The Wolf of Oren-yaro (Annals of the Bitch Queen Book 1)

by K. S. Villoso

  By K.S. Villoso

  Annals of the Bitch Queen

  The Wolf of Oren-yaro

  The Ikessar Falcon

  The Xiaran Mongrel

  The Agartes Epilogues

  Jaeth’s Eye

  Aina’s Breath

  Sapphire’s Flight

  The Black Dog

  Birthplace

  Blackwood Marauders

  Blackwood Marauders

  K.S. Villoso

  The Wolf of Oren-yaro

  Annals of The Bitch Queen: Book 1

  "I murdered a man and made my husband leave the night before they crowned me.”

  Born under the crumbling towers of Oren-yaro, Queen Talyien's life unfolded like a storybook. The shining jewel and legacy of the bloody War of the Wolves that nearly tore her nation apart, her marriage to Rayyel, the son of her father's rival, spoke of peaceful days to come.

  But all storybooks must end. Rayyel's sudden departure before their reign began created fractures that left the land as divided as ever.

  Years later, Talyien receives a message from Rayyel, urging her to meet with him across the sea. An assassination attempt interrupts Talyien's quest for reconciliation, sending the queen struggling in a strange and dangerous land. With betrayals in every twist and turn, she is forced to enlist the help of a con-artist to survive and save her husband from the clutches of those who would seek to use him for their gain...if he would let her.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogues, places, events, situations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.

  Liam’s Vigil Publishing Co.

  633-255 Newport Drive

  Port Moody, V3H 5H1

  BC, Canada

  Copyright © 2017 by K.S. Villoso

  Cover art by K.S. Villoso

  ISBN: 978-0-9958537-7-5

  www.ksvilloso.com

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of very brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For more information, address Liam’s Vigil Publishing Co.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  The Legacy of Warlord Tal

  Chapter Two

  Anzhao City, Marvel of the West

  Chapter Three

  The Con Artist and the Queen

  Chapter Four

  The Ruse

  Chapter Five

  The Silver Goose

  Chapter Six

  The Ikessar Heir

  Chapter Seven

  Dark Thoughts in the Shadows

  Chapter Eight

  Lord of Shang Azi

  Chapter Nine

  The Con artist and The Queen,

  Reprised

  Chapter Ten

  The Lamang Siblings

  Chapter Eleven

  The Dragonlord in Distress

  Chapter Twelve

  The Long Road to Zorheng

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Prince and the Princess

  Chapter Fourteen

  Zorheng City

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Fifth Son

  Chapter Sixteen

  Zorheng City, Reprised

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Legacy of Warlord Yeshin

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Return to Anzhao City

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Queen’s Guard

  Chapter Twenty

  The Lord of Shang Azi, Reprised

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Last Ruse

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Ikessar Heir, Reprised

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Aftermath

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Legacy of Warlord Tal,

  Reprised

  About The Author

  Other Books By K.S. Villoso

  The Agartes Epilogues

  Birthplace

  Items of Interest, Salvaged Over The Years

  To Dad,

  With all the love

  and most sincerest apologies

  of a daughter who could have been anything,

  but chose to follow her heart.

  Chapter One

  The Legacy of Warlord Tal

  They called me “bitch”, the she-wolf, because I murdered a man and made my husband leave the night before they crowned me.

  Hurricanes destroy the villages and they call it senseless; the winter winds come and they call it cold. What else did they expect from my people, the Oren-yaro, the ambitious savages who created a war that nearly ripped Jin-Sayeng apart? I almost think that if my reign had started without bloodshed and terror, they would have been disappointed.

  I did not regret killing the man. He had it coming and my father had taught me to take action before you could second-guess yourself. My father was a wise man, and if the warlords could’ve stopped arguing long enough to put their misgivings behind them, he would have made a great king.

  I do regret looking at the bastard while he died. I regret watching his eyes roll backwards and the blood spread like a cobweb underneath his wilted form, leaking into the cracked cobblestone my father had paid an Osahindo builder a remarkable amount of money to install. I regret not having a sharper sword, and losing my nerve so that I didn't strike him again and he had to die slowly. Bleeding over the jasmine bushes—that whole batch of flowers would remain pink until the end of the season—he had stared up at the trail of stars in the night sky and called for his mother. Even though he was a traitor, he didn't deserve that pain.

  I also regret not stopping my husband from walking away. I should have run after him, grovelled at his feet, begged him to reconsider. But I watched his tall, straight back grow smaller in the distance, his father’s helmet nestled under his arm, his unbound hair blowing in the wind, and did nothing. A wolf of Oren-yaro suffers in silence. A wolf of Oren-yaro does not beg.

