The Bridge Kingdom

by Danielle L. Jensen

  Because something had. Something had shifted, softening her toward him, perhaps to all of Ithicana, and he wasn’t sure what it was. For near as he could tell, most of her experiences since she’d arrived hadn’t been particularly good. She was the daughter of a man who was more Aren’s enemy than his ally, and he shouldn’t trust her. Didn’t trust her. But with every passing day he spent with her, he found himself wanting to trust her. With everything.

  Lara swallowed audibly, pulling her hand from his grip and crossing her legs on the ground, waiting until he sat next to her. The blue light from the sea illuminated her face, making her seem otherworldly and untouchable. “When I was growing up, I was told many times the amount of revenue Ithicana was rumored to make in a year off the bridge.”

  “How much?” He shook his head at the number when she answered. “It’s more.”

  “Are you bragging?”

  “Just being truthful.”

  The corner of her mouth quirked, and she was quiet for a moment before she continued. “To me, the amount was staggering. And I thought . . . I was told that Ithicana played and manipulated the market, gouged travelers afraid to tempt the seas, and exacted heavy taxes and tolls from merchants who wished to transport and market their own goods. That you decided who had the right to buy and sell in your markets, and that you’d take away that privilege if they crossed you in any way. That you controlled nearly all the trade between two continents and eleven different kingdoms.”

  “Accurate.” He didn’t bother to add that Ithicana paid in blood for that right, because she’d seen the evidence herself.

  “What wasn’t accurate . . . was the reason why.”

  “What did they tell you?”

  “Greed.” Her eyes were unblinking as she stared over the ocean. “When I was young, I believed you must live in enormous palaces filled all the greatest luxuries the world had to offer. That you sat on a throne of gold.”

  “Ah, yes. My throne of gold. I keep it on another island and visit it when I need to reaffirm my sense of self-worth and entitlement.”

  “Don’t mock me.”

  “I’m not.” He picked at the top of his boot where the leather had split from too much exposure to salt water. “It must have been quite disappointing to discover the truth.”

  Lara made a sound that was a half-laugh, half-sob. “Midwatch is just as luxurious as my home in the Red Desert, and my time spent here relaxing by comparison. I was raised hard, Aren.”

  “Why were they so hard on you?”

  “I thought I knew, but now . . .” She lifted her chin from her knees, turning her head to look at him. “You ask me what changed? What changed is that now I know you use that money to feed and protect your people.”

  There had been a certain inevitability to her learning that truth. Maybe if he’d kept her locked up in the Midwatch house, with no contact with anyone but the staff and his guard, he might have kept it from her. But he’d wanted his marriage to Lara to be a symbol for change in Ithicana, a new direction. And for that to happen, they’d needed to see her, and there had always been consequences to that path, and the revelation of Ithicana’s secrets was one of them.

  And he so badly wanted to trust her.

  “The truth is, Ithicana isn’t survivable without the bridge,” he said. “Or rather, it is survivable, but only if every minute of every waking day is dedicated to survival.” Pivoting on the ground so they were facing each other, he stared into her eyes. The sun was rising, the light shifting from blue to gold, and it was like waking from a dream and being plunged back into reality. If Aren could have stopped it, he would’ve. “Imagine a life where you had to fight these storms and these waters to feed your family. To clothe your children. To shelter them. Where weeks might pass when you couldn’t take a boat on the water. Where a series of days might pass when it would verge on suicide to step outside your home. What else is there but survival in a world like that?”

  Aren hadn’t realized he’d taken her hands, but she squeezed them tightly then, and he paused, his thumbs trailing lightly over her scars. “The bridge changes that. It allows me to give my people what they need so that some small part of their days might be dedicated to more than just survival, even if it’s only an hour. So that my people might have a chance to read, to learn, to make art. To sing or dance or laugh.”

  He broke off, realizing that he’d never explained this to anyone. Explained what it was like to rule this place. The constant fight to give his people lives worth living. And it wasn’t enough. He wanted them to have more.

