“What are you saying?” he asked.
“The children you were playing with, Damon,” whispered Ria. “Each one is a little seta or solas. Each one looks up to me as a role model, some to you, as well. They look to us for clues as to what is acceptable. Do you understand this?”
Damon didn’t answer her. He didn’t want to understand it, not in the way she did, not in the way that would keep them apart. At the same time, he loved her enough to accept her decision.
“So be it,” he said. “I’ll still welcome your company if you’ll help in the search for a way to save Vel.”
“Then you shall have it,” she said. “Thank you, Damon. I love you so much.”
“And I love you.”
He felt like pulling her close, embracing her and kissing her. It took a force of will to keep from doing just that, and somehow, the space left between them in that empty, expectant moment only made him more aware of her and how dangerous it now was for them to be alone together. He could stop himself kissing her for a time, but the tension seemed to contradict any chance of that restraint lasting forever, on both sides.
“Goodnight, Damon.”
“Goodnight, wife.”
She glowered at him, but a betraying smile snuck through at the edges of her mouth.
CHAPTER 7
Damon wore his dreamspell amulet to bed again, eager to hear from his aesta, if she had a message for him. He woke up disappointed and cold. The ground had frozen overnight, though the early morning sun was already working to melt the frosted dew.
He overheard a slight commotion from the direction of the longhouse. Sharika and Ria were outside, both speaking in tones that alternated between hushed and offended as they spoke with a young man whom Damon didn’t recognize.
He made his way over slowly, all too aware of how the sudden appearance of a Merinian into Remenai affairs might be perceived. Their attention wasn’t on him, however, and Ria was clearly at the center of the discussion.
Damon waited patiently until the man bowed to Sharika and Ria and departed into the woods before giving voice to his question.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Ria hesitated for a moment before answering. “I have been summoned to meet with the Athlatak.”
“Alright,” said Damon. “What, or who, exactly is the Athlatak?”
Sharika began speaking in a serious voice, her words coming out so quickly that Damon doubted he would have been able to understand her even if he’d spoken Konokai. The older Remenai woman took hold of Ria’s shoulders and shook her for emphasis, not hard, but not softly, either.
Damon glanced past both of them toward the longhouse, where Arylla was making her way over. He moved to join her in hopes of getting a more straightforward answer.
“What is an Athlatak, Arylla?” he asked.
She winced slightly and ran a hand along her chin. “It is… difficult to translate. Sort of a ruler, like emperor or king, but only in passing. The word is closer to mapper or even painter in your people’s language.”
“He’s powerful, then?”
“Very much so,” said Arylla. “An Athlatak only rises among our people once every decade or so. Most serve for less than a year before accomplishing their mythosai, ah, stated purpose.”
“Sort of like a royal agenda?” He folded his arms. “Do you know what this Athlatak’s stated purpose is?”
Arylla shook her head. “I do not.”
Damon flicked his eyes toward Ria and Sharika, still in the middle of their intense discussion. “What are they arguing about?”
“Sharika…” Arylla hesitated, letting her expression take on a conflicted frown. “She says that there are few good reasons why that Athlatak would summon Ria, young and clanless as she is.”
“She’s a tempester,” Damon pointed out. “She’s also developed a bit of a reputation in Veridan’s Curve.”
“It is possible that the Athlatak wishes her to become his ally,” said Arylla. “It is, unfortunately, just as likely that he wishes her imprisoned or executed.”
He tensed his jaw and looked at Ria again. She was shaking her head, refusing to acknowledge some point that Sharika seemed adamant about making. The conversation between the two Remenai women ended in a huff, with Ria stomping off in the direction of the clearing’s edge.
“Hold up,” called Damon as he jogged after her. “Hey. Talk to me.”
“This… I am not certain whether your advice would be helpful in this matter.”
“I have more to offer than just my advice,” he said. “I’m with you, Ria. Whatever you decide.”
He pulled her into a hug from behind, heedless of being seen by Sharika and the others. Ria sighed, briefly melting into the embrace before pulling away and taking his hands into hers.
“The Athlatak has summoned me to Yvvestrosai, the City of Flowers,” she said. “If I heed his command, I will be walking into his domain and placing myself in his power. If I refuse it… I risk being made umasutten, word-exiled. It is nearly the same as having banishment marks placed on my face. I would be stripped of basic rights and reviled by my people.”
“Then let’s go talk with the Athlatak,” said Damon.
Ria was already shaking her head. “Damon, you are of Merinian birth. It is not as though you can just—”
“Ria. I’m going with you. You can either accept my help openly or accustom yourself to me following you for the length of the journey. Your choice.”
She let out an annoyed hiss through her teeth. “You do not even speak ten words of Konokai…”
“So teach me more.”
“…Or have any understanding of the local laws and customs!”
“Ria, I’m an outlaw, in case you’d forgotten,” he said. “If your help and advice isn’t sufficient to keep me in line once we enter the Remenai lands, it’s not as though dodging the authorities will be a new experience for me.”
“You are impossible!”
“No,” he said, quietly. “I just care about you.”
