The Bone Palace (6 page)

She didn’t bother pulling back the covers, but fell limp across the bed, staring at the shadowed canopy as dawnlight brightened through the curtains, waiting for her
nerves to settle and her shaking to still. When they finally did, she rose to bathe and dress and face the rest of the day.

The lawns were still wet hours later and the sky hung dull and heavy, thwarting most morning pursuits or driving them indoors. And so Savedra found herself in the Queen’s Solar with Nikos’s wife.

When Lychandra Alexios lived, the room had been filled with couches and tables and expensive carpets, a place for comfort and quiet conversation. After she died, the furniture had gone into storage and dust had dulled the tall windows and skylights. Only last year had the king given his son’s wife leave to refurnish it.

If he expected her to turn it into anything other than a private practice yard, he never said so. Not that anyone who knew Ashlin would expect otherwise.

Steel rang and echoed as the princess and her sparring partner drove each other back and forth. Breath rasped, and boots scuffed and thumped on stone. Today they used western longswords, straight functional blades without the Selafaïn fondness for curve and ornament. Still beautiful, Savedra supposed, though she preferred her weapons more subtle. Her hand wanted to clench around the memory of a dagger and she adjusted the drape of her forest-green skirts over the bench instead.

Metallic light trickled through the windows, robbing the pink and yellow granite tiles of their warmth. Thick clouds dragged past overhead, pregnant with unshed rain. Savedra regretted the image as soon as it came to her and looked down again. She studied the flash of steel, the fighters’ footwork, the play of muscle under sweat-sheened skin—anything but Ashlin’s face or waist.

The princess’s stomach was lean as ever under her leather vest, she decided after several moments of carefully not looking. The last pregnancy had progressed far enough to show, but that softness was gone now. Muscle corded in Ashlin’s arms as she lunged and parried, and sweat darkened her linen shirt and pasted stray wisps of short candle-flame hair to her cheeks and brow. In the light of day Savedra’s fears seemed ridiculous—Ashlin could more than handle any assassin.

Warrior princess. Barbarian. One-day queen of Selafai. And by some joke of the saints, Savedra’s friend instead of bitter rival. A friend she would kill to protect.

As a friend, she should convince the princess to rest. No one else dared—no one wanted the edge of Ashlin’s tongue, especially Nikos. But the last miscarriage had been harder than the princess would admit, and Savedra had been the one to stroke her hair, to clean away the blood and pretend she never saw the tears. For all the years she’d wished to be born a woman in flesh as well as mind, some things she didn’t envy.

A footstep in the doorway drew her head up. The grey light wasn’t kind to Nikos—his sandalwood skin looked sickly and shadows smudged his eyes. Even his usual flamboyant clothing was subdued to shades of black and emerald. He hadn’t been in his rooms when she’d first knocked, far earlier than he normally rose, and Kistos had only shaken his head with the pained look that meant he’d been told not to speak of something. Nikos tried to school his face now, but she caught the tightness at the corners of his mouth. His lips quirked as he watched Ashlin.

He stopped behind Savedra’s bench and brushed a quick caress across her shoulder. “Have breakfast with me. I need to talk to you.”

Had Denaris told him about the assassin already? Usually she waited till lunch, if the would-be killer was already dead.

Once Savedra might have thought it a point scored, that he came to her and not his wife for counsel, but she had long since given up scorekeeping. Now loyalty and friendship pricked and tugged her with every conflict.

“Alone?” she asked, arching her eyebrows.

Before he answered, the sky opened with a sigh and rain rattled against the windows. The clash of steel died. Out of the corner of her eye, Savedra saw Ashlin frozen in place and scowling, her opponent’s sword brushing her belt buckle.

The guard, one of Ashlin’s personal retinue, said something joking in Celanoran and stepped back with a bow. She repeated the word, still frowning, and turned away to sheathe her blade. The soldier, well-used to her temper, caught Savedra’s eye and quirked an eloquent brow. One corner of her mouth curled wryly in response.

