The Ragpicker King (Chronicles of Castellane #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

K el woke up in the Trick.

He didn’t realize where he was immediately. He was lying on a hard surface, he knew that much. His head ached and the shadows seemed to crisscross each other at strange angles. For a hallucinatory moment he imagined that this was a dream in which he was locked in a cage, iron bars all around him.

Slowly he sat up. His stomach lurched, bile rising in the back of his throat. He sucked in a gasp of stale air, gazing around him: Bare stone floor. A straw-tick mattress and ragged blanket. A cheap clay pitcher. Three stone walls rose all around him, a gap of light high above—a barred window, through which moonlight spilled. A ceramic pot on the floor, for obvious purposes. And instead of a fourth stone wall, bars ranged from floor to ceiling. They seemed to glow with a dull light.

Kel rolled onto his knees. He did not think he could stand up without vomiting, so he crawled across the floor until he reached the bars. He wrapped his right hand around one, felt the faint vibration pass through his palm, like static electricity.

Sunderglass.

He was in La Trecherie. The Trick. Treason Tower. Its various names rolled through his mind like carriage wheels carving bloody tracks, and he barely managed to crawl to the chamber pot before he was sick in it. He coughed and spat, rocking back on his heels, bitterness flooding his mouth.

Conor. It was coming back to him now, in disjointed pieces. Anjelica’s room in the Castel Pichon. The Castelguards bursting in. Falconet. The look on Conor’s face as Falconet presented his evidence, painting Kel as a murderer, a liar, a traitor.

Kel crawled over to the straw-tick mattress and rolled onto it, seizing the pitcher. Thank the Gods, it was nearly full of dusty water. He drank down half of it before realizing he had no idea when it would be refilled. Reluctantly, he set it down.

First, assess the extent of your injuries, Jolivet had always said. So, in the dim light of the window, Kel set about examining himself. There was a knot at the back of his head where he’d been hit, still sticky with blood. He was still wearing the same clothes he’d come to the Little Palace in, though there were tears in them now, some edged with blood. He imagined he’d been dragged across the grounds while unconscious, and this was the result.

Otherwise, he was unhurt. He wondered how long he had lain here. Was it still the same night, or had he been unconscious for a full day? The thought made him feel utterly disoriented, as if he had become unmoored in time. Then again, now that he was a prisoner, it no longer mattered what hour it was, or what day. It was not as if you had appointments to keep—save the last appointment of them all, the one that all men and women kept in the end.

It was as if he could see the Dark Guide and the gray doorway before him. Kel closed his eyes, but that was hardly better. Printed against the back of them was that look on Conor’s face in the Castel Pichon. The look of one who had been dealt a mortal injury. A child abandoned in the dark.

Stop, he told himself. There was no point sitting here having feelings about what had happened, what Falconet had done. The ache in his head was starting to recede a little, and he could think. Ask questions, he thought. Imagine you are standing in front of the Ragpicker King, piecing together the bits of a mystery, finding the puzzle piece that fits the gap in the picture.

The first piece. That note. The Ragpicker King had not written it. He had been tricked into going to the Little Palace by someone who had known Anjelica was leaving. Someone who had planned what would happen if he was there when she did.

The obvious answer was Falconet. Someone had also taken his clothes, his amulet, and hidden them in the Little Palace so it would look as if Kel were fleeing from Castellane. He thought of the amulet glittering in Joss’s grasp, something so intimate, so personal to Kel and to Conor, used in such a way.

Falconet had pretended well. Pretended that he did not know Kel was not Kel Anjuman, but Kel Saren, Sword Catcher. Kel wondered how long he had known. When had Elsabet told him? How long had he been in league with Malgasi, and when had he decided he needed to rid himself of Kel—the person who was uncovering the truth about the conspiracy, circling ever closer to Falconet’s name?

He thought of Joss in the carriage by the canals. Didn’t you talk to him at the Solstice Ball, Con? Did he ask you for any royal favors—paying off gambling debts, doing away with an enemy or two?

And Conor, replying, I don’t think I spoke with him at all. He seemed busy keeping Esteve away from Beatris.

Falconet shrugging it off. Well, I was very drunk. I must have misremembered.

But he had not misremembered anything. He’d been confirming for himself that the Conor at the Solstice Ball was Kel. Perhaps confirming what Elsabet Belmany had told him: Kel Saren can become Conor anytime he likes. He’s probably fooled you a dozen times. Joss was vain; he would have hated that. And he would have wanted to test anything Belmany told him for himself. Such a small mistake for Conor to make; such consequences.

Kel passed a shaking hand across his face. There was more. Falconet had been the one to tell them about Cabrol’s death.

Kel’s head spun. Ciprian had approached Kel at the ball, wanting to unburden his soul about the conspiracy. Falconet had discovered it was Kel that Cabrol had talked to, not Conor. And that Cabrol, desperate to shift blame, was a liability. Perhaps he had even found out about Kel’s meeting with Ciprian at the Caravel. Either way, both Kel and Ciprian had been revealed to be threats to the conspiracy. And a day later, Ciprian was dead and Kel was in the Trick.

Kel almost had to admire the work, it was so neatly done. At the same time, he wanted nothing more than to cut Falconet into small pieces and distribute them around the Maze. He sank back onto the prickly mattress, staring into the dark. All his realizations, he thought bleakly, had come too late. He could not warn Conor. He could not reach the Ragpicker King. My friends have no idea where I am, or that anything has happened to me. Gods, what do I do?

Lin woke to daylight streaming across the foot of her bed. No, not her bed. It was a bed, the shape and feel of it unfamiliar. Was she in the Etse Kebeth, or a patient’s house?

