“Where?” I gestured up and down my body.
The corners of Raffar’s lips quirked upward. He took the holster from my hand and bent on one knee. With a slow look up at my face, he pushed my zintella dress leg as high as my knee. He busied himself fastening the thick leather band around my calf, then slid the knife into the holster. With one hand, he smoothed my pant leg down. The knife was invisible.
He said something, and Aldar relayed it: “Try pulling your weapon out quickly. You’ll need practice in pushing aside the cloth and extracting the knife.”
I made an attempt, but only succeeded in tangling the knife in the cloth. Raffar motioned with his hand: again. I concentrated on the direction of the sharp point, then repeated the action . . . and almost slit the silk with the blade.
Raffar held up his palm. Then he took my hand in his. Despite his position as king, his palms were calloused. From what? Holding the reins of those massive birds? Years of practice with one of those wooden staffs? He pointed my hand to the ground and curled my fingers toward my leg. Pushing my zintella dress leg up with my fingertips, he skimmed my knuckles upward against my skin. When he reached the top of the knife, he straightened my fingers forward, and moved them onto the hilt of the knife at the same time.
When he met my eyes, I nodded, but he led me through the movements again. His fingers trailed an attentive line along my calf this time too. I gritted my teeth. The knife was the important thing here. My safety. Not my husband’s touch.
I practiced unsheathing the knife ten more times, until Raffar was satisfied with my speed.
He dropped a hand on my shoulder and looked deeply into my eyes. They glittered as he spoke. “If anything should happen, don’t be afraid to use it. I’d rather someone else get hurt than you.”
I was about to nod when one of the guards called Aldar’s name. His eyes darted between us, and Raffar murmured something that probably meant he should go. Raffar and I shared a quiet moment. When our inability to converse began to feel too awkward, I curled my hand to motion for him to follow me to the zestberries. His head bobbed, and he waded after me into the brush.
Snort.
I stopped short. Something was in there, past the thick brambles and tall grasses. Raffar reached for me, but he was too far away to take my hand. Before I could step toward him, the grasses rustled and a hairy snout poked out among the leafy green . . . followed by bloodshot eyes.
I stumbled back. The wild boar’s canines slammed into each other, clashing loudly, aggressively. It moved forward another step, revealing its huge size—easily twice as heavy as me—and a nasty gash in its side that buzzed with flies. A sickly smell wafted across the brush.
My heart slammed against my ribs. Wild boars were dangerous, especially when injured.
“Jiara . . .” Raffar started, but the rest of his sentence was lost on me. Did he want me to turn and run? Slowly walk backward? Yell to try and drive it away?
There was no time to decide. The boar barreled forward, stopping only a couple of feet before me. It lowered its head.
Raffar crooked his fingers and waved me gently backward. Slowly, I picked up my left foot, and the boar’s snort rang through the air again. In a blur, the wild animal came at me. With a throaty yell, Raffar dove over the tall grasses directly for it. I screamed for help. Raffar rolled, grunting and shouting as the razor-sharp teeth of the boar gnashed and snapped in his direction. He grappled with the animal, a knife flashing in his hand as he slashed at the boar’s back and head.
A rough, tortured squeal ripped through the forest. Shouting guards raced off the road toward us.
“Matid!” called Raffar. The guard jumped onto the thrashing animal, pinning its lower limbs with his knees and ducking his head as the boar snarled and squirmed.
Raffar wrenched the boar onto its back and plunged his blade into the soft skin of the animal’s underside. Blood ran from the wound, coursing into the grass, and the animal’s cry echoed in my ears until its power drained and finally died out.
Two guards attempted to push me out of the way, but I held back until my husband stood. His chest heaved, and blood, dirt, and grass smeared his skin and clothing, but he didn’t look injured. Finally, I allowed Freyad to take hold of my shoulders with both hands and pull me back to the carriage, her gaze and foreign words soft as she tried to soothe me.
I leaned against the carriage. Someone brought Raffar a large flask of water. He sluiced the blood from his skin and used the last bit to rinse his bloody knife. All at once, I was aware of the unaccustomed pressure on my leg: the holster with the knife Raffar had given me only moments ago. I hadn’t even thought to draw it.
