“ENOUGH! ENOUGH, I AM YOUR KING!”
Even Kora shrank, frightened by the booming echo of Lanokas’s voice. The crowd desisted in stunned silence. A middle-aged matron stood poised with a broom to strike Kora’s head. Lanokas fixed her with a haughty glare.
“I am the king.” He ripped the implement from the woman, tossed it to the ground. “There will be justice in my realm, not mob rule. I will pass sentence on her.”
With the single word sentence, Kora knew what would happen next. He would keep the promise he had given her the only way he could. He would save her from the mob by stripping her of everything himself, everything but her life.
“On your feet,” he barked. She had never heard Lanokas speak with such ice in his tone, such hatred. Though she knew it was an act, it shook her to the soul, and she had to pause when she had risen to her knees, aching all over, her shoulder smarting. “Your feet!” he bellowed. Hayden moved to help her stand, but the royal ordered him back. Kora mustered the strength to support her own weight. She forced herself to meet the king’s eyes, though they burned her own.
“Kora Porteg, I banish you from my realm. You have until nightfall to remove yourself from Podrar and two weeks to reach the coast. The eastern coast: there will be no trips to Partsvale and its Miracle Pool. My order will secure you a ship. Should you set foot again in Herezoth, the consequence is death, to which by the power of my office I hold every man and woman here solemn witness. You understand what I’m telling you?”
Kora understood. She understood that he feigned the odium of his tone just as surely as the threats he levied were genuine, genuine because nothing less would allow her to escape the Palace walls. He had finally accepted what she had been explaining since they shared that first kiss behind Wheatfield’s barn: that he belonged in Podrar, she anywhere he was not.
“I asked you a question. Do you understand?”
Kora inclined her head, dropping submissively, shakily, to one knee. Lanokas lifted her by the chin. His touch was firm but gentle; he was careful not to press against her throat, and sure that for one second no one could see his face, as close as it was to hers and as low, he allowed his expression to change. His features softened into ones Kora recognized, the ones in which she had always found counsel and consolation. A brightness returned to the depths of his eyes that told her as clearly as if he had spoken, in a fraction of the time words would have cost, “I consider, and will always consider you, my equal. My last memory of you will not be you bowing before me.”
Then he was gone. The stranger he had become returned with such suddenness that Kora’s heart jumped, and she stumbled two paces back, to distance herself.
“Have you lost your hearing? I told you to stand before me. You have your orders, sorceress. If you hope to complete them, you had best be gone. This instant.”
The crowd opened passage to the threshold. A constant, though dull, stream of insults and threats began. Hayden and Bendelof walked on either side of Kora, the first with the sword the king had dropped for him to retrieve, in case someone tried to harm the sorceress. No one did, though a number made rude gestures. Bennie placed a hand on her back at the worst of the comments, when people called her shameless, or a rat, or swore they would hunt her family.
Kora’s guides led her safely through the courtyard, then through the small throng that had gathered outside the gates. Word of the king’s ruling had spread, and though Kora expected an arrow to come flying out of nowhere, her banishment either appeased the citizenry, or no one man was willing to accept the execution that awaited should he violate royal command and murder her himself.
No one dared to follow Kora. The three Leaguesmen only stopped when they reached a quiet street two miles away, empty and narrow, lined with cabins. There Hayden said, “I should get back to Lanokas. He’ll need me, he’ll need any help he can find. He’s got a monster of a task ahead, righting Zalski’s mess.”
Kora bit her lip. She could feel her cheeks turn red, her eyes stinging. Hayden took her hand. “Listen, he didn’t mean a word of it.”
Kora nodded. “Even so,” said Bennie, “that show will be hard to forget.” Kora nodded with greater fervor, and Hayden embraced her. She broke into sobs in his arms.
“We won,” he told her. “Zalski’s reign is over. Don’t forget that we won, not ever. Damn, but I’ll miss you! You’ll adapt though. You’ll do fine over there, wherever there is. Things will look up, you’ll see.”
