by Anna Steffl
Arvana involuntarily cowered. He was unbelievably strong and persevering. Lina had enticed him to train by offering the sword, but the strength and will were all his. There was no one better to have Assaea. Could she say the same of herself and the Blue Eye?
Crack.
With a heavy exhale, he picked the lock from the mangled wood. It was intact, but the metal rings through which it passed were no longer attached to the chest. He dropped the lock, threw the lid open, and took from the chest a black coat decorated with medals, gold buttons, and lace. “My grandfather’s uniform,” he said. By the way he caressed the garment, touched the medals, Arvana guessed he was thinking about his own brief generalship.
He passed the coat to her and rummaged deeper in the trunk. He pulled out half-a-dozen books, passed three to his father, and kept the others. She was left holding the mothball-scented uniform.
“These are personal,” the chancellor said upon opening one. “I don’t see it is our business reading them. Myronan, what is this about?”
With a half-guilty glance to the book in his hand, Degarius said, “Before she died, she told me I should read these. I never had occasion until now.”
“It doesn’t mean you should read them. You know she wasn’t right those last years. She thought you were my father.”
“I’m guessing grandfather told her something of the Forbidden Fortress.”
“Why do you need to know?’
“The thing I killed in the lake was a draeden, an immature draeden. They have another that I guess they’ll unleash on Sarapost at the end of Solemnity. Don’t you have any intelligence on it?”
“We know that Sovereign Alenius is planning to unveil something at the end of the Solemnity, but we thought it merely the announcement of their first push into Sarapost. We’ve heard rumors of something strange to the far north, but a draeden? That’s impossible.”
“I’ve seen it,” Degarius said. “It was what burned Solace. Our troops don’t stand a chance. They’ll be dead in minutes. Alenius is going to unveil it and maybe The Scyon. Only The Scyon can raise the draeden.”
The chancellor gaped. “You intend to go to the Forbidden Fortress?”
“Where else?”
Clutching the diaries to his chest, the chancellor teetered backward and melted into a threadbare armchair. “If what you say is true, you’d be undertaking a fool’s errand. The ancients used blessed swords and a Blue Eye against The Scyon. Our best course is to alert King Fassal and disband all our troops at the front until King Lerouge can bring Artell. But a Blue Eye?”
Arvana caught her breath. Was he going to tell his father everything? As much as she admired the chancellor, he’d been an official. His allegiance was with Sarapost. He shouldn’t know.
Sure enough, Degarius said, “The Solacians have been keeping—”
“Degarius,” Arvana said firmly and cupped her hand over where the relic lay beneath her coat.
“They’ve been keeping a Blue Eye ever since Paulus died. Their superior gave it to Miss Nazar.”
Arvana knotted her fist beneath his grandfather’s uniform. How dare he?
The chancellor nearly dropped the diaries he held. “You?”
If his father was going to know the truth, he might was well know all of it. “I was sent to judge if Prince Lerouge could use the relic. He wasn’t the best man, but he seemed to have changed and your son...he can’t use it. So, I gave it to the prince.”
The chancellor nodded. “Lerouge had Artell, Lukis’s sword and an army.”
“Grandmother gave me Assaea when I won my first tournament,” Degarius said haughtily, obviously spiteful at being cast as second best. “So, it’s a fool’s errand, but not completely foolish.”
“My mother had Assaea?” his father asked. “But how?”
Degarius shrugged. “She never told me. I never really believed it was Assaea until”— he glanced to Arvana, but said— “until I killed the draeden.” There wasn’t even a flicker of appreciation left in his glance for how she’d saved his sword, and life, at the Citadel.
Eyes glazed with introspection, the chancellor said, “No wonder my mother was so disappointed I refused to take up the sword.” The chancellor sighed, focused on the books in his lap, and then opened the top one.
Degarius, too, started to read.
Here she was, purposefully left holding the uniform. She draped it over the chest’s edge and to pass time, stepped to the window overlooking the back of the house. The river, edged by a bluff on the far side, flowed parallel to the horizon. He’d spoken of learning to swim there.
