Green Wild (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 2) Read online

  The Magister’s face clouded and she took a petty pleasure in finally worrying him. “How interesting.” He considered her for a long moment, slowly tapping one finger on the desk. “The Vassay have developed a method of communication our own Logos workers have not mastered. One of the items we’re negotiating over. I am certain that I could request they send one of their workers along with you to maintain a line of communication. Do you think that would be a bad idea?”

  Kiar said tartly, “Yes. I do. Yesterday was bad enough. Even if it turns out their connection to the assassination attempt is just a coincidence, I don’t think it’s a good idea to let the Vassay feel any more empowered. You’re doing quite enough of that. No offense.”

  He laughed. “Honest child. And of course, you have Twist...” He paused a moment and Kiar wanted to say, What? How do I have Twist? But she knew what he meant.

  “Well, Kai will provide something for our people to study and watch. Thank you for the information.” He shuffled his papers again. “I understand your princess wants to leave today if she can arrange it. I’ll be there to see you off. I suggest you pack if you haven’t.”

  With a nod of his head, the Magister dismissed her from both his office and his Citadel. Burning with conflicted emotions, remembering her dream’s warning to be wary of the Bastard, Kiar left.

  Chapter 6

  The Tabernacle of Broken Hearts

  “HEY,” SHOUTED AN angry voice. “Why did you let it happen?”

  Jerya stood in the plaza known as The Tabernacle Of Broken Hearts, contemplating a large black granite box, worn smooth by many hands. The box and the matching dome above were all that remained of a forgotten temple, and the city had long ago given the ruins a new purpose.

  The city folklore said that leaving the remains of your broken heart in the tabernacle would help you forget what you’d lost. People wrote letters to the Tabernacle, pouring out their pain, and left offerings: nearly new dancing shoes, promise rings, baby clothes, dried flowers. They left an offering, and sometimes, if they could bear it, they took something else out and tried to use it to help somebody else.

  “Hey!” The angry voice came closer and Jerya’s detachment of Royal Guard stepped between her and the source. She didn’t move from her meditation.

  The box usually contained a few offerings, but they never accumulated before somebody decided to reuse them. Now it overflowed. Hundreds of people gathered in the plaza. Some of them watched her and her family, but others scanned the crowd, looking for those they’d lost. Many of them wept. A day after the mudslide, and the reality of what—and in some cases who—they’d lost was sinking in. The ash was clearing from the sky, but the mud wasn’t giving back what it had stolen. Once she’d gathered her family together again, they’d spent most of the day before sending eidolons to pluck whomever they could from the roofs of the north city, but too many had been unwilling or unable to escape ahead of the mud.

  “I just want to know—” went the angry voice. Young, male. Insistent. Jerya turned, waving the guards out of the way so she could fix her attention on the speaker.

  A wild-eyed young man supported an old woman with a dirty, tear-stained face. When he realized he had the Crown Princess’s attention, he stepped closer, pulling the old woman with him. But even standing only a few yards away, he didn’t lower his voice.

  “Why did you let it happen? My grandmother believed in you, so now what are you going to do? Are you going to roll back the mud? What good are you?” His voice broke and he shook his head.

  Jerya looked up at the mountain and the smear of darkness down its flank. She didn’t look at her relatives, clustered behind her. She couldn’t afford to show them any weakness, anything that would inspire her uncles to get involved, or this could go very badly.

  Turning back to the angry young man and his grandmother, she said, “I’m sorry. Did your entire family get out in time?”

  “It’s just me and my grandmother,” he said bitterly. “She lost her life’s work. I had to carry her out in her nightgown. And look at her now. How will she recover? We’ve lost everything, and here you are. What have you lost?”

  Jant muttered behind her, and Jerya closed the distance between herself and the angry man. His accusation she ignored; it was so unfair that it had to come from grief, not reason. “Do you have some place to stay now?”

  “No, of course not. Didn’t you hear me? We lost everything. My grandmother doesn’t even have a decent dress.”

  “We will find you a place to stay,” Jerya said firmly. She had a place to stay. So would everybody, somehow.

