Through the window of Munslow & Daughters Tailoring Inc. she made out a sun-kissed Vicki and another girl, obviously her replacement, chatting away during a mid-morning slump. When Anna had worked there her desk carried a look of deliberate vagrancy. Shrines of sentimentality did not appeal to her and she found a space full of knick-knacks and personal belongings distracting. Her replacement, however, did not, choosing to line her desk with misshapen, homemade crafts. It gave a homeliness to the space that Anna saw had been lacking. No doubt at Yuletide it would be decorated in lanterns and holly, customers remarking how welcome it made them feel.
The sun didn’t impart much warmth as the group made their way through the town. Repairs were well under way and spirited workers had wasted no time fixing up buildings that had been affected by the fire. Though there were gaps where stores had been, of those left standing not even the smallest was missing a thatched roof. Tommy remarked that the locals must have pooled their resources to ensure no-one was forgotten.
Why it felt so jarring to be here Kara didn’t know. The surfeit of birth brands should have fazed her, as too should’ve the yokels with their irksome habit to leer where refined persons will stare on indifferently. She came to the conclusion that a part of her did want to go back to Old Haven and have the opportunity to see her father again. An overblown reconciliation would not have occurred – the Wetherbys did not do public displays of emotion, preferring to bottle their grievances and uncork them over a holiday meal – but the tantruming toddler inside Kara that she had yet to suffocate wanted a moment, a couple of grains of sand in the hourglass, to flaunt her experiences, her knowledge, her friends. She’d grown. Evolved. And what was he doing? Making vials, tinkering, living in and out of that lab. Wouldn’t have gone to the cemetery without her. Would’ve let the weeds grow over her mother’s grave like they had grown over his heart.
There came a look of disgust over Kara’s face then. Considering metaphor a refuge for the insipid to squat in, she dumped the weed image into her mind bin, throwing the tantruming toddler out with it.
When the seven reached the town square they realised why nobody had taken an interest in their arrival. Hundreds of men stood around, putting on helmets, choking up goodbyes to loved ones, listening to a woman give a speech. The group did not recognise her at first, despite the copper hair. Taking her eyes off the loyal subjects in front, the woman guided her head round. To see it one would think the two women knew of the quests come to fruition.
Queen Katharine was not the Venecians’ monarch. They had not felt her stabilising influence or known the turbulent years prior to her reign. Looking upon her, two of them with shields bearing the likeness of her capital city, they felt anxiety and gloom recede, as though there was no room for it in this square. Throughout the speech, they were awash with the queen’s words, attempting to discern the inner workings of the woman behind the lustre. Truths impressed on them as a gift of knowledge from the eternal Summerland, and the Venecians came to see that they would fight for this land as if it were their own. War was here. Not just a distant conflict to sit back and grumble about but on these people’s doorsteps. Mateo, Cesar and Andres had been born in Venecia; had trained with its military and swore to fight in its name, yet it was Carrigan that awakened them. Barbosa was not fighting to protect his homeland. He was fighting in the name of the Holy Sovereign. More money, more land, more subjects to rule and step on in pursuit of a footnote in history.
The three were not fools. Katharine no doubt wanted glory somewhere down the line. But at least she was willing to stand and fight and put her neck out. The closest Barbosa’s neck would get to harm would be an overenthusiastic masseuse. Right now he would be thinking about a light snack while ordering the scientists to be whipped while they worked. ‘Productivity,’ he’d say. ‘It’s a hardship.’
Leave him to his yellow city of Aracille. Seeing Queen Katharine, the three renounced any oath they made to their fatherland and braced themselves for the fallout. Better to die with a foreign queen, they reasoned, than live under a tyrant king.
Katharine’s speech came to a stirring end and the sons of Leitrim cheered, friends and family standing by to assume their role. When the time came they exchanged farewells and fleeting kisses, good chocolate and better gin. Many men could hardly be described as such, being little more than boys in oversized armour. With Katharine and the rest of her ragtag troops, they made onwards to the golden fields of their beloved Carrigan, hearing what the seven did not about the expectation of battle at Danduin Keep.
