Kaden was silent as he got ready for bed, the kind of silence that made every other sound grating—his breathing, the weight of his footsteps, the sound of water poured from a pitcher. It was all laced with tension.
He scrubbed his face over the basin, and ran his wet fingers through his hair. His movements were brusque. He crossed the room and pulled his belt from his trousers with a quick yank. “The soldiers told me you sat on the wall outside the window today,” he said without looking my way.
“Is that forbidden?”
“It’s not advised. It’s a long drop.”
“I needed fresh air.”
“They said you sang songs.”
“Remembrances. Just the evening tradition of Morrighan. You remember that, don’t you?”
“The soldiers said people gathered to listen.”
“So they did, but only a few. I’m a curiosity.”
He unlocked his trunk and threw in his belt and scabbard. His knife was placed just under the fur rug where he would sleep—he kept his blade close, even in his own locked room. Was it habit or a requirement of the Rahtan, who always had to be ready? It reminded me that I still had Natiya’s knife in my boot and I’d have to be discreet when I removed it.
“Is something wrong? Was it the way I said the blessing?” I asked as I struggled with the laces at my back.
He took off one boot. “You said it fine.”
“But?”
“Nothing.” He saw me fiddling with the laces. “Here, let me look.”
I turned around. “Aster seems to have knotted them,” I said.
I felt his fingers fumbling with the task, then finally felt the fabric loosen. “There,” he said. I turned to face him. He looked down at me, his eyes warm. “There is something else. When I saw you in that dress, I was—” He shook his head. “I was afraid. I thought— Never mind.”
I’d never seen him wrestle so much with his words. Or admit to being afraid. He stepped away and sat on the bed. “Be careful how much you push, Lia.” He pulled his other boot off.
“Are you worried about me?”
“Of course I’m worried about you!” he snapped.
I stiffened, surprised by his anger. “I’ve been welcomed, Kaden. That’s all. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“That kind of welcome could also bring a death sentence.”
“From the Council, you mean.”
“We have very little here, Lia, but our pride.”
“And a prisoner’s been honored. That’s the problem?”
He nodded. “You only just got here and—”
“But, Kaden, the people who welcomed me are Vendans.”
His eyes drilled into me. “But they’re not the ones who carry lethal weapons.”
There was no denying that the tools of Effiera’s trade were nothing like Malich’s and his cohorts’. I sat down beside Kaden. “What is the clan of Meurasi? Why do they matter so much?”
He explained that the city was filled with people from all the provinces. They tended to settle into neighborhoods of their own clan, and each had unique characteristics. One quarter was quite different from another, but the clan of Meurasi represented all things Vendan. Hearty, enduring, steadfast. They honored many of the ways of old that others had forgotten, but from them came the promise of loyalty above all.
“They’ll clothe their own, even if they have to piece together scraps to do it. Everyone contributes what they can. Their bloodline reaches all the way back to the only child Lady Venda had. The first Komizar remarried after she died and had many children with other wives, but from Venda, there was only one, Meuras. So yes, it’s an honor for anyone to be welcomed to the clan, but a prisoner—” He shook his head as if trying to figure it out then looked at me. “It just isn’t done. Did you say something to Effiera in the tent?”
I remembered her expression when Aster told her my name, and then the soft murmurs when I removed my shirt and they saw the kavah on my shoulder. The ways of old. Did the Meurasi still pass down the babble of a madwoman? A pretty name, Yvet called it. Maybe it was more than that, but given the Council’s reaction to my welcome and Kaden’s apparent disapproval as well, I decided to keep that card close to my chest for now.
“No,” I said. “We only talked about clothes.”
He looked at me warily. “Be careful. Don’t push it, Lia.”
“I heard you say that the first time.”
“I don’t think you did.”
I jumped to my feet. “Why is this my fault?” I shouted. “You’re the one who took me to the jehendra even when I said I didn’t need clothes! I bought one thing, and they brought me another. If I had insulted them by refusing the clothes, I’m sure I’d be reprimanded for that too! And tonight did I ask to say the acknowledgment of sacrifice? No! Calantha shoved the platter of bones in my face. What was I to do? Is there anything I can do that’s right in your eyes?”
He sighed and pushed against his knees to stand. “You’re right. I’m sorry. You didn’t ask for any of this. I’m just tired. It’s been a long day.”
