“A scout reported that the Stillean army is on the move,” Hadduk tells me at our meeting. “It seems that burning the ships turned their minds toward land instead of sea.”
“What are your thoughts, Ank?” I ask the Feneen.
He shifts in his chair, looking carefully at the Mason before he speaks. “We can send a messenger, carry word that what they seek—the Indiri—no longer wishes to leave with them. Let them know they can rebuild in peace and sail at their leisure.”
Nilana snorts, drawing attention to herself. “They’ll not believe it. I wouldn’t.”
“No,” Hadduk agrees. “They’ll want to see the girl themselves, and hear from her own mouth that she wishes to—” He breaks off, the words distasteful to him. “To marry the Lithos.”
“How far out are they?” I ask.
“Three suns,” Hadduk shrugs. “Maybe four. Stilleans don’t fight well, I don’t expect them to march quickly, either.”
“If they’re that far out, she’ll be welcoming them as the Lithos’s wife, not as his bride,” Ank says. “You are to be wed the coming night, yes?”
I glance up when I realize the question is put to me.
“Yes,” I say, disbelief ringing in my voice. “The coming night.”
* * *
The Keeper has my elbow the moment I leave the hall, steering me toward a room flanked by guards.
“Your bride would have a word,” she says, following me inside.
I have not seen Dara since she accepted our agreement—I have yet to think of it as anything as romantic as a proposal. I know that she was moved to proper chambers, fed, cleaned, and clothed. What I did not expect was how nothing would change about her. Though she has been made civilized, it is quite clear that the woman who stands before me is very much a wild thing.
“Lithos,” she greets me, and I dip my head to her, forgetting that she did not do so to me.
“Please call me Witt,” I say, sneaking a glance at her. The Keeper told me that Dara refused any of the traditional Pietran dresses that were sent to her, but settled for clothes a Lure would wear while she waited for her Indiri clothing to be cleaned and mended. The trousers are belted twice around her waist and the shirtsleeves are rolled to her elbows, yet she seems at ease. The stitches I put into her arm are gone, leaving a dark scar behind, a red slash through her speckles.
“May I?” I approach her, and she puts her arm out for my inspection. I run my thumb along the scar, pressing down to feel the still-swollen skin underneath. “This will not fade, I’m afraid,” I tell her.
“It is nothing to me.” She lifts her arm from my hand. “Only one among many.”
That Dara has seen much battle I do not doubt, yet I glimpse only a handful of scars now. That she has many, and that I may know them soon, sends a shiver through me.
“You can leave us,” Dara says to the Keeper, who looks to me. I nod for her to go, and she does so with a small smile.
“You wished to speak with me?” I ask, stepping back from her so that I may clear my head.
“Yes. The Keeper informed me that the ceremony will be Pietran, which I find no fault with, as I am marrying into your land. However, I would ask that we wear traditional Indiri marriage clothes so that I may honor my own people as well.”
“Of course.” I nod. It’s an easy acquiescence, but I do not care for how she asks it. Dara grew to womanhood in Stille, surrounded by negotiations and cunning. I can see in the stiffness of her back and the formality of her words that she learned well their ways. I liked much more the girl who stared at the stars and barely promised not to kill me.
“Dara,” I say, “this will go much easier if we are plain with each other.”
She sighs and turns her back to me, head dropping. “How shall I do that? By telling my groom that I have lain long nights feeling myself a traitor? That I have weighed the lives of my children not born against that of my brother?”
“Your brother will not be harmed—”
“But he will sail.” She spins on me, eyes bright. “He may as well die in front of my eyes as be gone from me forever. I will not know the names of his children or hear his voice crack with age. I will not know when he passes or he me. We will be dead to each other when he goes, we, who were born together.”
“I understand,” I say. “I, too, put those I love into boats.”
“You did so knowing they went to their deaths. Imagine instead that they have lived a full life elsewhere, and you ignorant of every moment.”
I do, and the stab of pain that comes is familiar. My mother’s face, the small trusting hands of my little brothers, these I have looked upon much and more, always believing the pain will ease with each glance. Instead I have held and nurtured it, until their loss is at my center. Now I see my mother with hair gone gray and a lined face, the boys grown to men with quick smiles. It never will and cannot be, yet the thought that it might, and I would not witness it, sends my grief cresting into something sharper.
“I ask much of you,” I say to Dara, settling my hand again onto her wrist, and the curve of the scar that ends there.
“No more than others, I have decided,” she says. I feel the rush of her blood under my palm as she speaks, the heat of her body in her words.
“The Stilleans would have me calm my nature, a tame Tangata roaming their halls to perhaps find shelter with a commoner who would not mind having spotted children at his table. Yet the Lithos of Pietra—”
“Witt,” I remind her.
“Witt,” she amends. “Has a nature like mine and would see them brought together as one.”
My own breathing quickens, my thumb roaming the length of her scar.
“I do not know what world this is, where marriage with you is not something I find detestable,” she says, eyes following my hand.
“This world is ours,” I tell her.
And she smiles.
