Page 75 of House of Dusk
She halted beside the cart. The two servants stepped back at her approach. Bracing herself, Yeneris tugged aside the cloth. Tami gave a bright chitter, uncoiling from a tight ball at the bottom of the cage and flinging herself at the bars closest to Yeneris with a piteous wail.
“Shhh,” she hushed the creature. “It’s going to be all right. You’re going to go home now.”
But Tami continued to wail until Yeneris opened the cage door. With a creel of triumph, the ailouron leapt onto her shoulder, nestling her beak beneath Yeneris’s ear. She began to purr.
“She likes you,” said Hura.
Yeneris shrugged. “I’m familiar.”
The man arched a brow. “Ailourons aren’t particularly friendly with anyone other than their chosen person. Or people their chosen person cares about. Their hearthkin.”
Another Bassaran word. Hearthkin and heartkin. The two kinds of family, her mother had taught her. Those you were born to, and those you chose for yourself. A foolish heat spread up her cheeks. Yeneris reached for Tami, unwinding the ailouron’s claws from her hair, ignoring her squawk of protest. She held the creature out to Hura. “Then she’ll be very happy with you. Princess Sinoe clearly thinks very highly of you, Lord Hura.”
Hura took Tami, who in fact did submit easily to his touch, and had soon nestled herself onto his shoulder. Yeneris told herself sternly that it was ridiculous to feel jealous.
“I should go.” She started to stalk away.
“A moment, Yeneris.”
She halted. Not because of his raised hand, or the entreaty in his brown eyes. It was her name. Even on Sinoe’s lips, her own name still sounded strange to her, just slightly dissonant. But this time Hura spoke it properly, the way her mother had said it. The way Mikat said it. It must be deliberate.Calm, she told herself.Give nothing away. It could be simply a slip. He was half Bassaran, after all.
“What is it, my lord?”
“I have something for Sinoe,” he said. “Another gift. One that I hope she will keep. One to give her hope.”
Yeneris hesitated. Unease crawled over her skin. Hura had positioned himself so that his back was to the crowd. His short cape hid his arms as he drew something from his brightly patterned tunic. “Will you see that it reaches her safely?”
“What is it?”
“A trinket from Lady Kizare. She wishes her daughter—” He spoke the word very deliberately—“might know that she has not forgotten her. That she thinks of her. That she prays every day to the four winds that they be reunited.”
The unease became something sharper. Yeneris stared at the small packet in Hura’s outstretched hand. What would Sinoe want her to do? Taking it endangered Sinoe. And Hura too, for that matter.
And it endangered the plan. Sinoe needed her father’s trust. She had just sliced out her own heart for the chance to visit the kore alone.
She started to step back. Hura’s gaze narrowed. “Please, take it. You strike me as a woman who knows how to keep secrets. And if you help me, I can help you someday. Perhaps you understand the desire to return someone beloved to their home?”
Ice spiked her chest, but Yeneris kept her expression impassive. He could simply be fishing, tossing chum into the water to see if she’d bite. She would not bite, even as her mind spun through possibilities. If she denied him, did he have the power to reveal her? Hierax clearly didn’t trust the Scarthians. But Hura could seed doubt. Whisper in the right ear, and raise enough concerns that she might be fired from her post.
If she accepted, she would need to thread a very narrow course. Clearly Hura wanted to whisk Sinoe out of the palace, off to Scarthia and her mother. If not for her own mission, Yeneris would want that too. To get Sinoe as far away from her father and this cage he kept her in. To give her space to spread her wings and fly. What a sight that would be.
But Yeneris needed Sinoe, too. The princess could take her to the kore. Help her ensure that the reliquary returned home, that whatever desecration Lacheron planned would not come to pass.
Still, if she could balance things just right, maybe she could have both. Rescue both Sinoe and the kore.
Carefully, Yeneris turned and went to collect the small leather bag that hung beside Tami’s cage. Returning, she held it out to Hura. “Here,” she said. “Tami’s favorite treats. The princess would want her to have them.”
As Hura took the parcel, he pressed his own into her palm. She tucked it away in a smooth movement, slipping it into her sleeve like one of her hidden daggers.
“Thank you,” said Hura. Turning, he ambled off. Tami craned her neck, bright golden eyes fixing on Yeneris. She began to keen again, riffling her wings, but Hura distracted her with one of the bits of dried meat until she quieted. And then he was gone, and Yeneris was truly alone.
CHAPTER 21
SEPHRE
This was, quite possibly, the worst idea she’d ever had. And Sephre had had her fair share of bad ideas. Letting Zander order drinks. Bowing to fashion and bobbing her hair, then having to endure a year of looking like some weird overgrown mushroom. Or that time, early in her soldiering career, stupidly eager to prove herself, when she’d challenged her greatest rival to a race through the Razorfells.Barefoot. She still had a scarred divot cut out of her left heel.
The stairs up to the agia’s office were not lined with thornweed, but even so, Sephre’s feet flinched from them. But she climbed, grimly, aware that she was out of other options. Halimede might never wake. Like it or not, Beroe held power in Stara Bron.
