Winter Queen by Amber Argyle
She knew what this was—opium mixed with tobacco. She breathed in the sweet smoke eagerly, hungry for relief. After a few puffs, she felt the pain easing back to something almost bearable. “Why didn’t you give it to me before?” she asked angrily.
“We didn’t have time—you were losing too much blood. Keep breathing it in, girl.” Scand poured some leaves into a mortar with shaking hands, then added a scoop of what looked like yellow spices but smelled like eggs. While Rycus went to work mixing it, Scand crawled around to her other side.
“How bad is it?” she asked.
“You shouldn’t be conscious with as much blood as you’ve lost.” Scand’s face was ashen and sweaty. Rycus shot him a dirty look, which he expertly ignored. “If the arrow hit your spleen, you might live. If it hit your intestines, you’ll die.”
“I won’t die,” she said flatly.
“That’s the opium talking,” Scand replied, then took a swig from a bottle of pungent-smelling spirits. She realized that was what he’d washed her with before.
They gave her a few sips of water, until her stomach felt queasy and she refused anymore. She glanced carefully around. “Where are the others?”
“Keeping watch,” Rycus reported. “What happened? We met the group you saved. They said you and another girl were captured.”
“She was killed. I escaped,” Nelay ground out, refusing to think of Kalla. Rycus searched her gaze but didn’t press her.
She looked at Scan. “Are you finished?” Her thoughts were getting hazy again.
Scand took the mortar from Rycus and examined it. He packed the contents between two pieces of linen and pressed it to Nelay’s back, wrapping it while she gritted her teeth. “It’ll need stitches, but not today. The wound is too swollen and it needs to drain.”
“Thank you for not giving up on me, Rycus,” she whispered.
He bent closer. “Rest. We will take the watch.” After a few more determined puffs of opium smoke, she rested her hand on her pendant and remembered no more.
When she woke again, it was pitch black except for the dancing light of the low fire. The pain had gone from a deep ache to burning again. The night air was chilly, as it always was in the desert. She shifted and saw Rycus, one arm cocked over a knee as he stared into the fire. “It hurts,” she said hoarsely.
He took the pipe and lit it, then puffed until it was burning. Nelay took her first pull and held it in her lungs for as long as possible before letting out. Almost immediately, her body relaxed. Still, she had to think of something to take her mind off the pain. “What are we going to do now?”
Rycus shifted to help her drink from a water skin. “The border along the desert is crawling with Clansmen. The only way to safety is to keep ahead of them, heading straight to Sopora and on to Thanjavar.”
“What about all the Idarans you left at the cistern?”
“We’ll have to go back for them after we get to safety. They have enough supplies to hold them out until we do.”
Nelay started to feel fuzzy again. “Do you think we’ll find my brother in Sopora?”
“I don’t know. Why didn’t your family tell you?”
Why hadn’t her parents told her Panar had left them? Why hadn’t he written her himself? She was ashamed they hadn’t cared enough to let her know. “He’s the only family I have left. I need to find him.”
“Nelay, you’re not going to be in any condition to search for your brother. Pay me and I’ll find him.”
“I’m in no condition to challenge Suka as high priestess, either. If I go back now, I’ll either be married off to the king or killed on sight.”
“Would it be so bad to be a queen?”
She stared at the mine walls without actually seeing them. “In the state Idara is in, it might just be fatal.” He didn’t say anything. “Even if we beat the Clansmen, I would be a queen in name only. The king has all the power. Better to be high priestess and decide my own fate.”
“Is that what you want? Power?” Rycus asked as he pressed the water skin into her hand. “Drink as much as you can hold. You lost a lot of blood.”
She did as she was told. After all, she had to get her strength back to prove him wrong. She shifted to look at him, immediately regretting the slight movement as her back twinged painfully. She combated it with a deep inhalation of smoke. “No—I want the freedom that comes with power.” Her eyes closed. “I watched my mother bury many of her children. I never wanted that for myself. Never wanted a life of servitude as a wife and mother.” Nelay was silent for a time. “All I want is to be a priestess.” She sighed, deciding not to fight the sleep dragging her down. “I’ll be ready to fight in a week.”
Rycus gave a doubtful grunt.
When she awoke again, a brilliant shaft of golden light streamed from the entrance. It stabbed into the mine, hurting her eyes. Immediately, she searched for the opium pipe. Scand already had it ready and pressed it into her hand. She frantically puffed, willing the sharp burning to ease. When it finally did, she looked around. Rycus was asleep on the other side of the fire. “It’s midmorning,” she said. “Why haven’t we left yet?”
“We leave now and you’ll bleed to death.” Scand lifted the bandages to check her back. “I don’t know how the swelling has gone down so much, or why you don’t have a fever.”
“I told you,” she mumbled. “I’m very hard to kill.” An effect of consuming the elice petal.
With a huff, he poured something thick and dark into a cup. He held it to her lips. She sipped. It tasted like cooked meat but had the texture of thick gravy. “What is it?”
“Cooked blood to replace what you lost.”
Nelay’s lip curled in distaste, but she reminded herself she’d eaten worse and sipped until her stomach threatened to rebel. “What kind?”