CHAPTER 74
Dara
I prepare for my wedding as if I were going into battle, hands steady, breathing even, eyes sharp. The same calmness has enveloped me, a sense of fate spinning out of my control, my mind giving way to my body, the better trained of the two. I’ve gone into fights I thought I might lose, and the blood in my veins rushed at the thought of something new, the assuredness of my enemies falling at my feet having grown stale.
I feel the same now, as the Keeper piles my hair onto my head, exposing my shoulders and the lines of old scars that creep upon them: one from my back and a stray Tangata claw, one curving around my neck from a nomad who got a lucky slash in on the road to Hyllen when I was small. They both fell, shortly after making their marks on me, their blood given to the ground, a gift from my Indiri blades.
I do not wear them tonight, as is Indiri custom. I have no weapon, no jewelry, only the thin wrap that ties at one shoulder. The Keeper blushed red when I told her I would wear nothing underneath it, every hard line of my body showing through the wrap—and the softer lines as well.
“It’s barely decent,” she said, eyes running over me.
“This is the Indiri way,” I told her. “We are fighters, and to marry, we meet one another unarmed, hiding nothing. It is trust to dress as such in front of another.”
“Trust and lust,” she muttered while she pinned my hair.
I looked at my reflection as she worked, knowing she was not wrong.
“It is time,” the Keeper says now, holding me by the elbow as I rise. The Pietra have not left me to myself, a guard or the Keeper always at my side. They expect me to bolt like a fadernal or slash at their throats like a Tangata. And while I have had many chances to do both, I have not taken them. My sleep has not been pleasant when it comes, and I have called myself traitor under my breath in the night, and though my mind condemns me for it, my body wishes to stay. More than once I have told myself to lunge for a Pietran blade, sna
p the Keeper’s neck in my hands, and slip away.
Yet I have not, my body more curious about what awaits me as the Lithos’s wife than my mind is concerned about what my ancestors might think of me. All my life I have put my blood first, the memories of people I have never known in the flesh dictating my steps. And now my own flesh is awakened, and it will have what it wants.
The hall is flanked by guards who eye me, some with distrust, some more openly, their gaze gliding over my body as I pass. The Keeper opens the doors to the hall where Witt stands at the front, wearing the same wrap as I do.
“Fathoms,” the Keeper says quietly, and I silently think the same.
That the Lithos is well made can be seen even when he is layered with armor. Without it, he bristles with strength, every dip and curve of muscle evident. His gaze sweeps me once, then focuses on my face as I approach. I feel a small smile twisting there and see one echoed back from him.
I reach him, and we face each other as an Elder marries us in the Pietran way. He speaks of the unbreakable quality of stone and the lasting life of the cliffs, words I can find no fault with, as I can find none in the man who faces me. Witt is made of strength and fights with honor, yet I felt a great gentleness in him when he touched my scar, and I am unable to deny the heat in my body that rose to his when he did.
If this man had spots, he would be as Indiri as I am, and that realization is what led me to the decision that I can take him as my own and be no traitor. For to me he is no longer the Lithos but a man, and I am a woman.
And I will have him.
The words are at an end and we trade rocks, I giving him a gray one that has become warm in my palm while I held it, he handing me a white pebble washed smooth by the sea. The Elder gives me a look, and I realize as the bride I am supposed to do something now, but I do not know what.
Ank leans into me, his voice in my ear. “You swallow it,” he whispers.
I do so, and it glides down easily, helped along by the wine I’d taken while the Keeper managed my hair. Everyone then turns to Witt, who holds a stone half the size of his palm, and I feel a sudden horror.
“Surely you don’t have to . . .” I say.
“I didn’t realize when I chose it,” the Keeper says, twisting her skirts. “Can I get another?”
The Elder shakes his head. “This is the stone the bride has put her skin against; her heat is inside it. The Lithos—” He closes his eyes as if it’s painful for him to continue, and I mark his face well, that I will remember this Elder as our country moves forward. “If the Lithos truly wishes to marry this woman—”
Witt pops it into his mouth, throat working, eyes on mine. The hall is quiet, and my hands find his in solidarity, squeezing as I watch the lump pass down his throat. Finally he breathes, and I with him. I feel Ank’s hand on my shoulder as a smattering of applause ripples through the hall—not much, I notice—and then the Elder sighs.
“I suppose you’re married.”
“Yes,” I say, gaze fixed upon my husband. “I suppose we are.”
* * *
There is a brief meal, one that I do not partake heavily of. The room is tense, very few of those in it actually celebrating my marriage. I memorize faces, making note of who will look upon me and who will not. Nilana is one who not only returns my gaze but also smiles, then, seeing the food still left on my plate, whispers something to Hadduk. The Mason rises, makes a small speech that I hear no a word of, aware only of the man next to me.
“I believe this groom is perhaps more anxious than most to see his bride in privacy,” Hadduk goes on, and a wave of red washes over my husband’s face. But he does not deny it. Instead, Witt offers me his hand, and we go, exiting the hall to a few barks of a laughter and some bawdy jests that can’t quite pierce the tension of the moment.
For the Lithos is taking an Indiri to bed.
