The Five Queendoms - Scorpica E-Book

G.R. Macallister

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

A page-turning, sweeping fantasy, full of devastating treachery, deadly magic and ruthless women, perfect for fans of House of the Dragon and The Jasmine Throne.In an ancient matriarchal world of magic, gods and warriors, the last girl – unbeknownst to the five Queendoms – has just been born. As time marches on, the scribes of Bastian find no answers in their history books. The farmers of Sestia sacrifice their crops to the gods. Paxim, the empire of trade and dealings has nothing to barter but boys and more boys. Arcan magic has no spells to remedy the Drought of Girls, as it soon becomes known. And finally, Scorpia, where every woman is a fighter, their commander, their Queen, has no more warriors to train. The lines of these once-great empires soon to die.After centuries of peace, the ensuing struggle for dominance – and heirs – will bring the Five Queendoms to the eve of all-out war.But the mysterious curse is linked to one of the last-born children, an orphaned all-magic girl, on the run from the Seekers of Daybreak Palace, who is unaware she has a claim to the Arcan throne…

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Part I: Before the Drought

1: The Barren Queen

2: The Road Home

3: The Way

4: The Healer

5: Binding Magic

6: The Drought of Girls

Part II: Danger

7: A Daughter

8: Healing Lessons

9: The Hunted, the Hunter

10: Trials

11: A Challenge

12: Strength for the Sorcerer

13: Betrayal

14: The Orphan Tree

15: The Bandit God

16: Warriors

17: A Slip

18: The Kitchens

19: The Quartz Heart

20: A Request

21: The Takers

22: Havoc

23: Comfort

Part III: Crisis

24: The Cherry Grove

25: Blood

26: The Festival

27: Rescued

28: Training

29: A Mission

30: The Isle of Luck

31: Bait

Part IV: Clash

32: Rites

33: The Sorcerer Speaks

34: The Only Way

35: The Barehanded

36: Free

Acknowledgments

Also Available from Titan Books

SCORPICA

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Scorpica

Print edition ISBN: 9781789099324

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789099331

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition February 2022

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2022 G.R. Macallister. All rights reserved.

This edition published by arrangement with Saga Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Inc, in 2022.

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

To Jonathan,finally

SCORPICA

Across the Five Queendoms of the known world, on an average day, roughly a hundred children were born. They rushed headlong from between the thighs of warriors and shepherds, farmers and courtiers, scribes and healers, thieves and queens. Some days brought more, some days fewer, but over weeks and months and years the newborns announced themselves in a constant cascade, squalling into life.

The Five Queendoms were the five fingers of a hand, crucially connected but distinct. Since the Great Peace had defined their borders five hundred years before, generations had known only harmony between the queendoms. The women who crafted the Peace drew the maps wisely: each nation had its gifts, its role. The scribes of the Bastion kept impeccable records and educated the most talented intellects of every queendom. Sestia was rich with grain and sheep. The desert of Arca grew only one thing, but that thing was magic, and it was enough. Paxim brokered the deals; the wheels of countless trade wagons wore ruts across its soil in every direction. And Scorpica had the strongest fighters, every woman a warrior, their commander their queen.

The balance seemed elegant, eternal, as solid underfoot as a natural stone bridge carved by water and time. Then one unnatural shift broke it open. Peace was not as solid as it had seemed.

Late on the fourth day of the fourth month of the All-Mother’s Year 502, the day a headstrong kingling was born to the widowed queen of Paxim, four girls were among the world’s newborns. One was the daughter of a warrior queen, another of a disgraced priest, yet another the offspring of a healer at the end of her line. One, born orphan as her mother’s spirit left the world, was no one’s daughter but the country’s. At first, they seemed ordinary. If the next days had brought more girls like them, they would have been.

But the following day, every child born to the women of Paxim—senators to servants—was a boy. The same was true in the tents of the Scorpican warriors. Among the magicians of Arca. On Sestia’s lush, sprawling farms. In the narrow stone fortress of the Bastion. All across the Five Queendoms, what happened was the same.

Infants were born squalling and silent, rich and poor, hale and weak, welcomed and unwanted. Their unfocused eyes looked out over bleak desert, rich green pasture, hilly wildwoods, impervious stone. They were gifts and they were accidents. They were blessed with excess and cursed with want. They were the ambassadors of future generations, hope made visible, swaddled in bundles of padded, wrinkling flesh. They were all things to all women. Except that not one of them was a girl.

Years would pass before another girl was born anywhere in the Five Queendoms.

More years would pass before anyone truly understood why.

PART I

BEFORETHEDROUGHT

   1   

The Barren Queen

Midsummer, the All-Mother’s Year 501In the Holy City, SestiaKhara

On the eve of the Sun Rites, Khara dha Ellimi awoke alone in the jet-black dark.

Despite the too-soft, too-large beds their Sestian hosts had set aside for her delegation, she’d fallen asleep quickly enough, soothed by the nearness of her fellow Scorpicae. The steady, measured breathing of a dozen warrior women at rest had been her lullaby. Yet she awoke to find silence her only companion. Soft, rumpled beds all around her lay abandoned.

Khara knew, of course, what her warriors had gone to do. She’d done it herself nine years running, in this very city, years ago. At ten-and-five she’d made her first journey to Sestia to celebrate rites. She’d returned to Scorpica with a belly set to swell, as did so many warrior sisters, their seed watered with a man’s rain. The annual Moon Rites or rarer Sun Rites, in this sense they differed little: the Sestian priests, the Xaras, encouraged pleasures for all. Pleasures honored the God of Plenty and Her consort, they said. The warriors of Scorpica, hard-edged and lean with muscle, their dark hair shorn nearly to their scalps, laughed behind their hands at the long-haired priests’ solemn piety. Some warriors believed in the God of Plenty and some did not. They pursued pleasure for pleasure’s sake, not for Hers.

Khara felt as if the thick mattress were trying to swallow her slowly, like a fangless snake. She struggled upward and almost fell from the raised bed, not used to a perch so high. Scorpion mokh these pilgrimages, she thought. Next time I’ll stay home.

