The last years of Lonen’s life had become a
study in helplessness. His inability to stop the increasing golem
rampages. The final, agonizing decision to send the women and
children away, to abandon their home to the enemy’s raids. That
goodbye to Natly, certain he’d never see her again. The devastating
losses of their forces. Nolan gone. His father dead. Ion, too.
Each death had carved another chunk out of
him, as if every one of them took a piece of Lonen away to the Hall
of Warriors. It seemed a man couldn’t survive being gutted so many
times, which explained why he felt so empty, so beyond the ability
to feel anything.
And yet the sight of that slender, exhausted
girl putting herself between her brother and a monster who killed
with a caress filled him with a desperation that demanded
action.
Oria stared up into her brother’s gold mask,
saying something low and urgent. Lonen’s heart thudded in his empty
chest as the monster raised its hand.
Closed the distance easily.
Drifted to touch her bright hair.
“No!” he shouted, the cry choked off by his
brother’s stranglehold.
Oria turned, still holding her brother’s
wrists, and flinched back at the spidery fingers hovering so near
her cheek. Her cur of a brother wrenched free, backing up several
hasty steps, and Lonen’s heart shredded into panic as the thing
made contact. Traced her high cheekbone, followed the line of her
jaw. Brushed one deadly finger over her full lower lip.
And she remained standing.
The thing spoke to her in some
incomprehensible language. It had a voice like an old warrior Lonen
had known as a boy, a man who’d taken a sword wound to the throat.
He’d lived, but spoke in a rasp, a cawing whisper.
“Nothing else.” Her clear voice rang through
the room without wavering. “Except to go, all of you. And do not
return.”
The thing caressed her cheek again, and she
surely restrained a shudder, her slim frame tight as a drawn bow
string, as it spoke to her again, at some length.
With that languid, unhurried, and jointless
movement, the thing turned and strode away, out of the chamber. All
in the room watched it go, silent, frozen in place, as if afraid
even a loud breath might attract it back again.
Then erupted in chaos.
Prince Yar shouted something incoherent at
Oria, then dove on the late king’s pulped body. The princess reeled
a bit, but caught herself, bolstered by the masked priestess with
corkscrew red curls, who carefully supported Oria by the shoulders,
saying something in her ear that made Oria nod sorrowfully as she
gazed at her brother. The city guard advanced on Lonen and his
pitifully small force of Destrye, who quickly scrambled for their
discarded weapons. They were few in number—only the handful of
warriors who’d been occupying the palace itself and guarding King
Archimago, and who’d managed to evade the monster’s touch. An
amazingly simple strategy, to lower weapons and not attack the
thing. It seemed to ignore everyone otherwise.
Except for Oria. Who alone had survived the
thing’s touch. Two exceptions at once.
“We have to recover Father and Ion,” Arnon
was saying in his ear. At least he’d released his throttling hold.
Lonen supposed he should be grateful for it, but he burned with
resentment—and an odd sense of betrayal. So many dead to that
thing’s foul touch, and nearly Oria, too. Not that he cared for her
fate exactly, but it grated that she’d protected her brother
instead of the other way around. Even now her brother paid more
attention to a dead man than his living sister.
Or, rather, to the crown.
“Lonen!” Arnon urged.
“Their bodies are going nowhere,” Lonen
replied, his voice surprisingly even, given all that churned inside
him. “Let’s turn our attention on those still living—with the goal
of keeping them that way.”
Prince Yar stood, the heavy jeweled crown of
Bára in his hands. “I am king now,” he proclaimed.
“You are not.” Oria overrode his words
before he finished, making the boy turn to her in shock. If Lonen
could have seen his face, the young prince would be gaping
slack-jawed, an image that amused him greatly.
“Then who is in charge, Princess Oria?”
Folcwita Lapo demanded.
“There are laws—both secular and prescribed
by the temple—that decide such things, Folcwita. You know this as
well as I.”
“We are at war.” Lapo thrust an angry hand
at the Destrye. “We are invaded, occupied!”
Oria’s chin held a stubborn tilt. “And yet
we are not animals. We choose a ruler by writ of law.”
