Third Daughter (The Dharian Affairs, Book One) (17 page)

The prince’s face broke into a smile that he tried to contain but failed. “As your majesty wishes.” He looked like he wanted to say something more… but thought better of it and rose up to standing instead. “Please let me know if there is anything I can get for you.”

“Just my things—” She cut herself off, realizing that included her mother’s aetheroceiver. It should be packed away, but who knew how many of the dozens of suitcases would be damaged by the fire, their contents exposed. “That is… whatever remains from the fire. Please bring the cases here, and I will take the trouble of sorting through them to see what can be salvaged.” Her mission could be cut very short if the prince’s servants went through her things.

“I will have everything brought immediately, along with anything else your majesty needs. Please, do not hesitate to ask. I wish to erase your memory of this night as quickly as possible.” Prince Malik templed his hands and bowed a quick
arama
before striding purposefully from the room. She noticed his hands were clenched again before he reached the door, full of anger and purpose.

She was glad his dark looks were directed at the assassin, not her.

Two days since the fire, and Aniri was indeed feeling like a prisoner in a velvet cage.

They were confined by the prince’s fears of another attack and hadn’t left her guest room for any purpose other than using the attached privy. All their meals had been brought to their room. Twice she had to request cutlery be included—it was obviously true the Jungali ate with their fingers, just as she had always heard. The prince himself had stayed away, apparently too busy with actual royal duties to pay a visit.

He did send a note, saying the engagement party had been moved forward due to the nature of the attempt on her life. He wanted to send a clear message that he was in no way deterred by their act of violence, even though the assassin—whoever he was—had escaped. The guard who had been posted outside her original room was a likely candidate, since he was nowhere to be found. Plus it had been discovered that his family was originally from Sik province, migrating before he was born to Bajir. The prince suspected he had been recruited by General Garesh.

Aniri returned the prince’s note, saying he was right to proceed, even though it sent tremors through her. Moving up the party meant shortening her time until the wedding, leaving her even less room to discover the truth about the skyship. The prince had sent back details about preparations for the party. She was disappointed he had not come in person to deliver that information, even though there was no reason for him to do so.

Priya spent her time rotating their entire wardrobe—the ones saved from the fire at least—giving each a thorough airing by draping them across the balcony. A couple of her dresses had been lost to the wind, fluttering into tiny colorful specks in the ravine. It was the only event which broke the monotony, and Aniri had nearly cried she laughed so hard.

She was clearly not made for confinement.

Immediately after the fire, Janak had helped her send a message to her mother, but since then, she had nothing to report. Indeed, Aniri had gained very little knowledge over what she had when she came to Jungali. That, more than anything, was eating at her every thought. What little time she had to complete her mission was ticking away.

Aniri stilled her pacing across the length of the room, coming to rest by Janak in the sitting area, which was comprised of two chairs and a small couch. Priya was out on the balcony tending their clothes, and the prince’s guards had taken a station outside their door to give them privacy.

“Are you certain,” she asked Janak, “you’ve never heard of this navia General Garesh is mining?”

He didn’t look up, busy sharpening his dagger. His thin-leather raksaka boots were propped on the prince’s wooden-edged table inlaid with marble. “You’ve asked me about navia seven times now, your most royal highness. I’m sorry my education in rare earth elements is inadequate for your purposes.”

“But it must be more than that!” Aniri resumed her pacing. Her fencing outfit was overly warm, which just added to her agitation, but it was the only thing that wasn’t either airing on the balcony or forbidden by Priya to be worn until they left the room again. “The prince’s spy wouldn’t message him about the navia unless it was important.”

“It ranked after your kiss, so I’m not sure where that leaves us in our hypotheses.”

Aniri scowled. Janak seemed to take endless pleasure in needling her about any part of their mission she might find unpleasant—a small consolation to him, no doubt, for the arranged marriage being only a ruse. Yet, in the wake of the fire, he had hovered over her, barely allowing her a visit to the privy without him.

It must be the natural reaction of raksaka for their charges. Even the ones they despised. It certainly didn’t stop him from showing contempt for her at every turn.

She stopped her pacing at his side again, drawing his attention up with her urgent stare. “Both the navia and the kiss must be important in some way to the prince’s plans for peace,” she insisted.

“Or his plans for war.”

Aniri examined Janak’s face for signs of humanity. Or at least a limit to his cynicism. “Do you truly believe he would risk his life to save me from a fire if all he intends is war with Dharia? He could have accomplished that by letting the fire do its work.”

“That would only bring the war to him sooner, and not on his terms,” Janak said coolly. “If he has this flying machine, he will want to surprise us with it.”

“It’s not much of a surprise if we’re already looking for it.”

“Looking for what, precisely?” Janak asked, rising and planting his knife in the fine wood of the table with a swift flick of his wrist. “We don’t know its size or capabilities or threat it might pose. All we know is the thing may fly like a bird. Or perhaps like a stone. Or that it is no threat at all, just barbarians with fanciful notions from spending too much time in this thin air.” He waved his weathered hand around for emphasis.

Aniri clenched her fists. She wasn’t quite sure why Janak’s speech angered her. He hadn’t seen the impassioned look on Prince Malik’s face when he spoke of peace. Or of his brother’s death. The prince would have sent her home rather than risk her life further with an assassin on the loose. It simply didn’t reconcile with also secretly planning to launch a surprise attack on her nation.

Maybe her judgment was being clouded.

Maybe she had simply been cooped in this room too long.

Aniri flung her hands open with a small sound of frustration. “Where are my swords?” she demanded of Janak.

