Warrior of the World Read online

  Warrior of the World

  Books by Jeffe Kennedy

  The Master of the Opera

  The Twelve Kingdoms

  The Mark of the Tala

  The Tears of the Rose

  The Talon of the Hawk

  The Uncharted Realms

  The Pages of the Mind

  The Edge of the Blade

  The Chronicles of Dasnaria

  Prisoner of the Crown

  Exile of the Seas

  Warrior of the World

  Table of Contents

  Books by Jeffe Kennedy

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  ~ 1 ~

  ~ 2 ~

  ~ 3 ~

  ~ 4 ~

  ~ 5 ~

  ~ 6 ~

  ~ 7 ~

  ~ 8 ~

  ~ 9 ~

  ~ 10 ~

  ~ 11 ~

  ~ 12 ~

  ~ 13 ~

  ~ 14 ~

  ~ 15 ~

  ~ 16 ~

  ~ 17 ~

  ~ 18 ~

  ~ 19 ~

  ~ 20 ~

  ~ 21 ~

  ~ 22 ~

  ~ 23 ~

  ~ 24 ~

  ~ 25 ~

  ~ 26 ~

  ~ Epilogue ~

  About the Author

  Teaser Chapter

  Warrior of the World

  Jeffe Kennedy

  REBEL BASE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Rebel Base Books are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2019 by Jeffe Kennedy

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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  Kensington Publishing Corp.

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  The RB logo is a trademark of Kensington Publishing Corp.

  First Electronic Edition: January 2019

  ISBN-13: 978-1-63573-042-5 (ebook)

  ISBN-10: 1-63573-042-2 (ebook)

  First Print Edition: January 2019

  ISBN-13: 978-1-63573-045-6

  ISBN-10: 1-63573-045-7

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  For Sarah,

  Who talked me out of my tree and

  is the reason this particular story exists.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to the folks who read this story with a short turn-around and gave me terrific insights on how to round off this trilogy: Marcella Burnard, Jim Sorenson, and Sage Walker.

  A huge thank you to Lauren Vassallo, Communications Manager at Rebel Base Books, for her inventive and tireless marketing support—and for telling me the books made her cry and miss her subway stop.

  Thanks to Tara Gavin for acquiring this trilogy and giving me the opportunity to tell this particular side-tale, and to all the Rebel Base Team. Appreciation and gratitude to Rebecca Cremonese for pulling miracles out of the fire time and again. Yes, I know that’s a mixed metaphor. I dare you to fix it.

  Hello and thanks to all the folks who hang in the SFWA Slack chat room. You all brighten my days, and your friendship and encouragement mean everything.

  Thanks to my mom, who tries really hard not to text me when she knows I’m writing. Hooray for new hips!

  Shout out to Minerva Spencer for fantastic support on this trilogy, too. And, while I’m at it, the Land of Enchantment Romance Authors (LERA) for always applauding.

  Hugs, kisses, and martinis to Sarah Younger: fantastic agent, cheerleader, and dispenser of publishing wisdom. You’re the best!

  Love to Carien, who always has the best snark for my whining – and who also cried at these books.

  And to David, first and last, who is always there.

  Prologue

  I was an Imperial Princess of Dasnaria and I grew up in paradise.

  Tropically warm, lushly beautiful, replete with luxury, my childhood world was without flaw. My least whim was met with immediate indulgence, served instantly and with smiles of delight. My siblings and I spent our days in play, nothing ever asked or expected of us.

  Until the day everything was demanded—and taken—from me.

  Only then did I finally see our paradise for what it was, how deliberately designed to mold and shape us. A breeding ground for luxurious accessories. To create a work of art, you grow her in an environment of elegance and beauty. To make her soft and lusciously accommodating, you surround her with delicacies and everything delightful. And you don’t educate her in anything but being pleasing.

  Education leads to critical thinking, not a desirable trait in a princess of Dasnaria, thus I was protected from anything that might taint the virginity of my mind as well as my body.

  Because I’d understood so little of the world outside, when my time came to be plucked from the garden, when the snip of the shears severed me from all I’d known, the injury came as a shock so devastating that I had no ability to even understand what it meant, much less summon the will to resist and overcome. Which, I’ve also come to realize over time, was also a part of the deliberate design.

  I wish I could take credit for extracting myself from the brutal horror of the marriage they forced me into, but I can’t. If not for my baby brother Harlan, I would’ve continued through the harsh winter of my wedding journey, my physical and emotional injuries muted by the numbing teas and smoke they supplied me with, and inevitably to worse torture and eventual death.

  But Harlan broke me out and we escaped. Miraculously, I even made it onto a sailing ship, bound for a greater world I knew nothing about, while Harlan remained behind, a captive of our ruthless family.

  Even then, I likely couldn’t have survived on my own. Full of fear and ignorance, I barely left my cabin, having no idea what I might do with myself. Until Kaja, Warrior Priestess of Danu, coaxed and then forced me to face my future. She taught me to defend myself. She gave me a disguise and vows of chastity and silence to protect me from discovery.

