A Heart of Blood and Ashes

by Milla Vane

  Atop the remains of a giant marble foot, Maddek looked in the same direction. If any more revenants lived, they would soon catch up to the warriors. But it was not a revenant that alarmed the trumpeters. Instead a sabenar slinked toward the herds. Though reptilian-skinned and several times larger than a long-toothed cat, in movement it more resembled that animal than other reptiles—and its saberlike fangs resembled the cat’s, as well.

  “The bison calf,” Kelir predicted from beside him.

  This was a game they’d often played as boys—watching the predators of the Burning Plains and making wagers over which animal would be targeted. But this night Kelir only played it to keep himself awake.

  Though weighed by fatigue, Maddek doubted sleep would come for him. But it was not the dangers outside the camp that occupied his mind. His gaze turned toward Yvenne again. Hanan’s mountainous head was buried almost to the eyes, and they had made camp in the corner of cheek and nose. The foot where he and Kelir kept watch was a longer distance away, but it offered the best vantage in all directions. They did not want to notice a revenant coming when it was already almost upon them. Ardyl, Fassad, and Banek slept now but would awaken at any noise, and Danoh and Kelir had both eyes on their surroundings and could keep watch over the sleeping warriors . . . and over Yvenne and Toric. One stricken by fever, and the other who had cared for him through first watch.

  A small fire still burned. By its soft light, he watched his bride bathe Toric’s face with cool water. The warrior moved restlessly under her ministrations, muttering in a feverish delirium.

  It was she whom Maddek wanted to keep in sight now, for when she was not, it seemed as if a revenant’s poison filled his own chest. As it had ever since he’d yanked his sword from a revenant’s gut and turned to see her coming toward him with Kelir’s bow and arrow instead of fleeing the magic-fouled whiptail.

  She had promised to make his life a misery. He still believed she would. But in that moment, he’d realized his life would also be a greater misery if Yvenne wasn’t in it.

  A misery with her or without her. Of the two miseries, he would choose what she offered. Yet that choice had almost been taken from him today.

  It was not the first time she’d been in danger. Yet when the blood wraiths had surrounded her, Maddek’s fear then had been nothing compared to today’s. He meant to make her a warrior-queen, but only so she could protect herself if necessary. Not so that she could race toward battle.

  His next lesson to her would be that sometimes a warrior’s best option was to run away.

  With a grunt, Kelir made wordless comment on Maddek’s distraction and how much of this night he’d spent looking toward the camp instead of watching for threats coming from outside it.

  Then his friend said gruffly, “Do not look at your bride tending to Toric and think a fool’s thoughts.”

  No need to ask what thoughts those would be—suspicion and jealousy. Maddek did not suspect either Toric or Yvenne, yet he could not truthfully deny shameful jealousy. Because Yvenne tended to the young warrior with warmth and without walls. She did not so easily touch Maddek.

  But he could only agree. “Such thoughts would be a fool’s.”

  “So do not think them. He has taken sweet liking to her, but it will pass as soon as another pretty woman shows him interest. And her eyes are only for you.”

  That was truth. At no one else did she ever look at with her gaze full of heat and hunger, except for Maddek—and a millipede’s leg.

  Kelir eyed him speculatively. “Were they also a fool’s words? There must be a reason she slept with the wolves and then refused to share your furs last eve.”

  Maddek wished the words he’d said had been mere jealousy. Instead he’d almost torn out her tongue. He’d told her not to look to him for affection, though it was Maddek who’d needed that reminder. Not she.

  But he could not undo what was done. “The next time she allows me to share her bed, I will put my tongue to better use than saying what is best left unsaid.”

  Both pity and laughter filled the other warrior’s reply. “It is but five days until the full moon.”

  When Maddek would have her again. And between now and then, she would build stronger walls between them.

  Suddenly frowning, Kelir leaned forward. “What’s got them up?”

  At the camp, Fassad and Banek were no longer sleeping but had risen from their beds. As Maddek watched, Banek nudged Ardyl with his foot, but she only rolled over and burrowed deeper into her furs.

