CHAPTER SIX

THE RUBY GROVE

My father had four sons before me: four sons who died during the rampage of Rysaran the Uncrowned’s mad dragon in Old Oren-yaro.

People have not always been sympathetic to my father’s sorrow, even before he decided to have his revenge against the Ikessars with the War of the Wolves. Rumours say that it was his own fault; that it was Yeshin who sent men to seize the caged dragon from Dragonlord Rysaran’s clutches. Our nation had sunk to a point where our leaders believed mastery of a dragon would make all the difference.

The details of what happened on that day had been lost over the years—my father was the only living survivor, and his accounts had a tendency to turn into rambling nonsense if he was prodded about the issue too long. Something about a soldier—not a dragon—turning around and cutting my eldest brother Taraji’s head clean off. Other times, he would say it was in fact the second eldest, Senjo, who was responsible for the deed before Senjo himself ran towards the dragon, straight into its gaping maw. Later, I would learn about how dragons were connected to the agan, and how Rysaran’s dragon used it to create madness in the air, turning people into something like beasts themselves.

Whatever truly happened, one thing remained clear: I was Yeshin’s first daughter and was raised the only way my father knew how to raise a child. I was four years old when he gave me my first sword, a wooden one that was too heavy for me to wield properly. Then he dragged me down to the barracks at the base of Oka Shto Mountain, where I joined Agos in training.

I wasn’t fond of the training. I kept up a good pretence because my father wanted me to—because to defy Yeshin would be to face down a dragon myself and I’ve never had the strength to do that, especially not at four years old. I went through the exercises with the precision of a newborn calf and then, for the next two days, lay sick in bed from the fever brought on by sore muscles. The servants took turns rubbing me with hot compresses and spooning chicken-and-papaya soup down my throat, all while criticizing my father behind his back.

That, for many years, became the shape of my life. At least once a week, I was required to sit with the soldiers and taught how to wield a sword properly, how to read an opponent, how to take a blow. Not every swordsmaster in the army was eager to send a young girl flying across the yard, but eventually, Yeshin was able to secure the services of a skilled sellsword from Darusu. Anong Garru we called him to his face—Sharkhead to his back. He was an awful man with a temper that matched his hideousness. Agos hated him so much that he once dipped the man’s boots in cat urine, which meant we had to sit through an entire lesson pinching our noses with our fingers. The prank was discovered and Agos spent that entire summer carrying two sacks of rice up and down the mountain steps.

Not exactly an idyllic childhood, but the sweet note was there all the same. I remember chasing after Agos in those days, laughing with him as he sweated up the mountain and cursed poxes on Garru and all his children, or clapping with the young recruits while we watched Agos decimate his opponent during training rounds. “Agos the Crusher!” we’d yell. I was the youngest, with a shrill voice that ran with the wind.

The lessons stopped in my tenth year. Yeshin hired Sharkhead as my private instructor, and I was no longer allowed to spend time in the barracks without an escort. The turning point had been an argument between Yeshin and my tutor, Arro. “A lady!” my father had fumed at Arro’s retreating back. He caught sight of me stumbling into the hall, witnessing the last of the exchange. His face contorted. “You…”

“Yes, Father?” I walked up to him, thinking he was calling me.

Trembling hands grasped my shoulders, but he lifted them as soon as he made contact, like he was afraid he would break me with his touch. “I know you’re my daughter,” he said. “I know what you are.” His eyes were red, and his lower jaw was shaking. This frightened me—I had never seen my father near tears before.

I struggled to maintain my composure. “Yes, Father.”

“They brought you those dresses, didn’t they? Your grandmother’s…I asked them to. That silk survived the Zarojo sack from Dragonlord Reshiro’s time.”

“They did, Father. They’re beautiful.”

He nodded, as if this reassured him somewhat. “Wear one to the next meeting. The blue suits you best, Tali.”

I bowed. But because he didn’t dismiss me, I stayed standing in front of him, straight and true—a soldier’s stance. After a moment, he drew me in for a hug. One hand came up to pat me on the hair once. And then he pulled away, that hard expression returning to his face. He would die in that same year.

My father’s daughter, my father’s soldier. They were one and the same as far as I was concerned, and it used to help whenever things became unclear. I tried to remind myself of this over the next few days, which was harder than I thought it would be. I couldn’t seem to cross whatever it was that lay between Khine and me. The journey felt disjointed, days of going through the motions rolling into each other. We never stayed at the same place longer than a night, arriving in inns late and waking up long before the other patrons in an effort to remain hidden. Three times we ran into Qun’s men, who were looking for me. But they didn’t know what I looked like, and they didn’t know I was travelling with only one companion. Each time, we managed to slip past them unnoticed.

