by Kate Elliott
“When I saw Dusty taken away at Crags Fort, I swore to the Mother of All that I would learn to fight. Maybe I’ll never see Dusty again, maybe he’s dead, or cursed to a life of slavery in a land far from here. But I will not stand by while there is a hope we Efeans can take back what should belong to us.”
She pauses, as if wondering if she’s let her passionate anger reveal too much to me, the girl with the Saroese father.
“Don’t worry, Mis. I’ve figured out what’s going on. I just don’t see how Ro’s ragtag Efean rebellion can defeat well-trained and professionally equipped Saroese armies. I’m sorry. I just don’t see it.”
“Of course you don’t.” I can tell she’s disappointed in me, and it stings.
“That doesn’t mean things can’t change. I can convince Father and Kal that we need to do things differently.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“They aren’t monsters just because they are Saroese,” I mutter, wishing I did not sound sullen and defensive.
She turns my hand over, palm up, and presses a finger to the middle, the Efean gesture for truth-telling. They believe the smoky eye of our shadow-soul peers out through the palm. “No person is a monster until their actions make them so.”
“And Nikonos really is a monster. None of our fine dreams of change will matter if he and Queen Serenissima win this trial. If he reaches Father before we do, all Efea will be crushed.”
6
Jes.”
A hand touches my knee, and I startle awake, swaying. I’m tied to the saddle of a mule, and it is Kal, riding beside me, who has woken me. His smile bursts like a sun in my heart. He kisses one of his fingers and touches it to my leg. I copy the gesture, one we’ve developed in the last five days of grueling travel.
The sun hasn’t quite risen, and cocks are crowing as we ride into a village. Women haul water and grind grain to get a start on a new day. I wonder if my mother grew up in a village like this, if she carried pails of water from the village well to her mother’s house and slapped away mosquitoes and breathed in the musk of animal manure and the smoke of hearth fires.
After Mis and Ro make our greetings, Kal and Khamu take the mules away, accompanied by local villagers.
“Why are you traveling with one of the foreign monsters?” one of the dames asks Mis.
A spike of anger makes my head want to blow off. “The man was born here just like you and me, Honored Lady.”
“They are poisoned flowers never meant to grow in Efean soil. You see what one did to me when I was no older than you are now, child.” A scar starts along her jaw and winds a thick seam across the edge of her lips to end in a mass of scar tissue at the bridge of her nose.
“I’m sorry. That is a truly terrible thing. But they aren’t all like that.”
She studies me, the complex blend of my height, my hair, my complexion. My eyes. “And the man who sired a mule like you? Has he kept faith with your honored mother?”
Humiliated, I look away.
She discards me by turning her attention back to Ro. “Honored Poet, why do you travel with a Saroese man when you know their hearts are filled with stolen blood?”
Poets cannot lie.
He looks at me, and they all follow suit as if he has spoken aloud that he can’t tell them the whole truth while I’m here to listen. Suddenly I am not Efean enough for them. It wasn’t like this in the villages closer to Saryenia, the ones who saw more Saroese. Dusty grew up out here in the east, on the fringe of the desert, and I see why he left as soon as he could.
“I’ll go to the stable with the rest of the mules.” My voice is stiff. I stalk off quite rudely although I can’t bring myself to care how I appear to people who have already decided to dislike me. Anyway, now I worry about hostility Kal might be facing.
When I get to the village stables I hear a buzz of agitated conversation. Khamu and Kal are watering and brushing the mules, surrounded by locals who are giving our guide what appears to be a stream of information. Khamu pauses frequently to pat Kal on the shoulder and refers to him multiple times as honored nephew.
“The soldiers came from the south, from the coast,” one of the men is saying. “Took half of our grain stores and left us only with a piece of papyrus that their captain claimed the royal treasury will make good on if we bring it to the palace in Saryenia. As if people like us would ever have time to travel that far, much less be admitted into the palace when we got there!”
I hurry over. “What badge were the soldiers wearing, Honored Sir?”
