23

After fifteen brutal days and nights of travel, our three carriages and ten guards—survivors from the attack at Crags Fort—reach the gates of Saryenia at dusk.

I lean out the open window of the third carriage, where Mis and I sit crammed in with the traveling chests and provisions. The main avenues should be bustling this time of day as people make their way home, finish their errands, or get ready for an evening’s revelry, but the streets feel oddly empty. It’s almost like we’ve entered a foreign country, not our familiar and beloved hometown.

A militia patrol halts us. “Do you have a pass?” its captain demands of Captain Neartos.

“A pass for what?” asks Neartos with a look of genuine confusion.

“No one is allowed out after nightfall without a special pass stamped with the king’s seal. If you have no pass, I must arrest you.”

Gargaron climbs down from the front carriage, while Kalliarkos stays out of sight. “I am Lord Gargaron, head of Garon Palace. I have just traveled at courier speed from the Eastern Reach with news of the war that the king needs to hear immediately. You may either escort me to the king’s palace or move out of our way.”

The sergeant hesitates, measuring the carriages, our grim-faced guards, and his patrol of eight men.

Then he sees me looking out of the last carriage and takes several steps closer.

“Is that Spider, the adversary? They say you marched a spider right out from under the nose of the enemy and saved the life of Lord Kalliarkos during an enemy raid.”

“Ah, so the news out of Crags Fort has reached Saryenia before us?” Gargaron asks with his thin smile.

“Everyone has heard the rumors. You know how Commoners can hear every whisper on the wind. There’s even a song about it—fantastically entertaining! Well, we wouldn’t want to delay the arrival of this noted Challenger, would we?” He and his soldiers salute me with an adversary kiss, then start to sing as our party rolls on.

The general’s valiant daughter will fight for Efea,

She’ll fight for Efea, and win!

For days Mis has sat passively, wept quietly, and barely spoken, but now she peers out the window as we make our way up the Avenue of Triumphs to the King’s Hill. Patrols move along the streets in force.

“How odd they know your story already, Jes,” says Mis with an edge in her voice that makes me feel I walked right over a secret without seeing it. “Just like someone flew it here by messenger pigeon on purpose, to sweeten our arrival for their own gain.”

“You think Lord Gargaron arranged it?”

She just looks at me, saying nothing, and I feel ashamed.

We two adversaries are set down at Garon Stable, where we are greeted with a stunned surprise by our stablemates. Rejoicing turns to tears as we tell our stories. Afterward we wash and we eat. Mis leaves the table before I’m done and when I follow her I find her in her cubicle packing her belongings into a small storage chest.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“I’m quitting the stable. I’m going home.” A lamp casts light on her determined face.

“How can you just quit?”

“Why do we run the Fives to enrich Patron treasuries and enhance their prestige? There was room in the front carriage for you to sit. You who leaped from Novice to Challenger at her first trial! The hero of Crags Fort! Now subject of a popular song! But even so the daughter of the great hero General Esladas is still crammed in with the baggage because her mother is Efean.”

I open my mouth to reply, then shut it.

“The enemy slaughtered Tana because we Efeans weren’t allowed into the citadel when we first arrived. Had we been inside, she’d be alive. And then the enemy took Dusty because he is young and strong enough to bear their burdens, and Efean enough to be discarded when they no longer need him.”

“He’ll survive. I’m sure of it.”

She straightens to look me in the eye. “Don’t pretend that things turn out all right for people like Dusty, Jes. Don’t insult him in that way.”

“But you escaped, Mis. It happens sometimes.” Her expression closes its claws around my throat, and I know I am just saying so because I don’t want to face the truth. “You care for him, don’t you? More than just as a friend.”

“Much good it did me! He only had eyes for a Patron girl, like I’m nothing.”

“Mis…”

“Do you know why I escaped?”

“Because Tana sacrificed herself to save you, me, and Dusty.”

“Yes, she did, but that’s not why I survived. After you ran off to warn the priest, the doctor and his servants broke open the gate, caught Dusty and me, and handed us over to the East Saro soldiers. They were to send me with the captured wagons as a beast of burden, like they did Dusty, but the doctor’s Efean concubine convinced him to leave me behind. I think she didn’t want me to suffer what she suffers.”

