The queen’s chin dipped in approval, and Ferdinand immediately stood, but Amarande put up a hand. “No, you’ll go in the morning. I believe we still have about ten hours of talking ourselves in circles about succession strategy before you ride off.”
CHAPTER 37
INDEED,the morning bled into the afternoon within the Itspi’s North Tower as Amarande, Luca, and their advisors talked in circles upon circles with nowhere to go.
A regency game of wait-and-see.
Ferdinand coupled with Osana.
Or no change at all. Simply a static decision of Amarande remaining queen and daring the other kingdoms to remove her.
Every option was slight and leggy, reaching for the sun, its roots shallow and countenance infirm. Nothing was established in any meaningful way.
And, before it was even time to break for supper, Amarande had had enough, and adjourned the meeting. Luca wasn’t surprised, though, when exiting the North Tower, Amarande leaned close and whispered, “Let’s go test my newly repaired sutures, shall we?”
An hour later, those sutures held fast though they’d soaked their training garments through in the blazing heat of late afternoon. No swords this time but throwing knives—a fleet of them in different shapes and sizes, and all deposited in a far juniper with consistent efficiency.
Luca dumped his blades in front of him and handed Amarande the one of hers that was too high for her to collect herself. He could see she was thinking of more than steel now, her mind spinning like a spindle wheel, sharp and fierce and ready to make something.
Therefore, he was surprised when she sounded somewhat stumped.
“Okay, so what are we going to do?” Amarande was rearranging her knives in the order she liked—smallest to largest, with her trusty boot knife right in the middle.
“About which? Renard? Geneva? Succession?”
“All of it.”
Luca set his hands upon his hips and meandered in a little loop, the grounds of the Itspi spinning out before him in a panorama up thehill. The red spires of the main castle, the chapel and stadium beyond. The soldiers in residence were running their own drills on the field, while the cook fires were lit for supper in the pro-Otxoa camp. He missed Beltza skulking in the trees, stars save her.
“I suggest we focus on one problem at a time,” Luca responded after a moment, pulling a knife into his hand and holding it up, a visual aide, “and that we use what we have at our disposal.”
“Okay, the meeting at the Bellringe…” Amarande paused with her first knife ready, the slight breeze brushing tendrils of burnt-chestnut hair about her face—it never wanted to stay in her braid for long.
“We have our knives and my army, and neither are welcome because they give us an advantage, not to mention if they’re with us, they aren’t aimed at Geneva, wherever in the stars she’s buried herself.” She shot her first knife at the tree—striking it at the perfect height to bury it straight in an opponent’s kidney—and then cast both arms toward the general direction of the mountain mines. “Perhaps we simply fling diamonds straight at the gaping mouths of all our opponents. They’ll choke and we’ll win.”
“Or they’ll crack a tooth or two, spit them out, and pocket precious trade stuffs.”
“Worth it.”
Luca laughed and waggled a finger at her as he paced the same little looping path in reverse, parsing over their strengths.
“We have your army and my rebels,” he started, gesturing to the castle and the camp. Amarande nodded and his words gained steam. “If the army can train the rebels in specific defense mechanisms to throw off Geneva, it would do a whole lot of good. These people planned for a single, covert attack for seventeen years. Their defense is piecemeal and is designed to keep a hidden community safe. They have no idea how to deal with open hostility, let alone defend against it.”
Amarande chucked a knife in the ground in forceful disbelief. “You’re right. We should’ve started with this training days ago. How did we not think of that?”
“We didn’t think of it because until the army swooped in to save us from the Warlord’s men, there wasn’t a sand grain of trust between the two.” Koldo’s last gift, in more ways than one. The soldiers sharing their tents with the people of Torrence had helped bolster that dusting of goodwill, too.
Amarande thought it through. “Do you think they would be amenable to training with my men?”
Luca sank, plucked her knife from the cracking earth, and handed it to her, his fingers lingering upon her own. “We can’t undo the past. We can only focus on how to keep surviving. No—thriving. We want our people to thrive. And right now, with these mounting enemies, it’s worth at least posing the proposition to them.”
Amarande would certainly beat herself up over the missed opportunity for longer than she should, but in that moment, she finally smiled in a way that almost reached her eyes. “Let’s make it happen.”
She sheathed the knife in its protective leather roll immediately, making it clear she meant to make it happennow,practice finished.
They gathered the knives and hauled out of the meadow—Luca expected them to head first to the military quarters to call upon General Xixi, but instead, Amarande halted at the base of the hill that led down to the meadow. When Luca glanced her way, he saw her attention caught on the tents erected by the Torrentian followers who’d elected to stay with Luca even if it meant laying their heads in Ardenia.
Amarande grabbed his hand with her free one. “Luca, does Naiara reside in the Torrentian camp?”
