The Beauty of Darkness (35 page)

“Once upon a time,

Long, long ago,

Seven stars were flung from the sky.

One to shake the mountains,

One to churn the seas,

One to choke the air,

And four to test the hearts of men.

Your hearts are to be tested now.

Open them to the truths,

For we must not just be ready

For the enemy without,

But also the enemy within.”

She paused, choking on her words. Silence clutched the plaza, everyone waiting, mesmerized, and then she continued.

“For the Dragon of many faces,

Dwells not just past the great divide,

But among you.

Guard your hearts against his cunning,

Your children against his thirst,

For his greed knows no bounds,

And so shall it be,

Sisters of my heart,

Brothers of my soul,

Family of my flesh,

For evermore.”

She kissed two fingers and lifted them to the heavens, a heavy sadness to her movement.

“For evermore,” the crowd echoed back, but I was still trying to comprehend it all. The words of Morrighan and her kin? Seven stars? A dragon?

The queen stood and looked behind her as if she had heard something. She jumped down from the wall and hurried away, disappearing into the darkness as easily as night. Seconds later, the balcony doors burst open and the Watch Captain stepped out on the empty balcony with several guards. It was then that I saw the Chancellor standing only a few feet to my right. He was still staring up at the balcony, perhaps trying to understand the queen's unexpected appearance. I turned, tugging on my hood, and hurried away, but in spite of the danger, something compelled me to return the next night. The queen's urgent prayer still stirred within me. Again, she spoke just as the veil of darkness fell, and this time from the east tower.

The next evening, Berdi and Gwyneth came with me. The queen was on a wall below the western turret. I worried for her, perched so uncertainly on ledges and roofs, and I wondered if her grief had made her reckless. Or mad. She said things I had never heard before. The crowds grew, but it was her haunting words that prodded us to return. On the fourth night, the queen appeared in the abbey bell tower.
Open your hearts to the truth.

“Are you certain that's the queen?” Gwyneth asked.

A nagging doubt that had prowled behind my breastbone was set free by her question. “She's impossible to see from here,” I answered, still trying to puzzle it out, “but she does wear the royal cloak.”

“What about her voice?”

And that was the strange part. Yes, her voice was like the queen, but it was also a voice that seemed like a hundred I had known, a timeless sound, like the wind in the trees. It passed through me as if it held a truth of its own.

Gwyneth shook her head. “That's not the queen up there.”

Then Berdi voiced the impossible, what we were all thinking. “It's Lia.”

I knew it was true.

“Thank the gods she is alive, but why is she posing as the queen?” Gwyneth wondered aloud.

“Because the queen is revered,” Berdi answered. “Who would listen to the most wanted criminal in Morrighan?”

“And she is preparing us,” I said. But preparing us for what, I didn't know.

 

CHAPTE
R
FIFTY

Only a midnight moon gave contour to the room. Dim gray defined the lines of the ornate pewter goblet in my hand. I set it back in the curio cabinet, alongside other mementos from years of service. A medallion from Eislandia, a gilded sea shell from Gitos, a sculpted jade bear from Gastineux. Unique tokens from every kingdom on the continent, except of course Venda, with whom there were no diplomatic relations. The Viceregent's duties as consul took him on many long trips. I hadn't seen him complain, but the pleasure he expressed upon returning home had said much about the hardships of his travel.

I closed the door of the cabinet and sat in a chair in the corner. Waiting. The darkness offered quiet comfort. I could almost forget where I was, except for the sword lying across my lap.

I was running out of options. It was getting harder to sneak through the citadelle, and by the fourth evening, I'd had to switch to the abbey. The citizens found me there. No doubt the cabinet would have guards stationed at the abbey tonight too.

The first night I had said remembrances over the portico, it was a miracle that I had gotten away at all. I was more careful now, but that night I was reckless and undone. My stomach had twisted into knots. All my carefully planned words had vanished. After seeing my mother with the Royal Scholar, grief had slashed through me like a sharp knife, shredding everything I had hoped for: A tearful reunion. A long-earned explanation. A misunderstanding.
Something.

