Sterling (14 page)

With my itchy mask of cosmetic in place, I walked towards the shop where Erich had bought my earrings. The jeweler did not quibble about buying them back, although once I’d passed them over I wished I could keep them. I liked the design, and I liked having a gift from Erich. He ought to have given me a present at our betrothal ball: the sigil token from his house. He never had.

I sighed as the jeweler dropped ten gold jhass into my hand. I hadn’t held a gold jhass since I’d left Engashta.

Erich would see that I’d taken my maid’s clothes, and he’d search for a runaway maid. Much as I wanted to flee immediately, I stopped at a clothing shop and bought a readymade traveling dress and matching jacket. I also purchased button-up boots, gloves, and a hat with a veil, the better to conceal my face. From the shop I went directly to the stagecoach station—I’d learned since Engashta. Though I wanted to hurry to Shankar, I resolved to take the first available seat. Erich would assume I’d head east; he’d never imagine I’d travel south to Galantia. I bought the seat for a discounted price because the coach departed in a quarter hour and the driver wanted to fill it.

Dear gods, Galantia? Costas Galatien would string me up like a pig for slaughter if he caught me.

T
he road
between Avani and Galantia ran in a straight shot due south. My ticket included the night’s stay at an inn halfway between the two cities. I kept to myself and prayed I would find passage east from the High City. Had normal systems of transportation been reinstated since the war?

The High City sprawled on the southern bank of the Rift River, but of course the stagecoach approached from the north. A famous mage-built bridge connected the northern road to the High City. The bridge was an icon that attracted admiring tourists from all over the world. As we neared the river, I peeked from the window to have a look at the renowned structure. I had never crossed it before, only seen its colorful glassy sheen from a distance.

I blinked. I saw no bridge. It was gone. Gone!
Nothing remained of it, not even a strut sticking up from the river.

My carriage and all the others wishing to enter the High City had to stop on the northern bank. The carriage driver consulted the armed Galatien Guards who manned a temporary tent gatehouse erected where the Galantia Bridge used to begin. I walked to the abrupt ending of the road and stared down at the white rapids of the river.

How could it have disappeared?

Verbian had said only mage-built architecture had fallen in the earthquake in Avani. I shivered in the cool breeze skimming off the river. The Talatan mage had suggested that something had gone wrong with magic to cause the earthquake, but had the High City suffered the event too? What did it mean?

The driver returned from the tent, explaining that all carriage traffic was being shunted downriver to the crossing in Herefork, another day’s travel west.

The destruction of the famous bridge made me feel sick. I didn’t want to go west an extra day. I wanted to go home.

My aunt Siomar lived in Fosillen, on the boundary between Province Galatien and Province Ricknagel. If I could reach her I would at least have an ally. I wanted no more delays, not with Erich hot on my heels.

I turned to the driver. “What about foot traffic? Surely there is a ferry that can take people across the river here?”

He shrugged. “You can try your luck on foot if you like. I’m going on to Herefork.”

As the stagecoach drove off in a cloud of dust, I squared my shoulders, squeezed my reticule, and headed towards the Guards’ tent.

If I had worn Sterling Ricknagel’s marred face, the guard on duty would never have given me the look he did: an assessing gaze that absorbed my good clothing, my gloves, and my new boots. He studied my face and smiled. Men never smiled at me, but this one could not see my mark beneath my cosmetic.

“I wish to take a ferry to the High City,” I announced.

“I can help,” the guard said. He gave me another appreciative gaze, and I glimpsed a picture of the easy, empty life that had run parallel to mine all these years: the broken possibilities that my mark had denied me. I shook my head as I followed him into the tent.

“I must log your information, of course,” he said, taking a seat at a folding desk, the type Papa had used in field operations. Three other guards sat at similar desks, recording the details of other travelers.

“Now.” My guard took up his stylus. “Tell me your name and your business.” He looked up expectantly. He couldn’t be all that much older than I was.

“My name is Sera.” Stupid to use the name of Erich’s maid. If he came looking for me, it would be the first name he searched for in city entrance records, but I could not take it back.

“Surname?”

“Rachell,” I offered, thinking of the girl who’d helped me on the Lyssus road.

“Sera Rachell,” the guard said as he wrote it down. “A pretty name.” He handed his record to me. “Your mark, please.”

I hesitated. Would a girl like Sera Rachell know how to write? But I was dressed finely enough that it seemed a reasonable assumption. My fingers shook as I took his stylus and wrote in a swooping hand unlike my own.

