45: THE SPURNED

Jorat Dominion, Quuros Empire. Three days since Kihrin’s story ended … for a little while

Kihrin pointed toward the rings in Janel’s hair. “Are those—?”

She shook her head quickly. “No. And my loyalty to Duke Kaen—well, it was always under false pretenses, wasn’t it?” Janel stared into her coffee cup. “False pretenses on both sides. Azhen Kaen knew I was a candidate to fit the prophecies for the Hellwarrior, so he wanted to keep me under his eye. Make sure I never usurped the role he wanted for himself. And if he turned my loyalty to him in the meantime, I was much more likely to go along with his plans concerning General Milligreest. Can you imagine the look on the high general’s face if Kaen were to show up for a meeting with me at his side?”

“I don’t think I like this Duke Kaen fellow,” Dorna said.

Janel sighed. “He had his moments. Unfortunately, he then had all those other moments.”

Kihrin fought back a yawn and grabbed for his coffee cup. If they kept this up, they would end up staying up straight through the night. On the other hand, he’d rather be awake but tired than sleeping when Relos Var arrived. “Yeah, but Xivan’s the more dangerous one.”

Ninavis chuckled. “You have good instincts about people.”

“You’d think so,” Kihrin said.

Janel shrugged. “Yes, I admit I have a problem with Xivan.”

“Which is?” Kihrin asked.

Janel sighed. “I really like her.”

Janel’s Turn. The Ice Demesne, Yor, Quur.

I was numb when I returned to the wives’ quarters.

No one noticed, but only because everyone else was equally dazed. Xivan stayed with Kaen. Qown and I were separated. I don’t know what had happened to Talea. Guards escorted all the other women, myself included, back to our rooms. No one spoke.

I hadn’t realized … I hadn’t been prepared.

That scene in the great hall had cost me in ways I’d never expected. I had known it would come to this. I had known this was the price I’d have to pay. And yet when the bill came due, I was shocked to find the coin so dear.

How much of my self-worth, my self-image, was predicated on this idea of being a proper noble, an honorable person? Good for my word. Loyal to the empire and my gods. And now that couldn’t be true, could it? Either I was a liar or a traitor.

It didn’t matter that this was the whole reason I’d wanted to go to Yor. I had wanted to infiltrate Duke Kaen’s house, wanted to lie to him and gain his trust in order to steal the magic spear Khoreval. If I needed that spear to slay Aeyan’arric and stop her rampage through Jorat, then it followed I would do whatever it took to claim the weapon as my own.

The whole point had been to betray Kaen. Right?

Except if my new status—whatever that status was—meant I could convince Kaen not to unleash Aeyan’arric on Jorat at all, then … did I even need the spear?

I could gain everything I wanted by betraying everything I was.

I touched the rings now woven into my laevos while women slid past me in the great room. They silently fanned out again through the rooms. I found myself reminded of the survivors of Mereina—all those people in too much shock to do anything but stare at nothing. A wife sat down on one of the couches and began weeping.

Across the room, out on one of those balconies, a motion caught my eyes. I realized Wyrga was out there, feeding scraps of something to her little polar bear cub. She caught my eye, gave me her feral grin, and winked at me. She put a finger to her lips and made a shushing motion.

I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed her, but when I glanced back, Wyrga was gone. And there was no place for her to have gone—the only exit from that area was either into the main room or … or a thousand foot drop onto freezing ice.

A tension settled over the room. I thought Wyrga had entered from another doorway, but as I turned around, I realized the pressure had a different cause.

Veixizhau had arrived.

She crossed her arms and scanned the room. “What are you bitches looking at?”

The woman who’d first greeted me, Bikeinoh, rolled her eyes. “Seriously? After the shit you just pulled? You’re lucky we don’t kill you ourselves.”

“As if half the women here wouldn’t have done the same given the chance. I just beat you to it. And don’t you dare try to be sanctimonious with me. We were all worshipping—” Veixizhau stopped talking as another wife cleared her throat and pointed.

Pointed at me.

I waved.

Veixizhau scowled at me. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for a bed,” I answered. “Humorously enough, they didn’t have any other place to put me. But you’ve learned your lesson, right?”

Her nostrils flared. “Sure. I’ve learned my lesson. I should have poisoned you instead.”

“There’s always next time.”

None of the other women came to her defense. Veixizhau ignored them and focused on me. “I wouldn’t smile, tumai. Because you had it wrong back there. I only told one person what happened to you, Exidhar—and I assume he told the others because he wanted to impress his friends. But those friends? They had no part in it. Which means you just fed an innocent man to Kaen’s dead monster of a wife.”

I did indeed stop smiling. “No, Oreth said Darzin—”

It couldn’t be true. Oreth had plotted to kill me. I knew that.

