39: A COUNTERFEIT OF ROYALTY
(Kihrin’s story)
I stared in shock at Talon. Then I growled, twisted under her, and tried to throw her off.
Unfortunately, her strength beat mine handily. Plus, she wasn’t holding my hands so much as wrapping tentacles around them.
“Talon, let go of me!”
“Shhh. You don’t want the guards to show up.”
“Oh, I think I do.” I tilted my head back and started to yell.
“But I’m here to rescue you.” Talon slapped a hand over my mouth. Note she grew an extra arm to manage it. “I’m betting your mother will forgive me if I bring you back to her.”
I stopped struggling. “Mother? Which one?” My words were unintelligible through her hand, but I knew Talon understood me.
I wasn’t just being a smart-ass with that question. Talon had eaten my adoptive parents, Ola and Surdyeh, adding their personalities and memories to her “collection.”1 She operated under some entirely false delusions concerning our relationship, at times indicating she thought of herself as my mother.
Considering our relationship has been sexual on at least one occasion, words can’t even begin to describe how uncomfortable that idea makes me.
Talon leaned in close. “Queen Khaeriel. I’m working for her.”
I eyed her suspiciously. My mother isn’t this stupid.
“Ha, you’d think that, right? But mimics are just so useful.” She beamed at me. “Oh, it is good to see you again, ducky. Honestly, you’re lucky I found you.”
I slumped back against the sofa, defeated. Lucky. Right. This was Taja’s “help.”
“Taja? What? Taja didn’t send me.” Talon suddenly looked nervous.
I’m not leaving without my friends. I mumbled that too, but the net effect was thinking it at her. She heard me fine.
Talon scrunched up her nose and leaned in close. “Speaking of, which one did you just have sex with?” She sniffed. “Oh. The girl.” Talon tilted her head. “Wait. She’s that girl, isn’t she? The one you told Morea about. Oh, I’ve been waiting so long to meet her.”
Stay away from her. Now remove your slimy tentacles and let me go.
“Oh, come now, ducky. I think we can—”
The door opened behind us.
Talon didn’t have time to hide her monster nature; she was a three-armed woman sitting on a couch with tentacles growing out from her back. The mimic released me and whirled around. The tentacles turned with her, tips sharpening to points like knives as they raced toward the source of the interruption.
“Run!” I shouted. I rolled off the couch and turned invisible. No sense making things easier for Talon if I could help it.
I saw the woman standing in the doorway. Pale and fragile and colored like violets.
Valathea. The real Valathea.
Talon paused with her claws inches from the woman’s face. The mimic looked oddly shocked. Valathea? Not so much.
Valathea’s expression never changed. She seemed neither startled nor afraid. She tilted her head to the side and regarded Talon like a bird examining a worm. The room fell quiet, a standoff I didn’t understand at all.
“Now put those away,” Valathea said, “before someone’s hurt.”
Talon’s lip curled. “Don’t threaten me. You’re in a new body. There’s no way you’ve adjusted quickly enough to cast spells.”
Valathea smiled. “But I’m not in a new body. I’m in my imprinted body. An exact duplicate down to the smallest cell, every neural pathway grown to exacting standards under instructions I left centuries ago. I could cast spells from the moment I opened my eyes.”
One of Talon’s tentacles quivered. “You’re bluffing.”
Valathea’s expression turned serene as she raised two fingers. They were disturbingly long and delicate, with lilac fingertips and slender purple nails. “Shall we find out together?”
Talon stared. Her expression faltered.
Then she ran.
Really, Talon flew, because a second after she started running, she shape-changed into a raven, banked, and flew out the same open door Valathea had just entered.
Valathea watched her go, then stepped into the room and shut the door behind her.
“Kihrin?” Valathea scanned the room. Then she paused. Her gaze backtracked and settled on the spot where I stood, leaning against the wall with my arms crossed over my chest.
She smiled.
“You can see me,” I said.
“I can see you,” Valathea agreed.
The door I’d originally used opened, and guards poured through. “Founder? I am sorry, but there seems to be some confusion…” The guards looked around the room. Unlike Valathea, none of them noticed me.
“Yes, I would say so,” Valathea said. “Perhaps one of you would care to explain what a mimic was doing here?”
“What? A mimic?” The lead soldier was appropriately horrified.
“When I entered the room, a mimic sat on that couch.” Valathea pointed. “I came here to question the young prince, but instead, you give me a mimic? Did you think I wouldn’t notice, or did you simply not realize Prince Kihrin had been replaced?”
“Uh…” The soldier’s eyes widened.
“I am sounding the alarm,” another soldier said.
“Yes, I think you’d better,” Valathea said.
“Please stay right here,” the first soldier said. “We will find out what is going on. I will station someone right outside this door in case the mimic returns.”
She made a shooing motion with one hand. “Go on, then. Station away.”
He opened the door for the other soldiers, then closed it as gently as he could, as if afraid he might wake a sleeping baby.
Valathea turned back to me.
“I need to free my friends too,” I said quietly. At least one vané soldier stood just on the other side of that door. “Know any spells for that?”
“I used to, but what I said to that mimic earlier?”
“Yes?” I had a sinking feeling.
“I was bluffing.” Valathea shrugged apologetically. “It’s almost the truth. This body has been prepared especially for me, so I’ll recover all my magical aptitude in just a few short days. Normally, it takes months.”
