“A righteous thief. You think the garrison commander will buy that?”
“Absolutely not,” I said with a smirk. “Which is why I choose not to get caught.”
Wren rolled her eyes and tapped her knuckles against theground to erase whatever bad luck I might have triggered by saying that.
Some people believed you could ask the gods for help. My father taught me our fates were woven in a tapestry, but the true structure—the weave, the tangles, the knots—was hidden from view and out of our hands—and those of the gods. That made sense to me. Surely the Terran gods were too busy with mountains and tides and sunrises to worry about our little tragedies.
Across the road, children kicked a leather ball back and forth, singing a verse with each kick. “West for lilies and mountain high! North for ice and burning fire! East for green things, watch them grow! South for fish and ocean flow.”
Carethia’s four border strongholds: the Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western Gates. Walled cities with garrisoned armies to guard the nation against foreign enemies.
“One prince for each gate! Who will win? They’ll fight ’til their father brings them home again!”
Carethia was ruled by Rhenish Lys’Careth. He was the twenty-third Emperor Eternal, so the title was more wish than reality. The nation was named for his Lys’Careth ancestor who’d conquered four nations and united them into one Carethian whole. The gates were supposed to be proving grounds for the emperor’s sons, to prepare them to rule the nation. (Daughters need not apply. A horseshit rule if you asked me, but no one did.) The most recent former Prince of the Western Gate had managed almost a year in the stronghold. In the meantime, he’d refused to meet the strongholders, ignored drought and the traveling sickness, and spent the stronghold’s funds on parties. Hundreds of strongholders had died of a famine he could have prevented, and he had been killed by the same illness he’d ignored.
If the Emperor Eternal knew what had gone on here, he’ddone nothing about it. No food or supplies or healers—not even words of encouragement—made their way from the City of Flowers, Carethia’s wealthy capital. The Emperor Eternal hadn’t even sent a replacement prince to clean up the mess. The Western Gate’s palace—its gleaming narrow tower of pale green stone rising like a spear in the center of the stronghold—was still empty, just as it had been for months before the former prince’s arrival. If a Carethian prince’s job was to outlive his brothers, the Western Gate was a deadly foe.
“Let’s get back to the manor,” I said. “They’ll beat the curfew drums soon anyway.”
A drumming began then, but not the patrol’s single beat. This was a thundering—the massive warning drums atop the stronghold wall pounded by garrison soldiers. And the ground rumbled beneath our boots.
“Soldiers,” Wren said, tension in the word.
She wasn’t the only one concerned. Around the market, tables were folded, doors closed and barred. But the garrison soldiers hadn’t made a move to close the gatehouse portcullis or doors—forty feet high and made of the strongest timbers Mount Cennet could supply.
There was a moment of strained silence, anticipation a prickle in the air, and then firelight flickered in the gatehouse’s shadows. A moment later, they emerged: five columns of soldiers in black leather armor with silver trim and helmets capped with a black plume of feathers. The first of them carried fluttering banners of black. Most bore the silver silhouette of a tiger, claws sharp and ready to strike. The widest in front read “Etoris Eni Vistes,” the motto of the Lys’Careth family. It meant “persistence in victory.”
I frowned. “These aren’t the emperor’s soldiers.”
“Wrong uniforms,” Wren agreed. “And the Emperor’s banners have an eagle.”
That left only one other option.
“The Emperor Eternal made his choice,” I said. “The new Western Prince has arrived.”
Two
We definitely weren’t leaving now. Other curious (nosy) people emerged from shadows and doorways, gaping at the flags and soldiers and armor. Strongholders knew royals could be useless at best, treacherous at worst. But the army was still quite a thing to see.
Mounted soldiers followed those on foot, and the market’s shadows had lengthened by the time the first carriage rolled through the gatehouse, pulled by a pair of sleek black horses. It was silver and gleaming atop black wheels, its roof rising to a steep and dramatic point, its shutters tightly closed. The carriage was circled by guards wearing dark uniforms like the other soldiers, but minus the armor and helmets. Three more conveyances followed, all closed tight. I guessed the prince didn’t want to grace us with a glimpse today.
“I bet he’s ugly,” Wren said.
I didn’t care much about the man, but I was dazzled by the shine. “Can a man with silver carriages be ugly?”
“You mean, will the coin make him handsome? I’d say itdepends on the size of the coin, but he’s royal. They’re all ugly of heart.”
“Fucking Lys’Careths,” I murmured.
“Fucking Lys’Careths,” she agreed.
And they weren’t the only trouble brewing. A pain in my chest—a sharp pinch near my heart—alerted me to a new danger, and a faint green haze bloomed in the air like clouds at the edge of a storm.
“Aether,” I warned. “Strong.” Aether was the stuff of the Aetheric realm—its energy and substance. Anima bore traces of it, but this was more than a trace…
“Where?”
I looked up, around, trying to locate the Anima as Aether spread like smoke in the dry air. “I can’t tell. It’s spread out.”