But by the next Sun Rites, five years from now, would she still be queen? By then she’d be nearing her fortieth year. It would be foolhardy not to consider passing the crown, though she had no daughter to receive it. So she had surveyed all her subjects, analyzed their strengths and weaknesses, planned for succession as she would for any campaign, and chosen as her protégée Mada dha Shodrei. Who had, like the others, vanished into the Sestian night.

Once steadied, Khara paced the dark room, her bare feet landing soundlessly on the cool stone floor. During the Sun Rites, the enormous, gleaming-white central building of the Holy City—both palace and temple—housed dozens, even hundreds, of visitors. Warriors could have their pick. Khara knew that some Scorpicae were strategic in their pleasures, choosing to bed particular men for their strength or intelligence, for traits they wanted in the next generation of warriors. She herself had never been so deliberate. But she suspected Mada would be. Her keen strategic mind was one of the chief reasons Khara had chosen her.

The other reason she’d chosen Mada was her daughter.

Tamura dha Mada was ten years old and already deadly with a bow, toting a swaying brace of red squirrels or plump rabbits home from the hunt even when far older hunters returned empty-handed. If Khara made her choice of Mada official—naming a woman who already had a daughter, and one clearly fated to grow into a talented warrior—the next succession, unlike this one, would never be in question.

The door opened with the faintest of creaks to admit a shadowed figure outlined by the lamp she bore, and Khara had the odd feeling she’d summoned Mada just by thinking of her. Instead it was Gretti, the youngest of their delegation at a mere ten-and-five, the keeper of the ceremonial blade. Even in the faint light Khara could identify her easily: slender in shape, her full lips pursed in concentration, her step tentative. Her sister Hana had been bladebearer five years before, an unusually capable one, but Gretti had none of her sister’s easy confidence. She held both of her discarded sandals in one hand, strings dangling. Her leather vest had been tied in haste. Without looking at Khara she crept to her own bed, lifted the soft mattress. When she saw the muted glint of the metal underneath, she breathed an audible sigh.

“It was safe here,” Khara said.

The girl wheeled, clearly surprised. She would need to learn awareness of her surroundings. “I was worried. So I returned.”

With a wry look at the slapdash ties of her vest, Khara said gently, “If you’d told me you were going, I would have reassured you. Then you could have taken your time.”

Before Gretti could respond, movement in the doorway caught Khara’s eye.

Stepping into the room, sure and silent, was Mada herself. Even with cattle-hide sandals on her feet, her footfalls made no noise. A bit shorter than her queen and broader in the shoulders, with the long, ropy muscles of a born runner, she stretched luxuriantly as she came.

“My queen,” she said. “It is time we were all abed.”

“We all were, I suspect,” said Khara. “Just not here.”

Mada smiled with obvious satisfaction. “Just doing our part to serve the Holy One.”

“Did you bed a Sestian, then?” asked Khara, an impolite question. She could see Gretti’s jaw slacken in surprise out of the corner of her eye, but she kept her gaze on Mada, testing her temper. If she was too hotheaded to rule, it wasn’t too late to choose a different successor. Nothing had yet been announced. “Did he call out Her name?”

Unruffled, Mada said, “I’ve more of a taste for Arcans, when I can find them. Do you remember what you used to choose, or has it been too long?”

She was saved from needing to answer—Mada seemed to want an answer, her eyes bright and expectant like a bird’s—by the return of two more warriors, their lips swollen and limbs loose. There was no light yet from the single high window, but Khara knew that morning was growing closer. No more sleep for her tonight, then.

The returning warriors did not seem interested in sleep either, conversing in the low hum of bees drunk on sunlight, running a wet cloth from the basin across their shoulders or elsewhere, unpacking and repacking the bags they had carried with them from Scorpica in preparation for the long journey home.

Khara listened to their conversations while pretending not to and donned the ceremonial robe she would wear for the Sun Rites. The other queens would wear their hair loose, per tradition; hers was too short to wear any other way. Gretti polished the blade over and over and Khara had to force herself to look away. The blade was sharp and deadly. It did not need to shine to do its grim work.

In what seemed like minutes, a soft but distinct chime sounded through the thick wood of the door to their chamber. Every warrior’s head rose.

“All ready,” said their queen, a statement, not a question, and opened the door to admit the Queensguard.

Four warrior women, two closer to Khara’s age and two to Mada’s, stood arrow-straight in the hallway. The warriors of the Queensguard wore long cloaks of pale wool to show their current allegiance to Sestia, the swirl of a ram’s horn stamped into the center of their leather shields. They were armored underneath.

“Queen,” said the tallest. “It is time. You have the blade?”

Khara turned to the girl. It was her moment. “Gretti,” she said.

In a flash the girl had sheathed the knife and brought it to her, turning the handle and presenting it, reverently, by the gleaming bone hilt.

Khara took the knife in her hands, then opened her palms with the sheathed blade flat on top, ready to bear it in front of her like an offering. Ever so slightly, she squared her shoulders.

“Will you follow me, please?” asked the shortest of the Queensguard, her tone hushed and formal.

“Yes,” said Khara. “We are ready.”

*   *   *

The queen of Scorpica had three responsibilities during the Sun Rites. One was to make the long journey here to bring the holy blade to be used in the ceremony. No substitutes were accepted; the queen herself must attend. The second was to eat a ritual meal of fresh red cherries with the other queens the day before the ceremony and affirm her participation. The third was to attend the ceremony itself, bearing the blade and handing it to the High Xara to wield, which was Khara’s least favorite of the three by far. The scent of blood alone did not disturb a warrior, and yet, how blood smelled to her depended so much on whose blood it was and how it had been drawn. Blood shed in the Sun Rites smelled like rust and rot, like overripe figs in a vulture’s beak. Even as she saw it bright and fresh, shed in the moment, to her it always stank of decay.

