Beneath Ceaseless Skies #60

by Brennan, Marie

  Kattie and I first hatched that plan at a failed truce parley when we were both twelve and sealed it with a sisterly kiss under that selfsame serpent of a vine—fat even then, and as heady with its perfume—and nurtured that plan across the narrow sea through smuggled letters and secreted messages for six years, and left our flight just an hour too late. Or a few years too late, or a few minutes: any would’ve sufficed to make good our escape, and in my imaginings, we have.

  But that’s merely how I choose to remember the evening, how I indulge in remembering it just these few moments while I catch my breath, wipe soot from my eyes, and rearrange my grip on the limp deadweight in my arms that is Katte’s bleeding, unconscious body. In this more dire reality, with its flame-wrapped boulders the size of crofters’ cottages lobbed by magicks over a narrow sea, the klaxon birds wail their panic from every turret. Smoke threatens to clog my nose and throat with poisonous stinging ash smelling strangely of mutton.

  It’s not mutton burning, of course; it’s those unfortunates, all my uncle’s counselors, champions, and guests trapped under the rubble of the fortress’s great hall where it fell; trapped in their dancing slippers and decorative feathers, their strands of polished amber and their golden torques under a mountain of ancient marble and carved ivory and a million shards of etched-mirror ceiling, and all of it ablaze.

  The pang at thoughts of my uncle’s death comes from my sense of outrage and not from deep personal grief; I used all that up on my parents, who died of green fever when I was six. I’ve shed tears for no one since. Not even for myself.

  Fire licks at every corner of my vision past the smoke. I resist the urge to unlace the confining boots hiding my shame by my uncle’s royal order. I ignore the point of my blade digging ungently into the soft flesh of my thigh. Taking a deep breath, I wedge myself under Katte’s slumped body and drape her weight across my shoulders. Milkmaids smaller than myself carry half-grown calves in such a manner, and the goatherd carries his charges and he but seven years old. Beautiful, perfect Katte of Mekk is larger than I, though more in length than mass. I pretend the wet sticky warmth seeping into the fabric along my ribs isn’t her blood as I stagger from under the scented vine into the garden proper.

  The garden, too, is burning. Everything, burning. Trees crackle at their tops like children’s party favors lit for Festival. Enormous plumes of red flowers, some large as my head and none smaller than my fist, ignite singly and in clusters along the sweeping branches decorated for this momentous day of peace. Crimson petals are replaced by vermilion flames. White ash flutters through the air like benevolent snow, mild and soft.

  My uncle’s spies warned us the Mekklan warlord’s son and his alchemists had perfected a magicked stone-burning reagent capable of igniting boulders, which when lobbed over the narrow sea dividing their isle from Toth could ignite other rock, which could ignite yet more, and more, and so could burn our famous fortress to the cliffs upon which it sits.

  It seems our informants did not, at least in this, lie. Pillars topple from the last standing portions of the great hall’s portico, flames gusting upward on drafts of their own heat. Soon the alchemists’ fire will eat all the marble and stone of Toth’s fortress palace, and all the grass and trees, and the sculleries and the stables and the spires, and the bones of my parents in the royal crypt. I suppose fire capable of eating rock doesn’t stop; it must consume the very cliffs downward, downward until it reaches the sea.

  I stumble from the last uneven flagstones of the palace gardens onto the stubbled wild grasses beyond the wall. Already my labored breathing burns in my chest as I lurch toward the narrow path leading down the cliffside.

  Katte moans and tries to lift her head. “Sigra,” she murmurs, my name made strange by her Mekklan accent.

  “Hold fast, Katte,” I say between panting breaths. “I’ll take you to the healer witch. Hold on....”

  Or perhaps I mumbled some other words of comfort, or said them only in my head, and all to escape my mouth between gritted teeth was a groan, or maybe a grim laugh. I have an unfortunate habit of laughing when distressed, even in the most dire circumstances: when I sliced my wrist to the bone during blade practice last summer, I’m told I laughed uproariously before fainting from loss of blood. At least I hadn’t had to witness my own ignoble trip to the apothecary in the head gardener’s wheeled barrow. My wrist still aches in damp weather, but I’ve managed all these years with worse.

