16 Negotiations
The last time Antal had seen Tyvo, his neighbor to the north, the old daeyari had shredded Antal’s neck open with his bare teeth. He’d be dead, if Fionamara hadn’t intervened.
After Verne’s defeat, Tyvo had sent a single message:
You useless fucking daeyari. If you ever fucking set foot in my territory again, I’ll cut your fucking head off and spike it to the top of a shiverpine.
Judging by Tyvo’s snarl now, his mood hadn’t improved over the past year. He crossed the gallery of the amphitheater, ignoring every daeyari in his path, orange eyes boring into Antal.
“Tyvo,” Antal greeted him with forced pleasantry. “What an unexpected surprise—”
“You have some nerve, showing your face here.” Tyvo stopped in front of him, tail a violent lash. “Pathetic little daeyari. I ought to pry out your fangs and toss them to the Void.”
His antler hadn’t recovered. One side of the rack curved to eight points, the other side severed near the base by Fionamara’s sword.
Daeyari could draw on Void ether to regenerate flesh, muscle, bone, the same healing their mortal bodies once performed, sped to seconds instead of days.
But their mortal antlers had been slow to grow, could never regenerate.
Forcing the process incurred abnormalities, fractals of red marring Tyvo’s regrowing nub.
The confrontation turned heads in the departing crowd.
Daeyari paused in the nearest tiers of the gallery, eyes keen as wolves scenting blood.
No fighting was tolerated within the halls of the Daey Celva.
Tyvo shouldn’t dare press closer. Antal still braced, unsure whether propriety would dissuade an attack.
And viscerally aware of his father beside him. Teeth on every side.
“Greetings, Tyvo.” Avroz spoke in a menacing low, that calm command he wielded like a weapon. His eyes flicked to the crowd. “Surely, this isn’t the place?”
Tyvo’s attention snapped to a new target—as if Antal needed the rescue. As if he were a velvet-antlered daeyari clinging to his father’s heels.
“I expected better.” Tyvo prowled closer to Avroz, undaunted by the latter’s low tail. “From your son, Avroz? Disgraceful, to have raised such a failure of a daeyari.”
Antal flinched.
So did Avroz, a tick of his tail almost too subtle to notice. Around them, the crowd was silent, the brawl of two territory lords and a councilor far too delicious to interrupt.
“Inexperienced,” Tyvo continued. “Lazy.” He tapped his severed antler. “And the disrespect, to take another daeyari’s antler!”
“If you feel so persecuted,” Avroz said, “you may petition official grievance—”
“Is that the story you’re telling?” Antal interrupted. “That I took your antler?”
His own words startled him. They came out low, barbed, more confident than he felt. Antal would be better off slinking back, letting his father smooth this over.
Avroz’s glare said as much.
At the challenge, Tyvo circled closer. Closer. He bared his fangs inches from Antal’s cheek, a warning growl in his chest.
It had hurt when Tyvo had bitten into him. The memory shivered down Antal’s spine, the pain of shredded muscle and Tyvo’s teeth grating against his vertebrae. The fear, when he’d been certain he was going to die.
Then, a different fear, when Fionamara had raised her sword against the rival daeyari.
“You came into my territory unannounced,” Tyvo accused. “Attacked me.”
Liar. Antal ought to bow his head, back away with tail low.
Not now, when he’d just fought off a coup. Not here, with so many eyes watching for weakness—his father’s fiercest of all.
Antal pushed that last breadth closer, their noses nearly brushing, meeting Tyvo’s challenge. “You supported Verne’s bid to unseat me. You threatened to kill my human.” He dropped to a snarl. “And she took your antler, not me.”
A murmur went through the crowd.
Antal was close enough to feel the furious energy prickling off his opponent, a scent like charred pine resin. Tyvo’s claws flexed—claws that had tried to slice Fionamara open. That had left a slim scar across her lips. Antal bared his fangs.
“You’d call me a liar?” Tyvo said. “Suggest a mere human could best me?”
He stepped away with a scoff. His back turned to Antal was the sharpest insult yet, an unthreatened dismissal, refusing to counter such outlandish argument.
He stepped away because he had to. Tyvo had no evidence. Antal honed in on the bluff.
“Your son could use a sterner hand, Avroz,” Tyvo said. “He has no place here, among proper daeyari.”
“She still has it,” Antal said.
Tyvo’s head cocked slowly, baring one smoldering eye over his shoulder. “What?”
“Your antler.” Antal held his tone level. “My human kept the souvenir after she cut it off you, has it propped above her mantle. I can fetch it, if you’d care to compare markings?”
The murmurs grew. A quiet hum of laughter.
In the blaze of Tyvo’s eyes, Antal watched every calculation—a measure of the distance between them, how swiftly Tyvo could lunge, what angle to put his teeth into Antal’s throat.
