Her curt tone set off all Dannarah’s alerts. She glanced around, half expecting an archer to dart out of the trees and loose an arrow into her back. Instead she saw that Terror had tucked her head against a wing to slumber even though Dannarah hadn’t hooded her.
Demons had that effect on eagles.
“The hells!” She pulled her baton from its loop, swung back to face the pilgrims, looking for anyone who was wearing a cloak. Instead she looked straight into a face that made her thoughts stumble.
Seen full on and close up, the young woman Arasit looked rather like King Anjihosh in having that odd blend of the wide cheekbones common among the Qin and the distinctive hawk’s nose that came from his Sirniakan father. She had even bound up her curly black hair in a topknot in the old Qin style still popular among soldiers and palace courtiers. From a cord at her neck dangled a wolf’s head ring exactly like the one Atani had always worn, with a chip flaked out of one of the wolf ears. After his death Dannarah had never seen his ring again.
She had a brilliant flash of stunned recognition.
“That’s my brother’s ring,” Dannarah cried. The whole world narrowed down until all she could see was the woman and the ring. “Who are you?”
“I’ve always suspected you were behind Atani’s murder,” said the woman, meeting her gaze as with a blow. “You were in charge of the reeves but you left him vulnerable the day he was killed.”
“Me! How could anyone think I ever wanted Atani dead?”
“You wanted what he had. You wanted to be king.”
Dannarah grabbed for the throwing knife tucked onto her harness. Too slow. The demon’s gaze punctured her. With nerveless fingers Dannarah released the knife and heard the thud of the weapon hitting the dirt. The demon prised open her mind and exposed her memories like the guts of a slaughtered soldier.
Platters decorate the center of the table: fish stewed in a mango sauce; a spicy barsh stew from Mar that her father favors and Atani refuses to eat because it burns his tongue; slip-fried vegetables that came to the table hot and crisp but have begun to sag as they cool. She sits on a cushion, trembling with defiance beneath her father’s stern eye. Atani stares at the table, fingering that cursed wolf’s head ring he wears on a chain around his neck, the one he never used to have before he ran away and returned without ever telling her what he had seen and what he had done. He is playing with the ring to avoid looking at her. Coward!
So be it. She will not go down without a fight.
“I’ll run away like Atani did, only I’ll never come back! I won’t go south to the Sirniakan Empire and be locked in a palace and wither away like a flower without sun or water!”
“It has already been arranged, Dannarah. You have been betrothed to an imperial prince, your own cousin. You will leave next month for the empire.”
She studies her father’s impassive expression, seeking any glimmer of hope, any sign of the affection he has always lavished on her. He cherished her bold speaking and brash spirit before.
“How can you betray me like this, Papa? I will be trapped in a cage, never to be free. They will hate me and never, ever trust me.”
“It is what your mother wants. This is marriage to her sister’s son, an honorable alliance for you.”
“Can’t you send one of the younger girls when they get older?”
Atani looks up with a rare sharp glimmer. “You would condemn the little girls to a place you refuse to go because you fear you will hate it there? If you might dislike it so much, and think it so horrible, then why volunteer them to go instead of you? That’s positively selfish, Dannarah! Even for you!”
“Easy for you to be the fish complaining of water! I can’t believe you of all people would turn on me like this. Our kinsfolk will send some tongue-tied, milk-witted princess north for you to marry. You can stow her in the women’s quarters and visit her when you want or maybe only when you must.” The barb makes her father’s lips tighten but it does not wound him because he is beyond her hooks and blades. In frustration she snags a spear of turnip off the platter with her eating sticks, but it sags limply, a broken weapon. “I won’t go, Papa. I respect Mama as I ought, but I won’t accept what she was forced into. I won’t be married off! I won’t!”
“Eat your food before you drop it on the table.” Her father never loses his temper but she feels his mounting anger in the way the air in the dining pavilion snaps as with the sting of lightning.
