They weren’t coming. From the start, I had known their chances were slim, but every time I looked at Rafe’s face, I mustered new hope for his sake. These were not just soldiers coming to help free a wayward prince and princess. These were his friends.
Hope is a slippery fish—impossible to hold on to for long, my aunt Cloris would say when I pined for something she deemed childish and impossible. Then you have to hold harder, my aunt Bernette would counter to her older sister before ushering me away in a huff. But some things slipped from your grasp no matter how hard you held on to them.
We were on our own. Rafe’s friends were dead. It wasn’t a whisper in my ear or a prickle at my neck that told me. It was the rules of reason that prevailed, the rules of everything I could understand and see. They said it plainly. This was a harsh land with no forgiveness for enemies.
I watched Rafe each night, stealing a glance when I was sure no one was looking. While my movements within the Sanctum were still closely guarded, his had grown freer, and both Calantha and Ulrix had become less watchful. With calculating patience, he was cultivating their trust. Ulrix, while still a frightening beast of a man, seemed to have given up with his fist, and Rafe suffered no more split lips, almost as if he had judged Rafe an acceptable excuse of a man even though he was enemy swine. Ingratiating yourself with a beast like Ulrix was truly a work of skill.
Rafe drank with the chievdars, laughed with governors, spoke quietly with servants. Young maids brushed close, endeared by his stilted attempts at speaking Vendan, eager to refill his mug, smiling at him beneath lowered lashes. But a new identity, no matter how well played, would do him little good once the Komizar discovered he was lying.
It was as if, with the Komizar gone, everyone had forgotten Rafe’s looming death sentence, or maybe they just thought it would never come to pass. Rafe was convincing. Someone was always pulling him aside, chievdars probing about the Dalbreck military, or governors curious about his powerful distant kingdom, for though they ruled their own small fiefdoms here, they had little or no knowledge of the world that lay beyond the great river. They only knew it by way of the Rahtan who spirited past borders, or by Previzi wagons that shared its treasures. The treasures and their abundance—that was what intrigued them the most. The small infrequent loads brought by the Previzi weren’t enough to satisfy their appetites, nor, apparently, was the booty of slaughtered patrols. They hungered for more.
I wore my dress of leather scraps tonight. When I entered the hall I noticed Calantha speaking to a maid, and the girl came running over. “It would please Calantha if you would braid your hair.” She held up a small strip of leather to tie it with.
I saw Calantha watching us. Every night now, she insisted I say the blessing. It seemed to please some, but heavily rankled others, especially the Rahtan, and I wondered if she was trying to get me killed. When I questioned her motives, she said, “It amuses me to hear you say the words in your odd drawl, and I need no greater reason. Remember, Princess, you’re still a prisoner.” I had needed no reminder of that.
“You can tell Calantha I have no intention of braiding my hair just to please her.”
I aimed a stiff smile at Calantha. When I looked back at the girl, her eyes were wide with fright. It was a message she wasn’t keen to deliver. I took the strip of leather from her hand. “But I will do it for you.” I pulled my hair over my shoulder and began braiding it. When I was finished, the girl smiled. “Now your pretty picture will show,” she said. “Just as Calantha wanted.”
Calantha wanted my kavah to show? The girl started to run away, but I stopped her. “Tell me, is Calantha of the Meurasi clan?”
The girl shook her head. “Oh, I’m not to tell, ma’am.” She turned and ran away.
Not to tell. I think she already had.
The meal went as all the others before it had. I said the blessing to the humble bowed heads of a few and the scowls of many. The fact that it gnawed at Malich the most made it worth it to me, and I always made a point to slap my gaze on his before I began. But then the words took over, the bones, the truth, the pulse of the walls around me, the life that still dwelled in stones and floor, the part of the Sanctum that was growing stronger in me, and by the time the last paviamma echoed back, the scowls mattered naught to me.
Tonight the fare was much the same as every night, thick barley gruel flavored with peppermint leaves, soda bread, turnips, onions, and roasted game—boar and hare. There was little variation, except with the game. Beaver, duck, and wild horse were sometimes served too, depending on what game was caught, but compared to my frequent diet of sand, squirrel, and snake across the Cam Lanteux, it was a veritable feast, and I was grateful for every bite.
