by Mary Weber
I bite my lip and keep staring.
It’s no use, though. Eogan’s green eyes and onyx face don’t appear, and after a moment I wave back at the soldiers. I keep my arm up while standing there with my night cover barely tugged around me and my hair flapping as all get-out in the breeze, until the ship is so high I can no longer see anything but the base of its glistening silver hull edged by the giant balloon billowing above it.
You’d better come back to me, Eogan.
“Nym?”
I don’t look at Rolf. Just shake my head and stride by him to return to my room, forcing down the fear welling up with ridiculous intensity. What is my problem? Why am I suddenly so scared? And of what?
Of losing Eogan, my mind says. Of maybe already having lost him.
I climb the stairs and tell my soul to shut the hulls up. Time to go raise an army and rescue Rasha, Nym.
Tannin is waiting by my door when I arrive, and he’s a welcome relief from my thoughts. “I believe the horses are ready and the delegation packed. All except your mare, that is.”
My mare? I smile in spite of my mood. “Haven?”
He nods. “She won’t let anyone touch her and the men are—”
“It’s fine, I’ll do it. Give me ten minutes.” I knock three quick times before striding into the room where Kel is now awake and eating a breakfast the maid brought.
The servant girl grins. “There’s some for you there too, miss. And I packed up a satchel of your leathers you mentioned you wanted along with a brush and some—”she glances at Kel before lowering her voice—“lady necessities.”
“Thank you.”
“Now, what about this dress? Does it need washing?” She holds up the green gown from last night.
“No need to clean it. I’m sure it’s perfectly fine.”
“No wine stains or food from what I can see,” she murmurs more to herself as she inspects it.
“Or slobber stains,” Kel mumbles around his porridge. “Might want to inspect it for those.”
He wrinkles his nose. “Just in case she was kissing a king last night.”
No matter how many weeks I’ve known Eogan, my skin still sets off like a fire. I frown at Kel. “Very funny. Finish your food.”
“It’s not funny, it’s disgusting and—” He glances at the maid as if suddenly remembering she’s there. And shuts his mouth.
“I’m sure whatever you did in it you were beautiful, miss,” the maid breaks in as if to ease the awkwardness.
“You think?” I turn to size her up. She’s about my height and weight. “In that case it’s yours.”
“The dress?”
“And any others in the armoire you fancy. I’ve no need of them and I’m sure you’ll look lovely.”
“Oh, miss, I couldn’t.”
“Yes, you can and will. I won’t need them where I’m travelling to, nor will I need them when I return to the battlefield.” Nor maybe even after.
“That’s kind of you, m’lady, but I couldn’t. King Sedric, he—”
“He has no use for them either, and if anyone asks, you can tell them I said as much. We’re about to go to war, not a party. I imagine they’ll fetch you a good price if you don’t want to keep them all.”
Her nod is hesitant. “Two of those would bring in more draughts than I’ve ever seen.”
“Good. Then it’s decided. So, did the boy come with luggage as well?” I ask, indicating Kel to keep her from going on about it.
“He did, miss. I’ve already sent both bags down with Tannin.”
“Thank you.” I turn to Kel. “Are you ready?”
He shoves a bite of honeyed bread in his mouth, then follows it up with a gulp of milk. “Nym, have you tasted this stuff? It’s bloody unbeliev—”
“I imagine it is, but watch your language.”
He snorts. “You swear all the time. So does my father and both kings.” He hops off the chair to shove his boots on.
“Yes, but your father and both kings are not age seven and charged to my care.”
He grins and grabs his cloak as I step behind the dressing curtain to change into my own blue leathers and black cloak. Their familiar softness and fit feel so much like home I’m near melting as, for a moment, that old desire to go back to Adora’s, when everything was wrong and yet so much more right than it is now, overtakes me. When my position was set along with everyone else’s.
Even if the woman was a mental crackpot.
Leathers on and hair braided, I emerge from the curtain and nod to the maid before beckoning Kel to follow me to the hallway where Tannin greets us. He leads us through the Castle corridors and past the beautifully carved gold-plate wood doors, then down into the lower quarters of the Eastern Wing. Outside of which sit the stables.
“The far one.” Tannin points to the end of the row of stalls where the stable master is standing, hands on hips. Before I can issue a greeting to the man, a loud whinny erupts from inside the booth.
She smells me.
I smile. She also smells the meat I grabbed off the morning’s breakfast tray.
With Kel wide-eyed and trailing behind, I scamper down to the stable master and Haven.
“She’s all yours.” He waves his hand at the man-eating horse that is at least five hands taller than even the largest purebred mare. “Let me know if you need anything.”
I run my gaze over my beautiful lady. Her black, glossy coat and mane and that foaming mouth that says she was hoping for a bit of the older man’s face to chew on. “How’s my girl?” I whisper, to which she smiles wickedly in return. She snorts and nudges her nose toward me, sniffing me out as well as searching for the meat I’ve brought. I set it on the stall ledge and it’s gone before I’ve hardly pulled my hand away.
