A Court of Lies

by Kate Avery Ellison

  “Would you consider moving elsewhere, if you were promised protection?” Briand asked thoughtfully.

  The woman lifted her chin. “I might. My children are lonely, and I don’t have enough books to satisfy their thirst for education. But who might protect us? It’d take a king’s guard to make me feel safe from the Seekers, I think.”

  A faint smile touched Briand’s lips. “Would a thief-queen’s guard do?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  THE MORNING OF the wedding between Prince Jehn of Austrisia and the queen of Nyr dawned in golden, dew-soaked splendor after a night of rain. Jehn was awake to see the first strands of light as they touched the horizon, and he remained standing on the balcony as the sun rose. The bed behind him was rumpled, the blankets in knots from his tossing and turning. He pulled the vial from his pocket, stared at the contents for a long while, and then put it away again.

  He needed a clear head for this day, no matter how much his hand might hurt.

  Servants arrived to dress him, scurrying around him in silence. His black mood filled the room like a cloud, and he said nothing to anyone.

  Lady Valora arrived to speak with him, but he sent her away. He did not want to talk strategies with his nobles.

  Not today.

  The sun rose, filling the room with bright light. Jehn drew the shades.

  The marriage would take place at noon.

  The servants helped him into his wedding finery—traditional Nyrian wedding garments, with a long robe of gold stripes that dragged six feet behind him on the ground, the sleeves long enough to cover his ruined hand. They draped ropes of gold and pearls around his neck, and the touch of the metal was cold like chains. Drums and trumpets played outside as a parade wound through the streets adjacent to the palace.

  Cannons fired over the bay, the boom shaking the walls of the palace, and Jehn found himself on the other side of the room, pressed against the wall, his chest aching as he struggled to breathe, his mind filled with memories of the pirate attack. The cannons fired again, and he closed his eyes and fumbled for the vial of medicine in his pocket.

  “Jehn,” a voice said.

  He opened his eyes. His vision was blurry, but he knew who it was.

  His captain of the guard. His best friend. His brother in all but blood.

  Back from his mission.

  Kael strode forward and grabbed him by both shoulders instead of bowing. His brow furrowed with concern.

  “Jehn,” he said again, urgently this time. “What is it?”

  “The cannons,” Jehn managed. His throat was dry as sand. His hand, holding the vial, trembled. “They… remind me. No. They transport me. I see it again. The sea. The ships.” He shuddered. “The knife.”

  His hand throbbed fresh as the image flashed through his head—that dark, suffocating room packed with bodies. The leering smile of the pirate king. The agonizing pain.

  Jehn’s chest constricted again. He gasped for air.

  Kael’s expression cleared. “It is called battle sick, Your Grace,” he said gently. “Many soldiers experience it after the horrors of war. Certain sounds or places dredge up memories that feel so real that they incapacitate the former soldier.” Kael glanced at the bed. “Trouble sleeping, loss of appetite, pain in the chest…”

  Jehn swallowed. “Perhaps that is it.”

  They both looked at the vial in his hand.

  A servant appeared in the doorway.

  “Your Grace,” he said in heavily accented Austrisian. “It’s time.”

  Jehn locked eyes with his friend. He uncorked the vial and took a swallow before replacing it in his pocket.

  Kael didn’t say anything.

  “The mission?” Jehn asked under his breath as they moved toward the door.

  Kael nodded once. “Successful.”

  Jehn sighed. He was pleased to hear this. Later, he would ask all the questions that needed to be asked, and see what he had sent Kael to find.

  First, his marriage.

  Kael stayed by the prince’s side as they moved through the palace corridors. The crowds outside roared in celebration of the holiday. Jehn didn’t think they cared anything about the queen’s marriage to him.

  He felt only dread.

