Though Safi couldn’t see the empress being tied to a tree behind her, she heard the same twanging stretch of ropes. The same crackling pop of shoulders stretched too far. There would be no running, no fighting any time soon.
She also heard the empress asking, with such sweet politeness, “May I have some water, please?”
The giant grunted Lev’s way, and as Lev marched toward Safi, water bag in hand, Safi realized the Hell-Bard commander was nowhere in sight. Her gaze cut left, right … But he was gone. Vanished into the forest.
“Where is the commander?” Safi asked after gulping back four glorious mouthfuls of stale water. “He was hurt. You should check on him.”
A metallic laugh echoed out from Lev’s helmet. “I don’t think so.” More laughter, and after tying the water bag at her hip, Lev eased off her helmet.
The carmine light through the leaves showed a young face. Safi’s age, at most. Short brown hair, a wide jaw that sloped down to a soft point. Pretty, actually, even with the puckered scars that slashed across her cheeks and behind her ear, as if someone had taken a razor to her face.
Lev grinned slightly to reveal crooked canines, and the scars stretched painfully tight. Shiny.
“Where are you from?” Safi asked. She already suspected the answer.
“Praga. In the Angelstatt.” The northern slum, exactly what Safi’d expected with that accent—though of course, Safi’s witchery stayed silent. No sense of truth or lie on the Hell-Bard’s words.
Safi cracked her jaw, fighting the urge to ask why she couldn’t read the Hell-Bards. It was possible they had no idea she was a Truthwitch. Yes, the commander called her Heretic, but perhaps only he knew exactly what she was.
Instead, Safi asked, “How did you become a Hell-Bard?”
“Same way as everyone else.”
“Which is?”
Lev didn’t answer. Instead, she made a sucking sound with her tongue, her pale green eyes running over Safi’s taut rope and stretched arms. Then up Safi’s face, like a Hell-Bard inspecting a heretic. Though what Lev saw, what she sensed, Safi couldn’t begin to guess.
“It was the noose or the chopping block,” Lev said at last. “And I chose the noose. More water?” She hefted up the bag, and at Safi’s headshake added, “Suit yourself.”
Safi observed absently as Lev hunkered nearby and began to inspect her weapons, crossbow first. Until her her magic surged uncomfortably to the surface.
Lies. Happening behind her.
It was startling, that sensation. That ripple down her exposed arms. It had been so long since anyone had lied in Safi’s presence—or that she’d been able to sense it—and it wasn’t so much that the words lilting off the empress’s tongue were false so much as the tone and drama behind them.
“You come from near the North Sea?” Vaness asked, her tone deceptively gentle and kind. “I also grew up near water. But not a cold sea like yours. A warm, sunny river.” Her tone shifted to a faraway sound that rubbed, yet again, against Safi’s witchery. “I was on my way back to that lake, with my family. Not by blood, but by Threads. By choice. We were almost there, you know. Perhaps a day or two more of sailing…”
A long pause, filled only with a katydid’s refrain and a sighing breeze. Then: “Did you destroy my ship?”
“No,” Zander blurted. Loud enough for Safi to hear. To feel him tensing with surprise. Vaness had lured him in with her sweetness.
“Liar,” the empress proceeded, no more sugar to lace her tone. Only iron. “You killed the people I love, and you will pay for it. I will bleed you dry, Hell-Bard from the North Sea. So I hope, for your sake, that you had nothing to do with it.”
The empress’s words sang with truth. A major chord of such purity, the intensity almost swallowed the promise’s meaning.
Which made Safi smile. Her second for the day. Because she would do the same if it turned out the Hell-Bards had been responsible for the explosion. Even if they hadn’t, she would still bleed dry the commander. The Chiseled Cheater who had ignited all this hell-fire and burned Safi’s life to the ground.
She would make him pay.
She would make him bleed.
ELEVEN
“Not now,” Vivia said to the eight thousandth servant to approach her since returning to the palace. She was sweaty, she was hungry, she was late. Yet the sun-seamed gardener didn’t seem to care as he scurried behind her through the royal gardens.