“Sheep. There’s a lot of them running loose around here.” Scand changed her bandages and slipped outside.
Desperately needing to relieve her bladder, she looked around. She didn’t want to wake Rycus, and everyone else seemed to be gone, so she rolled to one side and tried to stand. A stab of pain shot through her back and she gasped.
He was awake in an instant. “What are you doing?”
“I have to relieve myself.”
“Oh.” His brow furrowed. “That’s harder for women.”
“Yes,” she chuckled, then winced at the movement.
“Have you smoked some opium? That should help.”
At her incredulous look, he shrugged. “Help with the pain. Not necessarily the awkwardness.”
After five puffs, she felt well enough to let him help her to her feet. He led her outside and helped her squat behind a bush. Then, thankfully, he moved a few steps away.
When she was finished, he supported her as she walked back to the blankets. “You should never have come here,” he said, handing her a water skin.
Nelay was tempted to be angry, but the concern on Rycus’s face was real. “What would you have done if you were in my place?”
He hesitated and tapped the water skin. She drank a few swallows. “Had I the money, I would have hired men to find my family for me,” he said.
“And those men would have given up the moment they found my parents’ bodies. I knew where to look, knew which mines people might hide in. And I found Benvi, who knew something of my brother’s whereabouts.”
Rycus was silent for a time. “You are very brave and very stubborn and a more than a little foolish.”
She thought about that for a moment. “Yes.”
He laughed outright.
“Don’t worry. I’m going to be fine.”
She was already falling asleep, but she thought she heard him say, “I hope so.”
The next time she woke, it was dark out. She could smell food cooking. “Oh, lamb stew.”
Rycus smiled at her. For a Tribesman, he smiled a lot. Or maybe all Tribesmen smiled a lot, just never around Idarans. “I thought that might wake you up.”
He sighed. “I’m not going to take advantage of you—unless you want me to.”
She sort of did, but she wasn’t going to admit that. “Do you do this in the desert with your men?”
“Sometimes.” His answer surprised her. But it was working—already she felt warmer. She also had a very good view of his chest hairs. Not too many, but enough that he was definitely a man.
“So . . . do you want me to take advantage of you?” he asked.
She looked into his eyes, which gleamed with mischief. “Do you want to keep your man parts?”
Rycus chuckled and stared at the cave ceiling for a time. “So, snakes?”
She repressed a shudder, still feeling the ghost of their bites, over and over. “I hate them.”
He breathed in deeply. “I hate being in small spaces. The only reason I can tolerate this cave is because I can still see the sky.”
Nelay studied the slice of sky, mentally naming a couple of constellations.
He ran his fingertips along the side of her face. “When I saw you in that orchard, it was like finding something I thought I’d lost forever. And then that arrow hit you, and your blood was all over me.” He kissed her forehead, and something in her softened. “Rest, Nelay. I’ll take care of you.”
Someone touched her face. “Nelay.” She opened her eyes, only to be greeted with pain. Rycus crouched before her with the smoking pipe. He handed it to her. Behind him, the other smugglers were leading horses out of the mine. “Clansmen are headed this way. I fear it is too soon, but we must go.”
She tried to wet her lips with her tongue. “Water.”
He helped her drink from a water skin that tasted of goat—not especially appetizing but she’d had worse. She drank carefully, knowing the journey might cause her stomach to rebel. Rycus handed her a cup of cold lamb stew.
“The scouts say it’s clear, but we will have to move fast.” Worry filled his eyes. He leaned in and whispered, “These men deserve my loyalty. I can’t risk their life for yours, no matter how much it pains me.”
“You don’t have to apologize.” Eager to banish the fear in his eyes, Nelay started to push herself up, but he moved in before she could and scooped her into his arms. She winced. He must have noticed, for she could feel him watching her. With exceeding gentleness he handed her up to Delir, then passed her the pipe. “We have to ride hard. I’m sorry.”
With that he mounted his own horse and they took off. A wave of nausea and pain swept over Nelay. She puffed on the pipe until the haze distanced her from the pain, but she was not oblivious to the trickle of blood running down her back. Or the fact that she had to lean over to vomit lamb stew into the blurring countryside.
Throughout the day, they carefully passed her from one smuggler to the next so as not to tire the horses or themselves. Rycus watched her with a tense expression. But she knew how hard she was to kill. When they finally arrived at Sopora near dusk, Nelay glanced around in a haze. The village seemed just as she remembered from her childhood visits to the dry season markets, when their family had sold their sheep’s wool and purchased the supplies they needed to survive the coming year.
Rycus pulled her from the horse and carried her into an inn with a tile floor and mud-brick walls. He entered the first room he found and laid her on a soft bed. A very young, very pregnant woman came in and leaned over her. She pinched the skin on Nelay’s hand, clucking her tongue when it didn’t immediately spring back. “She’s desert sick. She needs water.”
“She throws up anything I give her,” Scand reported.
Scowling, the woman turned on her heel and started out of the room. “I have something to help with that.”
