by Amy Bai
"Honored to, your Majesty."
"Call me Taireasa, will you? I'm so everlastingly tired of that title."
"If you'll do the same."
"Call you Taireasa?" she asked, letting all the bone-dry sarcasm into her voice that Earl Dolan had been spared, and Kinsey laughed aloud.
"That may take more wine than we have in the kitchens," he remarked, then bowed as Maldyn moved closer to them. "You have duties. Annan and I will see you tonight, Ma—Taireasa."
He left on another bow.
Taireasa tried not to watch him go, but she didn't quite manage it.
CHAPTER 16
The air had a distinct hint of snow on it today.
Having had two winters up here already, Kyali was accustomed to such things, but the soldiers with her sniffed and frowned, like they feared snow would appear by the wagonload and trap them forever in this forest of scrubby mountain pine.
Ainhearag was perky-eared, moving with a floating enthusiasm that was probably both pleasure at being back in her foaling ground and the anticipation of violence. They rode quietly, using hand signs when necessary. Kyali looked only ahead. She could feel the eyes of the men on her and it made her want to kick her horse into a run, enemy scouts be damned, and head for the first place absent of people and their damned endless expectations that she could find.
There probably wasn't any place like that left in the world.
Up ahead, the trees began to change to birch and poplar, a lighter color of bare branches instead of the deep, spicy green of the pines. She raised a hand, making the sign for stop. They did, all six of them, in complete silence.
They were good men. Her father's men.
Her men now, thanks to Taireasa's little trick.
The trees sighed bleakly in the wind. Kyali and her patrol listened, frozen in place, even the horses making barely any movement. After several long and cold minutes, there came a faint crackling sound and then the low, faraway murmur of hushed voices. Ainhearag shivered under her, dark ears all the way up now, tension turning every big muscle to stone. Kyali ran a soothing hand down a cold neck and felt her horse's impatient twitch.
Another crackle sounded through the trees. Kyali drew her sword, heard the whisper of steel clearing sheaths all around her, and set her feet better in the stirrups. Her pulse began to pick up. Her fingers clenched on the grip of the sword.
Snow, she told herself. Ice.
One day, if she kept trying and stayed as far away from Devin and Taireasa as she could, she might learn to feel nothing but cold. It was a worthy goal. It would be so much better than the fire waiting for her every night when she finally let herself sleep.
The crackle came closer. Closer.
Then the brush exploded, disgorging a man on horseback, doubled up in the saddle, swaying ominously with every stride. Danyn Jerin's-son rode close enough that Kyali could see the arrow, the blood coming from where he had his arm wrapped around his middle. His eyes locked on hers, full of a dazed distance that told her just how bad the wound was. She wrapped her fingers tighter around her sword and looked past him, to where the trees were beginning to shudder and the sound of hoofbeats was rolling toward them.
Wedge formation, she signed, and took point without waiting for her men to move around her, just as the first of the Western band chasing her unlucky scout came rattling out of the woods.
They yelled, seeing her waiting for them, and raised their shields. They never slowed.
"No prisoners!" she shouted, and kicked Ainhearag forward, already swinging the sword.
The first man died at the edge of her blade, still trying to get his own sword into position. Ainhearag uttered a high squeal of rage as another soldier's horse snaked past to sink teeth into her shoulder. Kyali drew her dagger and sliced, and that horse went down kicking. Her own, much better horse executed a soaring leap over flailing legs, which landed them right in the thick of a Western band only a little bigger than she'd expected it to be. A sword flashed at her, hitting only the hard steel of her upper vambrace, numbing her arm all the way to the wrist. She slashed at her attacker’s exposed face, barely noticing when his blood arced out, splashing her.
Blows rained over her side, striking the brigandine over her ribs. She leaned, turning the dagger into her sleeve, got a fistful of thick leather, and hauled. That man fell and Ainhearag accounted for him with a single heavy step as they turned to meet another pair of approaching soldiers, shields raised so high they must not be able to see anything but their own hands gripping the bars.
