Ironical y, Cal ie was probably less afraid than anyone else in this room. She knew what it was like to live with terror so real she could feel it, so paralyzing she had to remind herself to breathe. She had spent so long in fear of everyone that the edges had dul ed, rubbed smooth by overuse. She was able to watch the Guardian approach with her thoughts blank.
The Guardian stopped several feet away. His face was covered by an iron mask, with two narrow rectangles for his eyes; no way to tel what he was thinking or feeling. Or whether he was about to draw his sword and slice it through her throat.
She glanced, despite herself, at her sister. Darri was on the edge of her seat, alert and coiled. She might as wel have been half a world away.
“The duke was commanded to kil them,” the Guardian said, so low that no one but Cal ie could hear. She “The duke was commanded to kil them,” the Guardian said, so low that no one but Cal ie could hear. She jerked her gaze back to him. “You should warn them to be wary. Many of the dead do not want them here.”
Then he turned and strode away.
Cal ie stood for another moment, not breathing or moving. From the corner of her eye, she saw a movement she recognized wel : Darri sheathing her dagger. As if a dagger could have done anything for her, against the Guardian. As if Darri could do anything in this castle except make everything worse.
She turned, almost tripping over her gown, and exited the hal through one of the side doors.
Once outside, she had to lean against the wal for a moment, and the weakness infuriated her. No one saw except two kitchen girls, but servants talked, even the insignificant ones. She had spent so much time and ef ort working her way into this court, put ing her barbarian heritage behind her, adapting so wel that almost no one made cat y remarks about her past anymore. She was not going to let it al be ruined in a few nights.
Cal ie took a deep breath, straightened, and glanced at one of the tal mirrors set into the stone wal . The image was dark and slightly distorted—ghosts didn’t have reflections in mirrors made with silver, so al the mirrors in the castle were made of polished steel. The inadequate mirrors were a frequent cause of complaint among the living, and almost al high-ranking living women had unlawful silver mirrors in their apartments.
Stil , the reflection in the steel, though imperfect, was enough. Cal ie’s makeup was faded, her hair a lit le frazzled—but no more than anyone else’s, this close to dawn. She turned left, heading for the interior of the castle, where there were no windows to let sunlight through and revelry could continue long into daylight.
She found a party in a smal sit ing room, where a group of young men were playing cards with a cluster of ladies-in-waiting. Lady Velochier, the king’s first mistress, was floating above them and cal ing out hints about what each player held. The hints were mostly directed against the ladies-in-waiting. Lady Velochier had hated the queen, who she believed had ordered her kil ed; but since the queen had died of natural causes and was now beyond her reach, she directed her animosity at those who had once served her rival.
Cal ie smiled as she stepped into the room. She liked Lady Velochier, who was funny and sharp-tongued.
The merriment in the room was infectious, and she let it fil her along with the scent of wine, washing away Darri’s demanding stares and Varis’s scorn and the memories of the bare windswept plains she had once cal ed home. No one on the plains had the slightest idea how to have fun. They were probably suspicious of the very concept.
But as she sat, the girl next to her turned and stopped giggling, her blue eyes going very wide. “Oh, Cal ie! Whatever are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with your family?”
“She’l be with them soon enough,” Lady Velochier cal ed out from above. She tilted her body downward and ran one hand gently over the blue-eyed girl’s hair; the girl, Aznet e, was her daughter. “Leave her be, sweetling. The poor thing has only a few more nights at court.”
“And then it’s back to the barren plains,” one of the men said. “Let us give you some fond memories to remember us by.”
“I’l take charge of that!” laughed another, a handsome duke’s son named Ayad who was the biggest flirt at court.
Cal ie smiled as if she was amused, wondering why she hadn’t expected this. The answer was easy: because she hadn’t wanted to. “I’d be careful,” she told the duke’s son. “My departure isn’t as certain as al that.”
“No?” said Lady Velochier. “Don’t they want you?”
Another chorus of giggles, and Cal ie couldn’t hide a flush. Lady Velochier had never turned that sharp tongue on her before. It no longer seemed so funny. “The king is a fan of the exotic, is he not?” she shot back.
“I think my sister may catch his eye. That would delay us as long as his at ention holds—so I would wager a month?”
The giggles this time were somewhat tentative; no one was sure if she had gone too far. Neither was Cal ie.
She felt of -balance, and was trying not to show it.
Lady Velochier sank to the floor and became solid, so that she looked like just another lady-in-waiting. She had been no older than most of them when she died, and she was stil extraordinarily beautiful, even if her mouth sometimes pursed like an old woman’s. She set led next to her daughter and looped one arm around her; Aznet e tilted her head onto her dead mother’s shoulder and smiled, closing her eyes.
“I would wager less,” Lady Velochier sneered. “Abject terror isn’t al that at ractive, even if your sister were presentable to begin with. Every time one of us goes a shade translucent, she looks ready to faint.”
Cal ie felt a spurt of sympathy for her sister, something she had been trying to avoid since the moment Darri strode into the throne room. She opened her mouth to defend Darri, and realized just in time what a mistake that would be.
