He shook off the romantic notion. That was
exhaustion getting to him, and being so long away from feminine
company. Natly was waiting for him to return, a normal, beautiful
and spirited woman of his own people. One with a strong, lush
figure and vitality to run and ride with the best of the Destrye.
And he’d be returning as king, which should be enough to finally
persuade her to marry him.
“Mostly I just want this done.” His turn to
be admitting to the enemy what he shouldn’t.
“Why don’t we start with what you came here
for—were you after the source of Báran magic?”
“Arill, no!” The shock of her suggestion had
him rejecting that foul notion too brusquely, because she
physically flinched, making him feel absurdly guilty, as if he’d
punched her. “No, we want nothing more than to keep clear of your
magic,” he said more smoothly, rolling the fragile goblet between
his palms. It reminded him of Oria, in a way—both easily crushed
but also exotically lovely, unlike anything he’d seen or touched
before. Not trusting himself not to shatter it carelessly, he set
it aside.
“Why did you attack us then?”
Glancing up sharply, he opened his mouth to
retort, but her expression, wide, wondering, and without guile made
him pause. An act perhaps, but… “You attacked us first,
Princess.”
She shook back her hair, frowning. “How can
that be true? Our peoples have battled in the past, I know, but the
peace has lasted for centuries now. The Destrye live far from here.
You
came to Bára. We only defended ourselves.”
It could be that she truly didn’t know,
isolated in her manmade fancy of a garden. He gestured to the
trees, the lavish vines with their hand-sized pearlescent blossoms,
faces turned towards Sgatha and visited by pale-winged moths that
hovered over them as they drank. “Where does the water come from
for all of this?”
Her frown deepened and she looked around, as
if seeing it all for the first time. “Well, servants haul it up,
but I gather that’s not the answer you mean. They bring it from
stores, cisterns below the palace. All the city buildings have
them, as reserves for dry weather.”
He gazed out at the sere, moonlit plain. “Is
it ever not dry weather?”
“We have a monsoon season, though it’s been
very light the last few years. When it does rain, we have roof
cisterns to gather it. A good monsoon season gives us water to last
until the next.”
“And if it’s a bad monsoon season, very
light, as in the last few years?”
She shrugged. “Well, obviously we’ve had
enough stores to be getting by. My trees aren’t dying so we haven’t
run out.”
“
Or
…” He held her gaze. “You’ve been
sending those unnaturally puppeted golems of yours—only equipped
with fangs and claws—to steal our water and kill any living
creature that stands in their way. Mothers, children, livestock.” A
bleakness washed over him at the memories.
To his surprise, Oria’s expression echoed
that.
She looked horrified, even. “You mean,
similar to the ones we used to defend the city when you
attacked?”
He barked out a laugh and swallowed some of
the juice to salve his dry throat. Too sweet, but the flavor was
growing on him. “They didn’t just look like them, Oria. They were
the same. They’ve been attacking us for years, decimating our
people and driving us out of our homeland. We tracked them back
here to make it stop. We had no choice.”
That last came out too forcefully, too
defensive. She needed to know the truth, though. He ran his hands
through his hair, remembering belatedly that he’d tied it back in
an attempt to look more appropriate for a meeting with her in her
lavish gown. Impatient with it, he tugged off the leather tie and
tossed it on the table. She might find him brutish and unkempt, but
what did he care?
“Everyone has choices,” she said, as quiet
as he’d been loud.
“You have to understand, Princess of Bára.
You—or maybe not
you
, I don’t know, but your people—you
drove us to this. Yes, we had choices. We either had to stop you,
die trying, or die by the claw of your golems.”
“I see. A moment, please.” She rose, seeming
restless, moving back to the balustrade and gazing out. The quiet
murmur of her voice drifted on the night air like the heavy scent
of the moon blossoms.
She must be talking to that dragonlet. The
absurdity annoyed him, but weariness softened the edges of the
irritation. Oria was right that they’d argued enough to last years.
