Chapter 4
Chapter Four
The west wing that housed the soldiers was more fortified and more starkly decorated than the east wing.
Verna knocked twice, then entered the room.
Kalen sat in the chair by the window, not on the bed where most new arrivals would be. She was washed clean and someone had given her a linen tunic. Without the caked dirt and dried blood, she looked a different woman.
She wasn’t pretty. Verna registered this without judgment, as she might note the quality of the grapes.
Kalen's nose had been broken at least once and had healed slightly off-centre.
Her jaw was strong, her brows dark, and her wide mouth was set in a firm line that seemed to be its natural position.
An old silvery scar ran down from her left ear to the edge of her jaw.
Her hands on the table were large and calloused.
And yet there was something about her that intrigued Verna. She had a presence and charisma that drew her to her.
Kalen's eyes tracked Verna from the door to the chair opposite without moving her head.
"Did you sleep?" Verna asked quietly.
The reply was blunt. "Enough."
Verna settled into the chair. On the table between them was food and water, as it had been the night before. This time Kalen had eaten most of it which wasn’t necessarily a good sign. The woman would know she had to keep up her strength if she wanted to escape.
"How is your eye?" Verna asked after a beat.
"I can see out of it."
"Would you like our healer to look at your wrists? The skin is very raw."
"I’ve had worse."
"No doubt." Verna waited a moment before she added, "Will you let her look at them?"
A pause, then Kalen answered gruffly, "If it pleases you."
"They’re your wrists, Kalen. If you wish it, I’ll ask the healer to tend to them."
The woman eyed her with that expression bordering between dislike and assessment. "You are very insistent on the distinction."
"Yes, I am."
Kalen glanced toward the sea. In the morning light her skin was a light brown, and the scar looked like a seam in old wood. "Okay," she said. "It would please me. They itch."
Verna almost smiled. "Good. I’ll send her after we talk."
"And what are we going to discuss?"
"Whatever you wish."
Kalen turned from the window and fixed her with a hard look. "That’s not an answer."
"It is." Verna folded her hands in her lap. "Though I will ask questions if I may."
"Ask away."
"Where are you from?"
"A long way from here."
Verna regarded her steadily. "The auction tag said the northern border."
"That’s where they caught me," Kalen said. "It’s not where I’m from."
"And where is that?"
The silence stretched long enough that Verna thought she might not answer. Then she replied, "A place you wouldn’t have heard of."
"Try me. I am well-travelled."
"East of everywhere you’ve been." Kalen picked up the cup of water and drank from it, then set it down again before she added, "My homeland doesn’t appear on Imperial maps. We’ve never been conquered or traded with. The Empire doesn’t know we exist."
"We?" Verna said, picking up the word. "As in your people."
"My people."
"Women warriors."
Kalen’s expression became wary. "What makes you say that?"
"The auctioneer said it took four men to bring you in. The slavers’ guild never states the truth when it wants to sell a fighter.
They need to make the buyer feel the prize is manageable.
If they admitted to four, it was likely more.
" Verna let that settle. "And there’s the way you hold yourself. You’re not accustomed to defeat. "
Kalen looked at her for a long moment. "You’re clever."
"I’m observant. There’s a difference."
"In my experience, clever people call themselves observant." Kalen’s mouth moved into a half smile. "I’m from a community of women warriors. Our lands are far away, but I won’t say in what direction. I have no way of knowing your intentions."
"A fair precaution."
"We are hidden from the rest of the world, which is why we’ve survived this long."
Verna nodded. She wouldn’t press the issue. She had no interest in finding a community of warrior women except to see how they lived. "How did you come to be at the border?"
"I was in a scouting mission that went badly." The flat tone of it suggested the full story was considerably longer and wouldn’t be told today.
"Were you the leader?"
Kalen pursed her lips. "Why?"
"Because you give orders with your body even when your mouth is shut. You walked off that auction platform unafraid."
