Huntress (2 page)

“I dare not leave her,” the King said stiffly. “She has had a difficult pregnancy.” Kaede remembered that the King’s first wife had died more than a decade ago, but he had not remarried until last year, when he chose a much younger bride. It had been something of a scandal, for the new Queen was the same age as Prince Con, the King’s son from his first marriage.

“We understand,” Maire Morighan said, as though they had argued over this many times already. She looked at Kaede. “We have also consulted the oracle stones about the invitation, and they called for Taisin, your classmate, to accompany the prince.”

Kaede shifted in her seat, confused. “But what does this have to do with me?”

The Mistress leaned forward slightly, her dark eyes focused on Kaede. “You have been called, as well.”

Kaede stared at her for a moment, dumbfounded. “Me?” It made no sense to her.

And then Taisin, who had been silent until now, said: “I had a vision. I had a vision, and you were in it.”

Chapter III

L
ord Raiden watched his daughter’s face as Taisin spoke. Kaede was startled, curious, but guarded. She lifted a hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. He had noticed the minute she entered the Council chambers that she had cut off her hair at chin-level since the last time he had seen her. She should be wearing it in a cylindrical roll at the nape of her neck in the manner of a proper sage-in-training—like Taisin. It was a small rebellion, but an unmistakable one, and Lord Raiden felt a familiar frustration rising in him. He had thought the Academy would discipline his daughter, force her to act in accordance with her station. But instead, it seemed to have only encouraged her to run wild. He could see traces of dirt on her hands, and he frowned.

“Taisin is a true seer,” Sister Ailan was saying, “and we consulted the oracle stones. They confirmed what she saw. Kaede must also go on this journey.”

“But the stones are not always clear,” Lord Raiden objected. “There are hundreds of stones with thousands of marks on them. Perhaps they’ve been read incorrectly. And Taisin is so young—”

Sister Ailan said crisply, “I have not read them incorrectly, Lord Raiden. And Taisin may be young, but she is our most gifted student in a generation.”

Lord Raiden looked pointedly away from Sister Ailan to Maire Morighan. “Mistress, I must question the wisdom of sending my daughter on such a mission. You yourself admitted it might be dangerous. I know the state of our kingdom right now, and I can assure you it is not a place of peace. I refuse to risk my daughter’s life.”

“Raiden,” the King said, “you know we would send as many guards with them as necessary.”

“Of course, Your Majesty, but you know as well as I do that Kaede is not gifted in the way that Taisin apparently is. Nor is she trained to defend herself as your son is. And Kaede is only a child; she is not yet eighteen.” Lord Raiden glanced back at Maire Morighan. “You should be sending an experienced sage, not a couple of students. You heard my daughter—she isn’t even familiar with the Borderlands Treaty.”

Kaede’s cheeks burned at the dismissive tone in her father’s voice. Resentment seethed inside her, acidic and sour. She wanted to lash out at him, but Maire Morighan gave her a warning look, and Kaede reluctantly bit her tongue.

“Lord Chancellor,” the Mistress said, “I understand your concern for your daughter’s safety, but the matter is no longer in our hands. Taisin’s vision was exceptionally clear, and when we consulted the oracle stones about Kaede, they were decisive. Kaede is meant to accompany Taisin, and no other sage may go. That is the word of the stones. Even if we don’t always understand why the oracle stones say what they do, there is a reason. They have never steered us wrong. We must trust in them.”

“Wait,” Kaede interrupted, frustrated. She turned to Taisin, whose brown eyes were shadowed as though she had not slept well. “What was in this vision?” Kaede asked. “What was I doing there?”

Taisin glanced at Sister Ailan as if to ask permission, and when her teacher gave an almost imperceptible nod, she said haltingly, “I—I saw you on a beach—a beach made of ice.” The memory of it washed through her; she felt the same loss and fear she had felt that night in the practice room, and beneath it all, she remembered the deep ache of love. It was disorienting, for in her life at the Academy, she had rarely noticed Kaede before, and now, sitting there across the table, Kaede was simply another girl in a black Academy robe, the plain stone buttons marching across her left shoulder as they did across her own. Taisin was sure she had no feelings for her—not here in the Council chambers. The emotions in the vision seemed to belong to someone else, and Taisin couldn’t reconcile them with the present.

