6.

 

It was a year before Bueralan had an answer to Zean’s question about the First Queen’s reaction to his new role in life.

Before that, before he pushed open the cracked wooden door of the inn where Ce Pueral of the First Queen’s Guard waited for him, there was the formation of Water. That was the name Serra Milai gave her newly made squad of saboteurs on the warm morning they rode from Lord Feana’s kingdom. She retired the name Sky in the dirt streets and, after the waves and handshakes from her old soldiers, left it behind with the copper bracelets she had worn, the ranks that she had bestowed, and the history of success and failure she had earned as a captain over two decades of blood and violence. She did it, Bueralan thought later, with an ease that he envied at the time, without the backward glance of which he had not entirely rid himself in relation to Ooila.

He would eventually, but it would not be after he stepped out of the inn Pueral waited for him in. For years, he would be haunted by the ease and reach of the First Queen’s captain.

“If you step out the door,” Ce Pueral had said as he held the old piece of wood open, “you will be shot.”

Bueralan had let the door close behind him.

The room was empty, the half a dozen long tables of old chipped wood that filled the floor ominous in their solitude, as if they had become conspirators with the woman who waited at their end, her gold-edged armor exchanged for nondescript leathers. Before her, she had two wooden mugs, and a squat bottle of sour wine that had given the inn its name, Second Taste. He could not see any weapons on her, but the shadows of the alcoves and the hidden corners of the room shifted as if they were flesh, as if the dark could take a breath.

“If I wanted you dead,” the captain continued, “you would be so already.”

“I know that.”

“I did not think you looked scared.”

“Just impressed.”

Pueral’s smile was faint. “Take a seat,” she said, pointing across the table. “It won’t be a long conversation.”

“You cleared out this whole inn?” He untied his sword from its scabbard and laid it, slowly, on the table before he seated himself on the hard bench. “You know, I have to work in this town.”

“You were made on the street of Wisal three days ago,” the other replied easily. “That is why you are in Venil alone, while the rest of Sky finish off their work for Aned Heast.”

“I’ll still have to leave after this.”

“Consider it part of our relationship. It’s healthier than the one I had with the Thousandth Prince, Jehinar Meih.”

“I do like healthy.”

“Is that why you killed two men on the streets of Wisal?”

Bueralan smiled, but said nothing. The two men had been mercenaries, both members of the small army that merchants had hired to “liberate” Wisal from the hands of the governor, and turn it into a free-trade port which, among other things, would allow the slave trade to gain a large perch on the corner of Wilate. The two men—both born in Ooila—had not been part of the plan that Serra Milai and Sky had devised, but they had appeared unexpectedly on a small ship to meet with the merchants, and to bring with them sample wares. The older of the two, a man named Ge, had made the exiled baron on the street and raised his hand in greeting, calling out to him as “Baron Le!” but the destruction of Bueralan’s disguise as a seller of soggy fruit had not been why he had died.

“Let me try another question,” Pueral said, her tone still light. “What did you do with the boys that had been brought ashore?”

“I didn’t sell them, and I didn’t use them.” He shrugged. “Maybe they ran away?”

“They were from Ilatte.”

“I know where they were from.”

Pueral lifted the clay pot of wine, began to pour. “I was surprised to see Ge,” she said. “His master has pushed very hard to expand the trade outside Ooila with the First Queen, though she has resisted. It is not to her taste, if you must know. The practice of buying the young in the wealthy families in, at least, the First Kingdom, has lost some favor, and she is happy to keep it at that. I might have had to kill Ge myself, if he had not seen you on the side of the road.” She pushed the cup to him, a courtesy that he did not fail to notice. “Imagine if I had not come all this way to learn about the work you were now doing?”

“You’re welcome to claim his death as your own, if you want.”

“I have no need for that.” A note of coolness entered her voice, yet it maintained its friendly tone. “Please, take a drink.”

He took the cup, tasting it after Pueral had tasted her own.

“It is a strange business you find yourself in, Bueralan Le,” the captain of the First Queen’s Guard continued. “A saboteur’s life is one of risk, deceit, and occasional murder—and you will not always be on the moral side of it. Your work in Hitna was very good. I had considered the war all but lost for the earl. I respected very much the part you played in the banker elections in Zoum—I had always thought democracy and capitalism went well together, but I never imagined how well until I heard that you had begun selling fake land. I won’t flatter you with more tales I’ve heard about your exploits from the last eight months, but it is sufficient to say that I always considered that you were wasting your life with the Thousandth Prince, a point that I feel has been validated since you parted ways with him.”

“Youth is a graveyard of regrets,” the exiled Baron of Kein replied easily. “But I leave mine in Ooila, where they’re safe and quiet.”

“You could return to them.”

His hand tightened around the cup, and he almost replied immediately. Instead, he lifted it and drank, and said, eventually, “Not even if you paid me.”

Around Pueral, the shadows shifted, as if they were alive, and impatient. “The First Queen does not need saboteurs,” she said. “They were the words she spoke to me. I came to Wilate on those words.”

Beneath Bueralan’s grip he felt the mug weaken. “This is not Wilate.”

“No, it is not.” She raised the cup, and drank its contents in one long drawn-out breath. “But what the First Queen needs is exiled barons who know their title contains both those words. What she needs is the quiet acceptance of her rule that comes from that—as well as the admittance that that one was wrong. Live as an exiled baron, Bueralan.” She rose from the table, but paused before she turned to leave. She said, “I like the tattoos, by the way.”

The first of his white inked marks was on his left arm, running from around his wrist and up his forearm, over his shoulder. “Thank you.”

She left then and, in her wake, the shadows of six men and women emerged from the room around him. He met the gaze of each, met the flatness, the coldness of their eyes, and knew that he was a lucky man, a man who had just avoided death. In his own eyes, he would continue to do so for years after, feeling as if a power much larger than him was watching his every move. It was a feeling he would not have again until Samuel Orlan told the Captain of the Spine that he would accompany Dark into Leera.

In the barracks of Mireea, he felt a hand nudge his shoulder.

“Don’t sleep in the chair,” Zean said, walking past him, leaving the empty room. “You always bitch about that on the horse in the morning, when you do.”