Broken Throne Read online

  Coriane pasted on a polite expression and turned to find her cousin leaning upon a bejeweled cane, one of the last beautiful things in their house. Of course, it belonged to the foulest. Jessamine had long ago stopped frequenting Silver skin healers, to “age gracefully” as she put it. Though, in truth, the family could no longer afford such treatments from the most talented of House Skonos, or even the skin healer apprentices of common, lesser birth. Her skin sagged now, gray in pallor, with purple age spots across her wrinkled hands and neck. Today she wore a lemon silk wrap around her head, to hide thinning white hair that barely covered her scalp, and a flowing dress to match. The moth-eaten edges were well hidden, though. Jessamine excelled at illusion.

  “Be a dear and take those to the kitchen, Julian, won’t you?” she said, jabbing a long-nailed finger at the candies. “The staff will be so grateful.”

  It took all Coriane’s strength not to scoff. “The staff” was little more than a Red butler more ancient than Jessamine, who didn’t even have teeth, as well as the cook and two young maids, who were somehow expected to maintain the entire estate. They might enjoy the candies, but of course Jessamine had no true intention of letting them. They’ll end up at the bottom of the trash, or tucked away in her own room more like.

  Julian felt quite the same, judging by his twisted expression. But arguing with Jessamine was as fruitless as the trees in the corrupted old orchard.

  “Of course, Cousin,” he said with a voice better suited to a funeral. His eyes were apologetic, while Coriane’s were resentful. She watched with a thinly veiled sneer as Julian offered one arm to Sara, the other scooping up her unsuitable gift. Both were eager to escape Jessamine’s domain, but loath to leave Coriane behind. Still, they did it, sweeping away from the parlor.

  That’s right, leave me here. You always do. Abandoned to Jessamine, who had taken it upon herself to turn Coriane into a proper daughter of House Jacos. Put simply: silent.

  And always left to their father, when he returned from court, from long days waiting for Uncle Jared to die. The head of House Jacos, governor of the Aderonack region, had no children of his own, and so his titles would pass to his brother, and then Julian after him. At least, he had no children anymore. The twins, Jenna and Caspian, were killed in the Lakelander War, leaving their father without an heir of his flesh, not to mention the will to live. It was only a matter of time before Coriane’s father took up the ancestral seat, and he wanted to waste no time doing so. Coriane found the behavior perverse at best. She couldn’t imagine doing such a thing to Julian, no matter how angry he made her. To stand by and watch him waste away with grief. It was an ugly, loveless act, and the thought of it turned her stomach. But I have no desire to lead our family, and Father is a man of ambition, if not tact.

  What he planned to do with his eventual rise, she did not know. House Jacos was small, unimportant, governors of a backwater with little more than the blood of a High House to keep them warm at night. And of course, Jessamine, to make sure everyone pretended like they weren’t drowning.

  She took a seat with the grace of one half her age, knocking her cane against the dirty floor. “Preposterous,” she muttered, striking at a haze of dust motes swirling in a beam of sunlight. “So hard to find good help these days.”

  Especially when you can’t pay them, Coriane sneered in her head. “Indeed, Cousin. So difficult.”

  “Well, hand them over. Let’s see what Jared sent along,” she said. One clawed hand reached out, flapping open and closed in a gesture that made Coriane’s skin crawl. She bit her lip between her teeth, chewing it to keep from saying the wrong thing. Instead, she lifted the two dresses that were her uncle’s gifts and laid them upon the sofa where Jessamine perched.

  Sniffing, Jessamine examined them as Julian did his ancient texts. She squinted at the stitching and lacework, rubbing the fabric, pulling at invisible stray threads in both golden dresses. “Suitable,” she said after a long moment. “If not outdated. None of these are the latest fashions.”

  “What a surprise,” Coriane could not help but drawl.

  Thwack. The cane hit the floor. “No sarcasm, it’s unbecoming of a lady.”

