A Heart of Blood and Ashes

by Milla Vane

  Perhaps Bazir was even more clever than she’d believed, though, hiding a dark purpose behind his indolent mask. And now he sat on the alliance council. What better place to weaken them all?

  “Not Bazir,” Vela said, as if hearing Yvenne’s thoughts. “The wrong brother is not yours, but mine. It was Enam’s power that raised those revenants, and whose poison I sense within the young warrior.”

  Horror gripped her throat. “Aezil courts the sun god? As the Destroyer did?”

  No answer again did Vela give. Yet again their journey gave answer enough.

  Aezil had raised a whiptail. They had known such a feat required more power than a priest of Stranik’s Fang had. Yet they’d assumed her brother’s blessed bloodline had strengthened him.

  Yet he courted Enam. And meant to assist the Destroyer.

  “I accept your task,” Yvenne said, her voice as raw as her heart. She’d already meant to see her father and brother dead. She’d known they were monsters among men. She’d not known this.

  Turning his hand, Maddek interlaced his fingers with hers. A gentle squeeze gave a silent promise of support. But of course he would support her in this. Of all people, the Parsatheans knew that to defeat a monster, they must stand together.

  Vela glanced at their linked hands, then crooked a finger at Maddek. “Bend your head nearer to mine, warrior, so you may better hear what I have to tell you.”

  Something the goddess wanted no one else to hear. Vela leaned near enough that, as she spoke, every breath passing through her veil was a cold breeze over Yvenne’s cheeks. But not a whisper of sound came to her ears.

  Maddek began to shake his head, as if in denial. Then he became absolutely still, body rigid with tension. A few more words from Vela wound that tension so tight that his great form quaked with the force of it, sinews and tendons taut as steel, clenched muscles of his jaw twitching.

  He lifted his head as Vela drew back, and Yvenne knew not what she saw in his face then. Fury seemed not hot enough. Determination seemed not iron enough. Denial seemed not arrogant enough.

  Only clear was his rejection of everything the goddess had said.

  Again Yvenne slapped her palm over his mouth. Yet this time she was not so certain he meant to speak. The way his volcanic stare burned as he looked at Vela, she thought the goddess must be hearing every word he did not utter.

  “You had best continue your lessons, then,” said Vela now, with light amusement. In a sweep of billowing black robes and frigid air, the goddess bent to retrieve a small clay pot from the ground—the jar the cockmonger had dropped when she’d prostrated herself. Opening the lid, Vela stirred the milky oil with her shining finger, then breathed in the scent before closing it again.

  To Maddek, she held out the jar. “And you will likely have need of this.”

  His mouth flattened and a dull flush climbed his cheeks. Sick tension gripped Yvenne’s heart, for even she recognized the insult the goddess gave.

  But Maddek was not a fool. And only a fool would refuse a goddess’s gift.

  He did not let go of Yvenne, but using the arm he braced beneath her legs, he opened the hand that had been gripping her thigh.

  Vela placed the jar in his palm. As soon as his fingers curled around it, she looked to Yvenne. “You came to me for a blessing before your moon night, and with these words, a blessing I give to you: you are stronger than you know,” she said. “Whatever strength you imagine you have, it is as you imagined the sea. You’ll find it is so much more than you believed.”

  Yvenne’s throat closed. “Thank you, my lady,” she whispered.

  The goddess smiled, and her cold stone fingers drifted down Yvenne’s cheek. With her voice of icy steel, Vela commanded, “Now look to the northern gate.”

  The glow vanished from the priestess’s skin. Black veil concealed her face. Warm palm cupped Yvenne’s cheek. Vela’s silent presence again filled the back of her mind.

  Immediately she looked to the north. They were not near enough to the edge of the bridge. From the center of the square, the wide Ageras river was in view, but not the city walls or gates.

  “To the horses,” Maddek commanded.

