Page 39

From the mines we ride to the army encampment, skirting around the northern edge of Garran City.

Like the mines, the encampment is much larger than I expected, the barracks and mess hall and training grounds bordered by a high stone wall.

General Eirenaios leads the tour here, with Zopyros, Kallias’s eldest, attempting to help.

We tramp through the encampment and I take everything in, mentally calculating Skaanda’s chances against a far greater force than we had planned on, with more yet to come.

According to Eirenaios, deployed soldiers are being called back to Tenebris on the strength of the truce with Skaanda.

Vil and I exchange glances, this news enough to halt our feud; he gives me a little nod—we’ll discuss the army and figure all this out with Saga later.

We have lunch in the mess hall, and I find Ballast sitting directly across from me at the long table we all share. He studiously avoids my gaze, and his face is pinched and drawn, like he’s in pain. I try not to stare at his eye patch and feel utterly sick. I don’t eat much.

Our last stop before Garran City is the greenhouses, which lie southeast of the palace. There are two dozen of them, massive structures made of metal and glass.

Lord Phaedrus, who oversees the greenhouses, leads us into one of them, and we’re immediately folded in warm, bright light. Crops march the length of the building in neat rows, green and flourishing, and the air smells of rich earth and spring dew.

My eyes turn up, to the dazzling lamps that illuminate the greenhouse, no wick or oil in sight. Vil studies them, too, his eyes wide with awe. I feel myself softening toward him again, the anger from earlier fizzled out.

Lord Phaedrus begins to explain the crop-planting schedule and the average yield of the harvest, but Kallias waves one hand and Lord Phaedrus bows and closes his mouth.

“The lamps are of my own design,” says Kallias, and I find him suddenly very close to me. “Do you like them, Princess Astridur?”

He looks down at me with a smug sort of triumph, and the oil in his beard glitters in the light.

I curl my hands into fists behind the fur cuffs of my sleeves and try to look as if I am in awe of him. “Are you an inventor, Your Majesty?”

He grins. “I am.”

“How do the lamps work?”

“Electricity,” he says, and laughs at my blank look. “I will share the secrets with Skaanda’s engineers, as I have shared them with Aerona.” He nods toward Aelia, who is standing near with her arms crossed.

“You have not shared everything with Aerona, or might I remind you that, in my homeland, your inventions and machines can only be assembled by the Daerosians you send along with the materials, because you have not fully handed us your knowledge, despite your pledge.”

Kallias shrugs off her words with a laugh, and to my horror he grabs my hand and tugs me down one of the rows of plants. Strawberries grow in a tangle of green, and he crouches to pick a handful, then offers them to me.

My heart rages inside my chest—where in the gods’ names is Vil?—but I can do nothing except eat them. They are delicious, the sweetest strawberries I have ever tasted, and yet I want to spit them out like so much poison.

“Father?”

I turn to find Ballast there, the red lines that show from under his patch stark and angry in the bright lights. He doesn’t look at me, but I feel his intent all the same. I fight to stay calm, to keep myself from grabbing his hand and running with him far away from this place.

“What do you want, boy?” Kallias snaps.

There is fear in every line of him, but he simply inclines his head and says, “Lord Seleukos is eager to have our guests enjoy the festival.”

Kallias’s lips thin and Ballast tenses, like he’s bracing for a slap. But Kallias simply brushes the strawberry tops out of my palm and, coiling his hand around my wrist, tugs me back to the rest of our party. Ballast comes after us, but I don’t dare glance at him.

Vil is deep in conversation with Lord Phaedrus about the lamps and crop rotation and designs for building even larger and more efficient greenhouses. My stomach knots. Vil swore to me he’d protect me from Kallias, and he didn’t even notice when the king pulled me away.

Ballast was the one who came to my rescue.

We ride down to Garran City after that, torches bobbing, horses’ hooves crunching through snow. The city greets us with lanterns on high gates and lights in every window, with the smell of candied nuts and roasting meat. The lingering taste of strawberries turns sour on my tongue.

We dismount just past the city gates, attendants taking our horses. Vil comes up beside me and slips his arm through mine. “Notice how Kallias showed us all of that in answer to our gift of food,” he says in a low voice, “and yet he offered us nothing.”

I nod; Kallias’s arrogance has not escaped me.

