Page 35 of Black Salt Queen

Luntok responded with a vehement shake of his head. “You are so much more than your hands,” he told her, raising her fingertips to his lips.

“What else do I have to offer, then?” Her eyebrows quirked up, the same way they always did when she was wheedling for compliments. And, as usual, he indulged her.

WhatdidLaya have to offer? His breath hitched in his throat as he studied her features. A pretty face, although an accurate observation, was not what she wanted to hear. So he told her, “A sharp mind. A quick tongue. I’ve watched you outwit nobles twice your age. Their admiration for you grows year after year.”

Laya blinked. His choice of words surprised her. “Noticed all of that, did you?” she asked, her voice uncharacteristically tight.

“I notice everything that happens at court,” he replied.

Everything about you.

They stood there for a long, pregnant moment. Laya gazed at him, not with lust, but with what appeared to be genuine gratitude. “Dear Luntok. If I kiss you now, I fear I may never make it back to my chambers,” she murmured as she stepped into the shadows. “But know that it brings me great comfort, having you around.”

Not once did she mention the wordlove, but Luntok could taste it in the muggy night air that hung between them. A lump rose in the back of his throat as he watched her go. In another life, he’d follow her up to her bedroom, make love to her, and then fall asleep at her side. According to some, Luntok had no right to that future. All because ancient rules governed their lives and forced him to relinquish Laya. It tore him in half every time.

Not for long.Luntok spat again at the foreign district for good measure. Maynara was changing, becoming a place where even ancient rules could be snapped in half like brittle reeds. Luntok and Laya were proof of this. Fortune would favor them if they were brave enough to carve their own path. And they belonged together. Anyone with eyes could see it. Why shouldn’t they have the future they both desperately craved?

Often, when Luntok worked himself up with feverish fantasies, his mother’s voice burst through his bluster to soothe him:Soon, my boy, soon.This once, Luntok leaned into the imagined comfort. He knew he needed only bide his time and Laya would be his, as she always should have been. Never again would he watch her spin out beyond his reach.

He squinted up at the nearest consulate, a miserable, gray block of a building. Once, it had housed the delegation of some western power?—Luntok had never learned much about the Sunset States, that faraway continent, their countries a messy patchwork of strange tongues and stupid names. Those consulates had no place in Maynara; they were a scar upon the Gatdula legacy. Hara Duja’s mother, the late queen, should have demolished them when she’d expelled their emissaries several decades before.

High above the street, shadows moved behind the consulates’ cracked windows. Squatters, no doubt, siphoning what they could from the westerners’ meager refuse. Through a hole in the dirty glass, a baby wailed. Luntok stuffed his fists into the pockets of his trousers and quickened his pace. He despised the foreign district. Although the westerners were long gone, their houses still stank of failure, of waste.

The noise grew louder as he worked his way back toward the heart of Mariit. Judging by the swell of music and laughter, the parade was in full swing. The other warriors didn’t tell Luntok where to find them, but he knew well enough to guess. They were waiting for him at the inn that straddled the canal separating the merchant quarter, a smattering of newer dwellings and ancient guildhalls, from the noble town houses of the central district. The family who owned the inn had moved to Mariit from the Kulaws’ kadatuan. In recent years, it had become a popular meeting place for Kulaw-affiliated visitors and any capital dweller with southern roots.

When Luntok stepped through the front door, the innkeeper, a lanky man around his mother’s age, greeted him in the old dialect people only spoke back home. On the wall behind him hung a gigantic wooden carving of a raptor bird?—the Kulaw family’s symbol. He gestured to the staircase next to the entryway, which led to the lower dining room reserved for the inn’s most prestigious guests. “Right this way, my lord.”

Over a dozen warriors burst into raucous cheers when Luntok came downstairs. In the fleeting hour he’d stolen with Laya, the group had already drunk themselves merry and red-faced. They’d left their weapons stacked against all four walls of the dining room. Smoky, yellow light winked off the flat edges of their blades. In the spirit of the feast days, they would spend the rest of the evening clustered around the inn’s round mahogany tables, snacking on parade leftovers, and playing dice games.

Luntok grinned as he wove between the warriors, clapping them across their shoulders in greeting. At the opposite end of the room, Vikal leaped to his feet and thrust his glass into the air. “All hail Luntok, the Swift-striker, favored by the old gods of Thu-ki,” he proclaimed.

