Bright Thrones by Kate Elliott
The next while passed in a whirl of frantic activity: Beauty’s companions lay in the cleft in silence and stillness as search parties ventured into the collapsed areas once, twice, and a third time before they gave up. They pulled out four barely living men with bad injuries from falling rock and seven dead ones, five without a mark on them.
“The poison air may recede in time,” he told Lord Eorgas, who arrived in a welter of vexation. “For now the bodies must be taken away to your burial grounds in Akheres Oasis.”
“Can’t we just leave them?”
“They’ll rot and attract tomb spiders, snakes, rats, and vermin. Do you want venomous animals in gallery five? Didn’t you tell me it’s your most productive vein of gold right now? You must do everything you can to close off this contaminating air and keep the vein going.”
Confidence made it easy to influence men like Eorgas who weren’t sure of themselves. And because the seven Shipwrights were experienced adventurers, they had the skills necessary to pull off a ruse of this magnitude. They didn’t panic at blood. They could fend off suspicion with bald lies. They could handle mules and wagons.
But Sunny and Flint argued with him.
“Why should we risk ourselves for useless people?” demanded Sunny. “I didn’t even get a kiss from our Beauty but I’ll take a favor from her now.”
“Shut up, Sunny,” said Pearl unexpectedly as Ash and the other five Shipwrights nodded, closing ranks around him. “You and Flint aren’t part of our crew, just hired hands for the duration of this mission.”
“Just like this impersonator you all love for his handsome face,” snarled Sunny.
Agalar looked quickly toward Bettany, fearful she might have overheard. But she was hovering about the wagon in which all her companions now rested, fussing with the canvas that covered their bodies, more nervous than he’d ever seen her. He had to concentrate.
“Ash, you and Lark drive the wagons to the hospital in town. Stow them in the basement where it’s cooler. Say the corpses have to be stored in the most isolated corner lest there is…” He considered options for a good story. “Say there might be poison air in their lungs that could kill others. Wear a mask the entire time so people won’t doubt you.”
“What happens once they reach the hospital?” Pearl asked. She wasn’t upset or angry, just sorting out options.
“I’ll make an excuse to ride into town and see what I can figure out. I am only acquainted with Saroese lords but surely there are locals who might be willing to help. This is a fluid plan.”
Sunny smirked. “This will go into our report. Our employer will withhold part of your payment as a fine for taking a pointless additional risk.”
“I’ll absorb the loss,” Agalar said at once.
“That’s fair,” said Pearl. “Are we all onboard with the plan?”
When all the Shipwrights nodded, she gave the go-ahead because in the end it was her crew. “Ash, Lark, get moving.”
That left Beauty.
Bettany.
Agalar beckoned. She left the wagons with the greatest hesitation, pausing twice and looking back four times before she reached him.
“Come along, Beauty!” he said in a loud voice meant for the guards to hear. “We must treat the living, not waste our time loitering over the dead, who are beyond helping.”
Tears had cut glistening trails through the dust coating her face. They trudged in silence up to the hospital compound, where they washed their faces and hands in silence, and in silence examined the injured men who had escaped the collapse. Five times she made a mistake as she wrote to his dictation, but all he could think about was the fear that twisted her face. The hope.
As they bent over the basin to wash again she muttered, “How will we get them out of Akheres Town? They’ll be executed if they’re caught. I will be too.”
“I don’t yet know.”
“Lord Agalar!”
Eorgas hurried up to them. “We have a visitor. I told you this morning that my patron, Lord Gargaron, had arrived in Akheres Town. He’ll be very angered by this accident at the mine and any delay it brings. He’ll blame it on me. He’s a frightening man, but I know you won’t be intimidated. I beg you, will you accompany me to attend him?”
Bettany had been washing her hands but she stopped now, all motion frozen.
“Tell me again who Lord Gargaron is?” he asked, watching the way she struggled to keep her gaze lowered and her mouth closed.
“He is the head of Garon Palace. He’s the nephew of Princess Berenise, the royal lady who controls the gold mines here. Her Exalted Highness is too elderly and frail to make the journey herself, so he comes in her place.”
“Comes in her place to do what?”
“To make an accounting. As you can imagine, it is a great responsibility to oversee the gold mines. All the gold in Efea belongs to the royal family. I have been given the honor of controlling the excavations, as you know.”
“Ah. I see. And then after he counts it, then what?”
Months of intimacy had softened Eorgas’s suspicion and loosened his tongue. “Then he will accompany the gold shipment to the coast and thence to the royal treasury in Saryenia.”
The gold shipment.
They had traveled to this gods-forsaken outpost and waited months for this moment. Now their original plan must be catapulted into action.
“Of course I will accompany you, Eorgas. You can be sure I will not allow Lord Gargaron to intimidate you. Just allow me to finish up here and I will come over to your chambers.”
Once Eorgas had left, Agalar leaned close enough to whisper, shoulder brushing hers. “What is wrong?”