“What were we doing on this beach?” Kaede asked.

Taisin took a deep breath. “The vision was very clear, but it was also quite limited. I only saw the beach, and the ocean… and you. You were important.” Taisin colored, and she lowered her eyes to her lap. “I had the vision the night after the Council told me the oracle stones called for me to go to the Fairy Queen. I knew that the vision was about this journey, and I knew it was telling me that you must be a part of it.”

“Kaede,” Lord Raiden said, addressing his daughter for the first time that day. “You know that you have duties that you cannot shirk.” Kaede’s stomach dropped; she should have known he would bring that up. “This is not the best time for you to be absent.”

“When would be the best time, Father?” Sarcasm twisted her words. “Should we ask the Fairy Queen to wait until you’re finished with me?”

The Chancellor’s face darkened with suppressed rage. “You disrespect your King, and I will not tolerate that,” he snapped.

“I think you are the one who is disrespecting
me
,” Kaede countered, hot with anger.

The King frowned, but before he could speak, Lord Raiden pushed his chair back from the table, the legs scraping loudly against the stone floor. He stood, towering over the table. “You are behaving like a spoiled child, Kaede, which only goes to show that you are not prepared to take on the responsibility that this journey would entail.”

“If I’m so irresponsible, why do you want to marry me off to some lord from the South?” Kaede demanded. “Why would you trust me with a political alliance if you think I’m such a child?” The words seemed to echo in the room, and she heard her own heartbeat thudding in her chest. When her father had first presented her with his plan last winter, they had argued over it for hours. He wanted her to marry a complete stranger just to keep the man’s province under the control of the King’s Guard. The idea of it sickened her.

“We are trying to prevent a
war
, Kaede,” Lord Raiden said coldly. “Surely you are not so selfish that you would send your kingdom to war just because you don’t wish to settle in the South?”

“It’s not about where I wish to
settle
, and you know it. And who’s the selfish one? You only want me to marry him because it would be good for
you
.”

Maire Morighan rose abruptly, cutting into their argument. “Enough,” she said. “Lord Raiden, please sit down.”

“Mistress—”

“
Sit down
,” the Mistress ordered. The Chancellor’s face was nearly purple with frustration, but he sat, the chair legs scratching across the floor again. “Lord Raiden, with all due respect, this is not your decision to make.”

For one brief, glorious moment, Kaede felt vindicated, but then her father said, “She is my daughter. She is not of age. She does not go where I do not permit.”

Kaede fumed, but before she could rebut him, the Mistress said coolly, “Undoubtedly that is true. But this journey is every bit as important—perhaps even more important—than your plans for her. You must give her up to us. She has another duty that comes first now.”

“Don’t I have any say in this?” Kaede asked. She looked at Maire Morighan, who seemed exasperated with both her and her father. “Mistress, you can see that I have no desire to do what my father wants me to do. But you aren’t giving me a choice, either.” Maire Morighan frowned, but before she could speak, Kaede rushed on. “I have been a student here for almost six years. Not the best student, but I have paid attention. And the one thing that has always made sense to me is the teaching that every individual has the right to make choices about their lives. Every minute of every day, we make choices. Why would you take that away from me now?”

Kaede knew she was taking a risk by speaking so forcefully to the Mistress of the Academy. But the anger she felt at her father boiled within her, driving away any fear of offending Maire Morighan.

The Mistress was not surprised by Kaede’s willfulness. That had always been the one quality that hampered Kaede’s ability to work through the rituals. But she was taken aback by Kaede’s appeal to the Academy’s teachings. From across the table, Sister Yuna said softly, “She is right. She deserves to choose her own path.”

Maire Morighan looked at Kaede, whose face was filled with desperate determination. At last the Mistress said, “All right. You have until the evening meal to make your decision.”

Chapter IV

K
aede’s entire body was tense as she hurried down the stairs away from the Council chambers. The unexpected encounter with her father had rattled her, and she needed to shake it off. Her teachers would have advised her to go to the practice hall, to sit quietly, but she wanted to go outside and breathe the fresh air.

