Threats of Sky and Sea

by Jennifer Ellision

  I take a step forward, stalling for time. Caden and Aleta don’t stir behind me. It’s foolish of me to wish they would when they can’t save me from this fate. No one can.

  I study the expressions of the men below us impassively. They’ve turned back to the ship, seeming to sense the eyes on them. They can’t know that their king has just given their lives away, but their grins fade as they sense something amiss.

  There has to be a way out, a way to avoid becoming the king’s puppet. Could I smash the boat and avoid their bodies? Then pull the men under in a pocket of air? I doubt I have the finesse for it as a fledgling Thrower. Even if I d, the bubble will pop under the ocean’s water pressure. And pulled beneath the surface, where they’re unable to escape the water’s inexorable grip, their drowning will be more of a certainty than ever.

  But all of those people back in Abeline, I think, grappling with myself. They don’t expect to be pulled into this, have done nothing wrong. And there’s so many more of them than these two men. I think of the children who dance in the village square and play in the fountain. Lady Kat would set her blaze during the night when most people are asleep and can’t escape from the flames.

  They’d burn to a crisp. Survivors would have to guess at which bodies belonged to whom based on the rooms that they were found in. They certainly wouldn’t be recognizable.

  I picture it all: The ash raining down on them, coating the ground like gray snow. A foot planted on a shovel to drive it into the earth. A mass grave, the length of several houses, on a field that used to supply wheat.

  Two lives…for all of theirs.

  Could I live with it? Not well, I admit to myself, feeling shaky, but I could make it through. I can’t shoulder the knowledge that everyone in my village is dead because of me.

  “I grow impatient, Lady Breena.”

  My decision is made. Trembling, I step forward to the railing and start to raise my hands. I make myself look the men in their eyes. I’ll remember my victims, carry them with me always, never allow myself to forget.

  Circular ripples surround the boat, but the men don’t notice, as their attention is fixated on the ship.

  I take a deep breath, readying myself to feel that power again, to use all of the feelings swirling inside of me and send them crashing down into the boat. Readying myself for the guilt I’ll carry with me for the murder.

  It’s a good thing, I try to tell myself, that it has to be a blunt strike because of my lack of training and knowledge. Maybe the men will avoid painful deaths through my ineptitude. But I can’t let them avoid death altogether, not at the cost of the people I grew up with. I swallow hard, hesitating. I can do this. I have to do this. Just like Da taught me. Count to five and—

  Heat streaks overhead before I can act, taking the decision from my rising hands. I turn, uncomprehending as my hands fall to my sides, and follow the path of a second sun flying through the air—a massive fireball flashes past our ship and heads straight for the boat.

  “Stop!” I yell hoarsely, sure that it’s Kat wielding the blaze, but the flames smash into the tiny fishing boat like an angry fist on an irritating pest.

  No. Horror fills me. There’d been no preparing for that, no way that I could muffle the cry that escapes or quell the sickness that rises in me upon seeing the fishermen’s boat go up like a hearth’s kindling.

  I can’t even see the bodies.

  Tears clog my throat. My voice is husky when I spin to the king, my breath ragged.

  “I was going to do it,” I say desperately. My corset is too tight, my ribs are too tight for the shallow breaths that I inhale.

  I loathe the truth in my words. I had been ready to do it, to trade those lives for the ones that I know. Now that they’re dead, my only task is to convince the king of that fact. I have to save Abeline. My throat is closing in on me. The scent of smoke sears my nostrils.

  The king’s eyes are steely as he considers me.

  “Please,” I beg. “I was going to do it before Lady Katerine stepped in. Please don’t punish my village.”

  “It wasn’t I, Lady Breena.” It’s as though Lady Kat halted the wind completely to better hear the conversation. Her steps forward tap loudly on the deck in the stillness.

  Then… I turn to Aleta in question, who shakes her head, mouth in a half-open O.

  That leaves one person that I know of. Slowly, I turn to the first friend I made on this transition into my new life. The first person I’d let myself trust here. The first Elemental who made me consider that they weren’t all bad.

