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Chapter Three

Skaanda/Daeros—the Saadone River

We’re two weeks on the road before we reach Saadone, the city built on the banks of the great river that shares its name.

We’ve passed scattered villages and acres of sprawling farmland on our way, more of Vil’s housing abandoned half built beside the fields.

Already the sun sinks a little earlier each night, and if the crops aren’t harvested before Gods’ Fall, they’ll be left to rot.

The housing will have to wait, much to Vil’s dismay.

I’ve been keeping my distance from Vil since that first night.

I don’t know how to untangle the snarl of my own emotions, and I can’t allow myself to get close to him before I’ve sorted them out.

It wouldn’t be fair to him—or to me—and the nearer we get to Tenebris, the less certain I am about anything: Vil.

Me. Our mission. It’s all confusion and uncertainty and dread.

So I put space between us, as much as is possible in our little company of six.

It’s midafternoon when we ride into Saadone City, the stink of the river thick in the air, the sudden press of people jarring and overloud after the long quiet of the road.

“With any luck we should be able to catch the last ferry,” Vil calls from the front of our group. “Then we won’t have to wait till the morning.”

I glance back at Saga, who twists her fingers in her horse’s mane. The Saadone marks the border between Skaanda and Daeros. Once we cross, we’ll be in constant danger—and close to the site of the disastrous skirmish that left her at Kallias’s mercy.

“I’m fine,” says Saga brightly.

Indridi and I exchange a knowing glance.

“Why don’t we stop early today?” I say to Vil. “Stay at an inn, sleep in a real bed.” I give a little sigh at the thought. A year and a half in a royal Skaandan feather bed has made me soft—I haven’t slept well since we left Staltoria City.

“As much as I would like that,” says Vil, with a pointed look at me that makes me flush at my accidental implication, “we can’t afford the time. Besides, the inns are sure to be full on account of the holiday.”

It takes me a minute to remember what holiday he’s talking about: the Bronze God’s feast day, a celebration of the harvest. But the feast has more to do with the time of year than it does with the god of minds.

I shift uncomfortably in my saddle. I’ve never liked the Bronze God’s story.

There’s certainly nothing celebratory about it.

But like anyone, I suppose, Skaandans skew religion to fit their desires, instead of the other way around.

If pressed, a priest might explain that it’s a commemoration of the Bronze God’s banishment and the return of people’s free will.

Although if that’s the case, it would make more sense to honor the Prism Goddess—she’s the one who banished him, after all.

But maybe the Prism Goddess has too many feast days already.

And the most religious among us are proud if they can afford clothing in every color of the pantheon—when would they wear bronze, if not now?

“If I may, Your Highness,” says Pala.

Vil nods his permission.

“I would suggest having a meal in a public house while I secure us passage on the ferry.”

“We won’t miss it?” Vil asks.

“Not if you’re at the docks in an hour.”

“I’m happy to go to secure passage,” Indridi says quickly.

Pala frowns at her for speaking out of turn but doesn’t otherwise acknowledge her offer. “An hour, Your Highness.” She salutes Vil and nudges her mount down one of the twisting, clay-tiled streets, and quickly disappears from view.

Vil leads the rest of us through the milling crowd to a three-storied building made of earthen brick.

The hanging wooden sign carved with the symbol of a woman and a blooming rose, both painted bright green, marks it as belonging to the Green Goddess.

There are hundreds of such public houses scattered across Skaanda—this one is hardly unique.

It hits me anew how such a pious people as us Skaandans can dedicate temples and drinking places to the same deity and not be struck down for blasphemy.

A pair of half-grown boys trot around from the back to take our horses, and then we file into the public house, Vil and Leifur leading, with me and Saga in the middle and Indridi bringing up the rear.

It’s noisy inside, raucous laughter and steady conversation fighting for dominance over the trio of musicians in the corner playing fiddle, drums, and piercing pitched bells.

Incense from the obligatory altar to the Green Goddess coils up from its place in the center of the room, a green basin on a simple plinth, with vines growing up from the base of it and leaves trailing over the basin’s rim.

Both Saga and Vil pull scarves over their heads and train their eyes low to keep from being recognized—their official portraits have been published widely enough for that to be a concern—while Indridi and Leifur go up to the counter to order food from the proprietor.

