Unbidden, Arin’s warnings about Vaida rose to the forefront. He’d spent hours detailing what to expect from everyone we would encounter during the Alcalah. His description of the Sultana had puzzled me.
“Vaida must believe you are insignificant, a simple village orphan with aspirations of glory. Do not challenge her or distinguish yourself in any way,” he had said. “The Sultana plays with people, bats them around for her own entertainment. But if she thinks you merit a second glance, she will make it her dying mission to eviscerate your secrets and reap your soul.”
Arin was not a man prone to the melodramatic.
Vaida stirred a spoonful of sugar into her drink. “How magnificently your fortunes have changed, darling Sylvia. I could not believe the news. A chemist’s apprentice from Omal’s lower villages, chosen for the Alcalah? Handpicked by the Nizahl Heir, no less? I must confess, my kingdom spoke of little else for a time. My poor Champion was quite distraught at losing their attention.” She pushed a chalice studded with rubies closer to me. I dared a glance at Arin, who gave me a small nod. I picked up the red drink and took a sip.
Karkade. The dry tang cut through the excess syrup she’d poured into the hibiscus tea. The drink was Jasadi in origin, but I wasn’t alarmed. After Jasad’s fall, the vultures had picked at Jasadi culture, tearing out the choicest bits for their own nests. I had seen the evidence in Mahair, watching bakers flip aish baladi into their ovens as though they had done it for generations. Then again, Adel probably had.
“I am grateful,” I said when it became clear Vaida expected an answer.
“Ah, gratitude.” Vaida wrinkled her nose. “Excise it with your sharpest knife and throw it away. Gratitude lowers women’s necks for a chain far more than it raises them for a fight. You earned your place. Correct?”
“Correct.” I would say anything if it meant she would stop talking to me.
“Tell me, Sylvia, does your husband wait anxiously at home for your safe return?”
I blinked. “My what?”
I sensed Arin’s mounting unease. “Vaida—”
She talked over Arin, the first I met with the courage to do so. “A wife, then? Or a lover?” At my continued befuddlement, Vaida sat back. She looked genuinely upset. “It has been years since my last visit to Omal, but have all its citizens lost their appreciation for beauty?”
My veneer slipped a little, and I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t fret, Your Highness. My life is not lacking in fulfillment.”
Beside me, Arin was rigid and doing a fantastic job of concealing it. Vaida and I stared at each other. I thought of the people in the well, languishing in their filth. Suffering a slow, undignified death.
Disquieting, Arin had called her. I needed to break my stare, to flush and stumble with my words. To my consternation, a remnant of royal arrogance surfaced, howling to answer her challenge.
“Who fulfills it?” she asked, her voice husky. She slid her gaze meaningfully to Arin, and we both straightened as though struck.
“That’s enough,” Arin growled. Even his iron control bent against this woman. “Do not antagonize my Champion. We are guests in your home.”
Instantly, the atmosphere shifted. Vaida picked up her plate. “Sylvia knows I’m teasing! Anyway, I already love her. Curiosity is a tempting mistress. No one knows that better than you, Arin.”
Though Vaida’s attention remained on Arin for the rest of the hour, I hadn’t a doubt she was attuned to my every movement. Too nervous to reach for the sweets spread on the table, I stayed on my side of the couch until we left her receiving room. Arin led us past the palace courtyards to a thriving flower garden.
“One of Vaida’s favorite patches,” Arin said.
Guards in their various kingdoms’ colors milled around. Servants rushed past us in frenzied preparation. “Crouch by the poppies and pretend to admire them.” Arin lowered himself on a concrete bench.
I fought a prickle of embarrassment. “Which ones are the poppies?” Mahair didn’t waste fertile soil for plants that couldn’t be consumed or used for medicinal puposes. The only flowers I could recognize on sight were the ones Hanim warned could poison me.
Not a hint of scorn crossed Arin’s expression as he pointed at a patch of red flowers with thin, parchment-like petals curling up around a fuzzy black center.
With a small smile of thanks, I slid to the ground, folding my legs under me. “I know what you’re going to say.”
“Oh?”
“I shouldn’t have glared at her.”
“You did well, Sylvia.”
I pretended to keel sideways into the poppies. His mouth twisted ruefully. “I do wish you hadn’t matched her gaze, since Vaida prides herself on provocation. She finds you interesting, but she won’t bait you if you stay near me. She cannot afford to stir bad blood between Lukub and Nizahl.”
The doll in the war room cabinet and its stained flag flashed through my mind. “The Battle of Zinish,” I recalled. “She must honor the peace accords.”
“Partly the peace accords, yes. With or without the treaty, Vaida would not cross me.”
My dress caught on a thorn from a different patch of flowers. “She’s afraid of you.”
“She is not the only person capable of playing this game,” he said, with a hint of aristocratic disdain. “I’ve known Vaida since we were children. Our minds are much the same.”
“Well. That’s terrifying.” I adjusted my legs into a more comfortable sitting position. The slit bared my thigh, and I gave up trying to fix it. “Are we departing at twilight the day after tomorrow?”
It took Arin a second too long to respond. He seemed to be noticing my dress for the first time. His gaze trailed over me, a leisurely perusal that made my mouth dry. Arin’s attention was usually as efficient as him—he didn’t linger, and he certainly never perused. “Nizahl’s colors suit you.”
Something dangerous pulsed in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t help but mimic him, studying the change in his attire I’d noted earlier. The laces of his shirt stopped at his collarbones. It felt wrong to see the length of his throat so exposed. His hair had come loose sometime between leaving Vaida and entering the garden, falling like a silver cloud around his jaw. Arin of Nizahl was maddeningly elegant. I wanted to cut him open and compare our bones to understand why his gave him grace and mine gave me back pain.
I busied myself with the flowers. I’d spent too long inhaling tunnel dust—it had addled my head.
“Twilight. Yes,” Arin answered belatedly. “Our route to Orban is longer than the others.”
The others weren’t traveling through the Meridian Pass.
The Meridian Pass was a narrow, flat canyon wedged between two reddish crags. Though it stretched a mere three miles, many riders met their doom there, crushed by falling boulders or chased by the vagrants and fugitives camped by the entrance.