Third Daughter (The Dharian Affairs, Book One) (15 page)

Looking into the prince’s pale eyes, Aniri forgot her purpose. Where they were so cold before, now they held a pain she understood. The moment was suddenly too intense, and she cast her eyes down to the desk, scouring it for a change in subject. “It is clear you have the love of your people in Bajir, in any event.”

“With your help.” His voice was soft. He hadn’t moved away.

She gave him a bright smile. “And hopefully the rest of Jungali will approve of me as well.”

“I can’t imagine it any other way.”

Desperate to avoid the intensity of the prince’s gaze, she glanced over his shoulder. A glint on the high shelf behind him caught her eye: a familiar metallic box was bracing the end of a row of leather-bound books. She stepped around the prince, pretending to examine the contents of the shelf. As she got closer, she realized exactly what the box was: an aetheroceiver. Like her mother’s, only this one was iron with flared tips at the corners and different etchings. The question was: who had its twin? Obviously she could do nothing about it now, but just knowing the aetheroceiver sat so near made her heart pound. She picked a book at random off the shelf.

“Do you mind?” She cast a glance at the prince, who was watching her every move. “I love to read.” Which wasn’t exactly true. She loved to fence and climb walls and chase after Samirian courtesans she shouldn’t love; but she tolerated reading well enough, and occasionally there was something useful to be found in ancient texts like these.

He grinned. “Please, your majesty. Take it with you. It’s a collection of ancient Bajiran love sonnets.”

She paused in her unwinding of the rough leather cord that bound the volume. “Poetry, Prince Malik?” She smiled. “You surprise me.”

“I told you, we’re a romantic people.” His grin grew sly, the sadness fleeing away. He leaned against the corner of the desk once more. Over his shoulder, she noticed a second balcony, beyond the prince’s and one floor up. She wouldn’t have recognized it necessarily, but for a brief moment, Priya shook out a blanket over the balcony’s edge, then retreated back inside.

Aniri tore her gaze away before her face could betray her surprise and delight. A plan had sprung up in her mind.

“If you don’t mind parting with it, I think I will borrow this.” Aniri wrapped the poetry tome back in its cord again. “Maybe it will help me to better understand your people.” She drifted past him to the door of the balcony. “You have a beautiful view, Prince Malik.”

“Would you like to go outside? I believe it’s still warm.”

When he opened the door, it didn’t appear to be locked. Once they stepped outside, it was clear there was no need. The only place to go was straight up to the top of the stone fortress or plummet a thousand feet down to the ravine below.

“You Jungali certainly like your high perches.” She strode out to the edge, only glancing to the balcony where she had seen Priya, so as not to give herself away. She judged the distance. It wasn’t far. It might be possible.

“It lends a certain perspective.” Prince Malik rested his elbows on the tall, white-granite wall surrounding the balcony edge.

“It reminds me of my aetherscope observatory back home. Not because of the rather extreme height, but because it’s a place where I can have my solitude.” And her skills in escaping it might come in handy to spy here as well.

“I do come out here to think sometimes.”

She turned to face him. “Do you read your love poetry aloud to the birds as they race by?” she asked with a mischievous grin. She pretended to look for birds, but was actually checking the wall between their balconies for grips and toeholds.

He chuckled softly. “No. But I do think sometimes how much simpler love would be if I hadn’t been born to the crown. If I had the luxury of finding someone who would be only for me and not for my country as well.”

She stopped the grin. There was definitely a melancholy side to the prince. “What would this woman be like, the one you would choose if you had the luxury of being a commoner?”

He stared at her with mock seriousness. “She would be beautiful and brilliant, of course.”

“Naturally. She would probably need to read up on her poetry as well.”

He grinned again. “She would have a wicked sense of humor.”

“Wicked as in evil, or wicked as in indulging in the soft arts of love?”

“Oh, definitely the latter.”

She couldn’t help smiling at that. “And what else? An eye for art? A love of nature? A strange predilection for picking fruit at its most ripe?”

He grew thoughtful for a moment. “I’ve always had this image of her with a sword in her hand.”

Aniri’s eyebrows flew up. “A sword? As in a dagger?”

“No, more of a foil or saber. Somehow I pictured her as a fencer.”

Aniri’s mouth opened and closed. Did he know she fenced? Was he teasing her? She covered her awkwardness by peering at the dizzying expanse below them. It wasn’t unheard of for royalty to fence, but it was an ancient art, leftover from a time when the cavalry carried swords rather than long rifles. Her country hadn’t seen war for a hundred years, but if drawn into one, it would rely on steam tanks and warships, not the fencing skills of the Queen’s court. Although the Queen’s armory might as well be daggers if the Jungali truly possessed a flying weapon.

When she looked back to the prince, he had grown quiet, gazing at some point on the distant mountain peaks. This intimate conversation was meant to pry loose information from the prince about his affairs of war, not the heart. And she didn’t expect it to leave her so unsettled.

Aniri pretended to shiver. “I believe it’s colder than my attire is meant to withstand after all.”

The prince snapped out of his thousand-mile gaze and smiled. “Of course. Let’s get you back inside.”

On their way in, Aniri was careful to note whether the prince locked the balcony door behind them.

He did not.

That evening, it was difficult for Aniri to evict Priya from her room for the night. Both Janak and Priya objected to the propriety of sharing the anteroom next to Aniri’s guestroom, but she couldn’t convince either one to take a guest room still farther from hers. And Aniri needed her room to herself to carry out her plan—if either of them knew what she intended, they would be violently opposed to it.

