Chapter Thirteen

VALGOR

Valgor was a large island nation located off of Alleria’s western coast. Although the two countries were ethnically and linguistically alike, the similarities ended there. Valgor was a mercantile confederation led by a self-selected group of wealthy businessmen who exerted loose control over its two dozen major cities, each of which jealously guarded its social, political, and economic prerogatives. There was no monarchy, no landed aristocracy, and not much by way of an army. Valgor’s ships plied the oceans, carrying the world’s cargo from the Rowowan tundra to Linecure’s dense jungle. During Rowowa’s war with Alleria, Valgor maintained a strict neutrality not so much out of principle, but rather so its merchants could trade with both sides. And if this meant that both Rowowa and Alleria sometimes abused Valgoran merchants, the Valgorans considered this the cost of doing business. Now that the conflict was over, though, Valgor hurried to cozy up to the Rowowan empire. Fortunately for Kargas and the royal twins, the Valgorans did not completely turn their backs on Alleria. For one thing, the cultural and personal connections between the two peoples remained strong. For another, the Valgorans wanted to make clear to everyone that Rowowan victory had not intimidated them into blind obedience.

These personal connections were the main reason why Kargas decided to take the royal twins to Valgor. He had served as adviser to the Allerian ambassador to Valgor before the war. In that position he had befriended innumerable Valgoran officials sympathetic to Alleria. In fact, soon after Kargas and the royals reached Kirkwell, he had identified Valgor as their next refuge and developed a contingency plan for them to get and stay there. Specifically, he selected the Valgoran city of Mercia as their sanctuary. With a population of a quarter million, it was neither the biggest nor most important Valgoran city, but it contained a large Allerian exile community that could help hide and protect the royals. Moreover, Kargas was friends with its mayor, who had throughout the conflict surreptitiously assisted Alleria. Not only was the mayor’s mother Allerian, but he had substantial economic connections with Alleria that he wanted to maintain and protect.

Getting to Mercia had not been easy for the royal party. As Kargas had expected, as soon as the home guard opened fire on Rowowan troops coming ashore, the Rowowan commander had summoned all the warships surrounding Kirkwell to the harbor to support the soldiers. This enabled the boat containing Kargas, Lattamore, Rael, Frederick, Iona, and Iona’s servant girl Lana to slip out from a cove on Kirkwell’s western shore and down the Heath’s foggy and isolated coast to the tiny port of Lackamore. There they picked up a former Allerian agent familiar with the waters to shepherd them across the Valgor Straits to Mercia. The entire trip took a week, during which Iona again succumbed to seasickness.

Despite their hurried and somewhat chaotic evacuation of Kirkwell, Kargas was not downcast. He always knew that it was a matter of time until the Rowowans located the royals on Kirkwell. He was instead encouraged that it took them so long to do so. To Kargas, this was more evidence of the Rowowan empire’s problems. Reports indicated that the Rowowans were discovering that digesting Alleria was even more difficult that conquering it. Tribal unrest in the Rowowan tundra was only getting worse, as were riots by out-of-work veterans in Rowowan cities. The Rowowan imperial council’s only real accomplishment since the conflict’s end was putting on trial one of its own for collaboration with the Allerians. Rowowan control over Alleria’s southern wastelands was so uncertain that the people in Hollandia had revolted and expelled the city’s small Rowowan garrison. Kargas had even toyed with the idea of taking the royals there to establish a Free Alleria zone until he received reports that the locals seemed more intent on killing each other than in uniting to keep the Rowowans out. Kargas continued to believe that time was on the royals’ side. Each day brought them closer to, not further from, Allerian independence. Until the time came for the royals to emerge from hiding to rally, unite, and lead the Allerian people, it was his job to keep them safe.

Although Kargas’s confidence in Alleria’s eventual independence remained undiminished, he harbored growing reservations about the man who would rule over it. As far as Kargas was concerned, Rael had not demonstrated much character, intelligence, or leadership during his time in Kirkwell. His inability to inspire and rally the home guard was as disturbing as his blasé response to Anna Mullins’s death. Kargas doubted that Rael had killed Anna Mullins, but he was sure that Rael’s partying, womanizing, and drinking made him vulnerable to such situations. Kargas had refrained from interfering in that unsavory part of Rael’s life out of respect for his privacy. He had instead relied on Frederick to keep Rael’s baser emotions in check. Frederick’s motives seemed pure enough. He could have remained behind in Aurora and lived off his family’s income, but he had instead agreed to accompany Rael on a difficult, dangerous, and uncertain mission. Kargas appreciated the risks he had taken, but worried that Frederick actually enabled Rael’s poor behavior. In fact, the more Kargas thought about it, the more he wondered if his hands-off attitude toward Rael resulted from a fear of what he would discover if he looked too closely.

