Ruti shudders. “What a horrific idea.” She smirks, unable to help herself, and turns when she hears movement in the garden.
Winda stands at the edge of the path, her eyes taking them in as she says, “Princess Dekala has sent me to locate you.”
Ruti tenses. Dekala had been asleep, or so she’d thought, and she hadn’t expected that her departure would have been noticed. “Does she require my presence?” She glances at Orrin, self-conscious, but he’s watching Winda instead. His eyes bore into her, his lip curling, and Winda only stares emotionlessly back.
“I do not believe so,” Winda says. Ruti chews on her lip, stymied at this order that is not an order. She has been located as a missing possession, ready to be placed back on a shelf for its owner’s future needs. She quails at this new categorization, and lingers in the garden.
But before long, the silence outside is as oppressive as Dekala’s quarters had felt, and so Ruti turns to go inside. Winda remains in the garden, and Ruti can hear Orrin’s voice again as she returns to the castle.
A week before the coronation, Ruti is summoned to Dekala’s war room. “Kewal!” she cries out in delight. The table is crowded with advisors, but there is one side of the table that is almost empty. Kewal sits there with one of the elders of Lower Byale, a woman Ruti remembers is named Phailin. Across from them is King Jaquil, who looks uneasily at the Markless at the table and keeps a safe distance.
The only one who sits near them, unbothered by their closeness, is Dekala. She says, “We have reached a consensus on the Markless.”
Ruti blinks. She hasn’t pressed the issue in the months building up to the coronation, certain that Dekala has other matters to concern herself with than the children of the slums. “Consensus?” she repeats warily.
“We are doing what we can to trace the trade routes of the Diri, but they have been scarce since my brother’s death,” Jaquil says regretfully. “Only some children have been returned to Lower Byale. But the people of Lower Byale have also expressed an interest in helping Somanchi’s Markless children.”
“The orphanages must be revitalized in the meantime,” Dekala explains. “I would like the slums rebuilt, and the Markless taught trades.”
Ruti gapes at Dekala. The slums rebuilt. The Markless taught trades. It’s a fantasy beyond anything Ruti would have dared to dream, once upon a time. It remains a foreign concept even now. Ruti tries to imagine it and cannot, but the idea leaves warmth surging through her body.
Someone else speaks up. Orrin, whom she hasn’t seen again since the garden. He sits with Winda on one side of the table. “The people of Somanchi will not purchase items sold by the Markless,” he says. His tone is frank rather than offensive, an unfortunate fact that he states. Ruti glares at him anyway, but she can’t deny it. Orrin’s voice gentles. “I know you have a different perspective on this than your people, but you can’t enact successful change overnight,” he says. There is something different in how he addresses Dekala, and Ruti studies him for a moment.
He still looks at her with affection and loyalty, but there is none of the dedicated obeisance that there once had been. Orrin has let go of his infatuation, it seems.
Ruti has been less successful at that.
Dekala scoffs. “I’m aware of that,” she says. “But we must give the Markless the tools to endure despite that. For too long, we have ignored Zidesh’s Markless problem. I will ignore it no longer.”
Phailin says, “We will be happy to take in many of your children. Lower Byale has been quiet for too long.” Her eyes move to Ruti. “And we will need an ambassador from Zidesh as well.”
Ruti stares, startled. “Me?” she blurts out. Kewal grins at her. “What would I—”
“You would assist in the transport of Somanchi’s children,” Phailin says. “And you will aid in their adjustment and in any structural issues we encounter as we dig further beneath the ground. Our people are beholden to you, Ruti of Zidesh. We wish to elevate you to a position as a leader in Lower Byale.” Kewal is beaming. Orrin looks nonplussed.
“Leader,” Ruti echoes, and she looks to Dekala. Dekala’s eyes are narrowed, taken aback but giving away nothing. “I would have to leave Zidesh.”
Kewal says, “What can you do in Zidesh that could be greater than what you can accomplish in Lower Byale?” Ruti has no answer for him. Here in Somanchi, what is it that keeps Ruti tethered? She hesitates and looks to Dekala again. Dekala says stiffly, “I suppose there’s no reason not to send her with you.” She doesn’t look at Ruti again for the duration of the meeting.
