“Or to seek help from the Gogean queen,” Kelir put in dryly.
As Yvenne had suggested. That his warriors listened to her so well pleased Maddek—though he misliked the thought of hiding in Goge, it had been a sensible alternative, and his warriors had seen that, too. Also sensible was Banek’s suggestion to flee past the city of Goge to the river Lave. It was a territory they knew well and where they would find allies among the army who would stand with Maddek and a goddess-touched Syssian queen against her brother and her father. But Yvenne had been intended for Toleh’s king, and Maddek knew not if the Tolehi captain who commanded the army now would stand against his uncle. There were Syssian soldiers who would surely be loyal to Yvenne, just as those were upon the ambush road. Yet they were small in number.
And his lesson to Yvenne would not be a false one. Sometimes a warrior’s best option was to run. They needed more numbers and they needed a defensible position—and allies whose loyalties were not in conflict.
They would find all in the north. Within the Burning Plains, Yvenne would have an entire Parsathean army to protect her, and no need to rely on her bow.
“Zhalen cannot know our route yet. If it was Aezil who sent that eagle, her brother knows—but he is in Rugus. By the time word reaches Zhalen of our route, we will be halfway across the Boiling Sea. We will see the firebloom before Zhalen’s army reaches the outpost. And if he brings soldiers out of Syssia with him, all of Parsathe will soon know it.”
Because such movement would be seen and an alarm sent out to all corners of the Burning Plains—but the alarm would not need to travel far, for many of the clans were already gathering near Kilren so they might choose their new Ran.
Kelir nodded. “So we are in a race.”
“A race we cannot win if we leave this road,” Maddek said. So they might have to face the soldiers from Ephorn—but it would not be an army that pursued them. The soldiers would have been sent to seek Yvenne and a small party of Parsatheans. They would be mounted for speed and their numbers few, because Syssia and Rugus kept few mounted soldiers in Ephorn. But even if the council added the alliance’s guard to their number, Maddek expected no more than a battalion.
“So we’d best pray to Enam for swift winds upon the Boiling Sea,” Banek added, though the tension had eased from his face.
“Do not pray too well, or Enam might send a storm. Better to pray to Nemek, to cool a fever and suck out poison,” Kelir said, looking toward the camp.
Maddek had no intention of praying to either god. It seemed like wishing for what was not. What he had instead was a bride who soothed Toric’s fevered brow.
Though Fassad had taken over that task now. As Maddek and Kelir approached the camp, Yvenne no longer sat beside the poisoned warrior but had settled onto her furs, the green stave she used to strengthen her arm across her lap. She was tying back the flowing sleeves of her robe—as if she intended to practice more before she slept. Her pale gaze caught Maddek’s as he collected Banek’s furs for himself, and then she looked at him questioningly when he held out his hand to help her up.
“Come,” he said. “We will make our beds in a quieter location. And discard that stave.”
Even with a goddess’s sight and aim, no arrow would fly true from that weapon.
She remained seated, gripping the bow tighter. “But I need to—”
“Use Ardyl’s, instead,” he told her. Ardyl’s bow was too long for Yvenne’s arm but was the shortest they had—and if his bride needed the weapon for more than practice, it would be Maddek’s arm that pulled the string. The bow would not be too long then. “She prefers her glaive, anyway.”
A grunt of agreement came from the warrior’s furs.
The happiness that lit Yvenne’s face was as bright as it had been that morning, when Maddek had first given her the stave, and almost as bright as after they had felled the whiptail. The constriction within Maddek’s chest tightened at the sight, but it was not the same poisonous pain that festered. This he knew not what it was, but the answering heaviness in his loins was clear enough.
Then his arousal was forgotten as she reached for the bow Kelir had fetched from Ardyl’s belongings. Yvenne’s blood darkened the linen wrappings formerly hidden by her sleeves.
Kelir froze at the sight. Maddek did not. Dropping to a crouch beside her, he snagged her wrist and gently turned it. A stripe of dried blood crossed the inside of her forearm. His gut clenched sickly as he realized what the injury was—and that it was likely not the only one.
“Show to me your other arm.”
Her brow furrowed, as if she puzzled over their reaction, and she showed him. The same stripe, but with more blood—from three distinct slashes, Maddek knew, instead of just one. The first from the strike of the bowstring when they’d felled the whiptail. The others after he’d told her to take the bow in her opposite hand and they’d felled three more revenants.
Shame was like anger, hot and thick in his chest and throat. For it had been his strength behind the pull of that string. The first arrow they’d loosed, the one that had killed the whiptail, he could not have undone. But if he’d known the first had hurt her, never would he have continued.
He battled his own tongue until the words of shame would not erupt like rage. Still they were harsh and hot. “Why did you not tell me the bowstring had done this?”
Because it must have hurt. It must have been a streak of agony, as if she’d been slashed by a blade or lashed with a whip.
Still she looked at him in bafflement—and a slight wariness, as if choosing her words very carefully. “It is but the cost of mastery.”
Choosing them carefully . . . because she must have first heard them from his mother. Yvenne had changed the words—his mother would have called it the price of practice—but now Maddek recalled the scars he’d seen on her forearm. This was not the first time she’d bled from a bowstring. And clearly his bride thought she must bleed until she mastered the skill.
Perhaps in the tower, that had been true. Here it was not.
He glanced up at Kelir. “She will need an archer’s brace.”
“It will be ready by morning,” the warrior said.
“A guard for her fingers, too,” Maddek told him, for the fingertips she used to draw the bowstring were blistered and raw. He’d known they would be tender until calluses formed, for that was the price of practice. But he’d not known when he’d given her the stave how relentlessly she would use it. And he did not believe she would ease up her practice now, simply because of blisters and blood.
“As a queen, you do not cry when you are in pain, and I will not ask you to,” Maddek said to her in a low voice. “But if you wish to be a warrior, you must tell us when you have been wounded. A warrior has the duty and the honor of tending to a fellow warrior’s injuries, just as you have tended to Toric. Do not deny us the honor of tending to you.”