When I came out of the bath chamber, Calantha had left two scrawny smooth-cheeked guards as my escorts in her stead. Apparently she’d had enough of me for
one day. I’d had enough of her too. I started to turn one direction, and both guards stepped forward to block me.
“I don’t require your escort,” I said. “I’m going to—”
“We were told to return you to your room,” one of them said. His voice was uneven, and he shifted from foot to foot. The two of them exchanged a wary glance, and I saw a knot of leather at the shorter one’s neck peeking from beneath his vest. He wore an amulet for protection. No doubt the other guard did too. I nodded slowly, noting their cautious expressions, and we began walking in the direction they indicated, one on either side of me. When we reached the darkest part of the hallway, I stopped short. I closed my eyes, my hands splayed on my thighs.
“What’s wrong with her?” one whispered.
“Step back,” the other said.
I grimaced.
I heard them both scramble back.
I fluttered my eyelids open until my eyes were wide and crazed-looking.
Both guards were plastered up against the wall.
I slowly opened my mouth, wider and wider, until I was sure I looked like a gaping cod.
And then I let loose a bloodcurdling scream.
They both ran down the hallway, disappearing so quickly into the shadows I was impressed with their agility.
I turned, satisfied they wouldn’t be coming this way again, and went in the opposite direction. It was the first time I had twisted the gift into a sham since I’d been here, but if I wasn’t going to be handed my newly earned freedoms, it appeared I would have to seize them. There were secrets just steps away that I had a right to know.
* * *
The caverns deep below the Sanctum were quiet. Only a little borrowed light from a lantern in the outside corridor helped me navigate. I entered a long, narrow chamber that had clearly been in recent use. A half-eaten loaf of bread was wrapped in waxed cloth. Books lay open on a table. Numbers and symbols that made no sense to me were scribbled on sheets of paper and gave no clue as to where the strange robed men were from. Several tiny sealed flasks filled with clear liquid lined the back of another table. I lifted one and held it to the light. Their own stock of spirits? I replaced it and searched the dim corners but could find nothing.
This chamber hadn’t been my intended destination, but as I’d passed its narrow portal, a chill suddenly overtook me. There. My flesh crawled. The word pressed heavy against my chest like a hand stopping me. There. I was certain it was the gift speaking, an air current within the room that reached out to me, but when I could find nothing, I doubted myself, wondering if it was only one of the drafts in this cavernous underworld.
I took one last long look at the contents of the room and moved on.
* * *
Aster had been right. This tunnel led only to wet rock and gears, the hidden workings of the bridge. The river roared just steps away from me, and I was already wet from its mist. Its power was staggering and frightening, and I wondered how many lives had been lost just trying to construct a way across it.
My spirits sank when I examined the gears. They were part of an elaborate pulley system with wheels as massive as the one I had seen higher up the cliff at the entrance to Venda. “There’s no way,” I said to myself. And yet …
I couldn’t quite bring myself to walk away. The lowest gear was secured into the surrounding rock. It was a slippery ascent, and the churning river below made me check and double-check every foothold, but my short climb revealed nothing of help. If anything, it only confirmed that we wouldn’t be leaving by the bridge.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
She didn’t use the word love. My aunt Cloris called it a “confluence of destinies.” I thought it was a beautiful word when she said it, confluence, and I was certain it had to mean something beautiful and sweet, like a powdered pastry. She said the king of Morrighan was thirty-four and had still not found a proper match when a noble First Daughter of a kingdom under siege had caught a Lord’s eye on a diplomatic trip to Gastineux.
Confluence—a coming together by chance, like meandering brooks that join up in a distant unseen gorge. Together they become something greater, but it isn’t delicate or sweet. Like a raging river, a confluence can lead to something impossible to predict or control. My aunt Cloris deserved more credit for her astuteness than I had given her. Yet sometimes the coming together, the confluence of destinies, seemed not to be by chance at all.
Today the Komizar had matters that needed his attention in the Tomack quarter, but he’d learned from Calantha that Rafe’s family had bred horses that supplied the Dalbreck army. He asked Eben and Governor Yanos to take Rafe to the eastern paddock and stables just outside the city to assess some of his studs and mares.
I had insisted on exercising some of my newly earned freedoms, even if it came with the escort of two well-armed guards, and I went to the Capswam quarter to seek out Yvet’s bapa. I gave him half the winnings from my card game with Malich and asked three things of him—that he seek out a healer for Yvet to make sure her hand didn’t blacken with infection, to use the remaining coins to buy the cheese she had so dearly paid for already, and to never shame her for the heinous deeds of another. He tried to refuse the money, but I made him take it. And then he cried, and I thought my heart would wrench from my chest.
The guards, two young men who were no more than twenty, witnessed the exchange, and after we left I warned them not to tell Malich where his winnings had gone.
“We’re Meurasi,” one of them said. “Yvet is our cousin.” And though they extended me no promises, I knew they wouldn’t tell.
It was midday, and I had just entered the stable yard from the south Sanctum gate, and Rafe from the western gate. My heart lifted as it always did when I saw him, for a brief moment forgetting about the danger he faced and the lies I had to guard. I only saw the scruff of his unshaven face, his hair tied back, the confidence of his posture in the saddle, the same sureness as when he had walked into the tavern the first time. There was an engaging power about him, and I wondered how no one else saw it. He wasn’t a conniving lackey to a prince. He was the prince. Maybe we all see what we want to see. I had fallen in love with the idea of a farmer, and it hadn’t taken much nudging for me to believe it was so.