Kal’s gaze flashes up. He’s surprised to see me here and nods to show me he’s all right, guessing I’m worried about him.
The elder answers politely, “The royal sea-phoenix, Honored Niece.”
Father would never loot Efean villages, and he’s in Port Selene, isn’t he? It must be Nikonos’s East Saroese allies, disguised as local troops. If so, that means they’ve gotten ahead of us.
“How far away is the Royal Road from here, Honored Sir?” I ask, because we have stuck to an inland path in the hope of avoiding any more of Nikonos’s soldiers. Now we need the quickest route, despite the risk.
The old man measures the rising sun. “A person can make it to the coast by midday.”
Khamu gestures. “Jes, why don’t you and my honored nephew go take a quick wash? There’ll be porridge waiting on the guest porch.”
I nod my thanks. In the last five days, Khamu has quietly facilitated every stolen moment of privacy Kal and I have managed. The bathing garden is empty this time of day, and it welcomes us as a fragrant bower full of promise. But we can’t linger, no matter how much we want to. Not after I’ve explained what I heard. I’m ready to charge back to the others but he takes my hand, kisses my palm. Kisses me. He presses his forehead against mine.
“Jes,” he whispers, as if he fears the gods might hear, “what if we just left?”
“What do you mean?”
“You and me. We could sneak south to one of the harbor towns, get work on a ship, and sail away. Vanish forever. We could make a life where no one can find us.”
“What about my father? Nikonos will kill him if we don’t reach him first.”
“We could write a letter and send it with Mis.”
“His command staff will never let an Efean girl through to see him. It has to be us. You know that.”
He breaks away, paces a circle around me, and returns. “Once I declare myself, I can’t step away, not ever. I don’t want to be king. I don’t want to fight over who has the most power, the most gold—”
“We can’t leave Efea in the hands of Nikonos and Serenissima. You can’t want that!”
He sinks down on a bench and rests his head on a hand as if he’s so weary. And why wouldn’t he be? “No. I don’t want that.”
“And your uncle Gargaron. If you’re not there to counterbalance him, to push against him, what will happen then? He doesn’t even consider me a person, Kal. How will he treat Efeans if he holds the reins of power? What if he goes after my mother? What if he decides my father is a threat? He’ll kill the very people who can make things right.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose, shakes himself, and stands with a heavy exhalation, as if he’s bracing himself to race as hard as he can through a Fives trial.
“No, you’re right, Jes. I can’t escape this. It was too late the day I was born.”
I have no answer. The precious solitude that has sheltered us during our overland journey has burned down in an instant’s firestorm, leaving us standing in ashes.
We walk in silence to the guesthouse as dread grows in my heart. Khamu and Mis are eating porridge while Ro regales the dame council and the elders with a passionate speech. The instant he sees us coming, he stops speaking.
Kal pauses politely at the bottom of the steps so everyone will notice he has arrived, but he doesn’t wait for an invitation to approach. He climbs up to the porch and offers a series of Honored Dames and Honored Sirs to the
assembled elders before turning to Khamu.
“We need to turn south at once. Khamu, you grew up near here. Is there a way we can approach the Royal Road without being seen, to make sure it’s safe before we risk using it?”
“Yes, my lord. I know a path that only locals dare take.”
“Very well.” Again he addresses the elders, who are staring at him as at a branch that has revealed itself to be a snake. “My thanks for your hospitality. I promise you, whatever has been requisitioned or stolen from your village will be repaid. For now, we need the loan of fresh mounts.”
Ro stands. “So. How quickly you abandon your performance as a humble groom, Lord Kalliarkos.”
Ro is taller and bigger but Kal doesn’t give way. He doesn’t know how to give way; he’s a prince of the realm.
“A massive foreign army has broken through the frontier on the Eastern Reach. Nikonos is in league with them. There can be nothing more important than stopping this threat.”
“I won’t deny it, but if you don’t mind my saying so, my lord, I don’t see any difference between these latest Saroese invaders and your ancestors.”
