But some of the birds were in smaller pens within the large area. From the left, I counted three pens. So, the next clue must be at that pen . . . which was occupied. The elephant bird rested on the ground, chewing slowly, almost sleepily. And there, just under a water-filled trough, a bit of parchment stuck out.
The trough couldn’t be reached from outside the pen. I eyed the huge elephant bird. My level of appreciation for Aldar was at an all-time low.
“You won’t hurt me, will you?” I asked the bird.
Its eyes closed and opened lazily, and it snapped up a beetle marching by.
Aldar might not be the world’s most stellar instructor, but he wouldn’t have sent me here if it was dangerous. I pushed open the wide-slatted, wooden gate and closed it behind me. With a bird of this size, there wasn’t so much room for me to get around it, but I tiptoed carefully, trying not to step in its messes on the ground.
I bent to retrieve the parchment, and the elephant bird hissed behind me. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I looked over my shoulder.
The elephant bird was standing now, towering over me, and it spread its wings until they touched either side of the pen, increasing the bird’s already formidable size threefold. It hopped from one tree-like leg to the other, opened its mouth, and hissed again.
My heart raced. It looked like it wanted to make mush out of me. I was done playing Aldar’s inane game. I edged around the pen, but the bird hissed louder and snapped its long neck forward. The hard beak smacked onto the side of my head, and bright flashes burst behind my eyes. The pain wrenched a screech from my throat. My head spun—I needed to get out now.
I covered my skull with both hands, but the massive bird bumped up against me, nudging me even farther from the exit.
“Help!” I cried, craning my neck for a glimpse of a birdkeeper or gardener. In vain. I was alone.
Another hiss burst from the angry elephant bird. It stomped from one foot to the other, and its fluffy wings smacked against my face. I couldn’t see, and feathers batted into my mouth and nose until I coughed. The bird slammed me again, harder this time. Then the ground was no longer under my feet, and my back hit the dirt, thrusting my breath from my lungs.
I gasped. “Help!” I yelled when I could breathe again, and then I sobbed—I didn’t know how to say the word in Farnskag.
Please someone, come help me. Even if you don’t understand me . . .
I curled into a little ball, and the bird knocked its hard beak against my head again. More stars flashed behind my eyes. I scrambled around in the dirt, threw a handful up at the animal, hoping to blind it long enough so that I could crawl by. It stepped back.
Then I remembered my knife. I crouched and slipped it from under my pant leg in one fluid movement. I had a fleeting, ridiculous thought that Raffar would be proud, and I said, “I don’t want to hurt you, but if you—”
The bird lunged at my hand, nipping my wrist, pinching the skin so hard, it tore in a flash of fire. I had to keep the feathered monster away from me. I screamed and slashed at one of the muscular legs and met my mark. Blood trickled down to the dirt below.
Hiss!
The bird rushed me, kicking its heavy leg squarely in my chest. There was no air, and I tipped to the ground. I couldn’t protect my head fast enough—the huge foot was right in front of my eyes. I pounded a fist against my chest, desperate to force myself to breathe again, and I stabbed up into the bottom of the massive, flat foot.
The bird jerked away from me. Voices. Cries. Red in my eyes.
Jerky movements of being carried. Soft, sweet-smelling clover beneath me, and I meant to open my eyes, but—no.
They already were open. They were open, felt scratchy, and everything was dark. “I can’t see!”
Rough palms on my face, wiping, wiping.
A blurry, short-haired person came into view. “Freyad?” I sobbed.
She wiped bloody, dirt-smeared hands on her pant legs and pried the knife from my grip and shouted to the others. Matid murmured soothing words, gathered me in his arms, and rushed me to the manor. As he brought me into my suite, with Freyad close behind, I caught a glimpse of myself in the looking glass. My tunic and pants were a filthy mess of mud and dung, my hair full of clumps I didn’t have to think long about to identify. Aside from the tear on my hand, a bleeding bump marred my forehead. I had scrapes and bruises everywhere, but I didn’t feel like I was seriously hurt.
