodies to be sword fodder for the guards anyway.”

  Nath made a furious sound. “That isn’t what I—nobody is going with you!”

  Briand held up a hand to quiet him, and Nath heaved an angry sigh and was silent, seething.

  “Your arrogance is astounding,” she said to Auberon. “That you would come here and make such a demand is unthinkable. What do you really want? Is this a trick?”

  “It’s no trick,” Auberon said. “Read my mind, dragon girl. You’ll see that I am sincere.”

  His gaze clung to Briand’s once more, and a shiver went through her.

  He did seem sincere. Desperate, even, despite his sneering façade.

  Maera said quietly, “If your sister was a fugitive of the order, and they’ve captured her, there is no rescuing her. She’ll be tortured beyond her capacity to withstand shortly, if she hasn’t been already. Nothing will remain of her mind but a shell if she lives at all. And you know this, so why…?”

  Auberon’s eyes narrowed. “They don’t know it is her. Not yet.”

  Kael, his chin still in his hand, slid his gaze to Briand. She felt his attention even as she kept her focus on the Seeker.

  “Explain,” Briand commanded. “Why would the Seekers not have already read Jade’s mind and discovered her identity?”

  “She was burned in a fire before she was captured. Her face was…” Auberon blinked a few times, “scarred. She is not recognizable, and as you know yourselves, shock can temporarily keep a mind from being read. In Ikarad, the prisoners are often thrown into vast holding cells to await processing. It can take months to scour the minds of all who are newly incarcerated. She may remain undiscovered for some time. But, as you can see, it is imperative that we go immediately.”

  “Why do you think Briand would have any inclination to help you?” Kael asked from where he’d been standing quietly. “What do you know?” he mused. “You’re not a stupid man. You wouldn’t come here without leverage.”

  Auberon’s lip curled at Kael’s piercing question. “When the guards of Ikarad do ravage my sister’s mind for information, they’ll know that Briand is the dragonsayer. They’ll know everything—they’ll know about you, traitor, and about your friends. They’ll know about the guardian family who was hiding in Tasglorn. Everything. Aren’t those things secrets you’d rather keep hidden a while longer?”

  Briand studied him. He spoke as if he had personal knowledge of these things. “Have you ever been to Ikarad?”

  Auberon twitched as if a dark memory passed through his mind. “Once,” he said. “Not as a prisoner, of course. It was a long time ago. But I still remember the things that are necessary to know. It is a strange, haunted place. Bound by curses and strange magic. But we could get inside.”

  “I still see no reason why we would help you—” Nath began.

  Auberon lifted his chin. “Allow me to sweeten the deal. I’m prepared to offer any information your Monarchist friends might need—codes, military movement, plans. I don’t care.”

  “Codes,” Kael repeated. “The codes Cahan’s army uses to communicate commands?” He had a gleam in his eye that suggested he’d thought of something.

  “I know them,” Auberon said. “I’ll give them to you.”

  Briand looked at Kael. He nodded to her once.

  “Let me look into your mind,” Briand said to the Seeker. “Let me see first that you are telling the truth.”

  “But what if he tricks you?” Nath spat.

  “He can’t see what I’m seeing, nor can he always control the flow of information. I could dip into his thoughts if he were trying to see mine. It isn’t quite like the way the Seekers do it, but it could work. We could know if he were lying, anyway.”

  The company was silent. Kael and Briand looked at each other. Briand gestured to the dracules.

  “Watch him,” she commanded them, and then she motioned for the others to withdraw with her to another part of the chamber, out of earshot.

  “This is insanity,” Nath hissed. “I say we kill him and be done with it.”

  “What about his sister?” Maera said. “If she is in Ikarad, since she knows about the dragonsayer—”

  “That knowledge, in the wrong hands, could be deadly,” Kael agreed.

  Tibus was quiet, his face drawn with concern.

  “You can’t possibly be entertaining the idea of helping a Seeker,” Nath said, aghast.

  “I am,” Kael said. “We could gain the codes the military uses and send those to draw the army away so the people inside could escape Isglorn.”

  “Meaning you would no longer be tortured by Seekers?” Briand asked.

  Kael nodded.

  She felt dizzy. She looked at Auberon over her shoulder and then back to the others.

  “I should contact Jehn via mechbird if this goes any further.” Kael said. He looked at Briand. “Thief-queen?”

  Her mouth pressed into a firm line, and after a moment, she nodded.

  She didn’t want to involve Jehn, but she knew Kael wouldn’t make a decision without speaking to his prince.

