by Amy Bai
Annan looked away first, which was interesting. He supposed even his unflappable master of spies was entitled to a twinge of sympathy now and then. A rock couldn't have remained unmoved, witnessing that.
"Bed," Kinsey agreed, wiping at his face again, because damn it, he couldn't seem to stop leaking tears. It was embarrassing, or it would have been if he had the energy to care. Annan hunched a shoulder, folded his arms, and heaved a gusty sigh. The man looked about as unsettled as he ever had, actually.
"But first…" Kinsey said, and turned to pull out a bottle of the Fraonir liquor Devin had given him, a dusty thing full of clear and somehow bright liquid. Annan looked at it with something approaching horror, which was a rather odd reaction, and then his broad shoulders slumped.
"Aye," he said, and went to retrieve a glass.
Two glasses.
"You're drinking with me, are you?"
"I am tonight."
Which was as much as he needed to know, Kinsey decided. It didn't look like Annan was in a talkative mood. He never was, when it came to himself. Kinsey poured generously, peering at the liquor curiously. Annan's dour look was telling.
"You've had it before?"
"Once, my Lord Prince," Annan said flatly, lifting his glass. "To new homelands," he proclaimed, and raised one defiant eyebrow when Kinsey stared at him.
"To new homelands," Kinsey agreed hastily, trying not to grin.
They drank, wincing.
* * *
Dawn was breaking in the east. The cold sunrise wind whistled around the tops of the fortress, kicked up sprays of snow from the rooftops, carried it spinning and glittering off the edges of the world. The trees began to have definition, shaping themselves out of the dark as the sky paled.
Kyali leaned against the battlement wall, watching, discovering that she was hungry for the sight of the faint pink light of the sun's first push toward the world, for the way the land drew itself in grays, then whites, then golds as morning broke over the mountains.
Her eyes were puffy and sore, and when they teared up again at the sight, they were also frozen. She rubbed at them, weary beyond words… but better, so much better.
She had gotten so lost. She was so lucky to have friends who loved her enough to bring her home.
An arm, heavily cloaked, leaned on the stone wall at the edge of her vision. Devin's presence, tired and sad and satisfied, settled against hers. It took her breath away. She wondered if she'd ever get used to that.
"I haven't yet," her brother said, eyes on the sunrise.
"Well, I may before you do," Kyali said soberly, but she couldn't keep the smile from pulling her lips up when he sent her a look of offended challenge. Her face wouldn't stay still this morning. Devin snorted, then shut his eyes and breathed carefully, face working.
"Gods, I missed that," he finally said, his voice gone a little watery. "I can't tell you how much I missed that."
"I can do it more often," she promised, and Devin barked out a strained laugh.
"You can try, wight."
She looked at the sunrise, trying to bite her lip hard enough to make it stop trembling. She was very tired of crying. "Minstrel," she shot back, and lost the battle as Devin pulled her into a ferocious, cloak-muffled hug like being mauled by an affectionate bear. He'd gotten bigger somewhere along the way: he was half a hand taller than she was now. That was going to be annoying. "I missed it too," Kyali said into his shoulder, spitting fur. "You've no idea."
"I love you."
"I had that much figured out, actually."
He didn't rise to the bait this time. Just held on, while the wind got colder and the light got brighter, and that was all right. He knew what she couldn't say, and she knew that, and it was all right.
"You two are going to freeze out here, and you would make particularly poor statues," Taireasa said, appearing more or less soundlessly. They jumped apart like thieves caught in a shop after dark. Devin swiped a sleeve over his face. Kyali sniffed hard, which gave her away completely—but there was nothing she could hope to hide from these two anyway. Taireasa was a blaze in her mind, like another sunrise.
"We'd make lovely statues," Devin assured her earnestly. "Dignified. Imposing."
"…Dripping."
"Just Kyali," Devin said. "Such a dramatic one, that girl, always weeping all over everything. Should have been a poet. Can't turn a phrase to save her life, though, it's very sad."
"Oh shut up, you—"
She couldn't finish; she was laughing too hard. Kyali leaned back against the wall, stuck between mirth and grief, and put her hands over her face, breathless, bewildered, hurting and healing at the same time. "I don't know what to do," she said through her fingers.
Taireasa leaned on the wall on her other side. Taireasa leaned in that other way, too, a heart as broad as the sky folding around hers, holding memory and certainty, pain and love, a faith as unshakeable as the rock this fortress was built on. Friend, confessor, fellow troublemaker, queen. Other half. Kyali lowered her hands, put one on Taireasa's shoulder. She would have to learn these gestures again. They didn't come easily. But they were worth the effort. Anything was worth the effort, to see the way Taireasa's face lit from the inside.
"Come inside now," Taireasa urged, leaving so much unsaid. And not. It was alive in her brave, perfect heart, flowing between them: the way home. "We can figure the rest out later."
The sun climbed over the edge of the world in a wash of fiery winter light, falling on the three of them, bringing every stone and branch into sharp relief. Taireasa turned her head to watch it. For a moment, she was a girl by a river, features alight with wonder. For a moment, the whole world might have been as still and peaceful as this tiny corner of it seemed.
"Yes," Kyali said, throat too full for more, and followed them in.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
No writer is an island: we just look like them, from a safe distance. Up close, if you can get past the mountain of spent pens and dirty coffee mugs and crumpled pages, you will find a complicated web of family and friends, editors and publishers, teachers, coworkers, peers… and the occasional total stranger who, through some overheard snippet of conversation, exceptionally strange action, or nothing in particular, triggered That Idea— and then politely ignored the wild-eyed eureka moment that followed.
Books don't happen without these people.
Thanks I owe to my husband, for his patience and support among so many other things; to my family, for their enthusiasm, deserved and not; to my friends, for listening to me babble endlessly about characters and themes and plot points; to my fantabulous betas Julie, Tracey, Eleanor, Steph, Jude, and Alice; to my editor Kate, for medieval Lamaze classes. And to my beloved Purgies, for the wisdom, the debates, the sympathy, the cheers, the hilarity, and the all-knowing, all-seeing L of the J.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amy Bai has been, by order of neither chronology nor preference, a barista, a numbers-cruncher, a paper-pusher, and a farmhand. She likes thunderstorms, the enthusiasm of dogs, tall boots and long jackets, cinnamon basil, margaritas, and being surprised by the weirdness of her fellow humans. She lives in New England with her husband and her dog. When she’s not writing in hermit-like solitude or plotting world domination via a silly-string war, you can catch her procrastinating here: www.amy-bai.com.
Table of Contents
SWORD
BOOK ONE
THE GENERAL'S DAUGHTER
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
BOOK TWO
LADY CAPTAIN
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CH
APTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR