by J. E. Holmes
“You do know.” Kuo’s voice was harsh.
“I . . . .” She had never succeeded, but she had also never stopped trying. “I would try.”
“Then—?”
“But it’s impossible,” she said. “You don’t know. The number of doors and walls and spears between me and him . . . it’s impossible.”
Kuo grunted again.
“I need to know what this is,” she said.
He was silent for a long time. She finally stopped weeping, and she tried to close her eyes to sleep. Visions flashed behind her eyelids. Wounds and blood. Shadows shifting. A violet blur. Even Marv, huddled shivering under her bed, all alone. She wanted to cry more.
“Sleep, Princess,” he said.
The way he said it was so different from the way Javras had called her Princess. Probably the most confusing part of all this, of her maelstrom of feelings, was that she missed him. Javras had lied to her, had turned on her, had sent his assassin after her. But she missed him still.
— Chapter 20 —
“I could examine a vine of grapes, count off the eighth among them, and assume it will be the sweetest. And perhaps it will be. But it was I who decided it was so. Perhaps another on the vine would have been sweeter, if not for my supposed insight. How much sweetness, goodness, possibility is lost to presumption?”
—Mako, philosopher of Paar, 608-672
The agony was worse the next day. Her back was a map of pain, all emanating from the hot gash running perpendicular to her spine. How she’d survived the blow was beyond her understanding. Kuo told her she was exceptionally lucky. He checked her wound and changed her bandage. He found herbs to rub into it, and that was a tear-filled trip to the desolation and back. But afterward, it was a little better.
They traveled slowly. Ediline made them turn aside, double back, stop and wait and see. No one followed them. Still she took precautions to reduce their tracks. They crossed and recrossed rivers and streams, wound circles, and took great care not to disturb their surroundings.
Kuo stopped to wash his clothes and bathed in front of her, fully naked under the sun as if nothing was strange about it. She turned away and stayed turned away until he was clothed again. It made her think too much of Javras, of the contours of his body, the weight of him on top of her. She burned quietly with longing and frustration at those memories.
At Kuo’s insistence, she allowed him to help her remove her clothing, but then banished him until she had finished bathing and needed help again. He had a low opinion of her clinging to modesty, but he obliged.
Kuo did not mourn, at least not that she could see, but he helped her fill the spans of time with conversation. He told her about his parents, about Taibenai, about the school where he’d studied. Taibenai had a port large enough for a thousand ships, and the university was actually different buildings all over the city, connected by special bridges and walkways. He’d always been the stern, quiet, focused one. He had only a few close friends, whom he hadn’t seen in over a year. He had a gift for languages. When confronted with career options for a linguist, he had elected not to content himself as translator or ambassador or politician, instead learning medicine, so he could help people across Lanen.
“You were a princess,” he said in return.
“Yes,” she said. She didn’t want to talk about it, but that was unfair. Why hide anything from him? They hid in the jungles from her nation’s soldiers. Everything terrible followed her. He should know why. “I was not liked.”
“Did you live in a palace?”
“Not like the Lords’ castles,” she said. “I don’t know if the other nations have castles. Korv is a bridgecity. The King’s manor is more like a really, really large house. They gave me a little house all my own, stuck on the side.”
They had just climbed a steep cliff and were resting in the shade. Thanks to her wound, she did much of her resting standing up. Crouching or sitting pulled on her stitches and was more pain than it was worth.
“Are you religious, Kuo?” she asked abruptly.
“My parents are Ruiners,” he said. “I am only a little.”
“Ah,” she said.
“In Saiyoe, we have other gods,” he said. “Old ones, long before Attenia. Whether we believe in Lords or Tyrants, we have other beliefs that connect us.”
“Really? And the Church allows it?”
He frowned deeply. “Morelek brutalized my people for their beliefs,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wincing. That wars might be fought for reasons other than a desire for more land, more power, was a foreign concept to her. “I didn’t know.”
He shrugged, his face still stern and distant. “I am a doctor,” he said. “I wanted to treat the sick, not to follow the path of war and put people back together. Your brother has no reason to kill us.”
“No,” she said, her mouth hot and dry, “he doesn’t. I’m sorry. You wanted to talk about me, and I brought this up again.”
He nodded. “Are you ready to walk again?”
“Yes.” He pushed her away when she tried to help him up, putting on that same doctor’s face, weary of telling her the same things not to do to reopen the wound in her back. She tried to smile, to give him some kind of comfort, but she couldn’t manage it.
A day later, after cresting a ridge, she saw it. A stone tower burst above the line of trees. In the distance there were more like it, smaller, spreading up toward the mountains. The pain across her back was enough to keep her on her swollen feet, but she stopped in her tracks, leaned on Kuo, and gaped. The top of the tower was crumbled, and great cracks ran down the full height of it. She could see it from miles away. It was magnificent.
The approach felt eternal. Always it loomed in the distance, and once she was down among the trees, beneath the canopy, she could only see glimpses of it. Then, finally, she broke through a line of trees and saw the stone slabs of the foundation. It was bigger around than any building she’d ever seen—besides Sladt, but that was hardly one building.
“It’s incredible,” she said.
