UW02. Plains of Sand and Steel

by Alisha Klapheke

  “This is the meaning of my life,” Ona said. “To watch Invaders suffer and die. I wouldn’t miss this for her, for me, for you. You must understand that. You’re the one who introduced me to the idea.”

  She didn’t know when Lucca had backed away a step, but he had, and his lips had paled. “I shouldn’t have,” he said. “You don’t even know what you’re so upset about losing anymore.”

  “I lost my life.” Heads turned. Ona lowered her voice. “Now I’m going to watch him lose his.”

  Varol spat words into the king’s face, words in the desert race’s tongue, lovely, complicated, hate-filled words. Ona loved the shape of them on Varol’s deadly mouth.

  When she turned back, Lucca was gone.

  Varol faced the Invaders and shouted something at them in the Invaders’ beast-like language. He grabbed the king by the back of the collar and showed him to his army. The king barked out words and the kyros slammed him against the parapet. Adem lashed the king to the stone and Varol began his bloody work.

  Everyone went silent.

  Each time the whip’s metal tips flashed in the sun, Ona smiled.

  The steel had to be some of the best. They didn’t make anything less in this iron ore city. Despite the amazing cut of the weapon currently ripping him to shreds, the king had been impressively stoic, holding fairly still and not crying out. At the fifth stroke, he lurched and shouted.

  Ona cupped a hand to her mouth to help her words fly. “Is it strange to see your own blood pooled at your feet?” she shouted in the trade tongue, and laughed, loud, though none near her joined in. She stared at the warriors and merchants and wives and brothers. “What’s wrong with you? He is our enemy. He has taken our loved ones and poured their blood on the ground. Why don’t you enjoy his suffering? It’s cleansing.” She laughed again. “I love it.”

  The whip cracked again. Snapped. Whooshed through the silence.

  Varol stopped, handed the whip to Adem, then took a long dagger from his sash. He said something in the king’s ear, pulled the man up by the hair and sliced the golden locks away, dropping them outside the walls.

  The crowd did shout then, and the fighters banged fists on chests and shields.

  Ona rubbed her hands together. It was time for the pig king to die.

  The warriors near Adem and Varol lifted the king and his arms reached out. They pushed him over the wall, and the rope was the only thing left to see from inside the capitol city.

  Varol looked down. His gaze latched onto Ona. She raised her sword, hilt first, and touched it to her forehead, swearing fealty the way Silvanian mercenaries did. She lowered her weapon to see him smiling, and he was the most vicious, gorgeous thing in the world. Heat flooded her stomach and tingled in her thighs and the tips of her fingers. She’d never wanted a man so much.

  A rumbling rose from the Invaders, but she didn’t wait around to see what would happen next. She still loved Lucca, and he needed Seren to live through this. Ona didn’t want Seren to die either, so she had to find the woman and free her before the battle began.

  WHEN SHE FINALLY FOUND LUCCA, he and Nuh were questioning a reed-thin man in the farming district. Lucca grabbed the man by the arms, shook him. From this distance, Lucca looked like a crazy person.

  “Tell him, Nuh,” Lucca shouted. “Tell him his kyros has been tricked and needs him to tell us every single detail.” A curl dropped over Lucca’s face and a dot of spittle appeared on his lower lip. “We don’t have time for this. We have no time!”

  The man let out a string of foreign words, and Nuh released him. Nuh rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and explained. “He doesn’t know anything. No one here has seen her. Or any of the high general—the kyros's—guards.”

  Lucca let out a loud, gritty breath toward the sun. He pulled out his sword and slashed through a sapling with a shout.

  Ona came up behind him. Carefully. He was her friend. But he was a dangerous man. Especially when he was like this.

  Once, right after Ona was promoted to condotierri, Dom had enjoyed enough wine for four people and had jumped onto Lucca’s horse bareback.

  “Let’s race, Ona!” Dom’s words had slurred together like a smeared painting. “I want to see how Lucca’s two ripe fillies perform.” He’d smacked the horse’s side hard and taken off into the black night of the forest.