Suddenly terrified and furious, she tucks the stalk into her mouth and swallows with one gulp. Atani says nothing, and she hates him for being the only son and thus the heir.
Their father speaks. “You are the price we pay to keep the peace, Dannarah. The empire knows that the Hundred exists. The imperial traders covet our spices, slaves, and precious oils. Most of all they desire our naphtha, which the priests and princes of the empire treasure more than anything. The Hundred cannot stand against the empire’s armies, should the emperor send them against us. So we make alliances. That is how the game is played.”
She will not give up. “The Sirniakan Empire would not care at all about the Hundred if you yourself did not have a claim to the Sirni throne.”
“One I have renounced by claiming a kingdom of my own, outside the empire.”
“That doesn’t change my point,” she cries, eager to press her way to victory. “Yours is a circular argument, as you taught us. Because you came here, the imperial eye is turned this way. That they threaten us justifies your position as the king who protects the Hundred, a position that fell into your hands because you came here as an exile fleeing from people who wanted to kill you because you were one of the claimants to the throne in the last imperial crisis. Thus the imperial eye has now turned this way. It isn’t fair to throw me to the vultures when you are the carrion they seek!”
He rises abruptly, and she stiffens, knowing she has gone too far.
“Enough, Dannarah!” says the father she loves in a tone that scalds her to the bone.
Atani jumps to his feet because he knows better than to sit when his father stands. Quite to her shock, he speaks.
“You don’t want her to go, my lord.” He speaks in the formal style he has come to affect in the months since he returned from his mysterious adventure. “But you don’t know how to say no to Mama because you can’t give her the affection and respect she craves. You don’t love her the way you love me and Dannarah, so you’re giving up Dannarah as if to make it up to Mama. But you will never make it up to Mama. That is the peace you crave, the one that will keep Mama’s reproaching gaze from your face that is always turned away from her.”
Her mouth drops open as the words spill from Atani like blistering flames, although his voice is quiet and almost apologetic. She thinks their father will break into drastic and violent action, not that he ever has before because he is not a violent man. Still, she hurriedly scrambles to her feet because she will not be a coward who watches passively while her brother is punished for defending her in a most courageous and dangerous manner.
But her father surprises her. He walks over to Atani and slips the wolf’s head ring onto the tip of his finger to study it more closely. After a moment he meets Atani’s gaze.
“Have you more to say on this account, Atani?” he asks in a calm voice.
“Yes! You have decided it is better to be rid of Dannarah than to regret she was not the son you wanted. You worry because you are not quite sure I am strong enough to take the reins you mean to pass to me. So let her stay. Let her and me rule in partnership even if I am the one who will wear the title.”
She waits for their father’s fury to break over them and obliterate them. But there like the sun emerging from the clouds shines the king’s rare smile…
Sunlight slanting out from broken clouds made her blink. She had dozed off. A headache chased behind her eyes as she looked around to orient herself.
She and Terror were high aloft, gliding south, the River Istri a thread far below. Tarnit ha
d taken the lead, Reyad off to the north as the third point. From the upper Elshar Valley to Horn Hall was about a hundred mey as the eagle flew, a twenty-day journey on the road but one an eagle flying at speed by rising and gliding along the thermals could manage in half a day.
For some reason her thoughts had mired in memories of her father and brother. Memory made her smile wryly. How she had cursed Atani that year, when he was sixteen, for running off to have an adventure without taking her along. She had hated him for a while, especially since he had never told her anything about his journey except scraps.
But then, three years after Atani’s escapade, Terror had landed in the palace garden and jessed her. That had been the best surprise of all. Once she became a reeve she had left the women’s palace and never looked back.
She rubbed her cold hands, having forgotten to put on her gloves. Funny that she never wore rings. They got in her way. Spending time with Chief Tuvas reminded her of her father’s loyal Black Wolves and the wolf’s head rings they had worn. At his ascension Jehosh had disbanded the Wolves in disgrace for the crime of allowing King Atani to be murdered under their watch. Had some of them held on to their rings, or had they all cast them away out of shame?
