Page 31 of House of Dusk

YENERIS

A t least this time they both had proper disguises. Yeneris had insisted on it, once she’d heard Sinoe’s plan. It had taken some digging in the princess’s wardrobe to find something suitably plain. And still more effort to convince her to leave behind her trinkets.

“I don’t see why I couldn’t wear my amber earrings,” said Sinoe. “You can’t even see them when I have my hair down. They’re good luck. And they bring out the color of my eyes.”

Yeneris scanned the street ahead, then glanced back to check that no one was following.

The only people she saw were clustered around the open front of a taverna, passing a large wine cup around as they played some sort of dice game.

“You can’t walk through the city as if it’s the palace.

You do realize just one of those earrings is worth three years’ wages to most people? ”

Sinoe sighed. “Spoilsport.”

“And your eyes are fine as they are,” she added. More than fine. Maybe too fine. Yeneris tensed as two young men stumbled out of the taverna, laughing. One of them tugged on his friend’s sleeve, nodding appreciatively toward Sinoe. They changed course.

“Two beautiful ladies like you shouldn’t be—” The man yelped as Yeneris’s dagger appeared under his chin.

“Shouldn’t be bothered by random men with no respect for personal boundaries?” She forced him back a step. He had been reaching for Sinoe’s arm.

The man looked more outraged than alarmed. “You think you’re too good for us?” he spat. “You think you’re tough because you have a little knife? You’re nothing, girl. Someone ought to—”

She kicked, sweeping his legs out from under him. By the time he hit the street—with a quite satisfying thump—she was already hustling the princess away.

“I told you this would be fun,” said Sinoe.

“This is not my idea of fun.”

“Isn’t it?” Sinoe cast her a sidelong glance. Yeneris was suddenly highly aware of her own hand, resting lightly on Sinoe’s shoulder. How close she was standing. For safety, of course. To make sure that if the men followed, her body would block the princess.

But they weren’t following. Yeneris and Sinoe has passed into a bustling night market, a patchwork of brightly colored stalls lit by pierced-copper lamps, the air smelling of smoke and burnt sugar and fried onions. Yeneris dropped her arm to her side.

“What do you do for fun, then?” Sinoe traipsed along one of the aisles, pausing to ogle a display of glass beads, then an array of cosmetic pots.

The question rattled in Yeneris’s mind. She had fun.

Of course she did. Just not recently. Training had been fun, sometimes.

Sparring with Mikat, when she managed to actually land a hit and cracked a smile from the older woman.

When she was little she’d loved the sea, loved the swell of water lifting her.

But the last time she’d gone swimming she’d hated it.

Hated the way it made her feel so small, so powerless. The hungry abyss cold below.

“That wasn’t supposed to be a stumper.”

She blinked, and found Sinoe watching her curiously, a tiny dent between her brows.

“I like doing my job,” Yeneris said, finally. That was a good answer. “I like being useful. I don’t have time for fun.”

Sinoe arched a brow. “That sounded like a challenge.”

“It wasn’t,” said Yeneris, hastily. “Where are we going? You said your vision was of someone who could help us learn what Lacheron is up to. Are they here?”

Sinoe did not answer, having been distracted by a nearby vendor whose stall was heaped with scrolls and bound codexes.

On the surface, at least, the market didn’t seem particularly dangerous.

No doubt a good chunk of the goods had been smuggled into the city.

The import taxes were notoriously high since the war.

But they were mostly small luxuries. She hadn’t smelled a single whiff of medena.

There were few visible weapons. The only raised voices were friendly shouts and boasts.

Still, there was something about the place that set Yeneris’s skin humming. What was it? She let her gaze wander, trying to find the source of her unease.

There. So small she’d almost missed it. A symbol carved into a corner of the bead seller’s stall. A stylized bee. She scanned the other nearby stalls. More bees. Now that she’d seen one, they were everywhere, even painted onto some of the walls.

Yeneris had memorized a detailed map of the city as part of her training.

Had spent hours reciting different possible escape routes from the palace.

