A Throne for Sisters

She glided through the room with delicate steps, listening to both the gossip that the nobles traded among themselves and the deeper layer beneath it that they only thought. She heard rumors about which men and women had lost at cards or betting on horses, alongside deeper worries from those who suspected that this time they might not be able to pay their debts. She heard the stories of affairs and infidelities, and her talent let her pick out the ones that were true from the ones that were being spread deliberately to cause trouble.

Perhaps if she’d been a different kind of person, Sophia might have tried to make her fortune by dealing in those secrets. That wasn’t what she wanted, though. She wanted to be happy, not hated. She wanted to be a part of this place, not a predator on its edges. She wanted to be more than just the gift that she had.

That meant finding a more permanent way to connect to this court. It meant finding a husband here. Sophia swallowed at the thought of that. It was a big commitment to make, and put like that, it sounded incredibly mercenary. Yet, was it any worse than the nobles standing around trying to make good marriages with one another, or for their offspring?

It was definitely better than being indentured, whatever happened.

And, in one way, Sophia had an advantage over the others there: she could at least see what kind of people the men around her really were. She could look deep into them and see that the upright man to her left had a streak of cruelty to him, or spot the young man thinking about the courtesan he would visit again tonight.

Sophia looked around the room, felt the eyes on her, felt the hopes of some of the men who glanced her way. Some of them felt predatory, like wolves circling a deer. Some clearly wanted to use her and discard her.

There was one young man wearing a sun mask and cloth of gold costume that only served to emphasize the handsome lines of his features. He stood at the center of a clutch of hangers-on, and Sophia knew even before she glanced through their thoughts that this was Rupert, the dowager’s eldest son and heir to the realm.

A glance at his thoughts made Sophia look away. To him, she was nothing more than a piece of meat. Worse, beneath that joking façade, there was a touch of violence. Sophia had heard that Prince Rupert was a fine soldier who liked to train alongside the other noble officers. There was more than that, though, and it was enough to make Sophia certain that she didn’t want to go near him.

She started to concentrate on looking for the nobleman Cora had recommended: Phillipe van Anter. But trying to pick one specific person out of a masked crowd was difficult, even with a talent such as hers. She looked at a tall young man with hair as red as hers. No, it wasn’t him. Nor was it a man dressed in a harlequin costume or one who thought that his military uniform made a perfectly good costume.

She turned and froze in place as she saw a young man on the edge of the crowds there. He was richly dressed, in a costume that seemed to evoke the flowing water and shifting weather of the island kingdom. He wore a gray and silver tunic over a blue shirt and hose, with lightly jeweled boots that somehow managed to be elegant rather than overstated.

The mask hid half his face, but even with it, Sophia could see that he was handsome. He didn’t have the hard edges of some of the soldiers in the room, but he still seemed strong and athletic.

He wasn’t one of those leering at her, or at the other young women in the room. Sophia caught none of the sense of violence from him that she’d gotten from Prince Rupert, and none of the problems that she’d seen in so many other thoughts there. There was something quiet about him, almost peaceful.

That wasn’t how Sophia felt, though. She could feel herself breathing faster at the sight of him, and her eyes stayed locked to him as he moved around the room. It was only as a man bowed low in front of him that she picked up the one thing she hadn’t realized:

This was Prince Sebastian, younger son of the dowager. Not the one who would ever inherit, but still far more than she could ever hope for.

Sophia started to look away, but found her gaze drawn back to him as if she couldn’t stop it. On the way there, she caught sight of Lady D’Angelica and her friends, and even if she hadn’t been able to read her thoughts, Sophia would have seen the hungry look the noblewoman gave the prince.

When she did look at Angelica’s thoughts, Sophia froze.

One drink, and he’ll soon be sleepy enough.

Sophia made her way toward the other girl through the chattering crowd. Sophia saw her touch a pouch set at her waist.

I just hope that the physiker didn’t cheat me. If this doesn’t work fast enough, I’ll never be the one to get him to his bed.

Sophia could guess at her plan now. Angelica was planning to give Prince Sebastian some kind of sedative, then go out of the hall on his arm. She was going to trick him into bed with her, regardless of his wishes.

When I’m with child, he’ll have to marry me.

That intercepted thought pushed Sophia over the edge. She had to stop this. She snuck up close behind the other girl, using her talent the way she’d used it to steal on the street, watching for the moment Angelica’s attention wandered, and then reaching out as calmly as waving a fan to snatch the bag from her belt.

Sophia could have thrown the sedative away, but right then, she felt that the noblewoman deserved more than that – for what she’d been like with Cora, if nothing else. Sophia took a glass of wine, quietly adding some of the powder within and stirring it into the drink. She moved close to Angelica again, watching for the instant when she would set down her wine for a moment on one of the small tables around the room.

It was a matter of a few seconds at most, but Sophia had been waiting for it, and that made it easy to switch the wine. She walked away, sipping Angelica’s drink, while the young noblewoman drank from the one Sophia had doctored.