But there was no option not to attend the rites, not for any of the five ruling queens. While only the Sestians worshipped the God of Plenty above all others, none of them knew what might happen if any queen ignored the summons. Were the Sun Rites a dam that kept back a flood of pestilence and famine? Did their own gods expect their participation, even if the sacrifice wasn’t made in their name? They could not know unless they failed to attend. No one yet had thought her curiosity worth the risk.

So the queen of Paxim negotiated and secured promises of attendance, the queen of the Bastion brought the precious Book of Worlds to record the ceremony, the Arcan queen came as the messenger of Chaos, and she, the queen of Scorpica, delivered the holy blade. The queen of Sestia herself, the High Xara, would be the one to wield it.

As she followed the Queensguard out of the palace and toward the amphitheater, Khara could think only of how eager she was to have today’s rites done with. Perhaps this would be the last time she’d ever walk this road. If she named Mada her successor and yielded the crown, she need not come this way again. She felt a pang of regret at the thought, but in the same breath, relief.

She would miss the cherries, though. Their like did not thrive in Scorpica’s cooler, wilder northern clime. Perfectly ripe, bursting with juice, so fresh off the tree they were still warm from the sun. She knew the ritual was chosen for the symbolism—all five queens left the sacred grove afterward with stubborn crimson stains on their lips, on their fingers—but the taste was so exquisite, even the memory set her mouth to watering.

When they arrived at the amphitheater of gleaming stone, they surrendered their weapons to the guards—all but Gretti—and passed through the final gate. Then they descended the long, long stairs, heading for the dais where the ceremony would take place.

The ritual dances began as they approached.

The dancers, dozens of them, were dressed simply in flowing, short tunics, the girls and women with their hair piled high, the boys and men wearing headdresses of ram’s horns. They acted out the beginning of history, beginning with the All-Mother creating the world, then birthing Her three daughters Velja, Sestia, and Eresh—Chaos, Plenty, and Death—to help Her create humans, animals, and plants to cover it. Sestia brought life, exhaling Her divine breath into mouths, bills, and snouts, placing feet and paws and hooves on the earth to explore far and wide. Eresh built the Underlands to welcome the spirits of humans, their shades, once their time on earth was done. Velja introduced all the things people most wanted and most feared—pain and longing, joy and satisfaction, hope, envy, despair—to create balance between life and death, ensuring that the only certain thing in this world would be uncertainty.

A horn sounded, bringing Khara back to herself. It was time. With the other queens she moved forward as the rest of their delegations stepped back, taking positions in the amphitheater’s front row. The dancers slowed their movements, easing away, stepping aside.

The mood changed to a crackle of anticipation, a thousand spectators drawing in and holding their collective breath.

Eight muscular women strode into the gap where the dancers had been, each set of four bearing one of the ceremonial bone beds. These they set in place, one end firmly anchored to the platform and the notched end hovering above the open-mouthed bins of seed grain below. What happened in those bins would determine whether the next year’s crop was plentiful or meager. All their hopes, not just Sestia’s but the world’s, rested in the golden cradle of that grain.

Then the sacrifices were led forward, their feet bare and cautious in the dust. Once on the dais, they were bound to the bone beds, each head fitting neatly into its notch, each long, smooth throat exposed. A girl on the cusp of becoming a woman. A boy on the cusp of becoming a man. Neither, thought Khara, was fated to live long enough to fulfill that promise.

Some years the sacrifices struggled and some years they didn’t; Khara didn’t know what made the difference and she couldn’t let herself care. She only looked away from their accusing eyes, and when the four witnessing queens were called forward to test the bindings, she checked to make sure the knots were secure. It was bad enough to know you were going to die. It would be worse, she thought, to think that you had some chance of escaping that death and then meet it anyway.

“You are satisfied?” said the High Xara, officially beginning the sacrifice.

“We are,” replied the other queens, as one.

The ceremonial horn sounded again, cutting through the air as dawn began to lighten the sky. The women and men in the amphitheater stood rapt. The horn’s last long note faded and died above their assembled heads.

“Queen of Paxim, diplomat and dealmaker,” the High Xara began. Though she addressed the purple-robed, dark-eyed woman, her words were for all, spoken in a voice nearly as sharp and resonant as the blast of the horn had been.

“Yes.”

“Have you brought forth all five queens from across the known world to play their roles today?”

“I have,” Heliane answered loudly, proud, firm. Her dark hair hung all the way to her waist; freed of its usual braids, it flowed down her back like a cloak.

After a pause, the High Xara turned to the next queen, her movements formal and spare. “Queen of the Bastion, the scribe of our holy rite.”

“Yes.”

“Stand you ready to record what we do here today?”

The oldest queen, her soft chin and cheeks crumpling inward like an overwintered apple, said, “I do.”

“Queen of Scorpica, battle-driven and strong.”

Khara raised her chin and met the priest’s steady eyes, forcing herself to match strength with strength. “Yes.”

“Will you bring forth the blade sacred to the Holy One for the sanctified task before us today?”

“I will,” said Khara, using her voice of command.

“Queen of Arca,” called the High Xara to the final queen in the semicircle, “I call upon you to speak with the lips of Chaos.”

There was always a pause, a tension, at this moment in the ceremony. No one knew what might happen. Chaos Herself was here in the form of her earthly avatar. Even those who did not worship the God of the Arcans could not help believing in Her enough to fear Her caprice, deep down.

When the queens of Arca were called upon in these ceremonies, their god Velja moved some to take drastic actions and moved some not at all. Oft-told stories remembered the queen five generations before who’d leapt from the dais and thrown herself in front of the ceremonial blade, dying in place of that year’s sacrifice. An earlier ruler had stolen a Scorpican pony and galloped through the rites as naked as the night her mother birthed her. The Arcan queen Mirriam standing before them today had ruled many years, her proud, hooked nose and bright, hawklike eyes unchanged for decades. And though she had ruled so long, they still did not truly know her. She might do nothing. She might do anything.

The silence lay over the crowd in the amphitheater like a blanket, stretching out, unbroken.

Then the queen of Arca said, with a faint, quizzical air of surprise, “I am moved to leave this place.”