She blinked and sat up. She felt dizzy and tried to breathe carefully as the world swung around her. There was dust in the air, bright motes dancing in the light that came from high windows. As everything stopped spinning, she realized she was in a strange room, bare save for a desk, a trunk at the foot of the bed, and the bed itself.

The walls were smooth and dark. The Black Mansion, she thought. I’m in the Black Mansion. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, her head pounding, an ache like a wound behind her eyes. She rested her face in her hands for a moment, struggling to remember the last thing that had happened. The Shulamat, she recalled. Images began to filter back into her consciousness. Mariam, lying with her hands crossed over her chest. The elders surrounding her, unspeaking, staring. The look on Aron’s face. Mayesh, his expression bleak. Her mind spinning with visions of words, with shining equations. She recalled the feeling of power flooding out of her like a river, her last desperate attempt to control it, to form it into a weapon that might burn away the threatening shadows that had haunted her dreams.

A bright running gold rim of fire. And then silence. And darkness, unpunctuated by light or sound. She thought she could remember the sensation of being carried. She had dreamed in bursts of images: flame and glass, the toppling pillars of a temple, walls collapsing into powdery fragments.

My stone, she thought, then jolted. The Source-Stone. A quick check let her know that it was not pinned to her clothes—she wore a clean tunic and trousers; she could not help but wonder what had happened to the clothes she’d worn at the trial—nor anywhere among the bed linens.

She slid from the bed to the floor. For a moment her legs refused to support her, and she hit the ground on her knees. She crawled across the floor to the trunk at the foot of her bed.

The hinges creaked when she flung it open. Inside were familiar objects. Her clothes, some of them, folded neatly. A scarf Josit had given her. Her father’s compass, which he had used on the Gold Roads. The thin gold chain that had born her mother’s magal. An anatomy book, a pair of gloves Mariam had sewn for her. Several packets of seeds, neatly labeled. She picked through them, a cold feeling growing in her belly. Each was labeled with Chana’s handwriting; each a type of medicinal plant that grew only in the Sault.

Someone who knew her well had packed this trunk. Several someones, it seemed. It had been prepared with a knowledge of what Lin herself would take from the Sault, if she knew she was never coming back.

She flattened her hands over her stomach, as if she could hold in her rising panic. She knew she should get to her feet, go out into the mansion, seek Andreyen and the others. But she could not make herself move. Breathe, she told herself, as she had told so many of her patients. Breathe through it.

There was a knock at the door. Lin raised her head. “Come in,” she tried to say, but her mouth would not quite form the words. She frowned, started to try again, but the door was already swinging wide.

The Ragpicker King stood in the open doorway. He seemed impossibly tall and thin, a stick figure with a stick staff in his hand, entirely black save for the white oval of his face. The sight of her on the floor beside the open trunk did not seem to surprise him. He crossed the room and sat down on the foot of the bed.

In a characteristic gesture, he folded his hands over the top of his cane before speaking. “Lin,” he said. “I wondered when you would wake. It has been three days.” He looked at her, sitting on the floor, the trunk open in front of her. “You must have questions.”

What happened? she tried to say, but again, she could not quite seem to form the words. Instead, she said, “Mariam?”

Andreyen’s green eyes were sharp. “You may have trouble with speech for a short while,” he said. “The gematry you performed was so powerful that some of it tore its way free of you, of the Source-Stone. I suspect it nearly killed you—” He broke off at the expression on her face, acknowledging her question with a nod. “Mariam Duhary is well,” he added. “As if she had never been ill. She will live a long life, thanks to you.”

“ Oh. ” A great tension went out of Lin, one she had been carrying for so long that she’d nearly forgotten the weight of it. “I want to see her—”

“Lin,” Andreyen said. He turned the staff around in his hands, his characteristic gesture. “You fainted when the power ripped free of you,” he said. “It was like a leashed tiger, suddenly freed. It poured out of you, into the world. A wall of the Sault burned, and an old temple to Anibal in the Maze was destroyed.”

Lin’s vision swam. Blood and fire. “Was anyone hurt?”

“A few minor injuries. Scrapes and burns. You were lucky: The temple has been disused for years, and the Shomrim were not on the walls. And the Ashkar, with customary diligence, are already rebuilding. In the meantime, Castelguards have been posted where the wall is broken. By the order of the Prince.”

He searched Lin’s face with his eyes. But she was thinking of someone else. Conor. Conor, making sure the Ashkar would be safe. But perhaps it had nothing to do with her. Perhaps Mayesh had asked him to do it.

“I need to see my grandfather,” Lin said. Her words were coming back at least; they came out clear and stern. As if she could order the Ragpicker King around. “And Mariam—I need to see Mariam.”

Click. Andreyen tapped the head of his cane with his fingertips. “Lin, do you understand why you’re here? In the Black Mansion?”

She shook her head. Not because she could not guess, but because she could not bear to say it. The pain felt like a bone stuck in her throat, something that stabbed and choked her from the inside.

“You have been exiled, Lin. You are galut. Ashkar no longer.”

She felt the heat behind her eyes. Tears, anger, refusing to show themselves. “It makes no sense,” she said. “They asked to see power. I showed them power. They wanted a Goddess. The Goddess brings fire. It is in our lore, our stories—”

“They wanted the idea of the Goddess,” said Andreyen. “It is one thing to wish for a Goddess to return; it is another to look upon holy fire. People are terrified of the Gods, Lin, and the Ashkar are no different. The Goddess is a tale of past glory and strength. But she is not in this world; she wanders the outer darkness, and that itself fulfills the human desire to hold one’s Gods at a safe distance. For what happens to those who come too close to the Gods? Only ruination.”

Lin said nothing.

“If it’s any consolation, I understand it was a contentious decision. You do have your supporters in the Sault, but the decision is ultimately up to the Maharam, and he said that the Goddess would have been able to withstand the use of such power and would not have collapsed as you did. That whatever source of power you used, it must have been corrupt and evil.”

