Ninthborn (The Ninthborn Chronicle Book 1)

by J. E. Holmes

  “I understand, Edi, believe me.”

  “I feel so guilty. I know he was awful to me. He tried to kill me. But . . . .”

  “You did nothing wrong.”

  She whirled. “Of course I did! I murdered him. I killed people. That blood is on my hands and it’s never coming off. I never wanted to be that.”

  He opened his mouth, and he said nothing. For the first time in his life, Ancil was speechless. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “He wasn’t supposed to die like that.”

  “Well, you can’t control everything.”

  “Edi, I am so sorry.” It was obvious in his eyes, but she was convinced he could fake anything. She’d put all this together, and he didn’t deny a word of it. Maybe for once she’d finally outsmarted him.

  “Is that why you’ve treated me like an actual person? You’re sorry?”

  “No,” he said, straightening like she’d slapped him. “You’re my twin sister. I love you.”

  She wiped her eyes. “Forgive me if it takes time to actually believe you.”

  He nodded.

  “What happened to Mother?”

  He seemed to sag a little further. “I don’t know. Before Ashwin came, I talked to her about a plan to keep you safe. But then, she vanished. I’ve tried to find her, but I’ve come up with nothing.”

  “Tell me why,” she said. “You would have been king regardless. It was going to happen.”

  “Our father was going to ruin everything,” Ancil said. His voice was so soft she wouldn’t have heard him if the alcove weren’t as quiet as it was. “The longer he planned this war, the closer to impossible it would become to dissuade the generals, and the longer it was rooted in every citizen’s mind that we had the right to wage it. By the time I could become king, Tithelk would be beyond recovery.”

  So, just like Javras, Ancil had prepared to orchestrate his father’s assassination. Ediline stepped past him, away from the window, away from the alcove. She wanted fresh air, fresh noise, to be away from stillness and silence. She wanted to go down to the river, sit by the water.

  “He handled the Era of Peace Accord so poorly,” Ancil said. “This time—”

  “This time?”

  “I’ll repair the damage done by Deffren, by our father. Trust me. Lanen will have a peace the Lords would be proud of.”

  “So it’s all been in the name of peace? All your subterfuge and scheming, grabbing for authority, it’s supposedly for the greater good? What about the people of Tailiet? The people Straad slaughtered?”

  His expression fell. “I never wanted that. I didn’t know it was already underway.”

  She couldn’t believe him. He’d known there would be casualties. He’d handed Deffren an army. He just saw the bigger picture, in which he stopped a greater war, and a thousand dead were his trade for a million spared.

  “I’ve always loved you, Ancil, but you’re too clever for your own good. No one can really understand you, not even me.” The shackles of guilt were a little looser, but she felt them still. She needed to be away for a while.

  “Will you help me do it?” he said.

  She turned, almost at the exit of the alcove. “What?”

  “You wield the Ender. You won’t use it the way Ashwin used it, but you have to understand that you’re connected to all of this now. You’re connected to everything.”

  She felt hollow and distant. Her throat hurt, her face hurt, and she was very tired. “So I’ve heard,” she said. “We’ll be in touch.”

  “Feel better, Edi.”

  “Lords spare you from the shadows, Ancil.”

  Kuo and the guard had waited for the duration of the conversation, and both were silent as Ediline walked on, out of Sladt, onto the bridges.

  Really, she didn’t know where to go, so she just kept walking. Kuo said nothing.

  Ancil wanted her to help forge a new peace. How, when everyone was terrified she was going to bring apocalypse? Everyone was going to try to kill her, to silence her, to make her insignificant. And what good would peace be, if apocalypse truly was coming, not through her, but echoed from the past?

  One thing was certain—she would never let this sword drink again.

  — Chapter 30 —

  “My sister was never given a chance. She was beaten and hidden, but she never allowed herself to be forgotten. It is only in attempting to emulate her tenacity, her drive, her spirit, that I have achieved anything. I will sign this in blood if it will mean people will believe it after I die.”

