Chapter Nine

I had my oarsman row me to the Mews at once, to tell Zaira the news in person. I couldn’t help but notice the increased activity at the Mews docks, with larger naval vessels tied up alongside the sleek cutters the Falconers normally favored, and soldiers hustling up and down the planks to load provisions. The Serene Empire was deploying her Falcons for war. Dread settled over me with the growing shadows of sunset.

I found Zaira in the cavernous mess hall, having just finished dinner; Scoundrel was curled up at her feet, and I passed Terika leaving on my way in. She gave me a broad, triumphant grin, and my heart panged with the news I couldn’t yet tell her.

But Zaira accepted our new assignment with a shrug, barely pausing in her scratching of Scoundrel’s ear.

“Be nice to get out of this chicken coop for a while. I’ve never seen Callamorne. Who else are you bringing?”

I pulled out the notes I’d made and spread them on the table between us. It was empty, aside from the two of us, though a murmur rose up to the arching ceiling of the mess hall from the half a hundred Falcons and Falconers still lingering over their plates. “Well, I need a skilled artificer to help me examine the circle, so I thought I’d take Istrella.”

Zaira gave me a knowing look. “Mmm. And I’m sure the fact that her brother will have to come along as her Falconer has nothing to do with it.”

My face heated. “Actually, she has exactly the right sort of mind to come up with innovative solutions for unexpected artifice problems.” Never mind that I’d feel much better on this volatile mission with Marcello’s stable, steady presence at my side. “I’m thinking we’ll also bring Terika.”

Zaira straightened. “Terika! Why?”

“Well, she’s from Callamorne, and she might like to visit her family. And we want a skilled alchemist at hand to concoct cures for any venoms, poisons, or plagues the Witch Lords might employ against the Empire.” Zaira’s skeptical stare demanded the truth, so I added in a low voice, “And she knows how to make my elixir. My mother wanted me to have an alchemist along who could do it, in case something happened to my supply.”

Zaira grunted. “Can’t blame her, after last time.” Scoundrel nosed her hand insistently, and she went back to scratching his head. “Aren’t you worried about bringing Istrella and Terika into a country that’s about to be invaded? They’re not exactly fearsome warriors.”

“Neither am I.” I folded up my notes and tucked them away. “I did consider it, especially given that their names are on that list of targets. But we’ll have a sizable escort of soldiers, and they shouldn’t need to go anywhere near the border.”

“Unlike us.” Zaira’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “If war breaks out, they’re going to put us right in the thick of it.”

“Most likely.” My stomach fluttered at the thought. “If Vaskandar attacks, you could have to unleash your fire on hundreds or thousands of soldiers. Are you …” I swallowed. There was no good way to ask this. “Is that all right?”

Zaira raised an eyebrow. “You’re asking me if roasting hundreds of people alive is all right?”

I grimaced. “Not really. More whether you’re all right.”

“I’m always all right. If something will make me miserable, I don’t do it.”

This was no more than half true, but I nodded anyway. “I just wanted to … Well, I didn’t think you’d done anything like that before.”

Zaira snorted. “The empire would damned well have noticed if I’d murdered a small army. So no, I haven’t. And no, I don’t really know what it’ll be like, or whether I’ll bounce up afterward all chipper and ready for cakes and tea. So you can stop asking me about it, before I twist your tongue off to stop you from talking.”

I couldn’t help lifting my fingers to protect my mouth. “Sorry.”

Scoundrel nudged at Zaira again, and she hunched down to fondle his ears with both hands. He closed his eyes in ecstasy.

“If you must know,” she said after a moment, still staring at Scoundrel, “I’m actually glad to have the chance to let loose this Hell of fire inside me to protect something for a change.” She sent a fierce glance sideways at me. “So stop trying to make me feel bad about it.”

I put my other hand over my mouth as well, and nodded.

