“Where are we going?” Sondra asked in her hoarse whisper. I slid her a quelling look in reply. Lia glided up the winding stairs, back ramrod-straight, coolly paying no attention to any of us. We couldn’t even follow too closely, because the train of her gown trailed several steps behind her. Not daring to step on it, we became ducklings following in their mama’s wake.
Knowing perfectly well that Lia never did anything by accident, I resigned myself to being put in my place—firmly behind the Queen of Calanthe. I’d challenged her in front of my commanders and, worse, her advisers. I’d pushed her into admitting she’d have to face bloodshed on the precious soil of her island, so I’d do my penance. At least she’d agreed to a plan and was giving us something useful to work with. I hoped.
“We are climbing to the top of a tower,” Ambrose replied to Sondra in my stead. He gestured to the staircase that wound in a graceful spiral up the inside of a tower, a solid wall of stone beside us and open-air windows on the outside, showing the palace grounds spread out below.
“Thank you,” Sondra replied sourly.
“Of course, child,” Ambrose answered with every appearance of sincerity. “My knowledge is yours.”
Sondra growled deep in her throat, but everyone ignored her. I kept my eyes on Lia’s slim back, enjoying the sway of her hips, and pondering how such a small frame could contain so much stubborn pride. And how I could burn to pull her into my arms and kiss her senseless in the middle of an argument. Our truces flared into battles with so little warning, I couldn’t seem to stick to a solid strategy with her.
The others hadn’t come along, though Dearsley had watched me with overt disapproval as he conducted a whispered consultation with Lia. She’d dismissed him, along with Brenda, Percy, and Agatha, cryptically observing that where we were going was nothing new to anyone else.
Sunlight poured in from above and Lia rose through an unguarded opening in the ceiling. I followed behind as fast as I could. She might complain about my hypervigilance, but she went too far in the opposite direction. Everyone on Calanthe seemed to be that way. They claimed they understood the dangers of the world beyond, admitted that their previous defenses no longer worked, and yet they wandered around their isolated paradise as if nothing could ever arrive to give them trouble.
Edging past Lia and quickly scanning the room—one big circle at the top of the tower, open to the air, no furniture, and only a dome of a ceiling—I saw no movement, no immediate threat. A balustrade of the same white stone they built everything from here circled a balcony outside the arches. I stepped out, verifying that no one lurked there, either. The tower enjoyed a view in every direction of Calanthe, with nothing obstructing the line of sight, so I could see how that could be useful. But, by the time we spotted Anure’s navy approaching, we’d be already fucked.
Lia didn’t come out to the balcony, though, so it must not be the view she wanted to show me. Still, I made the full circuit before I stepped back inside, Lia giving me a cool and remote look that nevertheless communicated her disdain for my precautions. Or her general displeasure with me, hard to say which. It can be both. Her words echoed in my head, but she’d said them on such a sensual gasp, her lithe body hot against me, that I had to look away, making a business of hitching my bagiroca back onto my belt. “Pretty view. Why are we here?”
Wordlessly she pointed down. I realized that Kara and Sondra stood at different corners of the room, staring at the floor while Merle hopped around on it. Ambrose had gone out to the railing, looking into the distance. Willing to play along, I also studied the glittering mosaic tiles laid in intricate patterns. The floor was pretty, too. Lots of shades of blue where I stood, then a central mass of browns and greens, studded in places with white shapes. I refocused my eyes. Not just a fancy pattern, but a map—one so large it spanned the entire room.
A map of Calanthe, rendered in precise and exquisite detail. Excitement pricked at me. I strode from the ocean I stood in to the cluster of white buildings that must be the palace. Orienting myself, I sighted out an open arch to a series of hills in the distance. Sure enough, they were on the map. I followed that line, walking out to the balcony again, and discovered an arrow etched into the flat stone rail. Words were also carved there, but in Calanthean, which I couldn’t read at all.
Moving next to the view of the harbor below the palace, I sighted it, then worked backward to the map. Not satisfied with what I could see from that angle, I got down on hands and knees, peering at the detail in the harbor, then scrutinizing the patterns of blues in the water, tracing them with my finger outward. Jumping up again, I ran to the rail, surveying the patterns of waves and currents, then went back to the floor map.
It had been made perfectly to scale. I knelt again in the deep-water harbor, then traced the wavy lines outward. “This is a barrier reef,” I declared in wonder, stabbing at it with my finger and looking around for Lia. “A huge one.”
