Sweet as the love between my loins, a bun is yours for a quarter-coin—heyo!
~ Last words of a street vendor before Feinan no’Sevarre
I MUST’VE DOZED out of sheer boredom, and when my eyes opened again, the light filtering past the curtains had dimmed. Wiping at the corner of my mouth, still sticky from the speridia, I leaned over to gaze out the window.
Towering trees—jealously holding onto their shriveled leaves—blurred past in the dusk, like a murky dream of a fleeing procession. If I blinked again, maybe I would truly wake this time to find myself still quailing in the alley with Tivvo coming for my head. Or maybe Orton already held my skull in his meaty fist, and this glimpse of the road was the last wish of my stained and fading aura.
But no, the earthbone flowed on and so did we. I sat back with a sigh.
According to old stories—sometimes called history, though I wasn’t sure how the tellings differed—the earthbone had vomited from catastrophic fissures in the earth along with the first demons a thousand years ago. When those demonic verges had burst, channels of molten ore from the Lost Lands had poured forth along with the monsters, blazing across the kingdom. The fires caused horrendous devastation, melting stone as brutally as flesh, leaving nothing behind and no one to mourn.
After the demons had been driven back at terrible cost and the fires put out, the peculiar roadways remained. A strange, lingering power folded distance and time on those paths, smoothing and speeding passage. Walled lightkeeps were built at the crossroads to protect outlying towns and freeholds from the horde. And if sometimes travelers on the earthbone went astray, reappearing at unexpected times and places or not arriving at all… Neh, such was the risk of leaving walls behind.
Over the centuries since, where verges broke open, demons emerged and people died—but always brave warriors and consecrated holy folk battled the demons and sealed the verges with their auric purity.
Until the Great Gorging three hundred years ago.
Then, the worst scourge in generations had raged from sunset mountains to sunrise sea, with hellish verges scarring the world. The Living Lands would have withered into the Lost Lands if not for the great hero Ormonde who challenged the horde and tamed the demon dragon. He dragged the beast out of the abyss and bent it to the defense of the kingdom. Then all the lightkeeps and their vassal settlements united under his rule.
Or so the old stories told.
Ever since, a royal scion compelled the monster into battle, wielding the demon’s own power against the horde. To keep the dragon restrained and sated, it was given the occasional Feast of a refined aura like Lady Dyania’s. That the never-ending struggle now demanded a Devouring of many auras meant… Neh, I didn’t know, but nothing good for sure.
I gave myself a little shake and then shook again inadvertently when the carriage rocked to a halt.
On the other seat, Lady Dyania rolled upright, blinking her mismatched eyes. “Are we there already?” Her voice was as raspy and trembling as when she first fought off the dinzah.
“Not yet, I think. The earthbone might hasten us, but the High Keep is not so close to Sevaare as that.”
“I wish it was farther,” she murmured.
I couldn’t blame her even though I was eager to seek out my family’s fortune and my own fate. We waited in tense silence, listening to muffled calls from beyond the carriage door. Not the screams of the demon dragon at least.
Despite our attentive focus, we both flinched at a hard rap on the door. Lady Dyania slouched back, both her eyes wide and wary.
I cracked the door to peer at the High Keep guard standing at attention. The gleam of torches flickered through the hart’s antlers, casting spooky shadows. “What’s going on? Why do we stop?”
Shifting her gaze past me, the hartier gave a respectful nod to the Chosen One within. “We pause here for the night. Remain within and affix the lock until morning.”
I frowned. “Why must we stay inside?” I wanted to see if the road might jar loose any memories of my family. “It’s not like anyone will wander off into the wilds here.”
The hartier pursed her lips, but the answer came from behind me.
“They don’t fear who might leave, but what might come in.” Lady Dyania’s voice wasn’t loud, but still it carried a point sharper than hart horns.
I glanced over my shoulder at her. “But demons won’t strike this many of us and well defended too.”
“Never forget, this road was theirs first.” She huddled into her corner. “If we’ve been summoned to a Devouring, something is coming—worse than we’ve known for nine generations.”
When I met the hartier’s somber gaze, she didn’t dispute the lady’s disturbing explanation. “Lock the door,” she repeated. “With the light, we will continue on.”
I had one moment to peer up the line of halted carriages before Dyania called sharply to me to close the door. But first I glanced the other direction.
