Морган Райс
A Throne for Sisters
CHAPTER TEN
Kate felt worse off than she’d been before she got on the boat. She shivered as she walked through the city, the failing light nowhere near enough to dry out the soaking wet clothes she wore.
She was hungry too, so hungry that she was already contemplating theft to fill her rumbling stomach. Kate found herself looking around at every shop and food stall, searching for an opportunity, but there was no chance at the moment, even with her talent letting her spot when the coast was clear.
She almost found herself wishing she were back at the orphanage, but that was a stupid wish. Even before she’d run away, it had been a worse place than this. At least on the streets, there were no nuns to beat her for making mistakes, no endless hours of working at pointless tasks to avoid the sin of laziness.
This was close, though, and Kate found herself hoping that her sister was better off than this. Her attempts to connect with Sophia weren’t working, though. Either that, or she was caught up with something that had her attention, so she couldn’t answer. She tried to connect with Emeline again too. Again, there was no answer.
Kate kept walking.
She wasn’t sure where she was in the city now, but from the look of it, she hadn’t landed in some noble quarter. There, she imagined that the cobbles would be gleaming white marble, rather than cracked brick and granite covered in a layer of horse dung. The houses around her looked cheaper even than the ones around the House of the Unclaimed, and from inside them, Kate could hear occasional shouts and screams, arguments and laughter.
She passed by an inn, where the candlelight within lit up carousing barge hands and workers. The words of a bawdy song carried out onto the street, and in spite of herself Kate found herself blushing. One of the men beckoned to her, and Kate hurried on.
By daylight, Ashton had been a bustling, rough around the edges place. In the growing dark, this corner seemed a lot less friendly. In an alley nearby, Kate was sure that she heard the sounds of violence. As she passed another, she caught a man and a woman pressed up against a wall together and she looked away.
Kate knew that she had to get warmer than she was. In daylight, she might have been warm enough to dry out simply by walking around, but by night, with the moonlight streaming down on her in a haze of silver and the wind cutting through her whenever she didn’t keep close to one of the walls?
She was going to freeze do death if she didn’t find a fire.
There were fires all around the city in hearths and grates. The chimneys of the houses around her belched smoke into the night sky as their inhabitants cooked on them and kept warm. It wasn’t as though she could just walk into one of their houses, though.
She could try an inn, but inns cost money, and if she just hung around one, Kate had no doubt that someone would want to know what she was doing there. So she kept walking, looking longingly at the inns nearby and trying to ignore the sounds of the city’s more dangerous inhabitants as they went about their nocturnal business.
Finally, Kate felt as though she couldn’t go on any longer. At the next inn she came to, she slipped into the courtyard it enclosed. She might not be able to pay for a room, but this one had a stable, and she might at least be able to keep warm there among the horses if she was careful. There would be stable hands somewhere, and the owners of the horses within would be out in the morning to take them. For now, though, Kate couldn’t pick up any thoughts that would point to people being too close.
There were three horses in the stables at the moment. One was a dark stallion, large and aggressive looking. Another was a docile white pony that looked far too thin and poorly cared for. The third was a chestnut mare, which whickered as Kate moved close, slipping into her stall to huddle down among the straw. She took a blanket that was draped over the horse’s back, and it didn’t seem to mind when Kate wrapped herself in it.
It wasn’t much, but it was far better than walking the street trying to dry out. She didn’t try to sleep, because she didn’t want to risk someone sneaking up on her while she did it. She just sat there while slowly, gradually, she started to warm up a little.
She also started to think. She had been planning to get out of the city when the boys had found her and she’d been forced to run. Her plan had been to steal everything she needed, from food to weapons, clothing to… well, a horse. Was there any reason she couldn’t still do that?
Kate crept to the front of the stall, looking out while simultaneously extending her other senses. She had no illusions about what would happen to her if she was caught stealing something as expensive as a horse. It would be the branding iron at least, and more likely the noose.
