"There are too many Guardians protecting it. I'm sorry, siran. I can't do this alone. I have tried and tried. I am not strong enough." He paused, then added, "And I have lost too many men fighting their men, who are commanded by a relation of Josarian's—a huge, hairy, loud shallah who wields a Moorlander sword and is, unfortunately, a strong fighter and a leader who learns from his mistakes."
"Lann. I know of him." Kiloran scowled. "Tansen no doubt taught that illiterate peasant how to make war on us."
"Lann is not Tansen, but he is more capable than I expected."
"It would have been a blessing if the entire Emeldari clan had perished in an earthquake many years ago."
"They are hard to kill," Meriten said grumpily
Kiloran rubbed his temples and tried to come up with a better solution than offering to help Meriten himself. Gulstan and Kariman, he already knew, wouldn't even reply anymore to a summons for help. The other waterlords were all deeply embroiled in defending their own territories from the Firebringer's loyalists—or else dead. Yes, so many were now dead.
Kiloran didn't admit it aloud to anyone, but since Dyshon's death, his own strength was undergoing the most severe test of his life. Whatever strange force was joining Baran in his claim on the Idalar River and the mines of Alizar, it was growing stronger, taxing Kiloran as he resisted it. Meanwhile, the vast territory under his control needed his constant vigilance, as did the city of Cavasar. It was all more than any one waterlord had ever before ruled, as far as he knew, and now he knew why; it was exhausting.
Still, the Shaljir River must be reclaimed, and soon. So he said to Meriten, "Very well. I will lend my strength to yours."
And when Searlon found Zarien, as his last message indicated he expected to do soon, Kiloran would have a truly effective weapon to use against both Tansen and Baran. Indeed, he would have a great deal more than that when the boy came under his influence.
"We will prevail, Meriten," Kiloran said reassuringly. "Never doubt that. Victory is all the sweeter when it requires such effort, that's all."
Zarien sighed in restless boredom, wondering how long he'd have to wait before Tansen would let him go ashore.
Nothing was right anymore. He had never felt confined or imprisoned on his family's boat, which was smaller than this one, even though he had spent virtually his whole life aboard it before the night he died. However, now that he found himself restricted to this boat for the time being, he felt practically crazy with the desire to get off of it. The monotony of long days at anchor made him anxious and irritable. He was dying for some open space and solitude. He would even, Dar help him, like to go for a walk.
Being back at sea... well, nothing was the same anymore. Nothing was the way it was supposed to be; the way it used to be.
Zarien gazed at the vast cluster of moored boats all around him, peering through the gently bobbing masts in search of a few familiar vessels. The few remaining boats of the sea-bound Lascari...
He didn't want to talk to them. He just wanted to know where they were.
Zarien tried not to think about what he would say or do if he saw them, if they found out he was here. He tried not to... but he nonetheless kept thinking about it, because there seemed to be little else to think about at the moment. Besides, he was tired of the curiosity of this tedious sea-born family with whom Tansen had left him. He was sure they were gossiping about him with the families moored all around them, and he found it embarrassing.
Zarien sighed.
However, at least Tansen was no longer on board. He was once again out of Sharifar's reach. At least there was that.
The voyage here had been nerve-wracking for Zarien, expecting something to happen every single moment they were at sea. And Tansen... Tansen just didn't understand. He still didn't believe. He had no idea how dangerous it was for them to be here, where Sharifar might demand her due at any time. Tansen was sure he knew better than Zarien.
Tansen could be amazingly stupid sometimes.
Zarien was startled out of his private thoughts when Toren Ronall, always a late riser, stumbled over to the railing, still groggy—and still, Zarien saw, reluctantly sober.
"I keep asking them all," Ronall said after a while, "and no one really knows."
"Asking them what?"
"Why they're all here. What they're all waiting for."
Zarien looked up to the peak of Mount Darshon, where colored clouds and flashing lights whirled passionately above the goddess's domain. "Maybe it's the same thing the pilgrims at Darshon are seeking?"
"But why here?" Ronall wondered. "And how do they know? I mean..." He shrugged. "What? One day you hear a little voice in your head that says, 'Sail to the east coast and wait for further instructions'?"
