It was only a clever sham to him, but clearly more to these hillfolk. The old man turned back to us. “Some thannis to warm you on your way?” he offered.
The Komizar forced a weak smile. Even he thought thannis tasted like sour dirt. “We need to be on our way—”
“We thank you for your graciousness,” I interrupted. “We would love some.”
The Komizar shot me a dark glare, but didn’t balk in front of the old man, as I knew he wouldn’t. It would never do to have a newcomer embrace the tradition of Venda more than its ruler—no matter how distasteful it was.
I lifted the proffered mug to my lips. Yes, sour moldy dirt, but not half as bad as wiggling white grubs. I drank heartily and handed my mug to the woman who served it, thanking her for her kindness. The Komizar took twice as long to down his.
He berated me when I didn’t offer a “display” of the gift at our next stop.
“You said word passes quickly among the hillfolk. A light touch is better than a heavy-handed performance. Leave them wanting more.”
He laughed. “Shrewd and calculating. Malich was right.”
“And he is right about so few things.”
And so the day went, hamlet after hamlet, the Komizar gaining favor with gifts, sacks of flour and morsels of hope, with me as proof that the enemy was trembling and that the gods were smiling on Venda.
Midafternoon we rested in a valley while the horses drank from a brook. The wind picked up, and the sky grew dark. I held my cloak close about my shoulders, standing apart from the Komizar and soldiers, and looked out at the vista, a land dusky and barren, washed in the colors of a dark pebbled river.
The day had shown me that Venda was an unforgiving place and only the heartiest survived here. A Remnant may have been spared, but only a chosen faithful few had been led by the gods and the girl Morrighan to a land of plenty. Venda was not that land. It had taken the brunt of the devastation. As we rode, we passed forests of stone, rolling hills with only occasional hints of green, fields of burnt red rock, windswept trees twisted into haunting shapes that made them look alive, strips of farmland where small crops were coaxed from hard soil, and distant deadlands where the Komizar said nothing lived or grew—lands as forbidding as Infernaterr. And yet there was something compelling about the landscape.
All I had seen were people trying to survive, faithful in their own ways, adding a bone at a time to tethers, remembering the sacrifice that put it there and the sacrifices yet to be made, people in barbarian dress, like the clothing I wore now. People who didn’t speak in grunts, but in humble notes of gratitude. I knew you would come. The words I had heard still bored into me.
A strong gust tore at my clothes, and my hair whipped free of the braid. I pushed the wild strands from my face and stared at the endless landscape and darkening clouds crushing the horizon. With two horses, how far could Rafe and I run? Could we disappear into the emptiness for even a few days? Because three days alone with him now seemed like the gift of a lifetime. I’d do anything for it. We’d been apart for too long.
“So deep in thought.”
I whirled around. “I didn’t hear you walk up.”
“Not wise in this wilderness to be so lost in your reflections that you forget your back. The hyenas prowl this late in the day, especially for little morsels like you.” He glanced to where I had been looking, a long horizon and endless dipping hills. “What were you thinking?” he asked.
“Am I not free to own anything? Not even my thoughts?”
“No,” he answered. “Not anymore.”
And I knew he meant it.
He studied my face as if waiting for a lie, waiting for something. I remained silent. Seconds ticked by, and I thought he might strike me. He finally shook his head. “If you need to take care of personal matters, my men and I will turn our backs for a few minutes. I know how your kind are about your privacy. Be quick about it.”
I watched him walk off, wondering at how he had backed down. Wondering about everything. He had saved Kaden, sent food for the hungry, was tireless in knowing his kingdom, from personally retrieving governors to meeting with distant hillfolk. Could I have been wrong about him? I remembered his cruel taunt, You did well, Chievdar, when he pulled Walther’s baldrick from the captured booty. He knew it would bring me to my knees. But it was more than that that fed my doubts about him. It was his eyes, hungry for everything, even my own thoughts. Be careful, sister. My brother’s warning burned beneath my ribs.
And yet, when we stopped at the last hamlet and I saw him embrace the elders and leave gifts, saw the hope that he left behind, and remembered it was he who had saved Kaden from the savagery of his own kind, I wondered if anything I felt in my gut really mattered.
And Morrighan raised her voice,
To the heavens,
Kissing two fingers,
One for the lost,
And one for those yet to come,
For the winnowing was not over.
—Morrighan Book of Holy Text, Vol. IV
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
KADEN
After four days on the road, I decided the gods were against me. Maybe they always had been. No such luck that the governor would be coming my way, half sloshed and late. The brothel in the last town hadn’t had the pleasure of his visit yet, and that was a stop he never missed. He was still somewhere on the road from here to there—or he hadn’t left yet at all.
Damn Governor Tierny. I’d wring his neck when I caught up with him. Unless someone else had already done that job for me.
The weather was miserable, cold winds by day, cold rain by night. The men who traveled with me were surly. Winter was coming early. But it wasn’t the icy winds that were leaving me raw. It was my last night with Lia. I had never told anyone, not even the Komizar, what my mother’s name was.
Cataryn.
It was as though I had raised her from the dead. I had seen her again, heard her voice again, as I told Lia about her. Saying her name aloud, something tore inside of me, but then I couldn’t stop telling Lia more, remembering how much my mother had loved me—the only person who had ever loved me. That wasn’t something I had wanted to share with Lia, but in the dark, once I had said her name, it all poured out, right down to the color of her eyes.
And my father’s eyes. That memory stopped me. I hadn’t told her everything.
Lia. Like a whisper on the wind.
At first I had thought that was all it was, the wind and long hours riding alone. When Lia had first told me her name in the tavern, it had reminded me of the hush I heard riding across the savanna, Lia through the canyons in the desert, Lia, the cry of a distant wolf. Lia wheedling into my heart before I ever laid eyes on her. And then Lia as I stood over her in the darkness of her room, my knife in hand. It was a whisper I finally couldn’t ignore, though I had managed to choke it from my life from the moment I met the Komizar. The knowing had only brought me pain.
I had used it the way Lia had. I had told the lady of the manor she was going to die a slow and horrible death, though I had seen no such thing. I was eight years old and angry that it was my own mother who was dying and not the petty one of my half brothers, a woman who had never shown me any kindness. That was when my first beating came. It was at the hands of my father, not the beggars. They only left scars atop the ones he had already laid deep.