“But Your Highness, it’s the plums. The storm took down half the fruits before they were even ripe—”
“Do I look like I care about plums?” She did care about plums, but there was protocol to follow for these sorts of conversations. Besides, the King Regent’s inevitable displeasure at her tardiness was a lot more compelling than this gardener. So Vivia slanted her foulest Nihar glare and added, “Not. Now.”
The man took the hint, finally, and vanished into the shadows of said plum trees, which indeed looked worse for the wear. Then again, so did everything in Nubrevna.
Vivia had spent too long at the dam. Oh, it had taken her no time at all to sail her dugout over the northern Water-Bridge of Stefin-Ekart, and the ancient dam and its ancient splinter up the middle had quickly taken shape against the evening sky. Up Vivia had ridden the locks—up, up, until at last, she’d reached the waters abovestream. There, she’d dunked her toes into the icy river, stretching, feeling, reaching until she’d sensed every dribble of water that entered the witch-controlled funnels of the dam. But all was as it should have been. The crack was still only surface level on the stones.
So Vivia had returned to Lovats, and that was when she’d lost all her time, stuck amid the ships carrying Nubrevnans into the city. The sun was setting by the time Vivia sailed into the Northern Wharf, and it was almost gone entirely behind the Sirmayans before she reached the palace grounds atop Queen’s Hill, and finally, Vivia marched into a courtyard, surrounded on all sides by the royal living quarters.
The broken latch on the main door required three forceful shakes from a footman before he could get it open, and the hinges screamed like crows across the battlefield.
Into the entry hall, Vivia strode, where she ran—quite literally—into her father’s youngest page. Servant eight thousand and one.
“Your Highness,” the boy squeaked. “The King Regent is ready to see you.” His nose wiggled, leaving his whisker-like mustache to tremble—and finally clarifying why all the other pages called him Rat. Vivia had always assumed it was because his name, Rayet, had a similar ring.
“I’m ready,” she offered stiffly, brushing at her uniform.
Rat led the way. Their footsteps echoed off the hallway’s oak walls. No more rugs to absorb her footfalls, no tapestries to muffle the click-clack. Twelve years ago, Serafin had removed all decorations that reminded him of Jana, throwing it into the storerooms beneath the palace, where it had rotted and where real rats had feasted upon the painted faces of long-forgotten kings.
So two years ago, Vivia had sold off each item. Piece by piece and on channels that weren’t precisely legal. Dalmotti Guildmasters, it would seem, were quite willing to trade their food in secret if real Nubrevnan art was on the table.
When Vivia finally reached her father’s wing, it was to find the inevitable darkness. Serafin’s illness made his eyes sensitive to light; he now lived in a world of shadows. Rat scuttled ahead to open the door and announce her arrival.
Vivia swept past him the instant he’d finished. Twice as large as Vivia’s own bedroom, the king’s quarters were no less spare. A bed against the left wall with a stool beside the headboard. A hearth on the right wall, untouched and whooshing with winds. Closed shutters, closed curtains.
Vivia squared her body to her father. No bow. No salute. No word of greeting. Save your energy for the council, he would always say. With me, you can be yourself.
The king’s gray head rested upon a pillow. His breath rattled in … out … and in again. He motioned Vivia closer. Somehow, eve
n with his frail shoulders pointing from his night robe, and even with the pervasive stink of death that hung here like mist atop the morning tide, Serafin captured command of the room.
Once Vivia reached him, though, she almost recoiled. Her father’s face, his eyes—they were ancient. Each visit was worse than the one before, but at least the king had seemed sharp when she’d come yesterday.
Cold pulled at the skin on Vivia’s neck. This illness had gone beyond frailty. His body was broken; his mind might soon follow.
“Sit,” he croaked, one elbow sliding back. Bracing as if to rise. Vivia helped him, his ribs so sharp against her fingers. Once the king was fully upright, she sat on the stool beside his bed.
