Court of Fives Read online

  He looks so serious that I nod like I’m tendering a payment even though I feel all at sea, unable to gain my footing. “My thanks, my lord.”

  He looks relieved that I am not angry at him, as if a lord would ever care about my feelings. “You can thank me by telling me where you train. If I don’t master Rings I can’t win ten Novice trials and become a Challenger. If I don’t get good enough to run as a Challenger, my family will send me into the army. That’s the last thing I want.”

  “Every Patron man wants to distinguish himself in the army.”

  “I don’t.”

  “How can you not want to serve in the army? The army is the glory of Efea. Soldiers are the truest servants of King Kliatemnos and Queen Serenissima. It is the army that keeps Efea’s people safe!”

  “You’re a captain’s daughter. That’s all you’ve ever heard. It’s not why we fight.”

  My irritation spikes again. How dare he dismiss my father’s valor! “Efea’s enemies are always attacking us. We have to fight lest we be overrun by people who want to steal the grain out of our fields and the gold and iron from our mines.”

  With a heavy sigh he starts climbing, and I match his steps even as I feel the ache of a bruise coming in where the spear-butt jabbed me.

  “I mean no disrespect to your father, the hero of Maldine. But it isn’t that simple, Doma. The noble ancestors of our king and queen fled the empire of Saro over a hundred years ago.”

  “Yes, I know. That was when the last emperor was murdered and the empire fell apart.”

  “Most of the people we fight are really just our distant cousins, the ones who stayed behind and built the kingdoms of Saro-Urok, West Saro, and East Saro out of the old empire. It’s like one huge, nasty, bloody, generations-long family quarrel.” He waves a hand airily. “The point is, I’ll never be allowed to learn what I need at my family’s Fives stable.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because my uncle doesn’t want me to run the Fives. Unlike your father with you, he can’t stop me running, not as long as my grandmother allows it. But the trainers at Garon Stable know it will displease him. They can’t go against his wishes.”

  “You feel trapped too!” I say eagerly as I forget I am talking to a lord.

  “Yes!” As our gazes meet, a spark of understanding flashes between us. “Please tell me where you train. I’ll do anything.”

  We reach the top of the stairs, which give onto the promenade. Soldiers guard every avenue that leads off the terrace into the city. Patron carriages are lined up, waiting to be given permission to exit. Everyone looks nervous.

  Amaya stands by the carriage next to Polodos. He surreptitiously slips a folded scrap of paper to her. Can stolid, boring Polodos possibly be Amaya’s secret suitor, the one who writes execrable paeans to her beauty on scented rice paper?

  The brush of Kalliarkos’s fingers on my elbow jolts me.

  “Please,” he says. “I know you understand.”

  “I do understand.” I am sure the sky will open and the gods’ judgment pierce me with a mighty arrow for talking to him when Father told me not to. “But you see how it is with me.”

  “Plenty of girls and women run the Fives.”

  “Yes, Commoner women do, and if I were a Commoner my family would be proud. But Patron women do not.”

  “Your father is the hero of Maldine. Surely that counts for something.”

  “His daughters must be the most proper Patron girls of all, even if we will never truly be Patrons.”

  He frowns, thinking over a situation a highborn youth like him has never faced. “Of course you’re not a Patron girl. You’re a mule.”

  I flush at the word.

  “Forgive me, I meant no insult.” That he blushes in his turn shocks me. Why does he care? “Of course I see your father feels he must be doubly strict given the peculiar nature of your circumstances. Considering how good you are, that must be frustrating for you.”

  His unforced sympathy opens my heart. “It is frustrating. I train at a little stable run by a woman named Anise. It’s near Scorpion Fountain.”

  His eyes widen. “That’s a bad part of town.”

  “No it isn’t. Maybe you’ve heard it is because only Commoners live there. Anise takes any comers, even Patrons. She won’t treat you differently from the others just because you’re a lord’s son.”

  “I don’t want to be treated differently because of who I am.” His expression is so serious I believe he believes it. Were a lowborn Patron like my father to attempt to rescue a Commoner girl from a mass arrest it could kill his career, but such magnanimity in a lord’s son is charming eccentricity.

