"Verification," Lodan threw out.
Alec elaborated for him. "Surely you're aware, Ellia, of the weight royal alliances give. It's not just after the war ends—if we even do win—there's a chance that if Lucian's position is confirmed it could help in the battle. We've seen the affect his appearance had on the Akadian soldiers, imagine if he could convince men to fight for our side before the battle had even begun."
"The affect Lucian's appearance has on the soldiers has nothing to do with the fact that he was Molec's son. That was because his brother was Captain, a great captain. Akadian soldiers don't care about heirs and royalty, they care about their military leaders. They're not going to turn on Malatos Lox because Molec wasn't faithful."
As soon as I got the words out, I closed my eyes, wishing I hadn't said them. When I glanced at Amalia, I felt as if I'd been slapped, and she wasn't even looking back at me. The Warriors had grown a little more withdrawn, but I felt reproached as well, and even foolish, like a child.
"An alliance between the Cirali Warriors and Shaundakul even more than Akadia and Shaundakul would assist with the war effort," Elminster mentioned—in his painfully slow way that had everyone holding their breaths by the time he had finished.
"Even you're supportive of this?" I asked Elminster. "Is everyone?"
Lyrie lifted her brows in a manner that said she wasn't. Lodan looked thoughtful at least. I didn't want to think of Amalia's expression. Elminster scoffed.
"I don't see why that matters one way or another," he sputtered. "I'm not blind. Princess Solidor didn't come to Yanartas alone and it's her raven-haired friend that Lucian fancies, not her." He chuckled at his words. Lyrie joined him, and for a moment I wanted to as well.
Most of the others looked stricken. Tory in particular, but I didn't see why all of them could be so dense about it. Lucian wasn't here; I'd told them why in so many words. They all knew he hadn't come to report when he was meant to—and if they didn't realize that that was proof enough what Estrid meant to the stringent Warrior, they really were blind, like Elminster had said.
"This doesn't need to be discussed thoroughly now," Alec placated. "Perhaps everyone should take some time to think on it.... We'll be sure to quell any rumors for the time being, Ellia."
"We'd never make you do anything that you didn't choose," Tory added.
"We should return to the matter of the Echrians," Alec went on, "Their assistance in Ghaund—do you know if they would fight the Wyverns if necessary?"
I tried hard not to sigh. We'd discussed most of what had happened with the Vermillion Birds before the talk of marriage had come up. I didn't feel up to speaking more of it now, but I certainly wasn't about to go retrieve Lucian to do it. I made Luffie promise to come in and fly me out if we weren't finished in an hour, then launched into answering Alec's question.
All the while ignoring the thoughts that were truly clustering my mind. Who marriage inevitably made me think of.
CYRIC:
I put one foot in front of the other, concentrating hard to do so. The floor was golden, and so were the pillars on either side of me; wide as trees. I looked up as I passed them, seeing Lox at the head of the throne-room. He had a hand on the back of throne, while his gaze was on the ceiling. Its golden rafters were cracked and ruined; it looked as if the whole thing could fall down any second, and the dust that coated the floor did nothing to deter the notion.
"It was supposed to have taken King Thaniel five years to build this palace," Lox said, still looking upwards, his black eyes shifting.
I stopped a few yards from the throne.
"He ruled seven generations before Molec; one of his direct ancestors—though I'm sure you already knew that. As long as this palace has stood, Akadia has been led by their line. Their dreams. Their directions. But now..." Lox's voice trailed off. He looked down at me with a smile. "Perhaps Thaniel should have spent longer than five years after all."
His tone was amused, and begged the same reaction out of me. But I didn't match it. And it made him frown.
"Are you here about the battalions?" he asked.
"I'm here because I was told you wanted to see me."
He narrowed. Not much. Just enough. To make me sure he could tell the frailty of my stance. The sweat at my neck. The strain of my throat—set to send me into a coughing fit at any moment. And most of all, his dislike of my reply—which even now had its great affect.
