When she saw that horse, Melia’s fear became a solid thing, a lump of ice inside her chest. With absolute cold lucidity, she realized they were going to die.
The men made the four of them stand at the edge of the road. Her mother, in her fine black wool shot with gold, held her head high and watched the brigands with her dark, angry eyes. Beside her, Teya, in her priestly reds, cradling her injured hand, trembled and whispered, “My lady, tell them who you are. You’re a million times more valuable to them alive than dead.”
The men searched the carriage, pulling out their luggage, opening the chests full of silks and wools, throwing them into the dust. One man got hold of a small chest filled with coins; he plunged his dirty hands in and let the gold trickle through his fingers, laughing at the shiny stream. The men tied the things they liked to their saddles and stuffed them in their bags, leaving the rest scattered around the carriage.
“Roderi doesn’t negotiate with Seragian scum,” her mother replied to Teya. “He hangs them on the crossroads. So shut up and hope they take the gold and leave.”
One man reached under the carriage seat and pulled out a leather folder. Seeing that it was just letters and documents, he threw it in the dust. The wind picked up the papers, lifting them in the air. Another man, who was stuffing silk scarves into his saddlebag, reached out and caught one sheet. He didn’t read thewriting, he probably couldn’t, but he looked at the seal and then at Melia’s mother. He called another man, then a third.
Melia watched their faces with impassive curiosity. They were weather-beaten, burnt by the sun to dark walnut, lined by the wind, covered in dark, scraggy beards. Abruptly, they stopped laughing and admiring their spoils. Instead, they gathered in a tight circle, their faces contorted in anger and alarm, speaking fast and gesticulating towards the women.
Melia’s nurse prayed softly, a senseless litany of words, a drone of an insect caught in a jar.
A man approached her mother and asked her something, pushing the seal under her nose. Melia recognized the sound of her father’s name, garbled by the strange language, repeated over and over again.
Her mother shrugged and shook her head.
“Roderi? Elmar?” the man repeated.
Roderi of Elmar, Melia’s father, who defended the border of the kingdom and hanged Seragian outlaws at crossroads.
Her mother’s lips were a thin, hard line. The man pulled out a knife and put it against her throat. “Roderi?” he asked once more. A drop of blood trickled down her mother’s smooth skin. The knife pressed deeper.
Melia’s mother closed her eyes and a single tear escaped her lashes.
“No,” Teya screamed. A futile bout of courage pushed her forward in an attempt to grab the man’s hand. But before her fingers touched him, another rider grabbed her by her hair and pulled her back. A flash of steel and she fell to the ground, blood gushing out of her neck, soaking into the dust.
“Teya!” Melia’s mother moved, but the man who held her was faster. He opened her throat in one smooth move, and she fell beside Teya, blood spurting through her fingers, wrapped in vain around her neck, unable to stop the deadly tide.
Melia opened her mouth but no sound came out.
“No, please, no.” The nurse pulled Melia back and held her tight, wrapping her in a cloak. “She’s a child.”
Melia buried her head in the dark folds, the image of her mother bleeding to death etched on the insides of her eyelids. The dark eyes wide open in horror and disbelief, the mouth gasping for air, the red fingers grasping, twitching.
The air moved behind Melia as blades slashed through it: cold and then searing hot. Her nurse screamed, and warm, sticky liquid poured over Melia, soaking into her clothes. They fell to the ground together. Sharp stones bore into Melia’s back while the soft, heavy flesh smothered her from above. Blood poured over her face. She tried to wipe it off, but her arms were trapped under the convulsing bulk of her nurse’s body.
She closed her eyes, wondering how she’d know if she were dead.
Much later, Melia heard voices.
It was dark and very cold, the wind lashing over the empty plains. She was unable to move her body. Something dark and heavy immobilized her completely, allowing her barely enough space to fill her lungs with small gulps of air. Her eyelashes were sticky and crusted. She blinked slowly, tears rinsing her eyes, blurring her vision. Orange flames hovered in the air, hooves crunched the gravel. Curses and shouts.
At first she thought the robbers had returned to finish her off. Then she realized she understood what the men were saying, though it made no sense. The panic and fear in their voices. The sound of her mother’s name. And “Seragian brigands, this far from the border.”
Two pairs of hands lifted the dead thing off Melia and pulled it away. When somebody grabbed her under the arms, she whimpered. They let her go immediately. Fingers touched her neck.
“Over here, give me light!” a man cried. “The girl is alive.”
• • •
A scream burstout of Melia’s mouth as she remembered. She’d died that day, her soul had fled her body among the carnage, beneath the still-warm pile of bodies whose blood soaked her clothes, her hair, and fed the ravenous red dust beneath. She had died, and all that was left was this empty husk, this puppet of a woman, this weapon her father had sharpened and plunged into the heart of the court.
The fact that she hadn’t seen the scope of her father’s plans, that she hadn’t meant to start a war, was irrelevant. She wanted to flee from the stink of blood, from the shadows of death in Syr, and all she’d managed to do was to bring them here.
She was the poison, the miasma spreading the sickness, the deathbringer. She should have had the decency to die and stay dead.
She curled into a tight ball of pain on the dusty carpet. If the king was dead, if her father—or Ferisa, more likely—had done something to him, then the war was inevitable. And more than that—Amron would know his father had died because he’d shown mercy to Melia. She had no courage to show her face before him, no right to ask for help.
