The Twelve Kingdoms: The Mark of the Tala (8 page)

“Your clothes, as ordered.” Ursula’s tone was dry—though for my telling her what to do or for something else, I couldn’t be sure.

Amelia’s ladies slipped past into the little room, drawing the door shut behind them. Gaignor took my clothes and starting shaking them out for me.

“I can’t change in my room?”

“You’re not going back to your chambers—too dangerous.”

“What’s going on?” Amelia called out.

“The enemy”—Ursula gave me a curious look—“suddenly fell back. They appear to be in full retreat. Our forces are in pursuit, but we must take advantage of this opportunity. Andi, change your clothes—the King is on his way.”

Too late. Uorsin’s bellowed orders rattled down the hallway, bouncing off the marble floors and soaring ceilings. Ursula stepped back a pace, setting herself apart. Not a good sign.

Uorsin came around the corner, clad in gleaming golden armor, scarlet cape swirling with the vigor of his stride. His grizzled hair bristled in disarray from the helm he’d yanked off, the one the young page trotting at his side carried like a shield. Hugh followed, off Uorsin’s left shoulder, his bright armor spattered with red and black blood. Uorsin held his naked sword still, the bright silver length dripping with shiny black. I’d never seen my father so radiant, so brilliantly present. His eyes flared with battle fire.

Then he pinned me with his gaze.

I drew myself up, acutely conscious that, with Amelia having changed, I alone now wore my nightclothes, topped as my gown was with a riding cloak. Surrounded by these armored people, I felt suddenly alien to them. Whatever had woken in me to the presence of the Tala around me still prowled in my heart. I was part Tala, and Tala wore no armor. My defenses came from inside. I would not quail in imagined guilt before my family.

I had done nothing wrong. I only wanted to stay in my home.

“My King.” I curtsied, trying to steady myself against the soul-crushing fear. “Prince Hugh and Princess Ursula. We offer our undying gratitude for your defense of us tonight.”

Hugh’s face changed, passing from the grim lines of the warrior to such a glowing expression of joy and tenderness that it was almost embarrassing to look upon. I knew that meant Amelia had slipped out of the room behind me. She joined me in the curtsy, slipping her delicate fingers through mine.

“Indeed, my King, my sister. My husband and prince—we are grateful. And thankful for your continued well-being.” Amelia’s voice held a question, and I saw Hugh’s slight nod. Her breath sighed out in a rush of relief, as if she’d discovered that she, too, would live.

“We were victorious,” Uorsin declared. “The Tala fled before our superior forces. They are no match for us.”

A pair of servants passed down the hall then, one pulling and the other pushing a wooden wagon piled high with furry black bodies, the empty sacks Amelia had described. My stomach clenched for all the death and suffering, and I yanked my gaze away to find Uorsin still staring at me, calculating. Angry, yes, but he also loved every moment of this.

Uorsin, the hero of the Twelve Kingdoms. I could see that young man in him now, the one who’d emerged from the Wild Lands with a bride—nowhere was it mentioned how willing she might have been—and proceeded to take over the known world. Remaking it in his image.

“We fought bravely tonight,” Uorsin declared to no one in particular. He handed his sword to the page. Another popped forward with a cleaning cloth. Uorsin stripped off his gauntlets and handed them to another page without taking his gaze from me. “And our cowardly attackers failed in their foolish quest to take what belongs to me. But this is far from over.”

He seemed to be waiting for an answer from me. I waited him out. Something not quite sane rode through his voice. No one seemed to hear it but me.

“You do have the look of her,” Uorsin mused. “I wonder what else of hers you got.”

He closed the space between us, raised his hand, and I braced myself. But he only lifted a long stream of my hair where it flowed thick and loose over my shoulder. “This is her hair, too red to be black. Never mind your witchy eyes. Somewhere in there you are mine as much as your sisters are. You will give me what your mother denied me. I see it now. They will regret this attempt to take what’s rightfully mine. You belong to me. Your power is mine, not theirs! They think to have you as I had her, and I won’t allow it, do you hear? I would see you dead first!”

