Pretender to the Crown

Pretender to the Crown

Copyright 2017 Melissa Proffitt

Smashwords edition

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any way whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Map

Cast of Characters

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

About the Author

Map

Cast of Characters

In Tremontane

Willow North—a thief

Serjian Kerish—a dowser

Edmund Valant—King of Tremontane

Felix Valant—Edmund’s son

Terence Valant—Edmund’s brother, the Eminence

Giles Rafferty—a rebel

In Eskandel

The Serjian Principality:

Janida—vojenta (leader) of the harem and Kerish’s mother

Salveri—the Serjian Prince, Kerish’s father

Maitea

Catrela

Giara

Alondra

Amberesh—Catrela’s son

Gessala—Catrela’s daughter

Imara—Janida’s daughter

Jauman—Giara’s son

Posea—Catrela’s daughter

Atamian Fedrani—Willow and Felix’s servant

Caira—Willow’s zetesha (maid)

Part One

Chapter One

The roof tiles, slippery with frozen rain, caught the light of the half-moon and reflected it back at the winter sky. Willow’s breath puffed in pale clouds that dissipated rapidly in the cold air that felt like shards of glass in her chest. This was the coldest winter anyone could remember in Aurilien, colder than the hard freeze three years ago that had made pigeons fall off the eaves, frozen dead on their perches.

She flexed her feet in the kid leather shoes she’d made herself, with the soles roughened to grip surfaces much slicker than this one. Working her fingers in the gloves with similarly roughened palms, she stepped away from the shelter of the red brick chimney that smelled of soot and someone’s dinner. Walking slowly, she counted her steps, seven, eight, nine, and on the tenth step dropped to grasp the rain gutter and let herself over the side of the roof.

Her questing feet found the ledge she knew was there and felt along it until they found a corner, then took a step down, and from there it was as easy as if someone had set a ladder just for her. She let go of the rain gutter, reached down without looking and found the window frame. It wasn’t so much a frame, really, as a ridge of stone running around the glass, but what mattered was the latch. Her magical senses saw it as a freezing strip of iron, easy to perceive even if she couldn’t see it with her natural eyes.

She flexed her right wrist a few times to jog loose the slim wire she’d stashed up her sleeve. A midnighter couldn’t carry much with her, so what she did carry had to matter, and she’d used this wire for any number of things over the years.

She shifted her position slightly, grasped the stones over the window with her left hand, and worked the wire through the space between the two halves of the window with her right. This was an easy enough entrance, so she’d decided to do as much as she could with her off hand, just to make it a challenge. Far below, the guards passed each other, each holding the leash of an attack dog. It was the rare guard that actually looked up, fortunately for her.

The latch flipped up, and she gently removed the wire. Really, Lord Adolon deserves to be stolen from, if he’s going to hire substandard help. But that wasn’t why she was going after him. He was an Ascendant, gifted with magical abilities like moving things with his mind, and he was wealthy, and arrogant, and treated his servants like—no, he treated animals better than he did his servants. That was why he deserved what she would do to him tonight.

She wormed her fingertips between the window and the ridge of stone and pushed gently. The hinges squeaked, not very loudly. That didn’t matter. This was an unused storeroom and no one would be around to hear it. She looked down at the guards, four stories below, but they’d already moved on. Good. They might not look up, but no sense being careless. She swung the window open and slid inside.

The empty room smelled of dust and nothing else. Willow let her magical senses build up a picture of the room while she waited for her eyesight to adjust. Hundreds of frigid pinpricks, colder than the night air, indicating iron nails, and larger laceworks of ice where lantern cages were mounted on the walls. Nothing else.

Now she could see the door outlined in pale light, probably from a distant lantern down the hallway. The top floor was given over to storerooms of this type, though most of the other rooms were full. If she were some ordinary thief, scrabbling for a living any way she could, she might content herself with pilfering those rooms. She pulled off her gloves and stashed them inside her jacket.

