“And you a good queen, Khosa,” he says, to see the smile quirk a little wider. “We rule well together.”
“Yes,” she says, raising her eyes to meet his. “We do.”
All else that he needs of her boils inside, the depths of his want to touch her, skin to skin, to feel her breath in his ear, the soft corner of her neck against his face as they lie together as husband and wife should. But he cannot linger too long on such thoughts with the bed beneath him and Khosa close enough to touch.
They do rule well together, side by side without one leading the other. No word the council spoke was not repeated to her, nothing she overheard from the servants was kept from him. And though their bed has so far been used only to confer with each other, how can he ask his council to hope while seated around a map of their collapsing kingdom when he cannot find promise in the friendship of a beautiful wife?
“I cannot say that I will rest easy without you beside me,” he confesses.
“Truly?” She raises an eyebrow. “I believe only two moons ago, you woke me with a complaint of my snores.”
“It is amazing that a girl of your size—”
She tosses a shift at him, which he grabs in midflight, the air around him filled with the smell of her in its wake.
“It is your safety that will leave me sleepless, not your snores.”
“Sallin travels with me,” Khosa says, surveying what she has set out for the journey to Hygoden.
“But he does not know you dance. I would have Merryl by your side.”
“And his wife would have him by hers, with their second child soon to be borne. He has chanced much for my part already. I cannot ask that he leave a woman he cares for to be with one who claims only his duty.”
“You mislead yourself if you think Merryl sees you only as a task,” Vincent says. “If you asked, he would go.”
“Which is why I will not ask.” Khosa avoids his eyes, tucking the last of her clothes into the shoulder sack. “I had thought that Donil should come.”
“Ah . . .” Vincent’s breath hitches in his throat at the thought of the long distance that would be between his wife and himself, while the Indiri shared her fires, her meals. Khosa has been nothing but honest with him about her feelings for his friend. If he should deny her request, the trust they have built will come down as surely as the tower in the square, the blood of their bond spilling as the tradesman’s did.
Can he even think of it as a request, at that? Only moments ago, he prided himself on the differences between his marriage and his parents’, that his wife need not have his blessing to make her own decisions. And Donil is one of the few people aware that the queen of Stille is still Given to the Sea, her spasms as uncontrollable as ever.
But Khosa wishes to be a queen in truth, and not the girl who was cloistered inside walls, kept safe from even the splash of the surf upon her feet. She moves among his people—their people—and to cage her again would be to lose her as surely as if she had drowned in the depths.
“If that is as you wish,” he says carefully, his voice guarded, though his anxious hands toy with the loose blankets on their bed, only now realizing that the servants haven’t tended to their room.
“Khosa, why has the bed not been done up? Or the pitchers taken away?” He cannot imagine the servants would disrespect his wife; some days he thinks the people love their new royal more than the one they already knew.
His wife slings her satchel over one shoulder before answering, pulling her hair free of the strap. “I have not felt well of late, and they believe that I . . . am with child. So they leave me to my mornings in peace.”
“Oh . . . I . . .” Vincent finds that the bedclothes are not sufficient distraction and runs his hands through his hair.
“It is nothing to be concerned with.” She shrugs off his gaze. “A twist in my belly that has not settled. No reason that I should not go to Hygoden, surely.”
“Surely,” he repeats, coming to his feet to join her now that her preparations are finished.
Vincent rests his hands on his wife’s slender shoulders, able to feel the heat coming from her skin even if he cannot touch it directly. To his surprise, she raises her hands to his arms, sliding them down past his elbows, following the curve of his wrist to lace her fingers with his. He can see the effort it takes, the concentration in her brow as she rubs her thumb alongside his.
“I will miss you, Vincent,” she says. “Truly.”
“And I you,” he says.
Neither one is lying.
CHAPTER 32
Witt
I know the smell of death. It has ridden on the wind before me, and I have left much in my wake, but the stench that envelops the hall as my men drag a prisoner between them is of such strength that even Hadduk covers his nose.
“Depths, what have you—”
I break off as they bring the Indiri girl before us, dropping her unceremoniously to the floor. Her skin is slick with blood, some clotted and dark, other smears viciously red. She lifts her head enough to fix her gaze upon me, the bright flash of an eye cold as the sea buffeted by the chaos of her hair, matted and stiff.
She growls at me; there is no other word for it. The Indiri language, harsh no matter how gently spoken, churns from her. The words have no meaning, but I know what it is to be hated and need no translator. The girl spasms as if choking, and the guards take a few steps back from her as a geyser of blood erupts from her mouth.
“Son of a Lusca,” Hadduk says, drawn by the sight, though it has brought with it a deep smell of rot. The Mason bends next to her, lifts her head by a handful of hair. Another litany of snarls comes from her, but the depth of her weakness is evident when Hadduk lets go, and her head meets the stones with a smack.
“The girl from the Stillean beach,” he confirms, rising as he wipes the hand that touched her on his breeches. “Take her outside and slit her throat. Downwind, if you will.”
“Or you can wait to hear the Lithos’s wishes,” I say to the men.
