Dark of the West (Glass Alliance)

by Joanna Hathaway

  Heat creeps along my neck. All six officers are gaping at me now, the seventeen-year-old kid no one ever thinks about much but who apparently has earned himself an entire dressing-down in the council room. The humiliation scalds.

  “Father, this isn’t the time,” Arrin intervenes, a slightly pitying move, which only makes things worse.

  Father raises his hands. “Isn’t it? They say he’s very smart. Brilliant, even.” His smile is cruel. “So what do you think I should do? Come on, boy. For once in your life say something useful!”

  His mockery is too much on top of everything else. I stand abruptly. “I think she’d hate you for this,” I spit. “She’d never want her death used for more war. She’d weep in her grave, and you know it.”

  Kalt gasps. His hand starts to move, like he’s going to yank me back down, as if that will undo what I’ve just said, but I don’t care. I stare at Father and he stares at me and I wait for the gun, the one that certainly has my name on it now. It feels damn good to say the words and not even think.

  For a long moment, Father doesn’t move, dangerously still. I watch his hand, terrified. The pistol is an inch from his fist, the trigger a moment from my head. Blood on the floor like oil. Just like the traitor, but this time it’s going to be mine. This is it. Then he says, “You’re dismissed.”

  I’m turning before he’s finished the order.

  I don’t look at Arrin or Kalt or anyone else and their stupid pity.

  I march out the door, blistering with anger, overwhelmed by fear, every emotion crackling through the numbness in a glorious rage, and nearly trip right over something small and blonde. I catch myself against the wall as the door slams shut.

  Leannya scurries back, quick as a mouse, but there’s no guilt in her eyes. No regret at having been caught spying. Only an equally furious rage in her eyes. “How could you?” she demands in a whisper. “You and Arrin both!”

  Her words are spoken so delicately it’s like they might dissolve between her mouth and my ears, but they slap me still. “Leannya, it’s not—”

  “How dare you speak for Mother! You don’t know what she’d want. None of you do. You were never here, but I was, and she’d have done anything in the goddamn world for you!” Her fury is almost as shocking as her language. She’s every bit as dogged as Arrin. “I hate the way you all sit around and talk. Baiting each other, like it’s a game. I hate your talk. I hate you!” She shoves me with more force than I expect.

  Then she darts down the hall. A fleeing gold shadow.

  I stand there, trying to figure out what’s just taken place between us, the fact that my own sister hates me—hates all of us—and it’s completely illogical, then realize I might be doing the exact thing she despises and chase after her. Through the main foyer, up the stairs, to our family quarters. I find her in Mother’s parlour. She screams as perfume bottles shatter against the wall. Glass splintering, like the brandy bottles. She hurls each and every one until there’s nothing left but a thousand useless shards and the stench of perfume—rose and vanilla and lilac, rotten when flung together in a mess.

  She stops. Trembling.

  Then she drops to her knees, whispering, “No, no, no,” pale hands trying to pick up the broken pieces, cutting herself on sharp edges. “These were mine. She said I could have them. She said I could. Why did I do it!”

  I don’t dare touch her.

  She lets the hurricane unleash, in tears, in fists. Then it subsides, and she stands again, swiping the tears from her face. Her eyes accuse me. “You gave in to them. You’re supposed to be better than that.”

  “Better?”

  “Yes. I used to tell Mother how scared I was for Arrin, because I know when he goes to the front he doesn’t think of anyone else, not even me. He just wants to win. I can’t watch over him there. And Kalt would hang his own neck if it pleased Father. But she said I shouldn’t worry, because we’d always have you. She said you’re better than that and you’ll always come home.”

  God in heaven. Mother’s finding a way to speak to me from the grave. Leannya waits for me to contest her words, and a new kind of ache throbs beneath my ribs. Mountains. That’s what I’ve wanted forever. The escape I’ve always craved. The nobler life. But it’s not more noble—it’s only more easy, away from here and these impossible decisions, away from expectations. If I go, if I trap every weakness, kill all the guilt, and do what I want, then I’m exactly the same as Arrin and Kalt and Father.

