Ash Rising

by Katya Lebeque

  “Hmm hmm” said her mother, drifting absently between the bodies in a weaving pattern that existed only in her head. Her sanity had not returned in the minutes, hours, since the events that were so huge in Vanita’s mind they couldn’t possibly have happened just this morning. Instead, she had begun aimlessly weaving in between the corpses in a looping pattern. It reminded Vanita of Ash’s mother. Although she had never met her, the noblewoman’s death was still fresh when Vanita had arrived at Rhodopalais, and one of her dying wishes had been that a servant read a story from her curious Bible text each morning. In it, there was the story of a man whom God had made a pact with by cutting several animals in half, including a bird, and walking in amongst the remains in a figure of eight pattern. The symbol for covenant. She hadn’t liked that story when she was little, and she liked it less now.

  “Mother, go and sit down. I’m going to. I don’t know how much longer I can stand.”

  The shock was there still for Vanita. The shock of finding her eye gone and her body irredeemably scarred, so wounded she had almost died. Then the contorted rage in the sunken faces of the mob that had broken into their home, the icy feeling of their steel against her throat as her sister watched on. The prince and, oh heavens, the duke… Then the mind-reeling black mass of the giant bird crashing through the ceiling, blocking out all else.

  It had all been too much. She was ashamed to admit it, but the first thing Vanita had done when the carriage was out of sight was sink onto the only daybed still standing near enough by and wish to fall asleep and, when she awakened, for fairies or elves or some other nonsense to have come and taken care of this mess. But when she put her head down a pain has flashed like lightning through the half of her skull where her eye had been ripped out, and sleep would not come, could not, to those who had not yet honoured their dead.

  Vanita did not care about the festering bodies of the oafs that had tried to kill them, but she did care about Tansy. She would not let her lie open to the sun, uncared for, the way Ash had described seeing corpses lying outside every other day. And so slowly, Vanita had pulled the white lengths of cloth off of some of the disused furniture. Slowly, she had lowered her aching body down to the floor and wrapped Tansy up and held onto her as she never had in life. Then she had dragged the body out beyond the rubble to spot where flowers had once grown in the garden. A pansy for Tansy. But there were no flowers now, and so she had taken dried bits of twig, and whatever wood that had fallen from the ceiling which she could lift and had dragged them over and made a lopsided mound of sticks around a girl she could not believe was no longer alive. She mumbled what words she knew of prayer from her sister over the sticks and had turned away.

  “Come Mother, come inside. Yes, inside… Remember?”

  The older woman bucked and stared at her as though she were an insolent servant. She had never seen the lines on her mother’s face so clearly before. “Come now Mother, shall we sit?”

  “Sit,” her mother parroted.

  “Yes, now come and let me sit you down…” The chaise lounge was the only seat left not in pieces. Now, it seemed absurdly floral. Vanita’s head was throbbing, the space behind her good eye seemed ready to explode and her thin frame was shaking with hunger and exertion. But she led her mother over carefully and lowered her onto the seat.

  And the old noblewoman sat, hands placed primly in her lap. She stared blankly out from her ornate chair at the tangled bits of ceiling shards and open sky above her, as if at a recital. In her line of sight, the emaciated frame of her daughter heaved the corpses of their would-be murderers out the shattered remains where their mansion had once been.

  ***

  Miles away, there was nothing shattered left. The horseless coach trundled along as peaceably as a woman on the way to market, belying all the horror of before.

  Ash looked around for the thousandth time at the pink velvet surrounding her like a lung. It was strange to be in this small, near-silent world clicking along, when just hours before the world had been the broken bodies of the mob that had tried to kill her and her family, before the bird had crashed through their home. Ash thought about her stepsister, her sister, again and immediately tried to think of something else. They would go for her soon, she told the clenching in her chest. Rize had promised it and, more importantly, so had she.

  The air in the pink cage was stultifying. Ash would have been happy to never see the inside of a carriage again, yet here she was staring at cushioned walls once again. Had anyone outside the palace ever been in one so often in so few days?

  “It is extremely fortunate that it was today of all days that we rode for you, as we the carriage followed us,” Rize had said earlier. She had not really listened at the time, her head still singing with the clamour of battle and bird as the remains of her family home lay scattered around her. Now, she wondered at the words, but said nothing as the scenery trundled by. The interior of any carriage, however pink or however royal, still held the memory for her of her sister lying bleeding on the floor. Her sister. She shook the thought out of her head and looked at the flat landscape again instead.

  Some time later, she did not know when, Derrick broke the silence.

  “How far is it still by carriage?”

  Ash turned her head to see the prince and Derrick staring at one another, with Rize’s cousin the duke appearing far more comfortable as he lounged at his own window, a slim ankle resting on one knee.

  “We are not too far off, I think. A few hours at most and in the gates safely just at sunset, I should think,” said Rize.

  Ash and Derrick looked at each other. Sunset? It seemed far longer than their hazardous journeys across the wasteland plains. Perhaps the coach was setting a more stately pace than they thought.

  “Are you comfortable?” This time, Rize was looking at Ash.

