Shifting Loyalties Page 3

  “So when you say you do not know what it does, you mean you do not know the spell on it,” Kalanath said.

  “Right. I know the masters at Stravanus have a way of learning which spell is on a wand, and it’s sometimes possible to figure it out by experimentation, but that can be wasteful and potentially dangerous.”

  “I imagine I can request a blessing that will tell us,” Perrin said, “if Averran chooses to help. He may consider the search for that knowledge a divine blessing in itself.”

  “Sometimes I wish your avatar weren’t quite so devoted to seeing humans grow in wisdom on their own,” Alaric said. “But it’s a problem for another time. Let’s get out of this place.”

  Sienne stowed the wand in her pack beside the scroll case. Now was the most dangerous time, after they’d succeeded in finding their treasure but before they were home safely. It was easy to become complacent despite there still being obstacles. She opened her spellbook to burn again. No more acid-filled cubes of jelly, she thought, no undead, no swarms of diseased rats…

  Dianthe was studying the two doors. “They’re not locked and there’s no nasty surprises waiting. I don’t know which to choose.”

  “Left,” Alaric said.

  “You always sound so decisive,” Sienne said. “How do you know?”

  “I don’t, but assertiveness can cover a multitude of sins,” Alaric said.

  The left-hand door opened on a long corridor, at the end of which was another closed door. Dianthe swore. “Trapped. I think this is the door in the barracks. I can deal with it, but it’s risky. Traps that sit around for a long time can degrade—bits go rusty, or shift, and that makes them more dangerous.”

  “But we know what’s on the other side of this door, and what I like about it is that there are no horrible corridor-cleaning creatures there,” Sienne said.

  “Let’s go back and try the other door,” Alaric said. “This is not a risk I want to take.”

  Weariness struck Sienne as they trudged back down the hall. She’d lost track of how long they’d been in this subterranean palace. It was hard to imagine anyone living here voluntarily. Reva Nocenti had to have been slightly mad to think it was a good idea.

  The second door led to another corridor that turned left almost immediately. “It’s leading us back toward the barracks, or at least in that direction,” Dianthe said. Sienne eyed the walls, clear of dirt or moss, and moved a little closer to Alaric. They were all walking faster now, not needing to say aloud what they were all thinking: how soon before that thing comes back?

  They came to another left-hand turn. Sienne wished her internal compass, product of a small magic, was any use down here. She knew they were facing northwest, but that told her nothing about the more important question of where the exit was. She’d had the stink of rot and acid in her nostrils for so long she’d begun hallucinating nicer smells, like roses or even manure.

  “Do you see that?” Alaric said to Dianthe.

  “I see it.” Dianthe sounded grim.

  “What? See what?” Sienne demanded.

  “A cube, way at the end of the corridor,” Alaric said.

  “Is it coming this way?” Kalanath asked.

  “Can’t tell.”

  “I think this corridor leads to the exit,” Dianthe said. “Either that, or it’s parallel to it.”

  “There seem to be no other doors along this hall,” Perrin said. “Should we turn back?”

  “The cube is definitely coming this way, Alaric,” Dianthe said. “Not as fast as the other, but we need to make a decision.”

  Sienne looked past Alaric’s bulk at the shimmer that marked the presence of a cube. She made a few lights and hurled them down the hall to light it up more fully. As they flew, they cast odd shadows on the floor—

  “There’s a side passage,” she exclaimed. “On the right.”

  In the glow of her lights, the cube was clearly closer than she’d thought. Dianthe said, “I think that’s the exit!”

  “The thing is very close,” Kalanath said.

  “Run,” Alaric said.

  They pounded along the corridor, Sienne working desperately to keep up with her longer-legged companions. The stench of acid burned her throat as she gasped for air. Alaric blocked her view of the oncoming cube now, but she didn’t need to see it to know it was going to be a close race. If the cube blocked the exit before they reached it…they could turn around, try their luck with the trapped door, but that was its own kind of danger. She pushed herself harder, grateful the cube’s cleaning secretions didn’t leave the stones slippery.

