“Can you go back to it?” I ask. “Through your memories?”
“No. Many have tried, though not in my line. There was a man who went so far back in thought that he was fed by his relatives for many moons as he sat unconscious, trying to reach the story.”
“With no luck?”
“No luck, and no love lost between him and his kin. We hold our gift of being born knowing sacred, but wiping another’s ass while he searches has a way of detracting from that.”
I smile again, relieved that he has no compunction around me, and our conversation is not peppered with apologies like with Vincent and me. “And how far have you delved into the memories you were born knowing?” I ask.
“Not nearly so deep.” Donil’s face is suddenly serious. “I’ve got one memory of climbing out of a pit right at hand. I’m in no hurry to find another.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, my hand closing over his before I realize it, the heat of his skin sinking into mine. “I read of your birth in the histories. I should have known better than to ask.”
His smile returns, and I feel a bright spike of pleasure at the thought that perhaps it is brought on by my touch as well as my words. “Indiri know much, and very little of it pleasant,” he says, his uninjured hand closing over mine tentatively. His fingertips barely touch mine as if in question, a sharp stab of anticipation following each brush of skin against skin.
“Tell me more of the histories, and the work that stains these fingers black,” he says.
So I speak, my words coming easily as the candle burns low, Donil holding my hand. And I let him.
CHAPTER 35
Dara
HOW MANY OF THESE TREES DID YOU TALK DOWN, AND how many were cut?”
Dara eyes the freshly hewn logs piled nearby, knobs still bleeding sap from where branches were cut away.
“I’d say half are my doing,” she tells Donil. “And even with my help, that’s not nearly what they’ll need to reinforce the city walls. It’s been rotting since the last time someone attacked it, and that’s time out of mind.”
The two are sitting under a shade tree in the middle of what the Stilleans call their encampment, something the twins find amusing. The tree was ancient, the early Stilleans neglecting it when they cleared the field. Dara imagined one Stillean saying to another as time passed that someone should see to it, each expecting the other to handle it, until it had grown large enough to present a daunting task. Its leaves spread wide, as if reaching for its counterparts that ringed the field, a distance it could never cross.
The field is used for marching drills and to host a few swordfights, none drawing blood but leaving a few purses lighter for want of smart bets, and there is a tent that serves as a mess hall, constantly doling out food to men who aren’t even hungry.
“That fellow’s on his third bowl.” Donil nods toward a portly Stillean leaving the tent, out of earshot. “He delivers the fresh blades from the smith, puts them in a pile, rewards himself with stew, then drives back into town.”
“He should feed it to the cart donkey; it’s the one doing the work,” Dara says.
“Quite,” Donil agrees, halving an apple with his knife and handing part to Dara. “You look like you could use some feeding yourself.”
She accepts the apple but says nothing.
“Does it drain you much to talk down the trees?”
“It tires me. But much less than it would a whole team of them to do the same task.”
“Yes,” her brother says. “It’s important they reserve their strength for things like swapping stories of their heroic feats, as of yet unperformed.”
Dara crunches into her apple. “And attending speeches.”
“That’s today?”
“This very moment, I believe,” Dara says, gesturing toward the city with her bitten apple. “Why do you think I’m here?”
“What? You don’t want to hear the king tell Stilleans it is time to make good on their proud history of . . . knitting sweaters?”
“I’d take the old ladies and their needles over the would-be soldiers I’ve seen.”
“The old ladies are faster.”
“I’m not entirely sure I jest,” Dara says, picking a seed from her apple. “They put more work into reinforcing the walls than training the army. If they think the Pietra will see a wall of wood and go home, they’re wrong. The Pietra will tear it down with their teeth and spit the splinters at us before shearing our heads off.”
“They’re Stilleans,” Donil says with a shrug. “The last time any of them shed blood was when they lost their baby teeth.”
A wave of sound rolls toward them from the city, voices raised in unison, and the twins exchange a look.
“Gammal must’ve said something decent, anyway,” Donil says.
“Vin wrote the speech.”
Donil doesn’t respond, but watches his sister while she crunches through the last of the apple.
“What?” she asks.
He plucks some blades of grass from between his feet and begins to braid them together. “It seems like the two of you have been talking quite a bit lately, is all.”
“He makes good conversation.”
“Mmmm.”
“What?” Dara asks again, this time accompanying her question with a slug to her brother’s arm.
Donil ties off the braid and tosses it into the breeze, watching it waft away to float over the heads of the would-be Stillean soldiers, now pouring from the city like ants.
“I see our adopted people getting ready to fight battles they’re not prepared for,” he says. “I’d hate to see my sister about to do the same.”
“No worries,” Dara says as the men began to fill the encampment, and Donil relaxes slightly. “There’s never been a battle I wasn’t prepared for.”
“Dara . . . ,” he begins, but her hand clamps onto his shoulder, strong and sure.
“Brother, as long as there’s a breath of hope that I can find a male Indiri, Stille is safe from speckled royal children.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” he says, watching as the king himself mans the pile of swords, handing one to each man who volunteers for the Stillean army. Vincent stands by his grandfather’s side, stiff and formal, but squints against the sun and nods when he spots them beneath the tree.
