King of Mist (Steel and Fire Book 2) (15 page)

“Aye, sir.” Hirram turned the goblet around in his hands, which were spotted with age but strong. A low mutter of voices drifted from the square beneath them. Some of the nobles were beginning to pile into their palanquins to return home. Others left on foot, steps weaving unconcernedly. The mountain was still considered safe at night, despite recent events.

Siv glanced at his companion. “Did you ever meet my father, Hirram?”

“Yes, sir. I served him here a few times. He treated his people with respect. He always spoke to me like a man, something that hasn’t been the case with all my employers. I used to work for Lord Rollendar, and he . . . Forgive me, Your Highness, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“It’s all right, Hirram. So you worked for Lord Von?”

“Aye. I can only say that a man knows when he’s being spoken to as a man and when he’s being spoken to as little better than a packhorse.”

Siv frowned. “Well, I may not be as good as my father, but I swear to always respect my people,” Siv said. “All of my people.”

“Hirram!” Lady Zurren’s sharp voice cut across the terrace. “Attend me.”

“Coming, my lady.” Hirram drained the last of his wine and picked up his tray.

Siv stopped him with a hand on the arm. “Come to the castle if you ever want a different job, Hirram. I’ll find a place for you.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.” Hirram met his eyes levelly. “Be as good as your father one day, Your Highness. We are counting on you.”

“Aye,” Siv whispered as the servant hurried off. One day, he hoped he would be.

In the meantime, he needed to do more to get to know his people—and to get them to know him. He’d spent enough time trying to court the nobles. He wanted to show the people he cared about them too. The mountain had been too depressing of late.

Siv swirled his wine, the Firelight glinting on it like sunshine on rich mountain plums. He really should host a festival to celebrate the harvest. But it wouldn’t just be for the nobility. He would throw a party for the people—all the people—and show them the kind of king he planned to be.

13.

Training

BERG
worked the new Castle Guard as hard as if they were training for the biggest tournament of the season. They had to quickly learn to account for sharpened blades and no boundary lines. He focused relentlessly on defense. Some of the duelists grumbled that the training was too simplistic, but all the fancy attacks in the world wouldn’t matter if your opponent ran you through in the first exchange. Dara was glad to get back into the rhythm of dueling. She had faced down death at the end of a sword herself, and it helped her adjust her perspective faster than some of the others.

The sport duelists were an ornery bunch, and training didn’t go quite as smoothly as she’d hoped it would. They didn’t like taking orders. They had become athletes instead of soldiers for a reason. Dara led the training sessions whenever Berg couldn’t make it, and they complained that she was even stricter than Berg, especially when she made them start their lunges over if they weren’t perfect and run laps around the entire castle—including up and down every staircase. She could still trounce most of them, but she didn’t feel as if she had them in hand yet.

Dara had been relieved of regular guard duty while she trained the recruits, so she rarely saw the king. Siv was busy with his own responsibilities. Occasionally he appeared on the balcony above the dueling hall to check on their progress, but he never stayed long. He still wasn’t officially engaged, and he had to spend time wooing his delicate lady in addition to carrying out the rest of his kingly duties.

Princess Selivia watched the training sessions sometimes, though, and she filled Dara in on the castle gossip. The topic on everyone’s lips was the big harvest festival Siv had decided to host. There would be a carnival in the castle courtyard, and the new duelists’ division of the Guard would make their official debut at the occasion.

“I think you all should have a special name,” Selivia said one afternoon, leaning over the balcony to call down to the duelists, who were resting up after their latest practice session. “And new uniforms! Something to show that you’re a special group.”

Dara eased off her jacket, rubbing her arm where she’d taken a bad hit in her last bout. “I don’t know if that’s nec—”

“That’s a great idea!” called Yuri.

“Yeah, a team name!” Oat said. “I like it.”

“What kind of uniforms?” Bilzar Ten asked skeptically, adjusting the collar of his expensive Morn Brothers dueling jacket over the tattoos twining around his neck.

“Oh, please let me choose them!” Selivia said. “Zala can help me. She has a great eye for color.” She indicated her Truren handmaiden, who was supposed to be teaching her the Far Plains language but seemed to spend more time helping the princess dream up new outfits.