  —King Ancil of Tithelk, 711, accounts compiled by Haffran of Paar

  She walked and walked, stopped and rested, then walked and walked some more until she found herself approaching the door to Yithin’s manor. There was no guard posted outside it as there once had been. She strode to the door and stopped there. How had Ancil managed to come into contact with Wien and Wulfgar? Well, that answer was obvious.

  “Kuo and, um, guard, could you wait outside? I shouldn’t be long.”

  The guard deferred to Kuo, who frowned at her. “Will you be safe in there?” he said. “I don’t know what was said between you and the King, but I saw your tears.”

  She wiped under her eyes, even though her cheeks were now dry. “I won’t be in any danger,” she said. “I promise. And I won’t be long.”

  Ediline opened the door to the manor and stepped inside without knocking. Yithin was supposedly returning soon, and this manor would return to him. Until then, however, she could rely on the inviting aroma of the kitchen.

  Jinnrey leaned over a pot that burst with a salty-savory smell that made Ediline’s stomach beg her to go closer. He looked up, saw her, then looked back down.

  “Javras is upstairs,” he said.

  “Hello,” she said. “Oh, and I’m alive, by the way.”

  “I’d heard,” he said, toneless, not looking up. “I celebrated.”

  “Did you spend your annual smile on it?”

  “You’re hilarious.”

  “I attempt to be.”

  “Javras is upstairs,” he said.

  “Why are you still here? Ashwin is dead.”

  “I know,” he said. “I spent my annual smile on that. Your survival had to settle for my bi-seasonal warm feelings.”

  “Then why are you still here?”

  “I will return to Ronrónfa with Javras. I have a piece of Ashwin’s estate to collect.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Upstairs?”

  “In his room.”

  She proceeded past the dining table, toward the hall. She lingered in the doorway. There was something else, something new, about which she needed to ask Jinnrey. He was so terse, she would need a different tactic to get information out of him. “Ancil told me everything,” she said from the doorway.

  “Did you forget where Javras’s room is?” Jinnrey said without looking up. “Third floor. It’s the one with the bed.”

  “Did you hear me?”

  “I ignored you.”

  “You were the go-between for my brother and these assassins,” Ediline said. “You had to be. Can you tell me one thing truthfully?”

  “In exchange?”

  “I’ll deny you were involved to anyone who asks.”

  He hummed. “Go ahead and ask. I can’t promise what my answer will be.”

  “Did Javras know? Did he know that the whole thing had been arranged? I mean—”

  “Javras did not know.”

  She swallowed. “Nothing?”

  “He was anguished enough as it was, thinking that he would order his father’s death, that if it came to it he might have to do it himself.”

  “You couldn’t spare him that anguish by saying it had also been ordered by someone else?”

  “I have no special allegiance to Javras,” Jinnrey said, still without looking up. He stood from his stool and stirred the pot a little, then returned to his creaking seat. “It was not my decision, and I had no preference either w
ay.”

  “He—”

  “The point was that he had come to a decision, and we should not steal the decision from him. He would have had to live with the fact that he made it either way. If we tried to take it from him, he might change his mind, as those of young men are often volatile.” He cleared his throat. “Leave me be and go see him.”

  “But I—”

  “Go, Princess. You’ll get no more information from me.”

  So she left, back down the hall, back up the ladder, up and up to the third level. She stood in the atrium there, eyes closed, listening. She heard no activity. As silently as she could, despite the creaking floorboards, she crept toward his door. After everything that had happened, all the devastation and the darkness, a part of her jolted with fear that he was hurt, that he was dead, or even that he was gone. She didn’t realize until then how badly she wanted him to be there.

  Since the night in the ruins, when she’d kissed him, her interactions with Javras had been limited. She’d been so angry with him, and he had been so stubborn and angry with her.

  The door was unlocked. She nudged it. Inside, it was dim, with little slivers of light cutting through the drawn blinds. She inched closer, beyond the portal of the door, until she was far enough into the room to see it. It was much the same, a few items of clothing scattered about, the papers on the desk. The swords were nowhere to be seen. And there was a lump in the bed, man-sized.

