Mother’s tits. How could this get any worse?
I sat back in the chair, working at the tangles in my hair. When I had them finally combed out, I began the braids I would loop around my head in a coronet. It was a sloppy compromise between the braids I needed and my exhausted longing for a real bed. The fire crackled, and I suddenly wished for my solitude back with such a vengeance I half thought I would throw him out of the room. Yet that would require energy to stand, and I did not think I had enough.
When I could speak without my voice shaking with anger or frustration, I did. “I am willing to believe you do not do this for cruelty. I do not wish to see you commit ritual suicide either, princeling. You will make some G’mai girl a fine s’tarei. Do not throw your life away on me.”
“What cruelty is there, if you think me so fit? I doubt it is a throwing-away, too. In any case, tis my life to do as I please with.”
So stubborn. He would indeed make a fine s’tarei. “You are Dragaemir. Your life is not your own.”
It brought him back to face me. His hands did not curl into fists, but I thought they perhaps wanted to. “I was never allowed to bear my own name until the queen needed my support as the warleader who held K’nea Pass. She struck a bargain with me: the Dragaemir name and my mother’s tomb restored, in return for my support in council and on the field. She no longer needs my support—her Heir is old enough, and her Throne is secure. In any case, I have a perfect right as a s’tarei to seek my adai, and she can no more stop me than she can stop the Ma’Tar.” He had fallen into the personal inflection again, watching me braid my hair. “Where are you bound for next, Kaia’li? Where will you take your s’tarei?”
“I wish you would not say such things.” There went all my plans of leaving him and the barbarian behind. If I accepted Darik as a s’tarei—which I was implicitly doing by leaving the legal question unanswered—then I was honor-bound to take him with me if I left a place. I could not slip out a window and leave him behind as a cast-off serpent’s skin.
“Kaialitaa, do you deny me as a s’tarei?” Again. Quietly. As if it was no large question, one to make my chest tighten and my eyes fill with water.
He would make a fine s’tarei. Guilt prickled behind my wet eyes.
I opened my mouth to say Yes, I deny you, I deny you in truth, which should have been my ritual answer. This was a cruelty waiting to happen to me, and I have not survived so long that I walk blindly into such a trap.
Instead, I heard myself say, “No. I do not deny you. I accept your oath if you choose to swear it, Dragaemir.”
Fool. You are a fool, Kaia. What will you do when he abandons you as your House did?
He actually rocked back on his heels. I was just as astonished. Silence stretched between us as I continued, mechanically, to braid. My fingers slipped through the strands and plaited them as they had done every other night of my adult life I had leisure to perform this little ritual.
He was determined, though. I finished braiding and had just dropped my hands when he was on his knees in front of the chair. That put his face almost level with mine. “I accept you as my adai, Kaialitaa of House Anjalismir. Insh’tai’adai, s’tarei, ai. It is done.” His hands gripped the chair-arms, his fingers sinking into the padding over the carven wood. I thought in that moment that he might have snapped the chair like firesticks if I provoked him. A s’tarei in a rage can do wondrous things, between their training and the Power that is the birthright of every G’mai.
Every G’mai, that is, except me.
I sighed. “I suppose I must, then. I accept you as s’tarei, Adarikaan of the Dragaemir. T’adai assai.”
That simply, it was done. I had given my word, and now could only wait for the worst. Mother Moon, what have I done? I would hardly put it past him to do something rash if I denied him. I will simply not hold him to it when his true adai appears. I sagged back in the chair, as exhausted as if I had just finished a duel. “You have made a grave mistake. Gods grant it does not kill you.” Or break me. I cannot stand this.
“Gods grant.” He watched my face, studying me intently. “I simply regret I did not find you sooner.” His black eyes were lit with something I did not care to name.
“You could have come to festivals.” My tone was not conciliatory in the least. “I attended them until my sixteenth summer, before I ceased believing in miracles and children’s tales. Get the weapons off the bed, except for those you wish to sleep with.”
“I was barred from attending festivals, by order of the queen.” His voice did not alter.