  “Anise doesn’t run adversaries in trials like the competitive Fives stables do,” I add. “She’s not interested in reputation and making money like everyone else is. She’s not like the palace stables, competing for royal favor and a seat closer to the king’s throne if their adversaries win. All she does is train those who want to learn. That’s why she’s got no fame. That’s why I can train there.”

  He clasps my hand warmly. “Thank you! I’ll meet you there, won’t I?”

  The pressure of his skin on mine makes my chest tighten in a strange way that Amaya would tease me for were she to see me now. Which she will, if she happens to look this way. I am suddenly aware of how many people swarm the promenade, any one of whom might recognize him and then me. And tell Father, or use gossip to harm Father’s reputation.

  I pull my hand out of his grasp. “I have to go.”

  “Scorpion Fountain. Anise.” He hurries away through the mob of waiting carriages.

  10

  Jes! There you are!” Amaya waves. “Hurry!”

  I trot over, hating how the fashionable sheath gown makes it so hard to climb or run. But if I’d escaped the soldiers, Kalliarkos wouldn’t have rescued me. Thinking of the way he casually treated me as just another adversary makes me smile as I reach the carriage.

  “Thank the oracles!” Amaya grabs my hands so tightly I think she might actually have been worried. “How did you get separated from us? We have to get home.”

  “It was stupid to stop here!” I say as we clamber in.

  “It’s stupid of you to run the Fives in defiance of Father. Do you want to have this argument again, Jes?”

  No one is more annoying than Amaya gnawing on an argument so I tweak aside the curtains and stare outside to ignore her. The view seaward is stunning from this height. The city has two harbors that are almost perfect circles, their rocky rims washed by water. Many ships sail in and out bringing in goods from foreign countries and taking away the grain, gold, spices, and cloth that our enemies covet. Between the harbors rises the peninsula that houses the City of the Dead and the tombs of the oracles. The deep blue sea stretches to the horizon to the south and west, its waters glittering under the sun.

  Far away to the south, much too far to see from here, lies the land of Saro, where my father was born, the same land out of which the ancestors of the current king and queen fled during a terrible civil war a hundred years ago, as Lord Kalliarkos has just reminded me. With their army and their priests the newcomers established a royal dynasty here. But even so, it wasn’t far enough away, because the deadly hostilities they left behind plague us still.

  My gaze drifts back to where Coriander waits like a person drugged by shadow-smoke. I wonder what terrible crime her brother committed. Probably he murdered someone in a fit of rage.

  “What are you looking at?” Amaya shoulders me aside. She glances toward Coriander but then turns to look forward for so long that I wonder what she is looking at. Finally she sits back. “How I wish I could trade places with Coriander! Then I could walk anywhere I wish in the city instead of being trapped by Father’s honor!”

  “As if Coriander ever gets a day free.” The memory of her brother’s accusations grinds at my thoughts.

  Amaya unwraps one of the cat masks and turns it from side to side. “Have you ever been in love?�
� she asks too casually. “I know you’ve done things at the training stable you’re not supposed to. I won’t tell.”

  “Kissing people who are attractive to see what it feels like is not the same as being in love!” I smile the bold smile I usually only wear at Anise’s stable, the one that shows I’m not really a dutiful daughter at all. “It is fun, though.”

  Amaya rolls her eyes and then lifts the cat mask to her face. For an instant, as I see her dark eyes shining through the slits, the mask seems to melt into her. For an instant, her skin takes on a sheen of silky fur and her teeth sharpen and gleam and her painted fingernails elongate into viciously pointed claws.

  Startled, I blink, then rub my eyes.

  She lowers the mask with an overwrought sigh, just an ordinary pretty girl.

  “Why did you buy two cat masks?” I ask.

  “So Denya and I can match.” She wraps the mask back up. “Are we ever going to leave?”

  She sticks out her head, looking forward. I see the way she catches in an excited breath, the way her head tilts flirtatiously like she’s smiling at someone she wants to notice her. Abruptly our carriage jerks forward and she sits back heavily in the seat, fanning flushed cheeks with a hand. She closes her eyes and smiles triumphantly.