It took a while to see any effect. For a minute or two, in fact, Sophia wasn’t sure that she’d managed to do anything at all. Then she saw Angelica sway slightly, swatting away the attempt by one of her friends to help.

What’s happening? Have I made some mistake?

Sophia saw her grab at her belt, searching for the now missing pouch. Angelica stumbled then, and this time one of her cronies did catch her. She looked as though she wanted to fight, or argue, but the whole coterie of them quickly swept her from the room, presumably looking for somewhere to rest.

Sophia smiled to herself at the thought that the other girl was getting what she deserved. She looked over at Sebastian.

Now for the part that she deserved.

Because the truth was, there was no one else in the room she had eyes for but him.

CHAPTER TEN

Kate felt worse off than she’d been before she got on the boat. She shivered as she walked through the city, the failing light nowhere near enough to dry out the soaking wet clothes she wore.

She was hungry too, so hungry that she was already contemplating theft to fill her rumbling stomach. Kate found herself looking around at every shop and food stall, searching for an opportunity, but there was no chance at the moment, even with her talent letting her spot when the coast was clear.

She almost found herself wishing she were back at the orphanage, but that was a stupid wish. Even before she’d run away, it had been a worse place than this. At least on the streets, there were no nuns to beat her for making mistakes, no endless hours of working at pointless tasks to avoid the sin of laziness.

This was close, though, and Kate found herself hoping that her sister was better off than this. Her attempts to connect with Sophia weren’t working, though. Either that, or she was caught up with something that had her attention, so she couldn’t answer. She tried to connect with Emeline again too. Again, there was no answer.

Kate kept walking.

She wasn’t sure where she was in the city now, but from the look of it, she hadn’t landed in some noble quarter. There, she imagined that the cobbles would be gleaming white marble, rather than cracked brick and granite covered in a layer of horse dung. The houses around her looked cheaper even than the ones around the House of the Unclaimed, and from inside them, Kate could hear occasional shouts and screams, arguments and laughter.

She passed by an inn, where the candlelight within lit up carousing barge hands and workers. The words of a bawdy song carried out onto the street, and in spite of herself Kate found herself blushing. One of the men beckoned to her, and Kate hurried on.

By daylight, Ashton had been a bustling, rough around the edges place. In the growing dark, this corner seemed a lot less friendly. In an alley nearby, Kate was sure that she heard the sounds of violence. As she passed another, she caught a man and a woman pressed up against a wall together and she looked away.

Kate knew that she had to get warmer than she was. In daylight, she might have been warm enough to dry out simply by walking around, but by night, with the moonlight streaming down on her in a haze of silver and the wind cutting through her whenever she didn’t keep close to one of the walls?

She was going to freeze do death if she didn’t find a fire.

There were fires all around the city in hearths and grates. The chimneys of the houses around her belched smoke into the night sky as their inhabitants cooked on them and kept warm. It wasn’t as though she could just walk into one of their houses, though.

She could try an inn, but inns cost money, and if she just hung around one, Kate had no doubt that someone would want to know what she was doing there. So she kept walking, looking longingly at the inns nearby and trying to ignore the sounds of the city’s more dangerous inhabitants as they went about their nocturnal business.

Finally, Kate felt as though she couldn’t go on any longer. At the next inn she came to, she slipped into the courtyard it enclosed. She might not be able to pay for a room, but this one had a stable, and she might at least be able to keep warm there among the horses if she was careful. There would be stable hands somewhere, and the owners of the horses within would be out in the morning to take them. For now, though, Kate couldn’t pick up any thoughts that would point to people being too close.

There were three horses in the stables at the moment. One was a dark stallion, large and aggressive looking. Another was a docile white pony that looked far too thin and poorly cared for. The third was a chestnut mare, which whickered as Kate moved close, slipping into her stall to huddle down among the straw. She took a blanket that was draped over the horse’s back, and it didn’t seem to mind when Kate wrapped herself in it.

It wasn’t much, but it was far better than walking the street trying to dry out. She didn’t try to sleep, because she didn’t want to risk someone sneaking up on her while she did it. She just sat there while slowly, gradually, she started to warm up a little.

She also started to think. She had been planning to get out of the city when the boys had found her and she’d been forced to run. Her plan had been to steal everything she needed, from food to weapons, clothing to… well, a horse. Was there any reason she couldn’t still do that?

Kate crept to the front of the stall, looking out while simultaneously extending her other senses. She had no illusions about what would happen to her if she was caught stealing something as expensive as a horse. It would be the branding iron at least, and more likely the noose.

But right then, when the alternative was dying a slow death in the city, it seemed more than worth the risk.

Actually doing it was the hard part. Kate could see some of the tack for a horse set on the wall, and the chestnut mare held still while Kate set her blanket in place and settled a saddle over the top. It was obviously used to strange people saddling it for its owner. She found more of the tack for it, and half-remembered lessons at the orphanage in how to be a good servant told her some of what she needed to know about where it all went. The rest, Kate guessed at, and when the horse didn’t pull away from her efforts, she suspected that she had it right.