CHAPTER 93

Vincent

Vincent rides for home, the remnant of his army traveling with him. They navigate a changed landscape, hills that previously stood now gone, new ones where they do not belong. The path they traveled is broken in places, blocked in others. One unfortunate Stillean climbed the trunk of a fallen Hadundun to glimpse the path ahead, only to lose his footing and fall through the low branches, cut to the bone in more places than could be counted. His blood pooled, spent for nothing, as the tree itself was past drinking.

There is little talk among them, their voices lost in horrors witnessed for the first time—some of them having killed and others having seen the killing. Vincent pushes them on, the camp not complaining when they do not stop for a meal on the first day and only for cold rations on the second. The earth continues to roll beneath them, like a stomach whose meal sits unsteady, but no more tremors come that drive people and animals alike to their knees.

A wretched cold night is spent among wet trees that hang limply but do not take lives. Vincent visits each fire in the Forest of Drennen, learning every face and speaking with each man in his army. Sleep does not come for him, and his horse is saddled before his men awake, cropping gently at grass and nickering to his rider, who leans against him for warmth in the low light of morning.

Stille is on the horizon when a rider approaches from the castle, grim faced. Vincent can think only that news of their losses and the death of the Indiri have preceded them, but the messenger brings his own ill words.

“Your mother, my king,” he says, head low. “She wishes to see you straightaway.”

Vincent finds Dissa in the great hall, a fire burning there, though the hearth is cracked through, more stones from the walls littering the shadows. A flat section of the ceiling has fallen, shattering the dining table and sending splinters the length of Vincent’s arm to each end of the room.

“Mother?” he calls, when she does not turn at his footsteps.

“I have news, Vincent,” she says calmly. “I would rather you hear it from my mouth than the wandering tongue of a sconcelighter or dairymaid.”

The heart he had thought stopped on the battlefield accelerates with fear, and Vincent goes to Dissa’s side. “Khosa? Is she well?”

His mother reaches for him, hand clasped in his. “After the earth moved, I went to her chambers to see to her safety and found her crouched against the wall, curled like an infant in its mother. She can barely speak, Vincent, so great is her pain.”

He would go to his wife straightaway, her deception aside. Though she has caused him misery, he would not wish the same upon her, yet his mother’s hand stops him.

“Dara?” she asks hopefully.

“No,” Vincent says, his voice closing over the simple word. “Nor Donil.”

Dissa’s hands go to her temples, the loss of her adopted children a fresh wound to bear up under. But she has suffered much, and endured more.

“Go to her.” She waves away Vincent. “Go to your wife.”

He leaves too quickly to correct her.