His voice ended in a thunderous roar, his meaty fist bunched in my hair so my scalp screamed with it. But I refused to flinch. Amelia clutched my hand so tightly, she crushed the bones together. I hoped she wouldn’t cry even as I marveled that she didn’t cringe back from him.

“You are to be sent away, Daughter. Now is the ideal time, before those unclean vermin summon up the dregs of their pitiful courage again. I shall question the prisoners and discover their strategy. Then we shall eliminate every last one and you shall help me take possession of their lands. This is the price they will pay.”

Uorsin released me so suddenly, I staggered against Amelia. She held me tight. Hugh and Ursula both maintained diplomatically polite faces.

“Set your ladies to packing your things. Take whichever among them you wish to. No telling how long we’ll have to hide you away. We shall make them believe you are here, inviting them to try their pitiful attacks until they have nothing left. They think I don’t know that once they come out, they cannot return.” He smiled unpleasantly and glared, clearly waiting for my reply.

“Thank you, my King.” I stammered the words somehow, from behind the fist in my throat. A day ago I hadn’t imagined myself as anything but the invisible middle daughter, living my cozy and uneventful life. It seemed my mind had great trouble catching up to all the changes. I couldn’t quite conceive of who I’d be, in this new place I’d never seen.
I don’t want to leave my home.
Had I told Rayfe that only hours ago? And now I would anyway.

Amelia squeezed my numb hand, reminding me I still had sisters. Dafne Mailloux had survived without that much. I could be at least that strong.

“My King and Father?”

Ursula stiffened with a steely warning glare, but I ignored her. I knelt at Uorsin’s feet, ignoring the gore encrusting his boots. I bowed my head and waited.

“Speak.” His voice was gruff, but not so angry. I raised my head and he offered his hand, the one he’d wrapped so cruelly in my hair. I took it and leaned my forehead against it, following a vague memory of my mother doing this very thing.

“I shall take Dafne Mailloux with me.” I thought it best to sound as didactic as he. Uorsin understood that. “I know you will need your dungeon space because of all the trouble I’ve caused. I’ll have her remove her books and so forth from that space and store them in my empty chambers for the time being.”

“That is unusually thoughtful of you, Daughter. Though I had thought to use those useless tomes and silly scrolls as fodder for the bonfires.”

“As you think best, of course, my King,” I murmured to his hand.

“Ech,” Uorsin pulled his hand away and lifted my chin. His glittering eyes surveyed my face. “You were never one to care much for books. Why now?”

I tried to keep my face impassive. Desperately I wished for Ursula’s cool steel.

“They do matter to you. How interesting. Fine, then. Ursula—rouse Lady Mailloux, if no one has done so. Inform her she’ll be traveling with Princess Andi”—he flicked a glance at Hugh—“to parts unknown. Direct her staff to remove all the texts to the Princess’s former chambers, which shall be stripped of her belongings.”

“Thank you, my King,” I told him, when he paused to hear it.

“We will keep them for you. Along with that horse you love so well. Should I have any reason to doubt that your loyalty lies with me and me only, I shall make a bonfire of those precious books and burn your horse alive upon them.”

He smiled, a grim warrior’s smile that savored his hold over me.

He’d been the one to set me on my first pony’s back. It was my birthday, the last one before my mother died. She’d given me a doll, so excited to show it to me. She’d suggested I name the doll Garland. I’d kissed her and handed the doll back—it wasn’t a very pretty thing—and my father had promised to show me how to ride, giving me attention I rarely received. Happy, I realized now, that I liked his gift better than hers. I cheerfully named the little black pony Garland, instead. My mother never said anything that I recalled. She set the doll on the shelf near my bed, to watch over me, she said.

This memory, so vivid, hurtled through me like a shooting star in the aftermath of my father’s threat and his clear pleasure in my suffering.

Uorsin turned and strode off to question his prisoners, unholy glee in his eyes.

And I, hollow inside, prepared to leave the only home I’d ever known.

A
fter that pronouncement, no one dared speak.

I took my clothes from Gaignor while Hugh drew Amelia aside, murmuring to her and cupping her lovely face in his hands. She leaned against him, red-gold hair streaming nearly to the floor, and he laid his cheek against the top of her shining head. They looked like a painting that should be called
The Lovers
. Ursula watched them too, and for the first time I saw the longing in her. She caught my look and hardened her face, raising her eyebrows at me.

