The Cedna (Tales of Blood & Light Book 2) (8 page)

“Malvyna Entila?”

“Yes, of course. Why, have you other sisters?

“No, and no, I have not met her.”

“She has eyes like yours.” His voice took on a wistful quality I did not like.

“My mother said I got them from my father.”

“They are beautiful. So green, so vibrant. One sees green eyes, but they are usually muddied with brown or yellow. The Entila color is unique.”

“Do you find my half-sister beautiful?” A twitch of unease prickled up my spine, and a chain clanked in the back of my mind.

Onatos said nothing, instead flicking aside the curtain to stare out the carriage window.

I frowned and shifted my leg so that his hand slid away. Did he favor me because my eyes reminded him of Malvyna Entila? I followed his gaze and watched the panorama of the High City pass, but none of the gorgeous sights registered. I sat as stiffly as a stick-poppet beside him, overcome with anxieties.

M
en
in grey tunics emblazoned with the Galatien flower escorted Onatos and me onto the Palace grounds. Seeing the hated sigil set my palms sweating, and I finally trained my focus on the task at hand as we followed a tiled path flanked by shaped hedges.

We headed towards a giant pavilion where a flock of people gathered. Onatos paused and spoke in undertones to another guard.

I tugged his arm. “I thought it was a private meeting.” I had not expected so many people.

Onatos took in the scene. “But this is private, my dear. In the public court you’d be in the vast hall surrounded by all the common petitioners, not to mention the King’s council and the magistrates. These are only Mydon’s courtiers, and they have no say in the proceedings.”

Then a few melodious notes tinkled and someone called, “The Cedna of Gante!”

Onatos pushed me forward.

I minced my steps in the unfamiliar swirl of skirts. The seated audience in the pavilion stared, curiosity and disdain feeding their gazes.

The sayantaq king sat alone on a raised platform in the pavilion’s shade. He did not look as he had in my imagination—he was far younger, only a few winters older than I. He had high cheekbones and a broad forehead. His beard was neatly trimmed to emphasize a pointed chin. He wore a glittering cloak, and he sat casually, with one heel crossed over a knee, slouched into his chair like a callow youth. His unusual amber eyes were glacial as he studied me.

“You call yourself the Cedna of Gante,” he said as I stood before him, “but Gante is ruled by my vassal, Lady Malvyna Entila. I gave it to her as compensation after her father was killed. By your people.”

A ripple of outrage coursed through my body like molten stone. Gante had never been his to give.

I suppressed my upset, took a deep breath, and met his gaze. “I am the trueborn Cedna of Gante from the union of my mother, who served as Cedna before me, and the Lord Ronin Entila. My mother ruled with the old ways and my father with the new. The Ganteans accept no other.” My statement would have appalled the Elders and Inarian, but I hoped it would speak to this king, this Mydon Galatien.

His eyes narrowed. He did not appear surprised to hear that Ronin Entila was my father. “Ronin Entila declared his legitimate daughter, Malvyna, his only heir. If anyone is the Cedna of Gante, it is she.”

No southerner could ever be Cedna! The suggestion set my temper even further on edge, but I had to remain calm. “Malvyna Entila sends raiders to our shores who enslave and kill our people. Enslaving innocents is illegal. We have committed no crime. We will not be ruled by a leader who has no concern for our welfare or our ways.”

Perhaps that final sentence was too much.

The king’s forehead creased. “Malvyna Entila indentures only those who are criminals: tax-evaders and smugglers. Our laws permit those who are convicted of crimes to make reparations to society in the form of indentured servitude.”

“To be convicted, one must have a trial,” I bit out. “My people have never had any kind of trial. Entilan raiders come to our shores to steal, slaughter, and kidnap. I have seen this with my own eyes.”

Mydon Galatien finally straightened and set both feet on the wooden boards of his dais. His hands tightened around the arms of his elaborate seat and his jaw clenched as he glared down at me. “Who are you to speak to me of slaughter? My friend— my dear friend, Ronin Entila—sailed north to your island with a cohort of his men. He took ten in his party. How many of those men returned?”

A flash of my mother’s memory jarred through my mind: seven bodies arranged in a cross in blood-soaked snow. I did not answer him, for I feared I could not control the rage twisting on my tongue.

“Three,” Mydon Galatien said. “Three men returned, and only because they never set foot on your damned island. All those who did died. Your people killed my dear friend and robbed a good woman of her father. Giving her the island—to do with as she sees fit—is the least I could do.”