  “Yes, thank you.” She tried for a smile.

  “Because if there is anything I can do –”

  A loud, fairly un-noble cough came from Derrick, who was trying in vain to look unimpressed by the carriage. “So, what is it Ash and I are to do, then? As these ‘royal weapons experts’ of yours?”

  “Well, we aren’t quite sure yet. It will be a new position, created just for you. But I would assume that a start would be to bring you onto the war council, which meets every –”

  “And how do we know we will be well treated, pray tell?”

  “Oh, for crying out loud, Derrick, leave be. It’s a palace, not a brothel. You’ve been there, why are you acting like you’re being sold for a penny?”

  An audible silence descended on the carriage which Ash did not quite understand. For the first time, both Rize and the duke looked actually uncomfortable.

  “What is it?”

  “Well… The thing is… we’re not going to the palace.”

  Chapter Two

  “Stop this coach.”

  “It can’t be stopped, it’s magicked.”

  “I said stop it!”

  Ash’s voice sounded anaemic and childlike even in her own ears. As though she were having a tantrum, or a spoilt noble brat that hadn’t been allowed ices after their meal. Not like someone who had just abandoned their entire family.

  “Ash, what is it? I said to you that we would –”

  “It’s her sister, you idiot!” Derrick was bellowing even louder than she was. “Her only sister has been left alone there with those birds and that mob, what’s left of them, still out there. Don’t you understand?”

  “But we are going back for her soon. I don’t see what the problem is.”

  At last, Ash found her voice again. “When is ‘soon’, Rize?”

  “The very next changing of castles, I swear it to you.”

  “And you don’t see what the problem is? Pray tell, when was the last time either of you two ever did anything without help from a servant or soldier. Anything. The servants at my home are all dead. My father is dead.”

  “Ash!” the prince looked panicked, and so d
id the duke, they were each glancing at each other nervously. “Why did you not tell us your servants were all gone? If I had known…”

  Ash silenced him with an angry look. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of justifying himself. “Of course they are all dead. Everyone who is not a prince have all lost their servants. That’s how life outside a palace is. And now you have tricked me into leaving my sister for dead. She can’t hunt, or boil water so it’s fit for drinking. She’s never even dressed herself without help before. And now I – I have left her…”

  Her voice cracked, sounding childish once more. She refused to have this conversation surrounded by pink velvet, so close to her face that she couldn’t breathe.

  “Stop the coach,” she said again quietly. “Stop it so I can get out or I will get out regardless.”

  “The pathfinders magick the coaches so that on each day that the royals move residences, designed to be random to make it difficult for marauders.”

  Ash threw him a scornful glance. At least he looked stricken and truly upset. Rize had looked so handsome this morning. Now his royal trappings and clean, pressed clothes were an affront to her. Without another word she turned the handle and opened the door, jumping from the still-moving coach.

  The duke’s horse had been following them from a distance since they left Rhodopalais, and it started when Ash thumped to the ground, almost catching her footing but at the last moment overbalancing and thumping hard into the dust. Still, it came over to her obediently enough when she recovered and stood, clicking her tongue gently and holding out her hand.

  “Here boy, here…”

  Thank goodness it hadn’t been eaten by a carrior yet. In fact, there weren’t even any in the sky. A queasy feeling dropped like a rock into Ash’s stomach. Perhaps they were all feasting off the dead at Rhodopalais. Ten or more carriors, greedy with fresh corpse meat, and her defenceless sister in the midst of them all…

  “Come on boy.” The horse was reacting to her fear and bucking when she tried to mount it. Ash tried for slow breaths, calming thoughts, until the horse stilled. She was no use to Vanita or anyone flapping like a milkmaid. Finally, she was able to get up, and back in a saddle she found her thoughts returning with more sense.

  She could always turn the horse around, and head back to save Vanita. But then what? The horse did not have space for three, and Vanita and her stepmother were still there. She could not leave her stepmother to die, but if she put the two of them on the horse, they wouldn’t know the way to this new castle. In fact, neither did she. And if she left the coach, what would they do to Derrick? Nothing, she hoped, but if they needed her and Derrick’s skills with iron weaponry like she suspected they did, then what would they not do? He would be a hostage, and he had no noble family, no rights…

  “Ash!”

  Rize was leaning halfway out of the coach window like a lovesick maiden.

  “Don’t listen to him Ash!” Derrick’s tawny head popped out the other window.

  Good grief. Ash wanted to sigh and roll her eyes, but before she quite knew what was happening, there was a flash of black hair and movement, and she had to rear up the horse. Rize was lying in a royal puddle in the dirt. She had almost ridden over the crown prince.

  “Rize!”

  “I’m sorry,” he panted, “but I just had to get out of there. I feel terrible, and I can’t sit there in a carriage while you are out here on horseback, it’s not right…” He peered up into her eyes, still breathing heavily.

  “Look, we will hatch a plan between ourselves to steal away some of the horses, just as soon as they have rested and we have introduced you to the council and started. I promise you. Please Ash, I was stupid. I didn’t think… forgive me.”

