Kaden’s room was at the end of a long dark hall. It had a small door with wide hinges frosted in rust and a lock in the shape of a boar’s mouth. It didn’t budge when he tried to push it open, as though the wood was swollen with the dampness, so he put his shoulder into it. It gave and swung open, banging into the wall. He held out his hand for me to go in first. I stepped in, hardly seeing the surroundings, only hearing the weighty thunk of the door closing behind us. I heard Kaden step closer and felt the heat of his body close behind me. The taste of his mouth was still fresh on my lips.
“This is it,” he said simply, and I was grateful for the distraction. I looked around, finally taking in the expanse of the room.
“It’s bigger than I expected,” I said.
“A tower room,” he answered, as if that explained it, but the room was large, and the outer wall curved, so maybe it did. I walked farther inside, stepping onto a black fur rug, my bare feet finally getting some relief from the cold floor. I wiggled my toes deep into the soft fleece and then my eyes landed on a bed. A very small one shoved up against the wall. I noticed that everything, in fact, was shoved up against the wall in a dull, orderly procession the way a soldier who only cared about practicality might arrange things. Next to the bed was a wooden barrel piled with folded blankets, a large trunk, a cold hearth, an empty fuel bin, a chest, and a water basin, followed by a line of mismatched trappings leaning against the wall side by side—a broom, wooden practice swords, three iron rods, a tall candlestick, and the very beleaguered boots he had worn across the Cam Lanteux, still caked with mud. Hanging overhead was a crude wooden chandelier, the oil in its lanterns aged to a deep tawny yellow. But then I saw details that didn’t fit a soldier’s quarters, their smallness suddenly larger than the room itself.
Several books were stacked beneath his bed. More proof that he had lied about not reading. But it was the trinkets that made my throat swell. On the other side of the room, bits of blue and green colored glass strung on braided leather hung from a beam. Tucked in the corner was a chair, and lying in front of it was a chunky rug woven of colorful rags and uncarded wool. The gifts of the world. They come in many colors and strengths. Dihara’s rug. And then, lying in a shallow basket on the floor, were ribbons, a dozen at least of every color, painted with suns and stars and crescent moons. I walked closer and lifted one, letting the purple silk trail through my palm. I blinked back the sting in my eyes.
“They always sent me off with something when I left,” Kaden explained.
But not this last time. Only a curse from sweet, gentle Natiya, hoping that my horse would kick stones in his teeth. He would never be welcome in the vagabond camp again.
Dread swept over me. Something loomed, even for the vagabonds. I had seen it in Dihara’s eyes and felt it in the tremble of her hand on my cheek when she said good-bye. Turn your ear to the wind. Stand strong. Did she hear something whisper through the valley? I sensed it now, something creeping through the floors and walls, reaching up through pillars. An ending. Or maybe I was feeling my own mortality drawing near.
I heard Kaden’s footsteps behind me and then felt his hands on my waist. They slowly circled around, pulling me to him.
I drew in a sharp breath.
His lips brushed my shoulder. “Lia, finally we can…”
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t do this. I stepped away and whirled to face him.
He was smiling. His brows raised. A full, indulgent grin. He knew.
Guilt and anger stabbed me at the same time. I spun and walked to the trunk, throwing it open. The closest thing to a nightgown I could find was one of his oversized shirts. I snatched it out and turned. “And I’ll take the bed!” I threw one of the folded blankets at him.
He caught it, laughing. “Don’t be angry with me, Lia. Remember, I know the difference between a real kiss from you and one given only for the Komizar’s benefit.”
A real kiss. I couldn’t deny what our first kiss had been.
He dropped the blanket onto the rug. “Our kiss in the meadow set the bar high, though I admit I’ll always treasure this contrived one too.” He reached up and touched the corner of his mouth, teasing, as if he was savoring the memory.
I looked at him, his eyes still lit with mischief, and something tugged inside me. I saw someone who, for a moment, forgot that he was the Assassin, the one who had dragged me here.
“Why did you play along?” I asked.
His smile faded. “It’s been a long day. A hard day. I wanted to give you time. And maybe I hoped I wasn’t just the lesser evil of your options.”
He was perceptive, but not perceptive enough.
He pointed to the trunk. “If you dig a little deeper, you’ll find some woolen socks too.”
I dug to the bottom and found three pairs of long gray socks. He turned around for me, and I threw off the dress from hell that was lined with a thousand burrs. His shirt was warm and soft and fell to my knees, and his socks came up just past them.
“They look far better on you,” he said when he turned around. He dragged the fur rug over near the bed and grabbed another blanket from the barrel, throwing it on the rug beside the other one. I used the washbasin in the corner while he prepared for bed, throwing off belts and boots, and lighting a candle. He told me that the door in the corner led to a chamber closet. It was a small room and far from luxurious, but compared to my last few nights camping amid hundreds of soldiers with barely a shred of privacy, it was perfection. It had hooks for towels and even another of Dihara’s braided rugs that offered welcome warmth from the bare floor.
