Blood's Pride (Shattered Kingdoms) (23 page)

The sight of Rahsa’s stricken face after he delivered this cruel speech was more than he could stand and he turned back and pressed himself against the stone walls again, wishing that the rock would swallow him up.

After a moment Rahsa spoke again, her voice soft, sympathetic, almost soothing, as if she were speaking to an overwrought child. ‘My father was a healer. Did you know that?’

‘No,’ Daryan answered miserably, ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘He’s dead now,’ Rahsa said. ‘He worked near the mines – the Dead Ones used to bring the mining accidents to him. Father would tell the miners that if they wanted to live, he’d have to take their arm, or their leg, or the wound would drain the life out of them.’ She paused and moved a little closer. ‘The men would scream and cry. When I was a little girl, I thought my father was a very cruel man, but when I got older, I understood that he knew how to save them.’

‘I’m sure he was a good man,’ he responded vaguely. He didn’t know what response was expected of him. ‘Rahsa, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean all that – I just heard some things that …’ He trailed off as a thought occurred to him. ‘All these years, I did what Shairav wanted me to do because I was afraid to be on my own with no one looking out for me. I was afraid to make decisions for myself. But the truth was that I was on my own anyway; I just didn’t know it.’ He straightened up with a deep sigh. ‘Maybe you’re right: maybe I am more than that. I have to be, don’t I? I couldn’t very well be less.’ He rushed on, trying
to express himself before the idea slipped from his grasp. He fixed his eyes on the solidity of the red rock wall. ‘And so the things I’ve wanted, for myself – for all of us – don’t have to be wrong, do they? Nothing Shairav told me means anything at all; I have to decide for myself, don’t I?’

He turned back hopefully to Rahsa, but she was gone.

Eofar ran down the corridor after Lahlil, leaving the startled Daryan behind; under the circumstances, even Daryan’s incredible revelation would have to wait. He kept his sister in sight and caught up with her a moment after she turned the corner, but when he tried to fall into step beside her, she quickened her pace and left him trailing in her wake.

The ragged Shadari robe over her shoulders and the tangle of black hair almost made him feel as if he was chasing a slave, but her height, her rod-straight shoulders and the self-assured swing of her arms said otherwise.

He had to force himself to use her name. After all the years of silence, all the careful self-censoring of his memories, to say her name now felt like a betrayal. Just whom he was betraying, and how, he couldn’t explain even to himself.

She stopped but didn’t turn, sending the message that she would not allow him to delay her for long. Eofar was well aware that he was frightened of her, in the irrational and all-consuming way that only a small child can be frightened. This made him angry, but his anger hit the blank wall of her presence
and slammed right back into him. He had the urge to provoke her into some emotional response, to slap her into wakefulness as he might a fainting victim.

he demanded.

you
here?> asked Lahlil, echoing his question but not his churlishness.

He wished he could believe it; she seemed to know everything somehow. her
? Chasing after her would have only made things worse.>

Reflected torchlight licked out of the centre of her wide, black pupil.

He had never given himself permission to hate her for tearing their family apart while their mother was still alive – but Mother was dead and gone now.

Lahlil remained so still, and so blank, that he wasn’t even sure that his words had reached her.

she said finally, accepting his unsolicited denial with equanimity. She continued up the corridor ahead of him.

She turned the corner up ahead and disappeared. The moment she was gone, the bulky figure of Arnaf, Eonar’s personal bodyguard, emerged from a crossing a few yards ahead leading two other guards.

Arnaf said in surprise. he broke off quickly as he sensed the grief that Eofar wasn’t even aware of feeling.

Dead. He’d been expecting it for so long, he would have thought it had no power to shock him. He’d been wrong. His knees suddenly felt weak, and for no practical reason he reached up and grabbed the hilt of Strife’s Bane, holding on tight: his father’s gift to him, so long ago, before everything went wrong.

The guard exchanged something with his two comrades.

Eofar replied, and left the startled guards behind. He needed to be with his sisters. He raced blindly down the corridor and was taken aback when he nearly ran into Lahlil, who had stopped in the refectory doorway: he’d forgotten about her.

Then he heard the clang of swords. he groaned, suddenly remembering Isa’s ridiculous determination to fight Frea. He shot past Lahlil, not caring for the moment what she did with herself, only to find the inner portico crowded with Norlander soldiers in various states of undress, as if they’d been hauled from their beds.

He shoved his way through the crowd, breaking through the ring of spectators. In the first instant he couldn’t tell his two sisters apart. They were both clad in dark leather, they both had tendrils of damp hair plastered to their skin, and they were both nearly at the end of their strength.

Eofar arched his arm over his shoulder, ready to charge between the two girls. Strife’s Bane leapt a few inches from its scabbard into his palm; but then, like the soldiers around him, he stopped and stared.

He couldn’t take his eyes off Isa.

In the last few hours she had somehow throttled back the volatile emotions that had always been her greatest obstacle and become the Norlander she had always aspired to be: cold, efficient, ruthless – and she was obviously out for blood. This was no ritualised sparring match, nor the kind of short-lived fit of passion that he had come to expect from her. The very real possibility of death whined in every swing of her sword. Frea was stronger, and far more practised, but once she had cycled through her repertoire of moves she had no recourse except to repeat herself. Isa was relying on some preternatural skill; it was flowing through the lean lines of her body, her unconventional style throwing Frea off-balance, making her incapable of anticipating Isa’s next move or finding an unguarded spot at which to strike.

