The Girl of Fire and Thorns (4 page)

Someone pulls me away. It’s Alejandro. I blink to clear stinging vision and see two painted men lying at our feet. He must have dispatched the other. I should speak to him, and my mouth opens, but something bright draws my gaze downward. Crimson. So much of it, all down my bodice, soaking my skirt. Metallic saliva tingles against my tongue, and suddenly, I’m shaking so hard I feel like my teeth will rattle from my jaw.

Alejandro pulls me close against his chest and strokes my back, muttering words I can’t take in. The battle is winding down, and soon enough, I will fret about my burned possessions, or Alejandro’s injured arm, or Aneaxi’s broken leg. But for now I can’t think beyond the warmth of Alejandro’s chest. He doesn’t love me yet, but in this place of death, in this precious moment of shared relief, he holds me.

We lose fifteen men to the Perditos. Others, like Alejandro and Aneaxi, are injured but will mend.

While Aneaxi sleeps, Lord Hector straightens her leg and splints it. I walk a few paces away to breathe different air and to wipe blood from my face with broad, waxy leaves. My dress is filthy and soaked, the blood already turning brown and thick, but most of my extra clothes burned with our carriage. My stomach grumbles—I can’t remember the last time I was this hungry—but I’d feel ridiculous asking for food while others tend to the wounded.

Lord Hector finds me later, sitting on a stump, staring at the foliage around me.

“Your Highness, we have a prisoner.”

I look up at him and notice that his mustache is matted and sticky. “Oh?” I’m not sure why he’d bother to inform me.

“King Alejandro said that you would decide how to deal with him.”

Me?
My heart thuds.

Perhaps it is a test, meant to appraise the girl who will be queen. Or maybe Alejandro is busy with other matters. “The man is a murderer,” I say, for no other reason than to give myself a moment to think.

“You have but to say the word, and I will dispatch him myself.”

My throat constricts at the thought. It doesn’t feel right that I should have the power of life and death.

I’d rather no one else died today.

“Does he speak?”

“Yes.”

“Then I have some questions for him.”

Lord Hector helps me to my feet. There is a glow of respect in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. It warms me, but only for a moment. The cost of such respect has been too high.

The painted prisoner sits in a ring of swords. His hands are tied before him; his ankles are chained. He knows his situation is perilous. He glances around at his guards, white eyed, understanding that any one of them could stick a blade into his heart.

He sees me approach, and hope flickers in his eyes. Or cunning. There’s something obscene about the paint swirls all over his body. They are ghostly, nauseating. Up close, I see hollow bones woven into his long, clumpy hair.

“My lady,” he says. His voice is perfectly clear and crisp, incongruous coming from his savage mouth.

I almost correct his address, but I don’t care to reveal who I am. “I’ve been tasked with deciding your fate. Is there a reason, any reason at all, why I should spare you?” I can think of a very good reason, but I need to know if he’s amenable.

He is silent for a moment. Then: “I could help you.”

“How?”

“I know the jungle. I know her secrets.” His eyes are huge, like a cornered animal’s.

“Will you answer any question asked of you? Truthfully? Without reservation?” Lord Hector nods his approval of my question. He thinks I am being strategic, but I simply do not have the courage to watch someone else die.

“I will,” the Perdito says.

“Then I will spare you.”

“Thank you, my lady.” He leans forward, clutching the fabric of my waist, head down in veneration. It’s the customary genuflection of a newly sworn vassal, and I find that I hate it. It’s too intimate, too dangerous, even with the sword points now aimed at his neck.

Then he stiffens. His fingers have glanced across the Godstone beneath my bloody skirt. I know what he feels. A faceted surface, hard as diamonds but warm with life. He recoils.

“You!” he whispers. His eyes are wide and wet with frightened tears; his breath comes in gasps.

Someone lunges forward, a blur of gray hair and ruffled skirts. A gurgling sound, a body slapping the ground. Ximena! She backs away, and I see our prisoner lying flat on his back, my nurse’s hairpin protruding from beneath his jaw.

I stare at the pin—so tiny—at the blood pooling around it, slipping across his skin into the jungle soil.

“So sorry, my sky. I thought he was about to attack you.” She might have been telling me I was late for morning prayer.

I gaze unbelieving at my nurse, amazed at the speed with which she moved, wondering why recognizing the life in my navel would sentence a man to death.

