Battles of Salt and Sighs by Val Saintcrowe

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ONIVIA CLUTCHED ATher drawers and the bedchamber door opened and Larent came out. He crossed the room to open the door to the hallway.

“Maven,” he said. “Come in.” He turned to look at her, spied the drawers, and walked directly to her. He snatched them out of her hands.

She let out a cry of surprise and protest.

He turned them over in his hands, fingering them.

A fae man shut the door behind him. He was the one who’d been given the message to take to Magdalia. Onivia recognized him. He spied the drawers. “Am I interrupting something?”

“No, we’re done,” said Larent in a voice that was reminiscent of the way he talked to her at the dinner table. He tossed the drawers over his shoulder and came over to stand behind Onivia. He put his hand on her, resting it on the curve of her backside, and because she wasn’t wearing drawers, she could feel too much of his hand there.

She tried to jerk away.

He dug his fingers into her.

She let out another noise of protest.

“Maven,” said Larent, ignoring her.

Maven seemed to be staring at the place that Larent was touching her, a strange, unreadable expression on his face. “I, um, just arrived back from the capital, and I was able to find your, um, your girl’s sister.”

“Good,” said Larent. “And what does she say?”

“She says, ‘I love her too, and that I bid her to think first of herself, that I am unharmed here.’” Maven paused. “I did confirm her identity. She knew about the burnt turkeys.”

“And how did she seem?” asked Larent.

“Well, she was locked inside her bedchamber, so I did not see her, and we only spoke through the door. But she is kept in the csaerina’s old rooms and there were whispers that the Croith himself had stayed there with her the night before, so I suppose she is—”

“What?” Onivia’s voice broke.

Larent let go of her.

She turned on him. “You said that he wanted her magic, only her magic.”

Larent shook his head. “I thought that was true. I’m sorry.”

“But if she’s being…” She wrung out her hands.

“We’ll speak later,” he said to her, warning in his eyes. She knew she was not to allow the messenger to understand how he favored her, if that was even what it could be termed.

She forced herself to swallow her words, but tears were springing to her eyes again. She had just finished crying, and now she wondered if she would ever stop.

“Thank you, Maven,” Larent put a hand on the other fae’s shoulder. “I appreciate this.”

Maven looked down at the other man’s hand and then up at Larent’s face. He ducked out of his grasp. “Anything else you’re going to need assistance with right now?”

“Not that I can think of,” said Larent.

“I suppose you’ll be sure to keep certain things about my, er, interests to yourself.” Maven sounded bitter.

“I’m sorry if I misled—”

“I see where your tastes lie.” Maven looked at Onivia’s drawers on the floor. “It’s all quite clear to me, Larent.”

Larent’s upper lip curled. “Well, I suppose you’ll think what you like.”

“And so will you.” Maven shook his head, sighing. He turned and walked out, shutting the door firmly behind him.

Larent folded his arms over his chest. “I don’t know if we should use him for passing any more messages to your sister after all. He seems to have taken that worse than I thought he would.”

“Why is my sister in the Croith’s bed?” Onivia snapped.

“I think it was the other way around. He was in her bed,” said Larent, staring at the door. “Perhaps I should have kept up the ruse that I was interested in him. I only thought that would be too cruel, but perhaps it was cruel enough as it was, since he is so angry with me. I wanted Maven to be an ally, but now he thinks I’m a human sympathizer too. You are destroying everything for me, do you realize this?” At this, he turned to look at Onivia.

She fixed him with a glare. “My sister. If she’s being assaulted by the Night King—and Fortune could only say what kind of wretched tastes a man like that might have—then I need to get to her now.”

“We’ve already discussed this.”

“Let me go with Cassus,” she said.

“No.”

“Please, Larent, she is not like me. She’s not the least bit resilient, and she will be completely broken down—”

“If you think you could get your sister away from the Croith—that anyone could—you’re fooling yourself. He can kill with touch.”

She knew this. Of course she knew this, but hearing the words seemed to pierce her with despair. “So, my sister is the Night King’s whore, and I’m yours, and there’s nothing I can do about it, is that it? I should just accept this?” Her voice was shaking.

“Yes,” he said flatly. He cast one last glance at the door, where Maven had disappeared, and then he turned his back on her and headed for his bedchamber again. He was in the midst of closing the door when he stopped. “I have to ask, the ancestors only know why, but what did I do that made you cry?”

She pressed her lips together, shaking her head.

He sighed. “Fine,” he muttered and started to pull the door closed.

“Why did you put your hands all over me when Maven was in here? What did you need to prove to him?”

He paused. “Oh, that? Maven is attracted to men. He’s not particularly good at hiding it, though most of the others don’t seem to notice. I may have… encouraged him in order to get him to deliver the message to your sister.”

She blinked for a minute, thinking that over.

“Anyway, then I wanted him to understand that I wasn’t actually attracted to him. I think I went about that badly, though.”

“But…” She furrowed her brow. It was a common enough practice, especially amongst the imperial legions, for men to lie with each other. Often they were on long campaigns without any women about. Besides, the legions encouraged it, thinking that it bonded the men more strongly, made them better soldiers. She likely wasn’t supposed to know about it, because it wasn’t a subject meant for a young girl’s ears, but it was discussed easily enough in the capital, or at least it used to be. “Aren’t all men attracted to men under the right circumstances?”

