Fray

by Rowenna Miller

  “No, I didn’t ask. I expected. I expected everyone to be willing, once the time came, to stand for the ideals they enjoyed discussing so much. To come with me as a sort of Reformist leader. There are many people, nobles especially, who would listen to you.”

  “I can’t do that,” Viola protested.

  “Then don’t come back. Just—just a letter. A pamphlet. You can write to those who might still be unsure, who might decide to follow the law.”

  “If you’re in earnest that I was influential,” Viola said slowly, “then I have done my part. Let me fade into obscurity here.”

  “Obscurity? That’s not life for you and you know it. Help us. Anything to encourage the intelligent among the nobles to make an intelligent choice.”

  “And risk ourselves here? Sophie was nearly killed, I won’t put Annette at that sort of risk with a few poor words on paper. What is worth that kind of risk?”

  “The law, Viola!” Theodor slammed the table with his hand, so hard I feared the marble could crack. “With the law. We wrote the law. We debated the law. We voted on the law. It passed. What is a country without laws? It’s anarchy.”

  “This is too much, too much too quickly!” Viola cried. I knew she was talking about more than the risks—she was thinking of the losses. She didn’t want to admit that the happiness she believed she had finally found, the peace and comfort of an uncontested future with Annette, long denied them, could be taken so suddenly. “You do realize how difficult all of this is?” She clamped her mouth shut. “I’m sorry, that was—”

  “Yes, you know damn well I know how difficult this is. He is my own father. I will be accused of attempting to usurp the throne for my own gain. I very well may die before this is over, and even if I don’t, I will likely be driven from my own country. But the law will be upheld if I can do anything to secure it.”

  Viola hung her head. “No one ever asked you to die for anything,” she said, to my surprise beginning to cry. “I certainly never did, and I never expected anyone to demand it of me.”

  Theodor shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t wait any longer.” He stood up sharply and left the table.

  “Sophie,” Viola said quietly. “I am sorry, I can’t—” She choked. “I can’t let anything happen to Annette, and I don’t relish the thought of being murdered myself, either. My words don’t matter any longer.”

  I began to argue but found I couldn’t. “Perhaps you’re right. About your role, your voice in all of this.”

  She nodded. “If I had known a salon could overturn a country, I would have stuck to card parties,” she said with a bitter laugh.

  “That isn’t true and you know it,” Annette whispered.

  “I do, too,” I said. I watched Viola, her eyes red and her carefully rouged cheeks tearstained. She needed to mourn, to let go of what she had carefully built. “I know you’ll help us when you can.”

  Viola wiped away an errant tear. “I’ll do what I can.” She assessed me. “You’re still wearing that Serafan thing because you haven’t anything else, aren’t you? I’ll have a trunk of clothes packed. Who knows when you’ll see the inside of your own closet again,” she said.

  “I—thank you,” I said.

  “If things… don’t go well,” Annette said, swallowing that thorny reality, “you are welcome here. Always.”

  I nodded, even though I knew returning to West Serafe was the least plausible scenario in my future, and embraced both of them. Then I found Theodor pacing the garden near the far wall and hidden from Viola and Annette by a trellis of trumpet vine. “Really, Theodor. You can’t expect them to—”

  “If I can’t expect them to, Sophie, I am afraid how few I can expect it from.” He leveled his hazel eyes on me, gripping my hands as though I could buoy him up and prevent him from drowning in the morass of uncertainty opening before us. “If even Viola and Annette are not willing to risk everything, is anyone?”

  I withdrew my hands slowly. “The rest of the country, Theodor. This can’t be a fight between nobles. It’s not a fight between nobles and it never truly was.”

  He sank onto a stone bench. Knots of trumpet vine climbed behind him, and he absently plucked a sticky blossom. I sat beside him. “If you’re going to take this on, you can’t do it on behalf of Reformist nobles. That’s over now.”

  He raised his head. “I am on the side of the law. Whatever else.”

