T
he slaveways of Krakandar Palace were a labyrinth of hidden paths, all of which led to the heart of power in Krakandar Province. Starros knew them better than any man alive. He’d grown up here in the palace and roamed them freely when he was a boy. As an adult, in his role of Assistant Chief Steward, he’d discovered even more offshoots and isolated nooks and crannies that gave access to the service areas of the palace as well as the more public areas he’d been familiar with as a child.
It seemed surreal, to be walking the slaveways again. This time, if he was caught, it wouldn’t be Damin, or Narvell or one of the Tirstone boys leaping out of the shadows to surprise him. It was more likely to be a slave or a member of the family taking a shortcut through the hidden passages. Regardless, they’d know he no longer belonged here. They’d know he was up to no good.
Starros had gained entry to the palace through the fens. Like the slaveways, he’d roamed the myriad trails through the swampy water-park with Damin and the others as a child and was one of the few who could find his way unerringly through the dangerous pools to the path that led to the palace gate. In an appalling breach of security that would have had Almodavar lopping off heads if he’d known of it, the gate to the palace remained unlocked. The chances were good nobody had been through the gate since the night Damin had gone down to the fens to seek some much needed solitude after he almost killed his uncle.
Whatever the reason, as Starros had hoped, the gate remained unlocked and he had been able to slip inside the inner wall of the city and gain access to the palace where he was free to roam the slaveways at will.
He was cautious in the beginning, fearful of discovery. But this was his third visit, and each time he grew bolder. He wasn’t just strolling through the slaveways for old times’ sake. Starros was looking for something; something that would give him unlimited access to every room in Krakandar Palace.
He was looking for the master key he and Damin had pilfered and copied when they were boys.
The key had sat—for as long as Starros could remember—on the lintel above the entrance to Damin’s room. When he searched for it, however, it was gone. Somebody had moved it. Unfortunately, the only people who even knew the key existed were no longer in the city, so he couldn’t ask anyone why it had been moved, or to where. He had to guess what might have happened, perhaps even relive that last dreadful night in the palace when Leila died, in the hope of finding what had become of it.
A noise further along the hall sent him diving for cover. He held his breath and waited in the shadows for the footsteps to pass him by. He risked a glance as the figure moved past the narrow alcove. It was a slave carrying a tray loaded with empty dishes. He waited until the slave’s scuffing footsteps had faded completely before he moved again. It was risky to be in this wing of the palace. In this wing the family suites were located. On his right was the door to what had once been Marla’s room when they were very small. A little further along the torch-lit corridor was the Blue Room, the room reserved for the most honoured guests.
The door past that was Leila’s room.
Starros hesitated, not sure if he had the courage to go on. He didn’t want to enter the room. He needed to find the key, and if he remembered what Kalan had told him of that last awful night of Leila’s, her mother had entered the room from the slaveways, using the master key the boys had created all those years before, to tend her poor savaged and brutalised child.
That’s when she’d discovered Leila, floating facedown in the bath, her wrists slashed, her blood washed away by the tepid bath water. Leila had gone to meet him, Starros knew. She thought he was dead and had gone to join him in the afterlife.
Starros wished he had the courage to do the same.
He approached Leila’s room with caution, his heart pounding. It wasn’t fear of discovery that made his blood race. It was an odd mix of guilt for not being there to help the woman he loved when she needed him most, and anger at the man who had kept them apart. He hesitated a dangerously long time, and then cursed his own cowardice, before stepping forward and reaching up to run his hand along the dusty lintel. It was empty.
“Looking for this?”
Starros nearly jumped out of his skin with fright. He spun around to find Leila’s mother standing behind him holding a single candle in one hand and the missing master key in the other.
“My … my lady …” Starros stammered, wondering how far he’d get before Bylinda raised the alarm. He looked over her shoulder but there was no sign of any guards yet. Starros quickly assessed his escape routes and the conclusion he came to wasn’t good. He didn’t want to hurt Bylinda, but she was standing between him and the quickest way out of the slaveways. And he had to run. Starros was under no illusions about his fate if Mahkas Damaran got his hands on him a second time.
“I knew you’d come back,” Bylinda said.
Lady Bylinda seemed thinner than he remembered, pale and washed out, as if she’d not seen the sun for months. Starros studied her with concern. This woman was the closest thing he had known to a mother and he couldn’t think of a single person in the world he had less desire to harm.
