by Devin Madson
“And you’ll stay, won’t you? Until I come back.”
His grin widened. “I can do that.”
He held my gaze all the way to the door where I brushed past into the night. The stall door swung closed, but I must have dragged part of him with me, so physically did his presence cling. All it took was a muscular frame and a willing smile and I had wanted to make Gideon wait even longer, but I kept walking and did not look back.
The Levanti in the yard lowered their voices as I passed, dodging around knots of men and women seated on the stones. Their eyes followed me too, and I was sure they could see into my thoughts, could see the raw, broken edges of my soul.
As I neared the manor house, I passed the remains of some sort of siege weapon, all pulleys and ropes and cracked arms. Remnants of war lay scattered everywhere, as much reminders of how far we still had to go as of how far we had come.
The estate where we had stopped for the night must have belonged to a Kisian nobleman. It had stables and gardens, thick walls and tilled fields and a mansion so full of rooms it was a maze. All the captains had been given rooms inside, but I had escaped its airless passages as soon as I could, preferring the open sky to one made of thick black beams. They looked heavy, as did the tiled roof. Heavy enough to crush me if it fell.
I passed two Swords of the Namalaka on the stairs. Both wore crimson silk over their armour, seeming to smother them in blood. “Captain Dishiva,” one said, saluting. I nodded rather than risk speaking, sure my views on their new attire would not be congenial.
Inside, a long, lantern-lit hall greeted me, each wall full of haughty Kisian portraits staring as I passed. I wanted to rip their eyes out, but Gideon had spoken at length about how the Kisians were not the Chiltaens, were not our enemy. They were our people now, our subjects, and had to be respected as such. So long as they showed the proper deference to their new emperor, of course. As with everything, he had a point. I just didn’t like it.
As I approached Gideon’s rooms, I passed more Levanti dressed like Kisian guards. I outranked them all, but not one saluted. There were no other captains here, no seconds, no healers, no trackers, no horse masters, just Swords desperate for glory and favour, and I glared at every one. The two outside Gideon’s ornate doors even stepped into my path, their arms folded. “Who seeks an audience with His Majesty?”
I drew myself up. “I am Captain Dishiva e’Jaroven and you will get out of my way.”
“We don’t take orders from you.”
“Who are you?” I said. “Who is your captain? I will inform them of your disrespect.”
One leered, making the scar upon his lip curl into an odd sort of smile. “We don’t have a captain anymore. We serve only His Imperial Majesty.”
I clenched my hands and hissed through bared teeth. “Well, your Imperial Majesty sent for me, so get out of my way or I will make you.” Both my swords hung from my left hip, but I touched my dagger as I assessed the weaknesses of their new armour.
The door opened before either could reply, and they parted for a small Kisian man in white. He bowed deeply, murmured something in their intricate tongue, and ushered me in with an outstretched arm. Both offending Swords stood at their ease, but my heart hammered with anger and I could not make my feet move.
The little Kisian grimaced and gestured frantically for me to enter. From inside came the hum of voices, the clink of dishes, and swish of silk, yet the room appeared empty.
Steeling myself, I unstuck my feet and strode into the large, heavily scented room.
“Captain Dish…” the Kisian said. “Captain Dishava Jar—”
“Dishiva,” I corrected. “Captain Dishiva e’Jaroven.”
The man muttered it, practicing, but his halted announcement had already caused the hum of conversation to cease. Footsteps sounded from the next room, and Gideon strode in through a pair of thin paper doors. “Ah, Captain Dishiva,” he said with a smile. “Exactly who I wanted to see.”
I stopped in the middle of the reed floor and, for the first time in my life, grimaced to think I might have tramped horse shit in with me. Even as I looked down, I saluted our new emperor. He too had donned a Kisian silk coat, which hung around him like a bloodstained flag. A very finely embroidered flag edged in gold thread.
Gideon’s brows lifted when I did not speak. “Is everything all right, Captain?”