Chapter 4

T
HAT night, we sing a hymn of deliverance and light prayer candles for the dead. The candles are foolish. If the Perditos attack again, the tiny flames, floating like stars in thick jungle darkness, will make telling targets. But we light them anyway.

None of the fifteen were personally known to me, and as the king whispers each name, I cannot remember their faces. Still, everyone on this journey has been kind, and I mourn their loss because Alejandro does. While my husband speaks of them, I pray silently, thanking God for his life and for the lives of my ladies. The Godstone radiates gentle fingers of warmth throughout my body as it always does when my prayers are heartfelt. After a few moments, the strain in my back from dragging Aneaxi fades to a mild ache, and I feel deliciously sleepy.

As a little girl, my greatest fear was that the Godstone would stop living inside me, that it would grow cold and still like any ordinary jewel. I would know then that the moment to perform my service had gone, that I’d been too selfish or lazy or stupid to act. So I learned to welcome its tender responses to my prayers. They are signs that I am not a failure quite yet.

Alejandro finishes the ceremony with a muttered “Selah,” and everyone breaks off to prepare for tomorrow’s journey.

“Lucero-Elisa.” His voice is so soft I think I’ve imagined it, but his eyes, sparking in the candlelight, fix on me as he approaches. His wounded right arm is pinned tight against his stomach, wrapped in a gray sling.

“Alejandro.”

“I wanted to thank you, Elisa. Hector says you acted with remarkable courage throughout the attack.” I don’t remember courage. Just heat and fear. “And…” He avoids my gaze. “And you may have saved my life.”

Alodia would deflect the praise, weak as it is. She’d turn it into a flattering treatise on how his mighty prowess would have won through in the end, even without help.

But he froze with panic, and if not for my interference, he would surely have died. Feeling bold, I say, “Yes, I did. And you’re welcome.” Perhaps this was my great service, to save the life of a king. But the jewel still thrums its portent.

He grins at me now, a boyish grin that warms me as much as the Godstone ever does, and my disquiet slips away. I smile back, feeling shy.

“Do you miss home, Elisa?”

My mouth opens to say yes, I miss it terribly, but I realize it’s not true. “A little. I probably haven’t been away long enough.” It would be nice to feel safe again, to hug Papá, or even to study with Master Geraldo. But I don’t yearn for those things. Not yet.

Just then, Ximena ambles toward me, so I excuse myself and hurry away. I’m not ready to face her. I don’t know what questions to ask.

We endure the jungle five days more. Exhausted from double watches and stiff from cramming into too few carriages, we gradually leave the stifling growth of the rain shadow for the dry side of the mountains that overlooks the desert floor. Joya d’Arena, the Jewel of the Sand, stretches before us. Orange-red dunes roll along the horizon, soft with heat glare. I know Joya is a harsh, scorched place, but the wind-whipped sand and the fading light make it seem velvety and welcoming.

Lord Hector guides us west along the desert’s edge, toward the sea. I see a line of deep green, perhaps days ahead, but in the shimmering heat it’s hard to know. Beyond the palms awaits Brisadulce, Joya’s capital. Alodia visited once, and she returned with stories of a marvelous oasis, beautiful sandstone buildings, and sparkling people who adored her on sight.

I’m eager to arrive, if only to change my clothes, order a bath, and lose myself in an enormous, multicourse meal. My head aches to think of fresh fruit and chilled wine.

We make camp along a stream that trickles from the mountains and heads west toward the city and the sea. In our borrowed carriage, Ximena orders me to take off my dress so she can wash it. She helps me with the buttons and I’m a little relieved, a little nervous, to have her so close by. She’s been a mother to me as long as I can remember. But I think of her hairpin—something I’ve seen almost every day of my life—sticking out of a man’s neck, and I marvel that I know so little about her. I’ve never asked. Where does Ximena come from? When did she begin working for my family? Why has she chosen to love me so?
“Spoiled girl,”
Alodia called me more than once as we were growing up.
“Coddled just because she’s chosen.”

Alodia is right.

“Ximena.”

“Yes, love?” Her fingers are busy at my back, loosening the stays.

“I’m sorry. So sorry.”

The fingers pause. “Why do you say this, my sky?”

Tears prick at my eyes. “I don’t know who you are or anything about you. I don’t know who Aneaxi is. And it’s my fault.”

