by Evie Manieri
Cyrrin waited until Lahlil had put the poker back, then said,
Lahlil walked toward the back of the room, where what remained of an old mural was flaking off the stone: the last shreds of something beautiful. Sometimes she could almost make out the image.
Cyrrin said,
Cyrrin’s derision licked out like a whip.
Cyrrin went on fiddling with her buckles.
Lahlil didn’t insult her by offering platitudes and reassurances. Cyrrin knew the reality of her condition better than anyone. Her spine had been deteriorating for years, and eventually it would come to the point where no brace, however firm, would help her.
said Lahlil.
said Lahlil.
Lahlil went back to Jachad and straightened his blankets. She had no idea how she was supposed to respond to that.
The return of her impersonal briskness came as a relief.
Chapter 27
The smell of the strong Norlander wine made Rho feel a little sick, but he drank anyway. He wanted to forget the way Dramash had pulled away from him in Ani’s tower, but the wine only made the whole scene spin around in his head like a wheel, forcing him to watch his failure over and over again.
The huge refectory was exactly the same as Rho remembered it. He had taken a spot on one of the benches where the mid-clan household staff and the Arregadors who didn’t have the money for personal servants took their meals; sometimes there’d be a few furloughed soldiers, or better-heeled Arregadors looking for something to settle their stomachs after a night of debauchery, but now he shared it with only three off-duty guards. Great joints of meat turned on spits in fireplaces the size of small rooms, and the old steward—whose primary duty, Rho had always thought, had been the stingy rationing of cakes—still kept a sharp eye on the cooks, scullions and innumerable other functionaries responsible for feeding the Arregador household. No one had paid any attention to Rho since a sharp-boned boy in an apron had first brought his wine, which had no doubt been added to the bill the house-warden had begun drawing up the moment he set foot in the door. He knew he should eat something, but his stomach was so jumpy he didn’t think he could manage it.
He used one finger to push around a stray metal token left over from a dice game, engrossed by the sound it made sliding over the cracks between the wooden planks of the table. His primary reason for coming back to Norland had been to make sure that Dramash could have a safe future—and so far he himself had been the only one to hurt the boy. He felt like the victim of the world’s least funny practical joke.
The token fell through one of the bigger cracks and rolled away under the table.
Ani bothered him. Something in that room had felt wrong, but he could not explain why. He recalled every word she had said, but there had been nothing there to warrant any particular alarm. Dramash obviously trusted her and wanted to stay with her, and Ani had made it sound like the elixir showed them getting safely away, so obviously interfering now would only make things worse. If his gut felt like it was full of rocks, it was probably because no one was telling him what to do next. He just needed to stay out of it and Dramash would be fine.
He took another swig, hoping it would help him believe all those self-serving reassurances, but it didn’t.
This was all Eofar’s fault. He was the governor of the Shadar, the one in charge; he should have followed their original plan—or come up with a better one—instead of just feasting and scheming with the Eotans like he was no better than the rest of them.
Rho stared into the cup, now as empty of wine as it was of answers. He set it back on the table, then knocked it down with an angry flick of his fingers and watched it fall over on its side. It lay there gently rocking, which made him think of that morning in the Shadar when he had sat on a rock and watched the Gemanese ship sitting way out in the bay. Dramash had just destroyed the temple and killed all of his friends, but he remembered how peaceful he had felt watching the vessel bob up and down. He could have sat on that rock forever, looking out at the rippling swells and the drifting flotsam. Then Isa had come along and ruined it. Do something, she’d said. Fix it.
Rho reached out and stilled the rolling cup.
From the moment this trip had begun he had stood aside while decisions had been made around him. Instead of taking matters into his own hands, he had sat back and waited for others to fail. He had backed off when Dramash refused to learn ho
w to control his powers, even though he knew better than anyone how much damage the boy could do; he had let Eofar take the lead with Gannon, even though he knew how angry he was; he had let Kira keep him away from Trey—and now he had let Ani take Dramash away from him without even putting up a fight. These had all been his responsibility, and yet here he was, drinking alone in the kitchen, waiting for someone to come along and fix everything for him.
