She hadn’t, but now she knows what has been niggling at her for all this time. Of course. The elaborate paint and thick bracelets that cover their nonexistent marks have been designed to hide the fact that Torhvin has brought Markless into the Royal Square, an action that might be taken as an offense to Zidesh if exposed. “I’ll find them for you,” Orrin says. “You speak to them.” He gives her a dark look that she shares, the two of them united for once. “I don’t trust Prince Torhvin, and Dekala should know everything before she.…”
His voice trails off and Ruti whispers, “I know.” She really does hate Orrin, but tonight, just as heartbroken as he is, she can’t muster up any resentment for his grief.
Ruti still accompanies Dekala through her daily routine as a supportive companion, a now-agonizing ritual that involves following Dekala through the Royal Square in silence, hanging back beside Orrin and watching Torhvin as he appears in Tembo’s training room. “I have heard stories of your skill as a fighter,” Torhvin says. He has taken off his shirt, revealing lean muscle and toned arms, and Dekala’s eyes flicker over them for a moment.
“I have heard little of yours,” she says, and moves in a blur, stick in hand before Ruti can blink. But Torhvin is good, nearly as good as Dekala, and Ruti watches them with a sick feeling in her stomach.
This is what a soulbond is, someone matched to you in all ways. Torhvin moves fluidly opposite Dekala, wields his stick with skill and looks just as exhilarated as she does as he fights. Torhvin is Dekala’s perfect equal, and a Markless witch is worlds apart from that.
As is a bodyguard bonded to some long-gone woman, and Ruti sees the dread on Orrin’s face as he watches the prince and princess spar. She elbows him. “Torhvin’s servants,” she mutters, capturing his attention for a moment. “Where are they?”
“Oh.” Orrin looks startled. “Uh.…” He shakes his head, looking at Ruti with glazed eyes. “Torhvin is being hosted in a complex of guest quarters near the inner left courtyard. There are underground rooms for servants. The Markless are kept there during the day.”
“Kept there?” Ruti echoes, but she’s already lost Orrin to the fight once more. He stares at Torhvin and Dekala, both of them with sticks pressed to the other’s, their eyes narrowed and faces locked. Ruti swallows, tearing her gaze from them.
Dekala is absorbed in the fight, and her eyes flicker only briefly to Ruti as she slips out the door. Carefully, she makes her way across the main courtyard. The Regent is sitting in judgment of the people, but it’s a small crowd today, a few local disputes that hardly draw in any visitors. Ruti slips past them without notice, nodding to a few guards who recognize her from around the palace.
No one questions her as she raps on the door to Torhvin’s guest quarters. The bodyguard Orrin hadn’t liked—Winda, Ruti recalls—opens the door, eyeing her suspiciously. “Yes?”
She is very tall. Ruti blinks up at her, holding her gloved hand out in greeting. Winda is Bonded, ashto and sewa combined, and she looks at Ruti in distrust. “Prince Torhvin sent me,” Ruti lies. “He is sparring with the Heir, and he wishes for one of his servants to attend him.”
Winda’s eyes narrow. “That’s unusual,” she says. “Torhvin prefers to spar privately.”
“Well, the Heir’s form has caught his eye,” Ruti says, and she wonders if this bodyguard loves Torhvin as Orrin loves Dekala. “Do you have someone or not?”
Winda glances away from her and sighs. “Very well. Wait here.” She disappears into the next room, the door still ajar, and Ruti slips into the room behind her.
After all her time at the palace, Ruti has learned many of its secrets, and she heads to the nearly invisible door in the wall opposite her, finding the latch in the wall and pulling it. A door opens, revealing a staircase leading underground, and she climbs down the stairs, closing the door behind her before Winda can see where she’s gone.
The servants’ quarters here are dank and quiet, which takes Ruti by surprise. In the rest of the palace, they’re brightly decorated and full of chatter, servants glad to be working in the palace instead of in some menial job beyond it. But here the staircase is almost oppressively silent, and the quarters below are hardly lit.
It takes a few minutes for her to gain her bearings, and she chants a spell to enhance her vision in the dark for a while. Slowly, as she blinks and sings, she catches sight of the Markless who stood behind Torhvin the night before. They sit against the walls in a room that had been transformed by Bonded with mastery over form. The Bonded who had done it must be from Torhvin’s company, but there is something familiar about the new shape of the room nonetheless. “Hello,” she says.
They stare at her, silent and still, their faces sullen. They do not speak. Ruti says, wary and uncertain, “Is this how all servants are kept in Rurana, or just the Markless ones?”
Again, silence. Ruti sighs, whispering another chant. A light rises from her left palm, illuminating the room, and she squints at the servants. Her eyes water up at the sudden light, and it takes a moment for them to adjust to the room.
But when they do, her breath whooshes from her. The Markless servants aren’t staying still out of suspicion of her or loyalty to Torhvin. There are chains on their wrists that attach to their bracelets, chains she’s seen before. The Djevehav had a room just like this one, a place that had looked like it was meant for many prisoners.