Around the room, the warriors echoed Vikal’s praise?—to Luntok, the Swift-striker?—and raised their glasses in turn. Luntok’s grin broadened as he looked Vikal in the eye. His great-great-grandfather, Luntok the First, the last of the Kulaw monarchs, had been given several titles throughout his lifetime:Swift-strikerby the warriors who revered him,Beast-makerby the Gatdulas who despised him, andHaribonby his most loyal followers?—that was Luntok the Second’s favorite title, meaningBird King.

Haribon Luntok wielded the one power the Gatdulas had ever feared. He had not merely transformed men into magnificent creatures but could also manipulate his own flesh. According to southern legend, he could morph into a giant raptor with a bone-crushing beak and a wingspan the length of four men laid out from head to toe. When Luntok was younger, his mother used to rock him to sleep with tales of the Haribon’s gory victories. Then she’d brush his hair back behind his ears and whisper,You, my son, are destined for wondrous things.

Luntok did not possess the ancient powers of his family, but he, too, was destined to be king. Imeria knew it. Vikal and the rest of the warriors did too. In Mariit, this was among the few places they could think it, in the concealed back room of an inn, safe in the company of southerners.

“Care for some wine, my lord?” A serving girl appeared before him, a pitcher in one hand and a seductive lilt in her voice. When Luntok nodded, she poured him a glass. She didn’t give it to him right away. Instead, she leaned in to whisper, “Let me know if there’s anything more you desire, my lord. It would be mysincerestpleasure to serve.”

She leaned into his side, the warm swell of her breasts brushing against his forearm with alarming forcefulness. Instinctively, Luntok snatched the cup from her, the corners of his mouth curling in distaste. “That will be all,” he quipped. Then he waved her off without so much as a thank-you.

The serving girl shrank back with a wounded look. She swept back upstairs as Vikal and the others guffawed.

“By the gods, Luntok, you don’t need to bite the poor girl’s head off,” Vikal said, chuckling heartily. “She has a pretty-enough head, as it is.”

“Not as pretty as Dayang Laya’s, though. Isn’t that right, my lord?” Jit teased. He was among the freshest warriors in the Kulaws’ ranks, only a few years Luntok’s senior.

The moment Jit uttered Laya’s name, a chorus of disgruntled sighs rang out across the inn’s lower dining room. Not every Kulaw warrior held the princess in such high esteem. Like half the kingdom, they prayed Laya would grow into a more diluted version of herself, sweeter on the tongue and easier to subdue. Hara Duja was the worst of them. If the queen had her way, she’d keep Laya from knowing her full power. Then she’d deny Laya the only person she had ever loved.

From across the room, Vikal gave Luntok a pointed look?—a warning of a sort, but Luntok ignored it. He took a long sip of his wine to wash down the bitterness, his fingers tightening around the stem of the glass. He could scarcely hear the warriors’ grumblings over the memory of Laya’s mocking laughter, forever ringing in his ears. The princess liked to be challenged, and Luntok was not one to back down.Marry me,he burned to ask her.I’ll never force you to be anything you are not.

For Laya Gatdula was many things?—a vessel of divine power, a woman of frightening wit, and, most of all, their future queen. Many Maynarans, northerners and southerners alike, did not hide their misgivings. They knew that some Gatdulas burned steadily like Hara Duja, guiding the kingdom like a dying candle, easy pickings for their enemies to snuff out. But most Gatdulas blazed brighter than the sun, as likely to burn the island to cinders as they were to bathe it in their glory. Laya was the latter fire. Her power would propel her to become the greatest queen Maynara had ever seen?—or a fearsome tyrant. After her destruction of the eastern wing three years before, more and more Maynarans questioned whether she was worth the gamble.

But Layawasworth it. Luntok understood this, the same way he understood that peace would only come to Maynara if Laya chose a Kulaw for her king. And Luntok would be exactly the kind of king Laya needed. He’d show her where to direct her strength, but he’d never tame her bluster. If she were the ship captain, he’d be her barrelman, always with his eyes on the horizon, telling her how to angle her sails. Their reign would unite the island from north to south. They’d rule side by side. A Gatdula and a Kulaw, coming together as equals.

According to his mother, Luntok would take the throne through battle, not through love. Luntok disagreed. He was convinced his path to the throne?—and to Hara Duja’s heir?—lay somewhere in between.

In the downstairs room, the Kulaw warriors were staring at him, waiting to see how Luntok might react to Jit’s teasing. When it came to Laya, it was too early to say what was on his mind. The night was young, with hours of games and drinking ahead. No one was in the mood to quarrel over the Gatdulas. Luntok would have to profess his undying devotion to the princess another evening.

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