Lightfall, p.33
Lightfall, page 33
She let her hands slide from his neck to rest over his heart. “I have to go. There’s a Mahasari spy in Valgard, and Cyril wants me to root them out. It’s the only way to save the treaty…to save you.”
His shoulders sagged. “They won’t let me go with you.”
“You’re the surety we need to keep Jad here. As far as anyone but us knows, you still stand accused.”
“And what do we know, Asheila?”
She raised a brow. “Do I need to show you again?”
His answering smile was exhausted, and his arms wrapped around her, bringing her into the shelter of his grip. When she held him back, she didn’t think she’d ever clung to anyone or anything so tightly in her life.
“Go save your kingdom,” Maleck murmured into the side of her neck. “I’ll be waiting.”
She backed away, drinking in the sight of him alive, his fate hanging in the balance. “I’ll come back for you.”
“Wait.” At the edge of his shackles, Maleck caught her hand and pressed something into it: his small leather journal. “Just in case.”
Halfway to the steps leading up into the estate, curiosity got the better of her. She undid the cord and laid open the pages he’d kept hidden during their entire stay in Middleton.
He’d been drawing again—drawing her. At breakfast, an apple in one hand, a book in the other; with Rozalie, leaning on the walkway ledge, their profiles sculpted in sharp relief; in the training room, twin daggers braced back along her arms, ready to strike.
He didn’t just render her frame in flawless detail; he captured the battle raging within her, the conflict fleshed out in lead, in the slant of her brows, the tilt of her mouth, the unhappiness in her eyes. In every drawing except one he must’ve captured from pure memory: her in Astoria’s music hall, legs dangling from the balcony, a smile on her face while she listened to the symphony below. The music moved through her in the sketch, drawn in gentle whorls and curlicues.
Ashe wiped her nose on her wrist, then balled her sleeve and hastily scrubbed a tear that plopped on the corner of the page. She shut the journal and tucked it in her breastpocket, close to her heart.
Then she dashed up the steps to find Rozalie and Bresnyar, to save her kingdom—and her selvenar.
The
SPY
of
STARS AND
DREAMS
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
THE SOOTHING SMELL of fresh soil filled Cistine’s nostrils, easing the ache of another bad dream and more uneasy feelings. She delicately shifted the sweetsap from pot to gardening box, cradling the roots gently in one hand and inhaling its pungent aroma.
Her bedroom door slammed open, startling her so badly she nearly dropped the plant. “Aden’s back and he won’t train with me!”
Heart pounding, Cistine glanced over her shoulder at Pippet. “Well, thank you for waking me up all the way! Why don’t you take Vihar and Faer into the garden for another race, then?”
“Mira took Vihar to the courtroom today.” Fuming, Pippet threw herself on the foot of Cistine’s bed. “For Saychelle, she said.”
Cistine stared at her, tired mind weaving these things together. Then she dropped the sweetsap into the soil, covered the roots, and dashed from the room, leaving Pippet moaning about being abandoned twice.
Though she ran the entire length of the courthouse, Cistine still wasn’t quick enough; elites were dispersing and Mira and Vihar descending the steps from the upper mezzanine when she reached the courthouse market, the Door growling for attention far below her feet. She clamped down on its call and strode to meet Mira. “I missed it?”
Mira looped her hair off her neck with both hands. “Honestly, you’re fortunate you did. Bravis was just short of savage. It’s been more than a week since Sander and I saw each other, and our reunion was barely a hello, you stink of the desert before they rushed us into the courtroom.”
“How did the assessment go? How was Saychelle? Did Marcel give his testimony for Salvotor today?”
“Yes, he did. It was precisely how you’d expect.” Mira mimed a yawn. “Pure lies from one ambitious fool about another. But Saychelle was marvelous, precisely how I’ve observed her: no hint of hysteria, no mental instability. When Salvotor isn’t given a loose enough leash to overpower her, all is…well.”
She spoke the last word oddly soft, and Cistine frowned. “Is it?”
