Ice bled through Corayne’s gut.
Ambush.
She squirmed under Dom’s grasp, trying to get up, but his hand was a deadweight on her spine. Sand choked her mouth, tasting of heat. She craned her head, looking for Andry, only to spot Sigil emerging from the ruins of the tower, a contingent of soldiers with her. Corayne gnashed her teeth, so angry she couldn’t even scream.
In a second, she counted forty troops approaching from the tower. Twenty of Ibal, with their bronze swords and pale rose silk over steel. Twenty of Galland, their green cloaks unmistakable, their pale, pig-eyed, sweating faces grim beneath their helms. Sigil stood between them, her weapons abandoned on her hips. She raised two fingers to her lips and whistled, a keen, sharp sound that made Corayne’s ears hurt.
Another forty soldiers appeared from the outskirts of Almasad, all of them Ibalet, arrows nocked to every bow.
A stream of Ibalet curses spilled from Sorasa’s lips like blood from an open wound. Soldiers surrounded her, their blades drawn, as Sigil approached.
Sorasa spat heartily, her aim true.
“Don’t take it personally, Sarn,” Sigil drawled, wiping a hand over her face. “You know what I am, and I know what you are. Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same?”
Sorasa’s voice was a serpent’s hiss. “To the highest bidder.”
29
THE BEAR OF KOVALINN
Ridha
The princess of Iona missed the sand mare, but the frigid north would have been a cruel punishment for so loyal a horse. She’d been bred for speed in the Ibalet sands, not trekking through frozen fjords. Ridha set her loose before crossing the Watchful Sea, sailing on the rare Jydi ship bound for trade and not raiding. In frostbitten Ghald, she purchased a stockier, long-haired pony, as well as a musty fur cloak that would serve her better in the wilds of the Jyd.
Though she was Vedera, immune to most discomforts of the mortal world, Ridha did not enjoy being so cold. The Jyd was positively freezing, even though it was only early autumn.
As she sailed the Glorysea, she saw Jydi longboats under the white sail of peace. Ships of trade and travel. Raiders sailed beneath gray sails, iron cold as the winter sky. But Ridha spotted none. It was as the thieves in the tavern had said: no Jydi were raiding. Not rare, she thought as the she rode the rocky coast. Impossible.
Kovalinn sat in the Vyrand, the great, wolf-shaped mountain range that formed the spine of Jyd. Ridha remembered the enclave of her northern cousins from a diplomatic journey in her youth, some centuries before, when she’d accompanied her mother. Domacridhan had been left at home, too young to go with them. He’d been little more than a child then, still growing, and he’d wept on her shoulder before she left.
She sorely wished he could have been with her now, a shield as much as a crutch.
The Jydi mortals were not ignorant of the Vedera like their southern neighbors, and they were far less intrigued by woman carrying weapons. When Ridha passed through villages on her way north, few children of the Jyd balked at her presence. Most were fair, blond or ginger-haired, but the Jyd welcomed all who took up the ax, the shovel, or the sail. Black skin, bronze skin, porcelain, every shade from white to ebony was present in the frigid north, from Ghald to Yrla to Hjorn, in every village and on every farm.
It was the same in Kovalinn.
When she reached the river mouth in the Kova fjord, a Veder was already waiting, stoic as an old oak. She was reedy and tall, wrapped in furs, with skin like glowing topaz, her black-and-silver hair braided into locks tied with fine chain. Ridha did not know her, but raised a hand in greeting, her palm white as the early snow clinging to her eyelashes.
How they knew of her coming, Ridha could easily guess. Mother must have made another sending, this time to the monarch of the snows. She tried not to think of Isibel of Iona, a wisp of magic with silver hair stirring in a phantom wind. Come home. Come home.
Is it an echo or a memory? Ridha could not say.
“I am Ridha of Iona.”
She searched the woman’s face. If Mother has already contacted Kovalinn, this might be for nothing.
The other Veder dipped her brow. “I am Kesar of Salahae, right hand to the Monarch of Kovalinn. He bids you welcome in his lands and is eager to speak with you.”
“As I am eager to speak with him,” Ridha answered.
In the distance, a cold wind blew, stirring up the steady fall of snowflakes. The way up the fjord cleared for an instant, showing a jaw of granite and snowy ground, a waterfall plunging its way to the river and the sea. At its peak, at the crest of a zagging pathway cut into the rock, was Kovalinn. Even from a distance she saw the bears carved into its gate, their fur chipped from black pine.