  Almost at once, the rumours spread like wildfire. They started in the great hall in the castle at Oka Shto when I arrived for my coronation, dressed in my mother’s best silk dress—all white, like a virgin on her wedding day—bedecked with pearls from Natu and gold-weave from Sutan, and no husband at my side. My son stood on the other side of the dais with his nursemaid, also in white. Between us were the two priests tasked with the ceremony—a priest of the God Akaterru, patron deity of Oren-yaro, and a priest of Kibouri, that foreign religion the Ikessars favoured, with their faceless Maker and enough texts to make anyone ill. They could pass for brothers, with their long faces, carp-like whiskers, and leathery skin the colour of honey.

  It was clear that my husband’s absence was making everyone uncomfortable. For my part, I was bored and restless, and I didn’t want to wait a moment longer. I turned to the priests and opened my mouth. Before I could utter a single word, the doors creaked open.

  “Crown her,” one of my advisers said, breaking into the hall. His face had the paleness of a man who had looked into a mirror that morning and seen his own death. His sandals made clicking sounds on the polished earth floor. “Prince Rayyel Ikessar left last night.”

  You could hear the weight of the words echo against the walls. In the silence that followed, I thought I could make out the rising heartbeats of e
very man and woman in that room. Not a day goes by that I am not reminded of what was lost to my father’s war; even bated breaths could signal the start to that old argument, that old fear that I, too, may one day plunge the land into blood and fire once more.

  Eventually, the Kibouri priest cleared his throat. “We must delay until the prince can be found.”

  “This day was approved by our order, set in stone twenty-one years ago,” the Akaterru priest replied. “It is a bad omen to change it.”

  “Every day is like any other,” the Kibouri priest intoned. “You and your superstitions…”

  My adviser stepped up the dais to face them. This did not look easy because both priests were taller than him. His mouth, which was surrounded by a beard that looked like a burnt rodent, was set in a thin line. “Warlord Lushai sent a message this morning, congratulating Jin-Sayeng’s lack of a leader. He will march against us by tonight for breaking the treaty if we do not crown her.”

  I did not bother to pretend to be surprised. “Rayyel is hiding there, I assume,” I said. It was such a bald-faced move: put me in a situation where I could not do anything but create trouble. Throw the wolf into a sea of sick deer—whatever will she do? Lushai once considered himself my father’s friend, but daring me to make trouble in front of the warlords was one step too far. It was also presumptuous, considering the part he played in all of this.

  My adviser turned to me and bobbed his head up and down, like a rooster in the grass.

  I gritted my teeth. “Get that crown.” I did not want to give them a reason to think I wasn’t fulfilling my end of the bargain.

  The Kibouri priest was closer to it. He didn’t move.

  “My lords,” I said, looking at the warlords, the select few who were not too ill or infirm or couldn’t find the right sort of excuse not to make it to the coronation. “You agreed to this alliance. You all signed on it with your own blood, drunk from the cup to mark the joining of Jin-Sayeng as one. Neither I nor Lord Rayyel have the power to stop this.”

  There was a murmur of assent. A murmur, not an outcry, but I went with it. I turned to the priests. The Akaterru priest had already dropped his head, eyes downcast. The other eventually forced his knees into a bow.

  They took the smaller crown. It was made of beaten gold, both yellow and white, set on a red, silken headpiece. My father had it made not long after I was born, commissioned to a famous artisan from a town in the Faor Mountains. I stared at it while the priests began their rituals, one after the other. I could have done without the Kibouri, but I didn’t want to risk offending the Ikessar supporters in the crowd.

  They crowned me. No spirits came to crest a halo around my brow or send a shaft of light to bless the occasion. In fact, it was cloudy, and a rumble of thunder marked the beginning of a storm. I wondered when they would discover the body, or if they already had and were just too afraid to tell me.

  Even after I became Queen, the rumours continued. I was powerless to stop them. I should have been more, they said. More feminine. Subtle, the sort of woman who could hide my jibes behind a well-timed titter. I could have taken the womanly arts, learned to write poetry or brew a decent cup of tea or embroider something that didn’t have my blood on it, and found better ways to better please my man. Instead, Rayyel Ikessar would rather throw away the title of Dragonlord, King of Jin-Sayeng, than stay married to me.

