“You forgot about the cut on my arm,” Kepi said with a wan smile. The slash on her forearm was festering, turning purple, a sorry sight indeed for the people of Harkana, not to mention their guests from Feren.
“I rather like the way I look,” Kepi said as she glanced at the patchwork of red and blue that covered her skin. The girls all shook their heads as they adjusted her gown, tugging it up across her slight breasts and flat stomach, correcting the pleats. The fabric was thin and she wore nothing beneath but her contempt, ill at ease at having to stand in the King’s Hall during the Devouring with a man whose people she so despised. Whose idea had it been to invite them to Harwen? Especially Dagrun, that brute and no-name. How can Merit tolerate the man? She had heard the rumors about her sister and the new king of the Ferens and hoped they were not true. The mere thought of the Ferens—liars, slavers—made her stomach roil.
Kepi’s history with Feren was something she tried daily, without success, to forget—how as a child the emperor had promised her in marriage to a warlord of the blackthorn forests. How she had nearly died at the hands of her new husband and his kin. Imprisoned, starved. Abused. Her year in Feren was easily the worst of her young life.
Kepi tried to push the thought from her mind as her cuts burned and her bruises throbbed. On any other day the pain would have distracted her, but not today, not with the Ferens so close. On a day like this, she could not forget what had happened to her at their hands.
The betrothal itself was not unusual. Since the War of the Four and the penances that came from losing to the Soleri, every year legions of commoners from the lower kingdoms were sent to Sola to serve as slaves, while the ruling families sacrificed their children. Sons were sent to the Priory of Tolemy, while daughters were matched in marriage by the emperor himself. Like slaves, the children of the lords and kings of the lower kingdoms had no choice: they had to submit to the emperor’s will, for the good of the empire, for the sake of their country, for peace.
And submit they did. Three years ago, Kepi had traveled with her father and sister and a small coterie of lords and ladies and soldiers, crossing the Rift valley on a rickety wooden bridge and making their way into the strange, dark land where green plants and trees grew wild, monstrous blackthorns so tall their tops were hidden in the low clouds, keeping the land in a cool gray shade, in a perpetual twilight that made everything seem hushed and secret. Even the noisy Harkans had been silenced and spoke only in whispers when they entered the forest kingdom, where there was no horizon, where the trees themselves seemed to lean in to listen.
It had all seemed so exotic—the land, the lushness and greenness of it, so different from the deserts of Harkana. So empty. Met only by the calls of the black-winged kestrels wheeling high overhead, the Harkans traveled two days without seeing another soul, not a village, not a city. Kepi started to think the Ferens were a dream, not a people as much as a myth.
No. She didn’t want to recall her tortured little wedding, the night of drunkenness that followed, and the way her husband’s body had looked when she found him dead the next morning, lying on his face in a pool of his own spit. She tried not to think about it. She always tried not to think about it, but was seldom successful. She’d spent a year in a Feren prison, accused of the drunkard’s murder, before her father had arrived with a legion of Harkan soldiers and demanded her release. When the prison guards balked at the Harkans’ demands, Arko’s men had cut down the Ferens, hacking their way into the prison. It was Arko himself who broke through the great wooden door of her cell, shattering her chains and carrying her to his horse.
When she crossed the Rift valley, passing from the Feren kingdom into Harkana, she had spit upon the earth, vowing never to return. When she arrived in Harwen, Arko declared Kepi’s commitment to the Feren kingdom fulfilled. She had married Roghan Frith as the emperor had commanded and Roghan Frith was dead. Kepi was free.
The Ferens felt differently, of course. They believed that Kepi was a widow of the Gray Wood and one of them now. She was owed to them. When Dagrun took the throne, the new king of the Ferens had quickly petitioned her father with offers of marriage to his various warlords. The fact that Kepi had been accused of murdering her first husband was not a deterrent. The Ferens would claim her, Dagrun had threatened, by the emperor’s decree.
Arko swore to his daughter that he would never allow it. And in the meantime, Dagrun had proven to be nothing but a saber-rattler. So far he had not gone to war over her, even if the threat of another Feren marriage was ever in the air.
I should have beaten Dagrun today. She was no longer ten and three, but sixteen, and the most nimble soldier her Harkan trainer had ever seen. I wanted to bring him to his knees. She was disgusted with her failure to do so. Since the wedding, she had dreamed of nothing but her freedom. She wanted to make her own way in the world, to be free of the empire’s influence, free of Feren marriage proposals. She wanted to determine her own path in life.
A knock rattled the door. A messenger. From Merit, no doubt, who was wondering what was taking Kepi so long and had sent a boy to fetch her younger sister to the gathering in the King’s Hall.
“A moment,” her servant called. Kepi was not yet ready.
“A long moment,” Kepi muttered, still not certain if she wanted to go through with the gathering.
“What are we going to do about the bruises?” asked the girl who had dressed her. The others all shook their heads; they were clearly at a loss. “Isn’t there some way to hide them? Chalk powder? Ochre?” The girls fiddled and murmured until Kepi lost patience with their fussing. She pushed them all aside, glanced at her reflection in the polished silver, and laughed.
“I think I look splendid,” Kepi said. She would not conceal her wounds. If she must make an appearance, if she must face Dagrun, let her meet him not with the face of a king’s daughter, but that of a warrior fresh off the field—bruised but defiant.
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