“Who are you?” came the demand. The sentries were a mixed group, gender made indeterminate by similar sets of broad shoulders and bows.
Tirnine started to speak but Draken urged Bumpus forward, his mind already made up. “I am Khel Szi of Brîn.”
No immediate reaction from the cloaked figure, like a flying arrow, which he took as a good sign. He added, “I come seeking Queen Elena.”
“You come to the wrong place, Khel Szi.” Stiffly courteous. All right, he’d take it.
“I have it on good authority she is on Cove lands.”
“Oxbow told,” the Cove guard hissed. The guards around them tightened and more bows creaked. Draken twisted in his saddle, counting. Eight. More than he’d thought. There was movement in the forest beyond. He wondered if getting stuck with arrows and his subsequent earth-shaking healing would startle Bumpus from his plodding pace into a trot. He wasn’t exactly eager to find out. Healing or no, arrows hurt.
“I have no quarrel with you, and I mean no harm. Just take me to Queen Elena,” he said. “Please.”
“You’ll come. As a prisoner.”
Draken lifted his hand clear of his sword. “If it gets me to the Queen, excellent.”
There was a rustling behind Draken, and a muffled command. He turned to look, feeling skittish. A tall, slim, cloak-draped figure emerged from the trees crowding the road. He fell very still, watching. The figure paused and his eyes picked out the details: lined eyes, a certain tilt to the mouth, black hair tied back into a knot.
But it was her voice, a gasping desperation, that tore something loose inside him. “Draken.”
He slid from his horse and strode to her, gathering her in his arms without pausing to look her over again. She leaned against him, wet cheek pressed against his. He ran his hand over her familiar, narrow back, and his shoulders eased. He felt at peace for exactly one breath, which he spent on her name: “Elena.”
“Where is our daughter?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“We must talk.” Draken set her back and looked at all the guards. “These people are yours?”
“Mercenaries, working on promised coin.” She gazed up into his face. “Where is she?”
“Sikyra.” His eyes were hot, her pale face and heartrending eyes burned into his darksight. He cleared his throat. “I called her Sikyra, after my mother.”
“Sikyra.” She said it slowly, the accent off. It was a foreign word, after all, and she knew only basic Monoean greetings and phrases of courtesy.
“Sikyra,” he repeated correctly. “Kyra for short. Aarin calls her that.”
“But you said you never knew your mother.”
If that was the biggest lie that caught up with him today, he’d consider himself fair fortunate. “We met. Briefly. Elena, we need to go talk somewhere privately. Not here.”
“She is well? Tell me that much.”
A hollow space grew below his sternum, yawning wide for his daughter.
You cannot tell her. Not here, not like this.
Bruche was right. What could he say but the truth as he wished it, not as he feared it? He shook his head, not daring to lie with words. “We must talk,” he repeated.
Elena searched his face, then nodded. “Fetch our horses,” she instructed her people. “We’ll go back to the village.”
We must be close, then.
It stood to reason. He couldn’t imagine Elena straying far from a stronghold at night. It definitely wasn’t safe, with banes flitting about. He turned his head, found Truls lurking near the rear of the group. Just as well. Perhaps he’d be of some use.
“Did you know I was coming?”
“There were some vague rumors. Nothing to substantiate. I hoped,” she answered. He helped her mount her horse and instead of riding Bumpus, he walked by her side holding his reins.
The forest thickened and the path narrowed until he thought it would disappear altogether. The scent of fish wafted on the air, warning of water ahead. The land spilled wide into a rocky beach fronting a cove. The trees had obviously been cleared and used to build the cottages on the lakefront because they crowded back round the lake beyond, stretching out like a sea quieted by ice, glistening under the moonlight. A couple of huts rested on the ice, far out. He studied it all silently, trying to think of anything else, trying to put off the inevitable.
Without seeing to the well-being of the others, Elena took Draken’s arm and started him toward a hut set apart from the rest.