  I peek out again. A young Patron woman is peering out of the heavy beaded curtains of the carriage ahead of us. Her hair is a dramatic sculpture of ribbons, elaborately layered tails, and braided plaits. Thickly drawn kohl outlines her eyes as if with wings. Seeing me, she frowns in surprise and withdraws inside.

  A moment later I see Kalliarkos—of all people!—stride up to that very carriage and swing inside. He’s grinning like he just won a trial. Guards wave their carriage through the gate.

  When our turn comes, Polodos walks confidently up to the guards and we are waved through without incident.

  “Polodos doesn’t seem like the kind of ambitious, dashing man you would be interested in,” I say, still peering out through the beads.

  “You need to pay attention to something other than the Fives, Jes. Polodos is very ambitious.”

  I sit back in astonishment. “Is he really the one who writes that leaden-footed poetry devoted to the mysterious pools of your star-ridden eyes?”

  “It’s not leaden-footed. They’re the most beautiful words ever written!” She hasn’t opened her eyes. “Could you just let me have some peace?”

  The grind of the wheels on the street, the clip-clap of the horses’ hooves, and the pad of the servants’ feet as they walk alongside out in the sun blends into a soothing rhythm. In a pleasant baritone Polodos sings a lover’s song about a sailor stealing off his ship at dawn to meet his beloved so she can “wash his clothes.” I shut my eyes and pretend I am climbing the victory tower, that I reach the top and pull off my mask.

  It’s just a dream. It will never happen.

  Amaya elbows me. “Jes! Wake up. We’re home. Thank all the gods! Father’s not here yet.”

  We live in a district where lowborn Patron men who have gained a certain level of prestige and wealth have set up households behind high walls. The green gates of our house are marked with Ottonor’s three-horned bull. We get out in the carriage yard and hurry indoors past Father’s parlor and study, past the reception room and garden where he hosts what social gatherings he can afford, and into the family quarters.

  “We did it!” Amaya takes hold of my hand. “Father will never know because everything went perfectly!”

  The tension and the emotion of the day finally begin to drain and I start to relax.

  Just as we enter the family’s gracious parlor we hear Bettany screech.

  “I can’t anymore! I won’t! And you can’t stop me!”

  That tone is trouble and this is not a day on which we want any further notice from Father. Amaya and I run down the passage and into the suite we four girls share. I bar the door behind us.

  Bettany faces Maraya. The contrast between them could not be more stark. Maraya has the same short, stocky build as Father. Bettany towers over her. Her hair spreads like an aura around her head. Hers is the beauty that crushes rather than soothes.

  “What is going on? Why are you bullying Maraya?” I demand. Bett and I aren’t much alike, but we did share a womb so there isn’t really anything I won’t say to her.

  “I’m not bullying her. She’s the one who got in my way.” Bettany picks up a laden basket and slings it over her back. “I am leaving this house forever. And I’m not coming back.”

  “If you ruin the family’s reputation by running away, I’ll never make a good marriage,” cries Amaya.

  Bettany measures Amaya in the hard way that makes Amaya blush. She hates that Bettany is far more beautiful than she is and hates even more that Bettany cares nothing for her beauty. “I weep for you, Amiable. You can tell Father I died.”

  “You might spare a thought for what will happen to the rest of us,” says Maraya calmly. “We will be punished for what you did.”

  “Don’t you care about Mother?” Amaya demands.

  “That fat cow! Grazing inside the fence she allowed to be built around her while she waits for the bull to come home and cover her.”

  “There’s no reason for you to be deliberately coarse!” I’m astonished at how much her comment annoys me. “If not for her, you and I would have been handed over to the temple.”

  Her anger makes the room hum. “Yes, we all like to praise her for that. But what if Father had insisted on giving us to the temple? Would she have stood up to him then?”

  Maraya raises a hand. “Your argument is a sieve that doesn’t hold water. Maybe he didn’t insist. But maybe he did and Mother refused. All we know is that I am alive and you two are not servants in the temple.”