The silence in the room stretched too long as Cal ie struggled against the desire to do it anyhow. Lady Velochier sniggered in victory and looked over the shoulder of the lady-in-waiting next to her. “Who taught you to play, darling? With cards like those, you should have bowed out long ago.”
Aznet e giggled, the girl shrieked in protest, and the room erupted in shouts and laughter. Cal ie drew her knees to her chest and sat silent, not participating, fighting the ridiculous urge to burst into tears.
You should have come years ago, Darri. It would have been dif erent then.
Now it was too late. Unfortunately, that was something Darri would never understand.
Chapter Three
Varis woke up early the next night and sat bolt upright. For a moment he wasn’t sure where he was; the bed beneath him was too soft, and he couldn’t hear the wind. Then he remembered, and relaxed his muscles one by one. He swung himself onto the hard stone floor and reached for the tinderbox at the side of his bed.
His brain, which had spent the day insisting he wake up, was now insisting it was time to sleep. He shook of his grogginess while he pul ed on some riding clothes.
His servant from the night before had said there would be a hunt tonight. If this court was anything like the others he had visited, most of the important noblemen would be on the hunt, and Varis would get a chance to either impress them or talk to them. Preferably both. Either way, it would help him figure out his next step.
He tucked a dagger into his boot, the weight of it reassuringly familiar, and made his way to the castle courtyard. His steps quickened as the fog in his mind cleared, and he strode confidently through empty hal s decorated with dreary tapestries. The passageways were dimly lit, but he had been paying at ention the night before and knew which way to go. He was nearly at the kennels when someone stepped out of a half-open doorway and stumbled into him.
Varis leaped away, whirled with his dagger already in his hand, and found himself looking at the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
Even her heavy makeup and overly ornate costume couldn’t detract from her beauty. She had a fine-featured face, with blond hair that tumbled over slender shoulders, sculpted cheekbones, and unusual y large green eyes.
She smiled at him as he stared at her—a slow, sweet smile that told him she was used to this reaction, bored by it even, but did not object to it from him.
She had to be dead. No one living could be this perfect. For a second, Varis didn’t even care. “My lady.”
“My name is Clarisse, Your Highness.”
Varis smiled. Women general y reacted wel to his smile. “And mine is Varis.”
“I know.” She looked up at him from beneath thick lashes, and Varis struggled to hold onto the smile.
Despite his usual confidence, he couldn’t believe she seemed to be reacting wel . “Are you here for the hunt?”
“Yes,” Varis said. “Are you?”
“Of course. I love to hunt.” She said it with a ferocity that made Varis’s heart pound. Then she dimpled at him, suddenly a court lady again. “You plainspeople must hunt often?”
Varis didn’t like the disparaging tone in which she said “plainspeople,” but he was suf iciently fascinated to pretend he didn’t notice. “Yes, of course. But we hunt during the day.”
“I can see how that would be easier.” The disparagement now bordered on contempt. Varis took a step toward her, forcing her to tilt her head back and look up at him. “But it would hardly be polite to exclude half the court, would it?”
“Half” was probably a wild exaggeration, and he knew she had said it only to see his reaction. He managed not to step back, but suspected from the way her eyebrows lifted that he hadn’t control ed his expression.
“Hunting at night sounds like a chal enge,” he said as calmly as he could manage.
“I suppose it does.”
“Exactly how I like to start my evenings.”
She smiled at him with pleased surprise. Varis played this particular game very wel ; he did not smile back.
Instead he lifted his eyebrows meaningful y, as if acknowledging a shared secret. Ignoring the inner voice that was trying to remind him this wasn’t why he was here, he said, “It’s something to keep me busy, in any case, while I take a break from conquering the world.”
Rael ian girls general y responded wel to the “conquering the world” line, but Clarisse gave him a look that made him feel stupid. “Is that what you’re doing in this country? Taking a break?”
Varis shifted his balance, suddenly bat le ready. Her tone was stil light and mocking, but he didn’t believe for a second that the question was innocent. “You have nothing to worry about. Ghostland is not conquerable; I’m here to make an al iance with your people.”
“They’re not my people.”
He looked down at her more closely, and saw what he should have seen at once: the color on her skin, unlike the waxy whiteness of the Ghostland women; the slightly dif erent shape of her eyes; the sharpness of her features. She looked more like the traders from beyond the mountains than like anyone in this kingdom. “I thought there were no foreigners here.”
“There aren’t supposed to be. I convinced them to make an exception in my case.” Clarisse grinned, eyes gleaming in a way that made his heart speed up. “So you intend to al y yourselves with Ghostland . . . and then? Wil you turn west and cross the Kierran Mountains?”
“Probably.”
She stepped back and looked him over more careful y. He couldn’t read her expression. “I’ve crossed the mountains, and I know what they’re like. You couldn’t ride an army of horses through those passes.”
In Varis’s experience, foreigners had no idea what Rael ians could do with their horses. He folded his arms across his chest. “Why do you care?”
across his chest. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t,” Clarisse said, pressing her lips into a straight line. “I don’t care.” She turned abruptly, her golden hair swinging against her shoulders. “Fol ow me. The hunt wil be leaving shortly, and we wouldn’t want to miss it.”