I was so shocked I actually spluttered. “Wha—why? The law…she cannot—”
“Oh, she can, and she did. Since I was past my Test and had no adai, she had custody of me. I am told my mother raved and threatened before she died, and her s’tarei spoke to the queen’s s’tarei, but twas no use. The queen could not risk me finding an adai—and possibly breeding—before her own Heir bonded. She is bound and determined only her daughter shall rule. Once my cousin was twinned, I was a little freer, but I would suspect you were already gone from G’maihallan by then.”
I nodded, blankly, and repeated the story with its usual accents. “I left eleven summers ago. I came back from a practice to find everything in my room gone. Thankfully I had my sword with me.” I was queerly light-headed, exhausted. What more could happen now? All I wished for was sleep, and plenty of it.
He was already moving to clear the bed of weapons and gear. Doryen’s staff had brought my belongings up, to my intense relief. I hated traveling as we had been, with nothing resembling proper gear.
“Why would they do so, Kaia’li?” His voice was so gentle, I could not stop myself from replying.
“Because I reached my sixteenth summer without a s’tarei. And I have no Power. They threw me out.” I realized I was using the personal inflection too, and cursed myself. “I am half-dead with exhaustion. At least let me sleep before you inflict more cruelty on me.”
“What is there in this of cruelty? You should rest. It has been a long road.”
I wish nothing more than to sleep for a moonturn. I hauled myself up, muscle by muscle. Stood staring at the fire, watching the flames lick the wood. “Darik?” I licked my lips, assayed the question. “Do you mean it? Do you think I have Power?”
“I do not doubt it.” No hesitation.
The relief was sharp enough to turn my anger at both of us. ”Then you are a fool. I am a fool too.” I stalked to the bed, threw my robe down onto the wooden floor and dropped down into softness, pulled the blankets up. The sheets were fine Shainakh linen, and I luxuriated for a long breath before Darik snuffed the two oil lamps. Firelight flickered, a dull glow. Tension invaded my body.
I heard the bed creak as he settled on the other side, above the blankets.
“Do not seek to touch me.” If you do, I will feed you a knife, G’mai or not.
“Of course not, Kaia’li. You are not ready.”
That annoyed me so much it took almost a half-candlemark to fall asleep. He said nothing, pretending not to notice the tears I gave to the pillow as silently as I could. He would betray me just as surely as my House had.
It was idiocy. For I found now, in the deepest part of me, that I did not care. I was so hungry for a piece of my home, my kin, my people. Once he found his adai I would be cast adrift again.
I fell into darkness wondering how I could stand it a second time.
Chapter 18
Sharp Memory
We left Arjux Crossing three days later. I rode a pale gray gelding, and there was a packhorse loaded with purchases. I spent a good deal of our coin outfitting us properly. There would be sellsword work in Shaituh to repair the hole in my purse, as well as whatever I could steal.
I was very interested in what the tavern gossips had to say about the G’mai searching for a wayward prince. I was equally interested in what the gossips were currently saying about Kaia, the Iron Flower. My reputation would not exactly suffer if I appe
ared in the company of a Skaialan giant and a G’mai prince, but I was known for working alone—had insisted on it, several times at swordpoint. So twould be valuable to the Thieves Guild, as well as the Shainakh God-Emperor’s Blue Hands or anyone else in the trade of information, to find out who accompanied me.
I was fairly certain I could avoid being thrown into a donjon—after all, I had never been accused of anything illegal in Shaituh, there were merely some things rumored to have been my work. Like the jewels from the collar and cuffs of the Shaikuhn of Shaituh while he was in the embrace of a courtesan—in the same room. That had bought me entry into the Thieves Guild.
I still spared a smile for that story.
Or stealing the treasury of Tak-Himor half blind, and casting the money to the poor on Slumstreet where the wickerwork baskets that passed for houses rattled in the desert wind. Or the shipboard fight with Ylar, the pirate. I had been fevered once again, the sea heaving as much as my illness making me unsettled, and I had…what had I done? The song said I had taken his ship with only one sword, but I remembered I had only disarmed one of his crew, magnanimously refusing to throw him overboard. I was merely taking ship from Hain to Antai during the usual winter lull in sellswording. I spent the rest of that trip sleeping with one eye open, though none of them had tried to kill me. At least, not after I had gutted the coxswain.
