Sterling (24 page)

“Escape?” He was mad. In Vorisipor they cut off the hands of thieves, and they did worse to escaped prisoners.

“How well do you know the city?” Erich went on.

“You know I’ve never been here before.”

“You are a well-read woman. Rack that brain of yours. Can you make a map of this place in your head?”

“Oh.” I had studied my map of Vorisipor voraciously every time Papa journeyed here. I closed my eyes. “The Governor’s estate sits on a hill near the center of the city. The city streets work in concentric circles around his estate for a two-league radius. Beyond that, the city design gets haphazard—a combination of old roads and new ways made by the Empire.” I paused, thinking. “There are two large parks, one north of the Governor’s estate and the other on the coast above the main harbor.”

“Roads out?” Erich asked.

I shook my head. “Most people come to Vorisipor by sea. The main road runs east into the Empire, and a smaller one heads north to the city of Muscan. I’m almost certain both roads have fortified gates at the city border.”

“North to Muscan, then,” Erich said. “That’s where we head.”

I nodded my agreement, though I doubted our ability to get there.

T
he carriage finally stopped
, and the Vhimsantese pirate, who’d driven, urged us out.

The southern air dripped, hot and humid. My dress stuck to my body, and Erich’s bloodstained shirt was equally sweaty. We could only shuffle awkwardly, tied as we were.

As the pirate prodded us forward
,
I tried to get my bearings, seeking the hill that might be the Governor’s estate. I could see none. We walked beneath an archway carved with flowers and vines. The path widened, and the surface changed from dirt to gravel. Beyond the archway, the vista looked provincial rather than urban. Designed gardens, larger and prettier than the neglected ones at Ricknagel Manor, sprawled in every direction. The scent of roses invaded the air. I had not expected such civilization in the Eastern Empire, though Serafina had told me about the gardens she had tended when she’d been trapped in Vorisipor in the Governor’s harem. I should have remembered her story and taken more precautions—she, too, had been taken by pirates.

Another prod of the pirate’s blade hastened our awkward steps. Roses exploded everywhere, climbing vines and lone bushes, small flowers and large, in full bloom in every color: yellow and peach, lavender with deep purple edges, violent pink, red so dark the blooms looked nearly black.

We stepped into a wide courtyard girded by repeating archways. I wished the arches cast more shade. The heat was oppressive.

“Continue!” barked the pirate. Erich and I had slowed our shuffle across the courtyard, as if the eye of the sun would mark us and steal our hope of secret escape.

Blessed cool air hit us as we finally entered a building, a dark space unlit except by vague sunlight that crept through windows in recesses near the ceiling.

Sentries wearing full Imperial garb lined the room. I finally understood why I hadn’t seen the Governor’s hill earlier: we were already upon it. Hope blossomed in my chest.

“He’s taken us to the Governor,” I whispered to Erich, unable to keep the good news to myself.

“Silence!” roared the pirate. Surely the Governor would punish the man for his poor treatment of us and his flagrant disregard for the rules of war.

The pirate herded us into the center of the room. He spoke to a nearby sentry in a low voice I could not hear.

The sentry departed. I exhaled. Perhaps this disaster would turn out well enough in the end. I wished I could reach the letter in my pocket—the Governor’s seal would mean something, here.

Everyone waited in silence—us, the pirate, the armored sentries. At last boot heels clapped stone beyond the room, two pairs at least. My hand tightened around Erich’s.

“What is this?” The voice spoke the Imperial language with all the tongue contortions that my tutors had tried to instill in me.

A man emerged from the shadows. He stood, tall for a Vhimsantese, but shorter than Erich, broad in the chest, with muscular legs beneath his short tunic. He seemed rather young to be a Governor of anywhere, much less Vorisipor. Such a duty was considered an honor to be bestowed on men who had shown long service to the Empire. I concluded that he was the Governor’s representative, rather than the man himself.

“Lord Jaxith.” Our pirate confirmed my suspicion by addressing the man. “I present Lady Sterling Ricknagel, as ordered.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. What did he mean,
as ordered
?

Lord Jaxith raked a cool gaze over Erich and me. “Who is the man?”

“The woman says a large ransom will be paid for him. I kept him alive to sell him back to the Lethemians,” our captor explained.

Lord Jaxith sighed and moved closer to us. “Ever the mercenary, Captain Preserni, but I doubt the Governor will be interested. Ransom is the least of his concerns at this moment.”

This whole exchange left me breathless with panic.

“Please!” I cried. “I have come here at the invitation of the Governor. I have a letter from him requesting a parley. I was promised free passage to and from the city of Vorisipor, under protection of the Governor’s escort. We were to renew a treaty made in good faith between my father, Lord Xander Ricknagel, and the Governor himself. Instead we have been mistreated by pirates. Release us at once!”

