The Twelve Kingdoms: The Mark of the Tala (4 page)

The feather landed at my feet, iridescent now against the white marble floor.

I thought no one saw me pick it up—their attention was so riveted on the circling bird. Several more arrows flew, embedding themselves in the priceless carved ceiling. The raptor cawed out a laughing sound and soared back out the broken window.

I turned the feather over in my hands, the rigid edge nearly as sharp as glass. Terror slid through my veins, leaving paralysis behind. Like a hunting dog, I’d run home with the bear on my heels, exposing everyone I loved to the predator.
Silly
. I tried to calm myself.
He knew who everyone was already. This isn’t necessarily to do with what happened today
. Still, the back of my neck crawled, as if his intense midnight gaze still focused on me.

Not knowing what else to do with it, I tucked the feather in a pocket of my dress.

Several of Uorsin’s advisers clustered around the tube. One donned metal gloves and carefully took up the tube, calling out that it held a message. Amelia slipped her little hand in mine, lacing our fingers together. Hugh stood with Ursula and Uorsin, forming a loose semicircle of our protectors, overseeing the advisers while they argued about magical taints.

“Do they really believe it could hold a terrible spell?” Amelia whispered. “I thought that was only stories.”

“That was no natural-born raptor,” I murmured back, thinking of the tiny bird that had formed from the blood on the man’s lip. “You saw it. It should never have been able to break that window. And it was . . . intelligent, somehow.” A shiver ran through me and she clutched my hand tighter.

“Such a strange day,” she mused. “First you, who never fall off your horse, take a bad spill, and Father is so worried he tells you not to ride anymore, and now this.”

I loved her for not putting it all together right away. Ursula certainly had, judging by the flinty look she cast me over her shoulder. She had her queen face on now, so I couldn’t tell if it was anger, fear, or worry that made her tap the point of her sword restlessly against the toe of her soft court slipper.

The message was placed under a glass dome and the court priest of Glorianna said prayers over it, dusting it with powdered pink rose petals. I didn’t point out that Glorianna’s window hadn’t held much power to keep the bird out.

With a show of great care, the advisers used thin prongs to extract a parchment roll from the cylinder. My vision darkened and I realized I’d been holding my breath. My heart beat hard, like the glass-edged wings of the raptor. Derodotur, the King’s senior adviser for my entire life, and for a long time before, stepped forward to read the missive.

Amelia fainted dead away.

I kind of caught her, but my own muscles would barely hold. Fortunately, the ladies who perpetually follow us about made themselves useful and jumped in to support us both. Amelia’s ladies, several of whom I didn’t know and who must have come from Avonlidgh, fluttered about Amelia, fanning her with lavender-wafting handkerchiefs. The too-sweet scent turned my already-queasy stomach.

Violet Gaignor, ever practical, held my elbow like she’d steady one of her horses and handed me a cup of wine.

“Drink it,” she muttered, “you’re going to need it.” It was a mark of her own distress that she forgot to use the honorifics. I gulped the wine gratefully, embracing the burn that warmed my frozen blood.

“Her Highness Princess Andromeda!” King Uorsin thundered. “Attend me at once.”

I stumbled a bit, my body too numb to obey him and too well trained to respond to that title to refuse.

“Explain yourself.” Had it bothered me that he never looked at me? This withering, contemptuous glare nearly melted my bones. This was the High King who’d carved tiny Mohraya out of the foothills, built Castle Ordnung to be the seat of the Twelve Kingdoms, and accepted tribute from the rest. I’d seen kings and battle-worn commanders wither under that glare. “Tell me what secrets you’ve been keeping.”

“Here, Your Highness?” I gestured to the court, now full to bursting with guards and the curious.

“Perhaps you’d prefer to wait until Rayfe and all the Tala have descended to storm the castle, so you can fling open the doors for your lover.” Uorsin pounded his fist on the jeweled arm of his throne. Even Ursula flinched.