My body sags, and I brace myself against the wall. Bettany saved Efean women and children, including Mis. I see now that she tried to get Amaya and me out of the way, but no matter how I turn it, once she realized we wouldn’t leave she let us ride into an ambush knowing we could die.

“You saw the empty streets, Jes. Soldiers on patrol. A curfew in place. When we left Saryenia, grain prices were already so high people stood in line to get a ration of bread. Imagine what it is like now for hungry people. For poor people.”

“That’s why we have to fight for Efea. As the army does.”

“The Royal Army fights for the power of the king and queen, for the lords, for the Patrons, not for us! Never for us.”

She breaks off as we hear footsteps in the corridor. Talon pads past without even glancing in to see what we’re doing.

“I’ve been here a year and she’s never spoken to me because she’s too proud to speak to someone like me,” Mis whispers. “Don’t you understand? I’m going to find a way to fight for Efea. For Efeans. Not for them.” She grasps my hands. Her grip, like mine, is strong and true. “Come with me, Jes. My family will hide you. You deserve better than this, running trials so they can win.”

“Jes!” Darios calls from the entry of the women’s barracks, for it’s not proper for an unrelated man to step inside a dormitory where unmarried women sleep. “There’s a steward from Garon Palace here. You’ve been summoned by Lord Kalliarkos.”

Mis shakes her head in a pitying way, kisses me on the cheek, and releases my hands. “At least I can leave. You’re the one who is trapped.”

The steward escorts me through the servants’ entrance into Garon Palace. He guides me down servants’ pathways, out of sight of the residents, and up to a rooftop terrace that looks across the city. Princess Berenise sits in a cushioned chair, hands in her lap. I look around for Kalliarkos, but she and I are alone except for her attendants. I am brought before her and allowed to kneel. Age has bent her body but her gaze is fierce.

“Ah. Spider. Here you are.”

“Your Highness.” Mis’s anger still throbs in my ears, so I speak imprudently and perhaps a bit tartly. “Does this mean Lord Kalliarkos is not the one who summoned me?”

“You must show patience.” Her voice has a clarity that impresses me, each word so distinct I feel I could pluck it out of the air. “I can bring about many things, if I so choose.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” I wait as a servant hands her a cup. She sips, and the servant takes the cup and stands to one side, ready to offer it again.

“I recommend you listen closely. In the few months you have been gone from Saryenia, Menoë has begun a tradition of passing out bread to the populace at the weekly Fives trials. It keeps the Fives court packed, and of course it has made the citizens of Saryenia sing her praises.”

“A cunning plan, Your Highness, but I don’t see what it has to do with me.”

She lifts a hand. “Patience. Menoë has become the confidant of Queen Serenissima, who is weak but no fool. The queen sees the restlessness of the population but she only knows how to control people through force. It is Serenissima who pushed through the curfew to keep the streets quiet at night. She sees how detached Kliatemnos has become, sunk in his Archives as he hunts for this Efean poet who he is sure has a secret about our ancestors hidden away.”

I think of the oracle we rescued from Lord Ottonor’s tomb.

Expecting no reply, Princess Berenise goes on. “Menoë has a persuasive manner—”

Certainly Menoë seems to have persuaded my father of her keen strategic mind and her innocence in any plotting with Nikonos! But I can’t say that aloud until I understand where Berenise stands.

“—and has convinced the queen to allow Prince Temnos to make carefully supervised trips outside of the royal grounds. He attends the Fives trials every week now. The crowd loves him because of his delicate constitution and because he presides with Menoë over the weekly distribution of bread.”

A smile touches my lips. Temnos must love the adoration of the crowd as well as the chance to watch the Fives. I wonder if anyone has been training him or if they even really care about him except as a tool to use in their plotting.

“Prince Temnos took a strong liking to you, Spider. As it happens, tomorrow is Fivesday, and as a special surprise for the prince, who will be attending, you will run a trial so he can see you.”

