Hinck made his way to the stern, wondering if this was the best idea. All day long the brand on his shoulder had itched, and though he tried his best to ignore it, he knew the likely cause. Oli had confirmed his worst fears.
“It’s a summons from Moon Fang. There will be a meeting tonight,” Oli had said, “And you shouldn’t go.”
Hinck didn’t want to go. It was the last thing he wanted to do . . . but it was also his best hope of learning what the cult had planned. Not appearing could be just as dangerous. So with Oli’s help they fashioned a rough mask and sent Hinck on his way.
Oli’s final words resounded in Hinck’s mind. “Whatever happens, don’t take evenroot. Once you get addicted, it’s near impossible to stop, plus you’d have to give your soul to a shadir to be healed.”
As if he needed the reminder.
Hinck descended to the hold, wandering the crossways and lengthways until he spotted a lone guard wearing a helmet and sitting on a crate before a compartment door. “Who comes this way?”
Hinck wasn’t sure how to answer. Was this a normal guard, seeking a place of solitude? Or was this one of the Lahavôtesh? “I seek the Sanctum of Mysteries,” he tried.
The guard stood and opened the door. “You have found it.”
Simple enough so far. He only hoped his hunch that there was no evenroot was true. Because if he were wrong, he did not know how he would manage to refuse the milk of Gâzar in such small company.
He stepped past the guard and inside the compartment. At first he saw nothing but a lone oil lamp sitting on the floor. By the time the guard closed the door behind him, the compartment had come into focus. Hunched over as he was, he could not have expected anything as foreboding or grand as the chamber underneath Canden House. Yet there was no altar here at all. Nothing but a circle of masked folk sitting on crates and barrels around the lantern. He quickly counted eight in the room besides himself. Three were women. As was the custom, all wore black.
“Come in and join the boredom!” a man said. His voice, while somewhat mad, was slightly familiar. He wore a red mask that was painted to look like drops of water.
Hinck perched on the end of a vacant crate. The group sat in near silence for far too long. Hinck grew fidgety and stiff but forced himself to remain still, not wanting all those masked faces fixated on him again. Since he had been the newest initiate at their last gathering, everyone probably knew exactly who he was.
“He is not coming,” said a woman in a white mask with golden leaves.
“He might still.” This from another woman, whose mask was covered in swirls of blue and yellow paint.
“I told you he wouldn’t,” said the man in red. Fonu, Hinck realized with a jolt. Now that he was speaking without yelling, the voice was unmistakable. “He has abandoned us. After all we’ve done for him. Cast aside like dull blades.”
“Dull blades can be sharpened, Red Ream,” a man said. His mask was dark blue with a jagged lightning bolt cutting across it.
Fonu glared at Hinck. “Why bother sharpening when you can pick new blades whenever you please. What kind of a mask is that, anyway, Hinckdan?”
“No names!” said the woman with the white-and-gold mask.
“What does it matter?” Fonu reached to the man beside him—whose mask was a yellow sun—and ripped it off. It was Sir Garn, the emissary from Rurekau. The henna tracings on the sides of his neck looked like dirt in the low light.
“How dare you!” he cried.
Fonu pulled off his own mask. “There is no longer a point in secrecy,” he said, his face shining with sweat. “We must know who we are if we are to know whom to trust.”
“And we should trust you?” said the third woman, whose mask had pink and white flowers on a green background.
“Janek has abandoned us,” Fonu said. “He would let each and every one of us hang if it meant saving himself. We must decide what to do apart from him.”
The woman with a blue-and-yellow mask removed it. It was Lady Mattenelle! “Fonu is right. Sâr Janek does not serve the King of Magic. He serves only himself.”
“I too have witnessed this.” And the man with a black-and-gold mask took it off. Kamran DanSâr.
A dune cat mask went down to reveal Canbek Faluk, Hinck’s uncle. Hinck knew the man had always been corrupt, but to see him here, a part of this group, it shocked him.
“Moon Fang has made himself king of Sarikar,” Uncle Canbek said.