Kora held on to Hayden three or four minutes longer, perhaps longer than that. She needed to feel one of her friends that close to her, to give at least one of them a proper goodbye. When she finally let him go, it was with some measure of peace. After all, she had known she would have to disappear one way or another. She was never fighting for them, for strangers. She fought for herself and for hers. Hang those yellow-bellied, ungrateful monsters. Hang them all! They would never deserve a king like him. They didn’t deserve him; she deserved Lanokas.
Rexson, now. King Rexson. A man Kora would never know. But then, she had fallen in love with Lanokas, not a king, and it was Lanokas she would remember without any sense of bitterness, only a profound nostalgia. Lanokas had been a confidant, a trusted companion: an equal, as she read within his gaze. Rexson never could have been. What did Kora know about court, about state affairs and etiquette?
She felt nostalgic already for the days of the League, as horrible as some of them had been. Nostalgia was less painful than other emotions: than the grief she would feel if she let herself think of Laskenay, or of Neslan; than the guilt of knowing she must abandon her mother and Zacry again, this time for good; than the anger and spite, the shame and the heartache that threatened to overcome her if she considered how her country, her home, would until she died and for centuries thereafter villianize her.
The shame, in particular, brought her to finally comprehend how Lanokas could have considered suicide. Why did it have to be him, of all people? Why had he been the one to demoralize and defame her? Through his order, to validate their curses and ensure that her legacy would be one to be spat on? She would have preferred he let them kill her, to lose her life but maintain her dignity. To be robbed of that, and by someone so trusted, so admired—it was more than Kora could bear, especially alone in an unknown place. The most sensible way, the only way, she could imagine to cope was not to cope at all.
No, those people would just celebrate if I threw myself off the ship. I won’t let them, no, not on account of my killing myself. I want them to be miserable. Let their fears of me eat them alive. Let them wonder if I’ll return to do as Zalski did. They deserve that uncertainty if they can’t see that I’m different, that I loathe everything he stood for. I’ll live just to spite them. I’ll live because of Sedder, because I was the reason he put himself in harm’s way. For Zac, I’ll live for Zac. What would he think of me, when he heard I died that way?
Just to consider the point caused too much pain. While the three Leaguesmen stood in silence, Hayden had placed his arm around Kora’s shoulder. Now he said, “I have to ask, do you grudge what Lanokas did?”
If Zalski had destroyed Kora’s voice, the king had ripped bare her heart and crushed it before an audience that likely would have paid to see the spectacle. That second injury ran deeper, even in a physical sense—each breath seared Kora’s lungs; a tightness developed in her chest that would not go away—but not every wound is one to be justly resented. That was one thing Kora had learned over the last year. She shook her head. She did not grudge Lanokas.
“Should I tell him you don’t blame him?”
Kora nodded this time. The king should know she held nothing against him. She was certain he considered himself a beast, though she owed her life to his ferocity, to his act’s credibility. He would struggle to forgive himself, and would have no Neslan to help him see how guiltless he really was. But he had Hayden. Yes, Hayden was already taking steps to give Lanokas, to give Rexson, the support he would need. Thank God for Hay
den!
Hayden held her hand tight. “Good luck to you,” he said. “Best of luck. And thank you, for looking out for me. Thanks for trying to talk me out of joining you. You were right, I had no idea…. but I’m proud, proud, to say I fought beside you. To call you a compatriot and a friend.”
“A brother,” Kora mouthed. They embraced again, and Hayden retraced his steps toward the Palace. He looked back to smile before he turned the corner. Though Kora could not quite imitate the gesture, she waved her farewell.
Bennie looked up at the sky, unsure what to do now she and Kora were alone. She stretched out a hand to touch the sorceress, but then pulled it back, clenching her fist. “I guess we should be going ourselves,” she hazarded. “I don’t think we have more than a couple hours before word really spreads. We should probably stop to pick up….”
