By the Morning Light_Smoke and Mirrors Read online

  But there was nothing kind about the expression on Emile’s face. He looked like he was moments away from charging back to Ayres, back to the castle, back to Michel, and punching him right in the face.

  For me.

  I was a fool to ever think my brother would pick Michel over me, no matter how much he worshipped the older boy.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, sniffling.

  Some of the hardness left Emile’s face, replaced by surprise. “What are you sorry for?”

  “I should have told you right away.”

  “You should have,” he agreed. “Then I would have marched down to the castle and punched Michel right in the face.”

  I let out a startled laugh. Even after all this time, I was still amazed at how easily I was able to read my brother. Wasn’t that exactly what I’d just thought?

  Emile put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Michel is an idiot.”

  I laugh-hiccupped at that. “He is.” I paused, sighing. “But I still think he’s handsome. Does that make me an idiot, too?”

  Emile grinned. “It does, but no worries. I still love you.”

  I shoved him away while he laughed. “Idiot!”

  “How can I be an idiot if you’re an idiot?”

  “You’re just a bigger one…” My words trailed off as a glint of gold caught my eye. Scrambling to my feet, I ignored Emile’s questions as I went further into the darkened room. In the corner I knelt down, feeling something cold and metallic with my fingers.

  “What did you find?” Emile asked, hushed. We’d always talked about finding treasures at the monastery, but it’d been picked clean ages ago.

  “I don’t know.” My voice thrummed with excitement. “I can’t tell.”

  “Bring it into the light.”

  We dashed out into the open, blinking against the sunlight. I held up my hand. A circular, flat disc, bigger than a pebble but smaller than a rock, rested in my palm. The gold, devoid of scratches or etchings except for a small hole at the top, sparkled brightly in the light, and Emile let out a low whistle, as our father often did. “You did it, Claudette. You found a treasure!”

  “We found it,” I corrected him. “What should we do with it?”

  He picked it up, examining it. “I don’t want to sell it.”

  “Me neither,” I said quickly. “It’s ours.”

  Emile pointed to the hole. “We can thread it on a cord and take turns wearing it?” he suggested.

  “And keep it a secret,” I added, delighted when his eyes widened with astonishment. “It’s our secret, Emile. No one can know about it.”

  He gave me back the treasure before pulling the door to the hidden room shut. It closed with a muted creak. “No one,” he echoed. “No one but us.”

  Chapter Three

  Our secret treasure turned out to be more than just a treasure. Somehow, it’d become a good luck charm. In the five years since I’d found it, things had started looking up for both me and Emile whenever we wore it.

  We started training to become Knights. When we returned from the monastery, the disc a secret tucked deep in my pockets, we found a group of boys waiting for us outside our home. Everyone but Michel was there, and they all started talking at once until Emile held up a hand and pointed to Andre. “Tell us what’s going on.”

  It turned out my shoving match with Michel had impressed the other boys. “No one else stands up to Michel, not even us,” Andre admitted, flushing. “But you did.”

  “Not only that,” Gilbert said, “but you knocked him down. If you can’t be a Knight, then none of us should be.”

  Exchanging an incredulous look with Emile, I nodded and told the boys I would think about it. But once my brother and I were inside our home, the door shut behind us, I began dancing. Emile watched me, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “I take it you’re happy?”

  “What do you think?” I asked, still dancing. “You’re going to train with me, aren’t you?”

  Leaning against the wall, Emile nodded. “Of course. Someone needs to make sure you don’t push Michel down again. Unless he deserves it.”

  “He always deserves it.”

  Emile laughed. “He does.”

  After my shoving incident with Michel—and his inevitable protests about my training that eventually dwindled away to nothing once he realized no one was on his side—Emile grew indifferent to the older boy. Once Michel noticed, he worked hard to recapture Emile’s attention. My brother resisted at first, but it was impossible to refuse Michel for very long. With his angelic good looks and his effortless charisma, he had the whole city wrapped around his finger, which might explain why more and more girls began showing up to train once they heard I’d been made a squire. After a week of exercises and battles with wooden swords, some of the girls dropped out, content to stand on the sides and cheer Michel on, but I was pleased to see most of the girls stuck with it. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who was more interested in swords and combat than dolls and playing house.

  My brother and I still made time for exploring, either with Michel, Gilbert, Andre, and a few other boys, or just the two of us. After finding the disc we returned to the monastery hoping to discover another, but we never did. “We’re better off,” Emile said wisely. “One is special, but two makes it ordinary.”

  I slid the disc back and forth through the cord that hung from my neck. “But then we wouldn’t have to share it.”

  “I don’t mind sharing it with you,” he said.

  Anyone else would have minded, but not my brother. Sweet Emile. It was because he was so gracious that I didn’t care when it was his turn to wear the disc. Yes, I missed its familiar comfort against my skin, but knowing Emile wore it made that absence tolerable.