  They reached the antechamber to the throne room, and there waited the queen, resplendent in gold. She looked like the sun, her dress and train blinding with flashes of light as she stood in the window. She turned at Jehn’s entrance, her face half-hidden by a long, embroidered gold veil set with diamonds. She made a gesture with her fingers, and the guards parted like waves, falling back to the edges of the room. Kael bowed to the queen and looked at Jehn, who nodded.

  His friend stepped away, and Jehn and the queen stood alone.

  Jehn didn’t trust his voice, so he didn’t speak. The medicine had begun to take hold, sinking into his veins like honey, softening the bite of the pain and loosening his anguish into mere bitterness. He looked at her with venom.

  She was beautiful. Deadly.

  “I have a wedding present for you,” the queen said. “As I believe that is customary.”

  Jehn didn’t move or speak.

  The queen stretched out a hand, offering him a scroll the size of her palm.

  “In the farthest edges of Nyr’s waters, there is a cluster of small islands called the Coassas,” she said, speaking in a voice only he could hear. “It is beautiful there. Warm, but not too warm. Grasslands, and small mountains. It is the place in Nyr most like your homeland, I am told.”

  Jehn gazed at her, puzzled.

  He didn’t understand.

  “There were never any executions,” the queen said. Her words were as soft as petals landing on water.

  Jehn stared at her as he began to understand.

  “You backed me into a corner, husband-to-be. What choice had I but to show strength? But your refugees are safe, just as you asked of me. They are on the Coassas islands now. No one knows but you and I and the members of my most trusted guard.”

  She pressed the scroll into his hand. “Here is the signature of the captain telling me it has been done. I wanted you to see it, so you would know that it was true. You may visit the islands if you wish and see for yourself if you do not trust me, which I imagine you do not.”

  Jehn lifted the scroll from her palm, his fingers brushing hers. A spark of electricity leaped between them at the contact.

  He gazed at the scroll, then her face.

  Something shimmered in the queen’s eyes. It might have been vulnerability. Then, her eyes hardened, and her gold-painted lips curled.

  “Do not try to manipulate me like that again. It will not end well.”

  Jehn felt dizzy. He stared at the queen as a hot flush spread across his skin and his chest filled with a strange, aching sensation.

  This woman took his breath away.

  He was in awe of her.

  Then the doors opened, and the sun poured in from the throne room, and Jehn took the queen’s arm and walked with her to say their vows of marriage before the Nyrian and Austrisian courts.

  The queen didn’t look at him again.

  But he couldn’t stop staring.

  ~

  Night had fallen, and the marriage feast was well underway, but there was one last ritual to partake of before they were fully wed. Jehn and the queen of Nyr climbed the steps of the highest tower in the palace, accompanied by only a pair of guards carrying torches and a priest in a long, dark robe. Stars glittered above, visible through the tower windows as they followed the staircase around and around in an ever-upward spiral. Fireworks exploded over the bay, sending sprays of screaming color through the darkness, illuminating the queen in floods of blue, then purple, then scarlet light. She had changed from the gold dress with the long train to a slimmer, simpler blue gown with a gold cloak as thin as mist. Webs of pearls draped her shoulders and arms and coiled around her slender neck. Her skin was warm and dark, and the pearls were bright against her body.


  How had he never realized how beautiful she was before now?

  He had noticed, perhaps, but now the realization struck him like a blow to the chest.

  They reached the top of their climb. The tower at the pinnacle of the palace overlooked the entire city. Far below, the streets glowed with lanterns and torches, looking like threads of fire across a dark blanket. Every citizen in the city must be in the streets.

  The priest took the torch from one of the soldiers and held it aloft. He spoke a blessing, then ignited a flame in the stone bowl in the center of the tower. Two metal sticks protruded from the bowl, already laid out by some unseen servant for the occasion.

  They waited in silence until the priest withdrew the pokers from the fire, the ends glowing red-hot in the dimness of the tower.

