by J. E. Holmes
“I do not want it.”
He seemed so vehement. Why, then, did she have trouble believing him? She saw him shift beside her, saw the shape of his form. Unbidden came memories of their first kiss, the unending lip-hurting kiss on the rooftop of her father’s manor. Of their night together, his body pressed to hers, his heat mingling with hers. That had been real.
“I don’t care,” she said. “The truth doesn’t change the fact that there was a lie.”
“You also lied.”
“I did, but I told you. I confessed my lies to you, and you came to something like forgiveness.”
“I do forgive you.”
“You’re angry with me because I got in the way, because I was the thing that prevented you from doing what you wanted.”
He waited, and she felt her heart beat in her chest. “Yes,” he said, low.
“I was in the way before your father arrived.”
“Yes,” he said again. She could sense the frustration in his voice. Days and days since the deaths of their fathers, since the betrayal and his failure to retrieve the sword, and he was still beating himself over it.
“I’ve been in the way since you first saw me,” she said. She couldn’t feel her mouth. From her lips to her heart was a straight drop with nothing in it. She heard her heartbeat, felt it, swore she could feel his reverberate in the stone beneath them.
“It was never your fault.”
He had attacked her. She had to remind herself of that, to cool herself. But he regretted it. He had fought her—she’d kicked him. He had chased her, he had brought her into the mess to begin with. He could have helped her escape with him, but she’d been forced to jump into that river that had twice spared her. What if it hadn’t? At least he seemed regretful.
“Tell me something,” she said.
“What?”
“Anything. Just tell me something.”
“I could still exhaust myself with words describing you.”
“Good words?” All the rest of her words caught in her mouth. Falling. She leaned sideways, and her shoulder touched his. “I convinced myself to hate you,” she said.
“I did the same with you.”
“But I don’t hate you. I’m furious with myself, with my better judgment, because I feel like I understand. I know the futility you were fighting against, the hopelessness, the frustration and the anger. I only wish I’d had the strength to stand like you did.”
“No you don’t. You can’t look at me the same way.”
He was right. Even the heat between their shoulders wasn’t the same. Not exactly.
“I’ve only ever stood in small ways,” she said. “Cut my hair in a way they don’t like. Go out at night when they want me to stay put. Talk back just enough to avoid a beating. Talk my way out of the beating when it’s on its way anyway. Have the courage to smile and laugh even after the beating comes and goes.”
She felt his hand on her knee. He rubbed it gently with a thumb.
“I convinced myself to hate you because I honestly felt good being with you those days,” she heard herself say. “I hated you because I thought you made all that false. You made all that not count because of what you did. You called me ninthborn like . . . like they do.”
“I am so sorry.”
“I hated you because I felt I belonged, and then those people I thought had welcomed me turned their blades on me instead.”
He squeezed her knee. “That was awful of me to do. I’m sorry, Ediline.”
“I’m sorry I called you those names,” she said.
“You were angry. It’s okay.”
“I kicked you pretty hard back there,” she said.
“I deserved it.”
“So you really are as good as you seemed to be for all that time?”
“No,” he said. “No, I am far from it. I decided that my father needed to die, and for a while, I had myself convinced that I could be the one to do it, if I needed to.”
“You’re not perfect.”
“I disregarded what I had with you. I don’t think you should forgive me.”
“You tried to tell me that you . . . .” She swallowed and tried to find her tongue. I am in love. “You told your father that. About me. About how you feel.”
“I did.”
Heartbeat. “Do you?”
Fingers around her kneecap. “I do.”
“I . . . .” Lords, what was she supposed to do? Part of her was still terrified. Part of her was still furious. An enormous part of her was still hurt.
But so much of her did not care.
She pivoted and threw her arms around Javras’s shoulders, and she squeezed. He tensed at first, then brought one hand around and set it on her back. She set her head in the crook of his neck. “I worried,” she said. “I cursed myself for doing it, but I worried, despite all that had happened to me.”
“About me?”
“Wulfgar, mostly, but you were there, too.”
He laughed, and she just caught fire. The laugh was real. It was the laugh that went with that honest smile that had made her feel like a whole person when she saw it and not just the ninth. It was the laugh that tore down the facade, broke through the mask of the emissary’s son. It was the laugh that made her squeal with success when she elicited it by saying something inappropriate. It was the laugh she loved.
She grabbed his shoulder and turned his body. Her lips went to his neck first. Into her poured his smell, his taste, his heat. She found his mouth and pushed until she had him on his back on the broken stone roof. Her body, draped over his, was hot despite her damp clothes.
His hands went to her back then—careful of her wound—slid down her sides. It was like distant rumbling thunder, like the sky lit pink and white by a single bolt of lightning, like a gale. When his hands came to her hips, he lifted her with his strong arms. Weightless.
Rather than being brought closer, he pushed, and her lips left his.
“Javras, I—”
“Princess.”
“Please,” she said. Every part of her wanted to be closer to him. Their bodies together were a song, and being separated snapped it like silence. All she could do was try to breathe.