To my surprise, she stood close nearby, a slight smile on her mouth. Something amused her. Probably my being slow on the uptake. I didn’t care. At least she’d let go of some of her anger at me, and the wealth of information in this map had my head spinning with possibilities.
“Why, yes it is,” she replied, her voice far less icy.
I sat back on my heels, taking it in. “This was created by a master. It shows everything, doesn’t it? The currents, the altitude of those hills, and it’s exactly to scale.”
“A team of masters,” Lia corrected, but her smile had deepened. She loved this place, and she revealed that in a warmth she rarely showed. “There’s a guild of artists whose sole focus is this map. They keep it constantly updated, and yes—it contains many layers of information.”
“Should we be walking on it?” Sondra asked, sounding uncharacteristically uncertain.
Lia gave her a smile, too. A real one that had Sondra glancing behind her. “It’s meant to be walked on. The glaze is very tough, and regularly renewed. It always surprises Me how many people who come here stand in the sea on the map, not the land, as if they don’t trod on Calanthe as soon as they leave the tower.”
“The floor is a major work of art, Your Highness.” Sondra had a sound of awe in her voice.
“Thank you,” Lia replied. “It’s a great source of pride, besides being useful for knowing all about My island.” She slid a narrow look at me.
Kara grunted, eyeing the ocean. “A barrier reef, you say, Your Highness?”
“Yes. It protects the harbor and, depending on the tides, makes entrance to it impossible, which is part of why the palace is the safest place on Calanthe.”
Kara frowned at her. “We encountered no issues when we sailed our ships in.”
Lia spread her hands with a mischievous look in her eyes. “You had help.”
“You don’t say.” He considered her. “Can your defensive enchantments make the tides uncooperative?”
I hadn’t thought that far yet, and waited with Kara for the answer.
“To an extent, yes. Calanthe’s influence reaches out all around Her, and that includes how the seas move, how the storms pass by.”
And she was part of that. I began to get a glimmer of what being an elemental truly meant. No wonder Lia’s palace didn’t need walls, if she could keep the worst storms away. “You control the weather and the tides?” My turn to sound awed, and Sondra snorted.
Lia waved that away. “Yes and no. And I’d rather not discuss it in detail.” She raised her brows, reminding me of our agreement that she could decline to explain rather than misdirect. Fine. I’d get more out of her later. That wasn’t against the rules.
“That’s how you drew the ship in.” Kara smacked his fist against his palm. “I knew that wasn’t natural.” He strode out to the balustrade. Sondra, clearly still uncomfortable walking on the mosaicked floor, followed him out. They stared out at where the reef lay hidden underwater, finding the markers on the balustrade as I had, discussing both. Ambrose moved over to join them, pointing his staff at something.
“Thank you, Lia,” I said, hearing the gruffness of my own awkwardness. “This map is amazingly useful.”
Lia crouched beside me, her beaded skirts tinkling on the glassy surface. “This place is open to all citizens of Calanthe, of which you are now one. I have to remember that I granted you and your people asylum here, the same as for Percy and the others.” She trailed her black-tipped nails over a section of coastline rendered in sparkling silver. A beach, with calm light-green water, probably good for swimming. “Teachers bring the schoolchildren here, and sometimes I come to talk with them. The children, they crawl on their hands and knees, like you are, putting their eyes up as close as they can, and talking to Her, like you were.”
I had a habit of muttering to myself when I was thinking. Sondra liked to tease me about it. Lia likely thought me crazed and undignified, ill mannered as a child—and she wouldn’t be wrong. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She met my gaze, our faces close. Something shimmered between us, like heat rising off the sands outside Keiost. “I like it. I love seeing the children roll around on this map of their home, the land that gave them birth or sanctuary, finding their villages and favorite places. It’s a … celebration, and I always feel Calanthe loves the attention. I wish everyone would do it.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” I admitted, turning my attention back to the mosaic, and firmly away from the sudden and savage fantasy of kissing those glossy black lips, of dragging her down and having her on this map. Some celebration that would be. I cleared my throat. “I’ve been in a lot of palaces, estates, castles, fancy houses with fancy things. Of course, most of them were in ruins, stripped of anything valuable. But I never saw anything like this, even in the ones the Imperial Toad spared and gave to his cronies and the cowards who caved instead of fighting—” I broke off, realizing what I’d said.
“Like Calanthe did,” Lia filled in. Her nails clicked over the tiles, and then she stood with a sigh. “I know how little you think of us, Conrí. Of My people, and of Me. It’s disingenuous of you to mince words now.”
