Blood's Pride (Shattered Kingdoms) (52 page)

‘She’s my sister,’ Eofar reminded him.

‘It was Harotha’s decision,’ Raina interjected.

‘Eofar!’ He hurried over to his friend. ‘He’s your son – yours and Harotha’s! You’re not just going to abandon him, are you?’

Eofar’s silver eyes were dull. ‘It’s for his own good.’

‘That’s what they told
me
,’ Daryan retorted hotly, ‘when they took me away from my mother. They were
wrong
.’

‘What do you want?’ Eofar cried out, his voice breaking. He threw out his hand towards the infant. ‘Look at him! Anyone who sees him will know what he is. He can’t stay in the Shadar. He needs someone to protect him.’

‘What about you? You’re his father—’

‘I’m going to Norland,’ Eofar told him, glancing over at Nisha. ‘Someone must go to the emperor. If he hears the Shadari have revolted, there will be another invasion. Someone must go and speak with him. It has to be me.’

‘Is this really what you want?’

‘What I
want
?’ Eofar rasped, and turned away.

Daryan looked at the helpless little baby lying in Nisha’s arms. Harotha had figured out everything before him, just like always. Angry, impotent sobs took hold of him again. Eofar hobbled slowly back towards the sleeping chamber. Raina laid a hand on his arm to stop him, but he looked at her and she took her hand away.

‘Wait,’ Nisha called after him, and he paused with his hand on the curtain. ‘We need to know his name.’

Eofar opened his mouth to speak, and then stopped. The Norlander closed his eyes and stood there, deathly still, for a long moment, then he turned back to Nisha. ‘What’s the Nomas word for “victory”?’

The Nomas women chanted simultaneously, ‘Osharad.’

‘Call him that,’ he said before disappearing inside.

A slice of daylight split the room as the curtain over the front door shifted, and the Mongrel slid inside. She stopped in the middle of the room and stared at the baby in Nisha’s arms.

‘Meiran,’ Nisha said, in a voice husky with emotion. She cleared her throat and then went on more glibly, ‘Well, here he is, my poor, beautiful babe.’ She looked down at the baby and wrinkled her pretty nose for him, then laid him against
her shoulder and softly patted his back. ‘Eofar can’t bear the sight of him. You can’t blame him, can you? Harotha wants you to take him away from here. Take him away, and never come back to the Shadar.’

The Mongrel’s scars shone silver in the firelight as she slowly held out her arms. It might have been a trick of the light, but Daryan thought he saw her trembling. Nisha nestled the baby boy’s head in the crook of her arm, and then paused, her hands resting on her shoulders, beaming at her with such overwhelming tenderness that his own sore heart swelled with longing. He would have given anything to see his own mother again, just for a moment.

The Mongrel whispered, ‘I knew you were going to say that.’

Daryan looked around the room. Suddenly he realised that he was in the presence of a conspiracy, witnessing the culmination of a story in which he had played a part, but that he still barely understood.

Ignoring the eyes that turned to follow him, he trudged across the room, lifted the sleeping Dramash off the floor, and said wearily, ‘Can we go now?’

Eofar stood on the deck in the stern of the Nomas ship
Argent
with the strong, cool wind blowing into his face. He was watching the Shadari’s fires twinkling in front of the mountains, which were just visible as purple humps in the evening starlight. All around him the ship creaked and groaned uneasily, but he had already grown accustomed to the ceaseless torrent of sound. It blended into the background of his thoughts, as did the bright voices of the Nomas sailors attending to the needs of their vessel.

The cabin door behind him squeaked open and he heard the uncertain steps of his cabin-mate coming to join him.

Rho asked as he leaned against the railing.

They stood together for a few more moments, lost in their own thoughts, before Eofar looked at Rho and recoiled.

Rho’s wounds were finally beginning to heal, but he still couldn’t straighten to his full height. The resulting slouch echoed his former disinterested posing, but there was no
mistaking the fact that he had turned his back on his birthright: his head was a mess of choppy white spikes – it looked as if he had used his knife to hack off his hair by the handful.

He was unfazed by Eofar’s reaction.

Eofar remembered something.

Rho said nothing in reply, but his thoughtfulness deepened and Eofar shifted the subject of the conversation.

Rho asked in despair, but there was more than a hint of amusement too.

He turned and scanned the immaculate deck, illuminated by lamps swinging from the rigging. Underneath the billowing sails, a dozen steady-legged, strong-armed Nomas women were going about their business with their usual air of unflappable efficiency. In their midst, Nisha stood with one arm resting easily on the ship’s great wheel, the other supporting Dramash as he tried to turn it under her laughing tutelage.

asked Rho.

Eofar reminded him. themselves look like the loyal ones. Then we’d be walking right into our own tribunal.>

Rho tried to be dismissive, but without much success.

They turned back to the receding view of the Shadar.

Rho said after another lengthy pause, and Eofar understood that he was not speaking of the Nomas queen. During one of the interminable, sleepless days that had followed the battle Eofar had found himself confiding everything that he had kept hidden for so long.

he agreed, afraid he already knew the question.

Eofar looked down at his hands on the railing. He stamped one foot, sending fresh spasms through his bandaged ankle, as if the pain would bring enlightenment. He looked back out across the water. The stars looked brighter at sea than they had from the Shadar, and the sea air was fresher and cooler. For the first time in a long while, he felt the stirrings of hunger.

Rho asked.