Spirits lifted, even Anna did not think of the reckoning that had occurred in that square as she and her companions left it, splinters from the pyres at their feet. Whether the powder that clung to her dress was merely dust, no-one can say for sure.
Any chance Anna had of sneaking off and seeing her family dissipated the moment Tommy’s grandmother had her in her grasp, embracing the girl as if she were her own. Tommy had been given his portion of squeezing and didn’t think his lungs would ever be the same.
Nan Bunton’s patterned dresses hung on her like a second skin, and she was beautiful not in spite of her wrinkles but because of them. Her hair was as white as sugar; her nose stout and not ashamed of it; but the magical feature, the one that captured you immediately, were those blue eyes, full enough of decency and compassion for you to feel every harboured injustice slip away and to glean something about the human condition you had overlooked or opted to ignore. Keep it safe, free from ridicule.
‘What are you standing out there for?’ she said to the other five, loitering like tramps and starting to look a fair bit like them too. ‘Come in here. I’ll fix you something to eat.’
Honey and lemon is the smell of Nan’s home, a little hut made bigger by light and shrewd use of space. Kittens and mother cat lie sleeping in a basket in the corner and balls of gingerbread coated in white icing sit on the table. She insists the seven help themselves while she gets to rustling up some other culinary delight, both fattening and delicious. Everyone offers to help, guiltily wolfing down the treats, but she simply plies them with more food and floats away on her sweet cloud. Cesar is a little boy back at the ranch, mother dishing up, giving bigger portions to some rotund visiting cousin or other. A suggestion by an upbeat Anna that he be renamed Hogger is greeted by a wide grin, more cake than teeth.
Tommy really would like a slice of orange drizzle loaf. Cesar gets there first, pawing every piece to find the biggest, then spitting crumbs everywhere offers Tommy one he’d rejected. The young boy looks at the strand of drool linking the loaf to Cesar’s mouth. His worst fears have been realised. They’ve hatched. Jungle worms. The wriggly things are inside his friend, eating his food. It’s the only explanation. Tommy looks down, feeling a wriggling himself. Oh Shaper, marshmallowed be thy name, don’t let them eat me. Anyone but me. Flushed, the boy knocks the piece out of Cesar’s hand and shoots off to help Nan. The Venecian crumples his face, shrugs, strains, picks up the cake from the floor, and reunites it with its brothers and sisters, washing it down with sheer satisfaction.
Spotting the symptoms of a Tommy-sized panic attack, Nan makes space for the boy on her workspace and gives him an onion to chop while she rolls this, mixes that, presiding over him with an infectious calm. She doesn’t ask him about why he left, nor chastise him, instead listening to his excited tales about the atheist monks of Old Haven, the warring tribes of the Kurashi Wilds, the scary witch ladies of the desert city of Thrace. His frame is sturdier, she notices, with a man’s confidence bubbling under the surface. She knows before he does what he’s going to say and there are notes of sadness in her wise, blue eyes.
‘I’m sorry I never said anything to you about leaving,’ says Tommy. ‘I didn’t mean for you to worry about me.’
She shakes her head to imply there is no need for apology. Tommy’s onion, chopped to Nan’s high standards, is put into a colander. He places a palm on top of her lined hand. As a boy he used to play with that han
d, stretching out the skin and making it taut. Each time he would be amazed at the transformation; how her hand now looked like his.
‘I made a promise, Nan. I want to stay with you and I’ve been thinking about this town every day since I left, but I don’t want to break that promise.’ The rolling and mixing has stopped. ‘It is the right thing to do, isn’t it?’
‘Well,’ she says, placing a second hand on top of his. ‘If you feel that’s what you have to do then I trust that. Course I’m sad to see you go, especially so soon, but I’d rather you go and be happy than stay here with me and be miserable.’
‘I thought because of grandfather,’ he said, trailing off.
‘I miss him. Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder those what ifs. But he wanted to find out what life had to offer no matter what happened to him, and do you know what, I think if he could do it over he wouldn’t change a thing.
‘Maybe I’m too comfortable to ever leave. I fill my lot nicely and would rather feel big in a small town than small in a big city. For you Tommy there’s something much grander and bigger waiting out there, in the wider world, and I want you so much to find it, dear boy. You will seek it out. And if you stay true to yourself, you will see what wonderful things can come of it.’