“Myronan.” The way the chancellor said his son’s name meant something was wrong.
Arvana turned from the window.
Degarius took the book from his father. As he read, his mouth first pressed into a thin line, then puckered on the ends, as it he’d tasted something bitter.
The chancellor, doubled over, looked as if he’d had the air knocked out of him. What had Lina written to affect them so?
Degarius was shaking his head in disbelief. “Did you know?” he asked his father.
“No.”
“What’s the matter?” Arvana asked. “Doesn’t it show the way? Is it impossible?”
“It shows the way. It is possible.” Degarius snapped the diary closed. “But there must be another way, a better way.”
“What do you mean? Another way?”
“A way without you.”
Arvana’s throat pulsed with rising fury. “This is the other way.” She pulled the relic from her shirt. “You promised the superior to do this.”
Degarius, with chin thrust out and crossed arms, stepped imposingly close. With the resolute confidence of a man sure of his authority, he set his piercing blue eyes on her. “I only promised your superior to come here. I’ve done that. Now, I must do what’s best for my country and people. Make this easy. Give me the relic. I know you won’t kill me to stop me.”
The lying bastard! She hardened her gaze and met his. She recalled the vision of him from bonfire night, the man made feeble by being drawn through the Blue Eye. By her actions, she’d made her beloved father suffer; she’d do it to him. “You’re right. I won’t kill you. But I’ll make you wish I had.”
“Ari.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Let my father or me find someone to use the relic.”
Him or his father? That was lunacy. Her head buzzed with anger. “Is this about you being the hero? You’re no better than Chane with his delusion of being Paulus. He wasn’t Paulus, and neither are you. I am. Your grandmother begged me to help you.”
The chancellor was suddenly beside them, holding his hands between them like a bystander trying to stop a fight. “Please.”
Degarius motioned him away. “Lina was crazy.”
“Crazy to give you Assaea? You think she judged well in that case. Besides, we have but days! If you were to find someone able to use it, you have no idea how crossing the border between life and death can disturb a mind. Just opening the cover to test your champion will ruin the advantage of surprise, an advantage my people died for. We have a chance, however small, if we do this together. Here.” Arvana thrust the Blue Eye before his eyes. “If you wish to fail, I can’t stop you except by a way that is my equal harm. Whom would I find to take Assaea if I must stop you? As much as I wish I could do this alone, I can’t.” She jabbed the relic at him. “Take it,” she screamed. “Take it!”
Degarius raised a hand but placed it to his forehead. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want you to have to do this.”
“It isn’t your choice. It never has been your choice. You’re not the general of this battle.”
“Damn it,” he cursed under his breath, tossed the diary on the table, and strode toward the stairs. His heavy stomp down them echoed up through the cavernous roof.
Arvana slipped the chain back over her head. The locket was cold against her heaving chest.
The chancello
r picked up the diary and held it to her. “It is my mother’s, such as she was. If you wish to see it, I consent.” He motioned to the armchair.
Arvana accepted the book and the invitation to sit. So much anger had sapped the marrow from her bones.
Lina wrote:
I dread passing this confession to you, Nani. It is a shame I’ve hidden from everyone except your grandfather. Even he, however, did not know the whole truth of it. Otherwise, how could he have loved me?
The young shouldn’t shoulder the errors of the past, but that is often the case in this world. As my excuse, let me tell you I, along with every other country girl, believed being a Lily Girl was our chance to become accomplished and serve the Sovereign Alenius. We heard that he was the most handsome of men and that he would take the most beautiful, talented girl in Gheria to be his wife. My father wished me to marry Stellan, but then he was but the second son of a neighboring lord. I thought I deserved better. So, when the eunuchs came for Lily Girls, I slipped away to the village.
I meticulously studied every art in which the eunuchs and old Lilies schooled us. I enjoyed when they rubbed my skin with oil, powdered my face, and fitted me with the finest dresses.
