Um, well ... okay. A) The "new characters" are only tools. Don't worry about 'em. B) Talon and J'engar ain't that big. Thus, their armies are pretty small. C) I went over the legal issues briefly in the previous chapter, but I don't think it translated well enough. She is not his wife unless the marriage in consummated. Period. Until then, she's only a wife on paper--they're not married. It's like getting a divorce but never signing the papers.
I'm not saying he sleeps around, but I *am* saying that when Ianna wants something, she gets it. Blame it *all* on her. D:
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“Did you see her face?” Fraon, one of the delegates sent along with Ianna, whispered to his companions. “She looked almost human, for a moment.”
“Huh,” Tulin said in reply, glancing over at Taejon and Caelun. Those two were so starkly loyal to Ianna that speaking a wayward word in their presence was as good as ensuring they’d be killed in their sleep. “You figure she’s really gone for the Talon?”
“He’s handsome enough,” Sacchid put in. “And powerful.”
“Pfft.” Caron looked at them with a disdainful look on his face, holding his bag of parchment and quill and ink to his chest as his horse ambled on beside the others. “He's as good as taken. I saw the look on her face when he started blathering on about his concubine wife—she was thinking about how to best slit the girl’s throat, I’ll put money on it.”
“What you should put money on,” Caelun said, startling them all, “is your own throats getting slit by His Lordship Genor up there, because if you haven’t noticed, the wind’s blowing the wrong way. They can hear every word you say, you idiots.”
That shut them up fast, for indeed, now that they were looking, they could see a slight tension in Daeun’s shoulders, and a subtle glance that he kept sending in their direction, as if to say, shut up, you fools—they bent their heads, chagrined.
“Besides,” Caelun said after a few minutes had passed, and the wind had changed directions, “what’s there to argue about? She kills who she kills and loves who she loves. She is the Thief of J’engar—no more is expected of her.”
Eyes rounded and eyebrows rose, for no one had missed the admission beneath those words—King Aedaan’s comment had been based on fact! Taejon elbowed Caelun, who grinned in response.
“What?” Caelun demanded, eyes dancing. “Can’t she have her fun? You can’t say you haven’t thought about taking a side trip to one of those Talon whore houses.”
Breath whistled threw clenched teeth. “A whore? Him?” Sacchid whispered, scandalized.
“He’s more of a pet, isn’t he, them both being noble-born,” Caelun chuckled. “Leave them to it, men. If she doesn’t have her fun with him, whose to say she won’t have fun of another sort with our necks, huh?”
Caelun knew that he was perfectly safe, and Taejon especially, but the delegates were not. They knew as well as he did that they had no allegiance to J’engar-ai, and therefore they were completely expendable. One or two of them paled at the thought, and they spoke nothing more of it for the rest of the trip.
Though they stopped twice to rest, they by and large pushed forward until their mounts’ heads hung low and their hooves dragged, and the riders were slumped in the saddle, too weary to remain upright. Ianna was ruthless. She threatened to flog them all if they stopped, and even the horses seemed to take her seriously, for even if they were at a dead crawl, they kept moving.
They made it to Senvar in three days, somehow, and stopped immediately to rest. They exchanged horses (except for Daeun, who would rather die than give up Tsuunai) and took baths, and got some well-earned rest. Daeun once again disappeared on business, though this time he took Ianna with him.
“Do you always go visit your spies every time you enter a city?” Ianna asked, as they meandered down a road paved with crushed rocks and seashells. “Doesn’t it become conspicuous?”
“They all work for me,” Daeun said blankly. “Why would it be conspicuous?”
“But they pay allegiance to someone else, yes?”
“Well—technically—but they are in my pay.” When she continued to look at him, he elaborated. “I own several businesses from Genor to Tvaar, including pubs, inns, grocers, markets, stables, and tailors. I have a string of fishing boats from Corvul to Anlion—my employees keep me very well informed. Everyone, even the king, must contact someone in one of those areas, and if they do, I know about it.”
“Gavin, he works for you?”
