“Of the earth, is it?” Hadduk argues. “Then why did it not shudder beneath me as I took them down in piles, and made mud with their blood?”
“How did it go, after?” I ask, leading him. “Did you pile the bodies and burn them?”
“We piled the corpses, many and more,” he says. “But when we brought the torches, they had gone to dirt already.”
“And so became one with the earth,” I say. “And now we walk upon them, build our houses on their bones. The earth knows there are only two left, and it will mourn their passing with a vengeance.”
The others are quiet, nervous moments betraying that my words have hit their target. “Do not take her death lightly, Witt,” I say.
He raises his eyes to me, and I see the truth in them when he says, “I do not.”
“So she lives that we may save our own skins, yes?” Hadduk says, pulling a knife. “But what harm is there in taking a bit of hers?”
CHAPTER 49
Ank
I trail down the steps after Hadduk and Witt, the light of their torches barely reaching us as I exchange a few quick words with Nilana, who rides on my back.
“What should I know?” I ask her.
“The Lithos and Mason are at odds over the girl,” she says. “To be fair to Hadduk, she has killed everything she’s laid a hand on.”
“Except the Lithos,” I amend.
“Not him,” she agrees. “Though I do not know she’s had the chance.”
“I’d say she has,” I argue. “To hear him tell it, they fought side by side in the woods, blades in hand, yet she did not turn hers upon him.”
“Nor he on her,” she adds.
“What is at work here, Nilana?” I ask, and feel her shrug, shoulder blades moving against my own.
“Perhaps they are distracted.”
I don’t laugh. If there is indeed some attraction between the two, it cannot end well. Though, I think as we find our way into the dungeons, I do not know of a good ending for any of us who walk this earth.
I follow Witt’s torchlight to find a small room that holds many terrors. There are only simple things here: a barrel of water, a chain attached to the wall, a stone slab of a table, a stoked fire, and a poker, but well I know that the most innocent of objects can bring about great pain when wielded by the right hands.
Hadduk has gone to fetch the Indiri from her cell, Witt’s color slightly off in the torchlight. I rest Nilana on the table in the hopes that the Mason will not put it to darker uses with the Indiri, and go to the Lithos’s side.
“Witt,” I say, “this does not have to be.”
He closes his eyes against my voice. “I must draw out Stille, you know this. She is close with the king of Stille, and proof of her being in our hands can bring his army to our doorstep, where we’ll fight our way among our stones, not standing on sand when the sea comes to sweep us away.”
I hear Hadduk struggling with the girl, a string of Indiri curses coming before them as they approach.
“Witt,” I growl, words having deserted me this once.
He faces me, and I see a darkness in his eyes not of emptiness, but of deep despair. I rest my hand on his shoulder for a moment and feel all the goodness I knew from before, now heated from the center by the beginning of something bright and pure.
Fathoms. He does care for the girl. It’s surrounded by a maelstrom of confusion and helplessness, but it’s there.
“I’ll do what I can,” I promise him.
Hadduk bursts into the room with Dara just in front of him, her hands bound with iron circlets. She surveys us, eyes lighting on me with nothing short of contempt. It hurts to see, and I wish I could be alone with her, explain the plight of my people and where it has led me. How it has brought me here, to a place where we are enemies and I stand aside and let her be hurt at the hands of a monster.
“Dara of the Indiri,” I say, keeping my voice light. “It has been some time since we last met. I hear you’ve not been idle.”
“And you’ve not been far from my thoughts,” she says.
“I’m flattered,” I tell her. “I did not know you cared.”
“Come closer, and I’ll show you much,” she says.
“Enough,” Witt cuts in, moving between us. “Indiri, tell us of Stille and what plans they have for Pietra.”
He turns to face her, once again the Lithos and no longer Witt. Behind Dara, Hadduk stands ready to stop a lunge at the Lithos or block her escape. But the Indiri does neither, instead smiling at the gathering.
“Bring your blades. Bank the fire. The only words I have for you are foul and spoken in Indiri.”
“I thought as much,” Witt says to her. “And so I’ve brought an interpreter.”
He nods to Hadduk, who disappears into the corridor. I look to Nilana, who blinks at me, at a loss. The sound of jangling keys reaches us, then a trudging step. Hadduk returns, bringing after him—unbelievably—an Indiri.
The man is frail and bent, though I would not call him old. His skin has sagged with years spent in darkness, and gone gray beneath his spots. But he is Indiri, and male, and when he sets eyes upon Dara, it is as if the sun has risen inside of him. For her part, Dara’s knees go for a moment, and she sags, the insolence she’s depending on abandoning her.
The man straightens, gone from prisoner to noble in an instant. He speaks to her, the guttural language of the Indiri, and she answers in kind. Hadduk prods the man in the spine.
“What do you say to each other?”
“We greeted each other as Indiri do,” Dara says. “Naming our mothers.”
“I’ll name your mother, and something you won’t like if—”
“Hadduk,” Witt cuts him off, then turns to Dara. “The Pietra granted mercy to one on the field that day, to be used against others, if necessary.”