Veixizhau laughed. “In any other case, it would have been smart to point the finger at a royal. It’s not like the duke would have punished one of them. I bet it never even occurred to your Oreth to tell the truth. He thought finger-pointing would serve him better. He was wrong.”

“You’re lying.”

“That’s the best part; I’m not. And don’t even think about being all righteous with me. You belong to Suless now, and it’s only a matter of time before she claims you.”

“Suless is dead,” I reminded her.

“No, she’s not. Oh, I can’t wait for you two to meet. She loves murderers.”

I flinched.

She saw the reaction and smiled. Then Veixizhau turned, head held high, and swept out of the common area.

All the women were quiet until Bikeinoh clapped her hands. “All right, everyone. Let’s have dinner and then go to bed early. I have a feeling tomorrow is going to be a very long day.”

“What does tumai mean?” I was back to being numb, distracted by minor details.

She paused before answering. “I suppose the closest word in Guarem would be knight.”

I nodded. Veixizhau had said it like an insult, but maybe that wasn’t the case. Maybe it didn’t matter. A different word seemed more fitting.

Monster. Kaen did collect them, didn’t he?

Bikeinoh touched my arm. “Let’s find you a room.”

---

No gods or goddesses presented themselves to me in the weeks that followed, not god-kings or the Eight. Veixizhau’s words proved hollow.

But I couldn’t shove her accusation from my mind. Couldn’t escape the nagging suspicion that Oreth had been innocent—at least innocent of that crime.

I retreated into myself, speaking to no one unless spoken to first, seeking no company, snapping at polite attempts at conversation. I’d managed to avoid Senera and Relos Var, and while I was in theory now Duke Kaen’s man, he’d made no attempt to put me to work. I didn’t see Brother Qown either and found myself glad. I wore my anger around me like a coat, and I didn’t want to hear Qown insist I was smothering myself.

That lasted several weeks.

“Janel, what are you doing?”

I looked up from the book of Devoran prophecies I’d “borrowed” from the duke’s library. “Isn’t it obvious?”

We were in the middle of the training yard, which, like everything else in the Ice Demesne, lay deep inside the crystal pyramid. The giant room was divided into sections so multiple groups might train at once, but the large space did nothing to hide the accumulated stench of sweaty bodies.

Xivan raised an eyebrow and pointed to the training mat. “Get in here. I want to see what you can do.”

“I’m busy.”

All noise near us stopped. Even the nearby men stopped their sparring.

Duke Kaen’s soldiers used the same training facilities as Xivan’s new recruits; none of the men appreciated sharing those facilities with women. Which meant all the while the women trained, the men watched, harassed, and heckled—or at least as much as they thought they could get away with under Xivan’s baleful stare. There had been incidents. Soldiers who had groped or, on three occasions, done worse. Some thought the duke wouldn’t mind if someone else helped themselves, if he no longer cared to claim them as his own.

Xivan took those men away, and we never saw them again. After the third “example,” the incidents stopped.

But now every eye turned to me.

Xivan’s eyebrows rose up. “Get in there, now. If I ask a third time, you’ll be fighting me rather than Talea.”

Talea, Xivan’s apprentice I’d first met in the caves, had started her lessons eight months earlier, which gave her an edge over the other students. I returned to reading my book.

I knew I was being childish, but I couldn’t make myself stop. My anger was a slow-burning fury, and the fact I had no clear direction for my rage made it worse. How much easier it would be if I could just hate a special singular someone and not the whole world.

A curved Khorveshan sword landed, dull side down, against the book’s spine and then pulled the entire folio from my hands. I had enough time to recognize Xivan sliding another sword within my reach before she swung her own blade toward my head.

She fought with live steel.

I rolled to the side and grabbed the sword, grinning as I stood. The grin faded as I felt the weapon’s weight. I’d never fought with a weapon I couldn’t swing around like a piece of silk. I could lift this, but only just. Making this weapon an extension of my arm and will? Out of the question.

This was a problem.

“No more smiles?” Xivan mocked.

“I’ll smile when this is over.” I swung at her, but the force of my blow was inconstant and slow. She blocked me and came inside my reach to nick me on the arm. I hissed.

“When you’re ready to start,” Xivan said, “just let me know.”

Muscle memory and instinct had trained me to fight a certain way. Without the strength of a dozen men, those instincts became pitfalls.

I ran at her again, screaming, determined to at least have something to show for my efforts. She watched my approach with amusement, blocked me without effort, and turned on her feet at the last minute like changing leads in a race. “No wonder Oreth didn’t think you should be a stallion. You fight like a mare.”

My vision turned red. To the side, someone screamed.

Xivan’s tunic caught fire.

