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“I don’t plan to be.” Lin was already out the door. Outside, the afternoon light was dark gold; birds sang in the boughs of the trees that lined Scarlet Square. She felt as if she had passed into the underworld and returned to a city unchanged.
Halfway down the steps, she turned, looking up at Ji-An, who was standing in the doorway of the mansion, framed by scarlet. “Is he a good man?” Lin asked. “Or a bad one?”
Ji-An frowned. “Who? Andreyen? He does what he says he will do. If he says he will kill you, he will kill you. If he says he will protect you, he will protect you.” She shrugged. “To me that is a good man. Perhaps others might feel differently.”
In Aram, Suleman was profuse with his compliments, telling Adassa he had never seen such a rich land, or such a wise healer and Queen as she was. Even as he spoke his honeyed words, he prevailed upon Adassa to visit him in his own kingdom of Darat, so that she could see all that also might be hers if she agreed to marry him.
She was at first reluctant to go. Her people were anxious at the thought of her leaving, for though Aram was at peace it was surrounded by lands deep in strife. It was Judah Makabi who convinced Adassa, saying, “Be not ignorant of the designs of others, lest you be defeated.”
At his insistence, she wore around her neck a talisman ofgematry,meant to protect her against ill intent.
While in Darat, Adassa was shown many wonders that had been accomplished through the use of magic. Great marble castles higher than the tower of Balal, which was the pride of Aram. There were dazzling rivers of fire that burned night and day, illuminating the sky. Phoenixes wandered the grounds of the palace, shedding sparks like fireflies.
Yet often Adassa was aware of the hard gaze of Suleman upon her. Though he told her he watched her with the eyes of love, she was suspicious. At night when she retired to her chambers, she found that a carafe of water had been placed for her beside her bed; when she gave some of the water to one of the palace cats, the creature was rendered instantly unconscious. Realizing that Suleman meant to drug her, Adassa made her excuses the next day and returned to her kingdom. With a heavy heart, she went to Makabi and asked of him that he journey unto Darat and spy on Suleman to determine his plans, and she laid upon him the guise of a raven that he might travel unseen.
—Tales of the Sorcerer-Kings,Laocantus Aurus Iovit III
Kel had been injured before, of course. In his line of work, it would have been strange if he hadn’t. But he had not come so near death before, nor spent so much time abed, drugged with morphea and the peculiar dreams it gave him. The first time he felt strong enough to rise from his bed and traverse the room, he was horrified. His legs felt limp as wet paper. He fell immediately, cracking his knees on the stone floor.
Conor had come quickly to help him up while Delfina, who had arrived to change the bed linens, shrieked and fled the room. She returned—to Kel’s annoyance—with Legate Jolivet and a stone-faced Queen Lilibet. The Queen was infuriated that Kel had been attacked at all: Didn’t the criminals of Castellane know better than to ambush nobility from the Hill? What were things coming to, and to that end, how long would the Sword Catcher be useless to them? Should Conor cancel the next fortnight’s public appearances? When would the Sword Catcher be well again, if ever?
Thanks to the Gods, Jolivet was there. He explained that the Sword Catcher was in excellent physical shape (good news to Kel, who did not feel it) and that there was no reason to imagine he would not make a swift and full recovery. Kel should avoid lying inbed any longer, but take moderate exercise, increasing his effort each day until he felt strong enough for his training to resume as usual. He should also eat a healthful diet of meat and bread, not too many greens, and no alcohol.
Kel, who was on his feet by this point and able to limp to the tepidarium and back, expected Conor to fight this decree—especially the ban on drinking. But Conor only nodded thoughtfully and said he was sure Jolivet knew best: something Kel was fairly sure Conor had never said before in his life. Even Jolivet seemed startled.
But perhaps he should not be too astonished, Kel thought later, as he dressed slowly, hands shaking while he attempted to do up his buttons. Conor had been distracted since Kel had told him of Prosper Beck’s demands. Busy wheedling the Treasury for the money? Borrowing it from Falconet? Or more likely, borrowing a little here and a little there to avoid facing down Cazalet? Whatever his plan, he was absent from the Castel Mitat for long stretches during the days, and Kel—for the first time in years—was thrown upon his own company.