The door was locked from the outside. Willow had it open in half a minute. Well, it was really just meant as a deterrent to casual theft by Lord Adolon’s servants. The hall outside was empty and cold, lit, as she’d guessed, by a lantern at the far end next to a staircase going down.

Willow took another minute to orient herself. Her senses covered most of this floor, but only extended vertically as far as the next floor down. Still, it was far enough that she could perceive some people still moving around. The silvery gleam of a bundle of steel keys hanging at a hip was probably the housekeeper. Floating, tingling brass, that was someone with a candlestick who had his other hand on more brass, looked like a doorknob. A couple of people blazed with silvery steel light, armor and the streaks of sword blades. The housekeeper was heading down another flight of stairs and might interfere with Willow’s plan, but there was no way to know that until she descended herself.

More of a challenge were the guards, who were sweeping a very tight pattern through the halls of the third floor. Or, rather, they would be a challenge if Willow were at all interested in the contents of Lord Adolon’s treasury. As it was, she intended to bypass them entirely. She waited until they were some distance from the stairs, then moved swiftly down, listening for signs of others wandering the halls of Lord Adolon’s manor that night.

Her sense of the guards’ swords receded until they were out of her range. They were more alert than she’d expected. She’d spread the rumor that someone would try to break into the treasure rooms a week ago, knowing from experience that a week of nothing happening would dull Lord Adolon’s guards’ reflexes as well as pull his attention away from her true target. Rufus Black, her current employer, had called her crazy for spreading the rumor at all. She’d reminded him that she was the expert, damn it, and someone like Lord Adolon, who was more paranoid even than she, needed a different approach. So she’d examined his estate for a week, started the rumor, examined the guards’ patterns for another week, and tonight was the night it all came together.

She crept out of the stairwell on the second floor and padded across the soft carpet to the second door on the right, which was unlocked. From what she could tell, all the doors on this floor were unlocked. His Lordship didn’t want to be disturbed by servants fumbling at keys for rooms they needed constant access to. She shut the door quietly behind her and looked around.

The drapes were tied back from the windows, letting in moonlight to illuminate the room. A hunched figure stood near one of them. Willow tensed, then let out a nervous breath when she realized it was a harp. Music room. There wasn’t anything in here worth stealing, even if she were capable of hauling a harp out in her trouser pocket. She only cared that it was empty of people.

She inhaled slowly, calming her pulse, and assessed this floor as well. Nothing moved. The ring of keys had descended to the next floor. Brass knobs, iron hinges, thousands of nail heads no doubt hidden beneath plush carpets, chandeliers like spider’s webs and iron cages for lanterns, flashes of fizzing silver and burning gold concentrated—there.

Willow rubbed her palms on her trousers three times, then interlaced her fingers and stretched. Now it was a challenge. Sleeping people rarely wore metal, maybe a ring or two, but in general they were invisible to her senses. She knew Lord Adolon had some guests she’d need to avoid, and she’d marked those rooms off on her mental map of the estate. Still, there was no guarantee they might not be up late, calling for tea or hot milk and bringing servants up from below stairs. Magic could only get you so far. After that, it was all talent.

She slipped out of the music room and ran silently down the hall, counting doors. Seventh door on the left... It looked just like all the others, but then it wasn’t likely they’d put name plaques on them. Everyone who lived here knew which room was whose. And this was Lady Adolon’s.

Willow tugged her jacket sleeve down over her hand, took hold of the brass doorknob, which tingled sharply even through the fabric, and pushed the door open. Here, the drapes were drawn, and the room was blacker than night, limned in faint lines of burning gold from the gilding along the upper moldings. She let the door close softly behind her. Not a lot of metal here, which was good and bad: bad because it left her mostly blind, good because it meant what she wanted wasn’t in this room.

She breathed out slowly and let her magical senses see for her. Off to one side, another doorknob, and beyond that, a tangle of silver and gold. Lady Adolon’s dressing room, and her jewelry box. Willow took a few careful steps. The bed with its lightly breathing occupant was to her right, there was a chair—she felt it brush her legs an instant before she would have tripped over it. She gripped its back to orient herself again and stepped around it, feeling with her foot for anything else that might be near, a small table or footstool perhaps. Nothing.

