“Captain Faliq,” the prince had said by way of greeting. “You’re up early.”
Casual words for any listening ears.
“The storm last night kept me from sleep. I hope I am not disturbing you.”
“On the contrary.” In the dim light, his mouth quirked in a smile. “I was about to go for a ride—to let this fat hog hunt for her breakfast for once.”
Kadara puffed her feathers in indignation, clicking her enormous beak—fully capable of taking a man’s head off in one snip. No wonder Princess Hasar remained wary of the bird.
Sartaq chuckled, patting her feathers. “Care to join?”
With the words, Nesryn suddenly had a sense of how very, very high the minaret was. And how Kadara would likely fly above it. With nothing to keep her from death but the rider and saddle now set in place.
But to ride a ruk …
Even better, to ride a ruk with a prince who might have information for them …
“I am not particularly skilled with heights, but it would be my honor, Prince.”
It had been a matter of a few minutes. Sartaq had ordered her to switch from her midnight-blue jacket to the spare leather one folded in a chest of drawers shoved against the far wall. He’d politely turned his back when she changed pants as well. Since her hair fell only to her shoulders, she had difficulty braiding it back, but the prince had fished into his own pockets and supplied her with a leather thong to pull it back into a knot.
Always carry a spare, he told her. Or else she’d be combing her hair for weeks.
He’d mounted the keen-eyed ruk first, Kadara lowering herself like some oversized hen to the floor. He climbed her side in two fluid movements, then reached down a hand for Nesryn. She gingerly laid her palm against Kadara’s ribs, marveling at the cool feathers smooth as finest silk.
Nesryn waited for the ruk to shift about and glare while Sartaq hauled her into the saddle in front of him, but the prince’s mount remained docile. Patient.
Sartaq had buckled and harnessed them both into the saddle, triple-checking the leather straps. Then he clicked his tongue once, and—
Nesryn knew it wasn’t polite to squeeze a prince’s arms so hard the bone was likely to break. But she did so anyway as Kadara spread her shining golden wings and leaped out.
Leaped down.
Her stomach shot straight up her throat. Her eyes watered and blurred.
Wind tore at her, trying to rip her from that saddle, and she clenched with her thighs so tightly they ached, while she gripped Sartaq’s arms, holding the reins, so hard he chuckled in her ear.
But the pale buildings of Antica loomed up, near-blue in the early dawn, rushing to meet them as Kadara dove and dove, a star falling from the heavens—
Then flared those wings wide and shot upward.
Nesryn was glad she had forgone breakfast. For surely it would have come spewing out of her mouth at what the motion did to her stomach.
Within the span of a few beats, Kadara banked right—toward the horizon just turning pink.
The sprawl of Antica spread before them, smaller and smaller as they rose into the skies. Until it was no more than a cobblestoned road beneath them, spreading into every direction. Until she could spy the olive groves and wheat fields just outside the city. The country estates and small towns speckled about. The rippling dunes of the northern desert to her left. The sparkling, snaking band of rivers turning golden in the rising sun that crested over the mountains to her right.
Sartaq did not speak. Did not point out landmarks. Not even the pale line of the Sister-Road that ran toward the southern horizon.
No, in the rising light, he let Kadara have her head. The ruk took them floating higher still, the air turning crisp—the awakening blue sky brightening with each mighty flap of her wings.
Open. So open.
Not at all like the endless sea, the tedious waves and cramped ship.
This was … this was breath. This was …
She could not look fast enough, drink it all in. How small everything was, how lovely and pristine. A land claimed by a conquering nation, yet loved and nurtured.
Her land. Her home.
The sun and the scrub and the undulating grasslands that beckoned in the distance. The lush jungles and rice fields to the west; the pale sand dunes of the desert to the northeast. More than she could see in a lifetime—farther than Kadara could fly in a single day. An entire world, this land. The entire world contained here.
She could not understand why her father had left.
Why he had stayed, when such darkness had crept into Adarlan. Why he had kept them in that festering city where she so rarely looked up at the sky, or felt a breeze that did not reek of the briny Avery or the rubbish rotting in the streets.
“You are quiet,” the prince said, and it was more question than statement.
Nesryn admitted in Halha, “I don’t have words to describe it.”
She felt Sartaq smile near her shoulder. “That was what I felt—that first ride. And every ride since.”
“I understand why you stayed at the camp those years ago. Why you are eager to return.”
A beat of quiet. “Am I so easy to read?”
“How could you not wish to return?”
“Some consider my father’s palace to be the finest in the world.”
“It is.”
His silence was question enough.
“Rifthold’s palace was nothing so fine—so lovely and a part of the land.”
Sartaq hummed, the sound reverberating into her back. Then he said quietly, “The death of my sister has been hard upon my mother. It is for her that I remain.”
Nesryn winced a bit. “I’m so very sorry.”
Only the rushing wind spoke for a time.
Then Sartaq said, “You said was. Regarding Rifthold’s royal palace. Why?”
“You heard what befell it—the glass portions.”
“Ah.” Another beat of quiet. “Shattered by the Queen of Terrasen. Your … ally.”
“My friend.”
He craned his body around hers to peer at her face. “Is she truly?”
“She is a good woman,” Nesryn said, and meant it. “Difficult, yes, but … some might say the same of any royalty.”
“Apparently, she found the former King of Adarlan so difficult that she killed him.”
Careful words.
“The man was a monster—and a threat to all. His Second, Perrington, remains that way. She did Erilea a favor.”
Sartaq angled the reins as Kadara began a slow, steady descent toward a sparkling river valley. “She is truly that powerful?”
Nesryn debated the merits of the truth or downplaying Aelin’s might. “She and Dorian both possess considerable magic. But I would say it is their intelligence that is the stronger weapon. Brute power is useless without it.”
“It’s dangerous without it.”
“Yes,” Nesryn agreed, swallowing. “Are …” She had not been trained in the mazelike way of speaking at court. “Is there such a threat within your court that warranted us needing to speak in the skies?”
He could very well be the threat posed, she reminded herself.
“You have dined with my siblings. You see how they are. If I were to arrange a meeting with you, it would send a message to them. That I am willing to hear your suit—perhaps press it to our father. They would consider the risks and benefits of undermining me. Or whether it would make them look better to try to join … my side.”
“And are you? Willing to hear us out?”
Sartaq didn’t answer for a long moment, only the screaming wind filling the quiet.
“I would listen. To you and Lord Westfall. I would hear what you know, what has happened to you both. I do not hold as much sway with my father as others, but he knows the ruk riders are loyal to me.”
“I thought—”
“That I was his favorite?” A low, bitter laugh. “I perhaps stand a chance at being named Heir, but the khagan does not select his Heir based on whom he loves best. Even so, that particular honor goes to Duva and Kashin.”
Sweet-faced Duva, she could understand, but—“Kashin?”
“He is loyal to my father to a fault. He has never schemed, never backstabbed. I’ve done it—plotted and maneuvered against them all to get what I want. But Kashin … He may command the land armies and the horse-lords, he may be brutal when required, but with my father, he is guileless. There has never been a more loving or loyal son. When our father dies … I worry. What the others will do to Kashin if he does not submit, or worse: what his death will do to Kashin himself.”