“Which is why she wanted you to do battle with her own offspring?”
“To them it’s a game, a very healthy, practical game. Unbanded Divhs can’t be killed in our plane, so if they come across a predator that stamps them out, they just return home. But if they endure a challenge and battle long enough to molt, they move to their second stage of development. It’s the perfect example of the natural balance between their plane and ours. It’s just never one that I actually considered before this past month. Then again, there’s a lot of things I didn’t consider before this past month.”
“There’s no balance between our plane and the Divhs’.” Tennet humphs. “There doesn’t need to be.”
I blink up at him, struck by the difference in manner between him and Fortiss. With Fortiss, every interaction is an opportunity to explore, to balance, to learn from each other. With this warrior?—
“Is everything a fight with you?” I don’t mean to snap so harshly, but now that my rebuke lingers between us, I can’t take it back. For his part, Tennet grins at me and settles one heavy arm on the railing of the overlook. He’s not anywhere remotely close to angry, but that doesn’t make him any less dangerous.
“It seems like every conversation you and I have becomes a fight. But then it would almost have to, wouldn’t it? I want something that you don’t want, for all that it was arranged for both of us. Never mind that you were originally willing to honor the contract made up by your father and mine. Your priest here shared with me the details of your bridal attire when you set out for the Twelfth House, so clearly your intention started out as honorable.”
I know he’s deliberately trying to bait me, and I’m not pleased that he’s so successful at it, but I can’t help myself. “You mean the day that my brother died? Then, yes. Yes, I’ll admit that on that day, that morning, I had no other options, no other purpose than to ensure the safety of my house. And in the hours and days after Merritt died in my arms, I still had no other purpose other than to ensure that safety. But at that moment, my path changed, and it’s never going to change back, Lord Tennet. I don’t care if your house wages war against mine, I don’t care if you go all the way to the Imperator, I’m never going to honor that contract. I’m never going to be your wife.”
His grin never wavers, but his brows drift up. “I would say those two don’t need to be mutually connected sentences,” he counters. “I knew the moment I realized who you actuallywere—especially given that you were covered in the gore and saliva of sandworm offspring—that your situation had markedly changed. I would never expect you to honor that original contract. You’re no longer that original woman. But as to whether or not you’ll ever be my wife, well, it seems reasonable that you might reconsider that possibility. Two houses joined together in the Protectorate isn’t a bad decision for the strength of all.”
I bare my teeth at him. “You forget, I’m no longer tied to the Tenth House.”
“And you mistake me for giving a damn about the Tenth House. I speak of the Thirteenth, for all that you haven’t broken ground on it. The Twelfth and the Thirteenth bound together as one would present a mighty front against any foe. And it would serve you as well.”
“I don’t need your protection, Lord Tennet,” I remind him, but he shakes his head, cutting me off with a dismissive wave.
“I’m not one of these fools who think you cannot successfully run your own house alone, Lady Talia. I simply think—know—that you’re not going to want to.”
Once again, he’s taken me by surprise. I blink at him, my pulse pounding so hard it bangs around my skull, but he turns back forward, peering out over the moon-swept plain. “No matter where a castle is built, the stones that serve as its foundation are part of the earth of that space, the power and the history and the personality. You and I are products of the mountains where we were born, just as Lord Protector Fortiss is a product of these wide plains. He is farseeing and expansive in his beliefs. He can gather in many opinions and perspectives and land on what is right. He can sacrifice the individual for the need of the whole.”
I shift uneasily beside him. He’s only known Fortiss for a few hours, yet his understanding of the man is keen. Worse thanthat, in his words I sense a warning that has nothing to do with battle plans and the management of houses.
But Tennet isn’t finished. “You and I are different. We are inheritors of the mountains, warriors who know that rocky paths can lead just as easily to open vistas as they can to deadly falls. We know the canyons can hide sparkling treasure or deadly predators that you’ll never see until they’re upon you. We can’t see far, but we can see what’s right in front of us with perfect clarity and understand it for what it is. And we know, sure as the Light, that we’ll never be able to waste time with ponderings about the wide world, if we don’t survive this moment.”
