The Lyre Thief Read online

  “Are you deaf as well as stupid?” the trader bellowed.

  Rakaia looked around the courtyard of the Winternest keep, certain everyone must be staring at them. It was barely dawn and the caravans were anxious to be on their way. Several fires lit in metal braziers had clusters of caravan guards huddled around them, drinking mulled wine and warming their hands. It was spring, but there were still piles of dirty snow shoveled against the walls and the air stung with a stiff, icy breeze. Shivering in her half-sister’s borrowed cloak—not nearly as grand or warm as her own—Rakaia feared that any moment now someone was going to point at her and yell, “That’s her! The princess! Don’t let her leave!”

  But nobody said a word. The yard was filled with people and wagons, livestock, chickens, and soldiers stationed here at the keep, wearing the red and gold livery of Sunrise Province emblazoned with the lion’s head escutcheon of the Lionsclaw family, in addition to the scores of mercenaries who guarded the caravans. There were several whores relaxing on the steps of the main hall after their night’s labors and a number of harried customs men running back and forth, trying to make sure no revenue slipped past them and into the greedy hands of their Fardohnyan counterparts on the other side of the Widowmaker Pass.

  “Um . . . what would you consider a fair price?” she asked, hoping he’d give her some idea. Rakaia had never had to buy so much as a jug of wine in her entire life before today.

  The man laughed. It was a big, hearty bellow that made her feel like a small child. “Ha, you think you’re cleverer than me, don’t you?”

  “I guess we’ll find that out when we’ve agreed on a price,” she replied, not sure how much longer she could hedge like this without naming a figure. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to pay. Her mother had equipped her with a handful of gold coins and she carried a king’s ransom in jewelry tucked into the belt of Charisee’s borrowed dress. What she lacked, she was discovering very quickly, were the basic life skills one needed to survive outside a harem.

  “Very well. One hundred rivets!”

  The only thing Rakaia knew about haggling was something she’d overheard her father say once when he was negotiating a trade deal with some Denikan princes who’d driven a hard bargain, by all accounts, for their precious sulfur and saltpeter—he who mentions a price first, loses.

  And by the way the guards walking past them were laughing, she figured his price was ridiculous.

  “Five rivets,” she countered.

  “That’s insulting!”

  “So is your offer.”

  “Eighty, then, and if you don’t like it, you can walk.”

  She guessed he was bluffing. She hoped he was bluffing. “Twenty.”

  The trader studied her for a moment and then he nodded. “Twenty it is.”

  It seemed a little quick, but at least now Rakaia had her way out of Winternest. She turned her back to the man as she fished the coins from her purse, and then turned back and placed them in his outstretched hand.

  He laughed again as his meaty, grimy fingers closed over the coins. “Ha! Who is so clever now! I would have taken you for five rivets.”

  You’re not so clever, Rakaia thought. I’d have been happy to pay eighty. But she kept her thoughts to herself as she followed the man to the covered wagon he owned. Let him have his minor victory.

  She glanced up at the sky. It would be full daylight soon and Charisee would wake. “How long before we leave?”

  “Soon.” The trader then wrapped his big, meaty hands around her waist and lifted her bodily into the wagon. “In the meantime you can keep Aja and Barlia company.”

  She supposed he meant the two young women already seated in the wagon, who were watching her curiously. She smiled at them warily and turned to the trader. “Are they your wives?”

  That set the man off again, laughing hilariously. “Wives? Oh, you are too much, girl . . . Wives.” He headed off toward the front of the wagon and his horses, still guffawing. As she took her seat on the wooden bench that lined each side of the wagon, she could hear him saying, “Hey, Kirko, did you hear that? Aja and Barlia are my wives!”

  The girls seemed to find it amusing, too. Rakaia didn’t get what was so funny or why they were laughing at her. One of the girls noticed her irritation. “Marten is our . . . employer,” she explained. “He’s flattered you think him respectable enough to own two young wives. Or maybe that you think he has two wives at all.”