  “Send the mechbird,” she said.

  She would do anything to save Kae
l.

  Even break into a Seeker prison with the enemy.

  ~

  The mechbird came back that same evening, its gears hot from flying as fast as possible without stopping. Kael and Briand, waiting on the roof, intercepted the bird. The message it spat into Kael’s palm simply read, in the code language used between Kael and Jehn:

  Do it.

  And was signed by a single, scribbled J.

  Kael studied the writing for longer than Briand supposed was necessary to absorb the meaning of the words, and then he sighed.

  “See how shaky the text is? It is his hand, but it is sloppy. The prince,” he said to her, “is still using medicine to curb the pain of his hand, and I suspect, the pain of his mind as well.”

  “The pain of his mind?” She lifted a brow, skeptical. She was still angry with Jehn. She had not forgiven him for what he’d done to Kael. To her. “Is it so difficult to be a prince, with legions loyal to you and willing to give their lives and their blood to your cause?” Her voice turned scornful.

  “The prince lives a lonely and somewhat tortured existence,” Kael said. He brushed a kiss across the top of her head. “Much as I did before…”

  “Before what?” Briand asked.

  “Mmm,” Kael murmured. He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair. “Before a witching-eyed guttersnipe with a penchant for climbing towers and stealing horses came into my life and turned everything I thought I knew upside down.”

  “You didn’t like me then,” Briand protested. “You despised me.”

  “I was fascinated by you,” Kael said with a laugh. “I pretended exasperation and severity in turn to disguise how intriguing I found you, because if you’d discovered it, you would have twisted it to your advantage daily.”

  Briand made a scoffing noise. “I wouldn’t’ve. Not daily. Weekly, perhaps.”

  His chuckle was a warm rumble against her back as he pulled her into his arms. She leaned her head against his shoulder.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked. “About Auberon?”

  “We’ll assemble a team to break into Ikarad,” Kael said grimly.

  It was Briand’s turn to sigh. “This is going to be dangerous, isn’t it? Will everyone be safe? Nath? Tibus?”

  “Nath and Tibus are seasoned soldiers. And we’ll take every precaution.” Kael said, but he looked worried.

  “Every precaution that he won’t murder us, or that we won’t murder him?” she asked. “I’m thinking specifically of Nath here.”

  “I don’t think Nath is the only one eager to put a knife in a Seeker’s chest,” Kael said.

  She twisted her neck to look at him, and Kael was grim-faced.

  “You?”

  He pressed his forehead to hers and sighed in response.

  “I know you and Auberon… have a bit of a past,” she said.

  Kael didn’t move. He breathed in and out, as if savoring the feel of having her there. “He has long wanted me dead,” he agreed. “And I confess the feeling has been mutual at times.”

  “The information I could glean from his mind could save you torture,” she whispered.

  Kael made a small noise in the back of his throat. “But in return, we follow him to the bowels of hell. Ikarad is deep in the north, across mountains, through snow and ice. It was forged by magic, but not just any magic. Legend says a Seeker who’d gone insane built it a thousand years ago. It’s a twisted place, with riddles and betrayal written into the very stones. It won’t be easy, Catfoot.”

  “When has any mission with you ever been easy?” she said.

  He laughed quietly. “Fair enough.”

  It was different, being with him like this. She saw the man behind the mask. The doubts, the fears. She reached out and pressed her palm against Kael’s chest. Kael reached up and covered her hand with his. She felt his pulse in his palm, calm and firm.

  She loved him.

  She leaned close and planted a kiss on the corner of his mouth. “I have crossed deserts,” she said. “I have crossed oceans.” She pressed a kiss on the place just below his lower lip. “I think I can cross ice too.”

  Then she had a thought, and paused, her mouth against his chin.

  Kael drew back slightly, enough to look into her eyes. “What is it?” he asked.

  “What about the thieves?” Briand said. “I don’t dare leave them alone.”

  “I have an idea about that,” Kael said, and smiled.

  CHAPTER TEN

  MAERA’S EYES LIT up with entirely too much glee when she heard Kael’s plan.

  “I will play the best thief-queen you’ve ever seen,” she promised, her bright red lips flashing in a smile. “No one in the thief quarters will ever realize you’re gone. And we might redecorate a bit. This is going to be fun.”

  “How are you going to convince them that you’re me?” Briand asked, hands on her hips. “Take sick and hole up in the thief-queen chambers for several weeks? And what do you mean by redecorate?”