Lin stared blankly at the objects in the trunk. She wondered again who had packed it. She imagined Mariam’s gentle hands folding her clothes, Chana painstakingly writing out the names of the plants in the physick garden.

I cannot say I was not told, she thought. Over and over Aron tried to warn me. Mayesh, too. “I do not know what else I expected,” she said. “I am not the Goddess, after all. Just a girl with a magic stone.”

“Speaking of which.” Andreyen drew the brooch from his waistcoat pocket and lightly tossed it to Lin. She caught it in her hands, turning it over, feeling a wave of relief pass through her. Relief, and surprise. For there was still light in the stone. A burning heart, suffusing it with a dark glow.

“I would have thought,” she said, “that they would have destroyed it.”

“I doubt half of them know what it is,” Andreyen said, and there was an odd bitterness in his tone. “Mayesh Bensimon was the one who brought you here.”

“My grandfather? But he never knew I worked with you... did he? Why would he bring me here?”

The Ragpicker King avoided her gaze. “Do not underestimate Mayesh. He always knows more than you think. And Lin, look.” He leaned forward. “The stone still burns with power. After all you did, it is not dead. It lives. ”

She closed her hand around it. “It does not matter. I will not use it again.”

Real astonishment flashed across his face. “Why not?”

“All I wanted was to cure Mariam. That has been done. I pretended to be something I am not, and I have been exiled for it. I have lost—so much.” She closed her eyes.

“But you have also gained. Perhaps you cannot be the Goddess of the Ashkar people, but you can be a sorcerer, Lin. A Sorcerer-Queen.”

“I have never wanted to be a Sorcerer-Queen. I am done with this power.”

“That would be a waste. Of everything you have learned and done. I understand—”

“You couldn’t possibly understand.”

“I understand because I, too, was exiled in my youth. I, too, wished to learn the ways of magic and was punished for it. All magic was taken from me, and the possibility of ever controlling it. But you, Lin. You still have power. ”

Lin opened her eyes. His green eyes were burning like a hawk’s. She said, “You have only ever cared about the magic. Never about me. Only about power.”

“I am the Ragpicker King,” he said. “What do you think I traffic in? Crime? Murder? I traffic in power, Lin. Power matters. Power like Elsabet Belmany displayed on Tyndaris. But Elsabet is a force of evil. You can be a force for good.”

Elsabet Belmany. The vision Lin had had in the Shulamat came rushing back: She saw the dark-haired woman standing on the steps of the temple of Anibal as flame rushed around her like water. I have destroyed her hiding place, she thought. But she is not dead; I can feel the power of her stone still, somewhere near Castellane. And how could I ever defeat her, anyway? I only can use the power of the King, and Belmany has her own power.

“Stop,” Lin said. His words were just that, words. They echoed in the emptiness she felt down to her bones. She was an exile. She would not see Mayesh again, nor Mariam; not Mez, not Chana, not anyone.

And she had lost Conor. She had chosen her home in the Sault over a home with him, and now the Sault did not want her. And here was Andreyen, pushing at her, wanting yet more from her, more things she could not do, could not give.

She closed her hand so tightly around the Source-Stone that it ached. The edges of the brooch cut into her skin.

“Please,” she said, barely able to find the energy to speak the word. “Leave me. Leave me alone.”

In the past, Kel had looked up at the Trick and thought about the dreadful fate of those consigned to its cells. Trapped behind Sunderglass, knowing there would be no trial, only waiting on His Highness’s pleasure until the execution could be arranged. (And then the cold green water, the pinch and bite of teeth, the undignified screaming ceasing only when life ceased.)

He had never imagined how boring it would be. Watching the single patch of sun travel across the floor. Awaiting the occasional visit from the guard bringing food and water, not because he was hungry but because eavesdropping on their conversation broke up the monotony. It also allowed him to learn that Anjelica and her privateer had made their escape through the Narrow Pass, where they had been joined by a garrison of mounted guards led by Kurame, Kito, and Isam; the Castelguards had turned back at that point, no longer on their home territory. It was some solace to know that she was, at least, safe from the murderous Malgasi.

He was almost relieved when he heard footsteps outside his cell. He sat up quickly, brushing straw from his clothes. It wasn’t a guard, he knew; their boots made a particular noise on the stone floor. Heart roaring in his chest, he said, “Conor?”

A shadow passed in front of his cell. Stopped at the bars. A broad shadow, too tall to be Conor. Disappointment bit at Kel just as light flooded his cell. Standing in front of him was Legate Aristide Jolivet, just as Kel had first seen him all those years ago at the Orfelinat, dressed in his scarlet uniform, his ring gleaming on his hand. In a rough voice he said, “Believe me or don’t, but I never wanted it to end like this.”

Kel rolled onto his side and glared up at Jolivet. Jolivet, who had plucked him from nothing and brought him to the Palace, who had taught him to fight for Conor, who had ordered him to seek out those responsible for the Shining Gallery murders. “I would spit on you,” he said, “but they have not provided me with sufficient water.”

“You cannot be so surprised as all that,” said Jolivet. “You always knew that one day you would die for Conor.”

“I’m not dying for Conor,” said Kel. “I am dying for your lies, and Falconet’s.”

“I lied for the Aurelians,” said Jolivet without emotion. “I always will. It is my duty, and yours. If I had come out in that moment in the Little Palace and spoken for you, said that in investigating the Charter Families you had acted on my orders, then we would have lost the only slight advantage that we have over the conspirators. They are not aware of what we know. ”

“Please don’t say we, ” snarled Kel. “Why don’t you tell Conor, then? Just tell him. ”

“What would be the point?” said Jolivet. “You are a Sword Catcher, Kellian, but you cannot return to what you were. You have been too greatly compromised. You cannot be put back at Conor’s side, to live as his ‘cousin,’ among his friends, his enemies. Not now.” He sounded slightly incredulous that Kel did not already see this. “If a shield has been broken, one should no longer cling to it but cast it away in battle. If you were a different kind of soldier, Kel, and this were a different kind of war, you might have a medal pinned to you. Instead, I can offer you only an honorable death.”