Ahead, Tarnit flagged an alert.
They were gliding down the updrafts coming off the North Reach of the Soha Hills. The wide expanse of the Istri Plain opened to her left, a landscape of green fields and orchards ornamented by copses of trees and the sparkling water of irrigation ditches and reservoir ponds. They flew south straight toward the magnificent glittering peak of solitary Mount Aua. The powerful thermals streaming up the mountain would give them the last boost they needed to glide east across the Aua Gap to the city of Horn and Horn Hall beyond.
Just at the edge of her sight she saw what appeared to be a full wing of eagles circling where the plain narrowed to become the broad pass called Aua Gap. She’d received no message that there was trouble in Horn Hall’s territory, so naturally she altered course and headed that way.
Soon enough they spotted the commotion. An army marched on the road below, soldiers in their ranks, the banner of the King’s Spears, wagons, and men riding attended by the red and gold banners of the palace. In other circumstances she would have called it half an army on its way to war. It was such a long column that the vanguard had already halted and started setting up camp.
A triad of reeves broke off and headed their way. All reeves wore colored stripes on their leather vests to mark hall affiliation. What in the hells was Argent Hall doing this far north without a single message to let her know they would be passing through Horn Hall’s patrol territory? And after demanding Horn Hall take over the pursuit in Sardia?
The lead reeve flagged preemptively for them to land. Their aggressive circling caused Terror to tug so hard against the jesses that Dannarah thought it better to descend than risk her eagle going after one of the other raptors while they were still aloft. She flagged Tarnit to stay aloft with Reyad and went down. When they landed Terror was in a foul mood with so many strange eagles too close.
She was in a pretty cursedly foul mood, too.
She unbuckled and hooded Terror before the eagle could do something rash. Tents were going up about a hundred strides away on a strip of roadside field whose massive Ladytree offered shelter to impoverished travelers. She shaded her eyes against the afternoon sun to study the main tent, an elaborate structure with painted canvas walls and three banners flying from the center pole: the chief marshal’s eagle banner, the Second Company of the Spears—which only accompanied the princes—and a red and white banner marked with a sword. One of Jehosh’s sons was here.
“The hells!” she muttered.
The guards gave her a startled glance as she approached. A pair of reeves emerged from the tent and stopped dead. She thought they would move aside but instead they blocked her path.
“Is there a problem, reeves?” Even having to say that much got her wishing she had feathers to fluff up like an angry eagle.
Cursed if the men did not glance at each other and then toward the cloth entrance, seeking orders from an unseen authority inside rather than obeying her instantly.
She slipped her baton from its loop, feeling the headache throb back into life. “Maybe you’re too blind to see my marshal’s wings but I’m not too blind to whack you both on your slow asses. I’m going in.”
Like startled grouse they hustled back inside.
The guards crossed their spears across the entrance to stop her from following. “You need permission to enter the presence of Prince Farihosh.”
Dannarah rarely found herself taken aback, but the long flight and this unexpected hostility left her blinking for just long enough that the entrance curtain swept up again to reveal a man she knew.
Chief Marshal Auri smirked at her. She’d hated the prick for years, and he knew it. “Marshal Dannarah. What brings you here?”
She gestured toward the area where four eagles besides Terror were hooded and waiting. “I might ask what brings you here since I don’t see your eagle. Perhaps you prefer to walk rather than risk yourself to an eagle’s talons and beak. I’m sure it’s safer to walk even though you jessed the Hundred’s gentlest bird.”
His flush entertained her, but he was still chief marshal and she was not. “I am come from the palace with a private message for the prince from his mother Queen Chorannah. Certainly I did not expect to see you here as you are never invited to the palace.”
“Your reeves flagged us down. My flight is returning to Horn Hall from a patrol in upper Sardia. One you requested us to take on, as I recall.”
“And did you catch the fugitives?”