“With all due respect, Your Highness.” I released the teeth I’d clenched to keep from shouting back at the King. “I have no idea who Rayfe or the Tala are. I encountered a man today, yes, who tried to take me hostage. I have no idea if this is the same person.”

Oh, but I did.

Ursula knew it, too, given the incredulous stare she fixed on me.

“She was too young to remember,” she murmured to our father, “since you forbade mention of them after . . .
she
passed.”

Uorsin stopped her with a flick of his hand. “And you chose not to report this to me.”

I gritted my teeth again. “It just now happened, Your Highness. I thought to wait until we were private and—”

“You thought to betray us to the Tala!” he roared. “You were born a monster and now you show your true face before us all.”

Stunned silence crushed the air out of the room. No one moved, afraid to draw the King’s ire. Ursula caught my eye, stricken. Even Hugh, who’d moved to the cluster of ladies around a groggily sitting-up Amelia, stood frozen.

“If I may, Your Highness?” Derodotur stepped forward with a deep bow. “It’s entirely possible the shock of the events today affected Princess Andi’s constitution. Her emotional state is likely delicate and the young lady could be injured, if indeed it was Rayfe who approached her. I would be willing to work with her, question her, to find the truth of things.”

Uorsin clenched his jaw, studying me like a deer strung up for skinning. “Exactly what did you do with that demon?”

What was the right answer? Ursula shook her head infinitesimally, but no to what? Would the fact that he hadn’t really hurt me make me seem complicit?

“I fought him off, my King,” I replied, hoping he wouldn’t notice I’d ducked the question, “thanks to my sister Princess Ursula’s excellent instruction. Should you see a man with a knife cut from chin to cheekbone, that’s the one I met.”

A flicker of a smile passed over Ursula’s face. Now that I thought about it, I had done surprisingly well. In fact, that last burst of strength when I escaped him had been amazing.

“But did he kiss you, Princess?” a thready voice demanded. Lady Zevondeth, leaning on her cane of gold-wrapped oak, pushed through the circle of advisers. She thumped the cane on the marble with a crack. “Did his blood pass your lips in any way?”

“Uh, no, Lady Zevondeth,” I stammered. How had she known? And why ask this? Not was I raped, but was I kissed. The blood. Mine mingling with his and that impossible bird flying away. I slid my gaze to Ursula, still impassively of no help.

“But he tried, didn’t he?” She peered at me, milky eyes sharp with perception. I nearly squirmed under the relentless attention of everyone there.

“My King,” Derodotur inserted.

“Yes, yes.” Uorsin waved a hand at his adviser, steeled gaze never leaving me. He sighed. “I shall abide by your advice for now. Derodotur, Daughter—attend me. The rest of you can go enjoy the feast.”

He heaved himself out of the throne, as if impossibly fatigued.

“My King—” Ursula started.

“No,” Uorsin growled. “You shall host the feast in my stead.”

She rolled her grip on her sword hilt then, seeming to remember suddenly that she still held it. Ursula sheathed her sword, bowed to the King, and set about dispensing orders to get the room cleaned up and inviting the lords and ladies to please proceed to the feast.

“With me.” Uorsin strode from the room, Derodotur and I trailing in his wake.

The King quickly outpaced Derodotur’s stilted steps. An old wound from the wars made one of the adviser’s legs rigid. Derodotur used to tell us stories of the Great War. He had been another general’s page on the battlefield, which had been always difficult for me to see in the carefully formal adviser.

With an eye to the King’s back, Derodotur took my arm, something he did for balance, but it allowed him to speak quietly to me.

“Tread carefully, Princess. He is not himself at the moment. And you are not you in this story, but a game piece in someone else’s. He’s fighting ghosts. Don’t let him make you the target.”

“I don’t understand.” I was tired. My head pounded. That was why my voice sounded so weak.

“No. Nor were you meant to. Uorsin thought to duck this . . . consequence, though he well knew this day would come.” He flicked a glance at me from the corner of his eye. “Salena said it would be you, but then she died, and, well . . .”