  Well, every lady I’ve met seems well versed in it, yourself included. If I can even call you a lady. In truth, Jessamine had not been to the Royal Court in at least a decade. She had no idea what the latest fashions were, and, when she was deep in the gin, could not even remember which king was on the throne. “Tiberias the Sixth? Fifth? No, it’s the Fourth still, certainly, the old flame just won’t die.” And Coriane would gently remind her that they were ruled by Tiberias the Fifth.

  His son, the crown prince, would be Tiberias the Sixth when his father died. Though with his reputed taste for warfare, Coriane wondered if the prince would live long enough to wear a crown. The history of Norta was fraught with Calore firebrands dying in battle, mostly second princes and cousins. She quietly wished the prince dead, if only to see what would happen. He had no siblings that she knew of, and the Calore cousins were few, not to mention weak, if Jessamine’s lessons could be trusted. Norta had fought Lakelanders for a century, but another war within was certainly on the horizon. Between the High Houses, to put another family on the throne. Not that House Jacos would be involved at all. Their insignificance was a constant, just like Cousin Jessamine.

  “Well, if your father’s communications are to be believed, these dresses should be of use soon enough,” Jessamine carried on as she set the presents down. Unconcerned with the hour or Coriane’s presence, she drew a glass bottle of gin from her gown and took a hearty sip. The scent of juniper bit the air.

  Frowning, Coriane looked up from her hands, now busy wringing the new gloves. “Is Uncle unwell?”

  Thwack. “What a stupid question. He’s been unwell for years, as you know.”

  Her face burned silver with a florid blush. “I mean, worse. Is he worse?”

  “Harrus thinks so. Jared has taken to his chambers at court, and rarely attends social banquets, let alone his administrative meetings or the governors’ council. Your father stands in for him more and more these days. Not to mention the fact that your uncle seems determined to drink away the coffers of House Jacos.” Another swig of gin. Coriane almost laughed at the irony. “How selfish.”

  “Yes, selfish,” the young girl muttered. You haven’t wished me a happy birthday, Cousin. But she did not press on that subject. It hurts to be called ungrateful, even by a leech.

  “Another book from Julian, I see, oh, and gloves. Wonderful, Harrus took my suggestion. And Skonos, what did she bring you?”

  “Nothing.” Yet. Sara had told her to wait, that her gift wasn’t something to be piled with the others.

  “No gift? Yet she sits here, eating our food, taking up space—”

  Coriane did her best to let Jessamine’s words float over her and away, like clouds in a windblown sky. Instead, she focused on the manual she read last night. Batteries. Cathodes and anodes, primary use are discarded, secondary can be recharged—

  Thwack.

  “Yes, Jessamine?”

  A very bug-eyed old woman stared back at Coriane, her annoyance written in every wrinkle. “I don’t do this for my benefit, Coriane.”

  “Well, it certainly isn’t for mine,” she couldn’t help but hiss.

  Jessamine crowed in response, her laugh so brittle she might spit dust. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? To think that I sit here with you, suffering your scowls and bitterness for fun? Think less of yourself, Coriane. I do this for no one but House Jacos, for all of us. I know what we are better than you do. And I remember what we were before, when we lived at court, negotiated treaties, were as indispensable to the Calore kings as their own flame. I remember. There is no greater pain or punishment than memory.” She turned her cane over in her hand, one finger counting the jewels she polished every night. Sapphires, rubies, emeralds, and a single diamond. Given by suitors or friends or family, Coriane did not know. But they we
re Jessamine’s treasure, and her eyes glittered like the gems. “Your father will be lord of House Jacos, and your brother after him. That leaves you in need of a lord of your own. Lest you wish to stay here forever?”

  Like you. The implication was clear, and somehow Coriane found she could not speak around the sudden lump in her throat. She could only shake her head. No, Jessamine, I do not want to stay here. I don’t want to be you.

  “Very good,” Jessamine said. Her cane thwacked once more. “Let’s begin for the day.”