“Shouldn’t it be Amintelle colors?” Dell Dunn said eagerly. “We’re the king’s men.”

“And women,” Luci snapped.

“Wait, what are the Amintelle colors?” Errol Feln asked, scratching at his broad nose.

“Blue, of course,” Bilzar said. “Haven’t you noticed how often our king wears blue coats?”

“Why in all the Firelord’s realm would I notice that?”

“Our king is very dashing,” Bilzar said, looking down his handsome nose at Errol, who blinked and leaned over to whisper to his sister—probably asking her what dashing meant.

“How about we call ourselves the Blue Squad, then?” Oat suggested.

“That’s boring,” Yuri said, throwing a glove at him. “Come on, Oat, you can do better than that!”

“How about the Duel School?” Dell said. The others groaned.

“I wish Vine had come to practice today,” Yuri said. “She’s good at this sort of thing.”

“Oh sure,
that’s
why you wish she was here . . .” Oat said, throwing Yuri’s glove back at him.

“Hey, I have a great appreciation for all of Lady Silltine’s talents,” Yuri said.

“How about we call ourselves the King’s Men?” Shon said, unlacing his boots with jittery hands.

Luci huffed out a sigh. “We’re not all men,” she said. “How many times do I need to remind you people?”

“The King’s Guard, then?” Shon said, shrinking away from Luci’s glare.

“What about us?” Selivia called down from the balcony. “You’ll guard the princesses sometimes too.”

Yuri leapt to his feet and flung his arms wide, making Selivia giggle. “The Guards and Protectors of the Royal Amintelles, long may they live!”

“How about just calling us the New Guard?” Dara suggested. She still wasn’t sure the name was necessary, but she didn’t want it to get too flowery and complicated. They had a serious job to do.

“It has a certain simplicity to it,” Bilzar said. “We’ll be the new blue, the protectors of our king—and his gorgeous and effervescent sisters—and we will be the dawn of a new era for Vertigon.”

“Hear! Hear!” Dell called.

“The New Guard,” Oat said. “I approve.”

“It’s easy enough to remember,” Errol said with a shrug.

“I love it!” Selivia called from the balcony. “Zala and I will work on your uniforms. They’ll have to be a special blue. You’re all going to look so gallant!”

She and her handmaiden disappeared from the balcony, already chattering about how they’d help the New Guard make an impression by the time of the grand harvest festival.

With all the training and preparations, Dara had very little time to worry about anything else. She hadn’t made any progress at all on figuring out what to do about her parents. She hadn’t seen them in over two months, and the longer she waited the harder it would be to approach them. She had asked Vine to keep her ears open for news of the Fireworkers, but she couldn’t bring herself to explain why. She still hoped it was a problem she could solve on her own.

And then there was the Fire. Dara had taken to skirting around the Fire Lanterns lining the castle corridors whenever possible. The Fire called to her more intensely than ever. When she was tired, which was often these days, she could barely keep the lanterns from swinging toward her as she passed them. The manifestation of her power may have been delayed, but that didn’t seem to have dampened it. Dara still didn’t know what to do with her ability. She couldn’t ignore it forever.

One afternoon after a particularly harsh practice, Dara trudged down to the castle kitchens in the basement for a snack. Most of the duelists had flopped down on the floor to rest as soon as training ended, and she was alone. She snuck some goat jerky from the kitchens and headed back toward the stairs, planning to take a nice long nap before her evening run.

As she walked through the underground corridor, munching on the jerky, she brushed against a low-hanging Firebulb. Suddenly, Fire shot into her like a shock, and the Firebulb went out. Dara gasped and dropped her jerky. The Fire remained inside her, humming and singing along her bones. It was as if the Fire had sensed her blood could contain it. She shuddered at the feeling.

Dara raised her fingers to the still-swinging Firebulb and concentrated. She gathered the molten heat oozing through her veins, pulling it down her arm and into her hand, and pushed it toward the Firebulb. Slowly, the Fire squeezed out of her and back into the metal vessel. Dara slumped as the last of the heat left her. She had to be more alert so this wouldn’t happen again.

