“Unnatural,” Ruti finishes. “The spirits say it’s unnatural. They refuse to grant me this request.”
Adisa contemplates them. His hut is small, about the size of Ruti’s old shop, with shelves along one wall and a bed against the other. A table is behind him, a dozen half-finished poultices atop it, and Ruti doesn’t recognize the ingredients within them. “An unnatural request,” Adisa says slowly, “requires an unnatural offering.”
Ruti leans forward. “How can an offering be unnatural?”
“There is a place,” Adisa says, and lifts one of his poultices, inspecting the objects within. “A lake that can turn a man to stone. It is known as the Lake of the Carved Thousand, and it is deep in the south of Guder, where it meets Rurana and touches the Southern Sea. If you can bottle its water, the spirits may grant you even the most impossible of wishes.”
The Heir pounces on that promise. “May grant it? So even if we voyage there, we might still be without hope?”
Adisa looks at the Heir for a long while before he speaks. “If you seek to destroy your mark,” he says quietly, “then you are already without hope.”
The arguments begin before they make it back to the Royal Square, and they’re still squabbling over their new quest the next day in Ruti’s room. “You are not bringing Kimya,” the Heir says definitively. “She’ll be safer here.”
“She’s a Markless in the royal palace,” Ruti shoots back. “I’m not leaving her here alone for days. Maybe even weeks. No one in this palace can be trusted.”
The Heir looks irritated. “I’ll be here,” she says, which silences Ruti at once. “What?” the Heir says at her expression. “Did you think I could go off on a journey for weeks without my uncle raising an alarm? I can’t join you.” She rolls up the scrolls she’s been examining. “I will have my tutors put together a map for you, and I will give you all the coin you need. But Kimya stays here. There is no need for her to join you.”
Kimya makes an annoyed sign from the bed, a pay attention to me! that has them both looking at her. She wants to go, and she makes it clear with her next signs, but the Heir remains immobile. “One girl traveling alone will move much faster than a girl and her little sister,” the Heir reminds Kimya. “And time is of the essence.”
“No, I am of the essence,” Ruti says irritably, picking through different roots that the Heir had brought her. “And I want Kimya with me, Your Highness.” She says it in the tone that she knows annoys the Heir, the inflection almost an insult.
The Heir’s jaw works beneath her skin. “We’ll revisit this later,” she says abruptly, and stalks from the room, leaving behind a surge of wind that blows the roots off the table. Ruti mutters something uncomplimentary and goes to collect them.
“You’re coming with me,” she promises Kimya. “I won’t ever leave you behind.” Kimya bites into her chocolate sullenly and doesn’t respond.
But the Heir is just as intractable the next day. “My tutors have plotted this map for you,” she says, setting a scroll down on the table. “The Lake of the Carved Thousand is within an island accessible by sea. You’ll have to travel through Rurana in order to reach the lake, and Rurana is.…” She pauses. “Prince Torhvin keeps his land strong and difficult for outsiders to penetrate. I don’t know how he’d take to a Zideshi Markless wandering through it.” She points at one of the red circles on the map. “Here are people we know have hosted royal emissaries from Zidesh before. I will give you enough coin that they will consider it again.”
Ruti stares down at the map, overwhelmed. “I’ve never even left Somanchi,” she manages.
The Heir considers her. “Do you need an escort? If need be, I can send Orrin.”
“That’s fine,” Ruti says swiftly, alarmed. “I’ll be all right. I don’t need any escorts—except my assistant, of course.” She gestures at Kimya.
“No,” the Heir says, a crack of thunder punctuating her comment as though it is purposeful.
And so it continues. Ruti prepares for the trip with her teeth gritted. She learns to recognize the names of the places written on the map. She practices the Ruranan dialect of Zideshi, the harsher R sound and the flimsy Kh that is indistinguishable from K. She makes lists of herbs for offerings she’ll have no use for, only to gain more time before she leaves. For three days of preparation, the Heir returns each day before dinner with exotic ingredients and more information about the lands Ruti will travel through, none of it good. “We know very little about the treatment of Markless in Rurana,” the Heir admits one day. “My tutors believe that they aren’t easily ignored as they are in Zidesh. If you can paint your hand each day, or if there’s a more permanent option—”
“No.” Ruti’s most recent attempt at a protection poultice falls apart in her hands. “I don’t do that.”
“Don’t or can’t?” the Heir prods. Even Kimya is eyeing Ruti curiously. “If it’ll make this trip go faster—”
“I don’t do that,” Ruti bites out again. Fish scales crumble in her fist, and she stares at her hands and refuses to meet the Heir’s eyes. “I think we’re late to dinner, Your Highness.”
Ruti is still expected at dinner with the courtiers and the Regent, even as she plans for a trip that is going to be an ordeal. The Regent eyes her with distrust, but he ignores her as often as he glares at her, focused on his niece. “The scholars are certain now that they’ve found your soulbond,” the Regent says abruptly. “A prince who is as powerful as you will be, and who has the will to match yours. We have sent word, and he is willing to meet you.”
