by J. E. Holmes
A hundred realizations hit her, followed by a thousand questions. She started to sit up, but the pain through her was like cracks in a struck pane of glass. She groaned, and he eased her back down.
“Kuo—”
“Easy,” he said.
She let out a breath. “Javras—no, Wulfgar. Did he—?” She cut herself off, her tongue twisting, too hurt to ask, too desperate not to.
“He survived,” Kuo said, shaking his head. “Barely. Your doctors are poorly trained.”
“Who needs doctors when you could have warriors instead?” She laughed and then regretted the choice. “He’s alive?”
“Most of him,” Kuo said. “His injuries were severe. He needs a long time to recover. He may not walk.”
“Oh.”
“But he lives. I already heard him joking.”
Relief spread through her. “I’m glad. And Javras?”
“You haven’t asked about yourself.”
“I know I’m still breathing.” She could barely feel her face beneath pain and numbness that was surely meant to keep her from feeling the pain. Her torso ached deep through. But she was alive, she could feel it, and she would stay that way. Her luck hadn’t run out yet.
“Javras is recovering well,” Kuo said.
“Good. Kuo, are you okay?”
He straightened and wiped at his face again. “I’m fine.”
“You were worried about me.”
“I was, yes.”
“Thank you.” Her fingers crawled an inch at a time away from the empty cup, and she reached them upward until he touched her hand. She held it. “Thank you,” she said again.
“You haven’t asked about . . . .”
“What? I know my brother is dead. I watched him die.”
“Not that."
“I don’t know—shit, what happened to the sword?”
“It’s here, safe with you.”
“With me.”
“Yes,” Kuo said.
She didn’t believe him. “Show me. Javras didn’t take it? Neither did Ancil?”
“No,” he said. He pointed to the corner of the room, where the black-and-gold scabbard leaned to the wall, the pure black hilt in its place. It was there. She no longer felt the desperate panic, the unnatural need to know if it was still there.
“They did not try,” Kuo said. “Your twin promised it would be safe here with you, and he has put a guard outside your door. Only I have been allowed to visit you.”
“Has anyone else tried?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.” Still undesired. Hated, certainly. She had to have earned feared, now, too. Bringer of destruction, ender of kings. Soon she’d have a reputation to rival Ashwin’s. Lords, she was sick with herself. The water threatened to come back up.
Kuo snatched up a bowl and held it under her chin, and she spit up in it. Then he walked away, rinsed it out, and came back. He set it down and wiped her lips.
“Kuo, I didn’t want to do it,” she said. “But I just needed to survive. I really hoped I could save Deffren. I never hated him the way he hated me. I just wanted him to know . . . .” She lost her words, and she began to weep. Quiet, tired tears. But she halted abruptly when she saw Kuo join her, passively, just tears rolling down his unkept cheeks.
“I wanted him to know I didn’t mean to,” she finished. “What’s wrong?”
“Your brother sanctioned the slaughter of Tailiet. You killed the man who ordered it, brought down the king who allowed it.” He sniffed and wiped at his face, just now realizing he had been crying. “Ediline, you are a hero.”
“A hero who hates herself?”
“Being a hero can’t be easy. You made a difficult decision in the snap of a moment. Now you deserve to rest.”
Marv murmured in her lap. Lifting her hand to stroke his head took more effort than she cared to admit, so after a few loving pats she let her hand fall limp again at her side. Maybe Kuo was right. Maybe she did deserve to rest. Her eyelids were heavy. Her whole face seemed to be dragged down.
“Now that you are coherent,” he said, “I will go. I will check in on you again soon.”
“You deserve to sleep, too,” she said. “Doctors need to sleep, too.”
He said nothing, patted her hand, and stood. Then he paused a moment. Gently, he bowed. She was so stunned that she didn’t think of anything witty or sharp or smart to say until he had left and it was too late, but she was moved. Marv grumbled and rotated in his nestled spot on her legs.
Ediline let her eyes rest.
