Page 8 of The Fires of Longest Night
“Hmm. You still think the armor was stolen?”
“Probably off a corpse somewhere. You know how hard it is to get decent protection these days. You kill someone with decent armor, I know you’d take it from their body.”
“True enough,” Resset says. He hesitates. “You know the warlord is considering promising Nissa to the son of the head of the Telithina clan?”
Heat and then a chill cascade over Ria. She makes herself stay calm. “Oh?”
“I thought you should know.” Resset gives her a look that she glances away from. “I gathered you two were getting, uh, close. Didn’t want you to be hoping for impossibilities.”
Ria raises a shoulder. “Whatever the warlord is or isn’t doing, I know that Nissa will be the one who makes the decision. In the end.”
Resset gives a bark of a laugh. “I wouldn’t pin too many hopes on Nissa embarking on some juvenile rebellion. Some girls seem to skip that step. Too strong a sense of duty or some such. Just become virtuous womenfolk. Others… well now, others just get stuck in it, don’t they.” He gives her a long look, in case she missed the significance of what he was saying.
Heat floods into her cheeks. He’s referring to her—to the dozen or more times she’s challenged him or the warlord, or some other person their stupid hierarchy demanded she should show respect to, even when it’s not warranted. “Don’t let me keep you,” she says in a flat tone.
“Oh, I won’t,” he replies, almost hissing as he rises.
Illima slides into the space he’s vacated, almost as soon as he’s gone. Ria wrestles with her anger.
“How are you feeling?” Illima asks quietly, pressing a cup of water into Ria’s hand.
Ria sighs. “I’m alright. Just not quite how I expected to spend this Longest Night.”
Illima offers a sympathetic half-smile. “No, I’d imagine not.” Ria quirks a brow at her quizzically. “I mean, Nissa wouldn’t be dancing with anyone else, were you hale, and we both know it. As does our warlord’s second,” she finishes more grimly.
Ria frowns. “Resset?”
“Resset.” Illima’s tone is dour. “No doubt he came over to offer some more discouragement?”
Ria looks at her wonderingly. “How did you know?”
Illima gives a short laugh. “You and Nissa are so tangled up in each other you’ve barely raised your heads to look around. You’d have seen it, if you did. Probably. He’s not been particularly… cautious about it.”
Ria’s mouth falls open as she puts together what Illima is saying—or carefully not saying. Was Resset trying to displace her? What was that story about the son of the Telithina Warlord? She scowls briefly.
“Are you saying…” She shakes her head. Even if Illima was right, knowing Resset has been aiming for this doesn’t help her much. Her plans for the night involved being well enough to make Nissa’s Longest Night memorable… or the kind of experience she’d like to repeat, say, nightly… for a year…
Illima glances at her. “I’ve been wondering whether to tell you both, but it seemed like you were just going to go on your oblivious way together and that, in its own way, would have been the best payback he could get. But now…” She makes a moue of her mouth. “I have something for you.”
She hesitates and then draws a small ball from the pouch at her waist. It’s textured, and she settles it into Ria’s hand. Ria runs a thumb over it. It feels like dried leaves, bound together somehow.
Illima gives a short, irritated sigh, and Ria looks up at her, wondering. “What is it?”
“It’s… a special remedy,” Illima says, and Ria can almost hear the obfuscation in the words. “And let me be clear, it’ll cost you. But it will give you the strength and… well, it will take away the pain, for this Longest Night. So you can make the most of the time you have.”
She shakes her head. “I have misgivings. I keep this for desperate days, truly, but I have watched you and Nissa, and I don’t want Resset’s meddling to… well, I don’t want it to succeed just because you and she have been moving at an echidna’s pace, honestly.” She gives Ria a quick, salacious grin. “Because youhavetaken your time, girl.”
Ria flushes, but she can’t help the grin that surfaces as well. “I wanted to be sure. Well, no, I already am. But I wantedherto be sure. And I’m happy for that to take as long as it needs to.”
“All very noble, I’m sure,” Illima says with a snort. “But in the meantime, Resset’s got to weave his little trap for her, and…” She shakes her head. “She’ll be too… she’s not naive, but she does tend to think the best of people. And she’s got that tendency towards duty… She’ll just go along with it, because her father says the words. Even if it’s Resset’s plan.”
“So, you’re giving me this… medicine… so that I can… invite Nissa to leap the flames with me and… stop whatever Resset’s plan is?”
“Whatever his plan is, you can bet that it won’t involve Nissa getting to make any real choices about who she will marry,” Illima says dryly. “And while Nissa will no doubt sacrifice her own happiness for the rest of the clan, what she can’t see is thatwhatever she gives up, every other woman in the clan will be asked to give up too.”
Ria blinks at her in confusion. “Me? She’d be giving up me, right?”
Illima laughs at her. “No, silly. Well, she would. But the women… they’d lose real choices about who to marry. After all, if the Warlord’s daughter doesn’t get to make her own decisions, why should they?”
