Roa stopped pacing.
Could she really kill her own husband?
Of course not.She pressed her palms to her eyes.What am I thinking?
Theo touched her arm. Her hands fell to her sides and she looked up into his silhouetted face. “You can save her, Roa. You can save all of us.”
She looked up at him miserably. “By killing the king.”
“By removing the next tyrant from the throne.” He took her hands in his, warming them. “We can help each other. Help me smuggle my men into the palace, and I’ll help you obtain the Skyweaver’s knife and make the exchange.”
She shook her head, feeling hollow. “And then what?”
Roa wanted her sister. But at what cost?
“And then you rule alone, as a just and powerful queen.” He cupped her face in his hands. “Think of how much good you could do for our people, Roa.Without him.”
If the Skyweaver’s knife existed, if it really could save her sister the way the stories claimed...
“No,” she said, her tone final. “I’m not a murderer.”
And Dax had promised to hold an Assembly as soon as theyreturned. With the treaty signed, he had to uphold his oaths now. He had to lift the sanctions. Things would change for their people soon. Roa had all but ensured it.
“Well then,” Theo said, stepping away from her. “Come find me if you change your mind.”
I won’t,she thought, and put the notion out of her head.
Before
When Roa and Essie were eleven, the son of the king came to the scrublands early. It was late spring, after the big rains, and the rivers had swelled. With the swell came thousands upon thousands of fish.
The day after his arrival, they were on the lake, mending nets while their parents helped the House of Springs bring in their catches. Roa sat with Essie, their small two-person reed boat bobbing on the water of the lake. Their heads were down, their fingers picking knots. Dax sat in a boat with Jas, and in between were other reed boats full of children untangling fishing nets.
“Tell us, Dax, have you learned to read yet?”
Roa’s head shot up. She looked to Theo—the one who spoke. Except for Dax, Theo was the eldest. The boys in the other boats sniggered at his question.
Dax ignored them. But Roa saw his hand tighten on his net.
“Is that a no?”
“Stop it, Theo,” Lirabel said from the boat next to theirs, her gutting knife working out a particularly nasty tangle.
Theo ignored her. “Here. Tell me what this says.”
He traced the lettersi-d-i-o-tin the air for all of them to see.
Roa, Essie, and Lirabel looked to Dax, who gripped the slippery net tightly between his fingers, bracing himself for whatever was to come.
“Theo,” Essie snapped, lowering her own knife in her lap.
“What about this one?”
Roa also lowered her knife, watching Theo’s tanned fingers spell the lettersi-m-b-e-c-i-l-e.
Dax’s skin darkened with a blush.
“Not that one either?” Theo shot a derisive look to the other boys. “Hmm. Do you think you inherited stupidity from your father or your mother?”
