Plus, what do I care that Tennet eyes me curiously as I speak, his sharp eyes dropping to my imperfectly covered throat? Can he see the ugly, puckering scar that peeks out beneath the fringe of my too-short hair that barely brushes my collar?
He looks too long. Not with disgust—but not with indifference, either. My stomach twists as I long to shrink away from him. Does he consider me gruesomely damaged? No longer worthy of being his betrothed?
Betrothed! The word turns sour in my disfigured throat and, not waiting for the rest of them to move, I turn Darkwing roughly toward the First House and start out.
“Talk and ride, yes! Talk and ride. Two of my favorite activities in one,” Caleb announces, deftly maneuvering his horse between mine and Tennet’s, the two of them slightly behind me and to the left. I fix my gaze on the spires of the First House while he tells the tale of the tournament, as only Caleb can.
“This year’s Tournament of Gold was destined to be life-changing well before it started, given the rewards Lord Rihad promised the warriors and their houses who turned out for it. Promises of rafts of soldiers to the winning houses, exalted seats on the Court of Talons, and his favor at every turn. We already had a fair number of combatants a solid two weeks out from the tournament, all of them setting up camp in the fields between Trilion and the coliseum, but Lord Rihad wanted more. It was a time for all houses to come together and represent the glory of the Protectorate, and all able-bodied warriors who could come, should. Begging your pardon, Lord Tennet. You verily had sound reasons for staying away, especially if your father was ill. May the Light receive him.”
Though he’s behind me, I can see Caleb in my mind’s eye as he turns to Tennet, equal parts somber and full of welcome. I further imagine Tennet’s sour expression as his response follows hard upon. “We received no such summons to the tournament, and it wasn’t for lack of watching the passes for any riders with word.”
“None at all?” To my surprise and frustration at my own impulsiveness, I turn in my saddle to gaze back at the two men—who couldn’t look more different if they tried. Caleb’s face betrays a curiosity equaling my own, while Tennet seems to only have grown more stoic in the intervening moments since he last glared at me. “My understanding was all houses were summoned well in advance of the tournament. Merritt certainly knew of it, my father as well, for all that the Tenth had no intention of competing in the spectacle this year. Merritt was too young.”
“Too young,” Tennet echoes, never mind that Caleb beside us is barely fifteen years old, and clearly this tournament wasn’t his first. But Caleb isn’t the first-born son of Protectorate royalty. “And yet, you are a year Merritt’s junior, was my understanding—by your father’s own description.”
My gaze leaps to meet his and I see the challenge there, read it in the twist of his lips and the smirk behind his eyes. “And you’re supposedly a boy of fourteen. It would seem the contract forged between our houses was formed on lies and strategy, Lord Tennet,” I concede. “Doubtless more truths will come to light before we’re done.”
To my surprise, his smile deepens some, and something dark and fierce flashes in his piercing eyes before he schools his expression back to a mask of indifference. “Doubtless,” he murmurs.
The tension between us is thick enough to bring down a charging stag, and Caleb’s cheery voice sounds ever so slightly strained as he takes up his tale. I turn back in my saddle and ease Darkwing forward at a slightly faster clip.
“Once the tournament proper began, it seemed much as it always does—chaos, but controlled chaos, falling into the time-honored order of pit battles among the rank and file and exhibition fights of mighty Divhs to whet the appetite ofthe spectators. At night there was music and food and the camaraderie of a Protectorate who seeks a reason to come together and witness the glory of the warriors and their Divhs. Have you ever been to a tournament, Warrior…ah, Lord Tennet?”
Caleb either receives some sort of non-verbal response or determines that the good lord has no intention of divulging more information, for he immediately launches ahead, a baby shorebird flinging itself out of its protective nest to flap about in an unforgiving sky. “Well! It’s a sight to behold. Warriors from houses across the Protectorate—not all, not all, but most—brought caravans of attendants, all of them setting up an unruly camp for weeks where goods were bought and sold, food and drink were celebrated, and music rolled across the plain. When these warriors met upon the battlefield, their Divhs fought with them and for them, mighty creatures that would take your breath away. Sandworms, winged lizards, fearsome lions, great horned beasts with powerful arms and legs—every combination of creature you could imagine. They came and they fought.”
We pass through the gates at the base of the mountain, beneath the sharp-eyed gaze of the guards at the top of the tower. I stare up at those guards with as much mental force as I can muster, fully aware that the heat of the day and the cessation of rain, coupled with how near we are to the end of their journey, has loosened the mood and circumspection of the riding party. The colors of their tunics are now plain to see, announcing them as Twelfth House soldiers.
I pray the moment we pass this station, the guard or one of his lieutenants will race to the top of the tower, signaling the watchers at the castle to warn them about their impending guests. There need be no concern or undue security that gets triggered—these men are loyal to the Protectorate until they prove otherwise. But given who is about to land on his doorstep,I suspect Fortiss will want at least a few moments to prepare a reasonable greeting, especially if Gent didn’t convey my message from earlier to Fortiss’s Divh, Szonja. I would’ve preferred some advanced warning myself.
