In the morning, she tells Kimya to pack. “We can sneak onto one of the merchant boats leaving for Kaguruk. The farther away, the better.” Kimya nods without argument. “We’ll have to sell the bed and the table for coin before we go. We’ll take my ingredients with us. Who knows who might have use for us in Kaguruk?”
Kimya’s face is bright with excitement, and Ruti does her best to look confident. She has no idea what Kaguruk does to Markless, if they’re as cruel as the people of Rurana are rumored to be. Kaguruk might be just another stop as they search for a place to settle, but at least there they’ll be safe from the Regent.
Kimya gathers ingredients from the shelves as Ruti heads outside to find a buyer for their table and cot. They are old and rotting, and Ruti had traded for them with a few chants, but they’re still better than what a lot of shopkeepers in the slums have. She can get ten, maybe twenty coin for both, and that can serve as bribes if they’re found on the merchant ship.
After a few minutes of hurrying from shop to shop, she realizes she’s being followed.
Her first thought is Kimya, who is rarely contained, but these footfalls are the heavy steps of someone who is bigger than Ruti and wears sandals instead of going barefoot. The movements are abrupt behind her, stopping and starting as she stops and starts, and Ruti tests them without looking back. Gingerly, she walks to the next shop and stops just before it. The heavy steps cease again with her, and she ducks into an alley and breaks into a run.
Her stalker follows. Ruti races down another road, weaving through Markless beggars and peddlers and the rare Unbonded who have come to the slums for cheap prices. She can hear her follower in hot pursuit, so she turns sharply into another alley, running swiftly through it and making another quick turn to her shop.
She bursts inside, hissing to Kimya, “Hide under the bed. Someone’s here.” Carefully, she snatches the knife from the cabinet and emerges from her shop.
Her pursuer emerges, and Ruti’s eyes narrow. It’s Orrin, the big, hulking lightning guard from the palace, and he raises his hands in threat. “You will come with me if you want to live,” he orders.
Ruti doesn’t budge. “Your lightning can’t kill me,” she snaps, bristling. “Do you want me to call another protector? A Maned One would eat you for lunch.”
Orrin’s eyes flash in fury. “I will kill you before you begin to sing,” he snarls.
Ruti feels intense dislike building for the lumbering fool who’d blasted her, whether or not it might be foolhardy to taunt a Bonded royal guard. “Or you could hide like a coward, as you did the last time I chanted,” she says, smirking.
“How dare you.” Orrin’s hands crackle with energy. The street empties swiftly, Markless fleeing from a Bonded guard and the confrontation sure to follow. “I am no coward.”
“You’ve come down to the slums to attack a defenseless Markless girl,” Ruti shoots back, the tips of her fingers playing against the hilt of her knife. “Am I the best you can do, you cowering dotard?”
Orrin roars, reaching back to hurl a sparking ball of pure energy at Ruti. Ruti tilts her head, readying a song, and then, abruptly—
A low rumble of thunder. “Enough.”
She knows that commanding voice even though she’s only heard it once. Orrin freezes, the lightning fading back into his hand, and a girl glides from the shadows, wearing the same silken cloak and translucent scarf she’d worn at the Merchants’ Circle. Her brown eyes are piercing as they take Ruti in, and Ruti’s bravado fades under Princess Dekala’s stare.
The Heir puts a hand on Orrin’s arm, her brown skin and red nails vivid on his pale skin, and Orrin deflates, scowling at Ruti but waiting, obedient, for the Heir to speak again. “Bring us inside,” the Heir says. It’s an order from someone accustomed to being obeyed, and Ruti turns without thinking, walking unsteadily into her shop.
She doesn’t put the knife down.
Kimya has listened for once, and she’s nowhere to be found. Ruti stands behind the table, watching as the Heir glides into the shop. Her golden cloak outshines the entire room, more luxurious and expensive than every item around her. Ruti gulps and says, “If you’ve come to have me executed, it will go the same way as it did before. I won’t be killed by that oaf,” she says, jerking a thumb at Orrin. He glowers at her.
The Heir says, “What magic can you sing?”
Ruti blinks, startled. The Heir meets her gaze. She is made to look delicate by her clothes and the elaborate styling of her hair and jewelry, but there is iron in her eyes, something fierce and dangerous that forces respect and accepts nothing less. “I …” Ruti stumbles over her words, unable to tear her eyes from the Heir’s. “I can sing anything,” she says finally. It’s a bold statement, but it’s true. “I taught myself to sing. If I have the right offerings for the spirits, I can teach myself whatever magic I need.”