It came as a relief when we finally left the towns behind and came upon the first strip of wilderness. The Ruby Grove was named for the forest and the unusual growth of a variety of bright-red-leafed deciduous trees and shrubs. By sunrise, the brilliance was dazzling, giving the hills the appearance of a rolling sea of fire. I felt like we had been transported to a magical land—to Sheyor’r, perhaps, what the Zarojo called the land across the agan fabric. I saw a gecko of some sort sunning itself on a rock, and even its skin was red, with bumps of bright orange.

“Anjishing isn’t far from here, you know,” Khine said. It was the first time he had spoken in hours.

I blinked, remembering the name of the village he liked to use for some of his cons. “I thought the red cliffs were to the north, past Anzhao,” I managed.

“Yes. Up there is a village called Anjishing,” he said. “Which is a hub for craftsmen peddling rare and valued jewellery. You hear about it often enough, you think it’s the same thing.”

“You tricky bastard. They sound almost the same.”

“That’s the whole point. If a guard catches up to me for fraud, I could always tell him that I did acquire said item from Anjishing, yes, at the base of the red cliffs in the Ruby Grove…what, you don’t call them red cliffs over there? But everything’s red…”

“Any other trick you want to tell me about?”

“I have one that involves a suckling pig. You need…”

His voice was drowned out by a rush of wind from above. I looked up just as an enormous shadow crossed the field. A giant shape, rather like a ship in mid-air, blocked the sun. I had read enough about airships to know what it was, but it was my first time seeing one.

Khine whistled. “That’s a new route,” he said. “Looks like it’s heading east for the Inland Sea.”

We watched it drift off into the sky. The wooden sides of the ship were marked with brightly coloured carvings of lionbeasts and rok haize. The rest of it was dominated by green and blue paint, with red tassels attached wherever they could fit. Dageian airships, from the drawings I had seen in books, were more sombre in comparison. “They run on agan, too, don’t they? Just like the Dageians’?”

“I think so,” Khine said. “I don’t know much about it myself. I’ve read about these channels they’ve made along the ground, and how the mages draw from them? I’m not sure. They copied the system almost entirely from Dageis.”

The ship continued to bob up and down until it disappeared into the horizon. I realized that my horse had drifted right beside Khine.

“I’d love to ride one,” I mused. “How does the sky look from above?”

“You’ve never?” He made a sound. “I thought, being a queen…”

“Politics is my whole life, Khine. It’s always been one meeting after another, the warlords’ complaints, my bannermen’s requests, laws to pass over to the council…I once thought if things got quiet and Thanh was older, maybe we could travel and see the world.” I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “You’ve been on one?”

“Tashi Reng Hzi once took us to the southern coastal cities. The route only went so far back then. That new one, though—that’s going to bring you to the capital at Kyan Jang. The things they can accomplish with the agan are nothing short of amazing.”

“What’s it like?”

“Like you’re soaring on the back of a bird. I was frightened at first—nauseous. Tashi Hzi made me chew on a piece of gingerroot until it passed. And then—it’s nothing I can describe. You feel like you can see everything from up there.” He gave me a look, and the smile died on his lips. “Maybe someday, you and I…”

I turned away, wishing he wouldn’t say half the things he said. I clicked my tongue and urged my horse forward, trying to ignore the feeling of dread welling up inside of me. If I wasn’t dead by the end of the year, I would be back in Jin-Sayeng, back on the throne. I, who had grown up with so much, who had every need taken care of before I could even realize I was wanting, had no right to ask for more. I was content with these red trees, the way they bowed over the worn trails; the ride through them was a pleasant excursion on what was an otherwise wretched quest. And Khine…

The uncertainty of what awaited me had the effect of slowing down the passage of time. From the hills, we dropped down to a path running along a river, where I could see steep mountainsides from across. Mounds of sandstone scree gathered in the valleys between the ridges, while pink and white wildflowers blossomed around the base, so many that they looked like snowfall on the first day of winter. I caught Khine staring at them, a faraway look on his face.

“I haven’t been through here in so long.” He shook his head as soon as he had spoken. I wanted to ask him when the last time was, but something in his voice stopped me—it felt like I was stumbling onto a stray thought, one I wasn’t supposed to hear.

“Did you know they would be out this time of the year?” I asked, gesturing at the bloom.

