Page 31

CHAPTER

Thirty-One

N EEMA SHOWED HER pass to the ancient servant at the entrance to the imperial suite. With artful decrepitude, he groped for his glasses.

The day was already uncomfortably hot. The tiled hallway looked cool and pleasant. They waited.

“I don’t have time for this, Neema,” Cain said through gritted teeth, as if it were her fault.

The servant tried his other pocket.

“Sorry,” Cain said, pushing past him. “I have an empire to win.”

Neema continued to wait because she was a Raven, and Ravens love and respect and are generally in thrall to paperwork. “It’s all in order,” she said and the old man, after he had read it again slowly, twice, agreed that it was.

Hurrying up the stairs, she found herself in an empty courtyard, half in light, half in shade. She had barely taken in its quiet beauty—the mosaic floor, the wooden fountain, the subtle scent of the fruit trees in their limewashed clay pots—when she heard a loud crash from the room to her left. The sliding wooden doors were pushed back, giving her the perfect view of Cain as he sailed past.

“This is fantastic!” he shouted, leaping over a cream silk couch as if his life depended on it.

A moment later Princess Yasila flew after him, wielding a broom.

Neema blinked.

By the time she had reached the doors, Cain was on his knees in front of the sofa, and Yasila had the broom under his chin, choking him. She did not appear to be using any force, her posture soft and relaxed. The most delicate of shifts, the most subtle of movements, held Cain in place. He was turning red.

“She tried her magic on me,” he wheezed. “Didn’t work,” a choked cough, “obviously, so…” Cain gripped hold of the broomstick and rolled his spine.

“Don’t—” Neema said, guessing what was coming.

Too late. Cain turned a standing somersault, flipping Yasila over the top. Neema stepped back in alarm, but the princess had landed lightly on her feet, low and lithe, still holding the broom. Dragonstyle—the rarest and most beautiful of martial forms. She turned the broom like a staff, preparing for the next attack.

“Look at all these books, Neema,” Cain said, throwing one at Yasila’s head.

The room was lined with them, floor to ceiling, with a rolling ladder. Neema had always wanted one of those.

Yasila deflected the book without even looking at it. As it sailed by on its new trajectory, it knocked over a large porcelain vase. Neema leapt to catch it, but she was too late. It smashed on to the tiled floor.

Yasila stepped into a low hanging stance. “Get out,” she said.

Cain had retreated behind the couch. “Impressive skills, princess. Did you train your son?”

“I have no son.”

“Does he have a weak spot? You could help me beat him.”

“I hope you rip each other’s throats out,” Yasila said, calmly.

“Why don’t we all sit down?” Neema suggested.

Yasila kept her eyes on Cain. “We will speak in the courtyard. Move.”

This was a fight of a different kind, one Neema had engaged in many times. If she let Yasila sweep her back into the courtyard, it was over; she would have lost any authority she might possess. She held up her imperial pass. “Your highness. We have the power to search every corner of this suite, and question everyone living here.” Including Nisthala. She left the threat unspoken.

Yasila’s gaze flickered to a door built into the bookshelves. Presumably, her daughter was sequestered on the other side.

“If you would sit, and answer our questions,” Neema continued, in a reasonable voice, “perhaps that won’t be necessary.” She gestured to the couch.

Yasila handed Neema the broom. “Clean up your mess and we will talk,” she said, and crossed to a chair on the other side of the fireplace.

Neema and Cain shared a look. Sometimes it was quicker to find these things funny.

As Yasila sat down, it became clear why she had chosen the chair over the couch. This was the imperial suite, and this chair, with its high back and scrolled arms, was very much like a throne. Behind her, the dramatic view from the eastern balcony: dazzling blue sky, deep blue ocean. She posed in front of them as if she owned them, hands resting in her lap. And who would not wish to be owned by Yasila Majan—so beautiful, so compelling. The sea, the sky—why would they not worship her?

Neema swept the vase fragments into a pile, while Cain returned the book he’d thrown. Yasila kept her gaze on the fireplace.

