“I am no baker’s daughter,” she snaps.
“No, you and Donil ensnare with more than a well-cut hip or head of hair,” Vincent shoots back, angered by the rejection. “You draw others to yourselves like a Pietran Lure, but at least Donil makes use of his catch. You throw yours back to the sea, damage already done.”
Most women slap, but Dara’s hand knows the shape of a fist better than an open palm. When she punches Vincent in the face, he’s knocked to the floor.
“I’ll damage you all right, Vin, and worse than that if you dare to propose to have me as a kept woman again. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand,” he says from the floor, touching the trickle of blood that seeps from his nose. “I understand that I never had a chance.”
And Dara knows that it’s not her he speaks of but Khosa. The anger she has left slips away, and she sinks to the floor beside him, the broken parts of each of their hearts unable to make a whole.
“Me neither, Vin,” she says.
CHAPTER 40
Khosa
WHEN MY GUARDS COME TO A QUICK ATTENTION, THEIR mail rattles, pulling me out of the history I study and jerking my hand, which sends hot tea splashing onto my wrist. I hiss but otherwise ignore the pain, instead coming to my feet as the guards had.
For the queen has come to visit.
“Your Highness,” I say, instinctively dropping into the deep curtsy that was taught to me as soon as I could stand on two legs, though it would come into use only when those same legs took me to Stille.
“Please, as you were,” Dissa says, motioning to both myself and the guards, though I doubt they take her quite so literally, as one of them had been nearly asleep.
I go back to my bench, and the queen follows me there, her full skirts moving through the rushes and bringing an unfamiliar perfume into my library. The room is more hers than mine, and though I know it well, I can’t help but feel an ownership for a place that she’s yet to grace with her presence in my time here.
“Are you healing well?” the queen asks.
I lightly touch my shoulder where a bandage rests beneath my clothes. “Yes,” I tell her. “The salve from your healer has done its work, and there is hardly any pain.”
“And how goes your work?” Dissa asks.
This is a subject I can take to easily, the one thing I can speak of that won’t involve practice and concentration, each gesture and word carefully thought out in the ever-fought battle for normalcy. I prattle on about tides and dates, fiverberries and Dara’s third-great-grandmother, before I realize that the queen is watching me more carefully than she is listening.
“I forget myself in talk of the past,” I tell her, pushing aside a sheet of my calculations. “I should have offered my condolences before anything else. I was sorry to hear of your father’s death.”
The queen accepts with a nod of her head, but I’m well trained in smiles, and hers does not meet her eyes. “I imagine it is hard to stay in touch with what goes on outside of the walls, when one is as isolated as you are.”
“It is,” I say slowly, searching for the buried meaning that is surely in her words. “I have left the castle only once, when Vincent—”
“Yes, when my son risked much to give you a moment of freedom,” she interrupts. “Of late I have wondered what more he would wager on your behalf.”
Tones and small gestures I cannot interpret, but words I can decipher, and she does not cloak these. My eyes drop to my wrist, and the angry burn left in the wake of spilled tea.
“The prince does not care for me beyond what is seemly,” I say.
“I wish I were so sure,” Dissa says. “A mother knows much, and what I’ve learned from watching him since your arrival could fill one of your books, if there were a language to write it in.”
I meet her eyes, daring her to call me liar again.
“All things can be written,” I say. “And between us there is nothing that could not be read by his own mother, or that would make a Scribe blush to copy.”
Dissa is quiet, studying me. “I believe it is so, on your own part. But what of his?”
“I cannot speak for the prince more than I could a sea-spine,” I tell her.
“And that is as it should be,” she says, placing her hand on mine and holding it tight when I try to pull away. “It is the sea-spine you are meant for, and not my son.”
I fake no courtesies as she rises to leave, the guards’ faces as unreadable as my own as she sweeps past them. Outwardly, I return to my work, and I have no doubt that my guards find me a cold fish indeed, to be so unruffled by a royal threat. But inside I am reeling, for I have myself wondered if Vincent’s feelings for me have intensified, and if so, what to do about it.
I lose myself in pages and ink, until there is a tapping at the door and my heart leaps at the familiarity of the pattern. Donil’s knock is always hesitant, asking my permission before entering the library—a place that I’ve just been forcefully reminded I won’t occupy for long. He enters at my nod with the same easy confidence as always, and I feel my face twist as the emotions I’ve tamped down force their way out.
“Khosa?” His own smile falls away at the sight of my distress, and I wave to the guards.
“Leave us,” I say, my voice tight as I struggle to cap the rage I feel at the knowing glance they share, even if I am grateful when they judiciously shut the doors behind them.
“What is it?” Donil asks, and I go to him without preamble, falling into his arms as all the strength I’ve held on to by my very fingernails since escaping Hyllen leaves me in a rush. His arms circle me, and I sag against him, a deep sob rising in my chest.
He lowers us both to the floor and lets me cry, not asking for explanation. I revel in the safety of his touch, the brush of our skin, the only touch I’ve ever borne without revulsion. Since I was small I’d seen children run to their mothers, wives to their husbands, friends to one another, and never known the draw that made them do so. Until now. There is comfort within Donil’s arms, and safety. And undeniably, buried deep but churning through us both, a throb of desire.