“It is a ruin.”
“Have you ever seen them before?” She walked to it and lay her hand on the grainy weathered stone.
“Ediline!”
She laughed—the first laugh since the massacre—at his face. He was horrified, and he cringed when she touched it. “What?” she said. “Are you afraid it will curse me, that I’ll bring down the wrath of long-dead gods?”
“It is maybe a thousand years old,” he said. “It could fall on you.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t thought of that. The thought of being crushed beneath a cascade of stone pushed her to take great steps back and observe it from there. What had it been? The Tithelk in her thought maybe a watchtower, a defensive structure, but what would the Lords of Attenia have feared at their borders?
“What are you looking for, in these ruins?” he asked.
“I . . . don’t really know.”
“Damn you,” he said.
She laughed again, and he just looked angry. Then he managed a small chuckle. It was the first time she’d seen Kuo laugh. Or smile? He never smiled. He was just surly. All the time, even before the slaughter. It felt wrong to laugh, after what had happened, but her cheeks hurt at the small exercise, and it felt good.
After the relief of the laughter, she still had to consider what he’d asked. There were thousands and thousands of buildings, and she had no idea where Ashwin had found the bloodsword. She had come to the sensible conclusion that trying to find that particular place would be completely futile. So she had been coming up with a new plan, in the days they’d been traveling west.
“I want to destroy this sword,” she said. She sighed. “Someday. I can’t afford the time to search these ruins for answers, and I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to find them, anyway.” She took a breath. “So, we go north. I will confront my brother.”
A tiny smile clung to Kuo’s face. “Thank you, Princess.”
“I’m not doing it just for you, or for Tailiet. Not for this damned sword, or because my brother deserves to be stopped. I’m not even going to do it for all of Lanen, for all the lives that might be lost.” Her mouth was dry, but her legs felt newly strong.
“Those would all be good reasons,” he said.
She took a deep breath. “Kuo, I told you that I wasn’t liked at home, but it’s more than that. I am the ninthborn of Tithelk. I am the unlucky, the hated, the one who wouldn’t die.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I’ve always been—wait, what? You know?”
He frowned at her, his eyebrows drawn down into that V again. “I asked you your age,” he said. “You told me you are a princess. I thought you assumed I knew.”
“Oh,” she said. Now she felt stupid.
“You want to prove them wrong.”
She stumbled past her embarrassment. “I—yes, I do.” Lost defiant fervor woke in her. Her voice rose. “My mother told me that I could have been great. She pitied me. I could have had potential. Just missed it. Was that supposed to make me feel better? I don’t know. What I do know is that there is evil in the world, and I lived just beneath it. Somehow, it didn’t touch me, couldn’t stomach it. What took me a long time to see is that I do have potential.”
“Yes, you do,” Kuo said. He folded his arms, approval at the edges of his mouth.
“My brothers and sisters and father thought the Lords had nothing in mind for me, that I was nothing but a miserable inconvenience, a tragedy waiting to happen.” The words curled through her like hot smoke. “They thought I would be better off—that we’d all be better off—if I was just dead or gone. Well, now I’m gone, but I’m going to come back, because I can make this better.”
“Will you become Queen?”
She nearly screamed in surprise, but it stuck in her throat and came out as a bizarre squeal. Never in her deepest, strangest dreams had she ever considered ruling her nation. It could never happen. It was sad and laughable to think that it could happen. Even if all her siblings and both her parents died in some tragic accident, it wouldn’t happen, because the people of Tithelk would rather have a paralyzed newt as their monarch than Ediline.
Someone else would do it. “No,” she said, “but I won’t let Tithelk be led by a tyrant.”
“Who, then? I see potential in you.” He eyed the tower behind her as if he worried it would fall. “You have the strength to stand, and you have the stomach to carry that weapon.”
It was odd, to have someone believe in her. “Thank you, Kuo.”
“Who, then?” he repeated.
“My twin brother, if he can stop this war,” she said. “I know he can be a good person again. My father died before he could fully make him into himself. There’s still time, there’s still hope.”
“Good,” Kuo said. “North.”
She stepped out of the shadow of the tower and felt a little warmer, a little stronger. Her back was a clinging, crushing vice of pain, but she felt it less. There was festering fear at returning, the still-lingering nausea of the death that they had left behind, and wriggling anxiety, but Ediline felt surer of herself. She’d made a decision. Even if she died, she would not turn back on this decision. She would confront Ancil.
And, somewhere, she would have to confront Javras, too.
— Chapter 21 —
“On the darkest day of history, one man was absent. Eight Lords of Attenia rallied their peoples and stood against the dark with wills of steel and the light of righteousness with them. They could not find the Deceiver, the Shadowalker, who left a trail of his crime behind him, uncovered after the Fall.”
—The Words of the Lords, ed. xii
Fore-autumn came, and the air began to turn. The stone structures continued to impress. There were towers, some grand complexes, but most were completely crumbled, mounds of stone or harshly blunted fragments of walls. Days went by, rains fell, and the gash across Ediline’s back—thanks to Kuo’s medicine—was healing. She slept a little better, only waking to nightmare visions a few times a night. Twice, Kuo woke gasping and clutching at her, but he wouldn’t talk about it.
