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Chapter Ten

Daeros—Tenebris

Kallias is slouched like a sulky child on the couch in his private receiving room. The couch faces an elaborate metal screen on the left wall, heat coiling out of it. I’m in my usual hiding spot in the ceiling, wisps of heat escaping from the vents to whisper tantalizingly around my freezing face.

Both Nicanor and Basileious, the king’s engineer, are standing by him.

Nicanor looks exhausted, the heavy dark circles under his dull eyes making his face appear even paler than usual.

His knuckles are bruised, and there are flecks of blood on the cuffs and hem of his elaborate fur robe.

Rage twists through me. I know where he’s been—tormenting the whole of Kallias’s Collection for singing their rebellious hymn.

But I’m not sure Kallias even knows Nicanor is here: His whole attention is focused on Basileious.

“You’ve been promising me for years that we’re almost in,” he snarls.

Sweat beads on Basileious’s broad forehead, his spectacles slipping down his nose. “We—we are, Your Majesty,” he stammers, shoving his spectacles nervously back up again. “But the rock is ... resistant to our drills, our axes. We’re trying. We’re working as diligently as we can.”

“ Then Try Harder !” Kallias shrieks, jerking up from the couch and grabbing Basileious by the collar. I flinch as Kallias flings him to the floor in front of the heating grate, and the engineer just stays there, frightened as a rabbit.

My heart drums overquick. I haven’t heard anything about Kallias digging for the Iljaria weapon since that conversation two years ago, when the Aeronan ambassador Talan gave his emperor’s ultimatum: Find it and surrender it to Aerona, or be invaded.

I think of Vil’s caginess when Leifur brought up the story of the weapon on the road, the night Indridi—

I push that memory away and refocus on the scene below me.

Kallias paces the floor beneath my hiding spot. He has never, I suppose, learned to look up. Perhaps Vil and Saga are right. Perhaps he doesn’t know it’s me. My foot cramps and I grimace.

“If I may, Your Majesty,” says Basileious from the floor.

“Get up, fool,” the king snaps at him.

Basileious obeys. Nicanor just stands tensely by the couch, forgotten.

“We have made a hole,” Basileious explains. He straightens his robe and shoves his spectacles up onto his nose again.

Kallias frowns. “A hole?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. One of our drills penetrated the last bit of rock that keeps us from the mountain’s heart. It’s a small hole—the width of a child’s finger.”

Kallias wheels on him. “Then make it bigger .”

Basileious gulps, sweating so much the edges of his hair are damp. “That is what we are doing, Your Majesty. We got through once. We can get through again.”

My heart beats, beats, as I recall the discussion from two years ago with greater clarity: A vein of iron, mixed with silver. This vein glows.

Impossibly powerful Iljaria magic, somewhere deep within the rock—I shudder to think what Kallias might do with such a weapon.

“How much longer ?” Kallias demands. “That Aeronan bitch is breathing down my neck. It’s only a matter of time before the emperor stops blustering and sends his army in place of his daughter.

I need that weapon , Basileious. Without it, I’ll never be able to stop Aerona from invading, won’t be able to call Skaanda and Iljaria both to heel. ”

A chill shudders through me.

“I know, Your Majesty.” Basileious fidgets with the cuff of his sleeve. “I promise you the weapon will be yours soon. Before the end of Winter Dark.”

“You swear this to me?”

Basileious dips his head. “On my life.”

Kallias sneers at him. “Don’t disappoint me, or that’s exactly what it will cost. You’re dismissed.”

The engineer bows and leaves the room in a hurry. Only then does Kallias turn to Nicanor.

“What happened during the ceremony? Who taught them that hymn?”

Nicanor holds himself perfectly still, the fear clear in his eyes. “I am not certain, Your Majesty, but it will not happen again. They’ve been properly punished, unless you wish me to dispose of them altogether.”

My heart seizes and Kallias swears. “Not while we have visitors.”

“Very well, Your Majesty.”

“In the meantime, find out everything you can about the Skaandan ambassadors. I don’t trust them.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“And Nicanor?”

The steward meets his gaze, a muscle jumping in his jaw.

“You have served me a long time,” says Kallias. “But if anything like that happens with my Collection ever again, I will put you in a cage. I’ll make you play the part of an acrobat, and I will laugh when you fall and dash your brains out on the floor.”

Nicanor dips his head, so white he looks to be made of snow. “I understand, Your Majesty.”

Kallias sighs, like these conversations have worn him out. He plops down on the couch again, staring moodily at the heating grate.