  As one, the warriors rose—as did their mounts. With swift strides, Maddek crossed the distance and lifted Yvenne into the saddle before springing up behind her. He turned the horse north, carefully weaving through the bodies still kneeling and prostrate. The clatter of hooves across cobblestones joined the rising voices of the astonished crowd. Some ran after the Parsatheans, as if also following Vela’s instruction to look north—or desperate to see what the goddess wanted them to look for.

  Yet Yvenne knew. Even before they reached the edge of the bridge, where the Ageras sparkled below, and peered toward the northern shore. She knew what came.

  “It is too far,” muttered Kelir, shading his eyes from Enam’s glaring sun. “I see the wall but not the gate. Danoh?”

  Who had the keenest vision of all the warriors. “I see the gate,” she said in hard frustration. “But only the shape.”

  Not the people who passed through it? “I see a merchant in yellow robes leading a wagon into the city.” But not the soldiers Yvenne thought to see, unless they’d already come through the gate and were out of sight behind a building. She turned her gaze beyond the gates and her heart froze. “Soldiers approach on the northern road.”

  “How many?” Maddek’s voice was grim and unsurprised.

  They rode four abreast. She counted the rows. “Two full companies flying the alliance council banner, followed by eight horsemen wearing the seal of the Rugusian royal guard.”

  Maddek’s body stiffened behind her.

  “Only two hundred mounted soldiers to retrieve a stolen bride?” Kelir scoffed. “The council must have thought Maddek was alone when he captured you.”

  His joking lifted Yvenne’s heart only slightly. “My brother Bazir rides at their head.”

  Sudden astonishment arched Kelir’s brows but it was Danoh who exclaimed, “You can see that?”

  They could not? She looked in hope for Tyzen, too, but if her younger brother was among their number, he was not in her view. She returned her gaze to Bazir—and the man who rode beside him.

  The shape of his beard marked him as hailing from Toleh. “Does the council minister Gareth have blue eyes and a scar upon his left cheek, and a scorpion sigil on an opal ring?”

  “He does,” Maddek said.

  “Then the Tolehi minister also rides with them.” Which might act as a curb on her brother, but only until Bazir found his way around the other minister. So how could she find her way around Bazir? Her mind raced even as Maddek turned to the others.

  “Banek, ride at speed with Yvenne to the docks—”

  “No,” she said. “In Drahm we’ll stay, and together we’ll stop my brother.”

  His response was a snarl. “We can purchase two hundred arrows, my bride, but I will not whip your arm to shreds while we fight them.”

  “We need not fight them at all. And if you attack Bazir and kill him, the alliance council will declare war upon you and Parsathe. You will tear the alliance apart, in the very moment I have been tasked by Vela to strengthen it.”

  Abruptly he buried his face in her hair. His broad chest heaved against her back. His voice was low and rough against her ear. “I have taught you that a warrior must sometimes run when faced with a threat she cannot defeat. That is what you will do now. But we cannot all run. Not if you are to survive. A ship is no easily defensible position. Instead my warriors and I will find one within this city and leave no soldiers alive to pursue you.”

  “And likely die, too.”

  “Silver-fingered Rani comes for us all,” he said gruffly. “But she will come for more soldiers than Parsatheans this day.”

  “She will only come for my brother,” Yvenne told him, and when
she heard his grunting dismissal of that declaration, she sharpened her tongue. “You must stop thinking as a warrior, Maddek, and instead think as a king. But if you will only be a warrior, then I remind you of the first warrior’s lesson you taught me: make use of what you have.”

  Like cold iron he became. Utterly rigid, Maddek held her in a hard and silent embrace. “What do I have?”

  “You have me, Maddek—Zhalen’s daughter, as cunning and as vicious as my brother. But that is not all I am. So if you will not be a king this day, then at least be a warrior who makes use of what he has and follows the lead of a queen.”

  For a long moment Maddek didn’t reply, his body as taut as when Vela had whispered into his ear.

