The Heartwood Crown

by Matt Mikalatos

  Darius bowed his head. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  Break Bones put a hand on his shoulder. “You go to her, Darius. I will find and kill the archon. Put the Sword of Years into my hand, and I will fetch his head.”

  Darius hesitated. “The prophecy says it will be a human.” He held the sword out to the king.

  “I have told you already, I am Pastisian. And I will not carry that sword. I will not wield a tool that seeks to sway my actions.”

  The sword wanted battle, that much was clear. But wouldn’t there be Elenil to fight in Aluvorea? Perhaps Mrs. Raymond would carry it? But she shook her head before he could even hold out the sword to her. The prophecy had been clear, and Hanali thought it was about Darius. “The prophecy,” Darius said. “What happens if I don’t go to Far Seeing?”

  “A prophecy can wait,” Break Bones said. “The Scim have waited these many years for justice, what is a few days more?”

  “You must decide quickly,” King Ian said. “I am commanding my soldiers to speed their departure.”

  Hanali had been quiet. Uncharacteristically quiet.

  “What do you think?” Darius asked him.

  Hanali’s eyes fell on the faerie. “She’s lying. The Aluvoreans have been allied with the Elenil for hundreds of years. The archon sent a hundred of these little things out to find you, no doubt, hoping to distract you.”

  The faerie started signing like mad to the messenger, who held his hands up and told her she was going too fast.

  “Think,” Hanali said. “When last you saw Madeline, was she well enough to journey to the Sunlit Lands? How long has it been? She would be worse now, not better. It is too fantastic, too unlikely, that she would have returned at just this moment. It is not like her. She has said her good-byes, she is done with this place.”

  But Darius knew, somehow, that Hanali was wrong. This was exactly like Maddie. It wouldn’t matter that she had said good-bye. It definitely wouldn’t matter that her health was failing. Once Madeline made a decision, there was nothing to be done. It was one of the things he loved about her, one of the reasons he knew that when they broke up he wouldn’t be able to convince her to get back together: she had broken up with him because she loved him, and there was no way she could be persuaded to change that.

  He remembered a time at school when one of the kids on the track team said something about how Darius could run so fast because he was Black, and Madeline took it to heart. She had gone to the coach and said she was going to sit out of every meet until the coach agreed to have a conversation about it in a team meeting. The coach said no. Madeline started convincing other kids they should sit the next meet out. Darius said no. He was still going to run. It wasn’t like he hadn’t heard the comment before, or a thousand things like it. But she convinced eleven other kids to sit out, and finally the coach folded, because the upcoming meet was a big one. He told Madeline he would let her lead a conversation, or bring someone in to lead one, but she had to agree to sit out the next meet anyway. Or she could drop it for now and they’d have a conversation at the end of the season—no need for all the drama when they should be running.

  Darius still remembered the grin on Maddie’s face as she sat in the stands at that meet, and how she cheered for him even louder than usual. He remembered how she ran down to him after his race and threw her arms around him. And he remembered how she waited until the coach let her start the conversation with the team (which had gone surprisingly well—way better than Darius had expected) and then reported the whole thing, including the weird suspension, to the principal and told him that her next call would be to the newspaper unless “something was done,” and suddenly the coach was missing a meet himself because he was off at a mandatory training of some sort. Coach was scrupulously fair to Madeline—and Darius—after that. Darius told her she shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble, shouldn’t have put herself on the line like that for a dumb throwaway comment someone else had made, and she had looked at him with real shock and said, “Darius, that was wrong what he said to you.” As if when you saw something wrong, what else could you do? You had to fix it, right? Even if it cost you.

  So yeah. It was exactly like Madeline to be in the Sunlit Lands again. And it was exactly why, if she were here, she would tell him to do the right thing. Sure, she wouldn’t want him to kill the archon, but she would want him to help the Scim. If he saw Madeline before he killed the archon, he wasn’t sure he would ever do it. She would convince him there was another way. So maybe it was now or never.