Mira didn’t speak again until they emerged into the courtyard, the shadows of the statues cast long in the midday sun. “Salvotor was the picture of restraint today. He all but laid out the circumstances for Saychelle’s testimony to go smoothly.”
Though her nape prickled, Cistine grasped for optimism. “Maybe he’s learned his lesson about what he can and can’t get away with.”
“Perhaps. Or else he’s gotten away with something far worse than we know.”
The thought haunted them through Kanslar’s wing, moving in silent tandem toward another session. Finally, Cistine said, “You must be so glad Sander is back.”
“I am, though I didn’t like the look on his face one bit. I’m sure I’ll hear all the good news about the Blood Hive soon enough.”
Mira’s sharp tone brought Cistine’s gaze back to her. “Are you glad Siralek is gone?”
She was quiet for a time, one hand on Vihar’s shoulder as if to steady herself. “Whenever we love people, no matter how wonderful they are, there are parts of them we won’t like. Habits. Vices. Ambitions. I’ve never shared Sander’s belief about the necessity of the Blood Hive, what it stood for, what it accomplished. But I love him enough to let him walk that path and decide for himself where it will lead him. I hope…I pray he’s realized now how despicable that entire place was.”
Cistine’s mind drifted to thoughts of dark hair and midnight eyes, and she tweaked the twisted ring around her neck. “Do you think the parts of someone you don’t like are reason enough to walk away from…from love?”
“Only you can answer that. You do have to love a person as they are, accepting they may never change. But there are boundary lines.”
Cistine squeezed the betrothal ring again. “What if they—?”
Vihar froze, stiff-legged, a growl booming from his chest, bringing them both to a halt.
Ahead, the door to Sander’s apartment swung on its hinges like a broken limb.
Mira ordered Cistine back and sent Vihar forward in the same breath, but she didn’t heed the warning; hand on her augment pouch, she dashed into the room on the wolf’s heels.
Furniture was overturned, dishes scattered, screens ripped down from their fastenings on the ceiling, clothes scattered along the floor and tiles pulled up and broken in half. Snarling, Vihar stalked through the room, sniffing at every corner. Mira shot past Cistine into Sander’s bedchamber; a moment later, a stream of profanity issued through the kicked-open doors that would’ve made the most seasoned Warden blush. Cistine bolted inside.
She’d never seen Sander’s bedroom before, but it matched the man: ornate, tiled in deep mauve and gold accents, ferns and garlands everywhere—but even those were cut down. Mira stood amidst the destruction, gripping the edges of an open armoire. “They’re gone. All of them.”
“All of what?” Cistine demanded.
“My client notes from every person I’ve ever helped.” She pressed both hands, violently shaking, over her mouth. “And my…Sander’s…”
Mira collapsed without warning, limbs jerking, body rigid.
Shock froze Cistine for a moment. Then, screaming for help, she dropped down beside Mira, trying to grip her thrashing head.
It took no more than a minute for the scent of spice to envelop her, broad hands shifting her out of the way, and in a whip of sand-crusted robes Sander was on his knees beside his lover. The look on his face was not panic, but pain; he shouted at Vihar, gave a sharp whistle, then swooped his arms around Mira and lifted her carefully, trapping her limbs in such a way that she could hurt neither him nor herself. “Flip one of those sofas in the parlor.”
Desperate to be useful, Cistine did as he said. He laid Mira down, turned on her side, his hand resting on her shoulder while she spasmed. Then he jerked his chin toward the hearth. “The lockbox there contains a tonic. Measure out half a cup.”
Cistine hurried to obey, though her fingers rattled so badly it was difficult to pour the clear liquid into its tin cup. Behind her, Sander murmured in a low, soothing monotone.
“Is she going to be all right?” Cistine’s voice trembled.
Sander motioned her to set the cup on the floor. “She will be. This isn’t the first time this has happened.”
“How did you find us so quickly?”
“I followed you from the courthouse proper—and it’s a good thing I did.” Sander raked the room with a glance. “This is what I come home to after serving my Court. Someone will pay in blood.”