My face flushed hot, and I rubbed my forehead. We’d been in danger, and I hadn’t even taken my weapon in my hand.
“Are you all right, Queen Jiara?” Aldar asked as he rushed to my side.
I nodded, but my throat was so rough from screaming that I didn’t try to respond.
The translator’s eyes were gentle as he said, “Into the carriage with you, Your Majesty. You . . . you look a bit shaky. You should sit down.”
I glanced down at my trembling hands. Then I let Freyad steer me into the carriage to wait for my husband—the man who had just saved my life.
Chapter 9
Four days later, the skin on my face and arms began to itch from the dry air. The forests around us were lush and green, so it was not as though we were in one of the deserts of eastern Svertya. But the ocean and Azzoro’s reach into the atmosphere were far behind us.
While in Azzaria, Raffar and I had occasionally walked alongside the carriage to stretch our legs. For safety, we remained inside while in Loftaria, and not only because of the potential for wild animals. Not including the feeling of being cooped up, riding in the carriage with my Farnskager companions felt surprisingly like meditation. Their gruff words rolled over me, leaving me to my own thoughts, never intruding on my mind. But my limbs ached with the desire for movement.
Outside of their famous vineyards, Loftaria was a plain country. Fields of crops followed cool, leafy forests. Unadorned wooden homes with thatched roofs clustered together to form tidy villages. The inhabitants watched us from a distance as we drove by. Their fear of the black-and-white Farnskager hybrid figure flags fluttering in the wind was palpable. The war between the two countries—fought two generations ago when the Loftarian Servant-King decided the Farnskagers had to be forced to revere the gods—had been decisively won by the Farnskagers, and it seemed no one had forgotten.
The Loftarians still followed the same gods as we did in Azzaria, but they did away with their Servant-Kings shortly after the war, instead installing governors elected by the population. The only conflicts they’d had since then were for economic reasons, like with Azzaria. At least it appeared they knew when to quit. Receptions at the Loftarian governors’ manors so far had been cordial but tense. Every administrator we’d met had assured us that the attacks on northeastern Azzaria had stopped the moment they’d been informed of the wedding. Their parliament was considering requesting harbor rights in some of Azzaria’s coastal towns. They’d have to pay tax, but they could spare the cost of war they’d spent for so long in trying to take over our land. Some of them even sounded relieved.
Tonight, we were at the final estate on our way through the country. The governor of the region had arranged for a banquet with musicians and dancers to entertain us. Raffar muttered that they were trying to please us in the hopes that the taxes would end up a percent lower once I reported to my mother that the trip had been uneventful.
So far, Loftarian food had been similar to cuisine in northern Azzaria. Delicious rice and noodles, pork and chicken and vegetables. But today’s food was different—a dish I’d only seen at my wedding. A huge bird that’d be more than enough for the entire table of thirty. Orange mush. Boiled white roots. Beans. Corn. Some kind of green leaves.
Servers portioned out plates. My Farnskager companions dug in, grinning from ear
to ear. And that was when it hit me. Just as the food in southern Loftaria was closer to Azzaria’s, the cuisine here was closer to Farnskag’s. My taste buds pouted at the meals that awaited me for the rest of my life.
Raffar sat on one side of me, and Aldar leaned in on the other. He pointed to everything on my plate, one after the other, naming them in my language and his. “I know they look foreign to you. They taste different than you’re used to. But you’ll grow to like them.” His grin was a little crooked as he continued, “I’ve grown to love seafood, after all.”
I swallowed, but my heart warmed at his encouragement. “Thank you.” The bird hadn’t been bad. I’d start with that. Shivers ran across my cheek, but I brushed them away. I took a deep breath and bit off a tiny morsel.
The seasoning was different on this one. Bitter, like when you licked the pit of a nectarine. My lips burned too, as if too much pepper had been used, but I forced myself to chew.