  Soon after I turned fourteen, a traveling group of performers came to Ayres. It was a bright spring morning when I first heard their carts rattling along the dirt road. Springing up from bed, I dashed to my window that overlooked the fields to the west. A caravan stretched back as far as the eye could see. “Emile, wake up!” Racing into my brother’s room, I threw myself onto his bed. He let out a startled cry and fell onto the floor, his legs tangled in his sheets while I laughed at him from where I perched on his bed.

  “Claudette!” His mouth gaped open like a fish. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  “No, silly.” I pointed to the window. “Look!”

  Outside tents were already being erected. Each one was dyed a different color so that it looked like a rainbow had sprouted in the fields amongst the wildflowers. The sleepy and confused look on Emile’s face was quickly replaced by a wide smile. “The carnival is here!”

  The last time the carnival had come to Ayres, I’d been five. They suddenly appeared as if by magic, setting up in the fields beyond the outskirts of the city. Emile and I had watched from my window, excitement coursing through our veins. Every night Papa would take us each by the hand and walk with us to the tents. As we navigated the crowded and narrow aisles, the smells of exotic foods wafting in the air, it felt like we’d stepped into another world, one where magic still existed and it hadn’t gone bad. When I asked Papa if the magic used in the shows was in fact real, he laughed and patted me on the head. “Do you think the Knights would let them set up here if the magic was real?” I’d been crushed upon hearing that. I wanted the magic to be real and good. And so did Emile, although we didn’t dare discuss it for fear of being overheard and punished. We kept our true feelings to ourselves; it was the only way we were able to enjoy the carnival.

  Now we were nine years older and squires. If we did see magic—real magic—we were obligated to report it or else lose our position as squires. But if Papa said the magic used in the shows wasn’t real, I believed him.

  The arrival of the carnival made me and my classmates jumpy with excitement, and our teacher let us out early when she realized no one was paying attention to her lessons. With the weekend ahead of us, Emile and I dashed home, deposited our satchels in the livin
g room, and ran outside once more.

  The travelers were still setting up their tents and wouldn’t be ready for business for another few hours. Normally, with so much free time ahead of us, we would head to the castle to train, but by silent agreement we made our way to the monastery.

  “What should we spend our money on?” Emile asked as we traversed deeper into the monastery, heading toward the stairs. In the main part of the monastery the second floor was still intact; when we visited the ruins, we always ended up in the largest room with oval-shaped windows that faced west so we could watch the sun set before we headed home for dinner.

  With the ruined monastery situated on a hill, it offered us an excellent view of the ever-growing carnival. I hugged one of the stone window frames and leaned my body toward the opening, letting the salty breeze kiss my skin. “Food, obviously,” I said in answer to Emile’s question. Last time the carnival had come Papa had bought us little treats nearly every night. But now that we were older and earned an allowance, I knew we couldn’t rely on his generosity.

  “I want to see some shows,” Emile said.

  “Me too. I can barely remember anything we saw last time.”

  Emile sat down on the sill, letting his legs dangle out the window. “I remember being scared of everything. We left early one time, remember? The woman with the snakes around her neck scared me.”

  I didn’t remember that, but the thought of snakes made me shiver. Letting go of the window frame, I sat down next to my brother. “No snakes.”

  “No snakes,” he agreed. “Michel will probably want us to go as a group.”

  I wrinkled my nose at that. “You mean he’ll want to boss us around, telling us what we can and can’t see.”

  Emile’s head bobbed in agreement. “You know Michel. He’s the boss. Of everything.”

  When I was away from Michel, it was easy for me to see his flaws and wonder why I even liked him in the first place. But when we were together, it was like I was a different person. All it took was a single smile or an offhanded compliment and I was a drooling idiot who had no idea how I existed when Michel wasn’t around. I hated that about myself. It was a weakness, and one that I couldn’t control. I knew my best option was to push him away completely, but that was impossible if I wanted to be a Knight. Even though he wasn’t a Knight yet, Michel had a lot of say in how they ran things. The other boys may have stood up for me five years ago, but if he really wanted me gone, I’d be gone. So I kept quiet and worshipped Michel even though I cursed myself for it when I was alone, hoping I’d grow out of my feelings for him eventually.

  But that was the thing about Michel. He was like a spider—once he trapped you in his web, there was no escaping. Just ask Emile. He was as heartsick as I was.

  What a pair of fools we were.

  “He can’t possibly want to be with us every night,” I pointed out, even though we both knew that wasn’t true. Michel would gather the whole lot of us and expect us to follow him from tent to tent, seeing what he wanted to see and doing what he wanted to do every single night.

  “We’ll sneak away,” Emile declared. “Especially if he tries to take us to see the snakes.”

  I held out my hand and we shook on that. Satisfied, we fell silent, watching the scene below us. From up here the people looked like little ants as they scurried from tent to tent, rushing to make sure everything was in place for the grand opening. As I watched, my hand automatically went to grip the disc, my heart stopping for a moment when my fingers found nothing but air. Then I remembered that it was Emile’s turn to carry it. I couldn’t see it under his shirt but I knew it was there, all the same.

  I whispered a silent prayer that it would grant us a good time tonight—one that wouldn’t involve any snakes.