  The person I’d thought had grown from the cowardly destroyer I’d met in Abeline.

  Tregle won’t meet my gaze.

  “It’s nothing I haven’t done before.”

  Thirty-One

  So much for the idea that Tregle had been led to a better life after his Reveal.

  He doesn’t truly believe that, does he? I wasn’t the one to take the lives of the fishermen, but even now that we’re safely back in port, bile lies at the base of my throat from having been a party to their deaths.

  And if it’s not the first time that Tregle’s done something like that… I forget sometimes that he’s a soldier. No wonder he keeps quiet so often.

  This is what becomes of the good Elementals under the king’s rule. He presses them into his servitude until they become one of his Adepts. Until they become someone they’d hardly recognize.

  I won’t let it happen to me. Not like it happened to Tregle and Da.

  From the ship, I’m escorted to Da’s cell door. I hardly know what to say to him now that I’m close to understanding why his past shaped him the way it had. Why he’d felt he’d had to run. Maybe, like me, he’d had something to lose.

  I still don’t appreciate all of the secrets, the making of my entire life into a lie. But I can understand it now and that’s something.

  Da’s as quiet as ever, picking at some dirt under his toenail, tongue twisted to the side. He looks like a wild man. Tufts of his hair protrude from his scalp like unruly weeds, and the clothes he’s been given are gray with his own filth.

  The pick of his nail is a bee buzzing at my ear, irritating me until I can’t bear it any longer and I burst out with an accusation that’s not really an accusation at all.

  “You’ve never worn red.”

  He stops picking at his toes. I know he understands my meaning. If he’s killed as many people as I think he has, why not acknowledge it? At least Kat does that much.

  “Yet my middle name is Rose.”

  His hands fall to his sides. He’s made me wear the color in his stead, only I haven’t realized it until now.

  “I’m trying to understand,” I say. My voice is strained, and I take a minute to calm myself. I don’t want to accuse him anymore, but I can’t go on ignoring what Aleta told me of his role in her parent’s deaths. “You were his assassin?”

  Da’s mouth puckers at his toes. “Wondered when you’d get to that. Yes, I was his favored assassin. But what does that matter? I did right by you when the time came.”

  “Lying to me my whole life wasn’t exactly doing right by me,” I bite out, losing my composure as quickly I gained it.

  “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

  I try my hand at the stony silence Da’s practiced so effectively during my visits.

  He leans forward, resting his arms on his knees. “Think the situation’s black-and-white, do you?”

  “You either murder or you don’t,” I spit out without thinking. This is not how I’d wanted this conversation to go. I don’t see it as black-and-white, not anymore, but he just refuses to give an inch.

  Words can’t adequately say how angry it makes me that this is the subject he finally chooses to have a conversation with me on. That instead of inquiring after my health or making plans for both of us to get out of here, he delivers a defense for murder in a voice just above a whisper.

  “How about this scenario, Breena Rose? Imagine that you�
�re a child. You think you’re an adult, but really the world is so much bigger than you’ve ever known—more than court, more than fencing lessons, more than birthday balls thrown for nobles you don’t even know.”

  He’s talking about himself. He’s finally going to tell me something.

  “The world is more than you’ve ever known,” he continues. “You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, but you’re cocky. Too cocky. And secure in your station. And worst of all, you’re powerful, which is a dangerous ingredient when combined with youth. You know only what your best friend tells you about the world.” Da shuffles his feet and sighs. “Even back then, he wasn’t the same boy I befriended as a child. There was a thread in him that had unwound somehow.”

  Best friend. He can only mean the king. The glimpse into their past that the king gave me our first night in the palace is enough for me to guess that.

  “The way he saw it, it was Egria against the world. Us versus them.” He shrugs. “I wasn’t so sure, but then he showed me a list from another kingdom and told me that every name on the list had wound up dead. And I saw Corrine’s name on it.”

