The Wonder (Queen of Hearts Saga #2)(37)
Dinah clasped her hand around the dagger. “I agree!” she yelled back.
“And your father was a whore as well, except that he slept with sheep.” The crowd laughed and Bah-Kan let a smile draw across his face. “Your half-sister is a dozen times more beautiful than you, and the crown looks so lovely upon her head. I hear she is a good queen.”
Dinah felt the fury rising up inside of her, the clawing black heat that she so often pushed back down. Still, she remained calm. “You are surely right. She is lovely, even though she is a false queen.”
Bah-kan sidestepped and then charged, his Heartsword raised as if to carve her in half. Dinah rolled in front of him, clipping him at the shins and making him tumble. As she passed, she nicked the back of his calf with her dagger. Bah-kan roared as he landed, and Dinah scurried to her feet, the dagger poised to throw. For a second, she had the advantage. Bah-kan was distracted by his bleeding leg, and the Heartsword was down. Then he spoke again.
“Your mother was just as well-known for her whoring as she was for her mad son, who would have benefitted from an infant drowning. The Mad Hatter should have been left at the bottom of a lake.”
Dinah screamed with rage as the fury overtook her and she flung the knife at Bah-Kan. The blade was thrown so sloppily that it bounced off the edge of his Heartsword even though he never moved it. With inhuman speed, he reached out, caught it in his hands and flung it back at Dinah. She watched as it buried itself deep in her chest armor. Without the armor that Mundoo insisted upon, she would have been dead, but that was the least of her cares. Seeing nothing but her all-encompassing rage, she launched herself upon Bah-Kan and ripped at his ear with her teeth.
“Your Highness! Dinah! Stop!” She felt Sir Gorrann grab her waist and tug her back.
Bah-kan shoved her off with one hand. “Control her! Gods, she’s just as mad as people say!”
The crowd stared as Sir Gorrann carried her, squirming and screaming, back to her tent. That had been a dark day, but the training continued. Each and every morning her lesson was learned: when she let her fury get the best of her, she lost control of herself, her fight, and her focus. Bah-kan assaulted her with words and insults each fight after that, but Dinah never rose to the challenge. She remained calm and in control and told herself that revenge was best taken with a blade—not a violent tantrum. Bah-kan’s strength and skill always bested her in the end, and would forever, but Dinah grew exponentially as a fighter each time his Heartsword met her blade. Between the training that Wardley had given her growing up, the time she had spent learning from Sir Gorrann in the woods, and the brutal, one-on-one fighting with Bah-kan now, Dinah felt increasingly more comfortable with the blade in her hand. The next day, she faced off sword-to-sword with a dozen different Yurkei warriors, and more often than not, she beat them.
When she boasted, Bah-kan laughingly reminded her that it wasn’t the accomplishment she thought it was—the Yurkei’s main weapon was not a blade, but a bow and arrow (a weapon with which Dinah was utterly useless). In a real battle, she wouldn’t get within a hundred yards of them unless they didn’t have their bows and arrows; even then, if they just had daggers, she would still lose. This didn’t matter to Dinah. When her opponent was laid out on the ground in front of her, her silver blade held against his heaving throat, a rush of pride and fury flooded Dinah’s system. She loved the feeling of winning a fight. It was no wonder her father had found battle so intoxicating—when you didn’t know if you would live or die after this moment, the moment when you found that magical opening in which to slip your blade was otherworldly grace.
After their seventh day of training, Bah-kan released Dinah early, saying that he had to visit his wife and brood of children, who lived at the other end of the valley. Dinah smiled at the thought—Bah-kan and his large Yurkei wife, and their tent full of monstrous children, all taller than the rest of the Yurkei children, with dyed white hair and shining blue eyes.
Dinah was exhausted and wished to go to bed, but Sir Gorrann stiffly informed her that she must find other ways to occupy her time. When she put up a fight, he insisted that he had pressing matters in their tent; he wouldn’t tell Dinah what they were, but gently shoved her out the door after checking her healed wound. Dinah suspected his pressing appointment was with one of the Yurkei women who was fond of watching him bathe every day, but she kept her mouth shut and gathered a small meal of eggs before leaving. Sir Gorrann lowered the tent flap in her face after ordering her to find them some ripe fruit in the Yurkei orchard. Dinah sighed. It was late afternoon, and the falling sun was just beginning to cast a hazy golden glow on the valley. Free time? Without her guards? It was a foreign concept to her at this point.
After a few minutes of consideration, she decided to walk the length of the valley to the orchard. She still had an hour or so before the sun set in the east. She longed to see what rested behind the highest mountain ridge, the northernmost hill with a winding staircase carved deep into its steep side. Dinah took her time getting there, and found herself wandering along the outer mountain face of the valley as the Yurkei settled into their tents in the late afternoon. Dim lights from white torches flickered within the fabric tents, giving the valley an enchanted, mythical glow, like ethereal clouds had floated into its midst. As she walked, Dinah saw the lowered eyes of the tribe as she passed them, a sign of disrespect. The Yurkei’s distrust and anger toward her remained, but she was no longer spit upon or had rocks thrown at her when she left her tent, and that was a vast improvement. Many of them crossed the valley to avoid walking next to her, and Dinah wondered if it was just that they didn’t want to chance touching her, of if they were afraid of her. Her sessions with Bah-kan and Sir Gorrann were growing in popularity, and while she always lost, she was a strong fighter.