  “The time of decision has come,” King Ian said. “Hanali?”

  “I, for one, will head to Far Seeing,” Hanali said, but he seemed distracted.

  “And you, friend Scim?”

  “Yes,” Break Bones said slowly. “I will go to Far Seeing. Brother Darius. You need not join us. With the Pastisians behind me and the Elenil here at my side, it seems likely we will overcome any barrier through brute strength or Hanali’s guile.”

  Darius wanted to go to Maddie, so badly he thought he would be torn in two. But there was an issue of justice here. Darius had a responsibility. He had promised to confront Thenody about the murdered Scim child, Nightfall, too. Then there was the blood of the Scim shed over centuries to be atoned for. He thought of what Madeline would say to him if he chose to come to her and lost an opportunity to move the Sunlit Lands toward justice. She would be angry. She would want him to do the right thing, and come to her after if he could. Surely she could wait a few days. This wasn’t an either/or decision. He’d kill the archon and leave immediately for Aluvorea. Far Seeing would be a detour, nothing more. His spirits lifted at the idea of seeing her again, and having done his duty, too.

  He spoke to Diwdrap. “Can you take a message back to Madeline?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Tell her that I love her and that I’ll come for her after we take Far Seeing.” He paused. What else should he say? “Tell her . . . tell her she has always been my something better.” Those last words echoed a line from Madeline’s favorite books, the Meselia novels. The same books that Mrs. Raymond had written, once upon a time.

  The faerie gave him a skeptical look, then signed something to the translator. “I’ll tell her,” he translated. “But that’s the sort of message that should be delivered in person.”

  With that she jumped off Darius’s hand, landed on her hummingbird, and flew away, her hands speeding a message to the Pastisian messenger as she departed.

  The messenger’s face flushed. “She also has a message for the Elenil.”

  Hanali raised his eyebrows. “Oh? What did she say?”

  “I’m afraid it’s not repeatable, sir.”

  Hanali clicked his tongue in annoyance but said nothing. He seemed to be lost in thought. He watched the hummingbird speed out of sight.

  The bird flew up, toward the taller buildings of the city, then in widening circles, as if looking for a path in the air, before it flew to the south. Darius looked at the king. “I go to Far Seeing, so long as Archon Thenody is there.”

  The king raised an eyebrow, then spoke to his attendants. “We walk toward the Gears of the World now. I would have a moment of private conversation with Darius.”

  Mrs. Raymond slipped her hand from the king’s arm and immediately began giving instructions to some of the soldiers nearby. The guards made sure there was a wide berth around the king and Darius. Hanali didn’t even make a comment, a testament to how distracted he had become.

  The king put his large hand on Darius’s shoulder as they walked. “You have made a warrior’s choice, Darius Walker. I pray you do not regret it. Now I must offer you one more thing before you depart with my soldiers.”

  “What is that, Your Majesty?”

  “Let me take that sword from you. The magic weighs you down, and it changes the way you think, the way you move in battle. It draws you toward blood, and you fight against it. It slows you.”

  Darius frowned. “I offere
d it to you a few minutes ago, and you didn’t want it.”

  “I have no desire to use it. But I would gladly free you from it.” He walked in silence for a moment, gathering his thoughts. Then he said, “Why do you want to bring justice to the Scim so badly, Darius Walker?”

  It was a crazy question. “It’s the right thing to do.”

  “Ah. But people such as you and I know that injustice fills the world like water. You cannot drink it all, Darius. So why have you chosen to empty this particular cup?”

  Darius opened his mouth to speak. Then he realized that he didn’t know the answer. The Scim had befriended him when he arrived in the Sunlit Lands. He had lived among them. He knew them. “They’re my friends,” he said at last. “And I want them to be treated well.”