“Are you all right, my lady?” he asked, momentarily forgetting the peril he faced. To see her so frail, so delicate, alarmed him a great deal.
“She went to meet you,” Bylinda said, as if he hadn’t spoken. She wasn’t even looking at him, just some vague point over his shoulder.
“Lady Bylinda … you must believe me … if there was any way I could have prevented …”
Bylinda shook her head and forced her eyes to focus on him. “It wasn’t your fault, Starros. You have to understand that. Leila always loved you, even when you were small children. You looked after her. You loved her for being Leila. She just wanted to be safe. Safe with you.”
Starros didn’t know what to say. He’d thought his own grief was intolerable, but Bylinda’s pain was like staring into an open, gaping wound.
“I swear, I never meant to hurt her …”
“None of us did, Starros.” She glanced down at the key and then held it out to him. “You might as well have this. I don’t need it any more.”
He stared at the key cautiously. The suspicious part of him wondered if this was a trap. Perhaps she was setting him up by making sure he was carrying something incriminating when they captured him. But then he decided it was nothing of the sort. Bylinda seemed lost in her own private hell of grief and recrimination. There was no room for thoughts of vengeance.
Besides, if Mahkas caught him again, evidence or the lack of it wouldn’t matter. There would be no pretence of justice involved. Starros would be dead as soon as Mahkas could get his hands on a blade.
“You shouldn’t come here again, Starros. It’s not safe for you in the palace now.” Bylinda looked him over and then smiled ever so faintly. “I’m glad he didn’t hurt you.”
She meant Mahkas, Starros guessed. She would have no way of knowing he’d been beaten almost to death by her husband and it was only the intervention of a god that saved him.
“I guess I was the lucky one.”
He couldn’t keep the touch of irony from his voice, but it was doubtful she noticed it because Bylinda’s eyes suddenly glistened with tears. “Do you think she’s happy now?”
Starros wished the floor would open up and swallow him. He had no idea how to deal with Bylinda’s sorrow, no way of offering her comfort. And no time, in any case. Any minute now, anyone—from another slave clearing dishes to Mahkas himself—might stumble across them.
He took the key and pocketed it, wishing he knew something to say that might ease her heartache. “My lady … if there’s some way I can make amends …”
She shook her head desolately. “It’s not your job to make amends, Starros, because it’s not your fault. Don’t worry. I’m going to take care of it.”
He wasn’t sure what she meant by that and didn’t wait around to find out. At the first sound of the scraping of metal on metal a little further up the hall, he bolted, squeezing past Bylinda, heading for the only corridor in this wing that would lead him safely outside and away from the unbearable torment in Bylinda Damaran’s eyes.
Back in the Pickpocket’s Retreat, Starros dropped the master key on the table in front of Luc North. The forger had taken over Wrayan’s favourite haunt while his boss was away and was having a high old time ordering Fee around and playing King of the Hill while he dealt with the guild’s business each evening.
“What’s this?” Luc asked, looking up at Starros.
“The master key to every room in Krakandar Palace.”
Luc stared at the key in amazement and then looked up at Starros with a broad grin. “You’re really starting to take your devotion to the God of Thieves seriously, aren’t you, son?”
Starros shrugged. “Wrayan said I should steal everything I could from Mahkas. I thought this would be a good start.”
“How the hell did you get this?”
“Bylinda Damaran gave it to me.”
“Yeah … right,” Luc agreed sceptically. “Still, I suppose I shouldn’t really ask. What are you going to do with it?”
“Rob the palace, of course.”
Luc thought about that and then indicated his approval with a nod. “You do realise that with the city sealed, it’ll be impossible to fence anything you get away with? Nobody in Krakandar is going to be foolish enough to handle stolen goods from the palace. Not the way things are at the moment.”
“I’m not doing this for the money, Luc.”
The forger laughed. “There’s an attitude that’ll change the first time you go hungry, I’ll warrant.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Aye, I do. Did you want some help?”
“Maybe later, when I get to the bigger stuff. I thought I’d just start small. I am new to this whole burglary thing, you know.”
“That’s why you decided to start with something small, like a palace, I suppose?” he chuckled. “Still, you’re always better off working in familiar territory. Aren’t you worried about getting caught?”
