The Crown of Embers (20 page)

I stand and say, “Belén, come here.”

He approaches without hesitation and drops to one knee.

I ask, “Do you still wish to swear fealty to me?”

His soft indrawn breath is the only indication that I’ve taken him by surprise. “I do,” he says evenly.

“Then I would accept you into my service.”

He reaches up with both hands and clutches the fabric at my waist, quickly, as if he’s afraid I’ll change my mind. It’s intimate and unnerving, especially when the side of his thumb brushes across my Godstone, and I hear the whisper of drawn daggers somewhere nearby. But it’s the traditional gesture of a newly sworn vassal, and it must be allowed.

Belén intones, “I swear my life and service unto you. I swear to protect you and to honor you. I am yours to command in all things. For as long as I live, your people shall be my people, your ways my ways, your God my God.”

I take his hands and pull him to his feet while everyone in the group mutters, “Selah.”

He towers over me. I can’t help but stare at his eye patch. He was tortured. For me. Because he refused to give me up once he realized his mistake. On impulse, I pull him close and hug him tight.

He whispers, “Thank you, Elisa.”

Behind him, I glimpse Mara’s face. Her cheeks shine with moonlit tears.

I pull away, hoping I have not forgiven too easily. But it feels right to do it. “I need your help,” I tell him. “Tonight.”

“Anything.”

When I explain about the riders following us, he nods, unsurprised. I don’t even have to tell him what to do. He simply says, “I’ll be back by morning.” And he slips away into the darkness.

“Who do you think it is?” Mara asks, once he is gone.

I sit back down and cross my legs. “I suspect Conde Eduardo. He was displeased to hear of this journey and its purpose. He is set on me marrying a northern lord. And he knows I’ve been keeping things from him.”

“He does not know about me, yes?” Storm says in his sibilant voice.

“That is one of the things I’ve been keeping from him.”

“If they are the conde’s people,” Ximena says, “we might be able to use them to our advantage. Set a false trail, maybe.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” I say.

“What if they’re thieves?” says a female voice I don’t recognize.

Hector barks a laugh. “Then they are poor thieves indeed,” he says. “Five against all of us?”

He is right to be amused. He and Tristán could probably defeat five common thieves alone. What I worry about, what I don’t say, is that they might be assassins. They might be observing, patient and cold, waiting for the right moment to creep into our camp.

Perhaps Hector is thinking the same thing, because he says, “Until we know for sure, we’re doubling our watch. Elisa, will you ride in the servants’ carriage tomorrow, out of sight?”

I open my mouth to protest, to say that I prefer my own two feet to a hot, bumpy carriage, but then I remember that I’ve decided to trust his judgment in these matters. “All right,” I say. And it really is.

Chapter 18

I
’M
awakened by a hand pressing across my mouth. I arch away from the intruder, pulse pounding, drawing breath through my nose. It’s happening at last, what I have feared—

“Elisa!” comes Belén’s whispered voice. “It’s me.”

I go limp with relief. He removes his hand, saying, “Shh!”

“What do you think you’re doing?” I whisper furiously.

“I wanted to see if I could sneak past Tristán’s sentries and the Royal Guard and into your tent.”

“Oh.” I push back my bedroll and sit up, then rub warmth into my arms. My guard is the most elite force in the country. Surely not just anyone could slip by them. Weakly I say, “Well, you
are
one of the sneakiest people I’ve ever known.”

“I don’t deny it.” I can’t see him in the dark, but I hear the smile in his voice.

“What did you find?”

My tent tilts precariously as he knocks the wall crossing his legs. “Five men trying to pass as desert nomads. By their clothing, you’d think they came from my own village. But the hair isn’t right. It’s too . . . careful. Coifed, even. And their horses are stout and sea bred. No colors, no markings, but their tack is high quality. Even the weave of their saddle blankets testifies to wealth.”

“So they might be Conde Eduardo’s men after all. Or the general’s.”

“I recognized one. I don’t know his name, but I’ve seen him at the conde’s shoulder. A very tall man, taller than me. Fine, straight hair slicked back with oil. He seems young at first glance, but I’d wager not. He has the look of experience about him.”

I search my memory, cataloging the conde’s advisers and attendants. There is only one I’ve never encountered. “You may be describing Franco,” I say. “An elusive man. I don’t know that I’ve ever spoken to him.”

He pauses, shifts in his rear. “Elisa . . . you should know. If Humberto were alive, he would be very proud of you.”

The hurt that wells up is so unexpected that it’s a moment before I can speak. “Thank you,” I manage. I have to redirect the subject. I’m not sure I want to talk about Humberto. “Did you overhear anything?”

