Page 5

Chapter Two

Skaanda—the tundra

It’s raining when we leave Staltoria City, Skaanda’s capital, a miserable, cold, dripping rain. I hunch under the hood of my cloak and try to ignore my roiling stomach as my horse trudges gloomily eastward on a road of churning mud.

The great swaths of farmland scattered liberally across Skaanda will be glad of the rain, as long as it doesn’t go on for too long and cut short the precious days of dwindling sunlight.

Vil has been working with the top Skaandan engineers on crafting huge lamps to simulate the sun for the fields, but so far they can’t find a source of sustainable fuel to make them burn long enough to be of any use.

Daeros solved this problem years ago, constructing greenhouses on its much more limited land, the lights inside allowing crops to grow even during the winter months.

They won’t share the secrets of powering those lights with Skaanda, though by all accounts it’s this very knowledge that they trade to Aerona for the food they’re always in need of—because even with the greenhouses, Daeros doesn’t produce enough to feed its entire population.

This is yet another reason Vil is eager to annex Daeros into Skaanda—food for Daeros’s people, miracles of engineering for Skaanda.

We pass fields as we go, workers harvesting crops and piling them in huge wagons, which will be taken to storehouses outside of Skaanda’s largest cities.

New brick structures with shining tile roofs line one end of the fields, housing for the workers so they don’t have to travel long hours every day back and forth to their homes during the busiest seasons.

This is one of Vil’s innovations, paid for out of his own pocket, and there are similar buildings going up all across Skaanda, ushering our country into a new era of prosperity. It makes me fiercely proud of him: his ingenuity, his generous spirit.

Saga rides beside me on the muddy road, bristling with nervous energy, oblivious to the damp.

Vil is in the lead, his shoulders square and strong against the dreary day.

I am not quite brave enough to nudge my horse up next to him, unwilling to confront the tangle of emotions he inspires in me quite so early in the morning.

And anyway, I am more than content to stay with Saga.

We have grown fiercely close in the year and a half we’ve spent together in Staltoria City.

She’s nearly a sister to me and understands me far better than my actual sister ever did.

Rounding out our company are Indridi, Saga’s handmaiden, who has been attending me all the while I’ve been at the palace, and two soldiers: Pala, a woman of forty or so who seems distant and severe, and Commander Leifur, a man only a few years my senior who is eager to prove himself and be named Vil’s general one day.

Our party is small enough to travel quickly and to appear unthreatening to the Daerosian army encampments we will have to pass on our way to Tenebris.

We can’t risk getting caught up in any skirmishes, and it’s the season for war: light to see by, blood running hot.

At least when it’s not raining.

At Saga’s beckoning, Indridi rides alongside us, her tight dark curls dripping water in her eyes.

She’s twenty-three, just older than Vil, and I don’t miss how often her glance drifts in his direction.

I can’t blame her—Vil is hard to not look at—but I don’t like the way it plants a seed of jealousy in the pit of my belly, hard and tight and small.

Indridi has lived in the palace since she was thirteen years old, and in addition to being Saga’s handmaiden, she’s one of her very best friends.

I have gotten to know her, too, these past eighteen months, and have appreciated her quiet humor and steady good sense.

Now, however, she sits tense in her saddle, her shoulders tight, her forehead creased.

Her skin is a medium brown, halfway between my light and Saga’s dark, and raindrops cling to her high cheekbones. There is misery in her eyes.

“All well, Ridi?” says Saga, peering at Indridi in concern.

“Of course, Your Highness,” Indridi returns, not meeting Saga’s gaze. She grips her reins too tight, knuckles straining against her skin.

“Long way to Daeros,” Saga presses. “If there’s something bothering you, I hope you’ll tell me.”

Indridi makes an admirable effort to smile, though she doesn’t quite manage it. “I am fine, Your Highness. Thank you.” She gives a little bow from her saddle, her eyes briefly sliding past mine, then holds her horse back until she’s riding behind us again.

Saga leans sideways in her saddle and pokes my arm. “What’s bothering you , Bryn?”

There’s no point in lying. “I’m not sure I can really do it, Saga. Pretend to be something I’m not. Face Kallias again.”

Saga waves my comments away like so many flies, though I don’t miss the tension in her own frame.

“Of course you can! Vil and I will coach you in the finer details of Skaandan royalty the whole way there.” She chews on her lip, giving me a piercing glance and a glimpse at her own fear.