“Surely, you don’t think to claim the
crown.” Yar was still holding it, his voice full of anger. “You
have no mask and are too frail to be—”
“Not me,” she cut him off. “Our mother,
Queen Rhianna holds the right to rule. At least in the interim,
until protocols are followed.”
“Oria, she…” The priestess who’d supported
Oria trailed off, with a cagey glance at Lonen and his men.
Following her gaze, Oria pressed two fingers to her temple, looking
pained.
“Why are you holding blades at each other?
Haven’t you all had enough of death today?” Her voice wavered. “We
need to get people out there to restore order to the city. Some of
the burned may yet be helped. Others in hiding should be told it’s
safe to emerge. Why is no one thinking of these things?”
“We need to use this opportunity to evict
the Destrye from Bára once and for all,” Prince Yar said to her
back, his snarl unfortunately a bit too much of a whine.
“We promised a truce and broke it,” Oria
said to Yar, but she looked at Lonen. “Will the Destrye accept a
renewed truce, at least for the next few hours, so we may all tend
our dead and wounded? I realize you have no reason to trust my word
a second time, but it’s all I have to offer. I shall remain here to
see that it’s kept.” She threw a significant glare at the
folcwita.
Yar and Arnon both burst into protest—a
strange pair of bedfellows there—but Oria held Lonen’s gaze. She
kept her spine straight and chin high, both proud and humble at
once. Her eyes held a special plea, as if she somehow asked this of
him personally. He who’d risked himself to implore her to drop that
ridiculously large sword she so obviously had no skill or strength
to wield. Despite the hollowness of grief, the image of her
straining to carry, much less lift the thing and point it, nearly
had him smiling.
Even so, she seemed to be one of the only
sane one of her entire tribe. Which was saying something, given she
went everywhere with that white dragonlet that she seemed to
believe understood her when she spoke.
He found himself inclining his head, a slow
nod of acceptance that had his brother rounding on him. Tempting to
knock Arnon upside the head with the haft of his axe, to silence
him. But they needed every able-bodied man the Destrye could
muster. Until they assessed the casualties, it could be that the
balance had changed enough for the Bárans overpower the Destrye
forces inside the walls. A daunting thought, even though the Bárans
weren’t warriors.
“Princess Oria, you have no authority to—”
Folcwita Lapo started.
“In my mother’s absence, I do. And I’m older
than you, Yar.”
“You wear no mask, Oria,” the prince
grated.
“And you have no wife,” she retorted, then
turned back to Lonen. “I’m asking for a few hours.”
“You have them,” he found himself
saying.
“Lonen, you—”
“I’m older than you, Arnon.” Lonen nearly
smiled to be echoing Oria. It hit him like a physical blow that,
with Ion and Nolan dead, along with King Archimago, that he—the
dream-filled third son—would have to assume the Destrye crown. If
they ever got out of this cursed walled city. “Let us tend to our
people, Princess Oria. A truce until we can convene here again at
sundown? I promise that any Destrye who lifts a weapon in violence
to one of your people will die by my own hand.”
“I promise the same, that any Báran who
attacks a Destrye will be tossed into Ing’s Chasm. Blades down,
gentlemen, please.” Oria seemed to sway a little on her feet,
recovered herself. “Let the Destrye go about their business and us
to ours.”
Her guard bowed to her, sheathing their
weapons. With another nod to his unlikely savior, Lonen returned
his axe to its place on his back, mustered his men, and went to see
about dealing with yet more dead.
O
ria waited for Lonen and
his warriors to clear the room, then succumbed to Chuffta’s
chiding—and the sapping weakness in her limbs—and sank into a chair
at the council table, cradling her throbbing head in her hands.
Nat dead, too. Only her mother and Yar left
of their family. Her mother acting crazy, bereft of her mask and
hwil
, and Yar… What was this infection of power madness that
had overtaken them? Her father had raised her brothers to be
ambitious, true, and prepared them to rule. And Yar had been ever
the most impetuous of them all, but everyone had laughed at that,
saying he’d grow out of it. She’d never imagined her brothers would
be so quick to claim the crown, especially with them so untried. Of
course, never in her worst imaginings had she imagined such a
vacuum on the throne of Bára.