On the other hand, Kargas felt increasing respect for Iona. The shallowness, frivolousness, and self-centeredness that had characterized her actions during the war had all but disappeared during her time on Kirkwell. She had abandoned her promiscuity, taken a job, and stayed out of trouble. She had also become more serene, confident, and reasonable. Most importantly, she had taken her role as a princess seriously by embracing the responsibilities the position entailed. To be sure, she had certainly made mistakes while on Kirkwell. Kargas remained flummoxed with her decision to advertise her identity at Royo’s execution. But the positives certainly outweighed the negatives in both weight and number. Indeed, Iona’s success in rallying the home guard enabled them to escape from the island. When he expressed his pride in her behavior on Kirkwell, she responded, “We all have a part to play in this story, and I intend to play mine to the best of my ability.”

As it was, Iona was not nearly as confident and secure as she acted. Once they reached Mercia, Kargas procured for the royal party a dwelling in a quiet, well-to-do neighborhood along the waterfront that Iona dubbed “the bungalow.” Kargas urged Iona and Rael to get out and present themselves as respectable Allerians who had fled Rowowan tyranny. Iona tried to play the part, but discovered that the traumatic events she had gone through on Kirkwell made it difficult to schmooze with strangers. Although she was proud of her role in rallying the home guard, she regretted that she did not do more to help Royo. She was also ashamed that she had not resisted Officer Owens’s sexual advances. It occurred to her that just as Owens had pressured her to assume a role not of her own choosing, so had Kargas and others. After all, she never asked to be either a princess or a whore, but people simply took it for granted that she would fulfill those roles. She was unsure what part she wanted to play in life, but knew that she should have the right to carve it out.

But there was more to it than that. During the week-long boat trip to Mercia, Iona had a lot of time while seasick to think about Anna Mullins’s murder. She could not ignore or dismiss Royo’s insistence that her brother was a killer. She knew that Royo was prone to self-righteous overdramatization, but he had been willing to die in order to focus her attention on Rael’s supposed wrongdoing. That was hard to overlook or discount. The more she thought about it, the more she questioned Rael’s innocence. She thought it was odd that Rael had never expressed much curiosity about Anna Mullins’s murder, even though it was the most discussed topic on the island. Nor did he deny rumors that at least one person had seen him with her on the night of the homicide. Instead, his interests had narrowed to drinking, partying, and womanizing, almost as if he was using them to escape from a guilty conscience.

Iona knew that the changes in her personality and character were impacting her relationships. She wondered if Kargas’s growing respect was simply the result of her living up to his expectations. As for Frederick, she was disconcerted by the complete lack of interest he showed in her. She suspected that this was due to her refusal to conform to his ideals. Most importantly, her interactions with Rael had become chilly and strained. Iona and Rael had never been close, but resentment had replaced Rael’s usual indifference toward her. He seemed to regard her more as a competitor than a sibling. Iona concluded that Rael was threatened by the inner strength she had demonstrated on Kirkwell.

One evening, about a week after they reached Mercia, the royal party sat down together as usual for dinner. Because Kargas was absent, Rael and Frederick had started imbibing earlier than usual, so they were both tipsy by the time Lana served the meal. As it often did, their conversation turned to the war. Iona usually tuned out their self-serving reminiscences, but she snapped to attention when she heard one of them mention an officer named Turnkey. Royo had told her on the night before he was supposed to be executed that a Lieutenant Colonel Turnkey had escorted him to the front. The same artillery shell that injured Royo had killed Turnkey. She remembered Royo saying that Turnkey claimed that he had uncovered Brenda Furthermore’s killer during a recent visit to the front. Now she listened to Rael and Frederick regale each other with tales of Turnkey’s phenomenal poker playing abilities during his trip to their Noemfoor headquarters along the Ethosian-Rowowan border. When Iona innocently asked them what Turnkey was doing in such a remote place, they looked at each other for a couple seconds before claiming that they did not remember.

Iona returned to her room after dinner and tried assess all this information. Someone had obviously sent Turnkey to Noemfoor early in the war to collect information on Brenda Furthermore’s murder. Turnkey apparently discovered enough evidence there to identify the likely killer. Was it Rael? Instead of arresting and prosecuting him, though, the same person who had directed Turnkey to Noemfoor then dispatched him to Narnicle to arrange Royo’s death. Was Kargas orchestrating this cover-up? Did he have that much power at the war’s start? Iona had learned a great deal about petty intrigue during her years in the palace, but this was on a completely different level and with much higher stakes. Iona wondered what she should do with this intelligence. Perhaps it was best to just leave it in the past and focus on larger and more important issues, such as Allerian independence? Besides, how reliable and verifiable was it?