The pirate rolled his eyes, but Lord Jaxith turned. He lifted his brows. “What makes you think you did not receive our escort, Lady Ricknagel?” He gestured to the pirate. “Captain Preserni is a ranking officer in the Governor’s fleet. And he has escorted you to the Governor’s door.”

“He killed my men and took over my ship like a common pirate! He flagrantly disregarded the international code of parley. He took us prisoner!”

Lord Jaxith spoke slowly, as though to a child. “Lady Ricknagel. Perhaps you do not understand. Our countries are at war. As we speak, Costas Galatien has attacked our western border. Your father made promises that were not kept. Captain Preserni only took what actions he thought necessary to bring you to the Governor securely.” He waved to dismiss the pirate, Captain Preserni, and then strode out of the wide room. The sentries around the room shifted their postures at his departure.

“What’s happening?” Erich whispered.

I was quivering with rage and dismay. “That vile pirate was the Governor’s escort after all. Costas has engaged at the Imperial borders, and so they feel they can ignore the international laws of parley because we are at war—but that’s ridiculous! The very reason for the laws of parley is to allow for diplomatic measures during wartime. It makes no sense.”

An awful feeling of my own weakness came over me. I was not made for the ruthless deliberations and deceits of war. How could I outwit these repugnant and dishonorable men?

The sentries circled us, their metal armor clanging like temple bells as they knelt. Fear coiled in my stomach as heels clacked in the hallway outside.

Our lives hinged on my words to the Governor.

He entered with Lord Jaxith. Older, perhaps even twenty years older than Papa, the Governor had a gut rounded with years of easy living. He was a man of my father’s build, large and meaty, but Papa had trained every morning of his life so he would not go to seed the way this governor had. Despite the white streaks in the Governor’s hair, he dressed it in the Imperial Army’s topknot style. He wore a
shir
at the hip and a vest of scale armor.

Displeasure tainted the man’s face. “You are Xander Ricknagel’s brat?” he said in Lethemian.

Erich’s fingernails dug into my palm.

I tried to recover from my shock at such a rude address. “I am Lady Sterling Ricknagel. My father is dead, as you know, so I am the Head of House Ricknagel. I have come in his stead to renew the treaty—”

“Ha!” The Governor cut me off with a scornful exhalation. “Excellent. You will sign the deeds.”

“D—deeds?” I stammered. “What deeds?”

The Governor leaned into my face and spoke his own language. “Your father promised me lands for my assistance in his war. I gave the assistance. Now I want my lands.” He stuck a finger into my chest. He wore a gauntlet with metal spikes protruding from the knuckles. This was not a dandy’s gauntlet like Captain Preserni’s, but rather a deadly device that could cause pain and damage.

“I don’t understand,” I said in his tongue. “I came here to sign a peace agreement.”

The Governor snorted. “Peace? Peace is for women and old men. Your father contracted six thousand men from me to fight against Costas Galatien. In exchange for these men, I was to receive lands. I hold the land deeds already—your father was to sign them on his next visit here. I require signatures from the Head of House Ricknagel to take ownership of the property. Now,
Uraska,
I want my deeds signed.”
He fairly growled this last sentence. My cheeks flamed.
Uraska
meant
ugly
in his tongue.

I did not believe him. Papa would never have contracted with this man for foreign mercenaries to fight in a Lethemian war. And even if he had for some desperate reason made such an agreement, he would never have offered the Governor Ricknagel private lands as payment. Never in a hundred thousand years.

I decided to call the Governor’s bluff. “What lands?”

“Five thousand square leagues,” he replied, “from the Rift River boundary with Shiree, fifty leagues east along the river, one hundred south along the border.”

“Containing Orvia? My father would never have given you Orvia.” The prosperous city and surrounding farms supported a fair chunk of Province Ricknagel. Then dread choked me as I realized that House Ricknagel privately held that land—it was not entailed to the Lethemian crown. It was mine, and mine alone. If the Governor truly held the deeds, my signature was the only validation the documents needed.

The Governor smirked. “I think,
Uraska
, that you do not know what your father would do. Women do not understand the ways of men. Only westerners are such fools as to let a woman lead. You will sign the deeds for me now.” He waved, and five sentries gathered around Erich and me.

“I’ll do no such thing. You promised to parley! You said there was a treaty. You broke international laws; you had my ship attacked! You—”

“Do not speak to me of broken promises!” roared the Governor. “We gave Xander Ricknagel everything he wanted. We gave him men and some of our best spies and assassins.
We
upheld our agreement. Now we will receive our due.” He gestured at his sentries. They cut our bonds, and while I had wished for it earlier, I did not want to be severed from Erich.

“Sterling!” Erich bellowed as sentries pulled him away.

