chapter FIVE
LATER, MANY HOURS after she watched the soldiers march from the garrison, Ilse bent over her desk, hard at work on her quarterly report for Mistress Andeliess. She wrote steadily, rows and rows of numbers, in the neat hand she had learned as a merchant’s child. Light from the dying sunset streamed through her open windows, casting long sharp shadows across her desk.
A woman’s voice sounded loudly in the corridor outside. Another woman answered—one of the courtesans. It was a busy evening in the pleasure house. From the rooms beside and below hers, she heard murmurs, faint laughter, and the more intimate sounds of lovemaking. Usually she could shut these out—they reminded her too strongly of Raul’s pleasure house in Tiralien—but not today.
Ilse laid down her pen and rubbed her eyes. I’m tired. That’s all.
Tired and distracted by the day’s extraordinary events. In between her duties as steward, she had gathered details—the three Károvín ships, the storm which drove them onto the rocks, the outbreak of violence and the bloody skirmish that followed. Rumors flowed through the corridors and bedrooms, delivered from visitors to courtesans in private, then dispersed throughout in murmured exchanges. Even better, Falco had visited the common room that afternoon. Ilse had stationed herself close by his chair, and overheard his comments about the fighting. The captains and commanders were still dissecting what happened, he said.
Ilse thought she knew. Last summer, she and Raul Kosenmark had received word from their Károvín spies about strange maneuvers on land and in ships. Today’s events had to be connected. Would the regional governor see that? Would he send word to Raul?
A year ago, she would have said yes with assurance. Now, she wasn’t quite as certain. Lord Nicol Joannis had once been a member of Raul’s shadow court. He had served as a conduit for information from Fortezzien and the southeast. Well before she left Tiralien, however, Joannis had withdrawn from their regular correspondence. A matter of precaution, Raul had said in passing, though whether the caution came from Raul or Joannis, she had never learned. Nevertheless, Raul had trusted Joannis enough to suggest that Ilse come here for her temporary exile.
In case Markus Khandarr did not believe our fiction.
In case of other eventualities she and Raul could not foresee.
Their plan had been a good one, a sensible one. But those dispassionate discussions last autumn seemed far removed from today, and this crisis. She had not dared to approach Lord Joannis since her arrival. Why should she? She was nothing more than a commoner, a discarded lover who now earned her wages as a steward.
Useless, useless second thoughts.
Ilse wrote the last sum, blotted the page, and set the sheet aside. She was still sifting through the details she’d learned when she heard a scratching at her door. Ilse paused, almost certain she’d imagined the soft noise, when there came a tentative knock. One of the courtesans with gossip? A runner from Mistress Andeliess?
But it was Galena Alighero who stood outside, a tall pale ghost. “A few minutes,” she said quickly. “That’s all I want.”
Ilse hesitated.
“Please,” Galena said. “It’s not about— Please.”
Even in the corridor’s half-light, her distress was obvious. Reluctantly, Ilse stood aside and motioned for Galena to enter. Instead of taking a seat, however, Galena circled the small room. Her gaze flickered over the walls and bookshelves as though tracking an invisible enemy.
“What’s wrong?” Ilse said.
“Nothing.”
A lie. Ilse let it go. “Sit down,” she said. “We’ll have some wine.”
She filled two wine cups and offered one to Galena. Galena took it and abruptly sat down on the couch. Her hands were shaking so, the wine rippled in the cup. She wasn’t acting, Ilse thought. Was it battle fever? She tried to recall if Galena had ever seen action before.
She took a seat on the same couch—but not too close—and waited for the girl to speak.
The quarter hour rang outside, a thin soft peal. Galena shivered, as if the bells had stirred unpleasant memories. “You know about the Károvín,” she said softly.
“I heard. There were three ships. Or was it four?”
“Three. They sank. Foundered on the rocks.” She gulped down some wine. “You heard all that from Falco already. I should go.”
Ilse laid a hand on her arm. “Stay. I’ve heard a few stories, but not yours.”
Galena flinched, but sank back onto the couch. “It’s the storm,” she said. “Or that’s part of it.” Her voice went breathless, higher than usual. “It was magic. The captains think a mage on the ships called up the storm for cover. The Károvín sent at least twenty ships into the eastern current just last week. If the storm had hit us earlier, we might not have sighted them at all. They could have taken the city.”
