Shella, Khriss thought, forcing herself to remain calm. No man had ever treated her in such a disrespectful way.
“I’ll get you some food, Khrissalla,” Kenton said, nodding toward the horizon. “We’ll be reaching the desert soon; there are a lot of Kershtian towns built along the border—trading stations between the Kershtian nation and Lossand.”
“Nation?” Khriss asked. “So far all we’ve seen are tiny tent cities. Is there more than that?”
Kenton raised his eyebrows at the question, but he chose to answer. “Yes—there are massive tent cities as well.”
“But only tents?” Khriss said with a frown. “Are they all nomads?”
“No, none of them are,” Kenton explained. “Tents are the only practical buildings to use in the Kerla. The winds blow so much that the sand level fluctuates enormously. Even the Kershtian capital of Ker Kedasha is composed entirely of tents—and its population is over fifty thousand.”
“So, at these border towns,” Khriss continued, “we’ll be able to get food?”
“That depends,” Kenton said with a shrug. “What are you willing to trade?”
#
Kenton placed the bag full of metal onto the merchant’s trading table. The low table, constructed of cloth stretched across a flat construction of sandling carapace, sat in the center of a gaudy tent with embroidered walls and numerous cushions.
The Kershtian, a man with a broad face but thin limbs, opened the bag, picking at its contents with spindly fingers. “Not much, friend,” he said. Two gold strings wrapped around his head just above the ears, holding a golden coin pressed against his forehead—the symbol of his DaiKeen allegiance.
“I know,” Kenton said with a nod. They sat on cushions, as per the Kershtian way. Khrissalla had insisted on accompanying him, and sat on a cushion next to his own. Kenton turned back to the merchant, who was still appraising the scraps—whatever bits of metal Khrissalla and her group had been willing to part with.
The Kershtian nodded. “I’ll give you much deal,” he informed. “Best deal on sand! You want Kershtian coin’n, you want Lossandin coin’n?” He spoke with a heavy Kershtian accent, habitually adding soft ‘ha’ sounds to the end of all his ‘s’s.
“Either coinage is fine,” Kenton said with a shrug. “I’m just going to spend it on supplies.”
“Spend them here, yes friend?” the Kershtian said, perking up. “Well, I give you sands good deal! My cousin, he sells supplies’n? You want food’n? Qidoin?”
“Food.”
“Ah. Yes, friend.”
“What’s he saying?” Khrissalla interrupted from beside Kenton. She was watching the interchange with intense eyes—apparently she spoke a little Kershtian, or at least enough to pick out the occasional word.
“Not now, Khrissalla,” Kenton hissed back.
The girl shot him an angry look. “I deserve to know what’s going on. Those instruments are mine, after all.”
“I’ll write you a transcript later.”
Khriss’s eyes—she removed the spectacles inside—grew thin. “I don’t trust you, Daysider. For all I know you’re arranging to sell me into slavery.”
“I’d be lucky to get a three-legged tonk out of that deal,” he mumbled.
“What!”
“Hush,” Kenton insisted, shooting a look back at the Kershtian. The trader had watched the exchange with wide eyes, an offended look on his face. The expression couldn’t compare to the one he’d given earlier, however. When they had entered, the man had arranged cushions for them both to sit upon—and, according to custom, he had placed Khrissalla’s a few inches behind Kenton’s. The duchess had immediately scooted her cushion up, placing it equal with Kenton’s and the Kershtian’s.
“She is … .quite beautiful, friend,” the Kershtian said, regaining his composure. Merchants who worked this close to Lossand were usually capable of dealing with more than their associates further into the Kerla.
“I suppose,” Kenton said with a wry smile.
The Kershtian shared his smile. “I have found, friend, Lonsha women are rarely worth the trouble’n of their arrogance.”
“Wise words, friend. Now, for the trade?”
The Kershtian smiled, eyeing the scraps eagerly. Metal and stone were valuable commodities in the Kerla, where the ground lay buried by a hundred feet of sand. Both materials were much less rare now than they had been before, mostly because of trading between Kershtians and Lossandins, but a small sack of steel such as the one he was offering could still turn a healthy profit.
