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Fear had become familiar to the Vederan princess in the short months since the slaughter at the temple. It grew in Domacridhan’s absence, blooming like roses in a garden. She had heard nothing of him since he rode from Iona, dead but for his still-beating heart. He could be truly dead now, for all she knew.Leaving only meto stand between the Ward and What Waits.She heaved a rattling breath, trying to ignore the ache in her bones. Not from the cold, not from the ax, not even from her hours in the training yard, practicing in full armor. It was her mother who had made this wound. The cowardice of Isibel, Monarch of Iona.
The ash branch still lay across her knees, the sword she would not wield forgotten in her gray halls. Ridha cursed her mother.Perhaps she’ll hear me,she thought, thinking of her mother’s power, and the far reach it gave her.
“I see the anger in you, Princess,” Kesar said softly, hesitant. Tentative as a traveler walking across broken ice.
Ridha sighed, her chest rising and falling beneath her furs. “There is gratitude in me too,” she murmured. “So much it is almost overwhelming. To you, to Dyrian, even to the cold Lady of Kovalinn. For ignoring my mother. For refusing to leave the Ward to its dark fate. For all of you who refuse to surrender.” The air froze on her teeth. “I will not surrender either.”
She looked south down the fjord, toward Calidon and Iona. She could not see the only homeland she’d ever known, but she felt it still, miles across the freezing sea, through mountains and glens.
Then her gaze sharpened, her eyes fixing on something much closer than Iona.
Dark shapes took form on that distant horizon, spots at first but quickly solidifying into something familiar. Ridha squinted her immortal eyes, looking down the miles.
Longships bearing white flags, sailing under a symbol of peace.
“Mortals,” she said aloud, pointing with her ax.
“The first have arrived,” Kesar said, clapping Ridha on theshoulder. “Leave the ax,” Kesar added, tossing hers away. She glanced at the fjord and the choking pieces of ice. Even shattered, they clustered together, floating on the frigid water.
Ridha did as instructed, abandoning her ax to the other Vedera chopping at the frozen landscape. She set off with Kesar, silent, waiting for some explanation. With a click of her teeth, Kesar summoned the bear to follow. It gave a friendly roar and tromped along, ice shaking from its paws.
Behind them, the longships continued their journey toward Kovalinn.
Kesar pressed her lips, stepping off the dock to join the long, winding path up to the enclave. “The ice always wins,” she muttered, glaring at the fjord.
As with the other mortal kingdoms, Ridha knew little and cared even less about the politics of the Jyd. They had no monarchy, she knew that much, with no king or queen she could call upon for the full might of raider country. Instead there were a dozen different clans, all ranging in size and strength, that controlled different regions of the bitter northlands. The Jydi were a strong people, fearsome to the other mortal kingdoms, but disjointed, each clan separate from the others.
The mortals were of Yrla, a settlement across the mountains, at the spearpoint of another fjord. They’d brought four longships, now docked at the bottom of the cliff.
The long hall of the enclave waited, bursting with Vedera eager to see the Jydi. The doors yawned wide, spilling the orange light of sunset across the stone floor.
Dyrian held his seat, his back straight against the carved wood. His feet dangled, his legs still too short to reach the floor. Like his mother, he had red hair and pale skin, a starburst of freckles across his cheeks. To the Jydi, he looked like a young boy, but the Vedera knew better. His wolf-gray eyes were sharp, and he held a smiling ax across his knees. The pine branch was long discarded. His enclave was at war.
Kesar and the snoring bear held his right side, while Lady Eyda stood as always, a statue behind her son. Ridha sat at Dyrian’s left, befitting her status as a princess and child of a ruling monarch, though she looked nothing like it. She’d abandoned her fur coat for her green steel armor, eager to look as much a warrior as the Jydi. Both pit fires were lit, filling the long hall with warmth. She basked in it, the numbing grip of the ice finally melting away.
A dozen mortals entered the hall, their shadows stretching long across the floor. They walked between the pit fires, approaching Dyrian’s throne. Light from the flames played over them, shifting their faces with every step. Ridha surmised that the rest of their number were outside in the gateyard, or still down with their ships. She guessed at least a hundred Jydi folk had come to Kovalinn.
For what reason, no one said, but Ridha was no fool.
Dyrian was unbothered by the Jydi raiders, fierce in every inch, but Ridha eyed their weapons. Of all the mortals upon the Ward, only the Jydi ever attempted to war with the Vedera, and she had not forgotten it. They bore axes and long knives, and two even carried cruel, hooked spears. These were not farmers. These were raiders.
Half were fair-skinned and blond or red-haired, if not shorn bald. But one of the men was once of the Temurijon, wearing their distinct plated leather armor beneath a cloak of wolf pelts. He had short black hair, angular dark eyes, high-boned cheeks, and bronze skin. Two women were from the kingdoms of the Long Sea, perhaps Tyriot, with curly hair the color of mahogany, their faces olive-toned. Only one had gray hair, his braids woven with herbs. He alone wore no furs, only a thick wool dress that covered his boots, with a long chain of iron looping from shoulder to shoulder. All were tattooed in Jydi whorls, the backs of their bare hands marked with distinctive knots.
Their leader, a small, pale woman with a longbow and an anvil jaw, even had a wolf tattooed on the shorn half of her scalp. The rest of her hair was plaited into a long blond braid, set with chain and carved bone. Though she was smaller than the other raiders, they clearly deferred to her, letting her walk ahead. When she came closer, Ridha realized she had one green eye and one blue, the shared colors of the Jyd.
“Welcome, friends,” Dyrian said, standing from his seat. “I am Dyrian, Monarch of Kovalinn, of the Vedera of Glorian Lost.”
The raiders did not bow. A few eyed the bear, snoring at Dyrian’s right hand.
“I am Lenna, Chief of the Yrla,” rasped their leader, her voice deeper than expected. She spoke in Paramount, her words heavily accented by the Jydi language. This far north, she clearly had little use for the common tongue of the Long Sea.
Dyrian dipped his head in greeting. “It has been many years since mortals of the Jyd entered my hall.”
“The chief of my chief came here, long ago,” Lenna said. She squinted at the Monarch. “He met a boy king. You arestilla boy.”
“I am,” Dyrian answered. “My people do not age as yours do.”
“I can see.”
