“Yet the Silver Archer still stands.”
“Only because I have the queen’s blessing, and the love of many in Sazukford. If not for those, Arthard would have strung me up in one of his cages. Still, he is not a man easily thwarted. By secretive, fiendish means, he has done all he can to make my life miserable.”
“I saw the cages outside the wall,” Nesaea said, remembering the ring-thief.
“Arthard loves them,” Lynira seethed. “In the last year, he has doubled their number.”
“Punishing criminals is the duty of highborn,” Nesaea said, tone neutral. “As I recall, Sazukford has more than its share of lawless.”
“I’ll grant you, Sazukford is surely no righteous city, but is it a noble’s duty to tax beggars and cripples? And when those unfortunates cannot pay, is it duty to hang them beside murderers?”
“Surely it’s not so bad?”
“Worse,” Lynira said, gulping her wine down. “There has been more than one urchin hung to die. That’s why he tried to burn me out. When I spoke against him, with half the Dreamer’s Quarter at my back, he sent us off with arrows dropping all around. Later, a runner delivered a message telling me I could leave Sazukford peaceably, or die. Naturally, Arthard has hidden his tracks well, fearing the queen’s reprisal. As it stands there is only my word against his.”
“Where will you go?”
“Nowhere,” Lynira said darkly. “By right of birth, Arthard holds Dionis Keep, but I have
earned
my place in Sazukford. He is nothing but a tiny shit of a man with title and lands. The only thing he has earned is the hatred of most folk in the city. If it is war he wants, then he will have it.”
Nesaea sipped her wine, waiting patiently for her former mentor to continue. In time, she did.
“Tell me, why do you want to see Arthard?”
“His court magician, Sytheus Vonterel, is my father.”
“Tragedy upon tragedy,” Lynira said regretfully.
“What do you mean?”
“Arthard’s magician proved disappointing to his master. For tricks and conjuring, illusions and sleight-of-hand, Sytheus served well enough. But he had made other promises that, when called upon, he failed to deliver. Arthard’s niece came down with a bloody flux, and the magician could not heal her.”
“She died?”
“Nothing so dire. Otherwise the magician would be bones in a cage, rather than locked in the lord’s dungeon. A common hedge witch proved more adept with her potions. The girl is hale as ever.”
Nesaea imagined her father as he had been, with his love of rich food and a portliness to prove it, his love of sunlight and laughter. Now those things were denied him, locked as he was in darkness and damp. Sytheus Vonterel had ever been a man to believe his skills greater than they were, and now he was paying for his conceit.
Lynira’s silence drew her attention.
“You have thought of something?”
Lynira nodded. “I cannot give you an audience, but often those who have the skill to escape the inescapable, say a certain girl who escaped the bonds of a Giliron pleasure slave, also have the skill to enter where they don’t belong.”
“You know a secret way into the keep?”
“Before you agree,” Lynira said, holding up a cautioning finger, “I must take back what I said about favors.”
“Name your fee,” Nesaea said, doing her best to keep the hesitation from her voice. She quite literally owed Lynira her life, both for keeping her safe from the men who had followed her from Giliron, and for sowing into her mind and heart the means by which she could make her way in the world.
“One thing I ask,” Lynira said, “and it is no harder than what you intend.” Nesaea accepted that with a nod. “I would have you leave a note, something to prick Arthard’s pride, and to give warning that he is not untouchable.”
“And if I fail?” Nesaea asked.
“Why, then, dear child,” Lynira said flatly, “you will surely die, and my heart will be broken.”
Chapter 10
“Run!” Nesaea cried. She tried to reach Rathe, sensing a grave threat closing in on him, but unseen bonds held her in a cold embrace.
Rathe did not hear her. He turned a slow circle, sword raised against darting, stealthy foes. Thick mist plastered his black hair to his brow. Concern etched his hard, dark face.
“Run!” she cried again.