She bent to retrieve her jerky. When she straightened, Zage Lorrid stood directly in front of her.

Dara froze. A hundred thoughts went through her mind. She should run. She should draw her blade and warn Zage to stay away. She should pull the Fire back out of that Firebulb and hurl it at him.

Before she could do anything, he said, “So.” Then with lightning speed he yanked a burning cord of Fire from the stones and cast it at her.

Dara barely had time to yell before the Fire wrapped around her in a hundred threads. She pulled against them, and though the Fire didn’t burn her skin, she couldn’t push through it either. It held her firmly as rope.

“Let me go,” she said.

Zage watched her struggling against the bonds.

“Curious,” he said. “I’d have expected Rafe to teach you how to absorb those threads by now. You must be behind on your training.”

“He hasn’t trained me in anything,” Dara growled. But she stopped struggling.
Absorb.
She could try that. She concentrated on the thread of Fire around her right wrist. She imagined it connecting with her pale blue veins and being absorbed into them. Slowly, the Fire entered her body, and the first bond disappeared.

Zage immediately lashed another bond in its place. But he was staring at her in surprise.

“What do you mean he hasn’t trained you?” he said softly.

Dara glared at the Fire Warden, thinking fast. He knew she had the Spark, the innate ability to Work the Fire. It was too late to hide that now. But what else had he figured out? And what was he planning to do to her now?

“I only recently found out I have the Spark,” Dara said. “My father doesn’t know.”

“He doesn’t know,” Zage repeated. There was something like wonder in his voice.

“Release me,” Dara said.

“We must speak first,” Zage said. “Tell me. What do
you
know?”

“About what?”

“Your father.”

Dara frantically tried to absorb more of the Fire holding her in place, but Zage only added to it, pulling more molten power from the castle walls. He did it automatically, continuing to study her with those glittering black eyes. Zage would tell the king what she could do. Siv would wonder why she’d kept it a secret, wonder whether she knew anything about a bottle of Firetears that had shown up in the castle a few months ago. Her heart stuttered painfully. Was there any way out of this?

“I don’t know anything for sure,” Dara said. “But I think my father is a danger to the king.”

“Indeed,” Zage said. “And you?”

“The king is my friend,” she said. “I want to protect him.”

“So you say.”

“If you don’t believe me, then what do you think I’m doing here?” Dara tugged at the bonds again. She was now holding quite a lot of Fire inside her as she absorbed the threads Zage sent at her. The trouble was she didn’t know what to do with the Fire next. She had mostly seen Fireworkers making objects. She didn’t know how to truly
wield
the power.

“I have long thought you were biding your time,” Zage whispered. “Rafe is a patient man, and I thought it clever of him to position his daughter in such a manner. But I’ve wondered of late what was taking you so long.”

“My father didn’t position me anywhere,” Dara said. “I want to stop anyone who would hurt the king.”

“But this ability.” Zage watched her as if she were a strange creature from the Lands Below. “I was led to believe you lacked the Spark.”

“I did.” Dara finally stopped struggling and let some of the Fire drain out of her. It was easiest to direct it through the metal of her sword. It passed through the blade and dripped back to the stones. “It started this summer. I didn’t have a chance to tell my father about it before . . . before the Vertigon Cup.”

“And you’ve decided to keep it a secret now?”

Dara met Zage’s eyes. It was time to gamble. “I don’t think my father has the kingdom’s best interests at heart.”

“I must agree on that point,” Zage said. “But whose interests do you have at heart?”

Dara swallowed. She couldn’t believe she was spilling her secrets to Zage Lorrid, of all people. But she was trapped. Her fate depended entirely on what he decided to do with what he already knew.

“Siv’s,” she said. Her breath constricted as she voiced the truth. Zage must hear her heart pounding. “Not the king, not the kingdom, not the Guard. It’s Siv that I . . . that I care about.”

Zage sighed, long and low. “I see,” he said. The bonds of Fire disappeared from around her wrists.

Dara sagged, rubbing at the warm spots on her skin as the last of the Fire faded back into the stones.

“Are you going to tell him?” she asked.

“Which piece of information?”

“Any of it?”