“We’re not kids anymore. He doesn’t have any power over us, and we will never be part of his Collection again. You know that, right?”

Fear squeezes my throat, and for a moment I feel like I’m falling, shards of ice and rock waiting at the bottom to dash me to pieces. I take a jagged breath and swipe rain out of my eyes. “I’m afraid I’ll ruin our ploy the first moment I see him.”

“How?” says Saga.

I shrug and stare at the mud churning under my horse’s hooves. “I’m afraid I’ll drive a knife into the bastard’s heart.”

Saga gives a grim laugh. “You’ll have to beat me to it.”

“Saga, you promised you’d behave,” says Vil, voice light with forced humor. He glances back, and for a moment I’m caught fast in the intensity of his gaze. He smiles at me. “No stabbing,” he says, “either of you.”

“God of fire,” swears Saga, but without any real heat. “You are no fun at all.”

Vil calls a halt at midday, and we do our best to eat lunch in the still-pouring rain before it can get too soggy: sweet brown bread and cheese with figs, salty rice cakes with sweet-spicy dipping sauce.

There’s no chance of a fire in all this wretched wet, but that doesn’t keep me from feeling grumpy at the lack of tea or coffee.

When we’ve eaten and all taken a chance to relieve ourselves, we ride on.

Vil sings an old Skaandan ballad in the rain, his voice a rich, strong tenor that burrows inside me and makes my chest ache.

After a few minutes, Saga joins him, hesitant at first, then growing more certain, her voice twining around her brother’s in a hauntingly beautiful counterpoint.

I haven’t heard her sing since Tenebris, since Kallias locked her in a glass cage like a canary and forced her to trill at his command.

She was remarkable, then. She is more so, now.

Tears press at my eyes. I blink and swallow until they’re gone.

My thoughts drift in the rain, in the music.

There was a time when I wasn’t made up of anger, every cell in my body stitched together with rage.

I was happy, once. When Kallias is dead and I find my family, I can be happy again, and everything that happened in the last ten years will fade to a half-remembered nightmare. Won’t it?

Rain seeps under my collar and crawls down my spine. It’s going to be a long journey.

Saga has been praying to the Red God and Yellow God and Prism Goddess all day, but they don’t seem to have heard her by the time we make camp for the night—it’s still raining.

Saga grumbles but helps the rest of us erect canvas tents in hopes of staying relatively dry until morning.

When they’re up, we unfold more lengths of canvas over the soggy ground inside the tents, and then the six of us huddle together in the larger one to eat our cold dinner.

We’ll separate for sleeping, the four women in this tent, the men in the smaller one.

“Gods I want a fire,” says Vil. He stretches out his long legs in front of him and scowls at his food.

“I can try and build one,” Indridi offers, the color in her cheeks deepening.

“In all this wet? I think not.”

My stomach twists and Indridi ducks her head.

“Let her try, oh grumpy one,” Saga admonishes her brother. “What’s the worst that could happen? Toasted cheese and hot tea?”

“Fine,” says Vil shortly. He rubs at his temples, and I wonder what’s gotten him so out of sorts.

Indridi slips back out into the rain and gathers some of the wood from our mound of supplies, which is protected beneath yet another length of canvas. For a moment I watch her uneasily through the tent opening.

Pala and Commander Leifur finish eating and leave to check on the horses, and Saga mumbles something incoherent and conveniently leaves, too.

I briefly eye Vil before plopping down beside him, careful to keep space between us. “You all right, Vil?”

He shrugs a little ruefully. “This is taking so long .”

I laugh. “It’s only been a day. And it won’t rain the whole time. Probably.”

He turns to grin at me, and he’s close enough I can feel the heat of his breath on my face. My own breath hitches as his eyes flick down to my mouth.

Outside, Indridi lets out a little whoop, and I start away from Vil. Flames lick up from her woodpile, hot enough to burn even in the rain. I don’t think it’s my imagination that the rain starts to slacken, bit by bit, as the fire grows brighter, until it’s hardly dripping at all.

I leave the tent with Vil at my heels, and then there is indeed tea and toasted cheese, enough to warm my belly, enough to ease the prick of ever-present fear in my heart and dispel a bit the tension of whatever it is that’s building between Vil and me.

He sits on the opposite side of the fire and I’m able to relax, to enjoy the hot cheese and scalding tea.