“Your sister is a bold one,” Tamar said, as if she’d read Mayu’s thoughts. “She had to have started up the labs before your mother’s death, before she was made queen.”
Ehri frowned. “There was an incident … a scientist tried to defect to Kerch. He was captured by Fjerdans. I know there was an investigation. But my mother was already in poor health and couldn’t pursue it. She died not long after.”
“Interesting timing,” said Tamar, and returned the axe to its holster.
Mayu met her gaze. Was she implying Makhi had played some role in her mother’s death?
The web was too tangled, full of too many threads and too many spiders. She and her brother were bound to be trapped and eaten.
Mayu had cheated death once. She was meant to die by her own hand, the same night she had killed Isaak. His blood had still been on the knife blade when she’d driven it into her heart. Or that was what she’d intended. She’d missed the mark. An accident? Or in those vital seconds had her desire to live won out over her desire to free her brother and serve her queen?
If she’d managed her own death, would Queen Makhi have honored their bargain? Mayu didn’t think so. And she didn’t really believe she’d ever see Reyem again.
Mayu’s parents had encouraged her competition with her twin, thinking it was all a game, all in good fun.
“Who will run up the hill to fetch water?”
“I will!” they would each cry.
“Who will land three strikes without getting hit?”
“I will!” they would shout.
But it was always Reyem who did. He was never smug about it. He would ruffle her hair and say, “Next time you’ll get me. Let’s go see if we can steal some green melon.”
Mayu had almost wished he would be cruel, because then maybe she could hate him. But he was her best friend and her favorite companion. When they were running through the woods, she didn’t care that he was faster. When they were roaming through the muddy creek looking for tadpoles, she was the sharp-eyed one who somehow knew where to look. She could celebrate his victories and his gifts because they were kebben. And she knew he shared in her failures because he was her twin. She would have happily shared in his losses—if he’d ever had one.
They’d been together in the marketplace when they’d spotted the poster advertising the arrival of the Royal Creance, who was coming to their city to find girls to train to join the Tavgharad. WHO WILL DARE TO SHOW HER SKILLS? the sign asked in tall red letters.
I will, thought Mayu. They only wanted girls. It was something Reyem couldn’t try. She’d gone down to the pasture outside the academy and filled out the forms and joined the other hopefuls. She’d run and sparred and crawled on her belly, all the time chanting to herself, I will. I will. I will.
And she had. She’d been chosen to travel to Ahmrat Jen and train.
Her mother’s worry at the news had been like a slap to the face.
“She isn’t ready! She isn’t good enough!”
Her father had been more reasonable. “They wouldn’t have chosen her if she didn’t have a chance.”
“They chose her because she is obedient, not skilled. What will become of her when she fails at her training?”
“She’ll come home,” Mayu’s father said.
“In shame? She’s not strong enough to survive such failure.”
But they were wrong about that. Mayu had been failing her whole life. Her constant competition with Reyem had prepared her well for the trial she was about to endure. The other Eyases selected to train as Tavgharad had all been the very best of the best in the towns and villages they came from. They took their first losses hard.
Not Mayu. She loved training. She loved the exhaustion that silenced her thoughts, the routine that gave order to her world. She loved being out of Reyem’s shadow. In his absence, in the fatigue of fighting, running, learning to disassemble and reassemble guns, climb walls and scamper along rooftops, her mind finally quieted. And in that silence she heard the music of combat at last. Becoming Tavgharad meant she had joined a dance that had begun centuries ago. The first Taban queen had traveled with an elite bodyguard of women and a fleet of trained falcons. She had trusted her guards and her raptors and no one else. Those guards had gone on to train other women, and their symbol had become the carnelian falcon. This was the tradition Mayu had become a part of, and she carried new pride with her every day to the temple fields, where they ran drills in the blazing sun or the pouring rain.