Someone made a grunting sound, and Willow went perfectly still, waiting to see if Lady Adolon was going to do more than roll over in her sleep. Another grunt, then silence, but Willow waited another handful of seconds before making her halting way toward the doorknob and brass hinges. The latch scraped across the plate like a rasp over rough metal. Willow held it fast, listening for more noises, but the room was still.

She pulled the door open, praying Lady Adolon was the kind of person who would insist on doors that didn’t squeal and interrupt her concentration. Not that she would concentrate on anything more important than the perfection of her skin. Willow slipped through the narrow crack.

Rufus had said—or, rather, the client had told Rufus, who’d passed it on to her—that the necklace was in Lady Adolon’s jewelry box. He hadn’t said she had more than one. Fizzing blobs and chains of silver tangled with burning strands of gold in several waist-high cabinets at intervals around the room. She might have guessed it wouldn’t be easy.

Willow cursed inwardly and dug in her belt pouch for her very expensive, very smelly matches. She’d have to light a lamp, which was dangerous as well as cheating, but her personal challenges weren’t as important as getting the job done. She knelt to feel around the bottom of the door. No gap to let light out, though she couldn’t do anything about where the door met the walls without wasting a lot of time. Just one more risk to take.

She lit one of the tiny lamps beside Lady Adolon’s dressing table, adjusted her cap in the mirror, and went digging. It felt like there were a hundred little drawers in each cabinet, though Willow’s senses let her ignore most of them as not containing her target. You’d think something that gaudy would be easy to spot, she thought as she opened yet another drawer. The client had been uncannily specific: fat gold links in three rows, connecting thirteen golden discs in which were mounted emerald-cut diamonds, ranging in size from ten to fifty carats. It sounded far too bulky for a woman, but it wasn’t Willow’s job to judge its aesthetic qualities, just to retrieve it.

She felt the seconds skipping past and had to make herself move slowly instead of flinging drawers and cabinet doors open in desperation. Every moment that passed meant one more moment in which someone might see a trace of her passing and draw the right conclusions. And she wasn’t so arrogant as to believe she’d left no trace. Good as she was, she wasn’t perfect. She moved to the next cabinet. All this metal in one place was starting to make her dizzy with euphoric, staggering bliss. Imagine wearing a wedding ring, she thought, irrelevantly, and smiled at her foolishness. The men she met in this business weren’t the marrying kind. Actually, neither was she.

In her distraction, she almost missed it. She was sliding the drawer shut when her eye registered the large, flawless diamond on a gold disc more than an inch across. She pulled the drawer open again. Thirteen stones—this couldn’t be anything else.

Willow took a black velvet pouch from inside her shirt and carefully picked up the necklace with it, then turned it inside out around the necklace so no part of her skin touched the gold. She drew the strings tight and dropped it back into her shirt. It burned like a little fire across her belly, even shielded as it was by the thick velvet, but it wasn’t more than a slight annoyance and wouldn’t interfere with her escape.

Quickly she shut the little drawer, checked around to see if she’d left anything open that shouldn’t be, and blew out the lamp. With as much jewelry as Lady Adolon had, it was possible she wouldn’t know the necklace was missing for a week or more. Not that it mattered. Willow was getting paid to retrieve the thing, not to make it look as if it had gone missing on its own.

She waited for a few seconds, listening, but the dressing room door blocked all sound except her own quiet breathing. No guards had entered the room and were waiting to capture her. Nothing had changed. She opened the door and shut it behind her—

A lamp went on by the bed, and Lord Adolon sat up, stretching and yawning.

Shock rooted her to her place. He wasn’t supposed to share a bed with his wife; what was he doing here? He reached out for the bell pull, turned his head, and saw her. His mouth fell open. What—? he began, and Willow dashed for the door.

