Daughters of Ruin (27 page)

“I suppose.” He still read.

Iren was finished with the niceties. “Look. I understand you won't take me.”

“Good.”

“Because we're not bosom friends.”

“Because you have trouble written all over you.”

“Nothing is written all over me.”

“Very well.”

“If you're an honest man, then I would send a letter.”

“I'm no shinhound.”

“Please,” said Iren. She placed a small parcel including an encrypted letter and her signet ring onto the ledger the man read. Next to it she placed a bag of silver.

The man sighed.

“That's the most I've begged anyone,” said Iren. “There's a woman, a landlord. She keeps a flat on the riverfront. Ask anyone for Dokhtar Zafira.”

“Dokhtar Zafira,” said the man.

“I wrote it on the parcel.”

The captain nodded. Iren turned and walked away. The captain reminded her of her father, sentimentalist that he was. The king of Corent, off to be medic, on the front lines. Honor-bound. Dead.

The captain would deliver to Zafira.

Zafira would see the ring and send the parcel immediately to Queen Malin in the capital. Her mother would decrypt the message—a brief of all that had happened.

Iren walked up the alley toward the Odeon. The streets were alight with torches, and crowded. Taverns disgorged their diners toward the theaters. Jugglers and bards played at the entrances to welcome guests.

Iren moved through the crowds like a wind-swept leaf. The signet ring was the last piece of evidence that she was heir to the Corentine spires.

She was alone.

A pack of children surrounded her in a plaza. They offered trinkets and a shoeshine. Iren waded through them. A juggler in front of a theater shouted to her, “Careful, miss. They'll pick your pocket.”

As Iren passed by, she dropped a handful of souvenirs and a few coppers into the juggler's upturned hat. “I picked theirs,” she said.

She liked the sound he made.

“Whoa.”

She liked being alone.

She was the shade scarab. A creature grown in the darkness. In Corent the magisters kept the vicious things in cages at the very tip of the spires—where they would get the least amount of shade. They stayed the size of a human hand. But deep in the mountains they grew into bulls. Their chitinous
click, click, click
haunted the caverns. Like the scarab, Iren was kept small by the constant glare of Hiram Kinmegistus, Declan, and the Protectorate court.

She hid her talents from the light.

Always withdrew.

Always pretended.

Dainty Iren.

Delicate.

Domestic.

But she was free now. In the shadow of the great wide open, where she was just another homeless child roaming the streets.

Iren smiled as she crossed the bridge to the island of the Odeon. The guards had no idea. The guildmasters. Even Cadis. That she had been loosed onto the world. Its shade would be her food, until she could reach her mother.

She ascended the stairs and entered the Odeon.

She nodded to the doorman.

She smiled.

She made a
click, click, click
sound.

The Odeon was built for gatherings. Outside the common hall was a garden palisade. None of the usual balconies designated for nobles. No inner sancta where royals distinguished themselves, even from their lesser cousins.

Just long garden paths.

Open porticoes where everyone strolled in leisure.

What social creatures these Findains must have been.

Iren crossed the garden without looking up.

Past two picnics.

Past a poet's recital.

Past three separate games of dice.

The castle of the Archon Basileus was the only other structure on the small island in the mouth of the harbor.

Cadis would be within.

Butting heads with Hypatia.

Sparring with Arcadie Kallis.

Flaunting herself for Jesper.

She was made for such constant melodrama.

She was a fish back into water.

So much social pressure.

So much business conducted over jokes and a handshake.

It was a wonder to Iren that Findain ever rose to power.

They ran a country as if it were a primary school, with cliques and guilds and secret societies. Whispers and singing and talent shows.

Everyone equal.

Another way of saying everyone vying for attention.

Unstructured rule by popularity.

Iren preferred a few magisters, a good debate, and efficient action. Iren entered the gathering hall in the basilica.

To her credit, Cadis was studying the ledgers of the central banks.

Hypatia Terzi lounged nearby, writing a letter.

Jesper stood over Cadis's shoulder, explaining some of the names on the ledger. Unwritten explanations.

Jesper stopped when he saw Iren.

Cadis turned. It was concern on her face.

Something amiss.

Iren checked the exits: the entry and two doors, none guarded.

Three windows, all closed but breakable.

“Where were you?” said Jesper.

“Dancing,” said Iren. It came with a sharpened stare.

They all knew she didn't dance.

Now they knew she didn't answer to Jesper Terzi either.

Cadis stood from her seat. “Iren, it's nothing.”

“What's nothing?”

“Come away from the door.”

“I'd rather not.”

“Oh, stop coddling,” said Hypatia. “We know where you've been.”

Iren didn't respond. If she had to, she could run. All she really needed was the brace on her left arm. It held her knives and thief's kit. She could sleep in gullies with the homeless.

At night she could steal into the basilica for her travel pack. A land route to Corent would take two and a half months at this time of year. The plan formalized instantaneously.

“What were you doing at the docks?” said Jesper. He spoke like a boy trying to speak like a man.

Cadis touched his arm. She seemed concerned. She was wearing more powder than usual.

“Now, hold on,” said Cadis. “I trust Iren.”

Hypatia snorted from her seat. “Then you're a fool.”

“She's my sister,” said Cadis. Then to Iren, “We didn't mean to ambush.”

Iren needed more information. What could they possibly know?

Iren felt blind. “I was at the docks.”

They must have been following her.

“What were you doing?” said Jesper.

“Hopscotch,” said Iren.

