Blood's Pride (Shattered Kingdoms) (24 page)

said Lahlil softly,

Isa’s eyes flicked back to her for a fleeting moment.

Eofar could feel Lahlil’s intensity snaking out towards his little sister, like vines. he begged her as Frea aimed a thrust at Isa’s heart. Isa parried neatly and slid out of the way. Frea lost her balance for a moment and Isa charged, scraping sparks from the two swords as she pressed Frea backwards.

Lahlil asked again, ignoring him completely.

Frea lunged with a soundless snarl, but again Isa stepped fluidly out of range. Lahlil moved in tandem with her and now, when Isa’s arm came up to block the blow, it was as if Lahlil had pulled it on a string.

he began, but she was already answering.

Isa paused and then in that same calm way she
said with certainty,

Eofar shut his eyes, as if by doing so he could block out the image of his mother and sisters on the back of that triffon, flying away from him.

Frea screamed, and she threw herself forward like a rabid animal. She hacked at Isa with all of her strength, all technique abandoned in her rush of frantic rage.

Strife’s Bane trembled in Eofar’s hand and he tightened his grip sympathetically on the hilt, that same desperate urgency to stop what was happening shooting through his veins. He didn’t
want
to know – he had never wanted to know.

said Isa. Her arms and legs were quaking with the force of Frea’s blows, and her shoulders were beginning to sag with the effort. Still, she held her ground. Frea, her strength squandered, changed to a two-handed grip and fell back, and Isa immediately went on the offensive. Eofar watched her blade slicing and darting.

Lahlil pressed.

Isa twisted her wrist to change her grip. The hilt of the sword leapt from her hand and hung in the air for an elastic moment. Then it dropped back into her palm with a slap and she swept her arm around in a long, lovely arc, turning with the blade
as smoothly as a fish in an ocean current and sliced a gash along Frea’s unprotected side.

Blood’s Pride fell to the ground with a clang.

Eofar watched numbly as Frea – invulnerable Frea – clutched her bleeding abdomen and doubled over. Isa stood over her and ended the story with the finality of an executioner’s axe.

Eofar’s thudding pulse went suddenly quiet. It was all so obvious: of course Frea had cut the harness. With the harness broken, Mother would have had to turn back; there was no room on the back of that triffon for another little girl. And if Lahlil
had
come back, she would have shoved the rest of them out of Mother’s life, just as she had always done. He would have done the same – no, he admitted to himself; he would have
wanted
to – only he would never have had the courage.

Blue blood welled through Frea’s fingers and spattered the dirty floor. With her other hand, she reached into her jacket and brought out the letter.

Frea was frothing with bitter triumph as she tossed the letter down at Isa’s feet.

Eofar cried, diving forward. He scooped the letter up from the ground, scraping his knuckles bloody with cuts that he never felt. Clutching the letter to his chest, he backed away from all of them towards the door until his heel caught the bottom of the portico step and tripped him up.

asked Isa.

Isa advanced with her sword pointed at him. The blade was still slick with Frea’s blood.

He could feel Frea’s fervid anticipation as she sat on the ground, bleeding. She had won before she’d even drawn her sword.

Isa insisted.

he said wretchedly.

She started to sheath her sword before remembering the blood still sliding down the blade. She looked around and found a cleaning cloth on a table nearby, but as she wiped down the blade, Lahlil swept by and plucked the letter out of his hand.

She sat down on the step and unfolded it with her long grey fingers.

Isa asked, still addressing herself to Eofar.

He forced himself to look at her. Frea’s maliciousness swirled around him. He had no choice but to tell her the truth. He forced himself to come to the point.

A curious sound rumbled through the room. He turned in
alarm and saw Lahlil, still sprawled on the step, waving the letter gently in her hand. Her shoulders were shaking and the sound was coming from somewhere deep in her throat.

She was laughing.

Frea trumpeted, climbing awkwardly to her feet.

