Court of Fives (Court of Fives #1)

“To the Fives? The game? What are you talking about?”

“You don’t know anything about being Efean, do you?” His dark gaze mocks me. “What I can’t believe is that you just discarded him on the floor.”

“She gave birth to him in darkness. Don’t think you can judge what you were not here to experience.” I am not about to confess the desperate thing I did in my panic. Instead I kiss the baby’s cold forehead as a blessing. Watching me, Ro-emnu’s sneer softens.

A bed-curtain sliced up makes a sling to tie the baby against my body. Unlike my new sister he feels empty: no spark heats him, and his self has long since fled. Father never had any luck with his sons.

“Where is the oracle?” I ask.

“Why do you care?” His sympathetic expression fades into his usual derision.

A thump interrupts us. Kalliarkos trots in with two lamps, the rope and harness, and a sealed reservoir of oil. He grins with a cocky confidence that looks good on him.

“They’ve gone on around the hill. We did it, Jes! Everyone is out!”

I can’t allow myself to relax. Disaster lurks around every corner.

We tidy up the tomb, then wrestle the heavy stone lid almost all the way back over the bier.

“Tomb robbers built this so they could sneak in,” I say after we set the coffin on top.

Ro-emnu scoffs. “Men from the Efean masons’ guild built it, Doma. Your father’s people are the tomb robbers, not mine.”

Kalliarkos sets a hand casually on Ro-emnu’s shoulder. “Ro, we have got to go, not argue about history.”

Instead of scorching him with a retort, Ro-emnu shoves him away companionably. “You’re right, Kal. We can argue later.”

I’m impressed by how Kalliarkos has so quickly forged a comradeship with a Commoner criminal.

“Jes, you go first,” Kalliarkos says. “You won’t need the rope. It’s an easy climb. Ro and I will close the bier and follow.”

Even with the baby bundled against me it is indeed an easy climb. Hand- and footholds have been carved into the rock, as if this really is a route for tomb robbers. A lantern burning at the base of the shaft guides me down. The stonework is fine masonry in a crisscrossing pattern, obviously laid by a master craftsman. At the base I look around curiously. A jagged cleft makes a passageway out of the shaft but I wait, a hand curved atop my brother’s cap of hair. Above, the stone lid grinds as they shift it, then clunks into place. Ro-emnu descends. The way his feet thump as he probes for footholds betrays him as an inexperienced climber. A stream of words pours out of him, sounding like the silkiest poetry even though he is cursing about donkeys, manure, and breaking legs in holes filled with scorpions. Just above me he slips and plummets the last body length.

I press back against the wall to avoid his feet but steady him so he doesn’t smash. He slams into my side, grabbing hold of me for purchase. He’s very strong.

Above us, Kal laughs. “I heard that slip! Best stagger out of the way as I’m coming down.”

Ro-emnu’s murmur teases my ear. “Hard to imagine a petted and cosseted princeling running the Fives when he could be sitting in the stands making bets on the outcome and eating grapes offered to him by a prettily masked slave like you, Doma.”

The insinuation is a slap in the face. I twist out of his arms and shove him into the cleft. “Efeans are the ones who enslaved their own people. Kliatemnos the First and his queen, Serenissima, put a stop to that evil custom. We don’t keep slaves.”

“No, you just call them something else and treat them worse. How your father’s people love the lies they tell!”

“I’m down!” says Kalliarkos cheerfully. The lantern bobs as he picks it up and follows us into the narrow passage.

“That was fast for a pampered lord,” says Ro-emnu in a tone so affably joking that I feel my neck has been wrenched by his abrupt change of mood.

“Climbing is my best skill, as both you and Jes should know by now,” replies Kal in a laughing way that confounds me. His voice is as bright as the lamp, glittering with triumph. “We have only to follow the chalk marks back out to the pool we came by, and we’re free.”

“Good thing you brought the chalk,” says Ro-emnu.

“Now you see the value of running the Fives, don’t you?”

“It’s a foul game that Patrons love. No offense.”

“None taken. We’ll contest the matter later over a drink.”

Lord Gargaron is wrong to think that Kalliarkos’s instinct to treat others as equals is a flaw. Even I thought so at first, believing him too nice, but his ability to respect others and set them at ease makes him strong, not weak.