The Wheel of Osheim (The Red Queen's War 3)

“Did he say Vermillion?” I raised the shade and peered out, squinting against the brightness. The suburbs of Vermillion bumped past. “At last!”

“We’re there?” Lisa, blinking, face creased where she lay on me, strands of hair stuck in the corner of her mouth.

“We’re here!” My grin so broad it hurt my face.

Lisa gripped my hand and smiled back, and suddenly all was right in the world. At least until I remembered Maeres Allus.

Minutes later Lisa and I disembarked outside the courthouse on Gholloth Square and stood stiff and stretching, looking around with disbelief. Father Agor tossed a coin to a porter who received his luggage from atop the carriage and set off after the priest, a case under each arm. Our silent merchant friend departed, a boy with a mule carrying his trunk, leaving Lisa and me alone on a crowded street as the carriage rattled off to whatever stables would receive it.

On my journey south with Snorri I’d spent much of my waking day planning and anticipating my return to Vermillion. Travelling with Lisa, I had hardly spoken a word on the subject—perhaps fearing to jinx it, or unbelieving that after all I had endured our home would be waiting there to take us in once more as if nothing had changed. But here it was, busy, hot, wrapped around its own concerns and indifferent to our arrival. A large number of troops had been assembled on Adam Plaza, their supplies heaped against the side of the war academy.

“Will you take me home, Jal?” Lisa turned from the street and looked up at me.

“Best not. I’ve met your eldest brother, and he doesn’t like me.” Lord Gregori would have sliced me up himself if I hadn’t hidden behind my rank and made him goad Count Isen into doing the job for him.

“I live at the palace now, Jal.” She looked at her feet, head down.

“Oh.” I’d forgotten. She had meant the rooms in the Great Jon’s apartment in the guest wing. The ones she had shared with her husband. “I can’t. I’ve got something really important I need to do straight away.”

She looked up then, disappointed.

“Look.” I waved my hands as if there were something to look at that might actually explain it. “You don’t want me there. Not when you meet with Barras. And you’ll hardly come to grief between here and the palace gates.” She kept those big eyes on me, saying nothing.

“I would have married you, you know!” The words took me by surprise but they were out now and words can’t be unsaid. Instead they hang between you, awkward and uncomfortable.

“You’re not the marrying type, Jal.” A tilt of the head, surprise touching her face.

“I could be!” Maybe I could. “You were . . . special . . . Lisa. We had a good thing.”

She smiled, making me want her all the more. “Mine wasn’t the only balcony you climbed, Jal. Not even within my father’s grounds.” She took my hands. “Women like to have their fun too, you know. Especially women born to families like mine, who know they’re going to be married for their father’s convenience rather than by their own choice.”

“Your father would have jumped at the chance of a prince for one of his daughters!”

Lisa gave my hands a squeeze. “Our brother did jump at the chance.”

“Darin.” His name tasted sour. The elder brother. The one not to be seen staggering drunkenly from bordellos in the predawn grey, or gambling away other men’s money. The one not past his eyes in debt to underworld criminals.

Suddenly I couldn’t stand her kindness a moment longer. “Look. I’ve got this matter to attend to. It can’t wait. I really have to do this. And—” I rummaged in my jacket’s inner pocket. “I need your help.” I withdrew Loki’s key, wrapped inside a thick velvet cloth bound tight with cord. “Keep this for me. Don’t open it. For God’s sake don’t touch it. Don’t show it to anyone.” I folded her hands about the package. “If I don’t come to the palace within a day present it to the Red Queen and tell her it’s from me. Can you do that? It’s important.” She nodded and I released her hands. And somehow, although that key was by far the single most valuable thing in the kingdom of Red March, something I had fought and bled for, literally walked across Hell to keep, I felt no pang at letting Lisa DeVeer take it. Only a sense of peace.

“You’re scaring me, Jal.”

“I’ve got to go and see Maeres Allus. I owe him a lot of money.”

“Maeres Allus?” A frown.

I remembered that to most of my circle Allus was a merchant, a rich one to be sure, but nothing more, and who has time to remember the names of merchants. “A dangerous man.”