Page 12 of The Queen's Shadow

“It doesn’t seem like he’s thinking much at all,” she said. Her brows rose as Arphaxad embedded a third knife in the stump, the blades nestled together in a neat triangle.

“Clearly.” He kicked at a fallen branch in the detritus. It skittered across the undergrowth and shattered against a tree.

The rest of the correspondence Cassandra had removed from the cave had proved to be just as illuminating as the name signed on that first letter. Sethos Amanakar was planning to use the chanters, and the power he learned from them, to stage a coup against his father. And the Inetian ambassador to Medira was in league with him.

It wasn’t exactly surprising that there was a plan to overthrow the Inetian emperor—Cassandra heard rumblings of that regularly. The Inetian emperor had fourteen children from a dizzying succession of queens and likely more illegitimate children as well. There was always someone who thought they could use one of his progenies to make a claim for the throne, especially in an empire that had been united by so much bloodshed and where there were generations of lingering tensions.

Amanakar was one of the lucky illegitimate sons to be claimed by the emperor when there were dozens more who never had been—and he was more well-connected than even some of his legitimate siblings from earlier queens who had fallen out of favor, since his mother was sister to one of the more well-connected, though now discarded queens.

Cassandra’s mouth twisted at the thought. At least Amanakar had been claimed by his father when she’d just been discarded by hers. The old wound ached, more than she wanted to admit. She knew all too well how it felt to live in a world that claimed your birth was not valid, and she could understand some of what might drive Amanakar to want to overthrow a father who cared for little beyond getting pleasure and exerting power wherever and whenever he wanted.

It was a tale as old as time. Those in power always sought to use others to get what they wanted, no matter the consequences. She just wished Amanakar hadn’t decided to go about it so stupidly.

That’s what made this plan so much worse than the usual rumblings of uprising in Ineti: the gall of Amanakar to try to use magic that had been banned across the empire. Magic that could easily go awry and bring about the end of...a lot of things.

Frustration curled in her gut. It was her job to know about the changing power situation in and around Rendra, and she’d missed it. Amanakar had never come up as a threat before now—he’d always seemed to be a man simpering in the graces of the great emperor and leeching as much as he could get away with. While he wasn’t threatening Rendra directly, he had sent men to the peninsula to learn from the Sorothi chanters. And that kind of power, and closeness, was a direct threat to Rendra. Especially if his aim was to throw the Inetian empire into chaos.

Arphaxad stared at the daggers in the stump, tension clear in every sinew of his body.

She understood his anger too. For him, this was more than just a small thing he hadn’t been aware of. It was an enormous oversight, especially with the looming marriage alliance to the Inetian emperor’s daughter. And if it hadn’t been for Cassandra making an idiot of herself at the Mediran palace, he might not have known for weeks more.

Arphaxad pulled another knife and threw it at the stump. This one slipped past and skittered into the forest. He swore. She didn’t like seeing him so on edge—he had a maddening ability to keep his composure, even under the tensest of circumstances, and for him to show his anger this openly showed how unsettling the situation was.

“What I want to know,” Cassandra said as she picked up her bow and moved to stand beside him, “is why the enclave even agreed to help in the first place. They know the risks better than anyone. And they’ve spent their entire lives learning to control their magic. These Inetians clearly have not, judging by what we witnessed today.”

Arphaxad sighed. “Something must be going on in the enclave. Something we don’t know about.”

He looked at her sidelong as she nocked an arrow and drew the string. The arrow thwacked into the stump right in the middle of the daggers. He made an appreciative noise. “Good shot.”

“I’m imagining Amanakar’s head,” she said impishly.

He snorted, then drew another dagger and tossed it. It embedded in the stump just beside her arrow.

They were quiet for a moment, staring at the weapons in the fading light. The shadows had lengthened since they’d made their way back to the ridge, then deeper into the forest in hopes of avoiding prying eyes, of getting father away from the wrongness of the cave. It wouldn’t be long before darkness fell. A tired ache was gathering in Cassandra's body, but she knew she couldn’t think about rest anytime soon.

“What can Amanakar possibly offer the chanters?” she said finally. “Safety? The backing of a major power? All that seems like a gamble compared to what they have now in Medira.”

Arphaxad nodded. The anger had drained from his face, and she could see the exhaustion that lay behind it.

She raised her bow again and sent another arrow thudding into the stump, sliding it between her first arrow and Arphaxad’s dagger beside it.

“Now you’re just showing off,” he said. Cassandra’s lips twitched, and she waited as he went to the stump and removed first his daggers and then her arrows.

“Amanakar’s ploy is learning the secrets of the Sorothi chanters,” he said as he returned, handing her the arrows. She watched carefully where he placed each dagger. Those were certainly not all the weapons he had on him, but it helped to know where some of them were. He arched a brow at her, and she gave him her sweetest smile.

“Possessing the ability to open a door to anywhere would certainly prove effective against your enemies,” he continued.

Cassandra slipped the arrows back in her quiver. He was right. That kind of knowledge could give even a very small force an enormous upper hand. “Amanakar could open a door to his father’s bedroom and kill him in his sleep and no one would ever know.”

“Exactly.” Arphaxad grimaced. “And if there’s an influx of amateurs using this kind of power, how long do you think it will be before they start tearing rifts like we saw today? How long before something truly horrible comes slinking through?”

She quieted at his words. She never wanted to witness what she had this morning ever again. It had been so utterly wrong. Even here, up on the ridge and away from the cave, she could sense its pull, its wrongness, its distortion on the reality of their world.

“They’ll destroy the world,” she said soberly. “Or, at least, send the empire into chaos.”

Arphaxad flexed his fingers, then pulled a dagger from his belt. She could sense his frustration again. “Bastard,” he said.

Cassandra froze—that word. She hated that word. And coming from him, it somehow cut through her even more deeply.

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