  Her throat closed up with emotion, and she turned her head away, back in the direction she imagined lay her old home, and Vanita.

  “…Or, at least, please give me a ride to the castle?”

  “Oh alright. Climb on.”

  True to his word, the prince pointed to the horizon just as the sky was beginning to blush with the first pinkening signs of dusk. Ash could make out the shape of a castle almost straight ahead of them. Perhaps it was the lack of giddiness from her last soiree with royalty, but to Ash it looked distinctly squatter and sturdier than the palace.

  “Ash?”

  This time it was the duke craning his sandy-coloured head out of the carriage. “Ash, can you come back within the carriage? I’m afraid it won’t stop, you’ll need to jump it. Please, it’s important.”

  “You know something? I am really beginning to hate coaches.”

  After she was safely ensconced in the carriage after yet another ridiculous jumping experience, Ash turned to find the duke looking uncharacteristically serious. She and Derrick exchanged glances.

  “Sorry about that, but really, it couldn’t wait. We are almost at Castle Blindé, and I needed to talk to you both before we get there.

  “At the looks on your faces when we spoke about the castle, I realised something that should have been obvious to me. You don’t know how it works, how to play the game.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I call it ‘the game’ but it’s really quite serious. At court, even now, everything is about appearances and procedure. What is underneath is only accepted, or more importantly protected, if you look the part and play the part well.

  “Rize is no use with this, and he likely never even mentioned it. That’s because he was born heir to the kingdom and has stayed that way. He’s young, strong, educated and charming, but all of that is of little importance compared to the fact that he’s heir. He doesn’t need to play the game, he was the one born with the royal flush. But you two, you will need to play, and play well.”

  “Listen here, Duke. We are not coming to the palace to be simpering courtiers. We have a job to do. We don’t want to be a part of your court - ”

  “First off, it’s not my court, it’s Rize’s and his father’s, and the fact that he likes you so much already puts you in danger. Secondly, I’ve lived at court my whole life and I know what I’m talking about.”

  They were fast approaching the castle now. She could make out the thick walls and battlements of stone. “Go on,” Ash said before Derrick could speak.

  “Let me use an example. It was not an accident that I called you into the carriage. First rule court: there are always at least two reasons anyone says or does anything, often more. Do not be content with looking at just one. My second reason for calling you into the carriage is this: appearance is everything, the way things are done is all people have left. To approach the castle with the crown prince on the back of your horse like some tavern wench, while I helped down Derrick like some maid, would not have garnered you any favour. This way, he is seen as the hero riding, bravely, without cover from the carriors. You arrive with station, with trappings of wealth, whether they are yours or not. Each gets what they need from the public’s eyes.”

  They were crossing the drawbridge now, the portcullis opened wide like rusted iron teeth, the castle ready to swallow them whole. Ash tried not to stare and listen instead to what the duke was still saying.

  “If you two want to survive here, listen very carefully to what I am about to tell you next.”

  Ashes Slowly Fall will be available for purchase on Amazon in October 2018.

  Pay $1,99 instead of $3,99 by requesting your discount when you visit www.katyalebeque.com and fill in your email address when the lightbox appears to offer you your free chapter sample.

  One last thing…

  You cannot possibly know, unless you have one of your own print-babies out in the world of Amazon and such, how much an honest review or a rating means. If you enjoyed Ash Rising or if you didn’t, please post a review on Amazon and a star rating, even a GoodReads review if you’re that way inclined.

  I’m also always happy to hear from readers so please check out my contact details on my website: www.katyalebeque.com
If you liked some aspect of what you read or there was stuff you didn’t like – especially if there was stuff you didn’t like – please do let me know.

  Indie authors are something that exists because of you. Just you. When Ash Rising began gathering momentum and threatening to coalesce into a book, I spoke to the few people I know in the publishing world. Many were enthusiastic about the premise and characters and said it had great promise, but regrettably publishing is a business and they were too scared that it would seem as though they had ‘missed’ the fairy tale retelling trend. I asked them the gold standard question: would you for reals read this or are you trying to be nice? Many said yes, they would read it and encouraged me to self-publish on Amazon because amazing books are born there all the time that are excellent and heart-changing. Which brings me back to you. All this is for you, not some VP publishing suit who has ratings to consider, but people who like some things and don’t like others regardless of what’s in literary fashion right now, irrespective of who everyone’s talking about this year at Frankfurt. So please let me know and let other readers on Amazon and other platforms know, what your thoughts are so that you can be tailored to.

  Thanks in advance you amazing people, you legends-who-ride-books.

  About the Author

  Katya Lebeque is a twenty-something South African with an incorrigible writing habit that was started young, but certainly not helped by the fact that she has been a journalist and professional writer for the past nine years. She burst (okay, tripped and fell) onto the writing scene way back in 2010 when she won ELLE magazine’s Best Short Story competition and, later, a Writer’s Digest ‘Dear Lucky Agent’ contest in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy category.

  She lives in Sandton with her husband, a fairly entitled Maine Coon, a car called Eva Marie-Saint and a motley crew of Lindt slabs that never seem to last long.