10

Jes! There you are!” Amaya waves. “Hurry!”

I trot over, hating how the fashionable sheath gown makes it so hard to climb or run. But if I’d escaped the soldiers, Kalliarkos wouldn’t have rescued me. Thinking of the way he casually treated me as just another adversary makes me smile as I reach the carriage.

“Thank the oracles!” Amaya grabs my hands so tightly I think she might actually have been worried. “How did you get separated from us? We have to get home.”

“It was stupid to stop here!” I say as we clamber in.

“It’s stupid of you to run the Fives in defiance of Father. Do you want to have this argument again, Jes?”

No one is more annoying than Amaya gnawing on an argument so I tweak aside the curtains and stare outside to ignore her. The view seaward is stunning from this height. The city has two harbors that are almost perfect circles, their rocky rims washed by water. Many ships sail in and out bringing in goods from foreign countries and taking away the grain, gold, spices, and cloth that our enemies covet. Between the harbors rises the peninsula that houses the City of the Dead and the tombs of the oracles. The deep blue sea stretches to the horizon to the south and west, its waters glittering under the sun.

Far away to the south, much too far to see from here, lies the land of Saro, where my father was born, the same land out of which the ancestors of the current king and queen fled during a terrible civil war a hundred years ago, as Lord Kalliarkos has just reminded me. With their army and their priests the newcomers established a royal dynasty here. But even so, it wasn’t far enough away, because the deadly hostilities they left behind plague us still.

My gaze drifts back to where Coriander waits like a person drugged by shadow-smoke. I wonder what terrible crime her brother committed. Probably he murdered someone in a fit of rage.

“What are you looking at?” Amaya shoulders me aside. She glances toward Coriander but then turns to look forward for so long that I wonder what she is looking at. Finally she sits back. “How I wish I could trade places with Coriander! Then I could walk anywhere I wish in the city instead of being trapped by Father’s honor!”

“As if Coriander ever gets a day free.” The memory of her brother’s accusations grinds at my thoughts.

Amaya unwraps one of the cat masks and turns it from side to side. “Have you ever been in love?” she asks too casually. “I know you’ve done things at the training stable you’re not supposed to. I won’t tell.”

“Kissing people who are attractive to see what it feels like is not the same as being in love!” I smile the bold smile I usually only wear at Anise’s stable, the one that shows I’m not really a dutiful daughter at all. “It is fun, though.”

Amaya rolls her eyes and then lifts the cat mask to her face. For an instant, as I see her dark eyes shining through the slits, the mask seems to melt into her. For an instant, her skin takes on a sheen of silky fur and her teeth sharpen and gleam and her painted fingernails elongate into viciously pointed claws.

Startled, I blink, then rub my eyes.

She lowers the mask with an overwrought sigh, just an ordinary pretty girl.

“Why did you buy two cat masks?” I ask.

“So Denya and I can match.” She wraps the mask back up. “Are we ever going to leave?”

She sticks out her head, looking forward. I see the way she catches in an excited breath, the way her head tilts flirtatiously like she’s smiling at someone she wants to notice her. Abruptly our carriage jerks forward and she sits back heavily in the seat, fanning flushed cheeks with a hand. She closes her eyes and smiles triumphantly.

I peek out again. A young Patron woman is peering out of the heavy beaded curtains of the carriage ahead of us. Her hair is a dramatic sculpture of ribbons, elaborately layered tails, and braided plaits. Thickly drawn kohl outlines her eyes as if with wings. Seeing me, she frowns in surprise and withdraws inside.

A moment later I see Kalliarkos—of all people!—stride up to that very carriage and swing inside. He’s grinning like he just won a trial. Guards wave their carriage through the gate.

When our turn comes, Polodos walks confidently up to the guards and we are waved through without incident.

“Polodos doesn’t seem like the kind of ambitious, dashing man you would be interested in,” I say, still peering out through the beads.

“You need to pay attention to something other than the Fives, Jes. Polodos is very ambitious.”

I sit back in astonishment. “Is he really the one who writes that leaden-footed poetry devoted to the mysterious pools of your star-ridden eyes?”