  “And in being on the side of the law, you must accept that your allies are now the common people who have been fighting for their reforms longer than you have. Not your fellow nobles who finally listened. Yes, some of them will side with you.” I closed my hand over his, the trumpet vine blossom trapped between our fingers. “But most will not. The king has not, and so those loyal to tradition over law will not. We have to look forward, not back.”

  “What frightens me, what I can’t fathom—what comes out of this? I am fighting to uphold the law, to retain the reforms for the people. Not to overthrow our law, not to rout the nobility.”

  “There’s no way to know for sure,” I said softly. “Between you and my brother, I have confidence you will guide the ideals of this fight well. But you have to let go of the reins, at least a little. This isn’t your revolution.”

  52

  ALBA’S WHITE VEIL WAS FRESHLY STARCHED AND NEARLY GLOWED in the sunlight. If the purpose of the veil was to encourage modesty or to stifle beauty, it didn’t work in her case, the stiff folds providing a contrast to her soft features and round cheeks. Keeping her hair covered only highlighted the sparkle of her pale blue eyes. The stiff sea breeze scoured some pink into her pale cheeks.

  Ballantine had arranged the ship, a brig whose owner had a reputation of gambling debts, and would captain the ship himself, with a crew of Serafans paid well enough through the ship’s owner not to ask questions. Kristos and Sianh jockeyed over who should direct the crew in loading our scant luggage, and Theodor wisely kept out of their scuffle, charting various courses with his brother, debating which was preferable, direct routes or routes that skirted Pellia or the islands that dotted the sea to hide our trail.

  Though I perhaps should have stayed inside with Theodor, I needed the stiff breeze and bright sunlight to clear my head. Our leave-taking from Viola and Annette had felt stilted and pained; I knew that Theodor grieved what he saw as the loss of his cousin and his dear friend. I felt stretched thin, understanding their reticence but unable to sympathize with avoidance any longer. I had tried that route and failed.

  Alba turned to me with a pale smile. “There is something we ought to discuss,” she said quietly.

  “Of course,” I replied, though I was not ready for more conversations about strategy or my ultimate destination.

  “I have not been perhaps entirely honest with you.” She gripped the rail as my eyes widened. “And I should tell you before we leave port. You can run back to your friends’ estate if you so wish.”

  “Very little could convince me to do that,” I said.

  She laughed. “Don’t speak so hastily. You see, I was truthful that I have been in contact with your brother since last fall. I had read his work and I did wish to correspond with him.” She broke eye contact with me and turned her gaze toward the deep aquamarine of the ocean. “But he was not the first in the movement with whom I had contact. Pyord Venko wrote to me first.”

  “Venko,” I breathed. I should have known—I knew that he drummed up support from Kvys patrician houses. “That’s past now,” I said.

  “It is,” she said. “But you must understand. Pyord was not merely a contact, and my house not merely one he hoped to add to his bankroll. He was my cousin. On my mother’s side.”

  I blinked, the sun reflecting on the waves suddenly too bright. “We… we don’t choose our family,” I stammered.

  “For many years, I would have chosen Pyord every time,” she said staunchly. “We were friends as children, playing games of make believe in the birchwood in summer and telling stories at the f
ireside during the long winter months. He—” Her voice caught and I thought I saw tears glimmer in her eyes. “He was a brilliant child. He taught himself to read before his parents hired him a tutor. He taught me to read. I suppose, in the end, he trusted his own brilliance too far.”

  I found I couldn’t answer.

  “When he asked my house to support him, I agreed. It seemed a wise investment, from the way he sold it—the government of Galitha was bound to change, and my house would shift from one of average consequence to highly influential if it was one of those that had been a friend and ally of the new government from the first.” I understood this—the same reason Kvyset would tacitly support us now, the gamble that a new government would be a better ally.

  Alba stared out into the water for several breaths before she continued. “I sent money. I even—and this is what I find I have difficulty admitting—I even promised him our cavalry.” She turned back to me. “I am sorry. I didn’t realize that his ambition had overtaken his ethics, or that his intellect had overtaken his compassion. I still saw him as a brilliant boy, a visionary.”