“Bullshit,” said Kel. “You could free me. Send me away in exile. But you won’t. I know too much about the Aurelians, about the workings of the Hill. If I am not bound to the Palace, I am dangerous to you. Even if I swear my silence, you would never trust it.”

There was a long silence. Jolivet said, “I wonder sometimes if I did you a disservice by teaching you too well.”

“That,” said Kel, “is not the disservice you are doing me.”

“I remember when you were a little boy from the Orfelinat,” Jolivet said. “That first night you were at the Palace, they all marveled at how clever you were. I thought, better he were not so clever. That one will know too much to believe in glory and honor. He will always see too much to be at peace with what he is destined to be.”

“I will tell you what I see now,” Kel said. “I see that you imagine you can manage the matter of the conspiracy, of the betrayal of Falconet and Alleyne and who knows who else, all on your own. Without telling Conor. But it is long past time to tell Conor.”

“As you told me what you learned on Tyndaris?” Jolivet said. “And you imagined that I would not find out? That I do not have spies among Lady Alleyne’s guards? We all make decisions about what we tell, Kellian.”

“So then you know the severity of the threat?” Kel demanded, sitting up. “You know what the danger is? And you won’t tell Conor—”

“It is nothing to you what Conor knows, not now,” said Jolivet. “You are already a dead man, Kellian. And the Palace of Marivent keeps counsel with the living.”

Lin did not know how long she lay on her bed in the Black Mansion, holding her stone in her hand. She knew the patch of sun on her coverlet had faded into twilight, shadows introducing themselves into the pattern from new angles that formed shapes like those one could sometimes see in clouds.

At one point, she heard voices at her door—Merren and Ji-An, she was nearly sure—but she did not call out or make a noise, and eventually the voices faded with their accompanying footsteps.

Lin could not herself have described her emotions. The enormity of what she had lost kept her from feeling it completely. Shock cushioned the blow, as it had when her parents had died, drowning her grief in a cloudy numbness. Every once in a while, a specific aspect of loss would assail her, and then she would feel it, the way her patients sometimes described feeling flashes of pain break through a fog of morphea. ( Josit—oh, Goddess, Josit. What would happen when he returned to the Sault? Who would tell him Lin was gone, that he could never see her again? She could not write to him on the Gold Roads; an exile could not write to an Ashkar in good standing without tainting their reputation. Oh, my little brother, she thought, how I will miss you. )

After a long time, she rose to her feet. She stripped off her clothes, noting with a vague interest the bruises that marked her pale skin. They were worst on her right side. Perhaps she had fallen there; she did not remember her collapse in the Shulamat. She recalled only her burning hands, unmarked now.

The few clothes that had been packed for her in the trunk were the colorful gowns Mariam had made her over the years. Green, scarlet, bronze. Nothing blue or gray. Nothing Ashkar.

She put on a dress of flowered muslin, brushed her hair, braided it neatly. She had just slid on a pair of shoes when the sound of a familiar voice pierced the thick wood of the door.

Lin froze. She had not caught the words, but the cadence, the timbre, she knew. Had always known, even when she’d tried to forget. She fastened her brooch inside her sleeve and went out into the corridor, following the sound of voices into the Great Room.

The windows were open, letting in an unaccustomed amount of light and noise from the city outside. The rattle of carriage wheels, wind in the boughs of the trees in Scarlet Square, the sound of birdsong. A reminder that whatever else happened, Castellane went on.

Merren, Ji-An, and the Ragpicker King stood clustered in the center of the room. None looked pleased. Merren seemed genuinely upset and was gesturing worriedly with his hands.

None of that was surprising to Lin. What was surprising was that Mayesh was in the room with them, dressed in his gray robes, his face lined with tension. There was something different about him, though she could not at first tell what.

“ Zai? ” Lin came slowly into the room. “What are you doing here?”

Mayesh nodded in her direction. “Lin. You’re awake.”

“It’s about Kel.” Merren looked pleased to see Lin up and around, yet at the same time his tension remained. “They’ve stuck him in the Trick.”

“What? But why ?” Lin demanded. Her heart had begun to beat very fast. It could not be... surely it was not what he had done for Lin, sneaking her into Marivent, into the King’s chamber, under the eyes of the Arrow Squadron? But how could anyone have known about that ?

“The official word,” Mayesh said grimly, “is that he stands accused of murdering Artal Gremont and Ciprian Cabrol. We may know that the idea is ridiculous, but there are many who speak out against him. Alleyne. Falconet. Sardou.” Mayesh looked at Lin. “Your friends have told me about the conspiracy,” he added. “I’ve long suspected that someone on the Hill was involved in the Shining Gallery massacre, but not that it was so many, or that they had the backing of Malgasi.”

“But what about Legate Jolivet?” Ji-An said. “Kel has been acting on his orders all this time. Can’t he speak up for him?”

“He has not done so,” said Mayesh. “He has denied involvement. Which means that we cannot trust his loyalties in the matter.”

“What about you?” said Lin. “Can you not speak up for Kel?”

Mayesh hesitated for a long moment. “I am no longer the Counselor to the throne of Castellane,” he said. “I cannot return to Marivent, nor can I speak with the Prince.”

It was then that Lin realized what was different about her grandfather. His silver medallion, the one that marked his office, was gone.