  Later that evening, Coriane sat down to write. Her pen flew across the pages of Julian’s gift, spilling ink as a knife would blood. She wrote of everything. Jessamine, her father, Julian. The sinking feeling that her brother would abandon her to navigate the coming hurricane alone. He had Sara now. She’d caught them kissing before dinner, and while she smiled, pretending to laugh, pretending to be pleased by their flushes and stuttered explanations, Coriane quietly despaired. Sara was my best friend. Sara was the only thing that belonged to me. But no longer. Just like Julian, Sara would drift away, until Coriane was left with only the dust of a forgotten home and a forgotten life.

  Because no matter what Jessamine said, how she preened and lied about Coriane’s so-called prospects, there was nothing to be done. No one will marry me, at least no one I want to marry. She despaired of it and accepted it in the same turn. I will never leave this place, she wrote. These golden walls will be my tomb.

  Jared Jacos received two funerals.

  The first was at court in Archeon, on a spring day hazy with rain. The second would be a week after, at the estate in Aderonack. His body would join the family tomb and rest in a marble sepulcher paid for with one of the jewels from Jessamine’s cane. The emerald had been sold off to a gem merchant in East Archeon while Coriane, Julian, and their aged cousin looked on. Jessamine seemed detached, not bothering to watch as the green stone passed from the new Lord Jacos’s hand to the Silver jeweler. A common man, Coriane knew. He wore no house colors to speak of, but he was richer than they were, with fine clothes and a good amount of jewelry all over. We might be noble, but this man could buy us all if he wanted.

  The family wore black, as was custom. Coriane had to borrow a gown for the occasion, one of Jessamine’s many horrid mourning frocks, for Jessamine had attended and overseen more than a dozen funerals of House Jacos. The young girl itched in the getup but kept still as they left the merchant quarter, heading for the great bridge that spanned the Capital River, connecting both sides of the city. Jessamine would scold or hit me if I started scratching.

  It was not Coriane’s first visit to the capital, or even her tenth. She’d been there many times, usually at her uncle’s bidding, to show the so-called strength of House Jacos. A foolish notion. Not only were they poor, but their family was small, wasting, especially with the twins gone. No match to the sprawling family trees of Houses Iral, Samos, Rhambos, and more. Rich bloodlines that could support the immense weight of their many relations. Their place as High Houses was firmly cemented in the hierarchy of both nobility and government. Not so with Jacos, if Coriane’s father, Harrus, could not find a way to prove his worth to his peers and his king. For her part, Coriane saw no way through it. Aderonack was on the Lakelander border, a land of few people and deep forest no one needed to log. They could not claim mines or mills or even fertile farmland. There was nothing of use in their corner of the world.

  She had tied a golden sash around her waist, cinching in the ill-fitting, high-collared dress in an attempt to look a bit more presentable, if not in fashion. Coriane told herself she didn’t mind the whispers of court, the sneers from the other young ladies who watched her like she was a bug, or worse, a Red. They were all cruel girls, silly girls, waiting with bated breath for any news of Queenstrial. But of course that wasn’t true. Sara was one of them, wasn’t she? A daughter of Lord Skonos, training to be a healer, showing great promise in her abilities. Enough to service the royal family if she kept to the path.

  I desire no such thing, Sara said once, confiding in Coriane months before, during a visit. It will be a waste if I spend my life healing paper cuts and crow’s-feet. My skills would be of better use in trenches of the Choke or the hospitals of Corvium. Soldiers die there every day, you know. Reds and Silvers both, killed by Lakelander bombs and bullets, bleeding to death because people like me stay here.

  She would never say so to anyone else, least of all her lord father. Such words were better suited to midnight, when two girls could whisper their dreams without fear of consequence.

  “I want to build things,” Coriane told her best friend on such an occasion.

  “Build what, Coriane?”

  “Airjets, airships, transports, video screens—ovens! I don’t know, Sara, I don’t know. I just want to—to make something.”

  Sara smiled then, her teeth glinting in a slim beam of moonlight. “Make something of yourself, you mean. Don’t you, Cori?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  “I can see why Julian likes you so much.”

  That quieted Sara right away, and she was asleep soon after. But Coriane kept her eyes open, watching shadows on the walls, wondering.