Zarien thought of the stahra which had helped him follow Tansen once upon a time. "Maybe it's more as if... as if their boats know where to go."
Ronall looked up at the sky-piercing volcano. "We're all going to die in a massive eruption. I'm sure of it."
Zarien rather wished the toren could get drunk. Being sober made him depressing company. He looked away... and sucked in his breath when he caught sight of a familiar foresail.
"Is something wrong?" Ronall asked as Zarien fell back a step.
Linyan's boat.
He would know his grandfather's boat anywhere.
"Zarien?" Ronall prodded.
It was moving slowly, careful not to bump the closely-moored boats between which it passed. Zarien's eyes were fixed on it in mute horror. He knew he should hide, lest a stray glance expose him... But he felt frozen, unable to move a muscle.
Ronall finally said, "They're coming toward us, aren't they?"
Panic filled Zarien. "No! They can't! No."
"Well, they are," Ronall pointed out.
Breathing hard as he watched the approaching vessel, Zarien knew it was true. "Someone's told them I'm here."
Ronall straightened up, looking worried and even a little alert. "Who would have done that?"
"Anyone might have told them," Zarien realized with sick dread. This family had indeed been gossiping. A lot, it seemed.
"Why?"
"My tattoos," Zarien said absently, still staring at Linyan's approaching boat. "Anyone can see that I'm a sea-bound Lascari and shouldn't be with you. With Tansen."
Ronall digested this. "So who's on that boat?" When Zarien didn't reply, he guessed darkly, "Your relatives?"
Zarien nodded, hurt and angry that Tansen had abandoned him here to deal with this alone.
"Ah." Ronall sighed. "Not fond of your relations?"
"No, it's... They think I'm... I can't..."
"Just tell me one thing," Ronall said as Linyan's boat pulled so close that Zarien could leap onto its deck if he chose. "Are you in danger from them?"
Zarien shook his head. His heart seemed to stop as familiar faces swam before his eyes. Linyan stood at the railing, a fresh, angry scar running diagonally across his face, from forehead to chin. There was Zarien's grandmother at the helm, and one of Zarien's uncles was brailing the foresail up to the yar...
Linyan's voice was hoarse. "Zarien."
Zarien met Linyan's gaze. Had his grandfather been this old the last time he'd seen him?
"Zarien?" Linyan prodded, his expression dark with confusion.
"Yes," Zarien choked out, ashamed and relieved and scared and glad, all at once.
Tears welled up in Linyan's eyes and streamed down his wrinkled brown cheeks. "We thought you were dead."
"I was."
Ronall's head jerked sharply in surprise. "What?"
"We told that assassin... the one who did this to me..." Linyan touched the fresh scar on his face. "We said you were dead. We saw you die. We said he was looking for another Zarien, not ours. Ours couldn't possibly be alive."
"An assassin looking for me?" Zarien felt his chest heaving. "Who was he?"
Linyan shook his head. "I don't know his name. He was a big man. Younger than your father was. A
handsome man. Well dressed. Very cruel."
"Did Kiloran send him?" Zarien asked.
"Well spoken," Linyan continued in a daze.
"Did he have a scar on his cheek?" Zarien persisted. "And short hair?"
"Yes." Linyan frowned. "You know him?"
"No. But that's what Tansen told me Searlon looks like." And Searlon was looking for him. "I'm sorry, grandfather."
"He seemed so polite until..."
Ronall blurted, "Until he did that to you?"
Linyan touched the awful scar on his face again. "He wanted to know everything about Zarien. Everything there was to know." Now Linyan was weeping again. "He made me tell him... I told him the secrets we had kept. The things no one but you ever had a right to hear from me, Zarien!"
"What secrets?" Zarien demanded.
"Then the Kurvari sailed east, like everyone else these days."
"Who?" Ronall interrupted.
Zarien said briefly, "The Kurvari are sea-bound relations of the Lascari."
"When they finally found us," Linyan babbled, "they said they had seen you, in the Bay of Shaljir. That you were still alive."
"So you didn't die, I take it?" Ronall sounded relieved.
