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Daindreth
Daindreth spent most of the night scouring the city with Amira, but there was no sign of the sorceress from earlier that day.
By the time Daindreth and Amira stumbled back to where they’d stashed Thadred, the sky was already paling with the dawn. Since the warehouse was compromised, they’d holed up in the loft of a carriage house connected to what appeared to be a respectable merchant’s home. By all appearances, no one was in residence, so they set up between boxes of tack, horseshoes, leather oil, extra carriage wheels, and various odds and ends.
“There you are.” Thadred hurled a wooden doorknob in Daindreth’s direction the moment he emerged at the top of the ladder.
Daindreth deflected it with an arm. “You’re in a fine mood this morning.” Daindreth stepped aside as Amira climbed up after him.
Thadred grumbled incoherently. At the sight of Amira, his gaze sharpened. “Well?”
“Nothing.” Amira peeled off her gloves and slapped them into one hand. “Not a sign of the sorceress. Or Iasu.”
Thadred guffawed. “That’s half good news, I suppose. At least you weren’t attacked.”
Amira pulled off her cloak and tossed it over the back of a chair—or what had once been one. The seat was missing. “If there’s a snake in my bed, I’d like to know where.” She set to unbuckling her own set of weapons, flexing her neck and shoulders as she did. “Iasu is here, and he won’t be fooled long by that misdirected bauble.”
Daindreth watched her, his brow furrowed. “There’s one place we didn’t search for the sorceress last night.”
“Where?”
Daindreth held her stare for a moment. “The palace itself.”
Amira’s face paled just a little before she shook her head. “No, my father wouldn’t harbor a sorceress.”
“Just like he wouldn’t try to assassinate an archduke?” Daindreth hadn’t meant for that to come out as wry-sounding as it did.
Amira shot him a frown but shook her head. “Not a sorceress, but maybe Iasu.” She chewed her lip. “The sorceress must have already left the city.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Amira snapped, pulling off her boots, then her stockings. She wiggled her bare toes against the floor. “My father will know that Vesha is hunting us. Vesha is an enemy of the Istovari. That has never been in doubt. He won’t ally himself with them now.”
“If you say so,” Daindreth shrugged, but he was still not convinced. There had to have been a way that King Hyle had learned of Caa Iss. Besides Vesha, her Kadra’han, and those closest to Daindreth, no one had known but the Istovari.
It seemed the only rational explanation.
“Everyone hates us,” Thadred grumbled. “The more we learn, the more it seems that the world is in one great conspiracy to swyve us all.”
Neither Amira nor Daindreth offered an argument for that.
Daindreth pulled off his own boots, wrinkling his nose. He hadn’t bathed in almost two weeks, since before leaving Mynadra. This was probably the greasiest and filthiest he had been since rolling in mud pits with Thadred as a boy.
“Do you think there’s any food in the house of our unwilling host?” Thadred asked.
Amira shrugged. “Probably.”
“Hmm.” The knight stood, flexing his neck from left to right. “I’ll go check that, then. Do you think the doors are unlocked?”
“They are now,” Amira said.
Daindreth shot her a look.
“What?” she asked, innocently. “I took a look around last night. All the furniture is covered, and the fireplace has been emptied. We can probably stay at least a day or two before anyone comes back.”
“Good.” Thadred moved toward the ladder.
The ladder had been Thadred’s primary complaint regarding Amira’s choice of hideout, but he grabbed the rungs and set to stepping down them one at a time, hindered even more by holding his cane in one hand. “I can’t tell you how dull it is to be left behind,” Thadred shouted up at them. “You two, abandoning me like a sick girl.”
“Perhaps you’d like to come jumping rooftops,” Daindreth shot back, raising his hand so Thadred could see a dried scab across his palm. Daindreth had several others on his right knee and a bruised rib, but it could have been worse—much worse.
Thadred stopped with nothing but his head showing above the hole in the floor. “What happened to you?”
Daindreth shrugged. “Amira was teaching me to use the rooftops.”
Thadred turned an accusing glare to Amira. “You what?”
Amira faced Thadred so that Daindreth couldn’t see her expression. “What? I won’t coddle him.”
