The Kiss of Deception (42 page)

“And so shall it be,” I finished, “for evermore.”

I opened my eyes, and all around me soldiers had paused from their duties, watching me. I rose and picked up the shovel and walked toward Walther first. Kaden stopped me before I reached his body. “Lia, death isn’t graceful or forgiving. You don’t want to remember him this way.”

“I’ll remember him exactly this way. I’ll remember them all. I will never forget.” I pulled my arm loose.

“I can’t help you. It’s treason to bury the enemy. It dishonors our own fallen.”

I walked away without answering and stepped around bodies and their severed parts until I found Walther. I dropped to my knees beside him and wiped his hair from his face. I closed his eyes and kissed his cheek, whispering my own prayer to him, wishing him happiness on his journey because now he would hold Greta again, and if the gods be merciful, cradle his unborn child. My lips lingered on his forehead trembling, unwilling to part from him, knowing it would be the last time my flesh touched his.

“Good-bye, sweet prince,” I finally whispered against his skin.

And then I stood and began to dig.

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

KADEN

The whole camp fell silent watching her. Unlike me, none of them had ever seen nobility before, much less a princess. She wasn’t the delicate fleshy royal of their imaginations. One by one, as the hours went by, even the most hardened were drawn to sit and watch, first because of her chilling chants that had saturated the whole valley and then because of her dogged concentration, shovelful after shovelful.

It took her three hours to dig the first grave. Her brother’s grave. She wrestled his bedroll from his dead horse, tied it around him, and rolled him into the hole. I heard Finch’s throat rattle and Eben sucking on his lip. Though none of us had any sympathy for the fallen, it was hard to watch her kiss her dead brother and then struggle with the weight of his corpse.

Griz, who arrived later with Malich, had to walk away, unable to watch. But I couldn’t go. Most of us couldn’t. After her brother, she went on to the next dead soldier, knelt to bless him, and then dug his grave, chipping away at the hard soil another shovelful at a time. This soldier had lost an arm, and I watched her search for it and pull it from beneath a fallen horse. She placed it on his chest before she wrapped him in a blanket.

How long could she go on? I watched her stumble and fall, and when I thought she couldn’t get up again, she did. Restlessness grew in the soldiers around me, strained whispers passing between them. They squinted their eyes and rubbed their knuckles. The
chievdar
stood firm, his arms folded across his chest.

She finished the third grave. Seven hours had passed. Her hands bled from holding the shaft of the shovel. She went on to the fourth soldier and knelt.

I stood and walked over to the supply wagon and grabbed another shovel. “I’m going to go dig some holes. If she should roll a body into one, so be it.” The soldiers standing near the wagon looked at me, astonished, but made no move to stop me. It wasn’t exactly treason.

“Me too,” Finch said. He walked over and grabbed another shovel.

The squad flanking the
chievdar
looked from him to us uncertainly, then drew their swords.

The
chievdar
waved his hand. “Put them away,” he said. “If the Morrighan bitch wants to bleed her fingers to the bone, it will provide fine entertainment for us all, but I don’t want to be here all night. If these fools want to dig some holes, let them dig.”

The
chievdar
looked the other way. If he had been tired of the display, he could easily have put an end to it. Lia was a prisoner and enemy of Venda, but maybe her chilling song had triggered enough of his own fear of the gods to let her finish her work.

Eben and Griz followed us, and probably to the
chievdar
’s dismay, seven of his soldiers did too. They grabbed picks and axes and whatever they could find, and next to the fallen we began digging holes.

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

We spent the night in the valley not far from where the slain were buried and set off again the next morning. It was three more days to Venda. This time we were flanked by a battalion of four hundred. Or six hundred? The numbers didn’t matter anymore. I only stared forward, letting my head bob freely with the jostling rhythm of the horse. The view in front of me was of Eben’s horse, his lame front leg making the others work harder. He wouldn’t make it to Venda.

