The Lost Princess Returns Page 4

  “Ash is sleeping off healing the wounded and will be back at it when he wakes,” Andi noted, “so Ami is staying here for a while. But Ami wants us to remind anyone who’s going that Kir, traitor to the Thirteen Kingdoms and former High Priest of the Church of Glorianna, is hiding out at the Imperial Palace. Or was, the last we knew. She’d like him brought back to face trial for his crimes.”

  I nodded, making a mental note. “You’re not coming?”

  “No,” she replied. “I need to work with Stella—my niece—and Rayfe would like to teach our nephew Astar about shapeshifting discipline, so we’ll also remain here. Besides which, I’m under orders to stay close to home.” She laid a hand on her belly and Rayfe put his hand over hers, giving her a grateful smile.

  He then turned to me. “That said, any Tala who’d like to travel with you have our permission. Many of our people lost loved ones to Deyrr, and they will appreciate the opportunity to redress those losses.” His glittering feral smile made the short hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I was just as glad not to be facing him in wolf form.

  “And Ursula and I must return to Ordnung,” Harlan put in. I carefully did not look at Ursula. “But I think Kral will want to go with you.”

  “Where Kral goes, Jepp goes,” Andi added, “so I can communicate with you, should you need reinforcements. Or magical assistance.”

  “Can you perform sorcery from that far away?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Some.”

  “By which she means, staggering amounts,” Zynda put in with a sly smile.

  “Maybe,” Andi cautioned. “I’ve never tried to reach that far.”

  Zynda shrugged elaborately. “For that matter, I can do a few minor magics, should we need it.”

  Interesting. “I don’t see us defeating the Dasnarian Empire by force,” I noted drily, “so I’m inclined to think a small team would be most effective. We go, maybe rally the populace, if you think that will work,” I nodded to Karyn, “then remove Hestar and Hulda from power. Then the navy can be recalled so they no longer threaten these lands. Though, that might take longer than two or three days.”

  “If it does, it does,” Ursula acknowledged.

  “Who will you put on the throne?” Harlan inquired. “Will you establish yourself as empress?”

  “No!” I burst out, and was sure I heard Ochieng snicker quietly. “That is,” I said, gathering my wits, “I am already married, and though I know it’s acceptable, I would not marry one of my brothers regardless.”

  Harlan regarded me somberly. “You still have too much Dasnarian in you.” He gestured to Ursula. “You could be empress on your own blood claim to the throne. As our father’s firstborn, you have that right.”

  The possibility struck me with force. And Harlan was correct—I did have enough Dasnarian in me still that it hadn’t occurred to me. I also had enough of my mother in me to find the prospect exhilarating. All through my childhood she’d drummed into me that only power mattered. Power protected you and provided everything you could want. As Empress of Dasnaria, I’d arguably be the most powerful person in the entire world. It would be a fine revenge on those who’d thought to make me their pawn. I could make changes to the empire, transform Dasnaria into what it could be.

  “This is sounding more like a coup than a conquest,” Ochieng said, giving me a considering look. He’d always been able to read me well, knowing my thoughts even when we’d been strangers and I’d been under a vow of silence.

  “A coup is probably accurate,” I conceded.

  “But one founded in righteousness,” Karyn supplied. “For the good of the people of Dasnaria.”

  I hoped so. “We need to strike a decisive blow to remove the diseased head from the neck of the empire before the body is too far gone to be saved. After that, we can discuss governance. Are the rest of our Konyngrr siblings still alive?” I directed this last at Harlan, who was watching me with quiet speculation.

  “So far as we know, yes. Inga and Helva remain in the seraglio of the Imperial Palace.”

  “Are they married?” I asked.

  “No,” Ursula answered, canting her head at me. “As you negotiated for them.”

  I was surprised that deal had stuck. At most I’d been hoping to buy my sisters some time, but I’d figured that Hulda would find a way to betray the bargain we’d made. Of course, when I left on my wedding journey, I hadn’t expected to be gone for nearly twenty-five years. “And our other brothers?”

