Cordelia wished Pool was nearby so she could communicate with Nettle without speaking. As they made camp, she gave Nettle a few pointed looks, then glanced at Fajir. Nettle sucked her teeth slightly. Cordelia repeated the looks, then wandered toward Nico, hoping to have a word alone with him, hoping the Sun-Moon had given him Cordelia’s language the same way they’d given it to Fajir.
She plopped down beside him, and he glanced at her, a questioning look in his dark blue eyes. Nettle moved next to Fajir and struck up a conversation. Fajir stared at her for a few moments before answering in fits and starts.
“How did you come to be here?” Cordelia asked softly.
Nico turned from looking at Nettle and Fajir and blinked at her.
“Do you understand me?” she asked.
He nodded. “I haven’t…spoken your language much since the Lords gave it to me.” He spoke haltingly, his accent thick, and his voice surprisingly light, almost feminine. “I am here because I follow the seren.”
Cordelia nodded. She understood following the leader, but that didn’t explain the way he looked at Fajir when her back was turned. “Is she your lover?”
He sat back, eyes wide as if she’d slapped him. Being a widow meant having no partner, but Cordelia didn’t know if that meant they could never love anyone else. Partners didn’t necessarily become lovers, though Fajir and Halaan had been. By the shocked look on Nico’s face, she guessed he’d been lovers with his partner, too, and that their vengeance might keep them celibate forever.
“No,” he said quietly, gaze darting toward Fajir.
But Cordelia noted the flush in his tanned cheeks and a spark in his eyes. Fajir might not wish it, might not even know about it, but there was something there on Nico’s side. Well, that answered her question about why he’d come.
“Do you think this is the right thing to do?” Cordelia asked. “Will killing this man bring her peace?”
“True vengeance will help Halaan rest.” He smiled and glanced into the distance.
Cordelia sighed. If Halaan was able to rest, Fajir’s vengeance would be satisfied, and Nico would be clear to make a play for her. Well, that meant there was no help here. Nettle and Fajir were still talking, so Cordelia decided to find out everything she could about Nico in the meantime. Maybe there’d be something she could use.
“Were you always a guard?”
He shook his head, staring into the flames of the campfire he’d built. She wondered if that would be his only answer, but then he said, “My partner and I guided lost travelers. We liked the solitude of living in our outpost, hosting the occasional patrol. Sometimes, we even helped plains dwellers who’d gotten separated from their clans. Shira died in a storm, looking for a lost child. Now I make sure others don’t share her fate.”
Cordelia frowned. “So…you’re helping the lost by being a guard?”
When he glanced at her, he had tears in his eyes. “Fajir is lost, and I am helping her find the path again.”
Maybe once they found their target and Fajir killed him, Nico would propose, take Fajir to a house in the middle of nowhere, and set up shop again. Cordelia wondered if Fajir would ever go for it. Maybe Nico wondered the same thing.
Cordelia wiped the dust off her boots and tried to look nonchalant. “And once she finds her path, she’ll go back to being a guard, and you’ll go back to helping lost people on your own?”
He frowned hard and glanced at her, clearly uneasy with the idea. Cordelia kept her face neutral.
“It’s admirable,” Cordelia said. “Helping others, making sure no one dies like your partner did, even if it means you have to be alone in the end.” She stopped there, only a little ashamed, but that was better than having to kill someone. She could see she’d planted a seed of doubt. Maybe now Nico would try to slow this expedition, giving Cordelia more time to convince Fajir that vengeance wasn’t worth risking her own life or Nico’s.
Cordelia lay down to sleep, satisfied.
The next day, they spotted a plains dweller camp in the distance. Fajir wanted to ride ahead but listened to Cordelia’s words of caution. They dismounted and secured their ossors with screw-like tethers that sank into the ground. Nettle spotted an outrider circling the camp, a sentry, a likely source of information.
Fajir sneered, her hand twitching near her bone sword. Cordelia prodded her in the arm. “We can’t kill the sentry. He can tell us if your man is in this camp.” And she hoped like hell that he wasn’t.