Our silverleafed vehicle was last. Behind us was only the gray ribbon of earthbone disappearing into the dark. No memories there, just a forgotten past—or an ominous glimpse of a dire future.
High above the threadbare branches, the moon winked between scudding clouds. The crack across its pallid face was like a sly, black smile, but the charcoal sky was otherwise empty.
I yanked the door shut. On the other side of the carriage, Lady Dyania tugged the embroidered curtain across the window.
It wasn’t so late—this time of year, the way the setting sun drifted down at an angle behind the far mountains meant a lingering twilight—and I’d never done well with idleness. On a lazy day, my mind sometimes roamed into trouble. So I settled on the floor and sorted through our provisions again, partly to occupy my hands but also to show the lady our reduced situation. She didn’t move from her corner, though I knew she was watching me.
After I had given all the water tins a careful shake and set them aside with the food, she rose somewhat unsteadily from the cushions and crossed to the tiny privacy chamber tucked into the front of the carriage.
“Be quick with your purifying,” I reminded her. “Stopping at night will double our time on the road, and being thirsty is worse than going hungry.”
In answer, the panel slammed between us.
With a shrug, I selected a few items from the supplies and retreated to my bench.
Eventually she emerged with droplets of water still beaded on her eyelashes. Her artful braids, which had been disarranged in tussling with her attendants and lolling on the carriage floor, were knotted back again. But the colorful threads woven through, representing all the auric hues, were dulled in the fitful sconce light. Since the cavalcade was halted, the surge of the earthbone dwindled—like a barge docked off the river into a sluggish side channel. The lamps and heater, and the pump and incinerator in the privacy chamber wouldn’t work as well.
The lady aimed her critical glare at my hands. “Wash—with soap—before we eat. Then I will cleanse our auras.”
I huffed. “I don’t need—”
She pointed at my hands, then at the privacy chamber. With another puff, feebler this time, I did as she ordered.
The wash water barely warmed, but it was more than I usually had. And the soap smelled good—herbs and flowers blooming out of season. I left sudsy water in the basin and soaked my fingers to dissolve the grime and absorb the perfume.
I used some extra water to rinse; the lady’s fault for making me feel judged.
She had unfolded a clever little table from the side of the carriage, and a light meal awaited, including a few slices of the speridia, rehydrated and plump. Squeezing into the seat across from her, I reached for a piece.
“Put your hands on the table,” she snapped.
I froze, then did so. After she appraised my nails, she raised her two-toned gaze to mine. “Shall I say the blessing?”
Apparently I’d passed inspection. But I was surprised she asked permission for the auric cleansing. She’d seemed so insistent before. “As you please.”
I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d sought a blessing for any endeavor, much less a simple meal. Blessings could be bought, but I didn’t have such coin, and even I wouldn’t steal a blessing. I might not be devout but no sense risking damnation.
She intoned an invocation and waved a palm-sized version of the sanctified silkha pennants over the table. Why would even a noble scion waste auric purity on such paltry offerings?
Except what else did we have to do, trapped out here on the empty road on the way to a Devouring?
She finished with a last whisper: “And as the amaranthine light everlasting remembers, may all its hues brighten the Living Lands.” She spread her fingers in the final gesture of the prayer. “Blade to bone, breath after breath, now and forever.”
Meanwhile, I was reaching for the rind. For all her refined manners, she was only half a beat behind me—or maybe she thought I would take it all. No doubt she was used to eating first and her fill. Neh, that wasn’t her life anymore, however long she had left.
We didn’t speak over the repast of soft, savory bread and hard, sharp cheeses. But I oohed with delight when she opened a small, fabric-lined box she must have found hidden away and showed me wintryberries. The tiny white fruit dissolved on my tongue, so sweet and delicate.
The lady gave me a crooked grin, more sad than mocking. “Never had wintryberries?”
I shook my head. “Good thief I am, but not enough to brave the l’Hazan gardens. And as tasty as these are, they wouldn’t keep me from hunger, nor would anyone I know risk the wrath of Sevaare’s lord just for a taste of summer in the coldest months.”
She popped one berry into her mouth then nudged the small box toward me. “Enjoy. Without risk or wrath.”
