Oleander

XIV. Warnings (part two)

Andar broke away, faint wariness in his gold and bronze eyes. Even in the absence of his skin against hers, the ghost of his touch lingered.

"I was right to guard myself against you," he murmured. With a casual intimacy that belied his gaze, Andar tucked an escaped tendril of dark hair behind her ear.

The air burned between them. Its heady vapor dissolved: intensity replaced with careful gaiety.

"I have something I want to show you." Yalira's spirit rattled within her, the abrupt change in momentum. He laughed at her expression—wry disbelief mixed with reluctance, apprehension. "You liked my last surprise, didn't you?"

Her priestesses sequestered away in their dilapidated altar. Yalira smiled. The image, despite its humbleness and distance from the gilded beauty of Antalis, sparked warmth in her chest. Andar did not lie. That gift had brought her a shade of joy. The smile was short-lived, a flickering ghost that moved into a frown.

The altar was now its own problem. A headstrong Tala testing the waters of her own leadership. A gaggle of young priestesses hungry for Antala's wisdom in a world where it no longer breathed. A constant flux of the sick and dying. Each visit templed new lies to soothe their spirits.

If Andar noticed the churning clouds of her thoughts, he did not mention it. Their arms intertwined, he guided their steps with a brisk pace. Not back toward the forum, not up the sloping path to the high city, but to a flat arena flanked by barracks and stables. Yalira had hardly realized their walk had taken them so far, but the shouts of men, the cracking thunder of practice weapons dragged her attention to their surroundings.

Happy cries rang above the echoes of mock battle. Without their shining armor, without the bloody dawn of Antalis upon them, they were harmless as puppies eager to greet their master.

Just as Yalira's priestesses called in cheerful greeting, Andar's men cried out at his arrival. Not with his adorned titles or the deferring bows she'd expect to see, but with the respectful adoration and easy familiarity of brotherhood.

Andar slipped away before she could query their purpose at the training yards, the barracks. He, too, was eager to greet his men. He clapped his hand to their shoulders, returned their smiles with an unguarded ease he did not wear in the high city, the forums.

"He is happiest here."

The voice surprised Yalira: Edyt's soft alto among the masculine shouts.

Yalira turned to incline her head towards her sister-queen. While Yalira had dressed for the forum, draped a stylish cut of gray and silver, Edyt wore pink exertion on her broad cheeks, her hair twisted back into a single braid.

"I'd heard that you trained with the men," Yalira said as a means of greeting. It was a poor excuse for conversation, but the memory of being held beneath bathwater hadn't yet faded from her mind. The pull of it stole the cleverness from her tongue.

Edyt nodded. "All the women of the Horde are fighters. Only the strongest fighters can bear the fiercest sons."

The Horde, the nomadic tribes of the northeast, would have conquered most of the continent if Andar had not stood in their path. Tales of their prowess on horseback, their skilled arches, their brutal treks across the northern plains kept children awake in their beds at night. As it was told, it was only Andar of Tyr, who met them smilingly, who could rise to equal their war-thirsty nature. It was said they offered Edyt as joyful tribute, a bride to bear sons that would conquer the world.

"Then I imagine you will have very mighty sons." Though she meant the words as light compliment, they fell with a flatness that echoed with darkness of truth. Stillborns and malformed babes.