“But that’s not possible,” she said. “Why— Who dismissed you? And why would they ever do that? You have counseled the throne for more than three decades.”

“This is worse than I had imagined,” murmured the Ragpicker King. “Without Kel, without you—the Crown Prince will stand alone.”

“Did Conor dismiss you because you spoke for Kel?” said Lin. “Is that why?”

“It was the Queen and Prince who dismissed me,” Mayesh said dryly. “As Counselor, I have always advised the Prince to trust in his Sword Catcher. It seems they felt this advice may have been given in bad faith.”

“Bad faith?” Andreyen echoed quietly.

“The rot of the conspiracy has spread more than can be easily seen, I suspect,” said Mayesh. “Who knows what poison may have been dripped into the ear of the Queen? She told me to return to the Sault and serve my own Prince, the Exilarch.”

“How vile,” said Ji-An.

“I knew the monarchy was not to be trusted,” muttered Merren.

Lin said, “Conor would never hurt Kel. Never. Kel is one of the only people he cares for in the world.”

“Which is why the idea of his betrayal is so destructive,” Mayesh said. “And I agree that Conor would not hurt Kel. But the Prince of Castellane might have to. Two nobles lie dead. The alliance with Kutani is hopelessly broken. Conor cannot be seen to have lost control of the situation. Kel is the one who will have to pay the price.”

“Then we’ll rescue him,” said Ji-An. “We can get anyone out of anywhere. We’ll get him out of the Trick. We’ll need some force to back us up—”

“No,” Andreyen said.

Every one of them, save Mayesh, looked at him in surprise.

“No,” Andreyen said again. “We cannot enter Marivent. I cannot enter Marivent, nor can any under my instruction or command.”

“Kel did,” pointed out Merren. “But— I suppose he wasn’t in your employ, was he?”

“He was not,” said Andreyen. “And he has paid a great price for working with us as much as he did.”

“The King on the Hill is likewise forbidden from coming here,” said Mayesh, “so the Black Mansion is protected. It has been this way for a long time. The Ragpicker King must stay away from Marivent, and Marivent from the Ragpicker King. I am here only because I no longer represent the Palace.”

“That’s ridiculous, Andreyen,” said Merren. “You expect us to just sit here while they feed Kel to the crocodiles?”

“I don’t like it, either,” said Andreyen. “But you are asking me to do what only the King on the Hill can do, and I am the King in the City.”

“But we know things,” Ji-An said. “Surely our knowledge must weigh something in balance with Kel’s life—”

“Stop.” Lin’s voice rung out harshly. “ I will go to the Palace.” It was now night, of course, and the Ashkar were not supposed to travel through the city after dark. But she was no longer Ashkar. “I will tell Conor that Kel has never acted against him. I will make him understand who his true friends are.” She looked around the room; her gaze lit on Andreyen, who was regarding her with a small, sideways smile. “I will not be acting on the orders of the Ragpicker King. I am making this choice myself.”

Mayesh did not seem surprised. All he said was, “I suppose you have a way to enter the Palace?”

“The guards at the North Gate know me,” Lin said. “They will let me in.” She looked at her grandfather. “Will you accompany me to the door? I know it is forbidden for you even to walk with me, but—”

“Some Laws are foolish,” Mayesh said roughly, and joined her on her way out.

As they paced through the corridors of the Black Mansion, Lin could not help but cast a covert sideways glance at Mayesh; his hawkish face seemed hollowed out, lines of sorrow cut like grooves at the sides of his mouth, the edges of his eyes.

“Grandfather.” Impulsively, she reached for his hand. “I am sorry. So sorry.”

“For what?” he said roughly, though he did not take his hand away. “For getting yourself exiled? I suppose I helped with that. The Maharam was not at all pleased with the way I spoke to him.”

“And what of Aron?” Lin asked. “He told me so many times this was a mistake. He must be pleased at how this has turned out.”

“I do not think so,” Mayesh said. “Not at all.”

“But what will you do now?” Lin said. “Now that you are no longer Counselor? Will you be all right?”

For the first time in a long time, he smiled. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “I will sit on my porch and smoke my pipe and throw sabra fruit at the children who try to pick my flowers. In fact, perhaps it is better I have been dismissed.” He searched her face with his eyes. “It means I do not have to ask you why you call Conor by his Gods-given name, and do not use his title.”

Lin tensed. “I—”

“I knew Conor was not suddenly asking me all these questions about the Ashkar because he was curious about my life,” said Mayesh. “I ought to have guessed he was curious about yours.” He hesitated. “You truly think he will listen to you?”

“He does,” said Lin, “sometimes.”

Mayesh nodded slowly. “Then it must be tried.”

Kel lay awake, tracking the progress of the rising moon through his single window. He had only just started to doze off when he heard footsteps in the corridor.

And wondered immediately how he could ever, earlier, have mistaken Jolivet for Conor. Even Conor’s pace was familiar to him. He would have known it anywhere. If I were dead and buried and those feet walked over my grave, I would know those footsteps.

Kel put his back to the wall, slid slowly down it. He was sitting on the floor by the time Conor appeared in front of the bars. There was hardly enough moonlight for Kel to see him clearly, but it did not matter. It was Conor.

Conor regarded him silently. Kel was not sure how long he had been in the Trick now—three days? It was the longest he had gone in fifteen years without seeing Conor Aurelian. Though surely that was not enough time for Conor to have changed in any real particular way. Still, there seemed something different about him—about the set of his mouth, his eyes. In some way he had not before, Kel thought, he resembled Lilibet.

Like her, his outward appearance was perfectly polished. High black boots, a silk tunic and a velvet cloak with a rose clasp at the front. His winged silver circlet holding back his dark hair. A folded pair of dove-colored gloves held carelessly in one hand. But there was a wariness to him, a tension, that was new. He had never been wary around Kel before.