  I’m a Dakar.

  The truth startles me with its sudden, shameful intensity.

  Leannya waits. I reach for her hands, now pricked with blood, and hold them gently. I try not to think. “Mother was right,” I say. “You’ll always have me.” It might be the worst promise I’ve ever made, an impossible vow to keep with whatever the hell’s going on in Father’s council room, but in this moment, it’s the one thing I know I want to be true. The thing that needs to be true. “I’m here for you. I swear it. I’ll fight for you.”

  She studies me a long moment. Tear marks on her face, blood on her hands. Her stare is careful and searching, scouring my bones, looking for lies like a true Dakar, then she reaches a verdict and throws her desperate arms around me.

  She believes me.

  And maybe I do, too.

  * * *

  I go to Father’s room in the evening.

  I’m not exactly sure why. It’s a terrifying decision, one I go back and forth on, but the words I hurled at him in front of his men were rotten. I’m old enough to admit it. I need to be better, for Mother at least. For Leannya. I won’t let this family become a stalemate of battle lines.

  I swallow my wounded pride, my fear, and when I reach the door, I knock once. The quick kind that’s not very committed.

  Gathering courage, I try a bit harder.

  Then again.

  Well, he has to be in there. Haven’t seen him since the meeting, and Arrin was complaining that someone else was complaining that he never showed up for a later briefing. Which means he’s there. Father doesn’t disappear. He makes other people feel like disappearing, but he never does it himself. Before I can shrink away from the door, like my feet want to, I just go ahead and open it.

  A narrow hall greets me, hollow and devoid of colour.

  To the left is Father’s study, books and maps on each shelf, desk covered in files, scent of cigarettes and leather. No sign of him. Cautiously, I walk through, my boots creaking against the wood floor as I near the desk. I glance down at the photographs spread in a haphazard array. There’s Malek holding a weathered Safire flag, triumphant. Another with Mother sitting by the sea, a child in her arms, her face too young. She was only my age when she had Arrin. They say the marriage came first, but I suspect it was the other way around. The last photograph is of Father leaning against an elaborate sandstone building with Southern roundels. Next to him is a short, unsmiling woman. Her black hair swallows light, a rifle across her shoulder, expression fierce.

  A long-ago ally turned into his worst enemy.

  Lehzar.

  It’s scrawled right there, in dark ink, and though I have no idea what went sour between them—Sinora and my father and Malek and Evertal—it doesn’t matter. Blood runs down my hands again, sticking to my skin. Mother struggling for every ragged breath in my arms. That gasping wet sound.

  I grab the knife sitting on his desk, the slender one for opening letters, and thrust it into Sinora’s heart.

  Weak laughter reaches my ears.

  I turn with a start and find Father watching from the adjoining room, half-hidden by a leather chair. He’s slumped on the floor against the wall, legs bent at the knee, bottle in hand.

  “You want to kill her?” His voice wavers. “It’ll take more than that. She’s clever as sin.”

  My squashed terror springs back to life. I’m not sure if it’s in response to being caught, or seeing him drunk. Probably both. And I’m ready to run. Get away from the bullet that’s been waiting for m
y selfish face. Get away from the inebriated General of Savient who despised me even before I insulted him publicly.

  But he holds out a hand, palm towards me, like he’s cautioning an animal. “Stay.”

  I don’t move.

  “You’ve already trespassed here,” he says. “Might as well have a drink for it.”

  “I came here to apologize for today, sir. I shouldn’t have said it. I was upset and—”

  “Sit down, Athan.”

  Athan.

  He says it like it’s nothing. Like it’s easy, meaningful. But I can’t remember the last time he addressed me by name, and familiar desperation rises inside. The wanting of something I can’t explain. That place in me only he can reach. He looks uncomfortably alone there, smoking his cigarette. He never smokes. Not like Arrin and Kalt, who always have the things in hand, but he sucks it down now, fingers shaking slightly against the flimsy paper, expression disturbed.