“It’s not leaden-footed. They’re the most beautiful words ever written!” She hasn’t opened her eyes. “Could you just let me have some peace?”

The grind of the wheels on the street, the clip-clap of the horses’ hooves, and the pad of the servants’ feet as they walk alongside out in the sun blends into a soothing rhythm. In a pleasant baritone Polodos sings a lover’s song about a sailor stealing off his ship at dawn to meet his beloved so she can “wash his clothes.” I shut my eyes and pretend I am climbing the victory tower, that I reach the top and pull off my mask.

It’s just a dream. It will never happen.

Amaya elbows me. “Jes! Wake up. We’re home. Thank all the gods! Father’s not here yet.”

We live in a district where lowborn Patron men who have gained a certain level of prestige and wealth have set up households behind high walls. The green gates of our house are marked with Ottonor’s three-horned bull. We get out in the carriage yard and hurry indoors past Father’s parlor and study, past the reception room and garden where he hosts what social gatherings he can afford, and into the family quarters.

“We did it!” Amaya takes hold of my hand. “Father will never know because everything went perfectly!”

The tension and the emotion of the day finally begin to drain and I start to relax.

Just as we enter the family’s gracious parlor we hear Bettany screech.

“I can’t anymore! I won’t! And you can’t stop me!”

That tone is trouble and this is not a day on which we want any further notice from Father. Amaya and I run down the passage and into the suite we four girls share. I bar the door behind us.

Bettany faces Maraya. The contrast between them could not be more stark. Maraya has the same short, stocky build as Father. Bettany towers over her. Her hair spreads like an aura around her head. Hers is the beauty that crushes rather than soothes.

“What is going on? Why are you bullying Maraya?” I demand. Bett and I aren’t much alike, but we did share a womb so there isn’t really anything I won’t say to her.

“I’m not bullying her. She’s the one who got in my way.” Bettany picks up a laden basket and slings it over her back. “I am leaving this house forever. And I’m not coming back.”

“If you ruin the family’s reputation by running away, I’ll never make a good marriage,” cries Amaya.

Bettany measures Amaya in the hard way that makes Amaya blush. She hates that Bettany is far more beautiful than she is and hates even more that Bettany cares nothing for her beauty. “I weep for you, Amiable. You can tell Father I died.”

“You might spare a thought for what will happen to the rest of us,” says Maraya calmly. “We will be punished for what you did.”

“Don’t you care about Mother?” Amaya demands.

“That fat cow! Grazing inside the fence she allowed to be built around her while she waits for the bull to come home and cover her.”

“There’s no reason for you to be deliberately coarse!” I’m astonished at how much her comment annoys me. “If not for her, you and I would have been handed over to the temple.”

Her anger makes the room hum. “Yes, we all like to praise her for that. But what if Father had insisted on giving us to the temple? Would she have stood up to him then?”

Maraya raises a hand. “Your argument is a sieve that doesn’t hold water. Maybe he didn’t insist. But maybe he did and Mother refused. All we know is that I am alive and you two are not servants in the temple.”

“Or worse,” murmurs Amaya. “You might have been dedicated to become attendants to a living oracle. Think of how awful that would be! Shut up in a tomb until you die.”

We all turn on her, even Bettany. “Shh!” “Hush!” “Amaya! How can you speak such an impiety!” Our words roll together into one.

But it is too late.

Maybe our bad fortune has nothing to do with Bettany’s rebellion and Amaya’s blasphemous words. Maybe it started when I so arrogantly presumed that my day would go exactly as planned. When both Amaya and I defied our father’s wishes. Maybe it has nothing to do with us girls at all. To lords who live in palaces, we are nothing more than sticks in the current to be rolled along in waters far more powerful than our fragile lives.

A commotion rises from the house. Shrieks and shouts split the air.

A staff hammers on our closed door. The voice of the Senior House Steward startles us, for in the normal course of our lives he is far too important to be bothered with mere girls. When he speaks he sounds frantic, like a man about to fall into a vat of poison.

“Open up! Doma Maraya, you and your sisters are demanded at once in the master’s study.”