by Zoe Marriott
“Princess. Princess Theoai. Are you injured? Can you get up, please?”
I scrabbled the knife into my pocket, dragged my forearm over my watering eyes, and lifted my head with a gasp. Uniforms I recognised. The uniforms of the palace guardsmen.
“What happened?” I croaked.
“You were attacked, Princess,” one of the guards said, crouching to help me to my feet. I was too shakey to refuse his help.
“By whom?” I looked around wildly. The lights were gone. The cave was shrouded in shadow. The midnight pool was empty. Triple Gods – was he killed?
But there was no sign of any miscreants, robbers, foreign intruders. And I could not see Aroona. Only three more guardsmen, staring at me gravely. “Where is Aroona – Shell?”
The guards exchanged glances. “You are confused, Princess. She is the one who attacked you. We arrested her. Our fellows are taking her back to the palace now.”
“What?” I looked at them again and saw the shapes of single-shot muskets, clutched in their hands. I had taken them for batons. They had fired on us. On the sea man? They had been the attackers. Why?
And then I saw it. The last few moments as they must have observed them, peeking through the crack in the rock, out of sight. The tentacled sea monster and his haunting, siren voice. A voice they almost certainly could not understand. My scream, Shell reaching for me and being pushed away – then putting her arms around me and kissing me. They had thought –
“This wasn’t an attack. You misunderstood. Take me to Shell at once!”
“We will,” the guardsman who held my arm said. His grip tightened until it was painful. “You’re to be brought back to the palace immediately as well. By order of the Queen.”
38
The blood looked black in the waning moonlight. A fine spray of it – from the sea man – pock-marked the white embroidered flowers at my shoulder, and my own blood dripped steadily in a long trail down the front of my skirt. The guards had tried to stop and bandage my wounded hand. I wouldn’t let them. I had to get to Aroona.
By the time I had managed to stumble, shivering and weak-kneed with shock, from the cave, the incoming tide had swallowed the white strip of beach at the base of Morogana’s rock. In a few moments more the cave itself would likely be flooded. We waded to the steps in sea water up to our knees. The guard’s grip on my arm was still painfully tight, but I didn’t have the will to turn on him and force him to release me. Squinting up against the steadily lightening sky, the side of the rock seemed black and featureless, and I could make out no sign of Aroona, or the men who had dragged her away. Why had she let them take her? Why hadn’t she fought them? She had seen them shoot her friend! She was too good, too gentle. She needed protection. She needed me.
The trek back up the granite steps took what little reserves I had left. I realised I had not eaten since breaking my fast at Uldar’s bedside the day before, nor rested. My breath came in pitiful, shallow wheezes, and when we reached the top of the rock, I nearly had to crawl up over the final step, afraid that my light-headedness would send me rolling all the way back down again.
Miramand awaited me there. She was resplendent in silver-blue brocade and pale grey fur, coiffed, powdered and composed in the shadow of the great black tree. She ran her eyes over my damp, blood-stained figure and smiled.
“I told you,” she said softly, “That if you defied me, I would make you regret it.”
You scheming old harridan. I bared my teeth at her, but I had not even begun to formulate a response ferocious enough when she stepped aside to allow the guard to draw me past her – and I saw the entirety of the punishment she had arranged.
The rock was nearly full of dishevelled, unhappy looking courtiers, many of them clearly bundled into their outer coats over nightwear. The Chancellor was there. The King and Uldar were not. Of course. Uldar would never allow this. He must still be in bed, ignorant of whatever she planned.
Then I looked past the crowd to the pointed tip of the cliff and saw Aroona. She was a crumpled ball of damp silk and tangled hair, dropped on the bare rock as carelessly as a pile of soiled laundry. The trio of guardsmen who stood watch over her were far burlier and rougher looking than the ones who currently surrounded me. One held a loaded musket-rifle at the ready. Another, probably their ranking officer, held a wicked looking longsword.
