King Callie: Callie's Saga, Book One (2 page)

Royth’s head jolted upright in a cold sweat. Valric was waiting for him, his expression frighteningly eager. The young Prince’s anticipation unnerved Royth even more, given what he’d seen.

Gods and saints preserve us,
Royth thought.
He’s the next King.

“What did you see?” Valric asked, curious and excited at once. Royth hesitated to answer, dwelling on the images - but as he held his tongue, a new thought emerged. The man he once was - from the buried years, before Barra, before he became Royth - whispered from the depths.
You can save them all,
the once-buried man said.
But your next moves must be perfect.

“Naeb’s Coil,” Royth finally said, feigning surprise. “Of course.”

Valric was puzzled, but Royth saw his expression take on new anxious dimensions, coupled with excitement. “We can save your father,” Royth said, his eyes darting back to Valric’s, filled with new passion. Easy enough to fake.

“How?” Valric demanded. “Tell me.”

Royth ran back to his desk, and began to write down ingredients at a feverish pace - convincing ones. “You must act quickly. You haven’t much time, on account of what we need.” He hardly needed to look at Valric to know the reaction. “I will take care of the other ingredients, but the most crucial, I’ve left to you… petals from Naeb’s Coil. It blooms but once every ten years, beyond our border to the east, in the Erimeni Freelands.”

Royth heard a brief pause before Valric spoke. “How far beyond the border?” the Prince asked, his voice full of caution.

“Less than a day’s ride, under the shade of Nemi’s Fist. There may be a settlement nearby. You should be careful, Prince, and quick - the flower needs to be fresh, and the Erimeni won’t be forgiving if they catch you in their lands. Draw swords quickly, if you find them. They don’t forgive trespass easily.”

Royth once learned the secret of a good lie from a woman with a hundred names:
be a sculptor of truth
. The truth was raw marble, waiting to be carved into a brilliant falsehood. All a liar needed was to cut away the trivial, the unessential, and the harmful, and create a new image that fit both outcome and expectation… or, better still, prejudice. Valric cared little for herbs, and cared much for danger - but now, he wanted hope. Royth gave it to him, with ink and untruth.

The Seer’s guilty hands sketched a map, and a rough drawing of Naeb’s Coil. He marked the parchment with caution to travel quickly, to underscore the urgency in the prince’s mind, and blew on the page to dry the ink faster. Valric looked on with eager anticipation. Once the ink had dried, Royth pressed the parchment it into Valric’s hands. “Depart on the hour, and ride like lightning,” Royth said, keeping Valric’s gaze a little longer. “You understand?”

Valric nodded. “Thank you so much,” he said, tears of gratitude welling in his youthful eyes. He clutched the paper, and wrapped his arms around the Seer in a tight embrace. “You’ve saved us.” he said.

“Do not thank me yet,” Royth replied, almost faltering. Valric’s words had hit him harder than he expected; the Prince was perhaps too excited, too eager. And he would only spread the lie further. “Get me the flower. Then thank me when he is healthy again.”

Valric nodded. “I understand,” he replied.

Valric ran out of the room like a shot; in his wake, he left gnawing guilt. Royth retreated to the center of his room, and picked up the bottle of woja, at the foot of Kembo’s altar. He took a burning swig into his mouth. The numbness could not come quick enough for his liking - but before it arrived, Royth told himself a final lie, the grandest of them all, and chased it with another drought.
One day,
he told himself,
I’ll be forgiven
.

CHAPTER ONE

After hearing those three words, Princess Caliandra could not possibly hate her sister more.

Tears fell from her verdant eyes, and traced a path down her cheeks. They fell carelessly upon her white sleeping gown and rolling brown waves of hair. “Why are you telling me this?” Caliandra demanded of her stony-faced sister, Eliya. Caliandra’s sister anxiously balanced on the edge of the bed, as if she might fall. Caliandra’s cavernous room felt all the greater for Eliya’s presence. “Haven’t I suffered enough because of him? Haven’t I, Ellie?”

“I thought you would want to know.” Eliya replied, hands calmly folded in her lap, her gentle jaw clamped firmly shut. Caliandra saw little sympathy in her green eyes - the common gift from their parents. “You were to be married to him, after all, and I thought… Well, clearly, I thought wrong.” Eliya’s hands flew up in exasperation, and her expression softened, ever so slightly. “I’d hoped you’d have moved on. It’s been two months.”
No, it’s been three. A lifetime in the Barrish court
, Caliandra thought.
I can only imagine how slowly time moves for our cousins in Silenia, in the Emperor’s court; that might well be an eternity.

