Some of my men appeared proud at the ease with which I’d killed him. Others, more inexperienced, likely knew not what to think.
Only Dren’s shoulders dropped as he looked at me.
Disappointed? Proud? Awed? Even after all these years, I could not tell. Nor did it matter.
Kill him, Terran.
And I had.
2
LYRA
“Those stilts look as if they might give way at any moment.”
Peering out of the window of our table at the window of The Siren’s Rest tavern, I watched as wave after wave crashed against the worn wood, expecting to plunge into the sea below us at any moment.
“They did once.”
My head whipped back toward the speaker. ?Ilyas Rho, our shrewd smuggler-turned-rebel and local contact, grinned at my appalled expression.
Unlike Marek or Issa, the water-wielder and his sharp-eyed human partner who also sat with me, I knew little of Ilyas Rho aside from the fact that he was our contact here. We’d only met just before this meal.
“Pardon?” I asked, Issa seemingly just as surprised as me.
“They are fortified with featherleaf which, as you might know, cannot break. But local legend tells of one Gyorian king who was so enraged that his queen took a lover that he demolished the original Siren’s Rest by splitting each of the stilts on which it was built in half and plunging her and her lover, along with the other patrons, into the sea.”
Marek, amused as always, shook his head in disagreement.
“Nay. ’Twas not a lover but a woman who planned to challenge him at the Rite of Stone and Soil.”
The smuggler frowned. “What does a Thalassari know of Gyorian legend?”
Marek, unfazed by the question, took a swig of ale. “When the woman in question was half-Thalassari? Plenty.” He leaned forward, clearly relishing his new role as storyteller. “Her mother was Gyorian, her father, Thalassari. Though none knew of it until she was able to escape from a watery death with ease. She was the reason Gyoria, unlike the other clans, instituted The Sovereign Clause.”
The Sovereign Clause. Only a full-blooded Gyorian could challenge the current king or queen.
“What happened to her?” Issa asked.
I was curious as well, never having heard the story.
“She survived and never challenged the king. Some say though, because she was more powerful than he, The Unbalance sparked The Shattering.”
I rolled my eyes. “The Shattering was caused by two heirs who fought for the throne, and magic chose neither.”
“So say those who wish to erase her history.”
“The problem with a Thalassari,” I said, ignoring for this one brief moment the gravity of our mission, “is that one can never discern whether or not he, or she, spins tales or relays real history.”
“That is not the only problem with a Thalassari,” Issa said wryly, to which Marek did something under the table to her that made the human shriek.
I was about to comment on their interaction when a Gyorian woman walked by, brushing Ilyas’s arm. The movement was so slight I’d not have noticed except I saw the tension in his spine. Without a word, he stood and followed her.
Marek leaned his head to the side, watching Ilyas’s retreat.
“That was… abrupt.” Issa sat back in her seat, peering in the same direction as her partner.
The Siren’s Rest was precisely as Marek and Issa had described it.