  It aches now, as do my feet and ankles still bound by these cursed boots. I’ll not reach the bottom of the cliff wearing such instruments of torture; made, of course, by order of the king. And tight, tight, tight, as though it’s not too late to force sinew and bone from keratin and hoof.

  “Katte,” I say, crumpling to my knees, lowering her to the weedy reeds clinging to the cliff’s rim with more stubbornness than flourish. “We must climb down to the boat. Can you stand?”

  “Sigra, I’m sorry.”

  She murmurs my name once more before consciousness leaves her again. I smooth her damp hair from her cheek. Red coagulating smears streak our clothes, her face, my hands. The gash in the side of her head glistens.

  I slide my blade from its sheath to saw a strip from the hem of my tunic. Unlike the gown laid out for me this evening—the gown I never donned, the gown now buried under countless tons of ancient rock or burnt to cinders with the rest—it’s roughspun, chosen for sturdiness and durability. With luck it’ll prove absorbent, too.

  Katte’s eyelids flutter like moths under paper. She rouses, presses the roughspun to her skull cracked by falling rubble. I rip the lacing from my boots to tie the makeshift bandage in place, and when I’m satisfied it’s the best I can do, I tug my feet free of the hated footwear and stand. With feral pleasure I fling the heavy, irregular boots over the edge of the cliff and imagine with satisfaction them tumbling, squarish, loose-tongued, and empty, end over end until their splash into the sea far below is swallowed by the crashing tide where it hurls itself against the rock.

  Unfettered, my hooves find sturdy purchase on the pebbled ground as I bend to help Katte to her feet. She wobbles slightly and blanches, but stands firm.

  I hug my only friend briefly but tight. We turn to watch the great Fortress of Toth burning with the raging alchemical blaze sent by Katte’s brother, the warlord’s son, using his terrible magicked launching weapons from over the sea. What hate a man must hold to kill his father, his father’s personal guard and closest advisors, a thousand of my uncle’s guests, and a thousand more innocents—servants, cooks, stable boys. And me too, of course; as heir I should’ve been in the great hall at the twelfth chime of the twelfth hour, lifting my glass to peace.

  I look away from the burning arches and spires and ramparts to study Katte, wondering if her brother’s actions, her father’s death cause her pain. But in the etched lines of her face I find no grief; I see only exhaustion and a set to her mouth I interpret as resignation. I know from her letters she’s lived confined mainly in her tower, scarcely seeing her alchemist brother until the last year or so and her warmongering father almost never. She hardly knew them. Like me she has no other friends, and has led an unbearably lonely life before now.

  “Can you make it to the bottom of the cliff?” I ask.

  Her gaze lingers on the twisting flames, the massive column of smoke darkening the sky like an angry stormcloud sent by weather magicks. She turns, looks out across the water. The sea is grey, calmer past the turbulence of warring currents near the shore. She nods, though weakly.

  We navigate the steep incline. Katte stumbles on unsteady feet, holding her bandaged head with one hand and gripping tight to my shoulder with the other, her steps increasingly weaker as we go. I’ve grown to love her like a sister for her letters of courage, of support. I love her now for the look of grim determination in her eyes, the defiant set of her chin. The roughspun bandage and the front of her gown are drenched in red. The portions of her face not streaked with soot or blood are white a
s sunbleached bone.

  My sharp hooves do well on the soft crumbling stone of the cliff path. I ignore the dozens of seabirds shrieking, diving at us as we pass their cliffside nests. When the birds see we have no interest in their eggs, they leave off their aerial attacks and satisfy themselves with perching just out of reach and cawing bitterly as we pass.

  The water’s edge where it kisses the cliff is deafening, violent. These kisses aren’t the gentle pressings described in bardsong; here is a kiss of fury, of titanic strength, of the unending struggle for dominance between tide and stone and sea. Moored to the rocks in the sheltered cove at the bottom of the path lies our boat where I paid for it to be hidden. Paid with my dead mother’s jewels. Paid enough for the little goatherd and his fisherman father to live like lords the rest of their lives.

