Fiona had forgotten how green the Kepa Valley was. Once they were past the high wastes and near-desert of the flatlands, the road to Haizea wound between low hills, verdant with winter’s crops—if you could call it winter when the air was so balmy and snow and rain were a thing of Tremontane’s uplands. In six months, the rains would come, and then the river would swell and the entire country would take to its boats, but for now, the weather was perfect. Mittens liked the way food grew at every turn, and Fiona had to strongly encourage her to keep moving when what she wanted was to stop every few yards to tear up another mouthful of rich, tender grass.
She smelled the tanginess coming from one of the little roadside stands, out of sight at the moment, that sold food to travelers, pan-fried vegetables coated lightly with a dark sauce that tasted of garlic, ginger, and fish. They’d had it for their dinner that day, and the day before, and Fiona wasn’t tired of it yet. It brought back so many memories of the good times, before everything had fallen apart, that she was having trouble remembering why they were there now. The previous night, Sebastian had bid her good night with, “We have to reach Haizea before sunset tomorrow, so we’ll make an early start,” and the reminder that they had a deadline had been startling.
“Not worried, are you, Miss Cooper?” Sebastian said, coming up beside her.
“I wish I knew more of what they expect. But I can’t be the only woman whose first time at the Irantzen Festival this is.”
They rounded a curve in the road and the roadside stand Fiona had smelled became visible. It was little more than three wooden walls holding up a shingled roof that sloped to the rear. A woman dressed in Veriboldan laborer’s clothes, wide-legged trousers of a coarse weave and a wraparound shirt, came forward to watch them approach. Sebastian waved at her politely but dismissively, and she took a few steps back.
“You said they’d be watching you,” he said. “It’s safer if you look confident. Not too confident, but not needing too much attention.”
“I think if they’re watching me, they won’t be watching you.”
“The priestesses at the Irantzen Temple won’t be watching me at all. They don’t care about the attendants. To my knowledge.”
“Then we don’t have anything to worry about.”
They left the woman behind and began ascending a gentle slope. Mittens veered toward the long grass of the verge, and Fiona pulled her up sharply. Sebastian said, “I wouldn’t say that. We don’t know exactly where the blackmail evidence is kept. And attempting to steal from the Jaixante is dangerous. Veriboldans aren’t gentle with foreigners caught committing crimes against Veriboldans.”
“That almost sounds like nerves. Isn’t it a little late for you to be worried?”
He laughed. “Miss Cooper, it’s hard for me to feel nervous when you’re around to needle me. I’m not nervous. But I am feeling cautious, which I think is a safe feeling. And I think it’s reasonable to consider possible disasters and plan a response to them.”
“And what disasters are those?”
“Being unable to move freely within the Jaixante. The evidence being held somewhere inaccessible, or worse, not in Haizea at all. Being identified as a—member of my family. Those are the ones that would keep me up at night if I were at all nervous, which we’ve established I’m not.”
“How—” Fiona stopped herself from saying How can I help? just in time. She’d gotten them all past the border, she would get them into the Jaixante; Sebastian didn’t need any more help than that. “How would being identified as a member of the family whose name you won’t give me be a problem?” she asked instead.
Sebastian grinned at her. “The blackmailer, Gizane, would definitely be suspicious if someone with that surname, which you don’t need to know, showed up in Haizea.”
“Is she here?”
“I don’t know. She was in Aurilien—isn’t that right, Holt?”
“She met directly with men and women in positions of power in Aurilien, several times,” Holt said. “But it is certainly possible she might have returned to the Jaixante. She is the trade liaison between Tremontane and the royal city.”
“What if she recognizes Holt?”
“I did not make myself known to her,” Holt said, “and I believe she is the sort of woman to whom servants are furniture.”
“At any rate, if she is here, I’m not worried about her recognizing me,” Sebastian said, “and I’ll keep my name to myself.”
“It’s not as if I care who your parents are, Sebastian.”
“You might if you knew who they were.”
“Meaning they’re well-known enough that even someone like me would recognize the name. Are you noble?”
“Miss Nosy, you are in fine form today. I can’t wait for us to reach Haizea.” He smiled, though, and looked amused rather than offended.