The King reached his study, flung the door open, and wheeled around, impatiently waiting for us. Breaching protocol, he gestured for us to enter ahead of him. As I passed him, my father looked at me like he’d never seen me before in his life. Like he was seeing some sign of contagion in me that would spread through the kingdoms. And an avid lick of hunger lurked within him. For what? Uorsin already controlled the known world.

A little piece of me broke off under his unspoken accusation. I’d always known that I wasn’t his favorite, but I hadn’t thought he hated me. I had thought I was done longing for my mother. Not so. Suddenly and dreadfully, I missed her.

“Sit,” he commanded and sank behind his desk. “Tell me everything. Leave no detail out. And I shall know if you are lying.”

I told them the story in humiliating detail. How he pinned me, how he teased me and tried to kiss me, which had seemed like a minor point at the time. Their grim expressions said otherwise.

I didn’t mention the blood bird.

“You are certain he did not actually kiss you?” the King demanded, steepling his fingers.

Since they all cared so much, I lied. “I’m certain.”

“And his blood, child,” Derodotur asked in a gentle tone. “You said you cut him—did any pass your lips? Or mix with yours?”

A wave of cold dread washed over me, settling in my stomach. My face felt numb, all sensation drained out of it. Both men watched me, tension high while they awaited my answer. Another lie. “No. No blood.”

The King sat back, tapping his sword-calloused fingers on the arms of his chair, clearly relieved. “How many times have you met with him?”

What?
“I told you, this was the first time I ever saw him.”

He frowned at me.

“Your Majesty,” I amended hastily, but it did nothing to alleviate the dark expression.

“You went there to meet him, then.”

“No, sir.”

“How did you know to go to that place at that time—have you been exchanging messages?”

“I didn’t know!”

“You just happened to walk straight into his arms, by happenstance.”

He made it sound ridiculous.

“Why did you ride to
that
meadow, today?”

I shrugged helplessly, at a loss to give him what he wanted. “I felt like it. I wasn’t even thinking about where I was going. I was just riding along and thinking . . .” I trailed off.

He pounced. “About what?”

“Songs and poems,” I replied, far more tartly than I should, but I wasn’t going to own up to girlish thoughts of love and a nameless longing to these two men. Especially given what had happened.

“Uorsin,” Derodotur interrupted, yet again.

The King’s black glare landed on his adviser. I’d never heard Derodotur call the King by his name to his face.

“May I speak freely?”

“It appears you already feel comfortable enough to do so, Derodotur.”

“I stood by your side the day you wed Salena and sealed your bargain.” Derodotur raised his eyebrows, waiting for my father’s curt nod. “When Princess Andromeda was born, Salena said she was the one. How Rayfe found out, I don’t know, but he clearly thinks Andi knew. That means this is beyond our ken—which we thought even then.”

You really know nothing at all.

“Do you have a point, Derodotur?”

“Yes, I do. It’s entirely possible, and likely given the evidence, that Andi did not know and still does not know what drew her to that meeting place.”

Uorsin studied me. My skin crept under the scrutiny. As if Rayfe’s blood even now crawled through mine, tainting me in some horrifying, irreparable way. I gazed back at my father, wondering how to ask him to save me from it.

“There were no others with him?”

“Just the wolfhounds.”

They exchanged significant looks.

“My King.” Derodotur’s voice was soothing. “It doesn’t mean—”

“You may go, Princess,” Uorsin interrupted him.

The surprise held me to my chair a moment. Apparently my interview had ended. I stood, curtsied. Neither of them said anything more. The weight of the words they needed to say to each other outside of my hearing lay heavy in the air.

“Do not leave the castle,” the King added as I reached the door. “Inform Ursula that you are to have a guard and be watched at all times. Consider this a test of your obedience and loyalty. And stay away from the windows.”