“With just three ships?”
“No, with all twenty.”
Ilse felt cold wash over her skin. Károvín soldiers, here in Osterling, after centuries of calm. Falco had not mentioned that detail. “How did you know they were the same ships?”
Galena hesitated only a moment. “My father said the report came from the king’s patrols. No other ships were sighted in those waters. They’re certain it’s the same fleet. The captains think they meant to head around. Except they haven’t, not yet. Commander Adler doubled the watch just in case.”
East from the Veraenen coast lay the open seas—there were no known islands, no continents. Nothing, Ilse thought, except an impenetrable magical barrier, and the lost kingdom of Morennioù. Again she had a shiver of premonition.
Legend said that Lir had drawn a curtain around the island province. After the second wars, when Dzavek had invaded Veraene in his search for Lir’s jewels, Veraene had sent ships to contact the islands. None had returned. Fishermen brought wild tales of a burning wall in the open ocean to the east. Lir’s Veil was its name. The Károvín had their own name for it, most likely.
“Did you take prisoners?” she asked.
“Yes. Thirty-four. Soldiers and sailors.”
Ilse did not miss that last phrase, or the pause before Galena had answered. Falco, too, had been strangely reticent when asked about prisoners.
“Thirty-four soldiers and sailors,” she repeated. “And who else?”
Galena’s fingers tightened around her wine cup. “Who told you?”
“No one. I guessed. Can you tell me anything, or did you swear to secrecy?”
She hardly needed to hear the answer. Galena’s panicked expression was enough. “We didn’t swear an oath,” Galena said. “But Lord Joannis was there. He told us to be discreet.”
So the matter was important enough for the regional governor.
She offered more wine to Galena, who refused. “I promise not to spread any rumors,” Ilse said. “Or would you rather talk about the fighting?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Then she added, “They fought hard in spite of everything.”
“What do you mean?”
Galena’s gaze flicked toward Ilse and away. “Just what I said. They’d fought at least one battle already that day. And they were exhausted from the storm. Still, they didn’t want to yield. When we tried to take them prisoner, a dozen or more fell on their swords. The ones we did take—Ranier and Tallo knocked them over the head. Then there was that woman…”
She drew a long breath and fixed those unnaturally bright eyes on Ilse. “I’ll tell you. But you must promise not to tell anyone else. My father thinks that woman is not Károvín. He says she answered in Károvín, but slowly. As if she had learned it from a book.”
The notes of a flute drifted up from the common room, and one of the courtesans, Luisa, began to sing. Ilse could not distinguish the words, but she knew the melody. It was a popular ballad, recounting the history of two lovers separated by chance. Several verses described their anguish, but toward the end, the song spoke in minor keys, how their grand passion died, extinguished by nothing more than neglect. Ilse released a sigh, and drank deeply of her wine. I wonder why Luisa chose that one.
Galena, too, was listening intently, her empty cup finally at rest. “Commander Zinsar died,” she said softly. “Lanzo lost an eye, and Piero took a sword thrust beneath his mail. The surgeon said he lost too much blood, and the herbs haven’t taken hold.”
Ilse knew the surgeon. Aleksander Breit was more skilled and conscientious than most. If his patients had any chance, he would give it to them. Still, his best herbs and spells might not be enough. “How is Marelda?”
“Angry. Frightened. She went back to the hospital as soon as our captains dismissed us.” Galena’s eyes narrowed. “I hated the fighting. I wish—” She broke off with a frown.
Ilse waited through a long silence. Luisa had reached the last section of the ballad. Someone joined in with a guitar, drowning out the flute. Another moment and the new musician gained control of his playing, the two instruments blending into a seamless harmony. Above them, Luisa’s sweet contralto swelled to pure and unfaltering tones.
“I heard Lord Joannis wants to celebrate your victory,” Ilse said.
Galena shifted uneasily, but said nothing.
I’ve struck close, Ilse thought. “Would you like more wine? Or coffee?” she asked.
Galena shook her head. “Water. Just … water.”
