Page 1 of Court of Talons
Chapter 1
The way of the warrior is death.
And if my chicken-brained brother keeps slowing us down, I may have to kill him myself.
“There!” He points, destroying any hope I have of ignoring his latest outburst. “What’s that over there?”
Merritt pulls his warhorse to the side of the crumbling trail for what has to be the fifty-seventh time this morning. I watch him with barely controlled irritation, keeping my head ruthlessly still beneath my hooded cloak. If I make any sudden move, the jewel-encrusted coils of my thickly braided hair will tip me right out of my saddle.
My brother has no such constraint. He bounces in his stirrups, then strains to see over the tumble of vegetation, his eyes bright and his smile wide. He’s every inch a seventeen-year-old off on his “first true adventure.”
“Patience, Talia,” my handmaiden mutters beside me. “He has the attention span of a gnat. Three bronze say we’re back on our way within the half-hour.”
“Done.” I’d never take Adriana’s coins, of course, but she’s wrong. I know Merritt better than he knows himself.
We’ll be here a while.
Merritt’s stallion huffs and stamps, driving a hoof into the broken stone. All around us are jagged piles of rusted metal, burned-out husks of what may have once been vehicles. Hollow buildings leer at us from either side of the collapsed road, redolent with long-ago death. Merritt seems not to see anything but the hulking wrecks, while I study a thin, fetid stream of goo that moves sluggishly along the bottom of a choked gutter, bubbling from a dark hole I don’t want to think about too much.
It’s a cursed place, salted with the fear of the forsaken who vanished from these same streets hundreds of years ago. Somanydied in the onslaught of the Western Realms before the Protectorate rose up to hold the line between order and chaos.
We shouldn’t be here…
But it’s also a shortcut to pass through the Shattered City, and we needed to make up the time.
“We have to keep going,” I call to Merritt, forcing a grin when all I want to do is shake him into deep unconsciousness. “We’re already arriving after dark, and that’s if we push hard.”
“Well, what’s the rush?” Merritt wheels his warhorse part way toward me, his mood immediately souring. “You’ll be married off tomorrow anyways, whether we get to the Twelfth House at sunset or midnight. Who cares when we arrive? Go water the horses or whatever, and let me see what’s what.”
With that, he’s off again, angling Darkwing around a fallen metal beast. The priest Nazar moves after him, always the grimmest shadow. Merritt is the old man’s charge, but Nazar also glances my way with steady eyes. I know what he’s asking of me.Scout the perimeter. Make sure no one is watching.
It’s the one task the perpetually grouchy priest has let me take on during this journey, and I won’t disappoint him.
“Adriana.” With that one-word order, my handmaiden falls in line behind me. Both of us have been relegated to fat-bellied ponies by order of my father, but they’re sturdy enough, and trytheir hardest to keep up. Meanwhile, Father is back at the Tenth House, drinking to his new wealth, while I—for the first time in all my twenty-one years—amfree.
At least until we reach the Twelfth House.
My own “first true adventure” will only last the day.
“Are you supposed to protect him while wearing your bridal finery too?” Adriana asks me drily as we plunge into the forest that butts up against a huddle of gutted buildings. There’s a sort of outraged wildness here that seems to mock the stump of a rusted marker still visible beside the almost-trail. Whatever lettering or symbols the sign once boasted are long faded away. As are all the ghosts who made them or once read them. The forest, however, lived on. Violently, eagerly, chewing up what little of the doomed civilization remained behind.
I grin. “Only if I’m lucky.” I’d take any chance to put my secret combat practice into action, but there will be no need for it on this scouting expedition. “Not that we’re likely to find anyone here. Still, the tournament is barely a few days’ ride from this city. If anyone from another house heard about my marriage and thought Merritt might be traveling with me to the Twelfth House first, they could maybe want to see if he was worth worrying about.”
Adriana scoffs. “He’s not. He’s as useless as?—”
Her words die away as I lift my hand. Since Merritt could crawl, I’ve permitted only myself the occasional pettiness to say anything negative about my brother. He may be overindulged and a little exasperating, but Merritt’s boisterous affection for me and my mother’s stalwart commitment to us both are the main reasons I’m still alive. That and my docile willingness to go along meekly with whatever indignity my father demanded of me, including this absurd marriage to a house even more backward than our own.
Adriana breathes out a quick apology, and I accept it with an even quicker smile. Her easy candor is my fault. I’ve been too careless with her, but she’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a friend.
I follow my smile with a chuckle. “Buttheydon’t know that, yeah? To them, Merritt may be the newest entrant in the Tournament of Gold, not just passing through to secure fighting men for our house.”
“Well,I’dlike to travel to the Tournament of Gold,” she points out, reasonably enough. “Not be stuck at the Twelfth House watching you try to play dutiful wife.”
“Not try,” I remind her as she draws up next to me.
She sighs. “Not try, no. You’ll be the perfect bride and helpmate, Lady Talia. A blessing to all you meet.”
“Yes.” And I will. I have to be, to ensure the heresy of my birth is finally buried for good. After twenty-one years of shame, I’ll at last have a chance to bring honor to my house—even if it’s only as the bride-in-waiting to a boy of barely fourteen years, whose house is the weakest of the Protectorate.