Page 113 of The Iron Flower

Anger starts a slow burn at the base of my neck as the woman bows to me over and over as she backs away. There are lash scars on her neck and face and arms, and there’s something not quite right about her, as if she’s suffered one too many blows to the head.

I turn to Valasca, my face rigid with disgust. “So. You have Uuril slaves here?”

Valasca only seems to be half listening to me as she scoops up her stew with a piece of bread. “Sala isn’t a slave,” she says flatly.

What kind of fool does she take me for?

My rage notches higher. “She’s running around serving and bowing as if she’ll be struck if she displeases any of you. It’s obvious she’s been beaten one too many times, and she doesn’t have the markings of your people.”

“She’s Alcippe’s mother.”

“What?”

My eyes fly to the Queen’s dais, seeking out scale-tattooed Alcippe. The huge warrior is watching the Uuril serving woman, the hatred of her previous expression replaced by one of deep pain.

I glance over at Sala. “But she doesn’t look anything like Alcippe,” I counter, shaking my head in disbelief. Alcippe is taller than Rafe and almost as muscular as Andras. This Uuril serving woman is frail and short; Alcippe’s complete opposite.

“Alcippe resembles her father,” Valasca explains around the food in her mouth. “Ever heard of Farg Kyul?”

Farg Kyul. One of the strongest and most ruthless Urisk commanders during the Realm War—and one of the few lower-class Urisk to be granted dragonlord status.

“He was Alcippe’s father?” I ask, incredulous. “How did she wind up here?”

Valasca swallows and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “She came here with her mother when she was twelve. Her father was monstrously cruel, and they escaped from him.”

I try to picture weak, abused Sala spiriting Alcippe away from a life with Farg Kyul. “Impossible,” I counter with an emphatic shake of my head. “There’s no way that woman ever rescued her daughter from a dragonlord.”

Valasca fixes me with a level glance. “Sala didn’t rescue her daughter. Alcippe rescuedher.”

I gape at her, and Valasca sets her bowl down, resting her hands on her crossed legs. “It’s a long story,” she cautions.

“I’m not going anywhere for a while.”

Valasca regards me appraisingly before relenting. “Sala was one of Farg Kyul’s four wives. She never bore him a son and lost what beauty she had soon after giving birth to Alcippe, her only child. Because of this, Sala was despised and often beaten by the dragonlord. She was also badly mistreated by the other wives.”

Valasca’s eyes flit toward Alcippe.

“But Sala loved her daughter a great deal and did her best to shelter her from the abuse directed at her, as well. Alcippe grew quickly, and by the time she was ten, she was courageously throwing herself between her mother and father to try and protect her mother from his angry blows, some so fierce that her mother was already deaf in one ear.”

Valasca’s brow furrows, and her eyes briefly flick toward Sala, who is on her knees again, offering up food to another group of women across the hall. “When Alcippe was twelve, she returned from tending their livestock and found her mother unconscious on the floor. Blood was streaming out of her mother’s nose and ear, and her eyes were swollen shut. Alcippe quickly gathered some food, bundled them both up, then waited until dark and left, carrying her mother over her shoulder.

“She traveled on foot for two months straight until she reached our lands, both mother and daughter half-starved. Alcippe used her last reserves of strength to gently lower her mother to the ground before us. She had one request before she herself collapsed from exhaustion.”

“What was it?”

“She said, ‘Turn my mother into a warrior.’”

I glance again at Alcippe’s mother, hard at work serving and bowing. I watch as she places a bowl into the hands of a Smaragdalfar woman, the woman’s gray hair streaked with green, her emerald-patterned skin shimmering in the rune-lamp light. The woman grasps Sala’s arm affectionately, smiles at her and murmurs something kindly. Then she gently cups Sala’s submissively downturned chin in her hand, raises her head and bows respectfully to her. Sala smiles sheepishly and quickly scurries away.

“But her mother never did become a warrior, did she?” I ask, rattled by Sala’s obviously broken spirit.

Valasca shakes her head grimly. “Sala never completely recovered after her last beating. Our physicians tried to tell Alcippe this, but she refused to believe it, insisting that her mother would get better with time. She threw all her energy into learning our ways and becoming a warrior herself. She kept trying to teach her mother what she learned, guiding her hands around a bow, coaxing her to grasp a spear. But her mother would always grow afraid and run back to the kitchens, back to the tasks she had been required to do for the Kyul family.”

Her brow furrows as she watches Sala. “Time passed, and Alcippe became one of the fiercest, most powerful soldiers we’ve ever had. When she was eighteen, she received her warrior marks and her new name from the queen. Then she got on her horse and rode off, rune-axe in hand.”

“Where did she go?”

Valasca narrows her eyes at me. “To pay a visit to her father.”

---