“No. And I don’t particularly want to now.”
“Even so. She said she saw a girl of the age of the prince dancing at a ball, and this girl would change everything.” The Pathfinder allowed her gaze to glide over Ash. “I wonder which ball she saw? And don’t for a moment think that I didn’t notice that thing on your hand and draw my own conclusions. You have much to lose Ash. “Everything’, as a matter of fact… Although I don’t think you’ve quite realised yet what “everything” is.”
Ash snorted. “You talk in riddles, Witch, and I did not come here for a riddle. I came for a confession.”
“Then you have-” but the Pathfinder stopped as if she had seen someone in the empty doorway. “No!”
A moment later Rize walked through the open doorway, still glowing with the light of the ballroom, still with his paper flower by his heart. Both faltered a little when he saw his teacher in her undressed state and Ash pointing a knife at her.
“I… I’m sorry to interrupt… Good lord Ash, what are you doing? Head Pathfinder, I thought you asked to see me?”
“What?”
“I asked for you, Rize. I wrote it out on her orange-bordered fancy parchment in her handwriting, asking you to come here.”
“Ash! Why?”
“Because Head Pathfinder here has something to confess to you.”
She turned her gaze back to the right, to find a different woman in front of her. “Please. Yes, I confess,” the Head Pathfinder whispered. “It was me. I started the Expansion Project.”
“Good God Ash! That’s what this is about?”
“Yes. The country, the people dying outside these walls, they need justice.” She smiled at him. “Consider it a very early engagement present.”
But he was not smiling back. “Ash how dare you! This is my teacher and a faithful servant of the crown… And what does it matter who started the Project?”
“I did, I started the Project, I swear. Please.”
“You see? She confesses to starting it, for having come up with the idea of the Expansion Project, in the presence of an acting monarch or his heir. The punishment is simple – death.”
The woman’s head sagged a little, but her spine did not bend. Almost imperceptibly, she nodded, and Rize fell to the floor.
“I won’t let you do this,” he whispered.
“It’s done,” the Pathfinder whispered back.
“No, it isn’t. Not yet.” He raised his voice and raised his eyes. They were crying. “It was me Ash. I started the Expansion Project.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Not the same
Hours passed. Hours or it may have been days slipped by, before he came.
Ash had deep in some muddled dream, pillow still wet, when the knock had woken her. Her mouth was dry and stomach growling, and she must have looked a sight with her tear-swollen face. Still her heart lurched when the knock came, and she hoped and feared it was him in equal measure.
It was the duke. His eyes visibly boggled when he saw her, still in the crushed silver dress from the ball.
“Good grief Ash are you alright?”
Right… what a word. What was right? Who was right? Without answering, she motioned for him to sit down.
She must have been staring numbly into space, because his hand suddenly touched hers and she jolted from the human contact. She hadn’t been touched since he had kissed her, since…
“Ash, shall I call someone? Are you unwell?”
“I… What did you want, Duke?”
The duke’s face softened like butter. “It warmed me, seeing you and Rize in the ballroom, and it got me thinking. I know you have a Stepmother who is lady of Rhodopalais but, well, you’re Vanita’s real parent, aren’t you? I’d like to ask you something. Ash, would you consent to me asking Vanita to be my bride?”
A silence passed. Maybe one of days, or weeks. Somewhere in the middle of it, Ash nodded dully. As if through a fog, she heard the duke chuckle. “I must admit I was expecting more of a fight from you. I know it must seem out of nowhere, but we have been writing and – good lord Ash, are you sure you’re alright?”
Tears fell softly down as Ash sat with her eyes fixed on the ruined silver fabric she wore. How many tears had she cried onto this dress now? His mother’s dress.
“Duke. Lorin,” she whispered. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
***
They were waiting just where he’d said they would be. Like thieves Ash and Lorin padded towards them. The carriages stood tall and silent in the dark, like sleeping monsters that would now have to be woken up.
“You’re sure about this?”
“Sure,” Ash whispered back, although being out again in this chilly castle after having been in her room for two days had made her jumpy. Any moment, she expected the Head Pathfinder or Rize to jump out of the shadows, pointing fingers and shouting about what a terrible mistake she’d made. Which each corner that remained empty, each silent second with no loud retribution, she got more nervous still.
Castle Blindé must have had hundreds of carriages passing through here in its day. Now, only ten remained. The coach nearest to them was ironically the same dusky pink one that had first transported them from Rhodopalais. Seeing it again after so long, Ash wasn’t quite sure what to feel. At least Vanita would recognise them easily when they came.
Ash took the words out in her mind, summoning them into her vision as she blocked out all else. She focussed her awareness again into that little ball, and pushed it at the words, hoping it would be enough. As she spoke them out loud, they lit up one by one in her mind’s eye: “to Rhodopalais, I summon you. Go there three days.”
The coach rattled to life. Ash looked around nervously. “He should be here by now. Where is he?”
