Riven (Exile Book 2)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  “My name is Renn Kinari. Clearly, I am not human,” the Kinarian said, speaking in the language of the Maarlai. Daarik stared at him. “Do you know anything of the planet Kinar-5?”

  Daarik shook his head.

  “We should sit,” Faerlah said, steering Daarik toward his vacated chair. She took the one beside his, and Kinari sat in his own seat.

  “My mother is a Kinarian. She’s actually the princess of the planet Kinar-5. The Kinarians are a race of shapeshifters. They’re also known as ‘the Watchers.’”

  “What do they watch?” Daarik asked, stomach tightening. He had a feeling he wouldn’t like the answer.

  “Everything. They watch worlds as they are born. They track societies throughout the universe. They see it as their sacred duties to watch and record the lives of beings on every planet they can. They are trained, from a very young age, to become Watchers, and, once their king has deemed that they’re ready, they are deployed to a world. They use their shapeshifting abilities to blend in, to live among those they are Watching.”

  “All right,” Daarik said, motioning for him to continue.

  “As you may have guessed, my father is Maarlai. Was Maarlai,” he added with a grimace. “He passed away a little over ten years ago.”

  Daarik was about to extend his condolences, but remembered this being had come into his village under false pretenses.

  “And how do a Kinari and a Maarlai get together? Was your mother watching the Maarlai?” he asked.

  Kinari shook his head. “My mother disliked the idea that she was supposed to simply watch as bad things happen. She ran away from home. She met my father, and they spent their life together traveling the universe, saving planets from certain death.” He waited. “They could not save your home world. Forces of nature were not something they could have hoped to combat. But when worlds were attacked, or the people of a world endangered themselves, my parents and their crew often stepped in to stop it. They saved Earth a while back.”

  “From whom?” Faerlah asked, eyes narrowed.

  Kinari glanced at Daarik. “Have you noticed those flashes in the sky?”

  "I have,” Daarik answered.

  “A little over a thousand years ago, a race of beings called the Sarlene had a vendetta against Earth. Not that Earth even knew it was in danger. The Sarlene were religious zealots and were affronted by how similar the humans are to them. They decided that Earth had to be destroyed, its pretenders forgotten. A gift to their god,” he finished. “My mother and father found out about it and stopped the attack. Most Sarlene didn’t survive. It set their planet back for a very long time.”

  “And those flashes?”

  Kinari sighed. “I think they’re ready to exact their revenge.”

  Daarik and his grandmother exchanged a glance.

  “Are you here to Watch?” Daarik asked.

  “No,” Kinari said, glancing at Faerlah. “I understand that’s what you thought, which explains some of your anger,” he said to her. “And I do not blame you. But that’s not why I’m here.”

  “Then why are you here?” Daarik demanded.

  “I’m here because my mother loves this planet. I’m here because the Maarlai ended up here, of all places, and I want to know more about the people I come from. Fighting against you in your war against the humans was the best way to learn what I wanted to know... while also staying close to Shannen." He looked down, clearly uncomfortable. "My goal was to come here, until I met her. Then... I learned from a distance. I never met any Maarlai other than my father.”

  Daarik pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to fend off the pounding headache that threatened. “All right. So why are you here, Kinari? In my village. Why are you here?”

  “I’m here because your wife, who I once loved, is marching into Tanris, and that is the first place the Sarlene will attack. They will go for the perceived power first. They see that giant palace with its walls, and they will assume that’s their target, even though the true ruler sits here,” he said, bowing a little to Daarik. “She’s making her way into what is going to be hell very soon, and there is no Kinarian princess around to save her or this world this time around. My mother has been out of touch since my father passed.”

  Daarik felt the air go out of him. He felt cold from the inside out.

  “Why didn’t you just tell us this? Why the subterfuge?” Faerlah shouted as she stood up.

  “Because I’m not supposed to reveal myself,” Kinari snapped. “My grandfather is probably sending his own little task force at this very moment to come and collect me—”

  “Will they help us?” Daarik asked.

  Kinari laughed bitterly. “Not a chance. That’s why my mother left, remember? They Watch. It is against everything they believe in to involve themselves. I intended to stay hidden for a while so I could help.”

  “You could have helped by going with Shannen when she asked you,” Daarik snarled. His hands were balled into fists. He just wanted to hit something. Preferably this Kinarian bastard.

  “You need to do it. You have the forces to protect her from Edwell if she gets there before the Sarlene attack. I know you think she can handle herself. I’ll have to take your word for that. Even so, you’re the only one who can convince her to stay out of the city so she’s not there when they strike.” He gave a crooked smile. “Your wife is stubborn.”

  “I know,” Daarik said absently. He felt the fight go out of him, at least where the Kinarian was concerned.

  He walked out of the hut, wrenching his sleeve up, exposing his mating mark to the night air, the night sky. The metal glinted in the moonlight, and he sent a silent plea that Shannen had her mark uncovered as well.

  He sat under the empty, dark sky for what felt like an eternity without hearing a whisper from his wife.

  His mind was made up. The time for politics and delicacy was over.

  It was time to march.