  She gave me my self back again.

  And Ochieng… He gave me stories, a home, and my heart’s desire.

  Without these people, I couldn’t have survived. But I can’t be the helpless kept princess all my life. At some point I need to find the warrior in myself.

  If only I knew how.

  ~ 1 ~

  Despite the rain, I went to see the elephants. Especially Efe.

  In the endless downpour, it hardly mattered what I put on. Whatever it was became soaked within moments. I’d finally adopted the habit of the N
yamburans, wearing light fabrics that at least didn’t hang on me like iron manacles with the weight of all that water. When I returned to the house, I’d then hang them next to one of the fired clay stoves, switching them out for another set.

  It gave me an excuse to sit quietly and try to recover my strength—and wind—while hanging onto my pride. Perhaps I fooled no one with my attentiveness to drying my clothes.

  Especially as nothing ever seemed to dry completely. Even Ochieng’s elaborate descriptions hadn’t done the rainy season justice. It poured nonstop, day and night. Below the granite butte the D’tiembo house perched upon, the river swelled until it seemed to fill the entire valley. No longer shining bright like a polished sword, it lay gray and sullen, deceptively still—until debris sweeping downstream revealed the lethal currents that tumbled them past, a great beast masticating its treasures as it carried them away.

  Though I felt naked without my leathers, I’d given them up as too impractical in the pervasive damp. I’d even stopped wearing the vambraces, which had always been more to cover up the scars on my wrists from my wedding bracelets. I wouldn’t say I no longer cared who saw them, but they were certainly no longer secret. All the D’tiembos knew what I came from and what had happened to me. Another reason not to bother with pride, though I couldn’t seem to help myself.

  There seemed to be very little I could control about myself. I hadn’t picked up my knives and sword since I’d returned either.

  I didn’t trust myself with a sharp weapon.

  Slipping out of my little room, I left the sodden curtains hanging in place instead of tying them back, so it wouldn’t be obvious I wasn’t within. Though I’d given up my vow of silence—and of chastity, though I’d yet to do anything there beyond giving up the silver disk of the promise—I didn’t often feel like talking to people. You’d think I’d have a lot of words dammed up inside me, like the debris in the river fighting to race to the sea, but once I’d told Ochieng my story, I didn’t seem to have much left to say.

  Or, more precisely, nothing I felt comfortable articulating. Back to that pride. The legacy of my mother, a curse I perversely treasured for its cool familiarity.

  I’d killed Rodolf, my now late husband, in a blur of blood and violence I barely remembered. But that hadn’t killed the hatred he’d planted in me. As my body healed from that brutal battle, all of my fear and pain gained life again, too. Sometimes it overcame me, the rage-terror, the many-faced emotion that flashed like a fire no amount of rain could quench. Sometimes I thought another person lived inside me. Perhaps Imperial Princess Jenna, daughter of Empress Hulda, the most ruthless bitch in the Dasnarian Empire, hadn’t become Ivariel. I might have created Ivariel, Warrior Priestess of Danu, but she only provided a calm shell over the dark face of Jenna.

  Jenna, who couldn’t seem to stop hating, and whom I couldn’t seem to control.

  The antechamber was empty, as usual, since my room sat on a less-frequented edge of the many-tiered house, and I moved silently through it and down the woven grass steps few people besides me used, suppressing a groan at the aching protest of my body. Amazing how simple movements like going down steps made my abdomen protest and my always-strong legs tremble with weakness. I thought I’d endured pain before and understood it. Had conquered it.

  But those had been mostly surface pains—from flogging and my late husband’s rough attentions. Mostly skin deep, except in my woman’s passage, which was meant to open to the outside anyway. These wounds had penetrated through layers of tissue and muscle and organs, deep inside me, hindering my smallest movements. Pointed reminders that I should be dead.

  With determination, ignoring the pain, I descended the slow steps to the terrace. When I’d arrived, in the dry season, the large D’tiembo clan had spent most of their time on the big, low-walled terrace that overlooked the river. These days it mostly held puddles of rainwater. One of my young students, Ayela, and her brother, Femi, used long-handled tools to push water that collected in the corners and deeper indentations over the edge of the terrace. It seemed like an exercise in futility to me, but all the kids took turns doing it. Maybe to keep them occupied as much as anything.

  Ayela spotted me and waved, a cautious gesture, her normal ebullience carefully muted. They were all careful with me. I could hardly blame them. She and my other students were anxious, I knew, to resume lessons with me. I also knew their parents had spoken firmly with them that they should not ask me, that I needed time to get strong again. The first eighteen years of my life had been spent in the seraglio of the Imperial Palace where the ladies all honed eavesdropping to a fine art. The D’tiembos with their curtain walls and privacy that existed only via courtesy could hardly keep secrets from me.

