“Even pulling our ranks out of Daijal and Urova, wardens are barely able to clear the poison fields before more revenants come through. Winter brought heavier rains and snowfall than the previous years, and there are more bogs to deal with. We’re losing too many wardens to the dead and the war, and we don’t have enough tithes ready to graduate, to say nothing of those tithes we lost in the attack. We need to replenish our ranks for the future.”
Soren went still beneath her piercing, knowing gaze. “Have you decided if you will lift the stay on Solaria’s sanctions?”
Since the founding of their country, the Houses of Solaria that claimed the Imperial throne had buried their royal dead rather than burned them. That adherence to a form of worship for the Dawn Star had resulted in a secret crypt underneath the royal grounds, accessed through the private star temple used by the Imperial family.
Soren had become aware of the crypt during the funeral for Vanya’s parents when Vanya had invited him to participate in the funeral rites. The iron coffins with their welded-shut lids in the crypt below the Imperial palace had held an unknown number of revenants—revenants the House of Kimathi, in an unconscionable attack backed by the Daijal queen, had let loose during the Conclave of Houses.
He still woke sometimes from the nightmare of being trapped in a metal coffin, listening to the sounds of a revenant trying to claw its way inside. He might be a warden, used to fighting against the walking dead, but being at their mercy like that was something he never wanted to experience again.
The crypt with its buried dead had been something Soren couldn’t hold back from Delani, no matter how much he cared about Vanya and the other man’s precarious hold on the Imperial throne. It was law in every country on Maricol for citizens to burn their dead and leave names on a memory wall. Burning the dead was the only way to ensure a body didn’t rise as a revenant, an action written into the Poison Accords that governed the relationship between wardens and Maricol’s countries.
Because Solaria had broken the Poison Accords—at the risk to their own citizens and others—that country owed the wardens enough tithes they could replenish their ranks within the next few decades. Neither was Solaria the only country to be hit with sanctions. Daijal, too, had been slapped with them, albeit for vastly different reasons. The wardens couldn’t enforce the sanctions on Daijal so long as the war was ongoing, but already Daijal was feeling the bite of having no wardens to lend aid against revenants or cleanse the poison fields.
Right now, the war was giving ground to the dead. Soren knew they needed more tithes, but he also knew handing down the sanctions now would weaken Vanya’s grip on power and leave Solaria vulnerable.
“I’d send you to deliver the news if I thought it would get us anywhere,” Delani said.
Soren had spent many years in the Imperial court learning how not to show his feelings. He doubted he was fooling Delani. “If you hand down sanctions now, it might destabilize the war effort.”
“Solaria’s Legion is deployed to their northern border and no further. Neither Daijal nor Ashion has risked a skirmish with that country’s army. They are not involved in any war effort, despite Ashion’s numerous requests for support and aid.”
“They fight over thevasilyet.”
Delani made a throwaway gesture with her hand. “That is a proxy fight. If the emperor had proof of Eimarille being responsible for the destabilization of his country’s government, the Legion would have marched on Daijal last year. We need tithes if we’re to handle the dead once the war is over. Our records might have been destroyed, but I know from previous research us wardens needed to double our ranks in the aftermath of Ashion’s initial civil war. We number less now than we did then. We can’t do our duty unless we fill our ranks.”
“And if doing so causes the House that holds the Imperial throne to lose power to one who won’t care to pay sanctions, what then?”
“We will pull our people out of Solaria the same way we did with Daijal and Urova.”
Soren swallowed tightly. “What about the Wastelands and Rixham?”
Delani leveled him a flat stare. “We would guard Solaria’s northern border. Your concern is noted, but I know your feelings toward the House of Sa’Liandel. As I recall, I sent you to observe the Imperial court, not bed the emperor.”
Soren refused to feel shame about that, even if his cheeks did heat a little. He knew he’d overstepped when it came to Vanya, but he couldn’t regret the days he’d woken up in Vanya’s bed. He ached for those moments, even now, missing the other man in a way he’d missed no other. His relationship with Vanya was complicated. Soren had tried his best to keep it out of the public eye, but the Imperial court ran on whispers, and there’d been no hope of hiding where Vanya’s favor lay.
Other wardens had expressed their displeasure with his choices since his return to the island, but at least none had tried to kill him like therionetkain that Ashion border town. Amidst everything else that had happened, Soren’s past indiscretion with a head of state wasn’t the worst problem they were dealing with.
“Solaria is the only country with a military that can stand against Daijal’s and win, but only if they’re not rocked by internal divisions, which will surely happen if you insist on the delivery of tithes,” Soren said carefully.
“They haven’t chosen to engage.”
Soren wondered what Vanya would think of his defense of Solaria, if Vanya even thought of him at all these days. “If Eimarille’s war continues how we believe it will, Solaria will have no choice but to be drawn into the conflict. Would you rather have them solidly capable or the Houses at each other’s throats again because you demanded sanctions from all their people?”
The Conclave of Houses hadn’t fixed the animosity between some of the bloodlines, merely patched over the cracks at the behest of the Dawn Star. Still, all the news coming out of Solaria spoke of the palace being rebuilt and Vanya conducting government out of Oeiras.
“You act like they have a choice about their payment. You don’t have the authority to argue for them. You are a warden, not Solarian.” Delani paused, raising the brow over her good eye. “Though I wonder if you were supposed to be even that.”
Soren shoved down his anger, knowing it wouldn’t help him here. “Iama warden. This is the only road I have ever known.”
“You have a sister. Two of them, if the broadsheets out of Ashion are correct. Your records as a tithe were destroyed along with everything else, and there is the question of starfire that runs in the Rourke bloodline.”
“We give up our countries and we give up our names when we become tithes. My loyalty is to the wardens, and it always has been. Whatever people think I am, they are wrong.”
The Dawn Star had set him on this road, and Soren would walk it as a warden until he died and his ashes danced amongst the stars. Whatever crown he may have once worn in some other life, whatever name he may have once had, he didn’t want it.
All he truly wanted was the love of a man who wanted nothing to do with him anymore.
Delani sighed, leaning forward to rest her elbows on the desk. “We both know you are not just a warden, and I can’t ignore that fact forever, the same way I can’t ignore the sanctions owed to us. Daijal is readying for a heavy push east now that the snows have melted. You are right that we can’t afford for Solaria to be splintered when Eimarille eventually turns her attention to that country. War will only delay the inevitable, but the sanctions will be paid.”