“What is it?” he asks softly, his breath stirring the fine hairs around my ear. “What has you so troubled?”
A gasp of fresh air does nothing but give strength to a new bout of tears, and he draws me even closer, our bodies pressed together, both of us surrounded by the pile of my skirts on the floor around us.
“The queen was here to visit me,” I finally tell him, as he dries my tears with the hem of his shirt.
“She’s not so frightening,” he chides.
“She’s a mother, and there is nothing so ferocious in nature as that,” I correct him. “I was warned away from her son.”
“Ah,” Donil says, glancing away from me. “I didn’t realize your heart went in that direction.”
His jaw is tense, the pulse of anger at my words betrayed by the smallest flicker of muscles jumping beneath speckled skin. I reach for him, drawing his gaze back to mine and letting my fingers trail across his lips.
“It doesn’t,” I say.
He closes the distance between us, and my world is no longer made of water, but fire. In Hyllen I had often lain in my loft bed, wondering how any act of intimacy was performed, how nakedness could be seen and not bring shame, how embarrassment could be overrun by need. In only the space of a few moments, I know, as my body screams for his so loudly its voice alone would shed my dress if my hands weren’t already at work. I don’t know whether to tear at my own clothes or his, but then my fingers are buried in his hair and our mouths are saying things to each other with no words, things that have grown between us in more innocent hours.
“Khosa,” he says, voice heavy as if drunk. “Khosa, wait.”
I’m on my back in the rushes, hair spilling down my shoulders. “Wait?” I ask, partly brazen, partly confuse
d.
“I can’t do this,” he says, rising off of me.
“You don’t want me?”
“Tides, woman,” he says, shaking his head. “I only wish I didn’t.” He pulls me onto my knees beside him, and I arrange my dress back into decency.
“Khosa,” he says gently, hand finding mine, though we both still tremble with need. “What if I should get you with child?”
“It is my purpose,” I remind him. “And you are my choice.”
“And fulfilling the role would give me great joy. Until it was truly done, and then my love the reason your body floated in the sea.”
“That will be,” I remind him pressing my palm against his. “Whether by you or another man, I go to the water.”
“And your child after you,” he says. “Dara would drag me to the depths if one of the last Indiri was meant for the waves.”
I untangle my fingers from his and rise, presenting him with my back. “Are your sister’s wishes so great that they outweigh both yours and mine?”
Behind me, Donil sighs as he gets to his feet. “I have a role to fill, same as you, Khosa, same as Vincent. Though it seems we’re all damned whichever way we turn.”
The door slams as he leaves, sending the rushes at my feet trembling as much as my hands, hands that have just now learned the thrill of a touch, only to have it taken away.
CHAPTER 41
Witt
WITT RUBS HIS FINGERS AGAINST THE ROUGH UNDERside of the table, picking at the sharp edges of splinters that catch his skin. It serves to keep him focused as the long parade of Pietran problems and requests comes to face him.
“You need to collect what, again?” He asks the Hyllenian shepherd to repeat himself.
“Coilweed, my lord,” the man says.
“My Lithos,” Pravin, seated next to Witt, corrects him. “In Pietra you face your leader on equal footing. The Lithos sits on the throne only to deliver judgment. Today he sits in a chair like any other.”
Witt is acutely aware of the fact that his chair is like any other, on this day of all days. The Hyllenians were surprised that they would have a chance, along with any Pietra, to speak to the Lithos. The Pietra had not been pleased when some Hyllenians were spared death, and more than a few fights among the two peoples had broken out.
As a result, the line of supplicants is much longer than usual. He’s been receiving all day. Witt’s backside hurts, his head is pounding, and his lungs feel as if they might collapse under the pressure of inhaling the indoor air, stale with so many complaints. A sliver of wood slides underneath his thumbnail, painfully bringing him to the present.
“And what do you need coilweed for, shepherd?”
“It’s time to take the tails off the young lambs, my lo—my Lithos. The coilweed, it reaches for other plants, squeezes the life out of those around it so that it can have all the sun, all the rain, for itself.”
“I know what coilweed is.” Witt pulls the splinter out from his nail with his teeth and spits it onto the table between them. “Why should I let you go looking for it?”
“Because the lambs . . . they’re born with long tails, see? They can get stepped on, scraped open, fester. We take a bit of the coilweed, and it snaps around the tail at the base, pinches it off in a few days.”
Pravin leans back from the table. “And you think we’re depraved?”
“It only hurts for a moment, sir. Once it coils tight, they can’t feel it. Like tying a string real tight about your finger. It’s how we do the castrations, too.”
Pravin covers his face with his hands. “That’s knowledge I didn’t need.”
The shepherd looks between the Lithos and the Mason, his hands rubbing together nervously. “I thought maybe you would. For . . . for the next Lithos.”
It is Witt’s turn to cover his face, hiding the smile that blooms there for a moment.