And she did just that, stepping off the dais toward the spectators, taking the long walk up the stairs toward the far exit. Heads everywhere swiveled to watch her as she went.

Khara looked at the High Xara, whose eyes did not drift from the dark-robed queen as she mounted the seemingly endless steps up and away. Once the queen of Arca was gone, it seemed to Khara that the High Xara breathed a sigh of relief. An instant later, the priest’s face was blank and still as a mask. Perhaps Khara had imagined that moment of humanity.

“Let the God be fed,” the High Xara’s voice rang out.

It was time for Khara to fulfill her obligation.

She turned the blade in her hand, wrapping her fingers loosely around the leather sheath, and offered it to the High Xara. The priest took it in a smooth, practiced motion.

The crowd began to stir then, watching, shifting, breathing, and Khara knew there was no way she could have heard the sound of the sharp blade sliding out of the hardened leather. Yet that was what she thought she heard, the metal whispering, its parting almost regretful.

Khara bowed her head.

The High Xara struck.

A thousand pairs of eyes watched the bare blade come down, first into the chest of the girl-almost-woman, then into the chest of the boy-almost-man, but Khara’s were not among them. She continued not to watch as both of the sacrifices’ throats were slit, first the boy’s cries silenced, then the girl’s. She didn’t need to see to know. Blood coursed down through the notches of the bone beds onto the seed grain, completing the ceremony, blessing the next year’s planting. She never looked up. Instead she stared down at her hands, limp and unmoving, the juice of yesterday’s cherries still staining her fingers a lingering, lasting red.

   2   

The Road Home

Leaving SestiaKhara

As the outline of the Sestian capital faded into the distance behind her, Khara felt both exhausted and elated. The landscape changed so quickly from the busy hubbub of the capital to the open countryside beyond. The countryside looked more like home. Once they were out of the city, the rolling green hills of Sestia were unbelievably lush, the air so sweet and clear. Khara let herself breathe deeply and leave the completed rites behind.

She rode in the center of the column, though she would have far preferred to be at the front. Next to her rode the other member of the delegation considered most vulnerable, the bladebearer Gretti. She was so young, thought Khara. Had she herself ever been so uncertain, so new to the world? How odd to have come so far, grown so strong—becomequeen!—and found herself banished to the center of the column again, next best to a near child.

Eight ponies rode ahead of them and eight behind, carrying the rest of the delegation as well as packs of trade goods, with senior warriors in the outermost positions. Bandits and brigands were always a risk on the long roads of Paxim, the constant stream of valuables a tempting source of rich plunder for the morally flexible. So the warriors kept their formation tight and their weapons at hand.

The shaggy, sturdy ponies they rode came from the wild red mountains that bordered Scorpica and Paxim on the east, the haunted land known as Godsbones. No other animals suited Scorpican riders so well. Khara had roped her own mount, Stormshadow, when she was only a girl. Now the horse was like an extension of her. The ride home across much of the known world was exhausting even in the best conditions, but her body could have no greater comfort than Stormshadow’s familiar back.

Comfort for her mind was another matter. Khara wished, not for the first time, that she were riding alongside Vishala. But her most trusted councillor remained in Scorpica whenever Khara was not there, to represent her and make judgments in her stead. She and Vish had known each other since childhood, had learned together how to draw back bowstrings with their chubby fingers when both could barely speak words. She would have loved to name Vish her successor, but choosing a woman her own age was foolish. A queen who reached her forty-fifth year without handing over her power was always Challenged, or so the stories went.

And every year she grew more vulnerable. Her people respected her, but few truly loved her. Even at the beginning, when her mother, Ellimi, died, there’d been whispers. Is she strong enough? Who will rule after?

When Khara walked among her subjects, they nodded, fell silent in respect, lay their swords at her feet. When she walked alone, her ears far from their lips, she knew what those same warriors called her. The Barren Queen.

She rarely thought of those nine children born of her womb, year after year, all boys. Not a warrior among them. Once the midwife severed their link with the birthing blade, Khara had kissed their sweet, wet heads and handed them to Vish, who she trusted above all others to do what needed to be done. Vish would handle selling them to be raised in one of the other queendoms, where boys and men had roles to play. There was no place for them in Scorpica.

So many years, so long past. She had put it off too long already. Succession must be decided. She would put Mada to the test.

And it was Mada who led the column, her back straight as a sword even as she swayed in time with her mount. She was holding up well, especially for her first time in these strange surroundings, so far. But the journey back would be long. That was when Khara would show her the rest of what it meant to be queen.

On the way back to Scorpica—nearly a month’s ride through Paxim and then a day between the high, stony gates of the Bastion—they would meet Khara’s far-flung generals, the vast network of Scorpicae who managed protective forces hired out to the weaker queendoms. Anyone could train fighters, of course, and set them to the task. But Scorpica had been training, assigning, cultivating lifelong warriors for generations. That was their role, and no Scorpican had ever broken her sworn oath of loyalty to the nation where she was assigned. Trust was absolute, and the other queendoms paid handsomely for that trust.

To rule wisely as queen, it was not enough for Mada to fight brilliantly. She would need to understand each of the women she ruled, matching them to assignments that would shore up their weaknesses without wasting their strengths, naming a fair price for their services. A girl turning woman at ten-and-five might be ready for the high honor of an assignment as a foreign leader’s Queensguard, or she might benefit from more training in Scorpica before she could even be trusted for straightforward guard duty in the nearby Bastion. It was not easy to know so many women so well. If Mada could grasp these matters, thought Khara, she would be ready. The best queens, the ones who ruled until succession without a single Challenge, were three in one: not just the nation’s best fighter, but its best leader and best strategist as well.

Sunrise after sunrise, sunset after sunset, they made their way across the plains of Paxim toward home. The dozens of trading posts they passed through were all different, yet the same: a crier shouting the latest news, voice gone hoarse; citizens swarming like flies to the booths at the markets, settling upon anything they found sweet, then scattering again in a flurry; merchants by turns honey-toned and brusque, depending on what they had to sell and how they thought they could best sell it.

