52

ALBA’S WHITE VEIL WAS FRESHLY STARCHED AND NEARLY GLOWED in the sunlight. If the purpose of the veil was to encourage modesty or to stifle beauty, it didn’t work in her case, the stiff folds providing a contrast to her soft features and round cheeks. Keeping her hair covered only highlighted the sparkle of her pale blue eyes. The stiff sea breeze scoured some pink into her pale cheeks.

Ballantine had arranged the ship, a brig whose owner had a reputation of gambling debts, and would captain the ship himself, with a crew of Serafans paid well enough through the ship’s owner not to ask questions. Kristos and Sianh jockeyed over who should direct the crew in loading our scant luggage, and Theodor wisely kept out of their scuffle, charting various courses with his brother, debating which was preferable, direct routes or routes that skirted Pellia or the islands that dotted the sea to hide our trail.

Though I perhaps should have stayed inside with Theodor, I needed the stiff breeze and bright sunlight to clear my head. Our leave-taking from Viola and Annette had felt stilted and pained; I knew that Theodor grieved what he saw as the loss of his cousin and his dear friend. I felt stretched thin, understanding their reticence but unable to sympathize with avoidance any longer. I had tried that route and failed.

Alba turned to me with a pale smile. “There is something we ought to discuss,” she said quietly.

“Of course,” I replied, though I was not ready for more conversations about strategy or my ultimate destination.

“I have not been perhaps entirely honest with you.” She gripped the rail as my eyes widened. “And I should tell you before we leave port. You can run back to your friends’ estate if you so wish.”

“Very little could convince me to do that,” I said.

She laughed. “Don’t speak so hastily. You see, I was truthful that I have been in contact with your brother since last fall. I had read his work and I did wish to correspond with him.” She broke eye contact with me and turned her gaze toward the deep aquamarine of the ocean. “But he was not the first in the movement with whom I had contact. Pyord Venko wrote to me first.”

“Venko,” I breathed. I should have known—I knew that he drummed up support from Kvys patrician houses. “That’s past now,” I said.

“It is,” she said. “But you must understand. Pyord was not merely a contact, and my house not merely one he hoped to add to his bankroll. He was my cousin. On my mother’s side.”

I blinked, the sun reflecting on the waves suddenly too bright. “We… we don’t choose our family,” I stammered.

“For many years, I would have chosen Pyord every time,” she said staunchly. “We were friends as children, playing games of make believe in the birchwood in summer and telling stories at the fireside during the long winter months. He—” Her voice caught and I thought I saw tears glimmer in her eyes. “He was a brilliant child. He taught himself to read before his parents hired him a tutor. He taught me to read. I suppose, in the end, he trusted his own brilliance too far.”

I found I couldn’t answer.

“When he asked my house to support him, I agreed. It seemed a wise investment, from the way he sold it—the government of Galitha was bound to change, and my house would shift from one of average consequence to highly influential if it was one of those that had been a friend and ally of the new government from the first.” I understood this—the same reason Kvyset would tacitly support us now, the gamble that a new government would be a better ally.

Alba stared out into the water for several breaths before she continued. “I sent money. I even—and this is what I find I have difficulty admitting—I even promised him our cavalry.” She turned back to me. “I am sorry. I didn’t realize that his ambition had overtaken his ethics, or that his intellect had overtaken his compassion. I still saw him as a brilliant boy, a visionary.”

I withdrew from the railing. Alba was right—part of me wanted to bolt from her, to run from the ship and up the gangplank and into Port Triumph. But another part of me understood. A part of me that had trusted Kristos, loved him, and been betrayed for that love. I had the tenuous, brittle chance of rebuilding that trust with my brother, something Alba would never have with Pyord.

“I wish,” I said, with deliberate control, “that I had the chance to know the brilliant boy you did. I only saw the ambitious man he became.”

“I wish you had, too,” Alba whispered.

“Kristos knew, of course. That you and Pyord were close, were related. He didn’t tell me.”

“I asked him to let me tell you in my own time. I presumed that you wouldn’t trust me if you knew. And I needed you to trust me enough so that I could help you and, in turn, help your country.”

I hesitated. I had been lied to and manipulated in worse ways than Alba keeping a secret about her relationship to Pyord. Yet those lies had turned me into a pawn, and that had recast me in a new mold that didn’t trust as easily, that didn’t forgive lies. Alba had saved my skin, of course—but Pyord would have done the same if it benefited him. She had my brother’s trust, but that inspired little confidence. She had sought me out at the summit, and that could have been a ploy from the beginning.

“I’m not going to abandon our plans,” I said finally. “But I—please excuse me.” I retreated toward the other side of the ship, facing the open water, and saw Sianh standing near the prow of the ship.

“How much of that did you hear?” I asked.

“Enough,” he replied with a faint smile. “It’s a small ship. We should likely get used to a certain lack of confidentiality.” He turned his gaze back toward the low waves lapping the docks.

His distance was maddening. I didn’t know or trust him any more than Alba, but I expected some response, either outrage at her deception or consolation that she was still trustworthy.

“And?” I finally asked.

“And she was close with a man who used you poorly.”

“Perhaps you don’t know the entire story—”

“I know enough.” He shrugged. “What are you asking? Do I think you should be her friend, confide all your secrets in her?” He shook his head with a laugh. “I do not care. And neither should you, not any longer.”

“If I can’t trust her—”

“What is trust? What are you trusting her with, precisely? She is your ally, not your friend. You want the same thing, you are useful to one another to obtain it.” Sianh didn’t take his eyes off the water, so he didn’t see my stunned face as I fell silent. I had layered the two, ally and friend, and stitched them up together with trust like a seam lapped over itself.

“Your friends may not be on your side, and those on your side may not be your friends,” he continued. “You see that when you look to the Lady Viola and the Lady Annette, yes? Untangle the two, friendship and alliance, and you will be happier.”

“I doubt I’ll be happier,” I replied.

“Wrong word. You will stop driving yourself to distraction, fretting over who is your friend. The meaning of trust with an ally is utilitarian, not emotional.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”

He softened. “You’re likely not. It is a strange thing, to stop seeing yourself as merely a self, and to see yourself as representing many others. Acting for many others.”

Sianh was right. I understood, as a shop owner, that my choices were for others and not only for myself. I had to translate that into this new world I found myself floundering in. I wasn’t acting on my behalf, but on the behalf of an entire nation. Sobered by that thought, I put aside the question of trust as a friend would think of it, and accepted, faltering, the reality that continuing a partnership with Alba was best for those I represented.

“It gets easier,” he said. “I knew the men serving under me were not my friends. They had friends among one another. They were permitted that luxury. Those of the same rank as I, by and large, were not my friends. Peers, perhaps, not friends. It goes without saying that my superiors were not my friends.”

“I don’t think we quite have that sort of rank structure here,” I cautioned him.

“We will. And you are among the leaders. And leaders have very, very few friends.” He grinned. I didn’t return the smile. “Come now. You will have fame and a place in history.”

“At the price of being lonely and friendless, constantly embroiled in a game of ‘who is my ally’ with everyone I meet?”

Sianh laughed. “Hardly. Be patient. And don’t look for your friends among those with whom you must work.”

I nodded and left him looking out over the water. I wondered if he intended to spend the entire voyage that way, eyes fixed on some point in the churning waves.