Kimya is livid that Ruti agreed to this before asking her about it. Her hands fly, and Ruti says helplessly, “I didn’t. Dekala agreed to it and I just—you’ll like Lower Byale, it’s perfect—” But Kimya doesn’t want to hear it. She signs again in disbelief, the same question for Ruti over and over: How can we leave Dekala?
“Then you can stay,” Ruti finally says in a surge of frustration. “I’ll go.” She rises from her bed and stalks out of the room.
She will leave after the coronation with the first caravan of Markless children. Dekala’s soldiers have flat-out refused to accompany the children, so Lower Byale will send caretakers to guide them through the trip. Ruti is meant to supervise the entire thing. Kewal tells her that she’s a hero of Lower Byale now, and they are eager to have her with them, but it doesn’t seem as though she’s needed as anything more than an icon. They will find reasons to use her magic, but they don’t require it, just as no one in Somanchi does.
She aches suddenly for the early days in the palace, provoking Dekala and walking beside her each day. It had been simpler before she’d loved Dekala. Still, she can’t quite find it inside herself to reject that love altogether. It has left her changed, has transformed her from a bitter child of the slums and left her a soft dreamer. Too delicate, the girl she’d once been would say, but she clings to her heart regardless.
She spots a movement ahead, and she knows who it is before she hears her voice. Dekala is walking through the garden alongside Orrin, smiling up at him as she is wont to do more often these days. The smile freezes when she sees Ruti in front of her. “Oh,” Ruti says.
She looks at them for a moment, the comfortable way they walk side by side, and wonders with sudden despair if Orrin hasn’t moved on at all. Perhaps he has only grown from infatuation to something more profound, to a connection between them that has left him at peace. Perhaps—
Orrin looks between them, his eyes widening at Ruti’s expression. “We aren’t.…” He looks sheepish suddenly. Ruti glares at him, lost and growing increasingly frustrated. “I am not—I have a soulbond!” Orrin blurts out, holding up a hand. “I found my Bonded.”
Dekala’s lip curls into a smirk. “I found your Bonded, you mean,” she corrects him, then amends, “Though I wasn’t aware of it for a very long time.” She shakes her head. “Go,” she says, nudging Orrin’s arm gently. “King Jaquil will need an escort home. You’re going to be late.”
Orrin nods to Ruti, disappearing into the garden and leaving them alone. Ruti ducks her head, embarrassed at her own discomfort and frustration. “Winda,” Dekala says abruptly, and Ruti looks up.
“What?”
“Winda is Orrin’s soulbond,” Dekala says, and she smiles suddenly. “As far as we were all told, her family refused to send their daughter to the palace and disappeared. In actuality, she was drafted into an elite unit of Zideshi spies who have infiltrated various other kingdoms. I have been in contact with Winda for a long time, but I never put it together. Orrin didn’t recognize her all these years later. He only realized when I told Torhvin that Winda had been mine since she was three.”
“Oh,” Ruti says, struck by that. “That’s why he was always so grouchy around her. He kept saying he had a bad feeling about her.”
“Trust Orrin not to recognize his own connection with his soulbond,” Dekala says lightly, and they catch each other’s eyes and smile. Ruti’s chest is full and hurting at the same time.
Dekala clears her throat. “So you will be leaving with the Markless?” she says. It’s uncertain, particularly from someone who had said it with such certainty earlier.
Ruti shrugs. “I can do good there. I am not needed here.”
Dekala’s face darkens and her eyes close off from Ruti again. “You have your … uses here,” she drawls, and it is distant and intimate enough that it makes Ruti’s cheeks burn. “As my witch, of course.” She leans forward, her eyes inviting, and Ruti cups her cheeks, lets their lips brush together, and knows that she cannot do this anymore. She is drowning in a deluge of her own overpowering love, and she has finally learned what it means to have value.
It is not this. Never this, a consort and a distraction, a girl wanted but unloved. “I think you might destroy me if I stay here any longer,” Ruti says, and the admission carries forth all the words she cannot speak. It leaves her drained and empty and so very sad.
Dekala draws back as though she’s been slapped. “Then go,” she hisses, and Ruti can’t read her at all, can’t piece together what must be rage and hurt and betrayal. “I warned you. I told you—”
