Her skin went clammy. “You mean… the size of Trom dragons?”
Chuffta went very quiet. Finally, “I never thought of it that way.”
“I thought you told me you’re not related to those monsters.”
“We’re not!” He sounded fully insulted.
“You said it was like comparing a house cat to one of the golden desert jaguars.”
“Exactly.”
“But those are related creatures—just different in size and wildness.”
“And intelligence. Don’t forget that the Trom dragons are stupid beasts that lack derkesthai intelligence.”
“How do you know?”
“Why else let the Trom ride them?”
“That’s no answer.”
He stayed silent a moment, then, sulkily, “They look stupid.”
She was saved coming up with a reasonable reply to that by Lonen and Priest Robson turning to her.
“If you think she’s up to it, boy, and you think you can get Her Eminence to assist, then I’ll play my part.”
“She’s up to it,” Lonen assured him.
Those spectacular brows drew together, sending them into an even more impressive pattern. “What say you, sorceress—you’re willing?”
Oria looked past him to Lonen, who nodded encouragement. Trust me. Oh well, not like she had any other options at this point. “I’m willing.”
“All right then. Travel safely under Arill’s hand.” The priest closed the text with a thump, nodded decisively, and left without another word.
Oria waited for the sound of the outer door closing. “What did I just agree to?”
Lonen came to her, standing behind her chair and filling his hands with her hair, sliding his fingers through it. She’d become so accustomed to this lulling ritual that her eyes half-closed, and she wanted to purr like one of Chuffta’s house cats. “It means more than I can express,” Lonen said, in soft, slightly rough voice, “that you agreed without knowing.”
She shrugged a little, tipping her head back to look up at him through her lashes. Her fierce warrior. They were in it together, for better or worse. “You asked me to trust you.”
“I appreciate the leap. I know that’s not easy for you.”
Perhaps not—but easier every moment she spent with him, it seemed. “So what did I agree to?”
“You’re going to be my second in the duel.”
Her eyes flew open wide. “I’m what? I can’t do that!”
“There’s no one else I’d rather have at my back. Priest Robson checked ancient law, and in the absence of other immediate family able and willing to serve as my second, my wife can fill the role.”
“I’m no warrior—I can’t fight your brothers.”
“With magic you can.”
“But…” She trailed off, realizing. Travel safely under Arill’s hand. “That’s why you asked if there was enough magic in the leaf. And why we’re journeying to find a better source—or for me to confront the wild magic.”
“Yes. Also, we need a sponsor for our wedding in Arill’s Temple, since Nolan has lodged a protest to the marriage, along with tonight’s challenge. We need someone with greater authority than he has.”
“Don’t you, as king?”
“I did, but no longer—not with the challenge live. Until we resolve it, we’re equal in authority.”
“That sounds like an unreasonable system.”
“It’s an old system,” he admitted. “But typically a challenge would not be left unresolved for long. It would either be settled immediately or at first light the following day.”
That’s why he’d hustled them out of the great hall so fast. “So Nolan expects you to fight in the morning?”
“Yes, be we won’t be here. Baeltya will be here soon to give us one more treatment that will last a while, then we’ll sneak out before dawn.”
“Won’t that be you conceding the challenge?”
“No. Priest Robson confirmed that Nolan must wait seven days to declare me dead.”
“He was thought dead longer than that,” she pointed out.
Lonen rubbed the scar around his eye. “So many men lost in the war, we never got around to the formality of declaring all the missing as dead. It seemed unnecessary at the time.”
“And now we have to sneak out of your own palace.”
His eyes sparkled. “It’ll be fun. Like escaping Bára again.”
“That was not fun.”
“You felt very nice bouncing on my shoulder, your breasts all soft on my back, your adorable bottom high in the air.”
She closed her eyes and groaned. “Only you.”
“You love me for it.”
“Maybe,” she conceded. “So who has this higher authority to sponsor a wedding in Arill’s Temple?”
“Someone fortuitously living very near the lake I planned to take you to.”
A note of hesitation in his voice alerted her and she squinted at him. “Who, Lonen?”
He gave her a lopsided smile. “My mother. Her Eminence, the former Queen of the Destrye.”
All she needed. One more impossible Destrye woman to make her life miserable.
~ 11 ~
As promised, Lonen woke her in the early hours, when all was dark and still.
Though how he knew the time, she couldn’t fathom. Even had the windows been uncovered, there wouldn’t be any hint of sunrise yet. Pilaryh came to help her dress and pack her final things—something that surprised her, until Lonen curtly told her he wouldn’t give anyone access to her who wasn’t utterly loyal.
Apparently, although he’d told Oria numerous times not to be concerned about Nolan’s challenge, Lonen had been expecting it. She’d been through the same with Yar. Hoping one’s potentially traitorous sibling wouldn’t do the worst was one thing. Being blind to the possibility was another.
Pilaryh dressed her warmly in layers, including wonderful wool stockings lined with fur that went all the way up to her crotch, held up by ribbons attached around her waist. Short bloomers would allow her to answer the call of nature without having to get chilled. Knee-high boots, also fur-lined, would keep her feet warm. Then layers of skirts and wool petticoats, the light indoor cloak she’d worn to dinner, and then another that Lonen produced, made entirely of incredibly soft white fur.
