by Beth Cato
“I began to worry for you,” he said, matching her stride as she walked back toward the ruined sod structures. Pink and orange light gleamed over the Pinnacles.
“Alonzo rode a hybrid of gremlin and mechanical war machine here from Tamarania. The first of its kind. She—Chi—was forced to go and go and go, as my horse was.”
“To suffer the same fate, though with no branch?” he asked quietly.
“Yes,” she whispered. At that, Leaf trilled. He was being unusually quiet. He’s mourning in his own way, like when so many of his kind were slain on the Argus. “Alonzo is going to take care of her.”
“As a warrior should tend to his fallen steed.”
“Grandfather, this change in me. I . . .” Oh Lady, I can’t even hint at it.
“You do not wish him to know.”
Octavia looked at King Kethan with relief. “Yes.”
“He is not an idiot. He already worries for you.”
“And I worry for him, with my every breath. We’re going to the Lady. I’m going to talk to her. This . . . it doesn’t have to be this way.” It doesn’t have to be me. Please, Lady. I have given so much of myself to you, to Caskentia. Allow me this selfishness.
“Octavia, have you given thought as to what this world would be without the Tree?” He motioned with his head. “Look around. Nearly a millennium has passed and the Dallows is still known as the Waste in spite of the Lady’s efforts to heal this land. Look at Caskentia. Mercia.” His voice broke. “I know the good that Percivals rendered in my day. You have tended our boys at the front, you and your sister and brother medicians. What will this world be if there is no Lady to answer your prayers?”
No Lady. No medicians. No healing magic. Only doctoring, as crude and slow as it is.
Her chest felt so tight she could scarcely breathe. Sensing her distress, Leaf made a sound akin to a purr and paced from shoulder to shoulder in a way that usually made her giggle. Not even Leaf’s antics could brighten her spirits now. “You can’t—you can’t place that burden on me, Your Majesty. I’m sorry. I know how that sounds. You just spent decades locked in a tomb, all because of the Lady’s leaf and seed.”
“Evandia believed she was doing the right thing when she revived me. She was scared, desperate. I will not deny that I have known frustration and anger during my captivity. If not for the books in my mind, I would have succumbed to madness.”
“The books you memorized?”
“From the age of fourteen, when I began to keep count, I read fourteen thousand three hundred and fifty-one books.” His voice softened. “I remember much of them. When the books in the vault crumbled to dust, I read from the library here.” He tapped his temple. “I read the years away.”
“The Lady has stood for some seven hundred years,” she whispered. “I don’t have your memory. I don’t . . . I don’t want that fate. I want to save people, that’s true, but I never wanted to lose myself in the process. I want . . . I want to be me. I want to live, as a person. I want to grow old.” I’m only twenty-two. Her words sounded so petty and whiny, even in her mind.
The Lady was so powerful, so full of potential to help thousands of people and beasts in need. And yet . . .
Octavia wanted to breathe in an icy morning wind, taste the brittle nuttiness of hard cheese, wiggle her toes against a carpet of moss, feel a horse’s sloppy lips against her palm. She wanted to smile at her patients to let them know all would be well. For the vicious claws of young, purring kittens to prick her lap. To hear the feisty, satisfying snap of snow peas in her grasp as the pods parted from the vine.
King Kethan sighed. “You are no fool, to wish for such things. You do not crave suicide or full self-sacrifice, not with a full future before you.”
This is why he was prized as one of the wisest men to have ever lived in Caskentia. I always knew we lost a great deal at the start of the wars, but I never knew how much.
“What should I do?” she whispered.
“The Lady is known for compassion. At the Tree, surely there is a way to speak to her directly. I do not see a confrontation with her as wrong.”
“You just aren’t sure if it will do much good either.”
He held his hands palms up. “I am in search of my own answers, my own peace.”
Tears stung her eyes. Peace. An end to this war. A home. A garden. An atelier. Alonzo’s smiling face. Animals, people who need me. A place to belong.
