Page 12 of Winds of Destiny
Kai
We leave Zephyth early the morning after the ceremony. Prince Camrael’s family bids him farewell at the city gate. His sister’s eyes are wet as she embraces him, and her little ones cling to him so hard their father has to pry their arms from their uncle’s neck. His father is less emotional, as befits a king, but gives his son a truly princely parting gift—the brilliant-white jaka bird, with a fine leather saddle and a bridle that seems to make the damn thing almost steerable.
It’s a shame—I was looking forward to having him in the lead wagon beside me, but now he’ll surely want to prance around on that bird with Lord Turo at his back, a single unit of two people that I’m not sure I can penetrate.
Only…
They aren’t looking at each other.
Or rather, Lord Turo is looking at Camrael, but the prince isn’t looking back. Something has happened between the two of them, something to put a rift into what seemed like an unbreakable bond. I’m curious, even a bit concerned, but this is also an opportunity I can’t pass up.
Lord Turo only makes it easier for me. Once we’ve said our farewells and begun our trip north, the spymaster breaks away from our wagons and slinks off over a ridge carved by the everwinds and into the tall grasses not far beyond where we were attacked by those Kamoran bastards. He’s invisible in seconds.
Rusen lifts one arm and inhales dramatically. “Is it the smell?” he jests, and Prince Camrael, who’s finally let himself look toward his bodyguard now that the man is no longer there, sighs heavily.
“He’ll be back. I’m sure he wants to see if he can track where those chariots went.”
That’s a good thought, and one I’d assumed the guards of Zephyth had already acted upon. My impression of the city’s readiness falls even lower. To have a single man capable of gathering intelligence like this out of a city of tens of thousands is risky at best, disastrous at worst. They need to make some serious changes to their training regimen, changes that I intend to suggest when I send back Dellian troops. For now, though, I’ll take advantage of the fact that my husband’s shadow guard is gone to learn more about him. Maybe if he gets a chance to know me and becomes fond of me, he’ll be less furious when he learns that I’ve been hiding my identity all this time.
I don’t regret it—one never knows whose eyes are watching or ears are listening, after all, and it’s better not to make myself a target so that I can focus on protecting Camrael. Still, I don’t look forward to his reaction when he finds out we’re really married, so it’s in my best interests to court him properly.
“How far have you ever gone from Zephyth?” I ask.
Camrael looks over at me like he’s surprised I asked. Nevertheless, he moves his mount closer to our steady-plodding team of rams so we can speak more easily. “On land, nowhere at all,” he says, then smirks. “Unless you count my little escapade with the whelvers. By sea, though?” He shrugs. “I’ve gone to the edge of the bay, but never any farther. Once you get out into the open ocean, the waves pick up, and if you’re not an experienced sailor, you can lose control of a boat quickly.”
“I’ve never been on a boat,” I confess.
“A good thing, too,” Rusen adds from behind me. “Given how sick you got the first time you rode a ram.”
“They’re bouncy fuckers!” I protest. “Everyone gets sick the first time they ride one!”
My faithless soldiers laugh at me, the bastards. “Not everyone throws up hard enough to make everyone in a ten-foot radius wet,” Jeric says. “It’s still the talk of the barracks.”
Camrael, at least, is trying to hide his smile, but I don’t mind him laughing a little at me if it means he’s engaged and entertained. “The first time I got on a jaka, it threw me off into a pile of its own dung , ” he says. “The only reason I didn’t cry about it was because it did the exact same thing to my sister when she first tried. The only person I know who’s ever been able to ride one without getting tossed into shit is—” His smile starts to fade as his gaze drifts toward the tall grass again.
No. Think of me, focus on me. “I went out in the everwinds once,” I say, and that’s got his attention again. Good. “When I was very young. We’ve never had whelvers, so when we put a caravan together, we made our wagons from metal. It took a team of the strongest rams to move them, and we had to link them together behind a flexible shield to keep them from blowing away as well.”
Camrael’s eyes are wide. “How did you steer them?”
“Some drovers used whips—only when the wind was with them, obviously—but others trained them to respond to clicks…actually, kind of like you managed with your clever flute.” That gets a smile.
“I ran away from the caravan once we reached the plains below our mountain,” I go on, and now I’m a bit lost in my own memories. “There was a lull in the wind, and I was convinced I saw a jewelfruit bush in the distance. They were always my favorite as a child, so of course the thought of finding a bush covered in them was too good to pass up.”
“Was it really a jewelfruit bush?” Camrael asks.
I smile and nod. “The pink kind, as soft and sweet as honey once you crack open the shell. I managed to eat two before the everwinds kicked up again.” They were the most delicious things I’d ever tasted, as bright on my tongue as the sun was in my eyes. “Just moments from grabbing another, I was blown away.”