Dara waves back. “And once I’ve determined there are no more Indiri, what better place for our blood than a throne? Besides, brother, you have no foot to stand on, speaking to me of such things. I hear you passed some time with the Given yesterday.”
“What of it?” Donil shoots back, tone sharp enough to confirm Dara’s suspicions.
“I’ll tell you what of it. If blood of mine is in Khosa’s child, I’ll take it to the treetops with the Tangata, and all of Stille can go to the depths in a wave.”
“Even Vincent?”
“Even him,” Dara says, and her voice does not shake. “The Indiri above all things, brother. You need to remember that.”
The first scream from the woods goes unheeded by all except the twins, the killing call of a Tangata being a familiar sound. But Dara’s hand tightens on Donil’s shoulder, a lifetime spent in the woods bringing her to her feet in alarm.
“Something is wrong,” she says, seconds before a wave of Feneen burst from the trees.
“To arms!” Donil yells, his own sword unsheathed as he charges forward, ready to meet the entire line on his own.
The men waiting their turn for a sword panic, half of them running back toward the city empty-handed, while those who remain dive for a weapon, fighting each other instead of the enemy bearing down on them.
Donil cuts into the first Feneen he meets at a run, easily parting the soft pit of his belly open. The next feints, and Donil’s sword takes his knees out from under him, a back slash ending the rest. Donil slips easily underneath the
broad swing of his next attacker, a huge Feneen with an extra head resting on his shoulder, mute and blind. Donil takes off both with a single swing.
He turns, expecting to find Dara beside him. But she barely cleared the shade of the tree, the paleness of her skin even more evident in the stark light of the sun. Talking down the trees cost her more than she’d admitted, and he is about to return to her side when he sees her lips moving fervently, and the grass browning at her feet.
Dara’s voice gains volume as the grass around her dies, its life flowing into her as she calls it, refilling the energy she’s lost and then some. The brown swathe widens, creeping toward the tree as Dara’s Indiri speech flows, the words dark and heavy, nothing like the ones she used in the forest. This call isn’t asking, but demanding, and it echoes over the field with a clarity that slices through the cries of battle as the first of the untried Stilleans fall under Feneen might.
When the tree begins to crumble, it shakes the earth, and soldiers from both sides turn to watch as grass turns to dust and the tree itself sinks into the ground, enveloped by the pull of Dara’s call. As many eyes are on her as the collapsing tree, her skin now flush and bright with life, her hair crackling with energy and eyes bright as stars. In the space of breaths, a circle of fallow ground surrounds her, and a tree that stood for ages is gone, all of its power inside the Indiri girl, who draws her sword, and charges.
The first Feneen who dares to meet her is cut in half.
The twins fight toward the king and Vincent, whose own swords are already bloodied.
“You’ve got to get back to the city,” Donil says to both of them, yelling over the cries of men dying around them, the crash of steel against steel as untrained Stilleans try to hold their ground.
King Gammal shakes his head. “I gave these men a speech about courage. I can hardly be seen fleeing.”
“And I wrote the speech,” Vincent says.
“Backs together, then.” Dara doesn’t bother to argue. “Vincent, on my right. Father’s-Father, we’ll circle you.”
“I would not see youth cut down in my stead. I’m an old man, Dara girl,” Gammal says.
“And the king,” she reminds him. “So shut up and do as I say.”
Gammal’s laughter rings out odd and lost on the battlefield, as alien as Dara’s now vibrant skin and glowing eyes. They circle their king, Indiri on one side of him and Vincent on the other, a pattern they’d often practiced, always in play and never with blood underfoot.
“Vincent,” Donil calls as he spots Ank among the melee, shouting orders, “our friend has declared himself anything but.”
“Well, pull me under,” Dara says breathlessly as she parries against a Feneen, driving him through the chest. “They’re riding Tangata.”
A cat breaks through a group of Stilleans, swiping open a man’s face down to the bone before leaping onto another. Its Feneen rider swings his sword wildly, and Donil takes off his arm with a stroke as the cat passes near, ready to pounce on its next prey. Another cat bounds through the melee, a dead rider dragging behind but not slowing it down as it pulls a Stillean back by his heel, snapping his neck with a toss of its jaws.
Dara takes down another Feneen as they press toward the king. The body of dead around their protective circle grows, but her eyes are on the cats.
“My left arm for a bow,” she seethes.
“That’s your sword arm,” Donil reminds her, but his glance follows hers and he sees the trail of mutilated bodies left in the wake of the cats.
“Go,” he says.
Dara doesn’t argue, crossing the field in a moment with her stolen energy, taking out a cat’s back legs before it knows she’s behind it. It turns to fight, the bloody stumps of its legs dragging through filth and spraying blood. The first swipe snags the tip of her cape, pulling her off balance and bringing her to a knee. The cat drags itself to her, its haunches curling for a pounce even as it dies. She finishes it with a slice across the throat and rises, blood-spattered, to face a Feneen who saw a chance to take her unawares.
He was mistaken.
