Page 13 of House of Dusk
“You saved the others,” Yeneris found herself saying. “You said more might have died if we hadn’t been there.”
Sinoe nodded slowly. Then she turned, abruptly transfixing Yeneris with those enormous eyes. “I owe you an apology. I used you. I knew the only way to get you to come with me was to sneak out. To force you to follow. I turned your duty against you. I made you my tool and I shouldn’t have done that. I, of all people, should know better,” she added, bitter with self-recrimination.
“You don’t need to apologize to me,” said Yeneris, brusquely. Heat flooded her cheeks. “Please. Let’s just—”
She broke off at the sound of footsteps. Someone coming down the steps from the floor above. The floor that held Sinoe’s chambers. Yeneris growled under her breath, starting to press Sinoe into the garden, out of sight.
Too late. A tall, slim figure hurtled down the staircase, bent with fierce intensity, as if he meant to slice his way through the world.
Sinoe slid from behind Yeneris with a happy cry and ran to intercept the living dagger. “Ichos!”
The young man halted, a look of relief flitting across his angular features. “There you are!”
Prince Ichos had the same proud bearing as his sister, but on him it seemed an attack, a dare to the world to strike him down. His hair, undyed, held richer glints of red, catching the light of the braziers like rubies. His eyes were not as clear as Sinoe’s, more of a muddy hazel.
Ichos scanned his sister up and down, frowning at the dust clotting her gauzy skirts. Then he looked past her, to Yeneris. His gaze went instantly to the rag she’d bound around her arm, where the first ghoul had sliced her. It wasn’t much of a wound, barely a scratch, but enough to need tending. And she’d given Sinoe her cloak, after noticing the girl shivering on their walk home.
“What happened?” He glanced to Sinoe, then back to Yeneris. His jaw tightened. “Was my sister in danger?”
Sinoe’s laugh broke the silence, merry and tinkling, entirely unlike the low chuckle Yeneris had heard earlier. “Ichos, you know quite well I’m a danger to myself.” She gave a dramatic sigh. “If you must know, I was out in the gardens earlier today and I lost an earring. I wouldn’t have bothered, but it was one of the amber bees. You know, the ones Mother gave me?”
Ichos nodded, frowning.
“So I had to force poor Yen here to come with me to find it. And wouldn’t you know, I’d lost it right in the middle of the rose bed. I would have gone in for it myself, but Yen insisted.” Sinoe ended this speech with an elaborate shrug, the movement conveniently showing off the jewelry currently decorating her ears, gold settings shaped like honeybees clasping polished amber. “I’m hopeless.”
It was a flawless performance. Yeneris was forced to revise her estimation of the princess yet again. If she could lie so easily to her own brother, she could certainly lie to Yeneris.
Ichos made a doubtful noise at the back of his throat. He was still glowering at Yeneris, as if this was somehow her fault. She fought to keep her own expression cool, impassive.
“Don’t be sour,” Sinoe told him. “I haven’t eatenallthe milk candies. I know they’re your favorite. Come up. We’ll have tea, and you can tell me all about that delicious poet you’ve been spending—”
“I didn’t come for tea,” said the prince.
Sinoe held her breath for a heartbeat. Going still, like a mouse that fears the hawk, spiraling above. “Why, then? What do you need?”
“Not me. Father.” Ichos’s mouth pinched. “He’s returned. And he requires your services. Immediately.”
CHAPTER 5
SEPHRE
In her old life, Sephre might have drowned her riled spirits at the taverna. Zander had always known where to find the best brews. Even during the worst privations of the siege, he’d managed—via bribes or threats or quite possibly sorcery—to obtain several bottles of Scarthian milk wine.To celebrate our victories, he’d told her, grinning. But the toasts she remembered were all in memory of the fallen.
There were no tavernas in Stara Bron, of course. But Sephre did keep a small supply of wine in her workshop, purely for medicinal application. After such a day as this, surely she might stretch the definition of “medicinal” and take a cup.
If only Brother Timeus hadn’t taken her request to clean up the kitchen gardenquiteso literally. In his zeal he had weeded the herbs so carefully there was not a single errant sprout or fallen twig, then fallen upon the basket of neglected glassware she’d been meaning to wash and had left out hoping the rains would do the work for her. She’d returned from the agia’s office to find the boy with his sleeves turned up, elbow-deep in a soapy pail, whistling cheerfully as he scrubbed his way through the mess. She hadn’t had the heart to ask him to stop, even if it meant the loss of her usual refuge.
She could have gone to the dining hall instead, to join her fellow ashdancers in an hour of quiet companionship and spice tea before the evening meal. They were pleasant times, listening to Brother Dolon expound on some new scroll he’d discovered in the depths of the archives, or watching Brother Orrin try yet again to beat Brother Petros—who cheated with more flair and aplomb than any of the professional dicers Sephre had known—at hopstones.
But the interview with Halimede had left Sephre too uneasy for that. And so she sought a more solitary relief. A different sort of drowning.
Sighing, she let her head tip back against the edge of the bathing pool, breathing in the hot steam as the warm waters did their best to unlock the tension from her limbs.
The baths had been an unexpected joy at Stara Bron. Fed by the hot blood of the earth itself, they were warmer than the finest steam rooms of Helissa. So old that the steps to enter the pool had been worn into curves by generations of ashdancers come to wash away the grime of a long and trying day.
If only she could so easily wash away Halimede’s words.I need you, Sister Sephre.Allof you. Who you were, and who you are. I need you to help me fight it.
Fight what, though? Rumors and speculation? The deaths were troubling, yes. But as yet there were no skotoi clawing their way out of the netherworld. No signs of imminent cataclysm, of the return of a long-dead god. The only devastation Sephre knew had been caused by a mortal man, in his quest for power, to prove himself the Ember King reborn. Maybe it was simply an excuse to justify denying Sephre the Embrace.