Ilse fetched a carafe of water and filled Galena’s cup. She watched as the girl drained it, then wordlessly refilled it when Galena held out the cup for more. Around them, the pleasure house was quiet for the moment, but Luisa’s song, of love and lovers lost, still ran through Ilse’s mind.
“Ilse, why did you come to Osterling?” Galena said softly.
The change in conversation took Ilse by surprise. She sent a covert glance toward Galena, but saw nothing in the girl’s expression except ordinary curiosity. What would Galena say if Ilse told her the truth? That she had come to teach herself magic, to find Lir’s jewels so that these endless wars between Károví and Veraene would end. So that one day, she and Raul Kosenmark might marry.
But the reasons started long before she met Raul Kosenmark. She had come to Osterling by a series of hard choices, each seemingly inevitable, that had led her from Melnek to Tiralien, from Raul Kosenmark to Osterling Keep. Galena would not understand, and so Ilse gave the simplest answer. “I came because I needed employment, and Adela offered me a position as her steward.”
Adela Andeliess had been delighted to hire a steward with experience at pleasing a duke’s heir. So she told Ilse, proving it by raising Ilse’s salary twice in the past four months.
“I remember the day you came here,” Galena went on. “Marelda saw you at your window. You waved back to her.”
Ilse nodded. That had happened her first hour in Osterling, while she stood poised between her old life and the new. “You were walking through the courtyard with Marelda and Piero and Aris,” she said. “I met all of you a week later, when the garrison commander allowed me to drill with the others.”
“We thought you were a rich woman, playing at soldier. At least, that’s what Aris said at first. He said later he’d been wrong.”
Exactly the words Aris had used, when he later came to Ilse seeking her advice about the northeast borders, where Ilse spent her childhood. Ilse had told Aris what she knew about the garrisons and patrols. A week later, Aris had secretly applied for a transfer and vanished from Osterling Keep.
“I’m sorry he’s gone,” she said.
“So am I. I thought— I thought at first he left because of you.”
Ilse shook her head. She knew why Aris had left, both the reasons he gave, and the one he kept secret. But she doubted Galena wanted to know about her brother’s relationship with Ranier Mazzo. In Galena’s uncomplicated mind, love and desire were the same. It would be too difficult to explain that Aris had desired Ranier, but could not love him, even though Ranier desired him in return. Not because a man should not love a man, but because Ranier himself made trust, and therefore love, difficult.
“My turn,” she said. “Why did you come here tonight?”
“To talk.”
“We did talk. About everything except what bothers you. Was it something you saw today in the battle?”
Galena’s breath caught in a laugh. “You could say that.”
One beat, two, and three. There were no bells to count the passing moments, but Ilse heard them in the pulsing at her temples, in Galena’s shivering as she fought to bring herself under control. Oh, there were secrets unfolding here. She wished she didn’t need to listen to them. They would do Galena no good. Nor her. It was for Veraene and the peace that she kept still and waited for the other young woman to speak.
“It was after the fighting started,” Galena said at last. “One of the Károvín— We fought hard. He drove me back, away from the others. Then he knocked me down. I hit my head against a rock.”
“But he didn’t kill you.”
“No, and I don’t know why. Or maybe he thought he had. Killed me, I mean.”
“What happened to him, Galena?”
“He got away.” That in a whisper.
So. A Károvín soldier had escaped into Veraene. He’d head directly for his homeland, no doubt, but the patrols would intercept him long before he reached any border. Strange that Falco hadn’t mentioned this particular detail. Had Joannis required them to keep the news a secret? Then her breath deserted her when she realized where Galena’s confession headed. “Galena, did you tell your father? Or the commander?”
A heartbeat of silence followed. “No.”
Ilse closed her eyes, silently cursing Galena’s folly. “Why tell me?”
“Because you know Commander Adler and Captain Spenglar. You could—”
“Lie to them?”
“No! But you could tell them you heard a rumor.”
Ilse thought briefly of striking Galena with a very hard object. That would do no one any good. No, she had to tell one of the garrison commanders—or better, Nicol Joannis, so they could send out patrols and track the man down.
Galena had begun to weep silently, tears pouring over her face. Ilse put her arms around the girl and held her close, stroking her hair. When Galena relaxed against her with a sigh, Ilse stiffened. No, she told herself, the girl was too distressed to mistake kindness for desire. She continued to stroke Galena’s hair, which was a springy mass of brown threaded with silver, barely contained by the many cords she wore.