“Yes, he should be. I sent him a note, then a servant to relay the message again an hour later.”
At that moment, a servant walked out from the shadows. Ash’s heart thumped in her chest, but her muscles were well-oiled in this now, and without her head’s permission her arms reached up coolly with a dagger in each hand.
“No – don’t! Please don’t, I – I was not followed I swear!”
“It’s alright, Ash. It’s the servant I sent with the message.”
“Y-yes, and I have one back. I just have a note for the duke, that is all. And I’ll tell no one.”
Ash snatched at the parchment before the servant could react, and he scuttled away back into the darkness. She started to hand it to the duke, then changed her mind.
“Hmph. “For the duke’, is it? No letter for me? Well, whatever he has to say, he can say it to both of us.”
Dear Ash,
Yes, I knew would read this. I’m not coming. I know I’s my home, but there really is nothing there for me anymore. And I think it wouldn’t be honest. I am not the same boy who was there anymore. And this is where I stay now.
Give my love to Vanita.
Derrick.
The duke had been reading over her shoulder, and Ash felt rather than saw him raising his eyebrows. But he said nothing.
“Well,” she said at last.
“Well indeed. He writes fine for a commoner.”
That was a point. When on earth had Derrick learned letters? But there was no time to think about it now.
“I suppose it’s just me then.”
“I shouldn’t think so… there’s no way I would leave you to make that journey alone. I’m coming with you.”
“But Rize… He… I know he did wrong, and I can’t even bear to think of him, let alone look at him… But you, you’re his cousin. He needs you.”
“You don’t know him like I do, Ash. He does need me but, he has this other side you haven’t seen. He’s excitable, passionate, impossible to predict when he doesn’t get what he wants. It’s almost always okay but in extremes he has this darkness that… I don’t know what Rize will do, to be honest, he’s never been under this kind of strain before. He will no doubt
have questioned whether or not you really didn’t tell the king every second until it builds into something violent… Or something else. Besides,” and here a blush crept into his voice. “I want to see her. I need to see her, actually.”
“See who?”
“Don’t be an arse, just get inside the carriage.”
***
It was still dark when they crossed the plains. The owl carriors hooted overhead, but didn’t attack, and Ash told the duke of how Vanita had bled and bled on the floor of a carriage that had been an Expansion pumpkin. Of how she had almost died, they were sure she’d die, but the strength in Vanita was well-hidden and it had pulled her through, just as it always did.
In the hours just before dawn, the duke looked out into the featureless blackness at the window and told her in turn of how Rize had lost his horse, the only one he’d ever truly loved, on the ride to her. He told of how something had taken over Rize then, in that moment of great pain, and he had killed a crow carrior all on his own, with nothing but a sword, hacking and hacking away at it with the strength of three men until he had pulled the prince off himself. Because of the darkness he’d seen in Rize’s eyes.
“Poor horse,” Ash said aloud, but in her mind, she was thinking of that crow cut to smithereens.
“Yes. We all lose the ones we love.”
Because it was dark they did not see. Because they were talking, telling each other parts of their own story that they did not know, Ash did not feel it. The gap in the world, a blackness. The absence that marks something terrible.
An hour later, in the greying light of morning, Rhodopalais showed her face.
“This is not right, we’re lost,” said the duke frowning out his window.
But Ash just stared. She had been practising her awareness on and off the whole ride, just in case some Pathfinder at the palace found out and tried to stop them with her mind. Now she screeched the carriage to a halt with her heart. Metal groaned, and then everything was still as she stared without moving at a blackened ruin.
Ash got out the coach, tripped on the ground and fell. Her eyes registered the large sunken hole where Stepmother’s room should be, the fire-marked walls of a mobbed place below. But her heart could not feel it, her head could not believe it. She half-lay and half-knelt in the soil.
“Ash let me help, here. We are lost, that’s all.”
But she shook her head. She knew those walls.
“It’s going to be alright Ash. Come, get inside the coach and we’ll go find Rhodopalais.”
But Ash shook her head, his words far away. She had never known it, but she’d always thought deep down that this was the one family member who would never leave her. And she’d been wrong. Ash turned aside dully and retched on the ground.
Realisation was beginning to creep into Lorin’s voice, which was even further away. “No, it can’t be… Can it? But that means…”
And at once they were both running.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Family
Two days later, the duke knocked on the door.
Vanita’s room had survived, if not Vanita, and Ash had been lying in her bed, in the smell of her. Lorin, for his part, had sat in the still-intact kitchen, looted of everything of value, except for the note that he stared at and stared at through the hours.
Dear stranger,
I have gone out to try find food. If I am not there and someone reads this, I am likely dead.
Please take care of my mother. I know that is not the times we are living in, but I also know that people are still good.
Lady Vanita of House Cerentola, heiress in full to manse Rhodopalais
The duke had water in a chipped cup and held it out to her. It was good that he was here now, thinking of something outside his own pain, but Ash couldn’t help seeing the emptiness she felt in his own eyes.
