Tears of War (45 page)

Kovan raised an eyebrow. “I’m surprised you didn’t kill the men who run the High Houses.”

“So I’d be stuck with a new bunch of idiots to deal with?” She shook her head. “Killing their children was far more efficient. It preserved the current leadership. Besides, people can watch adults be killed all day long. But start disposing of their offspring though and they come around fairly quickly.”

“And did they come around as we hoped?”

A servant carried a tray of damp cloths and a drink into the cavern. Oksana grabbed the drink and downed it before pulling a towel from the tray. “Yes, once I finally had their attention. They are not eager to change the way they run things. I told them they wouldn’t be able to run their nation the way they do if they sided with the Guardians.”

“You could have easily alienated them by killing their children.” Kovan sighed. “It was a risky move.”

Oksana shrugged and started wiping the dust from her face with the towel. “They can have more and if not then they should have taken me seriously to begin with.” She tossed the towel back on the tray. “I’m going to change my clothes.”

“You better watch out for Sadira.”

She paused. “Why? What happened now?”

He laughed. “Azurynn killed another of her mages and I told her of the changes in Markene.”

Oksana flipped her long, golden hair over her shoulder and rolled her eyes. “Sadira needs to let Markene go and stop obsessing over it.”

Kovan went back to sharpening the long blade. “I just said to watch out for her.”

Oksana snorted and walked through the doorway. She was the only other one besides Kovan and Azurynn who really wasn’t afraid of her. Oksana was a powerful user of Shadow weather and another even match for Sadira.

Sadira stared around her chambers, panting. Nothing was left untouched. She’d torn everything apart. How dare her father die unless it was by her hands? And now that rotten, scheming Kalila held the throne that was supposed to be hers.

She paced across the room, kicking the debris out of the way. Markene was hers; no one would take it from her. The rest of the world would belong to the Shadow Riders, but Sadira had every intention of ruling from Markene. She snatched a fallen vase and sent it shattering against the wall. Markene was hers!

Sadira turned cold eyes on Larna who cowered in the corner. “Clean this up.” Seeing only one sister left still irritated her. But Drisa had killed herself and there was nothing Sadira could do about it. Kalila, on the other hand, she had plans for.

She turned her back on the room as Larna scrambled to clean up the mess. Sadira felt calmer now. Azurynn was a thorn in her side but one day, she would get that woman too. As she walked into the main chamber, Azurynn looked up with hooded eyes. She sat with another black chain in her hands. A massive bruise spread across one side of her jaw. Her dark green eyes edged with black followed Sadira across the chamber and she had the feeling Azurynn had heard her thoughts.

Ignoring the feel of the woman’s eyes boring into her back, Sadira called Ranit to her. As soon as the dragon fully settled on the floor, she climbed into the saddle and fastened the straps.

Kovan strolled into the cavern and stopped. “Where are you going?”

A mocking smile spread across Azurynn’s face. “She is going to visit her obsession. Excuse me, her birth nation.”

Sadira narrowed her eyes at the woman. “You are a fine one to talk. I recall an entire fleet of ships filled with dead men.”

Azurynn’s smile remained in place. “I did what I needed to do and then put it behind me.” Her smiled faded as her eyes grew hard. “I don’t play games like you do.”

“You don’t know what you are talking about,” Sadira snapped.

“Don’t I?” Azurynn ran her fingers over the chain slowly. “You had every opportunity to do what needed to be done in Markene when you went back there to steal your sisters. Instead of killing everyone and walking away, you played games. You stole your sisters for pets and then allowed one to escape. You could have left Markene inhabited by nothing but ghosts. Now look at you, still trying to claim something that was never yours in the first place.”

“It was always mine,” Sadira hissed. How dare this woman air her mistakes like that?
What are you going to do about it?
a little voice whispered in her head.
What can you do?
She shook the thoughts away, determined to ignore Azurynn. She couldn’t keep from hearing the woman’s soft, mocking laughter though.

Kovan cleared his throat. “Are you sure now is the time for this, Sadira?”

Sadira shot him a withering glare. “This is none of your business.” At her command, Ranit left the cavern and launched into the sky. The air rippled into a black swirl as a Jump opened. They passed through into the icy darkness. When they came out of the other side, they were halfway to the Blood River.

She hated the short Jumps they had to make, but they couldn’t Slide like a Guardian dragon. Instead, they had to pass through the same void a soul sphere led to. They could streak back to the Kormai in a matter of seconds, but leaving was much harder and had to be taken in a series of Jumps through the void. The further they got from the Kormai, the shorter the Jump until just west of the Galdar River. After that they had to fly over land.

