Darkwind, p.15
Darkwind, page 15
Cistine sighed, taking her bags from his fists. “No. I won’t let him intimidate me.”
“It’s not intimidation that worries me. It’s that he’ll hurt you.”
“He could’ve done that already,” Cistine said. “He could’ve killed me rather than making peace.”
Julian ruffled a hand back through his hair. “Just be careful.”
“I will be.” Cistine stretched up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “I had a good time tonight.”
“So did I,” Julian said. “But don’t get too comfortable with nights like these, Princess. We’re not here on retreat. Time is still working against us.”
Cistine bit back the retort that he hadn’t seemed so worried about wasting precious time when he was flirting with barmaids and gambling for mynts in Veran. It wasn’t the right time for an argument, anyway.
But his comment put her in the perfect mood to face Thorne.
The cabal’s leader occupied the head seat at the table, nursing a bowl of stew. Something about the sight of him eating—after she’d seen him with a blade in his hand, or commanding a room of bloodthirsty warriors—seemed unusually domestic.
It was the face of his companion that made her heart truly sink.
The old woman occupied the same chair as when she’d kept Cistine company during her meal earlier that day. The same calm smile turned her features, too. But she and Thorne were eating in the darkness together, so close to Cistine’s room—as if they’d been waiting for her return.
Cistine avoided their eyes as she sidled past the table and hurried toward sanctuary.
“Baba Kallah tells me you two became acquainted today,” Thorne said.
The name stopped Cistine in her tracks.
She’d heard it before: Ariadne had asked Thorne if he’d spoken to Kallah before he’d treated with Cistine.
Slowly, she turned back toward the table.
Thorne’s face was impassive as ever. He didn’t lay into her with accusations, so it seemed Baba Kallah had kept her word, and Thorne had no idea Cistine had overheard his clandestine meeting.
The old woman speared her cane across the table, pushing out a chair. “Come. Sit.”
Her tone was warm, but the words were steel. Cistine clutched the bags in her shaking fist and slowly sank down in the offered chair, keeping her eyes on Baba Kallah. “We’ve met. She made me supper.”
“Good,” Thorne said. “She seems to approve of you.”
“Someone with manners in this house of bandits?” Baba Kallah laughed. “Oh, I more than approve.”
Cistine flared her nostrils, fighting a smile. Thorne shook his head and returned his focus to the stew.
“And how was your shopping excursion, Yani?” Baba Kallah asked.
Another word to add to the list stashed under her pillow, which reminded Cistine of the merches Thorne had slaughtered and the name they’d called him. She tucked both away for later questioning. “It went well, once Tatiana warmed up to me. She’s certainly…loquacious.”
“No more than the woman who describes someone as loquacious,” Thorne said.
Cistine resisted the urge to jut her tongue at him. “At least I won’t be fighting in a dress tomorrow.”
Thorne’s eyes flicked up, gleaming with cool interest. “Let’s see them.”
Cistine laid the training armor on the table, relieved to know it was clean since she’d wiped and polished it herself. Thorne cleaned his mouth on his wrist and got to his feet, moving beside her to peer down at the threads.
Cistine braced herself to be told that armor from his kingdom wouldn’t fit a body from hers, but at least she knew these were quality threads—Tatiana, Quill, and Julian had all assured her of that. She’d almost chosen a pair of winter pajamas, assuming the floaty material was meant for training in the hot sun.
Thorne smoothed his hands over the lightweight vambraces, guards, and belly plate. His thumb followed the curve of the sternum cover, which angled down between the breasts. He frowned as he rubbed a shred of fabric between his thumb and forefinger. “Good. But leave off the bracers and coverings when you wear it at first. They’ll weigh you down, and you won’t need them until you learn to take a blow.”
Cistine almost tipped over in shock. “Take one?”
Baba Kallah nodded. “Everyone must take a blow if they’re going to give one.”
“I didn’t agree to bruises and broken bones!”
