Chapter Twenty-One
Twenty-one
Dancing at a royal celebration wasn’t as bad as I might have imagined, if I’d ever had the opportunity to imagine dancing at a royal celebration. Which I hadn’t.
I said yes to a few requests, mostly from gray-haired gentlemen who enjoyed moving around the room with a pretty girl.
But my feet had begun to hurt, and I was getting a headache from the combined perfumes and oils aristocrats apparently bathed in.
When a group of jesters began to move through the room turning flips and making jokes along the way, Wren and I escaped to the courtyard.
“Thank the gods,” she said quietly when we’d made it to the pond where the air was fresher and cooler, the darkness soothing, the noise diminished. Torches had been set around the boardwalk, their reflections on the water like new stars.
“Why do they wear so much scent?” I sniffed at my sleeve, which smelled like musk and overripe flowers.
“They rarely bathe.”
“Why? They’re rich. They have all the hot water they could want and plenty of clothing.”
“They think it’s dangerous to be clean. Opens the pores to vapors and sickness.”
I paused, considered my soaking time. “That’s not right, is it?”
She gave me a look.
“Just checking.” But I glanced down at my arm to reassure myself nothing had sprouted there.
We crossed the arched wooden bridge, found the pavilion empty, and took seats along the bench.
I sat sideways, propping my elbows on the rail and my chin on my hands so I could watch the goings-on.
The palace gleamed like jade lit from the inside, the wealthy in their costumes dotted through the courtyard like complementary jewels.
“It’s strange to be here like this,” Wren said.
“Completely bizarre. We should probably be grabbing paintings or stealing gold bullion.”
“Bullion is heavier than you think.” She gave me a wicked look. “But you were very near to the crown jewels.”
“I’m going to assume you mean the treasury and not the prince.”
She snorted.
There were footsteps on the arched wooden bridge that led from the pavilion to this part of the grounds. It was the prince, apparently done for the moment with his crush of dance partners. And with him was Savaadh, the Zephyrii from the Vhranian caravanserai. (And Galen, of course. Always Galen.)
Savaadh was dressed more formally than he’d been the last time I’d seen him.
He wore a pale tunic, leggings, and boots beneath a fluid overrobe of brilliant orange and crimson, the fabric sweeping behind him as he walked.
His hair was pulled back at the temples, enhancing the lines of his face.
He was beautiful in a different way than the prince, but no less attractive.
They stepped onto the pavilion. I rose. Wren, who’d been leaning against one of the pavilion’s support beams, stood up straight.
“Ensi,” I said.
“Savaadh, please.” He gave Wren and me each a very gallant bow. “You both look stunning.”
“Thank the prince. He gave us the dresses.”
Savaadh looked at the prince, brows lifted. “Did he?”
“Why are you here?” I asked. “I thought you were traveling north?”
“We decided to wait,” he said. “The cold has not yet diminished north of the caravanserai, which would stress the animals.” His eyes twinkled. “I understand your return trip was…interesting.”
“Enlightening,” I agreed. “You played along with the ruse about the prince’s identity.”
“Not a ruse so much as a cloak. Much in the same way a thief might find her way into the palace.”
“Not to steal,” I pointed out.
“I do not judge you, Little Fox. The world is dangerous. We must protect ourselves in the ways that we can.”
A servant crossed the bridge with a tray bearing a jar of sweetwine and cups. The prince had apparently made arrangements before they’d come this way.
I glanced at him and found his gaze on me. “Don’t you have guests to attend to?”
“They’ve seen I exist,” he said with a smile. “That’s good enough for now.”
Doubtful, given the ravenous looks they’d given him. But it was his party and his sweetwine.
“I believe it’s my turn to toast,” the prince said when the drinks were poured. “To friends.” He raised his cup.
“To friends,” we repeated, but the look Wren gave me said she was thinking the same thing: We were friendly with the princes, but we weren’t friends. There was too much difference between us.
“I understand you were attacked,” Savaadh said, his eyes big and full of concern. “You’re all right?”
“I’m fine. What do you know about the Luminae?”
Savaadh and the prince exchanged a look. “Is this rising up again?” Savaadh asked.
“I don’t know,” the prince said.
“Rising up?” Wren asked.
“Many leaders were relieved when the Aetheric god left our realm,” Savaadh said.
“No competition?” I wondered.
“Exactly.”
That was something to search for in the library—a Carethian history that discussed the god’s disappearance.
Savaadh leaned toward me. “Is he truly Luminae?”
“No.”