"I didn’t fear to be bought," Kalen said with a ghost of a smile. "They would have found out they’d brought a viper into their midst."
Verna suddenly realized this was true. The woman had a suppressed violence simmering under the surface, and given the opportunity, she would kill her master. She needed to do some fast talking or this warrior could cause havoc here.
"And you?" Kalen said abruptly. "What is your reason?"
Verna blinked. "For what?"
"For buying me." Kalen gestured broadly at the room, the estate beyond it, and the sea. "I’m hardly a young girl needing to be saved." Her eyes moved over Verna’s face with the same unsentimental assessment she’d given the courtyard walls.
"You’re a beautiful woman. You are clearly educated, wealthy and hold a great deal of power in the empire.
Why are you here playing the saviour of slave girls instead of enjoying life? "
The question landed hard. Verna was not accustomed to being scrutinised but held her temper. "That’s a question you have no business asking."
Kalen ignored the remark. "Where is your husband?"
Verna looked toward the water, thinking, as she often did when the question of her choices arose, of her mother. People said she had her mother’s face, but she never considered it to be a blessing.
Her mother had been the beauty of two provinces, dark-eyed and fine-boned, her hair the colour of snow.
She had married a royal nephew at the emperor’s request, and had spent the rest of her life regretting the union.
They had made their home on her family’s estate, and though her husband hadn’t beaten her, he had systematically made her become smaller in every way that mattered.
Eventually, her mother, who had laughed loudly and sworn occasionally and had a genuine gift for the management of land, had stopped laughing entirely.
She died when Verna was twenty, and her father drank himself into the grave three years later.
Being their only child, Verna had inherited the estate.
"My mother was beautiful, but it didn’t bring her happiness," she said, meeting Kalen’s gaze a little defiantly. "I chose to spend my life differently."
Kalen studied her. "You never married."
"No."
Kalen considered this without apparent judgment. "And the women you collect here. The girls. You give them the choice your mother wasn’t given."
"I try to."
Another silence. Outside, the wind moved through the whispering trees and the sound came, as it always did, like voices of her Eclipsian ancestors. Kalen’s head tilted slightly toward the window at the sound of it.
"What are those trees?"
"My grandmother planted them. We call them whisperers. The wind does something particular through the leaves." Verna stood and moved to the window. Below, the silver-green rows of them shivered in the morning air along the drive. "She said they were company when she was often alone."
Kalen shivered and said quietly, "They sound like the whispering of witches."
Verna turned the silver ring on her finger as she studied her profile. The broken nose, the old scar, the face, not beautiful but with a haunting presence far more arresting than a pretty face.
"Yes," Verna said. "They do."
They stood in silence, both looking down at the whispering trees, while the light moved across the water below. Kalen turned from the window and gazed at her directly. "You haven't answered my question."
"Which one?"
"Why you bought me," she said firmly. "The girls I understand, but I’m not a blushing youth or a domestic. I can’t see myself fitting in here."
Verna was quiet for a moment. She had known this question was coming since the auction hall and had planned a careful answer, but now found it wouldn’t hold up under Kalen's scrutiny. The woman wasn’t a fool.
"Not yet," Verna said reluctantly.
"Not yet what?"
"I'll answer you, but later when you’re settled in. You've been here less than a day and I'd rather you were fed and rested before I asked anything of you."
"You're going to ask something of me?"
"Yes."
"Huh!" Kalen exclaimed then frowned at her. "Ask now. I don't like waiting."
"I've noticed," Verna said drily. "All right.
" She returned to her chair, then waited for Kalen to come back to the table.
Verna folded her hands on the top in front of her, choosing her words carefully.
"The emperor," she began, "is a man who requires entertainment.
Borgine has ruled for twenty-five years and has grown bored.
He taxes, controls the trade routes, the marriage alliances, and the judiciary.
But Borgine is not a bookish man." She paused.
"Last year he staged what he calls the Trials of the Houses.
