The Hidden Queen, page 36
“And if the ring’s stuck in the middle of a pile of demonshit somewhere?” Selen asks.
“We’ll bury it and say a prayer.” I’m annoyed now, and don’t bother to hide it. “Won’t be any worse off than before.”
Never known Selen to shy away from a fight, but she ent got it in her this time. She drops her eyes. “Ay, you’re right.”
“What’s our plan for sneaking off?” I change the subject quick. “I can slip off anytime I want, but getting the rest of you out of the keep with the new security, supplied and equipped for a long trip…”
Olive gives me a knowing look. “When Darin Bales says What’s our plan, it means he’s already got one and is too shy to share it.”
“Go on then, Dar,” Selen says. “You’re the expert at sneaking.”
“Don’t clomp around like a herd of mustang like you two,” I admit. Selen snickers, and some of the tension leaves the scents in the air.
“Can’t go now,” I say. “Snows are on their way, and we won’t find anythin’ if we freeze to death.”
“Agreed.” Selen rubs her arms. “So when?”
“Reckon Olive should throw another big festival for Equinox,” I say, “and make sure we’re in the bandshell. Let everyone get a good look at us, then sneak off while they’re all drinkin’ and dancin’. Be a while before anyone notices we’re gone, and then Olive tells ’em we went off to Tibbet’s Brook to introduce Rojvah to my family, now that we’re promised. Say Selen and Arick came for support, and to see a bit of the world. Round trip takes months. Folk won’t ask questions.”
“He’s right,” Selen says. Night, twice in one talk! “Plenty of folk make the pilgrimage out to the Brook to see the birthplace of the Deliverer.”
“Ay, then they take one look at the place and turn right back,” I say. “Brook folk ent unfriendly, exactly, but they like bein’ left to their peace, and nothing spoils peace like a pack of wide-eyed city folk trampling your fields and puttin’ up tents on your property.”
“It is a good plan,” Rojvah agrees. “I should like to see your home in truth some day.”
I can tell from her scent she means it, and it makes me think of Olive’s dismissal of the Brook—her casual assumption Hollow must be preferable, and that if I got married I’d have to stay, because of course no woman would want to go there.
“I would see your homeland too, cousin.” Arick surprises me. “It cannot be coincidence when a place produces so many heroes.”
“Make you a deal,” I tell Arick and Rojvah. “We live through this next year, I’ll take you there for real.” Rojvah takes my hand, her scent delighted. Selen’s…ent. Not angry, just a little sad.
I turn and hold a hand out to her. “Used to say you’d visit one day, too. Still mean that?”
Selen looks at the hand. “Ent that many of us going to disturb folk’s peace?”
“Reckon it will.” I grin. “Grandda always used to fret I din’t have any friends. I come home with a pair of pretty girls, he’ll throw a party that keeps the whole town awake for a week.”
That forces a laugh out of her. “Corespawn it, Darin Bales,” Selen grouses, but she matches my grin and her sad scent dissipates as she takes my hand.
* * *
—
I walk Rojvah back to her rooms. It’s easier knowin’ a kiss is coming. It’s become a ritual, and I like rituals. When my senses are chaos, rituals help me focus. Easy to kiss even someone pretty as Rojvah, when it’s expected of you.
We go out onto the terrace like we do every night to say goodbye. I still feel a burst of magic when our lips touch. Rojvah always smells nice. More I smell her, the more I want to. Her mouth is warm and she squeezes me so tight I never want it to end. But it has to. That’s part of the ritual. Even as I melt in her arms, part of me is counting breaths until it’s time to step back.
“Your kisses are improving,” Rojvah whispers, and she smells pleased. “But you need not pull away so soon.”
“Don’t want to be improper,” I say. “Ent married, yet.”
Rojvah rolls her eyes, smelling amused. “If you wish. I could dance for you, if you prefer.”
“Dance?” Suddenly I’m all tensed up again.
