“Which is why you need allies.”
Snorting, Ahnna looked away. “You sound like Aren. And that’s the sort of thinking that got us in this position in the first place.”
“Hear me out.” Rising to her feet, Lara paced back and forth across the floor of her cell. “After I fled Ithicana, I went to Harendell. They aren’t happy about Maridrina holding the bridge, because my father’s alliance with the Amaridian queen means Amarid gets preferential treatment at Northwatch and on the bridge. Harendell is losing money hand over fist, and you know how they feel about that.”
Ahnna nodded.
“The Harendellians don’t want Maridrina holding the bridge, nor do they want it for themselves. If we go to their king, I believe we can convince him to aid Ithicana in this fight.”
“He’s not going to agree to risk his navy just because we ask him nicely, Lara. Harendell might be losing money in trade, but they stand to lose more if they go to war.”
“He will if you hold him to his word.” Grasping the bars to her cell, Lara met Ahnna’s gaze. “The alliance of the Fifteen Year Treaty might be broken with Maridrina, but it still stands with Harendell. Or it will if—”
“If I marry their crown prince.”
Squeezing the bars, Lara nodded. “Yes.”
In one rapid motion, Ahnna turned away, crossing the corridor to rest her forehead against the opposite cell. Finally, she said, “I’ve never left Ithicana, you know. Not once.”
Most Ithicanians hadn’t, only the select few trained as spies, but given who Ahnna was, the information was surprising.
“The moment my mother allowed it, Aren was off like a loosed arrow. North and south, he went everywhere. And there were years where it felt like he spent more time pretending to be someone else in another kingdom than he did being my brother home in Ithicana.” Ahnna was quiet for a moment. “I never understood it. Never understood why he would want to be anywhere but here.”
“Because,” Lara answered softly, “he knew there’d come a time when he wouldn’t be allowed to leave. Just like you knew there would come a time when you wouldn’t be allowed back.”
Ahnna’s shoulders trembled, and Lara heard the other woman draw in a ragged breath before turning. Digging in her pocket, she extracted a key, which she inserted into the lock on Lara’s cell. “What’s the rest of the plan?”
5
Aren
It didn’t take him long to determine that they were keeping him in the inner sanctum of the palace in Vencia—a place reserved for the King of Maridrina, his wives, and his numerable progeny. Why he was being kept in this place rather than in a cell in one of Maridrina’s innumerable prisons was less clear.
Probably because it made it more convenient for Silas to gloat, Aren thought.
As much time as Aren had spent in Maridrina, the palace was a place he’d never been inside. What might be gained from the venture was not worth testing the layers of security Silas kept upon it. Especially for someone of Aren’s importance. The only Ithicanian spy to make it inside had been his own grandmother. Nana had arranged to be recruited into the previous king’s harem, where she’d lived for over a year before faking her own death to escape. And that had been fifty years ago.
Only now was Aren cursing his lack of knowledge of this place, because it put him at a gross disadvantage when it came to trying to break out of it.
The interior wall was thirty feet high, with guard posts on each of the four corners and soldiers patrolling the top. There was only one gate for entry, which was always kept shut and guarded, both inside and out. Within the inner walls there were two curved buildings, between which stood the tower with its bronze roof that could be seen for miles around. And amidst it all were the gardens, servant women spending their days cultivating the lawns and hedges and flowers, while others swept the stone paths and cleaned the fountains of the debris scattered by the storms, all their efforts to ensure the comfort of Silas and his wives.
There were fifty wives in the harem, the women taking advantage of the breaks in the weather to come outside, all of them draped in the finest of silks, fingers and ears glittering with gemstones. Some were older, but most were young enough to be Silas’s daughters, which made Aren cringe. He’d been ordered not to speak to them, though in truth, the women kept far enough away from the stone table at which he was chained that there was never any opportunity.
And then there were the children.
He’d counted sixteen, all under the age of ten, and while not all of them had inherited their father’s eye color, several of them had. Each time one of them fixed him with azure eyes twin to Lara’s, Aren felt like he’d been punched in the gut.
Where was she?
Where had she gone?
Was she even still alive?
And worst of all: the question of whether she’d take Silas’s bait and come for him. Of course she won’t, he told himself. She doesn’t give a shit about you. It was all lies.
But if they were lies, why was Silas hunting her?
Why, if she’d given him everything his heart desired, did he want her dead?
The thoughts drove Aren to madness, and chained to a bench in the gardens, he had nothing to distract him, nothing to temper the anxiety that grew in his guts with every day that passed.
A female scream cut the air, snapping Aren from his reverie. Over and over the woman screamed, and Aren watched as the wives who’d been in the gardens fled inside, the servants herding the children with them.
The screams came closer, the guards at the gate moving to open it, revealing a hooded old man who slowly strode between the buildings in Aren’s direction.
The Magpie.
“So lovely to see you again, Your Grace.” Serin inclined his head. Then he made a face. “Excuse me, I grow forgetful in my old age. You’re no longer king, so we are to be familiar, aren’t we, Aren?”
Aren didn’t answer, the spymaster’s demeanor wholly at odds with the screaming coming from just outside the open gate. Sweat rolled in fat beads down his spine, his pulse roaring in his ears.
“It happens that you have a visitor,” Serin said, and with one hand, he motioned to the guards.
Two soldiers appeared at the gate to the courtyard, dragging a struggling figure between them. Aren tried to stand, but his chains jerked him back down onto the bench.
The woman wore a Maridrinian-style dress, but her face was concealed by a sack. Her clothing was stained with blood, and each time she tried to jerk out of the soldiers’ grip, droplets splattered against the pale paving stones.
Was it Lara? He couldn’t tell. She was the right height. The right build.
“It was only a matter of time, wasn’t it?” Serin purred, extracting a knife from the folds of his robe. “I must say, she was easier to catch than I anticipated. Emotion makes for sloppy execution, even for one with her training.”
Aren couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.
“Lara and her sisters are used to pain, Aren. More used to it than you could possibly imagine.”
Serin held the knife blade over a brazier one of the soldiers had brought, watching the metal heat. “It was what I used to temper their minds. It’s fascinating how despite it being me who burned them—me who cut them, me who buried them alive—that by whispering the right words in their ears, they blamed you for their tears. Children are such malleable things. Remove one of her shoes, please.”