She couldn’t linger on such thoughts. “Let’s hope we get the answers we want. For now, we need to figure out how to get the three of us to the Lady, and how to get this family to safety.”
Charred patches marked where debris had fallen in the crash. The airship’s wreckage continued to smolder, a few flashes of orange bright in the new darkness. Like a strange shadow, one of the wyrm’s tunnels gaped before them. Octavia kicked through the turned dirt to stand on the edge. The tunnel dropped straight into the abyss. Leaf sprang from her shoulder and glided in a circle before landing again at her feet.
“What do you know about wyrms?” Octavia spoke loudly to be heard by both the King and Bruna. The other woman was still some thirty feet distant.
“They have always been a hazard of the Dallows,” said King Kethan.
Bruna stopped on the far side of the ten-foot pit. “They’re attracted by noise, but sometimes they act as if randomly. They are especially bad in this area. Some people settle again and again only to have their homestead destroyed, as if they are being run off. We chose this acreage because there weren’t any holes.”
“But what are they? Has anyone killed one?”
Bruna shrugged. Dried blood showed as black, broad streaks across her shirt and trousers. “You always hear claims, mostly from men in their cups. I’ve never seen proof of one dead. Shooting them doesn’t seem to do much. They move fast enough that dynamite can’t get them in time.”
“You noticed something, Granddaughter?” asked Kethan.
Alonzo approached, a new weariness in his stride. She waited for him to join them.
“I noticed the wyrm wasn’t alive. It didn’t have a heart, or a song, or its own distinctive soul. It was like a plant.”
Like a plant. Wyrms known to plague the area. Run people off.
“Are there any fragments of the wyrm on the ground, something caught by a bullet? I need a light.” Octavia fumbled inside her satchel for a glowstone.
“Here,” said Alonzo, pulling a stone from his pocket. He extended the weak light and began to pan across the ground. A minute later and Octavia did the same. They walked side by side, their steps slow. Leaf hopped in front of them at the edge of illumination.
After several minutes, King Kethan knelt down. “I believe this is its flesh.”
He pointed to something that resembled a brown scrap of leather about the size of her palm. At first glance, Octavia might have dismissed it as part of a uniform or tack from the airship, but this wasn’t burned.
“It would be easier to identify this if it spoke like the branch,” she muttered under her breath. But then, the leaves hadn’t had a voice either. However, there was one thing to which even the processed Royal-Tea had responded. She turned away from the men as she pulled her faithful scissors from her pocket.
“Octavia, what are you—”
Before Alonzo could stop her, she levered the blade enough to penetrate the fabric of her glove and the skin beneath, then stooped to press her blood to the thing on the ground.
Leaves and vines lashed outward with the brilliant chaos of a sneeze and just as quickly withdrew into the scrap of bark. Bruna screamed.
“Well. That was unexpected,” said King Kethan. Leaf mewed agreement.
“Wait until you see what she can do with a keg of tea,” said Alonzo.
“Shush, you.” Octavia was surprised to find herself smiling. �
�Well, that settles it, then.”
“Settles what?” asked Bruna. “What was that?”
“Wyrms aren’t animals or monsters at all. They are the roots of the Lady’s Tree,” said Octavia. “If they’re attacking a settlement, take it under advisement that the settlement is too close to her, and move elsewhere.”
“Too close?” Bruna’s eyes were wide and white in the dark. “We can’t see the Tree from here even now! Taney has a settlement near the Tree. How come it’s still there?”
That name made Octavia grimace. Grand potentate Reginald Taney ruled over the Dallows, and his plot to kidnap her and Mrs. Stout had started this whole mess.
“A tree’s roots stretch far, far beyond the canopy,” murmured Alonzo. “Maybe their camp is on caliche, or ’tis so close to the Tree that exploratory roots would destabilize the massive trunk.”
“I’m sure someone has tried to follow these tunnels before,” Octavia said to Bruna.
“Well, yes, but tunnels collapse or folks never return.”