My hesitation was unseemly short, but she had offered, and since most of my pleasures were even smaller than the berries, I’d take what I could. They disappeared faster than snowflakes in flame.
“I’m surprised Ula and Jensim didn’t take the berries.” Lady Dyania grimaced. “They absconded with everything else of worth.”
“Except you,” I pointed out. When the lady didn’t seem to appreciate that particular honor, I shrugged. “They were in a hurry to get away.”
“While you took their place.” The lady’s dark eye narrowed. “Why?”
“They didn’t want to go to the High Keep, and I did.”
“Why?”
I sat back with my tin of herb water. Not as delightful as wintryberries, but a treat nonetheless. “Because I have nowhere else to be.”
Either she didn’t really care or my answer unmasked a truth that require no further inquiry. “So here you are,” she mused. “After scheming with my craven attendants, you should’ve at least negotiated appropriate accouterments to present yourself as my maid.”
“Maid?” I wrinkled my nose. “Heyo, my aura would fool no one, even if I clad myself in procession pennants and wove spectrum threads between my toes. Anyway, there was no bargaining about our swap. You opened the carriage door in front of me, and that was that.”
“Such purity of luck for you.”
“Not much use for luck, pure or otherwise,” I refuted. “I’ve found opportunity serves me better.”
“So you said before, when you claimed I still have a chance.” She lifted her chin. “But when I would’ve leapt from the carriage, you were in the way.”
“You hesitated,” I shot back—with a bit more indignation than was warranted because the twinge of guilt didn’t sit well with the wintryberries in my gut.
To my surprise—and more guilt—she glanced aside. “Maybe I did.”
After a moment, I sighed. “Most would have. From scion to street is a harsher fall than one step out of a carriage.”
“And now it’s too late. One step beyond the road is death.”
“Not necessarily. My family traveled the kingdom, carrying wares and words between lightkeeps, and though they didn’t have the auric power to call on the earthbone, they made a living for themselves.” As far as I remembered. My chest tightened.
“I wouldn’t know how to sell song or stock.” Again she sounded more sad than derisive.
Neh, it wasn’t like I’d taken that path either.
With nothing else to do, I cleared the little table, brushing the crumbs into my palm which I surreptitiously tipped into my mouth. Waste not.
Without the flow of the earthbone, the carriage chilled. Though the attendants had purloined the better bits of finery, they’d left behind cumbersome lap blankets and an embroidered cloak, so we bundled up snug enough, each on our respective bench.
When I reached out to extinguish the flickering sconce, the lady murmured, “Leave it.”
Though I itched at the unnecessary consumption and the command, I again did as she asked. And maybe for this one task I didn’t mind. Light alone wouldn’t repel demons, but it felt like some protection.
Or at least we’d see our end coming?
As I nestled under the blanket, breathing warmth into the heavy felt, I said my own little nighttime words—not a prayer, or even a wish, really, just a reminder to myself not to dream.
Because sweet dreams were even more rare and less sustaining than wintryberries, not to mention riskier to reach for. Dreams hadn’t gotten me through years of loneliness and danger in Sevaare, and I suspected the High Keep would be as unforgiving. But this chance might never come again.
I hadn’t hesitated before, and I wouldn’t now.
+ + +
From a restless sleep, I woke to my bladder’s complaint. Too much tea. On the other bench, Lady Dyania was hidden except for a few black braids and the one white one fanned atop the embroidered cloak, as if holding the protection to her.
I used the privacy chamber quietly. Easy now to be quick with the water since it was icy after the night’s inactivity. I lit the sanctified prayer candles—meant for the Chosen’s last prayers, as if that mattered—before diving back under my covers. Even small flames would allay the chill until the cavalcade got moving again. The metal cups were pierced into swirling patterns, and the dance of light through the holes mesmerized me back into sleep with the fragrance of temple blessings.
Muffled sounds from without warned me shortly before the rap came at our own carriage. Before I could rise to open the door—reluctant anyway to let out our meager warmth—the hartier’s gruff voice reached through. “Sevaare arise. We leave with the sun.”
I nudged aside the curtain, though there was nothing much to see. Lady Dyania unpeeled the covers to just below her chin, her pale fingers blanched even whiter with her grip. Her eyes, dark and light, staring upward, were rimmed in red. Had she slept at all, or just cried through the nocturnal hours? If so, I hadn’t heard her. Not that I had any words or way to console her.