Mada was open-eyed with wonder, Khara observed, and yet she never relaxed her guard. She nodded and listened as Khara introduced her to important warriors. She cocked her head attentively as each spoke, naming which areas of the country had more unrest and required more vigilance, which were as placid as a forest lake.

Here and there among the posts and towns, inns dotted the countryside, but these had no appeal to Scorpicae. They bedded down along the roadside wherever they chose, rotating the watch and pillowing their heads on their packs. Most slept better than they had on the overstuffed mats where they’d lain their heads during their week in Sestia.

In the golden light of late afternoon, Khara estimated they were yet two nights from the gates of the Bastion, their last milestone before home. She held their position on the map in her mind, picturing them as a moving dot equidistant between two far-flung trading posts, when she heard a faint whistle, high and sharp. All twelve warriors knew it instantly.

An arrow.

“Kii-yah,” shouted Mada, the command to scatter, and her bow was already in her hand.

Ahead of them on the wide road stood a series of dark shapes, all human, all armed to the teeth.

The bandits were a random tangle of a dozen ruffians, cloaked in dirty brown rags; lean to a fault, looking like their last decent meal was but a distant memory. Khara’s first thought was that they couldn’t pose a serious threat, not against a team of trained warriors. That was before she realized that the arrow she’d heard whistling had lodged in her left shoulder, not nearly far enough for comfort from her heart.

Then, only then, came the pain.

The pain would have to wait. The battle was joined.

Mada’s first arrow took the bandits’ first bowman in the throat. Her second whizzed just over the head of the elfin, masked woman with the longsword. Quickly, they were too close for bows. Then hiss after hiss sounded, the sound of metal swords drawn from leather sheaths, as the Scorpicae readied themselves.

One of the bandits, a short man whose thicket of dark hair gave him a pronounced resemblance to a bear, seemed to reconsider. He turned and fled, his sword clanking hard against his hip as he ran for the far horizon.

Mada looked back at her queen and nodded once, then turned back to the fight with something that looked very much like glee.

Khara took one more moment to evaluate the scene, sizing up attackers and defenders, then reached out with her good arm to grab the bridle of Gretti’s horse. Gretti’s eyes were huge. Khara could not count on the untested young woman to keep her head and her mount in the fray.

“Hold on,” Khara told her.

Then she clicked her tongue once, sank her heels into Stormshadow’s sides, and spurred her straight into a hard run. Gretti’s mount followed suit.

The bandits were circling to array themselves both in front of and behind the column, and so Khara took them off the road immediately, due north, their mounts barely a pair of reddish streaks in the gathering darkness. She willed herself to ignore her stinging, burning shoulder for now. Once she could, she’d chew on the knot of willow bark from her pack, but only fools ranked comfort ahead of safety.

Behind, she heard the shouts of warriors closing to battle and wished she were riding at their head. Had she not been the Barren Queen, had there been a daughter at home ready to assume the mantle of leadership, she would have. How different things could have been, she thought grimly. Then she lowered her face into her mount’s streaming mane and focused on saving the life of the young woman behind her. And her own.

As they rode hard, the shouts in the distance grew faint. Her eyes scoured the land ahead of her in the dwindling light. Farms in the far north of Paxim were small, growing only enough to sustain the families that worked them. There were no true cities for miles. She reached for the willow bark now and began working at it with her teeth, hoping it would dull the pain quickly. When she saw the squat, low shape of a dwelling on the horizon, she adjusted course, then slowed on the approach.

Suspicion must be their watchword. It was possible that the entire scene on the road had been staged to drive them into a second ambush. Then again, judging by the arrow in her shoulder—its stiff gray-white feathers bobbing as she moved—the attack had been very real indeed.

Keeping Gretti behind her, she scanned the house and the grounds. The figure of a man stooped outside the squat building, drawing up a bucket of water from a well.

As they drew nearer, he finished his task and turned toward the sound of the ponies’ hoofbeats. He wore his wavy hair in a single knot at the nape of his neck. His clothes were those of a workingman, practical, well-used. She could almost read his thoughts as he looked up at their approach, his movements leisurely, and opened his mouth to utter a greeting. Then, noticing the arrow protruding from her shoulder, he let the words die unspoken on his tongue.

He hurried in their direction, and she put her hand on her sword, thinking, Perhaps I will join in battle today after all.

Then he veered past her toward Gretti. Belatedly she noticed the young woman was swaying in her seat, then slumping forward, her full weight against the neck of her mount.

“May I help her?” asked the man.

Even as he spoke, Khara was already dismounting from Storm-shadow, supporting Gretti with her uninjured right arm, lowering the young woman’s unconscious form to the ground.

“But your—canI—” said the man. He gestured to the arrow, its long straight shaft following Khara’s every movement, the feathers ahead of her, the bloody arrowhead behind. “Do you need my help?”

The bark had blunted Khara’s pain, and she could tell by the way the arrow sat in her shoulder that it hadn’t taken her through the muscle. She could wait.

“Her first.” She pointed to Gretti. The bladebearer had been untested, and no matter how they trained girls for battle, no training was the same as reality.

His dark brows knitting, the man nodded and knelt.

He inspected the girl with care, gripping her chin without twisting it, pulling up one lid to gaze into the unseeing eye beneath.

“Are you a healer?” asked Khara.

“Of sorts,” he said. “I do a little of everything, out here. Healing. Ranching. Trading. Teaching. Whatever needs done. Bandits on the road?”

“Yes.”

“They get anything?”

“I doubt it very much.”

He let out a noise that was something like a laugh, but not quite, and resumed his examination.

While he examined Gretti, Khara examined him. Body lean, fingers calloused from hard work. Likely close to her own age, she thought, perhaps a little younger. Face suntanned but not leathery, with faint spidering lines at the corners of his eyes. He moved with a deliberate, tense energy. She had the impression he was old enough to know himself, an age that came at a different point for everyone, but made for a greater happiness when it was reached. She had found it herself, finally, not that long ago.

She let him work in silence for another minute, and then said, “And how is she?”

“No wounds,” he said. “Fainted from shock, looks like. She’ll come around. Do you think your friends will be here soon?”

