SHADOW WEAVER

by Claire Merle

  I try to help Jakut remove his tunic, but lifting my arm hurts. He notices me wince.

  “You're injured?”

  “Give me your knife,” I say. He passes it without question. I cut the sleeve where the blood has stuck his skin to the cloth. The wound is long and shallow.

  “Someone must look at your injury, Mirra.”

  “It is internal,” I say. “I think a rib is cracked. Nothing can be done.” I rip some cloth from my underskirt and use the strip to staunch Jakut's blood.

  “Except rest.”

  “Which is why I hid it from the Duke.”

  “I can do it,” he says, holding the cloth in place so I do not have to strain myself. He stares at me for a long moment. “I release you.”

  “Release me?”

  “You should not ride. You will stay somewhere with Brin to recover. I will pay Tug and Brin what I owe them, and once you are fit and well enough, you will vanish from my cursed entourage.”

  He wants to let me go? After all he has been through to get me this far? We are less than a half-day's ride from the Red City! I can think of nothing to say which will not make me sound as bewildered as I feel.

  He takes my silence for hesitation. “If it is Tug you're worried about...”

  “Tug?”

  “I will make him an offer to accompany me to the palace that he cannot refuse. My payment will release you from us both.”

  Jakut is offering to cut all strings and return my freedom. A bittersweet mix of emotion fills me. Happiness I'm no longer considered an object for trade, confusion he doesn't despise me, shame for the way I have treated him, and regret because I cannot accept.

  If I don't find out what happened to his escort and whether it was part of a plot to dethrone the King and eliminate those next in line, Duchess Elise won't allow Tug to return Kel to Blackfoot Forest. But then again, the Duke and half his army are here. It would not be difficult to ambush my brother's guards and get him away from Deadran. Would Tug let me?

  If Jakut is not a threat, my brother's safety is assured. For now. But can I come this far without discovering the truth? Without unravelling the riddle of the Prince. Who is Jakut truly?

  If he is the man he claims he is, if I could help him remain that man, no matter what atrocities lie entombed in his past, perhaps I can change the destiny of the Uru Ana. King Alixter may be dead. Even alive, he cannot rule from an Etean jail. Jakut is the rightful heir.

  A soldier arrives with sterilised cloth and boiled water. He promises to return with the salve once it is ready. Jakut winces as I begin to clean his wound.

  “You have said before that something binds me to Tug,” I begin. “You are right. But what you do not realize is something binds me to you too. If it is your destiny to be crowned ruler of Caruca, you will have the power to change the course of my people. To stop us from living like hunted beasts in the outland forests. To stop mercenaries and bounty hunters ripping infants from their families. What went on in the Pit was only a window, a glimpse of the horrors men commit against the Uru Ana every day.”

  The hurt and gravity in the Prince's expression as he listens, mirrors something deep within. Until I'd spoken the words aloud, I hadn't realized how firmly rooted my desire is to help rewrite the history of my dying people.

  I pour more water onto the cloth. Jakut's fingers graze my hand and catch it in his palm so I am forced to reckon with him. “Go back to your home. You have my word I will do everything I can for the Uru Ana. Nothing good can come from the Ruby Court.”

  “Except perhaps you.”

  He smiles ruefully. “I thought I was an assassin?”

  “Whatever you were is not as important as what you are now. Or what you will choose to be when we reach the Ruby Palace.”

  “This is your destination, Mirra. I will go on from here alone. You warned me Lord Strik would see you as a threat to his granddaughter and today you almost died. You were the target of this attack. I know what I saw. Only those who tried to assist your escape were injured. Lord Strik must have sent them. And if he has power over men whom most of Caruca believe are a northern myth, then we can only imagine the power he will hold in the Ruby Court.”

  I withdraw my hand from his. He really means to let me go. This is not some ploy to gain my trust.

  The Prince's desire for me to leave him seals my determination.