“If they won’t travel the earthbone at night, it’s because they fear the path bends to the Lost Lands without the guidance of light. This with the first Devouring in three hundred years…” Her fingers spasmed although her gaze never shifted from the filigreed pattern above her. “What is coming?”
“Trouble, I suppose, which is commonplace enough.”
“Not like this.” Her voice dropped to the merest whisper. “Nothing like this.”
Her fatalism annoyed me. Unfair, since her path would be fatal. But demons and Devouring and doom aside, I finally had a chance to find what had become of my family, to change what might become of me.
Although if she was right about something worse…
What was I supposed to do about that? I had nothing to offer. An entire cavalcade of the purest scions in the kingdom would sate the Dragon Prince and bind his captive demon for another thousand years, and they would fight back the horde, and all would be well without me, certainly.
So I told her, “If you have morning purification, it’s harder to bump around the toilet when the carriage is moving.”
In reply, she pulled the cloak over her head.
A day with the silent, condemned Chosen stretched ahead, more gray and forbidding than the road. Once we got moving, the auric flow of the earthbone powered the utilities, and Lady Dyania had to shed her covers when the carriage heated. But she kept one of the prayer pennants draped over her face, like a shroud when she wasn’t even dead yet.
Eventually she disappeared into the privacy chamber and didn’t come out for a long while. I found the hidden catch for the little table and set up a small meal then waited.
When she came out, she looked at the food, not much different from yesterday. “I’m not hungry.”
“But the Dragon Prince will be.”
As if I’d slapped her, blood darkened her cheeks. “You dare—”
“If you don’t want to feed the monster, you’d better be strong enough to fight it.”
There was nowhere to go in the carriage—except back to the toilet—so she sat across from me again. “I can’t fight.”
She was maybe a little taller than me, but fine-boned and just fine in general. Had she ever swung a fist with intent? Or even screamed? Except when they’d imprisoned her while waiting for the pikes of the High Keep guard.
I pursed my lips to one side. “I myself prefer to run away. Deny, blame, flee, mostly in that order, has kept me alive. But I could show you a move or two for when you’re cornered. Maybe you can’t win, but—”
“I can’t fight at all,” she interrupted. “If the Chosen refuses, the dragon may escape the pure auric bonds woven through the centuries to contain it, and it will rampage. Should I save myself just to watch the horde amass and overrun our walls, lightkeeps consumed one by one, until the Living Lands wither to dust and demon seed?”
Her words conjured ghastly images in my mind. “And that’s all upon you?”
“When I had the chance to escape the carriage, I faltered. Maybe I was weak, too afraid to take that step. But I thought about it all this last, long night.” Even her pale eye clouded. “Comes the Devouring, I can be the next to lose, or the last, but if the Dragon Prince falls to the monster, with him falls the kingdom.”
I slumped back. “I…didn’t think about it like that.”
“You didn’t have to think about it at all.” This time, her tone was sad and mocking, but I couldn’t bristle.
Because she was right. I’d only ever had to watch out for myself, save myself. I’d never been chosen for anything. Instead, I’d been left behind.
We both picked at the food. Afterward, Lady Dyania huddled in her seat, staring out the window. In the afternoon, the road finally left the claustrophobia of the forest for the expanse of the Widening Leas.
The vast, empty plain spread below the Argonyx Mountains from where the High Keep ruled over the kingdom. My family would have never traveled this way—the trading paths wended mostly between the lightkeeps and the freeholds on the periphery of the kingdom—but I’d heard stories all my life.
Here in the open heart of the Living Lands, a thousand years ago, the independent lightkeeps sent their emissaries to weave an accord uniting them against the horde released from the Lost Lands by an evil mage seeking to seize power for himself. They joined weapons and wisdom and the power of the pure-souled to fight the demons.
And they won. For generations, the lightkeeps sent their most brilliant lights to Velderrey on the leas, weaving together their brightest threads from sunset mountain to sunrise sea, and all was well.
Until the Great Gorging, when three hundred years ago, verges broke again across the world. Ravaging demons left the leas in empty ruins, but Ormonde, a ninth-facet master of the diamonde light, tricked and trapped the demon dragon. With his auric might, he twisted the monster’s dark power upon the horde and annihilated them, saving the kingdom and becoming king of all the Living Lands.