  Lucca had moved fast, not needing a chant. Mounting the nearest horse, he’d taken off, then returned later with a laughing Dom. Foam ringed the horses’ mouths. Lucca tied them up and spun to face Dom.

  Lucca struck Dom twice with a fist across the jaw, dropping the taller man. His foot on Dom’s throat, Lucca took Dom’s sword and threw it to Ona.

  “Do what you want to him for speaking to you like that. Just don’t kill him. You know what he’s worth in a fight.”

  Ona had cut her initials into Dom’s thigh, a permanent reminder that she’d get her vengeance no matter who wronged her.

  Now, Ona put an easy hand on Lucca’s back.

  “Let’s look somewhere else,” she said, wondering what he’d do if he’d seen her with Varol during Seren’s arrest. “We have time. We aren’t attacking until nightfall, when the moon will show the Invaders’ stupid, overly shiny breastplates, but won’t give them the light to see exactly what we’re up to.”

  He nodded too quickly. His color was high.

  She glanced at his sword and he seemed surprised to see it unsheathed. He tucked it away and followed her and Nuh away from the farm district.

  “I’ll find out where they’re keeping her,” she said. “From Varol.”

  “Why would he tell you?”

  “Even in the middle of a siege a man is a man.” Ona raised her eyebrows. “Bet on it.”

  Lucca’s grin lacked any sort of good humor. “I’d never bet against you.”

  28

  ONA

  “When do we send the first wave through the front gates?” In Adem’s tent, Ona paced a line in front of Varol and his men. Adem ran a hand over his chin, glancing up every now and then from his war map. Nuh and Haris stood beside Ona like her own retinue. “We should wait until we have the group who’ll perform the false retreat at the mouth of the mine.”

  Varol nodded. His finger drew a line down Adem’s map. “Agreed. How many should make up the front division, General Adem?”

  Sweet Bean’s eyes narrowed like he could see the warriors moving along the parchment’s markers. “Three units, I think. I’ll lead them.”

  Nuh made a noise that almost sounded like “No.”

  Ona knew why. Adem was basically offering himself as a sacrifice for the city. The front force would take the heaviest hit as the false retreat unit performed their little act.

  Varol glided past the table and came up close to Ona. The men around them stiffened at the second breach in tradition with regard to him and her and their glaringly obvious physical attraction.

  Sweet Bean looked ready to pop out of his hard shell. “Kyros Varol, please. This is not proper behavior from one such as illustrious as you. The royal line must uphold our—”

  Varol’s fingers started at Ona’s temples, ran down the two sides of her face, and came together at her chin. Ona was clay for him to mold. She sighed. He was cruel, but just. Finally, at long, long last, she’d found a leader worthy of her purpose. She allowed him to tilt her mouth to his where he paused.

  “General Adem, are you my father?” he asked.

  “No, Kyros, of course not.”

  “Then why—”

  “Your father is dead,” Adem said.

  “Exactly so. And so is my brother. You know all the secrets about that.”

  Adem breathed out through his nose. Ona’s stomach tightened. Varol’s mouth touched her ear, made her shiver. Neither men knew everything.

  “Would you agree then, General, that I am the embodiment of our Empire?” Varol asked. “That I am the pinnacle of what it means to be of the Holy Fire’s home?”

  “Tha
t’s why you must act with reserve until you are wed to a woman who equals your beauty and who shows patience and calm.”

  “Must act. Hm. That doesn’t sound like something you should say to a kyros, does it, mercenary?”

  His eyes made Ona dizzy with want. He could order anyone he wanted to fall on their sword.

  “No, it doesn’t,” she whispered.

  “See? Even this lowly, foreign mercenary knows. She’d lead the charge at the front gates if I asked it.”

  “I would,” Ona said, “but I’ll fight beside you, my kyros.”

  “Beside me? I don’t think so.”

  “I thought—”

  “That we were equals?”

  “We…” The room’s heat closed in. Ona searched for the right word. He understood her, didn’t he? “We connected.”

  “We certainly did.”

  “I thought up this plan. You can’t throw me into the fray as a distraction. My unit will be more useful in the second wave, after the false retreat depletes their numbers.”