But right then, when the alternative was dying a slow death in the city, it seemed more than worth the risk.
Actually doing it was the hard part. Kate could see some of the tack for a horse set on the wall, and the chestnut mare held still while Kate set her blanket in place and settled a saddle over the top. It was obviously used to strange people saddling it for its owner. She found more of the tack for it, and half-remembered lessons at the orphanage in how to be a good servant told her some of what she needed to know about where it all went. The rest, Kate guessed at, and when the horse didn’t pull away from her efforts, she suspected that she had it right.
She opened the stable door as quietly as she could, every creak of the wood or squeak of the bolt sounding impossibly loud against the quiet of the night. She didn’t dare to ride the horse from the stables, so instead, she led it quietly, step by step, until she reached the gate that led to the street.
“Hey, you! What do you think you’re doing?”
Kate didn’t hesitate. Her climb up into the saddle wasn’t graceful, but it was fast. She dug her heels into the horse’s flanks and yelled at the top of her voice. At the same time, she sent, as powerfully as she could, the urge to run.
Kate didn’t know which aspect of it brought the horse to a gallop, but right then it didn’t matter. The only thing that did matter was that she found herself clinging to the horse as it sprinted through the nighttime streets. Shouts sounded behind her, but they quickly faded into the distance.
The real difficulty was hanging onto the horse. Kate hadn’t ridden before. The orphanage assumed that the only ones riding around her would be whoever bought her indenture. Certainly not her, and certainly not this fast.
That meant that she clung to the horse’s neck for dear life, not even trying to steer it as it chose its own path past carts and the few pedestrians still out there. She hung on until the horse’s strength started to fade, then pulled on the reins, trying to draw it to a halt.
She managed to slow it to a walk, at least, trying to orient herself. She didn’t know exactly where she was in the city, but she had a sense of where the river was, because she’d pulled herself from it not that long ago. If she kept heading in the opposite direction, eventually, she would be out of the city.
Kate pointed the horse in what she hoped was the right direction and kept riding. She might not have ridden before, but she quickly found herself getting the rhythm of it, gripping with her legs and keeping going as her new mount took her past shops and inns, brothels and gambling parlors.
She passed one of the gaps in the old walls there. There had been a time when she would have had to ride through a closed off gate, getting past guards who would have wanted to know where she’d gotten the horse. Those days were long gone, though, the gates destroyed by cannon in one of the civil wars. Now, Kate was able to ride through with ease, traveling through into the greater quiet of the outer city.
There were still shouts somewhere behind her, but Kate doubted that anyone would be able to catch up now. Just to be sure, she kept off the main roads, so that anyone chasing would have to search for her. Out here, that meant going past rows of wooden buildings, most with their own small gardens to try to grow some extra food.
For the first time in her life, Kate felt truly free. She could just keep going, out into the Ridings with their open fields and their small villages, and no one would stop her. She would be able to find what she needed out there, whether it was food, or weapons, or just the freedom to live off the land.
She took a deep breath, resisting the urge to kick the horse into a gallop again. It had run hard enough for one night. For now, she wanted to keep going at a pace the chestnut could maintain until morning, so she let it continue its brisk walk through the outer reaches of the sprawling city.
It wasn’t until she saw a blacksmith’s shop that Kate drew her mount to a halt again. It was the one cluster of stone-built buildings in a sea of wood and clay brick construction, so solid looking that it seemed as though it had been there forever. There were examples of the owner’s work out in the space around it, from wrought iron gates to scythes awaiting sharpening, to barrels of arrow shafts, just waiting for arrowheads to fit them.
Those caught Kate’s attention. If there were arrowheads, there might be other things to go with them inside. There might be short hunting bows, just waiting for the kind of elaborate metal fittings some people loved. There might be knives. There might even be swords.
Kate knew that she ought to keep going. It would be safest not to risk any more thefts until she was clear of the city. Even the horse had been a massive risk. Yet it had been a risk that had left her far better off, hadn’t it?