"Ah yes, I do recall that," he said. He shrugged his shoulders. "But now that we're on the subject, why don't we discuss the soldiers after all. I would ask you what you think of their current status...only I'm not sure that you know. We've been missing you at the war-meetings. Since, well, since the attack last week, isn't that right?"
I swallowed thick, then spoke calmly. "I know that they're returning from the east. That part of Venoc's battalion is remaining in Selket. That Scanth will stay in Karatel with his." I lifted my head stricter. "Last I heard they're meant to arrive without a few days."
"And your opinion?" he prodded.
I took a short breath, gripping my jaw, before going on. "To end the war after the king's death, most everybody is pleased about it.... But even if they weren't; it's a necessity to have the soldiers back in Akadia, isn't it? If they were away while the rule is so uncertain, it could mean chaos." I met his gaze evenly. "There would be no telling who might try to take control."
Lox measured my face, then I thought I saw something, something like the fire that lit his eyes when he spoke of chimera—only I couldn't be sure, before it disappeared. "That's very good, son. Very good." He tipped his head up to the rafters. "We've discussed the palace as well. What do you think should be done about it?"
I didn't have to look up. I heard a pound in the distance, from somewhere outside the building's walls, and dust crumbled down in a golden fog. "I think that you've already decided," I answered.
Lox took a breath, with a slow nod. Finally lifting a brow. "By that do you mean... that I decided after seeing the palace in such a state that it must come down—or that I decided it should come down before it was ever in such a state?"
My brow dipped. I didn't try to hide it; I didn't think I could have in any case.
"Cyric... do you think you can behave as you have for days, scarcely speak to me, after such an event and I won't guess the line of your thoughts? Your behavior always has been transparent. All your feelings, the same. So have out with it, son. Are you in agreement with so many others, that imagine I planned the whole destruction myself. Fit with chimera, materials we have no access to—celebrating an event I had no part in planning."
My narrow deepened. But it wasn't enough to keep me from seeing him perfectly—as I slowly shook my head. "Not like the others," I said, then the next words strained out, with about a dozen others screaming at me not to say them, "I saw you."
Lox had maintained a calm exterior thus far, but now, though his body stayed very still, his eyes flamed over, the skin around them tensed, and he kept this very dark glare on me for seconds, until finally breaking it to frown. "You saw me leave?" he scoffed. "Of course I did, that's why I'm not dead."
"No," I argued. "Not like you told everyone else. You said that you were called away on news from Scanth. If that were true, others would have been told. But they weren't. Your men told Sersk. And Sersk, he told you. And then..."
Lox's features crushed together, but I was watching him at the palace again, looking about the room, from Molec, to Veera, to me, and others—all of it making me as ill. Then I was being led to a cold balcony, by Ellia. She was holding my hand. And then she touched my face, and looked at me, and her eyes told me how much she loved me. Then she kissed me and it hurt because I knew I couldn't have her.
Very suddenly, or perhaps not so much as I thought, I was brought back to the throne-room by Lox's voice—only now his features had gone steady, and his tone was careful. "Is that what you think?" he said, speaking of the first words that I'd missed, "That I would have le
t you die. Well—no wonder you're upset, son." He took a step forward, and I was too off-balance to shift myself. "Cyric," he said, frowning, "I knew your princess would rescue you. I watched her take you away. There was no doubt in my mind that you would survive."
He paused, and I frowned, trying to measure these new words against what I knew. "You're saying you did call the Yanartians, then?" I followed, thinking that for him to know that Ellia could save me, he would have had to have been aware that they were there.
Lox scoffed. "You know as well as anyone, that I couldn't call the Yanartians. If I could, I would call them into a hive of Wyverns where we might dispose of them once and for all. No. I simply... the Yanartians didn't attack the palace on their own. They had the help of Democedians. My spies there, picked up word of it: movements of their explosive minerals. I only knew that they might try to use it against one of our strongholds, maybe even the mountains in the north. I didn't know when or where. I certainly never guessed that they would attack Akadia, let alone the palace directly. When the victory was won in Selket and it was clear that both Molec and I would be present to attend the celebration, I had suspicions. I had the skies watched. But it was merely a precaution. If I had known, for certain that the palace was going to be attacked, I would have kept everyone from it of course. But by then it was too late."
