The Kiss of Deception (38 page)

The birds of the forest were just beginning to call in the predawn light when I stepped out from the
carvachi
, so I was surprised to see that my depraved Vendan companions all sat around the fire already. I refrained from gasping when I saw them, but they all looked like they had wrestled with a lion. The scratches had darkened overnight and were now angry bloody welts striping their flesh. Malich was the worst, his face mauled and the skin under his left eye shining blue and red where I had punched him, but even Griz had a slash across his nose, and one of Finch’s arms was riddled with lines. Malich glared as I approached, and Kaden leaned forward, ready to intervene if necessary.

No one spoke, but I was well aware that they were watching me as I fumbled with bandaged hands to hold a cup and pour from the pot of chicory. I was going to take it to the large tent to avoid their company, but when I turned and met Malich’s glare, I thought the better of it. If I backed down now, he’d think I was afraid of him, and that would only fuel him. Besides, I had steaming hot chicory I could throw in his mauled face if he stepped toward me.

“I trust you all slept well,” I said, deliberately keeping my tone light. I returned Malich’s glare with a tight-lipped grin.

“Yes, we did,” Kaden answered quickly.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” I sipped my chicory and noted that Eben wasn’t present. “Eben’s still sleeping?”

“No,” Kaden said. “He’s loading the horses.”

“Loading the horses? Why?”

“We’re leaving today.”

The chicory sloshed in my cup, half of it spilling to the ground. “You said we weren’t leaving for three days.”

Finch laughed and rubbed his scratched arm. “You think he’d tell you when we were really leaving?” he asked. “So you could sneak out sooner?”

“She’s a
princess
,” Malich said. “And we’re all stupid ogres. Of course that’s what she thought.”

I looked at Kaden, who had remained silent.

“Eat something and get your things out of Reena’s
carvachi
,” he said. “We’re leaving in an hour.”

Malich smiled. “That enough notice for you, Princess?”

*   *   *

Kaden supervised me in stony silence, not caring that I fumbled with bandaged fingers as I gathered my few belongings together. He knew exactly where I kept the bag of food I had been hoarding for my escape—bits of sage cakes, balls of goat cheese rolled in salt and gauze, and potatoes and turnips I had pilfered from the vagabonds’ supplies. He snatched the bag from beneath Reena’s bed without a word to me. He went to load it on the horses along with the other food, leaving me to tuck the last few items into my saddlebag. Dihara came into the
carvachi
and gave me a small vial of balm for my fingers and some chiga weed in case I had more pain.

“Wait,” I said as she turned to leave. I threw back the flap of my saddlebag and removed the gold jeweled box I had stolen from the Scholar. I took out the books and returned them to my bag. I held the box out to her. “In the winter when you travel south, there are cities in the Lesser Kingdoms where books and teachers can be had. This should buy you many. It’s never too late to learn something of another gift. At least for the children’s sake.” I pushed it into her hands. “As you said, it’s good to have many strengths.”

She nodded and set the box on the bed. Her hands reached up and gently cupped my face. “
Ascente cha ores ri vé breazza.”
She leaned close, pressing her cheek to mine and whispered, “
Zsu viktara.
”

When she stepped back, I shook my head. I hadn’t yet learned their language.

“Turn your ear to the wind,” she interpreted. “Stand strong.”

*   *   *

Natiya glared at Kaden as he helped me up on my horse. Malich had insisted that my hands either be cut off or tied before we left. While Kaden would have argued Malich down a week ago, today he didn’t, and my hands were bound. Natiya and the other women had quickly gathered together a riding outfit for me since they had burned my other clothes. It was clear they hadn’t known we would be leaving today either. They found a long split-legged riding skirt, and a snug white shirt for me to wear. They also gave me an old cloak in case the weather turned, and I packed that into my bedroll. Reena made me keep the scarf for my head.

Griz roared a hearty farewell, but none of the vagabonds responded. Maybe good-byes weren’t their way, or maybe they felt as I did, that it just didn’t seem right. A farewell seemed born of a choice to leave, and they all knew this wasn’t my choice, but at the last minute, Reena and Natiya ran after our horses. Kaden halted our procession for them to catch up.

