“I’ll wait by the water.” Without another word, she stepped over a puddle and made her way down the path toward the beach.
18
Lara
War Tides.
That’s what the villagers on Serrith Island had called it. The two coldest months of the year when the Tempest Seas were calm enough for Ithicana’s enemies to attack.
And this year War Tides had come early.
So early that the villagers had not yet been evacuated to the mysterious location where they spent the season, which was probably why the Amaridian navy had twice risked getting caught in a late storm. For while a well-defended singular location could be protected, countless little civilian outposts were another matter.
It was the best time to attack, the cold, strategic part of Lara thought. When Ithicana’s army would be forced to split their efforts between protecting dozens of small villages and protecting the bridge. And if it came to it, she knew Aren would put his people’s lives first. It had been written on his face when those horns had sounded, the panic and desperation. The willingness to risk everything to save them. And the dead look in his eyes as he’d surveyed the massacred village and known that he’d failed.
They aren’t your responsibility, she viciously reminded herself. Your loyalty is to Maridrina. To the civilians of your homeland who suffer under Ithicana’s monopoly on trade. To the Maridrinian children who have nothing on their plates but rotting vegetables and rancid meat, if they have anything to eat at all. They are dying as surely as if Ithicana were slitting their throats.
The thoughts were enough to turn her mind to the matter of smuggling information out of Ithicana. While it might be possible for her to code short messages into her letters to her father, she didn’t dare attempt to include any of the details she’d learned about the bridge. If the codebreakers noticed them, she’d be lucky to get out of Ithicana alive, and everything that she’d done would be for naught. Aren knew where she’d been and what she’d learned. It would be easy for them to shore up the defenses, and there would be no catching them by surprise.
No, she had to gather the information she needed, and then smuggle it out all at once. The question was how.
Instinctively, she knew that the way had to be through the King of Ithicana himself. Her thoughts went to her cosmetics box, within which the ink Serin had given her was hidden. Not only did she need to entice Aren to write a message to her father, she needed to steal it for long enough to write her own, never mind the problem of resealing it without anyone noticing that it had been tampered with.
“Quit plotting and help Taryn with the dishes, you lazy tit.”
Nana’s voice ripped Lara from her thoughts, and she turned to scowl at the old woman. “What?”
“Did you not hear, or did you not understand?” Nana’s hands were on her hips, a large snake wrapped around her neck and shoulders. It lifted its head to regard Lara, and she shivered.
“This is my island,” Aren’s grandmother barked. “And on my island, if you wish to eat, you work. On your feet.” She clapped her hands sharply.
Lara rose, instantly annoyed with having obeyed, but to sit back down would be childish.
“Out.”
Glowering, she stepped out into the morning air, catching sight of Taryn, who sat next to a washtub, up to her elbows in soapy water. The young woman was the only one of Aren’s guards to remain with her—the one to have drawn the short straw, she’d readily griped to Lara on her blindfolded walk back through the bridge to Nana’s island, which was called Gamire. A group of unfamiliar soldiers silently trailed them. Lara had thought it Taryn’s reluctance to spend time with her, or perhaps disappointment over not going to wherever Aren had scuttled off to, that had made the role undesirable, but after a night spent in Nana’s house, the real reason was apparent.
The old witch was an obnoxious, bullying harridan, and Lara had no idea how she was going to keep from murdering the bloody woman in her sleep.
“You’ll get used to her, after a while.” Taryn dunked a plate into the steaming basin. “Helps that most of us have been patched back together by her at least once.” Letting go of the dish, the woman lifted up her undershirt to reveal an oval-shaped series of scars that covered the better half of her ribs. “I fell into the water during a skirmish and a shark had a go at me. If not for Nana, I’d be dead.”
A knife or a sword or an arrow—those were wounds Lara could fathom, but that . . . “Nasty creatures.”
“Not really.” Taryn dropped her undershirt and returned to the plate. “They’ve been trained to be man-eaters, but it’s not their preference.”
Taking the dripping plate and rubbing it with a towel, Lara thought of the Amaridian sailors being dragged beneath the surface. The blooms of blood. “If you say so.”
Pushing back her long dark ponytail, Taryn smiled, revealing straight white teeth that must please Nana greatly. “They are brilliant creatures. There are a few who stay with us always, but most of them are only here during War Tides. That, more than the weather, is how Nana knows when storm season is coming or going. The fishermen notice their numbers.”
Did her father and Serin know that? Lara chewed the insides of her cheeks, considering the information. One of the risks of attacking at the beginning of the calm season was that there was no way to predict exactly when it would begin.
“They always congregate at the places where raiders attack the most, like at Midwatch.” Taryn swirled a rag inside a chipped mug before handing it over. “There are myths that say they are guardians of Ithicana’s people, which is why it is forbidden to harm them unless absolutely necessary.” She laughed. “It’s just a myth, though. They come to be fed, and they don’t discern between us or our enemies. Anyone in the water is fair game.”
Lara shivered, setting the dry cup in a clean basin with the rest.
“Quit your chattering,” Nana barked from a distance. “There’s other chores that need doing.”
Taryn rolled her eyes. “Want to escape?”
“Is escape from Nana possible?”
A wink. “I’ve had lots of practice.”
True to her word, after the clean dishes were put away, Taryn managed to have them assigned to a task that sent them down into a village Lara hadn’t even realized was there. She took in the Ithicanians bustling about between the stone houses or cajoling children who were shirking their chores. “Why isn’t it evacuated?”
“They don’t need to be. Gamire Island is safe.”
Find the civilians. Lara remembered Serin’s words, the back of her neck prickling as two children ran past her, sacks of oats in their arms. Her eyes took in the village again. There were groups of men gutting fish, but her nose picked up the scent of baking bread, of red meat on the grill, and the faint tang of lemon, though not once had she seen a fruit tree in this place. Which meant it had all come as an import via the bridge.
“Those living on the other islands . . . where do they go for War Tides?” she asked, because not asking would be more suspicious. And because she was deeply curious where this mystery location might be.