  Only then did Rakaia notice the jeweled court’esa collars the women wore. She cursed her foolishness. They weren’t “fine ladies”; they were whores, albeit well-trained and very valuable whores. Even if they hadn’t been, she should have remembered Hythrun men only took one wife at a time. She was demonstrating nothing but her breathtaking ignorance of the wider world by not acknowledging that. “He’s not offended, is he?”

  The older girl shook her head. “You’ve probably made his day. Are you riding all the way to Tarkent with us?”

  Is that where we’re headed? Tarkent was the largest seaport in southern Fardohnya. She had a chance to find a way to her uncle’s province overland as well as by sea, from Tarkent. Rakaia glanced out of the wagon. Surely they would be leaving soon? Charisee might wake any moment, find that letter, and then do what she invariably did and blurt out the truth. “I hope so.”

  That was the fatal flaw in her mother’s plan, Rakaia had always thought. Charisee was a terrible liar. Neither did Rakaia share her mother’s view that her slave-born half-sister would jump at the chance to become a princess. More likely she would come clean about her true identity and where her sister had gone the first time someone looked at her sideways.

  Rakaia looked out of the caravan again, wondering what was taking so long. Although she knew Charisee would not deliberately betray her, she also knew the younger girl was honest to the point of being exasperating. Even if she’d wanted to help Rakaia escape, even if Rakaia had confessed the true reason for fleeing the harem, Charisee might not be able to help herself and accidentally give the game away.

  Either way, Rakaia had no intention of being in Winternest when her half-sister’s conscience got the better of her.

  It had been much easier than she’d feared to get away. While the huge Fardohnyan caravan filled the courtyard of Winternest and drew everyone’s attention from the Fardohnyan princess in residence, Rakaia had taken Charisee’s plain, homespun servant’s dress and cloak, and most of the bridal jewelry her father had gifted to her, while her sister slept in her bed, made her way across the bridge connecting the two halves of the fortress, then headed downstairs to the main yard to negotiate her passage.

  She had chosen well. Tarkent. From there Rakaia could make her way to Lanipoor and her uncle’s palace. Her mother promised he would protect her. She just had to find a way to Lanipoor.

  Find a way . . . Gods, a month ago I was a princess. I never in my life thought I’d need to worry about finding my way anywhere.

  The caravan finally moved off, trundling slowly out of the massive studded gates of Winternest in the early morning, and not a moment too soon. As they made their way out of the keep and onto the road to the Widowmaker Pass, a century of Greenharbour Raiders waited patiently for them to pass on the southern side of the road. Rakaia hunkered down in the back of the canvas-covered wagon while Aja and Barlia waved and flirted with the Raiders as the troop rode by. She heard Marten exchange a greeting with the soldiers, but couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying. She didn’t need to. This was the escort, she didn’t doubt for a moment, sent to bring Princess Rakaia to Greenharbour.

  “Did you see her?”

  Rakaia looked up as Aja—the younger of the court’esa—tired of watching the Raiders, returned to her seat in the back of the wagon. They traveled in an unremarkable vehicle, with no obvious signs of wealth, not even a guard. Marten thought the caravan protection enough, apparently. Perhaps he worried an extra guard only served to advertise that he had something worth protecting. The Widowmake
r Pass and the mountains surrounding Winternest were riddled with bandits. Marten carried a large quarterstaff across his knees as he drove to deter trouble, and kept his court’esa out of sight, in case the thought of taking slaves or the chance for a bit of recreational rape and pillage overcame the mountain bandits’ natural caution.

  “Did I see who?” Rakaia asked.

  Aja was a pretty girl of about seventeen with thick curly hair and skin the color of rich dark chocolate. Her companion, Barlia, was a little older and well on her way to becoming jaded. Her hair was braided into hundreds of thin strands with various charms and beads plaited into the ends, making her clink softly whenever she moved her head. Aja still teetered on the brink of childhood—all gangly legs and tactless curiosity.

  “The princess.”

  “What princess?”

  “The Fardohnyan one that was supposed to be at Winternest when we were there.”