“Anything else I can do for you, Your Majesty?”

“Bring me Elpis. I could do with a bit of company.”

Nicanor bows and goes to do his bidding.

I scurry away as quickly as I can, sick to my very core.

“I know you’re there,” says Aelia without looking up from her writing. She dips her pen in the bottle of ink on the desk. “You might as well come down.”

For a moment I just crouch in what I thought was my hiding spot above her room, blinking through the cracks in the ceiling.

Then I crawl across the wood planks, squeeze into the heating vent, slip my hands through the grate, and deftly loosen the screws until one side of the vent swivels free, exposing me.

Aelia watches me mildly as I hop down and settle myself cross-legged on the chaise by her writing desk. This room is a little larger than mine, but furnished the same.

Diamonds dangle from Aelia’s ears. She sets her pen on the desk and caps the ink bottle.

“Astridur Sindri,” she says. “Somehow I’m not surprised.” She smiles and rises from her seat, eyeing me pointedly as she sweeps by. “You move like a dancer, you know. Or an acrobat.”

I go cold. Have I really only managed to keep my secret for two days?

She settles again on a plush chair facing me. Her earrings flash in the lamplight. “I do wonder what you’re doing here, back in the court of the king who tormented you, acting the spy for a Skaandan prince.”

She’s trapped me neatly and she knows it, but there is no malice in her gaze.

She leans back in the chair and folds her arms across her chest. “Perhaps you don’t remember me.

But I remember you—how could I forget? I was certain you would fall to your death a dozen times during your routine, all those years ago.

But you didn’t. And here you still are. Surviving.

” She lifts her eyebrows, clearly waiting for me to speak.

I’m prepared for a lot of things, but not this.

How much does Aelia know? How far is she in her father’s confidences?

And why is she here after all these years?

The emperor wants the hidden Iljaria weapon, that much is clear—but does he really trust his daughter enough to send her to fetch it for him?

“I am simply here to negotiate peace for my people,” I say carefully, “and to give Prince Vilhjalmur all the tools he needs to accomplish that.”

Aelia nods, but there’s a glint of something dangerous in her eyes. “I should warn you that we are a bit at cross purposes. Aerona’s arrangement with Daeros is drawing to a close. We have nothing more to gain from them, and they take much more than they give.”

“What is it, exactly, that Aerona wants from Daeros?” I ask, keeping my voice as neutral as I can.

For a heartbeat, her eyes narrow, but then she smiles again, airy and light. “Daeros offered us the designs and building materials for all of Kallias’s inventions.”

My heart stutters. I knew this already, in the vaguest of terms, but not the details. “What kinds of inventions?”

“Lamps, mostly, that burn without fire or fuel. They are useful, of course, but hardly worth the endless shipments of food Daeros has demanded. My father originally signed the trade agreement because Kallias promised—” She cuts herself off, frowning at her slip, and changes the subject.

I curse, inwardly—she very nearly started talking about the Iljaria weapon.

“To be frank, Astridur—” She gives a little laugh. “Why do I get the feeling that that isn’t your real name?”

I grimace, and she studies me intently for a moment before laughing again, like it doesn’t matter.

“To be frank,” she repeats, “the imperial army will be here by summer. They will seize Daeros and absorb it into the empire. And then they will turn their gaze on Skaanda.”

I want to poke at her more, press her to talk about her father’s plans for the Iljaria weapon. But I can’t do that without admitting that I know about it, too. “Why are you telling me all this?” I ask her.

“Because I like you, Astridur, because I believe in the Skaandans’ bid for peace, and I wish very much it could come to fruition.

Because whatever my father’s philosophies, I have not his hunger for more land and people to rule.

And because there is a chance—only a chance, mind you—that if the Skaandans send proper tribute to my father, he will stay his army and let them become an independent province instead of an occupied one. ”

It’s my turn to laugh—there isn’t a chance in hell that Vil and Saga would agree to that .

Aelia waves one hand dismissively, her eyes boring into mine. “But most of all, Astridur, I am telling you this because I have a personal mission I mean to achieve sooner than the summer.”

“And what’s that?”

Her face grows tight with anger. “Putting an end to Kallias’s Collection.”

My gut twists. Gods’ bones, I’m going to be sick again.

She sees it; she softens. “You’re part of the reason I’m here, you know. I refused to leave that acrobat to her fate, locked like a parrot in a cage. I’m glad you got free. I’m sorry it took me so long to come back.”