“And your opponents will never ask you to. So take the blows well,” Thorne said. “Don’t worry. Quill will come down lightly until you’re truly ready to fight.”
Cistine’s blood throbbed in the creases of her elbows and the backs of her knees. The thought of standing before Kanslar’s Chancellor with a bruise like Quill’s on her cheek—the thought of walking through this kingdom, sore from blows as well as from physical strain—was humiliating beyond belief.
Oh, she would be wearing the coverings. Anything to spare herself from having her kidneys rehomed by a kick from one of Thorne’s death-gods.
She forced herself to smile as she peeled the armor from the table and folded it back into the bag. “Thank you for your advice, High Tribune.”
Thorne frowned at the title, and Baba Kallah thumped the tip of her cane slowly on the floor between her feet. “And how was the rest of your evening, Princess?”
“Well, I cleaned the kitchen.” Neither of them commended her for it. “Oh! And Tatiana showed me the garden.”
Something in her face—or perhaps her tone, which broke with excitement despite her best efforts—made Baba Kallah laugh. “And I take it that was to your liking.”
“It was stunning.” Cistine sat again, sliding her chair closer to the table. “How many varieties of fruits and vegetables have you planted there?”
“Too many.” Thorne returned to his seat as well. “Every year, I warn her and Ariadne we don’t have the resources to delegate to tending that gardening patch. And every year—”
“You eat the produce like a starving man,” Baba Kallah said. “Don’t think I haven’t seen you wandering the trellises, eating peapods off the vines.”
Thorne shrugged. “They’re a fair substitute if you don’t have time for a meal.”
“Well, watch where you step,” Cistine warned. “Those trellises are next to the potato mounds. If you flatten them, you’ll bury the harvest.”
Thorne raised a brow. “Are you a gardener?”
“It’s a hobby of mine, yes.”
Baba Kallah stared at Thorne with wide, earnest eyes, until the silence in the kitchen became uncomfortable. He sulked in his chair, giving no indication he sensed the way her gaze traveled repeatedly between him and Cistine.
“You should retire, Princess,” Thorne said. “Quill will want you at the rock top, fed and dressed, at sunrise.”
Baba Kallah gave up conferring intention to Thorne to smile at Cistine instead, and a rush of warmth stirred her as their gazes met. Baba Kallah reminded her of her own grandmother, who’d helped raise her while the Queen was bound up in royal affairs: a kind, unassuming old woman whose only interest was to help everyone she met.
“If Quill tries to hit you before you’re ready to take the blow,” Baba Kallah purred, “put your knee into his groin.”
Thorne choked on his stew. Cistine burst out laughing, then smothered it with her hand.
No, Kallah was not only a kind old woman. She was an ancient fox in a den of wolves.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE TRAINING ARMOR proved far more flexible and breathable than Cistine’s heavy dresses, though she found it clung to her curves in uncomfortable ways, baring angles she was used to having covered or tamed by a corset. Quill gave her little time to dwell on those things as he forced her to focus on her breathing: how she inhaled when she stretched, when she jogged, and when she labored through the core-strengthening exercises. She was able to walk a bit farther around Hellidom the second day before her blisters drove her mad again, and when Quill slapped her a congratulatory high-five at the end of training Cistine grinned all the way back to the Den.
True to her word, Tatiana was prepared to discuss politics after lunch—but here the conversation adopted a different cadence. Cistine had grown up around legislators and lords; she knew how skillful tongues danced around sensitive subjects, and she quickly realized there was some—perhaps even much—Tatiana kept from her about the inner workings of the Courts.
But the basic sketch was something they could at least lay over the map: five Courts all subsisted within Stornhaz, but only one sat in session at a time. The rest were relegated to weaving connections among the people during the other seasons, cobbling together favors they could call on when their Court sat in session again.
“Each Court has eight Tribunes.” Tatiana tapped the map blanketing their laps as they sat cross-legged on the sofa. “One guess as to why.”
“Eight territories.” Cistine sipped her cup of jasmine tea. “One Tribune to represent each.”