“We must take him unawares,” Fajir said. “If he sees us, he will alert the clan.”
Cordelia rubbed her chin. She didn’t trust Fajir to keep her cool. She kept her own weapon near at hand.
“I will bring him.” Nettle was off through the grass before anyone could protest. When the sentry rode past ahead of them, Nettle reared from the grass and pulled him backward out of the saddle, snagging the reins of the animal at the same time.
Cordelia bent double and ran as best she could, hoping the long grass was enough to hide her. The sentry was limp, eyes half-lidded, his breathing shallow. Nettle had scratched him, paralyzing him. Cordelia grabbed him before Fajir could and dragged him back the way she’d come. When Fajir moved to get his legs, Cordelia said, “Grab the ossor!”
Fajir frowned and did so. Nettle grabbed the plains dweller’s legs instead and wrinkled her narrow nose in Cordelia’s direction.
Unless a person had a bad reaction, drushkan poison wore off in about an hour. They sat and waited, not really speaking. When the sentry came around, Nettle stayed out of sight, not wanting to scare the man any more than they had to. When the sentry’s eyes opened enough to focus, Nico knelt at his side.
“Make no noise, friend, and you will live,” Nico said.
The sentry blinked at the three of them, and his brow glistened with sweat. “Who are you?”
Cordelia hoped Nico hadn’t been lying. She’d defend this man if she had to. “This woman is going to give you a description,” she said, nodding at Fajir. “Tell us if the man she describes is in your camp.”
“Dusky skin,” Fajir said, her voice flat. “Light green eyes with flecks of brown. Light brown hair. A small scar on his chin, and a bigger one near his temple.” She must have seen that face every night in her sleep.
“What do you want him for?” the sentry asked. “Who are you?”
“I’m Jenna; this is my sister and her friend,” Cordelia said. “And the man she’s describing got me pregnant.”
Now the sentry gawked at her. Nico and Fajir cast glances at each other but looked at the sentry again, clearly going along with her story.
“We met when he was on a raid,” Cordelia said, trying her best to sound wistful. “We…dallied.” That sounded pretty classy, better than screwed. Or fucked. “I didn’t know I was pregnant until long after he’d gone, and now I’ve come to find him.”
The sentry blinked for a few moments and struggled to sit upright. Cordelia let him, trusting that Nico could pull him down if he tried anything. “He didn’t give you his name or tell you where to find him?”
Cordelia shrugged and tried to look as if it didn’t matter. “I just know he was Engali.”
The sentry seemed skeptical until Nico sighed. “I…dallied with a young raider once. It was a hurried affair, and we simply called each other ‘my love.’”
Even classier. The sentry’s sigh said young people were all the same. “Why did you grab me?” he asked. “Did you think we’d try to hide the father? A child is always welcome!” He looked around, probably seeing from the terrain that he wasn’t far from camp, but he still eyed them with suspicion.
Cordelia shook her head. “Sorry about the tackle. My sister’s really upset.” Luckily, Fajir looked positively murderous. “She grabbed you before I could stop her.”
The sentry shook his head. “Come meet the elders. I don’t know anyone who looks like that, but the Engali clan is huge.” He puffed up a little. “Maybe one of the elders knows where to find h
im.”
“We’re in a hurry,” Fajir said, sounding slightly strangled.
The sentry gave them all a frustrated glance. Cordelia put her hand on Fajir’s arm, not knowing what she’d do to repay such a look.
“There’s no need to be so angry,” the sentry said to Fajir. “I don’t know how it is in Sun-Moon lands, but here in the plains, having a child outside of a bonding ceremony is perfectly natural. Your sister will be honored among us.”
“Just tell us where the next Engali camp is,” Cordelia said, “and we’ll be on our way.”
He gave them directions as best he could, telling them to watch for certain landmarks that only a plains dweller might recognize. Before they parted, the sentry stood and touched Cordelia’s arm, then Fajir’s. “All will be well. You’ll see! Next time, just ask.”
