The Inadequate Heir, page 11
Keris bit his tongue to keep from commenting that he had actually attacked the Valcottans, knowing it would be wasted breath. Otis and the rest of the military men in the room would only find another excuse to send a raiding party over the border.
“They’ll expect it,” Captain Philo replied. “Better to wait a few days, then coordinate a strike. Perhaps by sea this time? There are a few villages close to the coast that would make prime targets.”
Civilians. Keris’s jaw tightened, knowing the raid would look the same as the scene he’d left behind at the farm. Bodies of people who’d never held a weapon in their lives. Bodies of people who only wanted to work the land and care for their families. Bodies to stack upon the thousands who’d already died in this sickening back-and-forth between nations that accomplished nothing.
What would it take to end it?
“Given they were likely retaliating against our recent raids, perhaps we’d be better served to strengthen our border patrols than to incite them further.”
Every man in the room went silent, all eyes fixing on Keris. His first inclination was to dismiss his own words, to back away from the situation, as he’d always done. But the Valcottan woman’s criticism was fresh in his head, so instead he found himself saying, “Our capital goes hungry for want of crops, and yet we put all our effort into killing Valcottan farmers rather than protecting our own and allowing them to farm the highest-yielding land in Maridrina.”
“We protect them by demonstrating to Valcotta that there are consequences to attacking,” Otis answered. “It’s how it’s done.”
“How it’s done,” Keris repeated. “Yet year after year, hundreds of farmers and their families die beneath Valcottan blades, which suggests the strategy is not particularly effective. Perhaps it’s time to try something different.”
“With respect, Your Highness,” one of the men said, “it might be better to leave military strategy to those with training and experience, especially given you’ve made it clear to us that you have no interest in involving yourself.”
Retorts rose and fell, but none reached Keris’s tongue, because he wasn’t entirely sure what he wished to accomplish other than to put an end to raiding, which wasn’t within his power. The men took his silence as agreement and returned to their debates over when and how to raid, drawing maps in front of them.
They wouldn’t hear anything he said because they wanted to raid. Wanted to leave death and destruction in their wake. For all they claimed to be acting in the interests of those they were supposed to protect, it wasn’t the truth. They were killers.
Keris stared into his glass, some trick of the light making the wine look like blood. His stomach twisted, bile burning in his throat.
You’re a killer, too.
On the ride back to Nerastis, Otis had filled his ears with platitudes. That Keris had had no choice but to kill the man. That if he hadn’t, he’d have been the one who wound up dead. And when none of that worked, that the Valcottan would’ve slaughtered the woman and her children. “You saved their lives,” Otis had repeated over and over. “You’re a hero.”
He was no one’s hero.
“It had to have been Zarrah Anaphora,” Otis said, drawing Keris’s attention back to the conversation. “There’s no one else in Nerastis with the authority to override Prince Bermin’s commands.”
Keris glanced at his brother. “There was a woman there?”
“She arrived at the head of another force while you were in the farmhouse,” Otis answered. “Likely as reinforcement, but the little chit turned coward at the sound of the patrol horns and called the retreat. Ran off with her tail between her legs.”
“Was she the only woman?” Unease rose in his chest. “Or were there others?”
“There were several women in her company.” His face was filled with disgust. “All of them dressed like men.”
“Repugnant practice,” one of the generals muttered, another pounding his fist against the table, declaring, “It’s unnatural.”
Keris was tempted to point out that Maridrina’s most recent victory against Ithicana was the result of a woman’s strategy but instead rose to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me, I find this conversation tremendously tedious.”
As he strode from the room, he heard Otis giving the other men final instructions for the raid, but then the sound of boots followed him, and a second later, his brother slung an arm around his shoulders. “I know it doesn’t feel this way, Keris, but what happened today was a good thing. You rode into battle and took down Bermin Anaphora, for fuck’s sake. The Empress’s son and one of the most formidable fighters in Nerastis—you! If you’d change your mind and allow me to share that information, the men in that room would revise their opinion of you.”
Keris struggled not to cast his eyes skyward, uninterested in being in the good graces of those idiots. “No.”
“At least in the report we send Father—”
“I’d prefer you refrained from mentioning my involvement.” Their father would be pleased, yes, but not out of pride. It would be because he’d see it as a victory against Keris in their endless battle of ideology.
Otis was silent, then muttered, “He’ll find out, regardless. Nerastis is full of the Magpie’s spies, and if I exclude that you were with me, he’ll know it was because you asked me to, which will be worse.”
Keris’s jaw clenched, knowing his brother was right and hating it. “Fine. Say I was there, but nothing else.”
“Let’s not dwell on that which cannot be changed.” Otis pulled him closer, then gave him a shove forward, making Keris stagger. “Let’s go find some entertainment in the city. A pretty girl to soothe your battered morals. I’ll arrange an escort.”
Keris opened his mouth to argue that he was in no mood for entertainment, but then shut it again. Escaping the palace right now would be impossible, but escaping a brothel … Keris forced a smile onto his face. “Lead the way.”
BOTH OF THEM kept their hoods up, though the dozen guards Otis had handpicked for their escort likely gave away their identities. Even so, Keris was happy enough to keep his face relatively unknown to the people of Nerastis, anonymity key to his ability to blend in among them.