“What about Velanor?” asked Ria. “You already established your plan to help her. What of seeking out Wrath and plying her for advice?”
“Plying her for advice,” he said teasingly. “You certainly have a way with euphemisms.”
“I am being serious, young Damon!”
He made a show of looking around and scanning the trees. “I expect that if I start journeying east, out of the colonized regions, Wrath will catch wind of it. It might even be faster to get an audience with her through this approach. She seems awfully interested in what I’m up to.”
“You would be placing yourself in needless danger…” she said. She shook her head, her eyes pleading with him, but at the same time, he could see her warming to the idea.
“Not for the first time,” he said. “This isn’t just about me, Ria. Aesta would never forgive me if I let you go alone. Neither would Vel. I’m not interested in facing her ire straight away once she’s recovered.”
“Nor am I,” Ria said. She drew in a breath and held it a few moments. “Perhaps you are correct. I am being of narrow thinking in taking this upon myself alone. I could use your help."
“Then you'll have it,” said Damon. "Let's not dally for longer than we need to. We'll set out east and see what awaits."
"You have never traveled the Remenai lands beyond the Malagantyan before, have you?" Ria flashed a surprisingly eager smirk. "This will all be new to you, no?"
"I'm looking forward to it," Damon said. "Let's make for the forest."
"Not just yet. We should spend the morning and perhaps the afternoon saying our goodbyes to Sharika and the others."
Damon could have said his goodbyes with a few mere words and a wave or two, but he understood how meaningful it was for Ria. He followed her back to the longhouse, shouldering the look of disapproval with which Sharika favored them both.
Much of the conversation Ria shared with the other woman, her aesta's aesta, was lost on hi
m in words, but perfectly clear in emotions. Sharika was clearly against them leaving, and from the way her eyes kept pulling toward Damon, he had a suspicion about the source of her anxiety.
“What’s she saying?” he whispered to Ria during a pause.
“She is expressing the concerns she harbors over us proceeding with this journey,” said Ria. “Some of them are… how do you say… tangential to the danger we will be exposing ourselves to.”
Sharika had always taken issue with their closeness as a family, to put it politely. Damon hadn’t cared about her opinion much from the start, but he knew that Ria did. She wasn’t capable of shrugging off that sort of judgment, not after putting so much effort into knowing her nearest relatives.
“Tell her that it wouldn’t make sense for you to go alone,” said Damon.
“I already have.”
“Then tell her we’re adults, and she has no place lording over our lives.”
“I already… Damon, would you please let me handle this?”
She shot him a look that left little room for objection. Damon headed into the longhouse, where he received a surprising amount of help refilling his food pack from Arylla, Saxil, and a few of the Remenai children.
“Bring her back to us, Damon,” said Arylla. “The children love her. They would be crushed if anything happened to her.”
“That’s a sentiment I share,” he said. “I don’t intend letting her come to harm.”
Arylla nodded and surprised him with a quick hug. Saxil made a show of shaking his hand, a gesture most Remenai dismissed as Merinian nonsense.
He rejoined Ria outside just as her conversation with Sharika was coming to an end. She looked deeply affected by the encounter, and Damon had the sense not to probe into what had transpired any more than he already had.
“Thank you,” he said to Sharika in Konokai.
She blinked and slowly, respectfully, offered him a nod in reply.
“I need to gather a few things,” said Ria. “But once I have… You are ready?”
“Ready and waiting,” he said. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 8
Damon genuinely enjoyed traveling with Ria again. Even before she’d left, their time at The Rosewood Inn had been a static routine, days of chores and small talk with lots to do and nothing to see.
He let her lead, in no small part due to how much he enjoyed watching her navigate the trees. She carried one of her carefully crafted wooden spears alongside the throwing knife he’d given her as a gift in the early part of the year. The leggings she wore clung tight to her thighs and butt, adding a pleasantly jiggly slice of wonder to his already magnificent view.
The late morning sunshine trickled through the immense forest canopy, dazzling splinters of light and sky. The ground cover—bracken, mosses, ferns, and a species of low-lying vine with bright red flowers that clung to anything it could reach—crackled and popped underfoot.
“How well do you know the route we’ll be traveling?” asked Damon.
“Well enough.” She shot a confident smile over her shoulder. “It will be a long journey. We still have two days to go within the Malagantyan before we reach Amaryssan, the Eastern Desert. Once we cross that, we shall need to continue through the Vinaland, or the Old Wilds.”
“Have you been this way before?”
“Much of it, yes. I have never come near to our destination, however. Yvvestrosai is not the type of city that a clanless such as myself could easily enter without danger.”
She seemed to draw in a bit in the wake of her words. Damon pulled forward, letting his shoulder brush alongside hers.
“You may be clanless, but you aren’t alone,” he said. “Any danger we’re heading into will be split between us.”
“That is sweet of you to say, Damon, but it may not be the case in practice,” she replied. “We shall see what fate has in store for us.”