“My friends?” she asked.

“You’re Scorpican warriors on a road direct to the Bastion,” he said, “with the Sun Rites a month gone. I know who you are.”

She sized him up again. Something in his smile looked like an invitation, though perhaps she was imagining it. Sometimes a person saw what she wanted to see. “You live out here by yourself?”

“My brother and I. He’s gone to Melo—that’s the nearest trading post—to swap the season’s honey for some other goods we’ll be needing for harvest. Back in a day or two, most like.”

His eyes were on her again, appraising, appreciating. Perhaps she hadn’t mistaken the invitation after all. She was enjoying the tingle of warmth in her limbs—a feeling long in slumber, starting to awaken—when she heard the sound of hooves approaching and stood, turning toward it.

“That’ll be your friends, then,” he said.

They arrived in a cloud of dust, a V formation, Mada at the point. The noise brought Gretti back awake. Khara saw her fight urgently to right herself before the other warriors arrived. The man reached out his hand and, in one smooth motion, brought Gretti to her feet. The three of them faced the new arrivals together.

“Bandits dispatched,” reported Mada, sliding down from her horse quickly. There was no visible blood on her, but her quiver was nearly empty. “You’re wounded, Queen Khara.”

“So I am,” she said, and couldn’t help looking over at the man.

As she did, he dropped to one knee, bowing his head. He spoke to the ground at her feet. “Queen.”

She told him, not unkindly, “Get up.”

“I knew you were with the queen’s party,” he said, his voice changed. “But I didn’t truly know . . .”

“We don’t do that, you know,” she scoffed lightly. “You do that for your queen here in Paxim?”

“Yes. We bow, at the least. Some lay their faces in the dirt. We lower ourselves to show respect.”

“Queens are a little different in Scorpica.”

“So I see,” he replied, his face relaxing, returning to that lazy, inviting smile.

Mada, arms folded, interrupted sharply. “Look. If you’re a healer, you can deal with the queen’s wound instead of standing around with your cock on backward. Otherwise, we’ll be on our way.”

“I can help,” he said, seemingly undisturbed by her insult. “I have a cutting tool to cut the shaft, and strong wine to wash the wound.”

“You do not know the Scorpicae,” Mada replied. “Warriors do not wash with strong wine. We drink it.”

Khara did not care for the dislike pouring off Mada like rainwater, nor for her dismissive tone. Mada was already acting like the queen, already taking charge. That was troubling. The assembled warriors watched them both, their ponies pawing and snorting, waiting for the next command. And the pain in Khara’s shoulder and back was beginning to burn. Now that the initial shock and hasty dose of willow bark had both worn off, that pain grew, radiated, spread. She gritted her teeth against it.

Khara turned her back on Mada deliberately and spoke to the man alone. “If you would share your water with my warriors, to refresh and wash themselves, it would be a kindness.”

“May the All-Mother bless you, warriors,” he said, addressing them all. “Any visitor is welcome here. You may avail yourselves of the well as you choose. And I will bring you some of that strong wine.”

“We will rest here for the night,” Khara said, her voice loud enough to carry, without turning. She added, “In our bedrolls. We travel lightly, and will not even put tent pegs in your ground.”

“As I said. You are welcome.”

Mada said, her voice forceful, “We can push on.”

Khara turned to face her and the assembled warriors, taking her time. Perhaps Mada would be an excellent queen of Scorpica in the future, but it would do her good to remember who was still queen today.

When Khara knew she had the younger woman’s full attention, she said, “Night falls. Tomorrow morning we push on. When none among us wears a bandit’s arrow for ornament.”

Behind her, the man added, “It is best to watch for poison, too. One never knows, around here, how a bandit has tipped her weapon.”

Mada held Khara’s gaze a moment longer, then said, “Tomorrow, then.”

Gretti piped up, her voice bright, “Let the queen be healed now. I will go with our host to fetch the wine he promised.”

Nods all around, and then the three of them walked into the gathering dusk toward the low, squat building, one lit lantern a beacon above its single door.

Inside, the hut was neatly kept, unadorned. One high table and one low, two chairs, two stools, and several shelves, all of mismatched wood. Two cots with thin mattresses and light blankets for the summer. A few stray rugs, undyed. A life without luxury, Khara mused. Then again, one might say the same about the life she and her sister warriors led, living in tents, moving their camp with the seasons.

As their host gathered several jugs of wine and a stoppered wineskin, Gretti pressed her hand into Khara’s, leaving a small object there. When Khara looked down, she smiled to see that the girl had handed over her own stash of willow bark. Then Gretti took the jugs of wine from their host with a grateful nod and was gone.

The three of them were alone: Khara, the man, and the arrow. She asked, “The cot?”

He looked away from her when he said, “The table, I think.”

“As you wish.” She seated herself on the table, working her body backward into a comfortable sitting position without putting her left hand down, afraid to put any kind of new pressure on the wound. The wood was smooth under her thighs. She could feel it where her half-skirt slid out of the way, just above the backs of her knees. The fire in her shoulder was spreading, but she kept the bark in her hand. The longer she delayed chewing it, the more good it would do her when she did.

“You do not even seem to be in pain,” he marveled.

“It should seem so,” she said. “We are trained to bear it. Is it true that the local bandits use poison on their weapons?”

“It’s possible,” he answered. “I chose my words to smooth the way. Are you angry?”

“No.” She thought of smiling to set him at ease, but the tension was an interesting tension, full of possibility. She let the silence linger.

“I’m glad. So. Do you want the strong wine on your body or in it?”

“Both, please.”

He nodded and moved the wineskin onto the table within her reach. She watched him prepare, tracking his confident movements, precise in the small space. Strips of cloth in a neat stack near the table’s edge, tiny pots and vials arrayed alongside. Once all was in readiness, he raised his cutting tool toward where the shaft of the arrow protruded from the front of her shoulder.

“No,” she said, raising her fingers to stay his hand.

“No?”

“Not there, I mean. The back.”