Shadowy figures moved beyond the paper screens. The little Kisian man had disappeared, but unfamiliarity clustered close. Pale sections of wall and floor showed some furniture had been removed, yet a profusion of decorative vases and screens, statues and lanterns, shortened my every breath. “Yes, Herd Master,” I said. “I am just uncomfortable in such surroundings.”
“Ah.” He grimaced. “I hope you will get used to them, because I have a task for you.”
He had been summoning every captain and giving each Swordherd a new purpose. I had known my time would come and dreaded it, but whatever my fears, these were my people and Gideon my herd master. I straightened. “What would you have me do, Herd Master?”
“I would have you and your Swords responsible for my protection and the protection of my wife. I—”
“Your wife? But you are a Sword of the Torin. You are not allowed to marry.”
Gideon lifted his brows, his momentary pause enough censure to heat my cheeks.
“I was a Sword of the Torin,” he said. “I am now Emperor of Levanti Kisia and if I want to remain so long enough to build a new home for us, I must marry a Kisian. We do not have enough Swords to hold this land by force, so we must be diplomatic.”
A new home. He had called our plains poisoned, sick, infected with some evil that had gotten into the hearts and minds of our leaders and turned them against us, but although I had seen it with my own eyes and knew it for truth, it could not dampen my yearning. Kisia, with its thick green forests and damp air, its single moon and strange food, was not the plains.
“Do you still wish for this?” Gideon said when I made no reply.
Unspoken was the knowledge he could risk no captain who did not believe in his vision. Rah had been proof of that.
“We need a home that is not under threat,” he went on. “We need to survive. To adapt. We are dying back home, Dishiva, dying. Our way of life, our people, and our honour—everything that has ever made us great will be our downfall if we cannot embrace change.”
Again the unspoken sense that Rah was ever-present. Unbending and unwilling to change.
Gideon began to pace, reeds crackling under his heavy footfall. On a shorter man the tail of his silk coat might have trailed along the ground, but it lapped at his ankles like a restless sea. “We have to fight for a new homeland before there is no place left for us in this world. Before Levanti are nothing but a memory, our groves crushed to dust and our gods forgotten.” He spun to face me, hands clasped behind his back in a way that made his sword hilts jut prominently from his hip. “Tell me I can count on your allegiance. Tell me you wish to fight for a future in which our way of life can be saved and perpetuated rather than allowed to die upon the winds of change. If you cannot, I will choose someone else for this task.”
He had a mesmerising way of speaking that reached into your chest and twisted your heart, and with emotion swelling, I pressed my hands together in salute. “You have my allegiance, Herd Master. My Swords and I would be honoured to serve in your protection.”
“And Lady Sichi’s. She requested a female guard and I trust you above all others.”
“I am honoured. However, if I may, Herd Master, I thought the reason we had been hoping to find Empress Miko was so you could marry her. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the way their society works.”
“No, you’re not, but…” He stopped and beckoned me closer, his silence heightening my awareness of the foreign conversation beyond the door.
Close to, his breath smelled of wine and there were dark patches beneath his eyes. “Marriage to Lady Sichi Manshin is the foundation upon
which my alliance with these Kisians has been built. We get our empire, they get us, and through family connections to Lady Sichi, the power Emperor Kin denied them. That is why it’s important you protect her.”
“She wishes for this marriage?”
“She does.”
I nodded, and he stepped back. “Their society is old and complicated, built upon shifting power balances and the honour of family names. We cannot expect to understand it in the space of a few days. But we must respect it if we want them to respect us.”
“And the empress?”
“We have other plans for Empress Miko when she is found.”
He spoke lightly, but the ominous words boded ill for the absent empress.
“Tomorrow we press on to Kogahaera,” he said. “We’ll be staying there for some time while we plan for the future. You and your Swords will each be given an imperial surcoat to mark you as my personal guards, and while you should assign Swords to me, I want you to ride with Lady Sichi yourself and make her your primary concern.”