Cordelia tightened her grip on Fajir. “Time to go, sis.” She nearly dragged Fajir back to their ossors. Nettle came out of the grass to join them when the sentry was out of sight, but Fajir’s gaze kept swiveling back toward the camp.
“Keep going,” Cordelia said.
“He touched me!”
“Yeah, keep your eyes on what’s ahead of you.” Cordelia bit her lip. “We might not find him, you know. He could be dead already.”
Fajir’s expression was unreadable, but she mounted her ossor without another backward look. Cordelia wondered what that meant for Halaan if his killer was already dead.
“We’re going to have to speak to more Engali,” Cordelia said. “And you’re going to have to keep your cool.” When Fajir didn’t respond, Cordelia sighed, seeing that she’d have to make this more personal to make any headway. “Did you hear that the Storm Lord is dead?”
Now Fajir glanced at her, confusion replacing anger. “So?”
“He’s the one that killed my uncle. I didn’t kill him myself, but I know the man who did.”
Fajir stared, clearly waiting for more.
“It didn’t really make me feel better. I mean, I’m relieved that he can’t kill anyone else, but my uncle is still dead.”
Fajir snorted. “And once the Engali vermin is dead, he won’t kill anyone else, either.”
“It sounded like an accident when you told me about it in the palace.”
“Save your breath.”
Cordelia resisted the urge to smack her. “Look, I know you don’t care about your own life, or about mine or Nettle’s, but what if Nico is killed during this quest for vengeance? How would Halaan feel about that?”
“Nico’s life is his own. I would not dare tell him how to live it.”
Well, shit, that wasn’t going to work. She tried to think of something else.
“Your words are nothing but ashes in your mouth,” Fajir said. “Don’t try to lead me astray. Just do as you promised, sister.” She kneed her ossor forward, out of earshot.
* * *
As night fell on the plains, Shiv wandered away from her mother’s tree and sat cross-legged in the long grass with her little sapling in front of her. It had grown faster than a normal tree, even faster than a normal queen’s tree, but nothing about her or her mother was typical. Queens were not supposed to bear their own children. When one queen died, a queen-to-be ascended in her place, and another was born at that moment with green hair, changed at her birth. The newborn became the queen-to-be, and the other queens moved to the next tree in line, so that each one would one day be the ninth, the great Shi, leader of all drushka.
Except for Shi’a’na, Shiv’s mother, Pool. When she separated from the drushka, Shi’a’na would only know one tree forever. She had missed the communion of other queens, and out of loneliness, she had borne Shiv. The daughter of a queen would always be a queen, which was why they were forbidden. There simply were not enough trees.
But now, Shi’a’na had learned to make another tree and had given it to Shiv, though it would not be able to carry her for many years. She would care for it before it would care for her. And still, she had no tribe but her mother’s. One day, long in the future, she would take the Anushi tree when Shi’a’na died, but then who would care for this little tree? Who would be its queen? She had often wondered, too, how she could be a queen without a tribe.
Now she knew. Now she had to resist pushing her thoughts through her tree, knowing what would happen when she did. Whenever she connected with the tree this deeply, feeling as one with the soil and sun, feeling the wind through branches, she felt him, her tribe of one.
“Lyshus,” she whispered. She had never been a queen before, but now she had a tribesman all her own, and the connection to him was so definitive, so electric. He was not connected to Pool. He was hers.
When Simon Lazlo had been injured, Reach had placed him in one of the Anushi’s birthing pods in order to keep him alive. The pod’s original occupant, only a few days from being born, had been ejected early. Reach had said it would not make a difference. The last stages of birth served to bathe the infants in the sap of the Anushi and the blood of its queen, tying the infant to the rest of the tribe. But Shi’a’na had been busy fighting, so Shiv had fed the child her own blood. She never dreamed that would make him skip over her mother and bond with her. After all, she was not a proper queen, and Shi’a’na was so much more powerful.
“Lyshus,” Shiv said again, unable to resist calling him. But the natural order of things wanted her to have a tribe, so it had given her one.