  Then he rasped, “What is the queen’s command?”

  CHAPTER 25

  MADDEK

  The queen commanded them to seek protection from a Gogean prince and to cower behind palace walls—walls that provided not even comforting defense. Drahm had no fortress or citadel. Instead the prince who governed the city resided in an opulent manse overlooking the sea, and instead of walls the parlors had great open archways that led to balconies and courtyards, with breezes moving freely through every room. Had he been a visitor instead of a warrior who stood in an archway overlooking the wide avenue that led to the palace gates, watching for the approach of two hundred soldiers, Maddek might have reflected that if a man must live behind walls, then an open and airy palace such as this would be an acceptable compromise for a warrior born on the Burning Plains. Instead he only imagined how quickly soldiers might scale the private balconies and invade a visiting queen’s rooms.

  A foul curse came from inside the parlor behind him. Banek paced in front of one of the few doors they’d yet seen in this palace.

  A closed door—with Yvenne on the other side.

  “I mislike that she is alone with him,” the old warrior said fiercely.

  Alone with Cadus, Drahm’s governor. A lowly position for the brother of the Gogean queen, yet one of his own choosing, for he had not wanted to shoulder the duties of a prince living within the royal city.

  Or so his brother Oren had told Maddek. But when Maddek had said the same to Yvenne, warning her that such a prince would be unlikely to stand firm against Bazir—or the alliance council—she had replied, “Cadus’s only fault is that he stands so firm, he breaks before he will bend.”

  After leaving the bridge, the speed at which they’d raced through Drahm’s streets prevented any more discussion. Nor had they opportunity to speak after reaching the palace. Despite their swiftness, news that Vela had appeared and shown favor to a woman with moonstone eyes and a party of Parsathean warriors arrived before they did.

  Just as well. Without Vela’s favor, Cadus might have doubted Yvenne’s claim that she was Nyset’s heir. The prince might have looked askance even at Maddek—a Parsathean who claimed to be the commander of the alliance’s army, yet who led only six warriors.

  Instead Cadus himself had greeted them on the palace steps and agreed to Yvenne’s request for an urgent audience with him. That audience had at first taken place in the parlor where the Parsatheans waited now. There only a few more words had passed between Yvenne and Maddek, when she’d quietly asked whether she could make spoken reference to his mother.

  He had not cared if she did. She could say whatever she wished.

  Yet although she made reference, little detail had she given. Cadus had listened with increasing agitation as Yvenne told him that her father had poisoned her mother, then imprisoned her in the tower. She told him of her own years spent locked in that chamber until she’d sent a letter to the Burning Plains, and that her father had killed Maddek’s parents when they’d arrived to judge her worth as a bride. In broad strokes, she recounted how Zhalen had lied to the alliance investigators and that Yvenne had truly been the one to kill her brother Lazen while Ran Ashev made her attempt at escape, how Zhalen had bundled her off to Toleh to be wed, and how she’d sent a message to Maddek that had led to his ambush of her carriage, where she’d killed her brother Cezan—and that she and Maddek had agreed to marry, so they might remove her father from Syssia’s throne, but had been forced to travel through Goge to avoid the soldiers in pursuit.

  Little the prince had said until she’d finished, and little he’d said after—except to request a private audience with Yvenne.

  Maddek could not fault the prince’s caution. In the presence of seven Parsathean warriors, a woman in fear of her life might say whatever she’d been instructed to say. In private audience, Cadus could make certain Yvenne was with Maddek by her choice, and offer his protection if she wasn’t.

  Speaking to her alone was a wise decision. In Cadus’s place, he’d have done the same. Yet still it took all of Maddek’s control not to tear open that door and see for himself that she was well. To roar at the prince that she needed no protection but his.

  “She is alone, but not helpless,” Ardyl said—to the pacing Banek, though until Maddek looked at her, he thought it might be directed to him. “She has her dagger.”