“Enough.”
The command struck silence across the gallery.
A crowd of immortal daeyari fell as still as chastised kittens, shrinking aside to form an opening.
Qirza, speaker of the Daey Celva, approached like a tempest of silver shawls, a single glower daring any daeyari to so much as snarl at her. Even Tyvo flinched.
“Councilor Qirza,” he greeted, words tight to his teeth. “I was just—”
“Causing discord in my gallery,” she returned with unflinching authority. “I’m aware.”
Tyvo had the audacity to bare his teeth. “I was attacked. Insulted. I’m owed resolution.”
“And as Councilor Avroz said, if you have grievances with any neighboring territory, you may submit them formally to the council. Perhaps you’d care to do so in my chambers, rather than snarling like a beast on the balcony.”
“I never—”
“Come.” Qirza gestured to the hallway—no room for argument.
Tyvo raked a molten look over Antal. Then Avroz.
His tail lashed as he retreated, past Qirza, into the hall that led to her office.
As Tyvo walked ahead, she lingered. Hardly a reprieve. Her look to Antal was slower, keener, sending a shudder down his spine.
“It’s been a long time, Antal,” Qirza said.
Here, at least, he knew what he was supposed to do. Antal bowed, touching his highest antler tip. “An honor to see you again, Councilor Qirza.”
“You will bring any future disputes with your territory neighbors to me.”
“I will. Thank you.”
“And the next time you have a daeyari head to share with me, you’ll deliver it yourself.”
“Of course, councilor. Though I have no plans of needing to do so.”
Qirza’s hum was close enough to approval. The crowd parted for her to leave, back to gossiping whispers as she disappeared into the hall. Antal exhaled a tight breath.
There were more eyes on him. For five decades, he’d hardly seen another daeyari. Now, dozens appraised him like a cut of meat. And when he turned…
Avroz watched with tail low. Face blank.
Then, a slow grin. For the first time in a century, Antal couldn’t spot razors at the edges.
“Syvr,” Avroz said lowly. “Damage control?”
Syvr snapped on a smirk easy as drawing a breath, a parting bow to Avroz before stepping toward the crowd. Their tail brushed Antal’s as they passed.
“Chin up,” they whispered, just for him.
Unnecessary. Antal knew how he had to deal with his father.
Syvr set to work, slipping alongside the closest group of daeyari, a greeting to a territory lord they’d not seen in too long, a laugh at Tyvo’s spectacle, already diverting attention.
“Come.” Avroz beckoned Antal into another hall, away from the stir he’d caused. Antal could cause another, refuse his father in front of so many watchers.
It was easier to fall in line and get this over with.
The corridor was dim, unnervingly quiet after the drama of the gallery.
Avroz led them onto a side balcony. Conduits lights were imbedded in the stone beneath Antal’s feet.
No rail guarded the edge, unlike most human architecture.
The unhindered view looked out upon purple-hued forest below, the canopy glowing with fireflies.
“I’ll admit,” Avroz said, “I’m surprised to see you here.”
Antal stepped to the ledge, testing the lip of stone beneath his feet. He let the breeze ruffle his hair. Watched it stir the leaves below. Fionamara seemed perplexed by the daeyari proclivity for high perches. It was easier to think up here, the world smaller, more manageable.
“You can spare your lecture,” Antal said.
“Lecture?” Avroz circled, joining him at the ledge.
“Of how I shouldn’t have come. How I could tarnish your lofty reputation. I’ve heard the council’s decision, enough to satisfy my curiosity. You can have your aedari hunt. I’ll return to my place on the Winter Plane.”
“You held your ground with Tyvo.” Not a bite. Avroz’s tone was one Antal almost didn’t recognize, slow and… approving.
Antal stared at him, betrayed by confusion creasing his brow.
Avroz was a proud daeyari. He stood now on the grounds of his empire, eyes burgundy in the twilight, hair unruffled in its braid. How many years had Antal wished he could hold his tail that calm, his chin that confident?
“You wouldn’t have stood your ground before,” Avroz said. “You’ve grown.”
“That’s why you sent me to the Winter Plane, wasn’t it? So I could grow stronger, more cunning. Well done.”
“And did you get nothing out of it?”
“Like what?”
“There’s nothing you’ve enjoyed about the Winter Plane?”
Antal thought of Thomaskweld, sprawled like gold upon the valley floor. He thought of divine notes filling the music hall. He thought of the sweetness of Fionamara’s mouth, the drag of her lips against his throat.
“Why would you care?” he growled.
“I do,” Avroz said. “Though you don’t seem to think so.”
Antal tried to maintain his sneer. He tried to stand firm. But something foreign flickered across Avroz’s face, a card his father normally kept so close to his chest.
Frustration.
“It is good to see you here,” Avroz said.
Antal scoffed.