Lox hesitated, but I wasn't saying anything. I'd gone very still, and I couldn't focus on any one thought for very long.
"You might have been preoccupied these past weeks in Akadia, Cyric, so perhaps you didn't notice Molec's behavior. But he was becoming unmanageable. There was no telling what he might do next, things that could put the entire army in jeopardy.... I had less than minutes. I had to make the decision that was best for all of Akadia. Are you, even now, thinking along those lines?"
I met his gaze—where before I'd been watching the floor. I heard these words repeated back in my head, until it became true that he was saying them. And then I wondered that he spoke of Molec, and even me, but didn't think of mentioning the person he'd left that had loved him most. But I wouldn't ask, myself, because I didn't want another answer that I already knew.
Lox frowned his best expression of disapproval when I didn't answer him. "You know, I find it hard to fathom, Cyric, when you escaped the attack yourself, that you could suspect me of false motives for doing the same." He paused for a moment, then continued on. "Oh, I know you said that you were forced. But I can't help but wonder if you'd have minded very much if she'd just taken you away completely. All the way to Yanartas." He waited again, watching my face, then tipped his head, glancing back over the throne-room. "Your recent behavior might lead some to believe so. I would aim to change that, and keep all this about the party between us. We wouldn't want you to become the victim of some misconstrued attack."
This time when he looked at me, it was only for a second, and my mind was distant again, but now instead of the party, it had flipped much further into the past, standing outside the barracks hall, passing Tobias on the steps where Lox had said nearly the same words to him that he'd just said to me.
"As for the palace," Lox went on, "you were right. It won't stand much longer. I've already spoken with the engineers; they plan to start with its demolition this afternoon." He stepped down from the throne, and stopped beside me, his attention still elsewhere as he spoke. "Be sure to leave before it comes down, right, son?"
He walked on, not waiting for me to respond. I could hear his steps ringing through the hall, and my mind was still on Tobias.
When he'd gotten some yards off, I turned around, calling to him at the same time.
"I knew about the letters."
Lox froze. My heart slammed in my chest, and my ears were ringing. I watched his arm shift first, and then his head slowly turn around—until he was facing me completely, framed by gold pillars.
"That they were fake. I knew before you sent me to kill them. Did you know that I did?"
He blinked a few times, glancing me over. And then his eyes glazed, like they were darker than dark, sucking in the light around him. "I don't see why it matters, son." He tipped his head down. "They're dead now either way, aren't they?..."
Before he turned back around, his mouth pulled to a snicker. And then his image melted, fading into reds and yellows, until I was in a room, dark and cold. Fog poured through a window. I was holding a knife. I raised it in the air... — and then I stabbed it downwards, into the chest of the man asleep below me. A horse cried outside the window and footsteps brought someone closer. A second figure appeared in the doorway, calling out my name, but only a moment before I launched my knife in his direction, striking him through the heart.
Hands wrapped around my neck, tugging me down into the bed; but instead of a dead man's they were warm and soft. They found my face and then her lips did; she kissed me as she turned me over. And my hands were on her and in her hair. She put her lips to my ear and whispered, "I don't believe you killed them."
I was in a hall of doors—made of heavy wood like the palace in Karatel. Each I passed was shut suddenly by a laughing Katellian servant, beautiful; twice I saw Lox with her before the door could close. At the end of the hall stood Veera, in dress that kept shifting between colors. Red meant that she was drinking too much at a party. Blue had me spinning her around beside a fountain. Green and she was sitting across from me on the edge of a bath, dipping her feet in the water.