  “Or worse,” murmurs Amaya. “You might have been dedicated to become attendants to a living oracle. Think of how awful that would be! Shut up in a tomb until you die.”

  We all turn on her, even Bettany. “Shh!” “Hush!” “Amaya! How can you speak such an impiety!” Our words roll together into one.

  But it is too late.

  Maybe our bad fortune has nothing to do with Bettany’s rebellion and Amaya’s blasphemous words. Maybe it started when I so arrogantly presumed that my day would go exactly as planned. When both Amaya and I defied our father’s wishes. Maybe it has nothing to do with us girls at all. To lords who live in palaces, we are nothing more than sticks in the current to be rolled along in waters far more powerful than our fragile lives.

  A commotion rises from the house. Shrieks and shouts split the air.

  A staff hammers on our closed door. The voice of the Senior House Steward startles us, for in the normal course of our lives he is far too important to be bothered with mere girls. When he speaks he sounds frantic, like a man about to fall into a vat of poison.

  “Open up! Doma Maraya, you and your sisters are demanded at once in the master’s study.”

  11

  A horrible sick fear worms its way into my heart. I can’t breathe. Father has found out!

  Amaya mutters a crude curse under her breath. Even Bettany stares, stunned speechless by the distress in the steward’s tone.

  Maraya recovers first. “We shall come at once, Steward Haredas.”

  His footsteps lumber unsteadily toward the front of the house, like he is injured and limping.

  “What if something happened to Mother and the baby?” A tear trickles down Amaya’s face.

  “Hide the basket, Bett!” I snap.

  When that is done Maraya leads us down the passage with her rolling walk. We hasten through the family parlor and along the shaded walkway that skirts the formal garden. Taberta kneels at the public altar, a stone basin set on a big block of granite. She clicks through her ill-wishing beads, mouth moving in prayers she can no longer utter aloud. Tears streak her face.

  Something has gone terribly wrong.

  We walk into the reception room with its floor tiled with a scene from one of the st
ories told in old Saro: that of the fledgling firebird that fled its nest and found a home in a new land.

  The family’s servants huddle here, whispering and weeping.

  Fear tastes like bile in my throat.

  Polodos stands guard at the closed door to Father’s study. He lets us pass.

  Mother sits in Father’s chair, her brow furrowed but her face clear and healthy. Father stands behind her with a hand on her shoulder. As we enter he steps away from her. His clothes are streaked with blood.

  He is a strong and good-looking man, hardened by war and yet unmarked except for a few minor scars. That is why the smears of drying blood on his brow shock us girls into mute statues.

  The door opens. Polodos enters with Cook, who carries a tray of drink and food.

  “I could not eat a thing after seeing that,” says Mother in a trembling voice.

  “You will eat,” says Father.

  We wait while Cook pours a cup of broth and ladles out fruit and almonds. Father stands like an arrow held to the string, poised at the edge of release. Only when Mother has eaten does he speak.

  “Lord Ottonor went into convulsions on the balcony. Although a doctor was in attendance there was nothing she could do. He is dead.”

  Cook hands him a cup of his favorite tea, and he drains it in one gulp like a thirsty man who has just crawled out of the Desert of Rocks.

  “Is that his blood on your clothes, Father?” I ask. Trying to make sense of it all is the only way to stay calm. “Why was he bleeding?”

  “He fell and cut his scalp open. He also coughed up blood.”

  Mother says, “He was poisoned.”

  Father shakes his head. “No. He was old and ill. He has had convulsions before. It is why he had a doctor in attendance at all times.”

  Bettany stiffens. I hiss at her under my breath but she cannot keep her mouth shut no matter what damage it does.

  “Now you have no lord sponsor, Father. What is to become of us? You and your pregnant concubine and your four inconvenient daughters and your shameful lack of sons and your household that has clung to the hope that you will gain a higher office even though you never do? What lord will wish to sponsor a man of your birth and age who has no wife and no heir, a mere field captain in the Royal Army with no prospects for advancement whatever his victories?”