by Becky James
“Are you belittling her?” I demanded.
Sylvia read the seriousness in my tone and stopped her dancing. “Thorrn, is everything—?”
“Are you making a mockery of her?”
My sister took a step back, and I moderated my stance, slowing my heartbeat. She frowned. “Thorrn, no. Although, I was a little, at first. She was just so provincial, and everyone was doing it. But when you talk to her, it turns out she’s astute and solid in herself. Solid in body as well,” she allowed. “But secure. She accepts that she’s no beauty, and she doesn’t seem to care. Every girl cares a little bit, but she doesn’t let that misgiving stop her. She’s subject to the whims and whispers of the court like the rest of us but, well, she seems to operate outside it.” Sylvia smiled at me. “A very special thing indeed.”
My stomach churned. “Where is she?”
“At dinner with the king and her mother I expect… Oh, wait! Thorrn!” Sylvia ran to keep up with my long, purposeful strides. “Ah, see how much easier this is… Yes, I should warn you; Rose is somewhat upset at you for taking ill this afternoon while assigned to Evyn—” I outpaced her, and my sister fell behind. “Thought you should know!” she called after me.
I pushed the normal doors to the royal apartments apart so hard that they banged open, immediately snapping Special Forces into the offensive. Gavain looked me up and down, lowering his fists. “You look terrible. What, a few turns of the glass without your new soul and you lose it?”
I ignored him. Gavain moved into my path. “They are having dinner in there. You can’t barge in like this.” He smirked. “Unless you are joining as her soul.”
Pulling my arm back, I punched Gavain in the mouth. He staggered back into the doors, crumpling with an oath. Spitting blood onto the carpet, he snarled, “What the hell, Shardsson!” The other guard, an older man called Gerdsson, levelled his halberd at me.
“What’s going on?” Rose’s high and frightened voice came from inside.
“Men? Report!” King Gough moved to be just on the other side of the door.
“Get back, Your Majesty. There’s an unauthorised incursion.” Gavain got up slowly, using the cover Gerdsson’s weapon afforded him.
I breathed hard, my shoulders shaking with each exhalation.
“Stand down. You’re under arrest,” Gerdsson said slowly.
“I only want to see her.”
“Who? Evyn?” Gavain asked incredulously.
“Yes, Evyn! Who else do you think I mean?”
There was a flurry of voices on the other side of the door. Slowly it opened a crack. Gough swept a glare across us, taking inventory, his huge double-handed sword in his grasp. “Shardsson? What ails you?”
Taking a deep breath, I steadied myself. “I need to see her, my liege. Evyn. I need… I need to see her.”
Gough’s face whitened. All of a sudden, Rose pushed past and into the corridor, launching herself at me. Gerdsson had to quickly move his halberd so she didn’t accidentally cut herself. “What do you mean see Evyn? What do you mean?” she shouted.
“My lady, I—” I fell back as she drummed her fists against my chest.
“What do you mean, see Evyn? She’s with you!”
I blinked. “What?”
“She said she was going to see you! She said you had been taken ill and she just got word that you were waking! She is with you!”
“She didn’t… I haven’t seen her. I have just come from the barracks, she wasn’t…” My head swirled. There was only one way all the way up to the royal apartments, and I had not encountered her, nor any trace of her.
“Where is my daughter? Where is she?” Rose shrieked.
Chapter 4
A furious search of the castle, the grounds and the surrounds turned up no trace of her. Shard organised search parties into the city. As one of the last people to see her, Shard and Gough both questioned me closely: what had she been wearing, had she met with anyone today, what was the last thing that I had heard her saying? The walls of the king’s office closed in on me, pulsing at the edge of my vision. I was trapped between my father’s blue eyes and Gough’s dark brown ones boring into me.
When they asked me if anyone had spoken to her in an unfavourable way, I broke down. I confessed what I had said about her, directly in front of her, rivers of shame and guilt coursing through me.