  No threat, then. Maddek glanced at the moon. Still high, so it was too early to change watch.

  Banek started in their direction. The older warrior gave a signal that all was well, yet Maddek did not wait for him to reach them. He scaled his way down Hanan’s marble foot with Kelir close behind.

  “Has Toric worsened?” Maddek asked as they met.

  “He is no better or worse than he was,” Banek said. “But his restless mutterings mean there is no sleep found in the camp—and if I am to be awake, better I make use of myself on watch. Fassad has decided the same.”

  Kelir nodded and said, “Better mutterings than silence.”

  So it was. In the campaign against Stranik’s Fang, they had seen warriors as strong and as young as Toric succumb to the fever, and always it was preceded by burning stillness. Toric was in danger, but not terrible danger. Most strong warriors who died from the fever were not bitten on a limb as he’d been, but nearer their heart or head.

  Yet someone as frail as Yvenne . . . that fever killed most, no matter where the bite was. Perhaps she might have been spared death, just as her goddess-touched mother had survived a different poison that ought to have killed her. But Yvenne’s body had never been as strong as that warrior-queen’s.

  It would have taken but one scratch. One bite. Yet she’d run toward danger instead of away.

  She was well, but still Maddek’s chest ached. His bride had said he was adept at finding weaknesses. He could not ignore that she was becoming his. For he focused on a problem he didn’t face instead of the one he did.

  “Will he have strength to ride tomorrow?” It mattered not if Toric could sit a horse after they reached Drahm and the ship that would carry them across the Boiling Sea. But it was still several days’ ride to that city.

  Banek shook his head. “Perhaps the next.”

  A full day lost—and with Syssian or Rugusian soldiers not far behind, if they’d taken the southern river road.

  “I can stay with him while you ride ahead,” Banek suggested.

  “No.” They were all stronger together. Even with Toric weakened. And if the soldiers had taken the northern road and reached Drahm before they did, better not to enter that city with fewer warriors at his side. “If they are on this road, this position is the most defensible.”

  Kelir’s mouth twitched in amusement. “And you have a bride who can place an arrow through any approaching soldier’s eye.”

  So she could. But not alone. And Maddek would not expose her to the soldiers, yet if an attack came, he would also be a fool not to use such a gift.

  Nor would she let him leave it unused. By Temra’s fist, her stubbornness meant that if he denied her, she would only seek strength elsewhere.

  That poisonous ache in his chest deepened.

  He felt Kelir’s gaze upon him now before the other warrior said, “Are you in need of counsel, Ran Maddek?”

  Though the warrior’s tone was light, it wasn’t all jest. Counsel and consultation was one of the Dragon’s duties. And whatever Maddek’s friend saw upon his face must have said he was in need of it.

  But it was not counsel he needed. There was no help for what afflicted him.

  “Not counsel. A promise.” But not from Kelir, though it was best that the warrior witnessed it. Maddek looked to Banek. Maddek’s guards did not have to obey him. But
if the older warrior made that vow now, it would be near the same. “You serve as one of my Dragon guards—but foremost you will serve as my bride’s. And if she will not run from a threat we cannot defeat, you will take her away from it.”

  Banek looked to Kelir. Maddek had no doubt the old man wanted to accept, yet this would be a decision made between the warriors, for it might mean Banek would abandon the Dragon—and Maddek—in a time of need.

  The lightness had vanished from his friend’s expression. Kelir misliked the request, but he also saw the reason for it.

  And he also knew Maddek’s own frustration at not having realized it sooner. “We saw what she was—every time she sensed foul magics, or when she looked at us with her moonstone eyes and we could not hold her gaze. She told us a goddess sees through her. We knew.” His mouth twisted in bitter humor. “Yet even the barmaid understood better than we, and that only on a glance.”

  Just as so many things had been described to Yvenne, but she’d not truly understood until seeing them for herself. Kelir and Maddek had been similarly blinded, believing they knew what she was but having no true understanding of what they saw. Yet not every warrior had labored under the same misconceptions.