She felt him stand in her mother’s branches and turn in her direction. His parents were with him, and through him, she heard as they tried to coax him back into their embrace, but he fought them. Only a week old, and he was already so independent, like her. Like the tree, he grew faster than he should, though all drushkan children could toddle from birth, and all were born with teeth.
Shiv had tried to deny contact with him, knowing it hurt the parents when he pulled away, but Lyshus had seemed hurt and confused when Shiv shunned him. He did not understand why she would deny him, and she was tired of trying. She had shared these thoughts with no one, not the parents, not Shi’a’na, not Liam. She had tried to keep to herself, tried to meditate through these feelings, but Lyshus’s anguish ate at her like rot in the roots.
“Lyshus,” she said again. She was lonely, had been so most of her life. This was why. She had been tied to the Anushi tribe through her mother, had been able to speak to them as her mother did, but it was borrowed power. This was real; it was alive. It was meant to be.
She felt it as Lyshus fled his parents, sliding down through the Anushi’s branches. He could not speak yet, could not fully understand what was happening, but he knew she needed him, that they were one tribe. She blocked out the feelings from the parents. They would be Shi’a’na’s problem, but after that thought came the touch of Shi’a’na’s mind as she sought the source of the parents’ alarm.
When her mother tried to touch Lyshus’s mind, Shiv’s anger flared, and she denied the contact.
“Daughter?” Pool asked through their connection.
“No, Shi’a’na. He is mine! My tribe!”
Shiv felt her mother’s shock but also acceptance. She knew the pull of the tribe. She understood it. But she was forced to split her attention between many individuals. Perhaps she could guess how intoxicating it could be to have a tribe of one.
Shiv felt a sense of relief. Now her mother knew. Maybe she would explain it to the rest of the tribe. Maybe she could explain it to Liam, tell him why she had been distant. It was cowardly to avoid him, but she never knew what to say. His touch was invigorating, but now that she had Lyshus, she knew where she belonged, knew what she had to dedicate herself to. It was the same reason her mother could never have more than a casual lover.
Lyshus raced through the long grass, short legs carrying him quickly. Shiv opened her eyes, and Lyshus leapt into her arms. He grinned; his skin was dark brown, almost as dark as hers, and little buds of hair were red over his scalp. He opened his mouth wide. Over his long leather shirt, Shiv found a nini
tied to his waist by a bit of vine. She held the wooden bauble, and he grabbed it, shoving it in his mouth. He settled in Shiv’s lap and crunched on it contentedly. Shiv was glad Reach had taught her this trick. She had never cared for a small child before, but Reach had cautioned her that they liked to chew on everything: wood, clothing, other drushka. A chewing child was a happy one. So all parents tied a nini around their child lest they become the chew toy.
Shiv felt the probing thoughts of her mother again and blocked them. She would not be able to do so forever. Her mother was too strong. For now, she seemed content to probe and retreat, but she would never allow someone in her tribe to keep secrets. All drushka were too open with one another for that. And someday, Shiv would need Shi’a’na’s advice.
For now, she cuddled Lyshus and listened to his contented little mind. She stood, and he swung around her, knotting his small fists in her shirt and dangling down her back. She climbed high into her mother’s branches while her sapling and her tribemate clung to her. There were predators on the plains at night, and neither Lyshus nor her sapling could defend themselves. Shiv found her small cubby and lay down inside, lighting a candle so she could watch Lyshus at play.
He chewed on his nini, occasionally grinning around it. She passed a hand over his head, and his little hair buds tickled her fingers. When the first bud fell, she thought it a trick of the light, maybe a stray piece of dirt instead of a bud of hair. When the second fell, she leaned close, thinking him infested by some insect, but as she searched him, all the hair began to fall from his scalp.
She sat up sharply. Was he sick? Injured? She stroked him, and all the buds fell, but he seemed happy. She had never heard of such an illness. She wondered if she should call Reach, but there, just under his skin, new hair was already growing, pushing out the old, and she had helped it along.
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