“A tasteless observation about one of their mothers and her goat, which I will not repeat. One suggested they allow themselves to drop farther behind tomorrow. ‘Out of sight,’ he said. But the tall one—Franco?—said, ‘We have to keep her in view. She’ll make a move soon enough.’”

I loose a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. “So we can reasonably conclude that they follow us, most likely on the conde’s orders.”

“I think so, yes.”

I lie back down and pull the blanket up over my shoulders. “Go get some sleep. We’ll let the others know in the morning.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” He turns over on his knees, no longer bothering with stealth.

“And Belén?”

“Yes, Your Majesty?”

Maybe I
do
want to talk about him. A little. “Humberto would be proud of you, too. He always believed you’d come back to us.” Saying his name aloud doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.
Humberto,
I practice silently.
Humberto
.

A soft catch of breath. Then: “He had a way of believing in people long before they believed in themselves, didn’t he?”

The entrance to my tent flaps closes, and he is gone.

As we breakfast on corn cakes fried in olive oil, Ximena and Hector argue about whether or not to split the group apart. Everyone else listens to their discussion, shifting awkwardly in the sand, trying to be invisible.

Only Storm has not joined us for breakfast; he does not dare leave the carriage in daylight.

“There is safety in numbers,” Ximena insists. “Five men against our guard and Conde Tristán’s warriors? It’s no contest. And I’m not convinced they’re out to cause trouble. It’s likely the conde just sent them to keep an eye on Elisa. This journey does not play into his plans, and he’s desperate to feel like he has some sort of control over the situation. The best thing we can do is stick together. Go to Selvarica as planned. The more expectations we meet, the less suspicious we become to observers. But if we separate, Elisa is even more vulnerable.”

Conde Eduardo is not the only one desperate to feel some sort of control, I muse as I chew on my corn cake. Ximena seethes with the frustration of being stuck in the carriage with the decoy queen, unable to keep close watch over me. She hates ceding complete responsibility to Hector.

“I hope you’re right, Lady Ximena,” Hector says. “But if he merely wanted to keep an eye on the queen, why didn’t he insist on letting his own delegation travel with us? It doesn’t make sense. And the presence of Franco has me concerned. He’s a shadow adviser. No one knows anything about him. My instincts say all is not as it seems.”

“We should have traveled with a larger party,” Ximena says.

Hector shakes his head. “I don’t trust enough people to form a larger party. Better the enemy out there than here among us.”

Tristán has been listening quietly, sipping from a waterskin at regular intervals. He ties it off, sets it in the sand, and gains his feet. He does it gracefully, in such a way that all our eyes are drawn to him. His beautiful face is grave when he says, “My father was killed on a journey such as this. It’s the perfect opportunity, you see. Anyone can be blamed. So no one ever really is. I still don’t know who killed my father.”

Everyone is silent. I say, “What do
you
advise?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Caution, I guess. I think the Lady Ximena is overly optimistic to hope the conde merely wants you observed. But I’m also not convinced that splitting off would be safer for you.”

I take a deep breath. I have to make a decision. And it’s one that could lead to someone’s death. Mine, or decoy Elisa’s, or someone I care about. I used to make these kinds of decisions all the time, when I was only a desert rebel. I would have expected to become accustomed to it.

“We have a plan for splitting the group if necessary, right?” I say.

Hector nods. “We do. But we can’t do it in open desert. We need to reach a village or trading post. Better yet, a large port like Puerto Verde.”

“Then we continue on as we are for now. Belén, you will observe them every night, so long as you feel you can get there and back undetected.”

He ducks his head obediently. “I can do it.”

“I’ll reevaluate when we reach a trading post.”

We break off to pack up camp. Ximena glowers as she returns to the decoy carriage.

As I’m rolling up my tent, Hector comes up beside me. “Tonight,” he says, “I’ll sleep outside your door. We’ll see if Belén can get by
me
.”

I freeze, and my fingers dig into the tent fabric. Humberto used to do the same thing, to protect me from the others. I look into Hector’s eyes. They’re steady and fierce, but I can’t tell what he’s thinking. I could always tell what Humberto was thinking.

Hector is so much more complicated, and though he is less a mystery to me than he used to be, it feels like I could spend years peeling back the layers, trying to learn his whole person.

When I don’t answer right away, he says, “Please let me do this.”

One thing I am certain of: I trust him utterly. “Thank you,” I say at last. “I’ll sleep easier knowing you’re there.” And it’s the truth.

Riding in the servants’ carriage is as awful as I anticipated. In no time, my back and rear ache from being jostled against the wooden bench, and I am crazy with heat, for we deliberately chose carriages with only small, curtained windows. Sweat pools between my breasts and soaks my hairline, curling wisps of hair that have escaped my plaits.