  Dianthe made a sharp right turn, and Sienne tripped over her own feet trying to stop. Alaric caught her under the arms and gave her a shove in Dianthe’s direction. The acid in the air was almost overpowering. Sienne kept running down this new corridor, praying the cube had a preset path and this wasn’t part of it.

  The path sloped gently upward, and Sienne’s legs ached from running up the incline. Just as she registered the presence of moss on the walls, Alaric said, “It’s passed us. We’re safe.”

  Sienne stopped and crouched with her hands on her knees, breathing deeply. “This is the way out, isn’t it?”

  Fresh, warm air struck her by way of reply. “It is,” Dianthe said, holding open the door at the end of the hall. Sienne walked past her into the shallow cave that concealed the entrance to Reva Nocenti’s underground lair. The air smelled of stone and, faintly, animal waste, but she’d never smelled anything more delicious. It was dark beyond the cave mouth, but it was the beautiful darkness of a true summer night, not the pitchy blackness of underground, and tension slipped away from Sienne like water flowing down a drain.

  Alaric came up behind her and put his arms around her. “One hurdle down,” he said. “Back to Glorenze, then another two days will see us in Fioretti.”

  “Now who’s looking beyond the mark?” she teased.

  “Just planning ahead. I feel I could sleep for days, but the work is just beginning.” He kissed the top of her head. “Let’s start walking.”

  3

  Every time Sienne returned to Fioretti, it felt like a different city. The capital bustled with life and energy no matter the season, and old buildings were always being torn down to make way for new construction. The people were different, too, thousands of men and women coming to Fioretti for a fresh start or leaving Fioretti to try their luck elsewhere.

  But now the City of Golden Ways sparkled and shone as never before. Sienne reined her horse Spark in to watch a pair of men hanging strings of lights between lampposts using invisible fingers, and marveled at the colors, red, white, and gold. Every door they passed had a wreath made of thin, flexible vines woven with yellow forsythia branches or red or white berries. Some of those were probably poisonous, but it was unlikely anyone would try to eat them.

  “We’re not going anywhere for the next week, are we?” she asked. “I don’t want to miss the festivities.”

  “I don’t see why the celebration is so important,” Alaric said. “It’s not as if the city has done anything more than exist for four hundred years.”

  “That still makes it the oldest city in Rafellin,” Perrin pointed out. “Nearly as old as the wars that tore civilization apart. It is a milestone everyone can find common ground to celebrate, regardless of income or religious beliefs.”

  “There will be food, and athletic events, and dancing,” Sienne said. “You should enter the contests, Alaric. Wrestling, or I think there are tests of strength…”

  “I’m not a citizen,” Alaric said. “I think it might dampen things if I defeated a Rafellish contestant.”

  “Hmm. You’re probably right. We’re still going dancing.”

  Alaric clutched his right knee and pretended pain. “I think I pulled a muscle running from that cube.”

  “I am happy to heal whatever troubles you,” Perrin said with an arch smile.

  Alaric muttered something under his breath. Sienne said, “It will
be fun, you know it will.”

  “Anything for you, sweetlove,” he said, smiling in a way that warmed Sienne’s heart.

  They left the horses at the stable and continued on to their lodgings on foot. Master Tersus’s house felt more like home to Sienne than the ducal palace in Beneddo, where she’d grown up, ever had. She looked forward to a good home-cooked meal and her own comfortable bed. Inns were never the same, no matter how expensive they were.

  She shifted her pack to keep the ivory scroll case from digging into her spine and said, “Who should we approach to sell this stuff? I imagine we can’t use that old coin as modern currency.”

  “Right,” Alaric said. “This find is big enough, we should make it public knowledge, which will boost our reputation and get us more contracts in the long run. So we’ll need to declare it with the government, to establish provenance. They’ll want a cut, but we should still make enough to keep us going for a year even if we took no other jobs.”

  “Which will give us time to continue the search,” Dianthe said. “Though we probably don’t want to stop working entirely.”

