Huntress (4 page)

Taisin was surprised by the offer, but also a tiny bit pleased, and it was the pleasure that made her feel awkward. “Thank you,” she said formally.

Then Kaede heard the red gates open, and her mother’s voice calling her. Giving Taisin a small smile, she climbed out of the carriage, carefully closing the door with the oilcloth tacked over the broken window.

Chapter VII

T
here was a strange man in her father’s study. Kaede paused in the doorway, her hand on the latch. He was tall, and he wore an uncommonly fine dark blue silk tunic embroidered with white-capped waves, but his hair was as short as a guard’s. He turned at the slight creak of the door that Kaede pushed open, and broke into a smile. A single dimple creased his left cheek.

“Kaede,” he exclaimed. “It’s good to see you.”

“Con?” she said, recognizing him at last. He had been a regular guest in her parents’ home when she was a child, for he was close in age to her brothers Taeko and Tanis. She bowed to him. “What did you do to your hair?” The last time she had seen him had been at Kaihan’s wedding last year, and Prince Con Isae Tan—like all young men of rank—had worn his long black hair in a topknot.

The prince grinned, running a hand over the prickly ends of his black hair, now barely half an inch long. “I cut it off.”

She laughed. “Why?”

He shrugged. “I wanted to look ordinary.”

Behind her, Kaede’s father said, “Ordinary? What did your father think of that?”

Kaede stepped aside as Lord Raiden entered his study, carrying an account book under one arm. He set it down on his desk and took his seat behind it, flicking back the wide sleeves of his black robe. “Kaede,” he said, glancing perfunctorily at his daughter, “the prince and I have business to attend to. You may leave us.”

The smile that had lit Kaede’s face upon seeing Con disappeared. The prince glanced from father to daughter and said, “Lord Raiden, perhaps Kaede might join us.”

“What? I don’t think so.”

“Lord Raiden, she is part of this business.” The prince’s voice was gentle but firm.

Lord Raiden met the prince’s gaze. There was a brief silence. “Fine,” he said gruffly. “Kaede, close the door when you come in.” He did not wait for her to sit down before opening the account book and paging through to a section marked with a ribbon. “As I was saying earlier, the King has ordered a contingent of guards to accompany you, as well as several wagonloads of supplies. I’ve no idea how long this trip will take; all the maps are confoundedly inaccurate.”

Kaede realized they were discussing the journey she was about to embark on—and that her father had had no intention of telling her anything about it. She bit back the flaring anger inside her and sat down in the empty chair next to Con. The prince said, “Lord Raiden, I know that my father always travels with a large number of guards, but I think we would be better served by a smaller party.”

“It is dangerous out there, Your Highness. The people are restless. Our caravan was attacked on the way back from the Academy.”

Con nodded. “I know. But I think we would be more likely to slip by, unnoticed, if we were fewer in number. Consider this: If we travel with one guard each, we can stay at inns along the way instead of requiring shelter from my father’s loyalists. It will allow us to gain information, as well. I can send word to you by carrier or messenger if necessary.”

Lord Raiden frowned. “One guard each is not much. The King will not support it.”

Con leaned forward, putting a flattering smile on his face. “Lord Raiden, my father will support anything that you recommend.”

Kaede’s eyes flickered from Con to her father. She could see that he wanted to believe what the prince said.

“Your Highness, that is kind of you to say, but I’m afraid it will be too dangerous.” Lord Raiden glanced at his daughter, who was watching him with a stony expression. “And besides, my daughter is traveling with you. I want her to be safe.”

Kaede choked back a laugh; he had never been so concerned for her safety before she was called to go on this journey. When she was a child, he had rarely seemed to notice her at all. She was convinced that his worry, now, was only a pretense; he was just frustrated that she was not doing what he wanted. When her father saw the disbelief on her face, he glared at her, and she glared back.

Con saw the exchange but made no mention of it. “No one will know who we are if we travel lightly, Lord Raiden. But if we travel with a caravan of guards, we will be a slow-moving target.”

“What about the Xi? They aren’t to be trusted. It would be better to send more guards with you.”

“The more people we send, the more the Xi can turn with their glamours. We should bring only the guards we can trust.”

Lord Raiden tapped the tips of his fingers together. “Whom would you propose to take with you? Which guards?”