“Why are you so kind to me?” Galena murmured.
I am not kind, Ilse thought. But it’s best you believe that I am.
* * *
VALARA BAUSSAY WOKE in a suffocating darkness that reminded her of Autrevelye, of the void between worlds and lives. Panicked, she tried to fight her way clear, only to roll over heaving and retching. Through the roaring in her head, she heard shouts and the clang of metal against metal. It was a battle. Károvín soldiers swarming up the stairwells and through the halls, cutting down her guards as she tried to escape from Morennioù castle.
Gradually the thundering in her skull subsided. There was no battle, only the memory of one. She spat out the bile and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Filthy. Stained with muck from the bottom of the ship, with dirt and salt and sand. Her wrists were bruised from the manacles they’d used, even after they had subdued her with magic.
Her treacherous stomach heaved again, but there was nothing left inside her aching body. Valara collapsed onto the stone floor. It was cool and damp against her fevered skin. Fragments of her surroundings intruded. She smelled damp straw, overlaid by crushed herbs and the sickening reek of stale vomit. Her guts pinched harder. She bit her cheeks to stop another bout of retching.
She was a prisoner, taken by the Károvín invaders. That much remained clear. They must have landed safely, then. She dimly recalled being roused from a magical stupor and hauled onto a ship’s deck. Winds were howling with unnatural ferocity and the scent of magic had overpowered her. There’d been a coastline in the distance—Károví, she’d thought. But that general, that duke, Miro Karasek, had roared out orders to the ship’s captain, demanding they steer north, north, damn it, even while the shore rushed toward them. Then came a terrible rending noise. The shock of water closing over her head. After that her memory blurred.
It took her several tries before she could stand up. She shuffled over to the cell door. The corridor was empty. Torchlight stippled the stone walls. It reminded her of another prison, from another life.
She wanted to break open the doors, flee the prison, but she remembered enough from those previous lives to make her cautious. She ran her fingers over the iron bars, then the lock and keyhole, probing for traps and alarms. Slow, slow, slow. She approached the magic and the bars as she would a wild deer in the mountains. As she had first approached magic five years ago.
Needles pricked at her skin, as though the dead iron could read her intentions. So. They had placed a magical guard on her cell. That argued for Károví and Leos Dzavek. The last time he had taken her prisoner, many lives ago, she had escaped by slashing her wrists and throat with magical fire, drawn to a sharp burning edge. It had been a painful victory. Leos would have remembered that incident and prepared against it.
Not that death is my choice. Not with Lir’s emerald in my hands.
She touched the ring on her second finger. Magic hummed at her fingertips, the only trace of the emerald’s true identity. How long before Leos Dzavek discovered the jewel his duke had stolen was false? How long before he thought to strip her of all possessions and force the truth from her throat? Then he would possess two of the three jewels. Morennioù would be helpless against a second invasion. (And he would invade a second time. She knew the man who was, who had been her brother. He did not suffer disappointment.)
She had to escape, before he found out her secrets.
There is only one way. Only one choice.
It was a gamble, attempting to make a leap across the magical void in the flesh. She had managed the trick dozens of times in previous lives; she had done it last summer when she recovered the emerald from Autrevelye, and again that last fateful time when Dzavek confronted her. But she had never tried to when so drained of strength. She would have to concentrate hard if she wanted to land in Morennioù and not lose herself in other worlds.
Ei rûf ane gôtter. Ei rûf ane Lir. Ei rûf ane Toc. Komen mir de strôm.
Magic rippled over her skin, clearing her head and easing the cramps in her gut. She murmured the phrase again, her sight narrowing down to a point on the stone floor, to a single speck of water gleaming in the torchlight.
Komen mir de strôm. Komen mir de vleisch unde sêle. Komen mir de Anderswar.
The world tilted away. A narrow edge, a bright sharp line, arced through the darkness. She glimpsed a hundred worlds refracted in all directions. Just as she caught sight of Morennioù, of Enzeloc Island and her home, a force, like a massive hand, struck her backward.
The shock of return drove the breath from her body.
