looked for the one person who would not expect a conversation and saw the Krimathean at the tail of the caravan. She had barely taken a step in that direction when the old woman’s voice stopped her.
“Warrior.”
Lizzan paused. Carinea held out two mugs of palm wine.
“One for her, as well.” She indicated the Krimathean with a tilt of her snow-white head.
So Lizzan had assumed. Still she joked, “I risked life and limb for your supper and they are not both for me?”
The old woman scoffed. “The snake is not that big.”
Fair enough, as it had not been hunted, either. Grinning, Lizzan gratefully took the cups and carried them past the train of wagons. The sun was low in the sky, the shadows long, but there was still enough light to see by. The Krimathean was sitting on her furs and sharpening her sword, her gaze sweeping the road behind them—the only direction from which attack might easily come now. Any bandits on the road ahead would have to make their way through the onks or circle around through the jungle, and they could do neither quietly.
But that was not the only reason to wait here instead of near the head of the caravan. The humid air did not stir much, but a herd of onks soon made a foul wind of its own. Best to be as far from it as possible.
“May I join you?” Lizzan didn’t wait for a reply before sitting. Her own bedroll and belongings were tucked away on Mevida’s wagon, but the ground would do for now. The woman gave a nod of thanks when Lizzan passed her the mug, and though she’d hoped to escape conversation, she still found herself asking curiously, “Can you not speak or is your silence a condition of the quest?”
The Krimathean responded with an arch of her eyebrows and a tilt of her head to indicate the latter. Forbidden by the goddess, then.
And Mevida had claimed she would soon head east. “Your quest takes you to Lith?”
A nod, eyes narrowing.
Lizzan knew that look, as sharp as the blade the woman carried. “But not to kill King Goranik.”
The king of Lith, who had served the Destroyer and had killed this woman’s own mother. Supposedly the king was already dead—an event that had stirred the unrest in that realm now, as his warlords fought over Lith’s crown.
Lizzan was not so certain of his death, yet a shake of the Krimathean’s head confirmed that was not the quest, anyway. And it would be impossible to guess what her quest truly was. The goddess Vela might have given her any number of tasks to complete, and the only certainty was that it would be painful and difficult . . . but with great reward.
The timing of her quest, then, was not hard to guess. “Do you think the Destroyer truly returns? Or is it merely rumor and panic again?”
The solemn nod said that he truly came.
A dreadful fist seemed to clutch around Lizzan’s heart. Koth had been spared a generation past but might not be this time. And she would not be there to protect her mother, her brothers. “You asked Vela for help to defeat him?”
Gaze steady, the woman nodded again.
“The goddess will not simply give her help?”
The Krimathean was not allowed to talk but apparently was not forbidden to make any sound. A short, stony huff of laughter matched the hardening of her eyes. So she must be wondering, too, why Vela would not offer assistance without demanding something in return.
But a future queen might question a goddess. Lizzan would not. Instead she hoped the goddess did give this woman the power to defeat the Destroyer. For if he was stopped in Krimathe, never would he reach Koth.
And Lizzan would not need to return home to save her family. “Will Krimathe accept outsiders into their warriors’ ranks?”
With a faint smile, the woman nodded.
“Even a warrior such as me?”
Expression more fierce now, as if rejecting the such as me, Krimathe’s future queen nodded again.
Lizzan concealed the sudden tightness of her throat and burning of her eyes with a sip of sour wine. All would not be well. Still her family would bear the burden of her shame. Yet she could fight. And even from afar, she could protect the people she loved.
Even the one who’d never deserved her heart.
At the thought of him, she sipped more deeply—and too quickly. Better to make this last. Yet it seemed only an instant later that her