The Lioness

Dar gestured around the blackened ruin of what had once been the encampment of the small tribe of Wilder Elves, a winter home by the river. Looking at him standing in the ruin, Kerian heard, faint, the echoes of that killing, as though the cries of the slaughtered yet clung to the woodland and the hills beyond.

“There’s no one here but me now.”

Ayensha! Ah, gods! Bueren Rose!

“No,” he said, understanding her frantic glances around, but the sound was a growling, hardly a word. “They’re not there. My wife survived the burning, and Bueren Rose. A few others, too. They are off and away, gone to be with your outlaws.”

His hand shot out, grabbing her wrist with grinding strength. She did not pull away or force him to disengage. Dar bent She watched, fascinated, as he ran his fingers through ash and soot like a painter’s brush on a palette. He rose again, making one stroke and then another; he painted her face in patterns of soot.

Finger pressing the flesh of her face roughly, he made a mask of darkness on her, and he said, “Do you remember, Kerianseray? Or have you so far fallen that you’ve forgotten how the Wilder Folk mourn? Do you remember how to paint your sorrow on your face?”

He blackened her brow. Kerian let him. He smudged her temples. He ran a sooty thumb down her nose, and he smeared her chin with the heel of his hand. His teeth flashing in a terrible grin, he darkened her cheeks, and when he was done, he flung back his head and he raised his fists as though to threaten the sky.

“They are dead!” he shouted, to her, to the forest, to the sky where people used to turn their faces and imagine they could speak with gods. “They are dead! The children! The mothers! The fathers!”

As he turned, she saw that the strength had run out of him with the shouting. Kerian leaped. She caught him before his knees gave way. He bore them both to the ground, but she dropped first to her knees and so was able to lower him gently.

She knew how to mourn. Though she had not practiced the Wilder mourning in many long years, she had not forgotten how to grieve. They wept the grief-storm, brother and sister. They washed away all the colors of sorrow with their tears. One wept for all the people he knew, the other for all the people she would never know.

In the end, with night falling, they began to talk. Iydahar spoke of his rage, while Kerian spoke of her mission. He told her how well and deeply he hated the Knights, how little love he had for her king.

“The boy who sold his throne. For what? A year or two to play at being king?”

Anger rose in her, flushing her cheeks till then cool with sorrow. “No, Dar, don’t speak of Gilthas that way. He’s—”

His expression grew hard. It was as though a door had suddenly swung shut. “Ah, you, Keri. No one could miss the secret you hold, girl. It’s all over you, all the time. So you keep his bed warm, do you? Aye, well,” he growled bitterly, “good for the little king, then. If he doesn’t get to rule or wield armies, he gets some of the privileges and rights of kings. “

Coldly, she said, “What are you going to call me now, Dar? The king’s whore?”

Iydahar regarded her, hard from narrowed eyes. “No one’s calling you his wife, are they? No one’s looking at you in the streets and naming you his queen. Is he ashamed of his Wilder Elf woman?”

The loud crack of her palm across his face startled them both. He sat gaping. She leaped to her feet, cheeks flaming. The print of her hand showed white where Dar’s grief-paint still clung, red on the naked flesh.

Though she had planned to tell her brother about her plans for a resistance, counted on it, Kerian realized she could not. She did not dare ask him to join a rebellion intended to buy time for a king he despised.

“Dar, is there anything I can do here?”

He shook his head. “I’m not staying.”

“What about Ayensha?”

His eyes flashed, anger and pain. “She thinks she’s found a cause.” He sneered the word. “Go look for her with her uncle and your outlaws.”

Kerian looked around at the scorched earth, the charnel pit, the wolves padding. Softly, night crept down, the howl of the sky turned deeply blue and the pale sliver of the new moon showed in the east, high beyond the tops of the trees. Dar rose. He looked at her long, and she felt a hollowness in her heart, feeling his eyes on her, his distant gaze. He was already thinking about his path away from this black and burned place.

“You’re going?” she asked.

“Away.”

Kerian heard that in silence, then she said, “Don’t go south, Dar. There are draconians there. Don’t go west, they hold every road, and the Knights are with them.”

He didn’t thank her for her warning, and she didn’t wait to hear more from him. She rose and left him. She did not expect to see him again.

Chapter Seventeen

“Fool”