23. Chapter 23
Chapter twenty-three
Erix
Keera watched the waves wash over her bare feet as we walked back toward the clans, carrying the meager supplies that had been left at our small band’s tiny camp. We had left the horses with Aderyn, Dhara, and Elion, who had stayed in the encampment, helping make repairs after today’s disaster.
“So much water, and none of it drinkable,” Keera said with equal parts wonder and disgust.
A smile tugged at my lips as I walked beside her. She sighed.
“Is it odd that after all the chaos and destruction today, this somehow feels… peaceful?” Keera asked.
I shook my head. “Violence makes the moments of peace even more tranquil. Just like the desert’s brutality makes her beautiful.
” My breath caught as the thought brought back another memory from today.
I had been so consumed with pouring myself into the new bond with Keera, that I had driven what had occurred in its absence from my mind. “Balance. Just like Kelvar said.”
“Kelvar?”
“I spoke to him,” I admitted.
“Your hallucinations?” Keera’s dark brows knit together, some of the calm that enveloped us instantly disappearing.
“He told me that I’m not mad,” I murmured. “When… when the bond between us was gone, I could hear him more clearly than I ever had before and he said that he had been trying to speak to me, so he could tell me about the Heart.”
Keera hesitated. I glanced at her out of the corner of my eyes as she chewed on her lips.
“Do you believe him?” she asked. I could not tell from her tone what she thought about it.
“You mean, do I believe my ancestor is really trying to communicate with me, or has my mind conjured up an explanation for its own madness?” I huffed.
But the truth was, I ached to believe it as much as I feared it.
Kelvar offered me an explanation and answers I desperately needed.
But I could also be trusting the fate of the desert to a mirage and driving us further down the road of destruction.
“What did he say?” Keera prodded.
Haltingly, I told her of the vision and Kelvar’s warning of a reckoning. “It could all be another lie,” I finished, but even as I said it, I wasn’t sure I believed it.
“But you don’t think it is,” Keera observed.
I swallowed. “No. The voices I’ve always heard, I always felt they were trying to tell me something.
I used to stay up all night getting more and more frustrated as I tried to decipher their message.
So eventually, I decided to drive them away.
But maybe it was Kelvar, reaching out to me my whole life. ”
“I believe him too,” Keera admitted.
I looked at her, somewhat surprised. I had worried I had been persuaded by my own desperation for answers, but Keera pushed on. “Alyx barely seemed dead in those chambers, and if Kelvar is telling the truth, she’s not.”
“Did we come all this way… did I pull you away from Kelvadan and Aderyn—carrying her child—away from her husband for nothing then?” My shoulders drew up toward my ears.
“Aderyn and Elion were already trying to find the other clans,” Keera said.
“And find them they did. This must be why the desert forced our paths together. Our destination was the same. And maybe there is still something to be learned from the temple and story of the first couple to cross the desert.”
I breathed in deeply through my nose, bracing myself.
“Izumi thinks there is. She thinks maybe the people of the desert could be united again if all the lords and the monarchs of Kelvadan were to follow another pair of riders. Just like how the man and woman who crossed the desert and found her Heart led the riders.”
Keera glanced at me out of the corner of her eyes. Her expression was tight. “Izumi and the other lords would agree to this?”
“It seems Badha changed her mind after all.”
Keera’s mouth quirked, even though her brows stayed knit together. “I knew I liked her.”
“The question is, would you agree to it? It’s not something I thought I would have wanted for myself, but with you by my side…” I trailed off, waiting for Keera’s reaction.
She stopped, turning to face me instead of continuing to walk by my side. I mirrored her.
“I don’t deserve to be left alone. I’m not sure I have earned the right to be a queen again… but maybe I deserve the chance to try again.” She lifted her chin, so fierce and stubborn even as she carried so many doubts. The fresh bond between us quivered as if content.
“You wouldn’t have to be a queen, like you were before. You could lead from horseback with a sword in hand, like the lords of old,” I said.
“Daiti suits me better than a throne.” She smiled slyly. “But your face might be my preferred seat.”
I exhaled heavily through my nose in amusement. “All viable options. We can lead the people side by side in open war, not hiding behind politics trapped in stone walls.”
Keera resumed walking and I fell into step with her. “It sounds like the legend of the Champion more than anything.”