“I knew you’d come,” Kel said.

“Why so sure?” Conor’s tone was light, emotionless. But that meant nothing, Kel told himself. Conor had been trained for years to use his face, his voice, as tools of diplomacy. To show nothing he did not want shown.

“Because I do not think you can trust Falconet so much as all that. Because I think you must see the holes in the web of lies that he is spinning for you. Because you know better, Con.”

“Oh, but I don’t.” Conor leaned his back against the bars of the cell opposite Kel’s. “I have learned not to trust my instincts. They seem usually to be wrong.”

Kel wanted to kick the wall. “You cannot honestly think I betrayed you for money—”

“Of course not.” The words came out as a pained hiss. “The betrayal itself matters more than the reason, don’t you see that? And can’t you understand, I don’t want to believe it? But I cannot let myself be someone who ignores what is right in front of him.”

“What is right in front of you is that Jolivet is lying. So is Falconet—”

“Is everyone in Castellane lying, then?” Conor began to pace up and down in front of the cell. “At the meeting in the Dial Chamber, when we had gathered to discuss the Gremont and Cabrol Charters, Falconet surprised us all by announcing that he had proof of treason. Of your treason. He warned of your secret alliance with the Ragpicker King. Of your plans to betray Castellane by helping the Princess of Kutani reunite with her lover—”

“Conor—”

“He brought dozens of witnesses.” Conor’s voice rose. “Benaset got up to say that you have been creeping in and out of the Palace at all times and going to the Black Mansion. Falconet had Castelguards follow you, you know. Then there was the tavern-keeper from Little Kutani who says that you met there with the Ragpicker King, and brought Anjelica with you. And there were more. Are you really saying that Falconet convinced a dozen Castellani citizens to claim falsely that they have seen you in Scarlet Square?”

Kel tried to picture the scene, tried to picture Conor defending him as Falconet paraded before him one piece of evidence after another. Falconet was clever—clever enough to turn truths and half-truths into damning lies—and who knew how long he had been planning this?

And not just him. He was hardly acting alone.

Kel said, “So you believed all forty or so of these people over me?”

“My old friend Falconet and fifty witnesses and the captain of my guard, you mean?” The ghost of a smile flickered across Conor’s face. “Don’t, Kel. Don’t joke about this.”

“They really are lying, Con,” Kel said, his voice low.

Conor’s gray eyes glittered. “It’s almost ironic,” he said. “You wanted me to be better, a better ruler, and I decided I would be, partly because you wanted it so much. And the person I used to be would forgive you, because he was never interested in being much of a leader. But I cannot forgive you for treason, Kel.”

“It was never treason,” Kel whispered. “I would never break my oath as a Sword Catcher. You know that, too.” Kel met Conor’s gaze through the gloom. “I was meeting with the Ragpicker King. I was working with him, not for him—”

Conor made a disgusted noise. “Even if that were true, you’re admitting you kept so much from me, Kel. Has every word out of your mouth for the past months been a lie? When did it start?”

“I was trying to protect you,” Kel said. “I went to the Ragpicker King because Jolivet requested it—”

“He denies that.”

“Because he thinks I’m compromised, useless to you now. He’s cutting his losses—but he wanted the Shining Gallery murders investigated. You know he did. And the Ragpicker King knows everything that happens in Castellane. Jolivet thought if I worked with him—”

“So you just went to the Black Mansion and offered your services?” Conor said acidly. “And the Ragpicker King, out of an excess of civic duty, wanted to help the Palace? And asked nothing from you in exchange?”

“Something like that,” Kel muttered. “There is more to the story of the King on the Hill and the King in the City than you know.”

“But you know it, I suppose. And have kept it from me.” Conor stared at Kel as if he were a stranger. “Don’t you understand? You have lied to me and lied to me and lied to me and you do not even deny it. You say you did it for my own good, but you did it. And Falconet has proved it to the Hill, to every family; he has made it impossible for me to forgive you. Even if I believed you, I could not forgive you.”

“Because of how it would look?” Kel said bitterly. “To these people who are conspiring against you? Working with Malgasi to bring down the House of Aurelian?”

“Because I cannot afford to believe you, Kel. I know that my trust in you is a weakness—has always been a weakness that could be exploited.” Kel stared; Conor had never said anything like this to him before. How long had he thought it? “In these past months, I have known something was wrong between us. Your secrecy, your silence, your lies—and I knew they were lies. I told myself you had found a girl or a boy in the city, someone you were keeping secret. I did not want to face the truth. I don’t want to face it now. But it is my duty. I cannot afford the comfort of lies.”

Kel could not stand the look on Conor’s face. As if he were breaking from the inside. “Blame me as much as you want,” he said quietly. “I knew what I was risking. But Falconet is not to be trusted.”

“It does not matter whether I trust Falconet,” he said. “I cannot trust you. And if I were to forgive you, the Charter Families—whether they are conspiring or not—would all move against me. They would see weakness all over me like blood on a wounded animal.” Conor slammed his hand against the Sunderglass bars. The noise echoed through the Trick, a crack like thunder. “If you had only come to me, ” he said with real anguish, “we would have determined something, come to some understanding, but what you did—treason cannot be wiped away or forgotten. Everyone knows of your guilt; everyone has seen it. I cannot stop what is going to happen. I cannot—” He took a deep breath.

“You cannot save me,” Kel said flatly. “That is what you mean.”

“No,” Conor whispered. “All your decisions have brought us here. You have taken yourself away from me. And I can never forgive you for that.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” Kel said. He held out his hands. He knew Conor could not touch him through the bars, but he had never reached out for Conor and found the gesture unanswered. He could not stop himself. “I am your Sword Catcher,” he said softly, and he saw Conor’s eyes shine in the dimness. “I bleed so that you will not bleed. I die so you can live forever.”