Like Dihara’s, their parting words came in their own tongue, maybe because it was more natural and heartfelt for them that way, but their words were only directed at me. They stood on either side of my horse.

“
Revas jaté en meteux
,” Reena said breathlessly. “Walk tall and true,” she whispered with both worry and hope in her eyes. She touched her chin, lifting it, indicating I should do the same.

I nodded and reached down to touch my bound hands to hers.

Natiya touched my shin on the other side, her eyes fierce as she looked into mine. “
Kev cha veon bika reodes li cha scavanges beestra!
” Her tone was neither soft nor hopeful. She shot Kaden another glare, her head cocked to the side this time as if daring him to interpret.

He frowned and complied. “May your horse kick stones in your enemy’s teeth,” he said flatly, sharing none of Natiya’s passion.

I looked down at her, my eyes stinging as I kissed my fingers and lifted them to the heavens. “From your noble heart to the gods’ ears.”

*   *   *

We departed with Natiya’s final blessing as our send-off. Kaden kept his horse close to mine, as if he thought I might try to flee even with my hands bound. I wasn’t sure if I was exhausted or numb or broken, but a strange part of me was calm. Maybe it was the parting words from Dihara, Reena, and Natiya that bolstered me. I lifted my chin. I had been outmaneuvered, but I wasn’t defeated. Yet.

When we were about a mile down the valley, Kaden said, “You still plan to run, don’t you?”

I looked at my bound hands resting on the horn of the saddle, the reins nearly useless in my grip. I slowly met his gaze. “Shall I lie to you and say no, when we both already know the answer?”

“You’d die out here in the wilderness alone. There’s nowhere for you to go.”

“I have a home, Kaden.”

“It’s far behind you now. Venda will be your new home.”

“You could still let me go. I won’t go back to Civica to secure the alliance. I give you my solemn promise.”

“You’re a poor liar, Lia.”

I glared sideways at him. “No, actually I can be a very good one, but some lies require more time to spin. You should know about that. You’re so skilled at spinning, after all.”

He didn’t respond for a long while, then suddenly blurted out, “I’m sorry, Lia. I couldn’t tell you we were leaving.”

“Or about the bridge?”

“What was to be gained? It would only make it harder for you.”

“You mean harder for
you.
”

He pulled on his reins and stopped my horse too. Frustration sparked in his eyes. “Yes,” he admitted. “
Harder for me.
Is that what you wanted to hear? I don’t have the choices you think I do, Lia. When I told you I was trying to save your life, that wasn’t a lie.”

I stared at him. I knew he believed what he was saying, but that still didn’t make it true. There are always choices. Some choices are just not easy to make. Our gazes remained locked until he finally huffed out an annoyed grunt, clicked his reins, and we continued on.

The narrow valley stretched for a few more miles and then we made a long, arduous descent on a trail that zigzagged down the mountain. From our first open vantage point, I saw flat land stretching for miles below us, seemingly to the ends of the earth, but this time instead of desert, it was grassland, green and gold grass as far as the eye could see. It shimmered in undulant waves.

On the northern horizon, I saw shimmering of another sort, a white glistening line like the afternoon sun on the sea and just as far-reaching.

“The wastelands,” Kaden said. “Mostly white barren rock.”

Infernaterr. Hell on earth. I had heard of it. From a distance, it didn’t look so terrible.

“Have you ever been there?”

He nodded toward the other riders. “Not with them. This is as close as they’ll go. Only two things are said to dwell in the wastelands—the ghosts of a thousand tormented Ancients who don’t know they’re dead and the hungry packs of pachegos that gnaw on their bones.”

“Does it cover the whole northern country?”

“Almost. Even winter doesn’t visit the wastelands. It hisses with steam. They say it came with the devastation.”

“Barbarians believe in the story of the devastation too?”

“It is not your exclusive realm, princess, to know of our origins.
Vendans
have their stories too.”

His tone was not lost on me. He resented being called a barbarian. But if he could play such a heavy hand with the term
royal
, tossing it in my face like a handful of mud, why should he expect different from me?

Once we were down from the mountains, the air became warmer again, but at least there was always a breeze sweeping across the plain. For such a great expanse, we came across very few ruins, as if they’d all been swept away by a force greater than time.