“But Your Highness, I haven’t done more than pace through a daily menageries to stay limber and practice a few tricks, not since Akheres Oasis. I’m not ready.”

“An adversary is always ready, Spider. Do you understand me?”

The words fall as a threat so I suck in my anger and reply in a cool voice. “Yes, Your Highness.”

“I am sure you do not,” she remarks with the asperity of the old who can easily perceive when the young are lying. “You are no more of a fool than your father is, Jessamy.”

That she uses my name makes me very nervous. It’s so hard not to jump up and pace around but I hold still.

“You may believe I am a weak old woman in thrall to Gargaron’s ambition to rule in Efea through my beloved grandchildren, whom he believes he can control. But you would be mistaken. Let me tell you a story.”

My whole body tenses, for I am sure there is nothing worse than being told a secret that might kill you. But of course I remain silent. As Mis said, as Bettany said, I’m trapped.

“As the younger sister of a king and queen I was naturally sent away to marry an ally, who at that time happened to be Sokorios, the king of Saro-Urok. When he was killed by a rival, I barely escaped with my life and my tongue. I was saved by the timely intervention of Menos Garon, whom I married even though his rank was below my own. Menos and I did well enough together. I respected him, and he respected me enough to leave the administrative reins of the household in my hands.”

“Menos was head of the Garon household, and Lord Gargaron’s father was his younger brother,” I say, remembering what Tana told me.

“Indeed.” Her nod is like a golden star of approval whose radiance makes me shine. “I have always believed that my husband, and later our son, Kalliarkos’s father, were assassinated. But their deaths were covered up with the explanations of a mining accident and a battle. Because of the nature of their deaths I’ve never had proof, only suspicion.”

Her gaze has years of weight. She can crush me as easily as she can breathe, and a conjecture that I have in some manner mistaken the genesis of this plot becomes visible on the map in my mind. So I leap.

“Their deaths allowed Lord Gargaron to become head of the household when otherwise he would have remained a lesser member of the clan.”

Her smile is no smile. It is a knife, put away into its sheath as she decides not to slit my throat. “Yes, you comprehend the situation. A man willing to murder his own kinsmen in order to take what belongs to them, merely because he covets it for himself, is a dangerous man. There is enough for all, but he is not a person willing to share. Aware of my vulnerability, I have lived a quiet life, built up my treasury, and bided my time for my grandchildren to come of age. Do you understand?”

“I believe so, Your Highness. If I were in your place I would hope to see my grandchildren become king and queen and leave Garon Palace to the dangerous man who craves it most.”

“Among the Saroese, women play their role from ‘behind the curtains,’ as the poet wrote. We learn to negotiate through misdirection and trade.” Her face is unreadable, for she is a woman who has survived many decades by never displaying her true feelings. “I made the offer to Gargaron: put my grandchildren on the throne and I will not push Kal’s rightful position as head of Garon Palace.”

“It was your idea? You had the Fives court built for Kalliarkos without ever meaning for him to become a real adversary?”

“He is a prince, with a claim to the throne of Efea through me and to the throne of our enemies in Saro-Urok, thanks to his mother’s lineage. The Fives is nothing but a game.”

I clamp my lips together. The Fives is more than a game if you are playing it for bigger stakes in the world. But I’m not going to disagree with her to her face. “So it was a piece of misdirection to let Kalliarkos train when all along you meant him for the throne.”

“Yes. You came along at a perfect time. When Gargaron was investigating your father to see if he was the military man we needed for our plan to work, he discovered you and had you followed and studied. Together we determined you might be the vehicle that could put an end to Kal’s senseless daydream.”

A sick anger twists inside me and I can’t speak. To speak is to die. They murdered Lord Ottonor and condemned his entire household to penury and disgrace. They threw away my mother and sisters and all the people to whom Mother gave refuge under her roof. They treated Kal’s dreams with contempt. All for an ambition that benefits their own selfish desire for power.

But after all I’m too angry not to speak, because too many lives are on the line to let the most important question go unanswered.