At that moment, they reached the top of the rise, and looked down into a valley that spread in ripples of terraced hills all the way to the river. And there, laid out like glimmering patchwork, lay Haizea. Delicate fairy spires, white or silver, rose here and there over the indistinct masses of colored roofs that were the smaller buildings, purple or blue or green or gray. The Kepa River cut through the city like a murky green ribbon lazily unfurling across the patchwork, with tiny barges zigzagging upstream, leaving trails like broken threads behind. On the near side of the river, a spongy-looking mass marked Haizea’s Dusktown, poor and dangerous to intruders. It had been too long for Fiona to judge if it was bigger or smaller than when she’d seen it last.
In the center of the Kepa, breasting its waters like the world’s biggest dolphin, lay an island linked to the shores by five broad, white bridges. White and gold buildings, with tapering towers and flying buttresses and aqueducts from which thin, lacy waterfalls fell, covered the island all the way to the blindingly white wall that surrounded it. The Jaixante. By night, Fiona remembered, it would glow with Devices the way Aurilien did, but Veriboldans preferred colors to white lights, and the Jaixante by night looked like a dowager Countess’s jewelry box. Even by day, it was stunning.
Fiona looked at the highest spire, a tower surmounting the royal residence near the top of the Jaixante’s artificial hill, and thought of Willow North’s crumbling black tower, symbol of Tremontane’s power, with a sense of guilty disloyalty.
A flight of birds swept low over the river, then rose into the sky, and the dim noise of their chatter reached Fiona’s ears, breaking her out of her daze. “We should go,” she said.
“Oh. Yes,” Sebastian said. He sounded as dazed as she felt. Was it a bad omen for their journey, that they were so overwhelmed by this foreign city? Fiona once again focused on Mittens’ ears and vowed not to let it get to her. She was Tremontanan, no matter how beautiful the Veriboldan capital was, and Aurilien had a beauty of its own.
Traffic on the road increased as they wound through the terraced hills into the valley of Haizea, but most of it was leaving the great city. Most of the men and women they passed were ordinary Veriboldans who glanced at them with a lack of interest, which surprised Fiona. Veriboldan commoners weren’t as xenophobic and bigoted as Veriboldan landholders—the equivalent of Tremontanan nobles—but usually they were at least curious about strangers dressed in Tremontanan clothing. Holt was dark enough to pass for Veriboldan, and there were Veriboldans with skin as light as hers and Sebastian’s, but they were still clearly Tremontanans, and therefore suspect. Or so she’d expected.
“I hope your plan doesn’t call for you to pretend to be Veriboldan,” she murmured to Sebastian after they’d passed a small group of travelers who in different clothes might have been Tremontanan natives.
“Only as a last resort,” Sebastian said. “I don’t speak Veriboldan.”
“I do,” Fiona said, “and I wouldn’t want to try it either.” She wouldn’t have wanted to impersonate a Veriboldan even if she’d been perfectly confident about it. It was too difficult to mimic all the subtleties of culture and behavior outsiders hardly even perceived.
It took nearly an hour for them to reach the outskirts of Haizea, and another half-hour to cross the city to the Kepa and the first of the white bridges leading to the Jaixante. They had to push their way through the crowds filling the streets, people laughing and talking and bargaining at top volume. Canvas booths, their striped sides pressed closely against their neighbors’, lined both sides of the street, their wares as varied as their customers. Fiona observed two women haggling over a pottery vase next to a man selling roast tubers on skewers, whose neighbor on the other side sold diaphanous scarves threaded with gold and silver. Maybe they could come back this way when it was all over. Assuming they didn’t leave the Jaixante at a run, pursued by the blackmailer Gizane’s guards.
The long market ended fifty feet from a boulevard that followed the curve of the Kepa’s banks. Beyond the boulevard, a gate of lacy white ironwork framed the entrance to the first of the bridges crossing to the Jaixante. It had no doors and no one stood guard there, but there was a sign posted. Fiona dismounted and led Mittens closer. “It says no horses or wheeled vehicles,” she said. “I gather the guards are on the far side.”
“We need to hurry,” Sebastian said. “It’s only an hour to sunset.”
It took almost all of that time to find someone who would stable their horses for the week of the festival, and Sebastian was almost jogging with impatience by the time he slapped hands with the stable master in agreement and shouldered his bag. They ran through the streets to the bridge, then across, Fiona breathing heavily with the unaccustomed exertion. She’d forgotten how it felt to run.