“Precisely,” Tatiana grinned. “Since each territory has five different Tribunes, you’re always bound to have ones you love and ones you hate. Some territories wait an entire year to appeal to the one Tribune they trust with their requests.”
Cistine frowned. “They really have to wait that long?”
Tatiana sighed, tapping her groomed nails gently on the side of her cup. “How much Valgardan lore were you able to get your pampered fingers on before you came here?”
“Not as much as I needed,” Cistine confessed.
“Obviously,” Tatiana chuckled. “Well, I know it’s done differently in your kingdom, but here in the Courts our time doesn’t rise and set with the cycle of life. Stornhaz moves by a different pace, you might say.”
“Show me.”
“I’m not sure I can do justice to it. Even when we lived in the City of a Thousand Stars, let’s just say I was shouldered from the political circle.”
Cistine cocked her head. “You lived in Stornhaz?”
“Yes, but that’s not a story for princesses.” Tatiana tugged the map from Cistine’s legs. “Anything else you want to know?”
Cistine sipped her tea and weighed her words carefully. “If there are eight Tribunes in each Court, which one is High Tribune?”
Tatiana tossed the map onto the bed. “I wondered when this was going to come up.”
Galvanized by her unhostile reaction, Cistine pressed in: “What is Thorne, exactly?”
“Once, he was a successor. High Tribunes are groomed to replace the Chancellor of their Court. They school for ten years or more in Valgardan law. Train with blades. Accrue favors, sit on the Tribunal. And then, when the Chancellor has served as many terms as the Court deems fit for him, he turns over the Judgement Seat to his High Tribune.”
Cistine traced the rim of her mug with her fingernail. “Do all High Tribunes live in cities like Hellidom?”
Tatiana snorted, polished off her own teacup, and set it on the floor. “Not most of them, no.”
“Then why is Thorne here?”
“That’s not my story to tell.”
Cistine tried a different tactic. “As High Tribune, is he the one I should approach about politics?”
“If you’re feeling brave.” Tatiana sprawled out and leaned her neck over the armrest, her nest of curls spilling against the floor. “You seem like a sweet girl, Cistine, so I’ll give you one more piece of insight for free: you should be careful about the questions you ask. There’s probably a very good reason Talheim never told you about us.”
Cistine frowned. “What reason might that be?”
Tatiana lifted her head, peering at Cistine with hooded eyes. “Maybe because, as a whole, this is not a happy kingdom, and there aren’t many happy people in it.”
“Quill seems happy enough.”
Tatiana snorted. “He’s a good liar. If you hit him in the right places, that cheerful armor starts to crack, just like the rest of us.”
“Even you?”
Tatiana’s eyes gleamed. “Unlike the others, I’ve lost little and have less still to lose. That makes life easier.”
Cistine slid her legs from under Tatiana’s, resting her chin on her knees. “I have everything to lose if I fail. Should I be unhappy?”
“No.” Tatiana let her head fall back against the armrest again. “But you should be careful you don’t end up like us. Doing the things we do.”
Something lurked behind Tatiana’s bright, flippant words. Like a lockbox, there was a secret trapped inside. “One more question.”
“Just one?”
Cistine rubbed her hands over the coarse fabric of her training armor. “Was Valgard always unhappy like this? Or was that…our fault? After the war?”
Tatiana gripped the seatback and lifted herself up to look at Cistine. Her eyes were fathoms deep, searching for something. Perhaps for sincerity…or worthiness. Weighing out whether Cistine deserved to know.
Then she went to the bedside table, opened the drawer, and pulled out a small, square note. She returned to the couch and leaned against its sloped back, handing the note to Cistine. “Have you ever seen something like this?”
Cistine studied it closely: it was a drawing of the cabal, all younger, perhaps even younger than Cistine, and it was almost too detailed, too pristine, too colorful to be real. They all had their arms around each other, and there was another girl there, and a man Cistine didn’t recognize.
“Who drew this?” Cistine asked.
