“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Lant said to Nien.
“Yes. I’ll be in before the meeting with the other Leaders.”
“Good. Night then.”
“Night.”
Nien watched the Commander and Pree K walk off together —
His mind turned to his own family. To Wing.
Shouldering his gear, he headed to retrieve his horse. The trip home now would not be a quick one as it was too dangerous to gallop the horse in the dark. That meant he’d have lots of time to do the last thing he wanted to do: Think.
Approaching the brief enclosure of a corral, Nien paused. With all his heart, he wished he could wish away the prophecy, the Council, the old legends told by old men.
I’m so sorry, Wing, he thought silently, as he drew back the timber gate to the corral.
But he knew what Lant had said was true. It was only going to get worse — for all of them. And now, as it seemed prophecy was fulfilling itself right before their eyes, Nien felt a new wave of helplessness come over him. The Ka’ull were in Lou. They’d taken and occupied the valley. Lant had not said what had happened to the people. There was a reason for the Cant. A reason his people were learning how to use weapons of war for the first time in generations. It had just seemed disconnected from the words in the Ancient Writings, words that had always felt very far away, malleable, changeable, unreal except for the worry the Council put on Wing and his family over a prophecy that was neither reasonable or needful.
That had all changed — in one day. Everything Nien had been able to dismiss for having no basis in anything other than words, was real. How real he didn’t — couldn’t — know. But there was that thing in Lant’s eyes…
Could the Ka’ull come into Rieeve? More importantly, why would they? What was here for them? Who, in fact, even knew Rieeve existed other than Commander Lant’s friend, Master Monteray, and perhaps the Empress Lant had spoken of, SiQQiy of Quieness?
The world suddenly felt both too expansive and too small, as if some protective veil had been stripped away and Rieeve exposed as having been a part of their world all along, revealing just how vulnerable, how fragile they truly were.
Nien pressed the bit up into his horse’s mouth, hooked the top of the bridle over its ears, laid down the blanket, and swung up the saddle. The gelding snorted as Nien tightened the girth strap and, checking the stirrup, mounted, adjusting the reins in his hand and securing his sword under his left thigh. He clucked and the gelding stepped out smartly, knowing he was headed home.
Chapter 7
Quieness
“L ead Netalf has arrived, Empress.”
SiQQiy, Empress of Quieness, the largest valley on the continent, looked up from her desk and saw Netalf, the commander of her personal bodyguard and a full-born Quienan, step into the room. Behind him came four other men. Three, she did not recognize personally but could see by their uniforms that they were from a small regiment of regular troops stationed near Quieness’ northing border at Jada post. The fourth was a messenger — from Master Monteray of Legran. But the boy was not only a messenger, he was also Master Monteray’s nephew. To him, SiQQiy turned first.
“Messenger from Legran. Jason,” she said, less formally and with a small smile. “Welcome.”
He inclined his head. “Empress.”
“What is your word from Master Monteray?”
“One of our spies has returned with word that the Ka’ull have seized and secured the valley of Lou.”
The first Empress of Preak and Quienan blood, SiQQiy’s eyes, veiled by long black lashes, glinted against the perfect silvery-dark smoothness of her face as she took in the information.
“When?”
“At least a half cycle now, Empress.”
SiQQiy turned to the men from Jada Post.
“Report,” she said.
“No word, Empress,” one of the Jada Post marshals replied.
“You came all this way to tell me that?”
“We were unsure whether to send another galley to look for them.”
SiQQiy pressed her palms against the maps and old record transcripts spread across her desk. “How many galleys are now at Jada Post?”
“Thirteen, Empress.”
“Thirteen battle galleys,” she said to herself. “We still do not know what has happened to our merchant ships. We have no word from the galleys sent to look for them.” She raised her eyes and looked at Netalf and everyone else in the room disappeared. She had always been able to speak to Netalf without speaking. In his eyes, she could see he shared her concern.
