Chapter 5
RIA
Four hours later, the sun has set, and the Longest Night fire is stoked high. The feast that Bartleboy had planned with Derrinza the head cook is coming to a close, and there is joy and music around the fire.
Ria is in pain. She knows from long experience that wounds hurt more hours after they’ve been acquired than at the time, but in her hope about this Longest Night, she hadn’t really factored in how much it might hurt.
And how much that pain might be slowly feeling like it might be sapping all the romance and promise out of the evening.
And it is making her grouchy.
She watches as, across the fire, Nissa spins in a dance with four of her friends, her long braids spiraling out around her. The sight makes her smile and wish she could make her way over, match Nissa’s steps...
Resset takes up a spot next to her on the log, following her gaze, and then turning back to her. “Haven’t recalled anything else about your attacker?” he asks, as she knew he would.
“Nope,” Ria says shortly. “Nothing. All just as I described it to you and the Warlord.”
The Warlord and his second had come into the healer’s tent just as Nissa was tying off the stitch in her arm.
Ria had given a full report and answered every question with good grace and a deal less of her habitual insouciance.
She hates the way that Resset always seems to presume everyone else’s incompetence.
Especially hers.
“Hmm. You still think the armor was stolen?”
“Probably off a corpse somewhere. You know how hard it is to get decent protection these days. You kill someone with decent armor, I know you’d take it from their body.”
“True enough,” Resset says. He hesitates. “You know the warlord is considering promising Nissa to the son of the head of the Telithina clan?”
Heat and then a chill cascade over Ria. She makes herself stay calm. “Oh?”
“I thought you should know.” Resset gives her a look that she glances away from. “I gathered you two were getting, uh, close. Didn’t want you to be hoping for impossibilities.”
Ria raises a shoulder. “Whatever the warlord is or isn’t doing, I know that Nissa will be the one who makes the decision. In the end.”
Resset gives a bark of a laugh. “I wouldn’t pin too many hopes on Nissa embarking on some juvenile rebellion.
Some girls seem to skip that step. Too strong a sense of duty or some such.
Just become virtuous womenfolk. Others… well now, others just get stuck in it, don’t they.
” He gives her a long look, in case she missed the significance of what he was saying.
Heat floods into her cheeks. He’s referring to her—to the dozen or more times she’s challenged him or the warlord, or some other person their stupid hierarchy demanded she should show respect to, even when it’s not warranted. “Don’t let me keep you,” she says in a flat tone.
“Oh, I won’t,” he replies, almost hissing as he rises.
Illima slides into the space he’s vacated, almost as soon as he’s gone. Ria wrestles with her anger.
“How are you feeling?” Illima asks quietly, pressing a cup of water into Ria’s hand.
Ria sighs. “I’m alright. Just not quite how I expected to spend this Longest Night.”
Illima offers a sympathetic half-smile. “No, I’d imagine not.” Ria quirks a brow at her quizzically. “I mean, Nissa wouldn’t be dancing with anyone else, were you hale, and we both know it. As does our warlord’s second,” she finishes more grimly.
Ria frowns. “Resset?”
“Resset.” Illima’s tone is dour. “No doubt he came over to offer some more discouragement?”
Ria looks at her wonderingly. “How did you know?”
Illima gives a short laugh. “You and Nissa are so tangled up in each other you’ve barely raised your heads to look around. You’d have seen it, if you did. Probably. He’s not been particularly… cautious about it.”
Ria’s mouth falls open as she puts together what Illima is saying—or carefully not saying. Was Resset trying to displace her? What was that story about the son of the Telithina Warlord? She scowls briefly.
“Are you saying…” She shakes her head. Even if Illima was right, knowing Resset has been aiming for this doesn’t help her much. Her plans for the night involved being well enough to make Nissa’s Longest Night memorable… or the kind of experience she’d like to repeat, say, nightly… for a year…
Illima glances at her. “I’ve been wondering whether to tell you both, but it seemed like you were just going to go on your oblivious way together and that, in its own way, would have been the best payback he could get. But now…” She makes a moue of her mouth. “I have something for you.”
She hesitates and then draws a small ball from the pouch at her waist. It’s textured, and she settles it into Ria’s hand. Ria runs a thumb over it. It feels like dried leaves, bound together somehow.
Illima gives a short, irritated sigh, and Ria looks up at her, wondering. “What is it?”
“It’s… a special remedy,” Illima says, and Ria can almost hear the obfuscation in the words. “And let me be clear, it’ll cost you. But it will give you the strength and… well, it will take away the pain, for this Longest Night. So you can make the most of the time you have.”
She shakes her head. “I have misgivings. I keep this for desperate days, truly, but I have watched you and Nissa, and I don’t want Resset’s meddling to…
well, I don’t want it to succeed just because you and she have been moving at an echidna’s pace, honestly.
” She gives Ria a quick, salacious grin.
“Because you have taken your time, girl.”
Ria flushes, but she can’t help the grin that surfaces as well. “I wanted to be sure. Well, no, I already am. But I wanted her to be sure. And I’m happy for that to take as long as it needs to.”
“All very noble, I’m sure,” Illima says with a snort.
“But in the meantime, Resset’s got to weave his little trap for her, and…
” She shakes her head. “She’ll be too… she’s not naive, but she does tend to think the best of people.
And she’s got that tendency towards duty…
She’ll just go along with it, because her father says the words. Even if it’s Resset’s plan.”
“So, you’re giving me this… medicine… so that I can… invite Nissa to leap the flames with me and… stop whatever Resset’s plan is?”
“Whatever his plan is, you can bet that it won’t involve Nissa getting to make any real choices about who she will marry,” Illima says dryly.
“And while Nissa will no doubt sacrifice her own happiness for the rest of the clan, what she can’t see is that whatever she gives up, every other woman in the clan will be asked to give up too. ”
Ria blinks at her in confusion. “Me? She’d be giving up me, right?”
Illima laughs at her. “No, silly. Well, she would. But the women… they’d lose real choices about who to marry. After all, if the Warlord’s daughter doesn’t get to make her own decisions, why should they?”
“Oh!” Ria feels like a fool. “So… You’re giving me this drug so that I can…”
“Give that girl a night that will let her know what she would be giving up, should she just go along with her father’s plans. So that she knows she has choices. Real, actual choices. With real, actual stakes, not just for the rest of us, but for her. Yes.”
Ria feels her cheeks heat again, but she gives Illima a grin. “I can give her choices,” she says softly, letting every fantasy she’s ever entertained about giving Nissa pleasure cascade through her mind.
Blood-bonded, please. Isiridion sounds entertained, but also mildly annoyed. Restraint.
Not tonight, dragon. No restraint tonight. Unless she asks for it, of course.
The dragon snorts in her head.
“I will give her every choice.” Ria’s voice resonates with feeling, and Illima’s smile is affectionate. “So how do I take this?”
“Eat it. It will taste like arse, and I’m sorry about that, but it really can’t be helped. And then you’ll have about twelve hours, give or take, of no pain and a decent dose of energy.”
Ria nods slowly. “The children are already abed. It won’t be long ‘til it’s time to dance the rainforest.”
Illima nods. “You should eat it now. Chew it until it’s gone. Don’t swallow anything whole.”
Ria draws a ragged breath and puts the ball into her mouth.
Bitterness floods her mouth, followed by a rush as her saliva seeks to counteract it.
She chews, forcing herself to keep going despite the flavor.
Illima watches her for a moment, then gives her a swift smile, and pats her knee. “Have a good night, Ria.”
Ria can’t do much more than nod in response.