It took me one long, horrified breath to realise why Shell lay unmoving. Why she had let them drag her here without any struggle. She was unconscious, and she was bleeding – I saw a heavy, spreading splotch of black high up on her left side.
They had shot her.
I didn’t even know I had tried to move until the guard at my side jerked me back. I turned to strike him and found my other arm seized by one of the others. “Release me! How dare you?”
“My Queen...” the Chancellor said, eyeing my bloody gown nervously. “I must – the Princess is hurt. Is this really appropriate?”
Before she could answer there was a commotion at the back of the crowd, where they clustered near the door into the ballroom. Uldar, pale and shaky-looking, dressed all by guess and supported by both of his doctors, pushed to the front. His face was a picture of confusion and distress. I felt a surge of relief so intense that my knees weakened and the guards had to hold me up for a moment.
“Theoai? Mother – what are you doing? Father is ill! He needs you! Why aren’t you with him?”
Miramand’s cold composure hardened for an instant into frustration – then transformed into a look of total motherly devotion so perfectly wrought that even I, who knew all too well the snake that dwelled beneath the layers of silk, nearly believed it sincere.
“My dearest boy, you shouldn’t be out of bed,” she said gently. “I am trying to help your Father now by dealing with the threat that struck him down. The doctors may call his sudden illness a stroke, but I know better.”
“Uldar!” I burst out. “Help! She’s gone mad. Shell’s been shot.”
Uldar’s wide eyes skittered from his Mother’s intense glow of affection to the limp form sprawled across the rock. “Morogana’s balls! What have you done, Mother?”
He rushed forward – only to be blocked by Miramand’s grip on his wrist. And, with a lurch in my breast, I saw him hesitate. Saw his eyes leave Shell’s crumpled form to meet his Mother’s eyes.
“Only what should have been done the moment that vile sea witch set foot in the palace. Listen to me now, my son. She has enchanted you, and your betrothed, and when her attempt to kill you failed, she turned her foul arts on your Father. She is our enemy. She came here to destroy us, and she has nearly succeeded.” The emotive words, delivered crisply and with complete conviction, were stunningly effective. The crowd rustled and murmured, faces slowly moving from sleepy and bewildered to frightened. Condemning.
Uldar blinked, frowned. “Sea witch?”
“She is lying!” I cried out in disbelief. “Shell healed you! You know that – your doctors saw it!” My voice was too loud, too strident. I saw how the courtiers averted their eyes from my display of temper, but I couldn’t help it. Why were these people – all people like these – always so stupid? “For pity’s sake! Won’t someone even bandage her before she bleeds to death?”
No one moved. Including Uldar. I stared at him. Willing him to shake off his Mother’s hand. Willing him to look at me, look at Aroona.
But still he hesitated. “I – I don’t understand what’s happening.”
I let out a short scream of fury. Everyone flinched, and I clamped my teeth down on my lip, battling myself desperately for composure, for the right words, anything that would get us out of this situation.
“See how the witch’s spell torments the Princess,” Miramand said, shaking her head. “The poor thing. Captain Gunnarsen – report to us. To my son. Tell us what you did and what you witnessed tonight.”
One of the men standing over Aroona, the one with the unsheathed sword, stepped forward. “My Queen, as you ordered
after the Prince’s illness, we kept watch on the castaway girl. Tonight, under cover of darkness she sought out the Princess and secretly led her from the Palace to Morogana’s rock. We nearly lost them here, but then one of my men found the steps on the side of the cliff – steps none of us had known of before. We followed them down and after some searching discovered a hidden cave in the base of the cliff. Within – ” he broke off, licking his lips. “My Queen, within there was a monster. Some kind of awful abomination, half man, half squid. I would never have believed such a thing could exist had I not seen it with my own eyes. It screeched and yowled in a terrible, unnatural tongue that seemed to hold the Princess mesmerised. Once, she screamed, and tried to break away. The castaway girl caught her, and subdued her struggles and then...” He paused again, and cleared his throat. “The castaway girl kissed the Princess. On the lips. And after that the Princess stopped struggling. Enspelled.”