He gave a wry smile. “Impressed?”

“Not unless you braved the death-defying rapids to plant the seeds yourself.”

The relatively calm river continued to trickle past us. His horse slowed to a walk, but Khine’s usual chatter was gone. A hot breeze came to tease my hair, which was followed by a bug that made clacking sounds by my ear. As I tried to brush it off, I caught sight of a mousy-looking deer, one with tusks the length of my thumb. It stared back at us, unafraid, and waited until we had passed by before it hopped back into the bush.

Sweat trickled down the grime on my face. As I wiped it off, I heard him clear his throat. “I’m sorry if I’ve been scarce the past few weeks.”

His words caught me by surprise. I smacked the bug just as it landed on my arm and flicked the carcass off. “You’ve been busy. I understand. Lo Bahn isn’t exactly an easy employer.”

“You can’t imagine,” he said. “Everything was a downwards slide for him after what happened at the governor’s office. Partners turning on him left and right—I was at my wits’ end trying to help him salvage what he could. I wasn’t even sure I was going to succeed. He very nearly had me beheaded for tricking him at one point—I’m going to spare you the details—but he needed me and Inzali, and so I lived to scheme another day.”

“What did you do for him?”

“Everything I could. Set up meetings with his partners, spoke on his behalf. A good percentage of his operations were illegal, so without the muscle to back him, he was grasping at thin air.”

“He didn’t have money to hire new men? Anya Kaz could’ve provided them to him.”

“I don’t think Anya would risk her men just to save Lo Bahn’s assets—not in a million years. You caught Lo Bahn at a bad time—he had sunk a fair amount of his fortune in some new investments, and paying the blood money all but crippled him. He’s put up a commendable show in pretending it’s nothing to him, but I don’t think the man’s getting out of this any time soon. His only chance is to start all over.”

I looked down past my mount’s ears to the ground. There was a new insect buzzing at my ear, and I let it. “I didn’t know any of this was going to happen,” I murmured.

“I didn’t, either. I would’ve found a better way to help you if I had known what would come from it. Perhaps I wouldn’t even have helped you at all.” From the corner of my eyes, I saw Khine gaze out at the horizon again. “I used to walk along this river with my father when I was younger. Not all the time—only if the overseer would spare him a few days. He used to tell me about his dreams for me—how he wanted me to be more, do more, to get out of that mining town and carve a life for myself. ‘Khine,’ he would tell me. ‘Some of us, me included, can only live for ourselves for today—to scrape to survive, only to wake up to scrape again. But I want you to be the sort of man who can live for tomorrow, who can dream of something better.’

“When he died—not long after Cho was born—I stood over his body for the seven days and at the end of it my mother came with a box. She showed it to me—it was half-full of silver. ‘This is not for spending,’ she said. ‘Father had been saving to send you to Anzhao City. He had been corresponding with Tashi Reng Hzi of Kayingshe Academy. He wanted you to be a physician, Khine, and I think if we can save a bit more, you can go.’ I remember staring at that box, wondering how we were going to be able to do that without my father, without the mines, with a new mouth to feed. I was only nine years old.”

“Khine…” I reached out to touch his arm.

He remained still. “I don’t know what to think, Tali. About you, about all of this.”

“I thought you had an opinion about everything.”

“I’ve always known I’ve been on a downwards spiral, but back then, I was harming only myself. Only me and what I could have been. This is different. I knew some of those men, Lo Bahn’s guards. I went to their funerals. Their families fed me. I couldn’t bring myself to say how I had caused the deaths of their husbands…their children…their fathers.”

“You didn’t.”

“It was my idea in the first place.”

“We didn’t know Yuebek would be there.”

“There are patterns we can observe to prevent such things, and we owe it to the people around us to take heed of them.”

Khine was looking at me while he said this. I felt my ears ring. “That’s why you wanted me to ride alone with you. You wanted me away from your family.”

“Among other things.”

I struggled against the disappointment in his voice. “Then why not just leave me be, Khine?”

“I take you to your husband, this all ends.”

“You know it’s not that simple. Walking away, on the other hand…”

“It’s not that simple, either,” he said. And he left it at that.

Some time later, we laid out bedrolls beside the river in the dark. I watched him talking to the horses, rubbing them down and scratching their chins, and tried to imagine what my father would think about him. They shared, if nothing else, that stubborn, idealistic streak. Yeshin would’ve enjoyed talking to him, at least before killing him for overstepping his bounds.