The problem with Raverran books on Vaskandar, I reflected, weighing Imoden’s Rise of the Witch Lords in one hand against Lavier’s Chronicle of Vaskandran Expansion in the other, was that they were written by Raverran historians. I rather doubted the authors had ever set foot in Vaskandar. Most of these books had been published immediately after the Three Years’ War and focused almost entirely on military history; they traced Vaskandar’s expansion from a small clutch of territories in the north as they swallowed up forest clans and petty kingdoms, raising a new Witch Lord over each, and culminated in Vaskandar’s wars with the Serene Empire. The few details they contained about Vaskandar itself were hearsay and folklore, full of contradictions and omissions.

I laid them both in my trunk anyway. Kathe had told me, before saying good-bye at our picnic, that Callamorne was on his way back to Let, and he might see me there; I wanted to come to our next meeting armed with more knowledge.

I ran a finger along a line of spines on my shelf, their leather bindings warm and smooth like the touch of old friends’ hands. I added Principles of Vivomancy and Origins of Magic to the trunk, and then somehow wound up lying on my stomach on my silk-curtained bed, with Orsenne’s History of Eruvia spread open to the early Vaskandar chapter, just for a quick overview.

A familiar rap on my door startled me into slamming the book shut; by the time I’d sat up on the edge of my bed, my mother had swept into the room.

“Are you done packing, Amalia? Your boat leaves for the Mews to collect Zaira in half an hour.” Her gaze took in my trunk full of books. “I am asking rhetorically, of course.”

“Almost, Mamma,” I lied.

Her eyebrow was insufficiently impressed to lift more than a hair’s width. “I’ll have Rica see to your clothes. But make certain you bring plenty of elixir, and pack it in multiple places this time.”

“Of course, Mamma.” I pulled a one-dose vial halfway out of my inner coat pocket, to show her that I could, in fact, learn from near-death experiences. “I’ve got more in my satchel as well, so I can take it with me on excursions, just in case.”

“Good.” She came and sat down on the bed beside me, her face serious. “Be careful on the road. I’m hoping there’s been no time for news of your trip to leak to the Vaskandran spy in the Mews, but only fools make assumptions.”

I straightened, remembering what I’d been burning to ask her earlier today. “Speaking of fools and the traitor in the Mews, what is Lord Caulin up to?”

“He’s no fool,” my mother said sternly. “Whatever else you may think of him, don’t make that mistake.”

“You know what I mean.” I waved an irritated hand. “Why did the doge send him to interfere with the Falcons?”

My mother regarded me a long time in silence. Finally, she said quietly, “Most likely, because of you.”

I stared at her, wondering if she was joking. But there was no humor in her piercing dark eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I know the doge better than almost anyone. And if Niro loves one thing, it’s control.” She turned her gaze to the window, where the clear morning light set the warm-hued façade of the palace opposite to glowing. “He is well aware that the Falcons are the keystone of the Serene Empire’s power. And what do you think it looks to him as if you are doing?”

“You mean, with my Falcon reform act?”

“Not just your law. Your acquisition of the Empire’s only fire warlock. Your cultivation of key officers in the Mews.”

“I didn’t acquire Zaira.” Warmth flooded up my neck. “And I’m not cultivating anyone.”

My mother did not dignify my protests with a response. “Even if your law comes to nothing, it’s a shrewd move to earn the loyalty of the Falcons.”

“That’s not why I’m doing it!” I protested. “I just want to give them a choice.”

“That doesn’t matter.” She turned her gaze back to mine, raising an eyebrow. “He can’t afford to lose the Falcons to you. Especially not now, with Vaskandar at the border. So he’s asserting control over them.”

“He’s using the murders to play political games?” I couldn’t keep the outrage from my voice.

“I’m certain that catching the traitor and preventing more murders are his chief priorities.” La Contessa waved away my ethical concerns. “But Niro da Morante is a man after my own heart in this at least: he rarely does anything for only one reason. Why not catch the informant and consolidate his political power?”

“But Caulin is going about this in the wrong way!” I bunched the lace of my cuffs in frustration. “He’s not going to catch the traitor by harassing Falcons.”

“I don’t trust Caulin’s investigation either, frankly.” My mother’s eyes narrowed. “He’s the one pushing the doge to tighten his grip on the Falcons; he’s hardly coming at this from a neutral perspective. This could all be part of his play for the Council seat.”

