Warrior (20 page)

“Wait until you see the size of the bath,” the slave predicted. “Then you’ll understand why I’m so impressed. How was dinner?”

“Only marginally less trying than lunch.”

“They seem nice people, though,” Aleesha suggested cautiously.

Luciena glared at her slave in irritation. “What happened to
let’s get out of this while we still
can
?”

Aleesha shrugged. “I’ve had time to rethink my position.”

“Rethink
your
position? What about:
You hate these people? You don’t belong
with them
? What was the other one? Oh, that’s right! Princess Marla’s just inviting me along to get me out of the city so she can have me killed, wasn’t it?”

“I may have been a little hasty . . .”

“You’ve sold out, you traitor,” Luciena accused, pushing off the door and heading across the sitting room to the bedroom. “You have no moral fibre at all, Aleesha. A few weeks ago, you would have cheerfully had me working my debts off by lying underneath Ameel Parkesh. One glimpse of a gold-plated stopcock and now you’re telling me to throw my lot in with the Wolfblades.”

She walked past her treacherous slave and the large four-poster bed and opened the door to what she guessed must be the bathroom. She stopped dead and gasped. The bathroom was built on the same scale as the rest of the suite and covered with tiny blue-glazed tiles. Rather than the usual geometric pattern Luciena would have expected, she was astonished to discover the golden figure of a kraken worked in mosaics into the floor, its sinuous body winding around the base of the bathtub, its scales highlighted in emerald and gold tiles.

And it wasn’t a bathtub so much as a small pool.

“See!” Aleesha declared. “Now tell me
that
isn’t worth a little compromise?”

Luciena turned back to stare at the slave. “You’re hopeless!”

“Elezaar says this is called the Blue Room,” Aleesha explained. “He says it’s reserved for only the most important visitors to Krakandar.”

“The Blue Room, eh?” Luciena remarked, walking back into the bedroom. The curtains on the bed were blue Fardohnyan silk, as was the matching coverlet and the pillows. The rugs were a complementary shade of blue, worked in a diagonal pattern, and hanging from the base of the brass candle-holders set into the walls were blue crystal teardrops. “I bet someone was up all night thinking up
that
name. What else did Elezaar tell you?”

“Just general stuff, really. You know . . . where things are, what the routine is here. I’ll be sleeping in slaves’ quarters in the other wing. If you need anything, you just have to pull this cord here,”

she informed her mistress, indicating a plaited blue and gold cord hanging near the bed. “It rings a bell in my room and, if I use the slaveways, I can be here in a few minutes.”

Luciena looked at Aleesha in surprise. “They showed you the secret tunnels?”

“I don’t think they’re much of a secret. Everybody uses them. Even the children, according to Lirena. Orleon did give me a rough map, though. Apparently, it’s not hard to get lost in them and I don’t think he wants me bursting in on Princess Marla by accident, clutching an overflowing chamber pot.”

“I’d be rather put out, too,” Luciena agreed. “Particularly as this place has internal plumbing and therefore no need for chamber pots. Overflowing or otherwise. Who’s Lirena?”

“The children’s nurse. She and Veruca were showing me around while you were at dinner.”

“And who is Veruca?”

“The other nurse,” Aleesha explained. “Although I think she’s retired now. She looked after Xanda and Travin when they were small.”

Luciena frowned at Aleesha’s familiarity. “That’s Lord and Lieutenant Taranger to you, my girl. I must say, you seem to be getting along rather well with the rest of the household, considering you’ve been here less than a day. Are you sure it’s me they want to adopt and not you?”

Aleesha shrugged. “They’re a lot more . . . I don’t know . . . It’s like . . . well, they’re not as snobbish as I was expecting, I suppose. Except Orleon. And they all seem to get along. At least they do below stairs. If it wasn’t for the slaves wearing collars, it’d be hard to tell the free servants from the indentured ones. And I couldn’t believe how helpful they were. Elezaar said it’s because Princess Marla brought you here. It’s like she’s given you her seal of approval, so her slaves are honour-bound to do the same to me.”

“I have Princess Marla’s seal of approval, do I?” she asked, flopping onto the bed. She was exhausted and the feather mattress welcomed her like the arms of a long-lost lover. Luciena sighed with relief for a moment and then pushed herself onto her elbows and looked at Aleesha. “That’s very big of her, particularly as I’ve yet to give her mine.”

