Read Oria's Gambit for Free Online

ability like that, no matter how unsettling, would
come in handy for building, say, aqueducts that didn’t burn.
    Oria began pacing again. Chuffta hopped to a
nearby bench, watching her. “Right now, Yar is away looking for a
bride from one of our sister cities. If he returns with an ideal—a
suitable match, he’ll be married before I can be and the throne
will be his.”
    Lonen scratched his beard thoughtfully, its
trimmed and oiled softness an unfamiliar sensation. “Not to be
callous about your ambitions, but would that be such a terrible
thing?”
    She laughed, this one bitter with a metallic
echo. “You think I’m power hungry and crave the throne. I suppose
that’s a fair assumption on your part.”
    Actually he didn’t think that at all. It
didn’t mesh with what little he did know about her, and he felt
obscurely ashamed of hurting her by the implication. He opened his
mouth to say… something, but she forged on in a rush, wringing her
pale fingers together.
    “I did not send the Trom to Dru, but someone
in Bára did. The ways of the Trom are mysterious even to us, but
they can be directed by their summoner. It doesn’t make sense, but
I think it had to be Yar who sent them. He’s the one who summoned
them originally and he must control them still. He has powerful
allies on our council and in the temple, those who believe it’s far
easier to continue to steal water from the Destrye than to cast
about for other options. We also face problems with our sister
cities, because we’ve been supplying them with water—your water—and
trading goods and political favors for it. That leverage is part of
how Yar will be able to convince them to give him one of their
priestesses for a bride. I don’t have a particular yen to be Queen
of Bára, but I desperately don’t want Yar to be king. For the good
of the Destrye, you don’t either. With the power of the throne of
Bára and the sister cities and the Trom under his command…”
she shook her head. “I don’t care to picture that future. I thought
you might understand.”
    He considered the torrent of information, as
overwhelming as heavy rain on parched earth. When she decided to
confide, she did so full out, something that put him in mind of her
restless, energetic stride.
    “So your solution is to marry ahead of him
and be crowned before he returns,” Lonen summarized for them both.
A solid plan, but what had been her intention before he turned up
at Bára’s gates only hours ago? She had to have had something else
in mind. “Why doesn’t he marry a Báran girl—priestess, that is? Or
the same for you—if time is of the essence, that would be easier
and faster. You claimed you didn’t have another man lined up to
marry. Did you withhold information there also?” A
not-so-surprising twinge of possessiveness at that thought. Though
he’d never truly contemplated having Oria for himself, not beyond
those plaguing dreams and the occasional fantasy, not until she
proposed it.
    “No—that’s the full truth. I don’t have
anyone to marry because it’s not that easy.” She tucked her hands
in the small of her back, pacing fast enough to make the crimson
silk billow around her legs. “It’s difficult to explain.”
    “Try,” he suggested in a dry tone, and her
mask flashed as she glanced at him.
    “I don’t think you’re stupid or ignorant. But
I do know you’re skeptical about certain elements of magic
and how it works.”
    “Acknowledged.” He poured the rest of the
honey over another hunk of bread, scraped the dregs with a piece of
cheese and piled several more on. A slice of meat and it would be a
decent sandwich. As it was, he might never stop eating.
    “The temple matches us with our spouses. In
the best of all possible worlds, we find a … good fit and make
a temple-blessed marriage.”
    “An arranged marriage.”
    “More than that—there’s complex testing that
involves magic.” She waved that off as yet another thing