“He’s putting himself forward for Baron Leodra’s old seat on the Council of Nine, then?” That might explain some things.

“He stands a good chance of winning it, too, more’s the pity.” My mother shook her head. “He’s competent, and I respect the work he does for the Empire. But he lacks the vision to lead it. He’s too focused on his own ploys and machinations and not on the larger picture. And he sees you as a threat.”

I glanced down at my own hands, soft and unskilled, worrying at my cuffs. “I don’t feel very threatening.”

My mother raised an eyebrow. “Two months ago, no one in Raverra thought of you as anything more than a marriage prospect. You hid in this palace and fiddled about with books and artifice projects, and you were barely politically aware enough to know who the doge was. But after what you pulled off in Ardence, thwarting experienced schemers and installing your own hand-picked new duke, everyone is paying attention. And now that you’ve stepped out on the political stage, your first act is to try to pass a law that rewrites one of the key provisions of the Serene Accords, tampering with the very foundation of the Empire.”

“I wouldn’t say it rewrites the Serene Accords. Appends to them, maybe.”

“Suffice to say there are few who’d have the gall to introduce such a measure. But you can do it, because you’re only eighteen.” A spark of something that could have been admiration entered my mother’s voice—or more likely, bemusement at my foolishness. “If the law fails, they’ll shrug it off as youthful idealism, and there’ll be no permanent damage to your career. If it passes, though …” Her lips curved in a wry smile. “If it passes, everyone will consider you brilliant and dangerous. We have a limited window of time remaining to ensure they’re not wrong.”

“I don’t feel brilliant and dangerous,” I muttered.

“The Lady of Thorns thinks you’re dangerous.” Her tone went hard. “She put your name on that list.”

I caught her hand, suddenly excited. “Mamma, I’ve been thinking about that.” An idea had come to me late last night, as I lay awake dwelling on thoughts of war and courtship, volcanoes and murders. “I think all this Vaskandran interest in me must have to do with the Witch Lord blood in the Callamornish royal line.”

It was no secret; royalty quickly ran out of sufficiently high-ranked marriage prospects, so half the great families in Eruvia had a splash of Vaskandran royal ancestry somewhere, and that meant Witch Lords. Border states like Callamorne had more than a splash. My father’s father had been of royal Vaskandran blood, well connected enough that his marriage to my grandmother put a stop to an ongoing invasion of Callamorne. If there was some political significance to his line, that might be enough to explain both my name on the assassin’s list and Kathe’s secret intentions.

“I suspect you’re right.” My mother tucked a loose lock of hair behind my ear, studying my face. “Wars and weddings twine Vaskandar and Callamorne together, in a long and personal history. You are part of that history, and it will give you diplomatic advantages on this mission that I never possessed. But it also exposes you to dangers I never faced.”

I hugged my book to my chest. “Did you ever meet my grandfather’s family?”

“No, and neither did your father, so far as I know. But I believe your grandfather was a Witch Lord’s son.” La Contessa frowned. “There are bound to be enmities and alliances that he left behind him, beyond the Witchwall Mountains.”

“But now Vaskandar is dragging them across the mountains into Callamorne.” I sighed. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”

My mother’s mouth crooked toward a smile. “I’m not certain I believe you. But I have high hopes you’ll be clever, which is better.”

She embraced me, then, holding me in a circle of warmth and delicate perfume. I closed my eyes, wishing for a moment that I were small again, and would spend this trip doing nothing more important than running up and down the stairs in the royal castle in Durantain with my cousins.

“Clever it is, then,” I whispered.

For the first few days of our journey by coach to Callamorne, we traversed the endless green-gold fields at the heart of the Serene Empire, past red-roofed villas girdled with flowers and lonely lines of cypress trees. As we approached Callamorne, the flat land wrinkled into gentle folds and rolls; the shallow valleys and hollows collected mist in the mornings, and the high places held on to the lingering golden light at sunset.

Terika stared hungrily out the window of the coach, gazing over the heads of our mounted military escort for the first sign of the shadowy hills of her homeland on the horizon.