She took the empty corridor behind the kitchens, avoiding the students at their work shifts. The kitchen cat, curled in his basket by the back door, stretched lazily as she unlatched the door and slipped outside. The rain had lightened to a drizzle, but the cobblestones of the path down to the beach were slick, and she walked carefully. The sea, visible ahead of her in a gray swathe only a few shades darker than the sky, moved in giant, undulating swells. She could hear the crash of the surf below.

When she reached the edge of the kitchen garden, she went down a narrow stone staircase toward the sand. A stream of smoke curled up from the groundskeeper’s workshop huddled against the retaining wall ahead. Fin was in. Kaede hesitated only a moment before heading for the workshop. She knocked on the wooden door, and hearing a gruff answer from within, she pushed it open, the hinges creaking slightly.

Inside, the workshop was a warren of crates and sandbags, wood scraps and tools. A lamp was lit in the back, where Fin called out, “Who is it?”

“It’s me,” Kaede replied. She threaded her way through the shop toward the sound of Fin’s voice.

Fin was seated on a stool at her workbench, mending a gardening tool. Her short gray hair curled over her ears and forehead, which was marked with black oil as if she had pushed her hair aside with dirtied fingers. She had once been tanned dark from the sun, but without a clear day in months, her skin had paled. She was still as vigorous as ever, though, despite the fact that she had celebrated her half-century mark the previous winter. She glanced at Kaede with quizzical brown eyes. “What are you doing down here? Your work shift with me isn’t until tomorrow. Maesie has you today, doesn’t she?”

Every student at the Academy spent several hours each day working in the kitchens or the library, cleaning the practice hall or sweeping the corridors. During Kaede’s first year, she had been assigned a task suitable for a Chancellor’s daughter: sitting in the library and marking down the names of every student who came and went. The duty had left her so restless that she had soon been reassigned to Fin, the Academy’s groundskeeper, who set her to work sweeping the Seawalk or filling sandbags. On slow afternoons, Fin would take her out to the North Beach and set up a target, teaching her how to toss the knives she kept in a tooled leather case, evidence of her former life with the King’s Guard.

Fin saw the nervous energy in Kaede’s stance, and she asked, “What happened?”

Kaede took a deep, shaking breath. “My father is here. And the King. When did they arrive? Where is their ship?” She hadn’t seen or heard any ship in the harbor that morning, and she knew it would have caused an uproar, for the only ships to come and go were scheduled months in advance.

Fin put down the tool, wiping her oily fingers on a rag. “They came in the middle of last night. The ship sailed back to Seatown as soon as the King disembarked. They wished to keep it secret.” But there could be no secrets from Fin; she had been roused by Sister Nara herself, bearing a candle and urging her to come down to the dock. She looked at Kaede’s agitated expression and said, “We should take a walk out to the North Beach.”

Startled, Kaede said, “Now?”

“Now is as good a time as any. I could use a break.” Fin levered herself up from the stool, reaching for a long leather case on the shelf bolted to the wall above her head. She slung the case over her shoulder. Her joints were a bit stiff from sitting still in the damp air, yet she moved with the measured gait of the former soldier she was.

Kaede followed Fin out into the misty afternoon. “Did you know they were coming?” she asked as they walked across the wet sand.

Fin shook her head. “I didn’t. They sent word by carrier to the Council, but only an hour or so before they arrived. You’ve spoken to them?”

“Yes. The Mistress summoned me to the Council chambers.”

“Ah. What did they want?”

Kaede explained what had happened, and recounting the argument with her father caused her anger to flare again. “I can’t do what my father asks—I just can’t,” she said vehemently.

“Are you—” Fin hesitated, glancing sideways at Kaede, who had a fierce scowl on her face. “Are you in love with someone else? Is that why you refuse to marry this man?”