  “And is no stranger to using it,” Fassad added with a grin. “As her brother discovered.”

  Banek waved that away. “We should have given her more lessons with a blade.”

  So they should have. But a blade would not save her from two hundred soldiers.

  With a snarl, Maddek looked through the archway again. Nothing yet.

  He turned back to the warriors. Only he and Banek were on their feet. The others lounged around a table laden with fruits and roasted meats. Eating their fill, as Yvenne had told them to—because after her brother arrived, they ought not trust any food or drink that they had not brought themselves.

  “When we are settled here,” he told Kelir, “secure our passage on a bargeship and take horses and provisions aboard.”

  His mouth full of pricklefruit, the warrior nodded. Kelir had thrown a multitude of questioning glances at Maddek since leaving the bridge, yet he hadn’t questioned Maddek’s decision to seek help from the Gogean prince.

  And he hadn’t known it wasn’t Maddek’s decision, except in Maddek’s decision to follow her lead. Because Yvenne had spoken fiercely to him about being a warrior or a king, yet not so loudly the others could hear. They only knew that after a fiery conversation with her, he’d altered their plans.

  They would follow him into a battle or into an opulent palace. But he could see Kelir’s relief that another option was still available to them—one that did not depend on the protection of a Gogean prince.

  A prince whose character Yvenne knew well. A character that did not match what Oren had described.

  There was clear resemblance between Oren and Cadus. Maddek might have known who he was even without introduction. The two princes shared the same brown hair and wiry frame, the same broad nose and narrow face. Yet Cadus had a quiet and thoughtful manner Oren did not. And knowing now how the Gogean queen had once admired Zhalen’s methods, Oren’s description of his brother as weak might only have meant that Cadus had refused to crush unhappy farmers.

  And his only fault was standing so firm he might break rather than bend.

  His only fault.

  “Ran Maddek.” Kelir raised an amused voice, watching him with a laughing gaze. “Do you think a fool’s thoughts?”

  All of his warriors regarded him in the same manner. Because he was snarling to himself, and all but tearing through the floor as he stalked again to the archway.

  Because Yvenne had brought them to the palace of a man that her mother had chosen over Maddek. The palace of a man the goddess Vela had urged her to consider.

  Yvenne had vowed she would not seek marriage with another. Maddek trusted that vow. Still poisonous jealousy ate at him. He needed no counsel for that. He knew they were a fool’s thoughts.

  The warriors were no fools. They’d heard Vela speak of a suitor
who lived in this city. It was no great leap to guess that the goddess meant Cadus.

  “You heard Yvenne’s vow?” he asked them and when they nodded, that was all that needed to be said. “I have no reason for jealousy.”

  Kelir’s eyes narrowed. “What were Vela’s words to you?”

  Words? They’d not been mere words. They’d been blades the goddess had used to strike through his heart.

  In bed and in battle, a warrior is too dependent upon his sword. Until you have the heart of a king, you will never truly have her and you will never truly protect her—and because you lack a king’s heart, you will lose her.

  Lose her. As he’d lost his parents.

  “They are words best left unsaid,” he told them hoarsely. And words best left unthought.

  He would not lose her.

  “Ran Maddek.” No amusement remained in Kelir’s voice now; there was only the head of the Dragon. “Do you need counsel?”

  Throat raw, Maddek shook his head.

  “Vela only tests you,” Banek said, giving counsel anyway. “As the goddess does with those she favors, so they might accomplish all of which they are capable. She prodded at your jealousy and your character, but only because she sees all that you might be. As we do.”

  Maddek cared not if he was favored by a goddess. “And Yvenne’s suffering? Why prod her with a threat of pain?”

  Shadows crossed the older warrior’s face. “It is not a prod. It is a kindness, so that your bride will be prepared.”

  “A kindness would be to prevent it.”

  And if the goddess would not prevent it, Maddek would. Vela had claimed that Maddek could not truly protect her, but he would.