Page 12 of Court of Talons
I curl my lip, but he’s not wrong. If the hair was cleaned, the adornments reset, it could be sold—or broken apart for its stones. And we have soldiers to buy.
Nazar has already transferred his gaze to me, though. “You’re built straight enough. Your back is broad and strong. In breeches and loose gear, you’ll pass.” He grimaces. “Your low voice will help as well. You are the warrior son, Merritt. Firstborn of the Tenth House.”
Firstborn,I think hollowly. One falsehood undone; a new, far worse deception begun.
And I’m not alone in this new lie either.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask sourly, shifting my gaze to stare into the priest’s inscrutable, pale eyes. “If the truth is discovered, I won’t be the only one punished. You’ll be killed as well.”
“Why doesn’t matter,” Nazar says. He turns me back to the smoldering remains of Merritt’s funeral pyre, then lifts his gazeonce more to the mountains looming over us to the west. They are our last barrier to the Tournament of Gold, and to the fate the Light has dealt us.
“You are Merritt, warrior knight, first-blooded direct descendent of the founders of the Protectorate,” Nazar says, my shorn pile of hair spilling over his hands. “Your feet are on the Lighted Path, the way of the warrior before you. From now until you take your dying breath,thatis all that will matter.”
Chapter 5
The journey over the mountain pass to the Tournament of Gold takes us three hard days’ travel. I barely notice it. My dismay over my shorn hair fades with the plodding of Darkwing’s hooves. It’s replaced by the twin daggers of grief and fury at Adriana’s senseless death, and at the loss of Merritt with his whole life in front of him. Those rake over me by turns, as sharp and jagged as the broken arrow in my saddle bag.
Someone—somewhere—loosed that arrow. And though finding that killer cannot be my focus, the anger that builds within me against the slinking coward who took my brother’s life eventually crowds out everything else…leaving behind only deep, immovable rage.
My left arm throbs every time I jostle it, too, blood seeping out from under the bandages Nazar has carefully fashioned for me. He says it will heal quickly, but I don’t see how. Especially since I shouldn’t have been banded at all. At least I didn’t share Merritt’s crippling sickness when he first bonded with his Divh. He’d been ill for days, a shivering, quivering mess. I only feel pain.
Yet another sign I am unworthy. As if I need more reminders.
The priest ignores me, mostly, for most of the first day. After that, when he speaks at all, it’s to tell me of this city or that, this house or the other, soft murmurs of a world I’ve never known except for the brief scraps of information I’d overheard through the years and ferreted away. No woman needs to learn about the politics and structures of the Protectorate. But first-blooded and firstborn warriors must. And Iama warrior, at least for these next few days. I sop up his every word like it’s my last meal.
At length, I tell Nazar of the man I saw in the forest, dressed in First House colors. He’s shocked, then outraged, of course, and he rails at me, driving nails into the wounds of my own guilt. His sneering rebuke shreds through my weak protests and half-formed defenses as if they were made of cobwebs. He rants for a solid three hours, then abruptly stops, falls silent.
What’s done is done, he says. The warrior can only move forward.
His lessons begin anew—and more of them now, histories and heroes, politics and power. I learn that Lord Rihad may have no sons, but he isn’t without his banded warriors—some of them almost as noble as the Lord Protector himself. He speaks of a nephew yet unbanded, too—Fortiss. A fighter of great renown, from an honored family, who is still without a Divh, for reasons Nazar doesn’t know but which plainly confuse him.
I think of the man I met, his golden eyes, his noble face. Is this Fortiss to blame for my brother’s death? I think of the gray-feathered arrow in my pack, shot true and far into the sky until it buried itself in my brother’s back. It’s finely made by any account, and so was the bow that shot it, I suspect. Not a marauder’s arrow, either. A nobleman’s.
Fury knots within me, as thickly coiled as my cut-off hair, but nowhere near as beautiful.
Gradually, Nazar’s quiet, lulling voice helps me box up the last of my pain, bury it deep. In this sacred soil, I plant iron-tipped resolve, fledgling shoots strengthened by the priest’s stoic presence. I will go to the tournament. I will secure the soldiers we desperately need. Once that is done, I’ll return to my father and face his punishment.
Even if I don’t survive that punishment, Iwillbring honor to my house.
By the third day of our journey, the pain from my arm has diminished to a dull ache—or maybe I’m simply distracted by the changes all around me. The road we’re following has grown crowded. Excitement rushes through the air, everyone’s tongue bearing tales of the coming Tournament of Gold. It’s to be the largest one ever, they all say, and the boons to the winning houses will be extraordinary. The Court of Talons will be full to bursting with warriors eligible for the winged crown—the award given to the winning warrior, if Lord Protector Rihad judges him worthy.
Nazar never stops to ask for any details beyond what we can overhear. Neither do I, of course. Every time a traveler stares too long at our small company—a boy, a priest and five additional horses, our dusty packs and empty saddles draped in Tenth House green—I brace myself. We are hardly a procession worthy of one of the great houses of the Protectorate. At every sidelong glance I expect to hear the cry that I am a thief, a liar, a criminal wearing the rightful band of my brother.
But no one stops us; no one speaks. Instead, we simply ride.
It’s late afternoon before we crest the final ridge. With a subtle gesture, Nazar points me toward the roped and cordoned campsites clearly occupied by the visiting houses of the Protectorate, their warrior knights and their banded soldiers come to fight in the Tournament of Gold. The lesser houses, like ours, have only one Divh, bonded to the first-blooded and firstborn warrior son of the house lord. The greater houses have more—Divhs that are bonded to lesser noble warrior knightsand even to non-noble banded soldiers. The Divhs of the first-blooded and firstborn warrior knights are always the mightiest, by far. But any Divh, even one commanded by a banded soldier, would be awesome to behold.
The campsite’s layout mirrors that of the Protectorate itself: the First House flags flying in the center, surrounded by the Second, Eighth, and Fourth Houses to the west, the Third, Seventh, and Ninth Houses to the south, the Eleventh, Tenth, and Twelfth Houses to the east, and the Fifth and Sixth Houses to the north.
Even now, I can see the red and white banners and tents of the Second, the sky-blue flags of the Fourth, the rich purple of the Sixth House. I’ve only heard of these great houses from the bards. Seeing them now feels wrong somehow, like a story ripped from its pages and scattered on a field. I search to see how large a space was allotted for the Tenth House, and yet—what would we raise? We have no banners or tents, no flags to fly. We’ve barely kept more than our bedrolls and grave shovel.
Still, I can’t dwell on that depressing truth for long. Because beyond these rich encampments, the thriving city of Trilion bursts forth like a swarm of bees startled from its hive…and for a moment, I can only stare. I’ve never seen such a place—never evenimaginedit.
Trilion isn’t a city proper, Nazar has told me. Now, taking in the buildings and streets below me on the third afternoon since my brother’s death, I understand better what the priest has been trying to explain during our journey.
Most every city, from the capital of the Exalted Imperium on down, is a tightly wound body built around two hearts: its market, and its buildings of official commerce and law. Inns and taverns, shops and artisans’ stalls expand in ever-widening circles around this double-beating center, hemmed in by rivers or mountains or the sea.
But Trilion’s hearts beat differently, and the city that has sprung up around them throbs with a rhythm all its own.