“Technically. But he hasn’t accepted pay since my father died.” He pointed up ahead, where a tailor’s shop window gleamed. “There. Let’s get in and out before someone realizes you’re the enemy, eh?”
The moment he entered, a maiden took over the counter, and the woman behind it disappeared into the back. Daeun followed, Ianna close on his heels, only to be handed a missive. “From She-Who-Has-No-Name,” the tailor said curtly, and disappeared again. Ianna looked curiously down at the strange, blackened paper, upon which nothing was written.
Daeun hesitated only a moment before sticking it hastily into his pocket and snatching up Ianna’s hand. “Hurry!” he said, and they flew out of the tailor’s doors, exploding out onto the street and nearly over-turning a bread cart.
“Why are we running?” Ianna asked, as Daeun pulled her down the streets of Senvar.
“To get to the inn,” Daeun said breathlessly, though she doubted it was from the running; he was in excellent physical condition. “When I read this, I must be warded and have a guard keeping me safe—I will be very vulnerable.”
They ignored Caelun completely, despite his horrified expression, and hurried into the first open room; as soon as the door closed, Daeun’s ears popped with the force with which Ianna warded the room. He flashed her a grateful smile and sank down onto the floor, the black paper in his hands.
He placed a hand on it, pressing it into the wood, and whispered into the air, “Goddess, guide me,” before his eyes rolled back into his head and he fell flat onto the floor.
Daeun’s family was not a family of traitors because it was their nature to be so, nor because it was their family philosophy that the patriarchy must be destroyed; but rather it was because, every generation, one son was born of Genor, usually the heir, who received a black paper. It came from many different people, sometimes goat herders, sometimes their own parents, but it always came. It had chosen Daeun, this generation, and wisely.
In that first letter, a woman whose hair was made of light and whose face was lined but still beautiful appeared before him, and all around him stood tall pale green trees; she spoke to him in a voice made of all the voices that ever was. “This king is not king, Daeun,” she said, her eyes boring into his as if driven by spears. “Bring honor back to Talon. Retake the throne—retake peace, Daeun. Do not fail me.”
The second letter came on his twentieth birthday, delivered by a mutt of a dog whose coat was tattered and bloodied, and who had died at his very feet, the black paper in his mouth. Once again the woman appeared before him, this time with a sword in her grasp. She held it aloft with both hands, eyes blazing white-hot. “This peace will not come like a dog to its master!” she shouted, her voice ringing in his ears and making his head ache. “It must be paid for! Take up your sword, don your disguises, and fight for this peace!”
The very next day he had taken control of the Resistance. It had already been built; when he had gone to his father, distraught over having failed the Goddess, his father had immediately shut the door and told him everything there was to know about the Resistance. Shocked, but relieved to be of use, Daeun had taken control, only for his father to die a year later.
Thus had the family Genor fallen to treason.
The trees around him rustled, and the woman before him, older than ever, glared up at him with undisguised rage. “The woman beside you was brought to you by the gods. She does not have your sweet heart, and will kill for you. Instead you waste her, and seek to find an alliance with her king!” The Goddess shook her head angrily, and straightened her back. The years flew away from her, until she was young again—and Daeun felt a flash of horror lance through him. Before him stood a woman whose resemblance to Ianna was striking, though her skin was pale, and finally he understood. J’engar’s exile had preserved the line; they still resembled their ancestors.
This was why they were so powerful, so feared—they were what the Talon had, over time, failed to be.
The Goddess’s eyes softened. “Your way will lead to peace, just as my way will. Trust your heart as much as your head—but above all, place your trust in her. We like her. She has fire in her heart. You lack that, Daeun. You always have. You love as easily as a poet—but you never had fire. Find your fire, and you will find the will to drive this king into the ground.”
“She is my fire,” Daeun realized, his voice sounding weak and pitiful next to hers.
“Well done,” the Goddess observed. “Can you guess the rest, Daeun?”
The rest? “Goddess, what—”
“Why do they call her the Thief of J’engar, Daeun? Is it because she can steal? Or what she has stolen?”
.