"Oh, yes," Zarien replied. "I died."
"They also said..." Linyan hiccoughed and stared sadly at him. "Zarien, did you really..."
"Go ashore?" There was a heavy silence. "Yes. I was dead for three days and nights. And then I set my foot upon land."
"Um, Zarien..." Ronall said.
"I've been on the dryland ever since," said Zarien. "Looking for the sea king. Looking for Sharifar's mate."
Shaking with a mixture of emotions he couldn't contain, Zarien pulled his tunic over his head. His grandmother gasped as he revealed the dragonfish scars. Linyan cried harder. The sea-born family on whose boat Zarien sailed made a lot of noise, too.
Ronall rubbed his eyes a few times, then murmured, "Dar and the Three have mercy." He reached out a trembling hand to touch one of the enormous scars that covered Zarien's torso. "You're telling the truth, aren't you?" Then the toren hung his head over the railing and was sick again.
Chapter Eighteen
A powerful friend is worth
all the diamonds of Alizar.
—Silerian Proverb
"Najdan!" Tansen thought he had never been so glad to see anyone in his life, not even Mirabar, who looked like a real torena in the elaborate headdress and wig she wore, mounted on a fine mare that trailed behind Najdan's gelding. Tansen wondered briefly about her expensive clothing and the elaborate quality of the horse's bridle and saddle... and then remembered that Mirabar was now a waterlord's wife, supported by more wealth than most toreni possessed.
He fed his heart with the sight of her as she road into Gamalan behind Najdan, but only for a moment. His mind was too filled with panic, caused by what he'd recently learned, to let him feel all the things he had expected to feel upon seeing her again. For now, he just thanked all the gods above and below that Najdan was here. Then he saw another woman behind Mirabar—whom he quickly recognized as Faradar, Elelar's pretty maid.
Tansen frowned suspiciously at Mirabar. "What's going on?"
"We're looking for Elelar," she said as Najdan dismounted and moved to help Mirabar dismount, too.
"Now?" Tansen added in confusion, "Here? In Gamalan?" He glanced at Faradar. "With her?"
Faradar crossed her wrists and bowed her head. "It's a pleasure to see you, too, siran."
"What's going on?" Tansen repeated. He couldn't believe that anything would have convinced Faradar to turn against Elelar and help Mirabar kill her.
Apparently realizing her disguise was no longer necessary, Mirabar pulled off the wig and headdress, which she tossed carelessly on the ground. Her brilliant red hair was flat and dark at the temples with sweat. Her glowing eyes were anxious and exhausted as they met his. And her brief, blunt explanation stunned him.
Elelar... favored by prophecy and destiny, then abducted by Cheylan and now in terrible danger.
Elelar... No, he supposed he would never stop caring what happened to her, even if that made him a fool.
"You have no idea where to look for them?" he asked, leading Mirabar toward one of the few buildings still standing in his abandoned village.
Faradar, who had also dismounted, bent to retrieve the fallen headdress and wig, then followed them. Najdan told one of the many men milling around to take care of the horses, then followed them, too.
Mirabar rambled vague descriptions of a cavern of fire and water as Tansen led her inside and found a stool for her. She slumped into a sitting position and kept talking, pausing only long enough to let Faradar make her drink some water. Both the maid and the assassin studied her with obvious concern. Her face looked drawn and her cheekbones more prominent.
"Have you been unwell?" Tansen interrupted.
There was a stunning silence as the three people with him exchanged uncertain glances. The awkward moment dragged on, as if there was something they needed to tell him but which none of them was willing to be the one to say.
Then it hit him like a blow from behind. "Fires of Dar, it's happened, hasn't it? You're pregnant."
"Yes."
"With Baran's child?"
Mirabar frowned. "Yes, Baran's child. Whose child would I be carrying?"
"I didn't mean... Um..." Tansen lost track of his words and decided to stop speaking before he said something even stupider.
He should have expected it—it was why she had married Baran, after all—but Tansen nonetheless felt as if someone had kicked him in the chest. Then fury flooded him as he thought of her, in her condition, traveling across war-torn Sileria, where every living waterlord and assassin would leap upon the chance to murder her while she pursued the ruthless Guardian who had already betrayed her and abducted another woman.