And maybe it was better to do this now, all in one go. People were already hunting for her, so maybe it was better to take all her risks tonight, rather than risking spoiling things once she was out in the open country. Somehow, Kate had the feeling that it was better to leave all her small crimes behind in the city once she left Ashton. This was still part of the life she was trying to leave behind; she didn’t want to spoil her new life by making enemies in the villages out in the Ridings or the Shires beyond them.
Her mind made up, Kate hitched her horse to the fence around the side of the blacksmith’s shop. She hopped over that fence, and the moment she had, it felt as though she’d done something irrevocable. She crept toward the blacksmith’s shop, keeping low.
There were three buildings. One was clearly the main shop, another looked as though it might be the blacksmith’s home, while the third was probably some kind of storage area and workshop. That was the one Kate slipped toward through the darkness, on the basis that it was the least likely to be tightly locked, and the most likely to contain completed weapons.
Sure enough, when Kate looked in through one of the tiny windows, she could see barrels with sword hilts and bows sticking from them, mixed in with ornamental ironwork and long nails designed for boat building.
Now, she just needed to find a way in. Kate made her way around to the door, but there was a large, wrought iron lock on that and the handle wouldn’t move when she tried it. She moved back around to the window, eyeing the leaded glass there. Would she fit through? It would be a tight fit, but Kate thought that she might make it.
She would have to break the window to do it, but with so many objects scattered around the yard, that proved to be easy. She just picked up a twisted iron railing spike and swung.
The glass breaking sounded far too loud against the silence, and Kate held still, listening for activity. When there was none, she knocked out the rest of the glass and pulled herself through the window.
Kate searched through the barrels. She didn’t know as much about weapons as she wanted to, but Kate could see that some of the creations here were better than others. There were some swords that seemed light and springy, while others seemed like cheap copies of them. Even some of the blades with more elaborate-looking hilts had blades without any flex, and with just a dull shine to them rather than the wave patterned metal of the better ones.
The same went for the bows. Some were just straight yew and ash, while others seemed to be composites of many layers of wood and horn, bound with metal. Kate took the best she could find. If she was going to do this, she was going to do it right. There was no way that she could climb out of the window again with them strapped to her, so she tossed them out ahead of her, then climbed back through, tumbling to the ground in the darkness and coming up to a crouch.
A hand closed over her shoulder, large enough and strong enough that Kate had no chance of escape. She spun, trying to pull away, and strong arms wrapped around her.
Kate swallowed, knowing she was finished.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sophia forced herself to stand and watch the ball as the dancing started, groups of people moving through formal court dances that she simply didn’t know the steps to. She wanted to rush forward in the direction of Prince Sebastian, but right then, it was hard to get her feet moving in the right direction.
What did you come here for, then? Sophia asked herself.
That was the question. She couldn’t be timid about this. If she couldn’t bring herself to even talk to the prince, then she had to make her way over to one of the other men in the room. If she couldn’t do that, then she needed to leave, sell what she had, and hope that it would be enough to keep her off the streets for a night or two.
Wasn’t it better to go over to the prince than to do either of those things? Wasn’t it better to just talk to a young man she liked? Sophia found herself able to move again with that thought, and she started to pick her way through the crowd.
Not everyone was dancing, even now. The older nobles there mostly watched from the sidelines, talking to one another about whose son or daughter or niece was dancing the most elegantly, about the wars across the Knife-Water, about the latest artists patronized by the dowager or the fact that Lord Horrige’s daughter had elected to become a nun of the Masked Goddess. Just the mention of it was enough to steer Sophia away from the conversation.
She kept drifting toward the prince. He wasn’t dancing yet, although his brother was, swapping from partner to partner with the laughing ebullience of a man who knew he could have his pick of the women. Sophia made sure that she avoided him. She had no interest in being swept up in the whirl of his amusement.