“Do
you
worry about it?”
“Not really.”
“Then why should I?”
“Well, for one thing,” the forger said, “if I get caught doing something … awkward, I’m likely to get nothing more painful than a lashing. If you get caught, my friend, the Regent of Krakandar is probably going to flay you alive, stake you out naked over an anthill and then piss in your eye sockets after they’ve been picked clean by the ravens, all of which he’ll do
before
he kills you.”
Starros smiled grimly. “That’s a picture I could’ve done without, Luc.”
“Just trying to help, lad,” the older man chuckled. “You let me know if there’s anything I can do, won’t you?”
“I will.”
Starros left the table and headed out the back (he never used the front door for fear of being recognised), wondering why he was so keen to risk his neck. He couldn’t explain it, any more than he could explain this sudden urge to empty the Krakandar Palace of as much contraband as he could get away with. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that his soul now belonged to the God of Thieves. Perhaps it was his way of seeking vengeance.
. The scariest thing of all—and the most substantial difference Starros had noticed in himself since his soul was traded without his consent—was the notion that more than anything else, stealing anything from Krakandar Palace would probably be, well, fun.
T
ejay Lionsclaw had never been under any illusions about her role as a wife and mother of the next generation of Hythria’s ruling class. As she paced the rug beside her bed dressed in nothing but a sleeveless silk nightdress, her feet freezing whenever she stepped off the rug onto the icy tiles, she tried to recall a time when she hadn’t done the right thing. Until she’d fled Cabradell, she couldn’t name a single incident. Her responsibilities as a Hythrun noblewoman had been drummed into her from an early age and even though she railed a little at the unfairness of it all, she had never attempted to defy her father, her husband or the society into which she had been born until the Karien, Renulus, had come into her life.
She’d warned Damin while they were still on the road to Byamor to be wary of her husband’s seneschal, but it wasn’t until they were back in Cabradell that Tejay truly began to wish she’d carved her initials on his spleen before she’d left. The man’s very presence set her teeth on edge.
It was the effect he had on her husband. Terin wasn’t really a bad man, just a foolish one. He keenly felt his low birth, even though his father had been a Warlord in his own right for more than two decades before he died, and Terin had inherited his title and his province with all the rights and privileges that went with it. But Terin remembered his childhood here in Cabradell. He remembered being taunted about his father. He remembered other children teasing him, because his grandfather was supposed to be Glenadal Ravenspear, yet the old Warlord had never done much more than nod in Terin’s direction when he passed him in the hall.
Tejay didn’t blame Lord Ravenspear. No Warlord with any sense singled out his bastard, or his bastard’s offspring, unless he was planning to acknowledge the man and make him his heir. Old Ravenspear had had bigger plans for Hythria and they involved creating an heir for the Hythrun throne. His own province he left in the hands of Laran Krakenshield, Marla’s first husband—and significantly, Damin Wolfblade’s father—and trusted fate would take care of the rest of his family.
Fate hadn’t quite worked the way anybody expected. Glenadal’s only daughter—and arguably, his legitimate heir—Riika Ravenspear had been killed by the Fardohnyans when she was barely sixteen. Laran Krakenshield had died in a Medalonian cattle raid less than two years later, and Marla had prevailed upon her brother, the High Prince, to appoint Chaine Lionsclaw the Warlord of Sunrise Province.
Lernen had done what Marla asked of him, but he’d made Chaine a Warlord in his own right, not granted him legitimacy, or acknowledged him as a member of the Ravenspear family. Terin believed he still carried the stigma of his father’s baseborn status and thought his wife—the last of a line of Warlords stretching back to the very foundation of Hythria—looked down on him because of it.
In truth, Tejay couldn’t have cared less. What she cared about was Terin’s foolishness, not his family tree. It had taken her a long time to realise that made no difference to her husband; a long, painful time in which all her attempts to aid him in ruling his province were either misconstrued as criticism or rejected outright as interference. If she made any suggestion, he thought she was implying he wasn’t capable as a ruler since his father had been nothing more than a bastard captain elevated to Warlord because he just happened to be acquainted with the High Prince’s sister.