She walked out to join the others on the balcony, beaded skirts hissing across the floor, her steps quiet—and I realized that, despite her earlier statement and her aching feet, she walked up on her toes so her sharp heels wouldn’t touch the tiles. I wasn’t sure how I’d gone so fast from trying to show her appreciation to pissing her off again, except that it seemed to be my particular talent and failing.
I returned my scrutiny to the map—something I could handle—learning how they depicted the depths of water and the landscape beneath. Lia could show Kara and Sondra where the actual barrier reef lay. The critical information about it had been woven into these intricate tiles. And not in words, but in images that even I, a barely educated ex-prisoner from a foreign land, could understand. Did the makers intend that? What a thing it would be if they could make a map of all the world. I didn’t know what kind of room could hold it, but it would be something to see. On a map like that, Oriel could still exist—and persist for all time, instead of growing tattered and faded in my memories and Sondra’s.
Yes, in the past, we’d called King Gul and the kingdom of Calanthe weak-willed puppets of the emperor, but I’d learned better. Gul, and Lia after him, had preserved things like this and like all that art in the portrait gallery. And all those people Lia had drawn to her court, people like Brenda, a poet and warrior, Agatha, a brilliant weaver, and Percy—whatever he did—with knowledge and skills saved from oblivion because Calanthe existed.
For the first time, I understood something of how Lia saw the world. I lived for revenge, to destroy Anure utterly and forever. Lia … she lived to preserve all this. I bet she stayed in the palace not only because she felt safe, but because all the most precious things were here.
Precious things Anure would destroy without taking a second breath. Standing, I looked out to sea again. Lia was right: Vurgsten changed everything. Even if we held off Anure’s forces beyond the reef, vurgsten could be lobbed from that far, and would take out this tower and its treasure in a moment.
I needed to think. Anure would come after Lia, and he’d expect her to be here, in the palace. Where she lives, as she so sardonically pointed out. She had her layers of enchantments. Anure had wizards to break them. I could throttle Ambrose for not telling us that.
Focus. Lia had relied upon the reef to protect them, but that could be exploded, too. That’s what I’d do faced with this scenario: Sail a few ships up to the reef, maybe at night. Blow the reef and the harbor wide open. Then have the rest of the navy ready to sweep in, maybe as the tide came in, to add velocity.
Then I’d send in a crack team, maybe several teams, to take Lia prisoner. If Tertulyn was a spy and had gone to him—who was I kidding? No “ifs” about it. Lia’s doubts had infected me—then he’d know Lia’s habits, where to find her and when.
Once he had her, maybe back on his flagship in the harbor so he could make her watch, he could pound the city and palace with vurgsten.
Though, if it were me and I wanted to hedge my bets, I’d sneak in first—same approach with several small, highly specialized teams. Take the queen hostage, get her out of the palace to a place well away and safe, then blow the reef and bring in the ships. He’d still want her in a place where she’d have to watch the destruction, I bet, knowing Anure’s methods, but the harbor still made sense. Most of the resistance—as much as the Calantheans could muster any kind of fight—would be centered here. And with its exposure to the sea on three sides, we couldn’t possibly defend it.
But what if Lia wasn’t in the palace?
We had an entire island to consider. I crawled over it, marking the larger towns, the roads between them. Rural, very rural, with most of the population centers all along the coast and then again in the hills. What were these shapes? I went back to the palace complex, found the tower we’d been imprisoned in, which Ambrose had taken for his own, and the tower I was in at that moment.
The artists had rendered the land and sea flat, as if a bird looked down on them, but the towers and buildings were depicted at an angle. I supposed otherwise they’d look like squares and circles, seen from above. The map tower had been foreshortened, but the design faithfully depicted the open arches, a glint of the map within. With an odd sensation of being two places at once, I almost expected to see a tiny version of myself, crouched on the floor.
I traced the garden path Lia and I had walked … Oh, look at that: Lia’s private courtyard wasn’t there. So some things were secret from the big map. Near as I could tell, every other building in the palace complex and the city beyond was accurately included. Counting under my breath, I crawled from town to town, keeping a mental tally of buildings, not sure what I was looking for, but certain I’d know it when I saw it.
“You might as well leave Conrí and send food, Your Highness,” I became aware of Sondra saying. “He’ll be like that for hours until he’s satisfied.”
Her use of my name and Lia’s title had penetrated. I put a mental finger on my running tally and sat back on my heels. The four of them stood nearby, watching me—all standing in the ocean, as it were. Lia saw me take note of it and we shared a knowing glance. Odd, to have a shared thought with her the others wouldn’t follow. Kind of nice, too. “These towns.” I gestured to one near my knee. “The numbers of buildings are accurate?”