He eased her down, and he sat up. “What will happen?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“We stop this war—no matter what it takes—and what will happen to you? To me?”
“I don’t know. Isn’t that all the more reason to let me kiss you now?”
“The man you’re with—”
“Lords, Javras, stay on one insecurity at a time.” A flaring temper certainly shoved her urges back from whence they’d come. She crossed her arms. “Kuo is my doctor.”
He brightened with embarrassment and turned sharply. “I mean it. What will happen to you? You’ll have to do something to stop the way they treat you.”
“I . . . .” Stop the way they treated her? Their culture practically demanded it of them. They would never stop. “I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Then you’ll have to run away.”
“And so I will,” she said. “I’ve already proven I can do it.”
“This will be different.”
“I’ll be able to pack some spare clothes, at least. You think people won’t hunt me down because of this thing? You think my family will care that I’m gone? You obviously have not met them.”
He groaned. She felt like doing more than that. Why had he interrupted her for this?
“Javras,” she said, “I want to take this one step at a time. I don’t know if I have the mental or emotional strength right now to plan so far ahead.”
“You managed to plan your escape.”
“I had help.”
“You can have help this time, too,” he said. “Before that day, you wouldn’t let me help you make a plan. If you had, do you think things might have gone better?”
“I’m not going to think about that,” she snapped. As if she had done so badly by her
self. “It’s a waste of time. There’s nothing either of us can do to change the past!”
“Keep your voice down.”
“I did just fine,” she said. “I’m still alive. Everything else would have happened no matter what I did. As far as I’m concerned, my actions prevented this war from being something far worse.”
“If you hadn’t—”
There it was. The accusation. “If I hadn’t taken that sword from you, what would you have done with it, except become your father?”
“Ediline—”
“No,” she said. “If you’d taken it, you’d have cut your way out of the royal manor. You would have left a wake of bodies behind you so thick you wouldn’t be able to even imagine the ground beneath them. Or else you would have died. I did the best thing I could have done, because I prevented anyone from killing anyone else that day.”
The assassin from the alcove, her father, his father, and some soldiers at Wulfgar’s hand. Who knows how many more after she left, while they made their escape. Still an amazing saving of lives by removing that weapon.
“Rather than invade Saiyoe,” she went on, “Tithelk would have declared war on you, and they would have declared war on Ronrónfa if you even made it that far. This is better.”
“The slaughter of innocents is better?”
“It would have happened regardless.”
She put her hands on the lip of the wall and shoved off. Nimbly she hit the ground in a crouch with no pain in her legs. Anger and determination pounding in her steps, she stomped back toward the camp. “There are certain terrible things we are powerless to stop, Javras. I just want to do all I can to stop the rest of them.”
Part Three
— The King —
— Chapter 24 —
“On the third darkened day, the water turned foul, dry to the lips of those who drank. Only traitors could sate their thirsts. Only water from the mountain springs remained fresh. Runners were sent into the thick danger; they did not return in time.”
—The Words of the Lords, ed. x
Slick lacquered wood beneath her fingertips. She felt the grain of it, the protective coat over the vulnerable flesh of the wood, and it was as if she could feel the workmanship that went into its creation. Hacking and sawing until the tree came down. More sawing into appropriately sized planks. Planing, sanding, smoothing, polishing. A dozen planks, a hundred, a thousand. Boring holes through them for the ropes, lashing them together, stringing them up, hammering the posts at the ends for support.
Ediline stood on the bridge and ran her fingers along the edge of the rail. The bridge swayed as she was joined by a slinking, stealthy figure. Wien grabbed Ediline’s hood and pulled it up over her head.
“You will be seen,” Wien hissed.
Ediline looked over her shoulder. “My hair is too long.”
“We have taken too much time, Princess. We are not yet at Korv. We must keep moving.”
“I have something I need to do,” Ediline said absently. “I’ll meet you and the others at the northernmost bridge.”
“There is no time—”
“I won’t be long.”
She turned away from Wien without another word and followed the bridge with her hood up. When the bridge came to a landing, a wide platform with houses and workshops, she took the next bridge, and the next, her eyes on the river winding below the whole time.
She found an embankment with a shallow slope. Her boots slid through the moist soil on her way down, but she braced herself on a harvest tree at the bottom of the embankment and didn’t slip.
Ediline slipped further down the riverbank, downstream from the harvest trees. Someone would come down this way to gather food. Downstream would be better. Really, she should have done this while they were still in the ruins of Attenia, or during the six days crossing mountains back into Tithelk. But she hadn’t thought of it then. She’d been preoccupied by the trek, by fear of the sword, by indecision about using it, by indecision about Javras. She’d been torn between kissing him and punching him—his mouth always seemed prime for either—for days.
Once she could no longer see the harvest trees in the midday sunlight, she knelt by the riverbank. The wetness of the soil soaked through to her knees. She threw back her hood, and she reached to her side. Her hand paused there. She ran her other hand through her hair, long on one side, still short on the other. But not as short as it had been. It came down over her ear now.
