The Bridge Kingdom (The Bridge Kingdom, #1)(45)

Without the bridge, Eranahl doesn’t exist, his father’s voice whispered in his ear. Ithicana doesn’t exist. Defend the bridge.

“If there are safer places, why don’t you keep your civilians there?”

There were practical reasons. Keeping every Ithicanian civilian within Eranahl year-round was impossible, but that wasn’t the reason he gave. “Because that would be like keeping them in cages. And my people are . . . free.” The word caught in his throat, a sudden understanding of what his mother had been fighting for slapping him in the face. For what was Ithicana but a larger prison, those born to it forbidden to ever leave.

Lara went very still, her head cocked and eyes unblinking, as though his answer had dug deep into her thoughts, leaving no space for anything else. “Their freedom seems to come at a significant cost.”

“Freedom always has a price.” How much larger would the price be to allow his people the freedom of the world?

“Yes.” The word seemed to stick in her throat, and she shook her head once, her eyes going to the dead men lining the path. Aren watched her closely, searching her expression for any clue that she was somehow complicit in their deaths, but she only appeared deep in thought.

“You should head down to the cove. The boats are waiting.”

Tearing her eyes from the corpses, Lara walked toward him, silent as any Ithicanian as she navigated the slick slope. His heart skipped then accelerated, the steady thump thump rhythm it took when he was heading into battle or trying to outrun a storm. The thrill that, despite knowing he should not, Aren had sought all his life.

Lara stopped in front of him. Her hair was wet from the rain, a stray lock plastered against her cheek. It took all his self-control not to brush it away.

“Once the boats are loaded, I’m leaving for a . . . meeting. You’ll stay with my grandmother until I return for you.”

Lara frowned, but rather than arguing, she reached up and placed her hand on his, her skin feverishly hot. Then, with surprising strength, she pushed down, snapping his blade back into its sheath.

“I’ll wait by the water.” Without another word, she stepped over a puddle and made her way down the path toward the beach.





18





Lara





War Tides.

That’s what the villagers on Serrith Island had called it. The two coldest months of the year when the Tempest Seas were calm enough for Ithicana’s enemies to attack.

And this year War Tides had come early.

So early that the villagers had not yet been evacuated to the mysterious location where they spent the season, which was probably why the Amaridian navy had twice risked getting caught in a late storm. For while a well-defended singular location could be protected, countless little civilian outposts were another matter.

It was the best time to attack, the cold, strategic part of Lara thought. When Ithicana’s army would be forced to split their efforts between protecting dozens of small villages and protecting the bridge. And if it came to it, she knew Aren would put his people’s lives first. It had been written on his face when those horns had sounded, the panic and desperation. The willingness to risk everything to save them. And the dead look in his eyes as he’d surveyed the massacred village and known that he’d failed.

They aren’t your responsibility, she viciously reminded herself. Your loyalty is to Maridrina. To the civilians of your homeland who suffer under Ithicana’s monopoly on trade. To the Maridrinian children who have nothing on their plates but rotting vegetables and rancid meat, if they have anything to eat at all. They are dying as surely as if Ithicana were slitting their throats.

The thoughts were enough to turn her mind to the matter of smuggling information out of Ithicana. While it might be possible for her to code short messages into her letters to her father, she didn’t dare attempt to include any of the details she’d learned about the bridge. If the codebreakers noticed them, she’d be lucky to get out of Ithicana alive, and everything that she’d done would be for naught. Aren knew where she’d been and what she’d learned. It would be easy for them to shore up the defenses, and there would be no catching them by surprise.

No, she had to gather the information she needed, and then smuggle it out all at once. The question was how.

Instinctively, she knew that the way had to be through the King of Ithicana himself. Her thoughts went to her cosmetics box, within which the ink Serin had given her was hidden. Not only did she need to entice Aren to write a message to her father, she needed to steal it for long enough to write her own, never mind the problem of resealing it without anyone noticing that it had been tampered with.

“Quit plotting and help Taryn with the dishes, you lazy tit.”

Nana’s voice ripped Lara from her thoughts, and she turned to scowl at the old woman. “What?”

“Did you not hear, or did you not understand?” Nana’s hands were on her hips, a large snake wrapped around her neck and shoulders. It lifted its head to regard Lara, and she shivered.

“This is my island,” Aren’s grandmother barked. “And on my island, if you wish to eat, you work. On your feet.” She clapped her hands sharply.

Lara rose, instantly annoyed with having obeyed, but to sit back down would be childish.

“Out.”

Glowering, she stepped out into the morning air, catching sight of Taryn, who sat next to a washtub, up to her elbows in soapy water. The young woman was the only one of Aren’s guards to remain with her—the one to have drawn the short straw, she’d readily griped to Lara on her blindfolded walk back through the bridge to Nana’s island, which was called Gamire. A group of unfamiliar soldiers silently trailed them. Lara had thought it Taryn’s reluctance to spend time with her, or perhaps disappointment over not going to wherever Aren had scuttled off to, that had made the role undesirable, but after a night spent in Nana’s house, the real reason was apparent.