  “I want my house back!” the man snapped. “I want to know why you failed to protect us. Too busy playing in the palace, I suppose.”

  Jerya exhaled, looking over the man and his grandmother carefully. He was angry, but she was shocked and broken. He was young, and his grandmother was old, and he clearly loved her very much. He would, Jerya decided, recover. But how he recovered would be dependent on his grandmother.

  She moved closer yet again, holding out her hand to the grandmother, focusing all her attention on the woman. “What was your craft?”

  Faintly, the old woman said, “I—I was a weaver. Fine wall hangings. Other things.” She opened a clenched fist to reveal a spool of viridian thread, vivid in the gray day.

  The grandson interjected, “She does amazing work and half the time your nobles claim they did it themselves. She made a set of wall hangings for me, for any children—the legends of Lor Seleni—” He stopped talking, looked away.

  “Your work sounds marvelous,” said Jerya warmly, still focusing on the old woman. “I’m so glad you’re still with us. Do you train students?”

  The woman’s tormented expression slowly became puzzlement. “Not recently.”

  Glancing down at the spool of thread the old woman still held out, Jerya added, “Did you bring that for the Tabernacle? I hope not. It’s so beautiful. And we will find you a new loom.”

  “What about our home?” demanded the young man. He threw something of his own toward the Tabernacle.

  Jerya caught it with her magic and brought it to her hand. It was a house key. This, she kept as she turned her attention back to him. “And your craft?”

  He stared at her sullenly until his grandmother squeezed his arm. “I’m a clerk in a warehouse on Gig Street.”

  Gig Street was on the south side of the river, the side of the city they stood in now. “You still have a job, then.” She gave him a sad smile. “So do I. Let’s both do our best, and maybe we can dig our way out of this disaster.”

  He hesitated, and Jerya nodded at one of her guards. He promptly moved forward.

  “Sir, I’m Lieutenant Raffey. Please, come with me and we’ll find a place for your family to stay.”

  The young man ignored the guard to glare balefully at Jerya. Then his grandmother reached up, twisted his ear, and said, “Stop being rude, boy,” and his entire expression changed. His eyes widened and his mouth opened. He looked down at his grandmother.

  She squeezed his arm. “Come now. We’ve all got work to do.” And without looking at Jerya again, he went.

  Jerya turned away, back to the granite box, the house key still on her palm. She mounted the steps of the dais the box rested on and slowly picked up a book that had tumbled off the heap and tucked it under her arm. Then she fingered a woman’s cut-off braid, and a polished man’s dancing slipper. There was a song book, and a paint brush. And there were the rocks: river-washed stones, tossed in among the abandoned belongings. Rocks weren’t usually what you gave up to the Tabernacle, but when you’d lost your entire home fleeing in the middle of the night, rocks were all you could spare. Jerya didn’t glance at the towers of the Palace, rising out of the mud that covered everything else. She knew.

  She stacked the book—a novel, she realized, something Tiana had read—and the shoe and the paintbrush on top of each other, and then turned to where her family waited. “We can sleep in the in
n, if you think it wise, but we must set up a court here, until the Palace can be recovered.”

  While Jerya stayed with Shanasee in the tower, Yithiere had taken over the Red Plume posting house, peremptorily kicking out the guests who’d come to celebrate Antecession and installing Iriss and the little girls. The rest of the family and the servants had followed, and the Chancellor and his servants, until the inn brimmed with the relocated Regency Court. Jerya was grateful Yithiere had chosen an inn to commandeer and not one of the big houses on this side of the river; at least most of the Antecession visitors had homes to go to out beyond Lor Seleni.

  Yithiere frowned. “Why here? It’s exposed and as the season changes, the weather will become a challenge.”

  “Because this is where they will come. You saw. This is where our job is.” She sat down on the top step of the dais and glanced at the crowd behind her family. Most of them were watching her now. She looked back, solemnly, and then turned to see Jant’s unexpected faint smile. He huddled under his umbrella with two guardsmen close behind him. Seandri and Seandri’s Regent Harthen stood at his elbows. Jant had insisted on coming, despite his dread of the open sky. It made the journey to the Tabernacle of Broken Hearts through the crowded streets even slower.