  “How do you know about her?”

  “We passed her retinue in the Widowmaker,” Aja said. “They were heading back to Talabar. Do you suppose she’s very pretty?”

  “It won’t matter,” Barlia said, pushing aside the canvas wagon cover to take a seat on top of one of their trunks as the rattle of tack and clop of the Raiders’ horses faded into the distance. “She’ll be a spoiled, stuck-up little bitch, whatever she looks like.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “All Hablet’s daughters are. She could be the most beautiful creature in all creation, but I’ll bet you anything you name she’s as ugly as sin on the inside.”

  Rakaia was shocked. And more than a little wounded by Barlia’s harsh and completely unwarranted assessment of her character.

  “She might be nice,” Rakaia suggested.

  Barlia shook her head. “I know you probably feel the need to defend your countrymen, but really . . . even in Fardohnya, have you ever heard anybody with anything good to say about a single one of Hablet’s daughters?”

  Rakaia was shocked. Is that true? Do people hate us?

  And why do I care—I’m not one of Hablet’s daughters.

  “Do you despise the High Princess of Hythria as much as you despise her sisters?” Rakaia asked. Even if she dismissed Barlia’s words as simple Trinity Isle prejudice against Fardohnyans, surely they didn’t think that about the Fardohnyan-born High Princess of Hythria. Besides, Rakaia thought everybody in Hythria loved Adrina. Her mother had assured her the Hythrun would welcome their high princess’s younger sister with open arms when she expressed concern for Charisee’s eventual fate. It never occurred to Rakaia people might hate her just because of who she was.

  Barlia shrugged. “Adrina seems a cut above your average Fardohnyan princess, I suppose, from what I hear. They say the High Prince is besotted by her.”

  “I heard she bewitched him.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Aja,” Barlia said, settling herself more comfortably on her makeshift seat. “She did no such thing.”

  “Maybe the Harshini bewitched him, then,” Aja insisted. She liked the idea of somebody being bewitched, apparently.

  “Why would they do that?” Rakaia asked. She didn’t believe such nonsense for a moment, but this was proving to be a very strange new world she was entering. She needed to find out everything she could about it, while she had the opportunity. Once they reached Tarkent, she would be on her own.

  “Well, for peace, of course,” Aja said, rolling her eyes at the obviousness of the answer. “There hasn’t been a proper war on this continent since Damin of Hythria married Adrina of Fardohnya.”

  “What about the war in Medalon?” Rakaia asked, wishing she’d paid more attention to her lessons in government and history. “Didn’t someone lay siege to the Citadel in Medalon, or something, after they got married?”

  “That was right after. And Hythria didn’t lay the siege. Prince Damin broke the Karien siege of the Citadel and then the demon child saved the Harshini by killing the Karien god, Xaphista,” Barlia said. “That’s what Aja means. Since then, the Harshini have returned to the Citadel, the Sisters of the Blade are done, Karien has embraced all the gods again, and King Drendik’s sworn to stay on his side of the border. The High Prince of Hythria and the Lord Defender of Medalon are apparently best friends. And Hythria and Fardohnya can’t go to war any longer, because the Hythrun High Prince is married to your king’s eldest daughter, so even if he wanted to, Hablet’s not permitted to declare war. Hythria even has a treaty with our people now.”

  Aja nodded in agreement. “Marten says that’s why there’s so many bandits about these days in the Sunrise Mountains. All that’s left for fighting men to do is be a bandit or be employed chasing them down.”

  “But isn’t being at peace a good thing?” Rakaia asked, not sure she understood what these girls were complaining about.

  “Not if you’re the God of War,” Aja chuckled.

  “We used to pray to him all the time when I was little,” Barlia told her with a sigh. “Now we pray to the God of Thieves to protect us on the road from his followers. Who do you pray to . . . ? What is your name, anyway?”

  “Ra . . . Raka,” she stammered. “And I used to worship Jelanna. My papa wanted lots of babies.”

