Green Wild (Thrones of the Firstborn Book 2)

by Chrysoula Tzavelas

  **Because if you don’t, we will see what Tiana does when you and I have another struggle.**

  There was a long silence. Lisette watched Tiana’s back to see if she turned around, or even shifted her weight: any sign Jinriki spoke to her. But Tiana might as well have been a statue propped up in her saddle.

  Lisette’s own mare shied nervously at nothing perceptible, and she wondered if Jinriki could get inside the heads of the horses and spook them. She remembered darkly that Cathay’s Regent Sennic had died after being thrown from his horse. That had been a bad day, a horrible day. Cathay hadn’t let anybody near him, until she’d talked her way past his defenses, and then he hadn’t let her go.

  **Do you remember these things to irritate me?** demanded Jinriki. **Cathay, Cathay, everywhere I look. Consider Slater. I have. He is also attractive, in a human sort of way, and far more reliable. He even has a few interesting issues I know you’d enjoy exploring.**

  Lisette didn’t need to turn around to consider Slater; she’d considered Slater since he’d been assigned to guard her, in an idle, self-indulgent kind of way. He was tall and well-built and smart and loyal and skilled with his sword. And also a Guard, which was a line she wasn’t crossing just for fun.

  **Why are you invading the guards?** she asked, refusing to let herself be pulled further off-topic.

  **I’m just helping them... what was Slater’s phrase? I’m helping them toughen up. They’re mostly incompetent. They need to know exactly what my expectations are. I’m giving them helpful advice on where they’re going to fail.**

  Lisette couldn’t even come up with words in her head to respond to that, except to squeak, out loud, “What?”

  Kiar looked back at her quizzically, then back at her book again. Nobody else noticed. Lisette reached out and played with her mare’s mane, muttering under her breath, “How can you possibly think that’s helpful?”

  **Well,** Jinriki sent meditatively, **It might make them give up and go home before Tiana gets hurt trying to save them. They’re a burden. It’s dishonest not to tell them so.** He sounded almost pious.

  “No, you’re just being cruel. You’re enjoying being cruel.” The mare’s ears flicked back to catch what she’s saying, and she patted her horse’s neck. “Not you, you’re a good girl.” Then she concentrated and sent, **The Royal Guard is a voluntary force. Every Guard on this trip was hand-picked for his dedication to protecting us. And Tiana is very lovable, in her own way. Don’t torture her guards for wanting to serve her.**

  **I’m not. I’m torturing them for being useless.** Again she caught that strange bubbling sense of self-righteousness, and she focused on it, dissecting it until she found the idle amusement underneath.

  **You’re a bully,** she told him flatly, watching Tiana again.

  **No, I’m a fiend, and I don’t like humans very much. Neither did my master. At one point he considered you all a mistake.**

  Lisette thought about the lazy arrogance of the voice in her head. Jinriki was, according to his own claims and Kiar’s reading, the favored Secondborn of a dead god. Some arrogance was probably natural. But he was also, in her observations and from Tiana’s stories, incredibly intelligent. Something didn’t make sense about his current approach. **You’re too smart to think it’s a good idea for Tiana to travel with only you as her companion. What’s going on?**

  **And you. We mustn’t forget you, her most precious friend.** Jinriki said ‘friend’ like Lisette would have said ‘horserace’ and Kiar might have said ‘hairbrush’.

  **That would be a disaster and you know it. Why are you being so stupid?**

  Jinriki didn’t answer right away. During his silence, Lisette kept a close eye on her mare. Wisps of straw danced by in the wind. The mare stretched out her neck to catch at one. When she missed one, she snorted and shook her head.

  **I am... grateful to the princess. But there are many who would be pleased if she once again gave me up. If I could remove their influence, that risk would be minimized.**

  Lisette was again surprised. Her mare stopped abruptly, misinterpreting her body language, and once more Kiar glanced over. This time she asked, “Is she all right?”