  Dafne spoke up. “According to our best intelligence, we believe Mykal took over the navy following Kral’s exile. Leo and Loke seem to be in charge of other military branches.”

  “Ban is still the same,” Harlan told me. “He hasn’t the wit to choose sides, so is likely Hestar’s puppet.”

  I nodded, remembering Ban’s childlike mind, even as a boy of sixteen. “You knew our brothers better than I did.” I’d known them as children, barely met them again years later when I left the seraglio to be married, and then I was gone again. “Do you think they’re loyal to Hestar, or simply obligated?”

  Harlan lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “I’ve been gone nearly as long as you have. Inga and Helva would know.”

  “And are eager to share information,” Ursula added.

  “Is there a way to contact my sisters?” I asked.

  They exchanged glances. Dafne handed the baby to her husband and checked some notes. “Maybe?” she said doubtfully. “I have a contact there, a librarian from our island named Akamai, but since hostilities escalated, our correspondence has broken off.”

  “Kral will also be able to discuss our brothers,” Harlan said, still watching me.

  Kral. Much as I dreaded confronting the brother who’d tried to send me back into that nightmare of a marriage that would’ve seen me broken and eventually dead, it seemed I needed him. I looked to Zynda. “It seems I should take you up on the offer to visit the Hákyrling.” I glanced at Ochieng for his confirming nod. “Then we can make our final decisions on this righteous coup.”

  “We can go now, if you like,” Zynda said. She had large eyes in an exotically angled face, and they were a deep blue like Rayfe’s and her brother’s. At the moment, they sparkled with anticipation. “I’d love to stretch my wings.”

  “You nearly flew your wings off yesterday,” Marskal said to her with narrowed eyes.

  “Yes. Yesterday. I’m rested now,” she replied saucily. “I can carry you, Ochieng, and Ivariel easily.”

  I glanced at Ochieng, hoping he could read my thoughts now, and would understand. “If Ochieng remained in Annfwn for the moment, could you bring Harlan instead?” I met Harlan’s surprised gaze, noted Ursula’s quiet attention. “Would you come with me, baby brother?” I heard the earnest plea in my own voice. Yes, I asked in part to lay the groundwork to accommodate my heart-sister’s request, but also I’d felt a stirring in my soul I hadn’t felt in decades. It had always felt like a snake to me, a serpent of hatred that was broken, enraged Jenna. It hissed and uncoiled in the cold ashes at the bottom of my heart at the thought of Kral and the part he’d played in my marital enslavement. What if I lost control and tried to kill him? Not only would I fail myself, but I’d perhaps murder the beloved of Kaja’s daughter. I owed Kaja’s memory better than that.

  Under the table, Ochieng put a hand on my knee, squeezing firmly—and a piece of my anxiety relaxed. Of course he understood.

  Harlan had exchanged a similar silent communication with Ursula and nodded. “If Zynda is amenable to my weight in exchange for Ochieng’s…” His eyes lingered on Ochieng, however, and I appreciated his consideration as Zynda breezily agreed.

  “Excellent,” Ochieng said. “This gives Dafne and me time to discuss a certain book?”

  She lit up. “Yes, please. That is, if—”

  Nakoa laughed. “I will keep our Lena while you go play with your books.”

  “I say we’re done then,” Ursula announced, pressing hands to the table and leve
ring herself to her feet. “You kids go play—and figure out how to stop that fleet where it is—while we do some work. King Rayfe, Queen Andromeda, I have some documents for you to review and—”

  “Oh, Moranu, no,” Andi exclaimed, turning to Rayfe in appeal. “Save me.”

  He patted her hand. “Courage, my queen. Documents pertaining to what?”

  Ursula smiled thinly. “With the barrier gone, our border agreements are obsolete. We need to revise them.”

  Rayfe grimaced. “All of them? That’s nearly a hundred treaties.”

  “A hundred and five,” Ursula replied with cruel cheer. “So we’d better get started.”

  Andi groaned. “I’m sending for more tea. And wine.”

  “Food, too,” Rayfe reminded her with a knowing smile.