“If, after all this, he dies because he falls off a roof—”
“He won’t,” Amira snapped. “I know what I’m doing.”
Thadred let off a laugh barbed with sarcasm. “That’s what we’re all counting on, isn’t it?” The knight eked his way down the remainder of the stairs, limping out of sight.
Daindreth shucked off his leather outer vest just as he began to hear Thadred’s three-beat stride below, heading toward the main house. He glanced over to Amira and stopped.
She had removed her knives and coat and sat crossed legged on the ground. Amira had unfastened the end of her braid and worked at the ends with a comb, pulling the locks free.
The strands of her hair caught the early morning sunlight, making them glow copper and gold in the rays. He studied the way they caught the sun, thinking of how he would describe it when he could write again—threads of fire? A mane of fire in place of a crown?
An image came to mind then, one of her draped over his bed in Mynadra with the early morning sunlight playing over her naked body, smirking from under a golden circlet encrusted with rubies.
“I would like to see you in a crown,” Daindreth said, surprising himself a little.
Amira paused, shooting him a sideways glance. “A crown?”
“Yes.” He watched as the play of light continued through her hair.
“You’ve seen me in a crown before,” Amira replied, tone curious.
“I know,” he said, then swallowed.
Last night when they had wandered the city, her guard had been up. She had become the assassin, the hunter, bent on protecting and killing.
Now, her armor was down, showing the woman underneath.
“I love you, Amira,” Daindreth said quietly. “I know I say it often, but...I mean it. I look forward to when we can marry.”
Amira’s hands paused, the comb still in her hair. A slight smile curled the corner of her mouth. “And what do you plan to do then?”
Daindreth laughed at the glint in her eyes. “I’m not talking about just that.”
“I know.” Amira went back to pulling her comb through her hair. “But that’s what I want to hear about.”
“I don’t think we should talk about that when Thadred’s not here.”
“Well, I wouldn’t talk about it with him here,” Amira quipped.
Daindreth laughed. “Amira, you know what I meant.”
“Yes.” Amira sighed. “Yes, I know.”
He already thought about it often enough and he could see that she did, too. Talking about it would only increase the danger. And even if Caa Iss hadn’t been crouching inside his skull, he didn’t want to bed her for the first time in a stranger’s barn.
Daindreth stretched out on his bedroll, leaning back and folding his arms across his chest. He studied the cobwebs overhead, wondering how many generations of spiders it had taken to build them.
“I don’t just think about sex, you know,” Amira said. “I think about it a lot, but not only that.”
Daindreth almost laughed again.
“What? You’re the romantic between the two of us.”
“What are you thinking about now, Amira? Besides sex?” He expected her to turn to the topic of the Kadra’han in the city or the unknown Istovari sorceress. She certainly seemed to have given them plenty of thought.
“I want to build a dynasty with you.” Amira’s voice was quiet, steady. He wondered if she didn’t sound shy saying the words.
Daindreth rolled onto his elbow to look at her. “What do you mean?”
Amira set down her comb. By now, her hair was in loose strands of red below her shoulders. She hesitated. “I want the Erymayan Empire to last for an age,” she said. “I want the House of Fanduillion to reign for a thousand years. I want your name inscribed on every page of history as the emperor who built a legacy to outshine even the most loved hero that came before.”
Daindreth watched her. For a moment, he could imagine it. For just a few heartbeats, he convinced himself that what she was describing would happen. Their dynasty—daughters with her hair and sons with his eyes, each of them powerful, good, and loved by the empire. Grandchildren, and great-grandchildren racing through the gardens of Mynadra, playing beneath statues of him and Amira long after their bodies had been laid to rest in the imperial mausoleum.
He imagined scholars, sorcerers, statesmen, and strategists coming from their blood. The House of Fanduillion, which had come so close to dying out, becoming a power to reshape the world yet again. This time for the better.
He was the last of his father’s line, but Amira could give him children, heirs. Greater than that, she could give him legacy. It was the greatest gift he could imagine.
She swallowed and looked away. “You’re a good man, Daindreth. You will be a great emperor.”
“The empire could crumble because of what we’re doing.” He’d thought about this a great deal. Even if Caa Iss’s threats and claims were false, the division between him and Vesha could lead to civil war.