The Kershtian quickly masked his interest, however, as he scooped the pieces back into the bag.
“How much?” Kenton asked.
The Kershtian shrugged. “Oh, friend, maybe forty lak? Much not useful, in scraps like this. Must be melted down, yes?”
Kenton snorted. “Put the bag back on the table, friend. I’m not a merchant, but I know that metal’s worth more than forty.”
The Kershtian placed the bag back on the trading table. “I don’t know, friend,” he said with a slight shrug. “Perhaps it is worth more, but . . . you lucky I trade with you. Others in town … maybe not so open-minded.”
Kenton frowned, focusing on the Kershtian’s innocent-looking face. The man was doing his best not to meet Kenton’s eyes—the Kershtian way of indicating he was making a threat.
Aiesha! Kenton thought with a frown. The man knew what he was. But how? The gold sash was hidden in one of his pouches, and he had replaced his sand master’s robes with nondescript ones before entering the town.
“Not many Lossandin travelling in the Kerla right now, especially not ones coming in that direction, friend,” the Kershtian explained, nodding toward the open sands. “Most come from there,” he explained, nodding toward Lossand.
Kenton frowned. It wasn’t a guess—somehow this merchant had seen through him. “You’ve never refused to trade with my kind before,” Kenton said, deciding there was no use in hiding. “What does who I am have to do with making a deal?”
“Nothing friend, that is why I make deal, eh?” The Kershtian still refused to meet his eyes. “But, times … times change. It is not a good now to be friends with Ry’kensha.”
“I’ll take forty,” Kenton decided, and the Kershtian smiled. “But,” Kenton added. “I want something else as well. Information.”
“What information, friend?”
“I want to know what has changed. I want to know why Kershtian warriors suddenly decided they could attack a group of sand masters.”
“Aiesha!” the Kershtian hissed. “Not those words’n. Be careful, eedsha.” Then he eyed the bag of metal. Forty lak was an incredibly good deal for so much steel. Finally, the man looked up, meeting Kenton’s eyes. The deal was done.
“Come,” the merchant said, nodding toward the door. He rose, picking up his cushion. Kenton followed, as did a confused Khriss.
“What’s going on?” she demanded.
“Later,” Kenton insisted as the merchant placed his cushion near the door of the tent. The street outside was small, but busy—these border towns were prime places for trading.
Kenton sat back down, watching as the Kershtian nodded out the door. “You see that, friend.”
Kenton followed the look. Standing across the small sand street were a couple of men, obviously warriors. They had zinkallin on their arms, and judging by the scowls on their faces, the weapons were probably pumped and ready to fire. Swords were strapped to their sides, and they wore shiny, well-made carapace armor.
“Soldiers,” Kenton noted. “From the warrior DaiKeen.”
“Soldiers, yes,” the merchant agreed. “Warrior DaiKeen … well … .”
Kenton squinted, focusing on the men’s foreheads. Every Kershtian man wore a symbol to mark his DaiKeen—his profession, though a DaiKeen was more than just a job. DaiKeenin were more like clans, family groups that one could choose. The merchant symbol was a circle, and most of the merchant DaiKeen tied their m
arks to their foreheads. The warrior symbol was an ‘X’ tattooed on the forehead.
As one of the men turned, Kenton saw what the merchant was referring to. There was an ‘X’ on the warrior’s head, but it wasn’t tattooed on—it was a scar.
“But, scarring is the way of the … .”
“Priest DaiKeen,” the merchant finished, leaning back into his tent. “Yes, friend. I know. Warrior symbol, priest marking-form. Very odd, yes?”
“A new DaiKeen?”
“Yes, friend,” the merchant said with a nod. “The new A’Kar, he created it’n.”
The new high priest, Kenton thought. This isn’t good. He’d seen that ‘X’ scar before—on the foreheads of the men who had slaughtered the sand masters.