Ruti takes a deep breath and raises her gloved right hand to her mouth. She bites down on the material, pulling off the glove with her teeth to reveal her own unmarked palm. Dropping the glove to the floor, she holds her palm up so the Ruranan Markless can see it. “The Heir of Zidesh looks favorably upon Markless,” she murmurs. “Tell me, are you servants or … or are you slaves?”
One of the Markless speaks at last. A woman, her eyes shadowed over in Ruti’s artificial light. “In the catacombs of Byale, the Markless of Rurana built a community,” she says hoarsely. “And when Rurana’s coffers were empty and its fields bare, the prince found a new use for us.”
“We are fortunate to have been kept in Rurana,” another says mournfully. “My children … I don’t know where they’ve gone. When I journeyed from Lower Byale to find them, I was taken. Prince Torhvin’s men have gathered the children and stolen them away. His ships—”
“The Diri,” Ruti says with cold suspicion. The Diri, who are wealthy enough from looting the continent’s shores to laugh off a treaty with a poor prince. Why would they ever …? “That’s his agreement with them. That’s why he’s been.…” She thinks of the eternal flame in the heating glass, of the Diri torches and red-hot knife that had never seemed to cool. “He’s been giving them the secrets of kuduwaí, hasn’t he?”
The servants are silent again, their eyes flickering away from Ruti furtively. They are terrified even now of Torhvin and his people, of what might be done to them if they share too much with Ruti. When she steps forward, another servant strains against his chains to move in front of his neighbor as though to protect her. Ruti shivers, a ripple of disgust passing through her at their state.
For all of Zidesh’s neglect of the Markless, the Markless are still free. There is no dynasty that would condone a mass killing of Markless anymore, not even in lands where the Markless are despised. And to enslave the Markless—to sell them, as though they are less than human—there are lines that even the worst of the kingdoms would never cross.
Or perhaps they would, if Torhvin has found buyers for his Markless.
She shudders, staring at the frightened Markless faces around her. “I have to go,” she says. “I’m sorry. I have to … to talk to Princess Dekala about this.” Dekala would never tolerate this. Ruti might not know Dekala all that well anymore, but she knows that with grim certainty. Dekala had been horrified just at the slums, and this is so much worse, so much more despicable.
She bends down to retrieve her glove and turns to go. But she can’t leave. Her heart is pounding and she can’t move her feet to walk up the stairs, to leave these Markless to their fate. In Rurana, Markless can grow old enough to be adults without becoming feral and dangerous, and Prince Torhvin threatens to end that altogether. “I can free you all,” she says. “I can sing your chains from your wrists. Will you come with me?”
Not one servant moves. Instead they cower back, eyes wide and terrified, and Ruti knows they have seen too much of Torhvin to believe that they can ever be free. The charming, patient prince who is wooing Dekala is nothing like the creature of the Markless’s nightmares, and yet, he must be.
She shudders again. “Please,” she says. “I don’t want to leave you here.”
“Save yourself,” the first woman rasps. “Save your princess from the prince. Our people are all but gone. Each rebellion leads to greater punishments. If we leave now, others will suffer.” She fixes empty eyes on Ruti. “You are Markless, yet you walk among royalty. There is hope for you.” Her eyes sharpen, a hint of fire within them, of dreams that have been stamped out and killed but not yet buried in the ground. “Give us a reason to believe that we might have the same.”
Ruti has no response.
Kalere is in the room with Winda as Ruti escapes back above ground, though for what reason, Ruti doesn’t know. “It is a matter of protocol,” Winda says disapprovingly, and Kalere catches sight of Ruti and purses her lips. She says nothing, only clears her throat when Ruti darts past, using the noise to conceal Ruti’s escape.
Ruti doesn’t think about the meeting. She thinks only of one thing as she heads back to Tembo’s training grounds. Dekala has to know. Dekala must be told about Torhvin’s Markless. But Dekala is gone, the match with Torhvin long over and the sun high in the sky. It’s near lunchtime, and when Ruti hurries back to Dekala’s rooms, she is already gone.
She doesn’t eat. It feels wrong to eat now, knowing what she does about what lies beneath Torhvin’s quarters. Her skin buzzes with the need to do something, to say something to Dekala and find some kind of justice for those Markless. Enslaved. It had been her greatest fear when she’d come to the palace, that she’d be jailed at the royals’ mercy forever. But even her worst nightmare pales in comparison with the picture that the Ruranan Markless had painted for her.
Rurana had once had a reputation for killing Markless as soon as they’d been clearly identified. The practice had ended when a queen, five generations ago, birthed a Markless son. Besides that, Ruti has never heard much about the Ruranan Markless. Catacombs, the woman had said. A community. The Markless of Rurana had been safe, hidden away from society, and then Prince Torhvin had taken the throne.
Dekala must know. Ruti paces her room, wary of eavesdroppers and overwhelmed with her newfound knowledge. Helpless and furious, she twists her fingers into broken, disjointed signs to Kimya that only seem to confuse her. She has to speak to Dekala.