Rathe reached blindly with a free hand, grasping at shadows. His lips moved, but made no sound. Equally silent were the figures emerging from the murk to slowly surrounded him. Rathe thrust his head forward, intent on one of those shapes, never seeing the others at his back.
“Behind you!”
Nesaea bolted upright in her bed, a quaking hand at her throat.
A dream. Only a dream.
She wanted to believe it, but could not. Never had a foretelling come on her so vividly. Or
was
it only a dream, dark and frightening, to be sure, but no more real for all that?
As her heart slowed, sleep cleared from her eyes and mind, and she began to doubt. She had never seen through the veil of the present without using enchantments or magical devices. Even then, she saw only reflections of fate, vague impressions attached to the accursed or the blessed. With the dream of Rathe, there was a difference. She had never witnessed anything so clear, as if she shared his destiny.
“We share nothing,” she murmured bitterly, fighting back tears. “It was only a dream. He is gone, and good riddance.”
The gray light of dawn seeped through a porthole in the wagon, telling Nesaea it was time to prepare. She climbed out of bed, tugged off her sweaty shift, hung it to dry. She opened the carved doors of a corner wardrobe, frowned at the fine gowns and dresses. Today, her usual garments would not do. In a drawer at the bottom, she found a pair of snug leather breeches, a linen tunic, a leather vest, and a long brown cloak of thin wool. Hunting garb. Perfect.
After dressing, she cinched an iron-studded belt about her waist, tied back her sable hair, and pulled on a pair of knee-high boots. Next she gathered everything she would need. A belt knife and a short sword, she would wear in plain sight. Two daggers and lock picks, she tucked into hidden sheaths sewn into her boots. A third set of picks she tucked into a pocket inside her breeches. One could never be too safe. A few choice potions, and the folded scrap of parchment Lynira had given her, found a home in small leather purse at her belt.
She considered the two fist-sized orbs resting in bronze sconces attached to the bedposts. The orbs looked like glass, but were not. The Eyes of Nami-Ja, named for the Giliron god of light, had been given to her by a wizard after hearing her sing. Each gave off golden light. She had only seen that light fail once, when she told Rathe he had been marked by the Khenasith, the Black Breath, an inescapable spirit-curse of ill fortune. As far as she could tell, the woe of the Khenasith also fell upon those foolish enough to become
enamored
with Rathe. She refused to name her feelings for him love.
Who is he to decide what is best for me?
she thought angrily.
She jammed one orb into a leather sack, pulled the drawstring tight, and hung it off her belt. Leaving her at Valdar the way he had, supposedly for her protection, still sounded too much like an excuse to be rid of her. She could still feel the brush of his lips over hers, a chaste farewell kiss under
Queen
Erryn’s heated gaze, before he and Loro had ridden into the forest. She had watched until he vanished, and not once had he turned back. She departed Valdar the following morning.
Cursing Rathe for a mud-headed dolt, and naming herself twice the fool for getting entangled in his roguish charms, she spun a windlass. The hatch of her wagon ratcheted open, becoming a set of narrow steps with a loud mechanical clacking. She climbed out into the cool of the dawn.
“I trust you did not think to go adventuring without me?” Fira asked, coming around the wagon’s bowsprit. Much the same as Nesaea, she had garbed herself as a woodland ranger, and carried an exquisite bone-and-wood bow, in addition to the short sword strapped to her back. Her fiery hair hung in a thick braid.
Nesaea twisted a wooden rosette beneath the paw of a winged leopard carved into the side of her wagon, and the hatch ratcheted closed. “If this were an adventure, I would have invited you along.”
“Invited or not, I’m going.” Fira folded her arms, her chin jutting defiantly. “I heard Lynira speaking when she brought you down last night, so I know whatever you are up to is dangerous, and you will need help.”
Nesaea had seen the stubborn look in the woman’s green eyes before. There was no use trying to change her mind. “Seeing as you have already dressed for the outing, I suppose there’s no point telling you no.”
Fira’s face lit up with a wide smile, and she fairly bounced on her toes. “Where are we going?”