They entered the brothel, the main level having been cleared of other guests so that the royals could have their pick of the girls. Spotting Aileena, Keris nodded at her. To her credit, the only surprise she showed was a slight raising of her eyebrows before she dropped into a deep curtsey and led him toward the stairs.
The air was heavy with scented oil and perfume, all to hide the smell of sweat and sex that permeated the popular establishment. The dim light provided by lamps fixed to the walls every dozen feet gleamed through glass of Valcottan make.
“I must say, this is an unexpected privilege,” Aileena murmured. “I had believed I displeased you during our last encounter.”
“The only one who did anything displeasing was me.” Keris shook his head when she opened the door to a room facing the street. “A quieter room, if you would.”
Shrugging one graceful shoulder, Aileena opened the door on the opposite side, revealing a room dominated by a large bed made up in lavender silk, the drapes a deeper shade of purple shot with silver thread. He smirked. “I thought you didn’t entertain Valcottans.”
She shrugged. “Business is business.”
“And a cock is a cock.” He went to the window and pulled aside the drapes to peer at the alley.
She gave a soft chuckle. “I wouldn’t say that, Your Highness.”
He turned around to find that she’d removed her dress, now wearing undergarments made of golden chains and glittering jewels. Gilt and glass but becoming nonetheless. Yet despite having tasted the pleasures Aileena had to offer, his cock did not so much as twitch at the sight, his mind’s eye filling with the memory of dark eyes, silken brown skin, and a body honed by a life spent working on her feet, not her back. But more than that, it was Valcotta’s words that filled his head, her fearless voicing of things that most were too terrified to even think. “Speaking of business, lovely, I’ve something of a proposition for you …”
“HAVE YOU LOST YOUR goddamned mind? The Empress left specific orders not to raid.”
Bermin crossed his arms, scowling. His throat was swollen and bruised from the battle. “Orders I don’t agree with. She seems content for Valcotta to look weak while Maridrina’s strength only grows.”
Zarrah ground her teeth. “It’s treason, cousin. The only thing saving you from execution is your title.”
Bermin rasped, “I’d rather die a thousand times than sacrifice my honor.”
“Honor, is it?” She spit the words in his face, fury rising in her chest. “What exactly did you prove today other than that we are as murderous as they are?”
Her cousin stared at her in confusion, which only fueled her anger.
“It wasn’t soldiers you attacked today; it was unarmed farmers and their families. Perhaps you might explain to me how slaughtering children proves your prowess as a warrior, for I say it does the opposite.”
Grimacing, Bermin wiped her spittle from his face. “What is wrong with you? Honor in vengeance. As it has always been.”
And for so long, she’d helped fuel the pattern. Had believed her actions righteous even as she’d condemned the Maridrinians. Except today as she’d looked at the bodies Bermin and his soldiers had left in their wake, she’d seen not righteous vengeance but coldblooded murder.
“You will abide, Your Highness. Or I will send you back to Pyrinat. It is your choice. Now get out.”
She twisted away, not watching him leave in favor of staring out the window at the city, shadows stretching long as the sun set. Her gaze moved east to the bluffs, the dam little more than a shadow in the distance. It drew her like a compulsion, beckoning her, because there was no one here who would understand. No one she could tell that a Maridrinian had put the spark of an idea in her head, and that against her will, it now blazed like a bonfire.
No one she could tell, except perhaps for the Maridrinian himself.
AFTER A FEW minutes of haggling on a rate, Keris had kissed the courtesan on the cheek and handed her triple what they’d agreed upon before slipping out the window into the Nerastis night.
He had no reason to believe Valcotta would be there. And yet his heart pounded rapidly as he exited the city limits and headed up the old dam, the roar of the waterfall growing with each step he drew closer.
Why are you here? a voice whispered from deep inside his head. What is it about this woman that causes you to risk life and limb to speak to her?
“She listens,” he replied to the voice. Except it was more than that. Valcotta didn’t just listen: she heard.
Stepping onto the top of the dam, he moved around the curved stone, coming to a stop at the edge of the spillway, his eyes drinking in the sight on the other side.
Moonlight gleamed off her dark hair, the short locks brushing her polished cheeks as the breeze blew against them. As always, she wore a thick leather bodice that was molded against her slender body, the same breeze toying with her hair blowing the loose fabric of her trousers taut against her curved thighs. Only her arms were bare, but the sight of them did more to him than the naked courtesan he’d left eating candies on the bed in the brothel.
“How did you know I’d be here?” she called across the rushing water.
His memory of her voice had been a pale comparison to the reality of it. A voice he could listen to for the rest of the night. And for many nights to come.
“I didn’t. Only hoped that fortune would favor me with your presence.”
She tilted her head. “You’re the first Maridrinian to ever call my presence a favor of fate.”
He smirked. “With a face like yours, I cry false. I’m sure you leave half-cocked Maridrinian corpses everywhere you go, Valcotta.”
She burst into laughter, easing the tension that had been seething through him since the raid. Calming his heart even as it made his pulse race.
