Stormcaster (Shattered Realms #3)(89)

Lyss tried to think of something to say. “You look spectacular, Breon,” she said. “Those suit you—you’re someone who makes the most of them.”

She’d thought she was giving him a compliment, but he didn’t take it that way. “I an’t a fancy,” Breon muttered. He stripped off the jacket, wadded it up, and threw it in the corner. “Everybody keeps trying to make me into something I’m not, just because I’m pretty.” He pressed his fingers against his face as if he might somehow rearrange it.

“So . . . you’re thinking that the empress means to . . . ?” Lyss swallowed, sorry that she had gotten into the middle of that question without planning how to end it.

“Why else would she give me these clothes? Your clothes aren’t like that. Put a curved blade at your belt and sling a bow over your shoulder, and you’d be a Carthian horselord.”

Lyss looked down at her breeches and overshirt. Then looked up at Breon. “Listen,” she said, “I have no way of knowing what the empress is thinking. I don’t know what she has planned for me. But there are people in this world who wear clothes like yours every single day, and they’re not fancies. The nobility, for instance.”

“Not where I come from,” Breon growled. “This reminds me of the night you and I met—when Whacks gave me some pretty new clothes so I could do something I’ve been sorry for ever since. I don’t want to go down that road again. I’d rather wear rags. If she doesn’t mean me to be a fancy, maybe she wants to use me to lure people into trouble.”

“My father always told me to try not to worry about things I can’t do anything about,” Lyss said.

“Easier said than done. Every plan begins with worry.”

They came for Breon first. A brace of imperial guards showed up and ordered him to come with them, saying that the empress wanted to see him. He looked fragile next to the bulky guards, his face pale, his eyes wide with fright.

“Wait!” Lyss commanded. To her surprise, they stopped, and turned back toward her. She embraced Breon, murmuring, “See you soon,” in his ear.

But she did not see him soon. Hours passed, and dinner came and went, and he did not return. Finally, she crossed through their common area and knocked on his door. No answer. She pushed the door open. “Breon?”

The room was empty. All of his belongings were gone, as if he had never existed.





36


AUDIENCE WITH THE EMPRESS


Lyss slept little that night, wondering and worrying about Breon. So she was in a particularly foul mood the next morning when a handful of the empress’s guards came to call. She was feeling reckless, itching for a fight, even one she could not win.

Her visitors included the usual imperial guards, but also a man whose garb resembled her own, the difference being that he was wearing a king’s ransom in gold around his neck and at his wrists. His belt was embedded with jewels, the buckle a dragon fashioned in gold.

“Captain Gray, I believe?” he said in accented Common.

“That’s right,” she said.

The stranger looked her up and down with the kind of arrogant ownership that, in her present state of mind, might lead to bloodshed. His blood. Alternatively, she might take his gold chains and strangle him with them.

“I’m Captain Samara,” he said, jerking his head toward the door. “Let’s go. The empress has granted you an audience.”

I didn’t grant her an audience, Lyss wanted to say. But good sense prevailed, and she didn’t.

Samara led Lyss out of the rear of the palace and through what once must have been a lovely garden. The leafless skeletons of trees remained, some of them braced against the ocean winds. The beds were empty of flowers, though metal markers still displayed the names of those that had once grown there. Arbors and pergolas were still threaded with the stems of vines, and stone statues and sculptures were everywhere, as if trying to compensate for the lack of vegetation. A leathery-skinned servant swept twigs and debris from the walkways.

“What happened to the garden?” she asked, finally.

“The only way a garden thrives this far north is through magic. When the magic died, so did the garden. The empress has other priorities right now.”

Like conquering the Realms? Or hunting down the magemarked?

Speaking of. “Where’s Breon?” she said, as they neared the far gate.

“Breon?”

“My friend. We came here together. You took him away yesterday, and he hasn’t returned.”

“Ah,” Samara said, “you are speaking of the empress’s brother.”

Lyss’s stampeding thoughts plunged over a cliff, tumbling until they hit bottom. “Her brother?” She gaped at Samara. “Breon is her brother?”

“Of course,” Samara said, with the smug assurance of someone on the inside. “Why do you think she has been so eager to find him? Her family has been scattered far and wide, and she is working to bring them all together.” He opened the gate and stood aside so that Lyss could pass through. “Now, we must hurry. The empress does not like to be kept waiting.”

As they walked, Lyss tried to wrap her mind around what the shiplord had said. Breon was Celestine’s brother? That was hard to believe. They were both breathtakingly beautiful, and they both had metallic streaks in their hair—gold for Breon, and red and blue for the empress. There the resemblance ended. Breon was charming, self-deprecating, nonjudgmental, and instinctively kind. Celestine could be charming—until she wasn’t. Otherwise, she was ruthless, cruel, arrogant, and selfish.