Two ships. That is what they have to take all of Hygoden and those of Stille who would follow their king.
A healer hovers, a pot of balm balanced on one hand, the other coated in it as she dresses Vincent’s hands and face. Most of his hair is gone, one of his eyes swelled nearly shut. The pain spikes as she touches him, then submits to the coolness of the balm. Tomorrow will bring more, he knows, and the concoction that the healer poured into his cup will ease it, not drive it away completely. He waves her off, already feeling dullness spread through him from the drink.
“Your bandages,” she protests, unrolling a clean linen. He takes it from her hands, ignoring the blister that has risen on one palm.
“My wife will see to it,” he assures her.
She leaves them to confer: Vincent, Sallin, Donil, Winlan, and Dissa.
“We must face a hard truth,” Vincent says to them.
Sallin nods, mouth tight. “Many have argued against leaving these shores, my king, though I did not think they would stand in the way of those who would go.”
“We don’t know that they have,” Winlan argues.
“Does a fire set itself?” Sallin asks.
“It does not, I can tell you from many nights spent in wet forests,” Donil answers. “Nor does it spring from the sea or walk from the castle’s walls without being carried.”
“There was an empty sconce in the lower hall,” Dissa says. “I spoke with the lighter. She knew nothing of it.”
“You are sure?” Sallin presses.
“The girl hardly knew the common tongue by the time I finished,” Dissa says calmly. “There was no deceit in her, only great confusion.”
“Where does this leave us?” Sallin asks, eyes on Vincent.
Wondering who would refuse their fellow Stilleans a chance, he’s about to say, when a guard enters, Daisy in tow.
“The girl claims she has something to share with the king,” he says.
Vincent glances at Daisy, who pulls her elbow from the guard at the tone he carries, implying that a dairymaid would have little and less to say to the king.
“Leave her with us,” Vincent tells him, and waits until the door has closed on his back to continue.
Daisy is the worse for wear, a smear of ash down one cheek and a gash on her arm, doubtless from something breaking as she shoved it into another’s hands. But she stands straight, waiting to be asked to speak.
“What is it, Daisy?”
She turns to Vincent, eyes bright with tears.
“I am sorry, my king,” she says. “You are betrayed.”
CHAPTER 66
Ank
That I would ever think of Pietra as home should be laughable, but this is what I feel as I emerge from the Hadundun trees to the Stony Shore. A sigh of relief escapes me, and my mount increases his pace, knowing that clean straw and a good feeding await him. There is no pride in what I have done, but I can hope that the action has allayed any remaining fears Witt and Hadduk may have of my loyalty. Yet there is one I would speak to before I see them.
Nilana rests in her rooms, propped against pillows, hair fanned around her, eyes closed. She needs no firelight to draw notice, and I let the door close quietly behind me so as not to disturb her. She stirs slightly though, eyelashes fluttering as I settle onto the foot of the bed.
“Ank of the Feneen,” she says. “Surely you don’t wish to know me better.”
“No,” I assure her, though it would be a lie to claim the thought has never crossed my mind. She is as gifted with subterfuge as I, and while I am not the Lithos, it would be best to not be distracted in her presence.
“Do you bring news of burnt boats?”
“One, at least,” I tell her. “What has happened here since my going?”
Nilana rolls her eyes. “Hadduk stomps his feet and glowers; the Lithos looks out to sea with lovesickness in his heart.”
“You see it too?”
“Perhaps,” she says, shrugging. “There is a great tension between them.”
“Hadduk and Witt?”
Nilana shakes her head, eyeing me, and I make a noise in my throat.
“What of the Indiri?” I ask.
“She hasn’t killed anyone recently.”
I laugh. “An improvement over the last time I returned. Yet this is not what I ask.”
“More than an improvement,” Nilana corrects me. “She’s been alone with the Lithos, and he still breathes. So, yes, there may be some feeling there. Enough to stop her from opening his throat.”
“If not feeling, at least a mutual respect,” I think aloud.
“From which can grow much,” Nilana adds.
“But not quickly.”
Nilana smiles, eyes closing lazily. “Men.” She laughs. “You are not the only ones who have something between your legs. Women feel much and more, I think you forget.”
“Surely she does not desire him?”
“Why shouldn’t she?” Nilana shoots back. “They are both young and easy to look at, fighters with hot blood in their veins. On a battlefield they may face each other, but put them in a bedroom, and you’ll find a different ending.”
“Still facing each other?” I ask, with a smile.
“That’s up to them,” she answers with her own.
“You really think so?”
“I do.”
* * *
I find the Lithos and the Mason deep in discussion, the Keeper just arrived to change Witt’s bandage. He doesn’t flinch as she peels it away, his words with Hadduk flowing as if she were not there. They have decided to place lancias along the cliffs, and I can’t help but shiver, imagining spears falling from the sky when Vincent and his army arrive.
“Feneen.” Hadduk sees me and promptly stops discussing battle plans, though I should be a part of them as the commander of my people.
