❖ QUEENKILLER, KINGMAKER Book 2 ❖
A year has passed since Isla rescued Tam Mai from the dungeons, but her sister's mind is still trapped and broken. There is only one person Isla knows can help her.
Meanwhile across the sea, a prince seeks justice f...
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Judhistir at least had the courtesy of giving him good men. For a while Kiet watched them in training, four-and-twenty soldiers at two arm's length apart in the inner courtyard of his late mother's estate. Steel against steel, blades singing as they scraped. One by one they stopped, once they saw the maharaj watching from the arcades.
One man stood out from the rest. Others gravitated around him like birds in a flock. He was young, close to Kiet's own age, his posture that of a man who had trained since he could hold a sword, but his paler shade of brown meant most of it had been done indoors. Or perhaps he carries Tsun blood.
Kiet sparred with him a while. His swordsmanship exposed his northern roots; smooth, limber movements, swift wrists and spry ankles. Even his weapon was typical of the Pior Lam design with its long, asymmetric blade and false edge.
He asked later to see Kiet's sword in return, and the men marvelled as though it were a pretty maiden. None had seen a real kalis from up close, never mind touching one. Certainly any weaponsmith could replicate the waved blades—his was only half-waved, with loose, undulating curves close to its guard before tapering to a tight point—but a true kalis was made imbued with essence from the epperstrom itself, and that only few men could reproduce.
As a boy, many had thought it pretentious. A maharaj who desired a weapon above all other boys to compensate for his lack of skill. Kiet never cared to explain himself, that his life depended on such a weapon in a way none of them ever could comprehend.
'Is it true? They say it was crafted by Dhukkun Rajiman himself.'
Kiet smiled at the question and sheathed his blade. Sandyakala was amongst the last weapons the daemolog ever crafted before he vanished into the epps, but Kiet needed give no more reason to be called pretentious. 'It was a gift for my fourteenth namesday.'
'At fourteen I was given string on a stick and told to call it a bow!' The men laughed and told stories of how each of them had it worse. Kiet made sure to commission new arms for them all.
❖ ❖ ❖
The northman escorted Kiet when he went to meet Judhistir. He detested being chaperoned, but they were his men now, and he needed to know them if he were to entrust Kiesja and Jyesta's safety in their hands. Already Akai took his role seriously. Kiet suspected it was—much like the other men gifted to him—the first major posting for the soldier. They were all young, untested, though showing much skill and promise.
It was convenient that way. Older, more experienced soldiers might show resentment upon being made to answer to a young upstart like him, what with his subversive ideas and foreign influences, and only second-in-line on top of it.
Judhistir smiled when he entered. 'How glad I am to see you make use of the men I have for you personally selected.'
They were in his private audience quarters, seated in deep, soft accent chairs the Maha Rama had imported directly from one of the Godsthronian nations.