She was not sure he understood her reasoning, but that didn’t matter, not as long as he obeyed.

“As you wish.” He echoed her earlier words.

She let her hand fall. As he moved into position, she put the last piece of willow bark against her bottom teeth and began to chew, thankful for Gretti’s gesture.

As gentle as he was, when he fit the cutting tool around the shaft still embedded in her flesh, she felt it. Despite her discipline, she was unable to keep her body from tensing with anticipation. There were things even a Scorpican could not control. The bark distanced the pain, but nothing—outside of Arcan magic, she supposed—could eliminate it completely.

As he clipped the shaft in a single, swift motion, she felt it shudder inside her. She heard the wood snap, the sound a sharp report in the small, close space, and felt him catch the cut-off section of arrow as it fell. As he bent down for a closer look at his handiwork, a stray lock of his dark hair nearly, but not quite, brushed her shoulder.

Before he could rise again, Khara took hold of the remaining shaft with her free hand, gripping it so hard she could feel her fingernails in her palm. Swiftly she yanked out what was left of the arrow and flung it away. A Scorpican trusted herself more than she trusted any stranger, amiable as he might be.

She looked down at the wound to satisfy herself. Yes, blood now flowed freely out of the narrow hole a handspan above her breast. She assumed the same was true of her back. The entire arrow was out, leaving a hole no bigger around than a slender reed. The cuts were clean. She might heal entirely, in time.

With gritted teeth, she said, “And now the wine.”

He uncapped the skin for her and placed it in her hand. She raised it to her lips, taking a long, hard pull on the mouthpiece. She swallowed and grimaced as it burned its way down, not as sweet as she’d expected, a wild, harsh taste.

“This wine is not good,” she gasped.

“I didn’t say it was good,” he said, pressing a wad of cloth firmly to her shoulder. “I said it was strong.”

She took another long gulp and laughed, then held the skin toward him.

While he drank, she used her right hand to untie and peel off the soft leather vest she’d worn over her chest bindings, leaving her shoulders and neck bare. His eyes did not leave hers.

Between them, they cleansed the wound with wine and water, then covered it with patches of soft wool, bound over with a longer strip of clean nettlecloth. He wrapped the last bit of it around her shoulder and tucked in the free end, running his finger along the edge.

“It will bleed tonight,” he said. “A few hours, I think, not more. We will change the dressing tomorrow.”

The closeness of his body had been necessary as he worked. It no longer was. Yet he remained, and she was glad of it.

He asked her, “Will you return to the house at sunrise?”

A heady relief swimming over and through her, she was ready to speak her mind. The time had come for both of them to choose.

She answered him in a hushed tone. “I would not need to return if I did not leave.”

The set of his jaw shifted. She could see him weigh his answer.

“With your wound, the ground will be hard for sleeping,” he continued. “It would be better to have a softer place to rest.”

“A softer place,” she repeated.

Khara noted with satisfaction that his eyes flicked over to the cot, just for a moment, before meeting hers again.

She did not look away.

His voice even softer, he said, “But you are a queen.”

Still holding his gaze, she answered, “But I am a woman.”

Then he placed a hand on her knee, just where the split half-skirt ended. His fingers on her bare skin were blunt-tipped and warm.

He asked, “Will you stay?”

She lowered her hand to his. Briefly eyeing the door, she whispered, “And your brother?”

“He won’t return tonight. And your warriors?”

“They’ll stay outside.”

He tilted his head forward and brushed his lips gently, oh so gently, on the bare skin of her shoulder above the bandage, next to her collarbone. He said, “I don’t want to cause you pain.”

She smiled at that.

“We are trained to bear it,” she reminded him, and, lifting his chin with one outstretched finger, guided his mouth up to hers.

   3   

The Way

The following spring, the All-Mother’s Year 502In ScorpicaKhara

The child was makilu, wrongheaded. There would be pain.

There always was, of course, in childbirth. Even for the Barren Queen, though in her previous births, she’d had an easier time than most. Her labors came on fast and strong, stripping her of breath and thought, but they did not last. Each of her babies had slipped from her womb as naturally as a scorpion molting, leaving her body behind like a shed skin, emerging new and soft and ready to embrace the world.

This one would not be so easy. She knew from what the midwives said and what they did not say. How many births had she witnessed, how many newborn warriors had she blessed? When childbed turned to deathbed, how many warriors’ eyes had she closed, whispering the words to wing their spirits toward the great battlefield beyond? She knew the faces of Scorpican midwives. Had she been an ordinary warrior, they would have muttered as they poked her swollen belly, frowning, shaking their heads. Makilu, makilu. Take care. But for Khara they pasted on brave, false smiles as they pressed and stroked the taut-stretched flesh over the shape of a compact backside, a head, a shoulder. The child may yet turn. She let them believe that she believed them.

A wail tore its way loose from her throat. The way was not open. Even as long as it had been, she could feel the difference. Makilu.

She reached out for Vishala’s hand. “Vish?”

“My queen.”

“Oh, but not now,” she said, grunting out the words. “I am no one’s queen when I am birthing.”

Her friend’s low voice, sweet like cream to Khara’s ears, was as comforting as the grip of her strong fingers. “We will tell no one.”

Most Scorpicae birthed with crowds of warriors in attendance, drawing on their encouragement, their support, their energy. When Khara was young, she had too. It seemed so long ago now. After the ninth birth, she hadn’t entirely given up pleasure, but she had become selective about the pleasures she took with men, and the phase of the moon when she took them. The rites were the easiest but far from the only time. If one enjoyed their attentions enough to look for them, which Khara did, men could always be found.

But she looked rarely, after those nine births, after her mother, Ellimi, named her successor to the queendom. A ruler had little time for pleasure anyway. She had forces and generals to gather, warriors to train, decisions to hand down, a proud nation to serve. The next ten years she’d remained shorn, fruitless, remote.