My clothes still dripped. Only an hour ago, fully dressed, I walked into the river that ran the length of the valley. I didn’t feel its waters on my skin, but I saw the gooseflesh it raised. I let the current wash through my bloodstained clothes. Walther’s blood and the blood of thirty men ribboned away through the water and traveled home again. The world would always know, even if men forgot. I had found Gavin facedown not far from my brother, his thick red hair easy to identify, but Avro and Cyril weren’t as easy to recognize—only their devoted proximity to my brother made me think it was them. A face is hard and sunken in death once the blood has drained away, like carved wood in a casing of thin, gray flesh.

I’ll remember them all. I will never forget.

Kaden, Finch, and others helped dig the graves. Without them, I never would have been able to bury all the dead, but it was because of them that a whole patrol had been massacred. One of those soldiers who helped dig may have been the one who plunged the sword in Walther’s chest. Or severed the arm from Cyril. Should I feel thankful for their help? Mostly I couldn’t feel at all. Every feeling within me had drained away like the blood of the fallen and was left behind on the valley floor.

My eyes were dry, and my raw blistered hands felt no pain, but two days after Walther’s slaughter, something rattled loose inside me. Something hard and sharp I had never felt before, like a chipped piece of rock that turns over and over again, tossed in the rim of a wheel. It rattled aimlessly but with regular rhythm. Maybe it was the same something that had rattled inside Walther when he held Greta in his lap. I was certain whatever had broken loose would never be anchored in me again.

Word had spread quickly among the ranks that I had the “gift,” but I quickly learned that not every Vendan had reverence for it. Some laughed at the backward ways of the Morrighese. The
chievdar
was chief among the scoffers, but there were far more who ogled me with wariness, afraid to look me straight in the eye. The vast majority congratulated Kaden and the others on the fine prize they had brought back to the Komizar. A real princess of the enemy.

They didn’t know his true task was to slit my throat. I looked at Kaden without expression. He met my blank gaze. He wanted to be proud among his comrades. Venda always came first, after all. He nodded at those who patted his back and acknowledged their praise. His eyes, which I’d once thought held so much mystery, held none for me now.

The next day, Eben’s horse grew worse. I heard Malich and Finch tell him he was going to have to kill it, that there were plenty of other horses in the captured booty for him to ride. Eben swore to them in a voice rising like a child’s that it was only a strained muscle and the lameness would pass.

I said nothing to any of them. Their concerns weren’t mine. Instead I listened to the rattle, the chipped rock tumbling inside me. And late at night as I stared at the stars, sometimes a whisper broke through, one I was too afraid to believe.

I will find you.

In the farthest corner, I will find you.

CHAPTER SEVENTY

I brushed my hair. Today was the day we would enter Venda. I wouldn’t arrive looking like an animal. It still seemed important. For Walther. For a whole patrol. I wasn’t one of
them.
I never would be. I pulled at the tangles, sometimes ripping at my hair, until it lay smooth.

Surrounded by hundreds of soldiers, I knew there was little chance of escape. Maybe there never had been one, unless the gods themselves decided to plunge another star to earth and destroy them all. How were these who sat proud upon their horses beside me any better than the Ancients, whom the gods had destroyed long ago? What held the gods back now?

We rode behind wagons piled high with swords, saddles, and even the boots of the fallen. The bounty of death. When I buried my brother, I hadn’t even noticed that his sword and the finely tooled leather baldrick that he wore across his chest were already gone. Now they jostled somewhere in the wagon ahead.

I listened to the
jingle
of the booty, the
jingle, jingle
, and the
rattle
within me.

Kaden rode on one side of me, Eben on the other, with Malich and the others just behind us. Eben’s horse stumbled, but managed to correct itself. Eben jumped from his back and whispered to him. He led him along with his hand clutched in the horse’s mane. We had only gone a few more paces when the horse stumbled again, this time staggering twenty yards off the road, with Eben chasing after him. The horse fell onto his side, his front legs no longer able to support him. Eben desperately tried to talk him upright again.

“Take care of it,” Kaden called to Eben. “It’s time.”

Malich came up alongside me. “Do it now!” he ordered. “You’re holding everyone up.” Malich unclasped the leather sheath that held his long trench knife from his belt and threw it to Eben. It fell to the ground at Eben’s feet. Eben froze, his eyes wide as he looked from it back to the rest of us. Kaden nodded to him, and Eben slowly bent over and retrieved it from the ground.

