“Ah, baby,” Lisen said and kissed his jaw. “It’s been too long.” She looked around and found a bucket of apples. She grabbed one and brought it back, offering it to him while gripping it with the palm of her hand to aid him in opening the fruit up to eat. “You know,” she continued as he chewed, “I’ve been spending a lot of time on one of your comrades here, a mare two stalls down from you. We’ve been riding with a friend, helping him to relearn how to ride after a horrible accident.” She held the remaining half apple up for him when he knocked his head against her shoulder.
“So this friend and I have ridden around the ring at least a thousand times, and I think he’s got it now. He doesn’t think so though. His seat is good. His control is excellent. But I think he’s scared to get out of the ring and do some real riding. And with all the people out there—you’ve seen them, right?—who can blame him?”
Pharaoh whinnied, and Lisen laughed. Sometimes she believed this damn stallion was smarter than most humans.
“My Liege?”
Lisen looked up to find Jal standing at the end of the aisle looking as though she’d just woken up.
“Are you all right?” Jal continued.
Lisen shook her head. “I’m fine, thank you. Just visiting my baby.”
“He’s missed you.”
“Well, soon it will be just him and me, I think. You’ll have to show me how you keep him groomed.”
“That would please me, my Liege.”
“You look like we woke you up. Go back to bed.”
Jal nodded and turned, heading back, Lisen assumed, to her sleeping place in the tack room. She and Jal had a relatively casual relationship, something rare in Lisen’s life these days.
“So,” Lisen resumed, “Nalin’s getting better and better, but I think we need to find someplace he can ride outside the ring. What’s that you say? You’re asking what is all the noise that drifts up from the forge? Does it bother you? It’s loud, but at least they haven’t had to start working nights as well, although, to tell you the truth, I think that time is coming.
“And what else? Oh, you want to know about all those people are out there? You mean, in the park? Hundreds of volunteers. Or, kind of volunteers. Good people from what I can tell. I’ve talked to them some. Maybe I need to talk to them again. Oh, you think I should. Well, maybe I will.”
She patted the stallion on the neck, kissed his nose and then headed out to the park.
When she’d ridden out with Nalin that day back in September, the park had whispered of fall, with some of the trees hinting at turning, but summer had still held the park in its grip. Tonight, her breath took shape in the crisp air, and she had to pull her shawl hard around her chest and shoulders. She liked sitting down at some of the campfires and talking to the men and women who had stepped forward to defend Garla. They knew who she was, yet at these times, an intimacy unknown in more formal moments allowed them to speak freely and openly. They never called her Lisen—or, even, Ariannas—but they kept the “my Lieges” to a minimum.
She headed to one campfire where nearly a dozen new soldiers huddled in the warmth. They smiled up at her as she approached, and one of them nodded.
“Cold tonight,” she commented as she hunched down with them.
“Aye,” one of them responded.
“How long before we go, my Liege?” another asked.
“Still no word,” she replied. “But it shouldn’t be much longer.”
“Did you really kill seven?” This question came from a man who was clearly new to the camp; only the new ones asked it.
“Your name?” Lisen asked.
“Retal, my Liege.”
“Well, Retal, yes, I did.”
“You shouldn’t be askin’ her that,” a woman Lisen thought she recognized spoke up. “’Tis rude.”
Lisen shook her head. “No, if you’re going to fight for Garla, I owe you the truth.” She’d told the story before, and she’d tell it again before this was over. She’d grown tired of it, and sometimes it left her feeling empty in the telling. But she told it because these people did deserve to know why they would soon be putting their lives at risk for her. So she told it, again.
On two crutches which Lisen had helped design, Nalin made his way from his bedchamber into Lisen’s office. He was still learning how to maneuver on the things, but they were a real improvement over two guards constantly in need of summoning. The next step—a constructed end to his leg on which he could walk—would come if they survived the horizon’s conflict, or so Lisen had confided to him yesterday. He reached the conference table, set his cloth bag filled with his notes upon it and laid the crutches on the floor underneath. Then he settled himself into his chair to sit quietly, waiting, alone in the light of a single candle.
He and the commander planned to confront the Empir regarding a risky idea she had stuck in her mind. She wanted to be the first—along with a couple of guards—to arrive at Bellin Plain where they all thought the initial engagement between Garlan and Thristan would occur. She had a romantic vision of herself hiding in the surrounding forest and watching the desert people gather in preparation for battle, and he and Tanres had decided to disillusion her of that notion.
The door from the hall opened, and Tanres stepped in, looking tired. Day after day, she and many of the other guards of command rank drilled the recruits, some in the use of swords and other weapons in combat and a few in how to fight from a horse. No uniforms, armor nearly nonexistent except for the guards who already possessed their own chest plates—this wasn’t an army; it was an alarming number of hungry mouths with very little skill useful on the battlefield.
“Holder,” Tanres said with a nod and took her seat on the other side of Lisen’s chair.
“Commander.”
“If you’re wondering, she’s still out in the park.”
“Talking to the volunteers again,” Nalin surmised.
“It’s good for the troops, my lord. Gives them reason to feel needed.”