This time only two other women squatted with her in the darkened tent, the two she had chosen: Vishala, the adviser dearer to her than any sister, and Beghala, the most experienced midwife in all Scorpica. She did not like Beghala, but liking was not important. That she and the child would both survive was her only hope. If the child remained makilu, Beghala might be the only one who knew the way. And if only one of them was fated to survive, Beghala would know how and when to make the choice. The midwife had been trained in the Bastion and had served for decades since; there was nothing of midwifery she had not seen. When delivery came to a critical juncture, Khara trusted her not to hesitate.

Another pain began to gather low inside her, its dark wave rising, and Khara spoke to distract herself. “Who stands outside?”

“Everyone,” Vishala said simply.

Khara began to imagine. It eased her pain to do so while she labored, setting her mind free to explore while her animal body did its work. The wave built, stretched, crested. She moved her grip on Vishala upward to the wrist, worried that if she tightened her grasp on Vish’s fingers, she might break them.

“Howl if you like,” came the voice of the aged midwife from farther away in the shadows.

“I. Do. Not. Like.” Khara knew she would howl—she always did, she always had—but not yet. She struggled awkwardly to her knees and hunched forward, swinging her hips, hoping to free the way.

She tried again to picture the scene outside. Mada would be nearest the tent flap, eager and tensed and hopeful all at once, waiting to hear. If Khara never emerged from this tent, Mada would be their queen; as soon as they’d returned from the Sun Rites, Khara had officially named her as successor. Then again, Khara supposed, if she never emerged from this tent again, she would neither know nor care who reigned after.

The next wave of pain grew, crested, crashed. Khara imagined the warriors behind Mada, beyond her, stretching across the open land. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of Scorpicae. Muttering in clusters, passing hopes and rumors. Restless. No doubt those who believed in the God of Plenty were joining hands in prayer, close-cropped heads bowed and somber. She knew what they prayed for—adaughter—but she had no such hope. Many of these same women had prayed for her nine times before. She’d been just like this, crouched and lowing, and those prayers fell like seeds on hard-packed ground, never taking root.

The way was not open.

Another squeezing, wringing pain came on and she tried to make sense of what she felt at the core of the grip, the nut inside the shell. Was it the solid, compact mass of the head that her body squeezed toward daylight? Or a jumble of limbs, crushed and tangled with each other, nowhere to go? She would not ask the midwife. If the news was bad, she didn’t want to know. Her sweat-drenched hair, grown long during pregnancy as tradition insisted, was in her eyes. She cursed it. She would be shorn again the sunrise after the child was born. If the child was born.

“Khara,” whispered Vish, who rarely called her by her name, even with all the years of friendship between them. “Are you here?”

“Here,” she grunted, though her head swam with stars. “Was I gone?”

“Just for a moment,” said Vish, but worry was in her voice now, curdling the cream.

It had likely been longer than a moment, Khara realized. If she lost consciousness, if she could not shepherd this child into the world, who knew what would happen? She’d trusted her animal body to deliver the nine boys. It had, without fail. Now her body was different, the birth was different, the child was makilu. She could not trust her body. She needed her mind.

To Vishala she said, “Talk to me.”

“About what?”

“Anything.”

“My queen, I will not,” said Vishala, her familiar voice stronger now, a strange harshness in it.

“What?” Khara struggled to focus. She saw Vish’s face for a moment, the warm brown eyes, the dark halo of close-cropped hair, the thin lips set in a firm line. “What?”

“No. Not me. You talk.”

She was in the rest between pains now, a blissful place like no other, and she laughed aloud. Of course her friend would know what to do. The midwife knew birthing, but Vishala knew Khara to her soul. “Trickster!”

There was no response, which she knew was deliberate.

“You want me to do the talking,” said Khara, trying to make her voice teasing, light. “In my state?”

“Should she rise?” Vishala was speaking to the midwife now, not to her, but they both listened for the older woman’s response. The rest between pains was short, the question urgent. In the next pain she might not be able to rise even if she wanted to.

“Let her do what her body asks of her,” came Beghala’s voice, which seemed to drift in her direction from very far away.

Vishala said to Khara, “You heard?”

“My body knows nothing,” hissed Khara, and as if angry at the insult, her body instantly doubled forward, the rising wave of pain crashing on her like the full weight of a mighty sea.

Then she felt an irresistible urge to place her hands on the ground and raise her hips high. She obeyed the urge, folding her body at a sharp angle, bending forward as steeply as she could with such a heavy weight in her belly. Her dark hair pooled on the ground, blood rushing to her head. The pain encircled her hips like a band of iron; the child squirmed against the cradle of muscle tightening down upon it, fighting every inch. Khara’s world shrank to those mere inches and she begged the child to win the battle, begged its head to drop into place and turn toward light.

At her ear, Vishala said, “What do you remember of him?”

It was a bold question, just shy of taboo. A warrior spoke freely of her pleasures if she chose to, but the choice was hers and hers alone. Details were to be volunteered, not requested. Khara would not have answered such a question from anyone else. But the answer came quickly to her lips. She remembered every one of them, from that first sweet-faced shepherd boy of Sestia, nearly a bumpkin, to the man she had joined with after the bandit skirmish, whose name she never had learned. In the morning, as he’d promised, he changed the dressing on her wound and treated it with a soothing, oily cream, and then she and her party went on their way.

“Everything,” she panted to her friend, thinking her voice was soft, but not knowing.

“Tell me.”

“Hair curly. All over. Fire in his eyes.” The rhythm of her words became a chant now, a pulse to harken to, and she gladly embraced it as the pain crashed on her again, forcing her hips back down. She pushed up, straining. “Salt taste. Strong arms. Strong thighs. No fear.”

What she did not say, but remembered—with exquisite clarity—was the remarkable ease of their joining. There had been no awkwardness, none of the nervous moments or self-conscious reserve of her younger years. They were both of an age to be confident, and neither mistook what the other wanted. All was clear. He offered himself up and she took him, setting a rhythm he quickly matched. She’d held his gaze as he groaned. Neither looked away.

His remembered groan fused with the groan that escaped her as her body fought her, the child fought her, her head swam again, she clutched Vishala’s arms as if they were all that kept her tethered to the world, and then she howled an animal howl.

The child was coming.