“Can’t someone else do it?” I asked.

Kaden looked at me, surprised. It was the most I had said in three days. “It’s his horse. It’s his job,” he answered.

“He has to learn,” I heard Finch say behind me.

Griz mumbled agreement. “
Ja tiak.
”

I stared at Eben’s terrified face. “But he raised him from a foal,” I reminded them. They didn’t respond. I turned around to Finch and Griz. “He’s only a child. He’s already learned far too much, thanks to all of you. Aren’t any of you willing to do this for him?”

They remained silent. I swung down from my horse and walked into the field. Kaden yelled at me to get back on my horse.

I whipped around and spat. “
Ena fikatande spindo keechas! Fikat ena shu! Ena mizak teevas ba betaro! Jabavé!
” I turned back to Eben, and he inhaled a sharp breath when I snatched the sheathed knife from him and pulled the blade free. A dozen bows were raised and arrows drawn by onlooking soldiers, all aimed at me. “Have you said good-bye to Spirit yet?” I asked Eben.

He looked at me, his eyes glassy. “You know his name?”

“I heard you whisper it in camp. They were wrong, Eben,” I said, tossing my head in the direction of the others. “There is no shame in naming a horse.”

He bit his lower lip and nodded. “I said my good-byes.”

“Then turn around,” I ordered. “You don’t have to do this.” He was shaken and did as I told him.

I stepped over to the horse. His back legs shuddered, spent from the effort of trying to do the work of his front legs too. He had worn himself out but was still as wide-eyed as Eben.

“Shhh,” I whispered. “Shhh.” I knelt beside him and whispered of meadows and hay and a little boy who would always love him, even if he didn’t know the words for it. My hand caressed his soft muzzle, and he calmed under my touch. Then, doing what I had seen Walther do on the trail, I plunged the knife into the soft tissue of his throat and gave him rest.

I wiped the blade on the meadow grass, pulled the saddlebag from the dead horse, and returned to Eben. “It’s done,” I said. He turned around, and I handed him his bag. “He feels no more pain.” I touched Eben’s shoulder. He looked at my hand resting there and then back at me, confused, and for a brief moment, he was an uncertain child again. “You can take my horse,” I said. “I’ll walk. I’ve had enough of my present company.”

I went back to the others and held Malich’s sheathed knife out to him. He cautiously reached down and took it from me. The soldiers lowered their bows in unison.

“So you know the choice words of Venda,” Malich said.

“How could I not? Your limited filth is all I’ve heard for weeks.” I began untying the saddlebag from my horse.

“What are you doing?” Kaden asked. I looked at him long and hard, the first time my eyes had met his with purpose in days. I let the moment draw out, long enough to see him blink,
know
. This wasn’t the end of it.

“I’m walking the rest of the way,” I said. “The air is fresher down here.”

“You didn’t do the boy any favors,” he said.

I turned and looked at the others, Griz, Finch, Malich. Slowly surveyed the hundreds of soldiers who surrounded us, still waiting for the caravan to continue, and circled around until my gaze landed back on Kaden, slow and condemning. “He’s a
child.
Maybe someone showing him compassion is the only real favor he’s ever known.”

I pulled my saddlebag from my horse, and the procession moved forward. Once again, I followed the clatter, clank, and jingle of the wagon ahead, and the loose rattle within me grew louder.

*   *   *

Steps and miles blurred. The wind gusted. It tore at my skirts, whipped at my hair, and then a strange stillness blanketed the landscape. Only the memory of Eben’s horse and its last shuddering breaths ruffled the air, the horse’s hot gusts receding, quieter, weaker. A last gust. A last shudder. Dead. And then the eyes of a dozen soldiers ready to kill me.

When the arrows were drawn and aimed, for a moment, I had prayed the soldiers would shoot. It wasn’t pain I feared, but no longer feeling it—no longer feeling anything.

I had never killed a horse before, only seen it done. Killing is different from thinking about killing. It takes something from you, even when it’s a suffering animal. I didn’t do it only to relieve Eben of a burden. I did it for myself as much as for him. I wasn’t ready to give up every last scrap of who I used to be. I wouldn’t stand by and watch a child butcher his own horse.