Chapter 1
"Emai. Fair. Svasa. Anar."
Each step filled the air with the laomy scent of newly awakened earth. Riven gripped the wood tightly as she walked. Over the last few days the coa.r.s.e handles had roused dormant calluses and fleeting memories.
Riven bit her lip, shaking off the thought, continuing with the work at hand. "Mother. Father. Sister. Brother."
The thin-ribbed ox flicked an ear as it pulled, the plow kicking up clots and small rocks. They struck Riven, but she paid them no mind. She wore a rough woven s.h.i.+rt, the dirt-speckled sleeves rolled into thick bands. Pants of the same material had been dyed an earthen yellow. Their cuffed edges would now be too short on the man they had been made for, but on her, they brushed her bare ankles and the tops of her simple, mud-caked shoes.
"Emai. Fair. Svasa. Anar." Riven continued the mantra., memorizing the words. "Erzai, son. Dyeda..."
Without slowing her pace she wiped a strand of sweat soaked hair from her eyebrow with her sleeve. Her arms were well muscled and still easily held the plow one-handed. The farmer had gone up to the house for a skin of water and their lunch. The old man said she could stop and wait on the threshold of the shaded forest that bordered the tract, but Riven had insisted on finis.h.i.+ng.
A fresh breeze caught the damp at the back of her neck, and she looked around. The Noxian Empire had tried bending Ionia to its will. When Ionia wouldn't kneel, Noxus had tried to break it. Riven continued her meditative pace behind the plow. For all the Empire's strength, spring would still come to this land. It had been
"Dyeda. daughter," she began her invocation again, determined. She gripped the wooden handles again with both hands. "Emai. Fair."
"That's fair," a voice called out from the shadows of the forest.
Riven stopped suddenly. The plow handles lurched in her hands as the bony ox was brought up short by the leather reins. The plow kicked hard into a tough clod of dirt and gave a metal tw.a.n.g as a stone caught on the cutting edge.
The voice did not belong to the old man.
Riven tried to ease her breathing by exhaling slowly through her lips. There was one voice, but there could be more coming for her. She fought the years of training that urged her to take a defensive stance. Instead she stilled her body, facing the plow and beast before her. Riven felt too light. She held on tightly now to the plow's wooden handles. There should have been a weight that anch.o.r.ed her, grounded her, at her side. Instead, she could hardly feel the small field knife on her right hip. The short, hooked blade was good for cutting dew apples and stubborn vegetation, nothing more.
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"The word is fair."
The speaker revealed himself at the edge of the field, where the farmland met a band of thick amber pines.
"There is a break in the middle," the man said, stepping forward. A wild mane of dark hair was pulled back off his face. A woven mantle was tucked around his shoulders. Riven noticed that it did not completely cover the metal pauldron on his left shoulder, nor the unsheathed blade at his side. He was of a warrior cla.s.s, but did not serve one house or precinct. He was a wanderer.
Dangerous, she decided.
"Fir, " He p.r.o.nounced again.
Riven did not speak, not for lack of words, but because of the accent she knew they would carry. She moved around the plow, putting it between her and the well-spoken stranger. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and bent to examine the plow's blade, feigning interest in the stone she had struck. Meant to cut through sod and clay, the blade would be more useful than the field knife. She had watched the old man fix it to the wooden body that morning and knew how to release it.
"I don't remember seeing you in the village when I was here last, but I have been away awhile," the man said. His voice held the indifferent roughness of a long time lived on the road.
The ever present insect hum became louder as Riven refused to fill the silence between them.
"I've heard that the magistrates are being called to hear new evidence in the case of Elder Souma's death," the man continued.
Riven ignored him and patted the patient ox. She ran her fingers along the leather straps as someone who was familiar with the trappings of horses and farm animals, batting away a gnat from the ox's big, dark eyes.
"Then again, if you are new to this land, perhaps you know little of the murder."