“We of the merchants, we are worried,” the Kershtian confessed, his voice growing hushed. “The A’Kar, he has much popularity’n. He says he destroyed the Ry’Kenshan, that the Sand Lord is very pleased with him. And the time of choosing comes very soon . . . .”
“The merchant DaiKeen hasn’t lost a choosing in centuries,” Kenton objected. “The High Merchant is King in Ker KeDasha.”
“Yes, friend,” the merchant said, a worried look on his face. “Perhaps, no problem. Perhaps … .”
“I understand.”
The Kershtian shrugged. “The A’Kar, he was wrong in one thing. The Ry’Kensha, you are still live. A few, at least.”
“Others?” Kenton asked with concern. “You saw others returning through here?”
“A few.”
“When?” Kenton demanded.
“A week ago, perhaps,” the Kershtian said. “A dozen men.”
A dozen. It wasn’t a large number, but at least Kenton wasn’t the only one to have survived.
“One thing I say, friend,” the Kershtian said. “Not all of us want the A’Kar to be king, yes? So, I trade. You buy food’n, and you go back to Lossand. The Sand Lord may take my soul’n, but I would not see the A’Kar’s words be true.”
#
“Politics?” Khrissalla demanded. “That’s what you were talking about?”
Kenton sighed, running his hand through his hair. “Yes, politics. Kershtian politics.”
“What does that have to do with us getting food?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“Then why bother with it?”
Baon fell into step behind them, leaving the shade in front of the merchant’s doorway, where he had been guarding. He wore a slight smile that seemed to say ‘she saved you, Daysider, now you have to put up with her.’
“Two hundred years ago, the Kershtians and Lossandin stopped fighting,” Kenton explained.
“Why fight in the first place?” Khriss asked. “Did they want your land?”
“Hardly,” Kenton said with a snort, leading them through the small city toward the place where the merchant had said his cousin ran a supply store. “The Kershtians call Lossand the Ry’Kel, the ‘cursed land.’ It’s the desert, remember? No water vines.”
“So, why fight?”
“We’re infidels,” Kenton explained. “Non-believers. The historical Kershtian viewpoint was that we had to be slain for our own good so we didn’t reproduce and raise up more infidels.”
“Sounds logical,” Baon noted with a snort.
“Two hundred years ago, the A’Kar—that’s Kershtian for High Priest—lost the Kingship for the first time in recorded history, and the High Merchant was crowned instead.”
Khrissalla frowned, completely oblivious to the looks her unbound hair and tight robe were drawing. “How does one lose a Kingship?”
“The Klin—the nobility, as you would call it—voted against him.”
“But, I thought you said being a nobleman was a religious position amongst the Kershtians,” she put in.
Kenton raised an eyebrow in surprise. He hadn’t thought she would remember that. “That’s right, it is, which is why the A’Kar hadn’t ever lost the choosing before. The title of Kli is granted by the A’Kar; it is the highest honor a Kershtian can hold. Once a Kli is chosen, however, the title is passed from father to son, as long as one maintains certain holy requirements. Eventually, the lines grew to the point that the families had been noble for so long, they barely remembered that the A’Kar had originally given them the title. Most of the Klin were merchants by profession. So, when the choosing came, there were enough that cast their vote for the High Merchant instead.”
“They let a simple majority choose their King?” Khrissalla asked with downturned lips. “How primitive.”
“If you say so, Khrissalla,” Kenton said with a shrug. “For dayside, the change was the best thing that could have happened. The wars stopped, and trading began. There are still battles, of course—but those are mostly between Kershtian families. On the whole, the last two centuries have been very good for Lossand.”
“But that could change soon?” the duchess asked as they arrived at the supply tent.
Kenton smiled to the proprietor—a man who looked almost identical to the one they had left behind, though the DaiKeen symbol tied to his forehead was wood instead of gold. The man smiled and began to negotiate the trade.
“Yes,” Kenton said back to Khriss as the merchant went to get the requested supplies. “The fifty-years between choosings is up this year, and it is starting to look like the A’Kar might win this time. That would be … bad.”