“It’s been three, Ellie. He moved on,” Caliandra said, between sobs. “But what about me? There were few before him, and that - that bastard…he changed. The moment Father took ill, he changed, and then, the engagement was off, and - ” She stopped, momentarily overwhelmed by sadness, and raised her hands. “What kind of man is married not months after breaking an engagement?”

“She might be with child,” Eliya speculated, and raised an eyebrow. She glanced at Caliandra, head tilted. “He didn’t…?”

“No!” Callie said, with scowling green eyes. “How could you think that?”

“Well,” Eliya started, “He was quite handsome, and very charming…” Eliya said, reminiscing; Caliandra grit her teeth at the thought, and Eliya, seeing it, reversed her opinion. “But clearly not enough to tempt you in that way.”

“Not until we’d been married,” Caliandra said, firm. “I loved him a great deal, but… I would have never been so foolish.”
Perhaps I should have
, she thought, the corner of her lips tugging downward with the regret.
Or would that have only made things worse for me?

Eliya shook her head. “You need to forgive yourself, Callie,” Eliya said. “All of Yom’s blessings wouldn’t have kept him betrothed to you. Tara’s very pretty, and kind, but she also has an immense dowry to offer.”

Caliandra knew her - they’d only met twice, but she was pretty – apple cheeks, red hair, blue eyes, a delicate button of a nose, ample bosom, slender waist; yes, Tara was very pretty, in all the ways that Caliandra couldn’t hate her for, much as she tried. She could, however, hate the considerable wealth that had caught Iaen’s eye - the wealth of Tara’s father, Lord Ailin Dugal. Who, unlike Caliandra’s father, had been born into nobility. The Duke had his parents and grandparents’ fortune to build on, and could afford a most handsome dowry. That was enough to make Caliandra wish Iaen would choke to death at the wedding; that instead of eating cakes and sipping wine, he’d gag on the gold and earth he loved so much.

Caliandra hadn’t even wanted to think about what Iaen had done - how he’d betrayed her love. She’d sent him her angry letters, stained with tears. She’d refused to attend balls, social engagements, anything – because he and Tara might be there, lording over her broken heart. Even the thought of seeing him brought her anxiety. And then, when she had broken herself of thinking of him, and pushed him from her mind - his name came creeping back to her on Eliya’s lips, with news of his marriage. It was a stabbing, wrenching pain, stained with the feeling of failure.

“Callie,” Eliya said, with a sympathy Caliandra couldn’t stand – what woman wanted her younger sister’s pity? - “There are other men, you know. They didn’t just die off after he was born. Perhaps you should look outside the kingdom, as I did for Mas.”

“They’ll not even look at me, and you know why,” Caliandra countered. “Father’s dying. That’s what made Iaen change his mind, and when Father’s dead - I -” Caliandra trailed off; she hated to think of what came after her father’s passing. The future was not a happy place for her - no father, and no husband. Sadness and anxiety overtook her.

“I’m not you, Ellie. Nothing you do comes easily to me.” Admitting that felt worse still; of all the indignities, and horrid fates, hers seemed the worst, for it was the least certain. As Caliandra looked at her sister, who sat before her with hair like wheat at sunset, rosy cheeks, and their father’s green eyes, looking every inch the perfect daughter… Caliandra could not help but hate her. She hated Eliya for having brought the news. She hated Eliya for having the security she wanted - for still having a husband. For having a man who loved her more than money.

Most of all, she hated Eliya for being Eliya - for being everything she wasn’t. Eliya’s art was weaving tapestries of social circles, of knowing which strings to pull or cut. Her words were careful in public, less guarded in private - but always honest with Caliandra. Her face was gentle, and soft and kind; a haughty look had never crossed it. And she never frightened men off; she teased them, she flirted with them, or, like Mas, they fell for her with all their heart, one deliberate word at a time.

Caliandra felt, by comparison, that she was too quick to prove her wit, and too proud to let it go undefended. Too willing to challenge men, when they did not want to be challenged. Too eager to dismiss them, when she found them lacking. Iaen was the only one who had enjoyed such prickly company, and won her heart - which made his loss all the more painful. The list of suitors that preceded Iaen was thin; the line after, nonexistent.