No—not the fireplace, Neema realised, as she sat down on the couch. She was studying the oil painting above it. Yasthala Victorious —a depiction of Yasila’s ancestor seated on the marble throne, the Raven on her shoulder. Neema had spent enough time around Venerants to know this was a coded stare. Yasila was silently reminding her impudent visitors of her noble heritage, her impeccable bloodline. Which was ironic, Neema thought, given that the Empress Yasthala had ended hereditary rule, and would have dismantled things further had she won the war more decisively. Venerants always chose to forget that bit, when they called her Yasthala the Great.

Neema knew the history of the painting, not because it was any good—it was decidedly average—but because of its connection to Shimmer Arbell. Yasthala Victorious had been a wedding gift from Andren Valit to his bride. Originally, he had wanted Shimmer to paint it. It would have been her first big commission, but she turned him down. He persisted, doubled his fee. Again, she refused him. When he tried a third time, she told him to fuck off.

Those who said yes to Andren Valit would say that he was charming, generous, good-natured. Those who said no told a different story. And those who told him to fuck off? Well. Only one ever dared. Andren spent the next few years methodically destroying not only Shimmer’s nascent career but also her reputation, her friendships, her life. She had to flee her home in Three Ports and take a tavern job in Armas, painting in the attic room above, practically begging for supplies. She only escaped Andren’s curse when she became too good to ignore. “Suppose I should thank the bastard,” she wrote, after his death. “May the Eight rot his soul and remain Hidden. I had to learn how to paint better than everyone else, just to survive.”

Neema wondered, now, if something similar held true for Yasila. She had escaped the Dragons, she had survived her husband. Such a life, so full of trials and tragedies, could easily have destroyed her. Instead they had made her stronger. Made her exceptional .

Cain was rolling the ladder along the shelves, enjoying the ride.

This was very much the Fox philosophy of life. Eat when you can, drink when you can, roll ladders along high shelves when you can. For tomorrow we die. He stopped with a sudden lurch. “She has your work, Neema,” he called down, astonished. “Essays and everything.”

“Monographs,” Neema said, secretly thrilled.

He held one open to the room. “Look—she’s even read bits of them.” There were asterisks in the margin, underlinings.

“My daughter,” Yasila corrected him. “Nisthala has an obsession with our ancient past. Tales of the Great Catastrophe and the Lost Tribes.” She lifted a hand from her lap and wafted it behind her towards the horizon. Long ago and far away.

“Oh,” Neema said, making a connection. “Like the emperor.”

A rare bolt of anger from Yasila. “They are nothing alike,” she snapped.

It took Neema a moment to understand her offence. Those old, ludicrous rumours about Yasila and the Old Bear. Eight. She thinks I’m suggesting that Nisthala is Bersun’s daughter. “Forgive me—I only meant we share an interest. Myself, your daughter. The emperor. That’s how I first came into his orbit, in fact.”

“Really?” Yasila settled back against a cushion and gave a deadly smile. “I thought it was your exquisite calligraphy.”

Neema’s face fell.

Cain joined her on the couch. As he was sitting down he said, casually, “So, princess, why did you kill Gaida?”

Yasila didn’t blink.

“Was it just to frame Ruko? Or did she threaten you? She threatened to destroy Neema, the night she died.”

Neema stared at him. “You know about that?”

“She told me at dinner, she was very proud of herself. Gaida,” he said conversationally to Yasila, “could be a bit of a cow where Neema was concerned. I’m not saying she deserved to die, but if you killed her for a good reason… do you have any snacks?”

“Cain, you’ve just had two breakfasts,” Neema murmured.

“What I’d really like is some chicken, with a sticky sauce. Although would that be wise, on this sofa?” He rubbed his hands over the cream silk. “Some chicken, some sticky sauce and a finger bowl. Maybe a napkin I could tuck in my tunic—”

“I didn’t kill Contender Rack,” Yasila said, and Cain grinned, because he’d irritated her into speaking. His signature trap.

“Do you have an alibi?” Neema asked.

