Page 42 of Silver & Smoke
‘Not long enough. You need to get ahead of it while you can. Change the perception of who Wren Embervale is.’
‘How can I change the perception when it’strue? The midrealms knows I executed Osiris for his treason in the shadow war. As for the deaths of those who helped fund and aid the conflict, Iamresponsible.’ She drew a trembling breath. ‘I took justice into my own hands and delivered it as I saw fit.’
‘You don’t regret it, then?’ There was no judgement in Kipp’s tone, only curiosity.
‘No. The only thing I regret is that it now threatens the plan we’ve laid out, that it puts Torj in jeopardy. I regret that one nobleman has the power to alter the tides of the upcoming war with one piece of a larger truth.’
‘So tell them your whole truth,’ Kipp said.
Wren scoffed. ‘Oh, it’s that easy, is it?’
Kipp shrugged. ‘One thing that has always struck me about the politics of the midrealms is that things are so often donebehind closed doors. As you said, battles are planned over sparkling wine and feasts, not accessible to the common folk – the folk who are impacted the most. Perhaps it’s time you spoke directly to the people.’
‘And how do you propose I do that?’
‘The same way Silas did.Write to them. Have posters put up in every town, every tavern. I think we know someone who may be able to help with that, don’t you?’ Kipp raised an amused brow.
‘You don’t think it’s too late for that?’ she asked.
‘It’s never too late for the truth.’
Wren inhaled the salty sea air as the breeze picked up around them, closing her eyes for a moment. ‘It would be a half-truth, though, wouldn’t it? To tell the people my story as the Poisoner, while still pretending I’m engaged to Darian.’
When she opened her eyes, Wren had never seen Kipp look as earnest as he did now, placing both hands gently on her shoulders. ‘Only you can decide what to tell them, Wren. It’s your truth to tell.’
CHAPTER 22
Torj
‘Since the founding of the warrior guild, Warswords have journeyed across the midrealms and beyond, but inevitably, they always return to Thezmarr, as surely as the river finds the sea’
– The Warsword’s Way
TORJ KNEW THElast place Wren wanted to go was Thezmarr. He’dseenher nightmares. The rivers of blood, the lashing shadows, the acrid scent of burning hair... He knew what that place did to her – what it did tohim, if he was honest. Where Wren remembered her friends’ heads on spikes and her eldest sister dying in the courtyard, he rememberedher. The ferocity etched across her face and the lightning she commanded with her fingertips. But most of all, he remembered her scream. Not the sound she made as Anya died, nor as the talon of a wraith tore through her skin, but as he leapt towards that vortex of darkness, praying that he could put something –anything– in between her and the end of all that was good. He never wanted to hear that sound again.
A spray of sea water up on deck wrenched him from his thoughts. They were a long way from Thezmarr yet, far from any semblance of peace, but they would fight again. What other choice did theyhave? Torj looked to the choppy waves on the darkening horizon, the crisp, briny air whipping around him, the sails taut above. He couldn’t make sense of how they’d got here. How, after everything that had happened during and after the shadow war, this was the precipice upon which they stood. Flashes of Silas’s taunts came to him, and regret surged in a wave of nausea. In another life, he could have pummelled that smug bastard to death with one swing of his hammer, but in his poisoned body... he was weak, and he had failed them all.
He didn’t know why he had kept Vernich’s mace, but he held it now against the rail as he looked out to the expanse of white-tipped sea.
‘We should hold a funeral while we can,’ Kipp said as he approached, nodding at the weapon Torj clung to. ‘For the Bloodletter and Ashlyn Graves. Our ancestors used to do such rites out at sea.’
‘It seems like a needless formality among all of this.’ Torj motioned to where the bannermen were setting up hammocks on deck.
But Kipp simply grasped his shoulder. ‘They were Warswords of Thezmarr. They deserve to be honoured.’
Perhaps it was because Torj was facing his own mortality that he threw himself into helping Kipp organize the Bloodletter’s farewell at sea. Truth be told, he relished having a task to distract him from the unpredictability that now plagued his body. The tremor he’d grappled with was no longer contained to his fingers. Both hands shook, and often. He’d done his best to hide it, but he knew Wren had noticed, even from afar. It was only a matter of time before she confronted him about it, Lucian be damned – or worse still, before she forged ahead and actually went through with the ruse of marrying Darian.
With the help of Cal, Kipp and Wilder, Torj built a raft that they would lower into the sea. He placed Vernich’s mace atop the kindling, while Cal added a jar containing the preserved fingers of Ashlyn Graves. The raft was only small, not nearly large enough to resemble the life either dead Warsword had led, but it was all they could give them.
Kipp had boardedTheFuries’ Willprepared, and with his supplies the alchemists made wreaths of red leaves and set them alongside the other tokens the bannermen had given as a show of respect.
Torj looked away as the raft was lowered into the water, still not quite able to fathom that this was Vernich Warner’s farewell. He was witnessing the whittling down of a symbol that had sustained the midrealms for centuries, that had seen them survive the shadow war.
With Vernich gone, Torj was the oldest Warsword who remained.
No, you’re not.Wren’s voice bloomed gently through the bond, and he glanced around to see her standing a few feet away, with Darian at her side.
Torj wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to the bond between them – this living tether that opened not only his heart and soul to Wren, but his mind as well. Perhaps he’d never understand it completely, perhaps that was part of its magic, but it was hard to marvel at that now as the makeshift funeral pyre for the Bloodletter drifted unlit across the sea beneath the cloudless sky.
