“Deserters are not men,” Alaan said when Izak relayed the story to him and Kelena late that day.

  “You pirates try fighting a war for two thousand years, see if you don’t desert just for a change of pace.” Izak smirked, but the channel-like dimples high on his cheeks made him look exhausted more than amused.

  When he had first ducked into the pavilion, Kelena had thought she should pretend to go to sleep so he could talk to Alaan alone. Izak had looked as if he needed it, his face haggard, his posture slumped. Before she could beg off, however, her brother had pointed out the new arrow hole in the calf of in his boot and asked the pirate whether he knew how to repair leather. She’d been so shocked and worried that she’d forgotten to make her excuses and let the men visit alone.

  Sighing, Izak rolled his shoulder, kneading at the muscle.

  “Does it hurt?” Kelena started to rise. “I’ll find a healer.”

  “It’s fine, just sore.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Now who’s being fussy over nothing? Trust me, Kelen, I’ll take a dozen shield bruises over the alternative any night.”

  Reluctantly, she settled back onto her cushion.

  “You acquitted yourself well in honorable combat,” Alaan said. “I did not know whether you could strike a killing blow with Loss.”

  Izak laughed. “You always sound so surprised when I show the least bit of competence.”

  “It is different with a blade than with blood magic.”

  “I’ll say.” Izak seemed cheerful enough, but in his next breath, he shattered the good humor with a curse that made Kelena flinch. “I should’ve killed the archers! Sketcher wouldn’t have taken all those arrows and Faren wouldn’t have died. I could have done the blasted job twice over by the time those foot soldiers reached us.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” Kelena said, taking her brother’s hand. Izak started to pull away, then squeezed. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Alaan disagreed. “You made a poor decision. Learn from it. Carry the lesson into future battles, but do not let it cloud your judgment.”

  Kelena glared at the pirate. Couldn’t he see that Izak had come to him for comfort, not criticism?

  “Did you ever lose a man in a sea battle?” Izak asked.

  Alaan shook his head. “I led only one raid as commander, and it was deathless by rote, a ritual attack on another tribe to take my wife.”

  “Wife?” Kelena couldn’t keep the shock from her voice.

  The pirate ignored her question, and Izak’s subtle headshake told her not to press the issue. He needn’t have bothered. Through the grafting, Kelena could feel the sudden sharp pain the word caused her Thorn, a sensation like treading barefoot on broken glass.

  Alaan continued as if he felt none of it. “Given time and battles, I would have lost raedrs. But I saw good men killed on dirter vessels when I was still a young raedr. One fell close enough that I caught him. Eruall. Had I been facing the right direction, I could have blocked the sword that felled him.”

  “But even the best pirate can’t look every direction at once,” Izak said.

  The men fell silent, both lost in their thoughts, while Kelena sought desperately for a lighter subject to bring them out of the darkness.

  She came up empty-handed. What could anyone say in the face of so much death?

  Izak nodded at the bowl of dried fruit and nuts sitting beside Kelena.

  “Are there any apple slices in that?”

  “You ate them all yesterday,” she said, feigning resentment. She leaned up on her cushion to pass the bowl to him. “Eat something else. Don’t just pick the good pieces.”

  Izak sifted through them. “You’ve hardly eaten any of these.”

  “I only like the apples,” she huffed.

  That drew a chuckle from him. “If they have any dried apples left in the stores at Shamasa, I’ll let you have all of them. Will that please Her Highness?”

  “Greatly, Commander.”

  In truth, what pleased her was the genuine amusement in Izak’s face at her little farce. All her childhood he’d been the one to cheer her; Kelena was glad she’d been able to do the same for him this once.

  In direct defiance of her scolding for picking around, Izak dug out a handful of walnuts. She rolled her eyes in put-on exasperation. Another blessed laugh.

  By and by, he turned serious again. “Alaan, did you ever raid ships in Helat waters?”

  “There are no dirter waters. The seas belong to the Ocean Rovers.”

  “Forgive my dirter ignorance. What I meant was, did you ever assault any Helat ships on your seas?”

  “In my twelfth year, I sailed as raedr under a commander who plied the waters around the sun-breather coast. We plundered mostly furs and sunburst.” Seeing their confusion, Alaan explained, “It is a valuable white-gold metal the Helat favor.”

  “Did you kill any Children of Day in those raids?”

  “I sent two to the depths that season. More in other seasons, as I gained skill and experience.”

  Izak grunted thoughtfully. “Has His Majesty—has anyone at all—ever questioned you about fighting the Helat?”

  “If your dirter king asked, I would tell him nothing. I will not fight his enemies for him.”

  “But you’d tell your best friend, wouldn’t you?”

  The conversation turned to fighting and tactics and other such things Kelena was less than interested in.

  Alaan spoke with cold bluntness of killing. The men whose lives he had ended were intruders in waters that belonged to his people. He had served their deaths both honorably and swiftly, and felt no guilt or regret.

  Would Izak feel differently about killing if he were as certain of its necessity as the pirate? Alaan claimed to have killed his first Helat at twelve years of age. By twelve, Izak had already been executing heretics, political prisoners, and bloodslaves for years.