  “You could feed every one of them like kings with that kind of money.” Lara wasn’t questioning his word, but driving him forward, extracting the whole of the truth.

  “That’s true. But having those things—having the bridge—comes with a cost. Other kingdoms know what sort of revenue the bridge earns, and that makes them want to possess it. Pirates believe we have stockpiles of gold hidden throughout the islands, so they raid us to find it. So we have to fight. My standing army isn’t enormous, but during War Tides, nearly two thirds of my people drop their trades and take up arms to defend the bridge. I have to buy them weapons. I have to pay them for their service. And I have to compensate their families when they die.”

  “So despite everything, Ithicana is only surviving after all.”

  He tightened his grip on her hands. “But maybe someday it could be something better.”

  Neither of them spoke, and when a soft breeze blew strands of hair across her face, Aren reached up to brush them away. Lara didn’t flinch from his touch. Didn’t look away. “You’re beautiful.” He tangled his fingers in her hair. “I’ve thought so since the moment I saw you, but I don’t think I’ve ever said it.”

  Lara lowered her eyes, pink rising to her cheeks, although it might’ve just been the glow of the sun. She gave the slightest shake of her head.

  “I should have.” He lowered his head, intent on kissing her, but instead a sharp noise made him jump.

  Hand going to his weapon, Aren turned to see Jor coming around the corner, his face filled with amusement. “I hate to break up your picnic, Your Majesties, but dawn is upon us, and we need to be on our way.”

  As if to punctuate his words, horns sounded out over the water announcing ships on the horizon. “Does this change things for you?” he asked Lara, helping her to her feet.

  She closed her eyes, her face clenching for a moment as though she were in pain, then she opened them and nodded. “It changes everything.”

  Hope, and something else, something uniquely reserved for her, flooded his heart and, taking Lara by the hand, Aren led her back to the boats at a run.

  24

  Lara

  Everything had changed.

  And nothing.

  It wasn’t lust. Lara wasn’t so weak as to abandon a lifetime of planning and preparation for the sake of a man too handsome and charming for his own good. If that had been the sum of it, she’d have sated her curiosity, then carried on with as clear a conscience as any spy could have. No, it was her admiration for Aren that was becoming increasingly problematic, as was her grief over what would happen to Ithicana once she was through with it.

  Lara and her sisters had been taught to despise Ithicana for a reason. Their purpose had been to infiltrate the defenses of a nation so that it could, at best, be conquered. At worst, be destroyed. An easy thing to envision when the enemy had been nothing more to her than masked demons using their might to keep her people oppressed.

  But now they had faces. And names. And families.

  All of whom were annually attacked by kingdoms and pirates alike. Perhaps the Ithicanians were cruel and merciless, but now Lara found she couldn’t fault them for that. They did what they needed to survive, and with every piece of information she stored away about them, her guilt swelled, because she knew Ithicana wouldn’t survive her. While that knowledge might have once brought her satisfaction, it was now nothing but an inescapable fact that seeme
d destined to plague her every waking moment with self-loathing.

  Her actions on Aela Island had accomplished what she’d feared impossible: earning Aren’s trust. And not just his trust, but that of all the soldiers who’d fought in the battle. Their expressions in her presence had gone from distrustful to respectful, and as one, they’d stopped questioning her right to go where she pleased. A right she’d instantly abused. No one had questioned her when she’d stepped away from the healers and the injured after the battle. No one had stopped her or followed her when she’d walked to the base of the bridge pier, where she’d found the nearly invisible entrance, which she marked with a few carefully placed stones that would mean nothing to the Ithicanians and everything to the Maridrinian soldiers when they took Aela Island.

  Inside the pier she’d also hidden three of the horns she stolen off corpses on the beach, ready to misdirect Ithicanian reinforcements when the time was right. A strategy that Aren had practically explained to her in his attempts to coax her away from the injured and into a boat. Which he’d only done because he believed she was coming to love them the way he did.

