Oriel wasn’t dust, but it was dying. Or dead. Because I had never gone back. I looked down at Lia, her eyes bright with the knowledge she’d woken in me, as surely as if she’d taken a stick and stirred the banked coals of old despair in my heart. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded.
She gave me an impatient look, then wriggled away. This time I let her go, watching her glide naked to the washbasin, petite ass twitching in her irritation. A new vine twined over her skin, thick with budding leaves, so lifelike, it seemed they might burst into being at any moment. I wanted to trace it with my tongue, to taste and feel her skin. How I could be pissed at her and crave her at the same time escaped me. It made no rational sense. Except that it seemed to be the story of our relationship.
“When should I have told you?” she asked in the same tone, fastening a pretty scarf over her bald scalp. “Should I have told you when you failed to tell Me you were the crown prince of Oriel, even though the knowledge would have improved your marriage proposal? Or when you told Me that who you were didn’t matter because Oriel was lost to dust and ash and you didn’t owe any allegiance to the land?”
I sat up in the soft bed, rubbed my hands over my face, willing myself to think. “I didn’t know,” I said into my hands, but then … Some things my father had said to me over the years rumbled in the back of my brain. Always in the mines he’d protected me, given me a share of his food, shielded me from the worst cruelties of the guards. For Oriel, he’d said. And Sondra … did she know? I ask only to hold the torch.
Lia’s hand touched my shoulder, light as one of her butterflies. “Hey,” she said softly, gentle with unexpected compassion now. “You didn’t know.” She blew out a breath, then retrieved her silk dressing robe and shrugged it on. “I wasn’t sure you wanted to; you seemed so determined to leave Oriel in the past. I’m still not sure it changes anything.”
I understood better now, how someone like Lia would view a man like me, a crown prince who turned his back on the land he’d been born to. And she was the one who had to hear its piteous, lonely cries. Maybe that’s part of why Lia walled herself off with ice. If I had to listen to that shit every night, it would drive me crazy.
Oriel, calling to me. My father tossing and turning, asking about my nightmares. Saying he had them, too. Had I heard the land in my dreams, too? All this time I thought it had been the ghosts of my family, my dead and imprisoned people, howling for vengeance. All this time, it might have been Oriel demanding blood. Conrí.
“Conrí?”
For a confused moment, I thought Lia’s voice was Oriel’s calling me by my title.
“I think maybe my father tried to tell me,” I said, thinking back over things my father had said, things I’d refused to hear. I’d been so angry, so full of hopeless despair.
She sat on the bed, her slight weight moving it no more than the breeze from the window, her green essence soothing. “He would have been very careful. No one has ever been sure how much Anure knows and how much he’s guessed, or blundered into via blind luck. This is sacred knowledge, passed from kings and queens to their heirs. I had My father longer than most, and he died before telling Me everything I needed to know. He was secretive, cagey like that.”
“I guess you come by it naturally then.”
She didn’t immediately reply, and I thought maybe I’d annoyed her. But I looked up to find her watching me with concern, that line between her brows that the makeup normally covered. “What happened to your family?”
The question seemed out of context. Not something I wanted to talk about any more. “I told you—my father died in the mines with me.” My voice came out hoarse, grinding with the grief, and I glared at her for making me say it again.
“You implied as much, though you’d never said exactly,” she replied, though without rancor. “What of your mother and sister?”
I flinched, and I knew she felt it. “Dead,” I said shortly—and with enough finality to get her to drop the subject.
“All right. I’m not asking you to say more now. But I am asking you to give this thought—lest you come back to Me at some point and demand to know why I didn’t tell you this sooner.” She smiled slightly, without any humor. “Why did Anure send you and your father to Vurgmun?”
“To mine his rock for him,” I spat back.
She raised her brows at my tone, but spoke patiently. “Oriel was the first to fall and—”
“I know that part.”
“Don’t get huffy.” She threw my words back at me with some satisfaction, pleased when I winced. “Arguably, Anure didn’t have his system worked out yet, but if he figured out how to control the lands by keeping royals captive at his citadel in Yekpehr, why didn’t he at least retrieve you, a crown prince of the Oriel bloodline he already had in chains?”
