“We’ll go,” the lumpy councilor says, surprising me. He points to Dolor and Miriam. “The three of us are known enough to these men, and there are only a few inns suitable for a house lord. We’ll go tonight—and be there when they wake tomorrow.”
“Take a brace of guards—no, do it,” Fortiss says, overriding Miriam’s instant protest. “They don’t have to loom over you, but they should be nearby if you need them. I’m not willing to assume goodwill when these men aren’t showing themselves. And the warriors too—if your houses are here, you should know.”
He shuts down the meeting quickly then, with assurances to the council that he won’t do anything without consulting them first. Then Fortiss and my father argue some more about when Lemille will be able to see Rihad.
Even with all that, in less than a quarter hour, only the three of us remain in the hallway outside of Fortiss’s chambers.There’s something unspoken in the air between us—an energy of past, present, and possibility.
Fortiss holds my gaze for a quick, stolen moment, but Tennet doesn’t waste any time. “What exactly is your plan to give Fortiss the sight, Talia?” he demands, the question clearly one he hasn’t been able to let go. “Not the priest, I hope. You can’t rely on visions and portents if you mean to truly defend the Protectorate.”
“Let’s get some air.” Fortiss waves us to follow him, and we fall silent as we move down the hallway toward the wide overlook. When we step out on the decking, Tennet looks around, scowling. The torches are lit, brightening the space immediately around us, but the moon is full and bright, washing the entire plane in a blue-white glow that extends all the way to the coliseum.
And there…I smirk as Tennet jolts in surprise, then strides out to the farthest edge of the overlook, peering hard. “There’s fire there,” he says, squinting. “There—and again. Shooting up, you see that? Who’s in there?”
“Caleb,” I say succinctly, dropping my hands to my belt. It’s a move I’ve watched warriors make so often, I assumed it was simply for comfort, but no. It’s a subtle power stance, both grounding and preparatory at once. I grin as Tennet scowls at me. “He’s training newly banded warriors there—soldiers all. Their Divhs are strong, but not as imposing. Suitable to guard a village or come together to serve several families in a conflict.”
“That’s not what Divhs are for,” he retorts.
“Not up to now, no,” Fortiss agrees. His gaze, too, is on the coliseum—fully a quarter hour’s easy canter from the base of the mountain. “Up to now, there’s been no need for Divhs to do much of anything but display their might and power—so strong that only marauders and fools try to take up arms against each other. It’s been an effective form of deterrence to incidentalbattles these past five hundred years. Thievery and even murder happens, but not on any scale. That is the peace that the Divhs have provided us, a boon but also a curse. Now, with this threat that looms from the west, the playing field changes. We can’t rely only on the mightiest of Divhs. We may need them all to come to our aid.”
“And we’re back to this nebulous threat.” Disdain weighs heavily in Tennet’s tone. “I have to say, I’d be inclined to side with the lords gathering in Trilion on this score. It’s not that I don’t believe that Rihad thought he was summoning creatures of true power and evil—I do. You don’t kill that many warriors without a strong belief that you have some mighty force on your side. But he also could simply have been mad, duped into believing that legends and myths are true. He wouldn’t be the first.”
“I saw the creature he summoned, Lord Tennet,” I counter quietly. Tennet turns to me, and in that easy motion I feel his warrior energy, both predator and protector. I recognize that same energy in myself. “You forget, I was willing to do anything to understand why my brother died and who killed him. My search took me to Lord Rihad’s chambers. I hid myself away, waiting for a chance to search it when it was quiet. Before I got that chance, I heard him speak his incantations, and I saw who responded. A creature that could have been a man, but was covered in snakes, standing in the heart of Rihad’s great fireplace, overtaken but not consumed by flames. It noticed me almost as soon as I laid eyes on it, and I fled. But it was real, Tennet—or as real as anything I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t an illusion created to dupe me, but something that Rihad was actually interacting with.”
“You ran,” he echoes, focusing on what I consider to be the least important piece of the story. “Ran where? Is that when you were discovered by Rihad?”
“Oh—well, no.” I smile a little as I remember that fateful night. “I ran like mad out here, then jumped off the edge.”
Tennet glances over the railing to the wide expanse below. “You jumped. Meaning, your Divh caught you and carried you the rest of the way down.”
He looks at Fortiss. “Do all the Divhs who participated in the Tournament of Gold perform such tricks on demand? I’ve never tried such a thing with mine. We bonded when my father finally gave up the band a year ago—an act I’m convinced sent him into his final decline, if I’m being honest—and I’ve never felt right summoning it just for my own needs. It’s the guardian of our holding, and that’s not a gift I take lightly.”
I bristle at the implied insult, but Fortiss cuts across my ready response. “Talia’s connection to her Divh—to all her Divhs—is unusual,” he says, his tone placating. “There’s no wrong way for a warrior knight to interact with your Divh.”
“There’s definitely not,” I put in, irritated at being interrupted. “You simply ask for what you wish.”
“If only it were that simple for all warriors, Lady Talia.”
Tennet turns sharply at the new voice that floats to us across the open space of the overlook, which allows me to hide my grin. I pivot as well to see Nazar step out from the shadows. The priest of the Light is dressed in his heavy dark robes of deep blue, his lean face dominated by solemn eyes that study Tennet with an intensity I know all too well.
“Good evening, Lord Tennet,” he murmurs. “May the Light shine upon you as you lead your house to glory. I would have come to assist you with the transition from father to son, had you need of me. I understand the Twelfth House doesn’t have its own priest.”
“Priest Nazar,” Tennet says, surprising me by lifting his right fist to his heart, the same gesture that would normally be accorded to another lord, despite his uncertainty about thepriest. “We could have used you, but we made it through. My father was a proud man and didn’t want to admit the need. He particularly didn’t want to admit it to Lord Lemille.”
I grimace, understanding completely. Tennet wasn’t supposed to exist, and nobody would believe that Orlof would give up the band to a boy of fourteen, especially when, a year ago he would only have been thirteen. But why had Orlof decided to give up the band at all—has he been ill for some time? I have so many questions, but once again I’m stymied.
“You haven’t summoned your Divh since you were first banded?” Fortiss asks and Tennet nods, dropping his hands to his belt in a move I again appreciate.
“I wanted to, certainly, but no—save once,” Tennet says. “My father, as I say, was a proud man, and he was doing what he needed to so that he would ensure the future of his house. He was also dying. I didn’t know it at the time that he gave up the band, and neither of us expected his decline to be so precipitous after it. By the time he finalized the marriage contract with the Tenth House, he was visibly fading before my eyes. Upon his death, I summoned our Divh to send him to the Light in accordance with his wishes, but in the weeks that followed, I haven’t sought its aid.”
It? I send the question out into the starlit sky and hear Gent’s huff of amusement in return.
Tennet gestures to the edge of the overlook. “I see now I’ve missed out on honing its skills for uses other than outright protection. I confess, it never occurred to me to ask.”
“Lady Talia is correct in saying that you simply have to ask your Divh for the aid you need, but in your case—and yours, Lord Protector Fortiss—you were constrained by the beliefs and training handed down from your fathers,” Nazar says. “So, in some ways Lady Talia had the benefit of not knowing what she could and couldn’t ask. The rule of tradition has played long andheavily in the actions of our warriors. It has served us well for hundreds of years. It’s also kept us in check.”
Tennet narrows his eyes. “Us?” he repeats. “You mean the whole of the Protectorate, or all of the Imperium as well?”
“Both,” Nazar says. “And I also mean us. The four of us, all for different reasons.”
