Daughters of Ruin (15 page)

It was all a lie. They were protecting her.

That was the final clue that brought it all together for Suki (the threat the day before, (the fact that no one attacked Rhea (the fight over Endrit—as if she were entitled to his affection))). Rhea always seemed so useless (and disappointing) to her father, but she had to know where they were hiding Tola. She knew. She had to know.

And Suki knew in that moment that Rhea was evil (to take everything she loved (Tola) and deserved (Endrit) for herself).

The anger made her numb arm tremble and her head spin. Suki ran toward Rhea (the nobles she had been protecting (a sweet old man who'd said, “You're a lucky man to be dancing with her,” to Endrit (in the short time before the blast) and smiled at her like a nice dad, and his two daughters) shouted after her (but Suki couldn't hear them (or pretended not to))) until she reached one of Rhea's guards (looking the other way) and brained him with her club.

“What are you doing?” screamed Rhea. “He's with us.”

“No, he's with you,” said Suki. (It was the perfect thing to say and the perfect time to say it.)

A rebel preoccupied her other guard. Rhea couldn't even respond. She had only a look of terror (that her plot had been discovered?). Suki felt an icy tremor in her shoulder (had it bled out?). She looked down. The tip of a cutlass jutted out (her nose almost touched it (the blood was really flowing now (the room spun))). Rhea threw a pin from her hair, and Suki felt the weight of the cutlass release from her shoulder (the person holding it must have let go).

As Suki fell, she thought,
I hate her
. She hated that she needed Rhea's help (and she thought that she should turn so she didn't fall onto the hilt of the sword (which would push it farther through)), and finally, as Suki blacked out—her arm cold, her sister Tola likely dead—her last thought was about Rhea (and it was one word (revenge)).

T
ime of the blast: Midnight.

Iren balanced on a rafter beam above the outer hallway.

King Declan stood below.

Four paces ahead.

He walked toward his chambers.

Iren found she could follow anyone in Meridan Keep using the beams of the lamplighters.

Sometimes people looked back.

They never looked up.

The explosion shook the beams and the walls.

Like an avalanche hitting a mountain spire.

Debris vomited from the ballroom and over them.

Screams and shouting.

Iren fell.

She reached out and caught the wood beam under her armpit. Her arm wasn't long enough to wrap around. She was a cat, scrabbling for purchase.

A long drop.

Below, guards rushed to the king's chamber.

She tried to swing her legs under the beam and up the other side.

Her finger slipped.

A tumbling fall.

She twisted around face forward.

Her left knee struck the stones.

A sound like clacking teeth.

Shooting pain.

She bit her tongue.

Blood filled her mouth.

But soundless otherwise, still undetected.

Iren searched for an alcove or unlit corner to hide herself.

She had lost sight of Declan in the fall.

Cloistered in his chamber, most probable, surrounded by guards.

Assignment fifty-three: incomplete.

Iren inspected her knee, no skin break, swollen.

“There she is!” A muffled shout from the end of the hallway.

Three men. Masked. Dressed to look piratical or outlander.

They ran toward Iren. Tactically untrained.

They ran shoulders square. Huge targets.

Iren had throwing blades in the bracers hidden under her sleeves—

“Princess Iren. Halt where you are.”

They knew her name.

Couldn't be outlander.

Iren stood straight, to hide her injury.

Throbbing pain as her knee continued swelling.

She hid the fact that it couldn't hold any weight.

The three men approached and stood abreast instead of surrounding her.

Redundant positioning.

Useless in a fight.

They didn't think much of her.

Iren pretended to shake. She hugged herself and reached into her sleeves.

Two teardrop daggers, tied to the back of each arm.

“What are you doing so near the king's chambers?” said the man in the middle. His voice was distant behind the layers of black terry cloth.

“I was scared.”

Tiny movements to untie each dagger. Kept eye contact to distract.

“Why aren't you in the ballroom?”

“There are villains in the ballroom,” said Iren. She thought of starting to cry, but the men seemed unconcerned.

“You were following the king.”

“Were you following me?”

A scoff. A familiar one.

“Take her back to the hall,” said the leader.

The two men on either side finally approached. Too late now to surround the prey.

Iren pulled the two knives and jumped forward. A glancing blow at the leader and she could puncture their shoddy circle.

It would be a footrace. Vaspata, goddess of diligence, preserve her knee.

Iren cut at the leader's face.

The fabric sliced open as easily as the cheek underneath.

The leader cursed and grabbed his face. Iren ducked under and ran.

One step.

The pain bloomed in all directions.

Behind her, heavy footfalls.

Two. Three.

A rush to the crossway. She would turn left.

No choice. Had to plant on her good knee, or fall.

Crackles of white light with every step.

If she could make it downstairs, to her cache of tools in the kitchen, a loaded crossbow waited.

Maybe Cooky would help her.

Ten more steps to the crossway.

A left, a set of stairs.

Too far.

Her knee buckled.

Iren came up hobbling.

A rough hand clamped on her neck and pushed her face into the sidewall.

She squirmed around to see.

Her captor let her turn but held her by the throat, her back pressed into the stone.

The second man grabbed each wrist in turn and stripped away her knives. The leader approached, hand to cheek. Blood between the fingers. A nice cut. His mask unraveling.

“When this is over, the delegations from three nations will investigate the crime scene. And you, little thorn, will be dead with a Findish blade in your heart.”

“You can let it fall, Magister.”

The man holding her tightened his grip. The leader sighed and let the tattered mask fall away.

Hiram Kinmegistus.

Iren let the line of her lips become a smile.

It was good to see him bleed.

“I suppose our game of cat and mouse is over,” said Hiram. “I've known of your sneaking all about the castle. And your little stash of weapons.”