“Your Highness, how can you trust Lord Gargaron if you think he murdered your husband and son?”

“I don’t trust him. But he has no blood relationship to the lineage of the first Kliatemnos and Serenissima. He has no possible claim to the throne. Therefore, once my grandchildren become king and queen, it will serve him to keep them there.”

I have to tell her. If for nothing else, to protect Kal. “Menoë is in league with Nikonos. I heard them plotting that night in the garden when I followed Kal into the pavilion. She means to betray you all.” The words hiss on my tongue, so bitter, and tears sting in my eyes, and I realize I am crying for Bettany—my own sibling betrayer.

“Certainly not.” Her tone brooks no disagreement.

Menoë has fooled them all, and there is no way I can convince them.

“You do not understand the full nature of the situation, Jessamy, daughter of Esladas. Imagine Menoë as queen. Once she gives birth to a boy, that boy—your father’s child—will be formally and publicly announced as the son of Kalliarkos and named as heir to the throne of Efea.”

“What will happen to my father?”

“Why should anything happen to your father? He’s too lowborn to make a claim to the throne, and Efea needs his military skill now more than ever. The king and queen are understood to be father and mother over Efea, so any child the queen gives birth to belongs to the king, and of course the ignorant populace will believe it is truly Kalliarkos’s child.”

“Does that mean Temnos isn’t really Kliatemnos’s son?”

“No. He is the king’s son in every way. Kliatemnos and Serenissima chose to bind the power more tightly into the family by both marrying and breeding inside it. We will keep our bloodline pure through Menoë. Don’t you hear what I’m saying? In due time, your half brother will be king of Efea.”

My hands go slack. My shoulders sag. Her words fall like nonsense because they are impossible. As my thoughts hit this unfathomable wall I lose all my strength. I just kneel there as she continues speaking. This is the ordinary way people go about murdering and bribing to gain and hold on to power.

And now I am truly part of it.

I know every piece of their plan, one that requires the deaths of Kliatemnos, Serenissima, and Nikonos to succeed, and if I do not go immediately to the king and queen, I am complicit, a traitor. Princess Berenise has made sure of that.

“Your part in this task, as I was beginning to say, is to capture and keep Prince Temnos’s loyalty.”

“What will happen to Prince Temnos?” I whisper hoarsely, for I fear to hear the answer.

“Nothing will happen to him. He’s an invalid, a weak boy who suffers seizures. No one expects him to survive to adulthood. As a rising Challenger, you will work to win the crowd so thoroughly to your side that, when we make our play for the throne, the populace will support us without hesitation, as I believe Gargaron has already made clear. Your reward for your successful part in our endeavor will be to receive all that you desire.”

She pauses.

I murmur, with the obedience I have no choice but to show, “Yes, Your Highness.”

“Very good. Now, I am going inside. You may remain here. Please, go over to the railing and enjoy the view.”

It is such a peculiar order that I puzzle over it for exactly as long as it takes for her attendants to help her away, removing all but one of the lanterns, and for the breathless arrival of a person who runs up the steps to the roof.

“Grandmama, my apologies for being late. I just got word you had summoned me.…”

He sees me standing at the railing in the outer aura of lamplight and stops dead, then looks around as if unable to believe there is no one else up here, that we are alone.

That Princess Berenise knows we are alone.

My hands tighten on the railing. I should reject being used like this, but I can’t take my eyes off him: his dark eyes, the strong curve of his shoulders, the parting of his lips as he takes in a resolute breath.

He walks over and stands next to me, careful to remain an arm’s length away. His presence feels like a fire illuminating my five souls, the heart of me: I have wanted him from the moment he spoke to me as an equal, adversary to adversary.

The garden, laid out below, magnifies our silence because there is no wind to rustle its leaves. Under curfew the city rests uneasily, as if holding its breath. Lamps mark the wharves of Saryenia’s famous harbors.

A trumpet sounds the hour, the sound rising so suddenly that I jump. When the horn fades he speaks.

“How are you come to stand here in Garon Palace, on the roof of my grandmother’s pavilion, Jes?”