Voices outside her window interrupted Iona’s contemplations. Since they had left Aurora, Iona’s servant girl, Lana, had grown from an awkward girl into an attractive young woman. Her transformation had been so gradual that Iona scarcely noticed it. Others, though, obviously had. Craning her neck to see out the window, Iona saw Rael flirting with Lana. Although Rael delivered his lines with practiced smoothness, there was a slight creepiness to his pitch that should have doomed his efforts – the too-ready smile, the forced intimacy, and the awkward innuendos. Fortunately for Rael, his good looks and aristocratic demeanor compensated for his oily glibness. Considering her age and inexperience, Iona was not surprised that Lana was enjoying the attention. Iona realized that if her theory was right, then Lana’s life was in as much danger as Brenda Furthermore’s and Anna Mullins’s had been. She also remembered that Royo had implored her to prevent such a reoccurrence.

Iona’s impulsiveness had always been a mixed blessing. She was aware of it, but did not see it as a character flaw. Instead, she questioned the instincts that provoked such rashness. As soon as Rael’s sappy conversation with Lana ran its course, Iona walked out to the porch. Rael was still there, smoking a cigarette and enjoying the ocean view. It irked her that he seemed pleased with himself, as if he was confident that the hook he had just baited would inevitably catch the fish he wanted. Over the past year her conversations with Rael had become increasingly strained and uncomfortable. She braced herself for another one, but was determined to engage him anyhow.

Do you like her?” she asked nonchalantly.

“Who?”

Iona groaned inside, but tried to remain civil. “Lana.”

Rael took a drag on his cigarette. “Her? Yes, she’s a nice girl.”

“Yes,” Iona said. “She’s a girl. She’s sixteen. Surely you can find someone a bit older.”

Rael stiffened. “She’s your servant, not your slave.”

“Exactly,” Iona replied. “I care about her and don’t want her hurt.”

Rael’s eyes went cold and dark. “What makes you think I would hurt her?”

Iona looked him in the eyes. “Why? Is that an issue for you?”

Rael leaned in closer to her and dropped his voice. “Be careful, sister. You might think you deserve it, but I’m still heir to the throne.”

Iona wondered what inheriting the throne had to do with Lana. “That sounds like a threat, brother. Did you use those same words to coax Anna Mullins into her bed?”

Rael suddenly smacked Iona across the face, knocking her into the wall. “You don’t know anything,” he said as he stalked into the house.

After retrieving some ice for her bruised face, a stunned Iona retreated to her room to sort out her emotions. She was furious with Rael, but unsure how to respond. The obvious recourse, appealing to Kargas, seemed childish. The incident crystalized many of the feelings that had been churning in her mind for the last few weeks. For one thing, it convinced her that Rael was a murderer. She believed that he had killed both Brenda Furthermore and Anna Mullins, and would probably do the same to Lana if given the opportunity. In addition, Iona now knew for sure that she did not want to spend an indeterminate amount of time scurrying from one strange place to another in Rael’s company, a step ahead of Rowowan agents and assassins, while waiting for the Rowowan empire to collapse so her wretched brother could reign over it. The problem for Iona was to find a way to stop Rael and escape the role others had assigned her.

Kargas was not blind to the increasing tension between Iona and Rael. He chalked up much of it to stress caused by close confinement and uncertainty about the future. That being the case, he figured that the siblings might appreciate a night on the town to break up their monotonous routine. Both enjoyed the theater, so when Kargas learned that Marco Dillonbrough’s Girls About Town was coming to Mercia’s Oracle Playhouse, he bought three tickets for opening night for Iona, Rael, and himself. He also made dinner reservations so that the three of them would have the opportunity to talk about their differences after the play in a congenial environment.

Iona accepted Kargas’s invitation without enthusiasm. Although she had no desire to spend any more time with her brother than necessary, the prospect of good food and entertainment counterbalanced her distaste in the company. That night, though, as she lay in bed awaiting sleep, it occurred to her that the evening offered her the opportunity for escape and retribution that she had been seeking. At first it seemed like a flight of fancy, but as her mind assembled the pieces and filled in the details, it became not only possible, but imperative.

The next morning Iona walked down to breakfast. There a hung-over Rael flirted shamelessly with Lana, touching her hand and discussing plans to picnic together at the nearby park. Although Iona feigned indifference, she seethed on the inside. She returned to her room, closed the door, and took out a blank piece of stationary. Using block letters to disguise her handwriting, she penned a short and to-the-point note to the Rowowan consulate in Mercia: “Prince Rael, the heir to the Allerian throne, will attend the opening of Girls About Town at Mercia’s Oracle Playhouse. You can identity him by his goatee.” She thought about providing more details to boost the letter’s credibility, but opted instead for a signature guaranteed to attract the attention of anyone familiar with the royals’ saga. She signed it “Anna Mullins.” That afternoon she took a long walk through the city and surreptitiously popped the letter into a mailbox.