My anger cooled. Maybe it was just part of his training as an assassin not to show it, but Kaden was never tired. He was always alert and ready, but his fatigue was evident now.
I lifted my foot onto the frame of the bed to unlace my boot. “Where were you all day?”
“Duties. Just attending to my duties as Keep.”
What kind of duties would take a toll on him like this? Or maybe he wasn’t well? He grabbed blankets from the top of the chest and dropped them to the fur rug.
“I’ll take the rug tonight,” I offered.
“No. I don’t mind.”
He took off his shirt. His scars always stopped me, no matter how many times I had seen them. They were a harsh reminder of how brutal his world was. He snuffed the lanterns, and once I had changed, he blew out the candle too. Tonight there weren’t even dancing shadows to ease me to sleep.
It was quiet for a long while, and I thought he had already fallen asleep, but then he asked, “Was there anything else you did today?”
He wasn’t too tired for his mind to still be churning with questions. Did he suspect something? “What do you mean by else?”
“Just wondering what you did all day. Besides climb out the window.”
“Nothing,” I whispered. “It was a long day for me too.”
The next day when Kaden had to go out, he had Eben come to keep me company, but I knew it was a ruse to keep an eye on me. Eben was guarding me, just as he had in the vagabond meadow—except that things were different between us now. He was still the trained killer, but now there was a chink in his armor, and a softness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. Maybe it was that I had spared him the burden of killing his own horse. Maybe my whispered acknowledgment of Spirit’s name allowed something he had hidden inside to bloom. Just a little. Or maybe it was that we shared a similar grief, watching someone we loved be butchered before our eyes.
On Kaden’s orders, Eben was allowed to take me out of my room, but not outside of the Sanctum, not to this wing or that tower, only to a narrowly prescribed area. “For your own safety,” Kaden said when I shot him a questioning glare. In truth, I knew he was trying to keep me out of Malich’s path and that of certain Council members. By the end of the meal last night, it was apparent that hostility still ran high, more so among a few because of my welcome, but the ever-united Council seemed divided now into two camps, the curious and the haters.
Eben took me on a circuitous route to the paddocks behind the Council Wing. A new foal had been born while he was away. We watched the stick-legged foal frolic in a small corral, jumping for the sheer pleasure of trying out new legs. Eben balanced on the paddock rail trying to restrain a smile.
“What will you name him?” I asked.
“He’s not mine. Don’t want him anyway. Too much trouble to train.” His eyes flashed with every pain he still carried, and his tender years made his denial wooden.
I sighed. “I don’t blame you. It’s hard to commit to something after—” I let the thought dangle in the air. “Still, he is beautiful, and someone has to teach him. But there are probably trainers who are better at it than you.”
“I’m just as good as any old wrangler. Spirit knew what to do with just a twitch from my knee. He—” His chin jutted out and then, in a quiet voice, he added, “He was given to me by my father.”
And now I knew the true depth of Eben’s grief. Spirit wasn’t just any horse.
Eben had never made any mention of his parents. If Kaden hadn’t told me that Eben had witnessed their butchering, I’d have thought he was spawned by some impish beast and dropped to earth fully dressed and armed as a small Vendan soldier.
I understood the hole that Eben felt, the wicked depth of it, that no matter how much you wanted to pretend it wasn’t there, its black mouth opened up to swallow you again and again.
He shook off the mention of his father in a practiced way, flicking his hair from his eyes, and jumping down from the rail. “We should go back,” he said.
I wanted to say something wise, something comforting that would lessen his pain, but I was still feeling that hole myself. The only words that came were, “Thank you for my boots, Eben. They mean more to me than you can know.”
He nodded. “I cleaned them too.”
I wondered if, like Griz, this was a kindness to wipe out a debt.
“You owed me nothing, Eben. I took care of your horse for me as much as for you.”
“I already knew that,” he said, and hurried ahead of me.
We walked back through yet another tunnel, but I was getting good at memorizing them now, and I was beginning to understand a pattern to the chaotic layout of architecture. Small avenues, tunnels, and buildings emanated from larger ones. It was as if many large structures within this ancient city had slowly woven together, a graceless animal that grew extra arms, legs, and eyes without regard to aesthetics—only immediate need. The Sanctum was the heart of the beast, and the hidden caverns below, the bowels. No one ever mentioned what stirred beneath the Sanctum, and I never saw the robed figures at meals. They stayed to themselves.
