Daughters of Ruin (6 page)

“Wouldn't you?” said Iren.

“Oh, of course,” said Cadis. “I'd teach the dog your tea ceremony and present him at the Revels wearing laces and a petticoat.”

Endrit laughed.

Marta sucked her teeth. For such an embarrassment, the magister would kill the dogs and burn the stadium with all the revelers still in it.

“I think it's hilarious,” said Suki, eyeing Endrit to make sure he agreed.

“You shouldn't have done this,” said Marta as she approached the hound and pulled the rolled parchment from the holster around its neck.

The beast, even while sitting, was nearly as tall as she was and twice as thick. Rhea imagined her teacher during the Battle of Epiphany Rising, fending off war dogs with a long-handled bident, which the soldiers called “shin guards.”

Marta never talked about the bite marks on her forearms, just as she never discussed the war.

She unrolled the parchment and read, “By the word of good King Declan, Protector and Preserver of the Pax Regina.”

Rhea let go of the lock of hair she had been nervously twirling around her finger. She tried not to tense in front of the others, but rarely did her father speak to them through the magister's hands.

Marta continued. “Regarding the Revels, tenth of their kind. In light of the ever-present threat of attacks and subterfuge by Findish radicals—”

Rhea knew what would happen next. Marta paused, as if to give Cadis time to act righteously indignant. Cadis stood erect and jutted her chin to take the insult with public dignity. To Rhea, the show was overwrought. Her father had expressly written “radicals.” No one was saying the perfect princess had anything to do with it. But that didn't matter to Cadis. She wore her victimhood proudly.

“Go on,” said Rhea.

“—to protect against such treason against the four crowns, the midnight ball will be reserved to the noble families of Meridan, royal guests, and guardian hands of the high court.”

“That's not fair,” said Suki.

“None others shall be permitted into Meridan Keep,” said Marta, finishing the message. “So spake the king.”

Rhea held her breathing. Of course her father would be cautious. He was the only one with the burden of protecting the Keep from attack. Hiram's spies must have uncovered a plot of some kind. But none of the girls were interested in spycraft. They just knew Endrit and the other performers couldn't come to the celebratory dance. After all his work.

Rhea was heartbroken too. But she knew the others would blame her for the whole thing.

And she had the least to complain about. She'd be dancing with Endrit anyway, at the exhibitions. Even so, she
had
hoped to dance with him later, when fewer eyes would be upon them and they weren't trying to kill each other, when—maybe—she could close her eyes, feel warm hands about her, and calm her anxious thoughts for just a short while. Rhea bemoaned the loss quietly, to herself.

“It'll be just us and a bunch of inbred nobles?” said Suki with a pout.

“They don't inbreed in Meridan,” said Iren.

“Then why are they so scrawny and weird?” said Suki.

“Because they're pampered and boring,” said Iren.

“Well, I'm not touching any of them,” said Suki. Sometimes she still sounded like the five-year-old brat who had been spoiled rotten back in the court of Tasan. The high emperor had five children. The sycophant Tasanese nobles treated all of them like a pantheon of insolent gods.

As soon as Rhea rolled her eyes, she regretted it. Suki—of course—had been watching Rhea as she insulted Meridan, to measure the success of her needling.

“I hope there is a Findish revolt. Then we can finally go home.”

“Suki!” said Marta. Rhea bit back the obvious retort, as she always did with their baby sister. If Findain instigated all-out war, the last thing the girls would be doing was going home. But if Rhea said it—even though Iren and Cadis already knew—it would destroy the last vestige of their relationship. They stabbed and stabbed the dragon, but if Rhea ever breathed her fire, they would act shocked and claim they always knew dragons to be so vicious.

“What?” said Suki. “How long do we have to do this? I have my own little siblings to condescend to.” She cast unsubtle glances at Rhea as she spoke.

Is she foolish or delusional? Even if she returns after ten years, which of her siblings would even recognize her? In such a formal court, would they ever bow to a Meridan-raised queen, even if she is the oldest now?

For a tense moment only the shinhound made any noise, chomping on some other treat that Iren must have given from a hidden fold in her sleeve.

Endrit—
thank the gods for him—
finally broke the silence by giving Suki exactly what she seemed to be mewling for. He reached out, put a hand on her waist, and pulled her back from her battlefield. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders—so obviously as a big brother would, though Suki wouldn't know it—and said, “There won't be anything so exciting as a revolt. The Findish have their future queen to fight for them at court.”

The stable hand is no diplomat,
thought Rhea. Cadis had no sway in the Meridan court. It would only make them feel like hostages. But Rhea was tired of caring how her sisters felt all the time.

“Come on, girls,” said Marta. “To bed. You'll be up all night tomorrow.”

“Not if those Findish radicals attack,” said Cadis bitterly. The barb wasn't as funny as she might have expected.

“And not if I have to dance with nobles,” said Suki.

Rhea felt them all avoid her gaze. They blamed her, though they would never say it. She was the daughter of the man who'd conceived of the Protectorate—the nature of their entire relationship. Their captor—if they wanted to think of it so ungenerously. Rhea was certain that Cadis felt so. She had a seafarer's wanderlust, always consulting maps and travelers' accounts of the wider world. She was the one already fit to rule—the only one among them rightly called a woman. But here she sat. Of all of them, Cadis seemed the most shackled, the most caged. Rhea would happily open the cage, if she could, and wish good riddance of her so-called sister.

At least she would not be treated as their constant villain, even though she was their sister and friend and advocate.

“I could speak to the king,” offered Rhea. “Maybe we can bring guests.”

Suki scoffed, “If I wanted your dad to listen to someone, I would have asked Cadis.” It was Rhea's mistake to ever hold out an olive branch.