Then we all squeeze ourselves into a corner booth with a little circle window that looks out over the water.

At nearly ten miles wide, the Saadone River might seem like the ocean, I think, to someone who had never seen the real thing.

It’s brown and green, a slow-moving mammoth that runs chillingly deep.

Somehow, in the rush to fit into the booth, I find myself scooted all the way against the wall with Vil next to me, his hip touching mine. The heat of him sears me. I carefully don’t acknowledge him, but look up to find Saga grinning at me across the table. She waggles her eyebrows suggestively.

Indridi is sitting next to Saga, watching Vil with a hopelessness that simultaneously angers me and makes my heart twist. Leifur is on the other side of Vil, nervously jiggling his knee.

He’s not used to eating with Vil and Saga, and his hand keeps going up to his left ear to touch the gold bar that marks him as a royal guard.

He watches Indridi watch Vil, and I want to shake the lot of them.

Thankfully, the food arrives and we inhale it, red rice and spicy lamb stew, candied figs and little square orange cakes glazed with honey. There’s mead, too, clear and sweet, and marvelously strong coffee.

I try not to be aware of Vil beside me, but it’s impossible not to be, his hand grazing mine as we both reach for more candied figs, the way his lips look stained with mead, or the way he stirs just the right amount of cream and sugar into my coffee because he knows exactly how I prefer it.

He doesn’t move his leg the whole time we’re sitting there, like the two of us have been fused together.

By the time-glass on the wall, we still have half an hour before we’re due to meet Pala, so we stay awhile longer in our booth, sipping drinks and imagining we have room for more of the orange cakes that tantalize us from the table.

Vil and Saga take this opportunity to quiz me on my fake persona for when we arrive at Tenebris, and I’m grateful for anything to distract me from Vil’s heady proximity.

I’m to pose as Vil’s cousin, the stepdaughter of Vil and Saga’s mother’s sister, which explains my lighter coloring.

Memorization has always come easily to me, which is good because Saga and Vil insist I know the Skaandan royal lineage all the way back to the beginning, some four hundred years ago, when the threat of genocide drove them out of Iljaria.

Along with Indridi, Saga will act as my handmaiden, too certain that Kallias would recognize her to pose as an ambassador with Vil and me. Everyone in Daeros still thinks that the crown princess of Skaanda is dead, and unlike mine, Saga’s appearance hasn’t changed much since her captivity.

So she will stay out of sight, while I hope my mop of dark curls that have begun to brush my shoulders and my altered figure and the cosmetics Indridi practices applying every few evenings will trick Kallias into thinking I am exactly what I claim to be.

“We never did decide on how to round out your history,” says Vil thoughtfully when I finish my recitation of Skaandan royalty. “Some talent or particular interest, in case Kallias pokes holes in your story.”

My mouth tastes suddenly sour.

Vil’s face softens at the horror in my expression. “There must have been something,” he says gently. “Before Kallias. Before—”

I blink and see my parents, my brother, my sister.

A house on a hill. An untainted sky. The gleam of sunlight on the water.

“My talent is acrobatics,” I say roughly.

“I was ten when Kallias took me. I was a child, Vil. Reckless and impatient and filled with boundless energy. I could never be still enough to learn painting or memorize poetry or whatever it is you did when you were ten. I don’t have any particular interests. ”

He lets my anger roll off him, then shrugs a little and says, “By the time I was ten, I was skilled enough in my weapons training I could kill a man in fifty different ways if I wanted.”

Indridi makes a choked noise while Saga glares at her brother. “You’re not helping, Vil.”

“I didn’t want to,” Vil clarifies, glaring back. “I only mean to say I had no special interests at that age, either. I just did what I was told. Please forgive my thoughtless question.”

My throat hurts. Vil takes my hand under the table and squeezes it, his fingers warm and rough. My pulse quickens in his palm. I wonder if I ought to reconsider my resolution to keep him at a distance.

It would be so easy to allow him nearer, to sink into his steadfastness and security.

I would want for nothing, on the arm of Skaanda’s prince.

I’ve had a taste of it already, these last eighteen months: belonging, purpose.

Maybe even love. I’m not assured of any of those things, even if our mission in Daeros is successful.

I wonder sometimes if I ever had them, even before Kallias stole my life away.