“And your business, Miss Rachell?”

“Travel. I’m going to Murana.”

“And what cause takes you to Murana?”

“My—my family.”

“Murana is your home?”

“My aunt lives there,” I squeaked. “My parents are deceased. I am going … to live with her.”

My guard’s gaze lifted to meet mine. “Where are your things?”

Oh! My reticule served as my only luggage, full of incriminating items. What if they searched me?

I managed, “My aunt advised me to ship them.”

“I see. Where will you be staying in Galantia?”

Did they always interview travelers this closely? Mistrust shivered down my spine. “I don’t know.” I knew nowhere except the Crystal Palace, where I’d stayed when we came to Galantia for the Marriage Brokering. Unlike some of the families of the Ten Houses, the Ricknagels did not keep a house in Galantia. The townhouse my antecedents had once owned had been lost long ago as a concession after a different Ricknagel uprising. Aunt Siomar owned a house in Galantia, but it was her private property, and I couldn’t use it, anyway.

“I’ll help you find a place,” my guard offered, too friendly to be believed. Even pretty girls didn’t warrant such unsolicited assistance.
Did they?

“No, thank you. I’ll find my way.”

The guard peered at me. “Really, miss, my way would be best. The High City is no place for a young woman traveling alone.”

His words made my face itch more than ever. His scrutiny seemed threatening. Did the guards have orders to detain any “young woman traveling alone” on account of Sterling Ricknagel?

My heart thundered against my ribs as I scrambled for the best response. If I acquiesced easily, would he suspect me less? I struggled to quell the quaver in my voice. “Oh, sir, I would hate to presume upon your time.”

The guard pulled a timepiece from his pocket and glanced at it. “It’s nearly the end of my shift. I’m headed back across the river anyway. I’ll escort you.”

I stood shifting anxiously while the guard spoke in hushed whispers to his cohorts. What was he saying? Was I a suspect? I had no option but to brazen forward. I had to get across the river, and the ferry was my only route.

My too-attentive guard did all the arranging for the ferry passage. I squashed into a seat between my guard and a man who held a mage’s staff. The fluorite stone atop his staff did not shine. Mages infused their stones with their own aetherlight, so they always gave off a little glow, but this one had no internal radiance at all.

“Your stone,” I murmured to the mage. “It has no aetherlight.”

He turned. “Every magestone has lost its aetherlight. All magical works have crumbled. Our magic is dead.” His gaze was flat and lifeless, too.

Magic, dead? What did that even mean?
Had the crisis in Avani spread everywhere? I resisted the temptation to take out my Ophira right then to examine it again.

“It is true, Miss Rachell,” said my guard. “All the mage-built architecture in the High City has fallen. That’s why the bridge is gone. The King has sent men to tally the damage throughout the country. Reports say that magic has broken everywhere. Mages are gathering at the Conservatoire to study the problem. No one knows how or why it happened.” He nodded at the downcast mage.

Others on the tightly-packed ferry listened to our conversation.
I must get to Fosillen
. Aunt Siomar would be beside herself if magic had failed.

The ferry careened as it hit a section of rapids. No one else seemed worried by the ship’s sickening motions, but I hated them.

My guard patted my hand. “Don’t worry. The pilots know how to navigate the rapids. We’re almost there.”

His words did little to soothe me. Would he arrest me once we made the shore? Did he know who I was?

The ferry dock on the far bank swayed with the current. My guard hastened me past another official tent and bustled me to Galantia’s gates. Only a short line had formed to enter.

My guard expedited my entry. We walked into the rowdy and roiling Bottom City. Shankar, my home, stirred rich and poor together in many areas. Galantia relegated the poor to this Bottom City, and the rich to the High City above.

“Shall we climb the stairs on foot or take transport up the road?” my guard asked.

Thus far, he’d been only courteous, but I worried he would turn on me at any moment. “I prefer to walk.” Better to be out in the open if he made his move.

“Let us climb then,” said the guard. “It will be invigorating.”

We passed youths lighting the street lamps that lined the stairs. With magic in shambles, all the big cities would be burning gas for lights. What chaos there would be in Shankar without magic! My city had no leader, no one to make decisions, no one to command that youths be hired to light the gaslamps at dusk. Had Costas appointed an interim head for Province Ricknagel? Would he strip me entirely of my birthrights? Would I face a usurper when I arrived home?

