Thursdays With the Crown

by Jessica Day George

  Not only that, but Lilah sat down on a gilt-covered stool and refused to go with them if they took a single dagger.

  So in the end Celie took the ring from the king’s finger, the crown from his head, and the collar from the griffin’s neck. The others watched, hands folded and heads bowed in respect, as she did so. She carefully wrapped the precious relics in embroidered silk that Lilah found and put them in a leather purse that was among the more practical treasures of the tomb.

  “I still say this is wrong,” Lilah fretted as they left.

  “Anything to help us get home,” Rolf said.

  “Anything to heal the Castle,” Celie corrected him, wiping her hands on her skirts again. She hadn’t liked touching the king, or his griffin, but it had been her idea, after all.

  “But we don’t know that,” Lilah insisted. “The relics might do nothing at all, and all we’ve done is desecrate this poor man’s tomb.”

  “Well, they’re doing nothing here,” Pogue said roughly. “And I feel like we’ve finally made steps toward getting home.”

  “Is that being one of the many fine weapons of which you and the wizard Bran are discovering the secrets thereof?” Lulath asked, pointing to one of the lightning spears.

  “Yes,” Pogue said, giving it a last longing look.

  “It enthralls me!” Lulath said.

  “That is hardly reassuring,” Lilah muttered as they turned to go.

  But Celie stopped. They were on the other side of the tapestry now, the one that made a wall between the biers and the treasure. In the Arkower’s caves there were also walls made of tapestries.

  But these tapestries were different. These tapestries looked just like the ones in the Castle. There were people, tall and pale, with golden hair like Celie’s, and griffins frolicking at their feet. The Arkower’s tapestries had been more angular and stylized, much like the cape that Lilah wore. There had been tapestries like that in the Castle, too, but only a few. Celie had found them in the newest parts of the Castle, the ones that had recently arrived in Sleyne and had never been seen before.

  “What is it?” Pogue asked.

  “It’s nothing,” Celie said. “I think.”

  Still carrying torches they walked silently out of the Tomb of the Builder, and closed and wrestled the latch back into place behind them.

  It was dark now, the clearing filling with shadow. Rufus and his father were both snoring, none the worse for having been left behind.

  Not that they had been alone. In the torchlight, Ethan’s eyes were wide with fear. His gaze immediately found the leather bag Celie carried, and what little color there was in his face leaked right out of it.

  “What did you take?” His voice was low, and he almost choked on the words. “What have you done?”

  “You see?” Lilah said. “You see, we’ve done something horrible and sacrilegious.” She took a few steps closer to Ethan. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t want to, but they all voted to take some things and …”

  “We need these things, we really do,” Rolf put in. “Or we wouldn’t have done this. We didn’t intend to disturb anything, but —” He shrugged.

  “I — I understand,” Ethan said after a long pause. He took a deep breath. “You should probably come and see what I just found, too.”

  And he turned and led them away through the trees.

  “Wonderful. Now I’m actually regretting that I didn’t take that crossbow we saw,” Lilah grumbled.

  Chapter 10

  “I went into the trees to … ah …,” Ethan said. He turned bright red.

  “Oh, I see,” Rolf said.

  Celie giggled nervously.

  “Anyway …?” Rolf prompted.

  “Yes, well,” Ethan went on. “That’s when I saw it.” He pointed, and they all took a few more steps forward.

  Lying at the base of a large tree, in the hollow between its roots, was a nest of dried ferns and twigs. The nest would have been big enough for Celie to curl up inside, if it wasn’t already occupied. Right in the middle of the nest was an egg. It was orange, a darker orange than Rufus’s and Lorcan’s eggs had been, but smaller than either of them.

  “A griffin’s egg,” Lilah breathed. “I’ve never seen one.” Then she flinched and looked around. “We’d better leave before the mother gets back. Mother birds can be vicious if you disturb their nests, and I can’t imagine what a griffin might do!”

  “There is no mother,” Ethan said. He was standing off to one side, half-hidden by a clump of ferns. There was a funny look on his face.