She was braced like a quivering animal ready to bolt from a predator’s leap. “Lord Gargaron is the man who destroyed my family. My father is a military genius who owed his patronage to a different lord. Gargaron murdered this rival lord and took my father to serve him. One of my sisters was taken to train in his Fives stable but I don’t know what happened to my mother and my other two sisters. As for me and my companions, we were just trash to be thrown out.”
“Will Lord Gargaron recognize you?”
“He’s never seen me, but he’s seen my sisters Jessamy and Amaya at least once.”
“Best not to take the chance, then. We shall depart—” He glanced at the sky and was surprised to find it only midmorning. Everything had happened so early, and so fast. “As soon as we can.”
At last her eyes lifted to his. Her gaze was an accusation. He would have given her the world if he knew how, but all he could do was this. Wasn’t each life saved a world of its own?
“There are things about my life I can’t tell you,” he said, wanting to soften that fierce glare. “I am not so different from you, Bettany. Please trust me.”
He watched her lips, thinking of the words he wished she might say: My world changed the day you walked into it. I think I love you.
Then she spoke in her harsh voice. “You’ve given me no choice but to trust you now.”
* * *
Inside Eorgas’s compound, silk hangings, silk couches, and silk pillows did their best to disguise the truth of what lay outside. The hangings depicted green fields threaded by channels of water. The couches were embroidered with flowers and brightly plumaged birds. Like his decorations, Eorgas was speaking with overwrought enthusiasm to a slender man of medium height fastidiously turned out in expensive clothing despite the heat.
“Who is this dusty, unkempt man?” Lord Gargaron asked Eorgas. He had the sour look of a man accustomed to bossing people around who weren’t moving fast enough for his liking.
“I am Agalar of Nerash. Of course you know who I am, as all educated men have heard of my revolutionary medical practices and brilliant treatises.”
As expected, the combined compliment and boast had the effect of making Lord Gargaron believe him. Eorgas’s steward brought water while Agalar launched into a monologue about his groundbreaking dissection studies.
“Not in Nerash, where knowledge is considered valuable rather than threatening. I only operate on executed criminals, so where is the harm?”
As drink and food was brought in, Agalar went into such excruciating detail about the difference between a healthily healing wound and a pus-infested one that Eorgas could not take a single bite. But Gargaron ate and drank without pause, listening with interest.
“You must accompany me back to Akheres,” he said at last. “Have you seen the Fives?”
“What is that?”
“It is the national game of Efea. It pits adversaries against each other on a court of obstacles. I am sure you will be interested in studying their strength, agility, and stamina. I have several promising adversaries ready to perform.”
Agalar wondered if one of them might be Bettany’s sister. More easily than he had hoped, it was arranged that he and Gargaron would return together that very afternoon to Akheres Town to observe a trial, as a round of Fives was called.
When Gargaron announced himself ready to tour the mines and went outside to gather his retinue, Agalar nudged Eorgas aside.
“My friend, can you do me a favor? I will spend a few days at the hospital in Akheres Town. I find myself quite unable to imagine a night without my assistant nearby.”
“By all means. I will happily hand her over to you. In a way, I already have.”
Eorgas laughed like they were sharing a joke, but it was his lewd smile that made Agalar want to punch him. Yet he had a lifetime of practice keeping his emotions under control.
“Your generosity is unbounded. But given the legal niceties of the situation, I would prefer to pay you a fair price, and you could dash off a transfer of ownership so I need not get into any trouble with the local magistrates.”
“Your recipe to cure my indigestion is payment enough. But if you insist, you may pay me a few coins as well.”
Eorgas instructed his clerk to find the correct manifest. There were the names of the twelve prisoners, including one “Bettany, daughter of Kiya, seventeen years of age according to her own testimony.” He wrote out a transfer of ownership in his own hand, sanded and sealed it, and presented it to Agalar together with a jovial slap on the shoulder.
Just like that, she was no longer subject to her Saroese masters.
6
As they came down out of the desert hills, the green bowl of land called Akheres Oasis dazzled Bettany. She had forgotten how alive the world could be. Air scented by the perfume of growing plants suffused her lungs with hope. Agalar had insisted she ride in the carriage with him instead of accompanying his supply wagons, as would have been appropriate. He had barely stopped talking the entire time, going on about his experiments with different forms of antiseptic wound dressings as if a mania had taken hold of his tongue. Her elder sister, Maraya, got like this sometimes, when she couldn’t stop talking about an obscure detail of philosophy or history that excited her imagination. The sound of his voice running at a galloping pace was soothing given how nervous she was. Eventually she forgot herself and interrupted him as he was talking about the difficulty of cleaning out wounds inflamed with pus.
“My mother used a tool called a syringe to clean out my father’s wounds when he would come home from war with stubborn inflammations.”
“A syringe?”
“It’s an Efean invention. It applies pressure, either out or in, so it can be used to suck pus out of a wound or to irrigate a wound with a cleansing agent. That’s how my mother used it, anyway.”