He made the deal with the merchant, trading for a week’s provisions for five people. They wouldn’t need so much, but it was always good to be prepared. Besides, Kenton hadn’t eaten much since his recovery a few days back. He was beginning to feel like he could devour the entire bundle of food himself—even if the Kershtians had covered it with their strong spices.
“So, what did your battle—the one that left you wounded—have to do with this A’Kar?” Khriss asked innocently as they turned back out into the crowded market street.
Kenton paused. She’s guessing, he decided. Just grasping for connections. It was a good guess, though. “Look, Khriss,” he said, “I’m not going to tell you anything more about that. I—” he paused. She was giving him an odd look. “What?” he asked.
“What did you call me?”
“Khriss,” he said with a shrug. “Khrissalla is too long—especially if I’m going to keep using it to annoy you.”
“That’s what Gevin used to call me,” she said quietly, her eyes somewhat dazed.
“Who’s—” Kenton paused as he felt an almost unnoticeable tug at his money pouch. A pickpocket. Fortunately, he didn’t have any money. Unfortunately, he had chosen to store something infinitely more precious in his money pouch.
He spun, reaching for the thief’s hand. The pickpocket was a small Kershtian boy of perhaps twelve. Kenton was too slow—the boy had already started to pull back when Kenton reached for him. And, as the boy moved away, his hand tugged something bright from Kenton’s pouch.
The end of his golden mastrell’s sash.
The boy yelped in alarm, dropping the sash as if it were a deadly sandling. The marketplace froze around them, hundreds of eyes turning to focus on the sash, which Kenton furiously tried to stuff back into its pouch. As he worked, his eyes fell on a pair of faces that stood out from the crowd—faces with cold eyes and scarred ‘X’s on their foreheads.
“I think we’d better go,” Kenton said, motioning for Khriss and Baon to follow.
#
“How far is it to Lossand?”
Kenton sighed at the question, but Khriss ignored the sound. She would have her answers no matter how rude he decided to be. She still couldn’t understand why her questions bothered him so much—they were only logical. She was new to Dayside; it made sense that she would have a lot of things to ask. The only way she was going to learn was if someone told her.
“I’ll answer, but only if you promise to answer one for me.”
Khriss frowned. They had entered what Kenton called ‘the desert’ just after leaving the town a few hour
s before, but the landscape seemed the same to Khriss. There was nothing around them to be seen but the same white dunes, some barely a few feet in height, others taller than a man astride a horse.
“Well?” Kenton prompted.
“All right,” Khriss decided. What could he ask that she wasn’t willing to share, anyway?
“We’re already in Lossand,” Kenton explained. “Technically, it starts where the desert does—though the sand won’t start to recede until tomorrow. Now, my question. Who is Gevin?”
Khriss froze, feeling her chest grow tight. Oh, Shella, not this …
“I heard you mention his name earlier,” Kenton explained.
Khriss paused, trying to think of a way around the question. Kenton’s stare was demanding, however, and she couldn’t bring herself to tell an outright lie, no matter how little she wanted to discuss the subject.
“He … he is my betrothed,” Khriss said quietly.
“Betrothed?” Kenton asked with a smirk. “Someone actually asked you to marry him?”
Khriss inhaled sharply at the barb, bowing her head as she felt her cheeks blush.
“I’m sorry,” Kenton said a moment later, his voice reserved. “I went too far that time.”
Khriss nodded feebly. “He didn’t ask me, really,” she explained softly. “It was more of an … understood betrothal.”
“Arranged marriage?”
“No, but it would have been, had we not taken the initiative ourselves. Gevin—or, his full name is Gevalden—is a prince of Elis. He’s the second son, but an important match nonetheless. There are only so many unmarried women of the proper rank and age.”
“I see. And you left this prince of yours to come to Dayside?” Kenton asked.
Khriss shook her head, keeping her pain inside, hidden behind a courtly mask. She raised her eyes, looking back at him with composure. “I didn’t leave him, I came to find him.”
“He’s on Dayside?” Kenton asked incredulously.
Khriss nodded.
“And, so your expedition isn’t just one of scientific exploration, like you told me,” he pointed out. “Now who’s lying?”