THE YOUNGER OF CRESCENTIA’S SLAVES is waiting for me on the dock when we disembark. I tell Erik that I’ll pray for his safety before leaving him.
As I approach the girl, her eyes dart around in an effort to avoid mine. “The Prinz escorted Lady Crescentia back to the palace,” she says, “but they promised to send the carriage for us soon.” She’s skinny to the point of malnutrition, yet her cheeks still have a childish roundness. Her large, dark eyes are sunken deep in her face, making her look far older than I’m sure she is.
She doesn’t curtsy, but then, Astrean slaves never curtsy to me anymore. It can too easily be construed as paying deference to a sovereign, and more than a handful have lost their lives for it. The Kaiser has done everything in his great power to isolate me from my people. Even when there are Astrean slaves around, we can never speak, and most of them won’t even look at me. I never used to understand it. I thought he was simply cruel in putting up so many walls around me. But if I hadn’t been so lonely, if I hadn’t felt so separate, maybe I wouldn’t have been so desperate to break myself into what he wanted me to be.
No one can say that the Kaiser isn’t smart. But now I’m determined to be smarter.
The Kaiser would never have approved leaving me alone with an Astrean, even with my Shadows nearby. But maybe this is one of the inches of freedom that executing Ampelio has bought me. I won’t waste it.
“I would prefer to walk, if you don’t mind,” I tell her. “What do they call you?”
She hesitates, doe eyes darting around briefly. She knows my Shadows are here, too. “Elpis,” she says, so quietly that I barely hear her.
“Do you mind walking, Elpis?” I ask her.
She chews her bottom lip for a few seconds until I’m worried she’ll draw blood. “We’ll have to walk through the slave quarter, my lady,” she warns. “It will be empty this time of day, mostly, but…”
“I don’t mind if you don’t.”
“I…I don’t mind,” she says, her voice strengthening. “We don’t have a guard, though.”
“We have my Shadows,” I say, though they’re more to keep me leashed than to keep me safe, and I doubt they’d step in unless it looked like I might be killed or disfigured. They certainly wouldn’t lift a finger to help Elpis. She must know this, too, because she looks at me warily.
“Of…of course, my lady.”
I can’t blame her for her discomfort. She was younger than I was when the siege happened. Astrea is little more than a ghost story to her. I’m not sure if that makes her a more or less dangerous person to trust. There is so much more than a whipped back at stake this time. I need to be sure of Elpis.
I’m tempted to look around for my Shadows as we walk, but I know by now that I won’t see them and it’ll only make me appear suspicious. Maybe I’ll catch sight of a scrap of black fabric darting through a nearby alley, or hear a handful of soft footsteps, but nothing more. They’re trained to be neither seen nor heard, and I’m sure they have Spiritgems aplenty to aid them in that. I’ve heard that cloaks lined with Air Gems can make the wearer invisible for a time, and nearly soundless.
They’ll tell the Kaiser about this, though I doubt they’ll dare get close enough to hear what we talk about. He won’t be pleased to hear that I exchanged words—no matter how innocent—with an Astrean slave. Thora’s voice sounds again in my mind, urging me to stay safe, but Blaise’s is louder. Twenty thousand.
“Do you live in this area with your parents?” I ask her as we walk.
“Yes, my lady,” Elpis says carefully. “Well, with my mother, at least, and my younger brother. My father died in the Conquering.”
The Conquering is what the Kalovaxians call the siege. It makes it sound more honorable, I suppose, to conquer something wild rather than to lay siege to something defenseless.
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” I tell her. “What does your mother do?”
“She was a botanist before, but now she’s a seamstress for the Theyn and Lady Crescentia.”
“How old is your brother?” I ask.
She hesitates. “He’ll be ten soon,” she says, a hard edge coming to her voice. “He’s my half brother.”
“Oh,” I say, glancing at her uncertainly. Even at court, there are women who have children out of wedlock, and it’s far less shameful for a widow than a maiden. If my math is correct, the siege would have just ended when her mother became pregnant. The pieces fit together and I realize what Elpis isn’t saying.
Conqueror’s Rights allowed warriors to terrorize and rob and enslave my people without fear of retribution, but I’d never thought of all that would entail. Rape. I won’t let myself think around the word or use one of the many euphemisms to try to dull it. Another injustice my people have faced. Another thing I swear will be paid for.
Elpis isn’t as practiced at hiding her anger as I am. It plays over her face like words on a page, evident in the tension in her jaw and the intense focus of her eyes. She could turn a person to stone with a gaze like that. It’s an anger I know too well.
Elpis isn’t loyal to the Kaiser, I’m sure of it. But that doesn’t mean she’ll be loyal to me. I’m not her queen, after all; I’m a spoiled, sheltered girl who is friends with the one who keeps her chained.
