Court of Fives - Page 25/116

I pull my hand out of his grasp. “I have to go.”

“Scorpion Fountain. Anise.” He hurries away through the mob of waiting carriages.

10

Jes! There you are!” Amaya waves. “Hurry!”

I trot over, hating how the fashionable sheath gown makes it so hard to climb or run. But if I’d escaped the soldiers, Kalliarkos wouldn’t have rescued me. Thinking of the way he casually treated me as just another adversary makes me smile as I reach the carriage.

“Thank the oracles!” Amaya grabs my hands so tightly I think she might actually have been worried. “How did you get separated from us? We have to get home.”

“It was stupid to stop here!” I say as we clamber in.

“It’s stupid of you to run the Fives in defiance of Father. Do you want to have this argument again, Jes?”

No one is more annoying than Amaya gnawing on an argument so I tweak aside the curtains and stare outside to ignore her. The view seaward is stunning from this height. The city has two harbors that are almost perfect circles, their rocky rims washed by water. Many ships sail in and out bringing in goods from foreign countries and taking away the grain, gold, spices, and cloth that our enemies covet. Between the harbors rises the peninsula that houses the City of the Dead and the tombs of the oracles. The deep blue sea stretches to the horizon to the south and west, its waters glittering under the sun.

Far away to the south, much too far to see from here, lies the land of Saro, where my father was born, the same land out of which the ancestors of the current king and queen fled during a terrible civil war a hundred years ago, as Lord Kalliarkos has just reminded me. With their army and their priests the newcomers established a royal dynasty here. But even so, it wasn’t far enough away, because the deadly hostilities they left behind plague us still.

My gaze drifts back to where Coriander waits like a person drugged by shadow-smoke. I wonder what terrible crime her brother committed. Probably he murdered someone in a fit of rage.

“What are you looking at?” Amaya shoulders me aside. She glances toward Coriander but then turns to look forward for so long that I wonder what she is looking at. Finally she sits back. “How I wish I could trade places with Coriander! Then I could walk anywhere I wish in the city instead of being trapped by Father’s honor!”

“As if Coriander ever gets a day free.” The memory of her brother’s accusations grinds at my thoughts.

Amaya unwraps one of the cat masks and turns it from side to side. “Have you ever been in love?” she asks too casually. “I know you’ve done things at the training stable you’re not supposed to. I won’t tell.”

“Kissing people who are attractive to see what it feels like is not the same as being in love!” I smile the bold smile I usually only wear at Anise’s stable, the one that shows I’m not really a dutiful daughter at all. “It is fun, though.”

Amaya rolls her eyes and then lifts the cat mask to her face. For an instant, as I see her dark eyes shining through the slits, the mask seems to melt into her. For an instant, her skin takes on a sheen of silky fur and her teeth sharpen and gleam and her painted fingernails elongate into viciously pointed claws.

Startled, I blink, then rub my eyes.

She lowers the mask with an overwrought sigh, just an ordinary pretty girl.

“Why did you buy two cat masks?” I ask.

“So Denya and I can match.” She wraps the mask back up. “Are we ever going to leave?”

She sticks out her head, looking forward. I see the way she catches in an excited breath, the way her head tilts flirtatiously like she’s smiling at someone she wants to notice her. Abruptly our carriage jerks forward and she sits back heavily in the seat, fanning flushed cheeks with a hand. She closes her eyes and smiles triumphantly.

I peek out again. A young Patron woman is peering out of the heavy beaded curtains of the carriage ahead of us. Her hair is a dramatic sculpture of ribbons, elaborately layered tails, and braided plaits. Thickly drawn kohl outlines her eyes as if with wings. Seeing me, she frowns in surprise and withdraws inside.

A moment later I see Kalliarkos—of all people!—stride up to that very carriage and swing inside. He’s grinning like he just won a trial. Guards wave their carriage through the gate.

When our turn comes, Polodos walks confidently up to the guards and we are waved through without incident.

“Polodos doesn’t seem like the kind of ambitious, dashing man you would be interested in,” I say, still peering out through the beads.

“You need to pay attention to something other than the Fives, Jes. Polodos is very ambitious.”