"Stop!" he shouted, and a chair smashed against the doorway, but she was already in the hall and casting about for an exit. Seven, eight, nine and she flung herself through the tenth door on the right, an unoccupied suite with a view of the back garden and a window ledge leading to the downspout of the rain gutter. She leaned against the door and breathed deeply. This is just a setback, you’ve been in worse spots before. She looked around the room. The moon shone almost directly through the window, which for some reason was open a crack, letting in a frigid draft.

She shivered, more from nerves than cold, and moved to look outside, standing well to one side so as not to be seen. Maple trees spread their bare branches to the sky, standing like soldiers in rows extending from the garden gate to the distant estate wall. In summer, that would be a perfect escape route, with all those leaves sheltering a fugitive from view, but right now she’d be very visible darting from trunk to trunk. She might be able to climb up the rain gutter, but it wasn’t sturdy, and going straight up the side of the house would leave her exposed to view for far too long. Could she stay in this room? No, they’d search all of them once Lord Adolon’s guards gathered—

Light flared behind her, and she spun, holding the heavy curtain as if she could somehow hide behind it. Who are you? the young man in the bed said.

No one, Willow said, which was the only answer her startled brain could manage.

You look like a thief, the man said, sitting up further. Despite the cold, he was bare-chested, revealing lean muscles and a thin scar across his collarbone that showed white against his darkly tanned skin. His black hair, cut short like a courtier’s, was tousled, as if he’d been sleeping. An Eskandelic man, here in Lord Adolon’s house? She would have sworn this room was unoccupied.

What makes you say that? she said, stalling. It would have to be the window. She just had to take a step or two backward and climb out, but up, or down? Either way could be fatal.

The dark clothes, and your covered hair, and the fact that you were moving very quietly until just now, he said. He swung his legs over the side of the bed as if to stand, but just sat there, watching her, an alert look on his handsome face.

Don’t bother calling the guards, I’ll be gone before they get here, she said.

Footsteps sounded in the hall, and someone pounded on a door very nearby. Willow reached for the stone surmounting the window, then flung herself against the wall, out of sight of the two guards that ran across the garden toward the house. She hadn’t sensed them at all—she was too far up. Heaven only knew how many more guards might still be outside. She peeked out. She’d just have to risk it, make a dash for the roof. Her palms were sweating.

Quick, take off your coat and hat, the man said.

What?

He crossed the room to her side and grabbed her hand and towed her back to the bed. Your coat, quickly! he repeated.

Dazed, Willow removed her coat and handed it to him. He tossed it far away, beyond the bed, yanked her cap from her head and shoved it under a pillow. Lie down, he said, grabbing her shoulders, and bore her down beneath him.

She heard pounding again, much closer now, but most of her attention was reserved for the man lying atop her, his dark eyes intent on her. He put one arm around her and pulled the quilt up over them to his waist. Sorry about this, he said, and kissed her.

His mouth was warm and firm on hers, and without thinking she put her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, returning his kiss. His free hand caressed her side and settled on her hip, and he worked his fingers under her thin linen shirt and stroked her skin, making her gasp. She felt him smile, and then someone was pounding on the door, and she heard it fly open. A gruff voice said, Where—oh.

The man lifted his head, just a little. Do you mind? he said with some irritation.

Sorry, sir, the gruff voice said, and the door closed abruptly. The man rolled off Willow and lay with his arms spread wide, one of them still trapped under her body. She sat up, tugging her shirt down where his fingers had rucked it up a bit, and resettled the bag, which had shifted during their embrace. Retrieving her cap, she pulled it down over her ears with some force.

Why did you do that? she said.

I was hoping for ‘thank you,’ but I suppose that will have to do, he said.

Thank you. Now, why did you do that? And who are you?

"Isn’t that something you ought to ask before you kiss a man?"

Willow flushed. You kissed me first.

That I did, he said, and he sounded so satisfied she blushed again. And I take it back. I’m not sorry at all.

You probably should have let them capture me. Lord Adolon won’t be happy with you if he finds out.

