Page 45 of Children of Fallen Gods

Caduan, to my horror… didn’t. He just stood there, giving Shadya a stare that seemed to be picking her apart.

I wished I could reach out and shake him:Don’t just stand there, Mathira-damned idiot. Bow!

Tension pulled the air tight. Finally, Caduan dropped to his knees, and it was like the entire room let out a silent breath.

They rose, and Shadya gave Caduan a warm smile, as if she hadn’t noticed his infraction. “I congratulate you on your coronation, King Caduan, though I am deeply sorry for the circumstances that led to it. I assure you that we will not allow what happened to your House to happen to any other.” She looked out across all of us, and her voice rose. “Half a millennia, and the Houses now unite to make it so.”

She turned back to Caduan with fire in her eyes, and it was clear that she expected a reaction to match. Perhaps some hardened statement of solidarity, some declaration of vengeance, some furious promise of hope and blood.

Instead, he said, simply, “I appreciate that.”

I almost choked.

“I appreciate that?!”I muttered.

“Sh!” Siobhan hissed, but even she could not pretend that she didn’t have the same reaction.

If Caduan noticed that everyone was staring at him with perplexed horror, he didn’t show it. Shadya, at least, chose to let this oddity slide, too. She turned to the rest of us and swept her arms out.

“And that, of course, does bring us back to the topic at hand, does it not?” she said. “We have an abundance of things to discuss and very little time.”

My father gave a serious nod. “This, I cannot dispute. Come.”

* * *

We gathered along the long,black glass table in my father’s finest gathering room. The walls were adorned with the most intricate maps of the Fey courts and the human lands that Sidnee artisans had to offer. Deliberate, of course, like everything my father did. Even these pieces of parchment needed to communicate to our reluctant allies the strength of the Sidnee clan. We all spoke with honey-sweet words, but they still held a little bitterness — bitterness that could merely be distaste, or could be poison.

The table was long, seating entire courts along one sheet of glassy black stone. Light spilled through tall, silver-rimmed windows. The Wyshraj sat on one side, their backs to the windows, making their flowing hair and loose robes seem to glow against the backlight. The Sidnee sat on the other side, all staid darkness and dark leather. Caduan was in the middle, so clearly part of neither clan, and so conspicuously alone.

Time ticked by as the most revered strategists from both nations outlined our current situation. Caduan was called upon to recount what had happened to the House of Stone, which he did calmly and factually — though I didn’t miss the way his eyes lowered as he spoke, the only crack in his composure. The Sidnee and the Wyshraj shared what they each knew of human aggressions, which turned out to be, in short, nothing.

“And this is why,” Queen Shadya said, at last, “my generals propose a very deliberate tactical approach.” She nodded towards to the two blond Wyshraj that I had noticed before.

“My two leading generals, Ishqa and Iajqa Sai’Ess, have developed a plan that I think we will both find mutually agreeable,” Shadya said. They rose, taking up a place on either side of the massive map.

“One thing has been exceedingly clear while reviewing our current information, and while listening to King Caduan’s account of the attack,” the woman, Iajqa, said. Her voice was low and smooth. “The humans managed an unacceptable level of surprise, and our first step must be to mitigate this risk and learn the nature of our enemy.”

“We propose an initial approach rooted in information gathering and defensive strategy,” the man, Ishqa, continued.

“We have no time for careful measures,” Klein said.

“I certainly understand the impulse to respond with force,” Ishqa replied. “The atrocity that was committed against the House of Stone deserves blood. And I assure you that we shall have it. In time.”

He turned to the map, gesturing with an elegant hand to the northern Fey lands — where the Obsidian Pales stood. “I propose that we take a small, elite team through the Fey houses, traveling south, investigating the aggressors and cause of the attack.” He trailed his fingers over the Fey continents that soon gave way to smaller, more isolated Fey isles. “We will travel south, first to the House of Reeds, then past the Houses of Nautilus and Roiled Waves, and then further to the independent lands and the human nations.”

“The human nations?” Siobhan said. “Is that wise?”

Ishqa’s expression barely changed, but some faint movement of his mouth evoked the ghost of a smile. “I have served in the army of Wayward Winds for nearly a century, and led it for half of those years. In that time, I have learned that there is little more valuable in times of war than a few chosen feet on the ground, with eyes that are sharp and weapons that are sharper. That is how you stop a war before it begins.”

I wasn’t especially charmed by that Wyshraj snootiness to his tone, but he was undeniably right — and Siobhan, of all people, knew this.

My father nodded. “Certainly, we can assemble an army to travel with you.”

“No army,” Ishqa said. “I propose that we send only two representatives from each the House of Obsidian and the House of Wayward Winds. The fewer there are, the more easily we can gather information without attracting unwanted attention.”

“And in the meantime,” Iajqa said, stepping forward, “We will build and train a joint army here, preparing ourselves for whatever is to come. A universal Fey force, representing the best of the houses of Obsidian and Wayward Winds together, united, in the strongest and most finely-honed power in the world.”

As she spoke, her voice grew slightly faster, as if her excitement was getting the better of her. I couldn’t help but share in it. The Wyshraj may be uptight and poorly-dressed, but their warriors were the things of legends. Even their ridiculous fashion choices highlighted their lethal beauty — those little strips of fabric displaying cut muscles and practiced grace, framing battle scars with the same reverence with which the Blades treated our tattoos.

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