“I can’t believe it. Still.” His voice echoed in the silence of the ruins, while the smell of blood from whatever must have crashed down most of the floor. Most likely a bird. Hopefully it had been quick – not just for Vanita, but Stepmother too. The duke had looked in what he must have felt was pragmatism for bodies, but Ash hadn’t. She knew the mobs common outside castle walls, and how hungry they could be.
As Ash took the chipped cup from him, the duke sat down on the edge of the bed. They’d likely never been closer, physically, and also never been further apart.
“I want to bury her,” he said quietly. “With flowers. Real ones. I don’t care if there’s nothing to bury.”
Ash nodded. “And after that? What then?”
Lorin sighed. “After then I want to stay here and die, but I know that I shouldn’t. Regardless, you must get back to the castle. The coach leaves today and you should be in it. They’ll be moving soon, as you know, and what makes you think they’ll take Derrick with? He’ll be all alone.”
“What, like I’m alone? What of it? He made his choice.”
“You know that’s not true Ashlynne. If he’d known, known about…. Vanita… he’d have run to Rhodopalais barefoot through glass, and you know it. If only to get to you.”
Ash sighed. But try as she might to ignore it, the duke had brought the smell of the kitchen to her senses, leaving behind the smell of her sister and of death.
“I need to be outside.”
Amidst all the ruin of the house, the hazelnut tree was still standing in its place silently, unafraid of mobs or birds. It was rooted too deep in the dark earth for that. Of all Ash’s immovables, the things she thought would outlast the stars – Old Merta, friendship with Derrick, Vanita’s smile – this tree was the only one still standing. She knelt under it one more time, hoping some of its strength would leech from the ground up into her.
It was hard to believe she hadn’t prayed under her tree in a month. It was harder to believe she had ever prayed here at all. She closed her eyes, but instead of praying, a sudden image wafted up, a memory: Derrick standing just there and scowling, saying “don’t talk to your God, talk to me.” He seemed so young in that memory, and he still was, whatever the ladies were using him for in the night. Derrick had always lapped happily at the surface of the world, never assuming others weren’t as clear as he was, and now the depths were drowning him. She sighed, and kept her eyes closed, trying to slow her breathing.
She must have fallen asleep, because the sun was suddenly stabbing at her eyelids overhead, and the duke was standing nearby looking at her. She sat up stiffly.
“It’s almost time.”
She nodded.
“What are you going to do?”
Ash spread her arms wide, still sitting in the dirt, and shrugged. “What can I do? The way I see it, there’s only one thing for me.”
The duke nodded, holding a hand out to her, and they walked to the coach together in companionable silence.
It was a lovely day, Ash noticed, sunny and golden. She immediately hated herself for that. How could she see the weather and be with someone else now? Vanita is dead, she said experimentally to herself. She’s gone. But she was still able to walk, to notice the day, though her heart thought she shouldn’t be able to function.
“I… I’ve left a letter,” said the duke. “In the kitchen. In case… God. Just in case.”
It came suddenly then, like an axe into her chest with the weighty disbelief of it. Vanita being dead seemed absolutely ridiculous. But she forced herself to keep stepping, keep breathing. There was one who was still alive. And he was all her family now, even if he was an idiot, and there was nothing that could change that. She remembered Derrick’s words, on that night of horror sewing Vanita up on the bloodied table: “you can’t save Old Merta, but you can save Vanita.” Well, she couldn’t save Vanita anymore, but she could save him.
“Let’s go.”
Vanita.
I waited all day for you and you did not come. I waited all night for you and you did not come. I laughed, not believing my eyes, and it did no good. I waited until Ash was safely outsid
e the room and then cried like a boy-child into your dresses and you did not come. Later, I cried again for her to see, and she with me, and we shed enough tears to bathe you with together, and still you did not come.
I cannot un-see you. I cannot un-know you. To me you are more alive than the carriors and this country, than the pale shape of Ash beside me, than all the world. To me you are the only thing that seems truly alive and yet, clearly, you are gone.
I do not know what I will do now. In years past I may have entertained delusions of hanging myself up by the kitchen rafters here at Rhodopalais but, these times have made practical people out of better men than me. I suppose I will go back. I suppose I will try to fix it. I suppose I will marry Naomi. I suppose one day I will be fine. There may be a time, though I doubt it, when I do not see your face every single day.
We must leave this place. Rhodopalais stinks of marauders and robbers, and foul corpses not even dug into proper graves. The thought that you might have –
I can’t finish it. Vanita, I have to leave now, you would have wanted me to protect your only sister, but if there is some chance that you are out and will simply, impossibly just appear out of the air like magick, as though all this had never happened… I hope that you do. If you do, come to me – my darling, please come to me – and I will throw off country, wife, crown and practicality. I will throw it all away just please don’t be gone, please. Please.
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