Page 32 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)
Slowly, I edged toward the door, straining to hear. My brow furrowed in concentration as rough voices filtered into the quiet of my room.
“—been ignored for three days.”
“They’ve been at war. I assume you’re familiar with the concept, General ?”
“If they’re not careful, I suspect they’ll have more war soon enough.”
I recognized the rough growl of General Warrick’s voice, and my hackles rose at the implication of his words, spoken so casually, as if whoever he was speaking to wouldn’t be surprised that he was threatening war on those he was sent to negotiate with.
I slammed my bedroom door open with my shoulder, ready to pin General Warrick against the wall and remind him that the last army that threatened Kelvadan had surrendered to me. Instead, I pulled up short as I came face to face with Prince Calix .
“Oh…” I looked back and forth between the two ambassadors. General Warrick had his beefy arms folded across his chest and his square jaw set. Calix stood between him and my door.
I sighed inwardly, realizing that this was another political dance to navigate. I almost missed the day before, when swinging my saber had been the solution.
“Did you have something to say?” I asked, folding my own arms over my chest and mirroring General Warrick’s posture.
“I’ve been sent to negotiate a potential alliance with the Queen of Kelvadan. That’s rather difficult if I never get to see the queen,” Warrick grumbled.
“Well, you have my attention now.” I raised a brow.
“So, it is as I had heard. Interesting practice of handing leadership to your warriors.” He appraised me, the scar over one side of his face puckering with the movement.
“I would have thought you’d approve, considering Doran sent a notorious warmonger to negotiate peace,” Calix said, his almost teasing tone undercutting the harsh accusation of his words.
“You have to be capable of violence to make an offer of peace hold any meaning.” General Warrick’s gaze was cold as it cut back and forth between me and Calix. “But I do have to ask why I am now expected to negotiate with you. Didn’t the queen have a son who would succeed her?”
“The people of the Ballan Desert respect power. Given that he was the one who surrendered to me during yesterday’s battle, I think I’m the one who holds that power,” I defended. My mind darted to the tether in my belly, which was quiet, although it had twisted uneasily all night.
“So, the one who led the clans against the city was this Viper?” Calix asked. “What has become of him?”
“He’s being held,” I admitted, avoiding the urge to shift my weight.
“Sounds like it would be wiser to dispose of him,” Warrick scoffed.
“I watched his surrender in the courtyard from the window, and it didn’t seem that his forces were ready to cease their fight.
Leaving their leader alive is an invitation for them to regroup and attack.
It doesn’t seem like that’s something you can afford right now. ”
My lip curled back, and my patience for a diplomatic way out of this conversation wore dangerously thin.
Before I could speak, Calix chimed in. “Not all of us are butchers, General. Some of us prefer tact.”
“That’s one way to say you default to underhanded deals and manipulations,” Warrick sneered.
“A political prisoner can be useful.” Calix shrugged, seemingly uninjured by the barb.
I tried to pick apart the unspoken undercurrent of tension in the insults between them but instead found myself stuck on a particular phrase. “Political prisoner?”
“I suppose the more correct term in Viltov would be ‘honored guest’, but my father often lets leaders of those he has defeated stay at the palace. As both a show of good faith and a way to ensure good behavior among the conquered,” Calix explained.
A grunt from Warrick signaled his disapproval, and I grimaced.
“I’m not sure the clans would understand or respect the idea of an ‘honored guest,’ nor would they stay an attack to spare one who surrendered,” I mused.
“The clans seem like wise people,” Warrick grumbled.
“But,” I continued sharply, “Kelvadan does not follow the ways of the clans. Any who call the Ballan Desert home are welcome here.”
Those were some of the first words Neven had spoken to me after my long journey to the Great City. It was the promise that had led me here and the thing that made me love Kelvadan even when something in me itched for the open desert—the seductive call of a home for one who had never had one before.
“I think it’s time we adopt this idea of political prisoners.” I uncrossed my arms. “And I’ll be happy to negotiate with both Doran and Viltov after the queen’s funeral. ”
There was no use putting the ambassadors off now, as the queen had only been avoiding seeing them directly to avoid the extent of her illness. With Izumi leading the clans and Kelvadan’s grain stores dwindling by the day, the favor of the ambassadors was more critical than ever.
“I will be holding you to that,” General Warrick said, his rumbling voice pitched low, and he turned and strode off down the hallway. Before he turned a corner out of sight, he looked back over his shoulder, and his eyes narrowed at the way Prince Calix had lingered.
I too looked at the prince curiously.
He shrugged at the question in my eyes. “I wanted to check on you.”
“On me?” I repeated somewhat dumbly.
“I hadn’t seen you since that day in the fields…” He trailed off, raking a hand through his already perpetually mussed hair.
My fingers twisted the end of the sash around my waist, and I made a concerted effort to relax them, pressing my palms against my thighs.
“The display of stopping the avalanche was quite something,” he admitted. “I was afraid it might have left you indisposed. Worn out.”