Iona had two weeks to prepare for her escape. She planned it out secretly and in tedious detail. She procured train and ferry schedules and used them to memorize several different possible routes to her destination. She walked to the train station every day until she knew the path by heart. Because she had spent little money since leaving Kirkwell, she already had a nice nest egg to fall back upon. Just to be safe, though, she augmented her cash reserves by persuading Kargas to give her additional funds for an expensive sewing machine that she did not get around to purchasing. She packed and hid a small suitcase of essential items, none of which gave any indication of her identity. Finally, she bought at a secondhand clothing store a nondescript dress that made her indistinguishable from Valgoran working girls.

Iona tossed and turned the night before the play opened. The knowledge that she had unilaterally set into motion a chain of events that would within twenty-four hours irretrievably change the lives of her and her companions weighed heavily on her conscience. Although she often doubted the wisdom and practicality of her plan, she knew that she had committed herself to its implementation the second she slid the letter into the mailbox slot. Her haggard and exhausted appearance the next morning gave credence to her claim that she was ill and would be unable to attend Girls About Town with Kargas and Rael. Kargas was clearly disappointed, but did not question the veracity of her story. Iona spent the day feigning sickness and calming her nerves. Fortunately, two pieces of news encouraged her. When Lattamore checked up on her, he mentioned that he was visiting an old friend that evening, so he would not be in the house when she made her escape. Neither would Frederick; Kargas decided to invite him along rather than waste the theater ticket.

Lattamore left in the late afternoon, followed shortly thereafter by Kargas, Rael, and Frederick. Their goodbyes were unsurprisingly perfunctory. Iona watched them depart with mixed emotions, but assured herself that she was doing the right thing by remembering Brenda Furthermore and Anna Mullins. As soon as they were out of view, Iona found Lana and asked her to clean up the kitchen. As Lana hurried toward the sink, Iona mentioned that she was going out for a long walk. She rushed to her room, changed into her working girl dress, tied up her hair, grabbed her bag, and slipped out the door. She reached the train station fifteen minutes later, bought a third class ticket, and climbed onboard. Although it seemed like forever, the crowded train pulled out of the station a half hour later and was soon chugging southwestward. Iona tried to read a book, but was unable to concentrate, so she stared out the window and watched the Valgoran coast go by.

The hypnotic rumble of the train failed to still Iona’s mind. She was pleased that she was finally controlling events, not the other way around. She knew that she remained a wanted woman, but she believed she had figured out a way to disappear for good. While studying the train and ferry timetables, she had discovered something odd. There was one ferry that did not restrict itself to crossing the Valgor Straits between Alleria and Valgor. It instead continued up the Valgor coast to Pennyrole, Carlisle, Mercia, Ludwig, and Hollyoake. If Iona got off the train at Haddonsburg, she could board this ferry and double back to Mercia before continuing northeastward to Hollyoake. Chances were slim that anyone would expect her to take this route.

After a sleepless night, Iona detrained at Haddonsburg. She had several hours to wait until the ferry arrived from Alleria and continued up the coast to Mercia and Hollyoake, so she ate lunch at a rundown diner and then found a small salon at which to get her hair cut short. She was surprised that there was nothing in the papers about Rael. Indeed, she wondered if he had somehow avoided the trap she assumed her letter had helped set, and worried that Kargas was hot on her trail. Until she knew otherwise, though, she decided to stick with her plan. She boarded the ferry in the early evening and found a seat by a window. By now her adrenaline rush had worn off and she was getting tired. Moreover, although the ferry was considerably larger than the boats she had taken to Kirkwell and Mercia, she still felt a little seasick. Even so, she fell asleep soon after the ferry pushed off from its dock and headed up the Valgor coast.

Iona had never attached much significance to dreams. She rarely remembered them anyway. As she slept on the ferry, though, she had a vivid dream of her father. In it the two of them were walking in the palace gardens. She asked him which was more important, truth or loyalty? Her father tugged on his beard for a moment. “Well, Bank,” he said. “The answer is truth. Whenever you sacrifice truth for loyalty, you invariably end up transferring your loyalty to the lie you’ve created.”

When Iona woke up, the cabin was full of dozing passengers and the overhead lights were dimmed. She felt like a weight had been lifted from her heart. She was unsure whether this was due to her dream, a few hours of rest, or her assumption that she was finally safe. All that she knew for certain was that she was finally free – free of responsibilities no one asked her if she wanted to assume and of expectations she had no role in creating. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she noticed that the man sitting across from her seemed vaguely familiar. He was looking at her with a bemused smile on his face and a glint in his one eye.

Horace Oxenstera leaned forward. “Hello, Princess Iona.”