Hadduk glances my way. “Apologies, my Lithos. The sight of speckled skin brought me back to the plains of Dunkai, where I gave commands.”
“But we are not there,” I say, stepping toward the girl to gain myself a few moments of thought. Dispatching her would be Hadduk’s first instinct, one of the two final blows necessary to end a campaign he began a generation before. But I’ve seen the guards exchange a glance at his hasty orders and would hear their thoughts.
“Where did you find her?”
“On patrol, my Lithos.” The younger one, not much older than myself, speaks up. “Near the edge of the forest. She . . .” He looks to his partner, who stares resolutely ahead. “She brought down a Lusca.”
“An Indiri swam in the sea?” Hadduk snorts, returning to the table where we had been conferring, Nilana alongside us. “Nonsense.”
“No, my Mason. The Lusca was on land,” the soldier corrects Hadduk, eyes cutting to me to gauge my reaction.
I nod, and he relaxes slightly. “A Lure told me he saw a Lusca pass from water to land. And you say the Indiri killed it. How?”
“With . . .” He pauses, looking again to his friend, who stands as still as the rocks. “With a tree, my Lithos.”
“She killed a Lusca with a tree?” Hadduk repeats.
“And a Tangata.”
“She killed a Lusca and a Tangata with a tree?” Hadduk’s eyebrows fly up.
“No, my Mason,” the soldier says. “The Tangata beside her against the Lusca.”
“Both of them wielding trees?” Hadduk asks, what little patience the man has slipping as the story progresses.
“Perhaps the boy should sit,” Nilana says. The sound of her voice releases another string of faltering Indiri from the floor, and a stream of blood spat in the Feneen’s direction.
The story from another’s mouth
would be too fantastical to believe, but I have seen men lie, and this one is too shaken to do so. I look from him to Nilana, trusting her opinion in many ways more than Hadduk’s. I know his counsel, saw his sneer the moment the girl was brought in. And while death is an instrument of war and one we know well, it is final once wielded.
Nilana listens, hearing each word and weighing it against the next while the boy speaks, telling us of webbed feet on land, Tangata claws unsheathed in defense of an Indiri, and the Hadundun tree’s collapse.
“She did something similar when the Feneen faced her at the walls of Stille,” Nilana says. “Although not to the same effect.” She turns to look where the girl still lies on the flagstones. A trail of blood shows the Indiri has tried to make her way toward us, but it cost her. Her chest rises and falls, but only just.
“I spoke quickly when I counseled for death, my Lithos,” Hadduk says. “But I do not think I spoke wrongly. If she could, that girl would have all our throats open.”
“I see that,” I tell him. “And I know that while she lives, you feel a duty of yours undone.” His color rises, and Nilana tilts her head so that the fall of her hair hides her smile as I goad him.
“Yet this Pietran soldier has brought us something more than one of the last Indiri,” I say, nodding to the boy. “He has brought us a girl who fought beside the king of Stille on the beach and charged my entire army wielding only two blades for his safety.”
“At the walls of Stille, she did the same,” Nilana agrees. “I saw her fight with the strength of many men, but her eyes are a woman’s, and they always returned to the young king.”
“He’d take an Indiri to his bed?” Hadduk cries.
“He’d take the woman he wants and who wants in return, be she Indiri or Feneen, with spots on her skin or no legs and arms,” Nilana counters, and Hadduk makes a hmmph noise.
“That’s different,” he says, and it is my turn to hide a smile.
“What shall be done with her, then?” he goes on. “I’ll not sleep well with an Indiri in the same walls.”
“You’ll sleep fine,” Nilana says. By the purr in her voice and the rise of his color, I’m guessing sleep is far from both their minds. The Lithos is not to be distracted, but I am not ignorant.
“Take her to the dungeons,” I say to the soldier who remained with us. “Have Gaul find an empty cell.” He complies, lifting the girl over one shoulder. Nilana’s gaze follows the drops of blood that trail them from the room.
“If you would use the girl to draw out the Stillean king, we’ll need her alive,” she says.
“More than alive,” I tell her. “I need her healthy.”
“Because?”
“Because I’m going to skin her.”
CHAPTER 33
Dara
There is wet earth beneath me, but for once it is no consolation. Though I be a creature of the land, this soil reeks of years spent inside and the leakage of bodies that have gone before me. Even if this cell smelled of sun and sky, I would be desolate. I was dropped at the feet of my enemies—all of them—and could not raise a finger.
I heard the Lithos’s voice, saw the Feneen woman who killed Gammal, and bore the touch of the man who rode against my people, driving them to the ground until their blood made mud. My wrath in that room could have brought down walls, yet I could not even lift my head from the floor.
I listened as they spoke of Vincent, the beach, the tree I took down on the battlefield of Stille, and of Kakis, whose tufts of fur floated on the wind as she dove to protect me, her skin opened in my defense. Thoughts of Kakis and Vincent made a fire in me, that enemies should speak of friends while in my hearing and I unable to strike. I tried, crawling, blood slicking my way. Had I reached them, I would have chewed through the Lithos’s skin with my teeth, bearing no other weapon.
