Dance of Thieves (Dance of Thieves 1)

“Did you see your sister this morning? How is she doing?”

Priya shook her head. “Still holed up in her room. She won’t come out.”

I kept thinking about her red and swollen eyes. Her silence. “Did she love him?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Priya answered. “The minute he plotted against the family, Fertig became dead to us.”

“But—”

“Jalaine will get over it. She understands the cost of betrayal. She would have run him through herself if she had known. Fertig’s aim was to kill her brothers. And maybe the rest of us too. It wouldn’t be the first time the Patrei and his family were all slaughtered.”

“What?”

She grinned. “I guess that’s one story Jase didn’t tell you. But I can assure you Jalaine knows it quite well. Centuries ago, a Patrei and his whole family were slaughtered at—”

“But I thought the Ballenger line had never ended.”

“All killed, except for the baby daughter.” Priya told me that an uncle had succumbed to the flirtations of a lover. He let her in through a bolted entrance in the middle of the night. A flood of attackers followed behind her. As the family fled, they were cut down by rival powers, but a servant scooped up the baby, and they escaped down another path, making it to the vault. The servant eventually made it out through one of the caves and raised the daughter among cousins in the mountains. When the girl turned twenty, she returned with those cousins in tow and there was another slaughter in the very same house—but this time it was the daughter avenging her family’s death, and a new reign of Ballengers began with her. “Some swear they can still hear the dead walking through the rooms. That’s why many guests aren’t fond of staying there.”

“There?”

“Darkcottage. It was the first Ballenger house.” She shrugged. “I’ve never heard anything in there.”

But I have.

“Are you afraid of spirits?” she asked.

Was I? I wondered. They whispered to you in unexpected moments, and sometimes crossed the boundaries of life and death and touched you with cool fingers, and sometimes they warned you, but that was all.

“No,” I answered. “The dead can’t harm you. It’s the living I fear.”

Priya cast me a long sideways glance. “I doubted you when you first came. I thought you were going to be a big load of trouble, but I admit, I was wrong—even if you lied to me.”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“It never was a show. You always cared for my brother. I just don’t know why you tried to hide it. Is it against your Vendan laws for a soldier to fall in—”

“

No,” I said quietly, cutting her off before she could utter the word I had avoided. Saying love aloud seemed dangerous. It made it tangible, easier to grasp and break. Or maybe I was just afraid the gods would take notice and steal it away.

“The Ballengers will never forget what you did for my brother.”

Yes you will, I thought. If you ever find out why I really came here, that I have searched every room of your house and rifled through your private belongings, that I combed through your desk and touched your neatly ordered pebbles, that I was an invader instead of an ally, you will only remember me for that.

The whole family would remember.

We rode silently and my thoughts returned to Priya’s story. A whole family slaughtered was a horror beyond imagination. No wonder the Ballengers were so protective, so diligent about teaching their history. But something Priya said niggled at me, A servant scooped up the baby, and they escaped down another path.

What path?

There were no direct paths to the vault from Darkcottage. She would have had to run out in the open, through the work yard, making her an easy target—though the attack did come at night. As long as the baby didn’t cry, she might have hid in the shadows and made her way there. If the baby didn’t cry. I remembered everything I’d had to do to keep a tiger quiet when I smuggled it out of Sanctum City, and that escape was extremely well planned, not a panicked flight from intruders.

“Just a mile to go,” Jase called. He circled back to ride with me again, his business with Gunner finished, and Priya rode ahead.

“I’ll give you a quick lay of the land when we get there, but while I go over leases and other business, you can explore the rest on your own.”

“Other business? Like Fertig?”