“Everyone knows that already.” The woman in the white-and-gold mask removed it. The Honored Lady Zenobia, longtime concubine of Rosâr Echad, mother to Kamran.
With the removal of her mask, the last two in the room took off theirs. The lightning-bolt mask had belonged to Janek’s shield, Sir Jayron, and the pink and white flowers on green had masked Rosâr Echad’s newest mistress, the actress Lilou Caridod.
Hinck saw no reason to keep his mask on. He loosed the ties and pulled it into his lap, keeping his gaze on the lantern.
“Because of Sâr Janek’s unpredictability, Moon Fang married Lady Eudora so he himself could lay claim to the Armanian throne,” Lady Zenobia said.
Hinck still couldn’t understand why Eudora would have married the old man. It seemed so unlike her. He reminded himself he didn’t care for Eudora anymore. She was not nearly as mysterious as Lady Pia, not that Hinck would allow himself to develop feelings for the concubine either, since she belonged to Janek.
Fonu voiced the very question Hinck wanted to know. “Why would Eudora have married an old man? It was no secret she never wanted to be queen. Never wanted to marry at all.”
“I imagine she changed her mind when she realized it was the only way to overthrow the rosâr and his Heir,” Zenobia said.
“More like her mother forced her,” Fonu mumbled.
“There is more,” Zenobia said. “My shadir tells me that Moon Fang has commanded us to sink this boat.”
“Sink the boat?” Canbek cried.
“The serpent nearly did that yesterday,” Kamran said. “They’re still patching up the bulkheads on the main deck.”
“He asks us to drown ourselves?” Sir Garn asked. “Is he mad?”
“He wants us to escape first, of course,” Zenobia said. “But with everyone else dead, succession of the Armanian throne would pass through Eudora to her firstborn son. As her consort and the child’s father, Moon Fang could then claim rule of both Sarikar and Armania.”
Hinck couldn’t help it this time. “Lady Eudora is expecting a child?”
“Not yet,” Zenobia said. “But soon.”
Hinck fought back a shiver of revulsion. Rogedoth was old enough to be Eudora’s grandfather! What was she thinking? Could Fonu be right? Had Eudora been forced into this?
“What about Janek?” Fonu asked. “We can’t let Janek drown.”
“Moon Fang says if he is not for us, he is against,” Zenobia said.
Everyone began talking at once.
“I didn’t agree to any of this,” Fonu said. “The man would truly kill his own grandson? He’s insane.”
“Rosârah Laviel would never approve of her son’s death,” Mattenelle said. “And I agree with Fonu that Eudora would not marry Moon Fang of her own free will. He must have used his powers against her. Maybe against Rosârah Laviel and Sârah Jemesha, as well.”
Sârah Jemesha was King Echad’s sister and Oli and Eudora’s mother. Apparently she was on whatever ship Rogedoth, Laviel, and Eudora were on.
“How much root did he have stored on that boat of his?” Kamran asked.
“Plenty,” Zenobia said.
“Then why won’t he share some with us?” Kamran asked.
“Who cares about that?” Lilou Caridod asked. “What shall we do?”
“I just don’t see how any of this matters right now,” Fonu said. “We should focus on finding land first, then worry about who will rule.”
This was one of the smartest things Hinck had ever heard Fonu say.
“It would be easier if Sâr Janek had not abandoned us,” Lilou said. “We could use his counsel.”
“The dungeon scared him pretty badly,” Mattenelle said. “He doesn’t want to do anything to endanger himself until he is on solid ground with a force of soldiers loyal to him.”
Hinck decided to speak up. “I don’t understand Roge—Moon Fang’s plan. Even if we sank the boat, and even if we reverted to right of first blood, succession wouldn’t pass to Eudora. Emperor Ulrik ranks under Trevn. And Prince Ferro after him. Then Oli. Then Eudora.” Then Hinck.
“If Rosâr Echad and half his family are dead, no one will care about right of first blood,” Uncle Canbek said. “Whoever takes power will rule this weak nation, and if Sâr Wilek and Sâr Trevn are dead, Moon Fang can do whatever he wants.”
