Chapter Nine #2
We served ourselves. The Vhranians, at least in this caravanserai, grazed at the table rather than filling plates, which was fine by me. It gave me the chance to try a bit of everything.
I was eating a slice of glossy red apple—so very different from the small, wormy fruits that would appear in stronghold markets at the end of summer—when Nik appeared beside me.
“Are you enjoying yourself?”
I swallowed, nodded. “There’s food, music, wine. People like me don’t get invited to parties. What’s not to like?”
“It’s good to enjoy it,” Nik said. “But be wary of him.”
“Of who?”
“Savaadh. He’s a dangerous man.”
I snorted. “You work for the Lys’Careths.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” I looked up at him. “We’re poor, not na?ve. Everyone is potentially dangerous to people like us. In fact, you might ask yourself if it was safe for us to run off across the grasslands in a stranger’s carriage.”
Nik began to speak, then thought better of it. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
I was a little surprised that he apologized, and so quickly. Nobles and their people weren’t usually keen on admitting they’d been wrong. “You’re forgiven. Begrudgingly.”
Nik picked up the platter of apple slices and extended it to me.
“Apologizing with someone else’s food doesn’t count.” But I still took another slice and crunched it.
“Nik.” We looked back and found Savaadh and Theranys approaching. Nik put the platter back on the table.
“We must retire soon,” Savaadh said quietly. “We should discuss things before you return.”
Nik glanced at me. “I’ll be back. Stay close to Wren.”
“I always do. Try not to run off with him to their northern camp.”
He lifted a hand in acknowledgment, and they disappeared through an archway to a different part of the complex.
Wren joined me. “Is he considering running off?”
“No, but he thinks I am because Savaadh is a flirt.”
“Being kept by an Ensi wouldn’t be freedom.”
“That’s exactly what I think.”
We walked back to the table where Charis and Darya sipped wine and nibbled torn bits of a thin, round bread dotted with flecks of green.
I took a seat. “Do you know what they’re discussing?”
“News from the capitals, I expect,” Darya said. “Murder is forbidden in the caravanserai, but spying is a ubiquitous and lucrative business, so they must be careful where they speak.”
Charis nodded. “We’ll find out some of it later, but not all. Savaadh believes he can protect us by keeping the more salacious information to himself.” She rolled her eyes, and even that was beautiful. “But we always learn the truth eventually. While we wait, let’s play cards.”
“Cards?” I asked, concern about presumptuous soldiers and secret conversations now fading away. “I love cards.”
“I thought you might. You look like a woman skilled at many things.” She opened a pretty lacquered box and removed a stack of thin wooden cards. She dealt them into three stacks in the center of the table and one small stack in front of each of us. “Have you played Crown the Queen?”
We both shook our heads.
“The goal is to obtain power,” Charis continued. “The higher the card, the greater the power. Enough power, and you can crown a queen.”
“So go the cards,” Darya said, “so goes life.”
Crown the Queen, it turned out, involved a lot of cursing, bartering, lying, and outright theft. I loved it immediately.
“Are you sure you haven’t played this before?” Charis asked when I’d added all but one of her cards to my hand.
“Never. But it suits me very well.”
“You don’t seem to be soldiers,” Darya said.
“We’re working.”
“Because you can see Anima?” Darya asked.
I nodded. “How did you know?”
“I can see a bit,” Darya said, “and there’s a touch of the Aetheric about you.”
“There’s been a lot to go around lately,” I murmured.
Before she could respond, Nik and Savaadh emerged from the alcove.
Together, they looked like the princes in the storybooks sold in the market.
Savaadh moved to a group in the corner, and Darya and Charis rose to join him.
Nik strode to our table, and Galen moved from his sulking spot in the corner to our group.
Savaadh was smiling and looked utterly relaxed; Nik’s face gave nothing away, but his hands were fisted in frustration.
“What did he do?” I asked quietly.
Nik looked surprised at the question. “Nothing. Why?”
“You’re angry.”
“I’m not angry. I’m frustrated.”
“By? And yes, I’m nosy,” I said, anticipating Galen’s comment. “I want to know if we’re in for more trouble.”
“The Emperor Eternal is aging. And there’s new maneuvering among the princes to take the crown.”
“Our prince?”
“No. The Eastern Prince, the son of the current Empress Eternal”—he paused, looked meaningfully at Galen—“is to be given control of the entire Eastern Army.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“He has.”
“It’s, what, forty thousand troops? Fifty?”
“Closer to fifty,” Nik said.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Don’t all the princes have armies?”
“They have detachments,” Galen said. His complete lack of sarcasm emphasized the apparent gravity of this development. “Like the soldiers who marched in with the prince. But the Eastern Army and Western Army are supposed to be led by generals. Not royals.”
“The head of the Eastern Army died,” Nik said. “The emperor has concerns about aggressiveness from Illarnin, and the empress has convinced him to put the troops in the hands of someone trustworthy.”
Illarnin was the nation to Carethia’s southeast.
“The Eastern Prince isn’t trustworthy?” I asked.
“He trusts no one,” Nik said. “People who refuse to trust aren’t usually trustworthy themselves.”
Wren frowned. “How did Savaadh know about this before the Western Prince?”