A competition between the great aristocratic families of the Empire, held in the arena next to the palace. "
Kalen's expression didn't change, but something sharpened in her eyes.
"The events last year," she continued, "included combat, horsemanship, and feats of strength and endurance. The houses were not obliged to participate, but this year we were informed it will be different. Everyone has to join in and we’ve been given guidelines. A house that performs well will be rewarded with the emperor’s favour.
A house that performs poorly—" She let the pause carry the weight of it, "will find him taking a more personal interest in its affairs. "
"What kind of personal interest?"
"Perhaps their estates will be broken apart and redistributed to loyal men. We don’t know yet, but he has the law behind him. The aristocracy gave him that power three generations ago in exchange for protection from invading enemies. He will find something to hurt the loser."
Kalen was watching her now with a frown. "And your house?"
"The Eclipsian Vineyards are one of the oldest estates on this coast. I am its sole owner." Verna felt a weight settle on her shoulders. "I have no husband and no male kin."
"Ah…he wants to marry you off."
"He’s suggested it three times in two years. But I am too wealthy and have too many powerful friends for him to take my lands." She gazed down at her hands. "If my house performs poorly in this year's Trials, it will be his excuse to stop suggesting and start forcing."
Kalen fell silent. A gull cried once, sharp and solitary as Verna waited for her to speak.
"So, you need a champion," Kalen said.
"Yes."
"You can’t hire one?"
Verna took a deep breath. "The emperor stated we were to find someone amongst our own soldiers. If I’m seen recruiting a fighter, word would reach him within the week.
I think that these games were set up to force me to marry one of his sons.
" She met Kalen's eyes with a smile. "Buying someone from the auction is not unusual for me. I do it every season."
At that, something passed across Kalen’s face; not anger, something complicated that Verna couldn't fully read. She held the woman's gaze. "Will you help me?"
Kalen looked down at her hands, the split knuckles, the raw skin at her wrists. Then she looked up. "What are the terms?"
The directness of it, no posturing or recrimination, did something to Verna.
She released the breath she hadn't known she was holding. "You’ll train with my guards for three months until the Trials. You’ll compete as the Eclipsian champion.
If we place well, the emperor's interest will move to an easier target and I’ll have a reprieve.
" She paused. "In return, I'll give you whatever you need to find your way home afterward.
Maps, contacts in the outer territories, provisions and a great deal of coin. "
Kalen looked at her with a dark steady gaze. "And if I refuse?"
"Then you remain here as the other women do. You’ll be fed, housed, and work in the fields until you're ready to go after a year." Verna gave her a knowing look. "But I think you'd find it difficult. You are not a woman built for waiting."
Kalen was quiet for a long moment. "This emperor," she said at last, "sits on his throne built on the backs of women and buys loyalty, and continues to fight wars to expand his empire."
"Yes. He does."
"And the only move available to you is to beat him at his own game."
"At present."
Kalen turned the empty water cup in a restless gesture. "Then I'll do it," she said. "Not for the maps and the coin, though I'll take them. But because the outer perimeters of his empire have become bloodbaths."
The warmth that moved through Verna then was something she did not immediately name. Relief, she told herself; nothing more than the straightforward solution to a problem.
"Thank you," she said quietly.
Kalen nodded once, with the finality of a woman who didn’t revisit decisions once they were made. She put out her hand for Verna to shake. "You have my pledge not to try to escape."
Verna took it, knowing this woman’s word wouldn’t be broken.
As she clasped the hand, an odd tingle spread up her arm.
It still lingered when she rose and moved to the door.
She paused on the threshold to say, "I'll send the healer, and clothes more suited for a warrior.
We'll begin evaluating what you can do in a day or two, once you've had time to recover. "
"I don't need two days."
"Tomorrow, then," Verna said.
The corner of Kalen's mouth moved. "Tomorrow."
Verna stepped out into the corridor and pulled the door closed behind her. She stood there in the quiet, her hand still resting against the wood, and did not examine the reason why she was in no particular hurry to move away from it.