“I was told you had summoned me, but when I got here it was Princess Berenise who was waiting.”

“I did not summon you. But it seems Grandmama knows you are here.”

“Yes, she does.”

“She summoned me, as she often does. She likes to eat an evening supper here atop the roof.”

“I know nothing of that, my lord.”

“You’re right to be suspicious of me. I said things I regret after the victory games, because I felt humiliated and I wanted you to feel hurt too. What I’ve seen in battle has made me see how selfish I was, how small the world I lived in before, how little I could see of what really goes on beyond the palace walls.”

“My lord—”

“Please let me finish. I’ve chewed over these words for days. When we met up again in the desert I wanted to tell you that I’d gotten over my anger, but I couldn’t speak to you when we were with the scouts. At camp your father was so adamant that you and I never be alone, and I was not about to confide in you with him present! And then on the journey here Uncle Gar was with me day and night.”

“I do not expect you to say anything, my lord. Your anger is understandable. You could have said much worse after the Fives trial. I’m sorry.”

“You’re not sorry you defeated me!”

“No, I’m not.”

“Of course you wouldn’t be. I knew you would say that.” He laughs curtly, and I can hear that for all his fine words, losing his dream—his senseless daydream—still hurts.

“I’m sorry for what it meant to you,” I say.

“What it meant that day, and what it means now, are two different things.” He shifts impatiently, rubs his eyes. “I’m not an adversary any longer. I can’t be an adversary, or at least not in the Fives. I see that now.”

“You are heir to two thrones, my lord. Your grandmother just told me so.”

He is so fiercely not looking at me that I flush self-consciously. As he inhales I tense in the way a good adversary does right before she leaps into Rings.

“What did she tell you?” he asks.

And so I tell him, because I have to see for myself how he reacts, where he nods because he already knew and where he winces because he’s as appalled and disgusted at their plans as I am. When to my utter relief he nods and winces in all the right places, and I finish, I bow my head and wait.

He takes in a slow breath and lets it out. I don’t rush him although I feel his presence beside me as I would feel the promise of a brilliant fire on a cold desert night.

Finally he moves, and I startle, but he’s just pointing into the night.

“Look at the lights on the water.”

The sea spreads as a mantle of darkness, broken at the horizon where stars pour upward into the vault of the heavens. Distant spark-bugs float between sea and sky: the prow and stern lamps on ships far out on the water.

When he lowers his arm he places a hand on the railing so close to mine I could exhale into him. The temptation to lean sideways and brush my shoulder against his washes so strongly over me that before I realize it my shoulder touches his. He starts. At once I straighten to attention as if Father stands behind us, watching to see that a gap is fixed between his daughter and the lord she must not desire.

“We could run away,” he whispers. “We could join a mercenary company and leave and never come back.”

Oh how it hurts to hear those golden words.

Oh how it hurts to answer.

“I can’t leave my mother and siblings. I just can’t.” I can’t—I won’t—be Bettany.

An unexpectedly sweet smile paints his lips. “I knew you would say that.”

“I’m sorry, Kal.”

“Kal?”

How that name crept out I cannot imagine. “My apologies, my lord.”

“Oh no, no, now you’ve said it and I can’t unhear it.” He rests a hand over my hand and turns to face me so that courtesy impels me to turn to face him, and thus we stand with the heady aroma of jasmine drifting up from the garden and the vast dome of the heavens our starry crown.

“Jes,” he whispers.

It is the easiest thing in all of creation to kiss him.

I test his lips to mine as our hands clasp and our fingers intertwine.

“They’re using us,” he whispers.

“I know.”

“They’re letting us know they won’t stand in our way, as long as we do what they want.”

“I know.”

“Jes—”

“I know.”

And then we don’t speak until I am so breathless that I am the one who has to break it off.

I stare at him because in all my dreams over and over I imagined this moment, that he would still care, and now that it is here it feels like it couldn’t possibly be happening.

A man coughs.

I spin to face the intruder, but Kal grabs my shoulder. He catches my eye, and with a look settles my pounding heart. I am not alone. He is with me. We are together.