  “Banek knew,” Maddek said to him. “He’d seen it before.”

  In Yvenne’s mother and in her mother’s mother. But the old man shook his head. “I saw the goddess within her. But I was blind to more, because I also saw that she was not the warrior her mother was. And after the ruins, when she failed to run . . . I didn’t see how brave she was. I did not see that until today.”

  Maddek had seen her courage. He’d seen it from the moment her brother had pulled her from the carriage, when she’d boldly lifted her chin and looked straight through him. Like a fool, he’d simply dismissed that courage. But now she was his weakness, and he could not let his weakness leave her vulnerable. “Will you protect her? Zhalen will never let her be. None of that family will.”

  And Maddek had new reason to kill them all. Yvenne had claimed she was more valuable as a bride than a corpse, but he’d not fully understood what she meant. Even after recognizing how valuable she was as a queen. Her daughters would have legitimate claim to the Syssian throne, yet even that was not all her worth. For her daughters would also carry a goddess’s magic within her. And Zhalen and her brothers could not control Yvenne . . . but a young and powerful girl, without the influence of a queen like Yvenne’s mother? Perhaps they could. Perhaps the only reason it had not already been done to Yvenne was because of her frailty and weakness. If she’d been as strong as her mother had once been, Zhalen would have raised her as he did his sons. Now if Yvenne had a daughter, Zhalen would take the baby, kill the mother, then mold the child in the same image as he molded his sons. They hungered for power too much to ever relinquish a claim over her.

  Little wonder Zhalen meant to marry her to the Tolehi king. Not only would her father have new claim to that throne, but the Tolehi king would not have fought when Zhalen took Yvenne’s female issue.

  “Until her father and her brothers are dead, she will never be safe,” Banek agreed, then added solemnly, “If Nyset’s line ends or is corrupted by Zhalen . . . that would be a great loss not only to Syssia but to all who call themselves her allies. So I swear it. My first duty will be to Yvenne.”

  Though Maddek was relieved by the vow, the ache in his chest didn’t vanish. A great loss. But not just losing Nyset’s line. Losing Yvenne herself would be a loss. And Yvenne’s children would be a gain for the Parsatheans. Maddek’s children.

  Kelir’s eyes narrowed. “And we can do the same to you.”

  Maddek grunted. He knew not what the other man meant.

  “If you do not run from a threat we cannot defeat, we will make you go.”

  The warrior looked smug, as if he’d won an argument Maddek hadn’t begun. But perhaps it only meant the argument had not been with him. This might have been discussed among the other members of the Dragon. Perhaps as soon as he had begun this quest for vengeance, they had argued about whether to save Maddek from himself if his rage and grief overwhelmed his sense.

  He knew for certain his warriors must have questioned his sense when Banek asked, “Why do we not change course now that Zhalen must know our route north? They would not expect us to flee south to the Lave.”

  “Or to seek help from the Gogean queen,” Kelir put in dryly.

  As Yvenne had suggested. That his warriors listened to her so well pleased Maddek—though he misliked the thought of hiding in Goge, it had been a sensible alternative, and his warriors had seen that, too. Also sensible was Banek’s suggestion to flee past the city of Goge to the river Lave. It was a territory they knew well and where they would find allies among the army who would stand with Maddek and a goddess-touched Syssian queen against her brother and her father. But Yvenne had been intended for Toleh’s king, and Maddek knew not if the Tolehi captain who commanded the army now would stand against his uncle. There were Syssian soldiers who would surely be loyal to Yvenne, just as those were upon the ambush road. Yet they were small in number.

  And his lesson to Yvenne would not be a false one. Sometimes a warrior’s best option was to run. They needed more numbers and they needed a defensible position—and allies whose loyalties were not in conflict.

  They would find all in the north. Within the Burning Plains, Yvenne would have an entire Parsathean army to protect her, and no need to rely on her bow.