In the early days of their marriage, Tejay had racked her brain trying to think of what she’d done to make her husband believe she thought that way about him. By the time she gave birth to her fourth son (Tejay was too well versed in her duties as a wife to think of refusing him her bed) she’d resigned herself to the knowledge that it didn’t matter what she did. Terin believed what he wanted to believe and nothing she could do or say was ever going to alter it.
And then Renulus had come to Cabradell.
The Karien was a big man, his bulk the result of good living rather than muscle. He was well educated—his credentials were the reason Chaine Lionsclaw hired him to conduct a census in the first place—but he was sly, ingratiating and rabidly misogynistic. He fed Terin’s insecurities with frightening proficiency. Before Renulus came to Cabradell, Terin had been an impractical but not inconsiderate man. After the Karien arrived, he grew more and more opinionated, more sensitive to any slight, real or imagined, and much more aggressive until finally, after one disagreement too many, the day after Chaine died (and at Renulus’s urging, Tejay was certain) Terin had unwisely attempted to beat his wife into submission for disagreeing with him in public.
Tejay won the fight—she’d been taught to defend herself by far better men than Terin Lionsclaw, and husband or not, nobody laid a hand on the daughter of Rogan Bearbow in anger and walked away unscathed. It should have been Renulus she flattened, Tejay thought afterward. Terin would never have attempted anything so foolish without the Karien’s encouragement.
Regardless of who was to blame, Lady Lionsclaw had left her husband on the floor of her bedroom nursing a black eye, a fat lip and two broken ribs, gathered up her children, written her husband a scathing letter of condemnation, and then headed for her father’s home in Natalandar, the capital of Izcomdar Province, without so much as a backward glance.
Tejay hadn’t counted on the plague, however, or her father’s death preventing her reaching her childhood home. When she got to the border of Izcomdar and received her brother’s message, she couldn’t go on, nor was going back an option. After assaulting Terin, she couldn’t return to Cabradell without losing her children and possibly endangering her life.
Tejay had been on the verge of desperation when she heard the news Damin Wolfblade was in residence in Krakandar. With the sure knowledge she would be both welcomed and protected in her foster-brother’s city, Tejay Lionsclaw had headed north, only to ride into the tragedy that was Leila and Starros’s doomed love affair.
Tejay’s return to Cabradell some two months later flanked by Damin Wolfblade and Narvell Hawksword, and accompanied by five thousand of her foster-brothers’ Raiders, had prevented Terin from doing anything rash to his wife. He was livid when he discovered Tejay had left the children in Krakandar under the protection of Luciena and Xanda Taranger, and although he began a tirade about his children—a Warlord’s heirs, no less—being placed in the dubious care of a common merchant and his wife, Tejay knew he was posturing for appearance’s sake. Terin was angry certainly, but not so foolish as to attempt to harm her with Damin standing there, glowering at him. He continued his embarrassing rant, however, until Damin was forced to remind him Xanda Taranger was his cousin and Luciena was his adopted sister and did Lord Lionsclaw have some sort of problem with the pedigree of the High Prince’s family not being good enough for a Lionsclaw?
Terin had stammered out an apology, fearful he may have offended the High Prince’s heir, but it did little to ease the simmering tension in the palace.
And the Cabradell palace was in chaos. As if her own problems with Terin weren’t enough, Tejay arrived home to find Prince Lunar Shadow Kraig of the House of the Rising Moon, heir to the throne of Denika—whom Marla had sent secretly to Sunrise Province months ago in the hope Chaine could get him over the border and on a boat back to Denika through Tambay’s Seat—was still languishing in the palace, disguised as a slave. Chaine had dispatched the young man to Highcastle too late to get him over the border and they’d been forced to turn back. As only Chaine and Tejay knew the true identity of the prince, and Chaine was dead and Tejay gone by the time he returned to Cabradell, he’d been sent to the slave quarters and left there to rot.
The Denikans weren’t going to take very kindly to the treatment their scion had received as a guest of the High Prince of Hythria.
She needed to enlist Damin’s help, Tejay knew that. But she didn’t want to add to his problems. He was already furious that Terin had made no attempt to gather any sort of intelligence since Hablet had closed the border and was busy trying to get Rorin and Adham organised and provisioned for such an urgent undertaking with Renulus blocking him at every turn. Narvell was no help. He spent most of his time searching for reasons to be alone with Kendra Warhaft while Kendra’s husband, Stefan Warhaft—who’d invited himself along for the ride—spent most of
his
time trying to
catch
Narvell Hawksword alone with his wife so he could call him out in a duel.