Lia dipped her chin. “Everything is as accurate and current as the map guild can make it.”
“Not absolutely everything,” I noted.
A secret smile ghosted over her lips. “Everything I allow,” she corrected.
“And Anure knows about the reef,” I continued.
“If he didn’t know everything before, we must assume he does now,” Lia conceded.
Kara folded his hands behind his back, standing at attention, old habits from the days he’d served as commander of Soensen’s navy, the finest in all the scattered kingdoms, and not a ragtag fleet of fishing boats sailed by ex-convicts and starving refugees. “Her Highness has promised me charts of the tides and channels. I’d like to take out a boat and see it for myself, too.”
I nodded permission, somewhat absently, surprised that Kara hadn’t seen what I had—that the map contained everything he’d need to know. But we all had our own ways of doing things, and I’d learned early on to respect that in my commanders. They might call me Conrí, but we had no true hierarchy. We were all on our own personal crusades, which just happened to be pointed in the same direction.
“Learn everything you can,” I agreed, “but we’re not letting Anure come to this harbor.”
“‘Let’?” Lia echoed in a mocking tone. She clicked over to me, not picking up her heels this time, until she stood squarely in the harbor, hands planted on her hips so the long nails arrowed down. “You’ve been going on about Anure’s unstoppable forces and vast supplies of vurgsten.”
“It’s true,” Sondra agreed, following with more tentative steps. “The emperor began stockpiling vurgsten before we were ever sentenced to the mines. Ejarat only knows how much of it he has at his citadel at Yekpehr—except that we can be sure it will be several factors more than what we have. And I’ll remind you that we don’t even have all of ours with us. We left a lot of it back at Keiost, and that’s not including what the supply trains from Vurgmun will have been delivering during our absence.”
“You have an active supply train from the mines at Vurgmun?” Lia asked, betraying her surprise.
“Yes,” I told her, getting to my feet so I wouldn’t be tempted to slide a hand under her shimmering skirt, to touch her beneath as the constant craving for her whispered I should. “Vurgmun is ours. I executed anyone not loyal to our cause, and the mines are worked by free people, sending vurgsten to us so we can take Anure down. The vengeance of many more people than you see fuels our efforts.”
“That’s why we need ships, Your Highness,” Sondra said, clearly continuing an earlier conversation. “The fastest your people have, to ferry vurgsten here.”
Lia considered that, thoughts opaque behind eyes more gray than blue now. “The Lady Sondra says that Anure could use vurgsten to destroy the barrier reef in a moment, then sail into the harbor and destroy the city and palace without setting foot on shore.”
I met Sondra’s eyes, nodded to confirm that had been my assessment, too. We’d always seen strategy much the same way. Of course, we were both terribly familiar with Anure and his tactics, far more than we’d ever cared to be. “He could. Would, if we let him. Though he’d make sure to extract the queen first.”
Sondra followed the thought. “Stealth team to infiltrate and abduct?”
“That’s what I figure.”
Lia’s sharp gaze flicked between us. “I’m not so easy to abduct,” she reminded me, “nor is Calanthe easy to infiltrate.”
“Even with wizards?” I asked pointedly.
Her eyes glittered. “Wizards are not infallible.”
“We are ineffable, though,” Ambrose noted cheerfully.
“See?” She nodded at the wizard. “You had one and I defeated you.”
“I know a few things now I didn’t then,” Ambrose pointed out.
“Yes, Anure might have the information he needs to work around those obstacles,” I added, regretting my words when she averted her gaze to look out the open arches. She wouldn’t betray her wounded heart by flinching, but this thing with Tertulyn had definitely gotten to her.
“Let’s assume he does,” she confirmed quietly.
Sondra raised a brow, but I shook my head slightly. I’d explain later, when Lia didn’t have to listen. “We can’t stop Anure from coming to Calanthe,” I said, working the problem aloud, pacing along the coastline away from the palace. “But we can keep him from approaching the harbor and palace. There’s too much here to risk that kind of barrage. Too much exposure. Too much potential bloodshed.” I glanced at Lia to find her watching me again, with arrested attention. At least I could give her that.
“How will you turn him away?” Kara wanted to know, brow furrowed as he, too, studied the map.
“Lead,” I corrected. “Not push, but pull. We’ll lure him away from here and to a battleground of our choosing. Into an ideal trap. Elsewhere.”