“Oh, how he rolled,” Rusen adds. “Like a child-shaped seed bumbling across the plains. His mother had to take one of the rams out to catch him before he rolled away entirely, and she’s lucky they managed to make it back to the wagon without a shield.”
“My father whipped my tail so hard I couldn’t sit down for the rest of the day,” I confirm. “But it was all worth it for an adventure like that.”
“He started a trend,” Morfan says. “Every child on that expedition tried to run off at some point after that. None of us made it very far, since the everwinds didn’t lull again, but we drove our parents wild with all our attempts.”
“What awful children you all were,” Camrael says with a chuckle. “I think we’d have gotten along very well in our youth. I was yelled at constantly by my father to ‘get down from those roofs,’ but of course I—”
“The roofs ?” Jeric’s gone pale. “Are you saying you walked along those awful, tall, skinny spires of yours? Outside ?”
“Ran along them, more like,” Camrael says. “Why?”
Rusen claps my youngest guard on the shoulder. “This one’s afraid of heights. We’d better change the subject before he falls right off the wagon in a faint.”
“I’m not that bad,” Jeric objects with a grimace, but Camrael is already pivoting to speaking about how his sister had a paralyzing fear of moths as a child. He’s kind as well as insightful. He’s going to be more than just a husband to me, I can tell. He knows how to respond to people, and how to speak to them so that they feel important and listened to. He’ll make an excellent co-ruler when my father finally steps down.
If the man ever gets around to it.
“It’s funny,” Camrael says, staring out at the plain again—but not in a way that makes me think he’s pining for Lord Turo this time. “You’d think our trade would be better without the everwinds, given all the problems they caused when it came to travel. My father said there were periods of mildness, like minor seasons, but for the most part they were fierce and unrelenting. Yet it seems like it’s harder to get goods from city to city now than it ever was before, thanks to all the banditry and the expense of arming caravans.”
“The everwinds blew for over a thousand years, if the legends have any truth to them,” I point out. “That’s a long time to get used to something, even if it started as something bad. You bred those whelvers up so they’d withstand the worst of it, and we bred rams with forelegs so long and sturdy the poor bastards can barely stand if they’re not leaning into something. And the everwinds did their part to make crops fertile and hardy.” Now nothing grows as well as it did when the everwinds blew.
“True.” Camrael glances up at the sky. “I wonder how long it will take us to adapt now that the everwinds have stopped. It’s been twenty years, after all.”
“We’ll get there.”
“Or perhaps they’ll start again, today, and blow us all off this bloody grassland and into the sea where we can be eaten by your god,” Rusen comments, like the utter asshole he is.
I’m going to strangle him when we get back home, I swear to Carnuatu.
Camrael chuckles. “Oh, don’t worry about that. He only eats wholesome things like fish and sharks and rays. Filth like you would upset his stomach, so you’d be perfectly safe.”
“Filth? Filth? ”
“You’re the one who brought up your smell,” Camrael says sweetly. There’s a hardness in his eyes, though, and his hand is straying toward his sword, which is slender and curving like his bodyguard’s, but not as long. “I’m just trying to reassure you that it’s definitely enough to keep anyone from wanting to put any part of you in their mouth.”
Rusen sits there in perfect, dumbfounded silence for a moment while the rest of my men laugh. When he finally comes out of his stupor, it’s with a smile—thankfully. “You’re quick with that tongue of yours,” he says with a nod. “Are you as quick with your sword?”
“I’m decent with it,” Camrael says. “Naturally, every member of the royal household is trained in the essentials of fighting and self-defense. I’m not an expert with it like Turo is, though.”
“Don’t suppose you’d need to be if he’s always been around to watch your back.” Rusen squints out at the grasses for a moment, as if he’s expecting Lord Turo to pop up like a flower from the snow in spring. “But it’ll be different once you get to Huridell.”
“Yes.” Camrael sounds calm, but I can tell it’s just a front. His hands are clenched so tightly around the jaka’s reins that I can see every vein in them. “Everything will be different there, I suppose.”
He’s upset now. I can’t have that. I swear, I’m going to gag Rusen to keep him from talking tomorrow. “Not everything,” I promise him. “The court is very liberal in many ways. You’ll have space to pursue your interests, and while no doubt our library isn’t as fine as Zephyth’s, I’m sure there are some volumes there you haven’t read yet.”
“Hmm.” Camrael looks at me for a long moment, then offers me a little smile. “And do you think my husband will accept me spending all hours of the day meddling with books and tools instead of learning the ways of my new people?”
“I think he’ll expect you to manage both with equal grace,” I say. “Like you’ve managed everything else so far.”
He looks away, but this time it’s because he’s blushing. It’s a fetching look on him. I wonder just how far down that blush goes.
I wonder if, before this trip is over, I’ll have the chance to find out.