The guard walked too close to me. “You said you were going to your aunt’s home, yes?” he asked as we huffed up the long stairs. “What happened to your own family, your parents?

I flinched and hoped he didn’t see. I did not want to think about my father in a bloody heap beside that broken mageglass. I did not want to think of my mother wasting away at our Tashriga lake house, refusing to see me.

“They died.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “My parents died long ago. I never knew them.”

“You are from Galantia?”

“Yes. I met King Costas when we were both young. He took many of us street boys in and made sure we had food and clothes and a place to sleep. He taught us his Forms and trained us to be soldiers.”

He was a Dragonnaire. I knew the history of the Dragonnaires, once a band of foundling boys, now Costas’s most loyal and deadly weapons.

My sense of desperation mounted with every step.

As we crested the top of the stairs, I fell back, saying, “You’ve been much too good to me, sir. I can find my own way from here.”

I began to turn away, but the guard caught my arm.

“Now, now, Miss Rachell—why such a hurry? After all I’ve done for you today, surely you can spare a bit more of your time for me.”

My mouth fell open. “Do you mean to imply that I owe you something for your assistance?”

He did not release my arm, and his fingers dug in deeper.

I twisted frantically, but the guard held on like a demonic limpet.

“Let me go!” I cried, hoping some bystander might hear and intervene. But the stair-top road was empty—few travelers made the arduous climb, and the lamplighters had been headed down, not up.

Costas’s Dragonnaires were renowned as the best martial men in the country. This one moved as smoothly as a shark in water, releasing my arm only to capture both of my hands behind my back. My reticule dangled in my grip, and I prayed he would not think to open it. Papa’s signet ring would expose my secret—if the man did not already know it.

“Come now, Miss Rachell. I’m not going to hurt you. I only want—”

“Get away from her,” a familiar voice demanded behind me. The guard’s eyes widened. He moved like lightning, releasing my hands, dropping into a fighter’s crouch, and drawing his butterfly blades from his sleeves.

“I don’t want to fight you,” the taut voice continued. “Didn’t you hear? My family has reconciled with Costas. I am simply looking for my—” I glanced over my shoulder. Erich stood there, rapier drawn, looking the perfect picture of a dashing hero from one of Stesi’s sensation novels. “—mistress,” he finished, staring at me as if to read my secrets beneath my painted face.

I caught my breath. He had not revealed me! I couldn’t imagine why not. If he planned to turn me over to Costas, he had only to tell the Dragonnaire my true name. Perhaps he wanted to present me to the King himself? That seemed likely. I inched to the right, though I knew flight was hopeless.

“Sera.” Erich glared at me.

“Your mistress?” The Dragonnaire stared first at Erich and then at me. I felt unreasonably embarrassed.

“Indeed.” Erich dropped the rapier tip to the ground to remove the immediate threat.

The Dragonnaire’s gaze raked my face. “We’ve been commanded to bring in any young women traveling alone for questioning.”

Erich scowled. “This woman isn’t traveling alone. We were ... momentarily separated. That’s all. Now, Sera, come here.” He tapped the ground with his blade as if calling his dog to heel.

“You never said Lord Erich Talata was your protector. You said you were going to your aunt’s.” The Dragonnaire looked mutinous—and dangerous.

“I
am
going to my aunt’s.”

“You never said you belonged to Lord Erich.”

“Why would I mention such a thing?” I snapped.

The Dragonnaire shrugged. “Damned Amatos.” He bowed in a perfunctory manner at Erich and then stalked off down the road.

Erich turned, his eyes like blue ice. “After this my reputation will truly be in tatters. Unsalvageable. Everyone will hear that yet another mistress fled my house and that a Dragonnaire tried to come to her rescue in the High City.”

I remained still, clutching my reticule, debating the unpalatable options of going with him or trying to escape directly onto the High City’s streets. My corseted, skirted physique was no match for Erich’s strength. I sighed and stared at the ground.

“Come,” Erich commanded. “I’ve sent word ahead to open up the Talata townhouse. They’ll have a bedroom ready by the time we get there.”

Erich strode down the road. Then he stopped, surprised I hadn’t followed. “Sera,” he said, my true name crackling behind the false one. “Come with me this instant.”

My legs moved of their own accord. As I entered his reach, Erich grabbed me firmly by the wrist, keeping me locked against his side as we marched along the street. His touch still elicited no sparks.