Page 21 of Winds of Destiny

No. Think of me, focus onme. “I went out in the everwinds once,” I say, and that’s got his attention again.Good.“When I was very young. We’ve never had whelvers, so when we put a caravan together, we made our wagons from metal. It took a team of the strongest rams to move them, and we had to link them together behind a flexible shield to keep them from blowing away as well.”

Camrael’s eyes are wide. “How did you steer them?”

“Some drovers used whips—only when the wind was with them, obviously—but others trained them to respond to clicks…actually, kind of like you managed with your clever flute.” That gets a smile.

“I ran away from the caravan once we reached the plains below our mountain,” I go on, and now I’m a bit lost in my own memories. “There was a lull in the wind, and I was convinced I saw a jewelfruit bush in the distance. They were always my favorite as a child, so of course the thought of finding a bush covered in them was too good to pass up.”

“Was it really a jewelfruit bush?” Camrael asks.

I smile and nod. “The pink kind, as soft and sweet as honey once you crack open the shell. I managed to eat two before the everwinds kicked up again.” They were the most delicious things I’d ever tasted, as bright on my tongue as the sun was in my eyes. “Just moments from grabbing another, I was blown away.”

“Oh, how he rolled,” Rusen adds. “Like a child-shaped seed bumbling across the plains. His mother had to take one of the rams out to catch him before he rolled away entirely, and she’s lucky they managed to make it back to the wagon without a shield.”

“My father whipped my tail so hard I couldn’t sit down for the rest of the day,” I confirm. “But it was all worth it for an adventure like that.”

“He started a trend,” Morfan says. “Every child on that expedition tried to run off at some point after that. None of us made it very far, since the everwinds didn’t lull again, but we drove our parents wild with all our attempts.”

“What awful children you all were,” Camrael says with a chuckle. “I think we’d have gotten along very well in our youth. I was yelled at constantly by my father to ‘get down from those roofs,’ but of course I—”

“Theroofs?” Jeric’s gone pale. “Are you saying you walked along those awful, tall, skinny spires of yours?Outside?”

“Ran along them, more like,” Camrael says. “Why?”

Rusen claps my youngest guard on the shoulder. “This one’s afraid of heights. We’d better change the subject before he falls right off the wagon in a faint.”

“I’m not that bad,” Jeric objects with a grimace, but Camrael is already pivoting to speaking about how his sister had a paralyzing fear of moths as a child. He’s kind as well as insightful. He’s going to be more than just a husband to me, I can tell. He knows how to respond to people, and how to speak to them so that they feel important and listened to. He’ll make an excellent co-ruler when my father finally steps down.

If the man ever gets around to it.

“It’s funny,” Camrael says, staring out at the plain again—but not in a way that makes me think he’s pining for Lord Turo this time. “You’d think our trade would be better without the everwinds, given all the problems they caused when it came to travel. My father said there were periods of mildness, like minor seasons, but for the most part they were fierce and unrelenting. Yet it seems like it’s harder to get goods from city to city now than it ever was before, thanks to all the banditry and the expense of arming caravans.”

“The everwinds blew for over a thousand years, if the legends have any truth to them,” I point out. “That’s a long time to get used to something, even if it started as something bad. You bred those whelvers up so they’d withstand the worst of it, and we bred rams with forelegs so long and sturdy the poor bastards can barely stand if they’re not leaning into something. And the everwinds did their part to make crops fertile and hardy.” Now nothing grows as well as it did when the everwinds blew.

“True.” Camrael glances up at the sky. “I wonder how long it will take us to adapt now that the everwinds have stopped. It’s been twenty years, after all.”

“We’ll get there.”

“Or perhaps they’ll start again, today, and blow us all off this bloody grassland and into the sea where we can be eaten by your god,” Rusen comments, like the utter asshole he is.

I’m going to strangle him when we get back home, I swear to Carnuatu.

Camrael chuckles. “Oh, don’t worry about that. He only eats wholesome things like fish and sharks and rays. Filth like you would upset his stomach, so you’d be perfectly safe.”

“Filth?Filth?”

“You’re the one who brought up your smell,” Camrael says sweetly. There’s a hardness in his eyes, though, and his hand is straying toward his sword, which is slender and curving like his bodyguard’s, but not as long. “I’m just trying to reassure you that it’s definitely enough to keepanyonefrom wanting to put any part of you in their mouth.”

Rusen sits there in perfect, dumbfounded silence for a moment while the rest of my men laugh. When he finally comes out of his stupor, it’s with a smile—thankfully. “You’re quick with that tongue of yours,” he says with a nod. “Are you as quick with your sword?”

“I’m decent with it,” Camrael says. “Naturally, every member of the royal household is trained in the essentials of fighting and self-defense. I’m not an expert with it like Turo is, though.”

“Don’t suppose you’d need to be if he’s always been around to watch your back.” Rusen squints out at the grasses for a moment, as if he’s expecting Lord Turo to pop up like a flower from the snow in spring. “But it’ll be different once you get to Huridell.”

“Yes.” Camrael sounds calm, but I can tell it’s just a front. His hands are clenched so tightly around the jaka’s reins that I can see every vein in them. “Everything will be different there, I suppose.”

He’s upset now. I can’t have that. I swear, I’m going to gag Rusen to keep him from talking tomorrow. “Not everything,” I promise him. “The court is very liberal in many ways. You’ll have space to pursue your interests, and while no doubt our library isn’t as fine as Zephyth’s, I’m sure there are some volumes there you haven’t read yet.”

“Hmm.” Camrael looks at me for a long moment, then offers me a little smile. “And do you think my husband will accept me spending all hours of the day meddling with books and tools instead of learning the ways of my new people?”

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