  Chapter Five

  Shannen sat late into the night pressed into a rocky alcove not too far from the city’s gates. She tried to rest, but the one time she’d fallen asleep, that strange buzzing sound had started up again, and she saw the glint of what she feared now was some kind of craft zipping overhead. Whatever it was, it did not seem intent on landing. She had only ever seen it flying overhead. She wondered if this was an explorer of some kind. Were there beings, aliens like Daarik, inside?

  Even as she wondered, she knew she had no interest in truly finding out. “Just stay in the sky,” she muttered as it disappeared overhead.

  She’d spent the day thinking, plotting. Over a meager supper of scavenged berries and withered apples, she’d laid out her plan to her Maidens and the others they’d picked up. They would get to the garden. She knew the gardeners would not alert Edwell to her presence. She and a few others would hide in the garden, and overtake Edwell when he came for his daily visit. Those outside the garden walls would deal with his guards. They could make it to the palace before anyone knew what was wrong, take out the few soft guards there, and get Edwell to the dungeon.

  They could do this. It would be a lot of sneaking around. So much could go wrong, but she’d finally decided to trust in herself and her Maidens and there was no turning back now. If she waited much longer, many of her soldiers, especially the men, would grow too restless and eventually desert her. She had to strike now.

  She wanted nothing more than to bare her arm to the night sky, to see if the magic that worked through her mating mark would allow her to speak to her husband again. But the light that shone from the mark would give her away, and she knew it would be all too easy to become lost in conversation with her husband, to be lulled by the deep, comforting timbre of his voice. She gazed up at the sky, a black sea shimmering with the vast expanse of stars. Where had her husband’s people once lived? Was it a planet she could see from here?

  Hard as she tried, her mind alighted, over and over again, on the chance that she had seen her husband, that she had kissed him, t
hat she had loved him, for the last time. Unskilled in the ways of war as she was, she knew the chances, even with her Maidens behind her, were not exactly weighing on her behalf. If she was recognized, if the ladies of the garden refused to help her, if someone alerted her uncle’s guards before she was able to gain the upper hand, all would be lost.

  So much could go wrong. She questioned, nearly every other moment, whether she had lost her sanity completely. Why did she care? Was any crown worth this? If she had any sense at all, she would turn around and wait until Daarik could call her back to his side.

  Like a dog, a tiny voice deep inside her whispered.

  She closed her eyes, determined to find the cold, hard place deep inside, the kernel of stubbornness and near-insanity that had allowed her to remain whole in the years she spent in her uncle’s household, that pushed her, over and over, to thumb her nose at him and his propriety. It had allowed her to walk into the Maarlai city and be wholly herself, no matter the repercussions. It had allowed her to be brave enough to love someone as different from her as night is from day.

  A crown, yes. The care of her people, certainly, because they deserved so much better. But in the end, this was for her. For her mother. She would claim the thing that so many wanted to keep out of her hands, and she would make them bend knee to her. She knew it was wrong to be motivated by vengeance, and, even worse, by hatred.

  She had ceased to worry about right and wrong a very long time ago. When kings and queens could not be bothered to live by those rules, why should she? When those with power allowed children to starve on the streets, countless men and boys to be killed in wars that should have stopped long ago, and women and girls to do nothing but sit and wait until they were required to play a role… intentions mattered little. What mattered were results. The result of “good, pious” men like her father and her uncle had seen the world burn.

  She was anything but pious. What she was, was angry.

  Shannen opened her eyes again and gazed up at the stars. “I love you, Daarik,” she whispered into the breeze.

  In her heart, she feared that this was goodbye.

  Shortly after sunrise, Shannen, her Maidens, and the others who had joined her made their way, in twos and threes, sometimes singly, through the city’s gates. It had taken almost nothing to convince them that now was the time to act. They’d formulated a plan based on the routines and schedules Shannen and a few of the Maidens had observed. Camille and two of the other Maidens had been making their way into the city since they’d arrived at their lookout, and their observations helped pinpoint exactly where Shannen and the others needed to be to make this all work.

  Finally, it was just Shannen and Smith left in the place they’d camped. They would arrive in the city, disguised as a husband and wife, there to visit the market.

  Shannen stood, eyes closed, taking deep breaths. Smith stood by patiently. When she opened her eyes, he was watching her.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  She nodded. “All right. We are doing this.”

  Smith smiled. “Finally.”

  Shannen let out a small laugh and shook her head. They made their way down to the road that led into the city, and Smith held his arm out for him. She took it, and they began to walk down the dusty road, looking, for all the world, like two lovers out for a stroll into the city.

  Every step brought her closer to her destiny. Every breath was one that drew her toward something she could not take back, whether she wanted to or not. Every heartbeat made her think of her husband.

  I will see him again, she told herself, even as her heart pounded and she began to sweat beneath her tunic and veil.

  “Relax. You look like someone who’s being brought to her execution,” Smith murmured, gently patting her hand. “You’re a queen. You will, very soon, be the queen our people deserve.”

  “I hope I am worthy of that faith,” Shannen murmured.