There are two nice things about the arrangement, though. One is that Hector sits beside me, and our thighs brush with every jolt of the carriage. When one wheel hits a large stone, the carriage lurches to the side and I slide along the bench until our hips collide. The carriage rights itself quickly, but neither of us bothers to move away.

The second nice thing is that it gives me a chance to talk with Storm for the first time in days. He sits on the bench across from us, and he is so tall his head nearly brushes the roof. He has pushed back his cowl, and sweat glistens on his near-perfect skin. He fans himself with a dried palm frond.

“Are you enjoying our journey so far?” I ask with no small amount of amusement.

He hisses, and his green eyes spark with fury, or maybe loathing. I feel Hector’s body go taut.

But I am no longer afraid of the Invierno. Logic tells me to consider him a threat, to remember that he might even be the assassin who stabbed me in the catacombs. But my instincts say otherwise. Perhaps it’s his transparency that makes me feel safe with him. He is one of the few who never bothers to hide his true thoughts from me. Maybe the only.

“This desert is God cursed,” he says.

“Your people do not seem well suited to it,” I observe.

“Indeed not. Our skin cracks and dries; our feet blister. There are days it feels like my blood is boiling. I found much relief from the wretched climate in my cavern hideout.”

I scowl at him. “And yet you marched an army of thousands across the desert to try to overrun us.”

“Well, we skirted it to the north and south, but yes. It was a difficult journey. Hundreds perished from the heat alone.”

“Your own country is much cooler by comparison?”

“Cooler. Wetter. Lovelier. Better, really, in every possible way than this forsaken blight that you rule.”

I surprise myself by laughing.

I’m further surprised to see his lips twitch with a hint of a smile. He says, “So tell me, Your Majesty. Why do I have the displeasure of your company today?”

“I yearned to bask in the light of your empathy and good cheer.”

“Sarcasm again. I thought you would tell me you had decided to hide like a frightened rabbit from the group following us.”

“I’m hiding like a wise rabbit.”

“Do you think they are the conde’s men?”

“I do, though I can’t be sure. One of them, a tall, quiet man, has been seen with the conde before.”

He starts forward so abruptly that our knees collide.

Hector’s dagger is at his throat in an instant. “Back. Away.”

Storm edges back, resumes fanning himself with the palm frond. His face becomes a mask of calm, even as he keeps a careful eye on Hector’s dagger. He says, “Describe this person to me.”

So I do, trying to remember Belén’s description exactly: Tall, hair slicked back, young looking, a close adviser. Storm coils in on himself, growing tighter and tighter with the telling until he looks like a cornered cat.

“What is it? Do you know this man?”

“I have to get away,” he says. “At the soonest opportunity. Leave me at the next trading post. No, leave me when we get to a large port. I’ll need a place big enough to disappear in. I can make my way back—”

“Storm! Do you know this man?”

He inhales deeply, and the mask of calm settles over his uncanny features once again. “I do know him. Franco, right? That’s not his real name. His real name, in God’s language, is Listen to the Falling Water, for Her Secrets Carve Canyons into Hearts of Stone.”

I gasp. “An Invierno!”

“A spy,” Hector says.

Storm says, “If Franco learns I am here, he will kill me.”

“Conde Eduardo has an Invierne spy working for him,” I say, as though sending the words aloud into the world will help me believe them. “Does the conde know that Franco is an Invierno?”

Storm shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t you tell me there was an Invierne spy in the employ of one of my own Quorum lords?”

“You didn’t ask. Also, I’ve been underground for more than a year. I didn’t know he had worked his way into the conde’s inner circle.”

“Have any others infiltrated my court?”

“Not that I know of. Your Majesty, you
must
let me go at the nearest port.”

The carriage lurches again, and I grab Hector’s knee instinctively. Storm’s gaze drops to my hand, and he allows himself a secret smile. I draw my hand back, curl it into a fist in my lap.

“If I let you go,” I tell him, “you would miss your chance to accompany us to the
zafira
. You won’t get another. Only someone who bears a living Godstone can navigate there, remember?”

He runs a hand through his golden hair, considering. Now that I’ve become a bit used to the odd color, I find it more beautiful than alarming. “You make a good point,” he admits.

“We could leave Storm behind,” Hector suggests, and his gaze on our companion is unwavering. “It might distract Franco, give us a chance to put some distance between us.”

That will never happen. I don’t care to show my hand to Eduardo or the Invierne spy by revealing that I’m harboring the former ambassador. But the alarm on the Invierno’s face is so satisfying that I pretend to consider it.

“If we left you behind, do you think you could get away?”

“No! Not if Franco sees me and recognizes me. He would stop at nothing to have me killed.”