“I don’t think you really want to dillydally,” she said.

I could have said a lot of things to that, but I didn’t. I stepped into that close little room and Gaignor helped me strip and don what they’d brought me. Servants’ clothes—trousers, rough shirt, leather jacket—probably a good choice. Gaignor braided my hair for me. She sniffed and had me hold the half-done braid so she could wipe her nose.

“Why do you weep, Violet?”

“How can you not be weeping, Princess Andi?” Her voice trembled and she yanked on the braid. “We’re leaving everything we know. Everyone we love.”

“You don’t have to come with me.”

“My place is by your side. Would you shame me by refusing my service?”

I waited until she tied off the braid, then turned and took her hands in mine. Her face showed lines of fear and grief. I wondered if she regretted leaving her home at Castle Gaignor to serve at court.

“What I ask of you is to stay here and care for Fiona.”

Her face whitened. “I wouldn’t be able to stop the King if—”

I shook my head to stop her. “I know. Just . . . do what you can. Ride her and love her, so that if—” Unexpectedly my throat closed, unshed tears running down the back of it. Suddenly it all rushed up and strangled me. I had to push hard to get the words out. “If these are her last days, I want them to be happy ones.”

Violet understood that at least. She clutched my hands and nodded. “I can do that much. I’ll care for her. Besides, you’re as loyal as the day is long. Nothing will happen to her.”

I nodded, feeling the weight of all the lies I’d told. The restlessness that had begun prowling my heart lately snarled at Uorsin’s tactics. Had he used something like that to bind my mother to him? There was something, given what I’d seen of his methods.

I embraced Gaignor and thanked her for her service. Hugh, Amelia, and Ursula waited for me, my sentries still discreetly down the way. The castle clattered with activity, the sounds of carriages and horses heavy from the yard.

“We’re sending out conscription notices to the villages—and warnings to be on the lookout for further guerrilla attacks. It will also provide good cover for you, to have so many coming and going. You’ll go with Hugh and Amelia in an unmarked carriage,” Ursula told me. Now she looked tired. She would be without us, also. It hadn’t seemed quite real, when Amelia married and went off on her honeymoon. We knew she’d visit. Now the time of our girlhood seemed truly over. We would leave and Ursula would stay here, at our father’s side.

No telling when, or if, we’d all three be together again.

I wasn’t the only one thinking that, I felt sure.

I wanted to ask what she thought of Uorsin’s blackmail. Or if she was used to his tactics.

She shook her head at me, wearily, as if she read my thoughts. “Don’t worry, Andi. You’ll learn that people behave oddly under extremes. All will come to rights.”

I knew, though, that she had it backward. The extremes show how people truly are. I wouldn’t forget that lesson.

I embraced her and Amelia joined us. Ursula tensed, then intertwined her arms with ours in our old three-way hug. We touched the tops of our heads together, staring at our toes. Amelia’s silk rose slippers, my dusty riding boots, Ursula’s gore-spattered steel-tips.

“Thank you, Ursula,” I whispered into our little silence. “You probably deserved a brother, instead of me. Or a sister less . . . tainted.”

“Don’t say that,” Ursula’s voice hissed, ferocious. “You are our sister. You were right—what is in you is in us.”

“Yes.” Amelia’s sweet voice smoothed over Ursula’s, no less firm. “You are us and we are you. We always shall be.”

Those traitorous tears welled up again, and I swallowed them down. I searched for words and found none. “Thank you,” I offered again. It felt weak, but they squeezed me and we broke apart, ducking our faces to wipe our eyes.

Hugh, who’d been pretending to examine a balustrade, looked over to us. Somehow, even though the dead of night still hung over us, he gleamed with sunlight.

“Are you ready, my wife and my sister?”

Amelia and I nodded.

“Amelia and I shall load up our things, then. We’ll appear to be making a judicious escape in the night.” His usually jovial face carried a new sternness. “Andi—in half an hour’s time, you’ll join the servants loading the carriages. They’ll be watching for you and will show you the hiding place. You’ll have to carry some things, to look like one of them, in case we’re watched.”