Instead I found the Royal Scholar standing at my mother's side, and got an admission of conspiracy and a guard drawing his sword. Thirty mad seconds with her became a betrayal of the worst kind, and the most painful and perplexing thing of all was,
I still ached for her.

I heard footsteps in the outer chamber. I adjusted my grip on the sword. I had nothing to lose by this meeting and maybe something to gain, however small. I'd already searched the Chancellor's and Royal Scholar's offices, hoping to turn up some sort of evidence. A letter. Anything. The rooms were suspiciously clean and orderly, as if they'd already been scoured and emptied of anything incriminating. I even searched the ashes of their hearths, knowing that was how they'd tried to make things disappear in the past, and found small bits of charred paper but nothing more.

The Viceregent's office was cluttered, his desk a busy sea of papers clamoring for his attention, a half-finished letter to the trade minister, and some commendations ready for his signature and seal. Nothing had been scoured here.

The footsteps drew closer and the office door opened, a triangle of yellow briefly illuminating the floor before it was shut out again. He crossed the room, his footfalls light, and a faint scent swept in with him. Cologne? I had forgotten about the perfumed and pampered smells of court. In Venda the Council mostly smelled of sweat and sour ale. I heard the soft whoosh of the thickly upholstered chair as he sat, and then he lit a candle.

He still didn't see me.

“Hello, Lord Viceregent.”

He startled and began to stand.

“No,” I said softly but firmly. “Don't.” I stepped into the light so he could see my sword casually resting over my shoulder.

He eyed the weapon and returned to his seat, saying simply, “Arabella.”

His expression was solemn, but his voice was low and even, unpanicked as I'd thought it would be. The Timekeeper would have been spinning in circles and screaming by now, but the Viceregent wasn't prone to hysterics like some in the cabinet. He was never in a hurry, never rushed. I sat down in the chair across from him.

“Are you going to point that thing at me the whole time?” he asked.

“It's not pointed. Believe me, if it were, you would know it—and feel it. I'm actually affording you a bit of grace. I always liked you more than the other members of the cabinet, but that doesn't mean you're not one of them.”

“One of what, Arabella?”

I tried to gauge the innocence of his response. At this moment, it didn't matter if he had ever been kind to me. I hated that I couldn't take a chance even on kindness. I could trust no one.

“Are you a traitor, Viceregent?” I asked him. “Like the Chancellor and Royal Scholar?”

“I'm not sure what you're saying.”

“Treason, Lord Viceregent. Treason at the highest levels. I think the Chancellor has grown tired of the baubles on his fingers. And who knows what the Royal Scholar's stake in this is. One thing I've learned from our dear Komizar is it all comes down to power and an insatiable hunger for it.” I told him about the Morrighese scholars in Venda, helping the Komizar arm and build a massive army. As I explained, I carefully watched his eyes, his face, his hands. All I saw was surprise and disbelief, and possibly a certain level of fear, as if I were insane.

When I was finished, he sat back in his chair, his head shaking slightly, still absorbing everything I had said. “A barbarian army? Scholars in Venda? Those are rather … fantastical claims, Arabella. I don't know what to do with them. I can't go to the cabinet armed only with accusations against esteemed members, especially from, I'm sorry to say,
you.
I'd be laughed out of the hall. Do you have any evidence?”

I didn't want to admit that I had none. I thought of Kaden, who had actually seen the army, the scholars in the caverns, and intimately knew of the Komizar's plans—but the word of a Vendan Assassin would be as laughable as mine.

“I may,” I answered. “And then I'll expose the Dragon of many faces.”

He looked at me, confusion wrinkling his brow. “A dragon? Now what are you talking about?”

He wasn't familiar with the phrase. Or at he least pretended not to be. I shook his question away and stood. “Don't get up—and that's not a polite request.”

“What do you want from me, Arabella?”

I looked at him, scrutinizing every angle of his face, every flutter of his lashes. “I want you to know there are traitors in your midst, and if you are one of them, you will pay. You'll pay as dearly as my brother did. I wasn't the one who killed him. It was those fools who conspire with the Komizar.”