The courtiers were gasping, tutting, eyes judgemental, lips thin. Uldar’s gaze finally returned to me, but not with any promise of help. There was nothing there but shock, dawning indignation and betrayal. Did he ever think of anyone but himself?
“That is not what happened,” I broke in. “These men didn’t understand what they saw. They mistook everything.”
“So the witch didn’t force her unnatural attentions on you?” Miramand raised her eyebrow, taunting me. You can’t deny it, can you? What will they all think of you then?
Deep within, in the squirming, frightened place beneath my lowest rib, a tiny fragment of me – the part that had lived only for power, which had craved approval more than breath, and feared pity more than death – quailed. But that part of me had not known Aroona. Not loved Aroona.
I crushed it.
“She didn’t force anything on me. She kissed me and I kissed her back. Because I wanted to.”
The rock erupted with shock and disgust. Miramand blinked once in surprise, then allowed a flicker of smugness to show as Uldar’s face twisted into an expression of pained betrayal.
“How could you do this to me?” he demanded. “We’re betrothed!”
I stared at him incredulously, then let out a bitter bark of laughter. “How could I? You tried to charm Shell into your bed the very day you first set eyes on her – right in front of me! Now she is lying at your feet, hurt, and you haven’t even bothered to check if she is still breathing! How can you?”
The betrayal slackened, for an instant, into chagrin and I thought I had reached him. Then someone behind him tittered, and I saw his hurt turn into mortification at being publicly exposed. His jaw set, and he turned his face away from me.
He won’t help us.
Even now, even like this, he would do no more than feebly kick against Miramand’s judgement before caving in to it.
I turned my head to look at Aroona again. Everyone else seemed almost to have forgotten she was there, silent and still as she was. My eyes passed over the rest of the scene in a cloud haze of unreality. Sounds had gone distant and echoing, as if I heard everything through water.
The sun was rising behind the palace’s towers, obscured by a thick covering of clouds. Miramand was ranting, talking about unnatural creatures and dark arts. Uldar was still pretending he was a hundred miles away. The courtiers had settled into an air of scandalised anticipation, like spectators at a play. Even the guards seemed to have relaxed, either watching the Queen avidly or staring into the middle distance, bored.
The Captain alone still seemed sharp. Holding his sword in a competent one-handed grip, he reached into a pouch in his belt and pulled out – a black hood.
My heart turned to ice. This was no mere ambush. It was an execution.
And then Aroona moved. It was a tiny twitch of her hand, no more. But I saw it, and I knew. She was awake, only feigning unconsciousness. Everything rushed back at me with an impact that made me gasp. Miramand had trapped us. Uldar had abandoned us. All hope was lost – save one.
I stamped down on the booted foot of the guard clutching at my left arm, then wrenched free of his loosened grip. The one on my right fell to a palm strike directly to his solar plexus. I darted across the space toward Aroona and flung myself down across her body, my fingers groping in my pocket.
“I will distract them,” I whispered in her ear as I wrapped myself around her prostrate form. “Do it. You have to. When you change, you can leap from the cliff to safety.”
I felt her warm hand close around mine, slippery with blood – and then find the handle of the sea-glass blade. Her ribs heaved beneath me with a deep breath, as if she were bracing herself. This might be the last time I ever held her, felt the shape of her against me, heard her breathe. But at least she would be alive. No matter what happened to me, she would be alive.
Someone caught at the back of my dress, jerking me back, then put their hands roughly under my arms and heaved. I let myself be hauled up – and saw that the one who was manhandling me was Uldar himself, his face creased with disgust. I spun away from him, forcing him to turn until his back was to Aroona, while the guards hovered uncertainly.
“What is wrong with you?” he snapped, eyes darting away from me to the courtiers. “Are you enspelled? Where is your dignity, Princess?”