Con relaxed a bit. He could sense that Lord Raiden was about to give in. “Tali, of course,” Con said. Tali had been his personal guard since he was a boy, and he was trusted by both the Chancellor and the King. “He is completely loyal to me.”

Lord Raiden nodded. “Tali would be going with you anyway. I agree he is a good choice. Who else?”

Con had already consulted with Tali on this, and he had two names ready. “Pol should go. He is one of Tali’s favorites and has been in the King’s Guard for ten years now. He is from the Northerness, and he is a skilled hunter. He would be a valuable asset. And I think we should also bring Shae, from the Third Division, though she is fairly new to the Guard.” Tali had suggested the woman, who had only been a guard for two years. “She’s from the village of Jilin; grew up near the Great Wood. She’ll know it better than any of the other guards.”

“So there would be six of you,” Lord Raiden said. “You, Taisin, Kaede, and three guards.”

“Yes.”

“You’ll need six horses?”

“I would suggest four riding horses, and two to pull the supply wagon.”

“No servants?”

“Tali will do the cooking,” Con said with a grin.

Lord Raiden let out a short laugh. “You won’t eat well.”

“We don’t need to eat well. We just need to survive the journey.”

Lord Raiden nodded slowly. “All right. I’ll speak to the King about your wishes.”

“Thank you.” Con looked over at Kaede, who had listened to their conversation in silence, and asked, “Does that sound all right with you?”

Kaede blinked. “With me?” She hesitated. Her father was watching her. Hearing the prince and her father discuss the details of the journey had made her feel largely irrelevant. Six years at the Academy behind her, and she was utterly unprepared for this sort of thing. She felt both useless and irritated by the uselessness. But she would never allow her father to see her misgivings, so she said nonchalantly, “Of course. It all sounds fine.” But the palms of her hands were clammy, and Con’s words rang in her ears:
We just need to survive the journey
. What was he expecting? She began to wonder, seriously, what she had gotten herself into.

The night before their departure, the King hosted a private banquet in their honor, and even Queen Yuriya, her belly swollen in the seventh month of pregnancy, joined them in the dining room. In addition to the King and Queen, Taisin’s family was present: her father and mother, with somewhat awed expressions on their faces; and her sister, Suri, with large dark eyes that seemed to look right through a person.

Kaede’s family had been invited, as well. Her mother, her hair twisted into the shape of a spiraling shell, sat at the King’s right hand. Her father sat next to Prince Con, who suffered the good-natured ribbing of Kaede’s three brothers for cutting off his hair. Kaede was between the prince and her middle brother, Tanis, who had recently returned from the South and only wished to discuss politics with the prince. Caught between them, Kaede fell silent, watching Taisin across the table. She was seated next to Kaede’s brother Taeko, who was the closest to her in age and had become something of a flirt in the last few years. Taisin had a small smirk on her face as Taeko attempted to impress her, and Kaede liked Taisin the better for it, as few were immune to Taeko’s charms.

The broad, circular table was laid with a cloth of pale gold silk printed with twining crimson and green flowers, and there were eight courses. There was cold salad and clear soup, with translucent mushrooms floating within the broth in cloudlike clusters. There was roast duck and sweet, brined pork and tender, spiced lamb. There were tender cabbage leaves sautéed with ginger; there was an entire river fish with its mouth propped open on a carrot; and at the end there were bowls of sweet bean soup, with candied plums sinking to the bottom like treasure. Kaede couldn’t help but feel as though it were a last meal of sorts, and the forced joviality of it all made her uneasy. It seemed wrong to eat like this when people were going hungry in that tattered tent city outside Cathair’s walls.

At the end of the evening, the King stood up and toasted them as if they were about to depart on a holiday, and Kaede almost winced as she was forced to raise her glass along with everyone else. When she glanced at Con and Taisin, she saw that they, too, had sober looks on their faces as they listened to the King’s booming, slightly drunken voice. She was relieved when the toast was over. She did not know what lay ahead, but she was ready to find out.

Chapter VIII

T
aisin lay awake on the platform bed, gazing up at the wooden canopy. The silk sheets were cool and slippery beneath her, and when she shifted, her skin slid across them with a whispering noise that sounded abnormally loud in the hush of her chamber. Her family had been given rooms adjoining hers, but the palace was so large that she could hardly believe they were sleeping under the same roof. The last few days with them had been precious, though. She would see them in the morning once more, but she already missed them.