Donil’s sword makes wider arcs as he grows tired, Vincent barely keeping his breath by his side. Still, the Feneen come on, drawn by the sight of the king.
Gammal has pulled his sword, though it is a decorative one only. He grips the blade in gloved hands, swinging the heavy pommel through the air and dropping more than one Feneen at his feet.
“I see him,” Vincent says to Donil. It’s the first chance he’s had to acknowledge Ank’s presence.
The Feneen is the only one on a horse, and he turns its head toward them almost as if he heard. He carries a bow, and an arrow sails straight for Gammal the moment he spots him, Donil knocking it aside with a swing of his sword.
Ank rides for them as the sounds of the battle falter, the dead bleeding out, the wounded crying for help. As he comes closer, Donil can see that the horse wears a Pietran bridle.
“You were not long in making new friends,” Donil says to Ank, arms shaking with the effort of holding his sword.
“The Feneen do what they must,” Ank says calmly, eyes on Vincent.
“Like attack those they offer assistance to?” Vincent asks, chest heaving.
Ank shrugs. “The assistance was refused.” His eyes shift back to Donil. “Stand aside, Indiri. This is not your king.”
“Not my king, but an old man armed with a useless sword,” Donil says. “I’ll remain, like any decent person would, Indiri or otherwise.”
“Let me see him.” A female voice speaks. Ank turns his head to answer her, his horse angling so that Donil and Vincent can see a strikingly beautiful woman with no arms or legs riding in a basket on Ank’s back.
“King Gammal,” Ank says. “Meet Nilana of the Feneen, brightest and best among us.”
“Milady,” says Gammal, unruffled.
She inclines her head. “Ank tells me you are a good man.”
“I’m pleased to hear he thinks so. Although his actions speak otherwise.”
“During war, our actions sometimes go against our hearts,” Nilana says.
“We weren’t at war until today.”
“Until today,” she agrees. And then she spits.
Donil and Vincent are watching Ank, not prepared for a threat from Nilana. The dart she’d hidden in her cheek sails between them, burying itself in Gammal’s throat. He drops instantly, the poison spreading through his body with one beat of his heart.
“A good man,” Ank says as Vincent kneels next to his grandfather, fingers outstretched to cover the wound. “And a good grandson.”
“Don’t touch it,” Nilana warns. “I’ve been building up an immunity to igthorn my whole life. One brush against your hand and you’re dead.”
“Why?” Vincent asks, arms around his dying grandfather.
“Because he is a good man, young prince,” says Nilana. “And not many years left.”
“I’ve seen inside your father, Vincent,” Ank adds, pulling the horse’s head back toward the woods. “I want to go to war against a man I can hate. Not one I respect.”
Dara’s shriek splits the air even from far across the battlefield, where the last cat and rider have fallen under her sword.
“Go,” Nilana says to Ank. “Now.”
Ank spurs his mount for the trees, bloodied mud flying up from its hooves. Dara gives chase, even with no hope of catching them. She screams an Indiri obscenity in their wake, launching her sword into the air. It hits the ground a hand span shy of the horse’s rear legs and Nilana’s laughter can be heard ringing back at them. Dara leaves the sword, running back to where Gammal lies, his life already gone, Vincent numb by his side.
“Father’s-Father?” she asks, even though she is all too familiar with the pallor of death that rests on Gammal’s face.
Donil shakes his head, and Vincent gla
nces up to see Dara quaking, eyes bright as twin suns, hair billowing in a breeze as the borrowed life inside of her seeks a way out. Their eyes meet, and she fills his mind, so that he forgets even Gammal, though he is touching the cooling body.
“Sister,” Donil says sternly. “Release.”
Dara closes her eyes and sinks to the ground, head resting on her knee. A gasp rips from her throat and her cape flutters as hundreds of speckled butterflies rise from beneath it, diving to play in the breeze that blows above the dead and the dying.
CHAPTER 36
Vincent
FOR A MOMENT, DARA IS ALL I SEE, AND THE THIN THREAD of desire that has been weaving through my body suddenly becomes a tapestry that might smother me. Her eyes, skin, hair—everything that has always been Dara—comes together in a burning moment in which I want her so badly I would take her there on the blood-slicked grass, among the dead, with her brother watching.
Then she releases the butterflies, the life she took from the tree leaving her with each pulse of their wings, and the pull is gone. I see her as she is, the girl of my childhood, covered with gore. Blood spatters her skin, drying so that it is impossible to discern it from her speckles. Tufts of Tangata fur stick to her, and I spot a tooth in her hair, snared in a tangle. I realize it is human, and I retch.
I’m on my knees, losing breakfast next to my grandfather’s corpse, when the trembling begins. At first I think it is only the weakness that comes after I train with the twins, a bone-deep exhaustion that promises to cripple me in the morning. But this is different. This travels from my knees into my gut, my whole spine trembling inside me as I roll to sit in the mud, one hand buried in the open gut of a Feneen soldier to keep my balance.
“Donil,” Dara calls, and comes to my side. “Vincent has the shakes.”
Her words reach my ears but not my mind. The trembling is so violent that I jab my own eye when I try to swipe the sweat from my brow.
Given to the Sea Page 14