“Willing?” the Heir echoes. “How kind of him. You offer him my kingdom on a silver platter and he deigns to accept.”
The Regent’s eyes darken. “Your spurned suitors have been speaking amongst themselves,” he says. “There are not many who are willing to come see you any longer. We are fortunate that the spirits have granted us a prince prepared to give you a try.” He clears his throat. “It will be a week’s time before he arrives. During that time, you will familiarize yourself with the common etiquette that escapes you. And your bodyguard will be replaced with one of my own.” He looks at Orrin with distaste.
The Heir sneers at her uncle. “If you so desperately want to keep my throne, then muster your army and prepare your coup d’etat,” she says abruptly. Forks clatter to plates, and there’s a gasp in the room. The Regent only shakes his head. Ruti herself gapes at the Heir, startled at the calm way she speaks, the surety with which she makes her sudden accusation.
The courtiers look appalled, and the Heir rises. “I take my leave,” she says, walking close along the table as she departs. Courtiers choke on their drinks and lurch forward, freezing up as the Heir walks past them. The Heir inspires fear, but Ruti knows that fear and dismissed it long ago.
She follows the Heir from the room, Orrin jostling her as they head through the doorway at the same time. “Do you really think the Regent wants to control the throne?” she asks. He isn’t a kind man or a great leader, but it has been over a decade since the king and queen died and he’s never made that power grab before.
“I think he wishes to control me,” the Heir says. She is walking toward Tembo’s training room, crossing the courtyard as wind whips around her. “I have tired of weak men who believe that I require control. I am sewa. Do I look like I can be ruled?”
Ruti stares at her—really stares at this formidable princess who will someday rule Zidesh. There are some who claim that each mark is a sign of how the one who bears it is deep down. Ashto is fire, for people who are passionate and temperamental. Majimm, water, for the calm and introspective. Endhi is earth, for those who are grounded and compassionate. And then there is sewa, the rarest of the four signs. Sewa is air and wind and sky, distant and untamed and free, and the Heir can never be ruled by any man.
“No,” she murmurs, and there is something in her voice that seems to calm the Heir, to help her find her balance. “No, I don’t think you could ever be ruled.”
The Heir steps into Tembo’s empty room. She lifts a stick and moves it in a blur. She dances with it, whirling it around faster and faster before hurling the stick into a target and lifting another to leap with it. “Sing,” she orders, and Ruti blinks at her. “Sing me,” the Heir repeats, and Ruti begins to sing.
When she sings, she usually has a request in mind, but tonight she has nothing. Sing me, the Heir says, and there is only the Heir before her, rising and falling and spinning like a cyclone. Ruti sings as the Heir moves, her voice dancing with the Heir’s movements, and she can feel power simmering between them, a new magic that rises from singing to someone else.
The Heir leaps and Ruti’s voice leaps with her. The Heir whirls around, bringing the stick down on an invisible enemy, and Ruti crescendos, her voice falling as a waterfall. Every movement of the Heir’s is fluid music, and Ruti strains to resist it at first, to keep control of the dance. She fails with the swoop of the Heir’s neck and the power that permeates the room.
The Heir seems to glow, the sheen of sweat on her face making Ruti warm as she sings to her movements. There is beauty in how the Heir fights, and Ruti feels her own voice rising to the occasion. Magic permeates every inch of the room, leaving Ruti drunk with it, teetering on unsteady feet as she watches the Heir.
The Heir is lithe and tall, and her braids swing in the opposite direction of her body, her eyes bright and exhilarated. She moves faster than Ruti’s ever seen her, somehow more agile than before, Ruti’s song giving her power as her dance gives Ruti the same.
Ruti doesn’t know how much time passes as she sings. Dusk has come and gone, leaving only the lamps burning in the corners of Tembo’s training room as their light source. Orrin lurks by the door, alternately gazing at the Heir in adoration and Ruti with distrust, but Ruti hardly notices him. The Heir spins, faster and faster with the stick moving between her hands, dangerously close to Ruti’s position. Ruti chants and chants, the song coming in spurts that seem to speed up impossibly as the Heir approaches, and the Heir is so close that she’s going to crash into Ruti—
Ruti stops the song abruptly and the Heir comes to an instant halt, the stick raised between her hands and nearly pressed to Ruti’s chest. They’re close, close enough that Ruti can see the Heir’s chest rising and falling and feel rapid breaths against her cheek. Ruti swallows, her stomach knotting itself up and her heart pounding with the force of the song. The Heir is watching her, their eyes locked, and they stand frozen opposite each other.
It’s Orrin who breaks the silence between them, moving toward the Heir to place a hand on her back. She whirls around, still on edge, and she has him pinned against the wall in an instant, the big bodyguard immobile beneath the stick to his neck. “Orrin,” she says. She sounds dazed, and it takes her an extra minute to drop the stick. “I.…”