Matid gingerly set me onto a chair, and his eyes assessed my body for damage. With a sweeping arm, Freyad ordered the man out of the room. She helped me undress, and as she spoke, made washing movements to let me know a bath would be brought in.
I had just wrapped a robe around my filthy self when the door burst open. Raffar and Aldar stood there. Hands and arms flew, Raffar shouted at Freyad and Aldar. Both of them shouted back.
My head thundered worse than if I’d been forced to read an entire book, and I was all out of patience.
“Stop!” I yelled.
Silence fell, with only the sound of the four of us breathing heavily in the room. Then a knock. The three stared at me, so I called in Farnskag, “Come in.”
Two men lugged in water to fill the tub. With a glare meant more for myself than for them, I left everyone in my sitting room and bathed as quickly as I could. I slipped into new clothes, then stopped briefly in front of some scented blocks I’d set up in honor of the gods. I clasped my hands to my heart then raised them to the sky.
“My heart in your hands.” With bird legs that heavy, I was lucky to be alive. “Thank you.”
I granted myself two more seconds of stillness, then returned to the sitting room where Raffar, Freyad, and Aldar were still arguing, although quieter now.
Raffar grunted a phrase at Aldar, who said, uncharacteristically formally, “The king would like to know what happened.”
I nodded. I wanted to know myself. “I was playing your game.” Your stupid reading game.
Aldar’s jaw dropped, but he translated, speaking a little longer, probably to explain what the game was.
As soon as he stopped, I continued, “And the last clue I read was Garden, Bird Pen, Three. So, I went to the third pen.”
“No,” Aldar said, shaking his head emphatically. “It was the first pen. The empty one.”
My language skills were pathetic, but I knew the numbers one through ten. “It said three.”
Raffar barked a question, and Aldar answered. Then he asked me, “Where’s the clue now?”
I fetched it from the pocket of my dirty pants, then held it out. “See. Three.”
Aldar examined the parchment, and his eyes sought out the floor. He covered his face with both hands so that his voice was muffled. “It is my fault, Your Majesty.”
I was about to nod when he said, “I should have realized the game was too difficult. And I’ve done a poor job teaching you, even the numbers. That says one.”
I snatched the paper from him, looked at it again. We’d been studying together for weeks now. I knew this word. “That’s three.” I showed it to Freyad and pointed to the word.
She held up one finger.
Humiliated, I crumpled up the page and tossed it in the corner. Then I stood there like a child, like Mother’s fickle, little dragonbird, in need of yet another lecture on concentrating harder, on improving my scholarly results like Llandro and Scilla. Tears burned in my eyes. If I could have run away, I would have, but it was impossible, so I dropped into my chair and pulled my knees up to hug them. I could have been killed because I was too stupid to read the number one.
Raffar ran a hand over my damp hair. “I’m glad you’re all right.”
All I could do was swallow . . . until I remembered the parchment I’d seen under the trough. “I only went into the pen because I saw the next clue.”
Aldar’s brow wrinkled, but he translated. Everyone’s soft sighs told me they were placating a childish monarch, but Freyad went down to check near the trough. She
returned a few tense minutes later, with a large shard from a parchment-
colored eggshell on her palm and a softness in her eyes that said she was sorry I’d been mistaken. She pelted Aldar with a crumpled ball of parchment she’d apparently also retrieved from stall number one.
“I apologize,” he mumbled again, stuffing the clue from pen number one in his pocket. “It won’t happen again, I promise.”
Raffar’s hand brushed over my face, over the cut on my forehead, which still smarted. His finger dropped to the blood-streaked knife on the table. “Freyad told me you defended yourself well. Fleetfoot’s mother is injured but will still be able to care for her young.”
Fleetfoot was Raffar’s mount. “Her young?”
He nodded, his lips pressed tight together. “She was in the pen because she is hatching.”