I have to take a moment to translate my words to Astrean in my mind before I say them. “Does he look like them?” I ask her quietly, dropping my voice to a whisper. I keep a tight hold on my smile so that it will fool my Shadows into thinking I’m babbling about something silly and inconsequential. Hopefully, after years of watching me do nothing of interest, they won’t expect anything more now.
I am poking at a bruise. Elpis flinches at my words, but I don’t back down. I need her anger; I need her to know it isn’t hers alone to bear, that I am on her side.
Her eyes narrow and she opens her mouth to answer before clamping it shut again. “Yes,” she says shortly in Kalovaxian before switching to Astrean and lowering her voice so that even I can barely hear her. “What is it you want from me, my lady?” she asks me, her voice tight.
The streets are deserted, though there are sunken eyes watching from broken windows. Children too young to work, the ill, the elderly. Hoa must live somewhere around here when she’s not with me. The thought strikes me as strange—it isn’t something I’d ever wondered about.
“What do you want?” I ask Elpis.
Her eyes dart around, searching for the Shadows, too, the ears that are always listening, the eyes that are always watching. They’re not here, though, I assure myself. Not close enough, anyway. But I don’t fully believe it. I’ve been wrong too many times before.
“Is this a trick, my lady?” she asks, switching back to Kalovaxian.
She doesn’t trust me. And why should she? She’s watched me for years with Cress. She would be a fool to trust me, and she’s lived too rough a life to be a fool.
If anything, the fact that she doesn’t trust me makes me trust her.
“No, it’s not a trick.” I look around again and see it—a telltale glimmer in the air, but a good twenty feet away, lurking in the shadow of a crumbling building. They won’t hear me, but I force a high, false laugh, keeping my smile frozen and speaking in Astrean for extra measure.
Elpis is bewildered. “Smile,” I tell her, and she instantly obeys, though there’s a touch of fear in her eyes. “They tried to break me, Elpis, and they nearly succeeded. I let my fear cow me, I let them cow me. But I’m done. I’m going to make them pay. For everything they’ve done to us, to our country. To our fathers and our mothers. Will you help me?”
I hold my breath. Elpis has grown up in this world, she has never known anything else. She could turn against me for her freedom and enough food to keep her family satiated, and I couldn’t even blame her for it. It’s a difficult world for Astreans to survive in, and I haven’t seen the worst of it. I am no more her ruler than the Kaiser is, and what does she care, really, so long as she’s safe and warm and fed?
But when her eyes meet mine, they are burning with venom. Her gaze is lethal, but not to me. Her anger only feeds mine, until we are matched, hate for hate.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” she whispers, stumbling over the Astrean words. I’m surprised she even knows them.
Your Majesty. The Kalovaxians don’t use that term, so the only person I’ve heard referred to that way was my mother. I know Elpis means well, but hearing it now makes my heart ache.
I’m not anyone’s majesty, I want to tell her.
“Are there people you trust implicitly?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says, without hesitation.
“That’s the wrong answer. You trust no one until they have earned it. I’ve made that mistake before and suffered for it. But the Kaiser won’t find punishing you worth his time. He’ll kill you, do you understand?”
She bites her lip before remembering that we’re being watched. “Yes, I get the joke,” she says with a laugh that sounds surprisingly natural. She doesn’t bother to lower her voice or speak in Astrean. Good girl, giving them something, even if it’s nothing.
“The only person I want you to trust is a boy. He was serving the banquet yesterday. A little older than me, with black hair cut close? Taller than most men, with bright green eyes. And a scar here,” I add, tracing a finger from my temple to the corner of my mouth, but making it look like I’m scratching an itch.
Elpis nods slowly. “I believe I know him,” she says.
“You think, or you know?” I press.
“I…I know,” she says, sounding more certain. “There aren’t many young men working in the palace, but one started two days ago. He had paperwork releasing him from the mines?”
Forged, I’m sure, and not likely to last long before that’s discovered.
“That’s the one,” I say in Kalovaxian.
She gives me a small smile. “You could have just said the handsome one. He’s had all the girls swooning over him.”
I stifle a laugh. “Can you get a message to him?”
“Yes, it shouldn’t be difficult. Lady Crescentia doesn’t notice much, particularly when she has a new book to occupy her mind. Her father keeps closer tabs on us, but he left to survey the mines yesterday afternoon.”
More useful information, though hardly the good kind. I can only imagine what the Theyn’s visit to the mines will entail, but I’m sure it will come with a body count.
“Good,” I say. “Introduce yourself to him. Tell him I sent you.” I know he won’t believe her—it’s exactly what the Kaiser’s spy would say to catch us. “We were children together in the palace, before the siege. Our nanny’s name was Sofia, but we called her Birdie because she had the prettiest voice. If he questions your story, tell him I said that.”
“And what would you like me to tell him?” she asks me.
“Tell him…tell him I have some news and I need a way to meet with him in person.”