She looked down, saw the burning threads, and laughed. Still holding the sword with one hand, she quenched the flames with the other. “Remember that trick, student. Against a different opponent, it might prove a good distraction.”

She swung the curved sword, a beautiful ornate dance.

I moved to block the attack, failed, watched my sword fall out of alignment, and instead went to kick the duchess. Her leg hooked inside my own.

I ended up on the ground, Xivan’s sword at my throat.

“How can you expect to defeat an enemy when you haven’t even mastered yourself?” Her voice was even, the question serious rather than rhetorical.

“I don’t—” I found myself at a loss for what to say. I’d fought stupidly. I’d turned a practice session into a tantrum. I had no idea how to control the maelstrom of my emotions. I didn’t try to stand. I just lay there, miserable, every eye in the practice yard on me, too numb to even care.

Xivan moved the sword from my neck and knelt beside me. “Don’t tell me you loved him.”

“What? Who?” What she said couldn’t have been more startling than if it had been a slap, but at the same time, I felt remorse stab me. I knew who.

Oreth.

But no, I hadn’t loved him.

I had wanted to love him, though. I had wanted him to love me back too. Neither wish had come true. Instead, his pride had demanded he break me, and my pride—

“The knight. The one I executed.”

“No, I—” I shut my eyes, tears welling at their corners. “I just—” My voice came out as a ragged sob. “I didn’t. It’s all so pointless. So unnecessary. I didn’t mean for him to die. I never mean for any of them to die and—” My grief expressed itself as a jagged exhalation. Somehow his death became conflated with all the others—the citizens of Mereina, everyone at Lonezh, the Hellmarch, my parents, that Marakori man murdered on the bridge to Atrine—

All the people I couldn’t save.

“So it’s yourself you hate, then.” Xivan’s voice sounded sad.

I felt like she’d pulled out the last piece from a tottering foundation. A shudder, an ugly clenching feeling, and then the avalanche. Her words ripped through me, until I felt I would be lost in the tumult. Naturally, I hated myself. How could I not, when I always lived? Lived not because I deserved it, not because I’d earned it, but to serve the false games of demons, the commands of generals, and always those damn prophecies. Lived, but never once made anyone’s life better for it. I had become a stallion to protect the ones I loved, but I couldn’t even protect myself.

What good was it all, then? What purpose did it serve?

I turned on my stomach, away from her, and began sobbing into my hands. Brutal sobbing, and for a time, I couldn’t stop. If I faced the world, I’d have to do something about it. I’d have to try to fix it.

I didn’t think I could this time.

I felt her hand on my laevos, stroking my hair. “Oh, my sweet little girl. How all those fires in your heart must burn.”

I’d reached the stage of a full-on bawl, which is tears and hiccups and too much phlegm. We were in public. I wiped my eyes and nose with my hands, anyway.

“You let all those others define you,” she whispered to me. “So many people telling you who you must be.”

I couldn’t let that pass unanswered. “I’ve rebelled—”

“It’s no different. When opposing forces collide, they define each other. You cannot advance against an enemy without letting them shape you. You push, and you’re pushed against. You measure yourself against others, by their approval or by their displeasure, and every time you will find you have given them power over you, whether you realize it or not.” She cupped my cheek, and I felt her hand’s cold flesh, nothing like living tissue. It didn’t horrify me as much as it should have. “You must find yourself, my dear. Find your own heart, your own beauty, your own truth.”

She stood and offered her hand to me. “And then we can work on defeating your enemies.”

I laughed, a choking near-hysterical laugh even as I grabbed her desiccated hand and let her help me to my feet. Because you see, she was my enemy. The Kaens and Relos Var and all the forces aligned to help them. My enemies.

Or my friends.

And I didn’t know the difference anymore. Was Xivan nothing more than an obstacle in my quest to steal the dragon-slaying spear, Khoreval? Or was Xivan someone who would help me triumph over Duke Xun and Markreev Aroth, to regain Jorat? Was it better to truly be Duke Kaen’s tumai—or do as I’d promised the Goddess of Death and help destroy everyone helping Relos Var?

Ever since Tya, Goddess of Magic, had enchanted Arasgon to join me in the Afterlife, I had been the traitor hidden in Duke Kaen’s midst. I’d been passing messages and instructions back to my camp every night while I “slept.” Yet still I knew I hadn’t truly accepted my role. Maybe Oreth had been right. Maybe I’d never know my place.

I was supposed to find Yor’s crimes unforgivable, while ignoring the blood on my own hands.

Xivan Kaen pulled me into her arms and cradled me, while racking sobs claimed me again.

---

Talea guided me back to my room afterward, arm around my shoulders. She sat me down in a chair by the bed, kneeling next to me.

