Ka-poel stared at him, her hands folded in her lap, before finally lifting them into the light of the lantern. “I have been trying to uncover my past,” Celine translated. “When I was a child, my nurse took me from Dynize. I remember very little of that time—I remember a palace, and great halls, and I remember fleeing through the night and across the ocean in a small ship manned by sailors who knew they would die.”
Ka-poel’s eyes took on a faraway glint, her brow wrinkling with the telling. She continued. “My nurse took me into the swamp, and we joined one of the tribes there. She died very soon after from disease. Her death deprived me of my own history, and I have wondered who I am for over two decades.”
“So who are you?” Styke asked. Her look was guarded, and he knew that pushing too hard on a subject like this was likely to make a person button up for good. But he was still angry about the things he saw last night, and he didn’t have the patience to be gentle.
Ka-poel waggled her finger, as if to say, My story isn’t done. She continued. “My nurse sang me songs. I remember those. She called me a princess, and I always thought that was …” Celine struggled with the sign Ka-poel made, her small face scrunching in confusion.
“Hyperbole?” Styke suggested.
Ka-poel nodded. “I thought it was hyperbole. When the Dynize came, I had reason to suspect that perhaps … perhaps that wasn’t the case.”
Styke gently smoothed Celine’s hair, watching Ka-poel’s face carefully. She was normally stoic, sometimes bemused or playful. But she seemed genuinely troubled right now, and that set him on edge. She was too powerful to be troubled.
“A bone-eye has been calling to me,” Ka-poel finally finished.
“What do you mean, ‘calling to you’?” Styke asked, feeling goose bumps on the back of his arm.
“Sorcery,” Ka-poel clarified.
“I gathered as much. But how? Does he know where you are? Is he able to track us?”
Ka-poel hesitated. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I was never trained in what I do, so there are many simple things that the Dynize bone-eyes are capable of that I am unaware of. So … maybe.”
That didn’t make Styke happy. Not even a little bit. Having someone like Ka-poel around—someone so powerful that they could take physical control of a company of cavalry—and have her admit that she had not mastered simple parts of her own sorcery was not only disconcerting, it was also downright dangerous.
“I have figured out,” she said, “that this bone-eye can only call to me through shared blood.” She paused. “Those lancers—well, their officers—I was asking them about the powerful bone-eyes who came over with the invasion.”
“And what did you discover?”
“I am being called by an old man. His name is Ka-Sedial, and he was the one who came to meet your sister the day before their invasion.”
Styke was on his feet before he knew it, towering over Ka-poel, fists clenched. “Be very careful what you say next,” he said through clenched teeth. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest. The very idea that someone would discover that he and Lindet were brother and sister had never even occurred to him. Only they knew the secret, and neither was about to tell a soul.
His leap had sent Celine tumbling, and without taking his eyes off Ka-poel, he helped her to her feet and gestured for her to watch Ka-poel’s hands.
“Sit down,” Celine translated Ka-poel’s next signs. “Blood is my business. You can’t hide your relation from me.” She sniffed, as if the smell of imminent violence coming from Styke was nothing more than an inconvenience. “I will keep your secret.”
Slowly, Styke lowered himself to the ground.
“This is an exchange,” Ka-poel said. “Do you understand? I keep your secret, and you will keep mine.”
Styke tried to calm his pounding heart, remembering the conversation before his sister was mentioned. “This Ka-Sedial?”
“Yes. He is my grandfather.”
“And what does that make you?”
Ka-poel smiled distantly, laughing to herself. “It makes me a princess. The Dynize emperor is my cousin.”
Styke almost laughed himself. A damned princess, riding along with him. It seemed like something out of a fairy tale, yet so much of this already did. He wondered if it explained her power—if the Dynize royal family was stronger than most. “Why is he calling to you?”
“He is trying to be …” Celine struggled with the next word, and Ka-poel had to spell it out in signs. “Paternalistic.”
“What does that mean?” Celine asked Styke.
“It means he’s trying to be fatherly. Reaching out for a lost granddaughter.” Styke didn’t take his eyes off Ka-poel. “Are you answering?”
“I am not,” Ka-poel said. “I may, tentatively, but I’m not sure if that will reveal our position. He knows who I am—he knows that I am that girl stolen away so long ago. But I don’t know why my nurse stole me away. She took me for a reason, and I want to discover why. But if I ask him, he will lie.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he may know who I am, but he does not know what I am. He does not know my power. I can see through his intentions like a pane of glass, and I know he wishes to use me.”
Styke grunted. “I don’t mind being used, but never against my will.”
“I am of a similar mind,” Ka-poel acknowledged.
Styke lifted his head, looking down the valley toward the soldiers unloading the cache. It was late, and he knew he needed to rest if they were going to ride all day tomorrow. “This thing,” he said, changing directions and gesturing to the wax figurines and bits of detritus on the rock, “I suggest that you learn some … restraint. There is no reason to torture people at length.”
“They feel no pain unless I make them,” Ka-poel said, frowning.
“Physical, perhaps. But emotional? I looked into that woman’s eyes. She knew she was being controlled and she tried with every fiber of her being to fight it. If you must do that to people, make it short. Suffering is needless.”
“I had cause.”
“We all have cause,” Styke said with a shrug. “This bone-eye, Ka-Sedial. What will you do with him?”
Ka-poel looked down at the camp herself, her frown deepening. “I will let him croon over the distance. I will let him wonder what I am up to. And in the next few days, I will find the godstone that he seeks and I will break it. Only then will I answer him, and I’ll allow him to know what I have done.” She smiled, an expression neither bemused nor playful. “Then I will demand that he explain why my nurse—a woman who loved me—felt the need to carry me off so long ago.” Ka-poel’s attention returned to the detritus spread in front of her, clearly a dismissal.
Styke left her with her figurines and headed back to camp deep in his own thoughts. Celine rode on his shoulder, clearly lost in thoughts of her own. “Do you understand never to speak of what you heard back there?” he asked.
“Yes,” Celine responded. “I’m no snitch.”
Well, at least her dad had taught her something. “Good. If you have questions, you may ask. But only when we are completely alone.” He took her back to Margo and Sunin, then found Amrec and began the mechanical work of brushing him down for the night. He thought of Ka-poel’s expression during their conversation, and of his own search for vengeance these past few weeks. He wondered if she had difficulty, trapped in her own body without a voice, unable to communicate beyond a bit of slate and a little girl’s translations.
He finished his work and prepared for sleep. They would find this godstone soon, and it would be her work to destroy or disable the damned thing. And then, it seemed, she had questions of her own to answer.
Sorcery had never scared him. But he did not envy this grandfather of hers. Not when she finally turned her attention on him.
CHAPTER 52