“Then we rebuild it,” Amira said flatly.
“How?” Daindreth arched one eyebrow. “Do I have the right to rule these people? More than half of our vassal kings were conquered by my father, bent before him at the end of a sword.”
“And how do you think those kings became kings?” Amira countered. “The same way your father did.”
“If the empire breaks apart as Caa Iss says it will, if they want to rule themselves—”
“People are too foolish to rule themselves,” Amira continued. “Too selfish. Too cruel.” She added that last sentence in a low voice. “Is something right because the majority approves it? No. I’ve seen a mob tear apart a twelve-year-old boy because he was raped by a priest. They said he’d made the priest stumble.” Amira’s lip curled and her voice went quiet. “A few days later, that priest was found dead in his bath. Assumed drowning. The few who had objected to the boy’s murder said it was divine justice.”
Silence bled between them. Amira toyed with the comb in her hands and Daindreth watched her, not sure what to say for a long space of time.
“You can’t think that all people are like that.”
She looked up. “But they are, Daindreth.” She shook her head. “My mothers will boast of their goodness to any who will listen, but then they leave little girls to die alone for the sake of their spells and infect little boys with demons.”
“What makes us different, Amira?” Daindreth asked, careful to keep his voice gentle. “How are we better than them?”
“Would you have allowed that?” Amira shot back. “Any of the things I just named?”
Daindreth bit his lip. He didn’t think so, but it felt as if she was making him out to be infallible. He didn’t like it.
“People like us, we were born to rule. We have a duty to rule.”
“To save people from themselves?” Daindreth sighed.
“If need be.”
“I have read about nations across the sea, where they have no kings or emperors. Where the people are led by those who are chosen among them, selected by the demos. Everyone has a voice.”
Amira rolled her eyes. “I’ve been to those countries and it’s no different than here when you get to the roots. Leaders end up getting chosen from the gentry anyway. It’s nobility and aristocracy by another name.”
“But they have no king.”
“No,” Amira conceded. “And it works for them—most of the time. But there is a reason we have leaders instead of mob rule. People cannot rule themselves.”
“There has to be balance, Amira. Some way to prevent something like my mother happening again. Her decisions have possibly put the entire empire under a curse.”
Amira began rebraiding her hair, shoulders stiff, not looking fully in his direction. “Not even Vesha rules alone. She has to answer to the barons, viceroys, counts, kings, and marquesses from across the empire.”
“But her deal with Moreyne—”
“Anyone could have made it,” Amira insisted.
“But she had the authority, Amira.” Daindreth shook his head. “I don’t believe that any fishwife or farmer could have made the deal that she did. They wouldn’t have had the authority. Demons care about that sort of thing.” Daindreth rubbed a hand over his face.
“What do you mean?”
Daindreth didn’t answer right away. “Are mudslides common in Hylendale?”
Amira let a few beats of silence pass before she said, “They happen from time to time near the mountains. Usually in the spring when the snows melt.”
“But that big?” Daindreth grimaced. “That catastrophic?”
Amira shook her head. “You can’t possibly think that was your fault.”
“I don’t know what to think, Amira. All I know is that natural disasters—true disasters—have been mostly unheard of in the empire.”
“We have had mild weather.”
“For a little over ten years straight?” Daindreth shook his head. “Hurricanes have broken apart before they reached our coasts. Wildfires have died out. Rain has never come enough to cause major floods or too little to cause drought.”
Amira shook her head vehemently. “That can’t be it.”
“I don’t know for sure, but I know it’s unusual, and...” He inhaled and exhaled again before he continued. “I know what Caa Iss has said to me.”
“You can’t trust a demon.”
“You’re right.” Daindreth leaned back onto his bedroll, smearing his hands over his face. “I can’t. But nor can I ignore what’s happening.”
“Why are you saying this?” Amira shook her head.
Daindreth hesitated, then steeled himself. He’d been a coward long enough. It was time to tell her. “When we were entering the city and you were away from me...” he began slowly, choosing his words carefully. “Caa Iss told me that Vesha made a deal with the cythraul. One to guarantee fair weather, health, and prosperity across the empire. He told me that since Vesha is no longer able to keep her end, the deal is off, and that the empire will begin to suffer all the misfortune that the deal prevented.”