“I learned the pillow dance in Sharaj.” Rojvah’s voice is low, reverberating in the air. Mischief in her scent. “It is written a bride may perform it for her intended, if they leave space for Everam between them.”
“What’s that mean?” Images of Rojvah dancing are swirling in my head. I feel drunk, like Hary stumbling around after he’s had too much wine.
Rojvah steps in close. “It means you can look, Intended,” she’s so near I feel her breath, the heat of her body, the way she shapes the air, “but you cannot touch.”
She drifts back to the doors, leaving me standing there like a tree shaking in the wind. “Good night, Intended.”
I force myself to climb the wall with shaky fingers, then lie on the roof a short while until my breath is back under control.
Arick is putting on a nightshirt when I get back to our rooms. “Did you enjoy kissing my sister, son of Arlen?”
“It was her idea to get promised.” Arick doesn’t smell mad, but it’s hard to tell with these things. “Know you don’t like it…”
Arick waves for me to quiet. “I like you better than the other suitors Mother was considering for her, and this way I don’t…lose her.”
“She’s your sister,” I say. “Ent ever gonna lose her.”
“Here in the North, perhaps,” Arick says. “In Krasia, when a woman marries, she goes to live in her husband’s house. Rojvah and I have been together every day of our lives. I do not know that I could bear to be without her.”
“What if you find someone, too?” I ask.
Arick shrugs. “Perhaps someday. But I have no right to be with someone until I understand what the demon did to me, and show him the sun, so he can never do it again.”
I nod, though it ent that simple. Alagai Ka got in Arick’s head, ay, but it’s only a piece of what’s eatin’ him.
I can smell he dun’t want to go on about it, so I let Arick head to bed and slip back onto the terrace. Rojvah got me saying good nights and sleeping in a bed, but Arick and I don’t keep the same hours. Night is when my senses and body truly come alive. Daytime feels like the sleepwalk.
I usually haunt the keep until everyone’s turned in. Olive’s taken to working late in her office, and usually only goes to her bed when the maid scolds her. I wait till she’s settled, and then go explore. Into town some nights, but more and more I find myself wandering the Gatherers’ Wood. Place reminds me of Mam, and the Warded Children. Ent one for cryin’, but I can set up a tree with a pretty view and think sad thoughts all night long.
Don’t head back inside until I feel dawn comin’, like that gentle pressure you get in your skull an hour before a headache hits. Aunt Leesha made me a special bed when I was little, and I love it still. Sat on a thick carpet, the four-poster is canopied and surrounded by thick layered curtains that block out all the light and most of the sound, givin’ me just enough peace to sleep through the heat of the morning.
By the time I slip into the covers, Arick is already up and dressing, heading down to the practice yards to drill with anyone and everyone who can hold their own against him in a fight, or teach him something he doesn’t already know about fightin’. Ent a long list, but he’s just as happy to practice sharukin alone, with the same diligence as when he practices the kamanj.
Arick’s strength at music is repetitive precision. Skill, not talent, he says. But if talent’s a thing, it’s clear where his lies. He treats fightin’ like I do my pipes, and it ent an exaggeration to call what he does an art. Ent heard tell of anyone takin’ him down twice with the same move. Next time they spar, he turns the move back on them, oft as not.
Sometimes, though, I catch him staring at his spear, and he smells scared.
I draw a cold breath as I climb to the roof. I’ve got my night eyes, but they don’t tell me as much on Hollow’s greatward, which sucks in all the ambient magic and smooths it out, destroying all the currents I might try to Read.
Doesn’t matter. Don’t need them. I can tell where folk are and what they’re doing from the tastes and smells in the air, the way sounds echo off the walls, the vibrations in the stone I cling to.
So I ent surprised when I find Briar Damaj sittin’ in a crenel, waitin’ for me.
“Where d’you go?” I ask, climbing atop the merlon next to him. Ent my business, really. Briar’s been close enough to meet with Olive more than once, but I lose track of him once he leaves the keep. Spent more’n one night sniffing around, failing to pick up the trail. Ent used to that. Briar smells more of hogroot than anything, and that grows all over Hollow.
