He heard Seri’s snort of a giggle, and then she pulled up the outer length of linen that hung from her belt. To cover her face, he realized when the young monk behind Tyzen did the same with the skirt of his robe.
Choking on laughter—or the stench—the Syssian prince caught Aerax’s eyes. “This will be a fine part of the songs they will eventually sing of the Destroyer’s defeat—the tale of an alliance struck amid onk shart.”
Aerax only hoped that there would not be a verse about a giant cat rolling in it. Or about a bastard prince who knew not how to properly address the High Daughter of Krimathe.
But it mattered little if he did. No one possessed a lofty rank while wading through dung. Inclining his head, Aerax greeted her with a simple “My lady.”
Holding the hood of her red cloak across the bottom half of her face, she nodded in return, then again in response to Tyzen’s greeting before pointing down the road.
Aerax took the lead, guiding his horse between the pools of urine while they followed behind one at a time, spaced far enough apart so they would not catch anything flung from a hoof. His gaze remained on Caeb, who stopped to curiously sniff at a few piles but did nothing that required a bath.
Once beyond the night mud, they stopped to wait for the others. Raucous calls came from the ferns and trees, the jungle waking as the sun slowly rose. It wasn’t yet high enough to glare down at them, but already the air was warmer, dew rising as vapor above the canopy.
Aerax’s gaze scanned the ground, searching for a sign that Lizzan had come this way. There was nothing, but that was not unexpected. If she knew he was behind her—running from him—she might make her way through the jungle instead of along the road.
He glanced back. Riders were approaching through the night mud—Riasa and the Krimathean soldiers who’d accompanied her, Lady Junica and Degg, and a handful of mounted Parsathean warriors. The Kothan escort was followed by the caravan. Few among them seemed to be walking, and the noise through the jungle told him that the Parsatheans and travelers on foot had opted to go around the mess on the road.
To reach them first were the two warriors who led the other Parsatheans, and who served as Tyzen’s guard—Kelir and Ardyl. People of the north were taller than those in Krimathe and nearby realms, yet these riders of the Burning Plains were taller still. Most of the male warriors in their company were of a size with Aerax, and he was considered a large man among his own people. But he was not a large man next to Kelir.
Like Seri, their black hair was drawn back in multiple braids, and they only wore boots and red linens folded over a belt—though Ardyl had also bound her breasts, and silver piercings decorated her ears and eyebrows. At the Krimathean palace, their warriors’ dress had appeared more elaborate—with armor bound in reptilian leather, their foreheads painted black, and wearing silver claws that rivaled Caeb’s. Yet not until this moment, recalling how Seri said Parsatheans were as silver-fingered Rani, did Aerax realize how they resembled descriptions of that goddess.
Always before he’d seen Lizzan in them. She was nothing like them. Yet still these Parsatheans reminded Aerax of her, in brief clear impressions that faded too quickly.
Sweet and painful those moments were. To glimpse Kelir’s quick grin and also to remember hers. To see the scars that raked down the side of the warrior’s face—and to recall the slashes carving through Lizzan’s. Red and angry they’d been when Aerax had last spoken to her, scabs newly forming. The injury must be fully healed now, though the marks left would not be as old and as white as the Parsathean’s. Still Aerax saw those scars and saw Lizzan.
Just as he did when he looked at Ardyl, a woman who burned with a ferocity tempered by humor and pride. In Seri he saw the girl Lizzan had been, but in Ardyl he saw someone similar to the woman she’d become—and of a size she and Lizzan were, tall and lean. Nothing they looked alike. Ardyl had brown eyes instead of blue, features that were square instead of angular, and a smaller nose, and her chin did not possess the stubborn jut that had driven Aerax to madness time and again. Yet the way the Parsathean moved with