  Do not falter, she silently chanted, eyes fixed on the sky as she floated her still aching body in the hot spring. Do not fail.

  Biting at a hangnail on her thumb, Lara considered what she’d learned. Considered whether it was enough for Maridrina to take Ithicana. Enough to conquer the unconquerable, and enough to give Maridrina the bridge that would be its salvation.

  It was enough.

  All that was left was to get the details of her invasion plan to Serin and her father, then for her to fake her death and escape Midwatch and Ithicana and, hopefully, her father’s inevitable assassins. Where she’d go, she didn’t know. To Harendell, perhaps. Maybe once the dust had settled, she’d try to find her sisters. Make a life for herself. Though try as she might, she couldn’t envision what a life beyond Ithicana might look like. A life without him.

  Lara’s eyes stung, and in a flurry of motion, she climbed out of the spring, reaching for the towel sitting on the rock. Over a week had passed since the attack on Aela, and yet she hadn’t taken one step further to putting her plan into motion. She’d told herself it was because the muscle she’d torn in her shoulder during the battle needed time to heal before she would be strong enough to make her escape. But her heart told her that she was delaying for other reasons. Reasons that put her whole mission in jeopardy.

  But tonight was the night.

  Aren had sent word from the barracks via Eli that there was going to be a storm this evening, and that he planned to dine with her. And if he was with her, that meant Taryn, who still insisted on sleeping outside her door, would take a break from her bodyguard duties. A double dose of a sleeping narcotic in Aren’s wine after dinner, and then she’d have the whole night in his bedchamber to work with no fear of interruptions.

  Already clouds were rolling in, the wind blowing, for even in the calm season, the Tempest Seas were not without teeth. Lara worked methodically on her appearance, drying her hair, then using a hot iron to create coils that hung down her back. She darkened her eyes with kohl and powders until they smoldered, and stained her lips a pale pink. She chose a dress she hadn’t worn before: dark purple, the silk scandalously sheer, her body revealed beneath whenever she passed in front of a light. On her ears, she wore black diamonds, and on her wrist, the clever bracelet that concealed the vials of narcotics.

  Stepping out into the hallway, she made her way down to the dining room, her sandals feeling strange after so many weeks of wearing heavy boots. The room was lit with candles, the shutters on the large windows open despite the risk the wind posed to the expensive glass. And a soaking wet Eli stood in close conversation with Taryn, whom Lara was surprised to find still in the house. They both turned to look at her, expressions grim, and Lara’s heart skipped. “Where is he?”

  “They went on patrol late morning.” Taryn scrubbed a hand along the shaved sides of her head. “No one has seen or heard from them since.”

  “Is that normal?” Lara couldn’t control the shake in her voice.

  The other woman exhaled a long breath. “It’s not abnormal for Aren to decide there’s somewhere he needs to be other than Midwatch.” Then her eyes gave Lara a once-over. “But I don’t think that’s the case tonight.”

  “So where is he?”

  “Could’ve been trouble with one of the boats. Or maybe they decided to wait out the storm. Or—”

  Horns sounded, and Lara no longer needed Taryn to tell her what they meant: raiders.

  “I’m going down to the barracks.” Running to her rooms, Lara replaced her sandals with boots and pulled a cloak over her dress.

  Outside, the rain was falling steadily, but the wind wasn’t high enough to cause the Ithicanians any trouble on the water. Taryn at her arm, and the rest of her bodyguard before and behind her, Lara hurried down the dark path toward the barracks.

  Where the tension was higher than she’d ever seen it.

  “I’ll find out what they know.” Taryn left Lara with the other two guards, who followed her as she skirted the cove, climbing the carved stone steps to the cliff tops, where she could see the sea. Several soldiers knelt behind the boulders they used for cover, spyglasses in hand.

  “Anything?” But they only shook their heads.

  What if he didn’t come back?