He crossed his arms on the table and put his head down, feeling more alone than ever before and with not the slightest clue what to do about it. For a while, he listened to the roar of the fires and the slow squeal of the turning spits. Then he heard someone swing open the kitchen door behind him and Aline appeared in the doorway with her cloak over her arm, flushed and out of breath. He sat up, blinking.
A sledgehammer shattered every other thought in his head, leaving only that one.
The restless crowd of Arregadors gathered to talk over Gannon’s next move paid no heed to him as he slid through them. The door-warden gave him a second look before opening up, but no one questioned him. He strode through the ranks of the Arregador house-guards, ignoring the lieutenant’s request to stop; Rho was a member of the Shadari garrison and still under Governor Eofar’s command.
As he headed out into the streets, he saw triffons patrolling in tight patterns overhead—and not just checking the Front or even just Ravindal; he could see them circling the lower town and the forests to the north and west too.
He had a hard time keeping track of where he was going—three years out of the country had somewhat blurred his memory of the city’s streets—and he sagged a little with relief when he caught sight of the cooper’s yard with its skeletal half-finished barrels, and turned into the modest little street leading to the stables. The stalls had all been abandoned in the face of the coming—or more likely, imagined—crisis, and the fires had all been doused. Rho saw nothing moving except a snow-covered heap of fur in the blacksmith’s yard; it looked like a big white dog.
Five paces away he realized with a shock that the heap was Kira’s coat, and that Kira was still inside it. He stumbled to a halt for a moment, not convinced that anyone in that crumpled position could still be alive, then he shook himself and ran into the yard. He didn’t see any blood in the snow around her, and as he knelt beside her and lifted her up he discovered to his intense relief that she was still breathing.
She twitched awake suddenly and opened one eye.
He held on to her as she tried to pull away, warning her,
said Kira, pushing against him, then bristling with pain as if her clothes were made of hot needles. She steadied herself against him and said,
Kira reached up to touch her left eye and winced.
He felt the last of Kira’s optimism plummet, as if he had tied a stone around her ankles and thrown her from a cliff.
said Rho. He kicked the ash barrel and then winced.
Using his arm, she pulled herself to her feet; by the time he realized she was reaching for Virtue’s Grace, she was guiding the sword back into its sheath.
Kira turned back to him; he watched as snowflakes settled on her hair and white eyelashes and was shocked anew at the damage to her beautiful face.
Another triffon passed by low overhead, and very much to his surprise, Rho realized he did have a better idea. He turned his face up into the falling snow and whistled as loudly as he could. The triffon turned around and flew back toward him, then the rider obeyed Rho’s command to land.
Kira stepped up behind him, buzzing with anxiety.
Rho was astonished to find that he actually believed it.
Chapter 28
The force of the triffon swooping down over the Front forced Kira back against Rho as the Eotan soldier looked around for a place to set down safely among the fidgeting troops. Kira saw the soldiers stamping their feet against the cold and casting glances at the empty entrance to Eowara’s tomb; she winced as waves of their edginess pounded against her throbbing eye and cracked ribs. Triffons still lined the headland and archers still gathered around the braziers, using the warmth to keep their bows supple, even though Gannon had always considered archery little more honorable than throwing rocks from a blind. She should have known that Gannon would not be put off by the failure of his villains to appear on cue; he was going to have his day of glory even if it meant making his soldiers wait out on the Front until icicles dripped from the corners of their eyes. No one was going anywhere until something happened.
The soldier flew low beside the terrace and Kira braced herself for the jolt of landing. Rho put his arm around her waist to support her, but she still felt as if she had just fallen from a window when the triffon’s claws scraped across the black rock. She managed to undo the harness herself, but Rho had to help her down from the saddle. She was beginning to feel like a parcel that had passed through too many hands on the way to its destination. They moved up onto the first few steps to the porch so the triffon could take off again.