  Kelena remembered trying to play with her brother afterwards. She had been too young and stupid then to understand why his laughter was different, why all his smiles were sickly, why nothing she did or said helped.

  “I’d like to get some sort of communication in place.” Izak and Alaan had shifted subjects while Kelena was lost in her thoughts. “Ideally, we could coordinate on the Night of Judgment, you from within, us from without, to get Kelena and her husband out of the city safely.”

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  Nausea pushed up the back of Kelena’s throat as she realized the turn their discussion had taken.

  “Tell me again what you remember of the route the crown prince intends to take into the city,” Alaan said.

  “I’ll draw it.” Izak grabbed a smoldering twig from the brazier and stubbed out its ember.

  Carried by a howling wind, a blood-soaked purple hair ribbon fluttered down a ruined street. Kelena watched it skitter and tumble. It danced over endlessly staring corpses and somersaulted across strewn rubble, its ends feathering wet red marks wherever it touched.

  Gray-green eyes met hers, and Kelena started, shocked from the reverie.

  Izak hadn’t noticed that Alaan’s attention was no longer on the map. The prince went on talking and marking routes while the pirate said nothing.

  After the men had finished discussing crossings, meeting points, and signals, Izak finally stood to go. Kelena tried to think of a pretense to extend the visit, but he had to relieve his men on watch.

  Then Izak was gone, leaving her alone under Alaan’s stark assessment.

  “I-I need to dress for bed,” Kelena said. “Please turn away.”

  Her Thorn faced the pavilion door while she laid out her day dress.

  “Is it the Night of Judgment you fear?” he asked.

  Kelena’s fingers fumbled as she unbuttoned her bodice.

  “Oh, let’s not talk about that,” she said, wishing he couldn’t sense the falseness of her cheerful tone.

  “You know that I will protect you, and your brother seeks to do the same.”

  She let out a titter of nervous laughter. “The Night of Judgment isn’t some enemy soldier. You can’t fight the strong gods.”

  “I will not concede a battle before it begins.”

  Goosebumps pebbled Kelena’s bare skin. She shivered and hastily pulled on her day dress.

  “Finished,” she said.

  Brooding wordlessly, Alaan handed her into the chest bed.

  Kelena studied his sandy hair and dark honey skin again. He wasn’t beautiful like Izak or handsome like Lord Clarencio, but he was striking. Like the summer storms his emotions always put her in mind of. Implacable enough that she could almost imagine he was capable of withstanding what was coming.

  He lowered the lid. As it hid his face, she spoke again.

  “There are some things everyone should live in fear of, Alaan. The strong gods are those things.”

  His hand paused, still holding the edge of the lid, the last narrow strip of light broken by his fingers curled around the wood. She felt him wrestling with something.

  “I do not fear death or dirter gods,” he said. “And while I am with you, you have no cause to fear them either.”

  Then he removed his fingers and let the darkness settle into place, dotted by dazzling specks of artificial stars.

  Kelena traced the constellations and listened to him remove his blades for the night, followed by the rasp of his uniform as he changed into common clothing to sleep. Thorns weren’t issued dayclothes, Izak had told her once before Alaan could shut him up, because it was a waste of money to clothe a man who never slept alone.

  Alaan stretched out on top of the chest, and Kelena inhaled deeply through her nose. Likely she was imagining it, but she thought that when he lay up there his scent came through the colorful pinholes, warm and bright and masculine, like a man who had the sun and the sea in his skin.

  Long after the grafting confirmed that Alaan was asleep, Kelena slid her hand up under her dayclothes to skim across her hips and stomach and breasts.

  This is what he would feel if he were touching me.

  Would he like it? Am I soft enough? Too soft?

  What does he feel like?

  On top of the chest, Alaan grunted softly and stirred in his sleep.

  Kelena’s face blazed. Hurriedly, she sorted out her day dress and turned on her side to stare at the glowing stars.

  In less than a week, she would marry Lord Clarencio. It was a guilty road to slumber after that realization, but still less awful than agonizing over the night the strong gods would turn their faces her way, when not even Alaan’s relentless ocean of determination could save her.

  ***

  Prince Izak didn’t guard Seleketra again until they were within two nights’ ride of Shamasa Redoubt. Pretty thought she was well covered by her cloak, but Izak cursed when he saw the yellowing bruise on Seleketra’s collarbone.

  “What happened there?”

  Blushing faintly beneath her tattoos, she gathered her cloak closer to cover her exposed skin. She wished she had something more substantial to wear than Seleketra’s enticing low-swept necklines.

  “I was bitten by that mean horse, the black one with the silver blaze. You know the one, don’t you? The same one that kicked that groom?”

  Izak eyed her doubtfully. “I’ve seen horses bite before. Something as delicate as that little bit of bird bone you’ve got would snap.”

  Seleketra’s glowing eyes stared at the head of the baggage train while Pretty tried to come up with a better lie. She wished someone less observant had been assigned to her guard that night. Why couldn’t Prince Izak have stayed busy until that last bit of discoloration was gone?