  It would throw her plan to shit. Without Aren to write a letter to her father, she had no way to get a detailed message past Ahnna and her codebreakers at Southwatch. Her only option would be to fake her death and escape, then send the information to her father from outside of Ithicana. But then he and Serin would know she was alive, and that meant a lifetime of assassins chasing at her heels. Yet, as she crouched on the ground to watch the blackness of the ocean, it wasn’t solutions to her dilemma that filled her thoughts.

  It was fear.

  She’d seen so many Ithicanians die in combat, in so many different ways. Run through or gutted. Crushed or strangled. Beaten or drowned. Their corpses danced through her thoughts, all of them now wearing Aren’s face.

  “They haven’t sent any word.” Taryn appeared at Lara’s elbow. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything other than that they don’t want to announce their presence to the enemy.”

  Or they were all dead, Lara thought, her chest tightening painfully.

  Taryn handed her a folded packet of papers. “This came for you.”

  Holding the paper next to one of the jars of algae, Lara scanned the contents. Serin, pretending to be her father, discussed his disappointment in her second-eldest brother, Keris, who was demanding to attend university in Harendell rather than take command of Maridrinian forces like her eldest brother. He wishes to study philosophy! As though there is time to sit around contemplating the meaning of life when our enemies continue to bite at our flanks!

  Some of the soldiers stirred, pulling her attention from the letter, and it was some moments before she could refocus. Marylyn’s code felt elusive. Lara’s eyes continually dragged out to sea. But eventually her mind pulled Serin’s message from the drivel. Valcotta has blockaded our access to Southwatch. Famine on the rise.

  A wave of nausea passed over Lara, and she shoved the pages into her cloak’s pocket. With its shipbreakers, Southwatch was capable of running Valcotta off, but she could understand their reluctance to antagonize the other nation. Understood what it would cost them for Valcotta to join the ranks of kingdoms raiding Ithicana. But it was her people who paid the price.

  They sat in the rain for hours, but no horns sounded. No boats appeared below requesting access to the cove. Nothing even moved in the darkness.

  Eventually Taryn shifted next to her. “You should go back to the house, Lara. There’s no telling when they’ll return, and you’ll catch a chill sitting in this cold rain.”

  She should go. She knew she should go. But the idea of having to wait for one of them to bring her news . . . “I can’t.” Her tong
ue felt thick.

  “The barracks, then?” There was a plea to the other woman’s voice.

  Reluctantly, Lara nodded, but every few paces up the trail, she cast a backward glance toward the sea, the roar of it beckoning, drawing her back.

  “This is Aren’s bunk,” Taryn said, once they were in the confines of the stone building. “He won’t mind if you sleep here.”

  Shutting the door to the tiny room, Lara set her lamp on the rough wooden table next to the narrow bed, then sat, the mattress rock hard and the blanket rough compared to her soft sheets at the house. It reminded her of the cot she’d shared with him at the safe house. How she’d fallen asleep in his arms, listening to the beat of his heart.

  She pulled off her cloak and curled on her side, her head resting on the pillow.

  It smelled like him.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, Lara drew upon every lesson her Master of Meditation had ever taught her, measuring her breath and clearing her mind, but sleep wouldn’t come, so she sat, the blanket wrapped around her legs.

  There was nothing in the room to distract her. No books or puzzles. Not even a deck of cards. The sparse quarters of a soldier, not a king. Or at least, not of the sort of king she’d believed existed. The quarters of a leader who did not hold himself above his people. Who wore their hardships like his own. Because they were his own.

  Please be alive.

  The door swung open, and Lara jerked around to find Taryn standing in the doorway. “They’re back.”

  She followed the other woman at a run down to the cove, her chest tight with fear. It was fear for herself, her mind screamed. Fear for her mission. Fear for the fate of her people.

  But her heart told her otherwise.

  The sand of the beach shifted beneath her feet, and Lara squinted into the darkness. A faint voice called out, then the chain rattled, clearing the entrance to the cove.