I won’t lie; I found myself tempted to tighten my grip until my fingers touched.
“I am the Count of Tolamer,” I said. “I’m a stallion, not a mare. I’m not asking your permission; I’m giving you an order.”
Despite his advantage in height, I still lifted him a few inches off the ground. He also blocked the line of sight his people might have used to shoot me.
“Uh … Count?” Dorna said. “I hate to interrupt your flirting, but you ought to see to the children—”
I glanced over. The soldiers were pointing their weapons at Dorna and Brother Qown and, yes, even Arasgon, although the nervous look in their eyes suggested they were less certain about the wisdom of threatening the enormous fireblood.
“Tell your people to back down,” I said to Dedreugh. “Or they can watch as I rip your jaw from your face and choke you with your own tongue.5 You don’t use that tone with a count. Nor do you raise weapons against those under my protection. Do you understand me?” I paused as he made strangling sounds. “Blink if you do.”
His fingers plucked at mine, but he blinked, then gasped and sputtered when I released his neck. “Lower your weapons!” he rasped to the men behind him.
When he finished, he turned back in a heated rage. “On your word, you’ll help me bring these criminals in, or being a count won’t save you.”
I raised an eyebrow, wondering how Barsine Banner’s ruler had been training his people. I remembered the baron as a hard stallion, fonder of the whip than the carrot. If Dedreugh’s attitude proved anything, he’d grown worse over the passing years. “You seem confused, Captain. A baron is lesser ranked than a count. And I already offered to bring them in, didn’t I?”
He backed away, glaring. He had poor thudajé. I had proved my idorrá over him, but he reacted with resentment, not honorable submission to my will. He was a bully, a thorra, one who thought their physical strength was the only strength that mattered when proving their right to dominate. I could see the threat in his stare: Watch your back, or when I get my chance, you’ll suffer for this humiliation.
I narrowed my eyes. Our system had functioned for five hundred years. It worked because people understood their place.
He proved himself less by insisting on idorrá over me. Equally intolerable after I’d already forced him to submit. There have always been those who mistook idorrá and thudajé as synonyms for male and female.
Outsiders make this error.
I would hardly have the right to call myself a count if I’d let someone of such common status treat me thus.
I whistled for Dorna’s horse, Pocket Biter, and Brother Qown’s gelding, Cloud, as I began to lower the deer we’d caught earlier from the tree. “Mare Dorna, Brother Qown, help tie up our friends while these men assist us in breaking camp. Ninavis, you’ll ride Arasgon. I’ll saddle our horses. The rest of you—don’t make trouble.”
The smile on Kalazan’s face surprised me. I remembered his talk of prophecy, of a demon-claimed child. He had no fear. Of course he had no fear—the hero who would deliver them all from Captain Dedreugh and his men had arrived.
I didn’t know if I wanted him to be right.
3: THE BARON’S JUSTICE
Jorat Dominion, Quuros Empire. Two days since the death of Emperor Sandus
“Wait,” Kihrin said. “The firebloods talk? Those horses in the stable can talk?” He pointed behind him for emphasis.
Kihrin had always spoken to Scandal as though she understood him. When he was a boy, he’d treated a cat named Princess the same way. People liked to regard their pets as family. That didn’t mean the animals talked back.
“Oh no,” Brother Qown said. “Now you’ve done it.”
“What?”
“They’re not horses,” Janel insisted. “Firebloods are imperial citizens with full legal rights.”
Kihrin’s eyes widened. “Has anyone told the empire?”
Janel set her mug down firmly. “When Atrin Kandor liberated Jorat from the god-king Khorsal, he granted citizenship to both races the god-king had enslaved: humans and firebloods. Calling a fireblood a horse is like calling a human an animal. Yes, they talk.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s not their fault you never learned to understand them.”1
“Well, that puts a different slant on Darzin’s attempts to breed Scandal.” Kihrin made a face. “A rather obscene slant.” Not that it would have changed his horrible brother’s actions at all. In fact, it wouldn’t have surprised Kihrin if his brother had known the truth about firebloods and tried, anyway. That sounded like Darzin.
“You call Hamarratus Scandal?” The tone in Janel’s voice implied Kihrin had flunked a test.
“Is that … wait. Why do you think Scandal’s name is Hamarratus?” Kihrin remembered Star mentioning the name to the old groom.
“Hamarratus told me in the stable,” Janel said. “Remember, they can talk.”
Kihrin considered the sounds the horses—rather, the firebloods—had produced during the dragon attack. He’d assumed they were normal excited horse noises. Storm. Big dragon. Lots of danger. But speech?
Maybe.
“I realize this is a shock,” Brother Qown told him. “Believe me, I sympathize.”
“Star says she likes the name Scandal,” Kihrin said. “I’ll keep calling her that.”
“Fine,” Janel said. “If that’s her choice rather than the pet name you gave a slave.”
Kihrin’s eyes narrowed. “She’s not a slave.”
“She’d better not be.”
Brother Qown looked back and forth between the two. “Janel, may I take over reading? You can eat.”
Janel pulled a bowl to her. “Yes. Please do.”
Qown’s Turn. The town of Mereina, Barsine Banner, Jorat, Quur.
Turning in the bandits for their reward required traveling to Mereina, Barsine Banner’s local seat. It wasn’t a happy trip. The guards joked and bantered the whole way, bragging as if they’d done anything more than arrive. In contrast, the outlaws were a dour bunch.
Brother Qown couldn’t help but compare them with the previous criminals they had captured, who had treated their situation like a game.
He’d been surprised. The rest of the Quuros Empire punished banditry with mandatory slavery. Here in Jorat, the men and women they arrested hadn’t taken the matter with any solemnity at all. They had been criminals and happy to take metal by force, but they had treated their arrest as a grand lark. They had lost; the count had won. Well played.
Ninavis and her gang behaved differently.
The silence from both the bandits and Count Janel herself was thick and sullen. She gazed around her with narrowed eyes as if she expected an attack at any moment. The whole group’s tension pulled tighter with each step toward their destination.
As they left the tree line, Mereina Castle came into view. Qown didn’t recognize it at first. He only realized the building wasn’t a watchtower or storage depot when the guards headed in that direction.
To be fair, it wasn’t much of a castle.