The door croaked on broken hinges, startling Cistine so badly she nearly yelped when first Hana, then a drove of Sander’s other lovers poured inside. Her pale gaze leaped from the destruction to Mira, still jerking on the sofa, and she paled and cursed, rushing to kneel at Sander’s side. Her hands clenched one of Mira’s and she pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “What in the stars happened?”
“What does it look like, our rooms were raided! And where were you?”
“At the teahouse, answering your summons!”
“I just returned from the stars-damned desert and went straight to the trial, I sent no summons!”
The look that passed between them sent chills skittering up Cistine’s spine. Hana half-rose from her crouch and laid a hand on Mira’s brow. “You’ll stay with her?”
“Of course.” Sander nodded to the bedroom doors. “Take Kendar and Vihar and search for a scent. I want this person found and punished. I don’t properly care if it’s done the legal way.”
With a grim nod, Hana obeyed, while Eyva and two other women picked up swords and stepped into the hall. Sander remained at the couch, and Cistine hovered at his side, watching how gently he held onto Mira’s shoulders, how he kissed her brow and whispered in her ear, his touch focused and controlled but anguish bright in his eyes.
There were things about these people she understood better the longer she was with them; the way Sander looked at Mira now was clearest of all. “Should I go?”
He shook his head. “When she returns, she’ll ask for you.”
Cistine lowered herself cross-legged onto the floor at his feet. “She said all her notes were gone, and something of hers and yours.”
Sander’s eyes widened. “The armoire?” At Cistine’s nod, he shot to his feet. “Stay with her.”
She shifted to take his place as he stormed from the room, mimicking his gentle grip on Mira’s shoulder with alternating strokes to her back. It might not help, but she had to do something with her shaking hands.
At long last, the rigidity in Mira’s limbs slackened. It was another few minutes before she rolled over, squinting up with a hand pressed to her brow. “Cistine?”
She brushed the hair from Mira’s face. “Do you know where you are?”
“Our room, I think. What happened here?”
“You don’t remember?”
A beat of silence. Then Mira rasped, “Tonic.”
Cistine pressed the cup into her hands and helped her sit up so she could sip, propped against the arm of the sofa. After several minutes, Mira sighed, staring down into her cup. “The Vassoran guard has no place for a woman whose distress sends her into spasms.”
Curling her legs under her body, Cistine said nothing.
“I was still a girl when it began,” Mira went on. “My parents thought I was only absentminded at first, that it would pass in time and guard training would help…and for a time, it did. But during the war, Sander and I crept off to spy on the front lines. We were caught in a terrible storm, injured. I was his guard at the time, and on my watch his life nearly ended.” She slowly tapped the cup, her gaze a different sort of remote. “That was the first time I…lost myself to the spasms. When I woke after that fit, I couldn’t remember who Sander was. Who I was. It was the most terrifying moment of my life.
“It took us some time to journey home while I continued with these spasms. Weeks more for the medicos to deduce that our ordeal broke the dam, allowing what was a nuisance for the child to become debilitating for the woman. Distress is as much a cause of my fits as it is your panic, and once I discovered there were ways to limit them, I realized how many others needed that help. So I pursued it with my whole heart.”
“And…Valgard allows that?” Cistine asked carefully.
Mira’s smile was cool and frank. “They do, for Sander’s sake. They still call it a senseless craft, indulgence of the weak. But indulging my weakness has given me back my life.”
“How many people have you helped, really?”
Brows furrowing, Mira peered around the room. “Many. Even Chancellors and Tribunes who come to me in secret. I’ve kept every report in case they returned in need of further help, and now…” she trailed off. “Cistine, that armoire’s seal was unbreakable. I’ve never known anything that could penetrate it without a key. Sander and I tested its sturdiness ourselves. Whoever did this was crafty and very, very prepared. They knew precisely what they searched for and how to find it.”
“Do you know what it was?”
“Not with any certainty. But they chose their moment perfectly, with Sander and I both in the courtroom today. I would bet every mynt in my coffers that someone called away the other women on very important tasks.”