Yasila folded her hands more firmly. “I do.”

“Other than your fiercely loyal servants?”

“And your invisible daughter?” Cain chipped in.

Yasila closed her eyes, shutting them both out for a moment. When she opened them again, and saw— disappointing —that they were still there, she said, “I did not kill Contender Rack. But I have found myself entangled in her death.” Clearly, she had decided the quickest way to be rid of them, was to give them what they wanted. “The Dragons use their magic sparingly. For years, I could not understand why. Time, and bitter experience, have taught me the reason for their caution. Every spell casts a shadow.”

Cain and Neema looked at each other, confused.

“I tried to bind you, Contender Ballari, to stop you from entering my home. Moments later, I broke a vase that has been in my family for generations. Yes, you smile. Coincidence. I would have said the same, once. But it happens every time. Every time. Magic is a force of nature. It must be respected, the way a fisherman respects the sea, or a hunter respects the forest. There is a balance that must be maintained. Take more than you need and you will suffer for it.”

Neema could see where this was leading. “You bound me at the opening ceremony.”

“Yes. Petty of me. But when I saw you…” Yasila looked Neema dead in the eye “She died with your lies stitched across her heart.”

Yanara. Her name left hanging in the air.

“You knew she was innocent, but you didn’t care. You were a nobody, a nothing. You saw an opportunity to rise and you snatched it with both hands.”

“I’m—”

“Don’t,” Yasila said, savagely. “Don’t tell me you are sorry. Don’t you dare .” She rose and began straightening books on their shelves, lining up the spines. When she spoke again, the passion had left her voice. “I had no desire to attend the opening ceremony, but the emperor insisted. So I must go. I walked through the door… and there you were. How well you looked, in that wonderful dress. And that exquisite amethyst choker, glittering at your throat.” She straightened another book. “I thought: How I wish it would choke her…” She laughed, drily. “The spell left my lips before I could stop it. So yes, I bound you, for a moment. How did it feel?”

“I thought I was going to die.”

Yasila abandoned her books. As she passed Neema’s couch she said, “Good.” and continued on to the balcony.

For a time the princess watched the ocean, the waves rolling in an eternal circle. With her back to the room, she looked like the only person left in an empty world of sea and sky.

“Neema?” Cain said, softly.

She shook her head. Any kindness from him at this moment would only make her feel worse.

The second of Yasila’s ancient servants arrived with a jug of iced lemon water, and one glass. With arthritic reverence he placed the tray on the side table by Yasila’s chair and slowly, slowly poured out a glass.

Cain was vibrating with delight. There was nothing he liked better than comedy, elbowing its way in at the wrong moment. “I’m turning grey watching him,” he said to Neema. “Where did he learn to move like that? The Snail Monastery?”

The servant left, even more slowly than he had arrived.

Yasila returned to her seat as if nothing had happened. She said,

“Every spell casts a shadow. I bound you, briefly. And then you whispered in my ear. Six words. I saw you on the balcony . Did you know how dangerous they were?”

“Not at the time,” Neema confessed. “You met Gaida there.”

Yasila frowned, annoyed by her own reckless mistake. “She said she had vital information about a shared enemy. I assumed she meant you. Or Ruko.” Not a flicker of feeling as she said her son’s name. “It was only when we met I discovered—she meant the emperor.”

Cain stiffened. “Shit.”

Neema inched forward in her seat.

Yasila held up a hand to stop her, before she could ask. “I won’t repeat her accusations. She had no credible evidence to support them.”

Typical , Neema thought, before she could stop herself.

“She thought I would be keen to ‘join forces,’ as she put it. Expose the emperor and clear her father’s name. Foolish girl. She was lucky I didn’t hand her straight over to the Hounds.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I knew what they would do to her.” Exile. Again, Yasila looked starkly at Neema. “Gaida’s mother is still alive.”

Neema swallowed, and looked down at her hands.

“So what did you do?” Cain asked, into the silence that followed.

“I warned her to let things be. No one thanks a dog for digging up rubbish. Then I left. I had hoped that was the end of the matter. But then…”

Neema lifted her gaze. “… I told you I’d seen you.”