“Where is your heart?” I asked, allowing my voice to soften, to plead. Look at me. All of you – keep your eyes on me. I pointed at the guard captain, the black leather of the hood dangling conspicuously from his hand. “Uldar, you know that Shell saved you. From the bear, from the poison. You cannot stand by and allow her to be murdered without a trial, without any chance to defend herself.”
Uldar opened his mouth, then closed it, staring at the captain as if he had never seen him before. “No – that’s not... Mother?”
Miramand did not flinch. “This is the only way to save your Father. You must see that there is no time for a trial. What is that little slut’s life worth compared with his?”
The sun broke through the clouds above the Palace. The rock was suddenly ablaze with glorious dawnlight, rose-gold and yellow. Miramand squinted, raising a hand to shield her face.
Behind Uldar, Aroona rose in a graceful ripple of bloodstained silk and tangled hair. Light flashed from the bloody dagger in her hand.
The courtiers behind me screamed. Miramand froze in place. As the guards began to lunge, Uldar turned, his mouth slowly gaping with alarm.
Now! I cried mentally. Do it now, Aroona.
Those serene, sea-blue eyes met mine. Here was nothing angry there, nothing vengeful. Her free hand signed: Love.
She plunged the sea-glass knife into her own breast. Her mouth tore into a soundless scream of agony, eyes overflowing with tears. Then she sagged. Staggered.
I leapt forward. Too late.
The clouds closed over the sun again, plunging the rock back into shadows as Aroona’s body fell from the edge of the cliff.
39
I saw her fall. A small, dark shape silhouetted against the vast pale water. I saw the sea foam froth up as if to take her from the air. I saw. I saw.
Nothing.
The dull grey storm light upon the water. The wind tormenting the foam crests of the waves. The first flakes of snow. She was gone.
The guard captain let his sword fall to the granite with a hollow clang. Miramand opened her mouth, closed it, then lifted her chin, visibly gathering herself. “Justice has been done, it seems. The enchantress is dead!”
The words were tinny and false-sounding. No one reacted. Uldar stared down at the sea, his face graven, distant. Mask-like. For the first time I saw the true resemblance between him and Miramand. I watched through a haze of grief and rage as he raised his gaze from the water, then turned to look at me. He came toward me with a hesitant step, waving his doctors and the guards back, brows crimped miserably.
“Theo. Theoai.” His voice broke. He swallowed. “I never meant – this. I never – sometimes a King must learn how to do what is hard. And painful. It is not always the right thing but s
ometimes it is all he can do. All this, this turmoil – it’s over. It’s just you and me now. Can you ever forgive me?”
I stood motionless, stricken above all with disbelief.
How could he possibly ask that? How could he even think it?
Yet I knew the answer. Didn’t I? I had taught him to behave like this. He thought it would be like the other times. When his recklessness had sunk the ship that carried me. When he had humiliated me at my court presentation. When he had ignored me like an unwanted encumbrance and tried to woo Shell into his bed. All the other times when he had hurt me, and I had been desperate enough to pretend it was nothing and smile and take his arm without even an apology to ease my wound.
This petulant, weak, spoiled little boy who had played at defiance, at power and manliness. This boy who had brought Shell here. Exposed her to the lust and disdain and wickedness of every benighted soul within the Silingana. Who, at the moment when she needed him, had collapsed back into boyhood so that he did not have to risk anything to save her.
So that he did not have to do what was hard, and right.
He had stood by while Aroona bled, had sulked about his hurt feelings while his Mother plotted murder. The murder of an innocent woman, the same woman who had cared for him, and saved his life twice. Three times.
The woman I loved.
If it were up to me, he would be the one who was dead. I would not have cared a pin if he died at this very moment, even though it would no longer do Shell any good at all. And he had the gall to ask for my forgiveness? I could no more forgive him for what he had done than I could turn myself into a fish and fall down into the water to join Shell.
Then the haze cleared from my vision, and I saw, sharp and clear as ice: he doesn’t need to know that.
“Uldar.” I reached out and took his hands in mine, forcing myself to cradle them in a warm, gentle grip, as one would touch someone they held precious. “Of course you are forgiven.”