The locations of three different safe houses.

Places she could go for supplies, for healing, for weapons.

Places where rules could be bent and laws could be broken without fear of notice. This was one of them.

She turned on Sinoe, who was sorting through a basket of scrolls. “Look!” she squealed, unfurling one. “It’s the Epic of Swords and Fire! One of the copies from the library of Melicarum. Ooh, and there’s even illustrations. This is my favorite part, when the heroine is poisoned and—”

“Where did that bangle come from?”

Sinoe arched her brows innocently, as if there weren’t an enormous golden bracelet decorating one of her shapely wrists. “You’re not the only one who can hide things in interesting places.”

“Princess,” Yeneris began, pitching her voice low, glancing to see if anyone had noticed the thief-bait. “This market belongs to the Queen of Swarms.”

“Of course it does,” said Sinoe. “That’s why we’re here.” She turned and signaled to the merchant.

Yeneris swallowed a curse. It was her own fault. She should have demanded more details. This was what came of trusting Sinoe to be in any way sensible. “She’s the one you had a vision about? You want to meet with of one of the most notorious thief lords in the city?”

The princess completed her purchase, not bothering to hide her silver coins any more than the gold bangle. Yeneris saw the merchant’s eyes linger on the trinket.

“Don’t frown, Yen,” Sinoe said. “This is important.”

“Fine. Then tell me where I need to go. I’ll take you back to the palace and get the information myself. You can’t be here, Sinoe.”

Maybe it was the fact that she’d used her name. Or maybe Sinoe finally heard the edges in her voice. She regarded Yeneris steadily. “I have to do something, Yen. You’ve seen what it’s like. Fates, you know. You’re—did you lose people? Because of my...in the war?”

It took Yeneris several heartbeats to find her tongue. “Yes.” Everyone. Everything. That was how it had felt at the time.

“Then you understand. You’re the only one who does.”

There were thousands. Not just the few who had escaped the destruction of the city, but those who fled before the siege, those who were already living elsewhere, the diaspora that had begun three centuries ago during the cataclysm.

So, no, she was not the only one. But perhaps she was the only one in Sinoe’s narrow world.

“What about your brother?” Clearly Sinoe hadn’t told Ichos about her clandestine activities.

Sinoe rolled her new scroll between her hands. “My mother told me a story when I was a little girl, about scorpion mares. Have you heard of them?”

Yeneris shook her head.

“They live in the far eastern steppes. They’re beautiful, tall and graceful, and they have coats like molten metal. Fast as the wind. There’s a story that they’re the daughters of the Sphinx.”

“What does this have to do with your brother?”

“Scorpion mares can’t be tamed. There’s only one way to catch one.

You need to hunt down one of their foals.

And you kill it. You murder it and tear out the baby’s heart and you take that, and you show it to the mare, and she will submit to you.

She will let you ride her, because you hold something that is precious to her.

But she will never love you. She hates you, even as she serves you. ”

Yeneris shook her head. “I don’t read poetry, princess. You’ll have to speak plainly.”

“Ichos is the scorpion mare. He hates Father, but he’ll never turn against him. And he doesn’t understand what it’s like for me. He’s not imprisoned in the palace.”

“Because he’s not valuable enough to keep locked away,” said Yeneris. That must be a wound as well. Ichos was as much his father’s tool as Sinoe. Just not one as highly valued. Awkward, to say the least.

Yeneris couldn’t help feeling that none of this was what she’d volunteered for.

When Mikat had recruited her from the camp—hungry and desperate for purpose—it had been to restore Bassara.

For the past seven years she’d imagined this mission.

Herself, brave and capable and cool-eyed, silently working in the shadows to regain the kore’s bones.

She’d understood that doing so required getting close to the princess.

She’d been prepared to lie, to manipulate, to gather secrets.

She hadn’t realized that witnessing someone’s hidden truth could be a mirror. These were not things she could simply scribe into the tablet of her memory, to be spilled back out to Mikat.

