“What?”
“Send away your boco,” Cvareh repeated, softer now that they were near.
“Why?” Cain asked skeptically. “Aren’t we moving flowers?”
“Not yet.” Cvareh looked over the horizon for anyone approaching. “We’re going to wait to find out who is taking them.”
“Cvareh, we should try to save some first.”
It was sound advice, but the idea of leaving the island and possibly missing the perpetrators behind the flowers’ disappearance was unthinkable.
“We will wait,” Cvareh said, weighting the last word with a note of finality. To really drive the point home, he looked to the woman who had been otherwise silent, and changed the topic. “Who are you?”
“Dawyn Xin’Anh Bek,” the sapphire-skinned woman answered. She had long golden hair that cascaded in waves, not unlike Petra’s curls, but just different enough that it didn’t hurt to look on her.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“Cain told me it’s to preserve some of the Flowers of Agendi before they all go missing.” She kept her eyes down out of respect, but her voice was strong.
“Look at me.” Dawyn obliged. Her irises were the color of honey poured into water—yellow on the edge and blue around the iris. “How long have you been in the service of the Xin Manor?”
“All my life.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-five.” She was quite young, but not a child.
“If you are involved in these affairs, I cannot promise your safety.”
“Can you promise my safety at the manor?” Cvareh didn’t have an answer for her so he remained silent and she continued, instead. “No, you can’t really, not anymore.” Dawyn looked to Cain, then back to him. “I don’t know everything, but I know that Rok killed our Oji and is poisoning our halls as they poisoned our wine. I am not afraid to die, Cvareh’Oji.”
There was that title again, chasing him like a beast he didn’t want to admit was gaining ground behind him. This time, he didn’t outright refute the notion.
“Come, let’s talk while we sit.” Cvareh wanted to get them out of view. He didn’t want the thieves to know that anyone was waiting for them until they landed, until it was too late. The two followed him in, sitting along the back wall. “Why you?”
“Why did I ask for Dawyn’s help?” Cain sought clarification and Cvareh nodded. “Because she’s as loyal to Xin as anyone could ask, and her family owns a winery on the west coast of Ruana.”
Her mention of the poisoned wine made a lot more sense. Cvareh met the woman’s unusually colored eyes. This was loyalty to her house, and it was also personal. He didn’t need to ask if her family’s vintage was some of the wine that had been tampered with.
“There are plots of land at the vineyard where the flowers will thrive,” Dawyn explained. “My family will see to them personally with the utmost discretion.”
Cvareh hoped she was right.
The conversation kept on with relative ease until it naturally died out. Both the tension and impatience of waiting consumed their focus. Cvareh could hear and feel Cain beginning to stir. But he kept himself still. He would wait days if he had to, and they would wait with him.
When the moon was high in the sky, and wispy clouds cast the world in on-and-off twilight, boco cries cut through the stillness. Cvareh crouched forward, ready to spring into action. Cain and Dawyn did the same.
“Don’t move until I do . . . Keep your magic pulled in tight.”
Even in the pale moonlight, the approaching Riders’ red skin shone brightly, as if by their own light. Three women dismounted their boco. Two went for the flowers, but one stopped mid-step. She held out a ruby-colored hand.
“Come out.” She squinted into the temple.
Cvareh stood, and with him, Dawyn and Cain. He walked forward, stepping into the moonlight and stopping on the top stair of the temple.
“Cvareh Xin, you seem to have a habit of being where you shouldn’t be and meddling in Rok affairs.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he dead-panned. Why bother trying to mask a lie everyone already knew was false?
“Yveun’Dono will be delighted to have proof of your treachery.”
“Yveun’Dono cannot bar me from worshiping at my patron’s temple.”
“He can do whatever he pleases.” The woman narrowed her eyes. “Now, by his order, leave.”
Cvareh didn’t move. The smart thing to do was to leave. Doing so would be consistent with the role Petra had carved for him: keep his head down, acquire information, be forgotten, be underestimated. She would be the one to plan and execute the attack later. But she was gone, and he had to fight for himself. For Xin.
“By his order? Or Coletta’Ryu’s?” Cvareh didn’t expect Dawyn to speak, but now that she had, he wanted to hear the answer as well.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The woman’s lips curled back, exposing her teeth. “If you do not leave, it will be a refusal of an order from the Dono. We are permitted to kill anyone who demonstrates such impudence.”
“Are you?” Cvareh assessed them. “You have no beads, so you’re not Riders. I’ve never heard of anyone but the king’s Riders operating with enough authority to duel and kill on his behalf.”
“Go, wayward Xin, and you will live out the rest of your god’s hour.”
“You go, and leave the flowers.” Tension rippled through his muscles. “Or I will be forced to defend them on behalf of my patron.”
He didn’t know if it was excuse enough for a duel, but it was all he had, and the women before him seemed even less concerned than him with the idea of keeping things respectable.
“You, the weakest of the Xin children? Fight us with your pets . . .?” The woman laughed. “Leave, Cvareh.”
He didn’t need to endure any more disrespect.
Cvareh lunged.
The woman was ready for him and darted forward, claws out, taking the first swipe as they met halfway. Cvareh dodged widely, forced to step back and avoid a second attack from one of the other women. Cain and Dawyn weren’t far behind, however, and quickly engaged the other Rok fighters one-to-one.
“This won’t last long.” The woman before him thrust a clawed hand out. Cvareh side-stepped and quickly pushed off his other foot. A woman’s scream rang out nearby; Cvareh turned, expecting to see Dawyn in need of assistance.
“You wretched girl!” The Rok Dragon was on the ground, hand covering a shoulder pouring blood.
Dawyn spat flesh from her mouth. “Look out!”
Cvareh turned back in time to dodge the point of a hairpin slicing downward in a vicious arc.
“Don’t let it touch you!” Dawyn shouted, even though they were not very far apart. “They’re Coletta’s women. Expect poison!”