  Javras was turned away from her. His bare shoulder was exposed, and at least three pulses jumped through Ediline’s body. Her tongue tingled. She turned quickly to go before she did something stupid.

  “Don’t,” he said. She stopped softly and looked. He had rolled over, and he was awake. The blanket of the bed half-covered him. Lords save her. Even in the dim light, with a bruised and swollen face recovering from a brutal smashing, he looked like something out of mythology. His tousled blonde hair, the finely sculpted body, and those dark eyes.

  “I came to see you,” she said.

  “I can see that, Princess.”

  “If you’re still recovering, I can come back.”

  “What did you want to talk to me about?” That question bore the awkwardness that had grown between them, that tangled briar of misunderstanding and crisscrossed opportunities. He no longer spoke to her with the smooth comfort of when they had been thrust together, when he had flirted with her and she’d attempted to flirt back, when she had melted into him. It had all been frozen, and now it was encrusted with ice that she had to chisel through.

  “It’s nothing,” she said.

  “Ediline.”

  Those dark blue eyes begged her to be honest with him. It was the right thing to do. She opened her mouth to speak, but then she saw the anguish in his face, the lines around his eyes, the furrowed expression, the silent plea for nothing to become worse than it already was.

  “I . . . .”

  Jinnrey was right. Javras needed to be spared this additional torment. It had probably been Wien’s idea not to tell him. If he knew that his trusted keepers had been in contact with Ancil, ensnared in some scheme between nations to use war in order to establish peace . . . Ediline didn’t know what would happen to him, but it wouldn’t be pretty.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m glad you’re all right,” she said.

  “And I, you,” he said.

  Words were difficult to find. She wanted to move closer to him, but she worried what she would do. Would she try to kiss him and re-injure his face? Would she slap him and re-injure his face? Would she just touch him and make an utter fool of herself? Lords, she didn’t care—she just wanted to touch him.

  She moved closer, slowly, and he didn’t object. “Are you going to stay long?” she said. “I assume at this point Ancil isn’t going to banish you.”

  “Wulfgar needs time to recover,” he said. “I won’t leave without him.”

  “Could I sit next to you?” The question had to shove past her breakfast on its way to her mouth. Luckily, her stomach behaved itself.

  “Of course, Princess.”

  “So polite, still.”

  She sat on the bed, felt the give of it, and with that give she felt the million terrible decisions that could easily follow from where she now sat. She folded her hands in her lap and kept her eyes trained on the room, on the door. She would not be thwarted by adolescent desires, no matter how good, valid, and tantalizing they felt. Right now, she was here to talk.

  To mend.

  “So, you’ll stay at least as long as Wulfgar is here recovering?” she said.

  “It could be a long time.”

  “That’s fantastic,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?"

  “No, I’m sorry,” she blurted. “Lords, that was a dumb thing to say. What I mean is that I’m glad you—and he—are going to be around for some time. It would be a shame if you had to leave before . . . .”

  “Before what?”

  Yes, before what, Ediline? She had no idea what her tongue had intended to do with the end of that sentence, so she’d halted it. Now she had to figure out what to say. “Before I had a chance to spend more time with you.”

  “That sounds nice.”

  “Less stressful time, I had hoped, but Ancil has . . . well, he has plans.”

  “Involving you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You should be happy, right?” he said.

  “I don’t know what I am.”

  “You’re a hero,” Javras said.

  She turned sharply and met his eyes, on her. He was sitting up, far closer than she’d thought he’d been. The blanket fell away from his chest entirely. She kept her eyes up, but that wasn’t much better. The swelling in his face had mostly gone down, and there was a red line across the bridge of his nose, showing where it had broken, where the skin had split. She wanted to touch him, to comfort him, but she knew it would hurt.

  “I’m a hero?” she said. “I could wake up tomorrow, or I could not. Someone might sneak into my house and smother me.”

  “Stay here, then.”