Royal command shrouded the woman he loved like clouds over a moon. He followed without comment, ducking under the low lintel into a cramped cabin. He gave it a quick glance, noted the dirt floor, the straw, wool-covered pallet piled with furs. Not lodging Elena would be accustomed to. Even the Moonling town at Skyhaven had been cleaner and had planked decking underfoot … that is, before Elena had burned it to the ground.
You don’t know what she’s been through since then, Bruche reminded him. This might be luxury.
He only wanted to take her into his arms and comfort her, feel her lean against him again. But she opened her mouth to speak and he knew it would be more questions about Sikyra and so he rushed in with a diversion. “Where have you been all this time?”
“Seeking to build up the army. Everywhere I go, I find I am assumed dead and I must explain who I am anew. I’ve never gone anywhere before and not been recognized. Not been Queen.”
“You are still Queen, Elena. Mine, and Akrasia’s.” He wasn’t so certain about Brîn. “What will you do next?”
“Rejoin the main force and march for Auwaer to protect it.”
“Perhaps it is best you go sooner, rather than later. Unfortunately, the Monoeans also suspect you’re in this region.”
She twitched an impatient hand, not asking how he knew that. “I’ll have you with me. Where is our daughter?”
His hand shifted to his sword hilt and his jaw tightened. He lowered his head. “I sent her with Osias after Brîn—”
“Monoeans took Brîn. I’d heard.”
“No. Ilumat took Brîn and gave it to them.” He said the words before he realized perhaps now wasn’t the best time for such bluntness.
“Ilumat is at Auwaer awaiting our reinforcements. He barely survived. He told me he thought you were dead. But for some rumors … I barely dared hope. Where is Sikyra?”
“You can’t trust Ilumat. He’s ly …” Her dark gaze drilled into his, cutting him off. His pulse quickened and his mouth felt dry. “I sent Sikyra to Eidola with Osias. There was no other safe place. We were in hiding; she was ill.” He had to stop to breathe. Saying it all aloud brutalized him worse than any sword could. “But the Mance were forced to flee Eidola.”
“With our daughter?”
He nodded. “Eidola was attacked. We think Korde freed the banes. But when we met in Reschan Va Khlar told us the Mance were all dead. They didn’t find the baby or Setia. I’d hoped they were just taken hostage but Osias summoned the dead Mance and they told him …”
Elena’s fingers flared with fire. The shock of it cut off his words. He tilted his head away, closing his eyes. An instinctual gesture against the sting.
Steady, friend.
The magic and darksight didn’t matter. None of it mattered. “If it could be any other way, if it could have been me, I would trade my life. She was—” His voice broke and the rest husked out. “Bright and loving. A joy—I wish—Gods, Elena, I wish you had known—”
Her shrill anguish cut through him. “Stop! Just stop talking!”
Draken obeyed. Her eyes were too bright and glistening, endless black caverns of grief. They looked—felt—all too familiar. The hollowness he’d been feeling yawned wide and spilled out his pain. He tried taking a step closer to her. She shied back.
“The Mance is wrong,” she said. “She is not dead.”
“Elena, I was there. She’s gone.” His voice snagged on the last word.
A woman in constant motion, the very air around her still
ed. “You gave her up to them.”
He’d tried to prepare himself, but her words felt like a spear had pierced his chest. His eyes heated, but no tears threatened. He had been here too many times, failed all too often. He felt dried up as the dead grasses he’d just rode through to deliver this revelation. He closed them and lowered his head, a single nod. He hadn’t known what else to do. But he was a Prince and a father. He had no excuse.
“She’s alive. She has to be.”
“Elena, she’s not—”
“I am your Queen.”
A beat. “Your Majesty. There would be some word, some rumor to chase. I would have found it if it existed. She is dead.”
“I’ll find her myself if you’re too craven to try.”
“You aren’t listening to me. Sikyra is gone. All that’s left to us is to rid our lands of the enemy.”
“Enemy? You think I don’t know what you are? You are the enemy! You went there and brought your people back to conquer us.”