For once, my nurse doesn’t brush off my objections with platitudes and weak praise. She just reaches around with her strong arms and hugs me close.

Ximena tells me that she is an orphan. As a little girl, she served priests in the refectory and laundered their robes. One man, Father Donatzine, noticed her quiet, hardworking spirit. He taught her to read and write well enough to scribe among the great historical documents of the Monastery-at-Amalur, where she took a special interest in the
Common Man’s Guide to Service
. After years of engraving the precious words onto her heart, Father Donatzine recommended her for service to my father, who was a young prince at the time.

“I still visit Father Donatzine when I can,” she says as she hangs my skirt to dry outside the carriage window. “He can’t read anymore. So I read aloud for him. He loves the passages in the
Scriptura Sancta
about God’s chosen.” She has a lovely smile that makes happy lines around her small eyes. “He was so pleased when God chose you on your naming day. He’d made a special point of living long enough to see the next choosing.”

I don’t remember Father Donatzine. I should be flattered that a man I never knew attached such importance to my existence. But it feels intrusive.

It occurs to me to ask, “Will you miss him?”

Ximena nods. “Very much.”

She pulls herself through the open door of the carriage and sits beside me on the bench. Her hands are sturdy and callused. I try to imagine them making careful brushstrokes on parchment. I’ve felt her rough fingertips against my back my whole life, watched how dexterous and capable they are. Capable of killing with a hairpin.

“You’re looking at me strangely.”

“That day. With the prisoner.”

Her gaze softens. “I thought you might ask.”

“You moved so quickly, Ximena! And you knew exactly where to stick that pin, and you knew he wasn’t attacking me, and I . . .” It’s coming out wrong, like I’m accusing her, which would be ridiculous since she’s not the only one who killed that day.

But she looks at me the same way she always does, with endless patience and perfect love. “My sky, I wish I could tell you many things.” She brushes my cheek with her knuckles.Then the carriage rocks as she descends the steps. “I need to check on Aneaxi.”

Tiny bumps rise on my arms as I watch Ximena navigate the sleeping rolls and pit fires of our small camp. I realize I’m peering from the carriage clad only in my chemise and torn slip.

The next day I ride with Aneaxi, who needs extra space so her splinted leg can lie across the bench. Each time we hit a bump, she winces and sweat coalesces on her forehead. She fans herself while answering all the questions I should have asked long ago.

I learn that my lady-in-waiting is the bastard child of Conde Sirvano, of my father’s court. Too controversial to make a good political match, too important to be shipped off to the monastery that raised Ximena, her status was a fluid thing, subject to the mood of her father. “Growing up in his household was dreadful,” she says. “Whispers as I passed, dark glances. All my clothes were hand-me-downs from my older half-sister. But she would rip them or pour ink on them before giving them to me.”

I am rapt as she remembers it all, because I know what it’s like to have a favored sister, to bear the studied, condemning gaze of the court. All my life, Aneaxi has been the sympathetic one, wrapping me in a hug and saying how sorry she is for everything. Now I understand why.

“I started volunteering in the laundry. Just to get away and to feel useful. One day at court, my father noticed my hands—all cracked and peeling. He beat me.” She shrugs, as if it doesn’t bother her in the least. And it probably doesn’t—not anymore. Aneaxi is never one to stay upset for long.

“But he also decided that if I wanted to work so badly, he would find something appropriate to my station, such as it is. He actually used those words, ‘such as it is.’ So he made me attend his latest wife, who was only a little older than I. He thought it would be a punishment, but we became friends. And when your mamá took pregnant with Alodia, my lady recommended me to Ximena, who was the queen’s attendant at the time.”

I ask, “Do you ever regret coming to the palace to serve my family?”

“Oh, dear, no. I loved your mamá. Alodia too, even though she is exasperatingly independent and stubborn. But you, Elisa. You are the delight of my life.” She grins wickedly. “And besides, the food at the palace is so, so much better. The conde’s cook should have been sent to the bull ring.”

I giggle, remembering the night a year or so ago when we crept together to the kitchens for coconut pudding, right under Ximena’s nose. Aneaxi has always been equal parts empathy, good cheer, and mischief—the perfect foil and partner for my earnest and careful nurse.

