Even the statues seemed to stare at the three of them, long after they’d passed beyond the range of their marble eyes: tall savages from the uncivilized, monster-infested southern fjords where not even the mystical Everkin dared tread for fear of falling prey to creatures from the depths of the world’s nightmares.
“You are frightening them for no reason. Cease, Kinos.” Her mother’s copper eyes narrowed as she shifted her ire upward. “And you. Take not too much of your bearing from your brazen sire. You are my daughter, and I will not let you bring shame upon our foremothers by acting a fool.”
Her father continued to grin in the way he always did when heckling his promise, putting a slight hop in his step to jostle the child perched on his broad shoulders as a horse would. And he carried right along, speaking in the language of the sandmen of the East. The foreign lilt of the words spilling from his mouth garnered wide-eyed, repulsed stares from everyone they passed in the bustling streets.
“Why bother to teach our child the land’s words, if we do not make her use them? She shall soon forget how to speak of all things, given the Aushani manner.”
Needing both hands to do so, the child gripped her father’s red topknot and pulled his head back to grind her nose into his forehead. Indignant, she growled back in the same tongue, “I shall not! I remember all the words of all the stories in all the lands we have walked! I shall speak them as they were told to me forever!”
Kinos grinned at his promise as he took back control of his braid by rolling their daughter off his shoulders and onto the ground. With a stubborn stomp in her step, the girl kept between the two of them, hands wrapped around the rope that held her very first spear fastened to her back. Its tip was only sharpened slate, not steel, but it was hers, and she’d been using it to help hunt their food for weeks.
Quite successfully, if she was brave enough to say so in front of her mother.
“Hear you this, Elpis?” The massive man chuckled, the sound causing even more alarm among the villagers than his speaking in a language considered too primitive to be uttered. “Our child is a story-keeper. She favors my kin.”
Elpis remained irritated. “By the cliffs of my birth, I will shave your crotch and your arse as you sleep if you offend the ones who have brought us here.”
The man cleared his throat and prodded their daughter in the shoulder. “Sing your mother the song, in our tongue. It shall calm her down.”
She peered up at her father, but it took a few moments to frame her response in the language requested. “Which one? There are dozens.”
Abruptly, Elpis stepped into her path. She slammed against the woman’s long legs and staggered backwards. Kinos caught his daughter by the hood with one hand, pinning her to his side. Peeking around her mother’s drake scale cloak, the girl searched the crowd for what brought her parents to a halt.
The village was like many they passed through since leaving the Shatsan-dalai. Aushani didn’t seem to build their outer settlements for defense, but surrounded them with stone aqueducts that guided waters from distant rivers or deep wells into grand fountains around which all their activity centered. They had reached this village’s fountain, a massive scalloped pool of bone and blue tiles at the center of which stood a white marble effigy of their leader, the Divine King.
The girl looked the statue over, from where its sandaled feet stood submerged in the pool, to its shoulders where a cape of water sprung to fill it, to its head adorned with the seven-pointed crown that was comically austere compared to everything else. As a statue, it was twice as large as the ones Klein erected of its leader, the Grand Matron, though she only vaguely remembered those. The Grand Matron’s scowling face was nowhere near as frequent a sight as effigies of the Divine King were in Aushan.
Atop every herm sat a bust of the Divine King, and every sheriff’s office had at least one regal portrait or sculpted bust of him on the wall. His face was embossed on every coin, his chimera seal on every bounty poster, and his royal cypher etched into the right pauldron of every Aushani soldier blocking them from continuing on through the fountain plaza.
“Aushan has no need of sellswords, Rabani,” said the man who looked like the one in charge. The helm cradled beneath his left arm had scarlet plumes—leaders usually wore feathered caps, according to her parents. They weren’t often wrong about those things. “Turn—”
A brown-haired Aushani trotted a dapple gray gelding right behind the line of soldiers, and with a click of his tongue, the horse butted the leader in the spine. Though the man took a slight step forward, he never took his eyes off her mother’s face.
“I requested them personally, Captain Felid’rael,” said the horseman, barely concealing a grin as the soldier finally looked over his shoulder at him. “These are the Ravens of Zorasi, and they are under the auspices of House Asakari for the foreseeable future.”
The soldier seemed surprised by the information. “The Ravens of Zorasi are a company of mercenaries. These are but two, and with a child.”
“We are a family of mercenaries,” said Elpis, speaking in the common tongue of Aushan as though born within the Divine Kingdom. “‘Company’ is the word your kind chose for us. It is not what we call ourselves, but it is useful in negotiating our pay.”
Though the captain sneered in incredulity, those flanking him took hesitant steps back. Many dropped their hands to their weapons, though none of their blades were long enough to come inside her parents’ guard. One quivered so nervously in his armor, the buckles keeping his half cloak fastened scratched against the plate, and the tone made her wince.