I was just dipping my soda bread into the gruel when a sudden sharp clatter roared down one of the hallways that led into the Sanctum. Every man was on his feet in an instant, swords and knives drawn. The ruckus grew louder. Rafe and I exchanged a furtive glance. Could this be his men? With reinforcements?
Two dozen men emerged—the Komizar leading them. He was filthy, spattered with mud from head to foot, but he appeared to relish the squalor. A rare sloppy smile was plastered across his face.
“Look who we ran into on the road!” he said, waving his sword over his head. “The new governor of Balwood! More chairs! Food! We’re hungry!”
The company of men swarmed to the table in all their glorified filth, leaving trails of mud behind them. I spotted the one who had to be the new governor—a young man, both brazen and afraid. His eyes darted around the room, quickly trying to assess new threats. His movements were sharp and his laughter tight. He may have just killed the last governor to gain this position, but the Sanctum was not his homeland. New rules would have to be learned and navigated, and he’d have to manage to stay alive while he did it. His position was not so unlike mine, except I hadn’t killed anyone to gain this dubious place of honor.
And then the Komizar spotted me. He dropped his gear to the floor and crossed the room, stopping an arm’s length away. His skin glowed with a day’s ride in the sun, and his dark eyes gleamed as they traced the lines of my dress. He reached up and fingered the braid falling over my shoulder. “With your hair combed, you only look half the savage.” The room erupted in loyal laughter, but his gaze that glided over me told a different story, one that wasn’t humorous or amusing. “So, while the Komizar is away, the prisoners will play.” He finally turned to Kaden. “This is what my coin bought?”
I prayed Kaden would say yes so the blame would fall to us. Otherwise, Effiera’s generous gifts might be repaid with retaliation.
“Yes,” Kaden answered.
The Komizar nodded, studying him. “I found one governor. Now it’s your turn to find the other. You leave in the morning.”
* * *
“Why you?” I asked, jerking the tether loose at my waist. It clattered to the floor.
Kaden continued to rummage through his trunk, throwing out a long fur-lined cloak and woolen socks. “Why not me? I’m a soldier, Lia. I—”
I reached out and grabbed his arm, forcing him to look me in the eye.
Worry filled his eyes. He didn’t want to leave.
“Why are you so loyal to him, Kaden?”
He tried to turn back to the trunk, but I gripped his arm tighter. “No!” I said. “You’re not evading me again! Not this time!”
He stared at me, his chest rising in controlled breaths. “He fed me when I was starving, for one thing.”
“A charitable act is no reason to sell your soul to someone.”
“Everything is so simple to you, isn’t it?” Anger flashed across his face. “It’s more complicated than an act, as you call it.”
“Then what? He gave you a nice cloak? A room in the—”
His hand flew through the air. “I was traded, Lia! Just like you were.” He looked away as if he was trying to regain his composure. When he looked back at me, the hot fury was still in his eyes, but his tone was slow and cynical. “Except in my case, there were no contracts. After my mother died, I was sold to a passing ring of beggars for a single copper as if I were a piece of trash—with only one caveat—to never bring me back.”
“You were sold by your father?” I asked, trying to fathom how anyone could do such a thing.
In seconds, sweat had sprung to his face. This was the memory that mattered, the one he had always refused to share. “I was eight years old,” he said. “I begged my father to keep me. I fell to his feet and wrapped my arms around his legs. To this day, I’ve never forgotten the sickening scent of jasmine soap on his trousers.”
He shut the trunk lid and sat down, his eyes unfocused as if reliving the memory.
“He shook me off. He said it was better that way. The better was two years with accomplished beggars who starved me so I could bring in more money on street corners. If a day’s begging didn’t bring enough in, they beat me, but always where it didn’t show. They were careful that way. If I still didn’t bring in enough, they threatened to take me back to my father, who would drown me in a bucket of water like a stray cat.”