  Yithiere’s frown deepened. “Our ‘job’ is hardly soothing broken hearts. We have a war to fight.”

  Jerya sighed. “We have more than one. Everything is confused and disorganized, Uncle. The city is a mess. It’s two thirds its size suddenly, with much of the same population. That isn’t going to just sort itself out. Somebody will have to make decisions.”

  “The Justiciars and the mayor—”

  “I don’t trust the Justiciars and the mayor,” Jerya said, her voice rising. She caught herself and modulated her tone. “I want to be here. We can organize the war from here, can’t we? The Royal Guard has mobilized at Mousame. And if anybody wants our help with restoring the city, we’ll be easy to find.”

  The Justiciars had claimed another inn for their own court. Guards and clerks surrounded it, just like their Court. It was, she supposed, safe, but it was also isolated. She needed to be different than the Justiciars. She would be who the people thought about when they required guidance. She wanted, deep inside, to take that from the Justiciars. They’d tried so hard to shut her out of governance, keep her family as figureheads.

  “Oh, they’ll want your help,” said a new voice. “They’ll want answers, too, just like that young man. Well done, by the way.” Just beyond her uncles stood Lady Alanah, the Royal Family’s martial instructor. She was an ordinary looking woman, near forty: average height, with brown hair pulled back in a bun and her skin dark enough to show that some of her ancestors had been of Royal Blood. She was armed like a Guardsman, which was uncommon in a woman but not remarkable. Her snapping hazel eyes, fringed with dark lashes and vivid even at fifteen paces seemed to be the only reason anybody would notice her... until she moved, because she moved like a tiger. Even now, only weeks after she’d had her third child, she looked like she could embarrass a troop of Royal Guard while thinking about something else.

  “Alanah,” said Jerya, smiling. She’d known the noblewoman most of her life. Lady Alanah, the daughter of a local count, had a genius for tactics and combat that had earned her an appointment as Royal instructor before she was twenty-five. “I’m glad to see you. I hope the rest of your family escaped safely? How is the baby?”

  “Yes, everybody is well. Quite an orderly retreat. The children are with my mother in her house at Quinn Crescent.” She glanced toward the east side of the city. “As I was saying, I’m getting questions about what happened and why. People are starting to make up their own stories. It was an ill-omened night for the mountain to shrug. Good work on Shanasee’s part, though. That helped enormously, although we may need to remind people of it.” Alanah spoke in the brusque, diffident way she talked about everything except martial arts and her children.

  Jerya frowned. “We will.” She rested her hands on her knees. “You also said they’d ask for help? Have there been other requests? More survivors on roofs?”

  “No more of those, sadly. But dozens of another sort,” Alanah assured her. “Nothing you can reasonably grant.”

  “Like what?” Jerya asked with a flicker of annoyance that Alanah made that decision without her.

  Alanah glanced to her side, where another lieutenant of the Royal Guard stood waiting patiently. “People are trying to cross back over to the north side of the river, but the bridges have been destabilized by the mud. I’ve stationed guards along the crossing points to turn them back, but we’ve already lost at least one idiot. I’m sure this is what you want, yes?” Alanah was entirely outside the command structure of the Royal Guard, but her unique position made most of the Guard treat her suggestions like the orders they’d almost certainly become.

  “Yes,” said Jerya slowly. “Thank you. It’s far too dangerous to return yet.”

  Alanah quirked a grin that made Jerya feel like a little girl in lessons again, eager to please her teachers. She’d have to check that reaction, because she suspected she was going to make decisions they wouldn’t like.

  An odd rushing whisper announced Twist’s magical arrival. Jerya looked around as he appeared beside the Tabernacle. He stepped lightly down to sit beside her. “Hello. I hope I didn’t break your heart too badly when I didn’t report in last night. I was... tired.”

  “You and Shanasee are the heroes of the disaster,” Jerya told him. “You’ll get a medal eventually.”

  “Oooh, will it be shiny? I’ve always wanted a shiny medal.” He sounded almost the same as he always did, but his blue eyes were dark with some distraction.