She surged forward again. She could hear the sound she was making, a feral, furious growl that hurt her throat. The sword was just another piece of her, and she found exposed knees, shoulders, necks, drew lines in scarlet on them, listening only to her own raw rage and the deafening thunder of her heartbeat. Her lieutenant Ciaran appeared on her left, swinging his mace. He took out another man with the hateful Arumilian green-and-black shield on his shoulder, delivering a startlingly messy blow that sent the man flying out of the saddle and sprayed blood all over both of them.
Ciaran's face was slack with shock. He reined his horse to a stop, made a gesture like he was going to reach for her, but instead pulled back and said something she couldn't hear past the wild thumping of her own pulse. Kyali sat back in the saddle and Ainhearag came immediately to a halt. She blinked, breathing hard, and looked around.
Looked at her scattered troop, alive and bloody and staring at her with wide eyes; looked at the dead strewn around the tiny clearing.
The sounds of the woods began, slowly, to come back. One of her men was muttering prayers. Another slipped off his horse to stumble into the bracken and be sick. Ciaran, steadying himself visibly, dismounted and went to crouch next to Danyn Jerin's-son where he lay curled on his side under a lightning-blasted elm.
"Is that all of them?" Kyali asked, trying to winnow the rage out of her voice as she spoke, to make her fingers unclench from the sword. Out of habit, her hands found the oiled cloth she always kept in a pocket and drew it out to clean the blade. Her missing dagger was in the neck of a soldier halfway across the clearing. She slid carefully from Ainhearag's back and retrieved it, breathing calm, breathing cold, breathing ice into her burning veins, trying to push away the memory of someone's knife parting her own skin.
She would never be free of it.
Danyn was dead by the time she came to stand next to Ciaran. His face looked younger at rest. His hands were wrapped around the shaft of the arrow that had killed him, as though he had tried, in desperation, to pull it out of himself. Kyali looked at that, not at his face, and thought of snow until it seemed to be filling the space behind her eyes.
She moved away to bend over the body of the soldier bearing the shield of Arumilia on his shoulder and, grimacing, slipped her hands under his armor, seeking the purse most officers carried inside their shirts.
It was there, and it yielded a single folded scrap of rough paper.
Orders. From Tuan of Tharst, who had apparently succeeded his father Cyrnic and taken Faestan's throne.
Perfect.
"Udryn, Kemmel," she said, looking only at the paper. "Ride double. Danyn will have your horse. We should get back."
"Aye, Cap'n," one of them said quietly; it didn't matter which. They raised the body of their fallen comrade carefully and tied his arms to the pommel.
Kyali didn’t look at that, either. It made it too hard to think of snow.
* * *
They met Devin and the Cassdall prince riding with a small entourage of guards down the steep path from the castle and had to stop and pull their horses to the side to let them pass. Trust her brother to pick the worst possible moment for a ride in the fresh air. She couldn't believe he was stupid enough to wander about on a mountain crawling with enemy bands. But that was Devin: risk was just a different sort of diversion to him.
He brought Savvys to a halt in front of them, his eyes gone wide and alarmed, taking in the blood on their armo
r, the silent passenger tied to the saddle on a chestnut mare.
The Cassdall prince reined in as well, blocking the path completely. Kyali let the air hiss slowly from her nose, refusing to speak, change expression, or move until they did so first.
Devin was pressing her again, gods damn it, in that way he had, with all his longing and sadness and that miserable, unbearable pull that he and Taireasa both exerted just by being nearby. It made her want to shout at him until her voice broke. It made her want to rip the second locket she knew he was wearing from around his neck and throw it as far down the mountain as she could.
It made her want to hear him sing that song again, to ask whether he was sleeping any better than she was, whether he had learned how to move beyond what he had lost into what he had to be, and could he show her how.
Ice, Kyali thought, miserable and furious. Fire.
And four dead barons. And the broken, jagged-edged pieces of herself she had to work with.