Along the rim of the fire table, a series of animal figurines
paraded, made of the same delicately transparent material as the
goblets, catching and reflecting the violet firelight. He picked up
one that reminded him of one of the forest cats of Dru. Amazingly
lifelike, the cat seemed to be stalking something.
The white lizard hopped off Oria’s shoulder,
wings unfurling for balance and catching Lonen’s eye, then took a
perch on the balustrade, green eyes glowing. Oria ran an
affectionate caress down the thing’s neck with long, slender
fingers that stirred Lonen in deep places that felt long forgotten.
She turned her back to the drop, facing him with hands folded over
her belly, chin high and steady. “So, if this is the case—and I
know nothing of it, but have no reason to disbelieve you—then
you’ve succeeded.”
It took him a moment to drag his thoughts
back and she tilted her head, with a wry smile. “Your men killed
the sorcerer who created the vicious golems,” she explained. “That
was a singular gift.”
Anger burned through his stupidly besotted
brain. Perhaps Ion had been right about his lack of judgement—and
now Lonen could never tell him so. “A singular
gift
?” he
snarled.
She held up a hand, both fending him
off—though he hadn’t moved toward her—and acknowledging his
protest. “A poor choice of words, I apologize. That’s simply how we
refer to the magic.
Affinity
might be a better word. At any
rate, no more of those golems will be sent against you because the
man who piloted them is gone.”
“We’ve seen others of those golems around
the city.”
“Piloted by others with far less ability, as
manual labor only, and…it’s something I cannot explain, but if they
go too far, they lose their animation and collapse. I don’t know
exactly how the late Priest Sisto was able to send the
water-seeking golems all the way to Dru, but I do know—from
conversations among us—that we have no one else in Bára who could.
I can also assure you that we won’t launch attacks against you of
any other kind, if you agree in turn to leave us alone.”
He wanted nothing more. “How can you
guarantee that?”
“What else can I offer?” She held up her
palms, copper eyebrows forking as she thought. “I’ll add a personal
promise. If you are attacked by anyone or anything of Bára, I vow
to do whatever it takes to protect the Destrye.”
“A sweeping promise.”
She smiled, ever so slightly. “Easy enough
to make, as I can be sure Bára won’t attack you again. We have
other problems than warring with the Destrye.”
“And you…have the ability to protect the
Destrye?” Seeing her in that violet and rosy light, he believed
that perhaps she did.
The brief moment of amusement fled. “I hope
so, because Bára will need that, too. I can only promise that I’ll
do my utmost for the Destrye, as I would for Bára.”
“I’ll have to settle for that, then.”
She nodded, crisply. “So that’s agreed. You
say you have no inclination to govern us. What else do you
want?”
Nothing, he realized. His father, Ion, even
Nolan might have sought to take more, but he himself would be hard
pressed to simply put things back together again. Still… “You must
agree to keep those other things away from us, too. The dragons and
the monsters that rode them.”
She folded her hands again, expression
shadowed. “I have no control over the Trom, but I believe them to
be our problem. They came at our call and have a long history with
our people. I don’t think they have reason to pursue the Destrye in
any way.”
He nodded, wishing that made him feel
better. The way that thing had caressed her cheek… “What did it say
to you—and why didn’t its touch kill you?” he asked, unsure if he
wanted to know for her sake or his.
“I don’t know. It’s something I shall have
to discover more about in the days to come.” With her body
silhouetted against the moon, the violet fire not quite enough to
reveal her expression, he couldn’t read her reaction to his
ill-advised question. Some tremor in her voice, though, made him
think she was afraid.
“You don’t know what it said, or why it
didn’t kill you?”
“Why it didn’t kill me. The words were…an
old dialect, and were not important.”
She was lying about that, which shouldn’t
annoy him as much as it did. “Are you in danger from it?”
She cocked her head slightly. “If so,” she
said in a measured tone that revealed he’d pricked her pride, “that
also would be my problem, not yours, King Lonen. Do you require
anything else?”