Yasila pinched her lips. “I went straight over to Vabras and confessed everything. You gave me no choice. Ravens do like to chatter .” She made a sharp snapping motion with her hand. If you had only kept your beak shut.

Neema, offended, said, “It’s not chattering. It’s curiosity. We’ll peck away at a thing for as long as it takes to get to the truth. That’s why you panicked. You knew I’d keep digging until I worked it all out. That you and Gaida had met. That she’d discovered something suspicious about the emperor. Something about that song she sang for him—” She stopped, in a dead halt.

An image had come to her from the opening ceremony—just before Bersun handed out the colours. Vabras mounting the dais to speak to him, while the contenders formed a line below. A whispered discussion. A final, decisive nod from the emperor.

Yasila had gone straight over to Vabras, and Vabras had gone straight over to the emperor. That’s what they were discussing on the dais.

Bersun knew. Before Gaida sang a note, he knew she was plotting to bring him down. He had let her go ahead with her performance—he couldn’t refuse her in front of the court. But his reaction to the song had been an act. His irritation, his tears.

Neema didn’t know the Old Bear could act.

Gaida had conspired against the emperor, and he knew about it. Vabras knew about it. Neema’s voice, when she spoke, seemed to come from far way. “She really had stumbled on something, hadn’t she?”

Yasila said nothing.

The emperor. The incorruptible Old Bear. Her friend, her mentor. The only person on the island she trusted without question. Neema felt sick, light-headed. Breathe. Breathe. Her peripheral vision began to blur.

Cain got up, snatched the glass of lemon water from Yasila, and gave it to Neema.

The princess folded her hands neatly back in her lap. Smiled quietly to herself.

“Who did he send to kill her?” Neema said.

“I have no idea.”

“Vabras,” Cain suggested.

Yasila shook her head. “He escorted me here straight after the ceremony. He was concerned about my loyalty to his majesty. He questioned me all night.” She rubbed a hand up and down her arm, as if trying to brush away the memory. “Vabras is my alibi, and I am his.”

“Then who…”

A shrug. “A Fox, I presume.”

Cain frowned at the accusation. “We would never kill a contender. Not even for the emperor. Especially not for the emperor.”

Fox assassins might dance upon the borders of the law, but there were protocols. The same was true for the Hounds, with their strict Code of Ethics.

Off the books then, on the sly. Someone fiercely loyal to the emperor, with access to Gaida’s rooms. “The afterparty,” Neema said. “That’s when they changed the tea in the caddy. It was one of the guests.”

Cain was puzzled. “But if the emperor ordered Gaida’s death, why was he so furious about it? He threw a cup at the wall.”

For a moment Neema felt hopeful. Perhaps Bersun hadn’t ordered it; perhaps Vabras had taken the matter in hand. But that sharp, decisive nod he had given his High Commander on the dais. The tight set of his jaw. She’d seen it a thousand times. See it done, Vabras.

She sat in numb silence, thinking about Cain’s question. Why was Bersun so furious? “It was supposed to look like natural causes. Like she died in her sleep.” A tragedy—but these things happened. No reason to suspect foul play, no need for an investigation.

Cain had his hands in a prayer position, pressed against his forehead. “So what you’re saying is… one person killed Gaida in her sleep… then someone else came along…”

“… dragged her body on to the balcony, and stabbed her in the back with the most famous blade in history,” Neema finished. The dagger, the display of the body—no one could pass that off as natural causes.

“So the emperor had no choice,” Cain said, lowering his hands. “He was forced to investigate a murder he’d ordered. That’s funny.”

No one laughed.

“He doesn’t want us to find Gaida’s killer,” Neema said, in a bleak voice. “He’s hoping we’ll track down whoever came along afterwards and ruined it all.”

Which was why he’d told her to start with the stolen Blade. Find the thief, find the killer , Bersun had said, knowing that wasn’t true. What he’d really meant was, Find the thief, and we’ll claim they’re the killer. And if she didn’t find them?