“So sure?”
I glanced at the prince, wondering how much he’d told Savaadh.
“Your secret,” he said. “Not mine.”
“You know of the Guardians?” I asked. “The Aetheric guides?”
“Of course.”
“I have a Guardian friend.”
“Well,” he said, sitting back again, as if he needed room to consider this information. “You are a very lucky soul indeed, Little Fox.”
“We’re searching the city,” the prince said. “But we’ve found no sign of him yet.”
“Have there been any more, as you call them, possessions?” Savaadh asked. “Other than the one that brought Fox to the palace.”
“Not that we know of,” the prince said, and looked at Wren. “Rumors?”
She shook her head. “I worked in the district yesterday. There’s fear of another attack and wild speculation, but nothing credible.”
The prince pulled a couple of coins from his coat and extended them to Wren. “Thank you.”
“What’s that for?” she asked, her gaze narrowed with suspicion.
“The information you just provided,” he said. “I figured I’d pay you before Fox hounded me about it.”
She looked at him for a moment, her head tilted as she considered taking yet more coins from the prince. But she nodded, nipped them from his palm, and tucked them away. “Work is work.”
“Agreed,” he said with a smile.
A horn sounded, and I nearly jumped to my feet, thinking the guards on the palace wall had spotted a threat.
And the boom that followed didn’t help. But it wasn’t a warning drum or cannon fire.
Colored light exploded above the palace like brilliant flowers.
The concussions were so loud I could feel each boom in my chest.
“What in Oblivion is that?” I asked in a lull between explosions.
“Gunpowder,” Savaadh said, “like that used to fire cannons. We sometimes use small charges to send messages between camps. These have been colored by using different recipes. It was my gift for the celebration.”
“They’re…powerful,” Wren said, her gaze on the sky, her eyes full of wonder.
Then the final, whistling spark died away, leaving wisps of bitter smoke in the air.
“Fox?” Savaadh asked, glancing at me.
“Loud,” I said, and rubbed my ear. “But pretty.”
He leaned toward me. “That could be only the beginning.”
“The beginning of what?”
“Of what I could give you. Treasures to fill a palace. You could live in the desert, the brilliant skies above golden sands, or travel with me to the plains of the north and south, where we camp, deep winter and high summer beneath the stars.”
“And what would you get out of it?”
“I’d get to enjoy your beauty, your wit, your charm as my traveling companion.”
“I don’t think I’m cut out to be anyone’s traveling companion.”
His eyes were dark and shining with promise…and humor. “How do you know if you don’t try?”
I liked Savaadh, but I knew his offer wasn’t serious; he was royalty, after all.
Though once again I did find myself wondering what it might be like to make that journey from year to year, from ice caps in the north to wetlands in the south, carrying what you owned and relying on the land, your cunning, and the stars to keep you alive.
“My answer is still no.”
“Tell me about star navigation,” Wren said, changing the subject. Savaadh’s eyes brightened, and he began to explain the positions of the Guiding Stars and how our realm moved among them.
“Fox, a word?”
I glanced at the prince. His expression had gone hard and cold as Carethian silver. He took a drink from his golden goblet, then put it on the table. Then he rose and stalked off, farther down the path and away from the palace.
“Of course, Your Highness,” I muttered, but followed him.
He stopped several strides from the pavilion, near a cluster of shrubs where white flowers scented the air with spring. “I warned you.”
I blinked at him. “About what?”
“Following him to Vhrania.”
For a moment, I wondered if the sweetwine had muddled my brain. “What are you talking about? I told you I wasn’t going to join his caravan. Told him that. Couldn’t even if I wanted to. And he didn’t mean it anyway. It was a joke.”
There was an edge to my voice that I hadn’t expected. The prince’s warning seemed cruel given how impossible it truly was.
“He’s an Ensi,” I continued, because I couldn’t seem to stop myself, “and I’m a servant, and that’s not the way the world works.” Both of us knew I wasn’t just talking about Savaadh.
“Even if I did want to run off with him, to get out of this gods-damned country, it would be no business of yours.”
His eyes went cold. “Wouldn’t it?”
“No. I know you want to stop the Aetheric practitioner, and I’ll do what I can to help. I won’t leave the palace until it’s done. But when he’s put away, that’s it. Our work for the Lys’Careths is done.”
Rebuild the fortifications, Fox. Build them tall and strong.
For a moment he just stared at me, anger shimmering in his eyes. The light caught those threads of gold, and they flashed like the eyes of the tiger on his banner.