The Vermilion Edge

Cecelia pointed at the crumpled document trembling between the prince's fingers before anyone could reach for their weapons.

"Put that piece of crap away, Roland."

The crown prince blinked, his mouth half-open and the stench of cheap brandy clouding the cold air between them. The parchment bearing the imperial seal shook in his fingers.

"It's treason," Roland stammered. No, treason wasn't the word he was looking for; his tongue tripped over his teeth. "Treason against the throne. Signed. By my father."

"Your father has spent three months sleeping sixteen hours a day and signing whatever they put right under his nose between two cups of poppy tisane," Lucian intervened. He passed a hand over his velvet doublet, right where the lining concealed the dull clinking of a short scabbard. "And you smell like a dockside tavern before six in the morning. Dio santo, Roland. If you're going to kill me before breakfast, at least wash your face."

Roland took a step forward, his heavy boot echoing against the marble flagstones that the saltpeter of the lower galleries had cracked decades ago. Two halberdiers moved with him, heavy, the iron of their weapons scraping against the vaulted ceiling.

"Do you think I'm joking, little brother?" Roland spat.

"I never think you're joking. I think you don't think, which is different."

Cecelia didn't wait for the soldiers to decide whose orders to obey first. She turned around with the harsh rustle of starched raw silk petticoats, walked the four paces separating her from the oak chest shoved against the gray slate wall, and lifted the lid without asking anyone's permission. It weighed. It weighed the way things do after rotting in silence for years. From inside, she pulled out not the bone dagger that still burned against her thigh, but two notebooks bound in stained vellum and a bundle of promissory notes tied with coarse hemp.

She tossed them onto the low pewter table with a dry thud.

Dust.

She is seven years old and her father is sitting her on the highest stool in the Varenne treasury to teach her that a broken sword can be replaced with four copper coins, but a falsified ledger can bring down an entire duchy. On the table there is hard bread and a deep bowl of rancid lard that no one clears away because it's too cold for it to smell bad. Her father dips the quill, brushes a lock of hair from her forehead with a finger that smells of iron gall ink, and tells her that blood is used for signing, but grain is what decides who survives the winter.

"Sit down," Cecelia told Roland.

"What the fuck is this?"

"The customs accounts from the eastern pass," she replied. Her voice came out flat, edge-less, almost bored. "The spruce timber delivery contracts, the saltpeter lots for the garrison of the marches, and three promissory notes from the Morosini merchant house made out to a certain Monsieur Chevalier. A gentleman who plays pharaoh in the taverns of the lower wharf and loses four hundred silver coins in a single night of loaded dice."

Roland went rigid. The imperial paper dropped two inches.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Of course you do. Don't be an idiot—Cecelia ran the pad of her thumb along the folded corner of the first notebook; a tiny splinter of dry wood poked into the edge of her nail and she bit it off before continuing—. You dismantled the three south-border watchposts in October. You sold the chestnut beams, the lead from the roofs, and even the mules' horseshoes to cover what you owed the river moneylenders. You left the valley entrance wide open like a barn door in the middle of a storm."

Lucian let out a dry, brief laugh that cut off halfway. He walked slowly over to the table, picked up a tarnished pewter tin cup someone had left behind from the banquet, and smelled it before setting it down in the exact same spot.

"Well," he murmured. "And here I thought your only vice was slow horses and distant cousins."

"Shut up, Lucian," Roland said through his teeth. His neck was turning the color of the faded vermilion hanging on the ducal banners behind him.

"I won't shut up. It's fascinating. You sold the empire's defenses to pay off bad cards. Papa is going to adore you when dawn breaks."

"The decree bears the emperor's signature," Roland insisted, but his voice no longer came from his chest; it came from his throat, tight, like that of a boy caught stealing green fruit from someone else's orchard. "If I call the guards—"

"If you call the guards," Cecelia interrupted him, pressing both palms flat against the vellum, "these ledgers aren't going to the council's antechamber. They are going straight to the chancellor before the prime bell rings. And if the council sees that the legitimate heir pawned the security of six provinces to pay gambling debts to river smugglers, they aren't going to slit your throat down here, Roland. They're going to send you to count pine trees on the border you left bare. In the best-case scenario."

Silence.

In the lower gallery, the tallow wax burned in the chandeliers sputtered against the cold iron, giving off that dense, dirty smell that always mixes with the stale lavender of old tapestries.

"You wouldn't do that," the prince said, staring at her, looking for some crack in the girl's pale face. "Your family depends on the rye quotas. If you open that box, Varenne burns with us."

"Varenne is already burning," Cecelia replied. She didn't move. She didn't blink. "And I have no appetite for dying on my knees on a damp flagstone just so you can keep losing other people's silver."

Roland looked at Lucian. Lucian shrugged, with that calculated laziness he used as a dented shield, and scratched the corner of his jaw.

"She's right, dear brother. If I were you, I'd sit down and find a clean quill. Pazienza. Sometimes the soup gets cold before one reaches the table."

The council antechamber smelled of a dead stove and wet wool as the three of them stepped out into the courtyard.

The sky over the capital wasn't black or blue yet; it was a crust of slate gray beginning to break in the east with a sour, heatless clarity. In the high stained-glass windows of the hallway, morning frost formed a white, milk-like pattern that erased the spires of the outer towers.

Roland walked ten paces ahead, escorted not by his gala halberdiers, but by three border guard captains who never took their eyes off the back of his neck. No ermine cape. Wearing a dark riding jacket and a transfer order signed by the seneschal banishing him to the southern marches before noon.

Lucian stopped by the stone balustrade, rubbing his left wrist with an absent air. The skin under his shirt pulled tight, a dull burn they both shared but neither spoke a single word about.

"I thought you were going to slit his throat with the bone dagger," he said softly.

"Blades stain clothes," Cecelia replied without looking at him. "Numbers are cleaner."

"And crueler. Dio, Cecelia. You have the heart of a Venetian banker."

"I have the heart of someone who prefers to see her enemy walk away in a carriage with his head bowed than end up hanging from a beam of St. Eligius."

Lucian snorted. The vapor of his breath vanished against the freezing air.

"Does your arm hurt?" she asked.

"Something always hurts in the mornings. It's the humidity of this rat hole."

"Liar."

"Well, a little. But less than seeing Roland's face when he read the grand total of what he owed at the anchor tavern."

Down in the cobblestone courtyard, the relay horses shook their leather harness with a dull jingle. The carriage meant to take them toward the southern road was already waiting by the iron gate, its wheels covered in dry mud and a driver wrapped in three blankets jumping up and down to warm his feet.

Cecelia looked at the capital's towers beginning to stand out against the dawn. All of that was left behind: the cold stone of the temple, the promises bought with grain, the farce of a betrothal neither of them had asked for.

"The road to the border is four days with your ass glued to a wooden bench," Lucian said. "But at least no one will try to poison our breakfast."

Cecelia turned her head toward him. Lucian didn't have his usual crooked smile, that cynical smirk he broke out every time danger came within a stone's throw. He had tired eyes, a jacket wrinkled from a sleepless night, and two days of stubble shadowing his jaw.

And she believed him. Without fuss.

Lucian didn't say anything else. He simply took a short step to the side and leaned his shoulder firmly against hers, in silence, as the great oak gates of the portcullis swung open toward the southern road with a long groan of iron and frost.