“I’ll be moving you to a room near my quarters tomorrow. Servants will come to gather your things. This will make it more convenient once the wedding is behind us.”
Convenient. My skin prickled. I knew what convenient meant.
It was strange that I should find comfort in Kaden’s quarters, but I did. I knew Kaden was at least trustworthy in certain things—even when he was stinking drunk. His quarters also had a secret passage. I doubted my new chamber would.
We left our horses with the guards on the outer edge of a thicket of trees, and the Komizar guided me through the woods. The trees were thin-trunked and close together, but I could see where a path had been worn through them. This was an oft-visited destination. He called it his own personal shortcut. After only a few minutes of walking, the line of trees stopped and we emerged on a bluff that overlooked a vast valley. I stared, not quite sure of what I was seeing.
“It’s magnificent, isn’t it?”
I looked at him, his face glowing. This was where his passion lay. His gaze floated over the valley. It was a city, but nothing like the one we had just left.
It was a city of soldiers. Thousands. He didn’t notice that I hadn’t answered him or even spoken, but he began systematically pointing out the regions of his city in listlike fashion.
There were the breeding grounds.
The smelteries.
The forges.
The armories.
The barracks.
The fletcher shops.
The cooperages.
The granaries.
The testing fields.
He went on and on.
Everything was plural.
The city stretched to the horizon.
I didn’t need to ask what it was for. Armies served only two purposes—to defend or attack. They weren’t here to defend anything. Nobody wanted into Venda. I tried to see just what was going on at the testing grounds, but it was too far away. I squinted and sighed. “All I see from here is a sprawling city. Can we get a closer look?”
He happily led me down a twisting trail to the valley floor. I heard the riotous ping of iron being hammered on anvils. Many anvils. The hum of the city surrounded me, a hum of singlemindedness and purpose. He walked me among the soldiers, and I saw their faces, boy and girl alike, many as young as Eben.
He walked briskly so I couldn’t stop to talk to any of them, but he made sure they knew who and what I was—a sign that the gods favored Venda. Their young faces turned in curiosity as we passed.
“There are so many,” I said stupidly, more to myself than the Komizar.
The immensity of it was staggering.
The patrols were being slaughtered. They were hiding something. Something important.
This. An army twice as large as any one kingdom’s.
He brought me to a level knoll that looked out over another stretch of valley. Trenches and ramparts surrounded it. I watched soldiers wheel large devices to the middle of the field, but the contraptions gave no hint of their purpose until they began using them. Arrows flew at dizzying rates, a blur in the air as a soldier turned a crank. A wall of arrows were all being shot by one man. It was like nothing I had ever seen.
After that came another testing field. And another. These weapons had a sophistication that didn’t match the spare, crude life of the Vendans.
He pulled me along in his zeal, and it was the last field that froze me with terror. “What are they?” I asked. I stared at golden striped horses twice the girth of other horses and at least twenty hands high, their black eyes wild and their nostrils breathing fierce steam into the cool air.
“Brezalots,” he answered. “They have nasty dispositions and aren’t good for riding, but they run straight and true when prodded. Their hide is thick. Nothing will stop them. Almost nothing.”
He hailed a soldier for a demonstration. The soldier strapped a small pack to the horse’s back, and then struck his hindquarters with a sharp prod. Blood spurted from his rump, but the horse ran straight and true, just as the Komizar said he would, and even though soldiers along the side of the field pelted him with arrows, they didn’t penetrate his thick hide, and he didn’t stop. He headed straight across the field, directly between hillocks of hay, and then there was a deafening noise and a blinding fireball. Burning hay rained down. Splinters of wood along with pieces of the horse thudded to the ground. It was like a pot of oil had exploded in a fire but with a thousand times more power. I blinked, too shocked to move.
“They’re unstoppable. One horse can take down a whole squad of men. It’s amazing what the right combination of ingredients can do. We call them our Death Steeds.”
Ice crept down my spine. “How did you learn the right combination of ingredients?” I asked.
“It was right beneath our noses all along.”
He didn’t need to say more. The purveyors of knowledge. That was why they skulked in the caverns and catacombs. They were unlocking the secrets of the Ancients and giving the Komizar the recipe for Morrighan’s destruction. What had he promised them in return for their services? Their own piece of Morrighan? Whatever the prize, great or small, it could never be worth the lives that would be lost.
* * *
We moved on to more fields, but now I hardly saw them, trying to imagine how any army could stand up to what I’d already seen. Finally we stood at the base of five towering granaries with walls of polished steel that were blinding in the sun. These were enormous stores of food on the edge of a city in want. “Why?” I asked.
“Great armies march on their stomachs. Men and horses must be fed. There’s almost enough here to march a hundred thousand soldiers.”
“March where?” I asked, hoping that by some grace of the gods, I could be wrong.
“Where do you think, Princess?” he asked. “Soon Vendans will no longer be at the mercy of Morrighan.”
“Half of these soldiers are children.”
“Young, but not children. Only the Morrighese have the luxury of pampering fresh-cheeked babies. Here they’re muscle and sweat like everyone else, doing their part to help feed a future for us all.”
“But the loss. You’ll still lose people,” I said. “Especially the young ones.”
“Probably half of them. But the one thing Venda doesn’t lack is people. When they die, they’ll be glad for the cause, and there are always more to replace them.”
I stood there, stunned, taking in the enormity of his plans. I had guessed they were planning something. An attack on an outpost. Something. But not this.
I searched for something to say, but I knew my plea was futile before it ever left my tongue. Still, the words spilled out, weak and already vanquished. “I might be able to plead with my father and the other kingdoms. I’ve seen how Venda struggles. I could convince them. There’s fertile land in the Cam Lanteux. I know I could find a way to make them let you settle it. There’s good land to farm. Enough for all of you to—”
“You, plead with anyone? You’re a hated enemy of two kingdoms now, and even if you could convince them, I have far greater aspirations than to be dragged by a yoke and harness. What is a Komizar without a kingdom to rule? Or many kingdoms? No, you’ll plead for nothing.”
I grabbed his arms, forcing him to look at me. “It doesn’t have to be this way between the kingdoms.”
A faint smile lit his face. “Yes, my princess, it does. It is how it’s always been and always will be, only now it will be us wielding power over them.”
He pulled away from my grip, and his gaze returned to his city, his chest puffing, his stature growing before my eyes. “It’s my turn now to sit on a golden throne in Morrighan and dine on sweet grapes in winter. And if any royals survive our conquest, it will give me great pleasure to lock them up on this side of hell to fight over roaches and rats to fill their bellies.”
I stared at the consuming power glistening in his eyes. It pumped through his veins instead of blood, and beat in his chest instead of a heart. My plea for compromise was babble to his ears, a language long erased from his memory.
“Well?” he asked.
A terrible greatness rolled across the land.
A new terrible greatness.
I said the only thing I could say. What I knew he wanted to hear. “You’ve thought of everything, sher Komizar. I’m impressed.”
And in a dark and frightening way, I was.