“I see.” I took a deep breath. “Any other ideas?”
“Hmm. My husband and your father are dealing with the soldiers your uncle garrisoned here, but that only solves part of the problem.” She tapped an elegant, too-long finger against her upper lip.
“Wait. Terindel? And my father—” I lowered my voice. “My father’s here?”
“Yes, looking for you. I told him you might need a little help. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, I don’t mind at all.”
“Even so, a distraction might help. Especially a distraction that provides us an excuse to leave quickly.’” Valathea held up the same finger. “Terindel and your father will find your friends, but you’re the one in the most danger.”
I’d rejected that same justification from Talon, but from Valathea, it made so much more sense. Or maybe I just trusted her more.
Trusting her was naïve. I knew that. I’d never known her as a living, animate being. I had no idea what she was like, if she could be depended upon, what her motivations might be. I didn’t even know if she was telling the truth about Doc and Therin. I knew she was Doc’s wife, and after his “death,” she’d been sentenced to die in the Korthaen Blight. The same sentence we’d been given, just with a lot more soul-chaining to make sure she never left.2
Maybe she deserved that sentence. Doc had never been coy about admitting he’d done terrible things as the Kirpis king.
Oh yeah. She was also my great-great-grandmother.
“Okay,” I finally said. “But we still need that distraction.”
Valathea tilted her head. “Do they still use knockout gas on prisoners they bring here? No scent. No warning. One second lucidity and then the void?”
I nearly asked her how she knew that, but the answer was obvious; she knew for the same reason I did. They’d used it on her. Valathea must have been a “guest” here—a prisoner waiting for her own execution in a drugged-out stupor. Just like me.
Except no one had come to her rescue.3
“Yeah,” I said. “They do.”
The woman smiled—serene, soft, wicked. “It’s extremely flammable.”
I grinned back at her. “Is that so? They should be careful. It would be a shame if there were an accident.”
Leaving the room proved easy; Valathea opened the door and asked a soldier (there were three, not one) to bring her tea. While she held the door open, I slipped out.
It took me longer to steal the keys from an overseer and find the storeroom, which sat on the far side of the house. I was glad, since I didn’t know how big a fire I’d cause. The vané stored the sleep gas itself in large glass containers with wide lids. I wasn’t sure how the containers themselves were transported or how they forced the gas into the main hallway. Bellows of some kind? Magic?
It didn’t matter. If I could set the gas on fire without blowing myself up, we’d be golden. If I screwed up, I’d find myself dead or captured.
Captured was the same as dead, just delayed a bit.
I slipped my vision past the First Veil and checked; the containers were glass.
I scouted the warden’s house until I found the kitchen, whose main function seemed to be providing a place to cook porridge. I ran into a slight snag because all the plates proved to be simple wooden trenchers instead of elegant ceramics and glassware. Finally, I located a glass wine goblet in a receiving room. I brought it to the kitchen, where I used ash, water, and the goblet’s reflective surface to mark Janel’s air sigil on my forehead.
I had to work fast. I located a large bag of haerunth grain and scooped it into the wine goblet, followed by an ashy piece of charcoal from the hearth. Another layer of haerunth followed on top. Lack of air would eventually smother the charcoal. I had a small window of effectiveness.
I snuck back into the storeroom, avoiding guards, and set the wine goblet on the floor. Then I closed the door behind me and got out fast.
If I’d done everything correctly, nothing would happen. In fact, without any further interference, the charcoal would snuff out long before it burned through the top layer of haerunth.
But I had every intention of interfering.
I worked my way back down the hall and set up a safe distance away. Guards didn’t often pass through this particular hallway, which was important.
I sat down, took a deep breath, and began to sing.
It wasn’t really singing, mind you. It was wordless, for one thing, a soft drone. And I used magic to cheat. I could have done this more easily with a musical instrument, but the theory remained the same. I slowly built up reverberating sound layers, casting out the vibration like a net, crafting a subtle disharmony devastating to a single material like granite or iron.
Or in this case, glass.
I wasn’t sure it was working until I heard a thump and a strange sound. Loud, and then muted, as if I’d dunked my head in the bathwater. Then the shock wave had me stumbling backward.
Okay. So the explosion was a little larger than I’d intended.
I regained my balance and hurried back to the receiving room, where Valathea waited. I remained invisible, naturally.
I arrived just in time for the show.
Rindala was trying to calm an increasingly uncalmable Founder. “Lady, please, I promise you—”
“Bring my carriage around immediately,” Valathea said. “I refuse to stay here another minute. Another second. Do you hear? I’m leaving at once.” Her gaze swept past me, but I knew I’d been seen.
Rindala knew he was beaten. “Of course. We will naturally send word when the situation is better under control, Your Majesty—” Rindala stopped himself. “My apologies, Founder.”
Valathea studied the man. Then she reached out and touched his cheek. “I remember you. You came down with us from the Kirpis, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” Emotional volumes wrestled in that single word. “Please be careful. My heart would break if any harm befell you now that you’re back.”
“Thank you. It gives my heart joy to see your friendly face. Even if I’m no longer queen.”
“You’ll always be my queen,” Rindala whispered. Then louder: “I’ll have your carriage brought around immediately. If I may?” The warden offered Valathea his arm.
“Again,” Valathea said. “Thank you.”
They walked out of the room.
I followed right behind them.