  Grasping Katte by the shoulders, I pull her close. Her velveteen gown is still redolent of jasmine from the gardens, the delicate scent surviving even the salt brine of the sea, the sharp tang of her blood.

  “The healer witch’s island isn’t far,” I say into her ear, loud enough for her to hear above the water, the wind, the echo of crying seabirds wheeling high above us up the cliff. “I went there often as a child. I know the way.”

  She nods, swallows hard, then shivers, sagging at the knees. I lean her against a sharp-edged boulder and unlash the small boat from its rocky mooring. No shore here; just one crag among many, thrusting from the swirling grey of roiling sea. Though it’s true I visited the healer witch as a child, I certainly never rowed myself there. I’ve never rowed anywhere but on the placid artificial lake of Toth’s ancient fortress moat; the one with geese and lilies, which in warmer seasons is smooth and unrippled as the great hall’s mirrored ceiling.

  In our plans, Katte and I were both well and whole. We knew our escape route dangerous, but it seemed more an adventure then, on paper and in daydreams. She sags now against the boulder, her head lolling and her knuckles white, her gown splotched wetly red against the distinctive Mekklan gold velvet and brocade.

  Katte’s brief resurgence of strength has been completely spent in our cliffside descent. I heft her across the short expanse of salt-dank stone, the spraying seawater masquerading as briny rain showering down to drench us. I pray I don’t drop her into the frothing waters as I lower her unresisting body into the boat.

  Miraculously, my silent, undirected prayer is answered. My hooved feet nearly prove my undoing as I skitter on wet rock. I splash, ungainly and afraid, into the wooden bottom of the shallow boat, certain my hooves will punch through. Behind me the red-streaked green saltweed slime clinging to grey rock shows two furrowed grooves scraped clean by my sliding.

  I swallow hard against the bilious fear lumping in my throat.

  No sooner are we aboard than we’re caught by vicious eddies near the cliff. Spinning, our little boat rides the crest of one wave only to be tossed into the trough of another. Water gathering in the bottom of our craft turns red, Katte’s hem seeping as though her gown bleeds rather than her head.

  I close my eyes against the motion as churning currents whirl us outward between rocks jutting like serpents’ teeth. Clenching my jaw tight, I strain against the rudder. The wood shudders, jarring my bones, wanting to shear off and join the flotsam froth.

  When we shoot unexpectedly into smoother waters, my grip on the rudder turns us completely around before I gain my bearings and fit the oars into their locks, desperate to keep us from rejoining more violent currents. The roar of sea crashing against the cliff’s base already seems distant and unrelated to our current circumstance. Pulling hard in the direction of the healer witch’s island, I remind myself that every stroke takes me farther from the thick black column of smoke billowing up behind.

  I laugh bleakly and grit my teeth. Ignoring the already-ache of underused muscles, the grinding of overtaxed ligament and bone, the bloody water washing across my unfettered ankles, I laugh and laugh, and row.

  * * *

  Rowing upon thrashing waves against swift brutal currents is nothing like rowing on a placid ancient moat, forever circling, watched by fat lazy swans paddling past chains of decorative lilies, petaled jewels tossed to float like buoyant necklaces.

  Keeping Toth to my right, I row, ignoring the burning fortress on the cliffs above and the bleeding girl slumped in the boat below. My hooves look to be drowning in her blood, though I know it’s just the seawater tinted unfortunate red. Her bandages are soaked through, the lacings from my hated boots dripping at their knots. When our small boat bumps against the rocky landing of the witch’s cove, I nearly collapse beside my unconscious friend in exhaustion and relief.

  Black gulls are our welcoming party. The great hulking birds glare at us from dark-marble eyes. Their feathers are the color of charred wood, their wings banded with iridescence which glints in the last rays of a setting sun redder than alchemists’ fire.

  Birds perched on every nearby surface watch me try to rouse Katte from the reddened water sloshing in the bottom of the boat. My shoulders burn from battling with sea and oars. My eyes sting, my vision swims, my head aches as though bound in tight leathers—some torture device similar to the straps my uncle’s surgeons bound to my feet in an effort to change their ungainly form.

