“Stop it,” Cal ie said from behind Darri. “Leave them alone.”
Darri turned so fast she almost overturned her chair. Her younger sister stepped away from the near-mishap primly, without looking at Darri. Her eyes were on the woman, who smoothed back her hair and smiled.
“Oh, come, darling. Why protect them? No one protected you.”
“As you made perfectly clear,” Cal ie said. “Though I understand your motives, Lizet e. With that hairstyle, only a foreigner couldn’t guess in seconds that you were dead. And for quite a while.”
Lizet e raised one hand to her hair, and suddenly there was no face beneath the elaborate hairstyle; instead there was a skul , shreds of skin clinging to gray bone, a white maggot squirming out of one blank eyehole.
Varis made a sick noise, obviously involuntary. Lizet e’s mask of a face reappeared. She smirked at him and at Cal ie, then turned to Darri and said, “I understand you have your eye on our prince. You had bet er get used to this sort of thing, if you’re thinking of marrying him. I’m the least frightening ghost here.”
“Real y?” Darri did her best to sound unconcerned. She would show these creatures they couldn’t cow a Rael ian princess. “How did you die?”
A short, absolute silence passed. Lizet e tit ered and touched a finger to her lips. “Now, now. We’ve only just met.”
Darri glanced at her sister, whose face was beet red; the last time Darri had seen Cal ie so embarrassed, she had just lost control of a horse. Apparently this was not a question one asked of the dead.
Lizet e vanished. Varis made another strangled sound. Cal ie sighed and said, “It would real y be bet er if you stopped doing that.”
Varis clenched his fists on the table. Darri tried to exchange a triumphant look with Cal ie, who had never been particularly close to Varis, but Cal ie took a seat without looking at her.
been particularly close to Varis, but Cal ie took a seat without looking at her.
A serving boy came by with wine and a tray ofcomplicated-looking delicacies. Darri took one and bit in. It was overcooked and overspiced. Cal ie did not take any. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, like someone suf ering through a very boring etiquet e lesson.
“I asked King Ais to seat us together,” Darri said, deciding to ignore Cal ie’s silence. Her sister was in there, somewhere. She had retreated deep inside herself—and who could blame her—but Darri would find her. “He wanted me to sit with Prince Kestin.”
“For understandable reasons.” Varis spat the words out more viciously than usual. His uncontrol ed whimpers had been even more impolite than Darri’s forthrightness, and he knew it. “Prince Kestin is the reason you’re here. Not that I would expect you to remember that for more than five seconds.”
Cal ie did look up then, not at them, but at the prince’s table across the room. When she spoke, her voice was flat. “Prince Kestin is dead.”
Darri fol owed her sister’s gaze to watch the prince toss back half a goblet of wine. “Dead?”
Cal ie put her elbow on the table and propped her chin up on her hand. “The dead can eat and drink. They don’t have to, but many of them enjoy it.”
“No, I mean—no one told us—”
“He was murdered several weeks ago.”
Just a few minutes before, Darri had been thinking him handsome. Thinking it might not be so bad if, to seal an al iance . . . her stomach turned. While she was forcing back her bile, Varis said sharply, “The king’s son was kil ed, and the murderer stil has not been brought to justice?”
“Not only that.” Cal ie leaned back in her chair, resting her elbows on the armrests and watching her brother. Her evident enjoyment of Varis’s discomfiture gave Darri some hope; she just wished her sister would look at her. “The murderer is protected by law. King Ais has issued a royal decree forbidding anyone to look for his son’s kil er. Any investigation into Kestin’s death is an act of treason.”
“Why?” Varis demanded.
“Because in this kingdom, fathers love their children.” Cal ie smiled bit erly. “And the purpose of a ghost’s existence is vengeance. If Kestin finds out who murdered him, he wil kil that person. And then he wil disappear.”
Varis wrinkled his nose in disgust. “His purpose is vengeance and freedom . . . and his father would rather keep his spirit trapped on this earth?”
Cal ie dropped her hands to her lap. “Control your prejudices, brother. A third of the people in this room are dead. To Ghostlanders, it doesn’t make that much of a dif erence.”
Al that did was turn his expression into an outright sneer. “Hard to credit, but I would believe anything of these people.”
Darri tried to breathe. If Kestin was dead . . . for the past ten nights, she had prepared herself to be a sacrifice, a trade for her sister’s freedom. She hadn’t even imagined there could be a way to save herself as wel —hadn’t let herself imagine it. Because if she had been wil ing to sacrifice herself last time, instead of dreaming of a happy ending for both of them, maybe Cal ie wouldn’t be here.
But the prospect that opened before her now was so dizzying she could barely think. If no marriage was possible . . . what if she and Cal ie could ride out of this kingdom together?
She turned and looked at Varis, recognizing the intent look on his face, the rigidity of his jaw. He had not missed the implications of Prince Kestin’s death.
“Wel ,” she said, and somewhat enjoyed the wariness with which he turned toward her. “If Prince Kestin is dead, there’s no reason for either me or Cal ie to remain here, is there?”
“Of course not,” Varis said, not flinching from her gaze. “The sooner we leave this place, the bet er. We’l stay at least a week so as not to be insulting, but I’l speak to the king shortly about making arrangements for our departure.”