Kaede almost laughed. “No. I’m not in love with… anyone.” She wasn’t sure if she ever had been in love, although she remembered the rush of emotions that accompanied her first kiss, with her classmate Liya, up in the crescent garden. It had been almost two years ago, on a sunny early summer afternoon. They had been clumsy and shy at first, but the giddiness that flooded through her after the kiss had plowed through all those nerves. She had felt exhilarated—free. But had she been in love? She didn’t think so. There was no heartache on either side when their little romance ended a few months later.

Kaede and Fin rounded an outcropping of rock that jutted from beneath the Academy’s iron foundation and stepped onto the North Beach, a crescent of unmarked, light brown sand cradling the sea. About a hundred feet out, waves crashed against submerged rocks that created a breakwater. When it had been warm, Kaede had often come here with classmates to swim in the sheltered cove. Fin set the case down on the sand and unlatched it, asking, “Who does your father want you to marry?”

Kaede paced back and forth, her footprints sending long trails across the sand. “One of the lords in the South. Someone named Lord Win.”

“Is it a political alliance?”

“Yes.”

“Your older brother made a political marriage, didn’t he?” Fin unfolded the wings of the leather case; within it were about a dozen knives. The smallest—an ornately jeweled dagger—could fit into an ankle holster; the largest was more accurately a small sword.

“Kaihan? Yes. He married the King’s niece.”

“And how is that marriage working out?” Fin straightened, carrying a square target toward the stony cliff wall that sheltered the cove. Years ago, she had affixed hooks into the wall and punctured holes in the target to hang it.

“I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything out of the ordinary.” Kaede stopped pacing and squatted down by the knife case. She was about to select her favorite throwing knife—a bright steel dagger with a black leather grip—but Fin bent down and pointed to a different one.

“Why don’t you try this one today?” Fin suggested.

Kaede was surprised. “Why?”

Fin shrugged and moved off. “It’s time for a change, I think.”

So Kaede picked up the dagger that Fin had pointed out. The blade was just shorter than the length of her forearm, and though it was made of a darker metal than the other knives, it was simple, straightforward, and ground very sharp. Her fingers slid over the nubbly surface of the grip, and it fit comfortably enough in her hand.

She rose, counted out twenty paces from the target, and shifted the hilt in her hand so that the blade was pointing backward toward the sea. Then she flung it, extending her arm in the direction of the target. This dagger flew differently than the ones she was accustomed to. It was heavier, and she hadn’t adjusted her technique to the weight yet, so it struck the very edge of the target and tumbled to the sand.

Fin went to pick it up and asked, “Do you think Kaihan objected to his marriage?”

“I don’t think so. His wife—we’ve known her since we were children. But even if he did object, it wouldn’t have made a difference. My father doesn’t take no for an answer.”

Fin handed the dagger back to her. “Again. The flight of the blade was unsteady last time. Be centered in your body when you throw it.”

Kaede curled her fingers around the grip again, and this time, she felt the core of her belly engaged in the movement of her arm. When the knife left her hand, she felt her fingers reaching after it, and the dagger struck the center of the target.

“Good. It’s not so different from the other knives, you see.”

Kaede sighed. “I can’t marry this Lord Win.”

“Why not?” Fin’s expression was blandly curious.

Kaede pulled a face. “Fin, I could never marry any man, you know that.”

Fin gave her the dagger again. “Kaede, you should realize that the chances of your making a political marriage with another woman are—well, it is unlikely. It has happened before, but you know that it’s rare.”

Kaede reddened. “I don’t want to make any political marriages with anyone.”

“That is your birthright, and it is your burden.” Fin stepped out of the way. “Try it again.”

The dagger clanged against the cliff, several inches off the target.

Fin asked, “Did you talk to your mother about it?”

Kaede grimaced. “Yes. She said that I should be open to the possibility that I could love a man. That I was being too narrow-minded.” She pushed her hair behind her ears as the wind came up, blowing a salty, wet breath across her face. “And beyond that, she said that plenty of married women have lovers—and sometimes their husbands die young, especially in a time of war. Can you believe that?”

“Well, your mother is a politician’s wife,” Fin said, smiling slightly.

“Yes. But I don’t want to be a politician’s wife.”

“What do you want to do, then?”