  “Zhalen cannot know our route yet. If it was Aezil who sent that eagle, her brother knows—but he is in Rugus. By the time word reaches Zhalen of our route, we will be halfway across the Boiling Sea. We will see the firebloom before Zhalen’s army reaches the outpost. And if he brings soldiers out of Syssia with him, all of Parsathe will soon know it.”

  Because such movement would be seen and an alarm sent out to all corners of the Burning Plains—but the alarm would not need to travel far, for many of the clans were already gathering near Kilren so they might choose their new Ran.

  Kelir nodded. “So we are in a race.”

  “A race we cannot win if we leave this road,” Maddek said. So they might have to face the soldiers from Ephorn—but it would not be an army that pursued them. The soldiers would have been sent to seek Yvenne and a small party of Parsatheans. They would be mounted for speed and their numbers few, because Syssia and Rugus kept few mounted soldiers in Ephorn. But even if the council added the alliance’s guard to their number, Maddek expected no more than a battalion.

  “So we’d best pray to Enam for swift winds upon the Boiling Sea,” Banek added, though the tension had eased from his face.

  “Do not pray too well, or Enam might send a storm. Better to pray to Nemek, to cool a fever and suck out poison,” Kelir said, looking toward the camp.

  Maddek had no intention of praying to either god. It seemed like wishing for what was not. What he had instead was a bride who soothed Toric’s fevered brow.

  Though Fassad had taken over that task now. As Maddek and Kelir approached the camp, Yvenne no longer sat beside the poisoned warrior but had settled onto her furs, the green stave she used to strengthen her arm across her lap. She was tying back the flowing sleeves of her robe—as if she intended to practice more before she slept. Her pale gaze caught Maddek’s as he collected Banek’s furs for himself, and then she looked at him questioningly when he held out his hand to help her up.

  “Come,” he said. “We will make our beds in a quieter location. And discard that stave.”

  Even with a goddess’s sight and aim, no arrow would fly true from that weapon.

  She remained seated, gripping the bow tighter. “But I need to—”

  “Use Ardyl’s, instead,” he told her. Ardyl’s bow was too long for Yvenne’s arm but was the shortest they had—and if his bride needed the weapon for more than practice, it would be Maddek’s arm that pulled the string. The bow would
not be too long then. “She prefers her glaive, anyway.”

  A grunt of agreement came from the warrior’s furs.

  The happiness that lit Yvenne’s face was as bright as it had been that morning, when Maddek had first given her the stave, and almost as bright as after they had felled the whiptail. The constriction within Maddek’s chest tightened at the sight, but it was not the same poisonous pain that festered. This he knew not what it was, but the answering heaviness in his loins was clear enough.

  Then his arousal was forgotten as she reached for the bow Kelir had fetched from Ardyl’s belongings. Yvenne’s blood darkened the linen wrappings formerly hidden by her sleeves.

  Kelir froze at the sight. Maddek did not. Dropping to a crouch beside her, he snagged her wrist and gently turned it. A stripe of dried blood crossed the inside of her forearm. His gut clenched sickly as he realized what the injury was—and that it was likely not the only one.

  “Show to me your other arm.”

  Her brow furrowed, as if she puzzled over their reaction, and she showed him. The same stripe, but with more blood—from three distinct slashes, Maddek knew, instead of just one. The first from the strike of the bowstring when they’d felled the whiptail. The others after he’d told her to take the bow in her opposite hand and they’d felled three more revenants.

  Shame was like anger, hot and thick in his chest and throat. For it had been his strength behind the pull of that string. The first arrow they’d loosed, the one that had killed the whiptail, he could not have undone. But if he’d known the first had hurt her, never would he have continued.

  He battled his own tongue until the words of shame would not erupt like rage. Still they were harsh and hot. “Why did you not tell me the bowstring had done this?”

  Because it must have hurt. It must have been a streak of agony, as if she’d been slashed by a blade or lashed with a whip.

  Still she looked at him in bafflement—and a slight wariness, as if choosing her words very carefully. “It is but the cost of mastery.”