She lay there, gasping. (There? She had no idea where.) Eventually she coughed, spat out a mouthful of blood. Her ribs ached sharply. Her throat felt bruised and sore. Voices yammered inside her skull. Outside, too—voices shouting curses in Károvín and another language. Veraenen.
Valara hauled herself to sitting. Just as she feared, she was still a prisoner in that same dank dark cell. Off to one side stood a bucket and a tray with a loaf of bread. Valara dragged herself closer. The bucket was half full of water. She drank a handful, then another. When her body stopped its shivering, she crawled back to the iron bars of her cell.
Magic roused at her touch. She moved her palms to the walls. Here the magic beat a slower, deeper rhythm. Hush, she told it. Let me read the past, nothing more. Nothing more.
She closed her eyes and focused on her hands. When her breathing had slowed, she narrowed the focus to her palms and then to the point where flesh met stone. The current welled up around her; she felt its electric presence rolling over her skin, rippling through her flesh, between her palms and the air—to the region between body and mind.
Ei rûf ane gôtter. Ei rûf ane Lir. Ei rûf ane Toc. Komen mir de strôm.
Her breathing slowed, her thoughts stilled to match the barely perceptible rhythm of the stone. Rock and mortar used no words, but human speech had echoed here in days and weeks and decades past. Where am I? she asked.
Sunlight glinted from the faceted granules; a man’s voice echoed one word. Osterling.
Yes. Osterling. The early kings of Fortezzien had built a series of castles along the coastline as watch points. The Erythandran emperors had taken over those castles and turned them into forts, manned by soldiers from the imperial army.
Slowly, the rocks yielded their memories, and the trickle of words had become a flood of human speech. Fragments of conversation. Oaths and curses whose meaning had disappeared into time. Valara sank deeper into the past, to the first settlers. Digging. A castle built by common laborers overseen by mages. A remnant of that castle formed this prison. Slowly the voices faded into silence, and she heard only the gulls crying, the wind sifting through sand, and the distant surf, unimpeded by walls or towers or other works of mankind. She had come to the end, which was the beginning.
She withdrew her hands. So she was in Veraene, not Károví. But still a prisoner, and half a world away from her kingdom. Karasek had left seventeen ships behind—nearly a thousand soldiers. Morennioù had only a small militia for each city. They had forgotten to guard against an enemy from outside.
No, it was not them. I did this. I destroyed my homeland.
She sank to the stone floor. Her eyes were dry of tears. She had foresworn grief to keep her strength in the face of an invasion. But now, in the quiet of this cell, memory recited a relentless litany of faults and errors and grave mistakes.
Five years ago, she had thought nothing of breaking the conventions against exploring magic. Or rather, she had thought a great deal about it. Her life dreams had pressed upon her nights, then her waking world. Eventually, reluctantly, she had to accept that she was Leos Dzavek’s brother in a former life. She had helped him steal Lir’s jewels from the emperor. Later, in yet another life, she had stolen the jewels again, and hidden them in Autrevelye.
It was a matter of curiosity, she told herself, unconnected with her life as a princess in Morennioù, the younger daughter, not even an heir. Then her mother and sister died in that shipwreck. Valara had become the heir. Whatever excuses she had made to herself before were worthless. She had sworn before her father’s council to obey Morennioù’s laws.
And yet, she could not resist the pull of curiosity. So she had poked and prodded at her memories, had explored Autrevelye in flesh and spirit, until her life dreams finally yielded enough clues to help her find the first of Lir’s jewels.
Only one. The oldest of the three, the first to speak as a separate creature after the emperor’s mage had divided the single jewel into three, many centuries ago. It was the emerald, of course. Daya was its name. She remembered reaching for it, her fingers digging into the dirt in some far corner of the magical plane, when a voice startled her. Leos Dzavek, conducting his own search.
Shouts. Her own frightened response. Then Leos striking at her with fist and magic. She had fled, bleeding from a dozen wounds and fevered by her too-swift passage between worlds.
Her own magic healed her wounds, but Valara had spent a terrified month convinced that Dzavek would follow her between worlds, or that her father’s council would strike her name from the rolls of nobility. As summer passed into autumn, she told herself that she had escaped discovery. She began to experiment with the jewel Daya. That had proved frustrating at first. Then, one night at the end of winter, as she worked alone in her rooms, the jewel had woken to her touch.