Ashlin crossed the room in long strides, rain-shadows rippling across her flushed skin. From her expression, Savedra guessed she wanted to chide Nikos for costing her the match. But that would mean admitting that he could distract her.

“My Lady,” he said with a shallow bow. “As I was just asking Vedra, would you join us for breakfast?”

Her scowl transformed into an entirely different frown as she sniffed herself. “I need a bath more than food.”

Savedra thought he would drop the matter now that courtesy was satisfied, but he surprised her. “You can have both in my rooms. I think you’ll like to hear this story.”

Nikos’ suite was in its usual disarray: clothing draped over bed and chairs, tables littered with books and notes
and the glitter of whatever cunning or lovely things had caught his eye this decad. The city called him the Peacock Prince—for his sartorial extravagance as well as the company he kept—but Savedra thought him more a magpie. He’d spent so many years studiously not being his father that it had become ingrained. The door that led to Ashlin’s adjoining suite was shut—Savedra didn’t want to know if she was locking it this decad.

Savedra helped herself to a cup of steaming coffee while servants laid out breakfast. She’d begun tasting his food as a warning to her mother; that habit too had become ingrained. It had its benefits, though—the new Assari empress was freer with trade than her predecessor, but coffee beans were still costly. Water gurgled in the pipes as Ashlin drew herself a bath, drowning the gentler susurrus of the rain.

Then Nikos began to recount his expedition to the royal crypts, and food and bath water and coffee alike cooled untouched.

“Vampires?” Ashlin perched on the edge of a velvet-cushioned chair, one boot still on, the other hanging forgotten in her hand.

Nikos nodded and ran a weary hand through his hair. “They live below the city, in catacombs underneath the sewers.”

The boot slipped from the princess’s fingers and thumped to the floor. “I thought those were only stories.”

“It was an arrangement made with an ancient Severos king,” Savedra said. That agreement was part of the family histories her mother had taught her. Those not often found in public records. She sipped her coffee and winced at the lukewarm bitterness; if only it tasted as wonderful
as it smelled. Nikos refreshed her cup from the carafe before he poured his own. “The vrykoloi agreed to stay in the catacombs and be… discreet.”

“Like murdering women in alleys?” Ashlin asked, eyebrows climbing. She brushed sweat-stiffened hair off her forehead absently.

“Of course. It would be indiscreet to kill them on the street, after all.”

The princess snorted and tugged off her other boot, letting it fall beside its mate. “What are you going to do?”

Nikos shook his head and stared at his cup. “I don’t know. I—” His voice lowered. “I can’t let Father find out.”

A chill snaked down Savedra’s back. Another fine line between discretion and treason. But he was right; Mathiros’s wrath was an ugly thing. He vented his grief and bitterness by campaigning in Ashke Ros, fighting the Ordozh raiders who pillaged there. That was madness and folly enough—no one wanted to bring the folly home.

“You’ll have to work quickly,” Ashlin said, with a soldier’s practicality. “The campaigning season is already over.”

“Not that quickly.” The flavor of Nikos’s frown changed. “There’s been a delay.” He flicked a fingernail against a folded parchment half-buried on the table.

“What now?” said Savedra. The king had promised his council a short campaign when he led troops to aid the Rosians in the spring, but one thing or another had delayed their return since late summer.

“An armistice.”

That sent Ashlin’s eyebrows winging toward her hair. “With the Ordozh?” The raiding horsemen were feared
like demons by any country that shared their border, and no one had managed to treat with their warlords in decades.

“They have a new
khayan
.” The foreign word slid smoothly off his tongue—for all his magpie mind, he knew how to pay attention. “An emperor of sorts. Father fought him.” His mouth twisted wryly at his father’s diplomacy. “This emperor is willing to have peace for a year, but he wants Father to be present for negotiations. The Council will complain, of course, but a treaty with the Ordozh is enough to give them pause. But we still need to find Mother’s jewelry soon, and deal with these tomb-robbers.”

Ashlin turned, unlacing her vest and peeling off her sweat-stained blouse on the way to the bathroom. She left the door ajar, and Savedra glimpsed the peach-pale curve of her back as Ashlin dropped her shirt. “I want to fight the Ordozh emperor,” she called over her shoulder. “Lacking that, I want to see a vampire. Your demons sound much more interesting than ours back home.”