  “Yes,” said Lisette hastily. “I was stretching out my back and confused her.” She urged the mare into movement again and thought fiercely, **You’re tormenting Tiana’s guards to make them leave, putting her in potential danger, so you can feel more comfortable? That’s so... petty.**

  **I know,** Jinriki thought, low and annoyed.

  The wind picked up again, blowing a splat of cold water against Lisette’s cheek. Distant thunder rumbled, and she realized the bright sunny day had vanished. The sun still peeped out between the roiling clouds, but it was like a prisoner catching his last glimpse of freedom. And on the northern horizon loomed a mass of clouds so dark and solid that it seemed like another mountain, one that put Sel Sevanth to shame.

  Voices raised behind Lisette, before Slater and Berrin both cantered past her to where Tiana rode in the lead with Cathay. Lisette exchanged glances with Kiar, and as one they both moved close enough to listen in.

  “A magnificent thunderstorm is about to break on top of us, Princess,” called Berrin. “We need to find shelter.”

  Tiana glanced over at Berrin like he’d woken her from a dream. Then she looked around. The road followed the border between Ingae and Dalein, a territory of mostly farmland. They grew lavender as well as grapes and grain, but there was a fair amount of waste land. They were passing through some now: too rocky and uneven for easy cultivation. There was, however, a small mixed orchard on the right.

  “We could stop at a farmhouse?” Tiana suggested slowly. “There’s one over there.” The farmhouse and its barn were both small. Sheltering sixteen humans and twenty equines would be a challenge. “But I’d rather we kept going. I’m sure we’ll get to a posting inn soon. Then we could have baths, too.” She turned her head enough to smile at Lisette.

  Thunder crashed overhead, and two of the soldiers’ horses shied violently. Lisette’s horse shook her head again and turned to stare at the misbehaving cobs.

  Berrin shook his head. “I think we’re going to have real trouble getting there. I was thinking, if you’ll forgive me for making a suggestion, Your Highness, that we could rest our horses in the orchard here. I imagine we could weave some branches together to create rough shelters. And if this is one of those quick-passing storms as it looks to be, we’ll be as tight and dry as can be within an hour or so.” He paused and saw Tiana looking ahead, as if still thinking about riding on. “You won’t get there faster by getting sick, Your Highness.”

  Another spattering of cold rain hit her in the face. Tiana shook her head. “I suppose I do at least know enough to come in out of the rain.”

  ‘Yes, you do,” said Lisette tartly, and turned her horse toward the grove. As soon as they were off the paved road, she slid down from the saddle and gathered the reins in her gloved hands. The orchard was a mix of apples and pears: a sign it was for local use rather than anything sold in a marketplace. The ground was still dry and the spatters from the sky became a pleasant rattle against the red and yellow leaves. Lisette walked forward to make room for the others behind her, feeling more cheerful. The air was fragrant with apples and something else. Something muskier. It reminded her of an aunt’s perfume.

  “Wait!” called Kiar, just as Cathay swore and drew his sword. But it was Tiana’s shriek of, “Lisette, no!” that sent Lisette diving to the ground. That was a combination of instinct and training: if something was moving toward her, she needed to get out of the line of sight between the Blood and their target.

  She still had the reins, and much to her surprise, her mare went down with her, kneeling and lying flat in a smooth motion. Lisette flung an arm over her neck as something dark went over both their heads. Then Berrin crouched beside her, and Tiana had unsheathed Jinriki, and somebody screamed.

  It was, Lisette realized finally, an ambush.

/>   Chapter 8

  Eye Contact

  After they descended the mountain and made it to the flatness of the road, Kiar began reading. Spooky wasn’t the best horse for reading. He didn’t have the smoother gait of the horses raised by the Palace and she had to keep refusing his requests to drop back and keep the soldier’s cobs in line. But she wasn’t going through books quickly, not this time. In the Citadel she’d been frantically searching for answers, but this was the steady, focused stuffing of her head with new knowledge. She’d taken history books from the Citadel: volumes she thought might have references to the first war against Ohedreton and information about the dawn of the Blooded monarchy in Ceria. But it was so long ago that much had been lost or transformed. With enough time the line between fiction and history seemed to blur.