There was a whisper, and it spoke a name, hushed and forgotten.
“There are more of them,” said a youthful voice, female and husky.
“Where this time?” said a man’s voice. It was tired, its resilience worn like the coast battered by centuries of storms.
“Does it matter? This is no coincidence. You need to see the signs—“
“Precautions are being taken.”
“They are too slow,” snapped the young woman. “It is all too slow.”
“What signs?” asked a third voice, plaintive. Silence followed her, a respectful void. Her voice was soft, yet protective.
“I have said it before,” said the man. “This is all happening after it was found. After that, things have changed, and not merely these incidents. Small changes, in the silence, in the people. They fear.”
“Yes,” said the third voice.
“Fear will protect them,” said the man. “Fear will keep the people, and so will we.” His voice changed, became hushed, closer. “Before I am dead, see that this is made right.”
“It will be ready in time,” whispered the third voice, reassuring. Her voice was resolute, even when quiet. It gave the impression of marble statues, of soldiers in a line, of a grand hall with a wide staircase. “It must.”
There was a gap. Ages seemed to stretch. There was a shifting in the space, a change to the arrangement of things. The silence lingered, pressed by a sound too immense to hear. It melted away. “It must,” the woman’s voice echoed.
“And if it is not, will you come to me?” spoke a smooth voice. His was different from the first man’s, like velvet.
“If it is not . . . .” The woman paused with great pain. “Yes, I will, my friend.”
A hand clamped down on Ediline’s mouth. She screamed and bit into the glove, grogginess ripped away. Massive arms dragged her through the mud, agony on the wound in her back. Tears welled in her eyes despite her fear, despite the fire in her chest. Her hands were empty. No hunting knife, no bloodsword. Before being dragged too far, she saw the black line in the dirt, darker than the night.
Past a line of trees, away from Kuo, she was flung to the ground. The hand on her mouth pulled away. Before she could get up, before she could round on her attacker, silver flashed in the moonlight, a blade at her neck.
She looked up at the midnight eyes of Javras. He still wore the formal attire from the incident in Korv, weathered over the bygone weeks. Behind him, the owner of the massive arms, Wulfgar. He, too, still wore the formal attire, but he’d opened the vest and rolled up the sleeves. And somewhere out of sight must have been Wien.
At the end of Javras’s sword—still gorgeous and etched with runes and characters—Ediline was utterly shocked, and she was silent. Wulfgar let out a small chuckle.
“Sharp-mouth princess is speechless,” Wulfgar said in his usual volume. It ached to hear him sound exactly as she remembered when he’d been jovial with her, not dragging her through the mud. “I like this.”
“Shut your mouth or I’ll—”
“Ediline,” Javras said. He angled the sword, lowering the tip to her chest. Her heart. As much as it ached to hear Wulfgar, it ached eighty times as much to hear Javras speak her name. It wasn’t cold, wasn’t sharp or harsh or angry or villainous. It was exactly the same, relieved or longing even, and it tore through her.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Kill me and take it.”
“I don’t want to kill you,” Javras said, “and I don’t want to take it. I don’t want it.”
“You fooled me.”
“I will put the sword away if you promise not to run.”
Her eyes darted to the line of trees. The bloodsword was beyond them. Was it all right? Had Wien taken it? She damned herself for being worried after the sword before Kuo, the actual person who migh
t be hurt. But it was the curse. She wasn’t a horrible person, just cursed.
“Is he dead?” she said.
“Your lover-man?” Wulfgar said with a laugh. “No, Wien will not kill him.”
“He isn’t—”
“I don’t care,” Javras said, his voice turning like ice. He cared. Oh, it was obvious he cared. Normally he lied so smoothly.
“I won’t run,” she said. “Unless you hurt him or me. Then you’ll be lucky if I run.”
Javras straightened and returned the sword to its sheath. It settled into the scabbard with a satisfying clink, and the shimmering sound of the gliding metal was remarkably sensual. Her skin tingled.
“After you leapt,” Javras said, “your twin ordered us to stand down.”
“He is king now.”
“Regardless,” Javras said, “we couldn’t stand down. We escaped, and we have been tracking you far better than Tithelk’s armies. It took some time to catch up to you. We would have approached you in that village while you were there, but we didn’t want anyone hurt.”
Wulfgar stared at the ground. “I am shamed I did not stop that killing.”
Ediline sat up, wincing, and then stood. “What happened, then? You just watched? Straad butchered those people.”
“We were following you,” Javras said. “By the time they descended on the village, by the time we would have been ready to defend it, it was too late. Besides, there were too many of them for us—you were the only one who could have stopped them all."
“Me? I’ll hit you, Javras, right in your face. Lords know I’ve earned the right.”
“With the bloodsword, you could have done it.”
She almost asked him to explain how. The thing had belonged to his father. Surely he knew something of how it worked. He had known that the first thing to do was to make himself invulnerable to its blade. She almost asked, but she stopped herself first to consider the consequences. Learning how to use it could help her. If she knew how to use it, she could be a proper threat if she needed to be. But she didn’t want to be tempted into using it.