He stared at her in astonished indignation for so long she became self-conscious and busied herself by adjusting her scarf.
“Why did you not tell me this before?” he demanded.
All her life she had been constantly reminded not to question the powerful. “You are a lord physician. I am just my mother’s daughter.”
“I am not so different from you.”
She pressed on her eyes, suppressing a burst of anger that he could speak with such blithe ignorance, then managed to say with commendable calm, “Please, my lord, do not say so.”
“That was a rebuke, wasn’t it?” He looked out the window, face in profile, but the way he was tilting his head made her think he was repressing amusement and didn’t want her to guess because he knew it would irritate her.
“Why do you think so?” she said in as even-tempered a tone as she could dredge up.
His gaze flashed to her. “Because you’re trying to speak calmly instead of shouting angrily. I can always tell. Your chin quivers when you do it.”
She bit down on her lower lip.
“Ah!” His gaze lit up in a way that was stunningly sweet. “Was that a smile?”
“No!”
But she laughed.
And he laughed.
And that was worst of all.
She clasped her fingers tightly together and sat rigidly. Her face burned. He was a lord. Though both her parents were freeborn, she was now legally a slave belonging to Garon Palace. No matter what feelings a person might have, the gulf between their situations prevented any relationship except that of coercion, however soft its touch.
As gardens gave way to two-story mudbrick houses lining the road, he turned away from the view and met her gaze with a troubling intensity.
“I had the opportunity to be educated in medicine. You have the same skills I do: steady hands, sharp eyes, a strong memory, and a desire to see people healed rather than harmed. That’s all I meant when I said we are not so different.”
Retorts came easily to her but she had no answer for praise except a blush she hoped he would not misconstrue. This feeling of warmth and admiration toward him was nothing but gratitude on her part. The highborn cared only for their own comfort and power, even ones with such beautiful eyes. Her mother had fallen for a handsome face, and look where that had gotten her.
“My apologies. I did not mean to offend you.” He paused, then added pointlessly, “We are almost to the Fives court.”
“Aren’t we going to the hospital?”
“It will look suspicious if I do not attend Lord Gargaron first. Ash and Lark will find an isolated place for your companions to remain until we can figure out what to do.”
“We’ll need help from the locals to get them out of here. But why should people here risk arrest and execution for people they don’t know?”
“Treat the wound that reveals itself, not the one you fear you will find. We’ll take each part of the operation as it comes. For the moment, they should be safe in the basement of the hospital. Here we are.”
They disembarked, leaving two of their number to attend to the mules while the rest processed up stairs to the viewing terrace reserved for highborn Saroese.
Bettany did not love the Fives as her sisters did, but she hadn’t minded attending trials when they were younger. Those family outings had been one of the few times her Saroese father seemed at ease. With his Efean wife and mixed daughters around him, he could pretend to be just another man among everyday people, even if households like theirs were rare in Saryenia. But as soon as he put on his captain’s uniform his entire demeanor changed. She had hated him for the way she could never be sure if he cared more for his family or his ambition. Now, of course, they all knew the truth.
But as much as she despised the highborn Saroese and their heavy-handed rule, she was still curious to follow at the back of Agalar’s retinue onto a balcony. Never in her life had she walked among the highborn, much less seen their silk-pillowed chairs and cooling fans and trays of delicacies up close.
Never in her life had she sustained the shock she did when—hiding at the back of the group as Lord Gargaron made elaborate greetings to the brilliant young physician Lord Agalar—she saw a familiar face among Gargaron’s servants: her little sister Amaya.
Unlike Bettany, who resembled their mother most among the girls, Amaya looked far more like their fa
What were they doing here?
Agalar strode back from the balcony and said to Pearl, “Make sure everyone receives food and drink. It’s been a hot, thirsty journey.”
Bettany grasped his arm. His surprised gaze darted to her, and then he gently turned his wrist out of her hand and tipped his head toward the balcony to remind her that they had to play their parts. But the gesture heartened her, because it made them conspirators.
“My sister is sitting right there. I have no idea how she came to be here but she is also a prisoner of Lord Gargaron,” she murmured. “Can you free her?”
His chin came up. “Do you think I can?”
“If anyone can, you can.”
A reckless grin brightened his face. “Then I shall.”
“Lord Agalar,” said Pearl, her tone heavy with warning and disapproval.
“Let me try,” he said. “They’re just girls. You know it’s wrong, Pearl.”
She sighed. “If you can manage it without suspicion. But Beauty will stay in the back where no one sees her.”
He strode back to the cushioned chairs where the highborn sat in comfort and luxury. Amaya handed the completed tray to Denya, who took it forward to offer to the men. Amaya’s tender gaze on her friend caught Bettany’s attention. Of course Amaya, always chasing respectability, would delight in the attention of a highborn Saroese girl, thinking it made her special.
Love was an ugly gash cut through her angry heart. It would be easier to weep blood than to see her sister go along with the horrible injustice of the world they lived in because she was grateful for the scraps tossed to her. Why did she refuse to see the truth?