“Because I escaped before he could?”
“Maybe.” She inclined her head at the possibility.
A light knock came on the door. “Your Highness?” Ibolya called through it.
“A few moments, please,” she called back.
I caught her wrist as she rose. “What are you thinking, Lia?”
She laid her hand over mine. “Are you sure you want the truth? It might hurt.” Her eyes looked silvery framed by the shimmering scarf, and they weren’t hard, but full of sympathy.
“I can take the truth. Spit it out.”
“I think the toad had plenty of time before you escaped to bring you to join his stable of captive royals. In fact, My best guess is that Anure doesn’t know that Conrí, crown prince of Oriel, is the Slave King who’s plagued him. If he’d put that together, he wouldn’t have been so lackadaisical in suppressing your rebellion.”
Offended, I frowned at her. “A great many people fought hard and died in those battles.”
“That’s beside the point. Strategically speaking, you were lucky,” she replied evenly. “You were smart, too, sure. I’ve studied the reports. You took advantage of Anure’s inattention and arrogance. He’d sent the dregs of his forces to the fringes of his empire, and he grew fat and lazy. It was clever of you to exploit that, but we both know that if the emperor had taken your rebellion seriously early on, he could’ve crushed you. If he’d known who you are, he would have moved swiftly and decisively.”
I couldn’t argue with her assessment. Lia saw things with a cool dispassion, dissecting events with clear logic. She’d easily grasped exactly how I’d seen it. It surprised me, though, that she’d studied our battles. “What reports did you review?” It wasn’t like we’d had a gaggle of academics following us around.
“Ambrose has been keeping a diary, didn’t you know?” Her lips quirked at my astonishment. “He intends to write a history someday. I asked to know more about you and your conquests, and he gave me the relevant pages to read.”
“When?” I demanded. I couldn’t imagine when she’d read this stuff that I hadn’t seen.
“In the days after our marriage. I don’t squander all of My time in formal court, or spend it on inane meetings.” She raised a brow at me. “But you wouldn’t know that, would you?”
“I already apologized for that,” I replied stiffly. “Doesn’t seem fair for you to continually bring it up.”
She regarded me with a hint of consternation, then inclined her head. “You’re right. I suppose that’s a good marriage rule to observe: argument, resolution, then it’s done and we don’t resurrect it unless there’s a recurrence of the problem. Fair?”
“I can live with that.” I grinned, awfully amused by how she tried to run our relationship like she did Calanthe. “You didn’t use that knowledge against me,” I pointed out, “in the strategy meeting when I said I knew what I was doing.”
“No, I didn’t.” She examined her nails, picking at something. “I thought about it. But I didn’t want to undermine your authority in front of our people. And while I don’t like this plan, I don’t have a better idea. Besides, despite all odds, you did succeed where no one else has. I only hope you can pull off the same when faced with Anure’s full might and attention.”
“I can,” I told her. “I know we can win.”
“I believe in your confidence,” she replied.
“Your Highness,” Ibolya called again, knocking. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but should we tell Your hosts that You won’t be at the breaking of the fast?”
“I’m coming,” she called back, then looked at me.
I held out my hand and she took it, smiling when I kissed her palm. Green leaves, sunshine, and a sweet taste of the sea. “Thank you for believing in me.”
She started to say something, then closed her mouth and squeezed my hand, before starting to let go.
I held on, remembering our conversation before I got distracted. “Wait. You never said why, according to your theory, the toad didn’t drag me to Yekpehr when he had me?”
She met my gaze, regret in her eyes. She’d hoped to distract me, to avoid telling me this, I realized. “I think he didn’t need you because he had someone from Oriel’s royal family already.”
“No, that can’t be it.” That was a relief. I’d been braced for something terrible to contemplate. “My mother died. Early on. I saw her corpse.”
“And your sister?”
The breath caught choking hard in my chest. “She—” I couldn’t say it.
“Did you see her body, Con?” Lia asked, her voice and posture compassionate, but with insistence, as if she knew I couldn’t stand to think of her.