  He laughed. “No one expects you to be perfect. You will figure this out your own way, just as you figured out how to live among beings who hated you, both human and Maarlai. You figured out how to gather and run an army. Look, none of us have killed each other!”

  She smiled. “Less talking.”

  “More rebellion,” he answered. It had become a catch phrase among her Maidens, and had spread to the rest of her army. She hoped, for all of them, that this would be the victory they longed for.

  They walked on, and the gates loomed ahead. She felt as if her heart was going to pound right out of her chest. Her breath came in short pants, and her mouth was dry.

  When they entered the city gates, the guards barely gave them a glance.

  Entering the city again struck Shannen harder than she had expected it to. Straight ahead, tall and gleaming in the sunlight, was the statue of her kingdom’s founder, her great, great, great, great grandfather. He stood, sword in hand, wearing armor carved in intricate detail. The statue towered higher than any building in the city, save the palace itself.

  She looked up at the statue and wondered, if the dead did in fact watch over us, what he would think of what she was about to do. As far as the world was concerned, her kingdom was very old. But she knew better, as did anyone else who had had the privilege of reading the old books. There had once been palaces, cities, countries that had withstood thousands of years. Those had all been destroyed, either by the bombs or by the rise of the oceans. Her kingdom was but a baby, but to most of humanity, it was an anchor, the one thing they had ever known.

  She tore her gaze away from the sculpture and walked on with Smith. They made their way leisurely to the royal gardens. There were usually guards watching the entrance, ensuring that no street urchins or beggars made their way in. However, just now, there were none, and Shannen smiled to herself. Her Maidens had done their jobs.

  She and Smith quickly crept into the garden, keeping an eye out for anyone who might cause them problems. Once inside, Shannen looked around and immediately spotted the two gardeners, kneeling beside a bed overflowing with fragrant purple blooms.

  “Can we help you? You really should not be in here,” the younger of the two said, standing up and brushing her hands off on her apron.

  Shannen stepped toward the gardeners, Smith staying a couple of steps behind her. She reached up and pulled her veil down, revealing the lower half of her face.

  The older gardener’s eyes widened. “Princess Shannen?” she whispered. Shannen could tell by her posture that she was about to drop to her knee, and she shook her head quickly. The woman, Inez, Shannen remembered. Her name was Inez, and the slightly younger gardener was Nina, her sister. Both stared at her.

  “So it is true,” Nina breathed.

  “Will you help me?” Shannen asked, meeting their eyes in turn. Both nodded, though they had paled and Inez’s hands shook. “He still comes every day to visit the garden. And you,” Shannen added.

  “He does,” Inez said quietly.

  “All I need you to do is continue to act as if nothing is out of the ordinary. We will hide in there,” she said, pointing to the small garden shed, where the gardeners stored their tools, buckets, and other items. “When we know that it is safe, we will come out, and I will confront my uncle.”

  “Was there truly an Immutable making you Queen?” Nina asked.

  “Yes.”

  “If we are found out—” Inez began.

  “Say we threatened you,” Shannen finished. “The fault will be mine, not yours.”

  Inez and Nina nodded, and Shannen and Smith slipped into the toolshed.

  She and Smith stood in the dark toolshed in silence. She could hear him breathing, and she had no doubt he could hear her. She seemed to still be having a hard time breathing normally.

  She heard him move, the barest rustle of fabric.

  The sound of metal sliding against leather, as if a blade was being unsheathed.

  She tensed, slowed her breathing. Her small knife, the one she normally kept strapped to her thigh, was alrea
dy resting in her palm.

  Please don’t, she thought, even knowing he would not hear her, and, even if he did, he was unlikely to heed her. Not now.

  Though she had anticipated it at that telltale sound of metal scraping leather, he nearly caught her off-guard, he moved so quickly. She barely had time to duck out of the way before his blade swished through the air, right around where her heart would have been. He did not utter a word, but slashed out again. She ducked away, hitting a clay pot, which crashed to the gravel floor of the toolshed.

  She heard Edwell’s voice outside, and it was just enough of a distraction that she moved too slowly, ducking out of the way of the blade headed for her throat, but it ended up slicing her across the shoulder. She bit her lip and stabbed, slashing out and down.

  He hadn’t expected her to fight back. She felt the short blade of her knife sink into the flesh of his stomach, and, as she pulled across, she felt his blood spill all over her hands. With a surprised-sounding grunt, he fell to the floor, taking several rakes and shovels down with him. She heard Edwell ask a question, and one of the sisters replied quietly.

  This was her chance. She had come this far.

  She would do this. She would not likely get another opportunity. He would come to investigate at any moment.

  And just then, she heard the shrill, staccato call of a cactus wren, the signal that Edwell’s personal guards had been handled.

  Now or never.

  She heard Smith move a little on the ground, and she kicked him aside and strode out of the shed, knife in her hand.

  Edwell had been saying something to the sisters, and he turned. His face was almost comical when he recognized her: surprised, pale, shocked. When he took in the blood on her hands and tunic, his eyes widened farther. “Guards!” he called.

  Camille and three more of her Maidens sauntered into the garden, and Edwell turned to look at Shannen again.