“No,” Lia said with clear certainty. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I paced over to her, close enough that she had to raise her chin to keep her basilisk glare fixed on me. “If he knows your secrets,” I said quietly, “knows everything Tertulyn knows, then you play into their hands by remaining here.”
“Nevertheless,” she persisted, “I am the queen. I can’t rule if I’m not at court.”
“Can’t you?” I let the challenge dangle between us. “Even if it means reducing blood shed in violence?”
She narrowed her eyes at me, fully aware of my manipulation and yet without a ready reply.
“Calanthe is more than the palace,” I offered, appealing to her reason. “What kind of queen needs a building to govern her realm?”
With a wry twist of her lips, she sighed. “I’ll think about it.”
Good enough. I’d win this particular battle between us. When we needed her to move, I’d make sure she did. I might be using her as bait, but I’d do everything in my power to avoid destroying her in the process. Except jeopardize the final goal.
If it came down to that, I’d have to make sure that I’d have the backbone to sacrifice Lia, too. The trick in dealing with Anure lay in not caring about anything. He’d have no power over me as long as I cared about nothing more than destroying him. Sondra was watching me with a concerned expression, as if she knew my doubts.
“We just need to find the right place,” I mused aloud ignoring Sondra and focusing on the problem, “and, yes, use Lia’s presence to draw him there.”
“There’s a major weakness to your plan, Conrí,” Sondra said, then turned to Lia. “Are you certain you’re up to being bait, Your Highness? It sounds easy in theory, but that kind of thing takes a lot of fortitude and you won’t be able to change your mind like you change your gowns.”
“I won’t change my mind,” Lia replied with enough chill that I figured most courtiers would have detected the warning and backed down. Not Sondra.
She looked Lia up and down, lip curling. “You haven’t had to suffer at all, or learn to endure much, living here. If you break under the pressure, it could destroy us all.” Sondra looked to me in appeal, that doubt still in her eyes. “She’s a weak link, Conrí.”
“Lia is the cornerstone of this plan because she is the one Anure will compromise his strategy for. We don’t have a choice here. I’ll protect Lia. She won’t be in a position to break.”
“But if she—”
“I can protect Myself.” Lia interrupted Sondra’s argument with cold precision. “My people will be My bulwark. If My pretending to be bait plays into a workable strategy to protect Calanthe from the emperor without undue bloodshed, then I’ll play My part. As Conrí notes, I have no choice.” She fixed Lady Sondra with an unflinching stare, then flicked a glance at me. “I’ve endured more than you know. Either of you. It’s not in Me to break.”
“Enough arguing,” I said, my eyes going to the map. “It’s all guesswork until we find the right place.”
“But where?” Kara asked, pacing alongside me, carefully still in the ocean. “These are small fishing villages. They’d be even more quickly decimated and invaded by Anure’s might. I’ve seen what he does to places like this.” His voice had gone even rougher as old ghosts swam up to haunt him. “Conrí, we can’t—”
I put a hand on his shoulder. I needed him in the present—and for Lia not to be frightened any more than she already was. She’d heard, of course, given her keen attention on our conversation and on where in her realm I walked. Lia would know every detail about those fishing villages, and likely every person, plant, and animal in them—and in the waters, too. I’d like to ask her to identify what I sought, but she’d be too close, too connected to see what I needed.
I’d discovered this over and over when dealing with locals sympathetic to our cause. As much as they tried to be objective, they loved their homes—or some aspect of them—too much to sacrifice what they needed to in order to win. And Anure had an uncanny knack for knowing what people cared about, ruthlessly using that against them. Maybe the emptiness in his soul made him sensitive to what lay at the center of other people, I didn’t know, but we’d won as much as we had so far in part by outsmarting him in this. He predicted what we’d try to protect; we stopped the locals from saving it, and circled behind Anure’s forces.
I, of course, had nothing left I cared about, so that made it easy for me to throw tasty morsels into Anure’s maw to chew and hopefully choke on while I cut his throat from behind. Lia’s problem was that she cared too much about all of it. If I asked her what part of Calanthe she’d serve up to occupy Anure, she’d refuse any piece of it.
So, I’d do it for her. She’d asked for my brutality and ruthlessness in service of her realm. I’d give her exactly that. Still, I found I couldn’t quite meet her eyes.
Kneeling down again, I followed the lines of currents with a fingertip. “I need more time to study the map,” I told them. “You all have things to do—go do them.”
Sondra sighed gustily. “Every time. Told you so.”
“I’ll have food sent up,” Lia said.
I ignored them both and focused on solving the problem. That kept me from thinking about anything else.