Third Daughter (The Dharian Affairs, Book One) (18 page)

“Yes, ambassadors are known for their generous and sympathetic hearts,” Janak said with derision.

Aniri ignored him and punched the code YES to Devesh’s query.

SO WORRIED ARE YOU OKAY came the response after a short pause. Devesh must be an excellent decoder. It took Aniri longer to respond.

AM FINE PLEASE IGNORE RUMORS

It took too long for a response this time. Aniri had to walk away from the bed several times and pace the room. She cranked the aetheroceiver again, just in case it might wind down in the middle of the message when it came. Janak retired back to his table.

GOOD TO HEAR HAVE YOU FOUND THE FLYING MACHINE

Aniri froze in her translations, her hand shaking a little when she copied over the last few letters.

“What?” said Janak, looking up from his spot across the room where he had resumed his relaxed pose with his boots on the table. “Does he have a new lady love already?”

“Janak, you best take a look at this.”

He grumpily got up and crossed the room to peer at her small writing on the thin white strip. He didn’t say anything for moment, but when he did, his voice was harsh, barely holding back his anger. “Did you tell him?”

“I swear to you, I did not,” Aniri said, her mind whirling. “The Queen forbade it.”

“Then how does he know of our mission?”

“Maybe you are right.” She crumpled to sitting on the bed. “Maybe this isn’t Devesh. Perhaps it was planted in my case and he simply delivered it, not knowing what was within.”

Janak snatched up Devesh’s note, crumpled it, and threw it to the floor. “He knows exactly what he is doing.”

“But how would he know about the mission?”

“I don’t know.” He stabbed a finger at the small aetheroceiver next to her. “But you cannot communicate any further with him.”

“Just let me tell him—”

“Princess! We are here on a highly sensitive mission to find a secret weapon of war. And we
do not know
who you are talking to!” His face was turning red with anger, and she knew he was right.

“I will… only reply that I miss... fencing with him. He will understand, and no one can take it wrongly.”

Janak shook his head and stomped back to his seat, taking up his knife and throwing it back into the table again.

MISS FENCING WITH YOU

Aniri’s response felt forced and awkward, like unknown eyes were peering into her heart. But if Devesh was somehow involved he would at least get part of her message. It didn’t take long for the message to come back. When the machine started to whir and click the message out, Janak came back to her side. He watched over her shoulder while she decoded.

THE FLYING MACHINE DOES NOT EXIST IT IS A RUSE DANGER LEAVE NOW

“Your Samirian friend is far more than a courtesan, Princess,” Janak said.

“I think he’s just trying to convince me to come home again.”

The machine clacked and whirred again. This time Aniri was almost afraid to see what the message would be.

IF YOU MARRY WILL TRIGGER A WAR LEAVE NOW

Janak took the box, ripped the paper slip from it, and hastily folded it up again. The gears ground as it was forced into its smaller shape before having fully wound down.

“Janak!”

“Princess, whoever is on the other end of this device is not your friend.” The anger had flown, leaving a cold hardness to his face. “You need to message the Queen immediately and tell her she has spies in her estate.”

Aniri’s mouth fell open. “Devesh is not a spy!”

“All diplomats are spies,” Janak said. “You will message her or I will do it myself, Aniri.”

He never called her by name, and his quiet anger would have sounded like fear if she hadn’t known raksaka didn’t experience such things. Aniri swallowed and nodded. Whoever was in possession of the aetheroceiver knew far more than they should about the mission and perhaps even more about the flying machine itself.

“I will message my mother right away.”

Aniri feared what would happen to Devesh. She took great pains to tell the Queen she didn’t know who had sent the message on Devesh’s aetheroceiver, that she couldn’t be sure it was him, and at any rate, she couldn’t believe he was a spy. But the Queen’s return message was cryptic, chilling, and final.

UNDERSTOOD

The aetheroceiver was a cold device, spitting out its encrypted symbols one at a time. Aniri wanted to shake it and shout at her mother across the aether. She wanted assurance that her entreaties had taken hold. Or some sign of what would happen to Devesh. If he was involved, he had to know something had gone wrong when her messages abruptly stopped coming. Maybe he would flee the grounds before her mother’s guards could find him. Maybe the ambassador would protect him.

He shouldn’t have tried so hard to keep her. For all she knew, the messages were simply his lies made up to convince her to come home. And now they had triggered so much more.

The two days until the engagement party with Prince Malik dragged in a torment of imagined scenarios of Devesh in her mother’s jail cells. Her mother wouldn’t torture information out of Devesh—such things were the province of barbarians, not the Queendom of Dharia—but summary execution of spies wasn’t unheard of. Or the Queen could simply hold him prisoner. Or send him packing back to Samir.

One thing seemed certain: Devesh would no longer be there when Aniri returned home. She daydreamed of fleeing to Samir and finding him in a small village surrounded by his extensive family. She would stay there, becoming a wife and mother, with many delightful Samirian children filling her days and her heart. But she had a hard time fully picturing it, like it was a gauzy wish she once had, but now it was simply a childish fantasy filled with holes, not the solidity of truth. A dream that had slipped through her fingers.

Devesh’s lies had cost them both.

And what if they weren’t lies at all? Janak refused to discuss the transmission, saying it wasn’t information they could trust, much less act upon. But it nagged at her. How could marrying the Jungali Prince possibly trigger a war? She wasn’t going through with the marriage, but Devesh didn’t know that. Was there some danger in marrying the prince that she had missed?

She was certain she didn’t have anything to fear from Prince Malik himself—he had already offered to release her from their arrangement when he thought her at risk. But General Garesh and the prince’s enemies... the danger there was clear. Someone had already tried to stop the marriage by ending her life. But how could the marriage itself bring war? The entire love-story ruse was premised on winning the hearts of the people and bringing the peace the prince sought, not an internecine war.