Ever since, a descendant of Ormonde’s line ruled from the mountain stronghold and protected the lightkeeps below from the hellish horde. Surely that wouldn’t change now?
The earthbone carried us along, numbing in the lull of its sway. Time passed in strange skips with the pale sun arcing unevenly in the gray sky. The flow kept the lights and warmer powered, but sometimes a thin, cold whistle of wind leaked through; a reminder our silverleaf bubble of idle luxury would soon end.
When the sun was at its peak—not to say high at this time of year—a few steeples of rock emerged from the sere grasses. I pressed my cheek against the window to peer ahead as broken towers surrounded us.
“The remains of Velderrey,” Lady Dyania whispered.
Before the Great Gorging, Velderrey had been the most magnificent lightkeep on the Widening Leas, where all the lightkeeps sent their scions and scholars, wards and warriors, ambassadors and bards. A multitude of demonic verges had burst here, so it made sense the earthbone roads would flow this way. Still, my nerves itched at the thought of journeying through the thousands dead, not just in that old battle but in the hundreds of years since.
Worse, the cavalcade eased to a halt.
The lady and I exchanged alarmed glances.
I gulped down a breath. “Please tell me I missed some very large weapons stashed with the wintryberries.”
She shook her head. “The Chosen go without their own protection.”
I laid a surreptitious hand on the knife tucked deep in my boot—and the other knife tucked deeper in my other boot.
When our hartier guard knocked, I opened to find her on high alert, scanning the bleak surroundings even as she said, “We pause here for the night.”
“Wait,” I sputtered as she turned to go. “It’s still daylight. You told us we only stopped for the dark hours.”
“Captain Vreas’s orders. Our progress is slower than we’d hoped, so we’ll push the last stretch across the plains in a full day.”
“But stopping here of all places?” I followed her uneasy glance around.
“It’s refuge, as much as we’ll find.”
“But it’s haunted,” I blurted.
She sighed. “Then maybe a few more auras won’t attract unwanted attention.”
That didn’t reassure me at all, and all my nerves itched with agitation. “Might we stretch our legs before sunset? We’d not go far, obviously.”
Another mistrustful stare—at me this time. “Don’t stray from this square. Some paths go…elsewhere, and it’s nowhere you want to be.”
“No straying,” I repeated obediently. “My name is Feinan. What may I call you?”
“I’m Lisel, but don’t call on me for anything. I can’t get you more wine or dinzah, nor find you better employment in the High Keep after…” She glanced away. “After. Stay close, touch nothing, and don’t breathe too deep.”
“No breathing.” I shot her a grin.
Shaking her head, she strode away.
“Don’t go.” Though we’d rested all day, the lady’s voice was as weak as when she woke from the drugging.
“Not far,” I assured her. “I just want to see.”
“Looking for opportunity here? All was lost three hundred years ago.”
“Time enough for another chance to arise,” I pointed out.
A hard shake of her head made her braids fly. “Another chance to lose everything.”
Maybe she wasn’t wrong, but such a mood wasn’t apt to improve our lot. Ignoring her glare, I hopped out.
In the harbor of the old walls, the last slant of the sun should’ve warmed us, but a draught sneaked under my cloak with the uncouth tug of an ineffectual thief. Shallow drifts of early snow had iced in the corners like discarded silkha pennants, soiled with dust. Other than that sly whisper of wind—and our intrusion, of course—the place was silent and still, not even a distant bird call to reassure us we hadn’t passed into the Lost Lands.
Ah, blight and spite, how I wished I hadn’t just thought that.
Others milled about the square. Half were clad in armored gear like Lisel’s, and the rest were in the subdued apparel of companions. Though my battered gray togs looked out of place, their preoccupation kept them from noticing I wasn’t like them. Some of the guards toiled at driving stakes into the ground around the cavalcade, lashing torchieres there, while others picketed the chariot harts as well as the sturdier yaxen that drew the carriages along the earthbone paths. Whatever our guards feared, they didn’t think we could outrun it, and so they’d make a stand here, should it come.
The attendants were involved in tasks of their own. Several were latching heavy shutters over the windows of their carriages. Two were sharing a pipe, and the bitter scent of dinzah drifted past me, though no one else seemed to mind. A last servant was, like me, just looking around.