“All these cycles, the rumours of Ka’ull movement. No proof. Now, we know they’ve taken Lou.”
“They are emboldened, Empress,” he said, speaking SiQQiy’s very thought.
The two old friends continued to study one another’s eyes.
“Send out three more galleys — one up, two back,” SiQQiy said, speaking again to the men from the Post, as there was not sufficient berth on the Tu’Lon River for more than three warships at a time. “But this time I want the ships tracked by land. I want only a small unit — no more than five men — to follow the ships up river toward the Inlet. This unit is not to engage, only observe.” She turned again to Netalf. “Lead Netalf, I want you to hand-pick these men. Choose wisely, for they will need to travel light and quickly. They must have good eyesight and experience in the high country. Above all, they must see without being seen, observe without being observed.” Her head sunk as she fought some inner battle.
The men remained quiet, still as the marble statues standing outside the doors to this, her tactical room.
“I’m tired of guesswork,” SiQQiy said quietly, so quietly that no doubt the men had not been able to hear her. But when she lifted her face there was metal in her dark gaze as she said, “I want to know what’s happened to those ships. I want to know where they are.”
The men nodded quickly and, at a cue from SiQQiy, her two young female aides whisked them away with practiced efficiency, knowing to take the men from Jada Post to one location, Monteray’s nephew to another.
As the two large, dark brown doors swung shut Netalf, alone, remained in the room with SiQQiy.
SiQQiy’s thin hands clenched into fists and her eyes returned to her Lead Guard. “Have the special unit ready to leave with the men from Jada Post.”
“We will find out, Empress.”
SiQQiy’s eyes softened. “You want to go with them, don’t you?”
“I do.”
The Empress’ chest rose and fell with a deep sigh. “You ask a hard thing.”
“Only because you have asked a hard thing.” Netalf smiled just enough. “You trust me to choose wisely — ”
“I had hoped you’d think it wise to bear in mind the needs of the Empress of whose personal Guard you are the head.” SiQQiy raised an eyebrow at him. “But,” she continued, “the greater wisdom lies in the good of Quieness and our people.” She held his familiar gaze. “You may go.”
Netalf acknowledged her with a bow and turned to leave.
“Netalf,” SiQQiy said as he stepped through the door. “You may not, in all your wisdom, choose Leit for this assignment.”
Netalf turned back.
Leit was Netalf’s younger brother and a junior member of SiQQiy’s Guard. For many revolutions SiQQiy had personally looked after and loved Netalf’s family. She would not risk robbing it of both its sons.
Netalf nodded to her.
“You know how he hates to be babysat,” SiQQiy said. “So, return as soon as you can.”
Netalf’s comely features grinned. “Certainly.”
SiQQiy’s mouth tipped in an uneasy smile. “Be careful.”
As Netalf left the room, her two female aides slipped back inside. They were trained to be as ghosts when others were present — ethereal, untouchable, competent entities. SiQQiy had chosen female attendants as they were able to read SiQQiy’s moods. They remained silent now even though no one but SiQQiy
was in the room. SiQQiy turned back to her large table covered in maps, books, and notes written in the delicate swoops and curls of her own hand. She suddenly missed her father so much she wondered if her female attendants noticed the shake in her hand. She pressed her palm to the table to steady it.
Her father was gone. She remembered his passing and how long it had been down to the position of the setting sun upon a sculpture in his room and the mingled smell of dysentery and incense. She’d not been able to burn that incense thereafter without smelling death and so had banned it from her palaces entirely. Not that it would have mattered for, eventually, she’d stopped going into that part of the palaces, anyway —
Until recently.
At first the association of that room with her father’s lingering, painful death had still been too much to bear. But slowly, she’d begun to remember the good times there as well, the times she’d run to that room for comfort, a chat, a story, or an embrace before bedtime.
She’d never had the opportunity to miss her mother, she having passed on before SiQQiy’s fourth birthday, but her father she missed horribly and, more so, without even a brother or sister to share not only the burden of his loss but the ruling of the largest and most powerful valley on the continent as well.