I shiver in the shadowed hall, and his hands go to my bare arms as he guides me to his rooms. They are sparse, with a good fire in the hearth and a jug of wine on the table.
“I thought we might . . .” Witt points to the wine without finishing, and I go to a chair, pouring myself a drink. He sits as well, taking a long pull of his own. I watch his neck muscles work as he drains it and gets another.
“I’m sorry about the stone,” I say. “The Keeper chose it, not knowing the Pietra custom of—”
“Eating it?” he finishes for me. “Yes, I suppose I should have warned you.”
“I managed,” I say, holding his eyes. “As did you.”
“I did,” he agrees. “I would’ve chewed through a boulder to have you.”
I pull pins from my hair and let it fall around my shoulders as I stand in front of him, the fire warm on my back through the thinness of my wrap. “Pity,” I say, pulling him to his feet. “Then you’d have no teeth.”
“Will I need them?” he asks, no longer pretending to look only at my face.
“Perhaps,” I say, trailing my hand along the line of his jaw. He feels alive beneath my touch, quivering with need and barely contained energy. My skin answers his, equal to equal.
“Dara,” he whispers, hands roaming over my shoulders. “I have seen husbands and wives who have nothing more between them than the title. I would not have it be so with us.”
My hands find the knot at his shoulder that holds his wrap together, and I undo it with a practiced twist. He does the same, and my covering falls from me, the heat from the fire now against my bare back.
“I have read the great love stories,” I tell him. “And if I look to them, I cannot call this love, but my ancestors have shown me what else can move between a man and a woman, and I do feel that.”
“I feel it too,” he says, eyes closing as my hands roam.
“Then show me,” I say.
And he does.
CHAPTER 75
Witt
I understand now why the Lithos is not to be distracted. I am more than that; I am lost. The only thing that exists is this bed and the woman in it, and I will stay here and die with her beside me and call my life well lived.
“Thirsty?” Dara asks.
I am, but I don’t wish to leave the bed or for her to, either. She does, though, padding across the floor in nothing but her skin. There is no modesty in Dara, and I adore her for it. She finds water, for which I am thankful. My head spins already, and I don’t know what to attribute to wine and what to elation. Dara comes back, pulling the bedcovers around her as she drinks, then hands me the glass.
“Do you like being married?” she asks.
“I do,” I say. “How do you find it?”
“Oddly comfortable,” she says. “Though I can’t deny it’s a cunning match as well.”
“It is,” I agree cautiously. “Our binding fulfills my oath to the Feneen to take an outsider as a wife, and your will allows the Stilleans to sail unassaulted.”
“Yes, it does,” Dara says, some of the light leaving her eyes. My heart sinks at the sight.
“Do you feel something for him, their king?” I ask.
My wife’s hands find her own hair, and she begins to make small braids in it as she speaks. “Maybe once,” she admits. “Though I think my heart knew him as a childhood friend, and when we grew to man and woman, it clung to him out of habit.”
“And now?”
“Now I have felt something else,” she says, hands leaving her hair to find me. “And it is much more powerful.”
“It is,” I breathe, stopping her hands for the moment. She looks at me questioningly.
“The Stilleans march on us, looking to take you back to their homeland. They’ll arrive within a few suns and doubtless will not take word from a messenger as truth that you wish to remain.”
“I will tell them myself,” she says, nestling into a pillow, her dark hair flowing.
“And I hope your words will
be well met,” I say, trailing my hand along her back. “But I cannot have the entire Stillean army at my door with no Pietra in armor.”
“I understand.” She nods. “Prepare the spada and lancia that will return to Stille to assist in shipbuilding. They will be a force enough behind you to ease Hadduk’s concerns, yet not so large that Vincent will be unsettled at the sight.”
I reach for her. “I enjoy your mind.”
“And . . . ?” she asks, eyebrows raised.
“And that’s really all,” I say, faking a yawn.
My wife shoves me lightly, and I pull her to me as we laugh, rolling together in the bed.
And we are very, very distracted.
CHAPTER 76
Vincent
The army marches, and Vincent with them, saving his horse’s strength. The act of putting one foot in front of another is all he can focus on, for he is pain both within and without. The burns on his face have settled into a low hum, like a gathering of ninpops under his skin. His knuckles are swollen, the skin cracked widely from where he hit Donil, yet it is only a low ache that swings at the end of his arm. It’s the pain inside that he cannot endure, overwhelming emotion that flows from his stomach and past his heart, filling his throat and threatening to send him retching, though he is not ill.
His friend lay with his wife. He still thinks of Khosa as such, though he knows that by Stillean tradition she is not. She is the wife of his heart if not his body, and that she does not feel the same for him on either count is a wound gone deep, to be reopened again and again, every time he looks at Donil.
Vincent has not spoken of it to him in the time since the army set out from Stille, for he has no words. Everything he would say was neatly encompassed when he struck Donil, the Indiri’s response in not fighting back the only one Vincent would accept. His wife and friend have done him wrong, and both know it. Speaking of it will only fire tempers when Dara should be first in everyone’s minds. So when Donil finds Vincent’s fire on the last night before they arrive in Pietra, Vincent turns his head from him.