Tejay shared Damin’s frustration. Sunrise Province should have known everything that was happening over their border with Fardohnya. They should have had an army in excess of twenty thousand men to call up, but between the plague and Terin’s mismanagement, there were barely a tenth of that left. To further add to Damin’s woes, there was no sign yet of Raek Harlen and the additional Krakandar Raiders he should be bringing with him.
And to top it all off, Tejay mused, pacing her room angrily, her husband had now decided she was having an affair with Damin Wolfblade.
This latest problem had started a few days after she arrived back in Cabradell. Furious with his wife for leaving him, Terin had made the mistake of berating her over dinner in the full view of every guest present. Naturally, Damin had come to her defence and because he was a prince and Terin merely a Warlord, there was nothing her husband could do but apologise for his rudeness to both his wife and his prince in front of the entire Cabradell court.
That public humiliation had turned what little like or respect Terin may have had for Damin into open loathing, and because Damin was young, and good-looking and extremely protective of his foster-sister, Terin immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was because the two of them were lovers.
Tejay didn’t know what to do. If she told Damin that Terin suspected him of being her paramour, he might laugh at the very notion, or he might—given his present frustration with her husband—decide to call him out. She couldn’t risk that happening, but neither could she risk Damin hearing the rumour from another source. And it would get about. Renulus would see to that.
Tejay shivered a little in her nightgown. She crossed her arms and rubbed them, thinking she’d be better served stoking the fire. Or going to bed. But there wasn’t much point in trying to sleep. All it meant was a long sleepless night, staring into the darkness, wishing she had an answer for even half her problems.
Without warning, the candle guttered in a sudden draught. She stopped her pacing to find Terin standing at the door of her bedroom with a determined look on his face.
“What do you want?”
“What everyone else seems to be getting a piece of lately.”
“Find your own bed, Terin. I’m not in the mood.”
“You’re my wife,” he reminded her, stepping into the room and closing the door. “Your mood is of no consequence to me.”
Tejay glared at him. “Do you remember the last time you tried to lay a hand on me, uninvited?”
“I remember. And you’ll pay for that, too.”
“And who’s going to
make
me pay, Terin?
You
?”
“Perhaps I’ll make your lover pay,” he suggested, as he approached her. “Maybe I’ll write to the High Prince. I’m sure he’d be interested in learning what his nephew’s been doing with another man’s wife.”
He stopped in front of her, but she wasn’t afraid of him. Not physically. The only thing she feared about this man was that he had the power to take her children from her, but even then, she’d done what she could to protect them. She had possession of them, out of his reach, and the High Prince’s heir on her side. The rest was up to the gods.
Tejay shook her head, amused at the notion. “You’re going to be sorely disappointed, Terin, if you’re relying on Lernen Wolfblade’s moral compass to serve your own private agenda.”
Her husband grabbed her by the arms and pulled her to him. He tried to kiss her but she turned her face away, making it clear what she thought of his touch.
What happened,
she wondered, as Terin’s stubbled chin scratched at her face,
to the girl who was prepared to lie down and take whatever she must for the sake of her family, her province, her nation?
She’s had enough,
another silent voice answered.
Terin’s grasp was bruising her arms, his breath smelled of wine and he was furious she refused to respond to him. This wasn’t about desire, she knew. This was Terin trying to prove he had power over her.
“Get your hands off me, Terin Lionsclaw,” she told him calmly. “Or I will break your neck.”
Angrily, Terin pushed her away. “Whore! You’ll give it up for a princeling, but your own husband isn’t good enough for you, is he?”
“I will tell you this one more time, Terin,” she told him in a level voice, clenching her fists by her side to stop herself from strangling him.
One Warlord,
she reminded herself, in a chilling echo of Rorin’s words in Krakandar.
We’re one dead Warlord away from disaster.
“I am not now, nor have I been at any time in the past, Damin Wolfblade’s lover. I been can’t help it if you don’t believe me. I do suggest, however, that you think very hard before accusing my alleged paramour of something you can’t substantiate. No doubt you’ve heard what happened in Krakandar to Mahkas Damaran. He was family. I doubt my foster-brother will be quite so gentle with you if you make him lose his temper.”