I blew out a rough breath, shoving those thoughts back, and asked Aliah, “Could you make out the faces of the riders?”
Aliah shook her head, glancing up when the others made their way over to us. “I only saw them from behind. I don’t know what it means, but it’s important. And Varidian?”
“Yes?”
“They were followed. Another figure, not on wyvernback, followed them through the archway and wherever the window led. I thinkthat’swhat I was supposed to see.”
“Let me guess,” Shula said with a frown, pulling off her riding gloves. “More shit for us to deal with, on top of these smug, pretentious Torn fuckers?”
“Let me deal with the Torn Isle leaders,” I said, pushing my shoulders back, filling my lungs with briny air. I was Rawiya Marrakchi’s son, heir to a long line of survivors and quietbravery, and a prince loyal to this empire even if my father had disinherited me. It was time I reminded people of that. And remembered it myself. “I can handle them.”
There was something to be found on this island, something Chakir wanted us to uncover, and more than that—the lightning soul had been quiet and watchful all morning, biding her time as she assessed every move I made.
All the old forces are merging again,was all she’d said when I pressed her on it this morning.
“Tell them about your vision,” I said to Aliah, giving my legion a quick once-over and unable to ignore the sense of danger dragging its claws down the back of my neck. “I’ll meet with the commanders.”
Nabil refusedto let me attend the meeting alone, so it was the two of us who entered the sturdy, straight-edged kasbah on the highest point of the island. The sandstone glowed in the golden midday sun as a muscular female guard swept an assessing look over our dusty leathers and ragged hair. I gave my name and reason for visiting, biting back a honed remark at the formalities—we’d just flown in with their own leaders, for fuck’s sake.
I half expected her to throw us out, but instead she pummelled the heavy door with a fist, and it slid back into the fortress, allowing us through. Nabil and I exchanged a glance, wary but prepared to battle our way out if necessary. It was why every knife I owned was hidden on my person, the sword of House Marrakchi strapped down my back. Nabil was similarly armed.
Inside, the overpowering scent of fresh-cut flowers hit my senses, the air cool and refreshing compared to the blazing sun outside. Flying in leathers during the height of the day was hell.
“Nice place,” Nabil remarked as another guard in a gleaming grey and silver uniform led us through several antechambers and down a golden hallway with channels of water trickling on either side of our feet. Water blooms lazily drifted along the current, their perfume tickling my nose. It was preferable to the fish guts scent of the docks, but slight overkill.
“Verynice place,” Nabil corrected when our path deposited us in the riad at the heart of the fortress.
I made an appreciative noise when the guard led us through an arabesque archway into the garden itself. The wind off the nearby ocean set unlit lanterns dancing at each tiled arch around the covered walkway, the vivid blue water of the low-slung pool rippling in invitation. It rivalled the riad at the Diamond, I was a little loath to admit, though not surprised. There was as much money on this island as in all of Morysen, if not more.
The baking heat didn’t reach us here, only a cool breeze that lifted strands from my forehead and stole a few from the bun on the back of my head. Magic, without question. Not just rich people—powerful ones. I’d need to keep that in mind, along with the fact we were outnumbered. And coming face-to-face with our fucking enemy.
Years, we’d fought tigers and Kaldic warriors at the wall and the towns and villages around it.Years,we’d witnessed the slaughter, senseless and without mercy. I blinked and I saw the child at the Last Guard, heard my wife screaming when we were too slow to save him.
“We can leave,” Nabil said in a voice only for my ears. We’d been friends and legion long enough that he sensed my mood shift the second it happened. “We can turn around right now.”
I clenched my jaw. Shook my head. There was enough conflict and death in Ithanys; if the Torn Isle were anywhere close to a treaty, I wouldn’t fuck that up for them. If the war would end, if those tigers would stop riding through the passes and attacking our innocents… I could shove my rage down for a single hour, sit my ass down on one of the padded turquoise sofas where Kanuri now stood to greet us, and listen to what she had to say.
That was all Chakir asked—that we listen.
I shook the woman’s hand, shook the calloused palm of Amuq’ran and the strong, wrinkled fingers of Emmahin too—the others were absent, I noticed—and sat my ass down on a grey sofa between two olive trees.
And I listened.
Even as my stomach churned and I wanted to storm out, to laugh and deny everything as a fantastical story, I listened.
CHAPTER 13
VARIDIAN
The emissary from Kalder was a rangy man named Mohammed in his thirties with dark shadows cut under his eyes and into his cheeks. Nabil and I watched him like wyverns spotting a goat, but I wouldn’t allow his obvious stress to soften my heart. He represented our enemy, represented the scores of tigers who’d slaughtered our innocent people. The people who assaulted women, killed children, and shredded our men—farmers and bakers and craftsmen, not warriors—into pieces.
Mohammed reached for a delicate cup of tea, the porcelain glazed in the same rich teal as the water in the pool and the sofas we sat upon, arranged around a low table overflowing with piles of papers. Lists and numbers and accounts of events written in a hasty, sloping hand. I didn’t miss the way the emissary’s hands trembled on his cup, or the fact he wouldn’t look either of us in the eye.
Empathy insisted I acknowledge that from his perspective, we were the brutes who’d slaughtered our way across the wall to wipe out his own people, to hunt down those tigers and rip the life from them. The rest of me hardened itself against the twinge of empathy, blocked it out entirely.
“How many?” Nabil asked, hands hanging between his knees as he leaned forward to pin a calculating stare on Mohammed.
“Thousands,” the Kaldic man replied hoarsely. “Thousands are missing from our towns along the wall, all the way from the Daw’ Forest above the mountains to the Caves of Whitbar. The last count was three thousand fae and thirty-six tigers missing.”
