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  Rani smiled her gratitude and stepped up to the gate. Just as she was about to escape into the City streets, a voice cascaded across the courtyard. “Close the gate, close the gate!” The metal clanged back on its hinges before Rani could register that Prince Halaravilli was the speaker. He darted into the shadows by the guardhouse. “Where are you going in the night? What gods do you pray to for right? For right, in the night, what is right?”

  Rani was shocked by Hal’s presence, by his sing-song accusations, and she sputtered out an explanation. “You know that I’m the First Pilgrim, Your Highness. You know that I must pray in the cathedral.”

  “Pray in the night, pray what is right. There is danger in the night, Pilgrim, danger in the City streets.”

  Rani shook her head, furious that she had been caught so close to escape. “I’m the First Pilgrim, Your Highness. No one will harm me while I act to honor the Thousand Gods.”

  Hal’s eyes flashed angrily in the dark. “There is danger everywhere, First Pilgrim. Danger in the night, danger in the day. Danger in the streets, danger in our rooms.”

  “The guard will watch me from the gate,” Rani gestured to the disconcerted gatekeeper, who was clearly hoping that his decision would not be faulted by the prince.

  “There is danger among soldiers. Danger among princes. Danger among merchants. Danger among priests.” Rani tried to laugh off the bitter threats, desperate to make good her escape. Hal’s chanting continued, though, gaining strength as he sailed on. “Danger from the lion. Danger from the fox.”

  Before Rani could react, Hal’s hand shot out, closing around the bracelet that nestled against her arm. “Danger from the snake.”

  Chapter 14

  Rani felt the blood rush from her face as Halaravilli closed his fingers tight about the metal band. The snakes burned into her flesh, and she set her teeth to keep from crying out. The prince took the measure of her pale face, and then he turned his suddenly steely eyes on the guard. Jutting his chin toward the gate, he commanded, “Keep watch out here. I must speak with the First Pilgrim.”

  The captain swallowed visibly and stepped away from his convenient little hut. Halaravilli dragged Rani inside the shelter and shut the door behind them, loosing her arm to thrust a poker into the heart of the small fire that the guard kept burning.

  “Wh-” Rani annoyed herself by stammering. “Wh-what are you going to do?”

  Hal traced her wavering gaze and then set the poker to rest on the hearth with an exasperated sigh. He seemed to make a true effort to gentle his words as he said, “Nothing, First Pilgrim. Nothing to you.”

  “Then why did you stop me?”

  “You’re in danger. It would be a sin to let you walk into that cathedral, knowing as I do what awaits you, First Pilgrim.”

  The ominous explanation heated Rani’s words. “The only thing waiting for me in the cathedral is the peace of the Thousand Gods.”

  “The Thousand Gods?” Hal guffawed, as if he had never heard of such piety. “You poor thing - the First Pilgrim, an orphan and alone in all the City - yet still you can devote your nights to praying to the Thousand Gods?”

  “Just because my parents are dead doesn’t mean I can’t pray!”

  “Too true, First Pilgrim. Too true.” Hal plunged the poker deeper into the fire, rearranging the logs that glowed red with embers.

  “Stop calling me that!”

  “What? First Pilgrim? It is your title, isn’t it?”

  “Of course, but you’ve never used it before. You make it sound like an accusation.”

  “And what would you rather I call you? Marita Pilgrim? Rani Trader? Ranita Glasswright? Ranimara? Rai?”

  Rani’s breath froze in her lungs. The tiny room tilted at a crazy angle, and she stumbled toward the prince in a mad effort to keep her balance. The patch of hearth, glowing with fire, soared up to catch her.

  Before she could smack her head against the floor, Hal’s wiry hands closed on her arms, catching her, pinning her, protecting her from her own headlong fall. “I-” Rani started, staring up into his questing eyes. “What are you saying? What do you know?”

  “I’m saying more than we have time to talk about here in a guardsman’s hut at the palace gates. I’m saying that I know who you are, and I know what you’ve done.”