I had no interest in playing guard to a fine Kisian lady, but being in Gideon’s presence had renewed my faith in why we were here and what we were doing. He had led us through the Chiltaen invasion, had freed us from our shackles, had held faith in what we were capable of and what we deserved, and for a long moment emotion suspended my voice and I could not speak, could only salute and bow my head.
Gideon set his hand on my shoulder, and with the gentle weight of his companionship there, it was all I could do to keep tears from spilling down my cheeks. I wasn’t even sure what they were tears for, but they pressed on my eyes and constricted my throat all the same.
“It has been a hard road for us,” he said. “And I cannot promise it will not get harder, but I can promise I will fight for our people and our right to exist in this world until there is no breath left in my body and no blood in my veins.” He squeezed my shoulder. “The only easy road would be to lie down and die, and Levanti do not do that.”
“No,” I managed. “Levanti do not do that.”
While I fought with the lump in my throat, he left his hand upon my shoulder, only dropping it back by his side when I looked up, his gentle manner so completely the embodiment of a herd patriarch that it almost overwhelmed me again to think of the home we had all lost.
“Let me know if there is anything you need, Captain,” he said. “As an emperor I must maintain a certain dramatic aloofness for the Kisians to perceive me as powerful, but I am still your herd master.”
He let me leave without further speech and I departed possessed of both renewed vigour and renewed hurt. No matter how much I tried to bury the suffering, to kill the memories, they were always there just beneath my skin, so close the smallest cut could send it leaking free.
A rumble of thunder welcomed me back to the courtyard. I had thought nothing could be worse than the mansion’s airless gloom, but the increasing humidity made every breath an effort. Lightning cut toward the top of the gatehouse, and as I crossed the yard, Swords muttered and grumbled about the oncoming storm.
Jass en’Occha was waiting for me in Itaghai’s stall. The meeting with Gideon had diverted my thoughts and I had forgotten all about him, but not wanting to be alone, not wanting to dwell on the memories that clung like the sticky night, I was grateful for my own apparent foresight.
He had finished brushing Itaghai’s mane and moved on to his tail, adding diligence to a list of good traits so far made up entirely of strong shoulders and an impish smile. Jass looked over one of said shoulders and treated me to that smile. “My captain returns!”
“I am not your captain. If you are a First Sword then Taga is your captain.”
“And a very good captain she is, but she has never trusted me with the grooming of her mount. He’s got quite the attitude, your boy,” he added, patting Itaghai’s rump. “I have never seen a horse look so disdainful. I don’t think he appreciated my stories.”
“You told him stories?”
“Why not? I had to pass the time somehow.” Jass set the brush down atop my open saddlebag. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Captain?”
I stepped in and the stall door swung closed behind me. Jass’s smile became a grin. “Here?” he said, glancing at the straw piled in the corner farthest from Itaghai’s hooves.
“Here,” I said, and began to untie my belt. My fingers trembled upon the buckle and I hoped he wouldn’t notice.
My swords hit the ground and he stepped in close, lips brushing mine. I turned my head, fear like a thousand needles on my skin. “No,” I said. “Not that.”
He stilled a moment, but it was only a moment before he chuckled and took my hand, pressing my palm to the hard bulge between his legs. “Just this then?” he said, his voice husky by my ear.
“Just that.” I pulled my hand away, his gentleness cutting my shell as Gideon’s had done. “I don’t know you well enough to want anything else.”
Jass shrugged and pulled off his breeches, and determined to match his confidence, I tugged down my own. They stuck to my sweaty skin, but I managed to free myself without falling over. He watched me all the while, his smile unwavering. Appreciative. Amused even, in an all too intimate way that filled me with the urge to run. Only Itaghai’s presence, his smell, and the restless shift of his hooves stilled my rising panic.
I pushed Jass down into the straw and he landed with a laugh. The free and easy joy in the sound sent my gaze shying toward the door. None of the others had laughed like that. None of them had smiled so. They had only wanted the ride.