  Her heart forgot to beat. “What?”

  “You’re always welcome anywhere I am, Ediline. I . . . I owe you a dire apology for how I’ve treated you at times.”

  “You do.”

  “And I give it to you.”

  “And I accept.”

  “I’m—”

  “Javras, don’t worry about it, I love you,” she said. She slapped a hand over her mouth—which hurt—and leapt up from the bed, taking most of the blanket unintentionally with her. It had snagged on her sword when she’d sat. Javras half-tumbled after her but held on before falling.

  “Ediline—”

  “Forget I said that,” she said. “Just forget it. I don’t know what I’m saying. What I meant to say is I forgive you, and I will cut out my tongue lest it misbehave further. I . . . I made a complete fool of myself just now, didn’t I?”

  “A fool?” He was grinning, smiling that easy smile, that relaxed smile, that smile that felt complete, that begged nothing, that lacked nothing, that expression of perfect contentment, and it was because of her. “Well, maybe.”

  “I am a fool, and I’ll be going,” she said. “I . . . Javras, I’m glad you’re okay. I’m glad everything is all right, at least for now.”

  He nodded, and his face sobered a little. “I saw the creatures in the shadows, the ones that attacked the King. They—”

  “A problem for tomorrow,” she said. “For today, I’m just a fool, and my tongue has a date with a rusty knife. I’ll leave you now.”

  “Ediline—”

  She hurried for the door, slid past it, closed it behind her, and still heard him.

  “I love you, too,” he said.

  She didn’t go back. She couldn’t look him in the face. And neither could she hide her smile, her elated, explosive smile, as she left Yithin’s manor and returned home, to Sladt, holding the echoes of her father’s dominion, where she felt she migh
t finally, at long last, despite the nightmares and the darkness, after interminable suffering, have a place where she belonged.

  — Epilogue —

  The stone weighed enough to crush a man and leave nothing behind, but there was a small alcove beneath it, burrowed in the ground. No one would ever find it, beneath a stone like this, like any other of thousands of thousands. A person could spend their whole life checking the stones in the ruins of that once-great society and never discover this stone, this alcove.

  On a dark night, beneath a layer of clouds, below a moonless sky, a heavy mist hung in the jungle ruins. The air was still, and the Everquiet, that connecting ethereal substance, was thicker than the mist.

  The stone moved. It was not a place of burial, nor a place of hiding, truly. It was a place of darkness, too tightly sealed to allow in any light. A place where things could be, where events could cross, where waiting could occur.

  The stone moved, and the man rose from the shadow, donning it like a welcome cloak.

  The End of Book One

  Acknowledgements

  I have a lot of people to thank, even though they might not expect it. First and foremost, my wife and partner, my mirror and inspiration, Anna. I don’t know if I would be doing this without her. The difficulty, rejection, and failure might have been too much. She has helped me grow when I definitely needed to, and she is responsible for many of the fully-formed ideas present here. This book would not exist if not for her.

  Next I have to thank my parents John and Cindy for not freaking out when I decided to abandon four years of architectural training to pursue this sometimes-dormant passion. I had so much to learn back then, but of course I thought I knew it all already. Thank you for love and support. My brother Matt, too, has helped me feel more confident, supported, and loved.

  To my UCR people, friends and classmates and faculty, more than I can remember and too many to name in detail; so here’s a list. If you think it’s you on this list, it is. If you think you should be on this list but you aren’t, I apologize. Anna, Lyn, Allen, Lisa, Brian, Estrella, Jacob, Caroline, Michael, Susan, Chris, Steven, Andrew, Tod, Laila, Ryan, Samantha, Jad, Alberto, Thomas, Andrew, Christian, Sidney—taking another breath—Dana, Amanda, Kelsey, Billie, Goldberry, Nalo, Melody, Sandra, and on. Old friends who helped me feel like I had a place to belong when I’d almost never had that before: Scott, Marcus, Bryce, Kurt, Joe, Jennifer. New friends Jordan, Taryn, Alayna.