by Evie Manieri
“Where is she now?” he asked in a low voice. A large brown dog raised his head at their approach, sniffed once and then settled back down to sleep.
“Still in my tent. I convinced her to get some rest.”
“You’ve been crying.”
“Of course I have.” She stopped beside one of the paddocks and regarded the sleeping goats huddled together in one corner. Her shadowed face was hard to read.
“Are you going to tell me what she said to you?”
“No.”
“Did she tell you not to tell me?”
“Listen to yourself, Jachi—you sound like a child. What she told me is not mine to tell. If you want to know, you must ask her. Leave it at that.”
“So what am I supposed to do?” he demanded. “Trust her? Not trust her? Stay with her? Leave her?”
“Those are choices you must make for yourself.”
“Oh, thanks, I hadn’t thought of that.” A fireball roared into life in his right hand and he spiked it into the sand. The goats sprang up, bleating, and skittered to the other side of the paddock with a raucous clanking of bells.
“Feel better now?” said his mother.
He met her eyes, and then looked away again sheepishly. “No.”
“And here I almost forgot to tell you,” she announced briskly, very clearly changing the subject, “I have news for you.”
“What kind of news?”
“The best kind. Amai and Shof have blessed us.”
“Really?” He was genuinely surprised. “Here? Now? Who is it?”
“Callia.”
“Callia of the Dawn Gazer?”
“That’s right—and she’s already four months gone. She wanted to wait for the gathering before she told anyone.”
Jachad laughed. “Really? Callia? That little flirt!” He shook his head. “You’ll have your task cut out for you, turning that chit into a queen. So that’s what catches Shof’s eye these days, is it? And a vainer, sillier girl he couldn’t have found if he’d tried.”
“She’s a nice girl, Jachi—she’s young, that’s all. And Shof has nothing to do with the choosing. Amai chooses her own handmaiden to lay with Shof on her behalf.”
“Well, Shof is still the one doing the laying.”
“You go too far, Jachad,” said Nisha. “The conception of a new king is a sacred and very private rite, not the bargainings of a procuress in the back of some tavern in Prol Irat.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know. Every procuress in Prol Irat takes a holiday when my caravan comes to town.”
“I’m glad to hear that, at least.”
“There’s no point, you see: the girls are so eager they’d happily pay us if we’d let them.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, but he was glad to see that his jesting had smoothed away some of her worries. His anger at Meiran warmed again as he looked at his mother’s sad, lovely face. Nisha wanted nothing more than to be allowed to love her, and Meiran couldn’t even give her that. Did she have any purpose here other than to torment them?
“So we’re to have a new princeling,” he said, scratching his chin. “It’s about time, I suppose, but it makes me feel old.”
Nisha gave a soft snort. “How do you think it makes me feel?”
They watched the goats settle back down to sleep. Behind them, they could hear the effect that Jachad’s demand for a council was having, rousing the Nomas nation out of their comfortable, well-populated beds. He would have to face his people in a few moments, and he still wasn’t sure what he was going to say to them.
“What are you going to tell them?” asked his mother, following his train of thought.
“I’m going to ask for their help—I have to explain why we need to stop Frea.”
“And why is that?”
He shrugged. “Because it’s the right thing to do.”
She nodded and put her arm around his shoulder. “Well, then, that should be easy, shouldn’t it?”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Isa set her feet and then rocked back, searching for the fulcrum: the resting, ready stance that was more important in a fight than any thrust or cut or parry. She still had sand in her clothes from sleeping outside while Eofar—with Aeda’s help—had cleared enough rocks from the cave’s entrance for them to enter, and the grains scraped against her skin when she moved. The air in the cave was cool, but the sun was well up and Eofar had insisted she wear her cape in case they had to leave quickly. He had gone outside already; to check on Aeda, he’d said, but she didn’t believe him. It was funny how they were both pretending they weren’t waiting, as if pretending would somehow make the waiting more bearable. As if anything could.
The glove on her right hand was damp and slippery as she began the long series of drills over again, and on the sixth move she felt a flutter of panic as she lunged and stumbled yet again. The point of Truth’s Might stuttered over the floor and the hilt kicked out of her stinging hand. She stood still for a moment, listening to the echo of the fallen sword ringing in the blackness of the cave. Then the pain came, great aching waves of it that swept up her shoulder and set her jaw trembling.
No. She must drill, and keep drilling: she must relearn what she had already spent so many years mastering. In a sudden fit of fury she let out a sound no Norlander had ever made before her. She listened, stunned, as it blared through the cavern.