“But from what she says, they ask her the same question every time.”
“How she got away from her kidnappers. Yes. I know.”
“And she tells the story over and over and over again.” Nalin sighed. “It can’t be healthy.”
“What can’t be healthy?” Lisen asked as she strode through the door into the room. She dropped her shawl on the couch, shook her wet, shoulder-length hair and slid into her seat at the table. “Damn rain. Just when you think it’s over, it’s back again. So what are you two doing here so late?”
“The commander and I have been talking,” Nalin ventured. “We’ve decided it’s too risky for you to ride to Bellin Plain alone.”
“I’d have a couple of guards with me.”
“It’s an unnecessary risk,” Nalin insisted.
“Why?” she snapped, her mood shifting from playful to irritated.
“Because, my Liege, it’s not safe,” the commander replied. “You and two guards tasked with watching for the approaching enemy while the remainder of the troops make their way from here to there?” Tanres shook her head. “They’ll be concentrating on keeping you safe and not paying attention to what’s going on around them. Not safe for you. Not safe for them.”
Lisen popped up from her chair and began pacing from the table to around the desk and back again. “And you two came up with this. Great. I need to be there. Don’t you understand? I’m the only one with any real knowledge of Thristas.”
“And how much additional insight on an army of Thristans do you think that will give you?” Nalin asked as he and Tanres turned their heads to follow her restless movements around the room.
“But it’s not fair! I should be there. This is my war. They’re coming after me.” She moved with frantic anxiety now, the words tumbling from her mouth like a river washing over a fall. “I’m the one.”
“And you’ll be there, my Liege,” Tanres said. “In the first wave, the wave with the majority of the Guard ready to surro
und you and protect you.”
“But not before. You need me out there. I might be able to read the first to arrive, and if I can, think how invaluable that information could be.”
Just as Nalin wished he could get up and go to her, Tanres eyed him with a look Nalin understood. He nodded to the commander who stood up and did what he couldn’t. She stepped in to block Lisen from moving forward and reached out to take her arms in her hands.
“Stop,” Tanres said calmly, a request more than an order. Nalin watched Lisen fidget but stay where she was. “Just stop, please.”
“It’s my fault,” Lisen pleaded. “All those women and men out there will march into a war that I started. I have to do everything I can to protect them.”
“My Liege, it’s not your fault.” The commander’s words made Nalin smile. Finally, someone other than himself speaking this truth to her. “It’s the fault of those who abducted you.”
“But—”
“No. And although it may be the fault of your predecessors along the way, you have done nothing to hurt the people of Thristas. You haven’t had the time to do anything.”
Lisen looked around Tanres to Nalin who simply nodded. He knew her soul needed more time to heal and that all of this was coming too quickly for either of them, him or her. But this was how it would be and how it would stay. Once the Thristans showed signs of pulling together, Garla would have to move, too.
“They’re going to die,” Nalin’s poor Empir wailed. “They’re all going to die, and I can’t stop it.”
She dropped to the floor, weeping. Tanres leaned down to her, and Nalin thought the commander might be on the verge of encouraging Lisen to stand back up. But Lisen pulled away abruptly, and Tanres straightened.
“No! Don’t touch me! Don’t be nice to me. Don’t be good to me.” She took gasping breaths between each sentence. “Everyone who’s ever been good to me since this all started is either dead or badly wounded. Oh, God.” With her legs turned back on themselves and her buttocks on the floor, she leaned on the palms of her hands, head down, struggling to breathe between her sobs. Tanres looked to Nalin, and he shook his head. So, with a shrug, the commander left her Liege to the will of her Will.
Nalin watched her cry for several minutes. She said nothing, so he kept silent. This was a moment when Bala might have been useful, but he didn’t want to embarrass his Empir further than she’d embarrassed herself with Tanres who, Nalin knew, would say nothing outside this room.
In the end, she cried herself out, and when she’d rubbed the remnants of her tears from her nose and eyes, she sat up and looked to Nalin.
“Is it always going to be like this?” she asked, still sniffling. “Am I going to hate myself forever? Because if that’s the case, I might as well offer myself up before the fighting begins, let them kill me and be done with it so no one else has to die.”
“Come here,” Nalin said softly. She sighed, rose from the hard marble floor and stepped over to him. It was much easier for him to turn to her when she took her place at the table since he no longer needed to put his leg up. “You know what I think? I think that if your mother had known what was going to happen to you, she would have taken her chances keeping you here with Ariel.”
“Too late to change that now.”
“And yes, it is always going to be like this. But no, you don’t have to hate yourself forever. You’d probably be better at this if you’d spent your life here. You would have seen your mother’s actions and their consequences and would be able to recognize your share of the responsibility better than you do.”
“She never had to deal with anything like this.” She hiccupped. “I’ve read as much as I could find on her reign, and it was never like this.” She hiccupped again, slipped in a giggle in reaction and put her fingers over her mouth to suppress her little laugh.
“You see? Laughter is possible even at our worst moments. Perhaps even especially at our worst moments.” Nalin nodded and took her hand. “In time, you’ll gain perspective. You’ll see that those people out there revere you.”
