Gwaharad must be the King of Kamori. Which meant Emere, his brother, was something like a prince, arguably the same rank as a princess. Loran suddenly felt silly about this wrangling of made-up titles. Kamori had no real king. Neither did Arland or Ledon, or anywhere else in the world. At least, this was so in the eyes of the Empire. Loran imagined Gwaharad to be someone much like herself.There are still those who fight. And there always will be.That was what the dragon in the volcano had said.
As she hesitated, unsure of how to answer, Emere went on. “My brother, the king, will arrive shortly. Your Highness has achieved what I had hoped to by feigning capture.” Emere eyed the Powered cart. As Loran wondered what it was carrying, Emere bowed deeply and continued. “I beseech you to meet with the King of Kamori and allow us to share your cause.”
Emere’s manners were flawless. Loran assented, and she lifted Wurmath to carefully sever the knot that bound his hands.
Emere brought his freed hand to his lips and whistled three times.
The forest rippled. Men and women dressed in green and brown and disguised with leaves and branches slowly emerged from the woods. Their disguises were varied, but they each had an archer’s bow on their back. By their orderly walk and uniform expression, Loran could tell this was not a group of ordinary bandits. Soon, about sixty Kamori soldiers had come into the clearing. The blue fire of the burning log guardhouse was still sending up black smoke into the sky. As the soldiers fell into formation, a middle-aged man with long hair came out of the forest. He wore no disguise. Instead, he wore a gold crown and a cloak hemmed with silver thread. Painted on his armor underneath the cloak was a green lion standing on its hind legs. The sword on his belt was black from hilt to scabbard. His expression was benevolent but unsmiling. This must be Gwaharad.
Emere darted through the formation of soldiers and went down on one knee before him. “Your Majesty.”
“Very good, Emere,” said Gwaharad. “Do you have what we came for at hand?” His gaze briefly shifted toward Loran before returning to his kneeling brother.
“I do, Your Majesty.”
“We were going to move once you entered Dehan Forest, but the smoke issuing from here made us reluctant to proceed. Who is this hero?”
“A princess of Arland,” said Emere, the words Loran herself found so difficult to use issuing smoothly from his lips. “Shesingle-handedly obliterated this outpost and killed four Powered legionaries.”
All eyes turned to Loran. The attention was uncomfortable. Gwaharad brushed past Emere and the ranks of his soldiers, who moved to widen the path for him without any other prompting.
Standing before Loran, Gwaharad held out both his hands.
“I am Gwaharad, King of Kamori. It is gladdening to meet a princess of Arland.”
“It is my honor to be in your illustrious presence, Your Majesty.” She had never heard of his name before this day, but Loran was prudent.
“Join us. You, Princess, have vanquished the Imperial dogs in this forest and saved many of my people’s lives—we are in your debt. And I am eager to hear the story of how you came upon your sword.”
Emere gestured and the soldiers moved to the cart, where they began off-loading its cargo, the largest being a metal box wrapped in chains. It looked like a coffin, and heavy even for ten people sharing the burden on their shoulders.
“We must go,” said Gwaharad briskly, “before the smoke attracts more of the Imperial soldiers.”
Loran nodded in agreement. Though she was exhausted from the fight, her steps felt light as she followed Gwaharad and Emere out of the clearing. There were other people out there standing against the Empire, and she had found them. She was no longer alone.
7CAIN
It was late morning when Cain stepped inside the olive oil shop at the mouth of the Grocer’s End just off the market square. Old Agatha’s expression turned grim when she saw him, but the owner of the eatery across the street was at the counter haggling over a tall bottle of oil, so the old woman made no comment about Cain’s lateness.
A pile of fresh olives in the corner of the shop gave off an inviting perfume. Though all of the shop’s oil was pressed and imported from Dalosia to the north by ship, Agatha kept fresh olives on display at all times. She had Cain throw them out when rot set in, then would buy another pile and the cycle would repeat. All four walls of the shop were lined floor-to-ceiling with shelves, bottles of olive oil both new and long rancid crowded together.
Cain got to work without a word, picking up a large jar of bad oil with both hands, the first of the score he would need toempty that day. It was work he should’ve finished the day before, but Fienna—the image of her lying in the patrollers’ morgue rose in his mind, and he shoved the thought away. The inquiries, as it were, had kept him away from his work.
The customer exited. “Come here,” Agatha called.
Pretending not to hear, Cain carried the heavy jar outside. As he stepped back in and lifted a second jar, Agatha said, “In all these years, I’ve never treated you like some provincial guttersnipe”—on the contrary, she’d been regularly reminding him of that fact for the past five years that he’d worked here—“despite my having brought on some urchin from the street. Because I thought you had a clever look about you, the air of a diligent worker, I taught you the work and paid you almost as much as a heartlander apprentice. But you keep going about town making trouble!”
Cain carefully lowered the second jar to the ground outside the shop and came back for another.
“What could you possibly be doing that such people would darken the doorstep? If it were the city patrollers, I would assume the silly boy had gotten into drunken mischief or whatnot, but this is the Ministry of Intelligence—”
The Ministry of Intelligence?
A muscle jerked in his right arm. Cain almost dropped the oil jar, but kept his voice calm.
“Ministry agents were here? What did they want?”
Had it been Ministry agents who ambushed him in the alley? Cain decided against it. Those men were too clumsy to be the secret eyes and ears of the Empire.