“Isa?”
She shut her eyes tight. She knew that she had imagined the voice because he wasn’t standing there behind her. He was dead. She knew he was dead.
“Isa? Are you—?”
“Daryan?” His name dropped from her lips but she still didn’t want to turn around. If this was a dream—and it had to be—she needed it to continue. Life didn’t give; life took—her mother, her sister, her arm … And it would take Daryan, too, just because she needed him.
She heard his footsteps behind her. How many times had she held her breath and listened to those same footsteps, wondering how long it would be before they went away again?
“Isa! Please…”
Then his fingers brushed her shoulder and she nearly went senseless with relief.
He pulled her into his arms; her back arched and her breath stopped as the heat seared into her skin like a hot iron. She heard his soft cry in her ear and felt him shudder even as his arms tightened around her. Then the first shock passed and she was no longer just withstanding the blaze but hungering for it, melting as his mouth finally pressed urgently against hers. It was like drowning in a lake of fire. Now it was her fingers tangled in his black hair and she was pulling him ever closer, engulfed but not consumed, gloriously tempered by the flames.
They drew back when they couldn’t bear it any more, and he stroked the damp hair away from her face, saying, “I knew you’d be all right. I knew you wouldn’t leave me. Not now—” She could see his eyes shining in her reflected glow and he kissed her again, short and hard, like a lightning strike.
It took another moment for her to find her voice. “When I saw you with Frea, I was sure— What happened? How did you get away?”
“No, I need to hear about you first.” The corners of his mouth turned down and deep furrows sprang up on his brow. “How bad is the pain?”
She didn’t answer; there was no point, he would know if she were lying to him. He lifted aside the fold of her cape and looked down at the knotted sleeve. Her stomach jumped and she felt horribly naked, more than she had ever felt from the mere absence of clothing. She saw his teeth grind together.
“If I’d got there sooner … if I’d—”
“Don’t,” she pleaded. “I can’t— I have to think about now.”
He let the cape fall back again. “You know Eofar wants you to leave? He wants to take you and Harotha away to some place safe before things here get worse.”
“I won’t go—I’ve told him that.”
He touched her hair again. “Are you sure?”
“This is my home—our home.” She ran
her gloved finger over his bottom lip. “Eofar told me who you really are.”
He laughed, but not happily. “Who I really am? I wish he’d tell me.” He told her everything that had happened in the temple after she’d left. “What do you think my people would do if they found out I did it all for you?” he murmured at the end. “Do you think they’d still want me for their daimon then?”
She was saved from having to respond by the entrance of her brother and Harotha into the cave. She heard Harotha catch her breath, and the sound prompted Daryan to look around him, as if he’d seen nothing but Isa until that moment. As she retrieved Truth’s Might and returned it to its sheath, Eofar went to the long stone table and relit the lamp they had brought along as part of their few supplies.
The cavern was one vast room, with tunnels leading out far beyond the reach of the lamplight. The cave itself might have been natural, but the floor was leveled and the massive domed ceiling was far too regular in shape not to have been worked. In the center of the room, heavy furniture carved out of stone sat under a layer of dust. Some of the chairs had been overturned, and the tops of the tables were streaked with black scorch marks.
Harotha followed a shaft of daylight to a little patch of wall not far from the entrance. As they gathered curiously around her, she wiped her sleeve along the wall.
Dust billowed out into the shaft of sunlight, glittering so brilliantly that Isa had to shield her eyes. When she was able to look again, she saw twinkling gold-painted stars surrounded by characters whose curving lines and dots reminded her of the cramped squiggles she had glimpsed on the pages of Daryan’s manuscript before the water from her broken bathtub had destroyed them.
“Your vision,” Daryan said in a low voice to Harotha. “It was real. This was the place.”
“Vision?” Eofar repeated, and Isa felt her brother’s sudden flash of anger—and the stark terror beneath it. “Harotha, tell me you didn’t take that elixir.”
Harotha and Daryan exchanged a look and some secret passed between them, something he hadn’t told her yet. Isa felt a stab of jealousy.
“Don’t worry, I’m fine,” Harotha assured Eofar. “Of course I took it—what did you think I was going to do with it?”
“I bought it so that I could find out what happened to you,” he reminded her. “What did you need it for?”
Daryan touched Harotha’s arm. “I think you should tell them everything.”
“Yes,” Eofar agreed, “and right now.”