I nodded, feeling a little impatient. Didn’t he realize how practiced I was at disguise? At being invisible?

“That gives you time to select any of your things you want to bring. Ask the ladies you wish to accompany you to blend in with Amelia’s ladies.”

“There will be only Lady Mailloux—if she agrees to come.”

Ursula flicked a glance at Lady Gaignor, then a knowing one at me. She nodded and gratitude filled me. Ursula understood what Fiona meant to me. She would also do what she could.

“You’ll have to give Hugh your sword,” Ursula reminded me. I sighed. Of course a servant wouldn’t carry one. Not so practiced after all. I unstrapped it and, feeling oddly naked without it, handed it to Hugh, who received it with a grave nod. Yet again I wished I hadn’t left my own dagger buried in Rayfe’s heart. In his shoulder, that is. Why had I seen it buried in his chest? The image flashed through my mind, Rayfe dead in the snow, the center of a scarlet circle, eyes colorless and fixed on a sky they couldn’t see.

My hand fluttered empty over the hip I’d normally strap it to. Hugh smiled in understanding. He snapped out his own dagger and handed it to me hilt first, sketching a bit of a courtly bow with it.

“Allow me to share my blade with you, sister Andi. It’s not a pretty piece, but it has served me well for many years.”

I took the dagger and slipped it out of its leather sheath while Amelia stood on tiptoe to kiss Hugh’s cheek. It was a woodsman’s tool, a working knife with a bone handle and a single-edged blade.

“Thank you, Hugh.” Moved, I ducked my head and concentrated on threading my belt through the sheath.

He winked at me. “It’s the least I can do for my favorite little sister.”

Amelia elbowed him.

“What? She is younger than I am—by nearly a whole year. Ursula is my favorite older sister.”

We laughed at his clowning, as he undoubtedly meant us to. Hugh’s world was an enviably sunny place.

“See you in a little bit.” Amelia worried at her rosy lower lip with her pearly teeth. Hugh ushered her off, and with a last nod to me, Ursula followed them.

“I’ll help you collect your things?” Violet Gaignor asked me.

I shook my head, reality coming back to me with all its shadows. “Throw together whatever you think I’ll need.” None of it mattered to me, I realized. The gowns, the jewels, the pretty things. All of it seemed like a lie. None of it meant anything. Except the one thing I had from my mother, which I’d unexpectedly just remembered.

“Wait—” I grabbed Violet’s arm as she nodded and turned to do my bidding. “The doll, with the black hair—do you know the one I mean?”

She frowned as she thought. “The one up on the shelf above your mirror, that ugly old thing?”

Unexpected relief undid a knot that had formed around my heart, dissolving a pain I hadn’t realized was there until it left. “Yes. I want that.”

I sounded crazy; I could tell by the carefully bland look on her face. “Perhaps, Princess, you should come look and see if there’s anything else”—
more appropriate
, she didn’t say out loud—“that you’d like to take with you.”

“I have something else I have to do. Just the doll—and anything else you think right. I trust your judgment.”

She nodded and curtsied to me, then bustled down the hallway. I turned to my sentries, not much time left.

“Would you escort me to Lady Zevondeth’s chambers?”

I rarely exercised my royal powers of command. In my life up until then, I hadn’t needed or cared to. It always felt vaguely unsavory to me. Now I wielded my meager authority like a weapon. The sentries didn’t want to take me to Zevondeth, but they also dared not refuse me, despite my dubious status. Wondering if Dafne was even now cursing my name, I followed them to another wing of the castle, wasting another few precious minutes of my small window of time in the long walk.

Lady Zevondeth was just returning to her bed when her maid announced my arrival. She met me in her antechamber, wizened face creased in cranky lines. She didn’t care for my summons, either.

“Princess Andi, what an unexpected honor to have you grace my private chambers—and at such an inconvenient time for you, I’m certain, what with all the carrying-on.”