Strengthen yourself,Jolivet had said, so Kel began by walking. He was half ashamed at how slowly he paced the mosaic-tiled paths of the Palace gardens, past flowering vines of honeysuckle, under trees heavy with lemons and figs. His chest ached—a deep hurt that made itself known when he breathed or moved too quickly.
He stopped taking the morphea. His body missed it most the first night without it, when he turned restlessly upon his bed, unable to get to sleep. But each day the craving faded, and each day he could walk farther, faster.
He limped through the Night Garden, amid the tightly curled green buds of plants that bloomed only after sunset. He circled the Carcel—the windowless, fortified stone sanctuary where the royal family was hidden in the event of an attack on the Palace. It had not to Kel’s knowledge been used in at least a century, and ivy grew thick over the barred iron door.
As there were no prisoners in the Trick, the Castelguards let him climb the winding spiral staircase until he reached the top, where a narrow aisle bisected two rows of empty cells, their Sunderglass doors standing open. He pushed past the pain of it, climbing the stairs once, twice, five times, until he could taste blood in his mouth.
He wandered the cliff paths, where the Hill itself fell away to the ocean, the sea below gray and heaving as a whale’s back. The cliff paths were studded with follies—fanciful structures of white plaster made to resemble miniature versions of temples and towers, farmhouses and castles. They contained cushioned benches and were meant to provide rest and shelter for those delicate souls who found the cliff path a wearying trek.
Sometimes on his travels Kel would catch wisps of gossip as servants or guardsmen went by, paying him no attention. Most of it centered on romantic entanglements among those who served the great Houses on the Hill; some had to do with the Palace, or even with Conor. There was no gossip about debts, Crawlers, or cousins of the Prince who might have been recently injured, however. If anyone wondered about Kel’s peripatetic ways, he heard nothing about it.
He never saw the King, though smoke spilled sometimes from the high windows of the Star Tower. On occasion, he saw the Queen, usually directing the staff or the gardeners. Once, on his way down the stairs of the Star Tower, he overheard her speaking with Bensimon and Jolivet.
“Old Gremont won’t last much longer,” Lilibet was saying, “and his wife is not interested in administering a Charter. That son of his must be fetched back from Taprobana lest the family’s chair become the object of an internecine struggle.”
“Artal Gremont is a monster,” Bensimon growled, and then Jolivet cut in, and the argument turned in another direction. Kel went on his way down the stairs, filing away the information to relay to Conor later as a piece of mildly interesting gossip. Whatever ArtalGremont had done, it was bad enough that Bensimon disliked the idea of him returning, even a decade later.
The next afternoon, on a whim, Kel cut through the Queen’s Garden on his way to the stables, meaning to visit Asti. He was passing the reflecting pool when he heard voices, muffled by the high hedges that surrounded the garden. One voice was a woman’s; the other was Conor’s. He was speaking Sarthian. “Sti acordi dovarìan ’ndar ben,” Kel heard him say.Those arrangements should be suitable.
A moment later, his voice faded. Kel wondered what arrangements Conor was describing, but then, it was Conor’s business, and Kel had been walking for hours now. Life in the Palace was a sort of wheel, Kel thought, as he turned his steps toward the Castel Mitat; it went on and on in the same rotations, cutting the same paths of habit and memory into the earth. The fact that he had nearly died was not even a stone in the road. It mattered only to him; it had changed no one but him. In that, he was alone.
—
Lin was dreaming.
In the dream she knew she was asleep, and that what she saw was not real. She stood upon a high stone tower, whose top was a bare expanse of stone. Mountains rose as black shadows in the distance; the sky was the color of charcoal and blood, the wounded eye of destruction.
In minutes, the world would cease to be.
A man appeared at the edge of the tower’s roof. She knew he had not climbed its sheer sides to reach her. Magic had carried him aloft: For he was the Sorcerer-King Suleman, and until today, there had been no greater power than his in all the world.