“I gave Vabras the evidence,” Neema groaned. “I handed it straight to him.” The only proof that Gaida had been drugged. And the only proof that Neema was innocent. She’d even told them she might have done it. Offered herself up as the perfect scapegoat. Or maybe, if they were feeling generous, they might arrest Katsan for it. That’s why Vabras mentioned her. He was offering me a choice, if things turned bad. A way to save myself. Blame Katsan.

She put the glass down on the floor, and covered her face. She felt a wave of despair, and horror. She was not na?ve. She had always known Vabras could be ruthless, when it came to defending his emperor. But the Old Bear? Brother Bersun of Anat-garra? A man who had sworn a sacred oath to live a life of honour, sacrifice, and charity. Who’d insisted that Commoners be given the same rights and opportunities as everyone else. For all his flaws—his short temper, his stubbornness, his mood swings—she had still believed he was a good man.

Who had she been serving all these years?

What the Eight had Gaida found out about him?

No one spoke for a time. The sea filled the silence, as it often did on the island. The rush and heave of the waves. The mournful cry of a seagull. The salt breeze trailing through the open doors.

If Neema walked now to the eastern balcony and looked down, she would see the emperor’s private pleasure grounds, the Garden at the Edge of the World. So many times she had walked there with him. They had talked of many things—the court, her work, even her family back in Scartown. But it struck her now—he had never talked of his past. In fact, Vabras had warned her before their very first meeting never to mention it. His Majesty does not like to be reminded of his life at the monastery, it makes him melancholy. Perhaps it was more than that. Something in his private history for which he felt ashamed. Something that might damage him fatally, were it revealed.

Gaida had visited Anat-garra. She had spoken to Brother Lanrik, Bersun’s abbot. Was that where she’d discovered his secret?

“I believe we are done,” Yasila said, cutting through Neema’s reverie.

“Not quite,” Cain said, sharply. “Small, subsidiary matter, but you almost killed Neema on Festival Eve.”

A lifted eyebrow. “I don’t almost do things, Contender Ballari.”

“But it was your Dragonscale oil, right? No one else has access to that much of it.”

For the first time since their arrival, the princess looked surprised. She inched forward to the edge of her chair, studying Neema intently. “Someone drugged you with Dragonscale? You’re sure ?”

“Positive,” Cain answered.

Yasila’s face flooded with confusion. “But…” A thought struck her. She stood up, rapidly, and turned to the sea and sky. She put a hand to her throat, struggling with some intense emotion; Neema could see the effort it took for her to remain calm. “Yana,” Yasila whispered. A name she had not allowed herself to speak in eight years.

Neema’s heart sank. Yasila had leapt to the same conclusion as Ruko; that her daughter was alive, and had returned to take revenge on those who had exiled her. Impossible, irrational. Why would Yana wait until now to return? Why would she hide from her mother? She wouldn’t. But when hope flares in the darkness, it blinds even the sharpest eyes.

Not for long, though. Not for long. Life had taught Yasila not to dream of what could not be. For a flickering moment, her daughter was alive again. Then she was gone. Back into the poisoned forest. Back into the locked box of her mother’s heart. “No,” Yasila said, still looking out to the horizon. And then she turned and smiled brightly. “Perhaps the Dragons want you dead, Contender Kraa. I do hope so.”

The interview was over. The princess escorted them across the courtyard; the potted fruit trees, the carefully swept tiles. Water spilled gently into the fountain; a pleasing, subtle sound, made for contemplation. Serenity was in reach here, perhaps. A home that was both a prison and a sanctuary.

“What will you tell the Hounds of this meeting?” Neema asked.

Yasila paused in front of a fig tree, inspecting its leaves. “The Dragons have a saying. ‘Do not ask the sea for treasure. Wait upon the shore, and it will come.’ I shall say nothing to the Hounds. I shall take no revenge upon you. I have only to wait upon the shore. The waves will take you, soon enough.” She smiled, pleased by the thought. And then she walked back across the courtyard, graceful as a snake on water.