“Did you meet the young prince?” the slave asked, kneeling down to help Luciena off with her shoes.

“Who? Damin Wolfblade? I sat next to him at dinner.”

That seemed to impress Aleesha no end. “What’s he like?”

Luciena shrugged. “Like any other twelve-year-old boy, I suppose.”

“So you’ll be staying then?”

“You say that like I have a choice, Aleesha.”

The slave stood up, holding Luciena’s shoes. She smiled hesitantly. “I think . . . maybe . . . you should think about doing what the princess wants.”

“Do you now?”

“This place isn’t so bad, you know, Luciena. And it’s a damn sight better than living on the streets in Greenharbour.”

“Really? Three weeks ago you were accusing me of betraying everything I believed in for even thinking of coming here.”

“I hadn’t seen this place three weeks ago.”

Luciena shook her head. “I swear, Aleesha, I’ve never seen
anybody
seduced by a bathtub before. Suppose Princess Marla wants me to marry some filthy old brute who’ll beat me every night before dinner?”

“Can I check out the plumbing in his palace before I answer that?”

Luciena laughed and hurled a pillow at the slave. “Get out of here, you wicked wretch!”

“Don’t you want my help getting ready for bed?”

“I’m sure I can manage.”

“You didn’t want a bath?”

“I’ll have it in the morning,” she said. “You’re far too eager to get in there and start sloshing around in my bathtub as it is. I’m going to make you wait a while. Consider it punishment for being so impudent.”

Aleesha looked disappointed. “Are you sure you want me to go?”

“Yes! Now leave me!”

The slave put the shoes down by the door and glanced around the room uncertainly.

“Out!”

“Good night, Luciena.”

“Good night, Aleesha.”

Luciena flopped back onto the bed and closed her eyes. Somewhere in the other room, she heard a sliding panel move and then snick closed as Aleesha let herself into the slaveways. The bed seemed to embrace Luciena, drawing her down into pleasant slumber, even though she was still dressed, the candles still burned brightly and she hadn’t even let down her hair.

I wonder if my Uncle Warak ever got my letter
, she wondered, suffering a moment of guilt for not sparing her Fardohnyan cousin a thought since leaving Greenharbour. She had written back before she left the city, explaining she had no money, but now Luciena was beginning to worry that she’d done the wrong thing.
Perhaps I should have told them to wait a little longer
. If she accepted Marla Wolfblade’s offer, she wouldn’t need to send money to help her cousin. She could send a whole damn ship for him.
If I accept her offer . . . If I marry the man she chooses for me . . . If I’m willing to swear
allegiance to the Wolf-blades
. . . The thoughts faded into oblivion as sleep overtook her.

Welcome to the family
. . .

It was the last thing Luciena remembered until she woke some indeterminate time later to find a stranger leaning over her in the darkness, his hand over her mouth to stop her screaming.

“Don’t be frightened!” a voice hissed in the darkness. “It’s only me!”

Luciena struggled to sit up and, somewhat to her surprise, the intruder let her. She blinked owlishly, her heart pounding.
“Xanda?”

He grinned at her, his teeth white against the gloom. “Sorry about waking you like that. It’s just I wasn’t sure how you’d react to being startled and in this place it doesn’t pay to cry out in the middle of the night. Not unless you want every Raider in Krakandar swarming into your room, looking for assassins under the bed.”

“Wha—what are you doing here?”

“We’re all going out onto the roof,” he whispered. “I thought you might like to join us.”

“We? Who is
we
?”

“Me, Travin, Damin, Starros, Rielle, the Tirstone boys . . . it’s kind of a tradition around here. Did you want to come?”

She looked around the darkened room, wondering what time it was. “It’s the middle of the night, Xanda.”

“Well, there’s no fun doing this in daylight.”

Luciena rubbed her eyes, forcing herself awake. “Is insanity a family trait, or just something you seem to be afflicted with?”

“I think it’s something in the water here,” he replied with a grin. “You coming or not?”