“What the—? It eats meat?” Kel moves closer, his expression saying this is by far the most fascinating thing in the whole Hidden Lands.
I shove a hand out to ward him back. “She’ll just as easily eat you if you get close enough. She doesn’t understand the difference between strangers and food.”
His round eyes gaze up at mine. “I want one.”
“Um, no.”
“Ah, c’mon. There’s enough. Look, there’re three more.”
“Absolutely not.”
He purses his lips and points to the other stalls housing a number of the other giant meat-eating warhorses from Adora’s barn. Except those have muzzles on their mouths. Poor beasts. I wonder . . . I peer closer to find two of the beasts are familiar. Very familiar.
One is Eogan’s.
The other was Colin’s.
My chest swells with a wave of grief far too fresh, too raw, that about cracks me in half. As if the fissure Colin carved with his name on my heart can sense the weight of his spirit here. His memory.
“C’mon, Nym.”
I shake it off and glare at Kel before looking back at Haven. “It would take too long to train you. Now move back while I step in to brush her down,” I say with thick emotion.
Despite his grunt of annoyance, the boy obeys but shuffles back as close as possible once I’m in the stall. I allow Haven to inhale my scent proper-like in the way she prefers, while keeping a metal rope between her mouth and my hand, just in case.
She nickers and bucks and pushes her nose into my hand anyway.
I’ve finished brushing her down, and the stable master has helped me saddle her—something I can’t do with my one hand curled in the way it is—and led her to the courtyard when ten Faelen guar
ds emerge in full armor. Behind them strides Lord Myles, the Luminescent Mia, and the Cashlin guard. Tannin goes to help Kel onto a horse, a smallish mare to the boy’s enormous disappointment, while I soothe Haven with tones and words Eogan used to use on her.
“Well, well, welllll. If thisss isn’t a party.” Myles looks around, and I note the sunken-in eyes and sag of his skin. Has he slept since we’ve been here? “Someone please tell me you brought ale,” he mutters.
“Who thought it’d be a good idea to bring him along?” demands one of the guards.
“I did,” I say without glancing up.
“With what he can do? He’ll be a danger and a liability!”
I turn. “And if we leave him?”
The guard’s face purses.
“Exactly.”
“Besidesss, my good chap. Who wants a shot at trying to ssstop me from coming?”
My gaze drops to his wrists as he mounts a gray-speckled horse. They’re untied. “I assure you,” I say loud enough for both Myles and the guard to hear, “if he does endanger us, Mia and I will slit his throat.”
Myles laughs, then winks at the guard. “Don’t let her fool you, mate. She rather enjoys a good round of letting the mentally unssstable run around with her.”
Despite my discomfort at his free state, I bite back a laugh. “In that case, why don’t you ride beside me?”
Saluting the guards with mock respect, Myles nudges his horse to move forward as the rest fall in line and we move out.
The mist is still wrapping her tendril blanket across the High Court streets and over the hills and green grasslands farther out as we descend. I turn for one last look at the Castle and scan the sky for the airships, but of course they’re long gone. Then I peer over toward the northern border—where the Elisedd channel sits with that third airship . . .
Clenching my jaw, I set my gaze onto Faelen’s interior valley, to the main road we’ll be travelling along and the people we’re supposed to convince that their week of relief was merely a pause, and now they’re needed for a bigger war with higher stakes. That they are no longer fighting just for their freedom, but for their very lives.
Eight days to go . . .
A rumble of thunder growls overhead, bringing the horses to nicker and shuffle their hooves. Unfortunately for them, it draws Haven’s interest. She bares her teeth and snarls, then snaps for their haunches.
“Leave them alone.” I pat her neck and prod her ahead. “You can hunt soon enough.”
Except she’s sensing it too—the tension in the air, of expectancy not yet turned to fear. It ripples down my skin and is met by another crackle across the sky.
I inhale and hope it stays that way.
When we reach the main cobblestone road at the base of the High Court’s hill and gates, I pull Haven forward and allow her to take full lead. A few minutes into the ride, Kel strikes up his chatter, much to the early-morning annoyance of just about everyone by the sound of their muttered replies and groans, until Tannin joins in and begins answering. I grin as Kel drills him on all aspects of Faelen life and military and, eventually, on what types of animals he’s seeing dotting the flatland the farther we get into the Valley.
I’ve been listening in on their conversation a good while when the odd awareness dawns. I can’t recall seeing any animals in Bron. Do they not have them? Not only that, but from the view from the airship, I don’t even know how they’d survive—or what they’d survive on. Aside from their river, the place is as barren as a desert.
It’s not long before the Cashlins add their own questions too and the stories begin flowing—of Bron, of Faelen, and of Cashlin. They float from sea life to solstice traditions to food types to burying of the dead.
I twist backward to Mia. “Those chess pieces in the throne room—are they actual people in them?”