She tried to relax; she knew she should get as much sleep as possible, because tomorrow would be a long day. But she was anxious and unsettled, and the palace was too grand to be comfortable. When she first arrived, she had stared wide-eyed at everything. She had never seen furniture as fine as the dark red lacquered armchairs and tables in these rooms; she had never slept in a bed as magnificent as this one, with a frame carved into the shapes of singing birds on branches. At night, there had been a phalanx of servants to bathe her in jasmine-scented water, and in the morning, more servants came to dress her in clothing so exquisite she was almost afraid wear it.

But all the luxury in the palace did nothing to dull the sharp clarity of the emotions that gripped her every time she remembered her vision.

Since the first time she had envisioned that beach of ice, she had seen it twice more in dreams. Each time she awoke feeling torn up with loss, the sight of Kaede departing as painful as a fresh wound. Tonight in the palace, she was still awake when the vision began to pull at her, like fingers gently tugging her toward a deep blue pool. Part of her did not want to go, but part of her experienced this tugging with a kind of intellectual detachment. She had never encountered this kind of Sight before; it was like there was someone or something leading her forward. It was not unpleasant or frightening; it was merely quietly insistent. She knew it would win eventually, and so she gave in, allowing her mind to open up to what it wanted to show her—and then she was there: standing on the beach as always, her feet planted on the snow, looking out at the boat that Kaede rowed away from the shore.

For the first time, she sensed another person with her. She knew, somehow, that if she turned around, Con would be standing behind her. And she realized that she could feel some of what he was feeling: pain, physical pain, and beneath that a knotted rope of worry. He was moving toward her, and his fingers wrapped around her shoulder as if to restrain her. She saw Kaede leaving; her stomach twisted with dread. But this time there was more: a hot wash of guilt, spreading a bitter taste in her mouth.

The Taisin lying beneath silk sheets in the palace twisted her body, curving it as though she were running after Kaede, but the one standing on the beach did not move beneath the press of Con’s hand. Instead she looked up, past Kaede’s receding figure, and there she saw something that took her breath away. In Cathair she gasped out loud, crumpling the sheets into her fisted hands. There before her in her mind’s eye was a fortress rising up from the frigid sea like a mountain of snow. It was as though an iceberg had been carved with a giant knife, shaped into towers and walls; and cut into those walls were glass windows that winked in the brilliant sunlight like a thousand sparkling diamonds.

The fortress was on an island—or perhaps it was simply a particularly large ice floe—and Kaede was rowing toward it. Each stroke took her farther from the beach Taisin stood on, her feet growing colder by the second, and now she heard a sound for the first time: Con speaking in her ear, an urgent tone in his voice.
Come back
, he was saying to her.
Come back.

Taisin awoke well before dawn, the vision still clear in her mind, her nightgown soaked with sweat. She shivered; the silk sheets held no warmth. She sat up, shaking, and climbed down from the platform bed to retrieve her knapsack. She pulled it open and rifled through it in the dark until she found her woolen traveling cloak. It had been laundered by the palace servants, and now she wrapped it around herself, the scratchy fabric a welcome contrast to the cold silk.

What had Con meant? Come back from what? The image of the ice fortress loomed in her memory, monstrous and beautiful. Who—or what—could have built that? The only thing she was sure of was the way her heart constricted every time Kaede left, and every time she felt it, she was more determined to make sure it never happened. But now the guilt confused her. Why hadn’t she felt it before? She was bewildered; she was frustrated. She didn’t understand the version of herself in the vision. That Taisin had emotions that the present-day Taisin—the one clutching her cloak to her chest in the King’s palace—couldn’t relate to. Was she fated to become that other Taisin?

Restless, she went to the windows overlooking the courtyard and unlatched them, curling up on the window seat. She tried to remind herself who she was right now, at midnight, in this grand, noiseless palace. She was a student at the Academy of Sages; she was in her sixth year, nearly ready to receive the mark. She was the daughter of two farmers; she was an older sister to Suri. She was not in love with the daughter of the King’s Chancellor.

She repeated these facts to herself over and over as if they were a mantra until she fell asleep, her head leaning against the window frame.