The Sovereign was indeed handsome, but was as vain and impotent as he was beautiful and it made him cruel. He forced me to do unspeakable things to try to please him. I did them, all along hoping that he would make me his wife. For a time, I was the most envied of the Lily Girls. Sapphires were braided into my hair and I wore the best, sheerest gowns. I imagined the day I would leave the confines of a Lily and take my place before all eyes as the queen of High Gheria. But I never conceived Alenius’s child, and he grew tired of me. Among the Lily Girls, I fell from the most envied to the most pitied. Then I realized I would grow old, ugly and forgotten within the walls of the Forbidden Fortress. Even being a country lord’s wife was a far better fate. I wanted to go home. I begged the clerics, but they only beat me for the audacity of asking. I’m ashamed of what I thought worth my release.
It was found in the most commonplace way. When I was a child, my father ordered a new barn. The workers digging the footings unearthed a trove of artifacts—a broken headstone, a casket containing a man’s skeleton whose bony hands locked around a sword hilt, and oddest of all, an immense collapsed rib cage. Inside the rib cage was a clear-shelled egg-shaped object filled with green wafers and silver wires.
Upon piecing together the headstone, my father found it was the marker of Paulus Lerouge’s lost grave. Now you know I told you the truth when I said your sword was Assaea.
My father believed the other thing found, the odd egg, was the Beckoner. It was said Paulus’s body was buried over The Scyon’s. Perhaps the ancients, having lost so much knowledge in those dark times, didn’t know how The Scyon was raised. Perhaps they didn’t know that there was anything inside the rib cage.
Judging the find too dangerous to reveal, my father had the footings filled and the barn built elsewhere. He reburied the creature, the Beckoner, and Paulus. The sword, however, he kept. He said it was a good thing. I didn’t bribe the Sovereign Alenius with the good thing. I wanted my father to be able to keep it. I thought the Beckoner couldn’t possibly work after so long, but that the Sovereign Alenius would like to have it as a rare artifact, would accept it as a bribe for my release.
He did want it. He sent me home to get it.
No man is supposed to look upon a Lily Girl unless the sovereign elevates her to a wife. We came and went from his chambers by an underground passage. On the day I left for home, the eunuch led me far into the tunnels. I always guessed they connected more than our compound and the Sovereign Alenius’s chamber. Although blindfolded, I remember we turned right only once. We climbed a stairway and came out in a room full of vestments. Here the eunuch removed the cover from my eyes. Leading a blindfolded girl through the Worship Hall would have aroused suspicion. I remember a dove window above the vestment room’s door.
Guards took me home. If I couldn’t produce the Beckoner, they would return me to the Forbidden Fortress.
Upon seeing the look on my father’s face when I told him my dealings, I changed my mind. I had disobeyed him not only once in refusing to marry Stellan, but a second time by revealing our family’s secret. I told the guards I had made the whole thing up because I was homesick and needed to see my family just once. My father corroborated my story. They nearly believed us until a foreman hoping for a reward led them to the site. They killed my father for his deceit. To punish me, they executed the rest of my family. To keep the Sovereign Alenius’s word, they gave me my freedom. So you see why, all my life, I have despised the Sovereign Alenius with all my being.
“You know the truth about the rest of my life. When the War of the Borderlands began, I aided the persecuted Mora Gherians who allied with Sarapost. The Janfa Gherian Clan was within a mile of my home when your grandfather Stellan bravely led a regiment in a desperate stand on the northern quarter of my land. Finally, I saw what a noble man he was. His victory was the beginning of better days. I told Stellan I preferred him to even the emperor and had tried to escape the Forbidden Fortress only because of him.
I always worried the Gherians will learn to use the Beckoner. I have prepared you as best I can if the worst comes. In the next pages are notes of all I remember of the Forbidden Fortress. It may fall to you, Nani, to avenge me on Alenius.
OF THIS PLACE
Mrs. Karlkin ushered Arvana to a hot bath. A towel and neatly folded chemise waited on a stand. “You were in the attic so long I thought the water would get cold,” the housekeeper said.