“Cashlin’s most important ancestors—long dead now, but queens and kings as well as those whose abilities were exceedingly powerful.” She encourages her horse closer to Haven until she turns with a bit too much interest and Mia’s mare wisely thinks better of it.
“It’s our biggest honor to be entombed in such a way,” the male guard adds. “One day Queen Laiha will join them. As will Princess Rasha.”
I raise a brow and turn back to the road, biting my tongue from mentioning that hopefully the queen hasn’t already joined them. The thought makes me queasy. And anxious to get to Rasha.
“Let’s hurry,” I call to the group.
It’s not long before we reach the first village—a small township we pass through without stopping. It smells of earthy peasant life and slaves and soil, as well as hope and hunger and cooling fires. I look in the faces of those who’ve assembled to watch us. Men, boys, women.
“Hoping for a glimpse of the Elemental who sssaved them.”
“Clearly they’ve not been informed I didn’t. At least not all the way.”
“Oh, they have. King Sedric sent runners out yesterday to ssspread the word. They’re just trusting you’ll do it for real this time.”
I look away from the expectant faces as small children watch from behind their mums’ skirts and bigger boys run behind us.
“They’ll be wanting a token from you, miss,” Tannin says in a low voice.
I peer around for my satchel even as I know I have nothing to give, but five seconds later Tannin pulls a few draughts from his own to drop on the ground with a clink that sends the boys hooting and hollering. When he glances up, he merely smiles, as do the soldiers closest us.
“Thank you,” I tell him. And I mean it more than I can say.
“How long until the first stop on this blasted trip?” Myles asks.
I snort. “Need some ale?”
“My dear, you know me so well.”
I glance back to tell him, “Like hulls I do,” when it dawns on me he may, in fact, need a sip of ale. He looks like litches. And he’s scratching his arms surreptitiously.
He wags a brow at me and suddenly the air around him ripples, then displays an image of us all in Bron—in the War Room watching the boy soldier behead the man. Except for whatever reason the man looks like Myles.
Behind me, Kel gasps.
“Stick to reality, Myles,” I snap.
The image fades, but he leans forward. “For now, perhaps. But imagine what I can do next time we see Draewulf.”
“If you survive that long.”
He frowns. “Just because Rasha’s mum believes my . . . enhancements are fatal doesn’t make it fact. Ask yourself, why would she want us to think such a thing, hmm?” He flickers another image in my face—the same one as always of me and him standing over Draewulf’s dead body with the entire Hidden Lands at our feet. “Perhapsss it’s the same reason she tried to wait out this war—her own survival.”
“Not this time.” I ignore him and pull out the map made in the council chambers in the dark hours yesterday morning. “We’ll stop for rest and food in a bit, then keep on to our first destination.”
Six places are marked, curving in a circular pattern around Faelen, all central to each territory so the surrounding villages can attend. These would be the towns the repulsive tax-gatherers and pontiffs go to when reading off new proclamations or High Court decisions that usually have little to do with the peasants aside from costing them more—either in money or manpower for the war. I scowl. It will be a miracle if we can pull this off and convince them to fight again for the same masters who keep them underprivileged.
I peer at the names to see if I recognize any of them only to realize—
You’ve got to be je
sting me.
I look again in hopes I’m wrong—that I read it wrong, that the dust and warmth from the road are getting to me. But the town’s name is still there in all its simplicity and horror and curving handwritten strokes that make my fingers and throat clammy. Why was I not told this was our first stop?
I hold back a shudder and straighten as Haven tenses beneath me. And try not to think about what awaits us there.
Because it’s the town of my ninth owner.
CHAPTER 24
THE VILLAGE IS JUST AS COLORFUL AND CHAOTIC looking in the evening light as I remember it. Yellow and green flags atop high poles wave in the breeze at the entry gate, and a rough fence still runs random lines down the unkempt streets and yards—attempting to keep out the goats and hens and unwelcome busybodies, but never quite succeeding. Patches of green grass and wildflowers interrupt the tan earth and cracked mud puddles where our horses’ hooves tread.
I firm my jaw and keep my gaze away from the second house on the left with the run-down barn with the fields and sheep behind it. Don’t look, don’t think, don’t care.
Just do what you have to and get out of here.
A shadow falls anyway across the dwelling as a cloud moves in front of the dying sun, and Myles glances over at me. “I believe your mood is showing again.”
Blast the daft Elemental blood—even my emotions can’t enjoy a bit of privacy.
I scowl at him and press on, only to catch Mia’s tender gaze. Her eyes are glowing red around the pupils and I swear she’s sensing the reason for my discomfort. I look away.
We’ve gone only a short number of paces when a low rumble of voices and hollers greets our ears. Five of the ten guards in our company automatically move to the front of us and draw their swords.
“Not sure that’s going to help,” I say to Tannin, with a nod to the guards’ lifted blades.
“Is this type of greeting normal?” Gilford, the Cashlin guard, veers his mare too near to Haven, who promptly feigns interest in something his direction until I yank her back in line. She needs to eat.