“My father bought me my glass idol at the market here.” Nelay touched it through her clothes, her eyes aching with unshed tears.
“Rest, Nelay,” Rycus said gently.
As if his words worked some kind of spell, her eyes grew heavy. She closed them, not sleeping so much as resting.
She heard someone pull out a chair and sit heavily on it. “We can’t leave those Idarans at the cistern forever,” Scand said. “They’ll be out of food any day now.”
Rycus sat next to Nelay on the bed, the wool mattress slumping under his weight. “Give the men a day’s real rest and then you all go back and lead them to safety.”
“The fire’s too hot, Rycus. You’re going to burn your sausages.” Scand’s voice was surprisingly kind.
“I’m staying,” Rycus grunted.
Scand drew in a long breath and left, his soft-soled boots scuffing across the floor.
When the woman returned a short while later, Rycus helped Nelay sit up and sip a sweet, spicy tea that eased the rolling in her stomach. His face relaxed as she drank cup after cup. She ate more lamb stew, which was much better than even Delir’s cooking, before finally lying down again. Rycus fetched Scand, who inspected her wound.
“The swelling’s gone down enough to stitch it.” He sounded surprised. He gave her more opium and started rooting around in his bag—a bag Nelay was coming to hate.
Moving to kneel before her, Rycus pushed her hair out of her face before turning to address the pregnant woman. “What’s your name?”
“Maran,” she said softly.
Feeling much more alert, Nelay remembered why she’d left the safety of the temple in the first place. “Do you know a man named Panar Favar Denar ShaBejan?” she asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
There was a pause before the woman said, “No, I do not think so.”
“Is there someone else who might know him?” Nelay pressed.
“We’re the only inn in the village. If I don’t know him, no one does.”
Nelay didn’t have the energy to argue.
“How many have fled Sopora?” Rycus queried, and Nelay couldn’t help but wonder why a desert smuggler cared about Idara.
“Most of the women and children have already left for Dalarta,” Maran responded.
Rycus’s gaze lingered on her swollen belly. “Why have you not gone with them?”
“My husband insists that Arcina will not fall. He doesn’t like leaving the inn unattended.”
Rycus leaned back on his haunches. “Arcina will fall. If it hasn’t already.”
“The Immortals are the finest army the world has ever seen,” Maran said in a mousy voice, as if repeating something she’d heard but didn’t quite believe.
“Not anymore,” Rycus muttered.
The woman stepped away and Nelay heard her push open the shutter. “If what you say is true, how long until the Clansmen arrive here?”
Rycus watched Maran, pity in his gaze. “There were patrols a day’s ride north of here. Sopora doesn’t have defenses to speak of. If the Clansmen attack, it will be a massacre.”
Maran closed the shutter and headed to the door. “Then I best warn my husband.”
Scand pressed a stick between Nelay’s teeth. “My eyesight’s not what it used to be, so this won’t be pretty. But it should hold.”
“What?” Nelay cried.
“Hold her,” Scand said to Rycus. The old man moved to where Nelay couldn’t see him, but she felt him leaning close to her wound.
Rycus gripped her hands. “Look into my eyes. Don’t look away.”
She did, whimpering and sweating as the needle pierced her skin again and again and again. When Scand was finally done, they wrapped her ribs and she couldn’t look at either of them for the embarrassment of being naked from the waist up in front of them.
Finally, Rycus helped her put her shirt on. She puffed on the pipe until the pain eased off enough for her to rest.
Nelay w
“Yes, but I could also use the pipe.”
Maran set the food on the floor before helping Nelay sit up. “Scand left it for me to give you. Start eating and I’ll fetch it.”
Nelay lifted the bowl with her right hand; moving her left still stretched the muscles in her back too much. “Where are Rycus and the others?”
Maran paused at the doorway. “He is trying to convince the remaining villagers to flee for Dalarta. The rest of his men are trying to scrounge up some supplies to take with them to wherever they’re going.
Relieved, Nelay let out a breath. Rycus hadn’t left her. He’d said he wouldn’t, but a part of her had been afraid. He’d been nothing but loyal, yet sometimes fear wasn’t rational.
“Did you convince your husband to go?” Nelay asked.
Maran gave a tight smile, her hands fluttering nervously. “We’re loading our cart. It will take a couple days.”
Nelay met the woman’s gaze. “With your condition—” she waved at the woman’s belly “—you should go now.”
Maran took a step back. “We have to pack up our livelihood. If all of the Hansi Province is already in Dalarta, there probably isn’t food to speak of.” She gave another tight smile and stepped out of sight.
Nelay lifted the steaming bowl. Mashed grains with dried dates and a cup of hot goat’s milk. She ate hungrily, and the food tasted better than anything she could remember eating in a long time.
Maran returned long enough to give her the pipe and promptly left again. Once Nelay’s thoughts went fuzzy, the girl brought a large clay bowl filled with steaming water. “I thought you might like to clean up.”
Thrilled, Nelay let Maran remove her clothing. She studied her body distantly. Her skin was ashen and her wrists chafed from the manacles. Bruises and lumps covered her. And she’d have a nasty scar from the arrow wound.