“They shouldn’t.”
“But they do. And when you sit down with them? Creators, Lisen, that’s when they decide they can die for you because you listen to them.”
“I only do it because I feel guilty.”
“It doesn’t matter why you do it. It matters that you do. They’ll never forget that.”
“You mean, that’s actually a good thing, not some guilt-driven self-indulgence?”
He nodded, and she wiped her cheeks again with her free hand.
“Then, I guess I have to keep doing it. Keep doing it until the world ends.”
“The world’s not going to end. If there’s one thing your mother made a point of teaching me, it was that some things come to an end, while new things begin. I find that nearly as hard to believe now as I did then. And yet, here you are, proof that new things do replace what’s gone. So let’s the two of us hang on together.”
He watched her back straighten as he spoke, saw he’d reached that strength of spirit that had brought her through every trial she’d faced thus far and knew she’d get through this, too. There might be magic inside her, but it wasn’t her only asset. Her instincts, her insight, her barely tapped intelligence would all bless her with victory. This victory might defy traditional definition, but she would win. And it would be his honor to ride beside her as her Will.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
war is coming
Korin’s life had begun simply, and he’d grown up to follow a childhood dream inspired by his mother’s courage and strength. Leaving Thristas for Pass Garrison at nineteen, he’d sought a disciplined life, a life lived under the scrutiny of ethical intimacy, where all anyone would expect of him was unquestioning loyalty to his comrades and the Empir of Garla. Commander Tanres had called him to Avaret nearly four years ago now, and the green glow of Garla’s forests and the smell of the sea that wafted into the capital had filled him with a kind of wonder. There he’d met Palla, a little older than himself, but a quick friend, and with his gift of observation and skill at putting what he saw into practice, he soon found himself promoted to captain and became the guard whom Flandari often asked for specifically. And then, had come Solsta.
He sat in the dining cave, Rinli at the teat, a bit of stew cooling as she suckled. That day about a year ago now had begun like any other day, just as this night had started out with him leaving Rinli in the caring chamber so he could attend to the malla plants. Then, just like that day back then, late last night his world had changed, again. He’d seen them—a group of Thristans making their way on foot across the desert. He’d stared for a long time, rubbing at his eye to be sure he wasn’t imagining them, but each time he refocused, they were still there, sliding across the sand between the islands of dirt and rock. They appeared to have journeyed from Mesa Eres, the largest of the mesas, and they numbered in the thousands.
This officially justified his warning to Lisen. He’d begun to question his judgment as the weeks had dragged on with no indication of a gathering, and no one had confided a word to him though their lack of trust hadn’t surprised him. It wasn’t that they believed he’d killed anyone; there were too many witnesses to his innocence. It was the fact that he’d gone at all, leaving his motherless child to someone else’s care, in favor of saving a member of the much-despised Ilazer dynasty.
So now, he sat and wondered if Lisen had listened to him. Or, had she been so consumed with the destruction she’d caused to her captors and her blindness to hear him at all? He truly believed—had and still did—that she possessed the required combination of personal experience in Thristas and empathy to open herself up to a people in need. But if she had listened to him at the Khared, a messenger was already riding to Avaret with word that movement had begun in the desert. He didn’t know where in Mesa Terses they were all going to fit until they moved on to Garla, but a great many members of the Tribe would be doubling and tripling up to make
room for the growing Thristan army for at least a few weeks.
Would they consult him? Within hours it would be obvious to everyone that war with Garla was coming. Would those in charge finally ask him what to do? Or would they leave him on the outside of their plans? Either way, he would insist on riding with them into Garla, bringing his prophecy-fulfilling daughter with him in her sling. It was his duty. What else could he do?
Lisen sat in the Sitting Garden, a place that Nalin said her mother had designed as a private space for quiet thoughtfulness and meditation. But Lisen wasn’t meditating. She couldn’t. She was too wound up to sit quiet with her thoughts. Her thoughts shouted at her in two different languages and multiple voices. “You’re the Empir!” “Do something, damn it!” “Don’t let these people die for you!” “Where’s your spirit? Did it get up and walk?!” That last, in Simon Holt’s voice, wounded her the most, and it took every bit of her strength to not break down and cry. Had he ever said that, or anything like that, to her? She’d been gone for just over a year. Had she already forgotten the sound of their voices, the words they’d spoken?
She held a flower in her hand, deep pink in color, and couldn’t name it. She’d never gardened with any commitment, but she’d loved flowers on Earth and had learned many of their names. She didn’t even recognize this one. Part rose, part hibiscus—what the hell was it?
At the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps, she tossed it to the ground, the question of its name forgotten, and looked up.
“My Liege,” Captain Kopol said, catching her breath, as she pulled to a stop in the little hedge-surrounded garden, “your Will has asked that you join him. Immediately. There’s word from Pass Garrison.”
Lisen jumped up from the stone bench and ran with Kopol back to the Keep. “Creators,” she muttered. After months of waiting, word had arrived at the earliest she’d expected it. It’s coming. It’s really coming.
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