As we walked the last hall to Kaden’s room, I asked, “Eben, what are those caverns down below? Aster mentioned them to me.”
“You mean the catacombs? Ghoul Caves, Finch calls them. Don’t go down there. Only thing in them is stale air, old books, and dark spirits.”
I suppressed a smile. It was almost the same description I used for the archives in Civica, only there the dark spirits were Civica scholars.
* * *
The next few days passed as the previous, but each one was shorter than the day before. I learned that time plays tricks when you want more of it. With each day that passed with no sign of Rafe’s soldiers, I knew that Vendan riders could be that much closer with news that the Dalbreck king was hale and hearty—a death sentence for Rafe. At least the Komizar would be gone for two more weeks. That would buy us more time for Rafe’s soldiers to appear. I tried to hold on to that hope for Rafe’s sake, but it was looking more certain that finding an escape was left only to us now.
The weather grew colder, and another icy rain drenched the city. In spite of the cold, each day I climbed out the window and sat on the wall and said my remembrances, searching through them like shuffled papers, trying to find answers, holding on to those that held a glimmer of truth. Each day a larger group gathered to listen, a dozen, two dozen, and more. Many were children. One day Aster was among them, and she called up for a story. I began with the tale of Morrighan, the girl led by the gods to a land of plenty, then told the story of the birth of two of the Lesser Kingdoms, Gastineux and Cortenai. All the histories and texts I had studied for years were now tales that mesmerized them. They were as hungry for stories as Eben and Natiya had been when we sat around the campfire—stories of other people, other places, other times.
These moments at least gave me something to look forward to, because there was no opportunity to talk to Rafe privately. Even when Kaden left me locked alone in his room and I snuck out, I discovered there were now guards posted below Rafe’s window too, almost as if they knew he couldn’t slip out through the narrow windows but someone smaller might slip in. The evening meal afforded me no greater opportunity for a private moment, and my frustration grew. Here in the Sanctum, we might as well have been separated by a vast continent. I attributed my restless dreams to my aggravation. I’d had another one of Rafe leaving, but it had more detail than before. He was dressed in garb I had never seen, Rafe, a warrior of frightening stature. His expression was hot and fierce, and he wore swords at both sides.
* * *
Evenings in Sanctum Hall were long and tiresome, not unlike court in Morrighan, but their ways were decidedly louder, cruder, and always seemed on the brink of chaos. The acknowledgment of sacrifice provided a curious quiet moment in stark contrast to their raucous activities. I learned the names of all the Council—the governors, the chievdars, and the Rahtan, even though so many of their names sounded alike. Gorthan. Gurtan, Gunthur. Mekel, Malich, Alick. Kaden’s name alone seemed to have no close soundalike. The chievdar I had met in the valley, Stavik, was sour beyond measure but turned out to be the most civil of the five army commanders.
The governors were the easiest to converse with. Most were glad to be at the Sanctum instead of the desolate homelands they came from, which perhaps lightened their dispositions. Three of the Rahtan were still gone, but the four who were present besides Kaden, Griz, and Malich were, by far, the most hostile of the Council. Jorik and Darius were the ones who had stood by Malich with their knives drawn when they saw my clan dress, and the other two, Theron and Gurtan, seemed to wear sneers like permanent battle paint. I imagined them as the men the Komizar would have sent to finish the job that Kaden had failed to do—and there was no doubt in my mind, they would have finished it without hesitation. They were the very definition of Rahtan. Never fail. It was hard for me to reconcile that in some twisted way Kaden had saved my life by bringing me here.
Every evening after the meal, the Council was drawn into games of stones or cards, or they simply drank the night away. The precious Morrighese vintages were swilled like cheap ale. The games of stones were foreign to me, but the card games I recognized. I remembered Walther’s first piece of advice to me: Sometimes winning is not only a matter of knowing the rules, but of making your opponent think he knows them better. I watched from afar, parsing out the nuances and similarities to the games I had played with my brothers and their friends. Tonight the stakes for one particular game grew, with the largest stack piling up in front of Malich. I watched smugness strut across his face like a barnyard rooster, the same cocky grin he had when he told me that killing Greta was easy.
I stood and walked over to the players. I decided I was in need of some entertainment too.