Rolling onto my side, I scowl at her. “Why do you dislike me so much?”
Her eyes narrow. “You mean other than the simple fact that your people invaded our land, opened a rift into hell, and utterly wiped out three quarters of our entire population in a single stroke? Is this not reason enough for dislike?”
My stomach knots. “It wasn’t my doing. I wasn’t even born yet.”
“Yet you carry the blood of my enemies in your veins.”
I lie back once more, glaring up at the sky. She doesn’t know how true those words are. Taar told me what role my father played in the history of Licorna’s demise. If Tassa or anyone else in the Hidden City were to find out I am Larongar’s daughter, what little good credit I have earned will vanish in an instant.
After a while I breathe out a sigh. “I know it should have been you.”
Tassa is silent, but there’s a questioning tension in that silence.
“I know you should have been the one to bond with Diira,” Icontinue. “You are a warrior. Brave and strong. And Licornyn-born. It should have been you.”
Tassa mutters in her own language, but the tone sounds very much like, “Damn right.”
“But . . .” I push myself upright, wrap my arms around my knees, and look out at Diira, who stands some way apart from us, her head upraised to catch the breeze, which blows through her dark mane. “She chose me. Diira . . . and Taar too. Though I am all wrong for them both. They chose me anyway.” I turn my head, catching Tassa’s gaze. “Do I not owe it to them both to try? To make myself worthy of their choice?”
She doesn’t have to say what she’s thinking. I can see how deeply she feels my unworthiness. But I can see as well that my words have moved her. Slightly. She turns away from me, wordless, and I’m just as happy not to continue any verbal sparring for the time being. Gods spare me, it’ll take the rest of the afternoon simply to catch my breath.
Eventually, however, Tassa interrupts her own long silence. “I am thankful she survived,” she says. “Nyathri, I mean. Diira. I may have wished the circumstances were otherwise, but . . . but I am glad she is no longervelrhoar.”
As she says this, her gaze shifts back up to the trees on the slopes of Elanlein. I shade my own eyes and look. There’s a figure there, standing among the trunks. Watching us. Halamar? I think it is he—the silent warrior whom Taar trusts implicitly. I feel ratherless warmly inclined toward him, as he is the one who knocked me out and threw me into that holding pit. I suppose I’ll have to forgive him eventually. He was only following orders, after all.
I glance at Tassa, chewing over my next words. But then, it’s not as though she can hate me more than she already does, can she?
“Do you still love him?”
If Tassa’s eyes were daggers, I’d be pinned to the ground. A series of deflections and denials flash across her face. One after the other she seems to discard them, only to turn away from me without speaking. I begin to think she won’t answer me at all. Then, abruptly, she says, “Velrhoarchanges the soul. Those who experience it, even those who heal, are never the same again. Like Diira. She is no longer Nyathri, no longer the being she was before she experiencedvelrhoar.”
I understand. After all I am no longer the same girl I was before Aurae’s death. That girl is still inside me, but I am more now. A woman of grief, a woman of pain. A woman of survival, who is learning, moment by moment, how to overcome.
Even from this distance, I can hear Halamar’s song. It’s so profound in its brokenness, but . . . I find myself considering what strength it requires for a man that broken to rise each day and serve those around him. To find reason, purpose. To simply place one foot before the other. Just as my song and Diira’s are akin, so too is Halamar’s in its own way. Only he has gone on without a healing bond. He may never findsuch healing.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I say softly.
Tassa snorts. “Do all humans presume familiarity where it has not been earned?” Before I can answer, she rises, hefts her stick, and looks down at me once more. “You are not without promise, bride of my brother. I will meet you here tomorrow and see what your limbs remember of today’s training.”
With that she turns and marches for her grazing gelding, leaving me behind.
12
TAAR
The sound of pounding hooves fills my ears as Diira gallops through the small forest of dummies, which Tassa arranged out here in the grasslands beyond the sheep fields over these last few days. They are merely posts wrapped with a bit of rough old cloth. With both Halamar and Ilsevel assisting, she dug down and planted them deep enough to take serious abuse without toppling, arranging them at such intervals to allow for some complicated footwork from the licorneir. Her own horse could not manage it, but Diira is smooth, almost elegant as she performs lead changes and rollbacks, darting in and out while Ilsevel’s sword swings all too close to her neck and ears.
“Perhaps a wooden practice sword would be better under the circumstances,” I say.
Tassa, hearing me, grunts. “The balance would be off. She’d grow used to hitting incorrectly as a result.”
She has a point. If we had more time, it would behoove a new trainee to practice with a blunt weapon, for the sake of her mount if nothing else. But I can’t have Ilsevel inadvertently assuming bad habits. Not when she scarcely has time to form habits at all.
I’m grateful for the effort my sister has put in over these last four days. Though every day I rise with the intention of working with Ilsevel again, I haven’t had a spare moment to give to her training. There is much to organize and prepare for the imminent mobilization of the Rocaryn fighting force. From sunrise to sunset, I am deep in council with my quartermaster, supervising logistics, requisitions, and provisions. There are many last-minute repairs to be made on riding tack and old leather armor, horses that require shoeing, blades that need sharpening, wagons loaded with supplies for what might be a long siege in a land where we cannot count on game or foraging. The preparations have been ongoing since well before I set out with the Licornyn riders on the previous campaign; nevertheless, I feel rushed here at the end, uncertain how I will ever finalize everything in time for Ruvaen’s imminent summons. Which still has not arrived.
But Tassa stepped in where I could not, implementing a rigid training regimen for my wife. Once she got over her initial reluctance, she has thrown herself into the task of molding Ilsevel into some semblance of a true Licornyn rider—by pure brute force if necessary.
While I doubt my wife enjoys the experience of being molded, one cannot deny the results. Her grip on hervaritaris muchimproved in the last four days, along with her timing. She makes contact with each of the standing dummies, and at least three times out of the eight hits a resounding blow with the percussion point of her blade. The other strikes are not so firm, but were those clothed posts in reality the heads of her enemies, she would, at the very least, cause some disorientation. I’ve seen young Licornyn riders do worse with far more training. Diira’s nimble footwork certainly doesn’t hurt.