— Chapter 29 —
"On the eighth darkened day, the Nine Masters of Attenia delivered an oration to their people. ’We are fallen,’ they said. ’Our time has come. You, our people, will persevere, despite all that we have done to wrong you. Despite our might or resilience or resolve, we have failed. We are not gods. Beware the Desolation, the Dark and the Silent and the Deep Below. Tonight, we die for you.’
“Each of these regretful Tyrants stepped from beneath the Arch and into the roil of the Desolation. Darkness swallowed the Arch and all beneath it. By sunrise, the string of darkened days had ended, and all of Attenia was in ruin, including its glorious Arch. Seven bodies of would-be gods were found. Gone were the Tyrants, who sacrificed themselves, yet too late for redemption.
“Nevertheless, their people lived, and another day followed."
—The Chronicle of Tyrants, ed. ii, since revised
It was days until she was allowed by Ancil to leave her house. She was starting to think Ancil was just trying to hide her from people who wanted to throttle her, but when Kuo said she could go on walks, Ancil permitted it.
When she left, she brought the sword with her. It remained sheathed, and she wore it at her hip, where its weight was perfect, where it balanced her. She walked as far as the ladder before returning to her house to catch her breath. Then she did it again, again, again, then climbed the ladder, then down and back. She wore herself out, all under Kuo’s observation. She was shocked to actually find a guard outside her door like Kuo had said. Disturbed to find that the guard was kind to her. Something was amiss.
When she could receive visitors, she took them outside. Geltir came and filled her in on gossip. A few whispered about her as a hero, as Kuo had said, but most were appalled and frightened that a ninth possessed the mythic sword once more, just like in the fall of Attenia. Ravings about the end-times were unavoidable. A desperate few fled, for fear of apocalypse. It would have been too much to ask, she realized, to expect them to change.
The Church of the Lords was silent, contemplative, preparing. They couldn’t stand for this. Deffren’s atrocities had been made public; the other nations would look to the Church to issue a rebuke of Tithelk. Something would be done. It made Ediline nervous, but she had no choice but to bear it and await their reaction.
She wanted to ask about Remer, but no one she spoke to knew who she was. She wanted to thank her, and to ask her eighty questions, and to see if she was okay. In their fierce struggle together, Ediline had felt something between them, a bond born of blood and fear. If she could add a friend to her pitifully small list, she wished to.
She was visited by Isbeil, though her favorite sister refused to discuss the shadows until Ediline had recovered. So they chatted about science and about how insufferable men could be, about mundane things, as if nothing were wrong at all, as if Ediline hadn’t murdered their brother. It was nice. And it was awful. A sick, horrible, aching guilt ate through Ediline’s stomach.
After Isbeil came Betrys, Cardiv, Emlin, and Trayiv, all the siblings she hadn’t killed, one by one, except for Corsen, who hadn’t been home in ten seasons. The visits were terse but polite, most likely urged by Ancil, who had not yet come to her. They congratulated her on not being dead, all swore that none of them had really supported Deffren, but no one talked about what had actually happened. The guilt in her chest curled in on itself and grew.
After more days, she was deem
ed strong enough to walk beyond Sladt, which elated her. Being in the manor was oppressive, filled with now even more horrible memories.
No one needed to tell her. Ancil was now King of Tithelk. She hoped he would prove to be as much a better king as he was a better man than their father, at least if he was still the Ancil that she had grown up with. Her first action, once she was strong enough to move beyond the walkway outside her house, was to seek out her brother. She had a few things stewing in her mind to say to him.
Even though Ancil had not only permitted but insisted that she hold onto the bloodsword, a spike of fear struck through her when she strapped it to her hip, intending to see the King. The last couple times, that had ended poorly.
She clasped her belt, buttoned her vest, and donned a jacket. Kuo held it for her while she slid her arms into it, and he said nothing. He could claim that she was no different from any other patient, but she knew better than that. She’d been any other patient in Tailiet, and he hadn’t remained around her longer than necessary. He vanished only occasionally, for short periods of time, mostly to ensure that Tithelk’s brutal physicians hadn’t accidentally killed Wulfgar.