King Kethan nodded with a thoughtful hum. “Wyrms do not usually come out this far, but this one had a purpose, I think. It created a direct path to the Tree.”
Octavia started walking. Leaf landed on her shoulder again and tucked his wings close to her shoulder. “Yes. Which leaves one more matter. Let’s get the others.”
Farrell shakily stood at their approach. The two little ones huddled under a blanket at her feet. A meager burlap bag of salvaged belongings sat to one side.
“Lady,” Octavia whispered. The presence, the essence of the Lady, lurked close to her consciousness. If she closed her eyes, she knew she would see the Tree, feel the same breeze she was feeling on her skin right now. “The horse. I need it, but I need it to save this family. Please. So many have died today. Let them be saved.”
A strange certainty rested in her gut. She knew the horse approached.
Octavia faced Bruna and Farrell. “There’s a strange horse coming. It’s . . . okay if you find it terrifying. It scares me, too, but it won’t hurt any of you. It’s part of the Lady’s Tree.”
The two women looked at each other uncertainly, their hands clutched. “Magic, then. The good sort?” asked Farrell.
“Yes,” said Octavia. I hope that’s not a lie. Hoofbeats approached. Alonzo sucked in a breath.
The remains of the mare, twined in wood and growth, looked like a macabre equine sculpture in the dim light of Alonzo’s glowstone. Octavia cradled the horse’s muzzle between her palms.
“These two women and children will ride you,” she whispered, her voice carrying in the tension of the night. “Make the saddle fit them. Keep them safe. If they need to stop briefly along the way, let them. Deliver them to the nearest Dallows ranch. Once that’s done, go to the Lady’s Tree and let my beautiful horse’s body know peace there. Let white-star jasmine grow on her grave.” Octavia paused. Leaf was a soft and solid weight on her shoulder, his mew a hot breath by her ear. “I should have named her Jasmine.”
“Theyridetheyridetheyridetheyride,” whispered that excited voice.
“Yes.” She found the reins where they tangled in the growth of the mane. As she stood there, the horse’s back distorted, stretching with the groan of branches and snap of brittle bones. Octavia swallowed down her revulsion and sadness. “Farrell, Bruna?”
They approached with trepidation. Alonzo and Kethan helped Farrell up first. A stirrup of vine extended to encompass her foot, a gentle vine draped over her lap. The same occurred with the two children and Bruna. Their terror, the rapid beating of their hearts, echoed through Octavia. She pressed the crutch to the horse’s flank, and vines immediately twined to hold it upright like a banner.
With all four settled into the saddle, the horse wheeled away, transitioning from canter to gallop in a matter of strides. They vanished into the dark plains.
“I feel,” Alonzo said, “as if we have much catching up to do on our walk.”
Octavia nodded as she looked to the men lit by the frail yellow light. “First things first, then. Let’s do this properly. Alonzo Garret, you were right to see the resemblance to Mrs. Stout in Grandfather here. I’d like to introduce you to King Kethan of the Fair Valley of Caskentia. King Kethan, Alonzo Garret.”
CHAPTER 17
Octavia had never been afraid of the dark—only of the way that blackness made fire seem all the brighter. However, she had never before been in blackness so absolute, so oppressive. Their glowstones glinted like mere fireflies against the midnight ink of an entire ocean. Even more, she couldn’t escape the keen awareness of the weight and press of the cold earth above—a weight that could crush them in an instant. The wyrm’s tunnel didn’t smell like a pleasant, freshly turned field either. No, its dank flavor coated her tongue and irritated her lungs as if it could crush her inside and out.
The Lady continued to pull them along like marionettes, but that didn’t make anything certain. Octavia could still die. There had been too many close calls. Back in the Waster camp, she had already defied the Lady’s will once; the blood-watered tree had tried to force her to take shelter in its branches, and Octavia had refused, knowing she must save Alonzo instead.
At the end of this, I’ll defy the Lady again.