Wulfgar’s hunting knife made the smallest shiver of noise being removed from its sheath.
With a fistful of her hair in hand, she dug the knife into the fibers and cut. It went through easily, and black and gray-white hairs fluttered down. Some stuck to her thighs and knees. Others hit the surface of the water and floated there. She brought the knife up and went through her hair again, dropping more into the water. Again and again. Then she grew more meticulous. The culling was done, but she wanted to try to even it up, and the knife was a difficult and dangerous tool for someone who didn’t know how to use it well. She’d cut herself on accident a few times, stripping bark or digging in the dirt.
When she was done, she wiped her legs free of hair, washed her hands in the cold river water, and wiped the knife clean. Then she returned it to its sheath, stood, and ran her hands through her hair. Short all over. It must have been shorter than Javras’s now.
She kicked the dirt and the water and scoured the embankment for signs of her hair. She tried to shake her head, rubbed her hands back and forth through it, to get all the loose hairs out. Best to be rid of it anyway.
At the northernmost gate, she found Wien and Wulfgar and Kuo waiting. Kuo and Wulfgar were having a raucous conversation in Fa. Oh, sure, Wien scolded her for removing her hood, but they could go about and shout in foreign languages sure to be heard for a mile.
“Doctor man has good stories,” Wulfgar said.
“What are you doing?” Ediline snapped.
Kuo frowned, his forehead drawn down. “I cannot practice Fa much,” he said.
“No, you.” Ediline jabbed a finger at Wien, who leaned casually against a tree. “You’re supposed to keep Wulfgar in line. Get him to be less conspicuous.”
Wien straightened and shrugged. “I am not afraid of us being recognized,” Wien said.
“And why not?”
Wien shared a look with Wulfgar. “We are not the princess, and we do not have the sword the King desires,” she said. “We should continue. The clouds coming from the west look bad.”
Indeed, a swirling mass of dark clouds pushed their way from the west. “We can hold off, then,” Ediline said. “Wait until the clouds pass to infiltrate Korv.”
Wien raised pacifying hands. “No,” Wien said. “Bad weather is good. Better cover. We must reach Korv tonight.”
Tonight. All the blood drained from Ediline, and she felt dizzy. Had they really come that far already, come so close that they could be back to Korv by this night? She had to close her eyes. Then she reopened them, composure hers despite the tangle of nerves and the weakness in her knees. “Fine then,” she said. “We infiltrate Korv tonight. What sort of rain is that?”
Wien’s eyes darkened, and just the very corners of her mouth curled. It was a sight that made Ediline shiver. That was the expression of someone who felt nothing after shoving her weapon through a man’s throat. “Clear-rain, certainly,” Wien said. “It might turn so cold to hail, perhaps, and there will likely be high winds. If the omens of the fallen Tyrants are with us, we may also be blessed by a dark-rain.”
A storm. Ediline dug her heels into the soft earth to keep herself from shaking. Kuo paled tremendously. “You think our chances are good, under those circumstances?”
“I think we must hurry,” Wien said. “Javras is already ahead.”
“Wien—”
“If we can use the dark-rain as cover, but remain un-dark, the night will be ours. It is a gamble, and I like our chances.”
Wien pulled up the hood of her
cloak and strode away from the bridgetown, onto the jungle pass. Her steps seemed too long for her short legs. Yet quickly she vanished.
Ediline looked to Kuo. “Are you all right?”
He nodded. “I will fight no one,” he said. “I am only there to put your limbs back together.”
“Wulfgar is rubbing off on you,” Ediline said. Her voice was steady, showing none of the fear that lay in her stomach. “That almost sounded like a joke.”
“I teach doctor man very many jokes,” Wulfgar said. He stepped up to Ediline and patted her shoulder. “I like the cut of your hair, Princess, very manly.”
She drew a fist back like she was going to punch him—then remembered hitting the hard knot of muscle that was his arm and thought better of it. “Remind me to hit you later,” she said.
“No, manly means good thing. Tough, strong. No one can stop you, not even large bear.”
“I can be tough and strong without being manly.”
“Maybe is mistake of my words,” Wulfgar said. He turned to Kuo and spoke in Fa, ending in a question. “Tell her what is right word and that it is not insult.”
“Manly is the word you mean,” Kuo said.
“But is not meaning she is man. Obviously she is woman—look at her breasts!”
Now she did punch him, and her knuckles and entire length of her arm hurt for it. He just laughed, and she stomped around him. “Don’t you ever look at my breasts,” she said, “either of you!”
“I did not mean like this,” Wulfgar said. “I do not think of you as attractive person at all, even though your face is very pretty at certain angles. Oy. My grave is being deeper now.”
“Quit while you can,” Kuo said.
“Good advice! Come on,” Ediline said. She plunged into the jungle, dim despite the sun and the temporarily clear skies. The Everquiet was distant. She hardly heard the hum of it. Somewhere beyond this jungle, a grand bridgecity sprawled across a broad river, an old and terrible manor at its center.
“It’s time I go home.”
— Chapter 25 —