His gaze turned sharp, cutting into me. “It was the Komizar who found me begging on a muddy street. He saw the blood seeping through my shirt after a particularly bad beating. He pulled me up on his horse and took me back to his camp, fed me, and asked who had whipped me. When I told him, he left for a few hours, promising it would never happen again. When he returned, he was sprayed with blood. I knew it was their blood. He was true to his word. And I was glad.”
He stood and snatched his cloak from the floor.
I shook my head, horrified. “Kaden, it’s an abomination to whip a child and just as bad to sell one. But isn’t that all the more reason to leave Venda for good? To come to Morrighan and—”
“I was Morrighese, Lia. I was a bastard child born to a highborn lord. Now you know why I hate royals. That’s who the Komizar saved me from.”
I stared at him, unable to speak.
No.
It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be.
He threw his cloak around his shoulders. “Now you know who the real barbarians are.”
He turned and left, the door thundering shut behind him, and still I stood there.
His schooling in the holy songs.
His reading.
His flawless Morrighese.
True.
The scars on his chest and back.
True.
But it wasn’t a Vendan who had done this to him, as I had always supposed. It was a highborn lord of Morrighan.
Impossible.
* * *
The candle burned out. The lanterns did too. I lay curled in the bed and stared into the dark, reliving every moment, from the time he walked into the tavern, to our long trip across the Cam Lanteux. All the times I marveled at his tender ways that were such a glaring contrast to what he was—an assassin. All the times. The way he was so comfortable in the Morrighese world. It seemed perfectly obvious now. He was reading the games board. It was Vendan he didn’t know how to read, not Morrighese. Pauline and I had both noted how well he sang the holy songs, while Rafe knew none of the words. He had been raised until he was eight as the son of a Morrighese lord.
Kaden’s own kind, my kind, had betrayed him. Except for his mother. She was a saint, he had said. What had happened to her? It must have been from her that he learned his tender ways. It might be she was the only one in his entire life who had shown him any love or compassion—until the Komizar came along.
It was the middle of the night when he returned. The room was completely black, and yet he moved quietly through it as if he could see in the dark. I heard him set something down, a loud thunk, and then I heard the scant ruffling sounds of clothing being laid out and the soft sigh of his breaths as he lay down on the rug. The room was heavy with silence. Long minutes passed. I knew he wasn’t asleep. I could feel his thoughts in the darkness, his stare drilling into the timbers above him.
“Kaden,” I whispered. “Tell me about your mother.”
Her name was Cataryn. She was very young when she was hired on as governess by a lord and his wife, but soon they discovered she had the gift as well. The lady pressed her daily for thoughts on her own young sons, but soon the lord pressed her for other things. Kaden was born and knew no other way of life. He thought it was normal to live in a cottage on his father’s estate. When his mother became ill and her life was quickly withering away, she begged the lord to take Kaden into the manor. The lady would have none of it. A bastard wouldn’t be raised with her noble-bred sons, and even though the lord promised Cataryn he would take Kaden, it seemed he had agreed with his wife all along. His mother wasn’t even cold yet when Kaden was given to passing beggars without a backward glance.
His mother was beautiful, crystal-blue eyes, black hair that was soft and long. Gentle and slow to anger, she was a teacher above all. She tutored Kaden right along with the lord’s sons. At night in the cottage, they looked out the window at the stars, and she whispered the stories of the ages, and Kaden repeated them back to her. He was too young to fully understand why the lord’s sons received special privilege, but when he became angry about it, his mother would gather him in her arms and croon against his cheek that he was far richer in the things that mattered because he had a mother who had more love for him than the whole universe could contain.
But then suddenly, he didn’t have her. He had nothing. One of his biggest regrets was that he bore his father’s white-blond hair and brown eyes. When he looked in a mirror, he at least wanted to see some measure of his mother.
“I see her, Kaden,” I said. “I see her in you every day. From the moment I met you, I saw your calmness, your tender ways. Pauline herself told me you had kind eyes. That’s more important than their color.”
He remained silent except for a low, shaky breath.
And then we both went to sleep.