He came up to join me by the fire. “Dealing with me is tiresome, isn’t it?” Khine asked.

I stared at him, my cheek on my knee. “Sometimes.” I wanted to ask if he thought the same thing about me, and then decided against it; I didn’t know how to deal with it if he said yes.

“We haven’t even known each other all that long.”

I nodded, smiled.

“Tell me what’s on your mind.”

I pretended to mull over his words. “It’s…” I began, before changing my mind. “If you had a choice, what would you have been? Not a physician. Anything else. If you were free.”

“You’d laugh.”

“You know I won’t.”

Khine looked embarrassed for a moment, which was an odd expression for a man usually so brazen. “I suppose I’d have been a soldier.”

“You,” I said. My lips quirked into a smile. “But you don’t like killing.”

“I told you you’d laugh.”

“Sorry. Tell me, then. Why a soldier?”

“I had this dream once that I could maybe rise up the ranks and become a general. If you did well enough in your studies and did your best to get noticed, it’s not a far cry. Do you know how much influence a general can wield? Being a soldier isn’t all about killing. You can stop deaths. March an army elsewhere. Save people.”

“You could do that as a physician, too.”

“A physician’s reach is limited. You’re controlled by the guild, by what you have to charge people, by the fact that you couldn’t stop them from getting hurt in the first place. And you can see how well that’s turned out for me. In any case, it’s better than being a con artist and a hired thug from Shang Azi, don’t you think?” Khine turned to me. “What about you? If you could be anything else but a queen? If you were free to walk away from all of this, what would you be?”

I stared at the fire for a long time.

“I’d be free,” I murmured.

There are no words to portray how I felt over those next few days—none, at least, that wouldn’t be misinterpreted by a historian with a better overview of how my life turned out in the end. I can write what I remember, but I feel my words are a poor substitute for the truth—that somehow in that wilderness, with the company of that one man, I found the shackles of my life loosening. I knew only the sound of the hooves clip-clopping on the trail, the feel of my sweat running down my back from the heat, the swaying of the bridges we needed to cross—something the horses, I was pleased to find out, were used to—and the endless, unreachable blanket of the clear sky above. We chewed on dried mangoes and flatbread along the way, boiling rice only when we camped for the night. Khine would explain the forks in the road, and tell me stories about the villages and towns that existed out in the expanse of this dusty wilderness. I listened with rapt attention as we fell back into the pattern of our early acquaintance, before the baggage, before he knew I was queen.

The trail followed the banks of the Tanshi River. The river itself didn’t just run in a straight line—it swung out like a serpent, making long loops and winding around itself so often that it sometimes felt like we weren’t making any forward progress. Parts of it were calm and shallow enough to tempt you to walk across—elsewhere, it was loud and rushing, full of foamy water and rocks and battered driftwood. The colour changed, too—it was usually a deep green or grey, reflecting the amount of brush around it. On the third or fourth day, it turned to a brilliant blue, so wide and calm that it very nearly seemed like a rock-fringed lake. The only disturbance came from a waterfall on the other side. There was a cave underneath where the water gathered, forming a small pool that seemed deep enough to swim in.

Khine broke into a grin. He urged his horse across a narrow part of the river, where scattered rocks formed a loose bridge. I didn’t need a second bidding and tugged at the reins to follow him, the third horse snorting behind.

The bank led around the waterfall and into a crack in the cave, where a small ledge jutted over the pool, forming a platform. We found a spot where thick roots formed a lattice across the ceiling and splotches of sunlight were sprinkled over the damp moss. As I worked to tie the horses to the roots, Khine stripped down to his loincloth and waded into the water first. He yelped.

“Is it cold?” I asked.

He wiped water from his beard and swam up to me. The pool was bright blue, a sharp contrast with the red rocks. “You stay there,” he said. “You’ll hate it.”

“Really,” I drawled.

“Really. It’s not for queens.” He leaned over the ledge with his elbows, water dripping down his tanned skin.

I gazed at the pool. It was tempting, particularly after days of hard trudging through heat and dust. I dipped my toe in the water and then, after a moment’s deliberation, pulled my shirt off.

“What—” Khine started, before turning away. “Warn me first, dammit!”

I removed the rest of my clothes and dropped into the water up to my chest. “Oh,” I said softly as I imagined the layers of dirt falling off. I turned to see him begin swimming away. “What, Khine?”

“Nothing,” he murmured.

“You’re allowed to, but I’m not?”

“I didn’t say that,” he bristled.