She stilled the tremor in her hands by gripping the hilts of the daggers on her hips. Her brother flattened his lips, carrying all his wounds right in his eyes where anyone could see them, and looked away.
"I take it we should not ride out today," the Cassdall prince said.
The understatement was bitterly funny. "No, my Lord Prince. Not today."
Kinsey's lieutenant, a tawny-complexioned, intensely irritating man with eyes like a basilisk, nodded calmly. "We'll precede you, then, Lady Captain, and clear the way through the hall. You have wounded?"
Did they? Yes, they probably did. "Nothing serious, but yes."
Kinsey's gray eyes darted from her to her men and, behind her, the still form on the mare that she was trying not to think about. She'd given orders that men died for before this. She was beginning to suspect it wasn't ever going to get easier.
It wasn't the sort of thing her father's officers had covered in her lessons.
"We'll make haste, then," Kinsey said, edging Annan out of the way and turning his horse.
As they followed the Cassdall prince and the Head of what was left of House Corwynall up to the great ironwood doors, the first few flakes of winter came falling out of the skies.
* * *
Being around people in a setting where he couldn't politely get away wasn't an experience Devin wanted to subject himself to, but it turned out that wine helped with that.
He held his glass up for the servants to fill again, breathing in the welcome scent of Orin's famous grapes, and ignored the worried look Taireasa was sending his way. She was sending more than a look, Her Majesty was—her heart had tangled insistently with his almost the moment he'd walked into her sitting room, and right now she was fishing impolitely for answers to his state of general misery.
"You had an uneventful trek here, then?" he said to Curran, dodging Taireasa's gaze and her seeking with effort. Curran's wife Loessa gave a small shudder.
"We had to hide in a cave," she said.
"It wasn't so bad," Curran retorted, grinning. "We thought we heard someone moving nearby, so we took shelter until we were sure we were safe."
"It turned out to be a deadly Sevassian boar," his shieldman Beagan added, perfectly deadpan.
Surprised into a snort of laughter, Devin covered his mouth with a sleeve. "Their most successful export," he said dryly. "No doubt there are many wandering the countryside these days. I take it you saw nothing else?"
"Not once we got past the foothills. We were careful."
And yet his sister, presumably far more experienced in moving about on this mountain, managed to run headlong into a band of the enemy large enough to bloody every man in her own patrol and kill a scout. Devin scowled.
She was obviously trying to draw them out.
Not a stupid notion, but hardly the job of the captain of the army. She seemed to seek out risk and violence now as actively as she avoided friendship and family. It made him want to shake her until her teeth fell out.
He had lost enough.
Kyali was, in fact, late. Taireasa had more or less ordered her to come to this gathering, refusing to hear objections or to acknowledge the indifference the captain of the Exile's Army had to being in the company of friends. Taireasa was getting very good at ignoring such things. She took every sign of Kyali's new and awful coldness with a quiet, sorrowful acceptance that drove Devin halfway mad.
Kyali had no right or reason to treat Taireasa like that.
She might have better reason to shut him out, if she knew their father had died while he was riding in the opposite direction, but Kyali didn't seem to know how to grieve anymore, so he doubted that was it.
He'd ruined what little appetite he had. Devin set down the apple he'd been about to bite into as Taireasa came up behind him, setting a hand on his arm and surrounding him, suddenly, with the steadfast warmth that was herself: her brave, sorrowing, brilliant self. She was extraordinary. Devin yielded, falling willingly now into the sense of her. She was just as sad and just as tired in her own uncomplaining way. Their hearts met in a knot of anguish and affection, possibly a bit too close for comfort.
Too close or not, it was all he had, and he was so very grateful for it.
"Ahem," someone said, and he opened his eyes to see Kinsey looking at them with intense interest. His lieutenant Annan hovered nearby, that serious face full of quiet estimation. Curran and Beagan had fallen silent.
The air was shimmering faintly all around them.