“Kuo, are you going to accompany me everywhere I go?” she said.
“I just might.” He straightened her collar and reached around her neck to fasten her cloak.
“Oh,” she said. She had expected a witty response, but then she remembered that, aside from his conversations with Wulfgar, wit was not among Kuo’s skills with language.
“At least until you’ve recovered,” he added.
“And after that?”
“I will go where I am needed.”
“Taibenai?”
“My family needs to know I live,” he said.
“Ah.” She hoped that communication between Saiyoe and Tithelk could resume, that Ancil would thoroughly apologize for the brutal acts committed by his late brother and seek to make things right. But this damage would take a long time to heal.
“I will not leave until—”
“Please,” she said. “Stop that. You’ve been a real friend to me, and I thank you for that, but you are right. You need to go where you are needed.”
He still stood behind her, his hands resting on her shoulders. “Are you prepared?”
“Yes,” she said. It was growing cold now in Korv. She stepped out of her house, Kuo right behind. The guard at her door, different each day, fell in step. Marv complained whenever she left, but she overfed him out of guilt and he was happy with that.
The climb up the ladder was easy, though she did flinch every time. She saw Deffren’s boot crashing down on her. Her nose remembered the pain. Her lungs struggled for air, even though it hadn’t been driven out of them. At the top of the ladder, she took a moment to breathe. Someday this would get easier. Kuo had told her a dozen times. Someday she might believe him. Until then, she wished to live somewhere else.
“Are you—?”
“I’m fine,” she said, cutting off Kuo’s concern. It was doctorly, and she was medically fine. Recovering at a brisk pace. “Let’s keep walking.”
The Hall of Council had been thoroughly wrecked by Deffren’s rampage. Only the back wall, the relief sculpture of the Battle of Semnal Valley, remained entirely intact, save the scar Ediline had given it. While the Hall was being rebuilt, while the throne was being replaced, Ancil did his governing from the Hall of Meeting. So Ediline hiked to the main gate, and she stood before the giant door.
The shadow-creatures had done no actual damage to the building. The door was still here, the inner walls unharmed. The shadow-creatures had just passed through them, then. She could still see them prowling, stepping over a body. People had seen them. People had been killed by them. What would the Church say? Would the High Confessor condemn everyone for blasphemy?
Ediline strode up the Main Hall, past the phantom memories, and into the Hall of Meeting. She stood at the center. Ancil was in the first alcove, the one visible from the entryway, and he was speaking with . . . Wien. That wasn’t what Ediline had expected. She wished she could overhear, but such were the acoustics of the Hall of Meeting.
So she stepped through the doorless opening, Kuo and guard following. The conversation between her brother and Javras’s bodyguard ceased. Wien stepped back, Ancil nodded to her, and then he turned his attention to Ediline. Wien bowed—to Ancil and to Ediline—and, before Ediline could say a thing, she hurried out with quick, hushed steps.
“I’m glad you’re up and walking around,” Ancil said.
“Kuo, could you take the guard and wait in the center there?” Ediline said. She kept her eyes locked on Ancil. “I have some private things to discuss with His Brilliance.”
Ancil nodded his permission, and after a moment, they were alone.
“I am glad you’re recovering,” Ancil said.
“I’ll bet you are,” she said, far more harshly than she had wanted to. “How could I be useful to you, if I were dead?”
“Edi.”
“That has always been the difference between you and the rest,” she said. She took slow steps around, looking at the strange angles of the walls, the curvature of the wood. It was all designed to keep the sound inside this alcove. Even the window, basking them in mid-morning sunlight, was soundproof.
“I’ll humor you,” he said. “What is the difference?”
“Everyone knows that I’m the pariah, the ninth, the feared and the loathed,” she said. “Not to mention the un-killable, try as everyone might. You, however, have always seen that I could be useful, too.”