  “And some of that money will have to go toward buying access to private libraries,” Sienne said.

  “Does not the University of Fioretti library suffice?” Perrin said.

  “The three books I found there were only partially helpful. I haven’t given up hope of finding a book that has the whole ritual we need.” Sienne couldn’t help feeling personally responsible for her failure, though she knew it was stupid. They needed to find a ritual that would free Alaric’s people, the shape-shifting race called Sassaven, and although a year of searching had taken them farther than Alaric had gotten alone in ten years, they had hit a wall recently. The bulk of the research burden had fallen on Sienne, fluent in three languages and familiar with reading ancient books, and every time she left the university library empty-handed, she felt despair creep a little closer.

  “We have the knife, the goblet, and the sedative potion,” Kalanath said. “It is more than we had a year ago.”

  “And we’ve found pieces of the ritual,” Alaric said. “Kalanath’s right, we’ve made progress.”

  They were passing the world-famous Fioretti marketplace, home to hundreds of booths selling anything one could possibly want, and the noise was so great Alaric had to pitch his voice louder to be heard. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of voices argued and haggled and laughed, creating waves of sound that rushed over Sienne, making her wish she could cover her ears like a child in a thunderstorm. “What did you say?” she shouted.

  “I said we can worry about it another day!” Alaric said.

  Sienne nodded, not wanting to shout over the din. She took a few more steps to keep up with Alaric, whose powerful form parted the crowds like a battleship, and gasped as someone grabbed her arm and pulled her to the side. “Alaric!” she shouted.

  Instantly he was there, breaking the grip of her assailant and twisting the dark-haired man’s arm high behind his back. The man yelped in pain and said, “Let me go! Sienne!”

  Sienne took a step back in surprise. Her hands and face felt as numb as if struck by force. “Rance,” she said faintly.

  “You’re an idiot if you think you can attack people in broad daylight,” Alaric snarled, and twisted harder. Rance let out a hiss and arched his back, trying to get away from the implacable grip.

  “Let him go,” Sienne said. “He’s…let him go. He wasn’t trying to hurt me.” That, at least, she was certain of. Rance had only ever inflicted emotional pain on her.

  Alaric released Rance, who took a couple of long steps away from the Sassaven and rubbed his wrist. “Do you know this man?” Alaric asked.

  She felt a flash of anger and humiliation that left her wishing she could run away from all of them, anything not to let her two worlds meet in such spectacular fashion. “This is Rance,” she said. “Rance Lanzano Verannus.”

  Alaric’s brow furrowed. “This is Rance?”

  The way he said it, as if Rance’s identity were an impossibility, as if there were something shameful about it, made Sienne wish even more that she could hide. “Yes.”

  “It is the Rance who married your sister, yes?” Kalanath said, with an air of having solved an intractable puzzle.

  “Yes.” Her ex-lover, her first lover, who’d left her when the opportunity to marry her sister and become heir to a dukedom had fallen into his lap. She felt she needed a map and a guide dog to fully explain what he was to her.

  Alaric still had that look of consternation on his face. “I thought he’d be taller,” was all he said.

  That made Sienne want to laugh. Rance was handsome in a dark, Rafellish way, with hazel eyes that twinkled when he laughed, but he was several inches short of six feet tall and compactly built. Alaric, at over six and a half feet tall, loomed over Rance like the mountain he was popularly compared to.

  “Sienne, who are these people? Where have you been for the past year?” Rance looked bewildered, which made sense—he probably hadn’t expected to just pass her on the street when she’d spent the last year staying thoroughly lost.

  “In Fioretti. I’m a scrapper now. These are my companions.” That was simple and straightforward, something she felt on solid ground with. “Why are you in the capital?”

  “We came for the celebration. King Derekian summoned us. And—but I’m overwhelmed, Sienne. Don’t you know how much your parents have worried about you? We all thought you were dead!”

  “Well, I’m not dead.” How had she missed how whiny he sounded? She’d thought she loved him, and love did strange things to the perceptions. “I thought the king would have told them I was safe.”

