Court of Fives (Court of Fives #1)

Thynos extricates his hands. “I have to send a pair of Nar’s men to shadow you. Don’t be surprised to see them behind you. Adversaries are required to be back by Firstday dawn, so hurry.”

On deserted back streets lit by cheap lanterns we pass a pair of old women sweeping up horse dung into a wheelbarrow. Now that our adventure is over, an awkward silence pools between us. When we reach the West Gate of the Lantern District with its brass wheels we pause in the square to share a mug of barley beer from a yawning street-side vendor. An air of spent revelry and sad loss permeates the gloom. The soldiers and foreigners who would normally pack the district’s “pleasure wharves” have all gone to make ready for war. The brass water clock ticks down the night, the last trumpet filling up for the dawn fanfare.

Thirst quenched, we walk side by side, not touching. A pair of drunks stagger behind us, propping each other up. I wonder if they are Inarsis’s men, always someone within sight of Lord Kalliarkos. In his own way he has been as protected and restricted as my sisters and I were.

As we head uphill into the palace district I find my voice at last. “Will you get into trouble for taking Ro-emnu out of prison?”

“I’m a prince, remember? If the king and queen complain to my grandmother, she will tell them to go soak their heads in a vat of urine.” I’m so shocked to hear such an impiety casually flung into the air that I can’t speak. He takes my hand, squeezing it as he chuckles with excitement. “Can you believe what we saw? I had no idea the City of the Dead was built on top of a vast complex where people must once have lived.”

I think of sparks like fireflies and my brother waking up from death. I think of Amaya eaten by a shadow, and the watery mist that brought my mother back to herself.

“Either my tutors never told me the truth or they don’t know it themselves,” he adds. “They’re all Archives-trained. I thought they knew everything. What now, Jes? What about us?”

In the empty street, knowing my family is free, I feel bolder than ever. “Why don’t you keep a concubine? Most lords do from an early age.”

He stops dead and tugs me to a halt. Right there in the middle of the street he kisses me. His lips are cool, and at first their pressure is light. It is his hands I feel more, solid along the small of my back. I savor the way our bodies fit neatly together. As the kiss deepens, the spark of my being heats, and it twines the cord of its life into the spark of his, setting off a flare of brilliant light within our hearts.

We break off. My eyes flash open, and I’m a little dizzy.

His gaze is wide and questioning. “Because she wouldn’t be you, Jes. You’re here with me because you want to be. Any concubine I had in the palace would be spying on me for my uncle.”

I think of poor Denya. “Is it really nothing but a pit of vipers?”

“Yes.”

Footfalls crunch up the street behind us, and we step apart. Inarsis’s two men still shadow us, no longer pretending to be drunk. To the east the sky lightens.

“Come on,” he says.

As we walk I think of the victory procession held for my father, the way the crowd went quiet when the royal carriage passed. With each step a new pattern begins to unfold in my mind’s eye. “Kliatemnos the Fifth and his sister Serenissima the Fifth are not popular rulers, are they?”

“Not at all,” he says blithely. To speak critical words about them is nothing to him! “My cousin Kliatemnos sits in his palace and carouses all day with his honey cakes. He sends his brother Nikonos into the field to fight his battles. Everyone knows Serenissima despises her husband and prefers their younger brother Nikonos in every possible way.”

“Poets are arrested for murder for making such scurrilous accusations.”

He laughs. “I’m not a poet, but I’ll tell you the truth anyway. Kliatemnos and Serenissima have a sickly twelve-year-old son but everyone suspects Nikonos is the real father. Can you possibly wonder why I want nothing to do with all of that?”

Anise’s warning. Thynos’s explanation. Kalliarkos’s angry flood of words. The path through the Rings is starting to open.

Words fumble out of me. “If I were a man like Lord Gargaron and I wanted more power in the world, I would marry my disgraced niece to the best general in the kingdom. I would force my unambitious nephew to march with the army and take credit for that general’s victories. That would give the nephew a princely burnish and prestige.”

His fingers clutch my elbow as if to warn me to be silent. But I go on, because Rings never stop turning until one person reaches the victory tower.