  “Where did you sleep? At the Citadel? Did you see my sister?”

  He tapped his nose. “Exactly so. I’ve just come from her. Would you like my report here?” He glanced around at the growing crowd. “There are some things we should talk about privately. You may not like the rest of it.”

  Jerya hesitated. “Is it urgent?” She felt torn between hearing about what her sister had done on the mountain, and her desire to show the people of Lor Seleni that she wasn’t going to hide from them.

  “That depends on whether you want me to rush back to the Citadel and try to stop Tiana from following a dream across the countryside.” He yawned. “Mind, I don’t think I could actually stop her, but we could probably manage to make her feel really bad about it.”

  Jerya stared at Twist before drawing her hands across her face. Standing up, she announced, “I’ll be back this afternoon.” Then she addressed her favorite cousin. “Seandri, would you remain here this morning?”

  In response, he came over and took her hand. She wanted to run her fingers through his curly hair, but she refrained, letting him hold her fingers lightly, her chin lifted like she was a queen. After all, she all but was.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked her, his voice low.

  “Be here,” she told him. She could trust him. He was steady and gentle and she loved him for it. “Listen. Be kind. Don’t give anybody permission to cross the river, no matter how they beg. Tell them I’ll be back soon. It’s just for a while, until we can get something better organized. They have to know we’re here, Seandri. We haven’t abandoned them.”

  He squeezed her fingers. “Are you afraid they think that?”

  Shaking her head, she said, “I’m afraid they think it’s our fault.”

  She walked back to the Red Plume, aware of how the crowds opened around her. It wasn’t much; it wasn’t enough to allow her to move quickly, but people pushed out of her way with whispers and murmurs. Impromptu markets assembled as some enterprising citizens realized they could sell all sorts of things to people who had lost almost everything. Twist walked beside her. Once, he flickered, as if he’d jumped somewhere and back again, very quickly. She didn’t ask; it was hard to talk in the noise of the streets.

  In the Red Plume, she made her way directly
to the room they’d set aside for Shanasee and Iriss. Gisen sat between them, looking at a picture book aimed at much younger children, while Yevonne dozed with her head on Gisen’s knee.

  “No change?” Jerya asked. Gisen shook her head and closed her book, looking attentively at Jerya.

  Cara, Shanasee’s Regent, emerged from an adjoining room. She hadn’t slept much in the last day and night, less even than Jerya and the others, and she looked it. She’d been furious when Yithiere brought Shanasee to her, irrationally angry at how Shanasee had been used and hurt. Now, she just seemed exhausted. She waved at her throat and said something inaudible. A mug steamed in one hand, fragrant with the scent of lemon and honey.

  Yevonne lifted her head from Gisen’s knee and yawned. “Cara’s lost her voice. She’s been talking and talking to Shan. But nah, they’re both still sleeping safe. It’s all right.”

  Jerya looked at the two still forms, thinking about love and loss. After a moment she turned away and went to one of the inn’s parlours, where Cathay’s mother and Jant’s wife both sat sewing. The Royal Family and its Regents and spouses and parents had been spread out all through the Palace; before the disaster, Jerya would go occasionally go days without seeing Lady Siana or Lady Julina. That was another reason to hold as much business as possible at the Tabernacle. It was too crowded here. The Chancellor had already spoken of moving his own staff to another building but he wanted to identify an appropriately empty one first.

  Lady Siana looked up and put her sewing down. “Do you need this chamber?” Jerya had heard that once Siana had been a vivacious woman, but now she was a pale, willowy creature whose laughter was quiet and her disapproval even quieter.

  As a child, Jerya had sometimes pretended Lady Siana was her own mother: a mother who stayed with her child despite the sadness. But that hadn’t lasted long; extended flights of fancy were Tiana’s domain and so Jerya had put them away. And it was too easy to see the marks grief had left on Lady Siana. She and Lady Julina were noble-born, but when they’d married Royal princes, they’d become part of the Regency Court. They had some of the training and counseling Regents relied on, but it hadn’t helped Siana. No training prepared you for your husband’s suicide.