He frowned. “The conspiring fools again. If they exist, as you claim, they've managed to hide it from me, so maybe they're not as foolish as you think.”

“Trust me,” I said, “they're not half as cunning as the Komizar, nor half as intelligent. They're fools to believe he'd keep any agreement they've struck with him. The Komizar shares nothing, least of all, power. Whatever he has promised—and I'm guessing it's the throne of Morrighan—they will never see it. Once he uses them for his purposes, they're done. As are we.”

I turned to leave, but he quickly leaned forward, the candlelight illuminating a stray blond wisp falling over his brow. His eyes were earnest. “Wait! Please, Arabella, stay. Let me help. I'm sorry I didn't more vigorously defend you. I've made mistakes in the past too—ones I deeply regret.” He stood. “I'm sure we can straighten this out if—”

“No,” I said, raising my sword. The scent wafted again, a flutter so faint it was hardly there, but it unsettled me in a deep distant way. It was jasmine. The thought burrowed deeper.
Jasmine
. In the same breath, I saw a little boy clinging to the trousers of his father, pleading to stay.

Jasmine soap.

I was jolted with the impossible. I gaped at the Viceregent, staring as if I were meeting him for the first time. His white-blond hair. His calm brown eyes. The smooth tremor of his voice floating through my head. And then another voice of a similar timbre.
I was a bastard child born to a highborn lord.

My breath froze in my lungs. How had I never seen it before?

Heard it before?

The Viceregent was Kaden's father, a man as cruel as the Komizar, beating his son and selling him to strangers for a copper.

He stared at me, waiting, hopeful.

But was he a traitor?

I've made mistakes in the past too—ones I deeply regret.

Worry flashed through his eyes.

Worry over me?

Or worry that I had discovered his secret?

“Why would I ever trust a man who threw out his eight-year-old son like a piece of garbage?”

His eyes widened. “Kaden? Kaden's alive?”

“Yes, alive and still very scarred. He has never healed from your betrayal.”

“I—” His face crumpled as if he was overwhelmed, and he leaned forward, his head braced in his hands. He mumbled quietly to himself then said, “I searched for him for years. I knew I'd made a mistake the minute it was done, but I couldn't find him. I assumed he was dead.”

“Searched for him after selling him for a copper to strangers?”

He looked up, his eyes wet. “I did no such thing! Is that what he told you?” He leaned back in his chair, looking weak and spent. “I shouldn't be surprised. He was a grieving child who had just lost his mother. I've wanted to take back that decision a hundred times, but I was grieving too.”

“And what decision was that?”

His eyes squeezed shut as if a painful memory tormented him. “I was trapped in a loveless marriage. I didn't mean for the affair with Cataryn to happen, but it did. My wife tolerated the arrangement well enough because she had no use for me and Cataryn was good to our sons, but after Cataryn died, she'd have no part of Kaden. When I tried to move him into our house, she beat him in a rage. I didn't know what else to do. For his own good, I contacted Cataryn's only relative, a distant uncle who agreed to take him in. I was the one who gave him money for Kaden's care. When I went to visit Kaden, the uncle and his family were gone.”

“That's a far different story than the one Kaden tells.”

“What else can you expect, Arabella? He was only eight years old. In only a few days, his world was turned upside down—his mother died, and his father sent him to live with strangers. Where is he? Here?”

Even if I had known where Kaden was, I wouldn't have revealed it to the Viceregent—yet. “Last I saw him, he was in Venda—an accomplice of the Komizar.”

Disbelief shone in his eyes, and I left before he could ask me another question.

 

CHAPTE
R
FIFTY-O
N
E

I paced the caretaker's cottage on the edge of the millpond, listening to the rain. I had already stoked a fire and wiped down the sparse furniture that filled it—a battered table, three rickety chairs, a stool, a rocker that was missing one arm, and the wooden frame of a bed, still sturdy, but its mattress eaten by mice long ago.