As she stepped out toward Prince Sebastian, she was sure she caught him looking her way. It was hard to tell for sure with the mask obscuring his expression, but her talent seemed to catch his surprise.
She’s coming over to me? I assumed a girl that lovely would have a full dance card already.
“Your Highness,” Sophia said as she reached him, curtseying because they’d taught the girls how to do that much at least at the House of the Unclaimed. “I hope you don’t mind me coming over like this.”
Mind? Only if she’s going to start going on about how perfect the ball is. I hate how contrived these things are.
“No, I don’t mind,” he said. “I’m sorry, I can’t guess who’s under that mask.”
“Sophia of Meinhalt,” she said, remembering her false identity. “I’m sorry, I’m not very good at parties. I’m not sure what I should be doing.”
“I’m not very good at them either,” Sebastian admitted.
They’re meat markets.
“You don’t have to hide from me,” Sophia said. “I can see you don’t like them much. Is it too many people looking for advantage in one place?” She paused. “I’m sorry, that was too forward of me. If you want me to go – ”
Sebastian reached out for her arm. “Please don’t. It’s refreshing to meet someone who is prepared to be honest about what’s happening here.”
Sophia actually felt a little guilty about that, since she was more than aware that she was there under false pretenses. At the same time, she felt more of a connection to Sebastian as he stood next to her than to any of the others there. He felt real while so many of the others seemed like simple facades.
The truth was that she liked him, and it seemed as though he liked her. Sophia could see his thoughts as clearly as fish at the bottom of a river. They were bright things, without the edge of cruelty to them that his brother’s had. More than that, she could see how he felt and thought when he looked at her.
“Why did you come to the ball if you hate them so much?” Sophia asked. “I’d have thought a prince could choose not to.”
Sebastian shook his head. “Maybe it works that way in Meinhalt. Here, it’s all duty. My mother wishes me to attend, and so I attend.”
“She’s probably hoping you’ll meet a nice girl,” Sophia said. She looked around pointedly. “I’m sure there must be one somewhere.”
She managed to get him to laugh with that.
“I thought I just had,” Sebastian countered. He seemed to realize what he’d just said. “What about you, Sophia? Why are you at this ball?”
Sophia found that she didn’t want to lie to him on that; at least, not any more than she had to.
“I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” she said, and Sebastian must have heard the sadness there. Obviously, he couldn’t know the reason for it, but even if he thought that this was about some foreign noble who’d had to run from the wars, the sympathy in his next words mattered.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up difficult subjects,” Sebastian said. He offered her his hand. “Would you like to dance?”
Sophia took it, surprised to find that there was nothing she wanted more right then. “I’d like to.”
They moved out toward the dance floor together. It occurred to Sophia then that there was one obvious problem with doing so.
“I should probably warn you that I’m not the best dancer. I don’t even know the steps to all the dances here.”
She saw Sebastian smile. “At least you have the excuse of a whole different set of court dances out in Meinhalt. I’m simply not very good, and I’ve had tutors tell me that, so it must be true.”
Sophia put a hand on his arm. She knew firsthand what it was like to have cruel teachers. She doubted that any of the prince’s had beaten him, but there were ways to be cruel without ever laying a finger on someone.
“That’s a horrible thing to say to someone,” she said. “I’m sure you dance better than you think.”
“At the very least, we can learn together,” Sebastian said.
For the first couple of steps of the new dance, Sophia faltered, not knowing what to do. Then the obvious occurred to her: there was a whole room full of people around her who did know the steps to the dance, and who would have to think about them in order to be able to execute them.
She listened using her power, hoping that it would pick up everything she needed, using her eyes to catch the rest as she watched the rhythms of the other dancers. One girl a little way away seemed to be thinking her way through the steps with the concentration of someone who had been drilled in them by a dance tutor not too long ago.
“You’re picking this up quickly,” Sebastian said as Sophia started to move.
“You’re not doing too badly yourself,” she assured him.