  Chapter Four

  The sun felt good on my face. While Emile remained sitting on the windowsill, I hopped back into the room, sat down, and leaned against one of the standing walls, shutting my eyes so I could doze. The carnival’s arrival had woken me nearly two hours before I normally rose, and I knew I’d crash early tonight if I didn’t make up some of that lost sleep.

  I’d just about fallen asleep when the sound of faint voices caused me to jerk upright. Rubbing my hand across my eyes, I murmured, “Michel’s found us already?”

  Emile, still on the windowsill, cocked his head sideways like a dog waiting for a treat. “No,” he said slowly. “Those are girl voices.”

  Was it some of the girls I trained with? Although I couldn’t imagine why they’d be here instead of at the castle training or in the fields watching the carnival set up. Then again, Emile and I’d come here, but that was because the monastery was special to us. It’d given us the disc.

  “Let’s go see who it is.” We crept quietly into the hallway and down the stairs, my fingers running across the smooth stone walls. At the bottom of the stairs Emile poked his head out, looking first to his left and then to his right.

  “No one’s here.” His voice was a hushed whisper. We paused, listening to the birds chittering overhead until finally we heard a female voice, too low for us to distinguish the words.

  “This way,” I said, leading him outside. We crossed the courtyard overgrown with wildflowers, mindful of the bees as we did so, and made our way to the other half of the building. On this side the second floor had collapsed; the only part of the building that remained standing were three of its four outer walls. Someone before our time must have cleaned up the rubble; Papa said people had taken the stones and whatever else they could salvage and sold it. I wish they’d left it as it was, but I understood why they’d picked the place clean. Again my fingers itched to hold the disc. At least they hadn’t found everything.

  I saw a flash of movement behind one of the standing columns. “Hello?” I called tentatively when I realized sneaking up on the visitors was rude—not to mention foolish. What if they were armed?

  A dark-haired head popped out between the columns, surprise written across her face. “Oh! Hello!” She came out between the columns to greet us and a second later, another girl joined her. They both had long dark hair, gray eyes, and olive-tone complexions. The girl who’d spoken looked like she was my age, while her companion’s age was harder to place. She was huge and easily towered over the rest of us. I imagined she was even taller than some of the older boys we trained with at the castle. In fact, with her sculpted muscles, she looked like a warrior. All she was missing was a sword strapped to her back.

  “We didn’t know anyone was here,” the shorter girl said, holding a crown of flowers in her hands. She had a blue wildflower tucked behind one ear; the color matched the sapphire-colored dress she wore. The color and the cut of cloth were unfamiliar to me and I realized these girls had come from the carnival. I felt a thrill of excitement. People traveled to Ayres, but I’d never had a chance to interact with any of them. And I was certain none of those travelers lived lives as thrilling as these girls who traveled with the carnival.

  “We were upstairs.” I pointed to the part of the building Emile and I’d come from. “We were watching the carnival set up.”

  The girl held up her flower crown. “We were picking flowers and skirting our chores.” The taller girl snorted. “I’m Aeonia, and this is my sister, Aurora.”

  “Sisters?” I blurted out before I could stop myself. Squinting at them, I supposed they did look alike, but still…

  Aeonia smirked while Aurora rolled her eyes. “Different fathers. Hers was much taller.”

  “Clearly,” Emile said with a grin. “I’m Emile, and this is my sister, Claudette.”

  “Nice to meet you Emile, Claudette,” Aeonia said while Aurora nodded. “Would you like to sit with us for a while?” She plopped down and patted the patch of empty grass beside her.

  We joined them and watched as Aeonia deftly wove a second crown of flowers. When she was finished she handed it to me, and I put it on, holding my breath. “How do I look?” I asked my brother, striking a pose.
r />   “Like a princess.”

  “Can you show me how to make one?” I asked Aeonia.

  “Of course.” While we gathered flowers, we asked each other questions. Aeonia was fourteen like me, Aurora sixteen, and they’d been traveling with the carnival since they were babies.

  “What’s that like?” Emile wanted to know. “Never staying in one place for long.”

  “It’s fun,” Aeonia answered without hesitation, but there was a flicker in her eyes that made me wonder if she was telling the whole truth.

  I wondered how I’d feel if I were in her position. Having lived in Ayres my entire life, I’d always wanted to see what was beyond the ocean. But what would it be like to see it all and know that at the end of the day, you couldn’t call any of that home? I tried to imagine a life where Ayres didn’t exist, but I couldn’t. No matter how far I traveled, this would always be my home.

  Aeonia was shocked when she found out Emile and I had never left Ayres. “But don’t you want to see what’s out there?”

  We exchanged a look. “Someday, but…” I paused, feeling foolish without quite knowing why. “We’re training to be Knights of Ayres, you see.”

  Aurora straightened up at that. “Knights?” It was the first time she’d spoken, and her voice was deeper and raspier than I expected.

  “Oh, no, look what’ve you done.” Aeonia poked her sister playfully in the side. “Now she’ll never shut up.”