  The queen bared her arm first, and the hiss of the hot metal against her flesh made Jehn turn away as a memory threatened to swallow him, a memory of pain and darkness and pirates. Instead, he gazed down at the gardens of the palace, visible from this point like nowhere else in the palace. The gardens all gleamed with light, their pathways lit by lanterns just like the streets, the edges of the ponds and lakes glowing with floating candles.

  His eyes were drawn to the queen’s garden again, that image of a snake, but what he saw made him freeze in wonder.

  At this height, the snake had transformed into something else.

  A flower.

  “Your Grace,” the priest said, and Jehn turned. The priest had already rubbed healing salve on the burn mark on the queen’s arm, and now he held out the poker for Jehn.

  Jehn crossed the tower floor to stand beside the priest. The queen watched impassively as the glowing metal lowered to Jehn’s skin. Jehn bit his lips to hold in a cry as the brand seared his flesh in the shape of the queen’s chosen symbol—a flower, just like the garden he’d caught a glimpse of below. The pain of it made him dizzy, and he wanted to close his eyes, but he kept them open. Kept them trained on the queen.

  When the priest withdrew the brand, he dapped an ointment that smelled of mint on the burn and whispered a blessing over them. Jehn heard only snippets—many children, long lives, joy in each other’s love—and he wondered what the queen was thinking.

  And then it was done.

  The priest bowed and withdrew, leaving them alone. The queen gazed down at her branded flesh that signaled that she was a married woman now, the brand that matched his own. It was her mark, for she was the queen, and he merely her consort.

  He wore her symbol burned into his flesh forever now.

  But Jehn wasn’t sorry about it.

  He spoke.

  “What now?”

  The queen was still examining the puckered, burned flesh from her branding. “Usually, the married couple descends the steps together and retire to their chamber. They do not return to the feasting until the morning. Of course, we will not be going anywhere together tonight, but we ought not to be seen at the feast either. I am going back to my chambers. I have a wicked headache.” She paused. “The feast will continue all week, of course, and I will expect to see you there and at my right hand. After that, I do not care what you do. Amuse yourself somehow—find a paramour, learn the language, whatever you want.”

  “I think,” Jehn said softly, “that I shall use the extra time to win my war.”

  “Isn’t that why you have generals?” she said.

  “Come now,” Jehn said. “We are married. Surely we can admit the truth about ourselves.”

  The queen’s eyebrows quirked.

  “You play at being a figurehead, but you run this country and your ministers too. They don’t even realize it, do they?” Jehn said.

  The queen tipped her head to the side. “You see much, Jehn of Austrisia. And what is the truth about you? That you are observant from behind the bars of your gilded cage?”

  “My truth,” Jehn said, “is that I shall rule the continent one day. And it is I, not my generals, who shall bring it about.”

  The queen smiled. It was a rare sight, that smile, and mesmerizing, but in a frightening way. Like a flash of light along the edge of an assassin’s knife. “Ambitious, you are,” she agreed. “But are you really so clever as you think? I’ve already bested you once.”

  Jehn was silent.

  She turned to go without waiting for an answer.

  Jehn spoke just before she reached the door. “Did you fashion your garden to look like the flower that killed your father?”

  The queen stopped. She turned her head so her face was in profile and looked at him out of the corner of her eye. Her throat, visible in the light of the fireworks, bobbed as she swallowed.

  “What?” she said. The word was a quiet, stunned utterance.

  “Your garden,” said Jehn. “The final image is a flower. It’s visible only from this vantage point. I saw it below, lit up by celebration, as bright as a brand. Specifically, I noted, the black lioness, based on the unusual shape of the stem and the petals. Your favorite flower, you said. A strange choice, I thought, given its sordid abilities.”

  Now, it was the queen who was silent.

  “I read about the black lioness in the palace libraries. It’s a rare flower, not commonly known for the poison that can be made from its nectar. A poison that, if ingested, causes bleeding from the nose and mouth. That flower killed your father, didn’t it? And yet, you wear its scent.”