A few hours later, fate threw a monster at them. They were still within the forest and received various warnings ahead of time, from the anxious bird calls to the sound of snapping branches, and even the smell carried by the shifting wind.
A lidaragi feasted on a fresh kill, a young boar who’d apparently stumbled into the troll’s territory. It was an ugly brute, close to five hundred pounds if Damon were to take a guess, and several heads taller than him.
He motioned for Ria to stand back as she raised her throwing knife. The weapon might be effective if she managed to take the lidaragi in one of the eyes or the front of the throat, but it was turned away from them, busy devouring the guts of its prey.
Damon crept forward, silently drawing his myrblade and picking his approach angle. He was a step away from being near enough to take the monster through the back with a sword stab when it tensed and reared up, swiveling its head around to face them.
He half expected Ria to let loose her throwing knife, or even her spear, but nothing came. She must have thought it too dangerous, given how easily a ranged attack could run astray of its intended target.
Damon hopped back a pace as the lidaragi swung a hulking arm at him. He slashed it across the chest in a quick counter and then dodged again, rolling past a mixture of snapping jaws and grappling claws.
He leapt upward with a flourish, jumping first onto an old stump and then at the troll’s back. With both hands on his myrblade’s hilt, he sank the weapon deep into the lidaragi’s back. His tongue went cold as he drew from his sword’s magic, freezing both the blade and the monster through which it was now impaled.
The moisture within the troll crystalized from the inside out, flesh bulging against its green skin as it died across the span of several painless instants. It took a bit of effort for Damon to pull his sword free, watching the monster fall forward like an intricately painted statue.
“I thought you were past the point of showcasing your combat prowess for me,” said Ria.
“Just figured I’d reveal one of my new tricks,” he said. “It’s effective against larger opponents who might survive a single stab.”
“A single misaimed stab,” said Ria. “Few creatures can withstand a blow to the heart.”
Damon wiped a few beads of sweat from his forehead and caught his breath. “Few, indeed.”
He had been trying to impress her, and from the smile she gave him as she continued walking, hips swaying with an extra ounce of allure, it had worked.
***
The lidaragi’s kill had been fresh. Damon saw no reason to waste the meat and cut a haunch off the boar after carefully cleaning his myrblade. They traveled for another hour before the setting sun and thick tree canopy colluded to shadow their way.
Ria chose their campsite, and Damon built the fire. A fallen tree gave them a natural bench to sit on, and a few minutes of cutting at the brush with his sword was all it took to clear space for their tents.
“You don’t have to set up your tent,” said Damon. “If you don’t want to, I mean. It’s up to you.”
He smiled at his own awkwardness. Ria smiled back, but it was one of a challenging variety that he hadn’t seen before.
“It is up to me,” said Ria. “I would like to have a tent for myself.”
He didn’t question her choice, though the urge to was near overpowering. Instead, he took to skinning the meat he’d taken off the boar and spitting it over the fire. It was a choice cut, fresh and fatty, better than the quality Malon would often buy in the Azurecliff market.
He listened to it sizzle over the flames and savored the smell of cooking meat. It was almost winter, and though that carried the upside of the forest being purged of flies and mosquitoes, it also meant that the predators would be hungry. He kept his sword unsheathed and within reach, ready if another lidaragi or goliath snake or—True Divine—a pack of wandering tau decided to try them.
“I wish to know more of what happened with you and Velanor during your dreamspell excursion,” said Ria.
“There’s not much more to tell.” He gave her a shrug, consider
ing the events. “It was a limited window into the intrigue of Hearthold’s court.”
“Through the eyes of this Captain Aldric,” said Ria. “I never met him, myself. What was that like?”
“I suppose it was… informational,” he said. “Scandalous, even. He is, or at least was, in love with Queen Anise. There’s no way he could ever have been with her openly.”
“Do you think, perhaps, that is part of why he loved her?” asked Ria. “Because she was forbidden to him?”
A glob of fat dripped off the meat and into the flames, eliciting a hiss from the fire. Ria sat on the log, while Damon stooped forward on one knee, overseeing the cooking of their dinner.
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” said Damon.
“People often want what they cannot have.”
“But it isn’t fair to assume that the only reason they want it is because they can’t have it,” said Damon. “Love isn’t that simple.”
“Desire often is, however.”
She stared at him, her violet eyes perfect and piercing. Her gaze seemed to flaunt the difference in age between them, but that also served to remind Damon that she wasn’t so much older than him. Half a decade, a sprinkling of years, no more than that.
“Were these considerations on your mind when you chose to set up your own tent?” he asked.
She nodded. “Very much so.”
He considered that as he slowly turned the boar haunch over, exposing its underdone side to the flames. “Did you learn much from Sharika in your time with her?”
“Much of what she taught me was what I already should have known.”
She looked so beautiful, sitting on a log, in the middle of the woods. It annoyed Damon to see her like that, though he knew it was a petty emotion to feel. Ria was coming into the woman she was always meant to be.
She was more attractive to him now than ever before, with a newfound sense of propriety and social consideration taking the place of her impulsivity and recklessness, a change that their aesta would have celebrated.
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