Page 68 of Court of Talons
I don’t give the woman the benefit of another nod, but she pulls her hand away from my mouth and our trek begins anew, this time toward the falls. We make it there in a matter of minutes, and as we step into the clearing near the rocks, I finally can see. The line of women is still almost invisible, wraiths disappearing behind the falling water to what I now realize is a cavern of some sort. We don’t walk for long, though, once under the cover of stone. After a few turns deeper into the cave, a flame is struck.
That sudden light blinds me after so many minutes in the dark. I flinch away briefly before my captor pushes me forward.
The flame lights a small fire in the center of the cavern, and there rests a familiar figure, the injured marauder from the attack in Trilion. Her leg is no longer bandaged by my green sash, though I notice that sash is now wrapped around her wrist. She’s wearing a fresh robe, cut down the middle, and I can see the bandages at her shoulder as well.
She’s not the only woman at the fire, though. Another one reclines an arm’s length away, beside a large earthenware bowl that steams with a smell I don’t recognize. Soup? Medicine? Either way, it’s not the bowl that captures my attention most fully about this woman—but three entirely different details.
First, she’s wearing a large scabbard strapped to her back, the hilt of a longsword protruding up from it, even in the relative safety of the cavern. Second, her face is marked with lines of war paint, the likes of which I have only seen on male warriors—warriors represented in paintings of the far distant past, celebrating the battles of the Western Realms.
And third, the woman’s belly is swollen heavy with child.
I know what it is to be gaped at, and I don’t wish to do the marauder any dishonor. Instead, I take all these truths into account at a glance then return my gaze to the woman I’d helped by the well. She stares steadily back at me. Unlike the pregnantwoman, she’s not merely a warrior of these people, I decide. She’s their leader.
“You’ll heal,” I say simply, my words so calm and assured they bring a smile to her face.
“I’ll heal,” she agrees. “Thanks in no small part to you. You could have brought the others back to that well, easily and quickly enough. It was built at a time when far more water rushed over these lands. The chute that leads away from it is straight and offers no place to make a stand until it empties out into a far ravine. We would have been killed well before we ever reached the surface.”
I don’t move, don’t nod, as if of course I wouldn’t have betrayed her and her people in such a way. In truth, it never occurred to me to bring the force of the guards and warriors back to that well. Were this woman my true enemy, I would have failed my house beyond redemption.
But this woman, I sense, is anything but my enemy.
She continues, “Instead, we ran free, and you returned to your exalted procession, riding all the way to the First House. Not as Talia of the Tenth House, we’ve learned, but as the warrior son Merritt. A warrior son bonded to a Divh, by all accounts.”
The woman beside me hisses in derision. “Gods in service to fools.”
“Yet here is a woman claiming her place among them.” The leader gestures, and the woman beside me claps her hand to my left arm, below my shoulder, searching but not squeezing tight. For once, there’s no pain, no bolt of agony at the sentient band being touched. Still, even through the heavy servant’s robe, there’s also no mistaking that I do, in fact, wear the band. The marauder gives a tight nod to her leader, who smiles with satisfaction. “And not an idle claim, it would seem. Stranger still.”
I keep my voice even. “No stranger than a group of women without a single man to protect them, harrying the edges of the greatest tournament in Protectorate. No stranger than a band of marauders who, if the stories are true, are possessed of demons from the Western Realms, a harbinger of even greater evil that’s to come.”
That revelation sparks grim laughter in group. I glance around, my vision sharper now that my eyes have adjusted to the gloom. There are maybe twenty women in this cavern…and not only women. I see girls, too, some not even as old as I am. Their eyes are wide and searching as they stare at me, as if they can’t believe what they’re seeing, can’t believe that someone like me exists.
I know the feeling.
Before me, the leader of these women and girls tilts her head, eyeing me shrewdly.
“It seems we are at an impasse then, Talia of the Tenth. But we hold the strength here. We could kill you and drop your body at the gates of the First House, a testament to our demons’ strength, and none would be the wiser. Why shouldn’t we?”
I take in these words, but without the fear that should attend them. Because these women are hiding out in secret, brandishing long swords, their faces streaked with war paint. They’re terrorizing the encampments at the edges of the grandest tournament in the Protectorate, hiding beneath a roaring waterfall, and living free without the protection or aid of men. This isn’t merely unheard of in the Protectorate, it’s heresy. Blasphemy. Sacrilege.
And it’s not all that different from what I am doing.
“You could kill me,” I agree. “And dump my body to cause panic and unrest. But there wouldn’t be so much unrest as you maybe expect. Warriors are dying on the road to the Tournament of Gold, more every day. Darkness flows from thewest on the whispers of bards and the slithering tongues of creatures in the fire.”
Someone shifts in the back of the room. “What’s this you’ve heard?” comes the sharp demand, but I ignore it, my eyes only for the leader.
“And so, instead of killing me, you can tell me whyyou’vecome to Trilion, where all the eyes of the Protectorate are focused. You’re healthy, strong. Well fed.” Once again, I cast my gaze around the stone chamber, taking in each of them, their fierce expressions and set jaws. Then I nod to the pregnant warrior. “Safe enough in your center that you choose to bring life into this world. There’s no need for you to cause disruption at the Tournament of Gold, merely for the sport of looting. I don’t care if it was gold in that packet you smuggled out or something far more valuable. You don’t need it. Why are you here?”
The woman besides me grunts with appreciation. “Not completely an idiot, then,” she observes drily.
“My name is Syril,” the leader says, and I can finally place her unique accent. It’s the same resonant inflection that the tall warriors of the Eighth house used. This woman is from the western borders of the Protectorate. “Marta, beside you, is my second.”
She gestures around the cavern. “These women who live and hunt with me, we are the Savasci. Some of us came to this life by choice, eager to hunt and fight and stand beneath a sun that doesn’t seek to keep us in shadow. Some were pushed into the fold by the blows of our supposed betters and the damning silence of our own kind. But all of us value our lives, and we value the soul of this land. There are battles and then there are wars. We choose both carefully and with purpose.”
She leans forward, staring intently “How did you come to choose yours, Talia of the Tenth?”
Clearly, I wasn’t going to get any answers until I gave a few of my own.
For the second time since coming to Trilion, I tell the tale of my journey to the Tournament of Gold—or most of it. I speak of Gent, and Merritt, and the push for soldiers, honor, and even vengeance. But I don’t share the shame of being firstborn and female, not even to these women. They might guess my shame—might even understand it, living as they do. But that disgrace is still a guttering heap within me, and it will do me no good to stir those ashes here.