“Mason.” I nod at him, then Witt. “Lithos.”
“You smell of smoke,” Witt says. “This bodes well.”
I sit before I answer, stretching my legs beneath the table we share. The Keeper’s eyes land on mine, then bounce off, her hands cleaning what’s left of Witt’s ear.
“At least one ship was aflame when I left,” I tell them. “Possibly two. The first caught quickly and brought a crowd. There was no time to ensure they would all burn.”
It’s a small lie, one I’ll tell to those I’ve allied myself with if it gives a breath of a chance to the people I was born to.
“How many does this leave?” Hadduk, too clever by half, asks.
“There was one already out to sea,” I admit. “One nearly finished—that one will never know water. Two that were left have many suns of work ahead of them before they will sail.”
“So they have at most three, likely two,” Witt says, tilting his head while the Keeper places the fresh bandage. “How many will they carry?”
“Not many,” I tell him. “Not even one of every three in Stille would find a place.”
“Too many,” Hadduk insists. “We must draw them out or march upon them, my Lithos.”
“With the Given as their queen and the sea at their disposal?” Witt asks.
“They will march,” I say quickly, intervening before the Mason warms too much to his own ideas. “The king has said as much and is only training their men before undertaking the journey. They will come, Lithos.”
“The training is ill-spent,” Hadduk goes on. “A Pietran child could best a Stillean soldier.”
“Which is why they train,” I say.
“They come too slowly,” Hadduk insists, rolling over my words. “We must bring them here before the boats are finished, strike off the hands that would build them and break the backs that would carry the timber. Sending the Indiri’s skin was not enough, my Lithos. We must take a larger piece.”
“Or”??
?I raise a finger—“the Lithos could marry her.”
Witt nearly chokes on his wine, and the Keeper loses her hold on the bandage. It rolls away from her, a trail of white across the stone floor. Hadduk, for his part, can only gape. At least he is silent.
“Hear me out,” I ask them. “We agreed that there would be a marriage between the Lithos and a Feneen in exchange for loyalty, did we not?”
“Yes,” Witt says. “And I know you would cast Nilana in that role.”
“Something I think the Mason would find disagreeable,” I say, turning to Hadduk.
“Disagreeable is the least of it,” he admits. “But if the Lithos does not see another among your people who would suit . . . I have my duties, and the first is to him, not my own desires.”
For the first time, I see why Nilana has any respect for the man, and I nod to him. “I speak for the Feneen when I say that such a marriage is beneficial to us as a tie between our peoples, but also as an indication that the Pietra are willing to bring outsiders among them and call them their own. Who could be more of an outsider to you than an Indiri?”
Hadduk grudgingly nods, but Witt only remains still, staring at the table while the Keeper tucks the last edge of the bandage around his head.
“The Stilleans have not responded to us sending her skin,” I go on. “The Indiri’s brother is among them, close in the councils of the king. He would perhaps advise that to die a noble death—even a painful one—is no disgrace to Dara and their people. It would in fact bring her great honor, which she would welcome.”
“But if her brother thinks the Lithos has taken her as his wife against her will, he would stop at nothing to spare her a life lived as such,” Hadduk says, catching on. “I’ve seen the Indiri fight; they are relentless, sometimes to the point of recklessness. I have no doubt the brother would rather see her dead than living as the Lithos’s wife, and would counsel the king accordingly.”
“Who would march on her behalf regardless,” I add, to see Witt raise his head.
“Is there something between them?”
I weigh my words, not knowing if the Lithos will be inclined to jealousy or cede the field in matters of love as he never would in matters of war. I settle for truth.
“There may have been at one time,” I tell him. “But the king’s heart belongs to his wife now, and he is an honorable man.”
“Which would not stop him from marching to the Indiri girl’s aid, regardless of how things lie between them,” Hadduk says, hand pulling at his beard in thought.
“And what of her feelings for him?” Witt insists, and Hadduk shoots him a dark look, knowing as well as I do that the question—and the answer—has no bearing on whether a marriage will draw out the Stilleans.
I show him my empty palms. “That is a question for her.”
“For my part, I think she has none.” The Keeper speaks, placing a hand on Witt’s shoulder. “I have spent some time with the girl, and though she reveals little, what does slip can be telling.”
The Lithos nods, though his face remains guarded, his finger tracing the rim of his cup. Hadduk shares a glance with me, his impatience skittering just below his skin.
“As much as I dislike the idea of suffering the Indiri to live, it could work,” Hadduk says, hoping to bring Witt to a decision. “Killing her means we remove the only anchor keeping the Stilleans on land, and could bring the cliffs down on our heads. Pain only increases her pride. This may be the only enemy I would rather see live in misery than die in it.”
Witt’s brow furrows at that, and he’s moved to speech. “I would not have it be that way,” he says. “The Lithos does not know a woman. To be the first and by force is distasteful to me.”
“But not, perhaps, being the first?” Hadduk asks, leading him.
“I . . .” Witt sighs, on the brink of agreeing.