Nikos rolled his eyes. “Your desire is my duty, Your Radiance.” Splashing drowned Ashlin’s retort. She swore in Celanoran, anyway.

One of their rare moments of easygoing humor. Savedra’s throat closed. Neither of them tried to shut her out, but they didn’t need to. Fate had done that well enough.

She stood, shaking her skirts with a practiced fillip, and poured the rest of her cooling coffee back into the pot.

“Where are you going?” Nikos asked.

She leaned in to kiss his cheek, sliding deftly away when he tried to pull her close. “To visit my mother.”

Savedra and Nikos’ relationship might not be the most impolitic the Azure Palace had ever seen, but she was hard
pressed to think of many others. Their houses had been bitter rivals for decades, ever since Thanos Alexios led the rebellion that overthrew the last of the Severoi kings. Not that Ioris Severos had been what anyone would call a good ruler, but that hardly mattered to the family. The last thing the Alexioi and their allies wanted was a Severos worming her way near the throne, especially the daughter of Nadesda, an archa known for her ruthlessness and wide-flung web of influence. Since Savedra moved into the palace she had narrowly avoided three poisoning attempts. Had she been able to bear Nikos any bastards she would be dead by now, no matter how careful she was or how powerful her mother.

Instead she was hijra; the third sex, in old Sindhaïn—men born in women’s bodies, women born as men, and the androgynes who were neither or both. The hijra veiled themselves with ritual and mysticism, keeping mostly to their temple in the Garden. The curious paid to see the faces of their priestesses, and paid more for their prophecies and their bodies. So Savedra’s rivals called her freak and whore—never mind that she had never taken the mark of the order—and made cruel jokes where Nikos couldn’t hear, but she would never be queen or mother to a usurper, and so wasn’t a permanent threat.

Savedra tried to let the hiss and splash of rain and wet streets drown her thoughts as the carriage bore her to the Octagon Court, but it was no use. Murder and sleeplessness left her maudlin, and the weather didn’t help. The grey veil, autumn was called, for the storms that swept down from the mountains; the same name was given to the listlessness and depression that took some people when the light and warmth vanished.

She had the use of Nikos’ coach, but it was simpler
and quieter to pass the gate and hire one of the dozen that always waited to carry visitors and courtiers to and fro. The ride was short—less than half an hour before the horses stopped under the covered walk of Phoenix House and the driver scrambled to help her out. His quick appreciative glance might well have been as much for her cloak as for her face, but he didn’t hesitate over the polite
milady
. Her bolstered pride earned him a gracious tip, and she nearly laughed at herself.

Eight houses brooded at one another from eight sides of the court, and at the tall bronze statue of Embria Selaphaïs that stood in the center. Severos, Alexios, Konstantin, Aravind, Jsutien, Hadrian, Petreus, and Ctesiphon. Eight houses, eight families, constantly squabbling and backstabbing over land and position and trade, a web of enmities and alliances that shifted every year with deaths and births and marriages. The rain turned all the houses into glowering grey hulks, but windows in only six glowed against the gloom. The Petreoi had retired to their estates in Nemea last month to elect a new archon, and the Ctesiphon house had stood empty since the family’s head had plotted against King Nikolaos twenty-eight years ago—the attempt had cost him his life, and his house their archonate and all holdings in the city for thirty years.

The carriage rattled away and Savedra turned back to Phoenix House, her heels tapping on wet flagstones as she climbed the steps. Two guards in black and silver livery bowed and held the door for her, and a maid appeared in the foyer to take her damp cloak.

“Is my mother in?” she asked as she shrugged off heavy velvet folds. Blue silk lining flashed in the lamplight.

“The archa is in the library, milady, with Lord Varis.”

“A private conversation?”

The woman shrugged one soft shoulder. “No more than usual.”

Meaning that no one had spelled the room to silence, then, and Nadesda wouldn’t mind an interruption. “Will you have tea sent up, please, and something to eat?”