“Yes, my King,” I replied. Inside, that little piece of me that had broken off withered up and died.

I
slipped into the banquet hall, trying to be my usual inconspicuous self, but a hush rippled through the room, suppressing conversations that then started up a bit louder than before. With new topics that weren’t me, apparently.

Holding my neck straight and face relaxed, I stopped by Ursula’s chair. The arrangement echoed the throne room, so she sat three seats removed from Amelia, who had Hugh on her other side—a new addition to our lineup. For the first time, it occurred to me that if I did marry, my husband would have nowhere to sit. Likely the thought that I might wed had never occurred to anyone.

But then, the idea of the wolfish Rayfe sitting down to dinner with us carried enough absurdity as it was.

Ursula had watched me cross the room with a gimlet gaze, and I steeled myself to report my instructions to her. To my shock, she stood and embraced me. The open show of support shook me, and I clasped her gratefully.

“I apologize to you,” she whispered in my ear. “Had I handled things better, it would not have gone this way.”

“No, I should have gone ahead and told you what happened. I wasn’t thinking that—”

“It would follow you home in such a spectacular way?”

I could hear the wry smile in her tone. It thawed me a little. “I’m to tell you to assign me a guard. That I’m to be watched at all times.”

Ursula sighed and released me. She nodded, serious. “I swear that you’ll be protected at all costs, my dear sister.”

She said it in a carrying voice, too, and only raised her eyebrows to my rueful look. Ah, well, what’s done is done. Hopefully the King wouldn’t be too angry at her declaration of loyalty. Ursula beckoned to the captain of the guard, so I went to sit in my chair.

Amelia slipped her hand into mine, squeezing it, her violet eyes swimming with tears. Hugh leaned forward, giving me a nod of solemn approval. Then we all fell silent, focusing on our plates while the careful chatter of the room washed over us.

I picked at my food, having absolutely no appetite, though I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Too much had happened. I couldn’t digest it all. My gorge rose and I thought I might vomit in my plate.

During most of the meal, I resisted slipping my hand in my pocket. The feather must be in there still, sharp as broken glass. It worried at me like a canker sore that you want to poke at with your tongue to see if it still hurts, even though you know it will and you’ll be sorry you didn’t just leave it alone.

After an interminable time, and after it became quite clear King Uorsin would not be joining us, Ursula offered a short toast to Amelia and Hugh’s visit. She made no mention of the afternoon’s events. There was no need.

Hopefully the feather hadn’t fallen out, to lie in the hallway where a servant might pick it up and discard it. I felt the fabric of my skirt for its outline. Panic burst bright when I couldn’t feel it. Gone. I’d lost the cursed thing. To be sure, I reached in. Ah, there it was.

I closed my eyes with the relief, the flooding reassurance, and a flash of a midnight gaze smiled at me with warm affection.

“Andi?” Amelia’s worried voice awoke me to her hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Everyone was drifting out of the hall, Hugh and Ursula off to the side, discussing security, given how they touched their sword hilts and surveyed the broken window. My sister glanced over her shoulder, a line between her clear gray eyes. I stood, carefully extracting my hand from my pocket as I did so. As if I’d been doing something illicit. Consorting with the enemy. It had an ugly sound.

There should have been dancing for Amelia. Music to celebrate her return. Not people slinking away and the clash of guards changing over.

“I think I’ll turn in,” I told them, and they nodded at me, unsurprised.

“Hugh, darling.” Amelia kissed his cheek. “Would you mind if I met you in our chambers a bit later?”

“Of course, my love.” He smiled at her. “Princess Andi—rest well and know that we shall all be here to protect you.” He kissed my hand with a gallant bow. My heart lurched at that and at Amelia’s pleased smile. I felt small for ever wishing he could be mine instead.

“Thank you,” I muttered, withdrawing my hand, not putting it in my pocket to check if the feather was still there.

Ursula and Amelia fell into step beside me as I walked to my own chambers, where there would be no handsome prince waiting for me with love in his eyes.