He raised his eyebrows. “I… don’t think so.”

“It’s only that in the legions—”

“The fae don’t hold with such things,” he said. “The ancestors have decreed it an abomination.”

“Well, that’s stupid,” she said.

“I happen to agree with you,” he said. “That’s neither here nor there. If Maven found another man, it would not be the least bit threatening to me. But the fae wish to separate themselves from the practices of humans and to embrace the old ways, which means all of the fae beliefs, even the stupid ones. It’s also one of the reasons they are so insistent on making sure they are taking human women for, um, for their use.”

She flinched in spite of herself.

He hesitated, looking down at the knob of the door, where he rested his hand. “If you tell me what I did that displeased you, I can be sure not to do it again.”

“It wasn’t like that,” she muttered.

He raised his gaze to hers.

“It was only…” How could she even explain it? “It was awful for it to be pleasurable somehow, awful to surrender in that way, awful for you to have conquered that part of me.”

He blinked, taking this in.

She wished he would close the door now. She wanted to be away from him, separated as much as possible.

“This is why I said the thing about breaking you quickly,” he said in a very soft voice. “And I could… with Akiel, it could just be brutal, I suppose. It would be harder for me, but if it would be easier for you…?” He let it hang there, as if he wanted her to answer him.

But she didn’t want to acquiesce at all to this. Making her a participant in her own debauchery hurt her.

Eventually, he seemed to realize she wasn’t going to say anything, and he shut the door, leaving her blessedly alone.

MAGDALIA WAS GOINGto refuse to dine with Duranth. She decided it and held firm to the idea all afternoon, practicing what message she would have sent back to him. She put together long strings of insults, debating between whether to call him a half-wit or a puss-filled windbag.

And then, when the summons came for dinner, she didn’t refuse.

She couldn’t even say why she’d agreed to the dinner. It didn’t make any sense, because she hated him and she didn’t want to be near him. She certainly didn’t want to eat with him.

It’s because I’m bored,she decided.

Yes, that was what it must be. After all, Duranth had always been the one thing that amused her. He had been her playmate as a child, and so now, she looked to him for entertainment. It was instinctual. It was an impulse.

Perhaps it didn’t hurt anything, because it was a way for him to serve her, not the other way around, and if she continued to enforce the natural order of things, making him do things for her, then perhaps that would not be the least bit damaging. Perhaps it would even be a force for good.

Once the legions came back, invading the capital and taking over again, Duranth would already be used to serving her again, and it would make him more likely to surrender to the humans.

He was influencing her—or attempting to—but she could influence him.

Then she saw him, and she knew all this was folly, just a silly story she was telling herself.

The truth was that he was evil, and he had evil influence over her, and she was in danger here.

They ate in the vast dining room, at the vast table, which stretched out through the huge room with enough seats for at least twenty guests, but they both ate at the head of the table, because there was enough room there for two place settings.

The food was not lavish today, not one of her favorite dishes, as she had been fed since her arrival. It was simple fare, instead, rice and lentils along with some greens.

She decided not to comment on it, but Duranth told her that she would eat like everyone else from now on. She said that was fine with her, and she knew that this was not evidence that she was influencing him at all, or that he was serving her.

He was not.

“Well,” he said, “what did you do today?”

“Nothing,” she said, “as prisoners often do.”

“We could practice magic together if you’re in want of some entertainment.”

“No.”

He laughed softly, drinking some wine from a earthenware goblet. She noticed, however, that the utensils were metal. Upon examining the fork, she determined it was pure gold, and she had to admit that she had no idea if fae were sensitive to gold, because there was little chance of them handling it as slaves.

Duranth saw her staring at it, and he launched into a long explanation of how the weaknesses of the fae were giving way, that more and more fae were being born with the ability to handle iron and steel, that even fae that weren’t half blood could bear it in some measure. “After all, you saw yourself that the iron piercings I was forced to wear never dampened my magic.” Absently, he fingered his ear lobe with one hand, and she could see the mark from the iron ring he had once worn.

She was struck by the notion of all the marks on his body from his time being on her family’s villa, and this made her feel—for a moment—like she might lose the three bites of rice and lentils she’d eaten.

But then she schooled herself and all was well.

It’s only because I loved him. He was my beloved playmate when I was young. It always hurt me to think of his being hurt.

“It does cause me discomfort, of course,” he said. “Even this…” He picked up the gold fork. “But I’d rather not eat rice with my fingers.”

“What about wooden utensils?” she mused, remembering the spoons from the fae huts at the villa.

Suddenly, the door burst open and several fae rushed into the room, all of them wielding gleaming swords.

One of the men dove for Duranth, knocking him off his chair and onto the floor, the tip of the sword to his throat.

Two of them came for her, and they pulled her away, each holding fast to one of her arms. She was so startled, she didn’t even make noise. She let the men hold her and she gaped down at Duranth. Why wasn’t he doing something?

The man stabbed Duranth in the throat.