“Sounds perfect.”
Niya hesitates. “I also—I’ve been experimenting with protections. See this border here? That’s where they’re sewn.”
“You can stitch wards?” Bean asks, properly impressed.
Niya shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know how a real mage would do it.”
“Who cares what a ‘real’ mage would do?” Bean demands. “That’s amazing!”
Niya smiles shyly. “I can add some to your sashes too, Bean, once I’m done with Rae’s.”
“Oh yes,” Bean says. “Will it stop horses from stepping on my boots?”
Niya frowns. “Right now they mostly work against other magics, but I can experiment with physical force.”
“Just don’t hurt yourself while you’re at it,” Bean says cheerfully.
Niya laughs. She will likely do a much better job of keeping herself and Bean safe than I ever could. But I’m still going to miss them and worry about them, anyhow. I claim big sister prerogative on that.
“You’ll watch their horses,” Bean says, now that my magical packing list is settled. “I want to know what kinds of horses the prince and all ride. I suppose they must be better than ours.”
“Maybe,” I concede. “But their hostlers have bought from us at Spring Fair before.”
“Which horses did they buy?” Bean asks, intrigued.
From there, we quickly descend into a discussion of which dam’s offspring was sold when to the royal hostlers, a topic our father takes up with great spirit when he and Mama finally join us. Niya and Mama exchange a commiserating glance and focus on their sewing.
Chapter
7
A week and a half later, I watch avidly from my carriage window as we trundle up a great, wide city avenue. This is West Road, the road off of which the true princess lived as a goose girl in the royal stables, and it passes through the poorest part of the city. The yellow-brick buildings rise up to two or three stories, not unlike the somewhat shorter buildings that make up our village. But there the similarity ends, for these adobe walls are stained, the plaster cracked and broken here and there, revealing the bricks underneath. The people are thin and poorly dressed, but it’s the children who shock me: squatting in the dirt to play, barefoot and dirty-faced, their figures painfully thin, and even a few, here and there, who wear nothing but a long tunic, as if the cost of pants were too much for their family.
Only as we reach the center of the city do the buildings seem to gain in wealth, fresh coats of paint on the walls, the streets wider. And the children are clean and well dressed. Finally, we enter the wide plaza before the palace gates. Beyond the impressive walls, the palace rises in a multitude of rooftops, all of them cloaked in dark green clay shingles. The walls are white stone, carved intricately, and the doorways arched. If I have never seen poverty the likes of which exists on West Road, I have likewise never seen such wealth as this palace. I just manage to close my mouth as we roll through the main gates and turn down a side road, skirting the palace itself.
A few minutes later, the carriage comes to a stop in a small courtyard allowing entrance into a series of apartments, including, as I am informed, my cousin’s. A footman opens the carriage door for me, and I step down as Veria Sanlyn bids me a brisk adieu.
The journey to Tarinon took four days, and each of them cemented further in my mind how little I want anything to do with the nobles of the court. To be sure, Sanlyn was not rude. She merely provided a space for a local horse rancher’s daughter to sit in between the cloth-bound packages of fancy dresses and uncut fabrics awaiting their final fate at a city tailor’s hands. After a kind greeting and a nod of her head, Sanlyn had no more interest in addressing me than she did my trunk, set at my feet.
But I did not come here to pretend to be a noble. In my last week at home, I visited Ani daily, holding her when she cried and trying to ease her anger and despair as the days passed and even her most sturdy hopes gave way to grief. Sitting with Ani, I promised myself I wouldn’t stop trying to learn more about the snatchers. I don’t imagine I can stop them myself, but if I can ask the right questions in the right places, if I can just get someone at court to care, perhaps they can still be revealed and destroyed as they deserve.
“Through the doorway there, kelari,” the footman says now. “I’ll bring your trunk at once.”
I nod and cross to a wooden door, carved and inlaid with a bronze floral design. A maid answers my knock, smiling brightly. “If you’ll follow me, Veria Ramella is expecting you.”
She ushers me past the ornate chair she must have been waiting in and along a short hallway rich with mosaic-tiled walls and carved ceiling timbers, to a set of elegant marble stairs. We proceed up these, the maid pausing at the top to allow me to catch up, and continue on through the first door on the right, into what must be my cousin’s apartments. They are not overly ornate, but I am taken aback by the richness of them, from the deep hue of the brocade sofas to the silver trays and crystal decorations. And there are actual luminae stones set in lamps, lending their steady magical light to the room. Luminae stones. If only Niya could be here to study them. Or I could take one home to her.
“This way, kelari,” the maid says, a faint note of amusement in her voice.
I tear my awed gaze away from the room to focus on her. “Thank you.”
She ushers me through a connecting door to an inner sitting room. I step in with a sense of absolute relief: here is a room that feels just like those at home, wool carpet underfoot and cushions against the wall, and only half the room furnished with the fancier low sofas and wooden side tables the rich prefer. The room is an exact depiction of my cousin’s marriage, she from a merchant’s family, used to simpler living, and he very much a noble, however small his holding.
They are seated together on the sofas, deep in conversation, Melly facing me. She looks up, her face brightening at the sight of me. Her belly is just beginning to fill out her tunic. Filadon perks up and twists to see me. He is handsome, his features bordering on pretty: well-shaped eyes, sculpted lips, dark hair curling around his ears. I have sometimes wondered how Ramella, whose beauty is of a simpler, gentler demeanor, managed to get past his facades, and how he, in turn, could have won her trust.
“Kelari Amraeya has arrived,” the maid says, completely unnecessarily at this point.
“Cousin Rae!” Filadon cries cheerfully, jumping to his feet.
I grin and dip an awkward curtsy as the maid lets herself out. “Verin, veria.”
“Oh hush,” Melly says with obvious amusement. “Don’t you go around bobbing at us like that.”
“Well, I am at court now, aren’t I?”
Melly just shakes her head and crosses the room to embrace me. She looks hale and hearty, her eyes clear and her skin glowing with health. “It’s been a long time—I’m so glad you accepted our invitation.”
“Bean would have tied me up and delivered me herself if I’d refused.” And I couldn’t forgo the chance to learn more about the snatchers—though that’s a conversation for another time, after I’ve settled in.
Melly pulls back from her hug with a laugh. “Bean is quite a force to be reckoned with, isn’t she?”