Shard was silent. Gough sucked in a breath. Then the king stood. “I must tell Rose. This might change things somewhat.”
I nodded. Gough slammed his hands on the desk, making me and his piles of paper jump. “Just so we are clear I was not asking your permission, swordsman.” He swept out.
I took a deep breath. “Father, I—”
“Save it. I don’t want to hear anything from you that isn’t directly related to finding her.” He continued with his questions in a low voice shaking with disgust, and I answered them as fully as I could, my voice small.
Gough returned, closing the door behind him. “Rose is going to go to her. You may call off your search parties, Shard.”
Shard frowned. “Call them off? Where does Rose think she is, and is she certain?”
“She’s absolutely certain.” Gough put his hands behind his back, not meeting Shard’s eyes. I kept my gaze on the carpet.
“My liege, as your captain, I must advise you. Wherever it is Rose thinks her daughter has gone, there’s a not insignificant chance that there might be danger. Regardless of this foul outburst” – my father glared at me – “Evyn might still have been interfered with.”
My gut clenched. No. What if she had been waylaid by whoever Rose was afraid of? What if I had driven her out of the safety of the castle straight into the arms of her enemies?
Gough nodded slowly. “I see your point. You.” I looked up to be confronted by the king’s accusing finger. “You will accompany my soul companion to find Evyn and assure their safety.”
I saluted so vigorously that I left bruises on my chest. “Yes, sir. I live to obey!”
My father went to reassign the search parties, and Gough led me to the royal family’s sitting room. I knew it well; the main focal and danger point was a balcony above the King’s Lake, the highest point of the castle bar the Last Tower behind us.
Gough boiled with barely restrained anger at me as he explained the plan to Rose. “Him? Absolutely not,” she said, glaring at me in the mirror.
“Rosie, he’s an excellent swordsman,” Gough said.
“Where I’m going, we don’t need swordsmen. And he was the one who drove her away in the first place.” Rose put her hair up, then let it fall and tried again, pulling and snapping at stray strands.
“Yes. It might be that a sincere apology is the only thing that can bring her back,” Gough murmured.
Rose’s hands fell to her sides. “Much as I hate to say it, you might be right.” She pierced me with a glare, the exact twin to her daughter’s. “And are you sincere?”
I met and held her eyes in the mirror. “I did not give your daughter a chance. I made judgements based on my own faulty values and reasoning. First impressions do count for a lot, and I have made a very poor one. I sincerely wish that I could start over again.” I bowed my head. “I need to see her safe. Then I will submit to the punishment that you judge fit to mete out to me for being remiss in my duties,” I told the king.
“Remiss? Actively working against them.” Rose sniffed.
Gough’s brows twitched close. “You’ve started very poorly. I would not be surprised if she rejects you entirely. While you’re gone, Rose, I’ll look around for a more suitable and worthy match for her, in the event Evyn requests it.”
My stomach twisted so badly that I was nearly sick. “She… She would be accurate to judge me unworthy and lacking as the other half of her true nature,” I choked. I had yearned for the complementary part of my spirit for so long; I didn’t want someone else’s. Had I condemned myself to being separated, our bond broken by soul searcher magic to be reforged t
o another? Please no, I begged silently. It ran contrary to what I sincerely believed; it would be like using a sword sized for someone else’s balance and skill rather than made for me.
Rose swept her hair into a tight bun. “Stop scaring the lad, Gough. Fine. No swords. No knives. No weapons at all. And you’ll need different clothes. Plain as possible. Warmer. It isn’t as hot over there.”
No weapons at all? I was a dangerous fighter barehanded but even still, it felt strange to think about going somewhere unknown without my sword belt.
Saluting, I did as she asked, running to the barracks and changing out of uniform into an unremarkable set of civilian clothes that I kept for feast days. Aleric tried to talk to me, but my head was too full, my tongue too much like the straw practice bales, my stomach sick and sour. Packing a light bag that I could carry at a dead run, I filled it with water, provisions and rubles.
