The Queen of Blood (17 page)

He squatted opposite her, and then swatted the fire spirit away. It scampered off, and she didn't try to call it back. It had done its job well enough. She had the start of a fire—it could dry out the larger branches.

“Thank you for the blanket.” Reluctantly, she lowered it from her shoulders. The air hit the cold cloth of her shirt, chilling her skin even more. “But I don't think Master Klii would approve.”

He reached over and pulled the blanket back onto her shoulders. “Master Klii is not in charge of you anymore. I am.”

She stared at him, certain that the wet and cold had addled her hearing. “I'm sorry?”

“Why did you tell the others where I was hiding? You could have had an advantage, as the only one who knew I was there. The others would have treated this like an ordinary class and not done their best.”

“They're my friends. I'm not in competition with them.”

“Yes, you are. There are more of you than there are champions. Not to mention that we can draw our candidates from anywhere, not just an academy—any village with a hedgewitch who shows affinity for all six spirits is fair game. Simple mathematical odds say if the others lose, you win.”

“Champions choose the best, not the sneakiest.”

“How do you know what the champions look for?”

“I don't, but . . .” She searched for a way to articulate what she felt more as an instinct. “The other students are not my enemy. And the ones I don't know—from other academies or from the villages or wherever—they're not my enemy either. The spirits are. I won't forget that.” She saw her village again, crisp in her memory. Rosasi, who used to tell stories. Her little friends who used to play on the branches with her. She hadn't forgotten them. She wouldn't ever.

He studied her. She couldn't read anything in his expression,
not with his beard masking his lips and the shadows in his eyes disguising his thoughts. “It was your idea to link hands and combine powers.”

“The teachers don't like it when we do that.”

“You use the resources you have. Life isn't like the practice ring. The only rule is do no harm, and save who you can when you can.”

She resisted pointing out that was two rules.

“Okay, that's two rules.” A smile flickered across his lips and then was gone. “Tell me: why do you want to be queen?”

“You know,” she said. “You were there.”

He looked startled. At last, an expression she could read.

“I'm from Greytree. You might not remember it. It was a tiny village in the outer forest, and it doesn't exist anymore. But you were there, scaring the spirits away.” She smiled then, not at the memory but at the thought of Arin, her stubborn always-right sister. “My little sister will say this is fate, your choosing me.”

He was silent for a moment, and her smile faded. She wondered if she'd said the wrong thing, if she'd scared him off, if she'd misunderstood him.

“You
are
choosing me, aren't you?” She hated the way her voice wavered, as if she were still a child, but she couldn't help it. To be so close and fail . . . it would be worse than never being chosen at all.

He was silent again, and Daleina felt as if the world around her was brittle. One wrong word and it could all shatter. But then he spoke a single word, the right word: “Yes.”

T
he headmistress drummed her fingers on her desk. “Daleina?”

“Yes?” Daleina said.

But Hanna wasn't talking to her. She fixed her eyes on Ven, as if she could peel back his expression and see his thoughts, or maybe just shake some sense into the man. Exactly what was he thinking? Yes, Daleina was a well-intentioned girl—now a young woman—who worked hard, but year after year, she eked by, excelling in her written exams but barely passing the practicals. She was hardly the star that Sata or Fara had been. The other champions hadn't even considered her. One, Champion Piriandra, had even recommended she be expelled, to save her heartache later. But Hanna didn't want to say that out loud in front of the poor girl, so she merely repeated her name. “Daleina?”

“Yes,” Ven said. Firmer this time.

Crossing to her cabinets, Hanna rifled through and drew out of a sheaf of papers. She carried them back to her desk and leafed through them: Daleina's records, from her entrance exam to now, including teacher and caretaker comments. Oh, everyone liked her fine. She was bright, a team player, conscientious. The caretakers appreciated that she never left her towels on the floor and also replenished the soap on her own. Her teachers noted that she was never late to class. She studied hard and excelled at all her academic classes, as well as in survival. Everyone agreed
she tried hard at commands. And she'd undoubtedly shown improvement. She could summon all six spirits. But she wasn't a natural, and you couldn't learn that. “Let me be blunt,” Hanna began.

“That's never a good opening,” Ven noted.

“I can tell you what she's going to say.” Daleina stopped in front of the wide window, touching the seams of the once-broken glass, and Hanna waited, allowing her to speak. “You shouldn't choose me. There are more powerful girls here. Girls with higher test scores. Girls with glowing reports.” She delivered it as fact, with no self-pity in her voice. Hanna felt her rib cage loosen. Maybe this wouldn't be so difficult, since the girl understood the situation.

“Your reports aren't bad,” Hanna said. “All your academic scores are top-notch. We're all proud of what you've accomplished.”

“Especially since you didn't think I'd make it so far?”

Again, no self-pity. Hanna glanced at Ven. She expected to see concern etched on his face, or a hint of chagrin. Instead he looked a bit smug, as if he'd pulled off a trick. “She's naïve,” Hanna told Ven.