  Slowly, I walk over and sit on the floor next to him.

  He hands me the whiskey. “Have the rest. You’re not as noble as you pretend.”

  He’s right, but Cyar’s warning is still in my head, so I place it on the floor beside me, untouched. He doesn’t seem to notice my decision, staring at the wall, smoking. Moments pass. I can feel my pulse scattering.

  Finally he says, “Everything happens as God wills.”

  He’s never said that out loud. Everyone else prays for war, prays for peace, prays for this and that and whatever else, but Father makes it happen. He’s always made it happen.

  I rest my arms on my knees. “I guess.”

  “Are you ever going to be more committal?”

  I shrug.

  “Ah, you’re too good at this.” He picks up a pen, flicking it between his stumbling fingers. “By the time I was fifteen, Athan, I’d already learned how to survive alone. Desert fever took my mother. My father was cut down by Landorian bullets in Thurn. He never knew how to win, only how to fight. Fighting forever and gaining nothing.”

  I listen, seeing Mother’s coffin, the way the cold earth took it completely.

  Nothing’s gained without sacrifice.

  “But Sinora. She was outside the game, outside the rules,” he continues, more to himself, “and that’s why I made her my ally. We had both been stolen from. She believed in my desire for justice, before she…”

  He trails off, burying the secret he almost revealed.

  “You knew her in the South?” I venture.

  Father’s head falls back against the hard wall. “Yes. We saw the disaster that was Thurn, the crimes there that no one remembers. The way these Northern kings took land that wasn’t theirs and tried to make an entire people think and be as they preferred. And now they’re surprised by unrest? They believe they have the right to own others, to force loyalty. But you can’t, Athan. Loyalty is in the heart. It must be earned.” He closes his eyes. “It was supposed to be me, not your mother.”

  His words stick on one another, slurred, and a tremor of pity kicks me in the gut. I don’t want to give it to him. Not now, not like this, but I say, “I believe you, Father.” I think he needs to hear it.

  Father shifts, looking at me. His boots nearly touch mine. “You were right about her today. She hated war. She hated what I did, and she’d hate what I will do next. But the world doesn’t care how noble you are, son. It only cares about strength.”

  I feel myself nod.

  “And yet I trusted her.” He tilts his head, studying me. “Arrin’s barely controllable, and Kalt craves everything I have, but you…” He takes a drag, exhales smoke. “Would you believe she never wanted you? Your mother, I mean. She didn’t want to give me another son. When she realized she was carrying you, she tried to beat you out of her own womb, but I stopped her. I wouldn’t let her do it.”

  His words don’t register. They hover between us, everything suddenly turned upside down. My past. My present. Mother desperate and fighting to shield me from his ambition in the only way she could. He, in the end, offering me life. I don’t want to believe it, it’s backwards, but he nods and says, “It’s the truth, ask Arrin.”

  I realize my hand is a fist, biting into my own skin.

  “But I have always believed in you, Athan, and I want to trust you. Can I?”

  His question finally sinks in. He wants my loyalty. He always has, and it’s not just because of my scores. It’s deeper than that, something I owe my life to him for, and the possibility is like a tailspin, gaining momentum as reality blurs. Every one of his words is from a bottle. That has to be it. But I crave them, savouring them despite the whiskey on his breath. I’ve been waiting every day of my life for even a fraction of this. I’ve waited without even realizing it. Watching him come back from campaigns and hoping that he might offer me more than a cuff on the head. Waiting for a glance that wasn’t cut on a knife point.

  Waiting for a reason to try.

  “Yes,” I say. “You can.”

  It’s not a lie, and I hate that it isn’t.

  He leans near, a secret for me alone. “The truth is I gave Sinora that first rifle, but she was the one creating chaos. She studied the Landorians so closely she could always spot an officer no matter how they tried to hide. She knew their tricks. She’d pick them off one by one until the rest didn’t know where to turn or what order to follow. A silent, shrewd war.” He points his pen at me. “But I have a way to stop her, Athan. And if we stop her, stop this chaos she thrives on, then the world will be better for it—in the North, in the South. This doesn’t have to last forever. This can end. We’ll have peace.”

