The Ritual (43 page)

MAP OF ARLENNIS

Cover art by
Michiel van Nieuwkoop

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THE CONSPIRACY

Book Two in the Theft and Sorcery Trilogy.

There is no room for love at the royal court. There is only intrigue and political manoeuvring.

For Veysita, a young half-elf courtier, this has been the reality of her life since childhood. Crown Prince Tionev is her best friend, but never more than that, even if she would like him to be.

When she uncovers a plot to assassinate the queen, her life is thrown into turmoil. Veysita discovers that she has not been trained to be the prince’s bodyguard, as she thought, but to be much more. She is to be a spy, thief and maybe even assassin, and she will have to travel into the lion’s den with little more than her wits to aid her. As if that isn’t enough, there is also the handsome, honey-eyed stranger who keeps showing up whenever Veysita least expects him.

Love may come knocking after all, whether there is room for it or not…

Read on for a sneak preview of Chapter One.

CHAPTER ONE

The knife handle rested in my slightly sweaty palm, and I shifted my grip so it felt more comfortable, though I remained in my low crouch and never took my eyes off my opponent. He eyed me back warily, feinting to his left, but I recognised the bluff and did not react.

“Come on then, Tash,” I taunted. “Are you going to stay there forever? Are you scared?”

“I could ask the same of you,” he replied, but I could see him tense, and readied myself.

He lunged at me mere heartbeats later, his knife held high for an overhead sweep. At the last moment he dropped it low, but I had already tossed my own knife into my left hand and used it to block his attack. At the same time I kicked out with my right foot, swiping his feet out from under him, and as he fell to the ground I pivoted and drove my elbow into his abdomen.

The breath whooshed out of him so he lay panting on the floor, and I stepped back to give him a chance to recover. “Point for me,” I said with grim satisfaction, and Tash gave a grudging nod.

“Sweet mercy, Sita,” he groaned when he scrambled back up, “didn’t we agree that you would pull your blows? I’m going to feel that one for days!”

“She was probably thinking of me,” Tio said from the sidelines, running an elegant hand through his golden hair. “I’m sure I annoyed her earlier in our debating class.”

“Well, there’s no need to take that out on me,” Tash grumbled. “Take it easy next hit please.”

“Maybe you should just fight better,” I countered, then launched into an attack of my own. Tash barely managed to jump into a defensive position, but although he succeeded in blocking the punch I aimed at his ribcage, he froze when he felt my blunted blade against his neck.

“You’re dead,” I said. “I win.”

“Trakan’s fucking Teeth, Sita, what’s got into you today?” he grouched. “Give me half a chance!”

“She’s doing what I’ve taught her to do, Tash,” Ziarev commented from the other side of the practice square. “Which means that at least one of you isn’t bothered by the fact that the prince is watching. Now stop whining and fight like you mean it. Sita wins often enough as it is without you not pulling your weight.”

Tash had kept his eyes lowered during the rebuke, then gave the weapons master a deferential nod. “Yes, Master Ziarev,” he said meekly. “Can I have a tenth-measure to myself please? I think I need to limber up a little more.”

“If you must,” came the curt reply, and I took the opportunity to re-tie the ribbon that kept my hair out of my face, deliberately turning away from Tio. It was true that he had annoyed me in debating class earlier, mainly because he had yet again not done his preparation, and yet again Master Juarev had let him get away with it. He was still annoying me now by choosing to attend my fighting practice. Tash always got nervous when Tio was watching, and it meant I didn’t get as good a sparring as I normally would. I felt like telling Tio to go away, but it would only amuse him, and he wasn’t likely to listen.

Neither was he prepared to be ignored, it seemed. “It never ceases to amaze me how graceful you look when you fight, Sita,” he said, sauntering up next to me. “And you make it seem so easy. Ziarev must be very pleased with you, don’t you think?”

“Why are you asking me? Ask him,” I grumbled, practising the flick of the wrist and fingers that made my knife switch between ready for use and concealed against my arm.

“I could, but talking to Ziarev won’t stop you being angry with me, and I don’t like it when you’re angry at me while holding weapons.”