  “I think he’s right,” Pogue said. “Look at how dirty it is.”

  Celie looked, and felt her face screwing up with worry. Rufus hadn’t had a mother, either, except for her, and Lorcan had been taken from his original nest to the Arkower’s caves. So she really couldn’t say what a well-tended egg in the wild should look like.

  But this did not look like a well-tended egg. There was dirt and grit stuck to one side as though the wind had blown against it, and bits of leaves that had drifted down from the trees above. A few marks in the soil around the nest might have been griffin tracks, but they weren’t fresh, even to Celie’s untrained eye. The more she looked, the more she became convinced that the egg had been abandoned.

  “The poor dear!” Lilah went forward to put one hand on the egg, and then drew it back. “Oh, it’s hot!”

  “So the egg is still alive?” Ethan asked. “I was afraid to check.”

  “Well, it’s very warm,” Lilah said. She looked at her little sister. “Celie?”

  Celie went forward and put her hands on the egg, trying to choke back the lump in her throat as she remembered finding Rufus’s egg all those months ago. This was not the same, she told herself firmly.

  “It feels alive,” Celie said.

  And it did. It was uncomfortably warm to the touch, and Celie felt the tiniest of vibrations. She rocked it a little, and it rocked back. Lilah flinched.

  “Don’t make it hatch,” she said, clutching Celie’s arm.

  “I’m not,” Celie told her. “I’m just checking it. I used to roll Rufus around; I think he liked it.” The lump rose in her throat again.

  “I want to try,” Rolf said eagerly. He came forward and put his own hands on the egg. “It’s so warm! And I think I can feel something moving inside!” He gently rocked the egg as Celie had done.

  “That’s a pity,” Ethan said.

  “Why?” Celie looked at him sharply. He was the only one of them that hadn’t come closer to the nest. He was standing, half-concealed by foliage, with that strange look on his face.

  “What have you done?” Pogue demanded.

  “I haven’t done anything,” Ethan said. “But someone else has.”

  He stepped out of the ferns and gestured for them to look behind where he’d been standing. A sudden premonition came over Celie, and she didn’t think she wanted to see what he’d found. She looked at Rolf, who took her arm and moved a little in front of her.

  “Do I really want to see this?” Lilah asked, echoing Celie’s thoughts.

  “I am thinking that this answer would be no,” Lulath said softly, his gaze also on Ethan.

  He, Rolf, and Pogue nodded to one another in that infuriating way boys have before they stepped over to the ferns, keeping Lilah and Celie behind them for protection. Celie bit back a smart remark: she was twelve years old, after all! But at the same time she really didn’t want to see whatever they were looking at, especially after Pogue looked, went pale, and swore. Rolf uttered a wordless cry, and then something that sounded like a quick prayer.

  “Oh, the beautiful mother,” Lulath said. He shook his head and Celie saw tears in the corners of his eyes. “The beautiful mother!”

  Seeing their reactions, Celie started to turn away, but then she couldn’t help herself. She knew what was on the other side of the ferns but she had to see it with her own eyes. She slipped out of Rolf’s grip and peered over the clump of ferns.

 
; There, in a small clearing, was a dead griffin. Her golden fur and feathers appeared tarnished, her body limp and frail. There were three black arrows sticking out of her side and neck. And insects—

  Celie ran back to the egg. She rested her hands on the poor unhatched orphan and breathed deeply, doing her best not to vomit. A minute later Lilah joined her.

  “Well,” Lilah said. She cleared her throat. Then, to Celie’s shock she turned her head and spit noisily like one of the stable hands. “Well. That is … that is really, really horrible, and I hope whoever shot that griffin meets a terrible fate of their own.”

  “It was recent,” Ethan said calmly. “In the last couple of days.”

  “That’s nice,” Lilah said bitterly. “Although I’m not sure how that helps, exactly.”

  “So now we must be worrying that this person of horrorbility is here in the forest near to us?” Lulath looked around nervously.

