Chapter 46 Caspia
Forty-Six
Caspia
T he king of Quentis sits at the head of a table long enough to seat one hundred nobles.
Floral arrangements infuse the air with a sweet fragrance.
Golden utensils, crystal flutes, and glass goblets crowd polished stone plates.
The guests all laugh and smile as the king shares a look of disapproval with his beautiful blond queen.
The noise in the dining hall is deafening, though not loud enough to hide the sound of Malynn’s teeth grinding together from her seat across from mine.
“Wrong fork,” she hisses, her nostrils flaring.
I return the wrong fork to the empty space beside my plate. There is a line of forks resting on a crisp, white linen napkin. They are exactly the same. Three tines, each etched with vines.
I’m not hungry enough to test another, so I tuck my hands beneath the table and stare at the floating bubbles in my glass of sparkling wine.
“Teach her, Andreas,” Malynn snaps, loud enough that the people sitting around us stop talking to listen. “Before she embarrasses us all.”
Andreas drapes an arm across the back of my chair.
And picks up his own wrong fork, stabbing it into the roasted hen on his plate as he glowers at his mother.
Malynn glowers back.
…
The fire roaring in the hearth made this parlor insufferably hot.
Sweat beaded at my temples. My stomach growled.
My throat was dry, my water glass empty.
The light from the overhead chandelier was so bright that the pages of the book in my lap glowed.
My headache had moved from manageable to miserable.
Or maybe it was simply the contents of this stupid book.
“Gah.” I lifted the book off my lap, about to throw it across the room, but I reined in my temper and snapped it closed instead.
There were too many rules. Too many formalities. I rubbed my temples and closed my eyes. If I slept with this book under my pillow, would these customs sink into my mind so I wouldn’t have to read another page?
“There you are.” Andreas wore a scowl as he pushed through the parlor’s glass-paned doors. “I have been looking for you for over an hour. I was getting worried.”
“Sorry.” I sighed as he dropped to his knees in front of my chair.
“Why aren’t you in the library? Is everything all right?”
“I just needed a change of scenery.” In truth, his mother had been in the library when I arrived this morning.
I’d been ignoring Malynn’s invitations to join her and her ladies for their afternoon tea.
Rather than take the hint that I was not interested in the life of a noblewoman, she’d been waiting for me in my favorite library alcove.
Her invitation was an order.
I defied it anyway.
But since I wouldn’t put it past her to have the guards escort me to tea when it was time, I’d snuck off to this tiny parlor in a quiet wing of the castle.
Andreas lifted the book off my lap and read the title embossed on the cover. “Quentin Etiquette.”
Faxon had brought it to me this morning when I’d asked for a book about Quentin decorum, specifically a book for royal dinners.
The vision I’d had last moon of me embarrassing Andreas at that party was the clearest I’d had in weeks. At least it wasn’t about death, but it had still put me in a rotten mood.
We were going to a gala in three suns. As much as I’d rather be reading anything else, I didn’t want to widen the rift already growing between him and his family.
“I don’t want to humiliate you by using the wrong fork,” I admitted.
His eyes softened. “I don’t give a damn what fork you use as long as you eat and stay healthy.”
“But other people care. And they’ll be watching.”
“Yes, they will.” He lifted my hand, kissing my knuckles. “I don’t care about any of this.”
“But they do,” I whispered. “It probably won’t kill me to read a book about etiquette.”
“Probably not.” He chuckled and stood, taking the book to the fireplace. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed it into the flames.
“Andreas.” I shot to my feet, but the book was already ablaze. “You get to explain that missing book to Faxon.”
“With pleasure, my heart.”
As Andreas had predicted, it hadn’t taken long for Roslo to learn of our marriage. The dinner and party invitations arrived nonstop. There was yet to be a sun that went by without a sketch of his face or mine in a paper subscription.
Chapman Leek was still a twelvi’ot, spreading lies about my background and identity.
His competitors were nearly as bad. I was an enigma and therefore the enemy.
Most portrayed me as a foreigner with no wealth or status who must have tricked Andreas into this union, because why else would he want me?
“When I was a Nestling, I was the favorite among our tutors,” I told Andreas, slumping into the chair. “I was the girl who always behaved. Who never missed an assignment or failed a test. I followed every rule. I was everyone’s friend.”
“Why does this not surprise me?” He grinned, leaning against a wall and tucking a hand into his pocket.
“It feels like I’m failing.” I looked to my hands clasped in my lap, to the rings gleaming on each finger.
“You’re not.” He pushed off the wall, once more crouching in front of me. He laced his fingers with mine, waiting until I met his gaze. “When I was a boy, I hated being trapped in a carrel.”
“I don’t know that word.”
“A study space with a desk.” He tucked a curl behind my ear and cupped my cheek.
“Just ask Faxon. I made everything more difficult than it needed to be. If someone told me to do something, my immediate response was why. I didn’t care if I failed.
I was usually the student making jokes and disrupting the class. You would have hated me.”
I smiled. “Definitely.”
“I grew out of it eventually. Stopped fighting those who were just trying to help me.”
“Are you saying I need to learn etiquette?”
“No. I’m saying you don’t have to learn it alone. You have me. Always.”
I sighed, leaning into his touch. “When we go to this dinner, I need you to tell me which forks to use.”
“Done.” With a kiss on the tip of my nose, he stood, pulling me to my feet.
I gathered the other book I’d brought with me to the parlor. The Voster’s gray book, one I rarely let out of my sight.
“Any progress?” Andreas asked as I tucked it under an arm.
“No.” I’d read it three times since the no-name Voster priest gave it to me, hoping with each turn of a page that something would click into place. So far, nothing. I was nearly as frustrated with it as I was the etiquette book. “I started it again today but couldn’t concentrate.”