He searched for the words to express it. He
wanted his youthful idealism back, to know that magic could be
wonderful, the way he’d imagined it as a boy, the way it seemed
possible in her enchanted garden. Not watered with the blood of
countless Destrye dead. He wanted to be rid of the crushing grief,
to rewind time so none of this had happened. Except that he would
never have met Oria. Which didn’t matter anyway as this meeting
sealed their goodbye. He’d return to Dru elevated in station but
impoverished in heart and spirit.
Nothing Oria could give him would change
that.
“No,” was all he said.
“All right.” She scrubbed her hands briskly,
as if shaking off dust. “Let’s write it down and end this terrible
day.”
He agreed. Though once again, the final
victory felt lacking.
O
ria stood at the
balustrade, the rising sun scalding her eyes as she watched the
Destrye army decamp. Chuffta perched on her shoulder, similarly
fascinated by the spectacle. She should be feeling a sense of
triumph. She’d achieved what she’d wanted all those days ago,
standing in that same spot, straining for any sign of the
battle.
Don’t put attention on a result you do not
want.
For the first time, the import of that
lesson came clear. She’d wanted quite desperately to know more
about the battle, to see and hear and experience it up close. She’d
gotten exactly what she’d wanted, hadn’t she? And it had left her
an empty shell, able only to feel grief and regret.
“A fine sight this is.” High Priestess Febe
said, stepping up beside her. “Who would have believed even a day
ago that they’d leave so easily?”
“It was hardly easy,” Oria replied, toying
with the strip of leather Lonen had used to tie his hair. He’d left
it on her fire table and she’d picked it up, first out of
curiosity, not sure what it was, this foreign object in her
otherwise unchanging world. Then she’d held onto it for no reason
other than it gave her something to do with her hands. “It only
took the near total destruction of our people.” A destruction
brought upon them twice over by her own family, something she still
didn’t know how to reconcile. A destruction that still loomed in
their future, if what Lonen had said was true. If Bára had gone to
such lengths to steal so much water for so long, did they have any
reserves at all? The cloudless sky and heating plain mercilessly
glared in confirmation of her worst fears.
“The arrival of the Trom frightened them.”
The priestess’s mask inclined as she nodded at her own insight,
oblivious to Oria’s point—and probably Bára’s dire circumstances.
“Else they would not have agreed to terms so speedily afterwards.
However you managed that, particularly without the advice of the
council, at least they are gone.”
Oria bit her tongue, keeping her opinion on
that to herself. There would be time enough to sort out all of
that, once the Destrye left. Already Bára felt different with none
of them in it. In exchange for her promise that they would not be
attacked or pursued, Lonen had withdrawn every last warrior the
night before. Perhaps the vacancy in the usually humming energy of
the city could be attributed to the loss of so many lives.
Or perhaps to the long shadow cast by the
advent of the Trom. The people of Bára looked to face a rapid
extermination by fire and bone-crunching, or an extended demise by
starvation and drought. Removing the threat posed by the Destrye
had only changed the cause and the timeframe—Bára still stood to
fall as surely as she’d predicted the week before.
But if Oria had learned nothing else, she
understood now that fretting changed nothing. Her mother would be
proud. If she could see past her mourning.
Resolutely, she put her mind on next steps.
“What can we expect of the Trom now, High Priestess?”
“That’s not something for you to worry
about, Princess Oria. This is a matter for the temple.”
Chuffta made a snorting sound in her mind,
one she’d love to make aloud. She wouldn’t, however. Though she’d
lost much of her respect for the temple in the past days, she would
not demonstrate it overtly.
“I disagree. The Trom indicated that it
would be back to visit me, personally.”
“Surely the Trom meant the temple, where the
priestesses are trained to interact with them. Without having
received your mask, without
hwil
and the teachings that
follow, you are ill-equipped to deal with such an important
entity.”
Oria turned with angry incredulity on the
woman. “The important entity that dropped my brother with one
touch, that killed him and countless others for no reason at
all?”
The priestess’s mask gazed back at her with
equanimity. “I understand that such emotional outbursts are
difficult for you to control, as you have no
hwil
, but do
try to restrain yourself from wild accusations, Princess. Clearly
Prince Nat, while seemingly worthy of his mask, was in truth
lacking.”