at the ball.
She didn’t need sisters of such disloyal quality. She didn’t know if the rumor her father had mentioned had been spoken by one of them, but she knew the sentiment was theirs.
And she knew what to do.
Meet rumor with quiet, treason with cunning, and vicious with vicious.
CHAPTER TWO
Cadis
Next came the Fin who dealt everyone false
Smiled at the others as she plotted their deaths
Hasty and brutish were just some of her faults
Broken nose . . . hideous . . . mackerel breath.
—Children’s nursery rhyme
The Royal Coliseum roared, like a great beast—hungry for more spectacle. Cadis knew the story by heart.
The people of Meridan wanted blood. They lived for it. They reveled in it. But they did not want to see themselves wanting blood. Not they who were so just.
So they told themselves the little story of a festival—a celebration of martial talents—when really, in their hearts, all they truly wanted was to see an accident, a slip and stab in the gut, a cloven hoof and upturned chariot.
They cheered for sport, but Cadis had stood before an audience since her name-day, and she could see it in their eyes. They wanted death and waste and violence.
Back in Findain, their celebrations revolved around the grand delivery of histories and the debate of philosophy. Masters each stood on the bows of ships at port—each their own stage—and bellowed into the harbor. Bad bargain comedies, tragic lovelorn tales of the sea, orations on the dignity of man, mummery, puppetry, even shadow plays projected on the unfurled sails of the ships—art, the true human art of stories and performances and song.
But here in the Revels, Cadis would be lucky to hear a mealymouthed official mumble a few words for the opening ceremony and a few blaring trumpets to announce the next contest.
And that was all right. Cadis wouldn’t crash against the rocks of their desire. No good salesman or storyteller would. She would be like water—flowing and unstoppable. She would read her audience, and she would give them what they wanted—for a price, even if that price was something as begrudging as their respect. Or, at least, the inability for them to hold their noses up and claim their queen superior, as they always did.
Cadis was Findish, after all. And if she told the right story, she had to believe they would listen.
A cadet cut herself on her shield, taking the blowback from an opponent’s mace. The crowd roared its approval once again.
Cadis watched from the conductor’s pit as she waited for her archery exhibition. She had warmed up already. By herself, speaking the words that calm, breathing the rhythm she had long ago established to steady herself—the rhythm of a ship at sea, a metered verse, an even fight. The war drum in her chest pounded.
Cadis felt the beads of sweat forming at the nape of her neck, under her long dreads, the droplets pooling and finally sliding down her back, under the leather breastplate armor.
She wore crimson and gold, the colors of Meridan, a gesture—maybe futile—toward unity . . . or at the very least, an evasion of the previous year’s insult, when she defeated Meridan’s future queen wearing Findish green.
Cadis had no intention of being any less proud of her skills, but it might appease the crowd that she salute them in this way, not to mentioned the convenient fact that there would be no rematch with Rhea.
On the coliseum floor, only two cadets remained standing in the open melee—one lumbering she-bear with double clubs, the other a scout with several open wounds and nothing but a trapper’s knife.
The people of Meridan cheered on the giant, the obvious favorite. They had no sense of good drama.
Cadis adjusted the greaves on her forearms, which protected her from the recoil of her bow. She should have had Hannah—her maid—help her tighten the straps, but Cadis had dismissed her a few days ago, when she’d caught Hannah rifling through her private drawers.
There was nothing to find. Cadis had no part in any Findish rebellion—if such a conspiracy even existed. She was loyal to Declan, though no one believed it. But she wouldn’t tolerate maids spying. It was too close to mutiny to be overlooked. She put the seal of her father’s guild on a promissory banknote and gave it to Hannah before sending her away. Any merchant of Findain would redeem it for a small fortune in dry goods. At least the maid wouldn’t go around claiming the Findish were as pinch-purse as