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Hiding her annoyance, Zarrah shrugged. “Silas’s favorite spice is salt, and lots of it. If I never taste the cursed stuff again, it will be too soon.”
“I think it less preference and more necessity.” Bermin grinned. “We have the Maridrinians boxed in, and they are starved indeed. Though blockading them is barely necessary, as the bastards don’t have coin to pay for food even if it’s offered. Even the Amaridian queen has cut them off, for Silas is in arrears on payment for the use of her navy, never mind the compensation he owes her for the vessels lost to storms. It won’t be long until Vencia stinks like corpse with so many starved dead in the streets, and all because Silas can’t bear to give up his precious bridge.”
Her cousin laughed, the delight in it making Zarrah’s stomach twist in revulsion. Those who starved first would be the ones with the least control over circumstances, while the king who ruled would feast until his last breath. “I think it not half so dire as you’ve been led to believe, cousin.”
“But soon enough. Especially once we retake Nerastis.” He slung an arm around Zarrah’s shoulders, tugging her into the office that had been once hers, though all vestiges of her presence were gone, down to the paint on the walls. Erased, which made her even more certain that Bermin’s enthusiastic greeting was feigned.
As she sat in a chair, he circled the desk. “We’ll take the city, then push north, taking land mile by mile and slaughtering any of the rats that don’t scuttle ahead of us swiftly enough, and it will only be a matter of time until Maridrina is crushed onto the tip of the northern point with naught but desert to sustain them.” He leaned over the desk, his grin feral. “We’ll have vengeance for them taking you, Zarrah. I’ll see to it myself.”
Was this truly what she’d once been like? How she’d seen the world? Loathing filled her, but Zarrah mastered her expression and inclined her head. “You intend to act soon? The garrison seems undermanned for such a venture.”
Something flickered across Bermin’s eyes, something dark and hateful, but it was gone in a heartbeat and replaced by a smile. “You know my mother, little Zarrah. Always biding her time, waiting for the moment to be right. If it were me, I’d seek vengeance for your capture this very hour, but I bend to her will.”
“The Harendellian ambassador told me that she locked herself in her room for a day and a night and wept, but I didn’t believe him.”
“It’s true.” Leaning back in his chair, Bermin crossed a leg, boot resting on his knee. “Locked herself in with orders that she not be disturbed foranyreason, though whether she wept or raged, I could not say. Only that she emerged and gave the orders you were not to be pursued for any reason. But…” He hesitated. “Yrina disappeared shortly after and hasn’t been heard from since.”
“Serin caught her.” Zarrah’s chest tightened at the reminder that her friend had been the only one who’d tried to help her. “She’s dead.” By her own hand, to protect Zarrah’s secret.
Bermin pressed a hand to his heart, lowering his head in grief she didn’t think was feigned. “How did you come to be captured? What were you doing on the north side of the Anriot alone?”
Zarrah had spent a great deal of time considering how she might answer this question. “You asked how I knew the Maridrinians would attack that night by sea, and I told you that I had informants. But that was a lie. I was spying myself, going in disguise and gaining information from the Maridrinians themselves.”
He frowned. “Why take such a risk? We have spies aplenty.”
“Spies whose caution was reflected in the quality of information they were providing.” She shrugged. “I was ambitious, and it caught up with me. I tarried too long and was caught by Prince Otis’s patrol.”
“Who brought you to the palace, where his elder brother decided you were worth more alive than dead.” Bermin rubbed his chin. “A prince we barely knew existed until he took the position of heir, but whose name is now on the lips of everyone, north and south. Is it true he pushed his own brother to his death and Silas applauded him for it?”
“So I heard.” Keris’s face flashed through her vision, the horror etched across it as he looked down at his dying brother. The brother he’d killed to protect her. “He’s a different sort of Veliant than we are used to. He’s… clever.”
“But not a fighter?”
“I saw no evidence of such skills in the time I spent around him.” She disliked the scrutiny, though it was inevitable. Bermin was a killer, and she didn’t like the idea of his attention focusing on Keris. “He was disparaged often for being bookish, which I’d say is an accurate judge of his character.”
Bermin’s face scrunched in disdain, but before their conversation could continue, a knock sounded at the door. “Come,” her cousin rumbled, and the door opened to admit one of the guards, who passed him a folded piece of paper.
“This just came. Keris Veliant has arrived by ship.”
Zarrah’s heart skittered, but she only scowled as Bermin opened the paper, his eyebrows lifting as he read. Then he tossed the paper across the desk so that she could read it. “Might be time to reconsider that judgment of his character, little Zarrah. It appears the bookish fop has decided he’s a military man after all.”
74
KERIS
Nerastis was a place that had been forced upon him. A tool for shaping him into a proper prince. A place where there was no desire for people like him. A punishment. Yet as he walked through the familiar streets, the stink of rot and sewage filling his nose, and shouts of madams tossing drunks out of brothels, Keris was struck with the realization that of all the places he’d lived, Nerastis was where he felt most at ease.
Where he felt most at home.
Why that was, he couldn’t have said. It was a debauched shithole teeming with violence, the buildings more rubble than not, and the poverty worse than anywhere in Maridrina. But as he watched the people of the border city go about their business, faces and clothing a blend of Maridrina and Valcotta, Keris realized what he found so compelling. Nerastis was a place where a seed could take root. Where an idea could grow into reality, because for all this city was the heart of the conflict between the two nations, it was also populated by people who set aside politics every night and lived as one.
It was fitting that this was where he and Zarrah had met. It wouldn’t have been possible anywhere else.
The thought had him turning south, eyes latching on the Valcottan palace on the far side of the Anriot. Was she already there? If so, how had she been received?
Was she all right?
Anxiety rose in his stomach as his mind provided him with endless scenarios where things had gone horribly wrong, each worse than the last.