  Ma. I’m afraid to even breathe too loudly, lest I stir Da from his fervor. We never talk about Ma. He scarcely seems to know I’m there anymore, trapped in his memories.

  “I knew I could stop the rulers from moving down the list,” he says. “I wouldn’t have to use a knife or even poison. Nothing so crude as that. I could just steal the breath from their lungs, and it would look natural. Like they’d passed in their sleep. No one would suspect the emissary of peace from Egria as a culprit.”

  He stops, face paling at the remembrance. “It was different than I thought it would be. They woke up when they couldn’t breathe. Struggled. Their faces purpled, and they fought me until…they didn’t anymore.”

  I’m going to be sick.

  “But I did it because I loved my wife.” His face is fierce now, and he emphasizes every word. “And the man I once called a friend promptly moved armies into a country too torn by chaos after the sudden loss of their rulers to defend against him.”

  Wait. He hadn’t been speaking of Nereidium? I know that the king hadn’t been able to get his armies onto the island after the slaying of Aleta’s parents.

  So the king has done this to other lands under his rule. No wonder Caden and the others are so determined to prevent it. They know his procedure, know how he works. Nereidium’s the first land he’s tried and failed to conquer, so of course he’s fixated on it.

  “But it was so easy that the king couldn’t believe he hadn’t had me do it before. He abandoned the excuse of a list. One never existed to begin with. I was almost relieved. It meant Corrine was safe. He told me it was for the good of the kingdom. He said, ‘Those who are not for the good of the kingdom are against it, and we execute traitors to the kingdom here. As well as their accomplices.’”

  Accomplices? Da’s grim face says it all. He hadn’t had accomplices. Just my mother. The king threatened Ma’s life.

  I feel vaguely guilty. If that part of my history is true, Da saved Ma only for his work to be undone when I was born.

  “I was a coward. So I bowed to his will and executed those he chose. His enemies began to whisper of me as a shade, one who steals someone’s breath away in the moonlight. Somehow, no one connected the falling kingdoms with my visits. I wish they had. I wanted a way out. And because I couldn’t see another way, because I was a coward, I tried it on myself. If I tried poison, they’d get me a healer, and if I used a knife, they’d staunch my blood, so it seemed that depriving myself of air was the only solution. I blacked out before the deed was done. The traitorous air came rushing back to me.” Da’s eyes are flat. “How could I bring an innocent child into that mess?”

  It’s a good question. And it explains why he’d run with Ma—and me in her belly.

  And yet, he had brought an innocent child into it. Aleta was stuck, bitter and mean and an orphan under the rule of her nation’s greatest enemy. She’ll be denied her rightful crown. None of it is fair, and it can all be traced back to Da. Despite how close I am to understanding, I can’t forgive him for this. His actions affected far more people than they’d helped.

  “Two nations are trapped in a deadlocked war because of you. Aleta’s parents are dead.”

  “Who?”

  “Aleta.” He doesn’t even remember the girl whose life he tore asunder? My sympathy is unraveling faster and faster. How could he just forget the girl? “The princess of Nereidium?” I remind him.

  To my disbelieving ears, he actually laughs. “Right. Of course. Aleta’s parents. The princess is alive because of me. I was the one who stole her away from the nursery that night while Kat set the blaze in the royal wing.”

  Kat killed the king and queen of Nereidium? She and Da had worked together—the two Riders under the king’s command.

  That title isn’t quite right for Kat though. I dimly recall the chaos of my Reveal. Hadn’t Kat sent a flame crawling across my arm? In fact, I’d been sure until Tregle stepped forward that Kat had been responsible for the fire that had taken the fishermen’s boat today. I’ve been so concerned with the addition of my own powers, I’ve hardly paused to consider Kat’s.

  “She set the blaze. How can that be?” I broach the topic. “I mean—I know that she can both Ride and Torch, but how?”

  Da laughs again, but there’s no humor in the sound. “Sweet mercies, they do keep you away from the castle gossip, don’t they? Lady Kat was birthed a twin, but her sister’s abilities transferred to her…somehow. So they say.”