“If we’re not careful, to our deaths,” Nesaea said, trying to temper the woman’s enthusiasm. Her effort failed.
“I’ve already saddled the horses,” Fira announced, and raced to the stables across the sprawling yard behind the Silver Archer. Of all her girls, Fira was the most skilled fighter, the most eager to join battle. She could also dance so seductively as to enthrall any enemy. How those two attributes went together, Nesaea had never figured out, but she had to admit she was glad for the company.
After telling the gate guard they had awoke with the song of the hunt in their veins, they rode out of Sazukford. The guard allowed that it was a fine morning to bag a pheasant or two, and cautioned them to avoid the lands north of the city, Lord Arthard’s private preserve. They accepted the warning with beaming smiles and gushing thanks, road out of Sazukford, and promptly turned north.
A few miles outside the city, Nesaea and Fira halted their horses atop a grassy hill overlooking an ancient graveyard. Tall grass and briars had overgrown most of it, leaving the roofs of several burial vaults poking up. Beyond those, the rolling amber plain stretched north to the hazed feet of the Gyntors. Peaks grim and dark and jagged reached all the way to the Sea of Muika, and beyond. Even from afar, that barrier to the Iron Marches held an air of foreboding. Only crazed traders and unwitting fools dared cross the spine of the Gyntors, what with its abundance of unspeakable creatures and haunted places.
Fira’s attention rested elsewhere. “How can a thing of gold be so ugly?” she asked, lips turned down in distaste.
“Not ugly, merely stark,” Nesaea said.
Dionis Keep sat atop a jutting blade of rock, both made golden by the rising sun. The keep’s curtain wall stood high, buttressed by a score of drum towers pocked with arrow loops. A stone bridge, supported with a dozen high arches, spanned the eastern flank of the River Idoril, and ended at a drawbridge.
“You really think your father is in there?” Fira asked.
“Lynira believes he is.”
“Are you sure you care to risk your neck for the man who never sought you out—”
Nesaea cut her off with a brisk shake of her head. “I swore an oath to myself, and it remains unfulfilled. Besides, as I believed he was killed, my father doubtless believed I was dead, along with my mother.”
She was not so sure about that. If Sytheus had returned to their razed home, he would have found Nesaea was not among the dead. Raids around Alhaz were not common, but when they occurred, those taken usually ended up in Giliron. She had loved her father deeply, but even as a girl she had known he was more coward than warrior. She had never hated him for it, but until the day she escaped Giliron on her own, she had looked for his coming.
“Forgive me for saying,” Fira said, interrupting Nesaea’s thoughts, “but I do not like what you intend.”
“It will not be easy,” Nesaea agreed, knowing Fira would dislike what came next. “I need you to guard the entrance.”
“I should join you!”
“Not this time,” Nesaea said.
“And if someone happens along, say a few of Lord Arthard’s men?”
“First and foremost, stay out of sight.” Nesaea pointed out the vault she planned to enter, easily large enough to conceal a woman and two horses. “If you are seen, do what you must to dissuade them from investigating too carefully.”
The challenge brightened Fira’s eyes, put a fetching dimple in one cheek. “Don’t fret over that.”
Nesaea heeled her mount and led Fira down the grassy slope, passed through the stone gate letting into the graveyard, and wended through the prickly brush to the burial vault. Its façade, all of snowy marble and heavily engraved, resembled a miniature palace, more than a resting place for old bones.
Lynira had assured her the structure served as the entrance to a secret passage that traveled under the river. Looking across the sluggish green breadth of the Idoril, imagining some secret way under it, all damp and dark, Nesaea had second thoughts about making the journey.
I have to try
, she thought, dismounting.
After they secured their horses, Nesaea parted the brush at the back of the vault, revealing a small iron door. Retrieving her lock picks, she set to work opening the door. After several tries, she heard a series of soft snicks. She carefully twisted the picks, retracting the bolt.
Nesaea tucked away her tools, then cautiously pushed the door inward on groaning hinges. The smell of dust and damp washed over her.