Lady Smoke (Ash Princess Trilogy #2)(20)

She snorts. “As if you ever could,” she says. “Theo, this is Spiros.”

“Nice to meet you,” I tell him. “Trust me, you did far better than I could have.”

“I did offer to fix that,” Artemisia reminds me before she notices my tray. “Taking breakfast in your room?”

“Not quite,” I say. “Do you have a few moments free?”

She nods before turning back to Spiros. “I’ll see you at supper.”

“If I can walk by then,” he says.

Artemisia and I don’t speak until we are out of earshot. When I confess about my visit to S?ren, she wastes no time telling me how foolish I was.

“As soon as the guards’ shift is over, they’ll be tattling to my mother about your visit and she’ll find some way to use it against you,” she says.

“I know,” I reply. “But I have an idea about that.”

Artemisia arches a dark eyebrow and purses her lips, waiting for me to continue.

“Your gift can change your appearance. Can it change mine?”

She looks surprised for a half second before her mouth bows into a smile. “It can. But in return, I’m going to put a sword in your hand and teach you how to use it. Deal?”

I start to protest again, but then I think about the way she fought a few minutes ago, unafraid and powerful and ready to take on any enemy. I still don’t know if I have that in me, but I would like to find out.

“Deal,” I say.

Artemisia gives a curt nod. “Well then, whose face would you like to try on?”



* * *



—

It is a strange thing, to be wearing my mother’s face. Dragonsbane’s face, I remind myself, though it doesn’t feel like Dragonsbane’s. I try to mimic her posture as Artemisia and I walk toward the guards. Art managed to change the appearance of my clothes, but she couldn’t do anything about my boots—I hope my straight-backed stance will help to disguise the fact that I’m a couple of inches shorter than Dragonsbane.

When the guards see us approach, they stand up a little straighter.

“Captain,” they say in sync.

“I’m here to see the prisoner,” I reply, clipping my words the same way Dragonsbane does.

“Of course,” one of the guards says, fumbling to open the door as quickly as possible.

“Is there anything you would like to report?” I ask, knowing that there is.

The guards don’t disappoint. They trip over each other to tell me about my own visit, how long I stayed, what they overheard through the door. I make a note to myself to speak softer, even if they didn’t hear anything particularly damning this time. Only my concern, only me convincing him to eat.

“You’ll speak of this to no one, am I understood?” I say, looking between the two of them with what I hope is the same intensity that Dragonsbane always has.

They both nod frantically and step aside, letting Artemisia and me pass.



* * *



—

I should have brought paper and a quill with me. I hadn’t expected much from S?ren—the names of a handful of other countries similar to Astrea willing to join with us against the Kaiser—but he lists close to a dozen, and Artemisia has plenty more to add. It turns out that growing up on a ship crewed by people from all over the world has given her a unique insight into the elements of their cultures that S?ren never picked up during his visits to their courts.

Each country seems to have a different structure. None of them is a matriarchy, the way Astrea is, though plenty follow the same patriarchal structure as Kalovaxia, even if the names of the rulers change. There are kings and emperors and potentates, yet as far as I can tell they all mean the same thing, more or less.

“I never understood the concept of the bloodline tracing through male heirs,” I admit after S?ren tells me about Prince Talin of Etralia, whose legitimacy as an heir is questionable at best.

“It’s how most of the world operates,” S?ren says. Though Artemisia doesn’t have Heron’s healing powers, she’s managed to use her Water Gift to clean him up and rinse out his wounds to keep them from getting infected. Again, it’s only temporary. After we leave, it will only be a matter of hours before he’s roughed up again. The thought weighs heavily on my conscience, but I know Art is right: there’s nothing I can do about it. Not now, at least.

“Patriarchies are awfully fallible, though,” I say. “It’s easy to cast doubt on the paternity of an heir, but almost impossible if you follow the maternal line. No one can say for certain who my father was, but my mother’s identity has never been called into question. No one would ever doubt my legitimacy as an heir to her throne.”

Artemisia makes a noise in the back of her throat. “Unless there are twins, of course,” she says.

When S?ren and I both turn to look at her, she sighs and sits up from her spot slouched against the wall diagonally across from S?ren. “There’s a story about when our mothers were born,” she says to me. “They say they tied a ribbon around the firstborn’s ankle. Flimsy a system as it was, there was no precedent, so they did their best. Of course, babies are squirmy things and the ribbon fell off after less than an hour. So the queen—our grandmother—picked one of them. It was a random choice, based on her intuition, she said. That was how the fate of our country was decided.”