“Briarpatch in Gatherers’ Wood,” Briar says. “Been working on it since before you were born.”
“Wander that wood a lot,” I note. “You had a patch out there, reckon I would’ve found it.”
Briar laughs. “Did you look beneath the hogroot patch?”
“Hogroot patches all over the wood,” I say. “Reckon it’s near trees, too?”
“Briarpatches are no use once folk know where they are,” Briar says.
“Don’t suppose you got any briarpatches out east?” I ask.
Briar shakes his head. “Never got out to the mountains. But I can show you how to make your own.”
“Be real grateful,” I say.
Briar holds up his hand, showing me his warded palm. “Anything to aid you in your quest, brother.”
“Need all the help we can get,” I admit.
“You can lead them through it,” Briar says.
I laugh. “I ent the leader.”
“Are you not?” Briar asks. “Who, then?”
I open my mouth to say Olive, but Briar knows as well as I do she ent coming. I think for a minute, and a deep chill of fear forms at the center of me. Selen won’t take orders from Rojvah, and Rojvah won’t listen to Selen. Arick gets along with both of them, but he’s got his own problems and ent lookin’ to tell folk what to do.
But night, no one listens to me.
“We’re an ensemble,” I say at last.
“Of course,” Briar agrees. “But you’re the resin that binds them together.”
“Olive is the glue,” I say, on surer footing now. “She’s the one related to everyone under the sun. Arick and Rojvah wouldn’t be here if they weren’t blood. Selen wouldn’t have crossed the desert with me if Olive wasn’t blood.”
“Family is more than blood, Darin am’Bales,” Briar says. “You of all people should understand that. You share no blood with any of them, but it was you who drew them into your ensemble.”
“We’re in a whole mess of trouble, then,” I say.
Briar shakes his head. “The Damajah walks in futures we cannot see, and she has faith in you. That is no small thing. Your ensemble makes you stronger, son of Arlen, but they draw more strength and courage from you than you know. You will need to guide them, as I must guide Duch Olive into the night below.”
It’s a scary thought, and Briar doesn’t press, giving me space to think it through. “Come,” he slips off the crenel and begins climbing down, “I will take you to Gatherers’ Wood and teach you to build a briarpatch.”
I hear Arther come in, but I’m deep in a ledger, hunting for something that doesn’t add up.
Baron Orchard is avoiding some of his taxes. That, in and of itself, is nothing new. The baron had been skimming for years, as Mother was well aware. The baron was powerful, and clever. Orchard knew the cost for Mother to audit and enforce the law was far more than the margin he was underreporting.
But since Mother’s disappearance, the baron has grown bolder, reporting whole crops as losses even as he quietly sells them to New Krasia for twice the local rate, using the excuse to cut funding to schools and hospits in his barony.
Mother would never have tolerated that, and neither can I. The baron needs a reminder—they all do—that Hollow’s laws have not changed.
Arther clears his throat. It’s so quiet that from anyone else I would think nothing of it. From Arther when he sees me occupied, it is practically a shout.
I pause, holding three numbers in my head while I search for a fourth that will prove my suspicion. “I’m a little busy, Arther. Can it wait?”
“That is for you to decide, Your Grace.” Arther offers a shallow bow. “There is a Miss Lanna Apple asking to see you.”
Just like that, all the numbers flee my head.
“I think Baron Orchard is corrupt,” I say.
Arther nods. “Almost certainly.”
I close the ledger and shove it a few inches in his direction. “The proof is in there. Have an auditor find it, and summon the baron to court.”
“Of course, Your Grace,” Arther says.
“And escort Miss Apple to my sitting room,” I say. “Perhaps you could give one of your wonderful, informative tours on the way?”
Arther smiles, knowing full well what I think of his tours. “Would an hour suffice?”