“You wear a captain’s coat,” Serafin said, voice stronger now and all acerbic consonants like Aunt Evrane’s. “Why?”
“I was under the impression, Your Majesty, that you had taken over the position of admiral.” He had said as much two weeks ago, during the same conversation in which Vivia had informed him of Merik’s death.
“So the admiralty returns to me,” Serafin had said. But now he simply sighed.
“Do I look as if I can lead a fleet? Do not answer that,” he added, a spark of his dry humor rising. “All day long, the healers tell me I improve—the liars. Sycophantic idiots, all of them.” On and on he talked. About what the healers had told him, about how strong he’d been in his youth, about his years as admiral and king, and …
Vivia didn’t know what else. She wasn’t listening, and her frequent “mmm-hmms” and “hyes” were all a lie. She tried to listen—she truly did—yet all Serafin talked about was the past, rehashing the same stories she’d heard a thousand times before.
Noden hang her, she was a terrible daughter. This was a moment of triumph that she’d waited years to receive—he had just named her admiral—yet still, she couldn’t seem to bring herself to listen.
She swallowed, quickly adjusting her cuffs while her father prattled on. Now he was making jokes about the High Council, analyzing the vizers’ copious flaws, and Vivia managed a shrill laugh in reply. It was so easily done, after all, and it always earned her an approving smile.
Even better, it sometimes earned her, as it did today, a snide, “We are just alike, are we not? Nihars to the core. I heard what happened in the Battle Room today. Your trick with the water was well done. Show them that temper.”
Vivia’s chest warmed. Then she summoned exactly what she knew he’d love most: “They are imbeciles. All of them.”
He smiled as expected and then inhaled a phlegmy breath. Vivia’s heart stuttered … But no. He was fine.
“What did the Council say today? Brief me.”
“A hundred and forty-seven ships,” she said crisply, “passed the Sentries this week. Most were filled with Nubrevnans, Your Majesty. The vizers are worried about food—”
“Food is coming,” Serafin interrupted. “Thanks to our Foxes. We’ve accumulated a sizable supply beneath the palace, and those stores will keep us secure through this war. That treaty with the Cartorrans will help too, thanks to your brother using his brain.”
Vivia’s lungs tightened. I use my brain too, she wanted to say. The Foxes were my idea and my hard work. But she wouldn’t say that to her father. He always insisted that they share the glory of any good decisions—and that they share the blame for any bad ones.
Guilt tidal-waved through her. She had never told her father about the mythical under-city or the underground lake, and though she insisted to herself it was because she’d been sworn to secrecy by her mother, Vivia’s heart knew the truth. She was a selfish daughter; she didn’t want to share the glory if her hunt for the under-city ever paid off.
“And what of our negotiations with the Marstoks?” the king continued. “Another victory won by your brother that will keep us fed.” As he said this, Serafin’s eyes lingered on the mourning band at Vivia’s biceps. The king had yet to don one, which had puzzled Vivia at first, since Serafin seemed to have nothing but praise for Merik—at least since Merik had moved back to Lovats and joined the Royal Forces.
Then the lack of a mourning band had pleased her, for surely it meant he loved her more.
Selfish daughter.
“Marstoks?” Vivia forced herself to repeat, shoulders inching toward her ears. There was the familiar sideways glint in the king’s eyes. Serafin anticipated a specific answer, and he was waiting for Vivia to fail in giving it.
She wet her lips, puffing out her chest as she carefully offered, “We are still in discussions with the Marstoki Sultanate, Your Majesty, but I will inform you the instant an agreement is made—”
“Oh?” With a creaking lurch, he snatched a paper off his bed that had, thus far, been hidden in shadows. “Then why did I learn this morning that you canceled negotiations with them?”
Vivia’s stomach hollowed out. The page he rattled at her was none other than the message she’d sent via Voicewitch to the Marstoki ambassador one week prior. How the hell-waters had Serafin gotten it?