Another dark Jump spun open and the icy black enveloped her for a moment before they came out the other side. Sulwyna had complained that the whispers inside the void bothered her although Azurynn claimed their tortured cries were a form of musical entertainment. Sadira didn’t hear them though. It must be something only those who used Shadow Spirit magic were able to hear.

Again the black swirl spun open and the dark void surrounded her.

K
alila walked through the halls with Lalani on one side and Sehlas on the other. The group of Weather mages trailed behind, holding their own quiet conversations. She wasn’t their queen. They were here to protect her and help her protect Markene from any visits by Shadow Riders, particularly Sadira. Kalila knew that visit was coming. The skin on the back of her neck prickled and she suppressed a shiver.

She pulled herself away from her dark thoughts and tried to pay attention to Lalani and Sehlas. Both were well-versed in what it took to run a nation, although they often wanted to go about it in different ways.

Lalani approached everything in a cool, practical manner while Sehlas allowed more emotion into his advice, though his was no less practical. The two often quarreled with each other as they were doing now.

“Someone is stirring the pot in this nation and they need to be ferreted out,” Lalani said.

Sehlas shook his head, his hazel eyes troubled. “You cannot start randomly questioning people; it will turn them away from Kalila rather than drawing their support.”

Lalani arched one slim red eyebrow. “And what do you propose? Allowing whomever is causing the dissention to continue? I may not have the strength of a Dragon Rider; however, I am quite capable of detecting lies if I am touching a person. It is not as if I plan to torture people until they give me answers.” She stepped around a cat that refused to move, bending to draw her hand over its fur. Without missing a step she straightened and continued, “Torture is not condoned by me or by Galdrilene.”

Sehlas sighed, a patient look settling over his features. “Any kind of questioning would put people on the defensive. It would make them feel as if guilt is assumed until their answers prove them innocent.”

Lalani gazed at him a moment. “What is your point? If we bring someone in to question it is because we do assume their guilt.”

Kalila rubbed her temples. How many times were they going to have this argument? Sometimes it seemed as if the two argued just for the sake of arguing. They passed her mother standing in the doorway of her apartments. Kalila searched her face, trying to find some semblance of the woman she remembered.

Her mother gazed back with empty, muddy brown eyes. No, they weren’t completely empty. Something flickered in their depths, something that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. For a moment, Kalila thought she saw cold hatred staring back at her, but in the next instant it was gone and only the empty eyes of an empty woman stared back. Her mother stepped inside the room and shut the door.

Lalani’s cool gaze glanced back and then rested on Kalila. “She is one we should question.”

“What?” Kalila nearly stumbled. Sehlas’ hand grabbed her arm to steady her though she didn’t look at him. “You want to question my mother? She is an empty shell caught up in grief over my father; she no longer cares about anything. Even so, she is my mother. What exactly are you accusing her of?”

Kalila didn’t have a lot of warm feelings or memories of her mother. Those feelings from childhood always came from memories of her father. He had been doting, supportive, and loving. Her mother had always been more concerned with her status and making sure her daughters achieved the best status possible through marriage. Kalila remembered her as often being cold and calculating…

No, her mother wouldn’t betray her that way. She had always wanted the highest rank for them. What was higher than queen? Why would she want to remove her own daughter from the throne? It wasn’t as if her mother wanted it; she didn’t think it was proper at all for a woman to rule Markene.

The memory of her mother’s anger floated across her mind. The only emotion the woman had shown had flashed bright and hot the day after Kalila took the throne and her brother, Toren, left for Galdrilene. She recalled when her mother cornered her after the feast, and the shrieking accusations that Kalila had completely overstepped propriety and in the process stolen her only son from her. Had it really only been fifteen days since she took the throne? If felt like a lifetime already.

Could her mother be the cause behind this festering wound in Markene’s solidarity? Did her mother not realize that the very existence of this nation rode on its ability to stand strong as a unified force? The Shadow Riders would tear Markene apart from the inside out if there were weak links in the chain.

Lalani stopped abruptly in the hall, her eyes unfocused. Kalila stopped and looked at her in concern. “Lalani?”

The color drained from Lalani’s already light-skinned face as her pale blue eyes grew wide. “A Shadow comes. I can feel it.”

Kalila’s heart slammed into her chest,and for a moment, she stood rooted to the ground while she tried to rein in her fear. This was not the place for it. She laughed softly, shaking her head at the irony of such a thought.