“The Lithos is . . .” Pravin searches for a word, his color deepening. “Intact. He takes no one to his bed by choice. It is a sacrifice he makes for his people, as the Lithos cannot be distracted.”
“Begging your pardon, but it can still be distracting, someone in your bed or no.”
“Coilweed,” Witt says loudly. “How much do you need?”
“I’d say a basketful, pulled properly along with the roots so we can plant them within distance of our flock to harvest at need,” the shepherd says. “It grows easy as rankflower. I doubt I’d have to go far to find some.”
“I’ll send two of my men with you. And you’ll be back by sundown, or we’ll practice your methods on your own skin.”
“Yes, my lo—my Lithos.” The shepherd backs out of the room, nodding to Witt and Pravin as he does.
“A moment before the next one, please,” Pravin calls to the guard at the door.
“And would you mind bringing something from the kitchen?” Witt asks the Keeper, who stands in the shadows of the hall. She nods and turns away, Pravin’s frown following her exit.
“You’ve taken to keeping her close.”
“I have. But not for any reason you need fear, intact or not.” Witt stands, stretching his limbs and judging the passing of the day by the slanted light coming in through the window. “We’ve been at it all morning and a good part of the high hours.”
“Bringing sheep and farmers into a world of stone and water was bound to set some tongues wagging. Let them have their words. They say them to the Lithos and leave without the weight of them. Besides, some of the Hyllenian women are not difficult to look at. A few high tides, and the Pietra will grow accustomed to them. The next Lithos will be sitting at this table across from their children, no doubt.”
“With the water pooling at their heels,” Witt says darkly.
“We can only do as we always have,” Pravin says. “Send the dead to the sea to spare the land, and claim every last inch of earth for our people.”
The door at the end of the hall is thrown open suddenly, banging against the stone wall and bringing Pravin to his feet, Witt’s hand to his sword. A Pietran soldier runs toward them, face drenched in sweat.
“I’m sorry, my Lithos,” the guard calls, hurrying to catch up. “He would not wait.”
“It cannot wait,” the soldier spits back, turning to Witt. “My Lithos, the guards who were taken by the Feneen have returned, bringing one with them.”
“Bring their prisoner to me,” Witt says.
“I think you’ll find, sir, that it’s the other way around.”
Witt has no need of slivers under his fingernails, or the rough texture of wood grain against his hands to keep his attention focused. The man sitting across from him has spurred him into battle-readiness, though it is not the kind of engagement that would require any weapons other than words. Witt takes the measure of the Feneen quietly, well aware of the same being done to him.
“You took some of my men,” he says.
“Rather easily,” the Feneen answers. “And one horse. But I’ve brought them all back to you, having seen sights they’ll not soon forget.”
Witt’s eyes flick to the Pietra who were returned. They stand, stripped of their armor and flanking the Feneen called Ank, almost as if they are his guards instead of soldiers in Witt’s army.
“And what sights would those be?” Pravin asks them.
“I saw men melded with cats, sir,” one of them answers, staring straight ahead. “Feneen who could not walk, submitting to be sewn onto Tangata in order to fight for their people.”
“A show of loyalty, to be sure,” Witt agrees. “But no more stunning than our own people who line the cliffs when the time has come to build their boats.”
“Pardon me, my Lithos, but no,” the other soldier says. “The Pietra who can no longer be of use to their people willingly go to the Lusca, a solitary death on an endless sea. The Feneen who believed themselves useless chose
pain in order to become an asset. They rode wild animals into an enemy camp, knowing that even should they survive the battle, they would never dismount.”
A prickle of irritation rises along Witt’s spine. “You sound like you admire them.”
“Is it so unbelievable?” Ank asks.
“What enemy were these Feneen set against?” Pravin asks, and Witt silently curses himself for not asking the more important question first.
“The same one you would conquer,” Ank says. “Stille.”
“What argument do the Feneen have with Stille and King Gammal?” Witt wills the growing uneasiness in his belly to not reflect in his words.
“The same argument any child would have against a parent who set them aside,” Ank says easily. “More than half our numbers are Stillean born, and the walls of the city closed to them though they drew their first breaths inside of it. As for Gammal, one cannot argue with a dead man.”
Pravin sits up straighter in his chair, and Witt leans forward. “You killed the king?”
“Not myself.” Ank holds the younger man’s gaze. “But I saw him fall.”
Witt looks to the Pietra standing on either side of Ank. “It’s true, my Lithos,” one of them says.
“It seems you have done us a great favor,” Witt concedes.
“I believe we can do more,” Ank says. “We have an army of fighters, recently blooded.”
“Pietra does not need favors, or soldiers sewn onto animals,” Witt says brusquely, rising to end the meeting.
“And how does Pietra feel about the loss of its own in exchange for its leader keeping his pride?”
Witt’s upper lip curls. “What loss would be that be, when you openly return what you take from me?”
“I speak of the Pietran dead when you take the field against Stille. As an army, they’re laughable, but a lifetime of weeding your weak has left you outnumbered, and while your fish may feed bellies, I do not believe they are quite full.”
“One Pietra is worth five Stilleans in the field,” Pravin says.
Given to the Sea Page 17