  I smiled at Ayela, but quickly turned away so she wouldn’t get the wrong idea. If only I could go down the cliff steps. However—exactly as Ochieng had predicted—the lower levels had been swept away, even before I managed to escape my sickbed for the first time. So, I went around, skirting the edge of the terrace rather than going through the house, making my way to the back side, where the covered steps descended to the storehouses.

  “Ivariel.” Ochieng stepped out from a room I passed, his lean face smooth, his dark eyes full of concern. “Going to visit the elephants?” he asked.

  I nodded, then remembered I should give him words, since he seemed to crave them from me. “Yes. Is that all right?”

  A slight line formed between his brows. “Of course. This is your home. You may do anything you wish. I simply thought to offer to go with you.”

  “You don’t have to,” I replied, my gaze going to the opening leading to the steps. I’d been so close. “I’m sure you have other things to do.”

  He laughed, though not in a genuine way. “It’s the rainy season. Nobody has anything to do that they haven’t done dozens of times already. I’ll go with you.”

  Because it felt churlish and ungenerous of me to refuse, I nodded and continued walking, Ochieng falling in beside me. “How are you feeling today?” he asked me.

  I never knew how to answer this question. “Better,” I said, as I usually did. Not an untruth—I certainly felt better than I had when I first awoke in the D’tiembo home, swathed in bandages, with no idea why I was there instead of dead. One day I wanted to feel again as I had before my eighteenth birthday, before any of this occurred. I missed feeling limber, vital, and beautiful. I hadn’t appreciated what a blessing those things were when I had them. Now that I would value them as precious gifts, I suspected I’d lost those, too, forever.

  “You’re moving less stiffly,” Ochieng observed. We reached the steps going down the rock face, and I clung to the hand rail. At least here the grass roof kept most of the rain off. The steps, also woven of dried and cured grasses, acted like a sieve, so water didn’t collect on them. They gave slightly under our weight, though, which made my internal muscles clench painfully as they worked to keep me balanced. Keenly aware that Ochieng watched me, I tried my best not to show it.

  He, his mother, Zalaika, and all the D’tiembo clan—but mostly those two—had taken great care of me, nursing me back to health. I had nothing but gratitude for their diligence and yet… Perhaps I was not a person who did gratitude well.

  “I was thinking,” Ochieng continued, moving far slower than his usual athletic speed, pacing himself to match my measured progress, “that it might be good for you to practice your martial forms again. Easy movements, to build up your strength.” And confidence, he didn’t say, but my mind supplied the words.

  “They’re really just dances,” I replied, aware of the flat resistance in my voice. “I told you that. I’m a dancer, nothing more. Kaja—” My voice broke on her name. I’d found out about Kaja’s death only moments before the warning arrived, on the same caravan, as if they carried all the terrible news in one of their wagons, that my late husband’s men had followed me all the way to Nyam
bura. I hadn’t had time to properly mourn her, wasn’t even sure what form that might take. Losing her felt like yet another deep-dwelling wound, one that ached, swamping me with misery at odd times.

  Ochieng set a hand on the small of my back, a brief touch, and I realized I’d stopped. “We could visit the elephants later,” he said softly.

  “No.” I resumed walking, ignoring his almost inaudible sigh for my stubbornness. I might’ve lied when I said “better.” Yesterday’s descent had been easier than today’s so far. It made no sense, why some days my body hurt more than others. But ever since I first made it down the steps to see Efe, Violet, and the other elephants, I’d made sure to go every day. Even if it ended up being the only thing I did all day. Which it often was, particularly after the long ascent. “Anyway, I know I told you—they’re not really martial forms. Kaja taught me to hold a weapon while I did the dances I already knew, because she didn’t have time to teach me the real stuff. I’m not really a Warrior Priestess of Danu at all. Nothing like she was.”

  He let that go, as he had every time I brought it up. “Dances, then. Maybe it’s time to try those.”

  “It’s too rainy.”

  “We can make a space inside.”

  We finally reached the storehouse level, where the rain sheeted off the grass sheaves at the top of the immense three-story structure. People waved to us and called greetings. They tended the small fires distributed throughout to keep the damp from setting into the stored goods. Hart, who’d traveled on the Robin with us from Ehas, called a hello to me as we passed. He was using a long pick to sift the big piles of hay, airing the stuff so it didn’t mold. Earning his keep, as I was not.

  I stopped at the bins of fruit, selecting some favorites for my girls.

  “Ochieng,” I said, as soon as we were alone again. “I don’t want to dance.”

  “Why not?” He sounded genuinely curious. “Can you explain to me?”

  I couldn’t. The thought of even trying made me feel weary. More than the physical exhaustion of just getting to ground level. The red soil had become thick mud, carved into channels of fast-flowing streams. Barefoot, I stepped off the platform into it, sinking up to my ankles, feeling as if it would suck me down entirely. And I still had to go back up again.