"Oh," Taireasa murmured, and withdrew heart and hand, looking up wide-eyed at the warping air near her head. "That keeps happening."
"Do you do that on purpose?" Kinsey asked curiously, not even a little unsettled at the evidence of magic happening in front of him.
"Not precisely," Devin said.
"It seems to have something to do with—" Taireasa faltered and looked away, obviously embarrassed. "That is, sometimes we can..."
"Share thoughts, yes? And impressions? It's fascinating. I uncovered a book in the library that seems to suggest it's hereditary, but I'm afraid most of the truly informative pages found their way into the mice's nests. Do you think—oh. Oh. I'm sorry. Devin told me, Majesty," Kinsey added, halting his monologue because Taireasa was staring at him in mortified disbelief. Curran and Loessa were listening with confused frowns.
"Taireasa," Taireasa said with odd emphasis. "And I would very much like to read that book."
This time it was Kinsey who looked embarrassed. Devin looked from one to the other, and felt his spirits rise just a little bit.
Interesting.
Hush, he heard distinctly, right inside his head. He almost dropped his glass.
Taireasa flashed an amused glance at him and tipped her head. I'm learning, she added with an echo of laughter and a warm flush of embarrassment—and with such startling force it was like being gently shoved off a cliff.
Devin blinked, tried to remember what he'd been about to say, and had to settle for sipping cautiously at his wine. Then the door opened, admitting his little sister. He tipped the glass all the way back and held it out again, insistently. This time even Annan gave him an uneasy glance.
Kyali shook her head at a servant as she entered, refusing wine of her own. She probably didn't want to risk even the possibility of enjoying herself. The unrelenting black of her trousers and tunic weren't exactly lightening the air of grim single-mindedness that followed her everywhere like a thundercloud.
She looked tired. And irritated, likely at the necessity of interrupting whatever else she did with herself to come here and be with people who cared about her.
He began to think it might be a very good idea to get drunk tonight.
"Lady Captain," Taireasa said, nothing but unruffled pleasure in her tone—Taireasa was disturbingly good at keeping that mask in place. Her heart was churning with grief and a truly appalling weight of guilt, and yet none of it made it to her face. She seemed to realize at that moment that Devin was aware of more than just her words: suddenly he was alo
ne, left with the lingering impression of pain equal to his own and, oddly, alarm.
Hell with it. He was getting drunk tonight. Maybe that would help him sleep.
"I see you recovered from your encounter with the West in time to join us, Lady Captain," Devin said with only a little irony, as Kyali walked warily into the circle they had made standing by the hearth.
Taireasa went pale as parchment. Kyali's eyes flashed once, a rare thing these days, and one callused hand curled and flexed. He could see the muscles in her jaw tighten. "What?" Devin demanded, taken aback. It hadn't been particularly witty, but he didn't think it was worth this kind of reaction.
"Yes, Captain, were there any more casualties?" Annan asked, eyeing Kyali with a pointed interest that seemed to gather more from her non-expression than Devin was managing to. "And do you encounter enemy bands so close to the fortress often?"
"Annan," Kinsey said—mildly, but Devin could see that he'd pressed a foot on his lieutenant's booted toe. The Cassdall lieutenant was sharp as a blade, and about as diplomatically gifted as Kyali herself was. Watching them match stares was like watching two cats stalk the same mouse. At any other time, he'd have enjoyed the sight.
"What is this about?" Taireasa asked, gaze bouncing between them.
Kyali slid a glance at her and twitched a shoulder upward in a detached shrug. "A band from Sevassis was sniffing about today, Your Majesty," she said, her voice as low and calm as if they were discussing the weather instead of a skirmish that had taken the life of one of her men.
—and as though that Your Majesty wasn’t the slap in the face that it really was. He could feel Taireasa gathering herself, holding that perfect mask of composure in place with effort. Devin couldn't help a huff of frustrated despair.
"But why were you out riding… yes. Of course." Taireasa cleared her throat delicately. "Did you learn anything of them?"