He’s not going to find out. Besides, he can’t afford to be unhappy with me. I’m his dowser.

Oh. Lord Adolon’s dowser, the man who located sources of magic for the Ascendant to fuel his magic. The idea made her feel unexpectedly downcast. You must be a recent addition to his household. This room was empty three days ago.

I arrived yesterday. So you’ve been planning this for a while. What did you steal?

What makes you think I stole anything?

Because you don’t look like the kind of woman who fails to get what she wants. You don’t kiss like that kind of woman, either.

You startled me. I reacted as anyone would have.

He sat up and bounced gently on the mattress. I think most women’s reactions in that situation would be to scream and shove the half-naked man to the floor.

Maybe. Willow got up and went to the window again. Shadows moving below told her the guards were still searching the grounds. Guards or not, she couldn’t stay here forever. She’d need to move soon.

What’s your name? the man said.

Does it matter?

"You were just in my bed. I think it matters a little."

I— Willow stared at him. I think you’re a madman.

My name is Serjian Kerish. What’s yours?

Mister Kerish—

Kerish is my given name. Eskandelics put family names first. I’ll make up a name for you if you won’t tell me.

I don’t—

It will be an embarrassingly sentimental name.

Willow closed her eyes briefly. How much stranger could this night get? Willow, she said.

Willow. A beautiful name for a blue-eyed beauty. He stood and came toward her, his dark eyes fixed on her. She took a step backward and came up against the wall next to the window. What did you steal?

Are you planning to take it from me?

No. I’m just curious as to what you’re risking your life for.

A necklace.

May I see it?

He was close enough now that she could easily stab him in the heart with her forearm blade that burned silvery light up to her left wrist. Close enough that he could kiss her again if he wanted to—or for her to kiss him. Don’t be an idiot, she told herself, he’s a dowser, he’s as much complicit as any Ascendant. I have to leave now, before they think to search the roof, she said.

When can I see you again?

Startled, she said, You can’t. Why would you want to?

Because you’re the most remarkable woman I’ve ever met.

You don’t know anything about me.

Which is why I want to see you again. She was tall for a woman, but he was taller, broad in the shoulders and muscled like someone who knew the use of a sword, and now he leaned over her, so close she could feel his warm breath on her forehead. Tell me where I can meet you. Tomorrow. Somewhere obvious, because I don’t know this city well yet.

He smelled as exotic as he looked, of spices from some distant Eskandelic marketplace. She put her hand behind his neck, pulled him toward her, and kissed him, lightly, then released him before he could react. I’ll find you, she said, and sprang backward out the window and scrambled up the wall, out of his reach.

She prayed to ungoverned heaven that he wasn’t watching her go, hadn’t foolishly stuck his head out of the window. With the way her luck was going, she didn’t want to trust to the guards’ disinclination to look up. She didn’t look back to see if he had. She focused instead on her hands, seeking out the narrowest purchase on the rough stone face of Lord Adolon’s house, bought and paid for by his Ascendant’s power, fueled by his dowser.

Her foot slipped. She cursed her momentary distraction. Maybe he wasn’t a selfish, arrogant Ascendant, but without a dowser, an Ascendant had only what little source he passively absorbed from the invisible lines of power. That made dowsers indirectly responsible for the things Ascendants did with that source. Made Kerish just as bad.

She pulled herself onto the roof, lay back and flattened herself on the freezing surface. She’d be damp after this, with her body heat melting the rime coating the tiles, but she was too distracted to continue. She could still feel his body against hers, his fingers on her skin. You don’t kiss like a woman who fails to get what she wants, he’d said, but the truth was she’d never been kissed before. And now she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

He’d rattled her, she who’d run from Lower Town to the top of the Hill without ever touching the ground. She who’d not only stolen Lady Marinnes’ famous ruby coronet, but had gotten the Lady’s household guard to give her an honor escort all the way home. Not that she’d been able to keep those lodgings afterward, but it was a story she’d dined out on for a month. And now a stranger with a charming smile and a body like one of the lost gods had kissed her, had looked at her with desire, and she was having trouble convincing herself not to go running back to his window.