“I did not bring them back. They manipulated me, tricked me. I swear on all that is holy, on Sikyra’s life—”
“You lied to me, as I handed our daughter to you, to her … death.” Her voice broke on the last word.
“Your Majesty, I didn’t—” He stopped. “Not about that. Not ever about her. I loved Sikyra. She was my only link to you and she was nothing but a joy.”
Tears fell freely. She wiped at them with her sleeve. The dust and grime smudged her face. “You don’t deny you are Monoean?”
His heart pounded in his throat. Here it was then. The wrong blood. The wrong man. All of it had led to Sikyra’s short life. “Who told you?”
“My cousin, my new Night Lord, who fought for Brîn and lost it to the Monoeans, and nearly lost his life. All this while you ran. While you threw away my daughter!”
Ilumat, again. He rose into Draken’s life like the reek of soured milk ruining fine silk. He was taking Draken’s life. His city. His sister. Now Elena. “I am a half-blood. Sacrilege, an abomination. No better than banespawn. So was our daughter, for that matter. Is that what you want me to say?”
No, Draken. Tell her all Ilumat did.
In that moment Draken knew protesting Ilumat would only make it worse. In a way, in many ways, he was glad. He was so tired of fighting all the right battles all the wrong ways. “Do as you will. Execute me for a traitor, if you can manage it. Gods know they’ve tried. Gods know how I have longed for death.”
“Give me the sword.”
Draken, no.
He drew without hesitation, flipped it in his hand so that he caught it by the blade. It cut the soft join between his thumb and forefinger. Blood dripped over the sword and off his hand.
“Kill me. This alone will do it,” he said quietly.
Fools all! Can’t you shut it while you’re ahead?
She was carved of pale moonstone, molten hatred rippling beneath the surface. The sword gleamed in her hand, fire flicking along its blade. But there was more. A shudder in her gaze.
Fear.
Fear of the damned ruddy gods.
“Get out.”
He held out the sword further. “Take it. Cut me down. One last favor.”
“No. You will live and suffer as I will.” She stared at him, her face set, then turned her back on him, a graceful, heartless shift of body and mind. There was no fire in her for him. He wondered if there ever had been.
Numb, he re-sheathed his sword and turned to duck back out under the lintel. His chest was too tight to breathe, heart squeezing all the blood away, chilling him from the inside out. No. Bruche. Dragging the cold air in as he seized control of Draken, forced him to breathe and stay upright.
He paused, his hand gripping the frame. “Beware the gods. They war among us. They hunt me. I think they hunt you, too.”
What had started as a stab to the heart had become a wearying deep ache and the hot press of anger. Something he could live with. Not live well, but enough to avenge his daughter. The gods could bloody wait for whatever plans they had in mind for him. He let the swordhand have free rein over his body and guide him away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
This time the Ashen died in eerie silence. Truth, most still slept as Draken’s blade struck, but after it was done, as he wiped Seaborn with a scrap of torn tent canvas, the stillness seeped into his bones.
It’s always this way, the quiet. You’re too busy killing them to notice.
Draken lifted his head and his darksight stretched across the encampment, picking out slow movement: Aarinnaie making her way through the bloody wreckage. Tyrolean already stood panting softly next to him, blades crimson. Gadye-made swords for royal guards, never intended for raw vengeance.
Tyrolean bent over a dead man for a few breaths, hands propped on his knees. “My lord.”
Draken turned. Tyrolean gestured with his sword at the dead man’s face. Draken had to shift around the body to see it. He stared. Thick black lines tattooed around eyes that stared into nothing. He nudged the man’s cloak hood aside with the tip of his sword. Tightly shorn hair capped his head, not bound back in a tail like most Akrasian men wore theirs.
“He had one of their weapons.” Tyrolean bent to retrieve a very typical, plain seax.
“Another bane,” Draken said. But this was the first they’d run across in their attacks since leaving Elena.