  “I can’t?” Varol’s voice raised the hairs on the back of her neck. “Kneel, mercenary.”

  She swallowed. “Varol.”

  Adem stepped closer. “You will address him properly, Silvanian.”

  Ona gave in. A rock under the rugs jabbed her knee. She wiped her palms on her brigantine as Varol looked down, his cobra eyes were trained on her, instead of aimed at her enemy. Where had she gone wrong?

  “You will lead the distraction attack,” he said. “At the front. With that unit you and the other mercenary supposedly trained.”

  She would die. She might cut through twenty, thirty Invaders, but there’d be a thousand more and I’d be a sacrifice for this city. Her unit couldn’t chant well enough. Only a few showed true promise. They’d all die.

  “And if I refuse?” she asked, almost whispering.

  A light in his eyes struck out. “Then you’ll lose your pretty hands. Or your head, depending on my mood.”

  “I betrayed my friend for you,” she said, thinking of Lucca’s wild eyes. “And Seren. I kept her under control while you plotted.” Ona thought of the look on Seren’s face when she stood beside Varol.

  Adem pressed two fingers into the bridge of his nose.

  Varol glanced at him, then back at Ona. “Yes, but you didn’t tell me their secrets. General Adem did. And you…” He moved a hand over her head, pressing harder and harder until her neck cramped. “You were a part of their deceit.”

  “Kyros Meric died of a cough and a fever.”

  “You, a filthy, low mercenary posed as my own royal brother in his very bed. You attempted to fool my general.”

  Icy fingers tore at her confidence. She gritted her teeth against the chill. “I was good enough for you and your wandering hands. And I did fool him.”

  His hand struck her cheek hard. Blood heated her lip and dripped off her chin. “Or perhaps my general was biding his time,” he said.

  Adem studied the ground. He’d been tricked by Seren, Lucca, and Ona. But she’d been fooled, too. By Varol.

  Her veins shouted, but her words refused to rise. She stood, pushing against Varol’s hand, rebelling against her own weakness, her mistake, those icy fingers. “I’ll lead the first strike, the distraction. And I’ll slay more Invaders than anyone in history.” For the first time in her life, her voice shook and her words thinned.

  “Of course you will. Because I have ordered it so,” he said. She was choking, suffocating, his words—instead of hers—held all the strength of a chant as they smothered her. “It is truly sad the Invader king told me one truth that none of you could,” Varol continued. “That pig told me a story about a rodent and a lioness.”

  Ona grabbed the front of her vest. Choking. Smothering. She remembered the slur the king had spat at Seren. She hadn’t understood it then, but now…

  “Ah, I see you know what I’m talking about. Are you ever telling the whole truth, mercenary? Forget it. I don’t care. Lucca Hand of Ruination has designed his own ruin.” Varol snapped at two of his personal guards. “Find the male mercenary. Don’t wait to run him through. Do it fast and let it be done. I have better things to worry me.”

  Before Ona could fall to her knees, defeated, Nuh and Haris dragged her from the spinning tent and away from the man she’d thought was the answer to everything.

  29

  SEREN

  Varol’s men moved Seren quickly through the streets, presumably so no one could follow without being noticed. She’d seen Cansu’s face when Varol announced her arrest. He would try to free her. Erol and Hossam, maybe not. They’d merely looked at the ground like they were afraid to meet her eyes.

  And Ona.

  Her friend. Or she’d thought she was.

  Varol’s men walked Seren into the main tent, tugged a hooded cloak over her, and steered her out the servants’ door. The only sound this far from the gathered crowd was the water trickling through the shallow canals as it slipped from tent shadow to tent shadow, hiding from the sun.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  The men stared ahead, their silence as loud as any shout. They passed out of the Kyros Walls, through the back gates, and into the training field. The clay pot weapons made a border between the archery range and the stables. What a waste. Where was the engineer now? Had he escaped? He was probably dead. Another waste.

  Seren could hardly put one foot in front of the other. The sun bleached the sky and scorched her head, turning her high-caste bell into a branding iron. She may’ve been the highest ranked woman in the Empire, but now she was nothing more than a prisoner.