She hesitated for a moment and then nodded, wondering if he was right about there being something in the water that made one crazy in this place. It would explain why Aleesha had suddenly turned into a raving Royalist. And, possibly, why she allowed Xanda to lead her into the sitting room. He pushed on a raised part of the panelling near the fireplace and the wall slid open to reveal a torchlit tunnel beyond.

“The infamous slaveways, I presume?”

“Scared?”

“Should I be?”

“Not unless you don’t like confined spaces.”

Glancing along the passage, Luciena took a step forward, then abruptly stopped. “Wait! I have to get my shoes.” She ran into the bedroom, felt about in the darkness for her shoes and then hurried back into the sitting room, hopping the last few steps on her left foot as she pulled the right shoe on.

Xanda waited for her to finish and then smiled. “All set?”

She nodded and let him take her hand and lead her into the passage.

Despite the mental image she’d developed of dank passages carved from living rock draped with age-old cobwebs and dripping with condensation, the slaveways were obviously well used. And they didn’t have far to go. Their destination proved to be another sliding door only a few hundred paces from her room.

This door, however, was locked. Xanda reached above the lintel, produced a heavy key which he used to unlock the door, and then replaced the key before standing aside to let her through.

“This is Damin’s room,” he explained in answer to her questioning look. “Nobody leaves the slaveways entrance to his room unlocked.”

“But the key’s right there on the lintel,” she pointed out. “Anybody could pick it up.”

“Only if you know it’s there.”

She shrugged, thinking there must be some sort of logic in there somewhere, and followed Xanda through the doorway. This one led into a large dressing room. Xanda closed the door, made sure it had locked behind them, and then took Luciena through into the bedroom beyond, which seemed about the same size as her room. The tall windows either side of the dresser were open and it was to one of these that they went. Xanda climbed through and then turned to help Luciena.

Maybe this is their plan
, a little voice in her head whispered.
They’re going to lure you out here
and then toss you off the roof
.

“It’s all right,” Xanda assured her. “I won’t let you fall.”

Welcome to the family
.

She hesitated for a moment and then offered him her hand.

Unlike the flat-roofed architecture common in both Hythria and Fardohnya, the Krakandar palace showed the influence of its northern neighbours. The roof was sloped and tiled, and three storeys up, the view, even by starlight, was spectacular. The city lay before them, dotted with pinpoints of warm yellow light, stretching away to the horizon so that it was hard to tell where the buildings stopped and the stars began. Behind them, the windows stretched up tall and symmetrical, topped by a series of smaller arched dormer windows above and another level of sloped red tiles.

The vast palace roof reminded Luciena of a mountain range carved by some god with a love of sharp angles.

Sitting on the tiles a few feet from where they had emerged were Damin Wolfblade, the fosterling Starros, both of the Tirstone boys and their sister Rielle. The younger children, Leila, Kalan and Narvell, were nowhere in sight. Neither was Xanda’s brother, Travin.

Damin glanced over his shoulder and grinned. “See, she’s one of us now,” he told the others with a soft laugh.

“What does he mean?” Luciena asked Xanda warily as he held her hand and pulled her through the window. She inched her way forward until she was near the others and then sat down, feeling much safer once her backside was in contact with the tiles.

“Once you’ve been out here on the roof, you betray us at your peril,” Xanda explained, sitting down beside her.

When it was clear Luciena didn’t understand, Starros added over his shoulder, “What he means is that Almodavar would kill us all with his bare hands if he caught us out here.”

“That’s comforting.”

Rielle smiled at Luciena’s obvious confusion. “It’s a Krakandar thing, Luciena,” she explained. “I remember being just as flummoxed when I first arrived. The logic works like this: Almodavar hates snitches even more than reckless fools, so if you told anyone we’ve been out on the roof he’d kill you first for telling, and then kill the rest of us for being here.”

“Doesn’t
anybody
know about you coming out here?”

“It used to be a lot harder when there was a guard in my room,” Damin admitted. “But we got very good at blackmail. You’d be amazed at what a Krakandar Raider is willing to turn a blind eye to if you’ve got reason to report him to Almodavar.”

“And for even the slightest infraction,” Rielle chuckled. “We’re not the only ones frightened by the idea of incurring the wrath of Geri Almodavar.”

Luciena looked around at them. “And you all think this is perfectly reasonable?”