Surveying the silverleafed carriage, I found recessed shutters and closed them up tight. Then I ambled over to the smokers.
The two men were older and garbed halfway between senior servants and honor guards, with the stocky builds of laborers. I gave them my mediocre smile, not too welcoming. One refused to even look my way, but the bigger one returned a grin. “Sevaare?”
I nodded. “Maru Deep.” The motif of blue and green waves across their carriage was familiar enough since their lightkeep was closest to Sevaare and engaged in trade. “How’s the fishing?”
The loutish one sniffed, but the bigger one laughed. “No idea. Refused to follow the oldsters to that heartless wench of a sea. Rather take this task again.”
I straightened. “You’ve been this way before?”
“Yeah.” When his companion grunted a denial, he amended, “Except didn’t stop here last time. Made to the mountains without pause. The earthbone has been tricksy these past days.” He frowned. “Or longer, now I think on it.” He took a long suck on the pipe, then tipped it toward me.
I waved off, and his friend snatched it back right quick. “Can you guess how much longer on this road?”
“Another day across the leas.” A wrinkle of uncertainty arrowed between his brows. “P’raps another half-day through the foothills, or maybe faster since the yaxen have had a slow go.”
“Unless the demons get us,” his friend muttered. “Never needed such caution before. Nor this many Chosen.” He drew harder the pipe, holding the smoke so not a whiff escaped him.
Then Lady Dyania hadn’t been mistaken about the rarity of this Devouring. “It’s been awhile since Sevaare sent a Chosen.” Maybe I’d been half this age; I hadn’t paid attention then, concerned for my own skin.
“Once a spring soothes the dragon, usually,” said the big man. “Or so the haloric auguries tell it.”
The other snorted. “But they aren’t taken alike from each lightkeep. Maru Deep’s scions are siphoned unfair since the king fears our surge second only to the verges cracking again.”
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
Though the bigger man made a shushing noise, dinzah was a tongue-flapper for many, like his friend who scoffed. “We were mighty once, and everyone knows Maru Deep would rule if the High Keep fell.”
I didn’t know that. “I thought if the High Keep fell, we’d all be gone.”
“With the sea at our backs, we could hold off the horde. Especially if we took the Dragon Prince along with the crown.”
Took the Dragon Prince? With what? A particularly large fishhook? That was definitely the dinzah boasting. He seemed to realize it too and filled his mouth with smoke. Worth more than his words, to be sure.
“Just idle musings,” his friend said, giving me a worried glance. “Restless nerves in this cursed place, neh?”
I patted the proud lowtide traitor on his shoulder. “I’m petrified.”
This time he offered me the pipe with a contrite grin, but I shook my head again and moved on.
One carriage bore no recognizable motif. In fact, it looked like it had barely held together on the journey thus far. The attendant, who’d been looking around as I had, tugged at a loose strip of flashing on the side of the carriage, his mop of hair flopping like the dried grasses in the wind.
I peered at his efforts. “Is that part not necessary?”
“It flaps,” he muttered, the vowels slow with pastoral intonation. “All day as we go, it flap flap flaps.”
“Maddening.”
He glanced over at me, amber eyes wary behind a smattering of freckles across his nose. He was younger than me and almost as poorly attired. The fabric of his livery was no better than my togs, just less worn; it’d have holes in the knees by the time the snows fell in earnest and be rags before spring.
Unless we all fell.
When I frowned at the desolate thought, the boy hunched his shoulder. Ah, that was very much like me too.
“Heyo, no mischief from me,” I said.
He kept his shoulder up. “Don’t need yours, ya. The Devouring’ll have enough for all.”
Careful not to frown again, I surveyed the rickety, unmarked carriage. “Where’re you from again?”
He didn’t bristle at my ignorance, which suggested he expected no one to know. “Osiroon.”
“Osiroon had a Chosen One?” Rude to say aloud, but I was surprised. “I didn’t know Osiroon still had walls.” In Sevaare, there was a saying riddled like Osiroon, a reference to the region’s calamitous spread of demonic verges.
He sighed. “When the Dragon Prince hungers, a Chosen One is found,” he recited the saying in his bucolic burr, then added, “Even in Osiroon, ya.”
