Darkwind, p.27
Darkwind, page 27
Julian cracked his knuckles. “All right. Let’s search every inch of this place for scorpions.”
Cistine laughed, placing a grateful kiss on his cheek as he started to lift the pelts and search underneath.
“Interesting that his warriors are spread out,” Ashe mused. “This shelter should belong to the women, so there’s no gap between Thorne and his cabal.”
Trust Ashe to think of that. Cistine’s heart twisted as she looked around the small cave, comfortably able to house three. Clearly, the living arrangements had been this way for some time, with the cabal neatly divided into pairs—except for Thorne and one other. One who had been forced to sleep alone and encased here, where Thorne could keep an eye on him.
This shelter had once belonged to Aden.
Cistine barely had time to sort through their rations from Hellidom—or remove her boots from her tired feet—before Tatiana returned to the camp. Cistine knew she’d arrived by the sound of Quill yelling insults across Villmark. Tatiana shouted him off, and then Cistine heard her storming closer to their shelter.
“I’ll be right back.” She hurried outside and nearly slammed into Tatiana in the entrance.
“What are you doing here?” Tatiana snapped.
Cistine grabbed her elbow. “If you want to have this conversation without someone leaping to defend my honor, let’s talk in your shelter, not mine.”
Tatiana’s mouth clamped shut. Hands in fists, she stalked to the tumble of rocks on the right. Cistine hurried after her.
It was easy to tell who slept where in this shelter: one half was pristine, not even a hair of the speckled pelt displaced. The other was disarrayed with piles of clothes, weapons, and half-finished rations in leaf beds. But the pillows met in the middle, and Cistine could envision the two women lying with their heads together, talking deep into the night.
Cistine skirted the mess on Tatiana’s side and sat. “How did you know I was here?”
“Quill sent Faer with a message,” Tatiana said. “I thought it had to be his latest prank. I told myself there was no conceivable possibility a stars-forsaken princess was foolish enough to run her hardly-trained hide off to the Vaszaj Range and intercept a battle brigade. It just wasn’t possible. Or so I thought.”
“Did Quill tell you why we’re here?”
“It doesn’t matter! Cistine, listen to me…” Tatiana shifted and grimaced, massaging her still-healing shoulder. “The Vassora put an arrow into me. This is not training. These are not games. This is a real mission, where lives can be lost. What do you suppose King Cyril would do to us if his precious daughter died on Valgardan soil?”
Cistine wavered, sinking her fingers into the pelt to steady herself. Death was terrible enough—hers or her friends’. But she hadn’t entertained the possibility her father might hold Valgard at fault if the unthinkable happened. That the possibility of war against King Jad might somehow be made to marry with a blow of retribution against the North for the death of Talheim’s only princess. “I didn’t think of that.”
“I’m beginning to understand that’s a habit of yours.” Tatiana dropped cross-legged before her, taking her hands. “Cistine, you must start thinking of your life as a prize. Stars know the entire rest of the world does. Either they love you, or they love the power that comes with your title. I’m going to tell you the same thing we always tell Thorne: get a hold of yourself and stop believing you’re expendable.”
“I don’t…” Cistine paused. “Does Thorne really believe that?”
“His father certainly didn’t inspire him to think any differently. The number of times he’s almost died, pulling one of us from a raid…too many to count. We have enough on our hands with that. Stop trying to best him for recklessness.”
“I’ll keep it in check,” Cistine said.
“Good. Because you are too pretty and far, far too amusing to waste on an early grave.”
Cistine rolled her eyes. “Tatiana the Flirter has returned.”
“Admit it. You’re flattered.” Though Tatiana’s tone was light, her face remained stern. “But hear what I’m saying, Cistine. You’re better-trained, you’re wiser than you were, but this is still a dangerous kingdom. Especially in a place like this.”
Cistine tilted her head. “How so?”