She stroked it, wondering at the texture. It wasn’t alabaster white, but had a dappled pattern when she turned it just so in the light. A kind of faint striping of shorter beige and gray hairs mixed in with the longer ones.
“What kind of animal did this come from?” She wondered aloud.
“You’re not telling me you’re going to refuse to wear it,” Lonen said.
“Did I ask after its name? I’m wearing half a dozen creatures’ former skins already,” she retorted. “I’m hardly going to draw the line now. I was simply curious.”
He ran his hand down the fall of her hair. “I apologize, love—I’m on edge. It’s a shadowcat. They live in forests farther north. The color and dappling makes it ideal for blending with the snow. There’s a hood as well, to cover your hair.”
“There’s your one for the day.” She smiled at him. “I’ll hardly be invisible when I’m otherwise wearing scarlet clothing, riding a big black warhorse, and hanging out with a fearsome Destrye warrior.”
Lonen grinned. “There are times to stay hidden and others to been seen in powerful ways. We’ll be doing both.”
They crept out of the palace, Chuffta scouting ahead of Alby—though the guards on duty who saw them looked steadily past. Lonen and his loyal attendants. How did he assess who would keep his secrets? She wouldn’t have known in Bára. Well, at least she hadn’t until the city fell to the Destrye and she found herself having to make decisions. At that point, most people had made clear where they stood. Some offered unequivocal loyalty, others—like her perfidious brother—made everything more difficult for her.
The tricky ones were those who seemed to change like a flower t
hat follows the sun, forever adjusting to face whoever held the most power.
Banked fires lit a few rooms, but only enough to make the enormous log walls loom like sleeping giants. A few guards manned the great doors, opening them just enough when Alby spoke to them for their stealthy party to slip through, the snick of the locks behind them loud in her ears. She hadn’t much liked being closed in, unablt to look out of the windows, but by the time they exited the final door, Oria felt exposed, and not only because the chill settled against her skin.
Below, the shanty town gleamed here and there with lanterns. Mostly, though, the pre-dawn dark loomed with oppressive, cold quiet. To the side, Buttercup whuffed a greeting, steaming breath billowing out, and she skipped with glee to see him, cupping his big head in her gloved hands and blowing softly into his nostrils. The groom who’d brought him made a sound of distress, throwing out a hand to stop her, but Lonen told the boy not to be concerned.
Slipping off one glove to feel the warhorse’s mind better, Oria leaned against him. Buttercup would never harm her. He smelled of sweet hay and heat, his mind fierce, eager—and excited for what the day might bring, much like Lonen’s state of mind. Buttercup didn’t think in focused words as Chuffta did, but he possessed a certain kind of sense. He seemed pleased to see the derkesthai, too, huffing and bobbing his head when Chuffta landed on the saddle and snaked his head around to peck at the horse’s neck in affection.
“Up you go,” Lonen whispered to her, grasping her by the waist and lifting her into the saddle, Chuffta winging up to clear the way. The groom held Buttercup still for them, so she didn’t need to. Even with Lonen’s height and strength, she had to grab hold of the saddle and haul herself onto the massive stallion. “Scoot forward,” Lonen murmured, then was up behind her before she knew it.
“I’m riding in front?” she asked. “The saddle feels different.”
“I had it redesigned.” His breath caressed her ear as he leaned to speak into it, a warm shiver going through her. He rearranged her shadowcat cloak, more forward, snugging her up in the vee of his powerful thighs and adjusting his own cloak around them both. Wrapping an arm around her waist for good measure, he took the reins and nodded to Alby.
“If anyone asks,” he said quietly, “you know only that your king requested his steed and left, nothing more.”
“All know I do your bidding, Your Highness. There’s no crime in that loyalty,” Alby replied with hushed fervency. “May Arill hold you in her palm and grant your swift return to take and hold the throne, my king.”
“Good man.” Maybe Lonen’s voice roughened a bit because of the need for quiet, but Oria suspected there was more to it.
They rode through the maze of buildings, hoods up, Buttercup stepping with that stealth so uncanny for his size and boisterous nature. They crossed a bridge over the moat. As Pilaryh had told her—it was filled not with water but with sharp spears all pointing toward the perimeter. The road crossed a short cleared area, then passed between two huge trees that stood as quiet and unmoving as the sentries back at the palace. As the lantern light disappeared behind them, the shadows of the deep, old forest settled around them, only the faint gleam of snow and Chuffta’s ghostly form showing against all the shades of black.
Somewhere beyond that dense canopy of limbs, the moons would be in the sky. At least Grienon, in his swift passage. Sgatha might have lumbered already beyond the rim of the world, not to return for some time. Oria had lost track of the moon cycles, even time itself.
“More room,” Lonen said, as if they’d only paused in the conversation, “to put the saddle bags and supplies behind me, and better for Buttercup to have the weight back over his haunches. Also,” he squeezed her waist, “I feel better having you where I can hold on to you.”
“I’m not going to fall off—my seat is much better than that by now. I could probably have ridden my own horse.”