“What—are you two my escort?”

In answer, Ursula jerked her head at the men behind us. Three lieutenants of the Royal Guard trailed behind, in full armor. “No, they are.”

“We are coming to your room so you can tell us
everything
,” Amelia supplied.

I opened my mouth to protest, then glanced at the sober lines around Ursula’s mouth. “Perhaps Ursula could fill us in on a thing or two, also.”
She was too young to remember
, Ursula had said.

She rolled her head on her shoulders, neck popping with a loud crack. “Yes,” she sighed, “perhaps that would be the thing to do.”

Wine awaited us in my chambers. Amelia poured while the ladies-in-waiting withdrew. Ursula instructed the guards at their stations outside the door and in my antechamber, then checked the window.

I looked out, too. My chamber sat high in one of the turrets because I liked to see out. It helped that no one else particularly liked to climb so many stairs. From there, the whole front of the castle grounds was visible. The arched white stone bridge over the river and the outer walls bristled now with soldiers. Had I known we had so many?

“Where did they all come from?” I marveled.

Ursula snorted. “I swear to Danu—you pay attention to nothing at all, do you?”

“I just didn’t think we kept a standing army.”

“Yes, well, you don’t think much at all, do you?”

“You know, Ursula, I’m really not in the mood for being beat up any more today,” I snapped. “I’m sure everyone will be lining up tomorrow to tell me in excruciating detail every single thing I did wrong—again. You’ll have ample opportunity then.”

Her lip curled and I braced for her snarling response. Then she stopped herself, rolled her shoulders again. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“What?”

Amelia appeared between us, jeweled goblets of wine in her hands. Ursula took hers and stared at it. I cradled mine, grateful for something to keep my hands busy.

“I would never criticize our father, as King.” Even though she knew we were alone, Ursula automatically glanced around for eavesdroppers. “But, had you been warned”—she gulped the wine—“perhaps this could have been avoided.”

“Let’s sit,” Amelia suggested. She fetched her own wine and crawled onto my high bed, arranging herself on it comfortably. She’d taken her hair down, and it spilled around her like fiery gold, her eyes luminous. “Andi can tell us her story, and then Ursula can tell us what our mother has to do with all this.”

That’s the thing about Amelia: she’s so lovely and sweet, you forget how clever she is and how little she really misses.

Though we’d only rarely done this as girls—Ursula was already fifteen by the time Amelia turned five—it felt familiar and cozy to sit cross-legged on my bed with them. Ursula reclined back against the pillows, watching us while Amelia pulled the pins from my hair and brushed it out in long, gentle strokes, something she did to her own hair every night and swore by. I told them the whole story, just as I’d told our father while he glowered at me like I’d stuck a knife in his heart.

When I finished, Ursula reached for the pitcher and refilled all our glasses, frowning.

“Why was the kiss so damn important?” she demanded. “And the blood thing?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me.” I felt guilty not mentioning the blood bird, but I couldn’t bear for them, too, to look at me with revulsion. If they even believed it.

“It has to be a magic thing, right?” Amelia mused. “Lady Zevondeth was all worked up about it, and you know how she goes on about the old stories. Except that there’s no such thing as magic.”

“The kiss and whether his blood passed my lips,” I agreed. I’d told them about the meeting with the King and Derodotur, too. “So, now, Ursula—please. What does our mother have to do with this?”

She dropped her head back and stared at the canopy overhead. “Salena was of the Tala.”

She said it as if she expected us to gasp in realization. Instead, Amelia and I frowned at each other.

Then Amelia smoothed her frown away with the tip of one finger. “So the Tala are real? Father said Rayfe was of these Tala, too. I thought they were a myth, like white bears or sea monsters. But Hugh says they talk of them in Avonlidgh—stories of the Great War.”

Ursula contemplated us, clear gray eyes troubled, then uncoiled to her feet to pace to the window. As if the sentries needed checking.