It was a shame they had to run so fast, she thought, because the Kepa from the bridge was an incredible sight she’d like to have time to admire. Green-glass water flowed unhurriedly downstream, passing beneath the arches holding the bridges up. Fiona saw a barge pass beneath one of those arches; its captain waved, and she did her best to wave back.
Overhead, birds squawked and dove at the water, then came to rest on the white iron pillars lining the bridge. More lacy ironwork spanned the gaps between them. Do people ever jump from here? she wondered, and felt disgusted with herself for having that thought when the place was so beautiful. Still, you have to wonder, her inner voice said, and she gritted her teeth and focused on running.
There was a gate at the far end, and two guards who came to attention as the three came charging toward them. “Stop!” one said in Veriboldan. “State your purpose.”
“We’re here…for the Irantzen…Festival,” Sebastian panted, as if he’d understood their words. “Please…let us pass.”
“You will not reach it in time,” the first guard said, switching to Tremontanese. “It is almost sunset.”
“Please,” Fiona said, “help us.”
The second guard appraised her, and Fiona was surprised to see a definite light of admiration in his eyes. She wasn’t used to being looked at that way. “Papers,” he said.
Sebastian already had the portfolio out and the papers spread in his hand. The first guard took them and examined them closely. “Fiona Cooper?” he said. He pronounced her surname with the emphasis on the second syllable.
“Yes,” Fiona said. “I’m Fiona Cooper.”
The guard scrawled something on one of the pages with the stub of a pencil, then handed the papers back to Sebastian. “Take the second right, then follow the ramp to the top,” he said. “If you run, you may not be late.”
“Thank you,” Sebastian said, and the three of them ran faster than before. Fiona glanced once back over her shoulder; the two men were staring after them—no, after her. It sounded like they had recognized her name. Maybe the customs officials had sent word about her, after all. She hadn’t seen what he had written on the paper. Some warning to the priestesses at the Irantzen Temple? Let’s just hope it’s not a warrant for our execution.
The ramp was steep, and curved as if following the contours of the island. Fiona’s legs and chest ached, and her shoulder hurt from where her bag balanced on it. She made herself keep running. The sun was nearly below the horizon, outlining it with yellow gold like metal in a forge. What if they were too late? Well, Sebastian would think of a different plan, and she’d go on to Umberan. It might not be too late to join that group going to Dineh-Karit. Or you might go on helping Sebastian, she thought. The idea surprised her.
They stumbled off the ramp and kept running down a long colonnade, its pillars bulging near the bottom as if they were wax that had melted in the summer sun. Ahead was one of those fairy structures, towering a hundred feet above them with spires that doubled that height. A flight of shallow steps led up to its base, and two white doors, arched at the top, stood at the top of the steps. They were closing.
“Wait!” Fiona shouted, pushing herself harder, and then all three of them were shouting and waving their free arms. The doors’ movement paused, then resumed. Fiona pelted up the stairs with Sebastian and slid between the doors, forcing them to stop again. It was black inside, and Fiona came to a halt only to be shoved forward by Sebastian, entering behind her. Holt followed close after.
“The Irantzen is closed,” said a female voice in Tremontanese. “You are too late.”
“No,” Fiona gasped, “it’s just barely sunset. We’re not too late. Besides, the guard wrote something—it’s on that paper—” She waved desperately at Sebastian, who dug through the portfolio, squinting at its contents. Finally, he handed a sheet to the now dimly visible woman, who seemed to have no trouble reading it. The woman glanced up at the three of them, then settled on Fiona.
“I think you are Fiona Cooper, yes?” she said.
“I am.”
The woman read the paper again. “These are your bodyguards?”
Fiona hadn’t seen the contents of the papers. “My attendants, yes.”
The woman handed the paper back to Sebastian. “Come with me.”
The doors slammed shut. Fiona blinked, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, but then she heard the scratch of a match striking stone, and light flared. The woman took an extremely old-fashioned torch off the wall. It stank of creosote and sulfur and left afterimages of itself when Fiona incautiously looked at it. The woman walked away without glancing back. Fiona looked around quickly. She saw another woman standing nearby, her hand resting on the door, who widened her eyes at Fiona as if urging her on. Fiona didn’t need a second reminder.