  “Yes,” Pogue said. “We need to get far away from here.” He took Lilah’s arm and tried to draw her away.

  “But what about the egg?” Rolf joined Celie and Lilah at the nest and gave the egg another playful rock. It twitched under their hands. “Is it close to hatching, Cel?”

  “It might be,” she said. “I mean, it feels just like Rufus did … but I don’t know if griffin eggs are like that the whole time they’re eggs or just at the end. And I don’t know how long they are in the eggs, either.” She raised her eyebrows at Ethan.

  “They’re warm and they move the last two months, and it takes four months for them to hatch,” he said. He sighed heavily and bent down to pick up a rock. “It’s a royal griffin, so this is really a shame.” He raised the rock.

  Lilah screamed and Pogue lunged at Ethan, grabbing his hand and forcing him to drop the rock. Rolf threw himself to his knees and shielded the egg with his body.

  “Are you mad?” Rolf shouted over his shoulder.

  “You would be killing this only precious egg?” Lulath was angrier than Celie had ever heard him. The tall prince’s face was red with rage, and he stepped toward Ethan with one hand on his belt knife, Lorcan hanging out of his tunic and hissing.

  “We have to,” Ethan protested, taking a step back but not releasing the rock. “Who’s going to take care of it? Its mother is dead; we can’t stay here until it hatches! It’s just going to die!”

  Celie reached around Rolf and patted the egg to reassure it. Then she stepped out of the nest, facing Ethan squarely. He didn’t know where to look: at Pogue, who still held him; at Lulath, who had half drawn his belt knife; or at Celie, who was so beyond anger that she felt almost numb.

  “Who shot the mother?” Celie asked him.

  “I’ve been in the mountain for days,” Ethan said, his eyes rolling. Pogue had let go of his wrist but was now pinning Ethan against a tree with his calloused hands, gripping the slighter youth’s shoulders.

  “That isn’t what I asked,” Celie said. Her voice was soft and she was pleased at how much it sounded like her father’s, right before he unleashed the royal temper, as Rolf always termed it. “I asked you who shot her.”

  “I don’t know,” Ethan said.

  Pogue’s hands tightened on his shoulders, and Ethan squeaked.

  “You’re so clearly lying,” Pogue snarled.

  “I’m not! I don’t know!” Ethan said, and then he whimpered a little as Pogue pressed harder.

  Celie disliked lying, but she had had to do it on occasion in the past. To Prince Khelsh and the Council, when they tried to take over the Castle. To her parents and her tutor, when she’d been hiding a griffin in her rooms. Whenever possible, she tried to tell some of the truth, to make her lies seem more believable and to feel less awful about lying in the first place. She thought she saw that same look on Ethan’s face that she had felt on her own when she told a “half lie.”

  “So, you don’t know the exact person who did it,” she said, squinting at him. “But you know about them. Or others like them. You know something. Tell us!”

  “Who told you to break the egg?” Lilah wanted to know. She looked as though she was about to pick up a rock of her own to throw. “Why would you do something like that unless someone had ordered you to?”

  Ethan looked away from them all and mumbled.

  “What was that?” Rolf straightened up, adjusting his tunic. “I don’t think I caught that,” he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

  “Tharkower,” Ethan muttered.

  “Speak up,” Lilah snapped.

  “He said the Arkower, didn’t he, Pogue?” Celie said.

  Pogue nodded, but Celie didn’t need him to confirm it. She’d known that was what Ethan was going to say.

  “The Arkower?” Lilah put her hands on her hips. “Why would he tell you to destroy any eggs you find?”

  “I have never — not ever — broken an egg, I swear,” Ethan hurried to say. “But he says that if you find eggs that cannot be brought back to the mountain, you should destroy them. If it hatches all alone, it will starve to death. And … well … you saw that we’re trying to bond with them. But the mothers … don’t like it.”

  “Someone killed the mother so they could take the egg to the Arkower, didn’t they?” Lilah still sounded as though she might be sick.

  “Yes,” Ethan whispered.