“Uh huh.” I cross my arms over my chest. “Why do I get the feeling we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if I’d made it to the Twelfth House that first day, my hair coiled in a grand mass around my head and laden with trinkets and jewels?”
He shrugs and offers me a grin. “I guess we’ll never know. Because that’s not where that particular mountain path took you. It didn’t lead you deeper into the mountains but out onto these wide plains. That said, such paths have a way of circling back on themselves. So, like any good child of the mountains, you should keep a sharp eye out and assess both dangers and opportunities when they present themselves for what they are, and for nothing else.”
I study him, well aware of Nazar still smoking his pipe deep in the shadows. Tennet knows it too. Does he simply not care? Or is he trying to convince both of us…and of what exactly?
“That’s fair advice,” I finally say, settling on the least offensive reply I can come up with. And then I ruin it, because, of course I do. “From what I’ve heard of your father, I’m surprised he spent so much time training you in the art of discourse.”
Tennet only chuckles. “Lord Orlof was never one to use words when his fists would do. But he also had a taste forthe absolute best the world had to offer, even high up in his mountain stronghold. My mother was Imperium born.”
Because I know the man so well, I can hear the slight shift in Nazar’s body, the movement probably no more than the tilting of his chin and the narrowing of his eyes on Tennet. This revelation is important to him. Why? Does he regret now not carrying on to the Twelfth House to meet an Imperium comrade? I remember the young Imperium woman in Lord Rihad’s court whose ways he knew so well. Nazar has spent the last ten years and more in the Protectorate…does he miss his homeland?
Fortunately, Tennet doesn’t notice the warrior-priest’s sharper focus but continues along with his tale. “Given how close we are to the border, it wasn’t as much of a leap for my father to find her as you might think, especially given the quality of our wine. But she came from a wealthy house, and she’d been taught by tutors trained in the capital city. To save herself from a life of boredom, she taught me to carry a conversation from the moment I could credibly talk.”
“How long ago did she die?” I asked quietly. Because this much I knew about the woman.
“Eight years ago,” he says, nodding at the stars. “She slipped away on a night even brighter than this, her eyes already turned to the adventure that awaited her over the horizon.” He flashes me another glance. “So, I guess I amend my earlier statement. There is a time to take a wider view. But may it be many long years before you feel you must.”
We stand there staring at the stars another few moments, and I feel pushed to say more, to learn more from Tennet—but also to hold back.
I don’t know this man; I don’t want to know this man. I have my own path before me—to serve the Protectorate and build my house; a house that can offer paths to any who would follow me to do more with the Divhs. And now this is my chance, assumingwe can vanquish the threat of the Western Realms and return to peace in the Protectorate.
Lofty dreams, all, and none of them possible if I don’t keep my focus. A warrior sees the whole of his opponent and uses all of it—I need to understand more of Tennet, yes. But not the pieces of him that call to my heart, but to my mind.
“Your mother came from the Imperium, lived in Hakkir, and she taught you,” I say instead. “What information do they have about the Protectorate, the way we live, our history? How much does it differ from the way that history is taught here?”
“That last is a very good question, and one that I never thought to ask until these last few days, traveling out toward Trilion, sharing idle chatter with warriors and townsfolk alike. The perceptions we have of our own past are fluid. They change with each generation, gradually shifting as politics and society changes. The information provided in the Imperium about the Protectorate’s past never changes, I suspect. It’s history from five hundred years ago, great events that secured the glory of the Imperium and its protection. It’s also caught in time, a perfect fully rendered painting that might as well be depicting mythology, not people, not even Divhs in terms of breathing, living creatures with their own purpose.”
He smiles a little grimly, shaking his head. “I never thought of it that way, of course, when my mother taught me the history of a country she wasn’t born in. I simply accepted her depiction of the past as the truth. It never occurred to me that it could be anything other than what she said. But now, I wonder how little I truly know, and how much the frame of my perception was bolted together with the ideas of people who have never lived our experience. It certainly was never an issue before I took the band. But once I became linked with Ayne, I realized how small I was, how insignificant, when I should arguably be somuch more. We were meant to be warriors, and we’ve become entertainers.”