Amira stiffened. “He’s a demon. You can’t trust him.”
“Yes,” Daindreth agreed. “But we have seen evidence that it’s true.”
“It was one mudslide,” Amira argued. “A tragedy, an awful tragedy, but one mudslide.”
Daindreth stared at the ceiling. “I hope you’re right.”
“Even if it’s true, you aren’t causing these things,” Amira said. “Vesha just delayed fate and now we have to pay for the borrowed time.”
Daindreth wasn’t sure if that was how it worked or not, but Amira had a pragmatic, less complicated way of looking at the world. “What if this keeps happening?” Daindreth asked. “What if more mudslides kill more people? Plagues? Droughts? Floods?” The archduke exhaled. “How can we let those people suffer?”
Amira didn’t respond. He heard her moving as she arranged their weapons and checked this and that. Probably the spells she’d placed around the villa to warn them if someone came.
“I wonder if there will ever be a day without emperors,” Daindreth whispered. “I wonder if there will ever be a day when we no longer need rulers.”
“As long as there are people, they will need rulers. Whether we call them emperors, sheiks, chieftains, priests, or senators—we will always need rulers.”
“It’s just so heavy,” Daindreth whispered. “At times, I can feel the weight of millions of lives pressing down on me. Like it’s going to crush me.” Even as he spoke, he could almost feel the squeezing sensation against his chest, weighing him down. “How can anyone bear this burden?”
Her footsteps came closer, soft and quiet. She knelt over him, one hand braced beside his head. “You don’t have to bear it alone. I shouldn’t have to tell you that.” She was close, deliciously close. “You have Thadred and me. And we’ll find others. Others who will stand by you.”
Daindreth thought a moment of Taylan—his friend, confidante, and in many ways his mentor. The old valet was dead. Killed by Vesha for siding with Daindreth.
Amira had almost been killed that same night and now they were both on the run with Thadred. It was dangerous for others to side with him. Was his life really worth theirs?
“You will be a great emperor, Daindreth. Greater than anything this world has seen.” Amira sounded so certain, as if she were describing something that had already happened, something that was guaranteed.
“How do you know?” he whispered. “How can you be so sure?”
“I know it,” Amira answered, her voice soft. “I know it, my love.”
Daindreth studied her face with her full lips, large eyes, and her pale neck. He wanted to tangle his hands in her hair while he kissed a line from her jaw to her collarbone. Instead, he rested a hand on her side, over the two parallel scars—one from his guards she’d taken the night they met and one from Darrigan when she had come to rescue Daindreth from the palace. He brushed his knuckles along her throat.
The curse left no outward marks, but Daindreth knew well enough about the strangling pain a Kadra’han’s curse inflicted on them. Amira had endured all that, overcome it, and dominated it—for him.
“I hope to one day repay all the faith and loyalty you offer me,” he said. “Somehow.”
Amira smiled. “You can start by making me your empress. If you don’t tire of me.”
“That’s on the agenda as soon as...” Daindreth trailed off. When they had set out from Mynadra, ridding him of the demon had seemed so possible, such a hopeful idea.
After their disappointing first meeting with the Istovari sorceress, now he wasn’t so certain.
Amira leaned down and kissed his neck. Her lips brushed the stubble along his throat and jaw, teasing, toying. His hand tightened on her side and his arm went tense, ready to push her away as much as he wanted to pull her closer.
“Amira.” He barely recognized his own voice. “Stop. Please.”
She pulled away from him. Her expression was hard to read. “Am I not allowed to want something?” she asked, her voice soft, but firm.
“Amira, we’ve talked about this.”
“I know.” Amira withdrew then, turning away from him. “I’m sorry.”
Daindreth wanted to tell her not to be sorry, but admitting how much he enjoyed her, ached for her, longed for her...
Did she have any idea how much she tortured him? Did she do it on purpose or did she really have no clue?
He watched Amira lie down on her own bedroll with her back to him. After a few minutes, her breathing leveled, but tired as he was, it was much longer before Daindreth was able to sleep.
