“So Maraya will be there to shelter them when they arrive.” She pauses, then goes on sternly. “Was calling your baby brother a little rat your idea of a jest? Because I am not laughing.”
Nothing is worse than Mother’s disapproval but I don’t know how to explain my suspicions or whether she’ll believe me.
“Don’t think I didn’t notice that you spoke to Wenru in Saroese rather than Efean. I’ve raised enough children to know his behavior is unusual and even at moments disconcerting.”
We plod along, her expectant silence as she waits for my reply like a hand tugging insistently on my arm. What if I don’t warn her that her infant son is actually dead, and whoever resides in his body has a chance to betray her because she’s not on her guard? To protect her, I have to try.
So I say, in Saroese, “There’s a huge poisonous snake about to drop out of the trees right onto your heads.”
Wenru’s head snaps back in fear, but Mother has heard the lie in my voice. Her gaze stays on the baby and his slow confusion as he realizes what I’ve just done. He tucks his head down as if he wishes he could turn into a turtle with a shell to hide in, and then says, “Ba ba ba” in the most unbabylike voice.
Mother stares at him as if he has turned into a snake. In Efean she says, “Jessamy, what is going on?”
Our guide raises a hand for silence. Concealed by a stand of trees, we look across well-kept gardens to an empty Efean village.
The guide murmurs, “Move fast and keep your heads down.”
We dash along a wagon track that takes us into the center of the village, where stands a simple Fives court. I hear soldiers speaking Saroese, their voices far too close, and I gesture toward the gate into Pillars, thinking we can hide in the maze. But a burly, threatening man steps out from behind that very gate, sword drawn, to halt us in our tracks.
3
Kiya! I was afraid we’d lost you.” The man facing us presses a hand to his heart. The intensity of his gaze on my mother disturbs me.
“Inarsis! There you are at last,” Mother gasps in evident relief.
He glances toward the rising voices of foreign soldiers entering the village. “Follow me.”
We head in the opposite direction, trotting past a row of granaries toward the northern edge of the village. Inarsis opens a closed gate, and we slip into a walled garden that encloses a tiled pool and neat herb and flower beds. Months ago I bathed here with my Fives trainer Tana and my stablemates Mis and Dusty, amid a friendly gathering of Efean villagers. Now an Efean woman emerges from a stand of lush rhododendrons, carrying a staff as a weapon.
Scowling, she addresses Inarsis in Efean, a language Kal does not understand. “Him too, General? All of them were meant to go on the ship.”
“He fell behind.” Inarsis looks at me as if it’s my fault.
The woman looks at me too. She says, “Ah, I see,” and steps aside.
Behind the thick screen of bushes, a brick-lined tunnel plunges under the wall. We climb down into an underground storage pit crammed with children, elders, and sealed jars of oil and baskets of grain.
“Hidden from the Garon tax collectors,” says Kal.
At the sound of his voice, every head turns. People stare at him. Tension thickens the air, and blades glint as they brace to attack.
“Is that you, Doma Henta?” With his perfect highborn manners, Kal bows over the hand of an elderly woman as if she is an exalted Patron lady. Of course he’s speaking Saroese, which most Efeans can understand. “I see you are keeping a share of your crops out of the hands of the Garon treasury, just as we hide a portion of our harvest from the royal tax collectors.”
I hear a few chuckles, and people lower their knives.
“Come along.” Inarsis has the same habit of command as Father, honed on the battlefield. The only Commoner ever to be granted the rank of general in the Royal Army, he has served Garon Palace for years, a loyal servant of Kal’s royal grandmother, Princess Berenise.
I make sure to fall in behind Kal, keeping a hand on his back. The cloth of his vest is still wet, but the heat off his skin seeps through to warm my palm. When we pause for Inarsis to speak to sentries guarding an opening to another underground storage chamber, Kal slips an arm around my shoulders and pulls me close. He’s on edge, practically bouncing on his toes. The darkness gives us a freedom we’ve never had out under the sun. I take the chance to touch my lips to his. He tightens his arm around me and returns the kiss. The heat of our connection burns every other thought out of my head, but he pulls away with what seems like shocking abruptness as Inarsis moves on. Yet he doesn’t let go of my hand.
He speaks into the darkness. “General Inarsis, can we fight them? We have a chance to ambush Nikonos and kill him.”
“I thought you did not want to be king,” says Ro from behind us, his tone as stinging as the scrapes the pomegranate thorns have left on my skin.
“Of course I don’t.”
“Of course he doesn’t! Hasn’t he said so often enough?” It makes me so angry that both Mother and Ro act suspicious of him when he’s done nothing but help us. “I saw Nikonos murder Prince Temnos. His own innocent nephew. A child! We can’t let a man like that rule.”
Ignoring me, Inarsis says coolly, “My lord, we can’t take the chance of attacking Nikonos. His soldiers have the armor and weapons that we lack.”
“But his soldiers are spread out, searching in smaller groups, so they’re vulnerable,” I object. “Nikonos won’t expect an attack from Efeans. It might work.”
Kal squeezes my hand.
“I did not ask your opinion about military matters, Spider.” By Inarsis’s curt tone, I can tell I have offended him. Worse, Mother does not defend me. Her silence is its own rebuke.
We hurry forward until we enter an ancient vault lined with stone. There’s a crack in the roof where a vine’s tendril has grown down, giving just enough light to see. Mis takes Wenru from Mother and sits on an old stone bench with a baby on each leg.
Inarsis gestures, indicating the abandoned space. “My lord, my best advice is to conceal you here until we’re sure all the soldiers have moved on. Then I will personally escort you by a different route upriver to meet your people at Furnace Gate, where I have agreed to rendezvous with them.”
When I glance at Kal, he nods as if he already guesses what I mean to say. That’s all the encouragement I need. “The soldiers searching for us wore hawk badges. That means they are from East Saro. Why would Nikonos bring in a detachment of foreign soldiers to occupy Saryenia when, now that he has made himself king, he has a Royal Army that is the equal of any in the world?”