“Is there anything I can get you?” she asked. “Tea? Something stronger?”

“I messed up back there, didn’t I?”

She smiled. “Messed up? Hardly.” She turned back the furs on the bed. “You’re grieving. Let yourself. I’m still not over my—” Talea must have seen my expression, the question in my eyes. “I had a sister. She was murdered.”

Two sentences, thrown out like idle trivia, but the pain in her voice ripped at my heart. “And—” I returned her smile with a much more pallid version. “You’re going to kill the one responsible.”

She’d always approached her lessons with a rage I’d suspected was personal, as though she pictured a special someone on the other end of every sword swing.

She scoffed and turned around, sitting down on the bed. “I wish. Darzin D’Mon murdered her.”

I blinked as the declaration cut through my own numbness. “The royal? The same one who—” I’d almost said, “The same one who’d tried to have me killed,” but I didn’t think that was true anymore.

“That’s what Thurvishar says.” She shook her head. “I don’t think Darzin even realizes what he did. It was just bad luck. She happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, and his assassin didn’t want witnesses. Just another bystander caught up in the royal games of empire. And Darzin’s done so much worse—” She looked away. “His list of crimes is long.”

I moved from my chair and sat next to her, took her hands in mine. “I’m so sorry. Are you going to kill him? Do you want help?”

She laughed and squeezed my hands back. “I appreciate the offer. Ask me again in a few years. I’m told he’s phenomenal with a sword, so I suspect I’ll need a little more than eight months training, no matter how amazing Xivan might be.”

“When the time comes, it would be my pleasure to help.”

Talea grinned. “Thank you. One of these days, I’ll be good enough with a sword and Darzin will stop being useful to Duke Kaen, and I just hope I’m there. Or Thurvishar is. I think he might try to fight me for the honor of killing Darzin.”

“How can you be friends with a royal? With the D’Lorus Lord Heir?”

She swallowed. “He bought me from Darzin.” Talea saw the expression on my face and added, “But Thurvishar freed me. Right away, he freed me.¹ He asked me what I wanted to do with myself, said he’d grant any wish I had. I felt like I was in a god-king tale where the peasant girl frees an injured lion from a trap—only the lion is a goddess who can grant any wish.” Talea cleared her throat. “Well, I told him I wanted revenge.”

“Darzin’s still alive,” I said, “so I’m guessing Thurvishar hasn’t fulfilled his promises.”

“He said it would be up to me,” Talea said, “but he explained—” She paused, taking my hand again. “He explained what they’re trying to do. I may hate Darzin, but they are trying to take down the empire. Slavery isn’t a feature of Yoran culture—Kaen won’t allow it to continue once he’s in charge. And what price wouldn’t I pay for a Quur without slavery?”

Truly, her willpower left me awed. I felt equally skeptical about the motives of royals. The Royal Houses rested on a foundation of slavery, greed, and pain.² I didn’t think anyone whose fortunes rested upon such a base would be eager to undermine the source of their wealth.

Oh, I understood Kaen’s motives: Yor felt lashed to a Quuros yoke, so it made sense to smash the empire first, before Yor declared itself free.

The royal families, though? All they wanted was more power. Always more power.

“It must be torture seeing him alive and breathing,” I said at last.

Talea shrugged. “Not once I started training with Xivan. I’ve rarely left the caves. And even then—” Talea chuckled. “He did see me once, when I first arrived with Thurvishar. Can you believe that bastard didn’t even recognize me?”

“But now you’ve left the caves.” The idea Talea would now have to deal with Darzin horrified me. “He’s going to be here. He’s here rather a lot.”

“No,” she said, grinning. “I won’t be running into him. And I have you to thank.”

“You do?”

“The Hon banished Darzin from the court as punishment for his role in plotting to kill you. Darzin may send someone else in his place as an emissary, but he’s not allowed here again himself.”

I didn’t feel like pointing out Darzin might have been accused unfairly. “I’m glad to hear it. I admit I didn’t relish seeing him again.”

“He’s a monster.” The bitterness and hate returned to her voice.

Even as a monster myself, I couldn’t disagree.

She reached out a hand and touched my cheek, lingered just south of my lower lip. “Would you like me to stay with you tonight?”

I felt a tremor shiver down me from cheek to loins. I hesitated. “Are you asking to share my bed?”

Her smile faltered. “Only if you want. I hope I haven’t offended. If you prefer men…”

I didn’t quite laugh. The desire to pull her to me, to cup her head in my hands, kiss her open-mouthed, and push her back onto the bed felt overwhelming. Did I want this? Oh yes.

I picked up her hand and kissed her calloused fingertips, each in turn. I felt her shiver. “Nothing would please me more.”