“He apparently has better contacts than the prince, or faster ones. Official messengers come through the Western Pass.”
That was the only road that traversed Mount Cennet, the highest peak in the mountains east of the stronghold.
The pass was nestled in a narrow valley, and even that was blocked in midwinter.
The only other options were skirting the entire mountain range, which would add weeks to a trip, or crossing the mountain on foot with a guide. And that was often deadly.
Savaadh lifted his hands. “The hour draws near!” he announced.
“We must retire soon to prepare for our journey. We leave before sunrise to set our way.” That was the cue for a group of musicians to begin playing.
One whistled into a skinny pipe, another plucked the three strings of a long box, and a third tapped a rhythm on a set of hand drums.
Savaadh strode to us. “It is our custom to share a dance the day of our departure. Will you join us?”
“No, thank you,” Nik said. “I don’t dance.”
Savaadh’s gaze shifted to me. “Fox?”
I knew that the mood among our group had darkened, but how many opportunities would I have like this? “Sure. But I don’t know how.”
“This I can teach you now.” He held out his hand, and I took it and rose to my feet. But I glanced back at Wren.
“Go,” she said. “I’ll be here not dancing.” And in case anyone tried to sway her otherwise, she crossed her arms, her features settling into her usual stern expression.
I didn’t bother asking for Nik’s permission. After all, I was honoring a Zephyrii tradition. Helping Carethian diplomacy.
Stools and tables in the middle of the room were pushed to its edges.
Savaadh and I joined the other pairs of dancers who’d begun to form a wide circle in the space they’d created.
And then the music began, a slow beat of drums and finger bells.
We all clasped hands and the circle began to move.
Two steps to the right, a clap, two steps to the left.
I followed along, matching my movements to theirs, and then the entire circle began to spin.
Skirts of brilliantly colored fabrics swirled like falling petals, and smiles blossomed with the joy of moving together.
This was why they danced: to remind themselves, before setting out in a line of travelers that might stretch a mile, that they were one community. One family.
The circle split into couples, and Savaadh twirled me around, and then on to the next dancer. We made another spin, and so on and so on, until I reached the man with remarkable blue eyes.
Nik took my hand, the touch sending a sizzling kind of warmth through mine.
I looked up at him. “I thought you didn’t dance.”
“I thought I didn’t, either. Turns out, I make exceptions.”
We turned in a circle, hands joined, and then he spun me away and back again. The flecks of gold in his eyes seemed brighter, his lips more generous. Even the curve of his ear was beautiful. If my heart had pinched not just for Anima, but for dangerous humans, it might have done so now.
The dance had already quickened my heartbeat, but now it sped in a new way. We’d had a kind of dance fighting back against the attack on the prince’s convoy. That had been a battle. This was…an awareness. Not of a soldier, but of a man.
Nik’s gaze didn’t leave mine, and I saw the awareness mirrored in his eyes, along with surprise. And then he released me to the next dancer, and we shifted back and forth between the rows of couples. I found myself searching for him through the lines of dancers, wanting one more glimpse.
When we reached each other again, he didn’t hesitate to take my hands. We mimicked the moves of those around us as candlelight sparkled and incense scented the air with mysterious flowers. I looked up and found his eyes on me, and there was hunger there now.
He drew my body against his, lowered his head, and pressed his mouth to mine.
The kiss was testing and soft until I responded and slipped a hand into his dark and silken hair.
There was a rumble of victory in his chest and he deepened the kiss, pulling me closer.
I could have blamed the sweetwine and incense for not stopping, for not pushing him away.
But I wanted this. The heat, the connection, the moment.
The dancers around us disappeared, so there was only Nik and me and the pounding drums. His hand at the small of my back, the hard line of his body a wall against the rest of the world. The image of our bodies joined in heat and desire flashed through my mind, had breath shuddering out of me.
And then the music stopped.
I fell back into my body…and moved a step away. It took a moment before I dared to look at Nik again and found his eyes dark and fathomless as a tempestuous sea. He ran a hand through his hair and put the other at his hip as he worked to regain control.
There was a different kind of movement in the room now. The Vhranians who’d been seated began to stand, to exchange embraces and share goodbyes. They’d decamp when the sky was still dark, the world still quiet, and would ride away beneath the glowing stars.
“You danced,” Savaadh said when we reached the group again. “I’m glad of it.”
“It looked like fun,” Nik said.
Savaadh shifted his gaze to me, and there was a knowing glint in his eye and a canny, crooked smile. “It has been a pleasure to meet you, Fox. I hope our paths cross again.”
“It’s been a very unique day,” I agreed. “Are your cousins still here? I’d like to say goodbye to them.”
“They’ve left to make preparations for our travel. Take this,” he said, taking a sheathed weapon from a servant who waited nearby and handing it to me.
The blade might have been covered, but the handle was unmistakable. It was the assassin’s windblade.
I’d already declined it once, and I knew that declining again, after he’d fed and wined us, would be ill-mannered.
“Thank you,” I said, and took it. It was lighter than I’d imagined, and I had no doubt Wren could make good use of it.
“I wish you a blessed journey,” Savaadh said, leaning forward to touch his forehead to mine. “And should you ever find yourself in need of a meal or a dance, you need only ask.”