“And I lack your sharpness and wit, dear sister, but we must use the tools Yom’s given us, mustn’t we?” Eliya replied. She reached out a comforting, delicate hand to touch her sister’s lap. Caliandra scowled at it, but did nothing to reject it; she still wanted comfort, all the same. “You’ll find a husband that appreciates your mind and beauty soon enough. You did it once before, after all,” Eliya said, adding a gentle smile.

“That’s just it,” Caliandra said, frustrated. Worry weighed upon her brows. “I can’t. I loved him. Who else in this land is high-born, and unopposed to a difficult wife? Who understands me?” Bitter anger filled Caliandra, and she let it loose. “You, mother, Father, Valric, Mae, Janni, and Royth - but who else?”

Eliya drew back, slightly, and avoided her sister’s gaze. “You… do have a reputation for difficulty,” Eliya said; Caliandra watched her sister choose words carefully, with a most diplomatic tongue and lightened tone. “Perhaps, if being married before Father passes is a worry of yours, you should aim to be more… forgiving of men’s faults.”

I could
, Caliandra thought,
but after a time, I’d only come to hate them more. Why bother?
“It’s too late for that, now,” Caliandra said, bitter. “You’ve seen him. He fades before our very eyes. And when he dies, so go our crowns, and my prospects. I’ll have nothing to offer when he’s dead, only fading beauty and a far lower station. Why bother being kind?” Caliandra scowled. She wanted no more of the conversation, because of how close it was to the discomforts of her life - and yet she knew there’d be more of it. Eliya was nothing if not persistent.

“Because kindness wins hearts,” Eliya replied, as she gently cocked her head, and spoke slowly. “But it must be the right type, and it must be at the proper time… You recall how I approached Mas, and won him. And has he changed his mind, with our father in the Shade’s grasp?”

Caliandra did remember. Mas had come south, from cold Kersik, as part of a diplomatic trip of several weeks, to forge new trade agreements between their nations. Eliya had approached him carefully, but pursued him with a kind tenacity, emboldened by Royth’s prediction of success. She arranged for dances, for conversations, for walks about the castle grounds, for a day’s ride in the Kilcully Mountains, for hunting, and for fishing trips - and though the trade agreements had stayed almost the same, Eliya was the clearest victor; they exchanged letters for weeks afterward, and it was only months before Mas declared, to his father’s consternation, that he wished to marry Eliya. Caliandra shook her head, and pulled her legs in, against her chest. “He’s mad for you, he’s rich beyond measure, and Royth saw it in a vision.” Caliandra said. “That’s different, sister. It was fate. A dowry doesn’t matter to Mas. But what man will want the oldest and most difficult Feor sister, when he’s not paid for his trouble?”

Eliya paused. “Some man will,” she said; she laid a pale hand on her sister’s knee. “Keep your faith, sister. Yom’s path is set for you; you don’t see it yet, for he has taken you into a dark wood, but one day, the light will shine through. You’re only sixteen years old, after all. And perhaps you should see Royth, too. Maybe he’ll know when that man comes into your life.”

“Yes,” Caliandra replied with a scowl. “When I’m thirty and childless, I’ll be wed to a man-loving lordling who’s too scared to live his truth.” There was a knock at the door that drew Caliandra’s attention, and interrupted her thoughts. “Who is it?” she asked, her back stiff. She didn’t want to be bothered in her moment of weakness.

“It’s your mother,” the Queen Sophine replied, her voice muted by the thick wood door. “Am I allowed to enter?” Caliandra looked over at her sister, who only shook her head, as if to say, I didn’t tell her.

“Come in,” Caliandra replied, annoyed. Her mother opened the door, and stepped inside; her blue dress skated above the floor, and a velvet cape flowed behind her. The blue contrasted with her olive skin, her hair – a darker brown than Caliandra’s and Eliya’s, which was pulled neatly back behind her head and held with gold clasps, set with emeralds – and her eyes, a shade lighter than the emeralds on her clasps. Her nose was long and sharp, like Eliya’s - not Caliandra’s, which was turned up to the world, like her father’s - and her cheeks were Caliandra’s, round and full. Caliandra saw the bags under her eyes, and the slow-spreading wrinkles at their corners, like cracking glass; they were far more visible since Father took ill. All of it created the appearance of a woman of great stature, hiding even greater private pain.