“He is working a separate plot to take control of the Rurekan flagship,” Lady Zenobia said to Hinck. “And the Duke of Canden would go down with the Seffynaw. That would leave Eudora next in line.”
“Oli too?” Fonu said. “You realize he is asking me to murder my two closest friends?”
“They both abandoned you, Fonu,” Kamran said. “You have no friends but us.”
“How does one sink a great ship, anyway?” Uncle Canbek asked.
“Compel a serpent,” Fonu said.
“Does anyone have any evenroot?” Sir Garn asked.
“I don’t,” Uncle Canbek said.
The others echoed him.
“What about the Magonian’s root Sâr Janek was looking for?” Sir Garn asked.
“Gone,” Kamran said. “The Order of the Sandvine has yet to locate any root, despite that being our true purpose.”
“How can we sink the ship without magic?” Lady Mattenelle asked.
“We can’t,” Uncle Canbek said. “The hull is too thick.”
“Sure we can,” Fonu said. “We just need to run it into a reef.”
“We’ve left the reefs behind us,” Sir Jayron said.
“Chop a hole in the hold with a boarding axe?” Fonu suggested.
“You’d get caught before you breached the hull,” Sir Jayron said.
“She might go down if we rammed another ship,” Kamran said.
“Or if one rammed us,” Uncle Canbek said.
“Who would steer us into another ship?” Lady Zenobia asked. “None of us have any business manning the helm.”
“Master Shinn might do it,” Kamran said. “Fonu and I have made a friend of the man. He tells us things, but I’m not certain he’d be willing to destroy the ship, even if we promised to take him with us.”
“Ask your shadir to help convince him,” Lady Zenobia said. “We must obey Moon Fang’s order and soon. You work on a plan to crash the ship. I will find a way to get us off the ship before you do.”
This was agreed upon and the group departed. Hinck walked the corridors in a daze, shocked that he had just taken part in a casual discussion of treason and the premeditated murder of over six hundred souls.
Worry besieged him. If he did not warn Wilek right away and something happened, Hinck would never survive the guilt. So he went up to the main deck and set off toward the royal cabins. As he passed the doors to the king’s galley, someone darted out, grabbed his arm, and dragged him inside.
Hinck struggled with his attacker in the darkness until the prick of steel at his throat stopped all movement. Oh gods. This was it. He was going to die.
A breathy voice whispered in his ear. “Where are you going, Lord Dacre?”
“Lady Pia?” Dumbfounded, he didn’t know whether or not to relax. “What are you—?”
“Silence!”
The intensity of her whisper did the trick. Hinck dared not breathe. Out in the corridor footsteps approached. Passed by.
Once the steps had completely faded, Lady Pia gripped his tunic in her fist and slammed him against the wall. “You are getting careless, lord. If Sir Jayron had found you outside Sâr Wilek’s rooms tonight, he would have killed you.”
Hinck understood that much completely. The rest, however . . . “But why did you—?”
She pressed the knife point deeper. It pricked his skin. He gasped, terrified. Was she trying to help him or kill him? Should he try to fight her off? To get away? Was she alone? He wished he could see anything at all.
He felt her breath on his face a moment before she pressed her lips against his. Stricken again by her erratic behavior, he remained still. So much confusion enveloped his mind. He noticed, then, the spicy incense that clung to her. It mixed with the strong smell of bread from the galley. Delight reeled through him at the feel of her kiss, but he fought against it, certain she would cut his throat next and drink his blood as a sacrifice to whichever god of the Lowerworld she served.
When she finally broke away and stepped back from him, she said, “You were hungry. Take a tray back to your cabin. Obey me and it will save your life. And be more careful in the future. I will warn Sâr Wilek of their plans.” She opened the door, and the light from the lantern outside lit her profile as she exited.
When the door swung shut, enclosing Hinck in darkness again, he sank down the wall to the floor, knees bent. He swallowed, astounded by the actions of this mysterious woman.
Then he remembered the danger still awaiting them. Sink the ship. They were trying to sink the ship.
And if Wilek didn’t find out and stop them, it might be the end of House Hadar.