The girl glanced up at her father. His face was as stone and his eyes shadowed by dark red brows, the expression he always wore when he thought he was going to have to kill someone. She looked at her mother, who was smirking—also the same expression as when she was about to attack someone for being foolish.
An irate voice shattered the tension in the air. “Stathis! Get your perfumed arse off that horse and get over here!”
Every single soldier withered at the sound as though their own mothers were scolding them. Even the horseman’s face fell slightly. He dismounted and ordered the soldiers off, and each quickly dispersed to the corners of the hexagonal plaza, with one of them towing the gelding along by the reins. Her parents kept still, dividing up the plaza between them in case of an ambush. Her mother’s hand appeared at the small of her back, snapping once to get her daughter’s attention before signing instructions.
Speak not. Take horse to Klein if battle.
She grumbled, then felt pressure on her shoulder from her father’s hand, warning her against disobedience. She grumbled again, and the pressure became a sharp pain. With a sneer, she nodded, and his hand settled once more on the weighted club hanging on his belt.
A thin Human woman with a long, thick braid draped over her shoulder stormed across the breadth of the plaza like a wraith wrapped in white robes. She even made it a point to walk straight through the lower tier of the fountain, kicking up water and launching a cascade of admonishing whispers through the crowd. Her dark brown hair was shot through with gray, and her brows were completely white, though she wasn’t quite as wrinkled as a crone yet.
The way she sneered at everything around her made her seem like a wicked one, though.
The horseman executed a polite bow as the woman stomped to a halt in front of him. “Sophist Elketos! I see you received my message.”
“You’re not paying me enough to nursemaid savages,” the woman snarled, balling up one fist on her hip and wagging the index finger of the other right beneath his nose. “Yevena retained me to tutor Paion, not change the diaper of some camp follower’s bastard.”
“Paion is happily ensconced within the University of Letters, due to your wonderful and all-encompassing lessons, and he seems so pleased with the curriculum and company he won’t be back at the estate until summer,” said Stathis, his grin from earlier returning. “Permit me to introduce you to House Asakari’s newly arrived retainers, the Ravens of Zorasi.”
The Sophist screwed herself up to her full height—the crown of her head barely rose above her mother’s elbow—and stomped a foot as she turned around. Narrow pale brown eyes regarded her parents in turn, and she remained silent for almost a minute, scanning the faces of those gathering all around the plaza.
Surprisingly, she spoke in the tongue of the sandmen, though her words had a pronounced Aushani lilt. “Foolish as a snake on the sand at night, coming unto this place, speaking these words. The peasants here have seen nothing beyond their borders for generations.”
Her mother’s grin became an amused one as she answered in the same language. “Perhaps your kind should encourage its youth to travel beyond the steps of their mothers.”
“These fools can barely find the Dawn’s Herald without someone like me.” The Sophist resumed speaking in Aushani. “You said there was a child, Stathis. Where is it?”
The horseman shrugged. “Your antics probably scared her off.” He chuckled. “Or it may have been your face. You look as though you just finished sucking a lemon.”
“Miracle Paion has any aptitude for decorum at all, given his sire’s ineptitudes,” grunted the Sophist. She dropped into a squat and peered past her mother’s kneecaps. “Found it! Quiet, for a giant.”
The girl stepped out from between her parents, finally getting a clear view of the plaza. Near a hundred people clustered and whispered at the far three sides, and more soldiers than stopped them were filtering through the crowd towards the front. Stathis’s horse was still in the hands of the soldier who led it off to the side, well within her ability to sprint and mount it before any of them could intervene.
She held her tongue as the Sophist stood and stared at her. “I’m supposed to make sure you don’t wind up as dim as the dirt under a rock, I take it.”
After receiving the confirmation sign from her mother, she asked, “Why?”
“Because this pompous tit,” the Sophist flung her hand backward and struck Stathis on the sleeve, “is paying me more than well enough.”
She didn’t know enough Aushani words to make long sentences, and settled on rephrasing the Sophist’s own. “How well is more than well enough?”
“Nowhere near as much as your parents will make, being chess pieces for the stupid war game the King’s set up in the Fields.”
“Why is war a game here?”
A grin tugged at the corners of the Sophist’s mouth. “Because no one has the balls to attack Aushan openly.”
“Why not attack in secret?”
“Why not, indeed.” The Sophist strode forward and bent at the waist to stand eye-to-eye with her. “What’s your name?”
After glancing at each of her parents, she answered, “I am Eleri, birthed from Elpis, and daughter of the Ravens.”
“Eleri, birthed from Elpis, and daughter of the Ravens.” The woman planted her fists on her hips and nodded. “Let’s see how stupid you can make this lot look by the time I’m done with you.”