But there was someone more important than revenge.
Holding my baba’s newest blade in my hand.
Sparring with him in the practice yard.
Hearing his low chuckle when I bested all the other students.
Sharing a meal with him in the low light of his smith.
All the things I had longed to do came rushing forward, as if the dam inside me had broken loose and it wasn’t anger that released, but pure longing.
“If I were free, I would find my father.”
Three
Before
The light was good for battle today.
I held my sword up to it, making the blade glow as if it had been heated by the forge once more.
“I’m sorry, have I come to the right place? I’m looking for the swordsmith.”
A boy a little older than me stood at the gate, gazing with uncertainty at my father’s shop, his hands around the reins of a fine black stallion alongside him. He was tall and lanky, with a mop of black hair, a large chin, and plump cheeks he hadn’t quite grown into yet. His too-big dark sherwani with gold embroidery and jeweled buttons betrayed his status.
I narrowed my eyes—he lived at the palace, and he worked for Emperor Vahid.
The emperor who had overthrown our kingdom and slaughtered half my mother’s people in the north.
And I knew exactly why he had come.
“If you can’t tell you are standing at the swordsmith by the various blades hanging outside of the building, I think you’ve got other problems besides being lost.”
His uncertainty turned to a scowl.
Good. I wouldn’t help him. Working for the emperor and flashing his colors around our village would mean he would get nothing from us but disdain. My father had supplied the old king with weapons that were as beautiful as they were deadly. But apparently, Emperor Vahid wanted his swords forged at the same smith.
“I prefer to be certain before making an assumption and proving myself an ass,” he said with his nose in the air. “Something it seems you have no problem doing.”
I inhaled sharply. Did this gaudy fool just call me an ass?
He puffed out his chest like an overgrown bird and stared down at me. “You clearly have no idea who Iam.”
A snort escaped me. This boy barely had hairs on his chin, and he was trying to lord above me? “I know exactly who you are, unfortunately. If you’ve come for the new emperor’s sword,my fatherwould be the one making it.”
His mouth dropped open and I gave him a satisfied smirk.
“I’ve been sent by the emperor himself, and you still speak to me like this?”
“Look around you.” I gestured to my small village at the edge of the mountains, the clay-packed houses embedded into the mountainside like flecks of snow, on the edge of the territory where all the northern tribes were forced to submit to the emperor. We might be a day’s ride from the city where the emperor established his new court, but we were far from compliant here.
No one in this village would be impressed by Emperor Vahid’s power.
These people cared about raiders coming for their family, about freedom from the imposed laws of the capital, and their ability to trade and make money from bartering their goods in the city. Not a single villager would turn their head at this boy’s fine stallion—unless it was to steal it as retribution against the emperor. We were more worried about mountain marauders and the bitter winter decimating the next harvest of apricots in the valley.
I took a sidelong look at the boy’s horse, decked out in EmperorVahid’s golden emblem—the outline of a zoraat flower crested on its saddle.
“These people supported the king. He protected them. You won’t find much simpering for you here, if that’s what you are after.”
