Beyond the Shadows
Page 22

Vi laughed and blinked her eyes to keep that bizarre flood down.
“You did marry in Waeddryner way,” Dehvi said. He tugged his own ear to indicate her earring. “But are not Waeddryner. Who is husband?”
Well, that helped with the crying. She cleared her throat. “Kylar Stern. Sort of.”
Dehvi’s eyebrows raised.
“It’s, uh, complicated.”
He shrugged and drew a sword. He touched the edge to make sure it was shielded, and they began sparring again. Vi sank into it, releasing her worries about the life she was fleeing from and the life she was fleeing to. Even as she lost, time and again feeling the dull poke of Dehvi’s sword, for the first time she had the sense that fighting was something she was really good at. When she countered a move that had caught her before, Dehvi might barely nod, but it was as good as effusive praise.
Dehvi shifted fighting styles no less than six times, and Vi sensed that he knew quite a few more, but the last one felt familiar. Vi was sunk so deep into her own body that she barely noticed that she’d spoken until she saw Dehvi miss a step. Her riposte brushed his stomach. She’d said two words: “You’re Durzo.” Her eyes told her it was impossible. Her knowledge of illusory masks told her it was impossible. But she knew, and his reaction confirmed it. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“It was the accent, wasn’t it? Always takes me a while to get it back. You got some Ymmuri uncle or something?” Dehvi said, his voice abruptly Cenarian.
“You fight like Kylar. What are you doing here?”
“You bonded Kylar with the most powerful surviving set of compulsive wedding rings in the world. Was that your own idea?”
“The Godking put a compulsion on me. Sister Ariel said ringing was the way to break it.”
“I thought Kylar was in love with that Elene girl. Why’d he marry you?”
Vi swallowed. “I sort of ringed him when he was unconscious.”
Dehvi’s expression went blank, and Vi had a sudden intuition that Durzo’s blank look was as indicative of pending violence as Hu Gibbet’s rages. Dehvi said softly, “I’m here to decide if I should kill you to free Kylar from the bond. You’re not making much of a case for yourself.”
She tossed her sword into the mud and shrugged. Fuck it. Kill me.
Dehvi-Durzo looked at her strangely, weighing her. “Have you ever felt that you were part of a grand design, Vi? That some benevolence was shaping your fate?”
“No,” Vi said.
Dehvi laughed. “Me neither. Goodbye, Vi. Watch out for that husband of yours; he’ll change you.” Then he left.
*     *     *
Solonariwan Tofusin stood on deck as the Modaini merchant ship lumbered toward Hokkai Harbor. It had been twelve years since he’d been to the Sethi capital, the city he had once called home. The sight of the two great chain towers guarding the entrance to the harbor, shining white in the autumn sun, filled his heart to bursting.
As they passed between the towers, as always, his appreciation of the seemingly delicate towers became awe. Built during the height of the Sethi Empire, the chain towers stood on narrow peninsulas. The base of each tower abutted the ocean so the chain couldn’t be attacked without taking the tower. The chains themselves lay under water except during maintenance and war. Then, the great teams of royal aurochs would winch the chains apart until they were at or barely below the water line at high tide and five to eight feet above it at low tide. During a battle, the aurochs would turn the chains. A single blade shaped like a shark tooth was attached to each link. Because of the half twist in the chain at each axle, a ship pressing against the mighty chains would find half the teeth chewing through his hull in each direction. It made the entire chain a saw that had destroyed more than one fleet, and deterred many more.
Above the sparkling blue waters—gods, Solon thought, the bay was a color to shame sapphires—Hokkai rose on its three hills. Above the ubiquitous docks already filling with wintering ships, the great city rose in thousands of whitewashed walls with red tile roofs. After the ugly hodgepodge of Cenarian architecture, it was a relief.
But the most beautiful sight of all, magnificent Whitecliff Castle reigning over the highest hill, filled Solon not only with awe but something akin to terror. Kaede, my love, do you hate me still?
After Khali and her Soulsworn had massacred everyone at Screaming Winds, Solon had had nothing to do. His friend Feir had left days before they knew of the danger. When the garrison commander ignored Dorian’s warnings that Khali was coming, Dorian disappeared. Solon had been the only man to escape. He’d found himself suddenly without ties to anything. It had been Dorian’s prophecy that had kept him from going home more than a decade ago. Solon had served Regnus Gyre as prophecy dictated—and failed. Regnus was dead. Solon had served for a decade, only to be dismissed the day before Regnus was murdered. Kaede was the Sethi empress now. She wasn’t likely to be happy to see Solon, but if she killed him, so much the better.
He labored with the sailors. He could have paid for his passage, but no Sethi worth his salt would sit in a cabin while others were hoisting sails, not even on a wide-bellied Modaini merchant ship. The Sethi preferred small, light ships. It meant their merchants had to make twice as many trips, but they made them twice as fast. A Sethi ship also had to ride a storm rather than plow through it, but the Sethi accepted the ocean’s whims and loved her and feared her equally.
As the ship came to rest in the bay, the Modaini merchant captain emerged from his cabin, his eyes and eyebrows freshly kohled. Solon always thought it gave the dark-haired Modaini a sinister aspect, but the captain was an affable man. He tossed Solon his pay and welcomed him to sail with him any time before going to speak with the harbormaster, who had rowed out to collect the harborage tax and inspect the cargo.
The harbormaster clambered up the webbing onto deck with the ease of a man who did it a dozen times a day. Like most Sethi, he wore no tunic until winter, and the sun had darkened his skin to a deep olive. He had a prominent nose, brown eyes, the figure-eight earring of Clan Hobashi, two silver rings on his right cheekbone, and two silver chains strung between the earring and cheek rings—an assistant to the harbormaster, then.
The man had barely spoken two words when he saw Solon and broke off in mid-sentence. Solon, still bare-chested as he had been for the whole trip, wasn’t as tanned as most Sethi. But despite his light tan and the white hair growing in to replace the black, he was unmistakably Sethi—and he wore no clan rings. The harbormaster’s long knife came out in a heartbeat. There were only two groups in Seth that wore no rings.
“What’s your name, clanless?”
The Modaini captain looked aghast. He had never made a trip to Seth and didn’t know their customs, which was why Solon had chosen his ship.
“Solon,” Solon said, not giving his clan name, as an exile wouldn’t.
The harbormaster grabbed Solon’s chin and looked closely at his cheeks and ears, first on one side, and then, frustrated, on the other. His eyebrows tightened in confusion. Not only were there no scars where the clan rings had been torn out, but there were no scars from where the rings had been put in.
“Raesh kodir Sethi?” he demanded. Are you not Sethi?