* * *
—
“What are you doing here?” I sweep into the room casually, as if I hadn’t just run to my chambers and spent an hour at the mirror.
Lanna is carefully to one side of a divan made for two, wearing her Seventhday best, the same dress she wore to the festival. It’s not what women wear at court, but it takes my breath away still. I see the soft hollow where her neck meets shoulder, and remember how soft it was against my lips.
“It snowed again last night,” Lanna says. “We’re going back to Apple Hill tomorrow, before the next storm comes, or we might be here all winter.”
Would that be so bad? I wonder.
“Of course,” I say. In truth, I thought them already gone. “I’m sorry I didn’t…”
“Oh, you don’t have to apologize!” Lanna seems scandalized. “Know you must be busy. It’s just…Oskar wanted to see Selen one last time, and we decided to go to the gates and just ask. Worst they could do is say no, ay? But then the guard squints at me and she says, ‘Ent you the one kissed Duch Olive at Solstice?’ Next thing we know we’re surrounded by statues and paintings and…”
She looks at me, blushing, and I feel my face heat in return. “Hope that’s all right? Just thought, maybe you might want to see me, but it ent…appropriate for you to visit a commoner in town.”
“I don’t care about that,” I say. “Everyone at the festival saw us kiss. I’m not ashamed to be seen with you.”
“Festival’s one thing,” Lanna looks around the lavish room, “palace is somethin’ else. Know I stick out like an onion in the apple cart. Don’t belong here.”
“Nonsense.” I sit beside her, taking her hand. “Can I tell you a secret?”
Lanna’s fingers curl around mine. “Of course.”
“Mother says no one belongs in a palace,” I say. “And when you begin to think you do, it’s time to leave it. I never did. That was why I ran away and joined the borough tour. This place can be…stifling.”
Lanna nods, leaning in closer, lips parting slightly, and I realize it doesn’t matter what we say, and I don’t feel like talking in any event.
I can’t be with Lanna. She isn’t wrong about that. It’s not that I’m scared to scandalize the matchmakers, or to marry a commoner, or a woman. It’s that all we have in common is kisses, and I’ll be lucky to live through next Solstice. But when she’s near, it dulls some of the hurts inside, and that’s worth some time no matter how busy my schedule.
I forget work for the rest of the day and into the night, enjoying her company. We send Lanna and Oskar back to the inn where the others from Apple Hill are staying with a warm carriage to escort them home, laden with gifts for them and their village.
But I don’t ask her to stay. There is work to be done, and every moment I spend with her is a moment I am not focused on my goal. Every kiss could be a robber baron I let escape. Every embrace a missed drill in the yard.
Everyone used to wonder why Mother never married. When I was little, I thought the duchess—the most powerful woman in the North—could do whatever she wanted, and it was my life that was stifled.
Watching their carriage recede in the distance, I understand too late that in some ways, Mother was the least free of us all.
Faseek and Gorvan fall in behind me as I march back inside. They are my brothers. Giant Gorvan was my trusted lieutenant in the Maze. Ferocious Faseek’s loyalty is without question. He’s hidden bodies and taken arrows for me.
But I find myself confiding in them less and less. In truth, I never confided in them much to begin with. Chadan and I were kai and kept our own counsel. We presented Gorvan and the others with plans, and they executed.
I trust them, but they cannot advise me in this place. Barely educated, they speak only the Majah dialect of Krasian, and a smattering of the trade pidgin of the greenland thralls in Desert Spear. They shadow me everywhere, but understand little beside threats to my person.
All my life I had friends I could rely on to keep my secrets and tell me theirs. Selen, Darin, Micha, Chadan. People I knew in my heart could never betray me. Now, suddenly, I have only my own confidence to keep. It’s no wonder Mother always seemed so tired, beneath the armor of her practiced appearances.
* * *
—
“Your Grace.” Baron Orchard bows as he enters my office. He does not take a knee, but that is to be expected. Mother never cared for such shows of submission, and neither do I.
