“That is his name.”
“Not to you!” she hissed. She stepped forward, either unaware or unbothered by the anger emanating off me. “To you, he is the Nizahl Heir. The Commander. The man who would cut you into more pieces than there are leaves in Essam if given half the chance. The way you two gravitate toward each other scares me. You are a Jasadi.”
“There is nothing to concern yourself over.”
From the tightness in her temples, she wasn’t convinced. “I hope not.”
We returned to where the others were climbing their horses. I waved away Marek’s help, hauling myself into the carriage with a grunt. Though outwardly unremarkable, the carriage’s interior had space to support two parallel benches, heavily cushioned and wide enough to lie down and sleep. Arin was already seated inside, a stack of parchment folded neatly beside him.
“Where is Vaun?” I managed not to make the question a snarl.
“Vaun has been dismissed from my service,” Arin said, drawing a line under a sentence.
I gaped. Arin took Vaun on almost all his hunts. If the other guards were to be believed, the two had been together since boyhood.
“I have no use for easily provoked guardsmen.”
Had I been a more charitable woman, I might have experienced a spark of sympathy for the devoted guard. What would Marek do if Sefa cast him aside so cruelly?
He would find a way back, Hanim warned.
With a mortified flush, I wondered if Vaun had relayed my taunts during our fight. “Did Vaun mention in detail what transpired between us?”
Arin’s hands knit together over his stomach as he sat back. “I am open to any suggestions on how I can improve my clumsy affections—”
I hurled a folded quilt at him, boiling with embarrassment. He batted it aside. “Vaun had a weak point. You exploited it. Where we’re going, you grapple for every advantage you can gain.”
“The other Champions may not be as sensitive about insults to your virtue.”
“This is the fourth time you’ve mentioned my virtue,” Arin said, and I would swear to Sirauk he sounded amused. “Perhaps preoccupy yourself with a different matter.”
“I don’t—I have not—” Since I would rather have stuck my head under the carriage’s wheels than continued this conversation, I shut my mouth.
Significantly more buoyed by the lack of Vaun in my future, I stretched my legs and tapped the other side of the carriage with my toes. Wes glared from his horse until I slid the window drape shut, pitching us in darkness. Arin’s profile on the opposite bench disappeared. The carriage juddered into motion.
The rocking lulled some of my sharper nerves. I was contemplating the wisdom of dozing when Arin spoke, startling me. “After the Hound attacked me, you didn’t run. If you had used your dagger to deepen the existing wounds, I would have lost consciousness and bled my last. You could have laid blame at the Hound’s feet. The guards would have believed you. My body would have been borne to Nizahl, the Alcalah postponed, and you freed.”
I’d become accustomed to the chilling labyrinth of his mind. Still, this one gave me pause. “You’re right.” The Hound’s claws had raked deep. Cutting into them a bit more wouldn’t have garnered notice. A few scratches and cuts on my person, and the authenticity of the encounter couldn’t be doubted. “Jeru would sway Wes and Ren’s doubts. The Mufsids would be held responsible—maybe Lukub, too, because of the Hound. In the melee, I’d be forgotten. It’s a good plan.”
I hadn’t considered the enormous amount of trust Arin had shown by allowing me access to his wounds. He’d sat there, rigid, contemplating the methods of his own assassination. Though I couldn’t confirm it in the gloom, the prickling on the back of my neck suggested he was watching me. I lifted a shoulder. “It didn’t occur to me,” I said truthfully. “I have to plan in advance for cold-blooded murder.”
The carriage jolted, rocking to the left. Wes rapped on the window in apology.
“Peculiar woman,” Arin mused. The carriage rattled on, carrying us into the heart of Essam Woods.
The trip to Lukub took three days. Three days of jumping at every noise, bathing in the river, and sleeping at the base of the tree with the least ants. Arin’s eyes grew more bloodshot the closer to Lukub we rode. I doubted he had slept more than an hour. The open, uncontrolled environment must have been scraping his nerves raw.
The Nizahl brigade met up with us an hour away from the palace. Fifty soldiers, stiff in their Nizahl uniforms, knelt when Arin descended from the carriage. The sea of black and violet unsettled me to my core.
“My liege, if you will,” Jeru said. He gestured at the carriage the soldiers brought. The new carriage resembled Felix’s gilded nightmare more closely. Undeniably Nizahlan, it rose on massive black wheels, the body painted obsidian and outlined in violet. Sleek and menacing. Twin wings crested from the sides of the carriage, their iron feathers gleaming in the moonlight. Sefa, who possessed an unshakable need to verify her surroundings through contact, reached for a wing. Wes caught her wrist. “If you value your finger, think again.”
The Nizahl royal emblem, a raven soaring between two crossed swords, had been meticulously painted across the side. The raven’s beady gaze followed me.
I observed the new soldiers with contempt, following Arin into the carriage. Did we really need fifty soldiers for the Banquet?
Two panels in the window pushed outward, and Arin didn’t stop me from throwing them open. I poked my head out.
“Greetings, traveler,” I told Wes. He startled violently on his horse. His head bobbed level with mine, such was the carriage’s ridiculous height. The tree line had thinned a few miles behind us, leaving greater room for the carriage to maneuver. The soldiers spilled behind us like rot trickling from a forgotten fruit, the beat of their horses reverberating around me.
“Get inside!” Wes ordered.
I glanced at Arin. “Can you command him to be nicer to me? Or at least less tightly wound?”
Arin unfurled a map of the Ivory Palace onto his lap. “No.”
“I suppose that would be hypocritical, coming from you.”
Wes groaned, long and loud. Luckily, everyone else was riding out of earshot.
“Sylvia, you’re going to have to exercise some forethought before you speak,” Arin said, uncorking a pocket-size vial of ink. He circled a spot on the map. “The other soldiers might take badly to your attempts at humor.”
Outraged, I managed to say, “Attempts?” before I lost track of the rest. The carriage shook as the ground shifted from hard, packed earth to soft soil. To our left, the trees cleared to reveal six identical wells dug into the ground. A revolting stench assailed me as we rode past the wells. I glanced down—and promptly reared back.