“If my lack of modesty offends you…”

“Just…just keep away. About an arm’s length or so.” He flailed about in the water to show me exactly how far. His idea of “an arm’s length” came out to about five.

I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. “Afraid of what Rayyel will say?”

“And Agos, and your whole damn nation while we’re at it.” He took a deep breath. “You, being with you…isn’t safe, as I think you’re well aware.”

“That didn’t stop you from wanting to ride with me alone.” I dipped my hair in the water and began running my fingers through the strands to wash it.

Khine grinned lopsidedly. “Not one of my wiser choices.”

I paused, staring at the water so I didn’t have to stare at him. “How are we, Khine?”

He hesitated. “What do you mean?”

“When we left Anzhao, I felt like…like we weren’t how we used to be.”

“I wasn’t aware we had a history.”

“You know what I mean.”

Khine cupped the water with his hands and stared at it as he replied. “I just…I don’t know how to feel about you lately. Learning you were a queen was one thing. We were running from Lo Bahn then, and you were still…you. Tali, the same woman I met on the streets of Shang Azi. But then your guards found you, and you put on this mask of authority and arrogance that I don’t know how to deal with. Queen Talyien of Jin-Sayeng, with her carelessness and devil-may-care attitude and blatant disregard for others…she makes me angry, Tali. And I don’t even know if it’s fair to put that on you.”

“You know it’s all an act.”

“If it’s all an act, what lies behind it? Do you even know? Have you discarded who you really are because you’re not who you think you’re supposed to be?”

“You wear lots of masks yourself,” I said. “Those cons you pull, or when you pretend to fawn over Lo Bahn and the rest of them when anyone can look at your eyes and see what you’re really thinking.”

“A big difference,” Khine said. “I can apologize and pay back what I took, maybe laugh it off the same day. Can you bring people back from the dead?”

I grimaced. It was not a subject I really wanted to discuss in detail. “Kora was a traitor. Biala Chaen…”

“These words hold no meaning for me. What about Eridu?”

“I didn’t want him dead.”

“Agos thought it was necessary to kill him to protect you. You could’ve seen that. You should have.” Khine sighed, water dripping down his chin. “I’m sorry,” he grumbled. “I’ve upset you. I’m…this is exactly why Jia left me. Tashi Reng Hzi made a diagnosis. Diarrhea of the mouth.” His eyes looked distant.

“I’ve heard there’s no cure for that.”

“None that I know of. I’m still looking.”

I heard my father’s voice in the back of my head. You do not owe this peasant an explanation. The Ikessars surrounded themselves with peasants. Do you want to know how well that turned out for them?

“Thank you for your counsel, Khine,” I said. “I will consider it.”

“That mask again,” he mused.

“Doesn’t it suit me?”

His eyes were dancing. “No.”

I smiled. “But it’s all I know. What else is there for me?”

“Can’t you discard it? Bury it. You’re fine without it, you know.”

“You make it sound so easy, like I can just walk away from the world my father had built for me even before I first drew breath.” I looked away. “My grandmother was his wife, too, you know. His second wife, the one who bore him no children. My mother’s mother.”

“What?” There was a note of disgust on his voice.

“It’s not what you think. My grandmother left him for another man. During the War of the Wolves, he caught up with her and found that she had been keeping a daughter secret all this time—this man’s daughter, born long before Yeshin married her. Yeshin seized her by the time she had her first blood—a tribute, he called it, recompense for my grandmother’s lies. My mother wasn’t even sixteen by the time I was born.”

“Spirits,” Khine breathed.

“This isn’t common practice,” I said. “Not in Jin-Sayeng. There are no rules forbidding it, but everyone else thought—in secret—that it was a crime against the gods. But Warlord Yeshin had a vengeful streak, an anger that ran deep. He could wield it like a weapon, and he wielded it well. I think my grandmother died not long after my mother died of childbirth. Died in grief for her daughter, for the sorry fate she had fallen into. Even now, people won’t speak of it, not where I can hear anyway.” I paused. “I don’t believe I remember my mother’s name. I must’ve known, once.”

I turned to Khine. “I’m not trying to gain your sympathy,” I continued. “I just wanted to show you the construct of my entire life, how I’m still dancing to the tune made by a man who has been dead for sixteen years. I can’t stop the music. I wouldn’t know how to, not without throwing away the few things in the world that are dear to me. My husband, once. My son, Thanh. I can play the part of a queen well, Khine, but deep inside…I don’t know. I’ve always known I’m not Yeshin—not half of what he was—but I couldn’t even be someone who could erase the pain and sorrow he brought to the world.”