  The queen’s expression was pinched. Pained. She faced him silently.

  Jehn studied her face. “At first, I thought perhaps you killed him,” he said. “But no—you did not kill him, did you? I do not think that you did.”

  Still, she was silent.

  “But,” Jehn said softly, taking a step toward her. “You are glad that he died. Your favorite flower, you said—is that fatal purple lily your favorite because it is the thing that killed him? I heard how he mistreated you. How he threatened you—”

  The queen winced. It was almost imperceptible, but Jehn saw it. “Do you wear its perfume as a reminder to yourself of your own mortality, or perhaps, as a message to his killer, who remains close to you even now? Is it your way of saying that you know?”

  The queen’s eyes sparked. She drew close to him, so close that he felt the brush of her lips on his ear as she whispered. A shudder worked through him.

  “Keep your clever deductions to yourself, husband, and you might survive. Stir up old blood, and you might find yourself killed. Make no mistake, Jehn of Austrisia. The Nyrian court is a deadly place.”

  With that, she withdrew in radiant fury to the staircase, leaving Jehn alone.

  He felt cold with her gone. Lonely. He was surprised at this emotion. It was new to him.

  He wanted to find her. Talk to her. Make her snarl at him, smile at him. Anything.

  Jehn was suddenly and uncomfortably aware that he might just be falling in love with his wife.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  THE QUEEN OF Nyr did not slow her pace until she’d reached her garden, flanked by her ever-silent soldiers who shadowed her without a sound.

  In the garden, with the paths lit by moonlight and the air smelling like honeysuckles, the sounds of the citywide celebration were muffled, muted into a background murmur masked by the sound of crickets trilling in the rushes. There were no fountains in her garden—she needed to be able to hear an assassin’s approach—but it was quiet enough for her to let the pressures and stresses of the day slip away as she loosened the golden cloak and let it flutter to the ground.

  She left the cloak lying there, discarded and rumpled.

  She was not a careless woman in her affairs. She couldn’t afford to be.

  Here, in this garden, she could be a little careless.

  She took down her hair and shook it out, massaging her temples to chase away the headache threatening at the edges of her vision. She kicked off her shoes next. She had never liked shoes as a girl, and she never learned to like them after she’d grown up. She’d spent her childhood playing on
the beaches of her mother’s island home, swimming in the sea and climbing trees. She never wore a shoe until she was past five. Her feet still loathed confinement.

  The queen padded to the edge of the pond and dipped her toes in the cool water. Overhead, fireworks exploded in the night sky, bathing her in alternating blues and violets.

  Footsteps alerted her to an intruder. Her guards straightened but did not approach the figure. The queen turned her head slightly, enough to see that it was Manus, one of the members of her guard. He was thin and lithe, but still muscular, with long hair as black as ink and a short, well-groomed mustache as thin and shiny as the end of a whip. He wore all shades of black and gray, and he blended perfectly with the shadows when he was still.

  “My queen,” Manus said, bowing low. “First, let me offer my congratulations to you on your wedding day.”

  “Thank you,” the queen said without looking up. “And what news do you have for me? Is it as we hoped?”

  “The mission was successful,” Manus said. “I’ve just received word from my spy. The Seeker did indeed find the dragonsayer as we hoped when we leaked the information to him of her location, and Prince Jehn’s captain of the guard and his crew liberated the sister from Ikarad with the Seeker’s help.”

  “And where are the Seeker and his sister now?” the queen asked.

  “Our spy doesn’t know,” Manus said. “There was an altercation after the prison break, and the two groups split—Kael of Estria with his men and the dragonsayer, and the Seeker and his sister.”

  “Find the sister,” the queen said. Fireworks exploded again, bathing the pond and Manus’s reflection in it in red and orange. “Bring her here.”

  Manus bowed again. “Of course.” He paused, his expression blank but his eyes dark with unspoken words.

  “No,” the queen said. “Not tonight.”