Ruse.
The word sent a small shiver down Aniri’s spine as she watched Priya pin her hair in the mirror. There were so many layers of ruse now. Aniri longed for when her most bold lie was that she was stargazing when in fact she was kissing her lover under a bridge.

Priya’s preparations had gone on half the morning; the engagement party was to finally commence at noon. Priya and Janak would represent the Dharian contingent, something Priya was beside herself with joy about, endlessly fiddling with and arranging outfits for herself. Janak seemed to think it was tolerable. He had brought his formal royal uniform for just such an event.

Priya tugged Aniri’s hair into one more tuft, held aloft by a jeweled pin.

“Are you sure this is the fashion for Bajiran brides?” Aniri asked her, pulling slightly away from Priya’s deft hands. “I think I resemble an exotic bird more than a Queen-to-be.” Priya had segmented her hair, pulling it back all around her face and fixing it with jewels that looked like a crown, but in fact were merely adornments.

“I am quite certain,” Priya said, with a frown. “Now hold still.”

Aniri did as she was told and gazed in the mirror. On her forehead hung a large blue crystal, intricately set in gold with a flower of clear stones circling it. A gift the prince had sent in advance, with a note saying it had been his mother’s, along with a request that Aniri wear it. That part she didn’t mind. In fact, she was touched, even as she understood the political significance. The people would recognize it and think it a treasured gift from a boy prince madly in love with his new Queen.

It was a lovely story. Too bad it was only a ruse as well.

Aniri took a deep breath and tried to hold still as Priya fussed. Her engagement gown was royal blue, the color of the united Jungali provinces. Yards and yards of fabric billowed below the tightly fitted corset and short sleeves. Priya had inked the backs of Aniri’s hands—one with the Dharian crest, the other with the four crests of the Jungali Provinces. She was laden with jewels she had brought from home: a heavy blanket of interlocked gold weave and crystals circled her neck and more hung from her ears. She normally eschewed the royal jewels, but they were required for occasions like this.

And there was the ring. Both she and the prince would be wearing the finely filigreed rings that encased nearly the entire length of the third finger on their left hands. They were customary engagement rings, Priya had told her. It wasn’t the thin marriage band that would bind them in the eyes of the gods for the entirety of their lives, but the engagement ring still felt heavy and restricting. A cage of gold so stiff her finger couldn’t move. If she failed in her mission, this was her future: a prop for the politics of a nation that wasn’t even her own. She was heavy with symbols all up and down her person, but the meaning—the truth of who she was—was invisible, buried under all of it.

All of a sudden, the thin air caught up with her again, and her chest started to heave. The stifling warmth of the room threatened to overtake her as well.

“My lady?” Priya asked. “Are you all right?”

Aniri stood and gripped the edge of the dressing table to stay upright. “Yes, I... I just think I need to take a walk.”

Janak looked up from a book on military strategy he had acquired to pass the time. “A walk, your most royal highness?” His voice arched with disbelief.

“My lady,” Priya said. “The party is beginning within the half hour. We are expected in the main hall shortly.”

“I know. I just need a bit of time alone.”

Janak set down his book. “You don’t have the luxury of being alone, Princess, not anymore.” He seemed to take some pleasure in that.

“I will take one of the prince’s guards with me,” Aniri said coldly, sweeping her skirts away from her chair and striding towards the door to their room.

Janak jumped to his feet. “Your highness—”

“Do not follow me, Janak,” Aniri said harshly. If he refused her order, she was not above sending him home. Or messaging her mother that his services were inadequate. Or some such thing. She could make his life more difficult if she wished, and with the days and burdens wearing on her nerves, she
wished
it very much.

He must have seen the determination in her face because he didn’t follow her to the door. She pulled it open and startled the guard outside by staring up into his face. There was a full complement of guards on duty, but she would only need one.

“I will be taking a walk before the engagement party,” she said to him. “I have need of a guard to accompany me.”

“Yes... uh, yes, my lady.” He glanced at the other guards, who had quickly come to their feet, leaving some kind of game with stones scattered on the floor. “How many guards would you like?”

“Just you.” Aniri strode past him, heading down the hall. His boots scuffed the floor, hastening to follow her, but she didn’t look back. She had no idea where she was going, only that she had a need to walk, to breathe some fresh air for a moment before committing herself to performing this role at the engagement party. Before putting on another ruse, another show, for everyone but herself.

The guard kept pace behind her, careful to avoid the train of fabric which floated above the granite floor in her wake. She didn’t know her way around the estate at all, but she had to be near a balcony where she could find fresh air. She might resort to throwing open one of the windows lining the wide empty hall and letting in the brilliant sunshine and brisk mountain air. But as she rounded yet another corner, she nearly tripped over her slippered feet in coming to a halt.

At the far end of the hall was the prince. And he wasn’t alone.

Once more in his all-black royal garb, the prince’s arms were wrapped around a beautiful woman in a hug which was anything but formal. The richly-colored blue silks of her dress hung off her shoulders, which were nearly bare, and pooled on the floor. The woman was clearly dressed for the engagement party. The prince’s face was buried in her long waves of black hair, as silky and lush as her dress. The couple hadn’t noticed Aniri. Her guard managed not to run into her when she suddenly stopped.

The prince pulled back from their embrace then cupped the woman’s cheeks and spoke softly, his face near hers. The words were obviously meant to be intimate, but Aniri couldn’t help straining to hear.

She couldn’t discern them, and then the heat of embarrassment crawled up her neck. She was spying on the prince—not on his plans for peace or war, but on his love life. One she hadn’t given a thought to. Aniri turned away, no doubt befuddling the guard who was looking rapidly back and forth between Aniri and the prince with wide eyes, saying nothing.