The Prince of Exiles (The Exile Series) (34 page)

“He’s really quite good,” Leah said. “Just wait, you’ll hear. Elder Ceres asked him to perform in her piece this year. Each of the Elders put up something, and everyone goes from one to the other. They’re all small, but it’s fun. You’ll see.”

“So the Elders sponsor performances?”

“Sponsor?”

“Financially back them. Produce them.”

“No,” Leah said, amused. “Elders have no money.”

“Ah, of course,” Raven said. This made sense to him. None of the royalty of the Empire carried money – everything was given to them as was their due. He quickly explained as much to Leah.

“That’s not the way it is,” she said, her eyes laughing at him though she tried diplomatically to keep her mirth from coloring her voice. “When they become Elders, their money is distributed evenly to all five cities.”

“But … then why would any of them desire to be elected?”

“Some of them don’t,” Leah said, laughing ruefully. “But if the people choose you, you must go.”

“Wait … they’re
forced
to rule?”

“Yes,” Leah said, “in a way. When an Elder dies, the people choose who they think best exemplifies that area of study, and the man or woman who the most people choose is given the office. Unless they choose to resign, like Warryn, in which case he’s given a stipend and the Elders nominate a replacement who the Kindred vote on. But he’ll never be allowed to resume his old post – it would be unfair, now that he knows so much about politics and statecraft.”

“Why would you ever want that?” Raven asked, horrified. “And more so – who would allow themselves to be dictated to in such a way? It’s the complete reverse of the natural order, the complete opposite of how a government is effectively run!”

“When you’re chosen as Elder, you receive all the knowledge of all past Elders,” she said, reminding him of what Crane had told him of the daggers – the
sambolin
. “Who would turn down such a wealth of knowledge? And what’s more, each Elder is the de facto head of their respective Guild. They are given control over all the resources of their profession. True, they lose any fortune they may have gained, but in return they are given complete reign over the field that gave rise to that fortune. Not only that, they inherit the previous Elder’s study which usually contains craft secrets of which they barely even dreamed.”

“Knowledge,” Raven said suddenly, the pieces falling into place. “Your entire nation is built on an economy of knowledge.”

“Indeed,” she said, smiling, watching him with a strange hunger, as if envying him the chance to learn all of this again for the first time.

Raven was staggered by the idea. The shifts that such an economy would make in the basic values of the Commons … hundreds of new ideas seemed to unfold before him, new implications he could never have considered.

“I don’t even know where to begin,” he said to her.

Leah smiled knowingly and looked at Tomaz.

“I know we were headed to the Bricks … but what do you think about taking him to the Library?”

A smile split Tomaz’s face, and the big man nodded. Leah grinned back just as wide, then turned and punched Raven in the shoulder.

“By the – what was that for?!”

“Keep up if you can!”

And then she and Tomaz were gone, racing down the street between the people and carts going up and down the boulevard.

Raven ran after them as they jumped and dodged, slipping down side streets, through heavy traffic, around clusters of barrels. He almost lost sight of them once or twice, but he caught up in the end when they stopped before a large, sprawling building near the center of the city. The Library had large steps that they took three at a time, and long round columns they dodged around. They passed through what looked like a security checkpoint where people were signing things out, and then they were inside.

It was huge in there – lined with row after row and shelf after shelf of books. It wasn’t as big as the collection inside the Fortress at Lucien, but it was close.

Raven smiled and followed them into this treasure trove.

***

Raven’s life among the Kindred over the next month consisted of days like this. He’d wake up, go to speak with Goldwyn, spend time with Leah and Tomaz, and then return to his cabin for the night in time for dinner. It was a simple life, with no responsibility, and he deeply enjoyed it.

After gong through most things of note in the Vale Library, he began to read from Goldwyn’s private collection – the Elder had agreed to lend him books to further their conversations, a point that had left Leah in a state of stunned disbelief. His extraordinary memory, powered in part by the Raven Talisman that expanded his mind whenever he reached through it, meant he never had to read a single page of a single book more than once, but simply knew its contents by the time he closed the cover. In a matter of weeks he’d gone through almost half of the first wall of Goldwyn’s house.

He began to gain a reputation around the city, not just as the former Prince of Ravens, but also as Raven, the young Exile who had fallen in with Tomaz and Leah. The three of them were always together – sometimes in the woods, helping various Kindred who lived there make final preparations for winter, sometimes at the Bricks, sparring with the Kindred soldiers, and sometimes holed up in Goldwyn’s manor, talking and laughing long into the night.

And with some careful questioning, he began to piece together their history.

It was easy to see how Tomaz had gained a legendary reputation, considering he was likely both the tallest and biggest man any of them would ever see, and so was next to umissable. Leah’s fame on the other hand, was much harder to uncover. However, after some careful questions in the right places and some coin, borrowed from Tomaz, slipped casually into the right hands, he came upon some interesting information.

