A River of Royal Blood

by Amanda Joy

  It would take a week to ride to Fort Asrodei, but my stomach fluttered as if my father waited among the trees. My insides had begun aching when we left the Queen’s Palace. Knowing I would see and confront my father in a week made my chest tight.

  My mother’s soldiers had noticed our appearance and watched Aketo with cool expressions. He stared back at them with utter calm. The soldiers looked away first.

  “If they cause you any trouble, tell me or the Captain.”

  Aketo’s nostrils flared, a sign of annoyance I recognized from our last conversation. “If they trouble me, I will handle it on my own.”

  “That seems wise,” I muttered. I drew in a calming breath. “I haven’t thanked you yet, for saving my life.”

  “Such a thing does not require thanks, Eva,” he murmured, eyes fastening onto mine.

  I smothered annoyance. He wouldn’t even let me apologize properly. “Nevertheless, I am thankful, Prince Aketo, and if there is anything you should ever need—”

  “Call me Aketo,” he corrected, smirking.

  And just that quickly, I wanted to knock his gorgeous teeth in. “Do you really think you can take on those veteran soldiers so easily?”

  He arched an eyebrow. “I’ve been dealing with veteran soldiers all my life.”

  And again I had put my foot in my mouth. Soldiers were the law in the Enclosures. “Is that how you became so skilled?”

  He grinned. “So you’ve been convinced of my skill already? After watching one sparring match?”

  I gritted my teeth for a moment before returning his smile. “I would say yes, but I’m afraid if your ego grows any larger, it may impede on your faculties. Like, for example, your ability to hold a civil conversation.”

  I started walking across the clearing.

  “Wait, Eva,” Aketo said, following. “My apologies, that was childish of me. I watched your fight. You are very good, quick and ferocious with your blade . . .”

  “But?” I looked around, trying to spot Falun’s crimson mane among the tents.

  “ . . . But what you lack in hand-to-hand training makes you easy to read.”

  He could not be serious. I’d thanked him for saving my life, and now he was critiquing my sword fighting.

  “If you’re so sure of that, we’ll spar after we make camp tonight.” Once the words were out of my mouth, an image of Anali on her back in the Sandpits flashed in my mind. And I’d never once beaten Anali.

  “Are you quite sure?”

  I wasn’t. Not even remotely. But Gods, if I could beat him, just his surprise might be worth risking embarrassment. I gave him a smile sharp as any dagger, and said, “I look forward to it.”

  * * *

  We took an overgrown road about a mile off the main road north. It was only a road in a loose sense, packed red dirt about the width of four riders. Azure and lilac-breasted birds careened from the branches overhead, their percussive cries echoing around us. We rode for most of the day and made camp just as the sun was beginning to set.

  Baccha saved me from my match with Aketo. In an effort to extend my limits with blood magick—I could use it only three times before the magick melted away—he’d proposed a combat lesson. We fought at the edge of a field of yellow wildflowers where we’d made camp.

  So far it had amounted to me being battered with Baccha’s blunt practice sword. He wanted me to learn to summon my magick while under attack. Unlike our last lesson, I’d first have to draw his blood through combat to use my power.

  I cursed as I blocked the Hunter’s next thrust. I surged forward, but he deflected my next attack with ease. I’d expected it and dropped to a crouch. The tip of my sword opened a wound on his thigh.

  I scrambled back and wiped the flat of the blade on my forearm. Beneath Baccha’s blood, the tattoo of a sword there became hot and the magick reared up in my mind. I wrapped the blood magick around the sword just in time to block Baccha’s overhead swing.

  I only had to twist the sword to direct the magick. Aiming for Baccha’s center, I struck. Dark red energy shot off the blade; where it touched Baccha, blood sprayed from his chest.

  “Good,” Baccha said through his teeth.

  I barely had time to deflect his next assault as my vision blurred. The light-headedness from my first lesson hadn’t lessened with experience, as I’d hoped. Now pain radiated from the center of my head, an effect of the binding. I hadn’t told Baccha yet, just in case he thought about slowing down my lessons.

  I managed one last slash across Baccha’s stomach with the magick before dropping my sword. I collapsed to the ground beside it. “No more, Baccha.”

  He grunted as he settled down next to me. “That is just as well. This”—he looked down at the wound low on his torso—“needs healing.”

  We watched the sun disappear below the horizon as Baccha’s wounds knit themselves back together. “How did you learn that?”

  His hair was braided back away from his face, the style and complexity rivaling Mirabel’s finest work. Even braided, ribbons of his hair shone like platinum and spun gold. “I learned it from a retired Sorceryn that lived in the Deadened Jungle.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I was born with the ability to heal and glamour, but that is all,” Baccha said, cutting through my thoughts.

  “And what about the rest?” I thought of his mindscape, that vast forest and river that now were enmeshed with my lake. Many of the noble fey, who were descendants of Godlings like Baccha, inherited other magickal powers from their bloodline. Though his father’s line, Falun had a gift of tracking. But if Baccha hadn’t been born with all his strange magick, how had he gained such power?

