The what?
“No.” Katarina’s index finger stilled, but she didn’t turn. “Not that.”
Silence stretched, and next to him, Carlo seemed to wither beneath it. Seemed to shrink in on himself, so sick with terror was he at the woman before him who was barely half his size.
“Your prize for doing a good job was to be that I’d give you the bastard prince when he had reached the end of his usefulness,” Katarina finally said, speaking about James like he was a goddamned toy. “You did not earn your prize, so his fate is the Furnace.”
Carlo let out a ragged sob, and it was then that Katarina finally turned.
Older than Alexandra, she was gaunt as a skeleton, her bones protruding and her cheeks hollowed. Her skin was covered with thick white paint that settled into the creases and wrinkles, and her black eyes were sunken deep into her skull. She wore a brilliant crimson wig, the looping curls hanging to her waist, and her black gown was made of layers upon layers of delicate lace.
She trailed her tiny fingers down the necklace James recognized as Ahnna’s, taking in her son. Her face abruptly filled with sorrow. It was like watching an animated skeleton in a wig, not a woman, but more shocking was her abrupt change in demeanor. “Oh, my dearest boy. I was told about your poor face, but it’s worse than I dreamed.”
Katarina stepped up to Carlo and cupped her hand against his cheek, the Beast leaning into her palm. “I will make the Ithicanian bitch suffer in ways she cannot dream of for doing this to you. She does not yet know the meaning of pain.”
“You mean it gets worse than wearing this dress?”
Ahnna’s voice came from behind the screen, but then she appeared, as tightly bound as James and restrained by two female members of the dark guild. Her hair had been teased up into a tower that rose at least a foot from the top of her head, and she wore a yellow gown of tiered lace that ballooned out around her like a parasol. Her face was painted white, false eyelashes brushing her cheeks as she blinked, and her lips were the color of blood.
She looked awful.
“Carlo, take Nina and go,” Katarina said. “You have another engagement to attend to, and you do not wish to be late.”
The Beast left with no argument, although the glare he gave Ahnna was murderous.
Ahnna ignored him and took James in, one eyebrow rising. “You look like a jester.”
“You look like the doll in the shop that no child wants lest she be given nightmares.”
The corner of Ahnna’s mouth turned up, but then her attention turned back to Katarina. “Let me see if I have this straight, Katarina. You and Alexandra are conspiring together to take control of the bridge, but you don’t trust your dear friend across the mountains to hold true to the arrangement. So your intention is to keep James and me alive as insurance against her double-crossing you, because we know that it was Alexandra who killed Edward. Which isn’t the sort of thing the Harendellians are likely to be very forgiving about, should they discover the truth.”
“That’s why I captured James,” Katarina answered. “As I’m sure you’ve come to understand, no one believes your truths, Ahnna Kertell.” The queen of Amarid smiled, revealing teeth that were concealed by gold and jewels. “You, I will keep alive to control James. To give him something to live for, lest he find a way to end things. His death would vex me.”
“Why? Don’t you trust Alexandra?”
Katarina chuckled. “No one knows her as well as I do. It seems like only yesterday when she offered an alliance in exchange for getting rid of Edward’s whore.” Her black eyes rolled to James as he stiffened. “Alexandra was young and idealistic once. She believed in love, but Edward soon crushed those dreams to ruin. She blamed your mother and believed that if Siobhan were gone, Edward would come to love her. I warned her otherwise, but…” Katarina waved a hand from side to side. “You know how that went better than anyone, don’t you,Jamie?”
He bit the insides of his cheeks, refusing to give her the satisfaction of a response.
“Siobhan’s death put a damper on dreams for peace with Cardiff, which of course was to Amarid’s advantage, but it also gave me leverage over Harendell’s young queen. For if Edward learned of the murder that bound our friendship, his wrath would have been a thing to behold. Your father could be so profoundly cruel when he was angered.” Gold and jewels gleamed as she grinned at him. “But Alexandra is no longer a young debutante with dreams of love in her heart, and with Edward long in the grave now, she grows bold. You will be the insurance that keeps my dear protégée in check, and Amarid will rise to heights it has never seen when Ithicana falls.”
“Ithicana will not fall.” Ahnna’s voice was frosty, and if James didn’t know her as well as he did, she would have seemed the epitome of confidence. “You’ve tried before. Tried andfailed,Katarina. How many ships did you lose in the battle for Eranahl?”
“Many.” Katarina’s tone was unmoved, and James was again struck with how it was like speaking to a corpse. “But it was because Silas was driven to action when patience would have served him better. Driven, it is rumored, by his own son’s strategy to save Zarrah Anaphora. Alexandra and I will make no such mistakes. When Ithicana falls to us, it will not rise again. The bridge will run through a dead nation inhabited only by snakes.”
It was final confirmation of Alexandra’s alliance with Silas and Katarina in Maridrina’s invasion of Ithicana. James’s father had beenenraged by the invasion, smashing cocktail glasses and shouting that Silas hadn’t just broken his treaty with Ithicana, but broken his treaty with Harendell as well, his vitriol toward Lara Veliant ferocious in its intensity. Through it all, Alexandra had stood in near silence, offering only the occasional,Veliants are always the worst sort, darling. Only to be tolerated, never trusted. You warned Delia time and again, but she would not listen, and it seems the apple didn’t fall far from the tree with her son, both idealists.Not once had James ever suspected that she was involved, and it made him realize how badly he’d underestimated Alexandra’s ambitions. How badlyeveryonehad underestimated her.
Ahnna huffed out an amused breath. “And just how do you plan to achieve that goal when every other nation has failed?”
Katarina rested her hands against the balcony and leaned back, dark eyes calculating and cruel. “It would be a kindness not to tell you my plans, because I think the knowledge will destroy your mind once you are in a Furnace cell. Yet I am told that it was your actions, Ahnna, that caused my son to lose his eye, so I will show you no mercy.”
Ahnna smiled. “Carlo did that to himself, Your Grace. Perhaps if he’d not been such a glutton and eaten twice his share of my mushroom stew, he’d see twice as well as he currently does.”
Katarina’s right index finger tapped twice on the stone, eyes glittering like onyx. “All right, Ahnna. I will play the game of hard truths with you. While you and James were galivanting around the Blackreaches, William gave Aren an ultimatum: Deliver you to Harendell for execution or face a blockade. Obviously Aren could not hand over that which he did not have, but he has also stood his ground and refused to name you as Edward’s murderer. Every bit as loyal as we had heard, which made him so very predictable.
“True to his word, William has put the full might of Harendell’s navy to blockading not just Northwatch, but all sea traffic into the gulf. An easy enough task given that the Tempest Seas have been fierce in their storms, so Ithicana is entirely cut off from the north. Those same storms strip the trees and flood the land, but worse, theykeep your people from turning to the seas for sustenance. Silas stripped all the stockpiles and stores, and Aren has had neither the time nor the funds to replenish them, so I expect your people will soon be subsisting on snakes and rats.”
“The bridge has two ends.” Ahnna lifted her chin. “You’re underestimating my people’s resilience, and we’ve endured similar circumstances before.”