Lips half-numb with dread, Cistine whispered, “Salvotor?”
Mira lowered her cup, her eyes returning to Cistine. “Stars willing, no. I shudder to think what he would do with the truths those pages contain.”
Cistine and Mira talked long into the evening about pointless, calming things while the Vassora came in a thin but steady trickle, taking note of every displaced object and item in the room. They ate supper while a Vassoran guard named Branko questioned them about what they saw when they first arrived, whether anyone was leaving the corridor at that moment. Cistine could think of no one, and Mira artfully dodged the gaps in her memory from before her fit.
Hana and the other women rotated to and from the sofa, checking on Mira a dozen times; some Cistine hadn’t met yet trailed in and out, and though Sander left to report to Thorne and didn’t come back, his words came from their mouths—asking after Mira’s condition, whether she was comfortable, if she needed anything.
“Listen to me,” Mira said after the thirteenth new face came into the room, lips primed to question, “go and tell that hand-wringing peacock that if he’s not convinced of my stable condition, he can come and check his stars-damned self. Tell him that exactly, Mona.”
The woman grimaced. “I’d sooner wrangle an adder.”
“Do it, or wrangle with me.”
Cistine hid a faint smile in her cup of vanilla tea. She supposed it was a mark of how much Mira trusted her now that she behaved this openly in her presence. The day’s alarms aside, it felt good to belong.
She didn’t remember falling asleep after Mona left, only closing her eyes for a moment, but all at once it was dark and she wasn’t on the couch anymore. Someone had carried her to a bed in the corner of the parlor. She lay awake for some time, wondering if she ought to return to her own room. But in these peach-scented sheets, cozy and warm, she felt safe. And if the thief returned, she wanted to be the first to confront them.
She burrowed her chin into the blanket and drifted nearly to the edge of slumber when the parlor door whispered open.
Her eyes flicked wide, heart drumming, and she strained to hear the thudding footfalls. A tall, bent-shouldered shadow passed along the curtain’s fabric, and with a heavy sigh someone settled in one of the plush armchairs righted by the Vassora.
“Aden?” Mira’s voice carried in a half-whisper seconds later, full of surprise. “Why are you here at this hour?”
“It’s over.”
Cistine could see little through the refastened screen, only the suggestion of Aden’s profile slumped in the armchair and Mira’s frame reclining against the hearth. “You and Sander and Tatiana finished your investigation, I know.”
“No, it…the weight.” Aden’s tone gentled with wonder. “That specter you accused me of carrying—it’s gone. Being there with Tatiana and your…with Sander, in Siralek. It set something free.”
“I see.”
“He apologized to me for what was and was never done. We reached an understanding. The moment we did, it felt like I shook the last of Nordbran’s sand from my boots. Like I could breathe again.”
“Because Siralek is gone?”
“No. Because I walked out of it, gates or none. I accepted it was over…everything that happened to me there. Everything I could and couldn’t save in that place.”
Mira pulled away from the mantle, settling on the usual sofa. “You saved what mattered. Ashe. And Sander. And yourself.”
“True. It only lives on now if I let it. And I won’t. For my own sake…for my family’s legacy. For the family I still have, by the grace of the gods.” A beat. “Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about Deja. She’s all that remains of that Nimmus-pit for me, and I want to be done with the claws she’s sunk into my life.”
Mira rested a hand lightly on his back. “If you’re truly ready.”
“I am.” Aden scoffed. “You wicked, clever woman. It was you, wasn’t it? You told Thorne I should go to Siralek. You arranged this.”
“I might have. Your Chancellor trusts me, you know.”
Cistine bit her fist to stifle a giggle at Aden’s curse. “Did you destroy the Blood Hive yourself to force this healing between your lover and me?”
“Is that what it is, Aden? Healing?”
“I think it may be.” Surprise lilted his tone.
“Well, then perhaps I did. Now that you and Sander are such good friends, you should be able to solve that mystery together.” Her tone brimmed with mirth. “And where is my preening peacock?”