“Then abdicate.”

I took a deep breath. It ached to admit how beautiful the word sounded. “My enemies would love that,” I murmured. “I bare my neck and half a dozen warlords will come running to tear my jugular out before turning on each other. And they certainly just won’t let my son, the heir of two clans, walk away.” I swallowed. “You see, Lamang, I do know how things are, as opposed to the way I think they should be. I’ve always known. I stopped dreaming of a quiet life with my husband and son years ago.”

The cave echoed with our words. I shook my head, hating how much I had spilled over the course of a few minutes. He didn’t need to hear all of that. “Are there no village girls waiting for you in Phurywa?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

He sniffed. “Between the ones I scared off and the ones related to me…”

“It’s a serious question.”

Khine paused for a moment. “You know the answer to that. Jia was…the first.”

“And last.” I swallowed, sliding deeper into the pool until my jaw touched the water. I watched the surface ripple with my breath. “You never tried to find her?”

“I don’t think she would appreciate seeing me again. Not after the things I’ve said. Besides,” he mused, “Kyan Jang is very far from here.”

“Is that why you were happy about that airship route?”

My question caught him off guard. Khine looked startled. “I didn’t consider that,” he admitted. “To be honest, when she said goodbye, that was it for me. I knew we could never go back to what it was. I recall saying good riddance. The last thing I would ever say to her. And not the worst, by far.”

His voice sounded so broken that without realizing it, I had forgotten his request and started swimming up to him. He turned towards me; this time, he didn’t try to keep his distance. He allowed me to approach him, drawing both of us deeper into the shadows.

“Let’s stay here forever,” I said. I meant it lightly, teasing. But somehow it came out just as broken as his voice. Here we were—two rejects trying to run away, at least for a time. Was even the talk of escape so unforgivable? Could I sink the shackles of my life in this pool, and not drown with them?

I expected him to laugh at my words. “Why not?” he asked instead, echoing my thoughts. He looked straight into my eyes as he said it, with a gaze so intense I felt a shiver run through me. I was close enough that he could reach out with both hands and pull me to his chest if he wanted to. I think I wanted him to.

The water rumbled. I turned around in time to see an enormous scaled jaw, filled to the brim with razor-sharp teeth, smash along the mouth of the cave.

The horses panicked. I swam up to the ledge to reach for my sword and the thing slammed into the cliff behind the waterfall. It gave me a moment to see a gigantic fish-like form slide past the cave opening, half in and half out of the water. Wet feathers dotted the creature’s scales, which formed into a crest above its head. The creature reminded me of a shark crossed with a bird, a thing that looked like it could both swim and fly. I cursed my luck, imagining what the warlords would say when they learned I’d been found in the belly of some unknown beast. Yeshin’s legacy, indeed.

The beast made no sound as it dropped to the bottom of the river. I didn’t know if the pool was deep enough for a creature of its size to follow us into the cave; I couldn’t see into the thickness of the blue water, and I didn’t want to wait to find out. I sidled along the ledge with my sword in hand, past the screaming horses, and paused, waiting. I could feel the water gurgling around me, shadows moving where they ought to be still.

“Tali—” I heard Khine call.

“Get back!” I screamed.

The horses strained on their ropes just as the enormous shadow rose from the surface. It struck the mouth of the cave, making the walls vibrate. I caught a flash of its throat, with black gills covered by a fringe of feathers. As it dove back into the water, I stabbed right into its gills, feeling the blade catch on gnarly scale and bone. I twisted the sword, and was rewarded by a hiss and dark blood spreading through the water like a cloud.

I pulled back and the creature lashed out, its teeth snapping once on empty air.

I readied my sword a second time. The beast returned; two sets of yellow eyes gleamed like piercing candlelight. It slammed straight into the granite, its massive jaws scraping along the edges before pressing against the mouth of the cave, dislodging a flurry of rocks from overhead. I was afraid for a moment that the whole cave would collapse on top of us.

But the creature had other plans. It pushed its tongue out instead, through its rows of jagged teeth, like a child trying to lick the last bit of honey from a pot. I drew back as the tongue went past me, straight towards the closest horse. The frightened creature tried to bolt. The appendage wrapped itself around the horse’s neck and pulled, dragging the horse into the water.