He wasn’t. In spite of his assertions that he couldn’t dance well, the only problem Sophia could see with Sebastian’s dancing was a kind of self-conscious stiffness. That seemed to come and go, depending on whether he remembered that people were watching him, so Sophia decided to distract him.
“Tell me about yourself,” she said as they whirled among the other couples there.
“What’s to tell?” Sebastian answered. “I’m the younger son of the dowager, technically lord of a minor duchy out in the west, and largely unimportant as far as the succession goes. I do whatever duty requires of me, which includes attending balls.”
Sophia brushed her hand across his shoulder. “I’m glad you did. But I’m not interested in all that. I want to know about you. What makes you smile? What do you like most in the world? When you’re with friends, do they treat you like you’re still a prince, or are you just Sebastian to them?”
Sebastian was quiet for so long that Sophia suspected that she’d gotten it wrong in spite of the advantages her powers gave her.
“I don’t know,” he said at last. “I’m not sure if I have friends, not really. At best, I’ve always been the one on the edge of my brother’s social group. Faced with most of them, maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. In any case, my one job as a younger prince is not to be embarrassing. That’s easier if I avoid the kind of entanglements Rupert generates. And to be honest, books are more interesting than most of them.”
Sophia held him a little closer. “It sounds lonely. I hope that I’m more interesting than a book, at least.”
“A lot more interesting,” Sebastian said, and then seemed to realize what he’d said. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t…”
Even if it’s true.
“It’s all right,” Sophia said. She could see his embarrassment at overstepping, but her talent showed her how glad he was that she didn’t mind, and what he was starting to think every time he looked at her. It was strange, seeing the room seem to light up for someone just because Sophia was there.
Sebastian looked as though he might be about to say something else, but another girl chose that moment to come up to them, her arm out as if to ask him to dance. Sophia could see how that would play out, with the prince passed from one lovely girl to another, completely forgetting about her.
To her surprise, though, Sebastian took a step back from the girl.
“Perhaps later,” he said, although he did it gently. “As you can see, I have a partner for this dance.”
“I have my dance card – ” the girl began, but Sophia was already dancing with Sebastian in the opposite direction.
She needn’t have worried. Sebastian’s eyes were solely on her as they kept dancing. Sophia loved his voice as he talked about the things that excited him, not the petty wars most noblemen might have been interested in, but art and the world, the people of the city and the things he was able to do as a prince to make things better.
“Of course,” he said, “it’s not like the days before the civil wars, when kings and queens could just do what they wanted. Now, everything goes through the Assembly of Nobles.”
“Leaving you feeling as though you can’t do any good?” Sophia guessed.
Sebastian nodded.
“Ashton is a cruel city,” he said, “and the rest of the country isn’t much better. Worse, in some of the more lawless parts. It would be good to be able to help.”
Sophia had always assumed that nobles just spat on those below them, not caring about how harsh their lives were. When it came to Sebastian, at least, it seemed that she was wrong.
Even so, she didn’t want to tell him the truth about who she was. Right then, the moment felt too precious for that. It felt as fine spun as a cobweb, and as fragile. One wrong move and it might all fall apart.
Sophia didn’t want it to fall apart. She liked Sebastian, and one look at his thoughts told her that he more than liked her. Right then, it felt as though she could stay and dance with him, talk with him, all night.
So she did.
She spun in Sebastian’s arms as another song played. She talked to him about life in the palace, about the places he’d seen and the people he’d spoken to. She drew out the parts of him that shone like diamonds in his thoughts, drawing him away from the mundane days and the pressures of court life.
When it came to Sophia’s own life, she kept things as general as she could. She could admit to having a sister, but couldn’t tell him stories about their lives except in the vaguest of details, because that would have meant talking about the orphanage. She could only keep up with mentions of the latest news because she could lift the details from the prince’s mind. The best she could do was to steer the conversation back to Sebastian, or talk about things that wouldn’t give away where she’d come from, or what she’d done to get there.