“No one,” Tatiana said. “It’s called a photograph. Something you don’t have in the Middle and Southern Kingdoms. Something we don’t have anymore, either.”
“But how is it made?”
“By a lightbox that bends an image and makes an impression on special paper. But you can’t make that much light in a small space naturally. You needed an augment to do it.”
Cistine dropped the note. “This was made with augmentation?”
“Most of Valgard owes its shapes and angles to augments, one way or another.” Tatiana picked the picture up. “We used it to power our cities. Our machines. They harvested it by the vat back when I was a child. Now we’re relegated to ghostplants and candles again. We have to use watermills to filter our rivers.”
“So do we.”
“And that’s all you’ve ever known, so you’re used to it. I used to know what it was like to turn a knob on the wall and trigger an auger-light that would burn until I turned the knob off again.”
“But that was unnatural,” Cistine said.
“Talheim always thought so. That’s why they marched here with their army and told us to shut the Doors. What they didn’t know was how an entire way of life would change when the way to the gods was gone.”
Cistine glanced at the door. Tatiana’s voice was still level, still calm, but Cistine suddenly felt trapped between the warrior and her memories. “Do you want augmentation to come back, then?”
Tatiana laughed as if the question was absurd. When Cistine didn’t join in, Tatiana’s eyes widened. She stroked a hand through her curls, lifting them and dumping them over the far side of her head. “Unlike some Valgardans, I saw the worst side of what augmentation can do. Was it necessary for the way we lived before? Yes, but it’s not necessary anymore. Believing otherwise is one reason Valgardans can be such miserable, feckless people.”
Cistine let out a slow breath. “I thought you were angry with me.”
“Why would I be? You clearly know nothing about our kingdom. You didn’t march up to Valgard and single-handedly shut the Doors.” Tatiana returned the photograph to the drawer. “It was a mutual agreement between our kingdoms…before you were born, I’d bet.”
“Then why do you sound so…” Cistine trailed off, gesturing helplessly. “Why mention it at all?”
“Because you asked. And because you ought to know what you’re getting into if you’re really going to stand before the Chancellors, like Thorne says.” Tatiana folded her arms and propped her haunches on the small table. “I’ve gotten used to living without auger-lights and augwains. I’m glad I fall asleep to the sounds of the mills instead of harvesters tapping into the augment well below Stornhaz day after day. But not everyone feels that way. Some might even want to make an example of King Cyril’s daughter because he was the one who convinced us to close the Doors at the tip of a sword.”
Cistine rubbed her clammy palms on her armor. “That’s why Thorne agreed I need to train.”
Tatiana’s brows knitted. “Thorne has his reasons for accepting your terms. But training is just common sense. You don’t walk into Stornhaz inexperienced and unarmed, especially if you’re Talheimic.”
It was common sense, and Cistine should have known it. Her steps in this kingdom should have been far better-mapped from the beginning. She certainly would have prepared differently for this mission if she’d known what to expect of Valgard…if her knowledge had come from more than Ashe’s childhood memories and a lifetime of threadbare whispers seeping from behind the Citadel’s closed doors.
Why had her father told her nothing of this place beyond a few tales of war? Cyril expected her to be queen someday, though he knew she resented the throne—and a queen would be tasked to uphold the tentative truce between the kingdoms. Why had he prepared her with a wealth of knowledge about Mahasar, who until recently had been of little threat, and yet left the North so deeply guised in shadow?
Was it because of his guilt, knowing the truce had destroyed an entire kingdom’s way of life and abandoned its struggling people to find a new means of survival?
“Some of us wish things could be safer between Valgard and Talheim,” Tatiana said when Cistine didn’t speak, “but truces aren’t the same as friendship. I knew someone who took a truce once, thinking it made him an ally of the Courts. It didn’t end well for him. For anyone he cared about.”
“What happened?”
Tatiana’s gaze flicked to the door. “There’s a reason Quill sleeps in the light. And why Maleck doesn’t like to travel alone.”
With that, she ended the day’s lesson.