  “I was four,” I say, “when mercenaries followed my family and another whom we had banded together with for survival and friendship. They had a daughter my age. She was like a sister to me. Until the night men snatched her from our bed. Our fathers searched until they found their trail. While the mercenaries slept, their throats were slit and my friend saved. But Asmine wasn't the same afterwards.” Neither was my father, I think.

  “Our families separated,” I continue, meeting Jakut's attentive gaze, “and my father moved us to Blackfoot Forest. But I made a promise to myself after we left. One day I would return to the Sea of Trees and hunt the hunters until they were all gone. Now I can do something far better. I can help a Prince rise to the throne and end the reign of terror over the Uru Ana.”

  The Prince's brows crease together, perhaps with the sting of his split flesh, and maybe a little with the sting of my revelation. He remains silent as I wrap the clean cloth around his arm. When I am done he reaches into his breast pocket, takes out the leather binding with his sketches. One sketch is folded over, creased and more finger-worn than the others. He hands it to me. I open it, watching him.

  A young boy in hunting clothes, bow drawn back, hair tied in a tangled knot steps out of the page. Except, the boy has my turned up nose, my high wide cheeks and narrow chin. It reminds me of the day Tug pretended to teach me how to shoot a bow and arrow.

  I hold the paper, not understanding.

  “I also believe we are bound by something we cannot entirely fathom,” he says. “It was the will of the Gods I find you.”

  “I do not believe in the Gods,” I answer, though my dismissive words cannot conceal the confusion and wariness pouring through me at this change in conversation.

  “I know you believe in some higher power,” he says. Before I can argue that in that case, he must know me better than I know myself, he continues. “You are Uru Ana. You see the passage of time and the paths of men. You see minds that have no physical existence in this world. Memories which can't be measured or weighed. Which appear and vanish at the will of their keeper. We could search Ederiss for a thousand years and never find where all the world's memories are hidden.”

  A nervous tightening loops through my chest. “I am not sure what you are trying to tell me.”

  “I woke from the long-sleep with nothing from my past but these rings,” he says, raising the ruby signet ring on his middle finger and the hawk-headed ring dangling on his neck thread, “an old tutor to tell me who I was, and this.” He taps the leather binder.

  “So?”

  “This sketch of you was already in it, along with the others.”

  Thirty-Five

  Soldiers lift Brin from a litter to the back of the healer's cart. He whimpers, head tossing from side to side as though he's in the throes of a terrifying nightmare, despite all the medicine he's been plied with. Tug watches, arms folded, and expression neutral. But I sense war raging in the serpentine ravines of his mind.

  Two soldiers mount their horses. The Duke has ordered them to escort Brin to the nearest town and see him installed at the healer's. It will be a hazardous journey through the forest, considering Brin's condition. Even when they reach the flat land beyond the river swamp, the way is not without danger. If the bird-men return, they do not stand a chance.

  Only the healer who has been well paid and instructed to send regular word of Brin's progress, appears satisfied with her new charge and change of fortune.

  A soldier approaches and announces my tent is ready. I thank him, and with a last glance over my shoulder at the departing cart, head for the tent so I may change
my dress.

  The center of the tent is tall enough to stand in. A hemp rug lies unevenly across the hacked down bush and shrubs beneath my feet. Two small wooden chests sit open on one side of the shelter, overflowing with silk embroidered robes that look startlingly out of place.

  I take my water flask and hairbrush from my saddlebag, and wash my face, wiping dirt and blood on the hem of my torn dress. Then I sift through the dresses, searching for the cobalt gray robe I wore in Lyndonia the morning Duchess Elise took me to visit Kel.

  Breathing is awkward. I am not looking forward to the next five hours’ riding. But at least my mare was not hurt when a bird-man tripped her with his lasso. I cannot imagine abandoning Dancer, nor seeing her suffer just so I may reach our final destination.

  I struggle to rip apart the hook-and-eye closures on the back of my tattered dress. Pain flares with each sharp, tugging movement. I don't have the strength to break the top hooks. With the back of my dress gaping, I peer out from the tent, hoping to borrow a knife from a nearby soldier.