My pulse thundered in my ears and my hands clenched into fists. “Ronin Entila came to a land where my people had lived for centuries. He came to take it. He stuck his flag in our sacred grounds as though our presence there, our lives, meant nothing. What would
you
do if the Vhimsantese Empire to the east of
your
country did that to you?”

Dead silence met my words. The courtiers who had been murmuring distractedly throughout our discussion had all grown still.

I had thought I’d managed to repress my anger well and made a sound argument, but the tenor of the proceeding had shifted. Something I had said—I did not know what—had changed everything. Mydon no longed seemed callow, but instead deadly and powerful. The courtiers no longer seemed flippant and frivolous, but rather vicious and prejudiced. I was surrounded by hatred.

I backed away from the middle of the pavilion. I hit a strong, upright body, a comforting warmth. Onatos.

Mydon Galatien stood. “Did you just question my policy towards the Eastern Empire?” He peered down at me with a look of disbelief tinged with raw anger. “In my own court?”

I would not quail. My people depended on me. “No,” I snapped. “I questioned your policy towards the Ganteans. You must answer to us.” My right hand inadvertently rose and caressed the bone hilt of my ulio, which I wore lashed around my waist. I’d dressed like a sayantaq, but no Cedna gave up her sacred blade, not even to appease a king.

Two guardsmen surged forward, catching my arms and pinning them behind me. I twisted instinctively to escape their hold. I was no stranger to unwanted restraints.

But the guards held me fast, and one of them reached for the ulio.

“Do not touch my sacred blade!” I cried.

He took it anyway, of course. What care did the sayantaq have for Iksraqtaq reverence?

The guards dragged me away from Mydon Galatien and the pavilion. The audience broke into heated murmurs as I continued to kick and struggle, providing them, no doubt, with ample confirmation that Ganteans were ungovernable savages.

“Let me go!” I screamed, but the guards easily pulled me back. I caught Onatos’s gaze. He shook his head in a tiny, admonishing gesture, as if to say,
Go quietly
.
Do not fight
.

How could his plan have gone so wrong for me?

T
he chamber
they held me in was much nicer than the stone caverns the Kaluq Elders had used to confine me. Though underground like a tapiat house, it was far larger and warmer and entirely comfortable. They had taken the blade Onatos had given me as well as my ulio.

Onatos arrived that evening, just as I nearly went mad with captivity. I clutched the wrought iron bars of the chamber door while he peered in at me through the dim light. “I did not realize he would be so prejudiced against you before he even heard you speak,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry for me, or sorry for you?” I remained angry that I had taken his advice and it had failed. I was worried, too, worried about when I would be released, worried that Inarian hadn’t come to find me, worried about how my people would receive the news of my failure.

“Sorry for both of us. But don’t worry, Beautiful. You won’t be held long. Mydon will sentence you for your disturbance in the court in a few days, and then you’ll be out of here.”

“Sentence me? For what crime?”

“You drew a weapon in the court.” Onatos chuckled dryly. “That’s illegal. Not to mention you attacked Mydon’s personal guards. All in all, a fine show of barbaric behavior.”

How could Onatos laugh at a time like this? “I did not draw a weapon. I touched my ulio. That’s all.”

Onatos sighed and grew more sober. “The real problem was what you said, of course. You questioned his policy towards the Vhimsantese Empire. He has faced a great deal of criticism about that, and it’s a sore spot with him. House Ricknagel—the second most powerful House in the Ten—wants Mydon to militarize the eastern border. He has refused, but there are many who fear what you said—that the Eastern Empire will someday encroach upon Lethemia’s lands.”

I dropped my grip from the metal bars that separated us, blinking in disbelief. “But Onatos! I did not even know! I only used the Vhimsantese to show his wrong thinking about my people, about Gante! I did not even know there was such problem! I sought to make him empathize—”

“Hush, love. It will be all right. I have already had words with Mydon. He will not punish you too harshly.”

“Punish me?” My question quavered as I recalled the punishment my mother had faced at the Elders’ hands.

“Let me take care of it. Remember, you are Ronin Entila’s daughter, bastard or not. Anyone who sees your eyes will believe it, and Mydon knew Ronin well. As a scion of the Ten Houses, you have many protections that are your right. I will make sure you receive them.”

“Where’s Inarian?” I asked. “Can you send her to me?”

“She is very upset, but I will see what I can do.”