Kora stared at her friend, confused. Nothing about Bennie bespoke confidence—not her voice, which was soft; not her posture, withdrawn, arms folded across her abdomen—but the girl asserted, “I’m going with you. I couldn’t let you sail off by yourself, it isn’t right. Besides, there’s nothing left for me in Herezoth. I have no one left to go back to. My Gran died just before I joined the League. We might as well stick together, don’t you think?”
Kora smiled, a genuine smile; her spirits lightened a bit to discover she still had that capacity. It came as a small shock, a sort of mini-miracle.
“We need to stop somewhere before we leave town. Just a street or two over.”
Kora sent her companion a quizzical glance, and Bennie admitted, “This might sound a bit strange. I’m not really sure how to explain it, especially to you, but a couple of days ago, Laskenay asked me to go to the well with her. Do you remember that?” Kora motioned for Bennie to continue, dreading what she might hear, sadder than ever to remember the woman who had taught her so much, to think of Laskenay’s son. She and Bennie started walking.
“She wanted to confide in me. I didn’t see why, but for weeks, she said, she’d been feeling that if any of us had a chance to survive today, it would be me. She sensed it, strongly. Stronger by the hour. I thought she was insane. Me? After what I wanted to do to myself? Laskenay didn’t know about that, she couldn’t have, but you saw it all. You know I never expected to make it through that battle. I was right, too, technically. I would have been a goner if Zalski didn’t have other plans.” The girl shook, but quickly gathered herself. “I guess my point is I decided to humor Laskenay. I figured it would calm her worries a bit, and what harm could it do? So she told me that no one but her knew where Zacry was, and that if something were to happen to her, I could find him here. In Podrar.” Bennie stopped before a cottage, unimpressive but well tended—or more so, if nothing else, than the others that surrounded it. “Right here, actually. We were closer than I thought.”
Kora threw her arms around Bendelof, swept away at the unexpected joy, the sheer comfort, of discovering that her brother was behind those shuttered windows.
Bennie rapped on the door. A man perhaps forty, with thick hair and a strong chin that Kora suspected she had seen somewhere, opened to them. When he set eyes on the red-haired youth, his face broke into a child-like grin that cut ten years from his visible age.
“That can’t be you. If you’re here that means….”
Bendelof spoke soberly, but her expression livened. “We did it, Drake. We have a king again, a true king.”
“Rexson?”
“He’s cementing his hold of the Palace right now. It was horrid, it really was, but we did it. We took Zalski down.”
“Thanks be to God! Thanks be to…. Listen to me, keeping you two outdoors. Come in, come in!”
The master of the house led the way to a dark kitchen, where the smell of roasted pork loin made Kora’s mouth water and Zacry was seated at the table, a slate and three books before him. He toppled his math book as he jumped up.
“Bennie? KORA!” The boy ran to hug his sister. The force with which he grabbed her took her breath away, but at the same time cleared her chest, removed the tightness that had plagued her so that respiration came easier. She tousled his hair. “Kora, what are you doing here?”
Bennie said, “We came to fetch you, unless you want to stay. You don’t have to hide here, not anymore. Zalski’s dead.”
Kora spun a chair around so that Zacry dropped onto it instead of to the floor. “He’s dead? And you two, you two aren’t? Is Lanokas gonna rule?”
Bendelof grabbed her chest. “How do you know he…?”
“Is he?” Zacry asked. She affirmed the boy’s intuition. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “I don’t believe it. Are you really who I think you are?” He rose to his feet again, his face hardening. “I mean that. You could be imposters. Zalski could have enchanted you.”
Bennie said, “You complained about Kora’s cabbage more than once back at Fontferry. Only the real me would know that.”
Kora sent her brother a look of mock insult. One side of his mouth twitched, threatening to turn up. “And you?” he said, half in jest. “What was the bedtime story you used to tell me? When I was little?”
The levity that had just arisen fell as rapidly as it had sprung into existence. Bennie pulled a second chair forward and sat facing Zacry, hands clasped on her legs. “Zalski took Kora’s voice,” she said.
