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Now a silence fell over the boys in the garden as Jolivet, standing at attention, scanned the scene with his pale eyes, his gaze resting here on that boy (Jacme, engaged in pulling strips from the powderbark tree), there on another (Bertran, the eldest of the group at ten). They passed over Cas and came to rest on Kel.
After a long, unnerving moment, he smiled. “There,” he said. “That’s the one.”
Kel and Cas exchanged a puzzled look.Which one?Cas mouthed, but there was no time for discussion. Instead there was a hand on Kel’s arm, hauling him to his feet.
“You must come.” It was Bonafilia, her grip tight. “Don’t make trouble, Kel, please.”
Kel was annoyed. He was not a troublemaker. Well, there had been that business with the explosive powder and the north tower, and the time he had made Bertran walk the plank off the garden wall and the idiot had broken a bone in his foot. But it was nothing that couldn’t have happened to anyone.
Still, Sister Bonafilia’s face was worryingly drawn. With a sigh, Kel handed his marble off to Cas. “Take care of it till I get back.”
Cas nodded and made a show of tucking the glass bauble into a vest pocket. Clearly he did not think Kel would be gone more than a few minutes. Kel didn’t think so, either—though he was beginning to wonder. The way Sister Bonafilia steered him hastily across the garden didn’t sit right. Nor did the way the Legate examined him once he got closer, bending down to peer at Kel as if he were seeking the answer to a mystery. He even tilted Kel’s face up by the chin to more closely examine him, from his black, curling hair to his blue eyes to his stubborn chin.
He frowned. “The boy is grubby.”
“He’s been playing in the dirt,” said Sister Bonafilia. Kel wondered why adults seemed to enjoy exchanging observations about things that were obvious. “Which he does often. He likes being muddy.”
Kel felt the first stirrings of alarm. He wasn’t dirtier than any of the other boys; why was Sister Bonafilia looking and speaking so oddly? He kept his mouth shut, though, as they departed the garden, the Legate marching ahead, Bonafilia piloting Kel through the old fortress at speed. She was muttering under her breath.Aigon, you who circle the earth with waters, who hold sway over swift-traveling ships, grant unto your daughter the safety of her charge.
She was praying, Kel realized, and felt that alarm again, sharper this time.
As they reached the front hall, he saw with surprise that the front doors were open. Through them, as if framed in a portrait square, he could see the sun sinking rapidly into the ocean. The sky cast a hot glow over the tin-blue water. At the horizon he could see the towers of drowned Tyndaris, tinted the color of wine.
The scene distracted him, and Kel lost a bit of time, as sometimes happened when he looked at beautiful things. When he was aware again, he found that he was standing among the craggy rocks outside the Orfelinat, flanked by Sister Bonafilia on one side and Jolivet on the other, his red-and-gold uniform glowing like the vanishing sunset.
There was also a horse. Kel stared at it in horror. He had seenhorses at a distance before, of course, but never one so close up. It seemed enormous, rising to the sky, its lips curling back over hard white teeth. It was black as night, with rolling black eyes.
“That’s right,” said the Legate, taking Kel’s silence for admiration. “Never ridden a horse before, I’d warrant? You’ll like it.”
Kel did not think he would like it. He found himself not minding when Sister Bonafilia pulled him close to her side, as if he were a child. (Kel did not think of himself as a child. Children were something else, carefree and silly, not like orphans at all.)
“You must say he will be treated well,” burst out Sister Bonafilia in the voice she rarely employed, the one that made orphans burst into tears. “He is so young, to be taken for Palace work—” She straightened her back. “He is a child of Aigon, and under the protection of the God, Legate. Remember it.”
Jolivet bared his teeth in a grin. “He will be treated like family, Sister,” he said, and reached for Kel.
Kel took a deep breath. He knew how to fight and scratch and kick. He had already drawn back his foot to deliver a vicious kick to the Legate’s shin when he caught sight of the look on Sister Bonafilia’s face. He could not quite believe the message he read in her eyes, but it was there, as clear as the outline of a tallship on the horizon.
Do not struggle or cry out. Let him take you.
Kel went limp as Jolivet lifted him away. Deadweight. It didn’t seem to faze the Legate, though, who swung Kel up onto the monstrous horse’s back. Kel’s stomach turned over as the world went upside down; when it righted again, he was seated squarely on the beast’s saddle, lashed in place by wiry arms. Jolivet had swung himself up behind Kel, his hands gripping the reins. “Hold tight,” he said. “We’re going to the Palace to see the King.”
Possibly he meant to make it sound like a jolly adventure, but Kel didn’t know, or care. He’d already leaned over the side of the horse and vomited all over the ground.
—
After that, their departure from the Orfelinat was precipitous. Jolivet muttered darkly—some of the sick had gotten on his boots—but Kel felt too miserable and ill to care. There was a great deal of swaying, and of Kel being certain that every time the horse moved its head it was planning to bite him. He remained in this state of high alert as they passed down the cliffs to the Key, the road that ran along the docks, against which lapped the dark waters of the harbor.
Kel was convinced that he would never, at any point, develop an affection for the horse he was sitting on. Still, the view from its back was impressive as they cut through the city. He had spent plenty of time lookingupat the crowds thronging the city streets, but for the first time now he lookeddownat them. All of them—rich merchants’ sons in gaudy fashions, innkeepers and dockworkers trudging home from work, sailors from Hanse and Zipangu, merchants from Marakand and Geumjoseon—made way for Jolivet as he passed.
It really was rather thrilling. Kel began to sit up straighter as they turned up the wide boulevard of the Ruta Magna, which ran from the mouth of the harbor to the Narrow Pass, slicing through the mountains that separated Castellane from its neighbor-kingdom of Sarthe. He had nearly forgotten he had ever felt sick, and his excitement only grew as they neared the Great Hill that loomed over the city.
Cliffs and hills ringed the port city, and Castellane huddled in the bottom of the valley like a hedgehog reluctant to poke its nose out of the safety of its lair. But it was not a city in hiding. It sprawled—and how it sprawled—from the western seas to the Narrow Pass, every bit of it crowded and noisy and dirty and shouting and full of life.
Like most citizens of Castellane, Kel had lived his life in the shadow of the Great Hill but had never expected to set foot upon it, much less make his way to the top, where the Palace of Marivent stood. The Hill—really a range of low limestone peaks covered with a tangle of scrub pine and lavender—was where the nobilitylived, their vast estates dotted up and down the slopes.The rich live high, and the poor live low,Kel had once heard Sister Bonafilia say. It wasn’t a metaphor. The richer you were, the bigger your house and the closer to the Palace, which occupied the highest point in the city.
The nobles liked their pleasures, and sometimes the sounds of their revels drifted down to the city at night. People would wink at one another in the streets and say things like, “It looks as if Lord Montfaucon has started drinking again,” or “So Lady Alleyne has rid herself of her third husband, has she?” When you were rich, everyone knew your business and delighted in it, even though they didn’t actually know you at all.
They turned off the Ruta Magna and rode through the darkened city streets until they reached the foot of the Hill. Castelguards in red uniforms crowded around the path here; their job was to prevent undesirables from accessing the Hill. Jolivet held Kel firm in the saddle while they rode through the checkpoint, the torches of the guards blazing as they stared curiously at the boy. They must have been wondering if the Arrow Squadron had caught a very small criminal, and, if so, why they were bothering to bring him to Marivent. Most lawbreakers, regardless of age, were destined for a short ride to the gallows of the Tully.