Isa said evenly.

he said,

Isa commanded, and he did. Her sword was clean now, gleaming in the firelight, reflecting fragments of the room and the people in it.

he beseeched her, knowing full well that he was losing her, He seized on the one positive thing he could find.

Isa sheathed her sword and looked around at her siblings incredulously. To Eofar, she said, knew that Frea had lied about how Mother died. I let her. She was right to blame me, even if she didn’t know it. It was my fault.>

Her eyes were glittering as she walked over to Lahlil.

Eofar recoiled in shock.

said Isa, whirling back to him. you
did it? I think that’s why Mother left you behind. Well, it wasn’t either of you. It was me.>

he interjected quickly, trying to rationalise it for himself,

She was firm and immovable, but the icy veneer she’d had earlier had burned away, revealing something very different underneath. He felt like he was seeing the real Isa for the first time.

His own buried truths churned inside of him.

Isa didn’t have to tell him to shut up this time: her wordless contempt for his ignorance was more than enough to stifle him.

to do. I needn’t have been ashamed of that. I thought Mother was wrong – not because she saved Lahlil, but because she lied about it. She kept Lahlil shut up in that awful room, even though she didn’t seem to be different from us in any way that was important. I told Father the truth because I wanted Lahlil to come and live with us. I wanted us all to be together.>

Lahlil stood up, still holding Eleana’s letter in her hand.

<
That
is what I’m ashamed of. No real Norlander would ever want such a thing. I knew it meant that I’m not what I’m supposed to – that there’s something wrong with me. I didn’t need an old letter to tell me that. I’ve known it all my life.> She turned and walked to the steps.

Eofar and Lahlil called to her simultaneously.

She turned to Eofar first, but he found he had nothing to say.

Lahlil held out the letter.

Isa’s reply throbbed with pain.

said Lahlil, still holding the paper out to her.

Isa took the letter and left the room.

Eofar felt a chill as Frea walked in front of him, her hand pressed against the still-bleeding wound. He felt closer to her than he ever had before, even as she turned her wrath and disdain on him.

Frea asked incredulously.

he answered sharply.

Frea told him softly.

Eofar began, but suddenly the room went black and he could no longer feel the floor beneath his feet. His first thought was another earthquake, but then the nightmarish visions grabbed hold of him again. He heard the crash of Strife’s Bane striking the floor, but now the images of Daryan returned, sharper this time: again he saw him wrestling with a Norlander, and someone else was lying on the ground beside him. It was Isa, wearing the same clothes she had been wearing a moment ago; bloodied, perhaps even dead. Eofar couldn’t feel himself falling; he could only feel the blackness pulling him in, until his head hit the stone floor with a crack and splintered the vision into a thousand bloody shards.

He opened his eyes to find Frea gone and a sticky trail of blue blood leading out of the door.

Lahlil was still sitting on the step, her chin in her hands, watching him. she told him.

He clawed his way to his feet. His head spun dreadfully and he felt like he was going to be sick again. At least he finally understood one thing. He looked towards the door.

traitors, to be killed on sight.> Even now, she showed no sign of any emotion.

It wasn’t until one of them moaned that he noticed the two soldiers tumbled together in a heap near the doorway. The other one moved his legs weakly, trying to get up; she had left them alive, at any rate. He had more urgent matters to worry about.

He staggered over to her, grabbed her by the arm and hauled her to her feet. The tight compartment of resentment he had banked down inside him for so many years had finally burst open and his anger overpowered his fear of her, at least for the moment. He gave her arm a shake.

Eofar felt a crack zigzag through Lahlil’s emotions and hastily dropped her arm just as a searing flash of red burned into him. He was sucked into a nightmare landscape, an endless battlefield in a chasm lit only by the flash of bloody blades. She hadn’t meant to let him in – she didn’t want him there –
but she was too late. Though her will slammed into him, pushing him out, he had seen what churned behind her disconcerting blankness, and the strength of will it required to maintain her façade staggered him.

Lahlil said,