When I came out, he lowered the chandelier and extinguished the lanterns. The room flickered with the single golden candle, and I crawled into the narrow bed, staring at the ceiling above me dancing with long shadows. The wind howled outside and pounded at the wood shutters. I pulled the quilt higher around my chin. The emissary has a better chance of being alive at month’s end than you do.
I rolled over and curled into a ball. Kaden lay on his back on the rug with his arms crossed behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. His shoulders were bare, the blanket only covering half of his chest. I could see the scars that he said didn’t matter anymore but refused to talk about. I scooted closer to the edge of the bed.
“Tell me about the Sanctum, Kaden. Help me understand your world.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything. The governors, the brethren, the others who live here.”
He rolled over to face me, lifting up on one elbow. He told me the Sanctum was the innermost part of the city, a protected fortress set aside for the Council, who governed the kingdom of Venda. The Council comprised the Legion of Governors from the fourteen provinces of Venda, the ten Rahtan who were the Komizar’s elite guard, the five chievdars who oversaw the army, and the Komizar himself. Thirty in all.
“Are you part of the Rahtan?”
He nodded. “Me, Griz, Malich, and seven others.”
“What about Eben and Finch?”
“Eben’s being groomed and will be Rahtan one day. Finch is one of the first guard who aid the Rahtan, but when he’s not on duty, he lives outside of the Sanctum with his wife.”
“And the other Rahtan?”
“Four of them were there tonight, Jorik, Theron, Darius, and Gurtan. The others are off meeting their assigned duties. Rahtan means ‘to never fail.’ That’s what we’re charged with, never failing in our duty, and we never do.”
Except for me. I was his failure, unless I did prove to be of value to Venda, and it seemed that would be determined only by the Komizar.
“But does the Council really have any power?” I asked. “Doesn’t the Komizar ultimately decide everything?”
He rolled to his back, his hands lacing behind his head again. “Think of your own father’s cabinet. They advise him, present options, but doesn’t he have final say?”
I thought about it, but I wasn’t so sure. I had eavesdropped on cabinet meetings, boring affairs where decisions seemed already to be arrived at, cabinet members spewing off figures and facts in rote fashion. Rarely did a speech end in a question for my father to answer, and if he raised a question himself, the Viceregent, Chancellor, or some other cabinet member would step in and say they’d investigate further, and the meeting would move on.
“Does the Komizar have a wife? An heir?”
He grunted. “No wife, and if he has any children, they don’t carry his name. In Venda power passes through spilled blood, not the inherited kind.”
What the Komizar had told me was true. It was so foreign to the ways of Morrighan, and all the other kingdoms too.
“That makes no sense,” I said. “You mean the position of Komizar is open to anyone who kills him? What’s to stop someone on the Council from killing him and seizing the power himself?”
“It’s a dangerous position to hold. The minute you do, there’s a target on your back. Unless others see you as more valuable alive than dead, your chance of surviving until your next meal is slim. Few are willing to take the chance.”
“It seems a brutal way to govern.”
“It is. But it also means if you choose to lead, you must work very hard for Venda. And the Komizar does. For years in Venda there were bloodbaths. It takes a strong man to navigate that line and stay alive.”
“How does he manage it?”
“Better than past Komizars. That’s all that matters.”
He went on to tell me about the various provinces, some large, some small, each with its own unique features and people. The governorship was passed down in the same way, through challenges when reigning governors grew weak or lazy. Most of the governors he liked, a few he despised, and a few were among the weak and lazy who might not be long for this world. The governors were supposed to spend alternate months in their provinces and the city, though most preferred the Sanctum to their own fortresses and extended their stays.
If this bleak city was preferable to their homes, I could only wonder how much more dismal those places must be. I questioned him about the strange architecture I had seen so far. He said Venda was a city built on a fallen one, reusing the available resources of the ruins. “It was a great city once. We’re only just learning how great. Some think it held all the knowledge of the Ancients.”
That was a rather lofty claim for such a wretched city. “What makes you think so?” I asked.
He told me the Ancients had vast and elaborate temples built far belowground, though he wasn’t certain they had all always been below the surface and that maybe they had been buried by the devastation. He said every now and then, part of the city would collapse, literally falling in on itself when buried ruins below gave way. Sometimes that led to discoveries. He told me more about the many wings of the Sanctum and the paths that connected them. Sanctum Hall, the Tower quarters, and other meeting chambers were part of the main building, and the Council Wing was connected by tunnels or elevated walkways.
“But as large as the Sanctum may seem,” he said, “it’s only a small part of the city. The rest spreads for miles, and it continues to grow.”
I remembered my first glimpse of it, rising up in the distance like a black eyeless monster. Even then, I felt the dark desperation of its construction, as if there were no tomorrows.
“Is there any other way to get in besides the bridge we crossed?” I asked.