  The king made a low rumbling sound in his chest, a sound of affirmation. “And did you have friends in your homeland who were mistreated? And did you throw everything away to help them? Did you abandon your time, your home, your loved ones, potentially your life to fight for them?”

  No. He hadn’t. He . . . he didn’t know why. He didn’t understand why he fought for the Scim with such intense certainty. He decided at last that there was only one answer that was honest. “I don’t know why I fight for the Scim,” he said. “Or at least, why I fight for them when I’ve never fought this way for someone else before this.”

  “I have a theory, if you would hear it,” the king said. “A thought to consider.”

  “Okay.”

  The king stopped walking, turning his whole attention to Darius. His gaze felt as heavy as a lead apron. Darius couldn’t have moved away if he had wanted. “As king, I cannot right every wrong. But I have come to realize that some wrongs are dependent on others. If I can find the core injustice and destroy it, many of the others are destroyed in time. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah. That makes sense.”

  “In your world, in your country, there are many injustices. Some are visited on the people who look like you and me . . . black-skinned people like us, like many of the Pastisians. This is why my people first came here, as you know. Slavery, racism, socially constructed poverty—these things are not the core injustice. It is something deeper: the belief that some people are inferior to others. They are not to be treated well, because they are less worthy than other people. They are not able to break free, because they are not as strong as their oppressors.”

  “But we did break free!”

  “You broke free of slavery, as did we. But you, Darius . . . Not every person in your country, not Black people, you. You have not broken free of this message that has been shouted to you by the world around you your whole life. You have not broken free of this core injustice, this oppressive lie which has been ingrained in you: you still believe you are inferior. You believe you are not worth fighting for. You believe you cannot have justice for yourself.”

  “I—”

  “Yet in the Scim’s situation you see a reflection, a strange reflection, of yourself. So although you have never fought for yourself with the same passion, the same ferocity, you fight for the Scim to prove that it can be done. You fight for the Scim as you wish someone had fought for you. You fight to make yourself worthy so that perhaps you can free yourself at last.”

  Darius trembled at these words. They sank into him. He wasn’t sure they were true. He didn’t want them to be true. But he couldn’t deny that they fit the facts. They even fit things Madeline had said to him more than once—that he stood up for other people but would never stand up for himself. He couldn’t talk about this anymore. He didn’t want to think about this. “Your Majesty,” Darius said, “we are running out of time to prepare for our battle.”

  “Ah,” the king said. “Of course. One more thing. The sword. It has a powerful need for revenge. It whispers to you of justice but disguises the cost.”

  “Justice is cheap at any cost,” Darius said.

  “I do not disagree. And yet . . . you are so quick to sacrifice, Darius. You take the weight on yourself alone, when the community would gladly lift with you.” The king held his hand out, and one of his attendants approached and gave him a sword. It had a strange box soldered above the hilt. The king pointed his finger at it. “This is a battery pack. It runs an electrical current into the blade. It has no magic in it—no will but yours guides it. It would be your blade, not a blade soaked in centuries of accumulated Scim blood. Use it here or in Far Seeing or in Aluvorea. My offer to send you there stands.” He handed the sword to Darius.

  Darius turned the blade over in his hand, studied it. “Your Majesty. I thank you for your generosity. But I must follow where the Sword of Years takes me.”

  King Ian took the electric sword back and handed it to his attendant, who backed away again. “I expected no other answer, but it is the role of kings to offer wellness to their people. So be it.”

  A buzzing excitement came from the Sword of Years. It could feel that it would be loosed upon the Elenil soon. Darius wasn’t certain how he felt about everything the king had said, but there was something about Ian’s confidence, his kindness, that amazed Darius. Not only that, but he also seemed aware of the injustices of the world. His kindness wasn’t the result of blindness or naiveté. Ian had said that his role was to offer wellness to his people. Darius’s heart swelled at the thought that the king saw Darius as one of his own. Maybe after the battle, after he had gone to Madeline, he could come back here again. “How soon will we board the airships?”

