“Please,” I whispered.
Her lips pursed in concentration, weighing her decision. She was still wary. “She has good days and bad,” she finally said, nodding toward the carvachi. “She may not know you.”
Natiya spat on the ground. “If the gods are merciful, she won’t.”
* * *
When I shut the door of her carvachi, I couldn’t see her at first. She folded into the rumpled bedclothes, like a threadbare blanket, barely there. In all the years I had known her, she’d either been hoisting a spinning wheel on her back or butchering a deer or, if it was late in the season, taking down tent poles and rolling up rugs for the trip south. I’d never seen her like this, or expected to. It had seemed she would outlive us all. Now she looked as fragile as the feathers she once wove into her ornaments.
I’m sorry, Dihara.
She was the oldest member of their tribe and had fed generations of Rahtan like me in her camp. I understood Natiya’s rage. Dihara might have gone on forever if not for the attack.
Her eyes fluttered open as if she had sensed my presence. Her gray eyes stared at the small swelling her feet created beneath the bedclothes, and then her head turned and she looked at me with surprising clarity.
“You,” she said simply. Her voice was weak, but she managed a frown. “I was wondering when you’d come. And the big one?”
“Griz was injured. Otherwise he’d be here too.” I pulled a stool close to her bed and sat beside her. “Natiya and Reena weren’t happy to see me. They almost didn’t let me in.”
Her chest rose in a labored wheeze. “They’re only afraid. They thought they had no enemies. But we all have enemies, eventually.” She squinted. “You still have all your teeth?”
I stared at her, thinking she was no longer lucid, but then I remembered Natiya’s blessing—her send-off to Lia as we left the vagabond camp. May your horse kick stones in your enemy’s teeth. Dihara’s body may have given out, but her mind still held a world of history in it.
“So far,” I answered.
“Then you are not the princess’s enemy. Nor ours.” Her eyes closed, and her words became even fainter. “But now you must decide what you are.”
She was asleep again, and I guessed straddling two different worlds, maybe traveling between both, much as I did.
“I’m trying,” I whispered and I kissed her hand and said good-bye.
If I saw her again, I knew, it wouldn’t be in this world.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I was told to wait.
The king himself would escort me to the caravan. The guards outside my tent were dismissed, which made me suspicious. A trick? Something was not right.
Rafe was late, and his tardy minutes seemed like hours. It gave me too much time to think. After our dance at the party, he had disappeared. I saw the shadows swallow him up as his long strides catapulted him through the arched paddock gate to the upper work yard. He never returned, and strangely, I found myself worrying about him. Where had he gone when this party had been so ridiculously important to him? And then I was angry at myself for worrying, and angrier still when later I was lying in bed and my thoughts drifted to the soft touch of his lips on my cheek. It was madness.
I desperately needed something from Rafe that he couldn’t give to me. Trust. His lack of faith cut me to the core. His disregard for the future of Morrighan cut me deeper. In spite of what he claimed, Dalbreck and its interests were all that mattered to him. How could he not see that the survival of both kingdoms was at stake?
When the party was over, Sven had walked me back to my quarters. He was more reserved than usual, offering me a stiff bow when we reached the door of my tent.
“You do know he has to go back. His kingdom needs him.”
“Good night, Sven,” I answered curtly. I hadn’t wanted to hear any more pleas for Rafe. I wished to hear someone plead for me and Morrighan for once.
“There is something else you should know,” he added quickly, before I disappeared inside. I stopped and frowned, waiting for another petition on Rafe’s behalf. He looked down as if embarrassed. “I was the one who suggested the marriage to the king. And I also planted the enticement of the port.”
“You?”
“Along with someone from your kingdom,” he hastily added. He spilled it out in one long breath as though he’d been holding it in for a very long time. “Years ago, when the prince was fourteen, I received a letter. Even he doesn’t know about it. It came while I was out in the field training cadets, and it had the seal of the kingdom of Morrighan.
“Needless to say, it caught my attention.” His brows rose as if he’d been caught by surprise all over again. “I’d never received any missive directly from another kingdom, but it was clear that somehow, someone there knew of my relationship with the prince. It was from the minister of archives.”
“The Royal Scholar?”