25

I pull my mask down over my face. The tray is in my hands before the door opens. Father remains at the window.

With bowed head I step out of the way as Lord Gargaron strides in. He cannot be bothered to glance at a masked servant. All his attention is reserved for the man he has elevated. His disapproval clouds the room.

“General Esladas, I thought you would be downstairs already. The procession is gathering.”

Father flips his sleeves, then smooths them. “My apologies, my lord. I am not yet accustomed to the formal manners of a palace and the stately customs by which every nightly meal is embarked upon.” No agitation mars his tone or manner.

Lord Gargaron’s frown lifts as he joins Father at the window. “It is just as well you’ve lingered here because there is a small matter I wish to speak of while we still have privacy.”

“My lord.” Father inclines his head obediently.

Lord Gargaron leans out to examine the courtyard, then steps back as if fearing arrows will pierce him from out of the night. “On the road, it is likely you will be joined by your wife’s brother.”

“Likely? Is there some doubt of it?”

“His grandmother insists he be given one final chance to prove he can make something of himself running the Fives, even though I am altogether opposed. Still, I have given my word to allow him a last trial. If he can win at your victory games, he may devote himself to the Fives. If he loses I will finally be allowed to send him into the army as has been my intention all along.”

He rubs a cheek with a finger, as if rubbing a gloating smile off his lips.

“My lord.” The acknowledgment offers nothing and betrays nothing.

“I expect you to keep him close. Let him see how a campaign is run. Give him a chance to prove himself in protected circumstances, with you making the important decisions. Above all else, keep him safe.”

“What manner of temperament may I expect to be dealing with, my lord?” Father asks with the patience of a man who has overseen any number of hapless lordly whelps sent out to endure their first and possibly only campaigns.

“He’s a smart boy but naïve. He needs seasoning and experience. The one thing you must cure him of is that he wants people to like him. He is inappropriately friendly toward those who are not of his station. He believes he can rescue forlorn wretches. He has a bad habit of doing favors for people to win their approval.”

Father is far too disciplined to glance my way but the twitch of his shoulders and the cant of his body betrays that he is abruptly wondering how I got here and who might have helped me.

“Cleanse him of that desire for camaraderie, if you can. But above all, I need him back sound in mind and whole in body. A few brave injuries would not go amiss to mark him as a good soldier. Your fortune will rise with his, I promise you.”

I rock back a step to catch myself.

“My gracious lady wife speaks little of her brother,” Father remarks. “I am not sure she has mentioned him even once within my hearing.”

“Though close in age, they are not much alike.” Lord Gargaron looks around to see me standing like a statue by the door. He flutters a hand. “Out! These creatures! Too stupid to take initiative.”

Father’s gaze flicks toward me, then back to his lord. “Good soldiers undertake their duty and accomplish all that they have been ordered to do,” he says as I depart.

The words are meant for me.

My head is buzzing. The stone steps slip away, like they are falling farther and farther from my feet, and by the time I reach the bottom I am halfway to flying. Only my trained reflexes keep me from slamming into one of the guards.

“Slow down!” he barks.

Panting, I duck my head and slide away at a more measured pace although my heart stumbles.

The corridor is awash in a locust cloud of voices. Because I do not know the layout of the villa, I miss the route taken by the servants and find myself in a large atrium in which a company of finely dressed Patron men and women are gathering. Across the room I see Lord Kalliarkos, Lord Thynos, and General Inarsis chatting amid a circle of brightly dressed courtiers, and although Kalliarkos glances around the room, my mask protects me as I creep along the wall like a shadow.

Lords and ladies mingle, chattering and laughing. The women wear linen sheaths, the fabric covered with embroidery and tiny beads to create flowers and vines and butterflies. Bright ribbons tiered in clusters and waterfalls in their hair swirl and swing as their heads move.

At the still center stands Prince Nikonos. No adornment gilds his gold keldi and sleeveless jacket; unrelieved gold silk is all he need wear to mark his status as the younger brother of the king. No one stands close to him, leaving him alone in a sea of laughter. He looks up at a woman with her back to me. Their gazes cross like sparks spitting and, making the gesture a deliberate snub, she greets a woman with an effusive smile and a cheek touched one to the other’s.