“I did not think it a good bargain,” she rushed to say, summoning a casual grin. When Serafin’s stony expression didn’t change, though, she shifted her tactics. Tried on a new mask—a snippier, angrier one. “A single glance at what the Marstoks proposed was all I needed to see Nubrevna would get the dung end of the shovel. Alliances are meant to serve our interests, not the Empire of Marstok’s. There was also the tiny problem of Marstoki naval forces invading Nubrevna two weeks ago, Your Majesty.”
“I only worry for your sake,” he said, though his face still wasn’t changing. “I would not want the Council to think you weak for not negotiating better.”
Vivia felt sick. Her words tumbled out all the faster. “But Your Majesty, I thought surely you would never wish to treat with those flame eaters. You are much too smart for that, and if you’d only seen what they proposed in this deal! And of course, now with the empress possibly dead, I am certain they would have ended negotiations themselves!”
“But you could not have known the empress would die. Unless…” Some of Serafin’s frost melted. Some of his humor returned. “There is more to her death than I realize.”
Vivia’s responding laughter was far too pinched.
He slouched against the headboard. “I told you, I only worry for your sake. I know you are strong, but the Council does not.”
As the king devolved into more stories of his own prowess, Vivia tried to calm her heart. Tried to pretend she was listening, but the truth was that her hands trembled. She had to sit on them to hide it.
It was always this way with the King Regent. Whenever he was displeased, she would catch herself shivering like a bird—which was ridiculous. Shameful, for her father loved her. Like he’d said: he only ever worried for Vivia’s sake.
Serafin was the good king, the strong leader, and Vivia could be too, if she would only act as he did. If she would only stick by his side. Share the glory, share the blame. So with that reminder—one she gave herself more and more these days—she settled her face and her posture into one of attentive interest. Then for the next two hours, she listened to tales of his feats, his brilliance, and his masterful navigations through Nubrevnan politics.
* * *
Outside the royal wing, Vivia met up with the palace steward and ten stiff soldiers. The soldiers saluted at Vivia’s approach through the quad while the steward—a petite woman Vivia had known her entire life—smiled and bowed.
This was their evening routine: after briefing her father, Vivia and the steward would walk the palace grounds and battlements. Vivia would listen as the steward read all requests, all petitions, all complaints that had gathered during the day, and palace workers were allowed to approach.
Now was the right moment for that gardener to complain about his plum trees.
They set off at a brisk pace, a wind picking up around them. Rifling through the gardens as fresh clouds gathered on the horizon.
Once upon a time, these pla
nts and gravel paths had been private, pruned, and purely for decoration. But eighteen years ago, Queen Jana had given the palace staff free rein. Within a few summers, row upon row of apple and pear trees had taken root beside the central fountain. Zucchini vines with fat yellow blossoms had crawled over the paths and around the rosebushes, while more heads of cabbage had sprouted in the western corner than there were actual heads in the palace.
Vivia’s gaze flicked to the only spot in the royal gardens left untouched: a tiny enclosure on the northeast side, walled in by hedges and with a lily pond at its heart. It had been Jana’s favorite place. Vivia had always assumed it was because the door to the underground lake waited within. Yet she wondered …
“Wait here,” she murmured before cutting away. Moments later, her feet carried her beneath the overgrown archway, through the rusted gate, and into her mother’s garden.
It looked exactly as it always had. Ivy grew wildly across the earth, hindered only by the pond and the cattails fluttering around it. A weeping willow reached long fingers into the water’s edge, while blueberry bushes grew out of control against the farthest wall.
Every day, Vivia hurried down the gravel path—the only place ivy hadn’t invaded—aiming for the trapdoor behind the blueberry bushes. And every day, she made sure there were no other signs of entry in the garden.
A lone bench stood several paces from the pond, and that was where Vivia strode now—for it was there that Jana had always sat. Vivia eased onto the bench, just as her mother used to do. Then she stared, just as her mother used to stare, at a cluster of bearded irises.
The flowers still held their own in a series of clay pots beyond the cattails. These were the only black irises Vivia had ever seen. Most irises were blue or red or purple, but not these. Not the ones her mother had loved so much.