  Anyway, every close-rat knew there was no reason to pitch a fit over old bruises. You learned from them and you lived, or you didn’t and you died. Pretty had learned. Now she always kept at least one of the eunuchs close by while Etian was with her, even when he slept.

  For his part, the crown prince had never spoken of the incident. Pretty would have wondered whether Etian remembered where the bruises had come from, if not for the fact that he had been especially tender with her ever since.

  “Do you want me to heal it for you?” Izak asked.

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  He nodded. “If you don’t want to tell me how you got the bruise, I won’t press you.”

  Relieved, Pretty let the conversation lapse.

  A handful of seconds passed.

  Then Izak gave her a rueful smile. “All right, I lied. Tell me you weren’t hurt at some point while you were left unguarded, and then I’ll shut up about it.”

  “It’s a love bite, Prince Izak,” she said to stop his questions. “I didn’t wish to say so because it’s none of your concern what your brother and I do when we’re alone.”

  “Ah.” The crestfallen look was gone so quickly it might have been her imagination. “That truly is something I would’ve been better off not knowing.” He adjusted his swordstaff so its butt set more securely on his boot. The saddle he’d modified to hold the weapon had disappeared with his mount, when the horse bolted during a fight with raiders. “I suppose a subject change would be in good taste?”

  “We could discuss all the women you’re enjoying around camp.”

  “Is that a subject change, or did we just hop from one bed to the next?” He picked a mud clod from his horse’s coat. “You’ll be proud to hear I’ve stayed well clear of Phriese’s girl, at least. They’re promised to wed when he comes back from Helat territory, so that makes her something like a sister to me.”

  Pretty’s heart swelled at the news. “I knew he’d find someone who loved him like he is! I told him so, me.”

  “So that’s one skirt I haven’t been under. And, of course, there’s my brother’s consort.”

  “I thought we were changing the subject.”

  That roguish grin flashed. “You didn’t let me finish. I only meant to say that it’s flood season in your home city, isn’t it? Lathe, the little close-rat I was telling you about, always went on about it.”

  “I always liked it, flood season,” Pretty admitted. “Sometimes it could be scary when the water came too fast or too high, but when it left, everything was clean, and it meant warm weather and Carnival of the Dead was coming soon.”

  Izak sighed. “I haven’t been to a Carnival of the Dead in years. Siu Carinal really knows how to throw a celebration.”

  “The dancing. The colors. The music.”

  “The wine, women, and food.”

  “And you get to see who-all’s died over the last year that you knowed,” she said, letting the full strength of her close-rat come through. “I looked every year for my twin, but Brat never turned up. I figured that meant she was alive somewhere… ’Til a while back, I realized that she coulda got killed in the gaol and thrown out into the river. The gaol’s bad medicine for close-rats. Not enough small spots to squeeze into to get away from the big folks.”

  Pretty fingered the reins and laughed. “That was a cheerful note to end on.”

  “What else are friends for if not to sing the occasional dirge with?” Izak said.

  “I like happy songs, me.” She gazed up at the brilliant expanse of stars. “What makes you happy, Prince Izak? And you don’t dare say the thing we both know is a lie.”

  “I’ll tell you, but you’re not going to believe it.”

  “Why not? I can believe most anything, me.”

  “This.”

  She looked across at him.

  This time the chuckle was self-conscious. He ran his hand through his dark hair, the motion disconcertingly similar to when Etian did it.

  “As someone who has no intention whatsoever of bedding you, Seleketra, I can tell you this: You’re sickeningly beautiful. A man would die for a day in your arms. I bet some have, haven’t they?”

  Pretty studied her mount’s ears, hearing again the screams of the man who had burned in the high place for her, seeing the hatred in the face of the man who had killed his son, feeling the thick cloud of hysteria that seemed to follow Seleketra wherever she went.

  “But for all that, you’re as innocent as a maiden. You can’t even say ‘love bite’ without blushing.” Izak shook his head. “Even if I could take you to bed, I wouldn’t, because a walking plague like me would be the ruin of you.

  “But getting to spend time with someone so pure, not seducing her—” He shot Pretty a grin. “Not being myself at all, in fact. That makes me feel like there’s hope.”

  Pretty frowned. “What if that other stuff isn’t really who you are? What if you’re actually being your true self here and now?”

  He laughed. “Nope. Drown yourself in something long enough and you realize you’re just returning to the midden you crawled out of.”

  “I don’t believe that, me,” Pretty insisted heatedly. “I won’t. Dolo said that without your healing, Gray would never be able to use his arm again, and Sketcher probably would have died of a mortified wound. And I heard you and Etian buried Faren yourselves before you came back from that fight with the deserters.”

  Izak looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Any man would have done the same for his brothers.”

  “And the way you talk about the pirate and your little close-rat—you’re a good friend.” He scoffed, but she went on anyway. “I know so, me. You even let a courtesan cry on your shoulder and offer to waste blood magic healing her bruises.”

  “Bruises? As in more than one?”

  Pretty went on as if she hadn’t heard him.

  “I know which side of you is just the face and which side is drowning, Prince Izak. Fool everybody else if you want, but don’t waste your breath trying to fool me.”