“Well,” Dekala says. She is breathing hard, her wedding gown shredded and her hair undone from its elaborate braids, but she is as composed as ever. “I suppose that settles that.”
Torhvin snarls at her and charges forward, raising his hands to the sky, and Ruti remembers too late that he has a new weapon at his disposal. The courtyard grows dark, thunderclouds appearing suddenly over them, and a storm begins out of nowhere. People shout, Bonded throwing their own hands up to try to stop the storm, but Torhvin’s rage is stronger than their delayed response. Thunder crashes around them, and Torhvin bites out, “I will not go quietly. I will take you all with me!”
The wind begins to whirl violently, twisting into a column that sweeps through the crowd. There are screams as people run for cover, as others are seized up and lifted into the tornado that has taken hold of the courtyard. Dekala’s guards charge toward Torhvin, but two of his guards stand between them, stopping their attack. “Winda,” Torhvin snarls, and Ruti tenses. Winda is standing with Torhvin, Kimya in her grasp. “Kill the girl.”
Winda doesn’t budge. Kimya folds her arms around herself, smug with wrists no longer chained. Dekala laughs, her voice as cold as Torhvin’s. “Winda has been Zidesh’s loyal agent since she was but a girl of three, brought to secret training to become a spy for her people,” she says. It has been a point of contention between them in the past few days, Winda supposedly holding Kimya safe in Torhvin’s captivity. Dekala had trusted her absolutely. Ruti had been less confident. Now, with Winda standing beside Kimya, Ruti doesn’t know why she’d ever doubted her. “You have lost. End this, Torhvin, before we are forced to end you.”
Ruti knows what he’s going to do before he does it, his wild, vengeful eyes looking only for someone defenseless to hurt. He has lost, and he is desperate only to destroy before he goes. He whirls around, seizing a dagger from his guard’s hand, and he is upon Kimya before Winda can stop him, the blade pressed to her throat. “Any last words, muteling?” he says mockingly, and Ruti cries out in horror, no time for song or defense.
Kimya holds up a finger, fear in her eyes but defiance sweeping over her. One, she signs in a language Torhvin won’t understand. Her hands move outward, a motion that sweeps her fingers away from herself. Begone.
In one of her hands, as she moves them outward, is an uncapped stone vial.
When they’d used the first vial to awaken Jaquil on their first day in Byale, as Winda and Orrin stood guard, the spirits had merely taken the offering and left behind an empty vial. They haven’t gotten to see what the vial of water can do, bottled up and potent, until Kimya splashes it over Torhvin’s face.
He screams. The burns come first, red and blistering, and when he presses his hands to his face, they blister as well. His skin burns and burns until it’s blackened, until the water seems to suck all the liquid from his body and leave a husk behind. Brittle stone spreads across his skin, tightening it and turning it into something less than human, and he teeters in place until he collapses under the weight of his own stone body.
In moments, he is gone, the stone shattering across the stage as the sky clears up above them. Dekala raises a hand, calling the sun to dry off the soaked courtyard, and she turns—not to the courtyard, not to Ruti, and not to Kimya, who has rushed past the frozen guards and thrown herself into Ruti’s arms.
Dekala turns to the Regent and says expectantly, “I am Bonded now.”
The Regent blinks, staring at her in disbelief. “You … you have no king,” he stammers at last, and his eyes flicker to Jaquil, who is crouched before his brother’s shattered stone carcass, his thumb caressing a piece of stone.
Dekala raises her chin. “I saved the Ruranan Markless. I awakened their rightful ruler. I took Torhvin’s army from him and his pirates as well.” She speaks clearly and precisely, and the people around them listen in quiet awe. “I voyaged across the land to find a magic unnatural enough to make the spirits bow to my will. I defeated Torhvin right here on this stage. And I did it all with only my witch’s assistance, while you happily handed me over to a tyrant. I do not need a king.”
Her gaze is fierce, uncompromising, and the Regent looks at her as though he is seeing her for the very first time. “So be it,” he says.
The coronation is scheduled for three months after the soulbinding in Somanchi’s Royal Square. The city is flooded with courtiers and dignitaries, with new arrivals who have heard the stories of what happened in Byale. They peer at Ruti with mistrust and curiosity in turn, trying to catch a glimpse of her bare palm.
She has become a celebrity of sorts, a Markless who walks freely within the palace walls. She no longer wears gloves to cover her hands, though Kimya is still under strict orders to keep hers on. Kimya is an unknown, a girl seen often with the princess but with no explanation offered to the courtiers. The court whispers about her. She speaks with her hands. She is teaching the translators the Niyaru sign language. The few who know Kimya’s identity keep it tightly sealed between them.
