“Are you the youngest?” Destin said abruptly. “Or are you between your two brothers?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m the youngest,” she said, “but only by a year. I’m nearly fourteen.”
“Which of your brothers are you most like, do you think? Hal or Robert?”
Harper cocked her head, as if trying to work out the trick, then she glanced at her mother for help.
“Harper is most like Halston, our eldest, who died at Delphi,” Lady Matelon said. Then, glaring at her daughter, she added, “Although on days like today, she reminds me of Robert.”
“Ah,” Destin said, nodding. “Harper, I have something for you.” He fished the thimble and chain out of his pocket and held it out to her. “Your brother, Captain Matelon, sent this. He says to tell you that he’s been pricked, but he’s not dead yet.”
Harper’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Captain Matelon?” She grabbed the thimble and brought it close to her face, examining it. Then looked up at Destin. “How did you know about this? Are there listeners in the walls at White Oaks?”
“Let me see it, Harper,” Lady Matelon said.
Harper spun around and displayed it to her mother on her outstretched palm.
Lady Matelon poked at it with her forefinger. Then looked up at Destin, her face hardening. “Are you really the kind of brute who would break the heart of a little girl?”
Destin shook his head. “I’m not in the business of breaking hearts,” he said, “though sometimes it can’t be avoided. Lady Matelon, Captain Matelon sent another message for you. He said to tell you to ‘look on the bright side.’”
“Halston,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.
“Where is he?” Harper demanded. “Where’s my brother? Is he in prison, too?”
“‘Where are my brothers?’ would be a better question,” Destin said. “I can’t tell you that, but I can tell you that they really want you to come to King Jarat’s party.”
“Why are you doing this?” Lady Matelon said, lowering her voice and looking over her shoulder at Lila. “I cannot fathom why you would be working with Halston and Robert.”
“Or why they would be working with you,” Harper said. “If they even are.”
Politics makes for strange bedfellows? Probably best not to go there.
“This enterprise is a risk that I would have preferred not to take.” Destin said. “But, as it turns out, Lady Harper, your brothers and I share a common goal. You may question whether I’m telling the truth, but you have to consider the possibility that I am, and weigh whether sticking it to the king is worth it.”
The ladies Matelon looked at each other.
“All right,” Harper said. “I will come.”
“Will you help talk the others into coming?”
She met his gaze. “I will.”
“Now. When you speak to the others, you mustn’t mention your brothers’ involvement, or my involvement, or in any way imply that anything other than a party is in store. You must simply convey the message that it is critical that they come. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Thank you,” Destin said, relieved. “Shall we return to the others?”
Harper dangled the thimble in front of Destin. “You should give this back to Hal, to keep him safe.” She wore a mask of innocence, but Destin was used to reading faces to see what lay underneath.
She’s trying to figure out where he is, whether he’s close, whether I’m going to see him, Destin thought. He closed her hand over the thimble. “You can give it back to him yourself when you see him. Now, when we walk back into the other room, it’s important that you appear properly chastened, as if I’ve spent this time schooling you on the consequences of defying the king. I am not the sort of man who delivers hope to political prisoners.”
“Maybe you are,” Harper said, giving him an appraising look. And then she drew her head in and rounded her shoulders as if she expected a blow to fall at any moment. She fixed her eyes on the floor, her lower lip trembling. The transformation was stunning. She was like a snake shedding one skin and putting on another.
You’re not like either of your brothers, Destin thought. You lack their bone-deep instinct for honesty. You might have a future as a spy.
39REUNION
Lyss sat her horse and watched her fledgling cavalry go through its maneuvers on the parade ground. It was an exercise in frustration. Her soldiers seemed unable to communicate with their mounts in a meaningful way. Every move the horses made seemed to surprise their riders, with sometimes disastrous results.
“Left TURN!” she shouted. “Now, forward!”
Once again the columns dissolved into chaos, horses rearing and showing their teeth. Several riders ended up on the ground.
“Ghezali!” she shouted to one of the field officers. “I said five paces before the turn.”
Ghezali stared at her as if she were speaking a foreign language. Which she was, in a way. Given that the Carthian army was a mix of nationalities, she used Common as the language of command. She was improving in Carthian—in military vocabulary, at least—but this job was hard enough without hunting for words all day long.
“What is the point of riding back and forth across the field in pretty formations?” Tully Samara nudged his horse closer. “This is a battle, not a dance. Why does it matter how they get to the enemy as long as they get there?”
“Use your eyes,” Lyss said, in no mood to indulge the shiplord’s constant questions. “The idea is to train the soldier so that, in the heat of battle, he or she can act without thinking.”
And if you can’t train the man, you train his horse.
“Ghezali!” she shouted. “Go back to the saber-and-lance exercises you practiced yesterday, this time using all gaits,” Lyss said, giving up on the complexities of turning. “Make fifty passes across the grounds, and you’re done for the day.”
Right now, the bloodsworn were as likely to cut up each other as the enemy, which needed