  Even so, it seemed odd how little she could find about Shin Savanyel’s life. When a drop of rain spattered on her book, she closed and stowed it, and turned her mind to that mystery. She didn’t pay much attention to the discussion about the storm; as long as her books were safe in their saddlebags, she didn’t mind getting wet.

  Then Lisette went off the road toward the orchard nearby and everything went wrong. Something rippled nearby. It reminded her of the phantasmagory, whenever it had been full of the minds of her cousins. The spiritual sanctuary generated an undertow that grew stronger when her cousins were upset, producing ripples and tides. What she felt now was the same, bouncing between Cathay and Tiana and herself. But instead of being drawn in, it felt as if something was about to be pushed out.

  The ripples came from the orchard. “Wait!” Kiar called, as Cathay and Tiana also cried out.

  Lisette promptly dropped to the ground, her horse flattening as well. Kiar flung herself from Spooky’s back and landed hard, then surged to her feet and ran into the grove. Something dark flickered over Lisette’s prone form and Berrin’s gloved fist smashed into it. It shot up into the trees. He crouched down protectively over Lisette and Kiar turned away to scan the shadowed trees.

  The treetop canopy shivered in the sprinkling rain, with spatters of water breaking through. Red leaves drifted down, shaken loose by the gusting wind, but nothing else moved. She didn’t relax; something still tugged on her.

  Her attention was split when, beyond the grove, Tiana pulled Jinriki out of his sheath. He immediately started doing something awful to the local Logos, warping it like a thousand pound spider in a stolen web. She could feel it well enough to be glad she regularly suppressed her Logos vision. Frowning, she focused back on the ripples.

  “Where are they?” Tiana demanded, stepping into the grove. “ Jinriki says they’re pouring through a fiend, wearing it out. Are you all right, Lisette?”

  The light, already dusky in the grove, dimmed further as the last of the blue sky was devoured by stormclouds. Lisette said, “I’m not hurt. Is it safe to get up?”

  “You should get out of the grove,” Cathay said. “Go to the Guards. Stay in the middle, just like in training. We’ll take care of this, while they’ll look after you.”

  Lisette sat up, patted the neck of her supine horse and said shakily. “All right. I—” and something zinged out of the shadows, just as the Guards moving toward the grove shouted.

  Kiar reflexively put up one of her shields, but felt the missile go right past her face. Swearing, she put up a shield near Lisette and Berrin and instructed it to block any fast moving missile. Then she put up a similar shield near Tiana and Cathay, and then—too much to do, all at once—she ran back out of the grove and into the rain and the battle that had exploded there.

  The horses were all going mad, rearing and screaming and kicking. More of the small fliers, carved of shadow and rain, flitted among them and even the Palace horses, trained not to take fright at eidolons, had joined into the desperate attempts to escape the strange fluttering things. Spooky, angry instead of frightened, reached out and caught one in his teeth and started shaking it hard.

  Andani, smooth-skinned living silhouettes, moved nearby, following the birds in to attack. Kiar assessed the group of raiders, determined that she couldn’t cage all of them, and sent her personal shield to protect and track her horse.

  Then she ran past the guards struggling with their mounts, toward the andani. Slater shouted at her but she ignored him. Two eidolon swords materialized in her hands. They weren’t her native eidolon, but they weren’t far from shields conceptually. It was particularly easy to make them seek out other eidolons.

  The lead andani wore a helmet and a hauberk, both of Cerian design, which struck Kiar as interesting. Even more interesting was how he slowed his advance when she moved toward them, holding out a hand to halt his followers. He recognized her, she realized, and he was wary.

  Kiar remembered her inadvertent visit to the andani’s own world. It wasn’t the first time she saw an andani, but previously she’d thought they were just somebody’s stray eidolons. In the other world, she’d watched one stroke the side of a behemoth, soothing it. It had behaved like a person.

  Cautiously, she said, “Don’t do this. You know what will happen. You haven’t nearly the forces here to stop us.” It was true. If Jinriki could deal with the portal fiend, then half a dozen andani wouldn’t be anywhere near enough to stop their journey. Not with all three of Tiana, Cathay, and herself.

  Especially not with herself.

