ready to receive you, if you are ready to be received.”
The doubt in the seneschal’s tone suggested that Maddek could not be. “I am.”
The older man sniffed as Maddek joined him. “If you wish, I will escort you to the bathing chambers first.”
Grinning his amusement, Maddek climbed the steps. “I do not wish.”
There was no shame in smelling of horse, or in wearing the grime of camp on his skin. The duty of serving the alliance and protecting their people left his warriors covered in sweat and filth, and he would not pretend a warrior’s work was a clean work.
As it was, the council ministers should be grateful he always washed away the blood of battle, or he would have faced them dripping an ocean of it.
With a sword’s worth of steel in his spine, Omer tipped back his head to meet Maddek’s gaze. “I would offer a robe so that you could clothe yourself before meeting the ministers, but we do not have any large enough to cover your mountainous expanse of flesh. But did I not see a mammoth’s pelt rolled up and tied to your beast of a horse?”
Not a mammoth’s but a bison’s—and it was too warm for furs. The last frost had melted during their journey north, and Maddek no longer used his furs except to sleep on.
He said simply, “I am already dressed.”
In red linen folded over a wide belt. The inner length of cloth hung to his knees. When it was raining or cold, he could draw up the longer outer length and drape it over his shoulders, but now it fell almost to the ground, all but concealing the soft leather boots that protected his feet and hugged his calves. The outer length of linen was split to allow for ease of movement, but unless he was riding or fighting, it concealed his skin as well as a southerner’s robe did . . . from the waist down.
On this day, the sun was high and warm, so he needed no other covering—whereas Omer wore enough for two men.
The southerners did not just wrap their cities in walls. Their soldiers wrapped their bodies in heavy armor even when they were not in battle. The citizens wrapped themselves in cloth from neck to ankle, even on days when they needed no protection from the cold or wind.
An entire life they spent wrapped, as if for a funeral pyre.
Maddek spent his life as he lived it. For a full turn of the moon he had been traveling, so he was dressed to ride. He did not anticipate a fight, so he wore no armor, and his chest was bare aside from the leather baldric slung across his shoulder to carry his sword. No black paint darkened his brow. The only silver upon his fingers was the family crest circling the base of his thumb; he’d tucked away the razor-tipped claws that would drip with blood by the end of a battle.
Although he was a commander of the alliance’s army, if Maddek had arrived looking as he did after a battle, he doubted they’d have let him through the gates. Many southerners within the alliance still believed the Parsatheans were little better than the Farian savages. The riders were still called raiders and thieves—and uncivilized.
Maddek had never known the raid. By the time he’d been old enough to mount his first horse, the alliance between Parsathe and the southern realms had been firmly established. But if civilization meant cowering behind walls, if it meant wrapping every bare stretch of skin in linens, then Maddek preferred to be a barbarian.
In a god’s age, when their civilized walls were crumbling to dust, when the names of their civilized cities were forgotten, Parsathean seed would still grow strong amid the ruins.
Omer gave Maddek’s bare chest a despairing glance before sighing and continuing across the marble floor inside the tower’s entrance. In silence they walked, until they reached the anteroom outside the council’s chamber.
There the seneschal quietly said, “It was with great sorrow that I learned what befell Ran Ashev and Ran Marek. They were always the most welcome of the council’s visitors. Of those who knew them, there can be not one who does not grieve for them now.”
Maddek inclined his head but made no other response, except in his gratitude to draw the red cloth up over his shoulder and drape it across his chest.
He had not yet learned what had befallen his parents. Maddek would not press Omer for answers, however. The questions that burned within his breast would be asked within the council chambers.
Nothing had been left unasked or unsaid between mother and father and son. Every Parsathean warrior knew life was too uncertain to leave important words unspoken. And since leaving the Lave, much time had Maddek to think upon what came next, beyond answers and—if needed—vengeance. To think upon what his parents would have wanted of him. When Maddek had last seen them, his queen and king spoke of finding him a bride and of strengthening the alliance between Parsathe and the southern realms.
Nothing was left unsaid, but there was much left undone.
So Maddek would see it finished in their stead.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Under a pen name, Milla Vane is also an award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of steampunk and paranormal romance. Milla currently resides in Oregon.
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