She stops fanning herself. Her eyelids are thin, near translucent like fine parchment. She has grown old recently, sometime when I wasn’t watching. I lean over and kiss the wrinkles that cord her forehead.

She smiles, eyes still closed. “You’re a good girl, Elisa. God was right to choose you.”

I swallow. Her love for me has always been a foolish thing, but I’m grateful for it. Maybe God sent her to me for a reason. Maybe he knew I’d need someone who could understand, even if only a little, what my life would be like. Gently I pry the fan from her fingers. As I wave it across her face, she sighs contentedly. I stay with her for a long time.

That night, Alejandro tells me we are only a few days away from my new home.

“Good!” I say. “I smell bad.” Then my face flashes hotter than the desert summer. This miserable journey has made me too flippant.

But he just laughs. “You don’t smell nearly so bad as Lord Hector.” He glances to his right, where the royal guard sits polishing his sword. He looks up at the king’s comment, and his mustache twitches, but his face remains properly stoic.

“How is Lady Aneaxi?” Alejandro asks.

I shrug. “She says the leg feels better, but she is determined to be cheerful, so I’m not sure. She’s weaker than she admits.”

“You love her very much.” His gaze has softened, or maybe it’s the firelight, but I can hardly breathe. He looks at me so intently, like I’m the only thing in the world.

“Elisa?”

“I . . . She is very dear to me.”

“She is lucky to be alive. Hector told me how you and Lady Ximena pulled her from beneath the carriage.”

I look down at the sandy shale that makes up our campsite, even though he’s giving me the kind of tender smile a girl could think about for hours. Later, when I’m alone in my bedroll, I’ll let the memory of this moment warm me to sleep. I will dare to hope that he is growing fond of me, that he is glad we are married.

Right now, I have questions.

“Alejandro. The Perditos. They didn’t always attack travelers.”

He runs fingers through black hair. “No. They didn’t.”

“Why now? Why us?” I clutch my skirt to keep from fidget-ing. He will tell me not to worry, that these matters are not for little girls, the way Papá—

“We think they’ve allied with Invierne.”

It’s a moment before I can speak. “Why do you think this?”

“They have steel weapons now. Arrows made from a soft, light-colored wood we’ve never seen before. Also, a band of lost ones killed three merchants last year with a—a sharp tool used to break ice.”

An ice pick. I’ve never seen ice or snow, though I’ve read about them. But why would Invierne ally with the Perditos? A thought occurs to me. “The highway is the only land route between Joya and Orovalle,” I muse aloud.

He nods slowly, watching me with such interest that I feel I’m being tested. I realize we haven’t met any other travelers on the road. During hurricane season, the highway should be overrun with merchants.

“It was a risky decision. To travel through the Hinders.” I’m careful to keep my tone even, free of reproach.

“Yes, it was risky. But we kept our journey a secret. I don’t know how they knew.”

“Maybe the attack was random?”

He shrugs.

But my mind is stumbling over his words.
A secret
. “What do you mean? A secret?”

“The good people of Brisadulce don’t expect their king to return for another month or so.”

Their king. A secret
.

And their queen? Something about my gaze sobers him.

I take a deep breath. “They don’t expect me at all, do they?”

He shakes his head. “No. They don’t know I’m bringing a wife home with me.”

The road flattens, and our journey grows more comfortable. The air is hotter, but easier on the skin with its steady, quiet breeze. Blurry, brownish blots mar the horizon. Sandstorms, Lord Hector tells me when he catches me gazing at them. During hurricane season, the wind thrusts into the mainland from the ocean, and the resulting sandstorms can flay a man’s skin from his bones. I’m glad we travel west toward the sea, keeping the dunes at a steady distance.

I miss Ximena. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked about the man she killed. Now I feel this thing between us, huge and impenetrable and unspoken. She’s as efficient as ever, helping me dress each morning, plaiting my hair, fluffing out my ruffled skirt each night. But her touch is brusque, her eyes distant and sad. Or maybe I imagine it.

Aneaxi grows weaker. Lord Hector thinks she’s caught some kind of jungle fever, though no one else has fallen ill. Her skin, normally dark like mine, pales to ash gray. When she dozes, her dreams are fevered and strange. Something frightens her. She calls my name often, panicked, and I have to grip her sticky hand and whisper in her ear before she’ll settle. When she wakes, she insists she holds no memory of her dreams, but I’m not sure I believe her.