“Edi, I think Deffren might have knocked your brain loose.”
She halted, that familiar private guilt strangling her. She had to swallow and take a breath, her face turned away from Ancil, to steady herself. “You know,” she choked out, “you’re the first person to actually say his name to me after what happened.”
“I won’t hide what happened. Not from myself, not from you, not from anyone. But you seem to think I’ve mistreated you in some way. Did I not see that you had a talented doctor tend to you at all hours? Did I not position a guard at your door? Did I not return your property to you?”
“I’m grateful you saw that I deserved all that, but I know you have your reasons.”
“I’d love to hear what you’ve concocted.”
He seemed very much the same. Thin-framed, sharp-jawed, tall and silver-haired. He was young, healthy, with a mind as sharp as a cut of glass. He wore no crown, no regal garments. In fact, he dressed as he always had. Yet he did look like a king. Somehow, though she’d never noticed, he had always looked like a king.
“I hold the sword, and people are afraid of me, now that I’ve used it,” she said. “So, you retain me, you treat me well enough. That part is easy to understand.”
“I see.”
“However, I think I’ve figured out something else.”
“Is this a game?”
“You’re so manipulative,” she said. She turned her head away from him and gazed up at the window, the brilliant blue beyond it. “It’s automatic for you, beyond even second nature. I blame our father. Manipulation is your language. You wear the mask of the deceiver and forget you have a face of your own beneath it.”
“Go on, I’m waiting for the grand reveal.”
“You had to face the problem of how could you both stop Father’s war and become a king that everyone would welcome,” she said. “He was planning it. You knew he was planning it. You wanted to stop it, but you knew he wouldn’t listen. So, how then?”
He made no interruption this time. No witty comment. His playfulness was a defensive tactic, and she was striking where he’d shown weakness.
“So you became so offensive to our father, so against his grand war, that he actually removed you as his heir,” Ediline said. “You knew he would do it. I don’t think you’ve ever been surprised in your life. Everything is a calculation.”
He wouldn’t admit to it. She just had to keep going.
“That way, Deffren could step in, the brutal warrior,” she went on. “You miscalculated a little, not expecting him to be quite so capable or vicious, but you wanted him to become king—so that when he was so awful, so brutal, so inhuman, you would look like a savior when you came to replace him.”
“Our mother always knew you were the creative one,” he said. His voice wouldn’t shake, wouldn’t show any sign of anything.
“You could wait until he broke the peace accord, and then you could fix it just the way you wanted to.”
She took a breath.
“Wien is the final piece,” she said. “I didn’t put that one together until just now. Did she always report to you? And let me guess—if our father had killed Ashwin first, Wien would have eliminated him, instead? It was what Javras would have done, to prevent King Maxen from having the bloodsword, and it would have suited your needs so well, too. If you got it, fantastic. If Javras held onto it, you knew he was going to give it to the eighthborn—to you.”
Now she looked at him. He just stared at her, no tilt to his lips, nothing like a smile anywhere near his face. It was as telling as anything could be.
“After I fled, you sent Wien to retrieve me,” Ediline said. “She brought me back. Wulfgar, too?”
She prayed to the Lords that Javras hadn’t known. She had to believe Javras wouldn’t have played into Tithelken political scheming. She had to believe at least for now, until she could know for certain.
She stepped closer. “Obviously you hadn't expected the dark-storm or that Deffren would get the bloodsword. When you warned me not to go after him, it was because you were already planning his removal, and you didn’t want me empowering him. When he attacked me, you talked him out of killing me, but then you hid. I had to face him without you.”
“Edi.”
“You’re a coward!” she screamed. She wiped at her face. Damn it, she was doing it again, crying when she didn’t mean to. “Ancil, this isn’t a game. I killed our brother. I didn’t order an assassin and close my eyes, I didn’t craft some elaborate scheme. I did it. But I didn’t want to.”