Finally, she claimed ill health from the thinness of the air and banished them both, much to Priya’s dismay. Even so, Aniri waited until well after dark, when the flickering gaslight under the anteroom door had finally gone out. Janak surely slept with one eye open, so she kept her movements quiet. She stripped her enormous bed of its sheets and carefully twisted them into knots, tied one to the other, mixed with a few of her coats, chosen for the sturdiness of their construction. She intended to keep her promise to Janak about not dying during his watch.

The trick would be finding a good place to attach her handmade rope: there weren’t any lion’s head parapets conveniently nearby. She could tie it around the desk leg, but she was afraid even its bulk might not be heavy enough to hold her. The bed was farther, but it was the most sturdy thing in her room. Even with all her strength, pressing a shoulder into one of the four posters, she couldn’t move it even a hair’s breadth. She lashed the rope securely to it, then turned down the last of her gaslamps and gathered up her armful of cobbled-together rope. On the bed, she constructed a lumpy facsimile of herself comprised of pillows under the heavy bedcover. She hoped the dimness would prevent anyone from checking too closely.

She nudged open the balcony door with her foot and pulled up short when she noticed the lights were still on in the prince’s study below. She ducked behind the white granite rim of the balcony, her heart pounding before she realized it was unlikely the prince could see her. The twin moons had faded to half-moons, casting only a pale light. The darkened glass of the prince’s office would act more as a mirror than a window, given the strength of the gaslamps within.

She eased to sitting and leaned against the cool wall of the balcony, testing her knots and biding her time. Eventually, the prince’s lamplights went out. She waited several extra minutes to be sure he had truly left and wasn’t planning to return, then tied the rope around her waist.

Aniri carefully climbed on top of the white marble ledge around her balcony, giving thanks that her climbing shoes had been buried in the dozens of trunks that came with her. Priya must have packed them before she knew their travels were not permanent, and Aniri was glad now for such over-zealousness. Her lightweight silk pajamas provided minimal weight and maximum mobility for the climb, and her father’s bracelet circled her wrist for good luck.

She was as ready as she would be.

Aniri slowly fed the rope over the edge of the balcony until her end was taut and the rest swung freely in a loop that ended at her waist. A cool draft rose up the side of the fortress, and she peered at the moonlit rocks a thousand feet below. The glittering silver thread of a river snaked between them. She reminded herself that falling a thousand feet was no different than the drop from her observatory back home. Dead would be dead. The only difference would be the size of the pieces left.

Drawing in a breath, she focused instead on her objective: the prince’s balcony. One story below and a dozen feet between them. She should be able to use footholds on the wall to walk over, while hopefully not losing her grip. Even if the rope stopped her from plummeting to her death, the jerk might snap her spine.

Janak’s heart would probably stop dead if he saw her now.

She held tight to the rope and slowly walked her way down the outside of her balcony, staying as close to the main estate wall as she could. Her breath started to come in gasps, and she whispered a curse. She had forgotten about the effects of the thin air.

Best to make this a quick journey then.

Once she reached the bottom of her balcony, she twisted her feet to gain purchase on the estate wall. Slowly letting out the rope, she wall-walked toward the prince’s balcony, making her way, toehold by toehold, along the gleaming granite. She forgot to breathe until her lungs screamed for air, then gulped in heavy draughts and paused when black stars darted in front of her eyes. She was level with the prince’s balcony now, but still a few feet away. Her angle wasn’t quite enough. If she let out the rope more, she would be too low. And she couldn’t go higher: her feet were already losing traction. If she released her toehold and swung back to her balcony, assuming the bed-anchor held and she let out a little more line, she might get to the prince’s balcony on the rebound—or she might crash into it.

Or she could reach for it now. But that would leave only one hand on the rope, and her grip was already weakening.

Her breathing became even more erratic.

She let go of the rope with one hand and reached toward the prince’s balcony, adjusting her feet, her grip on the rope sliding slowly down, her hand reaching… reaching… Finally she gripped the edge. She let go of the rope, grasping at the granite with both hands and heaving her body onto the ledge. The rough stone cut into her stomach as she hauled the rest of her body over and dropped to the smooth stone pavers of the balcony.

Her gasping breaths were so loud, she was shocked they didn’t wake Janak and Priya, two rooms and an abyss away. She rested a moment, letting the stars clear from her vision, before daring to stand. At least the trip back should be easier. Although she might want to make sure she had caught her breath.

Aniri untied the rope from her waist. The weight of the rope wanted to drag it right off the balcony again. There was no railing, nothing to affix it to, so she was left with carefully winding the remaining length and tucking it into a corner, hoping the friction against the balcony edge would hold it until she returned. If she lost the rope at this point, there would be no getting back to her room undetected. If she was lucky, they wouldn’t put her head on a pike, just send her back to Dharia as a spy.

She had better find some information in the prince’s office to make it worthwhile.

A quick peek showed nothing inside but shadows and strikes of moonlight across the desk. Her breaths still rushed in the cold summer’s night as she slowly turned the doorknob. The door eased open and she was quickly inside.

Aniri went straight for the box and pulled it down to a moonlit spot on the desk. The light also fell across a picture frame, the one the prince had picked up before. She hadn’t asked, but looking at it now, she didn’t have to. It was Prince Malik’s brother dressed in royal garments. The resemblance was striking, down to the dark, straight hair and the light amber eyes. Even in the silver moonlight, Aniri could see he was handsome, but in a boyish way, whereas the prince had the strong jaw and build of a man. A melancholy man, who loved his younger brother so much he would go to any length to preserve the peace in his name.

She glanced at the box in her hands, for a moment tempted to let it keep its secrets. The prince’s noble efforts for peace seemed so genuine. His sorrow so real. Unless he was a masterful liar, she couldn’t reconcile it with anything but a real desire for peace. Yet... he had turned cold when she asked him directly about the flying machine.