I have seen that face before, so striking with decorative kohl artistry turning her eyelashes into the spine of wings drawn onto her cheek. The architecture of ribbons in her hair spreads like a fan to frame her round face. She is the young woman who was peering out of the carriage at the Ribbon Market the day Coriander’s brother was arrested and Kalliarkos saved me from the same fate. Kalliarkos got into the carriage because she is his sister, and now my father’s wife.

Her gaze catches on me as on a hook. She gestures to one of the less glowingly dressed women and pulls her close, a hand curled possessively around the other woman’s arm as she speaks to her.

Why have I been so stupid as to stare? Praying the wall will hide me, I head for the far entrance, but before I reach it I am intercepted by the steward whose dour face kills all hope in my heart.

“You stupid country girls.” She pinches the underside of my arm so hard I choke down a yelp. “You were expressly told not to walk through the atrium. In these kitchen clothes as well, the worst sort of alley dress. Lady Menoë is displeased you have spoiled the efforts we made to have all the decorations exactly as she wishes. Believe me, you will regret you came to her attention. You have lost your pay for the week. Be in my office at dawn. What is your name?”

“Coriander,” I squeak in a voice not my own.

Mercifully she releases me to scurry on my way.

I make it out to the courtyard just as the atrium swells with the excitement and noise of more arrivals. When I glance back, I catch a glimpse of Lord Gargaron accompanied by my father. Unseen musicians sing the famous prayer for victory from the play The Firebird’s Revenge, which ends with the beleaguered general defeating all his evil foes, although, in typical fashion, he dies just before the messenger, who is his lost son, arrives to announce that the enemy has been utterly vanquished.

I flee past the courtyard and hurry through the bustling servants’ wing, where I find a random surface to place the tray. It is a relief to tug the smothering mask off my face, although I leave it pushed atop my hair just in case. A woman waves me down.

“Here, girl, take this to the kitchen.”

She hands me a bucket brimming with glistening oysters still in their shells and stinking of brine. I wander dazedly to the kitchens, gripped by the scents of baking bread and roasting fowl, the platters of fruit carved into the shapes of winged dragons and horned lions, and the sculptures of dates and honey built into miniature facsimiles of famous buildings like Saryenia’s lighthouse or the Gem Gardens of ancient Saro, where the last emperor was murdered beneath a flowering peach tree.

Steam wafts over me like the breath of the firebird. Smoke from grilling meat stings my eyes. I have no idea what to do with the oysters. Just as I have identified a table where I can stow them and flee, another woman accosts me, takes the bucket, and directs me to a table where girls are chopping onions, leeks, radishes, and cucumbers. I am set to peeling grapes, which a woman arranges in pleasing patterns on lacquered trays. My head is thick and my limbs move as if encased in lead. An anchor weighs down my heart. Seeing my father has set me as into a stormy sea, tugged this way and that but ever caught on the cable that ties me to him.

Can I really save them? Is it possible to unbury the dead?

How long I stand with the smell of food making me ravenous I do not know. But when a procession of young men in formal skirts and jackets appear to carry away the trays of grapes, figs, and cut melons, I wake as from sleep. Fruit marks the last course of the feast. Soon Kalliarkos, Thynos, and Inarsis will make an excuse to leave. If I’m not in the palm grove, Kalliarkos may decide to prove himself by sneaking in to find me, and that would be a disaster.

Fortune favors me. I am marshaled into a group given baked fish wrapped in lettuce to feed the wagoners making ready to return to Saryenia. Outside, some wagons are already leaving in a rumble of dust and noise. I hop onto the back of one as if I am part of the cavalcade and gulp down the delicious fish in its moist wrapping. With such a vast procession departing, the guards take not the least notice of me as I lick the last lingering taste off my fingers.

The wagons roll along the beaten earth lane, their way lit by young men pacing alongside with lanterns. I scan the heavens. The Four Sleeping Sisters have already risen. The moment the shadowy ranks of date palms come into view I jump off. Not until the procession has faded into the night do I run into the palms. To my relief, Kalliarkos and Thynos await me.

Kalliarkos hurries to greet me, grasping my hands and staring so intently at me that I can’t take my gaze off his dark eyes. “I thought you were captured! I was about to go in and rescue you!”

A spark of brilliant joy surges up from my weary, grief-stricken heart. I squeeze his fingers a little more tightly, enough to make him really notice how strong my grip is. “That’s why I had to hurry. I was afraid you would run in to rescue me and get caught and then I would have to rescue you from your rescue of me.”

He laughs, glances at Thynos, and defiantly plants a quick kiss on my mouth. “You never stop competing, do you?”