“Come on. I have an idea.” With my hand in his, he led me from the parlor and through the castle.
The halls were crowded. People gawked as we passed—the stares and whispers, the relentless looks of disapproval, were grating on my nerves. It was probably a good thing I didn’t carry weapons regularly.
The library’s atrium was empty when we walked through the doors, and the sigh I breathed was loud enough to echo off the ornate ceiling.
Faxon’s desk was empty, so we continued through the stacks, looking down each row, until finally we found him with Kos.
The boy was pushing a cart behind the bibliosoph as he shelved books.
“What does eco-monic princips mean?” Kos asked, handing Faxon a book.
“Economic principles,” Faxon corrected. “That means the study of commerce. Of supply and demand. Of behaviors that drive the consumption of goods.”
Kos scrunched up his nose. “Sounds boring.”
“It is, my son.” Faxon laughed. “At least to me. What’s next?”
Kos picked up another book, this one a bright purple. “Flowers. Also boring.”
“Not to gardeners.”
“I don’t wanna be a gardener.”
“And what do you want to be?” I asked Kos as we joined them.
“An explorer,” Kos answered without hesitation. “Or a librarian.”
The proud smile on Faxon’s face was blinding.
“Good answer.” Andreas ruffled Kos’s hair and winked. “I bet that earns you a sweet tart from the kitchens later.”
Kos giggled.
“I’m sure we can visit the cooks later,” Faxon said. “But only after you finish your lessons. Off you go. Back to your carrel. Work on your assignment. I’ll be over shortly.”
As Kos ran off to continue his studies, Faxon pushed the cart aside. “I thought you left for the day, Lady Caspia. How was the book on etiquette?”
“Andreas burned it.”
My husband only shrugged when Faxon gave him an admonishing look. “Had to be done. It was as dull as economics.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Faxon said. “Can I help you with something?”
“I don’t suppose you have a tutor’s carrel available at the moment?” Andreas asked. “It seems my mother has discovered Caspia’s alcove, so it’s time to find a new hiding spot.”
Was it childish to hide from his mother? Yes. But I was absolutely going to hide.
“Andreas, those carrels are cramped and drab. They’re for tutors. They’re not befitting a lady.”
“Humor me. Please.”
With a frown, Faxon waved for us to follow him. We weaved through the library, past the desks where young students, like Kos, were hunched over texts and books as they studied.
Several of the other librarians and teachers milled around this section of the library, instructing students. Most gave slight bows as Faxon, Andreas, and I passed their stations. Then we arrived at a row of ten doors.
Faxon fished out a ring of metal keys, flipping through them as he stopped in front of the last in the row. He fitted the key into the lock and opened the door to a narrow space the size of a pantry or closet. He lit the lanterns on the wall, giving them a moment to illuminate the carrel.
I walked inside, skimming my fingers over the wooden desk and the thin sheen of dust on its surface. It was cold and dark. There were no windows, and the chair looked stiff. But it had a door with a lock. “It’s perfect.”
“Then it’s yours. I’ll leave you to it.” Faxon unfastened the key from the ring and placed it in my palm.
The metal warmed and clinked with my elfalter rings as he left us alone.
I rounded the desk and took a seat in the chair. Stiff. But the wood was smooth, the back comfortable against my shoulders.
A space this cramped, a room that felt like a cage, would normally have me coming out of my skin. But I’d adjust.
Andreas leaned against the doorframe. “I will find you something better. And I will talk with my mother.”
“I like this little carrel. And don’t talk to your mother. It will only make it worse.”
“But—”
“Please?” This was not his battle to fight. In truth, there was no battle here.
My aunt expected everyone in our family to represent our bloodline, whether we were Nestling or Quiescent or Starling. It wasn’t unreasonable for Malynn to expect the same from me now that I was married to Andreas.
“Fine,” Andreas grumbled. “I’ll stay quiet. For now.”
I set my book on the desk and ran a finger along its gray spine. “I need to speak to the Voster who gave me this book.”
“No.”
I laughed. “Yes.”
“Caspia.”
“Andreas.”
He frowned.
I smiled. Each sun, he became more and more protective. It was oddly attractive. “Is there a way to send the brotherhood a message? Maybe through the king’s emissary? There is something important in these pages, Andreas. Something I must understand. Maybe a way to save Xandra.”
He sighed. “What if it’s only a story?”
“What if it’s not?”
My third read of the book had been out loud to Andreas. He was as perplexed as I was with the story.
This book was an account of evil magicians and read like a novel. If not for the mention of Starling at the beginning, if not for the Voster giving it to me, I would have thought it was fiction. At first glance, it seemed as if it could have been Sonnet’s ninety-first tale.
But it was so detailed, so descriptive, it felt like a history.
The magicians had once been ordinary men of a religion that worshiped Calandran spirits.
They lived in a monastery deep in the mountains.
One harsh winter, the men found themselves without food.
They were near starving and on the brink of death.
They prayed to their spirits, begging for help and to spare their lives.
By the time the ice melted, nearly every man at the monastery was dead.
All but six.
Feeling forsaken by their spirits, the men began worshiping demons who reveled in lost and angry souls. And the remaining six men made those demons a bargain.
For magic and immortality, they offered their bodies as hosts.
Possessed by these demons, the men became magicians. They fooled people into believing their power was a blessed gift to save humanity. They were worshiped and revered.
Until all of Calandra bowed at their feet.
“There has to be something significant with the number six,” I said, my voice low. “It can’t be a coincidence.”
Andreas lifted his hand like he was about to sign the Eight, but he changed his mind at the last moment, raking his fingers through his hair instead. “This feels dangerous, Caspia.”
I opened the book. “The truth usually is.”