  “He must be a very rich man!” Marten called from the seat of the wagon outside. Their employer must have been listening to their conversation. Then he added with a chuckle, “No pauper wishes for more mouths to feed.”

  “Well, he wasn’t a wise man,” Rakaia called back, forcing a laugh to cover up the fact that she had almost let something about her true identity slip. “I can promise you that!”

  “He taught you to speak Denikan well,” Barlia remarked, looking at her with a hint of suspicion.

  “He made sure we all spoke as many languages as possible,” she said, silently cursing her mother for not coming up with a plausible reason for that. It wasn’t common to be multilingual, particularly not a girl, unless she was of noble birth. Hablet’s reason for educating his daughters was simple. They were easier to marry off to foreigners in far distant lands where they would no longer bother him if they spoke the language.

  “Well, it’s a good thing, I say,” Aja said, smiling at Rakaia. “It’s a long way to Tarkent. This way you can practice your Denikan and we can practice our Fardohnyan.”

  “You’d all be better served practicing not saying anything at all,” Marten called back to them from the front of the wagon, but his court’esa laughed and ignored his comments. As the sound of Rakaia’s escort faded into the distance, and the caravan moved westward into the narrow mountain pass, Rakaia spent the rest of the morning naming items in the wagon for her traveling companions while they taught her the correct pronunciation in their language.

  Running away, it seemed, had proved not only remarkably easy, but it turned out to be kind of, well, fun.

  Chapter

  12

  CHARISEE FOUND IT difficult to sleep. By the time dawn broke over the edge of the Sunrise Mountains the following morning, she knew what she needed to do.

  She couldn’t do this.

  The only thing to do was to march downstairs and announce she was Charisee, Rakaia’s base-born sister, that the Princess Rakaia had run away yesterday, and she had bought herself passage in that big caravan heading back to Fardohnya.

  She rehearsed her speech over and over. In her head, it sounded reasonable. All she could do, really, was throw herself on the mercy of Lord Lionsclaw. She wished she could rehearse what would happen after that.

  Charisee did wonder, for a fleeting moment, if she would be better off not mentioning anything to Valorian Lionsclaw, but waiting until she was alone with Kiam Miar. Lord Lionsclaw was a nobleman, and although he seemed reasonable enough, that was probably because he thought he was dealing with a genuine Fardohnyan princess. She didn’t know what he would do when he discovered one of Hablet’s daughters had been able to run away while in his care.

  Kiam, on the other hand, was an assassin. He’
d seemed really . . . well, nice. And he, at least, she could trust not to kill her out of hand. The Assassins’ Guild had rules about who they could and couldn’t kill. The irony of knowing she might actually have a better chance of making it to Greenharbour alive if she waited until she was on the road with an assassin before she broke the news about her true identity was not lost on Charisee for a moment.

  Bent low into the wind, Charisee pulled her cloak tight against the spring sleet battering the fortress as she ran across the high arched bridge. She ignored the bows and salutes of the guards patrolling the bridge joining the two halves of Winternest castle. By default, she supposed it made her look even more regal—a princess refusing to even acknowledge the greetings of lesser mortals. It couldn’t be helped. Besides the biting wind driving the sleet obscuring her vision which cut through her like a blade made of jagged ice, she wasn’t sure if her courage had enough conviction in it to survive any sort of delay—particularly not a delay that reinforced the notion she might actually get away with posing as Rakaia if she just kept her big mouth shut.

  She hurried through the heavily studded, reinforced door the shivering guard opened for her and took the worn stone steps down to the main hall as fast as she dared, grateful to be out of the blizzard. The circular stairwell was dark, lit only by the occasional west-facing arrow slit and a sputtering torch every few score steps, which struggled to burn in the chilly air. Outside she could hear the wind howling around the fortress, making her doubt that even with the best of intentions they’d be traveling anywhere today—at least not until the weather settled down.

  Lord Lionsclaw, I have a confession to make . . .

  That’s how she would start. Charisee repeated the phrase over and over to herself as she ran down the stairs, each step taking her closer to the end of her brief, glorious moment as a real princess.