Dekala is busy with her tutors, who are now her advisors. Each morning, she sits with them and her uncle, transitioning from his rule to hers. The Regent will remain in the palace for her first year of rule, but after that, he is already speaking about traveling with his wife to her home kingdom of Guder. Dekala will rule alone, as she has always wanted.
In the afternoons, Dekala sits in the main courtyard and judges the people, the Regent silent beside her. The people of Zidesh speak of their warrior queen with admiration and love. There are some who bemoan the fact that they have no king, but they are easily ignored for now. Zidesh has been waiting for its queen for a long time.
Ruti sees little of Dekala during the day. She is no longer her constant companion, nor is Orrin. Orrin has disappeared entirely, and Ruti hasn’t had a chance to ask Dekala where he has gone. They don’t do very much talking when they’re together.
At night, Dekala tugs Ruti into her room and they fall to kisses, to passionate embraces, to relearning each other’s touch again and again. It is an unaccountably comfortable thing, being in Dekala’s arms, and it is a struggle to tiptoe from Dekala’s room each night and back to her own. The attendants gossip, but they are discreet, and the whispers never travel too far from Dekala’s quarters.
“What is this to you?” Ruti whispers one night, made bold by Dekala’s bright and hungry eyes. “What are we?”
“We are this,” Dekala says, and pulls Ruti down to kiss her.
Later, she whispers, “I told you that I will not love. I will not be consumed by someone else. We are not that.”
Her eyes are grave, not cold but not hot either, carefully free of the passion that emerges when they are together. Ruti says, “I don’t want to be that.” There is little else she can say, even when her heart drops and she finds herself craving something she can never ask for.
She loves Dekala, and it stings each time she holds her. She has more of Dekala than anyone else ever has, but she doesn’t have all of her. “Good,” Dekala says, and she kisses Ruti again, soft and tender and without any of the distance she espouses.
One night, the air is too restrictive when she departs from Dekala’s room, and she slips into her room only to make sure that Kimya is there before she steps out again. She longs for the dirt and the wind, for a walk barefoot in the garden, and she slips out of Dekala’s quarters.
There are new guards stationed there at night now, a cadre of them who pay her little attention except to recoil when she gets too close. Ruti ignores them and makes her way to the garden.
She’s surprised to see that someone is already there. Orrin is seated on a bench near the entrance, staring up at the glow of the full moon. Ruti follows his gaze up, feeling the mighty power of the spirits who reside beneath this sky, and says, “Have you been dismissed?”
“I have been promoted,” Orrin says wryly. “Pushed a comfortable distance from Dekala. I am to be a captain of the palace guard. A great honor.” He glances at Ruti, his eyes sharp. “I know where you spend your nights. Have you come to gloat?”
Ruti shakes her head. Maybe there had been a time when she might have, before she’d understood Dekala. Now she finds that she has little to boast about. “Dekala doesn’t love me.”
“She trusts you,” Orrin counters. “You were the one she called to make her queen.” He is calmer now than he once was, and it isn’t exactly resignation in his voice, either. For the first time since Ruti met him, in this quiet night where Dekala is away, Orrin seems comfortable.
Ruti snorts and dares to provoke him a little bit. “She couldn’t ask you. Torhvin had the Ruranan army steadfastly loyal to him. If Jaquil had reappeared without our groundwork, Torhvin would have executed a new coup out in the open.”
“The army had to know that Torhvin had betrayed them and given the secrets of kuduwaí to the Diri,” Orrin agrees. “But I could have shared that with them. I spent all of our time in Byale with them.”
“Except that you’re as subtle as an angry Maned One,” Ruti points out, and she’s surprised when Orrin lets out a snort at that.
He spreads his hands, the mark on his right palm bright in the moonlight. “I will not begrudge you her favor.”
Ruti wrinkles her brow, dubious. “No?”
Orrin meets her eyes, and in his gaze Ruti sees the fierce loyalty to Dekala that has always guided him. “Dekala will be surrounded by vipers from the moment she takes that crown. There will be many who seek her power or wish to manipulate her for their ends.” He broods for a moment, still the same old Orrin, and shakes his head. “She will need those who are loyal to her and not her power.”
“Then she will need you as well,” Ruti says quietly. It’s a peace offering, a recognition that they are on the same team now. “Regardless of where you’ve been placed in the palace.”
Orrin looks hard at her, then sighs. “Please don’t tell me we’ll have to be friends.”