  Through the bond I felt his contentment as well as his disinterest in my question. Since Mira found those coins from the Roune Lands in Baccha’s rooms, I’d been trying to find a way to tell when he was lying by using the bond. That way I could confront him about it and possibly get some clue on why he had returned to Myre. The duality of knowing Baccha had, if not lied, skirted neatly around the truth while being intimately aware of his emotions made it impossible for me to judge him accurately.

  “It is a long story, Princess. And besides, I’ve already decided what story to tell you today.”

  “Which is?” I prompted.

  He smiled. “I told you of Akhimar; now I will tell you the story of Myre.”

  * * *

  Many years passed in peace since the age of the Godlings, but peace, by its fragile nature, always ends.

  The fey Kingdom and the khimaer Queendom thrived, growing in strength and eminence. But war broke out, as wars do, because the King coveted the lands below the river, because the fields there bore more grain and its trees more fruit.

  But he made one mistake. He’d chosen to declare war during a succession. Khimaer Queens were not chosen by birth or power, but by skill. In every generation there were ten Princesses—one from each of the noble tribes—and when the old Queen died, the succession began. The Princesses were always given a task, one fundamental to the fate of the country. Whoever completed it most skillfully would be chosen as Queen.

  When the Elder council learned that the fey King planned an assault on the capital, they asked the Princesses to find a way to end the war before it began.

  Many Princesses amassed soldiers on the border between their lands—the Great River—and others made plans to assassinate the King. But one Princess, named Aaliya, simply gathered information on the fey monarch, including every rumor that had ever plagued his House.

  On the eve of the King’s planned assault on the khimaer Queendom, Aaliya crossed the river and snuck into the fey army camp. She passed a large tent with the King’s sigil on the front and continued until she came to another.

  It was smaller than the King’s tent, with a sigil of a leopard’s paw on the front. She slipped inside an
d waited. Finally a young man entered the tent. His hair was the color of the sky in high summer, a pale, perfect blue. His skin was tawny brown and freckled.

  Aaliya knew of the strange beauty of their neighbors to the north. Even so, Prince Rhymer startled her.

  She put her knife to his neck and bade him to sit. Besieged in his own tent, he listened carefully to her proposition.

  “If we marry and join our nations,” she told him, “we can save our people from war.”

  “And you will be Queen?” he questioned. “What shall I be?”

  “As my husband, you will lead my armies. You will protect the realm.”

  “And what of my sons and daughters?” the Prince wondered. “Are they to lose the honors of their station, the chance to rule?”

  “One daughter of the fey, I will take as my handmaiden, to one day be married into my line,” Aaliya promised, binding the oath with her blood. “One son, I shall have as my most trusted adviser.”

  It didn’t take long for Prince Rhymer to decide. Aaliya was lovely and her deal was more than fair, but her research had served her more than her beauty. The King had killed his wife in a rage just a year ago and the Prince still hated him for it.

  The next morning they crossed the river together, with the King’s head on a pike. Weeks later, the fey army traversed the river, not for war, but for a coronation.

  They called their new Queendom Myre. In the Godling tongue it meant “no creation without sacrifice.”

  * * *

  I was still thinking about Baccha’s story by the time I crawled into my tent. The image of the Prince and Princess wading the river with the King’s head in tow wouldn’t leave me. I’d never once heard any tales about Queen Aaliya, who had established Myre, which didn’t surprise me. Why would our bards tell stories where the khimaer were the heroes of this country, when humans had done all they could to paint them as villains? I wondered how much House Killeen had done to cover up the past.

  I thought back to my conversation with Aketo in the Palace before Dagon attacked. Then I’d said the truth wouldn’t change Myre, but I’d been wrong. The erasure of the truth already had.

  From the outside, my tent looked the same as the rest in the clearing, but on the inside the canvas was lined with strips of pale blue and soft orange cotton, and three rugs were laid on the ground. It was large enough to sleep three, but only Falun shared my tent. He was already inside unbraiding his hair.

  Aching from the ride and from my lesson with Baccha, I sighed as I sank into the cushions on the tent’s floor.

  “Difficult lesson?” Falun asked. The oil lamp in the center of the tent offered dim light, but Falun’s pale skin was still radiant.

  It had been exhausting, but worthwhile. “It was many things. If I said them all, I would contradict myself.”

  He snorted. “Just like him, then.”

  I rummaged through my saddlebags until I found the coin from the Roune Lands. I hadn’t yet gotten a chance to tell Falun about what Mirabel had discovered while searching Baccha’s rooms in the Little Palace. Why had Baccha said he’d come from Dracol, instead of the Roune Lands? People did not go to the Roune Lands unless they had business there. Perhaps he was trying to keep me from finding out why he’d truly returned to Myre.

  Falun’s face was unreadable while I explained where it came from. He’d finished undoing his hair and stared down at the coin. “What are you going to do?”

  “Keep having our lessons and wait for him to lie again or betray me, I suppose.” I paused, contemplating the wisdom of my next statement. “I saw you two riding together today.”

  Falun blushed. “I recall you telling me to keep an eye on him.”

  “I know. I want you to keep doing it. Just . . . be careful.”

  “I will, Eva.” Falun put out the lamp. “Make sure you do the same.”