  Now, on the bridge, in the middle of brightly colored chaos, she did the same. Nobles, citizens, merchants seemed to float before her, their skin cold, pace slow, eyes hard and dark no matter their color. They drank in the morning with greed, a quenched man still gulping at water while others died of thirst. The others were the Reds, of course, wearing the bands that marked them. The servants among them wore uniforms, some striped with the colors of the High House they served. Their movements were determined, their eyes forward, hurrying along on their errands and orders. They have purpose at least, Coriane thought. Not like me.

  She suddenly felt the urge to grab on to the nearby lamppost, to wrap her arms around it lest she be carried away like a leaf on the wind, or a stone dropping through water. Flying or drowning or both. Going where some other force willed. Beyond her own control.

  Julian’s hand closed around her wrist, forcing her to take his arm. He’ll do, she thought, and a cord of tension relaxed in her. Julian will keep me here.

  Later on, she recorded little of the official funeral in her diary, long spattered with ink splotches and cross outs. Her spelling was improving though, as was her penmanship. She wrote nothing of Uncle Jared’s body, his skin whiter than the moon, drained of blood by the embalming process. She did not record how her father’s lip quivered, betraying the pain he truly felt for his brother’s death. Her writings were not of the way the rain stopped, just long enough for the ceremony, or the crowd of lords who came to pay their respects. She did not even bother to mention the king’s presence, or that of his son, Tiberias, who brooded with dark brows and an even darker expression.

  Uncle is gone, she wrote instead of all this. And somehow, in some way, I envy him.

  As always, she tucked the diary away when she was finished, hiding it beneath the mattress of her bedchamber with the rest of her treasures. Namely, a little pallet of tools. Jealously guarded, taken from the abandoned gardener’s shed back home. Two screwdrivers, a delicate hammer, one set of needle-nose pliers, and a wrench rusted almost beyond use. Almost. There was a coil of spindly wire as well, carefully drawn from an ancient lamp in the corner that no one would miss. Like the estate, the Jacos town house in West Archeon was a decaying place. And damp, too, in the middle of the rainstorm, giving the old walls the feel of a dripping cave.

  She was still wearing her black dress and gold sash, with what she told herself were raindrops clinging to her lashes, when Jessamine burst through the door. To fuss, of course. There was no such thing as a banquet without a twittering Jessamine, let alone one at court. She did her best to make Coriane as presentable as possible with the meager time and means available, as if her life depended upon it. Perhaps it does. Whatever life she holds dear. Perhaps the court is in need of anothe
r etiquette instructor for the noble children, and she thinks performing miracles with me will win her the position.

  Even Jessamine wants to leave.

  “There now, none of this,” Jessamine muttered, swiping at Coriane’s tears with a tissue. Another swipe, this time with a chalky black pencil, to make her eyes stand out. Purple-blue rouge along her cheeks, giving her the illusion of bone structure. Nothing on the lips, for Coriane had never mastered the art of not getting lipstick on her teeth or water glass. “I suppose it will do.”

  “Yes, Jessamine.”

  As much as the old woman delighted in obedience, Coriane’s manner gave her pause. The girl was sad, clearly, in the wake of the funeral. “What’s the matter, child? Is it the dress?”

  I don’t care about faded black silks or banquets or this vile court. I don’t care about any of it. “Nothing at all, Cousin. Just hungry, I suppose.” Coriane reached for the easy escape, throwing one flaw to Jessamine to hide another.

  “Mercy upon your appetite,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “Remember, you must eat daintily, like a bird. There should always be food on your plate. Pick, pick, pick—”

  Pick pick pick. The words felt like sharp nails drumming on Coriane’s skull. But she forced a smile all the same. It bit at the corners of her mouth, hurting just as much as the words and the rain and the falling sensation that had followed her since the bridge.

  Downstairs, Julian and their father were already waiting, huddled close to a smoky fire in the hearth. Their suits were identical, black with pale golden sashes across their chests from shoulder to hip. Lord Jacos tentatively touched the newly acquired pin stuck in his sash—a beaten gold square as old as his house. Nothing compared to the gems, medallions, and badges of the other governors, but enough for this moment.