Rose and Gough met me at ground level in a little used corridor. “I suppose that will have to do,” said Rose. “Now. Look at me.” She took hold of my chin. “What you are about to see and experience, you will tell to no one. This is under pain of death.”
I held fast. Gough looked grim as he nodded, confirming it to me.
“I’m only agreeing to this at all because you’re her… well.” Her blue eyes flashed angrily. “You might have ruined everything, but that is nothing compared to the damage that will be done if you say even a word to anyone. Not even your father. Is that understood?”
My tongue was latched to the roof of my mouth. “I want to find Evyn. I have to… explain to her.” What explanation I could give, I had no idea, but first I would make certain she was whole. “I’ll do whatever it takes,” I said, and I meant it. If Gough had opened a door to hot coals or ravening monsters, I would have hitched up my pack to stride in barefoot and unarmed. Thinking about the last few days, how I had rained blow upon blow onto her without giving her one chance to catch her breath, made my heart ache. Coals and monsters were naught compared to that.
Rose did a quick head turn, gave Gough a kiss on the cheek, and pointed at me. “You’ll be blindfolded. You won’t remove it until I say so. When Gough says the word, you’ll march forward and you won’t come to a stop – no matter what happens – until I tell you to. Understand?”
I saluted. “Yes, ma’am.” What was further down the corridor? Some sort of secret passage?
Gough cleared his throat. “I hope I don’t have to point out that you will obey Rose as you would me. If she says to jump, you will do so.”
I saluted again. “I live to obey!”
“See that you do.” Gough gave his soul one last embrace, and his voice softened as he spoke to her. “Go well, Rosie. I will be busy; I have a missive from my brother to deal with. Shard is insisting I take half of Special Forces with me.” He smiled at her. My heart yearned for their easy familiarity, their closeness without words. I had spurned and squandered my own chances for that. Gough turned, scowling at me. “I hope you manage to bring her back. I hardly had the chance to meet her.”
“I’m sorry, sir—”
He shook his head, forestalling further words. I swallowed them back.
I would have to remedy this, somehow.
“Go well, both of you,” Gough said, blindfolding me.
I stood at attention while Rose did something, expecting to wear the blindfold for several turns of the glass. Who knew where this place was? Perhaps it was a secret chamber, underneath the castle but above the Academy?
“Go now!” Gough ordered. I walked, already disorientated. What if I were about to walk into a wall? I resisted the urge to put my hands up and focused on moving forward obediently.
“Stop,” Rose said. “Bend down, you are far too tall.” Beneath the blindfold, I frowned. We had walked less than five paces, but everything sounded different. I took in a quick breath. The air smelled different, there was the scent of plants. The air moved. We were … outside?
Rose removed the blindfold, and I gasped.
Gough and the castle had gone, vanished. I had been transported instantly to a forest with Rose. I turned all the way around; thick brown trunks surrounded me, green crowning their tops and swaying in the wind. Plants twisted and twined across the bark, trefoil green leaves glistening. I touched one, finding it wet. Beneath my feet the grass was – “Green! The grass, it’s green!”
Rose chuckled. “Yes. We have green grass over here.” She put her hands on her hips. “Come on. We have about a half hour’s walk. That’s half a turn of the glass to you. You’re going to see some strange sights. Follow my lead for how to react to them. And whatever you do, don’t freak out or panic. I don’t have time for it.”
She marched off into the undergrowth. I followed.
We quickly came to a path wending along a canal. This path consisted of one continuous slab of stone, smooth and flat.
Rose beckoned to me. “That over there is a bike, it’s going to pass at speed, just leave it.” An approaching device made of two wheels set one in front of the other and a rider perched between them seemed to be what she meant. The rider raised one hand as I Rose moved to the side for it. I kept an eye on it to guard against any threat to Rose, pushing myself back into the forest we had come from as it swept past.
“How many of those creatures do you have on your lands?”