  CHAPTER 16

  I LAY ON my back in the dirt, trying to catch my breath.

  Aketo peered down at me. He seemed to be holding in laughter.

  I stood, brushing dirt from my calfskin leggings. “Again.”

  I heard snickering behind me and gestured rudely at Baccha and Falun. They were sitting on an overturned tree with the other spectator to my humiliation, Anali. Every so often she called out advice. “Eva, don’t try to follow his movements. Look toward the next!”

  It was the third day on the road to Asrodei and my proposition to spar with Aketo had finally come to fruition. Yesterday I’d only escaped it by hiding in my tent until supper. I’d been too sore from my lesson with Baccha to contemplate getting trounced again.

  We faced each other again. Aketo licked his lips and smirked. His brown skin was slick with sweat, his horns fading into the dark trees behind him. “Captain, she can’t yet hear, so how do you expect her to sense my next move?”

  “What are you talking about? My hearing is fine,” I muttered.

  “Exactly my point. Fine is not good.” He beckoned me forward. In our first two matches, he’d let me come to him. Perhaps that was my mistake.

  I blew out a breath. “What exactly is it that can’t I hear?”

  “Everything,” he said. “It’s a part of kathbaria.”

  Kathbaria, the khimaer death dancing. That unbelievable fighting I’d seen between him and Anali in the Sandpits before everything went to ruin.

  “Kathbaria is a dance,” he continued, absently rubbing his jaw. “A communion with the world around us. A world with an undeniable pulse, a rhythm and song.”

  He couldn’t be serious. My reaction must’ve been plain on my face, because Aketo sighed. “Don’t take my word for it. Listen to your body, listen to the wind. Can you hear the movement from the camp behind us?”

  Yes, I could hear the creak of horse lines and the crackle of the fire, but the wind? “I don’t think—”

  “If you don’t want to try, then why did you ask?” he said.

  Fair point.

  I watched as he began to sway, just slightly, to music I supposed he’d conjured in his head. I tried to match his posture—balancing lightly on the balls of my feet, right foot in front of the left, hands at my sides, relaxed but ready.

  Every so often curls fell into his eyes and the gold of them was made brighter by the darkness.

  I tried focusing on the sounds of guards just a few feet from us—Kelis’s throaty chuckle, Malto murmuring what was surely a dirty joke, and someone being punched quite soundly in the chest—but it wouldn’t come together. All the other notes were discordant: wind twisting through the clearing, whipping at the tents, the natural stirrings of the trees.

  After a minute, I gave up. I matched his gentle sway and hoped we would move past this soon.

  Aketo’s eyes narrowed. “This will be tedious if you only try for a moment.”

  Not so patient after all.

  I straightened and rested my hands on my hips. “How do you know I’m not trying?”

  “Please,” he muttered.

  I threw up my hands. “Well, I’m not sure what you expect. Random noise cannot just become music.”

  “Provided you listen closely for more than a moment, you will find it.” Aketo moved less than an arm’s length away from me. Too close; I took a step back. He followed, pinning me in place with a glare. “Close your eyes.”

  I folded my arms across my chest, but did as he said. His voice floated between us, low and rich. Sharp. “Now empty your mind and listen. Start with the trees.”

  “What—”

  “The wind through the trees. Focus on one sound, find the music in it, and let your consciousness expand beyond it.” He paused, hand touching my arm briefly. I jumped. “You can’t dance without music and you won’t always have someone around to play it. You must find it.”

  I tried to relax. The wind in the trees made a sound like muted chimes. I could find n
o music in it, though, and soon latched on to another sound—the steady rhythm of Aketo’s breathing.

  The high, clear notes of thrushes in the trees, all while the soft exhalations of his breath kept time.

  I heard feet stepping through the brush and distant movement from the camp. Still, there was no percussion, no bass. And then I felt it—the steady drum of my heartbeat.

  The rhythm of Aketo’s breathing changed, stuttered and sped. I opened my eyes and dodged on instinct. His hand sliced the air where my neck had been.

  I could still hear his breathing, and my pulse raced along with it. The thrushes shrieked as I twisted away from him, their calls shifting to a staccato beat. Under this new rhythm, I ducked and kicked, trying to sweep his legs out from underneath him. Aketo leaped over my leg easily. As I straightened, he caught my arm. With a flex of his, he flung me out and spun me around, until my back was pressed against his chest, one of his arms loose around my neck. Had he been holding a knife, I would’ve been dead.

  Even with my heartbeat thundering loudly in my ears, I could still hear the wind, the birds, and damp wood popping in the fire. The music.

  “I’m surprised you can actually listen,” Aketo said, warm breath tickling my neck.

  I elbowed him in the side, and he laughed against my skin before stepping away.

  Even apart, it seemed I could feel his pulse against my back. My breathing that was matched to his. But if Aketo felt anything, it didn’t show on his face. “Next time, move from one attack to the next without waiting for your opponent to move. It is a dance, after all. You don’t forget the music as soon as you’ve done one step. You’re quick, like a bird. Use that—never hesitate, never slow.”

  His voice cut across the space between us. “Again.”