  “The king? Why would the king do that? Sienne, come with me. Your parents need to see you.” Rance reached for Sienne and was arrested by Alaric’s hand landing heavily on his shoulder. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Don’t touch her, and I won’t have to,” Alaric rumbled. “She’s not going anywhere.”

  “Oh? And who are you, to make that decision for her?”

  “I told you, he’s my companion,” Sienne said, interrupting Alaric’s retort. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

  Rance hesitated, looking at Alaric, then at the others, who’d remained silent but watchful during this conversation. “You don’t understand. They really need to see you. It’s important.”

  “Why is it important?”

  “I…you should speak to your parents. I can’t explain it.” His eyes flicked to her friends again, in a way that said clearly I can’t explain it in front of these people.

  “The duke and duchess are in Fioretti?” Dianthe said. “Sienne—”

  “I don’t have anything to say to them,” Sienne said, but she felt her certainty slipping away. Seeing Rance made her carefully constructed world fall apart, made the illusion that she was simply Sienne the scrapper wizard and not Lady Sienne Verannus impossible to maintain.

  “It is a small thing,” Perrin said. He’d avoided looking at Rance and had his attention fully on her. “They cannot make you do anything you do not wish.”

  Sienne wasn’t sure that was true, but if it wasn’t, it was her own weakness that made it so. “Tomorrow,” she told Rance. “Where are they?”

  “Why not right now? I’m going there—just went out to pick up a few things for Felice.”

  The mention of his wife, her older sister, was like a splash of cold water to the face. She could bear seeing her father, could endure seeing her mother, and Rance himself…it was like their affair was a ghost of a thing, nothing that roused any current emotions except, perhaps, embarrassment. But coming face to face with her sister, knowing that they’d shared a lover—that was too much to bear. It hardened her heart against Rance’s pleas. “Tomorrow,” she repeated. “We’re just back in town and I’m tired. They can wait a little longer.”

  Rance sighed. “They’re at the Plaza of Sighs,” he said. “Number four, across from the Gavant chapel. Can I at least tell
them when to expect you?”

  “Ten o’clock tomorrow morning. And yes,” she added as Rance opened his mouth, “I’ll come alone.”

  Rance looked swiftly away from Alaric, who looked ready to explode. “Thank you. I…thank you. Tomorrow at ten.” He made as if to clasp her hand, thought better of it, and disappeared into the crowd.

  Sienne stared blindly in the direction he’d taken until Dianthe said, “Sienne. Let’s go.” Then she turned and followed her friends toward home. She wasn’t sure if they were being tactful, or if the noise was just too great to carry on a conversation, but she was grateful for their silence.

  They walked as far as the bottom of the street where Master Tersus’s house lay before Perrin said, “Are you certain you wish to go alone?”

  “No, I’m not,” Sienne said, “but I think I have to. I don’t know why, but it feels wrong to have you all with me when I meet my parents for the first time in over a year. Like I’d be bringing a siege weapon to a knife fight.”

  Kalanath chuckled. “It is true, we are fierce in each other’s defense. It is maybe not a thing you need.”

  “I know where that house is,” Dianthe said. “We’ll be waiting for you to return, and if you don’t, we’ll storm the place.”

  “I know. Thank you.”

  Alaric held the door for them all, and Sienne breathed a sigh of relief when it closed behind them. They’d had an uneventful journey back from Reva Nocenti’s lair, but she hadn’t felt safe until now, surrounded by familiar walls and with the smell of beef stew simmering on Leofus’s stove.

  “I’m going to nap before dinner,” Dianthe said. “Carrying so much treasure through the streets makes me tense, and that makes me sleepy.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Sienne said. “Alaric?”

  “I’ll be up shortly,” he said. “Leave your packs, and I’ll store the treasure in a secure place. Master Tersus will let us use his safe.”

  Sienne dropped her pack at his feet and trudged up the stairs in front of Dianthe. At her bedroom door, Dianthe stopped her, her face still and worried. “You don’t still…care about that man, do you?”