"How could Baran let you make a dangerous journey like this?" Tansen demanded. "What in the Fires was that madman thinking?" He turned on Najdan, pleased to have a convenient target for his anger. "How could you do this?"
Najdan scowled back at him. "This isn't my doing."
"You're supposed to protect her!"
Najdan unleashed some temper of his own. "Don't try to blame me. You should know by now—"
"Stop it!" Mirabar snapped at both of them.
"You shouldn't be here," Tansen said to her, nonetheless wondering how he had lasted so long without seeing her. Even now, weary, bad-tempered, and carrying another man's child, her presence filled him to brimming again, after such a long, empty season without her.
"There's no one else who can do this, Tansen," she said quietly. "There is only me. Baran understands that." Their eyes met. "I need you to understand it, too."
Now he felt it, that horrible mixture of emotions—desire, jealousy, impotent anger, love, loyalty, loss, sorrow. Oh, yes, Tansen felt it all now. He wanted to curse Dar, but he supposed that would only upset Mirabar. So he took a steadying breath, forced himself to focus on the task at hand, and said, "You heard I was in Gamalan and came for my help."
"Yes," said Mirabar.
"I'm glad." Their eyes met again, and he knew he would lay the world at her feet if it was what she asked of him. As it was, now that he had agreed to help her, he had no idea what to do. "How will we find Cheylan and Elelar?"
Her golden eyes clouded with tears of frustration. "I don't know. I've tried so hard, and I just don't..."
"Shhh, sirana." Faradar put a hand on Mirabar's shoulder and said to Tansen, "She needs to rest."
"No," Mirabar protested. "I need to—"
"Rest," Najdan said firmly. "Even if Cheylan came to us right now, how could you defeat him?"
"You're going to fight him?" Tansen asked worriedly.
"I don't know what I'm going to do," Mirabar admitted. "I just know that I have been chosen to protect Elelar and the child she'll bear, and that's what I have to do."
She was still the same in every way that mattere
d. And therefore no easier than she had ever been; but he hadn't been made for an easier woman. "Then I'll do whatever I have to do, too," he promised. "But for now, they're right, you need to rest. You look terrible."
Mirabar gave a trembling puff of laughter. "Thank you."
Najdan shook his head. "You have never known the things to say to a woman, have you?"
"Both of you," Faradar said, "please go outside while I make a comfortable place in here for the sirana."
"Don't wait on me," Mirabar snapped. "I don't like it."
"I'll get her bedroll," Najdan said to Faradar, who nodded. The assassin left the humble dwelling. Tansen started to follow, then paused at the door. "Faradar."
"Siran?"
"I believe Radyan will be very pleased to learn you're alive and well."
She lowered her eyes. "You will tell him?"
"Next time I send a message to Shaljir." It was too dark in here to be sure, but he thought she was blushing.
"And will you tell him that I..."
"Yes?"
"Um... Nothing, siran," she mumbled, turning away.
He smiled. "Yes, I'll tell him that, too."
"Thank you," she said faintly over her shoulder.
He glanced at Mirabar again. "Do you want something to eat?"
She made a face, which he assumed meant no. Najdan returned with her bedroll, which he handed to Faradar. Then the two men left the two women alone together.
Out in the arid sunshine, under a sky streaked with smoke and ash, Tansen remarked, "The sirana seems a little temperamental."
"You'd be surprised at how much she's improved, actually," Najdan muttered. The assassin gazed around the ruins of Gamalan, his eyes taking in the dozens of men gathered here, tending their weapons, mending their shoes, chatting quietly in the shade. Most of them politely ignored Najdan now that they knew he was a friend of Tansen's. "So this is your truce meeting."
"Not yet," Tansen said. "The Marendari and the Moynari, as well as some other clans, are here. But the Lironi haven't arrived yet and I'm not sure when they will. And I have to be here when Jagodan comes."
"Naturally."
"Yet I was about to leave," Tansen added. "So I'm very glad you're here, Najdan. More than you can imagine."
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