“That will change.”

“She's inexperienced.”

“I will provide the experience.”

“It's one thing to make it through here, where the teachers are always on hand to correct for errors. You take her out of our walls, expose her to the world—”

“I want this,” Daleina interrupted.

Both Hanna and Ven looked at her. She shrank back at first, then squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, as if remembering she wasn't a child anymore. “Daleina, dear,” Hanna said, “I know you want to, but sometimes our abilities and natural talents don't match our dreams, and reality—”

“I can both sense and control all six kinds of spirits.” She turned to Ven. “I have power within me. Enough power.”

Hanna sighed and felt a headache pinch between her eyebrows. She rubbed her temples. “All right. We'll alter your
schedule. You can continue half your classes here, and half independent study with Champion Ven.”

“I'm taking her out,” Ven said.

Champions often did that—took their candidates out for a crash course in reality, taught them woodland survival the hard way, exposed them to the true dangers of the spirits—and then later returned them for extra classes, like Champion Piriandra intended with Linna, but just as many chose to stay in the capital, especially if their candidate still needed to develop her core skills. In Daleina's case, the choice seemed clear. “You'll be given a room here, Ven, unless you're particularly attached to your loft.”

“I can't stay.”

Hanna glanced at Daleina and wondered if she had any idea who her new champion was, what his history was. She had no doubt that her fellow classmates would fill her in. She debated what to tell her. “I doubt Queen Fara—”

“It's not about her,” Ven said. “I'm needed in the outer villages.”

Instantly, Hanna knew what he meant. He wanted to keep playing the hero and cleaning up the queen's disasters. “You can't expect to continue on as you have been.” They'd already discussed this, and she'd made her views clear. She'd thought he agreed.

“I can, and I will,” Ven said. “Keep sending the messages.”

Hanna tapped her fingers on her desk, which she thought was more polite than wrapping them around his neck. Why did champions have to be so stubbornly dense? They always wanted to save the world, everywhere, all at once, and it simply wasn't practical. “You have to choose, Ven: train her or patrol the villages. You can't take her out so far, as green as she is. The spirits will be drawn to her. She has enough power to be a danger to herself and to you.”

“She will have accelerated training,” Ven said. “I know what I'm doing.”

Hanna wasn't convinced he did. He'd been sulking in the outer forest for so long, avoiding the capital as if everyone here had shunned him. She considered whether it would be bad form
to call him an idiot in front of his chosen candidate. “Remember what I said? My thought on
why
we've been sent the messages?”

“I can't ignore them. Even if you are right.”

“And this is your decision? I can't dissuade you?” She drummed her fingers again, faster.
This could be a disaster
. She wondered if she should have been more explicit in describing how Sata had died, how close she'd been to the palace, how much pain she must have felt. If that could happen to an heir, then how were they supposed to protect the candidates? Especially away from the academy? She turned to Daleina. “Champion Ven has been on the front lines, protecting villages who lack protection. He comes to their aid whenever there is an attack. He's often first into dangerous situations, well beyond anything candidates usually face. With him, you will be exposed to more danger and hardship than a typical candidate. And you may not have the queen's blessing for this unconventional training.”

“Queen Fara hates me,” Ven told Daleina.

My, that was blunt
. “I wouldn't have put it that way,” Hanna said, “but yes, you may inherit political baggage that shouldn't be your responsibility.”

“First Headmistress Hanna tried to convince me that I don't want you, and now she wants to convince you that you don't want me,” Ven said. Damn man sounded amused. “The fact is that you do get to decide, Daleina. It's not only me choosing you; you must choose me as well.”

“Is this what happened with all the candidates?” Daleina asked. “When they came to see you. Did you try to talk them out of it?”

Her bright eyes were fixed on Hanna, and the headmistress shifted in her chair. She should lie, for the sake of the girl's feelings, but under her gaze, it didn't feel right. “This is an unusual case.”

“Because I'm a mediocre student, and he's a disgraced champion?” Daleina turned back to Ven, and Hanna couldn't help admiring the thread of stubbornness that ran through her voice. That determination, she remembered, was why she'd allowed a barely qualified girl to enter the academy four years ago. “Do you think I can help protect the outer villages?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation.

“Then I choose him,” Daleina said.

Hanna looked from one to the other, at their identical mulish expressions. She sighed heavily. “Just tell me one thing, Ven: why her?”

“Because she knows why she's here,” he answered. “She knows who the enemy is.”

And that was the moment that the headmistress began to feel a trickle of hope.

D
ALEINA WALKED DOWN THE SPIRAL STAIRS BESIDE HER NEW
champion. Her stomach rolled and flopped, and she realized her hands were shaking. That hadn't gone the way she'd hoped. She'd expected . . . She hadn't known what she'd expected, but not that humiliation.