“But there’s so much potential .” Vil’s eyes spark, his enthusiasm palpable. “Think of it—”

“Not here, Vil,” I remind him.

He squeezes my arm. “You’re right.” His glance flits nervously away before fixing on me again. “I’m sorry about before.”

I shake my head and try to smile. “It’s fine, Vil. Everything is fine.”

He opens his mouth to say something more, but just then Kallias calls for the whole group of us to follow him in a fur-swathed parade into the main city square, crowded with merchant stalls.

A white marble fountain occupies the middle of the square, water frozen in shining arcs. Pierced tin lanterns hang on poles around the fountain, illuminating the dark with fractured pricks of multicolored light. They are far more beautiful, I think, than Kallias’s harsh electricity.

But the arcs of frozen water make my heart thud against my breastbone: Iljaria magic, the power of the Gray Goddess, who rules death and winter. Garran City used to belong to the Iljaria, just as Tenebris did.

Musicians play near the fountain: an old woman beating a pounding rhythm on a pair of hand drums, a boy wielding an assortment of haunting pitched bells, and a pale-haired girl on a lightning-quick violin.

The girl and boy can’t be more than ten, young enough that I inwardly beg them not to play so well, for fear Kallias will take them for his Collection.

But today, it seems, he has other things on his mind.

He turns to me with his satisfied-cat smile, smoothly sliding his hand under my elbow. I can feel the heat of him even through my wool sleeve. “Let me show you the delights of Garran City,” he says low into my ear. “I think you will like it even more than the strawberries.”

I set my jaw, tell myself not to shake, not to pull away, not to vomit all over his silver-embroidered furs. But by the mutilated Bronze God, I don’t know how much longer I can keep up this charade.

“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” says Vil, suddenly beside me again, “but Princess Astridur promised to accompany me this afternoon. Would you allow me to steal her from you?”

Kallias raises his brow at Vil, who is perhaps being too protective of his “cousin.” But mercifully Kallias doesn’t comment on it, just gives a careless shrug and draws his hand back again.

“Take my son with you, then. He hasn’t been enough in company of late, and I fear his manners could do with some polishing.

” He snaps his fingers at Ballast, who obeys his father’s summons like a dog. It rankles me.

“Father?” he says, taut as a bowstring.

“Show our Skaandan friends the city. Spare no expense. And be sure to have them in the arena by the thirteenth hour, or I’ll take your other eye.”

And then Kallias sweeps past us, hailing Aelia, with Zopyros, Theron, Alcaeus, and Lysandra following him like pathetic furry chickens, while the governors go off in a group of their own.

The tension doesn’t leave Ballast’s frame as his eye sweeps from me to Vil and then back again. I brace myself for Vil to make some cutting remark. He doesn’t, just takes my hand, resolutely threading our fingers together.

I pull my hand free, more than irritated that Vil feels some masculine need to stake a claim to me in front of Ballast.

Vil squares his jaw but doesn’t reach for me again.

“Let’s go,” says Ballast brusquely, and stalks off into the square.

We follow, Vil radiating irritation beside me.

We thread our way through a host of merchant stalls selling food and jewelry and trinkets, books, maps, finely spun linen.

There’s a booth displaying small wooden chests, intricately carved, another offering blown glass, and yet another gears and cogs and bits of metal, for crafting clockwork.

It makes me think of my sister, and my heart wrenches.

A change comes over Ballast as we go, and it startles me.

He stops to speak with every one of the vendors and seems to know most of them.

He asks the middle-aged Daerosian woman selling the carved wooden chests if her daughter has recovered from her bout with Gray Fever.

He chats with a grizzled old fisherman about the season’s catch and asks his advice on the best-quality fish to purchase and have sent up to Tenebris.

He squeezes into a filthy alleyway to retrieve a child’s dropped coin, and as he’s giving it back to her, a young woman about my age slips up to him and tugs on his sleeve.

“Lord Prince, can you come?” she asks him. She’s really pretty, which annoys me.

Ballast glances at me and Vil and then back at the woman. “Of course.”

Vil is getting annoyed at all Ballast’s detours, but we follow him and the woman to a booth at the edge of the fair, where leather goods are displayed on a green table, from belts to boots to satchels.

A boy sits on the ground by the table, cradling a bundle of fur in his arms that I think is a hound pup, or was. It’s mangled and bleeding.