“I—” I couldn’t think. The memories crowded up, fierce, ugly, and stinking. Blood and screams. I wiped my free hand over my face and found it clammy with cold sweat.
“Your Highness?” Ibolya said through the door. “I’m so sorry, but if You’re to be on time, we must begin dressing You.”
Lia looked at me in question. “Should I stay or would you rather be alone?”
“No.” I glanced at the light-filled sky out the window. I’d meant to be gone by now. I had things to be doing. Important decisions to make about the present instead of dragging through the ashes of the past. “Sondra will be waiting for me.”
She nodded then called out, “I’m coming now.” She let go of my hand. Moving to open the door, she paused there. “I could be wrong. Just give it some thought.”
I would be thinking of nothing else.
Still, she hesitated. “Will you be all right if I go?”
I nearly laughed at her, except that I did feel so raw. All the shit I’d been through, and here I was tempted to ask this woman I’d somehow married to come and hold me. “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I have things to do.” With my voice so rough with emotion, my words came out terse enough that she smoothed her expression into her usual cool poise.
“Very well. Have a productive day, Conrí.”
The door snicked shut behind her with a quiet finality. Exhausted with the day not yet begun, I made myself get out of bed and find my clothes, resolutely pulling them on. I did have things to do. A fucking war to fight. All the rest didn’t matter. Focus on the here and now and I’d be fine.
I didn’t even believe myself.
Sondra met me at the stables with horses saddled and ready to go. She cast a glance at the sun, well into the sky, then arched a pale brow at me. “Good morning, Conrí. I thought you wanted to be out at the point earlier than this.”
“We have time,” I said, mounting the gelding. Nicely arched neck, fine, intelligent eyes, and an alert mien. Excellent steed. So was Sondra’s, the mare she’d ridden the day before. Beautifully refined, like everything on Calanthe.
“An hour until high tide,” Sondra agreed as we set off. “I verified with the locals. Did you sleep well—or not at all?” She smirked.
“Shut up, Sondra.”
She cast me a second glance. “You look a little rough this morning. The hellcat take her claws to you?”
“And lay off Lia. She’s not your enemy.”
“Nor would she thank you for protecting her, I bet,” Sondra retorted. “Certainly not from little ol’ me who’s so far beneath her.”
“Jealous?” As soon as I said it, I regretted it. Not for Sondra’s sake, but because I really wasn’t up for a conversation. I wanted peace and quiet, to think over Lia’s revelations and their implications. But time and tides wait for no man, as some philosopher said.
“Me? Jealous of Her I-Smell-Like-Flowers Fancy Ass Highness?” Sondra made a rude noise. “Not hardly. It’s just not like you to be distracted from the cause is all I’m saying.”
“I’m not distracted.” Except by sex. That happened all too easily. “Lia and I were discussing important things.”
“‘Discussing important things,’” Sondra mimicked in a whiny burr. “Listen to you. I never thought I’d hear you talk like that.”
“Like what?” If Sondra was spoiling for an argument, she’d get one.
“All soft and misty-eyed over a woman.”
“You’re the one who pushed me to marry Lia. You even gave me advice on how to woo her,” I reminded her.
“Yes, for the cause! Because the prophecy demanded it, because our vengeance required it. Or have you forgotten that part?” Sondra wrinkled her nose. “No one needs you to fall in love with her.”
I coughed, choking on my own spit, and swallowed hard. “Who said anything about that?”
Sondra gave me a pitying look. “You’re soft on her. And getting softer by the day.”
“Fuck you,” I replied, but without much heat.
“Well, not me, because I wouldn’t have you, but yeah, maybe you should.”
“What?” I wasn’t even following her.
“You should have sex with someone else. Someone not Her Highness,” she clarified, tossing her hair over her shoulder.
I threw Sondra a black glare. One that would have instantly cowed anyone else. Not Sondra, though. “What do you know of it?” I growled at her. “Suddenly you’re an expert on sex.”
She made a disparaging sound. “Absolutely not. But I do know she was your first sex, and that has power over a person.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face, wishing I’d taken time to bathe. Or grab some food. But it had been later than I thought when I got my shit together, and we wouldn’t have many chances to check these currents. Today, maybe tomorrow. Then we’d have to trust to luck, and mine had always been bad, no matter what Lia said.
