Court of Fives (Court of Fives #1)

He blinks.

At first I think he is about to deny it, to protest, to slap down the ugly accusation.

But I recognize the flashes of expression: the tic of an eye, the quiver of his upper lip, the way his brows draw down and afterward lift; he is running the Rings in his head, assessing the information at hand. My face must look similar when I crouch on the last platform and let the height and spin and speed of the obstacle settle into my brain until the pattern emerges.

He staggers, barely catching himself on the table.

“Kiya,” he whispers so softly I cannot truly hear him, but I have seen her name on his lips for all my life, and it looks like nothing else he says because it always shakes him to the heart.

The agony that twists his face gives me a stab of joy because I want him to suffer the way they must be suffering, knowing he condemned them to a living death.

He sinks onto a chair, hands braced on his knees. His lips move in a prayer, but he has not the breath to voice it out loud. The spicy fragrance of the steeping tea hits my nose, drawing me hard into the memory of the quiet evenings when we would sit in our courtyard as night embraced our content little family.

I hate him.

He gave up Mother’s devotion and our laughter for this sour victory.

After a while he looks up, and he says, “Jessamy.”

He sounds so wounded that I cannot help but creep over to him. I kneel as I used to do when I was younger and lean my forehead against the chair with its armrests carved in the manner of firebirds in repose. Mother bought him this chair.

He rests a hand on my hair and strokes a thumb over its coils.

“Jessamy,” he says again, as if the shock has torn all other words out of his mouth.

His raw grief is little enough recompense for the pain but I can’t revel in it. I can’t bear it.

“You have to get them out,” I whisper. “If anyone can, you can, Father.”

His voice is hoarse with choked-back tears. Its vulnerability makes me press a hand to my chest lest my heart pound right out of my skin. “It was the very day I got off the ship. I was only twenty years old, wandering around dazed because Efea was a dazzling vision like nothing I had ever imagined. I remember the very moment I saw her in the market. At home we had no garden but for a strip of dirt that my father’s brother cultivated for dill and peppers to flavor the bread. Only at a festival could we afford to trade bread for a few precious, shriveled persimmons, the last of the crop. Then in Efea there was an old woman selling persimmons so bold and orange that they caught my eye. That’s when I saw her. She was laughing.”

Mother has told the tale of their meeting before but made a jest of it. She tripped and a young foreigner caught her before she fell facedown into a vat of urine. Confusion resulted because neither spoke the language of the other.

The yearning in his face burns out my hatred. My anger turns to ashes.

“Did you fall in love with her at first sight?”

“No one can fall in love at first sight. Love is built over years, not snapped into existence like a flame that can be as easily extinguished. But I was so struck with her beauty and the pure joy of her laugh that something deep within me changed. Where I grew up I never saw beautiful young women laughing boldly in the market, like they belonged there. The poets sing that a man come to foreign soil leaves his heart behind in the familiar and beloved earth of the village where he grew up. But in that one instant my heart leaped all the mountain vastness and the wild and windy sea to come to rest here on Efean earth. I would never go back to the old country. Maybe I was Saroese once. But I am an Efean man now, and I will fight for Efea.”

“Fight for Lord Gargaron, and his palace, and his ugly schemes.”

He cuts a hand through the air to silence me. “I suppose it seems to you I did not fight to keep you. That I let ambition sway me. In what gauzy theatrical tale do you think I could have said no to Lord Gargaron? The instant he stepped into the house, our fates were sealed.”

Tears choke my throat. “We can’t leave them there.”

His stern voice comforts me. “We won’t leave them there. For her to have a life away from me I can live with. But if I walk away now, knowing what I know, I cannot call myself a man. And if I am not a man, then I might as well be dead. Besides that, it is the worst kind of blasphemy to entomb a pregnant woman. It is spitting into the faces of the gods.”

“Can you tell the priests?”

“Don’t be naïve, Jessamy. To get them entombed means at least some priests already know about it. Lord Gargaron has offered them something they want in exchange. Or they fear him. A man like that has many ropes with which to bind people to his will. Now let me think. The City of the Dead is guarded day and night. The tombs are sealed with bricks, impossible to enter or leave unless you break them open.…” He trails off, wiping a hand wearily over his brow.