Arvana wondered if the woman heard her shouting and threats. Perhaps not, since she was being kind. Or she had heard and was being kinder still, knowing warm water would help release the knotty discomfort of anger. Would it help the sick feeling in her stomach from reading the diary and understanding how Lina had damned herself? Even in Hell, Lina formed herself as a Lily Girl, a Lily Girl craving the glory of the throne. She clung to vanity, to the desire to be noticed above all others, though it had caused so much pain. The irony was that in Hell, she became what she desired, but there was no one to notice.
Mrs. Karlkin handed Arvana the soap. “Call for me when you’re finished.” With a critical eye to the grimy monk’s tunic and riding breeches, she said, “I’ll find you something to wear to dinner.”
As awful as it would be to put back on her filthy clothes, she couldn’t impose on the woman. “I have another tunic in my pack.”
“I’ve served in this house as child and woman. You can’t appear at the table in the clothes you brought unless you eat with the stable hands, and I’m sure Lord Degarius would never countenance such a thing. We may live far afield in the country, but we keep civilized ways. I’ll find a proper dress.” She frowned at Arvana’s boots. “The slippers might be harder.”
Arvana thought to disagree with what Lord Degarius would countenance and assert her preference of eating with the stable hands, but Mrs. Karlkin was bustling away.
The proper dress, in Mrs. Karlkin’s judgment, was a crimson bodice and matching skirt. The slippers were a tad long, but a wad of tissue in the toes made them wearable.
“I don’t feel right wearing it,” Arvana confided as the housekeeper finished repositioning a button so the skirt’s waistband fit.
“Nonsense. It’s nearly the right size. There’s a whole closet and two wardrobes of Lady Degarius’s clothes. She always wore lovely things, but a little young for her age. She never reconciled with getting old. I kept thinking her clothes should have gone to the servants long ago to be made into holiday dresses for the children, but fate has a reason for things.” Putting her hands to her hips, she made a final appraisal. “It’s not in style, but it’s lovely on you. Anything would be, though.”
With deep reservation, Arvana looked into the full-length mirror. She had never worn a tightly fitted bodice and flowing skirt. She had gone from a Sylvanian girl’s leggings and tunic to a
Solacian habit. Lina’s dress was a real woman’s robe, not made to be sensible, but becoming. The image of a fine woman stared back at Arvana. She felt like she knew this woman, but only vaguely, and here they were staring at each other. It was awkward, yet strangely compulsive. She could have stared a long while at this woman, at the gentle slope of her shoulders, at the way her chest rose and fell within the confines of the tight bodice, except the housekeeper summoned her.
“Come along. They’ll be waiting. Lord Degarius likes an early dinner.”
Mrs. Karlkin did know that about her master.
Arvana peeked into the rooms they passed. Every window seemed to open to a worthy view. The furniture was sturdy, yet elegant. But the place didn’t seem like his. Nothing had probably moved or been changed since Lina had died. They turned into the picture gallery. Mrs. Karlkin paused before a man and woman’s portraits that hung side by side. Arvana recognized Lina. The man had to be her husband Stellan. His hair was blond, like Degarius’s, and their beards were the same red. How hadn’t Lina thought Stellan grand from the start?
“The General and Lady Degarius’s marriage portraits. Behind you,” Mrs. Karlkin pointed to two smaller pictures, “is the chancellor as a boy. The other is my master at age eighteen.”
It was Degarius half a lifetime ago. His face was thinner, fresher, but the portrait’s eyes had the same resoluteness. The artist had captured their sky-blue color perfectly.
“A handsome boy. But he’s a handsomer man, don’t you think?” asked Mrs. Karlkin.
“Y-yes.”
“It’s time he had a new portrait made, one befitting the master of this house. Perhaps when he marries. The Maker knows I thought it would never happen and this place would fall into his cousin’s hands. But now—such a story—fighting a prince. I know my master. He’d never do it except for the best of reasons. Many a woman in Sarapost wishes herself in your place.”
So this was the cause of the fuss. Mrs. Karlkin didn’t know her master half as well as she thought. No woman in Sarapost, or anyplace else, would wish herself in my place.