At some point in that, it simply seemed natural that she should kiss him. Sophia stepped back for a moment, then leaned in deliberately closer, ignoring the looks of some of the young noblewomen at the sides of the room. This wasn’t about them. It was about her, and Sebastian, and —
When the clocks struck, the clamor of their bells cut through the music, and through whatever had bound Sophia to Sebastian all evening. The shock of it made them both glance away, and in that moment, whatever had been about to pull them into a kiss shattered.
Sophia looked up to see some of those around the edges watching the two of them, talking in low tones. The younger women definitely didn’t look happy as they started to drift away, taking off their masks as they went.
“Is the party done?” Sophia asked. “It… it doesn’t seem an hour since it started.”
“Three,” Sebastian said, but only after a glance at a reflected clock face to confirm it. Sophia could see that the time had flown past for him as well. “It’s a strange feeling. Normally, these things seem to stretch out for an eternity.”
“It must be the company,” Sophia said with a smile.
“I think it probably is,” Sebastian said. He took off his mask then, and if Sophia’s heart hadn’t already been beating hard at the thought of him, it would have done then. He was handsomer than she’d thought, not plain and forgettable compared to his brother, as he’d seemed in the thoughts of so many others.
“May I?” Sebastian asked, reaching up for her mask. “It’s bad luck to keep a mask on after the end of a masque, and they’ll think you don’t know our ways if you wear it back to your carriage.”
Sophia felt a moment of fear then. Behind her mask, she was Sophia of Meinhalt, a stranger who couldn’t be identified. Without it… would she be enough?
She felt Sebastian’s fingers as they delicately removed the half mask that she hid behind. He looked at her then, and Sophia could hear his thoughts as clearly as if he’d shouted them.
Goddess, she is even more perfect than I could have believed! Is this… is this what love feels like?
Sophia was asking herself the same question, and that brought a problem with it. Sophia tried to bury that as Sebastian started to walk her back out toward the front of the palace, gliding with her among the crowds of people.
Sophia could see some of the girls there watching her with barely disguised hostility.
Who is she? What is she doing here?
Sophia could feel their anger at not being the ones on the prince’s arm, but right then, she only wanted to concentrate on Sebastian.
“When will I see you again?” Sebastian asked.
Sophia wasn’t sure what to say to that. How could she answer it, when the only reason she’d gotten in there at all was a lie? The great flaw in her plan gaped in front of her then: it gained her entrance to the palace once, but it gave her nothing beyond that. It showed her this world and then shut her off from it.
Sebastian reached up to touch her face.
“What is it?”
Sophia hadn’t thought that her worry would show so clearly. She thought as quickly as she could.
“The carriage awaiting me…” she began, trying so hard not to lie but knowing she had no choice, “…it will take me back to…”
“The ship?” he offered, concern in his face. “Back home, across the sea?”
She nodded, relieved he said it and that she didn’t have to utter the lie.
“It would,” she said, “and yet…I have no home, not really,” she said. “My home is not what it was. It is all in ruins.” That part, at least, was easy to fake, as there was some truth in it. “I sailed across the waters to escape my home. I am loath to return. Especially so soon after meeting you.”
She saw confusion cross Sebastian’s face, and then determination.
“Stay here,” Sebastian said. “This is a palace. There are more guest rooms than I can count.”
Sophia didn’t answer. She found that she didn’t want to lie to him more than she had to. That was a foolish thing, when every inch of her was a lie right then, but still, Sophia didn’t want to say the words.
“You’re offering to let me stay?” she said. “Just like that?”
Sophia could barely believe that. Sebastian filled the gap, and it turned out that he only needed two words to do it, holding out a hand to her as the last of the others filed from the hall.
“Stay?” he asked again.
Sophia reached out and took his waiting hand and, slowly, she smiled.
“There is nothing I would love more,” she said.