They lingered awhile at that workspace. When it was time to resume cooking, Nan gave him a much-needed embrace and sent him back to his friends. With a quick glance at the chopped vegetable in the colander, she brought another onion down from a cupboard above and set about slicing it as she knew best.
It was the place Anna had dreamed her dreams, laughed her laughs, cried her tears and cultivated her hopes. Run away, she had said to herself. Never work, fall in love, marry a prince in a chapel by the sea… There’d be no need to worry about him cheating (royalty notoriously faithful), no more long hair to hide ugly birth brand on neck (royalty’s access to beauty products is second-to-none), and her life would be parties and ball gowns and idle days frolicking in surf to retreat at night to the terrace, kissing her prince till their lips shrivelled up, dancing under moonlight to songs she didn’t know the words to and didn’t care to learn.
She was dimly aware of the six behind her as she walked through a maze of memories to her home. She had wanted to make something of her life and she’d done that, hadn’t she? Gone out there and found something and left a mark. When the hour came, and Anna lay with her last moments running away from her, she would know she had done something with her time on this earth.
Home was here, as it had always been. The others would protest when she told them she was staying, but they would understand. She would hear from them again. They would be alright without her. Better off probably. And then when the war was over everyone could meet up, reminisce, laugh about when they were young. Maybe she’d have a husband and children of her own. Until then she’d stay with the family, teaching her brothers, helping with the crops. Could even put her abilities to good use during a drought or heat wave. Think of it: a tiny rain cloud going round watering plants, miniature bolts of lightning sizzling the weeds away. What a lark that’d be.
There’s her father, back hunched, knees bent amid the vegetable patch with the pet cemetery not far off. He sees her and she beams with a full heart. Forget the prince and the terrace and the songs and everything but this good man and his affection. Going to him, wanting his solid chest against hers, finding air.
‘I’ve come home, Pa.’
Shaking his head while her chest beats with joy. The family’s batch of tomatoes is ready, their sweetness bursting through the skin. They’ll gorge themselves on soup and fresh bread in the coming days like they have done for years.
‘You left us,’ he says and her mouth fills with her heart. ‘We didn’t know whether you were alive or dead. Our only daughter and you left us thinking the worst.’
Her youngest brother, Aidan, laughing somewhere. There is an instinct to find him and scoop him up into her arms. ‘I didn’t have a choice. They were after me. I wanted to give you a chance. I thought if I left you would be safe.’
‘You always have a choice. I gave you everything I had. Nurtured you even when you fought me.’
I can’t listen to this, she says. That face and its disappointment. You’re angry, I understand that. I should’ve said something before I left but—
‘But you didn’t. From the start I knew what you were. My own flesh and blood, yet underneath… I lied to myself. I said that if we hid it from you, buried it deep enough, that everything would be okay. But you went looking for it, didn’t you? You couldn’t leave it alone. I’d given you everything but it wasn’t enough. Not for you.’
I don’t understand.
I need you to be my dad and to love me and tell me everything will be okay.
‘This isn’t your home anymore, Anna. Seeing you again, hearing your voice. It makes me remember all those years I cared for you. I was the first one to hold you, do you know that? Can remember it as if it were yesterday. Taking you into my arms, wrapped in that blanket, looking into your eyes and seeing everything good in the world looking back. That’s gone now. When I heard Bale and his band of fanatics had captured you I wasn’t sad. I was relieved. Finally I could live without looking over my shoulder every day, wondering if and when that beast inside you would rear up. I looked at you, shivering and scared, and I felt nothing. You the girl that not even a father could love. That was your chance to be free. And you chose, Anna. You chose for you. But I won’t let you take this family down with you so leave and never come back, do you hear?’
Thumping him, telling him to stop this.
‘Leave.’
Don’t make me.
‘I don’t want you.’
Pulling at his trousers, finding dirt. Search for his face framed by the blue sky but before that a breath and it’s not that familiar smell of the fields.
Back turned to her, the father stands and hears her leave. He listens to the footsteps and separates hers from the six. His little girl, a voice says. With a face of dried-up feeling, the man disintegrates into ravens.