Thinking of that winter made me feel sick again in the saddle. I had leapt ship in Antai and sailed to Vulfentown after hearing whispers of work available, entering Shaituh in the company of a band of street performers. People paid good coin to see me exhibit my swordwork, and I attracted the eye of a Shaikuhn’s son. For three moonturns he pursued me, throwing the coffers of his father’s house over my companions. I tried to take nothing, and gave his gifts back as soon as he sent them. He had sought to buy my dinners, and invited me to stay at his father’s house while I recovered from the tai fever. I refused, and he tried to have his Guard drag me. The songs said I was a frigid beauty, who gave the boy one night of pleasure and left him until his obsessed grief drove him to madness. In truth, sick and blind and fevered, I fought him off until his Guard came, and escaped while he howled that he had paid for me, and he would have me.
I do not know whom he thought he had paid, or in what coin.
That winter had culminated in a duel. Snow, ice, one sick, half-frozen G’mai girl running for her life and finally turning to kill the madman who thought he owned her. Afterward, I spent two summers as a mercenary irregular on the Danhai border. Once I was officially in the army, the Shaikuhn could not duel me in revenge.
I would have hated to kill both father and son. They prize their sons, these foreigners; not unlike the G’mai prize their daughters.
It had been irrelevant, the father had died of tai fever the next summer. By then I had been embroiled in the morass of the Danhai plains.
I did not care to think too deeply of that, ever.
We crossed the Bridge at sunup, the great span and causeway arching over the Aijan River, stone pilings sunk into the slow-moving, silt-laden waters. I paused mid-span, as was my custom, and gazed down to where the River poured into the ocean. I looked, feeling the call of the sea that bowed away to a distant horizon, the tide spilling out, and finally urged the gelding on.
I patted the horse’s neck as the Sun mounted higher, morning creeping through gray veils of ocean mist. Darik walked alongside, and Redfist led the packhorse. I should have left the barbarian in the woods, gone back to Hain, spent the autumn doing little bits of thievery and taken ship elsewhere for the winter. Maybe a caravan out across the Y’kani Waste. That would have been interesting, and more to my taste than this.
Darik said little. He had said little since I had accepted him as my s’tarei. Perhaps he did regret his rashness.
I hoped so. I sought a graceful way to break the oath or find a mousehole in the laws, but nothing came to mind. In the cold light of morn, my exhausted inability to fend off his attention shamed me even further. It was not his persistence but my weakness I cursed.
I spent most of the morning in the saddle watching the road change under the horse’s hooves. I thought of nothing that did not require me to break both G’mai custom and godlaw, and that I could not do.
Could I? The G’mai had thrown me out…but the Moon had not. Her laws still bound me.
Darik avoided speaking to me at all.
I did not know whether to be pleased or even more irritated.
The Sun brought out blue lights in his hair, and since I had repaired his shirt and had his weapons-harness oiled, he looked a little more princely. I could now see the echo of the Dragaemir in him, the shape of his black eyes and the curve of his cheekbones. We are beautiful as a rule, the G’mai, but the Dragaemir are known for harsh beauty, the kind that settles onto the bones later in life, a kind of loveliness that hurts to see. My House—Anjalismir—is known for both temperamental stubbornness and a fragile, tensile beauty my mother was said to embody.
She had been very gentle, my mother, while I seemed to have inherited only the stubbornness she had not. None could ever have called me fragile—or beautiful. I had seen my own face in mirrors and found it nothing special, just a G’mai woman. Nothing out of the ordinary at all except my strange golden eyes.
Cursed eyes, to match the rest of me.
Hooves clopped on the road. My head slipped forward, I thought so deeply. He did look like a Dragaemir. I wished I looked more like an Anjalismir. Some of my agemates had been so lovely, the blossoming of our House. Even now, the faces I had grown up with were so clear in my memory. Tormentingly clear.