“This is faster and safer.” He dropped a hand against her bottom and squeezed again, nuzzling against her hood. “And more fun. Though I’ll agree your seat is excellent.”
“Is sex all you think about?” she tried to sound tart, but his flirting warmed her. It was nice to be just them again, without all the people around.
“Not all,” he sounded close. “When you’re not anywhere I can see you or touch you or smell you, then I think about other things.”
“Like redesigning saddles and which of your people are loyal enough to compile supplies and sneak us out of the palace.”
“Those things, too,” he agreed. “I also think up ways for us to pleasure each other, now that we’re both healthier.”
“Unfortunately, all your scheming has resulted in us no longer having a bed.”
“I think something can be arranged.”
“In the middle of a forest?”
“You’ll see.”
“Tell me.” But he refused to say more about it.
She dozed a bit, then woke to growing light, perfectly warm between Lonen and Buttercup’s combined body heat, along with the lusciously soft fur of her cloak. If only she could wear it all the time, she’d never get cold. Perhaps she could have more garments made of the shadowcat fur? She had to mentally shake her head at herself—what a long way she’d come from refusing to eat meat on principle to contemplating how to divest more shadowcats of their hides.
“We all live at the expense of something else,” Chuffta pointed out from wherever he flew above or beyond them. “It’s neither good nor bad. It just is.”
“I just feel like I’m becoming more Destrye all the time—barbarian and predatory.”
“Bára preyed on the Destrye, who definitely have names.”
He had an excellent point. Perhaps she’d always been the worse predator, like the great cats, hunters so lethal they could afford to spend most of their time napping in the sun. An image uncomfortably close to how her life in Bára had been, lolling in the shade of silk screens during the heat of the afternoon, the lush luxury of her garden, the beauty of the city.
“You’re forgetting all the time you spent studying, meditating, training to be a priestess and striving for hwil in order to master your magic.”
She had sort of forgotten some of that, how intensely critical mastering her magic had seemed back then, how attaining her mask had seemed more important than anything in the world. As small as her world had been then, she supposed the mask had loomed that large. Since then she’d gained the mask and lost it just as quickly—and so many concerns loomed far larger.
Perhaps that’s how life worked. She’d left the worries of her girlish self behind, maybe washed away by the bore tides of Bára, and she had the concerns of a woman now. One day she might have the thoughts of a queen, or a mother, or a crone. Strange to consider.
For now, it was good to be in the moment.
The light grew brighter, not just from the sun rising. The forest had thinned, with the trees slighter here, more spaced out. The road they followed approached a clearing. Though snow covered it all, the burnt remnants of what must have been a good-sized house tumbled black and collapsed. An extensive garden had been laid out, with barns beyond and still-standing fences that ringed empty paddocks containing only pristine snow. Nothing stirred.
It all reminded her forcibly of the images in Baeltya’s mind, of the people and animals bleeding and crying all around the little farm. Not this one, but very like it.
“What happened here?” she asked, though she knew.
“Golems,” Lonen confirmed. “Years ago, though. Before we set out to find Bára. And not necessarily an actual golem incursion. Most of these outlying farms were abandoned as water supplies dried up and because it was simply too risky to be so far away from help.”
“Do you know that’s what happened here for sure?”
“No, I don’t know which family had this place. I never had much occasion to pay attention to such things.” He had a frown in his voice for that.
“Then how are you so ce
rtain?” The road curved around the desolate farm, climbing a hill behind it.
“Mostly logic. We’ve been riding at a good pace for about three hours—and Buttercup’s walk is faster than most horses. That means a rider going for help at a flat out run would take that amount of time to get to the palace and back, which is much too long. Also, the gates are closed on the paddocks, which means an orderly evacuation.”
“But they burned the house?” She studied it again. Knowing how careful the Destrye were with flame, it seemed unlikely to be an accident.
“Ah.” Lonen was silent a moment. This time when he snugged up against her, it felt more like him seeking comfort than flirtation. “That no doubt happened when the Trom attacked.”
Oh. “They attacked here—this little farm?”
“Yes and no. Wait a moment, and you’ll see.”
They continued along the road, which ascended more steeply. The deep woods returned, the huge trunks full of their own quiet. But among them now were scattered boulders and the occasional jagged upthrust of rock. Granite, the color of Lonen’s eyes. Buttercup’s breath billowed in clouds by the time they reached the summit of the switchbacking trail, and the trees abruptly gave way to a startling vista.
The stood at the edge of a dramatic drop, the land below a flat stretch of snow-covered fields, patchworked by an array of wooden fences. Some sections of them had collapsed, others had burned and ended in nothing but snow. If she could reach out a hand to brush the snow away, there would be scars of burn and ash continuing in a line along the ground.
Lonen dismounted and held his arms up to lift her down, steadying her when her cramped legs protested, stiff after a few hours of riding. “I’ve already lost my riding endurance,” she muttered.
“You’ll get it back quick enough. The first day is always the hardest. And Buttercup might have a pansy name, but he’s a big horse.” Lonen slapped the warhorse on the shoulder with affection, sending him to lip at the snow in the pockets of grass along the otherwise windswept cliff’s edge.
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