Page 92 of Rule of Wolves

“I will!” they would shout.

But it was always Reyem who did. He was never smug about it. He would ruffle her hair and say, “Next time you’ll get me. Let’s go see if we can steal some green melon.”

Mayu had almost wished he would be cruel, because then maybe she could hate him. But he was her best friend and her favorite companion. When they were running through the woods, she didn’t care that he was faster. When they were roaming through the muddy creek looking for tadpoles, she was the sharp-eyed one who somehow knew where to look. She could celebrate his victories and his gifts because they were kebben. And she knew he shared in her failures because he was her twin. She would have happily shared in his losses—if he’d ever had one.

They’d been together in the marketplace when they’d spotted the poster advertising the arrival of the Royal Creance, who was coming to their city to find girls to train to join the Tavgharad. WHO WILL DARE TO SHOW HER SKILLS? the sign asked in tall red letters.

I will, thought Mayu. They only wanted girls. It was something Reyem couldn’t try. She’d gone down to the pasture outside the academy and filled out the forms and joined the other hopefuls. She’d run and sparred and crawled on her belly, all the time chanting to herself, I will. I will. I will.

And she had. She’d been chosen to travel to Ahmrat Jen and train.

Her mother’s worry at the news had been like a slap to the face.

“She isn’t ready! She isn’t good enough!”

Her father had been more reasonable. “They wouldn’t have chosen her if she didn’t have a chance.”

“They chose her because she is obedient, not skilled. What will become of her when she fails at her training?”

“She’ll come home,” Mayu’s father said.

“In shame? She’s not strong enough to survive such failure.”

But they were wrong about that. Mayu had been failing her whole life. Her constant competition with Reyem had prepared her well for the trial she was about to endure. The other Eyases selected to train as Tavgharad had all been the very best of the best in the towns and villages they came from. They took their first losses hard.

Not Mayu. She loved training. She loved the exhaustion that silenced her thoughts, the routine that gave order to her world. She loved being out of Reyem’s shadow. In his absence, in the fatigue of fighting, running, learning to disassemble and reassemble guns, climb walls and scamper along rooftops, her mind finally quieted. And in that silence she heard the music of combat at last. Becoming Tavgharad meant she had joined a dance that had begun centuries ago. The first Taban queen had traveled with an elite bodyguard of women and a fleet of trained falcons. She had trusted her guards and her raptors and no one else. Those guards had gone on to train other women, and their symbol had become the carnelian falcon. This was the tradition Mayu had become a part of, and she carried new pride with her every day to the temple fields, where they ran drills in the blazing sun or the pouring rain.

That pride carried her home for the spring festivals. She missed Reyem more than she had ever believed possible. Her envy had been eaten away by achievement, and now she could feel the hollow in her heart left by her twin’s absence. At the first glimpse of him, she’d broken into a run, grateful for her brother, grateful for her commanders and the queen who had finally freed her from jealousy.

Mayu and Reyem had sat together, decorating custard cakes, surrounded by clusters of anemones arranged in their mother’s white stone bowls, and she’d told her brother all about the palace, the temple fields, her instructors.

“I’ll be given my post when I return,” she’d told him. “I won’t be home again for a very long time.”

“Good,” Reyem said with a laugh. “Mother and Father can go back to fussing over me.”

“Does it bother you?”

Reyem wiped powdered sugar from his fingers. He had joined a military unit and was faring well, though he had yet to distinguish himself. “I know you deserve it. You worked hard for so long while I grew lazy on compliments. But … I think I may be jealous.”

Mayu grinned. “Reyem, I cannot pity you. If you would try, if you would be willing to fail, you would learn. It’s good to do things you’re not good at.”

Forever after, Mayu would curse those words. Because Reyem had started trying and he’d begun to succeed. She hadn’t understood how well until her father showed up at the Tavgharad barracks.

“Your brother has gone missing,” he’d said. He looked frail, his skin nearly gray from worry and the hardships of travel. “They say he deserted and that he may be dead.”

Mayu had known that couldn’t be. “Reyem would never do such a thing. And I would know if … if he were gone.”

It had taken months, but Mayu had pieced together rumor and fact and finally discovered that her brother—her twin who had been happy to avoid notice in his regiment until she’d goaded him—had displayed such gifts as a soldier that he’d been drafted into the Iron Heart program. The khergud were half myth among the Tavgharad. No one could confirm that they really existed, and yet the stories of their abilities were legendary—as were the horrific tales of what they endured in the conversion and what they lost when it was complete. She had set out to find him, to free him, when she’d been called before Queen Makhi.

Mayu thought her investigation had been discovered, that she would be banished or put to death.

Instead the queen had said, “You’re from Nehlu, one of the larger towns. Is that why you have no country accent?”

“My mother was a teacher, Your Majesty,” Mayu had said. “She wanted us to have every advantage as we tried to make our way in the world.”

“There is little call for elocution in the Tavgharad. Your fists speak for you. Did she teach you a passable curtsy?”

She had not, but Mayu could learn. That was her gift. She could always learn. The queen had offered her an opportunity to save her brother.