“I’m just observant. That’s why Melnora chose me.” She choked back tears and kicked at a loose stone. “But you didn’t answer my question. What makes it so goddess-damned shocking that I take a man to my bed?”
He grimaced. “Because if a man marries a woman and then discovers she isn’t a virgin, she can be thrown into jail or kept in the stocks. Only whores would risk it. But you’re not a whore. You’re the most respected woman in Under.”
“Your laws are barbaric,” she said. “You goddessless bastards don’t even know that being a whore is a prickling privilege. Aegos kisses those who share themselves, and blesses them even before the queen and king. The whores I know are some of the most generous and compassionate …” she growled in frustration as he shook his head in disbelief. “Pretty much everyone I know has a lover. If you love each other, you stay together. Only folks in Above get married. Wedlock is just another way to claim ownership over someone. In Under, we own ourselves.” She exhaled. “Look, your lot have balls to meet girls and get married, and we …”
Wince chuckled softly.
“What? What could possibly be funny about that?”
“Did you just say that we have balls?” His chuckle turned into outright laughter.
“You’re a twelve-year-old, Wincel Quintella.”
He nodded, almost proudly.
“That makes it easier, though. Doesn’t it?” Gemma looked at him with distaste. “Laughing over your cocks and balls instead of trying to really understand.” She spat at the ground as her temper threatened to get the best of her. “That’s what I mean, Wince. That’s exactly what you do in Above. Make every prickling thing about what’s hiding in your breeches, instead of what is happening right in front of your face.”
His grin faltered. “Sorry,” he whispered.
“Look … in Above, you can bury your head in the sand. You judge us because we’re whores and thieves and murderers, and you get to keep your hands clean. We scratch your belly and you scratch ours. But your goddess-chosen king is just as much of a twisted prick as the rest of us. And that’s worked out just fine, except …”
Wince was looking at her now as if he were meeting her for the first time. “Except what?”
“Except,” she went on, “maybe we were too busy scratching each other’s bellies to notice that a snake had slithered into the cottage.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE TUNNELS
They had stumbled through eleven different tunnels and were approximately 1,839 paces from the Six-Mast, near Canticle Center, when it struck her like an iron pipe to the gut.
“Stop,” Gemma said, dropping her pack. “I know what’s wrong with him.” Wince gingerly put Tollan down, and the king murmured something as if in slumber.
“What is it?” Wince said breathlessly.
“Hold this.” She pressed the flickering candle into Wince’s hand. His face was a study in angles, his eyes sunken and haunted.
“All right,” she said. “I remembered something.” She thrust her chin in the direction of the sleeping king. “But I need to get his shirt off of him to be sure.”
Wince nodded and undid the misaligned buttons on Tollan’s shirt. The King of Above’s skin burned with fever. His pulse fluttered and his breath was coming in painful gasps. His arm and leg muscles twitched uncontrollably. Gemma slid one quaking arm and then the other out of their sleeves, and rolled the dead weight of the king over onto his stomach.
Holding the candle near the raw, freshly drawn mage mark, she looked at the strange symbol—part brand, part tattoo—and knew immediately she was right. She drew a sharp breath. “Did you ever see King Abram’s mage mark?”
Wince’s mouth turned downward in consternation when he saw the mark on Tollan’s back. “My father is the weapons master. The king would come and spar on occasion, and he usually removed his shirt. I never saw his so inflamed, though. Is that what’s wrong with him?”
“I think so,” she said, fumbling in her pack once more. She pulled out the blank book and pencil they had used to pass notes earlier and drew a mark on a blank page. “This is what I was taught to look for on the back of the King of Above.”
“Yes,” Wince nodded. “That’s the mark.”
She shook her head, brushing her finger along Tollan’s red, irritated skin. “Not exactly. Look,” she said, pointing to one of the curves. There was a difference to one of the flourishes and a slightly different curve to the bisecting line.
Wince groaned low in his throat and pushed himself backward, as if distancing himself would somehow help. “But this has to be the true mark. Doesn’t it? I mean how …”
She looked up, meeting his gaze. “I was forced to draw this mark a hundred times a day for four straight months when I was fifteen. It has always been one of the Daghan family’s greatest concerns, that someone would try to impersonate the king, and this was their way of ensuring that it didn’t happen. You can always identify the true king by his mage mark. If I’d have made this mistake in my drawing, Melnora would have had me scrubbing chamber pots for a month. Which means …”
“No mage woman could have drawn that mark by accident. Prick me! They did this to him? Are you sure?”
“I’m not sure of anything, but it makes a lot of sense. Who in all of Yigris is powerful enough to take out both the King of Above and the Queen of Under simultaneously? Yesterday, I’d have said no one. But seeing this … the King of Above keeps four mage women as servants to the crown—insurance that the Vagans would never start another war. They are the only people who have done mage work in Yigris since the end of the Mage War.” She met Wince’s gaze. “Do you know how the king’s mage mark is supposed to work? Do you know what it does?”
“It marks him as Aegos’s chosen ruler.”
“Well, sure, but Melnora taught me that the mage mark is triggered when it’s looked upon. It’s supposed to infuse its bearer with confidence in himself, in his divine right to lead the people of Yigris. As if their view of and belief in the mark actually makes a stronger, better-equipped king. That’s why Abram would take his shirt off to spar—it made him more self-assured.”
“What does this have to do with Toll?”
“He was fine until I looked at the mark.”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“I think a mage woman took the opportunity of Abram’s death to try to kill Tollan, too.” She rolled her neck, staring upward at the tunnel’s ceiling for a moment. “Is it a crime of opportunity or something else? Why would they want to attack Tollan?” She remembered the strange, emotionless mage woman who had hovered behind Tollan when they’d first met. A sliver of fear stabbed at her spine.
“Really, Aegos? It’s my first prickling day as queen.”
They were silent for a long moment as she pondered what to do.
“If what you say is true about the mage mark, can we just—I don’t know—can we break it?” Wince said.
“The mark?”
“Yeah. Can we just make it so that it won’t work?” His gaze was on the raw brand on the king’s back.
Gemma stared at it, too, looking at the way the blackened skin almost seemed to pulse. She could feel the mage work. “It’s carved and burned into his skin, Wince. I don’t know. Maybe cutting a piece of it out might do it, but it’s going to hurt a lot, and might not work.”
Wince stared at Tollan for a few moments as Gemma grew antsy. They shouldn’t be standing still, and she was nearing the point when she would have to get them moving again when he said, “Look, Gemma. I’m a little out of my depth, at the moment, but I can’t just sit here and let those scorpions dig their claws into my king any deeper.” He looked away from her, then mumbled below his breath, “Twisted prick or not.”
She nodded. “All right.” She reached for her dagger, but he stopped her.