“Nobody can seem to agree which of us was really meant to be named Champion,” I observed.
“Maybe because we were both supposed to be Champion,” she suggested.
“Or neither of us.”
“Either way, we can’t realistically use the term. So, what would we be called?”
“Izumi and I thought… high lords?”
Keera’s eyes widened. “And the others would accept that?”
“Lord Alasdar, and then I, subjugated all the clans under the rule of Clan Katal. Having leaders outside all of them to unite us in our war with Doran might be more agreeable—not loyal to one clan but answerable to them all. And we won’t know until we try,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt.
In reality, it felt like a brood of vipers had nested in my belly, but I clamped down.
“Try first, face the consequences later. It sounds like our usual plan,” Keera mused.
“Then let’s go unite the clans, retake the city, and solve the mystery of Alyx’s death.”
Elion grunted in greeting as I sat next to him, but his gaze didn’t waver from where he stared.
He sat on a flat rock, his arms and legs folded as he stared at the neighboring camp.
It was close enough to the clans’ encampment that they might have been one, but they didn’t quite run together.
Instead, a small but sharp divide ran between where the clansmen had erected their tents and General Warrick’s men had made their base.
It was late, and most people were asleep, but a few in each camp stayed awake, keeping a wary eye on each other.
“These people are strange,” Elion observed. The bite in his tone gave me pause. He had always seemed more flexible than many other lords, but now he appeared on edge.
“They are from beyond the mountains,” I pointed out. “Their homeland is far from here.”
It wasn’t just that Warrick’s men kept to themselves that made the divide between the camps sharp.
They were dressed differently than the clansmen—armor made of metal and rings adorning clothing far too fitted and containing too much leather to be comfortable in the heat of the desert.
None of them had hoods draped around their shoulders, and the swords at their hips were not curved, many with a fuller running down the middle of a broad blade.
Even their hair marked them as different, many wearing it long and braided, with woven beards to match, some adorned with beads, although none wore earrings.
I glanced sidelong at Elion, with his clean-shaven head and golden hoops glimmering in both ears. The furrow between his brows was deep.
“They should not be here,” he insisted.
“They should not,” I agreed.
“We must force them to leave,” he pushed. “We have horses, and they do not. A raid on their camp in the middle of the night—show them how fierce the clans can really be—will send them running for their homeland.”
I grimaced. I had hoped in my first moments of attempting to unite the clans as a high lord, I would not have to oppose one of the lords I had been counting on to support me and Keera.
“We can’t afford to make enemies of their people. Izumi invited him here, and attacking him would be an act of war. One war is enough for the desert to be getting on with.”
It would have been better if Warrick had never come, but now that he was here, we needed to figure out how to rid ourselves of him.
Allying with him would only give him the chance to stab us in the back when we were weakest, but we could not afford to lose any riders to the cause of driving him away. Diplomacy was the best way forward.
“Riders of the sands do not shy away from bloodshed.” Elion’s arms flexed, making the hyena inked on his bicep seem like it was snarling.
“You have been instrumental to uniting the clans. It seemed to me that you would be among the most likely to understand diplomacy.”
Elion sighed, a modicum of tension leaving his posture even as he remained on alert.
“It is easier to trust people I understand,” he admitted.
“Even now that Dhara finds my bed when she thinks you aren’t looking, I think sometimes she might stab me with one of her many knives if it suited her.
But in many ways, she thinks like me. She is a lord who loves her sword and her horse and her freedom.
These men may stab me, but I have no way of knowing when or where. ”
“You seem to trust me,” I pointed out.
“You are of the desert.”
“I was raised in the city. As was Aderyn. The ways of the clans were foreign to me until I was an adult. I only played kaman for the first time when I joined you and Clan Tibel.”
Elion grunted. “If they play kaman as fiercely as you and Keera, then perhaps I will trust them more.”
“We can challenge them to a match if it would make you feel better. But we don’t have to trust them.
We just have to try and convince them to head back to their home without drawing our blades.
Perhaps they can be made to see that this land is hostile and foreign and not worth the losses it would take to conquer. ”
“And if they refuse to leave?” Elion asked.
“Then you will be glad for Dhara’s tendency to carry more knives than she has fingers.”
Elion snorted. I stood and turned to head back to my sleeping mat. He did not follow but continued to sit and stare at the visitors on our shore.