That certainty left bitterness in her gullet that was far worse than dirt. First Miss Percival’s betrayal, and now this turn from the Lady. The itchiness of bark growth had now spread to her hips and prickled along her shoulders and chest.
In the dim halo of light, Alonzo studied the walls, the floor, the ceiling. The wyrm—the root—had created an almost perfectly circular tunnel. Dry dirt clumps and debris crunched underfoot. The path zigged and zagged. It had been about a ten-foot drop into the pit, followed by a slow downward slope, though it didn’t take long for the route to level off. Leaf had not entered the tunnel at all. He hovered at the edge of the pit, his chirps echoing for a time. She could only assume he’d flown on to meet them at the far side.
The walk had given them abundant time to summarize what had befallen King Kethan and what they each had endured in the past week. That done, they had fallen into a silence miles long. They had likely walked ten miles already, or maybe it was a hundred. There was something about the timelessness of such darkness that could drive a person mad.
King Kethan’s boots made rubbery smacks as they disintegrated beneath his feet. His breaths were a tense rattle. His anxiety had increased as they walked, and she wondered if that was more because of the dark confines—so like the royal vault—than because of their actual destination.
Alonzo tripped on a fragment of root and caught himself on a knee. He waved her back before she could come to help. Octavia knew he was unharmed. She studied him with her more mundane senses.
His black coat, battered as it was, had an elegant flare with each powerful stride. The oilskin gleamed in the dim light. His thick long hair, bound at his neck, still managed to look magnificent even after his trek; she envied someone with hair that could maintain such body.
Silly, to think on such things after all they’d gone through, all they still must do. But at least Alonzo was here. His presence soothed her, gave her the same feeling as sitting on the porch of the academy after a day of treating patients and seed sowing, a hot mug of honeyed apple cider in hand, a full moon on the horizon. He was comfortable, even if all of her life expectations had collapsed into rubble as soon as they met.
Miss Percival had counseled her to shun the presence of men, as nothing useful or proper could possibly happen in their company. Octavia snorted softly. She still excelled at being useful and proper, even if she was in love.
That’s what this was. She was in love with a half-Caskentian, half-Tamaran former apprentice Clockwork Dagger, a temporary airship steward, a man with a maniac of a sister and a regal mother, and a peculiar knack for sewing.
He tripped
again. King Kethan helped him up this time. “My thanks,” said Alonzo, somewhat abashed. “I plead exhaustion.”
“As do we all,” said King Kethan. “ ’Tis noteworthy when even the deathless grow weary.”
Alonzo was tired, true, but that wasn’t what was causing his steps to drag. It was more like he was being tripped.
She bent to touch the object his foot had found. It was a loop of root. At her touch, it lashed like the tail of a surprised cat and withdrew into the ground with a soft rumble. No need to confirm the identity with a drop of blood.
Sudden fear made her all the more cold. “She plays favorites,” Octavia whispered. “This is a warning.”
The Lady is finite, as Kethan said. She’s also limited in her power. Most medicians would spend an hour trying to accomplish what I do in minutes. She obviously hated the Wasters—her vines shredded the men apart in their camp—and when I tried to revive Mr. Drury with a leaf, she refused to let it work. She . . . reinforces life, but death is harder. She cannot simply kill someone from afar. If so, surely Mr. Drury would have dropped dead long before I even met him.
With her parents dead and Miss Percival estranged, Alonzo was her family. He represented the grand potential of the future. The Lady had let her leaf work on him before because Octavia needed him to survive. She had even needed him hours ago at the sod house.
What if he has fulfilled his usefulness? Oh . . . oh God. Like my mare, my Jasmine. Like Chi. A courier, a lorry, that’s to be discarded at its destination.
The tunnel was suddenly all the more menacing.
The ground wouldn’t collapse beneath him, not with her just steps behind him. Tripping could injure him, cause him to require a healing. If they were a few feet apart, a cave-in could easily separate them, with her on the Tree’s side. The Lady couldn’t manipulate things physically before—she could only speak through those on the cusp of life and death—but now they were nearing the actual Tree.