  Cathay shouted in rage in the forest, but Kiar didn’t glance away from the lead andani. Lightning crashed overhead and the andani flinched, looking up at the sky. When it looked back at Kiar again, the spark of intelligence had vanished. The hand stopping the others from progressing dropped, and moving as one, the andani leapt for Kiar.

  Kiar lifted her hands and let the swords go. They flew from her hands to engage the andani to either side of the leader. Out of the corner of her eye, Slater moved forward, along with several of the other guards. The brunt of the attack fell on them, and they seemed to be handling it. The andani didn’t bleed like humans did but they were still vulnerable to being sliced open.

  The leader jumped toward her, the bone blade in each hand raised high. Kiar’s trained reflexes took over. She ducked low and came up, catching the andani’s slender arm. Looking at the frenzied, empty face, she thought of Cathay’s cats, her father’s wolves. Then she tore open her own eidolon source and pulled the andani inside herself, just as she’d done before.

  It didn’t fight being swallowed. It pulled its arms in close and dropped the weapons and collapsed out of the armor into a stream of eidolon stuff. It was odd, and uncomfortable precisely because it wasn’t. She’d become used to touching the aliens and warping the stuff of their bodies.

  Her knees gave out under her as her adrenalin drained away. She sat on the road and watched as the last of the andani fell to the road and dissolved into nothingness. Seven trained men against five andani wasn’t much of a contest, even with the late start.

  Slater wiped his sword on a cloth, apparently out of habit, and stood over Kiar. “Are you injured?” he asked curtly. When she shook her head, he said, “It was considerate of you to hold them off until we’d dealt with the horses, but next time, don’t. If you get hurt, we’ve failed.”

  Kiar blinked up at him. “Me? You mean Tiana and Lisette, don’t you?”

  He reached down and took her by the arm, hauling her to her feet. “No, my Lady,” he said, his teeth gritted. “I mean you. It would be good to protect the others, too, and that would be easiest if you would all stay together.” He glanced at her face and loosened his grip. “You are just as valuable as the Princess, my Lady. And you haven’t that sword to watch out for you.”

  “I have my shields,” Kiar offered, bewildered by his concern. She’d always identified with the Guards: they were both there to serve the Princesses.

  “You don’t. You rush into things as wildly as any of your kin—” Slater shook his head. “Never mind. I’m sorry. You did well holding them off.” He released her, looked past her, and the blood
fled from his heated face. “Apparently that sword isn’t as useful as I thought.”

  Kiar whirled around. Tiana was leaning against a tree just within the orchard, looking away as Lisette inspected an injury along the underside of her arm. The crimson blood shocked Kiar, but not as much as realizing the ‘orchard’ wasn’t one anymore. Half of the trees had been lopped in two and none of them had any leaves left. Something glowed in the heart of the grove, and Kiar smelled smoke.

  As she ran over to Tiana, Cathay emerged from the grove, his gloved fists clenched. He had scrapes on his face, but otherwise seemed uninjured.

  “Where’s Jinriki?” Tiana asked faintly.

  “I left him there. I’m sure you’ll be able to reclaim him after the fire’s gone out.”

  “Cathay!” protested Tiana. “He wouldn’t have hurt you. He promised me.”

  “I’m not going to follow the commands of anybody who treats me like a slave, stormy weather, not even for you. If he didn’t want to spend the night in a burning forest, he should have handled things differently.”

  “She’ll be all right if we can get it clean,” said Lisette, who seemed more sure of herself than she’d been all day.

  The sky chose that moment to open up as the gusting wind brought the storm. Spatters of rain became a downfall punctuated by lightning and thunder. Lisette glanced up at the sky, muttered something and then turned Tiana’s arm up to the rainfall.

  “Did they want the pendant?” Kiar asked, thinking of the Royal necklace Tiana carried. Ohedreton had destroyed a duplicate of it when he’d killed the King, and he’d been annoyed when he discovered the trick. But nobody paid attention to her question.

  Tiana winced, and then shouted at Cathay, “If you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the middle of a storm!”

  “Then the fire will go out quickly!” snapped Cathay and jerked around. “Where the hell are our horses?”

  Slater said, “Bolted. Sorry, your Highness.”