“Wait till you see,” she told Zaira cheerfully. “The hills in Callamorne are much bigger than the rolling little bumps you get here in the central Empire, rugged and covered in lovely woods. And soon we’ll get snow, and the fields and meadows will turn sparkling white, all the way to the mountains.”

Lienne, Terika’s Falconer, shivered. “Yes, and cold to freeze your blood, with icy footing. I prefer Raverran sunshine and a cup of mulled wine, thank you.”

Zaira shrugged. “I’m there to wait around until it’s time to set things on fire. If it makes you happy, I can look at some muddy hills in the meantime.”

“So charming.” Terika sighed. “That’s what I like about you.”

She slipped an arm around Zaira’s shoulders. Zaira gave her an alarmed glance, then relaxed against her. Lienne turned her face to the window to hide a smile.

The coach should have felt like a rolling target, with four people in it on the Vaskandran assassin’s list, but we’d taken enough precautions that I wasn’t worried. Zaira was back to wearing her artifice-worked corset stays and hairpins, which protected her from musket balls and blades alike; unfortunately, they required her innate magic as fuel for the powerful shield, and none of the rest of us could use such protections. Marcello rode outside the carriage with our escort of a full two dozen soldiers, training a wary eye on every fold in the land, line of trees, or farmhouse. No band of attackers large enough to threaten us could possibly escape his scrutiny, in the unlikely event they could penetrate this far into the Serene Empire at all.

No, it wasn’t fear that weighed on me as we traveled northwest toward Callamorne. It was the heavier, duller burden of expectations.

If I couldn’t figure out what to do with Ruven’s circle on Mount Whitecrown—if it was even the volcano enchantment at all—thousands of people could die. If Vaskandar invaded and the doge called Zaira to the border, thousands of people would die. And there was the old guilt I always felt when visiting Callamorne, wound queasily through it all—that an entire nation trusted in me to secure and uphold their place within the Empire, including my own family, and I only visited once a year and rarely thought of them.

They must have hoped for more when they gave up their prince to marry my mother and swore allegiance to Raverra. And this time, I had to give them more, so they would know the Empire would uphold its half of the bargain my birth had sealed.

I wished I could just sneak off with my cousins again, and perform no more complicated diplomacy than talking to Roland about Callamornish history to distract him while Bree stole apples from the castle orchard. But I had stepped up to take my place in my mother’s shadow, and there was no stepping down now.

Istrella rode in the coach with us, tinkering away on some experimental modifications to her brother’s powder horn, which I’d insisted she empty and clean first. The last thing we needed was to make exciting new discoveries about the interaction of artifice and gunpowder while locked in a moving carriage with a fire warlock. I couldn’t help but notice that Terika and Zaira seemed physically closer than they had before their kiss—small touches and glances passed near constantly between them, and no sliver of space divided them on the carriage bench.

When we stopped at a roadside inn on our fourth and last night before crossing into Callamorne, I took advantage of a moment alone with Zaira at our table in the inn’s crowded, candlelit dining room to lean in and murmur the obvious question.

“So, are you two finally courting now?”

Zaira glared at me, then flicked her eyes to the stairway leading up to our rooms on the second floor. Terika and the others hadn’t come down to dinner yet, though we expected them to join us shortly; I only had a few minutes to get in as much teasing as I dared.

She picked up her cup, realized the server hadn’t filled it yet, scowled into its emptiness, and set it down again. “It’s none of your pox-rotted business, but let’s just say Terika is the only person I’ve met who’s more stubborn than I am. You can tell she grew up on a goat farm—the spiky-headed bastards must have given her lessons.”

“That’s a yes.” I leaned back in my chair in satisfaction. “And good for Terika. You’re allowed to be happy, you know.”

“I don’t know what she’s thinking.” Zaira shook her head. “She’s sweet as a summer peach, and I’ve got a fair bucket of blood on my hands. Besides, what future does she think we have together?”

“Well, if I get my Falcon reform act passed—”

Zaira snorted.

“All right,” I sighed, “forget my act. Purely theoretically, if you could have any life you wanted with her, what would it be?”