  “I didn’t kill Prince Tuvashanoran!” Even as the profession of innocence spewed from her lips, Rani fought to free herself from Halaravilli’s grasp. His fingers tightened about her arm, about the bracelet Bardo had given her. She tried to pull away, but he merely pulled her closer, raising stiff fingers to her tunic lacings.

  She twisted with the desperation of a cornered animal, nearly ripping her clothing as she yanked open the ties at her own neck. She scrambled to grasp the metal twisted about her right bicep, bruising her own flesh as she ripped off the twining snakes. There was little doubt that the prince could overpower her, but she’d be cursed by all the Thousand Gods before she’d let him shred her clothing in his single-minded search for the Brotherhood’s symbol. “I did not kill your brother!”

  “I didn’t say you did.” He plucked the copper band from her, holding it with his fingertips as if the metal had the power to burn. The snakes’ eyes captured the hearth’s flickering fire and cast it back at them. “I never said you killed my brother.”

  The sorrow in his words knocked Rani senseless. She stepped back from the prince with awe in her eyes, a hundred facts falling into place, only to be shifted aside by a thousand questions. “What are you saying then? Why are you talking to me normally? What happened to your chanting?”

  He pinned her with his dark, shrewd eyes. “I don’t need to play those games with you.”

  “What games?”

  “And you don’t need to play games with me,” he chided. “I know that you’re the First Pilgrim, and you’ve clearly been selected by the Brotherhood of Justice.”

  “You know what the snakes mean!” Rani hissed despite herself, and Halaravilli nodded.

  “Aye, or at least I know enough to fear them, among all the rival powers in my father’s kingdom.” When Rani merely stared without comprehension, Hal smiled. “I know to fear the power, and I know to fear my brother. I know to fear the snakes, and I know to fear the fox.”

  “Stop it!”

  Hal favored her with a twisted grin, but he fell silent. “I know that a chanting idiot is no threat to traitors who would murder all who stand in their way.”

  “Do you realize what you’re saying?”

  “Better than you, First Pilgrim. I know the penalty for treason even better than I know the penalty for a merchant who gives short weight.” Rani vividly recalled the scales-master in the marketplace - was it only that afternoon? Then, Hal had commanded that a thief lose his thumb. The penalty for treason was harsher - a neck stretched in the balance. Hal sighed. “I know the weight of a brother who sees wrong and acts worse.”

  “My brother hasn’t done anything wrong!” Rani protested hotly.

  “Then you do have a brother, First Pilgrim?” Hal’s eyes pinned her, as she fought for an answer.

  She spluttered her protest in anger. “I do, and you can’t keep me from seeing him!”

  “Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do!” Halaravilli waved the snake bracelet before her eyes. “I’m a prince of the House of Jair, and I could have you thrown into the dungeons without any explanation. I could put you in the same cell where your parents prayed for deliverance, before they met the hangman’s noose. I could lock you up where the straw still stinks of the blood from your fellow glasswrights, where you still might find a thumb mixed in with the offal.”

  Rani’s scream rose from the bottom of her soul, and she flung herself at Hal as if he were an ordinary youth, an ordinary human being and not a royal prince. She fought to gouge out his eyes, to pluck his hair, to rake her rigid fingers along his cheeks. The keening that rose from her belly was an animal sound, fed by her weeks of wandering in the City streets.
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br />   Hal’s arms were iron bands about her chest; he had her subdued before the guard could fling open the door to the hut. When the prince addressed the soldier, he managed to add a quirky grin to his words, “Everything is fine, soldier, everything is fine. The First Pilgrim is just a little excited, a little concerned, a little perturbed. The First Pilgrim cries, the First Pilgrim sighs.”

  Rani was still squirming for freedom as the guard gave a nodding smile that stopped just short of a leer and withdrew from the small room. Twisting about like a fish on a line, Rani applied the careful knowledge of a youngest child and leaned her weight into Hal’s chest, simultaneously raising her booted foot to crash her heel down hard on his instep.

  The maneuver worked as effectively as it had when she had wrestled with her brothers, and she suddenly found herself across the room from the prince, panting and wild-eyed. “You lie,” she gasped.

  “Every word I told you is the truth.”

  “You murdered my parents! You tortured my friends!”