It spoke. In colors and song, as though Autrevelye itself lived inside me.
The next morning, Dzavek’s ships had broken through Luxa’s Hand to attack. An impossible deed, according to all her father’s mages. Well, they were probably dead, too, along with her father and his chief mage.
Her eyes burned with unshed tears.
No. Not yet. She could not afford the luxury of grief. She had to escape this prison and fly homeward. She knew her father’s council too well. They would quarrel—even the best of them—while Dzavek’s soldiers plunder the islands and made them helpless against a second attack.
And he will attack a second time. I know it. I must go back.
Propelled by desperation, she stood and shouted. “Help. Anyone. Can you hear me?”
She called out in Károvín and Veraenen, until the other prisoners shouted at her to shut her mouth and die. She didn’t care. She had to get word to Veraene’s king. She needed an ally.
One of the guards flung the outer doors open and stalked down the corridor, cursing. “What do you want?” he said in stilted Károvín.
“Send for your king,” Valara said in his language. “I can tell him about the Károvín ships.”
His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You tell me this news first.”
Three hundred years in hiding. It took an effort to break such a long and perfect silence.
“The Károvín,” she said after a brief inward struggle. “The Károvín have a new enemy. The enemy could be a friend to you. To Veraene.”
“Might?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know the words.”
“You know enough,” he said. “Why aren’t you sure about this friend?”
Careful now. She had to satisfy his curiosity without giving too much away. Her awkwardness with the language helped her there. She made a show of searching for the words, and when she answered, she let herself stumble over the pronunciation. “I didn’t—don’t. I’m not certain because I do not know your king. Does he want a friend? Does he need one?”
The guard studied her thoughtfully. She wasn’t entirely sure if he believed her.
“If you’re lying, I could lose my position,” he said. “The captain doesn’t like tricks.”
Valara shook her head. “I’m not lying. Please, tell him. Blame me if you like. Anything. But the king must hear what I have to say.”
She held his gaze with hers, willing him to believe her, until the man sighed and tapped his fingers against the bars. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll tell the captain. It’s up to him whether he passes the word higher. I can’t promise more than that.”
“I understand. Thank you.”
Valara watched him walk back through the corridor, his shadow fluttering in the torchlight. The other prisoners flung questions and demands at him, in both Veraenen and their own tongue. He ignored them and slammed the outer door shut.
An uproar broke out. Prisoners cursing their interrupted sleep. Prisoners demanding to speak with the officers, to have word taken to their king. Valara covered her ears and sank to the floor. Even if Veraene’s king listened to her, then what? Would he grant her passage home? Would he agree to ally his kingdom with hers?
Hers. Not her father’s. He was dead, murdered by the Károvín invaders.
Grief pressed like a fist against her throat. She resisted a moment, then let the tears break free.
* * *
ON A BARE ridge, miles away from Osterling Keep, Miro Karasek dropped to his knees. He could almost taste his desire for sleep, stronger than his craving for water. From below came the hiss and roar of surf against the rocky shore.
You will suffer great weariness, King Leos had warned him. You will live each week twice over. That should inspire you to haste.
He’d left the coastal highway within a mile of Osterling and its fort, scrambling up the hillside, into the pine-forested ridge that ran the length of the peninsula. Luck was with him so far. No pursuit. There were a few fishing villages on the coast below, but the hills and ridges themselves were bare of population. If he could find some shelter, he could risk a few hours of sleep, then take off once the moon rose.
The swiftest passage home lay on the roads between worlds. But he was too weary to risk that. And the king had warned him against such measures. They will watch all the borders for any sign of the jewels. Including those of Vnejšek.
He sucked in the dust-filled air and pushed himself to standing. It was the time between sunset and twilight. The sky had turned dark blue, and a few stars glimmered overhead. Far to the west, a wine-red ribbon marked the line between sea and sky. Already the ground lay in shadows. Risky, to keep walking over rough terrain. He could stumble and fall to his death on the rocks below. Or lie wounded, unable to escape, when the patrols finally tracked him down.
A thousand ways to die, he thought, moving cautiously forward through the tide of dusk. He had tried most of them in this mission.