Tatiana shifted to sit next to Cistine so they both faced the hovel’s entrance. “There’s a reason these archers aren’t trusted members of the cabal. They’re trained, and they’ve agreed to help Thorne, but they’re also unpredictable. They’re not loyal to peace or justice, just to the thought of paying back the Courts for slights over the years. So you have to be careful where you step and what you say to them.”
“Where did they come from?”
“Territories all over,” Tatiana said. “When Thorne’s reputation as a bandit leader grew, it attracted people from every corner of Valgard. Quill trained them in archery mostly, because aside from him, none of us are particularly good shots.”
“But…Thorne trusts them. So they must have good character.”
“Let me put it this way.” Tatiana brushed the hair from Cistine’s shoulder. “If they’d been the ones to find you in the forest, they might’ve shot you without question.”
Cistine’s stomach clenched. “Oh.”
“That’s what I mean about knowing what you’re getting yourself into. It’s why I’m frankly ready to drown you for setting foot out here.”
“But what’s done is done,” Cistine said. “We aren’t going back. So you’re just going to have to find a way to accept our presence here.”
Tatiana’s tongue poked from the corner of her mouth as she measured Cistine. “Spending time with Thorne hasn’t been good for you.”
Cistine laughed. “At least we can still agree on that. But I am flattered you care.”
“Not about you. About what it means to the cabal if you die. So many wasted hours.”
Cistine scoffed. “You do care! Admit it.”
“Never.”
Boots scraped the stone outside, and Quill shouted into the hovel, “Thorne’s called a meeting! You’re holding everyone up, Saddlebags!”
“Now that you’re out here, you’re holding them up, too!” Tatiana barked back. To Cistine, she added, “Just stay in the camp unless one of us is with you. And try not to ruffle any feathers.”
“That, I can promise.”
Tatiana squeezed her shoulder and swaggered out to meet Quill, engaging in a festival of banter that trailed away as they walked to Thorne’s shelter. Cistine slipped out after them and stood embraced by sunlight, trying to think of things she could do: change into comfortable clothes, sort out her armor, maybe eat something. She might even try to be friendly with the archers and learn what it was like to serve as scouts under the command of a High Tribune in hiding.
But she found herself crossing the camp anyway, kicking over a stump near Thorne’s shelter and planting herself on it. She pulled out Nail and examined its edge, trying to look busy to any passing archers while she listened to the murmurs coming from the stone hovel.
“Obviously, flagons considered, we can’t attack them in the passes,” Ariadne was saying—Thorne had clearly laid out Cistine’s report already. “We’ll have to wait for them to descend into the lowlands now.”
“Blaykrone lowlands, Ari,” Quill said. “Think about it—a battle on that terrain, with flagons…especially where the road leads?”
“Casualties are almost guaranteed in that scenario,” Thorne said. “And I for one am not prepared for that.”
“If we fight in the mountains, casualties are absolutely guaranteed,” Ariadne snapped.
“But we asked for this fight,” Maleck said. “The people of this territory did not.”
“Then what do you suggest we do? Traipse into their trap?”
The telltale sound of a snapped cinnamon stick echoed from inside, and then Quill’s voice: “Cistine gave us something valuable here. It is still a trap…but now we know what to expect from it. That gives us the advantage.”
“We can choose the battle on our own terms,” Tatiana agreed. “We decide how and where we confront these guards and their flagons.”
“Keep the battle high,” Thorne said, “up in the mountains, where we can outmaneuver them.”
Ariadne murmured, “You’re not suggesting what I think you are.”
“The Izten Torkat,” Quill said. “We’ll send them down the Throat of God.”
“If we trap them in that pass, they’ll have very little room to move,” Tatiana said.
“That’s brilliant—but neither will we,” Ariadne argued. “There’s a reason most caravans take a week to cross the Throat alone. You’ve all seen how narrow that pass is.”
“That’s where we hold the advantage, Ari,” Quill insisted. “We’ll swoop in ahead and lay a trap of our own. Cluster all the carts together and break them in half, one by one, while they’re still expecting us on the lowlands.”