She watched the doors shut as I did. Then reached her hand out and cried my name as the walls turned golden and an explosion of flames drowned out her voice.
I saw a Behemoth and then a pounding door inside a cave.
Ellia looked at the sun as she laid beside me. "I didn't feel it," she said, frowning, "but Tobias was certain." The cave door shook and scraped again. Ellia tucked her head into my neck. "At least I still have you," she told me. I stabbed Raand. Veera called my name. Ellia kissed me on a balcony. A dragon threw its head back above trees. The cave door shuttered and screeched.
I shot up into pitch darkness. I was covered in sweat, and I couldn't breathe; my torso was craning with the effort of it like I'd suffocate myself. A distant cry came from my window, signaling the Akadian night. I pushed off sheets and crossed the room. I coughed as I found my desk and opened the first drawer. I dug my hand inside to find nothing. I opened the next drawer, scattering papers only to find nothing again. I threw the drawer at the ground in a fit. Then I stood up, wiping sweat from my eyes, and coming to enough to realize that I wasn't going to be able to find what I was searching for. I screamed and kicked the desk hard twice, and then I put my hands up on the sides of my head and pressed in with my palms. The distance between me and what I wanted spanned itself out tauntingly, but I pictured the crown anyways, and then I pictured its owner.
My lungs slowly settled in their strain for air. The blood racing through my veins pulsed slower, though it continued to feel like a poison, like the poison that Silos described was killing the Behemoths. I'd thought it before. I thought it every time I had a nightmare. Akadia was like a substance my body couldn't survive, or else I was. Me and all the things I'd done.
The blackness of my room I couldn't take. I moved to my window and looked outside of it, so that I wouldn't be forced to see things in the darkness that I didn't want to. Here there were torchlights and lit streets and balconies.
These dreams I had most nights—making me ill whether they were true or not. Like the ones tonight. Real memories, such as my conversation with Lox. That was the time he'd confessed to allowing everyone in the palace to die. It hadn't been more than a few days after the attack. At that time I'd been ill not just at night but all the time. There were few things then that I could do to calm myself, but I'd had to learn them.
I pushed my hands over my face and into my hair, shaking as I did, but not with laughter or anything else explicable. I ended up slunk down, with my elbows on the window ledge, and I looked past the city, at the desert where the smoke rose orange from
the behemoth's cavern. I couldn't see the granted mountain from here, but there was a large mound of overturned earth on the other side of the desert—what excess had come from digging out the cavern. There was a ramp leading out that side of the lakebed; wagons used it, though it was hard to pull them up if they were loaded. Sometimes the Behemoths were made to do it, under tight chains, with the supervision of many men. Silos didn't like it. They used sparks to drive them on, an invention of Bellerophon's. They were made of just a small bit of explosive powder, nothing like what the Democedian's had used to blow the palace; just something that caused a flash of light and deafening pop. I suspected the fear they caused in the Behemoths was the reason for Silos's aversion.
Silos's question from earlier in the day came back to my mind now. But instead of it I thought of my answer.
There were things that I played in my head in the long hours of the day, and like a decision already made for me, I added it in with them. I tested it in my mind even now.
And then the night didn't seem so dark.
Chapter Four
ELLIA:
There were some Yanartian seagulls welcoming in the warmer day, but I could only just barely hear them above the other sounds outside. Voices mostly—calling in accents both foreign and familiar. My cabin was off the path traffic, and I had my door closed and a screen pulled across my window for privacy. For this reason, though light came in, the breeze didn't; and the chimes that filled my small room didn't make the constant sounds they usually did, more a random tingle here and there.
I was lying on my bed, on my stomach, fingering a small bottle. I'd shown it to the first-order Warriors and they'd said I shouldn't open it, but now I played with the idea. It was the pledge the Vermillion birds had given, not the bottle, but the fire inside—their living fire. Orange and curling, I wondered how the flames didn't melt the glass, though they did make it warm. It reminded me of the dispel stone that my powers had once been trapped in.
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