Page 17 of A Frozen Pyre
He gave her the wide eyes of a sand mouse.
She tapped her fingers against the table once more beforeasking, “Do you have any feelings on this companion? This…Dwyn?”
“I don’t like her, Your Majesty.”
Zita allowed the pause between them to stretch like cooled honey.
He released a long, slow breath before saying, “I’ve served as Ophir’s personal bodyguard for many years. I have a vested interest in her safety, a predisposition for suspicion, and a firsthand understanding of Ophir’s preference for unsavory characters. I think Ophir would be better off without an unknown variable influencing her life, particularly as she’s meant to serve both Raascot and Farehold.”
Zita chewed on this answer. She nodded with slow acceptance before eventually informing them that attendants would oversee their needs throughout the next week as they made plans for their summit. She thanked the men and walked them out the door, parting ways so that they might return to their rooms while she drifted into the courtyard to stare up at the vast, diamond-studded sky.
***
“Lying to queens, now?” Harland whispered after they’d rounded a number of corners and returned to their rooms.
“You trust my judgment, don’t you?” Samael said in response, keeping his voice low, as most walls had ears.
Harland’s lip twitched. Samael played an unfair hand, as it was positively annoying to argue with someone whose gift was perfect judgment. “I’d be a fool not to.”
Samael shrugged. “Then don’t worry about it. Queen Zita would be no safer knowing the truth. It works against Ophir’s best interest if anyone knows she’s a manifester.”
Harland sucked a lungful of air. He’d tried, and failed, to keep Ophir’s gifts a secret. He should have known it would be impossible to hide anything from Samael.
“It doesn’t become you to keep things from me,” Samael replied. “We both know that I’ll find out if it wasn’t somethingI knew already. Additionally, we both know she’d be hunted and killed. Or if she feels cornered, she may react in ways we can’t predict. Given her breadth of power and the slaughter we saw the morning of the execution, that’s not a risk I’m willing to take, are you? Besides, Ophir is far from the only threat. The moment Dwyn knows she’s suspected, she becomes the single most dangerous person on the continent. Right now, the only people who know everything are you, me, and Tyr.”
“I don’t love that Tyr is included in that list,” Harland grumbled.
“Don’t let your affection blind you,” Samael chided. “He clearly cares for Ophir’s well-being—” Samael paused at Harland’s reaction and pressed, “He does, Harland. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have come to us. The man had no reason to risk exposing himself by divulging what he knew. If he were entirely self-serving, you and I would still be on the outside looking in. I can’t speak to his other traits, but he cares for Ophir, and having a man on the inside is what will keep the princess alive. His ability to stay out of sight is astonishingly useful.”
Harland hated everything.
He hated that sweat beaded on his lip even at night in the arid, desert climate. He hated the heavy scents of oranges and limes everywhere he went. He hated the white marble pillars, and the way that every corridor fell away to yet another open-air courtyard or garden. He hated the marmalade in the cookies. He hated that Tyr had affections for Ophir—and worse—that she clearly returned them. He hated knowing that Ophir was with Dwyn. He hated that she was marrying Ceneth. And most of all, he hated that Samael was right. Not only was there nothing he could do about it, but he was supposed to be grateful.
He’d be sure to find gratitude as soon as someone slipped through the stitches of events and took him back to the night he’d first helped Ophir with her bodice. He’d be grateful ifhe could spare Caris her fate and keep Ophir in Farehold as the happy, carefree princess with no obligations or responsibilities, save for getting drunk on the wall with him. He’d be grateful if the All Mother turned back the sands of time, and not a moment sooner.
Six
Valor Mast, Tarkhany
The men were not unique in hating the crossing. Most would happily live their days within the capital and never set foot in the desert. Four days on horseback of sweat, misery, shimmering heat, and baking sand were spent in silence if only to conserve energy. When the first distant, silvery glint of the sea shimmered into view, one of them cried out with joy, but the oceanside was every bit as unforgiving. The men and horses alike were not seafaring, and the day’s voyage to Valor Mast was, for most of them, a fate worse than death. Canteens refilled and foods replenished, they finished the last leg on horseback. Within hours, they’d crested the final hill to the coastal village that had been famously carved into the burned-red cliffs of Tarkhany’s only inhabited island. They knew they were getting close when the empty skies gave way to the presence of large seabirds. They urged their horses over the final dune and their smiles quivered at what they saw.
“Sir?” asked one, voice shaking.
The lead waved a hand as he nudged his horse forward. They’d expected to see the ocean, the plummeting cliffs, and the telltale canvas tents perched above ledges for markets, exchanges, and the milling village folk to interact. One fallentent shuddered against the sea breeze, its ripped canvas dancing in the wind as it tried to escape the tether that remained sandbagged to the stone. Beside the tent was the bloated top half of a man, flies buzzing around the entrails that had dehydrated against the burning stone. The lead realized he was seeing not seabirds but vultures.
The smell of baked, rotting flesh hit him on the next sea breeze.
He dismounted his horse on shaky legs. It took a moment for him to understand the arms, the bones, the long brown smears of dried blood, and the single foot, still in its shoe. The high, single note of dizziness joined the crashing of the waves and the throaty growls that had always seemed too mammalian to belong to the ugly, scavenging birds, but he knew enough of death to recognize their sounds. His men dismounted behind him. The sounds of their feet scraping against the rocks joined the ringing threat of unconsciousness.
The man approached the cliff on uneasy legs, knees wobbling. He hadn’t thought it could get any worse.
He had been wrong.
The waves carried the bloated, bobbing forms of scores of villagers as the tide pushed their bodies lazily against the rocks, jostling the corpses together. The long hair of women mixed with the kelp. His eye caught on a shape no larger than a peanut from where he stood on the cliff’s edge, staring at it until he realized that the still form of an infant rested on the wet sand below, never to wail against its mother’s breast again.
He opened his mouth to cry out for any survivors but found his breath stolen on the wind.
His eyes dragged along the squares of windows and rectangles of doors that had been carved into the crimson stones, searching for any sign of life. Sun-baked smears of red-brown blood marked the cliff. A single body dangled out of an open doorway, arms moving gently in each strong gust from the sea.