Not only had I almost gotten myself trampled to death, I’d injured a breeding animal that had only defended her egg.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my heart breaking with every syllable. “I’m so sorry.”
Chapter 17
Two frustrating days later, following trips to neighboring villages, I still hadn’t found a person with the right leaf tattoo. I felt so useless. When Raffar opened the door to our suite that evening, his eyes were bleary.
“You all right?” I asked him.
He nodded and waved a hand, but didn’t explain. Someday, I wanted him to see me as a person he could share things with. But it would time consuming for him to show me the right words now, and the droop in his shoulders said he didn’t have the energy.
“Eat here today?” I asked.
He smiled tiredly. “Yes. Please.”
While Raffar cleaned himself, I ran down to ask a servant to make arrangements. My broken Farnskag was embarrassing, but I wouldn’t make him take over something as simple as instructions for dinner when he was so obviously exhausted.
Once our meal was over, we played a round of vansvagd again. Afterward, he tugged my hand to the bed. Entwining my fingers with his, he lay on his back and closed his tired eyes. I smoothed my other hand over his forehead, softening the creases between his brows. I ran a finger down one side of his face, massaging the tension there and then the other side.
“. . . good . . .”
After a few minutes, I extricated my hand and switched from trailing a finger along his skin to rubbing tiny circles with both hands. I smoothed down over his head to his neck and shoulders. He sighed, and my awareness of us together on the bed heightened until it was all I could think about. Us. In bed. Together. Touching. My pulse tripped, then began to gallop.
Raffar’s request to wait felt so far away. Sensibility abandoned me, and I leaned forward and kissed his forehead. He sighed and rubbed his skin against my lips. He didn’t push me away, so I kissed his eyebrow. His cheek. My heart pounded now. If only he would touch me. Like an invitation, an mmm stole from his mouth.
My kiss found the corner of his upper lip.
He turned slowly, then all at once gripped the back of my head and crushed his lips to mine. A moan escaped me as a flare of fire shot down my chest to my abdomen. He rolled onto his side, pulling me down to him. My arms smoothed up his waist, scraping toward his shoulders. His hands kneaded my back, moving lower until he tugged my waist against him, straining through the fabric to get closer to me.
After kissing my neck, his mouth moved higher again, until he held back and looked at me. His gaze swallowed me up, and I wanted to lose myself there forever. I slid my hands up his tunic.
He stiffened. “Ah . . . no. Stop, Jiara.”
I froze. He shook his head and rolled away from me, off the bed. He strode halfway across the room and ran both hands over his face and scalp. “. . . not eighteen.”
“It’s all right.” I shook my head. “I not afraid. I know you.” I knew him enough.
“We wait,” he growled. He paced away from me, taking a position at the wall next to the window, his breath still coming in gasps.
I sat on the bed, leaning back on my hands. He wanted to, at least it seemed like it. I wanted to. We were married. “Why? Why wait?” I didn’t want to do anything he wasn’t ready for. I just needed to understand.
Words flew from his mouth, but it was far too fast for me. “Stop!” I crawled across the bed and plucked the hated, but oh-so-necessary lexicon from his night table. His weary eyes stared at me for a moment, but he came and retrieved the book. He lowered himself to the bed, and our painfully slow conversation unfolded like a fairy tale.
Generations ago, people married early, sometimes as young as twelve or thirteen. Often their parents gave their blessings, but it wasn’t a legal requirement for a marriage. Raffar’s grandmother was one of them. She married an older man who promised her a good life. She was young and naive and soon worked all day for the lazy drunkard who was her husband. When she was old enough to see him for what he was, she left him, dissolving the marriage. At nineteen, she married Raffar’s grandfather, who later became the king.
Raffar’s grandfather changed the law. From then on, although there was no rule against intimacy between youths, marriage before eighteen was illegal. With time, the Farnskagers came to agree that people should be old enough to understand how their lives would change when they married and old enough to properly judge the one they were marrying.