  “I will speak to you once more before you fly from here,” the king said. Apparently this ended his audience. Ian spoke loud enough to include everyone nearby. “Walk with me,” the king said, “all of you. Come see the Gears of the World.” He led them away from the buildings and toward the edge of the world.

  There was a gap of about a foot between where the ground ended and the massive crystal sphere moved past. It was turning fast, and Darius put his hand out to touch it, feeling the smooth movement of the sky. The gap looked down into darkness and empty space. Darius shuddered at the thought of what might happen if someone were to fall into it. “Where do these holes come from?” he asked. Up close he could see that they were fairly large, about the size of a soccer ball.

  “We drill those,” the king said. “For our gondola lifts.”

  Hanali leaned close. “I see no gears in these so-called Gears of the World.”

  Mrs. Raymond snorted. “You’re so literal minded sometimes, Hanali.”

  The king pointed out the giant hooks and cables still in the field behind them. “We connect these hooks into the sphere, and then the gondola is lifted into the sky. We can be anywhere in the Sunlit Lands in a day, in the amount of time it takes the sun to rise and set again. Once we’re over the area where we wish to be, my people drop from the gondolas with gliders.”

  “How do you get the gondolas back?”

  “We don’t. They go into the sea on the other side of the world. They’ve never come up again on this side.”

  Break Bones said, “I have never seen a thing like this, nor imagined it in the world. It is no wonder the Pastisians keep their technology secret.”

  “Is it dangerous to the environment?” Darius asked. “Drilling holes in the sky seems dangerous.”

  “Every technology has an environmental cost. The Pastisians have purposely curtailed our technology for environmental reasons and because I will not allow the use of slaves or underpaid workers. This limits some of our options. But this particular cost is a small one for the strategic advantage it gives us.”

  “I’m ready,” Darius said. “Which gondola will I board?”

  “They are readying the first one now,” the king said. “I will take you there. Say your farewells now.” This was a smooth way of letting Darius know that he would be walking with the king alone, not with the others.

  Darius clasped arms with Break Bones. “I will see you in Far Seeing.”

  Break Bones grinned. “We shall meet in the archo
n’s chambers, our enemies defeated in our wake.” Darius glanced at Hanali but did not speak to him. The Elenil had turned his back, feigning interest in the rising wall of crystal.

  Mrs. Raymond, to his surprise, hugged him. While she was near him, she whispered, “The Elenil have done many things that are evil. Do not let your search for revenge corrupt you, too. Do not let them add the destruction of your soul to the list of their wrongs, Darius.” She held his eyes for a moment, then released him to her king.

  Darius walked alongside the king, mulling over her words. Ian said, “She has a way of saying things that haunt you in battle.”

  Darius laughed. “You both do. You should let your warriors focus on the fighting.”

  “You may die today,” the king said solemnly. “It would be a disservice to leave you in ignorance of yourself.”

  “It’s hard work, being a Pastisian,” Darius said.

  “Yes,” King Ian said. “Did she speak to you of forgiveness?”

  Not exactly. “No, she spoke against revenge. Or at least, what revenge can do to a person.”

  They had come to a gondola that had been laid out facing the sphere. Three men carried the hook, positioning it near the shining wall that rose endlessly over the Sunlit Lands. The gondola was upright, and soldiers moved in and out of it, making preparations. “She is a wise woman,” the king said, “but we always come to a place of disagreement here. She thinks one can forgive injustice and show mercy and be done. I say you cannot forgive someone for the past if they continue their behavior into the future. Or rather, it is not true forgiveness. For if I truly forgave them, would I not then desire what is best for them? And do not the perpetrators of injustice harm themselves as well as others?” He shook his head. “No. It is because I have forgiven the Elenil that I must help them find another way. It is because I have forgiven them that I must tear down the unjust works of their hands. I cannot allow them to destroy themselves in their selfishness.”