2. Chapter 2 #2
“It would seem his conquering heart is not content with just taking the Great City,” Erix bit out.
He reached into the leather bag strapped to the saddle he had been removing—apparently where he had found the ill-fated spy’s sash—now pulling out a folded piece of paper.
It was sealed with blue-green wax. Erix barely glanced at the pattern of some tentacled beast emblazoned on it before cracking it open and ripping into the letter so forcefully I feared he might tear the parchment.
He glanced over it before grunting in anger and shoving it into my chest. I barely grabbed it before he stalked off to relieve the rest of the horses of their burdens. I turned it in my hand, to read the elegantly looping script.
King Calix firmly requests that all nine Lords of the Ballan Desert present themselves to swear fealty to Viltov. All who refuse will meet the same end as your spies already have.
Heat bubbled up from my belly to boil the blood in my veins.
The Lords of the desert never pledged allegiance to the monarchs of Kelvadan, even when Alyx and Kelvar had sat on the throne.
The city and its rulers served all the desert, but the clans governed themselves.
Clearly, Calix wanted dominion over all here in the Ballan Desert though, and if he could not earn it, he would take it by force, as he had with these poor horses.
I glanced up from the words that had now blurred in my vision with the force of my anger. Erix dropped the last bridle to the ground. All twelve of the free horses now gathered around us, as if sensing that we would not treat them so poorly as their former riders.
“We have to free Kelvadan,” I said, but my chest tightened around the words.
Even with four clans combined, we did not have the power required to lay siege to the city.
We would need more swords, and the other riders of the desert would not set their enmity aside easily.
I swallowed around the block in my throat, though, to continue.
“While I have been recovering from my poisoning, the people of Kelvadan have been suffering—maybe even starving under Calix’s rule. ”
“I know,” he said, and while I expected anger, the deep sadness in his tone seemed even worse. His hand drifted to his sash unconsciously, and the tightness in my throat returned tenfold.
The rest of the desert needed him too—needed us.
But if I followed him down that path to the ocean, Calix’s foothold in the desert would only grow stronger.
Kelvadan would no longer be a monument to peace but the source of war and strife.
It would be a stronghold to be feared and avoided, not a beacon of hope to those who had no place of their own.
The phantom pain of hunger twisted in my stomach. I closed my fists around the scar across my palm, binding me to Erix.
I had promised him that whatever we did, we would do it together.
Erix’s voice cut through the nausea. “We will bring this information to the other lords. But the time for waiting is gone.”
Colorful swearing met my ears as I wove toward the fire pit outside a familiar tent. I rounded the last corner to find Aderyn on her knees, blood splattered over her thighs from the black-tailed jackrabbit she was attempting to skin.
I stopped before her. “It’s already dead. You don’t have to stab it quite so hard.”
She squinted up at me, but some of the frustration in her expression faded, and her shoulders slumped in defeat.
“Killing is the part I’m good at. Or at least I’m supposed to be.” She tossed down the knife at her side.
I kneeled in front of her and plucked the knife out of the sand where it had buried itself tip first. Flipping the rabbit onto its front, I made a small hole in the fur of its back.
Then, I hooked my fingers into the opening and pulled one hand toward its head, the other toward its tail, effectively peeling the pelt away from the flesh.
“You’re skilled at many things. This just takes practice,” I pointed out.
Aderyn sighed and sat cross-legged in the hardpacked sand as she watched me work.
“I used to think so,” she admitted. “But it seems the skills I have are better used for navigating life in a city than surviving in the wilds. Nature has no appreciation for the diplomatic settling of disputes. The elements will take your life no matter how nicely you argue with them.”
I snorted, cracking open the ribcage to remove the innards. “If I had been better at diplomacy, you would not need to argue with the elements. And we may need your skills as a commander yet.”
Aderyn looked up from where she had been tracing patterns in the bloody sand, her expression a mix of hope and concern. I knew she itched for news of Kelvadan just as much as I did.
“Calix sent riders to attack on stolen horses. He’s crowned himself King and is demanding the fealty of all nine lords,” I explained, grimacing at the bitter burn in the back of my throat, the taste of anger and guilt choking me.
Aderyn’s nostrils flared and a muscle in her jaw ticked. “There are only four lords at this encampment.”
I finished gutting the jackrabbit and thrust the tip of the knife into the ground as I considered her.
“We’re going to bring his message to the lords tonight, when they are all back from hunting and patrolling for approaching monsters.
But you are right that it will take all nine clans to face Calix—even if they have no intention of swearing fealty.
There may be a place for your diplomacy yet. ”
I had never been good at getting people to agree, but Aderyn had a way with them, and we could use every advantage if we were to recruit the other clans to join their swords with ours against Calix. Her love for the Great City was infectious.
Aderyn looked away. “I’m not sure there is much of a place for anything about me among the clans.”
My heart twisted. When I had come to Kelvadan, Aderyn had seemed so sure—so capable among the strange ways of the city.
It had never occurred to me how foreign the clan life would be to one who had never lived it, just like the stacked stone houses and close quarters of Kelvadan had been unsettling to me.
But I had come to love it, if not as much as one who had grown up there, in no small part because Aderyn and Neven had been there to show me all there was to enjoy in its strangeness.
My friends had made it feel like home, even when a deep buried part of me craved the wilds.
“Come entreat the lords with me,” I urged. “Nobody knows Kelvadan like you do, and after years of helping Ginevra and me get the archons in line, you might have valuable insights in how to heal the rift between the clans.”
Aderyn huffed. “The archons were far less likely to stab me for disagreeing with them.”
“We might have fared better if they had,” I mused.
At that, Aderyn smiled. For all she had filled in the gaps in my knowledge of the intricacies of political maneuvering during my brief time as queen, she had a warrior’s heart.
It made her current uncertainty sting even worse, like sand grinding into a cut.
I understood though—the feeling of loose footing when being thrust into a new way of life after existing in another so long.
The Clans operated differently than the city.
“I’m sure you’ll be able to both keep yourself from being stabbed and win their respect with those.” I nodded to the twin sickle blades strapped at Aderyn’s hips. They were clan weapons, and while she had been trained in Kelvadan, her father had made sure she knew how to use them.
Aderyn fingered the hilts of her weapons, but she glanced over her shoulder hesitantly at the tent behind her. She had scarcely ventured beyond the fire pit in front of the borrowed dwelling since arriving, spending nearly every minute at Neven’s side as he recovered from his brutal injury.
“How is he?” I asked, unable to suppress a grimace at the memory of his mangled hand, bone poking through shredded skin. Even worse had been his screams as the healers set each tiny joint, in the hopes that he’d be able to weave again someday.
“He never should have had to suffer such violence,” Aderyn bit out. “That was the promise of Kelvadan.”
I nodded, guilt heavy as a stone in my stomach. “Help me make it so again. Come meet the lords with me.”
She squared her jaw and nodded jerkily. “I’ll make things right.”
“We will make things right,” I promised. Even as I said it, the words tasted bitter.
I had promised myself I would do whatever it took to protect the people of Kelvadan.
I was even willing to tear my heart in half and marry somebody else to keep them fed, but in doing so, I had doomed the city and the clans to the whims of a tyrant.
If I had been the one to bring their destruction, did I truly have the power to make the desert whole again?