“Do I look like some moon-besotted idiot who sits around dreaming about a charming country cottage and a bunch of babies to you?” Zaira flicked her cup with a fingernail.

“I have no idea. Which is why I asked.” I shrugged. “If I could pick my own fate, I’d like an extensive library, a circle of good companions, and … and someone to share it with.” Marcello’s smile and warm green eyes filled my imagination; by the gleam in Zaira’s eyes, she knew it. “What about you?”

“That’s a dangerous question.”

“Dangerous? How so?”

Zaira’s eyes narrowed. “If you waste time thinking about everything you want and can’t have, it’ll eat you up from the inside, like you swallowed a cup of bloodworms. If you can’t reach out and take it, brooding about how much you want it only makes you wretched.”

“That’s a rather grim philosophy.”

“Growing up in the Tallows, you have to focus on staying alive moment to moment. You don’t think about the future, beyond making sure you have one at all.”

I traced a curving scar on the tabletop, where someone had carved their initial. “I never dreamed much about my future either, to be honest, for the opposite reason. Mine’s already been laid out for me. I can’t choose what I’m going to be or do.” Even in that dream of a well-stocked library and Marcello at my side, I had to vaguely imagine my mother still scheming away in the background, filling her seat on the Council of Nine. Once she retired, any last vestiges of freedom I possessed would vanish into the depths of the Imperial Palace.

Zaira grunted. “Maybe you’re the one who should run away.”

A server finally arrived with a wine pitcher to fill our cups; I welcomed the reprieve from needing to find an answer. An old, sullen anger had stirred half awake at Zaira’s words, left over from the last time I’d seriously considered running from my fate: when I opened my mother’s letter that called me home from the University of Ardence, just when I’d finally found a place to be myself and not the Cornaro Heir.

I raised my glass to drown the bitter memory.

“Took you long enough,” Zaira grumbled at the cringing server, and reached for her own cup.

As the wine tilted toward my lips, a spark flared on my hand. A sharp prick of heat pierced my finger, and the wire-bound crystal on a certain ring glowed gold.

Alchemy. Someone was trying to poison us. Fear lanced through me, jagged and white as lightning.

I slammed the cup down, splashing red across the table. “Zaira, don’t drink it! It’s poisoned!”

Zaira froze, her cup halfway to her lips.

The server lifted her bowed head, her face emerging from curtains of blond hair. Cold, deadly resolve burned in a face I’d seen before: the Vaskandran assassin who’d attacked Istrella.

I barely had time to recognize her before she drove the knife she’d held hidden under her tray into Zaira’s side.

I let out a shriek of panic and despair, but the air in front of Zaira rippled as if someone had dropped a stone into a still pond. The assassin’s knife rebounded from Zaira’s rune-scribed corset stays.

All this during the time it took me to leap to my feet—I was moving too slowly, and the assassin was too fast, and the desperate energy flooding my body made me clumsy. But I lunged at the assassin anyway, the impact jarring my hip and shoulder with bruising force, and I knocked her away from Zaira before she could strike again.

The assassin immediately recovered her balance, slipping out of my reach. She moved with deadly grace, efficient and lethal as a striking heron. Alarm spiked up from my lungs; I knew my limits, and I wasn’t good enough to stop her.

Zaira cursed and drew her dagger. The assassin cast her tray aside; it hit the floor with a room-silencing crash, shards of pottery skittering everywhere. All over the tavern, heads turned, voices exclaimed, and chairs scooted back in alarm.

Hells. The tray had hidden a pistol. The assassin leveled its gleaming barrel at Zaira. Time seemed to slow down, all the light in the room focusing on that fateful cylinder of polished wood and metal.

But then the assassin narrowed her eyes, seemed to think better of chancing Zaira’s shields again, and swung the muzzle around to point at me.

It stared at me like the cold eye of the Demon of Death. The hammer clicked back.

“Ex—” I caught the release word halfway out of my mouth, clamping my lips on my own panicked cry. Frightened faces pressed back behind the assassin; a mother thrust a crying child behind her.

Too many people. I couldn’t do it.

An earsplitting crack filled the dining room, followed by a sharp-smelling haze of gunsmoke.