I sank my sword into the base of the creature’s tongue, where blood vessels spread like a pulsating spider’s web. The creature turned its head away from the cave, but it didn’t let go of the horse. The horse stared helplessly back at me. I reached out of the water to grab the ropes, but the bridle snapped as the creature began to beat its feathered fins like wings. Little whorls of air appeared above the water—a moment later, it was soaring through the clouds, taking the horse with it.

I walked past the trail of blood for the other horses. “There, there,” I murmured, the words meant to soothe myself. The shaking was starting. I dropped the sword so I could place both of my hands on the warmth of the nearest mottled neck.

“Tali,” Khine breathed.

I turned. He was still in the water, and there was a look on his face that went beyond terror over what had just occurred. I realized I was still naked, with blood all over me. Modesty returned. I felt my cheeks burn as I slowly slid back into the water. The attack had lasted barely more than a few heartbeats, but I was suddenly so exhausted.

“How many more of those out there?”

“Probably just the one,” Khine started. He cleared his throat and turned away from me. “It’s, ah…a rare and solitary creature, or so I’ve heard. Never seen one until today, actually. It’s extremely territorial. I doubt there’s another in the area. Are—are you hurt?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“You’re shaking.”

“Nerves. I’ll be all right. It happens all the time.”

“You’ve a gash…on your arm there…” He gestured, but made no movement to come closer.

I looked down. I didn’t notice it before. “It’s not serious,” I said. “I think I got caught on the rocks there. It could have been worse. Did you see the size of those teeth?”

“Yes. Teeth. I was looking at the teeth.” He swallowed. “We should get dressed and pick another spot for the night. The blood might attract other beasts.”

He scratched his cheek before getting out. I turned away. There was rustling as he put his clothes on, and then footsteps. I looked up and saw him place my own clothes closer to me. “Before you catch a cold,” he grumbled.

I felt embarrassed all of a sudden—whatever spell I had been under in the water was broken by the gesture. “Thank you,” I managed to croak out.

Khine mumbled something I couldn’t hear before walking out of the cave.

With only two horses left, and one burdened with supplies, we decided to walk the rest of the way. Khine had wanted to ride double, but I wasn’t going to do that to a horse, not with at least another day ahead of us.

The added complication meant another one or two days of delay. It was a good thing, at least, that the fish-bird beast—Khine said they called it a kunuti in Lay Weng Shio—didn’t drag the saddlebags with it. We still had enough rice and dried fish to last another week. But Khine didn’t seem worried about the supplies, and I found that I didn’t mind the idea of spending a few extra days with him. After months of trying to track my husband down, I was starting to dread the thought of seeing Rayyel again.

It was a far cry from how I had been three months ago.

“What are you going to say to him this time around?” Khine asked me as we bedded across from each other that night. A fire crackled merrily a few paces away.

“I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

He chuckled. “All this time I’ve known you, I thought you’ve got every step figured out like some brilliant tactician. Lo Bahn’s convinced of it, too.”

“Is he, now? Is that why he made the effort to stab me in the back before I could get one in him?” I smiled softly, knowing he couldn’t see it. “I know how to look like I do. It’s part of the act I’ve played all these years. That first time…I thought I could get Rayyel to listen to me. That I could somehow explain everything, holding on to that thin thread of hope. And why shouldn’t I? He was my husband, no matter what else we were. We had shared a bed together. A life. I was convinced for the longest time that there had to have been something in that, that it meant something.” The painful thoughts resurfaced. I pushed back at them with expert ease.

“What was it like after he left?”

I thought about the question, biting back every sarcastic thing that came to mind. “Hard,” I finally admitted.

“I thought you were adamant that you didn’t need him around.”

I stared at the dancing flames, my chin on my knee. “I don’t know if having him would’ve changed anything,” I said. “But it would’ve made things more tolerable. Rayyel and I…we are little more than puppets, propped up between the warlords to stop them from tearing into each other. Those first few hours were chaos. We thought he went straight to Warlord Lushai—they’d seen him hire a carriage to take him east. As soon as we could, we rode out there with every intention of accusing the Baraji clan of treason. But Lushai welcomed us with open arms. We ransacked his castle from top to bottom, searched every room and larder. There was no sign of Rayyel.”

“What did Chiha say?” Khine asked.

I didn’t even think he’d remember her name. Akaterru knows, I’ve tried to forget it often enough. “That bitch,” I said. “She was there. Her room was the first thing I searched. She just stood there while I threw the sheets aside and looked under the bed, smiling ever so smugly.”

“That’s suspicious of her.”