Even as he watched, Frea aimed a swipe at Isa’s body that had a good chance of hitting the mark. Isa was in the wrong position to block. He could see her only chance lay in diving backwards, out of the way, but instead she dived forward underneath Frea’s sword, slapping her palm on the ground to catch herself at the last moment. As a defensive move it was dreadful, leaving her nearly prone and vulnerable to a downwards thrust – but it wasn’t a defensive move. She swept her blade up behind her, slicing just inches above the ground at Frea’s ankles. Frea had to jump to avoid the sword, and
already off balance from her swing, fell heavily onto one knee. Isa used the momentum of her own strike to roll onto her feet and a heartbeat later she was lunging for Frea.

Sick with the fear that he was about to see one of his sisters killed right in front of him, Eofar finally drew Strife’s Bane. The black blade twitched with eagerness in response to his distress.

he cried out, charging forward between his sisters. Their mutual outrage leapt out at him: a pair of lionesses robbed of their prey, and he could feel an angry undercurrent of disappointment and resentment buzzing out from the crowd. He swung around and addressed the assembly at large.

objected Frea, lurching back to her feet, but before she could finish, Isa, capitalising on her momentary loss of concentration, charged around Eofar and launched a new attack.

The violence of his emotion thudded out like a shockwave through the room.

Reluctantly, the soldiers began to jostle their way out of the room. Eofar kept one anxious eye on their departure and the other on his sisters, listening to them still hammering at each other while he tried to work out what to do next.

It wasn’t until after the last soldier departed that Lahlil emerged onto the portico from whatever niche she had found to conceal herself. His sisters didn’t notice her right away, but
he wasn’t surprised about that. It wasn’t just the dark cloak; she had a trick of shrouding her presence so completely when she wanted that even staring straight at her, he had a hard time believing she was really there.

He turned back to Isa and Frea and watched in frustration as they continued their battle. As soon as he saw an opportunity he jumped between them, beating back their blades with two quick strokes.

Frea told him, using the respite to wipe a sheet of sweat from her face with her free hand. This time she kept her guard up.

you
bleed, Frea!> Isa’s words slammed into the back of Eofar’s head like a hurled brick. She too was still at the ready, glaring at Frea over his shoulder. A raw welt was rising on her neck where the stiff collar of her new jacket had chafed her.

Eofar thundered at them. He stopped abruptly, but the word he had so hastily held back was supplied by another source.

Frea finished for him.

He had been so struck by the change in Isa that he’d barely had time to notice Frea, but something was different about her as well. Something was moving beneath the rock-hard slab of her anger: a thin trickle of despair, the kind that eroded everything in its path, drop by drop. Then he noticed the corner of paper – just a corner – between the folds of her jacket. It could have been anything …

Except that it wasn’t.

He averted his eyes too late. She’d seen him looking and she knew that he’d recognised the letter.

Frea asked cruelly.

He would have asked her for mercy, except that he didn’t deserve any.

she asked, each word a little snap of hatred.

he implored her.

Isa demanded, and without waiting for him to comply, she jammed her shoulder into his back and shoved him, hard.

He stumbled forward. Strife’s Bane struck the floor and was wrenched from his stinging hand, then skidded out of reach under one of the refectory tables. He hastily focused his mind on recalling it, feeling naked without its weight to ground him, though he had to admit to himself that a sword – even this sword – wasn’t going to help him now. The shiny triffons on the hilt rattled against the stone floor and slid a few inches towards him, but not far enough. The bond eroded over distance, but he was only a few feet away; he wasn’t concentrating. Again he turned his will to the task, bearing down hard, and this time the blade skidded out from under the table and flew up, hilt first, towards his waiting hand.

Lahlil plucked the sword out of the air before it reached him. she said, holding it out to him. She’d
shed her cloak and the scars on her forearm squirmed in the firelight. As he slowly took the sword from her, he realised the clash of metal on metal had finally stopped. He turned to see Isa and Frea staring at her.

Frea was the first to put words to the question that was already pulsating through the silence, snarling, she
doing here?>

said Isa, examining Lahlil’s disjointed face intently.

Eofar tried to walk away, but the tables blocked his path; there was nowhere to go. The four of them stood equidistant from each other: the four points of a square.

Eofar looked slowly around at his three sisters.

Frea countered instantly.

he protested.

Isa said simply. He looked over at his baby sister in surprise and found her still fixated on Lahlil. Isa confused him. She had both aged and regressed in the same moment: she was both grown woman and five-year-old child all at once. is
‘us’. Everything we are, all that we’ve become – it’s all because of her.>

Frea charged, just as he had expected. He knew Lahlil was unarmed and that he should intervene, but still Strife’s Bane never twitched in his hand – not that it mattered, because Isa
was there. She stepped in front of Lahlil as if she too had anticipated Frea’s lunge.

His bones shook with the impact of Isa’s sword against Blood’s Pride. She and Frea circled and he stepped back out of the way, but Lahlil stayed behind Isa like a shadow, hovering dangerously close to her back swing.