“No one lives forever, Kel,” Conor said evenly, and walked away.

As the carriage drew close to Marivent, Lin remembered Kel telling her that, when he was a child, his first thought on seeing the Palace had been, I can climb those walls.

She smiled a little at the thought of that tough little boy from the Orfelinat. She had been a child then, too, before her parents died. She had stood on the walls of the Sault, looking up toward Marivent. In her mind, it was the palace from every Story-Spinner’s tale. She had felt sorry for other cities, who did not have such a beautiful white castle, such a gorgeous royal family. She had seen Conor only in glimpses then, at public occasions—a beautiful scowling boy with dark curling hair like his mother. She had known he existed in the world, and that she would never know him. He might as well have been imaginary.

Now he was more than real. Now she could not think of him without anxiety rising inside her—fear for him, for his safety. For he was surrounded by serpents, and he could not see it. Would not see it.

She had to change that.

Mayesh had let her take the Palace carriage—the last one he would ever ride in, he had observed—from the Black Mansion to Marivent. The driver seemed to have no objection to transporting her. He might not even know that Mayesh had lost his position as Counselor, Lin thought. On the way up the Hill, she had thought about her grandfather returning to the Sault, breaking the news of his dismissal to the Maharam and the elders. Who would they choose to replace him, she wondered. And what would he do with himself now? Story-Spinner tales were about ordinary lives that became suddenly extraordinary, but little was said about what happened when it went the other way.

They rolled under the North Gate into a Palace that felt peculiarly silent. Usually, Lin was aware of servants and Castelguards hastening to and fro, running through Marivent in a steady stream like blood through the arteries of a body. Now, as she dismounted from the carriage outside the Castel Mitat, she heard no babble of voices or sound of hurrying feet, only the buzz of insects and the chirp of trellised birds. Above her, a shutter banged to and fro in the breeze outside an open window.

The moon was bright, and the Trick loomed in the distance like a black spear piercing the sky. Kel. A shiver went up her spine. She needed to keep her concentration on helping him, on helping Conor. That was what mattered now.

She made her way inside the castle and up the stairs, noting that even this place seemed deserted. No one in the colorful downstairs rooms, no one in the long stone corridor upstairs. No guards outside the Prince’s rooms.

She knocked on the door.

For a long moment, she heard nothing. Then a rustle, the chime of glass, like wine goblets clinking together.

She knocked again.

Conor’s voice, raised just enough to penetrate the thick wood of the door. “Jolivet,” he said. “If it is you, I told you before—quite clearly I thought—to fuck off. ”

Lin counted to five, silently, and pushed the door open. She had half expected it to be locked, but it swung wide without a sound. Shocked, she looked around in silence, recalling the apartments when she had first seen them. How beautiful, she had thought, and extravagant, from the rich bed hangings to the marble tables to the cabinet of rare liquors, the bottles gleaming like jewels.

Now those hangings had been ripped down. The bottles had been torn from the liquor cabinet and smashed against the walls and table edges. The room reeked of alcohol, and shattered glass lay in bright heaps on the stone floor. Someone had clearly walked on the broken glass in bare feet; their sharp edges were crusted with dried blood. Tables had been upended, spilling their contents: pens, silver candlesticks, bruised apples.

The lamps were unlit, but moonlight was streaming in through the great arched windows, illuminating the figure that stood in front of them. Conor, with his back to her. She would have known him anywhere—known him at a distance from the way his black hair curled against the nape of his neck, from the way his dark cloak hung from his shoulders. From the way he held the open wine bottle in his hand.

She licked her dry lips.

“Conor,” she said.

He turned around. He did not look surprised to see her, not exactly. Somehow she could not read his expression at all. In contrast with the room, he looked elegant, as if he had dressed for an occasion—black velvet tunic and trousers, a silver clasp at his throat, the shimmer of more silver caught among his curls.

“Your grandfather told me you survived your trial,” he said. “I wasn’t sure if I believed him or not.”

The shadows under his eyes were nearly black, and Lin could see the whiteness of his knuckles where he gripped the wine bottle. And though he spoke flatly and without expression, what she heard underneath his voice snapped the cords that held her in place. She could not stop herself. She rushed across the room and threw her arms around his neck.

She felt him sway a little in surprise. Then his free arm came around her and he pressed her hard against him, his fingers digging into the fabric of her dress, bunching it up in his hand. She pressed her cheek to his chest, velvet soft against her skin; she listened to his heartbeat, fast but steady.

He spoke roughly, into her hair. “I knew the wall of the Sault had come down. I pictured you lying among the rubble.”

“No. Nothing like that.” She tipped her head back to look up at him. He was so young to be all that he was, she thought. He was a grown man, but there was still a boyish softness to the curve of his mouth. “I have been so worried about you.”

His brows drew together. “You, worried about me? Why?”

“Because you have sent everyone you could depend on away,” she said. “My grandfather. Kel—”

“Kel has committed treason. It is my duty—”

“Your duty.” She shook her head. “ He was doing his duty. He was protecting you. He never had any other intention—”

“You are awfully worried about Kel.” There was a quiet something in his voice—not danger and not jealousy. She could not have said exactly what it was, but it felt like a cold finger on her spine.

“Of course I am. He’s my friend.”

“And you want a favor from your Prince, do you?” His hand slid up her back, cupped the nape of her neck. She felt herself shudder—though not with something that was cold. It was ridiculous that the touch of his fingertips on her skin could catch her breath and make her legs feel as if her bones had turned to feathers. Ridiculous, that she could not control it. “You want your friend freed from the Trick, whether he is a traitor or not.”

