“Talia?LadyTalia?” The words come out like a crack of thunder, and both Caleb and I wheel around, my short sword half out of my scabbard at the clear rebuke in the warrior’s tone.
“The same,” growls Caleb, rushing to defend me whether I need his help or not. “Champion of the Tournament of Gold, winner of the winged crown, head of the Thirteenth House. Which you should know since you’re clearly riding with her, warrior or not. Who are you and where are you from?”
“Caleb…” I wince, feeling a headache coming on. I slide my short sword back into place and pitch my tone to as placating as possible. “These men weren’t at the tournament. He and his men?—”
“These men buriedLord Orloftwo weeks ago, the old man still waiting for a promise to be fulfilled that he had negotiated in good faith,” the warrior snaps. He stares at me fully now, and for the first time since he arrived at the top of the path, when he looks at me, I feel seen.
It’s not an especially good feeling.
“Lady Talia of the Thirteenth House—a house I have never heard of—can I assume you are also Talia of the Tenth? Whose marriage to the heir of the Twelfth House would have united two mountain fortresses and maintained the strength of the borders of the Protectorate against the marauders from the east?”
“I…” I squint at him, fully at a loss. Who was this man? Some agent of the Imperium sent to aid the Twelfth House? And is Lord Orlof really dead?
But the man continues to stare at me, unyielding.
“I—yes,” I finally manage. “Though it’s of no account to you. Lord Orlof and my father arranged my marriage to his fourteen-year-old child and sent me off to fulfill the promise. Then my brother was murdered by an agent of Lord Rihad, and I came here instead.”
“Came to Trilion,” he sneers, his disbelief plain. “To fight in the Tournament of Gold as awoman.”
“Came to find justice for my brother and fighting men for my house the only way I could—because my brother wasdead,” I spit back.
He doesn’t back down. His blue eyes are sparking with fury which I absolutely do not merit. “A fair decision,” he seethes. “But fairer still would have been the one that took you to the Twelfth House, which is now the house you should cleave to by dint of the wedding contract.”
A cold wash of certainty rolls through me, and far away, I hear the questioning trill of Gent, can almost see his massive horned head tilting on his distant plane, as if to better hear my response.
I don’t disappoint. “A contract nullified by the fact that I am banded.” I reach up to the collar of my waistcoat and yank it aside, revealing my reinforced sleeveless vest and the very, very obvious warrior’s band that circles my upper bicep. “I would not have wished the shame of that truth to sully the standing of the Twelfth House.”
His gaze darts to my arm, then returns, more slowly, to hold mine. His eyes burn with rage, surprise, and something else, something I can’t pin down. “Then maybe you should have asked your betrothed his opinion.”
Oh, please. “Itoldyou, I?—”
“Because I would have supported you.”
My throat closes tight as if gripped by a vice, and breath completely deserts me as the warrior wrenches his cape over one shoulder, betraying the inky midnight blue of the Twelfth House. “Tennet, son of Orlof, first-blooded and firstborn. Contracted in the Light as your husband, Talia of the Tenth, now and evermore.”
“But…” I stare at the man, barely able to form my words. “You’re supposed to be fourteen!”
He smiles at me, all teeth. “And you’re supposed to have hair down to your feet, laden with enough riches to feed our people for a year. It’s a day full of surprises.”
Chapter 3
“Tennet of the Twelfth House!” Caleb says brightly, gaze darting from my face to the warrior’s beside me, who is most assuredly not the boy my father thought he was marrying me off to. “I tell you plain, your name has never appeared in any official roll of the houses of the Protectorate, nor in the line of first-blooded and first born.”
He holds up his right hand to ward off Tennet’s obvious question. “I know, because I made it my business to know two years back and more, in my studies to join the warrior class of the Second House. And yes, you’re right. No self-respecting warrior would go about the business with only one arm, but it’s not as if I started out that way. I simply had to make an adjustment along the path, as all great warriors do—as you did, surely, first-blooded and firstborn and all. Shall we ride? Lord Protector Fortiss will be eager to meet you and to feed you and your men after your travels.”
This virtual torrent of words does me the service that Caleb’s chatter has since the moment I met him. It gives me time and space to separate myself from the disasters of my own making and allow me to think.
“Warrior Tennet—no, Lord Tennet it would be, may the Light receive your father’s soul—this is warrior Caleb, banded in the great melee of the Tournament of Gold. Now he’s in charge of training the new banded soldiers and their Divhs.” I stop short of assigning my closest friend and staunchest supporter as a member of my newly formed house, but Tennet’s quick, assessing gaze rakes over Caleb with…what? Dismissal? Calculation? I’m too churned up inside to know, but it’s certainly not wholehearted acceptance.
Yet another mark against him. The man will be covered in blacking stone by the time we reach the gates of the First House.
Then again, Fortiss also was quick to dismiss me when we first met, that day in the forest outside the Shattered City. He saw me as nothing more than a bride-to-be on her way to her wedding, dressed for a life of passive, diligent service. From the hard set of his jaw, Tennetstillsees me that way.
Well, Fortiss learned the truth quickly enough. I’d make sure this hulking brute did, too.
“It seems the scant information I have received about the Tournament of Gold has been neither complete nor fully accurate,” Tennet replies, his words as neutral as a granite wall, despite his easy smile. “We should probably start with your explanation of what exactly happened here, these few weeks’ past.”
“Then we talk and ride.” Now I wince at the gravelly rasp of my voice, though I shouldn’t care what I sound like, only that I can be heard. Had my father’s aim been any truer when he sliced my throat all those years ago, when I was but a girl of seven, I would have lost both voice and breath in one fell strike.