As a child, she’d had other parental figures in the persons of Master Monteray of Legran and Commander Lant Ce’Mandu of Rieeve. But they had long since returned to their homelands and so, for many long cycles now, it had been she, Netalf, and his family. It was on them, alone, that SiQQiy could truly rely. Only their company that could ease the vast emptiness she often felt.
Surely, she thought, I would be lost without them.
Nevertheless, Netalf’s family were not familiar with the Ka’ull, with the psychology of the Ka’ull people and their warriors.
And that’s what I need right now, SiQQiy thought, vaguely aware of the tension bleeding off her young attendants. Dressed in thin, flowing silk, fitted only at the waist, the girls had the advantage of being able to understand the subtle language of women while retaining the discipline of SiQQiy’s guards. However, just as they were able to follow SiQQiy’s shifting emotions, she could also follow theirs and in moments like this, SiQQiy found herself in need of the steady, straightforward energy of men and the privacy their inability to read her proffered.
“Please,” SiQQiy said, “refresh the water pitcher, would you? And wine.”
Lots of wine.
Swiftly, the girls left, seeming to be just as happy to have some task as SiQQiy was to be let alone for a moment to continue...
Brooding, she thought, though she hated the word and rarely tolerated it in herself. But this — she hunted for the right definition — this is...
The answer came to her in a quote from a book her father had loved: “And here I stand, on this, the edge of my existence, planning for devastation in the dark.”
The book had been a work of fiction — of a kingdom’s young prince, no less — and his struggles with becoming. Perhaps her father had related to the young prince, just as SiQQiy did now.
This is what that meant, SiQQiy thought. This is planning for devastation in the dark.
Receiving a messenger from Master Monteray was a blessing, a touch of sunlight even though the news he bore was terrible. But she needed more than word from Master Monteray, she needed the man. Only he knew anything of the Ka’ull as a people, a nation. Only he had ever met a Ka’ull, personally. She needed his wisdom and insight, needed to look in his eyes and feel his steady, clear presence. Her surrogate father since the passing of her own, she used to visit Monteray in his small valley of Legran once a full cycle. It had now been the turning of two.
Monteray and his friend, Lant Ce’Mandu of Rieeve, had come to the palace shortly after the death of her mother. Like angels in rough traveling clothes the two men had become her one mother. Eventually, Lant had moved into Cao City, but Monteray had stayed on at the Palaces, remaining for some time even after Lant had returned to Rieeve.
It had now been many full cycles since both men had gone back to live in the valleys of their birth. She’d never seen Lant again, but she received news of him through messengers and her own visits to Master Monteray in Legran.
Just then, her attendants begged entrance into the room. SiQQiy called for them to come in. One set a polished silver pitcher down upon the edge of the table and a port of wine, the other a slender silver cup, then both stepped back to stand near a tall, thin-legged table with a bowled depression at its center. From the center of the depression grew an exquisite little plant with the brightest leaves of green SiQQiy had ever seen. It had been a gift — from Monteray. It had traveled far to reach her and survived, a thing one might not have thought possible in something so delicate and so beautiful.
As Monteray had, perhaps, intended, SiQQiy had seen herself in the small plant: beautiful yes, rare yes, but also surprisingly strong.
She raised her eyes to it in question, drawing courage from its fragility and liveliness.
Aware of her own sincerity, SiQQiy almost laughed.
I wonder if anyone would lose faith in me as a ruler if they knew I consulted a plant on important matters of state?
But, as if Monteray had magically instilled his wisdom in the little green being before sending it, a thought formed in SiQQiy’s mind: The next best thing is, even now, in your house.
“Very right,” she said softly.
Straightening her back, she left the room, her attendants falling into silent step behind her. The three moved like liquid ghosts down the long hall, under a portico, across a courtyard gleaming with sunlight through raindrops on plant leaves, and into her private palace where the messenger from Legran waited in her private dining room before a table laden with food.