In a more dignified manner, we face the single lamp and the man standing beneath it.

Lord Gargaron studies us with that thin smile on his thin face.

Defiantly I grasp Kal’s hand.

He says, coolly and sardonically, “Uncle Gar, how unexpected to find you invited to come up to take the view from Grandmama’s private roof.”

“Do not pretend you aren’t both perfectly aware of what this means, and the reward you will receive if you both play your part.”

Somewhere in Garon Palace a woman laughs, and I wonder: Is it Gargaron’s wife, pleased to hear he has passed Denya on to another man? Kalliarkos’s mother, rejoicing that her son has come home safely from the war? Lady Menoë, exulting in the unfolding of her cunning plan to smile to their faces and then stab them in the back?

“Why change your mind, Uncle? Why throw us together now when you did everything to keep us apart before?”

“What makes you think this wasn’t part of the plan all along? When I sent you to the Eastern Reach, Kal, I knew it would either make a man of you or break you so you would cease attempting to defy me. All I needed was for you to give up your naïve dream of being an adversary on the Fives court and accept that you are an adversary in the only game that matters.”

“Heir to two thrones,” murmurs Kal. “My inescapable fate.”

“Until your corpse walks to its tomb, you will never be free from the responsibilities laid on you by your birth. Now, Spider, you have a trial tomorrow. A steward will escort you back to the stable. Study this.”

He holds out a scroll.

Kalliarkos snatches it out of my hand before I can unroll it. “What is this, Uncle?”

“It is for the adversary, Kal. Not for you.”

Kalliarkos pulls it open enough to reveal a schematic that I instantly recognize as an engineer’s design for the configuration of a Fives court.

“It is the configuration of the Fives you’ll be running tomorrow,” Gargaron says to me as Kal slaps it closed. “Memorize it, and then burn it.”

“But that’s cheating!” I cry. “I don’t want to win by cheating.”

“You can’t demand an adversary cheat,” says Kal. “Besides the dishonor—”

“As if anything matters besides the dishonor!” I interrupt.

“Truly,” he agrees, “but besides that, cheating will get her barred from the game for life.”

“Cheating! Is that what you young people call it these days?” Gargaron’s brow wrinkles as a measure of his disdain. “You are so sheltered, both of you. Have you not noticed we are at war? Threatened by the armies of old Saro, all three kingdoms allied against us? Our own Royal Army is in retreat, and the king cannot give them the resources they need to fight. Do you think Kliatemnos is able to lead Efea through this calamitous time? Do you?”

Kal holds out the scroll to his uncle. “The Fives has nothing to do with this war.”

“Of course it does. Nothing we do is separate from the times we live in. It is your ancestor Kliatemnos the Second who codified the rules that adversaries follow. It is gold that builds a Fives court, and money and prestige that honor the winners. We win or we die, Kal. If Kliatemnos and Serenissima rule, Efea falls. Do you not see it? They cannot win, just as you could not win against Jessamy. That is why she defeated you, and why we must defeat them. To save Efea.”

He grabs the scroll from Kal, unrolls it, and holds it open so lamplight glows on the papyrus. I mean to look away but my gaze follows the lines like bees follow the scent of blooms to flowers: I don’t look because I want to win by cheating; I look because it is a Fives court and I have trained for years to study everything about the Fives.

“How did you get this?” I ask. “The administrators and engineers are meant to be irreproachable, on pain of death.”

“The administrator Lord Perikos had a favored son, the child of a concubine I grant you, but you of all people should know how a man can favor his concubine and her children above all proper sense and reason, Jessamy.”

I shut my eyes, because I don’t want to see, but it just makes the vision clearer: the prince spasming; the king stabbing the youth; the spark.…

“The boy died under mysterious circumstances in the service of Prince Temnos. Lord Perikos was not satisfied with the king’s explanation. Thus Perikos has become a willing accomplice in our plan to strengthen Efea by ridding ourselves of a dangerously ineffective king.”

Kal steps between me and the scroll. “Jes, you don’t have to do this.”

But his frown mirrors the bitter stain of complicity spreading across my heart.