Twenty Five – The Siege of Danduin Keep
Anna was okay. They were ploughing on. That’s what they were doing. She was happy about it, wasn’t she? Yes. She was going to be alright? Yes. A hug from Kara that was uncomfortable for both of them. A touch of the hand from a man whose face was abhorrent to behold.
Sending the others in front, fire came to her fingertips. At the edge of a corn field she watched crows pick apart spoiled corn. White-hot embers dripped down and the crows scattered.
A noise was breaking through.
‘We went all that way only to have to come back and start over again. What’s the point,’ said Andres. Cesar tried to focus, telling Lysander that this was not the route they followed. They should go north west to the pass, avoiding the forest.
In a low voice, ‘She is not well. You saw the troops in Leitrim. If there is to be a battle it will be on open plains, right where you wish us to go. Let us travel to Tarnwood; spend a night at Danduin. I have been there with the Order and know the route well. We’ll be safe, I guarantee it.’
‘You say it will add a day to our journey? Maybe two?’
‘Correct.’
‘Too much.’
‘I disagree.’
‘You did not use to dis-a-gree so often,’ said Cesar, hairs on his neck raising up in anticipation of a duel, or, likelier still, to compete for Best of Show in some tragic peacock competition.
‘True,’ replied Lysander. ‘I wager it has increased in line with your dim ideas.’
A hostile flutter.
‘Now,’ continued Lysander, ‘I believe there are others here who might want to air their opinions. Kara, you have plenty of those, what do you think?’ Girl spun her daggers, exhaled in protest, and turned away. ‘Andres, come on, let’s hear it.’ Andres suddenly found his fingernails utterly captivating. ‘Mateo?’ The boy shook his head. There was one person left, and he met Lysander wit
h a twitch that did not bode well. With an inward cry, ‘Tommy?’
‘Yes?’
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘Across the plains or north to Danduin?’
‘Er,’ he said, thinking aloud, Cesar barely able to contain his laughter. ‘Don’t know what the right thing to do is—’ Cesar almost bursting now; Lysander ruing his decision. – ‘But I personally wouldn’t go across the plains. Last thing we need is any action, what with Anna not feeling her best, and it’s mostly barren land so there’s not much chance of foraging for any food. Combine that with the amount of daylight at this time of year, the fact that we’ve no torches to travel in the night, the forest with its ample supply of nuts and fruits, the fact that we might be able to snag ourselves a deer or two on account of it being rutting season, and I think we’d be best off heading north to the Keep, making sure to stay off the roads and keep to the grassy woodland trail that’s in front, ‘cause that’s the quickest route.’
‘I did not know that,’ replied the winded monk. The way Cesar was dragging his chin across the floor might lead one to believe it belonged there.
‘Other one goes out into the open for a while. Not great when you’re trying to be sneaky.’
‘Yeah. Right.’
During the Golden Age of Carrigan, under the secure reign of King Alfrick II, art flourished while science discovered, Pagan polytheism was at last expunged, and though under one sky no nation of Torrodil could equal the Kingdom’s transcendence.
The ruins of Danduin Keep bear testament to the brief nature of such ages. Alfrick made a fine leader of the people, but a poor parent to his twin children, Helen and Matthias, who learned quickly that there was none in the land with a higher station, for they ruled the King and he ruled everybody else. When they came of age and had their first taste of power, they discovered it was rather to their liking. The coffers were unfortunately emptying faster than they could be filled, being siphoned as they were for the exploits of the greedy twins, and so Matthias encouraged his father to sell the outlying castles to barons and lords to do as they please. It was at Danduin that the twins used their combined intellect – modest as it was – to seize their father’s throne. As the last of the Outer Kingdom castles, the twins proposed to their father that it might be a nice idea to make a day of it and sign over the deeds on site with the new owner, later found wedged between two rocks at the bottom of a cliff. The King arrived with his two children and was drawn away from the keep to take in the outstanding shrubbery, finding his head stuck to a stump and then stuck by something sharper. With his blood still warm, the crown was seized – yet there were two sets of hands pulling on the prize.
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