“A sundog for your thinking, lady,” Darik said, just as I shook the thought away. “Your face is full of sorrow.”
“You look like a Dragaemir.” Why could I not keep my silly mouth shut?
“So I have been told.” His eyes were very dark, catching a gleam from the sky as he glanced up at me. “Does that please you?”
I shrugged, watching the road ahead, curving now between coastal forest on one side and a long sloping fen leading down to the seashore on the other. Salt filled the air, and I heard the distant breathing of the waves as they touched the shore. It was a sound I had sorely missed. “Must it please me?”
I heard a low gruff sound from the barbarian, twisted in my saddle to look back at him. He waved a broad blunt hand at me. “Just me throat, lass. The air here.” He tried unsuccessfully to smother a grin, coughed again.
I turned back to the horse’s ears and scowled. Such an expression would make me look even less of an Anjalismir, and I scowled even harder.
“Now you look even more sorrowful. What is it, Kaia’li?” He spoke in G’mai, damn him to Pesh hell, and I liked the sound of his voice too much. Far too much.
I shook my head. “I am seeking to compass how I am to feed you twain. There is work for sellswords, but tis dangerous, and I cannot thieve with both of you bumbling about.”
“I can thieve, if necessary.” His jaw set again, a stubbornness to match my own. “Should you require it.”
That managed to prick my pride. I took a deep measure of salt-laden air, wishing I was on a ship, the deck thrumming underneath me as canvas snapped in the wind. “I do not wish you to steal for me. If thieving is required I shall do it on my own, thank you.”
“I thought one of a noble House would not stoop to such things.” He stopped short.
Angry heat prickled along my cheekbones. “I do not steal for the money, princeling. I steal for the challenge. And I share what I steal. I only keep what I earn, or what I need to stave off starvation, thank you very much. Those I steal from can afford it.” I realized I spoke in G’mai, using the personal inflection. Again. It seemed he would not speak to me in aught other than my native tongue. “I must eat to live. There is no shame in that.”
Amazingly, he nodded, his hair falling over his forehead. “Agreed. You must have been hungry, when you left your House.” His voice barely reached me over
the sound of wind through dune-grass and trees, the distant roar of the sea.
We merely continued traversing from one subject I did not care for to another. What do you know of hunger, princeling? Have you ever thought of selling your body for a warm bowl of soup? “No more than usual. They did not look for me, my precious kin. I might have starved from their neglect had I stayed, who knows?”
Twas not strictly true, and we both knew it. I would never have starved within the borders of my land, no matter how shunned. Daughters are simply too precious.
Even flawed ones.
“How do you know? I seem to remember hearing of the Anjalismir losing a daughter ten or twelve summers ago.” He had a hand on my horse’s bridle, and looked up at me. “She was the Heir to the House, as I recall. The Yada’Adais sent to the queen to ask for a tracker, but the girl had covered her trail too thoroughly.”
“I do not know the Heir,” I lied. “I was too busy practicing on the drillground.” I looked down at the top of his bowed head. “May we speak of something else? If it would not trouble you.”
He refused to take offense. “As you like, Kaia’li. We are for Vulfentown?”
I nodded, one of my braids swinging forward to tap my right cheek. “We may find some luck there. Doryen told me two pairs of G’mai came through less than a nineday ago, following the others and heading for Shaituh. They should be well gone by the time we reach the freetown, but you may wish to be discreet.” I wished I could see his face while I mentioned the other G’mai. His reaction might tell me something. “Can you be so? I am assuming you do not wish to be found.”
He tilted his chin up and eyed me, amused. “I survived many summers under the queen’s scrutiny because I am discreet; almost painfully so. I am finding it a habit difficult to break.” The corner of his mouth lifted a little, a smile that warmed me though I tried not to be warmed. “For example, I think I might have found you sooner if I had not been too discreet.”
“You were not seeking me,” I reminded him, my hand coming up to touch the hard lump of the necklace under my shirt. The leather vest I had left at the Whitegull thankfully still fit me, and its laces were loose enough to be comfortable. “You sought an adai.”
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