A flicker of movement at his feet sent him leaping back. He caught himself before he fell, then laughed a wheezing laugh. Just a mouse. The creature darted through the weeds and vanished into the shadows underneath a large boulder.
And if a mouse, why not a man?
Karasek eased himself into a crouch—his knees cracked and protested—and discovered a man-sized opening, choked with rubble. He cleared away the debris and peered inside. The air smelled rank, as though a wild dog had denned there recently. Nothing stirred inside now, however.
He unbuckled his sword from his belt and lay down on his back. The gap was narrow, but the rocky floor gave him enough purchase. He grabbed on to a handhold and shoved himself through. Dirt and grit showered his face. He coughed, wriggled deeper into the opening until he reached the farther wall.
Here the niche widened, and its ceiling angled upward. He had enough room to crouch, so he twisted around and slid the knife from his boot sheath. His shirt and jacket made a pillow. The pouch containing Lir’s emerald, the reason for his mission, he tucked underneath. As he laid knife and sword within easy reach, it came to him that he was like the renegade warriors of old Károví.
As many brigands as nobles, his father had commented, in an unguarded moment.
His mother had glanced up with a frightened angry look. Karasek had expected another quarrel, but her mouth had inexplicably softened, and she’d murmured, “Be careful, love.”
He recalled the moment vividly, though he’d been only seven. One rare gesture of tenderness between his parents—the last one.
Karasek shook away those memories. His father was dead, secure from accusations, and his mother had deserted Taboresk for her homeland. Only the present concerned him.
Yes, the present. He smothered a painful laugh. He had no gear, no water. Only ten or twelve miles separated him from the garrison city. Disaster had carried him long past Dzavek’s original schemes, past the fallback plans the king had devised, and the ones Karasek had decided on himself. Now he was running on instinct alone. Like the old warriors from Károví’s founding, he would have to flit like a shadow, using magic and cleverness to regain his homeland.
Brigands and nobles. Which am I? He yawned, curled up on the hard ground, and within a heartbeat, slept.
He woke to the thick dark of full night. Karasek rubbed the sleep from his eyes. His throat felt clogged with thirst, and his stomach had squeezed into an empty knot. Live and you will eat and drink, he told his body. One by one, he gathered up his possessions. The pouch he tied around his neck. He covered the sword and its sheath with his jacket, but kept his knives handy. First to check for patrols.
“Ei rûf ane Lir unde Toc,” he said. “Ei rûf ane gôtter.”
The dusty air stirred into life, brushing against his cheek like a lover’s breath. A wisp of current, its scent like pine trees in winter, revived him, and for one exquisite moment, he could forget his weariness and a thirst so profound that his throat felt like sand. It was a risk, using magic, but less of a risk than stumbling into a pack of Veraenen soldiers. He would make a brief reconnaissance and then be gone.
“Komen mir de strôm unde kreft. Komen mir de zoubernisse.”
The magic current flickered stronger then weaker as his concentration wavered. Magic was like the ocean’s currents. Like the inexorable rhythm of life and death. Magic was Lir’s sweet exhalation, as she lay with Toc. Magic was completion.
“Lâzen mir de sûle. Vliugen himelûf. Ougen mir.”
The magic current spun through the narrow opening. A thread of perception connected magic with its wielder, and as the current rose toward the sky, Karasek saw the black expanse of night, a brilliant spangle of stars, a raptor floating high overhead. Higher yet, and he could pick out the buildings and walls of the garrison city, now washed in moonlight. Within, the souls of the inhabitants glowed. A few bright points, like suns among the stars, caught his attention. He recognized Valara Baussay’s magical signature.
I knew her before, in lives past.
The knowledge had come to him like a shock when his soldiers first brought the Morennioùen queen before him as a prisoner. She had been queen in that previous life, and he, he had been a representative of the empire.
The memories served no purpose, he told himself. He turned away from Osterling and commanded the magic to lift him away.
The current whirled him back toward the hills where his body lay. A blink, a shudder, and spirit rejoined flesh. Karasek drew a last breath of the magic current and savored its taste and smell. Then he spoke the words to wipe the surrounding area clean of his signature.