She rolled to her feet and pulled on her gloves, then set off across the rooftops. She might still have time to escape the way she came in, down the wall into a sheltered nook where two ells of the house met, then across the kitchen garden and over the estate wall. Lord Adolon’s magic was external, the power to move things without touching them. He didn’t have the more dangerous (to a thief) skills of sensing movement or thoughts or the presence of someone in a place she shouldn’t be. That didn’t mean she was safe. She’d lost precious time—she shook the memory away and leaped from the roof, turning in midair to catch the eaves and plant both feet on the adjacent walls that made a V she could practically walk down.

She heard shouts now. The guards were coming. She bounded down the walls and landed a little too hard on the gravel, which crunched under her feet. Silver streaks of steel blades on either side, approaching too fast—she rose up and sprinted straight for the wall, not trying to outmaneuver the approaching guards. The velvet bag rubbed against her stomach like a burning ache. Behind her, she felt shining spikes bobbing fast, low to the ground. She pushed herself faster, because the dogs would be upon her before the guards were. Then it would be over.

She feinted left, dove right, and heard the low growl of the attack dog. Her hands were on the wall and she was up and over, jaws snapping at her heels. The broken glass embedded in the top of the wall tore through the leg of her trousers and caught at her gloves. Then she was falling, rolling as she hit the ground, momentum carrying her to her feet.

Behind her, the dogs scrabbled at the rough stone of the wall, and guards shouted. Willow fled. She dashed around a few corners, then backtracked a few steps until she was sure she hadn’t been followed. She found a quiet spot where she could catch her breath before heading out again, just an ordinary woman walking home late from her job—

who wasn’t wearing more than a thin shirt. She’d left her coat in Lord Adolon’s house. In Kerish’s room.

It wasn’t the cold that chilled her. Lord Adolon’s talents might tend toward the flashy, but he had plenty of Ascendant acquaintances whose more subtle abilities could see a person’s identity, or location, from her clothing alone. With her inherent magic for sensing worked metal, she’d have become one of them if she hadn’t hidden her talent, stayed out of the Ascendants’ academy. If Lord Adolon had her coat—if Kerish gave it to him—

Willow began running again. Time to rid herself of her burning treasure, time to get paid, time to leave Aurilien and make a new life elsewhere.

Chapter Two

She was mostly frozen by the time she reached Rufus Black’s…it wasn’t his home, she knew, but she’d never seen him anywhere else no matter what time of day or night it was. Possibly he never slept. She rapped on the door in a staccato non-rhythm, then stood where she could clearly be seen from the upper window.

Eventually the door opened with a wailing scream that Rufus’s neighbors would have complained about if he wasn’t a duke of Lower Town and master of dozens of ruffians who were good at teaching people why complaining never got you anything but a faceful of knuckles.

Willow stepped inside and let Rufus’s invisible assistants remove her blade, then walked upstairs. The third step up let out a long sputtering fart. Someday she’d remember to skip that one.

Didn’t expect to see you before week’s end, Rufus said when she entered his lair. He stood at the window with his arms crossed over his chest. His long hair, slightly shiny with grease, spilled over his collar and halfway down his back. In summer, he never wore more than a thin tunic through which his back hair was clearly visible. Rufus didn’t so much have hair as a pelt.

I made an opportunity and took it, Willow said. She reached inside her shirt and took out the velvet bag. But I could come back tomorrow if that would make you happy.

As if Willow North cared about what makes me happy, Rufus said. He took the velvet bag from her hand and looked inside. Can’t imagine wearing anything like this, can you?

Not really. And it wouldn’t suit your dainty features, anyway.

Rufus snorted. I’d melt it down and reset the gems, if it were mine, but it’s not, and who knows why these Hill bastards do what they do. I take it you want paying?

"I was going to do this one for King and country, but you know how I feel about the King