“My lady?” he asked, leaning back, thrown by the change in topic.

“The small trunk that carries my weapons. Where is it?”

His disgust came swerving back. “We’re confined to this room, in case your most royal eminence hasn’t noticed.” Janak had taken to sleeping on the couch, and Priya made a small bed on the floor near Aniri’s. He gestured to the four-poster bed where Aniri slept. “Are you planning to fence the bed for practice? Because your royalness would not fare well in a sparring match with me, I assure you.” The scowl Janak always wore grew into a darker look.

Aniri didn’t trust herself not to stab him either.

“I need a break from this room!” She threw her hands up, as if imploring Devkasera herself to slash her sword through the roof of the palace and free her. And now that the words were spoken aloud, Aniri was even more certain she must do
something
or go mad.

She stalked over to the piles of traveling trunks, all stamped with the royal Dharian crest, and searched for the long, slender one Devesh had brought to the train platform. She had to dig through a dozen, making uncertain piles while Priya fluttered around her and tried to right them, but at last she found it. Janak had returned to his spot in the sitting area and didn’t look inclined to remove his boots from the table, so she brought the case over to her bed instead.

As she undid the latches and lifted the lid, she had half a mind to see how fast Janak was on his feet should she come at him with the foil. But her hands stayed on the propped open lid, staring at the contents of the case. Inside wasn’t only her normal training foil, but her saber as well. Or more accurately, her father’s saber. The one Janak had brought back from Samir instead of bringing her father home safely. It was the only time a raksaka had failed to keep alive the royalty on his watch. If anyone had asked her, that alone seemed grounds for early retirement, but her mother had kept Janak even closer to her side than before. Just one more way the Queen didn’t give her father the honor he was due in death.

Aniri lifted the saber from the case, balancing it in her hand. She remembered claiming it for her own when her father’s body returned from Samir. Her mother had allowed it, even though Aniri was barely strong enough to lift it at the time. The bracelet she wore had been a gift from her father’s heart, from the time when he was still alive, but this… this was more. Aniri pictured him fighting off the robbers who stole his life. She imagined their blood on his blade before he succumbed to the vermin. When the day came, she planned to use her father’s saber to finally deliver the justice they deserved.

It made her throat tight, knowing Devesh had sent it to her. He was reminding her of what she would lose by marrying the Prince of Jungali. She blinked away the tears that summoned. Then she noticed there was a small metallic box inside tucked at the end of the case.

An aetheroceiver.

Smaller than her mother’s or Prince Malik’s and more crudely crafted, it had less ornamentation and was made from a dull metal. But there was no mistaking the tiny swirls of symbols all over the box. She lifted it up. Devesh had given her a way to communicate. A way out of the mountains, if she had been taken hostage. It made her heart pound that he had held out hope for her.

She missed him terribly.

“Where did that come from?” Janak’s voice came from behind her, startling her. “Is it from your courtesan?”

“He
is
from Samir,” she said, keeping her back to Janak. “You said they are very clever with their devices.” But how did Devesh expect her to open it? Then she spied a tiny parchment note where the box had lain. It had her name in Devesh’s sweeping print. She unfolded it, revealing three, hand-drawn symbols: a tinker working on a tiny clockwork invention, a crown, and a sleek bowed ship, probably emblematic of Samir’s navy, of which they were very proud.

“Is this a royal Samirian aetheroceiver?” Aniri asked, partly to Janak, but mostly of herself.

“I doubt it,” Janak said. “Your courtesan certainly isn’t of the royal house.”

“No, he’s a diplomat with the Samirian ambassador.” Who, of course, worked for the Samirian royal family, of which her sister was now part. But Aniri wouldn’t have expected Devesh, a low-level courtesan, to have access to royal aetheroceivers.

“I was under the impression he mostly fenced and drank tea,” Janak said drily.

Aniri spared him a quick glare, then pushed the three symbols on the box. It unfolded before her, revealing a decryption wheel just like her mother’s, only on a smaller scale. She pumped the tiny crank, and once the aetheroceiver was humming and clicking, she quickly scanned the dial and typed in DEVESH one symbol at a time. It clacked as it sent off the message, and continued to hum afterward, but no response came spitting out immediately from the machine.

Well, she had taken nearly a week to open the case.

Still, her heart sank. Maybe he had despaired, having heard of the kiss, and locked his twinned version of the aetheroceiver away. Certainly he couldn’t be counted on to sit by it day and night, waiting for her to pick it up and respond. And yet, before the crank could wind completely back down, a response slip unfurled one keystroke at a time from the machine.

“I have need of a pen, Janak!” She excitedly smacked his chest with the back of her hand, and he lumbered to the other side of the room, returning with the pressurized quill pen they had scavenged from the previous guest room.

She quickly transcribed the message.

IS THIS THE THIRD DAUGHTER

She let out a small girlish squeak.

Janak stayed her hand before she could compose a response on the keys. “How do we know, my lady, who is on the other end of this aetheroceiver?”

“Devesh hid it in my sword case,” Aniri said with a frown. “Who do you think it is?”

“I think your young suitor is one of our enemies, the Samirians, and works for the Samirian Ambassador. And I think this device may well be in the ambassador’s hands.”

That gave Aniri pause. It was quite possible. How would Devesh get hold of such a device without the approval of the Ambassador? And it appeared to have royal symbols as well, although that could simply be the standard way the boxes were encrypted.

“I will be circumspect about my communications,” Aniri said. “But Devesh doesn’t want to hear my secrets, Janak. His concerns are only for me. The Ambassador is probably just loaning the device to him out of sympathy for our situation.”