“That wasn't a ringing endorsement for either of us,” her champion said. He didn't sound upset, but he had to be second-guessing his choice after all the headmistress said.

“Maybe you
should
choose someone else.” It hurt to say that, but what if she was taking the place of someone who would be better? She was being selfish, and that was wrong. “Aratay deserves the best.”

He stopped on the steps, forcing Daleina to stop beside him. “Then you will need to become the best. It won't be easy. I'll push you hard. You won't like me very much most of the time.”

She looked at him, at the pockets of shadows under his eyes, at the grayness in his hair, at his sinewy muscles. “Can you teach me how to keep a village from being destroyed?”

“I aim to try.”

“That's all I want.” Side by side, they headed down the stairs. He left her at her room, to pack and to say goodbye. “I can be ready in five minutes,” she told him.

“You have two.”

“Are you saying that because there's somewhere we have to be in two minutes, or because you want to demonstrate your power over me?” The instant the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to pull them back. She didn't mean that to sound as
disrespectful as it did. She knew better. But again, he surprised her, this time with a smile that flashed across his bearded face then vanished.

“Both. Move quickly.”

She spent a few precious seconds watching him leave, then she sprinted into her room. She packed fast—a few changes of clothes, a knife, as well as various ointments and herbs, including burn cream, herbs to stop her monthly bleeding and prevent making a baby, and salves to prevent infections and ease bruises. She'd watched the other chosen candidates pack and had imagined this moment for herself so many times that she knew exactly what she wanted to grab.

She heard a clatter, then murmurs, and turned as her friends crowded into the room, a mixture of worry and hopeful happiness on their faces. “Is it true?” Zie asked. “Were you chosen?”

“By Champion Ven,” Daleina confirmed.

They all tumbled in, and then everyone was talking and hugging and laughing and shouting all at once. She hugged each of them. Revi. Mari. Zie. Evvlyn. She nodded through all the good wishes and good-lucks and outpourings of advice.

“I don't know when I'll be back.”
Or if I'll be back
. “We're going to the outer forest. He doesn't want to stay in the capital.”

There were gasps at that. The other candidates were all expected back soon. Daleina was going to miss seeing Linna and Airria and Iondra when they returned. She hugged them all again, and then she darted out of the room and down the stairs. Looking back, she saw her friends pressed together at her bedroom window, waving at her, as she'd done for others before her. She waved back, smiling so hard that her cheeks hurt.

She found her champion in the entrance hall, talking to one of the caretakers. Shifting from foot to foot, she waited for him to finish. She heard footsteps behind her.

“Daleina?” Master Bei, the survival class teacher. Beside her was the wolf Bayn.

Daleina knelt and rubbed the fur on his neck as if he were a dog. She scratched his ears. “I'm going to miss you,” she told him.

“He wants to go with you.”

Daleina looked up sharply at Master Bei. “But he's yours.”

“He's his own. And he wants to see the outer forest again.”

Behind her, Champion Ven said, “Wolves can't climb, and we will be ranging everywhere.”

“It's what he wants,” Master Bei said. “He'll follow from the forest floor. You don't need to worry about him or adjust your plans in any way. Just drop a smooth stone when you switch camps—he'll find you.”

“Are you sure?” Daleina asked, her hands still deep in the wolf's fur. She then addressed the question to the wolf. “Are you sure?” She'd never been certain how much he truly understood.

Like the pet dog that he wasn't, the wolf licked her cheek.

“Ew, and thank you. Truly, thank you.”

The champion grunted, and Daleina didn't know if that meant he approved or “this is a terrible idea,” but he didn't protest again. She stood and bowed to Master Bei. “Thank you for all your instruction.”

Master Bei nodded and then swept away, though not before Daleina saw a hint of moisture in her teacher's eyes. Daleina stroked Bayn's neck again and then stood.

“Are you ready now, or is there another pet you'd like to bring along? Perhaps a raccoon? Or an elephant?”

“His name is Bayn, and he can understand you.”

Bayn bared his teeth at Champion Ven.

“You keep up or you don't,” he told the wolf. “And you're responsible for your own food. We won't hunt for you or wait for you.”

Daleina hoped the same rule didn't apply to her.

“Have you ever taken the wire paths?” Champion Ven asked her.

“No, sir,” she said, though she knew what they were. Knew, for example, that they were very,
very
high up.

“You'll like it,” he said. “Nice view.”

Obviously he was joking.

Wasn't he?

He headed for the nearest tree, and he didn't look back as he climbed. She followed and did look back every few feet to look at
the academy as they went higher and higher, past platforms and past houses. When he reached the upper midforest, he waited for her to catch up. Once she did, he headed down a bridge without a word. Daleina kept looking back until she could no longer see the gleaming white wood of the academy. Green closed around them. Far below, on the forest floor, Bayn kept pace with them. Occasionally, Daleina caught glimpses of him: a streak of gray fur winding through the cultivated bushes and herb borders—few lived on the forest floor, but many harvested from it.