Thank the Light that my father has returned to the Tenth House. The wedding contract he and Lord Orlof had forged was done so without any input of mine, of course. I didn’t even know the boy’s name to whom I was promised—he remained deliberately unnamed, according to Caleb, in any official records kept by the First House. But I would have remembered the name Tennet, if I’d ever run across it in any documentation on the Twelfth House. Theirs was a strange holding, as close to the eastern border as we are at the Tenth House, but tucked into far less hospitable terrain. The Tenth House was generally considered the official point of welcome for anyone traveling from the Imperium, whereas the Twelfth was only the destination of marauders bent upon slipping into the Protectorate unseen or unchallenged. Not that the Twelfth House deliberately welcomed them, of course, but from every snide comment I’d been able to glean from traveling bards, they simply couldn’t do much more than look the other way.
I have a hard time believing that the square-jawed warrior who’s listening so attentively to Caleb’s ongoing patter about the Tournament of Gold would’ve looked the other way. He’s as big as he is arrogant, like most every warrior knight I’ve met. So where in the Light has he been all these years? How is it that Caleb had never heard of him; my friend who’s pored over every scrap of knowledge about every House, from the first through the Twelfth? How is it that my father fully believed that he was sending me to achild, a son so captured beneath the thumb of his father that I would be put in my place by the elder Orlof for years before taking over as the mistress of my own house?
Because mark me plain, my father wasn’t interested in doing me any great service in marrying me off. He wanted to be rid of me, yes, and he had jewels to spare for my dowry, but the Twelfth House must have paid a bride price for me that was worth more to my father than the ornaments that he suffered me to carry on my person as I made the trek through the mountains.
I scowl. Clearly, I haven’t given this wedding arrangement enough thought. What is it that the Twelfth House had to trade for me that my father would have thrown in a mountain of jewelry and still felt like he had gotten the better part of the bargain? Lord Lemille of the Tenth wouldn’t have made the agreement otherwise, no matter how eager he was to be rid of me.
I don’t even like thinking about my father, and doing so now puts me in an even worse mood as Darkwing strides so fast up the winding mountain path that he nearly breaks into a trot. When my father had finally quit the First House to return to his own fortress with a brace of fighting men and the consideration that Fortiss settled upon him for his trouble, I’d thought myself well and truly rid of him. Perhaps that belief was too quickly formed.
These thoughts are my companions all the way up the mountain until at last we ride through the village that fronts the First House. Unlike the reception during the Tournament of Gold, our arrival today merits barely a flicker of interest. There is actual living and work to do when the pomp and glory of the Protectorate’s royalty ceases its demands.
Still, much like in the town of Trilion, there is also the faintest undercurrent of nervous energy riding along the conversations and sideways glances between the residents of First Village as we pass by. These people may not care about us specifically, but something remains very much on their minds. Whether it’s the threat from the west or simply continuedspeculation about the long-term impact of the Tournament of Gold’s deadly melee on the Protectorate, I don’t know. Further, I don’t want to know. Politics has never been a game I had the patience or discernment to play.
The moment we pass through the gates of the First House, however, my heart eases. Fortiss himself stands at the top of the sweeping steps to the castle, garbed in gold and black, his cape lifting with the breeze. There’s a smile on his face as our company approaches, but when his gaze shifts to me, I nearly choke on its intensity.
He’s changed. He’s definitely changed. Something has happened at the First House in the few short hours that I’ve been gone. Something he almost certainly won’t want to share with the newcomers from the Twelfth House.
I lean forward, my mind scrambling to figure out what has happened to him.
He looks the same as he ever has—tall, lean and well-muscled, with an arrogant twist to his mouth that echoes the smirk Lord Tennet wore so comfortably. As if the world had been fashioned as his handmaiden, willing to do his bidding at the merest word.
It’s a right and a power I’ve come into myself, having been banded to a Divh, but I wear that mantle with far less grace. Something else to work on.
But I’m not mistaken, I think. There’s an energy that suffuses Fortiss that’s different than the man I left in the small hours of the morning, the two of us breaking our fasts over an early strategy meeting. He was determined to explore the endless scrolls that his predecessor had left behind, scrolls that whispered of the danger and the magic held beyond the Western Realms, scrolls that, presumably, also held some details about the extraordinary monsters that fought so ably and well, then consented to remain at our beck and call for centuries after.We know ridiculously little about how that agreement came to be, and we must understand it better if we are to command the Divhs to help us in the battle that looms large to the west.
Has Fortiss discovered more about the Divhs? Has he stumbled into some magic that the former lord protector hoarded away; magic that could help empower us against the threat we know is coming? Had he?—
“Welcome to the First House, riders of the Twelfth!” Fortiss’s call is so bold it shakes me out of my racing thoughts as he moves down the steps, stopping halfway to extend one arm, as if to offer the whole of his castle to his guests. “We offer you rest, hospitality, and camaraderie as we mark this glorious new dawn of the Protectorate.”
