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She forced herself to focus on the report she held, which was from a spy in Harendell who’d discovered the whereabouts of the Ithicanian queen. Yet despite the information being unexpected and strange, she had to read it three times before retaining any of it.
“Why do you fight?” The question leapt from her lips, and Yrina looked up from the reports they’d been reviewing together to regard her.
“For any number of reasons, as well you know. Last night I got in a fight because one of Bermin’s fools spilled my drink.”
Zarrah had noticed her friend’s minor injuries when she’d come in earlier and accurately assumed an alehouse brawl. “Someone with a nose as large as yours shouldn’t pick fistfights. Is it broken?”
Yrina rubbed at it. “Nah. It’s made of steel. And he looks worse, I’ll have you know.”
“I’ve no doubt.” While Zarrah had been raised in the privilege and comfort of Valcotta’s capital, Yrina was from the northeast edge of the nation, part of one of the nomadic and highly militant desert tribes. She’d been born swinging her fists, been wielding a blade before she could walk, and had killed a dozen men before she’d reached womanhood. The Empress had personally selected Yrina to be Zarrah’s close guard after her mother had been killed, and she’d swiftly been won over by the other girl’s humor. “But that’s not what I meant. Why do you fight the Maridrinians?”
“For the honor and glory of Valcotta.”
Yrina said the words without hesitation, but the swiftness in the saying caused Zarrah to frown. “Of course. But… are there other reasons?”
Yrina set down the report she was holding. “For you, sister. Where you go, I will follow, and your path leads to Maridrinian blood and vengeance.”
Unease fluttered in Zarrah’s stomach. “And if I did not exist in your life? Would you fight?”
Yrina’s round face scrunched into a grimace, brown skin creasing around her hazel eyes. “I’ll not hear talk like this, Zar.”
“Not my death. I mean if we had never met.”
Her friend leaned back in her chair. “This is a strange line of questioning. Is it a test?”
It was, but not for Yrina. “Humor me.”
Yrina shrugged. “Might be that I would. The pay is good and the accommodation posh in comparison to other posts.” She swiftly added, “And of course, there is honor in spilling Maridrinian blood.”
A swell of nausea rose in Zarrah’s stomach. “Is it your opinion that the majority of the garrison shares these sentiments?”
“Why?” Yrina scowled. “There isn’t to be a cut in pay, is there? Because honor doesn’t fill the belly or pay for an attractive man to tell me I’m pretty. I think the Empress forgets that, if she cares at all.”
God spare her, had the Maridrinian been right?
“No,” she answered weakly. “No pay cut. Only idle curiosity.”
But Yrina had been at her side for a decade and was not so easily fooled. Leaning over the desk, she took Zarrah’s hands. “Not everyone has been hurt by the Maridrinians the way you have, Zar. But that doesn’t mean that we are not loyal to you. Your hurt is our hurt, and we will die to give you the vengeance you deserve. Trust in that.”
Words intended to give comfort, though they did the exact opposite. All the violence she’d perpetrated in her life, all the death she’d enacted, had been easy to live with, knowing it was honorable and just. But what if it wasn’t? What if everything she’d done—or in the case of Ithicana, not done—had been, as the Maridrinian had suggested, in the name of ambition?
No!The word of denial ricocheted through her skull because vengeance was not ambition. The Maridrinian didn’t understand how much the Empress had suffered at Silas Veliant’s hands, her beloved younger sister slaughtered and left to rot.
Except it wasn’t the Maridrinian people who’d killed Zarrah’s mother.
She bit at her thumbnail, remembering how she’d pleaded with Bermin to warn Ithicana because the nation’s innocents didn’t deserve to pay for the choices of their king. Yet wasn’t that exactly what she’d spent the past decade doing? Making Maridrinian innocents pay for the crimes of Silas Veliant? A good clean fight between armies of soldiers was one thing, but that wasn’t how the Endless War was fought. It was fought with ugly raids intended to strike against those who could least defend themselves, and in that, she was just as guilty as any Maridrinian princeling.
A knock on the door pulled her from her thoughts. “Come.”
A sweaty-faced scout entered, pressing a hand to her heart, and Zarrah recognized her as one of Yrina’s. “What’s happened? A raid?”
The scout shook her head. “It’s His Highness.”
Zarrah’s heart skipped, because Bermin had gone out on patrol earlier. “Has he been hurt?”
“No, General,” the woman answered. “He’s crossed the Anriot.”
“Oh, shit,” Yrina muttered. “He was going on last night at the alehouse about how not retaliating against the Maridrinians was dishonorable. But I thought he was just drunk.”