He paused, staring at the beams above him. He knew what I really wanted to learn—if there was any other way out.
“No,” he finally answered quietly. “There’s no other way until the river widens hundreds of miles south of us and the current calms. But there are creatures in those waters that few will risk encountering, even on a raft.” He rolled over and looked at me, lifting up on one arm. “Only the bridge, Lia.”
A bridge that required at least a hundred men to raise and lower.
Our gazes were fixed, and the unstated question—how do I get out of here?—hovered between us. I finally moved on, asking more about the bridge’s construction. It seemed a carefully wrought wonder, considering the hapless construction of the rest of the city.
He said the new bridge was finished two years ago. Before that there had only been a small and dangerous footbridge. Resources were limited in Venda, but the one thing they didn’t lack was rock, and within rock were metals. They had learned ways of mixing them that made the metal stronger and impervious to the constant mist of the river.
It was no small task, extracting metals from rock, and I was surprised that they seemed to be accomplished at it. I had noticed the strange glint in the bracelets that Calantha wore, like nothing I had ever seen before—a beautiful blue-black metal that shone bright against her pale wrists. The circles of metal jingled down her arms when she lifted the platter of bones, like bells ringing in the Sacrista in Terravin. Listen. The gods draw near. For a people who discounted the blessings of the gods, the hush that had fallen when Calantha spoke had been startlingly devout.
“Kaden,” I whispered, “when we were at dinner, and Calantha gave the blessing—you said it was an acknowledgment of sacrifice. What were the words? I understood a few, but some were new to me.”
“You understand more than I thought you did. You surprised everyone when you spoke tonight.”
“It shouldn’t have been a surprise after my tirade this morning.”
He grinned. “Speaking the choice words of Vendan is not the same thing as commanding the language.”
“But there are still words that are foreign to me. None of you ever said that blessing over a meal in all our way across the Cam Lanteux.”
“We’ve grown accustomed to living many different lives. Some of our ways we have to leave behind once we pass the borders of Venda.”
“Tell me Calantha’s prayer.”
He sat up and faced me. The glow of the candle lit one side of his face. “E cristav unter quiannad,” he said reverently. “A sacrifice ever remembered. Meunter ijotande. Never forgotten. Yaveen hal an ziadre. Another day we live.”
The words bored into me and all the ways I had misinterpreted the wearing of the bones.
“Food can be scarce in Venda,” he explained. “Especially in winter. The bones are a symbol of gratitude and a reminder that we live only by the sacrifice of even the smallest animal and by the combined sacrifices of many.”
Meunter ijotande. I was shamed at the beauty of every syllable of what I had once called barbarian grunts. It was a strange emotion to feel side by side with the bitterness of my captivity.
There were so many times I had looked at Kaden back in Terravin and wondered what storm was passing through his eyes. I knew what at least part of that storm was now.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“For what?”
“For not understanding.”
“Until you’ve lived here, how could you know? Venda is a different world.”
“There was one more word. Everyone said it together at the end. Paviamma.”
His expression changed, his eyes searching mine and warmth lighting them. “It means—” He shook his head. “There’s no direct translation in Morrighese for paviamma. It’s a word of tenderness and has many meanings, depending on how it’s used. Even the tone in which it’s said can change its meaning. Pavia, paviamas, paviamad, paviamande. Friendship, thankfulness, care, mercy, forgiveness, love.”
“It’s a beautiful word,” I whispered.
“Yes,” he agreed. I watched his chest rise in a deep breath. He hesitated, as if he wanted to say more, but then he lay back down and looked up at the rafters. “We should get some sleep. The Komizar expects to see us early in the morning. Was there anything else you wanted to know?”
The Komizar expects. The warmth that had filled the room was swept away with a single sentence, and I pulled the quilt closer. “No,” I whispered.
He reached out and snuffed the candle with his fingers.
But there was still a question stabbing me that I was afraid to ask. Would the Komizar really send Rafe home piece by piece? Deep down, I knew the answer. Vendans had cut a whole company of men to pieces, my own brother among them, a massacre, and the Komizar had praised them for it. You did well, Chievdar. What was one more emissary to him? All I could do was make sure he didn’t perceive him as something valuable to take from me.
I turned toward the wall, unable to sleep, listening to Kaden’s breathing and his restless turning. I wondered about his regret at the choices he had made and all the throats he hadn’t held back from slitting. How much easier his life would be now if he had slit mine as he was ordered to do. The wind picked up, whistling through crevices, and I nestled deeper under the blankets, wondering about my own regrets to come, for the things I was yet to do.
The room closed in, dark and black and far from everything I had ever known. I felt like a child again, wishing I could curl into my mother’s arms on a stormy night and she could whisper away my fears. The wind punched and thrashed against the shutters, unforgiving, and I felt something wet trickle down the side of my face. I reached up and swiped the salty wetness away.
How quaint.
How very quaint.
Like believing some things last forever.
A tear.
As if that could make a difference.