“If Anure finds us here before we’re ready, stuff like sex won’t matter,” I pointed out, sounding reasonably calm.
“If you say so,” she replied. “If you can keep your head straight.”
“Spit it out already.”
Sondra gave me a long look. “Come on, I know you’ve thought of it. Using the Queen of Flowers as bait—and don’t get me wrong, it’s a good plan, so far as that goes—but you can’t forget the critical component of fighting Anure. You can’t care about what he expects you to care about.”
I knew that. Hell, I’d figured that out and taught it to Sondra, along with the others. “I know.”
“Do you?” She stared out at the sea as we followed the path out to the point of rocks. “Because it seems to me like you’re starting to care about her.”
“She’s my wife,” I ground out.
“A marriage of convenience in every sense,” Sondra retorted. “Last week she would have seen you executed. That bitch has a cold heart, Conrí. Just because her pussy is hot doesn’t—”
“Enough!” I cut her words off with a shout of iron, surprising us both. I looked away from Sondra’s shocked—and knowing—stare. “I made vows. The marriage is real, in every sense. You will respect that.”
“Fine by me.” She shrugged, chirping the words nonchalantly. Then she gave me a hard look. “But when it comes down to it—and we both know it will, Conrí—will you be able to sacrifice her?”
I didn’t reply.
“Because if you’re going to falter on us, if you’re going to put your wife before what we need to do to bring down Anure, now is a really good time to tell me. He’ll expect you to care about her—because he does—and if you actually do, he’ll use that against you. You know it and I know it.”
“If we plan right, it won’t come to that.”
“And if it does? If it does, Conrí, what will you decide?”
The sun had risen high enough to bring color to the water, the surface glassy with the tide so high, the water full and calm between the two spurs of land. I reined up and dismounted, looked for a good place to observe.
“Conrí?” Sondra followed me, voice harsh as Merle’s. “I need an answer from you.”
I looked over at her, hair whipping like a pale banner in the coastal breeze, eyes hard in her lined face. “I never asked you to call me king.” When she opened her mouth to snarl a reply, I held up a hand to stop her. “But you were the first to give me loyalty, and I haven’t forgotten that.” I ask only to hold the torch. “I also haven’t forgotten why we’re here, or what claiming Lia’s hand meant. Still means. Nothing will prevent our vengeance. I won’t fail you, or the cause.”
She pressed her lips together, then nodded. “Thank you.” Turning, she followed the line of my sight, studying the water. “Are you going to tell me what we’re looking for?”
“Watch the water.” I glanced at the sun. “Tide should be at high point now, then will start reversing. It might take a while, but that’s when it will happen. I think when we see it, we’ll know. Unless I’m wrong.”
Making a snorting sound, she shook her head, even offering me a smile. A peace offering, I supposed. “You’re never wrong, Conrí.”
I didn’t know about that. Lia’s words plagued me, rolling in my head. Had I been wrong about my sister? I hunkered down, picking up a rock and weighing it in my hand. Untying the bagiroca from my belt, I added it to the rest. Then I took out one from Vurgmun and set it on Cradysica’s bones. I didn’t have any stones from Oriel, of course. My habit of collecting rocks from every place I visited had begun long after Anure’s guards dragged us away. Weighing the bagiroca in my hand, I thought about what Lia had said about the lands calling for their rulers. If I carried this bagiroca to the citadel at Yekpehr, would the captive royals know the fragments of their own lands?
Strange thoughts. Sondra squatted beside me, studying the water. Still full and calm, deceptively peaceful. The perfect trap.
“Can I ask you something?” I had to cough to clear my throat.
Sondra glanced at me askance. “Since when do you ask permission?”
“It’s about … before Vurgmun.”
Her eyes darkened and she looked away. “Is this punishment for what I said earlier?”
“No. But it is part of what Lia and I were talking about, why I was late.”
When she looked at me again, her gaze held remorse. “Shit. I’m sorry, Conrí. I’m an idiot. No wonder you looked rough, if you were talking about … that.”