  Tug is walking in my direction, away from where the troop is gathered. Unless he is going to relieve himself, he is heading to see me. Unlike the soldiers who erected the tent and promptly vanished, he is the only man around here who couldn't care less about my privacy.

  I consider ducking back inside. Standing in front of Tug with my dress half falling off is not a welcome thought. But Brin has gone and the unit will want to move on. I will be stuck half-dressed with everyone wondering what is taking so long, otherwise.

  “The Prince asked me to give you this,” Tug says when he is closer. He holds a slim bell-shaped phial half-full with yellow pus-like liquid. “It's Nocturne Melody, a pain reliever.”

  Pretty name for something so foul looking. I take the glass bottle, pop the cork and sip. The acrid taste makes me want to vomit.

  “It is usually drunk by men dying on the battlefield. Unless you're planning on a soldier carrying you to the Red City you should slow down.” The icy shards in his voice set me on guard.

  That moment in the forest, of complicity, of working together, of relief at seeing each other alive, has vanished. Perhaps he is angry with me because Brin might die.

  “I need a knife,” I say. “To get my dress off.”

  He takes the short knife from his belt. The blood on it is still fresh. He steps closer, eyes accusing, and wipes the blade on the sleeve of my dress. I flinch as though he's just spat in my face. With most of the blood now on my sleeve, he lays the knife flat in his palm like a challenge.

  I slip the pain reliever into the pocket of my robe, and reach for the handle. An ink engraving on the hilt bears the same beast markings as the tattoos on his face. I take it, and with a smile I do not mean, thank him for his help.

  I return inside the tent, rip the last two dress hooks with the blade and let the cloth fall to my feet. Until two minutes ago, I wanted to tell Tug I was sorry for Brin's situation. Now I want to thank him for banishing the guilt.

  Brin snatched Kel. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I hear Ma screaming as Brin tore my brother away and swatted her to the ground. If Brin dies, it is nothing to me.

  I am doing up the front buttons of the gray dress, distracted by the stains on it which remind me of Kel in the tower, when Tug bursts through the flap door.

  “I haven't finished!” I say annoyed. I fumble with the final buttons.

  “From the lengthy discussions after the attack, I take it you and the Prince are on good terms again?” Tug says, ignoring my protest.

  “He offered to let me go,” I say curtly.

  Tug snorts. “He has grown up in the Ruby Court. Survival for him depends on his ability to deceive and manipulate. He told you what you wanted to hear.”

  I take out my brush and start tidying my hair. “He risked his life to save me.”

  “So did Brin, and I didn't see you hurrying to his side to check his injuries.” Tug's anger boils close to the surface. I should be careful, but it is as though we have circled around back to the beginning. Strangers. Enemies. Walls within walls.

  He blames me for the outcome of today's attack. If he wants to blame someone, he should look to himself.

  “Why would I care what happens to Brin? He has never considered me, or Kel, as anything close to human.”

  Tug picks up a beautiful cream and lemon dress from the nearest clothes chest, and wipes his blood-encrusted face and hands all over it. I offer him water to finish the job properly. He ignores my attempt at defiance.

  “So the Prince offered you freedom?” he says. “How did he persuade you afterwards, not to take it?”

  “He didn't need to persuade me. You've done that for him. I could have left Lyndonia with Kel many days ago, but you betrayed me for Elise. If I leave without fulfilling our bargain, who knows what the two of you will do to my brother.”

  Tug's jaw tightens. “Betrayal is only possible when there is trust in the first place.”

  “What do you want?” I ask coldly.

  “Lord Strik will hear of the bird-men's failure before we even reach the Red City.” He pauses, crouches to pick up his knife from the rug near the clothes chest. “Perhaps you believe the Prince had nothing to do with the attack on his escort. Perhaps you believe it is coincidence that while the Prince was defying the King and refusing the Rudeashan princess in the north, the Carucan army was betrayed in the south and the King taken prisoner. Perhaps Jakut is the noble hero he pretends. It does not matter.”