Eofar asked.

Rho reminded him firmly.

Rho joked, but his levity was no more convincing than his optimisim.

Eofar leaned forward. Something was flickering on the beach.

He saw a new light spring up, larger than the rest, and closer; it flared up higher, hotter. His keen Norlander eyes made out the wisps of black smoke snaking up from the pyre before they thinned out into the purple sky.

Rho leaned out over the railing and stared down into the dark water.

Isa looked down at the crowds of people heading towards the beach. The light was gone and she had finally been able to peel off her cloak and single white glove. The evening breeze
cooled her skin beautifully and she closed her eyes, listening to the insects buzzing and chirping in the mountain’s scrubby underbrush. Somewhere behind her, Aeda was also enjoying the cool solitude of the mountain ridge; she could hear her tail thumping contentedly in the dirt.

Maybe he wouldn’t come.

She sat back down on the ground to wait and looked around again, checking the landmarks, making absolutely certain that she was in the right spot, then, satisfied, she stretched out on the ground with her balled-up cloak as a pillow and watched night descend over the city.

She awoke to Daryan’s warm hand brushing her hip and his dark eyes smiling into hers.

‘Sorry,’ he whispered as she sat up beside him. ‘I hated to wake you. You were sleeping so peacefully.’

She rubbed her eyes and stared at him in confusion. He wore a splendid purple robe, gaudily embroidered with shiny constellations of stars. A thin gold band circled his newly trimmed curls and his wrists were encased in a pair of wide gold cuffs. A heavy gold medallion swung from a chain around his neck. He should have looked ridiculous, but he did not. He looked noble.

‘I couldn’t change,’ he explained quickly. ‘It would have made them suspicious. Don’t worry, I brought a plain robe.’ He waved at a large sack lying nearby and began stripping off the jewellery. ‘Is everything ready? Do you have everything you need?’

She picked her glove up off the ground and smoothed it out in her lap. ‘How was the funeral?’ she asked.

He sat down heavily on the grass beside her. ‘They didn’t
know
her – they have no idea how brave she really was, or what sacrifices she made for them. They anointed her and prayed for her and laid her body on a bonfire because they thought she was the wife of a daimon. If they had known the truth, they would have torn her apart, and me too.’ He turned to her. ‘I looked for you. I thought you might change your mind.’

She looked out over the city. The Shadari had offered her a place of honour at Harotha’s funeral: the latest in a string of awkward gestures intended to repay her for saving Dramash and killing Frea.

‘The
Argent
sailed before sunset. I needed to say goodbye to my brother and Rho,’ she reminded him. She would never admit how close they had come to persuading her to join them. ‘And Dramash. I’m still surprised his family let him go.’

‘
Let
him?’ Daryan asked bitterly. ‘They’re so terrified of him they couldn’t wait to get rid of him. They were singing songs about his heroics all the while they were pushing him into the landing-boat. It’s all such a mess.’ He sat there in silence, staring down at the city.

The drumming began, and Isa listened expectantly for the rhythm to take hold. From every corner of the city, one drummer after another took up the complicated rhythm and kept it going, made a subtle change, passed it back again, like a vibrant but amiable conversation. She found it all strangely uplifting, and now it helped her summon the last ounce of courage she needed.

‘I have to tell you something.’ She swallowed painfully. ‘I’m not going.’

Daryan looked over at her sharply. ‘What?’

‘We should stay in the Shadar.’ She faltered. She knew him too well to mistake the crushed look in his eyes. ‘We should stay.’

‘What’s the matter?’ he cried. ‘Don’t you want to be with me? You know it’s the only way we can be together, don’t you?’

She intertwined her fingers briefly with his, feeling the heat wrap around them before she pulled her hand away. ‘Now it’s the only way, but things will change.’

He stared down at her knees. ‘I don’t understand,’ he whispered. ‘We’ve been planning this ever since Harotha died.’ He looked up at her, his eyes bright with welling tears. ‘Did I do something wrong?’

She pushed down the impulse to stop, to give in. ‘I knew when you walked away from me, after Frea died – I knew it had to be this way, but I just didn’t want to believe it. I let myself pretend for a little while, but I can’t pretend any longer.’

He began to speak, but she went on without allowing him to interrupt her. ‘You are their king – you think you can’t be, not without Harotha, but you’re
wrong.
You’re their king and we can’t change that.’

‘Yes, we can,’ he responded forcefully, kneeling down in front of her. ‘We
have
to change it. Nothing’s going to get any better for us here – do you want to end up like Eofar and Harotha? We have to get away—’

‘We’ll
make
it better,’ Isa said with equal force.

‘Let them do it themselves then, if that’s what they want!’ he shouted. ‘I never wanted to be their leader, Isa. I did the best I could, but this is the end of it. I’m finished.’

‘You’re not,’ she insisted quietly, ‘and you’re wrong. You’d
find it out soon enough if we left: you would know you’d abandoned them and it would poison everything. We would never be free of it. We’d never be happy – and it would be too late to come back. No. We have to stay.’

‘
Have to?
Who are you to tell me what I
have
to do? Am I still your slave? What about me – what about what
I
want?’ He seized her and pulled her close, squeezing her in his shivering arms until she cried out. He released her at last, saying, ‘Can I not have something I want, for once in my life?’

‘We’ll work for it,’ she whispered frantically, desperate for him to understand, to believe her, ‘until they don’t need you any more. Then we’ll be together.’