“I think she can be brought to it,” I assure him. “Her greatest desire is to see her people restored, if in a place of power, all the better. There are no Indiri left to her. Why not a strong male with whom to blend her blood, and what better revenge than to see one of her children reigning over the Pietra?”
“A speckled Lithos?” Hadduk snorts. “I’d die before I saw it.”
“Yes,” I say, pointing to the grays at his temple. “You would.”
The Mason grunts, as if this would be acceptable to him. “My Lithos,” he says, “how do you find it?”
“Better if I knew how the girl would feel about it,” Witt answers.
I rise from my place, knowing a nimble tongue will be needed. “Shall I find out?”
“No,” Witt says, standing. “I think a proposal of marriage should come from the prospective groom, don’t you?”
CHAPTER 67
Dara
The mind makes faces in the dark, drawing together shadows to show my eyes what they will not see again: Donil, Vincent, Dissa. All others can go to the depths, and I would not notice or care. Of those three, two may come for me. I can only hope they do not.
I have never been helpless, and the experience does not suit me. Worse yet is the thought that others may risk themselves for my neck. The skin I took from myself bore many scars, and I believe that Donil will look on them and be reminded that I can bear much and more.
I do not wish to be saved.
Little is left for me once I come to that conclusion, which should send me into despair but instead opens up a well inside I did not know resided there. A deep calm fills me, along with the knowledge that I have done what I could with what little I had, and taken a Pietran jailer and Elder down with me.
“May their stinking corpses be eaten by ninpops, and their leavings pissed on by goats,” I say aloud. My own voice is good company, and I have found songs long forgotten, notes that Dissa would sing to me as I slept in her arms, rhythms my mouth knows because my tongue asked my ancestors. I settle into a mix of these now, finding a measure of comfort in bringing Stille to Pietra, with Indiri words. There’s a shift in the air around me, and one of the faces that forms in the dark is the Lithos. I shudder to a stop, not trusting my senses.
“Is that you, Lithos?” I ask. “Or is my own mind my enemy?”
“I am here,” he answers smoothly. “And would make it that you have none.”
“Order your army to march off the cliffs,” I say. “Then fall on your sword.”
“What if they would march on your orders, and my sword were drawn in your protection?”
“I need no protecting,” I say, to which there is silence. It stretches long enough that I question whether I have imagined the exchange and the face that floats out of reach is truly there.
“If our swords were drawn together?”
“Against what foe?”
“I imagine there are enough Tangata to busy our blades for a good while,” he says. “And you eager enough to wield them.”
“There is one I would spare,” I say, thinking of Kakis. “One worth allowing the race to continue.”
“I feel the same about the Indiri,” he says.
For once, I have no answer. He comes nearer to me in the dark. What little light comes through my barred window shows his hands out, empty.
“I have something to say to you, Dara of the Indiri, and I would say it in the light.”
Light. The thought of it is enough to pull down the edges of my mouth, the beginnings of a solid cry. His hand touches my wrist, our skin barely grazing.
“Will you come with me?”
That he would ask instead of order makes my mouth twitch again, and I do not trust my voice to speak. Instead I answer by returning the touch, and find our hands clasping. We slip through the door, and he releases me to pass in front of him, guiding me down the corridor to the room where I killed a fellow Indiri and the roof came down on our heads.
It is open now, the moon shedding a w
hite light onto broken stones and mangled chains. I find a flat rock and sit upon it to look up at the sky, a sight I believed lost to me. In my worst moments, I have thought the Pietra would leave me to my cell as they had the Indiri I killed, that I would grow old with no one knowing how I looked with wrinkles on my face or aware that I had grayed at the temples. I take a deep breath of fresh night air and look to the Lithos.
“What is it you would say to me?”
“I’ll begin with a request that you not kill me.”
I can’t help but laugh, oddly welcome after the twist of my lips that would have left me in tears before the Lithos of Pietra. “For how long must I restrain myself?”
“I am going to speak for a short while and end with a question,” he says. “I ask that you hear me out and answer.”
“After that?”
“After that, you will either no longer wish to kill me or I shall not mind being dead. Agreed?”
There is little I can say to that, so I nod. The Lithos takes a deep breath and exhales sharply, his hands shaking at his sides.
“Dara,” he says, “the Stilleans would leave these lands. They are building ships to take themselves away, no longer trusting the earth beneath their feet. My Mason would sooner douse the ground with their blood than see them floating on water, and wishes to attack before they can take their leave. I, for one, see no reason to block their going and would argue against it.”
“Then do it,” I say, and he closes his eyes in frustration. “I only promised not to kill you before you finished,” I tell him. “I never said I wouldn’t interrupt.”
“Your adopted people are poor fighters, but not without honor. The king will march on your behalf, your brother at his side. I see no reason for their blood to be shed, either.”
He pauses, but I have nothing to say, this news striking all words from my tongue.
“The Feneen people fight alongside my own, as you well know,” the Lithos goes on. “Their leader, Ank—”