That had been far too easy—but at least it hadn’t been an outright refusal. Maybe he actual y meant it. Darri turned to her sister, and her breath caught halfway down her throat. Cal ie’s face was perfectly blank, but her lips were set in a grim line that Darri recognized from long ago.
Cal ie was not happy about her imminent escape.
Cal ie glanced swiftly at Darri, then away. She reached for the tray of food, expertly flipped up her flared sleeve so it didn’t knock anything over, and kept her eyes on her plate as she chewed on a tiny meat pastry.
I can save you, Darri thought at her. You can trust me this time. But Cal ie didn’t look up.
Darri picked up her own pastry and bit into it savagely. Varis, she noted, had not picked his up again after the first bite. Cal ie, on the other hand, was digging in avidly.
You can trust me this time. But Cal ie didn’t know that. Once, when she had been smal enough to sob herself to sleep with her head on Darri’s lap, Darri had promised to save her. And failed.
Darri couldn’t blame Cal ie for not believing that this time would be dif erent. But it would. If she couldn’t get through to her sister, then Cal ie would have to find it out along with everyone else.
Cal ie knew Darri was going to try to get her alone once the banquet ended, so she planned ahead. She munched on candied fruit until half the nobles had staggered to their rooms to sleep. Then she looked across the room and caught Duke Salir’s eye.
the room and caught Duke Salir’s eye.
It needed no more than that. The duke heaved himself to his feet and waddled across the room, his smal eyes bright with curiosity. Duke Salir always wanted to know more than anyone else, and frequently did. He had been eyeing the exotic new arrivals, waiting for his chance to pounce, since the moment the banquet began.
“My lord,” Cal ie murmured when he was a few yards away, to give her siblings just a bit of warning.
“Would you care to join us?”
Varis’s and Darri’s heads snapped up, their expressions for a moment identical. Darri would have been greatly distressed if she knew it—judging from the strained remarks they addressed toward each other, the relationship between her siblings had never recovered from Varis’s refusal to aid Cal ie. She couldn’t help feeling a smal , mean satisfaction over that.
“Thank you,” the duke said, set ling himself heavily into one of the high-backed chairs. “I’ve been looking forward to the chance to speak to Your Highnesses. I am very interested in the lands outside our borders, and have been fol owing with great admiration the exploits of your tribe.”
Cal ie barely suppressed a snort at the lie. In Ghostland, that was the equivalent of announcing that you were interested in the courtship rites of ants.
Varis looked predictably flat ered, but as he murmured a polite response, he shot Cal ie a look of thinly disguised panic. She could easily guess what he was thinking: Was the man he was talking to alive or dead? Cal ie pressed her lips together and said nothing. There was no easy way to tel ; even the ghosts didn’t automatical y recognize their fel ow dead. Cal ie had spent months learning the necessary combination of reading clues and not caring. Varis could survive for a few nights.
Besides, informing them that Duke Salir was dead wouldn’t be doing them much of a favor.
“Excuse me,” she said, and slipped out of her chair. Darri half-turned, but not before the duke had addressed a question to her, which she reluctantly turned back to answer. Thinking, no doubt, that she would catch up with Cal ie later.
A trapped, panicked feeling burned its way up Cal ie’s throat. She forced it down, concentrating on maneuvering her way between tables, and was halfway to the side door of the banquet hal when the room behind her went silent.
It was just for a second—a momentary break in the rhythm of conversation—but Cal ie had learned to pay at ention to the moods of the court, and she knew immediately that something was wrong. She whirled, her skirt catching on a chair edge, afraid to find out what her sister had done now.
But Darri was stil seated, her shoulders tense beneath her shiny strands of dark hair, leaning forward in that way she did when she was spoiling for a fight. Varis was seated too, his tired face set in a shrewd, polite expression. Neither of them had seen what the rest of the court had.
The Guardian was striding across the banquet hal toward them. He moved far more easily than should have been possible in that iron casing, as if the black metal was a second skin.
Cal ie’s breath caught in her throat as she struggled between an urge to run toward Darri and an urge to get out of the banquet hal . In the end, she fol owed her strongest instinct: to do exactly what the rest of the court was doing. Nothing at al . She watched.
The Guardian’s feet hit the marble floor with a heavy, metal ic tread. Everyone watched him as he passed, though they pretended not to; they returned to dining and talking, but less ostentatiously, trying not to draw at ention to themselves.
Across the room, Prince Kestin stood, his eyes flashing, but he was too far away to do anything.
The Guardian drew his silver sword. He was so fast that not even Varis had time to move before the sword sliced through Duke Salir’s throat, just as the duke was tilting his head back to down a goblet of wine.
Wine splat ered, Duke Salir vanished, and the goblet shat ered on the floor. For a moment the room resembled a painting, everyone in it frozen and silent, al staring at the Guardian. The silver sword was the only real-looking object in the room.
Then, one by one, the courtiers turned away. The low buzz of conversation resumed, a few servants detached themselves from the corners to clean up the wine and glass, and the Guardian sheathed his sword and kept walking.
Toward her.
Cal ie didn’t try to run. She didn’t try to keep her face composed either. She had once tried not to be afraid of the Guardian, until she had realized that this particular fear had nothing to do with her foreignness.
Everyone was afraid of the Guardian.