Harotha launched into the tale, speaking too quickly for Isa to follow every word. The ancient history went by in a blur, but she focused her attention on the part involving the little boy she had seen with Rho in the refectory, and how Frea planned to use him to destroy the Shadar and attack the heart of the Norland empire. She had a dozen questions for Harotha by the time she finished, but Eofar drew the Shadari woman back into the darkness of the cave and Isa heard them arguing in strained voices.
Daryan turned back to the wall and traced the curve of a figure with his hand. “I never thought I’d ever see anything like this.”
She moved closer to him, wanting to feel his touch again, craving the heat. She pushed aside the curls from the back of his neck and kissed him there. He shuddered and she drew back, afraid she’d hurt him, but then he turned and kissed her again with the passion of an inferno.
“Stop!” she hissed suddenly, drawing back from him. She had heard a sound like the scrape of a shoe against the floor and she shifted her eyes toward the doorway without turning her head. A shadow moved against the wall and then froze. Daryan’s eyebrows were arched in question, but he kept still. She took a slow step to her left.
With a yelp that echoed through the cave, the figure broke for the entranceway and streaked outside.
As Isa sprang after the fleeing spy she was thankful that her brother had insisted she keep her cape on. She hooked the last clasp and flicked the cowl up over her head just before she plunged out into the blinding sunshine, drawing her sword as she ran. Daryan called to Eofar and then pounded after her.
The spy ran at a breakneck pace, but with her long legs and fluid strides she closed the gap until he was almost within her grasp. She lunged, but the brightness impaired her vision and he twisted just out of her reach. She stumbled past him and whirled back to find the man kneeling on the sand, waving his arms protectively in front of his face. She could see Daryan huffing over the sand toward them. The stump of her left arm felt like it was splitting apart, and she pressed her fist against it.
“Please don’t kill me!” the spy wailed. “I was just walking by and saw the cave—please, I have a family—I have five children. I’ve done nothing wrong, I swear. Please, please, don’t kill me, please!” he begged, sobbing and scrabbling on his belly in the sand. She stared at the man with distaste and lowered her sword.
“Isa!” Daryan cried out to her as he ran. “Don’t!”
Too late, she saw the Shadari’s hand twitch and a fistful of sand hit her full in the face. She dropped to one knee and dug her streaming eyes into the crook of her arm. Before she could bring her sword up to defend herself, the Shadari aimed a vicious kick at the stump of her left arm and she fell back helplessly onto the sand, pain exploding through her entire body, seeing nothing but a purple darkness empty of stars.
Then she heard a wet smacking sound and a thud. She blinked her eyes until her vision cleared and saw the Shadari spy stretched out a few feet away. His eyes were closed and red blood oozed from his nose.
She tried to stand up, but the ground swung beneath her again and she felt Rho’s hands catch her as she listed forward.
As the pain began to subside, she looked up and saw that Daryan had stopped a little distance away and was looking out over the sands. Suddenly she understood why he was hanging back; he wanted to give her a chance to tell Rho what had happened to her.
She could feel Rho’s weariness, but his silver eyes were bright and clear in the shadows beneath the cowl. The bruises on his face had nearly healed and he looked almost like himself again, only stripped of his normal sardonic veneer. Except for her brother he was the only Norlander in the temple she had ever trusted, or who had ever shown any interest in her.
She reached up and unhooked the clasp nearest her throat, holding the folds of the cape together with her hand.
Rho, bemused, watched as she pulled the cloak open just enough for him to see. Instantly his eyes darted away—then he forced himself to look back again at the knotted sleeve swinging beneath her shoulder.
She heard his breathing, quick and ragged over the stillness of the desert, as she did up the clasp.
She began to feel calmer. The pain was becoming bearable again.
He released her and stood up. <
All right—then you’ll have to live with it.>
He kicked his boot into the sand, hard, and the grains scattered around him.
She started to stand up.
She glared down at Truth’s Might shining in the sand.
She got to her feet, half-expecting him to offer her a hand, which he did not. She picked up her sword and returned it to its sheath.
Daryan was still standing in the same spot, glancing over at her uncomfortably from time to time, and now Harotha and Eofar were coming toward them, flanking Dramash. The little boy looked just the same as when Isa had last seen him in the refectory; she had a very hard time believing a child that size could topple a castle of blocks much less destroy a whole city. He called out Rho’s name.
Suddenly she felt Rho’s cold lips brush her forehead.
Daryan was instantly at her side. “You told him.”
“It’s all right,” she said, feeling like a burden had lifted. “He doesn’t think I should tell the others, but he said I made the right choice.”
“Do you still think so?”
She swallowed against the dryness in her throat. “I’m alive. That’s enough for now.”