The Shadowglass (The Bone Witch #3) - Rin Chupeco Page 0,61

and the other asha. Likh.” Lord Balfour was the quietest, almost sad, and currently the soberest Yadoshan of the lot. Lord Aden told me he’d been to see Lord Khalad, but said little of how their exchange had gone. “Prettiest I’ve ever seen.”

Lord Aden downed his ale and shifted uncomfortably. “Say, you don’t think Lady Tea would go back to Yadosha and set it ablaze too, do you?”

“She had a vendetta against Kion,” Lord Fox assured him, “not with Stefan. The chances aren’t very likely.”

“But why would she turn her back on this city? Last I heard, she was friends with your girl, Fox—beggin’ your pardon, Her Highness—and loyal to your empress. She left most of Ankyo alone, but she laid waste to the bulk of the Willows, if my eyes don’t deceive me.”

“There was a reason.” Lord Fox stared into his goblet. “She didn’t betray Kion. Not in the way one thinks of betrayal. Some days, it almost feels like Kion turned her back on Tea first.” Like mine had, his silver heartsglass seemed to glitter. “Did she say anything about Kion while she was with you?”

Lord Knox paused. “Not explicitly, no. But she said some things about wanting to leave and be someone else. To travel the lands without the need for a name. Where she could carve out her own peace, her words were. I remember, because she’d looked so sad and vulnerable. With all due respect, Lord Fox, it was easy to admire her, even knowing the damage she could do, even knowing how Kalen would beat my arse. Maybe the danger was a part of her attraction.”

“We all admired her, Knox.” Lord Besserly raised his glass. “Let’s raise our glasses to the Dark asha. As strong and mighty as we are, able warriors one and all—may nothing we do piss her off.”

“Hear, hear,” the rest of the table chorused, and that made Lord Fox crack a smile.

12

There were minimal injuries from the daeva hunt, no thanks to the Yadoshans or their leader. The man the nanghait had first attacked would live with a broken leg—and despite the injury, still attended the party later that night where we were made honored guests, ignoring my pleas for rest.

“It wouldn’t be much of a celebration if the people we were celebrating weren’t present,” the minister pointed out. “Tomorrow is as good a day to sleep as any. But tonight, we drink!”

And that was why I sat at the center of a very long table, staring down at a roasted hog with a caramelized apple in its mouth. Yadoshan parties were as grand and as outlandish as their hunts. While their gatherings in Kion were tame out of respect for the Willows’ policies and general dislike of loud noises, the Thanh celebration was a citywide affair, spilling out of the council house and finding lodgings in the endless number of taverns and inns surrounding it. While the more influential nobles and ministers dominated the great hall we stayed at, the locals conducted their own festivities with lesser frills and more beer.

“This is ridiculous,” I complained once the First Minister was out of earshot. “There’s no point to all this. They deliberately went out of their way to get themselves hurt or worse, and now they’re celebrating the fact that they survived?”

“Sometimes people do things because they want to, and not because they make sense.” Khalad took a small sip of his ale and gingerly placed it back on the table. “It’s not like you’ve never met Yadoshans.”

I snorted. “I’ve never been responsible for their lives before.”

Kalen chuckled, mellower than I’d expected. “One of the few rules for the hunt requires participants to take sole responsibility for their actions should they die underfoot. It’s the only way they can claim a hero’s burial. You may have to endure this every several years whenever the nanghait wakes, but I don’t think the Yadoshans would oppose our staying here as normal citizens. Their policy is to never get themselves involved in southern kingdom politics—staying neutral is good for trade. Hunting the nanghait might actually put them in your debt.”

“That’s not exactly the best way to start a life incognito.” Kalen was serious about leaving Kion for good, but I still wasn’t sure what my own thoughts were on that the subject. I couldn’t let Mykaela shoulder all the duties of a Dark asha alone.

I looked around at the throngs of men and women talking and laughing and noisily chugging down dark butter