  I’m getting sidetracked. I drop my voice to a whisper, hoping that the stillness of the air means Kat isn’t spiraling my words to her ears as I speak. “Tell me about that night. There’s a deadline now, Da. The king’ll kill you if you don’t hand over this treasure he’s convinced you have. We’ve got until the prince’s wedding in two weeks.”

  “And you?”

  I falter, noticing how Da’s eyes have sharpened, his shoulders drawn in toward his spine. “I’ll—I’m not sure. He wants to make me a part of his navy.”

  “Navy?”

  “I Revealed last night.” I shift in my seat—it’s still so surreal. “I’m a Thrower.”

  He stills. “So you’ll be in his navy. But you’ll be alive?”

  “Yes.”

  He relaxes, leaning back against the gray bricks in his cell. “You look nice. New dress?”

  Trying to pin down Da for an answer is like trying to capture the air he’s supposed to command.

  “The king tried to have me kill someone,” I shoot back. There. That will hold his attention.

  The light of mild mischief in Da’s eyes after his compliment fades. He wilts under the press of my gaze. “Did you do it?” he asks.

  I, too, sag under the weight of the memory. “I was ready to,” I say softly, feeling ashamed at the remembrance. “Someone else stepped in.”

  “You’re making allies then.” A half-smile lifts Da’s cheek. “That’s good.”

  “Don’t talk of allies as if I’ve gone to war here, Da.” I’m only trying to do what it takes to get by until I can get us both out. I want only to survive that long.

  “My dear girl.” He sighs. His voice is world-weary, and the exhaustion in it frightens me. “The minute Kat stepped into our tavern, you were at war.”

  Thirty-Two

  They tell me I’m a Thrower, but that term implies that I can use my powers deliberately.

  Da’s words stay with me when the king assigns me a new tutor, one who is, thankfully, nothing like Tutor Larsden. Though I have no desire to give into the king one bit more than I already have, Da’s right. I am at war with the king and have been for months now. I’ll let them teach me how to Throw. Learning how to use my abilities is a wise decision.

  Unfortunately, I can’t seem to muster up a modicum of control in the days after my Reveal. Water responds to me in moments of heightened emotion, but making it obe
y my will is another matter entirely.

  It doesn’t help that I’m the only Egrian Thrower to be found anywhere. The new tutor is a kind Shaker, but she can only offer suggestions on how to concentrate or examples of Shaker methods. Maybe, the frail old woman suggests, I can adapt the movements to suit Throwing?

  But I don’t know how to adapt them.

  Every day, Tutor Alys is very calm as she starts out with me. We practice in a secluded corner of the garden, where the Shaker can manipulate the earth and I can attempt to work with the water of a decorative fountain.

  When Alys bids, a vine twirls from the ivy on a nearby arbor to whirl playfully around her finger before twining itself back about the arbor. A bud blooms slowly, like a palm opening, to reveal petals of pinks and purples.

  When I mimic her motions, sweating yet again beneath the sweltering sun, the fountain’s water surges up in a liquid tornado before splashing over my head.

  At least it’s cooled me off.

  Alys sighs, raising her arms tiredly. The sleeves of her robe slide past her elbows. “Let’s try again.”

  Her voice is encouraging as she entreats me to start over, but I’m irritated and verging on disgust with myself. I have no control. Can’t even guide a stream of water from a bowl to my fingers, a skill that has to be the most basic Throwing method in existence. How is it that I commanded an ocean-filled ballroom with nary a thought, but a small fountain is beyond me?

  “This is absurd,” I mutter. Frustration scrapes its way through my voice.

  “Lady Breena—”

  “No, really!” I insist, wringing out my hair. “What does the king want with a Thrower who can’t even master this much water?”

  “I’ll remind you again that the key lies in controlling your temper.” Alys makes her voice soothing. “It is the same with all Adepts. I master my element by grounding myself, imagining the roots that tie me to this land. You must be still as ice. Calm and innocent as a brook. Placid—”