I blinked. “Oh. No. I seem to have the opposite problem with harnessing the power of the desert.”
Something flashed behind his eyes, and I bit my tongue.
Admitting to a shortage of control did not befit a queen.
I had seen Dryden fighting for the clans in the courtyard yesterday.
No doubt being on the receiving end of an outburst of my power had convinced him to back somebody—anybody else for the throne of Kelvadan.
So, I would bury the snarling, snapping exile if that’s what it took to truly earn the people’s acceptance.
Calix’s expression though, was only curious. “Seeing you and your people so close to your home, able to harness the power it carries, makes me wistful that Viltov has become so distant from the strength of the ocean.”
I furrowed my brow. “The ocean?”
Calix sighed, leaning back on the wall behind him and propping up one foot. His casual posture made me smile; he did not seem to treat me differently now that I was queen, for which I was grateful .
“Stories say that hundreds of years ago, those who sailed between the islands of Viltov had a similar relationship with the sea that the clansmen have with the desert. Certain people could call on the strength hidden in its depths and navigate the waves with legendary skill. Some say they would even use it to fight.” Calix’s expression seemed wistful.
“Of course, we’ve been at war with Doran on and off for two hundred years now.
While most of those fights occur on the mainland, our soldiers are certainly not using any powers of the ocean.
My father, the king, discounts that such a power ever existed in the first place, choosing to pour his efforts and his treasury into inventing machines of war and science that can be brought to bear on our enemies. ”
“And what do you think?” I asked, drawn in by his tale of those who traveled the waves the way riders traversed the dunes. As queen, I might not be able to leave the city for long enough to cross the desert and see the ocean. My heart cracked a little at the thought.
Calix smiled crookedly, revealing that one of his canine teeth had been chipped.
“I’ve experienced enough things in my travels to convince me there are things about the sea that science can’t explain—that something beyond human lurks in her depths.
At times, I thought it might be my overactive imagination thinking the power of the ocean could be harnessed once more.
After watching you stop a mountain from falling, though… ” He shrugged again.
“I hope Viltov can connect with the power of the ocean once more,” I said earnestly.
“And I hope I can learn something about how to reconnect with her power from the people of the Ballan Desert.”
I tilted my head at him curiously, but he pushed off the wall and sauntered down the hallway. With a shake of my head, I reminded myself that now was not the time to ponder the plights of Viltov and Doran. A long day with the Archons stood ahead of me.
A familiar arm tightened around my waist. I scooted closer to the warmth at my back, even though it made me frown.
“Am I dreaming?” I asked, interweaving my fingers with the callused hand splayed across my belly.
Erix grunted in affirmation, sounding sleepy. “It’s the first bit of actual sleep I’ve had since I got here. All the stone makes me restless.”
The furrow between my brows deepened as I thought on his words.
I was dreaming that I was sleeping in my own bed in the palace.
In the waking world, Erix was likely laying in a bed a few levels away from me.
I twisted in his arms so I could see his face, and he cracked a bleary eye at me.
My heart skipped a beat at the sight of his high cheekbones and strong jaw, accentuated by the shadows of the dim light in the hour just before dawn.
“It seems silly that you did so much to get to me and we’re still having to meet in our dreams,” I murmured.
“Everything is always complicated in this palace,” he murmured back.
“It’s not like it is out in the dunes. It’s hard to worry about politics when you’re so busy figuring out how to survive.
” He grunted as if remembering a rather unfunny joke.
“Although politics found their way to me there too. They seem to be a hazard of leadership.”
“I never wanted to lead. I’m still not sure I do,” I admitted quietly, speaking the words into Erix’s chest, and he tightened his grip around me. “I just wanted to help.”
“I feared being king more than almost anything. It’s what scared me right into the arms of a tyrant. Because if he was willing to lead, then I didn’t have to. But he’s gone now, and I have nobody to blame for my failures but myself.”
I raised my head to meet Erix’s eyes, finding them screwed shut. Gently, I wrapped my arms around him. Through his thin sleeping shirt, I could trace my fingers over the neat lines of scars marching across the back of his shoulders.
“You haven’t failed.” I held him as if I could somehow force the brokenness I felt in his words back into wholeness.
“I still might,” he insisted. “I wonder if Kelvar wanted to become a king when he pulled this city from the mountain. Or if he was just thinking of Alyx when he did it.”
I swallowed around a lump in my throat. “He still made a great king.”
“No.” He shook his head violently. “He ripped this desert apart. But Alyx… they say Alyx was a great queen.”
It was my turn to shake my head. “Alyx was a healer. I only know how to destroy.”
A humorless laugh rumbled in his chest. “Two warriors, left to make peace. The desert has a sense of humor with her wrath.”
“There might still be a time for war,” I said, with a sinking feeling of dread.
I woke suddenly to the thin light of dawn falling across my pillow, and the heaviness in my belly only deepened. Today was the queen’s funeral.