Rather than rip loose the offending flap, I helped him bend around the baling wire used to repair the problem once before. As poor as Osiroon was, it seemed ludicrous to send such a sad conveyance; did they not care if their Chosen died in a carriage crash before being eaten by the dragon? The boy thanked me with a clipped edge to his courtesy, as if he sensed my judgment and resented it—fair enough, considering a street-snipe shouldn’t judge. But really.
“Have you enough provisions?” I prodded. “Is your Chosen giving you any trouble?” While I didn’t mind a bit of sulking under such circumstances, I hated the thought of anyone being hungrier than me.
The boy lifted his other shoulder, answering me plain enough. “Aimir is a lesser cousin to our lord. Bred for beast-bait, he was, and indulged for it too, ya, always knowing this would be the price but at least he’d see the High Keep.”
Strange to think how all of us bound to this road were here under different auras: reluctant duty or wistful acceptance, assigned or resigned or defined by lifetimes of foreknowing this tragic fate. I gave him a chunk of the speridia I’d tucked in my pocket “I’m sure we’ll see each other in the High Keep. If you need anything, come find me. I’m Feinan.”
He gave me a doubting look even as he took the fruit. “What makes you think you can do anything for anyone?”
“Nothing,” I said jauntily. “Like I’ve always had nothing. Which lends itself to a certain nimble maneuverability.”
He shook his head. “You think you’re clever. Won’t save you from demons.”
Neh, that accusation did sting a bit. “Sometimes demons aren’t the problem, or at least not the closest one.”
But as I walked off, he called, “Feinan? I’m Zik.” He lifted the speridia by way of thanks.
I gave him a little wave and continued my wander. I might not know all the history of the Living Lands—as noted, I’d always had more immediate concerns—but Zik was right enough to say I considered myself clever, so I kept my eyes open and my head down, making note of this and that as I flitted through the cavalcade. Paying attention while attracting none was how I’d always gotten by.
Since we were closer to the Argonyx Mountains than yesterday, the angle of the setting sun brought an even earlier twilight. The cracked moon had risen at some point when I wasn’t looking but vanished again in the clouds. By the time I let myself into the Sevaare carriage, the lamps had illuminated, but weakly since we weren’t tethered to the earthbone. Still, the alabaster highlights and golden-bronzed lowlights of Lady Dyania’s skin gleamed like a treasure. Undeniably a Chosen One.
She kept her face turned resolutely toward the window, as though I hadn’t latched the shutters closed against the coming night. I tossed a sheathed knife, the blade about the length of my hand from palm to fingertip, onto the bench beside her.
That brought her head around. “I wondered if you’d run off.” The note of disinterest flattening her voice sounded forced to me.
“If I had, I would’ve run right back.” I grabbed a tin of herb water and dropped to the opposite bench.
“So what were you doing?”
“Looking around, making friends, stealing a weapon for you.” I gestured at the blade. “Hide it.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she traced a fingertip over the wave motif. “Maru Deep is known for their exquisite detailing.”
“Better yet, it’s honed to a fine edge.” I turned the cool tin around in my hand. “If you want to run, you may have another chance in the foothills. But this would not be a good place to flee. The people of Velderrey may be long gone, but something lingers here, and I think it would not welcome your companionship any more than you welcome mine.”
“That’s not true.”
I tilted my head. “You think the tatters of auras would let your light shine among them?”
“Any more so than the dragon will?” She shrugged. “But I meant I don’t mind your presence.”
I boggled at her. “I’m touched beyond words.”
“Now I have a weapon, I needn’t abide touch or words.” She eased the knife from its sheath and flipped it end over end, the haft slapping centered in her palm.
I boggled more sincerely this time. What sort of lady toyed so with a naked blade?
She hefted the wide leg of her silkha trousers and slipped the blade, sheathed again, into her high boot. “And I already told you I can’t run.” But she patted her boot as if to reassure herself the knife was still there.
Since I myself said one thing and did the opposite all the time, I wasn’t going to question her contradictions.
Pulling out a prayer book I’d seen earlier—and ignored—during my survey of supplies, the lady settled to reading. Her lips moved during the call and response parts, but she made no sound, which I’m sure she thought was polite but mostly left me with nothing to do. While I’d often had to hunker down to await various opportunities and even more times where I had to hide from the repercussion of said opportunities, idleness made me twitch. Not moving meant being trapped—and that was no good.