When we made camp that night, I gave them the option of untying my hands so I could relieve myself or riding next to me for the remainder of the journey with my clothing soiled. Even barbarians had lines they chose not to cross, and Griz untied me. They didn’t bind me again. They had made their point, an exacting reminder that I was a lowly prisoner and not a guest along for the ride and I had better keep my hands to myself.

The next few days brought more of the same landscape, except when we passed an area where the grass was burned away like a giant scorched footprint. Only a few unburned bundles of straw and some lumps of indiscernible remains were left behind. Green sprigs shot up between the burned stubble, already trying to erase the scar.

No one said anything, but I noticed Eben look away. It didn’t seem possible that this had been a settlement in the middle of nowhere. Why would anyone build a home way out here? More likely it was the result of lightning or an untended vagabond campfire, but I wondered about the few lumps of rot that were melting into the black footprint.

Barbarian.

The word was suddenly tasteless in my mouth.

*   *   *

Several days out, we came upon the substantial ruins of an enormous city, or what was left of one. It rolled out almost as far as I could see. The strange foundations of the ancient town rose above the grass, but none of them were more than waist high, as if one of the giants from my story had used his scythe to evenly mow it all down. I could still see hints of where streets had once run through the stubble of ruins, but now they were covered with grass, not cobble. A shallow brook trickled down the middle of one street.

Stranger than the half-mown city and streets of grass were the animals roaming through it. Herds of large deerlike creatures with finely marked coats grazed among the ruins. Their elegant ribbed horns were longer than my arm. When they saw us, they scattered, jumping and clearing the low walls with a dancer’s grace.

“Luckily they’re skittish,” Kaden said. “Their horns could be deadly.”

“What are they?” I asked.

“We call them
miazadel
—creatures with spears. I’ve only seen their herds here and a little farther south, but there are animals throughout the savanna that you won’t see anywhere else.”

“Deadly ones?”

“Some. They say they come from faraway worlds and the Ancients brought them here as pets. After the devastation, they were loosed, and some flourished. At least that’s what one of Venda’s songs says.”

“That’s where you get your history? I thought you said she was mad.”

“Maybe not in all things.”

I couldn’t imagine anyone having one of those exotic creatures as a pet. Perhaps the Ancients really were just a step below the gods.

I thought about the gods a lot as we traveled. It was as if the landscape demanded it. Somehow they were larger in this never-ending vastness, greater than the gods confined to the Holy Text and the rigid world of Civica. Here they seemed greater in their reach. Unknowable, even for the Royal Scholar and his army of word pickers.
Faraway worlds?
I felt as if I was already in one, and yet there were more? What other worlds had they created—or abandoned like this one?

I put two fingers to the air for my own sacrilege, a habit instilled in me, though I did it with none of the sincerity that surely the gods required. I smiled for the first time in days, thinking of Pauline. I hoped she wasn’t worrying about me. She had the baby to think of now, but of course I knew she did worry. She was probably going to the Sacrista every day to offer prayers for me. I hoped the gods were listening.

We camped amid this once grand but now forgotten city, and while Kaden and Finch went to find some small game for dinner, Griz, Eben, and Malich unsaddled and tended the horses. I said I would gather firewood, though precious little wood looked to be available here. Down by the brook, there was a copse of tall bushes. Maybe I’d find some dry branches there. I brushed my hair as I walked. I had vowed I wouldn’t let them turn me back into the animal I’d been when I had arrived at the vagabond camp, filthy, with matted hair and devouring food with my fingers …
little more than animals.

I paused, my fingers lingering on a knot, twisting it, thinking of my mother and the last time she had brushed my hair. I was twelve. I had done my own hair for years at that point, except for special occasions when an attendant arranged it, but that morning my mother said she’d take care of it. Every detail of that day was still vivid, a rare dawn in January when the sun rose warm and bright, a day that had no right to be so cheerful. Her fingers had been gentle, methodical, her low aimless hum like the wind between the trees making me forget why she was arranging my hair, but then her hand paused on my cheek, and she whispered in my ear,
Close your eyes if you need to. No one will know.
But I hadn’t closed my eyes, because I was only twelve and had never attended a public execution.