“Here’s something,” Raven said, the way he usually did when he’d found something he wanted to discuss. He and Leah were at Goldwyn’s manor that day, reading through the Elder’s collection while he held a conversation with another of his students in the courtyard.

“Mmm?” She asked, looking up, curious.

“Looks like your personal history,” he said and then paused. He looked up slowly and smiled.

Her face went dead white as all the blood drained away.

“My personal history isn’t in a book,” she said, voice carefully controlled.

“Oh no,” Raven said, “it’s written on this piece of paper I put
inside
the book to make it look like I was reading.”

He pulled out the piece of yellowed parchment, snapped the book closed, and began to read from it.

“It says: ‘Leah Goldwyn became a full member of the Eshendai after she completed her first task to Tyne, where she was responsible for seducing twelve prominent members of the Most High and luring them to an estate where they were ambushed and captured, yielding the single greatest influx of covert information since the time of Bealzim the Fierce two centuries before. For these exploits, among others, she was given a number of honorary awards and became known among the common populace as the –‘”

In a quick motion, faster than the blink of an eye, she had snatched up the paper and ripped it in two. Her eyes were wide and her cheeks were bright red.

“Oh,” Raven said, “there wasn’t actually anything on that, I was reciting from memory.”

She looked down at the torn pieces – they were blank. She looked up again, eyes wide and even a bit fearful, and then
bolted
from the room. Raven ran after her, reciting the rest of what he’d read, following her from the house, until she turned and clapped a hand over his mouth.

“Shut up,” she hissed at him. “If you talk about any of that to me again I will knife you in your sleep, you know I will.”

He said something, but it was muffled, so she pulled her hand away.

“What?”

“I said ‘whatever you say Black Temptress’.”

Her olive skin turned bright red and her eyes burned with green fury. And Raven, like the strong, proud man that he was, turned and ran for his life.

“I WILL GET YOU BACK PRINCELING! YOU WON’T EVEN SEE IT COMING!”

And not a week later, she did.

She, Raven, and Tomaz, were walking to the Bricks to spar – Tomaz and Raven at least, Leah still refused to spar with anyone but the giant – when she made a passing comment about some of the decorations the Kindred had begun to put up in anticipation of the Midwinter Festival. This included huge evergreen trees that had been brought to the main Square of the city and erected around the perimeter.

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Raven, stopping them as something Leah said managed to penetrate his thoughts of sparring tactics. The Exiles looked at him questioningly.

“Did you just say you’re putting up those trees to
pray
to them?” He asked, incredulous. He was eyeing her suspiciously. “You
worship
trees?”

For a moment, Leah and Tomaz just stared at him, and then a look of some kind passed between them that he couldn’t understand.

“Of course we do,” Leah said, turning back to him, her whole manner changed. Her eyes were level with his, her lips slightly parted, and her breathing seemed to emphasize her chest. Was that possible, or was it just in his head? “When the great winter comes down around us, we gather as one people to feast and make merry at the foot of the tree.”

She took a step closer, and Raven found himself rooted to the spot. Her walk was now a sensual, waving thing that was completely unlike her. He realized his mouth was hanging open, and quickly clacked his jaws together and cleared his throat to speak, but she ignored him.

“We dance beneath the boughs,” she said, almost purring, “where huge fires roar, covering us in sweat despite the cold.”

She was still walking toward him, and Raven was finding it hard to breathe.

“And on the final night,” she said, now so close that they were almost touching, “a single woman is taken beneath the tree, where she is disrobed, and bathed in sap and honey. This is how we honor the tree gods.”

Raven tried to speak, but only managed to produce a strange mumbling gurgle.

“And then, when she is fully immersed …
 
we sacrifice an ignorant, gullible princeling.”

The look on Raven’s face must have been horrific, as the image she had built in his head curdled and ran like old milk.

Leah and Tomaz burst into laughter so loud it caused several nearby Kindred to jump in alarm. One elderly man was so offended by this sign of open merriment that he gave them a look that could have burned the hair off a horse at twenty paces.

“Your … your face!” Leah gasped, laughing so hard she was nearly crying.

Raven turned and began to walk away, his face burning so badly he was quite certain he could light a fire with it.

Both Tomaz and Leah ran after him, and before he’d gone more than a few steps, they were grabbing his arms and apologizing, all the while falling over themselves in their gaiety, though Tomaz, to his credit, was doing his best to stifle the more intense bouts of laughter.

“Hilarious,” Raven said scathingly, though it wasn’t very convincing, and they all knew it. “At least now I know how you got your nickname.”

Leah grinned, though the pink spots were back in her cheeks, and it made him feel … no. That was not a road he wanted to go down.