Kaede held the knife in her hand again, feeling the weight of it. It was made of iron, she realized. Solid iron. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I don’t want to be a politician, either. Marrying this man is just a way for me to establish myself at court. It cements an alliance, and I would be expected to do my best to make sure it stays strong. I’d have to be pregnant within a year. I don’t want that. I want to do something else with my life. I’m not like Kaihan, who just wants to have a family and stay in Cathair. I want to see the world.”

“You could see it. If you go with Taisin to answer the invitation of the Fairy Queen.”

Kaede had never even considered the possibility of seeing Taninli, the Fairy Queen’s city. It was only a legend to her. A thrill ran through her as she thought about it: What would it be like to set foot on those streets? They were supposedly built of diamonds. But a nagging worry tugged at her. “Fin, I don’t understand something. Yes, the idea of going on this journey—it’s exciting. At the very least, if I go I can put off the marriage my father wants to arrange. But the vision that Taisin had…” She trailed off, struggling to put her finger on what was bothering her. “I think she’s hiding something,” Kaede said at last. “I have no talents as a sage, but Taisin said that I’m important. Why? It doesn’t make sense to me. But visions—I don’t think they can be avoided. I’m not even sure if I truly have a choice.”

Fin studied her student, with her serious expression and windblown hair. She noticed Kaede’s fingers cradling the hilt of the iron dagger as if it had always been hers. After a long moment, Fin said, “The teachers here know much more about visions and fate than I do. But what I know is that in every moment of your life, you have a choice. Every choice leads to another, and another after that. You can only make a decision based on what you know now.”

Kaede laughed. “That’s almost exactly what I said to Maire Morighan. But what if what I know now is not enough?”

“Making a decision isn’t about knowing every potential consequence. It’s about knowing what you want and choosing a path that takes you in that direction.”

Kaede shifted the knife from her right hand to her left, and back again. “I guess I know what I want, then.” She lifted the knife; it was heavy, dependable. She felt every muscle in her arm engage as she threw it. The dagger struck the very edge of the target and clung there, quivering slightly. She sighed, opening and closing her fingers. “At least, I know what I don’t want. And I’ll delay that marriage as long as I can.”

Fin put her hand on Kaede’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. Then she went back to the target and retrieved the knife, bringing it to Kaede. “This is for you,” Fin said. “It’s forged from one piece of iron. I have had it since I left my mother’s home; it used to be my father’s dagger. It will now be yours.”

“I can’t take your father’s dagger,” Kaede objected, trying to give it back to Fin.

“Yes, you can. This dagger is as powerful a thing as I have ever had.” Reluctantly, Kaede took it. “If you go on this journey, you’re likely to encounter the Xi. They don’t like iron. Most blades these days are made of steel, but this one is all iron. And it has survived for many generations. You should keep it on you.”

“I thought the idea that the Xi don’t like iron was only an old wives’ tale. Is it true?”

“This Academy would not be built on iron if it were only a tall tale. Do you realize how much effort—how much magic it took to raise this place?”

Kaede looked at the Academy’s iron foundation, sunken into the top of the rocky cliff. Above the dark gray iron, stone walls formed the North Tower.

“No Xi will ever set foot on this island,” Fin said. “That’s proof enough for me.”

“Have you ever seen the Xi?”

Fin nodded. “When I was with the King’s Guard in the Northerness. I was young. The Xi came out of the Great Wood one afternoon while we were securing one of the villages up in the hills, and they watched us.” Fin voice was urgent. “You keep an eye out, Kaede. They’re not like you and me. Bear that in mind.”

Her words reminded Kaede of something else the King had said. “Have you heard the news of creatures coming out of the Wood in recent months? The King spoke of them, but Maire Morighan did not explain. Is it the Xi?”

Fin furrowed her brow. “I don’t know. Your teachers have told you nothing about it?”

Kaede shook her head.

“What I know is only hearsay,” Fin said. “Some strange bodies have been found in the villages bordering the Wood. Some folk have said they’re the bodies of monsters. All I know is that the Xi don’t look like monsters, and that’s why they’re so dangerous. If you’re going into the Wood, it won’t be an easy journey. You must keep that dagger with you at all times.”