  “Oh no, I would go mad locked away in that coffin you call quarters,” Maera said. “No, I think you will very soon suffer an injury with a tub of hot grease, perhaps… something that will require you to bandage your entire face, and your hands. You won’t be able to throw your knives with as much precision, perhaps. So, no one can expect you to be shearing meat off pigs at dinnertime from across the room, not for several weeks.” She winked. “It will be perfect, Briand. A vacation. I’ll sit on the throne and keep your thieves in line.”

  She hadn’t, Briand noted with concern, answered the question about redecorating.

  “Are you sure you can play a convincing—” Nath began doubtfully.

  “Question my ability to play thief-queen again, and I’ll put a knife in your chest,” Maera snarled at him with one hand on the knife she wore at her hip.

  It was, even Briand had to admit, a fairly convincing impression of her.

  Nath stared, then guffawed. “Add a face bandage and I think you’d fool any one of us.”

  Maera shrugged one shoulder. “I do what I can.”

  “Maera will stay with Crispin to make sure things do not fall apart here,” Kael said. “Bran and Cait will go with the wagons and the thieves Briand trusts to accompany them to take the refugees hidden in the hills and transport them to the coast. Nath, Tibus, Briand, and I will accompany the Seeker north to Ikarad.”

  “I am not to go to Ikarad, then?” Bran asked. His tone was respectful, not challenging Kael’s decision, but the disappointment shone in his eyes. He didn’t look at his missing leg, but his right hand twitched toward his knee as if he could cover it up.

  Kael’s look was kind.

  “Help Cait collect the refugees,” Kael said. “You will be a great asset.”

  Bran jerked his chin in assent. He swallowed, his throat bobbing.

  Cait gave him a quick smile. “I’m glad you’ll be coming with me.”

  “I’m bringing the dracules,” Briand said.

  Kael nodded at her. “Good idea.”

  Auberon watched their discussion from across the room. Briand could tell by listening through the minds of the dracules that he could not hear what they were saying at that distance. He sat on a chair, positioned awkwardly due to his bound hands, his expression remote and haughty until he realized she was looking at him, and then he gazed at her with the piercing look of a wolf peering at civilization from the edge of a forest, she thought. Something in her chest twinged as she remembered the moments of friendship they’d shared, and the words they’d exchanged afterward when they had both disavowed friendship of any kind.

  She couldn’t afford to let her thinking become clouded. He was dangerous, and he’d made his position and feelings about her clear enough in recent times. They were not friends. Nothing remained of the closeness they’d shared, the empathy that had grown between them when she was in Tasglorn as his prisoner. She would treat him with caution.

  ~

  Auberon’s nose i
tched, but he was not about to lose all dignity in an attempt to scratch it with a foolish-looking contortion of his bound limbs, no matter how vexing the sensation was. And so, he sat making his best scowl, because it distracted him in a pleasant way whenever one of the Monarchists looked his direction and blanched with fear. The scrawny, ugly one with the scars on his face kept sliding his eyes toward Auberon and then away, his hands reaching reflexively for the sword he wore at his waist as if he wanted nothing more than to run Auberon through and leave him to bleed out on the floor. The pretty female Tasnian with the red lips and the dark eyes kept rubbing her shoulder where Auberon’s sister had injured her during their last encounter. Even the old soldier with the close-cut hair, who was burly as a bear and who looked strong enough to crush rocks in his hands, grimaced whenever Auberon’s gaze fell upon him.

  They ought to fear him. He could cripple any one of them with a touch, except for her…

  She could destroy him.

  In more ways than one.

  Auberon’s chest tightened whenever he met the dragonsayer’s eyes. Could she see how he was torn apart just looking at her? Were his feelings apparent? His pulse thudded at the thought. He had offered his mind to verify his sincerity, to give them an inducement to help him rescue Jade, but what if the dragon girl saw the truth?

  What if she saw that he was wholly and irrevocably in love with her?

  She would know that she could make him do anything. Anything at all.

  She was his weakness.

  And that was dangerous indeed.

  They approached, looking grim, and Auberon sneered at them all. They would not see his pain. They would not see his fear. He slouched in his chair as if he weren’t bound and uncomfortable, as if he didn’t have a care in the world, as if he weren’t terrified for his sister and bleeding inside at the sight of the dragonsayer, beautiful and flushed with life, her expression cold and scornful as she faced him.

  “We will help you rescue Jade from Ikarad,” the dragonsayer said. “But we have conditions.”