The Heir regards her for another moment, then speaks her next words carefully. “My uncle demands—my uncle requests,” she amends, and there’s a flicker of resentment in her voice, a note that makes her seem, for the first time, as young as she truly is. “My uncle wishes that I be Bonded before I take the throne,” she says. “He has employed scholars who have studied the patterns of soulbonds for months before suggesting my most likely match. Princes and nobles will be flocking in soon, each hoping to be my Bonded.”
Ruti snorts, unable to hold back her amusement. “And he’s so sure that your Bonded will be a noble?”
The Heir gives her a cool look. “Never in the history of Zidesh has a princess bonded with anyone less,” she says, and sweeps her eyes around the room again, settling on Ruti as though she finds her wanting. “You will use your magic to ensure that I bond with none of these princes.”
It isn’t a request. Ruti bristles. “Why not bond with your soulbond?” she says, wrinkling her nose. She can’t imagine what it might mean to have a soulbond. Men hold little interest for her, but perhaps if she did find one matched to her, she might.… “Isn’t that what you people live for?” She says it disdainfully, earning a sharp look from the Heir and a glower from Orrin.
It’s Orrin who responds, placing a hand on the Heir’s back. “We’re in love,” he says, and his eyes glow with adulation as he looks at the Heir.
Ruti dislikes him even more. “With each other?” she says dubiously. His palm is open at his side, and she can see that he is already Bonded from that as much as from the lightning he uses so carelessly.
There’s a flicker of something that might be amusement in the Heir’s eyes. She turns, placing a hand on Orrin’s cheek, and he leans against it and gazes at her as though awestruck. When she turns back to Ruti, there is no humor in her eyes. “Spare me the judgment, Markless scum,” she says coldly. “You will help me, or you will suffer.”
Ruti can feel her hackles rising. “You forget who you’re talking to,” she says, smiling thinly. “I’m a Markless. I have nothing to lose.”
“Oh?” The Heir looks down at her, lip curled. It isn’t Orrin’s sneer, but it’s as cold as the icy wind that whips through the shop. “I watched you at the marketplace before we knew you were a thief,” she says. “I saw the girl you brought with you.” Ruti stiffens. The Heir smiles, victory written across her face, and Ruti hates her as much as she does her lightning guard. “Everyone has a weakness.”
There’s a movement in the next room, a bang as Kimya’s head hits the underside of the bed. The Heir doesn’t turn to look, though Orrin glares suspiciously at the doorway. “I am not some hapless noblewoman from the Inner Circle,” she says, enunciating every word as though to give it more power. “I will take everything from you if you try to test me.” She prowls the room like a Spotted One, eyes fixed on Ruti. “And you will see far worse than the inside of my dungeons if you dare speak of this to anyone outside of this shop.”
“I can sing my way out of—” Ruti begins scornfully, and the Heir is in front of her at once, dangerously close, closer than any self-respecting noble would come to a Markless. She smells of scented oils, her hands bathed in soaps like none Ruti has ever touched, and her eyes are like pools of molten gold when she’s this close. Ruti falters, forgetting her gibe, and then the Heir’s hands are on her face.
She doesn’t caress Ruti’s cheek as she had Orrin’s. Instead, her hand moves to Ruti’s throat, stroking the line of her neck with a smooth, soft finger. “Remember,” she says, her voice a ruthless purr. Ruti’s mouth is dry, her heart pounding. “Your voice can be taken from you, too.”
The wind whips around Ruti, pulling her hair from her face. “Do we have a deal?” the Heir asks, stepping back, her voice still deadly soft. “Will you come work for me?”
Ruti swallows, her neck still burning where the Heir had touched it. “I’ll need some ingredients,” she says. The Heir tilts her head in lazy acknowledgement. “An assistant,” she says, thinking of Kimya beneath the bed. “One I’ll bring myself.”
“No royal servant would work for a Markless, anyway,” Orrin says haughtily.
Ruti ignores him. “Food and drink,” she says, and she wonders if they might still escape, if this is better or worse than slipping onto a ship and fleeing Zidesh. “Shelter.”
“I swear on the spirits themselves that I will give you it all for eternity if I take the throne without a soulbond,” the Heir says, gathering her cloak and turning away from Ruti, effectively dismissing her. Orrin moves to stand beside her, smug as he looks down on Ruti. As though he has anything to do with her capitulation.
And it’s sheer irritation at both of them—a royal and her guard, who can enter Ruti’s life and restructure it without a single thought for the Markless girls they’ve selected—that has Ruti ask boldly, “Why were you watching me at the marketplace before you knew I took your ring?”
The Heir’s back stiffens, but she doesn’t turn. “Orrin will return after nightfall to escort you to my palace,” she says. “If you flee, I will find you.” It’s a simple statement that Ruti doesn’t doubt for an instant.