I swear in Indiri, my hands going to my side to feel the bones there, or what is left of them.
“None of that talk,” comes a gravelly voice from outside my cell door. The jailer, a man who had lit up with happiness at his first sight of me, his hand lifting the fall of my hair for a closer look at my face. “An Indiri,” he had said, hawking deep in his throat for spit to fling at me.
But he is an old man, all his juices spent years ago. He lurks now, outside the heavy wood of my door. I see him through the small grate in the door, a shadow that passes, then returns, a curious eye pressed against the bars as he tries to spot me in the dark cell.
I pull myself to the wall and sag against it, feeling as if the stones are all that keep my broken bones inside the sack of my skin.
“Depths,” I say in Indiri, the single word all I can manage.
“Enough of that,” comes the jailer’s voice. “There’s enough filth down here without your speech.”
“Go and build yourself a boat, old man,” I yell in the common tongue, biting down on the pain that it takes for me to do so. I hear a key in the lock and brace myself for the beating that’s sure to come, and one that will cause much suffering, be he old or not. There is little left in me. I could not even curl against a kick. Light from the corridor cuts into my cell, but it is a woman’s shape that passes through the door.
“His boat has not been made, for he is the only Pietran who would bide beneath rocks rather than above, and the Pietra make more bodies than prisoners. An old jailer is all they need, when there is little to guard.”
Her speech is Hyllenian, and I turn my head toward her as her eyes adjust to the dark. “They send a shepherdess?” I ask, and she follows the sound of my voice.
Her hands are cool upon me, but probing. I hiss when she finds what is left of my side. “A Keeper,” she corrects. “You’ve done yourself some harm.”
“The Lusca did the harm,” I tell her. “And paid for it.”
“So I heard,” she says.
“A Keeper,” I repeat. “And what do you keep?”
“The Given,” she says, and I flinch, though her fingers have found no wound.
“I see that you know of her,” she says, pulling a flask from her pocket. “I am not surprised. Khosa showed deep interest in the Indiri and would have sought you out when she arrived in Stille.”
“She sought my brother, certainly,” I say through clenched teeth as she pours something cool over a spot on my skin where a Luscan claw caught, leaving behind a tear. “Though she could not have him.”
“Does it matter who the Given beds as long as she should bear a child?”
“It matters when Indiri blood goes to the sea,” I say. “And any child she bears now will wear the crown of Stille, should the land last that long.”
The Keeper’s movements cease. “The crown of Stille?”
“Did you not know? She was married to the king, as a savior instead of a sacrifice once a wave swept the Pietra from the beach.”
“Khosa called no wave,” the Keeper says, sorting through her pockets for a new flask. “I have kept many Givens and can tell you they do not hold command over the sea, but the other way around.”
“You know that, and I know that,” I tell her. “And we’re both buried under rock.”
The Keeper makes a sound in her throat, and takes the cork from the bottle. “Drink,” she says.
It’s not wine, or medicine, but cool water that I find. I gulp deeply, the lightness of it gliding over the rotted blood that coats my throat.
“You’re poisoned,” the Keeper says. “Like the sheep gone to the high meadow unfortunate enough to find an igthorn bush.”
“No igthorn,” I tell her. “I took a tree into myself, with leaves like daggers.”
“A Hadundun?” she asks, taking the bottle from me.
“If that’s what you call it, though I’d sooner call it firewood,” I say.
“If you drew the life of a Hadundun into yourself, it’s not poison in your body, but death it
self,” she says. “The trees drink blood and hold each drop close.”
“That one doesn’t anymore,” I tell her, and she chuckles.
“I’d say not, though it nearly got the best of you.”
I don’t answer, the fact that I live proof enough that I overcame.
“It can be driven from you, like any poison,” she goes on. “I’ll bring more water. Cry, Indiri. Sweat. Retch. Piss your cell full. Death must pass through you so that you may live.”
“Death has passed through me many times,” I assure her. “I have not followed yet.”
“That is good to hear,” the Keeper says. “For you and I have much to say to each other.”
CHAPTER 34
Khosa
Khosa had spent her life in Hyllen as protected as the sheep, if not more so. The only journey she had ever undergone was from Stille as an infant, still sticky with her mother’s blood, only to return years later on foot, dancing. The trees had torn her clothes from her as she went, senseless, with the surf welcoming her and the sounds of the Pietra destroying her homeland at her heels.
Though she has seen none of what the road shows her now, it is familiar. Maps and words have brought these places alive to her in ink. The road to Hygoden is a long one, for which she is thankful. It will take much travel to mend the tear between her and Donil, and many shared words to cover the echoes of anger that passed between them last.
She pulls her horse alongside his, and they nuzzle noses in greeting. “I had not thought you would be keen to join us,” Khosa says, dropping her voice low so that it is lost to Sallin, riding some paces ahead.
“Keen is not how I would phrase it,” Donil says. “I belong on the field alongside Vincent, training the men who would defend the place I call home.”
Khosa’s heart dips at his words, any thought she’d had of bringing his affections back to her gone with the breeze that pulls her hair free.