Blazing fire exploded in my mouth, searing my tongue and gums and throat. My eyes watered, and I shot up from my chair, shoving it back until it tipped onto the floor with a bang. I opened my mouth, and the partially chewed food fell onto the plate below me. But the fire didn’t go away—it blasted through my mouth until my entire face was ablaze. In the span of a second, my throat closed up. I tried to pull in air through my nose, and I coughed, coughed, coughed—clutching my throat. “My mouth! My lips! Can’t breathe!”
Aldar shouted over me at the others. I wiped at my tongue with my hands, trying to rub off whatever was causing this pain, but the only thing that happened was that my palms tingled too.
“Here!” Aldar passed me his wine.
I gulped a mouthful, but it, too, burned, and I spit it out, dropping the goblet to the floor.
I was surrounded—by Raffar, Freyad, Aldar. Farnskager guards. Loftarian politicians. All demanding answers, three languages tumbling over one another. Hands on my arms and shoulders tugged me in more than one direction at once. I lost my balance and slammed sideways against the table. Pain shot through my hip, and I cried out again.
Raffar, Freyad, and the other head guard Matid shoved themselves between me and the rest, and they half-carried me from the dining hall to my chamber. They tried to lay me on the bed, but I pushed them away, jumping up as panic spurted through my blood. I couldn’t be still. This fire in my body—I had to douse it, to make it stop.
Freyad and Raffar spoke tense, harsh words. Matid ran out of the room. I coughed and spit lava onto the floor as tears streamed down my face. Why wouldn’t it stop? It hurt. It hurt so much.
I cowered down next to the bed, curling into a ball of fiery agony, and then I froze. The world around me disappeared. The pain was gone. I floated in blackness. In silence. I couldn’t smell the dust in the room or feel the beat of my heart in my chest. There was no warmth, no cold. Nothing . . .
Except the threads leading back to Mother and Father, to Llandro, Pia, and little Zito. Threads so strong I’d never want to break them. And other threads to various relatives and to members of Mother’s staff I’d known all my life. And a newborn, gossamer-thin thread to Raffar. I followed one of the threads, exhausted and venomous and dark, until I found Scilla, her face sad, but no—she was full of rage—then sadness again, her expression flashing so fast I couldn’t keep up. Our eyes met, and I reached for her, to bring her home—then a wave of ice flowed over me from head to toe. Brightness and sound exploded around me. I lay in the room full of hectic activity, and foreign shouts rolled right over me. My hand hovered in midair, nothing in front of it, and every fiber of my being ached with missing my sister.
Then it all came together in my mind. The pain. The burning. The fact that I had seen Scilla. My mouth was fine—
absolutely fine—as if nothing had ever happened. I stood, then backed up and lowered myself to the edge of the bed. “I’m all right.”
Raffar shouted at Freyad, and she called back as she filled a cup with water. No one had heard me, so I raised my voice. “Aldar! Tell them I’m all right.”
The translator’s head whipped to me, sitting calmly on the bed, and he stared for a second.
He was right to be shocked. It made no sense, but the flames in my mouth and chest and on my palms were gone. I’d seen Scilla. I knew what that meant. But now, miraculously, I was back in this room in Loftaria.
Aldar had just barked a phrase to the others when a woman carrying a physician’s bag rushed in with Matid. She squinted as she examined my mouth, but other than a patch of irritated skin on my cheek, she found nothing. Aldar didn’t speak Loftarian, but Matid did, so he translated to Farnskag, then Aldar told me in Azzarian.
“It looks like—but it can’t be—the queen would be . . .” the physician said as she dropped her arms helplessly. She tossed the spoon she’d used to depress my tongue onto the bed. “Her reaction indicates bladeleaf poisoning. But that plant only grows in Stärkland.”
“Western Stärkland even,” Matid added.
Far from here.
Raffar broke in, his eyebrows creased with concern, “Bladeleaf is deadly. All it takes is a couple of drops to kill a person.”
Another guard rushed to my chamber and whispered in Raffar’s ear. As he listened, the king turned to me and stared. With two long strides, he was at my side, dropping to the floor until he knelt before me.