After maybe the hundredth time I’d shifted around my bench, Lady Dyania sighed, and from some drawer, she produced a small needlework kit. “You have a hole in the knee of your trousers.”
I wrinkled my nose at her. As if that mattered. But since I had nothing else to do, I rifled through the packet she tossed to me. Among the fine threads, I found one orange skein heavy enough to serve, and still it was so silky in my calloused fingers I could scarce thread the needle. Kicking off my boot, I pulled my foot up on the bench to get a closer look at the rip.
Lady Dyania arched her eyebrows. “You can do the socks next.”
“Can’t see the sock holes when they’re in my boots.” But after I closed the tear in my trou, I darned the places where my toes threatened to poke through.
As I packed up the sewing kit, she noted, “Your needlework is as fine as any of my sisters’.”
“Since these are the only clothes I have with me, I’d best take care of them.”
“I was sent with some attire, and we are nearly of a size, so help yourself.” Her lip curled with anger. “If my attendants left anything better than your pants.”
Since I’d had something of a hand in letting her companions flee with her belongings, a twinge of guilt poked me, needle-sharp. “I’m sorry they betrayed you. Considering…everything, that seems especially heartless.”
After a moment, she shrugged. “No worse than being told one day in front of the entire court that the Dragon Prince was coming for his Chosen One, to be hailed and honored for one night, only to be ushered into a locked cell before dawn, not to see light again until I opened the carriage door and saw you. My brother didn’t trust me, wouldn’t even talk to me.” Her hand clenched on the prayer book, crumpling the delicate vellum. “At least those companions were hired, not kin, and they took only my possessions, not my pride.”
I couldn’t even imagine. Or maybe I could in some way. “I was a child when my family—who took to trading between lightkeeps and freeholds after my great-grandfather was branded and banished for reasons my grandmother would never confess aloud—came to Sevaare to leverage our wares and whatever other opportunities we might find. I’d been out for a day of…opportuning”—the lady snorted at the euphemism—“and when I returned to the courtyard where we’d stabled our yaxen and three carts, they were gone.”
Her little display of amusement faded. “Just gone?”
“As if they’d never been. Except for the innkeeper yelling how they hadn’t paid for the last night of lodging and took a bag of grain to boot.” I glanced away from her solemn attention, as if suddenly intrigued by the silverleaf patterns in the shutter. “The innkeeper told me I was his servant now. I told him…things I won’t repeat here. So he tossed me in the root cellar, saying either they’d come back for me or he’d make me pay for his losses with a little something extra for his trouble.”
“And they never came back?”
I shook my head. “He let me out eventually, lashed me a few times in vexation, and set me to work off their bill plus the cost of the tubers I’d eaten while he had me confined.”
She grimaced. “Sevaare does not condone indentured servitude nor generational debt.”
“So we’ll tell the magistrate next time we see him. Opportuning aside, I was no stranger to hard work, and he had no family either. I might’ve stayed, but eventually he suggested I’d earn more in one of the upstairs chambers than in the taproom or kitchen or stable.” I shrugged. “Since I didn’t want that, I left.”
“How awful to be left behind, to never know what’s to become of you.” Setting aside her prayer book, the lady tucked her empty hands in her lap. “Being l’Hazan meant always knowing. Everyone knew my eldest sister would be Chosen. Morowyn was so beautiful and learned, her aura not just powerful and pure but…kind. All our people loved her, and some even thought she should rule after my father, but that was not her path. Nine years ago, she was called to the Feast.” Pale-dark gaze unfocused, the lady wrapped her arms around herself—words and a touch she’d said before she did not seek. “I was to be the scholar, with all the books and ballads, but my brother Arafil said I should be honored to follow in Wyn’s steps instead. And I was—am. But I can’t help thinking of what we lost.”
Maybe we were nothing alike, but her wondering didn’t feel so different from my wondering. “In some ways, the worst part was when I stopped trying to guess what happened to them.”
“And so we both waited. Waited for someone else to choose our fate.”
I wanted to argue that I’d struggled to keep myself alive while she’d luxuriated, waiting to die, but it seemed a distinction of no matter now.
We would both find our fate in the High Keep.