Thynos coughs.

Kalliarkos releases me but I just stand there. I touch my lips, sure I can feel the pressure of his mouth still lingering.

He grins cockily. “That’s the first time I’ve made you blush.”

I cross my arms and lean just a little closer, chin coming up. “You won’t manage it again.”

“Won’t I?” His fingers close on my elbow.

“Come along, children, enough playacting,” says Lord Thynos sharply. He leads the horses down the path between the trees, calling over his shoulder. “I can hear Menoë’s cavalcade rattling along the road. She never travels anywhere without twenty wagons of furnishings and five carriages of personal servants, and her drivers have specific orders never to let any vehicle pass her household’s wagons unless it belongs to the king, the queen, or Prince Nikonos. We need to get ahead of them or we won’t reach the city gates until dawn.”

Thynos keeps walking, expecting us to follow, but neither Kalliarkos nor I move. His hand braces my arm. Our bodies touch like they are eager to learn more about each other. He examines me in a way that makes me feel he is searching for my every least secret simply because I fascinate and concern him so much.

“Did you see your father? Did you get what you desired or needed from him?”

I don’t hesitate. I leap.

“I need your help to do something so dangerous and entirely forbidden that bringing me here to see my father is trivial in comparison. If we are caught, we will both be executed.”

His warm hand slides caressingly down my arm to capture my hand. “What could possibly be that dangerous and forbidden?”

I am both terrified and exhilarated because I have seen something in him tonight that no one else has ever believed in. That I didn’t really believe in until right this moment.

“Your uncle entombed my mother and sisters with Lord Ottonor to keep them away from my father forever. I’m going to rescue them. I can only do it with your help.”

He lets go of my hand as if I’ve burned him. Crouching, he buries his head in his hands. A whisper escapes him, words I can’t quite hear. He rocks back and forth in some kind of pain.

Out of the darkness, General Inarsis trots into view. “Lord Kalliarkos? Are you injured?”

Kalliarkos jumps up so fast that Inarsis draws a long knife and spins a full circle to fend off attackers, but there is only me.

From the other direction Lord Thynos runs up, sword drawn. “Who has assaulted you?”

“‘I am assaulted by impiety, injured by blasphemy,’” cries Kalliarkos. It is a famous line from a tragic play, and he speaks the words with a vehemence that chills me.

Taking a step back, I make ready to run. My rash confession has jeopardized everything.

He grabs Thynos’s elbow so aggressively that Thynos looks startled and Inarsis almost leaps between the two men. “Did everyone know except me?”

Thynos looks at the fingers gripping his arm and smiles perilously. “What am I meant to know?”

“Uncle Gar has committed a terrible crime.”

If the ground had dropped out from under my feet and I had plunged into the furnace where the unjust are blasted and blinded by flames for eternity, I would have been less surprised. “You believe me?”

Kalliarkos’s chest shakes in a false, fierce laugh. “Of course I believe you. It’s exactly what he would do.”

“What are you two talking about?” demands Lord Thynos.

“Uncle Gar entombed Jes’s pregnant mother and her sisters as the oracle’s attendants in Lord Ottonor’s tomb.”

“Ah!” sighs Inarsis. He sheathes his long knife.

Kalliarkos begins to pace, but his gaze sticks to me. “The priest-wardens will not just let us break open the brick door. What do you propose?”

“We’ll go in and out the air shaft,” I say. “It has to be at night, but I will not be allowed into the City of the Dead on my own.”

Kalliarkos considers the plan as if it is a maze. “I can walk in and out at any time without being questioned. Everyone will expect me to have attendants with me.”

The world waits to bow at his feet, and he is finally starting to see the power of his rank.

“You’re serious.” Thynos crosses his arms.

“They both are.” Inarsis lowers a suspicious gaze on the other man. “Did you know?”

“Sun of Justice!” Thynos swears. “With the gods as my witness, I knew nothing! Nor would I ever be party to such an act. Bad enough they bury living women in the tombs of every lord and prince and king here in Efea. To entomb a pregnant woman on top of that! It’s sickening. It wasn’t like this in the old country.”

“Then you’ll help us, Uncle,” says Kalliarkos, his words more command than request.

“You can’t free them.” Thynos stares Kalliarkos down. “No one can.”

This time Kalliarkos does not give way. “Yes, I can. Jes and I can. And we are going to. So your choice is either to aid us or get out of our way.”