“I think you and I know the situation is more complex now.” In the last few months, serving in an army chased by defeats, Kal has undergone a fierce test, like metal in a forge, and been hammered into a harder person. “I am Efean born. I am not my ancestors.”
“Of course you aren’t, my lord.” Ro opens a hand, palm up, as a question. “Yet if you and Garon Palace do overthrow our new child-murdering king and his complicit sister-queen instead of being slaughtered yourselves, what then? Will you and your sister, Lady Menoë, rule as king and queen justly and wisely over your fawningly grateful subjects, Patron and Commoner both? As your ancestors have done for a hundred years?”
“The danger to Efea isn’t from me. It’s from Nikonos’s weakness. I’m sure his East Saroese allies intend to overthrow him once they make sure my sister and I are gone and they can make Efea a province of East Saro. Is that what you want?”
“I want justice.”
Then they both look at me, like they are waiting for me to agree with one or the other.
Irritation spikes through me. I’m not the victor’s ribbon in the victory tower, waiting to be claimed.
I’m the adversary.
“You two are both missing the obvious. At the moment we are fugitives and Nikonos is king. He will have all of us executed if he catches us. So we need to reach my father before Nikonos does. Right now.”
“The general’s valiant daughter has no time for nonsense,” Ro remarks in Efean to the council, who are trying to sort out the new dynamics at play as Kal asserts himself. No one laughs. Nothing about this is amusing.
We gulp down a thick porridge and set out again on fresh mules, accompanied by ten villagers. They carry field and carpentry tools as if they are weapons, but all I can think of is how quickly they will be cut down by armored soldiers wielding swords, spears, and arrows.
As we head south, Kal taps my knee. “Jes, promise me you’ll run if there’s trouble, not charge straight into it.”
“I never charge into trouble unless I’ve considered all my options and decided it’s the only choice.”
His lips tug up. “It was worth a try.”
Sun bakes the dusty ground until it shimmers like an oven. Soon the terrain starts to drop in ragged tiers toward the narrow coastal plain. A dark strip running parallel to the coast must be the Royal Road. I’m sure I see ships out on the distant water but the late-afternoon haze makes it hard to tell. We halt at the edge of the last, steepest drop, hand the mules back to the villagers, and bid them farewell before descending a slope into a mucky depression, a diseased-looking marsh that spreads east and west as far as I can see.
My soft leather boots are soon grimy with muck, but it isn’t true mud that sticks and clumps but rather a slippery sheen that reeks. Tears stream from my eyes and my nostrils itch from the stench of oozing petroleum seeps. In front of me Mis sneezes twice, then murmurs a prayer for the safety of her shadow, since sneezing can dislodge the shadow-soul. But when I check, hers is still stuck to her, rippling across the islets of plug grass we use as stepping-stones.
An antelope caught in the mire is far gone in decay. Insects who drowned trying to feast on its viscera float in an oily sheen, eddying up against its whitening skull.
Palms and sycamores mark a village ahead. All I can think about is the chance to pour a bucket of cold water over my head. I hustle after Mis through empty lanes and into the center square—where we run straight into a crowd of villagers facing down a column of soldiers wearing the royal sea-phoenix.
I spin desperately to warn away Kal, but he has already halted out of sight. The soldiers mark Mis and me as grubby Commoner girls, nothing of interest. The sergeant is laboriously attempting to inform the village men that he will pay for supplies and that the villagers need to flee immediately… but he doesn’t speak Efean and they don’t speak Saroese.
Are these Nikonos’s men?
A crow suddenly appears. It circles us and lands on a nearby roof to study our faces with keen interest.
“Do you recognize that crow?” I murmur to Mis.
“Why would I recognize a crow?”
“At Crags Fort, with the spider scouts. Don’t you remember the priest who’d had his eyes put out and saw through the eyes of his crows? My father has spider scouts with his army, and each squad has a crow priest.”