Her chambers practically dripped velvet. Small braziers of coals set in strategic spots, along with fires in two fireplaces, brought the room up to a high-summer daytime temperature. Her windows were covered over with tapestries. Likely sealed over, too, given the thick unmoving air, stale with old perfumes. Cloistered in this room, she considered the fighting, the suffering prisoners even now being dragged to the dungeons, the dead and dying being sorted and cast onto pyres or hospital beds, a bit of “carrying-on.”

Unexpected fury consumed me and I nearly pulled my borrowed dagger on her.

“Oh, this is an exceedingly convenient time for me, Lady Zevondeth. I have questions for you.”

“Might an old woman sit, then, and be comfortable?”

“Fine. This won’t take long, and then you can tuck your frail bones back into bed.”

“Speak, then, child—though I doubt I have any answers for the likes of you.”

Ah, there her true nature peeked out. Took a teensy bit of pressure. Which questions to ask, though? So little time to find out everything I needed to know, most of which she wouldn’t want to tell me.

“How did you come to be my mother’s attendant?”

Surprise softened her face. “Someone told you that? Such ancient history. I hardly think it matters now.”

“It matters to me. Tell me.”

“You don’t have as much power as you think you have, Princess. Full well I know what a precarious position you’re in.”

“Then you have nothing to lose.” I didn’t bother to wonder how she knew what only a few should.

She laughed at that, a sound like an old horse coughing. “You have no idea what I have to gain or lose. But”—she held up a crooked finger—“I am willing to be bought. Send your men to wait in the hallway.”

They protested, of course, and another precious minute was lost while they shuffled out to wait with Lady Zevondeth’s maid outside the door. Lady Zevondeth hobbled over to the chair by the fire and sat, raising an eyebrow, defying me to say anything. Waiting for my offer.

“What’s your price? And how do I know what you’ll tell me is worth it?”

“Oh, it’s worth it. You do not hold what I want in high regard.” She beckoned to me, holding out a hand that trembled with palsy. Uneasy, I went to her and laid my hand in hers. Her grip, stronger than I would have thought, held me while she picked up a slim silver knife from the marble-topped table beside her. She shushed me when I tried to pull back, and pricked my finger with the razor tip of the blade. My bright blood welled up. She caught it in a glass vial, letting my hand go and corking the little bottle. Gazing at it in satisfaction, she gave me a little smile while I sucked on my stinging finger. I imagined it turning into little birds and flying away.

“What will you do with it?”

“Does it matter? I thought you wanted other answers.”

I did. I nodded.

“Salena had no manners when Uorsin wed her. No understanding of court politics. And she had that odd . . . feral quality. I had a school at that time—the best in Duranor—to teach all the refinements to noble young ladies.” She sat up straighter in her fancy chair. “Yes, you didn’t know that. As commanded by the old King of Duranor, I closed the school, sent my girls home, and taught your mother. I made a queen out of her—my finest creation. My masterpiece. And she let it all go.”

I stared at her, unable to assemble my thoughts, and she inclined her head, regal, pulling an impassive mien over the hatred that had flashed so briefly, like a green shadow over her face.

“That answers the question you asked. Because you paid a high price for it—higher than you know now—I’ll answer the questions you didn’t know to ask. She would have honored that contract. It was her dearest hope to return with you to the Tala, to her own people. Uorsin knew it, too. We could all see it. Once she delivered Uorsin his third child, as required by the contract, she planned to take you and raise you among the Tala.

“She often said to me that if you were to marry a man of the Tala, she wanted you to grow up knowing their ways. She didn’t want you to suffer as she did, lost among a foreign people. She had some other reason that you needed to grow up among the Tala. Something to do with the mark. She seemed to think something would harm you if you did not go to them.”

“What?”

She squinched up her wrinkled face as if she smelled something bad. “Who knows? She made less and less sense as time went on. She should have known, though, that he’d take the opportunity to betray her wishes. She stopped him from having his greatest desire, so he took his revenge by denying hers. Toward the end, they had only hate for each other. The way he treated her . . .” Zevondeth shook her head, gazing at the fire.

“I think she would have taken you the day you were born, had she not owed Uorsin a third child. She should have gone before he destroyed her completely.”

“And it took her another five years to quicken.”