Yeneris cared. That was the solid, shameful truth of it. She cared about Sinoe. Fates, she even felt a pang of pity for the brother.

Fine , she told herself. Feel it. Feel it and then lock it away . Emotions weren’t shameful, unless she let them rule her. And she most definitely could not afford to be ruled by these emotions.

Which was made abundantly clear a moment later when she noticed a tawny-haired boy of about eleven bump against Sinoe on his way through the market.

“Not so fast.” Yeneris caught his arm just as he was about to slip away into the crowd. He gave a squawk, fighting her, but she was stronger. He was a skinny thing. She relaxed her grip slightly. No need to hurt the boy. “Give it back.”

“I didn’t take anything!” His eyes went wide, actually welling with tears. He was good. But not good enough.

Yeneris patted the boy’s sleeves, then the scarf tucked around his shoulders, where she found the suspicious lump. She pulled loose the gold bangle and held it out to Sinoe. “I told you this would happen.”

“And I told you to trust me,” said Sinoe, archly. She took the bangle, then held it out to the boy. “Here. You can keep it, if you take us to the Hive. We need to speak with the Queen of Swarms.”

· · ·

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” said Yeneris, scowling around the dim hall.

The clatter of dice thrummed in the air, twining with the reedy hum of pipes.

The high, curved walls were painted a rich saffron, decorated with a pattern like honeycomb.

The Queen of Swarms clearly valued a strong and consistent aesthetic.

Yeneris wondered if she would be wearing a striped black and gold gown.

Perhaps jeweled wings. Or a poisoned blade she called Stinger.

“You’re just grouchy because they made you leave your weapons at the door,” said Sinoe.

“Not all of them,” countered Yeneris. She’d managed to keep two of her most well-concealed blades.

A small comfort, given that others here had no doubt done the same.

“How exactly do you plan to get the queen to speak with us? If she’s working for Lacheron, don’t you think she’s just going to tell him about all this? ”

Her belly went cold at the thought. At best, she’d be fired from service.

Ruin any chance she had of rescuing the kore’s bones.

At worst, she’d be executed. No, worst of all, they might suspect her.

And what then? Would she be the one bound and bleeding, with Sinoe thrust into the thick smoke to spill her secrets? Reveal Mikat and the others?

Sinoe waved a dismissive hand. “Not if we give her a good reason.”

“What reason?”

“We’re going to save her life.”

Yeneris forced herself to take a long, deep breath. Then she drew Sinoe to the side, into an alcove beside one of the large braziers that warmed the room. “Tell me everything. Seriously, princess. This isn’t a game.”

“I know it’s not a game,” Sinoe bit back. “I saw the blood. I saw a woman twitching on the ground, trying to breathe through a severed throat.” Her voice trembled slightly. “I’m sorry. I should have told you everything sooner. I should have trusted you.”

Yeneris winced. “It’s fine. It doesn’t change anything. Let’s just focus on the mission.” Good advice. “Did you see the assassin?”

“No. The visions weren’t clear. But I know the words. I wrote them down.” She tugged a bit of paper from her sleeve, holding it out.

Yeneris took it, careful not to brush Sinoe’s fingers. The prophecy was short. The Queen of Swarms will die by an unseen blow, her hives dripping secret honey into the jaws of the wolf. “And you know it will be tonight?”

“No. But we can warn her.”

Fates, did she really believe it was that easy? That a woman who controlled everything remotely illicit in five different districts would simply believe their warning? And then reward them with information?

A week ago Yeneris would have called Sinoe naive. Her world so limited, so confined, even with its comforts. But she wasn’t naive.

Hopeful . That was a better word. Even now her brown eyes held Yeneris’s own, brimming with certainty that they could do this. And Fates curse her, that hope was catching.

“All right,” she agreed. “We’ll find the Queen of Swarms and warn her.”

“Warn her of what, exactly?” said a sharp voice behind them.

Yeneris’s heart plummeted. Two figures blocked their alcove, both wearing light leather armor, both with swords drawn.