I turned to look at him, shaking my head at his poor attempt at a joke, but when he gave me his most endearing smile it made my heart skip a beat and made my anger waver. Gods, but he was beautiful, with his deep blue eyes and his gleaming golden hair that fell in carefully coiffed waves over one shoulder. As always he looked immaculate, wearing the elaborate court fashion with the same effortless grace that all elves possessed as a matter of course. He made Tash look decidedly scruffy in contrast, with his battered padded armour and sporting what looked like at least three days’ worth of stubble. Beards always both fascinated and repulsed me, but I knew that was mainly because I did not see them often enough to get used to them. Only humans grew beards, and most of my day-to-day acquaintances were either elves or half-elves.

It had been one of the things I had tried to debate that morning: the differences between our country’s three races and their interlinking relationships, and it frustrated me that Tio had treated the subject with the same flippancy he always brought to debating class. Couldn’t he see how important it was that he knew the full ins and outs of how the races treated each other? How they acted around each other? All three races had a representative here, and even if Tio was one of those representatives himself, I knew he could be objective enough to try and look at the interactions here with a certain detachment.

Any outsider studying them would find their eyes drawn to Tio first. He was the crown prince, the only child of Queen Timaniel, and as such represented the highest possible elvish aristocracy in Arlennis. Most other elves were aristocrats as well, and they generally held positions of high authority, though they had a reputation for being set in their ways.

This was most likely due to the elves’ long lifespan. At age twenty-five, Tio still had more than two centuries of life ahead of him, and since the queen was still relatively young he might yet acquire a sibling or two over the next few decades. For now he still showed his age, but once he got to about fifty or sixty he would acquire the ageless look that so characterised elves, and little would change in his appearance until he was close to death. He was tall and slender, with pale, luminous skin, an angular face with sharp cheekbones and elongated, pointed ears.

Tash was about the same age as Tio, but the similarities ended there. Humans usually did the low-end jobs, the positions which were plentiful but required little formal education. Cities held many human artisans, but these would have started as apprentices, and their training was done on the job. With his palace position of guardsman Tash was pretty representative of humans, but he was smart, nimble and quick on the uptake, and had therefore been chosen by Ziarev to be my sparring partner. He was also loyal to the core and could be trusted not to speak of my weapons training, since only few people knew of it.

In appearance Tash was plain, with sandy brown hair and muddy brown eyes. His build was stocky and muscular, and he was a full head shorter than Tio, though he probably weighed twice as much. In general, humans of his age would be married by now, with a few children running around, but most of the guardsmen remained single, and Tash was no exception. Whether this was anything to do with the abundance of pretty half-elf ladies at the court I did not know, nor was I going to ask.

Tash and I had become friends over the years, but despite my close association with both the queen and the prince he always became deferential around Tio, to the point that he even toned down his language. I had heard him use far worse swearwords than those today, but he would have been mortified to use them around the prince.

Ziarev completed the trio – a half-elf like me, but much older, weather-beaten, and the queen’s master at arms for many decades now. As a survivor of the reign of King Sovander – Timaniel’s father – nothing fazed him anymore. Back then he had been a street thug, until the queen had declared all half-elves to be full citizens. He had been bold enough to come and ask her for a job, and she had seen something in him that she liked enough to give him one. He had worked his way up to master at arms within six years.

Just like elves, half-elves attained an ageless look after youth, and Ziarev could have been any age between forty and a hundred and sixty. His handsome face was marred by a jagged scar across his jaw, and underneath his close-cropped black hair his once-pointy ears were blunted stumps. I knew he had done that himself as a young man, in an attempt to pass as a human and escape persecution, and every time I saw them I was grateful that those dark days were more than fifty years past, and that I didn’t have to worry about being a slave or an outcast, like all half-elves had been then.

The three of them broadly represented our society: elves at the top, humans at the bottom, half-elves in the middle – the successful ones at least. There were still too many half-elves who struggled to cope, and I knew it was but one of the many problems the queen had to deal with on a daily basis.

“You look like you’re miles away,” Tio commented. “Are you alright? I really am sorry about this morning, but I hate debating class.”

