The Last Namsara (Iskari #1)(16)

Asha rolled her eyes. It wasn’t that far of a fall.

Suddenly Safire was there, her waster whistling through the air as she brought it down hard and fast. Asha barely had time to raise her own, barely managed to catch the blow—which still sent her backward.

“And if I hadn’t convinced the physician you were just dehydrated, he would have insisted on taking a closer look, and then he would have seen that burn.” She nodded toward Asha’s bandaged hand. “So you owe me.”

Asha lowered her waster.

Her father didn’t know, then.

Asha wiped the sweat off her forehead, relieved.

“Thank you.”

“Why does it need to be a secret? No one thinks you’re weak, Asha. You’re the Iskari. You killed that dragon. Like hundreds of others before it.”

But the burn didn’t mean she was weak—at least, not in the way Safire meant. It meant she was corrupted.

With her cousin’s waster lowered, rendering her vulnerable, Asha saw her moment. She took it, charging.

Safire’s eyes flashed as she blocked and blocked again. Like lightning.

The clack of wood on wood cracked in Asha’s ears as she circled, battering her cousin’s defenses, looking for a way in. But Safire was always there, like a door slamming in Asha’s face.

“And anyway,” said Safire, panting as she blocked, “who would I tell?”

“Dax. Obviously.”

Her brother would be horrified to learn his little sister was telling the old stories aloud, preserving the very things that killed their mother. And while Dax and their father weren’t exactly on good terms, out of worry for Asha, he might go to the king.

Dax couldn’t know. No one could know.

A gap opened up. Asha took her chance, driving hard at her cousin with her weapon.

She got nothing more than a swift kick in the shin before the gap closed up again.

“Arrrugh!” Asha lowered her weapon. “Just once! I wish you’d let me beat you just once. . . .”

“Wishes.” Safire shook her head. “I wish I knew why the dragons are breathing fire. And why you insist on keeping secrets from me.” She stepped back, surveying Asha, who was walking off the stinging pain in her shin. “And also how your brainless brother could bring those scrublanders home with him.” She rested the tip of her waster in the roof pebbles and leaned on it. “Speaking of Dax, what did you think of his friend? The quiet one.”

“Roa?” Out of breath, Asha spied the water skin Safire had brought up with them. She made for it. “Jarek interrupted before I could properly form an opinion.”

While Asha panted and wiped the sweat from her hairline, Safire now stood fresh as the dawn.

“Did you see what she was wearing?”

Asha took a long drink of water, then stoppered the skin. “The knife?” Roa had been the only scrublander without a weapon at her hip. But Asha had seen the bulge of a hilt strapped to the girl’s thigh, hidden beneath her dress.

“No. The pendant.”

Asha hadn’t noticed any pendant.

“It was a circle, made out of stone. Alabaster, it looked like.”

Asha frowned at her. “So?”

“It seemed like Dax’s handiwork.”

Aside from his looks, this was the one thing Dax inherited from their father: a love of carving. When their mother was still alive, the dragon king used to carve all kinds of things for her out of bone. Combs, tiny boxes inset with jewels, rings. And Dax, in an effort to make his father proud, taught himself the king’s craft.

“What are you saying?”

Safire came to stand before Asha, reaching for the skin. “I’m saying it’s interesting. That girl—Roa—she’s a daughter of the House of Song. Isn’t that the house Dax used to spend his summers in? Before—”

The words halted on her lips.

But Asha knew what she’d been about to say.

Before your mother died and the scrublanders turned against us.

As a child, Dax was quiet and curious, but also slow to learn things. It took him longer to walk and talk. And when it came to reading and writing, no matter how determined he was or how hard he tried, he couldn’t manage it. His tutors had no patience for him. They convinced the king there was something wrong with his son. Dax was simply unintelligent, they said. A waste of their time.

So their mother sent Dax to the home of her childhood friend Desta, the mistress of the House of Song. For years, Dax spent summers in the scrublands, learning alongside Desta’s children, whose tutors were more patient.

But then their mother died. Peace between Firgaard and the scrublands shattered and the House of Song turned against them. Instead of their honored guest, Dax became a prisoner. Asha didn’t know the whole story, because Dax refused to talk about it. But she knew it was a hurt her brother carried within him to this day.

“I’m just saying,” said Safire, tilting back her head to drink. “It looked”—she gulped water, then swiped when it dribbled down her chin—“like a token of affection.”

Those words slammed into Asha like a rockslide in the Rift. “Dax?” she scoffed. “In love with a scrublander?”

Safire made an arching swoop of her hands, as if to say I’m just telling you what I saw.

“Even if he did carve her that pendant, you know how he is,” Asha said. “Dax flirts with everyone. It doesn’t mean anything. And Roa seems”—regal, graceful, proud—“like the kind of girl who wouldn’t put up with that.”