How had this gone so wrong?

T
he guards led
me into a darker, cooler hall, winding around several turns before entering a wide chamber. A broad desk waited at the back of the room like an altar. The sentries released my arms, and I made an insulted show of shaking them out.

My entire life I’d held to the idea that honor was synonymous with the name Ricknagel. The Governor’s accusations against Papa, if I gave them credence, shook the foundation of my world. I did not believe it—and yet, one doubt nagged: why had Papa never said anything about his business in Vorisipor? Why the secrecy?

Sweating palms augured a panic attack, but I could not give in. My hands brushed my skirt.
Take a deep breath, Sterling. In and out.

As I concentrated on breathing, the panic subsided.

The Governor entered, accompanied by Lord Jaxith, whose smirking face I was beginning to loathe.

“Lord Jaxith, the deeds.” The Governor snapped his fingers and sat at the desk.

Lord Jaxith searched the pigeon holes in the wall,
producing several scrolls and unfurling them before the Governor, anchoring them with stones.

“Come here.” The Governor beckoned me in a peremptory manner. “Read. You should know the truth.”

The papers would tear open the final sacred spaces of my heart. I did not want to read them. I lifted leaden feet and leaned over the words. They’d been written in Lethemian.

Beneath the damning words, two signatures swirled. The first devastated me. I knew the bold strokes of Papa’s hand. Beside his signature an imprint of blue wax further betrayed; it bore the signet seal of the Ricknagel warrior that matched exactly the one I wore on my left middle finger on the ring I’d taken from Papa’s body in Engashta.

Only my hands gripping the desk held me up.

The Governor’s smirk dissipated, leaving an expression of barely-contained fury. “The deeds,” he said, chin jutting. He indicated the other papers, but I had not finished with this one.

My hands whitened around the desk. “It says the property shall be transferred to you at such a time as the troops had been delivered and used to Xander Ricknagel’s satisfaction. He died before he could make use of them. The agreement is not valid.”

“Do not think to slip out of this,
Uraska
. My men waited weeks in Vorisipor for his summons. They were gathered, paid, and delivered. What is it to me if your father never used them? I fulfilled my side of the agreement. I’ll have my due.”

Lord Jaxith pushed the papers towards my hands.

Despite my cool arguments, my mind was a wreck.
My father had signed this agreement? He’d actually deeded lands to an Imperial?
It did say that the lands were for
only
Governor Proseri to hold in his own name, privately, but any way you looked at it, Papa’s actions signified treason. This had been just the sort of agreement King Mydon Galatien had feared when he had banned Papa from treating with Vorisipor. The Eastern Empire was well known for privately buying huge tracts of land and then fomenting rebellions. The Empire always hungered for land and expansion. Papa had betrayed his liege and broken the sanctity of our nation’s borders—for a measly six thousand troops? In the end, Papa had defeated Costas without them. He hadn’t even needed them.

“My lady?” Lord Jaxith’s hand still rested on the deeds.

My pulse thundered in my ears.

“Sign,” the Governor said coldly.

“I will not sign.” I blinked back tears. Papa had been the noblest, the worthiest, the best of all men. And he’d been a traitor.

I tasted bile as I snatched the first paper, shoving aside the stone weights. Another troubling thought had occurred to me. What was the date on the agreement?

3 Karenne. Late summer.
Before Stesi’s death.
I recalled which of Papa’s eastern trips had created this damning document. Papa had rushed to Vorisipor after we’d come home from Lake Tashriga where my mother had died. We’d both been depressed and grieving. And yet my father had gone to Vorisipor as soon as we’d arrived home. I’d thought it strange at the time.

On that visit, Papa had contracted these troops to support a war that did not yet exist or have
reason
to exist.
He’d already been planning his rebellion before Stesi’s assassination!
She’d been alive, a figurehead of reconciliation between House Galatien and House Ricknagel, the new wife of Prince Costas, on 3 Karenne 837. No one could have anticipated her untimely demise.

But her death had been Papa’s main justification for going to war!

My mind reeled as Lord Jaxith pressed a stylus, already dipped in ink, into my hand. Papa had accused Costas Galatien of Stesi’s murder. But
—Amassis above—
this document showed that
Papa had been planning his rebellion well before her death! I’d believed Papa had only been pushed to war by Stesi’s murder. By marrying Stesi to Costas, I’d thought he’d tried to
avert
the conflict that had been brewing between our Houses over the management of the eastern border. Hadn’t Papa been pushed past the brink after Stesi had died from what we all believed to be poison?

What did it mean?
I didn’t know what to believe.

I threw the stylus down, scattering ink across the deeds and agreements. I stumbled backwards. I needed to sit or I would faint.

“I won’t sign.” I crumpled to the cold, stone floor.