  She smiled back. “That too.”

  ~ 5 ~

  Ochieng and I walked together down to the beach where we were to meet Zynda, Marskal, and Harlan. He held my hand as we strolled along the walk through the vibrant and bustling cliff city, as if we were tourists come simply to visit a new land. Once I’d become accustomed to thinking of the place as a vertical version of a city, it felt more familiar. The scars of battle lingered, but already people were working to rebuild. Even the children helped to scrub away burn marks from dragon fire, and the elderly and bandaged wounded gathered under bright silk awnings, their hands busy with food, cloth and other items.

  “Thank you for understanding,” I said to Ochieng, squeezing his hand.

  He slid me an amused smile, dark eyes sparkling with laughter. “You don’t have to thank me for a freedom that has always belonged to you.”

  “I know that.” He understood, too, that my old habits of thinking lingered, that deeply embedded instructions urged me to ask for my husband’s permission, that part of me still remained ridiculously afraid of venturing far from his side. I knew better, in my head—but that dutiful daughter deep inside never seemed to be quite convinced. “I’m not sure, however,” he continued, giving my hand a reassuring squeeze, “that I can completely understand.”

  Oh. Oh no. “It’s just that Harlan was there, before, when Kral came to—”

  “Tst,” Ochieng stopped me with an impatient hiss. “More listening, less talking.”

  “That’s something, coming from you,” I grumbled, making him laugh.

  “All too true,” he admitted ruefully. “But you love me even though I tell long stories and cozy up to clever librarians with big… vocabularies.”

  “All too true,” I replied wryly. “All right—I’m listening.”

  “What you and your brothers went through, this is a thing you all share. The wounds are old, with thick scars layered over, but the poison remains beneath, festering. I think that only someone else who’s felt this same poison can know the bitter sting. I can say, ‘oh, how terrible it is that you were poisoned,’ but that’s as much as I can understand.”

  “You’ve always understood me better than anyone, except perhaps for the elephants,” I replied staunchly.

  “Ah, well, the elephants are always an exception. And I’m ever grateful for what we share,” he slid me a smile full of warmth and enduring love. “Still, though we have joined our hearts and lives, we are still individuals, and there are things you must do alone. Or with someone else.”

  “You’re a good man, Ochieng.”

  “I know,” he replied with satisfaction, then laughed heartily when I bumped his shoulder.

  We walked on in companionable silence, wending our way lower down the cliff face, taking in the tropical splendor and the way animals mixed freely with humans. The D’Tiembo family lived in close proximity with the elephants, the pattern of life there deeply interwoven with the needs of the elephants. But Annfwn took that interweaving to another level, especially when I considered that many of these ‘animals’ were shapeshifters.

  “I’m not sure I can face Kral,” I finally said, aware that Ochieng had remained quiet, waiting for me to say what was on my mind.

  “What are you afraid of?” he asked softly.

  “Being weak and pitiful, maybe,” I admitted with a little laugh.

  “You were never that.”

  “You didn’t know me then,” I retorted, then continued before he could argue. “And that’s not even really it. I don’t know if I can forgive him.”

  “Then don’t.” He shrugged when I glanced at him in surprise. “It’s not a rule. You are not required to forgive those who hurt you.”

  I considered that rather astonishing idea. It hadn’t occurred to me, that I could withhold forgiveness. “Harlan has forgiven him.”

  “I think Harlan would be the first to say that his journey toward forgiveness was a shorter and less painful one than yours.”

  “I don’t know about that…” Harlan had filled me in on his time since we parted—how Kral went mindless with rage at losing me in Sjør, how our loving family had beaten him, and then my sisters to extract my location from him. Information he’d been unable to give, not even to prevent our innocent sisters from a flogging. We’d both laughed, and then wept over the Dasnarian certainty that I, an ignorant female, could never have eluded capture without help. They’d been so certain that Harlan had to know. He’d finally resorted to the Skablykrr, taking an unshakeable vow not to speak of me, simply to get them to stop.

  Funny how we’d both ended up with vows of silence.