“Why don't you answer the question?”

“Because I don't answer to you.”

“Iren,” said Cadis. “We already know.”

“We?” said Iren.

“Did you think a ship captain of Findain would keep your little secret?” said Hypatia.

So much for finding an honest man.

Cadis looked at her with genuine ache and confusion.

“Just tell us,” said Cadis. “Please.”

Iren knew she was cornered. Both were. Cadis could hardly stand beside her and keep hold of her tenuous position. She would have to take a tactical loss.

“Fine,” said Iren. “I went to the docks and asked the captain to send a letter to my mother.”

That was enough. Cadis seemed relieved. “See?” she said, as if proving an argument she had made earlier.

“But what did you write?” said Hypatia.

“Daughterly things.”

“Spying, you mean.”

“We don't know that,” said Cadis.

“Why else would you write in code?” said Hypatia. She held the letter aloft. It was Iren's.

The captain must have run it over immediately. Hypatia's underground network was more impressive than Iren had figured.

“We have our language.”

“A spy cipher.”

“So we like puzzles,” said Iren with a shrug.

“Not such a clever one,” said Hypatia. The noose was tightening. Iren remembered Hypatia had been writing on the parchment when she'd entered. Hypatia read from the letter.

Two days of surveillance on all of Cadis's movements, ending with, “Cadis is desperate for their approval as one of their own. She will break soon. The revolutionaries will have her.”

Hypatia lowered the letter. A triumphant sneer. “I guess I just solved your little code.”

Iren would have put three blades into her, center mast. But Cadis's silence was far more alarming. She had flushed into a deep crimson rage. She could never hide an emotion.

Her hands clenched.

Jesper seemed afraid to touch her.

She couldn't look at Iren.

She shook.

Then she lunged for Iren's face.

C
adis would know what to do, surely. Always the one with poise under pressure. Like Rhys.

Rhea, in turn, was utterly lost.

Did my father really make a criminal of me? Would he have thrown Rhys away so easily? Does he really believe that Marta was the leader of the rebels?

As they sat on the farmhouse porch, Rhea couldn't look at either of them. Suki had a frantic tremor ever since she awoke. Her eyes darted, glared at Rhea, lusted after Endrit. Her motions were jerky and her sentences scattered. Rhea wondered what the true toll of the attack had been on her little sister—certainly, it was deeper than the wound on her shoulder.

At least she wasn't sneaking around the barn anymore, listening to their conversations and pretending they couldn't see her.

Suki sat on the grass, on the other side of the broken-down fence, as far away from Rhea as she could be, eating more food. The little thing had eaten twice the portion of Endrit, who busied himself fixing the fence she had obviously broken.

He didn't seem to mind. He was never upset at Suki. He always doted.

Rhea tried to help by clearing the broken plants in the garden bed.

Why are we even doing this?
she thought.

Have we finally broken under the strain?

Endrit didn't seem broken. But the energy had to go somewhere. He dug at the base of each fence post, straightened it out, then packed the dirt again. He was searching for an answer that none of them had.

“What do we do?” said Rhea.

“Kill them,” said Suki.

“The guards?” said Rhea. The plaza had far too many.

Even the three of them approaching from the rooftops couldn't hope to beat them. “There are too many,” said Rhea.

“I meant all of them,” said Suki. She stared a thousand yards into the distance, in the direction of Walltown.

She lifted both hands in the air, in the shape of a ball, and then splayed her fingers outward. “Boom.”

She's completely lost her grip on reality
, thought Rhea. She turned to Endrit and spoke softer. Maybe Suki wouldn't hear, or wouldn't bother returning from whatever mad fantasy she was concocting. “Endrit, we have only a day.”

“What can we do?” he said, pushing the shovel deep into the dirt with his heel. Only a few days ago, she would have relished watching him at his work.

“I don't know,” she said.

“We need more information.”

Then why is he fixing a stupid fence? Why aren't we stalking outside of Meridan Keep? Why aren't we trying to save Marta?

“Do you have a plan?” she ventured.

“Mmm-hmm,” groaned Endrit as he lifted a shovelful of dirt.

Then why isn't he telling me? Does he think me still loyal to my father?

Rhea snapped a broken stalk from a tomato plant and tied the salvageable remains to the fence for support.

Am I still loyal? Or better put, is he?

Rhea couldn't help but go over the events of the night of the Revels. In the light of her newfound suspicions, her father's behavior seemed suddenly intricate and insidious. He had escorted her to her chamber that night and stationed a guard at the door.

Was he protecting me from the attack?

If so, why didn't he tell me?

Was he unsure?

She had felt such a zigzag of emotions in the market square, when she saw he had taken some sort of awful injury to the leg.
Why had he protected only her, if he knew? And what of Hiram? Where is he? Was he killed in the attack?

Declan must have barely survived. Rhea felt overwhelmed and empty at the same time. She knew the man who had raised her was long gone. And perhaps he had only ever been there in her near-blind devotion.

As she considered the depth of her father's involvement in the deaths of hundreds in the Meridan court, Rhea rolled a leaf of March mint, a Corentine medicinal plant, in the palm of her hand. It was known to have a calming effect. Rhea closed her eyes and thought of Iren.

How did we come to this? How did we let the years come between us? Will we all stand against one another on the battlefield?

For a long time the three were silent—Rhea reliving her childhood, revising each and every interaction with her father; Suki eating all of their rations while running some sort of hedge maze in her mind; and Endrit frantically digging fence posts as if it would save his mother.