  I withdrew from the railing. Alba was right—part of me wanted to bolt from her, to run from the ship and up the gangplank and into Port Triumph. But another part of me understood. A part of me that had trusted Kristos, loved him, and been betrayed for that love. I had the tenuous, brittle chance of rebuilding that trust with my brother, something Alba would never have with Pyord.

  “I wish,” I said, with deliberate control, “that I had the chance to know the brilliant boy you did. I only saw the ambitious man he became.”

  “I wish you had, too,” Alba whispered.

  “Kristos knew, of course. That you and Pyord were close, were related. He didn’t tell me.”

  “I asked him to let me tell you in my own time. I presumed that you wouldn’t trust me if you knew. And I needed you to trust me enough so that I could help you and, in turn, help your country.”

  I hesitated. I had been lied to and manipulated in worse ways than Alba keeping a secret about her relationship to Pyord. Yet those lies had turned me into a pawn, and that had recast me in a new mold that didn’t trust as easily, that didn’t forgive lies. Alba had saved my skin, of course—but Pyord would have done the same if it benefited him. She had my brother’s trust, but that inspired little confidence. She had sought me out at the summit, and that could have been a ploy from the beginning.

  “I’m not going to abandon our plans,” I said finally. “But I—please excuse me.” I retreated toward the other side of the ship, facing the open water, and saw Sianh standing near the prow of the ship.

  “How much of that did you hear?” I asked.

  “Enough,” he replied with a faint smile. “It’s a small ship. We should likely get used to a certain lack of confidentiality.” He turned his gaze back toward the low waves lapping the docks.

  His distance was maddening. I didn’t know or trust him any more than Alba, but I expected some response, either outrage at her deception or consolation that she was still trustworthy.

  “And?” I finally asked.

  “And she was close with a man who used you poorly.”

  “Perhaps you don’t know the entire story—”

  “I know enough.” He shrugged. “What are you asking? Do I think you should be her friend, confide all your secrets in her?” He shook his head with a laugh. “I do not care. And neither should you, not any longer.”

  “If I can’t trust her—”

  “What is trust? What are you trusting her with, precisely? She is your ally, not your friend. You want the same thing, you are useful to one another to obtain it.” Sianh didn’t take his eyes off the water, so he didn’t see my stunned face as I fell silent. I had layered the two, ally and friend, and stitched them up together with trust like a seam lapped over itself.

  “Your friends may not be on your side, and those on your side may not be your friends,” he continued. “You see that when you look to the Lady Viola and the Lady Annette, yes? Untangle the two, friendship and alliance, and you will be happier.”

  “I doubt I’ll be happier,” I replied.

  “Wrong word. You will stop driving yourself to distraction, fretting over who is your friend. The meaning of trust with an ally is utilitarian, not emotional.”

  “I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”

  He softened. “You’re likely not. It is a strange thing, to stop seeing yourself as merely a self, and to see yourself as representing many others. Acting for many others.”

  Sianh was right. I understood, as a shop owner, that my choices were for others and not only for myself. I had to translate that into this new world I found myself floundering in. I wasn’t acting on my behalf, but on the behalf of an entire nation. Sobered by that thought, I put aside the question of trust as a friend would think of it, and accepted, faltering, the reality that continuing a partnership with Alba was best for those I represented.

  “It gets easier,” he said. “I knew the men serving under me were not my friends. They had friends among one another. They were permitted that luxury. Those of the same rank as I, by and large, were not my friends. Peers, perhaps, not friends. It goes without saying that my superiors were not my friends.”

  “I don’t think we quite have that sort of rank structure here,” I cautioned him.

  “We will. And you are among the leaders. And leaders have very, very few friends.” He grinned. I didn’t return the smile. “Come now. You will have fame and a place in history.”

  “At the price of being lonely and friendless, constantly embroiled in a game of ‘who is my ally’ with everyone I meet?”