“Has anyone considered that maybe I'm not so keen on dancing with a bunch of termagants who do nothing but abuse and boss me around?” said Endrit.

“Endrit!” said Marta, the only one still horrified by his familiarity with the queens.

Suki laughed, turned around, and slapped Endrit's shoulder where she had just bandaged his cut.

“Are we toilsome prey compared to your handmaidens?” said Cadis. The look she received from Endrit, which both Rhea and Suki observed, was a raised brow, an impressed smirk, and a mischievous sparkle of the eye.

The shinhound shuffled nervously and barked to remind Marta that the parchment needed to be returned.

“Oh, they're not maidens,” said Endrit. “Does the captain of Findain not approve?”

Cadis made a playful show of turning her back to him. Rhea always suspected that Cadis could have him if she wanted.

“All right. To bed with all of you,” said Marta, clapping her hands.

Iren continued to gather her glasswork into the oilcloth, and that was signal enough for all of them to disperse. Suki griped and demanded a kiss on the cheek from Endrit, who obliged.

Cadis marched straight to her room. The precaution for their personal safety was still a personal insult, apparently.

Endrit slung his arm around his mother as if she were another sister and leaned down to kiss her sincerely on the temple. As he walked Marta out, he said over his shoulder, “Good night, my queens,” as a jester might say it, with too much gravitas, to make it sound foolish.

Suki chirped, “Good night!” and ran off, leaving Rhea and Iren sitting across from each other at the oaken round table.

Iren collected her glass-cutting tools in silence. Rhea sat for a short while, listening to her heart, still pounding from her training.

Rhea suddenly felt the overwhelming desire for a sister—a true sister—in whom she could confide, one whose only loyalty was to her, and not the others. She wished she could tell Iren about her training and ask if Iren felt as she did about Endrit in moments of such intense and terrifying desire that she imagined herself pinning him down, kissing him, pressing herself to him, but found herself at a loss for what to do after.

The image would turn murky and dreamlike. Rhea would feel embarrassed, as if Endrit could tell that she was childlike and ill versed in the details of love.

When they were younger, Iren had showed them an illuminated page from the poems of the ribald monk Hakan. In the corner, a couple sat entwined, one kissing the other's nape, the other openmouthed like a baby bird, begging the gods to transfix them, just as they were, onto the parchment of a book, so that they could remain in their embrace forever.

The girls had giggled at the lewd painting and teased one another.

Cadis had elbowed Suki and said, “That'll be you and Cooky Cogburn,” the greasy old kitchen master.

“No!
Akh
. I wanna be the girl who rides the gryphon across the sea,” she'd said, pointing to another illuminated page.

That was a particularly nice memory for Rhea, a time when they were four sisters sneaking together—not three and the king's daughter.

“Something wrong?” said Iren.

Rhea returned from her memory to the table, the central chamber, midnight before the Revels Ten. The candles guttering outside. The guards clapping their heels on the stone.

“No,” she said.

“You were staring at me,” said Iren.

“Sorry,” said Rhea.

“Nervous?”

“No,” said Rhea. She hated them to know her weaknesses.

“We could have Cooky send up mulled cocoa.”

“No, thanks,” said Rhea, smiling at the coincidence of old Cogburn in her musing.

“After the last time, it's natural to be nervous,” said Iren. She paused from her packing to look up. It wasn't a warm expression, but it might have been the best Iren could muster. Only she could be so blunt in her caregiving. Rhea didn't respond.

“You missed one,” said Iren. She pointed with a glass grinder at Rhea's left ear. Rhea reached up and felt a hairpin still in her hair.

“Thanks,” she said.
Will I forever feel like the sloppy pig slumped before the emira of Corent?

“I was serious about speaking to the king about admitting Endrit,” said Rhea. Iren stacked the glass pieces from largest to smallest, arranged by color.

Finally, she said, “Ismata, go kiss the future queen.”

The shinhound sprang around the table and licked Rhea's outraised palms. Rhea laughed. It felt wonderful to laugh. It was a small gesture, but Iren's favor came in tiny doses, and Rhea was relieved to have it.

“For your kindness, Your Majesty,” said Iren.

Rhea walked down the wide stone corridor of Meridan Keep as she always did—as her father taught her—with a weapon hidden in her palm. The hairpin was sharp enough to suture a crocodile's maw. “Pray you never need it,” her father had whispered, “but some in the castle will never love us. Some think I killed my friend Kendrick and hid his heir in the dungeons.”

But such was always the way—Rhea knew—with royal clamor. Rumor and conspiracy rarely bothered with the truth. Rhea had watched her father weep for good King Kendrick, his bosom friend, every year. She had seen the dungeons, which Declan had emptied of prisoners and showed to disbelieving nobles.

“All this room,” he had said, standing in the basement floor. “I suppose Meridan Keep will boast the largest wine cellar in all of Pelgard.”

He had no heart for dungeons and no interest in rumors.

“Meet rumors with quiet, my love.”

When Rhea was younger and felt her sisters hush whenever she entered a chamber, that was his coda.
Meet rumor with quiet.
But he was no fool, for as she got older, he told her of the discontented nobles who would fare better under some mocked-up heir to Kendrick—a puppet they would name Taylin, after Kendrick's misbegotten babe. He told her of the Findish rebels. And he added to their code: “Meet rumor with quiet, treason with cunning.”

Rhea followed the shinhound Iren had secretly named Ismata toward Hiram's study, where she would likely find her father as well. The magister was cunning enough for all of them.

His shinhounds carried secret messages throughout the palace and the spy networks of Meridan.

No treason would match the young magister's cunning.