  He gets up, slips the knife in his pouch and stands so his face is an arm's length from my own. The rage in him has gone, or transformed into another barrier to hold out the world.

  “It does not matter because the Prince is weak,” he says. “If Lord Strik can govern the bird-men who have not been seen so far south for hundreds of years, do you think he will have any trouble bending the Prince to his will? At some point, the Prince and Lord Strik met with the same objective—to see Jakut and Lady Calmi married. We can assume the Prince was quickly brought under Strik's power. As soon as his memories return, he will be under it again.”

  “If you are so sure he and Strik betrayed the Carucan army to get rid of the King and see Jakut crowned, why are we even going to the Red City? You should be telling the Duchess to prepare for war.”

  “We must discover what Lord Strik has planned before taking rash actions which will set the kingdom at war with itself.”

  “So the valiant Tye Keylore is back among us to save the Kingdom. Excuse me if I find that hard to swallow.”

  “No one wants a war, Mirra.”

  He is at the exit before I've had time to blink.

  “Wait!” I say. The sketches. Until Tug arrived, distracting me, I had thought of little else. I had considered discussing Jakut's claim with him, but he hasn't exactly paved the way for an exchange of confidences.

  “Where does Strik's power come from? What is it?”

  Wind howls across snowy tundra. Nothing but the sting against his face, the bulk on his back, swirls of snow and emptiness stretching on and on.

  For the brief moment Tug's memory absorbs the mind-world, it is as though I can breathe without the pain in my chest. A sense of aliveness, awareness, as crisp and clear as air.

  “Trying to understand the origin of this power,” he says, “will take you down a path as dark as the mind that wields it.”

  I know of only two reasons to cross the infinite tundra between Caruca and the Kingdom of Rudeash. One, to access the tundra mines where hundreds of glitter-eyed children slave until they die. The other, to visit the far away, isolated Kingdom of Rudeash.

  “We cannot defeat Lord Strik without understanding his power. Why were you crossing the tundra?”

  “I had reason to believe he was born in Rudeash.”

  “But he is a lord.”

  “A title given to him when he was adviser to King Rex. But he rose to the King's side from nothing.”

  “And you thought there might be others fr
om Rudeash with similar abilities?”

  “They seemed to be a simple people. Nothing I saw or heard suggested there was anyone else like him. Nothing explained it.”

  I nod. Jakut’s mother was from Rudeash. For a moment I thought she could have passed on a talent of foresight to her son. But if Strik is an anomaly, and the Rudeashans do not possess special powers, Jakut’s claim about the sketches is highly doubtful. Unless, I grow a little faith in the Carucan Gods.

  My head swims from taking too many short breaths, from the Nocturne Melody trickling through my blood, from questions and half-truths and lies. Too many to hold straight.

  But I cannot forget Jakut's attitude after the attack. The concern in his eyes when he realized I was injured was real. His offer to release me was genuine. If he is a liar and a manipulator and a coward, I have lost all instinct for survival.

  “What if the Prince,” I say, “only understood Strik's power and what he had got himself into when it was too late? What if he purposefully increased the dose of the mist berries before the long-sleep to erase everything in his past and break Lord Strik's hold over him?”

  “If it were so,” Tug snarls, “he should have informed himself of the matter. It changes nothing. As soon as Lord Strik enters the Red City or the Prince's memories return, he will fall under Strik's influence.”

  I am not so certain. Yesterday, Lord Strik demonstrated a certain caution with the power in his voice, using it only on Tug and me. He did not try to control Jakut. He did not try to escort the Duke's unit to the Red City. And he deemed the Prince's long, unexplained absence and my presence, enough of a threat to his plans to try to kill me.

  He must be waiting for something before he risks entering the city, a city which has kept him locked out, power or no power, for nearly three decades.

  “We must learn how King Alixter has kept Strik away from the palace and ensure nothing is changed,” I say. “In the meantime, it may take weeks for Jakut to remember pieces of his past.”