“The advantage of surprise, and of preparation,” Thorne agreed.
“Not to mention,” Tatiana said, “the flagons. If we manage not to rupture them…and if we can kill the Vassora before anyone uses them…”
“Stop talking,” there was a grin heavy in Quill’s words, “or I’ll start drooling.”
“It would be a windfall,” Thorne said. “But our focus isn’t on the rewards. We need to capture the surgeons for questioning. Everything else, even the flagons, comes second.”
“But you still won’t have this fight in the lowlands,” Ariadne muttered.
The silence was frigid. Cistine tensed.
“Don’t let this face I wear fool you, Ariadne,” Thorne said. “You know what lies behind it.”
Cistine sheathed Nail, got to her feet, and hurried away. She didn’t know if that ended the conversation, but she didn’t think she wanted to know anything more about the face Thorne wore—or what was lurking under its polished surface.
CHAPTER THIRTY
A HAND ON her shoulder rocked Cistine awake from that dream again: King Jad stalking her with a vial of poison in his fist, a shadow following her from the Den, never content to allow her a moment’s peace. She was almost glad to roll over and see Maleck crouched beside her, his quiet eyes half-masted in the shelter’s dimness.
“Patrol,” he murmured. “Thorne’s orders.”
Cistine groaned, pushing herself up on the thick pelt. Despite its softness, she felt the hard ground beneath—and that, just as much as the conversation she’d overheard outside Thorne’s shelter, had kept her tossing and turning all night. Now her joints were stiff and her muscles ached as she reached for her training armor. “Is this his idea of punishment?”
“Mine. And it isn’t punishment. It’s a privilege.”
Unsteady movement behind Maleck caught Cistine’s eye. Ashe was also awake, pulling on her boots.
“I’m going with you,” she said at Cistine’s questing whine. “Hellidom was one thing. But here in the wilds, where we were attacked before? Not a chance you go alone, Princess.”
Maleck drew himself swiftly to his feet. “I’ll wait for you outside.”
Still bemoaning her exhaustion, Cistine yanked on her training armor and crawled to Julian. He still slept soundly, as if he was already used to these conditions, and barely stirred when she brushed his hair aside and planted a kiss on his temple.
“Ashe and I are going on patrol,” she whispered against his ear. “We’ll be back soon.”
He grunted, burrowing his face more tightly into the soft fur. Grinning, Cistine ducked outside to join Ashe and Maleck in the bruise-blue darkness before dawn.
Though it was early, Cistine immediately spotted Quill and Ariadne limbering up with several archers for training. Tatiana sat outside her shelter, wrapped in an emerald robe and sipping a cup of tea while she browsed a map. Thorne was nowhere to be seen.
“What is this place, exactly?” Ashe asked as Maleck led them into the thick shawl of foliage that wrapped the hills around Villmark.
“During the war against the Middle Kingdom, there were training camps like this one all over Valgard.” Maleck held aside a low-hanging branch for the women to pass under. “Most were never plundered. They remain good outposts for people like us.”
“To what end? Another war?”
Maleck squinted into the trees. “This is where the lesson begins.” He gestured them to a halt, then nodded to Cistine. “What do you hear?”
Cistine put several paces between herself and the two warriors. She closed her eyes, fending off exhaustion and surliness at the early hour. And she listened.
At first, the silence was all she could focus on, because she knew it was a trick. She knew Villmark was behind her, and she ought to be able to hear movement of some kind; but not even a whisper of conversation passed through the trees six yards away.
Another gift Thorne was unwittingly giving to her: silence so she could concentrate.
The wind stirred the pines, humming through the steep crags, resonating like a woodwind instrument. Somewhere in the gaps between the thick, gnarled trunks, something rooted among the fallen needles. Distantly, water burbled along a streambed.
Cistine whispered these things to Maleck as she noticed them. Of the wind in the mountains, she told him the most.
“It reminds me of a symphony my father took me to in Astoria,” she said. “Those different peaks and rises in the sound…it’s just like instruments. Like the mountain passes are God’s own symphony, playing for anyone who has time to listen.”