“He’s not, ” Lin said. “And if you hurt him, if you have him killed, don’t you see what it will do to you? If you let him swing from the Tully gallows, or have him thrown from the cliffs like Fausten? It will wreck you, Conor. You will never get back what you lost.”

She felt a shiver go through him; thought for a moment he had heard her. Really heard her. He brushed a kiss at her temple, his lips hot. “What makes you think you know me so well?” he whispered.

“Because,” she said, “I love you.”

She felt his body go rigid as iron. “Lin,” he said. “You sent me away—”

“I know. I couldn’t bear it, that all I could ever have was a tiny part of you. That marriage and children with you would belong to someone else, someone who didn’t even feel about you the way I do.” And Kel made me see it, she thought. He made me understand. “You said you wished you could cut your feelings for me away, and do you think I have not felt the same? Do you know how often I have thought of you? In my dreams, my waking hours, you never leave me, Conor.” She tightened her hands on his shoulders. “Nothing can be perfect. I want you—all of you. You do not know how much.” She took a shivering breath. “But I will take what I can have. It is not nothing. I do not think I can bear nothing.”

His gray eyes searched her face, and at last there was something in his expression she could read: wonder, bewilderment. And a bitterness she did not understand.

“Conor?” she breathed.

“You are accepting my offer? You are telling me you will be my mistress? Because I cannot offer you anything else, Lin, not even now, with Anjelica gone.”

“I told you,” she said. “I will take whatever I can have of you—”

She thought she heard him say her name. Then he was pulling her against him, crushing his mouth to hers in a kiss. His mouth was hot and hard against hers, and he had never kissed her like this, not even in the folly, not with such force that she tasted wine and blood on his lips. His hand cradled the back of her head as he devoured her mouth, his tongue flicking between her lips in a way that had her aching for his hands on her body, the feel of his skin against her skin.

And then he pulled back, breaking the kiss abruptly. Lin could feel that he was shaking, small tremors that rocked his body, but his voice was steady when he spoke. “It is ironic,” he said, “that I have always known you were an excellent liar. I depended on it when I took you into my confidence about my father.”

“What do you mean?” Lin could hear the bewilderment in her own voice; she was not like Conor. She could not keep her voice steady even as her body screamed at her that it was being deprived of something it desperately wanted, even needed.

“You come here and beg me for Kel’s life,” he said. “You say that you know he was only protecting me. That you knew he was working for the Ragpicker King. And don’t bother denying it; I am already aware of your own association with Morettus. You and Kel had this shared world of secrets, it seems. One you both hid from me. Although in your case, at least, it is not treason. Just the ordinary, boring sort of lies.”

It was as if he had shaken her or slapped her. She choked, “I was trying to protect you, too. All we ever wanted was to find out who was responsible for the murders in the Gallery, who was targeting House Aurelian. All Kel ever thought about was you and Castellane—”

His lips twisted into a sneer. “All we ever wanted?” he echoed. “You seem to be positing a sort of conspiracy of kindness. A group of people who lied to me with the best intentions. All while you warn me of a conspiracy of unkindness, an opposing group who lied to me with bad intentions. Pardon me if I see little difference between the two.”

“What are you saying?” Lin whispered. “You can’t really mean it. You can’t be intending to murder Kel—”

He flung her away from him. Lin stumbled back, shocked, as Conor hurled the bottle he was still holding against the far wall; it shattered, releasing a silver rain of glass.

“I never thought I would trust anyone like I trusted Kel,” Conor said, and the bitterness she had sensed in his voice before was now at the forefront, turning every word to a curse. “And then I trusted you. You never seemed to need anything from me. I thought that meant I was safe with you, but there is no safety, is there? Not when I am weak, and I have come to understand now, finally, where weakness lies. You are my weakness, Lin—and so is Kel. You are chinks in my armor that can be pierced through.”

“Trust is not a weakness,” Lin said. “And if you cannot trust me, at least trust Kel. He has only ever tried to help you.”

Something flickered across Conor’s face, and for a moment Lin thought that he might have heard the truth in her words.

He raised a shaking hand to his face. “Castellane cannot afford me to be weak,” he said. “I have to be my own shield now. And a shield must be iron.”

“ No. Turning yourself to stone will not make you strong. Hurting Kel will not cauterize the bleeding—”

“Look at you,” Conor said, “so sure I plan to murder him. And yet at the same time you say you love me. What am I meant to believe? For to imagine that you love a murderer, Lin, seems out of the question.”

He was white as a sheet, but the mockery in his voice cut at her.

“At least let my grandfather counsel you,” she said. “Even if you cannot bear the sight of me, at least let there be someone you can rely on in the Palace—”

“ Stop it! ” Lin took a step back; she did not think he had ever shouted at her before. “Don’t you understand? You are deadly to me, Lin, like poison or a blade. I cannot be near you.”

“But I—”

“ Leave me, ” he snarled. “Consider it a royal order. Stay away from me. Stay away from the Palace. Go. ”

He might as well have shoved her. She staggered back, found her way to the door. She could feel the burn of tears behind her eyes; even as she reached for the doorknob, it seemed to waver in front of her.

The door swung open. Lin paused, then turned on the threshold. “Your father,” she said. “Order me away if you wish, but he is my patient, and there are things you should know—”

He looked at her from across the room. He was motionless, the icy moonlight striking sparks from the silver clasp at his throat. From the crown half hidden in his tangled hair; she had thought at first, for a moment, that he was not wearing it. But she supposed it changed nothing about him and who he was whether the crown was visible or not.

“The King is no longer any concern of yours,” he said. “I release you from your place as his physician. Consider this a binding royal order, Lin. Stay away from the Palace. Stay away from my father. And stay away from me.”

Lin took a deep breath. “Then you can throw me in the Trick for this, if you must,” she said. “But before I go, there is one thing I must tell you. About your father. And not just about him—about you.”