Shadow Queen - By Deborah Kalin Page 0,86

been so I could live, but that doesn’t excuse any of it. I sold my throne to the man who murdered my family, and now I’ve sold my people to the Iltheans. None of it’s excusable.’

‘You listen to me,’ Roshi said, gripping my knee hard. ‘The blood of the Skythes runs in you. We are not a people who lie down and die. I’ll not hear you rail against your fierceness like some limp Turasi cowering beneath a stone roof.’

I didn’t answer and she chose to interpret my silence as acquiescence. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now let’s wash that bird’s nest on your head. Then I think you should talk with Achim. He’s a most interesting man.’

Within moments she’d organised for a basin to be fetched, along with buckets of water and fresh clothes. She’d obviously settled into life with a travelling army.

‘Cold, I’m afraid,’ she said with offensive cheer, combing the chill water through my hair then scrubbing the soap into it, her fingers working some of the tension from my scalp.

I fell to wondering about Clay and whether he’d been destroyed. If he hadn’t, he would still come seeking me. Thought of the golem sparked an idea. As everyone kept reminding me, taking a throne was never bloodless. Sidonius’s campaign would be no exception. There would be a battle. Clay might come hunting again. Even if he didn’t, there were uncountable ways in which a general might find himself an inadvertent casualty of his own campaign. A dead general couldn’t carry word of my pledge back to his emperor.

‘Stop it,’ said Roshi, as if she could read my thoughts.

I cleared my mind and smiled at her.

‘Better,’ she said approvingly, before winding my hair into a braid and binding it on the crown of my head.

I cast an eye over the clothes she’d brought. The Ilthean matron’s sleeveless gown she held was cinched under the breasts with a string of silk and fastened at the shoulders with bronze clasps worked in the shape of a serpent’s head, fangs bared. There were also sturdy leather sandals with crisscrossing straps, which Roshi wound halfway up my calves. A great swathe of cloth, blue as sapphires, completed the outfit. Roshi draped it around my shoulders like an oversized shawl.

So easily had I been turned into a southern snake.

The choice was Sidonius’s, I had no doubt.

I stood, conscious only of the ache of my ribs against the linen bandages as Roshi stepped back to admire her handiwork. I grimaced as she twitched the stole first this way and that, adjusting its fall to her satisfaction. When she was done I feared to move at all lest the entire contraption collapse around my feet.

‘Enough,’ I said, when she looked like she might dive in for another round of adjustments. ‘I don’t need to look like the perfect Ilthean woman.’

Roshi bit her lip and held the tent-flap aside for me as I stepped outside, the pain of ducking through almost too great to bear.

I emerged to the sight of line upon line of Ilthean soldiers stretching between me and the plain behind which the Turholm towered, Dieter’s black raven banners snapping in the wind from every turret and tower. Despite Roshi’s warning, the sight was a blow.

I gazed at my beloved home, standing tall and proud before the approaching onslaught, and thought I might break somewhere deep inside.

To my left, Achim rose from a squat. ‘Lady,’ he greeted me.

‘I find myself in unpleasant circumstances,’ I replied stonily.

Achim cast a questioning glance at Roshi, but she had planted herself beside Sepp, who sat cross-legged at the far corner of the tent, shrunk in on himself, head down. Neither he nor Roshi came to Achim’s rescue.

‘Tell me how you came to be here,’ I said, still staring at the Turholm.

Squatting again, Achim rolled his shoulders in a shrug. ‘It is a long story, if you want all the details, not to mention a dry one. The short version is, I came away from my homeland to find someone and I joined Sidonius because he asked.’

‘Who is Sidonius to you?’

‘Dieter’s brother.’

‘What is Dieter to you?’

‘Private,’ He replied, his expression making it doubly sure I understood this was a closed topic. ‘This much I will tell you. We learned the lore of the Amaer together, during his time in my homeland.’

‘You know his tricks of old.’

‘I do,’ He said, flicking a finger I assumed was meant to encompass the marks Dieter had put on my brow. ‘He was always one