  “I did nothing, Ranita.”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  “Rani, then, is that what you’d prefer? Or Rai?”

  “How do you know these things?”

  “I’m a prince. I’m next in line to a throne that is being fought over by jackals. If I didn’t learn things, I’d be dead by now.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Many people, in many ways. My private guard was known to you.”

  “To me?”

  “Aye. His name was Dalarati.”

  Rani froze, unable to respond to the accusation implicit in Hal’s words. She could see Dalarati, lying on the floor of his small, neat room, horrifyingly still as his blood spread into a wider and wider pool. But that was ridiculous. She was no longer in the Soldiers’ Quarter. She was no longer risking her life as a Touched girl. She was Marita Pilgrim. Here. Now. In the palace. “Dalarati?”

  “Aye,” the prince confirmed, and his grey eyes cut deep. “He was a good man, and true. He worked to help me, to help the Crown, and never to place the kingdom at risk. Why do you weep, Marita? Ranita? Rani? Ranimara? Rai?”

  Rani dashed at her tears with the back of her hand. “I’m not weeping! Why shed tears for a traitor?” She fought against her pounding heart and forced herself to look Hal in the eyes. “I’m late, Your Highness. I am a pilgrim; I am supposed to pray.”

  “You go into danger.”

  “I go to the cathedral. What danger could await me there?”

  “If only I could ask my brother, Tuvashanoran.”

  “I mourn for your brother, Your Highness, but that changes nothing. I have to go to the cathedral. I’m the First Pilgrim.”

  “They’re using you.”

  “We’re all used. Your father uses you to secure the House of Jair. My guild used me before … before my pilgrimage.”

  “And this?” He raised the snake-bracelet, dangling it before Rani’s eyes, as if he would hypnotize her with the flash of fire on glass, fire on copper.

  “That was lent to me by another. It is not mine to lose or give away.”

  “It is an evil thing, Marita.”

  “Things aren’t evil, Your Highness.” The response came to her as if Tole, the god of wisdom, were speaking in her ear. “People are evil.”

  “And your Brotherhood? Do you call them good, Marita?”

  “They’re not my Brotherhood, Your Highness.” She held his gaze across the ugly twist of metal. “Don’t you understand? I’m not one of them. I’m not one of anything. I have no caste, I have no family. The only person left to me in all the world is my brother, Bardo. Don’t keep me from him.” She took a step closer, holding out her hand for the bracelet. “Please. You know what it’s like to lose a brother. Don’t force me to lose the last one I have in all the world.”

  Slowly, as if he were enchanted by a power beyond his control, he handed back the entwined snakes. “Death is the sentence for all traitors.”

  She met his eyes above the twisted copper. “I’m not a traitor.”

  The snakes stung her flesh as she took the band. Despite her firmest intention, she could not bring herself to force it back on her arm. After a moment’s hesitation, she tossed the bangle into the embers on the hearth. It fell, twisted and malignant, smothering the coals for just an instant before the flames leaped to new life, as if she had tossed fuel on the fire.

  The metal had begun to glow when she turned to leave. Halaravilli avoided her eyes as she opened the door to the hut, and she did not look back as she made her way through the City streets, alone and unprotected.

  The cathedral was cold, filled with clammy air and stale incense that made her think of the laying-out room in the cathedral close. She imagined she heard chanting mourners as she crept down the side aisle, and more than once, she paused in a niche, wishing she had her Zarithian dagger safe at her waist. A handful of candles flickered eerily on altars about the hulking stone building, and her hand trembled as she added her offering to Roat, the god of justice.

  She had just sunk to her knees, when she heard footsteps approach behind her, and then soft words. “I thought you were not coming.”

  “Bardo!” She launched herself at his unsuspecting frame, almost toppling him before his arms could close around her.

  “What is it? What’s the problem, Ranikaleka?”

  She shuddered. “Don’t call me that! I’m Rani! I’m Rani Trader!”

  Bardo shushed her as he led her to the nearest low bench. “Of course you are. Who would say otherwise?” His voice was soft and soothing, a reminder of her mother’s gentle touch when she was a baby and awakened with nightmares. “What’s gotten into you tonight? Why are you so late?”