That same argument. “But I know—”
Raffar smiled and held up his open palm and then pointed to his chest. We continued using the lexicon. “I’m happy you feel confident. I am also happy with you. When we traveled from Azzaria—do you remember the monoliths? The white ones?”
I nodded. White Mother. Where I was the only one not allowed to visit.
“White Mother is very important to us. Like her name . . . a mother, someone to give guidance, to watch over us. I promised White Mother I would give you the time until you were eighteen to be certain.”
There was so much I was unsure of here, but being with Raffar was not one of them. Carefully, I rested my hand on his. “Raffar, I am certain.”
“Fine. Then give me the time,” he said. “Let me fulfill my promise.”
His promise to a rock. I slipped my hand from his then rubbed mine together. How was I supposed to understand that? Accept that?
Raffar cleared his throat. “That time I first saw you, in the hall in Glizerra . . . I’d inquired about Scilla before planning to marry her. I’d heard she was smart and proud. But also cold and aloof. And then this girl tumbled in with wild hair and eyes, and a devilish grin.”
The tips of my ears burned. Zito and I had made quite an entrance that day.
Raffar’s voice grew soft, but not in the way of fond reminiscence. More with self-loathing. “I wanted to grab you and marry you there and then. And to find out you were the wrong sister—and a younger sister at that.” His fist thumped against his heart. “I am not the drunkard who married my grandmother. I will not be one who utters false promises and takes advantage of those too naive to understand.”
We were already married. And I was not naive. I leaned forward and opened my mouth to attempt an explanation, but he continued. “Jiara, how can I expect my people to follow the laws set by my family if I don’t have the strength myself?”
I pushed my hair back from my face and sighed. Whether anyone knew of his promise to White Mother or not, he needed to keep it—for himself, for his own self-respect. And as royalty, we had to set a good example. I shoved my hands under my thighs and rocked forward. “All right. We wait.”
He leaned forward, but stilled before he was close enough to touch his lips to mine. “Two more months?”
My heart hammered in my chest, but I forced myself to nod. I would be eighteen then, and I could wait. I wouldn’t try to convince him otherwise. Not if it meant so much to him.
__________
After the day of the treasure hunt, language lessons were restricted to my sitting room. Not only that, everywhere I went, someone accompanied me. Usually Freya
d, but sometimes Aldar, Matid, or Raffar. But it wasn’t so I’d feel more comfortable in terms of communication. No, I needed someone to protect me from myself. Was it possible to crush a person’s heart without leaving a mark on the body? Every time someone came to watch over me, mine was shattered anew. Aldar and Freyad had important things to do, and yet they worried about who would look after me, save me from my own ineptitude.
When today’s lesson was over, Raffar rushed into the room with Freyad right behind. Raffar paced back and forth.
“What’s the matter?” I asked Aldar.
He inclined his head toward the speakers, showing me I’d have to wait while he listened, then said softly, “The head trainer for our warriors has taken ill. It is very serious. He’s not expected to recover.”
My fingers rose to my mouth. Raffar ran a hand over the stubble on his head, leaned against the wall.
“Raffar must appoint someone new immediately, but there are issues. Politics, experience, so much to take into account.”
My husband paced by me again, muttering what sounded like the names of several candidates, none of whom were familiar to me. Freyad either nodded or shook her head at all of them. It seemed she not only was a good judge of character, but that Raffar gave her opinion much weight.
She was obviously overqualified to be my babysitter, so I asked, “How about Freyad?”
“Freyad?” Raffar repeated, as if only now noticing I was there and was, at least sort of, part of the conversation. He gestured to me and then to himself and said something to Aldar, who then responded.
Sentences flew back and forth between Raffar and Freyad like birds swooping for prey.
Aldar’s eyebrows rose. “It seems you made a good suggestion. He’s asking if she’s interested.”
Discussion continued so quickly Aldar couldn’t keep up with translating. Freyad’s eyes glowed with ambition, but Raffar kept gesturing to me.
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