So. There were no patrols yet. Would there ever be? He had killed the only witness to his escape. Or so he had thought. He remembered throwing the girl to the ground, her head striking a stone. She lay so still, he thought she must be dead. But he had killed so many in the past few days, he might have misremembered. A careful soldier would have run her through with a sword. He used to be careful, before this mission.
Karasek rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. A month of dangerous travel stood between him and the border. From there, it would take him another ten days of hard riding to reach Rastov. Was that fast enough to satisfy the king?
You must make haste, Leos Dzavek had commanded.
He had, sailing three hundred leagues in twelve days using magic. Time spinning backward through the barrier, then leaping forward on the return trip. It was as if his time in Morennioù existed in a bubble, like a soul’s multiple lives, compressed into a single short month.
The king is a thorough man, his father once told him. Karasek had seen the proof—the months of planning and maneuvers, all for an unknown enemy, in an unknown land.
It had started last summer. The king had summoned Miro Karasek to his private interview hall. Karasek had found him immersed in reading.
“You have new orders, your majesty?”
Dzavek looked up from his stacks of books. His gaze was diffuse, as though he saw images beyond Zalinenka’s white rooms. “I found him. I found my brother, Andrej.”
Karasek felt a river of cold pass over his skin, as though Károví’s brief summer had vanished into winter. Andrej Dzavek had died centuries ago, in the wars between Károví and the empire. Apparently that did not matter. Perhaps that was the key to understanding Leos Dzavek. All moments, past or future, were equal. All lives were now. It would be, he thought, like swimming in time.
The king explained. Andrej had returned to another life as a woman. His brother—this woman—was searching for the jewels in the magical plane of Vnejšek, just as Dzavek himself was.
What followed anyone might have predicted. The two brothers, no longer brothers, quarreled again. Andrej escaped before Dzavek could do anything more than injure him. In the aftermath, Dzavek had discovered more clues, which led him to the second of Lir’s jewels, the ruby.
But he was not satisfied with one. He required all three. His health had ebbed in the past ten years. It was a sign that, even with the greatest magic, he could not evade death much longer.
And so, in meetings with Karasek, Markov, and Černosek, Dzavek set out detailed plans for an undiscovered destination, an unknown enemy. Duke Miro Karasek would lead the invasion, Dzavek said, while Duke Markov would take temporary command of all the armies.
Drills and preparations followed throughout that summer. Karasek had thought their plans would come to nothing, when Dzavek summoned him a second time. Andrej had proved careless, had woken the jewel. Emerald had spoken to ruby, one magical creature to its other self. Through their speech, Dzavek discovered where his once-brother now lived.
More preparations and meetings followed. The final week passed in a blur of lists and reports and maps. Letters dispatched to his home in Taboresk. The ships stocked. The final troop selections. Weapons and supplies and gear. Dzavek wanted no blunders with this undertaking. He would not be denied again, he said. That explained several points in retrospect, Karasek thought. The contradiction between Dzavek’s meticulous plans and his extraordinary decree that Karasek should return the same day he located the emerald. It also explained the inclusion of Anastazia Vaček.
The last day at sunrise. They were on the point of launching the ships when Dzavek appeared with Anastazia Vaček at his side. “Your second in command,” he’d said.
Vaček had smiled and bowed. “My lord, I look forward to serving you and our king. We have the most satisfying orders.”
Two commanders. Two sets of orders. What promises had Dzavek extended to Anastazia Vaček that gave her such an expression of hungry delight?
Dzavek’s shuttered face had yielded no clues. After dismissing Vaček, he took Karasek to one side. “Remember the spells I gave you for launching the ships through the barrier. Do not discuss them with anyone. Not even Anastazia Vaček.”
Secrets within secrets within bloody secrets.
At departure, Dzavek passed along the lines of soldiers and sailors and touched his hand to each person’s mouth, Karasek’s last of all. Eyes closed, he still felt Dzavek’s dry fingers on his lips, still heard the king’s inarticulate murmur. His thoughts winged back to his companions. Whoever survived the battle would die before they betrayed their true mission. Discretion at a cost.
The moon had already reached its zenith. The night was spinning toward dawn. Karasek rose to his feet. Once more he checked the emerald’s pouch. All secure. With one last glance toward the south, he set off for Károví.