Jason stood as SiQQiy entered the room.
“Please,” SiQQiy said, waving at the table. “You must be famished.”
Jason sat down again and dug in. SiQQiy took a seat across the table from him as her attendants took up their places at the door behind her. SiQQiy nibbled politely on a piece of fruit though the only hunger she felt was for more information from Master Monteray.
When Jason’s hunger began to ease, SiQQiy diplomatically segued back to Master Monteray and the message. In-between bites of food, Jason shared with her all he knew.
“And you delivered this message to Lant Ce’Mandu in Rieeve? Have things changed there? Are they now welcoming outsiders?”
“No, Empress, I went around. My uncle, he went to Commander Lant himself.”
SiQQiy took the disappointing news in silence. That Monteray entered Rieeve at all was, she imagined, on the precipice of compromising the strides Lant was trying to make with his reclusive, paranoid people.
It would be so much easier, so much more efficient, SiQQiy thought for the thousandth time, if we could send our messengers through Rieeve.
Timely intelligence on Ka’ull movement from both sides could mean hundreds of thousands of lives.
Whatever news Lead Netalf and his team brought back to her would have to find its way to Master Monteray via messenger the long way around, and that would cost more waning of the moons in waiting, wondering —
Planning, she thought, for devastation in the dark.
Chapter 8
The Caves
T he creak of the short-rimmed saddle helped ease some of the agitation from Nien’s shoulders as the gelding moved through the diminishing light, the grasses grazing across its legs, high enough in places to brush the bottom of the stirrups and Nien’s boots. Twilight had faded, faint traces drifting amongst the tall grasses of the fields, like lingering fairy lights.
As he watched the clouds roll, melting into the dark overhead, so the word Merehr rolled through his mind into a place just as dark as the night above.
Nien wished he could escape the encompassing gloom the subject invariably brought —
Growing up there had been seasons of reprieve where the people left Wing
and their family alone, but those reprieves became shorter and shorter as Wing had gotten older.
He and Wing had been children when the people thought the Leader had come in the person of a Villager named Rhegal. But this man disappeared one day and had never been seen since. Most assumed he’d gone into the mountains and died there. No one would ever know. And so, the search had begun anew to find the Leader written of in the Ancient Writings, a man they were certain was to be born among them, as a Rieevan.
Wing had been a youth at the time, but even then, he seemed to fit the words of the prophecies precisely: “ ‘Of good height, great spirit and blessed colouring. He will be like no other...’ ”
Raising his face into the night sky, Nien drew a deep breath. Leer’s primary moon had appeared over the Uki. At full, second moon was merely a gentle blue glow in the great distance — which was about the only time it could be seen at all.
Nien studied first moon for a moment, remembering the conversation he’d had with Carly upon leaving the training fields. She wanted to spend some time together as they once had, just the three of them. He couldn’t blame her, he missed those times as well, before everything had gotten all complicated, when every day was an adventure and trouble meant they’d forgotten to lock the barn door.
Nien closed his eyes and faded back over the revolutions. Their three-member gang had been on many small journeys together, not the least significant being the last one.
In his mind, Nien retraced the memory to a place high on the northing edge of the Mesko forest and a very steep ledge...
“Wait, Nien. Hold on a moment.”
Nien looked back at Wing. “What is it?” he asked, his voice tense. He didn’t like pausing for a chat on this rocky ledge.
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Carly asked, eyes widening.
“Shh, listen,” Wing replied.
They listened. Nien couldn’t hear anything over the pounding of his own heart. And then, as if in answer to some unspoken cue, Nien looked up at the same time Wing and Carly did to an outcropping of rock on the high edge of the scree field. There crouched a very large cat. Easily as big as a man, the black depth of its coat stood in stark contrast to the red rock and green foliage of the mountain behind it. The curve and line of powerful muscles quivered beneath its glossy coat. And from beneath its upper lip peeked two sharp points of white.
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