Chapter 13
VARIDIAN
The emissary from Kalder was a rangy man named Mohammed in his thirties with dark shadows cut under his eyes and into his cheeks.
Nabil and I watched him like wyverns spotting a goat, but I wouldn’t allow his obvious stress to soften my heart.
He represented our enemy, represented the scores of tigers who’d slaughtered our innocent people.
The people who assaulted women, killed children, and shredded our men—farmers and bakers and craftsmen, not warriors—into pieces.
Mohammed reached for a delicate cup of tea, the porcelain glazed in the same rich teal as the water in the pool and the sofas we sat upon, arranged around a low table overflowing with piles of papers.
Lists and numbers and accounts of events written in a hasty, sloping hand.
I didn’t miss the way the emissary’s hands trembled on his cup, or the fact he wouldn’t look either of us in the eye.
Empathy insisted I acknowledge that from his perspective, we were the brutes who’d slaughtered our way across the wall to wipe out his own people, to hunt down those tigers and rip the life from them. The rest of me hardened itself against the twinge of empathy, blocked it out entirely.
“How many?” Nabil asked, hands hanging between his knees as he leaned forward to pin a calculating stare on Mohammed.
“Thousands,” the Kaldic man replied hoarsely. “Thousands are missing from our towns along the wall, all the way from the Daw’ Forest above the mountains to the Caves of Whitbar. The last count was three thousand fae and thirty-six tigers missing.”
I looked at the grey-eyed man and saw Fahad fall from his wyvern in the storm, saw Buchra plummeting to her death to defend Daurith, and had to rip my stare away. Had to leash that rage and shove it far, far down so I didn’t leap over the table and throttle Mohammed.
He could be lying. There might be no one missing in Kalder. But if any grain of it was true… three thousand fae and thirty-six tigers.
“We thought you’d taken them at first,” the emissary said timidly, taking another sip of tea like he needed to ground himself. “Especially given the wyverns.”
“Wyvern,” I repeated, my voice emerging as a dark, thunderous thing.
Calm yourself, the lightning soul snapped. Unless you wish to bring the storm to this island and make it obvious just who came out of that three-day squall with new magic.
I took a slow breath, enough to fill my lungs but not make it obvious I walked a sharp line of temper. I thought of Ameirah’s face, and my imagination conjured her eyes at a wry slant, her lips curved into a smirk. My next breath slowed the raging of my heart to a normal beat.
“The reports were ordinary at first,” Mohammed said in answer to my question, not daring to make eye contact.
“Nothing unusual about the wyvern behaviour; our border towns are used to seeing your beasts in their skies. But then came stories of black eyes, strange fire, and absent riders. And whistling wind in the dead of night.”
“Wind?” Nabil echoed, a furrow pinching his brows. “Someone with air magic?”
“Possibly,” the Kaldic man replied, taking another sip of tea, darting quick glances at us but lacking the bravery for eye contact.
This was who Kalder chose as their emissary?
“Have you heard the wind howling? I asked my Torn Isle companions, but they’re so far from the wall.
You are—well, we’re familiar with your legion. ”
“Bad idea to remind me that we’ve met in battle,” I said, my voice emerging dark, quiet.
Kanuri, who until now was happy to sit back and let the emissary handle the conversation, stepped in with a voice as sharp as a blade. “These are treaty talks. If you’re going to throw veiled threats around, you’ll be launched into the ocean and banned from the Isle for life.”
I trapped my tongue between my teeth. We didn’t want to be here; they insisted this meeting was necessary.
Essential. If they were hoping I could convince the council because of the bastard whose blood ran in my veins, they would be disappointed.
And if they believed I could sway the king himself… the thought almost made me laugh.
“I’d like an answer to my question,” Mohammed said—to Nabil, as if he were a lesser threat. As if he wasn’t a lethal rider in his own right.
“Have we heard of wild winds? No. But black-eyed wyverns missing their riders? Well, your Torn Isle companions can answer that question. We met a legion of them. But you know that, don’t you?
” Nabil observed the emissary with a dangerous swoop of his head.
“Those wyverns are yours. Who else would want our younglings slaughtered in their beds?”
Mohammed’s gaze flicked from us to Amuq’ran, but it was Emmahin who sighed. “You already know whose riders those were.”
“Legends and fae tales,” Nabil spat, razor-edged grief in his voice. “Convenient, that you have another to blame for the attacks when you’re meeting with Kalder, signing treaties with them. With the enemy who have killed so many of our people that we have lost count.”
“Likewise, you’ve killed ours,” Mohammed snapped, though he seemed to regret it and slammed his mouth shut, setting the teacup on the low table so heavily it splashed over the rim.
“I do not think the wyverns who attacked us these last few weeks belong to Ithanys. And I will swear on blood and air that they follow no Kaldic orders.”
Blood and air. Such an old oath—as ancient as the araethawn themselves, older than our two empires. Ancient fae honour: binding, and fatal if broken.
Nabil scoffed, but before he could speak, my voice cut across the riad.
“So swear it.”
Mohammed startled, as if he hadn’t expected me to call him on his offer. Emmahin reached for a cup of steaming mint tea and hid her smile behind its turquoise rim.
“Careful,” gruff, bearded Amuq’ran warned, glaring at us and the Kaldic man equally. “Those vows cannot be broken.”
“Precisely,” I agreed, a little viciously.
Mohammed took a tight breath and looked to Kanuri.
So she was the one he’d dealt with the most, the person he felt safest with.
Interesting. I disliked them both equally.
Silently, she handed him a knife, and I watched with rapt eyes, and a little disbelief, as the Kaldic man set the tip to his arm and pressed until drops welled on his skin.
“By blood and air, breath and bones, I swear,” he vowed, swiping two fingers through the blood and flicking drops into the air between us.
They evaporated before they could reach the tiled floor, his blood accepted by the noble, hungry magic.
“I have no knowledge of any Kaldic attacks on Ithanysian soil by wyverns, only our regular movements of tiger legions near the wall.”
I blinked. Waited for a second to see if he’d spontaneously combust, and then said, “Huh.”
There were tricks and evasive manoeuvres—his superiors could be behind it, and he might simply be unaware—but Mohammed spoke nothing but truth.
“Nor do I know anything about the mangled bodies washing ashore here,” he added with an uneasy glance at the Torn Isle leaders, then the sky above the garden. “Or that.”
I surged to my feet when he pointed behind us, following his extended finger past the open roof of the riad into the sky where a wave of darkness swept in like a storm.