  “Then why didn’t they take the egg?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. His face was burning with shame, and he couldn’t look in any of their eyes. “I guess something happened to them.”

  “Good,” Celie said. “I hope the father griffin ate them.”

  “Celie!” But then Lilah shook her head, unable to pretend shock. “No, you’re right, I hope something horrible happened to them.” She put both hands to her head and started to pace around the nest. “What will we do? We simply can’t leave the egg here to die!”

  “You know,” Rolf said, “you read stories when you’re little, and you think it would be so amazing to have adventures happen to you. Then you actually go on one, and find out that it’s awful. Nothing but bad food, sleeping cold on the hard ground, and treachery.”

  Pogue snorted.

  “Well, if this is to be our very adventure, then we must be taking him hostages,” Lulath said. He calmly began removing the decorative laces that ran down the side of his right trouser leg. “Hold him for only the moment more, friend Pogue! I will be tying his hands with this!”

  “What? Why? I haven’t done anything,” Ethan protested.

  “Except lie, and try to smash that poor egg,” Celie retorted.

  “I haven’t! I only …” Ethan sagged. “Please,” he whispered. “Please forgive me. Please take me with you.”

  All of Celie’s anger left her. He looked so broken. And she couldn’t imagine what his life had been like living all those years with the Arkower, always being told you would get a griffin, and then having griffins reject you.

  “I can see what you’re thinking,” Rolf said softly.

  “He helped you escape,” Celie pointed out.

  “This is being true,” Lulath said.

  “I don’t trust him,” Pogue argued.

  “We don’t need to trust him,” Rolf said, ever practical. “We just need to keep him with us to make sure he doesn’t go running to the Arkower. And I suppose he doesn’t need to be tied up for that.”

  Celie squinted at Ethan. “You’re a terrible liar,” she told him. “So I want you to look me in the eye and promise me that you will not go running to the Arkower. That you want nothing more than to return to Sleyne with us.”

  Ethan looked Celie straight in the eyes and said, “I swear that I will not betray you. I only want to go to Sleyne, and be where the Castle is.”

  There was silence for a moment, broken only by the rasping sound of Lorcan scraping his beak on one of the silver buttons on Lulath’s tunic. Finally Rolf clapped his hands.

  “Good enough for me, then,” he said.

  “As easy as can it be,” Lulath said, s
lapping Pogue on the back as Pogue released Ethan with a faint growl. “Now, what are we to be doing with that poor sad egg?”

  “Er,” said Rolf. “Well. I know what I’d like to do.”

  “What’s that?” Pogue had taken a few steps away from Ethan but was still watching him carefully.

  “I want to take it with us,” Rolf said.

  This was greeted with more silence, a stunned silence.

  “What if it breaks?” Lilah demanded. “What if the father comes after us? What if it hatches?”

  Rolf poked at a hole in his tunic in thought. “If a griffin comes after us, and we think it’s the father or aunt or uncle or grandmother, we can just give them the egg,” he said reasonably. “It seems pretty thick shelled, and I bet we could make a sling for it from our tunics.”

  “And if it hatches?” Pogue’s voice had an edge to it. “I know what you’re thinking, Rolf!”

  “What? What is he thinking?” Then Lilah answered her own question. “You want to keep it?”

  “Why not?” Rolf said to Lilah. “Celie has a griffin, and now Lulath has a griffin! And if Celie can raise a griffin practically by herself … no offense, Cel, but you are younger than I am … then why can’t I?”

  “None taken,” Celie murmured. “You’d be a fine griffin rider,” she told Rolf in a louder voice.

  It was quickly decided. While Celie woke Rufus and his father, whom she had started calling Lord Griffin in her head, Rolf and Pogue took off their outer tunics, wrapped the egg up, and tied it to Rolf’s back with Lilah’s sash. Celie and Ethan kept watch on the lake, nervously waiting for any sign of the Arkower.

  “We can be doing this,” Lulath said with enthusiasm. “An egg to hatch! A new griffin! Such the adventure for us, we must be writing it down when we are returned to the Castle!”