“I thought so, too. She was hiding something, but whatever it was, I couldn’t find it. ‘Missing a husband, Queen Talyien?’ I remember her asking me. ‘Hard to imagine how you could misplace a man.’”

Khine started to laugh, and then thought the better of it when I stared at him. “It was all I could do not to strike her,” I continued, as if I hadn’t been interrupted. “She was still Lushai’s daughter and an affront like that would’ve been hard to justify, at least not without revealing what I knew.”

“I’ve wondered about that,” Khine said. “I hope it’s not too forward to ask you.”

“We’ve come this far.”

“You would’ve saved everyone a lot of trouble just telling everyone what Rayyel did. Yet you kept it to yourself, allowed them to blame you instead.”

“There would’ve been more trouble had I accused Rai of anything. The way it played out, they only thought the worst of me—they couldn’t prove it.”

“But see, he doesn’t even know that you know. Or else how could he stand to accuse you as he did? Why didn’t you tell him?”

“A wolf of Oren-yaro…” I began.

“Ah, right. This ridiculous notion of your people that you can bear more than others because of your bloodline or who you serve. You Jinseins are so hard to understand sometimes.”

“You have ideals, too.”

“But they’re my own. Not anyone else’s. Certainly not passed down to me by ancestors who don’t care a lick about how they would ruin my life.”

“It’s so easy for you to say. You don’t—”

I stopped. I could hear something moving in the dark, and thought for a moment that perhaps the kunuti had returned. The trees rustled and I heard it again—a deep, low groan, rather like a dog who couldn’t decide whether to growl or bark.

I gathered my bedroll and plopped down beside Khine. Evidently, he thought this was too close and tried to inch further away.

“You’ve got to stop acting like that, you know,” I said. “I’m not going to order you to sleep with me. I just thought it would be safer if one of us was close enough to stop the other from getting dragged off into the woods.”

“The thought never even occurred to me.”

“Never?”

He stared as I began to spread the bedroll on the ground. “Er, order me to?”

“That’s what everyone thinks happened. They think I deliberately sample my guardsmen every turn of the moon. There was a time after I was crowned that every single meeting would devolve into these accusations. Not to my face, mind, but you could see them thinking it when they spoke to me. They—and some of them were friends of my father—sometimes hinted I could…widen my tastes, perhaps add warlord to the menu.” I shook my head in disgust.

“I’ve underestimated you. You knew how to handle Lo Bahn from the beginning.”

I gave a small smile. “That’s why Nor was appointed as my Captain of the Guard. Magister Arro made the call, insisted it was better I was shadowed by someone related to me instead of another whose name they could drag to the dust like they did Agos’s. I shouldn’t have asked Agos to disappear that night. But I was afraid Rayyel would find him and that one of them would get killed. Would Agos stand by and just let Rayyel run him through with a sword out of devotion to me? Or would Agos crush my husband’s skull with his bare fists? I didn’t want to find out. I cared for them both. I don’t have a lot of people in my life, Khine. I don’t want to lose either.

“But it became clear to anyone that his disappearance meant something. He had been by my side ever since he was appointed Captain of the Guard at Oka Shto. He had a house in Oren-yaro—they tore it apart and torched it. I never could find out who was responsible—I suspected the Ikessars, but I didn’t have proof. I was told later on that it was done for love of the queen. Like I would ever order such a thing. He couldn’t show his face again, could never enter the service of another warlord—not with me as queen of Jin-Sayeng. Everything he was…gone overnight.”

“So you keep him around because of guilt,” Khine said, like he had stumbled onto a rare realization.

I shrugged.

“On the other hand, he would’ve done a commendable job back in the cave,” he continued.

I glared at him.

“I meant with the kunuti,” Khine stammered.

“Some soldier you’ll make. Those nerves…”

“My nerves are fine. It’s running across monstrous beasts I’ll have to get used to. You seem to have a knack for attracting them.” He shook his head. “It was cowardly that I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do and then it was over really fast.”

“I see. The true reason Jia left you.”

“I walked right into that one.”

I closed my eyes. “I’ll need to teach you to use that damn sword Lo Bahn gave you one of these days.”

“All right,” he said.

“I was expecting you to protest.”

When Khine didn’t reply, I cracked open one eye. I realized he had fallen asleep, arms crossed over his chest, the back of his head on the tree trunk behind him. I stared at this man and wondered when my fear of him had turned to trust. After a moment, I placed my head on his shoulder. He shifted slightly and cleared his throat, but he didn’t pull away this time.

The night wore on. The sun came up. We broke camp and went on our way.