“Yeah.” I nodded, and we both fell silent for a bit. None of us asked the others about their time before the mines. It had always been an unspoken agreement, an allowance of privacy for people who’d lost everything in the worst ways. Even my broaching the topic felt like a violation. “Never mind. I—”
“Ask.” Her once pretty profile looked sharp, even haggard against the bluing sky. She turned her head and pierced me with her defiant stare. “Ask.”
If only I knew how. “You were … with Rhéiane, that day.” I said it fast, proud that I’d gotten my sister’s name past the constriction in my chest.
Only the stillness of her face betrayed Sondra’s shock. Slowly, she nodded.
“Did she—” I had to clear my throat yet again. “Did you see—” Sawehl take me, but I’d get through this. “Did you see her body?”
Sondra’s throat worked as she swallowed. “She’s dead, Con,” she replied, soft and grating. “Don’t go there.”
I nodded, but I had to press. “Did you see?”
She sighed and gazed at the water, hands clenched between her knees, fingertips red and knuckles white. “It was bad,” she said finally, still not looking at me. “You know that. The things they—” Pressing her knotted fists against her mouth, she stopped the words. “No one could live through what they did to her. I nearly died. I should have died.”
“Don’t say that.” I put a hand on her shoulder.
Silent tears rolled down her pitted cheeks. It had been a morning for women who rarely shed tears to openly weep. I’d never imagined I’d see Lia cry like that. An omen, maybe. Sondra shook her head, but didn’t shake me off. “They took her away,” she said. “And she looked dead to me.”
“But you don’t know for sure.”
“Until this moment, I’d have sworn to that truth.”
“And now?”
She moved her shoulders restlessly. “I hope she’s dead,” she said flatly. “Because the alternative doesn’t bear contemplating.”
That was the worst part of Lia’s theory. Unbearable to consider.
So I set it aside. Sondra gradually relaxed as I said nothing more. Our silence became almost companionable as we made ourselves comfortable on the rocks, the rising sun warm, flocks of shorebirds in brilliant shades of greens and purples, whistling and calling as they made complex patterns in the sky. The boats in the harbor were safely docked and none came into it, which only confirmed for me that the local fishermen knew of the dangers beneath the lovely waters.
“It’s a pretty place,” Sondra commented.
I grunted. “Everything about Calanthe is pretty.”
“Yeah.” She picked at some mud on her boot. “Doesn’t seem fair, somehow.”
My turn to give her a sidelong look. “You say that—after your lecture on me getting soft?”
She scowled. “I’m just saying I understand the temptation. It would be … nice, you know, if we could have this. If you could adore your beautiful wife and we could live in paradise and, I don’t know, I could find some strapping islander to treat me like a queen. But this isn’t for the likes of us. We lost that chance a long time ago.”
“I know.” And I did. Her reminder had been timely. I’d allowed Lia to believe I’d tell her in time to save at least the people, but I wouldn’t. Nothing could tip Anure off to the trap we’d lay for him. Lia’s chance of making it through this depended on that, too. I’d make the hard decisions for her, and she could hate me afterward. If we both survived. I seriously doubted I would. She could always curse my memory.
We fell back into silence, staring at the water. I don’t know if I saw it before Sondra did or if she simply waited to be sure before she said anything. “Holy fucking Sawehl,” she breathed. “Is that…?”
“A whirlpool,” I confirmed with great satisfaction. The water, no longer calm and peaceful, swirled in a great circle that spanned the reach between the two spurs of land. The currents spun outward, generating considerable surf that roared against the rocks. Anything caught on the outer reaches would be smashed to bits. In the center, a deep hole formed, a darker blue like Lia’s sapphire eye. I almost imagined a monster gazed back from it, perhaps even the baleful stare of Calanthe Herself. Following the whimsy, I saluted Her.
No disrespect intended, Lady Calanthe, but I hope You’re ready to drink the blood of Your enemies, because I fully intend to be feeding them to You soon.
Except for Anure. The eater of realms would be mine to crush, and Sondra’s to burn.