Warbreaker

Chapter 2

Siri sat, stunned, in a rattling carriage, her homeland growing more and more distant with each bump and shake.

Two days had passed, and she still didn’t understand. This was supposed to be Vivenna’s task. Everybody understood that. Idris had thrown a celebration on the day of Vivenna’s birth. The king had started her classes from the day she could walk, training her in the ways of court life and politics. Fafen, the second daughter, had also taken the lessons in case Vivenna died before the day of the wedding. But not Siri. She’d been redundant. Unimportant.

No more.

She glanced out the window. Her father had sent the kingdom’s nicest carriage—along with an honor guard of twenty soldiers—to bear her southward. That, combined with a steward and several serving boys, made for a procession as grand as Siri had ever seen. It bordered on ostentation, which might have thrilled her, had it not been bearing her away from Idris.

This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be, she thought. This isn’t the way any of it is supposed to happen!

And yet it had.

Nothing made sense. The carriage bumped, but she just sat, numb. At the very least, she thought, they could have let me ride horse back, rather than forcing me to sit in this carriage. But that, unfortunately, wouldn’t have been an appropriate way to enter Hallandren.

Hallandren.

She felt her hair bleach white with fear. She was being sent to Hallandren, a kingdom her people cursed with every second breath. She wouldn’t see her father again for a long while, if ever. She wouldn’t speak with Vivenna, or listen to the tutors, or be chided by Mab, or ride the royal horses, or go looking for flowers in the wilderness, or work in the kitchens. She’d . . .

Marry the God King. The terror of Hallandren, the monster that had never drawn a living breath. In Hallandren, his power was absolute. He could order an execution on a whim.

I’ll be safe, though, won’t I? she thought. I’ll be his wife. Wife. I’m getting married. Oh Austre, God of Colors . . . she thought, feeling sick. She curled up with her legs against her chest—her hair growing so white that it seemed to shine—and lay down on the seat of the carriage, not sure if the shaking she felt was her own trembling or the carriage continuing its inexorable path southward.

“I think that you should reconsider your decision, Father,” Vivenna said calmly, sitting decorously—as she’d been trained—with hands in her lap.

“I’ve considered and reconsidered, Vivenna,” King Dedelin said, waving his hand. “My mind is made up.”

“Siri is not suited to this task.”

“She’ll do fine,” her father said, looking through some papers on his desk. “All she really needs to do is have a baby. I’m certain she’s ‘suited’ to that task.”

What then of my training? Vivenna thought. Twenty-two years of preparation? What was that, if the only point in being sent was to provide a convenient womb?

She kept her hair black, her voice solemn, her face calm. “Siri must be distraught,” she said. “I don’t think she’s emotionally capable of dealing with this.”

Her father looked up, his hair fading a bit red—the black bleeding away like paint running off a canvas. It showed his annoyance.

He’s more upset by her departure than he’s willing to admit.

“This is for the best for our people, Vivenna,” he said, working—with obvious effort—to turn his hair black again. “If war comes, Idris will need you here.”