  I nod, overwhelmed by that impossible offer.

  An end.

  Enough.

  Home.

  He’s never said that before.

  I’m desperate to believe, and he smiles very slightly, half-hidden. Then we sit like that, sprawled together, quiet.

  After a while, I get up.

  I leave Father in his study, the knife still stuck in Sinora Lehzar.

  10

  AURELIA

  Hathene, Etania

  It’s midnight, and the maidservant is clearly startled to see me when I knock on Mother’s door. Her mouth hangs slightly open, glancing at the clock, at the late hour, but I have a plan for that. My eyes well up, my body shivers and shakes, and the girl switches to horrified. I’ve never played this card before, and it works well.

  She escorts me inside quickly and through the audience chamber, through the private withdrawing parlour, right to Mother’s bedroom. I don’t wait for any further permission. I push through the heavy door and the maidservant makes a squeak-like sound. I close it on her gaping face.

  Mother turns in evident surprise.

  I stare at her, also surprised.

  Soft, Resyan lyrics sigh from her gramophone:

  In the open air, I call to you.

  In the heat, I sing my song.

  I am a mountain, a song you remember,

  and my feet are roots fed with blood,

  with old dreams.

  She stands at the vanity with its glass bottles, wearing only her lace nightgown and silken robe, her black hair unbound, face free of powder and rouge, skin a deep shade of russet beneath the lamp. Everything queenly has been stripped away. She’s herself, vulnerable before me. Eyes glittering with what might be tears. And suddenly, she looks so much like a mother—warm and glowing in the light—that resentment stings. I wish I could run right to her and bury my head in her shoulder and breathe in her jasmine scent and hear her tell me everything will be all right, that there’s nothing to worry about and Havis is banished forever. I want that so badly I can feel it trembling in my breath.

  But she’s the one dealing these dark cards.

  She’s the one with secrets.

  “You can’t send me to Resya, Mother. Please don’t do it!”

  It’s not what I intended to lead with. My emotions are swirled and tangled inside, and that’s what comes out.

 
; She looks at me as if perplexed. It’s too dark to tell. “I’m sending you nowhere,” she says after a moment. “You’re only sixteen.”

  “But almost seventeen,” I say helplessly. At seventeen, everything can change for a girl. Marriage. Death. It all looks the same to me now. “I have to go to the University, as Father would want. You can’t send me away yet.”

  Mother laughs shortly. “Oh, come now, Aurelia. Don’t make that your excuse.”

  The ease with which she bats away my plea wounds me further. Of course it means little to her, she who was never properly educated, whose own father adored her for being clever and quick even though she couldn’t read a book. But this is all I have as escape. She doesn’t understand. Perhaps if I study hard, if I speak many languages and can debate economic policies, then Reni and his council and everyone else here will consider me too useful to send away. Perhaps I can make it a waste to marry me even into another Northern kingdom. I can make them want to keep me here. This place I love with every beat of my heart, this place my father believed in.

  My home.

  My mountains.

  Mother’s elegant brows draw together, studying my desperation. “Resya is freedom, Aurelia. Do you want to be cooped up forever in a palace? Bound to some spoiled duke? I’m offering you a way out, with a man who will let you do what you please.”

  “He’s a snake,” I choke out. “And I’m going to the University. I have to go!”

  Her eyes narrow, colour rising on her cheeks. “Tell me this, Aurelia—is life learned behind those high university walls? Can you learn there how to mourn your husband’s death? How to be handed a crown and expected to rule? How to start a new life in a strange land far from home? No, I learned these things by living, and believe me, the lessons of life are far harsher than my words to you now.”

  A hot and reckless bitterness pounds through my veins, sparking me. “And was it life that told you to negotiate with the likes of Seath?”

  Mother grips the edge of the vanity. Silence swallows us, the song ended, and she doesn’t move, staring at me. After a long and empty moment, she comes closer and I see stark weariness in her eyes. “You read the letter, did you?”