“Oh,” said Iren, throat nearly clamped shut.

“Did you think you'd escape and run back to the mountains?”

Iren let out a choked laugh.

“Let her speak.”

The man opened his palm. Iren gasped for more air. Her tongue still bled. Still, all she felt was relief.

He didn't know.

The spymaster of Meridan thought her intent was something as silly as running away. All this time he'd known she snuck about the castle, evading guards, fooling even his shinhounds, and yet he still looked at her and saw a little girl, scared and lost.

“Why do you smile?” said the magister.

“I have no weapon,” said Iren. The men waited. “And so I pray to the daughter of Vaspata.”

She was surrounded.

The grip on her throat was tight and the hand armored.

She could dislodge it, at a cost.

Maybe not even then.

Her knee ached.

Another race would be foolish.

Time—maybe time could save her, if someone arrived to see the men assassinating a future queen.

But the blast must have been part of a plot.

Screams could be heard coming from the ball.

Clanging.

War song.

No one would come.

“The goddess of diligence has many daughters,” said Hiram.

Always a fool for correcting.

“The daughter untimely born, who built the first bridge in the Corentine snowcaps.”

She had no weapon.

And neither did Hiram.

He would never again be so exposed.

“The daughter of diligence. Preparation,” she added.

They were confused.

She must have been delirious.

But Hiram was a prideful man, eager to show his learning.

Weakening himself, by speaking too much.

“Ismata,” said the magister. Preparation's true name.

A fool for correcting.

He must have kept his shinhounds near, in case he needed them.

He was unarmed.

And he had given over his only weapon.

“Ismata!” shouted Iren, just before the masked man's grip clenched around her throat. “Latch!”

The scrabbling sound of heavy paws on stone.

Hiram may have known of the name but not its meaning.

Just a little girl, naming beasts.

She had nurtured them for years with new names and alternate commands.

Ismata reared around the corner, growling.

Iren felt her body slacken.

She needed air.

The hound leaped at the man holding Iren, gnashing at the face.

The man went down.

He nearly pulled Iren down with him.

His glove burned as it tugged at her neck.

She wrenched back.

The man hit the stones, screaming.

The second man approached from the left.

Her mouth had filled with blood.

She had been saving it for him.

He jumped forward to grab her.

Iren spat a surge of blood at his eyes.

The man startled.

He was blinded for a short instant.

Iren dashed the other way.

A few steps.

Her knee held.

Then pain.

Lightning.

Fire.

Thunder.

Pain.

The sound of rushing water filled her ear.

Iren fell against a tapestry hanging on the wall.

She didn't think Hiram could move so quickly.

He had kicked her knee from the side just as she'd put her weight on it.

Iren panted.

Hiram grabbed the cuff of her shirt.

She gouged at his eye.

Quicker once again.

He caught her wrist.

Was he a wartime magister?

In all her investigating, had she missed some secret history?

Iren had never been assigned to investigate Hiram.

So many pressing matters.

Seemed he had his own secrets.

His grip crunched her bones together.

She wouldn't squeal. Never.

“What's this?” said Hiram. He roughly pulled back the sleeve. It revealed the leather bracer along her forearm. Tiny rolled-up parchments tucked into pockets. A lockpick set. A thief's kit.

The second man wiped away the blood on his face and joined them.

The first was losing to the hound atop him.

Iren pulled but couldn't free herself.

She feared for an instant that she'd die and wondered who would tell her mother.

Down the hall, around the corner, a figure approached.

Footfalls.

The clicking of braided seashells.

Blessed relief. Iren recognized the noise.

Hiram unstrapped the band with deft fingers and pulled it off her arm.

“You're a spy,” he said. A statement and a question.

“And you're the mouse,” said Iren.

Someone had finally come.

An arrow flew between them and struck the masked man in the collar. He reeled backward and fell. Frantic. Grasping at the feather.

Hiram retraced the shot.

Cadis stood at the end of the hall, another arrow nocked and ready.

Blood covered the lower half of her torn blue dress and splattered all the way up to her shoulders. A butcher's smock.

Hiram let go of Iren.

Cadis had made no sense of the scene.

The magister turned and ran.

“Take the shot,” said Iren, her voice hoarse.

“What happened?”

The question was enough.

Hiram turned the corner. He still had her notes.

Seven assignments, lost.

Declan's schematics for new cannon. Diverted trade routes of Findish caravans. General Hecuba's rumor of war. Iren strained to remember them all.

She would transcribe them again. On the road.

She was found out.

Soon Declan would know.

Even a future queen could be executed for spycraft.

Her mind raced with an order of operations.

Cadis had run up to her.

Iren turned to her, and together they said, “We have to leave.”

Cadis was surprised by their unison statements.

“I mean forever,” said Cadis.

“I know,” said Iren.

“They're killing everyone.”

“Even Rhea?”

“I think so.”

Iren doubted it. But Cadis didn't need to know to comply. Iren's mother always said that information should only ever be given to convince an ally or to kill an enemy. Otherwise it had been given away too freely.

She had already given Hiram too much.

Iren decided to keep her discovery to herself for now—that Hiram was behind the attack. And therefore Declan had orchestrated it all.

He'd blame the Findish rebels. Start another war. This time he had choked his enemies with unfair trade and built his own military in secret. A final war. A war of bloody unification.

But why, then, the Protectorate?

Killing them made sense, of course. But why such an elaborate charade for ten years? Why give them Marta and Hiram? Why teach them their own histories, give them books lent from the academy and sailing lessons in the king's own aqueduct? Why give them Rhea?

Was Declan ever so foolish as to think they would love him? What had he discovered that changed his mind?