Her expression must have betrayed her because Auri relaxed, seeing her in a weak position.
“They were being aided by a demon,” she added.
Auri’s smirk widened. “A poor excuse to cover up your failure to capture the prisoners.”
Had she feathers she would have fluffed up now to signal her displeasure. “Wasn’t that the excuse the Black Wolves used when King Atani died and a demon was involved? As I recall, you were part of the company assigned to protect him that day. But maybe you were lurking in the rear guard waiting for the danger to pass.”
Now she’d really made him angry.
“I can have you stripped of your marshal’s rank, Lady Dannarah. Don’t think King Jehosh won’t support me over you.”
“Since he already did, why would I think that?”
He took a step toward her. He was taller, and he still had the build of a soldier although with more flesh now he was twenty years older. “I suggest you return to Horn Hall. Don’t trifle with me.”
“It’s difficult to resist such an easy target,” she said, but it was a cheap shot and they both knew he had won the day, years ago, when Jehosh had named him chief marshal in her place. Her inability to dwell in a nest of calm had always been her flaw. Things just pissed her off.
Just as she was about to take a grudging step back, a young man emerged from the tent to stand at the chief marshal’s side.
He gazed quizzically at her. “Lady Dannarah? Has no one invited you inside to take refreshments with me?”
The clean and pleasing lines of his face so resembled Atani’s that seeing him startled her. She flashed to a memory of Atani standing at a tent entrance, surprised to see her when she had come to cry on his shoulder after the reeve who’d trained her had unexpectedly died. At the time Atani hadn’t been much older than this young man, twenty-four at the most. Was the young man wearing a wolf’s head ring on a chain at his neck? No, that was just her memory of Atani.
Prince Farihosh wore a soldier’s practical tabard, no rings, no necklace, no embroidered hems on sleeves, no ornamentation except the braided ribbons that decorated his topknot.
The headache pulled at her eyes; she rubbed her brow.
“Lady Dannarah, please sit with me for at least a cup of khaif before you go on your way. Chief Marshal Auri? I
believe our conference is complete. You may go.”
She could not help but laugh as Auri’s smoldering resentment at being dismissed took itself off toward the eagles. Probably one of them was his eagle, and he had certainly flown here, but she had enjoyed needling him. Pushing people until they got angry was a bad habit, she reflected as the young man escorted her to a lovely set of cushions tossed down atop several layers of rugs.
“My thanks, Prince Farihosh,” she said with careful politeness. “I think we have not met for many years. You are certainly grown since the last time I saw you.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you again, Aunt Dannarah. Great-Aunt is more correct but Aunt is less formal, don’t you think?”
The moment she seated herself a servant appeared with a basin of water and a towel for her to wash her face and hands. A second man succeeded the first with a steaming cup of freshly brewed khaif and a platter of bean cakes, ginger-soaked sweetened rice balls, and buns flavored with coconut. Patrol rations had left her hungry for delicacies.
“Your mother Queen Chorannah is well?”
“She is well, my thanks for asking.”
“And your father the king?”
His gaze flicked sideways toward the soldiers, servants, and reeves in attendance, then returned to her. “He is well, Lady Dannarah. My younger brother Prince Tavahosh flourishes.”
“All blessings be upon Beltak, the Shining One,” she said with the correct formula, grateful that he had reminded her of his brother’s name, which she had forgotten.
“As for my half brother, Kasad, Queen Dia’s son … Let’s just say I am glad to be out of the way of the two queens as they steep their bitter rivalry like a nice cup of tea.”
With an effort she managed not to laugh, but oh the hells how she wanted to. “A striking phrase. I have stayed away from the palace for many reasons, that among them.”
“So you have. Are you returning from patrol?”
Like Atani he had a solemn demeanor but a way of listening as if he were genuinely interested. So she spoke concisely of what had happened in Elsharat, the valley of the Elshar. “Beyond anything to do with demons it seems there is genuine and increasing discontent with the work gangs,” she finished.