Even so, everyone knew no one not stabilized
by a marriage bond could rule Bára, or any of her sister
cities.
“
Perhaps that is the problem,”
Chuffta pointed out.
“Good point,” she murmured to her Familiar,
watching Yar and Folcwita Lapo argue, Nat’s crumpled corpse at
their feet. Somewhere in the mad jumble of emotions sandblasting
her there had to be grief for her brother’s death, but for the
moment she couldn’t find it. She’d passed into some state of
callousness where she felt everything and nothing at once. High
Priestess Febe entered the room, pausing to take in the scene. Her
mask, naturally, gave nothing away, but she seemed unsurprised.
Aha, it turned out anger still ran strongly in her heart. Oria
called Febe over.
“Yes, Princess?” The high priestess emanated
calm, her hwil unshakeable, which only fueled Oria’s ire with the
woman.
“We need Queen Rhianna here.”
“Is that wise, Princess?” The high
priestess’s mask turned towards the fallen prince. “Can she
withstand another death, the loss of her son? You saw how fragile
she—”
Sick to death of talk of fragility, Oria
fixed Febe with an imperious glare. “It’s happened, whether she can
withstand it or not. She is the queen and we need her. Please bring
her here.”
“But Princess…” Priestess Febe hesitated,
her voice going kind in that tone Oria knew all too well. “You may
not be in the best frame of mind to be making decisions since your
unfortunate incident.”
Just charming how the priestess said that,
as if it were a tale written in illuminated letters and taught to
children:
Princess Oria and Her Unfortunate Incident
.
Chuffta snickered in her mind. That at least
remained the same.
The priestess noted something of her poor
attitude, because she drew herself up, a thread of…something
leaking through her cultivated calm. “There are things you should
be aware of, Princess. Without
hwil
, however—”
“I’m aware of a great deal,” Oria
interrupted her, beyond done. “Mostly I’m
aware
that many
people have lost sons and daughters today, while still mourning the
thousands lost only days ago. I’m
aware
that my mother is
also the queen of Bára and not even the temple has the power to
strip her of her responsibilities, even if she did lose her mask.
If there’s precedent to remove a widowed ruler from the throne,
that should be put before the Council of Law and judged
accordingly. Until that eventuality, she is needed and she will
step up to serve Bára as she’s always done.” Oria discovered she’d
risen to her feet and that High Priestess Febe had taken a hesitant
step back. “I may not be a priestess, but I am a princess who might
be Queen of Bára myself someday—perhaps sooner than you think—and
you
will
do as I command.”
“Yes, Princess Oria.” The priestess’s voice
sounded odd, but she hastened away with enough speed to set her
crimson robes swirling.
“
Well done, Oria.”
She sat again, pressing her face into her
hands, muttering into them. “Do you think so? My temper got away
from me.”
“
Anger will fuel you in a way that
despair will not. Use it.”
“So much for seeking the calmness of perfect
hwil
.”
“
It occurs to me that one can only beat
one’s head against a wall for so long before determining that the
wall is harder than one’s head.”
“Is that supposed to be a profound teaching?
Because I have no idea what you just said.”
“Oria!” Yar shook her shoulder.
She lifted her face to narrow her eyes at
him. This shouting of her name was getting old. A minor irritation
in the face of all that had occurred, and yet…
“Stop nattering at your derkesthai and face
reality. Either look about you or go back to your tower.”
“I’m looking,” she replied as evenly as she
could. “I’m taking a moment to meditate while we await the arrival
of Queen Rhianna.”
“Our brother is dead!” Yar shouted the words
at her, as if she somehow didn’t understand.
Oria took a breath and counted, trying to
exercise patience and compassion for her obnoxious little brother,
as her parents had always counseled, and her gaze strayed to Nat’s
jellied corpse. Her gorge rose along with grief that he’d never
juggle fireballs for her again. Funny, the inane things that you
remembered about a person. She should be mourning the loss of
Bára’s best heir to the throne. Not his cocky grin. Had his teeth
dissolved, too?