  I realized I’d fallen into thought and hadn’t finished what I’d started to say, Ochieng still waiting patiently for my words, as he always had. Of course Harlan had forgiven Kral. Harlan was practically a saint. I couldn’t imagine him doing anything else. Me, however… My heart was blackened with rage and hatred. The intervening years had done much to heal it, along with Ochieng’s love, the love of the extended D’Tiembo family, the unconditional devotion of my children, and of the elephants. But I recognized the stirrings of that serpent deep within, the one that knew only rage and retribution.

  Before the last few days, I would’ve confidently told anyone who asked that I was healed, that I’d left my past behind. Now, the nearer I drew to my past, the more the gilding seemed to be flaking away, as if it had all been a pretty gloss over the rotted core. “Harlan has always been a better person than I am,” I said, trying to explain. “The best of all of us, with a truly good heart.”

  And I… I was like my mother.

  Ochieng stopped walking and drew me onto a little balcony, a wide place in the road out of the teeming foot traffic, overlooking the tranquil sea. He took both of my hands in his and gazed at me with solemn intensity. “Ivariel, my love, you have a truly good heart. I would not have shared my bed, my own heart, and my life with you if that weren’t so.”

  I began weeping, the tears pouring out as they had back then, when I’d been so broken, the raw parts of me so exposed, that the tears had just poured out like water from a shattered vase. With a murmur of distress, Ochieng pulled me into his arms, holding me against him while I tried to find a way to stop up the holes again. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I said against his strong chest, his muscles lean and tough from working with the great beasts that were his friends.

  “You’re facing a very difficult thing,” he replied.

  “But it’s been so long.”

  “I think emotional pain has no time limit. While Ivariel has grown, moved on, and lived a full life, young Jenna has remained where she was when you left her. Ivariel found her footing, but Jenna never faced what drove her from her home and family.”

  I pulled back just enough to see his face. “I have faced it. Over and over.”

  “You faced parts of it. The rest you ran away from.”

  “I had to run,” I snapped, suddenly as angry as I’d just been wretched.

  “You can be mad,” he replied evenly, “and you can take it out on me, since I’m a convenient target, but no one is saying you didn’t have to run. I’m just pointing out that you did run, and now you’re go
ing back.”

  “You’re right.” I sagged in my regret, aware of raging Jenna boiling under my thin veneer of control. “I’m sorry. I’m being awful.”

  “You are not being awful.” He turned me so my back was against his chest, and wrapped one arm around me, gesturing at the busy scene around us. “You are like this city. Triumphant, but dealing with the destruction still. Battered, burned, tending to wounds, this is the aftermath of battle. No matter what the stories imply, victory isn’t followed only by feasting and dancing. There is also the hard work of recovering and rebuilding.”

  I leaned back against him. “You’re saying I’ve been feasting and dancing all these years and now I must take on the delayed work of rebuilding.”

  A chuckle rumbled through his body and he kissed my temple. “It’s not a perfect analogy. Our lives have not been all feasting and dancing. There’s been plenty of rain. And floods. And mud.”

  “The sun can’t shine all the time, Ochieng,” I said drily.

  “True enough,” he answered cheerfully. “The rainy season inevitably arrives. And sometimes we must confront our treacherous brothers.” He kissed my temple again, lingering this time. “But, you don’t have to do this, Ivariel. We can load up the ships and go home.”

  I released a breath. All these people, singing as they cleaned up the aftermath of battle, repairing their homes and shops, working together. “I do have to go, because I made a promise to my sisters.”

  He hummed thoughtfully. “And Kral is part of that.”

  “Yes,” I conceded.

  “Continuing to our appointment on the beach then?” he inquired.

  “Painful though it may be,” I agreed. I took his hand again and we resumed walking. It seemed the dread weighed on me a little less heavily. “Thank you for talking me down.”

  “Part of my job,” he declared breezily. “I get extra husband points for it.”

  I bumped his shoulder. “You already have thousands more husband points than I have wife points.”

  “Well, that’s just the way of the world,” he said, nodding with a sage expression, and making me laugh.