I could only imagine the chastising I would receive from her. I sighed and gazed up at Onatos through the iron grate. He reached through the gap between bars to run a finger over my cheek, softer than the caress of my copper skirt on my thighs.

“Don’t worry,” he murmured. “I’ll do what I can to get you out of here as soon as possible.”

A
woman waited silently
beyond the iron grate while guards unwound the ropes on her wrists. I had sprung up from the cot at the approaching footsteps, my twitchiness an old wariness that lingered from those days when the bootfalls had signaled my mother’s misery.

The guardsmen had no words for the new woman or me. They left us together in the underground cell.

A knot of dark hair rested on her neck. She might have been considered desirable in Gante for her ample flesh. My people rarely had the luxury of such plumpness. She said nothing as she stamped over to the lone stool in the corner of the cell. She wore a simple white garment and clutched an inadequate shawl around her shoulders.

I summoned back the command of the Lethemian tongue that had been languishing, like me, for the past few days. “Who are you?”

“Ennis Angusina. The magitrix. And you?”

“You may call me Cedna.”

She lifted her brows. “A proud one, I see. But I hear Malvyna Entila is the Cedna of Gante, and you’re only some barbarian imposter.”

Rage simmered in my throat, but I did not wish to show it to this stranger. “That is a lie.”

Ennis shrugged. “I’m only reporting the court gossip.”

“Well, the gossip is wrong,” I snapped. “Malvyna Entila is the imposter, and she has waged a campaign of death on my people for years.”

Ennis laughed. “She isn’t known for her compassion.”

“What did you do to get put in this place?”

Ennis crossed her legs and reclined against the wall. The stool scraped along the floor. Even her tiny feet were round, two ovals clad in black slippers with a silver buckle. “The official charges are espionage and treason,” she said. “But they’ll never prove it. The only reason they can even hold me is they
do
have proof that I made a silly unsanctioned love charm years ago—”

“Love charm?” I interrupted, intrigued. Ikselian used to say—with revulsion—that the southerners used magic in their matings. I had always wondered about such spells.

“Wait.” Ennis Angusina laid a hand on my arm. Her brown eyes rolled up and her face went slack as though gazing into Yaqi. Could she traverse the Layers at will like Atanurat? Was this what it meant to be a southern mage?

“Sorry,” she said, giving me a curious look as she resurfaced. “I wanted to check the Aethers to be sure no one lurked nearby. King Mydon has ears in the most unlikely places. But we are alone and may speak freely.

“Yes, I put a charm on Jhalassa Lissi-Batz and Mydon Galatien before they married.”

“Can they prove it was you?” I wondered aloud.

“Magic leaves a recognizable signature to those who can see the Aethers with skill.”

“What will happen to you now?” I asked, fearing my own fate.

“They have not proved my guilt in the matter of the espionage and treason. Their only evidence is hearsay, and they cannot convict on that alone. They’ll never find any evidence for any charge but the love charm. But I suppose I am stuck here for the time being, just like you.”

F
or three days
, I fretted silently that neither Inarian nor Onatos came, though Ennis’s company consoled me somewhat. Finally, one afternoon the hall door unlatched, and I jerked up in anticipation, smoothing my skirts and hair in case it was Onatos.

Ennis cracked a smile. “Expecting company?” She did not bother to rise, nor to attend to her ragged hair, now falling from the knot.

I would have recognized the soft pad of sealskin boots on stone anywhere. The sound burned a hole of dread inside me.

Inarian stilled beyond the bars, flanked by two guards, her face impassive. I clutched the gate that separated us. “Inarian,” I began. “Have you—were you able to speak with Onatos? Can you get me out?” I spoke Gantean.

Her jaw tightened as she glanced at the guards. “I do not think they understand us,” she said, watching for their reactions. They made none.

“It seems unlikely.”

She leaned towards me anyway to whisper, “They warned me, those Kaluqs who came to Nitaaraq. They said you were careless, impulsive, and childish. They said you had no sense of the responsibility of your position. And they were right.”

Her words hit me like a slap. “This was all a mistake,” I cried. “A stupid misunderstanding. It isn’t my fault!”

“You are a fool. A tainted fool. Look at you! Locked up in a southern prison. You, the Cedna!” She leaned closer and voiced a concern that had already occurred to me. “Have you a knife, an edge of any kind?”

I shook my head.

“What will you do when the time comes to let your blood? How will you cut yourself, how will you make your offering? Your people depend on you for this, if nothing else!”

“Onatos said he would get me out of here as soon as—”