  Sianh laughed. “Hardly. Be patient. And don’t look for your friends among those with whom you must work.”

  I nodded and left him looking out over the water. I wondered if he intended to spend the entire voyage that way, eyes fixed on some point in the churning waves.

  53

  I RETREATED TO THE TINY, SPARE CABIN I SHARED WITH THEODOR. The pale wood of the walls reflected the sunlight burrowing through a small porthole. On a gray day the cabin would be a gloomy place, but now sunlight danced on the walls, reflected from the water into warped, fanciful luminosity. Someone had placed a trio of water lilies in a low, footed bowl, an unnecessary affectation, but I inhaled their spicy scent anyway.

  I sank onto the straw tick that would serve as a mattress. This is who I was now, then. A leader of the Reformists. A founder, perhaps, of a new era for Galitha. Just as likely—perhaps more likely—a footnote in history, one of the executed or exiled rebels to the Crown swiftly annihilated in the Galatine Civil War.

  And what could I do, anyway? Theodor was an inspiring leader, Kristos was a visionary and writer, Sianh was a military strategist, and Niko had dredged together a resistance and held the capital already. I was no one. A seamstress with a business that was likely a casualty of war. A consort to a prince who was unlikely to ever inherit a crown. A charm caster whose magic, which once seemed so potent and full of possibility, now seemed insignificant.

  I returned to the deck, where the coast of Serafe was beginning to recede and the salt spray to whip across the deck.

  “We’ve a direct course mapped out,” Ballantine said, noting points on the map in front of him with his forefinger and thumb, turning them like a pair of pincers. “Niko Otni has an army, of a sort, raised to hold the capital. We need to establish a base of operations south of the city—and here is a good place to make landfall.” He pointed to a mark on the map—Hazelwhite, a small town I had never heard of.

  “We’ll be outmatched, at least at first, in manpower as well as supplies and funds.” Theodor traced the sharp black dot on the map. I reached for his hand.

  “Yes. But as you say, the Royalists are spread far and wide there, too, despite their money and their supplies. You will need to strategize, you see, to even the field.” Sianh ticked off points on his thin fingers. “Capture what supplies you can, what ar
ms offer the most advantage. Cannon, most likely. Render what supplies you cannot capture useless. Fight as foxes.”

  Kristos laughed. “That sounds like one of my bad metaphors.”

  “In the Serafan army, there are light forces—the word is similar in Serafan to fox, so they are often called the foxes. Small raiding parties, ambush attacks.”

  “Guerilla warfare.” Ballantine exhaled through his nose. I felt Theodor’s hand tighten.

  “No, it’s not dignified,” Kristos said. “You’ll notice you’re the only one of us here in a fine uniform.”

  “We have little choice,” Theodor conceded. “So we shore up at Hazelwhite.”

  “We should consider the map again,” Sianh said. “There is much to discuss.”

  I slipped away. Sailors went about their tasks, experience showing in the quick, effortless movements. I wondered what they thought of us, a strange group paying more than the job was worth. Would they get a cut of the extraordinary bonus Theodor had offered the brig’s owner? One scrawny sailor in threadbare slops glanced at me; I doubted it.

  Theodor found me leaning on the rail, watching a distant island slip farther into the horizon. The country already appeared as a low, green smudge punctuated by black peaks.

  “Even from this distance, the outer Serafan islands look so very different from Galitha’s islands.”

  “Perhaps not so different,” I mused as a sailor hauled a rope past us, tugging his trousers up by the waistband. “Are you all right?”

  “I will be.” His strained smile torqued an immobile face. “What Sianh describes—quite frankly, it terrifies me. My only military training is book knowledge and some archaic swordplay, not this ragged business in the dirt.”

  “You mean actual war?”

  “Yes, actual war.” There was grief in that lopsided smile. “I never wanted war to come to Galitha. We tried to avoid it. And then… I’m not quite sure how to be a leader in this movement and not a usurper to the throne, how to ally with those who would have overthrown the government last winter when my goal is to institute rule of law today.”