  “I can’t do this, Bardo. They’re princes - they’re the royal family. I’m just Rani Trader, I’m a merchant!”

  “What happened, Rani?” His voice hardened, and she heard the tone of a commander behind his words. “What did they do to you?”

  “Nothing!” She wailed, and the two syllables echoed off the high stone ceiling. Bardo reached out to shush her, to remind her of their precarious position here in the cathedral. When his fingers closed over her arm and he felt nothing but flesh and cloth, he grabbed at her tunic lacings, stripping the cords from her neck like a hunter butchering a deer.

  “Where is the bracelet?” When she could only stare at him, terrified, he clamped his hands down on her biceps, shaking her until her teeth rattled. “What have you done with the bracelet?” The hard callouses on his thumbs bit into her skin, and she saw the Bardo who had nearly killed her once before, nearly murdered her because of the Brotherhood’s snakes.

  “I gave it to him!” Rani squeaked when she could manage to gather breath. “Stop it!”

  Bardo let her go with a suddenness that sent her reeling toward the stone floor. Even as she crouched on hands and knees, gasping for breath, she saw her brother’s boot move, draw back as if he would send his hardened-leather toe careening into her temple. “Gave it to whom?” he demanded, as she scrambled against the wooden bench, trying to huddle into the smallest possible target. “Who has the snakes?”

  “Prince Halaravilli! Bardo, listen to me! He’s the good one, the one we have to save. The Brotherhood has to protect him, we have to save him, Bardo, please believe me!”

  Bardo’s breath came roaring, like a pack of wolves in the night-time hills, and Rani crouched against the bench, sending up prayers to all the Thousand Gods, begging her brother to come to reason. Bardo reached down and captured her arm, hauling her out from beneath the pew and forcing her to sit on the hard wooden bench. “Tell me what you know.”

  She began with a whisper, fighting back tears, struggling to remember that she was speaking to her brother, to her own kin. Bardo would protect her. Bardo would make it right. Bardo would keep her safe from harm. She told her brother about all that had happened during that long, long day, as she suspected first Bashanorandi, then Halaravilli, then Bashi again.


  Bardo listened, initially in anger, then in disbelief. His fingers closed about her arm as she spoke, pinching tighter and tighter as she told him all that she had learned, living among the royal family. She concluded, “And so, when I was drawing my portraits tonight, when I saw the bones behind their faces, that’s when I knew that Bashi was not a true prince.” She braved her brother’s eyes. “And I think I know who his father is. I know why he wants the throne.”

  Bardo’s voice was dead. “Why? What is it you think you know?”

  “Lord Larindolian,” Rani whispered. “He has too much power in the palace. He was in the queen’s chambers, and if you look at the lines of Bashi’s face.…”

  For just an instant, she thought her words would rekindle Bardo’s rage, but then he sighed deeply, shrugging as he sank to the ground. She cringed away from him, but he settled an easy hand on her shoulder, confident, controlling, silencing.

  “I told Larindolian he played a dangerous game. I told him you were no fool.” Rani held her tongue, and Bardo drew out the silence, like wire pulled through a mold. When he spoke again, his voice was weary. “You will not understand all of this, Ranikaleka. It’s the stuff of kingdoms, the stuff of nightmares. I’ll try to explain, as I understand it, and then you’ll know why I’ve done all the things I’ve done.”

  Bardo sighed and ran his hands through his hair, scrubbing at his scalp in a familiar gesture of contemplation. “It started years ago, when Father first ran for office, for the Merchant’s Council. You won’t remember that, you were hardly more than a babe at the time.…”

  But Rani did remember. She remembered her mother baking a sweet pudding for good luck, and she remembered the entire family sitting down to a roast goose, even though it wasn’t the Feast of Pilgrim Jair. She remembered the pride in her father’s eyes as he hoped for the recognition of his fellows. She recalled the way he held himself as he walked through the streets. That had been a good time, and Rani had found the patterns easily when she laid out their wares in the family stall. There had been much silver to place among the pewter, even an occasional glint of gold, or the cool, smooth flow of ivory.