Maleck sighed, and Cistine’s ears heated; perhaps she’d said too much or hadn’t sounded enough like a warrior. She turned back to face her companions and found Ashe already staring at Maleck—who’d closed his eyes and turned his face into the wind, a faint crease seaming his brows.
“There are times,” Maleck said, “when I realize I am…not as much a part of this world as the others. I don’t notice everything. Sounds, I don’t always hear. I’m too much in my mind.”
Ashe frowned, but Cistine didn’t move. She couldn’t. Her heart was slowly breaking in her chest.
This was what Thorne meant when he’d said Maleck was broken in places. But until this moment, she hadn’t realized he knew. That perhaps he even understood just how different he was, and how differently the others perceived him because of it.
“But,” Maleck went on, “the way you describe it, I can hear it…like the orchestras that play in Stornhaz. Long ago, I made my home in the rafters above the music hall. Their practices lulled me to sleep each night.”
“Which instrument was your favorite?” Cistine asked.
“The piano. Such power in its make, and yet the music it produced was sweeter than any other.”
Cistine smiled. “I liked the violins, myself. I asked my father to buy me one after my first symphony.”
“And you were terrible,” Ashe teased. “It put a bad taste in my mouth about music for weeks.”
“There are no terrible students, you know…only terrible teachers.”
Maleck finally stirred from his reverie, facing Ashe. “You taught her?”
“I tried,” Ashe said. “But I hadn’t picked up an instrument in years. I was rusty, and she was a nightmare.”
“I thought you played beautifully,” Cistine protested.
Ashe laughed. “Which was all the proof I needed that you were unteachable.”
Maleck led them into the trees. “It’s good you have one another. An anchor of that nature is invaluable. It can keep you from drifting if you forget who you are.”
Cistine wondered how far he had drifted. How lost he truly was, and didn’t let the others see.
“Don’t be dramatic,” Ashe said. “You have an anchor, too.”
“Do I?”
“In Thorne, yes. You’re here to guard his back. I can tell by the way you move around him…always trying to get between him and any kind of threat. Even if it’s someone talking about him when he’s not in the room.”
Cistine stared at Ashe. She hadn’t noticed Maleck’s movements so keenly. In fact, many times she’d tried not to notice him.
“You’re watching out for him,” Ashe continued, “just like I watch out for Cistine.”
Maleck said nothing. But the way his mouth twitched, it seemed he fought not to smile.
Their time on patrol passed with the climbing sun, but Cistine barely noticed, her attention consumed by Maleck and Ashe’s instructions: how to track by pawprints, scat, and broken branches through the undergrowth, and which berries were poisonous and which could be eaten.
“I remember some of this from my books,” Cistine said as they paused to gather handfuls of blackberries from a thorny bush. “But it’s good to see it in practice.”
“Knowledge is a powerful ally,” Maleck said, “but, unapplied, it can leave a person puffed up and useless.”
Cistine pondered that as she followed the warriors up a sharp incline behind the bush. Perhaps Maleck was right—and perhaps she herself had been the most puffed up and useless pupil in all the kingdoms combined.
She’d always craved knowledge...but to what end? She’d never imagined herself applying the things she knew. She’d never even considered how her knowledge might serve the people when she became queen. It was simply how she’d passed the time, made friends, and kept up conversation in the Citadel: by being the woman who always had an answer for everything, the smartest one in the room, brimming with arbitrary facts her handmaids and guests tittered over.
Embarrassment stabbed Cistine so sharply, she caught her breath, then whispered to herself, “No,” just to halt her mortification in its tracks.
How simple she was. A child who’d desperately wanted approval from those she would one day be forced to rule. She’d abused knowledge and gossiped endlessly to make herself feel important and secure in a kingdom where everything was being chosen for her. In the symphony of Astoria, she’d been a cymbal clashing loudly off-beat, while everyone was beholden to tell her she made the loveliest music.