“What are you doing?” I grabbed his hands to draw him up, to sit next to me on the bed, but he stayed where he was, and lowered his forehead to the bracelets on my wrists.
“Watcher of Sky,” Aldar whispered. “Watcher of Sky has protected you.”
“What?” How could bracelets protect me?
The guard rattled off more details to Raffar, and Aldar said, “After you reacted so badly, to test your food, they gave it to some kind of animal—Matid didn’t know the translation. It died immediately. It spit foam and its mouth was burned bloody. It sounds like it truly was bladeleaf.”
I shook my head. I’d ingested bladeleaf and survived . . . saved by bracelets? Raffar’s forehead was still pressed to my arm, but all I could think was that I should be dead.
Unless . . .
That feeling on my cheek. Had it been Scilla? Protecting me? Warning me from taking too big a bite? But she couldn’t be here. And I had been dead. I even saw Scilla. Unless it was a trick of the mind, induced by the poison.
Aldar dropped to the floor next to Raffar and waited until the king allowed him to press his forehead to the Watcher. Freyad followed suit and then Matid.
And I sat there like I was made of stone with a heart that didn’t know how to beat. Like some thing, some object they worshipped. But it wasn’t me they were worshipping. It was the bracelets. And I didn’t know who should get the credit for my survival. The gods? Scilla? Stones from the sky?
His voice filled with wonder, Raffar bent his neck to look up to me with moist eyes. “The Watchers have always looked out for us. And now, they have saved the life of our queen.”
__________
None of us got any sleep that night. I paced, barricaded in my room. Half the guards surrounded me, either in my room or outside the door. Half remained with Raffar, who spent the entire night in conference with the region’s governor. Raffar returned to my room as the sun rose and the first light crept in through the window.
“Governor Vadek doesn’t know who did it,” he said, with Aldar translating as always. “He’s questioning every person who stepped foot in the manor last night—”
His grip on the club at his waist, Matid tried to interrupt him, but Raffar held up his hand. “He got down on his knees in front of me. He wept. I do not believe he or his people planned this assassination. Loftaria has tried too hard to get on Azzaria’s good side now that they are our allies. Besides that, memories of the last war are still fresh in their minds. They have nothing to gain and everything to lose. By attacking us, they’d be drawn into a battle on two fronts.”
“The act of one person then?” Freyad pushe
d herself up from a chair.
Raffar nodded. “One person, or a small group. Possibly from Stärkland, considering it was bladeleaf.”
My head spun from the lack of sleep and the whirlwind of possibilities. One person, or a small group, probably also responsible for Scilla’s death. Except the evidence suggested a Farnskager . . . the evidence described by a Loftarian, whom Father had deemed trustworthy. And now poison from Stärkland, a country that bordered the western edge of Azzaria, Loftaria, and Farnskag. The Stärklandish army was mighty, but they normally kept to themselves.
I raised my fingertips to my forehead, then ran them down over the skin still rough on my cheek from the bladeleaf’s poison. I’d focused on Farnskag, but what if the killer were from Loftaria after all? Maybe the assassin had worn a disguise, patterns of simple charcoal to throw witnesses off. And it couldn’t be too difficult to buy bladeleaf, not even with the trade barriers to Stärkland. I shook my head, wishing the movement would jostle my thoughts into place. If anything, I was further from finding the assassin than I had been before.
Raffar reached toward me, taking my hand in his. He raised his head and fixed the group with his eyes. “We leave within the hour. No one eats or drinks anything unless we brought it with us.”
My eyes traveled over the guards surrounding me, taking in each pinched mouth, each hard gaze. One of the Loftarians could have slipped the poison into my food. But so could one of the Farnskager guards. No, I was no closer to finding Scilla’s killer. All I knew was that they were still at work.
Chapter 10
The Loftarian mayor bowed and apologized a thousand times as we left, but our refusal to eat or drink anything in his manor was telling enough. The sun had just brightened in the sky as we climbed into our carriage, and by late afternoon, the elephant birds hauled us over the border into Farnskag.
A Dragonbird in the Fern Page 8