“I know you do, but it’s a lousy excuse, Tio,” I replied, turning my attention back to him. “You’re the heir to the throne, and you
know
that once you’re king there will be many things you have to do that you don’t like, including debating your policies with the magistrates.”

“Well, maybe that’s exactly why I’m enjoying my freedom while I can,” he countered.

“And is that also why you keep bullying Master Juarev into doing what you want? He wouldn’t dare contradict you these days, and it’s affecting his capabilities as a teacher.”

“I know, but he’s just so easy to fluster! Maybe mother ought to have hired someone with a bit more spine?
Right, fine, I take your point,” he said, raising his hands in defence when I glared at him, but then his grin turned sly. “So I guess you also disapprove of me persuading him that we can write our essays outside this afternoon?”

“You what?” I asked, gaping at him.

“I convinced him to let us sit under the chestnut tree in the south rosary,” he said smugly, and winked at me when I couldn’t hold back my wide smile.

“Tio, that’s the best idea you’ve had in weeks,” I said, feeling my anger drain away completely.

“I thought you might like it. Besides, the day is far too nice to spend the afternoon in that stuffy classroom with a stuffy scholar.”

“For once I agree with you, and in return I might even decide not to tell Master Juarev that you called him stuffy.”

Tio laughed. “Like you would. You’d never tattle on me, Sita, and you know it. But I’m glad to have pleased my big sister. Come, I think Tash is ready again. Show me just how good you are.” He ran an affectionate finger across my cheek, then pulled a face and wiped it on his trousers. “Ew, you’re sweaty.”

Of course I am, I’m wrapped top to bottom in a padded suit and I’ve been fighting,
I thought, but I didn’t voice it and I avoided his eyes before he could see the feelings I couldn’t hide right at that moment. He called me his big sister, even though I wasn’t, but to me he was a man I wanted naked in my bed.

He knew I was in love with him, of course. He’d known it probably for as long as I had. For a while I had been naïve enough to think he might return my feelings, but that was before I’d walked into his room unannounced and had found him with his manhood buried deep inside my best friend Miriel. It was then that he’d told me in no uncertain terms that I held no attraction for him whatsoever.

Six years on it still stung. I was no longer the shy virgin I had been then, at twenty, but I had watched with hollow eyes as Tio chased every half-elf skirt in the palace, provided they were brunettes. My own hair was such a light blonde as to be almost white, and it precluded me from any sexual interest from him.

Ironically enough, I was almost certain that his sexual gratification had been one of the reasons why Aunt Tima had chosen me to be his day to day companion. Oh, it was by no means the only reason – my training was far too broad for that – but it was no coincidence that all Tio’s female attendants were half-elves. It was a well-known – if not openly acknowledged – fact that few elf men could keep their manhood inside their trousers, but as the prince and heir to the throne Tio could not be seen to father any bastards, so the queen kept all human women away from him. Half-elves, however, were infertile, and therefore safe.

And that was another interlinking relationship between the races. Elves, especially elf men, were almost unreasonably attracted to humans, and the resulting offspring were the half-elves, who had characteristics of both races but were unable to bear children of their own.

I saw Tash wipe his face with a wet cloth and walk back into the practice square, and gripped my blunted knife again with a sigh. There was no point in moping over Tio, and in the past six years I had learnt to ignore my feelings. I doubted I would ever get over him fully, but as Aunt Tima said, there was no room for love at the court, so I just got on with things. I had experimented with lovers – humans and elves as well as half-elves – though I rarely slept with anyone more than twice, and often it was a calculated choice on my part.

Like it had been with Tash. In addition to being my regular sparring partner and friend he had been infatuated with me for a while. I could sympathise, so I had given him one night, though I had also ensured that people knew about it.

Tio never got the hint.

As Tash launched into another attack, a little more focused this time, I let my body take over. The parry, block, attack, feint and counter-attack were almost intuitive by now, and when Ziarev joined in and I had to defend myself against two attackers I was still able to hold my own, even if it required me to draw my second knife and I sustained a few painful hits. At the end of practice Ziarev gave me one of his rare smiles, and I knew I had pleased him that day.