Determined not to let fear win, I lowered myself onto him. He groaned as he slid inside me. He crept his hands to my breasts. He gasped and laughed and wriggled beneath me, but I just gritted my teeth, exerting all the control I could over this man who had happily given himself up to me. And trying not to smell him or look at him, not to kiss him or taste him or feel him, we grunted together in the straw. Jass didn’t last as long as any of the others and I liked him the better for it. We still both dripped sweat by the end.
“Nefer said you were wild,” Jass said, wiping sweat from his forehead and grinning. “You can give me orders any day.”
I had dug a rag from my saddlebag but spun back as though slapped. “What? Nefer told you?”
“Yeah, and when Amsu said you’d ridden him too I jumped at the chance to bring the herd master’s message. I figured I’d do my part to satisfy.”
My cheeks flamed hot. “You thought you’d do your part? Your duty?” I threw his breeches at his head. “Get the fuck out of here and tell your friends I’ll have none of you back.”
The slap of his breeches wiped away his smile. “What? I didn’t mean—hey!” He threw up his arms to keep his sheathed blades from hitting his head, and still naked from the waist down I drew one of my swords from its scabbard. “Whoa! Hey!”
I lowered the tip toward his deflating cock. “I am not a conquest. I am not a joke. I am not a story you tell your friends so they can come fuck me too. I am a captain of the Jaroven and I will cut off your balls if you speak of me with the disrespect one speaks of an animal.”
His bare feet scrambled for purchase on the hay-strewn floor as he backed away from my blade. “Whoa! Stop! I didn’t say—I just—Get that fucking thing away from me! Are you mad?”
Backed into the corner of the stall, Jass thrust out a protective hand to ward off my blade, the other clutching his breeches to cover himself. Fear had widened his eyes and my anger drained like an ebbing tide. Here I was, a Sword captain of the mighty Jaroven, drawing my blade upon another Levanti in a stable yard far from home while the memory of him still ached inside me. Even Itaghai snorted and fretted, his hooves stirring the fresh hay in with the foul.
My hand trembled. I had drawn my blade. It had to taste blood before it could be sheathed and yet the man staring up from the corner deserved no such wrath. The Chiltaens who did were already dead.
Gripping the blade with my left hand,
I spun the sword and offered him the hilt. “I allowed my anger to overthrow my judgement,” I said. “The strike is yours to make.”
Jass’s eyes narrowed before he took the proffered sword. I wanted to clean myself and dress, but I stayed, hands at my sides, and waited for him to draw my blood. Hand? Arm? Throat? He might aim to kill if I had offended his pride as much as he had offended mine.
The blade hovered between us; then, still staring at me, he gripped the steel and ran its sharp edge across the back of his forearm. A thin trickle of blood dripped from the split skin, but he neither hissed nor sought to stem its flow. He handed my sword back. “I’m sorry. I meant you no offence, Captain.” He got to his feet and, leaning against the wall, pulled on his breeches and boots. By the time he had finished I still had not moved. “Captain Dishiva,” he said, and pressed his fists into a salute. With a pat for Itaghai and a grimace for me, he slid past me, out into the night.
The slam of the stall door sent me scrambling into my clothes, my cheeks burning as self-recrimination flooded my thoughts. What had I been thinking? Drawing my sword on another Levanti. And in such a situation. “Oh gods.” I pressed my hands to my face. “What have I done?”
Itaghai made no sound, just watched as I fretted. “I am a fool, Itaghai,” I said. “A fool. What sort of captain am I to—?”
A shout out in the courtyard interrupted my muttering. Another followed, and running footsteps passed. Grabbing my belt, I sped out through the stall door, buckling it on as I walked. A swell of excitement surged toward the gates.
“What’s going on?” I said, catching sight of Captain Menesor e’Qara, accompanied by his second—a scowling woman whose name I could not recall.
“Someone is at the gates,” she said.
“Someone should inform Herd Mas—” Captain Menesor broke off and his scowl became as deep as his second’s. “Someone should inform His Majesty. Jaesha, send someone or go yourself if—”
“I am sure our new friends are capable of that, Captain.” She gestured at the Kisians atop the watchtower. “If there are enemies, I would prefer to remain.”