Rose chuckled again. “Ah. That’s something we use to get around. Some of us, anyway. We also use cars and buses and trains…” Her eyes sparkled.
“Oh. And how many of those work your lands?”
“Uh… huh. How to explain?” Rose walked fast down the path. I kept up with her pace. “Evyn and I, we don’t have lands. We’re not really anything special here. We’re part of the Great Unwashed, the British Public, Joe Pub, whatever you want to call the average citizen. I found the way to Oberrot when I was a little older than Evyn. Wasn’t I just fascinated to learn that I had a soul, and that he happened to be a king…”
She turned off the canal path through an opening in the greenery and walked alongside a darker, continuous stone slab, this one with broken white lines bisecting it along its length, like a drawn map boundary made large and real. “Now this is a road,” she continued, “you have to be careful. The cars on it are far between but they go pretty fast.”
We did not meet any more creatures. As the shock of what I was seeing started to wear off, I began to feel the cold in the air. Soon I started rubbing my arms when Rose wasn’t looking.
We passed dwellings pressing close to the greenery that had the look of being tamed and domesticated, but while each abode looked largely the same the land leading to them was different. There was a green lawn at a certain uniform height as if regulated; the next had a hangman’s bar except there was a chair suspended by two ropes rather than the corpse of a rogue slave. Another had an arrangement of rocks around a small pond, too small to be any use for laundry or for washing.
“Here we are.” Rose pushed a small gate, making it clang open. I followed close to her as she made her way up a series of discontinuous grey slabs. Tufts of the green grass poked between them and rioted around them. Flowers of yellow, purple and red nodded and buzzed quietly, then discharged flying balls the size of my fingernail. I raised my fists but Rose’s attention was fixated on the door. There was little to mark it as different from its fellows up and down the row apart from the numbers they prominently displayed. This one had a number set in a clever design made of multicoloured small stones. I touched it as Rose worked the incantations for the portal.
“Evyn made that when she was about nine, I think,” Rose murmured. She dug around in her bag and then held up a wealth of keys that would put a gaoler to shame. Her fingers shook as she selected one and inserted it. “Moment of truth.”
The door gave a loud click and opened. Rose flung herself in. I put my hand on her shoulder, saying, “I should go first to secure the area—”
She brushed me off with a scowl. “Secure the area indeed … Evyn? Ev
yn! Are you here?”
When an answering cry came from above, my heart unfroze. Rose put her hands to her chest. My knees felt unstable, and I held tightly onto the door. I let myself close my eyes for a moment. She was here.
But was she whole, and was there anyone with her?
I had to duck to fit under the lintel. The door led immediately to a staircase, the rugs fixed into each riser, giving the impression of a continuous cream waterfall. Rose kicked off her shoes and made to go up. She turned around when I followed and pointed at the door. “Born in a barn, were you? And take your shoes off, please.” I closed the door and pulled my boots off. My bare feet sank a little into the warm rug. I glanced at her, having to stoop and turn my head a little to avoid the ceiling. She nodded, and then we both started up the staircase.
“Evyn, I was worried, darling!”
“Worried? I told you where I was going. I mean. Eventually.”
“What do you mean?” Rose rattled up the stairs ahead of me. I put my hand to my hip, thrown to be grasping at nothing.
“The note? Did you not find the note?” Evyn’s voice called from the side. At the top of the stairs there were four doors facing me from various angles and directions, all perpendicular to one another. Each looked exactly the same. I wondered if this was a mancer’s maze when footsteps pounded from the one to our right. “Mum, I’m sorry if you didn’t find the note, you must have been fretting. Oh my goodness I’m so sorry—”
The door opened and there she was. I gripped onto the rail that attended the stairs.
She startled when she saw me, slamming the door shut again. “Mum! What’s he doing here?”
“Evyn, I’m not having a conversation with a closed door.”
The door cracked open a little. The dim light outlined one red, swollen eye which glared at me but softened when she looked at her mother. “Come in then. But just you. Not him.”