  I drag Katte from the boat. Under my burden I stagger up the short path to the witch’s smooth-stone cottage thatched with waterweed. The last sliver of red sun disappears as I totter the final steps. The gulls must still be watching in the dark, but I can no longer distinguish their black shapes from the deeper blackness beyond.

  The cottage door opens to reveal a small hunched figure between me and a flickering hearthfire. I recognize the crooked shoulders and stilted angle of the head, the stiff outline of the woven gullfeather cape and hood.

  “Sigra of Toth,” says the witch. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  * * *

  Serious healing magicks are deadly for such a lifesaving art.

  I watch the healer witch rub Katte’s unmoving form with herbs and pastes, chanting and mumbling. Heat flows from them both, hotter and hotter, until the cottage is stifling, unbearable. Flashes of light spark from the witch’s hands so quickly, I’m left uncertain after each one if they’ve actually occurred, though I feel a tugging wrench at every pulse. Sometimes the sparks skitter across my skin, reach into my muscles and rummage through my gut. My body tingles at all my aches and bruises.

  One particularly brilliant flash sends Katte’s body arching upward from the cot, her long unbound hair spilling to the floor, her red lips parted in a scream without sound, her eyes wide open without seeing, her hands splay-fingered and pushing against nothing.

  I utter the long, drawn-out scream she cannot as my knees buckle and I sink slowly, almost gently, to the hard cottage floor.

  * * *

  I lost consciousness; I realized this only after I woke propped by the fire, clothed in nothing but an unbleached sheet and quilted gullfeather shawl. The witch told me then in her crooning voice my friend and I would probably live. Of course I’ll live, I said to her, and she replied, No ‘of course’ about it.

  And so now I sit, quiet, sipping the witch’s brewed herb tea. I’d thought the windows dirty, covered in ash; but now I see it’s black gulls clustered thickly on the stone sills. They occasionally scrabble for position up against the glass, their feathers flat-pressed swirling darkness. The windows, like much of the healer witch’s furnishings, are extravagant for a wave-crushed rock in the middle of the windy sea midway between Toth and Mekk. I abruptly realize that Toth no longer exists, and that now the witch’s cottage isle lies halfway between the seaside palace of a Mekklan murderer and a smoking hole on top of a cliff.

  I sip from the smooth earthenware tumbler between my palms. The witch shuffles over, squats by my side. Without looking up from beneath her woven gullfeather hood, she takes one of my hooves in her hand and probes my ankle with strong bony fingers. It’s been a long time since I’ve considered my feet, an
d longer yet since anyone has touched them without violence. Even the cobbler made my prison-shoes from drawings and measurements provided by myself at my uncle’s order.

  A brief resentment against both men flares in my chest before I remember they’re dead. My resentment snuffs out like a tallow candle.

  The witch raps on my hoof as though knocking at a small curved door. It makes a thick, slightly hollow sound. “Does it still pain you to walk, girl?” she asks, her crooked mouth and tongue turning the word girl into gull. The black gulls at her windows ruffle their feathers against the glass as though in response.

  “No,” I say.

  She nods. “Good. When you were small I feared they might never harden enough for proper walking.”

  Uncertain how to respond, I remain silent. I gulp the last of my tea, the few floating twigs and dried flowers not clumped wetly to the bottom of my cup tasting bitter as I press them between my teeth. The witch takes the cup from my hands and peers inside, tilting it to read my fate in the dregs by the fire’s glow.

  I wonder if she even knows the fate of the ancient Fortress of Toth.

  “Of course I know,” she says as though I’d spoken aloud, her attention still fixed on the pattern of herbs clustered in my cup. “I saw years ago what would happen at the twelfth chime of the twelfth hour. Saw it in the tea leaves.”

  She has powerful magicks, the witch. She’s lived on her gull-specked island as long as anyone can remember, assisting those who seek her aid, Tothic or Mekklan. She belongs to no one, owes allegiance to none. It’s said even outlanders from beyond the ocean make the watery trek to beg her help and often reward her richly for her time.

  When she glances up, her eyes catch the firelight at an oblique angle, making them glow from the depths of her gullfeather hood. “The tea leaves show bits of fate. Sometimes the future, sometimes the past. Know what I see now, girl?”