Zarrah had noticed her friend’s minor injuries when she’d come in earlier and accurately assumed an alehouse brawl. “Someone with a nose as large as yours shouldn’t pick fistfights. Is it broken?”
Yrina rubbed at it. “Nah. It’s made of steel. And he looks worse, I’ll have you know.”
“I’ve no doubt.” While Zarrah had been raised in the privilege and comfort of Valcotta’s capital, Yrina was from the northeast edge of the nation, part of one of the nomadic and highly militant desert tribes. She’d been born swinging her fists, been wielding a blade before she could walk, and had killed a dozen men before she’d reached womanhood. The Empress had personally selected Yrina to be Zarrah’s close guard after her mother had been killed, and she’d swiftly been won over by the other girl’s humor. “But that’s not what I meant. Why do you fight the Maridrinians?”
“For the honor and glory of Valcotta.”
Yrina said the words without hesitation, but the swiftness in the saying caused Zarrah to frown. “Of course. But… are there other reasons?”
Yrina set down the report she was holding. “For you, sister. Where you go, I will follow, and your path leads to Maridrinian blood and vengeance.”
Unease fluttered in Zarrah’s stomach. “And if I did not exist in your life? Would you fight?”
Yrina’s round face scrunched into a grimace, brown skin creasing around her hazel eyes. “I’ll not hear talk like this, Zar.”
“Not my death. I mean if we had never met.”
Her friend leaned back in her chair. “This is a strange line of questioning. Is it a test?”
It was, but not for Yrina. “Humor me.”
Yrina shrugged. “Might be that I would. The pay is good and the accommodation posh in comparison to other posts.” She swiftly added, “And of course, there is honor in spilling Maridrinian blood.”
A swell of nausea rose in Zarrah’s stomach. “Is it your opinion that the majority of the garrison shares these sentiments?”
“Why?” Yrina scowled. “There isn’t to be a cut in pay, is there? Because honor doesn’t fill the belly or pay for an attractive man to tell me I’m pretty. I think the Empress forgets that, if she cares at all.”
God spare her, had the Maridrinian been right?
“No,” she answered weakly. “No pay cut. Only idle curiosity.”
But Yrina had been at her side for a decade and was not so easily fooled. Leaning over the desk, she took Zarrah’s hands. “Not everyone has been hurt by the Maridrinians the way you have, Zar. But that doesn’t mean that we are not loyal to you. Your hurt is our hurt, and we will die to give you the vengeance you deserve. Trust in that.”
Words intended to give comfort, though they did the exact opposite. All the violence she’d perpetrated in her life, all the death she’d enacted, had been easy to live with, knowing it was honorable and just. But what if it wasn’t? What if everything she’d done—or in the case of Ithicana, not done—had been, as the Maridrinian had suggested, in the name of ambition?
No! The word of denial ricocheted through her skull because vengeance was not ambition. The Maridrinian didn’t understand how much the Empress had suffered at Silas Veliant’s hands, her beloved younger sister slaughtered and left to rot.
Except it wasn’t the Maridrinian people who’d killed Zarrah’s mother.
She bit at her thumbnail, remembering how she’d pleaded with Bermin to warn Ithicana because the nation’s innocents didn’t deserve to pay for the choices of their king. Yet wasn’t that exactly what she’d spent the past decade doing? Making Maridrinian innocents pay for the crimes of Silas Veliant? A good clean fight between armies of soldiers was one thing, but that wasn’t how the Endless War was fought. It was fought with ugly raids intended to strike against those who could least defend themselves, and in that, she was just as guilty as any Maridrinian princeling.
A knock on the door pulled her from her thoughts. “Come.”
A sweaty-faced scout entered, pressing a hand to her heart, and Zarrah recognized her as one of Yrina’s. “What’s happened? A raid?”
The scout shook her head. “It’s His Highness.”
Zarrah’s heart skipped, because Bermin had gone out on patrol earlier. “Has he been hurt?”
“No, General,” the woman answered. “He’s crossed the Anriot.”
“Oh, shit,” Yrina muttered. “He was going on last night at the alehouse about how not retaliating against the Maridrinians was dishonorable. But I thought he was just drunk.”
He’s gone raiding.
Leaping to her feet, Zarrah broke into a sprint, heading toward the stables.
17
KERIS
“Raiders.” Otis was already shoving his sword back in its sheath and moving toward the horses. “We need to go. We need to get you back to the safety of Nerastis.”
Keris to safety, while his people were slaughtered by raiders. The screams grew louder, shrill and terrified and desperate. “No.”
Snatching his sword up from the ground, Keris flung himself into the saddle and dug in his heels, galloping toward the attack. Tree branches scraped and caught at his clothes, but he ignored the stinging pain just as he did Otis’s shouts for him to stop.
He burst out of the copse, reining in his horse to take in the scene before him.
It was a farmhouse and barn, the latter already engulfed with flames. Animals ran this way and that, as did field workers, the Valcottans shooting them in their backs as they tried to flee. The few who tried to fight were cut down, blood spraying and bodies falling, the air suddenly absent of screams.
“Keris, there’s nothing we can do,” Otis hissed. “It’s too late! We’ll warn a patrol on our way back to the city, but we must go before they see us.”
There was blood everywhere, the Valcottans laughing as they kicked at bodies. Then an enormous man wearing leather armor that strained across his chest picked up a burning piece of timber and started toward the house. He lit the front door on fire before circling around to light the rear exit, then stepped back and looked upward.
And that’s when Keris saw the faces in the window. A woman and two children, eyes wide with terror. Without thinking, he dug his heels into his mount’s side and galloped toward the home.
Through the smoke, the Valcottans caught sight of him and shouted their alarm, and Keris vaguely heard Otis blowing on a signal horn to alert patrols in the area. But there wasn’t time to wait for them. The house, made entirely of timber, would be an inferno long before the patrols could reach them.
An arrow flew past his face, catching at his hair, but Keris only bent low over the horse’s neck. The Valcottans were moving to intercept, but his animal had been bred for speed, and only the big man stood in his way.
Eyes stinging from the smoke, Keris watched as the Valcottan man hefted a staff longer than he was tall, knees bending as he readied to swing it at the horse’s legs.
The animal tensed beneath him but didn’t falter, galloping straight toward the soldier.
Steady, Keris willed it. Steady.