  There wasn’t a soul in the training fields. If the Invaders managed to scale the walls here, they’d enter without a yatagan drawn or an Invader’s sword unsheathed. The idea of steel brought Ona punching into her thoughts.

  Had she been lying this whole time? Had she told Adem Seren had hidden Meric’s death? But why had Ona helped her only to turn on her?

  Varol couldn’t know she was the one who’d posed as Meric. He’d never stomach kissing a woman who’d been involved in that. Not that he’d loved Meric. Well, perhaps he had a little. But his jealousy had been the main player in that drama. The foremost affront to Varol was what he’d see as a humiliation, the dragging down of his royal family. He could verbally attack Meric, but Holy Fire help anyone else who did so.

  How deeply was Ona involved? When had Ona given up on Seren?

  One of the men looked back toward the city as they entered the scorched stables. Seren’s throat closed and she forced a sob down. Her Fig. Someone had dragged the bodies of the horses that had been lost past the stables and covered them in sackcloth. They’d be burned soon. Seren would never run a thumb over Fig’s scarred ear again. Fig wouldn’t nuzzle against her shoulder and make her feel like no matter what problems she had, mistakes she made, that she was enough. At least Fig’s half-brother, the young colt, had survived. She strained to hear his high whinny, but there was only the wind and the men beside her.

  Gray-green scrub grew in tight fists on the hill behind the stables.

  “There is nothing here. You’ve made some mistake,” Seren said.

  They urged her on with the butt of their yatagans, closer to the hill and the empty, dry space stretching to the outer walls. They stopped at the incline’s base and one guard shifted dusty earth from a spot in the ground below a lone tree that had stubbornly sprouted and boasted a handful of leaves. As the guard cleared more sandy dirt, a line appeared, then two.

  Someone had set a wooden frame into the dirt. No. It was a door. A secret door lying against the slight rise in the ground.

  The guards lifted the door and led her down a set of sunken steps. Lamps hung from posts that jutted out of the rough, wooden walls. It was like a mine but without the noise, carts, and tools. Newer slats ran along an opening to the right. This had been a mine a very long time ago. At the end of the passage, they veered left. Bars extended from ceiling to floor,
broken by a latched door of shorter cylinders of iron.

  This was to be her prison.

  The cell shrank and she was miles away. Only habit kept her from grabbing the guards to stay standing. She fisted her hands and her nails branded her palms. Clearing her throat, she ignored the sweat pooling on her lip and along her back.

  “This will be satisfactory.” She lifted the cell door herself and climbed inside before they could force her. “I’ll be very safe here.” A bed of grasses lay against the wall. “Maybe the Holy Fire—oh!—there isn’t a Fire bowl.” If she couldn’t pray, she’d never last an hour. She needed something to focus on.

  The guards traded a look. One nodded. “I’ll bring you one, Pearl of the Desert. It’d be wrong for you to go without in your position.”

  Her position. Was that as a person who’d ruled the Empire for a matter of hours, or as a person who was about to die?

  The lock on the latch door clicked as the guard turned the key. They walked away and left her in the cell. Alone.

  The lamps burned steadily. Silence weighted her ears. Her heart beat, urging her to panic, scream, shout out for help that would never, could never hear. A shush-shush sounded all around and reverberated off the walls like drums. It wasn’t someone coming for her. It wasn’t the pound of hooves or boots. It was only her pulse.

  No one was coming.

  Would the horses—those still alive—startle if she screamed? Would they hear her at all?

  Lucca would’ve searched for her, but she’d sent him away. She pictured his easy smile, his confident gait, and the way his eyes widened as he listened, really listened. Lucca. She pressed her palms together, remembering the feel of his hand, the promise of support. Had he understood why she ordered him to go? The hurt in his eyes had looked so real. He had to know he wasn’t below her, no matter their respective ranks. She’d only wanted to protect him.

  She hoped he was long gone, escaping before the Invaders grew comfortable in their siege and had time to watch for single riders. She imagined him galloping away, his mount kicking up the dust as he drove toward his home full of dark green trees.