“Aye.” Tyrolean thrust the seax into the unmoving chest amid the other stab wounds still oozing stinking blood. Draken gave Tyrolean a close look, but he only cut away some of the hem of another Ashen’s cloak and straightened to clean his blades. Not a scratch on him, as usual, while Draken’s healing from taking on a too-alert guard had trembled the ground throughout the attack, waking a few enemy before he could manage to kill them.
Draken stripped off his bracer and wiped his face with his sleeve. “Hunger is getting to you, Captain. You never used to be out of breath.” Now they never had enough to eat.
“I keep asking you to use my given name …” Tyrolean inhaled deeply, sounding a bit raspy. “… and you keep not using it, my lord.”
Draken grunted, tired of their ongoing argument. “Elena didn’t get the chance to decommission you, so I call you by rank. Speaking of, you don’t have to do this. She would take you back. I didn’t tell her you were traveling with me.”
The silence seemed to close tighter around them, something he could see with his darksight … a sort of dull grey void. It was his first time speaking the Queen’s name since she’d turned them out four sevennight ago. Draken concentrated on looking through the silence for any glimmer of a god. They came round sometimes, drawn by the blood. But he saw only Truls, drifting about studying the Ashen they’d killed. All male. All very young. Like the squad before this one, and all the others that had come before. They massacred at least two such encampments a sevennight.
“And you are my lord, so I’ll call you such,” Tyrolean said at last.
“Even if I’m only here to find my cousin and kill him for betraying me?”
“Even so, my lord.”
Draken sighed. “Any sign of him, Aarin? Or do they mock me once again?”
“No Galbrait and not much in the way of food,” Aarinnaie said as she jogged up to them.
Draken just gave her a curt nod. He’d run across Galbrait twice. It shouldn’t be so difficult to find the man unless the gods had decided to use his cousin to toy with him. Draken nudged the body of the servii to show her the lined eyes. She snorted softly but offered no comment.
If the Ashen were getting hungry, they’d be sloppy and desperate, which made men much easier to kill. Regional Akrasian farms had been robbed of much of their livestock to feed the invaders, and they’d started hunting the grassland horse herds running wild on the prairie. But Draken knew from recent experience they were difficult to catch, and smart, too. One scent of people and the herds made themselves scarce. Maybe this lot hadn’t roved the countryside killing locals like so many of the ot
her small Ashen bands they’d discovered.
“I did find this.” She grinned and tossed him a small bag. It clanked with Monean gold. He nodded. They’d be able to eat a fair long while on it.
They’d drawn further upland to the far edges of Septonshir, hunting out these Monoean squads. Osias said there were tiny villages scattered on the rivers and creeks streaming inland from the lakes. A day’s ride downland and they’d meet the tributary of the River Eros where it faded into bubbling groundwater and treed swampland. A small town rested there but rumor had it—if the dead souls Osias had summoned could be believed—that it was completely overrun with Ashen. It was from there they staged these raids, which were perplexingly unlike typical Monoean tactics.
What Elena’s troops were doing, Draken had no idea. He couldn’t think too hard on it—on any of it. He only got angry when his thoughts drew too close to her. But he warmed to the idea of running into Ashen at inns. That could mean fights ahead of them, and maybe against important people. Maybe he’d find Galbrait. “The locals will be hungry enough for gold, I expect.”
“Aye. The Akrasian army is melting rare and common for arrowheads.” Tyrolean spoke in a tone of finality and looked around at the dead men sprawled about, his face hard. “Coin is closer than the Brînian mines.”
Mines that were nearly dead. But Tyrolean was losing interest in the conversation. “Aye, Captain. Pray your piece and then we’ll go.”
Draken turned to his sister. The shadow only came over her in the night, or maybe it was there all the time, revealed only by his darksight. The bane splint. Darker. Stronger every night from all the blood they drew.
If you hadn’t taken her, she would have found a way to kill Ilumat by now. And Elena would have had to execute her.
Bruche was right. It didn’t make it any easier. Draken gestured to his sister and led her a little away, into a copse of trees where they’d left their packs. He let her drink first from the poor wine from his skin.
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