“I’m more worried about these soldiers right here, Jes.”
But I have a feeling, just as I do on the Fives court, that this is an opening I can take. I extend an arm and the crow flaps down to land on my wrist, feet tightening on my skin. It bobs once, then flies off. That decides me. I step forward.
“Sergeant, may I help? I speak both Saroese and Efean.”
My proper Saroese speech startles him. His kit is filthy, his face bristling with a stubbly beard, and he looks as exhausted as I feel, but he nods as if my presence is a relief. “Thank the gods. Can you tell these people we don’t want grain? I’ve been sent to collect oil and naphtha.”
“You’re with the Royal Army, under the command of General Esladas?”
Instead of indicating his sea-phoenix tabard, he taps a firebird badge sewn to the cloth. “Proud to be so.”
“I thought you were dug in at Port Selene, holding the eastern approach into Efea.”
“The enemy’s army is too large. We had to retreat.”
Father is marching straight toward Nikonos.
More curtly than I intend, I say, “You must take us to him.”
He waves a dismissive hand. “My job is to get these supplies and warn the villagers that they need to clear out before the enemy comes pillaging. Now either help me by translating or get out of my way.”
I don’t waste time arguing with him. I call, “Kal! It’s safe to come out.”
Kal strides into view. Where a prince walks, every gaze must follow.
“Sergeant.” He acknowledges the man with a nod but walks past the troops and places himself before the guesthouse porch, where he invites Mis to join him.
She throws a glance at me, rolls her eyes with a smile. For all that Mis has her own goals, she likes Kal and I think she even respects him.
After she introduces him, Kal offers a proper greeting to the dames of the village with the painstaking diction I’ve taught him. The women are happy to get paid directly rather than make a journey to Port Selene with their oil and naphtha, a trip that is now impossible anyway.
In the square, Ro has worked his way into a crowd, meeting their gazes, touching the arms of those young men and women with grievance writ large in their discontented expressions. He speaks with so much intensity, and anyway I’m curious about the discussions they hide from me, so I move toward him to hear better.
“We are quiet dogs biding in the shadows while the lions fight. When they have wounded each other and lie bleeding, then we become wolves. Thos
e who can, follow me. Our war has begun at last.”
His words wrap around my heart but I stay just outside the group, not moving too close.
As people start loading casks and vessels onto the wagons the soldiers have brought, Kal takes a formal leave of the dames and returns to the soldiers.
“Sergeant?”
“Leukos, Your Highness.”
“Sergeant Leukos, I must reach General Esladas at once. There’s an enemy force west of here as well as the invaders on your tail. The Royal Army is at risk of being caught between two hammers.”
“Yes, indeed, my lord. That’s urgent news! Agas! Klidas! You’ll personally escort Lord Captain Kalliarkos to the general.”
Two soldiers not much older than I hustle over. They check out Mis and me, dwelling too long on our figures.
Ro pushes his way out of the crowd, headed for me. He halts as Agas and Klidas step into his path to prevent him from getting too close to an exalted lord captain. Mis notices their interference with an angry shrug that reminds me what an ordinary part of life it is for her and Ro to have to get out of the way and not protest. But of course Kal can walk right past them. Maybe he thinks Ro is anxious to say good-bye to him.
“You and Khamu have done your part and brought me to the Royal Army,” he says to Ro. In Efean he adds, “My thanks to you, brother.”
They tap fists.
“Wherever it is you mean to go,” Kal continues, “please warn the villagers to hide. The East Saro and Saro-Urok troops will burn and pillage, as we’ve seen.”
“It’s habitual with the Saroese,” agrees Ro.
Kal has about a hundred smiles, each conveying a different emotion. This time he glances at the ground as if to give himself an instant’s privacy as he decides how to respond, then back up to meet Ro’s sardonic stare. A wry smile softens his lips but his eyes give a harder message. “Change can happen. I believe that.”
“You always do believe that you mean what you say. I like you for it, but I know better than to trust in Saroese promises.”
