Court of Fives (Court of Fives #1)

I push between them, keeping my voice low. “I have to go back to the stable because if I run away Lord Gargaron will send his stewards to hunt me down and then he’ll find out you’ve escaped. As soon as Mother can travel we must get her out of the city. Merry, ask Polodos if he can find out what happened to the servants who were left behind so we can trace Bettany. Amaya, I have to tell you…” My hesitation betrays me.

She clutches my hand as her lower lip trembles. “Is it about Denya?”

The words are hard to say because they will hurt her so much. “Lord Gargaron took Denya to be his concubine. I’m sorry.”

She puts a hand over her face, then lowers it to shake me. “I have to see her. You have to find a way to sneak a message in to her! So she knows I’m alive, and that I haven’t forgotten her!”

“Yes, I’ll find a way.”

“You want to train at the stable, don’t you?” says Maraya. “It’s what you’ve always wanted.”

I nod, because there is nothing else to say, and then I kiss them and the babies. Sweet Safarenwe is asleep but Wenru is awake, staring around with an expression so calculating that I am ashamed of how uncomfortable I feel around him. I thank Cook. Last of all I kiss Mother yet again before the carriage rolls away through open gates onto a dark street.

Kalliarkos steps up beside me, hands clasped behind his back at parade rest. The courtyard in which we stand is wreathed with trellises of night-blooming jasmine, its scent as heady as desire. We are the only ones here, utterly alone. I lean against him, so comfortable that I know this is also a place I belong: standing beside him no matter what people might say. He smiles without looking at me. We don’t even need to speak, just share our triumph in an easy silence.

Then he hooks a finger around one of mine, and I turn to raise my mouth to his.

“Kal! Time to go!”

The speed with which I leap around must make me seem ashamed, but Kalliarkos merely releases my hand and ambles over to his uncle. Thynos has driven up in the carriage we used to go to the villa. He climbs down, giving me a once-over as if trying to determine how far I have seduced his royal nephew despite my few charms.

“This is all very like an exciting and adventurous play to the two of you, I am sure,” he says. “You’re young, and it’s perfectly natural, but it’s not real.”

“It’s real!” objects Kalliarkos.

“Don’t interrupt! I’m impressed by what you accomplished, Nephew, but this budding little blossom of love has to wither now. Let me explain the realities of your situation to Spider, since you obviously have not.”

“He’s told me about his family, Lord Thynos,” I say, but when Kalliarkos presses a hand to his forehead as if plagued with a headache, I’m struck by doubt.

“There are many things I don’t believe you understand about our Kalliarkos, Spider. To start with, Princess Berenise is Kal’s grandmother.”

“I know that!”

“Did I ask you to speak? Then don’t. She is the aunt of the current king and queen. Her first marriage was to King Sokorios of Saro-Urok. At that time she left Efea to live in Saro-Urok as his queen. He died in battle less than a year after their marriage. Because she wasn’t pregnant, his successor sent her to an ill-wishers’ temple there but she escaped before they cut out her tongue. She found safety in the camp of an Efean army that had been campaigning in Saro-Urok in support of Sokorios. That army was under the command of Menos Garon, the uncle of Lord Gargaron.”

“Sent to be an ill-wisher! That’s a terrible story, but what does it have to do with us now?”

“I am trying to explain to you how the endless wars between Efea, Saro-Urok, East Saro, and West Saro are complicated by the shared kinship of their royal families. You see, King Sokorios was fighting against his cousin, a man named Elkorios. And indeed Elkorios became king of Saro-Urok after Sokorios died. Elkorios did not want Princess Berenise to return to Efea lest she marry some other Saroese prince who with Efea’s backing would then challenge him for Saro-Urok’s throne. But she escaped Elkorios’s plot by marrying Menos Garon and returning to Efea with his army.”

Kalliarkos breaks in. “That’s not the only reason she married Menos. My grandmother harbored her own ambitions. She’s like you, Jes. Always running the next game in her head.”

Thynos examines me to see how I will take this disconcerting compliment, but I wisely say nothing.

“Twenty years later she set in motion an elaborate scheme of revenge against King Elkorios for killing Sokorios,” Thynos goes on. “She began by contracting a marriage between her only son and my sister—Kal’s mother. For you see, my sister is the niece of Sokorios and the daughter of Elkorios.”