“Zalski took her…? What do you mean?”
“Before he died. To stop her casting spells. She can’t talk.”
Zacry looked rather as though he and not his sister had crossed paths with Zalski that day. His alarm faded to relief when Kora held his slate out in front of her; she had written, “Orphan in the woods you twerp.”
“So I’m a twerp?”
Kora wiped the slate with her palm and scribbled, “You didn’t know me?”
“You’re the twerp, that’s what I know.” Kora punched him gently in the ribs. Zacry said, “No more jokes. Did he hurt you? Could you get better?”
Kora wiped the side of her hand across the slate, the chalk turning her skin white. “I got better when I got here,” she wrote.
“And you?” Zac asked Bennie. “What is that on your shirt, is that blood?”
Bennie told him, “I’ve never been better.”
“Someone stabbed you,” he insisted. “And you couldn’t have transported here if Kora’s mute. You were in the city already, you….” Zacry steadied himself with a hand on the table. “You didn’t attack the Palace?”
Kora wrote, “When you’re 15 I’ll tell you not before.”
“That’s not fair,” he protested. Kora underlined the last two words and jabbed a finger at them. Bennie rose to her defense.
“You don’t need to know these things. You’ve already found out too much. Zac, your sister’s right.”
Zacry huffed to himself and asked Kora, “So the day I turn fifteen, you’ll tell me everything? From the beginning, from when you took up with them?” Kora nodded. “You promise?” She crossed her heart. Her brother accepted the agreement. “So where are we going?” he asked.
Bennie answered, “To Traigland, I imagine. The ships from the nearest port usually head there.”
Zacry started. “What? Why are we leaving Herezoth? I thought you said Zalski’s dead. What about Mother?”
“There’s no time to explain,” said Bendelof. “There really isn’t. Go gather your things, quickly.”
Zacry groaned. “You two are lucky I like you so much. If anyone else tried to pull this….”
The man who owned the house spoke for the first time since his guests had entered the kitchen. “I’ll find your mother, Zacry. I have connections, you know all about them. I’ll tell her where you went. Now go pack up. If Bendelof says you three have to be rushing off, it’s for a reason.”
His foster son obeyed him. Kora erased the slate again and wrote, “What connections?”
“I distributed the Letter in these parts, so your mother and I have some mutual acquaintances. I heard she went eastward af
ter the paper collapsed, toward the fishing towns nearest Yangerton. I should pick up her trail pretty easily, but if I can’t, the king will have the resources. You’re going to Traigland, you said? Stay near Triflag Bay, where you’ll make port. I hear it’s a livable town, and from there you can check each passenger boat for Ilana as it comes in.”
“That sounds like as good a plan as any,” said Bendelof.
“Are you hungry?” their host asked.
“I don’t feel hungry. I don’t want to think of food.”
“You should pick at something, both of you. Sit. At least while we wait for Zacry, you can eat.” He started slicing the pork loin. Kora, feeling more than ever that she should recognize her host from somewhere, wrote, “Have we met before?”
“I don’t think so,” said Drake, putting two plates before the women. “I’d remember that. I believe you know my sister, though. Nani Jute.”
Kora nodded. She had noticed his resemblance to Nani; they shared the same chin. Drake went to the other side of the room to grab a pitcher of water, and Bendelof asked after a couple of bites Drake prompted her to take, “How’s your sister?”
“She’s wonderful. And Ter and the baby. It’s a boy, I don’t know if you’d heard.”
“I hadn’t. It’s been ages since I saw her.”
“I’ll tell her you asked about her. You won’t see her yourself if you’re planning to go to Traigland. What’s taking you that way, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Bennie explained about the mob. By the time she finished, Drake was shaking with ire; he nearly slammed his fists on the table once, but thought better of it. “Those cowardly monsters,” he muttered. “Those mindless…. Where was Laskenay in all of this?”
The Crimson League (The Herezoth Trilogy) Page 59