“That is the worst compliment I’ve ever received in my life.”
Keris gave a deep bow, then motioned for her to step back. Clenching his teeth because he knew this would hurt, he sprinted to the edge and jumped. His boots made no sound as he landed, but the impact sent pain lancing through his shoulder, causing him to stumble and catch his balance against her shoulders.
Her skin was feverishly warm even through his gloves, and as Keris inhaled, the scent of lavender and leather and steel filled his nose. A warrior, yes, but also very much a woman, and they stood only inches apart, his hands gripping her shoulders and one of her hands pressed against his chest, holding him steady.
“You’re hurt.” She lowered her hand from his chest. “You shouldn’t have jumped.”
She was probably right, but the reward of being close to her felt very much worth the risk. “It’s nothing. An old injury come back for a visit.”
“There is little worse than uninvited guests.”
God help him, but he wanted to drown in her voice. “I hope you speak metaphorically of my shoulder and not literally of my presence on Valcottan soil, for if it is the latter, my feelings will be tremendously hurt. I might weep.”
She smiled. “Why are you here?”
“Why are you here?” When she shook her head, he sighed. “I was reminded today exactly why I didn’t want to come to Nerastis. Why I don’t wish to be in Maridrina at all, for that matter.”
“Then how fortunate you now stand on Valcottan soil.”
It was fortunate, though it had nothing to do with the soil. “I know a good many who’d debate that statement, but I’ll let you have it.”
“How magnanimous of you.” She tilted her head, quietly waiting for him to say more, and yet the truth of what had driven him to the dam stuck in his throat, not something he’d admit even to Otis. Especially not Otis, who hated the Valcottans so thoroughly for what they’d taken from him that he’d see Keris’s beliefs as a form of betrayal.
She’s different. The thought rippled through his head, though he had no reason to believe it. He barely knew this woman, this soldier. And yet he found himself saying, “You’ve witnessed the aftermath of raids against your people?”
She nodded. “Many times.”
“I have not. Had not, that is.”
“Until Bermin’s raid on that farm today.” She exhaled a long breath. “Was it as you expected?”
“Yes. And no.” Keris turned to the glittering city, the mist rising to dampen his hair and clothes. “The silence is different than other silences. It’s not the lack of words, but lack of motion. The still hearts and unmoving chests. The empty eyes.” Visions of the farmers at work juxtaposed with them lying in pieces across the farmyard and fields, and he blinked, trying to force them away. “One moment going about their lives, the next, their lives cut short. And for what?”
“Vengeance.” The word came swiftly from her lips, then she hesitated and added, “Retaliation for the loss of our people in the recent raid is the reason Bermin gave.”
A raid that the two of them had unwittingly caused.
“Yes, an eye for an eye. Yet those your people and mine would seek vengeance against care nothing for the lives taken.” He remembered how Otis had barely seemed to see the carnage around them. How the patrols who had come had been wild with anger over the sight and absent any grief for the loss.
Reaching down, he picked up a rock and threw it hard, swearing as pain lanced through his cursed shoulder. “Those in power don’t care in the way they should.”
“I care.” Her voice caught. “It breaks my heart every time I see it. I feel sick with guilt for not having prevented it. And …” Valcotta hesitated, then blurted out, “Have you ever had an idea lodge in your thoughts like a spark, and rather than your efforts extinguishing it, they only cause it to burst into flame? And for those flames to illuminate the world in such a way that you half wondered if you’d been blind before?”
“Yes.” Because her words had lit a spark in his own mind, though he hadn’t decided what, if anything, he intended to do about it.
Turning away from him, she sat, legs hanging over the edge of the dam. Keris lowered himself to the damp stone next to her, immediately feeling the waterfall’s mist dampen his trousers.
“My mother was murdered in front of me by Maridrinian raiders when I was fourteen. She didn’t even know how to hold a weapon, but she fought to save my life. They tied me to the cross holding her body and left me there to die.”
Keris’s stomach clenched. It was a cruelty his father had made popular in his younger years before he’d inherited the throne, and many of the soldiers in Nerastis continued to use it in honor of him. “I’m sorry.”
She didn’t respond, only sat in silence for a long time before finally saying, “I dedicated my life to becoming strong enough to fight back against men like the one who killed her. To protecting those who could not protect themselves. To defending Valcotta from those who’d harm her. And to the pursuit of vengeance. But along the way, I lost myself. Forgot myself. And all that remained was the need for vengeance.” She looked up at him. “That was the truth the spark revealed to me.”
“And now you seek to find yourself again?”
She nodded. “Except that when I do, I fear there will be no place for her in Nerastis. Or anywhere in Valcotta.”
That had always been the way he’d felt. As though his true self was so at odds with the man his father—and all of Maridrina—wanted him to be that it would be impossible for him to survive unless he escaped. That was why he’d been so desperate to flee to Harendell. Except his cowardice had consequences, his selfishness used as the linchpin in Lara’s and his father’s plans to invade Ithicana. And while he’d not caused the Endless War between Maridrina and Valcotta, in refusing to use his own power to try to mitigate the harm it caused his people, was he not complicit?
If you truly believe in something, you should be willing to suffer for it. To die for it …
