“I would think it obvious. What happened to you, Edie? You were always so quick.” He had slowed his steps to a halt, seemingly unbothered by seeing his estranged wife of eleven winters. “I am here because Perpatane invades. With Ruskar. With those barbarian Helmsmen. With Eccleston, although their troops are meager. With contingents from smaller countries. Tintar falls today.”
“Why?”
“Why do anything?” he said, shrugging. “For power, for gain. Our king, and I mean our king of Perpatane, not the madman you now are in service to, not your Shark King,ourking, rightfully has declared Tintar to be a country that refuses to progress into modernity. Threat of invasion for a broken trade agreement? How backwards. This is why the Cloudlands are leery of our trading with them. All they know of our continent is Tintar, a country of illiterate thugs bleeding over little bowls praying to pagan idols. Can you blame them?”
“So you, in critique of their warrior’s way, invade them in an act of war?”
“A war to end all wars.”
“That is what every warmonger has ever said.”
“There she is, my intelligent wife.”
“Do not call me that.”
“Why? Is that whathecalls you now? Your captain?”
I swallowed. “What do you want from me, Ormond?” I had not used his first name in so long, my lips could barely say it.
“I want you back, Edie.”
I opened my eyes, having closed them, perhaps to try and blink away the sight of him here in Tintar, in her temple. “You want me back?” I spluttered.
He smiled. “I was too hard on you. I put all of my ambition into your womb. That was unfair. I have lost my faith in our saint but, I ask you to keep that to yourself. No praying or boxing can make a barren woman have a babe. I know that now.”
I winced at his casual mention of the worst days and nights of my life.
“I missed you,” he added. “You cannot tell me you did not miss me.”
I could not. That first winter, working as a maid, I had longed for his arms around me. I had dreamed of the beginning of the marriage, the coupling, the gifts, the long conversations, his teaching me what he knew about running an estate, Perpatanian law and taxes, unknowingly preparing me for independence winters later in Eccleston, able to read and decipher documents as a scribe. But too much time had passed between those newlywed days and my flight from Perpatane. Too much coldness had been shown to me so that when my first casual lover in Eccleston showed me the cheapest warmth, enjoying my body for how it felt not regretting what it could not do, I had lost any love left for Thrush. And I had never missed him again. And more importantly, Helena and little Maureen had become a part of my life and then Mischa and my heart then knew what love was.
“I forgot how to miss you,” I said. “Why would you want me back? I still am barren.”
“I got a son on a woman. She died and I made him my ward. The way is clear.”
Breath expelled from my mouth in half laughter, half outrage. “So, now my barrenness is forgiven? Now, I am to be loved without condition. Did your father grant you the estate and the mines? Did your brother not have a son then?”
He shook his head. “It is all mine now. I am a very wealthy man, Edie. You will live as a queen, I promise you. Our marriage bed can be one of pleasure again.”
“Declare me dead and get yourself a younger woman,” I spat. “I know too much now.”
Thrush cast his gaze up and down my form, returning to my face. “You are yet, after all this time, so beautiful.”
“I do not like that word,” I said.
He looked confused, but said, “I will call you whatever you wish. I love you still.”
Hearing those words, the words I had wanted Alric to say and now never would hear him say, was all too much. “Never,” I gasped. “You broke my heart.”
“I know,” he said softly. “I broke my own too, Edie.”
Run, rasped my goddess in my ears.
I took another step backwards.
He held out his hand. “Come back to me. I will keep you safe. This invasion will be over soon. We have all of the ships. Your navy is gone and while your army is large, you cannot keep us from docking and our men from pouring into your city. There are no Tintarian warships to prevent this. And there will be a flood of them, Edie. Each of those Ruskarian-built ships holds nearly four hundred men. And there are eighteen ships. How big is the infantry? Most of your cavalry is deployed to the south. Your navy is in the north. There is no chance Pikestully holds today."
I took another step backwards, trying to breathe. More than seven thousand men were on their way to raze Pikestully.
