Maybe it was the spirits of my family that made me bold, or maybe it was just that I wasn’t used to being poorly thought of, but as his foot touched the stair, I called, “I would like to know why you don’t like me very much.”
He stopped, his hands on the wall, making his shoulders hunch up. “What makes you think that, Shalia?”
His use of my name seemed harsh, but I remembered him looking at Calix and me and then walking away the night before. “You didn’t speak to me last night. You don’t wish to speak with me now.” I smiled a little. “I don’t think I’ve seen you smile yet.”
“I’m not much for words,” he said.
Was that all it was?
He pushed off the stairs and turned, his back against the wall, watching me. “Why would it matter, if I like you or not?”
I was about to be alone for the first time in my life, in his country, where I knew nothing and no one, but I couldn’t think of a way to answer that didn’t make me sound like a scared little girl. “You’re my husband’s brother,” I told him.
His eyes narrowed on me. “Family is more important to the desert clans than it is to the Trifectate.”
I wasn’t even sure what he meant by that, but it felt like a rebuke. Nodding to him in what I hoped was a dismissive gesture, I turned into the darker part of the cave, going to the person I was really saying good-bye to down here. I traced his name on the wall.
“This place—it was made by Elementae?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Jitra has been here since the beginning of time.”
Galen looked above him, suspicious, as if the walls could attack. “In the Trifectate, it’s treason to use such power now. Punishable by death.” He sighed, looking over the wall with my family’s names. “A great many beautiful places the Elementae built have been demolished to serve the pleasure of the Three-Faced God.”
“It is treasonous to remember their gifts?” I asked.
He looked at me, his eyes guarded. “Yes.”
“Why?” I asked.
His eyes moved to the stairs and back to me, and I felt a shiver of warning run down my spine. “You cannot question the will of the Three-Faced God.”
My chin rose, and I felt the familiar defiance of being a little sister to so many brothers rise up in me. “But I will be queen.”
“Especially when you’re queen,” he said.
Our eyes met in the flickering light of the cave, and I wondered if he knew how he looked—severe and looming, his shape made larger by the shadows cast off from the flames, his eyes staring into mine and turning black against the brightness of the fire.
“What are these markings?” he asked, touching the stone next to us.
My mouth was dry for a moment. “This is where we keep our dead,” I told him, looking back to the wall and the person I hadn’t said good-bye to yet.
He looked at the ground.
I watched him, amused. “They aren’t in the earth,” I said. “They’re on the walls.”
He looked at the walls, aghast, and I smiled.
“You fear death,” I said.
“Sometimes,” he said. He looked at me, his powerful stare hitting me. “You don’t?”
I went to the wall, tracing my fingers over the names. “For myself, I suppose. I don’t want to die. But I’m not afraid of death, or of the dead. When we carve their names here, they stay with us. They live in the earth beside us. And eventually, their names wear away and they pass on, with all their family around them.”
He came beside me, touching the wall. “These are names?”
I nodded.
“They look like little pictures.”
“Everyone has a symbol. For you, and then for your family.”
He ran his fingers over a line. “Some are much longer than others,” he noticed.
I traced one with a sigh. “Long means you’re further away from the head of the clan. You need more explanation.”
“Who’s that?” he asked, looking at my fingers. It was two symbols, a rabbit and a dragon.
“My brother Torrin,” I told him, pulling away from the wall.
“How did he die?” he asked.
I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead against the rock, cold where I remembered the unrelenting heat of my brother’s body being burned in the sand, returning his life to the Great Skies. “You killed him,” I whispered. “His death was the reason my father finally agreed to talk peace terms with your country.”
“I didn’t kill him,” he said sharply.
“You are a part of the Trifectate. Your brother says you and your siblings are the Three-Faced God incarnate—whether you held the sword or not, you were part of it.” I felt his eyes on me, silent for a long time, and wondered whether it was wise to speak to him that way. I took my fingers from the wall and pressed a kiss to them, then brushed them back over my brother’s name.
I turned to face Galen. His eyes glittered in the torchlight and it was hypnotic, engrossing. “This border has been disputed for five years. The desert people have aggressed just as much as the Trifectate. It’s not as if I decided to attack your people on my own, on a whim.”
“But you started it. Five years ago, you came to the desert with death.” My cheeks felt hot, but despite knowing that criticizing his warfare would not endear me to him, I didn’t check my words.
“I did not. That wasn’t my decision.”
“You are what you represent,” I argued. “You know just what I mean. The Trifectate started this.”
“Only after the desert stood with the islands in the war,” he said, crossing his arms.
“But you crushed the islands,” I insisted. “There was no reason to come for the desert.”
“Ask my brother,” he said. “He’s the one who issued the order. I was not commander then.”
“And so you take no responsibility for it?” I asked. “You are commander now. You have been for a long time.”
“Would that make it easier?” he asked, and his voice was low, and harsh, and totally arresting. “You lost a brother. Your family sacrificed you in a marriage to buy peace. Would it make it easier to blame me and not my brother?”
My breath stopped in my chest. The light flickered over us, making our shadows move even though we were still. “I chose this marriage,” I told him. “I know why I did—and that has everything to do with the number of names on this wall,” I said sharply. “I didn’t come down here for company—or an argument. I wanted to say good-bye to my brother.”
The flame crackled on the wall as we looked at each other for a long moment. “Of course,” he said finally. “My queen. Forgive me if I spoke out of turn.”
I raised my chin and made for the stairs, hoping he wouldn’t follow me. I took a last look at the names on the wall and prayed that my sacrifice would leave blank spaces there where my kinsmen would live instead of die.
When I looked back, Galen’s head was still bent, and I liked the idea that a queen had replaced the pitiful girl from the night before whose courage had failed her when it came time to finish what she’d started.
Blessed Vessels
I returned to my rooms to find a storm of people there, women packing and men moving things, desert people and Tri guards alike. My husband should have been swarmed by people, given gifts and blessings by my clan, but he stood alone, his hands folded neatly behind his back.