Dara does not turn from the Indiri male, her eyes locked upon his. “And so you will harm his flesh in place of my own, that I will speak freely to spare him.”
“That is the thought,” Witt agrees.
She turns to him, finally, and I’m startled to see the thin line of tension that had formed along Witt’s jaw disappear when he finally has won her gaze away from the Indiri.
“He is my blood, the last of it I may breed with,” she says. “And yet what is that worth, in a world where our children would live and die in a Pietran cell?”
“You would go free, both of you,” Witt says, inclining his head toward the prisoner. “Your children would live beneath open sky.”
“And their parents without honor,” Dara says. “And without that, are we truly Indiri?”
She repeats the question in Indiri, posing it for the prisoner, who shakes his head.
“Depths, woman,” I shout at her, my patience broken. “What is this pride that it would lead you to your own death and the loss of your people?”
“What is my life, if it cannot be led with pride? And what are my people, if they live by the grace of the Pietra?” she asks of me, chin lifted. “Not Indiri, I tell you that. But something less.”
“There’ll be one less of you, before I’m done,” Hadduk says, sticking a poker into the coals of the fire.
“Hadduk . . .” I move as if to stop him, but Witt raises a hand.
“I’ll remind you that the Feneen are allied with the Pietra, not the Indiri,” he says.
“I allied my people with the leader who I thought was the best man, the wisest leader,” I tell him, all control over my voice lost. “You show me neither of these things here.”
“He’s a Lithos of the Pietra,” Hadduk says. “And this is how war is fought.”
The Mason pulls the poker from the fire, the end red hot, and swings it between the two Indiri, a trail of smoke that binds them. “Who’s first?”
“Me,” the male says in the common tong
ue, and his hand strikes quick as a snake, stopping the poker in mid flight. Calmly, with his eyes fixed on Hadduk’s, he curls his other hand around the burning tip.
A sizzling sounds fills the air, and the sweet scent of cooking meat, but the Indiri holds tight, smoke curling from between his fingers, his arm shuddering with the need to let go but his will keeping his hand clenched tight. It is Hadduk who finally wrests it away from him, breaking their painful union.
A gasp tears from the Indiri’s throat as he falls to the ground, maimed hand curled to his chest. “Sharpen your knives, Hadduk of the Pietra,” he says. “I have sat in darkness with my memories for a long while, and you have already done your worst to me.”
“Hadduk,” Nilana says, calling her to him. The stunned Mason can only backstep, the poker still in his hands, the blackened flesh of the Indiri’s fingers trailing from the tip.
Dara goes to the wounded prisoner, on her knees beside him. He turns his head to hers, and they say a few words to each other in their own language. Then she holds his face in her palms, and calmly, cleanly, snaps his neck. His body shudders and slides from her grasp. Dara rises, the chains that circle her wrists clinking together with the movement.
“I have no weaknesses,” she says calmly to Witt.
And the earth shakes.
Both above my head and below my feet, all is in movement, the walls themselves shuddering as dirt trickles loose, flowing like streams down the sides. Nilana yells, but Hadduk has her, his arms crossed over her head. Witt dives for Dara, I think to secure her, but then I see him cover her with his body as a last wrenching crack comes from the rock above us. Daylight streams in as part of the ceiling falls away, crushing the stone table Nilana had been upon moments before. I watch as a ray of light falls upon the dead Indiri and his body turns to a pile of earth.
Then all is still. No breath of air or rush of dirt. Hadduk pushes back Nilana’s hair from her temple, touches his forehead to hers. Witt pulls Dara to her feet, to which she comes unsteadily, eyes on the mound of dirt that was the only male Indiri she’s ever seen besides her brother.
“Do what we came here for, Lithos,” Hadduk says. “The Indiri do not suffer games.”
Witt looks to Dara with shame as he pulls a knife, the sound pulling her attention to him. She nods at the sight of the blade, as if in understanding.
“I cannot allow a Pietra to harm me,” she says, and to my astonishment, Witt turns the blade, offering her the hilt.
“Depths, man.” Hadduk leaps to his feet, crushing Dara into his chest from behind. “Would you arm this woman when you’ve seen her kill with bare hands?”
“I know what is to be done,” Dara says, reaching for the knife. And with Hadduk pinning her from behind, she skins the inside of her lower arm, calmly handing the Lithos a slice of her own flesh.
CHAPTER 50
Vincent
Khosa has been gone for seven suns, and while her absence has been a constant ache, the time has passed quickly. Stilleans do not like change, and what their king proposes goes against every fiber of their being. Vincent has sat at meals, spoken himself hoarse, flattered, argued, and pleaded his way through all the noble households. Most only shook their heads, though some have listened, and there are the very few whose ears have perked at the idea and the consolation that there may, after all, be somewhere else.
Every night he falls into his bed exhausted, but missing his wife. It has become their habit to talk over their days, combing through each other’s conversations to put together a full vision of their country and how everyone in it fares and feels. Without this, his daylight hours feel incomplete. Sleep has not come easily, and when it does, it brings visions of ships sinking to the depths and Stilleans he has led astray drawing a last, wet breath.
“It’s a hard thing to unsee,” he says to Dissa, his mother.