  It changes a woman, hearing such things. Hardens your heart. Twists your mind along dark paths you have no business being on. And perhaps it wouldn't have mattered if I hadn't loved Rai, but I did. More than I understood myself. More than I cared to explain.

  ~~~

  I don’t like to talk about the five years that followed. Too many memories to distract a woman with when there are other more pressing matters to attend to. Even now, pen in hand while I splash ink over my favourite dress, I find it difficult to recall those five long years I spent waiting for my husband while learning how to manage life as Queen. My only measurement of time in those days was my son’s growth. The rest had folded together into a canopy of anger and frustration, of analyzing his actions over and over again to myself and anyone who would dare listen—vast, immeasurable time, time I can no longer bring back.

  So better I move forward and start where it all truly began—to the beginning of the end, as it were.

  I didn’t know that in those days. As rulers went, I was young and lacked the insight to determine a doomed expedition before it began. All I knew was that after the letter from my husband came, asking me to meet with him in the city of Anzhao in the Empire of Ziri-nar-Orxiaro which lay across the sea from Jin-Sayeng, my resolve never to speak with him again disappeared in an instant. My advisers’ voices turned to prattling, as useless to me as the sound of wind rushing through the trees. I would meet with him, I told them. I would look him in the eye and ask why he would risk the land by not allowing himself crowned and remaining silent for five years. There were other things, too, of course—things I dared not say aloud. My father used to say that a Dragonlord who wore his heart on his sleeve did not stay Dragonlord for very long.

  And so I travelled from Oka Shto, the mountain castle my father built not long before I was born, to the port city of Sutan in the east, where I boarded a ship heading to Anzhao straight across. The journey itself was uneventful. Our arrival, on the other hand, was a different story altogether. It is on the morning after that I choose to relay the events, for reasons you will soon understand.

  Opening my eyes in a strange room, I lay back against the silk pillows and listened to the whistling call of a bird not from Jin-Sayeng. A moment passed. I pried my hands loose from the book on my chest and rolled across the bed so I could tug at the curtains. Before I could even reach the cord, a servant rushed forward to do it for me. Light flooded the room.

  I had been Queen for five years and a princess for twenty-one before that. Although I knew that the mere action of glancing at a window would produce a scattering of robes as servants rushed to be the first to do my bidding, I still attempted to wrest control of my life wherever I could. Only recently was I able to convince my council to let me eat without someone sniffing my food first.

  My father had detested that sort of attention. Warlord Yeshin had grown up with less extravagance, a claim few warlords these days can make. Born the youngest son, he learned to master the sword and the horse first before he was given his first guard: a half-blind, toothless soldier who was rejected from the Baraji household for his over-fondness for coconut wine. Even after Yeshin outlived his brothers and became Warlord of Oren-yaro, he still despised the luxuries.

  He didn’t try to raise me that way, of course. I was his only living child, and circumstances did not allow him to let his rivals poison his children until only the best remained. So I had no less than five servants scrambling over me since the day I was born, making sure that nothing—not even a fly—could touch me. Perhaps he might have been more lenient if my mother had been alive, but she died in childbirth—that same, tired story of the ages. She had only been fifteen.

  The good thing about being far away from Jin-Sayeng, in Anzhao City on the coast of Ziri-nar-Orxiaro, was that we could only afford to bring the one servant on the trip. So while she was struggling with the curtains, I got up. Her face paled. I ignored her and began to get dressed.

  “My queen!” the servant gasped in horror, contorting herself so she could reach me before I finished tying my belt.

  I stared at the poor girl. One of my councillors had picked her up from a town in the island of Akki a few years ago. Traditionally, handmaids were other royals, younger daughters or cousins of the aron dar, offshoots of the main clans. But my father, in the days following my birth, had lost trust in the royal clans and preferred to hire servants straight from the common folk. He had not been pleased that he had to stoop to such low measures, as he liked to call it, but there were less chances of a poor fisherman’s daughter from Akki slipping poison in my wine before I slept. They cou
ld be paid, of course, but commoners were notoriously easy to read, and one of the first things our servants learn is that the Orenar clan can easily double any sum they are given in exchange for their loyalty.

  At least, that was the official stance. The servants also learned, pretty fast, that anyone who dared betray an Oren-yaro would soon wish for a quick death. We are fair, but we are not kind. Leniency was a luxury that only a clan like the Ikessars could afford.

  “How do you like the Zarojo Empire so far?” I asked.

  She stopped, fingers hovering over my belt. I could see her ears turning red.

  “My queen…” she stammered.

  “Are those the only two words you know?”

  Her mouth opened and closed. I think she could see her life flash before her eyes.

  A burst of irritation ran through me. I tugged the belt away to finish tying it myself. I glanced at my boots and she tore herself across the room to fetch them.

  I wondered if knowing her name would change anything. Would she answer if I asked her then? It was an easy enough question, one she needn’t have to think about. But I watched her slide the boots onto my feet and couldn’t entertain the thought any more than that. Perhaps I could bring it up with Magister Arro if he was in the mood for my questions.

  I didn’t try to talk to her again, and we walked out of the hall into silence. I think she had the same idea, because she kept a respectable distance behind me, her eyes on the floor. I turned my attention to finding food. I wasn’t clear on what customs were observed out here and no one had bothered to leave me instructions. By the entrance to the guest quarters, I was able to corner one of my host’s servants and somehow—in my best Zirano, the language in that region—was able to ask her if breakfast was going to be served or if they expected me to find it myself.