“See, this is a good lesson—history is written by the victors. Never forget it. What you believe to be true is exactly and only what the people who won want you to believe.”

“But Father stopped the Great War,” Amelia protested. “That’s why the Twelve Kingdoms made him the High King. He’s brought lasting peace.”

The line of Ursula’s shoulders grew tight, and I put a cautionary hand on Amelia’s slim arm.

“Tell us what really happened, Ursula,” I asked of her, quiet, somber.

She glanced over her shoulder at me with brows raised. “Oh, Uorsin triumphed all right. No denying that. But I have reason to think he had help from Mother’s people: the Tala.”

Those wolfhounds. They had reminded me of something. Tales from the Great War. Giant dark eagles filling the skies, black wolves with blue eyes—those were in the songs, too. Fobbed off as bits of fantastic glory to dress up otherwise dull battles.

“Shape-shifters and wizards.” The words escaped me before I could pull them back. Amelia looked astonished, her rosy lips pursed in a giggle, but Ursula nodded crisply, turned so she propped her lean behind on the stone sill. So many torches flamed outside, her hair—still tightly pinned up—looked like it burned at the edges.

“That’s what they say. Not all of the books have been cleaned up.”

“But those things aren’t real.” Amelia tossed her hair over her shoulder. “They’re stories only.”

“If they’re only stories,” I pointed out, “why do we pray to Glorianna to protect us from them?”

“Glorianna is the pure, the protectress, She who banishes the dark.” Amelia looked at me like I lacked all sense. “Everyone knows that.”

“Yes, but how do we know that?” I pressed.

“You wear the rose of Glorianna like we all do, Andi.” Amelia tapped the intricate gold rose hanging from the chain around my neck. “Why?”

She had a point. “Because Father gave it to me, as he did to both of you. Glorianna’s protection. From what?”

Amelia blinked at me, long red-gold lashes sweeping across her twilight eyes. Something in them stirred, not quite so sweet. I handed her the hairbrush again and she automatically pulled it through my hair. It soothed me while I turned it all over in my head.

“So, Ursula, I’m guessing you heard a lot of this from Mother, since no one else speaks of it.”

A pang of the old loneliness shivered through my heart. I remembered only a few things about her. All that long, coiling, dark hair. Her sorrowful eyes. Mostly I had a feeling for her, not a face. That sense of love. With her I’d felt wrapped up in it, like a velvet cloak that protected me from the world. Losing it had left me forever chilled.

It just about killed me that Ursula had memories of talking with her.

She nodded, grave, like she followed my thoughts. “Before you were born, but after Father issued the edict that the Tala should never be mentioned. It wounded her, I think. She was pregnant with you, Andi, and I came upon her watching the full moon and weeping. I’d had a bad dream and went to look for her, I think.” Ursula shook her head free of unnecessary detail.

“It doesn’t matter why I was up. I went to Mother’s chamber and she was curled up on that big padded window seat, remember? Where she’d always sit to stare out. And she watched the full moon setting over the mountains.”

“To the west,” I whispered.

“Consistent, no? Yes, the Wild Lands west of the castle. She told me that her people came from there, that she left them to marry Father. She rubbed her belly, so swollen with you, and said that the first of her daughters to show the mark of the Tala would return to her people and take the place she’d left empty.”

“She said those exact words?” It was uncannily close to what Rayfe had intimated.

“If she was pregnant with you, Ursula was five,” Amelia said gently. “She’s not going to remember the conversation word for word.”

“Oh, but I do, Ami.” Ursula, however, studied me. “I remember because I started to cry, too, thinking I’d be sent away. And Mother took me in her arms and said I was my father’s daughter and would not be the one. She promised me that. All the time she told me this, she stroked the round curve of her belly. I knew, even then, what she wasn’t saying.”

“She thought it was me,” I whispered.

“She knew it was you,” Ursula corrected. “What’s more, Father did, too, though he pretends like he didn’t.”