They sit together by the large fireplace in the great hall, their voices echoing off the stones around them, barely reaching the arches of the ceiling.
“I can imagine,” his mother says, taking a sip of her wine. “But it is good for you to see these things, as it is one of two endings.”
“Yet I do not dream of the other,” Vincent admits, running a thumb along the rim of his glass. “Do you think I am mad to pursue this?”
“No.” Dissa shakes her head, the strands of silver in her hair catching the firelight. “I think you are young and in love, and not only with your wife. Stille has captured you, though its very nature had to change in order to do so.”
Vincent looks into the fire with a small smile. “Is it so difficult to understand? Long meetings about the quality of wool from Hyllen or fair tariffs for trapmen and shepherds do not kindle the spirit in the same way as sailing into the sunset in pursuit of legend.”
“Or war,” Dissa adds.
Vincent nods, remembering the ferocity that swept him as he fought in earnest for the first time, Dara and Donil at his side. But he remembers too the horror that came after, weak knees, a shaking body, blood-covered boots, and his grandfather dead on the ground, glassy eyes reflecting the sky.
“I would avoid that if I could,” he tells his mother now. “There is honor to be found there, but I will never revel in it as Dara does.”
Dissa’s face twists at the mention of her adopted daughter. “Dara,” she says, lifting her hands to her lips as she says the name, the only thing remaining of the girl that she can touch. “She left for love of you.”
“I know,” Vincent says, the subject enough for him to finally take a drink of his wine.
“It was for the best,” Dissa says. “Your love for Khosa is plain on your face and difficult for Dara to look upon. I have been that woman, loving and not loved in return. But my crown kept me anchored. Dara’s only constant was vengeance, and she went to wreak it on Pietran heads.”
“May it find a target,” Vincent says, raising his glass and taking a healthy swallow of wine.
“And may your constant remain your country,” Dissa says, raising her own.
“It’s an odd thing,” Vincent admits. “I did not want this throne, as you well know. Yet when it was time to defend Stille, I fought for it, watched my ancestor die at my feet for love of it. I’ve stood on Stille’s shores and faced a wave sure to topple me, and while my first thought was for Khosa, the second was for the kingdom at my back.”
Dissa’s mouth smiles in the only way it knows how, sadly. “All my life I’ve loved things that cannot love me back—your father, our kingdom. Being a ruler is very much like being a mother of an infant. What you care for drains your strength and requires constant attention, never able to return it. Yet when you wake in the night, it is your only concern, and you would send yourself to the depths to preserve it.”
“In my case perhaps quite literally,” Vincent says.
“How many will follow you, if Khosa returns with plans for a ship?” Dissa asks.
“More than I thought,” he answers. “Our victory over the Pietra came only after a hard loss to the Feneen, and while we celebrate the former, the latter is not forgotten. And there is the matter of the earth shaking . . .” He trails off, both of them pushing their feet more firmly against the stones, as if to test their firmness.
“Never have I felt such a thing,” Dissa says, her voice dark. “Stille itself betrayed us in that moment, our very soil a thing we could not trust.”
“It helped win many over to me,” Vincent reminds her. “Without it, few would follow me onto ships.”
“Either way, what is beneath their feet will sway.” Dissa shudders as she speaks, the wine in her cup making small ripples. Her fear is palpable, reaching for Vincent like a cool hand that chills him over the warmth of the fire.
“You will come, of course?” What was intended to be a declaration ends as a question, and Vincent feels an upheaval in his gut at his mother’s hesitation, worse than t
he day the earth shook.
“Have I not already outlived my usefulness here, in a dying kingdom? What place would I have in a new land beside my son, the king, and a wife who rules alongside him well?”
“You have a place as my mother,” Vincent says, his voice breaking on the word. “I may be a king, but am a child still. I would have you by my side.”
Dissa takes a long drink, her eyes not meeting his. “We shall see.”
Vincent has risen to go to her with a plea when the doors of the great hall burst open, a Stillean messenger running in.
“My king,” he says, out of breath. “You must come.”
CHAPTER 51
Donil
There is room in me for nothing other than love. I know full well that guilt should cast a long shadow, one that would turn my gut and send me begging to see a thing undone, but I have not felt that cool hand yet, for all that is inside of me calls for heat. The heat of her gaze, eyes on mine, her breath on my shoulder, our combined sounds that make no words, and at last, the heat of skin, melded as one.
We are fools, and I well know it, but we revel in our foolishness as we journey back toward Stille. At every pause we find a clearing, every drink a horse may need to take, we draw deeply from each other as well, and if Khosa and I should delay while gathering firewood and return with arms only half full, Sallin allows it to be so.
“We’ll need to be more careful once we arrive home,” I say, pulling my shirt over my head. Khosa’s hand sneaks underneath it, her fingernails trailing down my back from where she still lies, her hair fanned on the forest floor, caught in leaves. “Sallin may turn a blind eye, but the sconcelighters and kitchen maids see much, and say more.”
“We have the rest of this day,” she says sleepily, “and another to follow.”
“And then?” I ask, aware she did not add her own thoughts to mine about how we should meet once we are settled back in Stille.
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